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peachdues · 2 months

Text

TOXIC

LEVI X READER

A/N: a combination of the horny angst that’s been swirling in my head for a few days.

Listen. Do I condone what’s about to happen in this? No. Was it fun to write? Absolutely.

CW: MDNI • explicit sexual content below • toxic fucking • unprotected/raw sex • creampie • breeding kink • fucking does not solve problems • neither do babies • toxic Levi and toxic Reader tbh

This was a bad idea. Terrible; one of your worst to date.

And yet, as Levi spread you out across his kitchen counter — the counter that, until two weeks ago, had also been yours — you couldn’t for the life of you remember why every alarm bell in your head was sounding off, begging your body stiffen, to reject the man lowering himself between your thighs, his gray eyes glowing nearly silver with desire.

“Just can’t stay away, can you?” His lips are hot and silky as they slope messily across your thighs, and his fingers push aside the hem of your sundress to make way for him. “Because try as you might, you know no one will ever be able to fuck you like I can.”

Ah. That was why.

Because you and Levi had broken up. You were no more; a past concept, a memory.

In the end, your three-year relationship died not in a fiery blaze of glory, but in cold resignation. He’d sat stoically at the kitchen table as you’d confessed that you could no longer stomach being second or third or whatever place behind his true passion — work — and that it was time for you to put yourself first, for once, since he wouldn’t.

The only sign of his emotion has been his fists — clenched so tight that the skin of his knuckles had gone white.

I’m done. I have nothing left to give you, Levi. Not when you only ever take and offer nothing in return.

He’d tried to argue once you announced your intention to move out that night. He’d fought to convince you to wait until morning, to put away the small suitcase you’d packed with your most essential belongings, to sleep on it — on the decision overall. But you’d known that if you’d stayed, you would have changed your mind — would’ve let him change your mind, and he’d known that, too. So you’d held firm, turned your back on him and forced yourself to walk out of the door to your apartment, suitcase in hand.

You hadn’t intended to return, and it seemed like he’d accepted it. He’d even gone so far as to mail whatever of your belongings you hadn’t managed to pack to your parents’ address. So though you spent your nights staining your pillow with bitter tears, your heart feeling like little more than a misshapen lump of meat barely beating in your chest, you’d at least gotten what you thought you’d wanted: a clean break.

Until he’d texted you that all of your mail was still being sent to your — his — address. He’d offered to pay to have it forwarded to you, but when you saw how much that would have put you in his debt, you’d begrudgingly told him you’d stop by on your way home from work and pick it up.

Really, you knew better; should have known better, at least.

And perhaps your logic would have won over your desire, but then Levi’s fingers tug your underwear to the side and his mouth latches to your core, and all the chatter that constitutes your higher reasoning fades to an indiscernible buzz in the back of your skull. The moment you feel something hot and wet prodding your entrance, your mind whites out without the hope of coherency returning any time soon, as Levi begins to fuck you with his tongue.

With a keening cry, your legs seize around his head, trapping him between your thighs. Your hands shoot to grip his hair, desperate to find purchase; to find anything to help keep you tethered here, to reality, rather than risk floating away in clouded bliss.

But Levi is too committed to tearing down the wall you’d carefully spent the last two weeks building, brick by brick. So as his tongue pumps steadily into your core, he shifts, his fingers digging into the meat of your thighs as he presses you harder against his face. His jaw works furiously and when his teeth graze against your clit, you lose whatever last vestige of control you’d clung onto.

You’re sobbing through clenched teeth but utterly helpless to stop your hips as they begin churning and grinding against his mouth. Levi hums in approval, and throw your eyelashes, you spot the way his pupils dilate, chasing away the cool silver of his irises and replacing them with something black and hungry.

“Atta girl,” he praises between his thrusts, and the vibrations of his mouth against your heated, sensitive flesh nearly makes you drool. “For once in your life, stop fuckin’ thinking.”

He swirls his tongue around you entrance one more time before he replaces it with his fingers, plunging two into your cunt and curling them. He finds that rough patch on your innermost wall with a near frustrating ease.

It’s infuriating to know that the person you know can’t give you what you really need is somehow the only person who knows exactly how to give you what you want. And, judging by the faint smirk pulling at Levi’s lips they latch around that bundle of nerves at the apex of your thighs, you know he can see your resolve crumbling under his feverish mouth.

“You don’t even remember why we were arguing, do you?” He jeers between harsh sucks at your clit as you continue to writhe and cry out for more. “You just wanted to cause a scene; make me sweat a little.”

You want to fight back; you want to tell him that he’s wrong, that you’d meant it when you’d said your relationship had run its course, but he won’t give you the space to do so. Not when he presses his face firm against your center and rocks his head side to side, reducing any protestations you might have had to pitiful whimpers.

“You’ve got my attention, sweetheart. Let’s see if you know what to do with it.”

Levi slips a third finger into your core and you come undone. With his teeth grazing your clit in time with each measured thrust of his fingers into your heat, you shatter against the kitchen counter, hard enough that stars dance in the corners of your eyes.

“That’s my girl,” Levi groans as he continues to lap at your sensitive and overstimulated flesh. “You’re always so fuckin’ pretty when you cum.”

His praise, coupled with the way his mouth continues to work at your cunt prolongs the waves of your release, until your legs are trembling against the smooth granite of the countertop, and tears are gathered in your eyes. Your walls spasm weakly one final time and then it’s over, your limbs limp and your brain little more than a puddle of liquid between your ears.

Levi steps back and the heat in his eyes is unmistakable; you know, by the way his eyes turn from steel to molten ore that he wants more; wants to take and take and make you bend to him.

You shouldn’t do it; you know you shouldn’t. You know that what’s happening between you is a manifestation of everything that was toxic about your relationship. Levi, always needing to be in control, who only listened when you were at your breaking point, but could never fully give you what you needed. You, who made far too many excuses, who let him dictate the norms of your relationship because it was easy; being with him was easy, until it wasn’t.

So no, you shouldn’t give in; you should stand firm.

You reach for him anyways. “Levi,”

That’s all it takes; a pleading whimper of his name, your hands outstretched toward him, and Levi pounces. His mouth crashes against yours, and his kiss makes you feel whole even though you know he’s tearing your resolve apart.

And you let him; you let him, because you’d sworn you were going to spend your life with him. You believed, without a moment’s hesitation, that Levi was the one for you — the one you’d share the remainder of your days with, the one with whom you’d create and share a family. It was all you’d wanted, and Levi, to his credit, had assured you it was what he’d wanted, too. At least, he did; once.

And, as Levi’s hands slide under you to peel you off the counter, your legs locking around his waist with practiced ease, you know it’s what you still want; he’s what you want.

For all your desperation to have him, Levi is just as eager for you. He pivots you away from the counter, lips still moving heatedly against yours, only to drop you both to the cold tile floor, spreading you out beneath him as his lips begin trailing down your jaw, your neck. He’s too impatient to carry you to the bedroom, his hands fumbling with the buckle on his belt so he can have you then, now, on the kitchen floor.

“‘S been too long,” he pushes the straps of your sundress from your shoulders, yanking the bodice down to expose your. He groans at the sight of your bare breasts, and idly you wonder whether you made the subconscious decision to forgo your bra when you dressed that morning, in the event you’d end up here, under him.

His mouth closes around one pert nipple and you think it was the best decision you could have made; for nothing could possibly feel as right as the sensation of his hot mouth and silken tongue swirling around your soft flesh, nipping and sucking his devotion into your skin.

Your chest is heaving as his hands stroke down your body, pushing and pulling the skirt of your dress up, exposing the lower half of your body. Your legs are still little more than jelly thanks to the intensity of your previous climax, but you manage to wrap them around his hips all the same, clenching in an effort to bring him closer.

“Fuck,” he growls, and he imparts one final nip at your breast before he pulls back, his hands hurriedly shoving the waistband of his trousers and briefs down his hips, just far enough that he can pull his cock free. Your stomach flutters at the sight of him, ramrod hard, his tip already leaking with his desire.

He’s just as desperate for you as you are hopelessly in need of him.

Your eyes trace back up from where his length stands hard against his belly back to his face. A pretty pink blush has flushed his cheeks, spreading down his neck and chest, and his eyes are glassy with want.

“Levi,” you plead with a soft moan. “Baby, please —“

Baby. You hadn’t called him that often while you were together, but when you had, it was because you’d been so filled with affection — with love — that his name hadn’t been enough.

It was a slip, but it doesn’t go unnoticed by your ex. In an instant his body is covering yours, and he’s moaning into your mouth as one hand ensnares itself in your hair. Between quick kisses, you swear you hear him whisper your name against your lips, before his tongue swipes back in and steals your breath away.

He breaks your kiss to shove a hand between your bodies, gripping himself at his base and giving his length one, solid pump. You shift, spreading your thighs wider, ready to take him and feel whole once more.

He lines the tip of his cock up with your entrance and pauses. Impatiently, you buck your hips forward, trying to take him in, but he twists back just far enough that your wetness can only brush against him, a mockery of how you truly need him.

Levi ignores your howl of frustration. “If you want it, then tell me you’ll come home.”

Your teeth clench hard enough to crack, but you won’t give in; not yet, at least.

He’d been right; you wanted him to sweat a little, and damn if you weren’t going to try and bring him to his knees, if only for a bit. At least until he had you back in the palm of his hand, begging for a crumb of his attention.

So with a gritty determination that borders spite, you lock your ankles against his backside and haul him into you with all your might.

“Jesus — fuck!” His yell echoes off the gleaming stainless steel appliances as you force him fully inside you, unwilling to let him win this battle so soon. He falls forward, an arm flinging out beside your head to catch himself.

Your boldness pays off, for Levi is forced remain still, panting hard and his eyes screwed shut as he adjusts to the sensation of being fully buried in your warmth after so long. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see the way the muscles in the arm needed by your head ripples under the force of his restraint. Slowly, his eyes open and the darkness in them makes you pulse and contract around his length, your stomach fluttering in anticipation.

Your mouth falls into a perfect “o” as he begins to move once more. He sits back on his knees, back straight, and his hands come to rest on your hips. He tugs you up just enough that your backside rests against the tops of his thighs, your back forced into an arch away from the floor. His gaze drops to where you’re connected, your base pressed flush against his, and the sight of himself embedded so deeply inside you makes the fingers on your hips tighten.

Slowly, and with careful precision, he withdraws his cock from your heat until only his tip remains lodged in your entrance. His eyes flick to yours and then he slams back into you, forcing your breath from your lungs. He repeats the movement again and again, until your lower lip is wobbling and your fingers are sinking into the corded muscles of his forearms, unable to do anything but cling on as he hammers into you.

The stillness of the kitchen is soon disrupted by the telltale sounds of skin slapping against skin, punctuated by your breathy moans and Levi’s pants. Between the sharpness of his hips and the cold tile of the kitchen floor, you know you’re likely to walk away from this with bruises, but you can’t find it within yourself to care. Especially not when Levi is moving like this, each of his thrusts as punishing as they are calculated.

“What’d I say, huh? No one can fuck you like I can.”

Levi more often than not was a soft lover. Kind; generous; prone to taking his time with you, so much so that it was nearly painful, usually leaving you in a tearful puddle on your mattress, begging him for more.

But now, he’s trying to remind you of what you’re leaving behind by leaving him; he’s punishing you as much as he’s begging you to stay.

The thought makes you moan out, wanton and desperate, and the walls of your cunt clench harder around him.

His hips snap harshly against yours, choking off the sound in your throat. “So come back home,” and though you know he means for it to sound like an order, his eyes betray his urgency, his desperation to confirm that you hadn’t really meant it; that you’d given up on him in a moment of stress and exhaustion. “Quit being a brat and come home.”

You want to tell him you can’t — that the door had closed on your relationship the moment you’d pulled it shut behind you that day, but try as you might, the words will not form. All that spills from your mouth are broken utterances of his name, and even those flatten out into pathetic whines as Levi’s callused thumb finds your clit and begins to work, determined to haul you to the edge of your sanity and shove you over.

Your legs spasm around his waist as you begin your ascent to that sacred precipice. Your eyes are rolled back, your head thrashing from side to side as the pleasure, white hot and searing, mounts within you, that coil in your belly winding tight with every impassioned movement of his body against yours.

Distantly, you feel his hold on your hips tighten, and you can feel his thrusts growing sloppy. You know it’s only a matter of time before one of you succumbs to your release.

He growls your name, the last syllable tapering off in a small whine. “T-tell me — fuck — tell me where.”

Your eyes fly open and meet his, sobering awareness washing over you like a tidal wave.

Only once in the entire course of your relationship, did Levi ask where he was allowed to cum: the beginning. He’d asked the very first time you’d slept with him, legs in the air and over his shoulders, and once you’d made it clear you were on birth control, that had been the end of the discussion. You’d known that if you’d changed your mind, all you’d needed to do was tell him, and he’d adjust. Truthfully, however, you’d not minded the possibility of your birth control failing; you’d been content to let whatever happen, happen.

You’d told him as much, and he’d told you he shared the sentiment.

But that was then; this time, he’s giving you an out. A way to make sure this remains a one-time thing, a moment of weakness between two people too lost and broken to want anything different.

Levi’s eyes widen as the silence stretches between you, and his hips slow until he stops moving all together. The friction mounting where you’re connected is nearly unbearable, and you know the only way to relieve it is to give him an answer — whatever it may be.

This was it; the decision that will make or break you both. For once, he’s out the ball entirely in your court, and whatever comes after this moment of bliss — or frality — ends depends entirely upon you.

“Inside,” you barely manage to squeak, eyes wide and locked unwaveringly with his.

Even Levi hesitates. “Y/N —“

“Inside,” you repeat with slightly more conviction. “Cum inside me, Levi.”

“Your pill?” His hips have already resumed their pace, and you can feel how he’s grown harder at your insistence. But though his body is already moving in accord with your demand, his eyes look ready to bulge out of his skull when you manage the smallest shake your head.

“Inside.” You beg again, and you dig your heel harder into the steely muscle of his backside, limiting how far he’s able to pull his hips back; to pull out at all.

Because damn if he isn’t the only person in the world with whom you could fathom facing the consequences of fucking raw without even the safety net of the tiny blue pills still sitting at your pharmacy, waiting.

“Fuck,” he growls through clenched teeth, a tendon in his neck throbbing. “Fuck, you want me to give you a baby? So fuckin’ be it. As long as you’ll stay.”

He shifts over you, planting one foot on the ground so he can use his thigh to pin one of your legs back and to the side. His hand shoves under your other thigh, mimicking the position of your other leg as he mounts you, his full weight pressing you harder into the floor and keeping you spread wide for him.

Gone was the calculated precision of his earlier thrusts; now, Levi only presses his groin firmly against yours as he begins to rut, each rock of his hips pushing his length impossibly deeper into your slick warmth.

A cracked moan of his name signals that the blunt tip of his cock has brushed up against that spot within you that Levi knows will have you coming apart in minutes. And so, with a feral gleam sparking to life in his eyes, he shifts himself to press the head of his cock firmly against it, his hips rolling hard enough into you that you begin moving in time with him, your hips lifting up from the floor only to be pushed back by him as he works.

His balls are heavy against the underside of your ass as he continues to rut into you. You know he’s close when you feel him begin to twitch inside you, and the anticipation of being filled by him — so hot and sweet — makes the walls of your cunt clench harder around him.

If you thought you were a mess before, the way Levi mounts you on the floor has you nearly screaming with pleasure, so electric and blinding that all sights of the kitchen fade to white, and your eyes flutter shut.

But Levi won’t allow you to check out; not now, not ever.

“Look at me.” His free hand grabs your jaw in an attempt to force you to meet his eyes. You want to give him what he wants, but it’s far too difficult, what with the way yours are glued to the back of your skull, a thin line of drool leaking from the corner of your mouth.

