Tumgik
#actually think it stands out a *lot* surprisingly- given that they are still the exact same orbs. really interesting to compare to my usual
starflungwaddledee · 4 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
from: @starflungwaddledee to: @post-it-notes7
message from santa: "happy holidays post-it-notes! 🎄🥳 i know you very politely only wished for a few modest things- characters high fiving, or struggling in christmas attire- but i hope you'll still enjoy this given that i kinda went the opposite direction entirely! i'm an enormous fan of your work and most times you post anything i wind up browsing your art tag from tip-to-tail in enraptured delight. as such, i thought it was only fair i give back something a little more significant in gratitude for all the joy your work has given me. i knew i wanted to do a comic, so i was thrilled you already had a whole storyverse for me to work from!! this scene seemed the most obvious choice (chapter 8 of "wishful thinking" on ao3) given that i enjoy a dramatic fight scene 😂 i tried to stick as beat-by-beat to the writing as i could and worked in as many details as possible; i hope it'll be fun to see it envisioned this way! merry christmas! ~starflung 🎀🔔 "
783 notes · View notes
kscribbs · 1 year
Note
Me: sees OC ask
Me: ok ok, reign it in, Dani
Me: does the exact opposite 🙃🙃🙃
Have fun with this, K! >:)
Melusine:
-🐁 Capybaras are friend-shaped. What shape does your OC have? -🌧️ What is the favorite thing for you OC to do on a rainy day? -👎 Is there someone your OC can’t stand, despite them being on the same side or sharing basic values? -🤝 Does your OC have someone they want at their side when they are scared? Who? -🪤 What is one thing that could be used to lure your OC into a trap? -🎒 If your OC had to pick three things of all their belongings to keep, which would they chose?
Sebastian:
-📚 Your OC has to improvise a 10 minute lecture about a topic of their choosing. What do they chose? -🐁 Capybaras are friend-shaped. What shape does your OC have?
Sebastian is like. SOO shaped to me. I cannot express this enough lmao.
Oh! and for Tintin, bc I think about her at least twice a week:
-🪄 Does your OC have any special powers? If so, are they normal in this OC’s universe?
Okay! So I can only apologise profusely for how terribly late this is! My decision to draw certain bits was… arguably a little imprudent, given just HOW rusty I am atm. But nevertheless, here we go!
Mel:
-🐁 Capybaras are friend-shaped. What shape does your OC have?
Puddle Jerry :)
Tumblr media
And also Mermaid Man.
Tumblr media
These two entities combined is what her soul looks like.
-🌧️ What is your OCs favourite thing to do on a rainy day?
Tumblr media
Mel LOVES rain. It’s her absolute favourite weather. She’s never more content than when it’s raining. The torrential-...er (yup, that's a word) the better! Lil' lady takes after me, in that respect. Her fave thing to do when it's raining is go out and find a nice big puddle to wallow in :3
-👎 Is there someone your OC can’t stand, despite them being on the same side or sharing basic values?
She doesn’t get on particularly well with her aunt Pressyne, for reasons I’ll explore in-fic.
She HATES Matthew and would gladly unalive him, should the opportunity arise 😂
Tumblr media
She also... doesn’t seem to like Scott all that much? And I have absolutely NO idea why, LOL. Just, every time they’re in a scene together she starts getting testy. She’s not a huge Christmas fan tbh, so maybe that’s it? Finds the whole thing a bit too twee. (I <3 Christmas, so idk what she's on about).
-🤝 Does your OC have someone they want at their side when they are scared? Who?
This is a really fun/interesting one, because it kind of depends on, like— at which point in her timeline the question is being asked? When Marthinus (her son) was still alive, I’d have said him, honestly. He was a really sweet, engaging little mans. Very bright, very funny. Mel also had a friend/confidant growing up who wasn’t all they seemed, but I’ll touch on that/them another time! Then we have Seb, who Mel adores but honestly, he’s a bit hopeless, even if his heart is in the right place.
Lucy is perhaps the biggest contender. 
Tumblr media
(Will be posting this artwork in full, later on! Am much happier w Mel's design here, which was inspired by lmelodie's wonderful illos! (And I also really like Lucy's witchy turnout))
The older and more capable Luce gets, the more she assumes a sort of maternal role, where her bestie is concerned. 
And finally — perhaps surprisingly — we have Jack. 
I think it’s fairly clear from the end of Chap 3 that Mel and Jack actually like and respect each other a great deal, and this relationship only gets stronger as time goes on! I know I ham up the “frenemy” thing, but really it’s just friendship with a heck of a lot of banter. Mel comes to see Jack as a bit of a pillar, when things get Tough. And I’m gonna be throwing a spanner in the works at some point that will ultimately (re)define their dynamic for centuries to come.
(Mel IS going to meet and befriend Jacquie at some point, too. I'm just being incredibly careful about how I write that bc I wanna do le frosty bagel justice!)
 -🪤 What is one thing that could be used to lure your OC into a trap?
She’s fiercely loyal, so probably the threat of someone she loves/cares about getting hurt. Either that or copious amounts of dark chocolate. The really bitter kind. We’re talking 80% cocoa-plus, here (salted is even more tempting). 
-🎒 If your OC had to pick three things of all their belongings to keep, which would they chose?
The snuffbox under her bed, the portrait miniature of Marth and her cockle locket.
Sebastian:
-📚 Your OC has to improvise a 10 minute lecture about a topic of their choosing. What do they chose?
Something horrendously boring.
-🐁 Capybaras are friend-shaped. What shape does your OC have?
Moss from the IT Crowd. And also that scribble monster from Doctor Who (but wayyyy less angry; Seb's v affable). 
Tintin:
-🪄 Does your OC have any special powers? If so, are they normal in this OC’s universe?
So, this is kinda out of left field but she tames sea monsters, lmaooo. Yup. The below is part of a much larger artwork that I'm honestly enormously proud of, which doesn't happen often! So thank you so much, Dani, for inspiring me to do an art piece that reminded me of why I went to art school/decided to plunge myself into tremendous debt 😂😂
Tumblr media
Anyway, yeah! She has a real gift for wrangling ungodly sea beasts! >:3 Like this dragon... type... thing(?) here. I'll be posting the artwork in its entirety v v soon!
She has her water magic too, ofc, being a water nymph/sprite(? I still haven't decided).
I'm really glad you asked about her bc she's been on rotation in my brain, too! As has Melior, who reminds we a lot of Wednesday Addams, lmao. Sooo... Tintin's exact opposite, basically.
TYSM, Dani 🥰🥰 I had a LOT of fun w these! Even if I did take an eon to get back to you (so sorry again)! 😂
2 notes · View notes
purpleisnotacolor · 2 years
Text
How the committee against child murder sings
(there may be typos, I'll edit them out later)
firstly, Charlie:
she can sing reealy well. she could compete with Idina Menzel. (see this post for more details) she loves to sing and usually tries to get others to join in. big fan of karaoke. favorite song is "hallelujah"
Micheal:
he sings pretty well, depending on if he's using his mechanical voice box (previously ballora's) or if he's using his (real)supernatural-ghost voice. his voice is soft and low, but he can't sing high notes without using the voce box, which is a lot more tinny. He dosn't really like to sing but he will sing to his siblings or just to vent. won't do karaoke unless Jeremy is there. favorite song is "bring me to life" by evanescence, he liked it before it was a meme. He gets mocked for it, of course, but he persists.
Henry:
sings like any dad. his voice is soft and low like Mikes, but he will sing a lot louder and stronger. he loves to sing old songs to Charlie, but doesn't really get karaoke. He's a bit of a Johnny Cash fan, sings "San Quentin" a lot and really relates to it (he was in prison for the murders William committed for a bit less that 30 years). Charlie loves hearing him sing it.
Jeremy:
horribly.
but he's happy darn it! he can't read fast enough for karaoke, he slurs and skips words a lot but does it anyway because it's fun. he knows he sounds bad but Charlie insists he should keep going, and is always encouraging him. when he does annoy the others, he and she both think it's hilarious. favorite song is "I'm still standing" by Elton John but "life itself" from glass animals and "mad hatter" from Melanie Martinez are also big moods for him.
characters outside the main committee under cut
Cassidy (Golden, Freddy):
has the exact same ability as Charlie, however he has a completely different personality. He sings big and loud, with a surprisingly scratchy voice for a child. Loves to sing Rock and Metal songs that are often thinly vailed threats against Micheal. Heard "Leave Luanne" once and has not shut up about it since.
Even (Crying Child, Golden Freddy):
very awkward, but cute. He mumbles a lot if he's singing near other people, but likes to sing alone. Karaoke is actually pretty fun for him, there's no judgment when he does poorly. He doesn't really have a favorite song, but likes to sing the ones he remembers from his childhood or musicals/shows he's heard. "Do-Re-Mi" from the Sound of Music is one of the closets though.
Elisabeth (Scrap Baby):
Big and loud
sometimes softly, but always a little evil. She loves to sing for fun, or just to impress her dad (who is actually very supportive). She also sings nursery rhymes just because she knows she can make them sound creepier. She also likes to make some up and dosn't have many favorites.
Ennard (as a whole):
also likes the more showzy songs like Elisabeth does. what can they say? it's how they where all razed. and they love karaoke, they like having permission to be annoying and loud for a while. When they finally get a voice box that can do all they're voices, they like to sing with each other. Favorite song is "Brass goggles" by Steam Powered Giraffe or anything by that band really. it's really fun to sing songs with multiple parts all at once.
but as to the individuals in Ennard...
Ballora (in this AU she's Isabella Schmidt)
she likes the softer songs, and likes to sing with Charlie for this reason. but she can do the more energetic ones when she's feeling it. She prefers to sing to herself though, and uses it to calm down. Her voice is gentle but can be pretty commanding. she dosn't have a "favorite" per se, but does still sing "Stille Nacht" (the original German Silent Night) despite not remembering much of her life and never knowing much German beyond that.
Funtime Foxy:
Where most of the big-and-loud-ness comes from. She(??) loves the energetic and happy songs, they've given her a lot of comfort. She dosn't sing very well, she's not shrill or anything, she just can't do many varying notes. She loves the soundtrack from "greatest Showmen" and her favorite is the opening song "the greatest show".
Funtime Freddy:
Same as Jeremy mostly, but he likes the more aggressive songs. They're the only ones that sound good in his loud raspy voice. He wouldn't have a favorite, he just likes excitedly screaming vocalizing to vent tress and annoy the others. He can still sing fairly well when he puts his mind to it though.
BonBon (funtime Bonnie)
Doesn't sing much, It's just not his thing. But he loves to accompany the others when they do. He's used to being the voice of reason a lot, so he often organizes when they sing together. Who sings what part, when they start, what key they should be in, stuff like that.
And finally, William (SpringTrap)
he dosn't sing much, it's already very hard for him to talk and singing is mostly just unnecessary pain to him. But he can sing The Blues surprisingly well with his soft, growling voice. He dosn't like to go very high or loud, but he will sometime softly sing to Elizabeth or mumble small tunes to himself.
11 notes · View notes
slipperyskell · 2 years
Text
Assorted Monty HCs 3
(Running under the assumption of Organic Monty unless specified otherwise)
- Sometimes will just. Read random things for the sake of processing information. He’s not super big into reading otherwise but sometimes he’ll be bored and see some fine print or something on a poster or slip of paper and decide to snoop just to give himself something to do 
- That being said, this gator has vast hordes of random knowledge that may be of use to you... if you can get it out of him/he remembers said information at the given time you ask 
- If you’re hired on to be Monty’s handler/personal assistant, you gotta be cool with a lot of things really fast. Namely a surprisingly energetic and VERY charismatic reptile who can and will get into mischief, regardless of if he is under supervision. He can and will try to rope you into his shenanigans too 
- He will also insert himself into any job you’re doing and help, even if you didn’t ask him to. ESPECIALLY if you’re working up in the catwalks bc he cannot stand the idea of not keeping an eye on people up there to make sure they’re staying safe since the last incident. Had he not been in Gator Golf at the time that last employee fell... 
- he is very protective of his fellow employees, human and bot alike
- also just.  No thoughts, head empty somedays. He sees something that sparks even slight interest and oop! There he goes, off to go investigate - usually with you in tow bc as his assistant it’s your job to keep an eye on him so nothing bad happens (this isn’t just a Monty thing either - all of the animatronics have assistants for this exact purpose)
- He can be a handful but not for the reasons management provides (which usually focuses on his more destructive tendencies and nothing else). He’s just a very energetic person who needs a lot of things to keep him entertained. As long as you can understand that, you will get along with him swimmingly as his assistant 
- deadass if you treat him nice or really just don’t treat him or his friends like a piece of property like so many of the other human employees tend to do to the bots in the Plex, you have become his Bestest Friend in the Whole Wide World and he will straight up ride or die for you 
- If he had any use for money he could probably convince you to give it to him tho. This guy would be a god at scamming 
- I mean he can usually convince you to give him pieces of your food or drink so I would imagine he could just be like “hey can I have that pen” or “hey you should give me that clipboard” and you just give it to him. he just has it now. he doesn’t need it at all, he has no reason to have a pen or a clipboard, but he has it
- Generally speaking he tries not to get too much in the way of your work, but some days he wants the extra attention and other days he’s just feeling particularly chaotic (and some days, while he won’t admit this aloud, he gets very clingy and doesn’t want you to leave) 
- Since he’s a new addition to the Fazbear cast (and the band itself for that matter) he doesn’t actually know that much about the history of the Fazbear company beyond what he had programmed into him for the sake of some fun Faz-Facts. So if there were an AU where Monty is the guardian this man straight up does not know what’s going on. at all. He’s just chillin (same with Roxy for that matter) 
- Anything else that he does know, he finds out through Freddy, Chica, and Bonnie when he was still there 
- His mowhawk has a similar texture to that of an iguana’s. Surprisingly soft, would be very floppy if he didn’t use some kind of product to keep it up. He thinks he looks silly with it down so he tries to avoid not having it up in public (spoilers: he doesn’t look silly at all) 
- Give him hand massages bc his claws get achey sometimes 
- His tail is VERY solid/heavy. A good smack from it will definitely leave a bruise at least, so he tries to be as careful as possible, so he doesn’t accidentally hit anyone with it 
- Gators don’t typically use their tails to emote afaik (at least not the same way that other reptiles do) but I do like the idea of the tip of his tail still wiggling around when he sees something he likes, or he gets excited.
- The only time his whole tail is thrashing/getting smacked around is when he’s REALLY upset about something - like about to throw down or start breaking shit kinda upset
- he would absolutely use it in a fight if need be - it’s got enough weight to it n he can put enough force behind it so that he could easily knock someone over. And should he use enough force, he could probably break someone’s leg. 
- It’s pretty hard to lift it off of the ground straight up (he’d probably end up pulling a muscle in his back somehow) so he usually just lets it drag along on the ground behind him like gators normally do. If he needs it off the ground for some reason he would probably need someone to help him, or he might be able to grab it with his own hands, but since his tail isn’t very flexible that might end up hurting him
- Speaking of a not-particularly-flexible-tail, if you’re someone he’s really fond of there’s a good chance you’ll start to notice his tail loosely curled around where you’re standing 
- if he’s feeling really sneaky, he likes to come up behind you and blow a breath of air on the top of your head to get your attention. You’d be surprised how often he’s able to do this without you noticing
- Also has a tendency to sit his chin on the top of your head or shoulder so he can get a better look at what you’re doing (though if this makes you uncomfortable, he backs off) 
- He has his big boisterous laugh ofc, but he also has what I affectionately refer to as the Windex Cleaner laugh. He also tends to stick out his tongue when he laughs like that too which is great
- If he has access to a phone he will send you so many god damn memes. This dude is scrolling through TikTok like no tomorrow and sending you the funniest and most cryptic shit at 3am, when the both of you should DEFINITELY be sleeping/charging
- Something something the Glamrocks do have access to some kind of cell-phone like device or program so they can contact their assistants in case something happens (unless a certain asshole rabbit lady decides to cut off access to any form of internet), though they all end up using it for more casual things with their assistants should they be on good terms
- Monty also will send you very cursed pictures of himself with the camera right up against his snout so he looks like he has a really big nose
- and the MEME SPEAK THIS MAN USES. absolutely off the shits 
- He’s just got a mental meme soundboard in his head that he plays whenever something happens and it’s really the only thing keeping him from going nuts during busy days at work 
136 notes · View notes
lustbile · 3 years
Text
The Journal
Tumblr media
TenxReader
Word Count: 7.3k+
Summary/Warnings: Smut with plot, semi public, a lot of biting, mentions of supernatural and just general weirdness, and small amount of blood play
Apart of the Club X series: Masterlist (can be read alone or within the series, but unlike others it might just be the slightest amount confusing)
“So that’s what you’re into now,” your best friend’s voice is bored and distant, her task of wiping down the bar that stretched out in front of her taking a majority of her attention away from the babbling you’ve tried to subject her to since you entered the empty restaurant only about 20 minutes before, “weird demon sex clubs?”
“Ah ah, I never said they were demons,” you correct quickly, the thought of defending yourself never crossing your mind as you petulantly slap your hands against the polished wood, “I just said it was…. weird.”
“Weird is an understatement,” she scoffs quietly as she turns to dip her dirtied rag back into the bleach water and ring it out, “I mean look, I’ve always been supportive in the witchy stuff you’ve been into but this…. is a bit much.”
“I don’t see how this is any different than any other thing I’ve read into.”
“Oh you don’t see?” you finally manage to pull her attention towards you as she harshly slaps the rag back onto the wood with a stern glare pulled on her pretty features, “you’re talking about vulnerability and abandoned warehouses and public sex. That last one is definitely new.”
You fully expected this type of response, only hoping she’d be busy enough that you would dodge the motherly scolding she liked to give you when you pitched your schemes to her with your eyes wild and wide, but nevertheless, she was completely right.
It came from an old book, tattered and torn from being flipped through one too many times, that you found at your favorite antique store. The store itself was already notorious with your tight inner circle of friends as the creepy shop that was corrupting your brain, a constant taunt being that the little old woman that ran it was the actual devil and she was just waiting for the right time to jump you and eat you whole, but this did nothing to stop you from visiting at least once a week.
But the book, it was different from any other you had found. It was completely handwritten, including amazingly done sketches in a deep unfading ink, and spoke of outlandish things.
Some were easily brushed off, like a murder that happened in the 50’s that was known to stay in the mouths of the older folks, both to them and the book it was widely believed to be the doing of some long tongued and wild eyed creature, until a local sweet old man admitted on his deathbed that it was instead his one crime of passion.
He had been a young soldier that snuck into his lover’s room one night, and upon learning that she was to marry a nice lawyer the day after he was meant to deploy, his mind went blank and his hands were carving out her heart. He luckily escaped any questioning after being shipped off, and once he returned home he captured the heart of a pretty young girl and lived out a long life sitting on top of a horrid truth.
So yeah, stories of those sorts, having been solved in your lifetime, meant very little to you, but the one you were going on about now, meant the world.
The writing looked like it had been put down by a panicked chicken rather than the woman who’s name was written neatly in the front. It lived in some of the pages towards the back of the small book and spoke of a dark club. Club X.
She went on and on about stumbling across the club purely by accident, and meeting another woman with glittering eyes. Graphic details of being taken in the middle of the dance floor with a million eyes looking but not fully seeing her as she fell apart against a dancing and eager tongue made your heart thump lodged in your throat. But the more and more she visited the club, the more incoherent her words became, but towards the end the writing had become stained and obscured by a deep brown stain, before it stopped altogether.
Thankfully, the details of where the building was was completely visible regardless of being the thoughts of a mad woman, and with a lot of thinking and staring at the town map, you’ve come to believe that you knew exactly where the mysterious club stood.
Only a street down from the restaurant you sit in now.
“Listen, I know it sounds ridiculous, and it probably is, but what’s the problem with just going to check right?” you scramble to pull the delicate book from the bag that sits in the stool beside you as your friend moves closer and closer to where you sit, laying it flat to show her the page you’ve had bookmarked since you read it, “and look at the name she puts, I think it’s the man who ran it and it’s a long shot, but maybe he’s still alive, or if not maybe some family is! Right here, Asm-“
“Don’t say it again,” she’s quick to interrupt, sliding her free hand to hover above the page you’ve glued your eyes to, “I don’t wanna hear any old man names, especially that one it gives me the ick.”
“It’s just a name,” murmur to yourself, but move to put the book away regardless, “but anyways, I have something that most people who were going to the club didn’t, knowledge of what exactly I’m walking into. I can just go and look around, worst things worst its still a freaky sex club and I just go home, but I’m willing to bet this lady was just off the shits and its just an empty building with some funky vintage beer bottles that you can add to your collection.”
You feel like you’ve won an award you weren’t even trying to compete for when she finally breaks out into a soft smile. The huff that leaves her chest is endeared, and you swear your heart began to vibrate when she reached to run a gentle thumb across the swell from your cheekbone.
“Fine, do what you want, but if the bottle isn’t completely intact when you find it I don’t want it.”
“So you’re not coming with me?” your head tilts to the side in confusion as with things of this nature in the past, she’s always followed along to ensure that you didn’t do anything to stupid. You never felt like the company was fully necessary, but it was appreciated regardless.
“Baby, as much as I’ve enjoyed your info dumping you’ve done tonight, the other person that was meant to clean with me had to leave early with a stomach bug so I’m busy pulling a clean up job that’s truly a job for about five people. But you seem to really believe in this little adventure of yours,” she leaves the rag in a damp mass next to the stack of dirty glasses beside you to take your hands in her’s, her slightly wrinkled fingers are still warm and the way they lace with yours makes you feel like nothing in the world could hurt you, “besides, you’re as smart as a whip and I know you have me on speed dial. I trust you.”
——
You no longer love the feeling of being trusted.
When your friend had given you the heartfelt speech only a little over half an hour ago, you felt like you had been put on a nice pedestal before she handed you a cookie with a pat on the head.
Now the “cookie” had turned to rot in your belly and you were faced with your own perfectly dreamed up reality.
It was already late by the time you had walked into the restaurant your friend works at, the sun already setting and the last few customers gathering their things and paying the bills, so once you got her stamp of approval and we’re heading out the door, the only light left was a bright and full moon, and flickering street lights.
You took your time walking in the direction that your book and personal sleuthing had pointed you in, the closer and closer you got to the one warehouse in town that seemed to never be bought back from the city, the knots in your belly pulled tighter and tighter.
But regardless of the almost painful twist in your gut, you surprisingly almost missed the building in its entirety.
It was as if your entire being blocked out the thumping bass that shook the sidewalk and the blinding red light that spilled from beneath the entrance and out the fractured windows. Your brain trying to force itself from entering the building you spent so many weeks trying to locate.
But the way your heart thuds in your chest when you stand in front of the entrance is something you couldn't even pretend you didn’t feel.
Your tongue digs into the side of your jaw, and you're confused at the feeling of warm tears burning at your waterlines. It’s exactly the way the owner of the journal described it in her manic writings, weirdly exact considering the other stories that surrounded it that dated it back far before you were even born.
You want to go in, the shaking steps your legs take is evident to that, but the tense muscles of your shoulders and stomach makes you hesitate and even grumble out into the air.
You almost jump out of your skin when you hear a shuffling to your side, your throat tensing when you look over, and are put slightly at ease when you see two men who you assume are acting as some type of security. You almost expect them to look up and ask you for some type of ID when you’re being very weird and blatant about your presence, but they seem too preoccupied with the dim screens of their phones and the way they lean forward at different times as if they’re waiting for someone.
Your hands are shaking slightly as they scramble down to grab for your bag, desperately looking for something to occupy you to walk by them without being even more weird, and when your fingers wrap around the flaking leather that binds the book, you grab it like a lifeline.
Your fingers flip through the pages with perfect muscle memory as you trip up the few steps that lead to the door, the tabs you carefully placed on the first page mentioning the club not even necessary with the way you could find the page even in your sleep.
You subconsciously hold your breath when you walk past the two men, almost as if the book is instead something wildly illegal and you're trying to sneak past your parents, and your washed with a temporary wave of relief when you pass through the doors without even a glance from the two.
Though the relief is stolen from your bones the second your feet touch the floor of the club.
It’s as if you’ve entered a place you’ve known your whole life, and from the amazing descriptions from the woman in the past, its not a completely surprising feeling.
But another part of you feels like this is the first time you’ve seen human beings in the flesh.
You can't help but to feel like you must look like an absolute nerd as you pull the book up to your face as you start to survey the club, but thankfully the book told at least one truth, and many of the club goers are too busy grouping and grinding against one another to even acknowledge your existence.
More truths come to light as you flick your eyes between the pages and the walls.
The bar is still tucked in the same far corner as she described, the flittering red and blue lights making it feel like a beacon of calm regardless of it being surrounded by drunken forms and its intimidatingly pretty bartender.
The dj is just a stoic and unimpressed looking as the one from so many years ago as he subconsciously bobs to the beat that he creates as he messes with the nobs and switches in front of him. He’s actually so similar, you wonder if you were right and the owner did have family floating around, and maybe the dj is one of them.
You stumble further into the room as you pick out small details she wrote about so lovingly. Your legs carry you to the back of the building as you smile at the sight of the wine stain the writer claimed to have created when her lover shocked her with a playful bite to the neck.
You almost feel like the universe is gifting you everything you could have possibly asked for when you see the loose board that she said a friend of hers would always trip over, and electricity zips up your spine in excitement when you spots the large painting that still hangs over the booth she claimed as her favorite, and she meticulously sketched out next to a paragraph about what she thought the artist was feeling.
All these things though, lead to the things that make your jaw hang slightly open.
The large balcony above you is larger than you ever imagined. The hundreds of bright red carnations she loved to sketch drip from the golden bars like water, and the black velvet curtains that hang over the room it leads to look heavy enough that they suffocate someone if they fell.
She seemed so intensely in love with the place you stand in, and the woman she met there, and those emotions were more than evident from the way the recreated the energy of the club with her words and art. Which only tips you towards the part that caught your attention perhaps the most.
It was exactly where it was meant to be. Just below the balcony that hangs high on the wall, gaping wide and dark like the mouth of a hungry monster coaxing you to enter its throat. The only issue that you can see being the hanging rope that blocks you from entering, but with only shining bright clasps holding it onto hooks on the walls, you don’t think you're above sneaking past it with little guilt.
The hall was the one thing that taunted you the most about the story the woman spun in the little worn book. The empty and dark vass space being something that coaxed her as well, but unfortunately for you, and maybe her as well, the parts of her journal that began the tale of her passing the temping rope, was the exact spot that was stained with bleeding ink and a suspicious brown color.
You survey the space around you, looking for anyone that could possibly be a worker or just a stickler for the rules, but seeing as everyone in your range of vision was attached by the mouth on someone’s neck or sloppy lips, you figured you were in the clear.
You drop the book gently back into your bag before you step slowly forward. Your heart feels like a wild animal trying to break out of the cavity of your chest, and it feels like your intestines have been successfully replaced with writhing worms that are desperately trying to reach your gut. You feel heat traveling up your chest and neck, and as you get within a few feet of what feels like the end of your life, your body begins to shake.
If you had the ability, you would have screamed, and if you had the strength, you would have fought back. But right when you're about to reach the threshold of the hall, and right when you feel like your legs are about to collapse from underneath you, strong fingers clasp over your trembling mouth, and an arm wraps tightly around your waist.
You’re turned faster than you can blink, the sudden motion making your brain swirl in your skull and making you go lightheaded and dizzy. And while keeping their hand clasped tightly over your mouth, the person that cages you in slams your back into the cold wall and knocks the air from your lungs.
The eyes that meet you are cat-like and dancing wildly, the grin the man you're faced with now smiles at you wickedly, and when your hands dart up until your nails dig harshly into the skin of his forearms, his smile only widens.
“Now,” he starts, the remains of a chuckle shaking his chest and his words slightly, “what exactly are you up to?”
You wait for a moment for him to release you from his hold, and when after a minute or so he still hasn’t budged, all you can offer in response is an annoyed arched brow.
“What?” he has the audacity to ask with taunting sincerity, “you thought you were smart enough to go wandering around, so you should be smart enough to figure out a way to talk around my hand right?”
It’s with immense irritation that you realize the two possibilities you’re faced with.
From the book you know about the weird concept of soul mates or whatever they were meant to be. The woman and the mysterious dancing girl she met so many years ago, and similar stories from the friends she met during her many visits to the club who had almost identical tales that she had to recount.
