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httpswwwtbhkcom · 3 years

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I Finally Get to See You Again

[Oneshot/Imagine]

Pairing: Norman x Reader

[@httpswwwtbhkcom’s masterlist]

Summary: After Norman was shipped, you were devastated. You had grown a liking to the said boy. You and the others were having a hard time accepting Norman ‘died’. While in the naked eye, Isabella thought all of you weren’t planning to escape. The night before Ray’s shipment, half of your siblings escaped, leaving the younger ones with Isabella. It was difficult finding William Minerva and his shelter. Along the way of your journey, you found new friends that you could call family and the person you thought you lost.

Warning: Manga spoilers, some wrong grammars, some changes, mentions of death, Angst, happy ending,

Genre: Angst, Fluff, timeskip Norman, other timeskip characters, younger Norman and other characters,

Keys:

Y/n- your name,

A/n: If your asking, I’m still in hiatus. This had just popped into my mind when I was reading the manga.

This was longer than expected...

Reader: Neutral

Colored by: ???

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

You and Norman had a mutual liking to each other. It was obvious except for the both of you. The whole family kept teasing both of you when your both in your separate ways. You don’t have the smarts of the trio but your grades is as almost as high as them.

You always play with your siblings when your allowed to go outside. You were a great hider and seeker, your determination never goes unnoticed by the white haired boy.

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

After Conny left the house, she left her stuffed animal. You, Emma, and Norman decided that you three would give this to her before she left.

You three tried on finding Conny at the gates of the orphanage. You three first noticed a truck. Emma called for her, telling her that she had forgotten her Little bunny.

You were curious on what’s inside the truck which was covered with a curtain. Curious, you moved it and stumbled back in horror. Norman and Emma immediately rushed to you and also saw Conny with a flower sticking out her chest.

You were going to cry until you three had heard footsteps. In a flash, you three hid under the truck and decided to eavesdrop. You decided on trying to see who they are and what they look like. You almost screamed once more when you saw them. Luckily, Norman covered your mouth before you could scream.

You, Emma, and Norman escaped in time before you three got caught. Once you three were in a safe distance. You were on your knees and cried. Emma did the same and hugged you. Norman looked horrified and sad as well at the image of your dear sister now dead. Discovering her corpse is what leads to the three of you to discover the orphanage's true nature.

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

[Timeskip to Norman’s shipment]

You, Ray and Emma had tried to convince Norman to escape or at least to pretend he escaped. But he didn’t listen and accepted his fate. You and Emma were with the others while Ray was at the staircase. You tried to stop him from leaving but Norman only pushed you away and scolded you. It was noticeable that he was also hurt on leaving his family he had grown up with. It was more painful to him to leave his first crush, you were what made him determined on escaping Grace Field.

You sobbed as Norman cupped you cheeks, making you look at him. He kissed your forehead and told you it was going to be fine. The statement only made you cry more. “It’s time to go” Isabella told him, smiling. Norman nodded and gave her a small forced smile. He looked at you one more time before letting go. “Yeah.”. He stood up, leaving you alone crying.

You didn’t watch him leave, since it only pains you more.

After they have left, your siblings tried to comfort you. “Norman.... Norman..” You kept repeating his name. You were broken. You and Norman were so close, feeling someone close leave your life pains you.

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

A few days had passed you stopped playing with the other children. They told you that he will be fine and that he would give us letters and tell us about the outside world. But you knew the truth, their words won’t heal you as much as before, but their attempts made you slightly smile and nod. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

Isabella smiled as she looked you and Emma who was surrounded by other kids. She had thought she have finally stopped you all from escaping.

The thought of Ray’s shipment soon after Norman’s made you panic. Emma has been trying her best to escape for the family to escape with her. She wasn’t entirely hiding it to you. You didn’t know her plan, but you hoped that it works.

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

You and the others (Except for the younger siblings) were now running through the huge forest. Trying not to run into demons. “Luckily we have that guide with us. It’s such a huge help.” You muttered. Emma nodded, smiling. After being underground and leaving safely, you were relieved.

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

[Skipping to when they found the B06-32 Shelter made by William Minerva since I forgot what happened before that]

“We’re here! B06-32.” Emma exclaimed, looking at the information from the pen. “But there’s nothing here...” Someone murmured. “What can we do? This is really... B06-32.” Emma commented.

“What does it mean?” “There’s nothing here!” “No sigh of any kind... Nothing at all...” All the hope gathered from them disappeared. ‘As smart as William Minerva. He wouldn’t show the shelter from the naked eye.. So that means it’s probably hiding here somewhere..’ You thought. “So, can you see anyone in the area? Any humans?” Ray asked. “I think there’s no one...” Nat answered.

“So Minerva isn’t here after all?!” “But why?!” They cried. You tried to reassure them that it’s somewhere in B06-32 hiding somewhere. ‘We came all the way here... For nothing? What to do...’ The others who didn’t hear you wondered.

“LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIREEE!!!” The younger siblings exclaimed, making everyone flinch at the sudden loudness. “He said he would be here!!” “He told us to come visit!!” “AND WE CAME AAALL THE WAY!!” They shouted. You didn’t stop them, instead, waiting for them to tire out. Once they stopped, “Feel better now?” Ray asked, crossing his arms. “Yeah!” They exclaimed, panting.

“Then calm down and listen.” Ray said, gathering the attention of the others. “If Minerva is the one going back and forth between the worlds... Then he won’t always be on the demons’ side.” Ray added.

“And even if the demons usually avoid these deserted areas... Imagine if humans just stood around like sitting ducks, or if they left obvious signs... They wouldn’t last long, right?” You continued. Ray nodded at your explanation. “Emma, the pen.” Emma handed Ray the pen. “Yesterday, I found out about the next part. The contents of the pen go on after what we had seen.”

“And what did the next part show?” Gilda questioned. “Nothing at all.” Ray answered. “To be more precise, nothing I could see.” You sighed in relief at the second statement. You almost thought you and your family will be stuck here forever.

“What do you mean?” Emma asked. “I couldn’t access the rest of the data. I’m sure I put in the right answer, but even then... No matter how many times I tried, I could only see as far as Minerva’s message from before. Norman too, couldn’t access the data in that house. I think that’s because... The pen will only show the next part once you bring it to a certain location.”

“You mean...” “Exactly, here in B06-32.”

Once you all cracked the code. It showed a map. “It worked!!” The young ones exclaimed. “But... What’s this..?”

“It’s a map... There’s an underground entrance! As expected.” You answered. “It’s around that area! Go look for it!” When the map showed ‘Welcome’ and ‘Unlocked’, the ground began shaking. “Ray! Look! Something’s happening!” Emma exclaimed in panic and alarm. ‘Here it is...’ You murmured to yourself.

Ray opened the trapdoor revealing a ladder and the underground shelter.

“It was really here after all...” “He wasn’t lying!” They exclaimed, making you smile and giggle slightly. Once your feet was on the shelter floor, you walked with the others to see rooms with numbers. ‘102,103...’ You counted the numbers placed at the door.

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

Once you saw the man. You immediately thought ‘His... His manners are just terrible!!’ You grimaced completely shocked. You looked at your siblings to see the same expression you have.

“Are you Minerva?” Emma asked, in a serious tone. “Nope.” The man answered. “Too bad for you, kids. I’m not William Minerva.” He continued. “Then please call him. We came all the way here in order to meet Minerva.” Ray told him. “He ain’t here. What a shame, huh? No Minerva’s around here at all.”

‘What’s the meaning of this?’ You wondered, in a shocked face. ‘So Minerva was really a dirty liar...!?’ “Calm down.” Ray reassured. “Clearly you know of Minerva, too. We need more information. Where is he right now?” Ray asked sternly. “No idea, Man!”

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” Ray interrogated. “Who am I?! I’m your senior.” He showed a pen same as the one Emma, you, Norman and Ray found. “It’s the same pen...” Alicia muttered. “Senior?”

“Yup. Well, not from Grace Field, at any rate.” He showed his mark which was on his abdomen. “I come from a plantation called Glory Bell. I escaped it 13 years ago... With my colleagues. And thanks to this pen.”

“Same as us...” “He’s like us...” They muttered in relief, and shock. “That’s right. I’m just the same as you. Ended up here while searching for Minerva.” ‘Human beings like us... Living outside the walls!!’ You wondered. “How-ever...” The word made your smile you had falter. “When I finally reached the place for real, Minerva wasn’t around. I waited for him a hella long time, ended up living here, and no trace of the man. No way around it, Man’s a dirty liar.”

“Though, I gotta say I’m grateful for this shelter, y’know?” He added. “Everything’s provided for. Hurrah for my man Minerva!!”

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

Here you are now, standing beside Gilda. Seeing that Emma had a gun pointed to her head made you heartbroken. ‘Will she die? Please no..’ You silently pleaded as tears threatened to fall. “Hand it over. Your pen, kids. Fork it already. I’ll be keeping it so that y’all with never step in here again. I don’t wanna anyone weighing me down. Sorry, but you guys will have to leave.”

“Well then, gimme your pen and get the hell away from my face. Otherwise, every single one of you is gonna die right here and now.”

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

[Timeskip to when B06-32 was exploded and Andrew pointed the gun to Alicia]

“IDIOTS! DAMN IDIOTS! I’M THE ONE WHO IS ALIVE! HEAVEN IS ON MY SIDE! AHAHHAHAHAAHAHA!” Andrew laughed maniacally. Emma shot his joints. Andrew ran to Dominic and shouted “I’LL TRAMPLE HIM TO DEATH

DIEEEE!!! YOU PIGS! YOU ARE BEINGS MEANT TO BE EATEN!” His loud tone in his voice attracted a stray demon. The demon opened it’s mouth and began eating Andrew. Andrew shouted in pain. You were scared but you exclaimed. “Now’s our chance, Run!!!” You shouted, running to the opposite direction of where the demon is and back to the previous place all of you were in.

“No way... Even Yuugo and Lucas...” “They’re dead...?”

“It was an honorable end for them... Protecting all of us until their last breath...” Oliver mourned. The others did as well. “Uuu...” You looked at Gillian, who was in the verge of crying. “UWAHHHHH!!!!” She broke down. The others looked at her, who was also in the verge of crying. Soon after, everyone broke down.

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

Ray shot an owl. “This is it.” Ray said, showing the owl. “This is... An owl?” Nigel was confused. You looked closely and said “No, look closely. That’s a camera.” You pointed to the owl’s eyes. The others gasped. “How do that guy know where this place was? How were they able to weave their way through the blind spots of the cameras at the shelter? This would be the answer to those.” Ray explained.

“This thing pointed out the position of our cameras and informed them of where the place we escaped to was at?” Pepe asked. “Most likely. I should have noticed this quicker. When I think about it, this thing had been getting closer and closer and following us...!” Ray cursed to himself for his mistake. “This place is no good either. We need to leave it behind immediately.” He added.

“Oliver.” Emma called. “Yeah.” Oliver nodded. He showed the note to the others. “Everyone.” He called out. “Lucas received one last phone call.” Relief washed over everyone. “Mister Minerva could still be alive...?”

“No, we can’t know that for sure.” “It could also be conceivably be one of the ‘supporters’ that are still living...” “An ally...!”

“It hurts...! I’m so frustrated...! Do we really not have a life where we can just rest once...!”

“No, we don’t. So in order to get back, that’s why we’re fighting. Before these two months are over, we’ll definitely change the world.” Emma reassured. “We can do it. We will do it!! For Yuugo and Lucas!” She exclaimed. “So to that end, we should go! As long as there’s hope, we can make it anywhere and everywhere. Let’s go with everybody! To the place that’s calling out to us!”

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

??? POV: (If you have read the manga chapter, you would know who it is. If not, I feel sorry lol.... Sorry)

“That broadcast. I hope it reached the shelter.” He said. “Yes, it had to have.” A figure told him.

“Let’s get started, James.”

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

Your POV:

“7-3-5. 9-4-1. 10-10-7. 13-11-2. 21-8-4. 150-6-3.” “These numbers...” “It’s the same as before.” “Correct! It’s the code based on Minerva’s fantasy book.”

“Page 7, 3rd line, 5th word... ‘Go’. Page 9, 4th line, 1st word. ‘To’.” Emma murmured, concentrated on the code. “Oh yeah, I remember it now! We did that when we first found the shelter!!” The kid exclaimed.

“Now we put all the words together, and...” “What’s a Jaw of the Lion?” “How do you ‘Go’ there?” “Ah! I saw that on the maps, back in the shelter! When we were looking for the temple and the golden waters!”

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

You were surprised and happy when you saw the younger ones’ abilities for over the years. You were always with Emma and Ray that you can’t always be with them.

“We can handle this trip, no problem! We all learned from Yuugo and Lucas!!”

“Everyone, Stay here! We’ll be back!” You shouted when you heard a noise from a demon nearby. “Y/n! Now!!” Ray commanded. “Roger!”

‘This feeling... It’s demons. There are demons around.’ You murmured when you ran with Ray and Emma. When the three of you were finally in the source, you looked in surprise as you saw 2 people. ‘Huh?! People?!?!’.

‘Who are they? Why are they here?’ You overthought, you were interrupted by Emma. “We need to save them!” She shouted. You took your arrow and began aiming for the demon’s eye. Once the demons’ were dead, Ray threatened “Don’t move.” While aiming at the guy. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” Ray interrogated.

Unexpectedly, one boy turned around and went to his knees and bowing his head low on the ground. “THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!” He shouted. You looked at him shocked. “I WAS SO SCARED-!! I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO BE DEAD BY NOW, I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO BE EATEN~!! THE GUNS THAT WE HAD BROUGHT WITH US, AND EVEN THE CLOTHES THAT WE HAD ON US WERE EATEN!!” He explained in a loud voice. “REALLY, THANK YOU. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!” He clinged to your arms (Since you were the closest) and thanked you. “OI, YOU IDIOT, GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF THEM!! TO DO SUCH A THING TO THE PEOPLE WHO SAVED OUR LIVES!!” The other shouted. Then something struck them.

You looked at them sheepishly, curious. “HUMANS!?” They backed away in shock. “THAT’S WAY TOO LATE! AFTER SUCH A LONG TIME?!” Ray and Don had both the same expressions. You giggled. “WE’RE SO SORRY! WE’VE BEEN RUDE TO YOU AGAIN!” Two of them apologized once more. “Ayy...! You’re voices are too loud!” “The enemy will notice us.” Both Don and Ray scolded. “So, Who are you? What are you doing here?” Emma asked.

“Right. My name is Jin. And this is Hayato.” Jin pointed to Hayato who has a bandana. “I can’t tell you all the details, but... We are working under a certain person to achieve a goal... And because of that...” While Jin was explaning, Hayato noticed the mark on your neck. “AAAAHHHHHHH!!!” Hayato shouted. “We told you that you need to stay quiet!!!” Don whisper-shouted. “Jin!! There people. NO WAY! They’re the Grace Field escapees!!”

“We’ve been searching for all of you. Under William Minervas’ orders!!!” They explaned. “Mister Minerva?!” You looked at them in disbelief.

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

Earlier, Hayato and Jin (Mostly Hayato) have been talking about William Minerva (Aka their boss). Everyone was shocked and impressed at William Minerva’s doings of saving many children.

“Your Boss, Minerva told you to search for us?”

“Yes! Did you receive the broadcast? After that, knowing that the shelter was going to be attacked, the boss sent us to scout for you... The boss was heart broken. He conveyed to me that he want to help you out and needs your power as well.” Jin answered. “Mister Minerva...” They murmured happily. “We heard the broadcast, and right now we’re headed to that place he told us about.” Oliver commented.

“Then all is well! By all means, let us guide you there. To our hideaway!! Our base has food, as well as places where you can rest. And that’s not all. We also have medicine and treatment facilities. It’s ideal for treating anybody that’s injured. Let us take you as soon as possible.”

“That hideout.” Hayato and Jin looked at you confused. “It hasn’t been found out by other demons or the Ratri clan, Has it? Even though you’ve destroyed several farms already...”

“Up until this point, we haven’t been attacked by the enemy.”

“Hey Jin, About how far from here is your hideaway?” Ray questioned.

“Uhhm, and what about the ‘Neck of the Giraffe’? Is it near there?”

“You mean ‘the lion’s jaw’?”

“No. That rock is just the halfway point. From there, the hideaway is about a 2 day walk. The exact location is unknown to all but a select few within our group.”

“Sorry for doubting you. I’d like to ask you for some information.” Ray said.

“But is it okay? Taking outsiders like us directly to your hideout.” Anna asked. “Of course! It’s what the boss wanted us to do. And because you are all our saviors!”

“Thank you.” Emma and Hayato shooked hands. “I look forward to working with you.”

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

Emma, Anna, Ray and Hayato went to one of the enemy’s base since Cristy’s condition is unexpectedly changing.

Once they went back, you noticed that there was another person with them. You smiled as Cristy’s medicine was working.

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

Two days later...

You looked at the trees in surprise. “I can’t believe these trees!” ‘It’s a forest!” “But way bigger than all the others we’ve seen!”

“Is the hideout in there?” Oliver asked. Jin nodded. “Yes! We’ve almost arrived.” You were excited and nervous to finally find their boss and other children like you. “I’ll go ahead first to tell the boss about you folks! Jin, Zazie, show the way to our friends and keep ‘em safe!” Hayato said before he ran faster than a normal human speed. Everyone except for the said two was surprised at Hayato’s incredible speed.

“Here it is. This is our hideout.”

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

Jin showed all of you the places and you looked at all of them in awe. ‘They all have smiles on their faces.’ You thought, smiling yourself.

“Welcome!” “Whoa! The fugitives are here, Dude!” “Nice to meet you!” “Welcome!” The kids greeted. ‘This is the paradise that Minerva built...’.

The other kids gave all of you sweets, which you thanked for. Hayato came back and said “The boss wants to meet the leader!” Oliver nodded to Emma and she nodded back. “I’ll be back soon!” Emma waved. You all waved back and talked to the other kids.

You are lying if your not curious what Minerva looks like.

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

Emma showed ‘William Minerva’ the family. “This is our family now!” She happily exclaimed. “It’s gotten quite large. What a great family!” You know that voice...

“Hu.. Huh?! What do you mean?” “Wait what?? Minerva was...” “You’re alive!? The real thing?!” Everyone started to tear up. You weren’t looking for a short while, interested in the books. Once you heard them talking, you looked at them confused. “That kid is from Emma’s pictures..” “Eh?... But that kid was.” “22194, 22194.” Adam repeated. Of course! You remember that number!.

“NORMAN!!!” The kids shouted. “I’m so happy. You’re alive!! You’re alive!!!”

You looked at the trio happily hugging each other. It made your heart melt. “Where’s Y/n..?” He asked, hoping to see you in the big crowd of his family. The others who were blocking your figure moved for him to see you. You looked at him with tears in your eyes. “I missed you Norman!!” You broke down and tackled him.

Tears also started to fall in his eyes. He hugged you tightly and both of you were in the position for a few seconds. People looked at both of you knowingly that you both deeply care for each other. “I’m so glad you’re alive..!”

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

Norman gave all of you of where your home is. And the four of you played chess and many more. You rested your head on Norman’s shoulder, Emma was beside you resting her head on your shoulder, Ray rested his head on the bed and Norman’s other shoulder,and Norman was resting his head on your head, holding your hand.

Norman hoped he could confess to you one day. And he knows he will. He just hopes it will be sooner than later.

☽✧ ✦ ✧☾

E/n: I kinda got lazy with this. So please bear with me.

#norman #norman x reader #norman x y/n #norman imagine #norman oneshot #yakusoku no neverland #yakusoku no neverland x reader #yakusoku no neverland x y/n #yakusoku no neverland imagine #yakusoku no neverland oneshot #the promised neverland #the promised neverland x reader #the promised neverland x y/n #the promised neverland oneshot #the promised neverland imagine #x reader

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aomineavenue · 4 years

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Homesick (Miya Atsumu x f!Reader) | 006. dinner disaster

Summary: Six years ago, L/N Y/N wouldn’t exactly say that she loves her life. It had always been problematic but her best friend, Miya Atsumu, since she was eight when she moved to Hyōgo, has always been there for her, and she wouldn’t change it for the world. However, things would always fall apart for her ever since, so she should have expected of such. Running away from her problems seemed like the easiest route to take at the time, so what happens when the past comes barging back into her life demanding answers? Will she be able to confront her demons?

Pairings: Miya Atsumu x f!Reader

Updates: irregular.

Genre: Angst, ANGST I LOVE ANGST, a lil bit of fluff here and there.

Warnings: Language, etc. (Will be mentioned once posted because I don’t want spoilers huehue)

Disclaimer: I do not own any characters except for the reader and my ideas. I do not claim any images used for content in this fic, everything goes out to their respective creators unless it is mentioned that it is mine.

Status: ongoing. | series masterlist

↩ confessions | dinner disaster | realizations ↪

mia’s note(s):

can you find the easter eggs in here?

i am sorry, i am not very fond of this chapter lmao i told you guys im bad at writing that isn’t angst man

i hope you guys enjoy anyway, lemme know what you guys think!! and tell me if you find the easter eggs mwa mwa

You nod eagerly as you shut the menu in your grip, completely ignoring Reiji’s protests from beside you as the rest of the individuals seated around the table either watch in amusement or curiosity. “I believe there is always a three special course meal that changes every day according to the chef, we’d absolutely love that.”

At the sight of Reiji’s features scrunched up in horror, you inwardly squealed in victory.

Years have flown by, you’re both practically strangers at this point. Yes, strangers. Just two strangers who know every shameful secret, every hidden freckle, and even every fatal flaw in each other. Who were you kidding anyway? Six years have gone by just like that, but you knew it yourself, deep down that you still strongly cared for the man that now stood before you, his eyes the only thing you could focus on, not even the soft chatter of the other guests or the soft instrumental melody produced by the restaurant’s speakers could capture your attention and disrupt your thoughts. Mesmerized, that is what you are. What even.

It has been six years and to this day, he still completely steals your breath away.

Not that it should surprise you or anything. Despite everything, how he had hurt you back when you were both 17 and in your second year in senior high school back in 2013, or the hurtful words that spilled from his mouth from the running emotions that day back at the sports complex when the truth revealed itself, you couldn’t bring yourself to hate him or even be angry. You’ve thought of this a billion times since you left Hyōgo. You have imagined a billion scenarios, trying your best to prepare yourself because you knew. You knew that it was inevitable to stay hidden, to keep your secret hidden. A part of you always knew you were going to meet him again. Not that your reunion was delightful or anything. It was nowhere near such. No matter how many scenarios you created in your head, it had not been enough for you to prepare for any form of response.

You hadn’t realized it at first when you had met him on that day because of the emotions running high through your veins, but now, standing in front of him, your eyes drank him up completely. Of course, you notice the differences from six years ago. It wasn’t as if he was going to stay how he had been back then, nor was it difficult to notice the changes from the boy you used to adore. Looking at him now, it was clear as day that he had grown up from the charming boy next door to a breathtaking man that you can’t seem to tear your gaze away.

As your name rolls off of his tongue, you snap out of your trance, blinking a couple of times. Thankfully, you suppressed your emotions quick enough from allowing the warmth that wanted to creep across your cheeks. God, how embarrassing. Did he notice you were practically devouring him with your eyes? Hopefully not.

However, despite his handsome features, you are suddenly reminded of the last conversation that the two of you shared and it was enough for you to push your mushy thoughts to the very back of your head. Ah, right. You remembered now, before being distracted by Atsumu’s ridiculously handsome face, you were going to give Asuma and Reiji a good smack. If only you had known of this setup, you would have never agreed. Jumping back to reality, you were about to take a step back, wanting to leave the premises, only to be held back by Reiji, gripping onto your arm to stop you.

You were cut off from your protests, Reiji moving closer to whisper in your ear with the all too familiar tone he uses on you during arguments. Before he could even finish his sentence, you already knew that the excuses you have in mind were no use. There was no room for negotiations. “Stop being stubborn and sit down. Do this for your kids. It’s not like it’s a date or anything.”

