#white rock lake fire

[disteal]

The burning man debacle is rly captivating to me in the ‘convention dumpster fire poetic irony’ sense. Like ur telling me these silicon valley crystal guys are stuck in a flooding lake bed after calling the cops on climate change protestors holding up traffic into the festival? By telling the cops these unarmed protestors had a gun? Fantastic. And they’re dying from exposure- oh they’re scaring the shit out of each other with a fake ebola scare??? Of course. I’m sure they’re handling that normally. Just saw a video from a guy at the festival saying folks need to stop being ‘negative’ about the people who didn’t survive the night. And they can’t leave the flooding lake bed because nobody can move their cars- It appears Chris Rock and Diplo have escaped the lake bed by walking out, as it was only a few miles until they hit regular traffic. We do not know the state of the burning man sex plane, the plane at burning man you book to have sex in, which exists. Never before seen cataclysmic impact to the ‘white women with $5k veneers and box braids’ community.

[rayas-ryoiki-tenkai]

something a little different

• tags: gojo/reader, 18+ minors dni, vibrator, semi-public smut

• summary: the vibrator presses against your clit and it drives gojo wild

•°. *࿐ this story contains explicit themes. minors dni •°. *࿐

"It's fairly silent," soft, white hair bounces when he tilts his head, "no one will know."

He's watching you, peering down beyond his blackout sunglasses to what muscle twitches where, how you fill your chest slowly and expel in a sigh. You're thinking about it, of course, the tempting thrill, a silent pleasure that will shift so loudly in your bones. Gojo can already spot how your thighs attempt to shake the exciting tickle off them.

"It's not a cursed tool, is it?"

Gojo shakes his head chuckling, but damn if it was, he'd have found all there was to find in the archive back in his clan's base. Not that he seemed fond of rummaging through anyone's underwear, something told Satoru that cursed tool sex toys weren't a thing.

"I will have the remote, obviously," he leans further into the seat to spread his legs. God, even the thought of you searching his eyes in a crowd when you're fighting the stimulation on your clit, that plead to give you a merciful moment to breathe, what a pretty sight you'd be.

You bite your nails.

He gestures a lipstick-sized, and disguised, bullet vibrator to you in two feeble fingers. It dangles in a tease, calling to you in a breathy whisper, or maybe that's just Gojo.

You know it'll feel so good. A stir in your pelvis that your boyfriend could push over if he so willed it. You'll shake and cry.

"Fine," you give into the fire in his eyes, an ice that burns. You know something pulls you into him despite the evergrowing list of 'maybe this'll be a bad idea' festering in the forefront of your mind. Because if things go wrong, if you need swooping away from a messy situation, you just had to say the word.

Gojo stands up and your spine stiffens. His steps are paced, deliberate, kissing the tension with soft praises as he steps closer. His breath fans down your face, bright eyes drinking up the both of yours before resting on the plump part of your lips.

A finger trails at the base of your throat and he drags it up your windpipe, relishing in the nervous swallow that shifts the movement. Bony ridges and pliant skin, Satoru pulls his finger up underneath your chin, savoring the jittery wash of electricity that rushes through you.

You feel light. A breath. Your chest runs rampant from his closeness, the sheer intensity of his scent setting back your resolve as you stare at his lips too. Pretty and pink, one of the softest parts of him considering he's all slim built and toned muscle everywhere else. He inches to press them onto yours weakly, as if he hadn't decided how to merge your mouths together this time.

They grow firm when his finger and thumb tilt up your chin. A sure, needy thing. He kisses into you hard and sharp like a parched man, staggering in search for lady lake in vast heat. Open-mouthed and so fucking wet. And he's found his drink, favoring his sweet tooth with your sweet tongue.

Playing with your tongue, his other hand plays with the strap of your pants, catching onto the band of your underwear. You squeak into his mouth when his hand dips to place the vibrator into position against your clit.

Gojo smiles against your lips.

"You'll take it, right?" He breathes.

"I'll take it."

You submit.

-.--.-

"Shh shh," Gojo's palm squeezes around your mouth, catching loud moans before they fall on the ears of the public. Your fingers tighten in his shirt. Fuck, it feels so good.

The restaurant was oblivious to how you rocked your hips in one of their booths, a needy sight for Satoru to drink up and have his own problem in his jeans.

Purposely on the lowest setting, you ached for more, but Satoru was no where near to grant you that mercy. So, you turned to extreme methods.

Lifting your drink, you stuck your tongue out to curl around the straw, wet and sloppy. You sucked with a sensual hum in your throat, looking at him through your lashes. Gojo caught the full extent of your show and it shot straight to his crotch.

Oh, so you wanted to play that game?

Now, he presses you into the bathroom door, edging the intensity until your cheeks flush, your eyes lose focus and your knees buckle, just to knock it down again to leave you hanging. You dread at the sound of the remote clicking when you get so, so close to coming, Gojo abruptly tuning the vibrating near null.

So blissfully painful, your clit feels like it's on fire. The overstimulation stirs into an impending orgasm, but it's just not enough.

"Baby, you look so good like this," Satoru purrs, his breath tickling in your ear. You're desperately clinging onto him, fingers bunching into fabric, flexing and shaking as if you couldn't decide what to do with them. Gojo is drunk on the power, dizzy with how your pretty little face stretches into pretty little expressions. That curl of your brows. Your jaw hanging low.

You hum loudly against his hand, erotic and messy.

He all but watches you, gives you the attention to feel the spotlight of his flashy blue eyes, and it spurs you on more. Your thighs lack the strength but they squeeze together still; you just need a little bit more.

Fuck, it feels like your skin could burn through your clothes, your nipples painfully stiff against your dress and bra. Gojo drags his lips along your neck, hovering close enough to wash your body in pure electric bliss.

Metal clanks as Gojo unbuckles his belt, a hand immediately freeing his straining issues. He pulls a packet from his pocket, rips it with his teeth and rolls the condom to the base of his cock. Fuck, the way your eyes glaze over at his cock like you could already feel him fucking you into the door until you collapsed.

The desire runs rampant. You buck your hips.

Your words muffle behind his hand. The buzz of the vibrator almost drowns you out. He hears you clear enough anyway.

"Please, Satoru," he lifts from your mouth to hear you say it, "Let me cum, please. Fuck me good."

Your hands are shaky, finding uncertain purchase on his shoulder as he lines himself up, the angry tip of his cock coaxing itself with your leaking juices. The vibrator buzzes idly on the floor. Your breath is unsteady.

One push in and you're already so close.

Shit, he fills you up so good and so easily.

He bottoms out and stills. Your moans shift a pitch higher, so close to pulsing around the glorious shape of him in your walls. If he moves the slightest, you're so done for.

And fuck, he does.

Pulling out slightly to ogle at how wet you're around him, he slams back in to the hilt, kissing the spot that makes you shake the most. And you cum immediately, a loud pornographic moan right into his ear, your lower back pushing into him to shake off the insistent edging he gave you.

"Fuck," he mutters, and by God you feel so good fluttering around his cock, so warm and wet. His hips jut forward of their own accord, he can't hold it back any longer.

And he thrusts a sloppy pace to fuck you through your orgasm and rile up the next, the smacking and squelching of your hips spurring him on to fasten the pace. You cling to him, ankles locked around his waist, arms locked around his neck; you know you'd fall if he moved you away from the door.

Fuck, fuck, you feel it squirming again, your breaths stagger once more.

The bathroom door handle shakes, and when it doesn't budge, a loud knock resounds.

Before you have the voice to gasp, your head thuds the door and Gojo clamps your mouth with his palm again. His sunglasses are thrown wherever, and bright cerulean locks with your eyes. His pale eyebrows are curled dangerously.

He fucks harder, faster and for some unbeknownst reason, louder. His hips thrust purposefully, rough and angry, how dare someone impose on his focus to fuck you good?

Satoru rests his forehead on yours, daring you to pull away from the eye contact, not that you wanted to anyway. The sheer will to making you come apart on his cock again only added to your commencing orgasm. That wild look. A starved beast behind the front of wolfish grin.

The door knocks again.

Gojo snarls. His hips smack painfully and you whimper under his palm. Tears fall on the back of his hand. Your toes curl, teetering on the edge of another mind-fucked orgasm. Your eyes roll back. Your hums grow short and high.

"Shit," Gojo hisses when you clamp around him and immediately pulses inside of you as he cums. Cushiony walls milk him deliciously and he messily thrusts into you to ride it out. His breath is heavy, spent. Your chest pushes into him as you breathe shakily.

Satoru drops the palm on your lips. You can't help but laugh.

He certainly made you shake and cry.

[cuubism]

Rock Paper Scissors

Dreamling | Pre-Slash | 5.7k | AO3

Dream suddenly gripped the lapels of Hob's jacket with a startling fervor, arms stretched across the tabletop. His gaze bore into Hob's. "I beg, allow me to represent you instead." "Now what kind of man would I be if I let others fight my battles?" Hob said, prying his fingers off before his endless grip tore through the fabric. "Hard as it may be to believe, I'm actually not a bad hand at chess. Don't worry about me." "I do not find that hard to believe. However, as I have said, this is not chess. It is an intimate and punishing battle of minds." "Alright, so it's like Go Fish."

Hob gets challenged to a duel. Too bad his opponent has it out for Dream, and has no intention of playing fair.

--

the first fic I ever started writing for Dreamling a year and a half ago, then forgot about! 😂 then randomly decided to finish.

--

“ROBERT GADLING,” yelled an individual Hob had never met before in his life, “I hereby challenge you to a duel!”

Hob squinted at him. Said individual was standing across the darkened street, dressed strangely in a white tunic flecked with gold. Then again, Hob’s barometer for strange was a bit different than what was normal, so who was he to say, really.

“What?” he said.

Suddenly this person was much closer to him. Hob flinched back, but couldn’t move much, close as he was to the pub door. “We have business,” hissed his pale-suited challenger. It was a masculine figure, blond hair swished to one side, eyes like fire. 

Hob wasn’t impressed. He’d seen worse. Better, too.

“Listen, mate,” he said, “I don’t really have time for this. I’ve already got something on the books tonight. Come back tomorrow.”

He started to walk through the doorway, but the… creature?—he didn’t think it was human—grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “We have business,” it repeated.

Hob tried to shake off its hand, but its grip was like hot iron. It seared through his jacket and burned his skin. 

“What business?” he snapped. “I’m certain we’ve never met before, and my memory is actually pretty good, long as it is.”

The creature smiled, more like a baring of teeth. “You have courted those who have harmed me—and my ilk.”

“Not clearing it up at all.”

There was a sound like the swishing of a thousand ghosts, and then Dream was beside him.

Dream. How strange, still, to have a name, a history—well, sort of—to put to the face he’d circled back to over and over again for all these years. The name cut his friend into sharp relief—Hob’s shadow, finally united with the being who cast it. 

Where the pale stranger burned white-hot, Dream emanated cold. Hob had always found his friend’s cold aura strangely comforting. It didn’t feel dangerous and biting like the winter wind. Instead, it was the cold of lake water when one dove deep enough, a subtle and quiet draw to the otherworldly. 

Well. Usually it didn’t feel dangerous. Right now, it felt positively hypothermic.

Dream’s presence chilled the air until the stranger was forced to yank his hand away from Hob’s arm, shaking it out with a hiss. Hob’s breath fogged the air in front of his face, never mind that it was summer.

“Phaethon,” Dream hissed on one long, cold breath. “You are not wanted here.”

Phaethon pulled himself up haughtily. “I can go as I please. Night, or no night.”

“You may test that theory if you wish.”

Phaethon faltered, just a bit, before recovering himself. “I am here only to deliver a message. I challenge you, Robert Gadling, to a duel.” His blazing eyes flickered over to Hob, then back to Dream. “I did not believe you were one to violate the old rules of challenge, Lord of Dreams.” 

He bowed slightly. It felt mocking, which rankled Hob, who’d otherwise been keeping his cool. 

“Are you going to explain what this is about?” he said, for the third time. “I don’t appreciate being accused of things I haven’t done.”

Instead of answering, Phaethon said, “I’ve uncovered your history. There’s quite a lot of it, isn’t there? I wager it could make quite a bit of trouble for you, having all of that information turned over to certain parties. Human authorities. Occultists. Vampire hunters, they’ll love you–”

“I’m not a vampire,” Hob snapped.

“Doesn’t matter. Point is, we can do that, or, you can choose to face me directly.”

“What do you seek to gain from the challenge?” demanded Dream. He seemed to know more about what was going on here than Hob, which wasn’t comforting. Hob didn’t particularly want to get drawn into some kind of immortal creature game with obscure rules he’d end up tripping over.

Phaethon’s grin emerged one tooth at a time. “I want… your dreams.”

Hob probably should have been more troubled by this. Instead, he just frowned in confusion. “Not sure that’s in your power, mate. You’re aware who you’re talking to?”

He didn’t need to gesture to Dream looming over his shoulder.

“If you agree to the terms,” said Phaethon, a hiss like lava dripping over stone, “then the magic will bind us.” 

Dream didn’t contradict him, but his anger cooled the air until Hob felt like he was standing atop a glacier.

“I think I’ll pass,” Hob told Phaethon. “Feel free to try to reveal me. I’m good at disappearing.” 

He turned to go—

“Lord Morpheus.” Phaethon turned the beam of his gaze on him, sunlight ricocheting off ice. “Will you stand in his stead?”

Hob grit his teeth and, against his better judgment, turned back around. “Don’t bring him into this. Look, if I win your challenge, what do I get in return?”

“You may request whatever you like,” said Dream. “Such are the terms of the agreement.”

“Fine. If I win, then I want this: you never speak to or of me again. That means no threatening me, no using me to threaten anyone else, no telling anyone about me—nothing. Got it?” God, Hob just wanted to go inside and have a beer.

Phaethon gave him a little bow. “Fair enough. I accept the terms of this challenge.” 

Dream seemed aggravated; a trickle of energy, like black lightning, scurried up the back of his neck and disappeared into his hair. But he didn’t intervene.

Hob and Phaethon shook on it. Then Phaethon retreated into the shadows again, calling, “Tomorrow at midnight, Robert Gadling. I will see you then.” Then his eyes blinked out and he was gone.

Hob shuddered. Good riddance. He rather preferred his eldritch creature to that one, thanks very much.

“What was that?” he said.

Dream’s presence was warming again by small degrees. The atmosphere was now more like an industrial freezer than Antarctica. “A minor demigod.”

“Oh, minor. Alright then.” 

“They are occupied by petty troubles,” said Dream.

Hob looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but elected not to comment. 

“Come on,” he said instead, leading the way back toward the pub. “We’re supposed to be having an easy night of it, dammit!” He wasn’t about to let some minor demigod ruin his night. He never knew how many of them he would get with his friend.

Dream’s gaze lingered on the spot where Phaethon had disappeared, but eventually, like the sweeping of a long coat tail, he followed.

---

"So, a duel," Hob remarked as they sat down across from each other in the pub booth. "I admit, I haven't dueled anyone in a few centuries, but I can't imagine it'll be—”

"It is not what you are thinking of," Dream interrupted. He had folded himself into the booth seat like a stick insect trying to cram itself in a jar. It was an absurd image, the long black coat, the spindly arms on the tabletop. "It is not a fight of the physical form. It is a battle of the mind and will."

"You're going to have to elaborate."

"In such a challenge—” Dream began, but was interrupted by the arrival of a waitress, there to take their order.

"So, what can I get for you chaps?" she said brightly.

The idea of Dream being a chap was so hilarious Hob had to stifle a laugh. Yeah, maybe he wasn't taking the whole duel thing seriously enough. Oh well.

Hob ordered a beer and a plate of chips. When Dream showed no sign of speaking, he ordered for him, too.

“You can order whatever you like,” Hob told him, when the waitress had gone. “It is my pub and all.”

Dream picked up the laminated menu gingerly. It wobbled in his hands. He looked down at it with a flat expression.

Hob realized belatedly that he probably didn’t know what to order. How much had pub food changed since— God, 1910 or so? And it wasn’t like his friend would have had much time to peruse menus since, what with all he’d been up to.

“Just try the chips,” Hob said, taking the menu away from him. “We’ll see how far that gets you.” 

"I have no need of human food," Dream said, folding his hands back on the table.

“Sure, and I technically don’t need my left leg, either, but I do rather like having it.”

“You say strange things,” Dream murmured. “As I was telling you. In such a challenge—” 

The waitress returned with their drinks. Dream glowered at her. Hob thanked her brightly.

"So, you were saying?" he said, sipping his beer. "In such a challenge…?"

"In such a challenge—”

The waitress arrived again with their chips. Dream slammed his hands on the table, shaking the chips in their basket and making the waitress jump. 

"Sorry," Hob apologized, "we've had a bit of a day." Wasn't it always.

"In such a challenge," Dream continued when she had gone, in a tone that suggested he would not be stopped this time, "one must suggest a mind-form, which one's opponent will attempt to surmount and defeat. Then you attempt to defeat their new form, and so on until one challenger is victorious. It is… a predictive game, of sorts. If one can predict what one's opponent’s moves might be, one can choose forms to foil them. This can easily become complicated."

"So, it's like chess," Hob summarized.

Dream stiffened, lips pressing into an offended line. "It is not so simple as chess."

"Checkers?"

"It will not help you to think of it so." Dream took a chip and bit into it in irritation. "You just— oh." He stared at the chip. "These are quite pleasant."

"Can never go wrong with a good chip," said Hob, then furrowed his brows. "Haven't you had them in dreams before or something?"

"Presumably. It has been at least a century." 

Ah, yeah. That. "Well, they're frying them in veg oil instead of lard nowadays anyway. Kind of a different experience." 

Dream stared at him as if Hob made no sense whatsoever.

"Anyway," Hob continued, "am I even going to be able to create these mind-forms? I'm not exactly an otherworldly being." 

"The power is in you, though it may be more challenging to harness. And easier to let slip from your grasp. It is imagination, after all. Humans are good at imagination, though perhaps not so good at holding onto it."

"Hmm." Hob munched on a chip. "Okay. I'll work on my imagination." After seven hundred years or so of life, it was possibly a tool that needed some sharpening. 

"I admit it offends me greatly that Phaethon would presume to ask a human to fight in this way," said Dream. He suddenly gripped the lapels of Hob's jacket with a startling fervor, arms stretched across the tabletop. His gaze bore into Hob's. "I beg, allow me to represent you instead."

"Now what kind of man would I be if I let others fight my battles?" Hob said, prying his fingers off before his endless grip tore through the fabric. "Hard as it may be to believe, I'm actually not a bad hand at chess. Don't worry about me."

"I do not find that hard to believe. However, as I have said, this is not chess. It is an intimate and punishing battle of minds."

"Alright, so it's like Go Fish."

"Do not joke," Dream growled. Actually, he never truly growled. It was more like his voice dropped into a lower register than usual. Which was saying something. Hob interpreted it as a growl, though. "Do not joke when your existence is at stake. Your immortality cannot protect you from this." 

"Are you saying I'd be unmade if I lost?" Hob asked. It was a concerning thought, to say the least. It had been a long time since he'd had to concern himself with his own mortality.

Dream’s tongue ran over his lower lip. "Potentially. The terms of the fight do not state so, but I do not know how such a duel will affect a human. The strain of it may simply tear you to shreds. It nearly drained me, the last time I fought."

"Wait, you had a fight like this? Recently?"

Dream tilted his head, gaze paling in confusion. "I told you that I went to Hell to retrieve my helm." 

"Yeah, but you didn't tell me you had to mind-battle– who'd you mind-battle anyway?"

"The demon chose Lucifer Morningstar as his representative." Dream’s lip curled in distaste. "Hence, the near loss."

Hob looked at him in concern. "Are you alright, though?"

"Of course I am all right." He spoke it as two words, like the phrase had never before graced his tongue. Hob wanted to let out a long-suffering sigh, but managed to restrain himself. "I am Dream of the Endless."

"Mmhmm. Yep. Okay."

"You do not have to worry about me," Dream said stiffly, parroting Hob's words from before.

