#if u have more than one character u want to entrust into my care i will take as many as u have within reason

[2aceofspades]

oh my gawd i n e e d leo having a complete dad breakdown in front of the others. like hes stressed and tired and freaking out and they go "oh damn wait a second" and make him take a nap or smthn. (personal experience tbh i can go through some traumatic shit but the second i have to babysit i freak o u t) i love the casey leo comics youre making thats all

(not asking for art unless you want to make it,, just in general the trope is scrumptious and you are invoking the feels )

Oh! I hadn't thought about that. I definitely wanted to pull in some of the other brothers/characters into the timeline cuz I always feel so...inferior?...when I draw comics with just two people interacting. I dunno...but! Having more than one reaction to Leo just having to break down to be built back up would be a fun challenge...

I honestly have um...no idea where I wanna take this au comic series thing. I'm just drawing spontaneous events cuz I'm so used to not thinking when I draw.

However! I can see that happening with Leo because Cassandra literally entrusted him and ONLY him to her own child. His responsibility meter must be through the roof cuz of the whole 'taking care of a human who just so happens to be an impressionable young child' situation. So, without ranting too much, yeah...that idea could definitely be explored with great interest. Hopefully, I would be able to capture it well, but also ~delicately~.

Also, gah! Thank you!! 😭🙌✨ I'm really enjoying drawing them interact cuz their dynamic is so special to me I just wanna add more ~depth~ to it...

#ace answers #got my mind gears working ooooh! #i think this would be a great concept to explore especially given how much Leo has been internalizing #we'll see mehehehe... #}:-) #thank you for the ask! #i hope i sufficiently answered your query 🤗✨ #:)

[ootahime]

what is utahime’s role in the future? — a prediction (manga spoilers)

part 1 (unedited)

I WAS ABOUT TO POST IT BUT I ACCIDENTALLY DELETED IT AND I WAS SO HURT FR!!!!! I HAD REWRITE THIS ENTIRE THING </33

part 2 is here!

in this post, i will be analyzing the information we’ve been given about utahime so far to form a prediction about her future role in the jujutsu kaisen series. if you’re as interested in utahime’s character as i am, please feel free to keep reading :3 (i’ll also be talking about her relationship with gojo a bit too)

soukatsu_ on twt!

kaikaikitan on twt!

utahime iori is a semi-grade 1 sorcerer working as a student supervisor/teacher at kyoto jujutsu high school. she loves drinking beer and going to karaoke. she’s also close friends with shoko and she’s not particularly fond of gojo most of the time. what else do we know about her?

hates sweets (funny she’s the complete opposite of gojo)

she’s great at singing and it’s a huge part of her technique

squabbling with gojo became a reflex :3

everyone absolutely adores utahime

loves watching soccer and baseball

a terrible drunk (worse than naobito zenin)

gojo is her main source of stress

let’s dive into her personality and abilities!

chapter 65

before i get into it, i think it’d be best if i were to explain the timeline because a lot of people seem to be confused about this one particular thing. utahime is born on february 18th, 1987. contrary to popular belief, she is not 3 years older than gojo. it is november 2018 in the story because gojo was sealed on halloween. if gojo was born on december 7th, 1989, that would mean that right now, he is only 28 years old. he has yet to turn 29.

the year is 2007. gojo satoru is a second year at tokyo jujutsu high school. the japanese school year begins in april which suggests that gojo is only 17 at the time (even if it’s not april, it doesn’t look like winter yet so it’s unlikely that he’s already 18). utahime is 20 because it is past february. she is a 2nd grade sorcerer at the age of 20. that’s not bad at all!

chapter 65 introduces young utahime and mei on a mission together within a cursed site. in real time, they’ve been gone for two days which is a cause of concern for gojo, shoko, and geto because the two haven’t contacted anyone since the beginning of their mission.  the two begin to suspect something is wrong because the hallway markers they’ve set in place disappeared, and no matter how far they travel within the halls, the end is nowhere in sight.  mei theorizes that the cursed spirit is overlapping the space as they travel forward.  utahime agrees with this speculation and proposes a plan to escape the cursed spirit’s grasp by moving erratically.  notice how she says that if one of them should escape, they can try to attack from the outside or call for help.  if utahime was not capable of inflicting damage on anything then she would have told mei to escape and attack if she can while she waited to be rescued.  however, she didn’t.  she included herself in the sentence which leads me to believe that she is capable of going on the offense if needed.  

keep in mind that at this point in time, mei is a grade 1 sorcerer.  she is knowledgeable about all things involving jujutsu because she is experienced and skillful.  we can see this aspect of her character illustrated when she theorizes that the cursed spirit is messing with the space they’re in.  she chooses to go with utahime’s plan because she agrees that it’s the best action moving forward.  this verifies that utahime is an intelligent girl that’s able to get along with pretty much anyone.  

her intellect is demonstrated once again in chapter 79.  she was able to deduce the possibility of there being more than one traitor and the fact that one is probably a higher up.  she also narrowed down the mechamaru as the mole of kyoto not because he was acting suspicious but by process of elimination.  she thought thoroughly of his technique and how easy it would be for him to manipulate devices small enough to be undetectable.  

sure you can argue that she should already know all her students’ abilities and whatnot but you have to admit that it’s hard trying to sniff out the traitor when no one is acting suspicious.  in addition to that, how did she know that there was a traitor in the top brass?  i would have never guessed that tbh LOL (maybe bc im an idiot).

okay, now that we have established that she’s intelligent, let’s answer a more important question.  is utahime weak?

chapter 33

if gojo calls utahime weak, does that mean there is some truth to it?  well it is true that she is weaker than him because he’s the strongest and all.  in my opinion, he’s just teasing her.  he probably found that calling her weak is what really riles her up.  maybe i’ll talk about why he loves teasing her so much in a later post.  but anyway, gojo calls everybody and their mom weak.  he even said jogo was weak and we know how powerful that guy is.  gojo’s words alone do not indicate much about utahime’s power.  in fact, i don’t even think he has seen her use her technique yet.  he’s probably only ever heard of how it works.  this is what i think their conversation about her technique was like:

gojo: hm?  ur cursed technique is singing?  can u show me?

utahime: what!  no way!  

gojo: why not?

*one of the classmates tells him that she can only use her CT once in a while because it consumes a lot of energy*

gojo: hahaha!  u have to conserve cursed energy to use ur CT?  why are u so weak, utahime?

utahime: i!  am!  your!  senpai!  respect!  me!

what i’m trying to say is that gojo loves poking fun of people.  we should not believe him when he calls someone weak because compared to him, everyone is weak.  

this is a little off topic but let’s examine him telling her, “and you don’t have the nerves, utahime.”  i think he’s trying to say that there’s no way she’ll ever do something like that because she’s not the type to put her students in danger.  remember the soft expression and relieved smile on her lips when she said that she was glad the students were safe after the kyoto incident?  gojo was directly in front of her so not only did he hear her say that, but he could have seen the look on her face too.  even if he told her that she didn’t have the guts to betray the school to get on her nerves, he knew that utahime simply cared too much about the students so he ruled her out as a suspect right away.  this is why he ultimately decided to confide in her and ask her to help him.  

i’m a person who loves over-analyzing things.  i really enjoy the dynamic between gojo and utahime.  they’ve known each other for more than 11 years and although they always bicker, there is an unspoken feeling of trust between the two.  gojo can do anything and everything by himself because he is truly the strongest person alive, but he still knows when to rely on others.  him deciding to entrust utahime with such a job implies that he believes in utahime’s abilities.

chapter 52

she’s not using any cursed energy here--not to our knowledge at least.  this is just pure skill.  she was able to swiftly evade the swing from haruta.  he was surprised himself considering the fact that he was right behind her.  how do we know her CT isn’t speed?  after haruta swung at her, we can see that some of her hair got cut off.  if she was using her CT then speed should be her specialty.  she should have been able to completely avoid the attack altogether but she didn’t.  of course this isn’t a wow moment because jujutsu sorcerers should know how to dodge attacks, however, i’m just trying to get the point across that she’s not a defenseless person without her technique or others.  let’s not forget that semi-grade 1 isn’t a weak rank either.  you can’t simply be recommended to be a grade 1 sorcerer if you only can support others.  

chapter 48

i want to bring up this panel. it suggests that utahime and takuma are sorcerers who have not experienced black flash and therefore, do not understand the essence of cursed energy as well as those who have like gojo and nanami.  i find it strange how takuma and utahime were used to represent sorcerers who haven’t experienced it yet.  is the purpose to demonstrate that there is a clear difference in skill between adult sorcerers like utahime and takuma compared to gojo and nanami?  i could be nitpicking but the order of todo’s statement doesn’t line up with the sorcerers being shown.  let me explain in depth.  todo starts off by saying, “for those who have experienced black flash as compared to those who have not...” wouldn’t it make more sense to show gojo and nanami on the right side to represent sorcerers who have experienced black flash?  that was mentioned first, after all.  gojo and nanami should appear when todo says “for those who have experience black flash” while utahime and takuma should be shown right after to personify the second part, “as compared to those who have not.”  i’m just making it more complicated than it actually is LOLOL i’m sure it really just means they haven’t experienced black flash yet, which is completely fine.  i also find it fascinating how they used utahime to contrast gojo.  with nanami and takuma it makes sense.  nanami is someone takuma looks up to, he wants to gain nanami’s approval before he deems himself worthy of a promotion. what about utahime and gojo?  what’s the purpose of comparing those two together when it’s obvious that gojo knows more about the essence of cursed energy more than anyone else?  i might be delusional whoops

----

let me know what you guys think?  this is only a part 1 so i haven’t gotten around to answering the question.  i’m pretty much done with the second part, i just need to revise it a little.  i think after i post part 2, i’ll try to interpret all the gojo and utahime moments in the manga >.<

#gojohime #gouta #gojo x utahime

[spitpr1ncess]

Can I Call You Sir? / Nanami Kento x Fem Reader

--“And if I did? It’s only proved what I thought to be true all along. You’re a little degenerate, like me. I just wanted to test you, to know if you wanted what I wanted. Seems like you do, so tell me to stop and I will. Tell me you’re leaving, I’ll let you. I’m not going to force you to do anything, I respect your boundaries, and I respect that this is wrong. It just, feels so right. So deny it.”--

Fucking bullshit.

You stare at the graded paper before you and seethe from the inside out. An F? A fail?! But you’d studied relentlessly! The only thought you were having was how your mother was going to kill you when she finds out, you can practically hear her shrieking, “I’m paying heaps of money to put you through university and this is what you have to show for it?

Professor Nanami is writing something that looks vaguely recognizable on the chalk board, his tall but slim body looking oddly out of place at the front of the long classroom as you glare holes into the back of his blue shirt. There wasn’t a single person you hated more than him in this never-ending moment. You yawn and allow your head to fall heavy onto your crossed arms, hiding your shameful test results. You could listen to Professor Nanami with your eyes closed based solely on the fact that you would be failing the rest of this term if your test results were anything to go by.