So with that information you know the possibility of this grinning man being your person is high, but your person or not, he was lighting a fire in your chest regardless.
You don’t think or even weigh the negatives before you send him a hard glare, and you show very little hesitation when you push forward to sink your teeth into the first finger you can catch.
His yelp is covered by the blaring music, but you hear it loud and clear before he reaches his free hand up to pinch at the bridge of your nose to pull you off like a rabid kitten.
“You know what I’m up to,” you huff petulantly as you lean back into the wall with your arms folding over your chest, “or at least I’d assume you’d be smart enough to use your context clues right?”
His lip curls when he glances back up to you as he pets at his now bruising finger, but even with the thin veil of irritation on his pretty features, you can tell he enjoys the sarcastic tone you’ve adopted.
“Yeah you’re sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong,” he bites back as he steps closer, crowding your personal space and pushing his chest tightly against yours, “you’re lucky I’m who caught you and not boss man.”
“Boss man?” you ask, trying not to show you excitement over him spilling the treasured information about the club that you want so desperately.
He doesn’t answer you verbally, and the sly wink he throws at you shocks you more than you would like to admit, but when he tilts his head back quickly you don’t hesitate to follow his line of sight to the edge of the balcony.
If it weren’t for the thin wires of light that create hatching over his eyes and mouth, you probably would have missed the masked figure that leers at you from over the railing. His hands and shoulders are covered by the masses of flowers, and the hollow black where he hides his eyes stares down at you two with a look that you assume is annoyance and possible curiosity.
The moment you two look up, the figure jerks back. Your eyes flick quickly between him and the man in front of you, and from the bratty grin he wears as he looks up, you feel as if the masked man didn’t have any intention at being caught.
You get lost slightly in staring at the man pressed against you, his teeth that look sharper in the red lighting and his eyes twinkle in mischief, and even with the obnoxious start to your interaction, you’d be lying to say you don’t find him beautiful.
It takes you a second to regain your senses, tearing your eyes away from the fascinating side profile of the man, but when you glance back up to the balcony, the mask man has retreated back.
“He doesn’t like much when we take people back there before they’re ready,” he attempts at an explanation as he turns back to you, and seems unfazed when he misses the mark and just confuses you further, “he let the two goons outside have a little exception, but that's because they don’t know how to go easy y‘know.”
“No,” you shake your head at him with a quiet scoff, “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I think you know more than you think,” his voice drops as he speaks now, and as he speaks he reaches out his hand to hold himself propped against the wall next to your head while his other hand moves to run gently up the side of your neck, “I mean, you know who I am at least right?”
“I have an idea,” you admit with a huff, but you also admit to yourself that this probably means you won't be getting into the hall. You do mentally jot that down as a loss, but decide to take the man pressed against you as a win and you reach to grab at his shirt in retaliation, “but you could at least give me a name to work with.”
“Hm, I didn’t expect you to be one for such formalities,” his head tilts in amusement at his own words, and the action nudges the tip of his nose into yours and makes your heart flutter up into your throat, “but you might as well know the name of the man you’ll be destined to fall in love with.”
You roll your eyes hard enough for them to start to ache, and he quietly laughs and moves to press his nose into the soft flesh of your cheek as he feeds off your annoyance.
“Ten,” he answers quietly, his lips brushing the shell of your ear as he moves to whisper the syllable in your ear, and you never thought that with just one word he’d have a shiver rushing up your spine.
You respond quietly with your name, but the word comes out strained and rushed when he begins to nibble on the lobe of your ear and pushes his knee harshly between your thighs.
Both your hands now hold tightly onto the sides of his shirt, and when his lips move to trail against the side of your neck that isn't enveloped by his hand, you tug roughly at the fabric and your back arches slightly away from the wall.
His tongue is hot when he lays it flat on the center of your throat, and when he swipes it up until it flicks against the end of your chin, you can't help but cringe slightly at the feeling regardless of the way it makes heat pool in between your thighs.
The wicked grin on his face never falters, it only grows wider and more hungry when your eyes meet again, and with his staring so deep that you fear he may be collecting every ounce of your soul, you two have a silent agreement on the unnatural waves of electricity that connect you.
When his lips finally land on yours, it's the roughest and clumsiest kiss you’ve experienced. Both of you fight each other with hungry and eager tongues and the way your teeth gently knock together has your skull rattling in a way that, if you weren’t so hell bent of devouring each other whole, you’d probably have to take a breather.
Your hands reluctantly release the wrinkled fabric of his shirt, and in a desperate attempt to stay occupied, they shoot up the tangle tightly into his hair. You admit, you probably tug harsher on the strands than you probably should, but the groans he pours into your mouth, and the way his hips rock roughly into yours, has you tugging again and again.
He presses you further and further into the wall, and without thinking your hips begin to kick and tilt down until you're grinding harshly and sloppily against his tense thigh.
You let out a quiet whine that's muffled and garbled by his moving at the feeling of him pressing his thumb gently into the dip beneath your jaw, and pressing into your jugular. The sound is followed almost immediately by a small yelp when he latches his teeth to your bottom lip and gives you a stinging bite.
You’re frustrated almost immediately with the lack of friction you can feel from the layers of clothing between you, and now the slight shooting pain from the tensing skin between his teeth, you can feel the impatience in your belly crawling up and invading your chest and throat.
He’s quick to pull away when you retaliate with your own nipping bite to his top lip, your teeth still sinking down when he does and making his sting probably just as much as yours. And when he eyes you as his eyelids droop down into an accusatory squint, you assume he’s not used to getting a taste of his own medicine.
He mutters something to himself about your feistiness, and a sly comment about how he shouldn’t be surprised as he was expecting to get a handful, but he gives you no time to make a snide comment or even question about any of the words, before his fingers are closing firmly but loosely around your neck.
He keeps you rooted in the spot that you stand, the only change in your posture he allows is pulling you slightly away from the wall, just wide enough for him to slink behind you and tug you roughly back into his chest.
“You like poking around into business that isn’t yours?” he asks rhetorically as his free hand reaches around your shoulder to push past the neckline of your shirt, and right as he pressed down the center of your chest and his fingers brush the bottom of your rib cage, his fingers curl and he starts to drag his blunt nails up your sternum as he continues, “need to know and see every single little thing right? So… what’s the harm of being on the other side of it for once?”
“What are you on about?” you as sharply as you try to turn your face towards him the best you can, but his hand tilts under the bottom of your chin until your head is forced to lean on his shoulder and he’s nothing but thrilled at the way it makes you struggle.
“To be seen, or not?” he presses his lips back against the shell of your ear, and the way he whispers roughly makes you shiver again as your thighs press tightly together, “you know what I mean, and you know the answer I want, but its all up to you in the end.”
The electric and slightly humiliating buzz of being seen in a mass of bodies committing the same sins as you was something the woman in the book went on about frequently. She mentioned that there were a few times where she and her lover snuck off to get alone time of course, but the almost blinding pleasure that came from being worshiped by not only one person, but the eyes of an entire room, was addictive. And you wanted just a taste.
You grumble in response, the idea of admitting to the already confident man that you did indeed wanted the same amount of attention as he did made your chest burn even more than it already was, and you’d rather take your chance with his terrifying looking boss than to give him the satisfaction of your verbal confession.
He seems unaffected by your nonverbal confirmation, the way you press into him as his hand wraps around your waist again and creeps down to the button of your shorts, and your own hand grabbing onto the sleeve of his rolled up long sleeve shirt to guide him to undo the clasp or just dip below the waistband, is enough of an answer for him to know.
He chooses to pop the button, and once he has the zipper pulled down enough that he can work with, he begins to shove the worn denim down your hips along with your underwear until they are wrapped around your knees and he can push his fingers roughly between your thighs.
You try to clear the fog that he creates in your mind from his teasing fingers long enough to reach your free hand back to give the same treatment to the dark jeans that wrap tightly around his hips and thighs in a way that had you mentally drooling from the moment you got to get a full look at him, after he ambushed you of course.
You’re not sure how he undid your shorts so quickly without being able to see, but as you fumble and scratch your nails against the sensitive skin of his hip, you give yourself the benefit of the doubt seeing as your trying to work while his middle and ring fingers tease over your entrance and the heel of his hand presses clumsily into your neglected clit.
He, on the other hand, doesn’t give you any benefit of the doubt. He at least has the decency to press his lips across your cheekbone and temple to muffle his quiet laughs, but to make your task even more difficult, his fingers shallowly curl up into you just enough to make you twist and curl.
Once the button of his jeans finally releases, you instinctively let out a huff and sink your shoulders back into his chest as you reach past the fabric to wrap your hand around his stiff length and pull it from the confines until you can press it against his lower belly. And you get just one tally on your side of the boards you’ve created in your mind when his amused laughs devolves into pleased grunts and tilting hips.
“Please,” you start quietly, trying to rock more against the parts of his hand that press against you while running your palm up and down the length of him and smearing him with his own pre come, “I can tell you’re just as impatient as me.”
He swears in your ear, using his hold on you with both hands to shift your hips up and pull you closer before he clears his throat to speak, “well could you imagine, looks like we are a match made in heaven.”
“More like hell,” you retaliate, digging the heel of your own palm into the skin just below the tip of him to egg him on even further, “but either way, that's the point isn't it?”
“I should have expected you to be just a little bit of a smart ass,” he mutters a half hearted complaint, but he only contradicts his own words when he pushes your hips away enough for you to guide him between your thighs and to glide against the arousal that spilled from your body and his hands spread messy along any available inch of skin.
He thrusts smoothly against your back a few times, bringing his arm down to guide him towards your entrance painfully slow, but when you let out a gravely moan of his name, he cant deny himself for any longer, and he’s sinking into you until your eyes start to gently flutter.
Once he’s seated inside you, his hand tenses slightly tighter around your neck, and when you both start pushing towards each other to meet in the middle of your thrusts, his other hand takes the opportunity to map any inch of you he can reach.
He gropes almost painfully at your chest, traveling over your stomach and up your shirt to dig his fingers into your skin until you swear he’s tattooed his finger prints onto you, all while nipping and lapping at the skin of your jaw and neck.
No one immediately in front of you is watching, they’re all in their own worlds of flesh and saliva, but you can still feel eyes of someone on you. His first and foremost as they burn holes into the side of your skull and glance to watch where you push back against him desperately, but there’s another feeling you get of being seen and studied thats so intense that you’re a little shocked when you chance a glance up and see that whoever the masked person was from earlier wasn’t there at all.
So no, you have no idea who, or what is watching you right now, but you can feel the unusual heat it stirs in you as your body flutters around him as he fucks you sloppily. You feel a deeper relation to the woman that owned the book that still rests in the bag that feel unceremoniously from your shoulder when he first put his hands on you, and you hope that maybe you’ll eventually slip into the life of bliss that she meticulously wrote about and possibly learn what happened that demolished the stories that lived in the back of the journal.
You could feel the pleasure crawling up your spine like a monster out creature, your panting breaths tipping the man that works you over off to this even though you’re sure he was already aware before you were, and you think your legs are back to the edge of collapsing when his creeping fingers dance along the expanse of your stomach to find their place back between your thighs.
Your back stiffens at the first touch of his rolling finger on your clit, and your head tilts even farther back onto his shoulder than he already had it. He doesn’t seem interested in coaxing you to your finish slowly, at a pace that would have mercy on your melting mind and shaking form, but he instead abuses your clit until your whimpering out and stumbling and stepping slightly on his toes.
You feel like you’re waiting out the suspense of a horror film that’s score is too obvious to the incoming jump scare. You tilt your neck in a way that seems normal to him, but in reality your trying to feel the many rings that decorate his fingers with the delicate skin of your throat to test if any of them could possibly be sharp enough to cut you and draw blood. You know what blood means to him, and you know it's something he’ll have to do soon if he truly can feel how close you are to the edge.
You feel like you’re floundering a bit, confused from the possible deviation from the story you’ve committed to memory. Was there any chance in this world that this wasn’t your person?
You push this thought away as soon as your panicked mind can construct it though, because there’s no way the spell that it feels has been placed on you would be there if that was the truth, and your body is heated almost like a furnace, but you suddenly love the idea of being burned by him.
You pull in a gasping breath of air that pierces through the music and grunting that rattles in your ears, the taste of your orgasms dancing on the back of your tongue and your back arching so harshly you fear that one of your muscles might seize up and cramp. And right when you feel his hips start to stutter in tandem with yours, and when you’re only seconds from blabbering out mixed syllables that you could only hope would come out as a coherent question, you feel it.
His teeth latch onto you again, his canines not sharp enough to make a clean cut as they dig into the muscle of your shoulder, but his determination is strong enough.
It burns painfully, and makes hot tears well up in your eyes, but almost embarrassingly, is the exact thing that pushes you scrambling over the edge.
You feel like it hurts to breathe, your lungs so focused on letting out puffs of air and broken moans that they can't seem to remember how to bring oxygen in, and your eyes roll for a completely new reason for the man and much more painfully.
It’s when you feel him start to suck the rushing blood from your newly christened wound that you also feel the rumble of his groans against your skin and feel him start to come inside of you. His fist tightens again around your neck as he pushes aftershocks through your nerves with his own orgasm, and with flying hands you grab at both of his wrists, not to ask in any way for him to ease up, but from a sudden wash and need to hold onto him possibly until you die.
He lets you collapse to the floor once he pulls out, but he follows your sinking form and sits alongside you and partially underneath you as you both try to catch your breath.
The club scene in front of you is now blurs of flashing lights and abstract writhing forms, and if it wasn’t for the zaps of energy you feel from every brush of his finger tips, your brain would probably be too muddled to register him fixing both your clothes and his.
You become just slightly more aware when he shifts your body against him enough to grab at the strap of your bag with the heel of his shoe, and you try to sit up faster than necessary and give yourself a small head rush when he pulls it to himself and flips it open.
“You seemed a little weirdly unaffected by the whole,” he flails his hands in front of you for a second as he speaks, and your lagging mind takes a second to catch up with his attempts at implication, “not the fucking part clearly,” he teases, “but the leading up to it. The meeting part and all.”
“I know what this place is,” you admit, and if your legs had gained just a bit more strength you probably would have stood and requested a glass of water just from how gravely your voice had become, “I knew I was probably going to run into you.”
“But you weren’t looking for me,” he tries, and fails, at hiding the slight edge of offense his voice shows, “if you knew I was here why didn’t you look for me?”
“I didn’t worry about it,” you say, warming up a bit again in the fear that it may have come off slightly rude, “or, like, I mean I knew you’d be able to find me easier than I could find you. I was more interested in finding answers.”
“Answers to what? You said you knew this place, or at least what it is?”
“Well I only know the basics,” you shift in his hold, knocking his hands away as they sift through your bag, and grabbing blindly until you can pull out the book, “I found this journal and it-“
“A journal?” he asks in a volume that could have been obnoxiously loud if it weren’t for the thumping bass that shook the floor beneath you, and pulls the small book from your hands.
“It was written by a woman who came here a long time ago,” you explain, deciding to not take offense to his rough and grabbing hands, “I found it and tracked the club down, I needed to see if it was real.”
“Oh it's real alright,” he laughs as he starts to flip through the pages, stopping for a moment to smile at a simple sketch she had done of a cat that she said lived in the back alley, “hey wait I think I know this name, and these people.”
“What are you on about?” you ask with a scoff as you tug the book from his grubby fingers, “you can’t possibly know these people, this was written in like the fifties. Stop pulling my leg.”
“Oh I see,” he smacks your thigh playfully as he leans over your shoulder to glance at the first page that mentioned anything about the date, the ink clear enough to read 1953 in the swirling handwriting, “you think you know everything.”
“I do know everything, fuck you,” you glare playfully at him over your shoulder, “or I would know, if you’d let me go into that weirdo hall.”
“No hall, for now at least,” he sighs, the gears in his head turning as he thinks of the next thing to say, “but you know, time doesn’t exist the same way here, the woman who wrote this probably didn’t know that at the time, so I’m not surprised you don’t either.”
“What do you mean time doesn’t exist?” you look at him as if he’s grown a second head, but do you really have the nerve to question him like that? Considering that entire concept of the club you are very aware of its existence now, a time situation shouldn’t be the most shocking should it?
“Well, it's hard to explai-“
“Then don’t explain it,” you almost jump fully out of his lap at the deep voice that rattles above you, and both him and you look up at the figure that looms over you now.
The man is tall, his black hoodie looking weird in contrast to the clothes of the other club goers, and with a squinting observation and a familiar and annoyed sigh from the man seated behind you, you realize you’re being stared down by the mysterious entity that is the DJ, his hands shoved deep into his hoodie pocket in annoyance.
“Huh?” Ten lets out more in the form of a noise than a word, as his arms wind tightly around your form.
“I said don’t explain shit,” the man begins to tap his foot in irritation as he speaks, and you wonder if he’s aware that he’s in rhythm with the song that surrounds you, “you need to chill out with the loose tongue, its bad enough we have the big mouths outside.”
“I wasn’t gonna go that far,” Ten sounds reminiscent of a scolded toddler, and considering the man is hindering you from getting information that you wanted so badly, you can feel yourself mirroring the pout he wears, “I know what I’m doing alright man? Why are you over here anyways, shouldn’t you be at your little booth minding your business.”
“No one minds their business over at that booth, and you should know that better than anyone pervert,” the words are sharp, but the curl to his lips and the underlying playfulness to his tone tells you the likeliness of them being friends is high, “anyways, I know we don’t follow any regulations or anything here, but I’m still gonna take a fuckin’ break or two.”
“Well breaks over,” Ten reaches out a hand to playfully swat the man away, “I didn’t wait this long for you to just interrupt my bonding time with my person alright?”
“Alright, alright,” he finally starts to shuffle away, throwing one last comment about Ten being bitter his person showed up first over his shoulder with a grin.
“What a loser,” Ten starts, looking at you playfully and rolling his eyes, “too bad he’s like my best friend or whatever.”
“You seem to have a lot of fun around here don’t you?” you take a shot at voicing your observations, your heart fluttering in a completely new way at the warm smile he shoots you.
“Just wait a see, my love. Just wait and see.”
208 notes · View notes
yostresswritinggirl · 3 years
Text
Tumblr media
It is time. This took a while but I figured I should give you guys the closure you've wanted, even tho uh it's not really a closure lmaooo. Here's the first part for the new readers!
Xiao's Personal "Chef" Travel Edition
Xiao with a Reader who is not only his Personal Chef but assistant, adventuring together
Tumblr media
General/Preparation
A visionless chef with an adeptus by their side, going in a routeless journey together to savor the world that had once been pulled away from their grasps.
It must be the cause of the recent ressurection and defeat of the Lord of Vortex, immobilizing him once more for thousands of years. And in the window time, there would be less worries for the Qixing and Liyue Adepti to worry about. Think of it as a day-off for the Adepti, and a vacation for you.
While you carry with you no traces of elemental blessings and an enthusiasm for swordplay, the blessed Sigil of Permission given to you by your adeptus (whom claimed it was created by Rex Lapis himself before his untimely death) grants you a special connection with Xiao.
Sadly a vacation from Liyue does not mean a break from the constant voices of demons within Xiao's mind. And you've prepared him the medicine necessary to soothe his mind even if temporary, three bottles to be exact, all of which can last him several months.
He looks at you with confusion and silent question, of which you waved away because you had prepared this batch in your room in the Inn to make sure he doesn't run out of stock.
He doesn't tell you this but lately the voices had been not intrusive while he gets distracted by your presence. Like a soothing balm, to numb the effects of the pain. It's still there but not as annoying.
Your adventure or journey usually lingers around Liyue for the first parts of it, looking around the nation to enjoy the sceneries without thinking about errands or protecting the villages from impending doom.
Xiao already uh announced his indefinite leave to the other adepti beforehand, but well, when you wanted to visit their domains, which you countered was PERFECTLY safe (almighty Sigil of Permission has lots of perks) it was a very awkward time for him upon meeting them again. It was inevitable because of the energy the sensed from Xiao and your Sigil.
"Hello again, Guardian Yaksha, were you not on leave?" "Y-Yeah... we're just... passing through"
Field trip with the Adepti!!!! Moon Carver and Mountain Shaper brought you around their domains as if to test you, like Ganyu's trials, while also flexing their achievements and who has the best domain. Humans are rare, but you are a mortal who carries the last blessed Sigil and you're tamed in the ways of the adepti because of your exposure to Xiao.
Cloud Retainer not only teaches you the glory of gliding, but she also has cute and embarrassing stories of Xiao from way back! Xiao is in the background trying not to scream or rage at the ensemble in front of him-
"He really likes collecting Qingxin flowers, always bringing one whenever he comes back from his exterminations. He even offers one to Morax everytime." "Yes, yes, such flowers grow common before, right?" "Wha- (Y/N), what do you think you're writing down in that book?!"
"The devoted that carries the last essence of Morax's powers. We've heard much about you from your adeptus, it is relieving to finally put a face to your name. Tell us, child, what is it that you seek in our domain?"
They pretty much just outted that Xiao talks about you to the others, and he- he's just so done. He's either going to hide, leave the area or pull you out of the conversation before someone *coughCloudRetainercough* starts embarrassing him in front of you.
Once you've gotten the supplies you wanted to collect from Liyue's wild lands, like flowers or ores, your little party will start going further away from the familiar nation.
Comfort on the Streets
Being the chef in the party, a lot of the time, resource collection stops you short from travelling despite the many prepped ingredients you had carried with you. There's a lot of things laying around and you just couldn't let such opportunities go. Your adoptive mother Verr had taught you to indulge in your curiousities, as a mother, as a traveler, and as a cook.
Xiao takes the brute force, the frontline of being the tank and general fighter of your band. He indulges himself with unhinged strength so long as he was sure that you were perfectly safe from his own barrage of offense. You think in the back of your mind that he's enjoying the exterminations but in his mind he indulges himself with your cheers and praises after fending off some pesky slimes that strayed too close to your temporary camp.
Xiao does not need rest and barely breaks a sweat but you're quite fragile of a human being, you still need rest and consumables, things that you had the luxury of despite working in the Inn. Here you were alone to carry your own weight and care for yourself. You look up from the boiling pot that was settled over the bright campfire to see Xiao's figure coming into view, a freshly killed boar in hand as some kind of offering for your sacred stomach.
You guess now the caring isn't one-sided.
When taking things into careful detail that requires precision and undivided attention, it seems the voices of the demons and revelled gods in the depths of his mind disappears, more so under the presence of you.
So it was the perfect opportunity now that no other errands hold you back, to teach Xiao how to make the infamous Almond Tofu.
When you teach him survival he takes into consideration everything despite the bored/blank face he dons.
Oh but he still prefers your way of cooking, he can never get the same soft texture of the jelly that you easily make.
Xiao doesn't really need to eat but he's glad to be your taste-tester for the new dishes you cook from the random, probably edible, ingredients you find here and then.
The stew continued to boil with bubbles popping despite the fire under it extinguished for a while now. It was an unnamed soup you concocted from the various seafood you've gotten from the ocean paired with the meat the adeptus hunted.
It was delicious. Despite being a palette he was not used to, it was something he can stomach. And despite the different meat mixed in, the flavours didn't clash like he thought it would but instead blended the tastes quite well. Xiao hums as he sips the soup politely, tilting the bowl as he gulps down.
"It is manageable, despite your first try, I can see this being sold in one of the restaurants in Liyue Harbour-" he turns to you as he proceeds to hold out his bowl for seconds when he stopped in his tracks, eyes slightly widening a crack at the sight of tears free falling off your chin.
The spoon on your hand was slack, eyes distant yet dilated as you silently cried. When you felt the glove of his hand cup your cheek, tilting your head to make you face him, your expression cracked to that of grief melded with forced laughter. "It's... it's just like what mum used to make." You sob, and his hand wavered from its touch.
Travelling reopened old wounds. For you and for him.
Xiao doesn't NEED sleep nor does he WANT it, despite the many times you had caught him dozing off in the middle of the day during your work at the Inn. Such occasions usually meant that there was an event that needed his aid the night prior.
Your guardian yaksha usually stays up to keep watch and when you wake up, you would find him spaced out or in the brink of passing out, desperately holding himself together
But there are other times when he feels more restless and not content with just standing guard to make sure you are protected—
Those moments are when you are held in his arms, him resting against a tree and you resting against his lean chest, travel blanket laid over the both of you. When the terrain allows it, the sleeping bag would be under your bottom and legs for extra comfort.
When you can't rest, he whips out his flute to play you a soft tune hoping to lull you to sleep. If he sinks into the comfort of the mood, he'll continue playing much softer to prevent waking you up so early
But the guardian yaksha can buckle at the temptation of comfort, a humanistic desire fuelled by the assurance that in his arms you are absolutely safe-
And you two lay under the stars in peaceful slumber. Good night~
Combat-side of Travelling
Kicking the bottom shaft of the jade spear, Xiao swiftly catches it with his other hand, a small smile aimed for himself at the expert action before he raises his eyes back at you where you lay splayed on the floor. Drenched in your own sweat and desperately breathing. A long, wooden stick discarded by your side.
You pried your eyes open when the rays of the sun suddenly stopped invading through your thin eyelids, the shadow of the Yaksha looming over your form with a rare triumphant smirk. "Yeah, yeah, I know what you're gonna say-"
"I told you so."
"Oh hush you!"
His soft laugh was melodic and it made you break a smile despite the exhaustion.
We've already established beforehand that Xiao is your main dps here and you're just support/utility. But you've expressed your desire to AT LEAST pick up some weight, asking the man to help you hone your weapon proficiency, even if you knew he'd decli-
He accepts. Oh. But it's not about swords sadly, it's for polearms. Since it's the weapon he uses, it's the only thing he can teach you.
Will be CONSIDERABLY gentle in training you compared to his massacres, and will be ever so patient so long as progress is made. Surprisingly, Xiao is actually a really good teacher, and you'd find his points to be precise and on the spot.
He'll be there on the side as you try to fight off a hydro slime for the first time, with the aid of your cheap spear you both from the nearest town over. If you get cornered, he'll be there to instantly swoop in. Fortunately you managed, and he gave an approving nod.
Despite his acceptance to teach he's not gonna let you fight actual threats because he doesn't wish to risk your safety. And you're still gonna be a hundred feet away as he does his job
If he ever managed to hurt you himself, it's... it's not gonna be good, not good at all for the both of you... luckily that hasn't happened! Uh, yet lol
Just admire him from afar, he looks pretty anyways, although the black particles that seem to surround him before the end of the fight
But he'll always come back to you, with a slight limp you always notice despite his attempts to hide, and you'll be there to heal him up
Like a knight to his princess? Or healer, more so
And the process rinses and repeats at your generally peaceful trip
"Oh, oh, I see it! Uuup there!"
His honey amber eyes follow where your fingers point, high and up against the cliff until he sees the glimpse of the swaying violetgrass. No orders needed to tell him what the objective is, but as you place your hand on his elbow when he was about to leap, you had different plans.
"Woohoo!" Please be careful, he shouts in his head as you rode the tides of his Anemo currents, gliding over to where the violetgrass awaits for your plucking hands. When the glider retracts as you grip the cliff face, you broke the stem of the flora. A eureka in your voice as you held it up like a treasure before pushing yourself off the cliffside.
The wind on your back was not harsh, carefully constructed and maneuvered as you seemingly float down into the arms of the awaiting Yaksha, as per routine of your retrieval, "Thank you!"
"Is it in good condition?" It didn't bother you that he has yet to put you down, nodding with a grin as you gently waved the perfectly grown violetgrass in your hand. Satisfied, he turns around to go back to your route when
golden, brown and white silhouettes entered your peripherals among the turn.
"Eh?"
"Ah?"
"Traveler, Paimon and Zhongli?"
"Well, it is the most intriguing that we meet again this far out and in such a circumstance, Xiao and (Y/N)."
Party gained 2 ½ members!
Tumblr media
I noticed upon writing that after you started travelling with Xiao, the formality in your tone of speaking started to dissipate. Easing into the comforts of your relationship with him, Xiao is relieved.
@kookieyachi @moaa @dandelion-dreams @zelos-simp @legionqueensav @snackgod @rxsalinee @cala-ran @wind-wheel @witchsungie
496 notes · View notes
cinnamonest · 3 years
Text
Yandere Profile -- Eijiro Kirishima
Ahhh I finally finished this one! I love my loud red boy bless him
For @shorkbrian !!
Tws:  Fem reader, yandere, delusional mindsets, kidnapping, manipulation, stalking, mentions of death, normal yandere content, mentions of a high school setting
Tws (below cut): Noncon, throatfucking, pain content
This is also the first time I'm including my new severity scale (which I just made a post about before this one) in a profile!
