#i will never draw anything as good at that bird and skeleton ever again in my whole life btw

[yeojaa]

( NEVER LET YOU GO. )

You do things without thought, making impulse decisions that’d make Freud proud.  Sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don’t.

(or:  Jeon Jungkook’s just as impulsive as you.)

pairing.  tattoo artist!jjk x f!reader.

genre + rating.  slice of life fluff, light smut.  explicit (but only at the end). 

tags / warnings.  mentions of heavily tattooed!JK, casual drinking, tender lovemakin’, JK with the bad jokes, honestly just him being funny and chill like that one guy you never get over...

wc.  7.6k.

beta reader(s).  @hobi-gif​, @papillonsgf​, and @yeoldontknow​​ 💛 ty for always indulging me and most importantly, supporting me when i begin to spiral. 🤠

author note.  i got this idea into my head one evening in the shower and now... it is this.  it’s not your usual bad boy tattoooist!JK fic but i hope you enjoy regardless.  as always, feedback means a lot! 

You and forethought aren’t close friends.  You really aren’t even distant cousins, or part of the same family tree.  You consider it a stranger, wave loftily as it passes you by, squinting like you can’t properly make out what it is.  Careful consideration?  Thoughtful patience?  None of that exists for you.  At least, not when you really, really want something. 

It’s what has you here now, bumbling your way into the tattoo shop like a newborn baby bird.  

You wonder how it must look, whether the shop assistant is used to this.  Random girl shows up on a Sunday afternoon looking like a fish out of water, eager yet afraid.  By how she greets you - with a curious stare and not quite a smile - you’re sure she is.  

“Do you take walk-ins?”

You’d meant to make an appointment.  Had sat for hours on the shop’s Instagram page, combing through the residents’ portfolios, trying to decide who to reach out to.  When you’d finally decided, you’d realised books were a thing and most of them were closed.  (Just your luck.)

Still, it never hurt to try, right? 

“Everyone’s fully booked.”  The girl sounds bored, apathetic yet genial.  (You don’t blame her.)  By the way her stare swings over you, it feels like a dismissal.  You’re ready to admit defeat - head half-bowed, words draped over your tongue.  “But our apprentice might be able to squeeze you in.”

An apprentice?  Well— that’s not exactly what you’d been hoping for, but this shop is reputable.  Well-known.  Considered one of the best in the city.  Surely their apprentice would be fine.  Just less seasoned, not as experienced. 

You all but snap your neck nodding along, gratitude tumbling out in the form of awkward laughter.  “That’d be great!”

The girl passes you off with a nod of her head, gesturing down the hall.  “Last room on the left.  His name’s Jungkook.  His schedule says he’s all clear, but maybe knock before you go in.”  It’s not the sunniest smile you’ve ever received, but the small thing she offers helps with the nerves.  Stills them beneath your skin as you do as you’re told. 

“Jungkook?”  There’s not really anywhere to knock, every wall neatly frosted glass and no doors in sight.  (You had passed a few folding screens but otherwise, it’s open concept, each room offering a glimpse into the artist who works inside.)  It feels too disruptive to tap your knuckles on one glass pane, lest it interrupt someone else. 

(His studio is minimally decorated but inviting:  one big cabinet; two of those typical IKEA shelves in the 4x4 grid that every new homeowner and their mother have; and a shop table, upon which a black backpack sits.  Various plants dress the room - both hanging from the ceiling and along the window - and Polaroids string over walls, held aloft by twine.  A Roomba sits by itself in a corner and the tattoo bed dominates most of the space, positioned closer to the dividing wall;  one teeny tiny rolling chair sits beside it.  There’s a bench on your left, with a pair of Birkenstocks tucked beneath.  All in all, very homey.  Reminiscent of your own apartment.) 

Hidden behind the bed, crouched low to the ground beside the cabinet, is a head of dark hair that speaks, drawing your attention from studying the cozy space.  “Oh?”

You’re not expecting the face that turns to you, all big doe eyes and the sweetest dimples. 

For a moment, you forget what you’re here for.  Why you’re standing in the empty door frame, staring down at the guy like you’ve spent your entire life secluded and have no idea how to speak.  

The longer you’re quiet, the more his concern seems to grow, single brow disappearing into his inky fringe.  It hangs in his vision at certain angles, shields the brightness of his stare with each turn of his chin.  “Are you okay?”  He’s even risen - stopped what he was doing - so he can see you more clearly, without any obstruction in the way.  Good for him, but worse for you. 

He’s so cute.  Were you prepared to look like an uncertain idiot in front of this… angel?

“Y-yeah.”  You manage after what feels like forever, sweeping your nerves under the rug that sits on the floor, separates the sole of his sneakers from hard concrete.  “Um— I was told you might have some time?  For, uh, a walk-in?”

(Why’re you stuttering?  You’re never shy.  Or rather, you’re not this nervous mess.  People have always called you an extrovert, outgoing as hell, a social butterfly.)

(You aren’t those things but you appreciate the sentiment nonetheless.)

“Oh!”  Realisation dawns across his features, throws his kind smile into greater relief, and you have to actively tell yourself not to stare, tearing your gaze away to focus on the wall of stencils past his shoulder.  He moves into motion then, stepping around the bed to meet you still rooted in the doorway.  “Yeah, I’ve got time.  Come in.”  Up close like this - there’s only maybe two feet between you - you can make out the little scar on his cheek;  the tiny beauty mark below his bottom lip;  each individual lash that frames his Bambi eyes and flutters when he blinks.  “I probably can’t draw you anything new right now but I’ve got some flash, if you’re interested?”

Even if you weren’t interested, you don’t think you’d say no.  You were always a sucker for a cute boy and this Jungkook?  He was that.  In spades. 

“Sure.”

“Are you looking for anything in particular?”  He’s retreating back into the room, moving to grab his iPad off the far table.  It’s balanced on his arm when he swivels to you, prominent front teeth on full display.  “I’ve got a pretty big selection.” 

When he drops onto the bench - a wayward vine above his head tickling his cheek - he gestures to the spot beside him.  This time, you don’t stare for a stupid amount of time, instead taking up the seat without hesitation. 

“So—”  He’s swiping through the photo library with his Apple Pen.  You’re sure there are pretty sketches on the screen - you just can’t focus on them, too preoccupied by the artwork that crawls across his hand and into the sleeve of his oversized, well-worn shirt.  It’s an intricate chrysanthemum, impossibly well-shaded with bold colours that demand attention and stand out over his fair complexion;  it creeps halfway up the back of his hand to tickle over his knuckles.  He notes your attention with a quiet chuckle, fingers wiggling.  The ink moves, flows, ripples with the motion, before his hand relaxes, knuckles unravelling as he offers the limb to you and your curiosity.  “Do you like it?”

“It’s incredible.”  It really is.  You’ve never seen anything like it, as if a painting has been done across his skin, laid in watercolour rather than tattoo ink.  “Did it hurt?”

(You almost want to hit yourself for the stupid question.  Of course it did.  It’s a hand tattoo.)

Jungkook only laughs again, doesn’t hold it against you despite the verbal barrage you’re faced with internally.  “Like crazy, but it was worth it.  This was my first tattoo and all the rest have just sort of been—”  He shrugs, fabric of his shirt bunching around his collar.  

“A piece of cake?”  You can only imagine.

“Exactly.”

You nod thoughtfully, as if that means anything to you.  (It doesn’t.  You’re bare as a baby’s bottom, blemish free save for the occasional hellish pimple and the scar you have from surgery on your hand when you broke parts of it in sixth grade.)

If he can tell you’re talking out of your ass, he says nothing, redirecting your attention back to the iPad propped on his lap.  “Do any of these interest you?”  He’s resumed scrolling, swiping carefully through pages of flash.  There are assorted floral pieces (plum stems, lily stalks, fully bloomed mums) and various skeletons (what looks like a deer, a dragon, a wolf).  They’re mostly blackwork with fine lines and heavy contrast, so wonderfully detailed you spend too much time studying one piece before he’s flipping to the next.

“That one.”  It catches your eye more than the others have.  Likely because it’s one of the few pieces in colour, soft hues spilling over neat lines.  A pretty little cat with a braided collar, big golden bell centered beneath its head, unravelling petals sweeping around it.

“You like cats?”

You do.  “She looks like mine.”

“It’s settled.”  He beams then, rising so quickly you’re startled;  you watch as he moves around the space with decisive steps, putting your plan into motion.  A paper is pulled seemingly out of nowhere, laid on a wooden clipboard and offered with a blue ballpoint pen.  “If you can fill all of this out, I can get the stencil ready.”

Well, that was easy.  Somehow, you’d thought it’d be more complicated, a ton of back and forth and yes and no.  You can’t deny you’re nervous, staring down at the consent form.  

(It doesn’t mean you read it any more than you normally would, though.  You gloss over all the points, making note of what you’re agreeing to without really considering any of it.  You’ve wanted a tattoo for most of your life.  There’s really no going back now.)

(You just hope it turns out like you want - that you’re not just being blindsided by a sudden superficial crush and a lack of critical thought.)

“I think I’m done,”  you mumble, slashing the date into the paper with gusto.  

“Do you have your ID?”  You’ve got it ready for him when he returns to take both it and the form.  “I’m just going to make copies and then we can discuss more.”

He’s gone with that same smile, disappearing back the way you’d come. 

Alone, the nerves set in.  You’re actually doing this.  Getting a tattoo.  Putting something permanent on your body.  It’s exhilarating and terrifying all at once, shaking your hands in your lap.  Maybe you should’ve eaten more before you’d come.  (You’d woken up late - had only shoved two pieces of raisin pinwheel bread into your mouth before you’d made up your mind about this.) 

(But had you really made up your mind?  Was this going to be it?  It feels mostly like yes, though the repetitive thud of your toe against concrete seems to indicate otherwise.  It’s as if you’re tapping out something in morse, telling yourself—)

“Okay!”  Jungkook’s back before you know it, driver’s license returned to you along with an unsealed envelope.  You eye it curiously.  “A copy of your form and an aftercare sheet.”  

He’s really thought of everything.  Or the shop has.  Either way, you appreciate that when you’re not so sure, caught somewhere between giddily excited and vaguely worried, as if someone’s pulled a weight off your shoulders, taken on some of the burden of this spontaneous choice.

“So, where do you want it?”  It’s like he has a one track mind, utterly focused on the task at hand.  (Probably a good thing, given you’re about to voluntarily let him needle your poor skin.) 

You hadn’t thought about that.  You’d always liked the idea of a back of the arm tattoo, positioned somewhere along your tricep so it could be seen while turned away.  “My arm?”

“Upper?  Forearm?”  There’s not an ounce of annoyance or exasperation or anything else negative.  He’s just genuinely curious, peering over his shoulder at you. 

“Tricep area, I think?  Would that look good?”

“If you like it, it will.”  Then he grins - beams so bright you half expect the sun to come zooming out of his mouth - and laughs, a funny little cackle that makes you do the same.  “I’m kidding.  That was cheesy.  But I’m sure it’ll look fine.  We can try laying it down first, so you get an idea?” 

“That sounds good.”  A lot better than endless years of regret for poor placement. 

“You’ll, uh— need to take your shirt off though.”

It’s then you realise your mistake:  wearing a turtleneck.  “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

A beat of silence passes, then another, and he smiles so kindly you wonder what your expression must look like.  Sour, like you’d sucked fresh lemon?  Awkward, as if you’d never worn anything less than double layers before (a proud Never Nude)? 

“If you’re uncomfortable, we can reschedule.  Or I can put a divider up so you don’t have to worry about being seen from outside.  Whatever you’d prefer.” 

The longer you stay quiet - a seemingly common occurrence today - the closer his brows furrow, preparations coming to a standstill.  You can tell he’s not trying to rush you, politely waiting for an answer with transfer paper in one hand and scissors in the other.  

(If only he could peek into your brain, see the whole reason you’re hesitating is because you can’t quite remember which bra you’re wearing, whether it’s the slinky black one that offers absolutely zero support or the lacy blue one with the cute detailing and practically see-through cups.)

(Did it really matter either way?  He was probably desensitized.)  

“It’s fine.”  You find the confidence somehow, nodding firmly.  Jungkook’s still studying you carefully, though.  Waiting as you strip your purse off your shoulder and reach for the hem of your sweater.  It feels funny in your fingers, more like steel wool than sheep’s.

One breath.  Two. 

You fold your turtleneck neatly, laying it beside your bag and turning back to face him.  “All right.  Let’s do this.” 

“So, which arm?”  He’s close now - crossed to you in two strides of his long legs - and holds up the stencil.  

Your right rises, fingers wiggling as if to say hello. 

He lays the design down, pats it into place with deft fingers.  You don’t realise the breath you’re holding until he pulls the sticky paper away, leaving neat line work in its wake.

“Oh.”  It slips out of its own accord, almost a whisper as you stare at the design in the mirror.  “It’s so pretty.” 

There’s pride in his eyes as he stares with you, bounces his gaze between it and your face.  “Thanks.”  He lets you linger, peering thoughtfully at your reflection before speaking, casually hopeful.  “What do you think?”

“This is it.  Right here.”

Maybe he’d fist pump, if he were any less cool.  As it stands, he simply nods, cheeks round like fresh baked bread, nose scrunched with glee. 

“All right.  We’ll shave you down and get started.  You like the colours, right?”  Once again, he’s buzzing around the room, gathering up all his materials and snapping black gloves on once everything is laid out upon his cart.  It’s heavily stickered, covered in video game vinyls and anime mattes.  (You recognise a handful of them, make a note to ask him where he got them from.)  He pats the tissue papered bed top when you make no movement toward him.  “Hop on up.  Face down, if that’s okay.”

You do as he says, climbing atop with minimal grace.  It takes you a bit of adjusting to get comfortable, folding your left arm under your head and allowing your right to simply dangle, uncertain of where it should be.  

“You’re sparkly.”

“What?”  You’d misheard that, right? 

“Your skin.  You’re sparkling.”  He sounds a little in awe, surprised as wetness spills across your arm, the edge of a razor following closely thereafter.  

“Oh.”  Heat creeps over your cheeks, slinks all the way up into your roots and has you chuckling awkwardly.  “It’s my soap.” 

“Sparkle soap?”  Whether he’s just making conversation or genuinely curious, you’re not sure.  He does seem delighted by the fact, though, as if he’s never seen a girl covered in glitter before.  (Which, fair.) 

“It’s this specialty holiday soap.  It has pigment in it.” 

“That’s cool.”  He’s laying the stencil down again, smoothing it over your now-hairless arm.  “It smells nice.”

Obviously, you agree.  It’s honey and citrus, brightly fragrant but not overpowering, lingering on your clothes like the subtle golden glitter does.  Still, you flush, heat crossing from a casual day under the sun to burning-on-the-stove hot.  “Thanks.” 

“Was that weird?  I hope not.”

“No, you’re fine.” 

He hums a tiny noise, something that sounds like understanding and appreciation all at once.  

Then the buzzing starts - a steady, inescapable brrrrrrrrr - and he’s gripping your arm, steady yet gentle.  “Ready?” 

Honestly, you’re not sure.  Hearing the noise makes it seem scary, has your entire body tensing up like Pavlov’s dog.  Your honesty can’t be helped, a nervous giggle chased off your tongue.  “I think so.” 

“I think so too.”

By the time you’re done - a good almost five hours later, your arm stinging so bad you wonder why you’d ever sat down in the first place - you’d fallen asleep twice, started drooling on your other arm once, and really, really have to pee. 

“All right—”“  The incessant buzzing stops.  Liquid spills where the pain centres, followed by rougher paper towel.  “You are finished.”

(You might be imagining it, but he sounds about as relieved as you.  Maybe because you’d been sitting for hours on hours, turning down his offer for a break because you just wanted to get it done and therefore forcing him to do the same.) 

“Can I see?”  You don’t want to leap to your feet - feel a bit too lightheaded for that - but you’re bouncing with excitement, the thrumming in your arm intensified when you shift to catch a better look at Jungkook’s face. 

“Yeah, go ahead.  Just be careful - you might be a bit—”

He’s right.  You nearly topple over the moment you stand, none-too-gently rolling off the edge of the bed and barely landing safely on your feet.  It’s only his close proximity that prevents you from falling to your knees, one degloved hand darting out to steady you. 

“Careful!”  It’s politely reproachful, coloured soft with worry.  

“Sorry, sorry.”  You seize the edge of the bed, gripping tight as you wait for everything to settle, the lightheadedness to recede.  Everything straightens out quickly enough.  “Got up too quickly.”

“Do you need a snack?”  He’s already up, moving faster than you, rummaging through the cabinet against the far wall.  “I’ve got seaweed and Choco Boys and shrimp chips and—”

You can’t help but laugh, hobbling to the mirror to inspect your new piece of art.  “I’m fine.”  That, and you’re too occupied with the ink that now sits embedded beneath your skin, a flurry of lovely colour and impressive line work.

“Choco Boys it is then.”  The familiar yellow package is thrust toward you, a pack of his own already ripped open.  Mushroom-shaped treats are tossed into his open mouth, lips curling around chocolate and his next words,  “it’ll help with your sugar levels.”

A thank you comes, fingers curling around the snacks, but you’re still in deep, so focused on the lovely hue that bleeds over your skin, marks up previously unblemished flesh and holds your attention.  It’s better than you could’ve possibly imagined, a piece of artwork forever yours.  It makes you giddy as you stare at it - almost reach for it, but stop when you catch the alarmed widening of Jungkook’s eyes.  

“You like?”  

“I love.”  You’d stare at it for hours, if you could.  Likely will, once you get home, sitting in front of the mirror like a zombie.  “Thank you so, so much.”

The brunet beams as he polishes off the last of his Choco Boys, tossing his dark hair back with a flick of his head.  Triumph rolls off him in palpable waves, sitting pretty in the lines by his eyes, the scrunching around his nose.  Seeing how it blooms in his stare is like a straight endorphin shot, as if you’ve done more than just be the canvas he’s laid all his hard work into.  “It was a pleasure.”

It’s a whole month later - enough time for the piece to heal - before you decide you want another one.  It’s not as spontaneous as the first time, instead led with an Instagram direct message to @jeonink.  (You half expect him not to answer;  you’re utterly delighted when he responds not five minutes later.) 

Maybe it’s fate or maybe it’s luck that has him with availability the same day you reach out, bringing you back to the studio three hours after you’ve messaged him.

He’s just as cute as before, black baseball cap pulled low over his ears, silver-lined ears twinkling beneath the shop lights.  

“So, what’re you thinking?”  

Truthfully, you hadn’t done much thinking.  Just like before, you’d decided you wanted a tattoo and, well, the rest had been history.  You figured you’d let him have free reign, given how happy you were with your first piece.  “A sleeve?”

That surprises him.  His whole face lights up, eyes wide, mouth rounding curiously.  “Like, a full sleeve?”  It’s not necessarily a no - more of an are you sure? he hides between the syllables.

“I think so.”

He nods slowly, knowingly, arms folded over his chest, expression suddenly unreadable.  “You caught the itch.”

Your own features twist, brows shooting high.  “The what?”

“The tattoo itch,”  he clarifies with a laugh, the sound sweeping your concern away like the sea.  “People say once you get one, you get addicted to the feeling.”  He’s extending both arms to you now, hands palm up.  For a moment, you’re note sure what he’s doing.  (In actuality, you’re distracted by the fact that he’s in a tee, muscle cording his limbs, undulating as he turns his arms over.)  “I got bit by it when I lived in Japan.  It’s actually what got me into tattooing myself.”

You remember what he’d said last time - how he’d spent a handful of years overseas, working in restaurants after having followed his last partner there.  He’d shared lots about his life, giving you the Sparknotes version while you’d ground enamel to fine dust.  

“I guess I have the itch then.”

“Guess you do.”  

Your dream comes to life in four excruciating sessions.  It’s some of the worst pain you’ve ever endured (you’re never going to get an elbow tattoo ever again) but you’d do it all again in a heartbeat, utterly in love with the mural that now lives on your skin.  A peony caps your shoulder while one runs halfway up your bicep.  Another takes up the entirety of your forearm.  There’s a darling little bird and delicately inked koi.  It’s breathtaking, greater than anything you could have dreamt up.  

You’ve been staring at it for at least three minutes now, tracing over the freshly laid colour with a tender touch.  You’re grateful for the SecondSkin, the clear bandage that wraps everything up and keeps it safe from your over eager hands.

“You did it.”  Jungkook’s grinning at you, feet kicked up where he sits, his usual bag of Choco Boys balanced in his lap.  “Big girl.”

From anyone else, it might sound condescending - might rub you the wrong way and have you glaring daggers.  Instead, you take it in stride, beaming at him from your seat.  He’s been there with you every step of the way, been there for every hour (seventeen over three months, to be exact) you’ve dedicated to finishing this beauty up.  Tease you as he might, you know he really is proud of you.  

“You mean we did it,”  you return, giddy like a child.  

“Ah, right.”  The chocolate-covered snack he’s devouring goes crunch crunch crunch before he speaks, mouth still full, eyes crinkled.  “I guess I did do all the work.”

“Hey!  Screw you!”  You’re glowering at him, middle finger raised in defiance.  

(How curious that your relationship has grown like this, turned from tattoo artist and client to what feels like more.  It probably makes sense, given the long hours you’ve spent together, the support he’s had to offer each time the pain has gotten this side of too much, chattering your teeth and dizzying your head.  Solidarity in pain and all that.)

(You really had tapped out once, when he’d crept his gun into the ditch of your elbow.  You’d asked him whether it’d hurt beforehand and he’d only laughed, shrugged off the question and continued with the careful shading to your inner arm.  That in itself had hurt like a biiitch;  you hadn’t thought it could get worse.)

(You’d been mistaken.)

“Am I wrong?”  He drawls, full of laughter and that big dumb smile of his you’ve grown accustomed to.  It eats up his cheeks and disappears his eyes, makes it hard to be mad at him when he looks so sweet.  

“Yes, you are.”  You’ve got absolutely nothing to back it up, but who cares.  This is the sort of banter the two of you have developed, like two old friends forced to spend too much time together.  (Not that you’d complain.  You’ve loved hearing his stories, all the tales he regales you with whenever you’re in his chair.)

A snort is his answer, the full roll of his eyes over-exaggerated and playful.  “You’re lucky we’re all finished or I’d sneak in an ugly fish somewhere on your arm.”

You think he’s kidding - know he takes too much pride in his work to do that.

Still, you stick your tongue out, hopping down from the bed with your freshly inked arm, hands clapping together in celebration.  “You wouldn’t dare.”  You’re confident, crossing to the bench to tug your flannel on, careful of the dull pain that throbs beneath the thin medical dressing.  

“Wouldn’t I?  I’m leaving anyway.”

You’re ready to call him out for it, insist he would never ruin the sanctity of his profession in such a way, when you realise the words he’s spoken, the casual tidbit he’s just dropped like it’s nothing.

“Leaving?”  

(Is it you or do you sound disappointed?  You can’t dwell on it for long, worried you’ll miss his explanation.  Had he mentioned it previously?  Slipped it in when you’d been delirious from pain?  No, you would’ve remembered that.  You swear you would’ve.)

“I’m moving to Tokyo.”  How he’s so casual, you have absolutely no idea.  You suppose it’s not a big deal for him - he’s not from here anyway.  Home is back in Korea, the place he’d spent most of his life before moving to Japan and then here, just two years ago.  (God, your memory is good.  If only you’d retained knowledge like this when you were in school.)  “My flight’s next weekend.”

Your face must be hilarious because Jungkook’s laughing, cackling like the evil villain in an anime.  

“Gonna miss me?”  

Would it be inappropriate to say yes?  Because you will, you realise the moment he’s posed the question.  You’ve grown to consider him a friend, someone who you send random memes to on Instagram (usually pertaining to #tattooartistproblems or one of your shared hobbies, like video games and finding the best noodle soup restaurant in the city).  

You go for the safe bet, answering with a question of your own.  “Are you gonna miss me?”

“I’ll miss your restaurant recs,”  he answers, offering honesty to your reticence.  “You can still send me funny photos though.”  

You can’t help your laugh, the tiny quirk of your mouth into a smile.  “I guess you’re right.  Will you still be tattooing?”  It’s an innocent enough question - you really do want to know.  You can’t imagine going to anyone else, even if it means you’ll be shelling out an absurd amount of money for a plane ticket.

“Yep, new shop.”  Something twinkles in his stare, has him giddy as he rises to his feet, tossing his empty packet of snacks into the trash bin.  “Actually, where I got most of mine done.”  You understand it then - that it’s a move of faith.  He’s finally come full circle.  You’re unbelievably happy for him, brimming with delight to mirror his pride.  

But you’re still going to give him a little bit of a hard time because you have to.  It wouldn’t feel right otherwise.  “Whoa, big shot.”

“I am actually,”  he sniffs, raking an ink-strewn hand through his hair.  It’s longer now than it was when you met him, curling over the tops of his ears, hanging in his eyes at every turn.  “You’ll be lucky if I remember you when I’m famous.”

“Famously lame, maybe,”  you tease, slipping your bag over your shoulder.  You busy yourself pulling your keys from the interior pocket, checking your phone as if you’re ready to go.  It’s only when you’re standing in the hallway - you have no real intention of departing like this and he knows that, considering you haven’t paid yet - when you level him with a half-formed smirk.  “But I guess I should take you for a drink?”  

His hoodie is on before you know it, yanked over his head and tugged into place as he joins you.  It’s become your regular routine - leaving together after your sessions, a perk of always booking the last slot he has available.  (Not that you relied on that, but simply because your work schedule didn’t really allow for anything else.)  “Obviously.”

Jeon Jungkook is a talented artist, a dedicated snacker, a lover of the colour black.  You discover, sitting on the patio of the nearby bar, that he’s also really, really good at holding his liquor.  

(Not that he’d ever indicated otherwise.)

“Do you think you’ll get anything else done?”  He’s on his sixth pint, casually leaned back in his chair as he picks at the fries you’d ordered but that he seems perfectly happy to help himself to.  (Payback for all the times he’s forced snacks on you maybe?)  “Like, a face tattoo?”

You scoff at the question as if greatly offended.  “You think I’d get a face tattoo?”  

While a little glazed in the eyes, you can tell he’s altogether coherent, grinning across the table at you.  “Hey, I don’t judge.  You like making surprise decisions, so I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Okay, so he’s got you there.  Used your own impulsive history against you.  “I would never.”  

“If you change your mind, do I get first dibs?”

“Dibs on what?  Tattooing me?”

He nods as if it’s the most obvious answer in the world.  “Duh.”

You can only roll your eyes, tossing a wayward burnt fry end at him.  “Yes, Kook, you get first dibs on ruining my face.”

His expression twists, mouth shaping around words he’s keeping caged behind his teeth.  There’s something he isn’t saying, a comeback he’s chosen to lock up.  You wonder what it is.

“Hey - nothing wrong with face tattoos.”  

“Really?”  You’re leaning forward, a clear challenge written across your face.  “Then why don’t you have one?”  He has a million others as it is:  a hand, nearly the entirety of both arms, his chest, his shoulders, one of his legs.  (You haven’t seen them all in person but you have seen them online, memorialised on his Instagram feed.)  

“And hide all this?”  One inked hand is gesturing toward his own face, gesticulating wildly as if that’ll drive his point further home.  “I would never.”

“That’s what I said!”

It doesn’t matter to him, not when he’s fully sober and most certainly not now, when he’s slightly buzzed, eyes glossier than usual.  “But I’m cuter.  It’d be a shame if it were me.  You…”  The way he trails off is suggestive, indicative of something mocking and mean.  (Except it’s never cruel - far too friendly and soft to ever hurt your feelings.)  “—not so much.”

Another fry hits him right between the eyes and then another disappears into the hood of his sweater, lost to the black fabric that bunches up around his neck and hides the flush he’s been battling since you two got to the bar an hour ago.

“Don’t be rude!”  

He beams at you then, so unnecessarily endearing you can only throw one more piece at him. 

“I’m kidding.”  You knew that already but pretend to ignore the pseudo-apology, choosing instead to polish off the last of your now-cold fries.  A bad choice, you realise when he continues, surprising you with the words that come out of his liquor-laden mouth so much so that you almost choke.  “You’re actually pretty cute.”

(So what if you’ve sort of maybe been waiting to hear them?  Wondering if the tiny crush you’d developed was in some way reciprocated?)

(Not that this meant it was.  Only that you perhaps weren’t alone in thinking he was the most lovable - and somehow simultaneously hot - person you’d ever met.  It’s almost rewarding to know the long hours together hadn’t left him unscathed.)

“You all good?”  The look on his face is worse than that smile he usually offers, instead a devilish smirk that makes him look like Satan himself.  

Were you?  You’re not sure.

“I can’t believe you just said that.”

“Really?  You can’t?”  You’re not sure what that means, whether you’re simply reading too far into it.  But then he’s dragging his bottom lip through his teeth, head cocked curiously.  It’s a bait, you realise—and one you’ll gladly take.

“Should I have expected it?”

Shoulders hike, rising up around his ears.  “I thought I made it sort of obvious.”  

Had he?  Thinking back on it, you can’t really recall.  Of course, he’d always been friendly, indulging you in your pursuit of body art, sketching up the loveliest things you’d never even think to dream of;  accepting your distracting Instagram messages without complaint, always tossing you a like or some sort of acknowledgement no matter what you’d send (and you’d send some random, random stuff).  Chatting with him daily had just become the norm, conversation flowing freely whenever you’d pop in for your next session.

But that was just because he was a nice guy - or so you’d thought.  You realise now how wrong you’d been, too occupied with your own crush to notice his (if it could be called that).

“You like me,”  you hum, surprisingly nonchalant despite the little pitter patter in your chest, the flutter of your heart within your ribcage.  

“I think you’re cute,”  he retorts, though there’s no real weight to his rebuff.  The two statements are really one and the same and you’re giddy with the knowledge, absolutely tickled pink.

Except for the fact that he’s leaving, fully prepared to start a new life in another city in just one week.  The irony isn’t lost on you, like fate’s laughing even as she offers you this little crumb.  (You feel like Oliver Twist, frankly.)

“Same difference.”

He huffs - you’re reminded of how adorable he is when he does that - and downs the lukewarm remainder of his beer.  “I take it back.”

“No, you don’t.”  Where the confidence comes from, who knows.  You grip it tight with both hands though, hold it snugly as you level him with a stare that has his own unwavering.  It’s almost as if you’re caught in a staring match, a battle of unspoken wits. 

It drags on longer than it should, just the two of you locked to each other with nowhere to go. 

Then he does the last thing you expect:  shoves his chair aside and leans across the table, stealing a kiss and returning to his seat, all in the span of time it takes you to blink.  

(His lips are so soft.  A little chapped, a tiny bit dry, but soft - deceptively delicate.  Bitter, touched with sea salt and something else distinctly him.  French fries and beer and his Chapstick.) 

(For the briefest moment, you wonder whether you’d just imagined it - if your imagination had truly gotten the best of you and you’ve absolutely lost your mind.) 

