#I got a post coming soon about if the dude is a vessel | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

palbabor-writes · 4 years

Note

OK so please consider typical Shig/reader where theres unspoken mutual attraction and they're not quite together but it's Post-kamino Shig, like IMMEDIATE post-kamino where he's still processing and incredibly vulnerable from just losing his sensei. I've had this in my head for a while but IDK how it would go and I think you'd do it justice (just ignore this if u don't wanna i just needed to put it out there 😌)

ugh, i loved this idea. where do you find them lydia? they just live in your mind rent free and i want to go to there. gosh, thank you for the ask.

Pairing: Shigaraki Tomura x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Adult language, SMUT, NSFW/18+ only, mild angst, pivotal life moments, TW: drinking/drug use, masturbation, blow jobs, face fucking, spanking/mild pain play, vaginal fingering, cunniliginus, overstimulation, switching, dirty talk, loss of virginity (if you squint), dominance, vaginal sex

Word Count: 11,800

Notes: oh man. so, if the word count didn’t give it away, this is plot, with a hefty dose of porn. in my mind, this is all part of the grieving process for shigaraki and he’s having a rough time coming to terms with what he’s needing to do. yeah, AFO supported him and enabled him to build a following, but he also hid all of the major pieces from him (i.e. the doctor & gigantomachia) so i can see him mourning for AFO as a teacher & as a psudo loved one, after all, at the end of that chapter he’s clutching those hands to him like he’ll fall apart without them.

Edited by the lovely Lydia: @kugutsuu. she is the best and if you’re not reading her works, all I have to say is: YOU SHOULD BE.

Mise en Place

/mē-ˌzäⁿ-ˈpläs/ noun or verb a French culinary phrase which means "putting in place" or "everything in its place.”

This has got to be the strangest, hole in the wall, bar you’ve ever worked at.

The patrons are touchy and most seem downright dangerous. The whole lot of them are more like mid level criminals than the usual haggard, overworked, regular, citizens you find in local watering holes. Meanwhile, the gentleman who runs the day to day operations shares more similarities with a will o’ the wisp than a man, and the bar itself is smack dab in one of the seediest parts of town.

The liquor selection, however, is top of the line. Some of the labels you haven’t seen outside of posh hotels or high class country clubs, and many of the older bottles are rarities. Honestly, there are so many of the high brow bottles that you’re not sure who to ask about the rail selection. There’s no real order to the place and it’s the most free reign you’ve ever been given with your mixology experiments. There’s not even a listing of drinks to go off of. But, if the disgruntled evening crowd is happy, then so is the upper management. All they ask is that you lock up before you leave.

No, nothing about this place makes sense. But, it does pay well and, right now, that’s the only thing you need to worry about.

There’s one other barkeep, a stogy man named Akio. He usually works the day shift, but late yesterday afternoon, he’d given you a call and asked if the two of you could swap for the duration of next week. At first, you’d balked, worried you’d need to schmooze with an unfamiliar bunch of regulars, who’d then decline to tip simply because you were new. But, Akio had sweetened the pot with the promise of $20,000 yen, so, you’d agreed.

“It’s fairly quiet in the afternoon,” Akio reassured you. “It’s really just putting away shipment and serving the odd customer who happens to pass by. The only thing...well, I’m sure you’ve met him. You’ve been working there for over a month, no way you could miss him.”

“Who?” you ask, twirling your spoon in your mid-morning coffee, curious, but not wanting to seem overly eager in your questioning. You like your night shift and you’re not wanting this to become a regular swap. You detest having to lug heavy boxes to and fro, pulling liquor and checking lot numbers, ick. Plus, if it really is that slow in the afternoons, it would only be a matter of time before Kurogiri would come after you with a duster and ask you to clean the upper shelves. Yeah, no, thanks. This would be a one week deal, ONLY.

“His name is Shigaraki. He’s, er, different. I suppose you’ll meet him soon, if you haven’t already.”

“Shigaraki? No, that name doesn’t ring a bell. Is he--”

“I have to go, my son is here. Thanks again for the swap and talk soon, (Y/N).”

The line clicks and you let your phone fall from your ear, clattering the metal and plastic along your kitchen table. Shigaraki, you think, taking a scalding sip of your coffee, no, that’s not a name you’ve heard before. Wonder what it is about him that has Akio so on edge. It’s not like him to give you, er, whatever that strange heads-up had been. Either way, it would take more than a vague descriptor like different, to spook you off.

******

Akio was right, on all counts, about the haze of monotony that permeated the afternoon shift at the bar.

Well, right on everything except a sighting of that elusive Shigaraki guy. No, the whole afternoon it’s just been you, Kurogiri, and one, rather sloshed old man, who you’ve long since cut off, and propped at the far end of the bartop. It’s been a dull, slow, day. Thank God you’d taken that extra cash from Akio, or this might not even turn out to be worth your while.

You’re slipping another bottle of whiskey on the lower shelf when you hear a barstool scrape back. You turn at the sound, your head already lifted and a small, friendly, smile lingering on your lips. There’s a lanky guy, dressed all in black with a mop of wavy white hair, working himself onto the small seat. His head is lowered and he hasn’t bothered to look up at you, not yet, anyway. He looks, not really young, but you can’t tell and you’re not about to let some underaged kid worm his way in here. You’ve had enough of those punks sneaking in in the evening, thank you.

“Gimme a shot of scotch,” the man says, his voice low, with a quiet rasp racing along the tone. It’s a strange timbre and it makes you pause, your eyes scanning those pearlescent strands of hair that are hiding his face from view.

“Hmph,” you snort, arching a brow at his attempts at concealment. He must be underage, who comes up to a barkeep with a ducked head and demands a scotch?

“Let me give you a piece of advice, don’t come into a bar and immediately refuse to make eye contact with the bartender. We’re like animals at the zoo, we startle easily and don’t like surprises. And, with your face tucked like that, I can’t gauge your age. So, before I get you that unnamed and unbranded scotch, I’m gonna to need to see some ID.”

The man lifts his head at your preamble and you feel your breath catch at the raw annoyance that’s etched across his scarred and cracked face. His eyes are a rich red, closer to ruby and they latch onto yours, insistent and sharp. It’s a deeply intense stare and you can’t seem to pull yourself away, your brow furrowing at his sudden shift in demeanor.

“I don’t have an ID,” he snaps, his lips lifting into a snarl, showing you the vivid whiteness of his teeth.

You lick your lips and his gaze follows the motion, eyes lowering, freeing you from that uneasy imprisonment he’d abruptly ensnared you in.

Your heart is beating rapidly against your throat and you shake your head, refocusing your bewildering reaction to this guy's presence. “I-I haven’t heard that one before,” you say, taking a few steadying breaths and tossing a dirty glass in the dishwasher, looking for any task that will let you step away from this strange interaction.

“You must be new,” he says, leaning back and hunching those dark shoulders. You watch him out of the corner of your eye and shut the dishwasher door, hitting the button to run a cycle.

“Nope,” you correct him, pulling out two fresh glasses and lining them up on the bartop, reaching for the rail scotch. “I’ve worked here for over a month.”

“Never seen you before.”

“That makes two of us,” you reply, flipping the bottle up and filling both glasses with four counts of the dark liquor. You press one to him and lift the other for yourself. The man narrows his eyes at you and looks pointedly at the glass in your hands.

“You supposed to drink on the clock?”

You laugh and he shifts back at the sound, his head bowing forward, another scowl lifting his lips. Realizing you must have made him uncomfortable, you step toward him and clumsily clink your glass against his, tilting your head at the surrealness of this whole conversation. “They don’t really care what I do. Come on, stranger who has no ID, bottoms up.”

He looks from you to the shot a few times before finally relenting and taking the vessel in a strange four fingered grip, his middle finger arched carefully away. Once you’re sure he’s actually going to toast with you, you sling your shot back, enjoying the sharp burn of the rich liquor.

You’re about to ask your new drinking companion another question when you hear his chair scrape back. By the time you’re stepping toward him, he’s already pacing down a back hallway, blending into the darkness and disappearing from your sight.

“Um! You can’t...I don’t think you can go back there. And you gotta pay, dude! Hey--”

“He doesn’t need to pay.”

You always hear Kurogiri before you see him and today is no exception. He’s standing at the entrance to the back of the bartop and he’s watching the path the strange young man took, his shifting face turned from you. You cock your head at his assertion and swiftly place your empty glass into the soapy water of the filled sink. He likely saw you take the shot, but you’re not about to leave evidence behind.

“What do you mean?” You ask, watching as the wisp like man turns and steps toward you, his amber slits watchful. It’s like he’s sizing you up and you shift on your feet, uncomfortable at the frank, open, assessment.

“He’s Tomura Shigaraki, and he owns this bar.”

******

You’re off for the next two days and the wait, the silence, is abjectly harrowing. You can’t sit down, can’t relax, can’t focus. The one time you decide to get overly familiar, of fucking course, it would be with the owner. But no one has called, and no one has sent you any messages. The empty static of your job's reticence doesn’t alleviate your nerves.

Who knows, they might want to act out the sick power play of having you show up for your shift, only be fired as soon as you darken the doorway.

The next afternoon, you take a familiar route to the bar, your feet tapping hollowly along the steps and alleyways that wind to the rusty entrance. You come in the front, blinking against the darkness, and lock the door behind you. Everything is quiet. But, in forty minutes, the open sign will switch on and you need to get your bar set up, plus slap on a little bit of makeup. You’re so lost in thought that you’re almost to the long bartop when you spot him.

It’s Tomura Shigaraki. He’s sitting at the same bar stool and his head turns as you approach, those unearthly red eyes lingering over you. It’s a different look, very, very removed from that harsh glare he’d given you the other day. He looks less hostile and more, well, curious.

You give him a cursory nod and pad behind the high counter, taking the final glasses out of the dishwasher and removing the stoppers from all the open liquor bottles. He’s still watching you and you can feel his gaze as it bores into your back, your side, your front. You attempt to ignore him, but the constant threat of those insistent red eyes is beginning to frustrate you. Finally, once you’ve replaced the cash drawer, you lift your gaze to his.

“What is it?” Your voice sounds waspish, but you don’t care.

“Nothing,” he replies, leaning forward and propping his chin on his palm, not breaking that unsettling leer.

“So stop staring at me,” you bristle, unsure why your heart is starting to beat a rapid tattoo against your ribs. You don’t know this guy. Sure, he’s mysterious and almost handsome, in a dark horse kinda way, but there’s no reason for him to give you this odd staredown. You’ve done absolutely nothing to warrant this attention, well, besides drinking on the job, but he could just fire you for that, if it was so troublesome. Either way, he should either speak up, or knock it off.

He smirks at your impudence and murmurs a raspy, “No,” back, his head tilting, waiting for your next move.

“You’re a real charmer, you know that?” You scoff, crossing your arms and jutting your chin defiantly.

“Whatever you say,” he breathes, that smile of his deepening, making his vermillion eyes shine. And, just like that, the two of you wander into a stilted game of give and take.

For the first few days, he makes sure he’s there before you arrive for the last of your afternoon shifts, his dark back already perched over the bartop as you shut the door behind you. Then, when you transition back to the evening shifts, he’s there too, sitting at that familiar perch, his eyes always, always watching, observing. You continue to ignore him and he seems to relish your agitated silence, flashing you dark smirks and quiet laughs.

Finally, two weeks into this stagnated stalemate, you make a point to strike up a real conversation with him. He’s obviously taken aback by your first few questions, his eyes wide and jaw tense, but he plays along.

Over time, the two of you carefully erect a haphazard friendship. And that chair of his? That center barstool? He used to not mind if another person was sitting in it when he arrived late, but recently that’s all changed. Now he guards it ferociously. Snapping and glaring at anyone who is stupid enough to drift into it.

Along with the lingering looks and burgeoning, almost flirty, dialogue you’ve pushed him into, he’s also gotten very demanding of your attention. If you spend too much time talking with another customer, or with Kurogiri, he pouts and darkens until you return, his tense form losing that sharpness. It's almost like he’s got a crush on you, but he’s not sure what to do with the newfound sensation, lost and confounded by your teases and grins.

Most people, you notice, give him a wide berth, but not you. No, you like his keen wit and heated musings. He’s fascinating and you want to see more. And in his flustered confusion, he lets you lean in, blinking and wide eyed at your open, flagrant interest in him.

******

As the weeks drift into summer, things start to change at the bar.

There’s some atypical deposit of power that’s been bestowed upon the place. People you’ve never seen before, begin to frequent the premises, sharing videos and whispered conversations about that man, Chizome Akaguro, better known to the general public as the Hero Killer.

Tomura flits between several, dark moods, clutching his newly injured shoulder and murmuring complaints about hero society, All Might and the Hero Killer. Apparently, there had been an altercation between the two of them and Tomura didn’t hide his ire, his agitation from you. No, he would vent to you, his voice gravel and ash as he snarled his rage.

Then, as if things couldn’t get any stranger, one evening a young girl begins to hang around, pestering you for a soda and prattling on and on about blood. Another new guy slips in a few hours later, his skin marred by thick, ragged burns and staples. He’s quiet, rudely demanding a shot and nursing it in a corner, his bright blue eyes flashing as he stares vacantly out at the crowd by the well.

A quiet man, called Spinner, asks you for a water, and you acquiesce, watching as his green hands wrap around the glass, downing the liquid in a quick gulp. Later, there’s a robust, loud, clearly confused guy, wearing a skin tight black bodysuit loitering by your bartop. He keeps entreating you for a drink, then tells you to buzz off seconds later. Exasperated, you plunk a whole bottle down beside his glass and continue on with your work, ignoring his chatter.

Finally, a man in a white mask and a top hat rounds out the strange posse and the group gathers together, hovering around Tomura, asking questions and listening to his rasping answers.

Thankfully, the rag-tag group leaves soon after closing, all of them shouldering their way back out into the night. You shake your head as the door closes behind them, gathering the collection of dirty glasses they left in their wake. Only Tomura remains, sipping meditatively on his drink, his red eyes foggy and unfocused. You know from experience that it’s not a good time to ask him questions, so you continue with your closing duties, keeping your eyes down.

Something is going on, that much is clear. But, unless you could worm the information out of Tomura, you’d likely never fully know all of the details. Part of you warns that it’s likely dangerous. Many of the people who haunt the bar are low level villains or brokers, not a winning combination if you’re wanting to stay out of the fray, and on the right side of the law.

You finish wiping everything down and return to Tomura, asking him softly if you can wash his empty glass. His eyes lift to yours and the expression that greets you almost makes you want to reach out and cup his cheek. He looks tired, worn thin and so, so needy. You’ve never seen him like this. It almost feels like he’s showing you something he’s never revealed to anyone else, a vulnerability that only you can see. He’s giving you access to a quiet secret that can hang between the two of you, safe in the knowledge that he can trust you with it. That urge to stroke a finger down his roughed brow rises again, but you shove the impulse away, rattled by your sudden, visceral, reaction to him.

To distract yourself, you snatch up his glass, and turn from the intensity of his stare, a slow prickle of gooseflesh trembling along your skin. As you run hot water and soap over the vessel, you feel your heart begin to pound and you chance another peek at Tomura’s quiet form. As usual, he’s watching you, but he looks unfocused again, that broken vulnerability tucked away. You want to ask him if he’s ok, but before you can croak the words out, he pushes his stool back and paces down the dark hallway, leaving you alone and bewildered.

******

A few days later, you ask Kurogiri if you can sneak away for a minute, you need a break. The bar has been packed since nine and you could use a quick breather. It’s the first night Tomura hasn’t stopped by and his absence has bothered you. You missed his grumpy quips and his persistent glances. All this time, you’d thought it was just him that was catching any kind of feelings, but it looks like he’s somehow managed to nag his way into your psyche, too.

You take the back stairs quietly and let yourself out onto the alleyway balcony, climbing the rickety fire escape to the rooftop. You’d found the access to the roof your second week and it’s still your favorite place in the whole bar. On a clear night, you can see all the way to downtown Tokyo. It’s always quiet this high up, tranquil and serene. You brace yourself against the concrete wall and watch the lights of the city glimmer, like distant jewels, in the darkness.

You pull a small joint from your pant pocket and flick your lighter on, setting the edge of the rolling paper alight and taking a slow drag. The inhale fills your lungs with a light pressure and you savor the feeling before blowing a thin line of smoke into the night. You get a few more hits in before you hear the fire escape stairs rattle, signaling that someone is coming your way. You debate dampening your roach, but you don’t want to waste it, so you tuck the smoldering paper in your other hand, maneuvering it out of sight.

The white shine of his hair always gives him away.

Tomura hops over the ledge and his eyes are already lifting, searching for yours as he stands. You arch an eyebrow at his tense stance and you can’t help your giddy smile. “Everything ok?”

“Kurogiri said you were taking a break,” he replies, dipping his long fingers into his pockets and sauntering over to the patch of concrete you’re braced against.

“Yeah,” you confirm, waiting until he’s closer to lift the joint back to your lips, taking a steadying pull and scooting over, so he can fit beside you on the wall. “It’s busy, and I’ve been slinging drinks all night. Just wanted to decompress for a bit.”

Tomura doesn’t reply, but he does slot himself close, the warmth of his broad shoulder radiating against yours. The two of you drift into a companionable silence, and the only sounds that greet you is the quiet hush of traffic below and your inhales and exhales of smoke.

“You got another meeting?” you ask, crossing your arms and pressing minutely closer, enjoying the distant shiver Tomura gifts you.

“No,” he murmurs, his voice low. You think that might be the end of the conversation but he continues a few seconds later, his head tilting toward yours, those red eyes scanning your upturned face. “They’re on a mission. I’m not able to participate. It will need to be like a SIM game. They are the pieces that I’ll move over the board, they’ll act to my battle plan.”

You turn to him, your eyes wide. “So, they’re just...pawns? Little NPC’s that don’t matter?”

Tomura laughs and his teeth gleam in the moonlight and distant shine of the neon lights. “Of course not. Do I look that heartless? No, they’re valuable players and if this goes right, we’ll be able to take on the next level with a decided edge.”

You let that last comment hover, pausing to take another huff, your eyes lowered, brooding over his words. “So, you’re their vanguard leader?”

“Sure,” Tomura nods, “We can’t keep grinding each mission, hoping to pick up any XP these heroes happen to drop. We need to make waves of our own.”

“Oh? Like the Hero Killer?”

“No,” Tomura snarls, his arm tensing beside yours, a hand rising to scritch at his scarred neck agitatedly. “Nothing like him. We’re looking past him. He was too short sighted, so busy following his own code of justice that he didn’t notice he was breeding more heroes, not putting them down.”

“Hmm,” you sigh, thumping your head lightly against the concrete behind you. “That is true. But, you can’t deny he’s brought up some serious divisions. It’s funny, really. It makes me think of this little hero toy I had when I was younger.

It was of an older hero, he prolly died long ago, but I loved that toy when I was a kid. Then, as I got older, it stopped mattering and one day, without me even realizing it, it lost its importance entirely. I wonder if hero society will ever shift to that. With the fractures that have been seen at UA and all over Japan, it could be a matter of time before real change starts to happen. Anyway, I wasn’t meaning to grill you on your, uh, projects. I was--”

“What toy?”

His question nonpluses you and you cock your head, blinking up at his peripheral stare. “Um, I think it was of that fast hero, O’clock. It was my older brothers originally, but he passed it down to me. No idea where it is now. It likely got lost in a move or accidentally left behind.”

Tomura lifts his eyes from yours, his jaw clenching and a slow gulp echoing down his lean throat. You watch the bob of his Adam’s apple, fascinated by the movement. That urge to touch him is back and you have to clench your fingers into your palms to quiet it.

You’re so distracted by your primal reaction to him, that you miss his question and he has to repeat it, his eyes slipping back to yours, the red dark.

“What?” you ask, blinking against the acuteness of his gaze.

“Can I take a hit of that?”

“Of what...oh.” You lift the half smoked joint and chuckle at yourself, pressing the smoldering paper toward him. “Sure. You had one before?”

“Does it matter?” He scoffs, carefully taking the white roach from you and raising it to his chapped lips.

“Go slow,” you warn as he begins to inhale, his eyes drifting to a half mast, concentrating.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he grumbles, pulling a tentative, but heavy, drag into his lungs.

“Fine,” you scoff playfully, “do what you want. But don’t blame me when you’re coughing up a lung.”

He rolls his eyes, but doesn’t heed your advice and, seconds later, he’s clutching at his throat, dropping the joint onto the broken gravel and concrete as he heaves. Instinctively, you thump him on his back and run your palm soothingly over his lean shoulder blades, surprised by the corded muscle that greets you. For a relatively thin guy, he’s certainly packing some strength under that unassuming form of his.

Tomura startles at your touch and he yanks himself away from you, his head ducked, eyes fastening onto yours, the irises accusatory and bright, burning with some underlying emotion that you’re too nervous to name right now.

“Uh,” you begin, aghast that you’ve upset him, “m-my bad…”

But, he’s already leaving, his head firmly turned from you, clambering over the edge and back onto the fire escape, leaving you alone in the darkness.

******

After that night, you can’t slip him out of your mind. Even when you sleep, you can see those red eyes of his, gleaming and hungry. One evening, you’d even woken with your fingers firmly pressed to your throbbing clit, stumbling and gasping, shaking free of a dream of him. He’d felt so real, so in focus and you can’t catch your breath, fingers still rubbing a tight circle over your quivering bundle of nerves. You pant as you break yourself, sukling in the whites and reds that haze over your vision. Yeah, that crush of his definitely isn’t a one sided thing.

The next shift you work, he’s waiting for you, perched in his familiar seat, his shoulders curved and tight. You give him a glance, but he doesn’t meet your eyes. His hands are lowered, fiddling with something under the bartop. You begin to open your bar, trying to quiet your wandering thoughts, not wanting to perturb him again. You’re uncorking a red wine when he presses something across the mahogany wood of the bar, toward you.

It’s small, with dark colors and a tiny, familiar, upper half mask. You let the bottle of wine thud against the counter, abandoning the half opened bottle to move closer. It’s...it’s your-- No. It can’t be yours, but it is the same toy, the one you’d mentioned on the roof the other night. How did he?