================
Severity Scale
Intelligence/Perceptiveness: 6 Brutality: 5 Physical capability: 9 Mental/emotional instability: 6 Restrictiveness: 5 Sexual sadism: 6 Stubbornness: 8
What are they generally like? Lucid, aware? Obsessive? How do they behave?
He's actually not one of the yanderes that stalks from a distance - he's not so nervous that he can't approach you, no, he's comfortable enough to talk to you in person. Being away from you physically is almost painful, he wants to spend as much time with you as possible. He's also one you might catch onto a little bit, because he's just on the border of being a little lacking in self awareness to the point that he doesn't always realize when he's smothering you. Of course, it aligns well enough with his general personality that you won't think too much of it, just that he can be a little overbearing or clingy.
That being said, he does do his fair share of information collecting when you're not together. Boy is a master at data collection - he'll find socials you forgot you had, posts you made years ago, every major information collection site there is, he'll use to find everything he can about you. Your socials, your friends' socials, your relatives' socials. Even if you have one of those apps that lets you see who's stalking you on your social media, he's already planned ahead for that, and uses a variety of burner accounts so you never notice a thing.
Especially in later stages, as his mental stability is slowly worn down, he's prone to the classic yandere persona flip. Can go from his usual very energetic, spirited, happy go lucky sort of demeanor and, in very shocking and unexpected moments, become highly aggressive towards others, or even snap at you with an uncharacteristic coldness. However, he's aware enough to know he's doing it, and quickly backpedals once he does, apologizing and telling you he's just having a really bad day. Only these "bad days" seem to pile up quite a bit as time goes on.
Similarly, he becomes more delusional with time. At first he might actually be fairly receptive towards your friends, even male ones, and while his behaviors and stalking is present, it's not over-the-top just yet. It will take a few months but gradually he finds himself slipping into an increasing pattern -- just one more hour sitting outside your dorm room, just one more text, one more post of yours from five years ago, just one more of this or that and soon it's completely spiraled out of his control.
He's also aware enough at first to realize you might not be too keen on, you know, essentially imprisonment. If it weren't so fucked up, it would almost be funny to watch him - rehearsing the whole speech he will have to give to darling when she wakes up to himself in the mirror, nervously pacing, not making eye contact the whole time he's explaining himself and later finishing off telling you you're here forever with a "so, uh, yeah," and a nervous little laugh. He's a bit panicked himself but will do his best to calm poor darling down, and, as he tells himself, your initial reaction will be bad, but you'll adjust.
How likely are they to kidnap their darling? How quickly will they do so?
He's surprisingly patient and can bide his time. If you're good, he's one of a few where you may be able to prolong your freedom and evade captivity for a very long time, years even. In order to achieve this, though, you'll have to never question his very much questionable behaviors, listen to him when he says not to talk to anyone else, spending every waking moment with him, that sorta thing. So really, it only works for a very naive darling who is already paranoid of others. For most people, who will, you know, call him out on his bullshit, he'll change his mind about letting you be free pretty quickly.
This is especially true if he feels like he's losing you -- if you just get upset that's one thing, but if he senses you're starting to become wary of him or even avoid him, he'll be pushed to the edge very quickly. He's not the brightest when it comes to his methods, most likely opting for a very simple break-in during your sleep or kidnapping you on the way home sort of deal.
He was something of this "waiting period," a time some types of yanderes have where they try to be normal. These types of yanderes are most likely to start of their relationships as normal and organic and only gradually devolve, or snap, into a higher state of delusion and unhealthy behavior. He's no exception to this, and you may get a few months of a very normal relationship with only small red flags that seem to be gradually increasing. 
How difficult is it to escape from them? How do they keep you restrained? How do they deal with attempted escape? 
To escape, only moderate difficulty, actually. To stay escaped? That's a different story.
You see, he's got a slight predator-prey thing going on and will most likely give you a window of opportunity here or there (not a lot, only when he's carefully arranged it out). Early on he has a tracking device implanted in you while you're knocked out, but never tells you about it. He'll let you get a little ways, never so far that there's any risk, and always stays within very close proximity. Watching your worried eyes as you can't shake the feeling of something watching you, knowing you're questioning your own sanity in your state of paranoia. It's really cute, watching you dart your head back and forth into the shadows, every which way except for the actual place he's standing. Will wait until you inevitably run into seclusion, when you take that turn onto a corner with no eyewitnesses, when you duck into a business closed for the night for cover, and he'll have a hand around your mouth before you can even make a noise.
He knows he should be mad, but he gets off to it so much it's hard to be genuinely angry rather than just... Roughly exerting the pent up energy into you. Which in and of itself is something of a punishment.
How easy are they to trick, deceive, or manipulate?
It's a mix of "more intelligent than he lets on," and "still kinda on the dull side." In particular, he's not very good at telling when someone is lying. It's honestly a coin toss every time you try, which actually makes it more difficult, really. You'll be just hopeful enough that maybe you can deceive him on this one thing, but there's a 50-50 chance it won't work. Unlike a super intelligent yandere who you automatically know better than to try, you'll keep getting your hopes up and trying with him, which ultimately results in more punishments when it fails.
How lenient are they? What privileges can you have, and what will you be denied?
He's moderate on allowances, but still restrictive on contact. As in, he'll get you the things you want, especially once he's making tons of money as a pro. Lets you have a highly controlled phone, complete with internet, but given a lock to prevent commenting or sending or uploading of any kind (aside from messages to him, of course). He doesn't really care too much about the media you consume or whatnot, but if he decides he doesn't like something specifically -- say, youtube videos on lockpicking -- then he'll probably take it away for a time until he can figure out how to better control it.
He's one to let you roam his place to an extent, once again it's a case-by-case basis of "you have this privilege until you do something to lose it." You can cook and access the kitchen until an incident of you hurting yourself or attacking him. You can watch tv and roam around until you break something intentionally out of spite. That sort of thing -- he deals with the problems when they arise, but is generally fairly lenient on your allowances, so really it's very unwise to take that privilege for granted, since it's a lot more than what a lot of yans would allow.
When you're really really good, he'll definitely let you go out with him. As we'll discuss, he likes to emulate normalcy, and really likes the fun kind of dates - theme parks and movies and the like. It'll be quite a while before you get to this stage though, as he has to feel 100% confident you won't try anything at all. Of course, if you do try anything, the privilege will be lost until you earn it back. However, this will also be entirely undercover on his end, probably wearing masks and sunglasses or the like. He doesn't want people to see you with him and recognize him, like a lot of the mha yans, he fears the potential of someone using you against him.
What kind of rules do they have? What kind of punishment would they use?
Once again a "make them up as you go" guy. Listen, he didn't plan much beyond the initial kidnapping you and security, so there's a lot he hasn't thought about. From day one, what's made clear is you're not to leave and that you need to accept the way things are as soon as possible, and you know, be a doll and be sweet for him. As time goes on things get added -- don't look up this or that, don't attack or resist, don't backtalk him, don't give him the cold shoulder, etc etc. Over time it will amount to a lot, actually, you see, he's got a very specific image of how you should behave in his mind. Anything that deviates from that will quickly become a rule. So it's kind of like a puzzle for poor darling, you're not given an exact image of what you're supposed to act like or what you're not allowed to do, you just gradually find out with trial and error and an ever-growing behavioral rule list what is and isn't acceptable
.He can't stand isolation punishments, can't take being away from you for that long. He might try at first, but, almost comically, he cracks very early and brings you back out (just went you thought you were gonna get a break from him). It's primarily, (in our sfw section) a matter of losing privileges. To him, he knows that one of the worst punishments is boredom, so he'll take away your things that occupy you and leave you with nothing, potentially restraining you to a single room, so that you eventually cave and apologize.
How do they deal with rivals, or perceived rivals? Will they get rid of them? Will they kill them themselves, or find another way?
He uses social methods or underhanded, subtle tricks to eliminate people rather than killing them. Frames them for stealing, or some other misdeed to get them expelled, ruins their social reputation, fakes messages to make you hate them, maybe even to make them hate you. that's during the school-age stages of things. Now, an older hero Kirishima, definitely uses his status to get things done the way he wants. Come on, who in their right mind would try to take the girl of a pro hero to begin with? They were asking for it. He has a few similar methods -- ruins their public image, frames them for a crime, or, if they're persistent enough, may very well just use a couple connections to make sure they disappear -- potentially disappear entirely, or perhaps get permanently hospitalized from a bad accident, become the random victim of some villains, etc.
That being said, during the pre-kidnapping stages, he's definitely gonna start fights with other dudes for looking at you the wrong way. Even if it's horrifically embarrassing, he thinks of it as a show of manliness. You'll eventually have to pull him off and calm him down before he pummels the poor victim of choice completely. Over time, this earns him a reputation for being insanely protective, and it makes people start to avoid both him and you, which is all the better in his mind.
How easy is it to make them mad? What does their anger look like?
With most things, he's pretty slow to anger, tries to be very patient and understanding. You have to wittle down that patience with repeated and deliberate disobedience to get a snap out of him - which is highly possible, considering poor darling initially is given no bad reaction. You'll think he's a pushover since he doesn't get super mad the first time, or the second or third, so when he finally does snap it's pretty frightening - it's all the irritation bottled up and released at once.
He tries hard to project the image of who he's known to be - a chill, good natured, optimistic guy, which is why he manages to be so patient. He doesn't want that image ruined for you, and he's very very particular about, and worries about, the image of him in your mind. He has a deep need for you to see him as a heroic figure, to look up to him, and to see him as above you, so he doesn't want to ruin that with violence and anger.
It's usually a literal snap of some sort - whatever he's holding gets slammed down on the table, or crushed or snapped in half (say, a glass or pen). His voice gets low, and builds up into a snarl. Definitely one to grab you by the hair. Drags you to wherever he deems a suitable place to take care of your issues.
So they see you as above them, beneath them, or equal to them?
He doesn't think about these things too much, and really, he's somewhat in the middle or can even fluctuate. A lot of it depends on you. If you're good and obedient, he treats you like you're an angel, says he doesn't deserve you. Now, if you're not being so good, he might sometimes let the frustrations slip out into some bitterness, likewise muttering that you should be a bit more grateful that someone like him loves you so much.
That being said, he does want you to see him as above you, wants you to look up to him and, simply, he wants you to think he's amazing and heroic! He goes out of his way to repeatedly impress you with displays of strength and the like, and, like a lot of the hero yanderes, will frequently subject you to watching the news of him saving people. He exaggerates his heroics significantly and makes sure you know just how many people he saved, and of course, he makes sure to show you every girl that blows up his phone after finding his number somehow, all the adoring females fans, and so on, in a very blatant attempt to make you jealous -- having all those fans does get his ego going a bit.
How determined are they for you to love them? How hard will they try to make it happen? Or are they content just having you?
Definitely strongly determined. He wants not only your acceptance, but also to somewhat normalize the relationship. He emulates a lot of normal behaviors like aforementioned dates, but also things like "date night" at home (cuddles on the couch and watching TV, playing games, takeout etc), little good morning texts for you to wake up to when he has to leave early, making food together. It's so tender and sweet that sometimes you could almost forget that you're being trapped against your will. It also, of course, is very beneficial for his imperatives, considering that that sweetness will only help you adjust more quickly.
Bonus: Is there anything that makes them unique, in comparison to other yanderes?
Probably the previously noted extent to which he strives towards a very butchered resemblance of normalcy. It's like he wants to just be a normal couple... but he doesn't, he can't. I'd say that even he himself kind of struggles with it a bit -- psychologically, he's one of the yanderes that deludes himself because he has to. It doesn't come super naturally, it's that, being forced to recognize how unhealthy and harmful his extreme controlling and possessiveness is, to come to terms with the fact that those urges aren't normal... the guilt would eat him alive if he actually stopped to think about that, if he actually allowed himself to admit that reality to himself. So, he doesn't. He will push that thought away, even though it does exist somewhere deep down, until the day he dies. He couldn't live with himself if he didn't delude himself into believing it's all necessary, and that he's good to you. A lot of his more lenient tendencies stem from this.
It's a conflict between parts of his brain -- a duality of sorts. One part says he wants the normalcy -- he wants dates and love and sex and fun and he wants it all organically, he doesn't want to be a kidnapper, doesn't want to have to do these things. But as much as he wishes he didn't have to, the other part of him does, in fact, say that he has to do these things. Yanderes that have these sorts of internal conflicts due to a strong sense of morality (which he DOES have, really) tend to have a "waiting period," as he does, which I mentioned above -- a time where they try to go about things normally but find themselves unable to.
As a result, I'd say he's one of the yanderes that's actually very likely to start off as an actual boyfriend, rather than a stranger or a friend. He's confident enough to ask you out and charming enough to get a yes, but he just can't control himself over time.
General perverseness: how sexual of a person are they? What’s their drive like? How touchy do they get? Do they have any reservations about sexuality?
Like some of my other yans I've discussed, he has what you call reactive sexuality. On his own, he's average for a young man, but once he has someone he really has a lot of affection for, that drive goes up significantly in their presence. There's a lot more stimulation, after all, it gets those hormones raging and the urge to fuck goes way up pretty quickly now that there's an availability.
He's moderate-to-heavy on the perversion for what you'd expect from a guy like himself. He's far from pure but he knows exactly how to teeter the line of being just gross enough to make you squirm and blush without being such a horndog that he actually offends you or drives you away. Not that he won't push that line as far as he can, constantly testing your boundaries.
As for touchiness, oof he's VERY touchy. Poor darling. It, like many things, increases with time in the pre-kidnapping stage -- even from the get go he's prone to slinging an arm over your shoulder or leaning on you, but that progresses into gradual soft gropes that you almost feel like you imagined, and extended touches, hands gripping your shoulders, etc. Post-kidnapping, very touchy all the time. Very much a cuddler and likes to grab at everything he can when he does so.
How forceful are they? Do they care about your willingness?
It's eh, moderate, but ultimately, as in yandere nature, force will be used if necessary. He's so sweet about it at first that it almost doesn't even feel like it. He tells himself you're afraid, and any lashing out is just because of that. Even if you say he's the problem, he thinks that's just because you're embarrassed to admit you're scared. Everything you can come up with, he'll loop back to that rationalization. It helps him get over any potential guilt he'd otherwise have, which he certainly would if he didn't lie to himself.
He's so sweet about the whole thing its nauseating for poor darling. Wiping away any tears on your face, taking a long long time to prepare you up with fingers and touches and words, and telling you it'll be ok, that it only hurts for a second, that he'll make you feel so good, that you'll be happy this happened just as much as he is.
What sort of kinks or fetishes do they have, or would they fill?
Oral fixation
This boy just... saying he wants you to blow him is understating it. He wants to throatfuck you -- grab you by the hair and use your face like a toy. In the beginning he'll be gentler, but he fantasizes about reaching a point at which he can really just go at it, train your gag reflex to be virtually non-existent. He likes to cum down your throat, but even more he loves pulling out at the last moment and telling you to hold your mouth open and tongue out, jerking off onto your tongue, getting some on your face, and telling you to swallow.
Roleplay/Lingerie
Specifically, he'll get into anything service related. Maid outfits galore. He loves treating you like a doll, really, dressing you up in whatever newest lewdest thing he can find. Definitely keeps up with the newest outfit trends of the egirl type of sphere -- loves the things like thigh highs, virgin killer sweaters, garters, anything of the sort. Very much into the "cutesy" type of stuff on you, expect lots of pastel colors and soft fluffy things. Also 100% will get a tail plug and animal ears of some kind. And it's not just for looks, he likes you to act out the role, too. He's actually super-blushy about the whole idea at first, but he does like the idea of being called "Master," especially when it's all soft and embarrassed coming out of your own mouth. 
Size difference/strength difference
It ties back into the thing of wanting you to look up to him. He loves loves loves seeing the faces and the little squeals you make for him when he gives you displays of raw strength - and he'll be sure to frequently remind you of exactly how strong he is. Standing-fucking, slinging you over his shoulder when he's dragging you back home, picking you up and throwing you on the bed, grabbing you by the hips and lifting your entire body up and down when you're on top of him and using you as effortlessly as if you were a near-weightless fleshlight.
No matter which size you may be, he loves it whichever way. If you're tiny and short it gives him an automatic power rush, but if you're larger and taller he loves that too - it gives him a massive ego boost that he can pin you down and control your body with such ease, bonus points if you thought he couldn't since you're bigger than he is.
Size kink pt 2
Also a size related thing, but specifically dick. Listen I refuse to believe this man doesn't have a girthy, thick dick. And he loves the things it can do to you -- the way you gasp and shudder, even little whimpers of pain. He feels bad if there's any pain, but he can't help but get off to the squeals just a little bit, the tears in your eyes are just so cute. Definitely loves making a visible bulge on your stomach, and will make sure you see it too, holding your head in place to force you to watch your stomach bulge every time he thrusts in. Bulging your throat is equally hot, as mentioned above. And he loves the way that there's just that slightly visible gape for a few minutes after he pulls out as your body adjusts.
Threeways
Perhaps very rare for a yandere, he's one of a few that isn't 100% opposed to sharing, provided it's with special individuals, namely a certain blonde friend. Not so much in the relationship aspect, but a sexual one, and it's very well-controlled on his end, with him having the ultimate power over the whole situation. There will always be things that only HE can do to you that no one else can, of course, and it's all only with those he trusts to never spill about your existence. Still, he just really really likes seeing you get spitroasted, really. Can you blame him?
And of course, he'll make sure to get reassurance from you that you only love him and don't care about Katsuki at all, and if he ever gets even the slightest feeling that that might not be the case, it's a kink he'll give up easily if it means soothing the potential raging jealousy.
How do they feel about pregnancy or babies? Do they want them?
He actually really, really likes the thought of being a dad. It's sort of a pride thing, having a family he can love and support (it's not like you're gonna be allowed to work), showing you off to everyone. And of course, the emotional attachment you'll undoubtedly form, the dependency you'll have on him. 
Getting to watch cum drip out of you and never having to pull out is a nice bonus, too.
What kind of (nsfw) punishments would they use?
Big into overstim. It's perfect because it's a punishment that is both effective, doesn't technically hurt you, and releases all those good chemicals all at the same time. He doesn't initially want to hurt you too bad, but, if you're really bad -- either in terms of the severity of the offense or the number of times you continue to do it -- he can reach a point of anger at which he'll resort to impact-pain-based punishments, too. Ever the sweet one, he actually does research first to make sure he won't go too far and seriously injure you, but once's he's made all the right purchases, I could see him settling on riding crops, he will make you hurt.
And, really, because it all gets him off at the same time -- the strangled little cries and mewls and whimpers are so much hotter than they should  be. He likely blindfolds you the whole time, partially to increase your fear and anticipation, but also so that you don't know he's jerking off to the whole thing.
The aforementioned throatfucking is also an effective and very quick, straight-to-the-point punishment when need be. If he's super mad and doesn't have the self control to take you elsewhere he may very well just dump you on your knees and demand you open your mouth or else you'll be in for a lot more pain. If he's in that kind of borderline-sadist mood he can get cruel with it too -- cumming in your mouth but not letting you swallow, making you hold the gross taste against your tongue for several minutes, or, his favorite guilty pleasure he feels too bad making you do most of the time, slamming your face all the way down and holding his cock all the way down your throat, perfectly still. No matter how hard you try to pull back or beat on his thighs, he has an iron grip and will hold you there until you nearly pass out.
Also, hell, just fucking him can be a punishment if he wants it to be. He can manhandle you with such a brutality and strength that it's genuinely painful. You want to know what it feels like to have a, literally, rock-hard dick ramming into your cervix?
What body parts of their darling do they like the most?
Very much a thigh boy. Not only are they soft and pillowy, but he loves to bite and suck at the insides of your thighs and leave lots and lots of marks. They're just as much for you as they are for him. He makes sure you always wear shorts or short skirts (or nothing is fine too) to make sure said marks are always within your vision.
240 notes · View notes
batarella · 3 years
Text
3 birds 1 stone - chapter 12
Tumblr media
‘Dick, Jason, and Tim. Supposed brothers 'till the end, until all three fall in love with you. Who wins your heart?
The man who earned it, the man who stole it, or the man who always had it?’
A/N: We continue the three perspectives!!! AND we got special appearances from a few characters today eeeeee we’re so close to the finale. Hope you guys enjoy this one!
WORDS: 12,068  WARNINGS: violence, arm dislocation, muscle injuries, alcoholism, mentions of coffee addiction and insomnia
MASTERLIST | 3 BIRDS 1 STONE MASTERLIST
-----
Dick:
That day, this all ends.
Telling himself he got into this mess because he hadn’t a choice, that he hadn’t already stopped because it was all just too riveting and captivating and not at all within his control, was nothing short of a lie.
He had every say in it.
But not even his fucking conscience could convince him to stop. He wanted this mess. Dove right into the lava. He knew every bit of the heartbreak he’d have to endure and he willingly brought it to himself. To get lost into the deep dark woods, with nothing more than an oil lamp, to be pricked by the many thorns and suffocated by the leaves and trees that crowd about much like a bush. To get lost in her, and never want to climb out of any of it. He knew how slippery the road ahead of him was and still he kept going, kept driving, sped up a little even when he thought he’d actually get to where the stars pointed him to.
But so profoundly was his loss of himself, without much effort at all to escape from those grasps even when he told himself he did; going to another woman, wanting the same arrest of his heart to hopefully take him away, but without halting those thoughts of Y/N and how her smile that he’d seen earlier that day would last until dark, maybe even beyond that. Those flares of her face and her voice and how he let them speak to her every night, change them into burning whispers against his ear when he’s memorized her voice too much to make her say anything he wanted her to, even when they only last in his head.
Dick never tried to stop her from taking her heart like that, even when he had to watch her be with another.
Tonight, it all ends. Every bit of this torture that he brought only to himself, it all comes to this sorry halt.
Dick, standing atop a roof of an office building in Dresher, knew that at that moment, he had to sit this one down. He had to be alone and in the darkness to make this as painful as it possibly could, hoping that if all that pain were to be felt now, compress them into this little tub of static blackness, then perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad the next day, and the day after that. Even when he knew this would backfire, he had to.
No one, especially not Y/N, would want him to end up with her. Tim deserved her. Hell, even Jason’s done a lot more for her sake than he had. He can't hope anymore. He can't let this go on.
All this would have gone better if he’d known this sooner.
So with him on that rooftop, sitting on the ledge fifty stories above as if not at all was he a push away from death, Dick let his finger scroll across his phone’s screen moist from his sweat. The battery was going to run out soon. He’d been there for hours, staring at that same picture of her from the day in the nursery, when the sun had been kind to her, touching the surface of her skin so perfectly, it showed more of the little details that he’d already memorized. Those exact images would be thrown out by the end of tonight. Pack their bags. Scram them out the door.
It had, as expected, proven to be difficult.
The thirty-seven pictures he took that day, he’d already heartly remembered by the end of it. Countless of times, he pulled them out of his pocket just to take a second to look, even at the worst. Another month had passed and nothing had happened much since, nothing out the ordinary, which meant their friendship was back to how it used to be. They were friends.
And that was why it ends tonight. Because if he doesn’t fight these thoughts, if he doesn’t fight her, he loses her. He loses this friendship.
Are you sure you want to delete this photo?
Confirm.
Confirm.
Confirm.
Thirty-six times, he let his finger do the talking. Not his heart. Not even his brain.
At the last one, the screen was too distorted by a fallen tear that had seeped out of his domino mask for him to go on. It was the only hindrance he needed to give up and stop. At least for a second.
But he couldn’t even dwell on it too much, or let himself cry, let it burn his skin off enough so it wouldn’t hurt any more afterwards. He couldn’t even let himself have that luxury when he heard the thudding noise of his brother’s boot-cladded feet, a Bo staff that hit the ground, and a black cape that enforced a gust of wind to blow against the back of his head.
Dick just closed his eyes, and just after that, Tim walked over to stand right behind him.
Greatest Detective in the World. But even an idiot would know what he was up to, sitting in the darkness crying while his feet dangle off a rooftop’s ledge, eyes to his phone like he was reading the saddest sob story in the whole world or that he’d just received a text that one of his loved ones’ lives had been taken away from cancer.
The way Tim was silent, he knew.
And Dick just let him believe it, without even a word to explain himself, he did. He let Tim’s mind do the figuring out and the explaining because not even his own words would be half that truth.
Tim’s voice that night wasn’t the kind he heard often.
“You think this is the right time for that, Dick?”
A crack on his knuckles, his throat sounding rough and beaten, Dick didn’t know what to even say.
“We called you fifteen times over at the bridge. We needed you-“
“Sorry-“
“And it turns out you’ve been at your phone the whole time-“
“You handled it without me.”
“That isn’t the fucking point.”
A month of silence, since that deathly night after they took Y/N home. Several minutes, together in one car, had proven to be one of the most insufferable moments of his life. And not surprisingly, it went on for even more days after that.
Dick turned off his phone, but Tim snatched it away from his hands and walked away so Dick couldn’t grab it.
He stood from the ledge. “Come on, Tim. Not cool.”
“Hmm. Cute,” Tim faked a smile and swiped around the screen, at the last picture of Y/N he had. “Could have sent it to me. And Jason.”
“Tim-“
“But it’s cool,” Tim said. He threw the phone back at Dick and he caught it just before it hit the ground. “All good. Finally, you have something of her all to yourself, right?”
Tim was Tim. Not this. Not someone so angry and grievous and someone who was looking at him that way with so much disgust when he used to be that young boy of fourteen who looked at his older brother like a god. How long, he thought, must he have kept all this frustration bundled up inside, where not even he could reach into. Someone who’s so calm, so in control of what he says, had finally given in and let his annoyance flourish about. He wondered, as anyone would, at what point Tim had finally had enough of all of this.
“Tim, please-“
“You,” Tim pointed his gloved finger right at Dick’s face.
“You were supposed to be my brother.”
.
Tim:
Of course, he’s had enough.
He’s had enough of all this a lot longer than anyone else, even he, would have thought.
It might have been since that day Y/N was crying over an argument they once had, over something he can't even remember, that almost pried them apart, only for Dick to come along and console her without telling Tim where he was, and he only knew because Y/N told him what happened. If she hadn’t, Tim wouldn’t have known.
He wouldn’t have known Dick had long been pining over the love of his life, never mind how she was in his arms and kissing his lips and calling for his name.
Dick, who could have literally anyone he could possibly wish for, just had to want her.
“What do you want me to say?” The asshole started after a moment’s silence, of nothing but a helicopter’s whirl from far above, the lack of light from everywhere around them, and their footsteps against the empty cement.
He couldn’t even look at his brother in the eye with his mask on, but he knew enough to know what he felt. It didn’t matter if he was sincere. It didn’t even matter that he cried.
“Nothing,” Tim said. “You’ve done your damage.”
“Damage?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“Enlighten me.”
Tim scoffed and faked yet another laugh. It annoyed himself at that point.
“You are unbelievable-“
“I’m not trying to do anything with her anymo-“
“Don’t even start with that, asshole.”
Tim’s hands were shaking, and subconsciously he tried to repress those tremors, hoping they’d go away if he clenched them enough, but they only got worse.
“She was mine,” he cried. “And you just couldn’t handle that-“
“I never tried anything with her when you were together.” Dick tried to step closer to him but he just backed away.
“So you weren’t just waiting for us to break up so you’d swoop in and be the hero?” he scoffed. “I asked you to make sure she was okay, not take advantage of her hurting just so you’d have your chance.”
“And why did you break up, Tim?” He had the audacity to ask. “You didn’t love her anymore-“
“You knew I still did-“
“Then why hurt her?!”
“Because I was hurting her anyway!”
Never. He’s never been this angry. Not that he could recall.
“I was 17. Everything about me changed. Wayne Enterprises. Red Robin. Fucking Bruce dying and coming back to life. She was there but I was about to lose my fucking mind. I thought she didn’t have a place in all that mess anymore so I broke it off.”
Finally, he stepped close enough to Dick, almost to leveling with his height. His brother had his lips hidden, hands falling to his sides.
He looked terrified.
“Two seconds after that, I never regret anything more my whole fucking life. I thought talking to you would make her feel better, but you just couldn’t help but bat your pretty little eyes at her when she was vulnerable. I wanted to go back but I couldn’t ‘cuz you were already there!”
He was snarling, and a growl escaped his throat by the time he backed away. Tim didn’t even get to hear himself until he saw his own reflection in the white of Dick’s mask.
