#her cave is her home and her grave and she is content in the way cranky old snarky women are

[impossible-rat-babies]

there are several good side quests in HW, but there’s this one that gets me in the hinterlands. it’s started with “saro roggo’s average life” which is an aether current quest. simple enough?

WRONG!

it turns into a chain of quests where poor saro struggles to make sense of his existence now that he is no longer just a frog. he has no instructions, thus he doesn’t know what to do. what gives his life meaning? it’s being told what to do and he doesn’t have that, so he’s scared he’s going to be turned back into a normal frog. thus he enlists your help to discover the deepest desire of master matoya and give it to her. through this quest chain you ask a bunch of the brooms what master matoya desires and they spend you off on their own quests. (they are fun lil you only get directions from the journal kind of quests). but eventually one of the brooms tell you of their sister who might know what matoya desires, but she is hidden away and can only be summoned by a special word. another broom tells you that it’s the word of what is dearest to master matoya, and another tells you it doesn’t know what is dearest to matoya, but it is certain that matoya hates y’shtola above all else. she doesn’t talk of her, so of course she must hate her? right?

you go and find the broom anyway and find out this funny hidden away broom holds matoya’s memories of a young Y’shtola. all the joys of her growing up into a fine young woman to the sharp pain of her sudden departure. matoya cannot bear to have the memories close, but she doesn’t wish to forget them. so these memories get tucked away—hidden just close enough.

#ITS SO….im GRABBING THIS SIDE QUEST CHAIN AND SHAKING IT #Y’shtola and matoya’s relationship is complex in MSQ but GOD this is just an added layer #how much matoya was/is a maternal figure to Y’shtola and all the joy and sorrow that comes with it #I love matoya so much as a scholar. as the one who put her foot down to what her country did and how they fled #she’s the only one to stay. she is the keeper #her cave is her home and her grave and she is content in the way cranky old snarky women are #I LOVE HER SO MUCJ AJSJSJD #owen talks #ffxiv #yes I am working on a doc of gold quests that are worth it imo #it will be weird considering I did so many ARR ones when i was first playing and didn’t think to write them down #but it’s pretty comprehensive of HW to ShB thus far #also there will be EW areas missing (mostly thavnair/radz-at-han and a bit of sharlayan) #bc I am a goober and didn’t keep track of them

[quitealotofsodapop]

Imagine what would happen if, somehow, Wukong could meet his mother? And I don't mean in the way that Guanyin is both the reincarnation of his mother and his adopted mother, I mean if he could meet the actual version of her who laid his egg? What would she think of him?

Ok I got a little carried away and made a wee ficlet/idea for how this could happen;

--

It was the Qingming Festival - a time for the living to focus on the departed and tend to their resting places.

Pigsy wasn't a religious man, but he had made a point of visiting his ancestor's burial plot in Gao Village each year - bringing his adopted son MK along to help sweep the site and burn offerings. Tang typically joined in, leaving pomergrante seeds or sprigs of willow on any grave left untended to show good faith to the departed. Those who lived by the water ways set out lotus-shaped lanterns to guide the visiting souls back to Diyu.

Wukong had found the festival rather morbid in the past, especially since for such a long time it was a time of great sorrow for his people. Monkey demons had no formal burial grounds for their ancestors, only the Mountain of Fruit and Flowers itself. In the centuries following the Burning, it had been a tradition for those on the Mainland to return to their island home to as pilgrimage. They would land on the beaches and set ceremonial bonfires, offering fruits and prayers to the statues of the Bodhisattvas.

This year, MK had insisted (rather forcibly) to join in on this tradition. He had never attended such an even before, but he clearly saw his own connection to the island upon learning that he himself was a monkey demon.

As a consequence of his involvement, MK's family and friends decided to insert themselves amongst the festivities.

"They have certainly earned their places at the table," Ma agreed, now far older than she had been in her Marshal days, "And they've helped so much in repairing the island after that Brotherhood fiasco."

Wukong had agreed with a nervous chuckle.

Azure Lion's defeat had come with a heavy cost. When MK had unleashed his own hidden mystic monkey power against Azure Lion; the force of his blow had cleft the island in half - almost reminding Wukong of how a certain god he knew cleaved a mountain open to save his mother.

Thankfully only the main peak had been split, though insurmountable damage had been done to Water Curtain Cave. Wukong called in a few thousand favours from surrounding tudis just to move the rubble and clear the area around his hut. He didn't want his subjects nor his little troop to be in danger of a falling cave ceiling any time soon. He had enough things to be worried about.

For now he was to enjoy himself.

The bonfires had started just before the sun went down. MK and the rest of the "noodle troop" (as Mei had dubbed them all despite Red Son's objections) had arrived some point in the early evening. Pigsy and Tang looked positively green at the MK-operated flight from the mainland, and required some rest before they could get started with festivities. Sandy had of course offerred his services to the monkeys on the mainland to ferry them across to the island, free of charge. In turn the fishman found himself swarmed with elderly cooks and grandmothers making sure he was eating his fill of the banquet.

Wukong could only smile at his little troop. His family.

"Are you content Sun Wukong?"

Wukong nearly jumped at the warm voice of the Bodhisattva as they appeared at his side without fanfare. A concious choice for the goddess.

Looking forward at the dancing and laughter, Wukong sighed

"I am."

"Your mind is busy though."

Wukong nodded. Guanyin had always been so perceptive of his emotions.

"I'm thinking you know, about the ones who came before all of us."

"Not uncommon, given the holiday."

Wukong hummed in thought. The fires of the party were still strong enough to hide them both amongst their glow.

"My mo-... the one who made me." he hesistated despite knowing that the goddess likely knew his thoughts. "I just wished I had a way to have known her. I know that she... she sacrificed everything to make sure I made it here today. But I don't even have a gravesite to sweep for her."

The Bodhisattva gained a slyness to their smile, the sprig of willow in their fingers hiding their amusement.

"You know... Qingming isn't just a time for us to remember our ancestors. But also for us old souls to recall our past lives."

Wukong had been looking away when the goddess said those words. So he replied in jest "So what? Are you going to turn yourself into a monkey to get the feel of it?"

"No, but I did invite some very important persons to witness the festivities this year. With permissions from Kshitigarbha."

The Bodhisattva of the dead? Why would she need to -

"By Houtu he's lovely."

The new voice stopped Wukong's thoughts in their tracks. Turning to where Guanyin once stood, his Gold Vison revealed a new figure.

A painfully familiar figure. One he could almost indentify in the mirror.

The soft, sunset warmth of her smile broke through the haze of the other realm. Her orange-gold fur bright against the reds and greens of her clothing. Large jade bands decorated her arms and tail, her form made bigger by a large red cape the King could swear he recognised.

Wukong felt the words die in his throat.

"Mo...ma."

The figure nodded and broke into a twittering laugh at her child's reaction.

"Yes love."

"You... you are. Her." Wukong pointed to a statue, one recently uncovered in the clean up efforts and placed in an area where the subjects could see her safetly. "Shíhuā."

The Last Stone Matriarch of Flower Fruit Mountain.

"I am. Though my subjects just called me Matriarch, my dearest called me Stone Flower." The female monkey stepped forward with the grace of a Queenm placing an air-light hand on her son's face.

"Oh my. Your title serves you well. Beautiful Monkey King. You can thank me for that."

Wukong felt tears running down his cheeks as he smiled at her words. Oh how he wished he had known her as a child. Perhaps he would have grown up with her wit and charisma lightly teasing and guiding him through his journey of cubhood. A voice that would have kept him out of trouble.

One detail of her nearly-identical body stood out to Wukong above all else though.

She was a good half-foot taller than her son.

Wukong narrowed his eyes at the peal of her hair, making a childish pout, "Not sure where your height went though."

At his comment, the Matriarch laughed once more, now near tears with joy, "Yes! Yes! You are your father's son alright! I was wondering where his dao rubbed off on you!"

"Father?" the thought was as alien as the situation happening before him. Did she mean her mate?

Sensing his confusion, the Matriarch replied with a delightedly-exasperated sigh, "Yes, my Consort - and the one you should thank for the extra dao that paints your body. Please forgive his tardiness, he's distracted as always."

"My love! Have you've seen him yet? He looks just like you!" A louder, joyous voice broke through the crowds of dancing monkeys. The ghostly form of a short pudgy male bounded unseen by the living towards the three, "I just saw the little ones! Looks like his heir got cursed with my looks!"

The male monkey demon's fur was a earthy chestnut brown that hid him in the dim light. Big intelligent yellow eyes shone through his butterfly-shaped facial mark.

Most embarassingly he stood exactly level with the less-than-tall-Monkey King. And he seemed extremely proud of it!

Wukong was about to say another word when another voice came at the heels of the Consort.

"Monkey King! Have you met these guys yet? They're so cool and they know everything about you and the island!" MK ran forward, his eyes shining with Gold Vision. In his hands many a half-eaten pomergranate spilling with seeds. Little baby monkeys clung to his jacket and pants legs as he came closer.

Wukong's face finally broke into a wide smile as he laughed.

Looks like his cub had ancestors to tend to afterall!

--

Pls enjoy, wasn't sure how to insert Yuebei or Luzhen in yet. Just wanted to focus on Wukong and his mom interacting for the first time.

#stone matriarch au #stone egg talk #sun wukong #lmk mk #qi xiaotian #lmk guanyin #lego monkie kid #lmk

[ryry-rebel]

A Whole New World Mission

All Might x Reader

This was requested. I really hope you liked this! Thank you so much for the request!

My Masterlist -> Masterlist

Synopsis- The mission had been complete. The evil royal vizier, All For One had been captured, completely stripped from his powers, ever rotting in the Cave of Wonders. However, this has left newfound prince Toshinori Yagi and princess y/n to create new missions and adventures of their own. But this mission had to have been the greatest of them all.

Warnings- Smut. If you do not feel comfortable with reading sexual material, please click off this chapter now.

Pronouns- she/her the reader is female

Content- 18+ MDNI, Oral male receiving, bondage, gags, public humiliation, orgasm denial

Word Count- 3,193

Note- This is an AU, (alternate universe) which takes place in the movie Aladdin. I do not own the movie or its characters, and I don't own the MHA characters either. I do however, own the plot of this story. Also, in this story, you are Gran Torino's daughter.

In the city of Argabah, the city of mystery, of enchantment, there once lied a great evil. An evil so grave it turned the city upside down.

But, no one had to fear any longer as the city of Argabah had been saved from the wrath of the evil royal vizier, All For One. All For One had manipulated anyone who came across his path, using his snake staff to hypnotize his victims. But justice was served to him on a golden platter, leaving him to rot in the Cave of Wonders, stuck inside a genie lamp for all eternity.

A lone boy, a diamond in the rough, a street rat, with only his monkey Abu to show, had rescued both the Sultan and the princess.

The peace and order of Argabah had been restored.

In the end, the rightful Sultan, Sorahiko Torino, regained his rightful place on the throne.

This leaving Toshinori Yagi, the new prince of Argabah and the princess, y/n, to discover the world.

They adventured off, traveling to new cities, seeing all the sights of the magnificent new world. They would lay awake for countless nights as they gazed upon the stars that lit up the dark sky, sharing a few chaste, yet passionate kisses as the newfound duo enjoyed to bask in the breathtaking reality of it all.

Each new adventure gave them a new mission to accomplish.

However, none of the missions given could have compared to the first, but each one gave them new opportunities to explore, new paths to choose, each one leading in a different direction.

The mission of a lifetime had already been complete, all except one.

There was a new mission that y/n desired to accomplish, one that would leave Toshinori distraught and frenzied...

     The sun was ablaze, resting high in the sky, warming up the day as the commonfolk of the city wandered about, trading their precious goods and foods. The city of Argabah was bustling at all times of day, never a dull moment. Herds of sheep, horses, and other livestock wandered about, their owners anxiously awaiting the grand profit to come.

The city was alive, readying to celebrate the engagement of young y/n and the Sultan to be, prince Toshinori.

The city was not only bustling with excitement and chaos, but the castle was as well. Food of different varieties had to be prepared. Clothing tailored specifically to the royal members had to be sewn. Decorations had to be finalized and hung.

There was just so much more to do with such little time, and y/n needed a break from it all.

Traveling from city to city on a flying carpet can make one very tired. Being back home at the castle was just what she needed. She needed to rest her tired bones, possibly soak in a hot bubble path. Petting her tiger, Rajah, was one way miss Torino liked to de-stress.

But alas, being the sultana to be, she could never escape her royal obligations.

She knew during the peak of day, at noon, the handmaiden, Nemuri would come to her room to fetch her. The perfect top and harem pants had to be sewn by the seamstress Uwabami, and time was of the essence.

Y/n's father, and the new royal vizier would surely come to pay her a visit at some point as well.

Oh, it was all too easy. This glorious busy day, filled with tasks that needed her urgent attention, made it all too easy.

Her new mission would have to be accomplished today, as there is no better day. The interruptions from the young girl's father and the others would serve a great purpose...

Y/n leaned on the grand staircase that spiraled down to the first floor as she desperately waited for her lover's arrival. It would be noon soon, in exactly thirty minutes and time waits for no one.

Her plan must be put in motion before the clock strikes 12. But she didn't have to wait any longer.

There, at the bottom of the staircase, stood Toshinori, looking quite dapper in his purple waistcoat, harem pants, red fez cap, and his clean-shaven face. Not a hair of stubble in sight.

Y/n's heart skipped a beat as she descended the stairwell, as her lover's arms awaited her.

Toshinori was hit with an overwhelming feeling of joy and happiness as he watched his partner fly into his waiting arms. Abu that sat upon his shoulder, was also overjoyed for the young prince.

The wide smiles all-around said enough.

Y/n couldn't stay in his arms long, despite her heart's yearning. She had a plan which was resting on a thin timeline. She needed to strike when the iron was hot.

Breaking the embrace, she lightly grabbed Toshinori's hand and began to pull him up the gigantic, spiraling staircase. A look of excitement and uncertainty crossed Toshinori's god-like features.

He felt compelled to follow the princess, even without a proper warning of what was to come.

Halfway to princess Y/n's room, Toshinori decided to speak up, addressing his feelings of bewilderment.

"Young y/n, what have you planned today?"

Y/n did not answer as she continued the walk down the hall to her room. It was too soon, she could not spoil the fun.

Only when she had reached her room, then, and only then, did she voice her plans to the young man and her traveling companion Abu.

Y/n halted and spun on her heel to face Toshinori. Her angelic movements thrilled the young prince. Y/n entangled her fingers into Toshinori's blonde locks and pulled him down to her height, so she could whisper into his ear. Her voice was soft and enchanting as the ethereal words she spoke aroused Toshinori, a small bulge beginning to form in his pants.

"I have set up a pleasurable time for us..." Y/n paused, savoring the moment.

"To be more clear, I have arranged a bondage night." Y/n pulled back and released Toshinori's hair. His features were frozen, shock and excitement filled his entire being. Strong electrical pulses surged throughout his body, igniting his inner flame.

Mixed emotions circled around the hallway; the tension was so thick it could not be severed.

Y/n was feeling powerful and in desperate need of pleasure. Pleasure so powerful it could block out all that surrounds it. She wants to bask in the eternal feeling for as long as she could. She yearns for a distraction. A distraction that only her lover could provide.

However, pleasure was not the only thing on the young girl's agenda...

Toshinori was feeling rather needy. The tightening of his pants did not go unnoticed. But, with this feeling of need and desperation, came the feeling of uncertainty.

The princess was quite busy today, was she not?

How unsettling it would be for someone to catch him and young y/n in such an intimate situation. He had questions and quite a handful of them, but y/n was not willing to answer. Afterall, that was part of her mission...

Abu was repulsed by the entirety of this situation, and he did not wish to stick around to the end. However, not one person, neither y/n or Toshinori, noticed Abu's look of dismay as he leapt off Toshinori's shoulder and made his leave. Abu scurried down the hall, escaping from the two lovers.

Without a second thought, y/n ushered Toshinori into her bedroom. She had closed the door behind her, purposely forgetting to lock it.

Despite Toshinori's overwhelming height advantage over y/n, she was easily able to restrain him.

Y/n's slow, seductive movements made the prince unable to think on his own. His body and mind no longer in sync.

This is a dangerous game to play Toshinori thought. The possibility of being caught shook him to the bones. However, Y/n did not agree.

Princess Y/n found the idea of being caught in such a private situation quite rousing. The thought made her pussy tremble and contract. In fact, she had found it so thrilling that she had orchestrated the whole thing!

When the sun was at its highest point in the sky, at exactly noon, her father, followed by Endeavor, and Nemuri, would come knocking on her door.

Oh, how y/n could not wait to see how this wonderous scene would play out.

Toshinori would have to remain silent, even through the immense pleasure he was going to feel. If not, he would run the risk of being caught in the nude.

Oh, how incredibly intriguing was that!

"Young Torino, do you not have royal obligations that need you-" Toshinori's protests were cut off mid sentence. Y/n had captured his lips in an intense, needy kiss. Their lips molded together as their tongues danced. Toshinori's body weakened and relaxed. He was in a state of pure bliss. Kissing y/n like this had made his prior concerns seem so insignificant now. Y/n moaned into the kiss as she began to take off Toshinori's purple waistcoat. Toshinori pulled back as he gazed into y/n's ravenous eyes. His face was flushed from embarrassment and need. Through hooded eyes, y/n placed a finger gently to his lips, ushering him to be silent. Toshinori nodded slowly, complying with her every demand. Removing her finger, y/n mouthed the word "undress", as she walked away, heading to the sofa that sat in the left corner of the room by the terrace.

The terrace that was just barely conceded. Only a thin piece of fabric hung down, allowing any passersby to hear Toshinori's desperate cries.

Only, they would never hear his cries, y/n had made preparations.

Bending down, she picked up the plentiful amount of silk ropes, enough to keep her strong prince in place, and a piece of thick cloth that was going to serve as a gag.

With items in hand, y/n walked to the right side of the room and stood in front of the bed.

Her bed that was only concealed by light fabric that acted as a canopy.

If someone was to stare long enough, they could most definitely see what was behind the fabric.

This worked perfectly.

Dropping the items onto the soft, silk sheets, y/n beckoned for her lover to come; he understood and trekked over to the waiting princess.

A now nude Toshinori stood present, his eyes never meeting Y/n's. Y/n's eyes glossed over his muscular body, stopping near his nether regions. Her eyes were plastered to his groin, taking in the beauty in front of her. Y/n could never recuperate from the sight of his girthy cock. His dick was thick, any woman would be left satisfied and begging for more. He was of normal size, but the way Toshinori used his physical-fit body to his advantage made Y/n grovel.

But not tonight. She would not allow herself to succumb to Toshinori.

Sparing not a second longer, the young girl pushed Toshinori onto the bed.

Being much stronger, Toshinori could have forbidden this, but he had little to no desire to do so anymore. The thought of being caught like a deer in the headlights was not as arousing to him as it was for y/n, but it still intrigued him enough to let this affair run its course.

Toshinori toppled onto the sheets as his lover picked up the restraints and began to bind his limbs.

She started with his hands, restraining them to the bed posts. She double knotted all of the knots she made, ensuring Toshinori would not be able to escape his binds.

Lots of extra rope was needed to keep him in place due to his immense size and strength.

Then, y/n moved into his feet, wrapping the rope gently around his ankles before pulling it tight. Toshinori tensed at the feeling before relaxing again.

His curiosity was overwhelming now, his pants were so tight, the fabric straining. His cock ached to be touched.

He ached to feel Y/n's warm mouth around his throbbing shaft as she gave kitten licks to his swollen tip.

Would y/n give into his desires?

Y/n carefully wrapped the rope connected to Toshinori's ankles around the posts at the bottom of the bed. All of Toshinori's limbs were spread, giving the princess full asceses to his divine body. Y/n licked her lips, an insatiable hunger growing inside her, and grabbed the thick cloth that remained on the bed. The young girl made her way to the side of the bed, bringing the cloth up to Toshinori's mouth.

"Be still" was all the girl said before stuffing Toshinori's mouth full. The bed began to rock as the prince flailed his limbs around recklessly. Y/n pulled the gag hard, ordering her prince to be silent.

"We wouldn't want people to hear you now, would we?" Y/n asked in a shushed tone. A tone so enchanting it lulled Toshinori to comply with her demand.

Y/n finished with the gag, tying it tightly, as Toshinori's body relaxed again.

"Speak" Y/n adjured.

Toshinori began to move his mouth, the gag posing quite an obstacle. The gag was thick, but not thick enough where Toshinori was not able to meet his lips with a bit of strenuous effort.

No words came out when he was ordered to speak, only muffled sounds that Y/n decided to ignore.

"Good" she cooed.

The real fun was about to begin with fifteen minutes to spare. Just the right amount of time to get Toshinori riled up and begging for more.

Slowly, y/n began to mount the bound prince, carefully settling herself on top of his groin. Y/n could feel his cock pressing against her clothed pussy. She moved back and forth slightly as she listened to her lover's exquisite moans and grunts.

Then she leaned forward, as she began massaging Toshinori's broad chest. Then she began to trail kisses down his stomach. She started at his pecks, slowly making her way down.

Toshinori balled his fists, his knuckles beginning to lose their color from the lack of blood circulation.

"Ghapt agh ouh ghing?"

Y/n lifted her head slightly as her lust-filled eyes met Toshinori's.

"I am worshipping your body..." Y/n paused before scooting her body and whispering into Toshinori's ear. The sensation of her lips hovering above his ear made his body crawl.

"Before I ravage you... Before I make your body tremble as you cum."

Toshinori's body was lit ablaze by a burning passion. A passion so big every concern, every distraction was completely drowned out.

The surrounding world no longer existed.

Y/n was his world. All of his attention was on her.

On her body as she crawled off him.

On her full, plump lips that swallowed his cock with such ease.

On her cleavage as she walked away seductively.

On her luscious body and how well her tight-fitting shirt highlighted each curve.

On her plump, rounds breasts as she pulled her top up, exposing her perfect cleavage.

On her plump thighs as she straddled his legs.

On her captivating e/c eyes as she looked at him one last time before slowly taking his cock.

Y/n grabbed the base of his sizeable cock and began to stoke it. Her pace was slow, painfully slow. Toshinori was an impatient lad and had no issue voicing his thoughts. Rather, he tried to voice them.

"Fpleap Ount tphes."

"I am not teasing" Y/n proclaimed as she took Toshinori's cock into her mouth. Y/n kept a steady pace on the base of his shaft as she swallowed the rest. She hummed in satisfaction, the vibrations from her throat engulfed Toshinori in pure bliss.

"Mmmnpmhh."

Y/n's lips curled around Toshinori's cock. The moment was perfect for her, just as she planned.

Tik Tok...

The princess removed her mouth from Toshinori's cock, leaving him unfilled and completely at her mercy.

Tik Tok...

Toshinori began to mumble uncontrollably. The lack of warmth that Y/n's mouth provided was driving him mad.

Tik Tok...

"I can't understand your mumbling" Y/n said as she took her lovers cock one final time.

Tik Tok...

Her pace was no longer slow. She stroked the base of his cock with extreme urgency, and she bobbed her head up and down his shaft with no mercy. Toshinori was close to ecstasy as the moans that he emitted circled around the room, filling the deafening silence.

Tik Tok...

Toshinori felt a coiling tension in his abdomen. Blood rushed to his cheeks, his skin red and warm to the touch. Goosebumps littering his skin as he balled his fists tightly.

Tik Tok...

He was on the verge of a powerful orgasm as his vison became blurry, white stars blinding his sight.

Tik... Tok...

Toshinori's breath was ragged as his vision suddenly became clear again, the stars fading away into oblivion. The feeling of ecstasy was suddenly ripped from his grasp as his body no longer burned. The euphoric sensation was just beyond his fingers, just a hair too far to reach.

Toshinori's eyes landed on Y/n. She was no longer on top of him and her top was no longer pulled up. She was up on her feet as she began closing the fabric that hung from around her bed.

Y/n looked back at Toshinori's pleading eyes as she gently placed a finger to her lips, once again ushering him to be silent.

Toshinori began to speak loudly, but all that came out was inaudible muffled sounds.

Then came the faint voices. Toshinori was silenced immediately, the feeling of uncertainty came rushing back to him.

Just beyond the fabric that hung loosely around her bed, stood the princesses father, Sorahiko, the new royal vizier, Endeavor, and miss Torino's handmaiden, Nemuri.

All three of the palace members began to bombard Y/n with questions, questions regarding her upcoming engagement.

However, poor Toshinori had realized something was not quite right with the princess's behavior.

She wasn't ashamed nor bashful, not even a hint of blush shown on her plump cheeks.

She was unbothered, her tranquil gaze never meeting Toshinori's.

She kept a level head when speaking to her guests, almost as though she expected them.