You gulp and look up at him, your heart pulsing wildly against your ribs. For the first time, he looks away from you first, his white hair pillowing across his brow. His lips start to rise in an all too habitual scowl and his raspy voice lifts to your ears. “If you don’t want it,” he grouses, one hand pulling away from the offered toy, clearly flustered by your wondering gaze. Without thinking, you slip your fingertips over the top of his hand, prolonging the touch, sulking in the warmth of him.

His fingers curl, some unconscious tremor racing along his digits. He almost yanks himself away, but then he stops, sighing as his eyes lift to yours. For a long moment, the two of you watch the other. You can hear his breathing speed up and you can almost smell the shift in the air. All it would take is one, tiny push to break that delicious tension.

Tomura’s nostrils flare as you start to lean closer, your body curving toward his, fingers still pressing into his skin. Your tongue dips out, wetting your lower lip and pulling it into your mouth, sucking on the plush flesh. His eyelids have lowered and he’s mirroring your motions, his elbows assisting his lift, his face upturning, seeking, reaching.

With a bang, the front door is flung open and it breaks the spell that’s fallen over the two of you. Tomura leans away first, his eyes narrowed in agitation, sliding from your open face to the darkness of the entryway. You exhale a shaking breath and follow Tomura’s gaze. It’s that masked man, the one with the top hat and he’s already striding confidently forward, peppering Tomura with a series of questions.

Snagging up his gift to you, you walk back to your bottle of wine.

******

You don’t have a chance to see Tomura again until he tells you, one evening, that the bar is going to be closed for the next few days. Then, over his shoulder, you spot the blonde boy, strapped and bound into a stiff chair and you blanch, stunned, too overwrought to give him more than a one word acknowledgement before stumbling back outside. In all of your talks, he’d never mentioned anything like this. That boy looked like a kid, barely past middle school, his eyes wild and defiant, but also so, so frightened.

No, you think, pacing your apartment, it’s impossible to come to terms with this. You can’t stay there, can’t work there. It’s too dangerous, too close to a real criminal den for comfort. You have to look out for yourself, no matter your feelings for the man who’s wandering down some long, lost pathway, toward a future you can’t even comprehend, let alone see.

So, you hand in your written resignation.

Kurogiri is behind the bar when you bring it in, and you’re hoping that the early morning conversation will spare you from having to see him. The wispy, purple hand of Kurogiri is just about to take your letter when Tomura barges down the hallway. His eyes immediately land on you and he steps forward, a dark look passing over his palled features.

“Why?” he growls, fingers snatching the paper from Kurogiri and crumbling the parchment to bits, his quirk rendering your typed words to nothingness.

“I don’t want to be a part of any kidnapping. It…” you pause, looking toward Kurogiri and, to your surprise, he nods to Tomura and moves away, leaving the two of you alone in the vacant bar. Tomura is still glaring at you, but he’s waiting for you to finish your thought, his jaw grinding quietly.

“This doesn’t feel like you.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Tomura scoffs, his chin jutting at the assertion.

“This doesn’t change society. This is just some petty attempt to get back at the UA staff. It’s like...It’s like you’re asking for trouble to seek you out. You’re smarter than this. Besides, what are you going to do with him?” you smart, crossing your arms and balling your fingers into your fists.

“What do you know about anything? That kid’s been oppressed by hero society, literally muzzled and bound--”

“As if you’re doing any better! He’s still muzzled and bound, Tomura! He’s just in a different location. This is insanity. Who put you up to doing--”

“That doesn’t matter. This conversation has nothing to do with that. You can’t leave,” Tomura snaps, his head lowering, soft white hair falling over his face. “Give it a few more days.”

“What? I can’t stay if the bar is raided and it’s prolly gonna be if you keep that kid. Besides, that’s not--”

“Just...just give me a few more days. I don’t want to beg you, I shouldn’t fucking need to beg you. It’s not an impossible request (Y/N). Just--”

“Fine,” you sigh, uncrossing your arms and watching him. He looks on edge, haggard and angry. Those emotions aren’t projected at you, you know that. Nevertheless, it doesn’t lessen the danger he’s asking you to stand with him in. But, you can give him a few days and you tell him so, trying to ignore the pattering of your heart when he looks at you and smiles.

******

Then, Kamino happens.

You weren’t there, thank God. But he was, and now, no matter what he’d asked of you, no matter what he’d hoped for, everything shifts apart. Days linger into weeks and you’re trying your best to reason that he’d made it out in one piece. Surely, you would have heard something. The capture of the leader of the League of Villains would have been a morsel that the media would have wanted to crow about, especially after the loss of All Might.

Late one evening, your phone rings.

It’s an unknown, blacked out number, but something tells you to answer, so you pick it up. You almost gasp when you hear that familiar rasp and you listen to what he tells you. You can’t get over how brittle and cracked his voice sounds but you write down the address he gives you. He cloaks his true motivations with a lie. Apparently, he has your last paycheck. Like that even matters to you. Honestly, you’re just glad he’s safe and whole. But, he’s gone to all this effort to build a bridge back to him, so of course you’re going to go.

You check and double check the directions, carefully maneuvering and weaving through bus stops and back streets. Somehow, you make it and find yourself pressing open a dilapidated door and stepping into a small room. Only darkness greets you, even though the bright midday sun is shining outside. The place he’s brought you to is on a dock, on the outskirts of town, close to the salty edge of a bay. You can hear the mournful cries of a seagull as you close the door behind you, sealing yourself inside and blinking into the gloom.

It takes you a minute to catch sight of him.

He’s lingering along the edges but you can make out the glow of his eyes, red and fierce. He looks different. It’s only been a few weeks, but it looks like the weight of years has crushed him under its unfeeling grind in that short amount of time. No, Kamino has changed him, rendering him unhinged and dangerous, drifting along the peripheral of your vision. Still, you haven’t come here to witness him falling to bits at your feet. No, you’d come here with another, darker motive.

Now, to work.

“What happened?” you ask, keeping your back firmly against the door. Watching him move closer, those red shoes of his glinting over the dark wooden floors.

“Sensei is...gone,” he replies, his voice hollow and faint. He’s mentioned his Sensei before and you’d heard the man’s strange voice echoing from that back television, like some distant, terrifying specter. But, you knew he was important to Tomura, more like a father than a teacher. However, you’d seen the news. You knew he was beaten to a pulp and captured, locked away and out of Tomura’s reach. Now, he can’t ask his Sensei for advice or support, not anymore. Even knowing what little you’ve gleaned about the strange man, Tomura must be devastated by his loss.

“I’m sorry,” you tell him, genuine in your sympathy.

Tomura nods and fishes for something in the pocket of his trench coat, lifting a thin slip of paper out and showing it to you. “Here,” he sighs, still not meeting your eyes directly.

“Oh,” you say, moving away from the door and taking a few steps toward him. “You really did ask me here for the check, huh?”

“What else did you want?” he grumbles, his voice regaining a small slice of that familiar rasping. The question lingers and you feel your pulse speed up, your palms itching at your sides. “Or, did you want to scold me again?” Tomura continues disgruntled, and you can see a grimace pass over his face.

“You deserved it,” you confirm, taking another step, only wavering when you’re a few feet from him. “You wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn't kidnapped that UA student. Now, the kid, and your Sensei are gone and you’re stuck here. Wherever here is”

“Look at you, quite the oracle aren’t you? So, you did come here to berate me.” Tomura snaps, dropping your pay stub to the dusty floor.

“No,” you shake your head, not wanting this to spiral out of your control, not wanting him to simply shut you out, alone on that pier, left with all of your what ifs. “No, I didn’t come here to do that. I-I...it’s just that...well...that wasn’t you. That whole plan...it still doesn’t make sense”

“How the fuck would you know what is, or isn’t, me? You said that that morning, too. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now,” Tomura bristles, closing the distance and bowing up to you. You can feel the sheer heat of him radiating against your shirt and you shiver at the sensation. If you lift your hand you could touch him, you think distantly. He’s so close...He’s so...

You gulp, trying to quell your rising emotions. “I guess, I don’t know then.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Fine,” you say, biting your lip.

“Fine,” he repeats, no doubt thinking that will be the end of it, but you’re not finished.

“You’re better than this you know,” you tell him, eyes searching for his, not relenting your glare until he finally meets you halfway, his red eyes flashing.

“Better than what? Better than you? A half baked woman, slumming her way from mid range bar, to mid range bar. Hoping you’ll catch the eye of the right person, someone who can pluck you from all the muck and grime that you lift that pretty little nose of yours at.”

“What?” you breathe, a snarl of your own etching across your face.

“Don’t act like you didn’t know what you were doing. Fucking leading me on like that--”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You thought I’d be your ticket out, or you could wager me later for a better piece, something stronger, someone that could do something for you.” Tomura is seething, his chest bumping against yours, the red of his eyes burning as he glowers at you.

“Tomura- I don’t know what you’re talk--”

“Stop saying that. You stupid, or something? And stop saying my name like that. Like it fucking matters. You could have had anything, you know? But...but you took it all for granted. You had the world...and then it...it’s...it’s just gone.”

He’s not talking about you anymore. Even though he’s growling and spitting rage at you, he’s not talking about you. “Shigaraki,” you begin, trying to see some way to reason with him. To bring him back to you.

“Don’t call me that,” he groans, his head dipping, almost resting against your shoulder. “I haven’t earned...that’s not me.”

“Alright. What am I supposed to call you?” you whisper, overwhelmed and trying to resist that urge to pull him into your arms. You’ve never seen him like this, and you don’t know, you don’t…

“There you go again, acting like you care.” Tomura scoffs, rolling his eyes.

“I do care, you ass,” you bite, turning your head toward him and letting your voice fall beside his ear. He snarls at the assertion and presses impossibly closer, trying his best to put on a show of wavering strength, knowing you might still be bullied into backing down, into denying him. But it’s not working, no you’ve come this far and you don’t want to leave him, not like this.

“I care,” you repeat, still murmuring next to his cheek, so near you can hear, and feel, his ragged breaths, hot against your skin.

“About what?” he grunts, moving his head from you, determined to not let you win.

“About, well, you.”

“Liar,” he spits, but his voice wavers, showing you a tiny, tiny sliver of hope.

“Am not,” you counter and watch as he leans back, those vermillion eyes searching for yours. One of his hands lifts and he ghosts the digits over the top of your shoulder, watching as you shift toward the distant touch, pulled to him, like a magnet.

“Such a liar,” he posits, fingers hovering beside your neck, twitching with want.

“No, I’m not,” you gasp, your voice so faint, you’re worried he might not hear it. But he does and he dips his head toward you, inches from your face, lips already parted and waiting.

“Prove it,” he challenges, his voice deepening, losing that sharpened edge at long last.

So, you shove him.

You’re not sure why that’s your first, instinctive reaction, but it’s too late to question your motives and it sparks a crazed response from the man in front of you, snapping him out of his head and refocusing him.

He fumbles backwards, caught off guard, his red shoes catching as he lumbers, trying to not fall. His eyes flash at you and he instantly rights himself, moving back to you. Through it all, you can hear yourself saying something. It sounds like it might have been another taunt, but you can’t focus, not when he’s pressing himself against you, his fingers finally, finally touching you.

Tomura can’t seem to settle now that he’s gotten ahold of you, his fingers tracing over your neck, your shoulders, your face, your sides. He’s panting and gasping, his fevered exhales fanning over your prickling skin.

“Get off me,” you moan, batting at his wandering hands.

“No,” he sighs, cupping your jaw and dragging you to his shaking lips. His kiss is clumsy, almost childlike. He lifts and leans, pressing halting smacks against you, grunting when you twist from him, fighting his hold.

“You don’t deserve it,” you tell him, wanting to lance that boil that’s festering in his mind, knowing he needs the pain before he can handle the sweetness of the pleasure. The last thing he needs is love. No, not right now. Hopefully, there will be time for that later. But for now, he needs something raw and shattered, something that will let him see that it’s not impossible to pick up the pieces, that he can be whole again, he just needs to try.

He drags his rough lips over yours and you lower your fingers into his snowy hair, pulling him closer, demanding that he give you more. He gasps at the sudden shift and you slip your tongue into his mouth, tangling it with his and yanking stammering moans from him. Your lips are slick now and you use the extra lubrication to slip down his neck, leaving him trembling above you.

You dip into each and every scar, laving over all those old hurts until he’s snarling. You leave a bruising bite against his pulse and he snatches your face between his palms, dragging you back to his lips.

“Stop squirming,” he complains, his forehead bumping against yours, trying to keep up with your rapid fire laps and sucks.

“No,” you laugh, fingers lacing into the lapels of his trench coat and using the leverage to drag your breasts over his hardened pectorals. He grunts at the sensation, one arm wrapping around your lower back, pinning you to him. When he finally manages to work his way free of your frantic presses, he lowers his lips to your neck, mimicking the same path you’d taken with him, his teeth nipping and pulling until your humming, giving him a thin cry of encouragement that spurs him on.

Tomura drags a canine over your pulse and you shiver, folding into his crumpled embrace. He’s almost having to hold you upright and he growls when you slip from his arms, annoyed you’re making this so fucking difficult.

“I said, keep still,” he reminds you, heaving you back up, lean forearms bracing you to him. You smile and lace your arms around his neck, wanting his lips again. He allows the pull, loving the contrast of your plush skin against his. He’s a fast learner and this time, it’s his tongue taps and maneuvers for entrance, swallowing down your needy pants. His nose presses into your cheek and you cup at his jaw, stroking the warm skin until he slows his frantic pace, meeting you halfway, and lingering in your wet softness.

Then, just as he’s getting comfortable, you dig your teeth into his lower lip, pulling until you bleed out a little taste of copper. He snarls and shoves you away, lifting the side of his hand to his injured mouth.

“What was that for?” He snaps, tapping his fingers against the wound, watching as they come back red. “The fuck is wrong with…” His ire stutters to a halt when he catches sight of you.

You’ve already slipped your shirt over your head and now your fingers are twisting until you unclasp your bra, sliding the lace down your arms. The cool air makes your nipples tighten but you don’t attempt to cover yourself from him. Instead, you arch an eyebrow at his abashed expression and begin to unbutton your pants, your fingers teasingly lingering over the button and zipper, before lowering the denim down the curve of your hips.

You don’t even hear him approach. No, you’re too distracted by your little show to notice him until you feel those warm fingers tracing over the newly bared swells of your skin. You lift your head and your eyes catch his, smiling at the hazy hunger that’s blazing out at you. His touch is tentative and you roll your eyes openly at him, lifting your own hands over his, pressing him until he’s digging those four digits into your sumptuous flesh.

His thumb rubs over your pebbled nipple and you reward him with a low moan, your eyes slipping behind your heavy eyelids. He cups at your other breast and lifts the weight of you into his palm, openly marveling at the feel of you. Still, it’s not enough and if you’re going to get your point across, you need him to give you more than these lazy strokes.

“Take off your jacket,” you tell him, stepping away from him, quaking minutely in the loss of his warmth.

“What?” he asks, clearly too overwrought to hear you. So, you help him along. Your fingers snatch the shoulders of his trench and you yank it off him, tossing the fabric down to the gritty floors. Then, you shove at him again. He isn’t as taken aback this time and he rallies immediately, snatching at you and dragging you against him, making you gasp at the harsh sensation of his dark clothes against your bare front.

“What do you want?” you ask him, licking your tongue along the underside of his jaw, listening to his shuddering breaths. “What do you want to do to me, Tomura? Come on, I know you’ve got some idea. Fucking show me. Don’t let me boss you around, unless that’s what you’re wanting today to be about. I can take those reigns from you. I’m better at this after all. Less...flustered,” you pause, sucking and nipping at his neck, enjoying the indecisive flex of his fingers on your upper arms.

He allows you one more bite and then he’s tossing you down, not caring where you land. Thankfully, you sprawl over his discarded jacket, the fabric sparing you from the neglected wooden floor. You’re trying to regain your bearings when you hear his belt clatter to the floor. You look up at him, watching as he flings that dark shirt away, showing you the lean muscles that you’ve wondered about for so long. God, for someone so lanky, he looks fucking good.

Tomura smirks at your expression and swiftly yanks his pants and boxers away too, revealing something even more mouthwatering. Fuck, fuck, you think, an involuntary gasp leaving your lips. His cock is thick, pulsing and absolutely dripping with his precum. The tip is a lovely pink, curving toward that chiseled stomach of his and damn, you want to suck on it until he’s putty in your hands.

As if he can read your mind, Tomura steps closer, giving himself a few tugs as he peers down on you, imperious and almost perfectly in control. “You want it?” He asks, trying to hide that sudden shift in his voice, wanting to show you that he understands what you’re expecting from him. You nod and bite your lip, looking up at him from feathery eyelashes.

“Come here,” he requests, slowing those pulls and letting his precum slip from his fist to the floor, tempting you with those tiny droplets of arousal. Obediently, you rise to your knees, fingers tracing up his thighs, smiling at the light buckling he gives you, his calves twitching and shaking.

You tease your way to the apex of his hips and pause, lingering along that dip of his stomach. “Can I taste you?” you question coquettishly and you adore the moan that falls from his lips.

Taking that as a yes, you slowly lower your mouth to him, ghosting the tip of him over you. Rubbing him back and forth, painting that thick precum over your lips until they’re glistening. Tiring of this little game, his fingers dip into your hair and he grips you, hard. With one pull, he’s burying that velvet heat of his length past the ring of your lips and into the sweet cavern of your mouth. His cock swells and throbs as you lap ravenous at the hefty weight of him.

He’s salty and earthy and you let your tongue swirl over his slit, lapping into that leaking gap until he’s murmuring nonsense over you. He’s almost too big for you to take, so one of your hands lifts and wraps around his base, easing your sucks and ensuring that none of him is left out of this gift of mind numbing ecstasy you’re bestowing upon him.

There are several veins, racing along the side of his cock and you tickle along each of them, pressing until you can feel the beat of his heart, frantic and fluttering. Soon, he begins to silently ask you for more, rutting his hips against your face, scraping himself along the back of your throat. When you heave around him he lets out a loud, elongated moan and digs in again, lingering until you’re nearly choking.

You chance a peek up at him and are surprised to see him gazing right back, those red eyes of his clouded and muddled. His hand keeps an insistent pressure against the back of your head, demanding that you keep going. So, you pick up the pace, lapping and sucking, hollowing your cheeks until a thin line of your drool begins to trickle along your chin, dripping onto your knees.

“Can...can I…” he begins, fingers starting to tremble, his knees buckling. No, that’s not what you want from him. You shake free of his hand, letting him slip from your mouth, and he stammers and sputters at the loss, his eyes narrowed and dark, glaring at you with a raw frustration.

“No,” you tell him, keeping one hand on him, stroking him, maintaining that steady pressure until he’s grunting, his hips instinctively canting into the tantalizing motion. “No, you don’t ask me for anything. Yeah, I can finish you off, if you need me to take control, but it’s not going to be on your terms. If you’re wanting something Tomura, you better fucking take it. Stop asking me for permission. I’m not-- mmph--”

He rips your hand off of his dick and his fingers curl beside your ears, forcing your mouth back, and impaling you on his length, immediately gagging you on his heady thrusts. You inhale sharply, your breath catching, failing as he keeps railing into you. More saliva slides out of your lips and you falter, a weak whimper echoing around him.

“Mmm,” he growls, holding your face as he presses against the back of your throat loving the clenching and mewls you give him. “That feels fucking good, (Y/N). Taking all of my cock, ah- fucking choking on it. You’re so fucking greedy. Don’t worry, I’ll give you more. Let’s see, what would make this even better, oh, I know. Saw it in a porn once. Put your hands behind your back and don’t move them unless I tell you to.”

Immediately, you clasp your fingers together, letting them rest against your lower back. The suspension knocks you off kilter, but Tomura braces your head with his other hand, pinning you between his palms. His dick is still lancing in and out of your mouth, scraping against your tonsils, making you swallow and open, trying to push yourself past that oppressive gagging sensation.

“Ahhh, such a good girl, now spread your legs and lift up, just a little bit, yes- right there. Better keep those hands still,” he taunts, pulling his cock out until it hangs against your lower lip, glimmering with the sheen of your ministrations. Then, he dives back in, thrusting and grinding until his balls are papping against your soaking chin. Your legs tremble as you hold yourself up and you can feel your own arousal, slipping down your inner thighs, splattering onto that dark trench coat of his.

You’re heaving under him, grunting and slobbering trying to not fucking choke on the girth that’s being pistoned into you. He’s gasping praise at you, his white head thrown back, and his lower abdomen is rippling, letting you know he’s so, so close to spilling down your abused throat. He bows over you as he cums, spewing thick ropes of his release into you. You gulp at him, determined to let every last drop slither down your waiting throat, longing to savor everything that he’s giving you.

True to your promise, you keep your hands clasped and you nearly topple over when he tugs free of your lips. Tomura takes pity on your wilted form and lowers himself to his knees, wrapping one hand around you and tapping twice on your shaking digits, letting you know you can relax your grip. You fall forward, and he waits above you, watching you with a mounting fascination. Once you catch your breath, you look up at him, not caring that you’re still covered in a mix of tears, spit and his cum. He smirks at your dishevelment, pleased by your open display of your wanton lust for him.

“See? It’s not hard to take what you want, to do what you want,” you pant, still trying to gulp down a few more rough intakes of air.

Tomura sucks his teeth at your bravado, but you notice he’s having a little bit of trouble steading his own breathing and his hands are twitching as they reach for you. You hum when he cups at your dips and curves, lingering over spots that make you moan for him. As he plucks at one of your puckered nipples his eyes lift to yours and he leans close, pressing a wet line of kisses against your collarbone.

“Lay back,” he rumbles, still sucking at the hollow of your throat. You do as he says, propping yourself on your elbows, curious and waiting. He’s slowed down now that he’s slaked that first brush of pent up aggression, but he’s still got a little more to burn. You can see it, lingering behind his vermillion eyes, gleaming under the carnal intrigue.

His fingers, so dangerous and deadly, race down your sides, falling to the juncture of your legs and dipping into the slick that he finds. He parts your folds, bracing himself over you, his lips sucking bruises into your skin. The gossamer threads of your leaking cunt run down his fingers and onto his open palm and he groans into your neck, nuzzling his nose to your skin and inhaling, deeply.