The rest of the lesson passes quickly as you fall victim to maladaptive daydreams, playing out every single scenario where you approach Professor Nanami and question his harsh grading. You aren’t a stupid girl, in fact, in every other class you were smashing your target or hitting above. What was this mans problem? You imagine slamming your paper down in front of him, arms crossed and little foot tapping the floor. “Do you hate me?”, “So you have favourites?”, or just a plain “what the fuck?!” were among the favourites you’d rehearsed. His face was cold as stone as he stared back before licking his lower lip and smirking, pulling his glasses atop his head, causing a pretty ripple in his hair as he stands absolutely towering over you. A large thumb lifts your chin to look at him as his eyes bore into you. Then his lips are on yours.

Wait what?

What?

You’re roughly pulled from your daydream by your hair as a pair of polished brown shoes stand at the foot of your worn school desk and a voice beckons your name. Professor Nanami is stood less than a foot in front of you waiting for an explanation. You shoot bolt upright in the uncomfortable wooden chair as your entire body feels like its been zapped by an electric fence. You can feel the blush in your face spreading to your ears as you push the strange daydream to the back of your degenerate mind.

“Sleeping through my lectures will not help you fix that broken grade, Miss Reader. Do you understand me? Or do I need to put it more plainly? It can’t be easy with a simple mind like yours, but I’m sure we could find a way to help you absorb what I’m saying.” His eyes are cold as steel and boring into your soul, he doesn’t even blink, he’s like a robot. You hold his gaze before risking a look around the classroom revealing that it is completely empty, not a soul to be seen, brilliant. So not only had you failed your test but you’d also voluntarily agreed to extracurricular activities whilst daydreaming about kissing your Professor, it sure was a great day to be you.

You panic, how were you going to salvage this? You needed to think quickly, but nothing was springing to mind.

Clearing your throat and calming your nerves you begin, “sorry Professor I didn’t get much sleep last night, I have a lot going on at home so am finding it difficult to participate in classes at the moment.”

You are?

He lets out a small snort as he sits at the edge of your desk, peering down at you through his glasses, a look of judgement plasters his incredibly chiselled facial features, he is beautiful, and you’re happy to admit that, whether or not it could get you in trouble.

What?

“Your lies won’t cut it here, you’re excelling in all your other classes, algebra, languages and biology. These are not easy subjects and geography is a breeze in comparison, so why are you failing? Are you doing it on purpose?” Your attention is drawn to his strong throat and his Adams apple lifts and falls again as he swallows and you wonder if he is anxious about approaching you, not that he has any reason to be.

You feel anger bubble in your throat as you argue back, “I’m not a liar. I’m having trouble concentrating here. Your teaching, the class size, the fact the class is the last of the day, maybe you’re grading me too harshly! Have you considered that? Nobody else failed, so why did I?!” Your voice is shaking now and your knuckles are white as you push your nails into your palms, drawing blood. Professor Nanami looks at you for a moment before standing and heading back to his desk at the front of the class where he picks up a piece of chalk and some papers and begins to write.

“Question one is on plate tectonics, lets begin there. Would you care to explain the theory to me?” He turns and gives you a weirdly friendly smile, you calm your nerves and take a breath, opening your paper and looking at your answer, you read out the sentences you had written and cringe as you allow Professor Nanami to correct you, taking notes on his tutoring. Your personal four o’clock class finishes at just past seven as you both wrap up the test paper and Nanami wipes the board clean.

“In future Miss Reader, you come to me when you need help. You’re a smart young lady really, you know that, so put your brain to use. You’re going to do great things after your course is up so don’t discredit yourself over one failed paper.” He sits at his desk and waves his hand to dismiss you. “You’d better go now, I’m sure you have a worried boyfriend wondering where you’ve gotten to so late in the evening.” He pushes his glasses onto the top of his head, much like in your daydream, and you appreciate how good he looks for a moment. He’s aged yes, around thirty yes, but still gorgeous. You know the girls at University fawn over him, fighting to get even a slither of attention, and here you were, in a private tutoring session of your own, and without even meaning to.

You ponder the boyfriend comment before packing up and heading for the exit, deciding to test the waters you address him, “I don’t have a boyfriend Professor you see I simply don’t have time, and anyway, none of the boys here are mature enough to interest me.” You turn and give him a smile as you catch his gaze flitting up from where your stockings meet the fat of your thighs, you roll your eyes at him and shake your head as you sigh and leave for the night.

This was an interesting development.

-

Sleep washes over you as you awaken in your dream. Professor Nanami is sitting before you, he beckons for you to sit on his lap, you oblige and as you nestle against his chest, his fingers find the edge of your stocking, he traces lazy patterns on your thigh, eliciting a small sigh of pleasure from you. He nuzzles his nose against your cheek and plants a soft kiss against your neck, he pushes your soft hair behind your ear and begins to litter kisses on your sensitive lobe.

“Sweet thing, you smell heavenly, I just want to devour you.” He whispers. You throw your head back and invite him to suck and nip at your exposed throat, completely vulnerable in his arms you entrust him with your entirety. He groans as you manoeuvre your little waist to create friction with the fat of your ass and you’re met with the impossible hardness between his legs, this moment between the two of you feels like fireworks, everything is at a standstill and there is nothing but your two bodies, completely entwined, obsessed with each other’s perfect anatomy. You continue to explore each other physically as you mewl and sigh rhythmically, nothing has ever felt better than your Professors loving touch on your absolute innocence. You’d been with boys yes, but never a man like Nanami.

“Nanamin,” you cry out as he finds the hotness between your legs.

“Sweet girl, I’ll take the best care of you, just relax.” he speaks like sweet poetry from his mouth that tastes like the most expensive organic honey. Your breath hitches as he starts to disappear, you reach out but he is no longer there.

-

You jolt awake as you feel wetness pooling between your legs, the hotness and lack of friction so unbearable you are torn from the dream of all dreams.

Fuck, this is weird now.

Daydreaming about your Professor wouldn’t be the worst thing if you weren’t now absolutely sopping wet and grinding against your own mattress. You dare to slip a tiny hand under the waistband of your pants and give a little release to yourself, it felt unreal, and without realizing you were picturing him as you drive yourself to the edge and jump off head first. You’re picturing his pretty features and strong hands, his soft lips and authoritarian stare. In your head he’s praising you, “sweet thing, sweet girl” he says. You shudder as you come down from the satiating high and allow shame to encase you completely, rolling over, you stare at the screen of your phone.

5:38. A notification flashes from last night.

baby nobara: maps said you left uni at 7! wtf were u doing?? ps, shopping tmorrow?

You open the notification and type a quick reply.

you: was just studying, nothing important hahahah. sure! meet me at 11?

With that, you roll back over and let sleep nestle you gently between her arms.

-

It’s twenty minutes after your planned meet time that Nobara turns up, and holding a Krispy Kreme bag full of donuts and a doc marten tote housing at least one new pair of shoes, she’d obviously done a pre-shop, not that it was particularly out of character for her. Her gentle face is plastered with a mischievous grin as she runs and embraces you like two sisters might embrace after a long time away from each other’s presence

“I had to warm up before we got started!” she laughs at you, and all is forgiven in a matter of seconds. You’re both giggling as she opens the bag and makes you a peace offering of a strawberry donut, you eagerly accept as you discuss what shops you want to hit up today. You both spend hours browsing, trying on and chatting about everything, you don’t get to see Nobara often as you have alternating days on campus and your schedules clash horribly so the times you do spend together are cram packed full of mischief.

You’re walking past a load of stores as you approach Victoria's Secret and you immediately flash back to Professor Nanamis eyes on your stockings last night and his comment about your supposed boyfriend. Cogs are turning in your mind but before you have time to make the connection, you’re being dragged in, you have no objections and are pleasantly surprised by the variety of lingerie this particular chain of store holds. You pick out a few different numbers including a black corset body suit and a matching garter with stockings, you knew the reason for picking it out was completely inappropriate but it didn’t stop you from taking it to the counter and paying nearly 100 dollars for it. You grinned as you schemed yet another daydream waiting for your friend to decide on the bits she wanted.

You both decide on a little sushi place for lunch and as you fill your mouth with miso Nobara asks, “Who are you fucking? It has to be someone at university, that’s why you stayed so late, right?” The question completely winds you as you try not to choke on your food. Your eyes are watering as you try to explain that it was just extra-curricular studies. Nobara nods and rolls her eyes, “You don’t have to lie to me, I’ll find out sure enough.” She laughs as you pray she lets this go, shovelling some nigiri into her mouth she waves you off. “Chill,” she says as you allow your heart to slow in your chest.

You give her a hug as you finally part ways and she ruffles your hair, “See you around”, and with that she’s gone. You begin the walk home as you reflect on the events of today, you reel as you come to the realization you spent 100 dollars on a lingerie set for a man over ten years your senior who would less than likely ever find out you’d bought it. Unless.

No.

You shake the thought of trying to bait your own Professor after barely scraping by the last term, expulsion for indecent behaviour seems somewhat worse, at least you think. It also doesn’t seem good for Nobara to now suspect you have something going on with somebody, she has to know all the top gossip and you don’t doubt she will find a way. Now that you think about it, you should turn your phone location off. You know your friend would stalk you for the sake of some scandalous news she can tease you about. You giggle to yourself, you and Professor Nanami, what a thought.

-

The bell rings as you finish washing your hands, you stopped to use the bathroom before your final class of the day, Geography. You’d been anticipating this class, having chosen the black corset body suit with stockings to match, you’d paired it with a mid-length black satin skirt and an oversized cardigan, it was enough to feel comfortable in, and not break any regulations but enough for Professor Nanami to notice, which was just perfect. You wanted to test the waters after his comment and wandering eyes, you’d had time to stew over your awful test results and were wondering if maybe he was a little harsh with the grading. Either way, today would tell.

You hurry up the stairs and down the long corridor to the classroom where he lectures, there were around 30 students already settled in class and you could see your Professor writing on the board. You slip in quietly and take your seat at the back of the class, you shed your cardigan, giving a frontal view of your chest and begin to take notes. You ensure you pay full attention to todays class, not taking your eyes off the man at the front of your lecture room. You meet his gaze a few times and you sense him trying really hard to not allow his eager eyes to flit downwards, you wish for him to give you anything more than a feeling to go off of but he’s stone cold and hard as steel. As the class draws to an end Nanami dismisses the students and you wait until the room has emptied before you walk towards his desk. You wait for him to address you.

“Miss Reader, can I help you with something?” he doesn’t meet your gaze and instead continues typing something on his keyboard, you’re frustrated with how nonchalant he’s being, how you’ve probably misread the entire encounter, how you’ve created a whole reality from nothing.