Grumbling underneath your breath at how much of an ass he was, he only replies with a chuckle as he releases his grip on your arm, neither of you realizing the green-eyed monster’s gaze that followed the whole interaction. The two of your friends took their seats, greeting the rest of the party, while you’re left standing there before Atsumu. As you stood there face to face, you didn’t realize the two occupants around the table sharing hushed whispers amongst each other, berating each other for bringing other people along. Meeting his gaze once more, you give him a small nod, “Atsumu. Shall we then?”

He nods, his voice cracking slightly because of his nerves, “Yeah.”

However, as you turn to greet the rest of the party, you feel your shoulders grow tense at the realization of what your two friends did once again. They had occupied seats around the table, leaving the only available seats next to each other for you and Atsumu. If it’s one thing you hated, it was when your friends become the meddling monkeys that they are.

Not wanting to cause a scene, you inwardly groan and occupy the seat next to Reiji, leaving the seat next to you for Atsumu. In spite of your irritation, you find yourself flashing a half-hearted smile at the three across from you.

“Hi!” the one in the middle greets you happily with an enormous smile plastered across his face, “I’m Hinata, it’s nice to meet you.” He extends his arm across the table, holding out his hand for you to shake, which you gladly take.

“Nice to meet you too,” you respond with a nod of your head as you release your grip from his hand, just in time to retrieve the menu that the waiter had passed throughout the group. Flipping it open, you avoid the glances from Bokuto and Osamu, who looked as if they were itching an interaction from you, but because of your irritation, you definitely didn’t want to talk to them just yet, they probably had helped your friends in setting this up. “So Hinata-san, I’m assuming you're Bokuto’s teammate?” you ask before tearing your gaze away from his to examine the menu in your hands. You don’t notice the frown that briefly appeared on Atsumu’s lips.

“Oh, Hinata’s just fine!” he waves his hand with a laugh, “Yes, I’m Bokuto and Atsumu’s teammate. We actually wanted to bring our friend Sakusa here too, but he said he has an emergency at some hospital.”

"Hmm…" you hum, letting your eyes scan the menu, thinking you might as well enjoy the food, "Oh, I hope everything is okay with your friend Sakusa and it’s nothing too serious, but now that we're here, might as well enjoy and run Rei's wallet dry. Right, Rei?"

You tilt your head a bit, glancing over at Reiji from the corner of your eye with a sly smirk forming on your lips. Ah, the man could only let out a nervous chuckle, knowing full well what you were planning as he recalls a similar scenario a few months back in the very same restaurant that put a dent to his savings because of the ridiculous price of the meals you had ordered that night. Not tearing your gaze away from your best friend, you call for the waiter's attention, who quickly responds by walking over and pulling out his tiny notepad to jot down your table's order.

"Hello, I'm Daiki and I'll be your waiter for the night." He greets with a friendly smile, not realizing the awkward atmosphere among the group, "What will we be having?"

Clicking your tongue against the roof of your mouth, you give Reiji an innocent grin before turning your gaze over to the waiter to return his smile with your own, "Hello, Daiki. You see, my friends here aren't really sure what to order, but I told them not to worry since I've been here so many times, so I'll be ordering for everyone!"

"Excellent, ma'am!" He nods his head, matching your enthusiasm.

At the sight of Reiji’s features scrunched up in horror, you inwardly squealed in victory.

It was going to be a long night.

Mayuzumi Asuma and Suwa Reiji were now considered dead.

To you, at least. And somehow, you knew that, despite them avoiding meeting your gaze alongside with the other three across from you who freely interacted with each other, they themselves knew what they were getting themselves into. They were digging their graves for this stunt they have pulled.

You’d got to give Reiji credit, though. Despite pushing his buttons by ordering everyone the high priced three course meal, he wasn’t his usually squirmy and irritating self. You had at least expected sharing a heated argument with him after such a display, but instead of giving in, he continued to pursue his plan with the others.

Oh, they think they were so slick, as if you hadn’t caught on with their little plan. Not a date, they say. It might as well be one, since they’re bluntly ignoring your attempts to converse with them. All was missing was some privacy. At first you hadn’t thought about it when you had tried to share a conversation with Hinata, it was only right for you to get to know someone; you were just being nice. However, before Hinata could respond to your question, Bokuto had dragged him into a conversation about volleyball. You brushed it aside, not thinking anything rude of it, as you knew Bokuto would often speak with anyone out of the blue. It was just how he is.

You hadn’t even thought about it the second time around when this time; you tried conversing with Osamu, wanting to know about how his business is going so far. Except, the conversation between you and Osamu never happened due to the fact that Asuma had cut you off mid-sentence, engaging the man in a ridiculous conversation about healthy diets. Like, what the heck was that all about? Asuma and healthy diets just don’t sit well with you. Nevertheless, you brushed it aside, shifting your attention to the first course meal of the night that had been placed before you.

They think they were so smart, trying to pull it off. Ah, but no. You had caught on with their little plan the third time around when you tried to join in Bokuto and Hinata’s conversation. You were instantly shot down by Reiji, shifting the conversation to another topic that only they could understand.

They were dead men. All of them.

Placing your chopsticks down, you turn your head towards Reiji’s direction with a false innocent smile curling upon your lips. “Reiji, dear.”

Ah there it was, catching the nervous bob of his Adam’s apple in this throat with your gaze. "Yeah?"

"I hope you know—”

Hinata cuts you off by standing up abruptly from his seat, waving frantically towards someone’s direction, “Ushijima-san!”

You blink before turning your head to look at whoever Hinata was waving to, catching a glimpse of a tall, muscular man nodding towards Hinata’s direction in greeting, a woman trailing close behind him. Not wanting to be rude, you return to your previous position to face Hinata that was seated across from you, “Was that the Ushijima Wakatoshi?”

Hinata nods as he sits back down, a huge smile on his face. “Yeah, I’m sure you know about him.”

“I suppose,” you lift your shoulders up in a shrug as you pick up your chopsticks once more, completely forgetting to reprimand Reiji’s actions much to his relief, “I was volleyball manager back then in high school, so I would know a few things, including some players.”

“Where did you go to school?” Hinata asks, tilting his head a bit as he looks at you curiously. You wonder, briefly, had Atsumu not mentioned you at all since the incident at the sports complex? Weird.

As you were about to reply, the man seated on your left answers for you. “She went to the same school as me, Shouyou-kun. She was our manager.”

Hinata stares at you for a second, blinking a couple of times before realization hits him, his eyes widening, “I remember you now! You were that pretty manager!”

The men around the table chokes and sputters their food, causing you to scrunch up your nose in disgust. Atsumu is first to respond after clearing his throat, “What? I mean, yeah. She was our pretty manager.”

“I remember her because it was the first time I saw Tsukishima look stupid over a girl,” Hinata chuckles, shaking his head. “But, how come I only saw you once? Were you a third year at the time?”

Suddenly, the tension was back in the air. You catch from the corner of your eye, Atsumu growing tense from Hinata’s question, and you had to fight the urge to show your own emotions. Everyone else was silent, probably waiting for you or Atsumu to answer. “Ah, I left high school towards the end of our second year, and moved to Kanagawa. I had my hands full at the time, so I didn’t return to high school.”

“But wh—” Hinata gets cut off by his own yelp, making you raise a brow in confusion. He turns his head towards Osamu’s direction, wincing slightly, “Osamu-san!”

Osamu lets out a laugh, not looking anywhere near apologetic. “Ah, sorry buddy. I was reaching over Bokuto but you were in the way.”

An awkward atmosphere engulfs around the table once more. This dinner was certainly not going according to Osamu and Reiji’s plan. Opting to avoid the awkward glances from the other individuals, you turn your attention over to focus on your food while Osamu and Reiji were sending glares towards each other once they realized your attention elsewhere. The two had talked with Atsumu earlier, devising a plan for the two of you to talk things through. Originally, Osamu suggested that the dinner should be just you and Atsumu, but Reiji declined such an idea because of two reasons. First, you would completely decline yourself to go to a dinner and leave Atsuhiro in the hospital despite your mother being present, Reiji knew you too well that the idea of dinner at a fancy restaurant without your sons was a big no. That is, unless a friend of yours were to force you by dragging you to the restaurant. And second, if you were to be left with Atsumu alone, Reiji fears that you would leave almost immediately.

And he was right for both. If he hadn’t dragged you here himself, you wouldn’t have bothered to go. And if he hadn’t stopped you earlier, you would have ran out the moment you saw Atsumu. However, they hadn’t expected this. Reiji hadn’t expected Osamu to bring two other people, while Osamu hadn’t expected that Reiji was going to bring someone else along. Yes, it was a disaster.

Reiji had opted to bring Asuma along, because he knew you were going to be suspicious if it were just the two of you going for dinner. You would have accused him of coddling you like a child, it was something he would do now and then when he wanted you to release all the emotions you had kept bottled up. It’s not that you didn’t appreciate him for it, he just knows that if he did such a thing during such an emotional time, you would push him away when Reiji wanted to speed things along. As much as Reiji disliked the father of his favorite twins, he wasn’t going to deprive the little boys any longer of the chance of finally getting to know their father. If he was going to force everything on you, he would do it. He, too, has grown tired of your decisions of run away.

Osamu on the other hand, only decided to accompany his brother himself but as he and his brother were leaving the apartment, the other two barged out of Bokuto’s room claiming to be starving from the lack of food the past couple of hours because of some intense gaming session on the PlayStation 4 that Bokuto brought along with. Not being quick on their feet, the twins had blurted out they were going out to eat. They unfortunately could not decline the two balls of sunshine.

Clearing his throat, hoping to shift the tension in the air. “Anyway,” Osamu starts before tearing his glaring gaze away from Reiji over to where Ushijima was seated across the room, “Who is that girl Ushijima is with?”

“She kinda looks familiar,” Bokuto hums, placing his chopsticks down after finishing his first course meal, shifting his gaze over to Ushijima’s table.

“That’s the heiress of the Akita Empire,” Asuma answers, “Pretty woman, she is. I didn’t know she was dating anyone.”

Hinata lets out a gasp of excitement, his eyes going wide. “I wonder if Ushijima-san is really dating her!”

“Maybe you can ask him at the party…” Bokuto suggests while the rest of his words are drowned out by you, growing bored with the night as you wonder when you can possibly leave.

Despite drowning out the conversation around the table and focusing on the food, Atsumu pulls you in with his voice from the side, “Hey, I’m sorry about this. I told Osamu and Reiji it was a bad idea from the start.”

Ah, so it was those two who had planned the whole thing out. You let out a sigh, turning your head to face him to answer, your voice low to keep the others out of the conversation, “There’s nothing that we can do now.”

“Would you have preferred that it was just the two of us?” he asks, hope laced in his voice.

Lightly nibbling on your bottom lip, you tear your gaze away from him. Did you? You actually wanted to talk to Atsumu after having the talk with your sons. You were going to express your disappointment towards Reiji and his plan full of flaws. Had they planned this for the two of you to talk? If so, this was stupid to begin with. Something so serious between the two of you and Atsumu should be discussed within private walls, and this was nowhere near private. So maybe, yes. Perhaps, if the two were you alone, then it would have been better. “I guess,” you finally admit, “Maybe the two of us can talk things through properly when this is over. I think it’s time. For now, I hope you can accept my apologies.”

“And I hope you accept m—”

Hinata’s loud voice booms excitedly, “Oh remember that party!”

The two of you snap your attention over to Hinata, the disappointment clear in your features for the disruption. What were they talking about? However, curiosity gets the best of you and you entertain him anyway. “What party?”

“The Christmas party last year!” Hinata announces with a chuckle, “At first, I was thinking why Reiji-san and Asuma-san here look so familiar then I remember I attended the party with Bo-kun and the others!” As if on cue, the moment those words left Hinata’s mouth, Atsumu and Bokuto visually stiffened, causing you to grow more curious.

“Ah, that party.” you let out a laugh, nudging Reiji with your elbow, “He’s talking about your all-time favorite party.”

A scowl makes its way to Reiji’s features, “Please, do not remind me of that horrendous party. I had to move rooms just because of that, and I replaced the mattress too.”

“You’re so dramatic,” you drawled, laughing along with Asuma as you remember Reiji going crazy the next day after the party. “Just because your guests did the dirty on your bed—” Reiji cuts you off by pinching your side, which causes you to let out a yelp in both pain and surprise.

Osamu interjects with a grin, “Actually, I have a feeling that Sakusa would have died hearing such information. But I would be pissed off too, Reiji. That’s nasty. I would have moved out the whole place entirely.”

“Right?” Reiji exclaims by throwing his hands in the air, “I couldn’t step inside the room without wanting to poke my eyes out.”

“That’s why we no longer let Atsumu drink too much because he’ll probably do that again,” Hinata adds, laughing along.

Once again, silence.

“Wait, what?” Reiji asks, the first to break the silence. “That was you?”

Bokuto smacks Hinata’s head before looking away awkwardly. Hinata, on the other hand, takes a minute to realize his mistake before flickering his gaze back and forth from Atsumu over to you, waiting for his mistake to backfire in his face. The rest of the individuals around the table turn their attention over to Atsumu, waiting for his response.

You were the first to defend him, letting out a laugh. “Okay, enough of this. Let’s leave the past in the past. Let’s not make things awkward, it’s not like Atsumu and I are dating or anything,”

“Tsumtsum!” a squeal echoes throughout the restaurant and all you could think now was “What now?”

#atsumu x reader #atsumu miya x reader #atsumu imagine #atsumu imagines #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x you #haikyuu imagine #haikyuu imagines #hq #hq x reader #hq imagine #hq imagines #homesick

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seancekitsch · 4 years

Text

Barefoot

warnings: angst, communication issues, talking about relapsing, addiction, drugs and alc, not overtly mentioned but like these characters are like this bc of trauma and repression, spoilers for the movie the graduate which i severely misunderstood as a kid, dirty fuckin smut

When you wake up, Klaus isn’t there. Just like yesterday. Just like the day before yesterday. Or the day before that. The bed is cold even with you in the sheets. Light streams into the window but it does nothing to help. The studio is drafty and it will only get colder in the winter months, and those socks are already coming in handy. Rent is due soon and while you’d be surprised if Klaus left you alone with the lease, you’d couldn’t be sure. People had left you before, but Klaus is the one you wouldn't know how to cope without. His tea from four days ago is still sitting on the bistro table, cold and settling, surely disgusting but you’re afraid that if you touch it, if you clean it up, well then. Klaus wouldn’t return. Klaus would be gone from this apartment . Vanishing himself from this studio and this life like one of his ghosts. The tea would evaporate eventually or grow mold but it was all you had to hold onto for him to come back. Maybe it all wasn’t real. Maybe it was a trick of your imagination. Maybe you’re the ghost. Maybe you’re just a trick of his imagination that he got tired of playing with and-

Fuck. That’s when you realize you’re in a bad way.

What do normal people do when they feel things getting bad again? Do other people feel the backslide and just somersault into it by refusing to clean or get out of bed? By dealing with the pitiful look from their boss by buying absinthe on the way home from work? God, the look Margie gave you. It killed you. By convincing themselves that all of this good they just had was just a Belle Reve and you were Blanche about to be taken right back to the clinic? You actively gag as you sip from the bottle starting around noon, the sweetness at first being a fun distraction, now actively grossing you out as you continued to drain it. Absinthe wasn't actually the plan, it was just there, it was just strong. Now you regret it and wish you got something you even liked. At least this is the worst of it, though. Before you would have fully slid back into your old ways and not thought twice.

You wonder if there was something about your role in what transpired, if there was something you could have done or not done to change the outcome. Could you have kissed him and shut him up so he never would have said ‘I love you’? Could you have done something other than shake your head ‘no’ out of panic and start to cry? Could you have just said it fucking back because you mean it too? Could you have not continued to panic and said something along the lines of “I’m not a replacement for Dave” when Klaus tried to say it again? Could you have said or done anything just to stop him from hastily dressing himself and leaving in the middle of the night, leaving you there silently crying on the bed? If he were anyone else, you would have said it back immediately, because if it were anyone but him, words would be something you just threw around aimlessly. They're just words. You'd said it a million times to your ex-fiance. If this were anyone else, you would have said it back immediately, and probably relapsed the next morning in panic. But it isn't anyone else. Its Klaus fucking Hargreeves. It's the guy from across the hall at the clinic. It's the guy who helped you steal socks, then a table to eat dinner at. It's the guy you literally have traveled across time and space for. And you did love him. It wasn't just a phrase. You knew that for a while now, but part of you would have liked to keep it hidden forever. Because once you say it, the bubble bursts. It's out there and you can't take it back. It's real and tangible and it's not the fantasy of Klaus, it's Klaus himself. In order to say it you'd have to kill the fantasy Klaus. You’d have to murder him and all of the mythology around him and live in the real world with him, which might have even been stranger than any fantasy you could come up with. He deserved better than this. He deserves more than me, you think, than someone who would hurt him to protect herself. Selfish bitch. Gotta do better. By the time you finish half the bottle, eat your cold lo mein take out from two days ago, and decide to take a nap, you've made a decision. If you ever see Klaus Hargreeves again (which is doubtful because you don't plan on leaving this bed unless it's for work and even that feels like not a good enough reason) you'll kill the fantasy Klaus and commit to loving the real Klaus.

But sleep doesn't come. The cold leftovers sit like a rock in your stomach, not at all mixing well with the green liquorice liquor you've downed, so you lay there eyes-closed begging for the pain to subside. It's a familiar feeling, much like the week and a half in the bed before Klaus inserted himself into your life. The ache and the want for more than you have but the inability to give it to yourself. So you lay there. You just lay there, for hours. Thank god Margie gave you a few days off. You lose all track of time just laying there, actively trying not to think, trying to ignore how you feel both physically and mentally, curling into the sheets until you can feel yourself melt into them.

It’s dark when you hear the keys rattle in the lock, and then the door opens. You keep your eyes shut, because if you do you can pretend it’s an intruder, coming to rob you of your mismatched dishes and beat up old record player before killing you. Which is a reasonable and comforting fantasy that you rather hide in than face Klaus. Klaus was real and Klaus loved you and Klaus got in your head. The intruder is a fantasy and the intruder is horror and the intruder might not even let you beg for your life. You can gladly imagine the intruder using keys that maybe he stole off of Klaus to come in here and steal all of your monetarily worthless shit and then just stab you or something anticlimactic. You know exactly what you want to say to Klaus and how to say it but you don’t know if it’ll come out of your mouth when the time comes, so you cling to this stupid horrible thought to take your mind off of the sound of footsteps entering the apartment. So you keep your eyes shut when you hear the sound of boots being taken off, when you hear the deflating sigh, the pattering around the room slowly before you hear the sounds of ruffling, probably his coat being taken off. You keep your eyes shut as there's a distinct silence in the room besides your best fake-asleep deep breathing. Like he's holding his breath and waiting for something.

You lay still, keeping up the fake sleeping, as the mattress creaks and dips next to you and Klaus sighs again. He emanates the warmth that had all but been stoked from the apartment and left you shivering. You can feel yourself pulling towards him, wanting to wrap your arms around him and hold him and never let go again, but you don't. There's always the off chance this is just a very strong hallucination brought on by the bottle of green fairy on the floor next to the bed. But fuck, if you dont wanna just pull him close.

“I know you're awake,” he says lowly, so close to you. His face is centimeters from yours, if you had to guess, nose just almost touching your own.

“You know, I used to watch you sleep all the time. You- you do this… this cute twitchy thing when you're out cold,” he continues. He sighs, realizing you're either much more stubborn than he thought or much more avoidant of anything vulnerable than he is. It took him a day of sitting on Diego’s floor while being lectured for his drinking habits for him to realize that he couldn't give up with you. He made peace with the fact that he couldn't save Dave. He couldn't change history, but he could change the future he could have with you if only he didn't let this go. But it was his conversation with your boss that had him worried. It wasn't like you not to show up for work, even if things were tough.

“You know you’re actually terrible at faking it, right?” he asks, for clarification. You want to open your eyes, to laugh, but you keep them shut and a tear escapes down your cheek.

“Can you— can you just look at me? Please?”

It hurts, it fucking hurts but you shake your head no.

“Oh don’t do that shit again. C’mon, doc, look at me!”

You can’t.

“Your tea went cold. I-I’m sorry,” is barely a whisper. But you say it. And he hears it.

“Hey! Hey hey hey, don’t worry about that. Don’t worry.”

He chooses his next words very carefully. If you were to open your eyes, you’d see him yearning to touch you, a worried and pained expression all over his handsome features. You’d see his hair just as unkempt as yours and the tee shirt he’s wearing is also obviously yours. You’d see those beautiful green eyes doing their best impression of bambi right after the hunting scene.

“What have you... what’s been going on? You haven’t been by the shop.”

“You went there?” you whisper again. Still kind of afraid this all isn’t real. You know it is because you feel his breath fanning out against your face and you feel the bed becoming the warm welcoming thing it once was.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did. Margie said you weren’t coming in for a week.”

“She spoke to you?” you wince. Knowing that was probably highly unpleasant for the both of them. Half the time when he showed up at the end of your shift she made him wait outside of the shop and refused to look at him.

“Yeah Margie, christ that woman loves you.”

Your eyes shoot open, startling him a little, but he relaxes by the time your eyes adjust to the dark. You see him and only him. Everything is Klaus.

“Listen, I-“ You start a little too loudly, scaring yourself.

“No, no. Don’t say something you don’t mean. Don’t say it back because I said it.”

Fuck. Fuck is he even going to believe it when I say it? If not what’s the fucking point? You feel more tears pricking at your eyes and you crumble a little. The burst of confidence is gone as you curl farther in on yourself, feeling your legs brush his as you let out just the tiniest choked sob. He’s frozen, and your hand is searching, blindly grabbing against the sheet until it comes in contact with his. Hurriedly, as if he would sift through your fingers like sand, you entangle your fingers with his and squeeze as hard as you can. Like if you let go he goes too. You can’t lose him again but it sounds like a break up. It sounds like what you remember a break up sounding like.

“Please,” fuck you sound pathetic.

“It’s okay. I’ll be fine. It’s okay if you don’t love me back. I can go stay at Diego’s or Vanya’s or something and we can figure out how to get out of the lease early. Anything you want. I just wanted to let you know I meant what I said. You’re not a replacement for anyone. You’re who I want. But you don’t have to want me back. I’ll... live.” he finishes flatly, devoid.

Your heart is officially breaking. Into a million tiny fucking pieces. A memory comes to the forefront of your mind in that moment. The first time you choked him. The way he looked up at you. The way you realized at that second just how many people probably took advantage of him in the past. The way he probably thinks you’ve done to him now too.

“No, Klaus please listen to me,” your voice doesn’t sound like your own, doesn’t feel like your own. You feel far away from him even though his hand is clasped in your own. You feel like that scene in the graduate where Dustin Hoffman is interrupting Elaine Robinson’s wedding. Screaming and slamming fists against the glass trying to change your fate. Trying to get him to see.

“I was scared. Fuckin terrified. I- I- I- I’ve never said those words and meant it before,” you gasp between sobs now much more eager to spill out of your mouth, “It wasn’t you, I got in my own head about it. I got surprised. I love you, Klaus. I love you so fucking much I didn’t touch a fucking thing in this apartment because I was afraid somehow that meant you wouldn’t come back. I know I’m not replacing Dave. I know. I don’t know why I said that. I've wanted to take it back since the second I said it. I've hurt so many people and I hurt the one person I didn’t wanna hurt. I never wanna hurt you again. I love you. fuck. I don’t want to stop saying that. I love you.”

Klaus... is surprisingly quiet through your little speech. Maybe it’s because you can’t control what your voice is doing, and you’re crying. He’s staring at you so hard it feels as if he's trying to look through you, see the transparencies, see the truth in what you're saying. You want to shrink under his gaze, knowing he's trying to sus out if you mean it, feeling vulnerable each passing ticking second.

But then his hand squeezes yours back just as hard. If he squeezed hard enough he could easily crush a few of your bones, and you'd let him if it meant he understood.

“You do,” more a confirmation than a question.

“I do.”