The princess was always quite skillful, never truly breaking character, but in this situation, it would be quite a difficult task to remain placid.

Toshinori also observed strange behavior from Sorahiko. The Sultan of Argabah was quite perceptive, despite his age. So, it did not take young Y/n's father long to spot the distressed Toshinori lying behind the fabric.

Sorahiko could not make out details, but that did not make this situation any less embarrassing.

Mixed emotions ran through the Sultan's blood.

Rage.

Discomfort.

Most importantly, disgust.

The Sultan did not fancy seeing his daughter’s lover in the nude.

However, the princess's father was a humble man, and his decision not to allude the others to Toshinori's presence made the prince feel upmost respect.

So, as Toshinori sat as quiet as a mouse as to not draw any more attention to himself, Y/n could not help but smile. A small dishonest smile that had gone undetected by everyone in the room.

Her plan had worked, her new mission was complete.

Her mission to leave Toshinori sexually frustrated and embarrassed...

#mha fanfiction #all might #all might x reader #all might x y/n #all might x you #mha toshinori #toshinori yagi #toshinori smut #all might smut #aladdin au #mha au

[aspensfairylight]

Haunted House

Tw : nsfw content

Characters : Ghost Donna x Reader

Rundown : The Beneviento manor was rumoured to be haunted, and those that entered, didn't always come back out.

Request status : open

A/N : I saw a gif of what looks like Donna dancing in the Re8 trailer in one of the megamyte memory things, so I thought hey, what if Donnas house became like a haunted house thing. It's also inspired by Classyfruits nsfw art on twitter, the one of the ghost and the haunted manor, I love that drawing and it may have stirred something in me 🧍‍♀️. This story is pretty far from cannon but it's ok, it's more as if most of the village survived and overcame everything

The manor in the woods, nestled by the waterfall, it was a home all the children in the village were warned to stay away from, as the occupiants of the home weren't completely gone. The history of the village was complex, gorey and cruel. There were many more areas parents warned their children about, the castle was another. A place parents swore held vampires, a place where maidens never came out from all those years ago. You were all warned of these places, said to be the homes of the Lords that ruled all those years ago. Yet now, they laid abandoned, nothing more than a bad memory.

You knew going over the raggedy bridge was a bad idea, you knew wandering through the cold woods was a bad idea. Yet still you wandered.

The air nipped against your skin, yet in the misty valley, it felt cooling in a way it never felt in the village. It helped to relax the nerves building up within you, you didn't know the dangers you were in for.

Soon, you stumbled onto a large grave, overgrown flowers and grass adding age to it, yet the dolls littering the grave seemed to only add to the creepyness. You didn't give it much thought, continuing to the large door.

"Give up your memories."

What did that mean? Your memories? To who? Quickly, you thought, reaching for the locket gracing your neck. This locket held photos of loved ones, was this the offering demanded? Carefully, you slipped it from your neck, slipping it through slip in the door. You pushed against the door, letting it slowly fall open, you slipped inside and walked through the cave.

This was a bad idea.

At the end of the cave was an elevator, you stepped in, up you went.

Who'd you give your memories to?

The elevator came to a stop, the old coverings pulling away, and you stepped outside, the harsh crash of waterfslls ringing out, an old manor sat. It was long forgotton, slowly falling apart. You knew the stories of the Lord that used to live here, that she caused hallucinations with her flowers, that she had a devilis doll named Angie that often spoke for her. The villagers often said that the Lord still lingered, even in death. Was the Lady of the manor still lingering?

You admired the way the manor looked, from the outside, it seemed that it had been beautiful in it's glory days. But now, it sat crumbling. Carefully, you made your way to the home, you climbed the stairs that squeked as you did so. You glanced around the front, glanced at the waterfall. Your hand rested on the door and pushed it open with a faint creak. The home that was revealed was full of dust, cobwebs and everything was falling apart. Yet it was stuck in time. The sewing supplies were scattered the same as they were all those years ago when the doll maker met her early fate. You stepped in further, glancing around the old home, it would have been beautiful in it's early days. It did make you wonder what these walls held, what memories were made here. Was the doll maker kind? Evil? Was she misunderstood or the monster made out to be? The home looked like a normal, cozy home- just old and abandoned.

Then you spotted it.

The portrait of the doll maker and her beloved doll.

Although damaged with the age of time, the woman was beautiful. Dark eyes that drew you in, sharp brows and soft lips. You didn't want to take your gaze off of those perfectly crafted eyes. The woman was beautiful, and she looked so normal. So young.

There was a hand on your shoulder, a soft breath on the back of your neck. You jumped and twisted to look back behind you, yet there was no there. You took in a deep breath to try and calm your nerves. It was most likely a bug, a breezy and your worry, surely nothing had been there behind you. Your gaze pulled away from the portrait and you continued your journey around the home. You saw tea cups almost always in a pair of two, who else lived here? Did the doll maker really let her doll have a cup of tea? You hummed in amusement at the idea, it was cute to think of that beautiful woman in the painting sitting around the home, musing with her dolls over tea. And yet she was said to be a villian.

You found yourself in a study, stacks of books neatly laying around, a projector, two chairs around a coffee table. A tea cup sat on the desk, and one sat at the coffee table. You mused again over the idea of the doll maker sharing tea with her doll.

stay.

You snapped around as a hand slipped into yours, the words floating around in the deep whisper of a woman.

Please, stay.

Where was that sound coming from?

Don't leave me. Please.

The voice sounded desperate, but you didn't know who it belonged to, and that scared you. What if you weren't alone?

Your fingers trailed along the dusty book spines, and carefully you slipped one from the shelf. Your hand swiped away the dust, revealing the book title, it was a book on plants. Did the doll maker like plants? Was it an interest of hers? You did the same thing for a few more books, most of them were plants, one on psychology and the human mind. You were slowly learning about the doll maker.

You set the books back where they belonged, turning back around to leave the study. Yet sitting on the chair at the desk, sat a figure. She wore black garbs, a veil covering half of her face, blood running down her face. It was the woman from the painting. The doll maker. You stumbled back with a gasp, hitting the bookshelf.

"Please... I don't want to be alone anymore..." The ghostly woman begged out to you.

How the fuck was a dead woman sitting across from you?

"Please.. Stay.." The woman pleaded out, her frame leaning over her desk a bit, eager to get closer to you. As scared as you were, you couldn't help but feel awful for her.

The doll maker stayed silent, and you stayed still, neither knowing what to do. It was her that made the first move, moving out from her chair, and moving towards you in a float. Her eligant frame floating over to you, a cold whispy hand carefully resting against your cheek. "Please... Stay, be my friend..." Softly, you nodded, a part of you was afraid of what she would do if you said no, a part of you felt sorry for her. Relief washed over her features at the nod, and like that, she vanished.

𖤐ᭃ

You lost track of time, how long had you been wandering through the manor now? You flopped onto a couch in one of the doll filled rooms, dust dancing upwards at the sudden contact. You had learned so much about what the doll maker may have been like when she had been alive, the mass amount of dead plants and books on plants made you think she took a liking to plants. The dolls and doll making supplies, the mass amount of books, sewing supplies and a simple piano-looking thing. She seemed like such a simple and normal woman.

You relaxed into the cushion, you just couldn't get that damn woman out of your head! She was so beautiful, and the hands you saw in her portrait seemed so... slender and perfect. This wasn't the time to be feeling this way, and although you were still a bit spooked about meeting a ghost, you just felt confused. Very confused and a little bit horney. Your thighs gently rubbed together, but it only made the sensation worsen. Your mind worried that the ghost might see you, but your mind tried to shake off what you saw as your mind playing tricks. But you saw her, you smelled the flowery scent she had, you felt her. The ghost you saw had to be real.

"fuck.." You mumbled to yourself, you felt so weird feeling this way, what if you weren't alone? A soft hand rested on your knee, a soft breath on your neck.

"Go on," the doll maker whispered, and you turned to look at the voice. The doll makers soft lips turned into a sly smile, her sharp brow made her look so devilish. "Stay with me, please." Her hand gently rubbed up your thigh, her hands felt so amazing on your thigh, where else might they feel good on? "Do you like this, doll?" The doll maker hummed out to you, her deep voice made you feel oddly good.

"Yes," it was true, you loved how her fingers felt dancing along your thigh. "Why are you doing this?" Your confused voice muttered out, you liked whatever was happening, but why?

"It's lonely here... I want you..." The doll maker softly said, a sloppy kiss was planted to your neck. "Please, let me make you feel good... If you stay, you'll feel good," there was a desperation in her voice, and there was a desperation building up inside you. God this was fucked. But the whispy feeling was something you wanted more of.

"Please, touch me! I'll stay," you were desperate, you needed her touch, you craved more. You pushed your hips towards her hands as sloppy kisses were scattered along your skin, a soft hand pushed through your skirt.

"You're mine, doll." Her tone was different now, it was possesive and deep. It made you want more. Her teeth dug into your neck, and you squirmed under the pain. She was marking you. You were now hers. Her fingers dug their way through the thighs you opened further, fingers dancing against your inner thigh. A finger gently danced over your clit, the sensation sending a jolt through you. Her touch was so soft, so whispy, so talented. Gods it felt so good!

"Hmph, more, please!" Her teasing was becoming cruel, her teasing was only drawing you in more. You moved your hips again. Her smirk seemed to widen, her gaze enjoying the sight infront of her. You looked so pretty, so desperate.

A finger gently entered into you, but it wasn't enough, you needed more. "My doll, you're so needy," she teased out to you, slowly adding another. Her fingers hooked as they slowly quickened their pace. The sensation felt so weird, so different from the feeling you felt with your own fingers. You let out a soft moan, your music ringing through the otherwise dead manor. "Good doll, you sound so pretty," she praised out to you, her thumb gently rubbing along your clit. God it felt so good!

The doll maker didn't stop, your pretty sounds filled the manor more. Her fingers brought you to your climax, god it felt so good. "Such a good doll! You did so good for me," the doll maker hummed to you, planting a soft kiss on your sweaty forehead. "You're mine."

You didn't care if you were hers.

You felt so, so good.

And your foggy mind couldn't think about much else.

#re8 village #nsfwaspen #donna beneviento x female reader #donna beneviento x reader #donna beneviento #re8 donna

[saltnpepperbunny]

Till World’s End- 9: Two Days Remain

PREVIOUS: Three Days Remain > NEXT: One Day Remains >

COVER

Till World’s End is rated Mature. Viewer discretion advised. Content Warnings listed on the Cover.

* * *

The wailing of wind through the open maw of stone sounded like a baby’s cry. Sleep never came to Shadow, for within minutes of closing his eyes, that infantile shrieking would jar him awake. Shadow was not a “kids’ pokemon.” If a baby was present, he had to leave the room. Something about laying eyes on a creature so miniscule, so shamelessly helpless, turned his stomach and brought bile to his throat. He didn’t understand his reasons behind it. All he understood was that a baby’s cry brought the itch of violence to his claws. 

Shadow knew it was all in his head. The whining was just the wind. But when he stood outside the Cave and heard that sound, fear leashed him. Shaking, he turned tail and made sick in the bushes. The Cave was definitely empty; all he could smell within was bone cold nothing. But the what if held Shadow prisoner in the outside world. The sun rose, set, rose again, and still, the wind kept howling, and he did not venture in. What if…? What if…

Dawn painted the sky rose red. Shadow lifted his face to greet the morning. He had to do this. Before everything ended, he had to make his return, complete the circle. It was the only way to move on. But that damn wailing! What was he supposed to do to break the spell?

Shadow…

The zorua’s ears pricked. He whipped his head in the direction of the Cave entrance. His breath hitched. That voice… It couldn’t be. No.

Shadow… Shadow…!

He jumped to his feet. Body rigid, ears erect. It was just the wind, wasn’t it? It was just the wind? But the murmur of his name emanating from the mouth of the Cave was unmistakable. Shadow sometimes heard whispers on the wind. The rustling of leaves in the trees pieced together into words. He usually heard names, his own or Selkie’s. Sometimes, he heard taunts. But not in that voice. Never in that voice.

Shadow darted to the Cave’s mouth and looked deep into the darkness. She couldn’t be here, right? There was no way.

Shadow…

“M-m-m-mom…?”

Shadow… Come home…

His tail tucked between his legs. Shadow gulped. Who he would find within, he had no idea. But at the end of the day, Mom         knew best. She would see through his inaction, she knew all he’d done was put off the inevitable. After all, his two nights of waiting had been pointless, hadn’t it?

Selkie never came to find him.

So, fine! He knew it was just the wind. There was no baby in the Cave! Whether Mom was in there or not, he didn’t give a damn. With the whisper of her voice curling in his ears, with the icy tremble of fear on his breath, with shaking paws, Shadow finally returned to the Cave.

His paw pads tread against frigid stone. The earth was flat and smooth beneath him. Shadow descended further and further into the dark. The tunnel pressed tight around him, and his whiskers brushed against the rock. Shadow worked hard to control his breathing. His lungs burned from effortful sucking of the breath. But though his paws resisted the forward momentum, though everything in him wished to collapse and curl up into a heap, Shadow pressed forward. The tunnel widened. The space opened. And Shadow stepped out into the wider space of the underground Cave.

Shadow’s lungs ached as he gazed out upon the skeletons littering the stone. He crept out amongst the stalks of bone blooming from the earth, looked into the sockets of each skull, and glassy feline eyes stared back. The cavern was a garden of bones. As Shadow stalked across the cemetery of unmarked graves, Lyn’s pleas for mercy echoed in his mind. A breeze from nowhere brushed past him, carrying on it the screams of the pokemon who died here. Somewhere, a baby cried. Wherever that wretched creature was, Shadow wished it would shut up.

He came to the place in the wall where the tunnel narrowed again, went deeper. Shadow swallowed his spit. He knew this way. What lay at the end. As Shadow descended further into the narrowing shaft, he heard the screams and wails of a child dragged into the depths. The tear stains caressed his cheekbones. He felt the talons peel through his fur and pinch into his skin as laughing monsters dragged his body against stone. Deeper, deeper. Crying for Mom. Where was Mom?

Shadow took a deep breath. If he lost himself in his mind now, he would never reach the bed. He pulled himself out of the labyrinth. The nightmare had been years ago. No living being walked the depths but him. He pressed on and went deeper.

The iron door of the cell was unlocked, just as they left it those years ago. The open doorway, pitch black. Shadow stopped and stared into the darkness, tried to swallow the building, bubbling panic in his chest. He was scared. So scared. He had to do this, but he could already feel it: The blinding pain of talons ripping through his skin, the horror of those cold blades digging through his flesh. His own screaming and crying bounced across the walls, and from the blackness echoed laughter. His body shuddered in sickness. The laughter was the worst part, it was always the worst part. How could someone gouge him, maim him, and just laugh? How? How?!

Shadow gasped, yanking himself once again from his own head. He realized he’d started to cry. Furiously wiping at tears, though his heart darkened at the thought of her, he longed for Selkie’s resolute strength. She left him to brave this place alone. Brought him back here in the first place. That fucking bitch.

Shadow shuddered under the swirling storm of his emotions. Angry, mournful, terrified, he choked back a sob and leaped forward into the black hole.

The cell was tiny. The ceiling low. Cramped. Shadow had no idea how long he’d spent prisoner here, but he remembered vividly the torturous claustrophobia, hardly enough room to pace let alone truly stretch. The constant, aching tension in his muscles measured up to the sharp, jarring pain of the beatings. Shadow stood still at the cell’s center. He let his tears fall. He listened silent to screams of blinding pain. Raucous laughter. His own voice, begging for mercy. Soft sobbing as he lay alone on the icy floor, clutching at his throbbing groin. The orchestra of the nightmare.

Shadow could so clearly see himself, small, unkempt, curled in the corner of the cell, crying alone. His heart, gouged open and oozing with black hatred for Mom. How could she do this? How could she abandon him to this?! Chest throbbing from the storming pain, Shadow fell to the floor of the cell and let loose a wail of agony. He covered his face in his paws and choked up sobs. The hatred for her consumed him, the agony of the betrayal, the understanding that she really had hated him this much. She threw him away like nothing, and the pain of it threatened to devour Shadow alive.

He took deep breaths, just as Selkie had shown him.

When the worst of the storm began to pass, still forcing himself to breath, Shadow lifted his head. Across the cell, blue eyes met the empty sockets of the Rogue’s bleached skull. His bones, like the rest of his minions, flowered from the spot where Selkie killed him. He would never forget it.

No, Shadow would never forget. The moment of his rescue was as distinct in his mind as that of his imprisonment and abuse. When the cell door swung open to reveal not the Rogue, but instead a popplio about his age, Shadow knew instantly that she was not amongst his captors. She stared at him like an alien, as if Shadow was the last pokemon she expected to find at the bottom of the earth. As if she was not the one out of place in this hell.

And then, the approaching footsteps of the Rogue. Thud, thud, thud, thud. Shadow had come to believe only pain and hatred could exist here. But somehow, he found again the white flower of kindness, bruised and buried deep, deep within his soul. “He’s coming… Quick, hide!”

Into the cell she came. After her came the Rogue, and the pain. Shadow embraced normality, the reality of his eternal prison, squeezed the scream in his throat and refused to cry out. Popplio, forgotten. This was his life. This was the world Mom abandoned him to. She sold him away for their money, how could she? He was never leaving this Cave, he would die here! He would never see the end of his misery!

Then Selkie sliced open the fabric of the world, and in came beams of light. Jumped from her hiding spot, and a burst of water separated the Rogue from Shadow. She rushed him, Shadow jumped back, and by the time he spun around to understand what the hell was going on, the deed was done. The Rogue was dead, murdered by Selkie.

Yet at this point, she was just Popplio, just a popplio with jewelry of teeth. Shadow couldn’t understand. The Rogue was dead? The Rogue was dead? What the hell was happening?!

“You… Y-y-you…”

“Saved your ass, that’s what! Now, unless you wanna sit around for them to lock you up again, get off your fucking tail! Let’s go!”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Fight.”

And she did. Popplio stormed the Cave, and every pokemon she found lay dead at her claws in seconds. Most never got the chance to scream. Shadow watched as one by one, the monsters who’d held him captive dropped, and dropped, and dropped. Thunk, thunk, thunk of bodies against the sticky stone floor. The world ripped apart, inverted.

When she was done, when the Rogue and all his minions lay dead at their feet, Shadow did not look at the bodies. His eyes lay only on her. The being with the power to tear the world asunder, to rip the fabric of the universe to shreds. She was a pokemon, just a popplio, but Shadow knew then this being was something different. If this world had abandoned him, then she could not be of this world. Something different. Something special. Something that, against all convention, had decided to save him.

Why? he asked with eyes alone.

In the still, murky pools of her eyes was no answer. All she did was hand him a fang.

It was overwhelming. Sheerly overwhelming. Looking out amongst the dead and the one who’d slain them, Shadow cried. He wept and wept, coughing up soft sobs, engulfed by the understanding that he was free. He’d been saved! He’d been saved… Good Arceus, how could he ever repay a debt so deep?

For now, his words would have to do. His actions would follow. He promised himself and, silently, her, the moment he took the fang from her delicate hold.

“T-t… T… Thank you.”

“… You’re welcome.”

They made introductions then. She introduced herself with a melodious name: Selkie. Shadow wanted to sing it to high heaven! She was a recruit with the Spectrum Island Rescue Guild, training in outlaw capture. A mission to apprehend the Rogue had brought her to the Cave. Wow, a solo recruit after Talonflame the Rogue? She must have been a big shot! As they caught up, the field of bodies surrounding them faded out of Shadow’s consciousness. All he could take in was her.

Together, they left the Cave.

Shadow would never forget Selkie’s glinting silhouette framed against the mouth of the tunnel as she guided him to freedom. The full moon illuminated the night sky, cloaking all in a misty blue, shedding pooling wisps of light across the jungle trees and earth. Seeing the outside world once again, feeling the breeze in his fur and the soft dirt beneath his pads, Shadow cried once again. Selkie rolled her eyes and snapped at him to hurry along, and he dutifully followed, but Shadow could not stop his weeping. Oh, how beautiful the world was! How beautiful, this chance Selkie gave him!

Together, they crossed the sea. What a terrifying journey! Shadow buried his face under Selkie’s collar and clutched on tight as she surfed the waves. She slipped through the water with swiftness and grace, slid across the foaming crests, and Shadow’s fur ran damp with saltwater. He was scared, but not like the Cave. His fear ran charged with the thrill of the journey, entering the unknown of second life.

Alone together, surrounded by open sky, Selkie and Shadow forged ahead into the dawn. Whatever came next, ensuing that blissful moment in time, Shadow believed right then that he could face it.

But Shadow would soon come to find that the challenges he would face at Spectrum Island Rescue Guild were near insurmountable. He would come to find what weak flesh he was made of.

That blissful moment in time between Selkie and Shadow, from their leaving the Cave to their arrival at the Guild, that liminal space, the gap between worlds where Shadow looked into a crack in the sky and saw potential, proved itself ephemeral. When Shadow saw a crowd of pokemon emerge from the Guild and fix him in their questioning gaze, his blood turned to ice. He cowered behind Selkie, putting her body between him and the onlooking strangers who just kept staring, stop fucking staring! When an oricorio stepped out from the crowd and approached Shadow, he snarled and shook, don’t come near him, don’t fucking come near him! Selkie growled at the oricorio to back off, but a makuhita barked at her to shut up, psycho, and Selkie slung insults back. Within seconds, the crowd was buzzing and barking, and the oricorio was still creeping closer, and Shadow couldn’t focus, there were too many pokemon, he couldn’t breathe! He spun around to bolt, but someone grabbed his tail and Shadow screeched. Kicked out with his back feet and connected with something solid. Someone grunted behind him, and Shadow’s lungs heaved but found no air. The world was getting louder, and darker, and darker…

Shadow remembered the tumult of his waking in the Guild’s infirmary. Waking up alone, panicking to find himself in a cave, panicking more when Oricorio, the Guild’s head nurse, came back in, and panicking even more when she trotted across the room in his direction. Within minutes of waking, he filled the infirmary with screams. Tried to bolt. Remembered being held down, unable to think, crying out. The commotion only remedied when Selkie’s bark cut through the nightmare fog. Growled at them all to “shut the fuck up, some pokemon are trying to sleep.” Despite the snarl on her tongue, the storm stilled in Shadow as he paused and soaked in the sight of her. She’d reappeared! His savior was back! She could protect him from these pokemon, right?

So, Shadow darted out from the crowd of nurses and heeled at Selkie’s side. Wagged his tail. “Hello again!” He ignored the stab of pain in his chest when Selkie looked him up and down like he’d drooled on her. She took a step back from him but then whipped around to the nurses and barked, “For Arceus’s sake, don’t just crowd the kid, you fucking morons! Did no one tell you where he came from?! Show a little fucking respect for once!”

That’s when Oricorio darted over and started to squabble with Selkie, but as they barked back and forth at each other, the nature of their words faded from Shadow’s consciousness. His eyes drank in Selkie alone. He watched her eyes pulse with irritation for the nurse, baring her sharp teeth, and Shadow saw again the glint of her fangs as she ripped out the throats of his captors. Something turned hot inside him.

He looked deep into the still pools of her eyes and within saw nothing through the murk. It daunted Shadow, but not like the crowding Guild pokemon frightened him. Not like the Rogue petrified him. The emotion he’d felt in his journey across the sea returned, and inside Shadow stirred the instinct not to run from what scared him… but to near it.

When Selkie left the infirmary, finally fed up with Oricorio’s bleating, Shadow trotted after her. Selkie didn’t notice at first, but as she shuffled through the hall and pricked her ears at the pawsteps behind her, her shoulders dropped with a huff. “I can hear you, y’know.”

“I, um… I wanted to go with you!”

Selkie turned to glare at him, but there was something halfhearted about it. She was clearly annoyed, but her eyes were still. The storm of rage that flared from her in the Cave was absent. Thankfully, not aimed at him.

“Why?” she muttered.

“Because I, ah… I wanted to! Is that okay?” Shadow’s tail wagged. His heart oozed with something warm and sticky and soft, perhaps blood? His cheekbones flared with heat, but he didn’t understand why. How could he explain to this pokemon that his attraction to her was beyond all language that could possibly explain it? Shadow wanted to be near her, just because!

Selkie scrutinized him for a long time. Shadow held his breath, awaiting the moment she might rebuff him and break his heart. Selkie’s gaze flicked steadily to and fro, up and down as she took Shadow in, he could see the gears spinning behind her eyes. She looked… annoyed? Or possibly… no… confused? Before Shadow could figure it out, the oncoming stomp, stomp, stomp of heavy footsteps startled them both out of the spell. An exploud and a glaceon approached them from further down the corridor.

“Hey, Selkie. That the kid you rescued from the Rogue?” Exploud’s voice rolled like soft thunder.