“You just kissed me.”  It seems like you’ve found your new favourite hobby of just repeating things, giving live play-by-plays like an awkward narrator in a romcom.  

“Yeah, so?”

“You’re leaving.”  Speaking the words into existence feels bad;  you see the way his eyes tighten, the subtle sobering of his expression even while he tries to keep his cool.  

“I am.”  At least he’s realistic.  It saves you from any uncertainty, keeping the what-ifs at bay. 

You suppose it means you have nothing to lose. 

“Do it again.”

And Jungkook does - over and over, sinking the taste of him almost as deeply as ink, offering a piece of himself you want to keep for just as long.  

It takes you longer to add to your collection of art, nearly four whole years before you decide what you want next.  (It’s a back piece this time - a full body suit from your shoulders down past your ass.  Another cat, dressed in traditional Japanese clothing and surrounded by flowers.  An ode to your first tattoo, to the one that had started it all.)

(You’re not sure you’re ready for the pain, though.)

“Lay down,”  the artist instructs, back turned to you, busy preparing his materials.  You’d stripped down while he was occupied, discarded all your clothes to the allocated basket and stood quietly in anticipation. 

You do as he says, dropping atop the tattoo bed with a quiet oof.  The stencil has already been laid, the entire outline ready to be inked into your skin.  You can’t deny you’re more than a little nervous.  It’s been years since you’d last gotten anything done, uninterested in finding a new artist since Jungkook had left. 

(Which he had, exactly as he’d intended, gone on a 6 AM flight that you’d driven him to, teary-eyed and embarrassed.  He’d laughed at you standing outside of the departure gate, his suitcase at his side, arms wrapped around your shoulders.  You’d refused to show your face, burying it instead into the warmth of his neck, into the familiar scent of him that was going away for who knows how long.

“Stop being a baby,”  he’d said, smothering you in kisses, the full weight of his laughter palpable through your close proximity.  It'd rumbled out of his chest all the way into yours, finding a home behind your ribcage, right alongside where your heart fluttered, shaded blue and sad.

“Stop being mean,”  you’d countered, petulant like a child.

It couldn’t be helped.  You’d had only one week with him - one glorious, chaotic week filled with eating too much junk, rewatching your favourite animes, and generally making up for all the lost time you’d never even known there was.  As amazing as it’d been, it still hadn’t prepared you for the goodbye.

That was your fault, though.  You’d wrongly entertained the idea that maybe things would work out, that he’d change his mind or ask to take it - whatever you had, that is - with him, keep it going somehow.  He hadn’t.)

“Do you have a preference where I start?”  You’re unbothered, hair loosely knotted over your shoulder.  Ready for the session to start - ready to feel the familiar sting again.  (You’re proud of that.  It might have taken you years and years but here you were, tackling something huge.)

“Nope.”  

“Sounds good.”

The buzzing begins and pressure lands upon the small of your back, a gloved hand laid over the centre of your spine.  You remind yourself to breathe in, out, focus on something other than the pain that fizzles over your skin and then ebbs into tenderness.  Where he’s started - just above the fattiest part of your butt - isn’t too bad.  Tolerable and yielding.

You can do this.

Your back aches in a different way than you’d anticipated, soreness buzzing beneath inflamed skin and making it uncomfortable to move around.  It’s not any worse than your arm had been - the lines along your spine had felt comparable to that of your elbow - but it’s fresh, not dulled by years like your sleeve now was.

The artist is stripping his gloves off, your back neatly covered and the bed stripped of its original tissue paper.  He’s leaned against the sink, onigiri held in his now-free hands, nibbling at the edge of the rice ball as you turn this way and that in the mirror.  “You did good.”

You’re still undressed, admiring the linework from different angles, shimmying closer to your reflection to catch the lighter inking that makes up the undefined edges of the various florals.  Something tells you that you should be shy - eager to redress after spending nearly five hours naked in the secluded studio - but you don’t care.  Your back is quickly becoming a masterpiece, something that might as well be hung in the halls of the Louvre.  You’re in love with it.

“Thanks.”

You mean thank you for his compliment but also for all his hard work, the long hours he’s put into bringing this beauty to life.  It means so much - like progressing to the next level.  

Which, you suppose it is.  This is a fresh start for you.  A new beginning in a new city.  

“Proud of you,”  he hums, suddenly close, broad palms searing heat over your hips.  He’s careful to avoid the edge of the bandage that wraps your back and holds you delicately, like fine china or the most precious jewel in the world, lips sweet against your temple.  

You meet his eyes in the mirror - the same sweet doe-eyed stare from five years ago.  A little darker now, aged by the hand of time but endlessly kind, shining beneath the overhead lights.

“Proud of you,”  you chirp, identical smiles spreading over your faces.  

Jungkook’s having none of it though, bratty as usual.  “Proud of us.”

You suppose you can settle for that.  You really are proud of the two of you - for how far you’ve made it and all the obstacles you’ve overcome.  From the first few weeks of sadness, all the melancholy that’d set in when he’d left, to exactly one month after, when he’d called you in the middle of the night, drunk and stumbling home.  

(It’d been infuriating at the time - incoherent and foolish as he was - but it’d bloomed something between you, something neither of you could ignore.)

Four years of miserable long distance had become this:  a love that's brought you back to his side, to a city you’re unfamiliar with but that he calls home; to a city that never sleeps, loud with pachinko machines and some of the best food you’ve ever had;  to the place you’ve been missing every minute you were apart.  

You’d never thought you would move for someone, uproot your entire life for a relationship, but he’d changed that.  Made it worth it in ways you had never considered.  Convinced you more and more with each trip you’d taken, two visits twice a year, for a measly two weeks at a time.

“Should we head home?”  He means your physical home - the apartment the two of you had decided on in Roppongi, the one you haven’t seen yet, that he’s had to move into all by himself.  It’s not quite as nice as the home in his arms.  

You say yes anyway.

“I’m so talented.”  The words come entirely too whole for your liking, loud somewhere above your head.

“Are you serious?”  You’re levelling your boyfriend with the most incredulous look, whole face scrunched up, hands fisted into his dark sheets.  It’s uncomfortable at this angle - kinking your neck as you look over your shoulder - but you really can’t believe he’s just said that.  He’s knelt between your legs, knees spread wide around his own, his hand halfway up your back and tracking heat over your spine.  

Somehow, he has the audacity to look surprised.  “What?”

“You’re really patting yourself on the back right now?”  Now, when he should be pounding you into oblivion, working that big fat cock of his through your fluttering walls, making you moan his name into his pillows like it’s his only job? 

(It truthfully could be.  You’d rank his skills in the bedroom on par with his skills in the studio.)

“Oh.”  All at once, he’s the devil - sin personified. Or would be, if he didn’t somehow still look infuriatingly cute.

The gentle touch turns bruising, heel of his palm pressed hard into the tender notches of your spine.  “You don’t like when I admire my own work?”  Asked as he shifts behind you, length dragging out of your dripping cunt to gently tap against your aching clit.  The head of it glides through your folds, mercilessly teasing but never slipping back in, never filling you whole like you need.  (Because you really do need it.  You haven’t seen him in six months, left to your own devices - literally.)  It feels like heaven and hell, too good and not nearly enough all at once. 

“Kook,”  you snap. Try to, anyway, his name far too whiny and breathless to hold any real weight.

“I’m just admiring you, sweetheart.”  He’s dragging the hand over your back, tracing all the lines he’s embedded into your skin.  They make up his favourite piece, inked permanently into his favourite canvas.  A testament to his hard work, his dedication, his love.

Any other time, you might not care.  Here and now, after not having felt his touch in what feels like forever, you’re burning from the inside out, a million volts of electricity tripping your circuits.  When you speak, it’s more a plea than a reprimand, uttered so sweetly you know he can’t deny you. “Admire me later.”  

“I’ve missed you” is his only answer, punctuated by a fluid roll of his hips, the heavy press of his cock back into your dripping cunt.  “I’ve missed this,”  he breathes out, sinking all the way in, so slow you can feel every ridge and vein as he fills you.  

“Missed you too,”  you parrot back, a little delirious now that you’ve gotten what you want.  

Now that he’s right where he should be - with you.

tag list.  @neverthefirstchoice​​​ @youwannabelostandnotbefound​​​ @snackhobi​​​​ @codeinebelle​ @xjoonchildx​

#goldenclosetnet #magicshopnet #ficswithluv #thebtswritersclub #networkbangtan #heartsforbts #bts #bts au #bts imagine #bts fic #bts oneshot #bts smut #bts fluff #bts jungkook #jeon jeongguk #jeon jungkook #jungkook #jungkook au #jungkook imagine #jungkook fic #jungkook oneshot #jungkook fluff #jungkook x you #jungkook x reader #jungkook x oc #work.zip #oneshot.zip #jungkook.doc #jeon jungkook smut #jungkook smut

[stones-x-bones]

You Don’t Have To Be Good || Deirdre and Bex

TIMING: Current PARTIES: @deathduty and @inbextween SUMMARY: Deirdre finds Bex in the fossil room and the two have a heart to heart. CONTENT: Domestic abuse mentions, References to child abuse

You’ll know human inferiority when you see how they don’t understand. Siobhan wiped Deirdre’s tears away, voice warm and sweet in a way that Deirdre would chase forever. She’d been sent home early, having been told her showing off of a dead bird was wholly inappropriate and furthermore, the sign of some deficiency. The humans don’t know the beauty of a skeleton. 

But there was some part of her, mature now, and leaned up against the door frame of her bone room, that thought her mother might have been the one who didn’t understand. There was a human, staring wide-eyed at her meager fossil collection (visions were harder to pull from remnants that old, and as such, she preferred more death in a fresher state). She looked at them with the very wonder she’d been taught a human could never have. The same way she looked at them. “There are gloves there, if you want to touch any of them.” Deirdre announced, pushing herself off the door frame and greeting Bex with a smile. “Go ahead, a chara. You can see them better when you hold them in your hands.” 

While Morgan had said Bex was free to any room in the house, she’d always been extra careful when going into Deirdre’s fossil room. Never touched anything, never stayed too long. Instead she would just stand near the cases and stare wide-eyed like a kid in a candy shop. She liked trying to figure out which skeleton was what, even though the articulated ones were pretty obvious. The fossils were the more fascinating part to her, but bones were just fossils that were too young, so, really, they were all the same. They all told a story and they all had history. She was trying to get back to a sense of normalcy after what had happened yesterday and over the past week, glancing at one of the sheet fossils when Deirdre’s voice filled the room and Bex jumped. She was used to watching her surroundings usually, making sure she knew who was around or when she was alone-- but being in this house made her feel relaxed enough to not feel the need to do that. It was becoming a problem. “Oh, I--” she started, stopped, “it’s okay! I wouldn’t wanna mess with your stuff.”

“No, please,” Deirdre gestured. She stepped into the room and grabbed a pair of gloves for herself, slipping them on before she extended a pristine white pair of fabric clothes for Bex’s own use. “I insist. I don’t collect these things so they can sit here unadmired. Granted, it’s mostly me that does the admiring…” Deirdre trailed off, glancing down at the gloves in her hand. She shook them, for emphasis. Morgan was always better at this; the talking and the socializing. And even for the fact that Bex had been with them for a while, Deirdre hadn’t done much for her. For that, she was guilty. But guilt didn’t serve the bone room. They did, after all, have one thing more in common than the same roof over their heads. “There’s amber in the drawers, I only have a few pieces, so I haven’t put them into a proper display and--Hold on--” Deirdre shifted away, pulling open one of her draws on the far wall, revealing tiny bones housed safely in velvet, and the amber. Deirdre pulled on out, it wasn’t a mosquito, but some bug-like creature she didn’t know the name of. “Like in the movie,” she said as she offered it out as well, “what do you think?” Deirdre turned up, gazing about the entirety of her immaculate collection. “Of the whole room; what do you think?”

Bex watched Deirdre curiously as she slid into the room and pulled out a pair of gloves. Tentatively, she reached out and took the pair offered to her, sliding them on carefully. Most of the things in special rooms in her own home were one-hundred percent off-limits to her, even now, as an adult. But especially so when she was a child. She remembered from her conversations with Deirdre that she had lived in a household very similar to Bex’s, in size and strictness. It felt a little like an unspoken thing between them. Deirdre was pulling open a drawer full of bits of amber, and Bex peered curiously inside, holding out her hands as she plucked a piece out. “Oh! Is that a myrmeleontoid?” She lit up instantly at the sight of the ancient beetle species, the first time she’d cracked a real smile in a long while. There were quite a few different bug species back in the ancient world, but only a few had been captured in amber and preserved well enough. They’d found plenty of bee and fly and ant species in amber, but beetles were often more rare. She looked up at Deirdre, then, still holding the amber as if it were the most delicate thing on earth. “It kinda makes me jealous,” she said, but she was still smiling, “I wish I had an entire room for fossils. Did these take long to collect?”

Deirdre’s brows knitted together in a way she hoped Bex couldn’t notice. The caution and the reservation, even the quiet wonder, was all familiar. Yet, in the empty spaces of her identity, at Bex’s age, she filled it with arrogance. Bex seemed to fill it with...anxiety. Then again, Deirdre wasn’t sure how she might’ve acted if there ever was anyone kind enough to take her in. “A what?” She laughed, “that’s a big word, you’re going to have to dumb it down for me. I’m an actuary, not a scientist.” Deirdre glanced down at the amber as Bex continued, pulling her bottom lip in with her teeth. Humans wouldn’t understand, she thought, and in this case, she considered that Bex wouldn’t even believe. But she’d found most of these bones, and simply ordered what was rare. “I was angry,” she started, staring out at her displays, numerous and carefully organized. “I could hardly bring any bones from Ireland with me; nothing big, anyway. And I’d have to start my whole collection all over again, in this miserable town, and I was angry. Then the day after I moved in, I took a walk and right there in the snow was bits of a moose.” She turned, and gestured to the spine fragments on display; a sentimentality for her first find here. “There are no moose in Ireland, and no point in being angry or jealous. Just start your own. Again, someplace new.” Deirdre laughed softly to herself, crossing her arms over her chest. “All of this took just about a year. And you can have your own bone room, Bex. The basement is used for nothing more than Christmas decoration storage, and I don’t think Morgan would object with making it yours.” 

“Um, sorry. It’s a type of ancient beetle,” Bex explained, “this looks like the larval stage, but I’ve only ever seen photos, so I can’t be sure, really.” She pinched the block between her finger and thumb and held it up to the light to examine it better. Bubbles of air had frozen in time around the critter’s head, and around it’s legs. Being trapped in sap sounded like a terrible fate. She wondered how long it was before the poor thing had suffocated. Her gaze turned back to Deirdre when she spoke again, finding her staring at her displays with a nostalgic look. Bex, if anything, was at least good at picking out micro-expressions on peoples’ faces. It was a self-preservation tactic. “There’s a ton of moose here. They have trail maps that can show you their migration habits. There’s probably a lot more skeletons along those paths.” She paused. “I’m sorry you had to leave your old collection behind. But this one is pretty great, you know.” Her eyes trailed over to Deirdre again and she made brief eye contact, before looking away, holding the amber back out to her. Her mind wandered so much easier these past few days, full of painkillers and visions of claws. She just wanted something normal. “I...can’t do that. Couldn’t ask you to do that for me. Besides, I don’t have any fossils or bones anyway. My parents don’t exactly approve of that hobby. Last time I tried to stash some in my closet my mom ransacked it and threw them all away.”

With a frown, Deirdre took the amber as it was given back. “Are your parents here, Bex?” Deirdre asked quietly, sincerely. She remembered her first move away from her family, and how every day she expected her mother to barge in, and turn up her nose at the dust that lived under her furniture. For all the times she did turn up unannounced, even in this home she had now, it was never as simple as the dust. “I don’t plan on having anyone in my house that I disagree with,” Deirdre’s eyes narrowed, voice turning sharp as she remembered Ariana. “I don’t like the idea of people like that intruding on what’s meant to be safe.” What’s meant to be hers. But Deirdre shook her head; this was about Bex. “I had novels. Romance, mostly. Growing up, I liked them. I hid them under my bed. My cousin knew about them, and one day, when she was angry at me, she told my mother. To this day, I can still smell them burning; how my mother looked standing by the fire; how I had to bite the inside of my cheeks to keep from crying.” Deirdre slowly returned the amber to its place, looking back at Bex. “They won’t hurt you here. They won’t know. I won’t let them. You are safe here, you understand that, don’t you?”

The question took Bex by surprise, but then again, hadn’t she been asking herself that every day? Are they here? Will they come? Will they take her back? She watched Deirdre take the amber and squeezed her hands shut around the air where it used to be. The answer was no, but also yes. Because no, they were not here physically. They could not grab Bex or yell at her or stand between her and the doorway. But yes, because she saw them everywhere. In every raised hand, in every loud voice, in every corner of the room when she was just a bit too tired or too lost in thought-- and then she’d blink, and they’d be gone, but they were there. They were always there. They were more frightening than a bloodthirsty werewolf sometimes. “No,” she answered back just as quietly. She wrapped her arms around herself as she listened. Her chest ached. How many of Bex’s fantasy books or history compendiums or fuck, even comic books, had her mom stolen away from her? Torn to shreds and dumped in the garbage. Her mother didn’t care to burn the evidence. She hadn’t minded when Bex would pull whatever remains she could find from the trash to try and piece them back together, sobbing on the study floor. It was a lesson, she told her. One she could learn fast. And she had. Just like the books, the fossils were destroyed. The bones were snapped, sometimes like her own. She looked at Deirdre, not realizing the tears in her eyes until she was blinking them away. She turned her face. “You don’t know that,” she said back, “how can you guarantee that?” 

Deirdre still felt wonder every time Morgan perked up to hear of something she liked, of her life or what she was doing; excitement for the person she was with such love that she had never been given. The first time it happened, Deirdre thought it must have been a lie. How insidious it was that even when happy, loved, her mother could reach through time and space and sow doubt. How terrible it must have been for Bex. “Your parents are always with you…” she breathed, closing her eyes. “Every doubt. Every hesitation or negative thought. Your fear, your anger, your life...it’s all theirs. They are here. It’s like they live inside your body, always watching, always waiting. You hear their words in your own voice. I know how it is Bex.” She opened her eyes, looking at Bex—hugging herself, crying. “But physically, they are not here. And the only harm they can do is the kind they taught you to do to yourself.” Deirdre moved closer, slowly and gently resting her hand on the young girl’s shoulder. “I know this because no one who stays in this house is anything like them. And I want you to be safe. And we are very similar, Bex.” The humans would never understand. Except Siobhan had never thought her torment was the kind with a name, a human name. And there were many that understood. “I also break glass, but I look a lot cooler when I do it,” she smiled, “and I can guarantee it: I promise you that I won’t let your parents enter this house. And you know my thing about promises, I’d have to keep it. Although, maybe don’t invite your parents over unless you want me to throw your mother through a window.” Deirdre tapped Bex’s head. “What are the parents inside your thoughts saying about that?” 

Bex felt her body tightening with each word spoken, truer than the last. A string of sentences that somehow described her life so perfectly and yet so horribly. She trembled and bit down on her lip. She didn’t want to admit it, she’d never admitted it to Morgan, but she hated them. She hated them. They stole her life away and even now that she was out, gone, they were still everywhere. They were inside of her, stealing bits of her. They filled her up and swallowed her whole and her darkest fear, her biggest fear was that, one day, she’d be just like them. She would become her mother, full of anger and resent and pain. She tried to force away the tears but they always stuck around. She did not flinch when Deirdre came close, because her mind inherently understood that someone who had lived it, too, would never dare raise a hand. She hated that Deirdre was right. She looked up when Deirdre said she shattered glass, too, when she said she’d promise to keep her safe. Bex didn’t have words for that, she couldn’t even say no. She scrunched her nose as Deirdre tapped her head, looking up at her-- the only other woman in her life aside from her mom who was taller than her-- and furrowed a brow. “I don’t think I’d mind altogether if you did…” she mumbled, releasing some of the tension in her shoulders. “Did--” she started, stopped. Chewed on the thought. “Did your mom ever tell you...she loved you?”

Deirdre laughed; loud and barking the way she did when she was both surprised and amused. She was quick to stop the sound and wave a hand in the air, trying to tell Bex that she wasn’t laughing at her, but more like laughing with her...even though Bex wasn’t laughing. “Honestly I thought you might like to have the honours of throwing your mother through a window, but I could do it.” Her own mother was far stronger than her, shorter in stature and more lean, but far more skilled. For all Deirdre had been called a prodigy, her mother had the advantage of about sixty more years of training. But the worst Bex’s mother could be was some witch, right? As Deirdre considered the logistics of truly throwing Bex’s mother through a window, she nearly missed the other question. When she heard it, she felt like laughing again. And then she thought about it. Siobhan was a complicated woman; as a child, before her scream, she could remember a warmth. When training, her mother’s patience wore thin. Approval was rare. She had wanted a daughter, had rejoiced in her young activation, but didn’t like the reality of it. She was quick to tell Deirdre that she never cried, she never complained, and she’d had it so much worse.

“Never the word love,” Deirdre said after a moment, “Proud; delighted to have a daughter like me. It was always about the image. She never used the word love--she didn’t believe in it. But she liked to be kind when it suited her; whenever I agreed to her way, she’d call me smart. If I did what she told me, she said she was proud. If she felt like I was going to disobey her, she reminded me that she was my mother. If I seemed displeased, she would dangle everything she did for me over my head. It was these moments that tricked me into thinking she must have been a good mother. If she had been cruel all the time, it wouldn’t have taken me so long to know. I wouldn’t have listened to her. Those drops of approval...I lived for them. I knew they existed, so I chased them. And the more I chased, the more rare they became. The more rare they were, the harder I ran after them. Everything I did was about her. Always about her. So, no, she never said she loved me. She didn’t have to, it wouldn’t have changed anything.” Deirdre rolled up her sleeve, pointing to the iron burn on her forearm. It had been for training, but it was the only scar she had for her mother’s torment; for all of her volatile emotions. “A woman who will do something like this, isn’t one that loves you. As much as I wished she did. As much as I wished my whole family did. It was never about love to them. And as angry as I am with my mother, I know how my grandmother was to her. And I know how my great-grandmother was to her.” She knew because they were all still alive, of course. “Did yours?” She asked, rolling down her sleeve, “ever say she loved you?” 

Never the word love. That shouldn’t have reassured Bex as much as it did. But it made her feel just the smallest sense of relief. It shouldn’t have, but it did. Her mother had probably never said it to her. At least not anytime Bex could remember. She remembered a lot of “that’s my girl”s and “you were so well behaved”s and “good girl”s, but never that. Barely even...proud. The closest she got was when her mom would tuck her in to bed and Bex would say the words in her small voice, and her mother, so sweet, and so soft, now that her anger was gone, would sooth down her hair, and brush thumbs over her bruises and say, “Of course, darling.” Listening to Deirdre felt like listening to someone describe herself, her childhood. It made her skin crawl, it made her shiver. She squeezed around herself, burying the pain that was flashing in her eyes. Memories of bruises written into her muscles. Deirdre was rolling up her sleeve and Bex looked down at the mark on her arm. A burn. Her parents were always so careful to never leave anything behind on Bex’s body, she almost wished she had something to show for it. All she had were the memories of broken bones and purple bruises, and blood stained clothes. It wasn’t fair, to either of them. Bex reached out, as if to touch the burn, as if touching it would make it more real, more true. As if touching it would make Bex feel what Deirdre had. But she didn’t need to touch it for any of those things to happen. They just did. She just knew.

Bex pulled her hand back and scratched along the tops of her thighs. Her only marks of her pain were there, on the insides of her thighs. And she’d done them to herself. They were her only ounce of control, for the longest time. Razor blades along skin. She swallowed. “No,” she answered quietly. “I don’t think she knows how to.” Chewed on her lip, rolling it between her teeth. “I wish she would. Sometimes I still think she can.” She looked up at Deirdre, tried to catch her eyes, but found herself unable to hold any sort of gaze. Her eyes fell in shame. “I’ve tried my whole life to get either of my parents to just tell me something, anything close to love. Or even just being proud. Or that they care about me. I keep thinking that if I just do better or try harder it’ll change. It’ll get better. They’ll look at me and tell me they’re proud, that they love me, that I did good. But they just-- it’s only when I do bad. They--” her breath hitched when she inhaled. Why was she already crying? “What did I do wrong?” she suddenly blurted. “Why don’t they love me? Why do they hurt me? I told them I’d be good. I told them I didn't mean to, but they--” She put her head in her hands. “Why can’t I do anything right?”

It was a reflex. Something Deirdre couldn’t explain even if she wanted to. But without thinking, without asking and without meaning to, her arms wrapped around Bex. She pulled the girl in close and gently a hand moved to her hair, stroking the way she thought a mother might–if either of them had ever had one. “You didn’t do anything wrong…” Deirdre said softly. She didn’t believe it much for herself, every silent minute was met with doubt. Perhaps her family had been right. When would Fate come and take away all her nice things like it had so many times before? When did she have to go back? But in that moment, holding Bex in her arms, her doubt fluttered away. And she knew, even if it only would be for these seconds spent with Bex, that neither of them had done anything wrong. “It’s not you. It’s not you, Bex. It’s not your fault. You can bend and break and twist yourself all you want, but they will never see it. Love like that is conditional, fit to be swept away if ever it comes. People like that don’t care, not truly, not like parents ought to. And that’s not your fault. You are a bright and brilliant and kind young woman, and you have grown that way in spite of them, and they will never take that away. Do you understand, Bex? You will always be worthy of love, no matter what. And one day, it’ll be easier to let go of them. One day their voice in your head will get so quiet you won’t hear them unless you strain–and you wouldn’t trouble yourself like that anyway. Because you won’t want to. Don’t wait for them to love you.” Deirdre pulled back, looking Bex in the eyes. “You have people here who do. You don’t need to wait for them. You are good, Bex. You are good to me. Do you understand?”

Of all the things Bex expected from Deirdre, this was not it. Perhaps it was her own aversion to touch that made her not even consider the idea that, maybe, there was a point after all the healing that hugging was not an act of control, but an act of empathy. Bex had hugged Morgan a few times, and while her grasp felt comforting and safe, it was not for lack of trust that had been built. The hurt that Bex carried with her never truly left, but, sometimes, it felt less so when she was in Morgan’s arms. Here, now, as Deirdre wrapped her up and combed fingers through her hair, she was stunned for a moment. Her body didn’t move at first, wondering, if maybe, it was a trick somehow. Like with her mother. But there was no way her mother could ever show any sense of compassion, any sense of empathy the way Deirdre was showing. You are good, Bex. And then, with perhaps just as much fervor and just as much surprise, Bex wrapped her arms back around Deirdre and let herself be taken in. Even if she couldn’t say it yet, her words meant something to her. You are good to me. Hands tightened up in knots, bunching the cloth of Deirdre’s shirt between her fingers. It’s not you, Bex. It’s not your fault. She hiccuped with her strain, words drowned by sobs. Don’t wait for them to love you. She sank into Deirdre’s arms and wondered if she understood without Bex having to say anything. No, she knew she did. A child did not cling so desperately to approval if she did not understand the cruelty of its rejection. Finally, despite her grief still worming its way through her chest, she answered, “I understand,” against Deirdre’s shoulder. 

"Good," Deirdre asserted. She squeezed Bex a little tighter, easing slowly into letting her go. She gestured to the door, figuring they'd both had enough emotional release for the day. She wasn't going to make Bex dig up more than she wanted to. "Will you help me bake some salmon biscuits? For the cats and Min--" Deirdre coughed. "Me. I love fish...cookies. Yum." Although, as she thought about it, she wondered if Mina would appreciate being offered cat treats. It wasn't her fault that Mina and the cats shared a fish-centric diet. "Oh, and Bex?" She paused, smiling at the young witch, "have you ever read Wild Geese? I think you'd like it." 

#chatzy #wickedswriting #chatzy: deirdre #you don't have to be good #deirdre #domestic abuse mention tw #tw child abuse mention #soft???? #this is how u soft right??

[the-phoenix-heart]

Sorting Hat Chats - The Last Unicorn

I don’t care if literally no one else cares about this but me WE ARE SORTING THE LAST UNICORN CHARACTERS WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!

(You can find the basics of the system I’m using here, by @sortinghatchats​!)

(Also my reference for this is the 1982 movie and the 2010 graphic novel. As Peter S. Beagle, the actual author of the book, wrote the screenplay for the movie and the graphic novel has everything else the movie missed+an author’s note from Beagle I think it’s safe to say that I’ll get an accurate read on these characters.)

(Also also you don’t know just how long this has been in my drafts)

THE UNICORN, or AMALTHEA as she’s known in human form, is a Badger primary. It’s important to remember that Badgers are loyal to people, but what they view as people doesn’t have to be a human. The Unicorn views other unicorns as people and it’s why at the beginning she’s willing to leave behind her entire forest that she cares for, just for the small chance that she might be able to save them. Also, her saving the harpy, despite the fact that the harpy would surely kill her. She does that because the harpy, Celaeno, is real like her. “We’re two sides of the same magic.” It doesn’t matter if Celaeno is a creature that would kill all the other animals she’d just freed or Mummy Fortuna. She’s ‘real’ like her, and therefore people to The Unicorn. 

When she’s been transformed into a human she says, “How can anything that is going to die be real?” Dehumanizing is a thing Badger primaries do a lot of the time, and here The Unicorn is literally saying that what is ‘real’, what is people, are immortal magical creatures (and regular animals), and anything else isn’t ‘real’, isn’t people. 

The Unicorn’s secondary is harder to get a grip on, seeing as for half of the story she spends her screen time standing melancholic on high twisted towers looking out into the sea. Turning into a human is her moment when she burns. As Amalthea she is lost and forgetting herself, and also almost certainly has developed depression. Lir says that Amalthea heard about his horses burnt legs and she immediately went to it to try and heal it, only for nothing to happen. She literally tried to unburn something but it didn’t work guys. Before all that though, as a unicorn, I think she was a Lion secondary. 

When she finds out she might be the last unicorn in the world she decides to charge out into the world and find them, or die trying. When she’s mistaken for a simple (but pretty) mare she goes off on that little farmer. She stands her ground when the harpy is gonna kill her. She saves Schmendrick from the tree he accidentally made fall in love with him just by marching up to it and shutting it up. She saves Molly and Schmendrick from thieves by rearing up and threatening them with her hooves (she’ll stomp you with her fucking hooves if you even think of looking at her friends). And at the end she saves her friends from The Red Bull by charging at it and herding it into the sea. She’s described as “rearing up like a scimitar” and screaming (which no immortal has ever done) when she fights back. Even when she is transformed into Amalthea. When she’s still just been transformed she stops Mabruk pretty much by staring him down and possibly using her magic. Even at her most burnt, when she is willing to give up on the other the unicorns, she does so by being blunt and standing her ground.