“Say it.”

“I love you.”

“Say it again.”

“I love you,” with more force, more conviction.

“Once more, with feeling!” a smile is beginning to grace his lips.

“I fucking love you, Klaus!” you shout pretty much directly into his face. He doesn't mind a damn bit. He presses forward eagerly; releasing your hand only to roughly cup the back of your neck, fingers digging into your skin. It hurts, but in the most satisfying way. Your hands reach and grip for his face, greedily moving your palms over his jawbone as you lock him into place. Klaus is dizzying in his fervor, barely letting you keep up as his teeth clatter against yours, bite at your lips, his tongue darting between your tasting lips and tickling the roof of your mouth. there’s no letting up to the onslaught even as his hands travel, one hand trailing trimmed nails down your back, sure to leave a mark even with the barrier of your shirt, the other groping at your chest, seeking out a nipple to harshly pinch, making you squeak into his mouth in shock at his actions. As possessive and kinky as he could be at times, he has never been this rough with you. And you like it. He takes the time to bite down on your bottom lip, pull away, shake his head a little before mercifully releasing it and putting his forehead to yours.

“Oh you, you—“ he draws out, scoffs, “you wicked thing. You had me worried.”

“I’m sorry,” you gasp.

His grip on you softens, relaxes. His eyes shut just so, full of contentment. His nose nuzzles forward until you're cheek to cheek, and you can feel your cheek isn't the only one that's a little damp.

“Stop apologizing. I have you back now,” he whispers, sounding the most at peace you've ever heard him. He presses a kiss to the skin right at the place where your jawbone and ear meet, making you shiver at the sound of contact. He pulls you flush with his body, a tight hug, just holding you there before maneuvering your body so you were laying flat, your chest and shoulders pressed to the bed while he presses kisses to your face.

“Trust me,” he says, and you do. He lays himself back down, on top of you, and fuck, you love this. You love when he lays on you, when you feel his weight resting on you. Earlier today you thought you'd never feel this again, and the fact that thought was false has you grinning from ear to ear and reaching back to play with his curls as his arms find their way under you to hug you as you chant your love for him like a mantra. And then you feel it. Klaus is hard as a rock. Poor thing, it's been almost a week for him, when the two of you were so used to going at it basically anytime you had a spare half hour. Playfully, you grind back into him a little bit. Nothing that means business, but just a little brush of your ass against his cock to have him squirm a little. He reacts immediately with a growl and buries his face in the side of your neck to kiss and bite your neck and shoulder, while one hand removes itself from the hug to slide up your shirt again and blindly grope at your chest. Two can play at this game. You grind back again, a little harder, a little more deliberate in your movements this time. You're both chuckling as he starts to grind back, both feeling extremely free and confident in your control over each other's bodies. He knows he could have your sweatpants off and be inside you in under a minute, and you know you could easily have him blow his load in his pants if you keep it up teasing him like this. But how long can you really keep it up without wanting to give in to your own desires? You're painfully aware that it's been days you've had to survive without Klaus’ touch, too.

“You wanna end kiddie hour here?” he asks, and he couldn't have asked soon enough, because you're shimmying your sweatpants down with clumsy help from your hand that's somewhat trapped under him and laughing as he just as blunderingly removes his. Neither of you bother to fully remove them because the second his cock makes contact with your skin you're sighing and reminding him you love him. He lines himself up with you without using his hands like this is something he just instinctively knows how to do.

When he pushes into you, you whimper. Full on whimper like it's too much even though this is something you've done hundreds of times with him, but somehow it's new. Maybe making love isn't just a sentimental name for fucking. Maybe you're making love for the first time. Maybe now you know the difference. He brings the arm that was under your shirt back up and trails it down your arm until it gets to your hand, where he rubs his palm against your knuckles, almost inquisitively before tangling your fingers together and squeezing. Holding it in place. His other arm reaches just a little further, hugging you from behind and giving your waist a little squeeze as a ‘get ready’ signal. You tilt your ass back up at him a little as he pulls out, thrusts back in again. Only this time his thrust is punctuated with an “I love you”.

And so is the next one.

And the next one.

Until he works up a rhythm that leaves the both of you moaning and stuttering. You hike up one leg, changing the angle so slightly that his hips snap up into you in a way guaranteed to bruise. You’d happily have it hurt to sit for the next week if he kept fucking into you like he would break you. Klaus puts his full strength into fucking you, legs pinning you to the mattress as he uses the arm that’s holding your hand for extra leverage. Sweat dripping off of his chest as he kisses your back and moans and laughs into your skin. It’s times like this you remember your partner is fully trained in combat. For someone so lean, he’s strong, and he has strong control over the muscles in his body. It’s like a kind of clairvoyance he has to know exactly what parts of your body to touch, what to do to have you losing it around him all the time. Is Klaus Clairvoyant? You think as the angle of his thrusts changes ever so slightly, but still at that rough pace, now making your clit grind into the sheets beneath you making you scream out.

“That’s right, baby. You feel good?” he groans. Little shit.

“Yeah,” you whine, looking back to make eye contact.

“Who’s making you feel good?” Oh, he’s working for an ego stroke as well as a cock stroke. You’ll give it to him. Klaus deserves it.

“Oh, fuck— y-you, Klaus”

“And who do you love?”

“Fuck. You, Klaus! I love you so much,” words leak from your mouth like a sieve. “I love how- how you fuck me so good.”

“That’s right, and now I'm gonna make you come. Trust me.”

That's the second time tonight he’s asked you to trust him. You do, unwaveringly.He gives you no time to react before he speeds up his thrusts and the hand around your waist dips lower. He leans off of you a little, giving you a little more space, but plunges his hand between your legs. instead of stopping at your clit, he goes as far as to push a finger, his middle finger, up into you as well. And then the bastard curls his finger just slightly. The action has you turning into the pillow to scream. It's too much. It's too much. You've never been this full in your life and now it feels almost sinful how easily you are coming apart for him. You're shaking and with the added pressure of his finger you can feel just how hard your body is squeezing his cock. You can feel tears leaving your eyes for the second time tonight as you babble about how much you love him and your body jolts for his touch. He finishes too, inside you and happily pushed into the hilt. The whine that leaves your throat when he pulls out finally is unfair and needy. Already missing being so full of him. He rolls back over so that he's not on top of you, and pulls you in tight.

“I don't want to stop saying it,” he mutters into your hair, and you wait for him to continue patiently.

“I don't want to stop saying I love you.”

“Then don't.”

“I won't. But I will throw away this take out. This lo mein is old. It smells.”

You laugh loud and hearty, and he gets up from the bed, fully kicking his pants off as he does so, and there's no fear that he won't come back to bed with you this time.

#klaus hargreeves x reader #klaus hargreeves smut #klaus hargreeves imagine #klaus hargreeves fanfic #my work #prize buck series

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liukangmybeloved · 3 years

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everyone else is fighting for second {Mortal Kombat (2021)}

SPOILERS FOR MORTAL KOMBAT (2021)

Summary: Canon Divergent AU. Crack & Fluff. The team develops into something of a found family, which happens to include Cole's actual family. They take a day off from fighting to go to the fair, where the biggest question is 'who is Cole's daughter's favourite in the team?' Besides her dad, of course. Kano is very competitive about this question.

A/N: 1968 words. I will take a meat-tenderizer and FIX the canon and make it SOFT. i love cole young and mk 2021, if you don't like that, you've been warned. everybody lives/nobody dies AU & kano isn't a traitor. also imagine there's just like.... more time before the tournament. enough to become a found family. like i said, fluff & crack. warnings for swearing.

If Cole had it his way, Emily and Kano would have never met. He would be perfectly happy letting everyone else on the team meet her, but he's yet to hear a single sentence leave Kano's mouth that didn't include some colourful variation of 'fuck', 'shit', 'wanker', or 'cunt'. So unsurprisingly, he wasn't exactly eager to let his teenager daughter near the man who Sonya had literally called 'scum of the Earth', but alas.

"I'll be on my best behaviour, pinky-swear!" Kano's grin was all teeth as he'd held his pinky finger up to Cole's glowering face, wiggling it a little when Cole made no move to finish the pinky-swear.

"If you say - cunt -" and the word sounds so uncomfortable coming from Cole, he damn well looks uncomfortable just saying it, "within a hundred feet of her, I'll get Kung Lao to cut you in half." And he gesutres over to where Kung Lao and the rest of their ragtag bunch of misfits; the man in question had forgone his usual weapon for a more modern, soft-brimmed sunhat, but his jaunty wave to Kano at the sound of his name still managed to be menacing. The Australian shuddered in horror at the mere thought; at least he took the threat seriously.

"You don't have to be jealous, man," the threat seemed to only have dampened Kano's jovial attitude momentarily, as he's got a spring in his step as he follows Cole to the rest of the gathered champions, "Uncle Kano's gonna set a fuckin' - flippin' -" he corrects himself as Cole shoots him a warning look, "great example." Sonya barks a loud, derisive laugh as Cole sees fit to remind him that he's not Uncle Kano.

"Emily's a good kid," Liu Kang assures, kind and sincere.

"Yeah, she never even believes me when I tell her Kano's a dirty, little rat," Kung Lao smirks in the face of Kano's sudden outrage, and Cole is pretty sure that, despite it being Emily and Alison's idea, to give the team a day of levity and to bond, this might be the worst plan he's ever agreed to.

"This is a day of bonding, not of infighting," Raiden's voice joins them, followed by the God himself only moments later, which is enough to unite all the champions in confusion at his choice of wardrobe for the day. While still sporting a majority of his usual attire, somehow he'd managed to procure a t-shirt with a meme of all things on it, a personalised meme!

"I designed it myself, I think it turned out pretty okay; whaddya think?" Kano sounded far too proud of himself, looking at the cartoon drawing of what could only be Raiden himself pointing awkwardly at Thor as depicted in Marvel Comics, who was pointing back.

"We are both Gods of Thunder," Raiden explained, pointing to his own shirt; Sonya had gone wide-eyed, unsure of how to react, while Jaxx was doing his utmost not to burst out laughing.

"I... didn't know you knew what a meme was," Cole admits, though honestly, once the shock had worn off of, it was rather charming.

"I didn't know you knew what a meme was," Kano fired back, equally confused.

"I have a thirteen-year-old, of course I know what a meme is -" but then it seems to hit him just as it hits Sonya and Jax, and the three of them turn to the pair of confused, cave-dwelling, internet-free champions. None of them knew where to begin trying to explain the whole situation, but thankfully, Raiden chose that moment to open a lightning portal, and they all headed through quickly.

----

The night that Cole and his family had gone home after everything had gone down, the fighting, Sub-Zero, and the man he's pretty sure is the ghost of his ancestor, Emily had looked him dead in the eye and called him a super hero.

And then told him that his friends were really cool.

This was a sentiment that his new friends seemed to share about his family.

Cole quickly comes to realise that family isn't something a lot of the rest of the team have nowadays; they have each other, but for a lot of them, that's mostly it. He sits on an invite to dinner that he'd already ran past Alison several days ago, before inviting Liu Kang and Kung Lao over, if nothing else, to repay the hospitality they'd shown him so early on.

Alison's rule was that there was to be peace on their property; no training, no fighting, but the team was welcome as long as they didn't bring trouble to the door.

So then it was Sonya and Jaxx, who brought dessert when they came over.

Emily once asked what Thunder Gods ate. Did they eat? Cole wasn't sure. He extends an invite to Raiden anyways, but it's politely declined. The next time, however, he took up Cole's invite, mostly for the company, and to thank Alison and Emily for their patience; having Cole away so often wasn't easy, he'd be the first to acknowledge that. Alison appreciated the sentiment, as did Emily, though she was also just bursting with questions for the God, and he did his best to answer what he could.

Then finally - finally - after so long spent with the team, of most of them coming to find comfort and serenity in his home on the occasions that they need it, Kano is invited to Sunday lunch too.

----

"I know us champions and our super powers are pretty cool," Kano says to Emily, the moment they step through the lightning portal and emerge into the sunshine and the noise of the fair, "but I'm your favourite, right? Besides your old man, of course," and he rolls his eyes a little at that, as does Cole, for very different reasons, while Alison shoots Cole a questioning look. Thankfully she still does not trust Kano as far as she could throw him.

For her part, Emily answers incredibly diplomatically, sounding much older than her thirteen years, and quite a bit like her mother;

"Kano, you're a grown man, my approval shouldn't matter to you," she sounds sincere, which is completely undercut by Kung Lao sliding into step beside Kano.

"Which means you're not her favourite," he teases, and Kano practically growls back, embarrassed, while Emily calls out to Raiden that she likes his shirt. He practically beams.

"Not a lot of people will really get it, though," she points out, and Raiden muses on that for a moment.

"But I get it, and it's mine."

"Fair point," Emily nods at that, as their strange group steps up to buy tickets.

---

Emily spends more of the fair of people's shoulders than she does actually walking, which delights her endlessly. Mostly she's up on Jax's shoulders, and charges her cotton candy for the ride, ripping a small chunk from the one Cole had bought for her.

"It's weird seeing you all look so normal," she says to Sonya, the two of them in line for the Dodge 'Em Cars alongside Liu Kang and Kung Lao. Sonya grins, knows exactly what she means, gaze turning to the two members of the Shaolin Order of Light, not that anyone would know simply from looking at them now. Where Liu Kang had found a pair of trendy, ripped jeans was beyond Sonya's imagination.

"You look cool, though," Emily amended quickly, "I didn't realise you all would come to the fair, but I'm glad you did," she's smiling brightly as they get closer to the front of the line.

"Who did you expect to come along today?" Liu asks, eyes wide and curious. It wasn't that he was as competitive as Kung Lao or Kano, but he still found the child's interpretation of their group to be interesting. She knows, in some capacity, what they're capable off; she'd watched her father slice, dice, and kill Goro after all. The fact that she could think so highly of them speaks a lot to her capacity for kindness, or perhaps her childish naivety, but Liu preferred to think it was the former.

Emily, however, goes quiet, seems to be a little embarrassed. She mutters something, avoiding eye contact with any of them, and Liu goes to ask her to repeat herself, but she interrupts him while doing so;

"I wanted Dad to have a day off," she admitted, before adding, "and... and Lord Raiden; I don't think he's had a day off this millennium."

"It's good of you to look out for them," Sonya tells her fondly, "our team can be pretty single-minded, but we needed this day off, I think." And she gives Emily a pet on the shoulder, and lets her steer the tandem Car when they finally get a turn.

----

"It's me, right? I'm your favourite," Jax asks Emily over lunch, not because he genuinely believes it, but because it riles up Kano, and to a lesser extent, the competitive Liu Kang.

"Jax is one bad day away from pledging his allegiance to Skynet, he can't be your favourite -" Kano grumbles.

"Dad's my favourite," Emily reminds them sternly, and Cole has to hide his proud little smile, before she adds, "and mom's my favourite too, the rest of you, well of course you're all badass as hell -"

"Is it Liu? 'Cos he's pretty and you're, yanno, a teenage girl," Kano scowls at the warrior who'd been attempting to just quietly enjoy his basket of fries. Both Cole and Alison are wearing similarly murderous expressions, and Kano raised his hands in mock surrender, dropping his gaze.

"Actually," Emily said pointedly, despite the embarrassed flush on her cheeks, though she was mirroring her parents intensity, "my favourite is Raiden because he's literally a God that shoots lightning out of his hands, and you're now my least favourite because you're a rat bastard."

"I taught her that," Kung Lao was grinning from ear to ear, and when he and Emily look to each other, they share a definitive nod.

"How come he's allowed to teach her words like bastard?!" Kano demanded to know.

"Because you're a bastard," Sonya interjects.

Kano is thankfully quiet for the remainder of lunch, sulking at his end of the table as chatter returns to normal, returns to talk of how everyone else had been enjoying the day.

----

At the end of the day, Kano shoves a large, stuffed kangaroo at Emily that he'd won at the booth where you had to knock over bottles.

"Didn't even use me eye or anything; lost an hour of my life and fifty fuckin' dollars," he was grumbling, while Emily was examining the prize.

"You won this?" She seemed endeared by it, endeared by the thought that he'd put the time into winning it for her.

"'course I won it, can I stop being your least favourite now?" He asked, and Emily tucked the kangaroo beneath her arm, giving him an appraising look.

"You can't buy my loyalty -"

"Wouldn't want it if it could be bought, I know that shit from experience," Kano interjected, crossing his arms defensively, ignoring where Cole was glowering at him every time he swore.

"But you put time in, and effort, so you're back to third with everyone else."

"As long as none of those bastards is beating me, I'm okay with that."

As they headed to the exit, to where Raiden had created a lightning portal for them all to go home through, Emily reached out and punched Kano lightly in the shoulder.

"Thanks, Kano, it's pretty sweet that you care so much."

"Don't tell the others," he grumbled back.

"We've been with you all day," Jax calls out, "we already know."

#mortal kombat #liu kang #mortal kombat 2021 #kano #kung lao #cole young #raiden #jax briggs #emily young #alison young #sonya blade #mortal kombat fluff #mortal kombat fanfiction #lkmb

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iceshard1011 · 3 years

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Sanders Sides (Web Series) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil/Creativity | Roman/Logic | Logan/Morality | Patton, Kaimi Alvi/Katrina "Calamity" Santos Characters: Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, Morality | Patton Sanders, Logic | Logan Sanders, Original Characters, (credit of patentpending), Misleading Compliment | Missy Sanders, (mentioned) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Fanfiction, Unreliable Narrator, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders Has PTSD, Crying, References to Depression, Anxiety Attacks, Misunderstandings, Brief Internalized Transphobia, it's LAMP but there's a focus on Prinxiety, because i'm a predictable nerd, Miscommunication, spoilers for patentpending's Powerless, for the love of god read that first, 1. it's a good read, and 2. this will spoil the hell out of it Summary:

Three times Roman panicked over Virgil, and one time Virgil panicked over Roman.

Speculated alternate universal continuation of patentpending’s Powerless.

okay, did this for @patentpending. hope it’s okay! x 5k word fic is below, but please heed the spoiler warnings.

Patton got it slightly worse than Logan. Kaimi, the passionate yet kind-hearted and humble reporter — a sweet girl who couldn’t stand a mere picture of a drop of blood — was somewhere between the two. Perhaps unsurprisingly, however, ex-superhero Roman ‘The Prince’ Garcia had it the worst.

The actor could hardly be blamed. He had already suffered a fair amount of nightmares, waking up with a jolt in his penthouse’s bed, with Missy blinking sleepily up at him and asking what was wrong.

One doesn’t simply live through years of battles and fighting and bloodshed and walk away without demons. The names across Roman’s chest said as much.

He had seen his fair share of death over years of being The Prince, and while admitting this was sickening, it was not something Roman was unfamiliar with. He’d watched people die in front of him. He had caused many of the deaths himself during the fights.

He knew all this.

He also knew that it was completely logical to react to a particular, recent death in a particularly violent, particularly traumatised manner.

(He also knew he was never particularly good at listening to anyone, even himself.)

Sometimes, Roman Garcia had bad days. Days where he woke up and felt sick to his stomach for just existing. Days where he struggled to move, because the images flashing through his mind made his head spin. Days where he couldn’t look anyone in the eyes, where he barely ate, where he quailed away from comforting touches and wanted to slam his hands over the sides of his head and scream when voices tried to ask what was wrong.

He wasn’t sure what these days meant. He felt too much to be depressed. It went on far too long to be anxiety attacks. It felt too different to the post-traumatic stress episodes he had when struggling to find his way home after the sun had set.

(But he never voiced any of this, because somehow, he had a feeling Logan would vehemently disagree, which spoke levels of itself.)

Sometimes, Roman could feel the Bad Days approaching. Sometimes he struggled to fall asleep, with a strange pit curling inside him somewhere. Sometimes, it didn’t travel into the following day.

Most times, though, it did.

It was one of those Bad Days. Sometimes Roman tried to ignore it. He tried to act his way out of it. He didn’t like having Bad Days, not only because they made him feel like he was literally dying and he wanted it to stop he wanted to stop thinking stop moving stop breathing he wanted it to stop stop stop STOP!

But because he didn’t want to take away from his family’s bad days. Even with Patton’s coloured wristbands, the little puffball still struggled sometimes — and that was okay! They all always did their best to make sure the heart of their group was okay, and comfortable, and did everything they could.

Logan’s back still ached some days. Sometimes, it was so bad he couldn’t move from bed, and had to spend hours trying to just sit up. It was painful to watch, and Roman knew he hated sympathy, so he did his best not to show the way his heart twisted at the sight of the astronomer’s pain.

Virgil covered his bad days so well. Roman imagined it was the built-up practice of having days throughout his entire life dealing with dysphoria and discrimination and judgement and being spat on and ridiculed for something he couldn’t help. He may have been used to those kinds of bad days, but obviously not the days brought on by guilt, by the thoughts of what the thing he created did to people all over the world, the destruction and horror and death, all in the wake of his too-brilliant mind and too-nimble fingers. Those days were usually preceded by slow days with not much activity, phantom pains, struggling movements to do so much as hold a mug with his prosthetic arm.

It really wasn’t a surprise that Roman’s Bad Days followed Virgil’s.

So, he tried to smile, tried to stop his hands from shaking, tried to not crumble with every step he took.

Somehow, it was never enough.

On this particular Bad Day, Roman was trembling. He did that, sometimes, when it was really bad. He couldn’t stop. It was a constant tremor, in his nerves, shooting through his blood, curling in his limbs, shuddering up his body.

He had done his best to avoid his roommates. He had slept in that morning, half genuinely trying to go back to sleep, half feigning sleep whenever Virgil quietly shuffled into the room to check on him. When he finally got out from under the covers, he spent at least an hour and a half in the bathroom, under scalding shower water and making himself more presentable than strictly necessary as he knew he was not going to be mentally equipped to leave the apartment today.

“‘Morning,” a quiet, gruff voice greeted Roman as he finally mustered up the coward to step out of the comforts of his bedroom.

Almost immediately, the confidence he’d been trying to summon all morning threatened to leave him.

Roman swallowed. “Good morning, Sunshine!” he chirped merrily, gliding into the living room. “Where’s the rest of the fam?”

“Went out for lunch,” Virgil said from the kitchen. Roman blinked, and Virgil glanced over his shoulder at the silence. “It’s one in the afternoon, Ro.”

“Oh.” Roman felt slightly faint, but he wasn’t sure if that was part of having a Bad Day.

“You must have had something of a busy night.” Virgil smirked and skulked from the kitchen, moving over to him, and Roman wondered if he was going to need to rush back into the bathroom. “Insatiable thoughts keeping you up, love?”

Roman’s tongue was heavy. “Not quite,” was all he could murmur in reply.

Virgil’s perfect brow furrowed, his gorgeous eyes flicking with worry, and his lips were not flecked with blood, that was just Roman’s imagination, they were in the apartment and it was fine, and oh god, he was losing it, he couldn’t keep it together, not today, not right now, he was going to— he needed—

“Roman!” Virgil’s yelp of concern was drowned out by the roaring in Roman’s ears as he threw up in the kitchen trash can. The ex-hero’s arms trembled in an effort to keep him up.

Focus, focus. It’s okay. It’s fine.

Gravity felt like it was trying it’s best to drag him to the ground. He felt just like he had when he’d first lost his powers, trembling and scared and desperate—

He heaved again.

There was a smooth, rubbing sensation running up and down his back, and it helped as he coughed and spluttered and hacked up more bile.

“Oh, baby,” Virgil’s voice whispered, and Roman’s stomach twisted again, but he had nothing left to throw up. “I didn’t know you were feeling sick.”

“‘M not,” Roman mumbled, feeling light-headed.

“Let’s get you back to bed, yeah?” Virgil murmured, and Roman felt boneless as his boyfriend guided him into their bedroom. Something damp and warm wiped at his face and he pulled away with a grimace. Something else was thrust in his face, and he squinted at it.

“Rinse and spit,” Virgil ordered, gesturing to the glass of water and the tub he was holding. Roman obeyed without protest, then sunk back down against the bed sheets he’d fought so hard to escape from.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed, but it seemed to go far too quick before Virgil was back beside him.