But Dick. He didn’t even take it as a hint to just shut up and take his rambling.
“I never meant to keep her away from you-“
“I went to you, Dick.” Tim wiped his lips with the back of his gloves, watched over to the next building to avoid his brother’s face. “I always went to you for help. With her. You know how long I’ve wanted her. And I went to you because I thought you were my brother and you’d help me.”
“I did help you!”
“You were helping yourself!”
His hands slammed against Dick’s chest, and it was a good thing he didn’t fight back. He would have just taken that as an excuse to keep hitting.
“Tim,” Dick held his hands up. Tim backed away. “Just go to her-“
“THIS ISNT ABOUT HER ANYMORE, ASSHOLE!”
Hands shoving his chest once again. This time, Dick had caught them, held them by his wrists enough so Tim couldn’t pull them away.
“THIS IS ABOUT YOU AND ME, GRAYSON!” Tim screamed. “WHAT HAPPENED TO HAVING EACH OTHER’S BACKS!”
“YOU THINK IT WAS MY CHOICE TO GET IN BETWEEN YOU!?”
It was from a whip of strength not even he had known prior, but it hurt when he finally could take his hands off of Dick’s grip, and with that, he backed further away, though his eyes couldn’t stray from looking straight into his brother’s.
“IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER IF IT WAS-“
“THEN I’M SORRY!’ Dick swallowed. “IS THAT WHAT YOU WANTED TO HEAR?!”
“No,” Tim’s knees hit the railing and so close did he fall, but he kept himself up, rubbed the bottom of his chin with his gloved hand. “You're not sorry…”
Dick’s silence. Even more so did he want to just lunge at him and strangle his vocal chords. No matter how far-fetched, Dick was supposed to tell him all the things he wanted him to say. So far, he’s said none of that.
Dick just watched when Tim turned around to rest his weight onto his palms, looking out into the open seeking for just about any kind of help there was that he could call out from the wind, but there was nothing.
“You're right,” Dick said, and Tim felt the cement crack from beneath his palms. “I’m not sorry.”
“Fucking bold of you-”
“What would have happened to her if I hadn’t stepped in?” He heard Dick’s voice louder and clearer, which meant he was walking closer towards him.
“I would have come back. I always wanted to come back, but by then she was all over you. I couldn’t-“
Tim looked at his own hands. “I had it coming. I can't blame her.”
Another whiff of air, and it blew the strands of his black locks right onto his eyelids. They stung, but he didn’t push them away. He just kept his eyes locked onto the blankness of the gray, the dark that went all the way into his spirit.
“But I do blame you-“
“Tim, you hurt her-”
“AND YOU HAVENT?!”
Dick caught his Bo staff, which Tim had thrown right at him as swiftly as he turned around. His mouth was as dry as his palms were sweating. His teeth were close to breaking. And his eyes dangerously drifting off into some unknown nowhere just so he wouldn’t have to look at such betrayal.
“Tim-“
Tim was shaking, or at least his hands were, when he gave into his impulses and moved so fast, grabbing Dick by the collar and standing him down.
“You stand there blaming me for all that hurt when here you are-“
“What the hell do you want me to say to you?!”
He was strong, stronger than any one of them would have thought. Dick couldn’t even move, much less out of shock than it was out of his hold on him too overwhelming to counter.
“Tim, this isn’t like you-“
“You have no idea what I’ll do,” Tim growled. “Why do you think I became Red Robin?”
To separate himself from the likes of what it used to be. To not be Robin anymore. To stray away from his ideals, ideals and morals no longer his.
Because he was, in his truest capacity, capable of much darker things than people seem to know. Even his own brother.
“I hate you-“
Dick, who took that second to take advantage of weakness, grabbed him by the wrists and pushed him off with the soles of his feet, not enough to send him to the ground but enough to almost topple him. And when he looked up, immediately, Tim’s fist headed for his brother’s head, but again it was caught by Dick’s palm.
“HEY, HEY, HEY, ENOUGH! BOTH OF YOU!”
A much deeper, louder voice, the third one to be heard that night. It was that, and two strong arms that grabbed Tim by the shoulder and Dick by his suit’s back. Even when it wasn’t even to much effect, they stopped.
At least, for a second they did, before Tim started for Dick’s neck and he had to be held back with a strong hand right against his chest. “Let me go!”
“What the hell is going on with you two!?”
“Stay out of this Jason!”
It was easier for Jason to stand right in between, just to stop either of them from going after their skin. Dick had stopped. Tim, on the other hand, had to be held back by the shoulders. “Tim, calm down!”
“I said stay out of this!”
.
Jason:
“One of you pinheads tell me what’s going on!”
“Are you really gonna let Jason fight your battles, Dick?!”
Tim tried to push Jason out of the way. He was lucky, in fact, that none of them could see the irate look on his face hidden behind the safety of a red helmet. Otherwise they might have started for him too, just at how disgusted he looked at them both. And he had every right to be. He knew exactly why they were fighting. It was the devil in him who felt like asking.
Jason held him back with his cape. “Hey, KNOCK IT OFF-“
“Let go of me!”
“You don’t think I wanna bash this asshole’s brains out everyday, Tim?!” Jason hauled him to the floor. “Trust me. You can hold back.”
“Oh, fuck you, Todd.”
“You shut up.” Jason pointed at Dick. “If this is about Y/N I know exactly why Tim wants you dead.”
“And why am I the one you two’re ganging up on?!”
“If I was, Dick, I’d just let this one have at it with you. Thank me later.” Jason said, nodding over at Tim. Tim shrugged off his brother’s hold on him and frowned.
“You were never the one to trust, Dick,” Tim gulped. And Jason knew Dick would have thought the same. His flaring eyes, the burn that was almost never there from someone so usually calm. It was unnerving seeing Tim this way. “Look at everyone you’ve hurt. Y/N. Kori. When are you going to stop?”
“Don’t you fucking start with me, you little-“
“Hey! Knock it off!” Jason pushed Dick again with a shove of his hand. Dick stepped back.
“Jason, just get out of here -“
“I don’t know, man; Feels like I have to be the responsible one. For once.”
Tim grabbed Jason’s hand and hauled him to the side so he could step closer to where Dick was standing. “You don’t want to be a part of this.”
Jason, if not at all wanting that to be true in the slightest sense, didn’t fight back and took Tim’s shoving. But, as he’d thought, Dick was the one who looked at him so slyly he wanted to grab his lips and use them to haul him over the building.
Suddenly, every part of his skin wanted to burst, blood beating through every inch of vessel and flesh so much it burned him. His mouth sewed shut, ears hurting at the redness. Again, if not for the helmet, it would have been a dead giveaway.
But Dick wasn’t having it.
“Trust me, Tim. He already is.”
“What the hell do you mean-“
“I said, enough. You two settle this at home.”
Jason tried for Dick’s shoulder just to push him to back away, but he threw his hand off.
“Don’t fucking act like the good guy between the three of us,” Dick said. “What are you gonna say next? That this isn’t what Y/N would want?”
“You think it is?!”
Dick chortled and he turned away. Tim still wouldn’t let his glare away from his brother and if Jason would let him, he’d have mauled him to death.
“You always did think you knew what was best for her, didn’t you?”
“Jason, what the hell is he talking about?”
He never told him. The bastard never told Tim when he was so sure he would, when he basically told him that night outside Y/N’s doorstep that by the end of the hour, Tim would know what he’d done and he’d have found Jason by the next, even when he tries too hard to disappear, which he had tried to do for four months, hiding from his brother, and not long after he’ll never be welcomed into the manor as so much as a guest. It did surprise him, after many months, that Tim hadn’t so much as acknowledged it. Part of him wanted to believe Tim didn’t care, or had already forgiven Y/N and in turn forgiven him.
But, of course, Dick hadn’t told him. The asshole wanted this to drag out as painfully long as he possibly could. Make him carry that burden himself just because he thought it was right, as Tim’s brother, even when he wanted no part of those niceties.
“You wanna tell him?” The blue leotard wearing ass said. “Or should I?”
“Don’t fucking bring me into this shitshow-“
“Brother, you walked right into it yourself.”
“I will kill you,” Jason growled. “One of these days.”
“Tell me what?”
Tim’s voice, the softest it had been since the start of that night.
He shouldn’t.
His little brother, one whose relationship had proven far too difficult to build, if there was ever a chance at a good relationship at all. His brother. An established brotherhood he once despised so much, took too many years just for it to be something tolerable. His little brother.
He never had a little brother like Tim. Perhaps even now, he wouldn’t. Not once he knows.
“Tim, I-“
“Jason, tell me what’s going on.”
Dick no longer even had that smirk on him. He just looked sad for the both of them, as he should be. As anyone should be.
“Just tell him.”
So much did his fist want to just fly and land straight at Grayson’s perfectly chiseled cheekbones, break his face so much he wouldn’t live to stand a day.
But Jason had grown too silent, too guilty.
He couldn’t even take off his helmet and look at either of them in the eye.
Tim stepped right in front of him and on his face kind of worry that often lingered prior to it being the worst rage to ever engulf into.
Was there a way out of this? To counter the impact? Make it so it didn’t hurt so much?
If Grayson had just told him, it wouldn’t have to be this way.
“Jason-“
He looked up, and through the slits of his visor, he knew Tim wanted to look at him in the eye, to find something out of this truth.
“I…”
His throat, it hurt to even breath. And when this happened, he usually takes the helmet off. This time, however, he couldn’t do that. Not when he had so much to say despite him not wanting to.
“I slept with her…”
It was a shame Dick didn’t look too much like an ass right then. If he did, he’d have a reason for himself to just jump at him with a knife. But all he could even see, all he could bring himself to watch, was his feet.
Nothing else. Not when Tim was looking at him that way.
“What?”
“I slept with her-“
Tim.
Was it even Tim anymore? The boy in front of him? Who never looked at him with so much betrayal?
“When?”
“A few months ago…” he said. “Lasted about a month.”
Then, it wouldn’t even have mattered if it were him who broke the news, the asshole that Dick was, or the Gotham Times.
Tim.
No longer his little brother. Never will be again.
Right for the neck. That’s where Tim pounced a second less than he was smart enough to move away.
 .
Dick:
That asshole deserved it.
But if anyone deserved it more than Jason did, it was Dick.
Was it to divert Tim’s attention from himself? Give him a breather and a while for Tim’s anger to mellow down taking it out on Jason so he doesn’t take it out on him so much? Possibly.
But the moment Tim’s hands squeezed the living daylights out of Jason’s neck, he knew he shouldn’t have brought it up. It was wrong. This was all wrong.
He started for Tim’s arms, grabbing them both just to at least give Jason enough time to breath, but this newfound strength certainly wasn’t one he’d expected. When he did manage to pull them off, Tim swung his fist right at Dick’s face.
Then, he went back for Jason, who then took that short time to grab both his fists and stop them for hurling him over the roof.
This was his fault. This was his doing.
And all the more did he want this to end when Jason held Tim strong enough to make him scream, and with that, he threw another punch right for his helmet, shattering the visor beneath his bruised knuckles. Jason tried to kick him away with his knee, but Tim was pushing him.
Jason, who should have been a lot stronger, was not doing much to fight Tim. And instead, he tried talking him out of it.
“Tim!” he coughed. Tim still holding both fists went on to push him. “Tim, stop!”
Head slam against his helmet, and it broke, enough for a part of it to be chipped off and expose his forehead.
Jason finally hurled Tim over to the ground just so he could wipe the blood stain off from seeping down his eyes, but that wasn’t much of a good idea. Not when Tim took that as a chance to jump for his brother, grabbing him by the shoulders, and with the forces of their own bodies flying across the wind, the railing wasn’t enough to stop their fall.
Tim and Jason fell over the building, down fifty stories with one’s hands wrapped around the others throat, and Tim went on to strangle him even as they fell.
Dick, without even thinking much, dove into that same abyss. Did he have a plan? No. Was this going to work anyway? Probably not. But he had to try.
At least, it was all he had to do. When Dick leapt, head soaring straight down for a car so miniscule that wouldn’t be so small the more he wastes time, his brothers thrashing bodies that broke the speed of their fall worked to his sorry advantage and Dick managed to catch up.
He grabbed Tim off, thankfully with the fall lessening his grip but not at all did it change the murderous look on his face. This wasn’t his brother. This can't be him. This was someone who had all his frustrations bottled up in the form of coffee addiction, insomnia, and workaholic tendencies, someone who hadn’t vented out his hurt and anger at him, who he apparently had been hating for a while.
When he had him in his grasps, Dick grappled up to the next building. “Jason, hold on!”
It was, in actuality, the worst idea he’s ever come up with. Other than the fact that Tim weighed a good 170 pounds, Jason was no lighter. Not even in the slightest. And carrying both of them? He might as well be hauling up a whole tank.
That one single grappling hook showed them no appreciation despite it holding on the best it could. And it was to no help that the hook landed on a building too far.
They were just yards up the ground when the rope tightened, and the impact on Dick’s arm he was sure had the bone dislocated. A scream was all he could muster at the shooting pains that went all the way up his neck, but still, he held on, and even when it lasted no more than a few seconds, it was all too agonizing not to feel like it lasted hours.
All it took was to at least break the fall, but that was all he could handle. Dick let go of the grapple gun and they were falling across the whole block, across the street over to an abandoned lot with junkyard cars and probably some broken glass scattered across the ground.
Tim landed on top of one of the cars, breaking the windshield under his weight. Jason wasn’t so lucky, rolling across the cold cement with it hitting his helmet, enough to expose his face.
And Dick, with it not helping his arm at all, landed right against the fenced border and fell to the ground. Some wire sticking out might have impaled his skin.
He was breathing. Was he still breathing? There was throbbing. Redness. Blood that went to his eyes, most probably. He could hear his heart and basically the rest of his senses going haywire.
When he looked up, already Tim could stand, right on top of the cars.
Now lacking his Bo staff, Tim smashed the broken metal beneath his feet and pulled out a slab hard enough to break bones.
 .
Tim:
If Dick were smart, he should have let him die.
This was always how he was, how this was all going to boil down to. His so many ways of dealing with loss, heartbreak, and stress, it was never going to hold him back enough if he hadn’t an outlet. And this, tonight, this was all part of the inevitable. He did what he promised Y/N. He kept off the coffee and had eight hours of sleep every day. But did it mean it warded off his thoughts on her? On his brothers? On their betrayal and how much he’d been holding that all off for months? Not even close. In fact, they grew worse.
Who does he start with?
Dick was all the way over at the fence. Wounded. Dislocated arm. He pulled himself up and went for a wall he could smash his shoulder against just to pull back the bone.
And Jason.
Shit.
Should have went for him first.
Two glocks in his hands. This man wasn’t afraid in the slightest.
“Jason, don’t!” Dick cried. Too late. He already shot one of the cars.
Tim spun about just to dodge at least the shattered glass. He was aiming for his legs, at all the parts of his body that wouldn’t be so lethal. How kind of him.
Which meant, that if it were the vital parts of him exposed, Jason wouldn’t shoot.
So he didn’t even try to hide himself, his chest especially, when he hurled himself over the many car hoods and roofs. Jason kept going, and this time he went to shooting the glass on purpose. Probably to hit him with the shards.
Tim reached the wall and pushed his feet so he’d roll on the ground. Cape up, he looked through the many places to hide, but he didn’t want to hide. What he wanted was to grab one of them, any of them, by the shoulders, pin them to the ground, and have his fist have at it with their stupid faces.
He ran up to Jason, cape protecting his legs and arms, and just as he did Dick had crept up behind him, grabbing Jason by a headlock. Elbow to Dick’s chest, he took that as a chance to grab his guns and throw them over to the side. So close did he miss one of the bullets, if grazing his shoulder was ever a miss. But he ignored that hiss and landed a hit on Jason’s stomach.
But not even that could last long, with Jason practically subdued. Dick set Jason aside to block Tim’s fist from landing anywhere near either of them. He kept hitting, swinging, it was all a blur after the third time he felt his shoulders hurt. And Grayson’s was no better. So he aimed for it.
What was he doing?
Foot landing on Dick’s pelvis. It was enough for his body to skid across the ground. He looked up at his brother, teeth gritting so much that it hurt, Tim didn’t move fast enough before he could move away from Dick’s fist, which landed a good one right to his teeth.
 .
Jason:
This was the most ridiculous fight he’s ever been on. No different from a fucking pellet gun war over at the gardens that one time they were drunk and stupid. This was a game, one he really didn’t want to play. He should have known, and what he thought that time was that somehow, she was worth going through all this chaos for. That moment of bliss, that month of beauty and serenity and peace, was it worth this? With his own brothers?
It wouldn’t have been if it was just a month of beauty and serenity and peace. But it wasn’t just about that anymore, was it?
So this had to be worth it. In every way. With Dick and Tim over a few yards away, Dick holding his shoulder and trying so hard to avoid being hit there and Tim so unruly and angry and being so taken over with his rage, not at all was he anything like this before tonight.
He had the choice. To grab the gun that had skidded over to his side, shoot them both in the shoulder to put everything to a stop, or join in on their rumble to drag this out as long as inhumanely possible. Three different men who knew exactly what the others’ moves will be, this wasn’t going to last very long if it were to be a good way.
But, if this were to be dealt with bullets, he can say goodbye to either of them of ever being his brother again, to never be a part of this family so hard to love but love nevertheless.
He stopped his hand from reaching for the gun, and with that, he started for the two.
Jason grabbed Tim’s ankle just before it would have landed on Dick’s chin, threw him to the side so he’d land on the floor.
Dick’s fist, which would have hit Tim, instead hit Jason right at the nape of his neck. He almost toppled over to the ground, and with that flash of rage, he struck back at Dick right at his bad shoulder. Might have been too far. But he didn’t care.
Tim hit his back, right up against his sharp knee. He cried out at the unnerving bellows that went straight to his head, picked himself up just before he hit the ground.
Another hit for his head, but Dick had stopped it with his own hand, twisted Tim’s ankle so he’d once again lose his balance and fall.
Three different men.
Three different fights.
Three men who knew each other far too well to be beaten so easily.
They jostled and rolled about, around the junkyard over so many of the cars and the broken glass and even the fence that had long blown over. This wasn’t at all supposed to be what they’d spend the night on, but with the slabs of metal being thrown, the cars almost hurled up with their peak human strength, their limbs flailing, some barely missing a nerve on their head and some wrecking a whole tooth out of their mouth, it was not, to even some capacity, ever going to end as well as any of them hoped.
And with them at the middle of the barren empty grounds, Jason dodging Dick’s fist only to meet Tim’s knee, Dick being absolutely smothered by Tim’s head smashing against his, and Tim being pinned to the ground by either of his brothers larger than him that he hated so much.
It all would have ended in death, after the kind of blur that clouded so much of their moral thought and any kind of sense at all to remind them of what they were doing, if not for something far too strong for them to easily swerve from.
Or, better yet, three things too strong for them to swerve from.
At a whiff so quick for any of them to have possibly even sensed, a flash of purple was the first to wave off that blur from their eyes. And it went for Tim.
Stephanie was first to subdue him, holding Tim down with her knee landing right at the small of his back. He cried out both at the shock he hadn’t expected and the pulsing pain that probably went all the way up his spine, but he was done. Steph had grabbed Tim’s head and pinned him down right against the floor.
The next one was Dick, and before any of them could even turn, something so brightly blinding, a figure of yellow, fell from one of the cars’ hood and grabbed Dick by the neck. Duke was smaller, but not at all was that some disadvantage. His huge armored arms, locking Dick enough for him to just flail his hands about, it was enough to make him stop.
And, just as he expected, the next thing he saw after that flash of a second he was spared, was a blur of black so silently creeping up on him, Jason couldn’t move even when he knew it was coming. No one could have seen it. Not even him. By the next second, he was bent over one of the cars, hands to his back, and Cassandra had a taser stuck to his hip.
“NO, NO, NO, CASS DON’T-“
Barely enough to fry him unconscious, but enough to fucking electrocute his skin off so his muscles could barely move.
 .
Dick:
This should all have ended sooner than it even happened.
And the shame crept in, not even when he stopped struggling against Duke’s hold on him, but when Barbara, the last to come into the scene, flew in from the window right across.
She looked like she wanted to murder all three of them by a rope around their necks. One single rope. Having three just wouldn’t be worth it.
She took off her cowl and let her red hair fall to her back, so they’d easily see just how disgusted she looked at them all, at the look on her eyes, at the look on all their eyes.
“Duke, let me go-“
“I’m sorry, Dick.”
“Please.”
“If we could, Nightwing,” Babs swallowed. “I’ll have you tied to that streetlamp for the rest of the night.”
Jason tried to reach for something in the car just to kick Cass away, but she tased him again. Some smoke flew up from his flesh.
“Cass, that’s enough,” Babs said.
Cass glared at them all, then settled to just holding Jason down with his arms.
“Is anyone going to tell me what the hell is going on with you three?”
“Maybe if you get your foot out of my head, Steph, I’d actually get my brain back and answer her question,” Tim said.
“You lost your brain when you fell down that building.”
“You saw that?”
Steph snorted. “You’re lucky I didn’t jump in until I had all of us on call.”
“Lucky?!”
Steph twisted Tim’s arm and his cries could be heard over to the next block.
Jason tried, again, to break free from Cass’s hold, but her fist wasn’t one to welcome when it landed much like a bat would’ve right up against Jason’s head.
And Tim, who almost pried Steph’s knee from against his back, was just pinned down again not even a second after breaking free.
They were too tired to go up against any of them.
So Dick, knowing there was no other, prettier way out of this, let go of his hands from gripping too hard on Duke’s arm. He didn’t let go, but it had loosened, enough for him to properly talk. Babs went over to him. That dagger-infested glower stuck through, but at least there was some appreciation for his lack of resistance.
“It was a misunderstanding-“
“Was it?!”
Babs clenched her jaw.
“This is about her, isn’t it-“
Tim’s voice echoed. “No!”
.
Tim:
He growled and shoved Steph’s hand away, but they kept on his arms, pushing them down against his spine. She was strong enough to subdue him, stronger now that he was exhausted and his muscles were all strained, but that didn’t mean he was, in any way, going to back down from this fight. This wasn’t over.
He could crane his head up enough to look at Babs.
“This is about these two traitors who lied to my face for months!”
Steph was having too much trouble keeping him down. “Tim!”
“Are you really going to take their side?!”
“No one is taking anyone’s side here.”
Babs eyed Cass at least to make her loosen her grip on Jason’s twisted arms. Cass rolled her eyes, sighed, and still without a word, she grabbed Jason by the back of his collar to make him stand. But it wasn’t without her taser stuck up to his side.
“Cass, I’m not gonna fucking fight you-“
“Just shut up, Jay,” Dick said, and with that, Duke tightened his arm.
“They wanna know,” Tim panted. “Tell them all why we’re in this mess.”
His voice, all broken and rageful and so unlike what anyone would have thought. It turned the heads of everyone around. Steph loosened her hand around Tim’s neck much out of her own disbelief.
“Stabbing me in the back the way you did…”
“Tim, you don’t have to-“ Babs went on, but Tim’s screams were too much.
“Tell them! Say why you’re all a bunch of ass-“
“You’re the one who wanted this to be some shitshow!” Jason’s teeth shouldn’t last long with how much he was gritting them when he hissed and snarled at Cass, who poked the taser just beneath his hip.
“Cass, enough with the taser.”
“Yeah, Cass,” Jason said. “Where the hell did you even get that?”
“Some douchey police officer over at Chinatown,” Duke said to him while still keeping his hands on Dick.
Something so foreign, so unruly and aggressive, it was taking too much control over him. Tim’s eyes were burning, and there weren’t even any tears. His blood pulsed through every vein, strong enough for it to hurt, and loud enough for him to hear it through his bloodied ears.
Tim pushed Steph away and for a moment, he was free. He wasn’t even thinking anymore. He just wanted his hands squeezing the voice out of Jason’s neck.
Babs grabbed him by the cape just as Steph caught up, and again he was on the floor. Still, he screamed, thrashed about because everything within him just yelled for him to finally let it out. He was done being the nice guy, done being the brother they both pushed around, took advantage of, lied to, and picked on because they knew he’d never fight back.
“Tim…” Babs helped Steph holding him down. She looked up at Dick. “What the hell did you do to him?”
“Nothing we can't sort out!”
“Jesus, Dick,” Jason snorted. “You haven’t said one smart thing all day.”
“Like you're any better, you asswipe.”
“Enough!”
Babs stood right between them, otherwise they’d have lunged for each other even if they had a missile launcher aimed for their heads.
“Let me go. Duke,” Dick said. “I’m not gonna fight any of you-“
“Yeah, three seconds ago you were close to running Jason’s head through a windshield.”
“Just let me go and we’ll all calmly-“
“Calmly?” Duke laughed. “I saw you fall down that building from where I stood. None of you know what calm is.”
Duke’s voice was stern and not at all did he sound like he’d trust him enough for that, no different than Steph’s or even just the look in Cass’s eyes. Because, if anything, other than the utter disgust, disdain, and disappointment, everything before them was something not to easily believe.
Not long after, before anything even happened, before Tim heard that first trace of a large black cape and the heavy soles that would have broken the cement floor underneath if he hadn’t purposely landed so swiftly, with the shadow that wasn’t in fact a shadow, but a suit so terrifying, dark, and so close to invisible, it was the night in a physicality no two people could similarly describe.
Tim knew he’d get here first, before anyone else even turned their heads. Because he stopped with his cries and faced his untimely doom. Face to the ground, quiet and unmoving. Everyone else followed but that was after he’d already appeared.
Not even anyone from the likes of the worst villains had seen the look on Bruce’s face as close to the one he had right then.
 .
Jason:
If he were alone, he’d just have snorted. The look on Grayson and Drake’s face. Couldn’t be drawn.
He’s seen that same frown on Bruce every time he shoots a damn gun, which was every night. He could paint it by memory and he wouldn’t miss a detail. The squinted white of his eyeholes, his lips forlorn and flat. His hands, clenched enough for it to hurt, hidden beneath his cape. Oh, Dad. Did I do that?
These guys just needed some getting used to.
And he shouldn’t be amused at the fact that at least, for once, he wasn’t the only one in trouble this time. Tim looked ashamed. Dick looked like he’d seen a ghost. Dick should have known this, at least. He’s steered up a few times of trouble himself. Nothing like what he’s done, that’s for sure. But he shouldn’t be so stricken. Still, he was, which made it all the more inappropriate if he were to smirk right then.
Damian was right beside him. He wasn’t entertained, or intrigued, what he usually was watching his father tell off his brothers. In fact, he looked bothered. Like they’d just taken so much of his time away from what he’d rather be doing, which apparently was more interesting than this.
Ah. Of course. An out-of-town mission. Just Batman and Robin. They left Babs in charge. Probably why she looked just as horrified as Dick, hands to her side and keeping the slight shake of her palms hidden. It seems she prepared for anything to happen on patrol that night, anything Bruce prepared her for being the boss. What they hadn’t prepared for, apparently, was them.
“Batman, I-“ Babs swallowed. “We have this under control. You can go back to-“
“Let them go.”
Chills down everyone’s wobbly spines at his growling voice proved more terrifying under the filter near his neck. Everyone except Jason, of course. But he can't be so relaxed. Cass was getting suspicious. He just felt her hands tighten even more around his wrists.
But perhaps, he should be afraid. He’s gotten into mounds of trouble, but it was never anything like this.
He snorted again. They hadn’t hurt anybody. It was just them three and their lack of brain. They’ll be fine.
He hoped.
“Bruce, they’re trying to kill each other-“
“They can try.”
Babs, right then, might be the one to kill them right after. Maybe with her bare hands. Maybe with a truck. With a deathly, silent scowl at all of them, she nodded.
Duke was first to let go of Dick, and with that a pat on the back. Dick rubbed the back of his neck, stayed put and didn’t even step away. He was relaxed. Ashamed, but relaxed. He just stretched out his limbs and already everyone was satisfied.
Next, it was Jason. With a reluctant Cass finally letting him go, and the taser, Jason tumbled over to the nearest car hood just to keep himself up. That fucking taser robbed him of his knees. How many volts was that thing?
Finally, Steph swung her legs over from holding down Tim’s body and helped him up. She dusted off his back, apologized under her breath. He probably had a lot to say if it weren’t for the seven other pairs of eyes on him, watching him from letting out so much as a twitch.
