#but i almost wonder if doing the scaling for the land would work before placing buildings because if the lands scaling is off it'll look we

[ro-sso]

what if i... hypothetically... made a minecraft world into a replica of star stable online... what would people do...

#no cause i've been thinking about this #how do i translate blocks to sso scale? I mean we know that if we try to translate the MC body to minecraft then things will naturally have #to be slightly goofily oversized #especially since horses are 2 blocks wide in minecraft so stables like moorland are probably 4x4 (home stable is probably a 2x4?) #although then how do you translate queset boards? obviously the right detail cant be translated over without oversizing everything #I feel as though I have a good enough knowledge of ML/FP to start there at least #but i almost wonder if doing the scaling for the land would work before placing buildings because if the lands scaling is off it'll look we #my main thought is to start with an ocean superflat and world edit then build up the coast of fort pinta? or start in the centre of moorlan #OR i try and match sso's co-ord system to the minecraft co-ord system #that'd be another way of doing things #hmmm many thoughts #sso #minecraft #ssoblr #star stable online #star stable #starstable

[cat-astro-pick]

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑻𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒅, 𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝟎𝟐

𝑀𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠, 𝐸𝑧𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙 𝑥 𝐹𝑒𝑚! 𝑅𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑟

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑻𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒅, 𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝟎𝟎

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑻𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒅, 𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝟎𝟏

It's been about a month since Heartsteel debuted. Nothing had changed. Ezreal called me up without even a hint of trying to care what the fans thought.

I was sitting in my studio, mindlessly taking notes on the score. The clicks of mouse and keyboard and the spinning of my laptop fan filled the room. I wondered how much my new piece would sell for. It was pretty pathetic that something I used to love to do was now just a way to make money.

I thought of a mouse. I remembered a mouse named Geronimo Stilton. With his long snout, sniffing cheese, loving what was around him, and speaking out when he saw injustice. As a child, I emulated him a lot. As the flavor of a clumsy cream cheese cake lingered on the corners of my mouth, I felt soap bubbles spinning around my head. The same mouse who rode in time machines and went on adventures to save fairy tale lands reminds me-

"There's a weird scale here."

"Huh?"

I said in my dumbest voice, with my dumbest expression, and my dumbest words. While I was making a fool of myself, she took the mouse and fixed the scale. I couldn't lie now and say it was intentional. I couldn't control my meltdown emotions. I've been thinking about the past a lot lately. The hand that popped the balloon was like popping my heart.

[Witnessing the debut of 'HEARTSTEEL', a group that will steal your heart at first sight].

[A close-up look at the lives of the HEARTSTEEL members!...]

[Exclusive! Ezreal's...]

.

.

.

I shoved my phone into my pocket. Shoulders ached. And my elbows, which had been crushed by the armrests for so long. My work had slowed down noticeably since everyone had left. I closed my laptop only after I'd made such a mess that efficiency was nowhere to be found. I slowly mulled over the title of the article I'd seen earlier. The more I thought about it, the funnier it became. I was proud of him, and then a nasty feeling of anxiety creeped up and wrapped around me.

I don't think Ezreal would abandon me. If he's the kind of person who would neglect a friend just because he's famous, then there's no reason for him to accept the selfish me that I was even before then, the one who broke promises, spoke harshly, fought with Kayn all the time, and hid in the corner of the room by myself. So I pushed harder. Even then, I was so stupid that I was testing Ezreal's feelings for me, experimenting to see if he'd get angry or not, even when I was wrong. Ezreal was the one who always passed my ridiculous and unfair tests. I, who was relieved to see him and then tested him with increased intensity, contributed nothing to his success. So I shouldn't be the one who is celebrated in Heartsteel's success.

But,

"...You idiot?"

"Why?"

"You're the one who should be celebrated."

"So what?”

“…Seriously?”

When I showed up at Ezreal's studio with the expensive bottle of wine I'd gladly bought, I was greeted by colorful confetti as soon as I opened the door. I was dumbfounded by the confetti covering my shoulders and head. I almost threw my wine bottle on the floor in surprise, but Ezreal didn't care. A pom-pom cone hat trimmed with shiny soft plastic was placed on my head. It was a tacky pink, the kind of color my mom might have put on when she was a young lady. Ezreal's hat was green. I didn't bother to joke that if Ezreal's hair had been a little more bushy and less cared for, it might have felt similar.

It was just the two of us, but it was refreshing in its own way. It was like having fun for the first time in a long time. Even when he was famous, Ezreal loved to spoon-feed the cake. It was fun to have a party with just the two of us, where we didn't have to be formal. In hindsight, I realize that it wasn't just the party that made me happy. There were other external factors beating on my heart. Well, I would call it a simple alcoholic deception.

When I opened the wine, the atmosphere was too quiet. I would have paid more for champagne if I'd known this would happen. The thought of Ezreal watching me open the wine with a spoon full of whipped cream in his mouth was overwhelming. If it was champagne, he'd be covering his ears and videotaping me from afar. Alas, fancy wine glasses don't exist in the workshop. Instead, we brought in two glasses and poured wine into them. It was wine, but we drank it like grape juice. The wine wasn't sweet, but that was okay as the cake was sweet. And there was something even sweeter in between. I'm not the type to get drunk, but I couldn't stop smiling that day. It was like someone was playing timpani and xylophones in my head. In fact, I don't remember much after that.

It was cold on the way home. As soon as I got home, I took off my stuffy walker, laid down on the floor, and laughed like a madman. It swung around and hit my shin, but I didn't even feel the pain. I couldn't remember how I'd gotten there, but my cheeks were hot, red and puffy from the cold wind.

I felt dizzy, precarious, like a piece of paper with a small margin. There were so many things I wanted to do. There were many things I wanted to say. There were many medications I was taking, and many doubts about the things that surrounded me. Walking back from the death wasn't exactly exhilarating. Cold sweat trickled down my muffler. The night view of the city was beautiful. I looked at the night view upside down, like a spider hanging from the ceiling, and saw the fall of the city. Maybe the fall would be mine. These were feelings that would be fine after a bout of tears. I felt like I was losing myself with each person I encountered. So I disliked Ezreal. Maybe I had a crush on him. Or maybe it was love. And so what?

I had done so many terrible things.

I tested him. I craved affection, and when I got it, I walked away. I came back when I ran out of love. I was no great being; I could not give him eternal life by sucking his blood. All I left him with was a terrible scar.

A day of emotion. Days when I can't get them out and they turn into a lump in my throat that burns and flows out of my eyes. On days like that, I had an awful habit of wanting to quit everything. I wanted to give up, but I didn't know what I wanted to give up, and I had no regrets. I just stupidly thought about the font of the name on my tombstone. He and I weren't meant to be. No, it shouldn't have happened in the first place. If God is a transcendent being with proper reason, he should make me miserable.

My pride wouldn't let me accept him. My horrible past wouldn't allow me to accept him. If I was going to spill my guts to Ezreal, it had to be after I'd changed. If not, it had to be when I wasn't me. Maybe I should go back a few years and strangle myself. Yeah. I didn't want to admit it. The moment I admitted it, I would have to deny my existence. Denying an emotion kept me whole, which is why I was afraid of emotions. To admit now that I'd been pouring out those sticky, unpleasant feelings to Ezreal would be like being naked in a clothing store display case. I'd held it in so far; it wasn't that I didn't want him to be famous. Stupidly, with a strange sense of possessiveness, I wanted him to be in my enclosure, but the world outside the egg told me that my illusions were false. Rather, it was I who was stuck inside his cage. The feeling of the world as I knew it expanding excluding me made me uneasy.

I should have kissed him when we were drunk. I'd ask him to forget the past. When this drunkenness was over, I would try to deny these feelings again. Solid feelings that haven't wavered in over a decade aren't going to show up for Ezreal overnight. At least not unless I change on the inside.

#ezreal #heartsteel ezreal #heartsteel x reader #heartsteel #lol #lol heartsteel #league of legends #league of legends x reader #lol x reader #ezreal x reader #lol fanfic #x reader #heart steel

[sharpen-your-hatchet]

What I feel; What I do; What I want || Wenclair fic - Chapter 1

Description: "Frankly, all her life, she has felt separation between what she feels, what she does, and what she actually wants. Being royalty means there's often little room for opinion and desire [...]; Enid wonders how it'll feel to have her ingrained sense of duty be pitted against her unshackled curiosity. "

Six months past her 19th birthday - Enid, princess of The Kingdom of Nevermore, is allowed the chance to travel and explore the world as she sees fit. Unfortunately, it comes with a little caveat... in the form of some unwelcome company for protection. Cue Wednesday Addams, the only knight deemed worthy, and who is now Enid's personal thorn in her side.

Can they work together despite their differences? Or maybe fate has an entirely different plan for them altogether...

Pairing: Wednesday Addams / Enid Sinclair Rating: General Audiences Word Count: 3150

Click Here To Read On AO3 or read below!

x-x-x-x-x-x

The Kingdom Of Nevermore. A proud nation that towers not only in size, but also in the scale of opportunity it offers those who live within it’s borders. It is a magnificent nation, both well governed yet free. Not only this, as Nevermore is also a sprawling landscape with plentiful forests, lakes, and deserts to support the livelihood of almost any race and species. Anyone is welcome – particularly those thrown from their lands by beasts and thieves, or have otherwise been outcast. It is a land of peace and prosperity; a place that anyone may call home.

Within Nevermore’s borders there are a variety of towns, cities, and outposts – all freely explorable to every citizen if they are brave enough, or can find some way to adapt themselves to the local climate!

Some of these homesteads are within the coldest depths of the darkest caves; others amongst the crashing waterfalls of the great lakes that feed every river within the land. One particularly hardy group even find themselves nestled within an expired volcano. It is a sight to see. Not only are there free citizens, but factions too: causes people may align themselves with for a greater purpose. Most are for good, and to make Nevermore stronger… but not all are quite so innocent, though this is best not dwelled on. Unfortunately, corruption and evil can leech into anywhere, and no kingdom can be perfect - but for most, Nevermore is a place to call home and feel safe.

Within the main central city there is a castle. It is a magnificent building that is surrounded by elegant gardens, that only adds to the beauty of its architecture. This castle is the ancestral home of the Nevermore Royal Family, and it is where they still reside to this day. Though there is government, the Royal Family does not rest on their laurels. They take great pride in participating in the growth and maintenance of their land. The current family consists of the queen, prince consort, a myriad of young princes, and their single daughter – Princess Enid.

Today is a special day for the Royal Family, and there is an excitable thrum throughout the castle. Hums and whispers; glances between staff… and it is all to do with the princess herself. The staff that tend the garden look upon her room – easily spotted from the large circular stain-glass window – and wonder when the princess will emerge…

Their wait will not be long. Princess Enid awakes with a summer song in her heart, pulled into the world of the waking from a slither of sunlight piercing the curtains of her study. With a slight twinge in her neck, she groans as she shakes herself awake. Asleep at her desk again, it would seem… With an ancient Nevermorian text acting as her pillow. She must rush to her bed quick before the servants find her like this again. With sleep in her eyes, she stumbles through the short hall connecting the private study to her bedroom, tugging off her slept-in day clothes, before slipping into the relaxing coldness of her bed.

They will never know. She will play the neck ache as a training accident. Genius.

As if on cue, a servant quietly enters the room, a fond but restrained smile on his lips. He carries a tray over to the bed, his smile widening as he catches the sparkle within Enid’s eyes. Placing the tray down on her lap, he steps back then and awaits her commentary.

Enid shuffles one of her plush animals before looking down. It is a decadent array of fruits, some meats, breads, and tea. Delicious no doubt – but excessive. “Quite the platter this morning.” She muses, quirking her brow as she looks amusedly to the servant.

“Ah yes...well, you will not experience such decadence out there in the wild,” He replies, his tone playful but warm. “The kitchen thought it well you have a good hearty meal for your big day.”

Enid takes some of the meat – a sliced ham of sorts – and places it upon some bread before taking a bite. It is savoury and frankly, to die for. She is thankful for the effort, even if she thinks it unnecessary. She must remember to thank the kitchen staff before it’s too late. She grins at the servant “It’s wonderful! Though, definitely too much.”

The servant dips his head, shrugging. “I tried to tell them.”

“Well, I shall tell them myself once I am dressed.”

“Of course. I shall leave you to run your morning, princess.”

The servant smiles and leaves promptly. Enid eats some more of her breakfast platter but finds the excited flutter in her stomach too much. She simply cannot fill up on food when her insides hold too much anticipation...For today is the day.

Today. Is. The. Day!!!

The day she gets her freedom.

It is in all the governing texts – Upon six months passing a princess or prince’s 19th year, they are granted the freedom to discover and explore the lands as they wish. A journey of discovery, or thereabouts. The truth of it is that this exploration is a catalyst. The Royal Family were historically outcasts themselves: werewolves, purged from their lands. Now that the times have changed and they no longer fend amongst the wilderness, a large life-changing journey is necessary to bring forth their ability to shift. It is something Enid has looked forward to tremendously. Not so much for her abilities, but moreso knowing there is so much knowledge, wisdom, and so many stories to be found within this great land of theirs. She can only study books so much before wanting to see the world herself…If her wolf decides to show, that is only an additional benefit.

And now, the date is finally upon her. It has been the longest six months of her life.

Enid scrambles from her bed, eager to start the day. Oh she cannot wait for midday to strike; to be finally leaving the castle walls via the quiet back passages, where she and her trusty steed may gallop into their new adventure. No grand displays, no crowds pouring at her feet for just a glimpse, just her and the endless possibilities of what she’ll discover. She will prove herself a scholar finally – a reporter of the wonders of the land. She’s going to write a compendium. Something both factual and mystical to make her readers crave more!

It’s so close. She can almost taste it.

Enid dances around her room. She hums a tune as she dresses and prepares herself. Her clothing is simple yet refined, paired with a light armour set – handmade by the royal armoury. It is a masterpiece of craftsmanship. Agile, yet strong. It is quite unlike her regular garb; less elegant, but certainly more practical. Her father will be pleased! Her mother less so… though she is not fond of this adventure regardless. Enid falters for a moment but lets the thought pass.

Glancing in the mirror, Enid feels a world away from the princess she has been for the last 19 years of her life. It is thrilling, captivating even! She feels like herself and yet not at all. How exciting.

Briefly, she returns to her study, scrambling to pack away all her precious stationary. Paper, ink, writing quills, pencil lead, and charcoal - she considers more, but all this alongside the few books she is bringing to read, there is little room for more lest she wishes to break her back with the weight. Prioritising is key… but how does one prioritise when all you have known is luxury? Enid scowls at her belongings. Everything is important, and yet somehow forgettable. She thinks it best she not doubt her decisions because there’s always a solution if she’s wrong!

(There isn’t the time for doubt, regardless.)

She traipses back into the main bedroom, having little else to do considering her small pack of essentials has been prepared since a week prior – and then double, tripled checked.

There is perhaps one thing missing, however.

Enid approaches her bed once more. She glances at the array of – perhaps excessive – plush animals. Comfort items… something she should likely not use any more, considering she is an adult, not to mention potentially a queen in the future. But she cannot help herself, for there is a childlike warmth that exists in her heart when those soft and familiar shapes cuddle against her during the dark and cold nights. No one will notice if a small one went along with her… She picks up one of them – a plush depiction of a unicorn – and tucks it amongst the other items within her packed bag.

Despite the land of Nevermore being full of mystical and magical beings, many believe the unicorn to be a myth. Enid intends to prove them wrong. Something so majestic and widely reported surely cannot be false.

At least, that’s what her gut tells her… She’ll find out, one way or another. It’ll make a great report for her compendium!

“Still sneaking around with your childhood toys?” Comes a soft, quiet voice, laughing slightly.

Enid jumps, having not noticed her father quietly sidle in whilst she had packed the unicorn away. She turns to him with a meek smile. Of course she had to get caught out. “Well…” She starts, a faux-innocent grin spreading across her cheeks. “I just need a companion, is all. Something to keep me safe.”

Her father looks at her fondly. He approaches and cups the back of her head as he leans to press a tender kiss to her forehead. “Oh, my Enid…” He sighs wistfully.

Her father’s hands are warm and feel like home. Despite her excitement, Enid feels the slight prick of tears, and she finds herself faltering once more… But it took too much to get here, and there is too much she has prepared for to even consider doubting her choice. She cannot consider any other possibility. Especially not now. Though perhaps a few tears for the sake of missing her Father is not a terrible thing.

“Going to miss me, hm?” She asks, distracting from her tears, and pulling her father into a hug. She presses her wet eyes into his shirt… hopefully he will not notice until he is gone.

“Of course… but this journey is important.”

“Exactly, even if mother almost put a stop to it.”

Her father lets out an indignant hum and pulls away. He looks Enid in the eye, and she feels a slight anxious twinge. She knows that grave look… Why did she have to say that? Ugh.

“Do not bring your mother into this.” Her father scolds. “She had her reasons… Fortunately, she eventually saw sense, but do not tempt fate, Enid.”

Enid nods, feeling suddenly bashful. She drops her father’s gaze. “Will mother be seeing me off?”

Her father turns quiet.

… Of course. She should have expected this.