“I, I was hoping maybe you would assist me with some questions I have from the class today Sir, if you have time of course.” If he wanted to play games, he would get games, you might be younger than him but you’re not stupid.

“That’s okay, you’ll have to give me ten minutes whilst I finish this email, then I’m all yours. Feel free to take a seat.” He motions for the first desk in the front row and you roll your eyes as you decide to make a stand. You pull a chair from the side of the room to Nanamis desk and sit directly opposite him, you take out your textbooks and begin to lay them out on the space behind his computer, sitting down you cross your legs, brushing his shin with your shoe. You’re sure you see his jaw tighten, but he plays it off by cracking his neck, the loud crunch distracts from the tension filled silence and you lick your bottom lip in anticipation.

He finishes with his email and pushes the computer screen to the side of his desk then leans back in his chair and loosens his tie slightly, he catches you watching the space above where his shirt is buttoned and smirks, “So what questions do you have sweet girl?”, it’s an innocent enough question but you’re walking a fine line and need to be careful. You make idle small talk about today’s class for an hour or so before asking your Professor to quiz you, it’s a shot in the dark but you’re hoping he will catch on.

“I’ve been revising, ask me any twenty questions, if I get them right you can pass me for that test!” you grin, proud of the compromise you’d come up with.

“It’s a good idea, but what if you get questions wrong? Does the fail still stand?” he laughs quietly, like he made a personal joke that only he understood, he allowed his eyes to trail down to the black floral lace encasing your chest, it wasn’t overly provocative (you were in university after all) but it was enough to make his mind wander. You test the waters again, trailing a finger over the top of the hem, outlining the soft of your breasts, Nanami shuffles in his seat and adjusts his legs, brilliant.

You allow your Professor to test you, answering all questions and waiting for each correct answer like a patient puppy, sitting for its master. At the end of the test you grin, over the moon with yourself for showing him you deserve a passing mark.

“I told you! I told you I shouldn’t have failed. You were definitely marking me too harshly!” You brush your leg against his again, and he doesn’t make an effort to move himself, he drinks you in through the round frames of his glasses that are sitting pretty on the top of his nose.

“Sweet girl, I never thought you were stupid, in fact, I think you’re rather smart. So tell me, why are you really here right now?” He sits forward in his chair and leans across his desk, towards you. Your faces are so close that you can feel his warm and tempting breath on your lips, your eyes close of their own accord and you lean in. He teases you with soft pecks and you fight back, bringing a hand to his chin but he beats you to it. Your hand completely drowned by his own, the sheer size difference a shock to your system, he holds your hand against his desk where your forgotten papers sit. With his other hand he brings his thumb just below your chin and lifts your face so your eyes can meet his, “Is this what you wanted all along? To kiss your Professor? Is this what your little get up today is about? You thought I wouldn’t notice the pretty lace? Do you know how good you look?” His rhetoric questions causing your heart to beat a hole in your chest you inhale sharply, trying to take control of your breathing once again.

“You failed me on purpose.” It’s slipped out before you have time to consider what you’re saying.

What?!

“And if I did? It’s only proved what I thought to be true all along. You’re a little degenerate, like me. I just wanted to test you, to know if you wanted what I wanted. Seems like you do, so tell me to stop and I will. Tell me you’re leaving, I’ll let you. I’m not going to force you to do anything, I respect your boundaries, and I respect that this is wrong. It just, feels so right. So deny it.”

A grown man, your professor nonetheless, sits before you in what feels like a dream, asking for you to stop this.

So stop it.

You take your free hand and pull his face into yours, you’re kissing again, this time with more desperation. It was like you were parched, and Nanami was a stream of fresh water, you couldn’t get enough, and it was like your entire life depended on it. His desk was the only thing stopping you from jumping across and allowing him to devour you whole, you thought about straddling his lap and allowing him to grab the soft fat of your ass. Not yet.

You pull away from the kiss and stand, looking at the man before you, his tie completely loose, a few strands of hair falling on his forehead allowing him to look dishevelled, his glasses slightly steamed up. He was a sight to behold and your heart was beating to within an inch of your life with the idea that you had caused it. Internally you were screaming, DON’T FUCKING STOP. But you had to, had to make sure this wouldn’t be a mistake. You leaned across the desk and picked his glasses off of his nose, placing them on your own and pulling them up, to push the hair off of your face. He looked puzzled and opened his mouth to say something but you interrupted him.

“It seems I have forgotten something, looks like I’ll have to come back to get it tomorrow, what a shame.” And with that, you shot him a grin, turned on your heels, and left. Nanami sat staring at the door in utter shock and awe as you stalked out. He quickly fixed himself up sans glasses and packed up for the day, he muttered something about teaching you a lesson, and spare frames before he left, allowing the leftover tension to dissolve.

#nanami x reader #nanami kento #jujutsu kaisen #Nanamin #nanami fanfic #archive of our own #spitprincess #spitty #my own work #original content #nanami x femme reader #kento #kento nanami x redaer

[penfullofwordsaheadfullofstories]

No Matter How Many Skies Have Fallen

A/N: I really have nothing to say for myself at this point. 

Sequel chapter to this fic here, if you’d like to catch up. 

Thank you to @caffeine-in-an-iv​ for being my incredible beta and to @maybege​ for letting me rant to you and giving me so many wonderful ideas when I hit my walls. Also to the Obi-Wan fandom in general: Y’all are some of the kindest, most supportive people I’ve ever encountered on this hell site. Thank you for your support and your content! 

Pairing: Obi-Wan Kenobi x Force Sensitive! Fem! Reader (no Y/N)

Word Count: 11.9K (I lost all control) 

Warnings: SMUT!!! Soft Dom! Obi rights, Also, Sub! Obi vibes, Foodplay (but not how you’d think), Inappropriate use of the Force, Voice Kink, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Hands Appreciation Society, As Usual: Too Many Feelings For Porn, Emotional Competence Kink, Trust Kink, TW: Pregnancy, TW: A character draws blood on themself unknowingly

Title from one of my favorite quotes:

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

-D.H. Lawrence

What infinite irreverence the galaxy has for Obi-Wan Kenobi. 

As if his master and only semblance of a parent wasn’t taken from him when he needed him most.

As if a boy who needed a father wasn’t entrusted to Obi-Wan quickly following, far too young and full of his own loss. 

As if he wasn’t thrust onto the pedestal of parenthood when he really only wanted to be a brother. 

As if that isn’t what they became anyway, and as if that wasn’t the exact cloud that hung over the atmosphere of your lives ever since you’d arrived on Tatooine. 

As if the being whose life signature resided in your abdomen didn’t throw a punch into each of those blooming bruises by its very existence.

Which is why, you knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that you couldn’t tell him yet. 

Normally, it’d be no small feat to keep something of this scale from him. But these days, he’s so focused on having his shields up around you, keeping you from both being hurt by or helping with his torments. 

You have to take great care to control your body language, because even when he’s shut off from you in the Force, his keen perceptiveness will pick up on something being off anyway.

The art of a convincing lie is having layers. If he senses your feelings and decides to dig, then only give up one layer, and he’ll stop looking.

 In this case, it’s your worry over him. It is true you’re trying to shield him from feeling that, not wanting him to carry the burden of it on top of having to work through his own pain.

  But it’s not everything you’re trying to hide from him. So you let a small projection of your fear over his well-being escape, like you’re losing control of your feelings. It’s enough to convince him, and something critical inside you dies at the victory every time.

 He deserves your honesty, and you’ve never given him anything less until now.

 You hate how well your strategic deceit takes root. Because only part is due to your talent as a liar. The rest comes from how much he trusts you.

  You’re not stupid, though. You know it’s only a matter of time before the biological changes in your body betray you. 

Obi-Wan said he needed time, and you’re going to give him as long as you possibly can before dropping this anvil on him, hoping the further he gets from it all, the better off he’ll be. 

You could kick yourself for not being more careful. You hadn’t missed any dose of your herbal Ho’Din contraceptive. It was one of the few things you shoved in your bag with the mere minutes you had to leave Coruscant for good. It was from a reliable medicinal shop, and there’s no good reason it should have failed in any way.

But here you were anyway. 

Of course, there are options that free you from the obligation of carrying the child to term. All are expensive, and Tatooine is sorely lacking in any trustworthy medical facilities. The alternative methods could put your own life in danger as well. 

Even if it wasn’t, you’d feel so strange making that kind of decision without Obi-Wan. Not that he wouldn’t support whatever decision you needed to make for yourself if you did, but going behind his back is something you’re not sure his trust could recover from. 

And really, far too much has been decided for him in his life. 

The worst reason why you can’t bring yourself to move towards any solution that ends the pregnancy now, the reason you abhor, is because somewhere within you, despite the awfulness of the time and place, you want this baby. 

You couldn’t give a definitive explanation for yourself, but you did. Undoubtedly

Obi-Wan doesn’t press when you ask to cease your combat training for a time, asking to start learning the new offerings of the Jedi texts instead. 

He’s concerned when you tell him, but if he’s suspicious as for your reasoning, he doesn’t show it outwardly, at least. 

The way he doesn’t even ask about why, though: It makes you wonder if he had a reason all of his own why he’d rather not fight, even in imitation.

The Jedi writings given to Obi-Wan by Master Yoda are often more cryptic and mystifying than logically applicable without deciphering, which you are at first annoyed by, but then strangely thankful for, as Obi-Wan verbally processes his understandings of it, knowing what he does of the Jedi way, and you adding your thoughts from the stance of fresh eyes. 

The conversations distract wonderfully, and you savor any way you still get to connect with him.

You don’t push for the ways he doesn’t allow you to connect with him anymore. The way he won’t let you in his mind. Because now, you too have a reason to not let him in yours. 

*******

When it’s time to go into town for supplies again, you make up some feeble excuse which you know Obi-Wan sees through as a lie, and this time, he does pry, eyes soft and concerned. He knows you love going to the markets. You simply explain that you’re tired, which is true enough to satisfy him, leaving you behind with a kiss on your forehead before you watch him saddle up your eopie and ride off.

You sigh, sagging against the closed door once he’s disappeared into the horizon. You do love the markets. They’re the most colorful thing the planet has to offer, textiles and rugs and shiny, hanging things. 

But the spices. Fragrant and potent, usually so appetizing and intoxicating, you know would turn your stomach alone. And that doesn’t even account for the strange meats being cooked at different vendors, and Maker help you if anyone was selling raw meat of any sort today. You’ve done your best to keep your nausea at bay, at times even tapping into the Force for centering when the world felt like it was rocking. But you know the market would be too much, too many variables.

It’s not a fast journey, even on the eopie, and you don’t expect Obi-Wan to be back for hours. Which is why when you hear a knock on your door, the tool in your hand clatters to the floor, as does the remnants of your project. 