Tim didn’t shove her away so he could go back to poking Jason’s eyeballs out. He just stood there and stared at him like Jason and Dick were lucky everyone else was around. Which, he probably was. He wasn’t going to deny that.
The last people to be so afraid of Bruce were the three of them, the perpetrators, the reason for this little reunion. So instead of letting out something so cocky and unapologetic, something so at the borders of causing Bruce to have an aneurysm, not one mouth resisted from being kept shut. It was the kind of silence that wasn’t often expected from such an unusual family.
And Bruce looked at the three of them not with anger, or dismay, or even annoyance.
He looked disappointed.
Which, arguably, makes it a whole lot worse. Hell, even for him. He’s been yelled at since the day he came back and all of a sudden a little fight with his brothers is what brings him to shame.
Bruce was unmoving, so his voice startled and shook.
“All this…” he said. “For her…”
No one spoke. Not even a cricket. Even with the horns and sirens from afar, the bustle they couldn’t care less the only noise there was, it was deafening.
“Don’t you think you’ve disappointed her enough?”
Jason ignored the shattered edges of his helmet that poked on his cheek, ignored the blood it drew or the strain on his arms. Everyone did, perhaps.
“Go back to patrol.”
Batman left, as quickly as he’d come. Robin followed right behind him.
Batgirl turned around, nodded at her team, which was all there was out of her, out of anybody. They could see her fists clench, her eyes down and avoiding the others. The Signal flew out of the scene, Spoiler grappled up to the next rooftop, and Orphan disappeared out of thin air, without a word or even a grunt.
Nightwing, Red Robin, and Red Hood left that junkyard lot, and as the brothers they were, and dreadfully still are, they kept out of each other’s ways for the rest of that quiet night.
-----
What was so different about that night, and the many more nights that followed, was how they no longer had each other to turn to, even more now that it seemed they needed their brothers the most. Jason was, in the worst sense, used to the kind of isolation he was forced into after the matter. Dick had to learn to be alone, but it always had been better to have another’s shoulder to lean on and talk to. Tim, not so much. Not when he almost always turned to Y/N. And if not her, Dick. His older brother. One he once looked up to like a being unreachable, now a traitor he’d scoff at if he dared to show up.
So what they did, and what they were forced to do for several nights, was to deal with the cosmos and the whirlwind of thoughts all by their sorry selves. Dick usually could be found in training, spinning about in the uneven bars set up for him at the manor, have the sweat and the strain in his muscles force out whatever it was that bothered him into some physical outlet, how it often had been for many years as he appreciated himself for the care it brought. For the others, however, it wasn’t so much the same. Tim would spend all hours in the office and wouldn’t so much as nap even when his whole body tortured him to at least stop his back from being crouched so much. And Jason, well, had already drowned himself in booze, even more now that the reasons had faded clearer.
Alone in his apartment, over at the nook by the window where he usually spent the day with a book, now his mess of a hair would be plastered against the cold glass and the many bottles that surround him would block the surfaces of the cushion. It never actually got out of hand. He only ever drank to get rid of that noise blaring into his ear the way it was now, the way it was for all three of them.
And Tim couldn’t turn to that same comfort, or whatever it was that caffeine, stinging eyelids, and an unhealthy staring into a computer screen with an all nighter at the office would bring him. That night after the fight, he couldn’t sleep, even when he tried to. Which led to no one’s knowing, a cup of coffee when the day had risen and he was forced to go on with that said day like nothing happened. That cup would turn to two. Three. Eventually it dawned on him that he’d slept what he should have in a single day in a span of three.
Dick’s training, as it turned out, wasn’t so healthy at all. The strain in his wrists began a little over two hours ago. He’d been at the grounds for quadruple that time. For that day alone. Would it kill him if he didn’t stop? Probably not. Would it almost kill him? Probably. But he went on. Kept his hands busy. Forced himself to feel that exhaustion that should be taking his mind out of everything and not amplify it.
But this was only the beginning of what eventually would be that highway to descent, to some slope with no ladder to climb back up to, no guide for them to reverse and no light at the end that would eventually bring some alternative to the truth. They only had the truth to hold on.
Their brotherhood. One so strained. So complicated. One that took far too much time to build and rebuild. They couldn’t, not even if they wanted to, be apart from this family, deny that they were a part of it. They couldn’t escape each other’s presence no matter how many times they’d change their numbers or block out their trackers or find another city to live in. They couldn’t lose something that had grown too strong for them to fight against. That night, they tried. Or rather, the forces tried. The forces run by their bitter rivalry or the want for the same woman.
It was the fifth night after that fight, when Dick let go of the bars, finally giving his hands that rest too many hours overdue. He wiped his sweat, drank from his bottle, and pulled out his phone. That night, he thought it was enough, that this silence and bitterness and sheer negligence over their bond would eventually break for permanence. He knew that this coping was only just the beginning, and that it will, for everything he was certain about, would it become so much more, something so dark, that it would pull the whole family apart. He didn’t want that. For any of them. So that night, he sent a text to Tim and Jason.
Tim’s first account wasn’t on his brothers, though it had crossed his mind many more times than he would have hoped. His first thought, if anything, was how Y/N would have thought if he let himself fall. It’d be in his rule this time, that he wouldn’t let the caffeine get to him or reach to such extremes he’d never otherwise control. But Y/N wasn’t going to believe that, as nobody should. Hell, he probably shouldn’t place that much faith onto himself at all. Even if he does so much as lose an hour of sleep, one for every night until there wasn’t any hours left, if he allows himself one more cup when he had one just half an hour before, he knew it’d be just the beginning.
So, when he got that text from Dick, he realized it wasn’t worth much the risk.
He hated them both like he’s hated no one else, wanted them to realize just how much of a wreck their doings have imprinted on him and Y/N, how the consequences that followed weren’t nearly what they deserved at all. But if he doesn’t fight that hate, if he doesn’t find peace, it’ll be that darkness for him, that same life he hadn’t learned to control, one where he once lost himself to. and in turn, made him lose Y/N. And he’ll lose her again if he won't listen to that conscience. He texted Dick back and told him to meet him at Pauli’s.
Jason, on the other hand, acted as was expected of him. When he saw that text the first thing his lack of conscience told him was to get another phone and forget it all happened, disappear for another few months, show up when it was convenient, and hope that this all blows over before his escapism backfires.
But he never did get to bring himself to throw out his phone and get a new one, much less delete the text before he’s even seen it. A few days after, he let that daft little voice in him to open the text, allow himself a few seconds just to witness its premise. But he’d read through everything in that split second he allowed himself to. Dick didn’t really have much to say. And what else was to come next other than the few days of tussling and fighting and the many more bottles of booze that were not at all helping with those same voices that just wouldn’t shut up.
Was this all worth it? Was anything worth this at all?
Because those few years it took just to have any sort of a conversation with Dick, much more with Tim, certainly wasn’t a few years of a bond rebuilt that he wanted to go through again.
He loved them. In his own, twisted little way. He loved his brothers and actually would go out his way to save them from whatever horrors he’d been forced to face. That love didn’t have to be from occasionally hanging out in the holidays or spent an hour or two in a bar.
At least, in his conscience, if he were to die one day like he’d realize would happen again, knowing life wasn’t exactly his alone to spend and control, he’d know he did whatever was best for the people he loved.
So, despite Dick and Tim not at all expecting so much as a text back, they still had it in them to wait a few hours. In that dimly lit corner of Pauli’s, the aroma of freshly backed pancakes distracting them from their otherwise bland pickup from the rest of their senses. They waited, not hoping for the best.
Jason went into the diner and saw them, ordered a cup, then took a seat across Tim, with Dick in between.
That silence, the same for everyday for the past five, it was haunting and eerie, disturbing, uncomforting, one they knew they’d all have to settle if they wanted to move on and actually bring some light into whatever it was they’ve caused.
Jason didn’t take off his hoodie. Tim warmed his hands with his cup of hot chocolate. And Dick, knowing he’d have to start, cleared his throat and looked up.
.
Dick:
Seeing Tim walk through that door was a surprise enough, much more Jason coming along and not even was he three hours late. Fuck. Fuck. What does he even say? Where does he ever start? Should he even start?
Giving in to his impulses certainly was bad an idea. This was, in every way, what he should have expected when he picked up his phone and thought to call his brothers hoping it was the right thing to do. And, perhaps, it was the right thing.
But was he the right person to start it? Lead this conversation to the direction he wanted so they’d get to a better place? The one that pushed his impulses in the first place?
They were all too awfully silent. Tim’s had his second round of hot chocolate. He doesn’t even like hot chocolate that much. And Jason looks like he’s hiding himself from the cops with his hood down and neck craned to the table’s surface. He’s never been in anything more awkward and uncomfortable in his years. This was just humiliating.
But, he was sure, humiliation should be the first thing they’d have to go through. Setting their prides aside, talk with the other’s stories in mind and hope that by the end of this, it’ll at least be a bit better.
So he started, in the most bland, uneventful way, he tells them both.
“Thanks for coming,” Dick said.
Tim momentarily bit onto his lip, and Jason stayed motionless without so much as a nod. At least Tim glanced over at him, even when it was just a second.
“How are you, Tim?”
Tim’s finger traced over the brim of his cup. He’s finished it. Didn’t seem like he wanted to order another one.
“Alright. I guess.”
“Good. Jason?”
God, this was awful. He doesn’t even ask how their broken bones are healing after a life-threatening encounter in patrol. Hopefully this greyness wasn’t too weird, not when it should be the start of something even more difficult to overcome.
Jason’s order of coffee came into the table and it made Tim shift in his seat, leaning to the back to stay further away from its aroma. Jason took a sip. “Fine.”
As quiet as they possibly could. Dick wished he had something to order, even when it was just a piece of pie they’d displayed over at the counter. But he didn’t want to get up or even call a waitress.
He was, in the most obvious sense, ashamed. Ashamed that he wasn’t either of them, which he wished nothing more to be. He wished he was them so he wouldn’t have to be the man who’d hurt Y/N the most, when he was supposed to be who she’d turn for comfort, because they weren’t the man who’d been in love with her for so long, never thinking he’d have a chance. And when he did finally have her, even for a just a moment, when he finally got to kiss her that one time he’d been waiting for so many years, it all broke down and nearly diminished what he took years to build. Their friendship. Something so great yet so fragile, when their love never could be so easily set aside to make way for a friendly bond.
“I’m sorry,” Tim said, and his voice had gone softer. “I’m sorry I started a fight. And for being so angry. That was uncalled for.”
He did want all this to be right with them. Both of them. Two of his brothers he’s learned to love. And with that love comes many sacrifices.
“You don’t have to be sorry for being angry.”
“Would you like more hot cocoa?” The waitress came in with a pitcher. Tim declined, and she left.
He stared at the empty cup and rolled his lips.
“Yeah, I… I kinda do.”
Further into the day, the less people there were in the diner. And with that came more silence. There were half the people in there than when they’d first arrived. Soon enough, they’ll be the only ones left.
“I’m sorry, too.”
Then, without even a word, Dick and Tim turned over to Jason.
They didn’t expect him to apologize, or even say anything for that matter, possibly for the rest of the night.
But Jason shrugged, looked up at both of them in the eye, and he nodded. It was enough for them both to know what he meant.
.
Jason:
Get this over with. As quick as they possibly could. But he should know by now that this was going to take time. With how difficult it was. This wasn’t going to end any better than when they’d started if they rush through.
Jason took a sip out of his coffee and leaned his arms over on the table. Still, he didn’t take off his hoodie, as if he was going to take off not long from then.
“I don’t exactly know where to start,” Dick said. “But I think we should put this out there now.”
Neither of them looked him in the eye. He and Tim both stared at their cups as if it were any interesting.
“I’m sorry if I’m doing this wrong. I’m just saying what I think is best.”
“It’s okay,” Tim said. “Just go on.”
This was harder than when they had to help out the League face Brainiac. And that certainly was something.
“I love Y/N.”
Okay. Wasn’t what he thought Dick would say. But okay.
“Tim loves her, too.”
Shit. Alright. So that’s what this motherfucker thinks he’s doing.
“And I for sure as hell know, that you love her as well, Jason-“
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Jason’s voice was deep, controlled, and as monotonous as he forced it to be. Without a flick of a lie or a speck of truth, as they both would have easily picked up if they listened to him hard enough. That is, if it worked. Which it probably hadn’t.
“We don’t know who she wants…” Dick said. “And frankly, I don’t think she does, too. At least for now.”
“It could be any of us.” Tim didn’t take his sight away from the blankness of the white table’s surface.
He can't take this. No. He never should have opened that text. This was a bad idea.
Y/N will choose one of them. Not him. Not when he was the one who fell in love with her far too late, realized just how perfectly imperfect and how she managed to be this little bundle of happiness for him that he never could find in another. Someone whose presence he yearned for on the days when he thought nothing could be okay. He realized all that when too late, when his brothers already cemented their places and have already gone out of their way to win her love. And, on top of all that, he was the one he didn’t have a close friendship as a ground for something to lean onto. They weren’t close. Not like she was with Tim. Not even with Dick.
“This is ridiculous,” Jason stood up from his seat with his cup half finished. “I’m leaving.”
“Jason-“
“Dick, I want no part of this-“
“You can deny it all you want, but what if she chooses you?”
“She won't choose me. That’s the point-“
“Everyone knows that’s just as much of a possibility than everything else. It didn’t even take much time, and already you’ve wooed her. You think we didn’t notice that?”
Jason stopped and faced the counter, away from his brothers.
“Just sit down.”
“Dick-“
“I know this hurts but what if she actually does choose you-“
“I don’t love her.”
“You do. And she might love you back.”
No. Don’t bring his hopes up like this. This fucking-
“And if she does, are you really going to turn her down?”
Jason closed his eyes. He had nothing to say.
“No matter what Tim and I do, if it’s you she wants, then it’s you who’ll make her happy. Do you honestly think I believe you won't at least take that chance?”
Nothing. No voices whispering into his conscience to fuck everything and leave. Nothing that told him what to do, much less what to say.
He just knew that whatever he was, it wasn’t nearly as strong as that one pull that forced him back on his seat.
This shitshow already hurts as it is. What’s a little more?
.
Tim:
There’s a chance for all of them.
That’s what has always been so hard for him to understand. Never would he have thought it to be true, but it was.
They were both good men, good people, and if he were honest, he’d admit to Y/N being lucky if she were ever to choose one of his brothers in the end. He never, ever wanted to admit that. Not even now.
But for so long, he’s ignored the fact that those choices might be for her happiness, for what she deserves, and that might not always be about Tim. That whatever it was he wouldn’t admit to himself didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Y/N smiles like no other with Dick and no one else understood her like Jason. Even if Tim were her best friend, even if they had together from the very beginning, even if he probably loved her the most. It won't be about that.
So he has to accept all this.
And if it meant her happiness, then that hurt will be a lot easier to deal with.
“He’s right,” he said, and his two older brothers looked up at him.
“I’ve always thought you two… Well, I wish I was in your place. Not always. But, right now I do.”
They were confused to say the least. They didn’t look like they understood. Tim was the one who got to be with her, had years of calling her his love, had her love in return and have her actually show it the same way he did.
But that was just that. He had her. And now he didn’t. Because of him. Because he had her and was stupid enough to let her go, something neither of his brothers would have done if they were him.
And he wanted to laugh at the looks of both their faces. They didn’t have to say anything at all, but he understood. They envied each other in so many other ways, too complicated to map out. Because they’ve all done their own grievances, done so much that they regret.
Which is why this had to happen. Because no one knew what was going to happen next.
“I know it’s hard for all of us…” Dick said. Tim stared out at the window to see the start of the cold evening. “But we’re brothers. I don’t know about you both, but I don’t want this to tear us all apart.”
It already did, he wanted to say.
But it might not be true. It might not be too late. This brotherhood could still be salvaged. And in a way, it might be worth all that hurt.
“The last few weeks have been hard… for all of us… taken its toll on the rest of the family. And we’ve worked too hard on each other. I don’t…” Dick swallowed. “I don’t want to lose Y/N, but I don’t want to lose both of you either.”
It was easier for him to shut his eyes closed.
Neither do I, Tim thought.
“But… Y/N deserves to be happy… We’ve put her through too much.
“And if it means being with the one she loves, one of us, then so be it. We’re done making her decisions. We don’t decide between the three of us. If she wants to choose, then she gets to choose. And we won't have a say in any of it. She decides if it’s one or none of us at all. She deserves this.”
Jason finished his coffee. He no longer sat so stiff.
Tim sat back on his chair and stared out the window.
“And whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. As brothers. We’ll have each other. It’ll be okay. We’ll make it okay.”
That cold night of late November had the first snowdrop of the year. It was light, subtle, and one would have missed it if they weren’t looking out for too long. But they saw it, and never had something so gentle calm what used to be this rageful storm, not since Y/N.
They hadn’t spoken another word in that diner. But for many hours, they stayed.
They continued to wait for many months. They were patient.
October. November. December. January passed.
And on that day of the second week of February, a day Y/N once loved and hated at different times, they put an end to that waiting.
-----
MASTERLIST | 3 BIRDS 1 STONE MASTERLIST
-----
 A/N: I honestly can’t wait for the finale. AHHHH
MAIN TAGLIST:
@idkmanicantenglish​​, @wunderstell​​, @birdy-bat-writes​​, @multifandomgirl-us​​, @icequeen208​​, @offendedfishnoises​​, @arkhamtoddler​​, @elsenthal​​, @lucy-roo​​,  @loxbbg​​, @reclusive-chicken-nugget​​, @l-inkage​​, @http-cherries​​, @river9noble​​, @zphilophobiaz​​, @annoylinglyaries​​, @knightfall05x​​, @hyp-oh-critical​​, @satan-s-ass​​, @1-800-starmora​​, @flowersgirl02​, @nahcho​​, @thatonecroc​​​, @trixie-bb​​​, @daddyissuesmademe​​​, jasonsbitch, @shadowsndaisies​​ @jaybirdbooty​​​ @writing2sirvive​​​
SERIES TAGLIST:
@spaceservicestation​​, @thedeadlythoughts​​​, @vanessafabricius​​, @pinkforest05​
224 notes · View notes
orenjineki · 3 years
Text
Dabi the house-elf
Summary:When you don't get your Hogwarts letter at 11, you spam Hogwarts with letters until they get pissed of and send you a human Dabi who thinks he is a house-elf. And he's always naked and hung. Crap.
Warnings: Dub-Con, Dubious Consent, R18, Minors DNI
Notes: I am so sorry but I saw this tiktok by @savs_creates where Dabi is a house-elf and I just couldn't stop myself. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMerqQ5Dc/
I thank @mangospams who is my greatest inspo when it comes to Yandere Dabi.
You had a house-elf. As a muggle. A house-elf. The size of a grown, human!, man with a sizeable…erm, well size. Not only his frame was decently sized but also his private parts, as you liked to call them in your mind when you happened to accidentally see them from the corner of your eyes when the brown bedsheets you had given the man? elf? once again did a terrible job at covering him.
Which you did not want to see since you were still unsure about his race. To be fair, you were unsure about a lot of things since you turned eleven. Up until your 11th birthday you were convinced that you would get a letter from Hogwarts, be declared a witch and go on a great many adventure with your new, magical friends in a school that was essentially a death trap for children. (They have a forbidden forest with giant spiders, that can and will eat you, unless you raised the og spider because you thought it was a cute pet!). The thought that Hogwarts was not real, merely a product of fiction, did not occur to you. And why would it, since quirks were real, why shouldn't magic be?
And so you waited for your letter, standing on the doormat of your home, looking for owls. But none came. But they had to! And so you waited. And waited. With the interruption of school, food and sleep. But not a single bird, not even a pigeon, dropped a letter with a red wax seal in front on your feet. But you never gave up hope, maybe they just got lost on their way?
You waited so long that you eventually turned twelve. Angry about this unreliability and with a feeling of betrayal, you decided to take matters into your own hands and write them a letter instead, ha! And so you did, every day, complaining about the fact that this magical institute had the audacity to not send you your magical letter! Heck, even an email would have been fine! Your parents tried to stop you at first but since you were somewhat decent at school, they let you keep your paper intense hobby. When you had sent your 6666thletter, way past your 18th birthday, you finally got an answer!
''Dear Ms. …,
We have received your thousands upon thousands of letters, demanding to be announced a witch and allowed into our school. However, we are glad to inform you that you are, through and through, a muggle. Usually we would ignore such profligate attempts at gaining something which you do not deserve but the amount of paper you have wasted for your letters poses a threat to the environment which muggle folk already treat with so much disrespect. Therefore, as a reimbursement, and a desperate attempt to get you to stop writing us, we will send you a human who thinks he is also a magical being without a trace of magic in his veins. In this case it is a human man who got hit with a confundus charm as a child and is convinced that he is a house-elf. When you finish reading this letter, you will find him standing in your kitchen, awaiting your orders.
Sincerely, the secretary of Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry.''
Wait, so Hogwarts is real? And you have a house-elf/human now? What? You drop the letter and rush into the kitchen to see a man, with white hair, piercing blue eyes and piercings on…anyway. You couldn't decide what was more confusing about the situation. The fact that he appeared out of nowhere, the fact that large parts of his body were burned or the fact that he was naked. You decided to accept this new version of reality by staring at him incredulously for a good five minutes, in which he did not blink once, staring back at you.
Since he didn't say anything and you started to feel a little drowsy from this… revelation, you decided to end the day early and go to sleep in your one-room apartment. Sadly, your apartment was too small to hide in another room, hoping that he would be gone, only a really weird dream, when you woke up and entered the living room the next morning. Sadly, your living room was also your bedroom and your kitchen and so you could only turn around and stare at the wall incredulously until you fell asleep. The next morning you woke up feeling surprisingly refreshed, since your apartment was always too cold to catch a good night's sleep. But somehow you felt really warm, as if you had shared the bed with another, very warm body.
Was that breathing you heard near your ear, right behind you? You turned around in a millisecond and went right back to incredulously staring at your house-elf-human. Holy shit, he was still there. And naked. And now he spoke, making it even harder to ignore his existence. ''Is master mad at Dabi? Should Dabi burn himself as punishment?'' He raised a hand and a very hot and very scary looking blue flame emerged from it. Great, so you had a crazy human who was convinced to be a house-elf with a fire quirk in your very small and very expensive apartment. Just great. You decided to pretend this was real. Maybe if you went along with it, he would be revealed to be a figment of your imagination and someone would send you to a mental hospital where live might be a bit more normal than this. ''N…n…no, please don't! I'm just confused, it's fine, you did nothing wrong.''
And so you had a human house-elf. You tried really hard to convince him that he wasn't an elf, but his believe in his magicalness was as unyielding as 11 year old you's. You decided to just treat him like a really confused roommate. Very, very confused. He kept standing or laying as close to you as possible, staring at you so hard you worried he would set you ablaze with his eyes. Those eyes…
They were always on you. If it wasn't such a weird situation, he might have been your type, though more ''normal'' in his speech patterns preferably. The scars didn't look ugly, just saddening when you wondered about the pain his quirk must have caught him. In order to give him and you more privacy, you gave him an old brown bedsheet as clothing since he refused anything that was new and without holes. He was actually quite helpful around the household, watching you doing daily chores and picking them up immediately the next day until all you had left to do yourself was work and grocery shopping.
He did however always manage to make you slightly uncomfortable with the way he would stare at you whenever he had nothing to do but you had to write a paper or watch a cat video. And he was absolutely horrible when he interacted with other people, other men to be exact. One time, when you forgot to tell him to hide under the blanket when the doorbell rang, the delivery man had been visible from the kitchen unit and he stared at him, an eerie smile on his face, and a blue flame in one hand. You decided to push the delivery man out of his view, grabbed the package and slammed the door shut. After that you had a serious discussion about ''politeness'' with Dabi and he just kept insisting that ''Master doesn't need anyone else, only Dabi''.
You tried to talk him out of this worldview, but every time you even remotely disagreed with him, the room suddenly got very hot and smoke poured out of his ears and you decided to drop it. Maybe you should get a post office box instead.
From that day on everything seemed mostly fine, until you came home from work, very exhausted, with a sore neck. You yawned a lot more than usual when you tapped away on your phone and stretched your arms and moved your head around in a desperate attempt to ease the pain. Suddenly, two very warm hands found their way on your shoulders and a very hard and apparently large cock pressed into you from behind.
You gasped in shock, your breath stopping. Soft, white hair tickled your neck when your ''house-elf'' whispered into your ear: ''Does master need help relaxing? Dabi saw some of those massage videos master always watches at night on her phone. The humans in the videos look very calm after the massage.''
Your eyes widened in realization and horror, your ''house-elf'' had found your browser history. Great…
You tried to wriggle free from his hold, but only managed to rub your ass into his hard, and pierced, member, making the ''house-elf'' groan softly. The deep noise made your legs quiver and pulled a pathetic whimper from your lips. To your own shame, the most recent ''massage video'' you saw came to your mind and you wondered if he would really go this far. Before you could form another coherent thought, he let go of you to grab a glass of coconut oil from the fridge, melting it's content in his hands.
Then, his oily hands wandered, one under your shirt to softly massage your left nipple and make you whimper, the other under your waistband, inside your panties, to softly rub at your clit. Apparently, he had seen one of the more ''romantic'' videos, because you also felt his lips press soft kisses all over your neck and collarbone. Maybe he was really a magical creature, since the way he played with your admittedly very single body wiped all coherent thought from your mind. He kept rubbing and rubbing your clit until you came with a very embarrassing, very high-pitched moan.
''Don't worry master, Dabi will make you feel even better''. Before you could really grasp what he meant, something warm, hard and big was slowly pressed into your now soaked pussy. An even bigger, even more pathetic whimper left your lips. At your very audible reaction to his actions your ''house-elf'' stilled inside you once he bottomed out and laid his chin on your shoulder, looking at you with the widest eyes you ever saw on him. ''Is Master in pain?''.
You shook your head, bit down on your lip, and realized that you desperately needed him to pound you against the kitchen counter. ''I'm…I'm fine, please just move''. The desperation was very audible in your voice and the look of concern disappeared from Dabi's face. Instead, he licked your ear and whispered:'' Only if you Master admits that master belongs to Dabi''.
''W…what?!''
''Say it or Dabi will burn the next man that tries to sneak into master's home with a package.''
''O..ok, whatever. Master belongs to Dabi''.
The reaction where a dark chuckle and a kiss to your ear before he pulled out of you completely to thrust back in. When you didn't protest and your moans only grew in volume, his hands wandered and he started to squeeze each breast with a very large and warm hand. For the second time that night you wondered whether he actually was magical, since this felt like a very ''magical'' experience. Definitely fantastic with the way the various piercings battered into your g-spot and your clit, making you moan and whine just as loud as the women in your ''massage videos''. When Dabi saw your head fall back on his shoulder and your tongue roll out, he decided to make sure that everyone could see you were his and bit down on your neck, hard. You yowled out in pain but he compensated for it by rubbing your clit and thrusting so hard that you came on his cock half a minute later. The sensation of your walls squeezing him tightly and your cute whines also pushed him over the edge and you could feel his warm seed trickle out of you once he slowly retreated.
The house-human picked you up and held you bridal style in his arms before you could collapse. You still groaned softly from the overstimulation and he carried you to your very small shared bed. After carefully tucking you into bed and pulling you into his naked chest, he softly pushed your hair out of your face and gave you a number of soft kisses all over you face, on your nose, cheeks and mouth.
Before you managed to fall asleep, completely exhausted, you could hear him whisper into your hair after kissing your head:
''Now Master is Dabi's mate. I love you master, but if I ever see another man at the door I will turn him into a pile of ash''.
118 notes · View notes
pm-my-hubbies · 3 years
Text
Who Are You Talking To | C.E
Tumblr media
Summary: Reader is fed up with Chris not spending time with her on her week-long break.
Pairing: Chris Evans x Black!Reader
Word Count: 1.8k
Warning(s): None!
A/N: I accidentally shared this through my personal account! I apologize for any confusion if I tagged you the first time!
Chris was ecstatic when I informed him of the dates for my Fall Break.
He planned out everything we would do together. From planting a blanket in the middle of a park for a lovely picnic to strolling through farms for a pumpkin to carve and sit on our porch. He did all of that.
Yet he’s one strike away from me slapping the shit out of him. He’s been blowing me off every second and I’m due to return for work in two days. We hadn’t done any of what he promised we would accomplish together weeks ago. Instead, he handled work business downstairs for the first part of the day and followed that up with indulging in his own hobbies. I wasn’t a part of any of it.