If anything, it only solidifies her choice. She will likely not experience such freedom otherwise. She must take this chance and run with it. It does not stop the grumble of disappointment at knowing her mother’s less than warm reception, but she knows that within a few days it’ll be at the back of her mind, as she makes her way to greener pastures. Metaphorically speaking of course, as there is little pastures greener than the ones of the castle grounds. Emotionally greener pastures, perhaps, where she can escape the incessant need to be ‘good enough’ for her mother’s approval.

Frankly, all her life, she has felt separation between what she feels, what she does, and what she actually wants. Being royalty means there's often little room for opinion and desire – instead it is replaced with the wants of her parents instead, her mother specifically. Enid wonders how it'll feel to have her ingrained sense of duty be pitted against her unshackled curiosity. She hopes it will feel like a divine choosing of her own fate... And if not that, perhaps at least the weight on her shoulders to choose 'correctly' will err more in her favour, and her mother’s voice will not linger in her ear like a wicked siren song.

Sigh. She wishes her mother’s approval did not mean so much. It shouldn’t… and hopefully soon, it will mean almost nothing.

Enid takes in a deep breath. She must calm her own thoughts. She offers her father a half-hearted smile. “It’s okay. As long as you’re there.”

Her father’s expression warms. “Always,” He confirms, ruffling Enid’s hair slightly. “Now finish up getting ready, it isn’t long to go.”

Enid feels a smile tug back onto her lips, her energy and excitement revived. She nods and hugs her father again before he trundles out of the room, calling the servants to collect Enid’s things. As expected, a few servants enter moments later and collect Enid’s belongings before offering curt bows of their heads. Enid smiles in return, and wordlessly they disappear into the castle hallways. Efficient as always. The door shuts behind them and Enid is then left to her thoughts. Now her father is gone, they whir faster than ever, to the point she can hardly grasp them before another takes its place.

She is excited – that much has been established. Scared perhaps, too. Curious no doubt, and yet perhaps apprehensive at mingling with people who have only known her through paintings, books, and scrolls. It is a high pedestal to be on – that is, being a princess – and she can only hope people will cast aside their judgement of her bubbly, bright, curated exterior, and see that she is a person of substance with a lot to offer beyond her royal ties. People cannot be so shallow, surely?

Hm. She will find out soon enough.

Her eyes cast towards the clock above her dressing table. The time reads 11:30 – much later than she had expected! It really is nearly time!

Enid takes a breath, quickly taking a final scan of her beloved room before making her way out. With a pep in her step, Enid trails through the castle, greeting and smiling at every member of staff she can. She, of course, takes a quick detour to the kitchen to thank the cooks for her breakfast, before heading towards the stables around the back of the castle grounds. It is a short walk and she arrives ten minutes later to a small sending-off party, headed by her father who beams at her proudly. Enid feels her heart swell with happiness and she once again feels affirmed in this choice. She is so ready for this.

Enid goes to approach her horse – a beautiful white stallion named Sol – when her father gently guides her away for a private talk. He smiles at first, but it is empty and his expression soon pales, smile fading as it is replaced by what appears to be guilt. Enid’s stomach drops.

“Your mother and I talked.” He says stiffly.

Oh.

Enid replies with silence, staring up at him with a confused frown.

“She-… We think it would be best if you took a companion with you on your travels. To keep you safe.”

How convenient.

A companion? Seriously?! Six months of waiting, and training, and learning how to handle herself in the great wilderness… and she is now to take a companion!?! And to be dropped with this information right before her send off! Enid feels her face twitch, a stubborn scowl tugging at her eyebrows. This is unfair – more than unfair, this is an interruption of her birthright!

Perhaps the idea would’ve been loved by her had she been given the freedom to choose her travel partner – better yet, gotten to train with them… but no. Her “freedom” now suddenly hinges on the allowance of some likely brutish knight following her every move. The thought alone fills her with dread.

Enid’s mouth trembles as she tries to form words. How degrading it is that her mother disapproves of this journey and yet must dip her influential hand into it regardless. So much for freedom.

“Father-” Enid starts, only to be cut off harshly. She knows her Father’s pale heart cannot handle such a disagreement, and she can see his heart break as he asserts himself.

“No, Enid. I cannot let your mother – The queen – be disappointed. She is the ruler of us all, even me,” He sighs.

Enid grumbles. Frankly,it’s pointless to argue. “Who is it?”

Her father breathes out and calms himself. Expression brightening, he then places an encouraging hand on Enid’s shoulder before using it to spin her around. Her points with his free hand. “Her.”

… Her?

A...female knight?

At least, that’s what it appears to be. Knight’s armour and garb – though, unusually, a dark black as opposed to their usual royal blue – adorns the small frame of a woman who lurks in the shadow of the stables. Her neat uniform paired with her immaculately braided hair blends in with the dark wood, only really becoming visible when her head tilts upwards to show off the pale skin of her face. But it is not her skin nor her outfit that strikes Enid the most. It is her eyes. Intense, unwavering; a glare that sends a shiver down her spine. It is an inscrutable expression – one that has Enid wondering about this mystery knight. Despite being petite, she appears deadly regardless.

Enid feels herself struck. She simply cannot pull her gaze away.

Upon noticing their staring, the knight walks over with a stiff, but upright posture. She offers no greeting except the slight nod of her head. There’s no smile, barely even the twitch of her brow as she looks upon Enid. This is not a royal knight of which Enid is familiar… though considering the size of their forces, it is perhaps silly of her to think she would know them all.

“Enid,” Her father says with a hopeful tone. “This is Wednesday. She is a knight of a special calibre. She will be joining you for your journey.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Enid offers, holding her hand out. This turn of events is still most highly disappointing, but really she can only make the best of it. It isn’t as though she has much choice… in any case, this knight has certainly caught her attention. Maybe once the shock wears off she���ll feel differently.

But for now, Enid feels that maybe this won’t be the worst thing in the world.

Wednesday glares at her. She glances at Enid’s outstretched hand. “We’re leaving now.” Wednesday grunts, disregarding Enid and turning away. She heads back to the stables with a turn of her heel. Not an ounce of emotion seems to pass her.

Ah.

Enid suddenly feels she may have been very, very wrong.

#Wenclair #Wednesday x Enid #Enid x Wednesday #fanfic #Fantasy AU #Zelda inspired #Slow burn #enemies to friends to lover

[abyssal-zone-stares-back]

Running to where?

Naga!Bing x Reader

Warnings - Snake, slight blood, biting, little rabbit

Fuck that place.

You’re running again. The reason doesn’t matter, all you know is you can't stay there anymore. They won’t look for you for long. You’re sure of it.

It's raining and you pull up your hood. Walking along the forested road you look behind you at a noise. Car headlights are in the distance and you dart off the road into the woods to hide.

You step on what you think is a root but it slides out from under your foot and you’re tumbling down an embankment. You land on your front, the rocky bottom scraping your palms.

You groan, looking at your palms. Dirty and bleeding slightly. You wash them off in the fast flowing stream and continue on your way.

Trying to climb up the muddy side without using your hands is proving difficult, seemingly impossible. You give up and decide to walk along the stream instead.

The ditch winds away deep into the forest. Its sides growing steeper and rockier until its just sheer cliff faces and boulders you have to climb over. The rain has let up some but you're chilled to the bone.

Still following the stream you inspect your hands again. Looking down, you miss the shadow moving in the rocks.

Orange eyes reflect in the flash of lightning. A rumble of thunder covering the sound of shifting scales.

You pick at an edge of skin, startling back when a hand grabs yours. “Oh! I’m sorry dude.” You almost fall back but something catches you.

“Didn’t mean to startle you, just, picking at it ‘ill make it worse.” He explains. You blink at him in surprise. He’s, not all human.

A snake tail starts where his torso ends, a part of it holding you up so you didn’t fall. “You’re,” You start. He cuts you off. “Yeah, I'm a naga. Don’t worry dude I don’t eat people. Promise. My name’s Bing.”

“Bing,” You repeat. “Like the search engine?” Now he looks confused. “Never heard of it, but gee, you sure feel cold.” He runs one of his hands up and down your arm. “Wanna come with me so you can warm up?”

You agree, and he grins. “Great dude! Let’s go!” He picks you up in his arms and you yelp. He climbs over a group of boulders with ease, setting you down in a cave entrance.

It would have taken you forever to climb up here. And you're not sure if you can get down on your own. “Come on, this way.” He gestures for you to follow him further into the cave, not looking to see if you follow.

You do, watching the way his tail moves in fascination, wondering what it would be like for it to wrap around you. He stops after a while, gesturing for you to come closer again.

“Here.” Before you know what’s happening he’s wrapped around you and you panic. Squirming against the coils he lets go. “Sorry!” He apologies. “I should have explained. Body heat dude.”

“Don;t you have to take off clothes for that to work?” You ask. “Oh, yeah, that makes sense, I’ll just, look over here.” He turns to give you privacy as you strip.

You allow for him to wrap around you again, your back leaning against his front. His hands rub your arms and you shift. He freezes behind you.

There's a pressure against your ass and you shift again confused about what it is. “Dude,” Whatever Bing was going to say turned into a moan as you moved again. You know what it is now.

You can’t deny, he is hot, and exercise can help you get warm. You squirm down against his cock and he hisses.

“Are you sure?” You nod and you’re quickly moved up and his cock is sinking into you. “Oh fuck. I haven’t had someone around me in forever.” He groans, sinking his teeth into your neck.

Your body is flooded with endorphins and you’re shoved over the edge of your high. “Good job little rabbit.” He murmurs as he kisses against your neck.

You know, you were running away to nowhere in the beginning, but maybe you were running to here.

#tw snakes #bing x reader #bingiplier #abyssal nsft writing

[snackleggg]

More of my Pre-canon au! William is an animal lover, I have declared it.

William has always loved nature.

The small house his family lived in was just outside of town, surrounded more heavily with woodland than any of the other houses in their small community.

So, as a consequence, William grew up surrounded by nature. In the morning he was woken up by the singing of birds instead of the bustle of people leaving their homes to work. In the afternoon he would look outside and try to spot as many lizards as he could, all enjoying the warm sun but carefully hidden by their natural camouflage. In the evening he would listen as the nocturnal creatures of the forest came to life and their sounds lulled him to a peaceful sleep.

He remembers once, amongst many similar incidents, where he found a young snake, struggling with shedding it's skin. He had been 6 at the time and, with careful movements so as not to startle the poor thing, he had helped peel the stuck shed away revealing a beautiful pattern of brown scales in various tones. The snake didn't seem to see him as a threat and his curiosity and wonder of the creature got the better of him so he had picked it up.

William had held the small snake at eye level, watching as it's forked tongue tasted the air. Then the spell of amazement and wonder was broken as his mother called out to him from the house.

"William! For goodness sake child put that thing down! You could hurt yourself!" It was probably a concerning sight, her 6 year old son holding a potentially venomous snake a little too close to his face.

Feeling embarrassed and chastised, William had carefully lowered the snake down to the ground before watching it slither away and out of sight.

He had been scolded for 30 minutes before being sent to do some basic chores as punishment.

This memory stood out stark against the many, many other times he had been caught doing something he wasn't supposed to. For so long he didn't know why this one specifically stayed in his mind.

Then William found himself in the Demon realm, he found himself and his brother along with him on a place called the Boiling Isles.

He had seen extraordinary things and learned about this world of magic.

And then, at 26 years old, 20 years after this one incident among so many in his life, he found himself once more face to face with a snake. Though, not one from his realm.

Ava laughed from somewhere behind him but he didn't want to turn away from the bright red eyes currently locked onto his own.

"I think they like you" She said, William could practically hear the smile on her face.

What sight did he make this time? A full grown human man, frozen in place, in a staring contest with a snake that had WINGS! WINGS! If his mother could see him now she would surely have a heart attack. Of course, this time instead of a concerned mother there was his amused friend watching this unfold.

The... flying... snake? Had fallen from a tree it had been perched in, landing on a low hanging branch right infront of William's face while he and Ava had been walking back towards their temporary camp.

William had a familiar feeling staring into those unblinking eyes and watching as the creature tasted the air with their forked tongue. Almost as if by some long forgotten instinct, William raised his arm to be level with the snake.

Finally the staring contest was broken as the snake flapped their wings a little before slithering onto his arm, seemingly deeming it a suitable perch.

"Awwww, you got a little buddy!" Ava said, finally walking into his field of vision as she came over to give the snake a little scratch under their chin.

William smiled at the sight.

William has always loved nature.

And the nature of the Boiling Isles was no different.

#the owl house #Ava Clawthorne #toh wittebro #william wittebane #my writing #toh pre-canon au #au stuff #my fic writing #toh fic

[awkwardgtace]

Maybe "you really don't see it, do you?"

Heyy decided to get something with my mers out. Gives a little backstory to two of the characters and where they're at in their relationship.

You really don't see it, do you?

Byssal had been planning to go out to find food soon. He hadn't had a good meal for a week with the recent attacks on Pelago. She'd been hurt so badly, the fresh wounds an awful brightness on her dark skin. He had to be stronger.

Pelago was curled up in a dark corner of the cave they called a home. The usually organized place a mess. Neither had felt up to cleaning the destruction from the last group. He wished he could do more for her.

Slowly he settled next to her, the faint droplets of tears floated off her sleeping form. She couldn't be left alone, but going hunting with him left her in so much danger. He couldn't risk her life, he'd just have to make do. He could just make use of the stories too, the others were small enough…

The thought made him gag once he saw an image in his mind. They were all about Pelago's size. He laid a hand near her, he wasn't the biggest out there. There were a lot more threats to her he could never fight unless he was bigger, but here he felt like he was too big.

His whole hand could wrap around her. He carefully smoothed her blonde hair back. Her head was so much smaller than just his hand. He wanted to be perfect for her, he wanted to be her destiny.

"Byssal…" she whined. He laughed a bit, she never admitted she talked in her sleep. It was adorable, so many sleepless nights filled with the wonders of her mind. A secret just for him. "Please don't leave. I'll make it stop."

He used his finger to carefully wipe away the tears. She was so innocent. After all this time she still thought he could stand to leave her. A part of him was terrified by the idea that she might not be his destiny. He couldn't ever imagine someone better than her.

"...spell…works….blue now…I'll blend in…"

She curled in on herself more. She hated her white fins and scales. He loved them, he loved that she stood out. He could see her for leagues, a beacon in the dark depths. He would blend in, fade out of sight even to her. A murky green that humans would think is kelp or algae if he were too high up.

"Please… byss… hate me…"

He almost woke her up hearing that. He didn't know if she didn't say everything, but it hurt. He could never hate her. He hated the others who attacked her and peppered her beautiful dark brown skin with pale scars. He hated the ones of the past who left her tortured like this. He hated the pain she endured when first teaching him magic. He hated himself for being too scared to tell her how he feels.

"Find…right one.."

"You really don't see it, do you?" He whispered.

She moved a bit but curled up tighter without a word. He waited before drifting closer and looking at her wounds again. He traced them gently as she slept, each shudder making him freeze. She was so small.

She started to fidget in her sleep. Her tail moving strangely. He knew what that meant. Another dream, or maybe a nightmare, where she was made human. The sins of the past falling on her leaving her alone in a new world.

"It's me… please. Byss…"

The other reason he'd never stoop to eating the attackers. She didn't know he knew this part of her fears. Made human and left in the deep sea, looking smaller and different enough to be seen as just a human. Then he showed up.

"Byss! It's me! Please don't!"

Every time those cries fell on deaf ears in her dream. She was speaking a human language, one he didn't know. He had to learn for her, so she could have these dreams replaced with a shred of reality.

"Pel," he breathed. He started up with chirps that should soothe her. A promise that she's safe. "Even if you're human I'd know it's you. I'd protect you, take you to land and find a home close by. I love you Pelago. I only wish I could say this while you're awake."

Her frantic movements died down. Tears and sniffles echoing in their home. She wrapped her tail around his the best she could. He pulled her closer, keeping her small form safe surrounded by him. He could hunt later for now he'd sleep.

Pelago jolted awake another awful dream ending in pain. She tried to move, but it was dark and cramped. She started to panic until soft chirps echoed around her, a familiar oddity to them that came from the cave's shape.

She squirmed a bit and the confined space grew more open. A bit of light filtered in and she saw Byssal's face inces from her own. She raised a hand up to slowly massage the tense look off of him.

He was always doing everything for her. She just taught him magic despite the fact he'd grow so large. She never would have pictured him able to surround her like this back then. He'd barely been her size at the time. She leaned in closer to the warmth if his body, resting her head against his chest.

Chirps echoed again. He always said she talked in her sleep well he chirped. She loved it and wouldn't ever tell him. They always stood out, her one constant on the changing tides. They sounded sad though.

She chirped with concern and he curled in on her again. He pulled her up towards his face and nuzzled her in his sleep. She chirped happily with a laugh slipping out. That seemed to be his wake up call, green eyes were staring at her. They were such a dark color compared to his pale skin.

"I need to go hunt," he said. He let her go and swam to the mouth of the cave. He looked back with fear written all over his face. "Hide if any of them show up again."