Lion secondaries also have a habit of collecting people, like a Badger secondary, but I still say The Unicorn is a Lion secondary because the way she collects people (’people’ it’s two people and you can’t count Lir because he fell in love with Amalthea who was so burnt it wasn’t really her) isn’t because she is exceptionally nice (she’s not, not by human standards) or because she’s so hardworking (she doesn’t work that much in the story, because as a unicorn she doesn’t have to), but because she’s so magnificent, so true, so powerful. Those are Lion traits drawing people to her.

And honestly it makes sense that she’s a Lion secondary. As a unicorn she’s close to all powerful, nothing can touch her. She doesn’t have to put in the work like a Badger, doesn’t have to gather the knowledge like a Bird, and has no use for Snake transforming. I wouldn’t be surprised if all unicorns had a Lion secondary. Honestly I love seeing how non human characters are sorted because they are so different from human characters. 

SCHMENDRICK is a Bird primary. He truly believes in the system of the world working like a fairytale and unlike a lot of stories where this would be a bad thing and disproven at the end, Schmendrick is right about the system. He doesn’t have to learn to be right about the system, he’s right about it from the start and it’s not like he hates how the system works, he loves and finds comfort in it. A lot of great lines go to him. And you can also see Lion primary Molly and Snake primary Lir are questioning just about everything he spouts. 

Molly: “They deserve their fate, they deserve worse. To leave a child out in the snow-” Schmendrick: “Well if they hadn’t then he wouldn’t have grown up to be the hero of all this. That’s the way these things go.” Molly: “But if he’s the hero, what is [The Unicorn]?” Schmendrick: “[You and I] are the tale-but [The Unicorn] is real. [The Unicorn] is real.”

Schmendrick: “If it changes a unicorn into a human being, then that was the only thing to do. I am a bearer, I am a dwelling, I am a messenger-” Molly: “You’re a stupid messenger, and a stupid, stupid magician.”

Lir: “You have to do something.” Schmendrick: “I can’t.” Lir: “Do something. You have power. You changed her into a unicorn. Do something to save her. I will kill if you don’t.” Schmendrick: “Not all the magic in the world can help her now. If she will not fight him, she must go into the sea with the others. Neither magic nor murder will aid her.” Lir: “Then what is magic for? What use is wizardry if it cannot save a unicorn?” Schmendrick: “No-that is what heroes are for.”

Molly: “Oh, the poor man. Poor Lir.” Schemdrick: “It’s not altogether bad. Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed.”

(I could quote this book for eons people I swear)

He’s also the one who tells Lir he has to rule over the people of Hagsgate when Lir is two steps away from killing his birth father who says it was good he abandoned Lir so he could one day become king. He thinks that he has done The Unicorn more evil than Mommy Fortuna or Haggard or the Red Bull because he turned her into a human and turned her back into a unicorn. He tries to comfort Lir about The Unicorn by telling him his land is blessed because all the unicorns ran through it in freedom, and how The Unicorn will remember him, “when men are fairytales in books written by rabbits.” (god I love that quote)

As for his secondary, he’s a total Snake secondary. He pickpockets, he lies to villagers about being an actual great wizard, he haggles for good payment in Hagsgate so long as he assassinates Lir (which he has no intention of fulfilling), he lies his way into the castle, when he needs to get the wine to drink itself he just drinks it and gives it to a skeleton who can’t tell the difference between and empty bottle or a bottle of wine. 

There is however one time in the story where Schmendrick drops his rhetoric about how the world works. They’re in the Red Bull’s cavern and Amalthea doesn’t want to become The Unicorn again and wants to stay with Lir.

Schmendrick: “Let it end here. Let her marry the prince and live happily ever after.  Molly: Schemendrick, if we don’t do this there will never be another chance. All the unicorns of the world will remain his prisoners, forever, except one, and she will die. She will grow old and die. Schmendrick: One good woman more in the world is worth every single unicorn gone. Let it end.

This is not what he believes. It’s him tricking Lir, making Lir remember that he is a hero, and to let there be no more unicorns would go against his being a hero. Molly tells him he forced him, and that he did it so he could become a real magician. Schmendrick disagrees. Like a Snake he doesn’t see it as forcing Lir to make a choice, he sees it as the right thing to do, and only way to do it.

MOLLY GRUE, lovely Molly. She is a Lion primary, who was burnt by something in the past, which is probably how she ended up with Captain Cully, and she unburns at the sight of The Unicorn. Molly’s beef with The Unicorn at first is that she never visited her when she was young, despite her love of unicorns. It’s such a Lion primary thing to me to ask something like a unicorn why they never came to her, and then to forgive a unicorn when unicorns are not to be questioned or forgiven. Molly as soon as she learns of The Unicorn’s quest doesn’t even go back to get her things. She leaves right that second with her, saying that her things don’t matter now that she has seen The Unicorn. Molly hears about what the people of Hagsgate did to baby Lir and she is willing to throw down with them right then. 

Lion primary Molly doesn’t want to poke holes in the system of the world. She could care less about understanding the system, she just does things because her moral compass says it’s right. She doesn’t care that ‘unicorns are not to be forgiven’ she’s going to forgive The Unicorn dammit (it’s a pride thing. Molly feels she was wronged even though technically unicorns don’t owe anything to people, pride is also very Lion primary). I 

She has a Badger secondary. When she was burnt she found a community for herself to live/work in-Captain Cully’s Band of Freemen. When she’s in Haggard’s castle she gets a job as the cook and cleaner and puts herself to work to survive. She gets information from the talking stray cat, and she helps out Lir as much as she can, quickly becoming his friend.

PRINCE LIR, is a total Snake primary. He falls hard for Amalthea, and then decides that he’s gonna start doing great deeds and become a hero just so he can woo her. He doesn’t really care for anyone but Amalthea and Molly, he’s willing to kill Schmendrick if he doesn’t save The Unicorn after she’s transformed back into herself. Molly says that Schmendrick reminded Lir that he was a hero, but what Schmendrick really did was remind Lir that he was a hero for Amalthea. 

He’s willing to kill his own birth father for abandoning him, and when he is to be king he talks about how much he hates it because he’ll rule over people he hates and be alone the rest of his life. When he dreams about The Unicorn, and she doesn’t say anything to him, he takes this as her not caring about him like he loved her, a betrayal. The real reason why she didn’t say anything to him is because she remembered him, and his love, and loving him, and cared more about him, but Lir just doesn’t understand that.

His secondary is a Badger. When he falls for Amalthea his idea of courting her is doing great deeds and working to be a hero. He’s slain black knights, basilisks, seas serpents, and five dragons, he’s faced fatal riddles and glass mountains. He starts trying to write poetry after all these fail to touch her. He puts in as much work as he can to try and woo her. He literally sacrifices himself for her, not as a Lion charge, but instead as using his body as a tool. His sacrifice is so that The Unicorn will fight back. 

I will say however that he has a definite Lion performance. It isn’t a model, because he actually doesn’t care about the Lion secondary it’s just him performing as a Lion secondary hero to try and woo Amalthea, which doesn’t work. 

When he’s confiding in Molly he words a Badger secondary in love perfectly, “I want to serve her...I wish to be whatever she has most need of.”

KING HAGGARD is super fucking burnt, and a Snake primary. What he only cares about is trying to be happy, and keeping his unicorns with him. He gets cursed by a witch that one day his castle would sink into the sea with him in it, and his reply was that any good tyrant’s castle needed a curse. He wants to be happy of course but he doesn’t really care if he dies. He dies laughing. The scene where he monologues to Amalthea about how he has all the unicorns is my favorite, and he pretty much gives the perfect description of his primary. 

King Haggard: “All things die when I pick them up. I do not know why they die, but it has always been so, save for the one dear possession that has not turned cold and dull as I guarded it-the only thing that has ever belonged to me.”

King Haggard is greedy. He wants to own things. He wants to have his Snake connections like a healthy unburnt Snake but that doesn’t work. It’s never worked. He found Lir and decided that since he’d never been a father maybe he could have a Snake connection and be happy, but the connection did the same as all his other connections. The connection died, even if Lir didn’t. There is only one thing that has ever brought him the happiness of a Snake connection, and that was the unicorns. It’s a one sided connection, but he does truly love them. He does also have the Red Bull, but we don’t know what that relationship is like and it’s likely he views the Red Bull as more of an extension of himself (in my take of the character that’s how I view it). 

He hoards the unicorns, and in a way that while very Snake Primary is also very Bird secondary. Haggard collects things, and tries them out so that he can figure out what makes him happy. What doesn’t work he usually throws away, and what works (the unicorns) he hoards. He collected Mabruk not in a communal way, but in the way that he would collect a book, and when the book isn’t good enough he throws it away and picks up another. He’s also super fucking smart for a bastard. He explains about how he figured out Amalthea was a unicorn and talks about how her every action no matter how small was his spy.

It’s also a neat parallel that both Lir and Haggard are Snake primaries. The book ends with Lir resigning himself to be as unhappy as Haggard when he loses Amalthea. However, I do think that Lir will probably end up better than Haggard because he had some support from Schmendrick and Molly, and the book ends with a princess being sent to Lir to seek help. Lir will end up a healthy snake. 

So...

The Unicorn - Badger primary that sees immortal creatures as people/Lion secondary, both of these burn when she becomes Amalthea

Schmendrick - Bird primary/Snake secondary

Molly - Previously burned Lion primary, unburns after she sees The Unicorn/Badger secondary

Lir - Snake primary/Badger secondary, Lion secondary performance

Haggard - Burnt Snake primary/Bird secondary

#i have THOUGHTS on the last unicorn #like a lot #especially about lir and amalthea's relationship #but this isn't about that #sorting hat chats #sortinghatchats #the last unicorn #tlu #the unicorn #amalthea #prince lir #molly grue #schmendrick #king haggard #this is gonna get zero likes #what i find really interesting #is that we get an example of every primary and every secondary in this film #bird primary #lion primary #snake primary #badger primary #bird secondary #lion secondary #snake secondary #badger secondary

[treatian]

The Chronicles of the Dark One: Breaking the Curse

Chapter 48: Reconnaissance Work

If it weren't for Baelfire, he'd have called Dove to do this for him. Getting information, digging around and snooping…those things weren't really his job. And in this world, with his ankle injury, it wasn't something he was often physically prepared, or sometimes, even able, to do. If this were any other job not related to potentially finding a link to his son, he'd have sent Dove in a heartbeat. But since it was Baelfire, he'd opted not to summon his bird and simply do it himself.

Of course…the fact that he'd sent Dove on a nice little vacation didn't help.

After checking Granny's records in the office, carelessly left out for anyone to find really, and learning which room Booth was staying in, he'd taken to the stairs. That was the first time that he started to think he would have rather liked to have Dove with him in this case. He wouldn't have trusted the bird to come alone lest he find something too damning, but having a second pair of eyes might have been incredibly helpful given the fact that he was giving himself such a short amount of time to get this done. On the stairs, he'd set the alarm on his cell phone for seven minutes. That gave him time to get up the stairs, pick the lock, look around for five minutes, and leave. It wasn't a lot, but anything more than that would be risky. Booth could leave Mary Margaret's party and return here, he could come back with Emma, he could catch him and call Emma, Granny or even Ruby could come back to change for work, and he had no doubt they wouldn't keep silent. No, more than five minutes was just too risky.

He wore gloves, just on the off chance that he couldn't get the door locked again or he made a mess of something and Emma was called after. He wished he had one of Regina's skeleton keys, but the best part of being Mr. Gold meant that he didn't need it. Would it have been helpful? Sure. But necessary? Not at all. He picked the lock with some tools from the shop. Dove was good with locks, but he'd wager that he could do better. Being a pawnbroker meant dealing with locks of all types. He had hazy false memories over the years of people bringing him objects of value that had locks but keys that had "long ago" gone missing. Picking a lock was second nature; it was just another day at the office for him. Now, if he had two healthy legs, then he could dismiss Dove for good. But as it was right now…

Suddenly he felt the tumblers fall into place and heard the snick of the lock opening. He swung the door open, limped inside, and closed the door to give himself a few minutes of privacy. A few minutes…he had to make those minutes count.

There were a few lights that have been left on, which helped. His first priority was doing this quickly, but his second was to keep things tidy so that no one knew he'd been here. The lights on meant he didn't have to turn any on or remember to turn them off. He noted that the room looked well lived in, but wasn't terribly shocked at that considering how long Booth had been in Storybrooke by now. Bed, nightstands, desk, all common items one might find in a B&B room. But the desk would probably yield the most information. It was the most cluttered.

There was a hat of some kind, sitting next to a typewriter. It was old, older than Storybrooke. It didn't belong here in the B&B, and Emma had mentioned something about a typewriter when he'd spoken to her a bit ago. It was probably August's. It was an antique but…nothing more. Probably worth about one hundred dollars in a shop like his. There was no meaning to it except perhaps sentimental. If it was sentimental, he wasn't going to discover its sentiment without August. So he kept looking. He checked the paper in the typewriter, but it was blank. No words. No letters. However, there was more paper stacked next to it, under a wooden paperweight—a donkey of all things. Beautiful craftsmanship, it appeared to be handmade, but…also meaningless in addition to being worthless. He doubted the donkey was standard at Granny's either. But it, like the typewriter, was an odd thing to travel with. More sentiment?

He moved the donkey aside and looked to the small stack of paper it guarded. The top page held a simple typewritten paragraph, probably a continuation of whatever was on the page-

His heart stopped for a moment before thudding painfully back to life. He felt cold. As if all the blood had drained from his body.

He'd turned that page, expecting to find another page of text. Instead, he'd discovered a drawing, a sketch of something deadly, something he couldn't have prepared himself for.

It was a drawing of his dagger.

His name was spelled correctly.

"L" before "E". And every other detail aside from that was perfect as well. The way it waved, the etchings on it, the handle's design, the point of it, everything right down to his fucking name was perfect!

It was disturbing. Of all the things he'd expected to find, that certainly hadn't been in. It changed everything. Everything! He couldn't just leave August Booth to his own plans, not when he had a drawing like that. And he sure as hell couldn't call in one of the birds to watch him. No. He had to get to the bottom of this. And he had to do it himself. He had to do it quickly. He knew Baelfire and knew about the dagger…this didn't end when his cell phone alarm went off. It couldn't.

For once, he closed the shop the next day without warning or reason and spent the day trailing after August Wayne Booth. It wasn't terribly difficult. Where his motorcycle as he was usually never far. He'd gone to see Emma early that morning, but it had been a short visit. He still had two workers watching Emma and Regina, the two last remaining players in the Mary Margaret Scandal. He knew what they were doing. Emma was trying to figure out a way to take down Regina; Regina was trying to figure out how to cover her ass. They'd be too busy for Booth.

That was probably why he'd had lunch alone at Granny's that day. Hungry as he was, he didn't allow himself to go inside or eat anything. If he did that, he might get held up and miss August on the way out. He was a man on a mission—a mission to get information. Having a picture of that dagger was a threat to his existence. A threat to his existence was a threat to seeing his son.

He didn't take threats well.

Finally, August emerged from the diner, mounted his motorcycle, and sped off. He followed at a distance as he sped through the streets of Storybrooke, up into the woods, and arrived at, of all places, the convent. He parked his car in a spot that he knew would give him a good visual once Booth parked his bike and then watched as he strode up the stairs. He waited outside, pacing until Mother Superior appeared, they exchanged a few words, and then the pair of them went inside. It was curious. Very curious. What would Booth want with an Old Bug like her?

Fortunately, after an hour of sitting in his car, waiting for him to come out, he knew how to find out. Mother Superior…finally he'd talked to someone that he could have sway over! Fairy or nun, in this land, she was nothing but a tenant, and that meant he could ask her about him, threaten her if need be. In fact…this was great. Either Mother Superior would tell him what Booth wanted, or he'd find some legal reason to kick them out of the convent. One way or another, he'd be leaving here with a problem solved. The only question was which one.

One hour later, August emerged from the convent with the Bug. They chatted amiably on the porch for a few moments before walking down some steps and finally parting. That was his chance. And yes, the moment he got out of his car and made his way to the nun while August sat back on his bike, he was aware that he risked losing the man. But if he could learn anything substantial, then it might be worth the risk. For Baelfire…anything was worth the risk.

"Mother Superior. Good afternoon," he muttered without bothering to hide his disdain for her. She knew he didn't like them. No need to hide it. After all, the way she glanced up at him and then sighed didn't hide her own disdain.

"Our rent is paid in full," he explained simply. Yes, he knew that. Rent had been due the day Kathryn was freed…he'd had Dove collect it like usual so they could talk over the Kathryn situation. Then, once he'd given him his cut, he'd disappeared up to one of the cabins he owned by the lake for his well-deserved vacation while he'd done the books. He'd been irritated to see the convent had paid in full but not surprised after the events that had taken place over Miner's Day.

"I'm not here about the rent."

Mother Superior smiled one of her falsely sweet but innocent smiles. "Well, good day to you, then," she sassed before attempting to walk away from him. Honestly, the Curse had a sense of humor. This woman…a nun…innocent?! That was utterly ridiculous when talking about any fairy, least of all their leader.

"Tell me, that man who just left here…who did he say he was? What did he want?" he called before she could get too far.

She turned, her smile still in place as she whispered, "I don't have to tell you that."

The thing was, ever since he'd decided to ask her, he'd been expecting an answer like that. And he was more than happy to give her the answer that he'd prepared.

"And I don't have to not double your rent," he snapped, wiping the smile off of her face and putting it on his own instead. Their rental agreement was indeed specific. And Mr. Gold had longed for years to tear it up, which meant he practically had the damn thing memorized. He couldn't kick them out unless they failed to make rent. There was nothing in it that mentioned the rent had to stay the same year to year or even month to month. And by the look on her face, the Blue Bug knew it too.

"What did he want?" he pushed.

"Advice and counsel," she answered. "He came to town looking for his father after a long separation and he recently found him."

"Ah," he managed to let out a choked noise but only because his heart had suddenly leaped up into his throat as his body went cold and then numb all over again. It was identical to the feeling he'd had last night when he'd seen the drawing of the dagger only...different. This was different.

A son who had found his father after a long separation. A man who knew Baelfire.

It wasn't possible…

"And a happy reunion has already taken place?" he asked, trying not to put too much emotion into it. That was a difficult task. He was nothing but emotion right now. Emotion after emotion…fear, hope, love, joy, pain, sorrow, panic…lots of panic.

Why panic? All the others he understood but panic…

"No. He hasn't spoken to him yet."

No. It couldn't be Baelfire. If it was, they'd spoken just the other morning. Not that he would call that a happy reunion, exactly. But nuances…

He swallowed. "And why not?"

"Mm, it was a difficult parting. There are many issues to be resolved between them."

"I see…" he whispered, looking out across the property without actually seeing it. He felt a shiver creep up his spine and just barely managed to mutter "Good day, Mother Superior" before turning and leaving.

When he fell back into his car, he felt like he couldn't breathe.

August Wayne Booth…here to reunite with a father he'd parted badly from…it couldn't be…

Could he?

#Rumbelle #Rumple #Rumpelstiltskin #Rumplestiltskin #Dark One #mr gold #pinnochio #august w booth #Baelfire #The Blue Fairy #Mother Superior #ouat #ouat fanfiction #fanfic

[simping-on-the-daily]

Anyways Morals has a journal

The Book That Contains A Little Bit Of Everything, by Morals

The Book That Contains A Little Bit Of Everything was created by Morals as a journal for her to write down current events, although the book also holds coordinates to places, drawings, and other things Morals wishes to write down.

Morals frequently keeps the book inside of her inventory and never lets it out of there, not wanting what she writes down to be exposed. The hybrid considers the book to very important to her and tries to write at least one thing every few days, and even under the Egg, she still continues her tradition.

Due to Morals being corrupted by the Egg and her constantly fighting it and succeeding numerous times (allowing her to visit pro-omelette citizens as long as she says a codeword), Morals has started to only write in the Alien Alphabet, since Morals believes the Egg can only speak Galatic, not the End Language. After her corruption, anything that isn't written in the Alien Alphabet means that Morals is fully under the Egg's influence for the time being.

Notable or Memorable Journal Entries

'I love how birds just fly so calmly and then my wings just go FLAPPY FLAP FLAP'

'Currently have six stacks of gunpowder. Boom boom bitches I'm the new Jason Dean'

'Well shit I thought I was JD but I'm really Veronica now aren't I- Dream I was supposed to be the bomber not you >:('

'The Tommyinnator has done it's purpose and helped slaughter that kid. Proud mum over here'

'If my mum ever finds this pls don't ground me'

'Spam time /j'

makes getting pets really sad because they all run away from you. Passive mobs, at least'

'I found a pig! Named them Ethics. First ever pet! She's a little scared of me because of you know, the whole enderdragon gimmick, but I think she's warming up'

'Just got a new skeleton horse! Named her Noble and I had to once more chase them down to tame em'

'I had to command them to stay still so they wouldn't run, but I got a sheep! Their name is Honorable and they got purple dye. I can tell she's really close to shitting herself rn, but I just hope she warms up eventually'

'Villager just had the gut to say you can't simp for LEGO men. Good thing villagers have to obey my commands due to mum perks otherwise I would've smacked a hoe'

'Trading who? Villagers are forced to give me what I want meanwhile George is just suffering over there lol'

'I know I should feel bad about kinda using my Enderdragon status, but I also don't see what the big deal is? When I'm a few blocks away they go straight back to normal. All fear just gone. So, it's not like I'm traumatizing the villagers or Enderman'

'⌿⌰⌇ ⎅⍜⋏'⏁ ⊑⎍⍀⏁ ⏁⊑⟒⋔' (Pls don't hurt them)

'⏁⊑⟒⊬ ⏃⍀⟒⋏'⏁ ⟟⋏ ☊⍜⋏⏁⍀⍜⌰' (They aren't in control)

'⟟ ☊⏃⋏'⏁ ⌇⏁⍜⌿ ⟟⏁' (I can't stop it)

'⊬⍜⎍ ☍⋏⍜⍙ ⊬⍜⎍ ⊑⏃⎐⟒⋏'⏁ ⌰⍜⌇⏁ ⏚⏃⎅ ⍙⊑⟒⋏ ⊑⟒ ☍⟒⟒⌿⌇ ⌇☊⍀⟒⏃⋔⟟⋏☌ ⌰⏃⋏☌⎍⏃☌⟒' (You know you haven't lost Bad when he keeps screaming language)

'⏁⊑⟒ ⍜⏁⊑⟒⍀⌇ ⏃⍀⟒ ⌇⏁⟟⌰⌰ ⏃ ☌⟟⏃⋏⏁ ⎎⏃⋔⟟⌰⊬ ⟒⎐⟒⋏ ⎍⋏⎅⟒⍀ ⏁⊑⟒ ⟒☌☌' (The others are still a giant family even under the Egg)

'⟟ ⏃⋔ ⌇⍜ ⌇⍜⍀⍀⊬' (I am so sorry)

'⎅⍀⟒⏃⋔ ⟟⎎ ⊬⍜⎍ ⟒⎐⟒⍀ ⎎⟟⋏⎅ ⏁⊑⟟⌇ ⟟ ⏃⋔ ⌇⍜ ⎎⎍☊☍⟟⋏☌ ⌇⍜⍀⍀⊬' (Dream if you ever find this I am so fucking sorry)

'⏁⊑⟒⍀⟒'⌇ ⌇⏁⟟⌰⌰ ☌⍜⍜⎅ ⟟⋏ ⎅⍀⟒⏃⋔ ⟟ ☍⋏⍜⍙ ⟟⏁' (There's still good in Dream I know it)

'⍙⊑⟒⋏ ⟟ ⎎⟟⋏⎅ ⍜⎍⏁ ⍙⊑⏃⏁ ⍾⎍⏃☊☍⟟⏁⊬'⌇ ⎅⍜⟟⋏☌ ⏁⍜ ⎅⍀⟒⏃⋔ ⟟'⌰⌰ ⟒⏃⏁ ⊑⟟⌇ ⎎⎍☊☍⟟⋏☌ ⊑⟒⏃⎅ ⍜⎎⎎' (When I find out what Quackity's doing to Dream I'll eat his fucking head off)

'⎅⍀⟒⏃⋔ ⟟ ⌰⍜⎐⟒ ⊬⍜⎍' (Dream I love you)

'⏁⊑⟟⌇ ⎅⟟⏃⍀⊬ ⟟⌇ ⋏⍜⍙ ⎐⟒⍀⊬ ⏃⋏☌⌇⏁⊬ ⊑⎍⊑' (This diary is now very angsty huh)

'⊑⍜⋏⍜⍀⏃⏚⌰⟒ ⋔⏃☍⟒ ⊬⍜⎍⍀ ⋔⏃⋔⏃ ⌿⍀⍜⎍⎅ ⏃⋏⎅ ☌⍜ ⎎⎍☊☍ ⌇⊑⟟⏁ ⎍⌿' (Honorable make your mama proud and go fuck shit up)

'⟟ ⊑⏃⏁⟒ ☊⍜⍙⌇' (I hate cows)

'WORSHIP THE EGG'

'⏚⏚⊑ ⏚⏃☍⟒⎅ ⎍⌇ ⏃⌰⌰ ⋔⎍⎎⎎⟟⋏⌇' (BBH baked us all muffins)

'⌿⟒⟒⌿⟒⟒' (Peepee)

'Why don't I own any dresses'

'⟟'⋔ ⌇⍜ ⌇⍜⍀⍀⊬ ⟒⎐⟒⍀⊬⍜⋏⟒' (I'm So SoRrY eVeRyOnE)

'⟟ ⏁⊑⟟⋏☍ ⌇⏃⋔ ⍙⟟⌰⌰ ⎎⟟⋏⏃⌰⌰⊬ ⌰⟒⏁ ⋔⟒ ⎐⟟⌇⟟⏁ ⎅⍀⟒⏃⋔ ⏃☌⏃⟟⋏ ⊬⏃⊬!' (I think Sam will finally let me visit Dream again yay!)

#dream smp #dream smp ocs #mcyt #mcyt ocs #morals #minecraft morals #mcyt morals

[odysseywritings]

The Beat Goes On

(continued from here)

He replayed the guitar sound from earlier, with its mesmerizing ups and downs forming a spiral in his head. The red aura from the building’s inside merged with the playing, becoming faster and more aggressive on his already blistered fingers. He closed his eyes and made more lyrics about the place he saw before to recapture the essence.

Fire in a dark town

Yellow’s dying down

Red calling my name

Joining the sonic gam-

His mind-space cut off as he heard pounding electric hums from all around. Dorian woke to find a dark place illuminated by red lights scattered across the place. He saw a variety of humans- or at least things looking like humans-  wearing masks that were animal faces or outrageous expressions fitting for punks. No one had identical hair. Dorian could easily bump into someone with winged blond hair or a curtain of black hair. Their outfits were tattered, with shredded up clothes and dyed with bright pink and yellow designs all over.

The music playing was an echoing electric guitar surrounded by a cascading synth, with a cool yet dark melody keeping the clientele up and moving. Dorian stumbled round to find walls to cling to in an attempt to ground himself from this chaos. But there were no walls. Everyone was dancing in the middle of a desert full of rock formations that were used as platforms for party-goers to get attention. Red lights gave everyone a vibrant, hot-blooded feel that made Dorian shrink away. He cautiously moved back until he bumped into someone.

“Woah, easy,” a man with a warthog mask said. Though to Dorian, it moved enough to be the man’s face. “This ain’t a mosh. Heh, not yet anyway.”

“I’m just passing through,” Dorian said, feeling he shouldn’t be seen as naive. “Looking for someone. Red eyeliner, blue lips.”

The warthog man snorted with laughter. “You think I can tell anyone apart here? Good luck.

Dorian decided that fretting so much wouldn’t help him, so he payed more attention to the music. The sonic hums from before changed to more frantic synthesized energy, with heavy bass penetrating his heart. The drums, however, made him tap to the speedy beat. Its dynamic changed to a surprisingly jazzy vibe, and his compulsion to dance broke away any fear. Without realizing it, he danced closer to the enchanting sound as the song reverberated through his core.

Dorian didn’t even pay attention to the unique characters around him as he swung his legs around to the beat, catching the admiring claps of a few long-hairs and one fringe-hair. His energy seemed endless, and no bead of sweat was felt. Part of him worried if the warthog man injected him with something, but he put that to rest as the other animal-masked patrons cheered The final chorus of the song was signaling the end, but Dorian felt himself in a rapid trance until a familiar face bumped into him.

“Hey, watch-” her annoyed expression turned to worry. “What are you doing here? You didn’t take anything did you?”

Dorian shook his head.

“Alright, good. This place is for the experienced only. If you stay too long, the music takes over your senses.”

He was confused by what she meant. Dorian pried for more answers but his mouth closed before he spoke. The throbbing rhythm shook his heart as synthesizers and horns rattled his head. Joni’s face looked distorted somehow, as if make-up was disappearing. Yet her eyes stayed the same aside from yellowing.

Dorian glanced behind her to see the clientele look more beast-like, their masks becoming realistic parts. A deer-headed woman and a crocodile-headed man twisted around each other, forming a helix of flesh until they were featureless in all but brown and green silhouettes. To Joni’s right he saw a bird person pecking at a tiger headed one biting back, yet still caressing each other until they were a blob of yellow and orange.

He looked back to Joni forming beast-like features but he couldn’t decipher what exactly. She nudged him away from the music, slowly taking him away from this disturbing vision. The song’s audio died down as the audience cheered on, sounding and looking more human to Dorian’s relief. Joni sat him on a red rock to compose himself and rub the sweat off his matted head.

“What the hell did I just see,” he asked with a mix of anger and fear.

“Remember when I said to be careful about where you go,” she began, sitting next to him. “I haven’t seen you since the last time, so you really must be new. Music here is fine if you take it in doses. But if you go too far with it, it can really drive you crazy. After a while, you know which ones damage you the most. Until then, just be mindful of where you’re at.”

“All right, fine. It was just so different. I never heard it before and it was just drawing me in. It was a good rush! But what I saw was… It was enough to make me see better,”

“Good.” She paused for a moment. “Did you see anything strange with me?”

He was confused by her question. Was it rhetorical? Was it a diagnosis of how far down he went into delirium? He decided to tell a half-truth.

“No. Just that I saw you with less mascara.” He gave a chuckle, making her relaxed and thoughtful.

“And you’re still okay with that vision?”

“I think I’ll live,” he laughed, giving her a warm smile.

The privacy was cut off when they were greeted by the warthog man from before, his broad body looking intimidating as he walked over.

“Ah, so this is the someone who were looking for!” he chortled looking at Dorian before turning to Joni. “Say, you two know each other?”

“He’s just visiting, Steve,” Joni said. “This is Dorian.”

Steve took off his hog mask to reveal a man somewhere in his early 40s, with a bald scalp yet having long ginger hair down his back. “Pleasure to meet ya! Steve Fordham!”

Dorian shook the large man’s calloused hand. “Dorian Ivanyk.” A thought him and he turned to Joni. “I don’t think you ever told me your last name.”