To add on to it, his Zoom sessions weren’t successful and that prompted him to radiate negativity. Dinner time consisted of him giving me short answers or grunts and through it all, I remained optimistic. I figured being positive and not calling him out on his behavior right then would flip a switch in him to acknowledge how he was acting towards me but nothing happened.
My feet connected with the cold wooden flooring, goosebumps rising on the parts of my body that were exposed because of the tank top and pajama shorts I wore. The clock read 11:54 p.m. I’m praying Chris let Dodger out for the last time this evening.
The volume of the television in the living room increased the closer I dragged my feet to where I presumed he would be resting. Turning the corner, Dodger was the first one I spotted as he slept soundly on his stuffed animal right by the entrance to the room. Chris, on the other hand, watched CNN on blast as if he was an old man struggling to hear; his arms were folded across his chest while he laid on his side and blankly stared at the bright screen.
I rolled my eyes at the absurdity of my week spent at home. “Chris.” I called in a firm voice that was loud enough for Dodger to only blink his eyes open and instantly travel back to Dreamland.
My boyfriend only shifted his gaze to look at me. “Hm?”
“Did you let Dodge out one last time?”
“Mm-mm.”
Breathe Y/N, breathe. I let out a soft sigh as I bent down to gently shake the canine awake. “Dodger, honey. Let’s go outside.” I knew from Chris’ response he wouldn’t be letting our dog out anytime soon. The man would probably drag himself down the hall to bed as the sun rose for a new day.
Dodger simply obeyed my soft command by standing and putting on a show of dramatically stretching. As we made our way towards the back door right behind my miserable boyfriend, I made sure to cut my brown eyes at his lounging figure and hoped he could feel my glare.
Once again, my skin tingled as the cool night air caressed my legs and arms. To keep myself warm, I folded my limbs across my chest, rocking on the balls of my feet. My eyes managed to follow Dodger’s sniffing silhouette in the darkness but as soon as he began the squat for a number two, I looked away.
By now, Chris had shut off the loud tv. Finally.
“I thought you said we would be hanging out for my Fall Break?” I questioned with my back facing him as I kept my eyes on the dog.
“What?”
“I thought you wanted to hang out with me for my break. Week-long, might I add.”
“We are.”
“No we’re not, Chris. And you know it.” I sighed as I moved to slide the door closed but ceased my movement to leave an opening for Dodger in case he finished early. With my hands on my hips, I rotated around to stare down Chris. “You’ve spent every single day downstairs taking care of business with A Starting Point and work, which I have no problem with. It’s what you do afterwards that bothers me. Barely talking to me or not at all and then you sit down here to do whatever. I was trying to be positive and give you your space but now—”
“But now your little feelings are hurt, right?” he snapped. “You’re hurt because I can’t devote 100% of my attention to you on your little break? News flash: everything isn’t about you, Y/N. So, stop your whining and actually think about what I’m going through.”
This would’ve shattered a younger version of myself. But after years of reflection, I realized I was always given the opportunity to fight back instead of wallowing in my tears.
First, I glanced to my left. Then to my right. No sign of life. I grimaced at my boyfriend. “You must not be talking to me.” I indicated with a point towards my chest. “You must be talking to this goddamn wall.” I sassed, jabbing my thumb to the wall behind me.
Suddenly, for the first time in the year Chris and I have been together, his eyes were size of saucers as it dawned on him what he’d done. And how I responded.
Tonight, was his first time taking his anger out on me. Yes, we’ve had our arguments, but those moments were different. This happened to be the time where the world was against Chris and rather than rely on me to comfort him (as I usually would), he was victimizing himself. He probably expected my body to rack with sobs at the harshness of his words, but I was through with that shit tonight.
“Since you wanna pull a Karen on me, your ass can sleep on the couch tonight.” I punished him. In that moment, I felt the softness brushing against my legs. Dodger was finally in. I pulled the door closed all the way this time and locked it. “Come on Dodger, your dad is being an asshat. You can sleep with me.”
Chris was frozen in his spot as the both of us moved past him. I made sure to give him a little bump on the way with my shoulder.
While waiting for Dodger to grasp his animal in his mouth, I observed him throw Chris a quick glance as if telling him that he fucked up. Funnily enough, our dog was the first to exit the scene and hold his head high as he trekked to the bedroom.
“I’m locking that fucking door tonight. Don’t even try it. You made your bed, now lay in it.” I dictated.
~*~
Surprisingly, I slept like a baby. Maybe it’s because I finally said something to Chris about his behavior lately. The previous nights, he would slumber away while I laid awake wondering if we would even spend time together before I headed back to work. Calling him out felt right.
I took care of my morning routine before unlocking the bedroom door and calling for Dodger to wake up. What I didn’t expect on the other side was the tray we roll out for sick days to be standing in front of the door.
Dodger was planning on being difficult as he hadn’t moved from his spot. This gave me ample time to study the tray with a covered meal placed on top and a horizontally folded card with my name scribbled on it.
“You were right last night. I have been distant throughout your break and I’m sorry for ruining the plans I promised. It’s a short amount of time left with you but we’re going to get started early. Eat the breakfast I made for you and then freshen up by putting on your favorite dress. Meet me at the car by 11.”
I chuckled at the message but decided to follow his set of instructions, nonetheless.
~*~
As promised, Chris drove us to the pumpkin patch further away from where we lived for more privacy and intimate time together. We spent the whole ride discussing last night’s events and catching up on the conversations we were meant to have throughout my week in our house. When he parked the car, he suggested we snap as many couple selfies but made sure to emphasize the idea of him taking pictures of me.
“They’re for my phone.” He lied through his teeth as I raised a brow at his idea.
The truth: Chris yearned to share pictures of me on his Instagram. At least half of his feed consisted of me, Dodger, or nature and rarely ever himself. I worried he would lose followers for never updating them on how he was doing but he dismissed my worries with a kiss to my forehead and a, “It’ll be fine, who cares?”
For a while, we explored the farm with our hands linked and eyes moving about at the pumpkins of all shapes and sizes. It wasn’t until we’d reach the halfway point did I realize we didn’t have an exact clue as to which type of pumpkin we were searching for.
“I was thinking one of those big, tall pumpkins.” Chris answered after I asked him what our goal was.
“The ones that look like an orange squash?”
“Yeah.”
“Why…?”
“I don’t know, I’ve always wanted one.” He shrugged. His face held a gentle look of content.
“Well, if a squash-lookin’ pumpkin is what my big baby wants, then a squash-lookin’ pumpkin is what he shall get.”
Chris released my hand to wrap it around my waist and pull me closer to him. I felt my cheeks heat up as he placed a kiss to the crown of my head. After all this time together, he still managed to have me acting like a schoolgirl that somehow caught the attention of her longtime crush.
“Thank you baby.” He answered. “I know I already said this twice; through the note and in the car. But, I’m truly sorry for how I acted last night and the days before that. I was stupid in bottling everything up and not confiding in you like I normally do. Doesn’t justify any of what I said last night but I figured you had a lot on your plate and didn’t want to bother you with my own.”
I paused my walking to glance up at him with what I hoped was love in my eyes. “Chris, you could never bother me. As a couple, we talk to each other. Even if we’ve got problems of our own at the same time? I want you to come to me and I come to you so we can figure things out.” I stood on my toes to press a kiss to the underside of his jaw due to his towering figure. “I love you and accept your apology.
“I love you too.”
“You better. Because my ass wouldn’t be helping you find that ugly pumpkin to make you happy.”
“Hey!” he pouted before I shut him up with a kiss.
Taglist: @chaneajoyyy​ @daddyslittlecaptain​ @tantricevans​ @liquorlaughslove​ @nina-skyee​ @pinkgirlinablueworld​ @norababora @bakarilennox​ @rubyy98​
390 notes · View notes
texanredrose · 3 years
Text
Showing Off
Inspired by prompts submitted to @unsteadyshade on tumblr (here), that I reblogged earlier, or AO3 (here). Also, yes, I'm very much American but I decided to use the non-American lingo in regards to soccer here. Don't look at me expecting logic, my friends, I just do what the winds of whimsy tell me.
---
Blake pulled the hotel door shut behind her, following after her teammate and best friend who was further down the hall and carrying their tote bags. While she didn’t hold the same superstitious beliefs, Yang swore up and down they’d lose unless they brought along their ‘lucky’ practice ball; after going back to retrieve it, the woman seemed satisfied and started walking towards the elevator while Blake caught up. “This is ridiculous, you know that right?”
“Hey, don’t sass me; we’ve never lost a road game when we’ve had the ball,” Yang said, already wearing her keeper jersey, the material stretched a bit thin over her muscled frame. It had seen better days but, much like the ball, the woman refused to replace it, especially during their run up to the championship. “A little extra luck can’t hurt anyone. Except the other team, I guess.”
“It can make us late, though,” she said, one of her ears flicking back as one of the doors they passed opened and closed- had to be other patrons of the hotel, seeing as the rest of their team was already downstairs by the bus. “Which would mean we forfeit.”
“We’re not running that late,” Yang replied, throwing a grin her way. Then, lilac eyes were drawn behind them and lingered a moment before her lips pulled into a very specific smirk. Blake knew that smirk- it was the ‘oh, I’ve got an idea, you might not like it but you’re gonna do it’ expression, because aside from being one of the best keepers in the region, Yang Xiao Long was also ridiculously persuasive. Dangerously so, in fact. “Hey. Toss me the ball.”
“Your hands are full.”
“Wasn’t going to use my hands.”
Blake narrowed her eyes, vividly remembering the last time someone tried doing agility drills down a hotel hallway, and picked up on the subtle look behind them. After a few more steps, she turned to say something about the game to Yang as an excuse to glance behind them. And then, it all made sense.
A bit further down the hallway were two women, both of whom were dressed in sharp business attire, and the moment Blake returned her attention to Yang, she pointed at herself and mouthed the word ‘tall’ with a wink.
“C’mon, toss me the ball,” Yang said, coming to a stop.
Blake glanced at her watch and, although a touch reluctant, decided they had enough time for a little demonstration. Tossing the ball towards Yang, she stepped back to lean against the wall while the woman started juggling while still carrying both totes. With her best friend as a distraction, Blake could take a longer look at the women Yang was trying to impress, and realized a few things, chiefly: they weren’t just any business women following behind them.
They were the Schnee sisters.
Atlesian elites, borderline nobility, some of the richest and most powerful people in the world; the Schnee sisters were in the news for one reason or another practically every day. Blake was more familiar with the attitude and mentality of the younger sister, Weiss Schnee, because it was her actions that Blake, as a faunus, found most… interesting. All the way up until she assumed control of her family’s company, the woman didn’t seem much at odds with the stuffy, bigoted, narrow minded people found in her social circle. After, though, she not only did an unapologetic one-eighty in the other direction, she became so aggressively progressive that it created a wide schism in the highest echelons of Atlesian society. More than once, she’d deployed the surprisingly well equipped private SDC security forces to protect protestors from Atlesian police and military personnel, and paid an exorbitant amount of money to keep those protestors out of jail, either by paying off bonds or hiring attorneys. In a relatively short amount of time, she’d become a juggernaut for social changes, and the careful monopoly her scheming father had built became the ultimate tool for exacting those changes.
Blake could admire the woman’s sense of justice as well as her commitment to it.
The elder, though, she only knew by name. Winter Schnee stood on her sister’s side when it came to social issues and did something tangentially related to the SDC but, beyond that, the details were a blur. She’d never heard Yang mention either sister in anything more than a passing comment while they pursued the news together waiting for flights, certainly nothing she could recall that would explain why the woman wanted Winter’s attention specifically. However, it also wasn’t out of the ordinary for Yang to show off a bit for pretty ladies when presented the opportunity.
By the time Blake had made a decision herself, Yang had run through every trick she knew and had popped the ball up to balance on her chest. She motioned for the woman to pass the ball, which earned her a raised brow at first before lilac eyes twinkled and she popped her shoulders back to set the ball in motion.
Blake caught it before it hit the ground with her foot, stalling the ball’s momentum entirely for a moment before she began juggling herself. For her, it was less a skill she’d developed for showing off as one of honing control of her body and the ball, but she knew a few tricks, moving slightly away from the wall so she could juggle the ball in a circle around her while still facing Yang. It meant juggling with her heel behind her back briefly but she managed it without losing control and that prompted a low murmur from their audience. Impressively, she couldn’t make out the words, which made her think the speaker specifically didn’t want her to hear.
After transitioning between using her feet and knees, the faunus popped the ball up high enough for her head to get under it, her feline ears laying flat against her skull to prove she wasn’t using them to help her balance the ball in place, which earned a brief chuckle from Yang. Then, she began bouncing it atop her head while moving her head just so to get the ball rotating before allowing it to roll off her head so she could catch it with her foot.
With a glance to confirm Yang was prepared, Blake passed her the ball, and the two of them traded it for a while, trying to catch the other off guard to make the eventual save and pass even more impressive. It was a show of control and dexterity and, had they planned it, would’ve had a better end to the display. Unfortunately, a short pass from Yang resulted in both of them trying to save it, which sent the ball bouncing harmlessly down the hall until it came to a stop at Winter’s feet.
Then again, given the glint in Yang’s eye, perhaps that was her intention. “Oh, sorry about that. We’re just… warming up.”
With a jerk of her head, the faunus realized her friend was requesting some back-up. “Yes, we, uh… are on our way to a game. The semi-finals, actually.”
“We can probably get ya seats, if you want.” A nonchalant shrug. “You should come watch us play.”
The sisters exchanged a look then. The elder, questioning, and the younger… Blake couldn’t put a word to that look. It was equal parts goading and secretive, and perhaps something else dancing in blue eyes. She would need a lot more time to decipher that look.
And she found herself wanting it.
Then, without a word, Winter put her foot on top of the ball and rolled it back, popped it up, and… began juggling with just as much precision as they’d displayed. Except, unlike them- bedecked in jerseys, loose shorts, and tennis shoes- she was doing it in a form fitting pants suit and dress shoes, hampering her mobility somewhat though it hardly impacted her performance, executing all the tricks Yang had done. Then, she passed it to her sister, who, in high heels and a skirt, proceeded to do the same, keeping many of the tricks low so her skirt wouldn’t ride up. Which, of course, meant she had less room to manipulate the ball, had to move faster to get into position to execute each trick, and when she did a version of Blake’s around the world one, the faunus felt her mouth pop open in astonishment.
Once satisfied, Weiss passed the ball back to her sister, who caught it one handed.
“We appreciate the invitation. However...” Winter tossed the ball, hard enough that it hit Yang’s chest before the keeper thought to catch it. “We unfortunately have a prior engagement that requires our attention.”
The sisters began walking past the gobsmacked footballers and Blake didn’t miss the look Weiss directed her way as she spoke. “After you’ve won your game, perhaps you’ll join us in the hotel’s hot tub?”
Blake didn’t notice how close they were to their floor’s elevator until Winter reached over and pushed the button to call a car. “Unless, of course, you have your own post victory traditions that take precedence.”
Yang just shook her head while Blake managed to find her voice. “No. We don’t. Have traditions, I mean.”
“Excellent,” Weiss said, stepping into the car the moment the doors twanged open and hitting a button inside, smiling in a way that… well… Blake would call it seductive in another setting and found herself hard pressed not to call it that now. “We’ll see you there. Don’t be late.”
When the doors closed, both Blake and Yang were left standing in the hallway, both just… recovering from how mentally unprepared they were for their tricks to be used against them to great effect. After another moment, Yang turned to look at her, holding up the ball.
“Lucky. Ball.”
Blake resolved to not argue that point and instead focus on winning the game, ushering her teammate towards the stairs rather than waiting for the next car.
---
Weiss leaned back against the wall of the elevator. While they’d chosen to book this particular hotel for their business trip specifically because their favorite football team would be staying there, and they’d opted to not use the penthouse suite because they wanted a chance to catch glimpses of the team while going to and from meetings, neither expected to meet their personal favorite players in the hallway like that. Weiss had followed Blake’s career since college and, while responsibilities had prevented her from attending as many games as she would’ve liked, she always recorded them and watched them later. Up until the encounter in the hallway, that was how she and Winter had planned to spend their evening.
Now, though…
“Would it be inappropriate for me to bring her jersey to the hot tub in the hopes she’ll sign it?”
Winter made a considering noise. “Bring the jersey, leave a suitable pen in the room.”
“How would that accomplish her signing it?”
“Invite her back to the room.” Her elder sister smiled, and a twinkle in her eyes spoke to the crude humor of a former soldier. “I’ll be… elsewhere tonight.”
“Spare me the details,” she replied as they reached the ground floor. “... but thank you for the idea.”
As a general rule, Weiss was never overly fond of business meetings, but she found herself looking forward to the end of this one more than usual, if only to see where the night led.
---
Blake pushed out a nervous breath as she and Yang made their way towards the hotel’s pool area. The game itself ended in a shootout and while Blake had made the final goal that secured them a berth to the finals, she couldn’t relax quite yet. Post game celebrations usually involved Blake joining the rest of the team for a glass of champagne or a toast of some sort before the others prepared for a night on the town to celebrate the win. Most of the time, Yang went with them, leaving the faunus plenty of time to wind down with a book of her choice and a peacefully quiet hotel room. Even on the odd occurrence when Yang didn’t join the others, the blonde still found other ways of occupying herself that preserved Blake’s quiet.
So, rushing back to the hotel room to change into their swimwear before the hotel shut down their pool was a major break from their normal routine, and knowing they’d be going to meet two very beautiful and apparently incredibly talented women… well, she was just a touch nervous.
Unfortunately, her best friend didn’t share that anxiety.
“One piece or bikini?”
“What?”
“Which do you think they’re wearing?” The blonde shrugged, the tips of her hair brushing the back of her neck. Normally, Yang wore her hair down or in a thick braid for games, but seeing as she didn’t have the energy to deal with drying her hair again after the quick post game shower they’d rushed through. “I’m hoping Winter’s wearing a bikini or a two piece. She’s gotta have some abs, right?”
“You have an eight pack; what does it matter to you if she has abs?”
“It’s about the commitment.” With a smirk, she gestured towards her own abs, prominently on display thanks to her yellow bikini top. Along with a darkening bruise around her left eye, there were bruises along her ribs from a few sliding tackles that had almost sidelined the keeper entirely, but Yang was a bit tougher than their opponents expected. “It takes work to get these and keep ‘em.”
“And what’s the point of wearing a bikini top if you’re just going to wear swim trunks for bottoms?” She arched a brow, more comfortable poking holes in her best friend’s thought process than confronting reality as they neared their destination. While she, too, opted for bikini style swimwear, Blake had chosen a black top with matching bottoms and a light purple sarong around her hips. She might claim to be somewhat modest in comparison, but she was showing a bit more skin- which, rationally, she could justify because they were getting in a hot tub, not attending a gala, showing a bit of skin should be expected-
Blake shook her head, trying to calm her anxiety again.
“Gotta make her work for the goods,” Yang replied, either oblivious to or pointedly ignoring her nerves. Then again, perhaps she had a few of her own that she was hiding, considering the way she reached up to fiddle with her hair. “Besides, my bottoms always ride up. Trunks are more comfortable. Not all of us have an ass that won’t quit.”
“Not judging, I just think it’s… silly. To focus on what they’ll be wearing.”
“What else is there to think about?”
“How hard we’re going to flirt.” She pointed out, tilting her head thoughtfully. “What to say, how to say it… what result we’re hoping for.”
“Don’t overthink it, Blakey.” A laugh. “Let’s just have some fun.”
They came to a set of glass double doors that granted entry to the pool area of the hotel… at which point they realized the pool officially closed half an hour ago. Yang cursed under her breath as Blake’s shoulders slumped. They’d missed their chance, it seemed.
“Oh, Miss Belladonna? Miss Xiao Long?”
“That’s us,” Yang replied as a hotel employee approached them, already grabbing a key card attached to his lanyard and holding it up to a sensor beside the doors.
“Here. Both Miss Schnees are waiting for you.”
The footballers exchanged a look, surprised by the special treatment. True, they were quasi celebrities themselves, but this hotel handled all teams from the league, which meant they weren’t any more famous than the average patron. Then again, the Schnee sisters had quite a bit more clout than they did and could probably swing something like being given unfettered access to the pool area.
With a shrug and a smirk, Yang opened one door and they entered, spotting the sisters sitting in chairs beside the hot tub. Both were reading magazines, with fresh drinks on a table between them, and were… well… Blake found she couldn’t immediately discern their taste in swimwear because both sisters were wearing football jerseys. And not just any jerseys.
“I see you took us up on our offer,” Weiss said, getting to her feet and motioning towards the hot tub before reaching for the hem of the jersey to pull it off. At a glance, Blake could tell it was the special limited edition run from a few years ago, and her number no less. And while she would be sorely tempted to assume the woman had found one last minute, the careful way Weiss placed the jersey on the chair- not dropped or thrown carelessly- made her think otherwise. Only then did she notice the woman had opted for a light blue one piece with a single strap, leaving her upper back mostly exposed. “Splendid.”
“Congratulations on your win.” Winter also set aside her magazine and stood up, revealing she was wearing Yang’s limited edition jersey, and she took the same amount of care in removing it and setting it aside. Much to her friend’s delight, the elder of the sisters did wear a bikini of a darker blue and also sported some abs, though they lacked the definition of Yang’s. “A hard fought victory like that certainly deserves a celebration.”
As the sisters entered the hot tub, Blake looked over to Yang, who seemed equal parts excited and… intimidated- and that second one was hard. But what intimidated her ultimately evolved into a challenge and Yang never backed down from a challenge. For her part, the faunus just found herself wondering if, perhaps, they had a different idea of who needed to impress who than the sisters did.
Removing her sarong, Blake tossed it onto the chair Weiss had used and went to the hot tub, noting how the sisters had chosen to sit across from each other. She hesitated in entering, if only because she didn’t want to be too forward. Yang, of course, took the seating as a goading taunt of sorts, and settled herself in the tub hardly an arm’s length away from Winter. Probably closer than would be considered polite but neither seemed uncomfortable or surprised by the decision, so Blake opted to test the waters herself, sitting approximately the same distance away from Weiss but also across from Yang.
Almost instantly, she let out a sigh of relief; while focusing on getting to the hot tub, she’d done her best to ignore the lingering aches and pains from the game. Now, though, she could feel herself relaxing as the warmth began sinking into her muscles. Usually, she just focused on stretches before bed and had a tub of balm if that failed.
“Should probably do this more often,” Yang said, obviously relaxing herself. “Forgot how good hot tubs feel after a rough game.”
“Speaking of that, did you get checked out?” Winter gestured towards her eye. “You took a few nasty hits. I’m surprised seventeen didn’t get thrown out of the game.”
“The Vipers always play hard.” The blonde tried to shrug off the concern. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“You took a few shots, too.” Weiss pointed out. “How’s your knee?”
“I’ve taken worse falls.” She gave a wry smile. “But I’m beginning to suspect you know that.”
“I’ll admit I’ve been a fan of yours since your college days.” The woman shrugged one shoulder, feigning nonchalance- and Blake only suspected it was a show because blue eyes didn’t meet hers as she spoke. “I hardly think that is remarkable. You’re one of the best strikers the league has ever seen.”
“Did you ever consider playing?” At the curious look she received, Blake inclined her head. “It took me years to develop those tricks, and you did them better. That speaks to a remarkable amount of skill.”
“Well, I’ll admit I entertained the idea a time or two. Ultimately, I chose my path, and it didn’t leave enough room to become a superstar footballer.” She shook her head. “I don’t regret it but, I suppose, part of the reason I practice those little tricks to keep the dream alive.”
Her ears perked up, catching something between the lines. “Part of the reason? What’s the other part?”
“Why, to catch your eye, of course.”
“My eye?” She couldn’t help the surprised chuckle that bubbled up from her chest. “You’re Weiss Schnee; you don’t really need to try to catch anyone’s attention.”
The woman’s expression faltered then. “Yes, well… unfortunately, the sort of attention I garner on my own is markedly less… impressive, by some standards.”
“I’d think those people have poor standards, then,” she said, opting to tip her hand as well. “You’ve managed to galvanize social changes that have taken some kingdoms entire decades in a matter of years. Comparatively, bouncing a ball’s hardly anything. Don’t you think?”
At that Weiss laughed, a bright, high, unrestrained sound that Blake rather liked hearing. “If I thought that, I wouldn’t be trying so hard to impress you, now would I? And you shouldn’t discount your own efforts outside the pitch.”
The faunus felt her lips quirk up in amusement. They’d been watching each other from afar all this time; the only thing she didn’t account for was the magnetic attraction that being in the woman’s presence seemed to engender. And, as she made an excuse of stretching to cover her moving slightly closer to Weiss, it seemed she wasn’t the only one feeling it. The woman, mysteriously, decided to move and dip her shoulders beneath the water’s surface long enough to bring out a lovely light pink blush to her skin, and when she sat back against the tub’s wall, she was a bit closer to Blake.
Surreptitiously, she snuck a glance towards Yang, if only to gauge how much teasing she would be in for on the flight back home the following day. She quickly realized her best friend wouldn’t have a leg to stand on when it came to teasing; somehow, Winter had coaxed Yang into her lap and was apparently giving the footballer a message. For her part, Yang seemed to be in a luxurious sort of heaven, eyes half lidded and with a silly sort of smile on her lips.
“Forgive my sister,” Weiss said, a sardonic smile on her lips. “I’m impressed she’s shown this much restraint.”
“I can hear you,” the woman replied, blue eyes flashing towards her younger sister. “But that can be remedied. Yang?”
“Hmmm?”
“I think this would work better if you were lying down.”
Lilac eyes widened as the woman tilted her head, glancing over towards Blake. With a small nod, the faunus made the silent agreement to avoid their hotel room for a few hours. Frankly, Yang had slept in a few lobbies over the years, when she’d returned too drunk to be quiet and not wanting to risk waking the faunus. She could spend a night elsewhere to return the favor.
“Yeah… I think you’re right.”
As the two got out of the hot tub and retrieved towels, Blake returned her attention to the woman beside her. “You don’t have to try, you know.”
“Pardon?”
“Impressing me. You don’t have to try.” Blake tilted her head, leaning back to brace her arms against the rim of the hot tub. “I think that’s the part I don’t like about being with the league. The mandatory press conferences and the rules- sometimes, I just want to get straight on the bus after a game and go back to reading my book, not sit and play twenty questions for an hour. It’s like… wearing an ill fitting mask.”
“You handle them remarkably well.” Weiss smirked. “But I suppose I say that because I speak my mind a bit too bluntly during press conferences. I admire your restraint.”
“I admire your candor,” she replied, very carefully laying one arm along the tub’s rim behind the woman. “I really liked the interview you did with the Atlas Economist. It looked like you were going to give that guy an aneurysm.”
“That would’ve been impossible.” A light chuckle as she moved closer, lowering her voice ever so slightly to coax Blake into leaning closer. “He would need a brain first.”
They both laughed, using their amusement to hide their shifting movements until Weiss was pressed into her side ever so slightly. They continued talking and laughing quietly until sitting in the hot tub started becoming uncomfortable. However, the faunus did her best to ignore it simply because she didn’t want to part ways quite yet. Weiss was… a lot of things- emphatic, sharp tongued, witty- but above all good company that Blake wasn’t keen on losing quite yet. However, she couldn’t ignore that the heat of the tub was taking a toll on them both.
“Your skin’s turning red,” she said, running a thumb over the ball of Weiss’ shoulder. “We should probably get out.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
They both stood and exited the hot tub, grabbing towels to start drying themselves off. While doing that, she wracked her brain for some excuse to continue their conversation but found herself coming up woefully empty. Every suggestion she could come up with either sounded ridiculous or… risque. It wasn’t like she could simply invite the woman back to her hotel room for some tea.
“Thank you for the invite, by the way,” she said, trying to buy herself some time. “A good soak after a tough game feels… fantastic. I don’t often indulge.”
Blue eyes lit up as the woman wrapped a towel around her hips. “I’m more than glad you accepted. However, if you wish to… pay me back… I’ve been meaning to ask for your autograph.”
Blake raised a brow. The request seemed… deceptively innocent, especially with the way Weiss was looking at her. “I can do that. You want me to sign your jersey?”
“If it isn’t too much trouble.” The barest moment of silence, and then she tilted her head. “Unfortunately, the only pen I have is in my room.”
Blake took a step closer, pleased to see she actually stood a few inches taller than the woman when she wasn’t wearing heels, and lowered her voice. “Well… I suppose we’ll have to go to your room, then.” A pause. “And, maybe, we’ll think of something else I can sign along the way.”