You quickly grab one of the long staffs you and Obi-Wan had only begun to use in your defense training, trying to recall the lessons as adrenaline begins to rush through your veins. Tatooine isn’t known for its pleasant company, and if anyone was going to try to rob your home, now would be as good a time as any. 

The knock sounds again, and you shout from the inside, “What do you want?!” 

“A peace treaty in the form of baked goods,” comes the feminine voice, one you recognize. 

Opening the door, you lower the weapon in your hand as Beru Lars blinks at you.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were…” You step aside, gesturing for her to come in.

She waves a hand, dismissive. “I understand.”

You lead her over to the small living area as you fix two glasses of water from the kitchen. 

When you set them down on the table, Beru speaks. “I apologize for the intrusion, if there was another way of contacting you before coming here…”

“It’s absolutely fine, I’m glad to have you.” You smile in what you hope is an assuring way.  “Although, I’m surprised at it just being you. Where’s Owen?”

Her eyes flick to the stone floor. “He um… doesn’t exactly know I’m here. He’s out on a business deal today.” 

You feel your eyebrows go up at that, waiting for her to continue. But instead, she changes the subject. “Where’s Ben?” 

“In town. We needed some things from the market.”

Awkwardness settles in as a conversation topic evades you. 

She breaks the beat of quiet. “Here, I brought these for you.”

You take the basket in her hands from her, peeling back the thick woven cloth to reveal a simple form of bread. It looks so appetizing your stomach clenches, and you instantly realize you haven’t had anything since breakfast. 

But then the smell hits you, hard and powerful, and stars, it’s just bread, there’s nothing that should do that about bread, but you’re on your feet in a minute, forsaking the basket on the ground as you bolt to the fresher, barely making it in time to the sonic sink before you start heaving. 

In a moment, you feel soft hands at the nape of your neck, gently holding back the fabric of your shirt and blowing cool air as you continue to wretch. 

By the time everything has settled again, you’ve dealt with the aftertaste in your mouth, and splashed on your face with a precious cup of cool water, hot shame rises in your cheeks at how this must seem to Beru. 

You wipe at your face with a rag, half muffling your words when you address her. “I’m so sorry, I’m sure they’re absolutely delicious, It really has nothing to do…” 

“How far along are you?”

Your spine straightens instantly, and you let the cloth drop to the floor.

“I… what?”

Now she’s the one to flush. “My apologies, it’s just that it’s known for being a very gentle bread, it’s one my mother used to feed me when my stomach ached. If that smell turned you... I just assumed, and I shouldn’t have.” 

Your lips purse as you consider your options. It’d be easy to say nothing, or just to nod. 

“Two months,” you hear your own voice answer despite yourself. You’ve never been one for easy anyway.

A surge of emotion wells up in you at even being able to speak it aloud, aloud to another human, and next thing you know, to your absolute horror, you’re crying into your hands as your shoulders crumple in on themselves. 

Why now, of all times? In front of Beru Lars? Whom you know accepted Luke with her husband without question because they couldn’t biologically have any children of their own? 

“I’m… so… sorry,” You manage to choke out through the sobs, disgusted at your own lack of control.

At some point Beru must join you on the floor, patting her hand soothingly on your back. “Shhh, it’ll be alright. You’ll see. It’s not so bad having a young one around, you and Ben have so much to look forw…”

“He doesn’t know.” 

Her hand pausing briefly on your back is the only indication she gives of shock.

“Would he not be happy?”

You take a steadying breath in, trying to calm yourself. “I don’t know,” you whisper, small and almost frightened to let the room hear you say it.

It falls silent again, but it echoes around in your brain, bouncing against your thoughts until you feel the onset of a headache.

After you’re to a numb enough state to enjoy yourself, you and Beru make tea and bring it back to the living area. 

She lifts her glass to yours, clinking them. “To secrets kept from men and the mischievous company they bring.”

Your head now throbs with pain, but you smile anyway. “Thank you,” you say to her, and you mean it so very much.

********

The next time Obi-Wan goes into town, you’re feeling well enough to go with him. 

You’re not visiting the food portion of the market, after all, so you’re not as much of a risk to set your stomach off. He’s taken to fixing small machinery for trading with the Jawas recently, the extra income helping with the projects around the house. 

There’s a trap door that you found within the first day of being there. The staircase carved out of the bedrock beneath the hut leads to a small room that has now served as additional storage and a place for Obi-Wan to work. It’s also quite cool during the day, so if you can stand the smell of the various meats hung to dry, you’ll sit down there with some sort of project, or even reading material if you come upon it.

So today, he’s looking for a few specific tools that will streamline his working. 

It doesn’t take long to find a promising stall among the maze of shopkeepers, selling everything from trinkets to weaponry of questionable legality. Obi-Wan finds what he needs easily enough, and it looks like the trip is going to be as efficient as it is successful as you walk through alleyways with him. 

At some point, he takes your hand in his, squeezing it gently, projecting an assuring strand of affection toward you. It’s such a small gesture, but you’ll never tire of the feeling of his hand clasped in yours. 

You’re almost back to where the eopie, Rooh, as he named her, is stabled when Obi-Wan abruptly slows his pace, dropping into a stall. An alarm goes off in your head when you watch him pick up a frivolous trinket on a table that you know he has no interest in. 

You open your mouth to inquire at his actions, but it answers itself once you see him glance out of his peripheral vision to where the holonews plays in the stall adjacent. 

Battle footage on what you recognized to be Kashyyk at the presence of the many Wookies plays with the Emperor addressing the viewers in a very two-dimensional, sugar-coated, thinly-concealed threat to any other world that would try to resist occupation.

There’s wreckage and uncensored violence, and you turn your head away. 

“May it be known that Lord Vader is quite capable and willing to help those into compliance that require assistance... “

The item in his hands crushes, ceramic tile cracking into his hands, breaking the skin and drawing out drips of red.

But he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even seem to register the glass he’s pushing into his own hand. His eyes are wide and he makes a wounded noise from the back of his throat, eyes peeled to the holonews now, not even trying to feign disinterest.

His signature sparks, giving a flash and then a severe cry of anguish, and it hits you then. Pieces of information coming together as you feel Obi-Wan tear apart at seams. 

Anakin Skywalker turned to the Dark Side, and Obi-Wan thought him dead. There’s a new Sith Lord now; the correlation and timing can’t be coincidence. 

The Toydarian male behind the stall shouts something about paying for it in full, and you quickly hand over the credits with a glare.

You start to pull Obi-Wan’s other hand off the table, but you quickly realize your mistake in that.

The moment it isn’t holding his weight anymore, his knees start to give, and you’ve only a second to react, jamming your body under his arm to keep him upright. His momentum nearly pulls you forward, but you plant your feet and remember at the last second to call on the Force to assist you.

He seems to come to himself enough to walk somewhat as you steer him to the nearest alley away from the vendors.

He braces a hand on the stone wall, but even it isn’t enough as he drops to his knees. He doesn’t even seem to have the will to stand.

Crouching beside him, you place one of your hands on his chest. 

“I…. I…” The tremor in his usually so crisp wording and steady voice crushes your chest, making it hard to breathe. “I failed him. I failed him.” 

“Obi-Wan,” you start, trying to grasp at anything, everything to comfort him, not even thinking of how you can’t call him that here, even if there’s no one in sight.

If he registers your call, he doesn’t let on, continuing in his whispers to the wall.  “He was burning. Burning, but I couldn’t do it. It would have been mercy to kill him, it was my mandate to do it, but I could not...” his voice gives out on the last word, and his shoulders fall forward in a shuddering inhale that transforms into a cut-short sob on its exhale.

“And now…” as the words pour from him, his shields fall, and so do the floodgates on his emotions, and it takes all the training you know to not be washed away in the torrential current of his grief. Does he even know he’s doing it, or has the insurmountable weight of his burden finally overridden his innate control over them?

“I’ve sentenced him to a fate worse than death.” He’s only barely choked out the end of his thought before his shoulders start to shake in earnest and he crumples in on himself as he begins to weep for his brother.

Giving no heed to the odd angle, you throw your arms around him. Trying to get your arms around his body is exactly the embodiment of the feeling of the moment, this anguish you don’t even begin to be enough to cover. 

What could you say? What could you do? What would even begin to… 

When you press your fingers to his temple, it’s light, a show of how unforced this is, how much he can say no if he needs.  Because this isn’t for you. No, it’d be so much easier to not know the exact depth of his pain and rip your chest open with that knowledge. But you’re offering it,  meaning it absolutely, desperate for him to take the hand offered to him. “Please let me in. Don’t do this alone. Let me…”

Then he’s pulling you in, not just letting you come in yourself, clinging to you like a person drowning. You remember to steady, to try to keep your own head above the water as wave after surging, overpowering wave of soul-crippling agony like you’ve never felt it engulf you in their surge.

You can’t hold out against it no matter how hard you try, so you refocus from centering yourself to pulling his signature into yours as you wrap your arms tighter around his torso. 

 And you begin to weep with him.

 *********

 The suns are drifting low by the time both of you have any intelligible thought, far too late to start the journey back to the hut. 

At the inn, as Obi-Wan falls into the beginnings of a restless sleep, a thought emerges, clear and crisp in its awful truth. 

 You cannot tell him for a long while still. 

 *******

 It’s different now. Because when he wakes in the night, he doesn’t give you falsehoods you see right through. He lets you into the terror and distortional dreams that all reside over one theme.  

There’s silence in the first days after. Just silent tears and still embraces and the way time seems to freeze when grief is at its worst.

But then he starts talking. It comes in little pieces, then in larger ones.  

The loudest thing his signature screams is guilt.

You tell him how it isn’t his fault, how Anakin is responsible for his own choices, but he just gives you a new reason every time as to why it is his fault, how he could have stopped it. 

Because even in what he considers his worst failure, his verbiage is indicative of how it’s not his own image and pride hurting that he’s even considered. All of his thoughts, all of them, are on what Anakin needed that he didn’t give.

 At first, it’s just impressions from his mind, unsorted, blurry thoughts and feelings, but it eventually begins to become words. 

“After his mother died… I know that he blamed me. How couldn’t he? He told me of his dreams, dreams he knew were foresights, but I dismissed them, multiple times, at that. And the council… advised me against comforting him, but he… I… I did anyway.” His shoulders are forward, body sagging with unsureness that doesn’t fit him right in the slightest. “But it was far too late. I know there was something pivotal about the death of his mother, and I am...” he hesitates, seemingly not because he doesn’t know what to speak, but because he does. “Terrified. Terrified it’s all because I didn’t validate him sooner. If I had not...” His voice breaks off, as he shuts his eyes.

Fear is not something admired by the Jedi, you know. When he speaks of his own emotions, he speaks them like he’s confessing them.

 And as he confesses and confesses, you comfort where you can, cry with him when you cannot.