“It is.” Selkie squared her shoulders. Her face settled into an unamused scowl. Eyes still.

As Exploud and Glaceon approached further, Shadow found his paws carrying him behind Selkie. He peered out at the newcomers from behind her, felt ill from shame as they scrutinized his malnourished, scarred figure. Exploud scoffed. “Damn, he’s been through a number. You do that, Psycho?”

Shadow blinked in shock. What? What did he just say? There’s no way he heard right. But no, he watched Selkie’s eye bulge and twitch as she took a breath and growled back, “Obviously, his disfigurement is the fault of Talonflame. Why would I harm a victim for no reason?”

“You tell me,” Exploud chuckled, flicking one of the teeth on her leather chains. Selkie snapped at him with her teeth, and he wrenched back and guffawed. “Ha! You never change.”

Glaceon smirked. “I know she rescued you, Zorua, but keep a wide berth from Selkie if you know what’s good for you. She’ll hurt you just as bad as the Rogue did.”

Her words struck Shadow. Within him erupted a volcano of anger, but before he could even dare to retort, Exploud and Glaceon strolled off down the corridor and rounded a bend. The growl trailed from Shadow’s throat, cut off when Selkie hissed, “Shut it! If they hear you growling, they’ll come back and keep making nuisances of themselves.”

“Let them come back! T-t-they’ll get a piece of my mind!” Shadow yapped.

“What do you even care? You’re not the one they insulted!” Selkie growled.

“I know!” Shadow hollered. “But I’m furious! I hate what they said to you, what they said to me! How dare they?!” He huffed and heaved. Anger cracked bright, white, and electric in his mind. “You saved me from the Cave a-and the Rogue. You brought me back with you! Y-y-you saved my life! How could I stand to hear someone insult you for it?”

Selkie’s eyes widened. She blinked. Then scratched the back of her head. “Oh…” A pause. “Okay.” And her eyes softened.

Shadow blinked back at her, not sure what to make of her reaction. She didn’t smile, she didn’t thank him. Just, okay. And her eyes softened. At least she wasn’t scrutinizing him in cold confusion anymore? His heart oozed with warmth… But still, maybe he said the wrong thing. “Um, I’m sorry if I overreacted.”

“It’s fine.” Selkie turned down the corridor. “Um, if you’re not interested in staying in the infirmary, you can follow me if you really want. Just… keep five feet back. If you get too close to me, you’re done.”

She started off down the corridor then, and Shadow’s brows shot up in surprise. Oh! Okay! He could keep five feet back! He trotted after her, a respectful distance behind, shoving aside the agonizing urge to push further, closer into her bubble, snuggle against her. No way was he gonna mess this up!

And so, in between healing at the infirmary and trying to answer Guild’s pressing questions about the Rogue, Shadow followed Selkie around the Guild. He kept five feet behind just as she’d asked, except for when she turned her head or lost herself in a book, at which point he would sneak closer. Four feet, maybe three. Shadow would follow Selkie to the mess hall, to the library where she read quietly for long hours, to the morning briefing, to the beach to decompress and splash in the crisp surf. Shadow could tell his presence agitated Selkie. She’d hunch her shoulders when he hovered behind her, would sometimes shudder like a bug-type was crawling up her back. Sometimes, she’d bark at Shadow to back up further or get lost, and he would retreat to the infirmary in quiet tears, unsure why it hurt so bad but understanding more each day that his attraction to Selkie was swelling like a tumor in his heart. At night, he dreamt of the Cave and of her.

Selkie must have hated him. Shadow could understand why. He cringed at the way his magnet heart pulled him to her. He knew she hated his looming presence, the attention flustered and unnerved her. Shadow knew it the day she caught him hovering over her sleeping form and shoved him back with her flipper. “For Arceus’s sake, you cling to me like my own shadow!” He ran back to the infirmary sniffling, cried through the night. Nurse Oricorio stroked his back as Shadow’s heart tore itself asunder, victim to the storm, terrified that Selkie was fed up with him, done. The next time he saw her, Selkie said to him, face neutral, “Hello again, Shadow.” His heart burst. His tail wagged. He turned the pet name over in his brain. Shadow.

From their first meeting in the Cave, Shadow never introduced himself with his childhood name. This was for two reasons. The first: Even thinking the name brought nausea deep to Shadow’s gut, let alone uttering it aloud. His mind whispered it in Mom’s haunting voice. It bound him at the ankles, shackling his soul to the one who abandoned him. Second: Shadow felt reluctant to introduce himself as a pokemon who was truly dead and rotting.

He kept it secret even from Selkie, especially from Selkie, the understanding that he was somehow both living and dead. Shadow knew that he’d entered the Cave, and some number of weeks later, Selkie delivered him out. But he vividly remembered dying, crumbling into earth, the Cave had become his tomb alongside his captors. Mom’s child followed the Rogue into the crypt, and that boy had bled and fractured and mutated, withered. The thing that escaped the dark was unrecognizable from that which it had been birthed. A shadow of the real pokemon he’d once been. Shadow spent more nights than not in the infirmary pooling over his fragmented memories trying to figure out if he’d died, if he hadn’t, when it happened, how. They returned no understanding, just nightmares.

Shadow didn’t know who or what he was anymore. All he knew was when he searched within for himself, he found nothing but empty space and blank walls upon which long shadows stretched. A smoking wisp of nothing, an empty field after the battle. Hadn’t there been something there before? Something he could feel within and grasp onto that reminded him he was a person? Or had he really always been so empty?

He breathed in Selkie’s pet name and let it fill him up. When she continued to call him Shadow, he never once complained. Within time, amongst the Guild, it took root. Selkie started to let him follow her four feet behind.

Shadow came to understand some things about Selkie as he observed her from behind. For one, she handed out fibs like candy. White lying seemed to be one of Selkie’s most impulsive habits. Shadow couldn’t tell if she prepared them beforehand, so once when they were alone, he asked her about it. Selkie shrugged and responded that they “kinda just came to her in the moment.” Most often, they were harmless falsehoods, functioning to smooth over the interactions that came to her with much difficulty. But Shadow often watched her lie for the purpose of soliciting coin from other pokemon, sometimes in a pinch after realizing she’d forgotten her own money at home, sometimes to soothe a foul mood. Then she’d buy herself a treat at the canteen. Her favorites were the blue poffins.

Sometimes she lied about other pokemon. Shadow once watched from afar as Selkie huddled in a corner with two younger Guild apprentices, whispering of how Exploud coerced his partner Glaceon to please him after light’s out. Shadow could hardly keep his jaw from dropping as he watched Selkie assemble her face into an uncanny approximation of sympathy. The way she made her voice tremble with concern as she spoke of the horrors Exploud enacted against Glaceon made Shadow’s stomach turn. But wow… So, she didn’t take their insults lying down, huh? She took back her power in the shadowed corners of the Guild halls, and though the eeriness of her masking gave Shadow chills, he recognized the virtue in it. Selkie did not just roll over and take it. She was stronger than that.

The pokemon she lied about sometimes caught wind of the rumors, but rarely did they trace the root of the grapevine back to Selkie. Exploud was an unfortunate exception.

Shadow was watching Selkie practice aqua jet in the training grounds when Exploud stormed in, beelined for Selkie, and punched her hard in the back. Her pained screech jolted Shadow like a livewire. She whipped around and blasted Exploud with water gun, igniting battle. Exploud was a brick wall of an opponent, but despite the assault of his hypersonic roars and walloping punches, Selkie came back at him just as hard. She fought with terrifying ferocity, threw herself into attacks just to deliver her own, she didn’t even seem to feel pain! The horror of watching Exploud bruise and bloody her, combined with Selkie’s own inability to stop throwing herself at him over and over, dragged the cry out of Shadow’s mouth: “Stop it, stop it! STOP HURTING HER!”

When his cry fell on deaf ears and Exploud reeled back to swing again, though the sight of spattering blood and purplish bruises terrified Shadow beyond end, his paws carried him forth. Without thought, he decided. Exploud screamed as Shadow bit down on his forearm. His teeth, charged with pulsing dark energy. Exploud hollered and shook Shadow off, and the zorua scrambled back out of the way of his swinging arms. He met eyes with Selkie, and the still pools within rippled. She stared at him like he’d burst into light.

Later, as Nurse Oricorio treated their wounds in the infirmary (finally having shut up about how Selkie should “know better than to be spreading fibs about her fellow Guild mon”), fixing her gaze on the ground, Selkie muttered to Shadow, “Why did you do that?”

Shadow hesitated to answer. Why did he do that? Violence still petrified him; he was still shaking from the anxiety of the altercation. But within he found not a smidge of regret. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just couldn’t stand to see someone harm you.”

Selkie’s eyes narrowed. “Was he not within reason? You know what he’s pissed about. You know I did it.”

Shadow shrugged. “He started it.” Her eyes softened.

From there, something changed. It was a slow shift in the relationship between them, not one he understood was happening in the moment but psychically sensed. It was the shift from walking four feet behind Selkie to padding at her side. The shift from watching Selkie read books to reading them to her aloud at her request. From watching her train to heeding the call as she beckoned him to practice his dark-type moves with her. When they sparred on the training grounds, dark magic against water, Shadow came to life. The rhythmic movements of their violent dance shook loose scar tissue in his heart. In those moments, he felt like a real pokemon again, and Selkie had given it to him. A single petal in the flower of her heart had opened to him, and with it, in little ways their closeness grew. Not just Selkie and her shadow. Selkie and Shadow.

He felt it in those summer nights when he’d lie awake with throbbing heartache as he longed to lie beside her. All their time apart sent him buzzing, grinding his teeth in anxiety, pacing the infirmary, tending to separation pangs. Shadow had never known dependence, had only ever seen it in Mom, but he recognized then his addiction to Selkie. Every moment together swelled his heart with euphoria. Every moment apart left him despondent, anxious, and painfully lonesome. The company of the other Guild pokemon ceased to hold meaning. When Selkie went out on missions, Shadow was thunderstruck with wild terror that she may not come back.

He knew even then that his explosive fear agitated her. She dreaded the obligatory visit to the infirmary after every mission to calm Shadow down. His raging emotional storm unnerved her, he could see it in her rippling still water eyes. But her leavings horrified him, and he had no idea how to make it stop. The mental torture eventually became too much, and one night—the day after Selkie snapped and called him a “perpetual crybaby­”—Shadow snuck out from the Guild and stole away. Voices whispered on the wind, calling him with his old name and new, and Shadow knew it was the right choice. His intention: Find a tall bridge to jump off.

Shadow’s trailing paws took him higher up the island. Above a gorge that split through the land, he found a rickety suspension bridge. Looked down into the tumbling waters below and imagined his brittle bones breaking upon the rocks. His second life, evaporated. Wasted on something weak and worthless. The Rogue’s raucous laughter bounced across the gorge walls. The river hissed in Selkie’s voice. At least his action could free her of the obligation.

“So, this is where despair brings you?”

When Selkie spoke out, Shadow didn’t expect it to truly be her. But suddenly she was beside him, Shadow nearly jumped out of his skin. Something about her materializing beside him snapped Shadow out of his lonesome spell, and he became cognizant of just how high up they were. “S-Selkie…” Shadow breathed. “You followed me?”

“I saw you leave, and I was bored. I hoped you’d go somewhere interesting,” Selkie said. She didn’t look at him but instead stared into the bottom of the gorge. “Do you mean to jump off?”

Shadow gulped. “I did…” Selkie said nothing, still staring below. “What d-do you think of that?”

For a long time, she remained silent. Stared into the waters below. A breath of a ripple crossed her still water eyes. “I… don’t know.” A pause, a breath. “I’ve seen death rock the world of people and pokemon alike, but it never fazed me. Been to funerals but never shed tears. I think if you died, I would recover.”

Shadow’s throat trembled. “O-Oh…”

Selkie stared into the void below. Her eyes dimmed. Shadow felt ice on her breath. “I know yearning for death is ordinary. I’ve read so much online and in books about people wanting to die. Like catching the common cold. In my world, several millions die from suicide every year.”

Shadow’s brows furrowed. “In your world?”

“But even though it’s common, it’s still weakness. Most would stand to collapse before they could ever reveal it. I have never once heard someone admit to me that they want to die.” Selkie looked up. Her gaze pierced the storm of Shadow’s eyes. Probed his soul. “A night or two after I returned you to the Guild, I tried to drink myself to death.”

Shadow’s jaw dropped. “Selkie…?”

“That’s not even my real name. I threw away the old one when I got here.” She spoke matter-of-factly, but Selkie’s eyes swam with darkness. “I thought I could make something of your world for me. I have never known what it’s like to come home. I thought I could find it here, but something about the night we met knocked something loose in me. There’s no world I could call home.” She looked at him hard. “Let’s jump together. You and I.”

Shadow stood there, stupefied. What the fuck was going on? Selkie wanted to jump with him? What? He questioned whether the popplio before him was real or illusory and reached out a paw to prod her chest just to make sure.

Selkie flinched from his touch. “Why are you poking me?!”

Shadow responded with the only words that came to mind. He looked her in the eye. “Selkie is the only name I’ve ever known you by. It’s real to me.”

“It’s the name of a monster.”

“No. It’s your name. And it’s as real as the one you gave to me,” said Shadow. Selkie breathed. “I felt like you hated me. That’s why I came here.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Are you sure?”

“I assumed maybe you hated me. I’m so often the source of your pain.”

“I could never hate you, Selkie!”

Under the full moon on the bridge above the gorge, they talked for hours. Shadow lost track of the time as Selkie, usually so quiet, let loose the contents of her mind. She spoke of the stillness of her heart and soul. She spoke of boredom and anhedonia and how she’d long forgotten the feeling of joy. She spoke of purposelessness and explained the definition of nihilism. She spoke of feeling adrift, alone, understimulated, and deeply hateful. She spoke of only ever feeling truly alive in the rush of battle. She spoke of wanting to die since she was a young child.

And Shadow spoke as well. Spilled what had tormented his mind for so long. He spoke of plaguing nightmares and the voices on the wind, of unendurable emotional storms that left him gasping, reeling. He spoke of the uncertainty regarding his own death in the Cave, and of reaching inside and feeling nothing where his self should be. He spoke of the crippling, unshakable fear that someday, Selkie would come to regret her choice in saving him. That someday, she too would be gone, and he would have nothing.

Selkie asked him where such a convincing fear came from. Shadow paused then, gulped. He’d never told anyone this before. But the momentum of their conversation and the comfort of her listening ear soothed Shadow’s anxieties. Selkie knew of the Cave, so Shadow told her of before. He spoke of Mom, who hated him from the start. The ways she berated him, criticized him, cuffed him when he cried. Made salient how Shadow was the living reminder of her own pain. Sometimes she cuddled and kissed him, licked him behind the ears and told him she was sorry. But those moments had been fleeting and ultimately meaningless. They didn’t save him from the exchange, the Rogue, or the Cave. They didn’t save him when she threw him away like nothing.

Shadow couldn’t take the pain his memories brought. He clutched his head, pulled his own fur, cried, and screamed. The excruciating emotional storm ripped him apart inside, and Shadow was sinking under the waves. In desperation, he jumped at her, clung to her. Felt her muscles tense and braced for her to shove him off. Instead, she murmured a question.

“Does it help your pain if we touch?”

“Y-y-yes…” Shadow hiccupped. “I-is it okay?”

“… I guess so.”

And so, under the full moon on the bridge above the gorge, Shadow grieved. And Selkie held him.

When he finally calmed, breathing against her stillness, Selkie murmured to him again. “Shadow… I’m going to take you back to the Guild now. I have something very important to tell you about this world.”

As Selkie led him down from the bridge, as she guided him back down the island and to the doorstep of Spectrum Island Rescue Guild, as she took him inside and let him into her dorm, Shadow marveled at the fact that though Selkie was a stranger to it herself, she could still gift to another soul the feeling of coming home.

They huddled in her dorm and spoke together until dawn washed the little room in soft gray light. Hopes of sleep forgotten, Selkie told Shadow unbelievable things. How she was not a pokemon but a human summoned from another world. How this world was marked for death, and she was a hero tasked to save it. How her meeting with Shadow had snuffed out all desire to accomplish that goal.

She asked Shadow what he thought of that. She asked if he believed she should save the world. Shadow answered, “No.”

Together in that little underground space, a human and a pokemon sealed the fate of the world. Between them bloomed a secret, an agreement, an unbreakable pact. Maybe their choice was born in anger. Maybe it was born in hatred or despair. No matter the nature of its origin, from their choice, their secret, something incredible came into being. Something greater than Selkie and Shadow combined. From the union of their powerless bodies, Selkie and Shadow forged together the power to destroy worlds. It was a power greater than stillness and greater than storms. Together, they could become the tempest that would lay waste to all that had and could hurt them. No longer alone together, but a singularity. A team.

Was this love?

But now, they were divided. The power that they birthed together, from their separation, was now forfeit. Shadow was back in the Cave, called back by Mom, staring into the empty sockets of the buried monster that had abused him. What happened? What had gone so wrong? The destruction they wrought would still come to pass, but what about all they had built together? What about Selkie and Shadow? Was everything between them truly… over?

Shadow kicked over the Rogue’s skull as he ran from the cell. He didn’t give the skeletons a passing glance as he dashed by. They were dead and gone, the Cave was a tomb, but not his. Someone had died here, but Shadow was still alive. As long as he was still breathing, he would make it back out. He would make it back to her. Maybe there was nothing to salvage, but he couldn’t know until he tried.

The light of the sun cut through Shadow’s eyes as he sprang from the Cave. Before the end of everything, he had to know for sure.

#pokemon #pokemon fanfic #pmd #pmd fanfic #pmd fanfiction #pokemon fanfiction #pokemon mystery dungeon #pmd till world's end #prose #literature #fanfic #popplio #zorua #fanfiction

[special-wolf]

Trip Down Memory Lane || Bakugou Katsuki

[Female Reader]

"Katsy!" A feminine, child's voice called out, the ash blond turning in response to his nickname from his other childhood friend. "I have a question!" A childish grin plastered across his face as his small chest buffed out, "shoot! I'm sure I can answer it!" 

"Can I give you a kiss?" 

"EH?!" The boy, shell-shocked, staggered back. "No way!" 

"Why not?" 

"Because you'd give me cooties! Are you stupid?!" She frowned in response before getting close to him and kissing his cheek softly. The boy screamed and yelled in response, his whole face and ears going red like his eyes were and then ran off without another word.

The 16-year-old shook his head at the thought, a small growl coming from his throat as he glared down at the food on the lunch table. Kaminari and some others looked at him before continuing what they were doing, ignoring Bakugou since he usually had these sorts of responses. He stabbed at his food angrily, why was he thinking about that now? That was years ago.

He let out another short growl, his grip getting tighter and the chopstick that was in his right hand snapped in two. "Dude, what's your problem?"

"Can it, Dunce Face." He snapped, his eyes shooting up at the other blond as he got up and stormed away from the table.

"Kat! Can we walk to school together?" They were 14 now, making their way to Aldera Junior High for the first day of their third and final year.

"I don't care." He muttered, the girl just smiling and walking by his side as he kept his slouched posture as he stomped to the school.

"Your shoes look nice."

"Shut up.""As sweet as ever."

"Do you ever stop talking?"

"Nope, I'm always talking about you." He froze for a second, turning to face her and glaring.

"You spreading shit about me? I'll kill you."

"Will you make the effort and dig my grave especially for me?"

"No." 

"Then I'd rather you not kill me just yet." She shot him a grin, "but I haven't said anything bad about you, don't need to get so defensive."

"Die."

"You have such a way with words."

He stopped at the vending machine in the hallway, his hands in his pockets as he looked at the contents inside. He paused as he spotted the pocky sitting at the top. He didn't really like sugary or sweet things, but he was introduced to this by her. And he loved it.

"Kat! Kat! Slow down!"

"What? I'm going to be late home and the old hag will have my throat."

"Then we can walk together!"

"We live opposite ways." He rolled his eyes as she cooed at him, 

"You remember! But it's fine, I'm going to that corner shop near your place anyways!"

"Fine." He continued to walk, taking a small detour to walk her to the shop. "What was so important?"

"Oh, nothing. I just wanted to walk with you."

"Eh? Fucking idiot."

"Maybe, maybe not~!" He flinched as she grabbed onto his arm, leaning against him slightly. "But, I guess there was something. I want you to try something, I know you don't like anything that isn't healthy or spicy... But I want you to at least lick it or something."

"You're making that sound fucking wrong."

"Oh, ho? Well, I mean if you're willing to e-." 

"Shut up!" He barked, his entire face red as he looked the opposite way to her to make sure she couldn't see his face.

"Ha, ha! I'm messing! But seriously, there is something I want you to try." And so, he waited outside the shop for her hurry up and grab what she was getting. He impatiently tapped his foot, staring at the time on his phone as he huffed and puffed. He looked up as the doors opened and she came out. "I got it~!""What is it?" His eyes widened as she held up a box of strawberry pocky. 

"No."

"Oh, come on! We don't have to do the game! I just want you to try it with me..." The pout on her face made him cave, 

"... Fuck! Fine!" He held his hand out as she cheered, "just hurry it up!" He grit his teeth as she laid the pocky in his hand carefully, angrily biting into it as she bit her own. He ate the rest of it without a complaint, but he left without another word. 

"Kat! You can't just leave me like that! That's like leaving me on read!"

He knelt down as the box fell, picking it up and standing back up. He shoved it into his pocket before making his way to class before the bell rang. He sat in his seat, ignoring Iida's greeting as he looked out the window whilst waiting for class to start.

"Hey," he sighed as he felt her poke him once more. "Hey, I'm not gonna stop til you answer me, hey, hey, hey."

"What?!" He whisper yelled, glaring at the girl who sat next to him in class.

"If you look in the window close enough, you can see a blond babe reflecting back." He rolled his eyes,

"Nobody is worth my time to look at them-."

"I'm talking about you, Katsuki." His body tensed up, pink spreading across his cheeks as he looked at her. "You're the blond babe."

He looked away quickly, "shut up, dumbass."

He stared back at his own reflection, his irritation leaving him as he just admired himself. He never really thought about how he looked, he cared more about his skills. And if he did think about his appearance, like he was forced to with Best Jeanist, he never agreed to her statement before but now... He can kinda see what she was on about. The chub on his cheeks she always referred to being cute, and how much he hated it at the time, but now... It still wouldn't be the word he'd used to describe it, but he can tolerate it.

He looked at the door as it opened, expecting it to be Aizawa but scoffed as he saw it was just Deku. He sneered at the greenet as he dared near him to go to his own desk, the ash blond soon looking away angrily.

"He doesn't look down on you, Kat."

"Bullshit, he's been looking down on me for years."

"He admires you, that's why he does things like you. You should cut him some slack, just ignore him if he pisses you off that much, okay? Don't look in his direction."

"Fucker seems to be everywhere, it's hard not to see his shitty, plain face."

"I'm sure you're able to just ignore him."

He looked back out the window, his eyes seeing a building's roof as his palm held his head up. His gaze lowered slightly, his aura becoming less angry and more upset.

"You told him to kill himself?! Katsuki!"

"..."

"And you're not even going to say anything? That's serious what you said to him! Do you not think about anything?!"

"..." 

"For fucks sake! I know you hate him, but for-! Actions have consequences! Who knows what he'll do!"

"I-..."

"... This is too far... You've been beating him down for years... I keep telling you to ignore him, just leave him alone, but you never listen to me. Why? Why don't you listen to me?"

"I do listen!" 

"You don't seem to! You just tune me out when it's something you don't want to hear!"

"That's not true! I do listen!" He defended himself, his tone getting more and more desperate. "I-I do listen, I promise! I-I...!" He went quiet, "... I do listen..." His voice was a whisper, his eyes teary. "I promise..."

He could remember her arms around him, her scent filling his nose and he could remember how quickly she put him to ease. He didn't deserve that comforting, he knows that, but it was the best thing he had ever felt. He did keep bullying Deku, but he wanted to show her he was listening to her, so he kept it at a minimum. He didn't want Deku to feel like he'd given up on his word.

The lesson went by quick, as did the day, and next thing he knew was he was walking home by himself. He looked around his surroundings, wondering where else he had moments with her. He looked at the restaurant he goes to a lot for the spicy food, his gaze on the door but nothing really sprung to him. She's never been there with him.

He kept walking, nothing coming to his mind until he had gotten to his house. The path leading to his door was what made him think.

She stood there with a grin, she was wearing her usual Aldera Junior High uniform but something was different. "You're wearing a skirt."

"Huh? Oh, heh, yeah!"

"You never wear a skirt."

"Jeez! Can't a girl flaunt her stuff without being questioned? Men these days."

"Eh?! I'm just saying! Fine! I don't give a shit!"

"Pfft-! I'm messing! I'm wearing a skirt because it was the only thing I had left, it doesn't look bad on me, right?"