“Did you eat something funky?” Virgil asked, pressing a blessedly cold hand to Roman’s flushed forehead. “No one else was feeling ill.”

It took a minute for Roman to realise that the reason Virgil’s hand was so cold wasn’t due to his natural lack of normal bodily heat, but because it was his metal hand. The one he had made for himself, after he had lost it, after his eyes had widened and gone pale and—

Roman was going to be sick again.

He wondered, though, if he was going to vomit, why Virgil had not rushed to get something for him and had instead sat on the edge of the bed and pulled Roman against him.

It was a moment before he realised that the thing bursting from his chest wasn’t vomit, but hoarse, screaming wails.

Virgil hushed him over and over again. He ran his hands — only one hand really, and god Roman’s chest was hurting, was he even breathing? — up and down Roman’s back, through his hair, caressing his cheeks, rubbing his arms. Anything and everything to try and soothe his boyfriend.

Virgil would be lying if he said he wasn’t scared. He had never seen Roman like this. Even at his wits end as a hero, even in the heat of a battle, no matter what had happened, Roman had never broken like this, ever.

Virgil, in no way, thought Roman was broken, as a rule. He wasn’t useless or weak or any of the things he knew Roman struggled with labelling himself. After everything, he was still one of the strongest people Virgil knew, and he had met many people over the course of a few months.

So what on Earth could have set Roman off? He knew sometimes that the ex-hero struggled with not being able to zip around town to nab food, or smell the far-off ocean, or hear his family’s heartbeat unless he was pressed against their chest… but he had never broken down just like this.

Maybe it was a build-up. Maybe it was everything that had piled onto him spilling out. It was certainly a possibility, wasn’t it?

But then Virgil pressed his hand — the right one — to Roman’s flushed cheek, and his boyfriend keened, jerking away from him and scrambling back across the bed.

Horrified, Virgil raised his hands.

“Hey, sorry, baby,” he said, as gently as he could.

Roman’s chest was heaving, the only colour in his face from the flush of loss of oxygen from crying. His eyes were wide and wild and darted around. He was shaking all over. He’d stopped screaming, but his mouth still hung open, like he meant to keep crying but had rubbed his throat raw.

“What is it?” Virgil asked, and Roman met his eyes. “Tell me what’s happening, Ro.”

Roman looked like he was torn between reaching for Virgil and tearing into his own scalp — and, well, Virgil knew which one he personally preferred.

“Can I come over?” he asked. Roman buried his face into his knees and whimpered. “I’m going to sit next to you, okay?” He slowly shuffled forward, making sure to be as obvious about where he was at all times. He leaned forward so his breath brushed against Roman’s bangs. He didn’t touch him. “Hey.”

Roman didn't look up, but his quivering, pale, sweaty hand moved from where it was clutching the blankets and inched over to grasp the edge of Virgil’s sleeve.

“I’m here,” he assured Roman softly. “Just take your time.” Roman’s shoulders shook. Slowly, carefully, Virgil linked their pinkies together. “Breathe, Pretty Boy. You’re okay.”

“I’m— sorry, I’m sorry—” Roman gasped, but Virgil cut him off.

“Ah-ah.” He shuffled ever closer, brushing their legs together. “No apologising.”

“I couldn’t— I— you—”

“Breathe.” Virgil pulled Roman’s hand up by the sleeve, not kissing it but just barely pressing his lips to his boyfriend’s calloused knuckles. “Four, seven, eight, remember? Four, seven, eight.”

Roman nodded unsteadily.

They sat like that, for what could have been minutes or hours, Virgil wasn’t sure. Logan and Patton hadn’t planned on returning for another few hours, so that allowed the pair to sit in relative silence. Roman’s heavy breaths still shook in the still air, and every now and then he whimpered. Virgil didn’t move to touch him. Roman didn’t pull away. Virgil wondered if he had had a sensory overload.

“Do you want the fidget cube?” he asked softly. Roman hesitated.

“Where is it?” he asked in a rasping voice.

“Wherever you last left it,” Virgil answered with a smirk. He made to pull away. “I’ll go find it.”

Roman’s grip tightened. “No!”

Virgil froze and slowly moved back. “Okay. Staying here.”

“Th-thank you,” he gasped. “I-if you leave, I’m scared— I’ll— spiral—”

Virgil’s throat thickened with the urge to cut him off and tell him to breathe, but maybe Roman needed to say what he was thinking.

“I’ll see— red— it’ll be red and gold all over again— and I can’t— I won’t—”

Virgil frowned. What on Earth was he talking about? He squeezed their fingers.

“Can’t do that again, Virgil, I can’t!”

“Okay,” Virgil said. “I won’t leave.”

“Please don’t,” Roman agreed with a sob. “Please don’t leave me. Please. Please.”

“I won’t. I’m not.” Virgil pressed carefully closer. “I’m right here. I’m staying here.”

Roman shuddered and finally lifted his head. His eyes, bloodshot and tired, met Virgil’s, and he had to bite back a gasp.

Roman looked shattered. Like someone had taken something that meant the world to him and thrown it to the ground and let the pieces break into millions of tiny little pieces so small and far and in between that there was no hope of ever rebuilding what he’d lost. There was a lump lodging itself in Virgil’s throat.

“What is it, Roman?” he asked, quietly, desperately. “Please talk to me. Let me help. I want to help.”

“Make me stop thinking about it,” Roman begged. “Please, Virgil. I can’t— I can’t live like this anymore, I want it to stop, I need it to stop!”

“What, baby?” Virgil whispered fervently, moving to kneel in front of Roman and press his hands to his face. “What do I need to stop?”

Roman caved, fresh tears rolling down his face, and he reached up to grasp onto Virgil’s right hand. Virgil couldn’t feel it, but he could see Roman’s knuckles going white in his grip.

It took approximately three seconds.

And then—

Oh.

“Oh.” Virgil’s voice was choked. He was half worried he was going to throw up next. “Oh, Roman…”

“I keep— having these days— bad days, where I can’t think about anything else, and it’s— it’s hard, to function, to do anything, really, and I want to be near you — I really, really do, always, forever, but it gets scary, and it hurts, and all I can think about is— is—!”

“Can I hug you?” Virgil asked.

“Please,” sobbed Roman. “Please, please, hug me.”

Half of a second later, Virgil was curled around Roman, protecting him from all angles of the world, wishing more than anything that he could protect Roman from the battle waging inside his own mind.

He thought it could have been the lack of Roman’s powers. If that was the case, love and admiration was required.

If it had been a flashback, or Missy, then a distraction was in order.

If it had been literally anything else, Virgil would have been prepared.

His dumb ass had never once considered anything before or after the moment he woke up, disorientated, and confused in the clearing of that tower, Roman bent over him and shaking like he was now.

Whenever Roman quailed away from his touch, Virgil had always thought that it was a recovering-from-abuse day. When Roman stayed in his room all day, Virgil thought he needed to be by himself for the time. When he refused to meet Virgil’s eyes, he thought he was still mad at him for creating that weapon that destroyed so many lives. When Roman turned Virgil down during nights when he was feeling excited and hungry and that pulling want to be pressed against him, Virgil had let himself worry that it was because he was wrong, because Roman didn’t want someone like him.

All this time, Virgil had been worrying about himself, while Roman had been slowly crumbling under horror and blood.

Virgil swallowed down the emotion clogging his throat.

What the hell was wrong with him?

“I love you,” Roman was saying, over and over and over again, and “I’m sorry, sorry, so sorry,” and Virgil couldn’t have either of that going unchecked.

“Shh,” he hummed, rubbing his back. “It’s okay. Breathe. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

Roman looked up, opening his mouth to protest, but Virgil pressed his finger to his boyfriend’s lips. “Ah-ah,” he said softly, “no apologising.” More tears squeezed from Roman’s eyes. Virgil pressed their foreheads together. “I love you, too.”

Roman hiccupped. More tears rolled down his face.

That’s it, Virgil decided. Arms still around Roman, he sent a quick text to Logan and Patton, either to not worry about returning in time for dinner or being extra quiet when they came back. Then he pulled back (and pressed a kiss to Roman’s temple when he made a wounded noise at the retreat) and moved to close the blinds before wriggling from his binder. He shuffled them both beneath the bed covers.

“Nap time,” he declared.

Roman looked startled. “It’s barely noon.”

“Nap time,” Virgil insisted, and Roman relented. “Come here.” Gently, Virgil guided Roman’s head down to his chest, where he could rest his ear directly over Virgil’s heartbeat. A long, long breath blew from Roman’s nose. His own heartbeat, which had previously been thudding madly against Virgil’s stomach, slowly calmed.

Smiling, Virgil slipped his headphones from his pocket and connected them to his phone. He picked a calming but engaging playlist and offered Roman one bud. Tension slowly, slowly, bled out of his tight frame.

Virgil kissed the top of his boyfriend’s head.

“I’m here,” he said again, and this time it meant something entirely different. “I love you.”

Between Virgil’s gentle breath ever-so-slightly ruffling the crown of Roman’s hair, his steady-beating heart thumping under one ear and the calming music in the other, Roman fell asleep quickly.

After that, Roman didn’t have as many Bad Days. Or, maybe he did, and he just didn't remember, because now Virgil knew what to look for, and how to fix it. Roman also had a sneaking suspicion that Virgil had let something slip to the others, because they were always just as helpful as Virgil when he wasn’t around.

Sometimes, though, it wasn’t so much as it was the random Bad Days, as it was bad nights.

Roman was standing on the very top of the tower. The sun was setting gloriously over the ocean, casting the city in a beautiful golden-orange glow that reflected off the brown of Roman’s eyes. Wind ruffled at his hair. He could smell the sea spray. He could hear children laughing as they walked home from school. His chest swelled. This was his city, and he had done well with it.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Princey,” Virgil said beside him, and Roman’s heart beat harder at the small smirk he shot his way. “You had some help.”

Roman grinned, sauntering over to raise an eyebrow down at his adversary. “That I did. I really must thank Calamity at some point.”

“Oh, sure, for being thrown into a tree?” Virgil rolled his eyes, a smile of his own tugging at his lips. Roman almost wanted to eat that look off his face.

So he did.

And after a heated make-out session perched precariously on top of the highest point in the city, Roman took the time to just stare into those gorgeous, thunderous eyes.

You’re beautiful, he thought, all the time. You’re stunning. You’re so clever and strong, and I wish I could be anywhere near worthy of you or your time. You deserve more than this could have ever given you.

“I love you,” he said, because he could, now, he had learnt how to.

Virgil grinned that happy, carefree grin.

“So this is who you’ve replaced me for,” a pleasant, chilling voice said from behind Roman.

He turned, narrowly missing a strange, thrumming attack from Missy, and glared at her.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded. Her smile was innocent compared to what she practically purred.

“Only what I’m best at.”

Roman’s lip curled angrily as she leaned forward, her voice a whisper against his ear.

He wouldn’t actually remember what she had said to him, then. He would only hear a quiet gasp, not quite a breath and not quite a wheeze, sounding simultaneously right at his neck and a hundred yards from him.

He turned, but he lost his footing, and suddenly he wasn’t standing on the tower anymore, and he couldn’t reach out, he couldn't move, gravity was dragging him down and he couldn’t get to Virgil and Virgil was already dead and Missy had won and he was powerless and useless and he couldn’t do anything and—

“Roman! Ro, breathe! It’s okay! It’s alright, breathe.”

Roman blinked, and he was sitting on a soft ground, in a dark room…

He swallowed, and the bedroom was suddenly very, very quiet. He coughed, his raw, and wondered how long he’d been screaming for.

Roman rubbed his throat gingerly as a pair of hands flittered about, pressing against his body, his face, accompanied by a murmuring, reassuring voice. Lips pressed to his forehead, his temple, his nose, cheek, chin, eyelids, everywhere they could reach, and Roman heaved a breath.

Finally, he managed to meet Virgil’s gaze through his own fear and the dark room.

“Hey, Stormcloud,” he croaked. “Sorry for waking you.”

Virgil cut him off by kissing him soundly on the lips. “What have I told you about apologising?”

“If it gets me a kiss each time, I think I’m inclined to keep doing it,” Roman said with a sore attempt for a smile. Virgil didn’t comment on the rough edges of his expression, the way his voice wavered, or how his hands shook. He wrapped his arms around Roman’s chest, resting his head on his shoulder.

“What was it?” Virgil asked, because most times Roman took solstice in admitting his fears, especially when they came in the form of a nightmare.

Roman wrapped his arms around Virgil’s waist and dragged him to sit practically in his lap. “Nothing.”

There was a pause, because he was obviously lying, and there was only one nightmare Roman refused to talk about. Virgil knew this, and he never pushed. He didn’t need to, anyway.

“Well.” He pressed a kiss to Roman’s shoulder, slowly moving up to his neck. Roman sagged against him, glad for the contact. Virgil nuzzled into his boyfriend. “Nothing sure seems like a whole lot.”

“Unfortunately,” Roman agreed somberly.

“Think you can go back to sleep?” Virgil murmured. Roman twisted to bury his face in his soft, purple hair.

“Cuddle?” Roman asked tentatively, because sometimes Virgil tightened his binder too much and Roman never wanted to cause him any discomfort.

Virgil smiled, because he knew Roman worried, and he was never opposed to cuddling. “Of course.” He guided the two of them down, letting Roman snuggle up to his chest in his favourite position, where he could feel Virgil’s heartbeat and feel his breath.

Virgil wrapped his arounds around Roman’s torso and squeezed reassuringly. Roman was already asleep again. Virgil fell asleep himself with a smile on his face. Neither of them woke until broken morning light was streaming onto their faces.

Roman wasn’t entirely sure what had happened.

He remembered Calamity stumbling into the city centre, yelling for everyone to get down. He remembered being confused moments before the place exploded in flames. He remembered groaning and realising Virgil had thrown them to the ground, covering him with his right side. He remembered Patton fussing over the four of them, assured they were all okay and uninjured.

Kaimi may have been there, at some point, helping them to usher everyone away.

He remembered the new supervillain picking a fight with Calamity. He might have remembered Kaimi’s outraged cries when she hit the ground.

He remembered as he rushed for Calamity’s side, and she was fine, but then the villain’s focus was on them.

He remembered feeling that same old frustrated agitation at being useless, powerless. Helpless.

He remembered Virgil stepping in to try and defuse the situation. He definitely remembered the villain raising a weird-looking gun in his boyfriend’s direction.

And from there out, he was back on that tower. He was throwing himself at Missy, tearing and batting and punching and fighting with everything he had because he had to keep her away. He was without powers, but he was still strong, and he was determined, and he wasn’t going to let her hurt him again, she would never hurt anyone again.

And then they were both falling, and Missy was shrieking beneath him, except it wasn’t Missy, it was the villain, and they were beaten to all hell, and god, had he done that? And there were flashing lights, and people talking, some were shouting, and he was still twisting, still kicking, still fighting—

“Hey, hey!” Virgil’s voice said, and Roman froze. His vision cleared. His boyfriend, whole and unharmed and okay and concerned, so damn concerned, was in front of him, cold hands on either side of his face.

Roman lost himself in those seas of grey and silver, and all the fight left him. He collapsed into Virgil’s chest, pressing his face into his boyfriend’s neck.

“Kaimi, get some help!” Virgil shouted over Roman’s head, and he tried shaking his head.

“‘M okay, Virge,” he mumbled. Virgil hushed him. Cool hands ran through his hair, and he melted.

The rest of it was a blur.

Nothing caught up with Roman until he was mildly thinking that he wasn’t hungry enough to eat this cookie, and he blinked, confused.

He looked up and around him, taking in the interior of Bake My Day. It was dark outside, and empty. The sign on this side of the door said, Welcome! We are OPEN. He looked down at the plate of Crofters Jam cookies in the middle of the table shared between him, Virgil, Logan and Patton.

He blinked spastically, trying to make sense of what was happening.

“Hey, Pretty Boy.” A hand was clutching his. Roman looked across at Virgil, who smiled at him. “How’re you doing?”

“I…” Roman tried to speak, but his mouth was dry.

“It’s okay, kiddo,” Patton murmured, rubbing his back.

“You went into shock,” Logan explained. “You didn’t respond on the way to the hospital, or the way back here. We were told it would fade by itself.”

Roman blinked again. “What happened?”

No one seemed keen to answer that question.

“Kaimi and Katrina went home,” Patton answered without answering. “They were both okay. The police took care of the villain. He doesn’t have a name yet, apparently.”

“I… I mean to me,” Roman said weakly. “What happened to me?”

“We don’t know,” Logan said quietly. “You… snapped.”

“You got so angry.” Patton’s voice trembled; almost scared. “You just… lost it. You threw yourself at that villain like you still had your powers. It was…” The purple wristband was flush against their skin as they clasped their hands together too tightly to be comfortable. “It was so scary.”

Roman recoiled slightly, stricken. Logan didn’t notice, too busy focusing on Patton, rubbing his thumb gently along their hands.

“It wasn’t you that was scary.”

Roman looked around to see Virgil had moved from his seat across from him and was now crouching beside his chair. “It was the idea of your actions. How reckless you got.” A hint of a smile played at Virgil’s lips. “You looked kind of hot, being that badass.”

Roman couldn’t find similar happiness in himself. “I attacked that… that person.”

Virgil worked his jaw before nodding mutely.

Roman blinked rapidly, trying desperately to work out how to feel. He opened and closed his mouth as Virgil stood, rubbing his hands into Roman’s shoulders.

“I wasn’t… here,” he said finally, and Logan and Patton glanced at him. He kept his focus on Virgil and those beautiful eyes of his, willing him to understand, to not make him explain it. “I was… I was back there again.”

Virgil softened ever-so-gently, and Roman felt a tidal wave of relief crash into him at the understanding.

“I’m sorry,” he found himself saying, although he knew Virgil hated it. “I don’t mean to do it. Sometimes it just happens, I can’t help it. It’s so stupid, I’m stupid, god, I’m so dumb, I wish I would stop, I’m so—”

Virgil’s lips were on his, cutting his stream of words short. Roman closed his eyes, relishing the feeling of his boyfriend pressed against him. He gripped Virgil’s waist, taking the time to calm his racing mind. He was in Bake My Day. Virgil was kissing him. Logan and Patton could either be cooing or looking exasperated.

When Virgil pulled back, his voice was quiet, subdued. “I think I have to stop rewarding you for this kind of thing.”

“I’m not so sure,” Roman said, leaning forward for another kiss.

“If I may interject,” said Logan, carefully, “Roman?”

Only a little peeved, Roman turned from his boyfriend to the astronomer, who looked rightly sheepish, but there was something else in his eyes — apprehension, but with touches of something softer, kinder.

“What you’re feeling is natural. It’s healing. Have you… brought this up with Dr. Picani?”

Roman ducked his head. Logan sighed expectantly.

“I know, I know,” Roman grumbled. “I’ll… next time we go, okay? Is that okay?” he asked Virgil, who of course smiled and kissed his cheek, murmuring a soft, Yeah.

“I’m—” Roman cut himself, despite Patton’s curious look. “Tired,” he finished himself, with a woozy smile.

Patton smiled back. “It’s been a big day. Why don’t we retire for the night?”

The night air was cool as it swirled around the four of them, laughing and joking. Logan groaned and Virgil smirked at Patton’s puns. Patton squeezed Roman’s hands, and Virgil rested his head on Roman’s shoulder. Logan got caught in a lecturing infodump about some fascinating concept he’d recently discovered.

Roman thought that maybe, as they walked hand-in-hand, he was going to be okay.

It wasn’t often that anyone made moves on Roman.

Not only was he quite physically intimidating and quite often surrounded by a group of friends, more often than not he had a purple-haired gremlin he had dubbed early on as “his boyfriend” at his side.

Even then, however, when he wasn't around any of his family members, and off by himself (on rare occasions), it wasn’t something he had on his mind.

Until he ventured off to look at some stall in the distance that looked like it could be selling Disney posters.

Markets took up this side of the city every Sunday, and Roman had begged and pleaded to go ever since he found out. He didn’t want to go alone, because where would the fun in that be? Finally, eventually, Virgil had agreed, followed by Logan. (Patton had never needed much convincing.)

And now Roman was mightily regretting it. Both dragging the others along to the festive markets and darting away from them to go look at something by himself.

Roman was good at saying no. He was!

He was just also… easily flustered.

“Oh, come on, pretty boy,” the man before him purred, and Roman wrinkled his nose.

“Like I said,” he bit out firmly, “I’m fine.”

“You are,” the man agreed, and he almost reminded Roman of supervillain Remy The Sandman. “I could take you back to my place, if—”

“It is the middle of the day,” Roman said. Just walk away, his instincts snarled at him, sounding familiarly like Virgil, and for once Roman listened.

He turned.

And his arm was grabbed.

Roman jolted, surprised. He hadn’t been touched like that before, by a stranger. Not like this, anyway, where his muscles and bones were just as fragile as everyone else’s, and he could bruise, and bleed, and it was a very startling truth.

He was so shocked that he didn’t think to pull away while the man leaned in, breath nipping at his chin.

Then the man cried out, and his hand released Roman’s arm, and Virgil was raising a second fist to hit the man again.

“Not your metal arm, babe,” Roman said automatically, and Virgil paused. After a moment of indecision, he kicked the man’s knee, and he cried out again, dropping to the ground.

“Do yourself a favour and piss off,” Virgil snarled. His face was contorted with fury. One fist was shaking with rage, the other creaking under the strain he was putting it. Roman’s pursuer quailed away with a scowl, then limped off.

Roman was still in a daze as Virgil whirled on him, his face instantly flickering back to worried and loving and affectionate and god, Roman was so, so in love.

“Are you okay?” Virgil was asking frantically, his eyes scanning his boyfriend. “Are you hurt? Did he do anything to you?”

“I’m a hot mess,” Roman confessed pragmatically.

Virgil stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Meaning…?”

“You are very, very attractive when you’re pissed.”

Virgil flushed, his eyebrows raising. “Oh. Um.” He rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed, and a smile tugged itself onto Roman’s face.

“It’s okay,” he assured him. “You’re always very attractive anyway, so I’m mostly used to it.”

“Oh, stop,” Virgil told him. Roman did, though only in favour of kissing him until they were both breathless.

#sanders sides #prinxiety #romantic LAMP #roman sanders #virgil sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #cross posted on ao3 #tw vomit #tw harrassment #tw ptsd #spoilers for Powerless!!#fanfic #long post

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why-this-kolaveri-machi · 3 years

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whumptober day 9: take me instead

still here, still doing this! ‘twas nice to take a break for the last 6 months but i think i’m ready to come back.

summary: set after titans s2. jericho’s spent years as a mind without a body--enough to think he’s not in real danger from the villains the titans fight on a regular basis. it isn’t until dick puts himself on the line to save him that he realises how wrong he’s been.

warnings: SPOILERS for s2. serious body horror including gore and mutilation. a whole scene of this is inspired straight from a nightmare i had, so please be cautious as the descriptions are graphic.

take me instead

Leave him alone! I can… I can give what you want, and more. I’ve seen and done things you couldn’t even imagine.

Take me instead.

It’s the last thing Jericho remembers for a while.

When Jericho is next aware, he’s sitting at a familiar workbench next to his father. Slade is taking apart and putting together guns of increasing complexity at a steady pace, not looking at Jericho once, but the silence is familiar and almost… comfortable. There’s none of the cloying dread or desperation that he felt while spending six years trapped in Slade’s head; the guns might as well be fishing rods or model airplanes to the curl of warmth in Jericho’s chest.

“I want you to be ready,” Slade says in the manner of someone already in the middle of a conversation, “for this next mission. I know that it’s on short notice, but there’s something in the next room that should help you.” He finally turns to look at Jericho, and he realises with a jolt that Slade’s actually smiling. For a long, dumbfounded moment, Jericho stares at his father, at the beaming smile, the crinkle of crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes.

“Go on, then,” Slade says, tilting his head at a door that Jericho didn’t notice before. A part of Jericho is pulsing with anxiety (remembers that endlessly white prison, dead-but-not) but it’s smothered by a haze of contentment and a ready, easy trust that has him get up, open the door, and step through.