“Does that feel good?” He asks, his voice scraping, like sandpaper, hoarse and undone along your heated cheek. Ok, you think, arching as he dips one digit into you, you can let him have that one question, especially when your mind is fogging over like this, unable to think of anything but that ache that’s pounding through your core. You roll your hips again, urging that finger to slip further and he hisses as you pull him in, your walls trembling at the intrusion.

“Fuck,” he grunts, lifting himself to look down at you, his eyes wide with an awed marvel. “You’re so…”

“Mmm, so what?” you ask, wanting him to keep talking to you, loving rasp of his tone as it tells you such sinful things.

“So soft and warm and...God...so wet,” he replies, adding another finger, watching as you whine for him, your lower lips parting and welcoming him. He pumps the digits, in and out, at a steady rate, waiting for each quiver and ripple, trying to feel his way along, wanting to please you.

“Can--” he stops himself, flushing as your eyes open and snap to his, a rough displeasure written over your face. He tears his gaze from yours and scowls, letting his fingers press a rougher rhythm into you, sucking his teeth at his unspoken inexperience.

“This feels good,” you reassure him, not wanting to completely leave him adrift, knowing that he does need a little piece of guidance, for this part, at least. “Why don’t you get a closer look?”

Tomura looks back to you and nods before sliding down your body, lowering himself until he’s face to face with his prize. His mouth drops and he licks at his chapped lips, painting a few, warm, exhales against your sensitive folds. You squirm at the sensation and he grins, leaning closer, his free hand spreading you for his inspection.

“Is this…” his voice trails off and you can feel him wandering his way to just the right spot. When he lifts the fleshy hood of your clit and thumbs the distended pearl you gasp and shiver, your head falling back against his jacket, thumping against the floor.

He laughs and you can feel him getting ready to swipe at you again, his thumb already slippery and near, the heat of it radiating against that sensitive bundle. “You like that,” he crows, repeating the motion until you’re writhing. “But—” he ponders, moving so his lips are pressed against you, resting on those sopping folds, waiting for you to look up at him. Once your head lifts and your eyes meet his, he lowers his mouth, sliding his tongue over you.

“Oh,” you whisper, your hands automatically lifting and curling into his hair, threading the white tendrils along your palms. His tongue is rough and bumpy as it glides along, pausing to lap at some of your arousal. He smacks his lips at the taste, savoring the flavor before voraciously pressing back into you for more. When he pauses his explorations to give your clit a soft suck, you can’t help but flail, your back bowing and thighs tightening around his head.

Tomura grunts at the rough treatment, prying your legs apart but not letting up on that suction, pleased he’s found something that makes you tremble to pieces in his hands. He’s always liked working you up, so it makes sense that, in this instance, he’s no different.

His long digits are scraping into you, dragging along your quivering walls and spreading your cunt apart, leaking your arousal all over his jacket and onto his chin. He’s not satisfied yet, you’re not satisfied yet, so he keeps going, listening and watching, catching on to what makes you cry out his name, learning and adapting at an alarming speed.

“T-Tomura,” you keen, your hips lifting, grinding yourself against his face, begging him to not stop. You feel a smirk lift his lips and his tongue begins to circle and lick over your clit, maintaining a steady pressure. Meanwhile, his fingers have latched onto something delicate and spongy within your pussy, repeating an arched gesture, curling and uncurling as they stroke your budding flames higher.

“So good…” you murmur, hardly able to form the words as you feel that all encompassing tingle race along your bloodstream. “You’re doing so f-fucking good.”

In response, he begins to suckle on your clit, lightly tracing a canine over the pulsing bundle and that’s all that it takes. Your head dips back, pressing into the floor so hard that your neck arches with your back and your legs wrap around him, holding him to you as you quiver and shake under him. You can feel your heartbeat as you return to yourself, thumping a rapid beat over your breastbone and radiating out to your fingers and toes.

Tomura, for his part, hadn’t stopped lapping at you, his tongue replacing his fingers as he pushes the wet appendage into you, soaking up each wave of your release. Even when you’d dropped your death grip, your legs and arms flopping away from him, boneless and shaking, he’d kept on. After a few minutes of this, his lips suddenly feel a little too ragged, the chapped skin scratching against your sensitive, overstimulated, flushed lower lips. You do your best to wriggle away, but he stills your movements, not quite finished.

“Ah- that...it’s starting to hurt,” you grouse, pushing a hand against his bowed head. That declaration seems to get through and, finally placated, he gives you one last lick and lifts his head, his eyes glinting down on you, dark and mischievous.

“I want to fuck you,” he tells you, wiping a hand across his mouth, dragging the last of your essence away. You tilt your head and grin up at him. “So fuck me,” you reply, spreading your legs again, making room for his trim hips.

“Not like this,” he qualifies, his eyes hooded as he runs a hand along your leg, enjoying your skin, warm and pliant under his palm.

“Then how?” you ask, a little bewildered by this shift in attitude. Tomura leans up, resting on his haunches, leering at your nakedness, another smirk lifting his lips, arching that scar.

“Stand up,” he instructs.

You pull your legs away and slowly rise to your feet, waiting for him to do the same. Once the two of you are eye level again, he tugs you to him, his lips pulling and nipping at yours. You can’t help but melt into his persistent touch and when he feels you slacken against him, he starts to push you backwards. He walks you slowly, carefully, but once your back touches the cold wall, his caresses become rougher, more insistent.

He’s lifting your chin and his teeth are doing more biting than nipping, pulling at your lips until you’re gasping and swollen. He begins to lift away and you protest the movement, but his hand presses into your chest, shoving you back to the wall. You freeze at the forceful treatment, your eyes opening and fastening onto his. Waiting for his next move.

Tomura’s regained that wild look, his eyes hardening, sharpening like ruby slips of flint as they linger over you. “Turn around and brace your hands against the wall,” he commands and, for an instant, you debate pushing back, challenging his order, but that’s not what you’re here for. No, you’d come here with one thought in mind.

To see if you could show him what choices, what strong inner drive, wholly independent of his Sensei, he did have.

You’d watched that kidnapping debacle and all you could think about was how much better, how much stronger he’d be if he could just get out from under the thumb of that man, that voice on the tv. Even with this informal exercise of your own, Tomura had taken to your carnal lessons like a fish to water. He had always been a natural born leader, someone who cultivated and demanded change, he just needs a chance to try. A chance to prove that he didn’t need to ask permission, to ask questions. No, he only needed to act and he could make his aspirations a reality.

So, you turn, splaying your fingers against the wall and waiting for his next move, tilting your head, wanting to see him. He runs a calloused hand over the plush swell of your ass, kneading the skin and stepping closer. Once his hips are flush with your posterior, he ruts his newly re-hardened cock against you, his ever copious precum aiding his motion, letting him glide between your cheeks, easing into that cleft. You groan and press back, wordlessly asking for him to keep going.

Suddenly, his palm smacks against your ass, stinging the flesh and sending a sharp crack around the barren room. “I said, push out more. How am I supposed to fuck you when you’re plastered to the wall like that?” Tomura questions, his voice deep and guttural. You brace your hands against the peeling wallpaper and jut your ass out, presenting yourself to him, quietly hoping he’ll reward you with another spank. Pleased, Tomura does just that, his other hand lifting and smarting against your other, neglected cheek, imprinting his mark on you, even if it’s only for a brief moment, and his fingers linger on the warmth he’s raised from your skin.

“Good girl,” he groans, taking his cock in his hand and searching for that weeping entrance to your waiting pussy. You aid him as best as you can, arching your hips until he finally, finally slips into you. Tomura lets out a deep sigh as your cunt devours his cock, slicking him into the heat of your rippling channel. “Oh, fuck,” he moans, pressing until his hips are flush with your ass, grinding his bony hipbone into your supple softness.

He gives you a brief second to adjust before he bows his head over your shoulder, panting and grunting. “Hold on,” he gasps, slowly pulling his hips back and then ramming his straining cock back into you. You mewl at the sudden ferocity of his thrusts, your head dipping against the steady weight of the wall.

He offers you no reprieve as he pounds into you, his teeth latching onto your skin, sucking and drooling, losing himself in you. His balls tap against your swelled ass and you moan when he traces one hand around you, his fingers seeking your clit and pinching at the nub.

Your teeth begin to chatter, but he doesn’t let up, maintaining that mind numbing pace, pressing and grinding until you can’t fucking think straight. He’s completely untethered and he slakes out all of those pent up questions, feelings, hurts and wants against you. After a time, he begins to murmur things to you, finally sucking up his loose tongue and resting his chin on the mess he’s left on your skin.

He’s worried he can’t do it.

He’s never been alone, not like this.

Sure, he has the others, he has Kurogiri, but it’s not the fucking same.

He needs to see this through.

He wants to, he has to.

Where do you go, when there’s no one else to turn to?

It’s like a confessional, this rutting he’s doing and it’s bleeding all of those thoughts away, letting them pool against the front of his mind and then, pop, they shift away.

Oh this helps, he thinks, loving how you’re fucking taking him, how much you fucking need him. He can’t let you go. He can’t, he won’t. You’re all he has left. After all this, he can’t lose anything else. No, you were right, he’s gotta start taking things, snatching up pieces until he becomes this unstoppable force, greater than his Sensei, greater than All Might, greater than all of them. Yes, yes, yes, when he has you like this, everything else feels so fucking simple.

He’s slowing, his hips beginning to stutter and press erratically against you. There’s no need to worry about you cumming for him, not when you’ve already broken around him so many times in the last few minutes. No, the second he started panting all of those thoughts against you, you were lost, your cunt gripping him so tightly you were worried it might never let go.

Finally, with one last thrust, Tomura grinds his hips against you, his cock swelling and pulsing as he spills himself into you. The sensation of his cum splashing against your walls hurtles you over that edge one last time and you almost collapse, your legs shaking so badly you can't support your own weight. The only thing that prevents you from falling is Tomura. His arms snake around your waist and he holds you to him, his forehead resting heavily against your shoulder, sticking to your skin.

After a long beat, Tomura pulls himself out of you, grunting at the loss of your warmth and sinks to the floor, dragging you with him. Naked and gasping, the two of you cling to the other, waiting for the world to stop spinning as you come back to yourselves. Tomura recovers first, tugging you to his chest and wrapping himself around you, his chin perched on the familiar slope of your shoulder.

“You didn’t...you didn’t need to do this, but...” Tomura halts, his voice soft as his lips press rough kisses to your skin, silently saying what he really means, what you mean to him.

“That’s not true,” you counter, turning your head toward him. “You deserve to make a choice for yourself. You’re your own boss now. Now all you have to do is act like it. Don’t make those mistakes again. You call the shots, not your Sensei, not anyone else in the League, just you. You’ll have other choices soon, so don’t doubt yourself, it’s not like you.”

He huffs out a laugh and buries his nose in your neck, inhaling your scent as he licks at a rising bruise. “I don’t think you’ll like my next choice,” he rumbles, one hand drifting over your side and cupping the soft mound of your breast.

“That depends on what it is,” you smile, your eyes closing at the tempting touch.

“Mmm, do me a favor,” he begins, nipping at your earlobe. “Get on your knees and open your mouth. You looked so fucking pretty when you were sucking on my cock, I wanna see it, one more time.”

“What?” you question, absolutely incredulous, “again?”

“Do as I say (Y/N),” he replies, rubbing his rising length along your ass.

“God,” you gasp, bucking at the sensation, “what have I done? At this rate, I won’t be able to walk for a week.”

“You’ll like it,” Tomura promises, his voice dark, “I’ll make sure that you do.”

Notes: never have i ever liked that kidnapping bullshit. i guess it lets AFO face off with All Might, but for Tomura’s development? it makes no sense and he’s never done anything like that again, in canon. so, uh, yeah. booo kidnapping scheme.

Tags: @spicy-skull, @xwildskullx, @yixxes, @ghstmthr, @rekoii, @diaouranask, @bat-eclecticwolfbouquet-love

#asks #answered asks #pal muses #on Tomura’s dick #and his trauma #shigaraki tomura #tomura shigaraki #shigaraki x y/n #shigaraki x you #shigaraki x reader #tomura x reader #tomura x y/n #tomura x you #tenko shimura #shimura tenko #reader insert

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canary3d-obsessed · 4 years

Text

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed - Episode 02

Warning: Spoilers for all 50 episodes!

(Masterpost ) (Previous Episode) (Next Episode)

Donkey Riding

way ho and away we go, donkey riding donkey riding way ho and away we go, riding on a donkey

Wei Wuxian and Apple are doing their best for the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Xiao Zhan had trouble riding the donkey sitting side-saddle, so the Department of Questionable Practical Effects made him a fake leg to wear while riding regular style.

Can you spot it? It’s very hard to spot. It is very convincing.

Simple Pleasures

Wei Wuxian takes his time wandering up the nearest mountain, and half of the cultivators in the land also wander up this mountain because...Night Hunting! The cultivators are hot and thirsty from walking because they forgot that they all know how to fly.

Wei Wuxian relaxes by a well and listens to people stanning him.

Also

I’m going to say it: Wei Wuxian never met a drinking vessel he couldn’t blow.

Everything is Beautiful at the Ballet

The actress who plays A-Yan is named Zhang Linran. She probably has studied dance since she was 4 and now she gets her big break which turns out to be feeding an apple to a donkey. So let’s pause for a second to look at how beautifully she moves.

Reunions are Awkward, Part 1

Wei Wuxian meets up with one of his family members and it goes super well.

I...like Jin Ling? He’s much less of a douchebag than his dad, his uncles Jin, Jiang, and Mo (the three stooges), and every damn one of his Jin cousins. He’s genuinely brave (his Dad’s primary good quality) and his hair is on fleek. He’s still a whiny diaper baby, but I like him.

(much more after the cut!)

Then Jiang Cheng shows up, looking fine as hell and radiating peak arrogant-prick energy.

When he discovers that ‘Mo Xuanyu” stuck a piece of paper to Jin Ling, he tells the child to literally murder him. Excellent uncleing! A+++++ would recommend.

“In fact, literally murder anyone who uses Yiling Laozu’s tools, like talismans, lure flags, or spirit compasses - basically murder everyone in the Lan Clan plus those other fanboys we saw coming up the hill. Then get out there and make some friends, goddamn it!”

These nets full of cultivators on this daytime night hunt are the only time we ever see anything in a net during a night hunt. In fact dudes constantly go night hunting and the only prey we ever see is rock lady, murder turtle, and a couple of rag mops in the lake.

You Are Not Qualified to Speak to Me

Also radiating arrogant-prick energy on this occasion is Lan Wangji. He has been using pettiness as a weapon since long before he met this Jiang Cheng turkey, and he *brings it* when Jiang Cheng tries to have a conversation with him.

Letting your eyes wander everywhere except to his punchable face while you ignore his passive-aggressive questions? Quality work.

Dropping a silence spell on his child and then letting your own child explain it to him? Golden.

Lan Wangji is never ever going to forgive Jiang Cheng for what he did on cliff day, and his silence here is as pointed as an ice pick. I suspect the last words Lan Wangji actually spoke to him were “Jiang Wanyin, stop it,” sixteen years ago.

Jiang Cheng is actually the bigger person in this particular interaction, visibly mastering his temper and telling Jin Ling to take his medicine.

Reflecting

Wei Wuxian hangs out by a beautiful river and hallucinates for a while. River Jiang Yanli is nurturing and River Jiang Cheng is pissed off, so there are no surprises there. River Jiang Cheng thinks that Wei Wuxian is a promise-breaking douchebag. He’s not exactly wrong.

Courtesy of convenient gossiping cultivators, Wei Wuxian discovers that the 16 year old arrogant kid from the Jin clan who his brother from the Jiang clan has custody of is actually and quite obviously Jin Rulan.

Well fuck I guess now I care about something, that’s inconvenient.

Needing to help parent the child of the sister who parented him is what draws Wei Wuxian fully into his new life.

As soon as he has this realization, Apple comes back from roaming around, and never gives him any trouble after this for the rest of the story. Which...probably doesn’t mean anything.

Wen Gravesite

Does Wen Ning hang out here because it’s where he and his (dead) people came from? Oh great, now I am sad.

Judging by all the leaves on this grave thingy I’m going to say that this grave tender dude is, ah, not very good at his job.

Get him, Jingyi!

I feel like maybe we all focus too much on how Lan Jingyi is so hilarious and sardonic and not enough on how he is a such a biscuit.

Soul Grass

As mentioned in the previous post, Chinese spiritual concepts don’t always translate well into English. Soul grass? Sure, why not.

This is where Wei Wuxian’s Sherlock Holmes brain starts to work, although he still doesn’t remember really basic stuff about Dafan Mountain. Dying and changing bodies is rough on the old neurochemistry. This creates more opportunities for flashbacks, however, and if there’s one thing The Untamed deffo needs more of, it’s kissing flashbacks.

Temple Statue

Presumably grave-tender dude is also in charge of clearing away spiderwebs at the temple, because it’s not getting done.

Jin Ling walks into the temple blaspheming at full volume.

Since this isn’t a Greek story, he isn’t immediately struck blind for this. Then when he wishes for the statue to come alive, it obligingly does. Everything’s coming up Rulan!

Wei Wuxian shows up to rescue all the kids by throwing talismans at the monster which does not tip anyone off to who he is.

Baby Cultivator Babysitting

Lan Wangji chills out in the cultivators’ pavilion with Jiang Cheng and their mutual hate boners.

Meanwhile, Wei Wuxian forgets all about his nephew and turns into cool professor guy, explaining the basics of soul-eating to the baby cultivators and gleefully encouraging their fear of Hanguang-Jun’s punishments.

Because the Lan babies are good filial children they are super respectful and engaged with this random adult who is lecturing them. They also - like their own Hanguang-Jun at their age - see and admire Wei Wuxian’s intellect. It’s easy to forget how extremely smart Wei Wuxian is, because of how extremely dumb Wei Wuxian is.

Lan Jingyi suddenly figures out Wei Wuxian is not crazy.

Bis. Kit.

Then Rock Lady shows up and Jin Ling sticks 6 arrows into her while Lans Jingyi and Sizhui stand around not bothering to draw their swords.

I see a lot of comments about the bad effects in the statue sequences but I think Rock Lady is all right. The figure animation is decent and the lighting is no worse on her than on everything else in the scene. Her hair is nice, for a rock person.

Admittedly I just finished watching Guardian which has CGI monsters so bad they may have injured my retinas and possibly also my DNA, so the bar, for me, is pretty low. Rock lady clears it with room to spare.

Note: Wei Wuxian’s flute playing does zippity towards controlling the statue. Not sure what his plan was here.

Wen Ning Kicks Ass

Now we get to meet Wen Ning, who appears to be a stone-cold badass. Later we will discover how hilariously inaccurate that assessment is.

While all versions of Wen Ning are delightful, this version of Wen Ning is also...strangely attractive? He’s got a Patti-Smith-Horses-Era vibe here, instead of his more usual lost-baby-dork vibe. And his dreamy “I have nails in my head” expression is intriguing.

I mean, he’s not a total snack like zombie Song Lan or pre-zombie Song Lan or blind Song Lan or post-zombie Song Lan, but this look is a good one for Wen Ning, is what I’m saying.

Reunions are Awkward, Part 2

Lan Wangji, who has 99% already recognized Wei Wuxian because of the haunted sword and the fierce jawline and beautiful neck and tiny tiny waist, is summoned by his flute playing as inexorably as the Ghost General was.

Jiang Cheng also recognizes Wei Wuxian and goes into full beatdown mode, thwarted (silently) by Lan Wangji. Wei Wuxian attempts to preserve his incognito by sassing Jiang Cheng in as sibling-like a manner as possible.

Hanguang-Jun’s Pro-Ghost Agenda Has Been Clear for Some Time

This Jiang/Lan fight is hilarious when you consider the implications.

Macroexpression vs. Microexpression

Mo Xuanyu brought Wei Wuxian back using sacrifice summons, a dark ritual invented by Wei Wuxian that he, most likely, did NOT show to Lan Wangji back in the day. So it’s a pretty safe bet that Lan Wangji doesn’t know that Wei Wuxian was gifted a body, rather than stealing one.

when your brother turns around, you must whip him you will never live it down unless you whip him

When Jiang Cheng lets loose with Zidian, it’s not just because he’s angry. He’s using purple power to force Wei Wuxian’s ghost out of the body he’s apparently possessed. And Lan Wangji instantly STOPS him from doing that.

Clan Leader Jiang: this person has been possessed, against their will, by an evil ghost

Future Chief Cultivator Lan: Counterpoint: I am banging the ghost

Flashback Time

Welcome to your 30-episode flashback!

Once I used to join in Every boy and girl was my friend Now there's revolution, but they don't know What they're fighting

Let us close our eyes Outside their lives go on much faster Oh, we won't give in We'll keep living in the past

Road Tripping to Summer School

Gosh I’m looking forward to younger, kinder, more relatable Jiang Cheng.

...prick.

Incidentally, until now this episode didn’t know that Jiang Cheng has smile muscles, and neither did the person who glued his wig on for him.

I Like Rabbits

Here we have our first rabbit in a large collection of rabbit iconography that appears in The Untamed.

Instead of sending everyone to the Wikipedia page for Tu'er Shen I’m going to take this opportunity to rec the short film Kiss of the Rabbit God by Andrew Thomas Huang (tw: blood, tw:body-mod cutting) which you can read about and watch over at Nowness.com

Particularly if you are a queer person of Chinese heritage, check it out.

So. What the fuck are these? Are they food?

Are they made from wax? Or corn starch? or pig intestines?

Wei Wuxian runs off to get laid drunk and Jiang Cheng grumps about it. Jiang Yanli reminds him that being free is a Jiang Clan Rule, so really Wei Wuxian is following the rules by not following the rules. Does that mean he’s not free? My head hurts.