“Oh,” she hesitated and stood up. “I don’t have one. It’s a long story, and we should be moving on anyway. We might as well introduce you to the other member of our band.”

Dorian felt strange about Joni’s avoidance, but he let it slide after hearing more news.

“You two are in a band? God, I’d never figure. Tell me about it.”

“We’ll go on about it while we walk,” Steve said, showing his mouth was missing some teeth. “Come on, then!”

The three traversed the red canyon until they merged into a muddy brown, flat area. Joni and Steve took turns explaining their meeting and the band’s origin. Joni mentioned being a hungry, young woman looking to make herself known and get money as a keyboardist but lacking experience. She met Steve drumming for a pub band that didn’t have much steam in them and they hit it off with percussive-heavy jams. Dorian was invested in this story, and he was humored by Steve’s rambling over rockstar-level stories.

“So we had this one guy, Johnny Fingers, who deserved his reputation on the guitar. But he was too good and got it in his head he could do wrong. So one day he has a groupie with him, and he’s young and eager, so of course they share a room in a motel we were staying in. But an hour in, we heard loud thuds and he’s screaming to high heaven. Later found out he was trying to use his axe for something in the bedroom. But all we know later was… well, let’s just say he wasn’t called Johnny Fingers anymore.”

Dorian laughed along with Steve at the incredible story, while Joni gave an amused if somewhat annoyed smirk at the boys’ talking and reactions. She was thankful she wouldn’t be the only woman once they met up with their bassist.

Dorian saw the landscape turn green before he realized it, turning the area into a radioactive desert. Many people in silver suits were carving chrome roads with tools resembling vacuum cleaners. The sounds were sporadic and reminded him of western-styled guitars by coincidence. Up in the sky he saw a large wheel that spun slowly, almost like it replaced the sun in this perpetually dark land. He wasn’t sure what it did, but it made a repeating metallic violin sound every so often. It all reminded him he was not home, and the intrigue was fighting his need for comfort.

“Don’t look so down,” Joni said, catching his silent conflict. “We’re not that far from where we need to go. It’ll be worth it, trust me.”

Dorian nodded. Keeping his mind away from his thoughts, he asked about the people on the roads.

“They’re doing construction work,” Steve chimed in, pointing at a sex-legged skeleton looking like a large rodent. “Every now and then, the wildlife comes crossing in from the west and either causes traffic crashes or tramples the crops. So these guys have to keep repairing the roads and spraying ‘em with repellent.”

“I see.” He didn’t really, but he went along with it. He then pointed up at the large wheel. “So that’s part of the plan, too.”

“Oh we don’t know what that is,” Joni said. “It’s been there since before Steve was born. It hasn’t tried to kill us, so we leave it alone.”

“Awesome.”

The trio traveled on, with Steve telling more stories, including one with a singer dropping unconscious on stage in the middle of a song. The bassist then had to prop him up while pretending they were performing duets. Dorian again got a kick out of it, while Joni groaned.

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #fantasy #music #My writing #tempo of adventure #njm

[firehedgehog]

Undertale choose your Adventure

A Crack Story, Originally written and posted on Wattpad. Dream was on a walk.. and then it went weird.

So originally as said, was posted on Wattpad where at the end of each chapter there was a set of Votes. The Story finally finished but you can still find the original stuff on Watt. Here is the completed version minus the votes. If you want to join in future Adventures, please keep an eye on my wattpad account under the same name.

It was a beautiful day in the multiverse, singing flowers blooming birds... no they actually were.

Its not a misprint.

And a Skeleton was making there way through the area.

Dream Thought it was a beautiful day.

No battles.

His brother wasn't causing issues, and Ink for once wasn't driving him up the wall.

Nothing could make this day go badly.

Then he saw someone ahead.

Standing there was Error, The Destroyer.

Ink rival..

Dream was on his own, and his attacks would only do so much.

So... what if he changed what he did.

Taking a deep breath Dream walked towards the destroyer, who was apparently snacking on chocolate.

"Hey good looking," Dream said with an easy grin.

Error blinked and looked at the gold garbed skeleton.

"What are you on Dream?" Error asked.

"Who said I was on anything," he purred back.

Error glitched a bit more then usual.

"What's Inky's plan now," he growled.

"Just my plans," Dream said leaning up.

 Chu

Error fell down with a thud as Dream kissed him.

"Um..." Dream said as Error started rebooting.

"Get away from him Dream!" a voice growled.

And there was Nighty, looking as evil and goopy as always.

"Aw come on, he might be evil but at least he's cute and has a soul. Why do you always stop be from getting a boyfriend!" Dream pouted stamping his foot.

"Because your an immature idiot and think Ink for brains is a good choice half the time," Nightmare replied smugly.

Meanwhile Error had rebooted and hid in the bushes.

"No way! He just wants me for emotions! So let em have Error!" Dream cried.

"No way! Do you know how hard it was to get to the friend zone! I have to make it to the boyfriend zone next!" Nightmare snarled.

"So we both want him!" Dream said drawing his bow and arrows.

Error ate popcorn in the bushes.

It was nice to be wanted.

"We'll decide in a battle!" Nightmare called.

They leapt forward, attack on attack...

And somehow created a pentagram shape.

And activated it.

And Blinked.

"Blue?" Dream asked bewildered, as the other star sans seemed to appear in the pentagram.

"Wasn't I just making Tacos?" Blue said looking around a tray of food in his hands.

"I knew it!" Nightmare cried pointing at Blue.

"Knew what?" Dream asked.

"I knew Blue had to be secretly evil!" Nightmare yelled dramatically.

Error fell over laughing in the bushes, scattering his popcorn everywhere.

"Its is something I'm wearing?" Blue asked looking down at his clothing.

"EVIL!" Nightmare hissed.

"Brother... I'm sure this is a misunderstanding," Dream sighed, trying not to think of the weird thing Blue did.

"EVIL!" Nightmare cried.

"Can you guys send me home, the ovens still on," Blue asked with a sigh.

"He has to be evil, because he made friends with Error!" Nightmare protested, Blues eye twitched.

"That's jut the power of friendship, after all your Error's friend," Dream pointed out smugly.

"EVIL!" Nightmare ylled which was starting to get annoying.

"SEND ME HOME NOOOOOW!" Blue said in a warped voice an Error symbol appearing in one eye, the twins eeped and hugged each other.

When no return summon had happened, Blue got mad.

"So your just going to cry like babies," he said, voice still warped.

"Run you fools," Error said from his spot.

"Ha ha ah, I'm sure we'll be alright.. were friends right?"Dream asked nervously.

"We're going to die," Nightmare shivered.

"I'm sure it will be fine, after all Blue.. was the most innocent one right?" Dream said shivering.

Right?

Multiverse...

Stars darn it.. why did the multiverse only 4th wall break for Blue.

"Well then... I'm guessing you both need punishment," Blue giggled a bit insanely, voice glitching even more.

White bones shifted, Errors appeared around his body.

"Why aren't you running yet?" Blueberror smiled, voice fully glitched like Error now.

Only for a Taco to land in his hands.

Nightmare and Dream stared.

It was a fully cooked fresh taco.

"Oh! A Taco!" Blueberror said, and ate the Taco.

Magically he seemed to turn back into normal Blue.

"Your just not you when your hungry Blue," Error said, putting away his 'In case of Blueberror box' back into its magical hiatus.

"Thanks Error," Blue said all smiled and sparkles.

"Evil..." Nightmare whimpered.

"Soo... whats going on?" Blue asked putting his tray into magical space.

"Wait a minute," Blue said, eye lights blazing "Were you asking out my Error on a date!"

"Your Error?" Dream said faintly.

Nightmare looked ready to have an Error type crash.

"Of Course! We've been dating for years," Blue said happily.

"You did get the wedding invites right?" Error asked confused as he stood beside Blue.

"Wedding..." Dream said wild eyed.

"Invitations!" Nightmare squeaked.

"After all I don't share, Error's mine," Blue said with a wicked grin.

Error smiled happily.

Ink sulked in the bushes, everyone was having so much fun.

And they hadn't even invited him!

Him.. the Creator!

Why hadn't he gotten an invite to this drama yet, or even the wedding.

"Um... you got invited," a voice said.

"Don't I have any friends," he sniffed.

"Hello?" the voice said.

"He's totally not paying attention," a second voice said.

"Time to forth wall break!" the first said gleefully.

"We're already breaking it!" the second said.

"Time to join the party!" GumdropWolfYT gleefully shouted, as he picked up and Ink and threw him towards the other four skeletons.

ObsessiveFangorl facepalmed and dragged the other away, quickly closing the forth wall behind them.

"Ahhhhhh!" Ink shouted as he went flying

Crash

Fate held up a scoreboard with a 9 out of ten.

Error, Blue, Nightmare and Dream had slammed across the area from Ink who had suddenly bowled them over.

It was clearly a Ten Fate.

Fate?

Fine ignore me.

Hmph...

"Owwww," Blue said, he quickly got up and rushed to Error to press the 'Yes to Reboot' button.

"I see starrrs," Dream giggled clearly knocked over silly.

"I'm sooo done!" Nightmare said, opened a portal and left.

"Wait.. where did Ink go?" Blue said, looking for the resident soulless skeleton.

And Blinked when he spotted him.

"This.. is hilarious!" Reaper laughed taking pictures with his camera phone, he hadn't expected to come across Ink boi embedded into a hill side in a skeleton made crater.

Seconds made a dying sound.

"Hello Reaper!" Blue said happily, from beside the downed Error and Dream.

"Hey Blue, I see the moron was being a  moron again," Reaper said.

"Nah, just a badly patched forth breaking," Blue said cheerfully.

"So normal as usual then," Reaper cackled.

Suddenly Reaper paused, and stared.

“Is everything alright Error?” Blue asked, Error groaned and slowly got up.

“Geno..” Reaper whispered.

“Whoever Geno is, can take a number after this migraine,” Error said rubbing his skull.

“No, your Geno!” Reaper said shocked, his mate had vanished eons ago.

One minute there, the next nope.. cya later reality.

“I think I’d know if I was someone else,” Error said, after all Fate had said they’d created them from the anti-void.

Meanwhile Fate was trying to hide from Destiny’s glare.

“Yeah... you know what,” Reaper said with a smile.

“What what?” Blue asked bewildered.

Who was Geno?

“See ya, sorry you’ll have to cancel the wedding as I have I waifu to claim!” Reaper grinned, suddenly beside Error. He grabbed the destroyer who crashed, then both vanished.

“Get back with my Error!” Blue screamed going super sai.... I mean Blueberror and vanishing also.

Dream twitched.

Ink blinked and looked around wondering where everyone went.

If Reaper was anyone else, he’d be biting his fingers in frustration.

He’d found his Geno.

Geno so changed.

Geno.. who clearly didn’t remember him.

Yet... his soul pulsed, he could feel the link between them as soulmates.

What had broken Geno, his wonderful stubborn Geno.

Geno and himself, who had been discussing if they wanted children.

“Can you stop staring at me,” Error said grumpily, they were in Reapertale in Reapers home. Why Error hadn’t left yet, Reaper had bribed him with chocolate.

One of the things that apparently not changed between Error and his past self.

“Sorry... it’s just, I never figured out I’d find you this way,” Reaper said unhappily, after all how did one react to ones mate becoming the destroyer.

“As far as I know, Fate created me as Ink’s counterpart. I’m linked heavily to the Anti-void. If I’m gone to long, I’m pulled back. I don’t know how I can be your Geno,” Error said sipping a giant chocolate milkshake.

“Anyway, you can prove it?” another voice said, Reaper and Error blinked as suddenly as Blue was there eating a Taco at the table.

“How did you get here!” Reaper said shocked, only he himself and Grim should have been able to enter without an invite.

“Technically I’m an error a glitch in the system,” Blue chirped, his form shifting to his other self then back.

Right... Geno use to walk through security like it wasn’t there also.

“And what do you plan to do if you find out he is my waifu?” Reaper asked.

“Well Share him of course, Error is the only one I ever wanted. And at least your cute too, my glitchy error codes would protect me too,” Blue said wickedly.

Reaper and Error blushed heavily.

“Right,” Reaper said shakily... we have a few ways to do this.

“And?” Error asked, interested either way.

“TIME TRAVEL!” TK!Sans shouted appearing in a flash of time travel.

“Out! When I find out how you keep getting in with time magic this better stop!” Reaper said annoyed, stupid time kids.

“Oh! Look at the time. Gotta go!” the time tot said and vanished, leaving Reaper grumbling.

“You were saying?” Blue said giggling.

“I have a gem that sends us back in time, out of phase so no one can see us and we can’t change anything,” Reaper replied. “We go back, tag Geno as he’s taken and follow!”

“Why didn’t you use it in the past?” Error asked.

“You need three people to use it, and every time I get someone to agree they start arguing on where they should go first,” Reaper said dryly.

“Lets do this!” Blue cheered.

“Welp. Lets do this,” Reaper said, pulling a weird grey gem from a shelf.

“How does it work?” Error asked.

“Oh, were already there,” Reaper cackled, and all three of them faded away.

Fate sputtered as her toy vanished.

OoOoO

Three figures appeared with a Zomp sound.

Yes, a Zomp sound.

No were not going to describe it more.

Anyway...

“The world looks grey,” Error said looking around.

“And there is Geno, the day he vanished!” Reaper said pointing to a bloody glitchy skeleton.

“Does this have a speed up option?” Blue asked as Reaper tagged Geno.

“Sure,” Reaper said and slammed the gem into a tree.

“Cool!” Blue chirped as the world sped up.

Suddenly strings zoomed out of nowhere like a lasso yeeted Geno out of the area.

“Not my strings,” Error said, “looks like fates.”

“Right, lets follow!” Blue said, and they quickly followed the tag on Geno.

“The Anti-void!” Error said as they appeared in endless white.

“And there is Geno!” Reaper smirked.

“Hey you, Glitchy boi!” a voice yelled in the voice.

“Yeah you!” the voice yelled as Geno pointed at himself.

“I need a destroyer, you’ll do,” the voice said.

“That’s fate...” Error said dryly.

“Um.. no thanks, I kinda have to tell Reaper something important,” Geno said.

“Who said you got to say no?” Fate asked.

 Womp!

A giant hammer fell from nowhere and hit Geno, covering the area with a cloud somehow.

“Um...” Reaper said at the scene.

“...” Error said as the dust cleared.

“Now my minion! Do your job!” Fate cackled.

“Riiight... lets go home,” Blue said sweatdropping.

 BOIIIING

“What’s with the weird sounds it makes?” Blue asked.

“No clue,” Reaper said.

“...” Error said.

“Error honey?” Blue asked in concern.

And crashed and rebooted.

“That’s new,” Blue said as the reboot stopped at 99% with a new choice.

‘Download and install Original Data YES/NO’

Blue quickly pressed yes.

“Thank you for choosing The Origination Reincarnation Station, please sit back and relax” a gentle female voice said, then Error exploded.

“What the stars!” Reaper said as they were knocked back.

“Error!” Blue cried.

“And welcome back the migraine,” a voice said, a non glitchy voice.

“Geno babe!” Reaper said happily.

“I need to sit down,” Error.. no Geno said getting up, Reaper quickly helped his spouse to a chair.

“Are.. you still Error?” Blue asked worriedly.

“Yes...” Geno said.

“Good, just because you got your old body isn’t stopping my wedding to you two!” Blue said smugly, the married couple blushed.

“You had news for me... when you vanished,” Reaper asked softly.

“Ah..” Geno said blushing heavier.

“Ohhhh.....” Blue said giggling suddenly.

“I... was kind of pregnant when Fate grabbed me... and still am, now that this body was freed,” Geno said summoning his ecto body, which was quiet far along.

“How did we not notice!” Reaper said in shock.

 “            Well... I never summon my ecto body, and my glitched state hid any                  signs. Also.. I’m half dead and your Death,” Geno said dryly.      

Meanwhile Blue started having millions of baby thoughts, Error/Geno was a beautiful Skeleton in both forms. And the three of them would make adorable children, he wondered how long it would take to talk Reaper to get him knocked up too.

“Heh heh heh... Blue said lost in his own head.

“I’m sorry...” Geno whispered holding Reapers hand.

“For what, your alive,” Reaper gently said, he leaned forward and touched there foreheads together.

“But... I cheated on you as Error,” Geno cried.

 “Shhh... that doesn’t matter. You had no clue you were anything but what Fate said love. And I can see you truly love Blue too.. he’s not bad, and if that’s the price I pay for you I’ll pay it a million times,”            Reaper promised to his teary eyed love.      

 “It won’t be easy, I’m stil            l                   th                  e                   Destroyer. The Error,”                  Geno said.      

 “And I’m Death, Death and Destruction go together,”            Reaper smirked.      

“Idiot,” Geno said.

“And Blue can be the Chaos,” Reaper giggled.

“Crap...” Geno suddenly said.

“Whats wrong?” Blue asked, coming out of his daydreams.

“Well... Its time, guess the baby got tired of waiting eons to be born,” Geno said wincing.

 Thump

Reaper had left the building.

Okay fainted.

“Gahhh.... oh my stars!” Blue panicked and ran around like a headless chicken.

 Pow

And there was Blue meeting the wall.

 “            Why...” he cried through the pain.      

OoOoO

The sound of crying.

 “Take it easy, your magic will b            e                   over stressed for th                  e                   next few weeks,” a voice said, yes.. Sci’s voice.      

 “            I will, thank you for allowing me here,” Genos voice came.      

“No problem, was hilarious to see you rushing in using magic to carry Blue and Reaper,” Sci cackled.

 “The Baby!”            Reaper said coming fully awake.      

“Over here,” Geno said amused.

Apparently there were in at a hospital, Blue was just coming too.

“Reaper.. meet our son,” Geno said happily, held in his arms was a tiny Skeleton with one eye light typical to a sans type.

“He’s perfect,” he said raspy voiced in awe.

“What’s his name?” Blue asked wide eyed.

“I think his proud papa should choose,” Geno said.

“Goth, taking parts of both our names,” Reaper said happily, here he was gettinga happy ending.

Death and his glitch.

Death and Destruction.

With Chaos at the side.

“Hey Geno, next kids mine,” Blue smirked.

Geno sputtered.

Reaper laughed.

“You have quiet the future kiddo,” Reaper told the newborn.

He couldn’t wait to see it.

END

#Undertale #Crack #do not take this seriously #fanfic #Dream #Error #Nightmare #Blue #Ink #Reaper #Geno #afterdeath

[awed-frog]

big bones don’t lie - griffins

[If you found my blog because you’re curious about Greek people mixing up prehistoric bears and demigods, this post is for you. I studied archaeology with a focus on other things, and the research on this topic goes back decades, but imo the best book on how dinosaur bones influenced mythology is Adrienne Mayor’s The First Fossil Hunters. I strongly suggest you support this amazing historian and buy her stuff - she’s a great writer and she specializes in folklore and geomythology, it doesn’t get much cooler than that - but if you can’t and you’re interested in the subject - well, I believe scientific knowledge should be shared and accessible to everyone, so here are a few highlights. Part one of six.] 

Griffins: a very mysterious mystery

“A race of four-footed birds, almost as large as wolves and with legs and claws like lions.” 

The one thing you need to know about griffins is that they don’t really fit in anywhere. They have no powers, they don’t help heroes, they’re not defeating gods or anything like that. Technically speaking, they’re not even monsters - people thought griffins were legit - real animals who lived in Central Asia and sat on golden eggs and mostly killed anyone who went near them. And okay, someone might say, ‘Frog, what’s fishy about that? People used to be dumb as rocks and there’s plenty of bizarro animals out there, anyway’ and yeah, that’s a very good point - except for one thing. See, what’s creepy about griffins is that we’ve got drawings and descriptions of them spanning ten centuries and thousands of miles, and yet they always. look. the. freaking. same. 

Like, here’s how people imagined elephants.

This is insanely funny and probably why God sent the Black Death to kill everyone, but also pretty common tbh, because a) people want to feel involved, b) people are liars who lie and c) it’s hard to imagine stuff you’ve never seen. So the more a story is passed around, the more it’s going to gain and lose details here and there, until you get from dog-footed hairy monkey of doom to plunger-nosed horror on stilts. But griffins - art or books, they’re consistently described as wolves-sized mammals with a beaked face. So that’s what made Adrienne Mayor go, Uh. 

And what she did next is she started digging around in Central Asia, because that’s the other thing everyone agreed on: that griffins definitely lived there and definitely came from there. And this is where things get really interesting, because as it turns out, on one side of the Urals you’ve got Greeks going, ‘Mate, the Scythians, you know - they’ve got these huge-ass lion birds, I’m not even shitting you rn’ while on the other side of the Urals - wow and amaze - you’ve got Siberian tribes singing songs about the ‘bird-monsters’ and how their ancestors slaughtered them all because they were Valiant and Good.

(This according to a guy studying Siberian traditions in the early 1800s, anyway, because you know who writes stuff down? Not nomads, bless them: dragging around a shitload of books on fucking horseback is not a kind of life anyone deserve to live.)

And anyway, do you know what else those Mighty Ancestors did? They mined gold sand, and they kept tripping over dinosaur bones because that entire area is full of both things and some places are lucky like that. And in fact, the more excavations were carried out in ancient Scythian settlements, the more we started to realize that those guys were even more obsessed with griffins than the Greek were. Hell, some warriors even had griffins tattooed on their bodies? 

And it’s probably all they ever talked about, because that’s when griffins suddenly appear in the Mediterreanean landscape: when Greek people start trading (and talking) with the Scythians.

(Another important note here, not that I’m not bitter or anything: something else those excavations are showing is that Herodotus was fucking right about fucking everything, SO THERE. Father of lies my ass, he was the only sensible guy in that whole bean-avoiding, monster-fucking, psychopathic and self-important Greek ‘intelligentsia’ and they can all fuck off and die and we don’t care about temples Pausy you dumb bitch we want to hear about the tree people and the Amazons and the fucking griffins goddammit. Uuugh. /rant)

So anyway, Scythian nomads had been hunting for gold in places with exciting names like ‘the field of the white bones’ and basically dying of exposure because mountains, so Herodotus (and others) got this right as well: that successful campaigns could take a long-ass time, and very often people just disappeared, never to be heard from again. What everybody got less right: the nomads and adventurers and gold miners weren’t killed by griffins, because by the time they started traveling into those mountains, ‘griffins’ had been dead for hundreds of thousands of years. What they did see, and what was sure to spook the fuck out of them, were fossils - and, more precisely, protoceratops skulls, which can be found on all the major caravan routes from China all the way to Uzbekistan and are so ubiquitous paleontologists call them ‘a damn nuisance’.

And guess what they look like.

Just fucking guess.

[Left: a golden griffin, Saka-Scyhtian culture; right: psittacosaurus skull, commonly found in Uzbekistan and the western Gobi.]

Also, fun detail if you’re into gory and painful ways of dying: many of the dino skeletons are found standing up, because the animals would be caught in sand storms and drop dead. So basically you’d be riding your horse and minding your own gold-related business when all of a sudden you see the empty sockets of a beaked something staring at you and yeah - as a reminder, the idea of evolution was not a thing until Darwin, so any Scythian or Siberian tribesman seeing something like that would assume there was a fairly good fucking chance of a live whatever-the-hell-this-is waiting for him behind the next hill. And that’s what he’d say to Greek traders over a bowl of fermented mare’s milk: to stay the fuck away from those mountains, because griffins, man, they’re fucking real and there’s hundreds of them and anyway, maybe write that down if writing’s something you’re into, never saw the point myself but eh, to each his own, right, and cheers, good health, peace and joy to the ancestors. 

Man, don’t you just love mythology?

(How fossils influenced mythology: part two, Cyclops, will be up soon.) 

#mythology #greek mythology #monsters #griffins #ancient greece #central asia #scythian #adrienne mayor #please buy her books! #they're really fun #and she teaches a stanford so #that's someone you can trust #anyway i hope someone's interested #and that those people who sent me anon asks about this #find the post :)

[thebirthbysleep]

𝐭𝐰𝐨. 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝

𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱𝘀 :  six thousand, five hundred and thirty words

𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆 : avoiding rampaging navy soldiers, din is forced to stay on the pirate ship until they reach land. she grows distasteful that she is no longer homebound, and now the conversation regarding her curse continues to come up.

she’s sleep again.

in her sleep, din would forget who she was as she was reduced to dust at the mercy of traumatising dreams from which she could not wake. any child, upon awakening from a terror in the deepest level of sleep, would cry into their parents arms, and would be comforted with warm and hushed encouragements. and as the tears stop, they can find themselves slowly falling back asleep. because the comfort is there, the arms in which they feel safest are stretched wide open and the dark doesn’t bother them anymore. no monster under the bed can peep out, no ghost in the corner of the room can reach them. their dreams, plagued by the darkest parts of the human imagination, become forgotten memories as the second wave of sleep hits. 

din wasn’t so lucky in that regard. she had no arms to run into, she couldn’t even awake from the nightmares; she would simply be put into another, and fight back the tears of fear whilst facing another demon, another fear, another beast hidden in the back of her mind, placed into a plane from which she could not escape. there wasn’t a time where she was not in a dream, even after she spent minutes in the tower, she would be thrown into a whirlpool of darkness, to return to further suffering.

it was expected at this point, that if she ever sleeps again the nightmares would follow her, a stalking of the soul that would only results in the further shattering of something that barely existed anymore. din found herself feeling like a coward with each passing year, weak at the raging vendetta of vengeful greek gods. the effect of the curse working, the gods rendering her powerless, and her will to fight back reduced to the size of a speck.

in this dream, din found peace for the first time. nothing bad happened, but neither did anything good come to happen as well. she was stuck in a pond where she floated, ears hovering above the water where she could hear the tweeting of birds and the familiar rustling of leaves in the trees which would fall into the pond as if to kiss the surface where the nymph laid. they sensed her, they sensed every part of her. they sensed that something good and pure had fallen into the pond just like a leaf picked off on autumn, meeting the flower with its fellow kin, to be blown into the wind just like all the others.

it was a strange feeling but din felt like she was home. the nostalgia floating in tepid water, the running of streams of the grotto she familiarised herself with. it was heaven. she could almost reach the pearly clouds and the blue sky that greeted her, the sun smiling down upon her warm face,

causing her cheeks to rush rosy. it was odd, but din felt herself stand, her feet touching the smooth rocks at the bottom of the pond.

and that’s when she saw the fishes swimming in colonies, flocking to their families and picking off the algae growing on rocks. an orchestra of croaking frogs came behind her, following by a symphony of crickets which created the most magnificent music piece known to man; ambiance.

here, din stood for god knows how long, bathing and playing with water as if to familiarize herself with an old hobby, like picking up a pencil to draw years after closing the sketch pad and letting it collect dust. this was home, whenever this was. a memory, not a dream; her mind wouldn’t know how to create something so raw with nature’s perfection, it was a memory and even her doubts told her it was a memory. one which she wished to linger in for eternity. she could never get lonely here.

but all dreams must come to an end and this one was no exception.

din opened icy eyes to a strange environment. below her was a soft mattress, her body entangled in sheets and a pillow at her side which she had embraced tightly. it was the only occasion where the girl could confirm that she felt refreshed upon waking up. it didn’t land on her that she was somewhere strange until she heard a small hum from beside her.

sat on the edge of the bed, rosé glanced down at the half-awake nymph with curiosity. seconds later, din squeaked and jumped up, scurrying back and nearly falling off the bed on the other side. it was only then when the memories of yesterday came flooding back, but din found herself too dazed to scowl. to scream and scold as she did best.

“ good morning, sleeping beauty. we’ve set course to a lovely place in the mediterranean. i don’t know whether you’ve been to venice; i hear it’s beautiful ”, rosé said with a cheeky grin, din continued to stare at her with flustered round eyes, blonde hair caught in a nest which would only infer that she had slept well. what made it almost comical was the way in which the nymph held the pillow so tightly to her chest. “ captain said he has some sources over there; sea witches who could point us in the right direction. we’re going to get rid of your curse, dinnie~! ”.

getting rid of her curse? that didn’t sound right. din said she would be doing it alone and would require no help from the people who parents were the only reason she had gotten the curse anyway. she was stubborn, she wouldn’t allow her pride to be further injured by just subjecting herself to obedience just because they had volunteered to help and claimed themselves to be innocent children.

but it was far too late to be complaining about that now, especially as she laid in a bed in a small cabin where she assumed someone else slept, unless if this was a spare. she saw the lack of decorations and things that would normally personalise something as intimate as a room. needless to say, aside from being in a strange room, she had also fallen into a pirate ship which was no sailing in the middle of nowhere. the ship she thought would be going to athens was probably halfway through its journey by now, but then she realised she wouldn’t have been able to go.

because the sailor whom she brought the ticket off of turned on her, pointed a finger and cried witch, and the ottoman soldiers came in with the intention of doing god knows what to harm the nymph. it wasn’t safe to beg for a return. she couldn’t just snatch the wheel off the captain’s hand, she didn’t know how to sail a ship. and by far the most important detail, was that she hated the sea.

it was easy to say that she was eager to get on land as soon as possible, whether it be venice or anywhere else in the world; she would see land and she would vanish, she would start making her way home no matter what she did.

her thoughts came to a stop as din let her eyes fall onto her figure and found herself wearing something she definitely never recalled owning; a sky blue sleeping gown that went just past her knees and she quickly adjusted the ends as it had risen, bringing a flood of redness spilling onto her cheeks. “ who changed my clothes last night? ”, she asked through a mumble. 

“ oh, i did! ”. the nerve of this girl to sound so proud had din’s head spinning. rosé continued to grin. “ i lent you one of my many fancy sleeping gowns. you were in that white dress for a hundred years, and a lady should always have nice clothes at her disposal. so i hope you’re comfortable. i can get you something nice after breakfast. “

at that, her stomach croaked and ached. the nymph only shuddered and refused to look at aphrodite’s daughter as she stood and chuckled, seemingly amused by such comedic timing even though din was hours away from becoming a skeleton. she hadn’t finished eating her dinner last night, the pita bread and the mead left to be collected and thrown to others. it broke din’s starving heart.

“ up you get! don’t worry, i won’t be bringing you on deck now. i know you might be feeling slightly uncomfortable after yesterday ”, rosé continued, now on her feet and looking through something in a wardrobe; din daren’t look, it wasn’t her business. “ marcato will whip you up something nice. he feeds us quite well, none of that icky sailor food most pirates tend to eat. ”

din hesitated, her legs falling to the side of the bed and her bare feet now touching the wooden floors. she was confused on why she still felt pain at the soles, like something was digging into them. until she recalled the thorn path, and the scars it would leave on her physical body. she thought it would heal given her curse of immortality, yet not a patch of skin had nursed itself back; it was not good. how was she to traverse lands whilst aiming to get back home?

“ are you hurt? ”.

even rosé sounded pleasantly surprised by the voice coming from the door. din quickly adjusted the skirt of her sleeping gown and did everything she could to avoid looking at sephtis. by far the most awkward encounter she’s had yet; she’d cursed his mother the most, her personal grudge towards hecate running rampant.

he leaned by the door, and had taken notice of how din had been studying her aching feet with a small sneer on her face. “ don’t worry, seph. i’ll get marcato to patch her up nicely. what is it, din? a cut or a bruise? ”, din really didn’t want to be showing them her feet, it felt odd.