There’s a long metal table with a body on it. The reason it’s a body and not a person is because it’s covered with a long white sheet and the shapes underneath the sheet are… unnatural. The angles too sharp, the girth too thin, everything too still to be anything that’s alive. Jericho’s not sure why Slade thinks a corpse would help him with anything, but he moves ahead as though compelled, again, and lifts the sheet away.

The body is on its back, naked, limbs splayed awkwardly. It’s emaciated to a degree that the skin is worn down to the bone in some places: the fingers are literally skeletal, and so are the jutting crescents of the hips. There are enormous festering wounds on one thigh and one arm, excavated through layers of skin, fat and muscle like craters filled with… slough, and pus, and other disgusting things, and still bleeding--

--still bleeding--

Jericho’s been avoiding looking at the face until now, and there is a slow, sad sort of resignation in his chest as he lifts his gaze to see skin cleaving to the skull, eyes huge and watering in nearly abyssal sockets. The body’s lipless mouth moves.

“Jericho,” Dick says.

There’s no moment where Jericho’s jolted back to reality; just a dawning horror. There are a thousand questions crowding in his throat but the one he asks is: “Did… did Slade do this to you?”

“No, he--Jer--” Dick coughs, and Jericho watches with sick fascination as his ribs glide underneath his skin. “You have to get away from here. Now.”

“Not without--” you, I can’t leave without you “--knowing what he did to you, how could this even--”

There’s a chill in the air, so sudden and fierce that it slices through his skin and numbs his lips. The room he’s in--that he’s hardly paid any attention to so far--warps and twists, the edges where the walls meet the ceiling blackening like it’s a photograph that someone’s taken a flame to. Dick twitches on the table, trying to move, and bloodied spittle sprays his chin as he says, “Leave! Now!”

“I don’t--”

I SEE YOU.

The voice, female, is both a whisper in his ear and a roar that echoes inside the collapsing room. Dick lets out a scream that frankly Jericho would’ve never guessed he had the strength for and an invisible force pushes Jericho to the door that he just came from. Jericho tries to fight back, twist and get back to Dick, but before he knows it, he’s stumbling through the door, falling to his hands and knees. He jumps to his feet, unaccountably angry at Slade, the world, and mostly Dick--who, despite having far less experience with this slippery, in-between world than Jericho, just tossed him aside like it was nothing at all.

Overachieving bastard.

He whirls around to confront his father, but Slade has disappeared, and so has his workroom, and any semblance of a place at all. Instead, Jericho stands in the middle of ever-extending blackness that might be a cavern, given the way his footsteps echo eerily and the weak light that filters in every few metres. Dust motes float lazily in those little beams, and their presence makes the whole place somehow creepier than the complete absence of light.

“Dick?” Jericho’s voice is small, uncertain, but the word echoes nonetheless, making him flinch. Once the echoes die, however, there is only silence.

He picks a direction and keeps walking, because, honestly, what else is he going to do? It doesn’t take long for a human shape to materialise in one of the pools of watery light, and Jericho isn’t entirely surprised to see that it’s Dick. This Dick looks… whole, though, strong and broad and dressed in his Nightwing suit sans mask. He’s got his escrima sticks out as though anticipating an attack, and he’s not really looking at Jericho.

Jericho’s about to call out to him when a shape swoops in from the darkness straight to Dick. It’s moving with incredible speed, claws extended and glinting in the light, but Dick is faster. He swings his sticks around and knocks it to the ground, only to bring them up again to block the next attack.

Soon Dick is at the centre of a storm of black, punctuated by the rustle of cloth and the screams of the creatures dying as his sticks turn into swords. He’s barely finished skewering one creature before he’s lifting the sword--still dripping with gore--and plunging it into the heart of another creature. Jericho watches, open-mouthed, as Dick fights with a frightening combination of grace and force, his body twirling and leaping like he’s dancing but his thrusts sharp and brutal, driven by pure anger. Jericho can hardly countenance this… force of nature with the man who melted in his arms when he gave him an unexpected hug, or the one that came to seek absolution from his mother, half-wrecked by guilt and anguish.

He could’ve kept watching forever (Dick could’ve kept fighting forever) when he feels a bony hand like icicles rest on his shoulder and hears I’VE FOUND YOU, LITTLE ONE

“No! Jericho!” Dick stops for the second it takes him to shout Jericho’s name, and Jericho realises why Dick had been such a storm of movement: it takes only a fraction of that second for the shadow-creatures to overcome his defences and… tear at him. Blood and gore spray in a messy arc as his arm is torn clean off his body but Dick’s still standing, staring at him, shouting--

Jericho’s knees shake and his stomach’s turned to water but he shakes off the hand on his shoulder and runs--away from whatever it was that spoke to him, away from Dick, whose shouts have died and been replaced by the sickening, wet sounds of ripping flesh.

He runs, but there’s Dick again, younger now, crushed between two panes of glass like an insect in a display case--

YOU CAN’T RUN FOREVER.

--turns a corner, and Dick’s on a rack, an actual rack, and at each corner there’s somebody turning the pulley and stretching his limbs until his shoulders and knees pop out of their sockets, and, and, is Batman one of them? And one of the others, his face is half-shrouded in scar tissue--

ALTHOUGH, and now there’s a hint of amused menace, THAT MIGHT BE FUN, TOO.

Jericho sets off again, heart thundering in his chest and pulsing in his neck, panic scraping his breath through his throat and nose. It’s been so long since he’s had a body to call his own, but his mind can’t forget what it feels like to be truly afraid, to look at a threat and think: that’s going to really hurt, or i’m going to die, or both.

Along the way he feels little nudges from Dick, helping him pour on the speed. When these nudges stop, and he’s run out of corners to turn and reached one where he can only huddle, he turns.

There’s a woman standing there: tall, almost statuesque. Her skin is grey and her hair hangs limp past her shoulders. But her eyes are luminescent: pools of algae on water that reflects a coal-black night. There is naked hunger in the way she looks at him, in her smile full of mossy, pointed teeth.

HE’S RIGHT IN A WAY, she says. HE BURNS SO BRIGHT, AND HIS PAIN SO EXQUISITE. BUT HE IS ALREADY BURNING OUT. YOU… she steps closer, YOU WILL LAST FOREVER.

Jericho feels frozen as she reaches a bony hand towards him. HIS SACRIFICE WILL HAVE BEEN IN VAIN--HOW DELICIOUS.

He feels a familiar ice-cold pain along his throat, razor-thin, and a deeper, hotter pain that’s boring into his stomach. If he closes his eyes he can imagine that it’s Slade on the other end of a sword, eyes wide in horror and--and betrayal--

“No.” The pain in his stomach stops, and Jericho opens his eyes to see Dick’s back in front of him, the pointed end of an icicle emerging from his middle and dripping blood on Jericho’s feet.

And Dick still--

“While I’m still here, in my head,” Dick growls, “you don’t get to touch him.”

The woman screams--it’s a horrible sound, full of rage that buries itself like needlepoints in his eardrums--but Jericho has no time to linger as he feels the hardest push he’s gotten from Dick yet, and a sensation like someone’s reached into him and pulled his stomach clear out of his body, and then--

then--

he’s out.

For a long, surreal second, he is just a mind floating without a body, threatening to vanish into the ether if he can’t ground himself in somebody else’s head. He casts frantically for the nearest person and enters--and to his relief, it’s Rose. She must know something of what’s going on, because she immediately steps back and lets Jericho take over her body.

They’re in the Titans Tower, and he can see Kory, Rachel and Gar crowded around something--well, somebody--on the floor. At his choked, “Dick,” they immediately part, and there’s Dick on the floor, curled around nothing, ashen, eyes open and unseeing. He’s shaking minutely, but besides that there’s nothing to indicate that right now, inside his head, he’s being torn apart over and over and over again--

“He won’t let me help him,” Rachel says, her voice trembling, tears streaming down her face. “She wants you. He says he won’t let that happen.”

Jericho crashes to his knees next to Dick. He gathers his head onto his lap--tries to ignore how cold he feels and banishes all memories of his wasted body on that cold table--and kisses his forehead. “Please,” he says, tears spilling to land on Dick’s face and slide down to his ears. “Just--please.”

He’s not sure what he’s asking for. But he thinks Dick will find a way to give it to him anyway.

#titans #my fic #dick grayson #jericho wilson #a byronic cupcake

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murasaki-murasame · 3 years

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Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep16

I know I’ve said this before, but I hope everyone who complained about the first half of Gou not being gory enough is happy now, lmao.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut [plus some spoilers for Umineko, probably]

I probably should have expected this episode to be even more brutal than the last one after how suspiciously happy the preview images were, but I don’t think anyone could have guessed just how this was gonna go.

There’s a lot to say about the plot of this episode and what it says about the overall mystery, but one way or another most people’s reactions to this inevitably tie back to the question of how appropriate the horror content and it’s framing was, so I may as well give my two cents on that first.

Basically I thought it was fine, lol. It served a very clear purpose. It’s entirely valid for people to genuinely dislike it or want to skip it, but the very fact that it caused such a strong reaction in people is kinda also the entire reason why the scene existed. And why all of the other notably violent parts of the whole franchise existed in the first place. So at some point it kinda just feels like the whole argument is about the merits and ethics of gory horror in general, especially when it happens to children, which is it’s own whole broader topic.

Either way, I think it’s interesting how this whole episode’s approach to horror contrasts with the last episode, and how they both set out to do similar but different things. Ep15 was about brief flashes of intense, shocking violence to create a sense of suffocating confusion and isolation, and to hammer in the fact that Rika is truly stuck in an eternal loop of death, while this episode was more about one act of violence being dragged out over a horrifically long time that makes it feel more like outright torture than just murder.

It’s also kinda interesting that it was themed around the ritualistic murder of the Watanagashi festival, since this is the first time in Gou we’ve actually seen it like this.

Anyway, even though this episode feels like it basically laid out the entire story, I still feel a bit skeptical about a lot of it, lol. It feels almost too good to be true, with how thoroughly everything seemed to get laid out, and we already know that we have like eight whole episodes left to the show. So I doubt things are that simple.

It at least comes across now like this whole loop is Satoko torturing Rika as punishment for leaving the village, after probably getting time looping powers by someone who at least claims to be Oyashiro-sama, but even if we take all that at face value, I don’t think it answers everything about the story. If anything, Satoko’s side of the story makes it sound more like she’s being used as the tool of a greater mastermind, and we also already saw in this episode how she was going L5 in her own way, so she doesn’t exactly seem like she’s entirely in charge of the situation.

If she’s at least telling the truth about everything, and she really did start this loop after watching Rika leave the village as a teenager, I guess what probably happened is that Lambda decided to give Satoko her blessing by posing as Oyashiro-sama, as a way to ultimately get Rika/Bern trapped in the loop again. I still think it might be kinda unsatisfying if that’s basically all the culprit’s motive boils down to, but I do like the idea of this tying in Lambda as well.

I do think that Satoko probably really has been looping this whole time, and been the one to set up at least most of the new tragedies, but a lot of it still feels kinda iffy to me. For one thing, in this episode she seemed to have no problem with killing Rika herself, which seems to disprove the idea that Satoko might have been making different people go L5 in order to avoid being discovered by Rika. Even if she only changed her methods after Rika started being able to remember her deaths, this episode still happens well after that point, so if Satoko’s aware of all that, she doesn’t seem to mind having Rika remember being killed by her. So it makes me wonder why exactly she’d bother going out of her way to make random people go L5 if she could just do it herself this whole time. There’s always the option of ‘Lambda/Oyashiro-sama told her to do it that way’, but that’d just be kinda lame, lol.

It also makes me think again about Satoko’s suspicion toward Keiichi in Watadamashi, and how even after Rika died she ended up going to the Sonozaki estate and dying for some reason or another. If Satoko was responsible for Rika’s death in that arc, and her whole goal is just to punish her, I don’t really get why she’d bother trying to pin the blame on Keiichi afterward, and what reason she’d have to go to the Sonozaki estate afterward. I also still doubt that Satoko could have even killed Rika in that arc, since she was playing dodgeball with some of the other kids [and maybe Keiichi as well between episodes], who could have all said so if she had just randomly left to go kill Rika in the middle of their game.

It just feels like her whole goal should have already been fulfilled by that point in Watadamashi if she’s the one that killed Rika, and she shouldn’t have had any reason to bother with anything else afterward. Even if she tried to blame Keiichi for it just to direct the immediate blame off of herself, I really don’t see why she would have bothered going to the Sonozaki estate. Unless it was literally just some random unfortunate coincidence like what happens to Satoko in Watanagashi/Meakashi, I guess.

I also have to wonder what reason she’d have in Tataridamashi to lead Keiichi to her house to get attacked/murdered if her whole goal is just to punish Rika. A lot of her actions in that arc in general are just kinda weird, if you assume that she is indeed the main culprit.

Onidamashi is also kinda interesting, since there’s no real reason to assume that she had much of any involvement in like 99% of what actually happened in that arc. In theory she could have been pushing Rena to go L5 behind the scenes, but with how closely that whole arc seemed to mirror Tsumihoroboshi, I don’t think she even really needed to go out of her way to make things end up the way they did. Which makes the idea of her involvement in that arc seem kinda irrelevant at the end of the day.

It seems pretty likely at this point that she killed Rika at the end of the arc, but that also just happened at literally the last minute, and we can only guess how exactly what whole scene must have played out. The murder method is at least different to the one in this episode. I’ve seen some speculation that maybe Satoko tried to talk things out with Rika and things just went really badly, and that ended up being the start of Satoko getting more and more violent with her methods, which might make sense.

I just can’t help but feel like there’s more to the mysteries going on than just what we got shown in this episode, especially since we don’t know what exactly the deal is with Satoko getting divine messages from Oyashiro-sama. It just feels like there’s a higher mastermind manipulating things.

There’s also still the whole question of why the statue seems to be in a different state to how it was in the VN, and why the sword got stolen from it. It’d be easy enough to explain how Satoko could know about the statue and how to access it, but nothing she said here indicated anything to do with that. Her motives seem to be entirely about punishing Rika for leaving the village, so I’m not sure about the idea of her going back in time to avoid breaking the hand on the statue to avoid getting cursed by Oyashiro-sama.

It also sticks out to me even more after this episode that the sword hasn’t actually been used for anything, in spite of clearly being stolen by someone. If the culprit wanted to use it for ritualistic murdering purposes, this would have been the perfect opportunity for that, but Satoko just used the ceremonial hoe thing from the festival.

I also doubt that Satoko would even know anything about the sword and it’s purpose. It could just be another case of ‘the real mastermind is telling her what to do’, but there’s nothing concrete to really point at that.

Even though I could see Lambda being behind this, I’m also still really suspicious of Hanyuu. She’s basically the only person we’ve seen who actually talks about knowing what the sword is, and it’s entirely possible that she was the one to reach out to Satoko instead, considering that Satoko said that she was contacted by Oyashiro-sama, who we already know is more or less Hanyuu. I can at least imagine how this might be some elaborate move on Hanyuu’s part to try and bring Rika back into the village to stay with her longer. But who knows.

Anyway, the whole debate introduced in this episode of whether or not Rika should leave the village, and how it was a ‘sin’ for her to want to leave, reminds me a lot of basically everything from Umineko, with Battler constantly struggling with the question of whether or not to give into the idea of witches existing, and the mystery of what his sin was that he’s being punished for. But in a lot of ways this feels even more cruel than Umineko’s whole gameboard. Beatrice genuinely wanted to give Battler every opportunity to solve the mystery, and she set up the gameboard accordingly, but it feels like Gou’s whole ‘gameboard’ is just designed to beat Rika into submission in the most forceful way possible. The culprit doesn’t seem particularly interested in letting Rika ‘win’, they just seem to want to torture her for her sins.

The last episode was it’s own whole example of Gou feeling much more sadistic toward Rika than Umineko ever was toward Battler, but this episode’s loop seemed to take things another step further with having Rika get screwed over as soon as humanly possible. It’s not 100% clear, but it comes across to me like Rika literally woke up in that loop for the first time at the start of this episode when Satoko had already drugged and disemboweled her, which would really just go to show how Rika’s not being given any time at all to try and win. Matsuribayashi was described as a chess board where she got to start with all of her pawns advanced to the final row at the start of the game, but Gou is quickly feeling like a chess board where her king has been knocked out before she gets to make her first move.

I guess if the culprit’s motive really is just to torture Rika for her sins, it makes sense that they’re not even trying to make this into a ‘fair game’ of any kind, but it still feels noteworthy.

This episode also ends with Takano showing up to talk to Rika about stuff, so I guess that whole part of the plot is about to get delved into once and for all in the next episode, lol.

For better or worse this episode seems to confirm that Rika has remembered Takano’s whole role in things from the very start of Gou, but I still think that it’d be genuinely bad writing to have that be the case, and to then have her just . . . not act on any of that knowledge on-screen until now. With how much they’ve focused recently on Rika being completely confused about her situation and why people keep going L5 and killing her, it’s hard to imagine why she wouldn’t at least assume that Takano’s still behind it, and do SOMETHING to try and deal with her. But instead it just comes across like Rika’s spent this whole time being like ‘wow, I wonder why people keep going L5 unnaturally . . . . . where has this ever happened before . . . . . . . . guess I’ll just die lol’. At the end of the day I know it’d just be due to them not wanting to immediately spoil new fans about Takano, but if they were going to get to this sort of point anyway, it just seems like them hindering the storytelling for no good reason.

But that also just gets into the whole fact that trying to set this up like it’s a remake that’s accessible for new fans is ultimately kinda pointless since that’s turning out to not really be the case, so they could have just avoided issues like ‘Rika isn’t allowed to actually act upon any of her knowledge about the entire mystery and solution of the story because it’d be a spoiler for new fans’ by just committing to treating this as a sequel from the start.

Which is why I’ve been hoping that we’d find out that Rika actually hasn’t been aware of Takano’s whole deal this whole time, since it’d explain why she hasn’t acted upon it, but at this point I may as well accept defeat on that one, lol.

If the next episode does end up spelling out basically everything to do with Takano’s involvement in the plot, which seems to be what they’re setting up, I feel like it’ll be a real make or break point in terms of what Gou is even trying to be, and whether it’s writing decisions up to this point have been worth it, or if it’s been trying to have it’s cake and eat it too.

Anyway, since it’d be boring at this point to have Takano be the villain again, she’s probably going to be innocent this time around. Though I dunno if that’d be due to her having a genuine change of heart as a result of Matsuribayashi, like how Shion’s character development carried over after Meakashi, or if she’s just been getting stopped from completing her goal in each of Gou’s loops.

Mostly I just worry that she’ll wind up info-dumping lots of stuff on the audience that alienates new fans super hard by making it obvious that she used to be the villain, and she had her own entire character arc and stuff, but she’d already been dealt with and now things have changed and she’s on Rika’s side now. But I can’t really imagine how else it’d go.

One way or another it seems pretty likely that the next episode will be the end of the current loop, unless Nekodamashi is going to cover the entirety of this second cour. If we have another arc left after this, that’ll probably be it’s own loop. Which makes me wonder if anything that happens between Rika and Takano here would carry over into the next loop, or if she’ll just use the info she gets from Takano in this loop to do stuff in the next one.

I’m not even entirely sure what they could do with another whole seven episode arc after this one, since it kinda feels like we’re quickly barreling towards the endgame, lol. I’m still hoping that Gou gets into Rena and Shion’s backstories instead of just leaving them in the VN, but at this point I think the rest of the show is probably going to be centered more around Rika, Satoko, and Takano.

Also, since we have another whole eight episodes left to go, I’m pretty sure that the whole deal with Rika basically getting Stockholm Syndrome toward Hinamizawa isn’t the final message we’re going to leave on. It feels more like she’s giving into what the culprit wants, and Takano will probably end up motivating her to fight back against her fate.

I think it’s probably not going to be quite as black and white as ‘it’s entirely good that Rika wants to abandon Hinamizawa as soon as possible’, but I also don’t think it’s trying to push the idea that she deserves all this punishment just for wanting that. It feels more like Ange’s whole character arc in Umineko, and how she has to find a healthy balance between acknowledging the good parts of her family and also acknowledging their crimes. Rika has a lot of completely valid reasons for wanting to ditch the village as fast as possible, but Satoko probably still felt genuinely abandoned by her because of it, without Rika realizing how it’d affect her.

#murasaki rambles #higurashi #higurashi gou #I actually liked this episode a lot but the shift in tone between the first three arcs and this one is kinda hilarious at this point

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milkybunbuns · 3 years

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ii. battles → perfection masterlist → next → previous

w/c: 1.9 K

warnings: spoilers for season 1 episodes 6 and 7

a/n: I moved the basic hero training part to morning because I realised half way through it happened in the afternoon and I was too lazy to change everything 😅

A brand new day, which meant a brand new day of school. You wouldn’t even be surprised if today there would be another test and just unluckily for you, Hawks was nowhere to be seen in the morning, leaving you with no food (the fridge was empty) and there was no time to go shopping considering you were running late. Home school was kinda nicer, you could wake up whenever you want, learn whenever you want and train whenever you want, but sometimes it did get a little bit boring.

Sliding the door open quietly, you slid through the smallest opening possible and settled down in your seat, All Might completely oblivious to the fact that you had just walked in, 7 minutes late, however, it clearly didn’t go unnoticed by Iida. You watched as he raised his arm, panicking internally and waving your hands crazily at him, trying to signal him, no. Yet he paid no mind to you. Grrr, Iida!! Way to blow my sneaky entrance smh.

“Yes young Iida?”

“I’m sorry for disrupting the class, but I would like to point out that L/n-san has entered the classroom late and being part of UA, it is expected that all students should be on time”, he pointed at you, exposing you as everyone turned their heads towards you.

You heard whispers of ‘huhh, who’s that?’, ‘I didn’t see her’, ‘Is she new?’, which brought a lot of embarrassment upon yourself.

“It’s not very nice to whisper about someone in front of them kero”, Tsuyu, spoke up, which stopped all the whispers.

Iida stood up and bowed an almost perfect bow to All Might, “I’m sorry All Might for the discrepancy, please continue.”

“Right!”, the no.1 hero sweat dropped, “Please put on your costumes and meet me at Ground B”, he pressed a button on a remote, the wall somehow magically producing cases which held individual costumes based on requests. You grabbed your case, which was labelled no.9, looking around for Tsuyu so you thank her properly for standing up for you. Her green hair was pretty easy to spot, as you rushed to her.

“Oh hi L/n-san!”, she waved at you with her free hand, still keeping a fast pace.

“Hi Asui-san, thank you so much for standing up for me, I would’ve been a gonner without you.”

“It’s no problem at all and call me Tsuyu.”

“Alright Tsuyu, I was wondering if you’d like to be friends with me?”

“Of course! It’d be my pleasure kero”, okay phew it would’ve been so embarassing if she said no sjoakpa.

Everyone met outside, after changing into various hero costumes. Some looked out right ridiculous, Mineta’s was a great example for sure, while some looked really good and you couldn’t help but be in awe at Ochaco’s costume. It had a really nice colour palette consisting of pink, white and black and fitted her quirk really well.

“Ochaco!”, you waved her over, from where she was standing with Deku, quickly examining his hero costume, you noticed that the teeth looked a bit strange and he kinda looked like a bunny though it was clearly meant to be All Might style.

“Hi Y/n!!”, Ochaco smiled bouncing up and down excitedly, “This is so exciting! Our first hero training class!!”

“Yeah, I guess it is. Your costume is really cutee~”

She scratched the back of her neck sheepishly, “Thanks, but I honestly didn’t expect this to be skin-tight.”

“It’s good for your quirk and easier to manoeuvre around with a tight suit rather than a loose suit. We don’t want you accidentally making yourself float in a battle.”

“Oh yeah, of course, that would be pretty bad. But I love your costume, it’s really bright though, wouldn’t that be bad for stealth?”