"... It doesn't look horrible."

"... That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"Huh?! I've said nicer things! I'm a nice person!" He really didn't appreciate her laughter after that.

"You? Nice? Ha! Wow, that's the funniest thing you've said in a long time. Now, c'mon!"

"Are you mocking me?! I'll show you I can be nice!"

"Okay... Let's go!" As she went to walk off, he grabbed her arm and pulled her to face him. "Huh?"

"You..." He swallowed his saliva and pride, "... You look great..." He shuffled awkwardly as she stared at him.

"... Thank you, Katsuki... That means a lot."

"Yeah, whatever. I'll show you I can be a nice fucking person."

He smiled a bit to himself, just looking at the path. "What are you smiling at? You see a bug getting it on and congratulating him like a pervert?" Think of the devil. He turned to face her, just admiring her. "... You okay there, buddy?"

"Yeah... You've just been on my mind today."

She grinned, "wow, you really are head over heels for me, huh?"

"Yeah, guess I am."

"I like you, [Name]. I think anyways."

"Damn... Count yourself lucky, Katsuki, I like you too. I know anyways, lemme know when you're head over heels for me though, yeah? I'll be waiting for you. Just don't say I'll be giving you cooties, okay?" 

"... Shut up."

#special.writes #bnha #mha #bnha x reader #mha x reader #bakugou x reader #bakugo x reader

[books-of-the-great-leviathan]

Chapter 36- Luca

***

Water filled this place, thundering underfoot, veining the walls and collecting in sunken caverns high in the temple, touched with traces of luminescent shimmer. Pale, blind cave fish of massive scale cruised through pools. Each fish was as long as he was tall, their barbels twitching as Luca leaned over to get a better look.

He and Sirin picked their way up narrow, winding steps, through caverns and over rubble. The witch seemed rapt, and Luca was rapt with her. This was a haunted place, full of relics as a grave-vault. Everywhere, traces lingered: jewelry, small carvings scattered in corners, nautilus shells and fragments of crystal and gilded scroll cases, their contents long since turned to dust. Armor lay in niches, dried brittle as paper, made of some scaled hide Luca did not recognize. It gleamed a deep, lightless black, and looked as if it had been molded with neither strap nor buckle, like a second skin.

Witch armor, he thought, with a thrill, made to fit over wings and accommodate the powerful back muscles necessary for flight. Witches- Aiatar- had never been more than solitary creatures in the stories. Powerful forces, but always lonely. This proved so much. They once had a society, a people, alive with powerful magic. What had happened to pull that society apart and turn its people into nomads at best, and myths at worst?

Charms hung from doorways, reminding him of the sailor's charms that begged favor from the Triune back home, crafted by those leaving for a long ocean voyage. He touched the strings of small bones and carved slivers of crystal, listening to their chime.

Not just crystal.

"Sirin," he whispered. "It's whaleglass."

She came to stand alongside him. He touched the crystals again, marveling at their iridescent glitter. "I've never seen shards of it before. It's impossible. Whaleglass doesn't break like this. Besides, no one would waste it on charms."

No one we know, Sirin said.

Luca remembered Grand Magister Tosca's words- that there was so little folk knew about whaleglass, about its secrets, and especially about the lost art of its shaping. Artifacts made from the stuff were precious rare, and all of them ancient, carved by the people of Rashavir, by ancestors and long-dead alchemists, by figures of legend.

Maybe they weren't legend. Rashavir had sundered and sunk by apocalyptic calamity, its exact nature lost to millennia. What might have sunk with it?

Such languages of magic must have been lost. Such words of knowledge that would never again be spoken.

All the while, the peak hung overhead. The sun moved, and so did its shadow, thrown long across the forests below. What did it mean? What did any of this mean? The not-knowing filled him, sent shivers up his nerves, set fire to his heart. He had to figure this out. If he didn't find what they'd come for, what the Leviathan's trail had led them to, Cereza would become another dead thing on the shores of this strange island.

Sirin stood by him, eyes lifted, watching the play of light through the whaleglass. He watched her in turn. Her dark skin shimmered with iridescent reflections, glow caught in her lashes. Her hair had begun to curl, a dense cap of black that covered the scars on her scalp.

She looked up, suddenly, and saw him examining her. Her brow creased- some confusion, maybe, or conflict.

"What?" Luca asked her, softly.

She faced him, and lifted her hands, her fingers still, as if unsure of what to say.

"Valere!"

The witch's voice rang through the cave. Luca turned from Sirin, his nerves still alight, his face warm, and followed the witch's voice down the passageway.

Steps led him down, deeper, back into echoing darkness. The faint glow of the water was enough to illuminate his way. Niches gaped in the walls, most empty, some full of dust. The steps spilled out into a lofty, circular cavern, water running into a round pool at its heart and filling the air with its glow. Witch statues ringed the room, backs to the walls, wings spread and interlocking, hands filled with crossed blades. Armored Aiatar, faces covered with avian helmets. They stared down at Luca and Sirin, at the sole witch in their midst.

The niches stood open, here, and they were not empty. Bodies lay beneath shrouds of dust, enclosed in enameled sarcophagi- four of them, one in each niche. Luca approached slowly. The mummy within was dried dark as varnished leather, lips drawn back from its teeth, eye sockets reduced to folds of desiccated flesh. It wore robes, their colors long since lost. Silver ornaments had fused with its skin, its black hair set in elaborate braids grown brittle with time. Its hands were crossed over its chest, and arcane tattoos patterned its visible skin, ink twins to the reliefs of monsters and divine figures carved across the temple walls.  

The nails were blunt and unclawed, the mummy's teeth flat. Luca narrowed his eyes. He went to the next mummy, and the next. At last he turned and looked back at the witch.

"They're human," he said.

The witch nodded. Her brow was furrowed as she picked loose and re-braided a strand of her hair, over and over. "They're all human."

"Witches- Aiatar- they buried humans here, in their tomb, in their temple-"

"No." The witch shook her head hard. "We do not consort with islanders."

"One of you must have, once," Luca said. He pointed at Sirin. "She's evidence enough of that. Where else would witchborn come from? And this...it looks like they more than consorted with us. They honored us."

He remembered the legends of Valeria, his ancestor, who in them had won her crown through fell magics thanks to the power of her witch-consort. He'd always figured they were more propaganda than truth, even as he wished otherwise. But what if they hadn't been? What if, once, Aiatar had been more than legends, more than cradle songs to sing in the darkness, more than dread and lonely monsters?

He traced the knob of the mummy's wristbone. Once, Aiatar had built this temple. Once, one of them had folded this human's hands over their heart.

A wild, terrible energy rose in him, a yearning so strong it felt close to madness. If only he knew more, maybe this place could unlock a way to break the curse, to end the war. To bring back- what? Some age long-since dead, when all things were in balance, when folk understood the ways of the Leviathan?

"We need to keep looking," he said. He turned from the tomb, toward the way out. "I know there are answers here."

There have to be, he thought. Cereza couldn't afford anything else.

The upper passageways were in ruins. Entire walls had sloughed away; statues stood headless and limbless. Reliefs were worn to shadows on the iridescent black stone, witch legends, maybe, lost to time. Flights of steps led to ornate monster-flanked doorways that opened into nothing. Birds circled beyond the crumbled walls, seeming to drift motionless on the high clear breezes. Wind sang down empty halls and past the horns and tusks of statues, filling the halls with strange music.

Here the sky was uninterrupted, and Luca felt the weight of the clouds. They pressed down on him, blue-gray and heavy. The air smelled of rain, smelled of storms, the sky darkening, though the sun still hung high. Here, too, the carvings seemed older, primordial, formless: eyes, and wings, and things that could have been fish.

Not fish, he realized with a shiver. Whales, like those in the deep heart of An Gholam, like the paintings in the depths of Valeris Palace. Countless whales, cresting, diving, curled fetal. Cresting again, diving again, dying. He walked through halls of Leviathans, walked through dozens of cycles, ending and beginning and ending again. The air shook around him. It tasted bitter as magic on his tongue.

Over all, the peak arched, that back-curve like a fin.

"It lives," Luca murmured, trailing his hands over the walls. "It falls. It dies."

The heights of the temple seemed barely structure at all, just spires of rock and remnants of statues. The uppermost point waited, a broken prow of temple wall. Luca looked down- mistake. Mist spun, birds wheeling below him, buoyed on warm updrafts. He clambered up, heard Sirin climb behind him, twice as fast.

He saw what he'd glimpsed from the beach, what had winked at them in the sunlight: a curved dish of crystal, fully a yard across and mounted in a circlet of black stone. A long glass, then- a primitive telescope. He ran his fingertip over one smooth edge. From here he could see nearly the whole of the island, the vast expanse of the sea, all the way to the horizon.

The day was clear. The sea spread under it, miles of open waves. The long glass took his gaze and cast it leagues away, made smears on the horizon clear, consolidated them into- shapes. More than shapes. Islands, like the one they stood on. Humped backs, ridges rising in the shape of fins. One, close by; another, some miles from that. A third, further still.

All the same shape, all with that fin ridge. All like the backs of whales, rising from the deeps, glimmering like godsglass in the noon sun.

Luca's heartbeat pulsed in his fingertips. His lungs felt constricted, a great hand reaching inside him to clench tight. He felt like he was looking not out but up, like the stars had been pulled aside and he was seeing beyond them, like he stood at some edge and stared into dark, and didn't know if it led to an abyss, or to freedom.

To fly, to fall.

Stars spun in his eyes, in his nerves, in his heart.

"They're Leviathans," he whispered. The islands out there, the island they stood on. "They're all Leviathans."

He understood. It was like stepping into that fathomless dark, and falling, and falling. There had been countless Leviathans, and this was the place where they had come to die. This sea was a graveyard of gods. Of the same god. To live, to die- that was the way of all things, and so it was the way of the whale too.

Nothing could live forever. Not even the Great Leviathan.

"It comes here, and turns to stone, and then is reborn again from itself," the witch murmured.

Luca turned to her. "And our Leviathan-"

The witch finished his sentence for him. "-Is coming, Valere. That's what led me here. I understand now. It's coming to die."

Luca's blood pulsed in his ears, heat behind his eyes, gripping his heart. The cycle can't be broken, Cereza had cried once, lost in a dream or a vision. Both, maybe. All things at once. All things made one. The world seemed to vibrate around him, heady and unfathomable, the past and the future colliding in the instant.

"No," he said. "I need to get to it first. I have to heal Cereza. If it dies-"

The witch pressed her lips together, as if fighting back some agonizing weight. She shook her head. "I...I know how much you care about her. I know how much you love her. But the cycle can't be broken. Do you understand? Nothing can interfere. Not you. Not even...not even to save her."

No.

Sirin stepped forward, her hands slicing the word from the air. She stared at the witch, her eyes blazing.

This cannot be the end of it, she said. This will not be the end of it. You said the Leviathan is coming here to die.

"Yes."

Then we will have to intercept it first, won't we? We'll hunt it ourselves. She glanced at Luca. Like heroes of old.

"You can't interrupt its death." The witch's voice shook. "It could change the cycle. It could damage it, stop its rebirth-"

Such a fragile god, Sirin signed with a curl of her lip. She pushed forward, but the witch stood her ground. Get out of the way.

"No."

"Sirin," Luca warned.

She ignored him, like he knew she would. I said get out of the-

With a shriek like a bird of prey, the witch threw herself toward Sirin. Wings burst from her back, driving Luca against the wall in their furious backdraft; talons sliced from nowhere, gleaming black and deadly.

Sirin caught her round the wrist before the blow could fall. Her fingers dug into the witch's wrist; her talons trembled, poised to slice into Sirin's eye.

"Sirin," Luca said. "Stop." He grabbed Sirin's shoulder. She stared at the witch, eyes wide and dark as jet, reflecting the gleam of her snarl. He felt the tension in her muscles, their unnatural cold. It stung his fingers, numbing him as coils of shadow twined around his fingers, leaving pale weals. He didn't let go.

Sirin twisted the witch's arm, slowly, to the side. Her fingers trembled; the talons retracted, melting again into pale flesh. Sirin let her wrist go, and she collapsed to her hands and knees, her breathing ragged, her long black hair falling around her face.

Sirin turned and strode away. Luca knelt at the witch's side. She clutched both hands to her belly, as if in pain. Luca examined her- she didn't look to be wounded. He touched her shoulder. Her head snapped up.

"What do you want, Valere?" she snarled.

"I'm sorry," Luca said gently. "But I have to save her."

The witch studied him. The gold in her eyes was vivid, bright with tears. "Destroyer," she whispered.

Luca stared at her for a long moment. Slowly he stood and followed Sirin, leaving the witch on her knees in the dust.

He caught up to Sirin at the base of the temple. She sat on the head of a temple beast, legs dangling over its beaked snout as she stared toward the horizon. Nagi perched alongside her, feathers the same blue-green as the pine needles, her wings half-furled as Sirin scratched under her neck feathers. Luca climbed the statue to the nape of its neck, then stood, harpoon set against stone, staring in the same direction.

"She likes you," he said. "She doesn't let just anyone do that."

Sirin opened her hand, showing Luca her palmful of fish scraps.

"Ah. Treats. So you've deciphered her."

Sirin turned to face him, sitting backward on the statue's head. Enough, she signed as Luca opened his mouth to speak. I don't want to be chided by you.

"I was going to thank you."

She made a face.

"We'll have to do this without the witch's help. We need to get back to Cereza."

I still hear those things howling down there.

Luca let out his breath and climbed alongside her, kneeling on the sun-warmed stone of the beast statue's head. Not stone, he reminded himself. Godsflesh, petrified by death. He spread his palm over the glossy black rock and closed his eyes, imagining the pulse that had once animated it, the blood rushing beneath its surface. All that power was gone, too, collapsed and reborn, made nothing, and everything, all at once.

Was each Leviathan the same, another life played out by one mind, over and over, since the beginning of all things? Or was it true death every time, a cessation of being, fear alleviated only by the knowledge that this death was necessary for new life to come?

Cereza had wept, in the ebb of her visions. Was the Great Leviathan afraid to die, too?

Dread echoed through him like the tolling of some ancient bell.

The color of the sky deepened to an ominous blue, storm clouds gathering. Luca tasted the damp, heavy air, the cold spear of wind flattening his hair back from his forehead, filling his lungs. "When this is done..." he started.

When this is done? When all these storms and squalls are past and we walk under clear skies, you mean? Foolish prince, assuming he'll get it all right.

"That's not very nice of you to say." He drew another breath of the storm wind. "I have to think of what might come after. The hope that I'm choosing right, that all things will work themselves out. Otherwise what's the point of this?"

Hope for a better world.

"Yes."

And you think there's such a thing?

"There has to be," Luca said. "I think you do, too. More than you say."

She tilted her head, surveying him. The sun lit her dark eyes. And this is the correct choice. Risk, and destruction, and all.

"Yes."

Sirin faced the coming storm. The sun sank in the sky, and the ocean turned gold. Nagi turned gold too as she threw herself onto the wind, spiraling down in a dizzying pirouette to meet the forest below. Luca no longer heard the mimiki.

They're gone, Sirin said. Let's move.

The forest darkened as they descended the mountain, trees silent, mist rising. By the time they reached the shoreline the sun had sunk nearly to the sea, dragging streaks of arterial red and vivid orange behind it, like some beast carrying its kill to the shore. The sea soughed and crashed beyond the breakers, tide rising up the beach. Luca glimpsed whitecaps, swells, their schooner cresting and falling as it rocked on the waves. No longer the calm seas of that morning. Was it the Leviathan, displacing the seas as it swam toward its grave?

He hurried into the cave, to Cereza's side. "Get up, Cee," he murmured, brushing her fringe from her forehead. She'd grown colder since he left, skin stiff and glittering. Now her other sclera had turned black, too, iridescence bleeding into the gray of her iris. "We're going to get this damn curse out of you."

Her lips fluttered. "Luca?"

"Is that you in there?"

"You...you were gone..."

"I know. I'm sorry. I'm back, now. We have to go."

"Feel...cold."

"Not for long." He cupped the back of her head in his palm. "Did you hear us? The Leviathan is coming. We're going to see it, Cereza. You and me. Can you believe that?"

"Coming to heal me, is it?" A wry smile touched her lips. "I heard...I heard of a better way to heal me..."

"Oh?"

"Heard a witch's kiss can break any curse," Cereza said. "Wouldn't mind trying, just in the interest of experimentation..."

"Cee. Come on."

"With tongue."

Luca laughed, then pulled her to him, burying his face in her hair. Her arms wound around his shoulders, holding onto him. A jolt of fear lit his nerves. She smelled wrong, bitter as storm wind. She felt wrong, her arms too weak and too cold.

Fear turned hard inside him.

Save Cereza.

Kill the Leviathan.

The choice was already made.

He lifted Cereza. She felt lighter than before, lesser, wasted. He pressed his cheek to the side of her head as they left the cave. The wind tugged at him, clouds darkening, banks of pressure shifting high overhead. The storm was nearly on top of them. Soon the ocean would respond, waves rising to meet the sky.

At the horizon, lightning flickered.

The dinghy waited past the tidemark, where they'd left it. Sirin strode ahead, but Luca stopped a few yards off.

"The oars," he said. They were missing from the boat. "Where'd the oars go?"

Nagi keened overhead: a warning screech. Sirin whirled, flinging aside the supplies and dropping into a crouch. She raised her hands to sign.

Cold touched the back of Luca's neck.

"Careful, Highness," ordered a voice in Estaran. "That's your sister you've got there. Wouldn't want to drop her."

He recognized the clever, lilting voice, the cruel edge of it. Luca turned his head slowly, as much as he dared: enough to see the pistol barrel pressed into his neck, enough to see the halo of curling black hair and Ziva Lapin's grin.

"Got them, sir," she called.

Shadow darkened the sand. Luca faced front and looked straight into Captain Azare's eyes. He stood over Sirin, his own pistol against her skull, finger poised on the trigger. She knelt at his feet, head down, hands clenched on the sand. Witchhunters stepped from the mist, surrounding them, rifles aimed for him or for Sirin.

Azare twisted the barrel deeper, and Sirin winced, muscle flexing in her jaw as she grit her teeth.

"Strange, isn't it," Azare said. "No matter how far you run, it's never enough."

#togl #tales of the great leviathan #original fiction #fantasy fiction #serial novel #chapter 36

[xebecatt2002]

"Gabrielle, Tell him. Do the Bard thing" Chariots of War

From the very first episode Gabrielle is introduced as a storyteller and straight away it is hard not to be impressed with the level of authenticity the writers give to Gabrielle’s skills as a Bard. Many of these stories she tells are based on fragments of authentic myths.

'Chariots of War', the second episode of the series, opens on Gabrielle telling Xena a story as they make their way to the bar in a village tavern. Though we only catch the ending of her story, there is still interesting details to unpick.

G: “And so, Zeus, in his appreciation, turned the two lovers into oak trees. And then do you know what happened?”

X: “Somebody built a boat out of them?”

G: “No-- their branches intertwined, and they spent the rest of their days in each other’s embrace.”

There are a lot of stories in Greek myth involving 'metamorphoses', the Greek word for ‘transformations’, with both gods and mortals turning into other things like plants or animals. The only story that comes close to the one Gabrielle tells is the story of Baucis and Philemon.

The complete version of the myth is only found in the work ‘Metamorphoses'. It is a collection of myths woven together into a narrative through their common theme of transformation. It was written by the Roman poet Ovid who lived between 43 BC and 17 AD, a period of Roman history which saw the end of the Roman Republic and the reign of the first Emperor, Augustus.

The gods Zeus and Hermes (known here in their Roman forms, Jupiter and Mercury) disguise themselves as mortals and travel across Greece. When they seek hospitality from the mortals they encounter, they find themselves turned away from every household until the come upon the simple home of Philemon and Baucis.

‘Looking for shelter and rest, they called at a thousand

homesteads;

a thousand doors were bolted against them. One

house, however,

did make them welcome, a humble abode with a roof

of straw

and marsh reed, one that new its duty to the gods and men.

Here good Philemon an Baucis had happily passed

their youth

and here they had reached old age, enduring their

poverty lightly

by owning it freely and being content with the little

they had.’

Ovid, Metamorphoses, 8.628-635

Here the couple greet the strangers and offer up what little they have, providing them with the best of the meagre food and wine unknowing their true divine identities. Ovid goes in to quite a bit of detail describing the hospitality the couple offer especially the dishes that make up their feast during. While they entertain their guests the cups magically refill with wine.

‘Meanwhile, whenever the mixing-bowl got empty,

it seemed

To refill of its own accord, with the wine welling up by

itself.

Stunned and scared by this wonder, Philemon,

trembling, and Baucis

lifted their upturn hands to heaven and fervently

prayed

For forgiveness after serving so poorly prepared a repast.’

Ovid, Metamorphoses, 8.679-682

Fearing they have offended their divine guest they seek to appease them by sacrificing their only goose. This leads to a comical scene with the elderly couple chasing the goose and failing to catch it. It appears to run towards to gods for safety which seems to work as the gods command them to spare the bird as they are grateful for what they have already provided.

They then proclaim that the couple will be spared from the punishment they will inflict of their impious neighbours who refused to honour the Greek custom of hospitality known as xenia (ξενία), a word derived from the Greek word for stranger xenos(ξένος). Sometimes referred to as 'ritualized friendship' the custom was based on generosity, courtesy and gift-giving that strengthen ties between people. In earlier times when it was thought that the gods walked among mortals it was even more important to respect these customs to avoid incurring the wrath of a visiting god. It would became seen as a moral obligation for both Guest and Host to show respect to each other.

Returning to Ovid's story, the couple leave their home with the gods and head to the safety mountains. There they witness the flood the gods send down to wipe out their impious neighbours. Nothing is spared except the couple’s home which undergoes its own transformation as it becomes a temple to the gods.

The gods offer to grant the couple anything they desire as reward. After deliberating with each other Philemon and Baucis ask to be guardians of the new temple and also, that when the time comes for them to die, that they die together so they don’t have to suffer the loss of their partner. After many years happy years together they are transformed into Trees. Philemon an Oak and Baucis a linden.

"We

ask

to be priests and to guard your temple; and since we

have passed our years

together in peace, let the same hour carry us off, so I

need not

look on my dear wife’s grave, nor she have to bury my

body."

Their wish was granted; as long as life was allowed

them, they served

as the temple’s guardians. When time had taken its

final toll,

and while they were casually standing in front of the

steps of the building,

telling the sanctuary’s history, both Philemon and

Baucis

witnessed their partner sprouting leaves on their worn

old limbs

As the tops of the trees spread over their lip sand concealed

them forever.

Still to this day the peasants of Phrygia point to the oak

and the linden nearby which once where the forms of

Philemon and Baucis.’ Ovid, Metamorphoses, 8.712-720

The devotion the couple have for each other is really endearing. You can really see why this story would appeal to a young Gabrielle who left her home and arranged marriage to find the true place she feels she belongs.

It is also an interesting choice of story to share with Xena, someone she’s just met who is aloof and independent. She’s eager to befriend the warrior but is finding her emotionally distant. This emotional distance is reflected in the physical distance between them. In these early episodes they have clearly defined personal spaces, such as sperate bedrolls, and they spend a lot of time apart as Gabrielle is left behind in a 'safe' location. You could read into this that just as Xena tries to keep distance between her and Gabrielle physically to protect her, she is trying to keep her emotionally distant for safety reasons as well. In some ways Gabrielle may understand this which is why she choses to tell this particular story to Xena. The old couple might seem weak and vulnerable but they are given strength by the devotion and support they have for each other. Gabrielle is trying to show her new friend that caring isn't a weakness but a source of strength by using this story as an example.

X: “What’s the point?”

G: “Come on, Xena. I believe everyone will find their tree in the forest someday-- even you.”

X: “I find the strongest trees in the forest stand alone.”

G: “You don’t have to be strong all the time, Xena; sometimes it’s good for the soul to be soft.”

This moment beautifully foreshadows the relationship that grows between Xena and Gabrielle throughout the series as both become entwined emotionally, spiritually and physically in a multiple of ways. There are moments that the imagery of the myth is invoked in such a way that Xena and Gabrielle symbolically become the lovers. Intentional or not by the writers it is a fantastic coincidence.

One episode that subtly does this is ‘The Abyss’ during one of its poignant cave scenes. After an encounter with cannibals Xena and an injured Gabrielle become tapped in a cave that is rapidly flooding. As Xena tries to get them out, Gabrielle tells Xena her final wish, that she wants to be buried with Xena.

X [Whispers]: "Gabrielle-- Gabrielle-- here-- here. The time's

come. We're getting you out of here, all right?"

G: "Oh."

X: "All right."

G: "Xena, I have a-- a last wish."

X: "I don't want to hear of it."

G: "No-- I'm serious. You don't want to know?"