Hob thought that was evidently untrue, but decided not to mention the century of imprisonment or the multiple near-death experiences— could he die? Maybe it was more like multiple near-misses with eternal agony— since then. To preserve the relative peace of the moment. 

"So how'd you beat the devil, then?" he asked.

"I had everything to lose. Lucifer had nothing to lose, and only a paltry amusement to gain."

Was that an answer? Hob wasn't sure. 

"Okay," he said. "Well, I do have all of my dreams to lose, apparently. Plenty of incentive to win."

Ice crystallized along the rim of Dream’s glass, spreading from where his fingers pressed. “You speak as if you think I would ever allow this to happen.”

Hob raised an eyebrow. “I thought the magic was binding?”

“Only by honor.”

“And so… what would happen if you violated that honor?”

The words trickled out of Dream reluctantly. “One’s word would not be trusted again.”

“Right. Exactly. I can’t let you do that, love. There’s a whole eternity of words needing to be trusted after this.” It was tempting, honestly, to let his more powerful friend step in and handle this—especially as Hob still hadn’t gleaned what the hell he’d even done to piss off Phaethon—but ultimately, it wouldn’t be right. He’d never used Dream as a clean-up tool for any of his problems in the past, and he wasn’t about to start just because he now knew he was the Lord of Dreams.

Dream’s expression darkened further. He truly was capable of embodying shadow when he was annoyed; Hob didn’t know how he hadn’t figured out the extent of his supernaturalness sooner, honestly. “You would not let.”

“Hey. Come on. I’ve solved plenty of my own problems, haven’t I? Have a little faith.” Hob kind of wanted to pat his hand, but wasn’t sure it was a good idea. “You don’t think I can win a duel against this Phaethon guy?” 

Dream seemed uncertain about it, and Hob couldn’t help but feel a little offended. Sure, he wasn’t a supernatural entity, but Hob had gotten himself out of a fair number of scrapes, and without the help of any Endless, thanks very much! 

“His rancor disturbs me,” Dream said at last. “I do not know what you have done to offend him.”

“Nor I. Never met the guy.”

Dream seemed lost in contemplation. Hob let him, and kept eating the chips.

Eventually, Dream said, “Even if this loss did come to pass… you would always have a place in the Dreaming.”

Hob’s breathing stuttered. “With you?” he said, sounding much smaller than he’d expected. It was… an ill-considered response, to say the least. 

Dream shifted in his seat. “I am the Dreaming,” he said. “It is part of me, and I it.”

“I see,” said Hob. But the thought kept turning within him.

---

No more was said on the matter until their beers were drunk and their chips polished off and they were strolling out the door of the pub. 

As they crossed the threshold, Hob was struck by a realization. He slapped Dream on the breast of his coat, stopping him in his tracks.

"I'm an idiot! Of course it's not like chess. It's metaphysical rock-paper-scissors!"

"Are you intoxicated?" Dream asked wearily.

"Nope. Just happy to have my old friend around again."

Dream’s form, unbreakable as the darkness between stars, stuttered. Behind him, his shadow wavered.

Then he swept away, leaving Hob to catch up. 

---

They met again on the field of battle, so to speak.

Phaethon was there before them, melodramatic in his white-and-gold cape. Not as melodramatic as Dream, though, whose eyeliner seemed darker than usual, somehow, and whose cloak swept all the way to the ground, pooling more like liquid than fabric. He was very displeased about these events, Hob could tell.

Hob shook Phaethon’s hand formally. Once again, the touch burned him, but he resisted the urge to shake his hand out in pain. Then they stood across from each other. Hob wished he had a sword, but that was not this game.

"As the challenged party, you commence the duel," Dream told him, standing not far from Hob’s side as Phaethon paced before them, grinning. "You may choose your form and begin."

Hob had thought long and hard about how he would start. He didn't want to go too big, else the fight escalate beyond his control. Obviously, he didn't want to pick something weak either.

What was out there that had tormented mankind, sowing destruction, breeding fear and illness and death, while barely reaching higher than an ankle? 

Hob had lived through it. The choice was obvious.

"I am a plague rat," he started, and saw Dream’s eyebrows twitch. Impressed. Ha! "Hiding in shadows. Letting sickness into our food, homes, blood."

He saw the rats in his mind. Scurrying through tunnels, climbing into grain stores, unaware of what they carried. A seething mass of tails and slick fur and beady eyes, churning, churning, churning. 

Phaethon curled in on himself, limbs creaking, boils popping on his skin and pus leaking from his eyes. Hob flinched at the reminder of those times. Horrible, horrible times.

Mentally, Hob prepared for the counterattack. Paper beats rock. What beats rat? Dog beats rat. Cat beats rat. Famine, extermination fumes, plague doctors, modern medicine—

"I," Phaethon ground out, through the contortions of his body, "am a flood."

Oof. Good one.

"A swelling, raging river, decimating any town in my path. Washing rats down to their deaths." 

A phantom wave smacked Hob in the face and hurled him to the ground. It crashed over him, gallons and gallons of water, surging up his nose, into his eyes, down his throat. He choked on it. He drowned in it. Debris in the floodwaters bruised him till he felt like a branch spinning out in the current, rather than a human.

Then. He managed to take in a breath.

He staggered to his feet.

Dream was standing a step closer, like he'd lurched forward, but he forced himself back into stillness.

"I," Hob said on a gasping breath, pushing wet hair out of his eyes, "am a drought." Phaethon had taken it to another level? Fine. Hob would go scorched earth. "Whisking away all your water. Turning everything into dust."

Phaethon choked, throat suddenly dry. His eyes went bloodshot. His skin flaked and peeled, his lips bled. He clutched at his stomach as it heaved for water.

He could go rain again, Hob thought. Or ice age. Asteroid. Biblical flood—does that count if he already did a regular flood?

"I am famine," said Phaethon, when he'd recovered himself, though he was still rasping. "I wither crops without water. I starve everything that walks."

Hob's stomach caved in on itself. He fell to his knees, retching nothing but bile. His mind flashed back to his decades on the streets, so long without food he'd thought his stomach would start eating itself—and then it had. 

His arms shook. His body felt thin and liable to crack. 

"I," he croaked, still on all fours, "am an oasis. Rising from the desert, real, not a mirage. Offering reprieve." 

Too late, he realized this might restore his opponent. 

But instead, Phaethon creased and cracked, like he was the famine, persecuted by salvation. He clasped his stomach as if it was overfull; water poured from his mouth.

Water filled Hob's mouth, too, but it restored him. He climbed back to his feet.

Dream was definitely closer now. He wasn't imagining it. Still, he didn't intervene.

Phaethon was visibly weakened, but still he said, "I am selfishness. Infighting over limited resources. Society destroying its oasis."

Hob's limbs were torn in opposite directions. He yelled, but the invisible hands on him didn't let up, yanking at him like he was the final piece of food before everlasting deprivation. He pulled at them, but it was no use.

One of his shoulders dislocated with a loud pop, and he bit down on his tongue so as not to scream. Blood exploded in his mouth.

"I am generosity!" he yelled, blood dripping over his lips. "I am brother sharing with brother. Stranger sharing with stranger."

Dream was looking at him now like he didn't know what to make of him. Phaethon, too, was staring at him, but with a look of disgust. 

"High-minded idealist, are you?" he sneered. "What the hell is generosity going to—”

His expression broke in half. His hands shook; he picked at his nail beds until they peeled and started bleeding. His lip wavered and his eyes beaded with tears.

Hob didn't know what was happening to him.

"Shame," Dream breathed from behind him. "So clever, Hob."

Hob hadn't actually known what generosity would do, but he appreciated the compliment nonetheless.

"I," croaked Phaethon, through tears, "am memory. History and anger curdled to a resentment which no generosity can overcome."

He felt Dream’s eyes on him, as he no doubt feared the anger, the resentment he so believed that Hob held over his absence would surge forth again. But it did not, for Hob had never been angry with Dream. Angry with himself, yes, and that he felt acutely, along with the fear and hurt of Dream walking away, the stewing guilt of it.

Memory held more than anger. Mostly, for Hob, it held grief. Grief for his friend who'd been imprisoned for so long, while Hob went about his life, imagining him lonely, isolated perhaps, but never knowing the truth. Grief for himself, too, for he knew that to always blame himself for Dream’s behavior had also been unfair. 

Tears slipped from his eyes. He looked over at Dream, who was still watching him warily.

Memory had far too many facets for Phaethon to use it as an effective weapon.

"I am forgiveness," Hob said, closing his eyes against a fresh welling of tears. He didn't know who he was forgiving. Himself, or Dream, who still seemed to need absolution from Hob, no matter how Hob told him he didn’t.

"I am hatred!" Phaethon snarled. His voice had gone animalistic in a last ditch effort to come out on top. But forgiveness clanged around him, pulling tears from his eyes, undermining his viciousness. "I am division even forgiveness cannot mend."

Just like that, he opened up the path for Hob to take his king. Checkmate. Game over. Rock paper scissors shoot.

"I am love," Hob said quietly, even as a sob caught in his throat as the memory of all the hate he'd witnessed in his life, the hate he'd participated in, and the fear, long-held, that even Dream might hate him, for his wrongs, or for overstepping, pulsed back to the forefront. He could never hate Dream, though. No matter what.

"Love can be easily destroyed," snapped Phaethon, but he was wavering. 

"But it always comes back," said Hob. Unwitting, he looked over his shoulder at Dream.

His friend was already looking directly at him. That tinge of red, so terrible and familiar now, was back along his eyes. He didn't speak, not to Hob. Hob followed his gaze as he looked over Hob's shoulder and spoke to Phaethon.

"Do you have a counter?"

"Love?" Phaethon laughed hysterically. "You brought love to a duel?"

"I believe Hob brings love everywhere he goes," said Dream, and Hob whipped back around to look at him, eyes wide. The tiniest smile was dancing on Dream’s lips.

Then a blade erupted from Hob's chest.

Blood sprayed. His heart stopped beating—actually stopped, he felt it. The sword had pierced right through it. He scrabbled for it with clumsy hands, but the blade shiiiinged back out before he could grab it. 

Blood spattered Dream’s face. Those pretty lips parted, eyes widened, the lordly bearing wiped from his expression leaving only a person, shocked and wounded. Hob would never forget that look of startled horror for as long as he lived. 

Which wasn't looking to be that long.

He fell to his knees, blood pouring from his chest. No use trying to stop it. It would mend itself, in time, but that knowledge did nothing to stop the instinctive rush of fear. He was dying. He was dying.

He fell on his side. Blood soaked his shirt. All told, it took maybe ten seconds after getting speared like a wild hog—

—for the world to completely blink out.

---

Hob's chest ached like a bitch when he woke. 

He was still on the ground, bloody mud around him, soaking his clothes. Oh. That was mud made from his blood. How horrifying. 

He opened his eyes in time to see Dream lifting Phaethon from the ground by his neck. His hand was a vice grip and Phaethon choked, scrabbling at his fingers for breath.

"TREACHERY," Dream snarled, louder than Hob had ever heard him. His voice boomed across the empty park. "I will unmake you."

"I'm not one of your creatures, you can do nothing to me," said Phaethon, but his assuredness flickered.

Dream’s being was a black hole eating light. "Watch it happen."

Hob coughed, dirt trapped in his throat, and shoved himself up on his forearms. Dream froze, and turned slowly to look at him, Phaethon still clasped in his hand like he weighed nothing. Dream’s attention was like being in the path of a comet.

"Hob," he said. "Are you alright?"

Hob knew, in that moment, that if he asked Dream to spare Phaethon from whatever fate he had in mind for him, he would comply. And what power that was. Hob didn't want to be the one doling out mercy or punishment, like a judge at the gates of Hell. But damn if it wasn't a thrill to have Dream look at him like that.

"Of course I'm all right," he said, with a bloody grin. "I'm Hob Gadling."

Dream smiled too, a ferocious smile, like that of a wolf.

Hob didn't tell him to spare Phaethon.

Apparently, they both had some savagery in them.

---

"So why did he kill me?" Hob asked later, when he'd showered all the blood off—God he loved modern showers—and they were both sitting at the kitchen table in his flat, drinking tea. Well, Hob was drinking tea. Dream was just kind of staring at it. "I mean, the cost of losing wasn't even that high. Not on his end, anyway."

"He was not interested in you at all," said Dream, still not looking at him. "I dragged the truth from him while you were… gone. This was all a ploy to get to me. To hurt me—indirectly, of course. Such a lower being could never hurt me directly."

"Wait." Hob tried to grapple with this. "You— are you saying I was like a kidnapped princess?" 

Dream frowned. "If you insist. The point is, he did not plan to let you walk away. By winning, or by killing you, whichever he could accomplish." 

"Damn. Maybe I should have let you fight for me."

"No. You represented yourself admirably. More than admirably. You won the challenge, fairly, and did not try to kill your opponent to do it." 

Praise from Dream always hit Hob somewhere deep. Possibly because Dream only said such things when he meant them. Possibly just because it was Dream saying them.

“Well, thanks for handling him in the end,” Hob said, instead of voicing that sentiment.

Dream nodded solemnly. “I would not allow such harm to befall you without interfering,” he said.

Hob took a sip of his tea to avoid showing how he felt about that quite so obviously on his face.

“Why did he want to hurt you, then?” he asked instead.

“He is the child of a sun deity,” said Dream.

“And… that… means…?”

“Sunlight chases away dreams. We are natural enemies.”

Hob frowned. “What about daydreams?” 

“Daydreams may take place during the daytime, but they exist in the darkness of the inner mind,” said Dream.

“Ahhhh.” Hob nodded sagely. Yeah, sure, that made sense. One hundred percent. Absolutely. “I don’t know, I feel like some dreams can survive in the daylight. Thrive, even.”

“Perhaps next time I have an altercation with a sun deity, I will call upon you,” Dream said, a bite of sarcasm in it. “To see if you can banish them with this mindset.”

“Don’t give me that cheek,” Hob admonished. Dream’s mouth popped open in offense, but Hob plowed on, “Just have an open mind about it, that’s all I’m saying. Who knows, maybe you guys are in a symbiotic relationship or something, instead of enemies. You help people see what could be possible, and they balance it with reality.”

Dream was silent for a moment, thinking. “Perhaps,” he said at last. “But I do not think approaching them in this manner will serve me well, at the moment.”

“Maybe not if they’re going around attacking you,” Hob conceded, and Dream cracked a small smile.

Sun deities, Hob thought. Really, life was full of such strange and interesting things.

“So when you went to Hell,” Hob started. Dream tilted his head, but didn’t seem thrown by the change in subject. “What did you wager in exchange for your helm? The game makes you wager something, right?”

“It was the demon who chose the other side of the wager,” said Dream. “He demanded I remain in Hell and serve him for eternity, if I lost.”

Hob was glad he’d put down his tea, as he’d probably have dropped it. “What? Was the helm really worth that risk?”

Dream leaned back in his chair, lips pressed tight in offense. Or maybe hurt. “I am nothing without my tools of office,” he said.

“That is not true,” said Hob, surprised by his own vehemence. Nothing? He thought he was nothing?

“I could not have restored the Dreaming without them,” Dream insisted.

“Okay, fine. They’re important for your job. But that doesn’t mean you’re nothing without them.” Hob went to lay his hand over Dream’s on the table, hesitated, then decided, fuck it. Dream started when their skin touched, but didn’t move away. Hob repeated his words, with even more emphasis this time. “You’re not nothing.”

Dream met his gaze, challenging. Hob didn’t back down.

“As you wish,” Dream finally said. Which wasn’t actually an agreement. “I can concede that the ruby breaking was ultimately beneficial to my power. But the helm is my symbol of office. To leave it in the possession of a demon is a continual humiliation to my realm and station.”

“Okay, I’m hearing you,” Hob said. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Dream should be able to get his helm back. But he didn’t want Dream to risk horrible punishment for the sake of his pride. Better to slink away alive to try again another day, or so Hob felt. That wasn’t Dream, though.

“Just be careful, okay?” he said. “Even if you lost your helm and everything, and everyone in Hell thought you were pathetic—which, by the way, not sure Hell’s opinion is worth much anyway? but that aside—I’d still rather have you here than the alternative.” He threw Dream a smile, hoping he didn’t take offense to the idea that he could possibly be pathetic. “It wasn’t ‘The King of Dreams and Nightmares, et cetera’ that I missed for all those years, you know?”

“You did not know who I was, then,” Dream pointed out, but he seemed contemplative.

“I liked who I did know,” Hob said. “My friend.”

“Your friend,” repeated Dream slowly. Finally, he did pick up his tea, and took a sip. “A powerful title indeed, if you would have me when it is the only one I carry.”

“If you say so,” Hob said, which brought a small smile to Dream’s lips. If Dream wanted to think of it as a title akin to his kingship and endlessness and whatnot, then Hob would bestow it on him with gladness, and with a warm sense of honor that nestled right in his heart.

“It is…” Dream added, at length, “a meaningful title. To me.”

Rare, those expressions of feeling from Dream. Hob couldn’t help but to bask in them like a cat in a sunbeam. He remembered how Dream had looked at him during the duel. Love always comes back. Worth it, all the strife, to see Dream look at him like that, he thought.

“You defended me,” Dream said. “To prevent me taking the duel in your place. To protect me when it was not warranted.”

Wasn’t warranted. Hob really wished Dream would just learn to let Hob care for him.

"Would have even if I'd known it was you he truly wanted," he said. “I missed my friend for long enough. Wasn’t going to let something happen again when I could get in the way of it.”

“Your friend,” Dream said again. As if savoring the words. His lips tipped up again in a small smile. One just for himself.

Hob squeezed his hand on the table. A grounding touch, a reminder. “And don’t forget it.”

Dream turned his hand over on the table, and squeezed back.

[teriri-sayes]

Reactions to Crazier Bastard's Chapter 297

Brief summary: Cale puts out the fire and breaks the chains. SEW tries to push back the gray clouds.

==========

Much of the chapter focused on Sky-Eating Water putting out the fire, breaking the chains, and firing a huge water arrow to push away the gray clouds. She was so excited to use her full power that Super Rock was worried about Cale coughing up blood soon. 😂

Outside the WT's space, Exion and his butler suddenly came to the back garden where the WT was. Clopeh and the others were surprised, but Exion waited alongside them and did not fight them.

And with Cale's nature powers running wild, everyone was overwhelmed, even Exion. But Exion seemed happy and expectant rather than troubled. Is he really a potential ally? 🤔

Cale also made some discoveries:

Gray clouds = made by the saint of GoC

White Star's power when he tried to become a demon god something= gray color

Gray Eye Lake = the name of the gray-colored lake where SEW was first found

Gray wall = GoC's power wherein numerous eyes appeared on a gray-colored wall

What? That was some awesome foreshadowing! So GoC and GoW had been working together since AWS's time. And Cale also realized that GoW might have "chained" SEW because she had the potential to surpass and defeat AWS at that time. Woah. 😮

As SEW and Cale were struggling against the gray clouds, DA came forward and proposed a plan. Since the gray clouds were made by the saint and not GoC themselves, DA planned to "dominate" and scare the saint's power and cause it to runaway. Cale and SEW liked that plan.

Ending Remarks So GoC's color is gray, huh? Come to think of it, GoB also wears gray clothes and shoes. Maybe it's a god thing? But I'm amazed at the author for thinking this far. I never thought that all those gray stuff, especially the Gray Eye Lake, were foreshadowing!

Next chapter would be the implementation of DA's plan, and probably Cale meeting with Exion.