She gave an affirmative chirp before he finally left the cave. She went to the entrance and watched as he disappeared. He was so large, disappearing like that just seemed unfair. A lot of things were unfair though, she glared at her horribly white scales. Byssal said he thought they were better than the green of his own.

"You really don't see it, do you?" She sighed. She could never say this to him directly. "I want different scales to be with you Byss…"

She watched the empty water a little longer before retreating again. She didn't bother staying out in the open, hiding away where only Byssal would notice the bright white. Someday she'd tell him and maybe he'd understand. She loved him with her whole being and wanted to take away the constant stress and nerves.

#awkwardanswers #gt #giant/tiny #g/t #g/t writing #giant tiny #gt writing #gianttiny #gt prompts #oc:byssal #oc:pelago

[solveigruna]

Neath Dark Waters

The man known as Emet-Selch stood just at the edge of the lapping waves and stared intently at a large rock that jutted out of the water. There was a familiar presence just behind it - a colouring of soul that was at once comforting and infuriating. Sadness and madness. A sliver of what it should be and everything he wanted. With a sigh of annoyance the man raised a gloved hand and snapped his fingers and the rock that blocked his view disappeared from sight and revealed a pair of blue-green eyes peering back at him from the water; matching hair floating in waves around her slight form.

"And who might you be?" he asked of the creature in front of him. He'd heard tale of halfmen that lived beneath the waves in the deepest parts of the oceans but, to date, had yet to actually come across one. Any who knew how long lived he was might find that surprising but, honestly, it wasn't like he spent an awful lot of time swimming in the depths - or any at all. He had better things to do. Raise empires and destroy them and working towards the Rejoinings being chief among them. Investigating rumors of a people beneath the waves was not his job.

The half-woman, half fish tilted it's head in curiousity and moved forward with purpose before stopping mere feet from him - another thing he found curious. She didn't spook and flee as soon as the rock disappeared. If anything it seemed to have emboldened her. There was a sense of devil-may-care that oozed from her very presence. She didn't fear him, not in the slightest. 

Another tick in the column of things that was familiar, yet maddening, about the broken soul in front of him. 

The creature rose partially from the water and he made note of the mesmerizing colours and shimmering of her tail. The woman portion of her body was certainly beautiful - toned and pale, he assumed from a life under water and devoid of light. Freckles dotted her face and, strangely, she bore dark horns and scales that - on land - would've marked her as part of the Au'ra tribes. 

"I have been sent to find you." Her voice was strong and purposed with a very slight lilt to it from a dialect he couldn't place; it's timbre melodic and lulling. 

He almost immediately sensed a trap.

"Have you now?" He questioned as he crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow - his guard raised. He'd heard stories of these fish people luring sailors to their doom. Well, if this creature thought it was luring him anywhere, it certainly had another thing coming. Emet-Selch wasn't lured. If anything HE did the luring. “I assure you there is naught between us that needs addressing. You should be on your way before you get caught in worse than a fisher’s net.” Emet-Selch sneered down at the creature and sniffed haughtily. 

She regarded him a moment before moving a little closer and raising herself out of the water a few more inches. He made note that she was truly very small in comparison to himself. To the Garleans that he had surrounded himself with, she would be nothing more than the size of a child - if not for her tail. The iridescent blue and purple appendage easily added five feet to her to her height and he briefly wondered what she’d be like with legs. Based on her frame - lithe and nimble if he had to guess. 

“I fear no fisher’s net,” she responded simply. “I fear nothing and no one,” she added defiantly. Her eyes widened slightly, a look of feigned innocence meant to throw him off guard he assumed. To be quite honest he preferred the defiance - it certainly suited her better. She raised a hand out of water and extended it towards him; a faint orange glow peaked through her closed fist and he eyed it suspiciously. “But, I was sent to seek you. I have something that may interest you,” she tacked on. “It was found deep beneath the waters - deeper than most of my kind dare go. But I’m not like most of my brethren. I was told to seek a man that reeked of age and misery.” Emet-Selch glared at the woman in front of him and her insinuation that he reeked of anything. And how dare she continue to exhibit traits of a person long dead. And how dare the misery and age be so on the dot. All in all, Emet-Selch found himself very put out by all of this. But, oh, when she opened her hand and revealed the treasure that had been trapped within! His heart seemed to freeze as if it had been replaced with naught but stone. He felt himself kneeling in the water; a trembling hand reaching out for that which she held. “How? Where?” he questioned. Only one such stone existed. He knew this to be a fact as he had been its creator. So how had she come to be in possession of this? He had left it in safe-keeping with the only person he could trust. 

“I told you. The deepest depths of these waters,” she responded; her voice calm and lulling. He could feel his brain wandering as he stared at the stone and as she spoke. “It called to me. Faintly, at first. Then more insistently.” His eyes vaguely acknowledged her other arm raising into the air and he felt the barest whisper of fingers along his scalp and in his hair. “Once I found it - it sang to me. Spoke.” He felt himself being drawn deeper by her words and his mind hazily acknowledged that the orange stone that bore the mark of the Sun on it had disappeared from view. The arm that held it had joined its mate and wrapped itself around his head and shoulders; fingers lazily, and soothingly, running through his hair like a missed lover’s embrace. 

Emet-Selch felt himself falling slowly and couldn’t be bothered to care. This creature, this woman, who was so infuriating - yet tantalizingly familiar - had him enthralled and he let himself be pulled into the depths with her. What would this little moment hurt? A moment ‘neath dark waters of peace and silence with the ghost of a memory on his lips?

#ffxiv au ra #ffxivau #ffxivmermay #ffxiv emet selch #ffxivwolemet

[chickenroost]

Chapter 5 - Into the Earth

She sighed a bit. "I'm sorry that I broke your teeth, but you were going to kill me! I had to do something!"

Creed smirked as he looked to them, then slowly shot a deep red flame from his mouth out to the side of the group. He then roared and opened his mouth to reveal his teeth fixed as if they were never broken. Keir blinked as Creed smiled. "Fools...My clan can speed up our blood and use some of our pure flames to fix a little damage like this. Another gift we learned through our own strength and power. Still, it's impressive you are somewhat able to defend yourself. Guess I'll have to think of better ways to kill you later. Hehehe."

Keir sighed. "You're despicable."

She looked to him in wonder and surprise at them being fixed. "I had no idea you could do things like that..."

Frost looked to him questioningly. "What about her really troubles you so much? She is my charge not yours."

Creed snarled. "I'm not happy with this human. It's more that I can small the scent of the younglings that died by her people. Promising younglings. Snatched away. Snuffed out like a small fire. I’d kill to have vengeance."

She snapped at him. "I hated the sight of it! The way they killed that mother who only wanted to defend her children...more that they smashed the eggs who had done absolutely nothing to deserve that. I couldn't take it! When that man told me to give him this egg, I told him no! It's not much, but I could at least protect this one...and they are not my people! I told you. I am from Oarth. I only entered the village because that's where I was brought when it got burned. I had no idea they would do that to Eiwyen. She was a kind person."

He huffed and stayed quiet, a bit. "...A dragon is able to sense when a person is lying. Although, I sense no lies, I sense that is not all you felt. Eiwyen was different from the others...She gave your race too much attention and freedom... I will not be so easy. You will have a chance to prove your words and a choice to make someday. Till then, I have no interest anymore in wasting words with your kind." He growled and flew a bit away, but followed the group, keeping his solitude.

Keir looked to him; a bit surprised. "I think you touched a raw scale that time...Still, I'd never expect him to back off like that."

Frost sighed. "You can never be too sure what to expect of anyone, I suppose. Regardless, however, we have arrived." He dipped below the clouds to hover over an earthen crater in the ground. It was massive and almost like a labyrinth when one looked at it from above.

The girl looked to the circular expanse in wonder with wide eyes. "Woah..."

Frost chuckled a bit. "Welcome to the earth kingdom, younglings." They edged down to the inner rim of the stone city, landing down in one of cracked, paved slabs that served as a clearing among the bustle of the people there. Once landed, he slid her from off his back to her feet before transforming.

Keir and Creed landed next, transforming as well as they did. Creed growled. "This place is as much of a dirt hole as ever I see."

Keir growled. "As if the fire kingdom is any better."

Creed nodded. "It is. It's much hotter and more humid."

She looked over at them. "So, you prefer it warmer? But, do you mean you've been here before?"

Creed smirked, closing his eyes. "It's dirty and damp here. The sign of weaklings, rats who work with wet dragons. I guess even dirt needs water, though. Hehehe."

Keir growled. "Talk like that will only get you targeted by water and earth, you know."

He laughed. "I'm not afraid of water or earth."

She tilted her head, thinking. "You sure are confident of yourself...but even if you are strong, you seem like you are hiding something and pushing everyone away from you."

Keir smirked as Creed shook his head and turned away. "That's not for you to concern your short life over. I'm more interested in what the dragons will think of when they see you. Hopefully, it will be anger. Frost, you know that most of these dragons lost something to humans. Bringing one here will cause sparks and maybe even fire."

Frost smirked. "That may be so...but she's also our only little clue towards the hunters at the moment. Which is precisely why I requesting the help of Xial. As for you two, I presume you won't want to hang around for too long? Besides that. I'm afraid I'll have to chance it. With that boy running amuck, I couldn't exactly leave her there nor the egg behind."

Keir shook his head. "I'm here to help, my lord. Besides, this is a request that the dragons all agreed on. More than that, I want to help. We have to stop them before they become worse and cause more pain."

Creed huffed. "I'm not as noble. If it wasn't for the decision, I'd have hunted them down myself. Still, this makes it easier. If the hunters come, I'll be ready. I'll burn them into ashes for making an orphan of this child. If you want me to be sympathetic, then lets just say I'm here to protect this child when the human runs off scared and tries to drop it."

Frost nodded. "Very well...I suppose for now we - " He was cut off, however, by the sound of a commotion behind them. A dark-haired figure was trying to get past a pair of guards who had decided he was suspicious.

He was holding several log books and glaring at the guards with disdain, as if wondering why he had bothered to be here at all.

Creed looked to the commotion and focused on the character. "Looks troublesome."

The nearest guard frowned. "State your business here."

The figure sighed. "I already told you. I'm here at the request of the ice king."

Frost blinked. "Ah, is that you, Xial?" He called over and the figure strode out around the guards with a nod.

Xial spoke. "Yes, yes, but what is it you need me for this time?"

"Hold it!" The guard huffed, striding over to them. "And just why is she holding an egg? Did you catch one of the human thieves?"

"Better yet, why is the fire dragon prince here?" Another guard came up, eyeing Creed. "This isn't your romping grounds."

Creed blinked, then stared down the guard with a low growl as the air sizzled around him. "A lowly mud puddle like you has no right to question me. All you need to know is I'm here because of that egg. Now get out of my face before I burn you into nothing but dust like what you call home on."

The guard glared at him. "What did you call me?!" He smirked. "Go on, attack me. Would only give our king more of a reason to consider a war against your hot-headed kind." The other guard was looked to him in irritation as well.

He yawned and shook his head. "Any king that would attack us over you two pathetic puddles of water is not worth our nation's time. Besides, I'd not want to stink up the air more than it does now by burning you into mist. This human does half the stink for you and she doesn't even have water powers." He smirked. "Heh."

She frowned. "Hey, I don't stink!"

Frost growled in annoyance. "Regardless, he is my guest and to be respected as such."

The guards growled in annoyance, clearly agitated, but a hand on both their shoulders caused them to jump. "Well then, I do believe an explanation is owed to me, now isn't it?" A tall figure spoke in a rough, but clear monotone, as he scowled at the group.

Creed sighed. "And the puddle only gets bigger. I've had enough. Lord Frost, tell them something so we can get out of this watery sinkhole."

Keir growled. "Creed! Show some respect. You're making a fool of Lord Frost."

Creed gave him a curious look. "Oh?" He walked over to him, giving him a glare. "What I've done is sat here in this damp land and listen to babble. You care to entertain me, suck up?"

Keir growled, snarling a bit. "Keep trying. I am getting tired of your hot breath ruining our time."

Creed snarled back, as heat began to rise in his fingers. "You're asking for it. I'm going to burn that kiss ass tongue of yours."

The girl got in between them both, looking to the two dragons. "Would you both stop trying to dig your claws into one another for long enough to find out why Frost even had you two follow him here? And, judging from that dragon's armor, he's pretty high ranking too.."

The man's scowl only deepened further at the sight of her holding an egg in her arms and at disgust at the bickering. "Give me my answer and give it now, Frost. What are they all doing here?"

Frost rubbed his temples. "If you could but spare a moment of your patience, Daedalus, I can explain everything, gladly. That egg you see there..."

The man sniffed the air and let out a low growl. "She's been around crushed nestlings and you still dare to let her hold that egg at all?!"

Frost growled. "As I was trying to say, it's a bit more complicated than that."

Daedalus growled back. "How dare you bring a dragon slayer into my territory, Frost! How calm do you expect me to be?"

The girl spoke up now. "I am not a dragon slayer. I have never killed a dragon!"

A loud crash suddenly sent the two guards from before crashing into a nearby building with a boom, and the crumbling of stone around them. A large boulder sunk slightly into the cracked clearing from where it had been thrown to. This caused their eyes to draw sky wards. Daedalus flew up to meet the attackers into the clouds, along with more guards, as a massive brown dragon.

Creed blinked, looking to the skies. "What? Now what the heck is going on? Can't you fools even guard your own land?"

Keir moved next to Frost, eyeing the intruders. "Lord Frost! Those men..."

Frost growled. "Attacking so soon? You three...Take her to the black dragon kingdom. Xial, give this letter to your father. Do not let it fall into any hands other than his. And Creed...make sure you guard them all like your life depends on it. Because so help me if you abandon them, I'll make sure it will. Go. Go now while you still can. And, Keir, don't let her or that egg out of your sight." He flew off into the skies as dragons and their riders began to dip below the clouds, after the group. Frost froze two of them, but six more zipped on past as two each headed towards the three dragons around her.

#chickenroost #writing #my writing #original #fantasy #dragons #story #shining light #chapter 5

[mysheephasfailedme]

Close Your Eyes and Hope You Get There

The bus ride to LAX felt like galloping into the sunset at the end of a cowboy movie, except after disappearing into a tiny spot at the edge of the horizon, all that awaited was another vast piece of barren land, and another, and another, for me to disappear into. The sunlight outside was a murky yellow that tainted the trees with a sickly hue. Shiny white apartment buildings leaned into dirty yellow complexes, as if someone thought it would be funny to give potential home buyers a visual summary of before and after thirty years in LA. There was a Target and a CVS and a torn-down seven-eleven all packed up in one block, and the next block was a psychic boutique, tire replacement shop, and taco food truck 3-in-1. The bus jerked and jolted as the driver swerved, and I tried my best to keep my balance, refusing to let myself lean back so I could see the subtle differences between each stretch of land, enough to convince myself that the bus was still headed somewhere.

For someone like me, born and raised in Asia and way too lazy to venture out of westwood to explore LA, bus rides are the only real chance to see parts of LA and America that isn’t campus, where everywhere you walk you see flowers and green trees flourishing upon the money and labor pulsing under your feet, and for me to see fully fleshed out people, with significant others and grandchildren and bags of groceries, responsibilities that aren’t just going to classes, worries that balloon beyond getting a B, and weekend plans that are more than grabbing lunch and studying together. I tried to observe some of them but found that I was too dizzy from my motion sickness, so I closed my eyes. The last thing I saw was a beige two-story apartment and the dusty sedan steering in.

I thought about all the places I’d traveled to in America. A day trip to New York on another bus, trapped in traffic to pass through an underpass to actually get into New York. There was a guy lounging in his red convertible breathing in the exhaust from all the trucks and buses waiting with us and I whispered that’s got to be really bad for your lungs. When we were finally there we went to the Met and I almost died from the excitement. Sunlight spilled in through the roof into the room that housed the Egyptian temple, and we sat beside the water after exploring all the Egyption collections, envying the locals strolling by leisurely, some with kids in tow, as if all of this was the most natural thing to do on any Saturday afternoon. A three-week stay in suburban New Jersey, where to walk my friend’s baby cousin to the bus stop we passed by a lush meadow where my friend spotted blue jays. On the last day of school, my friend’s uncle drove us to the carnival, the sky light blue against my friend’s delighted screams on flying swings. That night we had chocolate cake. Three months in Santa Clara, where I got used to seeing this cute couple waiting for the bus together, the guy leaving to catch another bus minutes before ours would arrive, the girl texting him throughout the ride. From what I could make out sitting three rows behind the girl, her phone’s wallpaper was their prom photo. When I moved to another airbnb and had to start taking another bus to work, I wondered if they ever wondered about me. On the bus back from work I’d sometimes see this homeless old man, who boarded one day with a big scratch on his elbow that had barely started to scab. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him as his injured arm hung lifelessly against his frame, the wound brushing against his grayish white shirt, leaving a faint trace of blood, all while he stared outside, at the traffic that had started to build up. I started taking a different bus the next day, the old man slumped on the bus seat, with his arm with the scabs like flaking fish scales and the specks of blood on his shirt too much for me to see.