“ a scar. it’s still healing ”, she murmured and heard another hum from sephtis who then approached her and leaned down in front of her, observing the scar that her run to the side of her feet, raging with redness and aching to brush against. she had to look away.

sephtis observed in silence, “ rose thorns. they usually have this fungus growing in them that scars and swells up the injury it leaves. where did you get these from? ”. no answer, din didn’t need to respond when he could guess it for himself. “ i see. i thought you were immortal, aren’t you usually supposed to heal quickly? ”.

“ i still feel pain and gets scars like any other mortal ”, din said defensively, almost moving to show the other scar she had gained on her stomach but that was something far too intimate and private, a memory she liked to bury in a black hole somewhere in her mind. “ i-i don’t know why this isn’t healing. ”

“ enchanted thorns? ”, rosé suggested from beside her, placing a change of clothes folded neatly beside the nymph and tapped her chin. it was a cute habit. “ hardly seen in real life, most likely fabricated in that period of sleep you were in. ” din scowled, she disliked how they brought it up so casually, hardly with any caution that it might bring hurt to the nymph.

sephtis sighed after standing, “ i don’t know. but i’ll ask marc to whip up a remedy for the swelling and burning sensation. if she’s like this then we can’t really explore venice with much comfort. ” upon saying so, he turned and walked to the door. hesitated. but then left, leaving din staring at the wall in front of her and clenching the bed sheets under her trembling hands.

rosé quickly took notice and beamed care-freely. “ i know it may seem strange now, you’re on a pirate ship with people you most likely despise with a passion. i can’t blame you. but . . . we thought that maybe if you were going to return home, getting rid of your curse was perhaps the first thing you should do ”, she stated, din stared hard at her. “ in case something bad happens and all of this repeats again. and you suffered long enough, it’s about time you get back to your life. ”

din snorted bitterly, “ what life? i don’t remember anything from my life in the grotto. all my kin have passed, my parents are no longer with me and the grotto has perhaps become just another stream for men to drink from. ” she bit her lip. “ mortal men care little for the care we nymphs have for nature. the nature they go on to ruin. which is why i have to go back, even if i’m there alone. ”

“ seems like a lonely life, does it not? ”. the nymph blinked, taken aback. “ even if you’re home, you’d still be alone. it’s rather sad. ”

it wouldn’t be lonely, din wanted to say. but she didn’t like lying to herself. in fact, she knew it would be lonely. yet then again, she wouldn’t have anything to compare it to. her memories of the grotto had been whipped completely, she didn’t know anyone, so she had no one to miss.

it would be lonely, but it was home.

rosé got up and shrugged gently, placing the change of clothes within din’s reach, but before she could walk off, din had to ask something that had been gnawing at her mind since last night. in her dreams, it was pleasantly forgotten; but now it was important. she didn’t know whether rosé would be honest, but she still dared to ask.

“ last night ”, she stated. rosé stopped. “ at the inn. you said it was the man who found me and ratted me out as a witch. was it really him, or was it another pirate tactic to get me aboard your ship? ”.

rosé observed her for a while, to the point where din avoided her gaze, the air thick with an awkward tension. had she said something that brought offense? she knew it was a bold claim to make, but honesty goes a long way.

“ din. ”

the nymph looked up.

rosé offered her a warm smile, nothing like the cheshire grin she had gotten used to. “ we don’t like playing dirty. that’s something i can promise you. we’re not our parents in that sense. we like honesty. and we wouldn’t make this up just to get you onboard. we want to help ”, she said. “ just as we’d help any other person with your circumstances. ”

din rose a brow. “ okay. maybe not any other person. we owe it to you. our parents wrong you, and we’re here to correct it. it mustn’t be nice to kill all who you touch, and live out some of your closest friends. where’s the fun in that? ”. rosé’s words seemed genuine. din was no professional lie-catcher, but nymphs never lied, sworn to pure honesty. she could tell when someone was being anything but purely honest. but rosé had surprised her.

it was pleasant, in a way, to learn that they carried good intentions. but her rage was still boiling, she still hadn’t forgotten what they’d done beyond putting her to sleep for a century. they destroyed all that she loved. and yes, her sorrow cost three hundred lives; at the expense of the god’s betrayal, of course, giving her a gift she hadn’t asked for and cursing her with immense trickery which was probably funny from where they saw it. to her, it was anything but. never once had she laughed whilst stuck in that night-mare dimension, not even a smile.

it was only sorrow, painful sorrow.

“ we’re going to make this right. we owe it to you in a way ”, rosé continued, tapping her foot against the floors. “ i don’t really regret touching that gold. it awoke someone who will now give us the chance of an adventure of a life-time, and we’d be doing something for a good cause. ”

the nymph glowered, “ i’m not a compass. ”

“ no. you’re not ”, rosé quickly corrected herself. “ but you must understand, the whole concept of piracy is deemed a taboo. and we’ve sort of allowed ourselves into a self-fulfilling prophecy. we do pillage and steal and fight. with you onboard, it’s going the first time we’ll be venturing out for a good cause. we’re not heading off into the world to steal to survive. we’ll be helping you. and god knows, you deserve it. ”

it was deemed too perfect of an opportunity for din to accept. for all she knew she could be dumped back onto the hands of these gods and perhaps killed. she didn’t trust the kids yet, she couldn’t bring herself to do so when she still ached so much. deities weren’t good beings, they were selfish and it was painful to see the respect normal mortals held for them. they allowed their own personal grudges to have an impact on the world.

she wasn’t sure if it was true but she’d heard that after the fall of the january festival, there was ten consecutive days of rain that brought about a flood in the coastal region; poseidon’s doing, no less. demeter’s anger killed most of the crops. most gods allowed their anger to run wild and it hurt the greek population more than din’s storm did.

it was ironic, and unfair. yet she was perfectly comfortable with accepting the role as the antagonist. she had the perfect tragic backstory to become one. although most antagonists wind up crushed under the weight of the gods, din promised to be sly.

but right now, at that very moment, she had no choice but to comply. strand on a ship in the middle of the mediterranean, she would have to play along and then flee when they got to venice. it was the only way. would she be alone again? yes. but better alone than with these people.

she hadn’t noticed how quiet she’d gotten, and when she looked up, rosé was still smiling, but now sat beside her. din could only raise the corner of her lip and bow her head in slight dismay, squeaking when she felt what appeared to be a pair of cherry lips pressing against her cheek. rosé then quickly stood up. “ i’ll ask marc to get your breakfast ”, she said and then left, leaving a blushing din recovering holding her cheek, heart hammering.

the only worry she had, was that the charm of these demi-gods would be too much for her aching heart to handle.

･ ｡ﾟ.˚⊹･゜

the clothes felt weird.

as a nymph, din was used to no clothes at all. most nymphs would display their bodies and cover themselves with leafs around intimate parts, and took to nature to decorate their hair and bodies similar to how a mortal would craft jewelry and accessories from gold and stones.

the first time din saw her reflection after a century, she didn’t recognize herself. she hadn’t realized she had blonde hair quite like the locks she owned, and her eyes perhaps weren’t as azure as before. oddly, she thought back to the girl in her dreams. and how their features were basically swapped. for reasons unknown, she found the girl’s beauty far more striking than what the nymph saw in the mirror.

regardless, she fixed the tight waist-coast hugging her torso, the sleeves of the white shirt rolled up as they were a little long. the skirt was by far her favorite part; navy blue, her favorite color, and it went just past her ankles. shoes polished and clicking against all they touched, din thought that she could very well pass as a peasant girl, or maybe a maid or cook working on a ship. ordinary, just the way she liked it.

she remained uncertain of what to do with her hair, and in the end, let it fall loose after brushing it.

what was for breakfast was unknown to her, but it smelt nice when she stepped out onto the hallway, hands grazing against the walls to keep herself balanced. although it was a big ship and the water seemed calmer, din was still disturbed by the trembling and wading just as any person with a fear of the ocean would feel.

“ din! you’re up, that’s good! ”.

marcato sounded pleasant that morning, he had an air to him that was identical to his father’s. but apollo was more of a flamboyant god with smiles that could blind; what she now stared at was an almost exact replica coated in timidity.

in his hands, he held two wooden bowls and she spotted what appeared to be porridge with honey and chopped bananas on the stop, and she held her stomach so it wouldn’t cry out at the sight of something so divine.

she was seconds away from forgetting her manners, but she composed herself as the male placed the one bowl down on the table and beckoned her over. din gave a suspicious look around, marcato seemingly knowing why. “ don’t worry, i asked everyone to stay on deck so you can eat in peace. daeva is quite grumpy during the morning, and griffin is too loud ”, the sunny boy laughed and began to eat from the other bowl. “ dig in before it gets cold. ”

with some hesitation, din complied, lifting her spoon and observing the oats. could a ship like this really house such incredible ingredients? she wasn’t certain whether they had just stolen it or had someone make it for them, but din was impressed. from inside, it was already far prettier than the paladin, which she was supposed to have sailed off in that morning.

the thought of what would’ve happened to her on that vessel, aboard with only men, with a rumor flying around of her being a witch; din didn’t wish to linger on it. so with a shudder, she began to eat.

“ i know this hardly seems like a pirate ship. but it’s home for us ”, marcato said after a few silent spoonfuls. “ griffin usually fixes it when we’ve set course somewhere. he gets quite busy. he strengthened the thickness of the walls of the gallows, so our food and goods don’t get hurt by impacts or accidents. ”

din stopped, spoon hovering by her lips. “ how often would i have to worry about any of those happening? ”. marcato chuckled, but din didn’t mean to be funny, she was quite serious.

luck isn’t something din would say accompanied her on a regular, but she’s been having quite a lot of it after she woke up in regards to food. the food at the inn was something she wouldn’t quite forget, and this breakfast was no different. care was put into it, something about the softness of marcato’s hands justified this. the sweetness rolled right off her tongue.

“ are you feeling better? you completely blacked out after you came aboard last night ”, din had forgotten this entirely. to her, she was brought to a comfortable bed and slept soundlessly. that dream then came afterwards and she found peace. only to be awoken by rosé looming beside her.

her lips trembled for a moment, “ i’m fine. i just have a slight phobia of open water. makes me sick. besides, my plans were spoiled. maybe it was anger or just total panic that brought around a total collapse. ”

“ maybe it was pain, as well ”, marcato set his bowl of porridge behind him and went towards a cupboard where he pulled out a vial. a remedy. they’d really asked him to make her something for her injuries. her toes curled slightly, wondering if it would sting or hurt any further than the excessive burning on the scars on her soles. “ this will do the trick. ”

“ you don’t have t— ”.

“ i do ”, marcato said quickly, walking on over to her and sitting in front of her after pulling up a chair. “ it wouldn’t feel right to have an injured person aboard. i can tell you’re hurting. comes with being the son of the god of disease and healing. ”

could he sleep knowing someone nearby was in pain, she wondered. marcato motioned to her shoes, and after finishing her breakfast, din slipped the small heels off and hugged her knees to her chest, feeling bashful and she stopped the young man as he went to pour the medicine onto a cotton bud. “ can i do it myself? ”, she questioned.

he moved to give her the bud, but she shook her head. he would have to place it on the table, because if she touching something he was holding, she would make it disappear. it was just like what occurred with daeva’s sword the other day.

“ ah, your power. ”

marcato applied more of the oil-like substance onto the bud and then placed it on the table. and din took it quickly, and slowly dabbed it against the scars which would most likely turn purple if they hadn’t been treated any sooner. it didn’t hurt or sting to apply the medicine, to her pleasant surprise. “ it smells nice ”, she murmured. “ like— ”.

“  —chrysanthemums? i add floral scents to my medicine ”, the healer said, cheeks dusted pink like he’d just shared a timid secret. “ it makes the healing experience pleasant. most medicines smell like bitter herbs, and floral scents relax people. ”

din chuckled vaguely, amused by the confession. although she was forced to agree; floral scents were one of the many wonders of the world. they came in huge quantities and distinctions. subconsciously, din thought back to the grotto, and wondered whether she would familiarize with these blessed scents.

flowers were truly the gift of the world. it was as if persephone traced every single one with precision, and then breathed life into it. there wasn’t a flower that din didn’t know, but she hoped that perhaps she would come across others on her way back home.

in these thoughts, din hardly took notice of how quickly the scars were healing; like magic. she continued to picture the wind of colors that came with leafs and flowers. it was a form of meditation for her, she just had to picture what mattered to her the most. her thoughts ran wild of what beauties she would find back home.

“ do you have a favorite flower? ”.

she immediately shook her head, “ i don’t. it wouldn’t be fair to pick a favorite when they have so much value, one matters just as much as the other. medicine, food, beverages, most also aid in the care of our world. i love each one, even the ones i may not know about. ” with that said, din looked up at marcato. “ do you? ”.

“ u-uh, verbascum clementine, maybe. especially the ones with the faint yellow or orange color. i would say sunflower but . . . ”. din chuckled again, it would be self-explanatory. “ b-but i also like lavenders. ” marcato met her gaze shyly.

before she could conjure a response, din heard a noise from the entrance of the kitchen and spotted somnia. daughter of hypnos, and that morning, din didn’t find any energy to insult or argue. “ captain is calling all of us on deck, he says it’s urgent ”, somnia said and yawned into her hand, before taking a quick leave.

din glanced back down at the soles of her feet and found the redness fading and the swelling would soon be over. so she slipped her shoes back on and picked up her bowl of porridge and brought it over to what appeared to be a sink. “ y-you don’t have to wash it! ”.

it would be impolite if she didn’t, but the captain was calling, and she didn’t want to be the one keeping people waiting. so she left it on the side, adjusting her clothes before following marcato onto the deck.

what was difficult was getting up the stairs without feeling like she would tumble back, but she broke through into the sunlight which blinded her, her hands quickly thrown before her eyes in an attempt to protect them. she could hear the waves crashing from below, but the sound amplified as she stepped out, her stomach spinning with anxiety.

but as her eyes slowly adjusted, she blinked and was welcomed by a sight unlike any other. it was most definitely the most stunning ship she’d come to see, polished and clean, not a hole or crack in sight. it smelled of fresh paint and sea water, a funny mixture yet one that didn’t irritate or cause strange sensations.

“ morning, din! ”.

she heard griffin call from the side. the son of hephaestus didn’t share many resemblances to his father aside from the ears and perhaps the pouted lips. griffin was boyish, with dimples and muscles in every sense. she knew his father lingered with cyclopses, creatures unharmed by flames and also master smiths and creators.

marcato was right in saying that the ship looked so pleasant due to griffin’s seemingly strive at perfection. everything was precisely placed; who on earth would’ve guessed this to be a pirate ship?

“ busy so early in the morning? ”, she asked, feeling comfortable to talk to him the most out of everyone else in the crew. she continued to hold a hand against her forehead to avoid being blinded, whilst approaching a working griffin. “ what are you doing? ”.

griffin sniffled and then raked a hand through his brown hair, “ adding some metal onto the cannon side. not a thick sheet so it shouldn’t weight that much, but usually when we engage in sea warfare, our port cannons get butchered. we’ve lost two in our encounter in tortuga. so we can’t really repeat the same mistakes. ”

din wouldn’t have known that they suffered during warfare for how cared for the ship was. but as she looked deeply, she saw minor scratches on the edge of the port side, scars gained from engaging with people who had far more experience. but she thought of piracy of something like an apprenticeship; you learn on the way, and usually end up knowing more than scholars.

“ you seem to know quite a lot ”, she uttered, mostly under her breath but griffin picked it up with some ease.

he even laughed, setting down a hammer he held onto the floor and rubbing his scarred hands. “ i hear that a lot. i’ve been on the run from bitter gods for a while. maybe since i was fifteen or sixteen. when cap found me, i’d already gone through about four different crews ”, he revealed. “ two spanish ones, one french and one portuguese. i was always the mechanic, but i know a thing or two about sea warfare and the gamble that it is. ”

din almost didn’t hear what he said after he revealed something. about being on the run. well, it was no wonder she felt fonder of him than she did for the others. but it confused her; his father wasn’t a bitter man, he was fine serving as a blacksmith and being overworked to the brink of exhaustion. why would griffin be on the run? unless if hephaestus wasn’t the one he was avoiding.

and griffin spotted her confusion, “ my dad is alright. it’s his lovely spouse who makes things a little . . . complicated. she found out he pursued a mortal when she left him to be with ares, went absolutely insane. i guess it’s only because of rosé that i’m safe. ”

din turned her attention to where he nodded, on the quarterdeck, where the daughter of aphrodite sat chatting away with marcato and sephtis. “ i owe her a lot. she fools around a lot but she’s quite protective. i couldn’t have asked for a better half-sister. even if she annoys me half to death ”, with a snort, griffin turned back to his work.

･ ｡ﾟ.˚⊹･゜

the meeting didn’t come as urgently as din had expected, it took about an hour for the pirates to sort out an issue they were having with the gunpowder that was apparently weighing the boat down. whilst they disputed in the captain’s cabin, din took the time to explore the ship.

there wasn’t exactly much she could do other than walk around the deck. at first she didn’t advance onto the forecastle deck which was stationed right at the end of the ship, but it came to a point where boredom led her there, gentle steps finding her atop this elevated platform that allowed a view of the sea ahead of them that would scare but amaze every person.

to din, it was a matter of picturing the ship was the biggest component to the image. she couldn’t think of how big some waves could get, how easily this ship could be engulfed by one of poseidon’s murderers. the sea was an angry monster, hungry; it would swallow all it wanted. that was where her fear of it stemmed from.

it was no a matter of the beasts that laid within the waves; it was the ocean it itself, in its entire greatness and immense size, and the phenomenons that occur. whirlpools were by far her greatest fears; a large cyclone, a crack in the water sucking in all that couldn’t resist its great pull.

the very thought had the nymph cringing.

“ what are you doing out here? ”.

daeva.

din resisted the urge to roll her eyes and turned to glance at the male with a clenched jaw, “ am i not allowed? ”. what the nymph found was that her mood derailed the moment daeva opened his mouth or so much as came near here, it started the moment he pointed the sword at her yesterday; a foolish mistake, now she wanted him as good as dead.

“ no, you are. but the meeting is starting soon ”, daeva grunted, motioning over to where the pirates had gathered; just in the main deck, a map stretched out on a wide area with the captain pointing at certain places. at that, din moved past daeva, almost bumping into him on her way out of the forecastle.

she came to find theseus explaining the plan once they’d arrived in venice. by the nods he was getting, most agreed, and he politely rose his head when din approached. “ oh, you’re here! good, we were just going to ask you whether you’ve heard of tortuga ”, he said with a boyish grin.

tortuga? well, from what she’d heard, these pirates had wrecked havoc and had managed to tick off a couple of french soldiers. was it wise to put your feet back there when you had a navy after you?

“ yeah, i guess i have. ”

sephtis pointed to the island on the map, a mere speck opposed to the other islands of the caribbean. “ theseus says there’s a sea witch who apparently deals with curses. where in the island, i don’t know. but she’s there. and she hasn’t had many visitors in a few centuries ”, he explained.

din frowned, “ wait, weren’t you going to venice? ”.

“ we are ”, somnia cut in. “ but not because of the curse. we need to stack up on resources if we’re going to journey across the atlantic. we also need to find any island to stop at in case we have to hide. there are a few islands in between europe and the caribbean, and we need to find every single one. ” she nodded to griffin. “ he said the italians will help. ”

din looked at the taller male and he gave her a smile, “ relax, i know a couple of guys over there. they’re expert at maps. probably know territories we’d never even imagine. with the ottomans pissed off, the royal navy basically roaming the seas, and the french after us, we’ll need to be sneaky. ”

now she stepped closer to the map, and saw the lack of land in the atlantic aside from the huge continents of which she already knew. she pointed her index finger against the coast of africa, “ we might find a chain of islands here, and then cross directly into the caribbean. the shorter the distance, the better. but we also have to avoid following the trail of europeans colonizers. they’ll kill us. ”

“ well, we just about ticked off every european monarchy under the map. unless if we take down one of the ships at sea and steal their flag and clothes ”, theseus proposed, and griffin immediately shook his head. “ what’s wrong? ”.

griffin crossed his arms, “ we don’t have a lot of people in our crew. they usually carry twenty to thirty men in every ship. it’s fine that we have a small crew since we’re pirates, but the european ships will get suspicious. for that plan to work, we need more crew members. ”

“ we need to pick up more, then ”, rosé said pleasantly. “ i say we’ll find some as we cross the mediterranean. for now, we should focus on getting to venice, finding our sources, and we’ll pick up new members on the way. ” the girl clapped her hands, as if the meeting was over. “ great! now can we pick up more speed to get to italy sooner? ”.

theseus held a finger in waiting, and glanced carefully at din. “ i understand if you might be suspicious of coming with us. but we want the best for you, din ”, he said, bringing the nymph to frown more. “ this sea witch . . . she’s dangerous, but she’s our only hope. at least that we know of. we can break your curse if you want. ”

god, she wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible. and although the course had already been set and plans had been made, din was still resilient in joining them. in fear of putting her life at risk. she couldn’t die, but if she was jailed or imprisoned by officers on sea, it would be another period of imprisonment. and it wouldn’t be long before she was trialed with piracy.

she couldn’t risk it, and she wouldn’t.

yet the sly nymph to look the pirates in the eyes and nod.

“ i’ll come with you.”

𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐰𝐨.

#chapters #chapter two #demi-gods

[goatsnails]

    Atom wipes the blood from his mouth and tears from his eyes as he shakily stood up and continued sweeping. Razz growls.

    "That outta teach ya not to disobay me!!!" He snarls. Atom whimpers, he didn't know what he did wrong. But it didn't matter he must have done something. Razz snarls angrily and storms out. Atom shakes and cries. He wanted to get out of here, but he knew he stood no chance. He picks up a discarded newspaper and looks at it. On the front was a picture of a tall, black, handsome skeleton with an alluring, seductive smile and jet black moth wings. His name was Dusk. Everyone knew that. The brave anti hero with a tragic back story. And Dawn's frenemy.

    Atom smiles softly. He sorta had a crush on him. He cuts out the article and pasts it on the wall of his hole in the wall that served as his room. Razz told him that Dusk would probably kill him before even thinking that he was worth something. Atom believed him but that didn't stop him from daydreaming. He looks out the window and sighs. He goes to lay down hoping to get some rest before Razz comes back.

    The sun shone in Atom's face the next morning. He shifts softly. It went dark again as he felt something touch his lips. A kiss. Atom jolted awake, startled. But there was no one there. He looks around. He was in a strange room in a strange bed. On his lap was a tray with a steaming hot breakfast. His tummy grumbles softly. He looks around and starts eating as there was no one else there, he didn't want to waste food.

    If this was one of Razz's tricks he would learn about it later. Beaten to the floor for being so gullible. Atom feels his tummy. Nothing seemed off about it. He didn't feel sick. Usually when he woke up in a bed he was pregnant. But there was nothing. He notices his arms and legs were bandaged. He feels his head. The scars were gone. He was even more confused. He notices his rags were gone, replaced with silk, velvet and fleece. He was clean as well. The dirt and grime gone.

    Atom finishes and gets out of bed. He goes down stairs to see if he could find anyone. There was no one. Not a single person. Atom was alone.

    "I-i must be going crazy!! R-razz!? S-slim!? Please tell me this is one of your jokes!!!" He trembles and shakes. But then something catches his eye. A note on the table. He picks it up and reads it.

    'Dear Starlight, (That's you)

          I know you must be confused and scared, and wondering who I am. But do not fret, I will reveal myself in due time but as for now take this time to explore your new home. There is no one here who will hurt you. The fridge and pantry are always full and I advise you eat. You may head outside if you wish I'm sure you'll enjoy it. The shelves are packed with good books, games, movies and puzzles, to pass the time if you get bored. Everything you need is here. If there's anything you want just write it down and leave it here.

                                  Your's truly, <3.

Ps: you can leave if you wish but I don't advise you doing so.'

    Atom felt reassured, he relaxed and looked around. It was a nice little house. Cozy and neat. There was only one door that lead out. He opens it and gasps.

    Little song birds fluttered in the trees as mice and rabbits moves about in the flowers and grass. A family of deer rested in the shade of a large oak tree as squirrels chittered about. They all stop and look at him. Atom wanders out amazed by the beauty of it all. A little bird alighted in front of him and chirps curiously. Atom smiles and picks the little bird up. He pets it before letting it fly away.

    "W-who? W-who could have done this for....me? It......couldn't have been Razz......." He sits down and basks in the sun. It was so peacefull and calm, he felt so safe, he was soon asleep again.

   Atom woke up a few hours later, his tummy grumbles softly. He heads back inside. He was stunned to see a large meal already prepared for him. He looks around, hoping to catch a glimps of his kind host. He sighs in defeat and sits down to eat.

    When he was done he washes his dishes and puts them away. He looks around for something else to clean. But there was nothing, no cleaning tools either. He sighs, his gaze drifts to the bookshelves. He picks up one of the books and sits down on the couch to read.

     Atom spends the rest of the day reading and doing puzzles. He doesn't notice as the time flies by. He yawns as he finishes a maze. The puzzle book drops to the floor as he falls asleep.

     Atom was again awoken with a kiss from his unknown host. He was back in bed. He sits up and looks around. Still no one there. He sighs and eats. He heads down stairs again. He pauses when he notices a new note on the counter along with a small box. He picks up the note and reads it.

    'Dear Firefly (that's you again)

          I've collected some of your old belongings and put them in this box. It took a little longer than expected, I had to break a few necks to get them, but I hope to hear back from you soon.

                              Your's truly, <3'

    Atom gasps softly and opens the box. He pulls out his old plush lamb and blanky. He cries happily as he snuggles them.

    "LAMBY!!! BLANKY!!! I never thought I'd see you again!!!" He smiles and pulls out the next item. His journal. He blushes as he looks through it.

     "Boy, I hope they didn't go through this......" He sets it down. He pulls out the rest of his stuff. His favorite story book, his scarf and mittens. And even his scrap book full of drawings and cut outs of Dusk. Atom blushes more.

    "Oh gosh." He giggles and slips it on the shelf. He smiles and puts his stuff away. He smiles and goes outside.

    He starts gardening. Removing weeds and tending to the flowers and trees. The little animals help him plant seeds. Though not without eating a few. Atom giggles.

    "Hey! Those are for the garden not your tummies!"

    The animals chitter and chirp gleefully. Atom giggles and yawns. He goes under the tree for a nap. The animals gather around him. He rests his head on the buck's side. The doe licks him tenderly. He was soon asleep once more.

    The days pass without incident. The days merge into weeks and time seemed non-exsistant. He soon got bored and lonely. He sighs. "....I wonder if they'll allow guests.....not that anyone would visit me...." He thinks and writes a note.

    'Dear unknown,

          Can I get guests? Please? I just want some one to talk to that's not the animals. Not that I don't appreciate what you've done for me. I thank you for everything. It's just lonely. It's okay if I can't. I'll just be happy with what I have. Thank you.

                                    ~Atom.'

    He leaves it on the table and goes to bed. His dreams were calm and happy. Like they had been every night since he had been brought here.

    He sleeps till he's woken with another unknown kiss the next morning. He wakes up again to a warm breakfast in bed. He eats and gets dressed and heads down stairs.

    He pauses in surprise to see Dawn, the gaurdian of the multiverse, in his house.

    "D-dawn!?" He scurries over. Dawn perks up.

    "Oh hello. You must be Atom. Your friend has told me alot about you." She shakes his hand. Atom was stunned.

    "W-when I asked for g-guests I didn't think it'd be the literal guardian of the multiverse." He laughs nervously.

    Dawn giggles. "It's nice to meet you too." She smiles warmly.

    Atom shakes his head. "Why don't you take a seat. I'll make some tea."

    "That would be lovely thank you." She purrs. Atom smiles softly and goes to make tea.

    He sits down with her and they talk for a bit. Atom especially interested in her stories about Dusk. Eventually Dawn had to leave. She promised to be back later. She gave him a letter.

    "He told me to give this to you."

    "Who?"

    "Your lover."

    "Oh! O-okay."

    Dawn leaves. Atom looks at the letter. He opens it kinda hoping it would reveal the identity of his mystery lover. He opens it and pauses.

'Dear Starlight

      I know you barely know me. You don't even know who I really am. But I promise you will know in due time. However in this letter I wish to ask if possibly you would grant me access to your body tonight as you sleep so that I may grant you with a child. A child you can keep. I promise that if you say yes you will get a little baby. And I promise no harm will come to you or them. I want a child as much as I know you do. So just leave a note with yes or a no. I will not do anything without permission.

                                Yours truly, <3'

    Atom read and reread it almost a thousand times.

    "A...a child?" He holds his tummy with tears. "N-no....t-this can't be real....it's a trick...." He sat down. He couldn't believe it. This person, had already done so much good to him. But would he really give him a child? And even let him keep it?

    Atom teared up and cried. All he ever wanted was to hold a child. A child of his own. But everytime he had one before, Razz and the others would kill it. He could only see it when they snaped it's little neck infront of him. Never hold it for even a second. He read the note again. With tears in his eyes he wrote his anwser and went to bed.

    The next morning Atom felt strange. He got up and ran to the bathroom to throw up. He hung over the edge of the trashcan goaning.

    "Mmngh-" He gasps softly. He lifts his shirt. His eye's widened when he saw a little soul swimming around peacefully. He hugs his tummy tightly. He slowly gets back up and heads back to the room but there was no breakfast in his bed. Atom goes down stairs. He nods when he sees a masive breakfast on the table.

    "That would make sense....." He ate and went outside. He gardened for an hour or two before laying down on the grass for a nap.

    The next day Atom told Dawn the happy news. He was going to have a child. Dawn smiles and hugs him tightly.

    "That's amazing!!! Though....I wouldn't expect him to actually do that.....he never struck me as a family person.....strange...."

    Atom looks at her with fear. "H-he's n-not gonna kill them i-is he!?"

    "Oh, no, no. I highly doubt it! He loves kids. And....he loves you. I wouldn't think he would do this just to break your heart in the end......he's insane yes....but not crule. Unless you happen to be someone he really truly hates. Oh jeese I might be giving away too much information about him."

    Atom nods softly. "If you say so...."

    Dawn smiles softly. "You're safe. I promise."

    Atom sighs. "Any more letters?"

    "No. Not today. But I suggest you write him some. He got really happy when you wrote the one asking if I could come over. Well not me spacificly but you get the point."

    Atom nods. "Alright."

    Dawn smiles softly. "I'll see you later. Bye Atom."

    "Bye Dawn...."

     Dawn leaves and Atom sits down to ponder if this was a good idea. He hugs his knees and cries, sobbing endlessly. Someone wraps a blanket around his shoulders. Atom stops and perks up. He looks around. But he was alone. A hot cup of coco lay beside him. He picks it up and sips it.