“L-Levi,” you try and plead, to explain. But he has always demanded more of you than you knew how to give.

“Look at me.” His fingers squeeze your cheeks, insistent. “If you want my baby, then you’re gonna look at me while you cum.”

He’s doing it to prove a point — to prove that he still has control over you, over whatever it is that remains between you. And you, helpless against the whims of your heart, let him have it, because you love him.

Fuck. You love him.

You force your eyelids open to meet his punishing stare, and then his lips are crashing down against yours in a fiery clash of lips and teeth as both of you fight to consume the other. But you lose first, breaking your kiss to cry out as your climax slams into you with the force of a freight train, knocking your breath clean from your lungs.

It’s powerful; the most powerful orgasm you’ve had in memory, one that sends your back arching sharply up from the cool kitchen tile below, and pulls a howl of Levi’s name from your mouth.

You’re still straddled among the clouds of your pleasure when Levi succumbs to his own. His body tenses for a moment and then he’s coming undone, his hips giving one last, mighty push before he explodes.

He cums with a strangled groan that he silences by searing his mouth against your neck, his teeth sinking into your skin as he pulses within you.

You don’t try to stop the pleasured grin that forms on your mouth, nor the contented hums which vibrate in your chest as you hold him close to you, savoring the feeling of being warm and full of him.

You know you might regret the decision later; but there, spread out across his — your — kitchen floor, Levi’s full weight bearing down upon you as he continues to flood you with his release, you can’t help but feel that maybe this wasn’t the toxic choice at all. Perhaps this is simply a manifestation of everything that is good in your life.

Good. That’s what you decide to tell yourself as you feel Levi’s lips press sleepily against your neck. This is good; this is right.

Because this — he — is your home.

#attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #levi ackerman #aot #aot x reader #aot fanfiction #aot smut #levi x reader #levi aot #snk levi #captain levi #levi x you #attack on titan fanfiction

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niki-phoria · 8 months

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i really want a part 2 on this 🥹

pairing: yeonjun x male!reader (no pronouns used) genre: fluff word count: 650

summary: after salvaging your prom night, yeonjun takes you out on your first date

includes: blushy yeonjun, lots of fluff, outfit inspo from this pic

a/n: thank you for requesting !! once again, i'm so sorry fics have taken so long to write, thank you for all of your continuous patience <33 i hope you like it :))

likes, comments, reblogs, and feedback are appreciated <33

PART 01 / PART 02

yeonjun anxiously wipes the palms of his hands against the fabric of his jeans; his eyes continuously glance back towards the glass double doors in search of you. he impatiently drums his fingertips against the polished marble table. he tops on his phone twice, causing the screen to briefly light up, showing the time. 11:28.

the small bell hanging just above the door startles yeonjun, alerting him to the entrance of yet another customer - although this time the sight takes his breath away. you smile softly at him as you wander over to sit across from him at the table. your hair has been freshly washed and casually styled. an oversized gray sweater hangs loosely from your frame. from across the table yeonjun can just barely smell the cologne you put on.

“hey,” you smile brightly at him. “i’m not late, am i? i had to catch the bus.”

“no, no,” yeonjun chuckles. “not at all.” he slides one of the cups of coffee across the table towards you with a sheepish smile. “i ordered your favourite.”

“really?” you gasp, looking up at him with wide eyes.

yeonjun stifles a soft chuckle underneath his breath, nodding towards the cup. “try it.”

the beverage tastes sweet in your mouth when you raise the cup to your lips to take a sip. a satisfied hum leaves your lips as you set the cup back down on the table. “you’re too good to me, choi yeonjun.”

“i found a path in naksan park a few days ago,” yeonjun says. “i figured we could go for a walk once we finish our drinks. you know, see the sights. it’s nice outside.”

“i’d like that,” you smile.

“wow,” you whisper, pausing to look at the view of the city. a variety of skyscrapers and buildings nearly touch the clouds in the distance. “it’s beautiful.”

“just like you.”

you playfully swat at yeonjun’s shoulder. “you’re so corny,” you chuckle.

“you love it.”

you snicker, turning back towards the path before you begin your trek once again. yeonjun can feel his heart rate speeding up when your hands gently brush against each other. you softly smile when you glance over at him, hesitantly reaching out to take yeonjun’s hand into your own. despite the deep blush that spreads across his face he intertwines your fingers together.

“hey, look,” you say, gently tugging yeonjun alongside you as you divert from the path slightly. you follow the sidewalk even further until you reach a small, metal bench sitting underneath a line of trees. “let’s sit down.”

the metal feels cool against your skin as you sit down side by side. a comfortable silence falls between you for a few minutes as you relax; watching the bugs fly around you.

yeonjun leans back against the bench, shifting slightly to face you. his lips quirk into a soft smile as his eyes study each of your features. the shape of your eyes. the slope of your nose bridge. the angle of your jawline. the plumpness of your lips.

“y/n,” yeonjun’s quiet murmur catches your attention away from a stray butterfly. his face flushes slightly when you glance over at him. he hesitantly raises a hand up to cup your cheek, brushing a hand against your skin. your breath hitches in your throat when his gaze flickers down to your lips and then back up to your eyes.

“yeonjun,” you whisper. he nervously catches his bottom lip between his teeth - a particularly attractive bad habit.

yeonjun leans in just enough for you to feel his forehead press against yours. his touch lingers against your skin, igniting electricity in its wake. “can i kiss you?”

“yes.” your eyes instinctively flutter closed as you follow yeonjun’s lead in leaning in even closer. his nose brushes against yours before he finally closes the gap, capturing your lips against his in a sweet kiss.

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blackswan446 · 2 months

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worth it || four.

→ pairing: yan!knj x reader

→ wc: 1044

→ cws: mentions of drugging/anesthetizing someone

→ notes: i wonder what's gonna happen next!! (seriously i have no idea)

it had been a week since namjoon has seen you, since his eyes were blessed with your smiling face and your angelic voice graced the slopes of his ears. the whole time, it felt like he was going through the worst withdrawals a human could feel. the warm light that had shone through the deepest cracks of his soul had suddenly dimmed, the bulb had shattered, and the shards of broken glass stuck to his heart like a pincushion.

despite his melancholy, he still showed up everyday, long sleeves and all, hoping that you would come out of the room you had holed yourself up in and just talk. all he wanted was to hear that sweet voice of yours fill his head, and make his heart race once again. oh, he would kill to be in your presence again, even if it were only for a minute. after all, you had no reason to be all tucked away, when the problem that put you in this state was long gone.

did namjoon feel guilty for what he did? no. why would he? he was simply a piece of trash that needed to be disposed of, and disposed of he was. namjoon knew all the right chemicals to use to make the carcass of the animal that he had murdered fizzle away until it was nothing but liquid in a plastic bin. liquid which was then dumped into the ocean and forgotten about. not great for the environment, he knew, but he saw it as more of a service to the world. after all, daekwan was just a piece of garbage that was polluting the planet, and namjoon simply threw it away. where's the harm in that?

one particular evening, which consisted of a few rounds of video games and some take-out, the dynamic duo wound up lounging in the empty living room, where comfortable silence took up the atmosphere. that was, until namjoon decided to break the serenity and ask the question that had been lingering in his mind for way too long.

"so, how's [name]? is she doing any better?" he asked, setting his phone down on the cool leather sofa. jiwon sighed. "she's...i don't know. i mean, she's coming out of her room to eat and stuff, but that's about it. she doesn't say much to any of us. she hasn't been like this in months." he said discontentedly, furrowing his brows as he talked about his sister.

namjoon's heart broke, more than it had before, if that was even possible. you poor little thing. you were so careful, so cautious. you kept your guard up the whole time, all for some slimy predator to slide through the moat and into the castle, and turn everything upside down and inside out.

you

poor

little

thing.

luckily, namjoon was here now, your knight in shining armor had saved the day and killed the monster that haunted you, you just didn't know yet. and now it was the end of the story, where the brave knight marries the beautiful princess and they live happily ever after. but how? how was he going to get his happy ending, when you were still locked away in the tower of despair?

"i'm no expert," he continued, "but i feel like it'd be good for her to get out for a little while. just have some fun with someone she can trust, and push out all the bad thoughts and replace them with happy memories." he said quietly, face drooping with a look of despondency. "but i don't know how to convince her. i've tried to bring her with me on walks and errands, but she refuses to go."

bingo.

namjoon looked up quickly, mind flooding with ideas. this was how.

all he had to do, he realized, was climb into the tower. he had to rip off the iron bars, and unlock the heavy wooden door that kept you locked inside, and the rest would be history. this was his golden opportunity.

"you know," namjoon said, "i wouldn't mind going out with her. or with the both of you, i don't know, maybe more people will make her more comfortable. just a thought." he faltered, putting on his best show of uncertainty, hiding the dark ideas brewing in the depths of his brain with a pure, white veil.

jiwon paused, a thoughtful expression crossing his featues as he considered the idea. "that actually might be..really helpful. thanks, namjoon. i'll ask her later on." he said, a genuine smile unfolding on his face. namjoon's own innocent grin passed over his lips, before he turned his attention back down to his cell phone.

this was just perfect. this basically meant that you and him were going out on a date, if only your brother wasn't coming along. he needed to get rid of him, not forever, just for the night. once you two had spent some quality time together that night, namjoon would tell you his true feelings, and the two of you would live happily ever after. right?

what if his plan didn't work out? what if you didn't feel the same for him? it was well within the scope of possibilities, hell, it was extremely probable! what then? he couldn't just pack up and move on, no way. he'd never given up on anything, every project, every subject, every everything he'd done had been seen through to the end! he wasn't going to lose his streak now, and especially not on you. but what could he do? losing wasn't an option. but winning wasn't guaranteed. unless...

-- flashback --

"halothane," the professor said, "is used as a general anesthetic. it's colorless, and smells sweet. it's also given through inhalation, which makes it easy to administer." he concluded, setting down his pencil.

--flashback--

of course! if you were...unwelcoming...of his undying love, then he could just put a cloth drenched in the sugary-smelling liquid over your pretty face. you'd take a little nap, and when you'd wake up, everything would be perfect! it would work. it had to.

grinning inwardly at his devious plan, his excitement for the future began to set in. just you, him, and all the time in the world.

what more could he possibly ask for?

taglist: @teugiie

#bts #bts fanfiction #bts x reader #yandere bts #yandere bts x reader #yandere namjoon x reader #yandere namjoon #namjoon x reader #bts fanfic #yandere #kim namjoon x reader #yandere x reader

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vulture-writes-stuff · 1 year

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Self indulgence 2 electric boogaloo

Unrelated but I'm so fucking hype for Hades 2. I loved the first game I'm excited as hell. Anyways self indulgence and comfort. This is just a little ficlet.

Arven X Male Reader

Arven loves his boyfriend with all of his heart, but man, he's a damn idiot sometimes. Case in point: trying to do a sick stunt on the back of a moving Pokemon.

Reader is the SV protagonist, and is the same age as Arven. Takes place after the story, but there are no spoilers. None of Reader's Pokemon are mentioned, and they ride Miraidon.

It was a nice day. It was warm, the sky was cloudless, and the sun was out. Arven had thought to take a nice peaceful walk with Mabosstiff, and had even thought to invite his boyfriend to come with them.

That was a good idea, because he loved his company and genuinely adored him as a person. It was also a bad idea, because he just so happened to be a high-energy daredevil who loved excitement and activity. There wasn't anything wrong with that, of course, but he had a tendency to get himself hurt.

Mabosstiff trundled along peacefully, pausing to sniff at something interesting every once in a while. The two trainers walked side by side, accompanied by Miraidon. The Paradox Pokemon seemed antsy, impatiently nudging at their trainer every so often.

"What are you thinking about?" Arven asked the other suddenly, hooking an arm around his shoulders as an incentive to not do something stupid.

"There's a natural ramp there. I bet I could do a cool trick with Mirai." He hummed, rolling up the sleeves of his uniform jacket. "Watch this!"

"Do not do that!" Arven's words fell upon deaf ears as he watched the other jump on the back of Miraidon, the metallic Pokemon revving up before propelling forward. They kicked up grass and dirt as they went, leaving a worried Arven with a bemused Mabosstiff. "Bad idea!! Don't hurt yourself!!"

Arven shouldn't have jinxed it. He watched as his boyfriend, laughing like a maniac, launched off the ramp on the back of a living motorcycle... And promptly fell off, tumbling down the hill.

"Shit!" Arven cursed under his breath, bustling down the slope as fast as he could. This was exactly why he kept a first-aid kit. He lightly pushed Miraidon out of the way as they landed, nervously fussing over their trainer.

He was relieved to see him roll over, still giggling away. He was covered in grass stains and scratches, his violet uniform pants torn at the knees. Blood oozed sluggishly from a nasty-looking gash on his cheek, but otherwise he looked alright.

"Did not nail the landing." He stated the obvious, wincing as Arven pulled him upright into a sitting position. "Sorry. Couldn't help myself."

"I'm just happy you're in one piece." Arven shook his head with a sigh. He picked a gauze pad out of the box in his bag, gently dabbing at the bleeding scratch to clean it. "Really, that was foolish! You have to take better care of yourself, you can't just fling yourself off of every ledge you see."

He continued his scolding as he tended to his partner's scratches and bruises, making sure to bandage up any cuts that were bleeding. He was completely unaware of his boyfriend staring, a sort of dopey grin on his face.

"...What?" Arven finally caught on, a pale blush dusting over his features.

"I love you," He sighed dramatically, sinking forward into Arven's arms and accidentally dropping a few grass blades onto him in the process.

"Tsch." Arven clicked his tongue, giving him an affectionate kiss on the forehead. "I love you, too. Let's get you to nurse Miriam, make sure you're completely okay. I'd rather you not have an untreated concussion."

"Nurse Miriam it is." He tried to stand up, stumbling awkwardly on a twisted ankle. Arven caught him, helping him right himself completely. "Should we hitch a ride back?"

"Absolutely not."

Extremely short. Things are not great but I am. Managing.

#fanfic #pokemon scarlet and violet #pokemon arven x reader #trainer arven x reader #x reader #x male reader #pokemon x male reader #no spoilers #ficlet #short

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mysterious-moonstruck-musings · 10 months

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Destiny & Deliverance Chapter 4

Destiny & Deliverance Masterlist ||| Dieter Bravo X OFC

SUPPORT YOUR CREATORS. REBLOGGING & COMMENTS ARE APPRECIATED.

Series Rating: Explicit (18+)

Series Summary: Natalia Cohen is experiencing major life changes, beginning with leaving an emotionally abusive husband. She is learning how to navigate life on her own while dealing with high functioning anxiety, depression, and mild PTSD. Everything is looking up for her. She is a highly respected consultant for a major LA firm, has her best friend, Lauren, by her side, and is on her path to healing. Everything changes when she meets a handsome and broken stranger on a work trip. He turns out to be a well-known actor, with a heart-breaking past. They quickly develop a connection that will forever alter their lives.

Warnings: Themes dealing with mental health, emotional trauma, alcohol use, and discussions about suicide. There will be fluff, tears, spicy language, and smut. This will be a slow burn type of story. Read at your own risk.

Chapter Quote: “This must be the ‘fucking scary’ side that I heard about.”

I awoke to my neighbor’s alarm going off, again. I didn’t want my Tuesday to start like this. I was annoyed, but it really wasn’t even that loud. A normal person would probably sleep through it. I laid there attempting to go back to sleep. It went off again twenty minutes later. Seriously, what is the point of hitting the snooze button? Just get up already and be done with it.

I rolled over and grabbed my phone to do a quick email check. I had an email from Aubry saying she hoped my trip was going well. Nothing else. She was phishing for information. I hit reply and typed out, “It’s fantastic.” then hit send. She was going to love that. I was giving her nothing.