I opened my eyes as the bus limped to a stop. The city bus center. I got off, no longer worried about getting off at the wrong stop after three years in LA, as a plane took off in the distance. There was a gray sign that read “LAX shuttle” beside an employee-only parking lot and a small line of people already waiting, so I dragged my orange suitcase over. A couple minutes later, a man swaggered over and started singing “Jesus, oh Jesus,” shaking a cup half full of melting ice cubes and pacing along the line of waiting passengers. If I’d been alone I would’ve seriously started freaking out, but since there were others I settled for inching farther away when he wasn’t looking. Whenever he got louder, closer, I would stare at the golden line piercing through the middle of his white, pointy left shoe. His white shoe, dull from all the grime on it, must’ve been so shiny brand-new.

After what felt like forever, the gray shuttle pulled in, and he cut in front of me to board from the back door. On the shuttle, he sang his song about Jesus as the sun set behind the cars before us and we disappeared into what I hope would be the last horizon.

[epigstolary]

Just A Number

“You’re too young to be so fat” is something you’ve heard all your life. From your youth spent snacking in front of the tv, to your high school years indulging at restaurants or the mall, to your college years eating late-night pizza and junk in your dorm room, you’ve always been big enough to get that comment out of people. Parents, friends, boyfriends and girlfriends have all watched your advancing waistline with alarm, worrying about the fact that — no matter how big you had been when they last saw you — you were always bigger the next time.

And so they’d express their worry to you. These are the best years of your life, they’d say — you should be getting out and enjoying them, not sitting on the sidelines stuffing your face. Someone your age shouldn’t have trouble finding clothes that fit, or such a hard time making it up a flight of stairs that you have to stop halfway. You needed to try and watch the weight a little. Sometimes you wonder how things would have turned out if you had followed their advice.

But you didn’t. And so, you waddled across the stage at graduation and into a young adulthood that freed you from even the limited structure of university life. You landed some regular freelance work that paid the bills and let you work entirely from home. And you kept gorging yourself on whatever delicious food you wanted, whenever you wanted it. There was nobody to tell you what time meals were supposed to be, nobody to question your incessant snacking. While other people your age were going out with their friends, traveling to exotic places, partying, and living their lives, you were home by yourself most of the time. Craving. Consuming. Expanding.

With total freedom from a schedule and your last reason for even limited physical activity gone, the creeping tide of weight gain over the past few years turned into a flood. The snacking, meals, grocery deliveries, and takeout orders became constant. You would look like a completely different person to someone who had gone a couple months without seeing you, packing on fifty pounds or more from season to season. Eventually, your friends and family gave up on trying to save you from what was increasingly looking like an unstoppable force, propelling you faster and faster toward destroying yourself.

I suppose for normal people, there’s never an age where it’s expected someone will be too fat to leave the house. But it’s your mid-20s, and here you are. You spend eighteen hours a day on the couch, pinned beneath a flowing belly the size of a bean bag chair and two bulbous titties connecting to the massive rolls of fat under your arms. Laptop perched atop your wobbling stomach, you try to type with sausage fingers you’re even starting to have trouble bending, taking breaks every few minutes to rest your bloated arms.

As they fall to your sides, the fat on your biceps — bigger around than a healthy adult’s waist — puckers, flowing over the layers of rolls bulging from your abdomen. Your forearm fat shifts down toward your hands, making an impressive roll around your pudgy wrist. You try and shift a little to get more comfortable, wiggling your tremendous butt and shapeless legs around to try and resettle yourself. As you take up most of the couch now, there’s not much room to change positions. Instead, you stretch, wiggling the toes peeking out from the distended blobs of fat, now hundreds of pounds in their own right, that pass for your legs.

Shocking as those legs are, they can still support you during your labored, stumbling trips to the front door a couple times a day. Here, you collect the tens of thousands of calories you have to put away to keep you in this lard prison you’ve built for yourself. But you don’t think of it that way. You see it as a treat. After all, you just did a full-body workout lumbering to the door and back; why shouldn’t you reward yourself for keeping up with your fitness?

Except that nobody’s fooled by what’s going on here — not even you, on those rare occasions when the delusion lifts and you get a lucid look at your situation. There’s nothing normal about a twentysomething eating themself to the size of a California king mattress. There’s no excuse for being too heavy to waddle out your front door, ignoring whether you could even still squeeze your outrageous bulk through it. And all those admirers on the internet — talking about how sexy you look, how much they want to feed you, how they’d love to see you even bigger — are all really thinking the same thing.

They would push you to your limit if they had half a chance. Forget being able to waddle to the door; they want you so blown up with lard and full of food that you’re not rolling over without help. They want you a wheezing, blubbery mess with so many rolls, folds, blobs, and bulges covering your body that you’re almost unrecognizable as a person. They want to see you reaching pathetically across your expanse of fat, trying to get the feeding tube that’s slipped away from you, and looking at them pleadingly for help to restore the sickening flow of calories into your ruined body. They want you to end your twenties as a fat cow, insatiably feeding and alarmingly obese, eating yourself to death.

And they’d probably tease you by telling you about their day out of the house, and all the things that they got to do that a half-ton bariatric patient like you can never hope to do again. Fit in a car. Go shopping, mobility scooter or not. Literally just be outside without having countless amazed stares and snarky comments from all the people, shocked at seeing someone in their twenties who already weighs as much as five or six people. Shame those are off the table for you, they’d say; guess you better eat some more to make yourself feel better.

You’re not quite that big — not yet, at least. Your weight may be wildly out of control compared to most people your age, but even so it takes some time for those bad eating habits to reach critical mass. Give it a few years, though. Even if you manage to get a handle on your rapid expansion, there’s no chance you’re losing any weight. You’re too used to living this way to give it up. That number on the scale will keep creeping up, slowly but surely. You’ll be reminded of your inevitable fate by how your clothes feel like they’re slowly constricting, squeezing your belly and rolls tighter and tighter; how it feels like someone’s turning up gravity on you a little every day. But you can’t pin this on your clothes or the laws of physics. You only have yourself, and your gluttony, to blame.

You didn’t get this big, this fast, without wanting to on some level. And as long as that something is there, driving you, you won’t be stopping. So make peace with the fact that you have just a few more years, at most, before you’re too big to be anything but someone’s fantasy feedee. You may as well have another bite, another helping, another meal. Because age — and weight — is just a number, right?

#extreme weight gain #feeder fiction #gainerfiction #gaining #ssbhm #weight gain fiction #wg fiction #wg story #weight gain story

[the-blind-assassin-12]

Survivor Blues

Part One : Fight or Flight 

A/N: I am equally excited and terrified to finally be sharing this story, but here goes nothing! This has been in the works for close to a whole ass year now, and it all started when @something-tofightfor sent me a link to the cutscenes of TLOU I & II, casually suggesting I “get to know Joel Miller”, which lead to me having the strongest reaction to a fictional character that I have had in AGES, having a little emotional breakdown about it, and then immediately diving into a google doc to do something with all of my emotions. This is the result. I want to warn you that it does stick to canon timelines as well as themes, so the same darkness and danger that was present throughout the games is still (mostly) in tact here. It’s not a straight up angst pile, but you’re certainly going to have to buckle up if you choose to get on this ride. You’ve been warned. (please enjoy!!) 

Warnings: language, violence, death, apocalyptic themes, mother effing mushroom headed freaks, mentions of illnesses, brief mention of sexual assault - no description whatsoever (please feel free to ask me before  reading if you are unsure)

Word Count : 5,145 

Summary: Twenty-four years after the cordyceps outbreak ravaged the world, you find yourself wondering what could possibly be left for you that was worth fighting for. Lost, alone and having seen better days, you just want to find a place to rest. You end up finding more than you bargained for - or more accurately, more than you bargained for ends up finding you. 

SPRING 

April - 2037

You’d been making your way through the trees, boot soles landing one in front of the other over mostly melted snow and muddy terrain when you felt it - the eerie tingle that started near the base of your skull and traveled down your spine, telling you that something was wrong. The hair stood up on the back of your neck and you froze, eyes  widening to try to locate what had triggered your innate sixth sense. Though sometimes the foreboding came well before the danger was visible leaving you to warily wonder what to be on the lookout for, this was not one of those times. 

As you carefully scanned the landscape ahead of you, you saw them. Stalkers, judging by the way that they were moving and the low croaking sounds you could hear them making, two of them. 

Crouching behind a boulder before they spotted you, you swore to yourself. It had been a long time since you’d dealt with any infected at this phase, most of the ones you’d dispatched in the past few years either well beyond this stage of the cordyceps infection or else still freshly turned. These still had their sight, could employ strategic attacks, and were physically strong, and you were not looking forward to a confrontation with them. But they were wandering through a clearing roughly fifty yards away and directly in your path, blocking you from where you hid and the abandoned house you were hoping to find supplies in, so you were faced with an ultimatum: turn away and hope that your retreat would go unnoticed - and that you would soon find another place to seek shelter and much needed supplies - or stand your ground and take them out. 

Fight or flight. 

Those were the choices that almost everything in the world came down to anymore. Every decision you made was weighed on that scale, calculated by measuring risks against benefits. You had taken both routes at different times, depending on what the situation called for - fight when you had to or when it was one you could win, flight when running was the safer option. There was no such thing as dignity or pride when it came to these matters, only survival and protection, and you had fully adapted to that system years ago.

But now? You were tired. Bone tired, mentally exhausted, and neither seemed like the better option. It had been days since you’d eaten anything more substantial than dried berries and half a strip of squirrel jerky, weeks since you’d slept somewhere with a wall at your back or a roof over your head. You were desperate for a break, absolutely starving for just a spec of relief, and the thought of either engaging rogue stalkers in hand to hand combat or else rolling the dice and running away - possibly directly into another threat - made you want to crumble to dust or dissolve into tears. Before you could stuff your sleep deprived emotional response and make an intelligent choice, you were in motion, right hand grabbing for the pistol tucked into your jeans and whipping it out as you charged from behind the rock and directly towards the two creatures you’d spotted.   

Shit. 

You ruined it, the deep silence of the slowly thawing wilderness you were traveling through. With two quick pulls of your pointer finger, you had shattered the stillness that twenty years of societal decay and natural reclamation had brought to the neighborhood-turned forest you’d stumbled upon. Two deafening cracks sent a spray of blackbirds into the air from the branches they’d just begun to nest in, and then a pair of solid thuds hit the ground immediately after. Holding your breath, you waited for the world to swallow up the echo and go back to the quiet you’d interrupted, hoping the sound hadn’t carried down into the valley that you’d been skirting, or to any other infected that might be in the area. 

Gun still extended out in front of you, it shook in your hand. Why the fuck did I do that? You really shouldn’t have fired your gun. It wasn’t smart to make that much noise in unknown territory. Especially not when you were alone, and definitely not when you only had three bullets left. Why did I fucking do that? Adrenaline pulsed behind your eyeballs, your heart pounding in your chest as you failed to answer the question and strained to listen for the silence that would tell you that your mistake hadn’t been a costly one. 

Above the whoosh of blood in your ears though, instead of the thick quiet you’d hoped for, you heard a string of clicks and groans coming from just beyond where the two stalkers had been. Gritting your teeth, you watched as the hunched form of a clicker, its face grotesquely split in two by the growth eating through its skull, stepped out from behind a rusted out and overgrown car, another line of patterned sounds leaving it’s mouth as it searched for you. You blinked and willed your breathing to slow or at least to fall back into an even rhythm while you reassessed the situation and how best to move forward. You knew that if you stayed stock still the thing wouldn’t be able to find you and you’d be able to buy a few more seconds of time to make a plan. 

But it seemed that you were not done paying for lapse in good sense as yet another stalker ambled jerkily out from behind a dilapidated shed that you hadn’t seen at first. It's one bulging eye swiveled around and locked on to you almost instantly, and playing statue was suddenly no longer an option. Releasing a screech, the thing suddenly launched itself in your direction, leading its blind counterpart by sound.  

Oh, fuck. 

Gripping your gun with both hands to steady your aim, you waited until you had a clear shot on the faster of the two - the stalker - and took it as soon as it was clear. Just like the others, it went down hard and fast leaving only the clicker, but the echo of your weapon told the snarling thing exactly where you were. Having just fired your last bullet, you were down to the hunting knife tucked into your boot and any rocks or branches you could find to use in your defense. No matter what you’d have to get within reach of the creature to kill it, and that meant that it would be able to reach you, too. You knew that it was stronger than you were in that moment, that its crude drives could power its body far more forcibly and effectively than your depleted muscles could. Making a quick judgment call, you decided that you would have better luck trying to get past it unscathed. 

Without pausing to stow your pistol, you ran, gun still in hand, sprinting towards the house and trying to give the clicker in your way as wide a berth as you could. You knew that it would be on your heels as soon as it could find you again - a snapping twig or sliding gravel underfoot would give your position away eventually - and after a few strides it did. 

Damnit. 

You could hear the thing gnashing its teeth behind you as you leaped over one of the dead stalkers, and you did your best to keep your pace even as your body begged for you to stop. Every desperate gasp tore at your throat, the cold air searing your lungs as the sound of your own frenzied breathing filled your ears. Keep… Eyes on the ground a few feet ahead of you, you extended one leg to jump over a fallen tree trunk. Ignoring the splinter of pain that shot through your ankle and shin as you landed, you ran through it, as hard as you could. Keep moving. You sucked in another sharp gulp of chilled air, panting as your aching chest emptied, puffs of vapor bursting from your lips. Thighs burning with the caustic buildup of lactic acid, you let out a grunt and forced them to turn over again and again, denying your body’s demands for you to stop, to rest. 

I can’t. The thing behind you wasn’t stopping. The vacant shell of a person that was chasing you at breakneck speed wasn’t resting. Can’t stop. You knew what would happen if you did. If I stop I’ll die. Despite knowing that, you couldn’t keep the next question from cropping up. 

Would that be so bad? 

It was the worst possible time for you to have an existential crisis, but it happened nonetheless. Frost bitten leaves and blades of grass crunched under the treads of your boots as your oxygen deprived brain tried to offer you an out. You could stop. You could choose to let yourself get caught. Ducking under a low hanging branch without slowing down, you considered what it would mean to make that choice, to let twenty years of inevitably to finally catch up with you - to stop fighting and running altogether. 

For a long time it hadn’t been an option, stopping. Not while you had Kyle and Laura and the others to look out for, or Gavin to get back to- not when you still had a family. But you were alone now, and you had been for months. Alone, with no one counting on you or waiting for you or hoping you were safe. No one who needed you, no one who wanted you or loved you, no one to wrap your arms around or to wrap theirs around you. You were alone, and you were so tired. 

Would it be so bad? For it to be over? 

You weren’t even sure what scared you anymore, what drove you. When you were younger you wanted to be fearless, like the characters in your favorite books and movies. They were unafraid of tackling any obstacle, ready to run headlong into the fray and fight for what they believed in, to protect who and what they cared about. As a kid you’d always equated fearlessness with bravery. But now you knew that they weren’t the same. Bravery required something to fear. Being fearless, you’d realized, just meant that you had nothing at all. Nothing to protect or hope for, nothing to lose or have taken from you.  

Death had stopped scaring you years ago. Over the past two and a half decades you’d been forced into close quarters with it, becoming intimately acquainted with the inevitable. You’d fought with all you had to stay alive for the people you loved, but that became harder with each one that you lost. Your parents and your siblings, friends and coworkers and everyone you knew before the outbreak, then Ty, Ryan and Brayden, Gavin, Laura. By the time it was just you and Kyle, your only fear was turning. Not because you worried about what it was like to let the cordyceps infection take root in your brain. You’d seen it happen enough times to know that it was just like a switch being flipped - one minute the person was still in there, struggling against the takeover, and the next they were gone, all traces of who they were erased entirely. Compared to the years of degradation you’d watched your grandfather go through in his battle against Alzhiemer’s, it didn’t seem nearly as heartbreaking or traumatizing for the person being turned. The only reason you found that prospect terrifying was because you didn’t want anyone you cared about to be saddled with the moral burden of putting you down. But now you were free from  that fear, too, because there was no one left that you cared about, and no one left who cared about you. No one left to suffer your loss. 

Before you could convince yourself to surrender, the toe of your boot caught on a rock that was still snow covered and hidden, and you tumbled, rolling and skidding over the ground to land on your side. The thing chasing after you took advantage of your situation and closed in on you, and in those final seconds before its jaws snapped and caught your arm or shoulder or any other part of your body between them, your brain released one final reserve of energy and self-preservation. With a yell, you rolled to your back and reached for the handle of your blade, unsheathing it from your boot as you planted that same foot in the creature’s hip joint. Planting your other foot in the opposite hip, you used your legs as a frame to control the distance between you and your demise. When you were ready, you bent your knees to your chest, bringing the attacking clicker closer to you as you thrust your blade up under its chin, burying it to the hilt. 

The second your knife pierced the decayed bone and cut through the main stem of fungal growth that had replaced the former occupant’s brain, it became a limp sack of dead weight hovering over you. With a grunt, you kicked your legs straight again and pulled back on the handle of your blade, the defeated clicker slumping off of you as you turned your face to avoid the ooze of dark blood that leaked from its fatal wound. Panting, your chest caving in and expanding so rapidly you felt yourself going dizzy, you wanted to just lay there in the muddy snow. Your fingers were still curled around the leather straps wound around the knife’s grip, throbbing with how tightly you held it, and your limbs vibrated with overuse. 