X: "What is it, then?"

G: "I don't-- want to be buried-- with the Amazons."

X: "All right. Well, in fifty years, when the time comes."

G: "Xena-- I wanna lie with you-- with your family? In

Amphipolis."

X: "What about your family?"

G: "I love them-- but I'm a part of you. I want it to be like

that forever. I love you."

It is the climax of a series of intimate moments that are grounded in their love and devotion to each other. Gabrielle’s words cement their soulmate relationship. They are meant to be, and will be, together forever like the lovers of her story.

The context of this moment adds another layer to this allusion. As Gabrielle is affirming to Xena that she is a part of her, the warrior princess is preparing to save her injured partner by tying her to herself using vines. This nicely invokes images of Gabrielle’s story of the two lovers who becoming trees and entwining together. Also it connects with Ovid's tale of Philemon and Baucis as like the mythic couple, Xena cannot bear to witness the death of her partner. As Philemon and Baucis were spared that fate by being transformed into trees, Xena is using a plant to physically entwine her and Gabrielle to save her from death.

This climb up the ravine walls to escape the rising water could be reminiscent of Philemon's and Baucis' arduous climb up the mountain to escape the flood or just another coincidence. What perhaps isn't is that it is love and devotion that binds each couple together for eternity. Just like the lovers in the story Gabrielle tells in season one, and the myth it is based upon, Xena and Gabrielle will be together for eternity in each other's embrace.

Throughout the series there are a number of different ways Xena and Gabrielle become entwined together. As the emotional distance between them shrinks, the physical space seen in earlier episodes disappears and they begin to embrace each other. Not only is there a myriad of touches and hugs to connect them but while sitting, walking and even fighting they become inseparable.

They become so close that they pick up traits from each other and almost merge into one. This is such a vast topic to discuss it really needs its own post to explore in detail but the importance for this discussion is the idea that they merge into one entity. The idea that they become one is the connection with the myths and invokes the imagery of metamorphosis.

This metamorphosis becomes literal later in the series. In season 5’s ‘Succession’ during Ares’ contest to determine a worthy successor to Xena as his Chosen, he places Gabrielle and Xena into the same body. At dawn they discover that Gabrielle metamorphoses in to Xena and dusk, Xena into Gabrielle. This nicely alludes to Gabrielle’s story as they transform, much like the couple becoming entwine trees, two individuals become one entwined in each others bodies.

This physical metamorphoses happens in the series when it has become fully established that these two are soulmates, destined to be together for eternity. They are truly devoted to each other that they cannot be separated, just as the lovers cannot bear to be parted from each other even when they are transformed into trees.

As Gabrielle predicted at the end of her story, they both found their tree in the forest in each other.

Sources

Ovid, Metamorphoses

Whoosh.org, Episode Transcripts

Screen captures by myself

Thanks to Simjay on the Discord Xena group for the Gifs!

#xena #gabrielle #xena and gabrielle #xena fan #xenites #xena warrior princess #xwp #xenite #xena gabrielle #lucy lawless #ovid #renee o'connor #metamorphosis #metamorphoses #greek gods #myth #mythology #greek mythology #zeus #hermes

[aseioh]

The day the earth stood still

TW: Character Death

The inhabitants of Castle Dimitrescu barely managed to survive their battle with Ethan Winters. Alcina mutated to her dragon form but to no avail and is barely holding on to her life. Bela, Cassandra and Daniela were not spared and have suffered heavy injuries as well, due to the decrease of temperature in the Castle the three of them have barricaded themselves to the bedchamber were they have first dragged Ethan in. Patching each others injuries and licking their wounded pride.

  A single man had managed to crush the Dimitrescu bloodline.

A loud crash outside startled the young women, braving the unknown Cassandra opened the door only to see their mother’s bloodied form slumped by the wall. The three hurriedly half carried/half dragged their mother, her unconcious form making it hard to carry her near the blazing fire. The castle was still, not a soul stirred from within. Even the Moroaica and Samca which they have loosened around the castle grounds are quiet. The three women huddled close to their mother not knowing what would happen next.

Did the other Lords fared better than them? Did they manage to end that cursed man’s existence.

 Did Mother Miranda knew this would happen?

By the second day, Alcina began to stir from her slumber. She was still weak and can barely open her eyes, but seeing the high ceiling of the bedroom she surmised that she had managed to survive her fall from the tower and dragged herself back inside the castle. The rest of the journey were just blacked out. Straining to look at her left, she found her three daughters slumped against each other. Bela her eldest has a nasty gash on her forehead, her left cheek a mottle of blue and yellow color; a reminder of the time she had found her daughter near the kitchen, bullet holes littered her cold body - buckshot from a shotgun, that monster-.

Cassandra her second daughter and best hunter was wearing a loose fitting shirt, beneath it was a swathe of bandages covering her whole torso. She remembers the screams and gunshots she heard from the second floor, remembers her stumbling and finding Cassandra barely breathing, the young woman profusely apologizing to her and to Bela for not avenging her, for not killing the man-thing. And finally there was her younger daughter Daniela, her sweet Daniela. When the first signs of trouble have began to stir she had opted to lock her youngest inside the library. Daniela was an excitable child and with her sudden mania when on the hunt it was more prudent to keep her hidden and away from their guest.

It was all in moot though, Ethan managed to find the key that opened all the doors of the castle. Daniela managed to escape with minor injuries but the fact that Ethan managed to enter the library and still inflict injuries to her was the final straw. Alcina blames herself on this 'if only I was not blinded by my anger, I shouldn’t not have left the key in my room'. She remembers the phone call and the sudden rage that had her throwing her dresser table to the wall, never had she ever felt rage against Mother Miranda in her entire life until that point.

'My daughter was almost killed and she still though of her damned ceremony' and with that thought another grave though crossed her mind

"She never cared for any of us" Her sudden speech stirred the three slumbering women. Seeing their mother awake, the three women hurried by her side.

"Mother!"

"Mama!"

"Are you alright, where does it hurt?"

An onslaught of questions came from her daughters, worry written on their faces. Cassandra puts up a brave front but Alcina can see that her torso still bothers her. Alcina tries to sit, but is unable to do so, she was still laying on the floor and although one of her daughters was kind enough to put a pillow beneath her head it was still rather uncomfortable.

"I am fine. Weak but alive, and so are you my treasures." at that Daniela burst into tears and gently tries to hug her arm, Bela and Cassandra both teary eyed tried to do the same on her right arm.

"Mother can you stand? if you can maybe we can move you to the other bed." Bela asked as she eyes the bandaged side of Alcina.

"I'm afraid not Bela, I'm still rather weak"

Cassandra motions to get up and walking towards the door "It's been quiet inside the castle mother, I think Ethan has left. Maybe I could go to the wine room and get you some blood, that would help you right?" wincing slightly at her movement.

"I'll do it Cassandra, I'll be right back." Daniela stands as well, motioning for Cassandra to return to Alcina's side.

"Thank you be careful, we don't know what's still outside. there may be stragglers" Cassandra cautions her sister

---

The inside of the castle looks like a warzone. Shattered vases and cabinet glass littered the floor, and the once pristine floor of their hallway now has holes and bullet casings. Bullet holes littered the wall, the smell of gunpowder and blood still permeates the air. Daniela cautiously climbs to the second floor where the wine room was located, ears straining to hear even the smallest sounds. They were lucky she supposes that their were no windows inside the castle, that the doors of the kitchen were thick enough to insolate them from the cold coming from the courtyard.

Entering the wine room she was glad that Ethan had not decided to destroy their supply of wine, 'At least his not that petty' she thinks as she grabs five bottles of their finest, ones she knows were specifically for her mother's consumption. Walking back down, she wanted to investigate the extent of the damage made by the man but her priority was in the health of her mother.

There will be time for that later. They can rebuild, they were after all the Dimitrescu and they were all alive.

---

Back inside the room, Cassandra and Bela had managed to help Alcina sit on her chair.

"And how are you two, are you're bodies regenerating?" Alcina asked trying to be comfortable in the chair, her regeneration has been slowed due to the lack of blood. She was more concerned with her daughters, as she new that the insects making up her daughter's body do not reproduce. She will need to introduce new batches of flies in the swarm, hopefully that would allow for faster healing within her daughters.

Daniela came back with bottles in hand, she poured her mother a glass and gave Bela and Cassandra a bottle each. Alcina drank the liquid eagerly, she can feel the blood sustaining her, feeling slightly better she sighes. 'I wonder how the others are faring' Alcina thought as she looks at her daughters faces. Daniela and Cassandra were drinking their blood fast, meanwhile Bela was nursing hers, a worried look in her face.

'Ah. Of course. Donna' Alcina can see her eldest thinking, worrying about her beloved. She herself was worried, the Lords knew that Donna was the weakest in terms of strength preferring to use psychological tactics. Donna has never seen combat, she was more at home using her plants for hallucinations and turning men against each other than direct confrontations.

'If Ethan Winters almost killed her in both her forms...' Alcina shivered at the thought. She looks at Bela once again, Bela meets her gaze head on. She was thinking of the same thing, and with that though her dread rises and her arms begin to shake.

"Go and be careful, and remember I love you Bela" Hearing the permission, Bela embraces her mother and makes her way out of the room. Her swarm of insects more chaotic than normal. Cassandra and Daniela looks on as their sister vanishes from the room.

"WIll she be alright" Cassandra asked concern clear in her voice.

"I do not know love, but we will be here when she returns. Ready to support and mend" Alcina says with finality.

---

Bela rushes through the castle grounds, barely stopping to dress properly against the weather. Stepping out of the castle she was greeted with a blanket of frost and silence. No sound can be heard around the border, not even the hustle and bustle of the nearby village could be heard. She remembers that the Lycans went through the village earlier and though for a second if even a single villager manage to survive.

'Focus! Bela' Making her way to the eastern part of the village she was greeted by the Duke.

"Good afternoon Miss Bela, I'm glad to see you alive" the portly man greeted her.

"Duke what are you doing here!? You were helping that man!" Bela shouted readying her sickle and aiming for the Dukes head.

"Now, now... it was only business miss, and besides your family survived. Everything else can be rebuilt" The duke supplied trying to placate the young woman in front of her. "Besides, shouldn't you make your way towards Lady Beneviento's estate. I've just seen Mr. Winters leave the premises. I believe his on his way to Lord Moreau's reservoir."

The new information silenced Bela, looking at the four winged door and seeing the usual locked door open made her panicked.

"NO!" as she turned and ran towards Donna's mansion

"And remember miss, Everything can be rebuilt!" The Duke shouted to the retreating back of the young woman, chuckling to himself "Everything can be made for a price..."

---

Bela didn't stop running until she was near the grave of Claudia Beneviento and even then she can see the devastation that Ethan Winters caused. Dead Moroaica littered the way going to the estate from the the potter's field to the hanging bridge that connects the estate to the village. Claudia's grave itself had been open, the contents ransacked. Close by the slumped body of the grave giant can be found no doubt killed because it was doing it's job.

A cold chill enters Bela's body. If the giant can be killed, how could her Donna fare against that man.

Steeling herself, she enters the small cave that houses the elevator that would take her up the mansion. Bela was starting to feel numbed, the whole day feels like a century. What she thought started as a man trespassing in their castle to be eaten soon, became her worst nightmare. Bracing herself in the elevator, she fears for the worst.

'Donna please, be safe my love'

please please please please.... the plead continued like a mantra, she was praying to whoever deity that would listen to her.

----

Arriving at the top, she carefully exits the elevator, wary of every corners and listening to the smallest sounds.

The mansion superimposes the great waterfall, both a sight of wonder. Still there was something wrong, and she couldn't place what it is. the garden in front of the house looks undisturbed, as if it was left only to be tended again tomorrow.

the first sign that something was wrong was a broken box near the entrance of the mansion.

Seeing the broken thing, Bela's heart stopped.

 No.

 No..

 NO...  

"DONNA!!" Bela burst through the door only to stop dead in her tracks.

The mansion was in disarray. The dolls Donna so lovingly brushes and takes care of are strewn around the floor. The devastation done on the castle is repeated here. Some of the walls have fresh blood smeared across it. It's as if someone was running around without a care in the world.

Bela sways where she stands. "DONNA!?!" she calls again hoping to hear the woman she loves. straining her ears to hear even the smallest of sounds.

 It was silent

She cautiously enters the house. She stops and falls to her knees, there on the ground lies the crystalized remains of her beloved.

Bela cannot breath, each gulp of air just brings more cold inside of her. She crawls towards the crystals, eyes wide and unbelieving.

"Donna... Donna, this isn't funny. You're not supposed to leave me" tears stream down her eyes and her sight narrows, darkness encroaching from the corners of her eyes.

"DONNA!!!!"

Outside the waterfall covers the scream of a broken heart and the mansion stands quietly, guarding it's mistress and her beloved's anguished cries.

---

Because the thought "what would happen if Bela and Donna were a couple during the events of the game and one of them didn't make it?" kept running around my head

#resident evil village #alcina dimitrescu #donna beneviento #bela dimitrescu #cassandra dimitrescu #daniela dimitrescu #Beladonna #re8 village BelaDonna

[rawmeanderson]

pretty please ― friday.

ft. Kevin Hayes plot: with Kevin, Brady, and Jimmy all gone from New York and the new season about to start, everyone gets together for a long weekend. warnings: swearing, drinking, body issues, all sorts of sexy things but no penetrative sex. word count: 9.2k, making this the longest thing i’ve ever posted, holy shit. special thanks: a big thank you goes to @danglesnipecelly​ for proof reading for me, and also to @capobiancos​ for being such a wonderful hype person that validates my long winded chapters 🤗 notes: so, I basically lay out all of season two of Fleabag in this chapter in a way that would definitely fall under the realm of spoiling it, so I apologize if that upsets anyone! with that warning, I definitely encourage everyone to take the time to watch the series at some point because it lives rent free in my mind and will continue to do so for the rest of time. part of this takes place on a boat, and i’ve got to say, I don’t know a fucking thing about boats so i’m sorry if I got anything wrong 😂

THURSDAY

A knock on the door woke you up with a start the next morning, your body jolting for a brief second before you yawned, stretching out along the mattress. A second knock followed shortly after, and only then did you remember that someone had knocked to begin with, and that you weren’t even at home.

“Yeah?” you grumbled a second later, rolling onto your opposite side to face the door.

“Hey, it’s me,” Sophie said, opening the door enough to slip inside. She was still in her pjs, a sleepy smile on her face as she crossed the room.

You reached for your phone, checking the time and seeing that it was just a little after 10. There was a text from Kevin from 17 minutes ago, reading “Fleabag today?” You’d reply to it soon.

“Morning,” you yawned, stretching out along the mattress as she joined you in bed. She did this often at home on weekend mornings, usually to discuss what to do for breakfast or how to spend the day. 

“Mm, good morning,” she responded, already wrapping her arms around you as she pressed her face into the back of your shoulder. Sophie had always been a physically affectionate person, and you knew that was one of the things you’d miss the most when she moved. “Are you having fun?”

You snorted softly, rolling your eyes. Of course she was checking up on you. “Yeah, Soph, I’m okay,” you assured her, putting your hand over hers were she was holding onto you. “It’s good to see everybody.”

“Yeah, it really is,” she said, exhaling a content sigh. “What did you and Kevin talk about last night?” The question was innocent enough, but you could tell that she’d been dying to ask since you and Kevin had rejoined the group last night.

“We just caught up, really,” you told her, turning your head to yawn into your pillow quietly. “He wants me to come visit him in Philly sometime.”

“Aww, he’s always been so sweet on you. He was super happy when I told him you were coming this weekend.” Her words surprised you, making your cheeks burn a little, but you didn’t respond otherwise. Sophie knew that you and Kevin had hooked up before, and had always encouraged you to pursue him more. “We’re going swimming off the boat later, you should come with us.”

You made a slightly noncommittal sound, shrugging. “Maybe. Kevin wants to watch season two of Fleabag today, so I guess it depends when you leave,” you said, which resulted in Sophie making kissy sounds in your ear. “Oh my god, stop!” You both laughed as you elbowed her in the ribs gently, which only made her hold you tighter.

A quiet sigh left you, and the two of you laid there for a few minutes longer, until Sophie started snoring softly. With a soft laugh, you nudged her awake gently, and she groaned, forcing herself to sit up. You promise to get out of bed and join her in the living room soon, sending Kevin a quick thumbs up emoji, tacking on “I’ll be functional in 10 minutes” as you finally got to your feet. 

You changed out of your pjs into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, tying your hair up in a bun as you crossed the hall to the bathroom to brush your teeth. Kevin had texted to say they’d be back in a few, but you hadn’t even realized that he had left.

Still feeling relatively sleepy, you settle into the corner of the couch in the living room next to Sophie, learning from someone that Kevin and Nolan had gone on a coffee run. Just as they get back, you were wishing you’d known that so you could’ve asked Kevin to bring you back something. It surprised you then, when there was suddenly a cup being offered to you.

“Caramel iced coffee, biggest one they had,” he said, tilting his head as he looked down at you. A smile spread across your face, feeling a tug of affection in your chest over the fact that he had remembered your coffee order. You thanked him, and he looked rather proud of himself for getting it right. 

“You ready for some Fleabag?” you asked, taking a sip as you looked at him with raised eyebrows. You wished you didn’t feel so giddy, that the idea of spending the next three hours with him didn’t have you damn near preening. 

“Hell yeah,” he said, glancing over his shoulder toward the hallway. “My room’s got a TV in it, and I think I figured out how to stream to it.”

You hadn’t fully gotten around to thinking about where you’d be watching the show, so the mention of Kevin’s room, where you’d both surely be sitting on the bed, made you straighten up a little more. “Yeah, that sounds good,” you said, flashing a grin and taking another long sip of coffee.

As you get to your feet, Sophie caught your eye, wiggling her eyebrows at you. If you were closer, you’d swat at her playfully, but you settled for rolling your eyes at her instead. 

Kevin had already showered, you realized, as you followed him to his room. His hair was still damp, and you could smell his body wash and cologne when you stepped past him into the room. Silently, you wish you’d taken the time to shower, knowing the smell of last night’s fire still clung to your hair.

You were eying the armchair closer to the TV when Kevin dropped onto the bed, sprawling out, but you knew it’d be weird to sit that far away. God, Kevin took up so much of the bed that it was a little absurd, his legs stretching out along the mattress, hand behind his head where he was propped up by the pillows. His attention was on the remote, and you cast a final look at the armchair before he patted the spot next to him on the bed without looking at you.

Your shoulders were tense as you walked around to the other side of the bed, sitting down and leaning back against the headboard. Kevin looked up at you, and you cursed the fact that with you sitting up, he could see one of your worst possible angles. He smiled either way and you willed yourself to relax.

Even after just one night at the cabin, the bed smelled like him. It was both calming and borderline panic inducing, making it impossible to stop yourself from thinking back to his bed and the way the sheets slid along your skin as he...fuck. This wasn’t what you needed to be thinking about when you were poised to be spending the next three hours on the (much smaller) bed next to him. What didn’t help at all was the hand Kevin put on your knee, squeezing lightly, almost looking like a giddy little kid as he pressed play on the first episode of the season.

“You ready to cry, Hayes?” you asked quietly, looking down at him. He looked so comfortable and relaxed, stretched out beside you.

“Man, I guess. Is it really that sad?” he questioned, eyes moving from the screen to you for a short moment. His voice was as soft as yours was, deep and gravely enough that you felt it practically vibrate through your body.

“Kind of, yeah,” you said with a laugh, sipping at your iced coffee. “Honestly, I cried like a baby through a good chunk of it. It felt really personal, especially the first time I watched it.” He nodded, eyes lingering on you before they went back to the screen just in time for Fleabag to say ‘this is a love story.’

You’re both pretty quiet through the first episode, with Kevin muttering about how much of a slime ball Martin was. True to your own nervous habits, you sucked down your iced coffee pretty quickly, as it gave you something to think about other than the 6’5” wall of muscle stretched out next to you.

“Is she gonna fuck the priest?” Kevin asked, looking up at you as the credits for the first episode rolled. Laughing softly, you leaned to put your now empty cup on the end table next to the bed.

“You’ll see,” you responded, eyes meeting his when you settle into the bed a little more. Your gaze dropped to his mouth for a brief second before you forced yourself to look back to the TV.

“Whenever you say that, it always means ‘yes,’” he teased, still watching you as the next episode started. He kept sneaking glances at you as it played but you kept your eyes trained forward.

It would be impossible to count how many times you’d watched Fleabag. Since it was only 12 half hour episodes in total, it was easy to rewatch in a single afternoon, making it an easy comfort watch when you were feeling down. Watching it with Kevin though, hearing him make quiet predictions and chuckling here and there, warmed you down to your soul. He had always seemed to enjoy the movies and shows you recommended to him, which had always left you feeling...valued by him. You tried not to let your mind dwell on the fact that he’d been waiting for this, to watch Fleabag with you for over a year and a half because it reminded you of the distance that would be between the two of you again in just a matter of days.

By the start of the third episode, you were sitting up more, your legs crossed and your elbows on your knees, like putting more space between you and Kevin would stop your chest from feeling like it was caving in. The iced coffee had made you a little jittery and restless, and just when your throat was starting to feel tight from thinking too hard about everything, you felt his hand rub over your back.

You glanced back at him and he smiled softly, his fingers tracing up your spine. His touch was warm and soothing, and the loud laugh he let out over the award debacle in the episode sounded so happy and genuine that you decided you never wanted to leave this bed. The curtains were closed, keeping the room relatively dark despite the early afternoon sun outside. 

Hot Priest had shown up again, and just as sexual tension was building on the show, you swore you could feel it building between you and Kevin as well. You were still sitting up, his hand still on your back by the time you gave in, sliding down to lay beside him. He watched you as you moved, his arm slipping around your shoulders easily when you curled into his side. It had been more than a year and a half since you’d laid like this with him, your head on his shoulder, but the position was still so familiar that you sighed comfortably.

The two of you were quiet and still for a while as the fourth episode started, and Kevin was the first to move, turning his head enough to kiss the top of your head. His stubble brushed against your hair and his arm tightened around you. When he laughed, you could feel his body rumbling with it. 

“Oh, she’s totally gonna fuck the priest,” he murmured to you, his mouth against the top of your head, speaking as the confessional scene started. The words were so low that it sent a jolt of desire through you that only made you lean into Kevin more.

The make out scene that followed seemed to have both of you holding your breath until the painting fell on screen, jolting both of you and the characters. Kevin exhaled a breath and you found yourself laughing softly, tilting your head up to look at him.

“You good?” you asked, grinning as you tried to stop yourself from thinking about just how close his face was to yours.

“Yeah,” he responded, holding your gaze as the credits rolled. Your hand on his chest curled into a fist as you remembered how good the prickle of his stubble always felt against your palm. His eyes dropped to your mouth as his fingers slid over the nape of your neck. You didn’t doubt that he felt you tense against him as a shiver ran through you from the contact. 

You wanted to kiss him, wanted to press your body against his and never pull away, but instead you tucked your head against his shoulder. He didn’t seem to mind, rubbing his hand over your back again comfortably. 

Kevin roared with laughter over Claire’s haircut, almost as much as you had when you first watched it. You couldn’t help but laugh with him, enjoying the way his body shook against yours. When he quieted down again, you could hear his heartbeat as you pressed your ear to his chest. If you closed your eyes, it would probably feel like everyone was back in New York, that you’d have all the time in the world to stay like this. 

At the end of the episode, when the sexual tension exploded on screen, Kevin nudged you. “Called it,” he said, murmuring the words against your temple as he nosed at your messy hair. His voice vibrated through you in a way that made you feel warm all over. As badly as you wanted to, you didn’t look up at him, knowing that you wouldn’t have the self control not to cross that invisible line.

As the final episode started, you realized just how warm it had gotten in the room, and being curled up against Kevin like you were hardly helped. This episode always tore you apart then put you back together again, and you lifted your head to glance at him once when Hot Priest was giving his speech about how love is awful, then nuzzled right back into his shoulder for the time being.

You weren’t sure if it was Sophie’s impending move or the fact that Kevin was with you, but as soon as This Feeling started at the end of the episode, there were tears in your eyes. The song itself just felt like it was hitting harder, and you chewed on the inside of your cheek as you sniffled. Kevin’s arm tightened around you as the credits rolled, kissing your hair again as he sighed a moment later. 

“When is season three coming out?” Kevin asked eventually, his cheek resting against the top of your head as his thumb rubbed firmly over your shoulder blade.

You lifted your head to look at him, knowing tears were still swimming in your eyes. “That’s it. There’s not gonna be a season three,” you told him with the same sad smile you always had when remembering what you’d just told him.

“What? Are you fucking kidding?” he questioned, sounding outrightly offended. You snorted softly, still looking at him as you laughed. Now that the show was over, you weren’t able to distract yourself from how badly you wanted to stay just like this for the rest of the weekend.