I sat there for a moment wondering if Dieter had social media. This is a slippery slope, I thought. Then I opened Instagram anyway and found him. It was a verified public account, so I’m not sure what I expected to find. There was a lot of promotional stuff for his movies and shows. Some pictures from his travels. Typical celebrity stuff most likely. The latest post was an advertisement for a talk show that was happening this morning. I went to the search bar and entered his name in. Tons of images came up. Pictures of him out with friends. Paparazzi images of him walking around LA. I actually felt kind of bad for the guy. He couldn’t even walk down the street without someone shoving a camera in his face.

The alarm next door went off again ten minutes later. I huffed and threw my phone down on the bed. I decided to get up and start my day. My morning started the same as yesterday’s, minus the encounter with Dieter. Joe was waiting for me with coffee and a blueberry scone at 7AM. Megan met me outside the building when I arrived. She shared a funny story about her dog on the way up to the office. I felt like she was slowly warming up to me.

I spent the entire day doing observations and meeting with different staff members to ask questions. My lunch break was quick. I scarfed down the chicken alfredo that Megan had ordered, then immediately got back to work. I was beginning to feel a little overwhelmed with the amount of information that was coming in. I was starting to worry that maybe I wouldn’t be able to get through everything before the end of the week and I still hadn’t come across any obvious red flags. I was concerned that I had missed something. That familiar feeling of anxiety was really starting to kick in by the end of the day. I, of course, did not let it show. I was also feeling pretty exhausted. I thought about taking it easy on the workload this evening at the hotel. Maybe even try to go to bed a little earlier.

When 5 PM hit, I was ready to get out of there. I was peopled out for the day. Talking to people could be so mentally and physically exhausting for me since I tend to be more introverted. These were always my worst days. I would much rather be locked in a room reviewing data.

I walked out to meet Joe. He greeted me with a smile and again asked if I needed to make any stops before the hotel. I declined and slumped down into the seat. He didn’t try for any chit chat today. I think he could tell I was worn out. He just let me be. We pulled up in front of the hotel and he opened the door to let me out. He told me to have a good evening and he would be here at his usual time in the morning. I nodded my thanks and gave him a small smile.

I slowly walked into the hotel entrance debating on if I wanted to post up downstairs again while I had dinner or go back to my room and just eat junk food. I stopped in front of the restaurant and looked in. Not a soul in sight, except for Tim the bartender. He saw me, pulled out a wine glass, and started pouring whatever it was he gave me yesterday. I walked in and smiled thanking him as I took it to my back corner booth. He followed behind me.

“Tough day?” he asked.

“Not tough. Just long and I still have more to do.”

“Are we having a steady flow of wine and appetizers tonight?” he asked with a sympathetic look on his face.

“Why not.” I said as I shrugged. He laughed and walked back to put in my order.

I started pulling out all of my stuff and got to work reviewing more documents. It was an hour and a half later and a glass and a half of wine in when a voice asking to join me snapped me out of my intense focus. It was Dieter. I knew it as soon as I heard his voice. I looked up and he gave me that big, brilliant smile that made me want to melt. I smiled back, “Of course, have a seat!”

“I hope I’m not distracting you from your work. I can go somewhere else if I need to.”

“No! Not at all. Actually, I think I could use a distraction right now. I need a break. I told myself I was going to take it easy tonight, yet here I am.” I gestured to my stuff spread out on the table and gave an exasperated laugh.

“Well, if you insist on a distraction…” he chuckled as he sat down in the curved booth, rather closely on my right side. I could feel the heat from his body due to his proximity. It was a miracle that I could focus on anything else.

“So, how’s it going? Have you uncovered the big secret yet?” he asked with what seemed like genuine interest.

I sighed heavily, “No, not at all. I have suspicions, but nothing to back it up so far. I’m hopeful I’ll find something tomorrow when I really start digging into their data and tech stuff. I’m starting to get a little worried there may be nothing. Which, if that’s the case, it is what it is. The CEO doesn’t have any definitive proof of anything going on, he just suspects. I didn’t want details on the who or why yet. I don’t want any potential bias to affect what I am doing.”

“I am sure you’ll figure it out. You seem pretty intelligent.” he said as he gently bumped his shoulder against mine. I felt hot suddenly.

“Wha…what about you? Have you heard back about the audition or whatever it was you were anxious about?” I stuttered out.

“I haven’t. I think I should probably hear something tomorrow. I know they’ve inquired about my filming schedule, so that could be a good sign.”

“That’s awesome. Hopefully you’ll have something to celebrate tomorrow.”

Bartender Tim came over to take Dieter’s order. He ordered a beer and asked what I was having.

“I am partaking in endless appetizers and wine tonight. Feel free to have some of whatever I get surprised with next.” Dieter knitted his eyebrows together and started laughing at me. He looked back at bartender Tim and said, “Yeah, bring extra of whatever you're bringing her. We can split it. I’m down for a little appetizer roulette.” Bartender Tim sniggered at us and walked off.

“Bartender Tim and I have become BFFs already. He’s making sure I’m taken care of.” I said as I raised my wine glass as if to give a toast, then finished it off.

“How much of that have you had?” Dieter asked.

“Why? Do I sound drunk already? This is just my second glass. Trust me, I can tolerate more.” He chuckled.

“I don’t know about drunk, but you’re definitely amusing yourself. How long were you down here yesterday? I saw you as I was leaving.”

“A while..and you didn’t say hi? I feel insulted.” I said jokingly and lightly pushed on his shoulder. For fuck’s sake, I was flirting. I should stop drinking. It’s going to get me in trouble.

Bartender Tim came back with Dieter’s beer, cheese sticks and jalapeno poppers, more wine, and a glass of water for me. I didn’t even ask for the water. I think he was just doing me a solid before I got sloppy.

Dieter continued our conversation, “I actually wanted to pop in and say hi, but I was running late. As usual. A fucking disaster as you say. There just isn’t enough time in the day sometimes.”

My phone buzzed. Lauren always had impeccable timing. I tried to ignore it, but it kept buzzing. I looked at him and said sorry as I picked up my phone.

LAUREN: What are you doing?

LAUREN: I haven’t heard from you much. You need to take a break and call me.

LAUREN: I’m bored.

LAUREN: What do you want to do for our girl’s day when you get back? Maybe a spa day?

LAUREN: You DO need to learn how to relax occasionally.

I rolled my eyes at her. She always did this when she was bored. Normally I found it to be hilarious, but I didn’t have time for that right now. I hit reply.

ME: I can’t talk right now.

LAUREN: Why? Are you being held hostage?

LAUREN: If it’s because of work, then yes you can. Take a break already.

ME: I’m busy.

LAUREN: Are you ok? These are weird responses for you.

LAUREN: Waaaaaaaait. Are you with the hottie?

LAUREN: You better tell me if you are. You know you can’t lie to me.

Dieter was giving me the side eye.

“I’m sorry. It’s my best friend. She is being needy and ridiculous right now.” He gave me a raised eyebrow and a smirk. “That’s fine. No biggie.” I started typing out a response.

ME: Ok, yes. I am. We will talk later.

LAUREN: Hell yes! Get it GUUURL!

ME: Stop it. Bye.

I set my phone back down on the table. “Everything ok?” he asked.

“Yeah, she’s just bored. She gives me hell for working too much. She tends to be a bundle of energy, so she starts about five different conversations before I can get the first response in.” He laughed at my description of her.

“I can’t fuss about her too much. She’s been amazing the last few months. Helping me with things and all the drama I’ve been dealing with.” I said without thinking. Hopefully he didn’t ask me to elaborate.

“Drama?” he asked. I gave him a contemplative look. Ok, I guess we are going there, I thought. Without thinking, I put my right hand up to my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

“I’ve been going through a divorce. He was an asshole and a cheater. I put up with it way longer than I should have. He really messed me up, but it’s done now. Hopefully I’ll never see him again.” I looked down at my glass of wine, expressionless and unblinking. Dieter reached over and grabbed my right hand away from my shoulder, breaking my thoughts. He sat it on the table and gave it a squeeze. I looked up at him and our eyes locked. I could feel my heart almost beating out of my chest.

“No one deserves to be treated like that. Karma is a bitch. It’ll bite him back one day. He’ll never be happy and live a miserable existence.”

He said it with conviction. At that moment, I felt like he was looking into my soul with his dark eyes. I could see the sadness hidden there again. It made me wonder if someone had hurt him in the past. He slowly let go of my hand.

I let out a measured breath, “I certainly hope so. Who knows, maybe one day karma may come in the form of slashed tires and sugar in the gas tank of his fancy car,” I said casually. I was attempting humor to lighten the mood. He took the bait and started laughing at me.

“This must be the ‘fucking scary’ side that I heard about,” he said through his laughs.

“Welcome to the show, I’ll be here all week.”

Thankfully that did lighten the mood. We spent two and a half hours chatting, eating, and drinking. The conversation and laughter never stopped. His fun and boisterous side was more evident now than our previous encounters. He had a hilarious sense of humor and even a touch of dark humor that I could appreciate. The small touches continued. He would lean into me and lay his forehead on my shoulder when he laughed. I had seen pictures of him with his friends appearing to do the same thing, so I couldn’t tell if this is just the way he was with people or if he was being flirty. He was very hard to read. I did, however, feel very at ease with him. My anxiety was non-existent once we got past the initial awkwardness. He seemed to be more at ease as well.

Around 10 PM we decided to call it a night since we both had an early start. I slowly stood up and started packing all my stuff that had been scooted to the other side of the table as he handed it over to me. I was still slightly tipsy.

“So…” he started to say, then gave a long pause. I stopped what I was doing and looked down at him. “Is it possible that I might run into you down here tomorrow evening? I should be done kind of early.” He looked down at the nearly empty glass in front of him and started lightly tapping on the table with his index finger. He was clearly nervous to ask. He kept his head lowered but looked up at me through his lashes while he bit his lip. Was he trying to give me a heart attack? My mind momentarily wandered to me biting that lip. I shook my head. What the hell was my problem? I suddenly felt embarrassed, like he could read my thoughts. I finally pulled it together enough to respond.

“It’s a very good possibility. We do have to celebrate tomorrow after all.”

He gave me a questioning look.

“We’ll be celebrating you getting that role. I have a good feeling about it.”

He gave me a huge smile and said, “Please don’t jinx it” as he got up out of the booth.

We walked over to the elevator and got on.

“Which floor?” he asked as he hit the number “9”. I froze and looked at him, slightly confused.

“What?”

“Are you on the 9th floor?”

“Yeah, why?”

The doors slid shut and I started laughing hysterically. Immediately thinking of Lauren talking about all the destiny garbage. This was getting comical.

“What’s so funny?” he said with a very confused look on his face.

“Nothing. It’s just that we’re on the same floor.” He kind of laughed too. The door slid open, and we both stepped off of the elevator. We stopped, awkwardly standing in the middle of the hallway. I had a gut feeling, and I wasn’t sure if I could handle the answer, but I asked anyway.

“Which room is yours?”

“The second to the end on the left side.”

I absolutely lost it and doubled over in laughter. “You’re the snooze guy!” I said through my laughter. He stared at me wide eyed and confused.

I finally got it together and had to wipe tears from my eyes. It was absolutely absurd at this point.

“Just so you know, I’ve been internally cursing you every morning because I can hear your alarm every time it goes off.”

“You can hear that?” he said in disbelief.

“Yes, I can. I’m pretty sure our beds share a wall.”

He looked slightly embarrassed for a minute, but then started laughing too. We began walking toward our doors, both still laughing and shaking our heads. We said our goodnights and keyed into our respective suites. Our eyes lingered on each other as we walked through the doors.

I walked into my suite and shut the door in utter disbelief. There is no way this is actually happening. I threw my stuff down on the couch in the sitting area and dug my phone out of my bag to text Lauren.

ME: You’re never going to believe this.

LAUREN: Well, hello to you too, jerk. I’ve been waiting to hear from you.

My phone started ringing. She wasted no time calling me. I answered, acutely aware that he was right next door. I was paranoid he could hear me. I stayed on the opposite end of the suite, pacing and talking in a hushed voice.

“Well? What’s the big news? Did you finally get laid?” Lauren said sarcastically.

“What?! No. Shut up. I am dying right now. His room literally shares a wall with mine. He’s next door. It’s his alarm that's been waking me up the last two mornings.”

She was quiet for what seemed like forever. Then there was a burst of laughter.

“You absolutely cannot make this stuff up,” she said through her maniacal guffaws.

“So, are you going to tell me what you’ve been doing all this time? I need details.”

“Not many details to be had. We’ve been downstairs at the restaurant talking. We realized our rooms were next to each other after we called it a night. We both laughed about it.”

“That’s all I get? Really?”

“Yes.”

“You. Suck.”

“I’m sorry, I just don’t want to read into anything that’s not there. I know if I tell you, we’ll both be doing that. Honestly, I think he’s lonely and just wants someone to hang out with who isn’t fawning over who he is.”

“Wait, so does he know that you know who he is?”

“No. I haven’t said anything.”

“Don’t you think maybe you should?”

“Yeah, maybe. I don’t want him to think I was looking him up though.”

“Good point. Maybe it’ll come up naturally next time you see him. Assuming you do.”

I was quiet. I wasn’t sure if I should tell her we had already discussed dinner tomorrow.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?”

“Oh my gosh, fine. He’s going to be done early tomorrow, so we’re going to meet for dinner again.”

“Oh. Yeah. There is totally nothing to this,” she said sarcastically.

“That’s it. I’ve got to go. I’m tired. Bye. Goodnight.”

“Let me know how tomorrow goes!” I heard her yelling as I hung up.

I got ready for bed. After laying there in the dark for what seemed like forever, I reached for my phone and searched his name again. There were so many pictures and videos of him out with his friends. There were also a lot of him with people he worked with and at events. Nothing recent romantically linking him to any girls though. I skimmed comments on the pictures. On several, there were people arguing about his relationship status and preferences. Poor guy, no wonder he wasn’t dating anyone. The general public and paparazzi were all up in his business. I heard the faint sound of a TV click on, next door. It seems Dieter was having trouble sleeping too. It was nearing midnight, and I was still wide awake. Knowing that he was just on the other side of the wall was kind of driving me crazy. I could feel the magnetic pull, drawing me to him. I decided I was going to get up and take some melatonin in hopes that would knock me out. About 30 minutes later, I finally drifted off into another restless sleep.

A/N: Things really start heating up between our dear Dieter and Talia in the next chapter. I promise, it’s coming soon. 😉

Next Chapter

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silver-tooth-the-panther · 6 months

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Half-Demon! Tanjiro AU

Chapter Five

Coming Home

Warnings: Quite a bit of blood.

Word Count: 4627

The shimmering moon shined down on the group of half-demons and slayers as they traversed through the night. Their mission planted firmly in their minds. Tanjiro’s ability brought them new hope that they would see their loved ones again. They were not sure of his full capabilities and limitations, but they were excited for what was to come in store.

The journey from the Butterfly Estate to the ruins of the Ubuyashiki Mansion-and by that extent the Infinity Castle-wasn’t too long. Rui has nestled against Nezuko, who was walking beside her brother, with Rengoku standing behind him. Zenitsu and Inosuke were trailing behind all of them, just being grateful that their friends are alive. This journey was rather silent since they were just enjoying each other’s company.

“This is it.” Tanjiro spoke softly as he came to a dead stop. There in front of him stood the ruins of the Ubuyashiki Mansion and the Infinity Castle. The egregious sight of piles of broken wood and shattered lanterns created a sense of unease and despair. Tanjiro looked back at the team then followed the slope of Kaikoma Mountain-which was a little ways behind them. “I know that this place holds many bad memories for many of us, but if this mission proves to be successful, this will be completely worth it.”

All the others nodded in agreement. “No one could’ve said it better, young Kamado.” Rengoku smiled warmly. “We all have faith in you.” Tanjiro’s heart melted at the compliment. “Thank you, Mister Rengoku.” With that, the team of slayers entered the ruins.