[annievrse]

boyfriend!eren headcanons (summer edition)

—ᡣ𐭩 headcanons a/n: it is currently winter in aus, but i need summer eren rn in my room asap c/w: some suggestive but not that bad

boyfriend!eren walks around shirtless 24/7

boyfriend!eren gets so tan in the sun, he is golden!!

boyfriend!eren wears white swimming shorts, the reallyyyy short ones. lord. (he has 3 pairs of the same ones)

boyfriend!eren complains about sand in his hair nonstop (it’s his fault for laying on the sand instead of on a towel next to you!!!)

boyfriend!eren digs holes in the sand when he’s bored (e.g. waiting for you to finish your chapter/sunbathing/napping—he can’t nap on the sand, hence why he starts digging and building sand hills HASHDJAH)

boyfriend!eren volunteers to put sunscreen on you just so he can cop a feel (gets distracted and rubs the lotion into your back for literally 9 minutes)

when boyfriend!eren orders ice cream, he gets cookie dough or chocolate, sometimes the rainbow kids one

and when boyfriend!eren buys you ice cream, he will ask if he can taste yours and take the biggest bite :( in return, he lets you do the same to his <3

boyfriend!eren tucks a tshirt in the back of his shorts

boyfriend!eren wears birks 🫣 (hot)

boyfriend!eren will pull you underwater by your ankles if you aren’t careful, so keep an eye on him at all times when in the water with him

boyfriend!eren’s hair goes curly from the salt water and you have rinse it out for him in the beach showers otherwise it gets all tangled and frizzy

boyfriend!eren eats any melon like it’s his last meal, especially at the beach and on the boat. bring a container of it (or just an entire melon and a spoon) and he will go to town (the juice from the melon always drips from his chin onto his bare chest — just gonna leave you with that one)

boyfriend!eren is actually good at beach sports, so when you go with your friends, expect a game of beach football, with you on opposite teams because sasha and connie said it was unfair :/

boyfriend!eren in sunglasses >>>

boyfriend!eren drives jean’s boat (he won rock, paper, scissors at the start of summer)

boyfriend!eren DRIVES THE BOAT 😵‍💫

boyfriend!eren can wakeboard and wakesurf and looks hot doing it

boyfriend!eren wears a wide brimmed straw hat whenever on the boat because he’s cute ok

boyfriend!eren isn’t allowed to control the music on the boat or at the beach (group rules)

boyfriend!eren has to have you on his lap whenever he can’t be bothered to drive the boat anymore, and puts his hat on your head (you look so cute he could DIE)

boyfriend!eren fishes off the side of the boat with jean & armin, waits until he gets a bite, and then drags you in front of him to let you reel it in

boyfriend!eren has a photo of you holding the fish he you caught as his lock screen lmao

boyfriend!eren always throws the fish back though!!!!

boyfriend!eren buys you a pool float for the lake (it’s always something random like a watermelon (his obsession continues…), a flamingo, a champagne bottle etc etc)

boyfriend!eren inevitably pops said pool float when he backflips from the boat onto it :/

boyfriend!eren and jean want photos, they want paparazzi!!!!, when they do simultaneous backflips off the side of the boat and they always make the instagram

boyfriend!eren roasts marshmallows and tries to feed them to you but he burns them to a literal crisp so you roast your own (makes him pouty)

but boyfriend!eren gets over it when you feed marshmallows to him that aren’t burnt to a crisp <3

boyfriend!eren and connie (and sometimes jean if he’s drunk enough) will jump over the fire because they are shitheads (they only get one go each before everyone stops them)

boyfriend!eren gets all warm and cuddly when he’s drunk (after his usual unhinged activities with connie) so expect him to lay all over you when you’re around the fire

boyfriend!eren gets a sunburnt back and shoulders so you gotta sit on his bum and rub aloe vera everywhere while he whines about the pain

boyfriend!eren posts an end-of-summer dump and 6/10 photos are of you <3 (the rest consist of: his and jean’s backflip; a photo of him, mikasa, and armin around the campfire; him and connie clinking beer bottles; and him, armin, jean, and connie around a pool table: eren smiling wide with a single backwards rock and roll hand sign (he’s winning), armin with a smile and thumbs up, jean emotionless holding his pool cue (he’s losing), and connie with double middle fingers, his pool cue falling mid-air)

[sweetsweetjellybean]

If Tomorrow Never Comes | Part 1 | Empty Streets

Summary: Trapped in the Upside Down, Steve is prepared to die alone until he finds you hurt and in need of help. Doing your best to survive while the world catches fire, is there time for one more chapter in your story?

Inspired by As The World Burns

Special thanks to @myeuphoricmindset for her permission and encouragement. Please go check out her amazing fic.

TW: FemReader, Eventual Smut, Mentions of self-harm & death. No Minors 18+ Series Masterlist WC: 5807

Steve watches the tears run down the flushed swell of Nancy’s cheeks, her delicate fingers pressed to her lips. A sorrowful smile stretches his mouth, his soft hazel eyes meeting her sky blue. The last blue. The gaping maw of the rift stitching closed for good. Forever. With Steve on one side and the rest of them safe on the other. 

It was finally over and they had won. He decided long ago he couldn’t live if he lost one of them. So, in a split second decision, he gave his life to save them all. It had to be him. No complaints. 

The last glimpse of blue shrinks into a sliver of bright light resembling the waning moon, disappearing until darkness and the red glow of death are all that’s left. He places his hand on the seam of the solid black rock, bowing his head, whispering his last goodbye. 

He walks alone through the familiar decaying streets. The buildings crack and groan, pieces breaking off, turning to sand before they hit the ground. With Vecna dead, the Hawkins he created will be swallowed by the desert and the electrical storms until the world collapses in on itself and explodes in something akin to a supernova. 

He knew all this when he called for El to close the gate. When he pushed a resisting Dustin through into Robin’s arms. In the end, Nancy, the kids, they were all that mattered. He had to die to become the man they deserved. 

The man he always wanted to be. 

The ending of his story has been written–there's no more guessing before turning the page. Loneliness wraps its icy fingers around his shoulder, bringing the comfort of an old friend. He feels lighter now that he's shed the ties and obligations to those he loves. He's free to choose his own death and not without options. Armed and still carrying the backpack stuffed with preparations to survive the last battle, he can walk to Forest Hill, put a bullet in his brain, and fall next to his friend, forever sharing his grave, but he's not there yet. He'd rather go out fighting, and the monsters filling this place will be eager to accommodate.

The wind picks up, blowing the golden-brown strands away from his face as he watches red bolts of lighting scorch through the thick omnipresent fog blanketing the sky to strike the clock tower of the public library. The building stands tall and imposing, still intact in this realm, rotting and covered with ropey vines. A storm is coming. He’ll need shelter soon. Maybe the white and brick house on Maple street. He could crawl into her bed and close his eyes, pretending as he drifts off the sleep that it was a night he snuck through her window. With any luck, he’d never wake up. The ground trembles with the deafening booms of thunder, but as he walks away, it’s a quieter sound that catches his ears.

“Help me, please.”

“Careful,” Steve warns, steadying you with an arm around your waist before taking the binoculars out of your hands, letting them hang by the strap around your neck, “Stop walking if you’re going to use those or you’re going to end up catching your boot in a crack.” He motions to the gaps in the dry limestone bed of lovers lake.

“Where were you two weeks ago?” You ask with a wry smile, yanking down the handkerchief that covers your nose and mouth. “Maybe I’m too clumsy to be a geologist?”

“It’s okay to laugh, Steve,” you tell him when his tight-lipped expression doesn’t waver.

Fourteen days ago, he pulled you from a pile of debris through the raging winds into the windowless back room of a flower shop, where he helped you clear the sand from your eyes and stitched the gash in your leg. He sat on the floor across from you, back pressed against the mildewing floral wallpaper, the sweet putrid perfume of decaying carnations filling your nose with the scent reminiscent of a funeral while he explained where you were and why you wouldn’t be leaving. 

As an undergrad from Perdue sent to study the rift, you had been harnessed, hanging just inside the opening of the gate, taking samples when the earth quaked and your tether snapped. If it weren’t for Steve, you wouldn’t have survived the night and he’s protected you since. Taking out stray dogs and a few bats while scavenging for food and supplies. He assures you there are other things out there. Worse things. You’ve heard their screeches and howls between the thunder claps late into the frigid nights while you lay pressed against his warm back—safe. 

He’s the hero from the storybooks that you read as a little girl, trading the armor for a leather jacket and flak vest, but still just as tragic. A ghost moving through a fog. His sorrow blends him into the landscape, keeping you at arm’s length. If you had met before all of this. Bumped into him on the street or at a coffee shop, you still would have known that he was someone you could trust. 

He casts a skeptical eye your way but you don’t miss how the corner of his mouth rises just a little.  “I don’t like being out in the open like this.” His nose scrunches as his eyes roam the rolling gray clouds that keep the Upside Down in perpetual gloaming. 

“We need to find water. I can’t keep brushing my teeth with flat Sprite.” 

Gallons of sour milk and fermented juice fill the coolers at Bradley’s Big Buy, but the plastic containers of water all sit empty just like every river, well, and stream in this version of Hawkins. 

“How many more days are we going to waste on this?” He stands just behind you while you scan the lake bed, so close you feel the warmth of his breath in your hair. 

“You have somewhere else to be?” 

Entire sections of town have disappeared. Neighborhoods and buildings are falling into unstable fissures and there are fires burning in the east. It won’t be long now but you need this and so does he. Something to focus on.

“Everything in this place is damp. There are constant storms–”

“But no rain,” he counters.

“That we’ve seen. There are plants. There are animals. There’s water. Does it look like the land slopes downward over there?”You point to a spot where the trees are denser and closer to the lake bed. 

“I guess.” He squints in the direction of your finger until you hand him the binoculars that are still around your neck. He stoops and leans in close, pressing the glass to his eyes. “Yeah, it looks that way.”

“Then that’s where we need to go.” Taking back the glasses, you set out navigating the dry, cracked terrain. Picking your way through the vines and rocks.

As you walk along, Steve’s eyes stay fixed on a rowboat draped in the coiled, spiked tendrils. He swallows hard, face paling. The pained, haunted look marring his features has the dull ache of sympathy sitting in your stomach like a heavy stone. 

“Steve,” your voice stays gentle as your fingers slide against the rough skin of his palm, wrapping around his fingers. He flinches and jerks his hand away. 

“Sorry,” he says, like he’s suddenly realized you’re there. 

“Are you okay?”

“Fi-“ he clears his throat, “Fine.” He continues ahead of you, walking toward the woods.

"No. No way."

The short, wide, yawning mouth of the cave was tucked at the bend of a steep hill covered by browned moss and woody stalks of dead brush.

"Steve–"

"We're not going in. No shot. It could be full of bats. Without another exit we could get pinned down."

“Then you can wait here,” you say, ducking under the cave's entrance.

After a click, the beam of your flashlight cuts through the darkness and bounces off the glittering limestone that drips down the walls of the narrow passage like candle wax. The darkness presses in, your panting breaths echo as your courage starts to flee until you hear an annoyed “Goddammit” and the heavy fall of Steve’s boots as he comes in behind you. 

His eyes follow the beam of his light scanning the cave's high ceiling that’s crowded with sharp tipped stalactites before he wretches them to you, his expression turning wary. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“I’m not worried.” Your hand wraps around his forearm sliding down the worn leather sleeve, stopping short of taking his hand, you give his wrist a light squeeze before releasing him.

“Are you always this tenacious?” 

“Always.” You cautiously start down the tunnel, watching for loose rocks and small formations, “It’s a character flaw. I’m an eternal optimist. Everything happens the way it’s supposed to.”

“Hmmm,” he murmurs, looking away to study the walls.

After a curve, the passage widens and the rushing of water amplifies, up ahead a faint azure glow highlights a keyhole opening. Steve hands you his flashlight and reaches back grabbing the axe attached to the back of his pack. His hands adjust his grip on the handle as he holds it at the ready. With a silent tilt of his head, he motions you behind him as he pauses at the mouth of the chamber. Keeping the flashlights pointed low, you light his path.

“It’s a ledge. A big step down.” He calculates his movement before hopping down. He moves the axe to one hand reaching out for you with the other. Clicking off one of the flashlights you shove it in your jacket pocket before taking his hand, you try to gauge the distance like he had but your foot slips at the last moment. The clang of the axe hitting the stone floor reverberates through the cave when he drops it to catch you. 

“Maybe you are too clumsy,” he comments, both hands gripping your hips. Your hands slide from around his neck to his shoulders, staying pressed against him longer than necessary, your eyes locked with his - the gold flecks a contrast in the soft blue light. The spell breaks and he steps back, bending to retrieve his weapon.

“It’s…beautiful.”

You’ve stepped into a glittering cavern. Luminescent turquoise orbs with trailing silky threads cling to the jagged domed ceiling high above a steaming basin of crystal clear water. The underground world's best impression of the starry night sky. This might be as close as you get to seeing it again.

“I’m impressed,” his axe hangs at his side with one hand on his hip, “You were right.”

His praise has you beaming as you move to the craggy edge of the basin and shrug off your pack.

“Make it fast,” he peers through the steam into the water, “I don’t wanna be around when whatever lives here comes home.”

“I don’t think anything does.” Dropping to your knees, you unzip your pack pulling out the supplies you’ll need and lining them up, “There are no tracks or vines or anything. There aren’t even any spores floating in the air. Didn’t you say they don’t like the heat?”

A fine layer of steam swirls just above the surface of the water, dampening your skin and curling the fine hair at your temples when you reach over the rim to collect a water sample. Carefully, you pour a little into the four test tubes and place them in a rack adding a test strip to each one. 

“What about those things?” His finger extends to the neon lights above.

“If we were at home, I’d say glow worms.” You grip the hem of your sweatshirt, pulling it over your head and placing it on your pack. 

“Whatever they are, they don’t seem too bothered by us,” he muses, “What are you doing now?” He steps closer, peering over your shoulder as you lower the rope with your geological thermometer attached at the end into the water. 

“Measuring the depth and taking the temperature.” The water reflects the lights making it seem lit from below. It’s so clear you can see the metal tube of the thermometer hit the sandy bottom. Handing him the end of the rope you move back to your test tubes. Pulling out the strips, using your flashlight to compare them to the control printed in the kit. 

"It's safe to drink." A wave of relief washes over you. Clean water greatly increases your chances of survival. 

"Really? You're sure?" The surprise in his voice is clear. He didn't expect to get this far. 

"I mean..yeah," you sit back on your feet, rubbing your palms over the denim covering your thighs, "We can add some iodine to be sure, but tonight we'll have drinkable water."

Hand over hand, he pulls the line out from the water. He lets the shiny metal tube dangle for a moment. The water runs down edges dripping back into the basin before he gives it to you to interpret. 

"About four feet deep with a temp of 100 degrees. Perfect." Winding the wet string around the thermometer, you place it back in your kit and repack the rest of your supplies, leaving out your empty canteen.

"Perfect for what?" His brows draw in at the middle as he watches you loosen the laces of your boots.

"What do you think?" You pull off one boot and then the other, removing your stripey socks and then stuffing them inside. 

"You're not getting in there," he scoffs, hands moving to his hips.

"Steve," you sigh, standing and unbuttoning your pants and lowering the zipper, "I'm absolutely going in there." The denim material is heavy and damp from the humidity, sticking to your skin as you peel the jeans down your legs trying your best to not let them drag on the dirt covering the cavern's floor. "It’s been two weeks since I've showered. I stink and so do you."

"This is stupid." His head shakes and he looks upwards, eyes roaming the jagged rock walls as you slip your shirt over your head. 

"It's a necessity. Besides, hot springs are supposed to be really good for you." Your fingers work the clasp of your bra and it slips down your arms. His gaze returns as you drop the lacey garment onto the growing pile of your clothing. Now you have his full attention. Even in the dim light, it's clear his eyes darken.

Ignoring the way your heart beats wildly, your thumbs hook under the silk of your panties and they slide down your hips, "There's not much point in being shy." 

With false bravado you face him naked and vulnerable, letting his eyes drink you in, "We have to take care of each other, right?"

The torrent of water is louder in the absence of his answer as it cascades through an opening in the wall feeding the basin. Holding his stare, you walk along the water's edge until you find a spot where the limestone dips and becomes smoother creating a natural point of entry. 

"Be careful." He moves closer watching you step in. 

A moan slips from your lips as you sink down letting the heat loosen the tension in your muscles, enjoying the slight sting while your skin acclimates to the temperature. Pinching your nose with your thumb and forefinger, you dip your head below the surface into the quiet depths.

He's crouching at the basin's rim letting his fingers trail through the water when you emerge, slicking back your hair, wiping away the drips clinging to your eyelashes. His lips part and you know what he's seeing, the astral light reflecting in the rivulets running down your throat, over your breasts joining the sheen covering your skin.

"Are you coming in?" 

He pulls his hand from the water, fingers flicking away the wetness and you can practically see the gears turning in his head while deciding if it’s okay to allow himself this simple pleasure.

“It’s safe, Steve. You can live a little,” you say with your sweetest smile, bending your knees so you're submerged up to your neck, watching the cracks in his resolve widen.

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” He asks with a heavy sigh, unsheathing the knife that he carries on his belt and placing it on a smooth rock at the edge of the pool. 

“I’m the one who has to smell you.” Taking a few steps backward to where the basin deepens enough that you can tread water without being over your head. 

His Baretta joins his knife before his fingers loosen the laces of his boots. He stands shrugging off his heavy jacket and vest letting them hit the ground with a thwack that echoes through the cave before pulling his dark gray thermal over his head adding it to the pile. Your arms glide beneath the water while your eyes travel the path from the dips in his collar bone over the expanse of his broad chest that tapers into narrow hips. 

“Ahem,” he clears his throat as he works his belt loose and you don’t feel the slightest bit of shame that he's caught you ogling. The way the corner of his mouth lifts tells you he doesn’t mind either. 

“You wanna turn around?” He asks, thumbs popping the button on his cargo pants before he moves on to the zipper.

“Nope. I’m good.”

His eyes roll before he lowers his pants and boxers, holding them in front of himself until he catches your gaze and tosses them aside. Your lips part as you suck in a much needed breath. His half aroused cock stands out from his body. Long and thick, the pink veiny shaft and perfectly shaped head bobs, swelling further under your scrutiny. He walks toward the shallow end, and you catch the full smirk twisting his lips.

“Now you can smile.” You splash him as he steps into the water shrugging, his grin continuing to broaden.

His eyes flutter closed as more of his body disappears into the steaming pool, gentle waves lapping at his torso, then shoulders, then neck. A low grown rumbles from his throat just before his head slips under completely. He resurfaces in front of you, muscles of his arms tightening as he pushes the hair from his face.

"Fuuck," his mouth remains parted as he draws out the vowel, a water drop clinging to his plush bottom lip, "This feels good."

It's hard to take your eyes off him in this light. Heat floods your belly, but it’s not the water, you want to be what’s making him feel good. He’s already given away his heart, you're certain, but she’s not here and you are.

"It's nice to be warm. It's so cold here." You drift closer, breathing in the heated air. 

"You're cold?" He asks, brows knitting together.

"Sometimes…mostly at night." A pang of guilt has you wishing you hadn’t mentioned it. The last thing you want is to cause him any more worry. "Are these new?" You reach out, fingers ghosting over purple black bruises on his shoulder and chest. 

His head bows looking at the spot you just caressed, "Maybe. I can't keep track." He straightens to his full height, chest rising above the surface, water running through the thick patch of chest hair revealing several more bruises in various stages of healing. 

"I'm sorry," you swallow hard before continuing, fingers dancing over the freckles on his skin, "I know you're doing this–"

He coughs and sinks back into the water, patting his chest, "I think the steam is loosening up some of that shit we've been breathing in."

His head tips back and you follow suit watching the tiny glowing creatures attached to the rocky dome, their silvery tails gently swaying like they’re blowing in a breeze. There's beauty in their simple existence. Head dropping back down, you catch his stare, he’s closer now, and the way he looks at you sends all your thoughts fleeing. 

"It's nice here. Quiet," his arms sweep in arcs just below the surface, hands brushing against yours when they meet in the narrow space between you, "I can almost pretend I’m somewhere else."

"Yeah?" Floating closer, you look up at him from under wet lashes. There’s something in his eyes, a fire, making the gold flecks look molten. The gap between you narrows, his chest brushes your nipples. But it’s gone as quickly as it came. He moves away, scrubbing at his face with his hands.