But that last ditch effort of your survival instincts wasn’t done yet, that same thing that had taken over and handled the clicker screaming at you to get up, to get inside the house. It's right there, just a few more steps away. There might be something useful in there - food even, or fresh clothing. You haven’t seen anyone in weeks, that house might be untouched. It could be a gold mine. You could lay down in a bed. Just get up and get yourself inside. 

It wasn’t until you’d dragged yourself up to the second floor, sobbing through your soreness and fatigue, that you realized it was Gavin’s voice in your head, bargaining with you to keep going when all you wanted to do was quit, not your own. Limping and shuffling through the first of three doors at the top of the stairs, you shouldered the door open as tears streamed from your eyes. Of course it was him that would remind you to fight. Of course it was him that would urge you to keep fighting, even the memory of him was so strong that he wouldn’t let you quit. You fell into a shaking, sniffling heap on the dust covered bed, uncaring of the filth that coated your skin and the blankets you laid on. Reaching under your shirt, the fingers that had been clutching your knife closed around the chain that hung around your neck, the blade tucked back into your boot. You squeezed until you felt two smooth, round metallic bands pressing into your palm, and then you let go - of the rings, of your tears, of your consciousness - and let sleep fall fast and heavy over you. 

In your dreams, he came to you. Not just his voice, not just his insistence that you keep finding reasons to fight, things to live for, but him. Your Gavin. In your dreams, the world hadn’t ended twenty some odd years ago, and he wasn’t sick or weak. When you slept, you saw him, felt him the way you most loved to remember him - smiling and warm, grabbing your hand to twirl you through the kitchen before the restaurant opened or wrapping both arms around you to pull you down into the bed with him. In this particular visitation, he was sitting with his back to the trunk of the big maple tree that overlooked his grandfather’s farm, your spine pressed to his chest as the two of you watched the summer breeze sweep over the fields before it tickled your skin. You felt his lips at your ear as he whispered his love for you, felt the tips of his fingers flex against your body where he held you. “Don’t want to let you go,” he murmured, nuzzling into your hair. “Don’t want to say goodbye.”  

You turned to tell him that he didn’t have to, but instead of his face all you saw was the tree bark. Swiveling back around, you saw him standing in front of you instead. Hmm? How did he- 

Before you could piece together that this was a dream and that the laws of physics didn’t matter, Gavin knocked the toe of his sneaker against your foot, your heel rolling in the grass. “C’mon, time to get up.” 

“Uh-uh, Gav,” you protested, reaching your hands out to try to grasp his and urge him back down to the soft grass with you. “I want to stay here with you.” 

He gave you a sad smile and shook his head, toe knocking against your foot again. “You can’t, sugar. You can’t stay with me, you have to get up now.” 

Another nudge to your foot jogged you from the dream and dropped you back into your body, eyes flying open to see the muzzle of a rifle as it poked at your boot. Oh, shit. Adrenaline spiking again, you sucked in a breath as your heart pounded against your ribs. Gun. That’s a gun. Drawing your knees to your chest you sat straight with your back against the headboard and held your hands up, empty palms facing away from yourself, a slight shake in your fingers. Shit, what do I- Wincing, you swallowed the panic that threatened to rise and forced reason into your thoughts, convincing yourself that since you hadn’t been shot on sight, maybe the situation was worth trying to talk your way out of. 

Fight or flight… or surrender. 

You exhaled slowly and lifted your gaze to take in the figure of a broad shouldered man in a canvas coat, the weapon gripped in his gloved hands trained loosely on you though his trigger finger was relaxed, resting on the guard. His face was partly obscured by his gun, but you took in a pair of dark umber eyes weighing you with each blink, the bags beneath them sagging into his cheeks which disappeared under a graying beard. From the looks of him, he’d only been out on the road a day or two, jeans worn but clean, a scarf bundled around his neck and a bag strapped to his back that seemed full, as though he had packed it recently. He didn’t look hungry or ragged like you knew you must appear to him, but you didn’t know if that had any significance or if he’d just been lucky and happened upon a cache of food in another nearby house. Maybe he’s like me…just passing through, just looking for- 

“You’re gonna need to start talking.” His gruff voice broke the silence to make you realize that it wasn’t silent, a second pair of footsteps ascending the creaking staircase. Shit, there’s more of them. 

Nodding, you decided that the best course of action was to earn his trust, show him that you weren’t looking for confrontation. “There’s a knife in my boot and a gun in my bag.” You swallowed, eyes darting down to the pack that was on the floor next to the cot you occupied. “There’s no ammo in it, you can check.” 

“Which boot’s got the knife?” He asked, chin jutting out as the other pair of steps grew closer. 

“Right,” you answered quickly, licking your dry lips and extending your right leg out so that he could disarm you without having to come any closer. Using one hand, he found the handle of your hunting blade and carefully drew it from the sheath you had tucked between your shoe and your sock, dropping it behind him to clatter noisily on the floor. 

“You bit anywhere?” He stepped back, again putting space between him and you but blocking your path to the door. “Saw those infected out there. Any of ‘em get you?”

“No.” You crossed your arms over your chest. You knew he had to ask for his own safety. If you had been bitten, there might only be a few hours before you started devolving into a soulless vessel for the infection, before you turned and became a monster yourself. 

“You lyin’?” He pushed, though not any more aggressively than you would have if the situation was reversed. 

You swallowed, recalling a handful of times when you had come upon strangers that you weren’t expecting to find and how you’d actually been more aggressive than this man was when you’d questioned people. “No,” you answered again. Eyes moving to where he’d thrown your knife, you went on. “I would have taken care of things if I’d gotten bit.” A flash of understanding in his eyes told you that he got your meaning. You may have been out of ammunition for your gun, but if that clicker you’d dealt with had managed to sink its teeth into your flesh you would have followed the bite with your blade and ended things before the infection could take hold. “Look, I’m not… I just-” 

You stopped speaking as you heard the second person, another man, speak from the hallway. “Joel? What’s goin’ on in there?” He hurried into the room then. “I heard-” The second man’s eyes landed directly on you, widening as he took in the sight of the first man stooping to pull a small revolver from your backpack. “Well, shit.” You watched him tighten his grip on his own weapon even though he kept it lowered. “Who do we got here?”

“I dunno Tommy,” the first man, Joel, answered as he stood, returning his eyes to yours and tilting his head to one side so that the longer strands of his salty grayish hair flopped over his forehead. “We didn’t get that far.” 

“And we don’t have to go any farther.” You held your hands up in front of you again and proceeded carefully. “I was just… I needed to rest. I’m not looking for trouble or anything. I’m sorry if this is your place. I just… I’ll go. And you won’t see me again.” 

The two men looked at one another, silently conversing with their eyes and facial expressions, and you realized that they looked alike. The younger of the two had longer hair that was slightly lighter in color and struck through with fewer grays than the older one, but their bone structure was similar and their eyes were the same shade of brown. Brothers, some part of your subconscious told you, or cousins. Definitely family. You weren’t sure how or if you could use that information to get them to let you go, but you filed it nonetheless. You focused on listening for any signs of others but heard none, though you did catch a sound that you thought might have been the whinny of a horse. 

Before you could try to piece anything together, the younger man, Tommy, lowered his weapon to his side, Joel doing the same but kept his eyes trained on you. “You don’t have to high tail it now,” Tommy said, giving you a slight grin. “And forgive me for saying this ma’am but you look like fifty miles of bad road and if we let you go without offerin’ an alternative I’m fairly sure we’d be finding your corpse up here next time we come through, and that’s not what any of us want.” 

You narrowed your eyes at him and weighed the man’s words. You knew you looked like shit, and you knew that the two strange men who had stumbled upon you could probably tell that you hadn’t had a decent meal or a full night’s rest in far too long just by looking at you, so you knew that you couldn’t bluff and say that you weren’t in need of whatever they might be offering. But you’d also heard first hand about groups of men who sought out women just to have their way with them - you’d met Ty after she had escaped from one of those settlements, the woman never fully recovering from her time spent there. If that was what they were offering you, you’d take your chances with the infected. “Why should I trust you? I don’t know you. I really just… I needed a place to crash and-” 

“You need food.” Joel stated, head tilted to one side. “You’re a few days out from starving, I can see it on your face.” That shut you up, because you knew that he was right. “We have a place not far from here. It’s safe. There’s people, we have plenty of room.” He finally stowed his rifle back over his shoulder, completely disarming himself and locking eyes with you. “It's not just men, either. There’s women, kids.” He shook his head. “Long as you don’t try anything stupid, we’re not gonna hurt you.” 

You thought again about what they were offering. If they had wanted anything from you they had already had plenty of time to take it. If they’d wanted you dead you would be. “I…” You licked at your chapped lips and tried to come up with a reason not to accept their offer. But after the brush with mortality you’d just suffered and the heaviness of being alone at the end of the world, you simply couldn’t. “Alright,” you nodded. “Just-” 

“Alright then,” Tommy moved his head up and down one time and turned for the door as Joel stooped down to pick up the knife he’d taken from you along with your empty gun. He picked up your bag as well, putting both items inside and keeping a firm grip on it. You stood from the molded mattress and extended a hand out to take your things back from the man, but he clicked his tongue and shook his head. 

“I’m gonna hold onto these ‘til we get where we’re goin’. You’ll get ‘em back once everything’s sorted, yeah?” 

You didn’t see what choice you had so you sighed. “If you say so.” He gave you a look that said that he did in fact say so, and you nodded, realizing that he was waiting for you to follow the other man out of the room and down the stairs. “Alright.”  

His hefty footfalls followed your lighter ones as you descended the rotting steps that you’d somehow made it up without injuring yourself on, and then you were back outside, the late afternoon light already starting to fade. “Is it far?” You asked, turning to the man behind you. 

“Not too far,” he answered. “An hour maybe. We were out on a standard perimeter run when we heard gunshots up here and found you.” 

You felt yourself deflate a little at the thought of walking for an hour, especially when you realized that what you thought was the sound of a horse had actually been two horses - one for each of the men. Tommy was already sitting in his saddle when the two of you stepped up to where the second horse, a chestnut colored one with a long black mane, stood. “What’s the plan, Joel?” He looked down at you and then up at the other man as he too stepped into his stirrup and climbed atop his horse. 

“She can ride with me.” The man answered as he leaned forward, running his large palm over the horse’s shoulder before patting the animal twice. It wasn’t a suggestion so much as it was a decision, his tone firm and his eyes fixed securely on you as he sat back in his saddle. He wants me in front of him where he can see me. Smart. It was that more than anything that made you relax enough to start to trust him - he didn’t underestimate you, which meant that he wasn’t an idiot. 

The other man nodded once, clicking his tongue in his cheek. “Alright then.” Gripping the reins in his hands he pulled them, his horse turning so that the animal was facing the direction of what must have been a road at one point, the asphalt reduced to gravel by the tree roots that had broken through to reclaim it. “I’ll take lead since you got,” he waited until you had climbed up and taken your place in front of Joel the man’s large gloved hand closing securely around yours to help hoist you up and, then raised one eyebrow so that it disappeared under the hair that hung over his forehead. “Extra cargo.” 

You stiffened at that, narrowed eyes trained on the younger man as he turned. Cargo? I’m not… I’m a person. You remembered Ty telling you that the men who had kept her and the other women captive had often referred to them as cargo. People aren’t cargo. I - 

“He doesn’t mean it like that.” Joel’s voice came from behind you as though he could sense your unease at Tommy’s words. “He just meant since there’s two of us he’ll take point so I can keep an eye on you.” He reached around you to grab the reins, his thick arms coming around your body. “We done a lot of bad shit to survive, Tommy’n me.” You didn’t turn around, but you felt the movement as the man shook his head. “But we would never do what you’re thinkin’. I promise.” You felt yourself release some of the tension in your muscles and then he was speaking again. “You don’t have to tell me your name if you don’t want to, but like I said. We’re not gonna hurt you. What we’ve got? The place we’re taking you? It’s safe, and all we’re tryin’ to do is help.” 

You thought for a few seconds about giving him a fake name but decided that there was no point in that. Giving him your real one, you thanked him for everything that he had said and all that the two men were offering, and though Tommy had been quicker to fall into a smile in front of you, you heard the barest hint that there was one on Joel’s face as he let out a stunted laugh. “Thank me once we’re in Jackson and you’ve met Maria.” 

With that he flicked the reins and the horse began to trot off in the direction Tommy had gone, leaving you to wonder exactly what was in store for you when you arrived.

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Thank you for reading! If you would like to be added to or removed from the tags for this or any of my stories, please feel free to let me know! You can also fill out the form on my masterlist! 

Tags: @something-tofightfor  @littlemisspascal @mishasminion360 @nyctophiliiiiaaa @practicalghost @amb11 @mindidjarin @jk7789 @tentacruels 

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x you #Joel Miller #pedrostories #joel miller fic #the last of us fic #tommy miller #joel miller tlou #pedro pascal character #tw violence #tw death #survivor blues #survivor blues joel miller #fight or flight #i am terrified to release this into the wild but here we go

[edenmemes]

skyward sword sentence starters

more to be added !