The scent of day’s old blood hit Tanjiro’s nose as they shuffled through the broken pieces of wood. This frustrated him. Why did the final battle have to happen like that? So much sacrifice, grief, and death could’ve been prevented if…Tanjiro shook these thoughts away, focusing on the various scents around him.

“Tokito..” Tanjiro closed his eyes, shedding a single tear. Rui and Nezuko rumbled worryingly. “Are you alright, Kamado?” Rui asked with a hint of regret. “I’m fine..just a lot of bad memories. He’s the only one that I’m completely sure I can bring back here.” The small spider demon could hear the pain in Tanjiro’s voice. “I’m sorry..” Nezuko looked at Rui when he said that and held him closer.

Inosuke was busy busting woods-despite Zenitsu’s protesting-while Rengoku was carefully searching through the rubble. Tanjiro closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. He sniffed the air and opened his eyes in a flash. “They way!” Tanjiro almost roared as he started to run through the wood. The others seemed hopeful because of Tanjiro’s sudden determination, so they ran off with him.

Various red specks swirled around Tanjiro, but the scent of the young Hashira was overpowering. A soft, minty scent filled the air as Tanjiro and the others ran. Eventually, they came to a spot where large pieces of wood had fallen on top of each other. Underneath all this wreckage..was Gyomei’s haori peeking out from the bottom. “We found him.”

All the slayers drew out their swords and ferociously cut through the wood, being careful not to be careless. Rengoku backed up from the wreckage. “Stand back!” The others sprang back as the Flame Hashira plowed his body through the rest of the wood. He landed in another pile of destroyed wood then looked up to see what that action did.

Everyone gasped when they saw the young Hashira’s body. Muichiro’s eyes were closed with blood covering his skin and hair. Gyomei’s haori covered his severed bottom half..truly a depressing sight to see. “We need to find his bottom half.” Tanjiro winced, holding back vomit and tears. Inosuke looked around at his right side. “Is this it?” He pulled on a foot that was stuck underneath some rubble.

“That’s it.” Despite the fact that Tanjiro was now feeling ill, he still pulled out the lower half of Muichiro. Blood dripped everywhere as he placed the young Hashira’s half to his top half. “I can’t believe this happened to him. He was too young..” Zenitsu spoke gently. Nezuko nodded in agreement, trying to hold back sobs. Tanjiro covered the split in the young boy with Gyomei’s haori. They all wanted to puke.

“I’m so sorry, young Tokito.” Rengoku spoke softly. “You must’ve suffered greatly.” Tanjiro took another deep breath before slitting his wrist once again. The blood dripped into the young Hashira’s maw. All of the slayers knelt down beside him. Tanjiro, Nezuko, and Rengoku even prayed for the young boy’s return.

Within a matter of minutes, the flesh between the two halves started to reconnect. They all looked up when they heard the sound of a soft heartbeat. The skin on Muichiro’s arm then tore open and two long, blade-like spikes-one on each arm-rose from the rips. The dark blue spikes were curved like Obanai’s sword and had swirl patterns all along them.

Fangs emerged from Muichiro’s maw and the split in his body formed a long scar that went around his waist. It was then that the young Hashira slowly opened his eyes. “Ugh..Where am I?” Muichiro groaned as he sat up. Everyone, even Rui, smiled when they saw the boy come to life.

“Tokito..” Tanjiro whispered, holding back tears. Muichiro looked around him, seeing Rengoku. “Am I in the afterlife?” It hadn’t hit him yet that Rengoku had horns and flame marks. “Not at all, young Tokito!” Rengoku drew him into a strong hug. Muichiro was taken aback at first, but eased into the hug. “Wait..then how are you here? How am I here?”

Tanjiro scratched the back of his neck. “It’s a long story. I’ll explain everything when we get back” He didn’t want to overwhelm the young Hashira. Muichiro looked down at his new spikes. “Am I a demon?” Nezuko shook her head. “Not really..We’re kind of a new species.” Muichiro was in complete shock. “Wait, what?!”

A crow came flying in and landed on a broken piece of wood above them. “Caw! Caw! This is true! Master Kiriya even came up with the definition and name! From this moment forward, this species will be referred to as half-demons! They don’t need to eat humans, don’t have bloodlust, and they have their humanity! We’re still trying to figure out the rest of the details! Caw!”

They all looked up at the crow. “Hey Matsuemon, can you bring Mister Shinazugawa and Mister Tomioka to the Master’s mansion? Along with all the Hashira’s crows?” Tanjiro smiled warmly at the crow. The bird cawed. “I don’t see why not! They will surely be surprised! Caw!” The crow flapped his wings and took off.

“Ginko will be happy to see me.” Muichiro smiled softly. “And so will Genya.” The name of the young slayer made everyone’s heart hurt. Muichiro looked at them, confused. “He’s back at the mansion, isn’t he?” Tanjiro shook his head. “He..didn’t make it.” Muichiro’s eyes widened with shock. “Genya..died? Can you bring him back?” The poor boy sounded like he was on the brink of tears.

“I’ll try. I can’t make any promises.” Tanjiro stands up and sniffs the air, looking for his scent of pine. He made a soft chuffing sound and ran through the broken wood. Rengoku carried Muichiro as both they and the others followed Tanjiro. It was a good thing that they all could run quickly since Tanjiro was wasting no time getting to the center of the scent.

They eventually came to a small clearing. Tanjiro saw the same red specks as he did when he brought Rui back. “He must’ve been turned right before he died.” Tanjiro said to himself. Nezuko turned to the others. “It’s best if we get back. They nodded and stepped back into the rubble.

Tanjiro cut his arm open with his claws, letting his blood drip onto the floor. The specks glowed brightly and they moved closer to the blood. Tanjiro closed his eyes, raised his arms, and focused on his memories of Genya. From the time at the Swordsmith Village to training with the Hashiras. All of this made the half-demon tear up.

The red specks circled around him, just like they did at Mount Natagumo. They started to come together to form a being. Everyone’s eyes widened as they watched the spectacle in front of them. The red ashes came together like a puzzle to form the young slayer. It looked like Genya was laying on the ground, which everyone presumed that was how he was when he died.

Tanjiro lowered his arms when the red light of the ashes seemed to die down. Genya was now visible as he was laying on the ground. He seemed to adopt the same appearance as he did at the Swordsmith Village since his mohawk had yellow tips. There was also a new scar on his face. Other than the one by his nose, he now had a long scar that split his face in two.

Genya grumbled and made a soft roar as he sat up. He opened his eyes-and as everyone guessed-his eyes were black with yellow pupils. Tanjiro couldn’t help but grin when he saw him. “Hi, Genya.” The young slayer looked up at Tanjiro. “Hi Tanjiro..did you die too?” Genya seemed to be worried and tired.

Tanjiro shook his head. “Nope. You’re alive again.” Genya made a surprised squeak. “I am? But how?!” Tanjiro smiled warmly. “There’s a lot to explain.” Muichiro leaped out of Rengoku’s arms and ran to Genya. He stopped in his tracks when he was in front of the young slayer.

“Genya..” Muichiro's voice was soft, almost inaudible. “Hi, Mui.” Genya was relieved to see the Mist Hashira. Without warning, Muichiro hugged Genya, almost tackling him in the process. “Woah! You must’ve missed me, huh?” Genya chuckled as he patted Muichiro on the head. Everyone cheered when they saw them reunite.

Tanjiro turned to Inosuke. “Inosuke, do you remember how Miss Shinobu died?” Inosuke put a hand to his mask. “She was absorbed.” His tone was sad, yet hopeful. “Alright.” Tanjiro sniffed the air again, catching Shinobu’s sweet lavender scent. “This way!” With that, he took off towards the scent.

Everyone followed behind with a steady pace. They found themselves in another wreckage of wood, but blood and flower pedals were littered everywhere. Tanjiro looked around him to see the familiar red ashes, but this time there was purple dust within them. It was then he came to a horrible realization. Tanjiro would have to bring back both Shinobu.. and Douma.

Rengoku seemed to realize this as well due to Tanjiro’s reaction. He climbed down the broken pieces of wood to where Tanjiro was and stood next to him. He then decided to whisper something to the young slayer. “What’s he saying?” Inosuke said with a bit of aggravation. “I’m not sure.” Muichiro sighed, staying with Genya. Zenitsu put a hand to his ear and listened. His eyes widened with surprise and a little bit of fear.

“Are you sure, Mister Rengoku?” Tanjiro asked with concern. Rengoku nodded. “I’m sure. He’s probably going to be more than willing to help us with Uppermoon Two.” Tanjiro sniffed the air, looking for a specific scent. He turned to his left and ran over the wreckage of wood and glass. He stopped in front of a certain spot where he was able to see red ashes that belonged to someone else.

Tanjiro then performed the same procedure that he did for Genya and Rui. This time he seemed a lot more cautious. Everyone, except for Zenitsu and Rengoku, leaned over curiously to see exactly what he was doing. The ashes formed someone that the group never would’ve expected. Especially since both the figure and Tanjiro have had an antagonistic relationship ever since they first met.

The form belonged to Akaza, the Uppermoon Three demon. Everyone gasped and backed up when they saw him. “What are you doing, Gaupachiro?! He’s the one who killed Bug-Eyes!” Inosuke yelled angrily. Tanjiro didn’t say anything because he knew something they didn’t.

Akaza shook his head like a disoriented dog. He didn’t say anything as he looked up at Tanjiro. “Kamado.” Akaza seemed to be in shock as he scanned over the boy’s new form. “You must be..the new Demon King.” He spoke in a warm and soft tone.

“I don’t hunt or eat humans.” Tanjiro said flatly. “I didn’t think you would. If anyone were to break Muzan’s control, it would be you.” Akaza smiled, much to Tanjiro’s surprise. “Listen Akaza..from what I remember, you did seem like one of the demons who had-or should I say recovered-their humanity. So, I was wondering if you’d like to joi-“

“Yes. I’ll join you.” Tanjiro was taken aback by Akaza’s quick response. The demon’s scent seemed to be filled with regret and sorrow, so Tanjiro softened his expression. Everyone else was also shocked. Rengoku seemed to realize that this was a different person than the one he fought at the Mugen Train.

“I’m surprised that you are taking this offer so quickly.” Tanjiro smiled at the demon. “Let’s just say that I’ve made many mistakes..I don’t deserve this and I know that.” Akaza looked down at the ground. Tanjiro extended his hand to the demon with a smile. “Well..let’s try to make things better. I know that you want to.”

Akaza took his hand and stood up. “Thank you, Kamado.” He turned to see the others, who were standing on the hill of wood. “I’m sorry..” He spoke softly. Rengoku smiled at him and nodded. Tanjiro carefully led them back to the spot with the flower pedals.

With a heavy sigh, Tanjiro cut his arm to start the revival process. He created two puddles of blood so that he can bring both of them back. The process was very similar, but there was a clear difference. The young slayer had to splice the two different colored ashes apart.

The splicing created two forms. One belonged to Douma while the other belonged to Shinobu. The others watched with their weapons at the ready. Akaza was confused at first why Tanjiro would bring back Douma, but seeing Shinobu’s form made everything make sense.

The revival of the two beings was finally complete. They sat on their knees in front of the new Demon King. Shinobu came back with beautiful butterfly wings that had a light blue inner color while the border color was a light pink. She also had small antennae-like horns on her head. Douma looked the same though.

Shinobu was the one who opened her eyes first. “Hm? Where am I?” She looked up at Tanjiro and smiled. “So, we won?” Tanjiro nodded silently. Shinobu looked at her new claws. “Then, how am I-“

“Ugh! What’s going on?” Douma yawned exhaustively. Shinobu yelped and hissed with anger. “Why is he here?” She looked at the others with confusion. “Don’t worry, Shinobu! We’ve got him under control.” Rengoku’s voice was both reassuring and stern.

“Huh? There’s no need to worry about m-ack!” Douma gripped his chest as he almost roared in pain. He fell over as Inosuke and Akaza ran over to him. “You better not be faking it, you little shit!” Akaza snarled. Douma couldn’t even speak due to the pain. Inosuke looked at Akaza. “I don’t think he’s faking it.”

Shinobu seemed to be a bit relieved as she stood up. “What did you have to do to bring us back, Tanjiro?” Tanjiro thought for a moment. “Well I had to separate your DNA from him. Least that’s what I think happened.” Shinobu nodded. “That’s probably what’s causing him so much pain.”

Tanjiro sniffed the air. There was a hidden painful scent. It seemed like it was buried like a time capsule or even more accurately repressed memories. It was something that he only ever smelled once before, which was in Muichiro. It made him contemplate whether or not to give Douma a chance. On one hand, he didn’t want to upset Shinobu and Inosuke or have Douma not give a single care about this opportunity. On the other, this painful, buried scent cannot be ignored.

Tanjiro sighed as he slowly approached the writhing demon. Both Akaza and Inosuke stepped to the side. Douma was struggling to get up when he looked at Tanjiro. “Douma..I’m going to give you a chance to change. It may take a while, but I gave you your humanity back so we can start again.”

Douma groaned softly. “I guess I could join you, but I can’t make any promises.” Douma laughed, playfully. With an irritated look, Tanjiro gripped Douma’s shoulder which made him wince. “This isn’t just a game, Douma! If you even come close to hurting another human, then we will kill you again.” His scarlet eyes were so intimidating that even Akaza and Inosuke looked uneasy.

Douma quickly realized his mistake. “Okay, okay. I was only just kidding.” Tanjiro shook his head. “This is no laughing matter.” The young slayer sighed heavily as he went back to Shinobu. “I’m sorry, Miss Shinobu.” Shinobu only smiled at him. “It’s okay. I know. That you just wanted me back. Plus, it looks like you have him under control.”

Genya and Muichiro felt guilty that Shinobu had to deal with Douma being revived. They knew that it wasn’t her or Tanjiro’s fault, but they knew that it mustn’t feel the greatest. So together they decided to make it even. The duo approached Tanjiro and told them their proposal.

“Are you sure you want me to do that?” Tanjiro’s voice was filled with concern. “Yes. We don’t want Shinobu to feel alone.” Muichiro said softly. “Yeah. This will probably be difficult, but maybe this might turn out better than we think.” Genya smiled.

Tanjiro returned the smile. “As long as you’re okay with this.” He sniffed the air and ran to a different part of the wreckage, Genya and Muichiro following behind him. Tanjiro reached a certain spot where the scent of bergamot was the strongest. He then performed the same magical process as he did for the others.

This time the ashes formed the Uppermoon One demon, Kokushibo. Genya and Muichiro shuddered as they hid behind some of the wood rubble. The demon’s six eyes slowly opened and he looked up to see Tanjiro. He stiffened up seemingly alarmed. “Are you..the new Demon King?” He spoke softly. Tanjiro nodded. “Yes, but I’m actually a half-demon.” Kokushibo looked at the slayer’s uniform. “I see..”

“Why did you..bring me back?” Kokushibo seemed almost aggressive. “I shouldn’t..be alive.” Tanjiro felt some sympathy for the demon. The demon seemed to have a similar mindset to Akaza in this situation. Genya and Muichiro seemed weary of his words.

“I’m here to give you a second chance. You were once human and I want to return your humanity back to you.” Tanjiro explained softly. “I have nothing..to live for.” Kokushibo nearly whispered. He then looked to the wreckage, seeing Genya and Muichiro..the descendant he killed.

Truth be told, Kokushibo felt a great deal of regret when he sliced his descendant in two. That regret still haunts him now. As he looked at Muichiro, Kokushibo felt that guilt eating him alive. He wanted to make things right. Especially since someone is giving him that chance.