“Do you do a lot of skinny dipping?” You ask, trying to draw him back in, craving the connection. He peers at you unsure if he should answer.

“Come on, Steve. Tell me your secrets.” Biting your lip to hide the mischief in your smile, you draw a cross over your heart, "I promise not to tell."

He raises an eyebrow, shaking his head. “I guess I’ve done my fair share. There was a girl-“

“There always is.”

“Are you going to let me tell you?” With a swift move of his hand, he sends a splash of water in your direction.

“Please, continue,” you giggle with a wave of your hand, licking the water off your lips.

“She and I would sneak out late at night. Meet at the lake to be together." He looks away as he tells you, lost in the memory.

"Midnight Love. Sounds romantic." 

“I don’t think she would agree,” his eyes roam the stoney walls where glowing lights fade in and out, “She wanted more and I couldn’t give it to her. There was someone else.” He meets your eyes, wanting you to understand his contrition, “I should have been honest with her. Let her move on. I know better now. I’m all done breaking hearts.”

“Will you be honest with me?” It doesn’t matter what he's done. He’s shown you who he is, and that man is one that you believe in.

“Yes.” The word is heavy on his lips, the look in his eyes confirming his promise. “I can give that to you.”

Nodding your head in acceptance, you feel the shift, bared to each other, the wall between you falls to pieces like the replica of the town that surrounds you. It gives you the courage to ask what you really want to know, “What about the girl you’re in love with, the one that’s up there waiting for you with tears in her eyes? Don’t you think her heart is broken?”

“How did–"

Shrugging, you wait for him to continue.

“We weren’t together,” he confesses, “Turns out I couldn’t give her what she needed either.”

“That’s why you're here? Because you weren't enough for her? Your friends, don’t you think they need you?”

“It's not about her. It's about all of them,” he explains, his voice thick with pain. “Before all this, all the things I thought were important were just bullshit. They held up a mirror in front of me. It made me change directions, made me try to be better. But I moved too slowly and when they really needed me, I couldn't protect them. You know how you said everything happens for a reason?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, this is it. This is my reason. I had to make sure they’re safe. They can all grow up and do whatever it is that they are supposed to do, be whoever they are supposed to be. Staying behind. Letting them go,” he lays a hand over his heart, “That’s how I became who I was supposed to be and I could finally give that to them.”

“Steve…” You want to scream at him that he’s wrong. He had to be enough for them because he was already everything to you. But it would rob him of the meaning in his death, so you stay silent and let the unspoken words sink beneath the water.

“Okay, it’s your turn. You owe me a secret,” his tone turns light, and he claps his hands together, rubbing them back and forth, “Make it a good one.”

“Let’s see,” you squint up at the ceiling, “I started sneaking my mom’s cigarettes junior year and blamed it on my sister.”

“Come on, you can do better than that. I bet a pretty girl like you has left behind a trail of broken hearts. I want the good stuff.”

“You think I’m pretty?” You ask, tipping your head onto your shoulder with a grin.

“You know you are,” his eyes roll, “Don’t try to get out of it.”

“Fine,” you pout, flicking water in his direction, “I don’t think I broke any hearts. Maybe bent a few. My friends are always losing their heads over some guy. Acting crazy. All in the name of love. I always wanted that, you know? To get swept away in some sort of fairytale romance. It just never happened for me. I thought there would be more time. I thought…"

You’ve been looking at life through a wall of rose-colored glass, sweetening your view just enough to avoid reality. Saying the words out loud, admitting it yourself–to him, you’ve crashed straight into it, the broken shards cutting you with the truth.

“We’re not going to make it home, are we?”

“Do you still want the truth?” He asks, knowing you already know the answer.

"I had a list," you swallow hard, ignoring the sting behind your eyes. "I thought if we could find water, we could check that off and solve the next problem and the next. Then we'd somehow figure out a way back. You told me from the beginning but I was too stupid–"

"Hey, you're not stupid." He moves a hand to your cheek, brushing away a tear you hadn't realized had fallen. "It's not stupid to have hope."

"But it doesn't matter." Your hand covers his, indulging in his touch a moment longer before pushing it away. 

“That’s where you're wrong. It doesn’t change anything, but it matters.”

“I’m starting to feel tired. Would you mind if we leave?” Brushing past, you climb out onto the ledge. The water cascading off your body darkens the limestone floor. Your back stays turned away from him while you yank your underwear on over damp legs. The splashing sounds let you know that he is following suit. Your jeans are difficult to shimmy over your hips without drying off and you skip the bra entirely, leaving your shirt to absorb the water. Once you leave the warmth of the cave, you'll be freezing–you should have listened to Steve.

Another bad decision made with good intentions. The list of I’ll Nevers unfurls in front of you covering the path where your future should be. He had figured it out much sooner than you did. Everything you worked for and planned for was all just bullshit. Maybe if you had someone to hold up a mirror, your list would be shorter. 

The cave seems smaller, the walls press in as you finish getting dressed and gathering your gear. Space will give you perspective, although you still dread seeing that terrible red sky.

"Are you‐"

Your breath leaves through your parted lips when his hand tugs your hip, turning you, pulling you flush against his chest. He looks down at you, eyes burning, wet hair plastered to the nape of neck drips water down the column of his throat soaking his thermal. The plush curve of his lips so close to your own. 

"You're not supposed to be here," he growls as his grip tightens. "I wish you weren't. I wish you had never met me. I wish..."

The tears spill over your lash line and streak down your cheeks, you can taste their saltiness on your lips. His head dips toward you and your eyes flutter closed, holding your breath while you wait to feel the pressure of his lips. Longing and despair give way to a fear that he'll give you what you want because he grieves with you, and that will never be enough to stop the ache. But his kiss never comes. His touch lingers on your skin once he's let you go and you stand there with your eyes still shut as you listen to him walk away. 

By the time you make it out of the cave, the scarlet sky has dimmed to a deep crimson, and Steve decides it’s best to stick to the cover of the trees and spend the night in one of the cabins nestled on the shore among the forest of dead wood, instead of crossing back over the dry lake bed. Mercifully, the rolling storm clouds are gathering west of here, across town, leaving the woods quiet beside the dry leaves crunching underfoot. Your silence is an itch under his skin. He wants to apologize, but he’s not exactly sure what for. He meant the things he said, but he hadn’t intended it to sound so harsh. The light in your eyes has been the only thing pulling him back from the darkness of his own thoughts, but he can’t keep pretending. He’s accepted that this was how his story ends, but the way you look at him tempts him into believing there could be another chapter. 

A war rages inside him, confusion over when protecting you became something more. Something that feels like he’s betraying her, even though she’s a world away. The truth is, he wants you. Your endless hope, the smiles you dole out like they cost you nothing, like you don’t realize that they have become as necessary to him as the air he’s breathing. Every day, the feeling of you belonging to him grows, but it’s all mixed up with pain and resentment. He was to meet death with a calm embrace, but fate decided that peace was more than he deserved. Now he’ll fight with his last ounce of strength to give you one more breath, and part of him blames you for that. He wants inside you, to claim you as his, but he can’t accept your comfort without making the pain at the end worse for both of you.

These thoughts and questions, you, Nancy, are different currents clashing in a riptide, and he’s trying his best to keep his head above water. As the mist thins, a tiny cottage comes into view, partially hidden by the brush and the gloom. The flaking white paint and curling black shingles are tinged green with mold. With a lone vine, dry and dead, snaking down from the roof across the weathered door. He reaches out, wrapping a hand around your wrist, conveying with a look that you should wait here for him to clear the inside. Walking up the three stone steps, he unsheathes his knife to cut away the vine. It takes a few firm pushes from his shoulder to get the warped door to budge from its frame. The musty air hits his nose as soon as it swings open. This place has been closed up tight. Steve moves quickly through the small space, checking for any signs of creatures, but it’s untouched aside from a few dead vines wrapped around the exposed beams of the ceiling.

When he returns, you’re standing with your arms crossed over your chest, but the look written across your delicate features has changed to anger. His brows pull together, and his lips part to speak, but you beat him to it.

“I don’t wish that.”

“What?” He asks, confused.

“That I never met you. I don’t wish that,” you move closer until your toe to toe with him. “I’m here for a reason. My life has a purpose too,” you say, laying a hand over your heart, anger and sadness making your voice crack. “If you think you’re supposed to die for them. Then I’m here to make sure you aren’t alone.”

The way his mouth gapes in surprise only fuels your resolve.

“You’re not supposed to be alone.” You turn away and walk inside. He follows, shutting the door behind you.

A chill seeps through the damp mattress and the thick stack of crochet blankets piled on top. Despite being fully clothed, the cold works its way through the layers of material straight through to his skin. He’s lying on his side, staring at the closed door of the bedroom, replaying the words you said over and over. He can feel you behind him. Tiny pockets of heat wherever you connect, your forehead pressed to his back, hands tucked between you, the material of his sweatshirt balled in your fist. He’s still not sure what he should have said. The rest of the evening was spent without discussion. In his head, every sentence he forms is chased away with the image of you standing in the cave with your eyes closed, ready to be kissed. His instinct is to act first and think later, but this time the consequence is your heart, and he’s never been more unsure.

“Did you hear about the drunk geologist?” 

“What?” It takes a second for your words to break through his thoughts.

“He finally hit rock bottom,” you deadpan, your breath warming his back. “Do you know what kind of fruit geologists eat?”

His mouth quirks. Somehow you know just what he needs. 

“Pome-granite.”

He rolls over to face you. Your eyes gleam in the darkness, lashes fluttering, your lips stretched into a smile, you’re so beautiful, and it makes him feel lightheaded.

“You know you have to be patient with us geologists…we all have our faults.”

“God, these are so bad,” he says, his hand landing on your hip, his thumb finding its way under the edge of your sweatshirt to draw circles on your skin. 

“I have more.” Your hands smooth up the front of his chest, gripping the fabric of his shirt, eyes locking with his, and he can see it again, the hope. It’s a beacon in a fog guiding him home. 

“Of quartz, you do.”

Your giggles make his smile bigger until he can feel it in the apples of his cheeks. It feels like it’s been forever since he’s felt like this–you make him happy.

“Let me warm you up,” he says when your laughter subsides. His hands smooth over your shoulders until they’re wrapped around your back, pulling you closer, not stopping until your forehead is against his lips and there is no space left between you. Sighing softly, you push a leg between his, until you fit together like puzzle pieces. 

“Thank you,” you whisper, but as your warmth fills all the cold places inside him, he knows he should be thanking you.

AN: Thank you for reading. I'd love to hear what you think? Are these two going to make it? Did you spot the easter egg from our friend @loveshotzz? I'll give you hint this ties in to one of her fics. Do me a soild and reblog if you liked it. 💋 -Jelly

Part 2 Here

[blueweaver1]

This is part 2 of my Oathbound AU

Click here for part 1

I been working on this AU some more, as you can see. Above are the different forms that Impulse and Skizz can shift in-between. I just realized I forgot to add Skizz's scruff, please pretend he has it. Below has more details about forms, the environments they grew up it, and how this AU interacts with the Life Series.

--Forms--

Impulse prefers his human form. He works a lot with redstone and machinery so lots of tight spaces and moving parts. So while having horns and wings is cool those parts are more likely to get stuck or pinched.

Skizz prefers having at least his wings out. However, he doesn't like it when random people clock him as an angel. To remedy this, while he has his wings out he'll store his halo in his inventory. If anyone asks what type of hybrid he is, he'll just saying some type of white hawk. Impulse would say Skizz is a type of pigeon.

--Places--

So the places that Angels and Demons are form aren't new dimensions, but more like extensions to existing places. The placeholder names are The Upper and The Under. I thought about using the Aether name, but ultimately decided against it.

The Upper is a place far above the sky. Past the limit where fireworks refuse to ignite. Past the limit where elytra start to freeze and shatter. Past the limit where even the sturdiest avians refuse to go. That is where you'll find the angels.

The Upper is a very cold land. Water isn't a thing up there only ice. However, it's no winter wonderland given that it's much too cold to snow. Angels are built for this type of environment, because while they can eat food most of their energy comes from light. Shelter and tools are made from stone and wood-like materials. Although most angels are perfectly fine just finding a nice, flat, floating rock and sleeping on that. The air up there is very still and quiet.

The Under is a place far below the Nether. Beneath the lava lakes of the Nether, in netherrack that is partially baked from the intense heat and weight, you'll find the demons.

The Under is a very hot land. Winding tunnels and caverns that were dug out connecting with chaotically formed ravines all of which is only lit by lava that has snuck through the cracks. Demons are mostly fire proof, because of this they are able to crawl up from the lava lakes are search for food on the Nether floor. There are things they can eat in The Under, but almost all Demons prefer the stuff from the slightly above. The tunnels are often quite noisy.

If it wasn't clear: The Upper is above the overworld, The Under is in below the Nether.

--Who did the Oath first?--

This was answered in the comments of part 1, but I also wanted to put it here.

So if you asked them directly they would probably give you a different answer time. 1: because it's very personal 2: because it's funny. So what actually happened is both Skizz and Impulse thought of the idea independently, but it was Skizz who brought up it up first. However it was Impulse who did the oath first. Of course it took multiple years for him to psyche himself up to do it, not because he didn't trust Skizz, he was just very nervous about it.

Impulse is also just a "tiny" bit competitive and wanted to go against the demon stereotypes. While Skizz would've preferred it to happen sooner and was will to go first, he understood that this was important to impulse. He does have fun needling Impulse that it took him soooooo long, but it's all in good fun

--Life Series--

I personally like seeing that the Life Series started as a fun hardcore series that turned into a death game due to outside forces. Impulse and Skizz (in their human forms) understand that things are going wrong when the second game starts. While everyone's hybrid abilities are being suppressed by the outside force so no one get too much of an advantage. Yes, they could brute force it by going Eclipse mode and getting everyone out they don't know if that would help in the long run. I mean what if it happens again but since they outsiders how of their powers they don't take Impulse and Skizz and the two of them completely lose track of their freinds?

So they settle for trying to pick up clues and win at least one of the games...

....

...

.... why are they so bad at this ....

(though it sounds like angst, it's probably going to end up as a comedy if I'm going to be honest...)

[ms0milk]

𝟏𝟐 | 𝐏𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐥 𝐃𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫

ー✧ prince!bakugou x royal guard!reader

"You will spend summers in rainstorms and autumns in his orchards because you are Alderan and he will kill Takoban gods to get you there."

cw brief description of drowning and a claustrophobic struggle with the ocean. suggestions of suicidal intention and self harm. reader tries to fight the sea and your prince has horrible misunderstandings about it. bkg 🫱🏽‍🫲🏼 unethical rescue tactics pt 2, borrowed clothes, a fevered fireside confession in the bedroom you’ve been searching for 6.4k

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If Takoba is the edge of the world, Aldera is the center. You so starved for comfort, stand with your feet at the tip of the surf and tie your braids together.

You watch the sea at midnight and the winds coming off the water bite your scars before they chill your bones. Autumn at the edge of the world is miserable. Lakes freeze but the ocean is colder, it's full of tides, which you’ve spent the day reading about. The ocean has a taste, salt and decay. It is unfathomably ancient. You watch its many maws foaming under the moonlight and seashells burn in frigid water when you step onto them.

In the view from Bakugou’s bedroom, you’ve lined your boots up neatly in the sand and stand watch beside them for a moment. You’re dressed to stop a midnight siege, in your white nightgown and padded habergeon, staring so small and far away from the warmth of his fireplace. You in a dark blue world, framed by his open window. Bakugou would have sipped his tea and rolled his eyes at his newly fucked up sleep schedule and how ridiculous you insist on looking in public if his cup wasn’t spilt on the rugs where he dropped it. If he hadn’t already ripped his door off its hinges in his sprint out of the castle.

You couldn’t sleep. You have no appetite and no mobility yet for sparring. Just books. Just Uraraka answering your questions about the sea while watching her men train. The ride with Todoroki yesterday was nice but it left your throat stiff and you are still in your kingdom’s service. Today in Takoba, tomorrow and forever behind your prince. Long before the blue gardens and scars, before the kitchen, before sticky crowds and white horses and cold hallways, something somewhere started to die.

You take another step into the swollen water, it rises with the moon, to confirm your suspicions and grimace when a crab scuttles over your foot. Another step and you’re up to your hem. It would all be easier if your heart was still a forest fire. When did that stop? When did the rain come? Up to your knees now. Seawater climbs your nightgown.

As it stands you’re no longer a dragon, just damp tinder. The black sea sways you side to side at the hips now so gently– keep walking, don’t look back. You will free yourself from doubt and you will fight a god to do it.

“Moon makes tides,” Uraraka yawned and slouched and stretched as you sat on your knees beside her in the pit.

“Can you swim in it?”

“In the ocean?” she squinted, “Yeah of course. But don’t tell me you want to swim in this weather?”

Shinsou could only pretend not to hear for so long from his spot beside you both this afternoon, “The moon makes tides, and tides make storms.”

Good. Up to your ribs now. Wear the rock there like an anchor.

In the cold water your body heat becomes that much more apparent and it’s lovely like home. Genuinely hot for a second. Your nightgown floats up around you and you sink quickly from chest to nose when the sand under your feet drops to freezing nothing. The sudden dip shoots icy pain behind both eyes and the sensation of failing steeles every joint sickly sore. Walking through the ocean is like a fight, like driving a sword through someone solid, like braving a thunderstorm, but sinking into it is easier than sleeping.

You gasp and spit out the aftermath of losing your footing but you also fight too hard in anticipation of sinking and you’re suddenly in the open air up to your waist like a salmon leaping upstream. The weight of the nightgown settles you back down in the water to your shoulders and it’s silent except for the sound of waves kissing the beach and one another. Whistling wind. You bob only some ten meters out from shore, just short of where Todoroki held you back for fear of drowning and something wild like greed blinks open a sleepy dark eye.

You hardly have to move a limb to keep your head above water; the sea is free and gentle. You float easily here, where a lake wants to watch you fight. It’s part of the fun at home and in exchange you are safe in freshwater. Salt stings– saliva pools under your tongue to keep it from getting inside– but it also holds you up in the foam like two hands under the hip.

Is this what you were so afraid of? This is the god you planned on killing tonight?

Every day in this miserable place you have been beaten. You have fallen apart in some way, your hair is too messy, your new clothes don’t fit right. You lose Aldera with every step, heel toe– earrings that are no longer yours, heel toe– a weapon you can't return, heel toe and stand at attention– a brooch you’re too afraid to wear, to lose too, so you keep it under your pillow and wear silver seashells instead. Blue fire took the first victory in the forest and you salvaged your prince with your life thin in your teeth. Takoba took the second victory and strung you out in your nightgown for nobles to pick at like crows. A driftwood table took the third and Bakugou stole the fourth. The only time you have ever won here is when you decided to die. When you churn the water with your arms a pain echoes across your back not quite inside your scars.

Kirishima on the verge of tears, Shinsou above your operating table, Uraraka at your side, Todoroki holding you back from the edge of the world– your prince, wet to his knees– you have never, not once in your life have you ever failed. Their gazes make your throat hurt and you spit again into a tiny rolling wave that lifts itself over your chin and into your ears.

The goddess of the sea does not pity you.

She pulls you into her arms and laughs when you rub your freshwater eyes. She tossels your hair with silent waves you could never have seen coming. She reminds you of her strength. And Todoroki told you that you couldn’t possibly challenge her– eat your words sealace prince. Even just this once, witness me. You are a gem in the crown of Aldera, the left hand of the golden family. Takoba is no setback the sea is not your master, you are a chosen servant, not a mistake. It is so wonderful to be in the presence of a queen again and at night her water is soft and black.

The shore is farther than you remember when you finally glance back at the world. You bob like a peach, a frozen peach, and realize you can’t feel the cold anymore. Time to head back. Today was just a test anyway, to make sure you could put up your fight. Maybe sleep will come now that you’re starting to breathe heavy and now that your muscles ache again after days without real training. Ice creeps up the back of your neck from wet hair.