“That’s why I’ve already figured out what I want to be. If or when I become a hero, I’m going to be a daylight hero.” Your costume was almost all white, but it also had bits of f/c with it. It consisted of white combat boots lined with stars in f/c near the soles, as well as 3/4 length leggings and a skin-tight top which was able to help cool you off. In terms of gadgets, you had heatproof f/c gloves, a utility belt which contained ice cubes in a small thermos, bandages, a small bottle of water. Other than those, you had a heatproof visor on your face. (Feel free to imagine up your own costume)

“Wait, you’ve already thought so far ahead, we still have 3 years here tho!”

“Well, maybe I’ll change my thoughts along the way, but lets listen to All Might before we get called out.”

“Right.”

It turned out you were put in team I, along with an invisible girl, who had introduced herself as Hagakure and a tail boy who was called Ojiro.

“Okay, Hagakure, you should go scout for them and me and Ojiro will protect the bomb.”

“On it!”, and she was soon out of the room, discarding her clothes in one of the many rooms to become completely invisible. The extra time for the villains was over and before you could begin anything, ice quickly made it’s way to your feet, trapping both you and Ojiro in the ice.

Ojiro pressed a finger to his ear pierce, “Hagakure! Where are you what’s the situation?”

“The Todoroki guy has frozen the whole building and he’s coming to the room right now!”

“Okay, I’ll get us out of this”, you activated your quirk, hands quickly heating up as you let them hover over your feet, the temperature enough to melt it off. Thanks to Todoroki, the whole room was cold, so you could freely use your quirk without overheating, but the negative to this was you could only use up any stored energy from before, since it was almost pitch-black in this room. The door slammed over before you could free Ojiro, revealing Todoroki, who seemed slightly surprised that you were free. He still had no clue how your quirk operated and what it did exactly.

“So,Todoroki-kun? You after this?”, you grabbed the bomb which was still coated in a thick layer of ice and ripped it right out of the ground, allowing a pair of wings to form on your back. He raised his right foot, slamming it down to create a large scale ice attack which you avoided easily, flying out of the window and onto the rooftop where your quirk could operate freely and without end, until your body temperature gets too hot.

Todoroki followed the particles of light out, creating his own path of ice, but by the time he arrived, you already had the bomb safely sitting on the other side of the roof, now instead of being coated with ice, being coated with light energy, which was hot to the touch and melted the ice. Wordlessly, he sent an ice attack towards you, hoping to knock you out to remove the barrier around the bomb. Well he knew it’d know you out, he knew his ice side was powerful. So when you rushed from behind the glacier, sending a ball of light towards him, he was shocked to say the least, but still dodged it.

“If you haven’t figured out by now, your ice only helps me. Using ice attacks is useless, to defeat me, you’ve gotta use your fire side.”

Todoroki frowned, “I can defeat you with just ice, no matter how powerful you are.”

“Hm?”, you arched an eyebrow then shrugged, “Alright, sure.” You created a few more light balls just enough so they were surrounding you, “Say bye then”, you sent them all at once, controlling them to follow Todoroki like guiding missiles. He quickly created a cube like shape of ice around himself, the ice shattering into pieces leaving him unscathed except for a few scratched form the shards which pierced him.

A glacier, larger than the others before raced towards you, and you thought quickly, covering the space around you with light energy which melted all the ice.

“Your quirk relies on light doesn’t it, so what if you run out of it”, Todoroki pointed out, now the rooftop was encased with a thick layer of ice all the way around which was too much for you to melt through without wasting all the energy you had saved. “And even though ice helps keep your body cold, how much of it can you handle before your body starts to get frostbite. My body was made to be able to withstand these temperatures, but yours is made to withstand heat.”

He could already see that you were shivering, your costume didn’t provide much warmth at all, since you simply assumed you would always be too hot rather than cold.

“No way am I letting you win”, you said through clenched teeth, if there was one thing you hated, it was losing. In your palms you held bits of light energy to keep you warm, but you knew you couldn’t keep this up forever, you had to think and act quickly. Your eyes darted around the ice room, all that was there was you, Todoroki and the bomb. Of course! The bomb! The bomb was still covered with light energy. You grabbed onto the bomb, burning your hands in the process, but still managing to throw it at the ice, the heat melting through the ice to create a hole out. At that moment, you realised you had been baited. Todoroki knew you could withstand the heat of your own light energy better than he could and made it so you had no choice but to use the energy form there which got rid of the layer so he could get the bomb. You watched in horror as he reached towards the bomb and in panic, you sent one towards his hand which was badly aimed and went over his arm instead and into the ice walls.

You lunched forwards, even though you knew there was no way you could make it to him in time, as he touched the bomb, signalling the heroes win. Placing his left hand on the floor, everything was melted off. You were shivering from the cold, frost forming along your body. He took notice and felt just a bit bad, and got permission from all might to take you to the nurse’s office. After all, a hero’s role was to save.

You got on the bed, rubbing your arms to try and get warmth, recovery girl’s quirk couldn’t help you warm up since it wasn’t really an injury.

“Here, I’ll warm you up”, Todoroki stated bluntly holding out his left hand.

“R-right thanks”, you chattered, trying to fit both of your hands in his, which were extremely warm, but not too hot. After a few moments of awkward silence, with him staring at you, you let go. “Thanks for the help, but I think I can warm up myself from here on.”

“Alright L/n-san, but I have proven that I can defeat you with only my right side. I will not need my left side to defeat you.”

His words left you thinking for a while, he only required half his strength to take you out, which meant you still had miles to improve. When you got third in the quirk apprehension test, you thought you were pretty good, but you never noticed the difference in power between you and Todoroki till now. Training was definitely needed.

previous - masterlist - next

tagged: @dyna-m1ght

#todoroki x you #todoroki x reader #mha todoroki #bnha shoto todoroki #todoroki x y/n #bnha todoroki #todoroki shoto x reader #todoroki #todoroki shoto #bnha #mha #boku no academia #my hero academia

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saxxxology · 4 years

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What Lurks Beneath the Surface - 1

After Sam’s ultimate sacrifice, you struggle to cope. When he shows up after months of being gone, you’re happier than ever to see him. That is, until you realize that the love of your life is much different than you remember.

PAIRING: Soulless!Sam x Reader WARNINGS: canon divergence (season 6), angst, suspense, violence, smut, minor dub-con, and more. NOTE: Some elements of this series are a little darker than what I usually write. Warnings are sporadic to avoid spoilers - send me an ask if you have any concerns!

Read the entire series on Patreon for just $3

Series Masterlist

Every night after Sam’s death you drink to him. there’s always a bottle of something in your apartment, and you don’t touch it other than to drink in Sam’s memory. Each day his absence hurts just a little more, and on some days it aches so bad you can barely make it out of bed to go to work.

One morning you call in sick and spend the day crying in your bedroom, hugging your pillow and sobbing into the stained pillowcase. You whisper I miss you one second and then curse him the next. Damn you, Sam, you think. Damn you for giving up like that.

And then you wonder if Sam even wanted to make it out alive. Maybe he wanted to die.

For weeks, you try calling Castiel. All you want is a friend, and you’ll take the socially awkward angel as a goddamn roommate if it gets you somebody to talk to.

Castiel doesn’t answer.

Halloween is the first holiday to pass. Sam never liked Halloween, so you don’t dress up or decorate your apartment or go outside to hand out candy. You don’t even watch a horror movie; Sam was always there to protect you when the fake ghosts or monsters got too scary when you were little. Again, while tiny fists knock on your door, high-pitched voices yelling “trick or treat,” you repeat your ritual of drinking to him, making your count rise to exactly eighty.

Eighty days without your best friend.

Next comes Thanksgiving, and you make the long, cold drive to see Dean and Lisa. You spend three days with them, staying up late baking cornbread and cookies with Lisa, letting Ben teach you how to play video games, and the night before you leave, you and Dean go out to a bar and have a drink for Sam.

It feels good to drink with someone else for once.

A few days after you get back home, you’re out getting groceries, and out of the corner of your eye, you think you see him. There’s the blur of a dark gray jacket and brown hair, and the height makes it all the more realistic, but by the time you look up, the blur is gone, replaced by a white-haired old lady who’s easily a foot and a half shorter.

You shake it off, thinking it’s just your overactive imagination.

On Christmas Eve, you’re sadder than usual. Christmas was your favorite holiday to celebrate with Sam, and now that he isn’t here, it seems pointless to do anything related to it. But your apartment is so dark and dreary that you finally decide that wallowing in sadness is getting unhealthy. You spend the morning cleaning up, throwing out empty cans and bottles and you actually decide to test out your dishwasher for the first time since you moved in.

After cleaning and plugging in an apple-scented air freshener, you go out and get a small tree and set it up on your coffee table. A string of little white lights and golden ornaments light up the dark green branches, and when you finally turn them on, they light up your entire living room. It makes you smile, and you go to your room, dig out your brand new Polaroid camera, and snap a picture. The flash goes off, and within seconds the little rectangle of paper falls into your lap.

You hold it up, examining the picture. It’s still not completely focused, so you decide to let it set and grab your phone. You take a quick picture of your tree and send it to Dean.

< Merry Christmas! :)

A few minutes later, your phone chimes, and Dean’s caller ID pops up on your screen.

“Hey.” You answer the phone with the hint of a smile on your face.

“Hey, kiddo, how are you?” Dean’s voice is rough, but quiet, like it usually is after he’s had a couple drinks.

“I’m holding up,” you reply, “what about you?”

Dean exhales heavily, and you wonder if he’s alone and drinking his feelings away. “I’m… not okay, but I’m not going downhill either.” He clears his throat. “It’s just different.”

“Yeah, I know…” you swallow and look at the setting ink on your photo. “I miss him.”

“I miss him too,” Dean says quietly. “Lisa took one of the pictures I have of him and got it printed on a Christmas ornament, it’s hanging on our tree.”

“That’s sweet of her.” You smile. “Maybe I’ll come out for New Year’s Day, we can light fireworks with Ben.”

“Yeah.” Dean replies. The sound of a door closing echoes in the background, and Dean inhales. “Hey, I’ll call you tomorrow morning, maybe we can Skype or something.”

“All right,” you whisper. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

“Sure thing, kiddo. Merry Christmas.”

The line goes dead, and you toss your phone onto the table. The Polaroid still isn’t ready, so you reach under the couch and pull out the box of photos that you’ve collected over the years. You’re searching for one in particular, your all-time favorite out of over a hundred.

It’s an old polaroid of you and Sam on one of the few good days you had when you were younger; John had left the two of you at a mall while he took Dean to an indoor firing range, and the two of you had saved up enough for a Polaroid camera and some slides. In the photo, it’s Sam’s seventeenth birthday, and you’re holed up with the boys in a motel room with a ten-dollar cake and a bundle of multicolored balloons. Dean had taken the photo of the two of you right before Sam blew out the candles, and for once, the smiles you have in the picture aren’t faked.

You set the picture back in the box and reach over to reexamine your brand new photo. It’s a little blurry from the flash, but you reach over to grab a Sharpie and title it anyway.

You’re about to tuck the photo into the box next to the birthday one when you see something.

There’s a shadow in the section of the window that’s included in the photograph. A very human-like shadow.

You examine it closer, leaning forward so that the picture is illuminated by the Christmas lights. The shadow is clearly human, and it’s right outside your window, like someone is walking up the stairs to get to your apartment.

Mail deliveries don’t run this late, and you doubt anyone other than Dean has your address.

You rush into your bedroom and grab a magnifying glass from your desk. Flicking on your lamplight, you lean in to examine the shadow in detail.

The person’s clearly tall, from their position on the stairs and the height of your window. You move the magnifying glass a little to the left and freeze.

That profile… you’d know that damn nose anywhere.

You run out of your bedroom, down the short hall into your living room, to the front door. You wrench it open step out into the cold air, not caring that your bare feet are immediately freezing on the light covering of snow.

The only cars in the parking lot belong to the people who live there. There aren’t any fresh tire marks in the snow. You turn on the light outside your door and feel a hot rush of adrenaline flood your body.

Coming up the stairs and stopping right in front of you are boot prints, made by someone heavy enough to pack an inch of snow down and reveal the cement landing. You rub your eyes, thinking your imagination must be running wild, but when you open them, the prints are still there. You bend down and brush your fingers over the edge of the snow, examining the tracks carefully.

Sam’s boots. You know the indentations like the back of your hand, well over ten years of watching Sam walk through mud or through an old rain puddle had forced the pattern into your brain.

He can’t be alive… he died, he’s been dead for almost five months…

You’re pulled out of your thoughts by the sound of windows banging open, and you look up to see old Mrs. Alderman peering at you. She’s dressed in a pale pink robe and has her white hair up in curlers.

“Y/N, honey, get inside, you’ll catch your death,” she chides.

“I will…” you offer a smile and stand up. “Did you... did you see anyone just now?”

Mrs. Alderman tilts her head. “Out where, honey?”

“Here, by my door.” Your heart thuds wildly in your chest as you watch the old woman carefully.

She nods. “I did, tall guy, long hair, didn’t get a good look at his face.” She motions down the stairs. “He left a good minute before you opened the door. Looked like somethin’ spooked him.” She giggles raspily. “Thought you might have a boyfriend or somethin’ coming over.”

You nod and step back inside your apartment before she can say anything else. You don’t have anything of Sam’s that he could be attached to. Dean had taken his laptop and stash of books with him, leaving you with only the box of photos, but Sam didn’t know that half of them existed, and the others probably not enough to have a memory to hang on to. And Sam would never let himself stay on earth like that, as a ghost or spirit.

You go to the window and slide your curtains closed, blocking any view from outside before doing the same to every other window in the house. You grab the canister of salt from the top shelf in the kitchen and draw a thick line in front of the door, then over all the windowsills in the apartment. It seems stupid, but for the first time in five months, you feel like you’re in danger.

Sam had a lot of weight on his shoulders when he died, and you’ve seen the damage vengeful spirits can do, to both inanimate objects and people.

Finally, when you come back to look at the photograph, you collapse on your bed, holding the paper close to the lamplight.

The silhouette of the face, the height, the description Mrs. Alderman gave you… it terrifies you. There’s no possible way Sam could be alive, or that his spirit could make it to Earth. From the time he was six months old, Sam was damned to hell and nothing he could do could alter it. Demons are probably getting a kick out of knowing he’s down there, battling it out with Lucifer for the rest of time. Tears sting your eyes, and with a glance at the clock you realize it’s time for your nightly ritual.

Slowly, like there’s a weight pulling you down, you rise from the bed and stumble into the kitchen. You pull a brand new bottle of whiskey off of the counter and wrench the top out.

“Miss you, Sammy.” You whisper, and then you tilt the bottle back and take a long, burning swallow.

You feel like you’re falling and you land on something cold and soft and wet. Your fingers tangle in what feels like long blades of grass, and when you open your eyes, the sky is white above you.

There’s a grunt, the THWACK! of a fist connecting with flesh and bone, and the sound of a body falling to the ground.

Turning your head to the source of the sound, you realize you’re in Stull Cemetery, lying not twenty feet from where Sam was standing over his brother, the fingers of one hand curled into a fist, the other hand holding Dean’s shirt with an iron grip.

Bobby’s lying a few feet away from you, his neck turned at an awkward angle. You remember now; Lucifer had snapped his neck before throwing you over the hood of the Impala, the force of your flight enough to stun you on impact.

“Bobby…” You reach out for him, touching his shoulder in a vain attempt to wake him, but he doesn’t move. You hear Sam’s fist connect with Dean’s face again, and Dean’s pleading with him to stop…

Lucifer lets Dean drop to the ground, blood flowing freely from his nose and several cuts across his face. He turns away from you, looking out beyond the tall, black gates of the cemetery. You crawl backwards behind a tall headstone, cowering as Lucifer forced Sam’s body to revolve, his back ramrod straight, eyes narrowed, searching for any living thing in a place of death.

“Y/N…” Lucifer calls your name, taunting you. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Dean groans from his position on the ground and looks up at the imposing figure above him. “Don’t you dare hurt her!”

Lucifer stops, and from around the headstone you can see the hint of a smirk playing on Sam’s fine features. You hide your face as he turns, and you hear Dean shout in pain as his head snaps back, slamming against the side of the Impala hard enough to knock him out.

“Now…”

You cower in fear as Lucifer strides closer to where you’re hiding, his steps even and heavy on the damp earth, and fallen leaves crunch eerily under his boots.

“You can come out and give yourself up, by choice, or…” he stops a few feet away from the headstone, and you hear him take a deep breath, “you can make me come and get you myself. Cas is gone, Bobby’s gone, Dean’ll be out for a while, and Sam...” he scoffs, “Sam’s screaming in here, screaming your name…”

You whimper and cover your mouth, tucking your legs up underneath you. You hear Lucifer pacing away, and you sign in relief.

“I could let him out, you know?” Lucifer says. “I could let you hear the agony he’s in, let you know how bad he wants you to save him. Probably because he’s too weak to save himself.”

Those words make you feel rage over fear, and you stand up from your hiding spot, run around the headstone, and charge the devil.

“You bastard!” you scream, and you raise your fists as your body collides with Sam’s and you strike at his face, kicking and slapping at him even as he grabs hold of your wrists and holds you still. You’re forced to look into his face as he raises a hand to grip your throat, and those dark, glittering eyes are the last thing you see before he flicks his wrist, and your vision goes dark.

You jerk awake, still screaming and crying. Your body is drenched in sweat and there are tears streaming down your face.

“It was a dream,” you tell yourself. “It was just a dream, it wasn’t real…”

Sinking back against the twisted sheets, you feel the darkness return, that cold weight that presses you down into the mattress and stops you from moving.

Sam needed you in that cemetery. Lucifer had said so. Sam needed you and you hadn’t done jack to save him.

What kind of friend were you?

SIX MONTHS LATER...

You’re feeling good for the first time in a while, and when you get yet another sizable paycheck (you’ve been working extra shifts to avoid your apartment since Christmas), you take the opportunity to take a road trip and visit Dean, Lisa, and Ben at their new house. You stay for a weekend, reconnecting with Dean and poring over old memories of growing up with the Winchesters.

When you get back to the apartment on Monday afternoon, however, you have a bit of trouble parking.

Some asshole’s parked a shiny black Dodge Charger in your spot.

“Are you serious?!” You pull into the spot across from Asshole Number One and grab your bags. “What the hell is wrong with people...”

That night you take a long bubble bath to relax from the stress of travel. When you finally drain the water and slip on your brand new robe, you feel completely relaxed for the first time in months. Hell, you might even get more than five hours of sleep tonight. You towel your hair almost dry and toss the towel into a hamper before slipping on pajama shorts and a baggy shirt and pacing into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water from the fridge. You’re back in your bedroom when you get the scare of a lifetime.

Two large, strong arms wrap around you from behind, and one hand comes up to cover your mouth. You scream, but the sound is muffled and when you try to open your mouth to bite, you find that your jaw can barely move under the force.

Kicking wildly, you manage to land your heel just below your assailant’s knee, but their hold doesn’t loosen. You flail your arms above your head, searching out eyes to scratch or a nose to break. Your attacker pushes you towards the bed, and your legs go out from under you as they shove you down, hard enough to knock the air from your lungs. Gasping for air, your screams are half-silenced when they roll you onto your back, using their entire body to hold down your writhing form.

The gun, you think, get to the gun in the nightstand!

You manage to get your legs up and kick, hard. The person on top of you, now evidently male, grunts with pain and stumbles back as you crawl backwards on the bed, reaching for the only weapon in the room.

He’s back on top of you before you know it, dragging you underneath him and pinning you down. Again, he covers your mouth with his hand, muffling your groans and screams of fear.

No, no, please no…

Your lungs burn for oxygen, tears of fear streaming from your eyes and dripping down your face. You thrash around harder, hitting the body above you with fists that grow weaker with every second.

I’m gonna die… I’m gonna die tonight.

You let out one more gasping cry before you succumb to the darkness.

Read the rest of this series on Patreon

Reblogs and comments are much appreciated!

FOREVER TAGS: @atc74 @crashdevlin @daisymoder72 @daughterofthenight117 @emoryhemsworth @ellen-reincarnated1967 @fangirl-and-medstudent-help @fangirlxwritesx67 @fandom-princess-forevermore @foxyjwls007 @heartsaved @kittenofdoomage @karouwinchester @kickingitwithkirk @kyjey @lovelyrocker @lunarsaturn88 @mariekoukie6661 @meganwinchester1999 @misalovesherdog @marvelfansworld @mrswhozeewhatsis @neii3n @polyamorous-winchester @percussiongirl2017 @plaidalecking @squirrel-moose-winchester @sea040561 @sister-winchesters99 @sammys-dimpless @sammysnaughtygirl @spnwoman @swinchester27 @serpentbaby @thecleverdame @tumbler-tidbits @thelittleredwhocould @viinchester @winecatsandpizza @zombiewerewolfqueen @85natalie @4won

#what lurks beneath the surface #soulless!sam fanfiction #soulless!sam x reader #sam winchester x reader #sam winchester fanfiction #sam winchester fanfic

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twilightpoison · 4 years

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Alright so this will contain spoilers for chapters 7 to chapter 21. Also this is unedited and I ramble so good luck reading this lol.

So I wanted to add something to MC. So it was in the other post that we were thinking that MC had photographic memory, but when we panicking THEY WILL NOT REMEMBER ANYTHING. I say this but I’m going to like say that the only time this was not the case when they were in the labyrinth and had to remember how to summon Asmo.

Speaking of Asmo. I said before his was the longest to get but after the end of that night MC would tell him that they were still uncomfortable and to wait for them. Which is were Solomon comes in. The three of them hang out together a lot and that will help MC relax around Asmo more. I give it like a week and half maybe more maybe less. I like to think there are grace periods between the shinanagines. Then when they go back it doesn’t really change? Whether or not Solomon and MC live together is debatable but you bet they all hang out together as much as possible.

SPEAKING OF. Ok have i mention that MC and Solo are like siblings? Like I imagine during the ball when Luci is threatening you, Solomon just steps in like “Hello I am the brother your scaring the baby which is my job.” Then turning around and going “Yeah so lie ignore what he said I’m giving you part of my power to cause shinanagines.” And MC is just screaming internally because they don’t want to but given how these past months went it will actually happen.

I would love to switch topics and bring up something small I mentioned before. MC is the type to not be able to sleep and during one of these nights they probably passed Lucifer’s door to see that the light was still on. So they go the the kitchen, text him if he wants tea, coffee or a snack. Usually its just coffee but MC would take it to him and they exist in the same room until MC feels like they can sleep.

Anyway, we also talked about Satan knowing through his search on the internet about MC’s job, and how he’ll just casually weave it into a conversation leaving MC just confused. He would probably see MC on the same spectrum to him. While he collects knowledge for power MC collects knowledge to feel safe.

During the video game part of his arc, is when they really sit down and actually interact the most. MC giving him the full explanation on why they do the show and the things they learn through their research. They literally spend a whole in game day talking about demonology the others are just in the background like wtf?

YO THE MURDER ON THE TRAIN THOUGH?

BEFORE THAT MC WALKING THROUGH LONDON ONE OF THE BROTHER I THINK ASKED IF THEY WERE HAPPY TO BE BACK AND THIS MC IS JUST LIKE “Oh yeah definitely! Last time i was in London me and Solomon tried to solve a famous murder case! Oh then there was that haunted tavern- *gasp* WAIT ARE WE NEAR COLCHESTER CASTLE?” Their London videos are one of their favorites because i like to think MC is a history nerd sometimes.

Anyway the murder on the train. As Mammon, Luci and Satan are talking about doing things the ‘Demon way’ MC is just like. “Guys I’m and investigator leave this to me!” “Your a paranormal investigator. Let us handle this.” Luci would say but MC just points to Grisella. “THERE IS A LITERAL GHOST AND YALL ARE DEMONS LET ME HANDLE THIS.”

That scene has been in my head for weeks I’m sorry.

Then the horror game prank? Oh hell nah. MC is TERRIFIED. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t cry or something. Like yeah they live with demons lol but the fact that magic exists still hasn’t settled in and now that its actively effecting the people they grew to love they are freaking out.