“If you don’t want to join us, I understand.” Tanjiro said softly. “No..I’ll do it.” Kokushibo faced him again. “You do?” Tanjiro looked confused. “Yes…I have mistakes..to amend.” Genya and Muichiro were skeptical. “Do you think he will?” Muichiro asked. “Doubt it.” Genya growled.

Tanjiro smiled warmly. “I wish you the best of luck then.” The young slayer walked through the rubble back to where everyone else was. Kokushibo watched regretfully as Muichiro and Genya joined him. He turned to face the sky and sighed. “I’m sorry..”

Rengoku walked up the broken pieces of wood to stand next to Tanjiro. “Do you want to travel to Kaikoma Mountain?” He asked, enthusiastically. “Not yet..I doubt that there would be enough room for all of the Moons back at the Butterfly Estate.” Tanjiro clearly thought this through. “Smart decision, young Kamado.” Rengoku knew exactly what he was going to do next.

Tanjiro spilled more of his blood and used it to revive the master of the Infinity Castle. Nakime looked at Tanjiro and stiffened just like Kokushibo. “Hello, Miss.” Tanjiro said politely. “You must be the new Demon King. My name is Nakime.” Nakime spoke softly. She had a strong scent of fear coming from her. The damage that Muzan and Yushiro did when they killed her must’ve horribly scarred her.

“It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you.” Tanjiro gently spoke. Nakime shook her head. “What do you want from me?” She responded almost like a servant. “The only thing I want is for you to just give a home for the other Moons.” Tanjiro smiled with warmth. Nakime looked around her to see the slayers and Moons. She was taken by surprise seeing that Tanjiro brought back some of the Moons.

“As you wish, Master. I won’t make the castle as confusing as I did before.” Nakime turned back to him. “Thank you, Miss Nakime. There’s also no need to call me Master.” Tanjiro beamed with kindness, which was something that Nakime was not used to seeing. “Of course.”

Tanjiro stood up with a hearty smile and went to the other slayers. “Attention everyone! I’m currently going to Kaikoma Mountain to bring back the other Hashira.” The other looked at each other and cheered. “Let’s go!” Inosuke laughed excitedly. Nezuko and Rui smiled at the half-demon with new found hope.

The group of slayers climbed the mountain while the Moons stayed behind in the rumble. They didn’t want to make things more difficult for them then it already was. Luckily, it took roughly a few minutes to reach the two graves of the fallen Hashira. Everyone looked at each other, nodded, and started to dig.

Using their claws, getting to the Hashira’s caskets was rather easy. “Tanjiro! Gyomei’s ready!” Shinobu trillsd, calling to him. Tanjiro walked over to his grave and peered into the casket. Gyomei’s body was covered in bandages and scars. “I wished that there weren’t so many deaths.” Tanjiro said softly. “I know, Kamado. The good thing is that you’re able to bring them back.”

Tanjiro nodded and smiled as he dripped blood into the Stone Hashira’s maw. Gyomei’s left leg grew back in a matter of seconds and various rocky spikes grew out of his arms and back. His skin even developed the patterns of cracked stone. Gyomei sat up and put a hand to his head. “Where am I?”

Shinobu went down to him and hugged him tightly, sobbing. “Shinobu? Is that you?” Gyomei said softly. “Yes, it’s me.” She choked. Gyomei smiled and started to cry softly. “Are we reborn?” Shinobu nodded. “In a way. Tanjiro brought us back.”

“He did?” Gyomei turned his head upwards and smiled. “Well done, Kamado.” Tanjiro bowed respectfully. “Thank you, Himejima.” Another call came from the other grave. “We have Obanai and Mitsuri!” Rengoku yelled. Tanjiro couldn’t help but smile as he walked to them.

The dead couple remained in each other’s arms even in death. “I hope that they’ll be okay with us bringing them back.” Nezuko said shyly. “I think they will. They deserve to be together.” Tanjiro hums softly as his blood drips into both of their maws.

The scratch marks over Obanai’s eyes heal to form scars. His mouth becomes more snake-like as various small fangs start to poke through. A slim, white snake tail formed and curled around his legs.

On the other hand, Mitsuri’s lost arms finally grow back. Bright pink wings with green feathers at the tips emerge from her back, making her look like an angel. Heart shaped marks developed all over her body. They seemed to resemble her demon slayer mark.

Obanai was the one to open his eyes first. “Mitsuri?” His voice was soft and oddly warm. Mitsuri then opened her eyes as well. “Obi..” She smiled lovingly. It was only just then that she realized..”Wait! I have arms!” Mitsuri jumped up in excitement, causing the others to either yelp or chuckle.

“Well, you have more than that.” Obanai then also realized…”I can see!” He put up his clawed hands to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. “What happened?” He asked, absolutely flabbergasted. “I believe we can explain that!” The couple turned their heads to see Rengoku and Tanjiro.

“Rengoku!” Mitsuri immediately fumbled up and hugged him. Rengoku returned the hug along with a few tears. “Are we demons?” Obanai’s voice sounded worried. “Not quite. You have your humanity and you don’t need to eat humans.” Rengoku reassured them. “If you say so.” Obanai still didn’t sound fully convinced.

“Oooh! Everyone’s going to be so happy when we get back!” Mitsuri chirped happily. “They will..they really will.” Tanjiro smiled happily. Muichiro held Gyomei’s haori close to his chest as both he and Genya approached the Stone Hashira-who was talking to Shinobu.

“Here, Mister Himejima. You deserve this.” Muichiro said softly. Gyomei turned to them and smiled. “Young Tokito…Young Shinazugawa..” He then warps his arms around both of them gently, tears rolling down his face. “I’m so glad that you’re alive.” They both nestled his head in the Stone Hashira’s shoulders and hugged back.

After a few minutes of chatting-and crying-they all decided to traverse down the mountain and head back to the Master’s estate. They all felt so relieved and happy and they knew that their loved ones would feel the same.

“So why did you summon us here?” Sanemi growled at Matsuemon. “Caw! Tanjiro wanted me to gather you all here! Caw!” The other crows cawed as well. Not only were Sanemi, Giyuu, and the crows there, but Kanao, Kaburamaru-who was around her neck-, and a few Kakushi were also sitting on the perch as well.

“It must be pretty important if he wanted us to meet him here.” Kanao hummed as she pet Kaburamaru. “I don’t care what he wants us here for!” Sanemi roared. He swatted at Matsuemon, who flew out of his way. “We shouldn’t be here. I don’t understand why he wants us here or what the purpose of th-“

Giyuu stood-almost jumped-up with surprise. “Sanemi..look.” The Wind Hashira turned to face the sunset. There he saw all the previously dead slayers following behind the main trio. All the crows immediately took off to see their owners with tears in their eyes. Ginko circled around Muichiro before sitting on his shoulder and nuzzling his cheek.

Kaburamaru slithered to Obanai, who lowered his arm so that the snake could climb up. “Shinobu!” Kanao sobbed as she ran to her adoptive sister. Shinobu’s wings fluttered with happiness as the two reunited. Giyuu walked up to them with a smile on his face.

“Hey, Kocho.” His voice was soft and gentle. “You know, that’s actually the first time I’ve seen you smile.” Shinobu said jokingly. “Well..this is a pretty important occasion…I missed you.” Giyuu started to cry. Shinobu dragged him into the hug. “I know I missed you too.”

Genya waved from the horizon. “Hey, Nemi!” Sanemi couldn’t move. He just couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Genya..” Sanemi’s eyes welled up with tears. His fell to his knees in utter disbelief. The few Kakushi stood up with wonder and hope in their eyes. One of the female ones took a step off the porch and took a deep breath.

“The Hashira have come home!”

Author's note: My hands hurt, but I legit loved writing this! I hope you like it too!

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elm-writes-stories · 9 months

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Cuphead: Isle of Shadows (Rewrite)

*Hey everyone, I'm back with another episode for the rewrite of Cuphead: Isle of Shadows. This is published on August 7, 2023. If you guys like this episode, don't be afraid to heart, reblog, and comment! That would be greatly appreciated. Warning: blood, violence, gore, and slight cursing. Enjoy!*

Episode Nine: Take A Gamble

On the east side of Inkwell Isle City, Bowlboy lingered through the abandoned side.

He had been on the run from the Night Stalkers since he got back from injecting Mugman with…whatever that stuff was. He never wanted to hurt either Mugman or Cuphead, but he wanted to be a part of them…doing reckless things with them. Of course, he wasn’t liked by the brothers.

Bowlboy tried to find a place to hide, but he soon realized that there was no place to hide. As he was walking through the abandoned side of the city, he felt a paper under his feet. He picked it up and dusted the soot off, squinting to read the headlines and the picture of the red cat turning the wheel.

“Tremaine Outbreak! Are the red cats responsible for it?”

Bowlboy tilted his head in confusion. He heard someone lurking in the shadows behind him as he whirled around. He scanned his surroundings until he saw a hooded figure running towards him.

Bowlboy screamed and ran away from the figure deeper into the east side of the city. The hooded figure chased after him.

“Wait!”

Bowlboy didn’t listen as he tripped on the metal pipe and collapsed on the cracked cement. He groaned in pain and noticed the hooded figure approaching him.

“Don’t kill me, please!” Bowlboy cried innocently. “I don’t want to die!”

“I ain’t gonna kill ya,” the hooded figure said while raising his white gloves. “I just need answers.”

“A-Answers? For what? Who are you?” Bowlboy questioned fearfully.

The hooded figure took off his hood to reveal King Dice under the hood. Before Bowlboy could gasp in happiness, King Dice shushed him.

“Look, I’m going against the boss by doing this. But this was for his best interest. I need answers from you,” Dice said. “Did Hunter really tell you to go after Mugman?”

Bowlboy nodded his head.

“Are you sure he told you that?”

“Yeah, I have it right here,” Bowlboy said while pulling out a tape-recorder from behind him and pressing play.

“Put this inside of Mugman. Not Cuphead. Mugman.”

Dice blinked in confusion. “I knew we weren’t talking about the same person the other day. Hunter has been acting strange lately. I tried telling the boss…but he ain’t listenin’ to me. He liked Hunter way too much to the point where Hunter became Devil’s number one.”

Bowlboy blinked in confusion. “Why do you care to be the Devil’s number one?”

Dice shifted his glance at the small bowl. “Because—Because—ugh, nevermind. It’s cheesy.”

“Aww, it can’t be that bad of a reasoning, right?” Bowlboy questioned.

“It’s none of your concern—” They heard a creak under them. Before they could move, the silver platform under them gave way and both Bowlboy and Dice fell into the hole underneath them with screams.

They couldn’t see temporarily while they tumbled down the slope and into the caverns until they finally landed onto the ground.

Dice groaned in pain and blinked his eyes open. “Ugh, w-what just happened. Where are we?”

Bowlboy shook his head and looked around. “Huh, I didn’t think there were caverns underneath the city.”

Dice looked around to notice glowing mushrooms around them that lit up their path straight-forward. “Caverns, huh? Strange…I wonder why no one knew about the caverns here.”

Bowlboy shrugged his shoulders.

Dice and Bowlboy moved forward through the caverns, their eyes scanning their surroundings.

“Maybe the way out of this place is that way,” Dice determined, pointing at the door ahead of them.

Dice opened the heavy door and pushed his way through, his eyes widened when he found out that they entered a bedroom of some sorts. The lights were on everywhere with pictures and posters all over the walls.

“Well, someone is a bit disorganized,” Dice said with a judgmental gaze around the room. “I mean, it looks filthy.”

Bowlboy looked over at the posters of dancing red cats dressed like demons and words that scared him to his core. “Someone has been making posters about the red cats.”

Dice glanced at the posters with confusion written on his face. “Wait a minute, what’s going on there?”

“There’s always been this hate against red cats for so long,” Bowlboy recalled.

“But why?” Dice questioned. “Like why just the red cats specifically? They could’ve made it more broad and said that all cats are from the Devil, but why the red cats?”

Dice found newspaper clippings and squinted to read it through the other papers.

“Red cats are responsible for the Tremaine outbreak?”

“What?” Dice questioned with a laugh. “Okay. Okay, what on earth is going on here?”

Dice looked at the other paper clipping with some sort of a graph with faded colors. He realized the paper had statistics number to show which species of cats to be more aggressive. Dice looked and saw that the red cats tend to be more aggressive than the rest of the cats. Hunter’s name was on the statistic.

“Since when did Hunter become a scientist?” Dice questioned with a brow raised. He looked at the date and blinked in surprise. “Wait, this was taken before the Tremaine outbreak fifteen years ago.”

“Do you think Hunter had been planning something that had to do with the red cats?”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it one bit,” Dice responded. “He already had you inject Mugman with Tremaine…but the question is…why? Why Mugman? Was it to get to Cuphead? Was it because of something completely different? He’s planning something. I don’t know what it is. But…he’s planning something.”

“Look!” Bowlboy picked up the strange device with darkened goggles and weird antennas forming out of silver cap where the goggles were attached.

Dice grabbed the device and put it on to look through the dark goggles. What he didn’t expect was the orange silhouettes that showed everyone infected with Tremaine. He took it off for a moment.

“What the—?” Dice couldn’t even get a sentence out. He found brown gloves with weird buttons on each hand and wires. He put those on out of curiosity and put the helmet back on to look through the goggles.

Dice had no idea what he was doing when he pushed a button, but when he pushed a button on his right hand, he heard someone collided against the wall. Dice tried to find who was it by pushing another button on his other hand to browse who made the sound. He gasped once he saw an orange silhouette of Beppi, weeping in the corner.

“Make it stop. Make it stop,” Beppi groaned in pain.

Dice felt his heart tug for a moment. He decided to test out whatever it was and pushed the same button on his right hand, causing Beppi to smashed his shoulder against the wall.

“STOP! PLEASE!!” Beppi cried while grabbing his head.

Dice blinked in confusion and noticed the option list down below at the corner. He managed to get there with some struggle and noticed one of the options were to go into Beppi’s head. Dice clicked on that with the button on his left hand and it took him into Beppi’s mind. Through the goggles, Dice could see Beppi being laughed at as a child while the little clown covered his ears.

“Make it stop. Make it stop!” the kid version of Beppi cried.

Too freaked out to continue, Dice shoved the helmet and the gloves off, breathing heavily from looking into someone’s mind.

“What is that thing?” Dice uttered. “D-Does it control people with Tremaine? Does it make their pain worse until they reached to their breaking point? What is going on here?”

Bowlboy found a VHS tape and looked to see television in front of them. “Hey, what’s that?”

Dice turned to see a black screen at the corner of the room. “Wait…what is that?”

Bowlboy found a VHS tape player and inserted the tape in. The television flickered on and it showed a black and white film reel.

“What the heck?” Dice uttered and watched the film reel that showed the black and white pictures.

~.~

Jack couldn’t believed he got the job at the infamous Mason Corporations.

Out of all of the jobs Jack applied for, only one shady corporation gave him the job. It wasn’t what he wanted, but it’ll pay the bills and take care of both his wife and his child. It offered more money than what he could imagine, so why not? Despite his small argument with Porkrind about why working at Mason Corporations seemed like a bad idea, Jack decided to take the opportunity.

Jack worked there as a scientist next to Murray, the cup with a small blue nose. The red cat and the cup scientists were excited to be each other’s coworkers until they started to work there.

There was a new chemical that they were supposed to enhance, which was called Tremaine. Hunter, their boss, told them that Tremaine was supposed to enhance military soldiers to fight, but that couldn’t be further from the truth when running experiments. Their first test subject was a small rat picked up from the sewers.

Jack injected Tremaine into the rat, thinking it would strengthen it or make it more mortal like everyone else. However Jack watched intensely as he could see red irises and yellow eyes in the rat. The rat screeched in pain and rattled in his cage.

Both Murray and Jack witnessed this and looked to see that the chemical improves. So, they went to talk to Hunter about it.

“Mr. Manson,” Jack began the conversation.

Hunter turned to look at Jack.