The goddess of the sea plays with you for a few more seconds and you can’t wait to come back in the warmth of the sun to lay on your back with her to whom you no longer need to prove yourself. The ocean pulls in its depths just as much as it pushes at the shore so you brace your eyes for discomfort and duck under the surface to kick a good length forward. It would have worked in a lake, at the center of the world.

When you resurface you are somehow farther than before and considerably shorter of breath. The cold starts to press on your lungs now that you’re truly using them. It’s okay, one more time. You kick once to let the goddess lift you up with her salt and breathe in the free air before diving under again but all you actually do is stir bubbles around you exactly where you started. If anything even farther. Your boots are too small to see now.

There are no storms, no raging waves, no rain, no thunder, hardly wind, what is putting up the fight? Whatever. You paddle above water, thankful for light clothes, and weary of the growing ache under your jaw– the start of a pulsing headache. More than anything you are finally excited for bed, but no matter how hard you push there seems to be a growing distance between you and safety.

Dread drops in your peachpit stomach and you start to feel long pretty fingers tickle your heels in black water. The ghost of the flame mage happy to drag you with him to the bottom of the sea. Irrational like a fear of the dark, but still there’s no more time for testing pride, you have to get back to shore. The little girl inside of you cowers when you take one more heavy breath and then release it to sink yourself as deep as the salt will let you. You can see the breaking point, all you need is to reach the seafloor and kick yourself to it.

As you drift down into the pitch black something so much better than sand or ghosts meets your feet. You connect with rock as your lungs begin to ache for air and kick with every well trained muscle your legs have, forward towards the shore. Faster than freshwater, you rocket to the surface and gasp excitedly, blink rapidly, and infinitely closer to white sand, and then immediately the goddess pulls you under again.

Sure you found the breaking point, sure your toes tease the start of the shore you want to reach so badly, but that’s what waves do here. Break.

Something so silent couldn’t possibly be this powerful, but your head is forced back under as your hips are pulled back out and you tumble head over knees, mouth filled suddenly with salt and sand in the darkness. Resurfacing is no fun task, choking. You’re thankful it’s easy to float in the ocean but saltwater dries out your mouth as you retch it back out from your throat into the foam and then there’s another break over your head to remind you that humans should stay far away from god.

You’ll die just thirty meters from the shore. Salt blinds you. Water deep in one ear keeps you just dizzy enough to let this sea carry you out once again, and shouting isn’t an option. Shouting or gasping, you have to pick one. Ache has turned to paralysis; muscles so beaten and a heart beating so fast you’re already at the last limit reached by your master, training to failure. Striking and swinging until you can no longer hold your weapon. Hours of training reduced to fifteen minutes at sea.

The bruise of your shoulder protests every paddle you force out of it and goes much stiffer much faster than the rest of you. In a way, the mage is drowning you. In every way the sea is much more claustrophobic than a war room.

The moon watches you heaving for air stuck between beating waves and being swept back out to sea. She doesn’t do anything. You are pulled under again. The rocks beneath you scratch your soft skin this time and your instinct is to flinch which fills your nose with water and drowning is certainly not as peaceful as poetry makes it out to be.

Of course it ends like this. A soggy creature fighting gods alone.

Of course he’s watching you, his captain, being stolen by the sea.

You surface forcefully with a grip on your scruff and while your body remembers how to breathe, magic every furious color of the rainbow arcs above your head. The water recoils for a moment around you in the force of his impact. Bakugou erupts from the sky as he always does into the tragedy of your life in Takoba and you have no control over your searing gaze when it turns to him above you, framed by sparks and stars. Halo from the moon.

You both fall back into the water but not so helplessly as a moment ago. Your prince hooks and arm across your chest, pressing your back to his front and with so much more strength than you could ever muster, rips his way through the water in half of a backstroke. Half of him focused on keeping you afloat and only half of him conquering the sea. His legs create their own current. He holds you and you’re sure you’re breathing loudly enough into his collar to hurt his ears.

You are an excellent swimmer. Weak children, drunk diplomats, tests from your master; you have dragged your fair share of victims out of rivers and as the victim yourself you know better than to struggle or panic in your prince’s grip as he drags you from the goddess, but you can’t help how your fingers scratch at his translucent tunic. Cling to the warmth of his bicep.

In twenty seconds he has reached the break. Strength like a war criminal, like a godslayer. He turns in the water, times it to match the swell of a wave for height, and pulls you chest to chest with a guiding hand on the side of your head to fold you into him. The sea drops you and you know what comes next. Bakugou anticipates your struggle, or a drowned man’s panic, any logical thing and wraps another arm around you tight as he pulls you both under, but you don’t fight a single second and neither do you breathe.

He knows the sea so much better. If you weren’t unraveling like a common soldier you would have realized too, just how much calmer the water is underneath its surface. Even with ears full of sand you can hear the wave crash above you but there is no pull underwater. The roll of the goddess back out to sea twirls through your hair but nothing else. She lets your prince push up to the surface and doesn’t stop you from catching your breath inside the crook of his neck. Eleven seconds to beat the break. What does he even need a captain for?

This time when the tide drops, you don’t quite drop with it. Knees in the sand. Back on solid ground you realize how hard a body can shake and then water is beating you down again from behind, and a warm hand has you by the back of the haubergeon to keep you from slipping out to sea or laying flat down to sleep in the surf.

Both hardly walking, and you more-than-half carried, you and your prince stagger over seashells like glass back to the spot where your boots rest like nothing bad has ever happened at all, chased the whole time by a disappointed tide. You collapse the second he lets you. You, useless with cold and vomiting seafoam.

“Why?!” Your prince chokes, similarly out of breath beside you, hunched over his knees from the effort of winning your war. You can feel the glare. You are warmed by it and then entirely numb again, in a terrible turn of events, to even his attention. The very last ember dies without smoke.

Bakugou, even in a temper tantrum, has never looked quite so disheveled. He’s been wet before, and pushed his hair back with big hands and caught his breath through his teeth just like this, but he’s never looked at you with such confusion. His eyebrows don’t sit right. Without a scowl his whole thing really falls apart, huh?

“Answer me, Eyes!”

You wheeze instead of speaking when you try to use your voice for the first time and spit out the last of the salt that comes up with it. He doesn’t move, catching his breath across the sand at midnight. Your prince really is so pretty and something inside is eating you alive to the beat of the wash of waves. He is a star and you are the bloody little creature beneath him always, not chosen at all.

You sit yourself up. Bakugou is beautiful. Broad chest and shoulders trained for his magic and a wet tunic that clings to every lovely shape, just a few feet too far away to touch. Unmarred face and shaggy hair. His eyes. His jaw slopes sharp, sharper still in the moonlight and dripping with water, up towards his hungry red eyes that eat everything they’ve e–

“Wake up!” He barks.

He’s not eating you. He brings back your focus and when you hold his stare this time it’s so obvious he’s not confused, or angry, not exhausted or embarrassed or exasperated. He’s six and he’s holding your hands in a velvet carriage, terrified.

Oh boy. You guess self-control died with your heart, because your shoulders start to shake in a chuckle.

Bakugou stares. Any fold of his brows melts immediately at the sound of your soft laughter but he hardens again when he speaks. “What about this is funny?!” and pulls himself up to his knees as you lower yourself to clamshells, not-quite-laughing but not fighting the smile either. This is exhausting. “You just tried to kill yourself!”

This makes you snort, which is ugly, and shuts your prince up entirely. One laugh like a lie and then another and you curl in on yourself, shivering arms folded above your head and forehead pressed flat to the sand. Something like an apology. You are redundant, not suicidal.

If it were a real apology you would wait until he spoke again to raise your head like Todoroki in the stables, but that’s not what you’re doing at all. You ache from the inside. Burn in fact. You chuckle again and spit salt one last time when you sit up, then grab for your shoes with muscle memory instead of feeling since the cold has stolen that too. Bakugou is staring again– it is irritating, you should do it less.

The ocean makes a lovely noise when you are not drowning in it. It’s much quieter and sounds a bit like laundry sliding over itself. Or apples tumbling into a basket. You are the first to your feet, clumsily, and you are not so delirious that you forget you need proximity to a fire. Anyone else might not be able to stand through this adrenaline trembling but how many apprentices have come so close to death so many times as you?

“Oi,” Bakugou growls, confused again by the wrong emotion for just long enough to let you escape.

The hill between the castle and the sea is overgrown with dune grasses tall enough to tickle your hips and that is what you decide to climb. Empty stomach, ruined shoulder, shaking legs, deep dead eyes.

Your clothes cling to you. They make you small. He can hardly breathe in the cold as he rushes to catch up, dripping what he's sure are icicles, and you look as if you could hardly stay conscious in it. Does your face feel as red as it looks? Friction or fever? “Captain!” And it’s obvious Bakugou can’t decide on his volume, but bulldozes after you nonetheless husky with exertion, “fuckin wait–”

There are sandy paths beaten into this seaside hill, small like children made them on their happy little way to swim. Bakugou makes quick work of it. You hike. You put all your effort into staying on two feet through a chill you could hardly ever imagine. Heat pounds in your temples, cruelly imitating Alderan fire when really it’s something poisoned like liquor.

“Please don’t follow me sir,” you call over the wind when the prince gets a few steps too close to catching up and he makes a sound almost like words, like words you shot dead in his throat. You know that sound because you have been shot at the same exact angle. Deadly isn’t it? He falls back.

Just for a moment Bakugou stops and watches, filled with something neither of you have the words for yet. Recovering just as quickly as you are succumbing to exhaustion.

Wait, he stares. Just– “Y/n.”

Wrapped in white, you are framed by rolling seagrass in the moonlight. You finally stop climbing and turn. You like a half-drowned painting. In a furred cape you might be a queen. From your spot smiling sadly at the edge of the world, your nose has started to bleed.

“Give me an order.”

Six and shaking in his hands. Eleven soaked in a fruit filled hallway, always working and fond of libraries. Sense of humor that doubles over his queen. Often covered in blood, staring too earnestly right now for him to remember that anger might fix this. Bakugou doesn’t breathe.

You turn back towards the castle alone and for the very last time, your body keeps the tears at bay. On a hill of swaying green grass and bright in the moonlight, your prince, frozen, looks so much like his mother you should kill him for it.

You always thought you were hiding from him on duty, only slightly more stealthy than a dragon. It got better when Jeanist stopped training you in chainmail, but your excitement at every small job bounced off the walls of his castle so obviously. Squirrel duty? You helped a hundred bastards back outside without pause. Sent up to swept bookshelves under the Great Oak and you're the only person he’s ever seen hum to themself so high in the air. Stablehand? Stable master more like. Seven and stacking stools to reach the saddles before Jeanist set you back on the ground by your scruff like his kitten. Bakugou can’t remember what went first, your heartbeat or his hearing.

The very first time you snuck up on him was in August under a plum tree, nine years old. He slept beside his book in the shade on a perfect day, perfectly alone and free of tutoring for the afternoon. Maybe because you were barefoot, but somehow even out of breath, the only thing that gave you away was your voice.

“Careful Highness.” He shot awake with that and figured for a moment that you were a dream while his eyes adjusted to the light through the leaves behind you– panting above him and holding tight to a plum. Like premonition your other hand lurched to catch another as it fell toward him, “they’re ready for harvest.”

Bakugou sat up. Off at an impossible distance for you to have run to catch plums, Jeanist stood beside a hanging line of red uniforms waving a beckoning hand.

“Laundry calls,” you whispered. As the little prince turned stupidly back to you above him, you set both plums on the grass beside his book and bowed.

Wait.

“Maybe a nap in the vineyard? Grapes won't bruise.”

Wait, I know you.

He watched you bow one last time and jog out of the shade back to Jeanist and Alderan laundry, just as he watches you stumble now in the dark, towards the faraway lights of a castle without the fire you need.

Wait!

“Y/n!” Bakugou bursts over the ridge and back onto marble pavement, what the fuck is he gonna do– your name won’t work twice, he’s wasted too much time. “Captain!”

You pay him no mind drifting away with your back still turned and with even less coordination than when you were dragged from the sea. You are deteriorating– fuck, fuck it. Bakugou, brimming with something to the left of anger, charges. If you hear him coming you do nothing to stop him. Not as he closes the distance with eight good strides and slings you over his shoulder.

"I–!" you jerk to strike instinctively, “Put me down!”

Good, you can shout. He still has time, you’re still alive. He’ll apologize for touching you later, for hesitating and staring, he will say everything he set aside in anger when you are not trying to kill yourself.

“Put me down,” you hiss like you know you’re one of three people that can make his skin prickle with threat.

“Not a chance.”

You grip the back of his tunic, clinging so wet to his body that you grab equal parts flesh and he turns away from your path to the glowing front gates all those hundreds of meters away, to kick in a door on an insignificant corner of an insignificant annex in the shadows of the castle that is only unlocked because it’s the same one he flew from, instead of his window, when he was trying not to startle you with his magic and into the sea.

You will spend summers in rainstorms and autumns in his orchards because you are Alderan and he will kill Takoban gods to get you there. Your nails on his back begin to burn with your silence and it’s haunting not only because you weigh less to him than a phantom, but because the smell of the sea follows you inside when there is no one else left to close the door.

Immediately it is warmer without the wind but he will not slow until he finds fire, because you are gripping him instead of screaming again– because you are freezing to death and he will not let you win under new circumstances after he worked so hard to save you from the first.

This part of the castle is his, below the kitchens, the deep white underbelly in the cliff over the sea where no one will find him except cooks and staff who keep his secret and the queen who kindly ordered these quarters be built before she lost her mind. There is no difference of weight or warmth when he sets you down in front of the only red door in the hallway. You aren’t a ghost. Even if you aren’t convincing. He throws the door open.

You would win in a contest but Bakugou too can make a steady fire. It’s still chirping bright in his fireplace when he crowds you inside of his quarters. Wood and furs. The smell of bread, everything so unlike Takoba. Hard surfaces cushioned or covered in anticipation of winter with red and gold and wool, forest tapestries from home– and it is a small victory that you take another step, then another, deeper inside without hint or suggestion.

“where are we?”

“You need to change,” Bakugou dismisses when you’re far enough inside to close the door, and pulls open a cherry chest of drawers at the foot of his bed. It’s draped in pelts and pillows. Faded herbs hang in bundles above you.

“have clothes in my room.”

“Didn’t ask.” When he looks over his shoulder, you are wobbling towards the fire like a starving woman, with two hands reaching subtly from your side. Good, shut up and warm up. Bakugou rifles through his options one more time and grimaces, raising his own black Alderan riding tunic aloft; it’s the only thing that’s going to be long enough to cover all of you.

He’ll sort out this shitshow step by step– dry you off, shout scream scold, get you warm, shout some more– a good Alderan lecture, and then tie you to him if he must since you obviously can’t be trusted alone. Walking into the sea when you thought everyone was sleeping. And for what? He grinds his teeth and grips the sids of his dresser with the realization that he’s probably not going to sleep again tonight. He’d kill you if that wasn’t what you so obviously wanted.

“Alright asshole, get ch–” Bakugou chokes when he turns back to you, sitting politely fireside with a dagger materialized in your good hand, blade pressed flat to your collar. He jumps, black tunic flying and shouts indiscernibly in a lunge for the weapon.

Not fast enough because by the time he makes one step, you’ve driven the blade down your chest and clear through your shirt. It falls open and your bare ribs seize in goosebumps this close to the fire, “told you I’m not trying to kill myself.”

“Drop it!” He wails, as if to a dog.

Oh how you will haunt him until the end of time. Less than a month with you, just some soldier from his castle– a prodigal apprentice in a kingdom of geniuses– an impersonable, silent, invisible guard, who should cause harm only when necessary and appear only in danger– a woman who does this job to a tee, and still somehow steals his attention to any corner of the room she conceals herself in– just a month and you have beguiled him. Reaping grim satisfaction from watching you wreak havoc in this place he loathes.

You sit in front of his fire in his secret room, half bare now that you’ve decided to cut your clothes off of yourself, and entirely bare when you run the lip of the dagger across your shoulder to catch the fabric and then rough straight down the other side. You are pink from heat and staring through him entirely unfocused, all chaotic braids and parted lips. There’s a dry track of blood smeared under your nose and he shudders to think what part of his back it was wiped on while he was carrying you away. The fingertips of your scar peek into free air. Bakugou can’t spin around fast enough, howling in anger.

You sound like you’re smiling again mournfully like last time, “following orders, sir.”

“Don’t call me that!” He roars and shoves the black tunic behind his back towards you. This room is small, maybe five paces wide, and so he sits as far as he can from you on the floor beside his bed, still within arms reach. Back turned.

What the fuck is so funny? This isn’t a headache this is sustained torture. Bakugou’s own wet clothes cling to him in dry patches of salt and stick and grit that he’s desperate to bathe away just as soon as you are tethered to another magician. In another kingdom. You breathe heavily behind him in a mismatch between effort and task and then a sopping thud reminds Bakugou that you are stripping to nothing behind him and piling your rags onto his fine rugs.

“You’re a fucking nightmare.”

“you’ll be free of me in a moment.”

And it dawns on him, seasick irony, that there isn’t a person alive in this kingdom but him who could stop you from doing a single thing.

“If you think I’m letting you out of my sight you’re concussed.”

You pause your fiddling behind him for a second before resuming and you’re close enough that he can still hear your less than methodic pulling and ripping. A huff here and there. In the seconds it takes you to speak again your voice is still laced with the amusement that makes his skin crawl, “third time I’ve told you I’m not trying to kill myself.”

“Just hurry up.”

“was just saying a prayer.”

“Save. It. An excuse that fulla holes wouldn’t even work on Ei the naif.”

“right, because nothing gets past the champion.”

Bakugou erupts, out of unwounded fists to clench, and jerks around with every intention of barking at you. He’s not sure what he pictured before turning and he’s not sure where his voice went, but you are sat beside his fire draped in his black tunic with an expression he can hardly find the words for.

What is it in the way your shoulders hang? Exhaustion? The way your chin tips or your eyes flutter? Hunger? You watch him like you’ll eat him alive, like your life is the least of his concerns. The laces at your collar drape limp over your fingers from where you gave up their tying and so the shirt hangs loose and open, and much much too big. Bakugou has never thought of the shape your sternum makes between your breasts or what color the fine hair on your thighs might be. He knows the answers now because you’ve given up on posture like a selkie out of water and everything so unlike his captain– because something inside of you is slipping.

“don’t bother the champion with this,” your voice is still draconian. Even as your body fails, your eyes are still dark and infinite and possessive beside the glow of his fireplace and under a window that looks out over black water, “or Lady Mina, or your Lords. Don’t worry them with me.”

Bakugou mirrors you unconsciously in the way he sits close enough to touch. Why do you say that? You keep saying it, ‘Lady Mina,’ all month the same thing. Sir Sero, like he’s not a soldier in Jeanist’s rear guard. Like Mina and Denki didn’t grow up in the castle with you all to learn magic fifteen years ago.

“They’re not,” he admits because something about you unraveling by the sea sucks the malice like marrow from his bones. Maybe something inside of him is slipping too.

The pair of you slouch on the soft rugs from home and sticky with foreign salt, looking. Your next smile seems to take every ounce of strength, “what?”

“They’re not lords.”

And in a rush, horror ignites in the eaves of this tiny room like an Alderan dollhouse. It is a grease fire film of oil on water. He is the match. You drop your head to your shoulder and start to laugh like Bakugou isn’t watching the life evaporate from the top of your head and out his window in the heat that pinks your cheeks and blotches your chest. You laugh like you have life to spare, “course they’re not.”

You manage enough coordination to hold the chest of his tunic closed with one hand as you rise, still giggling bitter, nothing like the bells you rang for Todoroki.

“Stop–” Bakugou reaches for you as you walk past him towards the door but stops short of touching even the air.

“dream something sweet Highness, I won’t interrupt again.”

“Oi, wait–” He gathers himself awkwardly barefoot and still dripping seawater, to catch the door before you pull it open. You bow your head and reach for the knob at the same time as he manages to slam his palm and weight against it in case you decide you have enough life left to fight.