This is getting a lot longer then I had anticipated so I’ll wrap things up and add to these ideas later. If anyone wants me to elaborate on something let me know.

So coming towards the end of the events when Belphie is out and everything. At first I see MC being very wary about getting close to him. But then they see his brothers acting awkward and avoiding him. MC would feel bad, but they cant bring themselves to automatically hang out with him. So what they do is start by just being near him. Not necessarily talking but just being in the same room or near by. Getting used to his presence. Then slowly building up interactions to get to what we see in the game before the belated welcome party/birthday party.

When its time to leave Solomon would probably also stick behind to wait for MC to go home. Each of the brothers would most likely say the same thing as they do in the game but add in something about their job. Like “if you piss any demons off make sure to call one of us.” Or something.

I already talked about how their show would slowly turn into more of a informational show.

SO THE RETURN. Solomon would 100% drag MC to a portal to hell with a handheld camera. He vlogs saying that they are going to go back to hell for a while to there wont be any videos. THEN PUTS THE CAMERA ON THE FLOOR WHILE MC IS JUST LKE “WHAT? EXCUSE ME? I DIDNT SIGN UP FOR THIS!” And disappear on camera.

Solomon before hand had one of their editors (who is likely a demon he has a pact with) upload that and their fans just FREAK OUT. Like I imagine magic messes with human tech so the camera just fizz out and they hear the spell and like that they are both gone.

God this is turning into a full fanfic idea... I should probably write it at this point with how detailed its becoming. ;;;;;

#shall we date obey me #obey me #obey me spoilers #obey me solomon #obey me buzzfeed unsolved au

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tsunflowers · 5 years

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anime featuring adult women

there are a lot of great female characters in anime, but sometimes it feels like they’re all supporting characters in shows about men or they haven’t graduated high school yet. I wanted to compile a list of some anime with adult women front and center

kidou keisatsu patlabor on tv:

in the sci-fi future as imagined in 1988, human-piloted robots called labors are used regularly by all kinds of people, including criminals. to combat labor crime, the police develop a special unit of patrol labors—patlabor. instead of following the prestigious division one, we follow a cast of quirky characters in second-string division two, as they solve cases ranging from mundane to dangerous to paranormal

izumi noa, and why I love her:

she’s incredibly strong-willed and stubborn. she’ll stand up to anyone. she’s obsessed with labors, not just piloting them herself but repairing them and learning about new developments in the field. even though division two is primarily men and there is the “men at work” vibe of so much military and police fiction, noa fits in easily with the guys and no one excludes her. the few times people do question her skills bc of her gender, they’re immediately shut down

other women in the cast:

nagumo shinobu, the captain of division one. we never actually see her or her unit at work, but they have a great reputation. I just love her bc she’s very funny always shutting down the captain of division two and I like that in-universe there are women in leadership roles like this

kanuka clancy, a visiting cop from new york. her relationship with noa is very strong, definitely shippable. she’s adept with a gun, a sword, and a giant robot. she’s the serious member of the team who yells at the others for being dumb but there are still times where she goes completely off the rails and ignores the law to do what she knows is right

wotakoi: love is hard for otaku:

momose narumi is an office worker and a fujoshi. she wants to keep the fujoshi part a secret this time around because things went south for her at her last job once people found out she was an otaku, but it turns out several of her new coworkers are fellow nerds. most importantly, her game-loving childhood friend hirotaka works at the same company, and the two of them reconnect as friends… and soon more than friends. it’s a romance drama involving only nerds

momose narumi, and why I love her:

she’s a lot like your standard high school girl protagonist who runs out of the house because she’s late for school, but this time she’s late for work. she’s really funny and straightforward, except she thinks she has to hide that side of her at her job. she and hirotaka have a great childhood friends to lovers relationship. she’s kind of rude to him but he adores her (though he’s kind of bad at showing it). I love a cheerful girl/serious guy romance that’s done well and I think this one really is

other women in the cast:

koyanagi hanako, narumi’s new coworker who’s a fellow fujoshi. she’s also a cosplayer, specifically a crossplayer who specializes in cosplaying as handsome guys. she and narumi only met each other under their fandom nicknames before, but they were big fans of each other and hit it off instantly when they meet at work. they’re cute friends even if they always argue about who tops in their ships

psycho-pass:

in a futuristic society, people’s mental health is constantly measured by “psycho-pass” readings which track their emotional state and judge the likelihood that they will commit a crime. naive rookie cop tsunemori akane leads a team of enforcers, people who are considered “latent criminals” too dangerous to live in normal society but who are still useful to the police. akane develops a close relationship with enforcer kougami shinya in particular, but kougami has his own intense relationship with the elusive criminal makishima shogo. as the team of detectives investigate him, they uncover secrets about the system they never wanted to learn and their fates become entwined with makishima’s

psycho-pass is written by urobuchi gen (madoka magica, fate/zero) and if you’re familiar with him you know what to expect. the show is pretty grim and gory. content warnings for rape, violence, gore, body horror, police violence, the predatory lesbian trope, forced institutionalization, and probably a lot of other things I can’t remember. not a light watch, is what I’m saying

tsunemori akane, and why I love her:

she’s incredibly principled. she sticks to what she believes is right despite immense pressure. it’s precisely because she’s naive and doesn’t understand the system that she is able to fight against it. she grows a huge amount over the course of the series but she never loses her compassion or her sense of right and wrong. she’s pretty badass too

other women in the cast:

karanomori shion, a lab analyst at the public safety bureau. she’s your typical sexy and flirtatious anime character but I think her position within the setting is interesting. although she’s categorized as a “latent criminal” unfit for society, she seems to be valued more than the enforcers. she’s also bisexual and dating a woman, though she plays into the “bisexuals can’t settle down” trope a little. she is not actually the best character or peak representation but I’m pretty attached to her and a certain type of woman will be too

kunizuka yayoi, a lesbian former musician and the only female enforcer. she’s shion’s girlfriend. there is a predatory lesbian character in this series, but it’s not kunizuka. I think her being a lesbian is handled pretty well. she has romantic and sexual relationships with women that are important to her, but she doesn’t hate men or flirt with every woman she meets (traits I hate to see in lesbian characters written by men). she’s really serious and calm but still cute and I love to see her growing respect for akane over the course of the show

death parade:

two people wake up in a strange bar with no memory of how they got there. a mysterious man with white hair named decim and his assistant, a woman known only as “the black haired woman,” ask them to play a game. the games are both absurd and dangerous, and as the contestants play them dark sides of themselves are revealed. decim’s job is to judge them based on their behavior while playing the games, but the black haired woman’s influence causes him to wonder if he’s doing the right thing

like it says in the title, the anime deals with the topic of death, and death by suicide comes up as well. I don’t remember everyone’s backstories but I think violence and abuse come up several times. there are also mannequins that move around on marionette strings which is kind of freaky

the black haired woman, and why I love her:

it might be wrong to say that she’s the main character when she isn’t introduced until the end of the first episode and her name isn’t revealed for half the show but listen. she’s the emotional core of the show and the person who sets the events in motion. she’s a very emotional person and that’s her strength. her relationship with decim is the classic “woman teaches cold-hearted man to feel” trope but I think it’s an outstanding example bc it centers her emotional experience and the two of them are not explicitly in a romantic relationship. I’ve been trying to avoid spoilers but for her it’s almost unavoidable. I love the way that her story is slowly revealed over the course of the show culminating in an incredible sequence in episode 11. I think her depression is handled so well too. it’s heartbreaking

other women in the cast:

nona, the boss of the arbiters. she’s a schemer who knows a whole lot of things she’s keeping from everyone else. I really like her outfit above all else. baggy pants with suspenders… a great look

mayu, a high school girl who is a contestant in one of the games. she tries to be cutesy but is prone to anger and makes incredible faces. I like that she’s an obsessive fangirl character who’s played for humor but is also shown as being noble and sympathetic

sakura quest:

koharu yoshino is a woman who moved to tokyo to find a job but has no luck. when she finally gets a job offer, it’s to become “queen for a day” of rural manoyama village. upon arriving in manoyama, she learns that she was only hired because they thought she was someone else but they still want her to work there for an entire year. now she lives in a small town and is tasked with both revitalizing the citizens and drawing tourists in, along with the help of four friends. it may not sound funny and heartwarming but it really is. it’s a good story about connecting and reconnecting and also the head of the tourism board wears a chupacabra mask sometimes

the main characters, and why I love them:

koharu yoshino, queen of manoyama. her struggle in the job market is unfortunately relatable to many people today and I love that she wishes she could have a job as a queen. she’s great and she really comes to love the town despite everything

shiori shinomiya, a very sweet manoyama native. she’s almost too nice but it makes it all the funnier when she gets intense

maki midorikawa, an aspiring actor who is famous among manoyama citizens for a small role she played in the past. she’s serious about acting but her family wishes she would get a more stable job. she can be kind of rude but she does love her friends and her town

sanae kouzuki, a web developer who moved to manoyama to escape the intensity of city life and the negative effects it had on her mental health. the problem is she hates rural life and is afraid of bugs but is too proud to admit it on her blog. the only true city girl among the five

ririko oribe, my favorite of the five. she’s shy but loves cryptids and the occult. it’s very easy to read her as autistic and the other characters affirm her interests and behavior. her love of cryptids even helps the town out when Spanish tourists come in search of a local legend. her relationship with her grandma is really good as well, with the two coming to understand and love each other over the course of the show

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letterstothemidnightsociety · 4 years

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It may be 2020 and the world is slowly crumbling around us but if global pandemics, a U.S. civil war election, and murder hornets and now rumors of Putin’s resignation(???) aren’t sensational enough, it’s time for Sweeps! And I’m still watching Supernatural to avoid all my problems because, well. That should be obvious.

Cas is all of us.

OH! and there will be no discussion of the events of November 5 because guys, I’m still in season 1 right now, I’m not there yet. But yes, I KNOW.

Ok, so before we talk about Sweeps, let’s take a moment to appreciate that at this point in my Supernatural journey, we’re in the back half of season one, and that’s a real miracle for any tv show to get this far. Or at least, it was at the time, when a show could be ordered for the first 13 episodes and then be on the hook for the rest, or Back 9. Supernatural was lucky in that it had been picked up for the full season after episode 4, so there was probably more time to prep that Back 9 than a Front 13/Back 9 show would have been.

BUT that doesn’t mean the pressure isn’t on! Cuz we’ve hit the mid season, we’ve come back from Christmas break, and now it’s Sweeps!

Friendly reminder that TV’s here to make money folks, and Sweeps Week/Sweeps Month are (were??) vital to a season’s success or failure.

It’s Sweeps!

Alright, we’ll back track even further: TV networks and TV stations - the local centers that actually broadcast the shows in a given market - make money by selling ad time. They set the prices for that time by how many viewers are hypothetically watching at any given hour of the day. That’s where ratings come in, specifically Nielsen ratings. Nielsen Media Research, historically one of the most important media research firms out there, has been collecting audience data since the 30’s. They used to cold call households and to ask what each member of the household were listening to on the radio. When television came onto the scene, Nielsen started also collecting data on who was watching what. Ultimately, they dropped the cold calling in favor of diary keeping. Yes, they would actually send out diaries to a certain number of households in a given market, ask the residents to report every show they watched in a given week, and then four times a year, they’d “sweep” the country, collecting those diaries. These diaries would then impact the rate for ad time in each of those markets. Sweeps weeks happened four times a year - November, February, May, and July. And in fact, Sweeps Week is really more like Sweeps Month since it would take a month to deliver diaries to the households and then collect them again. Now, we can gather that data electronically (that is, faster), but Nielsen still tracks viewers for the whole month.

Actual Nielsen Diary which actually lists that someone actually watched a rerun of Seinfeld on TBS. Actually.

So what does Sweeps mean to the people actually producing television? Basically, it means you have to have some real hot sh*t in November, February, May and July. You’ll know you’re in Sweeps when the news stories suddenly get...wild. You know the ones - Killer Hornets in Your Area! When Hugs Kill! Is Your Government Killing You?? Oh wait, that may just be 2020.

For non-news outlets, Sweeps means saving your big episodes for strategic times of the year. You may notice, dear reader, that Sweeps lines up with some key tentpoles in a traditional television broadcast season. The end of November is usually midseason/winter finale time. Midseason finales are a big deal for many reasons, namely making sure you leave your viewers with a desperate desire to come back after the holiday break, but it’s also a good time for getting those big Sweeps numbers. You may also notice that sweeps # 3 is in May - that’s usually season finale time. February, Sweeps # 2, is right in between and July is just before the doldrums of summer. Honestly, July feels like a weird time to look at ratings, but that’s cuz I was raised on TV and it’s just an unwritten rule that there’s nothing good on in Summer.

Ok, I lied - I’m gonna talk about “Despair”, for just a second, I promise, minor spoilers ahead. This episode aired November 5 2020. That’s the final Sweeps period for 2020. And Sweeps may not mean anything to a show in its final season, specifically in this season, but it pulled out some big stops. Declarations of Love and Major Deaths? Yeah, those are two key staples for Sweeps, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence they weren’t pulling any punches in this episode. I know COVID delayed production, but even if they hadn’t restarted airing the season in October, this episode would have aired during May Sweeps. It’s also a series finale, so Sweeps isn’t the only consideration but it’s gotta be some consideration.

So let’s look at episodes 13 - 16, our February Sweeps Month episodes for season 1. What do we have?

Route 666 - Aired January 31, the beginning of February Sweeps

Here’s an episode that felt incredibly dated, but also incredibly relevant to today. The fact that Cassie has to fight with the mayor to prove that Black people are being specifically targeted felt a little Too Real Roy. They mayor even gets defensive that Cassie implies he might be racist because how can he be racist if he has Black friends? Does he say those words exactly? No. But that’s kind of the vibe you get off that conversation. I mean, I think I spent most of this episode making fun of a Racist Monster Truck that’s out there killing people, but honestly, slap a Confederate flag on that bitch and you’ve got any given rally or protest in America right now. I would almost consider this a Very Special Episode of Supernatural, where our brothers (and by extension us as the audience) learn about racism and the toll it takes on people of color, specifically Black Americans in the South. So there’s that.

But more importantly, for Sweeps week in 2006 anyway, was THE SEX. Not only does this episode comment on race in America, but Dean has a girlfriend and they totally bone. I mean, we’ve spent 12 episodes with just two dudes being dudes. Has there been flirting with random extras? Yes. Has there been any satisfying follow through? No. Because you save that for Sweeps. And it works. According to Wikipedia, “Route 666” had 5.82 million viewers the night it aired in America. The episode the week before, “Faith”, only had 3.86. That is almost 2 million more viewers who turned in to watch Jensen Ackles get tossed onto a bed with his shirt off.

Apparently this scene was a big deal because the network expressly told the producers not to have a lady on top and Supernatural just...did it anyway. Way to go, Supernatural, being progressive in all the right ways. Also, because I HAVE to say it, her name is CAS(sie).

Nightmare - Aired February 7

Next up is The One Where Sam’s ESP Comes Back! And boy was this rough. I mean, it’s nice and dark and also brings the show’s Mythology to the forefront, but it ends hella ambiguous. How Sweeps is it? Well, I imagine that the priests getup was included in the trailer as another Sweeps gimmick.

And I can’t decide if including Beth Broderick, OG Aunt Zelda from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, is a big enough guest star to be a draw?

I can’t not see Aunt Zelda

This episode feels like the show is really digging in to its Horror roots again. There’s some gorey special effects. There’s also a lot of small moments in this episode that I really liked, good acting moments and good character moments. It builds in some conflict between the brothers that never really gets resolved, just sort of deflected and kicked down the road for later. Is this Sweeps material? Maybe? The numbers on this are lower than on the previous episode - only 4.27 million viewers, but it’s also not as eye catching as Dean getting tossed on a bed with his shirt off.

The Benders - Aired February 14

I actually really like this episode, even though I forget this is even in season one. This one’s got a nice reversal of the formula for the show - for the first time we see that the monsters killing people are just...people. Or, as I said in my notes for this one - “they’re hicks! They’re just hicks, guys!” They’re not Supernatural at all. And I LOVE the Cop Buddy that Dean picks up. Jessica Steen as Officer Kathleen is SO A+, I would definitely watch a spinoff show of her life.

Dean, what IS this? What is this conversation?

But there’s not a whole lot of gimmick here, not a whole lot of flash. This is just a solid episode, but not a lot of audience grab. The key to that, I think, is in the air date - February 14. It’s possible they stuck this here because they did not expect a lot of viewers, and in fact, they only had 3.96 million viewers tune in that week. Still a good episode though.

Shadow - Aired February 28

And here’s our final episode for February Sweeps. We’re finally getting back to the main story arc. Not only do we see the return of Meg, our most prominent antagonist so far, but we also get the first reunion with John Winchester! I’d say this is a Sweeps episode that’s geared more towards season-long-fans than first time viewers. There’s a lot that happens - 1) Meg returns and reveals her cards as a Big Bad (Medium Bad?).

Oof. That’s...that’s SOME dialogue, guys.

2) John shows up and tells the boys that he knows what killed their mother (and also Jessica).

Ugh. Can we talk about this scene and how John just like, tosses out a whole bunch of information in the douchiest expo dump I’ve seen in a while?

3) John shows up.

These are moments that viewers who have been following along have been waiting for. There’s weight to the scene where Sam and John talk to each other for the first time in years - you feel the tension, you feel the fight that broke them apart, but you also feel the regret, the fact that both of them wish they could take back that fight even though they meant every word of it. It’s good pay off for the hours we’ve spent watching up til now. Of course, Dean deciding the team needs to split up again at the end feels like a real slap in the face. I’m pretty sure I felt it the first time, but definitely this time - John showing up feels more like a tease to keep us interested than any actual development to the show and it makes me feel like I’ve been tricked as an audience member. It feels like they only had Jeffrey Dean Morgan for, like, one day on set. I didn’t think his turn on Grey’s Anatomy was THAT big of a deal, but maybe it was? Maybe he was super busy? Or maybe the show just be like that. But the numbers are good - 4.22 million, a little up from the previous week. Not Dean Bones numbers, but not bad either.

Here’s the thing about sweeps guys - 15 years later and they’re kind of...irrelevant. TV still makes money on ads, sure, and there are probably more lucrative times of the year than others - Summer is still kind of the doldrums of programming - but even broadcast networks don’t run the same way that they used to. As early as 2014, the networks were doing their best to compete with streaming services and on-demand viewing by offering new content all year round, not just during key months. Broadcast networks might still program around Sweeps but that’s not needed now. And Nielsen ratings have been under scrutiny for years, thanks to TiVo. TiVo, guys, not even online streaming. When an audience is not tied to specific time frames, how do you really measure the true number of viewers? Nielsen’s methods of counting viewers hasn’t exactly kept up with the way we binge and watch when we feel like it. As late as 2018, Nielsen was still relying on paper diaries, despite the fact that they’d been using more accurate and up to date electronic methods since 2005. And again, with year-round programming, it isn’t necessary to focus on a specific times of the year.

In terms of business models, I think it’s also important to remember that when we’re not watching broadcast TV, we don’t mind paying directly for our new means of viewing. That’s how cable works, that’s how streaming works. I’ve been paying for Netflix through multiple price hikes and haven’t blinked an eye. I joined Disney+ early enough that I paid for a three year subscription. My parents are cable TV cord-cutters and they’re perfectly happy with a combination of Hulu+ and Roku.

But a lot of TV still does rely on ad time to make a profit. And for those shows, it’s even more important to use measurement methods that encompass accurate viewership numbers. I don’t see a future where Networks use a cable station model (based on subscription fees) rather than on ad dollars. However, I can see a future where Networks do away with Sweeps. Instead, they’ll just offer up that batsh*t sensational content all year round.

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primasveraas-writing · 4 years

Text

The Privilege of Love

Request: "about the finnpoe prompts... Could you write a fic about how after a very dangerous mission and Poe almost losing Finn, he (poe) asks Finn on a date and can't believe his ears when finn says yes and he flies him to some very pretty planet and have a fun, heartwarming date? Ps. I love your fics" -@buckysentbycyberlife

Thank you for the request ❤ This ended up being much angstier and much longer than anticipated, but I hope you enjoy!

NO tros spoilers included

Word count: 2075

XXX

Finn cried out in pain, and Poe fell apart.

At the least opportune moment, he lost all composure, in the middle of a firefight, a desperate, barely successful mission to pick up new allies for the Resistance. Responses to Leia’s call for help had trickled in slowly, but she seized every opportunity available to rebuild their forces. Or rather, Poe, Finn, and Rey did, at her behest.

However, these new recruits needed extraction. They were untrained and in the middle of a First Order-occupied planet, but the risk was determined to be worth it.

(“We’re sending in the calvary,” Leia had said grimly, referring to their trio. “We need everyone we can get to win this war.”)

At first, the mission had gone relatively well; they had gone undetected until their group was making its way back to the cargo ship they were using for incognito transport, and they were rapidly overcome by First Order troopers. Rey led the new forces, a scraggly group of about ten people, to safely, while Finn, Poe, and a few other ground fighters held off the endless waves of stormtroopers chasing them.

It was then when a blaster bolt struck Finn in the leg, and Poe forgot a lifetime of training.

He heard Finn’s yell, a terribly familiar thing after a decade with the Resistance- how many pilots’ dying screams had he listened to through his x-wing’s comms, how many friends had died just feet away from him- and his heart thudded to a stop in his chest. Poe’s instincts told him to keep fighting, don’t look. He had to stay alive, and that meant, sometimes, shooting first and examining the carnage later.

Finn, it seemed, was the exception.

With his blaster in one hand, Poe grabbed Finn’s arm with the other, half-carrying, half-dragging him behind the meager shelter of an abandoned speeder littering the street they had turned into a battlefield. He was trembling, he realized, as he held Finn’s face in his hands. The other man’s eyes were half shut, breaths coming in shudders.

“Finn! Finn-” Poe pleaded, shaking his shoulders slightly. “Come on, buddy.”

Finn's eyes opened suddenly, bright with pain. They focused on his companion's, flashing with fear. “Poe- my leg. I can’t walk.”

“I’ll help you. Look, it’s gonna be alright, just stay with me and it’ll all be fine.”

But Finn shook his head, his voice growing steadier. “I’ll be too slow. You go while you still can.”

Poe stared at Finn, suddenly overtaken by the imagine of Chewbacca descending from the ramp of the Millennium Falcon, Finn limp in his arms. For the briefest of seconds, the glory of destroying Starkiller Base had been squashed entirely. If Finn was dead, then it wouldn’t have been a true victory, and he knew it then, ever after meeting Finn just two days prior. Instinctually and instantly, he understood that Finn was an instrumental part of his existence, one that would be all the lesser without him in it.

The thought had become a recent subject of his nightmares, the more and more he spent his nights falling asleep thinking about Finn.

“No. You’re coming with me.”

And before Finn could protest, Poe stood, hauling their combined weight to stand. He slung Finn’s arm around his neck, raised his blaster, and shouted for his men to cover their retreat.

As they moved, slow and encumbered, Finn was silent, concentrating on his feet. Their journey was not gentle, bounding over rubble, almost endlessly, lengthening the frantic flee back to the safety of their ship.

They made it after an eternity, the last ones up the ramp, collapsing on the ground in an exhausted mess of limbs. Finn grunted in pain, more blaster bolts struck the side of their hull, one of his companions shouted “go, go, go!” towards the general vicinity of the cockpit, and the cargo hauler lurched into motion.

Poe untangled himself delicately from Finn, cautiously minding his wound.

“You’re gonna be okay, Finn.” The commander glanced up at his forces. “Lin, go get the medkit.”

With deliberate motion, Finn sat up, pressing his hand against his thigh. Poe, drenched in both his and Finn’s sweat, still shivered at the smell of charred flesh mingling in the air.

“Thank you,” he said. “For saving me.”

“Of course,” Poe replied instantly, with a brief smile that failed entirely to meet his eyes. “I wasn’t leaving you behind.”