❝ you promised to meet me before it starts, remember? ❞ ❝ you seem pretty...relaxed about the whole thing. ❞ ❝ is something wrong? what’s the hurry? ❞ ❝ sometimes i just don’t know what’s going on in your head. ❞ ❝ i'm not like you. i fail at everything i try. ❞ ❝ a shrimpy boy like you hardly looks the part of a hero. ❞ ❝ swatting a few monsters will be no trouble for you. ❞ ❝ run and play this time. get in my way again, though, and you’re dead. ❞ ❝ don’t even pretend that was an accident! ❞ ❝ do you doubt these eyes? i look upon your shirt and i see a single thread loose on your sleeve stitching. ❞ ❝ this is no place for one such as you. and yet here you stand. ❞ ❝ i need to vent all this unhealthy anger,     and your agony is such a great stress reliever. ❞ ❝ remember what we discussed. restrain yourself. focus on the task at hand. ❞ ❝ do my words anger you? do my words sting? let them. ❞ ❝ you don’t come by here just to see me, do you? ❞ ❝ what’s wrong? you just made a face like you wanted to say something. ❞ ❝ oh, i get it. you’re trying to weasel out of having to practice. ❞ ❝ i guess it’s not all bad. at least i’m getting paid. ❞ ❝ there’s something i’ve been meaning to talk to you about.... ❞ ❝ would you wake up, straighten up, and grow a backbone already? ❞ ❝ nice try, but you’re not fooling me. ❞ ❝ i...i have to go. i’m sorry. ❞ ❝ folks were always cheering me on like it was a parade. but as you know, time passes. ❞ ❝ you keep some very strange company, friend. ❞ ❝ i don’t know if it’s safe yet...i’m going to stay here awhile longer. ❞ ❝ oh no. you’ve done it now! there’s no escaping this one! ❞ ❝ so, what now? are you going to cry? ❞ ❝ i can’t begin to tell you how sorry i am for pulling you into all of this. ❞ ❝ what is wrong with you? just look at what you’ve done! ❞ ❝ what we’ve seen here today defies explanation. ❞ ❝ you put up more of a fight than i would have thought possible out of such a soft person. ❞ ❝ did you really just draw your sword? foolish. ❞ ❝ should you heed the call of destiny,     i don’t know what dangers you may have to face. ❞ ❝ i can’t help being such a coward...i’m really sorry. ❞ ❝ i fear i spent far too long teasing and toying with you. ❞ ❝ you do your people proud. ❞ ❝ how long do we have to live in constant fear? ❞ ❝ i'll just beat you within an inch of your life! ❞ ❝ dawn is drawing near. it has been a long night for the both of us, hasn’t it? ❞ ❝ you were limp and unconscious. i feared the worst. ❞ ❝ what do you think you’re doing sneaking out with that? ❞ ❝ such a beautiful day, but we’re too busy to enjoy it. some things never change. ❞ ❝ i guess you’ll never learn unless you run into trouble one day. ❞ ❝ look at my face. if that’s your idea of a joke, i’m not laughing. ❞ ❝ you appeared to be relishing that snooze, so i declined to wake you. ❞ ❝ huh? oh, uh, nothing. really, i was, uh...talking to myself. ❞ ❝ you’re looking a little pale... ❞ ❝ i imagine you and i will cross paths again. until then, do not lower your guard. ❞ ❝ you certainly are persistent... ❞ ❝ all that may be well intentioned and true, but it doesn’t mean it’s right. ❞ ❝ i’m prepared to pay the price for what i’ve done. ❞ ❝ i had no idea we were fated to carry such a heavy destiny. ❞ ❝ i need your strength to tip the scales in our favor. ❞ ❝ all this training, and no results! ❞ ❝ all i’ve hears so far is a bunch of babbling about destiny,     but that’s a load of garbage. ❞ ❝ when night draws her tenebrous curtain across the sky, i come here. ❞ ❝ what in the world just happened? did you use some kind of magic? ❞ ❝ please, see it through and prove the legends true. ❞ ❝ i was happy just spending my days hanging around with you. i wanted that feeling to last forever. ❞ ❝ you are vital to a mission of great importance. ❞ ❝ the chances of that happening are just about less than zero. ❞ ❝ i hate to break it to you, but today’s the day i bust up this adorable little fantasyland you’re living in. ❞ ❝ this is a war, and the fate of the land hangs in the balance. ❞ ❝ i know you, and you’re no hero. ❞ ❝ you’re messing with me. say it again, i dare you. ❞ ❝ you float through life with your head in the clouds. ❞ ❝ i don’t do charity for wimps. ❞ ❝ what’s this...? what is it that my eyes behold? ❞ ❝ don’t even think about it! are we clear? ❞ ❝ the point is your work here is done. i got it covered from here. ❞ ❝ my eyes foresee a hazardous, thorny road ahead for you... ❞ ❝ you...this is your fault, you know. ❞ ❝ my heart is bursting with thoughts of you. ❞ ❝ i have a serious dilemma on my mind right now, and you’re distracting me. ❞ ❝ i’ll make you proud. you’ll see! ❞ ❝ feels dangerous. something could jump out at us at any moment. ❞ ❝ we’re talking about a tale that’s been passed down over a lot of years, so i wouldn’t put much stock in it. ❞ ❝ i have the right to experience an unfettered and passionate love, don’t i? ❞ ❝ i’ll tell you, it gives even a big guy like me the creeps. ❞ ❝ oh...how can i get you to notice me? ❞ ❝ i get the feeling nothing i can say will talk you out of it. ❞ ❝ my love for you is wider than the horizon and deeper than the clouds. ❞ ❝ trust my piercing eyes...listen to my pure and innocent voice. ❞ ❝ i feel so excited, so cheerful, so full of life. ❞ ❝ i sense a silent power dwelling somewhere in your frame. ❞ ❝ this turn of events has left me with a strong appetite for bloodshed. ❞ ❝ there’s no doubting it. the gears of fate have begun to turn. ❞ ❝ i'm sorry. i was lost in thought there for a moment. ❞ ❝ don’t men open doors for a lady anymore? how long am i supposed to stand here waiting for a little chivalry? ❞ ❝ i hate even saying this, but i guess you got it all figured out. ❞ ❝ you must not push yourself. you’re still recovering. ❞ ❝ you think you’re pretty suave, don’t you? ❞ ❝ i know you’re in a hurry, so i really appreciate you taking the time to help. ❞ ❝ i saw it, but i was able to escape by the seat of my pants. ❞ ❝ do you have any idea how that made me feel inside? furious! outraged! sick with anger! ❞ ❝ you’re really something else. i could never imagine myself doing what you’re about to do. ❞ ❝ i must aid you in fulfilling the great destiny that is your burden to carry. ❞ ❝ i should have believed you...i’m sorry. ❞ ❝ lately, when i think about you, my head gets all fuzzy, my heart races, i get short of breath, and i feel all dizzy... ❞ ❝ you should know better than that to fret about me. ❞ ❝ thanks for jumping in there to rescue me. ❞ ❝ hey, hold on there! what are you trying to pull all of a sudden? ❞ ❝ your face cries out in earnest wonder, and that cry is: ‘what’s this?!’ ❞ ❝ i promise up front not to murder you. ❞ ❝ you...didn’t hear any of that, did you? there’s no way you heard, right? ❞ ❝ i tell you, all sorts of weird things are going on lately. ❞ ❝ calamitous visions appear before me... ❞ ❝ you...make me so happy...i think i’m going to keel over... ❞ ❝ i wanted you to be the first to see me like this. ❞ ❝ i can’t imagine a more fitting color for you. it’s as though you were born to wear it. ❞ ❝ i bet you can’t even decide what to have for lunch on your own, huh? ❞ ❝ amazing, right? wrong! it is beyond amazing! ❞ ❝ it can’t be easy for you, can it? ❞ ❝ you’ll see in time that you have your own role to play in all this. ❞ ❝ trust in fate to guide your feet. ❞ ❝ i bet you’re here just to check me out, right? ❞ ❝ i just hope nothing has happened. i’m worried sick thinking about it. ❞ ❝ whoa...you’re kind of imploding my mind right now. ❞ ❝ if you wanna live again one day, you should head for home. ❞ ❝ you have a great journey before you, and those clothes...they don’t look up to the task. ❞ ❝ did you manage to get even a wink of sleep last night? ❞ ❝ ever heard of banging your knuckles against the door? it’s called knocking. ❞ ❝ so, uh...yeah. just how long have you been standing there? ❞ ❝ honestly, it’s almost as though you become a completely different person when you worry about me. ❞ ❝ you showing up here must mean we’re connected somehow. like fate. ❞ ❝ sorry to put you through that. i guess i owe you one now. ❞ ❝ to tell you the truth, i’m feeling a little frustrated, and right now i just need someone to vent to. ❞ ❝ what’s with you? leave me alone if you don’t want anything. ❞ ❝ hearing that is such a...huge weight off my mind. ❞ ❝ though your journey will put you in harms way, you must endure. ❞ ❝ i'm just deadweight. what kinda use is that to anyone... ❞ ❝ seriously, what is that thing over there?! ❞ ❝ before i say another word, i feel like i owe you an apology. ❞ ❝ during your long journey, you’ve grown so much. ❞ ❝ from the moment i laid my eyes on you, i could tell you had a gentle and generous heart. ❞ ❝ oh dear...i don’t know what’s come over me all of a sudden... ❞ ❝ you don’t appear to have any serious injuries. for that much we can be grateful. ❞ ❝ i can see into those dopey eyes of yours. ❞ ❝ i can finally smile and laugh again! thank you ever so much. ❞ ❝ i think i might of broke something. ❞ ❝ is that it? i thought it was going to put up more of a fight. ❞ ❝ i thought we were goners this time. sort of glad i was wrong about that. ❞ ❝ what? i don’t seem like my usual self? ❞ ❝ this place needs a name. a name fitting for this rugged, adventurous wilderness. ❞ ❝ what were you thinking? you scared a year off my life! ❞ ❝ care to explain just what you meant by ‘our special moment alone’? ❞ ❝ my advice? work hard and wish with all your heart. ❞ ❝ say, you look all flustered. ❞ ❝ i fear we can’t dwell on our success. ❞ ❝ the world is bursting with undiscovered surprises, isn’t it? ❞ ❝ you're not exactly mr/mrs.perfect either, are you? ❞ ❝ this is easily as scary as i thought it would be. ❞ ❝ i swear this neighborhood’s getting crummier every day. ❞ ❝ you ain’t as dumb as you look. ❞ ❝ i was going to ask if you wanted me to take care of you forever... ❞ ❝ i need to learn how to keep these delirious dreams in check. ❞ ❝ maybe you should forget about everything that happened here tonight. ❞ ❝ can you imagine a more gruesome fate? ❞ ❝ there are more monsters about than before, so be careful. ❞ ❝ human desire is an insatiable, fearsome thing. ❞ ❝ i sense an evil presence on the other side of this door. ❞ ❝ you understand, don’t you? i’m not wrong about this, am i? ❞ ❝ i never wanted to lay eyes on you again. ❞ ❝ i would have gotten discouraged if you hadn’t come by to cheer me on. you gave me motivation. ❞ ❝ who do you think you are, getting involved in my business like that? ❞ ❝ i just wish there was more i could do for you... ❞ ❝ i don’t even understand how you could make such a wild accusation! ❞ ❝ it was at that moment i finally realized. i realized that...i love you. ❞ ❝ make sure you come home every now and then. nothing like a good sleep in your own bed. ❞ ❝ you’d better not keep me waiting. ❞ ❝ make sure you put your heart into it! i won’t stand for anything but your best. ❞ ❝ how could you be swayed by the temptation of material gain?     do you have no honor? ❞ ❝ you really want to hear about all my troubles? that’s kind of you. ❞ ❝ you...weren’t supposed to see that whole spectacle. how embarrassing... ❞ ❝ you have only succeeded in buying us a little more time. ❞ ❝ watch it! that’s no way to talk to someone who just saved your life! ❞ ❝ you look like you need to get something off your chest. ❞ ❝ know that all the questions you have now will be answered in time. ❞ ❝ there is nothing natural about these tremors. ❞ ❝ you might just be the person i need! you seem pretty good with the ladies. ❞ ❝ it’s great to hear you’re so confident in me. ❞ ❝ ideal love is unfettered and passionate. anything less than that can’t really be called love at all. ❞ ❝ you're incessant buzzing around my head like some irksome gadfly when i’m this busy is...making me very disagreeable. ❞ ❝ you may not have noticed, but i’m trying to hide here.     could you please scoot along? ❞ ❝ you'd better keep your eyes to yourself, if you know what i mean. ❞ ❝ have you come to laugh at me in my miserable state? ❞ ❝ you...you came to see me! i’m so happy. ❞ ❝ your job is simple! you make sure none of these monsters lays a claw on me. not...one...claw. ❞ ❝ now is not the time to be picky about who will help you. ❞ ❝ watch carefully while i demonstrate what a real hero looks like. ❞ ❝ you are something else! there is nothing you cannot do. ❞ ❝ if you think about how often we meet, you have to admit that our relationship has gone beyond friendship, you know? ❞ ❝ i’ll make the affair so excruciating, you’ll deafen yourself with the shrill sound of your own screams. ❞ ❝ i was right, then. there is something special about you. ❞ ❝ i should have reprimanded you the last time we met, but instead i was...soft. ❞ ❝ ha-ha! you didn’t see that coming, did you? ❞ ❝ you really are a snake in the grass. ❞ ❝ you are indeed worthy of being called a hero. ❞ ❝ i’m not used to getting stared at like this. it’s making me blush. ❞ ❝ i can’t hide anything from you, can i? ❞ ❝ the longer i train, the more i realize i’ll never measure up to you. ❞ ❝ whoa...you took out every last one of them. ❞ ❝ i know how bad this must look to you right now, but i assure you i mean no harm. ❞ ❝ it’s all very strange, but i doubt there’s much of a connection between these things. ❞ ❝ you're a weird one, climbing all the way up here. ❞ ❝ don’t cry --- it’s perfectly, mostly safe! ❞ ❝ you and i, we’re bound by that thread of fate. destined to fight. ❞ ❝ meet me in battle, and the thread of fate that binds us will be soaked crimson with your blood. ❞ ❝ i do not wish to dwell on what may have happened if you hadn’t been here. ❞ ❝ you have awakened a wrath that will burn for eons! ❞ ❝ you really like those fantasy stories, eh? ❞ ❝ there is one teensy, tiny thing i lack...namely, mercy. ❞ ❝ i must warn you, i won’t go easy on you this time. ❞ ❝ i might be willing to forgive and forget if you’ll strike a deal. ❞ ❝ since i know i can be honest with you, i’ll admit i got a little sulky. it was frowns all around. ❞ ❝ i see you’re still among the living. ❞ ❝ i saw them dragging you off unconscious, so i tailed them. ❞ ❝ i want you to visit me at my house tonight. ❞ ❝ you don’t have to say a word. i can see how you feel by the spark in your eye. ❞ ❝ you’ll see. i’ll be as tough as you in no time. ❞ ❝ it’s not like ‘oh, hey, that person’s back! i’m so happy!’ or anything like that... ❞ ❝ whoa...that’s some really terrible handwriting. ❞ ❝ i would very much like it if you would go out with me. ❞ ❝ truly? you choose me? ❞ ❝ i swear to you, whatever it takes, i will drag you into an eternity of torment. ❞ ❝ you and i, we’re bound by a thread of fate. ❞ ❝ i’ll watch over you, protecting you from afar. ❞ ❝ until then, we’ll keep our love secret. ❞ ❝ this news has just filled my heart with rainbows! ❞ ❝ this place seems strangely familiar... ❞ ❝ don’t you gotta take care of your own business first? ❞ ❝ they’re not going to do anything nice if they catch you. ❞ ❝ it’s not humane to tease someone this bored. ❞ ❝ i’m not some sideshow for you to gawk at. ❞ ❝ it’s weird to say out loud, but that’s just how i feel right now. ❞ ❝ you can’t break me with interrogation. you’ll never make me talk. ❞ ❝ word is there’s a huge treasure hidden in these here ruins... ❞ ❝ what? that’s not weird to say! ❞ ❝ ...i understand your true feelings. better than you know. ❞ ❝ all the fairytales that we heard growing up...they appear all too real. ❞ ❝ do i look sad? no, i’m doing what i want to do! ❞ ❝ i don’t know what came over me! i had no clue i had the talent to make something like this. ❞ ❝ you shouldn’t be out here in the open with no way to defend yourself. ❞ ❝ you do have the tendency to cause trouble for those you ‘help’. ❞ ❝ as far as i’m concerned, i got nothing but time. ❞ ❝ don’t you play coy with me. i know that you know, so why not let me in on the fun? ❞ ❝ so you really think a sob story like that is going to work on me? what a joke. ❞ ❝ i’d take pleasure in punishing you, but i have no time for recreation. ❞ ❝ sorry to leave you on your own, but you look like you can handle it. ❞ ❝ remember --- it’s a secret to everybody. ❞ ❝ it isn’t as action packed as what you’re doing, but maybe this is my destiny. ❞ ❝ don’t you just love the way it smells down here? ❞ ❝ defending the land...it’s my purpose, i think. it’s why i’m here. ❞ ❝ what do i know...you might just surprise me. ❞ ❝ fibber! you’re a fibbity fibber! ❞ ❝ you needn’t even say it. i can tell from the look of sheer astonishment on your face. ❞ ❝ you have had this destiny thrust upon you without warning...    or choice, for that matter. ❞ ❝ don’t do anything heroic and get yourself caught. ❞ ❝ ...you want to tell me but you can’t? ❞ ❝ you know, i really worry about you. it’s a weakness of mine. ❞ ❝ try not to get in the way of my shots, ok? ❞ ❝ i haven’t slept a wink in...ahhh...i don’t even know how long. ❞ ❝ i had my suspicions, but until now i wasn’t sure. ❞ ❝ you seem a good deal stronger than the last time we met. ❞ ❝ i would be remiss if i didn’t let you know of the weight on my heart. ❞ ❝ i have a reputation to protect, you know. ❞ ❝ listen closely. do you hear that? ❞

#rp meme #roleplay meme #roleplay starters

[husbandohunter]

Mermaids exist in stardew, yes? So imagine a mermaid farmer for Zhongli, Kaeya and Diluc it could be in Yandere setting or not. I just wanna know their reaction when they found out and how it’ll effect their relationship. Will it brew angst, love, or both

Part of your world [Genshin x Mermaid!Reader]{Stardew Impact series}

Synopsis: You came from the sea and he takes you through a journey of what it was like to live on land despite your differences.

Genre: Fluff

Characters: Diluc, Kaeya, Childe, Zhongli

"I threw in Childe because I had an idea for him xD It's fluff month so everything is going to be happy from now on >.>"

=============================

{Diluc}

It was a hot summer day when Diluc first found you lying unconscious ashore. You had just swam far and wide from the ocean world, the climate deemed unideal for your case. With no one else around, he took the initiative to help you out of your situation.

He shortly found out by the slight appearances of scales gracing your legs that you were neither a human or someone coming from the town nearby. As legendary as mermaids are, Diluc wanted nothing to do with you. His beginning plan was to find your relatives and send you out of his house (Additional work isn’t welcomed when he has so much already). However, you latched onto him pretty quickly since he was the one who saved you.

Here stands a human, a creature that you always wanted to interact with, in your perspective he may look a little stern but he must have plenty of knowledge to offer based on all the antiques he owns.

The only problem was that you two had no way to communicate. Different worlds meant different languages. Whenever Diluc told you that you couldn’t stay, all you did was tilt your head and whenever you tried expressing what you wanted to say, well, normally bubbles would come out of your mouth since they were an indication for your words.

He gave up on trying to kick you out and simply allowed you to take residence as long as you stayed out of his workaholic life. You would tend to his farm while he was absent on other matters and feeding animals in the barn (a lot to do but a win-win situation now that you were able to discover what it was like to live on land at the same time). Though you were also a handful, most of the time Diluc had to excuse himself from his desk when you thought the rake was some sort of hair brush and he forbade you from using the bulldozer. Quite honestly you caused him a lot of stress. He spent most of his hours teaching you and before he knew, it was already a habit of his.

The only words you knew were three words. If you wanted to eat you would say ‘fish’. If you were thirsty, you would say ‘water’. If it was anything else, you would say ‘Diluc.’

He allows you to take long baths since he knows how hydrated mermaids must stay at all times. Orders a pool to be built in his front yard (at least this way helps him save his costly electricity bills). Diluc also borrows books from the library museum for you to read, anything that you would find interesting, (mostly they were about alphabets and picture-based stories (it felt like he was raising a child).)

Easily gets worried when you step into town with him, he keeps a watchful eye in case you collapse and extra bottles when you need a drink. Most of the time, he had to keep an eye on you since you had the natural instinct to waltz into whatever interested you, such as dancing in annual festivities (which you dragged him along of course). It was how he grew attached to your presence because you truly knew how to appreciate the world around you when he himself was too busy to do so.