“Told you, you’re not leaving my sight.”

Maybe staring isn’t so much a habit as it is a system to keep you from collapsing under the weight of Alderan sun. You who watch the world carefully so that when you attack it is silent and succinct. As long as you’re only looking, just watching carefully, the world will never be in danger of you spilling the secrets obvious only to you, and your kingdom won’t have to acknowledge the war crimes it takes to teach a kid how to kill.

Bakugou looms above you and rests against his door on a forearm. You raise your head like it’s lead to look at him. Your mouth even opens to speak but then something like fire punches to life in the blacks of your eyes.

It’s not a blink this time, it’s a stutter at first– and your face is so flushed that it almost looks like you’re glowing– before something you see feeds the kindling to roaring. For a blessed second you aren’t smiling. You stare so deeply into your prince he can’t look away for long enough to realize that you’re reaching for him.

Why? Why are you leaning closer?

The first heat pools at the hinge of his jaw and then scalding follows. Why are your hands so hot? You pinch his earlobe between thumb and pinky and let your fingers graze over the ridges of ear just so gently that sparks itch where sweat prickles at his neck.

It’s still for a second before chills, agonizing, erupt up his spine, bone by bone as he realizes– as your prince’s face drops and his own hand jumps to reach his ears and what’s no longer there. His right hand grasps at Alderan gold, a tiny sun. His left only cups yours, so much smaller– and the ghost of your earring lost somewhere deep at sea. Six and bleeding in his hands, all grown up and at his mercy.

You smile in anguish, “I hate you.”

You don’t bother pulling your hand from his, only rest your head against the door and let your heavy eyes finally close. Nothing to hold back the freshwater tears now.

Bakugou almost isn’t fast enough in his shock to catch you when you begin to slide down the wall in collapse, “Y– shit– Y/n!” One hand pulls up on your own and the other reaches around your back to try and bring you into him instead of hard against the wooden floor like he’s still a prince and not just a man whose heart won’t stop racing.

“Y/n? Y/n,” he shuffles you in his lap where you landed, and breathes the shapes he hopes make the sound of your name as he searches, distracted. You are limp in his arms and entirely too warm to have been freezing to death a few minutes ago. Lips parted and rolling like you’re trying to speak. Running to safety with you on his shoulder, the seachill must have hidden your fever from him. He cradles your head to check for blood and holds your cheek when his fingers come out dry from your hair.

“majesty..”

Your heartbreaking laughter still bubbles up in quiet sobs and incoherence murmured, murmured, “..m sorry,” when you manage to see through the tears for a moment before falling unconscious again. Every apology laced always with “mitsuki.” You must have been holding it back. You must have been keeping the fever at bay by sheer force of will because now on the floor against him, your body is so hot it’s making his chest clammy. Sweat has soaked into the nooks of your black tunic and pools in salt licks between your breasts. Fuck Alderan fire.

Your prince gathers your shoulders and chest, your waist hips and exhaustion, into a bundle in his arms and pulls himself up with his doorknob because he will not let you drown, he will not let you freeze, and you will not win by setting yourself on fire. As he rises, blood leaks again from your nose. Tears fall aimlessly against his heart split to six like a pomegranate. When Bakugou is king there will be no child soldiers.

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[boundinparchment]

Sand and Shells

In which you receive a gift from a friend, who may be more than he seems.

Pure Neuvillette fluff. Dedicated to @surveyycorps because otters are adorable.

Sometimes, you came to this beach outside the city to think. Not always the same time and not always the same day of the week, but nonetheless, it was a ritual. Rain or shine, this was your spot.

You removed your shoes, settled onto the sand, and stuck your feet in the water. Like always. Work was particularly difficult right now; you needed solutions to problems, not short-term fixes, and it was impossible to think at your desk. Especially when the tension and frustration was so thick, you would need a claymore to cut through it. Your supervisor answered to the Chief Justice and you had a feeling that perhaps certain things were being hidden to save face.

As if that would spare a dismissal or a lawsuit.

The Court didn’t take anything lightly, especially clerical errors from poor management.

Resting your cheek on your knee, you stared off into the distance, watching the sun on the ripples of water. It was quiet out this way. The occasional otter, a school of fish, or some crabs but otherwise, you were entirely unbothered.

That was, until you made eye contact with an otter nearby. It tilted its head, watching you. In its paws, a pink shell. Probably lunch.

You gave a small smile and waved. Otters were always fun to watch, especially in their true element underwater, where they glided and flipped and soared. To your surprise, the otter tilted its head in the other direction and gave a distinct chirp before it darted off.

Guess these guys aren’t too used to human company, you thought.

You shifted, clearing your head further and running your fingers through the sand. So lost in thought, you didn’t hear the putter patter of paws on sand nor the chirp; you jumped when you saw the flash of blue and white as a shell was laid at your feet. The otter squeaked but remained close by, watching you on hind legs.

It wasn’t scared after all…

In fact, its eyes were different too. Not inky black at all but silver and purple…more like a melusine…

“Is this for me?” you asked, picking up the shell. “Thank you. I ate already though. You should have it.”

The otter shook its head. When you didn’t open it, it took out a rock from a fur pocket and brought it over.

“If you insist…”

Prying open the shell, you didn’t see the typical meat at all, but rather a pearl, black as night. Pearls themselves were rare out here, let alone those of different color. You plucked it out carefully and marveled at its iridescence.

You smiled and looked back at the otter. Clearly it wanted approval. It understand human speech, to some extent. How odd.

“Thank you. It’s very pretty. I’ll keep it safe. Take your rock back, you need that.”

Offering the stone in the flat of your hand, the otter took it and tucked it back into its pocket. With a chirp and a squeak, it walked away back towards the water; it looked back once and waved before departing back smoothly into the lake.

What an odd little fellow.

You held up the pearl again. There was a jeweler on the way back to your office. Rings would get in the way…a necklace, then. Why let such a beautiful pearl go to waste?

Weeks later, upon a surprise inspection, your supervisor was fired. Chief Justice Neuvillette would, to the best of his schedule, oversee the transition. He spent time getting to know names and faces, and when he came to you, your heart stopped.

His eyes were always so captivating but…surely…

“Black pearls are quite rare. The jeweler did a lovely job…they’re difficult to work with.”

You swallowed and pressed your fingers to the pearl, cold against your skin.

“It‘s from a friend. I doubt I’ll ever meet them again, so I wear it to remember them.”

“Ah. Then they’re quite lucky to have someone as thoughtful as you.”

You would remember that smile, soft and genuine, for days to come.

[kittyscupcakeandbunny]

A BREATH OF FIRE x MIN YOONGI

[Hybrid Gods AU]

PART ONE

Wood, cinnamon and honey.

Side Character: Park Jimin/white fox hybrid.

Warnings: mentions of blood, violence, death, smut.

....

Hot. It was so hot. I could feel the sun burning on my and skin a groan leaving my lips at the warm sensation a slight smell of honey and cinnamon waking me up. Confusion clouded my mind. Didn't i close the window before going to sleep? Lifting my hand up to cover my eyes i felt the soft mattress under my skin, so soft it was nothing close to the old white cover used to sleep every night.

The sun was shining so bright i could bearly open my eyes as i lifted myself up, the bed was too soft and comfy making almost impossible for me to do that. My mind was a mess and it felt like a i was hangover.

Realising I wasn't in my house i came to my senses and got up quickly taking in my surroundings. It was a small room with nothing on it but a bed on the floor with golden and black covers on top of it.

More thoughts about last night events clouded my mind as they came rushing back to hunt me. The man following me, me running into the forest the lake and... The mysterious creature who saved me.

"now... you owe the fox two wishes."

A fox... i clearly saw the ears on his head and his eyes. Golden Amber eyes. No human could have eyes like that. Just what is him?!

- you're awake.

The voice said behind me making me turn quickly, startled by his sudden entrance. He looked the same as last night. Amber eyes like gold, dark hair falling over them his scar on his right eye. He wore traditional clothes like last time, mostly black with golden details everywhere that made him look like a king.

- I've brought you clean clothes - he said, handing me them. - sorry i don't have anything... feminine. Those are mine.

- it's fine.

I manage to say while taking the clothes from him, our fingers slightly touching as i do. His eyes never leaving mine. Reading my face like a book he never saw before. He made sure i knew he was looking at me. I couldn't help but notice how his ears suddenly moved slightly.

- I'm sure you have a lot in your mind now - he said - but first, change and then come have breakfast with me.

He gave me one last look before making his way out of the room.

Taking a deep breath a looked at myself for a moment, my clothes were runied and i had drops of blood everywhere in them. I smelled like a tree. And blood. I looked for any wonds on my body but i found none, no scratches from the trees i ran into and no bleeding from falling into rocks. I had no injuries on my body from last night. This will go to the list of questions i would have to ask him later.

Holding the clothes he gave me my checks went red immediately. It was something semiliar to what he was wearing but instead of golden details it was red and had some flowers on it. It smelled like wood and honey.

I quickly change into it not wanting to make him wait any longer.

Making sure a double not it the strap around my waist I opened the door making my way out of the room. Instantly I'm welcome by a sweet smell of honey and herbs wich I assumed was chamomile.

- sit down, drink it - he order, golden eyes looking stray into mine he made sure to take a good look up and down before licking his lips - it will help you calm down.

- yes... - i made my self comfortable taking the sit in front of him, with the small cup between my fingers i blow it a little before taking a small sip. It was hot.

He only watched, eyes following my every move.

- eat some too... - he mumbled, this time holding a small piece of bread in front of me.

- thank you.

I took it from him having a bite of it. It was soft and sweet. I couldn't help but moan as i took another bite, it was still warm too. Did he bake this?

He looked at me as if he was pleased with himself, it made me realize the situation that brought us here. He wasn't human.

- sorry... - i said - it's really good.

- i know, a friend of mine always brings them for me. - he said while taking another sip of his tea.

- a friend..? - i insinuated.

- you didn't think Id be the only one, right? - he simply said. - there is so much about this world that you don't know...

Silence fills the air and i decided to focused on the food, too anxious to look at his eyes again. Or his ears. He seamed to be counting his options. Tell her or kill her.

He laid back both arms holding himself as he looked up then at me again, i just couldn't help but look at his ears. And he seamed to notice. He didn't smile this time. The scar on his face made him look deadly, and perhaps that's how he got it.

Remembering the way he just smiled as he killed not one but two people, no matter how good or bad they were. He killed them as if they were nothing.

But he's not human. I can't judge him for something he is not.

- what are you?

I manage to mumble the question at him. Still holding the cup of tea between my hands, he sits up looking eyes with me.

- I'm a six tailed fox. The protector of the lake you almost died in last night.

- how many... foxes like you are out there?. - i said. Putting the cup down.

- Many ... all over the world - he said - some hiding and some... well having fun. Disguised like humans trying to live a normal life.

- What about you?

- I don't care about that. I can't die. What's the point?

- i guess... last night... why did you save me?

- that's were the fun comes in - he said getting closer - you see... I'm six tailed fox, when your offered the help from me you owe me a favor - he explained - the same way around.

- so if i helped you...

- i would be obligated to return the favor.

- Why?

- It's just how it always been.

Now it makes sense. That's way he saved me. So I could owe him a favor. So he could have power over me.

- don't think too much of it - he said, taking one last sip of his tea - that's how the foxes live. The tales were never wrong about that.

- how do I repay you then?

He smiled at me full of mischief.

- Well... I saved your life - he said, holding his chin with his hand - how about you serve me for a life time?

- What would I do?

- that's for me to decide.

I gulped down. Serve him for the rest of my life? How could i even think about doing such thing. What about my life? I've been careful all my life. I never did anything that could put me at risk yet here I'm now. Sitting in front of a creature I never once believed existed, i almost died last night. I can bearly cut onions without almost losing a hand, how am i supposed to serve him?

- Let me put it in this way for you.... - he got up putting both hands on each side of my body, face bearly inches away from me - you don't have a choice, if you don't repay me with what i ask, the universe will make you pay on their own way.

His eyes were shining brighter then before, the strong scent of wood and cinamoon coming from him was stronger now. He almost looked deadly, but I held my ground. Locking eyes with him. I didn't felt threatened, i didn't felt fear even thought he looked at me with such burning stare.

Please do what I said.

Please.

For as much as i try to think this is absolutely bad, i shouldn't do It, who in your right mind would say yes to such thing?

- I'll serve you then - the words came out of my lips as if they were meant to, a whisper against his lips - a life for a life.

I watch the way a weight seamed to drop off his shoulders as he lower them a little, averting his eyes to look down where both his hands were cornering me on the table. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, still not moving and inch away from me.

Without even noting I was moving my hand towards his head, i wonder if his ears are as soft as his hair looks. But before I could kill my curiosity he stoped me, making me gasp as he held it tight now looking stray into my eyes.

- Don't cross a line you're not ready for.

Was all he said before lifting himself up and leaving abruptly. No touching ears then. Noted.

I took the time alone to think about the whole situation, how my life suddenly turned into in a spiral of ups and downs with a simple descicion. I couldn't blame anyone for it not even myself, all that has happened was completely out of my control.

I should focus on the present. At least I don't have anyone to miss me back home.

After I'm done eating I clean up the table and put the rest of the food in their respective places, taking a look at the small kitchen that was behind the door on the left the house wasn't so big but it was cosy. Once I'm done with cleaning up i go back to the room I was sleeping before, he hasn't come back and probably won't so soon.

With that thought I let myself fall in the comfy covers of the bed, the smell of wood and honey embracing me to a deep sleep.

....

A soft cold breez woke me up, the sun light suddenly moved from my sight and i was thankful. If it wasn't for the soft breathes over my face wich made me wake up instantly. I held a hand up my lips as icy blue eyes stared into mine, white hair falling over them and... ears. Another fox?

- Oh... did I wake you up? - he said softly and smiled.

Going back to a sitting positing i follow it sitting across from him.

- Sorry, how rude of me, I'm jimin.

He just sat there looking at me adorably, he was a bit short and was sitting holding both his feet. He wore something similar to what the scar fox did. But his where white and baby blue. With silver details at the bottom.

- I'm... y/n.

- Sorry for waking you up, i came to deliver some bread but then... I smelled you and... i got curious. - he said looking at his hands, checks turning a bit red. How cute.

- It's okay. Are you a six tailed fox too?

- Yes! I'm a winter fox! Not six tailed thought...

- Oh... you came to deliver bread? - the fox did mention another fox who brings him... - bread! You brought It!

I completely forgot it. My first day serving a fox god and i didn't even made breakfast for him.

Quickly getting up and making sure a tied the not around my waist to hold my clothes, i make the bed and turn to jimin still sitting there looking at me confused.

- Would like some tea? - as i asked him he looked at me surprised but happy, a sudden cold wind making and entrance throught the window.

- I would love some!

As i started to boil some water and prepare some bread to set it on the table, jimin helped me picking herbs to make the tea.

- So... why are you here? Yoongi usually don't bring humans to his house. - he said while putting the herbs inside the jar. Yoongi.

Never once did it pass throught my mind to ask his name.

- Oh I... I'm working here.

- Oh... - the way he said it with so much feeling, as if i was a prisoner here.

- No, no... not like that - i said smiling - he saved me.

- He did?

- Yes. And I'm very grateful.

There was silence, then I sat in front of him on the table. He just looked around for a moment not saying anything.

- Look... Don't pity me - i asked him - he told me everything, and to be honest I'm just greatful he was the one who saved me.

- I won't. If you say it I believe it. - he smiled. - where is he any way?

- Oh he left early yesterday.

- That sly fox... and left you here alone? - he said, a small hint of mischief on his tone - so easy for another fox to steal you away.

The heat on my face was instant, the sweet boy in front looked at me with mischief and a lot of second intentions behind his lines. How someone so cute could be so dirty?

His eyes went up behind me and he burst a: hyung!

I could already feel the warm sensation behind me, he was standing right there. His strong presence was unmistakable. His smell of wood and cinnamon filling the air as soon as he stepped foot in the house.

- What are you doing here? - he asked the other fox.

- What do you mean? I always came here at this time but you weren't here so your loving helping lady welcome me. - jimin said, amusement sparking in his voice.

- She did? - his voice came lower closer to me as he sat right next to me in front of jimin, not choosing the sit a place for him at the end of the table.

I gulped more tea as i felt he looking at me, my checks burning.

- Maybe I should taught her a lesson about letting stray foxes inside my house.... - this time he looked at jimin.

- Com don't be so hard on her... she's just a human.

- If I'm going to deal with you so early I need some thing stronger then tea... - Yoongi mumble beside me, taking the tea from my hands wich made me look at him. He came closer to my ear to whisper softly - could you please bring me a bottle of wine I left it in the room?

Nodding I quickly got up and made my way to the room, my heart beat was beating so fast I was scared he might actually hear. Damn it. He was a supernatural being maybe he could hear It?

I took a few breaths in th room before making sure my checks were no longer burning red and my heart wasn't beating like a drum. Grabbing the wine bottle on the night stand beside the bed I made my way out of the room.

None of them talked as i sat beside Yoongi and pour some of the wine in a cup for him, looking at jimin who stared at Yoongi and vice versa. Was it a staring competition?

- Should I pour the guest some wine too? - i decided to break the ice. Yoongi immediately looked over me a smirk on his lips, then stared back at jimin.

- See? She learns fast. - he said - no.

- You dirty fox Yoongi... you know I hate your wine - jimin said, looking back at me with a soft smile - I'll stay with the tea we made.

- Okay.

I went back to eat, taking a bit of a cookie full of sugar with some strawberry jam on it. The silence was mortal, i looked at them both as they just ignored each other. Jimin smiled at me from time to time, Yoongi would tap my thigh signaling he wanted more wine.

The tension was so thick you could cut it through with a knife.

- I'm curious... what kind of relationship you guys have? - jimin suddenly asked.

- The kind that is none of your business. - Yoongi spat.

He is not in a good mood I can tell, every since he came back i can feel this uncanny energy coming from him, he didn't seamed like this yesterday and when he talked about others like him it didn't bother him. Jimin seems to be a friend of his. But he just doesn't get it that Yoongi is not in the mood. Or maybe he does.

This could end really bad if he doesn't leave. Yoongi don't look like the type to make friends, and if he ends up saying or doing something to jimin he might regret later. I can't let this happen. I'm here to serve Yoongi. I'll do it my way.

- I... I don't feel so good... - i said, turning towards Yoongi I grabbed his hand that rested over his thight.

- What is It? - he turned to me pulling me close, i couldn't even look at him in the face. If i do I won't be able to hold the lie.

- Please help me? - i asked, knowing he did not have a choice. Even if it meant I would owe him more.

- You seamed fine... is she alright Yoongi? - i felt bad at how worried Jimin actually sounded. But he can't be here right now. I saw what Yoongi is capable. I'm sure he knows it too.

Holding his hand tighter i hide my face on his arm trying to groan in pain. I was surprised at how fast he held me up bride style, making me hold his neck quickly hiding my face in it. My checks were on fire now.

- It would be best if you leave now - Yoongi said to Jimin, walking towards the room.

- O- okay. If you need any help-

- i won't. - Yoongi instantly cut jimin off.

After that I felt a sense of relief, then I was put on the bed. Yoongis face over mine as he examined every inch of my face, putting the back of his hand over my check. Loosen strands of black hair falling over his eye, the scar seamed darker this angle and his red lips from the wine...

I couldn't decipher his expression but he was genuinely checking to see if i was okay.

- Your warm... but I can't sense any sickness on your body... - he mumbled, closing his eyes as he still held my face in his big hand.

- I'm not - i breathed out.

- What? - his golden eyes looked into mine.

- I notice how you were not in a good mood... It seamed like you didn't want to talk about it with jimin so i made the excuse for him to... leave. - as i explained he looked at me as if not believing.

He chuckled then bite into his lower lip looking at me, now putting both arms at each side of my face.

- You sure know how to play your cards... - he said - but now you-

- I owe you - i interrupted him - i know.

He just looked at me.