The casual tone of his words sharply contrasted the intensity of his stare, an unusual seriousness tainted with something deeper that Finn couldn’t quite place. His mouth opened, question on his lips, but Lin returned with bacta patches and bandages, and the moment was lost. He was treated quickly enough, but before they could regain any semblance of privacy, Rey rushed in from the cockpit to Finn’s side, and after the latter had been made comfortable on a makeshift bed of emergency blankets, he was left to rest.

Poe watched him from across the cargo bay and wondered why he would never be able to let Finn go.

This was war. Poe had seen more death than he cared to think about, had learned to carefully navigate the line of personal investment and the very real possibility that they could all be dead tomorrow. He loved his friends, his fellow Resistance members, and unfailingly dedicated himself to the cause, but concurrently braced himself for the worst. Their own mortality confronted them in every waking second, and he was no stranger to accepting the loss of others.

Yet, despite the adaptive skill to endure endless casualties, Poe knew that if Finn of all people died, he would never recover. Maybe to the point of losing the ability to pretend that it was okay, to get out of bed and resume his responsibilities without acknowledging his own pain.

He released a long sigh, and turned away.

xxx

By the time they landed, Poe managed to justify his feelings. He would have saved any other of his friends like he did Finn, and it was only natural that he was afraid of losing someone he cared about. There was no difference between his feelings about Finn and his feelings about his other companions.

Aside, of course, from the feelings that caused him to watch Finn sleep peacefully from across the hull, studying the lines of his face, trying to memorize his every perfection in the span of their two-hour hyperspace journey.

The next afternoon, after a sleepless night and a busy morning, Poe accepted an invitation to play sabacc cards with Finn and Rey in the medbay, spending his lunch break to entertain his friend while he recovered, still constricted to bed.

“Poe. Are you okay?” Finn asked him for the second time, and Poe snapped back to reality, focusing on the cards in his hand. He supposed that this was better, to be caught lost in thought about his sabacc hand rather than anything else; just five minutes earlier, he had realized that he was staring at Finn and heat had rushed to his cheeks before he could rationalize why he was studying the corners of Finn’s mouth and the way they slyly turned up whenever he was about to smile.

No difference in feelings indeed.

“Uh- yeah. Just a long day.” He lied quickly, avoiding Finn’s eyes and flashing a tired smile, which, at the very least, was genuine. He had replayed the day before over and over again in his head, conducting fantasies both torturous and blissful. The paranoia of losing Finn made him ache, yet concurrently, he imagined a universe where he could have swept Finn off of his feet, away from danger, and kissed him senseless.

He was face-to-face with his affection now. Dismissing the truth was easier when he could turn away, ignore the thundering in his chest and put off his emotions for a day of calm that likely wouldn’t come until the war was over, whatever that meant for him.

Last night, as he tossed and turned, he realized that he had almost faced the horror of losing Finn, and barely prevented the sobs from escaping.

Both Finn and Rey were watching him carefully, mirror expressions of each other. Uncanny at times, they frequently possessed the ability to know exactly what the other was thinking, and would either act in tandem or finish each other’s thoughts accordingly.

“I’m fine, guys,” He told them, but the strain in his voice said otherwise. The pair accredited him enough to not question his words, although Finn fixed him with another concerned glance that he ignored, despite the pang that pierced his heart in doing so.

Poe tossed his losing cards on the borrowed medbay table, “I’m bombing out,” he announced in distracted defeat at the same time that Rey’s commlink buzzed and she cursed quietly under her breath. The men turned to her, and she sighed.

“The General needs me.” She stood from her chair next to the bed, then leaned down to kiss Finn’s cheek. “I’ll see you later!”

The Jedi smiled at them both, wide and earnest as always. Poe felt a pang of jealousy- not for the nature of the two’s relationship, because he did believe Finn’s assurances that they were indeed just friends- but for the ease with which Rey was able to demonstrate her bond with Finn. Force, how he wished that he could do the same, or even define their bond to begin with.

“You aren’t acting weird because of yesterday, are you? I know I shouldn’t have gotten injured, but I was covering for someone and-”

Holding up his hand, Poe cut him off. “No, no, that’s not it. I’m fine, really, buddy. Just glad you’re okay.”

“You know I don’t believe you, right?” Finn demanded, and Poe barely choked back a stranged laugh at his persistence.

“I do. I do trust that you don’t believe me, but this doesn’t really change much for me.”

“Why not?” He pestered. “Look, I don’t know what’s happened in the last day, but you can tell me.” He sat up straight in bed, pushing himself up with his arms. “Things went wrong yesterday. I’m sorry you had to worry about rescuing me too.”

The words hadn’t fully left his lips before Poe was shaking his head. “Don’t blame yourself, Finn. There was a lot going on in that battle.”

Nonetheless, Finn’s eyes met his, relentless. "Thank you for saving my life," he told him somberly.

Poe melted in his brown eyes instantly, worries of staidness aside. "Of course. It's what we do around here."

The steady gaze between them lingered far too long to be considered casual. For a split second, Poe broke his stare, eyes flitting to Finn's lips.

"Actually I- I really care about you Finn. I don't ever want something bad to happen to you."

The other man recoiled slightly, surprised. "That's hard to guarantee in this line of work, isn't it?"

The deep, forbidden longing arose in Poe, like an uncontrollable wave, washing over every fiber of his being. Finn was right: it was too dangerous to care, too dangerous to promise any semblance of safety, and most of all, too dangerous to love without being hurt.

It was too late for some of those things now. Poe's love expanded beyond him, into the darkest confines of the universe, pushing out his fear and inhibitions and will to stay stoic. He could die tomorrow, and it would never matter to the First Order or anyone else in the galaxy if he loved Finn openly and freely. Their bond was theirs, their love and affection and burden all the same.

He answered Finn carefully, "You know, it is. But some things are beyond my control."

Nodding silently, Finn seemed to understand. Then, a hand slid into his own and squeezed. Poe's heart skipped a beat and out of his chest.

"There's a place I know," he began, deliberately slowing his words. He felt that his happiness, if unchecked, could lead to a mess of rushed words and sentiments that he would never be able to fathom into sense. "just over the hill on the side of the base. If you're interested, I'd like to show you sometime. It's-" he was breathless suddenly and inexplicabably. Perhaps it was Finn, subconsciously leaning towards him or the glimmer of understanding that flashed across his face, "-it's lovely."

Another squeeze. "That sounds perfect."

#finnpoe #finn x poe #stormpilot #finnpoe fanfic #star wars #stormpilot fanfic #tros #stormpilot imagine #poe dameron #poefinn #finn #the rise of skywalker #finnpoe imagine #star wars imagine #star wars fanfic

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yoyo-inspace · 5 years

Note

Mmmm... Top 5 hdm scenes!

all of them

Alright so there are tons of scenes in the entire trilogy that mean so much to me or that I find funny or horrifying or thrilling, etc. Had to narrow it down somehow. So I sort of settled for “scenes that stayed with me” after like, the first or second time I read the trilogy. Those that really etched their way into my head from when I was quite young. They don’t come in particular order though. I noticed going through it after I’d written it that there’s definitely a heavy bias towards moments in TAS, which I think is fair enough considering that’s the book I read last, when I was most mature, and it also has the culmination of a lot of stories - those moments wouldn’t have been half as impactful if they didn’t have the storytelling in the other books to lean on.

This got longer than I thought, but that’s generally what happens when I talk HDM. Also, obvious SPOILER WARNING for anyone who haven’t read the trilogy.

1. Lyra finding Tony Makarios in the shed.God, this scene. The build-up for it is amazing and absolutely chilling. There’s been build-up all throughout the book to what the Gobblers are actually doing. We get closer and closer to it. And then this chapter happens. The slow approach to the shed, the ominous but vague warnings from the alethiometer, the stories from the town’s people. You can really feel the dread creeping up on you. And then that last paragraph hits you.

The little boy was huddled against the wood drying-rack where hung row upon row of gutted fish, all as stuff as boards. He was clutching a piece of fish to him as Lyra was clutching Pantalaimon, with both hands, hard, against her heart; but that was all he had, a piece of dried fish; because he had no daemon at all. The Gobblers had cut it away. That was intercession, and this was a severed child.

It honestly gives me shivers every time. Nearly tear up reading it. I think it’s one of the best examples of how brilliant Pullman’s world-building is (and I do think his world-building is the strongest aspect of NL/TGC). I honestly don’t think this will be as strong in the tv show (and the movie really didn’t do it justice) - though I hope it’ll be horrifying - and that is because in a visual medium, we won’t get the horror and insight into Lyra’s mind that we have in the book. That’s okay, some things just fit better in the written medium, and I think this moment is going to be one of them. Lyra’s internal struggle with how to be brave is so good, and I hope they manage to portray a little bit of it on screen.

2. Roger leaving the land of the deadIf I tear up every time I read the Tony Makarios scene, this is the scene where I bawl. Literally, I started crying while writing the passage down. The entire sequence in the Land of the Dead is intriguing to me, and Lyra telling the ghosts of what will happen to them is beautiful, and the struggle to get there is painful. And then they get there. And Will opens the window and they’re all crowding, afraid and yet excited to be out of that horrible place. And then a little ghost of a boy, the boy who was the reason Lyra set out on this journey to begin with, takes a step forward.

The first ghost to leave the world of the dead was Roger. He took a step forward, and turned to look back at Lyra, and laughed in surprise as he found himself turning into the night, the starlight, the air… and then he was gone, leaving behind such a vivid little burst of happiness that Will was reminded of the bubbles in a glass of champagne.

That specific phrasing, the description of happiness as “the bubbles in a glass of champagne” has stuck with me for so long. It’s one I keep coming back to.

3. Lyra leaving Pan Don’t have much to say about this other than I still have such a vivid image in my head from when my dad first read that passage to me, of how I remembered it all to look, of what I felt at the time. Especially my shock at the call-back to Lyra’s betrayal. Again, a scene that in several layers is strengthened by the world-building. We’ve been so convinced at this point how painful it is to leave your daemon, both emotionally and physically. I’m greatly looking forward The Secret Commonwealth to dig into what this did to the relationship of Lyra and Pantalaimon.

[--] Lyra was doing the cruelest thing she had ever done, hating herself, hating the deed, suffering for Pan and with Pan and because of Pan; trying to put him down on the cold path, disengaging his cat-claws from her clothes, weeping, weeping. Will closed his ears: the sound was too unhappy to bear. Time after time she pushed her daemon away, and still he cried and tried to cling. [--]

”Pan, no one’s done this before,” she whispered waveringly, ”but Will says we’re coming back and I swear, Pan, I love you, I swear we’re coming back - I will - take care, my dear - you’ll be safe - we will come back, and if I have to spend every minute of my life finding you again I will, I won’t stop, I won’t rest, I won’t - oh Pan - dear Pan - I’ve got to, I’ve got to.” And she pushed him away so that he crouched bitter and cold and frightened on the muddy ground. What animal he was now, Will could hardly tell. He seemed to be so young, a cub, a puppy, something helpless and beaten, a creature so sunk in misery that it was more misery than creature. His eyes never left Lyra’s face, and Will could see her making herself not look away, not avoid the guilt, and he admired her honesty and her courage at the same time as he was wrenched with the shock of their parting.

[--] Her eyes never left Pantalaimon, who stood trembling at the shore end of the jetty; but as the boatman let go of the iron ring and swung his oars out to pull the boat away, the little dog-daemon trotted helpless out to the very end, his claws clicking softly on the soft planks, and stood watching, just watching, as the boat drew away and the jetty faded and vanished in the mist.

(Sidenote: I remember getting to the chapter titled “Lyra and her Death” and doing a big WHAAAAAT kind of face. My dad laughed at me. Either way, I find the concept of a personal Death strangely comforting.)

4. Asriel and Marisa into the Abyss This one is difficult to quote. Because it’s the whole scene, the whole part of it, the fight - which is brutal - and the ferocity of these two people who, granted, are both absolutely awful, but they do this thing at the very end and it saves everyone. It’s one of the many things that people do at the end that saves everyone, but still. Especially Marisa, who reveals earlier that she was so afraid of exactly this type of faith, just nothingness, to make that last jump, as Asriel calls her name, and she’s roaring as they topple Metatron over, the fact that they both have each other’s daemons at their side. It’s just a very haunting scene. I don’t think the tv show (or any movie) would have been able to pull of the exact way I imagined this in my head, but I’m looking forward to seeing it all the same, and I hope that we get there.

Instead of quoting the very end, I picked the moments just before, when they’re together again for a brief moment before Metatron arrives. It’s a rather sweet conversation, considering who’s involved, Marisa crying and Asriel comforting her. The “Dust is beautiful - I never knew” stuck with me especially.

He took her in his arms, and the golden monkey embraced the snow leopard’s neck and buried his black face in her fur. ”Is Lyra safe? Has she found her daemon?” she whispered. ”The ghost of the boy’s father is protecting both of them.” ”Dust is beautiful. I never knew.” ”What did you tell him?” ”I lied and lied, Asriel - Let’s not wait too long. I can’t bear it. We won’t live, will we? We won’t survive like the ghosts?” ”Not if we fall into the abyss. We came here to give Lyra time to find her daemon, and then time to live and grow up. If we take Metatron to extinction, Marisa, she’ll have that time, and if we go with him, it doesn’t matter.” ”And Lyra will be safe?” ”Yes, yes,” he said, gently. He kissed her. She felt as soft and light in his arms as she’d done when Lyra was conceived thirteen years before.

5. Lyra and Will freeing the Authority For a series that people keep harping on is about killing God, the actual death of the creature who called himself that is actually quite beautiful. It’s even a little sad. But it’s also important to me that there is actually no killing going on. All that happens, in all its unremarkable-ness - because no one else notices - is that there are two children who are kind and wants to help. And that’s what they do.

Will cut through the crystal in one movement and reached in to help the angel out. Demented and powerless, the aged being could only weep and mumble in fear and pain and misery, and he shrank away from what seemed like another threat. ”It’s all right,” Will said, ”we can help you hide, at least. Come on, we won’t hurt you.” The shaking hand seized his and feebly held on. The old one was uttering a wordless groaning whimper that went on and on, and grinding his teeth, and compulsively plucking at himself with his free hand; but as Lyra reached in too to help him out, he tried to smile, and to bow, and his ancient eyes deep in their wrinkles blinked at her with innocent wonder. Between them they helped the ancient of days out of his crystal cell; it wasn’t hard, for he was light as paper, and he would have followed them anywhere, having no will of his own, and responding to simple kindness like a flower to the sun. But in the open air there was nothing to stop the wind from damaging him, and to their dismay his form began to loosen and dissolve. Only a few moments later he had vanished completely, and their last impression was those eyes, blinking in wonder, and a sigh of the most profound and exhausted relief. Then he was gone: a mystery dissolving in mystery.

___

Whew. There we go. More crying than I was expected, though I probably should have, considering it’s me.

Quick honorable mentions, because I’m a horrible cheat, but without explanations: Lyra in the Retiring Room, Lyra leading the children through the snowstorm after Bolvangar, Mary Malone talking to the Angels through the Cave, Will and Lyra fleeing the children of Cittàgazze, all of Marzipan, Mary Malone standing on the platform and looking through her spyglass at the dust, Pan and Lyra talking about the Republic of Heaven.

#his dark materials #philip pullman #thanks for asking!! this was a lot of fun #had to replace a few elipsies because tumblr hates them #his-dark-memerials

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imyourliquor-youremypoison · 5 years

Text

Big Spook (Peter Parker x Reader - Part 2)

Synopsis: Aged Up!Peter thinks he’s done well with leading a double life. He’s studying what he likes, he has his own place, he’s dating the girl he loves… but that doesn’t mean life is easy all the time. Even superheroes have bad days - and sometimes worse days.

Tags: Aged Up!Character, College AU, Established relationship, Whump, Angst. Does not take FFH into account. SPOILER FREE.

Word count: 1.8k

A/N: I decided to write a shorter piece since my long ones don’t get a lot of attention. I don’t know why… Do you guys prefer short imagines? Do you get discouraged when you see “word count: 9k”??? Please tell me in the comments so I can adapt my writing :(

Part 1 <<< >>> Part 3

MASTERLIST

Today was October 11th, and it was a day like any other.

Peter was an open book to whoever knew how to read him. (Y/N) could see through him, he literally couldn’t hide anything from her if he tried. She knew what kind of OCD meant he lied, or hide something from her, or was nervous.

One thing she had learned over time, was that he usually switched to reversed psychology whenever he was mad. He would tell her she was the worst, that he hated her little quirks and habits, that he didn’t want to see her or talk to her, but she knew he meant the opposite.

So when Peter told her not to wait on him, she knew better than to obey. (Y/N) picked up her manual to finish her work, sitting on the same spot, in the same position as before, and she would stay like this until Peter came back.

She had closed the window now, before it was getting fresher and fresher every day, but it was unlocked so Peter could enter later. He tried to avoid walking around the building as Spider-Man, so the window was the best option. The fire escape allowed him to come back even if something happened and he couldn’t use his web shooters anymore.

She hoped he wouldn’t need to use it. Still, (Y/N) couldn’t just go to bed and pretend everything was fine. Therefore, she would wait.

A few hours later, (Y/N) opened her eyes, yawning and stretching. Shit. She had fallen asleep on the couch. No wonder, it had been a long day. A shiver ran down her spine and she hugged herself, rubbing her own arms to warm up. Why was it so cold in here? Had the heating system gone down again?

No. The window was open. Suddenly completely awake, (Y/N) shot up to her feet.

“Peter?” she called, meeting nothing but silence, only disrupted by the distant police sirens blending in the background noise, and the chatter of people walking in the street.

A thousand thoughts assailed her mind. What time was it? How long had she slept? Was Peter back? But if it was Peter who opened the window, why didn’t he close it afterwards? Why didn’t he wake her up? He usually let her know she was back or carried her to bed. If it wasn't Peter, then who? A burglar? Would a burglar sneak into their apartment even though she was sleeping right there on the couch? None of these questions found answers except for the first one.

Her eyes glanced at the microwave clock. It was half past one. No wonder it was pitch black outside.

“Peter?” (Y/N) called again, a bit louder this time.

If it was a burglar, maybe he would leave through another window, for fear of being caught red handed. (Y/N) hoped so, because she couldn’t fight. She wasn’t a fighter in the literally sense. Peter and her had briefly discussed teaching her the basics of self-defense, but they had quickly dismissed the idea altogether because as much as (Y/N) was a tough cookie, she had two left hands.

Not knowing what to do, she first decided to close the window, to get rid of the chilly draft. Then, she grabbed her massive engineering manual – surely it would hurt if she threw it hard enough? Her aim was half decent. One deep breath later, (Y/N) gathered her courage and inspected the rooms one by one. There weren’t a lot of room to inspect, granted, but going from the main living space to the bedroom was already scary enough if you considered there might be an intruder waiting for her in the dark, ready to strike.

She switched on the light as soon as the flip was within arm reach and found no one. The room was exactly the way they had left it earlier today, nothing had moved, not even the bed sheets. A long exhale crossed her lips, and she felt the tension leave her body. There was still the bathroom left, but what would a burglar do in their bathroom? There were no windows big enough to escape through and nothing of value in there.

(Y/N) dropped her manual on the bed and ran a hand through her hair to pull it back, feeling anxious beyond reason. Something was still off. Wasting no more time, she barged into the bathroom, expecting to find Peter in the shower or something of the sort, ready to demand an explanation for the way he had left earlier and then returned without a word.

Instead, what she found chilled her to the bone. The sight before her eyes made her blood curdle instantly and she dropped to her knees – not intentionally, her legs simply gave out.

“No, no, no, no,” she began to chant like a litany, a prayer to whatever god was listening.

It was Peter, but he wasn't in the shower. (Y/N) felt sick, and she barely had enough time to throw herself towards the toilet seat before retching, black spots dancing before her eyes when she emerged again.

In her precipitation, she tore a long piece of toilet paper off the roll and wiped her mouth, then looked at Peter again, horror painted over her features.

“Peter,” she whispered, hands shaking so violently she didn't dare touch him, in case she hurt him more than he already was.

He laid on the tiled floor, eyes closed – unconscious? Asleep? Dead? (Y/N) nearly retched again at the sheer thought. She had never seen him like this.

“Peter, please, Peter,” she cried out.

Her vision blurred slowly but she couldn't stop the tears from welling up. This was nothing like the day she had found out about Spider-Man, this was much worse. Please, let him be alive, please, please, she pleaded silently.

His suit was in pieces, there was nothing to save, nothing at all. He looked as though he came out of a shredder, cut, lacerated, torn in places. Was it bloody skin or red fabric? (Y/N) couldn't tell, and she didn't ever want to know. She looked down at herself when she felt something damp on her knees and found she was sitting in a pool of blood.

She was frozen. She stared at her blood soaked bottoms, unable to move, unable to say anything, unable to form the barest coherent thought. There's blood. There's so much blood. Peter's blood. It was all too much for her, she felt lightheaded all of a sudden and had to gather all of her strength not to faint right then and there.

“Oh no, no, no, Peter...” she whimpered still, finally recovering her voice and trying assess the damage. “What happened to you, Peter? I told you to be careful, I told you!”

He didn't answer, but she couldn't stop the flow of words from pouring out. Then, she had an idea, and fumbled to get her phone out of her pocket, quickly placing it over his parted lips, trying not to shake too much.

(Y/N) let out a loud sob of relief upon seeing the screen fog up, a sure sign that he was still breathing. But he didn't look good at all. Apart from his severely beat up and slashed body, there was also a monstrous gash on the right side of this head, running from his temple to the back of his head, oozing blood. It was the wound responsible for the pool of blood around him.

Peter's heart might still be beating, but (Y/N)'s had stopped completely and stood still in her chest, waiting for the shock to wear off. His hair was matted in dried blood. How long had he been here? How long did she sleep while her boyfriend bled out on the bathroom floor? (Y/N) began to heave, struggling to breathe while loud sobs forced their way out of her throat in between hiccups.

“Peter, Peter wake up,” she kept on crying, pointlessly. “I'm begging you, Peter, please, please open your eyes.”

She couldn't see anymore, everything was a blur, tears poured out of her eyes and mixed with the blood staining the floor. She could see herself scrubbing Peter's blood off the tiles while bawling her eyes out later, like in a bad movie. This couldn't be real, it couldn't happen to them.

What to do? Her mind was racing. The urgency of the situation struck her so hard she couldn't even think straight anymore. But she knew that she couldn't waste anymore time now, Peter's life was on the line. (Y/N) angrily wiped the tears away and took her phone again. Crying would be for later – for when Peter wasn't on the brink of death.

It took a few tries because she was still shaking like nothing she had ever experienced before, but (Y/N) managed to call Happy at long last, not knowing what else to do. She couldn’t remove his suit like she did last time he came home bruised and battered, she might do something wrong and hurt him even more. The hospital wasn’t an option either, Peter wouldn’t want to expose his true identity.

Happy picked up because he knew her number and knew she wouldn't call at this hour unless it was important, and (Y/N) made a mental note to thank him properly later. She tried to explain what was going on as best she could, but if someone asked her, she wouldn't be able to tell them what exactly she told Happy on the phone. She knew that she cried a lot, and stuttered some incoherent nonsense, but he must have understood something among the violent sobs raking her body, or at least sense the urgency of the matter, because she said he would be right over.

(Y/N) had no recollection of what happened next. She knew only that she didn't leave Peter's side at any point up until they arrived at Stark Tower and he was taken into surgery was one Helen Cho, and Happy had to hold her back so she wouldn't follow him.

He was so pale, so lifeless. Her heart hadn't picked up again, and (Y/N) wasn't sure she would feel it beat before she was certain Peter was okay. She cried some more into Happy's shoulder. He didn't let go of her until exhaustion got the best of her and (Y/N) collapsed in his arms, cheeks stained with dried tears and eyes red and puffy.

Today was October 12th, it was a quarter past two in the morning, and (Y/N) would never forget the date.

TAGLIST: @palindrome-teddy @complete-trash-101 @keeperofhopesanddreams @i-love-whumperflies @golden-guide

Comment if you wanna be tagged on part 3 :) (It became longer! oops)

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