Jiang Cheng: yes but grump grump grump

Jiang Yanli: Nothing bad will ever happen because of A-Xian’s choices, trust me

Outro

Wei Wuxian faint tally: one Caught by: the cold hard ground

Soundtrack: 1. Donkey Riding by Great Big Sea 2. Living in the Past by Jethro Tull 3. Whip It by Devo

Fic prompt: Lan Wangji’s internal monologue while he sits in the pavilion with Jiang Cheng

If you write a fic from this prompt and want to share, please post a link in comments!

Bonus: Wang Zuocheng, macro-expression king

Episode 03 Restless Rewatch coming soon!

#the untamed #fytheuntamed #the untamed spoilers #the untamed gifs #the untamed stills #my gifs #my stills #restless rewatch #restless rewatch the untamed #canary3d-original #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #lan wangji #lan jingyi #c-drama #bl drama #the untamed memes

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bedbellyandbeyond · 3 years

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Call Another Friend

(Story Post)

Nathan’s first day alone with the twins without any extra help was exhausting. He didn’t realise how much he depended on Dax to be around at least a fraction of the day so he could rest. He felt like Korsgaard had to be lying when he said they were angels all weekend, because as soon as he got them home, they went feral. They were like having two new puppies in the house, except bigger, stronger, and one’s a bear. Even in human form, they were crawling already and getting into everything. Not to mention, they wanted to nurse all the time, especially Gabriel. He drank a lot more than his sister and when Grace was done, Nathan often switched Gabriel to the other side to balance things out. He would be left dry, and sore, and praying that he would feed them enough to make them sleepy. He loved them to death, but he needed some moral support. “How can I help you, laddie?” “Reid, oh my god…” Nathan sighed as he got the doctor on the phone. “Are you working?”

“No, I’m off for the evening, but if there’s something I can do—” “I need someone to talk to. Do you think you could come over? Like, as a friend?” There was a pause on the other end. “…Are you joking?” “I’m sorry, I mean, if it’s weird, or—” “No, no! I’d love to come over!” “There isn’t something inappropriate about it? You know, messing with the patient/doctor relationship?” “If we’re not boning, we’re peachy,” Reid said, chuckling a bit. “I’ll be over before you can spell ‘friendship’.” “Haha, okay…” Nathan smiled. “Thanks, dude.” “Don’t even mention it.” “See you soon.”

It wasn’t long before Reid was knocking on the front door. Nathan had plopped the twins down in their playpen and went to let his friend inside. Reid looked very excited as he stepped in. “I hope you understand that when you become my friend, you cannot get rid of me,” Reid said. “You have the curse of Reid now. I am a tattoo.” “Hopefully a tasteful one,” Nathan joked. Reid shrugged. “Probably not.” He made grabby hands. “Where are the beasties?” Nathan took him to the living room which was pretty much completely taken over by the kids play area. Gates separated it from the kitchen and the hall, and another gate was put up in front of the sliding doors to the backyard. Nathan climbed in and sat down on the couch while his offspring started to crawl toward him. “Come sit.” Reid gladly climbed into the living room and sat with him, bringing Gabriel and Grace up onto his lap. “Hello, sweethearts! You're growing so big! I can't believe it!” Grace cooed at him and Gabriel tried to put a wad of his shirt in his mouth. “So. You have to tell me how it went with Kent.” Nathan threw his head back and groaned. Reid tilted his head. “That bad?” “I... I'm going to put them down for a nap because I'm ready for foul language...” Nathan said, scooping up his kids. Reid pouted as he’d just got a chance to see them, but he let them go. “…Aye, best they don’t pick up any curses just yet. They’ll be talking sooner than you know.” “Yeah… Alright, I'll be right here.” When Nathan got back, he proceeded to tell Reid everything that happened. He didn’t leave out any details and the doctor hung on every word, confused but invested. “Oh my god.” Reid had tucked his feet up under his legs and he leaned on his knees. “So, you kissed Kent but then Dax fucked him.” “Yeah… It’s all really fucked up… I don’t know how to feel about any of it,” Nathan said. “I feel guilty for kissing Kent but at the same time, I don’t know what to do with the whole…Dax and Kent thing. It’s so wrong.” Nathan paused. “Why are you smiling?” Reid was grinning from ear to ear. “Oh, sorry. It’s nothing.” “What are you thinking?” “Och, I dunno…” Reid waved a hand. “I mean… It’s all kind of perfect.” Nathan blinked and stared at his companion. “…Um, I’m sorry. Did you hear anything I said?” “Yes.” Reid straightened up. “You should go for it.” Nathan shook his head. “For what? You can’t mean Kent…” “Kent. Dax. You. You clearly all like each other,” Reid said. “I think you should go for that.” Nathan was taken aback. He opened his hands. “Are you insane?” “My therapist says no, but, I love love. I think you’d all make quite the incredible item,” Reid insisted. “Think about it. You love Dax, but he doesn’t tick all your boxes. Kent makes up for that. And Dax clearly adores you, but at the same time my impression of him is that he is incredibly versatile and both of you could be more sexually satisfied with a big bear in the mix, no pun intended.” “…Okay, I see. So, this is the curse of Reid.” Nathan tapped his own lip. “You’re crazy if you think I want to be in a throuple with Kent.” “Come on, now, Nathan,” Reid sighed. “When have I been wrong about you?” “What are you talking about?” “I was right about you and Dax. You work so well together. You’re a perfect couple.” “So, why in the world are you trying to inject Kent into it?!” “Oh laddie, he’s already in it,” Reid said. “He’s the twins’ father, he’s going to be in your life a lot more now. It’d probably all be easier if you’re all open about your feelings for each other. I believe in you.” “Kent doesn’t do ‘open feelings’,” Nathan said. “He thinks if he admits he likes men, he’ll be tarnishing the memories of his late family.” “Now, you say that, but he’s already opened up about wanting you to live with him. And he liked your kiss,” Reid said. “He’s coming out of his shell. Just be gay around him and it’ll rub off eventually.” “Even if he comes out, he’s still a horrible man!” Nathan said. “He swears up and down and every sentence is an insult. He…He laughed at my chest!” “To get you riled up enough to turn,” Reid said. “He’s clever. He’s patient. He’s as big as a house and I bet he’s hung like a horse. What do you want?” “He’s on the other end of the province!” Nathan said. “That’s a bonus!” Reid said. “You don’t have to see him every single day! He likes being alone, so you can just visit him whenever you feel like having your needs met, and then you’re out of there as soon as you can’t stand each other anymore. Win/win.” “That sounds like he's just a booty call,” Nathan said. “Well, no. Not necessarily. Needs can be affection, general time together. Time for him with the kids. Anything you need it to be,” Reid said. “You need to establish boundaries and everyone needs time to grow. Kent has been checked out of society for over two decades. Not to mention, I think he was raised on a farm anyway? You’re a city boy with a masters in education and your support system is here. He’s not going to fit right into the life you've moulded for yourself immediately. That whole grungy, off the grid, lumberjack living isn't your thing.” Nathan sighed. “You say all that like I like Kent.” Reid threw his arms up. “Are you kidding me? Nathan, you're obsessed with Kent. You have been this whole time. Did I tell you about the night he left the facility?” “No...” “You broke out to try and go after him,” Reid said. “A guard and I had to chase you through the facility. You were inconsolable. You didn't even eat anything that night.” “That was the wolf, not me,” Nathan said. Reid sighed. “Lad, you need to stop separating yourself from the wolf. It's still you. I've known you as the wolf. It's still very much you in there. You just lose your inhibitions. You feel the rain on your skin.” Nathan groaned. “I fucking hate you.” “No one else can feel it for you.” “Stop.” “Only you can let it in.” “Yeah, well you're trying to speak the words on my lips!” Nathan growled, hitting Reid with a throw pillow. “But you can't!” Reid grinned. He leaned over and took his friend’s arm. “Nathan. Tell me the truth. Do you have feelings for Kent?” Nathan hesitated and crossed his arms. “That's... I barely know him.” “That's not a ‘no'.” “Reid... He's not an option,” Nathan said. “We don't even get along. If I have any feelings for Kent, it's frustration, rage, hate.” “Grief, loss, yearning, relief, appreciation,” Reid added on. “You've exhibited all of those towards him as well.” “You're full of bullshit, Reid...” Nathan growled. Reid patted his leg. “You don't have to act on any of it, but you can't deny that you're very happy he's alive and you're a little excited to see him again this weekend.” “I am not. I'm more afraid to see him than anything,” Nathan said. “I have to go up to the middle of nowhere with my babies. Without Dax... I... It's scary.” Reid tilted his head. “Scary because you're taking your weans off the grid or ‘cause you're scared to face you feelings alone?” “Reid...” “Well, I could go with you,” Reid said. Nathan blinked. “You could?” “Of course! I'd love to see Kent again,” Reid said. “I've only spoken to him once ever.” “You don't have work?” “No, Syd still doesn't entirely trust me to take on a full workload, so I can get a whole weekend off, no problem.” “Are you still in recovery?” Nathan asked. “Well, sort of...” Reid said. “I've been fine for weeks now, I'd say. But Aoife and Syd both are teamed up against me. They're worried stress could trigger ‘relapse' and I ‘need to take my medication on time'.” “You do need to take your meds on time, what?” Nathan frowned. “No one gets it,” Reid sighed. “Not taking regular medication helped me get closer to my breakthrough. The whole ghost thing worked best when I wasn't medicated! A clean, chemically unaltered vessel made it work!” Nathan hesitated. “Maybe you shouldn't come up with me.” “No! Nathan, come on!” Reid shook his shoulder. “I’m not allowed to practice my research anyway, so I've been on my meds this whole time. I swear it. I'm just expressing my desire not to be for educational research purposes...” “That's still very concerning,” Nathan said. “I swear to you, I will be on my best behaviour,” Reid promised. “I want to see Kent again.” Nathan took a deep breath. “Why do I feel like a parent being begged to go to the candy store?” “Please. And any time you want to talk to Kent alone, or be alone yourself, I will watch the twins for you,” Reid said. “I don't even know if I'm comfortable with that.” “I'll change the dirty diapers all weekend.” “Deal.” “Ahh! Thank you!”

#lore #Nathan #Reid

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feralphoenix · 3 years

Text

HOWMST BELL THE CAT? - A treatise on one aspect of how the Pale King sealed the Radiance

sup hollow knight fandom, i’m back with the picante takes again after having Noticed A Thing.

as with my previous essays i’ll put this guy up on dreamwidth later for accessibility purposes, since my layout text may be too small for high-res pc users. i will attach that in a reblog at a later point.

CONTENT WARNINGS FOR TONIGHT’S PROGRAM: This essay discusses canon-typical body horror and bodily boundary violations, with some side mentions of colonialism.

all game screencaps are mine. the screencap of the wiki is from the “developer notes” (style guide) section of the “cut content” page.

ALSO: if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of this particular part of hollow knight worldbuilding/lore is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay, ty

HOWMST BELL THE CAT? - A treatise on one aspect of how the Pale King sealed the Radiance

We understand more or less how the Pale King’s plan was supposed to work. Stuff Radiance into a no-thoughts-head-empty and silent Pure Vessel to trap, isolate, and silence her, both putting an end to the Infection and killing her for good. Stick that vessel in the Black Egg, which harnesses Void BS to both keep the vessel alive indefinitely and to cover Hallownest (and its neighbors) in a time-defying stasis so that the Pale King could successfully hoard his favorite shiny FOREVER, threatened by nothing. Then put a seal on the Black Egg to prevent anyone from getting inside and harming said vessel while it’s strung up and helpless. And THEN, put protective seals on the anchors (the Dreamers) to the Black Egg seal to protect them from any external harm: The stasis means the Dreamers won't die of old age or starvation.

All in all, a pretty foolproof plan!

...except that the Dreamers are still vulnerable to having their minds breached with the moths’ magic... and the Pale King failed to take into account that his Pure Vessel was a person actually and the amount of toxic stress his training/upbringing put on them made them REALLY POORLY SUITED FOR THEIR JOB... and also that killing 99% of his million children and turning the Abyss into a landfill for baby corpses would take enough of an emotional toll on his wife and #1 enabler the White Lady that she would walk out on him, ensuring he’d only ever have one shot at this whole deal...

Basically it’s the sort of plan that an emotionally constipated, low-empathy sort of guy who pours all his points into INT and has a big fat zero for WIS might think is foolproof. It has big holes in it that the Pale King did not consider to be big holes until he got owned by the various consequences of his actions and fell down said big holes, making the shocked pikachu face all the while. Rip in die, my guy.

Anyway, there’s a lot of incidental information scattered about the game that gives us more insight into the stages of TPK’s plan. Looking at Monomon’s notes in the Archive suggests that she was probably involved in designing the Black Egg; the hidden room in the Weavers’ den points to their being the ones to blueprint the Dreamer seal; the White Palace’s hidden rooms reveal both TPK’s morbid fascination with the Void and his mea culpa wrt his motives and the Path of Pain is certainly suggestive of a lot of things. The White Lady tells us straight out that she walked out on the Pale King because she wanted no part in a second vessel batch, but how TPK didn’t handle that is only revealed via map design and some incidental dialogue from the Old Stag.

This stuff presents us with, if not a full picture, then at least a decent connect-the-dots of certain aspects of crater politics and Pale Court drama at the time, and how exactly TPK’s plan came together.

But there is still one glaring question that these cookie crumbs do not provide us an answer to:

Who shall bell the cat?

How did TPK et al manage to stuff Radiance into Hollow in the first place?

This is the subject of a lot of memes and jokes within the fandom because it's so absurd. Radiance fuckin hates that dude! She’s probably gonna be pretty wary of him considering how he stole her people in the first place! And considering the anti-colonialism slant of the writing - beyond the general sympathetic view Team Cherry gives of each indigenous bug society, Seer makes it very clear that Radiance has very good reason to take violent action against Hallownest - the answer is probably not something like “she’s just that stupid” or “she rolled a crit fail”.

Well... I have an idea of how TPK managed to get Radiance in there. It raises about as many questions as it answers, mind, but it may be someplace to start.

[desc: the hollow knight's entry in the hunter’s journal. top text/ghost’s comment reads: “Fully grown Vessel, carrying the plague’s heart within its body.” bottom text/hunter’s comment says: “The old King of Hallownest... he must have been desperate to save his crumbling little world. The sacrifices he imposed on others... all for nothing.”]

Here we have Hollow’s bestiary entry. Most of what we’re concerned with here is the top text, which says the seal has literally trapped Radiance inside their body. (First of all, ew, TPK.)

We already knew Radiance is literally actually inside Hollow, though: The Infection is leaking out of their body, and to get to fight Radiance, Ghost has to go traipsing into their sibling’s mind. So what’s significant about that here?

[desc: screencap of the outside of the black egg temple, post-infected crossroads. there are large infection blobs in the foreground and background, connected to each other by veins that come from inside the temple.]

The infection blobs are weird and get weirder if you kill enough Lightseeds for the Hunter to tell you their origin story, i.e. that the literal actual sun has been having a very long bad day and cried a lot, and some of the liquid coalesced into living flesh, and some of that living flesh took on a mind of its own to become Lightseeds. (Hollow Knight is a WILD place.)

Lightseeds are Radiance’s accidental children and share a lot of her traits: They are harmless creatures that try to avoid conflict if possible but if pushed will get creative and find ways to fight regardless of their physical limitations. (For the Lightseeds this involves hiding inside Broken Vessel’s corpse and puppeting it around to try to stab you.) They even have her same distinctive yell. And according to the Hunter, they’re born from the infection blobs. These enemies only ever appear in the Ancient Basin, which both Radiance and the Void have ransacked, and in the Infected Crossroads.

The infection blobs are connected to and sort of a weird extension of Radiance because the Infection itself is sort of a weird extension of Radiance. In the game’s internal style guide Team Cherry explains that the Infection started as an accident, not her original intention but what happened when Hallownest tried to block her out.

[desc: screencap from the wiki of style notes attached to seer that describe a sketch of radiance’s finalized backstory. text reads: “The moth tribe were (perhaps) descended from Radiance. However, the King convinced them somehow to seal Radiance away. I guess so he could rule Hallownest with his singular vision, as a god/monarch with no other gods. The moths sealed Radiance away by forgetting about her. Hallownest was born and flourished. However, the memory of Radiance lingered (eg [sic] the statue at hallownest’s crown) and soon she began to reappear in dreams and starting [sic] exerting influence. The King and the bugs of Hallownest resisted this memory/power and it started to manifest as the Infection. Thus the first attempt to seal Radiance failed, and the King had to try another method - the Vessel.” emphasis mine.]

Some fans have posited the blobs as deposits of pupa juice, but given Team Cherry's description of the Infection’s origins I don’t know how likely that is. Since the Void also sticks its squamous tentacles into things via veiny looking things and the Nightmare’s Heart has similar veiny nonsense in the Nightmare Realm, I wonder if it isn’t just a Meddly God Shit thing in general.

Whatever the case, the blobs are very much connected to/a part of Radiance.

And when you’re hanging around them, you will notice two things: They pulse like they’re part of a circulatory system, and you can hear Radiance's heartbeat emanating from them.

[desc: screencap of the game’s title screen with the infected menu theme in use: a glowing orange ball at the center of a lot of black tendony webbing.]

Let’s also think of the Infected menu theme, which you unlock after getting either of the endings where Ghost takes over from Hollow and absorbs Radiance out of them. Ghost is infected and then sealed inside the Black Egg in Hollow's place. It’s suggested by the animation’s staging that Radiance briefly struggles to get out of Ghost after absorbed but is ultimately stuck in them, at which point the seal is reestablished.

If you haven’t used the Infected menu theme yourself, the... interesting thing about it is that it moves organically. The light ball expands and contracts - y’know, sort of like a living organ - and so does the black webby stuff around it.

Also, Radiance’s heartbeat is included in the theme's ambiance.

[desc: hollow’s bestiary entry again]

To cut to the chase, this part of Hollow’s bestiary entry that says “the plague’s heart”? I don’t think that’s just Ghost/Team Cherry being poetic. I think there’s a good chance it’s LITERAL.

I think TPK is the sort of person who could cram a native woman’s literal living beating heart inside his own child’s body so they can use it as... say, a focus to absorb and trap her mind/spirit inside their body, too. Mr. No Cost Too Great is capable of a lot in the name of keeping other people’s claws off his Big Shiny kingdom. This is kind of his whole brand.

But also, like, yuck.

This fits the worldbuilding too; generally speaking Hollow Knight is Body Horror City. Also there’s the case of Grimm: While he and Radiance are loose counterparts at best with WILDLY disparate outlooks and ethoses, his existence serves as precedent that a Higher Being’s heart specifically can be separate from the rest of them.

As I said before, though, this DOES raise as many questions as it answers. If this is another piece in the puzzle of how TPK belled the cat, we’re now left wondering how he got Radiance’s heart to use as Hollow's focus to begin with.

We know he has access to the Dream Realm because that’s ultimately where he hid when Hollow’s seal failed, but who did he send to do the stealing and how did they get away with it? (TPK certainly wouldn’t have gone; his own life’s the one cost too great for him to willingly pay.) Was Radiance’s heart separate from her like the Nightmare’s Heart, or was it a part of her body? (I think the latter is more likely just from her personality; Grimm’s hidden heart makes sense because of how he keeps even his own servants at arm’s length emotionally, whereas Radiance is all heart all the time. I think this makes more sense with their equal opposites schtick too. But this would make for a WAY riskier mission.)

I can imagine all kinds of possibilities. None of them are definitive, but the thing they have in common is that they are all Awful... and how on-brand that is for Hollow Knight as a whole is, maybe, the most persuasive argument for It’s Literally Actually Her Real Physical Heart there could be.

#hollow knight #hollow knight spoilers #hollow knight meta #the radiance #hk radiance #not sure if i should tag tpk bc i doubt therell be anything in here his stans will enjoy lol #long post under cut -#essay

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synchlora · 2 years

Note

ooo I'd like to hear a summary :0

!!! pogggg lets go

[ warnings ahead for death, infection / gross wound shit, major injury, medical malpractice, medical shit, blood, etc. just be careful kings ]

so! it is your classic zombie apocalypse au of the main dsmp centering specifically around benchtrio and wilbur! :D starts off at the beginning of the apocalypse following tommy and tubbo

tommy and tubbo both narrowly escape their own homes. tommy's sister saved him when his parents turned and attacked them (she ended up dying so he could escape). tubbo's family boarded up their house but ended up overwhelmed and told him to leave, and he escaped in their truck.

tommy and tubbo were already old friends, and so they were the first people one another reached out to. they ended up meeting up at an old park near the train yard, tommy taking significantly longer as he was on foot. anyway blah blah blah sappy reunion they both cried and a lotta shit yeah.

SO. theyre fuckin using tubbos truck as their main form of transport when they finddd! an abandoned camper van at a nearby farm! ignoring the trauma of finding the dead family inside the farmstead, they collect supplies and decide to hitch up the trailer to their truck (theyre both getting a little tired of sleeping in the trucks cabin).

so! they've got a trailer, some more food supplies they were in desperate need of, and gas to last them a little while. overall, they only move when they've got to bc gas is fucking Rare, but they are somewhat mobile.

and so this is how they end up in a large city where we meet our next character! ranboo :]]

I have more written on this if you look through the tag, but basic gist is they find him in an alleyway while looking for supplies and he is zombie-bitten and on deaths door. tubbo wants to kill him bc dude he's gonna turn into a zombie soon and tommy won't have any of it. they end up taking him in, even though neither of them know if or how to cure him.

cue a trip to the city hospital searching for supplies they don't know how to use! aaaand cue wilbur joining the story. wilbur is curious what they're doing with equipment they can't even name, and the pair are desperate enough that they confide in him. he tells them he's a doctor (not true, this man is a dropout med student </3) and he offers to help them cure their friend.

and they're desperate enough to accept.

so wilbur comes back to the can with them and checks over ranboo. ranboo's arm is incredibly necrotic and the bite is starting to actually infect his system. after a lot of deliberation, wilbur concludes that the best course of action is amputating his arm (it is a total loss from the elbow down At Least) and hoping to have some chance to fight off the zombification infection that is starting to go septic.

and of course tommy and tubbo are at a loss, saying they can't fucking do this bc how the Fuck are they gonna amputate his whole arm with one "doctor" and two scrappy teenagers that are half starving most of the time.

but. its the only option.