 *****

 The swells of sorrow ebb and flow in their intense bursts and receding stillness, and despite the moments of not being able to breathe under the weight of it, there are miniscule, almost violating, hysterical intervals where smiles and life spring to the surface, gasping for air. 

Or in this case, the inexplicable desire to dance. 

You don’t even really know when you start, simply going about cleaning clothing in the sonic washer, and the next, some ridiculous, repetitive tune sweeps you to move your hips and feet, uncoordinated and graceless. The tune itself played from a datachip, scrapped with some pieces Obi-Wan was repurposing to make repairs. You’re not even familiar with the type of music, and it’s hardly the type of music you’d normally choose, but you find that today, it’s an improvement on the quiet that falls upon the house as Obi-Wan works outdoors. 

The song swings into a bridge, and you slide across the stone floor, imitating something you saw in a music holo years ago, as you do, your foot catches on the rug you recently added, sending you fumbling for your footing. You eventually catch it before you fall, but as you look up, you decide to lower yourself to the ground anyway at the sight of Obi-Wan, leaning up against the door frame, watching you with an amused expression, the fingers of one hand tracing between his lips and chin.  

You sit splayed as tactless and gangly as you danced and let out a short, startled laugh. 

“Please, don’t stop on my account. I was quite enjoying myself.”  

Maker, could you just hide under the rug you tripped over? “Please tell me you haven’t been standing there long.”

He pushes off his lean on the wall, crossing the room to you. “I won’t tell you lies, my love.” 

Shame twists in your gut at his words, chasing the laughter in your throat away. But Obi-Wan extends a hand down, and you take it, letting him draw you to your feet. 

He kisses the back of your hand before taking it in his, extending the clasp out to the side of your bodies as his other hand rests hot on the small of your waist. 

“But I will join you, if you don’t mind a style change.” 

“I don’t know how to dance like this,” you say, factually.  

“Then allow me to teach you.” When you look in his eyes, they’re lined with the etches of heartache still, but there’s something else too, brimming to the surface. 

“What, to this music?” You give your last, unconvincing protest.  

He simply drops his forehead to yours, and the small sounds of the room fade to white as a sweet, moving melody replaces it. It’s not perfectly clear, and it takes a moment to realize that it’s because it’s coming from Obi-Wan’s memory.  

The music has a distant, foggy quality, and it has potential to be eerie, but instead, it just lifts you into an ethereal feeling.

He steps, and your feet follow, not as graceful, but he makes it easy for you, the steps hinted out in his thoughts before taking them in actuality. 

When you start to feel confident enough in the movements, you look up at him. “Does this mean I can teach you my dances next?”

He laughs, laughs, unabashed and with no emotion harbored under it, and some torn piece of your heart mends at the sound.

“Certainly not.” 

You laugh too, even at the thought of him trying. The laugher rolls into a smooth quiet, and you let yourself bask in the feel of his body against yours, the press of his hand on your back as you rest your cheek against him. 

Obi-Wan cradles you to him, forsaking the pattern of the dance as he encompasses you in his arms, lowering his lips to your cheek, then your mouth in a blazing kiss. 

He takes your hand in his, lifting it above your head. Then you’re guided into a spin, and the room spins double with it as you abandon all endeavors of trying to get the dance correct. Your hand drops protectively to your belly before you can even think better of it, and by the time you know you’re not going to throw up, it’s too late. You already feel Obi-Wan’s unmistakable concern right before he asks, “What’s wrong?” extending an arm out toward you. 

His complexion is ashen with worry, and when you don’t respond, you feel him start to reach out to your mind; a spike of panic zaps down your spine, and you’re suddenly not sure you’re not going to throw up after all. 

Your shields crash down, not enough time for subtlety, and he retracts both his hand and inquiring tendril of energy as hurt and confusion shape his features. 

You can’t do this. You can’t keep up this facade or cover this moment with a lie you know he’ll see through. But you can’t tell him either. After all the weight he’s carrying, the weight of the being that grows in you should be yours alone. You can’t thrust that upon him. 

But it’s a delusion that you can keep this from him forever. You’re going to hurt him one way or another, and the weight of your silence and lies multiply every day you insulate him from the truth. 

You take in a shuddering breath as dread settles into your bones. You know what you have to do.

Even as you slowly lower your shields, opening your signature, your mind screams at you in opposite directions, ripping you in half, and your hand shoots out to the nearest wall to stabilize yourself. How could you be so sadistic to tell him this? How could you not tell him? After all the trust you have in each other?

But he doesn’t take the invitation. “I will not touch your mind if you are still unsure you want me to,” he says softly but resolutely as he approaches you, but stays an unthreatening distance away, as if approaching a frightened animal. 

No, no, no. You won’t have him being the one to sturdy you through this. You need to be strong, be ready, don’t force him to coddle you through the blast to his own chest. 

So you dial down your own emotions and switch your absorption to amplifying the still tiny, barely recognizable life you’ve been carefully censoring ever since you heard it yourself.

You want to close your eyes, blockade the pain of both how it impacts him and how it will impact you, but that’s not how you two do things.

Summoning every iota of bravery and resolve running in your veins, you force yourself to look up at him as you watch understanding coat him. 

His eyes go wide, and his hands clench and flex at his sides in an erratic, nervous pattern. 

You can’t keep your signature open to his mind’s reaction, you just can’t. He’s seen enough, and you can put your shields up again. His face is enough to confront all on its own.

Obi-Wan steps toward you, slowly, dazed in a completely uncharacteristic way. With the way he seems to ever be prepared for the blows life throws at him, you hate how you have to be the harbinger for the second one that’s knocked him off his feet.

When he stops in front of you, he places his hands on either of your shoulders and looks into your eyes, searching for confirmation, and you nod, trying to not let fear seep into your expression.

One of his hands covers his mouth as he takes it in. 

And then he’s sinking in front of you, off of his feet indeed, and onto his knees. You want to follow, ready to hold him through the heartache sure to follow, at the second child he didn’t ask for while he still grieves the loss of the first. 

But his hands instead take purchase on your stomach, tightening the fabric of your tunic around the barely-visible bump before bunching it up and lifting, just enough so he can tilt his forehead against the skin there. 

You can feel him reaching out, not taking him long at all to find what he’s searching for, and curiosity beats self-preservation at the last moment, prompting you to open your mind again, just for you to be able to catch elation coursing through Obi-Wan.

You don’t even bother trying to stifle your confusion as he looks up at you with glassy eyes.

Sinking to your knees to meet him, you take his face in your hands, trying to make sense of it all as he takes your hand in his. “I never... “ when his voice comes out unsteady, he clears his throat and tries again. “I never thought I’d have... That we could… didn’t occur to me that now...stars above, how long have you known?”

You don’t recall when you start crying, but tears are falling freely down your cheeks as you shake your head. “I’m so sorry. I… I would never want to keep something like this from you, Obi-Wan, but I couldn’t tell you, not with everything, not with all you already have…and i’m so sorry.”

“Oh, heavens, no. You should not have to do this alone. Please don’t keep things from me, even if you think it to be for my sake. We can…”

You fix him with a pointed, unamused stare. He exhales as he must notice his hypocrisy. 

“Your point is well-put and taken, but the sentiment still stands. We’ll not keep secrets from each other anymore. Do we have an accord?”

Despite it all, you smile at his overly-formal phrasing, something you’d normally have a quip about if it weren’t for the concern still nagging at you.

“Are you not angry then? Or disappointed?” you watch him carefully, praying to any deity listening that he doesn’t concoct some half truth to placate you. His first instinct is always to protect, but you’d never want it at expense of his authenticity. 

Bafflement marks his brow at first, then he takes your face in his hands. “Darling, no.” He says your name, gathering every bit of your attention. “I dreamt of you. During the war, when I was away. I did not sleep well, even then, but when I did, I’d sometimes dream of you, holding a child that I knew to be ours. When I woke, I would remember it so vividly, so painfully, because I never thought that was an attainable future for us.”

But that doesn’t need to matter if you… do you want this child?” His eyes are so full of hope, and it was the last thing you expected, but here he is laying it down on the altar of your preference, and maker, are you glad those two things aren’t opposing each other. 

Because his hope and yours are one in the same, and once he knows it too, at your whispering, choked, “yes,” he’s clutching you in his arms.

And for the second time in a month, you’re both huddled on the ground in tears. The first, bowing under the mass of catastrophe. Now, at the glowing relief of the sprouting of a dream sown in tears, too tender before to even say aloud.

But now? You’re saying it, back and forth, from him to you as your walls fall, permitting him into your mind as he welcomes you into his, and finally you take true comfort once again in the home you’ve built in each other. 

*******

The night after, you lie side by side, hand in hand, on a blanket splayed not far from the hut. The suns have sunken, but the pinks and oranges of their palette still paint the sky where it hasn’t yet turned to midnight cobalt. The light of the lantern gives off a similar hue, dousing everything in your reach in soft, warm hues.

It has taken Obi-Wan some convincing, being so out in the open with everything he had to worry about wasn’t his first choice, but you compromised for a small alcove in the rock formations which surrounded you on two sides. More easily defensible. Not that he needed it, but if he was cautious before, it was borderline unbearable now. With the added danger of the Empire knowing without doubt that he lived.  With more than ever to lose. 

So, he was in charge of safety, you were in charge of snacks. And if they so happened to be almost entirely comprised of those melons you couldn’t quite get enough of lately? That was no one’s business except yours. You brought a few things you knew Obi-Wan liked too, of course. 

What little remains of the miscellaneous spread you push to the edge of the blanket so you can both lie down. 

“I dare say it’s almost pleasant out tonight.”

You turn your head to him, a snort ready at him discussing the weather of all things, but it instead forms a cloud in your throat at the sight of him. 

His eyes are closed, hair rustling in the slight evening breeze, a tranquil ease over his profile. 

The small patches of grey in the part of his beard next to his ears catch the first glints of moonlight in a way the rest of his hair doesn’t, giving them away. 

The mellisonant lowness of his voice brings you back to yourself, cheeks heating. 

“I can feel you staring, little one.”  He opens his eyes, leisurely rolling to his side. “Some say it’s quite impolite.” Slanting over you, he lifts a brow, daring your response.

“And is that a problem?” You look up at him through your eyelashes, feigning innocence. 

Obi-Wan’s gaze follows back up to the stars, as he plays right along, pretending to have to think on it. “I suppose it depends.” 

“On?”

“On whether or not you allow me to return the impropriety,” he responds with a coy smile, moving back to you, so close now you can feel his exhales on your cheek. 

Warmth blooms through you as you answer back, “You can always look, Obi-Wan.” You lift yourself to close the short distance between your face and his, pressing your lips together, which he deepens right away. Using the hand not supporting half his body off of you still, he fans out his fingers across your belly, towing the line between caressing gently and clutching protectively. 

You pull your lips back from his as an uninvited slither of insecurity slips into your chest. 