“Phoebe’s busy! She’s got Killing Eve to work on, plus she did the screenplay for the new James Bond movie,” you told him, shifting onto your stomach a little more so you didn’t have to crane your neck to look up at him. His arm resettled around your waist, keeping your body pressed close against his. “Besides, how could she ever create something else as perfect as that second season? It’s just impossible.”

Kevin hummed once, nodding. “Yeah, you’re right,” he murmured, eyes moving over your face. “I’m glad I waited to watch it with you.” His voice was softer, making your heart race as he brushed his knuckles over your cheekbone.

“So, it was worth the wait?” you responded quietly, tilting your face toward his a little more.  

“Oh yeah, you always have been,” he told you, making you crack a wide smile as you scoffed.

“Damn, that was smooth,” you teased, licking your lips as he grinned. He shrugged it off, and you wondered if he realized how obvious he was being, staring at your mouth like he was. 

“Always have been,” he repeated, making you snort. Before you could laugh, his hand slid along your jaw, drawing you close enough that he could kiss you.

It’s probably for the better that he kissed you, considering you wouldn’t have been nearly this slow about it. He was still cupping your jaw, keeping you close as you leaned into him more. You were trying to pace yourself as want coursed through you, and you realized that he’d never kissed you like this.

The pair of you had hooked up about half a dozen times, and each time was rough and hungry, but now, the leisurely pace of it had your toes curling. He was kissing you like he had all day to savor you, to wear you down and build you up again. Honestly, you didn’t know if you’d ever been kissed like this.

When he sucked at your bottom lip gently, you sighed against his mouth, unable to hide the way you arched into him. You felt him smile slightly, and it was like your world was on fire. If you had remembered how to move, you would’ve shifted to lean over him, to take it farther, but even kissing him this slowly was taking every ounce of your energy.

He pulled back just slightly, and you were grateful for the chance to breathe. Your body was still buzzing when you smiled, settling your head on his shoulder again. Kevin kissed your forehead then your hair again, exhaling a heavy sigh of his own.

“How long do you think we’d be able to stay here before Sophie comes banging on the door, looking for you?” he asked.

“Probably not long,” you responded, reaching for your phone that you’d left on the nightstand. Checking your notifications, you scoffed as you pressed your face into his shoulder. “I’ve got three texts from her. They’re going swimming off the boat, and were kind of waiting on me.”

Kevin nodded, reluctantly loosening his arm around you. You stayed where you were though, knowing Sophie would survive a few more minutes. Finally, you mustered the motivation to move more than an inch for the first time in over an hour, leaning over him to press a quick, firm kiss to his mouth.

His hand slid to the back of your neck easily, kissing you back harder than he had before, and to stop yourself from melting against him, you pulled back, already moving to the edge of the bed. Kevin made an irritable sound that did wonders for your confidence, and you looked over your shoulder at him with a grin.

“D’you think there’s room on the boat for me to join?” he asked as you got to your feet. 

You shrugged quickly, lingering at the edge of the bed. “I’d assume so,” you said, knowing you needed to get back across the hall to change, but it was just too hard to take your eyes off of him right now. “Tell me to go get changed, or else I’m never going to leave.”

Kevin smiled and it was the kind that made you feel warm everywhere, like honey was running through your veins. “Go change, Y/N,” he told you, nodding toward the door. You looked at him for a moment longer before doing as he said, slipping out of his room to return to your own.

You texted Sophie to let her know you’d be ready in a few minutes before stripping out of your clothes. Pulling on your swimsuit was the first time all day that the self-consciousness crept into your mind. You’d been in desperate need of a new suit earlier in the season and, feeling good, you’d ordered one that showed more skin that you were used to. The cutouts at your sides especially had you itching to pull something on over it. The suit fit, but snugly enough that you found yourself trying to tug at it here and there, wanting to make it longer or bigger.

Pulling your shorts on as you grabbed a towel was a band-aid to the feeling, but it did the trick as you ventured out of your room to find Sophie. You made sure to grab sunglasses and a bottle of sunscreen, knowing Sophie always forgot to bring some when needed. She had texted to say they were already down at the dock, and as you headed down to meet them, Kevin was a few steps ahead of you.

He was already shirtless, therefore already distracting. His shoulders were a little pink from being in the sun yesterday, and all that you could think about was running your fingers over the bumps of his spine and dragging your nails over his skin. 

Like he could tell you were checking him out, he glanced over his shoulder and smiled at you, stopping to let you catch up to him. “That color looks great on you,” he told you as you fought the urge to tug at your suit. His eyes were still on you, tracing the curves of your body, and the warm desire that rolled through you was louder than your insecurities.

“You should wear sunscreen,” you told him with a cheeky grin, tossing the bottle to him. He nearly fumbled it, looking like he was proud of himself that he hadn’t dropped it, and you were about to say something else when you heard Sophie yell up to you excitedly from the boat.

“Do you think she’s already drunk?” Kevin asked softly, eyebrow raised as you both stepped onto the dock.

“You know how much she loves day drinking,” you said, shrugging with a little a knowing grin. Sure enough, there was a lemonade Truly in her hand when she made grabby hands at you as you stepped onto the boat.

“I’m so glad you’re coming with us,” Sophie told you, hugging you tightly as if she hadn’t seen you less than four hours earlier. You laugh, hugging her tightly as her attention turns to Kevin. “Ooh, good thinking bringing sunscreen, Kev! Make sure to get Y/N’s shoulders, she always misses the same spot!” She flashed a grin at you, then in typical Sophie fashion, she went back to sit next to Jimmy.

You hated when she put you on the spot like this, but thankfully, Kevin was practically smirking as you stepped aside to give him room to step off the dock. “She never changes, does she?” he laughed, already dropping his towel into a seat. His voice was low and you shrugged because he was right.

“I’d be disappointed if she did,” you responded, tightening the bun in your hair idly. You glanced out at the water simply to keep yourself from looking at Kevin and the way his swimsuit was settled low on his hips.

“I honestly think she might kill me if she doesn’t see me put sunscreen on your shoulders,” he said, nodding toward Sophie who was pointedly watching the two of you while finishing off her drink. You snorted, nodding as he opened the bottle, squeezing some into his hands. 

He motioned for you to turn around and with your back to him, your back tensed slightly. The sunscreen was cold against your skin, but Kevin’s hands made up for it, warm and strong as you willed yourself to think about anything but how you’d much rather have his hands elsewhere. He had to know exactly what he was doing with the way his thumb pressed against a spot on your neck that made you exhale a sigh as his hand moved lower down your back.

Across the boat, Sophie was making herself look busy by grabbing another drink from the cooler, and she seemed very pleased with herself.

“There, that should be up to Sophie’s standards,” Kevin said a moment later, dropping onto the cushioned seat behind him as he handed you the sunscreen. “You gonna get my shoulders now, or what?” There was a challenge to his tone, and as you were just about to respond, the boat started to move and you took the opportunity to sit down for the time being. 

Kevin was clearly trying to be casual, taking up just as much space as always with his thigh against yours. He was leaning back, his arm stretched out along the back of the seat behind you. Technically, his arm was around you, but he was clearly trying play it cool.

Sophie was in the water the second the boat stopped a few minutes later, and Jimmy joined her after tossing some of the floats in that she’d piled on the deck earlier. You stayed in your seat to watch Sophie and Jimmy splash at each other a bit, laughing as he dunked her underwater. Brady followed them in a minute later, leaving you tucked under Kevin’s arm with the sunscreen still in your hand.

Kevin looked at you expectantly and you scoffed, getting to your feet as you squeezed sunscreen into your hand. He stayed seated with his head tilted up to watch you, a smile spreading across his face.

“What are you smiling about?” you asked as you leaned closer to start rubbing sunscreen onto his shoulders. 

“Your tits look awesome in this swimsuit,” he told you, voice low enough that Brady wouldn’t hear him. You hadn’t expected that to be his answer and you scoff, shaking your head as you felt yourself flush. You pinched his neck teasingly, his hand shooting up to catch your wrist, grinning all the while. 

“Have I ever told you that you’re annoying?” Your tone is even as you go back to sunscreen duty, his gaze clearly dropping to the neckline of your suit again. 

“Pretty often, yeah.” He shrugged nonchalantly and you rolled your eyes as your hand rubbed over the back of his neck. “Can I have a kiss?” Kevin had already tilted his head up to look at you, and fuck, how were you supposed to say no to that.

You leaned in to quickly press your mouth to his, keeping it chaste, but he looked pleased when you pulled back. You don’t stop him when he moved back toward you, stealing another before smacking your ass teasingly. It surprised you and your gasp faded into laughter as he got to his feet to start talking you into actually getting in the water.

The sun was hot, and the five of you stayed out on the water for a few hours, mostly floating around, talking about nothing, really. Kevin seemed to be keeping close to you, and you hardly minded. You made sure Sophie had sunscreen on and she took the chance to wiggle her eyebrows at you suggestively before jerking her head toward Kevin. 

Evening had just hit by the time you got back to the cabin and you had desperately needed a shower. You felt like a new person after you re-emerged from the bathroom and joined the group again, just as dinner was nearly ready. Kevin damn near pouted at you when you sat next to Sophie, out of his reach.

You did, however, sit with Kevin and Nolan during dinner, carrying out a casual conversation about Netflix originals versus Hulu originals. Kevin made heart eyes at you the whole time, and it was more than a little distracting. You nudged him under the table with your foot at one point and he took that as encouragement, doing the same back to you. 

Pairing up with Sophie, the two of you managed to beat Kevin and Jimmy at pong twice. Music was playing as the others hung around, chatting amongst themselves. Nolan and Brady had pulled up seats next to the pong table, seemingly cheering for you and Sophie. Someone got another fire going as dusk fell, which you all gravitated towards when Jimmy and Kevin decided they didn’t want to lose to you and Sophie a third time. 

Brady was drunk in no time, with Jimmy not far behind him. They each decided to try to roast marshmallows, which failed miserably. The night was a little chilly, so you were grateful to be around the fire. You turned your head to glance out at the lake, then looked up at the stars, relaxing back into your chair. When you look back to the fire again, Kevin was watching you, winking at you when you made eye contact. He made you feel like a goddamn teenager with the way the wink had made your stomach flip. 

It was nearly 10:30 when you finished the only drink you’d brought down to the fire, and you sighed as you got to your feet. Walking past Kevin, his hand slid around your wrist to stop you. “You going up to grab another drink?” he asked casually, as if his thumb brushing over your skin wasn’t making it difficult for you to think straight. 

“That was my plan, yeah,” you responded, looking at him expectantly. Behind you, Sophie was laughing at something, and you could hear the fire crackling.

“Cool, I’ll come with you,” he said, his hand still wrapped around your wrist. When he got to his feet though, his fingers laced with yours as the two of you started up toward the cabin. You almost scoffed teasingly, surprised by the sudden influx of PDA throughout the day as he walked you away from the rest of the group.

Halfway there, walking along the group of trees that separate the cabin from the property next door, you saw Kevin glance over his shoulder briefly. He squeezed your hand, nodding his head toward the trees with a grin.

“What are you doing?” you asked, laughing as you stepped into the thicket. You looked back quickly, and no one seemed to notice the two of you disappearing into the trees.

“Nothing,” Kevin responded in an innocent enough tone that you laughed in response.

“You know there’s a whole cabin up there that we can go to, rather than be in the trees with all of the bugs and sap or whatever, right?” you teased, realizing you were deep enough into the trees that you could barely hear the murmur of the group talking around the fire. 

“Too far away,” he said, letting go of your hand to put his arm around your waist. 

“So what, we’re gonna make out in the woods for a while?” You were laughing a little as you said it, head tilted up to look at him. The smile on his face made your knees wobble a little as you leaned back slightly into the tree behind you, enjoying the quiet sound of the crickets that surrounded you.

Kevin shrugged, his hand sliding over your waist and along your back. He’d always made you feel so small in comparison to him and now was no exception as he watched your face, like he was enjoying making you wait for more contact. Your hand moved along his chest idly, the fabric of his shirt soft beneath your hand before it settled on the back of his neck to pull him down to you.

All the restraint of the kiss earlier had gone out the window, that much was obvious. It was slow, at least to start, your body buzzing as his teeth caught on your bottom lip already. Your arm tightened around his shoulders, keeping him close as he crowded you against the tree. The bark was digging into your back, scratching you a bit through the fabric of your shirt, but you hardly cared.

His tongue slid over yours and you moaned, not even trying to stop yourself. The sound obviously encouraged him, his hands sliding down to squeeze your ass as he pressed against you more. Urgency seeped into each of you, making you kiss him harder as your hand slid along his jaw. The scratch of stubble against your palm was better than you even remembered, and the desire to feel the same scratch against the inside of your thighs jolted through you.

After palming at your ass again, his hands moved up to the curve of your waist slowly like he was savoring it. He was pressed flush against you by then, overwhelming your senses as you gripped the fabric of his shirt. You sneaked a breathe where you could, your hand sliding up the thick muscle of his arm and over his shoulder. 

Your clit was throbbing between your thighs as you arched toward him, enjoying the soft sound he made feeling your breasts press against his chest. An eager tension was curling up your spine, an impatient, needy sound leaving you as he tugged at your bottom lip teasingly. His mouth left yours to kiss your jaw, coaxing you to tilt your head to the side for him.

Of course, you gave in, your hand sliding into his hair as his kissed along the column of your throat. “You’ve been driving me fucking crazy all day,” he murmured, his mouth against your ear while gripping your hips tightly. “That swimsuit, these fucking shorts.” The sentence is punctuated by him grabbing your ass again, pulling your hips forward into his.

“Fuck, Kevin,” you exhaled, your hand finding his cheek to guide his mouth back to yours. Even with his body pressed against yours like it was, you still needed more. 

His hands were everywhere, sliding up to cup your breast over your shirt, the other on your hip. Squeezing your thighs together, you licked into his mouth as your body rocked against his hungrily. You wanted to hate just how easy it was for him to get you wound up like this, but you’d always absolutely melted under his touch. 

Impatience was threatening to boil over as your core absolutely ached for him, desperate to feel more of him. The kiss had become a little sloppy, and by the time your hand found his wrist to guide his fingers to the waist of your shorts, your lungs were burning. 

He pulled back, his forehead resting against your temple as you both took a few breaths. “You want me to touch you, baby?” he asked, voice low as he kissed your jaw. His fingers toyed with the button of your shorts, making your breathing hitch as you nodded eagerly.

The button came undone, then the zipper, and his hand slipped into your panties, clearly feeling just as impatient as you were. Your arm settled around his neck to keep him close, turning your head to brush your mouth over his again. He happily swallowed the moan you let out as his fingers slid through your folds with ease, exhaling a curse a second later.

“Shit, sweetheart,” he murmured against your mouth, letting the tip of his finger just barely tease at your clit. 

“Don’t be a tease,” you pled, half whining for him already as your hips pressed toward his hand. You swore he was smirking even as he kissed you, his other hand coming up to hold your jaw, keeping your mouth against to his.

Kevin had started to rub firm circles against your clit, enough to make you squirm as you pant into his mouth. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d been this turned on, and you were so hungry for him that you’d completely forgotten that you were pressed against a tree with your friends 30 feet away.

“You’re so fucking wet,” he murmured, fingers rubbing firm strokes from your entrance to your clit and back. You could only nod, still trying to kiss him desperately despite the fact that you had barely caught your breath. He was still pressed close against you and you could feel the hard outline of his cock through his shorts which sent another wave of need through you. 

A slew of curses left you when he sank two fingers into you, letting the heel of his hand grind against your clit. Your hips pressed toward him urgently, feeling yourself tighten around his fingers, and part of you still could hardly believe this was even happening. His mouth left yours before you were ready, trailing down your neck again to suck at your pulse point. You squeezed his shoulder as your hand curled in the fabric of his shirt, doing your best to catch your breath. 

“More, Kev, fuck.” Your words were rushed as you whimpered loudly, feeling his fingers curl against your g-spot. If you had been able to keep them open, your eyes would’ve crossed, exhaling a pleased groan your head fell back against the trunk of the tree behind you.

Your toes curled as heat curled in your stomach, barely able to believe he had you this close to an orgasm already. His fingers were buried deep inside you, fucking into you in shallow motions and giving you the friction that you so desperately needed. 

“C’mon, beautiful, I know you can cum for me,” Kevin said, nipping at your jaw then kissing the hollow of your throat. You nodded quickly, opening your mouth to say who knows what, but a moan came out instead.

He cursed into your skin when your hips jerked, and you tumbled over the edge, somehow managing to groan his name as you came. You were practically clinging to him, whimpering and grateful that you were still upright even as your knees shook. Heat wove through you, leaving your mind blank and buzzing by the time you came down, your hips rocking against his hand until you slowed to a stop.

Your eyes were still closed, because you weren’t sure if you remembered how to open them, more concerned about getting air into your lungs. Kevin’s mouth pressed light and gentle kisses up the side of your neck to your cheek, doing nothing to help slow your heart rate down again. When he kissed you on the mouth, it was sweet, but with a hungry edge that made you clench around his fingers again.

“Damn, I forgot how fucking sexy you are when you cum,” he told you, letting his palm grind against your clit again. Your folds were sensitive and the feeling made you gasp, arching away from him with a whine.

When he pulled back, his fingers leaving you, he was smirking and you couldn’t stop yourself from giving him a pleased grin. Your cheeks were flushed and when you licked your lips, you could tell they were swollen. Everything was buzzing still, and like you finally remembered that the two of you were only slightly hidden by the trees, you glanced around quickly.

“Do you think you can keep your dick in check long enough for us to get to your room?” you asked, a teasing tone to your voice as you let your knuckles brush over the hard line of his cock. 

“Not if you keep doing that,” he responded, leaning to press a quick, open mouthed kiss to your lips before taking your hand and starting toward the cabin.

You nearly had to jog to keep up with Kevin, and you laughed as you told him to slow down. Glancing over your shoulder, it doesn’t seem that anyone around the fire seemed to notice the two of you slip inside the cabin, only pausing to kick off your shoes. 

As soon as the door to his room was closed behind you, his hands were on you again, pulling your body against his. Your head tilted back to meet his kiss, a satisfied hum leaving you at the contact. His hand found your waist, squeezing you there before starting to tug at the fabric of your shirt. He leaned back to pull it off over your head, and you swallowed, grateful that the room was still dark. 

You unfastened his shorts, and when your hand slipped inside to stroke him through his underwear, he groaned your name. His mouth crashed into yours again, bringing his hands up to hold your face gently despite the hunger you were both displaying. He kissed you for a moment longer, one hand sliding to the back of your neck, then to your shoulder as you nudged his shorts down. 

It was easy to figure out what he wanted when he pressed down on your shoulder lightly. You chuckled, kissing him again before sinking to your knees in front of him. His breathing hitched at the sight of you, and you smirked, already leaning in drag your tongue along the hard line of his cock through the fabric of his boxer-briefs. It would have been impossible for you to forget how much he had loved you going down on him, so why not take the time to tease him a little. 

When you looked up at him through your eyelashes, he cursed under his breath as you tugged his underwear down. His eyes were locked on you as his hand moved to push your hair out of your face, keeping his fingers threaded through the strands. With his cock free, you leaned closer to swirl your tongue around the head of it and you could tell that his hands were already shaking slightly. 

The grunt that left him when your hand stroked along his length a few times sent heat prickling down your spine as you started to take more of him between your lips. He started panting in response to you dragging your thumb along the underside of his dick, and his hips rocked toward you lazily. His responsiveness to every touch made you all the more eager, letting your hand fall away from him as you took him deeper in your mouth. 

You took a breath before letting him start to slide down your throat when his fist tightened in your hair. You arched your back to press your breasts against his legs, nearly gagging around his length as he swore under his breath. 

“Fuck, I missed your mouth,” he told you, breathing heavily as you started to bob your head. Alternating between sucking and sliding your tongue over him, you looked up at him again as your clit throbbed between your legs. His brow was creased, eyes squeezed shut as he groaned, and he was tense with restraint, his hips twitching toward you. 

Your lungs were burning, but the heady taste of him and the sound of his voice when he praised you softly had need burning through your veins. Speeding up slightly, your hand squeezed his thigh, letting your nails dig into his skin and he swore loudly. You let yourself get a little sloppy and your jaw relaxed when he hit the back of your throat. It surprised you a little when he briefly held you in place, but him taking that little bit of control made you moan around him.

As soon as he released you, you pulled off to catch your breath, bringing your hand up to stroke him slowly. His eyes were still locked on you, and you grinned up at him, knowing your lips were slick and swollen. Taking another deep breath, you leaned in again, dragging your tongue along the length. It was getting difficult to ignore the way your folds were throbbing, and you were so wet that the inside of your thighs were slick. 

“Shit, Y/N, I’m gonna cum,” Kevin warned, his voice tight as his hand in your hair tightened as he guided you back to where he wanted you. You rolled your eyes at him, smirking quickly before opening your mouth to soothe your tongue over the slit at the head of his cock.

Sliding your mouth along his length, sucking eagerly as your nails dragged down his thigh was all it took to make his hips snap forward when he came. He cursed, fucking into your mouth lazily as he spilled hot down your throat. You could feel his knees shaking slightly and you swallowed, starting to bob your head again as you exhaled a content sigh through your nose.

His hand relaxed in your hair and you pulled off, licking your lips as you looked up again. He had a blissed out look in his eye, breathing heavily as he grinned down at you. Sitting back on your heels, you licked your lips as he took another deep breath.

“I think you actually sucked my soul out,” he said a moment later, a chuckle to his voice as he dragged a hand down his face.

You snorted, grinning as you got to your feet. “Glad I could be of service,” you responded, earning a laugh out of him as his hands settled on your waist. He was smiling as he leaned to kiss you, and the second his mouth was on yours again, that intensity was back. 

His hands moved to unfasten your bra with ease, tugging the fabric away from your body as he started walking you backwards toward the bed. You followed his lead, gasping when his hand came up to cup your breast, rolling your pebbled nipple between his thumb and forefinger with a greedy hum. The back of your thighs hit the edge of mattress, but you stayed on your feet, unwilling to stop kissing him just yet. 

Kevin licked into your mouth, kissing you deeply as his hands slid down to squeeze your ass firmly with a groan. “Lay back for me,” he told you, mouth barely leaving yours. You nodded, tugging at his bottom lip with your teeth when you finally pulled back, settling yourself on the mattress.

Before you could pull him down to you, he was reaching to turn on the lamp on the bedside table. Warm light flooded the room and a protest caught in your throat, self-consciousness sweeping through you. Looking up at him, you managed to fight the urge to cover yourself as a flush colored your cheeks. 

He was silent, looking over you with greedy eyes as he pulled his shirt off over his head. After tucking his dick back in his boxer-briefs, he kicked his shorts off as well before he stepped between your parted knees. Leaning over you with a hand at your side, he kissed between your breasts and down along your stomach to make your breathing hitch. You didn’t expect him to nuzzle against you like he did, exhaling a breath.

“I missed you so much,” he told you, the words quiet as he glanced up at you. There was a softness in his eyes that you hadn’t expected, making your stomach jump as you squirmed on the bed impatiently.

He didn’t give you much of a chance to respond, his hands coming up to tug your shirt and panties down your hips. As soon as he managed to get them untangled from your legs, the fabric joined everything else on the floor, and he pulled you closer to the edge of the mattress as he sank to his knees in front of you.

Kevin didn’t waste anymore time, guiding your legs over his shoulders as his mouth trailed up the inside of your thigh. His breath was hot against your skin and you did your best to relax despite the fact that your hips was already tense with anticipation. You swore loudly when he parted your folds with two fingers, almost immediately leaning in to drag his tongue from your entrance up to your clit, punctuating the motion by sucking the swollen bundle of nerves into his mouth. 

“Oh my god, Kevin,” you breathed, already rolling your hips against his mouth greedily. He hummed in acknowledgement, and you swore you felt the vibration run through every inch of you. 

“I love how fucking wet you get from sucking me off,” he murmured, eyes sliding up your body as his tongue fucked into you. It was your turn to let your fist curl in his hair, pulling at the short strands as he lapped at your wetness. His nose nudged at your clit and his hand slid along the back of your thigh, pushing it up toward your chest. You loved how he was maneuvering you as he saw fit, positioning you exactly how he wanted you.

One of his hands was under your ass, keeping you propped up for him while the other hand slid up your body to your breast. His tongue continued to slide through your folds, sucking here and there as he toyed with your nipple. He was a little rougher than you had anticipated, and the motion makes you groan, arching off the mattress. You could already feel your orgasm building from being so wound up already, making your toes curl as tension bubbled in your stomach. 

“More, Kev, please,” you whined, biting you lip to try and hold back the desperate sounds that rose in the back of your throat. He gave you what he wanted, like he always did, and your clit absolutely throbbed as he sucked it into his mouth again.