SO I also have another post that goes into detail on how this all goes butttttt long story short: they do not have general anesthetic. they have to use regional anesthesia. basically, this means an IV of a pain killer and anti-anxity medication plus some localized anasthetic. so ranboo is very much awake during the procedure, yet awareness isn't exactly strong.

so: tommy watches his IV and makes sure he gets the medicine amount he needs, wilbur cauterizes and ties off major blood vessels, and tubbo performs the surgery itself (ie cutting the skin, muscles, and bone). its hell. ranboo is awake and not in Too much pain, plus the medicine is making him far more open to suggestion and calming, but it still is. a little traumatizing to say the least. tommy just about faints a few times. tubbo keeps his hands steadier than ever. wilbur just hopes he doesn't kill the kid.

but he survives it! and recovery is hell for two fucking months because not only does he have to deal with recovery from amputation BUT he still has the zombification infection in his system! so he is taking a bunch of pain killers for his surgery, dealing with drains and re-dressing bandages, and is getting a fuck ton of anti-biotics, anti-fungals, just about Anything they think that might help him Not Die.

aaaand this is a long time but he fuckin lives! he beats the gotdamn infection! and yeah its a fuckin mess :]]

continued plot involves other characters as well, like niki and jack and quackity and sam and eret! but I'll leave this brief with just the beginning story :D more stuff is in the tag as well if u wanna look around :ooo

#this au is so much fun for me #bc tommy keeps pigeons! big q gifts him one as both a companion and a source of food (eggs)#theres so much happening man axifsjcsjcs its v fun to write #thank u frog <333 #answered #apocalypse au where ranboo lives and its all happy and good and wonderful #frog the beloved

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imagine-loki · 4 years

Text

Toxic

TITLE: Toxic

CHAPTER NO./ONE-SHOT: One-shot

AUTHOR: fanfictrashdump

ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine Loki loves telling everyone that he fears nothing and no one. Tony asks him to check in on Character, who has been in a pissy mood all week. Loki chuckles. “Oh, I fear no one, but I’m not suicidal.”

The first sign that Loki was a soft boy wasn’t anything big or particularly mushy. He stopped on the street and got down on one knee to help a boy whose laces had come undone and was struggling to do them up himself.

RATING: T

NOTES/WARNINGS: I entirely forgot about this one-shot in my drafts. I kinda lost steam with it and I decided to post it kind of unedited, so there should be errors and boring valleys galore! Language! Reference to suicide.

SUMMARY: Lily is usually a sweetheart, but there’s a bit of poison flowing through her veins, right now. Meanwhile, Loki has a short bout of good conscience.

“Where are you going?”

Lily jumped, startled, immediately grimacing as her left shoulder smarted. Her arm was in a sling, having crash-landed onto it during a mission last week. The medic had said that she had likely torn one of the tendons in her rotator cuff, but that they would not be able to do anything about it until the swelling came down. Now, her whole arm lay useless in its cloth cradle while the other side bore the weight of bags and baskets.

“Um…,” she hesitated in her place, unsure as to why she was feeling a little like a schoolgirl caught out doing something she wasn’t supposed to. Well, maybe it was the fact that Stark had told her I don’t want you doing anything for the next month… “I was just going to the bodega. I’m out of snacks.”

“No.”

For a second, they stood in silence, staring each other down while she waited to see if there was going to be anything added to his sentiment. “That’s it?” He nodded, looking bored. “Yeah, I’m not a child. I’m going to the bodega.”

Loki groaned. “Lilian…”

“Not my name, dude.” She made the mistake of bumping into his shoulder with her injured side. On any other occasion, with any other human, it would have been no issue. Loki, however, seemed to be as dense as the center of a collapsing star, and though he barely swayed from his spot, she let out a sharp hiss and gritted her teeth painfully.

“You humans are so pathetically feeble, I swear,” he remarked, bending at the knees to gently prod at her shoulder. “Give me the list, I’ll collect your supplies.”

“No,” she replied, instantly, imitating his haughty tone, perfectly.

“Don’t be a child. I can go there and back faster than you can.”

Baby blues shot up and hardened at him. “What do you need? What leverage are you trying to get?” Loki frowned, tilting his head minutely to explore her incensed semblance. “You know what? I don’t care. I don’t need to be coddled. I can take care of myself just fine.”

“I didn't–”

“Leave me alone!” With the last shouted syllable, her veins glowed bright green and thorns seemed to sprout from every bit of her skin. Loki held his hands up in surrender, and took a step back for good measure.

With one last withering look, she skirted past his imposing form, and pressed the elevator call button. The doors opened almost instantly, and she slipped in, pressing the button for the ground floor. She did not expect, however, for the elevator to dip slightly under the weight of another person. Despite the fact that she had not seen Loki follow her to the hallway, he was standing there, silently, a few feet between them as they rode the elevator down in silence.

At the lobby, he waited for her to exit the car first, following like a spectre right after. They had made it half a block before Lily could no longer resist the urge to scream, and she turned on her heel to face a calm Loki.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Loki fought the smile creeping onto his lips for a bare minute. “Accompanying you. I thought that much was obvious.”

“I don’t. Need. A babysitter.”

“Never said you did, flower,” he riposted, off-handedly before he gestured her ahead.

Letting out a barely restrained groan, she stomped her way back down the street towards the bodega. Loki, for the most part, followed silently, gently fetching things from the top shelf that he knew she was trying to get to, crowding her side when other people got a little too close, generally treating her like she was a porcelain doll about to shatter.

It was annoying the shit out of her.

The bodega owner had barely reacted when she slammed her basket down and unpacked her groceries to pay for them. Her usually charming, chummy demeanor was extinct and replaced by a surly, snarled lip. Why would he be doing this? Was it just to drive home the point that he thought she was incompetent? Weak? Whatever it was, it was gnawing at her very soul and all she wanted to do was to go back to the tower and hide in her room until her shoulder had recovered.

Snatching her receipt from the bodega owner, she turned away from the counter. “Let’s get moving, Snakeb… Loki?” She glanced left and right, not finding him there, nor could she feel the heaviness of his presence anywhere around her. She glanced out the glass doors and found her missing demigod on the sidewalk. A child of about five or six, who was clearly waiting for his mother to get through with her transaction at the bodega, stood still with a gentle smile. Loki was down on one knee, equally easy grin on his face with a shoelace in either hand.

“I’ll show you again. Pay close attention, alright?” He pulled the strings up taut and made two loops. “Around the trunk of Yggdrasil, the little rabbits go, they twine around the knitted roots and sink deep down below. After they have had their fun they jump up to spring free, but every part of their spirit’s tied to the Great Tree,” he singsonged, knotting the laces easily. “Got that?”

The child nodded, giggling before going off with his mother who was looking at Loki a little too hard to be comfortable.

Loki glanced up, sensing Lily staring and offered her a smile she didn’t return. “Are you ready?”

“You taught him how to tie his shoes.”

He brushed aside her prickly tone, unbothered. “Yes… is that a crime, now?”

“Why?”

“He didn’t know how.” He shrugged, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“I thought you didn’t like weak things.”

“You know, at some point you’re going to have to tell me why you’re so cross at me.” He snapped, finally, though he didn’t look angry. Disappointed, maybe? Sometimes it was damn near impossible to place any emotion on his face that wasn’t blind rage.

“I heard you talking to Tony, OK? When I was taken to the medbay, she snapped back with double the fervor.

Loki sighed, counting backwards from ten. He was fond of the mutant and he didn’t want to frighten her by barking at her, as he would anyone else. "Despite what you might think, that doesn’t help explain anything.”

“You told Tony I was weak and didn’t belong in the field!” She shrieked, pushing her index finger into his chest. It hurt her more than it did him, but it was a matter of principle.

“No. I told him it was stupid to send you out to the field to somewhere you’d become weak. Foot-thick steel walls zap your energy and I warned him repeatedly about the repercussions. You got hurt because of it.”

Her anger sputtered and idled at the clarification. “You were looking out for me…?”

Loki laughed, a little mirthlessly. “Imagine that,” he replied, sarcastically. He reached out for her basket, carrying the snack-laden vessel himself to give his hands something to do as he marched stoically down the street. People seemed to sense his mood, as they all parted like the Red Sea for him, though they barely allowed her enough space to squeeze through. Glancing backwards, he caught her eye, slowing his pace considerably to allow her to catch up.

“But… you hate me.”

A little notch formed between his brows as he considered her closely. “When have I ever said that? You’re my friend. I don’t make friends with people I hate… Or people… Or make friends, in general, so you should count yourself very bloody lucky.”

Lily shuffled uncomfortably where she stood, and Loki could have sworn there was a flash of a shadow over features, but it was gone a moment after.

“Can we go back or are you going to stand here and glare at me some more?” He joked easily, gesturing down the street with his chin. The mood seemed to lighten, instantly. He didn’t pay her transient anger any mind.

Perhaps he should have.

The Tower was tense, to put it simply. Laughter, which was commonplace whenever the team was home, was nothing more than a distant memory. It seemed like every little noise and movement set off a chain reaction of unpleasantness from what was usually their most pleasant resident. No one had really expected this side effect. After all, when the mutant decided to tell Tony her secret after having worked for him for five years, she assured that she had it well under control. And it was. Her abilities were second nature at this point. Of course, the pressures of battle are something else, entirely, and little quirks popped up just as little quirks are wont to do.

And pop up, they did.

The first time it happened, the team had come back from mission somewhere in the South Pacific. They were all tired and sun-baked enough that if they never saw the great wide ocean ever again, it would be too soon. Heroes all piled into the kitchen with far too many containers of Chinese food, chatting in quiet hushed tones to give their raw throats and over-sensitive ears a chance to rest.

In the far end of the kitchen, Lily stood on her tip toes. Her small frame strained to reach a mug at the very top of the cabinet so she could make herself some tea. Steve, helpful and gentlemanly as ever, rested a hand on the small of her back to signal her that he was there. Reaching above her, he easily grasped the mug, offering her the handle with a dazzling smile.

Usually, she would beam up at the soldier and give his hand a squeeze. Today, her eyes narrowed dangerously. “What, do you think I can’t fucking get a mug now, Rogers?” She snapped, and the soft murmur of the room cut out immediately.

As if in slow motion, they whole team craned their necks over to where the pair stood. Steve had frozen in well-placed shock, mouth opening and closing to grasp for an appropriate apology that he couldn’t understand why he owed. Guilt flashed for but a second across Lily’s features before she cracked her neck awkwardly. Her veins, which would glow a bright green only when using her abilities, pulsed a sludgy brown. She had barely mumbled an apology before going off to hide in her bedroom.

That first encounter had been the mildest, by far.

No one had any idea how to remedy the situation. After all, Lily was usually such a bundle of bright, brilliant energy. She was the one who would always wake up to make breakfast for the group, leave them flowers, bake cookies when one of them seemed sad–she was not a dark, angry entity that yelled at her fellow teammates. Or snarled at anyone for entirely arbitrary reasons (that was Loki’s job, after all). The attitude usually waned after a few days and she’d be back to her bubbly self, which was all the more terrifying.

Right now, however, they were in a dark period.

“Are you truly using a children’s game as a selection tool for whom has to go disturb the plant witch from her self-imposed exile?” Loki asked, a little smugly as he happened upon Natasha and Tony playing Rock, Paper, Scissors to take Lily her new uniform. “You’re pathetic.”

“Don’t act like the sudden goth girl phase isn��t weird. I can tell she scares you,” Nat quipped, rolling her eyes.

Loki gave her a withering stare, looking smug as he circled her in a predatory manner that annoyed the hell out of her. “I fear no one and nothing, Miss Romanov.”

Tony snorted, before a glimmer in his eye sparked and left Loki looking weary. “OK, great. How about you go take this to her, then?” Tony held the bundle for Loki to take.

Loki chuckled, knowing full well the terror that the woman could inflict if provoked. “I said I feared nothing. I didn’t say I was suicidal.” He considered a little longer. “Well, not anymore, anyway.” Tony frowned, making a mental note to follow up at a later date.

“Come on! You two seem to be all buddy-buddy the rest of the time, anyway. Why don’t you just look in on her?”

The god rolled his eyes. “Has it ever occurred to you idiots that perhaps she’s protecting us and not herself when she locks herself away?”

“You are absolutely no help. Fine, Nat–” Tony turned around, sweeping his gaze left and right. “Nat? Where the hell did Nat go?” Frowning, he turned back around to glance at Loki and, instead, found himself alone. “Yeah! Great! Let's… er… regroup later! Good… talk…”

Loki sat at the kitchen table, poking at the, frankly disgusting, plate of eggs and bacon that Bruce had genuinely put all his effort into making for the crew. Glancing around the table, he found a sea of faces with the same sad expression. They all definitely longed for Lily’s pancakes and bacon breakfasts right about then. Loki was the only one who wasn’t even making an effort to be polite and put down some of the meal down his gullet. He had eaten some pretty grim things in his life, but he was not about to make that conscious decision when he wasn’t under any type of duress.

“It’s been two weeks, Tony,” Clint quipped, oddly undisturbed by the state of breakfast and munching full speed ahead. “She’s never been dark for this long.”

“I know. Is this you volunteering?”

“Last time I volunteered, I nearly got impaled on barbed thorns the size of my arm. I barely made it out without looking like Swiss cheese.”

“Barbs?” Loki asked, tilting his head curiously.

Clint nodded, eyes widening. “Yep. Big ones.”

Tony caught the whiff of an idea brewing in Loki’s mind. “Why? What are you thinking, Reindeer Games?”

Loki frowned, waving off the interest. “Nothing. Making a rather satisfying image in my head,” he replied, earning him a dark look from Clint and an annoyed sigh from the rest of the table. It wouldn’t do well to get their hopes up, after all.

After breakfast, Loki found himself pacing the corridor of their living quarters. Lily was only a few doors down and had not seen much of anyone in the whole two weeks since they had gotten back from mission. His brain continually told him that there was nothing he could do, no way for him to remedy this situation. That whatever this state of being was, he would only make it worse. It was better if he just went back to his room and waited for her to seek him out.

And yet, there was a small little voice in the back of his mind, his conscience, he would begrudgingly admit, that urged him to knock on her door.

She would go to the ends of the earth for you, if you needed it, it soothed.

The thought sparked images of the annoyingly sweet woman keeping his handful of secrets and being genuinely interested in his life. He could admit that his conscience was speaking the truth, but only because he knew the imp had little in the way of common sense and self-preservation. This was not the creature hissing at them all from across the threshold, though. And, why would he willingly put himself in the line of fire?

Out of the corner of his eye, a figure caught his attention. A vase of flowers on the windowsill, one of her creations. They were no longer the fresh white daisies they had been when they were placed there. Now they looked like some sort of Nightshade and he was certain they were not the nice kind.

“Oh, you fucking bleeding heart,” he ground out with a groan just as his conscience won out. Without allowing himself time to think or change his mind, he pounded his fist on her door. “Open up or I’ll break it down, Lilian.”

“Fuck off, popsicle!” Her voice was rough and shuddering, like she was trying very hard to keep everything out–or herself in.

Loki swallowed at the venomous retort that brewed at the tip of his tongue on its own accord. Being the bigger person was never quite his forte (nor did it ever get him good results), but he was able to reign himself back in. Rolling his eyes, Loki placed his hand on the door, letting the golden glow of magic envelop it before a satisfactory click let him know that it was open. He had barely crossed the threshold when he jumped back with a yelp.

On the floor, where flowers usually formed a dense, soft carpet, were twisting brambles and thorns. Flytraps and pitcher plants lined the walls, all too large to be considered just houseplants, and blooms burst open, letting out plumes of pollen that Loki dared not to breathe.

This was definitely worse than what he was expecting.

His eyes tore away from the dark forest with a little effort. “Lily,” he tutted softly, watching the woman tucked into a tight ball, tears leaking from her tightly lidded eyes.

It should have been obvious to him. Every living creature had a defense mechanism. Predators had their teeth, prey had their speed, and plants had adapted in similar fashion. Thorns, barbs, poison, giant vats of acid–they had made sure that their lineages survived. It stood to reason that Lily’s mutation, tired of the fighting and the constant worry of missions would also develop some dark effect. Since she wasn’t allowing herself to be dry and acerbic to her friends, her biology had found an alternate solution.

He should have thought of it before.

“Gods, how much pain are you in?” He asked, kneeling beside her on the bed. He ignored the spines digging into his trousers from where he walked through some cacti. There was no response, but rather a whimper and a sigh. “Flower, look at me.”

“Leave me alone, you self-aggrandizing asshole,” she growled, not bothering to open her eyes.

The corner of his mouth twitched, even as he pushed her hair out of her scowling face. It had gone from a bright silver to a dark, smoky grey. “You forgot self-serving and maddeningly good looking.”

“You’re not funny.”

“Agree to disagree.” At his touch her skin erupted in prickers as though they were goosebumps. He swallowed the hiss at getting his fingers skewered, blood pooling at the tips.

Lily’s fists flew in his direction, though he easily caught them in one hand. This time the groan of pain wasn’t silent and blood trickled down his wrists from his palms. “Stop it! Don’t touch me! FRIDAY, he’s hurting me!”

“Disregard that, FRIDAY. Lily, I swear–” She struggled in his grasp, eyes opening and flashing pitch black at him. He was shocked enough that he released her wrists. Her nails grew into sharp wooden talons and just as she reared back to swipe at him, Loki had enough sense to lay his hand on her temple and command, “Sleep.” Her body stiffened and slumped down a second later. “That bloody stings,” he complained, letting her rest back on the bed and bringing the covers over her oddly cool skin.

Loki couldn’t help but compulsively stroke his fingers through her hair, eyebrows pulled together in concern. For all his knowledge of magic and aliens and different realms, he could not figure out for the life of him how to soothe the poison threatening to consume her. In her slumber, she whimpered, shuffling closer to the gentle heat that radiated off of him in waves. Loki convinced himself that he was allowed to dote on her, so long as she wasn’t conscious to remember it. The sludgy brown lines going up and down her exposed skin lightened somewhat under his careful evaluation. Enough that he did not feel threatened when he tapped at her temple and took the sleeping spell off.

He offered a small smile when her eyes blinked up at him in confusion. They were back to their normal baby blue, though her hair still resembled plumes of smoke. “Easy,” he whispered as she jerked away from his touch, all at once. Instead of a hiss or an insult, she frowned, settling back to rest against the pillows, body barely brushing against his. “You’re safe.”

Lily nodded, breathing deeply. This time she didn’t hesitate when he brushed his fingers over her hair. “What are you doing?”

“Tending the garden.”

She rolled her eyes, exasperated. “I’m not a garden.”

“Yeah, you are. A few brambles and prickles here and there. Nothing a good prune and a hug won’t fix.” He used his index finger to lift her chin, having essentially buried herself into one of her pillows, cheeks burning. “You don’t have to keep us safe, flower. Sometimes, you’ll need to vent all that ill will and it is not up to you to avoid that.”

“Says the frost giant masquerading as an Asgardian.”

Loki let out a bark of laughter. “I think I liked you more unconscious.” Sadness flashed through her features, eyes downcast. “I was joking. You know I was.”

Lily nodded and the two fell into a tense silence for a long while. The mutant had sat up, fidgeting with her hands on her lap while Loki watched her, expectantly. He wouldn’t press her, of course, but he could tell that there was something on her mind that she wanted to get out in the open. When she didn’t say anything, he simply placed his hand over hers and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“I’m scared,” she blurted out.

“Well, you’re very scary so that makes sense.” The look she gave him told him that was not the answer she wanted and before she could look even more dejected, he added. “And that’s good. You’re powerful. You should be scary. Scary keeps you safe. Fear is a great motivator.”

Loki was starting to panic. It didn’t seem like any of what he was saying was helping her, though it was possibly the most honest and candid he had ever been. If anything, the quickly gathering tears in her eyes told him that he was making it leaps and bounds worse. Shouldn’t she be ecstatic that she could make anyone bend to their will by looking a little ominous? She certainly had the whole of the Avengers acting like she was some sort of displeased deity.

Except she wasn’t. She was gentle and giving and cared. It was becoming very apparent that this was her own personal hell.

“I don’t fear you,” he muttered, brushing hair away from her face. This time there were no barbs to prick him. “And honestly, the rest of these idiots don’t, either. They’re just worried for you.”

“I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Maybe because there’s nothing to fix. I’m guessing that with a little training you can learn to use… whatever the hell this is to your advantage.” His mouth twitched in a small smile. “Sometimes you must learn to embrace the darkness, dear.”

Lily was quiet for another long while, picking at her nails while she thought hard. “Loki?”

“Yes, pet?”

“Can I have a hug if I promise not to tell anyone?”

Loki barked out a laugh, pulling Lily into his arms and squeezing her tightly. “I don’t give a shit if you tell anyone. They probably won’t believe you, anyway,” he murmured into her hair, noting the soot-like material that clung to his fingers as he stroked her hair, turning it back to silver. “Don’t suppose you know if this is dangerous or not?” Lily shook her head against his chest. “Of course you don’t. Why would you?” The mutant giggled against him when he squeezed her a little tighter.

“Loki?” The Prince hummed his recognition against her crown. “Thank you for being a good friend.”

It took Loki supreme effort to blink away the tears that for some reason had sparked to his eyes, unbidden, at the sentiment. “It is my distinct honor, flower.” Comfortable silence filled the room for a moment longer. “I also couldn’t take Bruce’s cooking for another day.”

Lily scoffed, pushing away from his chest with a glare. “Why? Why do you ruin it?”

“Have you met me? Come on!”

“I hate you. Next time I’m poisoning you,” she whined, pulling Loki after her.

“Where are we going?”

“I can tell you haven’t eaten because you’re a child. We’re going to the kitchen.”

Loki grinned, following dutifully after her, as if the imp had any physical means to drag him anywhere. “Do I get pancakes?”

“No!”

“Please?”

“…fine.”

#Loki #Angst #Others #Submitted one shot #submission #Toxic #Fanfictrashdump

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primroseprime2019 · 3 years

Text

Con Job

"Alright! Chores are done! Now can we do some dune-bashing?!" Miko pleaded Bulkhead from her position on his shoulder as he walked into the command centre.