- I don't mind...

I gulped down at my own confession. Not looking at him. His breathing was getting stronger, i could feel it on my face. Once I deared to look at him he had a different kind of expression I couldn't tell if he was enjoying this or being tortured by It, his usually bright golden eyes were a darker amber this time pupils full.

His scent was all over the room, wood and cinnamon with a bit of honey. Intoxicated by him all i could do was watch him, the way his eyes traveled over my face, how he would lick his bottom lip and then bite it. The smell of wine coming from them as he breathed out.

Everything about him was intoxicating.

- Yoongi?

- Don't.... - he said.

Eyes still closed he leaned down against my neck, i held my breathe as he inhaled my scent then groaned against my skin.

- You smell so good... - he mumbled on my skin, i tried to calm myself at how good it felt having his voice vibrate against my neck.

He kept it at this, slowly moving his nose up and down my neck. Soft breathy moans leaving his lips every now and then. Slowly he stared to lay his body down against mine, one hand circling around my waist using his legs to separate mine holding me still against him.

I gasped a the sudden move and held a hand against my mouth trying to keep any sound from coming.

- Yoongi... what are you-

I stoped myself from saying any more as he bite into my skin, both my hands holding his shoulders tight.

- So much better... - he said over my lips.

Golden eyes looking at mine.

- Now you don't smell like him anymore.

Wait this is what this is about? I smelled like Jimin?

- Since you owe me little human.... - he said caressing my check - i want to sleep like this with you.

- Just sleep? - i asked, he chuckled at my question.

- Why? - he leaned down and whispered on my ear - you want something else?

My checks burned hot.

- I mean... you kind of started - i said. He looked at me incredibly offended.

- I did? You did, you are the one who- he stoped himself.

- What? - i insisted.

- No. I need sleep. I didn't have any last night. - he stated. Making himself comfortable over me, laying all his weight on me.

I can't believe this. What have I put myself into? This fox is going to make me have grey hair in my 20s.

Next?

Taglist:

@whipwhoops @glosstwn @catlove83 @4ukiyo4 @i-have-no-life-charlie @thvlover7

Sorry for any grammatical errors 💖😁.

[total-drama-brainrot]

Alenoah Week 2024: Day 3 - "TDWT Ending Rewrite"

The trek to the top of the volcano was, in layman's terms, agonizing.

Searing heat, somehow simultaneously swelteringly humid and suffocatingly dry, blistered at every inch of Noah's exposed skin and burned through his lungs like hot coals with every laboured breath. The sweat that would've been dripping from his exhausted body like a faulty faucet didn't even have the opportunity to form into pearl-shaped droplets before it evaporated against the overwhelming force of just how fucking hot it was.

And yet he'd made it.

He'd gotten there first, too.

Noah had somehow managed to out-slither the slippery fiend whilst the two were stumbling across the skipping stones of a lava lake, despite the weight of his pineapple dummy causing him to falter after almost every step.

The maw of the volcano bubbled and spat embers at his feet, just a few measly inches from the cynic himself. It was time to end it; the competition, the show, his… rivalry with Alejandro.

As if the mere thought of the Spaniard had somehow summoned him, Noah heard the tell-tale clicking of heeled boots against rock behind him quickly followed by harsh, laboured panting (not nearly as desperate as his own wheezing, but a far cry from the womanizer's usual composure). Alejandro's ponytailed hair rose from the plateaued peak of the volcano, followed by a pair of thick eyebrows furrowed against sweat-sheened skin, then a pair of furious sage green eyes- and sage was the most appropriate description Noah could think of, since they burned with a competitive fire comparable to the all-encompassing heat around them.

"It's over, Alejandro. I have the high ground."

Noah's voice was a hoarse, painful rasp, though whether it was from its unbearable dryness or the tenseness of the situation, he wasn't sure. He stood firmly at the edge of the volcano, searing light illuminating the edges of his form like a foreboding halo as he held Pinealejandro almost covetingly in a bridal carry, hovering the dummy over the scorching cavern of its imminent demise.

Alejandro- the human one, not the pineapple one- continued his unwavering ascent to the volcano's peak until he was but a few insignificant feet away from Noah. His shoulders visibly rose and fell with each huff of magma-scorched breath, and the barbaric snarl he bared towards the bookworm twisted his handsome features into something wild, alight with a passion that burned at white-hot as the lava below.

Then he roared.

"You underestimate my power!"

And lunged towards Noah, carelessly discarding his own pineapple dummy (comparatively twiggier and more feeble looking than Noah's own) as he cleared the space between them in the blink of a cinder-dusted eye.

"I will not lose to someone as infuriating as you!"

Before he could process what was even happening, Noah found himself scooped away from the edge of the volcano and lifted a few extra meters off of the ground, held victoriously above the latino in an overhead lift like he was some sort or glorified barbell. The shock of which inadvertently caused him to drop his own dummy, sending the construct tumbling into the bubbling, gaping chasm below until it plunged into the awaiting magma with a barely audible 'plop'.

For a brief tension-paused moment the two remained eerily still, almost frozen in place with disbelief (an impressive feat, considering it was far too fucking hot for anything to freeze atop the volcano).

Well.

That was that, then.

…It was sort of anticlimactic, really. Noah was almost disappointed.

"Um," The bookworm began, quickly schooling his surprise at being lifted and brandished like a javelin into his usual apathetic countenance, "Are you going to put me down, or…?"

Noah's enquiry was met a bark of high pitched laughter, a sound so entrenched in sardonic humour it was practically swimming in animosity.

"Ah, but Noah," Alejandro preened indulgently, as if he were speaking to a small child, and his snarl curled into a manic grimace. The archvillain's eyes were widened to their extreme, dying wisps of ember light flickering across his gaze which trailed from the waifish nerd held above his head to the boiling magma below.

"I still have a dummy to discard of."

In other words,

THROW THAT TWIG

INTO THE VOLCANO!!!

[calxia]

The Runaway PT3

Part 1, Part 2

If it weren’t for the groan he had made, it would have been very easy for the other ghouls to have overlooked Phantom’s prone form collapsed in the mud. He was coated from horn to tail with a thick layer of the foul-smelling stuff. With the way he was curled into himself, he could have easily been mistaken for a misshapen rock.

Rain and Cirrus rushed forward as soon as it clicked what (or rather who) they were looking at. They were cold enough just standing in the rain, but Phantom must be absolutely freezing caked in mud as well. They had zero idea just how long he had been collapsed. The scent trail by the road had already grown stale when they first started tracking him down. It could have been hours since he had left the abbey, and it had been raining most of the night. Of course, the younger ghoul was foolish enough that he would try to run away during the first storm of the year.

They grabbed what they thought was the quintessence ghoul’s arm and attempted to heave him back upright. It was hard to keep a firm grip on him- the mud made him as slippery as one of the eels Rain regularly pulled out of the lake. Phantom was a complete deadweight in their grasp. If it wasn’t for his quiet groans as they moved him, they would have presumed him dead. After a few minutes of tugging and manoeuvring, they managed to get him propped semi-upright between Swiss and Dew. They were both channelling their fire elements to increase their core temperatures and project their heat onto the filthy ghoul between them. He was so cold to the touch. Even the forever-cold Rain had noticed just how freezing he felt while lifting him.

They needed to get him up the hill and back to the abbey as soon as possible. They needed to get him out of his soaked clothes and into something dry before he became hypothermic. The only option was for someone to carry him up and hope that Mountain and Copia had arrived with the car. Even a ghoul of phantom’s diminutive size and stature would be hard to carry the unresponsive ghoul up the him, with the others following behind to hopefully stop them if Swiss were to fall.

They were short on time, so it would have to do.

They all had to work together to get Phantom’s prone form settled onto Swiss’s back as securely as possible. Phantom was boneless and no help as they tried to hike him further up on Swiss’s broad back. It wasn’t sturdy, but it would have to work for them. They started up the slope, the ever-progressing storm beating down upon them.

It was a slow-going ascent. Every few meters, the group would slide back at least a meter in return. It was tiring and it felt like they were not getting any closer to the road. The group was getting exhausted. They’d already been starting to get tired when they had reached where Phantom’s scent changed direction, but the trek down the hill had drained them.

They had to keep going though.

Phantom’s life depended on it.

It was slow going but eventually, they made it up to the roadside where they had left Cumulus waiting for Papa. She had moved to sit down in the grass while she waited, the harsh rain saturating her white curls. At the sound of the other ghouls stumbling through the overgrowth, Cumulus spun around to face them a look of concern flitting across her face. She shot up from the grass and rushed to help them up the final bit of incline.

“Oh gosh, did you guys find Phantom like this?” she nervously questioned as she flitted behind Swiss to help relieve him of the deadweight that was the younger ghoul.

“He was buried in the mud by an overflowing river. Has Papa and Mountain passed by yet?” Cirrus answered her as she moved to take the other side of Phantom’s weight.

A few hours had to have passed since they first set off from the abbey, and they were sure they hadn’t cleared that much land for it to take that long for Papa to catch up with them, but they would have to wait until they arrived. There was no way that they would be able to get Phantom back home with the torrential storm without someone getting hurt or the quintessence ghoul dying.

They would have to hunker down and try and keep him as warm and sheltered as possible. They settled down where they would still be visible from the road but had some shelter from the trees and formed a ghoul pile around the small ghoul with the warmest of the pack closest to him.

And then the waiting game started.

[passivenovember]

Someone says Billy might be in there, and that's all it takes to snap Steve's resolve in two like a pathetic, gnawed-on piece of red vine.

Billy might be in there, Nancy says.

It's strange when it claws out of her, choked and desperate because they're running out of time, some. Huge, old, fuckin', annoying clock ticking away someplace, deaf to be heard. But felt. Like five knuckles to the stomach.

Nancy's got mud on her cheeks. Blood crusting brown at the corner of her nose and fear glittering like shards of mirrorball in both eyes. Blue. Steve used to obsess over that shade, until.

Billy. Who burned the rest of the world to the ground. Who changed water and sky and moonlight and lake fronts forever. For Steve. Billy--

Who might be down there.

Steve peers at the soft current of the lake, rippling with tabs of stardust. Billy's dead, Steve remembers suddenly. They told him he was dead because he couldn't see through the cloud of black-cat gun powder that night the bottom fell the fuck out. They told Steve everyone was better off, they buried what was left of his body and they moved on. Everyone.

Steve didn't cry at the funeral. Couldn't. He promised Billy that he never would, not. In front of Neil Hargrove, not in front of anyone, so.

Billy might be in there.

Steve can't blame them as the boat rocks, gentle as the tick-tick of time pressing on, when no one moves.

Steve, Nancy says.

He looks at her, taken aback by the shock on her face. What are you doing, she says. But Steve isn't listening. His shirt dangles from her fingertips, a white flag. A death shroud.

Steve doesn't remember taking it off. He opens his mouth. Shuts it.

Eddie Munson looks at him with the kind of sharp, resigned knowing that makes Steve shrug. Clear his throat. Say, If I'm not back in two minutes, jump in after me.

Steve, Nancy says. Small and afraid, You can't go in. You're--

--Billy's in there, Steve snaps. No might. Leaving no room for argument. He can feel it, like that big clock in the sky, ticking.

Billy's in there, so Steve jumps.

--

Somewhere, in sudden, churning darkness

his skin starts to burn.

--

Something hits him, right under his temple. On his cheek bone. It sticks too the tacky landing of his skin and then falls.

Not. To the ground, Steve doesn't think. To the lakebed.

Into some great, terrible void that waits to swallow him whole because it has no teeth. No edge. No suffering.

"You're starting to burn," Someone tells him.

Steve jerks awake, eyes slamming into a bright blue sky. "Sorry," He says. "I fell asleep. I thought--"

"--You're gonna catch on fire."

Trees, nodding in the warm exhale of some far-away afternoon spring from the centerfold of himself. He's getting a sunburn but there's a tube of banana boat sunscreen on the beach towel next to him, hot to the touch.

"Did you throw that at me?" He demands. Steve's naked from the waist down. Flat on the earth, suddenly. Flat on a beach towel, gritting black sand into Miss Universe, '84's shiny blue one piece. He's seen this towel, before.

"You've gotta put it on," The voice says, "You don't have much longer."

Steve sits, blinking into the sunlight.

He's at the quarry. He's been here before.

"Who are you?" He asks.

The earth seems to exhale. Far below, laughter climbs the rocky face of memory. Steve hears children, playing. His children. Dustin's voice tugs at him. His heart. His mind.

Billy's in there--

"I'm looking for someone," Steve says, but he doesn't turn from the treeline. Doesn't peer below, either. Doesn't move. "I. I think I lost him. I haven't seen him in a long time but I--"

"Don't worry about that."

"I worry," Steve reports, but it feels like a lie. He considers the banana boat sunscreen but can't reach for it, afraid of what might happen if he sinks into its release.

The children keep laughing, far below, and Steve thinks he's seen this blue before. This shade. This sky.

"I don't want you to get sunburned," The voice tells him. Closer. Near enough that the breath from its lungs stirs the hair on Steve's head. Just out of eyesight. "You always look like shit when you're burned up."

"I was wondering if you could help me."

"You're gonna turn red, pretty boy. A fuckin' lobster."

Steve gasps. His heart shudders. Stops.

Stops beating.

Steve swallows. "I'm looking for someone," He says. Not particularly inclined to tear his eyes away from the peaks and valleys of the hill that grinds, pestle, all around him. He's safe. Nestled into the end. "Please, I. I think I lost him. I've been trying to find him for a long time but he's--"

"Hiding," The voice says.

Someone sits next to him in the sand. Naked from the waist down, golden.

Sunlight. Flame. The dawn.

Steve looks at him. "Billy," He says. Or maybe he doesn't. The word comes from everywhere, like springtime rolling over the earth. Flowers blooming and withering all at once.

"You don't have much longer," Billy stretches out along the beach towel, red trunks coated in dark black sand. "You're burning up. Why don't you go back?"

Steve remembers this.

Asking if there was an extra towel, if Billy wanted this one, why Billy gave it to him in the first place--

"Because I want to be with you," Steve says. Like Billy had said, then. That day at the quarry before. This and them and everything. It had opened a whole universe for them. It had changed everything and now Steve holds his breath, wondering if it will again.

Below, the children keep laughing.

"Billy," Steve says, because it tastes good. Like lemonade and iced tea. And cotton candy at the county fair. And cigarettes at midnight. And pancakes, burned by the man he--

"Look at me," Steve says.

Billy's hair billows, golden in the breeze. "I can't."

"Why?"

"You stare at me with those fuckin' eyes and," Billy shakes all over, "I'll get selfish. Ask you to stay."

"Don't have to ask," Steve tells him, rooted to Miss Universe '84. "I'm not going back."

"Yes you are."

"I can't live without--"

"Jesus Christ, would you listen to this bullshit? We sound like a play about star crossed losers, and not a good one, either." Billy sits up straight, tucking his hair behind his ears. "It's cliche. Don't say shit like that."

Steve swallows. "It's true."

"I know, pretty boy."

"So then why can't I stay with you?"

"Because it's not your time yet," Billy says, finally, finally looking at him. Eyes blue like the sky.

Steve exhales, watching as the earth moves with him. "Now who's cliche?"

Billy laughs, and.

Steve must crumble. Must catch on fire. Must make up his mind because he breaks.

"Don't cry," Billy tells him, weakly, "Harrington--"

"--I'm not going back unless you come with me."

"It doesn't work like that."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm dead," Billy tells him, turning in the sand until their knees press together. Solid and warm.

Alive.

"I'm not in the lake, sweetheart. I know you want me to be, but I'm not." Steve sobs. He can't help it, can't stamp it down, it slithers out of him with its fangs bared, full of fear and poison. It must get Billy in the heart. Must kill him a second time because Billy grabs at Steve, clutching Steve's face between his hands. "Hey, none of that, now--"

"--I'm sorry, Billy. So fucking sorry--"

Billy scrubs the tears away. "It's not your fault. Sometimes," Billy says, tugging fingers through Steve's hair, "Sometimes shit just happens, and people die, and it's a normal part--"

"--Nothing's normal anymore," Steve snaps, "I don't even know what normal looks like. And. Even before everything, before that night, I just. Something happened to me," Steve commit's the feeling of Billy's thumbs, rubbing circles into his sadness, to memory. "You happened to me, Billy."

The children aren't laughing, anymore. The sun dips low in the sky.

Billy turns from him, eyes scanning the treeline, "You don't have much longer, sweetheart."

"I'm not going back."

"You have to. I'm not arguing with you. This isn't a discussion." Billy says. Horrible and empty.

Steve snaps. "What, are you going to force me back into my body? Possess me like some fucking, ghost asshole and make me swim back to the surface?"

Billy blinks at him, shocked.

"That's where I am, right? Drowning at the bottom of the goddamn lake?"

Billy's face cracks open. "I can't watch you die."

"I watched you die."

"Bullshit," Billy says, "You couldn't see through the smoke--"

"--I love you," Steve says. Because it's simple. True. "And you love me."

Billy holds him tighter. Closer. "I know, baby."

"So let me stay here," Steve says. Holding on just as tight. Just as hard. "Let me come with you, and we can--"

"You have so much life stretching out in front of you, baby. So much love just. Fuckin' waiting for you."

"I don't care."

"You're going to have a family," Billy says, voice shaking, "You're going to meet someone. They're so good to you, I can. I feel it. Like sunlight," Billy blinks, lashes clumped with tears, "No. You already know him. Just met him."

"I don't want anyone else," Steve snaps, desperate. Wishing he could peel Billy's skin from the bone and sew himself up inside. Live there forever and ever and--

"I can't love anyone else, Billy."

"Yes you can," Billy says. "You will."

"What about," Steve asks, clutching Billy closer, "What about you?"

Billy smiles sadly. "I'm not going anywhere. Your whole life, I'll be here. I'll be waiting for you."

The sun dips below the horizon. The world burns.

Steve runs out of time.

[neptuneunworthy]

Devour

Pairing: Astarion x GN!Durge

Synopsis: It is so early in your adventures, you've yet to even infiltrate the goblin camp and save The Grove; there are so many things you don't know about your companions...and so many things they don't know about you. At least you don't go around and bite people awake however, like certain bloodthirsty rogues.

Word count: 3k

Warnings: Violence, Blood, Injury

Rating: Teen and up audiences

Stars always shine brightest when away from the hustle and bustle of the large cities like Baldur’s Gate or Neverwinter. The sky is not scarily illuminated by a gross cacophony of embers aching for more. It is when they shine so bright, when they twinkle just perfectly, that hope is born.

You were born without Hope. 

You were created without Hope.

This is not an odd thought, though as quickly as you register it not to be odd you also register you are unaware of how you know this fact about yourself. How can you be so sure? Because, if you were honest, you cannot for the life of you recall anything.

His smile is small and gentle as the boy crouches beside you with a ladybug on his finger, a leather-bound journal loosely folded in his lap. He’s small, like you, and just a kid, also like you. Though he could not be more different than you.

“What’s your name?” Your voice is squeaky, yet cracks from dehydration clawing its way up your throat.

The boy looks at you with a grin and worried eyes. Very few have looked at you before like that. Then again, you’re only eight years old.

“I’m-“

“Tav!” 

Your hands tightened around the thin linen, wringing it out a last time as your name was shouted by a certain wizard. Of course this likely meant supper was ready, hells even all the way out here by the lake you could smell the sweet aroma of spiced and juiced meat; the burning wood mixing with the scent in a way that made you truly realize you had been starving

You tossed the tunic over a rock with the other clothing and armour to dry and dust the mixture of sand and dirt from your legs, before turning on your heel and going to join the others. Their voices had already begun to mix with each other in chatter around the fire, Gale the loudest of them as he explained in detail what part of Faerun he would be feeding everyone tonight. 

Of course, only Wyll and Karlach seemed interested. Maybe that wasn’t wholly true. Lae’zel was interested, after all she was a woman of respect and even admitted Gale’s cooking to be “suitable.” However, she still will voice her very loud complaints against Faerun and it’s cooking even so.