Weiss smiled and donned the jersey, setting her hand in the crook of the faunus’ elbow. “Perhaps. Do you have any ideas?”
“I do.” As they started walking, she chuckled. “But I wouldn’t want to use a pen to sign something so… delicate.”
The woman hummed, pointedly looking at her mouth. “I believe I know of something else you can use.”
While outwardly Blake merely smiled a bit wider, internally she asked herself a question: just how far was she willing to go?
Before they reached the elevator, she’d decided that if she wasn’t officially dating Weiss Schnee by the time she boarded the plane tomorrow, she’d be disappointed in herself.
---
Weiss stretched luxuriously in her bed as the morning rays streamed in through the window. She was sore in places she’d forgotten existed- but the pleasant type of sore, the kind that eventually turned into an itch for more, and it took conscious effort not to reach for her scroll just then. It would probably do her well to show some restraint.
That mentality lasted all of thirty seconds before her scroll was in hand and she was admiring her new background picture, taken just before Blake put on her swimwear from the night before and left to return to her room. Nothing terribly suggestive or revealing, of course, just the faunus resting her chin on Weiss shoulder. An ordinary selfie. With her new girlfriend.
She couldn’t help the smile curling her lips.
The door opened and she looked over her shoulder, watching her sister strut into the room wearing her bikini with her usual air of complete and total confidence. Her jersey was held in one hand. Probably because she wanted to… show off. “You walked down the hallway like that?”
“Of course,” Winter replied, not even batting an eye at the words ‘Property of Yang Xiao Long’ written in marker across her chest and abdomen. “I’m pleased with the outcome.”
Then, a smirk.
“Please, don’t elaborate.”
“I won’t but I do hope you were as successful as I was.”
She glanced at her scroll as a message came through from Blake, a smile coming to her lips. “Indeed I was.”
Who knew giving in to her impulse to show off would have such wonderful results.
35 notes · View notes
cherrysha · 4 years
Text
The Chase
Hey! First post on this blog and its something I’ve never actually written before! Its Yandere Hisoka because I just rlly have a soft spot fr evil bastards. I want to write a lil more on this one buuut ive got sum other baddies i need to write for first. Since its my 1st time writing a yandere fic feedback is rlly appreciated <3
My requests are open atm 
Warnings: Blood, a lil spit, Choking, Yandere themes, violence, slapping, crying, uhh Hisoka being a pervert but thats expected
word count: 1,600
18+ crowd here, minors get blocked.
Part 2 here
Tumblr media
It didn’t take you long to understand why you were told to stay away. To be exact, it only took you three seconds.
-
“You know why no one has ever collected Hisoka’s bounty y/n?” your boss asked you after taking this mission.
Judging from his face you could tell the question was rhetorical. You rolled your eyes, waiting for him to finish his little lecture. “No one is stupid enough to walk into their own funeral. If you take his bounty you might as well pick out your own casket first, assuming you even have a body left to bury when he’s done with you. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave this one alone.” And with that, you left slamming the door behind you. No matter how many bounties you collected, it seemed like he just never gave you credit. It was just like him to underestimate your capabilities.
What a fool you were.
-
           That’s all it took. Three seconds and he had already sensed you. Even though you concealed your nen, even though you were a rooftop away, even though you took every single fucking precaution you knew, it did you no good. As you peered through your binoculars at him you were met with Hisoka’s full gaze, a sly smile spreading across his face. You felt it then, your hair standing on end, a sickening feeling in your gut. No, you hadn’t just walked to your funeral, you had sprinted.
You were running before you could even comprehend what happened, feet hitting the pavement as you tried to get as far away as possible. There was no time for you to be shocked, if his bloodlust was any indication of his power, you were as good as dead. There was no use in using any energy to try and conceal yourself now. He knew exactly where you were.
“I’ve got to be honest, you are definitely not what I expected…” Hisoka’s voice whispers into your ear. You faltered, your feet tripping over themselves as you felt the warmth of his breath on your neck. You couldnt hide the shock you felt that he had been able to catch up to you in such a short amount of time. Not many people could, and you had a head start. He lets you run anyway; his urge to murder you overpowered by his sudden desire to see you try to escape. No, he was going to savor this one. Hisoka always loved playing with his food and the way your heart was pounding was just too enticing.
-
You intrigued him, if he was being honest with himself. The chase had lasted longer than he had imagined. Any other bounty hunter would have stopped and tried to fight him by now. No, he could tell you were a smart one, you knew better than that. Hours of running had led to this moment and, oh, was he going to relish in it. 
After what seemed like forever, you finally hit the dirt, spluttering as your body gave out due to exhaustion. Such a weak little thing. And to think you truly believed you could take him on. It was laughable. The chase seemed as if it were over, Hisoka sighed, giving up on his hopes of toying with you even more. At this point he knew he might as well finish you off. He didn’t like playing with broken things, and right now there was no way you would ever be able to take him on. His eyes lingered over you, and something in him hesitated as he glanced at your crumpled form lying in the dirt, chest heaving with exhaustion. Hisoka’s gaze wandered over your body. He couldn’t help the smug smile that crept onto his face with how wrecked you look. Clothes grimy and tattered, bloody arms and legs from branches hitting your delicate skin. The sight alone made his mouth water. As you laid there and finally caught your breath his resolve to kill you started waning. But the thought of watching you try to run again sounded so boring. Both of you knew there was no point. Before he could jump down and finish you off, you spoke for the first time since his little chase started.
“There’s no point in hiding up there. I’m not stupid enough to believe I’ve gotten away.” Once he heard the lilt in your voice, he knew he wanted you. The twinkle that was still held in your dry throat was his undoing. How could someone run from death for hours and still sound as angelic as you did? He needed to know, he needed to hear more.
Your first good look at him was when he finally jumped down. Lithe and nimble, landing on his feet like a cat. He seemed well built, albeit his fashion sense was more than off-putting. “So perceptive…To think someone as smart as you would try to murder me. You should know better.” he chastised, circling you as you shifted into a kneeling position. This was it, twenty plus years on this earth just to go out in a single second. You sighed, it came with the job. You knew the risks. Now was no time to hold a pity party. “Can you make it quick? I promise you I’d rather die than hear you drone on and on about how foolish I am.” You didn’t look at him, instead you held your head down and waited. The chuckle he let out was low in his throat, almost imperceptible if you hadn’t been in the quiet of the forest. Surprisingly, his voice was still calm and collected as he smiled down at you “And what if I don’t want to do that? I don’t think you’re in a position to be making any orders little girl.” you held in the anger you felt bubbling to the surface, knowing that it would only serve to amuse him further. He wanted a reaction out of you, wanted to rile you up so killing you would be even more fun for him. You bit your lip, trying your hardest to resist the urge to punch his stupid face in.
Hisoka drew closer, bending down until you flinched away “Would you like to live?” he whispered, lips ghosting against your ear. His proximity sent a shiver down your spine, as if your body could sense how dangerous he was. “I’m not going to beg for my life Hisoka. You might as well end it now.” He groaned at that. God, did he love the sound of your voice saying his name. it felt as if he could live off of it alone. His fingers slowly traced your jaw until he reached your chin, pushing it up so he could finally get a good look at your face. “You’re a proud little thing aren’t you? No matter, I’m positive your defiant attitude will dwindle with time.” Your breath hitched at his last words. No, He wasn’t going to torture you if you could help it.
The anger was building up in your chest and you couldn’t help yourself when his face was just mere inches from yours. You spit, but that only managed to make his grin grow wider. Even though his demeanor seemed calm, his aura showed the opposite. Long nails dug into your skin as he gripped your jaw tight, blood seeping from the fresh puncture wounds. This time the laugh was audible, amusement in his eyes making your stomach curl. You werent given enough time to react to it for long, however. He lifted you off the ground by your throat, loving the way your hands instinctively curled around his arm. So soft and warm, so easily breakable. He wondered how long it would take to pull you apart piece by piece. Wondered how you’d look at him once he put all your pieces back together.
This was it; this was exactly what you wanted. A swift death. You closed your eyes again and waited as your airway was slowly constricted by Hisoka’s large hand. If you had kept them open, you would have seen the way he swiped your spit off of his cheek, sucking his fingers into his mouth and indulging in his first taste of you. His groan was mixed with a small whine this time. He wanted more; He needed more. His first taste and he already knew he would never get enough of you.
Meanwhile somewhere in the back of your mind you were amazed at how strong he was to only lift you with one hand, but you pushed it away. What a silly thought to have right before you die. of course he was stronger than you. Instead you tried to focus your mind on something better, something sweet. The sky right after a storm, the pond near your house with dozens of colorful fish, the feeling of your warm bed. Everything was going to be okay. You relaxed, letting the last of your breath go.
But within a split second he had dropped you, laughing as your body thudded against the ground. “Such an interesting little creature … A lot smarter than I gave you credit for. You already know just how to push my buttons don’t you sweetheart?” Gasping for air, you lay back in the dirt and allowed the tears to flow freely down your face and into the packed soil beneath you. You had been so close to cutting it short, so close to dying with at least a shred of your dignity left. To cry while on death’s doorstep was shameful, but it didn’t matter. It wan’t  like you could hide them once the torture started. Might as well lose your pride now, there wasn’t anything you could do. You were entirely helpless.
Hisoka saw it, the slump in your shoulders as the tears streaked through the grime covering your face. Those tears, he had to make sure that he was the only one who ever saw them. You were crying for yourself now, but once he got you home the only tears he wanted you to shed would be for him. From the pleasure he gave you. No, no one else could see them. They were his, you were his. He was determined to make you see, no matter how long he had to drill it into your stubborn head. The things he was planning on doing … he needed to ruin you.
Hisoka lifted you up by your neck again, but this time his grip was loose enough to allow you to breath. His hand came to your tangled hair, combing through before harshly yanking backwards only stopping once your face was mere inches from his own. You closed your eyes, not wanting to look at him. Not wanting to see the evil lurking just beneath the surface. Hisoka sighed, “Open your eyes for me darling.” You shook your head as best as you were able to with his grip still firmly in your hair. You couldnt trust yourself to speak, fearing your voice would crack and show just how weak you were.
 An audible crack echoed in your ears as Hisoka slapped you, biting back his moan at the whimper you let out. “Love, it’s impolite to close your eyes when I’m trying to speak to you. I thought my suggestion was enough, but if I have to use force then so be it.”. Fresh tears flowed as you stared at him, biting back your sobs as best as you could. You watched his yellow eyes flick to your cheek, smile widening in satisfaction at what he saw there. He tilted you impossibly close, licking up a trail of tears that marred your swollen and dirty face. “So sweet” he groaned, letting his head rest against yours. “And all mine.”.
460 notes · View notes
murasaki-murasame · 3 years
Text
Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep22
All of this ‘the culprit’s motives are super shallow and they’re just unhealthily obsessive’ discourse is giving me war flashbacks to . . . . basically every other part of the entire When They Cry franchise, lol.
Thoughts under the cut. [Plus spoilers for Umineko]
I feel like at the end of the day we’re all just gonna have to agree to disagree about how we feel about how Ryukishi is handling Satoko as the culprit here, since I don’t really think any amount of social media posts detailing our interpretations of her character are gonna change anyone’s minds, lol. But I’m still gonna give my thoughts on her anyway because it’s fun, even if I’m basically just preaching to the choir.
To be honest, this feels pretty much in line with how Ryukishi already wrote characters like Takano and Beatrice, in terms of them having unhealthy obsessions that lead them to mass-murder. The amount of violence Satoko has caused is arguably worse than either of them, but they’re all pretty awful if you think about the reality of what they all did as villains.
Sorta like with how a lot of the old-school Umineko discourse went, I think people are too focused on the whole idea of Satoko hating studying, and ignoring everything else about her character and her circumstances. Although even then I feel like people are being kinda unfair toward Satoko about how strongly she feels about academics, but maybe I’m just biased because of my own history with schooling and the intense levels of anxiety and self-hatred that can go along with it.
Plus the fact that Satoko already has a long history of sever abandonment issues, and has basically always had HS that amplified her feelings of paranoia and persecution. It’s pretty obvious at this point that she never really got ‘cured’ in the first place, though it’s less important to think about HS as an in-universe fictional disease with it’s own rules, and more important to just think about it as a representation of real-life mental illnesses which aren’t bound by the rules of made-up brain-worm parasites and aliens or whatever.
Also, the Satoko that started all this looping in the first place was one who never dealt with Teppei returning to the village, and thus never went through her whole character arc related to that. The series is kinda ambiguous about how it handles the idea of people’s character development carrying over between loops, but it explains a lot about Satoko’s attitude here if you go with the idea that she never really had to overcome any of her trauma or coping mechanisms in the “good ending timeline”, and this is the consequence of that taken to it’s logical extreme. The idea of her view of the world being skewed by the fact that she only remembers the “good ending timeline” is also kinda lamp-shaded by the part where she hears about Rika’s looping and is like “oh yeah, that’s the month where we had that cool action movie stand-off with the Mountain Dogs :)”. By the time she really got to understand exactly what was going on beyond the specific timeline she had experienced, she was already way over the edge.
I get why people don’t like the idea of Gou ‘tainting’ the VN’s happy ending, but I honestly like the idea that it’s examining the consequences of how Matsuribayashi was such an overly-specific timeline where basically nothing bad happened and everyone just banded together to beat Takano. It kinda glossed over a lot of the personal problems that the main cast had in the rest of the series, and this really goes to show the effects of some of that stuff not getting properly addressed. It also reminds me that Minagoroshi is a timeline that even in the VN, Rika completely lost her memories of, so I can see how even post-Matsuribayashi she might have never let Satoko know about the details of that one timeline where she overcome her abuse.
I also feel like it only really got to this point because of Featherine’s meddling. In the original Matsuribayashi timeline, Satoko just started drifting away from Rika and ended up wandering into the Saiguden and meeting Featherine before anything actually serious happened in that timeline. I think that if she had just been left to her own devices and that timeline had just kept going, Satoko probably would have either found a way to reconnect with Rika, or they would have just slowly drifted apart for good. But then Satoko got given the power to time travel, and only started going off the deep end after going through another five years of identical suffering.
And on that whole note, it reminds me of how in Umineko, Lambda had a whole conversation about the idea of an abused person becoming an abuser themself if they’re given the power to lash out. Which is basically what’s happening here. Satoko is being given the tools to completely detach herself from reality and try as many times as she likes to get what she wants.
Which also reminds me that this episode in particular REALLY lays the Umineko parallels on thick, lol. Particularly the whole ‘Satoko is turning into Lambda’ thing, which feels just about 100% confirmed now. They straight up have Featherine bring up the exact same ‘monkeys using a typewriter’ analogy to explain Rika’s situation that Lambda uses in Umineko to explain Bern’s situation.
I know a lot of people don’t like the increasingly blatant Umineko tie-ins, and that a lot of people still think it might just be misdirection, but considering how much stuff in Gou has been surprisingly straightforward and predictable, I think it’s pretty much exactly what it seems to be.
Though to be more specific, this is probably more about the start of Lambda and Bern’s relationship, and their appearances in Umineko, rather than the very first origins of them as individuals, if that makes sense. Obviously the concept of Bernkastel as an identity has been around since Higurashi itself, and we’ve known for a long time that Lambda was the one who originally gave Takano her blessing of certainty, but we’ve never known the full details of how those two started their relationship, and Featherine’s whole series of name-drops in the last episode makes it seem like Lambda as a meta individual more or less already exists, with Satoko being an iteration of her. So I think they both technically already exist, but this is how the two of them come into contact and start their whole unhealthily obsessive relationship.
I guess it’s still possible that, even if she’s already existed for a long time as a meta individual, she hasn’t actually come up with the name ‘Lambdadelta’ for herself yet, and this might be where she does so. Even with the list of names Featherine referenced, she didn’t technically bring up Lambda’s name directly. So in that sense this might be ‘Lambda’s’ origin story, even if she already exists.
Considering how basically the entire story at this point seems to be acting in service of setting up the whole LambdaBern relationship dynamic no matter what, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that this will end with Satoko and Rika fully embracing their codependency and mutually ascending to the meta plane so they can stay together once and for all. There might still be human versions of them that stay behind in the real world and continue living normal lives, though.
At the very least, it feels like that’s the logical outcome of the whole Chekov’s Sword Fragment plot device that’s been hanging in the background for ages now. I think it’ll just be the in-universe explanation they use to show the mechanics of how exactly that process works. It’ll probably be used to ‘sever’ Satoko and Rika’s meta consciousnesses from their physical bodies and allow them to basically become witches.
Mainly I just can’t really see this having a ‘happy ending’ at this point, aside from the whole idea that maybe the severing process leaves behind ‘normal’ versions of the two of them who stay in Hinamizawa and go back to their normal lives. I dunno if that’d make people happy, but it’d at least be a way for Ryukishi to have his cake and eat it too, lol.
I just don’t think that there’s any real chance of this ending with them just talking to each other and agreeing to put an end to all this, though. For one thing that’d just feel kinda anticlimactic and honestly make Gou’s story feel even MORE pointless, if it just ends with literally the exact same ending as the VN with nothing really being changed. But I also feel like Featherine wouldn’t be willing to just let Satoko ‘give up’ without having one of them definitively win their current game. In general I just feel like Ryukishi should just commit to the story he’s setting up at this point, instead of just backing out at the last minute and circling everything back to the same ending we already had like nothing in Gou ever happened. If we’re gonna have this whole new story to begin with, it should at least have some lasting consequences.
Anyway, I think in the next episode we’re finally going to loop back to the Damashi arcs and see how they played out. At this point I don’t care too much about getting answers to the ground-level mysteries of those arcs, and I doubt the story will spend much time on that, but I’m curious to see how it progresses Satoko’s whole development through these loops, since I think she goes through some changes with her motives and methods over the course of them.
Specifically I think that the actual experience of being physically present in her own set of loops and causing so much pain and suffering started to get to her, and she might have almost given up in her own way during Tataridamashi and wanted to just stay in that arc, but things went south anyway. Maybe, if that’s what happened, Featherine basically let her know that she won’t let her give up, and will force her to keep looping until one of them ‘wins’ no matter what. Either way, I think that arc was a turning point for her. Like how she asked Featherine to arrange things so that Satoko can make sure that she and Rika’s loops are synced up, she probably asked Featherine after that arc to change the rules again so that Rika will start remembering the details of her deaths. At this point it’s pretty obvious that the Hanyuu fragment Rika was talking to earlier in Gou was more or less just Featherine putting on an act and manipulating her, so the scene of Hanyuu giving her the power to remember her deaths was probably just Featherine telling her about the rule change.
And going by how the Nekodamashi arc went immediately afterward, I think that rule change was related to Satoko becoming increasingly desperate to put an end to the loops as soon as possible. And considering how she was willing to spend so much time reviewing Rika’s hundred years of looping just to prepare for this, it’d make sense to me if she becomes desperate because she basically gives up, but realizes that she isn’t actually allowed to give up, so she has to try and make Rika give in as fast as possible. Either way it’s pretty obvious that Satoko’s methods start becoming more violent in that arc, and she basically tries to brute-force Rika into submission, leading up to the loop where she just spawn-camps her and straight up starts screaming at her to just stay in the village while tearing out her guts. It’s still possible that her attitude in that loop was just one big act, but I think that was the result of her being genuinely desperate to just have Rika give up once and for all, and her starting to crack under the pressure of doing all of these things with her own hands across so many loops. 
So now we’ll just have to see how the confrontation between them at the end of Nekodamashi plays out once we get back to it. In the long run I just think it’ll lead to the ending I talked about before, with them using the sword on each other. The exact nuances of how that sorta ending might play out are up in the air, though.
Either way, I think there’s probably enough time to wrap up all that in two more episodes, but there’s still reason to believe that there might be some kind of sequel in the works. I don’t really want to bet on it, though, so I’m just gonna assume that there’s two episodes left and base my theories on that. In which case I think the next episode will go over the Damashi arcs and end with Rika and Satoko’s confrontation at the end of Nekodamashi, and then the final episode will wrap everything up. Considering that they both more or less know exactly what’s going on with each other by that point, there isn’t really that much that needs to be wrapped up. I think that will be the final loop we get, so it’ll all just come down to how their confrontation plays out, and what decision they come to about how to handle each other.
I honestly don’t really know how I think a full sequel would go, if it’s at least one cour long. Assuming that it’s not just a new Umineko anime that more or less continues Rika and Satoko’s arc via Lambda and Bern, but is a straight up ‘Higurashi Gou Season 2′. It just feels like there isn’t really that much that needs to be done to wrap things up, now that everything’s being laid out in the open, and Rika and Satoko are both aware of each other’s looping. They might switch it up so that they both end up teaming up to take down Featherine, but I kinda doubt that’ll happen.
I’m still hoping this is leading into some kind of new Umineko anime though, lol. That feels like it’d be the main reason for putting so much effort into this whole elaborate LambdaBern origin story we’re getting here.
I’ve heard rumors that there’s been listings for a 25th episode of Gou, so it’s possible that rather than another full season, there’s just one extra episode at the end. I’m not exactly sure what the point of doing one extra unannounced episode at the end would be, though. It might end up being a bridge between Gou and a new Umineko anime.
At the very least, if it’s just ‘Satokowashi Part 8′, it makes me wonder why they haven’t announced it yet, and why they didn’t just split that arc into two BD volumes with four episodes each, instead of having it be one big volume with seven episodes, and one random episode at the end for some reason. But if it’s more of an epilogue or a bridge of sorts between Gou and something else, with Gou’s story concluding with episode 24, then I guess it’d make some sense to do it that way.
We also know there’s gonna be a panel for Gou at a convention around when ep24 comes out, so if anything gets announced it’ll probably happen there.
Anyway, this whole episode can be summed up as “Satoko does a gay little psychological torture that pisses Rika off”, in the most morbidly entertaining way possible, lmao.
61 notes · View notes
honeypiehotchner · 4 years
Text
i knew you (Bucky Barnes soulmate AU) -- part one
I know, I know. I just finished a story and I started another one and now I’m posting a different one...I’m insane. But I’ve had this idea for a while, just never wrote it down until last night! Enjoy xx.
Also! It’s Bucky x Reader, but it might read as Steve x Reader. I promise it’s platonic!Steve x Reader, though. Steve has no intentions of stealing Bucky’s girl. He knows Bucky would haunt his ass if he did (this is set in The Winter Soldier movie, so Steve still thinks Buck is dead).
Warnings: just some general sadness and angst, mentions of depression, it’s angst city honestly it made me cry
Tumblr media
You watch as the old footage replays of Bucky’s wide grin. The only kind of smile that his best friend, Steve Rogers, could draw out of him with one single look or gesture. The only kind of expression that knocks the wind out of your lungs and sends chills down your spine.
“Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable both on schoolyard and battlefield. Barnes is the only Howling Commando to give his life in service of his country.”
You hastily wipe a tear away. It’s been months since you put the pieces together. Months since your parents told you that they had known for years. Months since they told you they didn’t want to tell you because they didn’t want to see you hurt. 
Months since you’ve realized the man you keep seeing in your dreams is Bucky Barnes.
At first, you thought you were crazy. People dream of faces they’ve never seen all the time, right? 
Soulmates are said to be rare, but not nonexistent. You’ve always thought they were real, just that the world was so cynical to really talk about them. The idea that there is one person out there whose soul is connected to yours is exactly the kind of thing that would send this generation walking the other direction with their middle fingers raised and eyes rolling in disbelief.
Then you started remembering your dreams. You started to see his face more clearly. Granted, you had no idea it was Bucky that you were seeing. 
You came to the Smithsonian almost half a year ago now with your best friend. She realized you both had never been before, and she basically said fuck it one day and took you with her. Her exact words were, “How have we gone to college here for a year and a half and we’ve never been to the damn Smithsonian?”
You weren’t expecting to meet your soulmate that day. 
Of course, you use the word “meet” very loosely. Your soulmate isn’t alive, which explains the emptiness you feel on a daily. It’s been said that soulmates can feel what the other is feeling. Often times it’s muted, but recognizable. 
You got to see his face, to finally realize that it’s Bucky. The Bucky Barnes. 
It sounds ridiculous — and God, you love your best friend for not calling you pathetic that day — but when you walked up to the very exhibit you’re standing at right now and saw Bucky’s smile...you knew. Instantly, you knew. And it moved you to tears.
It was like your soul had finally found her counterpart, here, grinning like a madman next to his best friend, all the way back in the 1940s. 
Your parents knew simply because of things you would say, offhandedly, without even realizing it. 
Your interest in WWII caught their attention, but it surprisingly didn’t last long -- only from about the time that you turned thirteen to a few months before your fourteenth birthday. You would’ve found Bucky a lot sooner had your interest in the war itself lasted much longer, but it didn’t. You wonder now if you subconsciously knew it was Bucky, but steered yourself away from it in an attempt to save yourself the heartache at such a young age. 
Your taste in music has been the constant that they didn’t quite understand at first. You listen to modern tunes, sure, but you’re a sucker for the music of the 40s. Even clothes. You sometimes found yourself leaning toward the styles of the 40s in subtle ways, not realizing it. 
The true confirmation of their suspicions came, though, when your mom said she heard you say Bucky’s name. The first time was on a road trip. You had fallen asleep in the car. You were sixteen at the time. You were dreaming and you have no recollection of ever saying his name. You weren’t even aware that you said his name while you were dreaming until she confessed that day.
You haven’t told anyone about it. Your best friend doesn’t even know. She still believes you got too excited about seeing Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, that’s all. She doesn’t know the real reason, the real aching pain that you feel every day. 
The only thing that eases the ache is this. Hogging this exhibit. Watching the footage over and over again. Watching Bucky’s smile and being unable to hold back your own, despite your tears.
You know the staff must think you’re delusional. Somehow you haven’t cared enough to entertain the thought. But you have seen the security guard give you strange looks when you walk in almost every other day.
It used to not be this bad. You came every day for a few weeks, but then you were able to calm down to once a week, sometimes twice a month, if you were too busy with school to think about Bucky much.
But lately, something has changed. You don’t know what it is. You still feel the emptiness, but something is different. It’s...troubled. That’s all your mind can come up with.
It makes no sense, though. How can Bucky be troubled? He’s dead. You believe in ghosts and all -- you’ve never been given a reason not to -- but you’ve heard more stories than you can count from people whose soulmate has died. They all say the same thing. They felt it when it happened. Because it was like a switch was flipped. They were feeling everything one moment, and the next, it was all gone. Empty.
Empty. How you’ve felt since the day you were born. You’ve been to therapists and they all told you the same thing. It’s just your thinking. Change your thinking processes. You’ve never slipped or spiraled far enough for it to be classified as a depressive disorder or anything else, just...empty.
When you found out about having a soulmate, and even more so when you found out it was Bucky, you still felt empty, but not as much. It was like everything suddenly made perfect sense. The emptiness had a purpose, a reason for existing.
When you see him smile, everything makes perfect sense. You feel like you have a reason to exist.
“Excuse me, miss?”
You slowly drag your eyes away from Bucky, preparing yourself to deal with a disgruntled museum-goer or staff member complaining about how long you’ve been standing here. But that’s not who you see.
He’s wearing a hat, but the resemblance is unmistakable.
Quickly, you glance at the video before looking back to the person beside you. That’s him. Steve Rogers.
“Hi,” you say hesitantly, quietly. He’s obviously hiding, which he is right to do. If anyone got wind of Steve Rogers walking around here, there would be mass chaos.
“Hey,” he replies just as quiet. “Um...Wanna get a coffee?”
You have no idea why he’s asking, but you nod anyway. Who would say no to coffee with Captain America?
Outside the Smithsonian and down the block, you bring Steve to your favorite spot to get coffee. Your best friend turned you onto it when you first got here for college, and you’ve gone here weekly ever since.
After grabbing your coffees, you pick a table far enough away from everyone else on the patio to talk without anyone listening in.
“So, uh…” Steve exhales, shifting in his seat. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” you shrug, holding onto your cup with both hands. “Why did you ask me to get coffee?”
“You looked familiar,” Steve says, slowly. “What’s your full name, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Y/N L/N. Why?”
“Y/N…” Steve mutters under his breath, a crooked smile crossing his face. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
“Huh?”
“Bucky used to talk to me about you,” Steve continues, and you swear your heart stops. “He had me draw pictures of you. He couldn’t draw for crap, but he kept describing you to me from his dreams. I’ve drawn so many I’d recognize your face anywhere.”