He senses it, of course, so you speak before he even needs to ask. “Are you really, truly, certain this is what you want? Now? I don’t want you to just say so because…and we could wait, we have...”

“I am,” he says, adamantly, before you even have a chance to finish. His eyes flash to the side. “I…” He rolls back onto his back, looking straight up as he talks seemingly half to you, half to himself. “There is not much I know for certain these days. Some days… I scarcely can remember who I am anymore.” 

He turns his eyes back to you, unwavering. “There are seldom few things I haven’t questioned of late, and my love for you isn’t one of them. And from the moment I’ve known, from the very first instant you let me feel the life within you, my love for them hasn’t been one either.” 

Your thoughts split into two, one wanting to lean into it, to take him for his word that’s always true, and the other cautioning you, telling you to keep distant and watch for the surface level honesty he gives that hides the brutal one he safeguards you from. 

But you’re not hiding anymore, feelings unconcealed in your energy and on your face, so he leans back into you, grasping your arm in his hand, squaring your shoulders to him. You cringe at yourself when you know he’s heard the impression of you questioning. It’s redundant, but self-doubt always is. “Know, please know, my darling.” Taking your hand in his, he brings it up to his temple with an insistence that you have no desire to counter. 

And it’s there. Right there and sparking in its clarity, right at the threshold of his mind as you enter it. How much he means his words, no holds barred, no cleverly crafted glazes to an unly underbelly of reality. His reality was this, how severely he craves starting a family with you. How much he already loves the being within you, how he looks forward to the day he gets to hold them in his arms. 

The fear is there too, quiet, but not kept from you. The fear of failing as a father, unsure of assuming any role that resembled a mentor again, all-too-familiar with the ghost that will float over him in every lesson he teaches. 

What shocks you there is his faith in you. In how much he’s already learned from you about the impact of open affection, in how you don’t let your feelings lead you, but you let them breathe, not suffocate them. It’s part of how he even can acknowledge his fears to himself and to you without berating himself under the too-simple phrase “fear leads to the dark side.” There’s truth in it, but also inaccuracy. 

Because he’s afraid, and yet, there is so much light in the acknowledging of it to himself, and in that very act, it loses much of any power it could have had over him. Oh, how deeply he wishes he could have articulated that understanding to Anakin. 

The pain is fresh, but so is his anticipation for the future, swirling together in a potent drink, and his throat bobs with the effort to swallow them down simultaneously. 

He knows you’ll help ground him through it, he trusts you, even in his uncertainty in himself.

It breaks your heart but also warms it: the knowledge that he lets you into that place where he keeps the questions of himself, the place only you and the man who’s caused most of this doubt have been permitted. 

 With a thankful short farewell, you part from his mind as you know exactly what you want to do.

The remains of your snacks still rest on the edge of the blanket, including the shells of the deep purple-pigmented melons. The one draw-back to their delightful taste was how badly they stained your fingers. You had to break them into tiny pieces, plopping them into your mouth without allowing them to touch your lips unless you wanted your mouth to stain too. 

But right now? The staining quality was just what you needed. 

Although first you needed a blank canvas. 

“May I take your tunics off?” you ask, sitting up. 

Despite a short twitch of confusion and then interest, Obi-Wan follows, raising himself up into a kneel, slightly lifting his arms in compliance. 

The paleness of his skin catches all the light of the lantern, highlighting your view as you slowly slide the fabric up and off, gliding your hands up the line of hair dipping below his navel as it becomes more exposed. It grants you a quiet, steep intake of breath from him and you suddenly give halt momentarily, distracted by the alluring appetite you’ve created. 

No, you won’t give in. Not yet. He needs to know this. 

You take one of the broken pieces of melon rind in your hand, where little tart bits of the fruit still cling, dribbling pigment, but before your finger makes contact with the taut skin of his chest, you pull back at the realization you might have bitten off more than you can chew. 

How do you even begin to describe him? Obi-Wan is so many things at once, so many attributes, and every descriptor that comes to mind falls blatantly short of him. 

Then you recall Obi-Wan going through the motions of Alchaka, watching his body fight to maintain the poses at times. Being such a personal practice, you felt honored that he let you see him go through the exercises, and even more honored that he opened up to you about the purpose behind it later. It was an exercise of both physicality and Force use, and the goal was absolute exhaustion. That was the destination. Trying, knowing from the start that he’ll fall short in the end, but doing it all the same. Because there’s so, so much to be said for the trying.

So you do. You bring the messy fingertip to his clavicle, smearing the first word you know to absolutely be true of him, as if starting the premise with a whisper of I know you’re even more than the sum all of these singular praises. 

The word “complex” appears in your penmanship on his skin as you drag it to life. You look up to his eyes, and his curiosity is clear there, but also so is the tenderness that is elemental to any time he looks at you. And just like that, you have your next word.

Kind.

And at the way he flushes so lovely for you at that?

Beautiful. 

You feel his protest before you see it, the objection in his signature, and you know you’re going to have to switch methods. 

Just then, a droplet from where you’ve written the last word on his pectoral falls, down, down, threatening toward the hem of his trousers, but you’re fast, dropping your mouth down and catching it all on your tongue before it can stain the bleached beige of his remaining clothing. 

When his stubborn revolt at the affirmation quiets in his mind in exchange for a flash of searing lust, you know exactly how you’re going to continue. 

Because Obi-Wan Kenobi, general, warrior, negotiator, Jedi Master, legend, has rarely ever been affirmed as such, and he squirms under the thick blanket of his humility and deprivation anytime someone endeavors. 

So you need his mind to be preoccupied enough, guards down low enough, so he can even hear the message get through.

When you place your hands over his waistband, locking eyes in inquiry, stopping when he hesitates, scanning the area around you, vigilant as always. Overly so now. 

“We’re alone. And wouldn’t you be able to sense it if we weren’t?” 

He looks down at you as he answers. “If I stay mindful enough to do so, yes.” 

Good, he’ll be even less prone to fight you if he has some of his mind sensing outward.

You look back up at him with the facial equivalent of asking “well?” to which Obi-Wan sighs in response. “Very well then.”

With your familiarity with ridding him of clothing, it only takes moments before you can finally taste him where you want to, where he’s already hard and swollen for you. 

 You know you won’t be able to take him as much as you want, a recently-developed overactive gag reflex preventing you. But it just so happens to be convenient tonight, as the resulting taunt should have him right where you want him.

A gentle kiss, right to the head of his cock is all the warning you give him before taking the whole tip in your mouth, swirling your tongue around him, pulling a choked hum deep from his throat. 

Oh, oh, Maker, have you done a grand miscalculation, because you forgot an entire factor in this equation: the way you have been borderline hysterical in hunger for him.

You’ve kept so much from him, and part of how you’ve even managed is starting to convince yourself of less than fact. Facts like how many times you’ve had to change underthings recently, physical evidence of desire unwilling to comply to your head’s demands. Facts like how you’ve literally had to bite your finger to keep the feelings at bay. 

You’d expected changes in your body even before your belly grew, but this was one you hadn’t anticipated. In some ways, it wasn’t that different than usual. You never knew you could want someone with the breadth that you want Obi-Wan. 

But this? Of late? It feels like it’s been amplified tenfold. 

You’re not keeping any cards close to your chest anymore, but you do have to ignore your own body’s screaming cries as you complete this.

He needs to know. 

Nerves still serenading his brain with feedback, you re-wet your finger with the purple juice and write the next words across his abdomen. 

Wise.

Perceptive.

He’s caught on to your scheme by now, cued by the all-too appropriate addition of the last word, and he lets you know it, an impression projected, speechless but still unobstructed. He’s still powerless against it. Or rather, letting himself be powerless. Trusting you with the control he has left, trusting you in his vulnerable places. The places where he’s weak.

Strong.

The word spread over his right upper arm, where he’s obviously just that. But may the tint of the word bleed through his skin, may it run through his veins, because that’s how deep and deeper still that his strength runs. It’s in the way he doesn’t flaunt it. It’s in the way he chooses to wield it. 

Gentle. 

He closes his eyes, flinching at the onslaught of acclamation, and you dip your head down again, wrapping your lips around his cock, letting him slide to where you can take him comfortably, just starting to build a pace as his hips squirm in harmony with his suddenly erratic breaths. Oh, how you’d love to let him deeper, allow his cock past your lips beyond the teasing amount you can take now, but the little writhes his body gives in protest are enough to almost make you okay with how your mouth won’t agree with your ambitions. He says your name, groaned out in bliss as he cups a hand on your cheek.

His barriers are down, so it’s easy to hear when his deprecating thoughts quiet again, and you switch back to coloring him again. 

You know the moment you look up at him that it’s a mistake, because he’s flushed, so torn, suspended in the limbo of your give and withdrawal, mouth ever so slightly open, tongue darting out to wet his bottom lip. 

You’re only human, so before you draw anything else, you bring your lips to his, which is yet another mistake, because among the many things Obi-Wan is, he is a deep kisser, and as his tongue delves into your mouth, your will power takes a devastating blow. 

You pull back, reeling at the reminder of how easily he can take back control, knowing you have to complete this before you let him. 

Stars, how you want to let him. 

For now, you need that control back, so you take him into your mouth again, filthily wet and not nearly long enough as you quickly pull back, watching in satisfaction as he heaves forward at the loss, correcting himself quickly back into straight posture. 

With a smirk, you drag your slippery, pigmented finger across his lower stomach. 

Disciplined.

There’s so many more words, so much more he needs to know, and if you covered every inch of his skin in the smallest writing it still wouldn’t be sufficient of all that he is. 

Or you could whisper it all through the Force, embed it all in his mind. 

But because you’ve been there, know his mind inside and out, you know every time he sees his own skin, all he sees is the red of blood on his hands. The blood of his brother. 

And that’s exactly why you’re going to stain it in your own colors. Take back territory and push back the front lines that the army of guilt has taken over on him. 

Your Jedi, ever-adorned in unassuming beige, now drips in the color of royalty.

Charming.

Humble. 

Confident. 

Steadfast. 

You’re only left with enough space for one more word, and you want some sort of conclusion to it all, something to summarize the expanse of the man kneeling in front of you. 

Nothing can. 

But maybe, just maybe, one word encapsulates what he is to you. 

Treasure. 

This time you do chant it across his thoughts, prompting him to open his eyes and look at you.

Cerulean blue blinks open, slowly, almost painfully and nearly overflowing with emotion. 

Thank you, is all he says, unable or unwilling to say it out loud, much too heartfelt and newly-budded for that.

You know his pain has older roots than those tended to in this moment, but you vow to yourself that you’ll never stop trying. 

Lowering your mouth around him once again, you don’t tease him anymore, at least not intentionally, even though you still can’t take more than half of him. 

“Look at you, you’re…” he hisses in a breath as you swipe your tongue against that vein on the underside of him. “Stunning. You’re doing so well, little one.” 