“We’re sorry to bother you, sir, but I don’t think this Tremaine you speak of is working,” Jack replied. “It doesn’t strengthen the test subject.”

“It causes the test subject to suffer within it, letting it become a monster,” Murray added.

Hunter cornered a smirk. “It’s supposed to do that.”

Murray and Jack looked at each other in confusion and then back at Hunter.

“Now, let’s move up a little, shall we? Let’s say…a person,” Hunter replied.

Murray and Jack blinked and nodded their heads obediently.

“Yes sir,” they both said.

Hunter gave them a nod and moved on to focus on his other projects.

“This isn’t what we signed up for,” Murray whispered to Jack.

“Quiet, Mr. Manson could hear you,” Jack warned his friend.

“We didn’t sign up to make people suffer,” Murray stated.

“M-Maybe Tremaine won’t have terrible effects on people.”

“Jack, did you not see what it did to that rat? Who knows what Tremaine is going to do to a person?” Murray pointed out to the red feline.

Jack bit his lips.

“Look, I know you got family to feed. So do I. But I don’t think doing this is a good idea for a job,” Murray replied. “And something’s up with that Manson guy. I don’t think…I don’t think he’s normal.”

“You realize that they got recordings everywhere, right?”

“I’m just sayin’.”

Jack sighed deeply. “We need to find out why Tremaine causes other people to suffer. What are the ingredients in it? Why does it cause people to suffer? We need to know.”

“I’m with you till the end,” Murray replied with determination. “As much as I don’t think this is a good idea to stay here to find out sensitive information, I’ll stick by ya.”

“What about you? It might be risky and it might get you killed—”

“I ain’t too worried about it,” Murray responded with a mischievous smile. “Let’s do it.”

For months working for Mason Corporations, Jack and Murray tried to find sensitive files in a secret file room they weren’t allowed to go in discreetly while working on the chemical. One day, they finally found a file that had the ingredients to Tremaine.

“Here we go,” Jack said while taking a deep breath. He opened the file and looked through the history of its usage. His eyes widened in shock and fear.

“What’s wrong?” Murray said while looking into the file. He scanned through it. “Ash…? Brimstone…? Demon’s blood…?” He blinked in confusion. “Wait, where does Hunter get those ingredients?”

“There’s only one place I know where he could get that stuff,” Jack uttered in pure disbelief. “I guess his ‘special’ scientists were sent down to the Underworld to collect the ingredients.”

“They would’ve been blown up by the Devil by now if that’s the case. No…Hunter must have brought something from the Underworld,” Murray responded. “But how?”

Unbeknownst to them, Hunter saw them looking through the file involving the ingredients of Tremaine. The tiger growled lowly and disappeared into the shadows.

Since Jack and Murray knew about the ingredients of Tremaine, they were trying to find a way to have the chemical not cause suffering among the test subjects. They tweaked the ingredients by excluding demon’s blood, ash, and brimstone and including the juice from an apple, water, and drops of human tears.

Murray would sometimes bring his baby son, Mugman, to work when no one else could watch him while his wife, Lily Rose, took his other son, Cuphead to her job. Baby Mugman would watch his father mixing the ingredients together in fascination, who was noticed by Hunter watching from outside of Murray and Jack’s lab.

Murray noticed Hunter eying on his baby and kept his son close with a small withering glare at Hunter. Since he noticed Hunter watching Mugman, Murray had an old friend who recently retired from the military that he could call and have him watch baby Mugman and baby Cuphead until either Lily or Murray could pick up their kids first.

Jack never took his daughter, Cassidy, to work mostly because it’s risky.

Other than through occasional worries of being spotted by Hunter and his ruthless employees and getting small amount of glares from people because of his species, Jack had been getting great pay to take care of Shayna and Cassidy for a couple of months until one day.

It was the first of the month of September when Jack came to work and stumbled into a room full of giant tubes of the original Tremaine. He witnessed the Tremaine being drained into the water pipelines on the east side of Inkwell Isle City.

Jack gasped in horror and hurried to find a way to stop Tremaine from getting drained further. He found the wheel valve turned and rushed towards to turn it back. A sudden flash interfered with his eyes. Temporarily blinded by the sudden flash, he kept turning the wheel, eventually saving little Tremaine left in the big tubes. However, Jack knew he was too late to save anyone at the east side of the city.

~.~

The east side water pipelines had Tremaine flowing within, blending into the water. Most citizens drank the water from the sink without knowing it. Objects, humans, and animals alike turned feral and tore each others flesh like wild animals.

The blood marked the streets on the east side of the city. The bee police force were there, but has been torn to shreds when encountering them. It had gotten bloody on the east side of the city with the blood, intestines, hearts, lungs, and guts scattered across the cold black roads that Rumor Honeybottoms, the chief of the police force, stepped in with extra help in the form of the red genie, the three-headed dragon, the mad scientist on his robot, the huge carnivorous flower, and the red lady shape-shifting into a blimp.

The flower’s face contorted into a machine gun and fired bullets in the forms of seeds, planted onto the ground and grew weeds and plant-eaters to hold the attackers back.

The mother and her blonde child cowered back from the child’s father, his irises red and his eyeballs yellow.

“Papa, please! Don’t kill us!” The blonde-haired child cried. Before her father could kill both her and her mother, the golden arrow flew by her father and one of the small blue stars smacked him in the face. Soon, the child and her mother lifted onto the back of the cloudy centaur, firing arrows with the golden bow.

The centaur took them to someplace safe and placed them on the ground, shape-shifting into the red-dressed lady. The little girl looked up at her with adoring eyes.

“What’s your name, sweetie?” the lady asked with a soft smile.

“S-Sally,” the child replied.

“Hilda,” Hilda introduced herself with a bright smile.

“GET OFF!!!”

Hilda turned to the familiar voice belonging to the orange-petaled flower fighting against the ones infected with Tremaine.

Hilda looked at young Sally. “Get you and your mother safe. Hurry!”

Hilda flew up to the sky and grabbed the fluff of clouds to shape-shift into a bull with gold horns. She managed to ram into the infected and get them off of the flower.

“You know I can handle them, right?” The flower stated.

“Really? The famous Cagney Carnation seems to be in distress to me,” Hilda teased while transforming back to her normal self.

Cagney, the flower, slammed his hand down into the ground and stabbed the incoming infected person charging at Hilda with a deadpan stare at her. He smirked when Hilda seemed shock at the fact that he got the person without looking.

“And Ms. Hilda Berg needs to pay attention to her surroundings so that she doesn’t get herself killed,” Cagney teased back.

“Awww, always lookin’ out for me, eh, Cagney?” Hilda flirted with a blush.

“You know it,” Cagney flirted back with a blush on his face.

The red genie appeared in between them with a smirk. “As much as I love to listen to you two flirt, we got a much bigger problem. We need to know what’s causing the people to insane!”

The three-headed dragon landed and blew fire at those infected with Tremaine, protecting a single frog mother protecting two little frog boys.

The mad scientist controlling the robot shot laser yellow beams at the people attacking a young clown and a young girl with a candy cane in her mouth.

The young pirate was fighting the ones infected near the port on the shore. The young sea creature with purple hair of a dead octopus noticed the young pirate boy. With a gasp in shock, her eyes turned red and shot red beams towards the pirate boy. The pirate boy dodged it and watched the infectees turned to stone. Once he looked back, he saw the sea creature gasping at her being noticed and dove back into the water. He hurried over and saw her swimming away.

“Wow…” the pirate boy muttered in admiration.

The dark blue bird with the house on him swooped in and used his wing to get the remaining individuals who were not infected with Tremaine to get on the roof of his birdhouse such as a young brown rat, a young pirate, three young vegetables, and a young slime ball. He flew away with them to get to safety away from the dangerous side of the city.

Rumor Honeybottoms flew in and used her wand to lift up the concrete to find something flowing in the water system. “It’s coming from the water system! We need it to redirect it away from the city!”

The remaining bee cops nodded their heads and hurried to redirect the water into the sewers so that it would never reach to the city again.

The water that had Tremaine inside of it went down the drain, leaving the special force breathing heavily in exhaustion from fighting those infected with Tremaine.

Rumor saw there were more of those infected with Tremaine as she raised the walls with her wand, trapping the infectees within so that they wouldn’t go after anymore citizens.

Unbeknownst to them, Hunter had been watching them all from the sidelines with a small smirk at them all.

~.~

It was only two days after the incident that the newspapers were written frantically all over the city.

“Tremaine released into the east side of the city!”

“Mason Corporations behind the Tremaine incident?”

“Who’s the real villain behind the Tremaine incident?”

Jack hoped for those answers to the questions just as much as the press.

Murray was dumbfounded after the incident, his fear suppressed by trying not to worry too much about it.

It was on the day that Hunter was about to speak up. Was Hunter behind this? Why would Hunter do this? Was this planned the entire time?

Hunter had microphones against his face while journalists were asking questions left and right. Jack and Murray were on stage behind Hunter and listened. All of them didn’t seem that hard to answer and rather…easy to explain…but there was two questions he would never forget was asked during the interview.

“Is the situation under control? Who should we blame?”

“This situation is under control,” Hunter said. “This chemical was released by a former employee of mine. His name was Jack Cat. He and his species caused this Tremaine outbreak.”

Jack widened his eyes at this shocking answer.

“Jack turned the wheel to release the chemicals into the water system and we had to shut it down before it was too late. I’ve studied his species for years…I’ve concluded that they can be usually be aggressive, but I would never have thought that the red cats could go this far,” Hunter stated.

The rising anger gripped Jack’s heart. The urge to speak and defend himself took over and Jack didn’t hesitate to follow that urge.

“You know that’s not true!” Jack shouted at Hunter with a growl.

Murray saw his friend charging towards Hunter and held Jack back. “Jack, no, you’re only going to prove his statements—”

“I’ve been framed!” Jack growled at Hunter, tears streaming down his cheeks. “You’ve just put my species in danger. You’ve just put my family in danger and you know it, don’t you?”

Murray was able to hold his friend back and tried to calm Jack down. “Jack, take it easy. You’re only going to make yourself look worse.”

Jack looked to see the journalists winced back in fear, afraid that he will attack either Hunter or any of them. The red feline softened his gaze and looked up at Hunter. Then he glanced back at the press.

“Please…I’m innocent,” Jack begged the press before being manhandled by the cops.

“Hey, let him go!” Murray shouted at the cops. One of the cops shoved Murray back against the wall, breaking off his handle for his cup head.

Murray groaned in pain while watching his friend being dragged off stage by the cops.

“Please, I’ve been framed! You gotta believe me!” Jack cried.

Murray watched in horror, tears edging out of his eyes.

~.~

Fifteen Years Later:

The television flickered off, revealing Jack’s past with Murray and Hunter to both King Dice and Bowlboy in the strange room.

“Odd…” Dice uttered while tilting his head.

“Poor Jack,” Bowlboy replied in pity.

Dice looked around the room some more to find answers to questions. He found another VHS tape. “Hey, what do you think is in this one?”

Bowlboy shrugged his shoulders and pulled the VHS tape out of the VHS tape player. Dice inserted a different VHS tape and saw something completely shocking.

It was a camera to the jail cell with this supposed Jack Cat sitting inside of it. Jack had been quiet…too quiet. Dice and Bowlboy watched someone walking towards the cell…was that this Murray guy? They watched Murray lock picked the jail cell and leading Jack out of his cell.

Dice tilted his head in confusion when the television flickered to another camera to see Jack and Murray in some sort of a secret lab, working on a cure for Tremaine. Both Bowlboy and Dice looked at each other.

“This is even more odd,” Dice responded.

“There are so many secrets here,” Bowlboy pointed out.

Dice took a glance back at those goggles and the gloves. He put them back on and decided to test something. He toggled through individuals already infected with Tremaine. Beppi was definitely one of them along with the…wait…Baroness Von Bon Bon? How in the world did they get the baroness out of Sugarland? She seemed to be withering and decaying once she left Sugarland.

Dice toggled again to find Mugman. What was about Mugman that was so important to Hunter? Dice was about to find out. He pressed the button to get into the memory and found memories of when Mugman and Cuphead were toddlers and were always together. Before Dice could dig further, he heard someone walking to the room.

Dice took the goggles and the gloves off, setting them down on the table. Bowlboy switched the television off and hid in the shadows as King Dice shut off the lights in the room.

“Youse got a lot of nerve kidnapping us!” Ribby’s voice growled.

“Yeah!” Croaks’ voice agreed.

Dice gasped in recognition. Ribby and Croaks? The owners of the Fly Trap? Quickly, the die put on his hood over his head, watching three assassins pushed both Ribby and Croaks through the room.

One of the assassins noticed Dice under the hood. “Help us, would ya? These two are getting hard to handle.”

“Hey!” Ribby shouted in offense. “We was doing fine until you showed up!”

“We’ll pound ya if ya don’t let us go!” Croaks snarled.

Dice joined to “help”, but he wasn’t sure where they were taking the frogs. The assassins took them through another door that Dice didn’t notice before. Once they opened the door, they pushed the frogs through the door while King Dice followed. Dice looked behind him to see Bowlboy sneakily trailing from behind him.

Dice followed the assassins into the underground prison where the people he saw on the video during the Tremaine Incident were all there.

Cagney pounded against the glass that seemed unbreakable. “Hey! What are you going to do to us?!”

Dice couldn’t answer that since he didn’t know himself. He looked ahead to find more the red genie looking onward solemnly. The mad scientist was tinkering his robot inside of his glass cell while the small brown rat was tinkering his vehicle in the cell next to the mad scientist.

The three headed dragon tried to blow fire at the glass to no avail surprisingly. When that failed, the three-headed dragon frowned and cradled their young baby in the cell with them.

Dice could see Hilda sobbing from the corner of the cell. When he looked to his left, he could see the blue slime big ball punching at the glass with his red boxer gloves. The Root Pack containing of Ollie, Chauncey, and Sal Spudder crying in the cell from Ollie’s stench. Rumor Honeybottoms didn’t have her wand and her arms were crossed in the cell, glaring at the assassins holding Ribby and Croaks hostage.

Sally, the blonde woman who was the little girl in the video, was dead in her cell…or was she dead? When Dice approached Sally’s cell to see if she was really dead, Sally perked her head up, her eyes red and her pupils small. She crawled over to the glass and clawed on it, scaring Dice away from the glass with a gasp. Once he left her and trailed behind the assassins, Sally blinked and her eyes returned to normal. She wiped the drool off of her mouth with a cocky grin.

Dice looked to see the bird with the house on his body, taking care of the little bird crying in the cell. Then he approached Beppi and the Baroness, acting irrationally with Tremaine in their veins. They’ve succumbed to their demonic selves, which scared Dice to think about for some reason.

Soon the assassins shoved the frogs into their own cells.

“HEY!” Ribby barked at the assassins before the glass closed behind the brothers. “Get us out of here!”

Dice blinked in horror and found the name-plates above the cells with each other of their names. The last two cells were across from one another, both were empty. Dice looked at one of the empty cell in horror…it…it had his name on it. Then Dice looked across at the other empty cell and widened his eyes in more shock.

“The Devil.”

“What’s wrong?” one of the assassins asked Dice, unaware that it was the King Dice noticing this.

Dice cleared his throat. “Um…why are we capturing King Dice and the Devil? Aren’t they…working with us?”

“We thought the boss explained to you,” the other assassin stated. “To all of us. Were you not listening?”

“No…absolutely not,” Dice responded.

“King Dice is great with magic and his control of his cards. The Devil is the ruler of the Underworld. Once Tremaine inside all of them, the boss will have complete control of everyone, even the Devil. Heck, even the world once he rules Hell.”

Dice widened his eyes in fear. Hunter wants to rule Hell? And raise hell in the world? “Wait, why does he want to be the New Devil?”

“He thinks he could do better than the original Devil. Why else do you think?”