    "Thank you....." He whispers softly. He dries his tears and calms down. He lays down on the couch and falls asleep, holding his tummy tight.

    The next morning he found himself in his bed, again woken with a kiss and a tray of warm food with pancakes shapped as hearts. He smiles softly as he eats. He rubs his tummy.

    "...maybe he really does love me......who ever he is."

    Atom gets up and goes downstairs. He pauses when he sees a wooden box with a note on the table. He picks them up and reads the note.

    'My dear beloved firefly,

        I was thinking of you the other day and thought you might like this. It's not much but it's the best I could get. I know you'll make something amazing.

                                Yours truly <3'

    Atom opens the box. Inside was a yarn, thred, needles and fabric. Sewing, knitting and needle work. Atom was delighted. He took the box and sat down to work.

    He works all day, and late into the night. He wanted to keep working but suddenly felt very tired. He falls asleep soon after.

    The days days past easily. Atom had almost forgotten about his past life. He was looking forward to being a mother and hopfully meeting his lover. Dawn visited every so often and they would talk. And then one day Dawn gave Atom some news that made his heart skip a beat.

     "H-he wants t-to m-ma-marry me!?" Atom exclaims.

     Dawn nods. "Yep."

     "But I-I don't e-even know who he is!!!!"

     "....well....you kinda do...."

     Atom trembles. "W-who!?"

     "Me." A deep, smooth, voice said from behind.

    Atom jumped and turned around and looks up. He froze in place his eyes wide.

     There, near the couch, was a tall, hansom, black skeloton with jet black moth wings and a charming, seductive smile. It was Dusk. "Hello starlight."

    Atom faints.

    Atom shifts and slowly wakes up. He pauses. He was laying on Dusk's lap, his head against his chest, Dusk's arm around him. A soft blanket was drapped over him. His mind raced. 'No this can't be real. It's too good to be real.' He shook he couldn't wrap his head around it.

    "Oh your awake." Dusk smiles and wraps the blanket around him a little more. "Have a good rest?"

    Atom nods softly. "Y-yes t-th-thank y-you." He fidgets. "I-is t-this real? I-is it really y-you?......"

    Dusk chuckles. "Sure is, Starlight."

    Atom was in utter shock. "I-it w-was y-you all t-this time?"

    Dusk nods. "Yep."

    ".....b-but....why?" The only thing Atom could say in the moment. "W-why?"

    "Why what?"

    "Why.....everything.....w-why did you s-save me? Why? Why didn't y-you kill me? W-why did y-you do this...a-all this

.....f-for....m-me?"

    Dusk chuckles softly. "Oh my sweet starlight." He rubs his cheeks.

    Atom holds his hand and looks at his eyes. So kind and caring and loving. He saw his future in them. Bright and warm and full of love.

    "....." Atom gazes into his eyes. Just then something caught his attention. Dusk wings. He looks at them closely and gasps softly. His wings, they weren't completely black! They shimmered like the night sky. He touches them gently. They were soft and felt like velvet. He smiles softly and looks up at Dusk. He smiles.

    Just then he felt a small kick in his tummy. He winces softly. Dusk lays his hand on his tummy.

    "Lively one arn't they?" He smiles softly.

    Atom pauses as the pieces clicked. "This is.....I'm carrying.....no....this.....you really did-"

    Dusk laughs and kisses him. "Yes. And I'm just as excited as you are."

    Atom jumps up and wraps his arms around Dusk's neck. "Thank you!!!" He cries heavily into him.

    Dusk holds him close and rocks him. Atom sobs. Dusk comforts him as he calms down slowly.

    "Thank you."

    "It's my pleasure." Dusk purrs. He pets him gently.

    "S-so...you're really want t-to marry me?" He looks up at him with wide eyes.

    Dusk nods. "As soon as possible. But I'll let you settle down first."

    Atom snuggles into him. "Thank you...."

    Dusk nuzzles him. "It's my pleasure."

    Atom falls asleep once again.

    Wedding bells rang cheerfully. Atom stood infront of the mirror, nervous. It was the day of his and Dusk's wedding. He shifts in his dress as he looks at his reflection.

    "Is this really h-happening?....Am I..r-really getting m-married?....a-and to D-dusk?" He trembles in both fear and excitement.

    Dawn pokes her head in. "Hurry everyone's waiting for you! And Dusk really isn't that patient! Especially on day's like this!"

    Atom nods and hurries out. He pauses when he saw Dusk at the alter. He almost fainted again. This was real and he really was getting married to his dream man. He slowly walks down the isle, blushing softly. He gets to the alter and stops in front of Dusk.

    Dusk looks at him and blushes softly. "You're beautiful."

    Atom blushes more. "Y-you really think s-so."

    Dusk nods.

    Atom beams as the priest starts. Atom gazes at Dusk waits for those special words.

    "Do you Dusk take Atom to be your lawfully wedded wife?"

    "I do." Dusk smiles. Atom beams happily.

    "And do you Atom take Dusk to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

    "I d-do!"

    "You may now kiss the bride."

     Dusk pulls Atom in and kisses him deeply. Atom blushes brightly as he melts into the kiss. Everything was perfect.

    Dusk sweeps him off his feet and takes him to the celebration party. Cross cuts the cake. Atom looks at Dusk. Dusk chuckles.

    "Go on. Have as much as you want."

    Atom gasps happily and takes as much cake as could fit on his plate.

    Dusk pauses. "Okay maybe not that much.....don't want you sick."

     Atom pouts and eats it anyway. Dusk laughs softly.

     "Cutie~" He winks at him.

     Atom blushes. His mouth stuffed with cake. Dusk licks the frosting off his cheek. Atom giggles and boops him. Dusk laughs and kisses him.

    Atom gazes up at his eyes again. "I st-still can't belive I'm ma-married! And t-to you of a-all people!" He beams happily. "A-and to think y-you found w-worth in m-me.....instead of just killing or eating me....."

    Dusk laughs. "Eaten you!? You were little more than a ration when I found you!" He looks at him and smirks. "But you've definently rounded out nicely since then~" He rubs his waist. "Fit for a king~"

    Atom shivers and blushes. "Y-you're not g-gonna eat me are you?"

    "If you don't want me to I won't."

    Atom nods softly.

    There was a scoff behind them. "Well well well~ what do we have here?"

    Atom freezes and burries into Dusk. Dusk snarls. "Razz-"

    Razz smirks. "Hello Atom. I missed you."

   Atom twitches. "Missed what? Useing me!? Beating me to the floor? Abusing my kindness?"

    Razz acts offended. "Atom! I thought you were better than this! I just came to congratulate you after you left me with out saying anything! Then get married behind my back with out inviting me! After all the love I gave you? I'm offended. I didn't even have to be here!"

    Atom shakes. "Selling the one you love off to other people for money ISNT LOVE! You SOLD me razz! FOR MONEY!! I gave you my heart, my love and my kindness! YOU were the one who WANTED a child an when we did- YOU KILLED IT! I'm MUCH BETTER OFF WITHOUT you! I'm MARRIED to someone whose much kinder and more patient than you EVER COULD BE!! I-i just wants someone to love me.....someone who'll just hold me.....wh-who won't call me an idiot every time I mess up a dish....that wasn't to your liking! IM SO TIRED OF YOU YELLING AT ME BECAUSE IT WASNT PERFECT!!!! WHO CARES HOW THE STEAK IS CUT!?! Who CARES HOW MUCH SHARDINAE IS IN THE GLASS?! Dusk doesn't! Dusk loves me! He took the time to love me! To know me! YOU NEVER DID ANY OF THAT!!! YOU JUST PUSHED ME AWAY LIKE I WAS NOTHING BUT A TOY!!! I'M NOT A TOY!!! AND DUSK UNDERSTANDS THAT!!! HE TREATS ME LIKE AN ACTUAL PERSON!!!! HE LOVES ME!!! YOU!!! NEVER!!! DID!!!" He shakes and runs away.

    Dusk watches Atom with sorrow. He glares harshly at Razz and attacks him.

    Atom runs and hides in an empty tree hollow. He cries heavily and holds his tummy tight. He sobs. Something pokes at his tummy. Something, large, wet, and black. A huge nose. A huge nose belonging to a huge black wolf with large red eyes. Atom gasps and backs more into the tree. The wolf pawses and whimpers. He tries to wiggle in with him. He gets stuck and tries to pull his head out. Atom pauses and helps him.

[cavastaleofficial]

Chapter 4

    "W-w-well, th-that was fun, w-wasn't it Frisk?" Alphys wrung her claws and laughed nervously.

    "Absolutely! Same time next week?"

    "S-Sure! I-I'll start looking for n-new shows t-too... that way w-we don't r-run out," Her mouth jerked up in the crooked fashion that always made everyone around her smile too, "W-Well, see you s-soon, then. Bye, F-Frisk!" The lab doors slid shut, and Frisk was left on her own. She turned away, and sprinted towards the place where she knew the River Person would be waiting.

~

    "Tra la la. The water is very dry today." Frisk's mouth twitched up at the River Person's strange ramblings. They never really made any sense, and today was no exception. How could water be dry, anyway? And earlier, on the way to Hotland, they'd said something about needing to have worn a few million more pairs of pants. Frisk had learned not to read into them too much, although occasionally they gave some useful advice amid the rambles. Frisk settled down and watched the fields of Echo Flowers go by.

    Then the boat stopped unexpectedly.

    "River Person? This isn't Snowdin..."

    "Tra la la. The walls prevent our passage." They gestured towards the water, and Frisk walked towards the front of the boat to take a look. Sure enough, there was something blocking the river. It appeared as though there'd been an avalanche of sorts, and now the river was full of boulders.

    "Oh well. I can always walk. I'll just text Paps and tell him why I'm late." She moved to leave the boat when the River Person reached out and grabbed her tight by the shoulder.

    "Tra la la. Beware of the man who came from the other world." Frisk's eyebrows wrinkled. The River Person sounded perfectly serious, with almost none of the usual lightness to their tone.

    "I'm sorry, I don't..."

    "Tra la la. Beware of the man who speaks in hands." This time they sounded urgent, and almost panicked. Frisk backed away and stepped carefully out of the boat, frightened by this change of character.

    "A-alright. I will." The River Person nodded, and pushed away from the shore.

~

    "Hiya, Frisk!" Monster Kid ran up beside Frisk almost immediately after she'd been dropped off by the small bird. "Suzy and I are just going to visit Onionsan. Wanna come?"

    Frisk forced a smile "Sorry, I can't, I have to get home. Maybe next time?" It wasn't that Frisk didn't like Monster Kid, she really did! He just made her a little... uncomfortable. Suzy, the girl he had mentioned, was Monster Kid's sister. And she didn't exist. Monster Kid thought she was real, but Frisk had never met her. When she asked why, she was told that for his entire life, Monster Kid had always claimed to have a sister named Susan, or "Suzy" for short. They thought he'd grow out of it, but he never did.

    "Aw, okay. See you later!" Monster Kid ran off, and Frisk fought off tears.

~

    Frisk glanced at her watch. 5:45.

    "Shoot" She started to run. She had to be home by 6 to help with dinner. And... she had an eerie feeling, as though something was off. The River Person was nervous, and what was up with that avalanche? Then, she slowed down, and stopped. Was the hallway to the crystallized cheese save point always this long? Her eyes scanned the hall, and she resisted the urge to turn around and run back to Undyne's house.

    That's when she spotted the door. It was crooked, grey, and strangely tall and skinny.

    And it called to her.

    Frisk's left foot moved forward reluctantly. Then, her right. She tried to resist, to stop walking towards this strange door, but she couldn't. Soon, she was standing directly in front of it, shaking.

    She reached out, turned the handle, and walked in. Immediately she was washed over with a wave of cold, and Frisk felt goosebumps run up her arms.

    "Hello, young one." Standing in front of her was a skeleton. Or, at least, that's what she thought it was. Its head looked like that of a skeleton's, but its body seemed like that of the amalgamates. Blobbish, and pulsating. "I'm sorry, as you can see, I'm not at my best. But no matter. I'll be whole soon enough,"

    Frisk swallowed hard. "Wh-who are you?"

    "I? I am Dr. W. D. Gaster. And you are Frisk Nardelli," Frisk's eyes widened, and she started to back away from the figure. Before she could make it out of the door, it slammed behind her. "Yes, I know your name. I know why you're down here. What really happened during your life on the Surface. And. I remember every. Single. Reset. Every detail. Not the foggy, partial memories Sans and Alphys have managed to conjure up." With every sentence Gaster moved forward - or was she being pulled towards him? Soon he was close enough that Frisk could feel a chilling breath on her skin.

    "What do you want with me?"

    Gaster grinned, and started to laugh. It was an ugly thing, and chilled her to her soul.

    "With you? I don't want anything with you," He leaned down so close their faces were almost touching. A shiver ran through Frisk's body, starting at her toes, and making its way up to her head. "I want freedom." He straightened, and moved back, turning so he was facing the back wall. He seemed to be considering something. Then he spoke again, softly at first.

    "Do you know what it's like... to not exist? To look down and see your friends, your family... and not be able to talk to them? To know they don't even remember you?" His tone grew stronger as he continued. "Do you know what it's like to be scattered into tiny pieces, to be lost across time and space?" His voice raised to a shout, and he turned around to face Frisk again, his eyes now blazing and moving between a furious violet and poisonous green. "Do you know what it's like to watch as everything you ever cared for is destroyed by a tiny, pathetic, human, and to know that you can't do ANYTHING?" As he spoke he seemed to grow taller, but as soon as he finished he closed his eyes and shrank back down. "But I digress. I'm sure you get the picture. I am trapped here. And all I need to be free..." His eyes flashed open once again, and his grin stretched across his face in a grotesque fashion, "All I need... is a replacement." Frisk's soul shrank.

    "I... I don't..."

    "Oh, but you do. And... it's too late. You see, all I needed was a way to create this space, a space between the real world... and the void. And you and that meddlesome flower... gave me just that. When he opened up the code to remove the souls, I was able to get in. It took a while to figure out exactly how to create this space to behave the way I wanted, and it took a few tries, to be sure. But now I have finally completed my goal... as soon as I exit this door..." The door behind Frisk moved across the wall until it was behind Gaster, "I will be back in the real world. This room will vanish. And you... will be in the void." He turned around and opened the door. As he slid out of the room, he grew taller and skinnier, and as soon as he was completely out, he had completely transformed. No longer was he a blob. Now he was very clearly a skeletal being. He stopped and looked over his shoulder.

    "Good. Luck." The door slammed behind him, and Frisk screamed.

~

    Sans was in his basement lab, sorting through his things that he'd brought down from his bedroom. As he organized his folders, he noticed something sticking out of one of them. He reached over and plucked it out. He flipped it over. On it was a child's drawing of three, smiling figures. On the top were written the words "don't forget". He stared, blinking, realizing what it was. Then, a sound behind him jolted him out of his mind.

    He whirled around, and before his very eyes the sheet that had been draped over the machine vanished, and lights flickered on. It whirred and beeped as it started back up for the first time in who knows how long. Sans' bones rattled against each other as he shook.

    "SANS!" Startled Sans turned around again to face the door. Papyrus ran down the stairs, panicked. "SANS, SANS, I THINK... I THINK..." He was hyperventilating and could barely get his words out.

    "woah, woah, bro. what's wrong?"

    "SANS, I THINK..." Papyrus looked his brother dead in the eye, and his voice lowered into the most serious voice Sans had heard in years, "I THINK HE'S BACK."

|Chapter 3| |Chapter 5|

|Master Post|

#undertale #undertale fanfic #undertale fanfiction #cavastale #frisk #undertale frisk #alphys #undertale alphys #river person #undertale river person #monster kid #undertale monster kid #goner kid #undertale goner kid #gaster #undertale gaster #sans #undertale sans #papyrus #undertale papyrus

[notstars-doors]

Hello, for the prompt ask thing, maybe 12 with birdflash? or maybe 1 or 22 forthe same pairing if your're not feeling very angsty?

hhhhh okay im always feeling angsty but i loved the potential for the other two so i used both instead :D hope you like it!!

Prompts:

1. “Christ- would you sit still for two seconds?”

22. “We should keep doing this. I quite like kissing you, it’s fun.”

***

Oh, we’ll just glideSo starry-eyedOnce I get you up thereI’ll be holding you so nearThat you may hearAngels cheer, ‘cause we’re together

***

“Christ- would you sit still for two seconds?”

Dick jumps from one ancient, probably crumbling, pillar to the next, leaving Wally in his dust. Graceful as a damn swan, Dick hops across the top of the ruins with an ease that Wally shouldn’t be so surprised by. He’s seen Dick perform far more dangerous tricks before, in far more dangerous situations, but being this high up himself has Wally just a teensy bit anxious.

“Never thought I’d hear those words from you, of all people, KF.” Dick quips over his shoulder, barely glancing at his feet before jumping again, landing gracefully on the angled, broken edge of a wall before throwing himself forward into a flip towards the next. He’s doing this on purpose now, just to send Wally’s heart hurtling into his throat.

“Dude, I’m fast, but that’s on the ground. Vertical is your thing, not mine.”

“What, can’t keep up?”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

Dick grins, crouching on the corner of whatever this building once was, perched like a bird. Wally bites back the comparison - wanting to avoid anything to truly provoke him. Usually that would be his first instinct but god knows he can’t escape his wrath on the ground – up here Dick would have more than an unfair advantage.

“Just a little bit.”

Coming out into the forest was Wally’s idea. It was near enough to the city that they’d be back in time for dinner, but far enough to forget the troubles that Gotham city brought to mind just looking at it, and Wally knew they both needed a break. They’d followed the trail for hours, just exploring and climbing and hiking through the trees until it felt like it was just them and the greenery, nothing else in the world.

And then they’d happened upon a set of old ruins, just the rocky skeletons of what must’ve been a old cottage or two, walls protruding from the ground in various shapes and sizes. Wally wouldn’t have been able to keep Dick from climbing them if he’d tried. He’d known better, though, and had (against his better judgement) joined Dick in his balancing act across a jungle gym of rock and cracked mortar. Wally flaps his arms around to keep his balance, stepping carefully across the gap between his wall and the next - opting for the safer route, rather than attempt the reckless jumps that Dick is so adept at.

It’s only their third date, and they have to get back to the Manor for a meet-the-family dinner that Dick thinks is entirely pointless (considering they’ve been best friends for years) but still has Wally’s heart thundering in his chest. He would rather hold out before he tries anything death-defying just yet. Doesn’t wanna give Bruce the satisfaction.

When Wally turns from the edge to retort, chest tight and stomach rolling, Dick is suddenly there. Right there, standing behind him, close enough to touch. How he got there without Wally noticing, he’ll never know. The easy grin on his face, his relaxed posture, hands in his pockets and completely at ease this high off the ground - it draws Wally in like a magnet, and before he even knows what he’s doing–

They’re kissing.

Wally thinks he started it. He’s not entirely sure. All he knows is that he’s got Dick’s face between his hands, cheeks soft under his fingertips, mouth against his, open and warm and inviting.

God. It’s so good. Better than he’d ever dared imagine. Dick is smiling into it, teeth clacking against Wally’s, and even that’s good. It’s a little clumsy from how desperate it is, but Dick’s hands are sliding down Wally’s sides to hold his hips, draw him closer, angling his head to find that sweet spot where they’re most comfortable, and then there’s fireworks going off behind Wally’s eyelids.

Dick kisses him like he wants to steal the breath from Wally’s lungs, like there’s nothing he wants more than to have what’s once belonged to him, like that’s enough to sustain him forever. He lingers  like he wants to search every part of him, map out every twitch and and shiver and find their buttons. He touches him like there’s lightning under Wally’s skin and Dick is the thunder, chasing after it, and Wally doesn’t need to count the seconds to feel that wherever he goes, Dick will follow.

And Wally- Wally’s just holding on for dear life. He wonders how it is that he’s gone for so long without this. Without knowing what Dick’s mouth feels like against his own. How soft his lips are. The velvet drag of his tongue on Wally’s. The trail of fire left behind everywhere Dick touches him.

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, it registers that he’s kissing his best friend. There’s that distant alarm bell going off in his head, one he’s trained himself to have, to hold back from every lingering touch and too-long glance at Dick. To hide how he feels. It’s there, present as ever, but Wally ignores it with an ease he never thought possible. Because he’s kissing Dick, but the more important thing is that Dick is kissing him back and that’s something he never thought he’d get to have.

He has to remind himself that this is a date. That Dick asked him out. That they’re doing this now.

When Dick pulls away, just enough to breathe, Wally has to swallow down the whine that tries to escape. Dick just smiles, his lips brushing against Wally’s again, and it’s sending another shiver down his spine. Wally can feel the heat in his cheeks spreading all the way to his chest.

Dick hums softly. His fingers toy with the hem of Wally’s sweatshirt, accidentally grazing Wally’s stomach with his nails. Or maybe it’s not so accidental. Who knows. Who cares?

Not Wally.

“We should keep doing that.”

Wally lifts his head, bumping his nose against Dick’s. He still hasn’t opened his eyes yet.“Hm?”

Dick’s breath brushes over his lips when he laughs, quiet and teasing. “I quite like kissing you, it’s fun.”

“Fun?” Wally asks, and in a moment of daring, leans in to nip at Dick’s lower lip. To break that cool facade. The strangled gasp he gets as a reward is all he needs to know that he’s not the only one affected. “That’s all?”

“Maybe not all.” Dick says quickly.

And then they’re kissing again and Wally is laughing into it when Dick throws his arms around Wally’s neck to drag him down. It’s a fucking revelation, that Dick feels for Wally as strongly as he does for Dick. That he wants him like this.

Sure, they’ve been on a few dates, and Dick had been the one to ask him out. But it’s only now, with Dick pressed tight against him, breath quick and warm when they part, like they can’t get back to each other fast enough – it’s only now that Wally is finally, truly sure.

When they open their eyes, slowly, in sync, Wally feels his world shift. Just a fraction, just that tiniest bit, but he feels it nonetheless. The ground isn’t so far away, with Dick standing this close. The height isn’t so dizzying, when Dick’s eyes are sparkling and entrancing and all the more dizzying themselves. Wally’s focus, his balance, realigns itself to where he stands here in Dick’s arms. There’s a pull that draws him closer, stumbling forward an inch. Dick holds him steady, balanced easily on the balls of his feet, and something grows warm and solid in Wally’s chest.

“Doin’ alright staying vertical, Walls?” Dick murmurs, mouth turning up at the corners, caught somewhere between a smirk and smile.

“I’m good.” Wally says, and knocks his forehead gently against Dick’s, his own smile bright, honest. “I’ve got you.”

#ask #prompt #birdflash #dickwally #dick grayson #wally west #imstillsleepy #thank you for sending this in!!!! <33333

[dramaticironyoflife]

Baby Bird (Fly Home) - Chapter 9: Baby Bird, What is Home?

Chapter 9

Summary:

Virgil is forced to tell a story, Logan is forced to trust a stranger, Patton is forced to make the most difficult decision in his life. Could this story get an more angsty?

Notes:

I hope you are all enjoying the New Year! Me? What? Here to spill some angst and ruin your day?! Noooooo...never... Unless. WARNING! MENTIONS OF PANIC ATTACKS AND PAST ABUSE! LIKE, PARENT CHILD NOT GOOD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

----

“Patton…” Virgil began and then stopped. His throat seemed to close, and his lungs refused to draw air properly. He could see him. The flash of angry eyes, the crash of a bottle against a wall, and the stench of alcohol in the air. The soft white walls became splotched with various stains and the carpet was replaced by jagged pieces of broken glass. He was filled with the overwhelming desire to hide, to get Logan into a safe place, and to be completely and totally silent. His fingers shook and he gripped at his hoodie strings in a frantic effort to bring himself back to the present. It all seemed so real that when a soft hand slipped into his, he shouted and scrambled away, clutching Logan to himself in the process.

Patton sat with his hand still raised to reach the young man. An unspeakable sadness clutched his heart and he wanted nothing more than to help them both. His eyes sought Logan next, already wanting to comfort and protect the boy he already thought of as “his baby bird”. The younger boy seemed alarmed but not unprepared for the reaction. Patton watched in awe as the smaller of the brothers reached out and gently pulled Virgil’s hood up. “I’m safe.” He promised softly. Virgil blinked a few times and then let tears slip down his cheeks. He looked down and found the deep pools of brown that stared back at him. Logan reached a slender hand up and carefully brushed away a tear. Virgil was filled simultaneously with a gentle fondness and a fire to protect the boy in his arms. He pulled Logan closer and pressed a kiss into his hair. Logan returned the grip with equal ferocity, helping to ground the anxious teen. The wise brown eyes fastened themselves on Patton’s frozen form. “Our father was extremely abusive.” He stated like it was a fact from a book instead of a traumatic event. “I’ve been informed that our mother abandoned us shortly after I turned one. Virgil and I were left in the care of the man who helped conceive us, but he was hardly what you would call a ‘good parent’. He beat us regularly, drank heavily, and did little to provide for us. Virgil raised me mostly, until the night our father…” Here, Logan’s strong façade cracked. His voice caught and he stared off into the distance, as if reliving some memory. Virgil tucked him closer to his side, trying to shield him from the skeletons that haunted their closet. “We were found that night and taken into custody. After that it was foster care.” Unspoken stories raced through the siblings’ minds and silence slipped over the group. “How old were you?” Patton asked quietly. His eyes were cloudy, and he hadn’t taken even one cookie. His attention was on the two boys who, for the first time, were sharing their tragic story with someone who actually cared. “I was eight, Logan was four.” Virgil continued, “When I was fourteen, I heard that they planned to separate us. I knew I couldn’t let that happen so, as soon as I turned 15, I high tailed it and began working odd jobs. I left a phone number on the back of a photograph so he could contact me.” “Of course,” Logan muttered, “I didn’t find the number until recently.” Virgil shifted his hold on Logan and brushed some of the hair from his eyes. “I didn’t exactly tell him where it was, or even give him anything other than a vague passing comment. Not sure it could even be considered a ‘clue’. Anyway, I ended up here and, when I had means of supporting myself, I started to look for Lo. He found the number about a week ago and here we are.” Patton looked between them. Virgil had never seen the man look so completely blank. He tensed as Patton removed his glasses and cleaned them. “And what were you planning on doing now, Virgil?” The older teen drew himself up and squared his shoulders. “I’m going to keep Logan and officially claim him when I turn 18.” Patton noted the fierce determination in the boy’s eyes. Logan was looking up at his brother with complete and total trust in his abilities. To separate them would be not only be cruel, but it would have severe repercussions. Patton could think back to when Virgil first showed up. A boy, shaking from the cold and trembling from something else. It had been at the end of a long day for Patton and he’d been heading back to the apartments to get some well-deserved rest when he’d seen a thin figure spreading a sleeping bag in a darkened alleyway. He’d tried to keep going, honestly. His fingers drummed against the steering wheel and he hummed to distract himself. Every time he peered into the dark, though, he swore he saw a flash of a thin purple sleeping bag or the outline of a scrawny figure in a patched-up hoodie. He’d almost made it all the way back to the soft blue building when his conscience couldn’t take it anymore. He’d swiftly turned around and made his way back to the alley. The boy was sitting on the sleeping bag, pulling what looked like fast-food leftovers from a dumpster out of his backpack when he saw Patton. The face paled but the eyes darkened. He bared his teeth and hissed. Patton raised his hands in surrender and slowly approached. The boy snatched his backpack up and made to run when Patton cried out, “Wait! I just wanted to ask you a question!” The boy froze but didn’t lose the tension in his shoulders. Patton took this as an invitation to continue, “Do you want a place to sleep?” Thus, the process had begun. Virgil had spent the night and vanished in the morning. However, Patton had never been one to take things halfway and had decided to pursue the impossible mission of earning the teen’s trust. Many smiles, sleepovers, and chocolate chip cookies later, he’d been gifted with a name and then a friend. Virgil had been understandably hesitant of Patton but now he was drawn to the soft-hearted man. For as deeply as Virgil mistrusted people, those he did trust he connected to them with deep loyalty. Patton and Logan had earned this status in his life, no one else. “Kiddo,” Patton sighed, his fingers twisted in his bathrobe, “you can’t just hide Logan and expect it all to work out.” Silence, ever the unwelcome guest, oozed into the room and filled it to the brim. “As soon as they find out, you could be tried for kidnapping, thrown in jail, and Logan would be gone forever.” Patton tried to reason with the emotional duo. Logan blinked hard and pressed his lips together. Virgil had paled considerably and gone absolutely still. His mouth open and closed a few times before he got his tongue to cooperate. “I can’t be without him, Pat.” The tone was raw and desperate. Patton felt his heart go out to the brothers. They looked impossibly small and helpless sitting on his sofa. Logan hadn’t changed his expressionless gaze. “I am a robot. I am a robot. Robot’s do not feel. I am a robot. Therefore, I do not feel.” The mantra that was running through Logan’s head was, once again, not having the desired effect. His regular methods weren’t working, and it just added to the desperation of the situation. Patton stood and shuffled closer, snapping the two out of their spiraling thoughts. He settled himself next to Virgil and took them in. It was impossible not to feel empathetic and all kinds of bad. They had just been reunited and now he was here, ripping them apart. But…what choice did he have? A look of utter and complete sadness crossed his face and Virgil seemed to sense it. “Patton?” The big brown eyes turned on him, Virgil wasn’t one to beg but here he was. He reached forward and grabbed the man’s hand in his own. Tears were beginning to well up in his eyes. Patton forced himself to look down. “Virgil…” He took a deep breath. Logan tensed and paled considerably. “Patton, no. Please…you can’t…we just got back together! You can’t just do this! I-please!” Patton shook the teen off his arm. He stood and walked over to the window, he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He blinked hard, trying to keep his own emotions in check. Behind him, Virgil curled in on himself, audible sobs coming from his shaking form. The wiry figure looked like a black stain against the white sofa. Logan shuffled over to him and tried to tuck himself under his brother’s arm. He whined when he wasn’t granted immediate access. Virgil seemed to be triggered by the sound and pulled him close. Patton realized that Logan wasn’t crying. He was staring off into the distance with a resigned look of acceptance. It broke the soft man’s heart. With shaking fingers, he pulled out his phone and typed a few words into the search bar. Florida adoption process - About 43,300,000 results (0.59 seconds).

Tag List:

@bunny222

#fanfiction #ts fanfic #virgil sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #Baby Bird Fly Home #writing #thomas sanders #sanders sides

[undertaleheadcannonsfromagremlin]

May I have headcanons for when a S/O asks the more artistic skeles to draw on their skin if they comfortable with it.

You get more then you ask for but…

Sans (undertale)- He’s probably going to draw on their stomach if they’re laying across his lap while the two of them watch tv. It was a rerun of an episode, so when his s/o offered for him to draw on them if he was bored, he decided to do so. He may draw a little bottle of ketchup, or maybe the moon and a few stars, nothing very artistic, but his s/o seems to encourage him. Huh, he may have found a new past time he likes, despite not being very artistic or skilled. 