Two worlds merged and he was learning how to live in yours too, how you perceive things. Building sandcastles, collecting seashells, listening to the echoes resounding within them. Activities he thought were unnecessary suddenly gained the meaning he had lost long ago. Diluc grew too fast at maximum speed, trying to get as many things done as he could, until he was pulled back by the emotional waves of your kindness and compassion, onto the shore he failed to live on. How ironic reality can be.

{Childe}

Everyone knew how much Childe loved to fish. He sets out at sea every evening to capture a batch of flounders, hopefully stumbling upon a legendary one.

In a way, he did. Just not what he expected. What he pulled out of the waters seemed to be a human-sized fish sitting upon the other residues caught in between. ‘A mermaid…?’ he thought, still digesting the fact in front of him. (No wonder the net felt so heavy).

At the same time he wanted to take you with and sell you for a good price but knew how mad Tonia would get when she found out. So he lets you go free. The thing is, you swam behind his boat and followed him back to land. This was how your relationship with Childe started, to this day he continues to jest upon that memory.

Tonia took most of the responsibility to coach you about human life. One of them was table etiquette, before you ate with only your hands which caused a mess. Childe would laugh hysterically at it until Tonia reminded him, “This is also what happens when you use chopsticks, big brother.”

Teucer invites you to basically anything since you have so much patience. Childe shortly realizes that he was soon going to be replaced as the eldest caretaker and you couldn’t even talk at that time. So it was only fair that he included himself in the circle while interacting with your way of communicating: sign language (Surprisingly, he was naturally good at it. Though his movements are rather exaggerated and...ungraceful).

You were nice enough to accompany him to his fishing tasks and soon enough became your daily activities. Childe takes the lead as you follow him from the side, sometimes he lets go of the steering wheel and allows you to push the boat instead (he kept a note to himself that in your mermaid mode, your strength multiplied by a large number). Other times he felt a little risky and decided to jump in the ocean with you for a swimming session. It worried you immensely but your anxiety subsided when you saw how much fun he was having and for the rest of the time, you both explored what the ocean had to offer.

Childe used to be a fish-cook enthusiast. Not anymore (since that day you cried when glancing at the flounder dish he placed on the table). He had to stick to seaweed or any other plant-based meals with a little bit of meat but too much would cause your stomach to churn. Since his siblings complained at the sudden change, he had to make a separate meal plan for them. With a mermaid in the house was certainly high-maintenance indeed.

Cuddling with you in front of the cracking fire blazing under the chimney was one of the calmest moments indulged himself in. He often chooses the life where the waves crash constantly, anticipating a thrilling storm that comes ahead. But you were just a lull at the sea, the mediator he needed in times where his siblings needed a mother-figure. Sometimes he fears that you would leave him and return to where your true family lives but he was grateful that you chose him above all else. He was grateful that by chance, he captured you at sea. One thing he loved about life was the unpredictability the future brings, including the blessings. Even if you were a creature from far away, in your presence he felt like he was truly at home.

{Kaeya}

When the tides rose above his head, Kaeya was sure that he was done for. The surfboard he recently stood upon slips off beneath his feet and he falls into the ocean’s merciless waves. No oxygen, no time to catch his breath amidst the impact, his eyes were slowly closing and the last thing he saw was the sun’s light beyond the heavy surface, along with the murky visual of someone swimming in front of it.

Although he almost drowned, the idea of being saved by a pretty mermaid makes up for the fact (He has a natural tendency to flirt at anything eye-catching even if you were an outlandish being). You on the other hand was confused by his advances as you couldn’t understand a word he was saying, hence you swam away.

Those beginning days when you chose to explore the land, Kaeya remembers how much trouble you had with walking using your new legs. He had to hold both your hands while leading you forward, he found it rather cute when you tighten your grip the moment you felt that he was going to let go (he was only bluffing of course but you still hissed at him). Still, Kaeya ensures that you don’t fall to the ground, he catches you in time when you collapse while laughing, “You’re doing great sweetheart.”

In return you teach him how to read the ocean’s movements so that he won’t drown again. Kaeya spends more time around the beach since he knows that the water bodies are where you were most comfortable with. He tells you that you always smell like saltwater whenever he buries his face in your hair, perhaps that was how he grew attached to the ocean as well.

In summer seasons there were several days where you had to sleep in his bathtub because the air was so dry. As a mermaid, he had to tolerate many of your unique quirks, in this case he had to deal with showering in cold water since you took up all the electricity. Another case was your wine tolerance, no one could challenge you to a drinking contest when your body could sustain large amounts of liquids. Kaeya sometimes jokes if you could turn him into a merman like those in fairytale books so he can have the same experience. You take it as a joke while he was also being half-serious.

When you have to take a temporary trip home, Kaeya visits the dock every evening and waits for you to come back, trying to see any signs of your colourful tail. He glances at the ocean he grew to love, knowing where he stood is as far as he could go and anywhere beyond the boundary was out of his reach. So many people left him in his life and even though he knew you wouldn’t do the same, he still worries. Uncertain if you would abandon him too.

Your existence became the center of his life the moment you chose to walk upon land with him. Side by side, through small hurdles the seashore and hurdles as big as the wave that almost killed him the day he met you, Kaeya keeps them all as if they were the most precious treasure a pirate could find. It didn’t matter if you were different from everyone else because despite your tail, all he could see was you.

{Zhongli}

While Zhongli strolls along the sandy beach, he follows the alluring sound of your singing voice. You sat upon the rock while humming along what seems to be an old folk tune, similar to what Guizhong once sang. The man folds his arms and closes his eyes. Many years have passed since he last heard something like this, “Your voice, it’s very lovely.”

He was a geologist who worked by the museum, collecting different types of rocks and seashells that would wash up shore. You became very familiar with his daily routine that before he pays a visit to the beach again, a pile of interesting rocks would be waiting for him by the docks. It was a gift. And Zhongli would bring snacks like seaweed soup as an accommodation for your kindness.

Unlike Kaeya, when you couldn’t walk because your legs were too weak to be used, Zhongli helps you with every step along the way even if the trip was a slow one. He even offered to have you carried when he saw you were having too much trouble but you insisted on trying. The whole trip that usually took ten minutes was a three hour walk.

Even though he knew many things, your language was not one of them. However he was willing to learn. Both of you have study sessions regarding each other’s culture. For you it’s the way humans drink with cups because of Zhongli being a tea fanatic himself, he even showed you how to hold a tea cup properly. You taught him how to swim since he had been so occupied on land that swimming never crossed his mind. Thankfully he was naturally good at it due to his tall stature (albeit a little scared when diving into an environment unknown and different to him).

Zhongli loves the way you sing and he would ask every time he wanted to read a book. Either under the tree on a warm spring day or on the couch when it was storming outside. Although he intended to get some reading done, Zhongli can’t help but fall asleep. You didn’t want to wake him up (and you could carry him if you wanted to thanks to your mega-mermaid strength) so by morning, you’d find yourselves in the same spot and your lap feeling numb.

Earth and sea were separated for a reason so that the creatures may stay upon the place where they belong. That wasn’t enough to separate you from him though. Zhongli would travel to the sea to see you and you mustered the courage to walk upon the hard surface of land. The two were only parts of the world but together they are part of the world, connected to form a whole new life.

#genshin impact #diluc x reader #kaeya x reader #childe x reader #zhongli x reader #diluc #kaeya #childe #zhongli #diluc ragnvindr #kaeya alberich #genshin #genshin impact kaeya #genshin impact diluc #genshin impact zhongli #genshin impact childe #genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #genshin impact imagines #genshin impact scenarios #stardew valley #genshin impact headcanons #nya writes

[delimeful]

taking the fall (4)

warnings: pain, injury, mentions of captivity

-

Roman woke to throbbing pain in his leg and an uncannily soft surface below him.

He resisted the urge to groan theatrically as he was unwillingly dragged back to consciousness, and then resisted the urge to groan harder as he recalled just what had happened before he passed out.

He’d been seen. After all his careful planning, his little one-in-a-lifetime excursion had still landed him in the hands of a human. He wasn’t fool enough to believe that Logan had left him alone just because he’d fallen out of sight for a moment and then passed out like a wimp who couldn’t even handle a little bone-breaking.

Humans often lived in blissful ignorance, but not ‘lack of object permanence’ levels of it. Logan had definitely seen him fall, and odds were that he was now in the human’s clutches. Which was bad.

Tiny furniture hobbies aside, the guy was a textbook nerd, which was only barely a step down from an actual scientist. Roman wouldn’t be surprised at all if he woke up in one of those clear glass vials that scientists were always using on TV. Would that be better or worse than a jar? Probably worse, but if he could tip it over…

He dragged his thoughts away from the hypotheticals, well aware that he was stalling. Whatever he was laying on now, it certainly wasn’t glass.

Hesitantly, he peeked one eye open a tiny bit.

A pillow. It looked absolutely bizarre from this angle, his body just barely heavy enough to sink in and cause a few wrinkles in the fabric, but it was still recognizable as one of the huge fluffy pillows that normally rested on the human’s bed.

He turned his head a little further, and found that the pillow was on the desk that he’d previously taken a dive off of. The miniature set was still present to one side, surprisingly enough. Perhaps less time than he thought had passed, if it hadn’t been sent off to wherever Logan had promised to take it yesterday?

Or perhaps Logan had decided to forgo that responsibility in favor of his exciting new discovery. Roman shuddered.

“Hello? Are you awake?”

The voice nearly made Roman jump out of his skin, and he couldn’t help but freeze guiltily, totally giving away his awakeness. He craned his head up and saw that Logan was sitting on the desk chair, pushed back a few feet from the desk, a tiny dresser in one hand and a paintbrush in the other.

That was… considerably less menacing than he’d been expecting. “What are you doing?”

Logan blinked at him, nonplussed. “Wood detailing?”

Roman squinted at him suspiciously, trying to figure out what nefarious plans one could enact with the details of a tiny dresser. Perhaps it was supposed to be a part of some sick enclosure that the human was designing for him? He had wanted Roman to talk about the chair, of all things, so maybe he needed a tiny victim to test out his furniture.

That wasn’t exactly torture, but he still needed to escape. His presence here risked every other borrower in the building and out of it. Growing more somber, he testingly shifted his leg, trying to figure just how effective the human-applied splint actually was.

… Ouch.

“Is it sufficient?” Logan asked, unknowingly echoing his thoughts as he leaned over slightly to peer down at him. Roman pulled on his fiercest scowl, and was gratified to see the human retreat slightly. “I have pain medicine, but I was uncertain about the proper dosage, so I decided to wait until you woke up to see what you wanted to do.”

“Oh, I just bet you want me to take pain medicine,” Roman shot back sharply, ignoring the fairly nonsensical nature of what he’d just said. Like he was helping a human figure out the best ways to drug a borrower!

“... I do?” Logan replied, sounding downright confused by his hostility. “Normally, I would encourage anyone with injuries as significant as yours to seek out professional medical attention, but after witnessing your fear of me, I assumed that you would prefer to not be exposed to more humans.”

“I wasn’t afraid!” Roman snapped indignantly, and then paused as the rest of that spiel caught up with him. He was unspeakably glad that the human hadn’t been dumb enough to waltz into a human sickbay with him, but-- “I would prefer to not be exposed to you, either, BFG!”

“BFG?”

“Big Frustrating Giant!”

Logan looked dubious, but carefully averted his gaze. It wasn’t what Roman had meant, but those huge eyes being off of him were admittedly a relief. He shuffled his body to the side slightly, trying to ignore the sharp pains from jostling his leg.

“I will remind you, you are the one who came into my apartment, not the other way around,” Logan said, frowning slightly but keeping his eyes locked on the furniture in his hand. “Why were you there?”

“I’m afraid it’s none of your business,” Roman sniffed haughtily, ignoring the way his heart had sped up in his chest at the idea of making the human angry.

“Apologies, I don’t mean my apartment. I’ve already discerned that you likely find sustenance and other helpful items in human living spaces, going by the ease with which you traverse large terrain and the repurposed human items that make up your belongings,” Logan clarified, casual as anything. “I was asking why you were in my stage miniature. There is no food in it, and you must know that I would notice if anything went missing.”

Roman stared at him, feeling the blood drain from his face at the offhand way that the human had correctly guessed a lot about how borrowerkind survived, all from Roman’s unconscious presence.

It was beans like this that the rules had been designed for, so of course he would be the one to catch Roman. He set his jaw, resolving not to say anything else that might give anything away to this wannabe Sherlock.

-

Logan glanced up from the layer of drying varnish that he’d been staring at for the past thirty seconds, wondering if maybe the tiny person had fallen back into unconsciousness.

But no, despite their silence they were still awake and glaring at him, brow furrowed and arms crossed firmly. He tilted his head curiously, trying to indicate that he was listening, but it seemed they didn’t plan to answer at all.

“If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine,” he said, hurriedly looking back to the miniature he was fiddling with in an effort to not stress the tiny person out any further. “I simply wanted to see if there was anything you needed that I could provide you, since I’m partially responsible for your injury.”

“Partially?” they echoed, incredulous.

Logan nodded. “I startled you, and your attempt to flee led to injury. I should have known better than to move so quickly, particularly with the disparity in our sizes.”

“That was a strategic retreat,” they emphasized, “and you never would have caught me if you’d moved slowly. I’ll have you know I’m no slouch.”

Caught them…?

“My intention wasn’t to grab you,” he said. “I was reaching for one of the chairs to try and compare the scale. If it was incorrect, it would have been obvious when put side by side with you.”

“Yes, yes, I already guessed that you have nefarious furniture-related plots for your poor captive, you don’t have to explain it.” They were rolling their eyes when Logan glanced at them, and seemed to be an inch or two away from where he’d originally placed them on the pillow.

It felt to Logan as though they were talking cross-ways, even more so than his usual pop culture reference confusion(and didn’t it just figure that a tiny person that lived in the walls was more familiar with human colloquialisms than him?) during conversation. Perhaps it was due to their less than fortuitous first meeting?

“It seems like there might be some misconceptions here,” he tried. “I’m not keeping you captive.”

The stranger lifted a skeptical eyebrow, spreading their arms to gesture at the surrounding area. “Aren’t you, though?”

Logan followed the gesture, eyebrows drawn in. As far as he knew, a pillow on top of his desk hadn’t turned into an impenetrable prison within the last few moments. “No. I’m not.”

“So if I were to, say, walk out right now, you’d just be all peachy-keen with it?” they asked, almost condescending in their doubt. “You wouldn’t try to stop me from leaving?”

Logan paused, a firm denial on the tip of his tongue. “Are there others like you nearby?”

That seemed to be the wrong thing to say, going by the way their tiny hands went white-knuckled for a moment.

“No,” they answered mulishly, “I’m the only one of my kind. And I’ll have you know, if there were others-- which there’s not-- I would never sell out my hypothetical fellows for my own freedom!”

“That’s…,” Logan sighed, deciding not to mention how incredibly dubious he was of the likelihood that there was only one of a species. “That’s not what I meant. You clearly pursue an active lifestyle, I just wanted to ensure that there would be someone to support you and help you recover from your injuries. You won’t be able to even walk on that limb for a fair bit of time without permanently damaging it.”

Logan thought for a moment that he’d gotten through to them, witnessing the way trepidation lingered in their expression when they looked down at their leg, but then they shook their head firmly.

“That’s just an excuse! I know that you’re planning on keeping me, humans always do. I’d rather deal with a permanent limp than be a pet in one of your little dollhouses,” they spat, vitriol in every word. “So either let me go or admit your foul plans!”

The words were sharp, designed to incite, but Logan was used to scanning for the tiniest of flaws in his work, and he could spot the subtle signs of fear that his tiny visitor was just barely concealing. Clenched fists to hide shaking hands, the curl to their shoulders that suggested they wanted to curl up defensively, even their expression wobbled slightly when Logan spent a moment too long looking at them.

He took a deep breath, trying to ease the tension in his own frame and put them a little more at ease. An impossible task, considering they expected him to-- to know that they were a talking, feeling person and try to ‘keep them’ anyhow, but it helped clear his head.

“What will it take?” he asked, keeping his voice even.

“Um, what?” they asked, thrown off.

“To get you to stay here, just until you heal. I’m asking this of you, so it’s only reasonable that you ask for something in exchange,” Logan said. “If we can’t come to an agreement, I’ll leave you to your own devices, but there has to be something you want badly enough to remain here for a few weeks.”

“And what, you’ll just give it to me and let me leave after I’m all healed up?” they asked, continuing their trend of acting like a future in which he acted with normal human decency was an impossibility.

“Yes,” Logan answered, as earnest as he could manage. “That’s part of the arrangement. I would also like to know your name and pronouns, though that is secondary to being allowed to treat you.”

“What if I said you weren’t allowed to grab me? Or touch me at all?” they asked.

“That would be acceptable,” Logan replied without hesitation, mentally trying to figure out how non contact would alter a treatment plan.