"I don't know, Miko. Last time, I spent a week picking sand out of my articulators. But there's a monster-truck rally in town," Bulkhead offered, causing Miko to light up.

"What is it with you and monster-truck rallies?" Paige asked as she leaned into Optimus, resting on his shoulder.

"They're awesome!" Miko answered casually.

"Optimus! I'm receiving a signal from a restricted band! It appears to be coming from a starship within the solar system," Ratchet reported, "It's an Autobot identification beacon!"

"So there are other bots out there?" Jack surmised.

"The masses scattered to the galaxy after Cybertron finally went dark. But 'Cons have been known to fake traps with false beacons," Arcee pointed out. Paige looked down at the mention of Cybertron but she was hiding her sadness at the fact that she was most likely the last Galatrian in the world.

And it hurt. Optimus, almost as if he sensed her sadness, gently brushed the girl's back with his digit before he looked back at the screens.

"Unknown vessel, this is Autobot Outpost Omega One. Identify yourself."

After some static, they got the answer they were looking for. And it made Bulkhead happy.

"I've had warmer welcomes from Decepticon combat grenades!"

"Wheeljack?!" Bulkhead exclaimed excitedly as he ran forward, causing Miko to nearly fall off his shoulder, "You old 'Con crusher! What are you doing all the way out here?!"

"Bulkhead? That you? What's with all the security?"

"The rock we're on is crawling with 'Cons. How soon can you get here and even the odds?" Bulkhead asked.

"Sometime tomorrow...if I put metal to the pedal."

"Another bot's coming here! How cool is that?!" Miko gushed excitedly.

"Wheeljack... I know him by reputation only. Can you verify his voiceprint?" Optimus asked.

"He is 1000% the real deal, Optimus," Bulkhead nodded.

"Aw, y'all wouldn't forget about us so easily, would ya?" A mech's voice asked playfully. Arcee widened her optics in surprise, "Jazz?"

"Us?" Jack repeated curiously. "I'm here with Jazz and Wheeljack," Prowl chuckled.

"Don't leave us out, ya old mech," another voice said and Primrose widened her optics with joy and surprise.

"WhiteRain, Nightwalker!" She said excitedly. "Hiya Prim," the other femme said.

"Hey, Rosie," Nightwalker said excitedly.

"New bots! And they sound cool!" Paige said happily. Upon hearing that, Optimus and Ratchet softly glared at the girl.

"You're all cool too," Paige said quickly with a smile and the others chuckled. "Whatever you say, Sweetspark," Ratchet chuckled.

"Who's the little lady?" Jazz asked. "You'll see her soon," Ratchet chuckled.

"We will send landing coordinates, Wheeljack. Safe journey," Optimus bidded.

"See you soon, buddy. I'll make sure you get a proper welcome," Bulkhead promised before the transmission was terminated.

"So...who's the boyfriend?" Arcee asked casually.

"Me and Jacky go way back. We were part of the same warrior unit: The Wreckers. Which means the 'Cons are gonna wish he never found us," Bulkhead proclaimed.

"Oh boy," Primrose grimaced as she facepalmed dramatically, "And I thought we had enough male ego around here!"

"Try living with them for as long as I have," Arcee retorted with a smirk.

"I don't know how you survive," Primrose chuckled.

"Hey!" Bulkhead exclaimed in mock offence.

◊◊◊◊

"Wheeljack? You old 'Con Crusher! What are you doing all the way out here?"

"Bulkhead? That you? What's will all the security?"

"The rock we're on is crawling with 'Cons. How soon can you get here and even the odds?"

"A war hero, hmmm?" Ember pondered aloud.

"We haven't much time. Makeshift!" Starscream called out.

Makeshift approached the three Decepticons. As soon as Makeshift was close enough, Soundwave stuck out his clawed tentacle and stabbed Makeshift. Within moments, Makeshift wasn't himself anymore.

"Let us give the Autobots a proper welcome," Ember said with a soft yet dark chuckle.

◊◊◊◊

"Wheeljack's ship is approaching the landing zone," Arcee reported happily.

"You think he's here to visit?" Raf asked.

"Maybe he'll stay! Hm, has to find his own human, though," Miko mused, "How about Paige?"

"No!" Bulkhead, Primrose and Arcee protested and Bumblebee glanced at Optimus who's shoulders tensed up with protectiveness upon hearing Miko.

"GroundBridge cycling up," Ratchet reported proudly, before sparks flew from the controls, causing him to grumble as he whacked it with his fist, "Blasted Scraplets! The equipment hasn't been the same since the infestation." "What are they like?" Paige asked, looking to Primrose, "the new bots, I mean."

"Jazz and Prowl are complete opposites of each other," Primrose chuckled, "Jazz is a bit of a musical delight while Prowl is a little by-the-book. WhiteRain is sassy and creative although her personality says different and Nightwalker's just a cowboy- rowdy and rambunctious."

"Him, Cliff and I would get into all kinds of mischief," Arcee chuckled. Paige smiled softly and she leaned into Arcee's neck cables.

"So Wheeljack's gonna land halfway around the world?" Jack began, "and then you'll just bridge him and the others here?"

"We can't risk revealing the location of our base. Just in case the Decepticons are tracking Wheeljack's ship," Optimus explained the reasoning behind this action.

"Someone wanna calm Bulkhead's pacing?" Primrose asked as she gestured to the pacing Bulkhead.

"Allow me," Miko smirked before approaching the railing, "Dude! I've never seen you so stoked!"

"You're gonna love Wheeljack! We were like brothers! And tonight, we're gonna party!" Bulkhead proclaimed.

"Sweet!" Miko cheered. The alarms went off.

"Bogies! Closing fast on Wheeljack's position!" Arcee reported.

"'Con scum!" Bulkhead exclaimed in anger.

◊◊◊◊

Wheeljack's ship, the Jackhammer, flew through the air, being tailed by five Decepticons who shot at the Autobot ship.

The Jackhammer dodged every shot except one. A blaster shot hit the engine and the ship made a huge dent in the desert as it crashed and skidded for a few feet.

The Vehicons landed and transformed into their bipedal forms. One of them took a step forward only to be met with a blaster to the chestplates and it fell to the ground.

WhiteRain, Nightwalker, Jazz, Prowl and Wheeljack stepped out of the smoke. Nightwalker's blaster was out and smoking.

"You trying to ruin our day, you're gonna have to try harder than that," Wheeljack said before he activated his battle mask and the five Autobots charged at the Vehicons, drawing their weapons.

◊◊◊◊

Echo watched the scene on the screen, her wings twitching slightly. Ember turned to Soundwave, "swiftly now. Before the other Autobots arrive."

Soundwave only nodded in response.

◊◊◊◊

"Open the bridge, Ratchet! We're missing all the action!" Bulkhead pointed out.

"I'll prepare sick bay," Ratchet decided as he activated the bridge.

"Who for? The 'Cons? This is Wheeljack we're talking about!" Bulkhead scoffed in disbelief before running into the portal with Arcee and Bumblebee following him.

"Why do I get the feeling that something bad is about to happen?" Primrose suddenly asked.

"Prim, you worry way too much," Firestorm teased her affectionately.

"I can't help it, Fire. It runs in the family!" Primrose defended as she jerked her helm in Optimus' direction.

"I heard that," Optimus called out from the other side of the room.

"You were meant to!" Primrose called back. "It's strange that Bulkhead only talks of Wheeljack and not of the other bots," Paige said, tilting her head slightly.

"Well Bulkhead and Wheeljack have known each other since the War began," Ratchet said, "trust me, imagine how their reunion will look."

◊◊◊◊

When Arcee, Bulkhead and Bumblebee arrived at the scene, they were expecting a fight. They were expecting to be attacked by the Decepticons. So they had their blasters ready to go. However, there was no need. Surrounding them were dismantled Decepticon warriors. Bulkhead could only stand and watch in pure amazement as Wheeljack ran his blade through the remaining Decepticon and he fell to the ground.

"I taught him that," Bulkhead chuckled proudly.

"Ever think we might need a hand here?" Nightwalker asked as he sheathed his blades and he and the others approached the three Autobots.

"What? And spoil the show?" Bulkhead scoffed.

"You missed one," Arcee said, placing her servo on her hip. WhiteRain unlocked her blaster and shot the remaining Vehicon right in the faceplates, taking care of it quickly.

"If this is all you got, then this planet is in much bigger trouble than I thought," Wheeljack remarked. Bulkhead widened his optics before he hurried up to the other two Wreckers and picked them up into a hug, laughing with joy.

Nightwalker chuckled as he and Arcee clapped servos together and patted each other's backs.

Jazz smiled as he rubbed Bumblebee's helm and Prowl chuckled. Arcee grinned as she watched the two Wreckers.

"Haha, watch the finish, you old wrecking ball," WhiteRain chuckled.

◊◊◊◊

The ground bridge opened and the Autobots ran into the base. Ratchet jumped slightly when the controls sparked and so did the ground bridge.

"Jacky, Rain, come here. Meet my other best buddy, Miko. She can wreck with the best of us," Bulkhead boasted.

"Hiya," Miko greeted.

"You keeping Bulkhead out of trouble?" WhiteRain asked as she leaned in closer.

"I try. But trouble finds us anyway," Miko answered. "More like you find trouble," Primrose chuckled as she hugged Nightwalker and WhiteRain.

"We're gonna get along just fine," Wheeljack chuckled and he walked up to Optimus, "Optimus Prime. It's a privilege."

"Likewise, soldier," Optimus said, "What have you to report from your long journey?"

"Been bouncing from rock to rock searching for signs of friend or foe. Now I find both," Wheeljack shrugged casually.

"We are few but strong. We have suffered losses. But we have grown. And we would relish welcoming a new member into our fold," Optimus said.

"I would be honored," Wheeljack smiled.

"Then let's get this party started!" Bulkhead cheered as he slapped Wheeljack's back and they bumped chests.

"Oh joy," Ratchet said sarcastically with a frown. Jazz looked around before he saw Paige hiding behind Arcee's pede.

Jazz smiled softly and he bent down on one knee and held his servo out. "C'mon out, Lil Lady. I won't hurt ya."

Paige looked up at Arcee who gave a reassuring nod and the girl walked over to Jazz before she climbed into his servo.

"You're a Galatrian," Prowl said, blinking in surprise, "I've heard of you but I didn't think there'd be one on Earth of all places." "She's so cute and tiny," WhiteRain said with a giggle.

Paige blushed and she waved her fist at the other femme, "I'm not tiny!" "Fiesty little thing," Nightwalker snickered.

◊◊◊◊

"The moment Makeshift passed through their GroundBridge, we lost their signal," Starscream announced, "the Autobot base is no doubt heavilly shielded to prevent us from locating it. No matter. I have complete faith in Makeshift," Starscream reassured himself as he and Soundwave walked into a prison cell with Wheeljack- the real one- hanging from energy-suspended shackles.

"Our inside man is already inside," Starscream said. Wheeljack looked at the two Decepticons with narrowed optics, "tell Megatron he's fragged in the helm if he thinks Bulkhead won't sniff out an imposter."

"Haven't you heard? Someone else leads the Decepticons now," Starscream said, a hint of bitterness in his tone.

"You? Ha!" Wheeljack scoffed with laughter. Starscream growled and raised his claws to strike the Autobot only for Soundwave to grab him by the wrist.

"Yes," Starscream hissed and he yanked his servo away, "yes he may be yet of use," he looked back at Wheeljack, "Makeshift is very good at keeping up appearances. He need only fool your friends long enough to open their ground bridge from within so that I may finally learn the location of the Autobot base and send in my strike team to stain its floor with the spilled energon of Optimus Prime."

◊◊◊◊

Loud electric guitar music filled the atrium as Miko played for the group, dancing a bit as she did. Paige and Raf sat nearby listening.

"Come on, Wheeljack! Show me what you got!" Bulkhead challenged as he caught the metal ball and threw it back, "Nice lob!"

"So...what's that about?" Jack asked.

"It's called lobbing. A favourite pass-time on Cybertron. Especially among the warrior class," Arcee clarified.

"Come on, Raf! Show us some moves!" Miko encouraged as the familiar beats filled the room.

"Oh, alright...," Raf sighed as he stood up...and did the robot.

"Of course. The robot," Jack laughed. Paige laughed as Bumblebee copied Raf.

"Oh the irony," Nightwalker laughed before he decided to join the two.

Paige watched Miko play her guitar and she walked away. "Hey Paige, can you sing something for us?" Miko asked, a smug grin on her face, "I'm sure Wheeljack would love to hear your voice for the first time."

Paige felt her cheeks warm up as everyone looked at her, even Ratchet. "U-um," Paige said and she glared at Miko, "you are so dead."

Miko stuck her tongue out at her. Paige sighed before she placed her phone on the amp and plugged it in.

"Said there's nothing that we can't do when we're dancing," Paige sang, "I can feel the music more when I'm with you. With your hands on me, I feel my heartbeat racing. Now."

"Had to let go of everything that I know," She continued, swinging her hips a little, "before, -ore, -ore. One, two, three, yeah, come with me. We can work it differently. One, two, three, and dance with me tonight! And maybe all our dreams are coming true. And, baby, I can feel you feel it too. So just let me move you. One, two, three, yeah, come with me. We can work it differently! Said one, two, three, and dance with me tonight. And maybe all our dreams are coming true and, baby, I can feel you feel it too. So just let me move you! Let me move you!"

"Yeah, little faster, little slower, it don't matter. 'Cause I never knew myself this good till now. And I hope you know this change in me forever. Forever," she did a little twirl, "had to let go of everything that I know. Before, -ore, -ore! One, two, three, yeah, come with me. We can work it differently. One, two, three, and dance with me tonight! And maybe all our dreams are coming true. And, baby, I can feel you feel it too. So just let me move you. One, two, three, yeah, come with me. We can work it differently! Said one, two, three, and dance with me tonight. And maybe all our dreams are coming true and, baby, I can feel you feel it too. So just let me move you! One, two, three, yeah, come with me. We can work it differently! Said one, two, three, and dance with me tonight. And maybe all our dreams are coming true and, baby, I can feel you feel it too. So just let me move you! Let me move you!"

She wasn't even aware Ratchet was staring at her with astonishment and the sudden applause startled her. She smiled sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck as her cheeks turned red.

"You weren't kidding. She has an amazing voice," Jazz said, his visor glowing with delight. "I agree," Prowl chuckled.

Paige blushed more and squeaked in surprise when Ratchet scooped her up into his servo. Jack smiled and shook his head with amusement. "Where's Optimus?" He asked Arcee, suddenly noticing the absence of the Prime.

"Went for a drive. Primes don't party," Arcee answered with a smirk. "But I'll be sure to show him this when he gets back," WhiteRain said with a grin.

"Comin' at ya!" Bulkhead warned as he threw the lob ball...that Wheeljack missed and it smashed into the GroundBridge controls.

"You know, I am attempting to perform sensitive calibrations here!" Ratchet snapped, "and you almost hurt Paige!"

"Sorry, Doc. Guess we're a little charged up," Wheeljack apologized as he picked up the ball and he gently patted Paige's head with a digit, "sorry, Kit. You built this bridge from scratch, huh?"

"I did," Ratchet nodded.

"That's quite a feat of engineering," Wheeljack complimented.

"Yes. It is," Ratchet agreed.

"Something wrong with it?" Wheeljack asked casually.

"I didn't care for the way it sounded after that last jump. I put it in shutdown," Ratchet answered.

"What if you need to use it?" Wheeljack wanted to know.

"Oh, I can't disrupt the defrag process without causing irreparable damage," Ratchet shook his head.

"So...how long will the defrag take?" Wheeljack questioned, his expression darkening.

"A few hours...if we're lucky. Maybe longer," Ratchet shrugged. Paige watched Wheeljack, frowning. Something was off about the Wrecker and his aurora only fed her suspicions.

After a while, the party ended and switched to that of Bulkhead and Wheeljack telling everyone, minus Ratchet, their stories of the war.

"So there we were. No communication. Low on Energon. Surrounded by 'Cons. So what does Wheeljack do?" Bulkhead asked teasingly, noticing the excitement on the faces of Jack, Paige, Miko and Raf, "Tell them, Jackie."

"What I do best," Wheeljack said.

"He chucks his only grenade smack in the primary heat exchanger!" Bulkhead revealed.

"Seemed like a good idea at the time!" Wheeljack defended his actions with a good-natured laugh.

"The joint went SUPERNOVA!" Bulkhead recalled, spreading his servos to prove his point.

"Awesome!" Miko gasped excitedly.

"Yeah. I'm still picking shrapnel out of my backside!" Bulkhead said as he rubbed at his backside in demonstration.

"I'm not surprised given the size of your backside," Arcee smirked and Nightwalker and Bumblebee snickered.

"There it is. Jackie's signature. One grenade. One shot," Bulkhead finished the story before noticing the expression on Wheeljack's face, "Hey. You alright?"

"What?" Wheeljack stuttered.

"You don't seem like yourself," Bulkhead observed.

"What do you mean?" Wheeljack demanded.

"I don't know. You seem...quiet," Bulkhead said. "I've been stuck in a can too long. I should go topside before things go stir crazy," Wheeljack shrugged.

"I have patrol in the morning. You can come with," Bulkhead offered.

"Let's go now," Wheeljack suggested as he immediately stood up, causing Paige's suspicions over the guy's strange behavior to rise.

"And break up the party?" Bulkhead protested, "Come on! The gang's loving you! You've gotta tell them about the Battle of Dark Mount Pass!"

"You tell them. You're better at it. How about if Miko here shows me the rest of your base?" Wheeljack offered.

"Yeah. Sure, Jacky. Go ahead," Bulkhead agreed hesitantly.

"Tour starts now," Miko declared as she and Wheeljack disappeared into the hallways, "Do you play any instruments? Can you fly? Have you thrashed more Decepticons than Bulkhead?"

"Typical Miko," Primrose couldn't help but mutter, before noticing Bulkhead's forlorn expression, "Hey. You alright, Bulk?"

"Yeah. Just out of sorts I guess, Prim," Bulkhead muttered. "Don't tell me you're jealous," Arcee teased with a slight smirk amongst the concern in her optics.

"That Miko's making a new friend?! Come on! Something...something's just not right about Wheeljack," Bulkhead said.

"Bulkhead, really?" Arcee sighed, thinking that Bulkhead was just overreacting, "He's travelled for galaxies. You haven't seen him in centuries. He could just be rocket lagged or...well, bots do change, you know?"

"Not Jacky," Bulkhead protested. Firestorm and WhiteRain looked at each other.

◊◊◊◊

Inside his prison, Wheeljack strugged against the confindments. His grunts of determination and occasional frustration were heard by the Decepticon guarding him. It annoyed the Vehicon to wit's end. Eventually, he had enough. He walked up to Wheeljack with his blaster unfolded from his arm and held it to his face.

"You're not going anywhere, Autobot," he proclaimed.

That was when Wheeljack took his only chance. He wrapped his legs around the Decepticon's neck. Immediately, the Decepticon struggled against his tight grip and started shooting laser blasts from his blaster.

"Blah blah blah," Wheeljack grumbled as he guided the Decepticon's target with his legs.

Within moments, Wheeljack managed to make the Decepticon shoot the control panel that kept the restraints that were restricting him active. With the control panel destroyed, Wheeljack was able to free himself. He fell to the ground when the sparks died and the cuffs shattered.

◊◊◊◊

"So, that's pretty much it. Energon stock pile, powerboard generator, armory; everything you need to blow the joint sky high," Miko remarked as she wrapped up her tour with Wheeljack.

"Where's this bunker located exactly?" Wheeljack wanted to know curiously.

"If I told ya, I'd have to rip out your spark chamber," Miko answered dangerously before a happy smile appeared, "Kidding! Just outside Jasper, Nevada! Though I don't expect that to mean too much to ya!"

"Can't say it does," Wheeljack lied, "So, any way out of here besides bridging?"

"Why? You're not planning to leave already, are you?" Miko asked nervously, "Come on. I'll show ya."

◊◊◊◊

"Almost there," Ratchet proclaimed as he continued working the damaged GroundBridge controls.

"Look. I know Wheeljack better than anyone," Bulkhead boasted.

"Hey," Wheeljack said as he walked into the room with Miko, "What are you guys talking about?"

"I was just telling the guys about you and me...at the Battle of Dark Mount Pass," Bulkhead answered casually.

"That's a heck of a story," Wheeljack remarked.

"Yeah. Tell it," Bulkhead requested with narrowed optics.

"Talk, talk, talk. How about after we go off-roading?" Miko suggested.

"Miko, stay out of this," Bulkhead warned. "Bulkhead, easy," WhiteRain soothed.

"I'm not sure I-," Wheeljack began to protest.

"Tell it!" Bulkhead persisted.

"Fine. If you wanna live in the past, Bulkhead," Wheeljack shrugged casually, "The Wreckers were trapped between a Decepticon patrol and a smelting pit. The 'Cons were vicious. Raining down on us with everything they had. Me and Bulkhead engaged the enemy. Left them for scrap. Then I made us a way out using their backsides as stepping stones to cross the molten metal. Isn't that how it happened?"

"Yeah. That's exactly how it happened...except for one little thing. I wasn't there," Bulkhead revealed, causing everyone to stare at the two of them in pure alarm.

"I'd already left the Wreckers to join up with Optimus. But you would know that if all you did was access Wheeljack's public service record," Bulkhead said as he poked Makeshift's chest, challenging the Decepticon.

"Bulkhead, what does that have to do with-WHOA!" Miko screamed as Makeshift picked her up suddenly.

"Miko!" Nightwalker and Bulkhead shouted as Makeshift stood near the ground bridge.

"Stay back. Or I'll squeeze her into pulp," he growled, holding Miko in a firm grip.

"Wheeljack! What are you doing?!" Miko exclaimed. "Decepticon coward," Bulkhead growled, "let the girl go and face me!"

"Don't fret," Makeshift said, "plenty of fighting to come."

"Is there a real Wheeljack!?" Jack demanded. "Oh indeed," Makeshift said with a smirk, "and I'm sure Mistress Ember is making sport of him." Primrose froze and her optics widened.