Papyrus (undertale)- He is pretty good at doodling! So when his s/o ask for him to doodle on them, well, you better believe he’s going to take this opportunity! He’s more then likely going to draw on their arms so they could see what he was doing, and if they give him the go ahead, he’d draw on the back on their shoulder blades, when they’re wearing a loose tanktop, of course. He’d doodle himself on them, as well as his s/o, the two would be more animated then anything. Expect a few details that are off, but other then that, it looks adorable. 

Blue (Underswap Sans)- Being excited is an understatement, Blue is hyped that his s/o offered to allow him to draw whatever he wanted on them! He may go a bit overboard drawing over their arms and legs, drawing a little animated head of him and his s/o, his favorite flowers as well as theirs, tacos, ice cream, you name it! He would also allow his s/o to draw on his bones, though realizing that the ink from markers could stain his bones for a while was quite the drawback to this whole thing. Whatever, he still had fun, and so did his s/o!

Stretch (Underswap Papyrus)- Stretch’s s/o is trusting him to draw on them? Huh, that’s a bit strange, but okay. He’d maybe write a few things on their arms instead, his handwriting looks nearly like calligraphy, so that likes word art, right? Maybe he’d draw a bee or two, as well as a honey pot, because his s/o is his “honey”. The two may crack up after that. 

Red (Underfell Sans)- This came out of nowhere, honestly, Red did not expect his s/o to offer him this. Well, he’s not very good at drawing, and he isn’t one to think of things on the spot, so he may hesitate. He may draw a rather grumpy looking him, on his s/o’s hand, though he would immediately stop after that, despite his s/o saying that it looked wonderful. Maybe a few bones as well?

Boss (Underfell Papyrus)- Wha- why would his s/o even tell him that he could do this? He has better things to do! Though at the end of the day, when there is nothing to do, he might take up the challenge of drawing on his s/o. He is surprisingly careful and attentive to details, drawing things such as villains, or something of that sort. Don’t tell anyone that he drew those on his s/o, or he won’t do it again!

Black (Fellswap Sans)- Seriously? He has so much work to do, why would his s/o even suggest that he can draw on them. He’d most likely tell them later, quite a few times before becoming annoyed with his s/o’s constant asking. He’ll draw a small skull and crossbones on his s/o’s cheek, before shooing them off so he could finish what he needed to finish. However when he is not busy, he’ll probably do a bit more drawing. Ever since his s/o had told him about a certain holiday in Mexico, he’s been fascinated with it, so his s/o should expect some Day of the Dead drawings on them. 

Rus (Fellswap Papyrus)- Are they sure they want him to draw on them? Like, positive? He may just doodle little hearts on flowers on their arms, but that’s about it. He’s not too confident in drawing, so don’t expect a lot from him. 

Sinister (Horrortale Sans)- He may or may not draw sugary food, because his s/o is just “too sweet”. Yeah, expect some small jokes while he draws on them, he may even draw stalagmites and bats. He kinda like the whole light and dark themes blending in, so expect a little drawing of a cave on his s/o’s stomach wile the sweet drawings are on their chest. 

Paprika (Horrortale Papyrus)- He might draw some dinosaur bones, to be honest. He’s fascinated with paleontology as well as human anatomy, so he knows a lot about dinosaurs and medical stuff. He’ll probably draw a actual dryosaurus on his s/o’s stomach, so, uh, yeah. Prepare for some dino facts, because he’ll be going on about them. 

Ink - He’d never though his s/o would ask this of him. And they’re allowing him anywhere? Well, I hope his s/o doesn’t have anywhere to be in three hours, because he’ll be drawing whatever he could think of on every part of his s/o. Expect intricat patterns, flowers, fish, colors, skeleton related stuff, and more! His s/o will be fully inked out at the end of this, but they’ll look wonderful! If his s/o ever asked him to design a tattoo for them after this experience, he may go all out yet again!

Error (Error Sans)- His s/o is asking him, of all people to draw on them? Look, he may love them, but being so close to them, he feels as if it may make them both uncomfortable at most. But after much begging from his s/o, he’ll draw maybe a puppet, as well as a few things from the only au he actually enjoys, outertale on their arms and legs. I guess he enjoyed it, but he won’t admit it! This may also be a way to help him with haphephobia. So please ask him to do this more?

Lust (Underlust Sans)- Oh god, what made his s/o think it was a good idea to ask him to draw something on them? He’ll probably draw something dirty on their thighs, that’s also funny. Like dickbutt. Yeah, you expected something even dirtier? He wouldn’t embarrass his s/o like that- no, the only way he’d embarrass/fluster his s/o is with too much PDA and flirting. Nothing more to worry about other then dirty memes. 

Romeo (Underlust Papyrus)- Oh, he’s flattered his s/o wants him to draw something on them! He’ll most likely stick to drawing flowers that have meaning behind them, drawing on their arms and chest. The flowers were surprisingly good, so if you ever want an intricate flower tattoo with meaning, ask him to design it! 

Dream (Dreamtale Sans)- Is his s/o sure they want him to draw? He may not be the best at it, and it made him a bit nervous to possibly disappoint his s/o with his drawing abilities. But he’ll draw something he feels like he’s good at drawing! He’ll draw 

Nightmare (Dreamtale Sans)- Really? He may seemed annoyed at his s/o for telling him that they could draw on them, and being insistent would cause him to give in with a frustrated sigh. Though he actually ends up enjoying drawing on his s/o, he mainly draws on their back so they can’t see what he is drawing. He mainly doodles little monsters, and maybe a few birds. Birds were pretty interesting. 

#undertale headcanons #adorable ask #sans #papyrus #underswap #us sans #us papyrus #uf sans #uf papyrus #underfell #fellswap #fs sans #fs papyrus #horrortale #ht sans #ht papyrus #error sans #underlust #ul sans #ul papyrus #ink sans #dream sans #nightmare sans

[serenlyss]

Reach

(Alternatively titled: Reach (for things you thought were gone forever))

Rating: G Pairings: ritshou, very small background terumob Summary: “Are you an angel?” Shou croaks, suddenly very sure that he must be dying, because this boy is so different from the rumors he’s heard from the people in his village that there’s no way he can be a harpy. He finds himself smiling despite the realization that his death is soon approaching, and murmurs, “You’re beautiful. If this is what dying is, I don’t think I’d mind going with you.” As it would turn out, not all fairy tales are born from imagination. Crossposted to AO3: Reach

Oh my gosh it's finally done. This AU was born from a half-baked desire to write a wings au with ritshou and I've been feverishly writing it for like 5 days now. I'm really excited to share it and super proud of how it turned out, so I hope you all enjoy it too! I had a lot of fun writing in a more poetic, descriptive style. Depending on how the inspiration hits I may write more of this au in the future as well, and make it into a little series. For now though, have this 12k+ word monstrosity.

---

Shou’s starting to regret not telling anyone where he’d planned on going.

His thoughts had started out innocently enough. The rumors of mythical creatures and terrifying monsters that lurked in the thick woods near his little village had always intrigued him, drawing his attention to the shadowy woods he’d been reminded from the time he could walk to never wander into.

Some of the stories are very obviously untrue, like the one that claims that a fearsome dragon sleeps within the shade of the forest’s tallest trees, guarding mountains of gold. They’re the kinds of fables meant to scare people from wandering off too far, but everyone is aware that dragons don’t exist. Even if they did exist, Shou doubts one would choose to live in a place as boring and uninteresting as this.

The other tales are slightly more believable to Shou. They’re stories that had probably sprung from a person’s real memories, stories spun with bravado and just a little extra embellishment each time they’d been told until they’d evolved into fairy tales in their own right. These are the ones that speak of monsters lurking beneath fishing boats, waiting to snap up any poor soul who happens to tumble from the safety of their ship, of human-faced animals that draw you in with sweet words only to lure you to your own inevitable death. Terrifying and malevolent creatures whose only interest in a person is to tear them apart.

Of all his people’s myths and fables, there’s only one that manages to pique Shou’s interest enough to draw him away from the safety of his town. These are the stories about the harpies, a horrifying combination of bird and man, a creature with the talons of an eagle and the face of a woman that could never be satisfied, always ravenous, searching endlessly for its next meal. They’re said to be terrifying, bloodthirsty, beautiful creatures, and Shou can’t help but want to meet one in person.

He knows, rationally, that he’s as good as dead if the rumors are true, but it’s not like he has anything more to go off of, or anything better to do. He’s terribly bored of his uninteresting, lonesome daily life, where the only exciting thing to come to his front door is the salesman trying ceaselessly to sell him things he doesn’t need. So, one day he packs up a bag with his sketchbook and some art supplies and a snack in case he gets hungry and sets off into the woods without a word. He knows that if he tells his neighbors where he’s going, they’ll try to stop him, and that sounds like more of a pain than Shou’s willing to put up with, so he doesn’t tell them. It’s not like he’ll be gone for long, anyway.

---

As it turns out, Shou is very, very wrong about the length of time it’ll take to reach the thicker center of the forest, and even more wrong about being confident in his ability to read his map. By the time he’s a few hours into his walk, he can’t tell what direction he’s moving in anymore, and he’s turned the map over half a dozen times trying to reorient himself. Eventually, he gives up and crumples the map into a ball, shoving it into the pocket of his backpack in frustration. Way to go, idiot, he scolds himself, shoving his hands into the pockets of his pants as he continues to trudge ever forward, you’ve screwed yourself. This stupid forest is impossible to navigate, and now you’ve gone and gotten yourself lost.

The forest is like a maze, trees so close together that it’s impossible for Shou to see more than a few hundred feet in front of him at any time. It’s huge, too; Shou swears he’s been walking in a straight line since he entered the forest hours ago, but he still hasn’t reached the other side. His feet are starting to ache from the uneven terrain beneath his shoes and his neck is slick from sweat that beads from a combination of the hot, humid weather that accompanies the transition from summer to fall and the fact that he hasn’t stopped walking since he first stepped foot in the woods. He hasn’t even brought any water with him, certain that he’d be in and out in a few hours at most.

Shou walks and walks and doesn’t let himself stop to rest, too worried that if he stops he’ll forget what direction to walk in and never find the edge of the forest. It isn’t until the sun has fallen behind the horizon and the trees in front of him are almost too deep in the shadows to make out that he finally stops to sleep, curled up in the thick grass and undergrowth with his jacket wrapped tightly around his shoulders.

After five days of waking, walking, unfolding his crumpled map and futilely attempting to find his way back to his village, the lack of food and water is really starting to get to him. He hasn’t come across anything salvageable, not even a forest stream he could drink from to stave off the dehydration that makes his limbs feel heavy and his tongue thick and dry in his mouth. His skin shimmers in an ever-present layer of sweat as the liquid slowly seeps from his pores, and he’s powerless to do anything about it. Even though the sun doesn’t touch him very often through the trees, the humidity and heat grips him strongly, their fingers digging in and wringing every last drop of water from his body until he starts to feel the telltale dizziness and nausea shutting him down from the inside out. His brain turns to fog and his legs to jelly, but still he walks, knowing that the moment he stops is the moment he gives up on living.

In the end, it’s a gangly tree root that does him in. It catches him around his toes and makes him lose his footing, and he lets out a hoarse yelp as he’s thrown swiftly and certainly to the ground. He hits it shoulder first, arms not quick enough to catch him on his hands, and the shock of it sends cramps up his arm and down his back. He winces, sure that it’ll leave a terrible bruise.

He attempts to push himself to his feet, to continue his endless walking, but his legs won’t listen to him anymore. His arms can hardly support the weight of his torso, and after a few fruitless seconds he lets himself flop uselessly onto his back. The sun is setting, spots of white appearing against dark blue as the last rays of daylight throw long shadows across the forest floor and plunge his surroundings into a thick and unyielding darkness.

He blinks slowly, eyes falling shut for a few seconds before he forces them open again. His limbs are heavy, not an ounce of energy left over to lift them with, and as he stares up at the open sky above him he finds himself unable to make out the stars anymore, vision too fuzzy to separate the white from black. He lets out a shaky breath, feeling the weak breeze stir the hair that arches away from his face. Why did I come here? he wonders to himself, regret creeping under his skin and settling there. This was so stupid… He feels a tears leak out of the corner of his eye, streaking down his face and disappearing into the creases of his ear. He hadn’t thought he’d have any water left in his body to cry with, and yet here he is. He can’t even reach up to wipe the trail of wetness away.

Behind his head, he hears the sound of tall grass rustling under soft, light footfalls. He doesn’t even try to turn to see what animal has stumbled upon him, eyes half-lidded. He knows he’s as good as dead, and whatever scavenger has happened upon him must know it, too. By morning, he'll be long gone, and the animals will pick him to pieces until there are only bones remaining. Maybe one day, he muses to himself in a delirious haze, some scientist will finally make it out here and find my skeleton. They’ll say I was killed by the harpies, and make up stories about a fantastic battle I must have been in… I’ll become the story they tell their kids to scare them away from the forest. The thought brings a bittersweet smile to his face, a brief flash of humor that quickly dies as the feather-light footsteps draw closer.

He listens as the creature approaches him, crushing grass and dry leaves underfoot, until it pauses right behind his head. Its form casts a shadow over him, and through his hazy vision he sees it bend down to look at him. He furrows his brow, fighting to focus his blurry eyes enough to make out the thing that most certainly will be eating him once he finally kicks the bucket, and finds that it’s not an animal at all.

The creature lowers itself to its knees, half-crouched over Shou’s head. Two hands reach out and brush against his cheeks, soft and incredibly careful, but the touch is not quite human. Through his eyelashes, Shou can make out slim shoulders and a slender neck that leads to a head that is distinctly human-shaped, and he can see the shock of black hair that falls into the creature’s face and frames shining eyes with its long strands. Shou’s eyes open wider, a gasp of awe caught in his throat. Two sprawling, shimmering wings curl around the creature and shield Shou’s upper body from the outside, falling over him like a dome and blocking out what little light the half-set sun provides. Hundreds of pitch-black feathers hover over him now, like the ones from the crows he sees outside his modest house, picking at the neighbor’s garden. Something about this creature’s wings is ethereal, however, the kind of vision that can only be conceived in lucid dreams and supernatural visions. His expression swims into focus gradually, revealing an impassive, boyish face framed with those same dark feathers. There’s something melancholic about his expression, a wistful, empathetic look in his eye that makes Shou’s failing heart skip a beat in his chest.

“Are you an angel?” he croaks, suddenly very sure that he must be dying, because this boy is so different from the rumors he’s heard from the people in his village that there’s no way he can be a harpy. He finds himself smiling despite the realization that his death is soon approaching, and murmurs, “You’re beautiful. If this is what dying is, I don’t think I’d mind going with you.”

The boy doesn’t react to Shou’s words. He doesn’t even know if this mystical, ominous, alluring creature can understand his language, though he likes to believe the near-imperceptible lift of his eyebrows is an indication that maybe he can after all. If he does, he makes no effort to respond, simply slides his hands along Shou’s cheeks to gently cup his face between them. He leans over Shou’s unmoving form until his face is mere inches away, his warm breath ghosting over Shou’s skin. Shou wrinkles his nose instinctively against it, feels feathers tickling the bare skin of his arms, and then the boy closes the gap between them.

Shou feels lips press against his, warm and soft, and he draws in a shocked breath through the corners of his mouth. The kiss is careful and awkwardly angled, Shou’s head turned in the wrong direction for it to feel natural, but there’s no discomfort behind it. The dark-haired boy lets out a long sigh against his lips that fills his lungs with fuzz and butterflies, the sensation sending tremors down his spine and raising goose bumps along his arms. A numbness starts in the pit of his stomach and spreads outward, a comfortable heaviness weighing down his limbs and making his eyelids droop as though he’s about to fall asleep. So this is what dying feels like, he thinks, the last thought his brain can manage before his eyes fall closed and he succumbs to the darkness pulling at his mind for good.

---

Shou regains consciousness in phases. The first thing to return to him is his sense of touch, poking at the edges of his foggy mind in the form of a weight that pushes him down into something soft. He feels pleasantly warm and cozy, his head cushioned by a material that reminds him of the soft wool he sheers off of the sheep in his village every summer. His fingers twitch when he realizes he can feel them again, but he doesn’t dare move lest he ruin the comfort of the moment too quickly.

The next thing to return to him is his hearing. He registers, faintly, the sound of movement not far from where he’s laying, the clang of metal on metal or the shifting of fabric nearby. At one point he hears the sound of someone humming in a voice he doesn’t recognize, a melody that comes across only slightly out of tune. The humming is incredibly alluring, and the more he listens, the more he’s desperate to find the source of the voice so he can tell them how mundanely beautiful it is.

It’s this desire that prompts Shou to open his eyes at last. He blinks a few times, letting his eyes adjust to the light that filters into the room from the skylight overhead. He wiggles his feet experimentally, legs shifting beneath a thin blanket that’s been tucked around him securely. He takes a deep breath, then rolls onto his side with little difficulty, propping himself up on one elbow so he can orient himself in his new surroundings.

It doesn’t take him long to realize that he’s not dead after all, the pains in his head and soreness in his shoulder from when he’d fallen an indicator that this isn’t the afterlife. He lifts one hand sluggishly to rub his eyes before glancing around, taking in the humble room he’s found himself in.

He’s laying on a bed atop a mattress stuffed with sheep’s wool and feathers, it’s edges carefully shaped to allow for a flat, comfortable surface to rest on. The afghan now bunched around his waist is also made of wool, dyed and knit by hand from the looks of it, and Shou takes a moment to run his fingers over the surface of it admiringly before he slides his sluggish legs out from under it. If it isn’t for the ache in his head and shoulder he might think he’s dreaming, with the way his fuzzy mind doesn’t quite grasp reality and the soft but constant hummed tune tries to lull him back to bed. He feels like he’s crossed over into another world, bare feet sinking into the coarse fur of the elk pelt that covers a portion of the house’s wooden floor.

The whole house appears to be one single room. The bed Shou is sitting on is set up against the wall furthest from the front door, nestled comfortably in the corner under a window. A shelf housing rows of neatly-folded clothes sits beside an identical empty one, and on the other side of that he can see a second bed, a matching knit afghan neatly tucked around it. It looks like it’s been tucked in very carefully and deliberately.

Gripping the shelf at his side, Shou hauls himself uncertainly to his feet. He sways slightly, reaching his other hand up to his face for a moment as a wave of dizziness washes over him. It passes, though, the dark spots clearing after a few seconds. He releases his hold on the shelf, taking a shaky breath to steady himself before he continues to explore the little cottage.

A neat kitchenette is set up against one wall, a large wood stove and oven taking up most of the space. A stone chimney rises from it to vent the smoke, disappearing through the sturdy roof of the house. Wooden countertops line the rest of the wall, held up by thin, hand-carved beams slotted into holes in the floor, and on top of them lay bowls of fruit and jars of various spices, filling the house with a mixture of aromas that make Shou’s nose tingle. Above the countertops, rows of shelves hold bowls, pans, pots, plates, and even some utensils. Large spoons and spatulas hang in rows from hooks underneath them, each one just a little different from the others.

In the center of the room is a modest kitchen table, made from smooth wood and accompanied by four matching chairs. In the center of it, a woven doily cushions a tall, thin glass vase, inside of which are resting a handful of sunflowers. A few brown, dry petals have fallen from them, but they look otherwise healthy and alive, their clipped ends half-submerged in clear water. Shou smooths his hand over the natural wood, feeling the veins and notches beneath his fingertips. The table is finished with a lacquer that gives off a pleasant floral scent, like lavender. Shou’s never seen a table this nice before, not even in the huge houses of the richest people in his town. He can’t help but marvel at all the personal touches he sees all over the place, each and every item in the house handmade with a skill and precision that he’s only seen from the master carpenters that come to sell their wares in his tiny village.

The house’s third wall is lined from floor to ceiling with shelves. Some of them contain little trinkets - shiny rocks, wooden carvings, stuffed dolls with embroidered eyes and patchwork limbs, beaded necklaces and polished rings - while others are filled entirely with books. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, brightly colored spines propped up next to black ones. Some of them look like they’ve been bound in a factory, their pages perfectly even and titles printed on, while others are bound with string and leather and are labeled by hand with dark ink. Shou can tell their owner has organized them very intentionally, but he can’t quite figure out how. Fiction novels sit beside textbooks on physics and mathematics, historical journals lay propped between children’s picture books, and in one corner he even manages to find a few books in a different language, all of them written by hand.

He pulls one out and thumbs through it briefly, and finds it filled with still-life drawings between lines of text he can’t read. There are illustrations of mountain scenery, of lakeshores sprouting cattail reeds and waterfalls careening over jagged cliffs. There are sketches of fruits and flowers, animals and cloudy skies, each of them incredibly detailed and true to life. He has to resist the urge to touch them, a habit he might indulge with the paintings and photographs in his home, but he really doesn’t want to smudge art like this.

He turns the page once more and finds himself in awe all over again. Staring back at him is a beautiful sketch of a boy, sitting in a grassy field with his legs drawn up to his chest. His back is facing Shou, his head tilted up to stare at the sky above, and stretched out from his back are two massive, gorgeous wings. They dwarf the boy with their sheer size, and yet they seem to fit him perfectly, arching up over his head and sloping back down until the ends of them just barely brush the grass behind him. On the boy’s face is a serene smile, eyes soft with fondness and bright with innocent admiration. His hair is carefully shaped, blunt bangs brushing his ears and forming a ring around his head, and Shou has the fleeting thought that his haircut would look incredibly stupid on anyone else but him. Instead, the subject of the drawing manages to make it look charming, in a plain sort of way, and Shou can’t help but wonder how accurate the drawing is to how this person must really look, if he exists at all.

Shou closes the book and replaces it as though he’d never touched it at all, and finally wanders toward the open front door of the house. The closer he gets to it, the louder and more clear the humming becomes, the soft sound quickly swallowed by the noise of the empty fields around them. Shou leans against the door frame and peeks around the corner, breathing stalling when he lays eyes on the source of the noise. He recognizes him instantly.

The boy is young, that much is clear to see. In fact, he looked to be around Shou’s age, or maybe a little older. He’s taller than Shou is, though not by much, but his build is much slimmer, a lightness to his stature that Shou doubts he can replicate. Everything about him is long, from his legs to his arms to the fingers loosely holding the handle of the broom that he sweeps in gentle arcs, chasing fallen leaves from the porch’s wooden floor. His skin is sun-dark, turned a muted copper as a result of long hours outdoors, and his back and shoulders are nearly entirely bared by the backless halterneck top he wears. Shou finds his eyes drawn immediately to the soft edges of his shoulders and the gentle curves of his arms, slim but toned, like a runner’s, and to the divot in the small of his back where his spine curves and disappears into the waistband of his pants. His thin feet are protected by a pair of sturdy-looking leather sandals, held unmoving by the fitted leather straps that secure them.

The most amazing part about him, however, is the pair of pitch-black wings that sprout from his shoulder blades, framed by the seams of his backless shirt. Their feathers shimmer in iridescent hues, sometimes appearing more blue or purple or red depending on what angle the light hits them from. Even half-folded, they take up a great deal of space, even more so than the boy himself does: they’re easily almost as tall as he is, the tops of them level with his head and the ends of his flight feathers hovering at the curve of his calves. They’re beautiful, like something from a fairy tale or a fable, and Shou has to stop himself from rushing over and impulsively threading his fingers into the downy feathers that poke out from between the boy’s shoulders just to see if they’re as soft as they look.

Shou isn’t sure how many seconds he stares before the boy notices his presence, instinctively turning his head to look at him with eyes that are wide with surprise. His humming stops abruptly, as does his sweeping, and he stumbles over his own movements just a bit as he straightens himself up and holds the broomstick to his chest in a distinctly protective manner. “You’re awake,” he says, then winces at his own obvious observation.

Shou can’t help the grin that comes to his face. “Nah, I’m just sleepwalking,” he replies teasingly, shifting his weight off the doorframe to just stand on the threshold of the house. Now that he’s not staring at the floor, Shou can get a good luck at the boy’s face, and he takes advantage of it to give him another once-over. His tan face is all soft curves, and his cheeks still hold just a hint of leftover fat from his childhood years, giving it a rounded look. His hair is short on the sides and longer on top, and it spikes out wildly in every direction. Shou can’t tell if it’s intentional or not, but he can’t help but find it charming anyway. Some of the untamed hair falls into his forehead, framing eyes that aren’t quite humanesque. It takes him a few seconds to realize that the boy’s eyes are pale yellow where a normal man’s would be white, and his irises are all black, not a sliver of color coming to them. They flit over him restlessly, taking in his appearance the same way Shou is taking in his. Now that he’s getting a closer look, he can see the small, dark feathers that sprout in odd places, like the strips of skin between the corners of his eyes and his ears, or along the curve of his shoulders. It’s simultaneously fascinating and just a little bit unnerving, seeing someone who looks so much like him but still so different.

The boy’s brow furrows at Shou’s unwithheld snark, lips pursing in a minute frown that Shou finds surprisingly endearing. “Right…” he murmurs uncertainly, moving to balance his broom against the rail that surrounds the porch. He clears his throat into his closed hand, clearly uncomfortable, then adds, “How do you feel?”

Shou hums, grin softening into something a little more genuine in response to the boy’s concern. “Well, I’m not dead, so that’s good,” he answers. “Thanks for taking care of me, by the way. I was, uh, pretty sure I was gonna die back there, before you showed up out of nowhere.”

The boy nods. “Yes, you mistook me for some sort of angel,” he confirms. Shou sees the corner of his mouth twitch, like he wants to smile but has stopped himself before he can. “There’s no need to mention it. You’re lucky it was me, though, and not another human, otherwise there would have been nothing they could have done.”

Well, if that isn’t ominous, Shou doesn’t know the meaning of the word. “I was that far gone, huh?” he sighs, raising a hand to push a few loose strands of hair back into place, slicked away from his forehead. “How did you manage to bring me back from the brink, anyway? I remember that you kissed me, which was… well, it was weird, I guess, and then I totally passed out.” From the time he’d lost consciousness on the forest floor until now he has no memories, no way to know how much time has passed since then.

“Kissed you?” the boy echoes, looking confused for a moment before he seems to realize what Ritsu’s talking about. “Oh, you mean when I lent you my breath? That was just a spell. I put you into a coma, essentially, to conserve your energy output before you starved to death.”

“You can do magic?” Shou breathes, eyes wide with awe. “That’s amazing! No one in my village can do magic, they don’t have the genes for it. Human characteristic, apparently, but I’ve always thought it would be cool to learn. What other kinds of magic can you do?” The words tumble from his lips without much forethought, even as the boy shifts uncomfortably on his feet in front of him.

The boy lifts a hand to absentmindedly rub at his opposite arm, glancing away. “Why don’t we sit down?” he suggests after a moment of silence, gesturing toward the table sitting, lonesome, in the middle of the one-room house. “I think there’s probably some stuff we should talk about, and you should really get something to eat if you want to get your strength back.” That said, he moves into the open front door, not bothering to wait and see if Shou’s following. The wings on his back rustle quietly as he walks, and Shou has to keep himself from falling into another speechless stupor as he watches the way the light touches them.

The growl of his stomach is what saves him this time, and he stifles a laugh at its fantastic comedic timing. “Yeah, food sounds pretty sweet right now,” he agrees. Before he goes inside, though, he drifts over to the rail and peeks out at the scenery that surrounds them. The house is set up on the bank of a river that rushes down from a tall mountain behind them and disappears into the thick forest on the house’s other side. Shou doesn’t recognize the scenery at all, but he can’t bring himself to worry too much when this new change of location is so pretty.

After a few seconds he moves back into the house, spotting the black-winged boy sorting through the bowl of fruit on his countertop. He pulls a few pieces out and moves them into another, smaller bowl, alongside a small loaf of sweet-smelling bread. He looks nervous, Shou notes, and when the boy glances sideways to meet his eyes he’s quick to avert his gaze again. Shou wonders if he looks as strange to the boy as the boy does to him, if they’re both anomalies of their separate civilizations. Judging by the empty scenery all around the little cottage, though, the boy doesn’t have much of a civilization to fall back on, so maybe he’s just nervous to meet another person at all.

“What’s your name?” Shou asks, sliding into one of the four sturdy chairs. It doesn’t even rock under his weight, each of its four legs the perfect length to sit level on the floor. He can’t help but feel another surge of amazement that nearly everything in this house has been crafted by hand.

The boy turns and slides the fruit and bread onto the table between them, hesitating for just a second before taking a seat across the table from Shou. “It’s Ritsu,” he replies, tone soft and uncertain. “What’s yours?”

Ritsu. The name is surprisingly mundane, the kind of name that, if Shou heard it called in his own village on any given day, would blend right in with the rest of the locals. “Call me Shou,” he says, leaning one elbow on the table in front of him and propping his chin up in his hand. “Where is this place? I’ve never been to this side of the forest before. Seems peaceful,” he continues, conjuring up a map of the area surrounding his village in his head. He wonders how far he’d managed to walk before passing out, and his much farther Ritsu had carried him in order to end up here.

Ritsu nods his head, letting one hand rest on top of the natural wood table while the other reaches for a slice of the bread between them. He tears a piece off of it to eat, and it’s then that Ritsu notices his hands. They’re flecked with tiny feathers that sprout from his wrists and shift when he moves, and they’re tipped with talons that look much sharper than Shou’s blunted nails. They remind him a bit of the unnecessarily long nails that the rich women in his town wear, painted in gaudy colors and long enough that it makes it difficult for them to do something as simple as holding a pencil properly. Ritsu seems undeterred by them, however, pulling apart the bread with coordinated hands that are simultaneously gentle and precise. “Not too far from where I found you. I would tell you what I call it, but it won’t mean anything to anyone other than me,” he replies in a very unhelpful way. After a moment, he reaches out and picks up a second slice of bread, holding it out to Shou.

Shou blinks, meeting Ritsu’s expectant gaze across the table, and accepts the bread from his outstretched hand. He tries to ignore the way their fingers brush against each other as he does, tries not to shiver when he feels the little feathers at his wrist tickle his fingertips. “Thanks,” he sighs, bringing it to his mouth and taking a bite of it without bothering to pick it to pieces like Ritsu is.

“So… what’s it like being a harpy?” Shou asks after another moment of tense silence. “You’re so mysterious out here, living by yourself. The stories say harpies thirst for their next kill and are never satisfied, but you don’t seem so bloodthirsty to me.”

Ritsu looks up at him with an expression that Shou can only place as offended, eyes narrowed and brows knit together. Then he scoffs, face screwing up in unhidden condemnation. “Humans will come up with any excuse to rile each other up, won’t they?” he replies contemptuously. “And I’m not a harpy, don’t compare me to those folk tales. Harpies don’t exist, that’s just the name the humans gave to my people after finding traces of us. We’ve never hunted humans.”

Shou tilts his head, leaning a little further forward in his seat. “Then what should I call you?” he asks.