The taste of him compels you as much as his words, seizes you in spice-like addiction, and how interesting it’s going to be explaining that taste craving to him, among your sudden adoration for those damn melons. 

“Darling, I’m…” 

You feel it in his energy before he says it, already pulling off, replacing your mouth with your hand, dropping your lips down even lower, mouthing at his balls, and the feedback is instant. An outpouring crest of his pleasure blasting outward as he lets out a depraved moan, netting his hands into your hair.

Your hand is wet and so is where he’s spilled on his still flexing and releasing stomach, clear white maring the lettering halfway through “disciplined.” You’d clean it with your tongue if you weren’t sure how your overly sensitive taste buds would react now. 

It’s not the first time you’ve had sex since you’ve known you were pregnant, but it’s the first time since he’s known, and it’s the first time you’re not hiding the symptoms. Before, you carefully shied away from anything that might give you away, and between the preoccupation of everything on his own mind he was trying to keep from you and his respect for your boundaries, he never pressed. He had questions in his eyes, but you knew how to carefully reveal partial vulnerabilities to keep him off your trail.

Your chest flares at the memory.

We’re not hiding now. 

It’s your chant, your reminder, your comfort. How nothing of this caliber will be kept between you again.

His eyes confirm it, sincere and exact as they fight to break through their dazed slipping. 

Never again. His voice in your head is home, so consoling it can and has put you to sleep before. 

Right now, it wakes you up in a different light, dowsing you in heat as Obi-Wan takes your hand in his, wiping it on a piece of his discarded clothing before wiping the spend off himself. 

Then he’s taking your face in both his hands tilting you up before kissing you soundly. 

I love you, he says across the wire that ties your minds, the wire that keeps growing stronger every day. So, so very much.

You say it back, a fact as simple as breathing. You love him.

You want him, borderline need him the way you need your next inhale, you don’t say, but he must hear it anyway, because that cocky little smirk that’s been gone far too long is back.

“Shall we do something about that?”

You’re about to just lift your shift dress up and off in response, but he halts you, grasping your wrists. 

“Allow me.” 

He pulls you into another sultry kiss, completely neglecting the task of ridding you of clothing.

Or so you think.

There’s buttons all the way down the dress, and you’ve never used them, always wondering at their purpose if it can so easily lift over your head. 

At first, you don’t even know he’s doing it until you start to feel the coolness of the night air on your nipples. Opening your eyes, you pull back from him to watch as seemingly in thin air, your buttons undo themselves. 

“You needn’t seduce me further. You already know how much I need you,” you gasp, breathless from the kiss.

Obi-Wan just gives a small smile as he drops a hand, dragging it down your side, then down your thigh. “Hm. So impatient. All this from just pleasuring me?”

Maker, he knows! He knows that you are. You always have been, and it’s not as if you weren’t projecting your feelings too.

When he reaches a hand between your thighs, parting them and making a single, tempting stroke through them, his fingers come back glistening. 

“I should think you could feel that I am.” You let the tide of your frustration spill over into your connection to his mind. 

You know he had to hear you, but he gives no indication that he did. 

“Mm. Desire needn’t always be indicatory of impatience,” he punctuates his statement with a hand at the base of your skull, tipping your head back to expose your neck. “I need you to be patient, little one. Let me savor you.” And with that, his mouth makes contact with your neck at the same time his other hand plays with one of your exposed nipples. 

You whimper at the attention, quietly pleading with him for more. Among the still slight changes to your body, this has been the most notable one. How sensitive your breasts have become to even the scrape of the fabric of your clothing. 

And with the rough pads of his fingers working only one, leaving the other to pang in want...

“Obi-Wan,” it’s a prayer, a request. He doesn’t need his hands to cause sensation, and you’d beg him right now if he asked. 

He lets up on your neck, only barely, lips moving against the now throbbing skin. “Answer me first.” 

Clearing your throat, you give the most cogent response you can muster. “Depends on if you’re definition of savor is synonymous with torture.”

He locks eyes with you then, gently grasping a breast in each of his hands, dragging his thumbs over the nipples as you moan out your assent.

His chuckle is far too self-satisfied to be becoming of a Jedi, but you’re already too far gone to call him on it. 

“Is that what you want, little one? For me to torture you so?”

An affirmative whimper is all the response you can give, and Obi-Wan reacts quickly, taking your chin in his fingers and tilting your eyes up to his again. 

“Then you will be patient for me. Because I’m always happy to stop, and we can begin again when you decide to adhere.”

Your brain short circuits on the spot, and all energy is redirected much, much lower. His voice, stars above, his voice when it takes a commanding tone. 

It’s intimate, it’s personal, and yet this game is almost inappropriately playful for how sincere the moment is. 

But such was being loved by Obi-Wan. Full of dissimilar feelings that shouldn’t fit, but moved together in liquid consistency. Like metaphors that didn’t rhyme but still somehow gave their own life-giving rhythm, not dissimilar to the sound of his heartbeat when you lay your head against his chest at night. 

Making quick work of the remaining buttons of your shift and underwear, he beckons you to join him as he lies back down, large, warm hands guiding you to turn around so you’re facing away from him. 

You know that the purple stickiness of the fruit will smear from his body to yours like this, but you can’t at all bring yourself to care. 

You gasp a sigh of relief as one of his hands finds your breast, brushing a knuckle over the too-sensitive nipple. 

“Please.” Your whispered beg sounds pathetic, even to your own ears. But as you arch against him in a frenzied attempt at skin contact, Obi-Wan juts his hips forward, grunting into the exposed column of your neck, and stars, yeah, maybe he didn’t find that so pathetic after all. 

“What do you want, darling?” His voice doesn’t divulge any desperation, and for only the hundredth time do you envy his immaculate self-control. 

“You know, don’t pretend you don’t.” Leaving any doubt to the wind, you push your chest against his barely-touching hand. 

“Specificity can be a virtue; that I also know.” 

You change techniques, driving your hips back softly into where he’s hard and insistent against your ass, hoping it compels him. 

Then you simply… can’t anymore. You’re frozen, unable to move your lower half at all. 

Tangling your desires into a knot and tucking it away, you find the mindfulness to reply. “Yeah, so is mercy.” 

“Indeed it is. I shall concede when you do.”

You won’t win a battle of the wills with him. You’re not sure anyone could.

So you bring his hand over to your nipple. “Touch me here.” 

You feel his smile without even seeing it as he starts tweaking the bud. “Like this?”

It’s so much sensation, all concentrated on such responsive flesh, that you want to beg for him to switch to touching you between your legs.

You haven’t even finished the thought when you feel his unmistakable metaphysical brush against your thigh.

Extending a tendril of your own energy, you invite him in, and he takes it eagerly, ever as eager if not more to be entwined with your mind as with your body. 

He hears it all, the besottment, the arousal, the neediness. The panic that he might drag this out longer, that you’ll have to go a single minute longer without...

“It’s alright. It’s alright.” He sends soothing waves through your connection, and he swaps the positioning of his hand with the curl of power. He turns his hand so that the back of it runs through where you’re aching for him, gathering up your slick on the backs of his knuckles. You have to contort your neck to see what follows when he takes the hand back behind you, and your mouth goes dry when he sucks the knuckles in between his lips. 

You want to hear, you want to know what he’s…

He’s welcoming you in, navigating you to the brink of his mental barriers, letting you take that final plunge into the unsuppressed fullness of your bond to each other.

Now it’s your turn to hear it: how his carefully constructed unaffected persona is not at all a match for his naked, wanton need for you. 

And under that, the foundation on which that desire is built, not the product of it, is his love, his unyielding, unashamed, iridescent love for you. 

It’s all you can do but to pour it back, affirming and soothing and calling his love into action with your own. 

You both don’t want anything else except the most complete of entanglement, and that’s exactly what he moves to do, situating your bodies, hiking your top leg in the crook of his arm as you feel the initial breach of his body into yours, and all breath leaves your lungs in an exhilarating evacuation.

His audible gasp is an echo of his emotions, how he thinks he’s prepared for this onslaught of feeling, but how you take him off guard, how his equilibrium threatens to teeter every time. 

The web of his consciousness enveloping you, it’s easy to pick out a single thought blaring within him: How much he adores the way you fit together. Your back against his chest, how your breast fits in his hand, how the snug joining of where his cock presses into your body sends you into trembles, how comforting your very presence is to his soul when he lets you in like this. 

Tears, without warning, seep out of your eyes as he starts to move against you, slow and deep. You close your eyes, willing the powerful emotion away, but glimmers of light flash out behind our closed lids the moment you do, and how the kriff does he stay composed? 

Anchor. Anchor against me. 

He stills, letting you have a break from the barrage of pleasure blinding you as you search him out, looking for the cords of his intellect that seemingly both steam downward and beam upward, grounding him.

You find it, and you clasp on tightly.

But the moment he starts moving again, you lose sight of it all over again.

Your heightened hormones make your flesh so susceptible, and the tears start to fall again. Obi-Wan rolls your nipple in between his thumb and index, and he’s so good, and you’re so full, and you can hear his pleasure as your own, adding, doubling everything…

Scorching, electrifying heat speeds through your veins, hitting hard and fast, leaving you astounded and even more sensitive than before. 

Obi-Wan’s signature spikes as your climax resounds through him, and you can feel the vibration of the wanton noises he’s making right where his beard scratches against your neck. 

But he doesn’t allow it to overtake him, letting it run through him without resistance, making himself pliable but unmovable, keeping himself back from the edge. 

You still have much to learn.

Because that control? Gives him the ability to not even stop, not even hesitate once, even at both yours and his own ecstasy flowing through him.

When he starts striking his hips hard into yours, the weight of him inside you dragging exactly in the right place, you start to cry in earnest. Obi-Wan stops for a millisecond, concern radiating off of him, even when he can hear how much you want this so clearly, has access to every little passing thought. 

“Don’t stop, I’m fine, I pro…” He does just as asked while moving his hand down to your belly again, a soothing touch to his rough thrusts. Your eyes are blurred with wetness, overwhelmed with him. 

He’s listening to it all, applying every micro-feeling of feedback into action against your desperate, post-orgasmic skin, hand switching back and forth from your nipples to loosely clutching your neck, Force energy focused on applying pressure to your clit. 

“You’re doing so well, so good for me,” comes the wisp of his sultry tone, lips pressed against your ear. 

Since you aren’t even thinking about changing position, you know it’s his own preference that has him withdrawing, guiding you onto your back. 

There’s no inhibition this way, not the way there is when you’re on your side, no separation from your bodies being flush when he pushes into you again. You have to anchor in him, both mentally and with your fingernails clawing at his shoulder blades as your body starts into tremors.

He’s keeping the weight of his chest off of you, even though your belly is still barely swollen into distinguishable roundedness, and as much as you miss the contact, you can look into his eyes like this, can see the unfiltered attachment and all the weight of all the emotion he wills his body to not cave under. 