"You Pit-Spawned fragger!" Nightwalker snarled.

◊◊◊◊

"Are you certain we are at the coordinates we supplied to Makeshift?" Starscream asked Soundwave, which earned him a nod in response.

"Then what is taking him!?" The other Seeker snapped with impatience.

"Maybe they gave your boy such a hero's welcome, he got the warm and fuzzies and decided to switch sides." Starscream whirled around to see Wheeljack walking towards them, his optics blazing with bridled fury and his battle mask on.

"Do you not see you are vastly outnumbered?" Starscream taunted.

"I see fellas who might vastly enjoy me pound some dents into you," Wheeljack growled.

"Destroy him!" Starscream commanded and the Vehicons shot at Wheeljack who took out his katanas and charged at the Vehicons.

◊◊◊◊

"About time," Makeshift huffed as he activated the ground bridge. "You won't get away with this!" Primrose snarled.

"I already have," Makeshift remarked with a smirk.

◊◊◊◊

Wheeljack was having an easy fight with the Vehicons. And he was getting too close to Starscream. Said Seeker fired a missile at Wheeljack. The force of the explosion was enough to knock the Wrecker back but he managed to land on his pedes, slicing and dicing any Vehicon who tried to attack him. That was when Wheeljack jumped onto Starscream, putting the Seeker down for the count.

Wheeljack heard the sound of the ground bridge opening and he turned towards it. "Well, well," he murmured as a plan formed in his mind.

◊◊◊◊

Makeshift stepped back towards the ground bridge with Miko still struggling in his grip. "Let's get this party started," he said with a dangerous grin.

Wheeljack suddenly jumped into the base and kicked Makeshift hard. Miko flew across the air and Bulkhead quickly caught his charge. Makeshift hit the wall and was unconscious for a few moments.

"I'd shut that hole before the stink comes through," Wheeljack remarked. "Couldn't have said it better myself," Nightwalker said.

◊◊◊◊

Starscream coughed as he got up. Energon trailed down his jaw and he looked towards the ground bridge with wide, angry optics. "Enter the ground bridge now!" He shouted.

The Vehicons hurried towards the ground bridge only for it to close. Starscream let out a yell of anger.

◊◊◊◊

Makeshift took out his blades and he and Wheeljack circled each other. Bulkhead stepped forward, but Wheeljack stopped him. "Ugly's mine," he said.

That was when the fight began. The two went at each other. Swords clashed and sparks flew. Everyone watched, ready to intervene if needed.

Paige pulled Raf close to her in a sisterly fashion and Raf clung to her. "Which one's the real Wheeljack?" He asked.

"I lost track!" Miko exclaimed. "The one with the bright grey aurora," Paige said. Jack looked to her in confusion.

Makeshift slashed at one of Wheeljack's swords and charged at him. Wheeljack managed to claim one of the Decepticon's swords, using them both to knock him to the ground. He won.

"That's my Jacky," Bulkhead boasted proudly. Wheeljack deactivated his battle mask and looked to Ratchet, "you, hit the switch."

Ratchet nodded in response and turned to activate the ground bridge. "It's time to take out the trash," Wheeljack said and he smiled at Bulkhead, "all yours, buddy."

◊◊◊◊

The ground bridge appeared before the Decepticons once again. The Vehicons backed away for a moment.

"What are you waiting for?! GO!" Starscream shouted. The first few Vehicons quickly ran into the ground bridge.

Bulkhead held Makeshift's defeated form in his servos before he spun around and threw the Con right into the ground bridge. The first few Decepticons saw Makeshift hurling at them and they quickly turned tail and ran.

Starscream saw them and before he could even reprimand them, Makeshift slammed into him and the two fell to the ground.

Wheeljack smiled at Bulkhead, "nice lob."

◊◊◊◊

At the Decepticon warship, the Autobot ground bridge closed. Starscream got up and glared at Makeshift, "please tell me that you at least learned the location of their base."

"Indeed Commander Starscream. It is in a hidden bunker just outside of-" Makeshift's explanation was cut off by the familiar beeping sound. Starscream glanced at the bomb that was attached to Makeshift's hip.

"Whoa! Back! Back! Back!" He exclaimed as he hurried away. Makeshift stood where he was and he looked down at the bomb on his hip. "Oh no," he murmured before the bomb exploded, eliminating him and any Decepticon who stood too close.

"MAKESHIFT! YOU FOOL!" Starscream shouted in anger as he and Soundwave flew away.

In the control bridge, Ember and Echo stood in the control bridge. Ember frowned as she felt the ship rock from the explosion. "Starscream better not have ruined this ship," she muttered.

◊◊◊◊

In the Autobot base, things had returned to normal. Miko was playing her guitar while Bumblebee, Nightwalker, Jazz Jack and Raf were dancing. Paige hadn't joined them as she was leaning on the railing, watching them with a smile.

Ratchet groaned in annoyance, "it's like a recurring nightmare." WhiteRain and Prowl chuckled softly.

"Now that you're part of Team Prime, we need to pick out a vehicle mode for you," Bulkhead said, gently bumping Wheeljack's arm, "I have some ideas."

"Uh... about that, Bulk," Wheeljack said hesitantly, "now that my ship's repaired, I'm itching to know what else I might find out there."

"Wait! You're leaving? Why!?" Miko pouted. "Well... because some bots never change," Bulkhead said with a soft chuckle. Wheeljack smiled softly.

"Wheeljack, know that you will always have a haven here," Optimus said.

"Jacky never stays but he always comes back," Bulkhead said proudly and he and Wheeljack did a fist bump. "Feels like you just got here, Sparrow," Paige said with a playful smile.

Wheeljack chuckled and gently ruffled her hair, "yeah, well I'll be sure to let you know if I find any more Magic Users out in the galaxy, Kit." Paige smiled softly and she hugged his digit, "thank you, Jackie. That... that means a lot."

"Anytime Paige," Wheeljack said with a soft smile. "We'll see you off," Firestorm said with a soft smile.

◊◊◊◊

In the desert, the ground bridge closed up. Wheeljack turned to Bulkhead, "there's room for two Bulk. Even with a backside like yours. Who knows what we might find out there? Some of the old crew?"

Bulkhead furrowed his optic ridges and he glanced at Miko who looked down sadly. The wrecker looked back at his friend, "sounds like fun, Jacky. But my ties are here now. With them. With her." Upon hearing that, Miko smiled up at her guardian.

Wheeljack gave a respectful nod to his friend and he looked to Miko. "Anything happens to my favorite wrecker, I'm comin' after you," he threatened playfully.

"I'll take good care of him," Miko said reassuringly with a smile and she pulled out her phone, "now say cheese." With that, she took a picture of the two Wreckers.

Bulkhead and Primrose looked to Wheeljack. "WhiteRain," Bulkhead said, a spark of hope igniting in his optics.

"I'm here to stay, sweetspark," WhiteRain said and she kissed Bulkhead on the cheek. "And if I find any wreckers, I'll be the first to let you know," Wheeljack promised. "What's special between you and WhiteRain?" Miko asked curiously.

"She and Bulkhead are boyfriend and girlfriend," Primrose, Firestorm, Nightwalker and Arcee chorused. "Aw," Paige said with a smile as Bulkhead and WhiteRain blushed and Wheeljack chuckled.

The white Wrecker shook his helm with a smile before he saluted everyone and went into the Jackhammer. The door closed and the Jackhammer flew up into the air, disappearing through the clouds.

#transformers prime #fanfiction #my ocs #self insert #the girl among the gods

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deepeststarfishsong · 4 years

Text

Bet

Written for @helianthus21, @pray4jensen, & @bend-me-shape-me‘s #SPNStayAtHomeChallenge 27/04 Monday 4. Bet.

Cross-posted to Ao3.

This may or may not portray my own sentiments on floral bouquets...

"Yes, Sam. I understand that it is traditional. I still find giving cut flowers as a gift of affection to be counterintuitive.” Cas shook his head in frustration as he watched yet another grainy commercial for a bouquet delivery salon in the little South Carolina town they were currently stuck in.

Sam laughed, “I’m sure it made sense when it began, but you know how sentimental humans are, Cas. Giving flower bouquets is one of the expectations of Valentine’s Day. It’s how you show someone you love them.”

Dean watched Cas and Sam argue the point, back and forth like a tennis match. Cas sat on the far bed watching the television with rapt attention and Sam laid sprawled across the nearer bed, laptop balanced on his chest while he half-heartedly conducted research. Why this of all topics was the one they latched on to he may never know. He shook his head and did his best to stay out of what was a pointless conversation, returning his attention back to the little table where his gun was disassembled and half oiled. Chuck, give me strength.

“What part of giving flowers do you take objection to, Cas?” Sam was not letting this one go.

“It just seems so bleak,” replied Cas, tilting his head while he considered his answer. “How does one convey affection or love with what are essentially dying flowers.”

“Well, when you put it like that, I guess you have a point,” Sam shrugged. “According to Lord Google, giving flowers began in the middle ages as representative meanings based on flower types, like a secret language. It says here that Rhododendrons imply danger and that tulips are a declaration of love.”

“A rather depressing secret language,” Cas muttered to himself. “From the moment they are cut, they begin to wilt and die. How does that portray feelings of warmth? Here is a gift representative of my love for you… dying…? I just do not understand the appeal.”

“Well we can’t all have Dean’s positivity when it comes to Valentine’s Day,” Sam nodded towards Dean, giving him a grin. “What is it you celebrate? ‘Unattached Drifter’s Christmas?’”

“Damn straight,” Dean replied more to himself than Sam.

“I don’t think I will have occasion to receive such a gift, regardless,” Cas voiced to the car. They had just finished up interviews at the County Sheriff’s Office and were heading back to the motel to regroup. Dean sighed audibly. Here we go again.

“I don’t know about that, Cas. You just have to meet someone special.” Trust Sam to come through with the unwanted Hallmark moment from the backseat where he couldn’t be reached to smack quiet.

“Yes, perhaps.” Dean couldn’t be sure but Cas sounded sad.

Once they reached the motel, Dean had volunteered to go for takeout. Sam had agreed immediately, thoughts already on getting his loafers off and jumping in the shower. Cas followed behind him, the flowers since forgotten and his attention turned back to the case. Dean could hear them spitball theories as he drove out of the parking lot.

“You should tell him, Cas,” Sam said as soon as the door was closed behind them.

“Tell who what, Sam?” Cas blinked at him in confusion.

“I know I give him a lot of shit for being an emotionally bankrupt horndog, but behind all of that, Dean’s actually a pretty decent guy. And he cares--even if he doesn’t know how to say it.”

“What exactly am I supposed to be saying to him?” Cas eyed Sam with less confusion than his voice implied.

“The truth, Cas,” Sam raised an eyebrow.

“I have been honest with Dean, even if I chose to limit the aggregate that I tell him. I have not lied.”

“Yeah, but you’ve been omitting something pretty big. I get it, man, I really do. I know you don’t want to risk your friendship, but I really think that he would surprise you if you told him. He cares, Cas.”

“It’s far too great a risk, Sam.” Cas looked defeated. “Dean has no preference for bodies like this… male vessel.” He gestured at himself. “And he certainly has made every declaration towards maintaining an autonomous relationship status.”

Sam wasn’t sure how to get his point across. He was the one that had to sit there and watch the two of them dance around this shit. Sooner or later, something had to give. “Cas…”

Cas’ face fell and he slumped into the chair, hanging his head. “He doesn’t think of me that way, Sam.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Sam lingered for a moment, considering Cas before stepping into the bathroom and closing the door behind him.

“I am not a gambling man, Sam…” Cas whispered to himself. “There’s just too much to lose.”

On his way back with dinner, Dean dialed up Sam and propped the phone in the crook of his neck. “Hey dude. You wanna run up to that liquor store and buy a handle? I’m about outta cash and this card is barely going to clear the room.”

Sam, on the other end, ruffled his still-damp hair with a towel. “Yeah, I can do that. It’s like a block and a half away. I’ll just walk, don’t worry about picking me up, just get back here with the food while it’s still hot.

“Yeah yeah,” Dean replied as he clicked his phone closed. Dean pulled up in front of the motel and killed the engine. He gathered up his duffel and the takeout that the restaurant had kindly nestled into a big cardboard box. Maybe he over-ordered but better safe than sorry, right?

He managed to wrestle the door open one handed and set the food down on the little tabletop. Dean could hear the shower running, Cas must’ve decided to wash off the desert sun. Dean busied himself with unpacking dinner, fighting with cheap chopsticks, and rooting around in his duffle. When he ran out of things to fuss with, he decided to hell with it and grabbed his container to sit down in front of the television.

As Dean got comfortable, the bathroom door cracked open and Cas poured out trailed by a thick layer of steam. “Did you leave any hot water for me?” Dean quipped.

“Yes of course I did, oh,” Cas stopped short when he looked at the bedside table. Next to Cas’ duffle sat a tiny gray and gold ceramic pot filled with living, red tulips. “Dean?” Cas turned to him in confusion.

“You can’t be sad about them since they’re alive, but you’ll probably have to take ‘em out of that tiny pot and plant ‘em when we get back home,” Dean explained, eyes flicking up to Cas’.

“But, I… Dean…” Cas looked back and forth between Dean and the flowers. Dean set his untouched food aside and stood, closing the narrow space between them.

“Do you like them?” Dean gave a tiny smile and Cas was instantly reminded of a small child asking if he did good.

Cas looked back at the tulips again and a smile crept across his face. He looked back to Dean unsure how to convey just how much he loved them, only to find Dean pressing close and running his fingers along Cas’ chin. “Dean…” Cas began.

Dean cut him off with a brush of his lips that began light but intensified as he felt Cas relax into his touch. Cas reached up to wrap an arm around Dean’s neck pulling him closer. Dean countered by sliding an arm around Cas’ waist, holding him steady.

The sound of the door opening startled them and pulled their attention away. Dean reflexively grabbed for his gun with his free hand, but continued to hold Cas close. Dean lowered his gun as Sam pushed the door open with his foot and closed behind him, setting a handle down on the table from one hand, and a case of beer from the other. Sam looked up at them startled, taking in the situation. His eyes caught the red potted bouquet behind the two, and he let out a laugh. He looked at Cas squarely, “About time. Some bets are a sure thing.” Dean, to his credit, ignored the bait and turned his back to Sam to press another soft kiss against Cas’ lips.

#SpnStayAtHome #Destiel #Dean Winchester x Castiel #SAM SHIPS IT #friends to lovers #tooth rotting fluff #shameless fluff #cross posted #tumblr prompt

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midnight-in-town · 4 years

Note

That new Aoex chapter... I was actually hoping we were going back to the present, but I wasn't disappointed by what we got. Quite a bit of lore, a glimpse of the true forms of the demon kings, the birth of the Illuminati, and Shiro becoming a dad. There was a lot going on and I think it really helped to connect the past with the present. What was your favorite part?

MY, ANON, THIS CHAPTER WAS SO FUNNY! Like, the more I look at it, the more I think 50% of it is some sort of joke from Kato-sensei’s part??? And don’t get me wrong, I love it, but just, this was insane.

First of all, can I just say that I truly enjoy Sensei keeping on destroying the very thought of Satan/Yuri as a healthy & romantic pairing with every chapter lately?

Because, there is a lot of things I can agree to disagree with when it comes to opinions, but I can’t understand people praising abuse and seeing it as love, which was definitely the case between Satan and Yuri with some fans.

Supposedly he loved her, but the moment she stops being useful to him?

He destroys her (soul?) as well in Gehenna.

For real, I feel bad for Yuri: we know that she loved Shiro and that it was bad luck & complicated childhoods that kept them away from each other until the end and now she won’t see her sons growing up, the Order is blaming her for Satan & Lucifer’s chaos and she somehow died twice.

And the reason she betrayed Shiro and the Order for? Dude’s blowing it in her face that “it’s her fault” and that she’s useless to him, also after he revealed he killed her foster family. So yeah, I truly despise Satan, he’s not made to be a sympathetic villain at all (one can’t relate to his issue of lacking a body powerful enough to withstand his powers) and I hope their sons will somehow avenge their mother (and their actual father, the man who raised them).

Oh but since we’re on the rather gloomy parts of the chapter, I gotta say that…

I’m glad the events of ch1 are finally being addressed.

Maybe we’ll find out soon about why Shiro couldn’t withstand Satan’s possession almost a year ago in the story, leading to his death: maybe Rin’s words really did hurt him, especially since we know that Yukio kinda had issues with him back then too, without mentioning Shura’s anger…?

So I don’t know, perhaps he got dispirited thinking his children despised him and then his body had grown too old, or the experiments of Section 13 were too far away in time for him to recover in ch1… I guess we’ll see about that soon. ://

Also also, I kinda got spooked by by the Toudou family:

Looks like Saburouta killed his brothers and his wife during the Blue Night (?) leaving only his daughter alive, which is somehow how she ended up following in his footsteps and working for the Illuminati.

Pretty scarring for that girl, I wasn’t expecting that at all.

As for the Myo Dha amongst the many victims of the Blue Night…

…rip Takezou, Koneko’s dad and Mamushi’s mom (also wondering where Jin, Renzou’s oldest sister, was the whole time but I think Sensei forgot about her).

Finally, I always wondered about how Shura fared throughout the whole Blue Night incident and…

baby girl did well by hiding.

The rest of the chapter though? Mostly funny parts, I swear to Assiah and Gehenna, haha! For example:

I gotta say I was really intrigued by whatever this Ark is supposed to be, but then…

…Dude gets out a freaking vacuum to deal with Lucifer’s remains???? Yeah, honestly that’s where I lost it LMAO!

IDK if Sensei meant to imply “that’s because he’s trash” or somehow that vacuum leads to this Ark thing, but I really lost my mind reading that scene. xDD

AND THEN…

Mephisto literally said “looks like it will be tough cleaning all this up… Well, gotta go now, you sure don’t need my help, bye~!”. Is he the laziest demon or what?!

Finally, guys taking out axes to free Jeremiah from the forest he created to protect himself from Lucifer ended up being the final blow for me:

This whole scene with Shemihaza really struck me more as funny (with demons having their own vibes) than anything else.

Same style but different time and space, we had Lucifer coming back to Gehenna after being defeated by the combo Shemihaza + Samael and…

Mephy being here like “omg bro, u sure u ok after I exorcised you? yeah? well that’s good news then”, my God, I couldn’t help but think that he really is the lowest of the low. xDD

Best part of the whole chapter has to be the following panel though, obviously:

Congrats Shiro, you got what you always wanted: kids to raise and a lifelong debt that is equal to losing your entire freedom. Well, aren’t you h a p p y?

Nah, more seriously, as predictable as it was since everyone expected the “favor” Mephy requested when Shiro was a child to come into play, I still feel truly bad for him. In the end, escaping the Order is what he wished for, ever since his traumatizing childhood in Section 13, and it’s the one thing he never managed to bite back.

Unless… well, we don’t know yet what the twins will do, but if they somehow manage to defeat Mephy (who is on Assiah’s side but also possibly one hell of a villain as far as they are concerned) or even just the Order, then maybe we’ll have Shiro’s revenge finally out in the open.

To start with, we know that Shiro didn’t raise no weapon. Yukio may not believe it’s true, Rin can have his doubts, but Shura knows the real deal when it comes to Shiro’s feelings about Yuri and her sons.

So Shiro raising sons and not weapons might eventually be what will stab every manipulator within the Order deep in the back, which would make an awesome revenge for him in that case.

Finally about this:

I made a post about this once, but just so it’s clear: as King of Time, clearly Samael knows that Satan will try to invade Assiah once more and him double crossing the Baals & Satan by telling Satan that he will prepare Rin as a vessel is just the best way to get Rin to face his father once he’s ready:

Which he almost is by now, in my opinion.

So yeah, Mephy is the same manipulator as ever, toying with both humans and demons, but we know he’s on Assiah’s side so, from the way I see things, he cannot be in favor of Satan showing up every now and then, raising havoc.

On the other hand, Mephy toying with Shiro and the Okumura twins (amongst others) is precisely why he could make a very fine big bad that the twins have to confront (both for themselves but also for Shiro’s sake), once Satan and Lucifer are out of the way. Ahhh, we shall see.

TL;DR a w e s o m e chapter, as always lately! Some difficult and gloomy parts, some awful moments, some funny ones and Mephy being the same old trickster he’s fated to be: what else could we ask for?

I hope you enjoyed it too, Anon! I don’t think the present time is coming back that quickly (in at least two or three chapters maybe?), but for now I’m still enjoying the flashbacks, so it’s all fine with me. :))

Please have a nice day and thanks for passing by in the first place! ^3^

#ao no exorcist #fujimoto shiro #mephisto pheles #samael #okumura rin #okumura yukio #yuri egin #toudou saburouta #shima takezou #jeremiah uzai #ane theory #ane 119 #anon #answers #my analysis

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wayward-mikaelson · 3 years

Text

Centuries Fourteen

Word Count: 1760

Pairing: None

Characters: Reader, Dean, Sam, Jack, Cas, Michael, Angels

About: Winchesters and Michael try and get the Reader back to the bunker out of Hezekiah’s reach

Warnings/Trigger Warnings: Language, Tension, Jealously, Car Crash

A/N: Had a hard time doing this one. I’ve been in a bleh mood. There are two more parts to this so hopefully this will be finished. Thank you to all who have stayed along for the whole ride.

*This work contains content meant for the 18+ crowd.

**Please DO NOT copy and paste my works WITHOUT my permission and WITHOUT giving me the proper credit. I work really hard on all my word and the thought of having them stolen is just sad. You may, of course, share the link to the story.

***This work is also posted on Instagram, WattPad, and Archive Of Our Own. Go show some love over there too

****Please go follow all my other accounts: Instagram, Twitter, WattPad, and Archive Of Our Own

*****Requests are CLOSED. I’m sorry.

Forever Taglist: @hobby27 @donnaintx @myinconnelly1 @elansaidaris @magssteenkamp @440mxs-wife

Dean/Jensen Taglist: @akshi8278 @sandlee44 @squirrelnotsam

My Masterlist

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Chapter Thirteen

My Favorite Fic List

When I finally come to, I roll over and hold my throbbing head. There's a faint ringing in my ears still. When my eyes adjust I see I that I'm in an entirely different room. I get up and feel the whole room spin around. I groan and feel strong, steady hands on my shoulders.