Ritsu huffs out a breath, tearing another piece of bread from his slice. “You can call me by my name. It’s not like you’ll ever meet another one of me again,” he answers quietly, and the bitterness in his words is palpable.

Shou purses his lips, a bit unnerved at the sudden tenseness in the air, and casts a glance at the untouched bed, nestled in the corner beside the empty shelf. “What about the extra bed? It belongs to someone, doesn’t it?” he asks, watching Ritsu’s face carefully to gauge his response.

Ritsu stands up and turns his back to Shou, moving over to the counter and filling two glasses with water from a pitcher. “It used to be my brother’s,” he answers after a quiet moment, “but he’s not around to use it anymore.”

Curious as he is, Shou’s not so confident he should parse this particular subject. He can practically see the muscles in Ritsu’s back tense up as he speaks, his shoulders hunching up a little closer to his ears and his head purposefully turned away. “I see,” he just says instead. By now, his bread is long gone.

Ritsu returns to the table after another minute or so, sliding a glass of water in his direction. “You need to drink lots of fluids to replenish the ones you lost,” he instructs. “It was the dehydration that got to you first. How long were you in the woods for, anyway?”

Shou cups his hands around the glass and sighs. “Five days. It was stupid of me to think I could make it through the forest,” he grumbles, feeling his regrets from his days of walking catching up to him now.

Ritsu just nods, face carefully impassive. “In the late summer heat, it’s no wonder you got so weak so fast. You probably sweated out most of your body fluids in the first couple of days,” he explains. “Speaking of which, you should really change out of those sweaty clothes, they reek.”

Shou jumps, feeling a rush of mortification as he looks down at his bedraggled appearance. Now that Ritsu brings it up, he can definitely smell his own body odor clinging to his shirt, and he’s certain he must be covered in dirt and grass stains. He screws up his face in disgust, nodding his agreement. “Ugh, you’re right, how did I not notice before?” he sighs. He downs the rest of the glass of water as Ritsu moves over to the shelf where all his clothes are carefully arranged, then stands up to follow him, hovering a foot or so away as Ritsu peruses his wardrobe.

Ritsu turns to face Shou for a moment, looking him up and down, and Shou does his best not to squirm under his sharp, meticulous gaze until the winged boy turns away again and begins thumbing through a pile of shirts on one of the middle shelves. At least, Shou assumes they’re shirts, but they look nothing like the tee-shirts and button-ups Shou usually wears. When Ritsu pulls one out of the pile and holds it in front of him, his suspicions are confirmed.

“Wear these,” Ritsu instructs, pushing the top into his hands alongside a pair of loose-fitting cloth pants. “They’re thin and have good ventilation, so you won’t overheat as easily.”

“Uh, thanks,” Shou responds awkwardly, laying the fresh clothes on the bed. He changes his pants first, which is easy enough, then reaches over his head and grabs his shirt by the collar, pulling it up and over his head in a smooth, well-practiced motion. Then he reaches for Ritsu’s lent top, and pauses when he sees that it’s less of a shirt and more of a flat piece of fabric. Backless, like Ritsu’s current top is. “Um, not to sound ungrateful, but how the hell am I supposed to wear this?” he asks, incredulous. “It’s got no back on it!”

Ritsu casts him a confused glance, tilting his head. “Of course not, it’s kind of hard to wear a shirt with a back on it when you have these,” he points out, gesturing to the sprawling wings that sprout from his shoulders. “It’s not totally backless, anyway, it has hooks at the bottom that clasps in the back.”

“This is super weird,” Shou mumbles, mostly to himself, but Ritsu’s indignant snort says that he’s heard as well. Still, it’s better than nothing, so he slips the halter neck of the shirt over his head and fiddles with it until it lays somewhat comfortably against the back of his neck. It rides high in the front, brushing the bottom of his throat, then swoops down below his arms to hug him around his waist. He moves his hands to clasp the back of it like Ritsu had described, his fingers finding the little copper hooks, but as much as he tries, he can’t get the pieces to fit together. “This thing is so complicated,” he curses.

Ritsu lets out a sigh that’s probably meant to be annoyed, and he takes the hooks from Shou’s fingers. “Let me,” he says, more of a demand than an offer to help, and deftly fits the little metal hooks together so the shirt is snug around his waist. The pants are high-waisted, riding up past his belly button, but even with the extra fabric in place the shirt still leaves slivers of his stomach exposed.

“You really wear this stuff everyday?” Shou asks, tugging at the edge of the top and attempting to stare at his own back to confirm that it really is as bare as Ritsu’s is.

“Only in the summer,” Ritsu replies. “Summer clothes are easy, since I don’t have to worry about covering the skin around my wings. My winter clothes are a bit more complicated.” He gestures to his bottom shelf, but without picking up one of the aforementioned winter shirts and looking at it himself, Shou has no way to gauge what ‘complicated’ could possibly mean. “In the summer it’s easiest to wear these kinds of tops, or just not wear a shirt at all.”

Shou nods, figuring it makes about as much sense as it possibly can considering he’s currently standing in front of an honest-to-god winged person.

Ritsu takes a step back and admires his handiwork now that the outfit is properly in place. “You look much better now,” he comments. “Your dull clothes are ridiculously boring, you know. You’d think humans would have some sense of color.”

“We do, that’s just what I usually wear when I go hiking,” Shou replies, scooping up his faded brow tee-shirt and laying it out carefully. “And if you ask me, it’s you who looks more ridiculous!”

Ritsu makes a sound half between a sniff of disdain and a laugh, and when Shou glances over he sees the dark-haired boy fighting another smile. It makes Shou wonder why he feels the need to keep his reactions to himself, what kinds of reservations he has about Shou that keep him from letting loose and expressing himself. “Say, Ritsu,” he starts, moving to fold up his tee-shirt and pants until he figures out what to do with them later, “why’d you save me, anyway?”

The question makes Ritsu stop in his tracks, halfway to the table to gather and replace the bowls and glasses he’d used for breakfast. “Why do you ask?” he retorts, answering Shou’s question with one of his own, and it comes across defensive.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t seem terribly fond of humans,” Shou says, sitting down on the edge of the bed he’d woken up in. He shifts uncomfortably in his borrowed clothes, trying to ignore the way he can feel the drafts on his back now. “I mean, I can see why, humans do some pretty shitty stuff all the time, so what made you want to stop and rescue someone like me?”

Ritsu swallows, picking up the glasses and bowls and dropping them in the sink to be washed later. He lets his hands fall against the rim of the sink, bracing against the surface of it, and is quiet for a few long moments, brows knitted together so tightly that lines form between them. A deep frown tugs at his lips, lips that Shou knows to be soft and warm. “I don’t know,” he says after a moment, quiet and contemplative and maybe just a little lost.

There’s really nothing Shou can say to that, so he doesn’t say anything.

---

Shou finds himself in very little rush to get home, and to his surprise, Ritsu doesn’t rush him to leave. When Shou asks, he brushes it off with empty words, telling him he isn’t back to full strength yet and that he should wait another night, but three days later, when Shou is back to feeling well again, he still hesitates to leave.

He’s not quite sure what keeps him rooted to this barren, empty space. Ritsu is the only humanoid creature for miles, which would normally make Shou ache for the bustle of the marketplace or the empty chatter of the village women gossiping by the church, but instead he finds himself soothed by the noise of the wind in the trees nearby and the lull of Ritsu’s soft humming in the early mornings when he doesn’t realize Shou can hear him.

“Aren’t you weirded out?” Ritsu asks him once, when they’re sitting in the twin porch chairs underneath the hand-thatched awning overhead. The woven straw back of it itches against Shou’s exposed shoulders, but he’s growing more used to it every day. Ritsu continues, “A person with wings like a bird’s, clawed fingers and a feathered face. Doesn’t it make you even a little afraid?”

Shou laughs, loud and unwithheld. “Of course I’m weirded out, you’re like something out of a fairy tale. Afraid, though? You haven’t done anything to make me afraid of you,” he replies, flashing Ritsu a bright grin in return. “You saved my life, after all, it would be kinda rude if I was scared of you after all that.”

Ritsu hums, soft and thoughtful, and runs his fingers absentmindedly through the feathers of one wing. Shou’s caught him doing so a few times now, has watched the way he straightens the crooked feathers and lets the loose ones fall to the ground to be swept up later. He’s preening, Shou realizes, and the thought causes a smile to tug at the corners of his mouth. The little quirks he manages to catch Ritsu indulging in only endear him more to his new friend, if he can consider this friendship, and he finds himself feeling just a bit more fond of Ritsu with each day that passes. “I suppose it’s a good thing, that you’re not afraid,” Ritsu says after a long pause, his black-eyed gaze fixed in a point in the distance that Shou can’t follow.

Shou simply shrugs in reply. “I think it is,” he offers, and sees the way Ritsu softens to it, ever-so-slightly.

There’s a stretch of silence between them, comfortable and calm, and then Ritsu blurts, “Let’s go somewhere.”

“Okay,” Shou agrees immediately, sitting up in his seat, and he tries his best not so show how elated he is at Ritsu’s sudden, impulsive request. In the few days they’ve been together Ritsu has already proven himself to be thoughtful to a fault; he refuses to make even small decisions without thoroughly considering all of his options, so that fact that Ritsu has decided to do something without noticeable forethought sends a thrill of excitement through Shou. “Where should we go?” he asks, curious about what destination Ritsu has in mind.

Ritsu pushes himself to his sandal-clad feet, shaking his wings out and scattering a few dark feathers on the porch. “Someplace I used to go a lot. Get what you need, and we can go now.”

Shou doesn’t wait to be asked twice. He ducks into the house and grabs his tennis shoes, the ones in which he’d walked miles to get here, and slips them on over his sockless feet. Then, as somewhat of an afterthought, he snatches up his backpack from where he’d propped it up against the mostly-empty shelf by the bed he’d claimed and hefts it over one shoulder.

When he turns to head back out the front door, he spots Ritsu standing in front of one of his many bookshelves, holding a hand-bound book in his clawed hands. He runs the fingers of one hand over the cover of it, eyes downcast, and Shou is struck by the wistful, melancholic expression that crosses his face for just a moment before he slides the book into his own bag and settles the strap of it over his shoulder. A question perches on the tip of Shou’s tongue, a quiet curiosity that he has to hold himself back from voicing. There are plenty of things about himself that Ritsu’s hasn’t told him, and that’s okay with him. After all, Shou has plenty of things about himself that he hasn’t told Ritsu, either. It doesn’t keep his mind from wandering, though, wondering what those things could be.

They walk, because even though Ritsu says flying would be faster, he’s adamant that walking will be easier. Shou’s not sure whether or not Ritsu can support his weight and fly at the same time, anyway, and he doesn’t mind walking. The hardest part is scaling the hill behind the house, which is steep and a little slippery from the morning dew that still clings to it, and by the time they reach the crest of it both of them are just a little out of breath.

Shou’s breathlessness is partially due to something else, though, as Ritsu gestures with one feathered hand to the little valley nestled in the hills and Shou’s eyes land on what is quite possibly the most beautiful sight he’s seen since leaving his village all those days ago.

At the bottom of the hill is what appears to be a field of wildflowers, though most of them have wilted under the late summer sun’s glaring rays already. The few that are still standing are bright against the green of the rest of the valley, poking out of the tall grass so that their bright petals can be seen by all who pass by. Most notably, clumps of little sunflowers like the ones in Ritsu’s vase at his house can be seen cropping up all over the field, the bright sunlight only serving to make them look even more vibrant than before.

“Woah, this place is awesome!” Shou exclaims, face blooming into a broad grin. He finds himself reaching for Ritsu’s hand on instinct, fingers curling around his palm and pulling him down the hillside. The surprised yelp he lets out only serves to make Shou’s grin widen, but he’s conscious of the way Ritsu squeezes his hand back so he doesn’t lose his grip.

Shou doesn’t let go until the ground beneath their feet evens out again and he finds himself in one of the little sunflower patches. He drops Ritsu’s hand and flops unceremoniously down into the grass with a laugh, kicking his feet into the air in a burst of energy. The grass and dirt is rough against the exposed skin of his back, but he can’t bring himself to mind as he stares up at the great blue sky and the fluffy white clouds that occasionally cross it. The sun is warm, but not unbearably so, and its rays make everything around him look and feel so much brighter than he’s used to. He takes a deep breath of the sweet-smelling air, limbs flopping out all around him starfish-style, and lets himself be blessedly still for a few minutes.

Ritsu continues past him, black wings folded comfortably against his back as he drifts deeper into the field. Shou cranes his neck back and manages to catch glimpses of him through the tall grass as he walks, stopping periodically to bend over and touch the flowers that poke up through the grass. He looks peaceful, Shou notes, expression holding the closest thing to a smile Shou’s ever seen from him, but there’s a hint of bitterness behind it, too, that makes Shou’s own high spirits dip just a bit. He sits up, turning to give Ritsu a proper look, and watches as he sits down cross-legged in the grass not too far away and plucks a small but bright purple flower from the ground. He twists its stem between his fingers, quietly observing it, and Shou is suddenly and surprisingly reminded of the pencil sketch he’s stumbled upon during his first morning at Ritsu’s house.

Hit with a sudden urge, Shou quickly snatches up his backpack from where he’d discarded it at his side and opens it up, removing his sketchbook and a tin of pencils he’d brought with him from his home in his village. He shifts himself to sit cross-legged on the grass, flipping the book open to the nearest empty page.

He’s not sure if he can consider himself an artist, at least not by trade, but the scratch of his sketching pencil on paper is a familiar and comforting noise. Sketching has become somewhat of a hobby over the last few years, a way of relieving boredom or filling time when he has it. Sometimes he sketches memories, or tries to copy down the faces of people passing outside his window. This time, he finds his eyes drawn to Ritsu: to the not-quite-bittersweet expression on his face, to the little purple flower he twirls between clawed fingers, to the long grass that half-hides his legs and sways gently in the warm summer breeze. It’s like a painting, the kind of image that’s surreal enough that it shouldn’t be able to exist in the real world, and yet Shou sits, and stares at it, and has the undeniable urge to cement this moment for posterity in graphite.

His sketches are fast and rough at first as he focuses on copying down the base image and plotting out his canvas with light lines and geometric shapes. He roughs in the shape of Ritsu’s form sitting in the grass, cross-legged, one hand propping himself up in the grass while the other lightly grips the little bloom he’d claimed for himself. He sketches the curve of his shoulder and the arches of his wings, stretched out to accommodate their length while sitting, and attempts to capture the effortless messiness of his wild, untamed black hair. With softer, more deliberate strokes, he brings to life the line of Ritsu’s jaw and the slope of his nose, all soft edges and muted curves. There isn’t a sharp angle on him, and when he moves he does so with effortless grace and purpose that just serves to add to his ethereal beauty.

Shou would be hard-pressed to deny at this point that he does find Ritsu beautiful, and not just for his shimmering feathers or the way he seems to glow in a way only mythical creatures can. There are little things that bring this thought to mind, like his slender, careful fingers, or the annoyed little frown he gets whenever Shou tries to tease him. He’s never seen Ritsu really smile, but he imagines his smile must be beautiful, too. There’s no way it can’t be, coming from him.

He moves his pencil to capture the set of Ritsu’s mouth, but when he looks up to get another look, he finds that his companion has moved. He blinks, momentarily confused, until a distinct shadow falls over his sketchbook.

“What’re you doing over here? You look really intense,” Ritsu comments, leaning over Shou’s shoulder to get a look at what he’s working on. His expression quickly changes from confused to surprised when he recognizes the rough sketch, though. “Is that me?” he asks.

“You moved! Now it’s ruined,” Shou groans melodramatically. There’s no real anger or annoyance behind his words, though, and his sketch is mostly finished, anyway. “Don’t you know that the first rule of modeling is that you have to stay still? Otherwise the artist has to start over.” He tips his head back and offers Ritsu a smile, if only to reassure him that he’s really only joking.

Ritsu raises a brow at him, unimpressed, and turns his attention back to the rough sketch in Shou’s hands. “I didn’t know you were an artist,” he says, rather than trying to pick apart Shou’s attempted joke. “Why me, though?”

Shou shrugs, setting down his pencil for now and craning his neck back to look at Ritsu upside-down. “I just thought it would make for a good drawing,” he replies honestly. “I can leave it unfinished if you’re uncomfortable.”

Ritsu moves to sit at Shou’s side rather than leaning over him, shaking his head. “No, it’s fine, you can finish it,” he replies, and one of his hands drifts to the bag draped over one arm. He hesitates for just a moment before reaching inside and pulling out the hand-bound book Shou had seen him stow away earlier. He turns it over in his hands once, twice, then holds it out to Shou. “I guess you could say I’m a bit of an artist myself. I sketch in my journal sometimes, when I see something nice that I want to remember. You can look, if you want.”

“You’d let me read your journal? Hope you don’t have any deep, dark secrets in here you don’t want me to know about,” Shou quips, cracking open the book’s leather cover.

Ritsu snorts out what might be considered a laugh, tapping the first page with one long nail. “I wrote it in my mother’s language, you won’t be able to read it anyway,” he points out, quirking a brow in an amused manner. He drags a finger to the top of the page. “This is my handwriting, and this,” he adds, running his finger down the page to where the shape of the unfamiliar words changes just a bit, “is my brother’s handwriting. We used to take turns writing little passages in these books.”

The implied “before he left” hangs in the air between them, unspoken but felt and understood all the same. Shou nods, noting the way Ritsu’s neat, even script contrasts with his brother’s more messy, sloped style. He flips through a few pages of indecipherable writing before he reaches the first aforementioned drawing, a sketch of a new garden filled with tiny green sprouts. Each row of plants is meticulously labeled with a little sign written in that same language, unreadable to Shou, but it’s an impressive sketch all the same.

Most of the sketches in the book of are a similar calibre, still life drawings or landscape sketches of places Shou has yet to see. “You’re really talented,” he tells Ritsu after flipping through a few of them. In between the sketches, Ritsu and his brother’s alternating handwriting take up most of the extra space.

“I’ve been drawing since I was a kid,” Ritsu replies, reaching over Shou’s arm to flip the pages of the journal of his own accord until he reaches one in particular. His hand lingers on the page before he sits back and lets Shou look at it himself, pale yellow eyes trained on his expression from beside him.

Shou blinks in recognition when he lays eyes on the sketch Ritsu’s chosen to share with him. It’s different from the rest, far more detailed, and it takes up an entire page of the little journal. The only writing on it is a few letters written in the corner with Ritsu’s neat handwriting: some sort of caption, Shou guesses. A name, or maybe a date.

The sketch is of another boy, one that Shou recognizes, because he has the same face as the boy from the sketch he’d seen in Ritsu’s other book just a few days ago. He looks like he can’t be more than a few years older than Ritsu is, his face carrying the same soft, childlike curves that Ritsu’s does. On his face is a small, tentative smile, shy, like he’d modeled for this but could never get quite comfortable enough to make the emotion come across natural. Faintly, Shou can make out laugh lines around the corners of his eyes, and dimples at the edges of his mouth where his smile shows his teeth. Like the other sketch, his hair is cut bluntly all the way around his head, leaving straight bangs that fall nearly into his eyes. There’s something undeniably endearing about the sketch, as though it’d been drawn with a great deal of affection. “Is this him?” Shou asks. He doesn’t need to clarify who he’s talking about.

Ritsu nods. “His name was Shigeo - is Shigeo, I mean,” he says, catching himself as he begins to refer to his brother in the past tense. “He’s about a year and a half older than me, though he never could really keep up with me, growing up. Where I was quick to pick up concepts and new skills, he always took just a little longer. My parents worried about him a lot.” As he speaks, his eyes flick down to the sketch in the journal, something undeniably sad in the way he speaks.

Shou swallows, watching Ritsu’s face as he speaks. “Where did they go?” he asks. Surely they couldn’t have abandoned him?

“My parents passed away a few years ago,” Ritsu says, letting his hand fall away from the book. He draws his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, hugging them close to his body. “They were hunted by humans who were scared of them and their magic. They would have killed me, too, but Shige protected me.”

“You care a lot about him,” Shou murmurs, “and he cared a lot about you, so what changed?” After all, Shigeo isn’t here anymore. His bed and shelf are empty and there are no traces of him in the little house that used to belong to both of them, but at one point he’d been as active and present as Ritsu is now.

Ritsu’s expression darkens, and he leans forward to rest his chin atop his bent knees. A frown tugs at his mouth, and his gaze is distant. “He fell in love with a human,” he replies, the words barely travelling over the gentle noise of the wind, and Shou catches the way his voice wavers in an attempt to keep his emotions from coming through. “I didn’t like him. I tried to tell Shige that it was bad idea to get involved with humans, that he’d only get hurt in the long run, but he wouldn’t listen. Growing up, we always got along well, to the point where we only had a few silly little fights as brothers, but this was different. Neither of us was willing to change our mind.” His wings shift slightly against his back, drawing in around his shoulders as though to protect himself. “I said terrible things to him, about how I didn’t want to be his brother if he was going to choose a human over me. I told him that if he was going to make such a terrible decision, he might as well just leave. I didn’t think he’d take me seriously, at the time.”

Shou stares down at the sketch of Shigeo laying open in his lap and tries to imagine him standing beside a younger version of Ritsu, one with wide, dark eyes and arms that are a little shorter and chubbier than the ones he knows. He can easily picture a loving and dedicated siblings relationship between them, the kind Shou has never experienced himself but that he’s seen countless times in the children from his village, can easily wrap his mind around a protective Shigeo eager to please his genius little brother. It makes his heart ache to imagine what such a bad fight between the two of them must have felt like. It’s a vulnerable memory, the one that Ritsu has chosen to impart to him. “Why are you telling me all this?” he asks after a moment, folding the journal shut and holding it tightly with both hands. “Why save me, why let me hang around you for so long, why tell me about your family? I thought you hated humans.”

“I do hate them,” Ritsu says immediately, squeezing his knees closer to his chest, and his gaze hardens with regret and anger and loss. “They took my parents, they took my brother.” He pauses to take a breath, shaky and tense, and buries his face in his arms so that Shou can no longer see his face. “I hate them… but I don’t hate you.”

Shou forgets to breathe for a moment, stunned speechless. He’d known, of course, that Ritsu can’t possibly hate him, but it’s still shocking to have it laid out so plainly. Shou had never considered that he might be the exception to the rule, the lone redeemable human that Ritsu has chosen to place his bets on. That if he had been someone else, Ritsu might not have deigned it necessary to try to save his life. “But why me?” he repeats, desperate to know what part of himself was the part that Ritsu had seen and decided was worthy of saving. “Why am I different from everyone else who tried to cross that forest and never made it to the other side?”

Ritsu lets out a long breath into his arms before he raises his head once more. He still can’t look Shou in the eye, though, and he stares stubbornly at the patches of bright flowers instead. “Did you ever realize why the forest seemed so endless and impossible to navigate?” he asks. “It’s because it’s guarded by a magical trap. My brother and I laid it when our parents were killed, to keep humans from ever finding this place again. Anyone who walks into the forest is cursed to wander it until they die from starvation or are killed by wild animals.”

Shou hums, remembering the way his map had become all but useless once he’d walked deep enough into the forest. Without magic of his own, it would have been impossible to sense a trap laying in wait for him. “So that’s why I could never find the end, even after five days of walking,” he murmurs.

Ritsu nods. “Well, we both helped to lay down the spell, but Shigeo was always far stronger than I was when it came to magic. His powers are deeply rooted in people’s emotions, including his own, and it made it difficult for him to control them,” he continues, picking at the purple flower still pinched between his fingers. He tears a petal from it and lets it fall into the grass, nervous. “His powers created a link between the two of us and the emotions of those who would enter the forest. We could feel their anger and their killing intent, but we could also feel the fear they felt in their final moments, their regret and desire to keep living. I tried to ignore it, but Shigeo never could. He never admitted it out loud, but I could tell it tortured him inside, even as the people walking into the forest become fewer and far between. I think that his connection to the trap is part of what led him to start caring for the humans.” He pauses, lowering his gaze, and adds, “Empathy is a powerful thing.”

“So, you knew I was in the forest the whole time?” Shou clarifies, leaning forward and looking up into Ritsu’s face.

By this point, Ritsu’s plucked the flower bare, nothing but its brown middle left attached to the stem until Ritsu pinches that part off, too. “Yes,” he replies. There isn’t an ounce of regret in his voice, but after hearing his story, Shou can’t find it in himself to be annoyed by it. Ritsu continues, “As soon as you entered the forest, I knew you were there, but you seemed… different from the others. You weren’t scared, and you weren’t angry. You weren’t lost, either, like the children would that sometimes wander into the forest without knowing where they were. There was something driving you, I could tell, but it wasn’t a desire for revenge or self-preservation like the hunters that used to come after my brother and me.” He drops the flower’s browning stem, lets it be swallowed up by the tall grass around him. “I saved you because I could tell you didn’t come to hurt me, and because part of me was curious to see if a human really did exist who could look at me without fear or anger. I thought that maybe then, I could start to understand the feelings that would make my brother want to leave me behind.”

Shou swallows, glancing down at his legs, splayed out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. It hasn’t occurred to him until now just how insanely lucky he is to be alive right now, now fortunate it is that Ritsu had decided to let him be the one to change his mind about humanity. “Do you think you understand any better, now?” he asks, voice soft and curious.

Ritsu squeezes his legs impossibly tighter against his chest. “Yeah, I think I do,” he admits, but when Shou chances another glance at him, he doesn’t find peace or closure in Ritsu’s gaze like he might expect. Instead, Ritsu just slumps with regret. His dark eyes are clouded with grief, as though this discovery has condemned something within him. “I do, and that’s the scary part.”

---

Neither of them speaks on the way back to Ritsu’s house. The sun is beginning to set behind the horizon by the time they make it back, and Shou’s stomach is grumbling. He grabs an apple from the fruit bowl to graze on while Ritsu sweeps the feathers and early fall leaves from off the deck, and he tries not to think too hard about the implications of the day’s revelations. He plops down on the edge of the bed that used to be Shigeo’s, a person who Shou now has a name and a face to attach to it. A person who still has a place in this house, should he ever come back to reclaim it. It’s not a place that Shou can keep for himself much longer, and he knows it. Guess I have to go home sometime, huh? he thinks to himself, and the thought leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

Ritsu comes inside and closes the door behind him, leaning the broom up in the corner by the coat rack. He moves quietly over to his shelf to change into his night clothes while Shou lays on the soft mattress, and when he’s ready to climb into bed himself, he turns to face him. “Shou,” he says, hesitantly, fiddling with the fingers on one of his hands. “I want you to know, I’m… I’m really glad I met you.”

Shou sits up in the bed, eyebrows raised in quiet surprise, but his reply is caught in his throat when he sees the small but undeniable smile on Ritsu’s face. It’s shaky, like he’s fighting the urge to stifle it the way he has so many times already, but it’s still there. It’s slightly crooked and, Shou notices, entirely humanesque, holding the same blunted incisors and sharp canines his own mouth carries. The sight of this little smile, simultaneously remarkable and unremarkable, is enough to send Shou’s heart somersaulting in his chest, the words on his tongue dying before they have the chance to see daylight.

It’s irrevocably beautiful, to Shou.

“I-I’m glad I met you, too,” he finally stammers, once he’s managed to get a grip on his thoughts long enough to form a coherent sentence, though he can’t quite suppress the awe-struck stutter that accompanies his words. “You’re a good friend, Ritsu. I’m really grateful that you decided to save me, that day.”

Ritsu doesn’t say anything in return, just flashes him another little smile and, oh, Shou could definitely get used to seeing that. Then he blows out the candle keeping the room dimly lit and plunges it into darkness, crawling into his own bed for the night.

---

Shou decides the following morning that it’s past time he returns to his village. He has a house and a job waiting for him at home, after all, or at least he hopes he still does, and while he doesn’t have any really close friends, his neighbors are bound to be wondering where he’s gone off to by now. He tells Ritsu as much as he packs up his sketchbook and his pencils and prepares to start the walk back home.

He pretends not to notice the way Ritsu stifles his disappointment under a layer of practiced calm. “Are you sure? If you need an extra day, it really wouldn’t be that big of a deal,” he offers, but Shou just shakes his head and offers Ritsu a bittersweet smile.

“No, I can’t do that. This was never meant to be permanent, anyway, I’ve just been borrowing your extra space from your brother. He’ll need it once he decides to come home,” he replies, gesturing to the empty bed and shelf nestled into the back corner of the house. “Although, it may be a good idea to invest in, like, a bedroll or something, in case he decides to bring his boyfriend with him.”

The suggestion makes Ritsu screw up his face in unhidden disgust, drawing a loud laugh out of Shou’s mouth at the sight of it. Ritsu rolls his eyes, long-suffering. “Yeah, alright,” he sighs, and follows Shou to the door to he can give him a proper send-off.

“You’re sure I won’t get lost again in there?” Shou asks, pointing to the magically trapped forest that lays sprawling in front of him. “I just walk straight, and I’ll make it home?”

Ritsu snorts, raising an incredulous brow at him. “Of course, I know what I’m doing,” he assures. “My brother may have been the one strong enough to lay the trap in the first place, but the illusion on it is all from me. I can manipulate it in any way I want. I won’t take you more than an hour or two to make it back without the trap getting in your way.”

Shou nods, taking comfort in Ritsu’s confidence as the two of them stand side-by-side facing the woods. “Well then, I guess this is goodbye,” he says, and tries not to let show the way the words make his heart fall and his throat feel just a little tighter.

Ritsu shakes his head, laying a hand on Shou’s shoulder. “It’s not ‘goodbye’, it’s ‘see you later’,” he corrects, and lets slip one of those small, kind smiles. “I don’t expect you’ll be able to resist coming back anyway, even if I tried to stop you, so I may as well give you permission to come visit before you end up lost in the forest again.” He plays it off in a casual manner, but the way his neck flushes just slightly pinker than usual gives away his true intentions.

Shou doesn’t bother to fight the grin that comes to his face at this, and before he can think better of it he pulls Ritsu in for a quick, tight hug. He catches the little squeak of surprise Ritsu makes in response to it, but his friend doesn’t pull away, lifting his arms to tentatively return the brief embrace. One of Shou’s hands finds its way into the downy feathers between Ritsu’s shoulders, soft as cotton between his fingers, while Ritsu’s splay against his back and squeeze him once, gently.

“Come back soon,” Ritsu mumbles against Shou’s shoulder before he pulls away, letting his hands linger for just a moment before he lets them drop back to his sides.

“Count on it,” Shou replies with a bright grin, offering Ritsu one last clap on the shoulder before he turns and begins to walk toward the forest. “I’ll see you later,” he adds over his shoulder, raising a hand in an energetic wave as he reaches the edge of the trees. He watches just long enough to see Ritsu return his wave before he turns and disappears into the forest, homeward bound.

---

When he would reach his lonely little house just under two hours later, his neighbors would greet him with worried words and frightened expressions, and when he would tell them where he’d gone and why, they would ask him if he’d found anything worthwhile after so many days away from home.

“No,” he would say, with a helpless little smile. “Nothing at all.”

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