Dice blinked in shock and confusion. “So the deal…he’s going to—”

“Don’t read too much into it. Just do as the boss says,” the assassin ordered while the assassins were walking out.

“O-Okay…well, I’ll just patrol here,” Dice replied, watching the other assassins exit out.

“Uh…look, I ain’t a fan of the Devil, but that is insanity on the whole new level!” Cagney pointed out with a growl. “Does he really think Devil is going to hand him over his throne just like that?! He’s the freaking Devil! Does he really think Devil is going to roll over and let him take over Hell and dominate the world?!”

Captain Brineybeard, who was in the cell next to the empty one belonging to King Dice, blinked in shock. “Wait, do ye reckon that Hunter might be trying t’ gain powers from the Davy Jones?”

“Davy Jones? Who’s that?” Cagney questioned from the other side of the prison.

“It’s what pirates call the Devil,” the genie, with the name Djimmi the Great plastered on the sign above his cell, explained. “The thing that Hunter is not seeing is that Devil is immortal like some of us here. Except the Devil has roamed this world way before any mortal and immortal beings exist along with the Most High. He cannot be controlled no matter how hard you try.”

“The Devil isn’t stupid,” Hilda joined the conversation. “Should we warn King Dice and the Devil?”

“Hey, I’m not worried about the Devil,” Cagney responded. “Literally, I can’t wait to see Hunter burn to crisp when he attempts to take over Hell.”

“Well, we can’t let anyone know of Hunter’s plan…wait a minute,” Rumor looked at Dice under the hood. “Usually, assassins patrolling us would tell us to shut up…”

“Because I’m not one of them,” Dice said while taking off his hood to reveal himself to the prisoners.

The prisoners gasped in shock.

“The King Dice,” Sally gasped in shock.

“Eh, we don’t have to worry about warning him now,” Cagney responded with a shrug.

“What are you doing here? Do you even know where we are?” Djimmi interrogated.

“Uh…I’m just as confused as you are,” Dice responded. “I think we’re underground on the east side of the city I think.”

All the prisoners gasped in fear.

“The east side? Where Tremaine happened all those years ago?” Dr. Kahl, the mad scientist approaching the glass, uttered.

“We was livin’ there when we was tadpoles!” Croaks gasped.

“We were livin’ peacefully there!” Sal stated.

“I ‘ave met Cala Maria thar when I was a young lad!” Brineybeard pointed out.

“I deffelobed ein loffe of machinery zere!” Werner Werman, the rat in the cell, stated.

“I have a safe home there,” Goopy Le Grande, the blue slime ball, responded.

“I lost my father there,” Sally uttered sadly.

“Wait, wait, we’ve quarantined this place,” Cagney pointed out.

“It’s the place anyone least expects,” Rumor uttered in horror. “What have we done?”

Djimmi glanced at King Dice. “Can you get us out? Can you help us?”

“Look, man, I-I don’t know—”

“Dice…”

Dice turned to see Bowlboy behind him.

“There’s someone on the other side of that door,” Bowlboy said while pointing at the fortified door.

Dice looked at the door and at the prisoners. “Who’s at the other side of the door?”

“We don’t know,” Djimmi responded solemnly. “It was a man who Hunter tortured so often, but we never knew his name.”

“That’s horrible,” Ribby uttered.

“I vouldn’t vant to pe zat guy,” Werner stated.

Dice turned back to the door and took a deep breath. “Here goes nothin’ then.” He walked up beside Bowlboy, facing the door. He could hear someone sobbing from the other side.

Dice turned the knob on the door and found out the door was locked. “Dang it. How are we going to get in without a key—?”

Bowlboy took out they key to the door from his pocket.

“I’m not gonna even ask how you even got the key.”

Bowlboy smirked at Dice. The small bowl unlocked the door with the key and opened it.

~.~

The door opened with a creak and Dice peeked into the room. In the dark room, the light shined from the door and up towards the man, who stopped sobbing. His shoulders tightened and looked away from them.

“I’ve already answered everything for you,” he said, sniffling. “You’ve killed my wife…my kids…my best friend. What more do you want from me?”

“Whoa, hey, easy there, we don’t want anything from ya,” Dice reassured the cup stranger.

The cup stranger couldn’t look back, but Dice could tell that he was trying.

“The ingredients to the cure? I’m tellin’ ya, I don’t remember. Your boss took half of my memory away,” the stranger growled. “You can beat it out of me all you want…but I don’t remember.”

“Easy there, we’re only trying to help—”

The stranger snorted. “Sure, you’re only trying to help. I guess you’re new to this whole Night Stalkers cult.”

“What? No! I’m not a part of them at all!” Dice responded while taking off the black robe and dropped by the cup stranger’s feet. “See? I’m only using that as a disguise.”

The cup stranger gasped and struggled in his chains. “Who are you then?”

“I’m sure you’ve heard of me. I’m King Dice,” Dice replied with a smile.

The cup stranger didn’t respond.

“You know…from Roll the Dice…”

The cup stranger still didn’t respond.

“He must be living under a rock,” Bowlboy assumed.

Dice sighed. “Nevermind. Let’s get you outta here.”

Bowlboy got out his lock picks and picked the locks around the stranger’s ankles and wrists. Once that was done, the stranger immediately sprang up to his feet and grabbed Dice by the purple coat, slamming him against the wall. Dice was face-to-face with the stranger, noticing that the stranger only miss one eye and he was missing a handle.

“Whoa! What the—?! Hey!” Dice yelled. “I’m trying to help you!”

“How do I know you’re not lying to me about being part of the cult?” the stranger growled.

“He’s not!” Bowlboy testified for Dice.

“If I was a part of the cult, you wouldn’t be out right now,” Dice pointed out to the stranger.

“Really now?” the cup stranger growled. “Maybe you’ve developed this tactic to get me to trust you so easily. You might stab me in the back.”

“What you’re saying is making no sense,” Dice said with a groan. “Why would I let you out only to put you back?”

“I don’t know. You tell me, Mr. King Dice,” the stranger snarled. “Let’s see what your true intentions are.”

“W-What?” Dice watched the stranger’s eye turned violet. “Hey, what are you—?”

It was sudden that his vision became violet and he could no longer talk.

“Kingsley! Kingsley!!!”

Dice’s vision was cleared and he groaned in pain. He was back to being a kid in an isolated cabin. He was dressed in disgusting rags and was bruised. Dice saw a silhouette of his father, causing him to widened his eyes in horror.

“Kingsley Dice, you better get your butt here right now! Daddy needs to get a look at ya!”

Dice blinked while breathing heavily, frozen in terror until his next memory flash into the lively casino. Dice looked and saw the Devil himself trying to get his father’s soul. However, his father saw him and grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Take my son’s soul instead. He’ll be a good boy to you.”

The Devil quirked a brow. “You’re willing to trade your son’s soul for your own?”

“Yes!”

The Devil’s lips formed into a smirk. “Well, well, I guess mortals never change.”

In a snap of the finger, Dice could feel the chains tying him to the Underworld in both his wrists and his soul.

He watched his father walking away out of the casino.

“Don’t worry, young one,” Devil reassured Dice while walking away. “I’m sure your dear ole daddy will die in the worse way possible.”

Dice shed tears.

Make it stop! Make it stop!

Dice blinked and now he was an adult like he was before. He realized he had his own show back. Before he could put on a grand smile in front of faceless audience, he looked down and saw Cuphead hugging his leg. Then he looked ahead and saw Mugman sitting on the seat, watching both him and Cuphead. It was then the violet glow around faded away in an instant.

Dice blinked and gasped as if he had been suffocating for so long. The cup stranger’s eye no longer glowed violet. He let go of the die, who stumbled by the doorway, breathing heavily as if he hadn’t breathed in a while. He looked up at the stranger in horror.

“What the hell did you do to me?!” Dice questioned breathlessly.

Bowlboy looked over at Dice in concern and then looked back at the stranger, who seemed to be just as shocked as Dice was.

“You saw my boys?” the cup stranger uttered, a tear rolling out of his eye.

“Y-Your boys?! What did you do to me?!” Dice shouted at the stranger.

The stranger looked down at Bowlboy, who tilted his head in confusion. He came over to Bowlboy and grabbed the bowl’s wrist gently. Automatically, Bowlboy’s eyes turned violet, which caused Dice to wince back. Surprisingly…it was a quick process and Bowlboy’s eyes turned back to normal, who was breathing heavily and shivering.

“You both saw my boys!” the stranger gasped in shock.

“Cuphead and Mugman?” Bowlboy questioned.

“That’s what Elder Kettle calls them,” the stranger said with a relieved smile and tears streaming down his cheek. “M-My boys are alive. My boys are alive.”

Dice watched the stranger breaking down crying in happiness, confused until it clicked. “Wait a minute…are you…the father of Cuphead and Mugman?”

The stranger looked up, smiling through the tears. “Uh-huh. I can’t believe my boys were alive.”

Dice looked closely at the cup stranger and he could finally recognized him from seeing him on the television. “Wait…Murray?”

Murray, the cup stranger, got up on his feet and wiped the tears. “It’s been a while since I’ve heard that name.”

Dice widened his eyes in shock.

“I-I need to see my boys. I need to know where they are!” Murray urged and hurried out of the room.

“Murray, wait! There’s something going on with Mugman—” Before Dice could finish his sentence, they heard footsteps coming towards the underground prison. Right before the prisoners could warn them to hide, the door busted through and revealed it to be Hunter and ten more hooded assassins.

Murray drew his brows at Hunter with his fists clenched.

“You know, Dice, I never thought you were going to stoop this low. Apparently, this is a new low for you,” Hunter growled.

Dice looked at the lever next to him and then back at Hunter. “You were going to betray the Boss, are you?!”

“Knock him out! Get him to his cell!” Hunter ordered his men. He looked at Murray. “You and I have unfinished business to discuss.”

Murray clenched his teeth and growled.

Dice placed his hand on the lever and pulled it, freeing all the prisoners from their cells.

~.~

Immediately, Cagney started to attack the hooded assassins with the help of Hilda and Goopy.

The three headed dragon, Grim Matchstick, blew fire at the ceiling above them as soon as the dragon got out of the cell. The ceiling collapsed, crushing the two empty cells that had both Dice’s and Devil’s names engraved on it. Murray was blinded by the sunlight and hid in the shadow. The bird, Wally Warbles, used his wing to get everyone on board. Werner, Dr. Kahl, Dr. Kahl’s robot, and Wally’s son got on Wally Warbles. Sally, The Root Pack, and Goopy got on Grim’s back. Beppi and Baroness Von Bon Bon tore into the assassins, scurrying away to find a way out.

Brineybeard got out of his cell and saw Cala Maria sulking in her own cell until it was opened. She was smaller than she usually was with her green mermaid tail and purple dead octopus hair. She looked up to see Brineybeard offering his hand to her. She smiled and grabbed his large hand. He picked her up and carried her out of her cell.

Everyone hurried out of the hole Grim created while Dice watched them all crawling out of the hole and escaping.

“Dice?” The familiar voice uttered.

Dice glanced over to see Devil standing there with Hunter next to him. Henchman and Stickler stood behind Devil, their eyes widened in shock at him.

“B-Boss, let me explain,” Dice stuttered, gaining Murray’s attention along with the frog brothers, Cala Maria, and Brineybeard.

Devil drew his brows together with a snarl, pointing his pitchfork at Dice. “I should’ve known you would turn on me sooner than later.”

Dice breathed heavily. “Please, let me explain—!”

The Devil shot the fireball from his pitchfork at Dice.

Dice was ready to accept his fate before Brineybeard tackled him away from the fireball. Brineybeard collapsed with Cala Maria in his arms along with Dice. Ribby and Croaks joined along with Bowlboy and Murray.

“Are ye alright?!” Brineybeard questioned.

“Hey-o, is the Devil your boss?!” Ribby interrogated.

“This is not the time to question,” Cala Maria pointed out. “We need to go now!”

“The lass be right! We needs t’ run now!” Brineybeard agreed with the sea monster in his arms.

“How do we get out? We can’t even fly,” Croaks pointed out.

They saw the silhouette of the Devil coming towards them.

It was sudden they felt something underneath them as they looked down and realized the large mushroom grew up towards the hole.

The group soon realized that it was Cagney growing a mushroom once they reach out of the hole. The mushroom tilted to the side.

“Scatter!” Cagney screamed for the group.

Dice pulled Murray by the arm to hurry onward while Ribby and Croaks ran in a different direction. Brineybeard carried Cala in his arms and followed Murray and Dice.

Cagney hurried away from the hole to catch up with Hilda and Bowlboy in a separate direction.

The Devil came out of the hole with Hunter by his side and Henchman and Stickler catching up them. The Devil watched Dice running away with Murray, Captain Brineybeard, and Cala Maria. With a growl, Devil aimed his pitchfork at them and fired another fireball.

The group dodged it and looked behind them to find Devil flying after them.

“Oh no, he’s going to kill us. He’s going to kill us,” Dice replied while breathing heavily in panic.

On cue, Ribby drove the car big enough to fit Brineybeard, Cala, Murray, and Dice in with Croaks on the passenger side.

“Get in!” Croaks shouted at them while opening the back door for them to hop in.

Dice and Murray entered the back seat of the car with Brineybeard jumping in after them with Cala Maria in his arms.

Cala decided to peek out of the window to find Devil chasing after them. With her brows drawn together, her eyes turned red and shot out laser beams. The Devil didn’t have time to react when the laser beams hit him and he was automatically turned to stone.

She smirked and put her head back into the vehicle. “Step on it!”

Ribby slammed his foot on the gas pedal and drove into the forest.

“I need to find my boys,” Murray uttered.

“Your boys?” Croaks questioned.

“Cuphead and Mugman,” Dice clarified for Murray.

“Wait, yer the father of those two?!” Ribby questioned with a gasp.

“We know yer lads, mate! We’ll take ye t’ ‘em if we knew where they be,” Brineybeard stated.

“Ooh! We know where they are!” Ribby exclaimed excitedly. “Hang on, we’ll take you to yer boys!”

With that said, Ribby sped up into the forest, getting away from the city.

Back to the Devil, he managed to burst through the stone with his flames and looked up with a snarl. He picked up his pitchfork and now he had no idea where the traitor and his new group of friends went.

“Ugh, he has the gall to betray me!” Devil growled.

Hunter shook his head. “A shame that is. I guess his greed got the best of him.”

“He’ll pay for this!” Devil snarled. “He’ll pay for all of it.”

Hunter smirked. “I know a way to make all of them pay for their wrongdoings towards you.”

Devil turned to Hunter in confusion at first. Then he grinned mischievously. “Do tell.”

Hunter smiled evilly.

To Be Continued...

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sofiiel · 8 months

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Trucker!Eddie x Landlord!Reader thing: (it's been sitting in my google docs drafts. It's just a unfinished opening scene. I wouldn't expect to see this fic posted soon. But to fill my inactivity, here is this.)

Hello, nobody ever told you how hard actually falling in love was going to hit you. Everything says it's like falling and you never really spot it until bam it happens. Love is as fast as Life is short, or that was the theory.

It was the sole thing you'd pinned for your entire life.

But you know what? Life is typically fucking long. And love?

It's slow. You're staring up a steep slope, watching that lumber truck grinding slowly towards your stalled little jalopy. That bad boy is carrying 40 short tons of lumber, its brakes are failing, and it's fresh out of fuel.

Love's great, but it will leave you feeling like roadkill that's seen the bottom of one thousand wheels.

Love comes with a name too, Eddie Munson.

"It took me fifteen years and an overdose to get you to admit it."

--- Eddie

He rolled into your shotty motel & weekly. Tracking all the mud and permanent stains right in with him.

"You know after all these years they finally pronounced that Munson guy as innocent." your cousin Marsha smacked over the phone.