“And you… you aren’t allowed to take notes on me! Or pictures!” they continued, watching him intently. He kept his expression agreeable, only nodding. “And you have to give me food, you can’t withhold it or make it part of another deal.”

“Medical treatment for someone on bedrest also includes things like meals and mental enrichment,” Logan replied, concealing the displeasure he felt at the idea that someone else would have tried that in his position. He really did hope these were all hypotheticals.

“And… and…,” they cast about, looking for something else to add to their ‘ridiculous’ demands, “I also want a sword!”

Logan paused, admittedly caught off guard. “A functional one?”

“Yeah-- yes, that's right! I want a sword perfectly sized to me, entirely functional, or the deal is off!” they replied, smug as though they thought they’d finally found something he’d refuse.

Unfortunately for him, Logan wasn’t the type to be deterred by a challenge. “I’ll have to go through some prototypes, but it can’t be too different from some metal decor I’ve worked on in the past.”

“Sorry, what now?” they asked.

Logan was already reaching for a post-it to jot down ideas for the base source of metal-- A nail? Or perhaps a piece of old silverware?-- eyes bright with anticipation. “I’m saying that you have a deal. You’ll stay here, and I’ll make you a sword.”

Caught up in schematics as he was, he completely missed his guest’s exasperated groan.

#sanders sides #sanders sides fic #sanders sides g/t #ts roman #ts logan #ttf #taking the fall #my writing #writing #borrowers #g/t #am i missing tags? #bthb #bad things happen bingo

[sekceesimps]

Shimmering Through Darkness (a Zhongli x reader oneshot)

summary:   Rex Lapis finally retires and allows for Zhongli to spend time with his darling. Basically just tooth rotting Zhongli retirement fluff with a lil spice!  (tried to make reader GN)

a/n  Schlongli is so sexy I can’t. This man is literally my entire reason for shifting. Hope all of you enjoy some fluffy Zhongli. Leave some feedback and drop a request! 

Sincerely Coffee 

Rex Lapis had been tired for so long. His responsibilities over the thousands of years in existence had drained him of strength and the will to continue his rule over the land of Liyue. 

He had been wandering the lands and been practically stripped of all purpose in his life. At least, that was until he met you. 

Your meeting had felt fated and arranged by powers far more powerful than him. Zhongli truly believed that the two of you were soulmates and quite honestly he was probably correct. He was ready to spend the rest of his entire life with you, however long that may be. 

Now the two of you had met by chance on one of your work ventures. He had been off at Wuwang Hill for funeral arrangements, a task that he found needless, but was thrust on him by the lack of workers at the parlor. You had gone there to investigate a slew of ghostly sightings, a task which you were loath to do alone. 

He had run straight into you while you were wandering around the houses looking for clues from a mysterious particle. Instantly, he had been captured by your stunning E/C eyes, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and body alert, but still relaxed. You had apologized for bumping into him and all he could do was stupidly stare at you open mouthed as you bashfully rubbed your neck with your hand. Ever the gentleman, he aided you with your commission and accompanied you back to Liyue Harbor. Well, next thing you know he’s inviting you to dinner and a few months later you’re living together. 

Your relationship blossomed much faster than either of you had expected. Zhongli was not going to complain though, every action of yours, as simple as it may be, seemed to spark something within him. Your very existence gave him reason to live and to plan a future that wasn’t a dead end one. 

He had been with many lovers over his years of existence, but none of them made him flustered or dream of keeping them close at his side. Zhongli prided himself on his calm composure, but when you gently ran your fingers across his knuckles or through his long dark hair, he was a blushing and speechless mess. To think that he was once the most fear striking and rageful Archon as you wrapped your arms around his lithe form and rested your chin on his head. 

You hadn’t really been shocked when he had told you that he was Rex Lapis. He was probably more surprised than you when all you did was shrug and leave kisses across his jaw. You truly are perfect for him, he thinks as you pull him to your side on the bed and shower him with love that he had not experienced in thousands of years. 

One of his favorite things to do with you is grasp your hand, lacing your fingers with his, and take you to all his favorite locations in Liyue. Really, his dates are just adventures of their own. He finds so much joy from being able to watch your eyes sparkle as he tells you a tale of a battle or an event that happened at a certain ruin or cliffside. His heart never fails to race when you rest your head on his shoulder and let him hold you close to his side. 

Living together was not something he wanted to ask of you, as you had yet to be married and his traditionalist ideals feared offending you. The concept of marriage was one of which he was beginning to entertain more and more. However, when you begin to stop accepting commissions in faraway regions, choosing to instead stay by his side more often, it leads to you not really being able to have a stable place to lodge. 

He was quick to use the Northland Bank’s funds to purchase a beautiful home slightly north of the bustling harbor. You were a little annoyed that he hadn’t consulted you and you could have paid for it yourself, however the pride in his eyes of being able to provide for you (ahem Childe provided for you, but neither of you say anything) just filled you with acceptance over the new developments. Shortly after, you decide to invite him to stay with you, not really knowing if he had even had a place to sleep in the first place. 

Zhongli preened under the attention you gave him at home. Almost every night, the two of you had accustomed yourselves to wrapping in eachothers arms and basking in the warm embrace of the other. These wonderful moments in your shared home gave him more meaning than he’d ever had before. His existence was now only to please and provide for you and your happiness. 

Retirement was an idea, just a faraway dream, that he could never be able to accomplish. He had his duties in Liyue! The people needed him to stave away threats and preside over the land. Yet, Zhongli no longer wanted to have dominion over Liyue, instead, he wanted to finally rest at your side. As the people of Liyue began to grow more self-sufficient, he began to see it fit to depart.

He had let the idea simmer in his mind for years, but now his plans could possibly reach fruition. He wasn’t like the Mondstadt Archon, Barbatos. Freedom was not his forte, he was the Archon of contracts. The great Rex Lapis had sworn to protect these people in the place he called home. As his definition of home shifted from the vast and diverse lands and mountainscapes of Liyue towards you and the warmth and love that you provided, his decision became clear. These people could care for themselves for the time being, and he wasn’t going to be going too far. 

When he broke the news to you, he had blushed at the way a smile broke across your face and you embraced him with fervor. He had planned for you two to live in your small home near the Guili Plains, but your begging to live somewhere with a few more people prompted him to decide to move to Qingce Village. After all, his home was wherever you were. 

You were the one who had to do most of the working and wage earning as he had no mora. He felt a bit guilty when you would come home exhausted every few days and he was just brewing some tea for the two of you. To be fair, the tea he made was very good and he was trying to master how to cook certain dishes so he could please you. 

Traditional husband and wife roles had shifted considerably as Zhongli was staying home and cooking and cleaning while he waited for you to come home from work. Your home itself was located in the outskirts of the village, allowing for a slightly longer travel, but privacy that Zhongli now desired. He was more and more relaxed and trusted you enough to mostly shed his troublesome human form. 

His draconic features were more apparent as he relaxed by your side in the spacious home. His golden eyes had a more prominent glow and two sharp curved horns protruded from his head. His nails were longer and more sharp and some days, parts of his skin would be shiny with scales. He was still in a human form for your convenience, however it helped him rest when he showed parts of his real body. Perhaps one day he’d show you his true self, but he’d have to do it in a secluded area, he is supposed to be dead after all.  

Zhongli in retirement was far more interested in children than he would have thought. While you might not have been technically married yet, something which he was eager to fix, he still wanted to start a family with you. After several long talks you decide to hold off for the moment, whether you want to have children or not, Zhongli is anxious to one day expand the home the two of you have created. 

Truly, he is much more domestic and eager to help you in any way he can. Especially in the bedroom. As he is slightly more dragon like now, those features seep into your more intimate moments. He’s more keen on marking and claiming you than he was before. Probably because he views you as his and is loath to allow others near you. He’s definitely more soft than before and prefers to have you guide the way. His yearning for that domestic life has really give you more control. It’s also given him a renewed focus on your pleasure and on taking care of you afterwards. 

Zhongli is glad that he found you. You’ve given him a sense of normalcy, a home, and love which he has never really felt before. You are his guiding light, his reason for life, and person he  wants to protect above all else. As his soulmate, you’ve cut through the darkness of the past several hundred years and provided him with everything he never knew he needed. 

a/n I’m currently writing Genshin NSFW HCs and I elaborate more about Zhongli there, so keep your eyes peeled! Hope you enjoyed this piece though. 

#genshin impact #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #zhongli #fluff #oneshot #zhongli x reader #rex lapis #domestic fluff #x reader #morax #morax x reader #kinda nswf

[varnienne]

At His Mercy

This is for the Citrus Dome's Hybrid AU Collab. It's so late and I feel terrible but life is so hectic for me rn. aflskfj this is my first attempt at writing monster smut so please be patient with me T-T

CW: dubcon, naga!Shinsou, edging, minor degradation/name calling, gn!reader but they have a pussy, I think that's it?

A rodent squeaked as it raced across the ground. You jumped, heart thumping in your chest as you turned at the sound. Brightening your lantern, you glanced around. Nothing. You sighed.

Why did I take this job again? Oh, right. The reckless dumbasses in your party were still healing from the last job. Next time they want to fight an elder black dragon, you’re going to teleport them as far away as possible. Now, here you were, on a solo quest to help pay for lodging and food while they recovered. They owe me for this.

Something pulled at your senses. Frowning, you concentrated on it. No oily malice, but no warmth of light either. You hesitated. Last time this happened, it led you to an abandoned mansion full of strange traps and gifts. Poor Mina was now cursed with a ghost child haunting her. At least you got a new spellbook out of it.

Another tug made you stumble. Guess I don’t have a choice. Slow, hesitant steps, the light of the lantern showed nothing but glistening rock. A cold droplet fell on your hand. You raised a brow, brushed it off, and kept walking. A few more landed on your clothes. What… your gaze moved to the ceiling. Eyes wide, you swallowed thickly. Sharp stalactites dripping with water hung low. Well, if I wasn’t careful before, I sure as hell will be now.

The strange pull coalesced and swelled until it pulsed from ahead. Magic sliced through the air, disturbing the formations above you. Several began to shake. Shit. You pushed off and didn’t look back. Some of the fallen stalactites started to block your path. Throwing your free hand out, magic surged from the pendant around your neck.

“Guiding Bolt!” Light converged into a ball. The ball raced forward, crashing through the rocks. The path was clear. More stalactites fell behind you. One skimmed past your leg. Another just missed your ear. You pushed harder. I’m not gonna let something like this kill me!

Another tremble alerted you to the largest column cracking and starting to fall. If you didn’t hurry it would cover the exit. But the stalactite was falling too fast to cast another spell. You leapt forward and rolled into a ball. The column crashed as you stood, ice shooting down your spine at the echoing thud. That was way too close.

You brushed yourself off and checked your lantern. “Dammit.” The glass was shattered and the last of the oil shimmering in a puddle by your feet. You shrugged. It was cheap anyway. Digging in your bag produced a striking stone. “Light,” you murmured. The stone sparked a few times before igniting, its glow just bright enough to see ahead of you. “Perfect substitute.”

~oOo~

Another hour of walking brought you to a three-way division. The pull surged once more, drawing you to the left path. It had a soft light that radiated with warmth.

The further in you went, the stronger its glow became. A gasp left you at the beautiful geode. Its vibrant purple crystals glittered from every crevice. The pull you felt earlier rippled all around you. This was the source of it. The geode’s aura hummed with a soft trill. Your eyes closed as the soft tinkling echoed in your ears. A smile danced on your lips as the magic enveloped you into an intoxicating high of warmth and comfort. There’s a word for this feeling. What was it again?

Something slithered around your ankles and a deep, timbre chuckle caressed your ears. “Well, well, well. Looksss like I found a would-be thief.”

“A… a thief?” Wait… were they talking to you? Your eyes opened as you tried to sense who was behind you. A yelp escaped your lips as you were lifted from the ground. Now hanging upside down, you stuttered out, “N-no! No, I wasn’t trying to…” But you were. For your client, at least. He wanted a small pouch full of crystals for the village’s power system. “Alright, I was.” Shaky hands waved in front of your face. “But I-I’m sure a few... small ones should work fine.”

The voice scoffed. “That’s what they all said.” Whatever held you up, shifted. You gasped when your gaze met the being who trapped you.

His deep violet scales glimmered with the geode’s light. Bright lavender hair defied gravity in soft spikes. Lithe, sun-tanned skin covered his torso, sloping down into a thick tail that disappeared into the darkness before looping back through the crystals and around your ankles. But what really caught your attention were his eyes. Slitted pupils with violet irises as deep as his scales, a quiet hunger for something you couldn’t place in them.

“Tell me,” he brought you closer, gaze narrowed on you. “What should I do with you?”

You gave him a shaky smile. “Le-let me go?”

The naga laughed. “That was a cute try,” you flushed, “but no. Can’t let you go that easy.”

Maybe if you could focus on another spell-

“What time of year is it?”

You blinked at him. “What?”

Shinsou huffed. “What time of year is it out there?”

“Uh… It’s almost time for the autumn harvests.” Heart pounding furiously, you eyed the growing smirk on his face and swallowed. “Why?”

The naga chuckled. “The villagers only ever send someone down here every few years before winter.” His tail finally lowered you to the ground. Though it coiled further up your legs. “Usually as some kind of sacrifice. Looks like they chose you to be next.”

“Sacrifice?” Escaped as a mere whisper. “What… what happened to the others?”

Shinsou slithered closer and cradled your face in one hand, the other carding through your hair. It loosened your braid and forced your hood down. His smirk turned into a wide smile that showed all his fangs. Another chuckle. You shivered.

“Depends.” His long tongue flicked out. “Do you wanna be eaten?” His thick coils tightened around your body, the pressure soothing knots in your shoulders and back. The softness of his scales relaxed the last of your tension. “Or would you rather face the villagers that sent you here?”

“I…” With your friends still recovering, you weren’t strong enough to fight an entire mob alone. But was becoming food really much better? “I don’t know.”

A strong hand lifted your chin. You glanced into Shinsou’s eyes. Funny. Were they glowing like that before? Or was that the crystals’ light in them? Claws gently slid up and through your hair.

“So, you want to be eaten?” You answered with a breathy yes. He chuckled. The deep tone had warmth rushing to your face. “Just remember, you asked for this.”

You blinked when the end of his tail tapped your nose. It brushed across your cheeks and trailed down to your neck. You shivered. Shinsou’s eyes flashed. His tail uncoiled from around you. Every touch of his scales on your skin sparked heat low in your abdomen. He smiled and finally released you from his coils.

Clothes in disarray, your shaking legs gave out. Shinsou caught you. “Careful now. Wouldn’t want a nasssty spill.”

You gasped. A tremble rippled through you. Shinsou’s hands grabbed your hips as his tail slithered between your legs. It teased you, moving higher and higher. Then it stopped. You rubbed your thighs, trying to relieve the ache.

Shinsou leaned in, breath ghosting over your ear. “If you want to be eaten, beg for it.”

You bared your teeth at him, but he only chuckled. Damn. Then his fangs nibbled at your neck. Fuck it. “Please,” you whined.

He smiled into the base of your neck. “‘Pleassse,’” His tongue slowly dragged up to your ear. Smiling lips barely touching the shell of it, he whispered, “What?”

Breathing ragged, you mewled and grabbed his arms. “Eat me.”

“With pleasure.” His tail brushed your inner thighs and wrapped around your waist. Coils shifted as he raised you high enough to reach your sex, tearing your clothes off. Shinsou set you down on a small pile of his tail. Clawed hands gently trailed down your hips and thighs. Your sex twitched when he pushed your knees apart.

He breathed in deep. Eyes rolling back, he growled. “Fuck. You smell deliciousss.”

Two fingers gently traced over your puffy lips. Up. Over your clit. Down. Barely sliding in. Shinsou teased your sex again. And again. You squirmed, trying to buck your hips onto his fingers. To no avail. A whine sounded from your throat.

“Impatient to be eaten are we?” He tapped your clit then gently rubbed it in circles. Slowly, so, achingly slowly, he leaned down. Breath ghosting over your pussy, he smirked. Then steadily licked up your slit.

You mewled. “Please, make me cum.”

“That’s sssir to you, little slut.” His deep chuckle rippled through you, strengthening the haze in your mind. Shinsou gently thrust into you. It writhed around, searching for that special spongy spot that should be…

Your back arched as your fingers dug into his tail. “Oh, fuck!”

Right there. The naga kept attacking that painfully wonderful spot. Rubbed your clit in faster circles. His fangs gently nipped at your nether lips with every thrust of his tongue. A clawed hand snuck around your thigh, holding your hips still. Shinsou stopped.

You whimpered when he pulled away. “Ah, ah, ah.” He glanced up, juices glistening on his lips. “You haven’t earned it yet.”

Blunt nails dug deeper into his scales as he edged you again. End of his tail slithering around your neck. And again. Fingers ghosting up your sides. Claws flicking across your nipples. And again. Tongue sliding against that delicious spot.

Finally, you couldn’t take it anymore. “Please sir, can I cum?”

Shinsou gently rubbed your clit. “Don't you want to feel this good all the time?” You whimpered and hastily nodded. He smiled with all his teeth. “Then all you have to do is sssubmit.”

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