“He dreamt about me?” You whisper. “Really?”
“All the time,” Steve nods, smiling sadly. “So you’re his soulmate?”
“I guess,” you say. “My mom says I used to say his name in my sleep all the time. I dreamt of his face, too, but I never knew it was him. Until my friend took me to the exhibit a few months ago.” You pause. “It sounds stupid. But seeing him there makes me feel...better.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve says suddenly. “It can’t be easy being born in a completely different generation.”
You smile softly. “Thank you. I’m sorry, too. I can’t imagine how hard it is to still be here after all this time. And without your best friend, too.”
“Yeah, it hasn’t been easy,” Steve admits. “But thanks. I appreciate it.”
“If it’s not too much to ask,” you begin, pausing to think about if you’re going to regret this. “Would you tell me about him? Just anything. It doesn’t have to be anything profound, just...anything you want to talk about. But if it’s too hard, don’t worry about it.” You wave your hands in front of your face, already preparing yourself for Steve to politely turn you down.
But he doesn’t.
“Bucky, he…” Steve pauses, shaking his head. “He was a lot wealthier than me back in the 40s. I had no business acting the way I did, picking fights with people three times my size, but I still did it. And Bucky was always there to pick me up off the ground and give me a ride back home.”
“Yeah?” You chuckle. “You used to be super skinny, right?”
“I was really sick, actually. Bucky had every reason to treat me like anyone else, but he never did. We grew up together -- though I used to joke that he grew up. I stayed the same size. But he never made fun of me for it.”
You can’t help but grin. “That video in the museum -- his smile. I see it in my dreams all the time.”
“Yeah, yeah that was Bucky’s signature grin. He could give any woman that smile and they were his.”
“I can see why,” you admit quietly, averting your eyes when Steve raises his eyebrows. You change subjects, not wanting to talk about how attractive you find Steve’s dead best friend -- despite him being your soulmate. “What was his favorite thing to eat for breakfast?”
Steve takes the bait, and for the next four hours, the two of you sit on the patio, talking about Bucky Barnes. 
His favorite color? Your eyes. Which you think is a little ridiculous, but Steve swears it’s the truth.
His favorite thing to do? Go dancing. Hands down.
His favorite thing to talk about? You. Again, you give Steve a stern look, and again, he swears it’s true. But when he wasn’t talking about you, Steve says Bucky talked a lot about the future. He was an optimist. Steve has no idea how, but Bucky always saw the brightest side.
Bucky was kind. Kinder than a lot of men his age, at the time. He had that blinding smile and instead of hiding it and going for the mysterious, brooding attitude, he chose to smile as much as he could, to anyone who looked like they needed it.
Realizing that the sun is beginning to go down, Steve decides to get you home.
“It’s alright, I can walk,” you tell him, feeling high on everything Bucky. “It’s just up here. I go to college here.”
“At least let me walk you to the campus,” Steve offers.
You raise an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“Bucky would kill me if I let his girl walk home alone. Especially when it’s getting dark.”
“Fine,” you cave. Hearing Steve refer to you as “Bucky’s girl” sends chills down your spine -- the good kind of chills. The kind that makes you wish it was the 1940s. The kind that makes you wish Bucky was here, holding your hand, walking you home.
Once you reach campus (you decide to let Steve walk you all the way to your dorm building), you ask Steve the question you’ve been wondering about ever since you first saw Bucky in the museum.
“Hey Steve?”
Hands stuffed in his pockets, Steve turns his head toward you. “Yeah?”
“If this was the 40s...do you-- Do you think I’m the kind of girl Bucky would want?”
Steve’s steps falter. You slow your pace to match his until you’re both stopped, looking at one another.
“What is it?” You ask.
“Yes,” Steve says simply. “Yeah. I do. I know for a fact he would’ve torn down every building until he found you. Because he tried.”
Your breath hitches. Deep down, you had convinced yourself that you weren’t the kind of girl Bucky would want. Not that it’s your fault because you were born this side of the millennium. But to hear Steve tell you otherwise makes you freeze.
“What?”
“Bucky didn’t have me sketch you because he wanted me to practice my drawing. He did it because he wanted to see a picture of you. Something he could keep in his wallet and look at every night. He was a ladies man, yeah, but every single one...he wanted them to be you. But they never were.” Steve shakes his head. “It really tore him up, that he never found you. He still held out hope, though. Until the very last second.”
Tears have sprung to your eyes before you even realize it. 
“Before he fell, he--” Steve pauses. “He told me to promise that I’d find you. I guess I kept my promise after all.”
He looks up to see the tears in your eyes, streaming down your cheeks. Without a single word, Steve pulls you into his chest, and without hesitation, you let yourself cry.
He’s not Bucky. And you’ll never find your Bucky, but he’s close enough. Steve promised Bucky that he’d find you, and he kept that promise. Now he’s going to do everything in his power to keep you safe.
Because he knows for a fact Bucky would’ve wanted that, too.
420 notes · View notes
beewolfwrites · 3 years
Text
And When I am Formulated, Sprawling on a Pin - Chapter Eight: Mad to Live, Mad to Talk
The eighth instalment of my Chishiya x OC/reader fic - you can find it here on AO3 too. 
Thank you to the people who always leave likes and comments, seeing/reading them honestly makes my day :) xx
As for what I mentioned in my last update, I’ll add the references as a chapter at the end of the fic (because some of them will give away spoilers!)
Speaking of spoilers, you guys probably connected some dots (a la hoodie)
Sorry, I'll stop talking - enjoy!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The drawl of his voice stretched like a lifeline, pulling me back to myself. Back to the bar.
Chishiya was slouched against the counter, idly watching the scene before him. His eyes dropped to the gun, before rising to meet mine. There was nothing in them, not amusement, not even cruelty. Nothing. They were emptier and darker than they’d ever been. And yet at that moment, I had never been more overjoyed to see him.
‘You should probably put that thing away,’ he said. ‘Hatter won’t be too happy if you start messing with her. He’s got high expectations of her.’
The man pushed the gun further into my skin, sending bursts of anxiety through me. I didn’t want him to pull the trigger accidentally. If he shot me in the stomach, it’d be a slow, painful death.
‘You know Chishiya, I’m pretty sick of you interfering all the time. You should stay out of militant business.’
Chishiya eyed the man with disinterest. ‘Militant business. It’s fascinating what you guys do. You take out the trash and dish out the sentence, but you never check the evidence.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ the man snarled. ‘Just shut up and stay out of this.’
‘What I’m saying is that you never bother checking to see if the ‘traitors’ are actually traitors. It’s surprisingly easy to slip a few cards into someone else’s room.’
The tension peaked, and I winced as the fingers around my wrist tightened painfully. Then just as quickly, he released me. He hissed a spew of threats in Chishiya’s face, then stormed off. I hadn’t understood a word, but either way, Chishiya was completely unbothered.
Now that we were alone, he barely even spared me a glance. I half-wondered why he was here. He wouldn’t have come to the bar just to help me. But I also couldn’t picture him as a drunk. As if to answer all the questions floating around in my head, Chishiya signalled to the bartender and said two words.
‘お水をください’ Water, please.
Knowing him, he’d say that alcohol clouds your mind and dulls your rational thinking skills. The bartender set the glass on the counter, but Chishiya didn’t walk away, but sipped his water.
‘Thanks,’ I muttered, although helping me was likely never on his agenda. ‘I’m guessing stuff like that’s pretty common around here.’
‘Well, there are only three rules,’ he said. With one side glance, he zeroed in on the hoodie Kuina had given me. ‘Right now, you’re not allowed to go roaming the city alone because you’re still new, and that makes you a liability. But the next time you’re in a game, you’ll be paired with one of the executives, or someone else with a high rank. If you ask, they’ll go with you to find new clothes.’
I didn’t know how he knew the hoodie wasn’t mine. But I had given up trying to figure out how Chishiya’s mind works.
Before I could ask, he spoke, catching me off guard once again. ‘Come on, Kuina’s waiting for us.’
----------------------------------------------------
That night, I had found out that Kuina and Chishiya were actually friends. Sort of. It was hard to tell. They hung around together and joked like friends, but instinctively I could tell that Kuina didn’t completely trust him. The days passed quickly, and despite the obvious tension between the militants and the other executives, I found myself actually enjoying it. It was hard not to, with hot water and all.
I spent my days pestering Chishiya to teach me Japanese properly (which he never did). And Kuina and I would chat about the real world. She told me about her mother’s sickness, and how she was desperate to get back to the old world so she could look after her properly. But when she asked about my own life, I filtered a lot of things out. I explained how I was visiting Japan with my brother, and how I had been trying to learn Japanese on and off for a few years just so that I could visit. But when it came to my personal life, I just couldn’t bring myself to talk about it.
‘話せば長くなる,’ I told her. It’s a long story.
The days seemed to dry up under the heat of the sun, and sure enough, my visa was due to expire.
Sitting cross-legged on my bed under the late afternoon rays, I couldn’t help but feel apprehensive after my last game… my first Hearts game… meeting Niragi and Aguni… the laser tag guns… the ball pit… the teenage girl. It had all collected into one big mass, and my throat tightened at the thought of the blood, the darkness.
No, I tried to tell myself. It’s different now. We’ll be put into teams, and I won’t be alone. We’ll clear the games together.
With slightly more resolve than before, I climbed off the bed and quietly left my room, only my stomach dropped when I saw the nasty surprise waiting for me on the other side of the door.
Niragi was leaning against the opposite wall, and the moment I exited, he shot me a grin. I had no idea what he was doing there, probably militant business, so I nodded at him in acknowledgement, then headed down the hall. I knew something was seriously wrong when I heard his footsteps stalking behind me.
‘Niragi,’ I greeted him.
‘Shorty,’ he replied, now walking beside me. ‘You really shouldn’t ignore people, you know. It’s rude as fuck.’
What does he want with me of all people?
‘私を待っているとは知らなかった,’ I told him honestly. I didn’t know you were waiting for me.
‘Ch, as if. I waited there for half an hour. Where the hell are you off to anyway?’
I held out my bandaged arm. ‘これがまだ痛い。だから医療室ではアンに会う.’ This still hurts, so I’m meeting An in the medical room.
Overall, it had healed pretty well. But after the laser tag game, and being kidnapped by militants, the wound had partially re-opened again.
‘I’ll go with you.’
Why??
My gut instinct was telling me to run away, far away.
We turned a corner, stopping in front of the elevators. When the doors pinged open, the group of girls inside immediately stopped talking once they laid eyes on us. They darted out of the elevator, leaving it empty for Niragi and I to enter. I tried not to feel nervous around him. If he wanted me dead, he’d have just shot me already, so it couldn’t be that.
‘どうして待っていた?’ I asked, slowly. How come you were waiting?
Asking Niragi questions felt like a life-or-death situation. Last time I was rude to him he kicked me in the spine. The man was like a loaded gun; he had to be handled with care.
However, he didn’t reply, and the lingered between us until the elevator stopped at the basement floor. We headed down a long, dark hallway, with exposed cables and pipes suspended from the ceiling. This was starting to feel like a really, really bad idea. Seeing the medical room door, I sped up instinctively, but Niragi’s hand grabbed my shoulder, pulling me back and yanking me around. The movement sent shooting pains down through my injured arm.
‘Chishiya,’ Niragi said, eyes glinting with malice. ‘You’ve become pretty chummy with him recently.’
Wait… what?
‘That’s not…’ I hated the way my voice stuttered. ‘そうじゃない.’ That’s not it….
He clearly wasn’t buying it. ‘Tell me what he’s up to. He’s an arrogant little shit and I know he’s up to something.’
Niragi’s grip was too tight, way too tight, and I could barely think straight through the pain. ‘違うよ,’ I insisted. You’re wrong.
‘Am I? I don’t think so, Shorty. You’d better tell me now before I put a bullet in you.’
I didn’t know whether I was scared or annoyed. My heart hammered in my chest, but I was getting pretty sick of his ridiculous questions. I tore away from his hold, inspecting the sleeve for any spots of blood that could’ve seeped through.
‘Stop doing that! クイナのパーカーを台無しにしたくない.’ I don’t want to ruin Kuina’s hoodie.
His brow furrowed a little at this, but I ignored it. Someone like him probably didn’t care about getting blood on his clothes.
I didn’t know how to say what I meant in Japanese, so all I could do was tell him in English. ‘You’re right about one thing. Chishiya’s awful. But you’re wrong about everything else. He can’t stand the sight of me, except when he’s watching me suffer. So even if he did have some kind of plan hatched up, he wouldn’t bother telling me.’
Niragi pulled away and stood up fully. Despite his visible irritation, he was listening all the same.
Perhaps he knows a little bit of the language?
‘And even then,’ I continued, ‘if he was planning something, why would he bother? You know as well as anyone he’s just in this for his own survival and being here at the Beach is his best shot. It wouldn’t make sense.’
A dangerous look worked its way onto his features. I thought right then and there that he’d attack me, kick me with his boot like he’d done before. But he did the exact opposite. With one hand, he twirled his fingers in a strand of my hair, before softly tucking it behind my ear.
I held my breath as he leaned in. ‘Everything you just said,’ he whispered, ‘is complete bullshit.’
Then pulling away quicker than I could flinch, he readjusted his rifle on his shoulder and took off back down the hall. Then he suddenly stopped, as if remembering something, and looked at me over his shoulder.
‘That hoodie you’re wearing… it’s Chishiya’s.’
-------------------------------------------------------
I must’ve looked like I’d seen a ghost, because when I finally entered the medical room, An immediately asked me if I was feeling ill. I tried telling her that I was perfectly fine, but she insisted on taking a bunch of tests to make sure I wasn’t going into septic shock. I couldn’t tell her that it was closer to actual shock.
Even when I finally left the medical room, I still couldn’t shake it off. Except now, the surprise had worn away, leaving sheer humiliation in its place.
Did Kuina steal it from his room?  
When he met me at the bar, he must’ve seen it and wondered where I’d gotten it from. And when he had mentioned asking one of the executives to go shopping with me… he had probably assumed I’d been in his room and taken it.
Oh god…
I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. I wanted to scream and tell him I’m sorry. I wanted to rip the hoodie off and push it as far away from me as I could. But I couldn’t. I still didn’t feel comfortable being so exposed.
‘It’s fine,’ I tried to convince myself, ‘everything’s fine.’ I got into the elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor.
My visa’s due to expire tonight, so I can get a new one for myself. I’ll just explain everything to him. It’s almost game time anyway, so he might be in the lobby.
As the elevator doors opened, I wiped any tears away with my hands, careful not to dirty the sleeves, and headed to the lobby. It was packed with Beach residents, either wishing their friends luck or preparing for the games ahead. I found the little table at the front and took the slip of paper with my name on it.
Group Two.
Then I stepped back, leaning against the wall as my eyes searched the crowds. Sure enough, I spotted a white hood, the thin tendrils of grey-blond hair visible beneath. I waited until he took his slip of paper before I stepped forward.
But there was no need. His eyes locked onto mine from across the room, as if he had clocked onto my presence immediately without showing it. He trudged through the masses, coming to a stop in front of me. I couldn’t help but rub my arms nervously.
‘I’m sorry,’ I blurted out, ‘Kuina gave me this hoodie, and I assumed it was hers and that she was letting me use it. But I just found out from Niragi that it’s actually yours. I didn’t steal it or anything, and I’ve definitely never been in your room. I’m so sorry, I had no idea.’
Chishiya didn’t seem surprised at all, or if he was, he was an expert at hiding it. ‘I know,’ he said, at last. ‘You couldn’t have known where my room was anyway.’
Thinking about it, he had a point. When I started wearing this, I hadn’t even left my own room, so I couldn’t have been in Chishiya’s.
‘I guess you’re right.’
I felt his warmth against my side as he leaned on the wall next to be me. ‘But what I told you at the bar that night still stands,’ he said. ‘Tonight, you’ll get the chance to go looking for any clothes or personal items you want.’
‘Once I get some of my own clothes, I’ll wash this and give it back to you, I promise’ I told him. ‘I just need to find out who the executive in my group is.’
‘It’s me.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because the executives create the groups,’ he said. ‘And I happen to be supervising you. Normally, when a new member arrives, we do an aptitude test. We observe them in a game to test their abilities, but I’ve already vouched for your abilities, and there were only two executives with an expiring visa.’
‘That’s….’ I trailed off, then something clicked. ‘Wait, who was the other executive?’
Ignoring my question, he went on. ‘Since I’ve already seen your abilities, your only test will be to survive. If you can do that, I’ll go with you to get whatever supplies you need.’
I tried to keep the smile from my face, but I couldn’t hold it back. ‘Sounds like a deal.’
‘Time for the games!’ a voice called out, excitedly, and the whole room erupted into cheers. The masses of Beach members piled through the doors, trying to find their assigned cars and groups.
At the same time, I hadn’t moved at all. I couldn’t keep my eyes from Chishiya’s. He was looking back into mine with that same calculating emptiness. I could see the cogs turning, but I didn’t know what they were turning for.
Then as quickly as it happened, the moment was gone as he left, disappearing into the crowd.
70 notes · View notes
kingreywrites · 3 years
Text
So Pardon The Dust
Fandom: Tangled
Word Count: 2493
Summary: When they arrive in the Dark Kingdom, the king has been dead for years.
Note: this is bittersweet, but the idea couldn’t leave me alone, and i had to write it out! so yeah, edmund’s death is heavily talked about, be careful if that’s not your thing! I just love Destinies Collide, and love what-ifs, so this story was born from there asghdh
Read on ao3
When they arrive in the Dark Kingdom, the king has been dead for years. 
They don't know that. What they do know is that once their travel in a shaky gondola over an immense rift ends, everything seems too easy. The kingdom is dark, cold, smells of dust and rust permeating the air, and it makes it hard to imagine that anyone has ever lived in such a place. But Rapunzel's hair pushes her forward, and they don't spend any more time thinking about it. 
They enter the equally dark and cold castle, searching for the moonstone. 
Desperate for a flicker of warmth, Lance lights a fire in a lifeless living room with no windows. Eugene's gaze is drawn to a painting, throning above the fireplace and depicting a man and a woman he presumes to be the king and queen. 
He cannot explain the deep uneasiness he feels at the sight, or even why he can hardly tear his eyes away from the picture. His heart is racing, and he explains it by blaming it on his concern for Rapunzel. 
The queen's smile remains etched in his mind as he moves forward. 
The king has been dead for years. They don't know it, but Eugene finds a room filled with overhanging statues and, sitting in front of a gigantic door, is a tiny skeleton covered in too big clothes and dust. A dark crown still hangs grotesquely on its head, but the first thing Eugene sees is the purple gem necklace between the fingers of its single hand. The same as the queen's in the painting. 
Eugene has a bitter taste in his mouth. Rapunzel holds his hand, also upset, and he remembers that they are here for her, and for her destiny. He holds her fingers tighter between his, and they move toward the door. 
The ghosts are… certainly a surprise.
Death is not something new to Eugene, yet he can't help but feel nauseous when the king's ghost appears so close to his own skeleton, eyes full of a melancholy and anger that only he understands.
He doesn't seem to be capable of speech. He just groans and attacks, mindlessly guarding the stone that cost him his life. When Adira arrives to help them, she calls him Edmund, a soft grief in her voice, and Eugene keeps the name in a corner of his head. Edmund. Not a ghost, not a skeleton, but Edmund, who protected his kingdom until he died trapped within it.
Finally, Eugene is the one who destroys his statue. He cuts off its head, and tries to forget how a few seconds before, it was his own that could have been lost, if the king's axe had not struck beside it. Luck saved his life this time.
Adira asks Rapunzel to enter the moonstone chamber by herself. She says that it's her destiny, and hers alone. Eugene wants to protest, worry burning in his heart, but he doesn't even have the time - Rapunzel looks at Cassandra, and announces that the three of them will go inside. He should be relieved, but he can't help but take another look at the king's- Edmund's body. Many people have died for this stone, and the more time passes, the more terrified he is of what awaits them on the other side. He knows death, more than any other member of this group probably; he's been around it personally. He promised himself when he came back to life, that he would never let Rapunzel die the way he did, slowly and violently, when she has so much to live for.
He doesn't know where this promise will lead him. 
When they arrive in the Dark Kingdom, the king is dead. They enter easily, and though the ghosts of past rulers stand in their way, the path to the moonstone is far from the most difficult adventure he has ever experienced. Eugene is worried, of course he is - he's afraid of the conclusion of their journey, afraid of what he cannot predict. Rapunzel tells him she loves him, and he almost wants to throw up, because they're in the middle of a kingdom murdered by that exact stone Rapunzel intends to grab. I love you too, he thinks, but can't manage to say, because the words sound like a goodbye, and he's not ready for that. He'd die one thousand times for her, if she asked him to. He'd die for her against her will too, if necessary, but he knows he can't get in the way today. As desperate as he is to protect her, he knows how much she values being able to draw her own path.
He wants to grab the moonstone first because he loves her, and because he loves her, he stays back.
That's not the case for everyone. He notices too late Cass running for it, and Demanitus' warning echoes once again in his ears, mocking now that the only thing he can do is try to pull Rapunzel to safety as the world explodes in colours. The king is dead, and their friendship with Cassandra is too, the shadow of Gothel haunting Rapunzel once again despite how much she deserves to be free from it. Cassandra flees, Eugene hurts his arm when she pushes him away, and Rapunzel runs after her, desperate to salvage what can be.
It doesn't amount to much, in the end.
Things settle down, as much as they can while Rapunzel still sits listlessly near the broken bridge Cassandra left behind, and Eugene goes in the castle again, in search of bandages this time. His left arm hurts.
He doesn't expect to find Adira, standing silently in front of... Edmund. Her back is rigid, her mouth in a straight line, but when he calls her name, he sees a foreign melancholy in her eyes. He doesn't know her that well, but there's a lot Eugene can understand from looking into somebody's eyes.
Adira sighs, shoulders lowering, and he's sure she hears his unsaid question. "I shouldn't be surprised," she says, but it's clear that in a way, she is. "I… knew, that King Edmund was not well, when we left. I often considered that he might very well be…" she trails off, her eyes falling on his body again.
"It's different to be sure," Eugene responds softly, his voice loud in the silence of this immense room. Watching them - Adira, and this skeleton, barely hanging together enough to recognise a human shape - it was difficult to conceive that once upon a time, they had stood here together, alive and happy, perhaps. He can't imagine what it feels like to see an old friend this way, with no warning. "Adira…"
"It's okay, Fishskin," she smiles, and in her voice, he could hear the echoes of all the time Rapunzel told him she was fine, because she didn't know how to act when she was not.
He barely knows Adira. Both because he didn't ask, and because she didn't want him, or anyone, to know her. But he can guess easily that her life had never been one of peace, not even before leaving the Dark Kingdom, and losing contact with the other members of the Brotherhood. He doesn't think she's unhappy, per se, but he- he knows, they all know, especially now after everything that happened, that anger and fear and grief are not emotions that should be let to fester until they explode. Maybe it's his worry for Rapunzel speaking; maybe he's confusing everything, and Adira is simply dealing with the situation the way she wants to, but before he can think better of it, Eugene takes a step forward, and asks her if she wants to bury the king's body.
"To- To give him a better resting place," he explains awkwardly, her eyes piercing right through him. He's ready to say sorry and hope she doesn't kill him for overstepping her boundaries, but, to his surprise, she softens, a genuine if sad smile on her lips.
"Actually Fishskin, that's… a great idea."
And so they do it. Adira finds a bear hood that the King used to wear - Dabney, she says reverently - and they place his bones in it, carefully moving everything in tandem. They don't really talk while doing it. There's not much to be said. Eugene thinks of this king, who was so desperate to save his kingdom that he doomed it, and he thinks about death, too. About how lonely it is.
Adira leads them down a few corridors, and they emerge in a small, grey looking garden. They walk until they find an unmarked tombstone.
"The queen," Adira announces shortly, and Eugene wonders if she helped bury her too.
It's not the first time Eugene digs a grave for someone. He remembers starkly getting out of the tower with Rapunzel, both of them entirely different people than who they were before, and finding a cloak and ashes at the bottom of it. He remembers how quietly distraught Rapunzel had been, and how he had proposed to bury what was left of Gothel.
Shaking his head, he tries to think about something else, but it's hard given the situation. His arm aches at each of his movements. Surprisingly, Adira breaks the silence, and that's enough to distract him.
"I often disagreed with King Edmund," she says, without looking at him. "He was a good king, but his duty to the moonstone blinded him to the bigger picture, and I was afraid that it would lead him, and us, to lose everything. I was right, as I often am," she chuckles, but there's no mirth behind it. Simply grief. Something that can't be quite put into words.
"How did he lose his arm?" Eugene asks, voice low as they finally lower the bones into the ground. His eyes catch the sight of the necklace falling aside, and when they're done, he picks it up, thumb running over the smooth surface of the gem.
"The queen died," Adira whispers. She's looking at the necklace too, when he raises his head. "Edmund's grief led him to act on the anger he had been repressing for too long, but the moonstone was much more powerful than he imagined. Its retaliation costs him everything he held dear."
Gently, Adira takes the necklace from him, and Eugene can't explain the impulse that makes him want to hold onto it for a little while longer.
He's sentimental, he reasons. There's something deeply touching about this man dying while looking at the last thing connecting him to his late wife. These are good explanations, but neither of them addresses the unease and bitterness rising in Eugene's throat. He doesn't understand it himself.
Adira looks at the necklace for a long time, emotions he can't name in her expression. Memories she will not share make her frown, and Eugene feels more and more like he doesn't belong in this moment.
"Should we… bury that with him?" he asks awkwardly. Adira bites her lips, and finally shakes her head.
"This necklace was special for the queen. I know she intended to pass it down to her children."
A terrible voice in Eugene's mind reminds him that it's too late - they both died, and that necklace, that tradition, died with them too. He's hit by the tragedy of it all again, relentlessly reminded that the king passed away long before anyone could try to save him. And they would have, Rapunzel would have convinced him to let her through, she would have given him faith, Eugene is sure of that. He thinks that's why he's angry, too. The king has been dead for years, maybe, alone and desperate until his very last moments. And Eugene, Eugene wishes to go back in time, and give him another chance, get him the help he needed before it was too late.
He has never been good at accepting unhappy endings.
"When… When King Edmund banished us from the Dark Kingdom," Adira continues, "he also made another sacrifice. He sent his son away, when he was barely a baby, to be raised far from the moonstone and its dangers."
Son. A baby, sole survivor of the royal family, who probably doesn't know he is. A baby, who isn't one anymore now, but who is probably alive, and the thought is enough for Eugene to feel something new - he'd call this hope, but he's not sure that it fits. Closure, perhaps.
"You want to give their son the necklace," he smiles shakily.
"That's what needs to be done," Adira agrees, before putting away the necklace in her pocket. The gem catches the moonlight one last time, shining brighter than before, and it's easier for Eugene to let go, this time. "However, I did not keep track of the prince. I don't know what became of him, after we left, but I will keep searching until I find him."
"Hey," Eugene grins, wanting to lighten the atmosphere a little, "you searched for the mystical and maybe non-existent sundrop, and you found it, so I'm sure a prince will be no trouble. And if you need anything, we'll be happy to help," he adds, more earnest this time.
There's a newfound warmth in her eyes, and she inclines her head, acknowledging his words. The situation feels easier, somewhat. They finish replacing the dirt on top of the king's body, and Adira places a little stone to mark the emplacement.
The king is dead, and Cassandra is gone, but Eugene wants to believe that they all can find their own healing in time.
One wrong move reawakens the pain in his arm, and Adira gauges him when he flinches. She tells him that if there are any medical supplies around there, they're probably in the King's personal quarters.
With her instructions, it's not too hard to find them. The bedroom he finds is enormous, which only heightens how empty and dark it feels. Blindly, Eugene makes his way to a window, and pushes the heavy curtains away, letting the moonlight flood the room, and reveal the ambient dust like as many little stars in the night sky.
One side of the bed is unmade. Next to the other, there is an empty crib.
His heart is racing, and he can't explain it. He turns to the bedside table, and does find what appear to be bandages, next to a pile of papers, so close to the bed that it is easy to guess that the king often looked at them. 
Eugene approaches. He tells himself, without much conviction, that he should not look. That even in death the king deserves to keep his privacy. Whatever these papers are, they must have meant a lot to him, keeping him company in his darkest hours, and Eugene doesn't belong in this story.
It only takes him a step, and a second, to recognize his old wanted posters.
50 notes · View notes