With his mouth occupied, he brought two fingers up to tease at your entrance, and you swore loudly as your hips rocked slightly, seeking him out. “You gonna fuck yourself on my fingers, baby?” he asked, the words vibrating through you considering he could barely bring himself to pull away from you.

Immediately, you nodded, then you forgot how to breath all together as he sank two fingers into you, tugging at your nipple at the same time. His tongue was sliding over your clit insistently, drawing figure eights against it as his fingers curled against your g-spot. You saw stars and the sound that left you was nothing short of a sob as your hips rolled against his hand, trying to getting him deeper. Your heel pressed between his shoulder blades, grateful for the extra leverage to help you meet his hand.

Your toes were curled so tightly that your foot threatened to cramp, and when he started to pump his fingers into you to meet the motion of your body, he moaned. The rough stubble covering his jaw had left the inside of your thighs sensitive, bordering on raw, but the irritation only made you that much more desperate. You swore, feeling yourself bow off the bed as he practically devoured you, hitting all of the right spots to send you barreling over the edge and into an orgasm. 

He didn’t let up, fingers still fucking into you as his mouth toyed with your clit mercilessly. It was impossible to catch your breath, pleading for him as you tugged at his hair roughly in an effort to keep him close. By the time you stopped squeezing around his fingers, you had relaxed into the mattress and your body felt heavy as your leg stayed draped over his shoulder.

Looking down at him, you realized that his eyes were already on you, his fingers still buried inside you but not moving as he lapped at your folds firmly. He always felt so good, bringing you down easy like this, until all of a sudden it was too much. A gasp ripped through you as you pushed at his head, the reaction met with a laugh as he pulled away from you.

“Sensitive?” he murmured, eyebrow raised as he smirked slightly. You nodded, a lazy smile on your face as you untangled yourself from him. He pressed a kiss to your hip as he withdrew his fingers from you, looking awfully pleased with himself. 

Your heart rate had finally started to slow by the time he dropped onto the mattress next to you, pressing a kiss to your jaw, then your cheek. There was a hazy look in your eye when you looked at him, still unable to figure out how to piece together a sentence. 

The two of you laid there for a while, close together and just breathing as your fingers traced shapes along his shoulder. Really, you should’ve moved because your bottom half was still hanging off the edge of the bed. 

“You think anyone realized we never came back with drinks?” he asked eventually, his voice a sleepy grumble. You laughed softly, shrugging before you sighed, turning your head to look at him. Leaning forward, you kissed him softly before sitting up. He watched you for a moment longer before he reached for his phone. “Damn, it’s after 11 already.”

“No point in going back out now, if you ask me,” you responded, moving over the mattress to lay your head against a pillow.

You smiled when he moved to follow, already curling up against you. He kissed along your shoulder, nuzzling into the back of your neck after pulled the sheets up to cover you. The cautious voice in the back of your head was telling you that you needed to get up, that you needed to get dressed and go back to your own room, but the bed smelled like him and he was so warm when his leg tangled with yours.

He only pulled back quickly to turn off the lamp before settling against you again even closer, his face pressed into your hair. You were content, even a little sleepy, and getting up wasn’t much of a priority right then. His fingers slid along you waist as the two of you stayed curled up in the dark, slipping into easy conversation.

Kevin had always been pretty quick to fall asleep after a good orgasm, and now seemed to be no exception. The talking tapered off after a while, and his face was pressed into your neck when you heard him start to snore softly. You stayed in place a while longer, nearly squirming with the effort to stay place as the voice in your head got louder and louder. 

Your hand slid along his forearm before you untangled yourself from him, finding that your knees are still wobbly when you got to your feet. It was easy enough to find your shorts and your shirt in the dark and you got dressed before going across the hall. The rest of the cabin was quiet and you went straight to your room, stripping out of the clothes again as you pulled your pjs on with shaking hands. 

In bed, you laid on your back, staring at the ceiling in the dark. Your feelings for him certainly hadn’t changed, so why would the fact that you never slept in bed with him. Every time you’d hooked up in New York, you pulled yourself out of his bed to go to the guest room. You didn’t know why, but Kevin had never mentioned it. Now though, you felt dirty about it, anxiety prickling at your scalp as you laid there. You could probably slip back in without him realizing it, but you were cemented into the mattress, your mind running a million miles an hours until you finally fell asleep. 

SATURDAY

#khayes #nhl imagine #kevin hayes fic #kevin hayes imagine #kevin hayes #flyers imagine

[dadsbongos]

The Mighty Boys

Movie/Game/Show: My Hero Academia Dynamic: Inko Midoriya/Izuku Midoriya/Reader (All Platonic) Warnings: character death (not bnha spoilers), i tried a little experiment thing but ehhh who knows :) Summary: Sundays are for family. ~~~

Sunday mornings were times where the Midoriya children were awoken by streams of golden sunlight pouring in through thin curtains and splashing on their faces. Izuku would always arise first, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and padding across the hall to his older brother’s bed. He’d climb onto the bigger bed and lazily shake his brother until the boy couldn’t ignore Izuku anymore. (Y/n) would sit up and tease Izuku about his bedhead. Then, together, the two boys would dash into the hall and ignore the fact that all their noise would absolutely have woken their mother by now. Inko would lay awake, but remain still, with closed eyes to truly sell the appearance of being asleep as her sons crept into her room. They were both so loud as they jumped onto their mother’s bed. So loud, it would mysteriously “wake” the woman, who would wrap an arm around each of her boys and pull them into her sides in the bed. They would giggle and squirm in feeble attempts to get out of the bed before admitting defeat and being content to lay in their mother’s arms. Slowly, but surely, Izuku and (Y/n) would fall back asleep in their mother’s warm, loving arms.

Eventually, Sunday mornings would start with Inko knocking on her eldest son’s door and calling through for him to wake up and get ready for school with a small Izuku following closely after her. The three would sit at the table and eat breakfast together - careful to avoid the subject of Father, lest (Y/n) go on a tirade about how he should be home and not overseas - until Inko would stand and take their plates. She’d press a kiss to her eldest son’s forehead, hand him his bookbag, and send him off to school with a smile. Izuku would be waving and loudly calling out his own goodbyes to his big brother from the dining table.

As the boys grew and Izuku finally found himself in full swing of attending U.A, Sundays were spent with Inko and (Y/n) - mostly Inko - cleaning the house in anticipation of their weekly visit. Barely after nine in the morning, Izuku would stroll into the home and give and receive hugs of missed love. (Y/n) would tease the younger boy over their old hero name choices, namely the Sibling Duo Heroes: Mighty Boys, while welcoming him home. Inko and (Y/n) would talk about how much they missed Izuku. How proud they are of him. How much they loved him and loved rewatching his performance at the Sports Festival on the T.V. How much they can’t wait to see him crowned as number one hero.

Both boys would go on with their lives and careers but Sundays would always be spent at Mom’s house. At Inko’s dining table with stuffed bellies from her cooking and hearts warm with the fondness of returning home after a long week. Ears full of stories from the past week and bodies begging for rest in the comfort of their old rooms. But those days of the boys’ bedrooms have passed and now they serve as a guest and storage room. Those rooms are Inko’s, not Izuku’s and not (Y/n)’s - because they’ve grown too big to stay in their mother’s arms like they used to. The most they can have now is the nostalgia of stepping through the front door and getting the most loving hug of their lives each Sunday morning.

As time turned on and the years grew and Inko found herself with difficulty breathing and aching joints, Sundays were spent in the hospital. Izuku and (Y/n) sitting around a bed in a sterile, white-centric room with the occasional nurse passing in and out. Sometimes the boys had to be silent, truly silent, for Inko to sleep, actually sleep, peacefully. Sometimes the boys would fill the quiet with stories about their careers, about dates, about friends, about pets, about random dogs they saw in the park that they thought Mom would like. Sometimes the boys would cry, leaving the hospital at the very end of visiting hours with blotched faces and bloodshot, puffy eyes. Izuku would drive home to avoid civilians and journalists and paparazzi alike recognizing him as he broke down over the deterioration of his mother. (Y/n) would sit in his car outside the hospital and weep over his mother’s decaying health until he felt it was safe to drive without the fear of tears clouding his vision. Inko would lay in bed just as she had been when her boys walked in, and she’d stay and she’d wait. Wait until next Sunday when she’d be able to see her boys walk in smiling together again, and wait to watch them leave with tears budding in their eyes.

For a day. For a single Sunday, (Y/n) drove to his little brother’s house first thing in the morning and barely found the stability in his legs to crash into a hug with the man as he hiccuped out the words they’d both been dreading for months. Izuku would feel his chest cave and his heart wrinkle up and his spirit itself die inside of him. They’d cry together. They’d scream and they’d mourn and they’d call out to the universe that they hated it for taking Mom from them. Mom didn’t deserve it. Mom should’ve had so much more time. And Mom was an angel on Earth and the universe just tossed her out like an old doll and it would regret it. They’d sob until their throats hurt and their heads ached. The brothers barely found the energy to kick themselves to eat or drink for the rest of the day; too worried that they wouldn’t be able to keep anything down with how sick they felt on that Sunday.

For a long while, Sundays were awkward and short. Two boys sitting at their mother’s grave with no words of substance to exchange and no idea how to move on from this point. Inko would always guide them through the process of grief when a loved one died and now that the loved one was her, they had nobody to turn to. “I miss Mom,” Izuku would choke out, feeling like a little boy lost in a large store without Inko to hold his hand through the fear. (Y/n) would nod stiffly, swallowing down the lump in his throat and speak through quivering lips in order to be the strong big brother that he always promised to Inko he’d be, “Me too. I miss her, too.”

The world, against all their wishes, still spun - but Sundays stopped. (Y/n) couldn’t pull himself out of bed long enough to even get dressed let alone drive down to his brother’s house. Izuku was quick to throw himself into work as deeply as possible to just forget the nagging feeling of guilt in letting his older brother pull away. Both boys knew that Inko would be disappointed, but neither of the boys could manage the will listen to their mother when she wasn’t there to say anything. No more golden sunlight to wake them, no knocking at their bedroom doors, no nice homemade breakfasts - only the reminder that Mom was gone for good. Only the pain of knowing they would never get to hear her last words, only hoping she hadn’t asked, “Where are my boys?” as she slipped into eternal slumber.

Then, though still early in his life, Izuku had a son. A giggly, smiley, happy little bundle of sunshine of a boy. And Sundays were revived. (Y/n) would visit every week to see his new nephew and see that his little brother was handling well. (Y/n) would babysit when his brother was busy with work. (Y/n) was an uncle now, and it revived the part of him that wished to take care of someone the way his mom did for him and Izuku. To show someone an unconditional love and a place to call home. He knew it was Izuku’s son and not his, but being Uncle (Y/n) was good enough for him while the baby would grin up at his slowly rebuilding heart.

Sundays continued passing and although neither of the boys had their mother's arms to lay their heads in, they still had each other to lean upon. They had taken on the spirit and the kindness of Inko and churned it into a love they could show the newest Midoriya. Give the newest Midoriya a soft place to rest as he grew with the praise and attention and love that Inko had once given Izuku and (Y/n). The care Inko had given to her little heroes; the sibling duo was passed onto that boy, Midoriya, Inejiro.

#bnha x reader #mha x reader #izuku x reader platonic #inko x son reader #inko x reader #deku x reader #midoriya x reader #midoriya x brother reader #midoriya angst

[galvus]

prompt: baleful • words: 474 • era: before the fall • [ masterpost ] threatening harm; menacing.

content warning: pretty extreme body horror + just horror in general.

The dead came in many shapes, each of them frightening to see in different ways.

There were the freshly dead with their vacant eyes and still-warm blood and the stiff, ashen limbs of those expired hours before. There were the long dead, their bodies soft and watery, disturbingly sweet-smelling, rotting.

There were skeletons, risen from the grave by dark magicks, their plentiful bones picked clean by insects as well as time.

And there were the Damned, pulled with mage's hands from the pliant soil of freshly dug graves. Splinters from the roughly hewn wood of their coffins still clinging to their burial clothes, they would walk. And they would fight. Not with the same fragile stumbling as skeletons, but with an unholy sort of strength.

The Shroud was home to so much more than beasts and bandits. It was a refuge for those desperate to disappear, for magic users being chased from the hells they made. Any cave, any corner, could hide something terrible.

Tales of the undead were passed from hand to hand in Gridania and the surrounding hamlets. Cries in the dark were often ignored once the sun dipped and the moon rose. No one wanted to be a hero soaked in starlight when the dead walked. Men and women snapped shutters closed. Children climbed into their parents' beds for fear of what might linger outside of their windows.

But no parents, no guardians, no lovers could protect you from dreams.

The dead plagued Bianca. Every time she shut her eyes, she was visited by nightmares of familiar faces with their jaws cracked open, their eyes lit by white fire and the wounds she couldn't heal in time bleeding freely. Their boots squelched in the dirt beneath their feet, the dirt that was churned into red mud by their unthinking and weighty steps. They crossed lonely paths and lonelier, moonlit fields to find her.

Some gurgled, bile foaming at the corners of their mouths. Others spoke. It was the ones who spoke who followed behind her even after she woke, their footsteps leaving a trail of viscera and bad memories.

“Thank you,” they said. A broken neck tilted at an extreme angle. Fingers snagged inside of a fist-sized hole in their guts. What remained of an arm dangling from a shoulder torn asunder by a beast's claws. “You saved me.” Backs bent at the place where their spine had been shattered. The white bones of their sternum and ribs pulled apart by unnaturally strong hands. Eyes popped. Teeth crushed. Fingers stolen. “You're a hero.”

Every time she woke from a nightmare, it was with a wretched sob, her nightgown soaked in sweat, her hands aching from the grip she held on her bedding. And every time she rose to change, the Damned followed her...

… as if she was one of them.

#ffxivwrite2021 #type: ffxivwrite #oc: bianca #mine: writing

[writing-frenzy]

Care to Make a Wager? (SVSSS Fic)

Summery: No System AU: In which Airplane finds he has a new lease in life, but of course it would have a cost. Of course, being the creator of this world gives him quiet the price cut. Not to mention the untended bonus content.

Still, he did not expect the direction his life would go.

(Warning: mentions of death, violence, and most stuff you could find in SVSSS Canon. You should be good, but here is a just in case.)

---

When one Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky was reborn, he really wanted to curse his lot in life. Sure, he had been born into a rather well off Merchant Family, but when the Lord of the Family has two Official Wives and a crap ton of Mistresses on the side, things were bound to get crazy.

Luckily one Shang Huan had one hell of a Mother; in another life, Airplane might have described her as a ‘killer queen or a ‘boss ass bitch’, but as his mother, he just thought of her as the most amazing woman on the planet. As it was, She alongside a whole bunch of tutors taught him everything he needed to know about the world and then some. 

(Sewing was a bitch to get right.)

But with those lessons, it didn’t take long for Shang Huan to realize he was in his own fucking novel; it had not been a happy realization, making him break out into a truly childish tantrum, filled with screaming and tears that only calmed after he was given some delicious melon seeds.

(Luckily it had been attributed to wanting a snack after a morning full of lessons, otherwise he probably would have gotten the switch for it...)

But with all this knowledge of his place in life now with him, Shang Huan needed to start planning; good thing that was one of his specialties.

Noting down every bit of information he could, Shang Huan mapped out as much items and cheats he could afford to take from the Protagonist, as well as places he could and couldn’t go, hazel eyes narrowed as he messily scratched out his plots with his trusty quill and journal. The many lessons he Mother made him go through only helped to sharpen him, as well as learn the world’s common sense.

He was having a good go at it, building himself up as much as he could before something completely from left stage truly changed his course.

“There is a legend of Dreaming Glory, said to be a treasure to ensure great health and excellent rest. Though be cautious, for it is guarded carefully by the spirit of a Felled Divine Beast, angry and resentful of the betrayal it had faced.” was a tale a wandering storyteller spun, a group of children ooooing and awwwwing at the right places, even as Airplane felt his jaw drop at the information, focusing more on those words then the candy his mother allowed him to buy at one of the festival stalls.

See, while the Legend of the Dreaming Glory was definitely right at home with this world, it actually hadn’t been anywhere in Proud Immortal Demon Way; it had been in one of his earlier short stories, where Airplane had been practicing with the Xianxia/Xuanhuan genres (and didn’t need to rely on it, dreaming more of the theater then writing). (Until a mugging gone wrong and dreams cut short-) 

This... opened a few more roads then expected, especially if all his fantasy stories came into play, as there had been a lot of experimentation with plots and ideas until he hit his cash cow with PIDW. After all, taking something from the protagonist was always going to be a risk of somehow getting his attention, no matter how much the man wouldn’t actually need it.

(After all, showing off had always been a part of Luo Binghe’s character; showing that he was no longer the penniless street kid, no longer the weak disciple, no longer the one who was always pushed around, but now the one who can take.)  

It also meant more research; thankfully, his Mother was one to always encourage more in the way of learning, thankfully humoring all the ‘trips’ he wished to take.... In hindsight, he probably should have questioned why she was always willing to take him and go, but at the time was just thankful that he could indeed confirm places he would need to visit later and squirrel away items that were within his reach. (An actual legit Cultivation Manuel, even if it was only directed for growing crops and alchemy, was still his most proudest find, only needing a riddle to get and easily hidden in his pouch with his other learning books. Being an Author only got him so far, as every little detail was needed to ensure one stayed on a steady path, though did provide it’s own little boosts here and there.)

------=------

One day, when Shang Huan had been 13, sneakily already past the first part of Cultivation Qi Refining and entering into the first stage of Foundation Building, found his Mother to be ill, no Doctors seeming to be able to cure her (or willing too as he saw a servant of the Second Wife slip a few gold; he got his revenge in the end), Shang Huan took a deep breath and buckled down, doing all that his Mother said to do with the time she had left, learning as much as he could before it would no longer be open to him. 

(Like he could stay here in this den of vipers, without his Mother’s protection and love; there was nothing else for him here after all.)

In that time as his Mother stubbornly clung on, he listened as she mourned his chance to enter into the prestigious Cultivation Sect of Cang Qiong like the First Wife’s Third Son, Shang Shaoqing. She apologized greatly that she could not fight for him to get that chance, like so many of the other Mistresses did for their own children.

‘Huh,’ Airplane couldn’t help but think, ‘looks like I just dodged a arrow.’ though it was good to finally know just what the timeline was for the story; Shang Shaoqing was to be a certain traitorous Peak Lord after all.

As it was, his Mother showed her determination and spirit greatly, lasting till he was 16 before she finally past away, a smile on her face as she did, her son long gone with his inheritance and her blessing of broken ties, carrying her name meaning of Shang instead of his Father’s.

(If the night before, Shang Huan had decided to tell her of his other life, told her how this was a story he had happened to read, showing her a few of the treasure he had gathered, how he cried when Shang Wenyan had only smiled with a few too many teeth, her voice fierce as she praised her son with all her heart, hugging him close with what remained of her strength as she told him her last words.

“Live life however you want my child, live and dream and hope, do not be afraid to destroy any your way, and know I will love you always my greatest pride and joy.”

Well... no one needed to know about that.)

But with this new freedom came it’s cons as much as it’s pros. As he was stuck at a bottleneck in Foundation Building at Middle Stage, there was still a number of things outside his reach until at least Core Formation First Stage...

------=------

It was during his wandering, selling talismans he could make at his level, along with tales he made up that he finally got his big break.

He first heard tales of a powerful Resentful Spirit that was residing in a broken land near the Borders, no one from Demons to Humans wanting the land as it was deemed useless for all the resentful energy there, and no one bothering to pay a sect for what they considered a waste of money and time.

Shang Huan saw this, and wonder if it was what he recognized... Taking in more details and scoping out for any information, Airplane couldn’t help but wonder how lucky it was; this was indeed a spirit from one of his very first stories in fact. He knew exactly what to do.

Instead of fighting the Resentful Spirit, Shang Huan brought it pure cave water and incense, smelling of ash and jasmine. 

This certainly got the Spirit’s attention.

“What do you want Rogue?”

“I want for many things to be honest.” the brunet Cultivator smiled, not showing any teeth so as to make it look falsely gentle, “But for now, I admit I do desire your land.”

That got a huff for his efforts, the spirit a mass of negativity and ire, but actually still listening.

“You have provided the right offering, so I will give you a chance; bring me wine of the Soothing Jade Flower, the Broken Sword of Chun, and a branch of Deathly Yew... You get me these three things, and the land will be yours.” And with that shopping list given, the spirit was gone, even as the energy seemed thicker then before, the incense and water gone.  

And with an absolutely evil grin, Airplane was off; he had already remembered the Wine and branch, had even gotten them first as he had plans for them, but he had not remembered the broken blade.

Fortunately, it wasn’t too hard to find; he had written that the blade had been struck with a heavy stone in a battle between Demons and Cultivators on the borders of the land, where it would lay forever. And lo and behold, there was only one ancient battlefield it could be abandoned in, as this was PIDW.

There weren’t many left over from the borders after all, most of them being purified already. And as he thought, the Bloody Sword Grave was still around, a testament to just how much the resentful energy had soaked into the ground, demons and cultivators alike avoiding the place like the plague, even as bloody rusted swords stayed stabbed into the ground, their thirst and hatred still felt even to this day.

Couldn’t be compared to Xin Mo of course, but for being swords on the surface they sure were impressive. Ignoring all these deadly, intact blades stabbed into the ground, Shang Huan covered his face with a scarf drenched in purified Qi infused water, even as the talisman he sewed on for defense and purity glowed the more he traveled through.

He finally stopped at a blood splattered rock, digging carefully around it as he did, before he managed to pull out four broken pieces of what had once been a beautiful blade, but was now nothing but shambles and rags.

Having what he needed, Airplane made his way back to the spirit and their lands.

------=------

(This deadly spirit of a truly terrible Cultivator, who had been feared and revered for being a monster on the battlefield... cried as they saw the items laid out before them.

“Ah, no my Han-Er, my beloved figher... why you stupid, loveable fool...” The Spirit sobbed, easily using his energy to clean and reformed the blade, manipulating the energies of the other two items to aid it, ensuring the sword would still be pure, hugging it close even as it seemed to damage them.

“... He tried, to come back to you; his fellow soldiers betrayed him... He loved you so much... still does.” Shang spoke, watching as the spirit that laid resting in the blade finally came out with this truth, purifying the other as they did, along with most of the land around them.

The brunet had to look away from their reunion, their emotions a bit too much for him... This had been one of his first tragedies he had written, a solider and their beloved separated because of jealousy and hate, doomed to wait for each other forever, the solution to be so easy to have, if someone had given them a bit of kindness, to discover the truth of their separation, though never given the chance in the end... He never mention just what the Beloved’s gender was, made it ambiguous, but had in his mind of minds always thought of them as a man...

Maybe he shouldn’t have put too much of himself into his work, but a habit is so hard to break.

“... We truly thank you; as promised, the land is now yours to do with as you see fit; all you need to do is put your name on the deed and your blood into the ward stone. All the treasures inside are now rightfully in your ownership, so mote it be.” was announced, making Shang Huan turn to see two beautiful and handsome men smiling at him, before they bowed seeing they had his attention.

Airplane could only bow back, biting on the words of how he owed to them to do this at least.

And with that, they were gone, to enter finally into the cycle of reincarnation, together at last...)

------=------

Having his own place was wonderful; a lot of work, but wonderful all the same.

The wards around his land ensured no one with malice could actually enter it, along with protections against thieves and robbers like most noble Sects had. Shang Huan even went as far as to make sure he owned the plot of land in the official records, having everything stamped and recognized, even as he made sure no one actually looked too closely at what land it actually was.

He even made sure to pay his yearly taxes to the Emperor on time, making sure everything was nicely recorded and logged. (And seeing as he didn’t live in any town or such, he didn’t have to bother paying anything to any Lords for protection! How nice was that?)

But having a base of operations, one with land rich in Qi and perfect for Cultivating on, it not only gave Airplane security, but many other advantages as well.

He now had a place to securely put all the treasures he had gathered, which was a lot considering it was a variety of weapons, valuables, and even priceless seeds to plant. He could be completely self-sufficient as he cultivated, the spirits on the land easily convinced to do chores in exchange for sweets and treats (And being able to live in such a energy rich place). Not to mention how his Cultivation not only went up, but combined with other manuals that were treasures of the home, Shang was set on his way to being a powerful Cultivator in his own right.

And if he was feeling a bit cooped up, he could always go on journeys around his world, exploring and treasure hunting for odds and ends as he saw fit.

Soon enough, Shang Huan had managed to reach 34 years old, entering the Peak of Nascent Soul stage in his cultivation when, in a bit of boredom and interest, he bought out a debt ridden gambling house on the border of his territory, that rested in a ghost-like town on the border of the Human World and the Demon Realm.