She'd been going on for two hours while watching the local news, chomping on that stale piece of week-old gum. But even the smacking a popping of inhumanly hard, tasteless candy was better than night shift alone.

Shoving a yawn back down your throat, you sighed. "Seriously, Marshie? You're still following that old story?" You ask her.

The clouds thundered like an angry drummer, and the wind whistled with the sharpness of a referee. Your eyes struggled to stay open, lulled by the hypnotic rhythm of the rain beating against the ceiling.

"Of course! That was back in our hay-day _____!" Marsha cheered.

Her grin could be felt through the phone.

"Your hay-day, Marshie. Not mine. '86 was the worst year of my goddamn life." you murmur.

Marsha gave a jittered titter, "Oh you're so modest, and a drama queen. So what, it was the year you got cold feet and ran out of the wedding and-"

You tapped your black boots against the worn brown carpet.

"That wedding was bullshit, but that's not why it was the worst year of my life." Your words don't reach Marsha's ears, she's gone in her recounting of the event.

While you loved your cousin dearly, her jittered laughter was now picking at your nerves.

"skussssssh! Oh-oh no....mar-......marshie?" you stammered, recreating the sound of static with your vocal cords.

"I....skushhhh! I think the singal is - oh you piece of - skuuuussssh! sorry, Mars- I better call back - skuushhh-t-t-bzt-t - in the morning!"

Hanging up the phone, you slumped into the chair and covered your face with your hands.

In your grand act, you did not notice the shadow darting across the parking lot. Sopping wet with a drooping playboy mag for an umbrella.

You had not heard the door chime between the desperate hisses, and now you were blind to the wet rat of the man lingering before the front desk.

He watched you for a moment, his heart out, thundering the storm. Caught in that agonizing moment which for each of you, though for many different reasons, felt like an hour.

When his hand reached out for the golden bell next to the brochures, a bright 'ding' echoed past the whistling wind.

You hesitantly slipped your hands away from your face, your dry expression swiftly switching to a stunned gawk.

"Um... I saw that vacancy sign a mile down the road." said your guest.

A smile inched across his lips, "Boots!" he gasped after a good hard look at your face.

The force of the scowl, that contracted your brows, was received like a punch. Your guest quickly threw his hands into the air.

"Nobody calls me that and walks away without a mauling." you warned.

He laughed warm hum, "I remember well."

"That was an awful fake-out, by the way. You sounded like a dying robot from an early 1960s horror film." he added.

Your eyes thinned into a glare, but fixed on his smile. It was the eve of the anniversary to the worst day of your life.

"Says the Freak of Hawkins High and the only student in Hawkins history to fail Drama class. Twice."

Your words were sharp, but still he smiled, and for an awful minute your chest ached at the brightness of it.

"Eddie fuckin' Munson....of all people..." you sighed.

#i am description heavy-handed so sue me #trucker!eddie x reader #eddie munson x fem!reader #short intro thing #one-sided enemy to lovers #eddie's soggy playboy mag #sfw #got so many unfished scenes and bite sized blips of these two #rotting away in my docs like 'let me die or write me plz'

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erzsebetrosztoczy · 1 year

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Hi! Idk if you write for Sigurd or Tyr but if you do, can i request a lil something with them, maybe comforting them after their arms got chopped off or something?

At your request 😌

Pairing: Sigurd x reader

Word count: 2770

Genre: fluff, angst

Notes: BB boi needs love. Give him love. Give him therapy and kisses and cuddles.

The mild spring weather, which you would otherwise have been grateful for, was now playing against you as you tossed and turned in your bed, your skin slippery with sweat, your forehead furrowed into deep wrinkles, your breathing ragged.Your dream images have now been ingrained in your mind - you have seen the terrible moments over and over again, you have felt the fear, sorrow, despair, helpless anger so many times. But these feelings did not rise in your heart because of your own suffering. That is, not completely.

The center of your dreams was not you. Your person, your presence was just an insignificant detail, as if you had become an outsider, a ghost, who was only an observer of all the bad happenings, unable to scream, run, or do anything to stop the horrors.

In the end; as always in this dream, you reached the point where your mind could no longer bear to see the further course of events - your awakening was a salvation.

Gasping for air, you swallowed, your eyelids popped open as if a snake had bitten you; Throwing your blanket aside, you sat down among the furs. With a buzzing, dizzy head, you looked around thought zigzagging, wanting to make sure that it was just your imagination playing tricks on you- you were really in your bed, at home, safe, under the protection of your people, and all the ugliness you saw before was just a figment of your imagination.

Your pounding heart echoed in your ears, a thin layer of sweat covered your skin as the coolness of the night hit your damp forehead.

Regaining control over your breathing, you took a deep breath in through your nose to calm your heart and mind.

After that you didn't want to go back to sleep— the nightmare chased away the dream from your eyes and you didn't want to risk reliving the horrible events anyway- because you were almost certain that if you were to fall asleep again the images would return, starting all over again, like an insurmountable cycle.

Pulling your boots on, you pulled your thick blanket over your shoulders and walked over to your candle holder on your dresser. Darkness prevailed in your hut, only the white light of the silvery moon shone through your window, illuminating your modest abode. It was a small room, but it turned out to be just enough for you, its homely warmth always made your residence soothing. Lighting your candle, you stepped out into the evening sky; the fresh spring breeze came as sweet salvation to your heart, after the tormenting dreams.

You thought that if you take a walk in the town; exercise your tired limbs, cool down your heated soul and clear your mind, you might be able to sleep a few more hours during the night before a new day begins full of tasks and responsibilities which can only be done properly with a clear head.

Your path led you to the river, watching the moon's eternal glow in the sky, listening to the soft creaking and cracking of the trees as the breeze moved them around you. You almost completely forgot the reason why you're awake, you almost completely forgot about the ghostly images that so gladly flashed before your eyes over and over again, while you roamed the realm of dreams.

Walking up the slope as you got a better view of the shore, you saw a figure among the docks, ships and stone pillars, not far at the end of the pier. The figure sat on the planks- long legs reaching down toward the water, the sluggish waves almost lapping at them. You stopped in fright, squinting your eyes, wondering if you could see him by the light of the moon, if it's a friend or a foe, who lurks alone on the shore in the dead of night. You were already about to turn around and quietly sneak home before it was too late, before the mysterious someone could notice. However, the moon has decided to come to your aid—the drifting cloud in front of it floated away into the distance, enveloping Ravenstorpe in a flood of light.

Your eyes widened, face elongated, and your heart felt as if it had been thrown off a mountain, when - to your greatest fear - you recognized the lonely figure.

Dark red - almost brown braids glistened in the gloom of the night, the white fur coat fluttered on his shoulders as a particularly stronger wind swept across the water – Sigurd sat alone on the edge of the pier, his shoulders slumped, his back bent.

In that moment, the cause of all bad feelings, anxiety, and fear came flooding back into you, crushing you to the ground.

The images from your dream flashed into your mind—a dark, cold, damp room; a huge, murderous shadow, running from corner to corner so you don't even have a chance to figure out who it is; the knives and tongs are a sharp flash. And then there's always comes that makes your blood freeze, the hair on your back stands, and makes you want to cry convulsively.

You catch a glimpse of Sigurd, sometimes sitting up, sometimes lying on the floor. Sometimes he's passed out or half dead, but that's the best case — most of the time he's awake, very awake.

You stand motionless in the middle of the room, you watch trembling as the dark figure ignores you and walks closer and closer to him, Sigurd's eyes widen, the paralyzing edge of fear reflected in his gaze. With what little strength he has left, he tries to free himself from the chains, ropes, and sharp claws, yelling, spinning, throwing himself- all the more in a frantic rush of terror.

You also feel his fear, his helplessness, his vulnerability - like an animal waiting to be slaughtered, who has been tied up and is watching the arrival of his executioner. A cold pain shoots through your heart, your limbs start to go numb, your face and ears burn, your eyes fill with tears, as despite all your efforts you cannot prevent the events or turn away from them.

A rusty, broken saw appears out of nowhere.

Then only the heart-wrenching yelling and sobbing; which one of you hears it, is unknown. Blood flows, blood everywhere, covers Sigurd, runs down to the floor, pooling, reaching your legs, then up to your ankles.

Blood, blood everywhere, red, warm and unstoppable flowing blood, covering the room, covering your body, flowing into your nose, ears, mouth, eyes, suffocating you.

Blinking, you turned back to face the Raven Clan's Jarl. You moved your trembling legs and wrapped your arms around your chest, to see if it could ease your heart's pounding.

You weren't there when it happened. You weren't there, you don't know how it was. It has already happened and there is nothing any of you can do about it. You know well, not even the weavers of fate can change the past. He was home now. Eivor brought him home; he lives- and is at home among his people.

You walked closer to the shore, but still making sure he didn't hear your footsteps - or at least if he did notice you, don't make it look like you wanted to go to him at all costs. In fact, that was all you wanted. Since Sigurd's return, you have only met a few times, your conversations were short. Until now, you didn't dare to bring up the subject of his arm, thinking that you should leave Sigurd, let him initiate the conversation. But inwardly your heart was rent at the sight of his condition; seeing the ghost of the agony on his face, the sparkle in his eyes has faded, his lips have only a faint memory of his smile.

You wanted to let him heal at his own pace, not rushed, forced just for your own peace.

However, you wanted to show him that you are by his side, that you are there for him at every moment, ready to do anything for him, just so that you can see him whole again. Until Sigurd is his old self, you can't be either.

The wind howled and rose stronger, caught in the blanket wrapped around you which flapped against your side like this. Grabbing the warm material, you pulled it closer as you were about to turn back from the shore, leaving him with his thoughts when a voice broke the silence of the night.

"You're really awful at sneaking." Sigurd spoke to you, his voice seemed forced.

"I didn't mean to… I didn't want to eavesdrop." You stammered, swallowed thickly from the embarrassment and shame. "I just came out for a walk and..."

"I didn't mean to send you away. Just don't stand there alone like a ghost, come here then.” Sigurd's tall figure turned towards you, patting the wood next to him with his good arm.

You just blinked at him for a few moments, wondering if you should leave him alone, or if he really wanted you to sit next to him for company, but your heart couldn't overcome your mind - you wanted to be as close to Sigurd as possible.

And now you had a great opportunity.

Taking small steps on the slippery wood, you reached him then carefully sat down on the edge of the dock dangling your legs over the water. You couldn't decide whether to look at him or you would make him uncomfortable with it, so you turned to his direction watching the moonlight reflected in the water.

In the past, the quiet, silent moments in Sigurd's company felt pleasant- a real salvation even - when you were both in your own world, yet next to each other —always in each other's company in an intimate silence.

Now however, this light and secure feeling couldn’t be found. A lump grew in your throat with each moment you spent in silence next to him, gnawing at the inside of your cheeks, wondering what and how to tell him. Do you say anything to him at all?

You noticed that, unfortunately, the man has changed towards you as well. The once open, attentive and interesting conversations turned into half-sentence answers, with his indifferent and tired voice you sometimes felt that he was perhaps outright bored or annoyed with your presence…

Although it had to belsaid; Sigurd held back himself particularly around you- since you saw how he could bark orders at Eivor, how venomously he could hurl accusations and insults at a person's head after a simple comment. You usually caught a glimpse of these while walking by the Long House; when at an unlucky moment you turn a corner and find yourself faced with a fight — you were only an occasional real eyewitness of its manifestations, and even then, as soon as he noticed you, Sigurd immediately retreated into his gloomy, wordless brooding.

While he lashed out at others with burning anger, when he turned to you there was only cool callousness.

The river tumbled, bubbled and splashed beneath you, a chorus of frogs surrounded you as if they were singing to you. At least they are talking while you sink into deep silence.

There were many things in your heart that you wanted to say, that you wanted to share with him, that you wanted to guarantee him; Sigurd needs to know that he is not alone, that he never will be, and that he should never be afraid that anyone - especially you - will reject him because of what he has been through.

"It's so quiet." Sigurd sighed heavily, the sudden noise alarmed you as you turned your head towards him, straightening up in your seat. His voice sounded strangely harsh - raspy and hoarse, as if it pained him to make a sound.

"It's best to contemplate at times like this." You answered, in the hope that a conversation might finally come to fruition. "In peace and quiet."

Sigurd's nose crinkled as he grimaced sourly; his Adam's apple bobbed rapidly while he swallowed. You noticed this; biting in the insides of your cheeks you thought again, could you have said something wrong to him.

“Is…something wrong? Did I say something wrong?" You sputtered softly, having enough of the silence, having enough of the speechlessness, having enough that you don't know what is happening between you, what is happening with Sigurd, why he behaves like this towards you. “If you wanted to be left alone you should have just said-” You suddenly bit off the end of your words as Sigurd leaned over to you, wrapping his arm around your collarbone and pulling you close to his side.

A sharp, ragged sigh escaped your lungs, shoulders and torso rigid from the quick and unexpected action.

Moments later, however, you finally felt yourself melting into his chest, the pent-up doubts and tension of the days had melted away to almost nonexistent as he held you close - even if only for a few moments.

"No, not at all. I didn't want to - you never -" You didn't say a word, you let Sigurd say what he wanted, stuttering, not finding the words. He needed time to express everything he wanted; you also needed time to understand him. "I didn't want you to think... I just... I don't know what's happening to me, what's happening around me. Why is all this happening… Nothing is the same.”

"Hey," you placed your palm on his shoulder blade, trying to calm him by drawing small circles into his clothes. "it's okay. I do not demand anything from you Sigurd, quite the opposite. I want everything to go the way it suits you. I understand why you're upset... I'd be the same if I were you — I am; seeing what happened to you... I just want you to know that I'm here by your side." You spoke as quietly and softly as if you were talking to a feather, making sure your breath didn't blow it away from your palm.

"No—I'm not being fair to you." Sigurd's voice broke, swallowing thickly as he shook his head.

For a moment you blinked in silence gazing ahead into the river, your mind trying to comprehend everything that had happened so quickly until now; how you should respond to reassure your beloved and assure him that it is only his mind that creates these dark shadows.

"How's your…arm?" You asked suddenly, the topic being so different from the previous ones that Sigurd snorted in astonishment.

"My arm?" A growl broke out of his throat as he forced himself to straighten up, leaving your side, his arm unconsciously touching the wound. "According to Valka, the skin is slowly starting to close... Sometimes it hurts, sometimes itches... most of the time it's like I still feel the -"

From the side you saw him biting his lip through his red beard, distant eyes wandering over the shimmering surface of the water. You reached for his hand, lacing your fingers together, pulling your body closer to his.

“It’s healing. Slowly, with a lot of care and time it will heal completly. Just the same, you will feel better over time. You can trust the clan, you can trust me— we will stand by you every step of the way.”

You turned to each other; pulling your legs up, you knelt on the pier so you could finally be at head level with Sigurd. Even in the darkness of the night, you could make out his sparkling, soft gaze, as his eyes scanned your features, mapping out what kind of meaning you wanted to give to your words.

Tingling waves ran over your skin as you finally felt Sigurd's warmth and the solidity of his body again; the fact that you could finally hold him in your arms made your heart skip a beat.

Without a moment's hesitation, your Jarl wrapped his arms around your waist, nuzzling his cold nose into the crook of your neck, resting his forehead on your shoulder.

You have been missing this feeling for a very long time. You missed him. Now, it's as if a little piece of your heart has returned to you again, as your body has absorbed the love and care of the moment.

Sigurd didn't answer, but he didn't need to- you already knew what he wanted to express, what he wanted to show you, even though his wounds crippled his voice for now.

"We'll get through this." You sighed, fingers coming to comb through his long braid. "We'll get through this together."

#ac valhalla #assassin's creed #assassin's creed valhalla #ac valhalla imagine #ac valhalla fanfic #assassin's creed fanfic #assassins creed sigurd #ac sigurd #sigurd styrbjörnsson #sigurd styrbjornsson #sigurd x reader #my writing

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