Gale didn’t seem to mind, though in your humble opinion you think that’s just because he’s a mixture of too kind, but also Lae’zel even finding his cooking “suitable” should be considered a victory.

You took your seat next to Shadowheart, admittedly she was the person you had found yourself the most comfortable around thus far. That was putting it lightly of course. But she was open and honest about her loss of memories, though she seemed to understand exactly why. Whereas you were not aware of anything. Save for certain…feelings when it comes to violence.

Still, there was a nice and quiet camaraderie formed over this; though you opted to not mention to her or anyone much about certain urges. Save for when you first inquired most everyone about them and they all gave you unsatisfactory answers.

You still had yet to confess it was you who killed Alfira. Though there was plenty of time to say as such, right? After all, the whole past day was spent fighting goblins at a windmill and spiders before you resume your trek toward the goblin camp once more. You were just busy and focused on other things that didn’t include confessing maiming an annoying bard only after just meeting her.

Ah.

Has it truly only been five days so far?

Everyone was such chums already.

Well, save for…

“It seems our white-haired friend has disappeared off to gods knows where again,” you mumbled. You weren’t an idiot, you had seen him stalk off the past few nights. “Where do you think he’s gone to?”

Shadowheart hummed in thought, biting down on a tender piece of pork before sipping from her goblet. “I pray somewhere won’t require me to heal him again. ”

She followed this by also side-eyeing yourself, which resulted in a quiet chuckle from you. It would be correct that both the pale elf and yourself had already made a pattern of needing frequent healing from her after battles.

“I mean it,” Shadowheart continued, though there was an ounce of teasing in her tone, “you would think for someone as sneaky as him he would be able to dodge out of harm's way. I suppose I should be glad he doesn’t beg me to heal him like you do--”

“-I do not beg-”

“-and instead he feigns ignorance to his wounds. Acting all annoyed and like a cornered cat when I manage to finally cast a spell on him. You can be thankful but him? You would think he would at least try to be cooperative since he is on a team…”

Her words now had taken a turn to actual complaining, which you listened to, and even admittedly agreed with. 

You looked down at the food, picking at it with your fingers. “I think he shows thanks in uncanny ways. He’s disarmed more traps and swiped more gold for us than any of us ever could--not without being caught or killed at least.”

As you ate, finally, she seemed to ponder these words. Even if you agreed with her rant over the man, you had to be tactful and give him the benefit of the doubt as much as you have given her. Hells, as much as you have given everyone else. There is a part of you that calls you stupid for it, a tremor in your hand wishing to claw its way around your companions throats. 

However, if you are to survive, if you are to hopefully eventually understand that supposed butler , then you need to ensure everyone gets along. 

“You may be correct Tav,” she said after taking another sip of wine (which had been stolen from The Grove), “but it would be nice to feel recognized.”

You understood, though for several reasons that felt lost to you. So you simply agreed with a nod. Recognition could mean a lot of things to both of you, but that was the unspoken truth in the statement, wasn’t it?

People eventually returned to their tents, save for yourself and Gale, whom you had offered your help to when it came to cleanup. He appreciated the offer. Despite your reservations about Gale, mostly as he insulted your knowledge as a fellow wizard…and perhaps guilt (why do you feel guilt?) from almost ripping and eating his arm unbeknownst to him, you find his companionship affable. 

It’s a type of acquaintanceship you can appreciate because you both can prattle on about the arcane to someone who actually understands it. 

“A shame Astarion did not make it to dinner tonight,” Gale bemoaned as he changed the topic away from cantrips. “I set a portion aside from him and everything.”

You eye’d at the plate of sauteed pork, likely a bit cold by now.

“I can wait for him. Make sure he gets it.”

Gale looked at you with a soft smile. “Truly that would be wonderful. I must admit I have grown a bit worried about our friend. At first I thought it was maybe my food smelled as foul as the Owlbears nest, but I have not seen the roguish man eat anything thus far.”

“I promise you he will eat your very delish and not putrid smelling meal.”

That gained a chuckle from both him and yourself, but you additionally also said, “I will finish up here. You already have done more than enough in cooking the whole camp a delicious meal, go get some rest.”

He placed a hand on your shoulder and gave a squeeze, “thank you, Tav.”

This is what Shadowheart means by wishing people (Astarion) said thank you, or that people (also Astarion) gave proper recognition where proper recognition is due.

You understand that the elf is probably just a very secretive person, which made sense considering his role in your camp after all. Honestly, you were pretty certain that he simply reads his books as he dines lavishly in the woods by himself with whatever tasty foods he swiped during the day. He is here for the reason everyone else is, and that’s to find out more about the pesky parasites burrowed in your brains.

Which perhaps is why Shadowheart is right; he needs to be more cooperative with the group. Though you can also understand the reasoning for keeping distance.

You cleaned off the plates from everyone else, leaving the one for Astarion untouched. Scratch, the dog that you had met crying over his dead owner, seemed more than happy to eat and lick any crumbs or residue left on the plates before you washed them by the lake. At least before he made his rounds to everyone’s tents; a ritual the dog performed each night to decide whose tent he shall sleep in.

When you settled back down by the now dwindling fire, you leaned back on the palm of your hands and looked up to the sky, taking it all in as you waited for the man of the hour to return. The stars did shine bright. They winked and kissed at you from afar. Whispering soft nothings in their twinkles and glimmers. A feeling swells in your chest as you look up at them. A profound loneliness overtaking your being. It didn’t feel right to be sitting here under the sky with the dim fire all alone. 

Obviously you weren’t actually alone. You had the aforementioned tadpoles to make sure of that. But it was different. You could feel yourself actually begin to relax as you looked at the gleaming night sky, but at the same time your chest swelled for something your mind believes was once real. Yet you had no name to place it to. No person to place it toward.

You slumped down onto the bedroll, one spare you brought out so you hadn’t been waiting patiently on the hard dirt ground, and laid on your back. Your hands rested over your stomach, your chest rising and falling gently, as your eyes stayed trained up above. 

It was horrible to miss something you didn’t know. 

Against your better judgement, and your word to Gale, you felt the mistress of sleep had called as your eyelids had grown heavy, and they had begun to shut. 

You had caught yourself, your eyes opening wide and body slightly jumping awake. Of course, you were thankful. Because for some odd reason your luck had kicked in, and you now lay face to face with Astarion loomed over you, his mouth slightly ajar. 

It took a lot for you to not cast thunderwave and send him flying, but his own surprise drew him back instantly, an unusual look of horror painting his face like he was a child being caught.

“Shit.” 

Even despite the fact he pulled back, your instincts send you standing up and engulfing your hand in flames as you glare at him.

His breath hitches and he steps back, shoulders and neck arching while he throws his hands up. His eyes are wide and feral. Shadowheart was right. He does act like a cat always trapped in a corner. This time though, he actually was.

“No—no it’s not what it looks like, I swear!” His voice is fill of an uncanny desperation for what you once thought to be a dashing rogue. “I wasn’t going to hurt you! I just needed…well, blood.”

You felt a pit in your stomach as you damned yourself for not recognizing this sooner. How stupid and oblivious had you been? Really? It should have been clear as day with his overly sharp canines and the scarring on his neck. You should have been able to smell it; the blood. Yet Astarion had’t smelled of anything rotten and iron. He smelled of—no that didn’t quite matter.

You gritted your teeth and spat, “I can’t believe I didn’t see it—we even found the boar * you * snacked on!” 

“It’s not what you think!” His hands fall down slightly with an almost sad and hesitant tone in his voice, “I’m not some monster . I feed on animals…boars, dear, kobolds—whatever I can get. I’m…just too slow right now—too weak.”

His gaze fell on you, almost pleading. “If I could just have a little blood, I could think clearer. Fight better. Please.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“At best I was sure you’d say no. More likely, you’d ram a stake through my ribs. No…I needed you to trust me.” He lowered his voice and leaned forward. “And you can trust me.”

You frowned, quiet as you studied him. Your hands shook at your sides, your head thumping; urging you to—

“You tried to bite me. How can I trust you?”

“Because we don’t have a choice! Not if we’re going to save ourselves from these worms. I need you alive. You need me strong.”

He took a breath, sighing and stepping toward you slightly. “Please. Only a taste, I swear. I’ll be well, you’ll be fine, and everything can go back to normal.”

Normal. What a load of crap. Even if you understood what he meant by it…though he was right. Astarion had been one of the best in terms of fighting and safely manoeuvring the party through traps. He was a natural born killer, with instincts not unlike your own. You needed him, the whole party did; and now he needed you and the beautiful scarlet that pumped through your veins.

You close your eyes and take a deep breath, then let your shoulders relax finally, willing The Urges deep down.

“Fine.” Your eyes meet his own, “but not a drop more than you need.”

He seemed stunned by this response, not that you blame him, you are sure if you had been in his shoes you would have fully expected—and embraced—a stake to the gushing heart.

“Really? I—of course.” A charming but warm smile fell on his lips, “not one drop more.” His eyes then fell down to the makeshift cot on the ground before falling back on you, “let’s make ourselves comfortable, shall we?”

You hesitate, just for a moment, before nodding and slowly sitting back down. You look back up at Astarion now, who lowered himself over you as you then slid your back against the cot—head comfortable on the pillow. 

Astarion is quick to bite into your neck, your body immediately tenses; knees folding up and hands gripping onto the sides of his loose poet shirt. It’s searing, it hurts, just for a moment. Then it’s just surprise at the feeling of your own blood being sucked out of you that keeps you held tightly onto him.

There is something familiar about someone so dangerous being so close, hands on either side of your head. Was pain and blood involved as well? 

Your brain fogs at the thought, and you only realize it’s from the pure dizziness you are being to feel. You are reeling now. Shaky breaths leaving your mouth as your hands press against his abdomen. He doesn’t move. So a moment later you try again. “Stop! It’s—it’s too much-“ your voice is small but pleading; something hates how pathetic you sound.

Thankfully, Astarion is quick to stop, and he pulls away, licking his blood stained lips and wiping gently at his chin with his thumb. “That—that was amazing. My mind is finally clear. I feel strong—I feel…happy!”

He peers at you, before quickly then helps you sit up, and you almost immediately lean your head into his shoulder. He tenses, but you pay no mind to this. Your breathing is shallow; mind still reeling from moments prior. 

“I—“ you chuckle weakly, “—I look forward to seeing you fight.”

Astarion is quiet as he brings the plate of now-cold food close, careful to not move you except to force it close. A clear sign that you should eat. That he is suggesting as such.

“Shouldn’t take so long. So many people need killing.” He hums as you finally pull your head back, and slowly begin to devour the plate. 

Your hands rip apart the meat, it’s cold by now, but you don’t mind it that much; though it’s tougher, the spices from Gale still make it a worthy meal. Astarion watches you, you can feel his gaze still on your neck, though truly all you can think about is the pork as your jaw clamps down on it. A part of you knows you  have chomped down onto much more sturdy meat before; flesh, maybe? 

Would that make you a hypocrite for your judgement of Astarion just moments ago?

You wipe your mouth on the back of your hand, grease and grime painting your skin while you finally catch your breath. Sated. Dizzy still, even a bit cold, but sated . Your eyes fall back on him, his gaze doesn’t reach your eyes; he’s hungry still. There is something tempting about offering more blood to him. Just offering more to him.

“Now,” he says in his usual sing-song voice, now rising to his feet, “if you’ll excuse me. You’re invigorating, but I need something more…filling.” He doesn’t offer you any help as he turns on the heel of his foot to leave. Though, he does hesitate, just for a moment before slightly turning his head toward you.

“This is a gift, you know, I won’t forget it.”

You bring your hand up to your neck, wobbling slightly when you stand; from both the wet feeling on your neck and his face just before he left, you understand he is a messy eater. Similar to yourself. As he disappears into the woods, you can’t help but wonder if he will devour the next creature with such greed. You dislike how you can relate.

Perhaps Shadowheart’s comment about Astarion acting like a cornered cat makes more sense now. If you were a vampire, or perhaps a monster in a similar fashion, you think that you would view the world as your enemy; trust no one, even clerics. Who are you kidding? Especially clerics.

[gumnut-logic]

Ice

An idea I had in mind for FishTank Week but didn't manage to do anything with. Also, an attempt to write anything, just anything.

Rambly brothers out on the ice.

-o-o-o-

Ice.

Ice is water.

Rather ironic that the substance he loved so much was so capable of becoming that which he hated with an equal passion.

Ice had taken his mother. Stolen his chance to ever get to know her, yet leaving him with just enough to know the terror and pain of the days that followed.

He remembered the tears, his family’s pure anguish, the loss that echoed down silent halls in a home that had nothing but sunshine all the times before.

The scars that built up and festered over the years.

All because of ice.

But it was simply water. It didn’t think, only existed and was as innocent as any other rock on this watery planet.

Yet a nemesis it remained as he watched his older brother tackle his own demons.

“Virg, you okay?”

His heavy lifting brother turned towards him, his specialised boots crunching on the snowy surface of Lake Baikal. His raised eyebrow was far too predictable.

“Yeah, why?”

Gordon turned back to packing the pod.

Thunderbird Two was a mere green dot far off in the distance on the lake shore.

“You took your helmet off.”

“My nose was itchy.”

Gordon snorted. “Now that is worse than the last excuse Scott gave you.” He deepened his voice enough to give an uncanny resemblance to Virgil’s. “Would you do that in space? No? Then don’t do it here!”

That earned him a glare enough to melt the metres thick ice they were standing on.

“Hey, you said it, not me.”

The fact Virgil only grumbled and shoved his helmet back on rather than lighting Gordon’s pants on fire with a safety lecture was just proof that his big brother was feeling the mood.

Because it was a mood.

The landscape was eerily silent.

Not an absence of sound. More the monotone of the sharp breeze cutting across the flat wildness of the deepest lake in the world.

It was winter, cue the ice, but winter in Siberia on a lake many kilometres wide and long, and with the surface water frozen solid, it was a desert of white and blue-greys.

Such the opposite of the bright tropical island they called home.

Gordon returned to loading equipment back into the pod. The fishermen had been saved, Gordon hauling them out, not even needing Four this time, his girl still curled up snug inside her sister on the far shore.

It had been ever so fortunate that they had been close when the accident happened, flying home from London. It had only taken them a minute or two to drop the pod onto the ice with the ice cutter, and Gordon was in the water, so far down, pulling the men to safety.

Virgil had airlifted them all out and then returned, dropping himself onto the ice to help pack up.

Gordon was ever grateful for Thunderbird Five’s valet service where Two was too heavy to land right on the spot.

And really? Just grateful for his brothers as well.

“So, you wanna do pizza tonight?”

“Sure.” His brother didn’t look up.

Virgil was rolling up rope in such a fast and perfect coil Gordon was both admiring and annoyed. He shoved the hatch closed over the tangle of coils of his own making. Goddamned genius brothers, it was enough to give a guy a complex.

“We could do a movie.”

“It’s Alan’s turn.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Gordon bit his lip. Okay, challenge accepted. At least Alan was easier to persuade than Scott. Or Johnny. Johnny picked the weirdest movies and was unpredictable as hell.

As for Virgil, his tank brother was little more than putty in his hands. Gordon knew his Virgil and knew exactly which buttons to press to get the results he needed.

“Try for a few less zombies this time. I want to be able to eat my dinner without regurgitating it.”

“You’re just a wimp.”

A fistful of snow clipped his helmet.

“Be careful what you start, Tankman, because I’m going to finish it.”

“You wish.”

Gordon bent down and gathered some snow into his hands. “Virg-“

He was interrupted by a sharp crack.

He froze.

The sound vibrated in the cold air and bounced across the ice.

The silence that followed was punctuated by his heart beat. “What was-“

But Virgil was looking directly at him, his arms suddenly out, eyes wide with disbelief.

And fear.

Another snap, another crack, splintering blurring them together.

His brother stumbled.

“Virgil?!”

But the ice groaned, rumbled…and moved. A visible crack split up the snow between the two of them.

“Virgil!”

He held up a hand. “Gordon, no!” Virgil’s eyes were on the ice beneath him, his perfectly aligned coils of rope unfurling to one side as the surface they were sitting on tilted.

Virgil moved, leaping towards Gordon.

But water spouted up between them and before Gordon could react, the ice tipped up on end before flipping entirely.

And his brother was gone.

-o-o-o-

[hawkflame999]

Ninjago Headcanons 13-16

#13:

“Elemental Master” is actually just the formal version of it. It’s really just “Elemental”. 

So like, (going randomly) “Elemental Master of Ice”, is how they say it when they have to be formal. But otherwise, it’s just “Elemental of Ice”. 

Every single Elemental in existence hates, just hates the formal version since it makes it sound like their power can be learned by literally anyone instead of inherited or chosen-by-previous-Elemental-of-(blank).

(like, they still have to learn to control it, but you get it)

I repeat, they HATE it. 

#14: 

The six have a LOT of nicknames for eachother, the number is INSANE.

But there are several nicknames that are solely passed down from Elemental to Elemental.

These are: Zane’s: Ice, White, Blizzard, Ice Dragon, and Frost.

Kai: Fire, Red, and Fire Dragon. (sry couldn’t come up with any more.)

Cole: Earth, Rock, Cave, Stone, Black, Mountain, and Earth Dragon.

Jay: Lightning, Thunder, (sry i couldn’t resist) Cyan, Electricity, Blackout, and Lightning Dragon,

Nya: Water, Sea, River, (other names of bodies of water) Pond, Stream, Ocean, (they stopped using that one after Seabound) Lake, Rain, and Water Dragon. Me: *says “other names of body of water” but proceeds to type those anyway* Lloyd: Green, Energy, Life, (A lot of Lloyd’s nicknames are related to his element because he’s the first Energy Ninja in existence)

#15:

As for the other nicknames….. >:D Zane: Frosty, Whiteout, Ice Cube, Ninjacle, (reference to Pilots, I think) Ice Tornado, Icicle, Snowy, Snow, Falcon Boy, Braincell-Number-One (I think that last one is Sensei G’s fault) Tincan, and Polar Bear. Those are the ones I came up with on the spot.

Another inside-joke-nickname is Living Ice Cube or Alive Ice Cube.

Kai: Flamethrower, Fiery, Hothead, Campfire, Hot Air, and Fire Tornado.

Another inside-joke-nickname is Living Flamethrower or Alive Flamethrower.

Cole: Rocky, Rockman, Rockman, Dirtbrain, Dirtclod, Mud, Rockslide, Earthquake, Earth Tornado, Righty and Lefty (reference to Earth Punch) and Boulder.

Another inside-joke-nickname is Living Rock or (the one they used the most) Alive Rock or Alive Mountain..

Jay: Sparky, Sparks, Zaptrap, Zappy, Shock, Blackout, (Jay had caused many, after all) JJ, Jaybird, Insane Idea Man, Blabbermouth, Stormy, Bolt, and Lightning Tornado.

Another inside-joke-nickname is Living Lightning Bolt or Alive Lightning Bolt.

Nya:  Mostly the ones up above, except they also call her Water Tornado, Braincell-Number-Two, (I think that last one is Sensei G’s fault), and Tsunami.

Another inside-joke-nickname is Alive Tsunami and Living Tsunami.

Lloyd: Green Bean, Bush, Grasshopper, Buddy, Kiddo (Also Sensei G’s fault), Little Brother, (ALL OF THE OTHEٍR FIVE WITH USE THAT ON HIM) Incarnation of the Word Hyperactive, Nephew,  (MASTER WU WILL NEVER LET THAT ONE UP) and so many more, if i tried to type them all my fingers would fall off.

#16:

Master Wu has his nicknames for the six. Even as they got older, he never did and probably never will let up on them.

Zane: “Young/ Little Frost."

Kai: “Young/Little Flame."

Cole: “Young/Little Rock (Sry could not come up with better)

Jay: “Young/Little Spark.

Nya: “Young/Little Drop (AARRRRHHGG CAN'T COME UP WITH BETTER)

Lloyd: “Young/Little Burst (Y’know BURST of Energy)