It was, quiet frankly, just something to do to pass the time. It wasn’t too hard to fix the place up, and warding it had been a fun challenge of his skills, but he honestly hadn’t expected anything much of it, just putting a few of his lessor needed or easily replenished treasure up to be won. And making it to where anything bet could only be what one had to bet, alongside making sure others would have to honor it had been a fun spell to create, as he really didn’t want to be bothered by liars and braggarts and then having to chase them down. He even just made up some Golems and bargained with a few willing natural spirits to help run the place.

This was just suppose to be a fun little venture; he never expected it to blow up like it did.

------=------

It started slow; a trickle, with a whisper, a simple rumor.

There is a place where priceless treasure could be won; if you’re willing to bet for it that is. But be careful to not bite off more then you can chew, for it might be more then a bit of blood and coins you lose.

Some poor sods have even lost their very souls to the place, even now working where screams and laughter flow so freely to the terrible click the dice, the gentle flap of the cards.

It is a place no Mortal is safe, where no Demon has promise, where a Cultivator is honor bound to accept what is due; after all, no one has to enter the place, no one needs to keep coming back, no one has to bet their all, not all all. 

But oh, how they come; even those who dare not darken the doorway of that gambling hall come, filling what was once an empty town into one practically bustling with life. Funny, how it came about because of such a deadly place.

And oh, do not even bother messing with the Gilded Plane Gambling Hall’s Owner, a man who at first seems so weak and stumbling, so gentle and busy with their hard work, who at first couldn’t hurt a fly even as he smiles so prettily.

He’ll smile that same smile even as you sell your very soul at his tables, those gorgeous hazel eyes amused even as the crowds pant at his feet, screams all around from both terror and ecstasy.

(Shang Huan can’t help but sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose as he is once more offered someone’s entire being; if he’s said it once, he’s said it again, betting is at the tables, not at his feet.

Just another day it seems; hopefully there will be no explosions in the kitchen again.)  

-----------------------=-----------------------

0.0 huh, I did not expect this when I started writing; I just wanted to have Airplane have some fun in the world he created, maybe opening up a few businesses to make money on the side. I did not mean to make him into an oblivious Hua Cheng of the PIDW verse (Yes, in this verse, he will be as terrifying and pretty, I will not take criticism for it.)

Also, I was greatly inspired by Nighthaunting, though instead of ballet I have SQH as a theatre kid whose dreams got cut short due to bad luck and assholes. I love how they have built their world, and how they say that writing was probably a side thing for Airplane, which just makes so much sense. Also, I am all for Airplane being scary and fully taking advantage of his author knowledge, so haha! Hope you all enjoyed this story~

#SVSSS #Scum Villain Self Saving System #Scum Villain Self-Saving System #Shang Qinghua #Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky #Wager (SVSSS) Verse #SVSSS Fic

[pizzaboat]

After a particular bad storm, Luz and king decide to have a movie night..

It should be fun, but Luz just hopes the two adults joining them don't kill each other in the next 2 hours...

"No way, I'd rather clean Hooty than watch some goofy kids movie"

"But Edaaa!" The teen whined, "There's nothing else to watch, and the storm nocked out all the power!"

Sure the power was out. Courtesy of the terrible weather. The magical grid through out the building had been temporarily shut off for hooty's safety, and so most things in the house had stopped working. But that wasn't a good enough reason for Eda to sacrifice napping time.

Eda watched as the human brought the box containing some human *VHS tape* titled "The Lion king" up to display. 

"Come on Its a classic," Luz pleaded, " and you agreed, after some persuasion-"

- Manipulation." 

"-that you'd do something with me and King," Luz pointed, "And you said I could pick. I pick movie night."

"Hey, I say alot of things. Doesn't make 'em true." Eda said with a shrug, "And don't even try to give me any puppy dog eyes kid, I'm immune now."

Luz pouted, and Eda watched as an idea formed on the girls face. Never a good sign..

"Well," Luz said, "You think your tough, but it'd be a shame if anyone in town found out you secretly like hugs!"

"You wouldn't dare," Eda gasped, "They'd never believe you!"

"Oh really? Try me." Luz challenged.

Damn it. Blackmail. She really was her kid. Eda knew teaching her would come back to bite her in the ass.

"Fine," She sighed, "But if anyone starts singing, I'm out."

"That might be a problem.. since it's a musical,"

Titan damn it.

***

And that's how thirty minutes later everyone was gathered in the living room as Luz stuffed human candies into some contraption and King dragged an assortment of snacks to the sofa, throwing them on the coffee table.

Even Lilith had been dragged out of her cave for the night.

"I didn't know you were interested in this stuff," King said to her sister as she settled in the furthest side of the couch, away from everyone else.

"Of course I'm not," She told him, "This is the only room in the house with sufficient enough lighting to read my book."

"If you say so," He muttered.

Eda plopped down onto the couch, opposite to her;

"Yeah, Lily's a nerd," She yawned, pulling a blanket over her self and settling in, "She doesn't do fun. So don't expect her to thrive in social situations."

"I'm not a nerd!" The other woman glared, " I'm trying to research a cure. For our curses."

"Save it," Eda snorted, "I'm fine the way I am, no thanks to you."

"I split the curse, what more do you want?"

"for you to take some damn accountability." 

"How can I do that if you don't let me!?"

"I don't care, figure it out!"

"OK!" Luz cut in with fake enthusiasm, "The movies starting! Who's excited!?"

Eda snapped her gaze to the teen. The two adults had missed the worried looks both Luz and King had been giving them as things had escalated.

Eda felt a wave of guilt, as Luz wormed her way into her side, deviding the two sisters in the hopes of preventing some all out fist fight, she guessed. Eda wrapped an arm around the girl hugging her back as the movie started and music played.

"Hey king, pass some snacks up," Luz whispered.

 

"Get your own, peasant," He whispered back.

***

Lilith had tried her best to focuse on words of the book infront of her in the flickering candle light, but her gaze always wandered back to the small box set on the coffee table infront of them.

The demon had been scolded multiple times by the other two, as he always managed to sit himself directly infront of the screen every five minutes, completely engrossed in its contents.

Lilith didn't do musicals. She hated them. Always had.

Edalyns loud complaints and groans of annoyance when the characters had broke into song, were more obnoxious than the movie its self.

That was new.. wasn't Edalyn big into musicals back when they both were in school?

The human had sung along to every word, boasting that she knew the lyrics to all the "Disney songs," What ever the hell a Disney was, Lilith didn't know. And she didn't want to find out.

Lilith had also noticed the wary glances the human sent her every now and then, as if she thought Lilith would pounce on them all. Lilith couldn't blame them for that one, so she did her best to keep her gaze anywhere else but the rest of the room, and focused back in on her book.

***

King could sympathise with the young creatures desire to become king and rule over all those bellow him. The young lion was the most relatable main character he'd ever seen. Much better than those characters from Luz's books. 

Someone hungry for status much like himself. Though King was already a king. Feared by all.

He clapped when Simba scratched the hyenas face. These animals names were weird he decided though. Lions. Hyenas. Elephants. The movie had even featured those freaks, the giraffes.

He understood the feeling of helplessness when both Simba and his companions had been trapped In the elephants grave yard, only to be saved by Simba's father Mufasa.

He gasped when he discovered Scar's plan to usurp his brother. Maybe Luz had chosen a good movie after all...

***

The human whiped tears from her eyes, then continued to blubber. King wailed clutching his stuffed animal. Even Edalyn seemed somewhat moved, though she didn't show it much.

The father had died apparently. Betrayed by his brother. Lured into a trap by his trusted sibling. His son used against him as bait.

OK maybe that one hit close to home. Hadn't she lured her sister to a witches duel using their apprentice against them? Seeing the broken form of the betrayed, forced images of what could have happened into Lilith's mind, and she suppressed a shudder.

Edalyn petrified. Luz skewered.

It hit her just how close she had come to getting both her sister and her sister's apprentice killed.

Damn it. She'd lost her page.

***

These guys had the right idea, "Hakuna matata", no worries. If society decides your not worth it, why not atleast relax and try to have a good time with your friends. Screw it. Y'know?

Maybe that's what she would've thought even a month ago. But she wasn't so sure that was such a great message to send kids. Abandon responsibly. She knew predictably that the movie would correct this. She was proved right of course.

***

Luz's excitement bubbled towards the end. She'd seen the movie a thousand times when she was younger. But big confrontations were always exhilarating to watch.

Though less fun when your the one confronting things in real life, that's where the beauty of fiction comes in; She was in the mood to enjoy some nice old fashioned living through fictional characters. No danger. Just movies and her family. And Lilith. She wasn't sure why Lilith was In the owl house. Not because of the storm. Just in general.

Luz would have figured Lilith would have found somewhere to stay by now. But it might be difficult for her, what with the Emperors Coven declaring her a wanted criminal, while the rest of them had been pardoned. A selfish part of Luz wished she'd just leave anyway. Her skin always crawled when the woman was around. 

Luz felt bad about this. But it didn't stop her from occasionally thinking it.

She caught a glimpse of the woman In question, when Scar had been left to be killed by the hyenas. Lilith look paler than what seemed possible with her already ivory complexion. Her gaze fixed on the old mini TV. Was she rooting for Scar or something?

Luz wouldn't be surprised.

***

The villian had recieved what he deserved. To be vanquished by his enimies. 

Lilith felt sick thinking of the similarities between her and the character.

Jealousy. Ambition. Cunning. The will to do what ever it takes. 

She knew they were different. But she couldn't help but wonder what could've happend if she were more like this "Scar" character. 

Titan. She thought this was just a kid's movie.

***

The movie finished. Eda had fallen asleep towards the end only to be gently shaken awake by Luz after. The movie hadn't been bad. She'd even enjoyed it, Eda wouldn't admit that to anyone though. Not in a million years.

Luz said goodnight with a tight, crushing hug, then carried King to bed. The little guy must have conked out at some point into the film. 

Movie night accomplished and no one had even died. A win if ever there was one.

They would clean up in the morning but for now sleep, she made her way to leave as well but was stopped by her sister.

"Edalyn, I think we should talk.."

#the owl house #luz noceda #eda clawthorne #edalyn clawthorne #lilith clawthorne #toh king #the owl house fanfic #idk what the point of this fic was.. #toh luz #toh eda #toh lilith

[firewoodfigs]

25 for royai, it fits them WAY too well :D

25. Wet kisses after finding refuge from the rain.

(for @brucestephenbucky - thank you for the prompt, lovely!! sorry this took awhile I wrote it on my phone and forgot about it existed AHAHA but I hope you enjoy <3) 

“Sorry to trouble you like this, Lieutenant,” Mustang grimaced. They’d ended up seeking shelter at her apartment after they’d met before Hughes’ grave from the sudden downpour, as it was closer. And while he had no qualms about being reunited with his Lieutenant - in her home, of all places - especially after they’d been separated for months, he couldn’t help but feel a little bad. Here he was, dripping all over her rug like a drenched kitten while she dealt with cleaning up the mess he made. 

Not quite how he’d envisioned their reunion to go, but here they were now.  

“It’s alright,” Hawkeye replied, a playful twinkle in her eyes even as her fringe clung to her forehead, damp from the rain. “What’s new?” 

Mustang grinned unabashedly. “You make a fair point.” 

She simply smiled in return before heading towards her room, presumably to rummage through her wardrobe. 

Mustang, on the other hand, stood in her living room, freezing and thinking. The brief time they’d spent apart had certainly given him space to mull over the what ifs, the could have beens. The feelings he’d harboured for her, even as he tried desperately to cheat himself over the years. Even as he allowed poorly-crafted lies and man-made guidelines to suppress how he truly felt about her. 

Typically, Mustang prided himself for his self-control. But the opportunity presented itself in the privacy of her home now, so to speak. Now, reunited with her away from prying eyes, he had the chance to let her know the true extent of his affection. Suppose he never had the chance to after this, because he died (the alternative where she died was simply unfathomable) in the course of the dangerous mission awaiting them? 

“Sir,” Riza called gently, appearing with a fresh towel slung over her arm. 

Under the dim, yellow light, she was a bit of a mess herself. Her hair was dishevelled, her eyes sunken and complexion pasty from an obvious lack of sleep. Still, something in him swelled as he revelled in the sight of her. Her. His dearest subordinate, his childhood friend, his comrade during the war and everything in between. (Everything that he’d only dared to dream about for so long - his lover, his partner, his equal.) 

And suddenly the temptation of it all was all too much to bear. Roy caved, pulling her close to his chest as she approached. 

Startled, Riza immediately made a move to resist. “You’re drenched, sir. This is hardly the time for this,” she protested, though her struggle was half-hearted.   

“Sorry,” he grinned, not sounding the least bit apologetic as he pulled her closer. Tighter. Riza only rolled her eyes and huffed, turning away to hide the traitorous hints of pink in her cheeks. “So it’d be alright, then, if I wasn’t a wet, sodding mess?” 

“I didn’t say that,” Riza quipped back, her voice carefully neutral. 

“You were thinking of it.” 

“I wasn’t. Now go take a warm shower before you catch a cold,” she admonished. “I’d prefer if you were useless only on rainy days.” 

“I don’t mind being useless if it means I can do this,” and Roy leaned in to rest his forehead, damp from rain and sweat, against hers before pressing a kiss to her lips. Like a refuge from the storm raging outside, it soothed and comforted his heart, which had been aching, yearning for her during her assignment. Mustang smiled, about to pull back. (He’d only intended for it to be quick, chaste. A momentary breach of the rules.) But her lips part invitingly, beckoning exploration, and immediately a carnal ecstasy leaps up in his throat. Desire brims on the cusp, spilling from the edges of his mouth as he continues to kiss her with desperate passion and overwhelming gratitude. Where he’d once known her as a friend, a subordinate, he now had the privilege of knowing her as a lover. Knowing the taste of her lips beneath his and the sweetness of finally, finally having a space for an outpouring of desire. Of devotion and love.

When he pulled back at last, her cheeks were flushed crimson, but relief flooded her honeyed eyes and came out in the form of a soft, contented sigh. 

“Time for that bath. Later, Lieutenant.” 

“Later, sir,” Riza affirmed, catching on to his intended message like she always did. (There would be a later. He’d make sure they would both live to see the future after this.) 

#royai #royai fic #royai fanfic #writing prompt #prompts are always welcome!! <3

[teenage-fanbitch]

you left me in this broken world

Fandom: Dream SMP

Word count: 2317

Please remember that this fanfic is about the characters of the SMP, it is not about the content creators and should not be interpreted as suh. There are no romantic relationships in this fanfic because 1. I don't know if the ccs are comfortable with that and 2. I wrote this about their character's friendship.

-----

It was awkward when they first met. At least, for her it was. Will never had issues with meeting new people, he'd just be talking and talking until eventually the person in question talked back.

Maybe it was the way Phil raised him, or maybe he was just born like that. It didn't matter to Niki, because her friend would always smile.

That was something she never seemed to grow tired off. Not back when they first met, not now, not ever.

Things were easier back then, though. Will would sing for her, and they'd dance and laugh their sorrows away.

They'd lost that, somewhere along the way, and she longs to get it back.

They've been through everything together, been through fire and rain for the other. Perhaps it's why she can't handle being away from Will, from the person she considers her brother.

It's not as if she doesn't want him to have this, to create a home for himself, to be free from the voices haunting him in his sleep.

"You deserve the world, Niki."

She remembers watching him softly play a beautiful tune, remembers him warming her frozen fingers, remembers that those hands were not made for war.

"So do you."

-----

They reunite, eventually. She joins the SMP and jumps into Will's arms the moment she sees him. There's a faint smell of battle lingering in his hair, but that doesn't matter, because at least he's still here.

It's fun, walking around L'Manberg with Tommy excitedly telling her the story behind every building.

She understands why Will thinks of him as his little brother, because while Tommy may be annoying, it's endearing to watch him flounder around.

It doesn't calm the raging storm in her, because Tommy's a child, and he just fought in a war, fought for everything he believed in, and he'd died for it.

He'd died for a home.

And Niki will do anything to give her friends one. It doesn't matter if she's known them for years or just met them, they all deserve a place to be happy.

L'Manberg is her everything. It's a place she can annoy Will, can ruffle Tommy's hair, can pass Tubbo a smile, can joke around with Fundy, and can talk for hours on end with Eret, because even they deserve a friend.

Everyone deserves a friend.

-----

Her home is gone the second Schlatt took place on the podium. She's seen bad people before, seen their smirks, the hunger in their eyes, their desire to get what they want.

She's never seen it directed at Will. Everyone loved the boy who played music at the park, who smiled at every person he came across, if only to make their day a tiny bit better. She's never met anyone who looked at him like he needed to be destroyed.

Her hope is gone the second Schlatt banishes her friend. She's seen Will scared before, seen him at his lowest point, but nothing could prepare her for this.

This is Will's home, he fought tooth and nail for it, fought with everything he had. And now it's gone. Her friend loses it all in just a split second, and she can't help but cry his tears.

L'Manberg is gone the second its flag burns. This isn't what L'Manberg was meant to be, was meant to become. This is corruption, and if there's one thing Niki refuses to let happen, it's her friends losing themselves because of it.

-----

There are times when she feels like it's better this way, like Schlatt is a better leader than Will ever could be. Manburg is thriving, and nothing too bad seems to have happened.

But then she hears Quackity scream at Schlatt, and she sees the bottles of alcohol scattered across the white house. She spots Tubbo sneaking away, hands shaking with fear. She sees the hardened eyes of Fundy as he looks at the flag.

She sees herself, sitting at the L'Mantree, looking at where the walls used to be. This is their tree. Except it isn't really theirs anymore, is it?

There were times when they'd come to the tree when she'd listen to Will rant about governing, when Will would sing her a song after a nightmare and she'd finally be able to rest. But Will is gone now, and she's all alone again.

She wants it back. She wants her friend back.

-----

People always tell her she's too kind for her own good, that she wouldn't see an absolute asshole if they'd be standing right in front of her.

But it's not that she doesn't see it, or purposely ignores it. Even the most hated people can have a heart.

The citizens of L'Manberg hate Eret, warned her for the king, but she didn't listen.

Because she knows that deep down, Eret still has loyalty, still has something to fight for, still has a heart.

Even the worst people can be saved. That's what she always thought. But not now, as she stands in front of Schlatt and all she sees is rotten.

Schlatt doesn't deserve her kindness. Not after everything he'd done to her, to everyone. The first punch was one of anger, the second one of hatred, the third one of sadness, and by the fourth one she's lost it.

She's crying and punching and she doesn't even notice when her punches only hit air, when she's dragged away and all that is left are tears as she stares at the bars of her jail cell.

-----

Nothing has ever mattered more to her than this. Not when Tubbo is covered in burn scars, when Tommy is no longer bouncing around, when Quackity is silently standing in a corner, and Fundy looks at her like he doesn't know if it was worth it.

She doesn't either. Will has lost it, he wears insanity in his eyes and once she thought she could fix that, could convince him that it was going to be fine.

But she can't, can she? She hadn't missed his coldness towards Tommy, his not caring about Tubbo, his distrust of Fundy. Even Technoblade was worried about him, even Technoblade thought he was too far gone.

Nothing has ever mattered more to her than this, because maybe getting L'Manberg back will get her her brother back, will save him from whatever is destroying him.

-----

They won. L'Manberg is back in their hands and there's still hope. They can make this place a home again.

And so they remove the decorations, remove everything that has something to do with Manburg, with that vile memory.

She's the first to spot the TNT. No one else noticed, and she doesn't want them to. They're finally laughing and she doesn't want to ruin that. So she covers it up, she pretends like it isn't there because they're safe, right?

Until Technoblade breaks. And then so does Tommy, and Tubbo, and all of her friends. They all break.

And so does she, once she realises Will isn't there, because that can only mean one thing. She wasn't able to save him.

-----

She knows Will was gone long before, knows this is probably what he wanted, but she can't help her aching heart the second Phil puts his sword through her friend's chest.

She loved her brother more than anything in the world, and now he's gone. Killed by his own father, by one of the few people that knew how much he was actually hurting.

There's a scream on her lips, and she doesn't care if it gets out, because Will was the one person that had always been there for her, that promised to never leave her. And now he's dead. He's gone and he's not coming back and that scares her.

So she screams and she cries it all out, she doesn't fight the withers, doesn't care if they'll kill her.

Her throat aches and her eyes burn, and it's all Phil's fault. He's the one who did this to her, the one who took her home.

And she screams a little louder.

-----

She finds herself sitting at the L'Mantree again, reminiscing about a past time. Back when Will was still in charge, and they'd be looking at their country, and everything would be okay.

Back when Will would lend her an old coat of his to keep her warm. Now she stole the coat herself, she'd grabbed it from his body, had ruffled his hair one last time, and ran away with tears in her eyes.

She doesn't care that the coat is covered in blood, because it still smells like Will, and it still makes her feel safe.

And safety is something she hasn't felt in a while. Tommy looks so lonely without Will, Tubbo looks too small to wear a presidential coat, Quackity looks so quilty walking around town, Fundy looks so broken and grown up, Phil looks so quilty every time he spots the cave.

And Niki looks at New L'Manberg, and she feels the need to run.

-----

The first sign is the flag. It's a nice flag, and it's good to have something to symbolise a change, that they're not the same.

But it still pains her to see a part of Will disappear. He didn't get a grave, didn't get a memorial, it's like his memory was stained, like he was never even there.

The second sign is when Tommy's exile. It's fair, in a way, but the boy doesn't deserve this. Nobody deserve to relive their trauma like that.

Tommy's irrational actions have hurt a lot of people, but this was still his home, and it wasn't fair of them to take it away from him.

The third sign is the butcher army. Sure, Technoblade isn't exactly innocent, but they'd treated him like he wasn't even human, like he was less than a beast.

And while she may not have liked Phil, may be unable to look the man in the eye, they'd clipped him from his wings and chained him to his house.

L'Manberg was supposed to be free, a way to leave all that cruelty behind. And look at it now, look at what there is left of the nation Will had promised her, the nation he had build with his own two hands.

-----

She sheds no tears when New L'Manberg inevitably falls. This country has been walking a fine line for months now, it's not the place Will had promised her anymore.

It's not. Fundy knows it, Eret knows it, even Tommy and Tubbo know. It's not worth her tears, not worth for her to spill her heart.

So she burns it down. Drops some TNT when she feels like it, because she wants to be a part of its downfall, wants to destroy the thing that had taken so much from her.

The battle has already been lost when she spots the tree, spots the one thing that had remained the same through all these years, and she remembers sitting here and smiling.

Now she watches the tree burn, watches all the memories and all the suffering turn to ashes. Because, even if she had called this place home, had loved its inhabitants, it was never meant to be.

-----

She freezes. Of course she does, because she knows that sweater, knows that beanie, knows who it belongs to. She doesn't know that skin, can't know that skin.

Fundy told her Ghostbur had helped with the renovation, but it couldn't be true, could it? Will is dead, he's gone.

He would've come back for her if he was still here. Ghost or not.

He would've.

It must've been her imagination playing tricks on her, there's no yellow sweater, no red beanie, no Ghostbur.

So she does the one thing she knows how to do. She runs away from her problems once again, doesn't look back, and sets the world further ablaze.

Her world. His world.

Their world.

-----

It starts making sense now. She finally gets why Tubbo exiled Tommy. Sure, he abided Dream in doing so, what only worsened the situation, but she does get it.

Tommy started this whole thing. He considered the discs worth more than anything his friends worked their asses off for. He kept aggravating Dream. He took away everything from her.

Maybe things would be better off without Tommy, maybe Will would've still been at her side if it weren't for him. Maybe Tommy should just die.

-----

The plan doesn't work. Either because Tommy knows what's up or he's just the most lucky bastard on this server.

It hurts to see him like this, though, so insufferably annoying. Because this is the Tommy she first met, the boy who was so bright and had no idea what the future would hold.

How much suffering he'd put everyone through.

She can't stand his innocence, his ignorance, she can't stand him.

"I hate you!" She does, doesn't she? "You left me behind, Will!" But she's not talking to Will, is she? "Tommy. I meant- I meant Tommy."

She takes a few steps back, shakes her head as brown hair returns to blonde, and she doesn't stop the tears that fall.

-----

It's only in her dreams that she finds peace. She doesn't get many of them, she barely sleeps anyway, but when she finally drifts off and it's not the usual nightmares that plague her, she can't help but smile.

It's all a dream, she knows that, but everything is better than her reality, everything is better than the endless cycle of hurt.

So when she spots the L'Mantree still standing, and it's Will welcoming her with open arms, she gives in. She hugs him tight and while it may not be real, it's still Will.

It's still safe.

"Maybe I'll join you some day, Will. Then we can laugh like we used to, sing some songs. We can be free again."

-----

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