"Hey there, take it slow," I look up and see Michael kneeling down in front of me. "You've been out for about a day." He turns and grabs a glass of water off the night stand and offers it to me. While I drink, I notice the room is empty, except the two of us.

"Where's Dean and Sam?" I urgently ask as my heart began to race. "Where are we? If you so much as left them, I will kill you."

Michael shushes and cups my face, forcing me to look into his face. "Relax, darling," his calm voice washes over me and I stop talking. "They're fine and unharmed. We are two towns over at another motel. They stepped out about an hour for some food." Michael slowly lets go of my face.

"How'd you get us out?" I ask handing the empty glass to him. I watch as he turns and sets it on the nightstand beside us. As he gets to his feet I notice the small grimace on his face. "Are you okay?"

Michael nods and sits next to me on the bed I'm on. "Getting you guys out was challenging. First,getting you out was the priority since Hezekiah has some sort of obsession with you. So I got you here and went back for Sam and Dean once I made sure you were safe. They were harder to get out but I managed. When we got back here, you were still out so we started to ward the room to make sure we all were hidden."

"So you're weak," without thinking I take hold of his hand and hold it. "How were they tracking you?"

Michael gives my hand a gentle squeeze. "I told Dean and Sam that it's possible that Hezekiah has some recruits which can make it possible for them to channel Angel Radio one way to a specific angel or angels they want to get a message from. A little different from praying to one another or crying out for help."

"Look about earlier," I start to say but Michael cuts me short.

"You don't need to say anything." Michael took his hand back and stood up. "I understand if you were in the moment. Like you said, it was silly and stupid."

It feels like a cold dagger was pushed into my chest. "Michael," I whisper as I get off the bed. "That's not what I intended to mean."

"Then what?" Michael turned on me. He takes hold of my arms and backs me up into the wall. "I confess that I'm in love in with you and that for some out of this world reason, I hoped that you felt the same. I mean when we kissed," I watch the hard expression on his face melt into sadness. "I felt you completely give into to me, only to imply that it was stupid and silly."

I look down at the ground. "I'm sorry," I say. I couldn't get another word out when Michael lifts my chin up to look at me. I use my free hand to remove his hand and slip past him. "What else was I supposed to say? Or do? I love Dean and have feelings for you. It's all so fucking confusing." I turn around and Michael is just staring at. I try and say something else but the door to the motel swings ope.

"We gotta go!" Dean walks towards me and grabs my upper arm and starts to pull me out of the room. "There are angels popping up everywhere. Mikey, you good there? Can you walk or do I need to drag your ass out too?"

I look back. I can tell that the warding is affecting him more. "I can move on my own, thank you." Michael grabs things from around the room and follow us out. Sam is waiting by the car and I notice Cas's truck in the next spot.

"What's the plan?" I ask once we get to the impala and Dean lets me go. "How many angels are there?"

"Cas, do you want to tell them?" Dean's voice sounds firm and tense. There is clearly irritation in his words. "Or should I?" Dean looks up and I see the anger, the fear, the worry, all of it, in his green eyes.

"Heaven has been compromised." Cas looks down at the ground. All he ever wanted was to get Heaven back to being the way it was before and now he is thrown back all the way to square one. "Apparently for the last year, Hezekiah has been slowly gathering followers to finish out Michaels original plan. Get YN on their side, kill Michael, and rule over Heaven and Earth. Obviously that didn't pan out according to him and now he's leading a full on attack." Cas looks at me. "It's going to be bad."

"So the plan is," Sam leans on the impala and looks at me as well. "Use what angels we have on our side as Dean and I get you back to the bunker. Find the Oz key thing Charlie used and get you the fuck out of this world until it's safe or until Hezekiah is dead."

I look back at Dean. He nods his head as he fumbles with his keys. "I won't go," I look back at Sam. "You can't make me."

I feel the familiar feeling of Michaels hand on my arm. I look at him and I can't help but see the side glance that Dean gives. "I have to agree with them. This is our only safe option. Don't worry, I'll ride along with you guys." Michaels thumb begins to rub my arm. Dean's side glance turns into furrowing his eyebrows.

"You will be riding along with the other angels," Dean says in a much more deeper voice. I know that tone too. He wasn't happy. I guess that Michael sensed that to, because he lets go of my arm and takes a step back. "In fact, why don't you go get in that truck right now."

"He does have a good point, Dean," Cas's voice is heard again. "I can drive behind you guys. Jack is more powerful. Having an archangel with you will help make sure that you guys get the to the bunker if anything were to happen to us in the back."

"That's a good point," Sam says looking at this brother. "I can see that you don't like the idea, but it could be our only shot."

We all look at Dean. I can see the fight in his eyes. I scoot pass Michael and place a hand on Dean's face and the other on one of his hands. His eyes meet mine and they soften and he gives me a small smile. "Alright," He says taking a deep breath. "I don't like it but I see everyone's point and you all are right. Now let's get this show on the road. YN, you're up front."

We hit the road as soon as we all are situated. The road is empty for about fifty miles until we hit the country road. Then we see them, the angels, lining up along and across the road. I look behind me and see Cas's truck behind us and the glow of Jack's bright orange eyes. Michael's eyes were also glowing bright. Looking back up front, I see a few angels fall with their vessels eyes being burnt out.

"I got you sweetheart," Dean's hand rests on my legs and I see look at me with a faint smile. "We will be back at the bunker in no time." When Dean looks back at the road, it's only to swerve out of the way of the gathering of more angels. "What the fuck?! Does this dude have the entirety of Heaven at his disposal?"

"Just focus on driving," Sams voice is heard right behind me. I can hear him mumbling something under his breath. Hopefully some helpful spell that Rowena taught him.

Then the high pitch sound from earlier rings in my ears making me cry out. Dean's hands fly to his ears and groans, letting the impala swerve around. Sam is heard doing the same thing. In what feels like minutes, the impala hits something and glass shatters all around us. The ringing in our ears stops and the excruciating pain shots through both my legs.

"Everyone okay?" Dean groans. He see me staring at my legs. "YN?" Then he sees what I see.

In my right thigh, sits a giant shard of glass. In my left thigh sits a piece of metal that's about half the length of my arm. I turn my head to Dean to see the horrified look on his face. "It feels as bad as it looks," I say calmly over the pain that is telling me that cutting my own leg off is the only option to make it all go away.

Dean reaches over to try and pull the metal out. I know he means well well but he doesn't see it from my angel. I smack his hand away. "Don't touch it," I say taking a deep breath. "If you remove any of these, I will bleed out."

Suddenly my door opens and there Michael gently but quickly pulls me out. He walks a few feet from the car and set me down. "Dean, Sam," he says firmly. "I'm going to need you two to pull these out while I heal her. If we do it fast enough, we can buy dean and her some time to get away."

Dean and Sam at my side without a word. Dean has hold of the metal, while Sam has that shard of glass. Michael has two hands under theirs and his eyes meet mine. "Now," He says and his eyes glow softly as Dean and Sam pulling the items out. I cry out for a brief second before the pain is gone. All feeling returns to my legs.

Dean helps me up and before we could make a plan to get away, we are surrounded by angels. I have this uneasy feeling that one of us or all of us weren't going to make it out of this in one piece.

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niyes-lahiffe · 4 years

Text

Soapy Decks and Flying Underwear

IT’S BAAAACK!!

Ao3

1 | 2

Chapter 3: Markets Hate Pirates

Ok, Nino knew he had just claimed to his entire crew that he would immediately sail to the destination the map led them to, but he realized the longer he looked at it, the less sense it made. Of course he was still beaming as bright as the sun itself, but he went downstairs to see if he could have any better luck in a slightly different environment.

He had been down there for quite a while when he started hearing thumps on the wooden floor above, followed by muffled cheering. His crewmates were certainly having the time of their lives with their excessive celebrating, and their happiness only rekindled the giddy feeling the captain had in his chest. His smile turned into a grin when the trapdoor opened and his best friend came down the steps.

“You should come up and celebrate with us, Nino!” Adrien offered as he took his place before the captain. “Can’t you look away from that map for one second, man?”

“But-“

“No buts, sir, a break will definitely be good for you.” Adrien winked at him, pulling out his sword and using the tip of it to gently lower the map from the captain’s hands. “Kim and Luka are wrestling right now and it’s quite hilarious.”

Nino snickered. “And Luka isn’t a pile of pulp yet?”

“Nope! He’s handling it surprisingly well.” The co-captain leaned against a barrel and his smile turned into a perplexed frown when he looked inside it. “Yo, Cap?”

“What is it, dude?”

“We’re out of oranges.”

Nino stood up abruptly, half-exaggerated, and hissed, “We’re what?”

“Truly unfortunate,” Adrien played along while scratching his chin. “Looks like we’re gonna have to restock.”

Nino placed his fingers to his chin in thought. “Actually, it really has been a while.” He laughed slightly. “We’ve been so caught up in everything that we’ve failed to realize we’re nearly out of everything.”

“It’ll be a good break for you, too,” his best friend agreed. “Wanna give the decks a good clean as I steer us to the market?”

“Ooooh you know I do!”

------------------------------

“Wow, nice parry!” Alya complimented her crewmate as she deftly dodged another one of the attacks from his wooden blunted sword.

“Thanks!” Nathaniel responded happily, proud to be complimented by his captain.

His succession threw him off, however, and he was distracted enough that he was unable to defend himself in time when Alya suddenly dropped to a squat and kicked at his legs, knocking him off balance. He grunted when he fell to the floor and frowned when the tip of Alya’s fake sword pointed at his throat.

“Don’t forget to be prepared for anything, though,” she smirked. Nathaniel huffed but graciously accepted her extended hand to help him back up.

“One day I’ll be as good as you,” he said, patting himself to rid of the dust.

“Maybe,” she teased. Alya glanced around at the rest of her crewmates to observe their fighting tactics, pleased with what she saw. Kagami and Max were definitely her best fighters, and seeing them duel was something else. Everyone else of course battled to the best of their ability, and she was indeed impressed, but it was almost entrancing to watch her two most skilled battlers duel.

“Yo, Captain!” A voice sounded from above, knocking her from her trance. Alya looked up to see Alix poking her head out from her post. When she noticed she had the captain’s attention, she called, “We’re about to pass a local market; wanna stop for a little bit to restock and check out their wares?”

Alya walked to the edge of her ship and looked out to see land up ahead. She nodded and turned back to her lookout. “Sure! Probably is a good idea before we head out to find the Jade Turtle.”

“You got it, Cap!”

Marinette appeared beside Alya and gave the captain her wooden sword. “I can steer us there real quick, if you’d like!”

“Sounds good to me, girl.” Alya smiled as Marinette saluted playfully and went on her way to the steering wheel.

------------------------------

The moment the boat was parked at a nearby dock, Kim nearly bolted off before Nino was able to get a firm grip of his shoulder. His crewmate looked back at him, perplexed if not a tad miffed.

Nino smirked at him. "I get that you're excited, Kim, but I need you on boat duty, remember?"

"WHAT?!"

"I can't have anyone stealing this boat or anything inside while we're at the market," the captain explained as he folded his arms. He winked and continued before Kim could open his mouth to protest. "You should consider yourself lucky, since I can only rely on someone I know will truly take good care of this ship."

Kim was obviously flustered by the compliment but was still ornery as he folded his arms and turned away.

"Dooon't worry, Kim, you won't be here all day," Nino snickered, and Kim visibly perked. "I'll have Luka take your place after half the day has passed."

Next to him, Luka froze and said, "Wait, what?"

Nino nodded.

"Why can't Luka and I switch spots so I can go now?" Kim objected.

"Kim, you're great but I don't trust you to remember to come back when you should." Adrien and Luka both had a small coughing fit as they laughed while Kim merely smiled and rolled his eyes.

"Eh, you're right," the lookout finally gave in. "You can count on me, Cap."

"Knew I could," Nino grinned, punching the other pirate playfully in the shoulder before he and the rest of his crew marched off the deck and into the already bustling streets of the marketplace.

As much as Nino loved sailing the seas on his beloved vessel, he always forgot how much he loved exploring bits of the land, too. The welcoming sights and smells drew him in and soon he was lost in the crowd. Adrien still tagged along with him, as he usually did, but Nino quickly lost the rest of his crew, though had full confidence that they would return to his boat by the end of the day.

Now, he had time to enjoy this.

Merchants left and right were yelling encouragingly about their wares to the wandering potential customers, the smell of freshly cooked bread and meat filled the air, children were playing game after game, and the streets bustled with energy as everyone moved back and forth between booths.

Nino and Adrien wandered between booths themselves, gawking at the beautiful jewelry that was far too expensive, and laughing at ones that were in odd shapes. A nearby commotion grabbed both of their attentions, and they both knew one of the ornery voices well.

"HEY! How dare you; I had my eye on that comb!" Chloe suddenly barked at the beautiful young woman standing next to her, who seemed to have just purchased an item: a golden, bee-shaped comb, and Chloe apparently wanted it desperately. The other girl may have been pretty, but despite her adorable freckles, bright blue eyes and bobbed haircut, her glare was nearly sharp enough to slice Chloe to pieces, not to mention the sword on her back undoubtedly would do that if the conversation got any more heated.

"Really? Well, I believe I just bought it first. Good luck next time, and good day." Before the other pirate could wander away, Chloe protested loudly and cut into her path, not allowing her to leave. Adrien leaped forward and grabbed Chloe as her sudden rival finally reached for the sword on her back, and Nino noticed a dark-skinned pirate do the same to the other woman with a, "Whoa whoa whoa, Kagami."

"Chloe, please," Adrien begged, pulling his snarling friend closer to him. "I'm sure we can negotiate. Nicely."

Chloe groaned, "Ugh...fine." She took a deep breath. "Can I have the comb." Adrien poked her harshly in the side and she grunted in pain and annoyance. "Please."

Kagami gave her a long, hard look, before finally replying, "What's in it for me?"

"Alright, I've got money." Chloe reached into her satchel and pulled out a wad of cash, leaning forward to give it to the other pirate. "Here."

"Wait." Kagami ignored the money and reached for Chloe's hand, staring intently at the jewelry on her fingers. "I'll give you the comb for this ring."

"Wait, seriously? I'll have you know this ring is very impor-OW!" She growled at Adrien, who had poked her once again. "Fine, FINE. Take the stupid ring!" The blonde pirate pulled the ring off her finger and Kagami gladly gave her the comb for it. Then, they both turned without saying a word and walked off.

Adrien and Nino nodded at each other, satisfied with the exchange as well. Chloe was definitely a lot of work, but Nino was extremely grateful she had a soft spot for Adrien.

------------------------------

"Oh WOW!"

Alya and Marinette stared in surprise at the tiny pirate with short, blond hair and the brightest blue eyes either had ever seen that had approached them.

“Your necklace is so pretty!” she continued, and she blushed when she looked up and noticed their confused yet amused expressions. “OH my bad; I should probably introduce myself.” She giggled. “My name’s Rose!”

Smiling, Alya nodded at her, saying, “Nice to meet you, Rose, I’m-“

“Totally rocking that necklace!!” Rose threw her arms toward her chest giddily as she admired the piece of jewelry. She nearly squealed when she noticed Trixx sitting next to Alya, and she leaned towards the fox excitedly. “Oh my goodness, you have a pet fox, too?! That’s amazing!” Rose reached her arm forward to give Trixx a pat.

Alya lifted a finger quickly. “OH, uh, better be careful, he tends to bite those he doesn’t-“

Trixx accepted Rose’s hand happily and even nuzzled into her arm.

“-know…” Alya lowered her finger as Marinette stared at the smaller pirate in surprise.

Alix suddenly appeared by her crewmates, laughing at the scene before her.

“Oh, Alix, good to see you!” Alya exclaimed. “I’m putting you on fox duty.”

Alix’s smile vanished and her eyes turned incredulous. “WHAT? No way, first boat duty, now this? I’d rather lick a toad!”

As if on command, Trixx, after Rose had said a sweet goodbye, wandered up to Alix and happily wagged his tail at her.

Alya bumped Alix’s shoulder with her own, wiggling her eyebrows. “C’mon, girl, I know you love it.”

“Fine, whatever…” Alix grumbled, though her small smile did not go unnoticed. “Come on, Trixx.” She took off, no doubt intending to cause some more mischief, and the fox followed suit.

“Yo, Rose!” A timid voice from behind sounded. Alya and Marinette turned to see a tall pirate with purple highlights holding up some sort of pink jewel. The girl she called for perked. “Come look at this.”

“Ooooh, coming!” Rose turned back to her new acquaintances and in one breath she said, “It was wonderful to meet you and your fox and I hope you have a good rest of your day, bye!” With that, she took off, leaving a smiling Marinette and Alya to shake their heads fondly.

“That has got to be the most adorable pirate I’ve ever met,” Marinette quipped.

“Speaking of adorable…” Alya felt a smirk steadily growing, peering at her best friend mischievously. “Maybe coming here if the perfect chance to find a cute man for you!”

Marinette’s cheeks turned bright red and she stiffened. “WHAT?”

“Girl, you’re always complaining about being single! Now’s your chance!” as Marinette became a blubbering mess, Alya took a second to look around. “Look, there’s a cute one right there!” she pointed towards a tall, good-looking man with long, blonde hair a few yards away, happily chatting with a darker-skinned friend of his.

The only response Marinette was able to make was a mortified garble, and Alya turned to find her friend’s face buried in her hands.

The captain took Marinette’s hands and lowered them, and when she looked up with uncertainty, Alya winked cheekily. “You’ll thank me later.” Without any further warning, She grabbed Marinette’s arm and threw her at the boy.

Much to Alya’s delight, Marinette stumbled right into him. Clearly surprised, he placed his hands on her elbows for support and gave the girl a peculiar look.

“I’M-You’re- PRETTY! I-I mean uh! I’m pretty sorry! I’m just...super clumsy…ha…” Marinette managed to stutter out.

The boy blinked a few times before he smiled like the sun. “Oh, it’s no worries at all, m’lady!” He bowed and kissed her hand, giving her a wink when he looked back up.

Marinette looked like she was about to explode.

Alya stood next to the other boy this flirt was talking with before and said, “Wow, I almost regret doing that.”

“Dude…Adrien’s a hopeless sap but I’ve never seen him that romantic before.” The pirate beside her shook his head while laughing softly. “Boy’s suddenly got it bad.”

“So does Marinette.” Though her face was still redder than a cherry, Marinette was clearly very happy with Adrien’s actions and she was giggling up a storm. “I feel SICK.”

“Maybe we should leave them to themselves for a bit,” the other boy suggested. She nodded and together they turned and pushed themselves through crowds a ways away. When they decided to stop in a fairly secluded area, accompanied by a few chairs and booths that weren’t as popular as the others, he turned to Alya and looked her up and down with a small smile. “Name’s Nino, by the way.” He held out his hand.

“Alya,” she replied, giving him a smirk of her own and her hand to shake firmly. She glanced at his back at said, “Is that a mandolin I see, pretty boy?”

“It is indeed.” Nino pulled the instrument off his back and gave it a few playful plucks. “Why are you interested in this?”

“I just want to see how good you are with music,” Alya said. She pulled her own lute from her pouch pocket and twirled it between her fingers, giving her new companion a wink.

His golden eyes grew challenging. “I’ll only show you my… incredible skills if you show me yours.”

She threw him a look just as determined. “But of course!”

------------------------------

To say Kim was ecstatic to finally be off boat duty was an understatement. The moment Luka arrived to swap places, Kim nearly created smoke behind with how quickly he dashed off, but it made his crewmate laugh hysterically nonetheless.

Nino and Alya both watched as Kim ran up to a booth selling bread. The look-out grabbed an entire loaf and nearly shoved the whole thing into his mouth, but Chloe snatched it from his hands before he could do so and whacked it upon the top of his head.

"Kim, you brute!" she scolded. "You know you need to pay for that!"

Nino was nearly beaming with sudden pride.

"But I'm a pirate!" The captain nearly laughed at Kim's sudden puppy dog pout.

"That is no excuse. You have money in that wallet and I know it."

A short, pink-haired spunky-looking pirate walked by Kim and waved his beloved wallet in the air. "Yeah, there's tons of money in this. Better keep a close eye on it so no one, say... snatches it." Her smug smile and Kim's dumbfounded face and intense patting of his rear to make sure his wallet was actually gone made Nino snort. Beside him Alya snickered, as well.

"Wh-HEY! You get back here, you punk!" And just like that, they both were gone in a flash.

Nino thought he might've seen something orange chase after them, as well, but the moment he blinked his eyes and squinted to make sure, it was gone.

------------------------------

As the sky began to turn a brilliant shade of pink and orange, Alya playfully bumped shoulders with her companion as she put her instrument away, and he soon followed suit.

"Thanks for the fun time," he chided. "We were so good that that one couple gave us a tip!"

She rolled her eyes playfully. "Ivan and Mylene give tips to just about anyone." She looked back at him. "But still, I clearly was better than you."

He faked a pout. There was just something about this woman that really brought out his competitive side. "I'd beg to differ."

Alya scoffed at him. "If you keep talking, you'll be begging, alright." As Nino blinked a few times at her, she began to walk away, clearly putting a significant sway in her hips as she went. "My companions and I have an important journey to prepare for."

She stopped in her tracks and turned her head with a small smile. "Hopefully, our paths will cross again."

Nino nodded in agreement and made sure to add a quick wink before she looked away. She simply laughed at him as she continued her jaunt away, and Nino caught himself smiling brightly.

Wait.

Was that a fox that just leaped onto her shoulders?

Nino quickly rubbed his eyes and leaned forward to get a better look, but Alya was long lost in the sudden crowd.

What was he doing? He couldn't keep his mind occupied on that. His crew had a mission to fulfill. Nino headed back to his boat, the excitement about what was to come already invigorating his entire spirit. This was finally something the Coral Crew couldn't butt their nosy lives into. This was finally something only he and his crew would enjoy.

#miraculous ladybug #djwifi #nino lahiffe #alya cesaire #djwifi pirate au #soapy decks and flying underwear #my fics #fics

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