But then the tremoring transforms into series of contractions throughout your body, centering through your slick core, and you thrash your head to the side catching a glimpse of Obi-Wan’s fingers clenching into white knuckles, grasping into the exposed sand from the blanket being bunched up. 

He projects his thoughts across the tether to you,  how thoroughly impacted by the very fact you’re carrying his child, how affected he is by every little thing about you, honored that he’s allowed to touch you like this. 

You roll your hips back up into his, and that’s what it takes. His stuttering body is the lightning, and the searing, molten pleasure across your connection is the thunderous repercussion. 

It completely overthrows you, and your body bows against him as his high instantly cues yours again.

You can feel him throb inside you at the very moment you do, his turn to experience the secondary sensory white-out of your mate’s climax through the Force, his shuddering shout meeting your breathy whines in the close distance between your mouths. 

And he does kiss you then, soundly but with the haze of afterglow slowing it. 

“Have you any idea how bewitching you are to me?” He breathes it out, and despite all the ways you’d normally scoff at such words, his eyes tell the story, and you listen to it’s truth. 

His eyes hold that constant infiltrating study of you, the one that could be unnerving if his mind, still tethered to yours didn’t hold such amor, heart bleed such fondness that settles in the creases around his eyes. 

How interesting it is watching someone as knowledgeable as him having such an inquisitive outlook on life, and being so frequently the object of those investigations. 

Did the galaxy know her debt to him? Did she know the sum owed to inflicting the worst of life’s pains on someone who refused to let it build anything except an even gentler man of himself? When does she plan on repaying him? What does she offer in exchange for her cruelty of the hand she’s dealt Obi-Wan Kenobi?

Then the whisper comes, soft but crisp, from somewhere in the threads of existence around you, “Can’t you see? It’s you, child.” 

You could argue it. You could scream how it’s not enough, how you’re not enough,  how he deserves so much more from some dark insecure place inside you. Or how love shouldn’t be treated as currency in exchange for pain, how the galaxy could still have your fists if that was how it tallied. 

But the finality of it settles in your soul, more impressionistic than in solid wording: there is no easy conclusion that ties the suffering of life into purpose, no experience that erases or mends its pain. But love. Love makes the complicated endeavor of trying to find purpose in the madness worthwhile.  

Obi-Wan’s hum of agreement resounds in your ears and through to your head. His Force signature feels so familiar, so at home within yours and yours within his, that you’d briefly forgotten he could still hear you. 

With all the strength still left in quaking limbs, you wrap your arms around him, and he melts into it. 

The compassion of his soul hardly matches his war-ravaged skin, his guilt-ridden memories. Every good thing here came to be with a war waged, refined and not burnt away in fire at his sheer tenacity. 

It’s a growing thing, blooming in the desert. The beliefs in both of you. Your love for each other. Your own trust in the Force. 

Healing is no short journey, but her two sojourners here are determined.

And if that tender hope can blossom here?

Then maybe, just maybe: Tatooine is exactly the place for a baby after all. 

*********

In the valley beyond the hut, a boy jets quickly away in some mechanical contraption he recently motorized, a girl in a similar vehicularized compilation of junk not far behind. 

On the cliff’s edge stands Obi-Wan, eyes scanning the landscape intermittently for any sign of threat between longer affectionate looks at the children before him.

He turns, feeling your approach in his keen awareness as you set a hand on his shoulder from behind. His temples are now even thicker with sun-bleached silver, and his eyes wield the lines of laughter around them. 

And you? You’re as roped in by his gravitational pull as you’ve always been. 

He puts a hand over yours, clasping it to bring you in front of him, where he can still watch the children and encase you in his arms at the same time. 

“Slow down, Luke! You’re going too fast!” comes the distressed cry of your daughter, Ahlina, drawing your attention away from admiring Obi-Wan and back to the valley. Her vowels curl in the same way her father’s does, but her more casual phrasing was certainly thanks to you. Luke shouts back at her, “Come on, keep up!” while he races on ahead.

Obi-Wan smiles, seemingly amused at a secret joke. 

“They are much too young for this nonsense still,” he speaks, muffled slightly as he hides his lips in your hair. 

“Probably,” you reply with an airy laugh.

Not long after, the engine on Luke’s small contraption gives out, jutting him off and tumbling forward into the sand. 

“I told you!” Ahlina yells, her own machine coming to a halt not far away from Luke. 

When they make it back up the cliff, Obi-Wan couches and opens his arms, and they both come running with smiles. They’re still young enough to be unshy about affection, and Obi-Wan knows to soak it up, closing his eyes in relishment. 

Luke is the first to wiggle down, waving before running over to hug your leg, which you happily return, brushing some of the blonde mop of hair from his forehead. You adored the nights that the Lars let him sleep over. 

Although the nights that Ahlina slept over at theirs certainly had their allure too. 

“Can we have a snack, Daddy?” Ahlina asks, still happy to be hoisted up on one of his arms. 

“Hm. Perhaps I can make some of those ahrisa sweet breads again?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Can Mommy make them?”

“Why not mine?”

“Because you always burn them.”

He bops a finger lightly on her nose with a smile. “Cheeky.”

She goes to bop him on his nose in return, but he catches the finger, holding it. 

“Give it back!” she screeches through a giggle. 

“No, no. I think I’ll keep it now.” 

The suns are dipping low as you retreat into the hut, the two children running ahead, racing to gather the ingredients to help you bake the bread. Luke especially was an enthusiastic sous-chef. 

You step to follow them, but Obi-Wan grasps your hand. You turn back to him, and he barely gives you a second before he joins his mouth to yours. Sliding a hand into the auburn beard, you open your mouth to him, letting his familiar taste permeate your senses. 

He reluctantly breaks after a long moment, and you take his hand in yours. When you turn back to the horizon, the suns are dipping, blanketing the landscape in the most celestial light of the day. 

The planet’s eyes aren’t harsh in the way you used to see them. They’re still intense, and frequently unforgiving. 

Perhaps they never changed. Maybe only you did.

But as they sink now, you give a silent, partial farewell, knowing they’ll greet you again in the morning. 

Because if Dark’s patience is infinite? 

So is the promise of the return of the Light. 

Tagging upon request: @million-dollar-legs

#obi-wan kenobi #obi-wan kenobi x reader #obi-wan kenobi x you #obi wan kenobi x reader #obi wan kenobi x you #obi-wan x reader #obi-wan x you #obi wan x you #obi wan x reader #obi-wan kenobi smut #obi wan smut #obi-wan smut #obi-wan #obi-wan x oc

[nishi-noyas]

hiiii, i heve that your request are open so i was thinking about some of the boys reacting to you in shor shorts? i'd love to see that, i love your work 💖💞💟💝 don't feel like u need to do this right now, rake your time bby byeee

(2/2) (i'm the same person of short shorts) the boys can maybe be noya and kenma (or just who u like i just love them all)

A/N: I hope you don’t mind that I added a little yamaguchi and that Kenma’ did a little shorter 🥺👉🏼👈🏼 I was trying to get this out as soon as possible.

Yamaguchi T. x Reader

Yamaguchi didn't know how to act at first. You had joined the volleyball team as their team manager around the same time as Yachi did. He had thought you were so pretty when Kiyoko had first introduced the two of you to the team. While Yachi was shy and utterly terrified of them, you were the complete opposite. It wasn't like you were loud and outgoing, but you made sure to try to keep the first years in line and tried to help Yachi get out of her shell more. He was so incredibly grateful that you weren't afraid to talk to them becuase Yamaguchi knew that he didn't have the guts to try and speak to you himself. You laughed at his jokes and cheered for him when he managed to land a serve during practice. 

So yeah, the boy had a massive crush on you. 

Said crush was not very helpful at the moment. The team was currently in Tokyo. Training with Nekoma and other amazing Tokyo teams. 

The team had been in the middle of a practice game with Nekoma. Yamaguchi had just been sent out as a pinch server when he spotted you across the gym in the shortest running shorts he had ever seen you wear. Tadashi's brain short-circuited. He had seen you in the school's skirt uniform, but you had always came to practice in the tracksuit that all the managers wore. It made sense for you to be wearing them, though, it was hot and humid, and everyone was trying to do their best to fight the heat. 

That still didn't mean that Yamaguchi was ready for it. He was so caught off guard by you that he forgot where he was. Ultimately, the whistle got him out of his stupor, but even then, the poor boy was so flustered that he just ended up hitting the ball into the net. 

"Ah," Yamaguchi winced. "S-Sorry! Sorry guys!" 

"It's okay!" 

"Don't sweat it, Yams!" Nishinoya reassured, giving Yamaguchi a hard slap to the back. 

Tsukki tsked, and Yamaguchi couldn't help but blush under the knowing look that his best friend was giving him. "Just make sure to keep your attention on the game."

"He's not focused on the game?" Hinata asked, honestly so confused. Having anything other than volleyball in your head? Impossible. "Then what are you thinking about?"

"I-I, n-nothing," Yamaguchi flushed under the questioning eyes of the rest of his teammates. His eyes moved back and forth from Y/N to back to his teammates. "I'm not thinking about anything."

The team quickly figured out what was happening when they caught sight of you in short shorts. All of them (except for Tsukkishima) collectively let out an "Ooh."

"Oh my god!" Nishinoya gushed excitedly. 

"Ha, Ha!" Tanaka laughed. He had a proud grin on his face as he slapped Yamaguchi on the back. He oddly resembled a proud older brother. "Yamaguchi, you dog you." 

"No, no!" Yamaguchi hurriedly denied. "That's not-you got it all wrong!"

"Alright, alright," Daichi said, dad voice at use. He finally decided to intervene when it looked like Yamaguchi was going to pass out from embarrassment. "Leave him alone, guys."

Daichi laid a hand on Yamaguchi's shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly. 

"No one will blame you for having a crush."

"I don't-"

Yamaguchi stopped midsentence when Daichi gave him his best "bullshit" look. The look shifted to a fond and understanding one when the first year shyly looked down at his feet. 

"Just try to keep your head in the game, okay?"

"Okay."

Yamaguchi managed to focus long enough to score some points for the team until he was subbed out. As he jogged off the court, you were there to greet him with a smile and a water bottle. 

"You did great out there!" 

"Thanks, Y/N," Yamaguchi said, his eyes looking everywhere but at you. Yamaguchi was sure that he was close to getting a heat stroke from how warm his face was. 

You knew that Yamaguchi wasn't always very talkative compared to Nishinoya. Still, the fact that he was obviously trying hard to not look at you was weird.  

"Are you okay, Yamaguchi?" 

"Y-yeah!" Yamaguchi stuttered out. He made an effort to look at you to try and play off how attracted to you he was right now. Yamaguchi tried, he really did, but his eyes wandered down to your legs before he not so subtly looked away. "Of course! Wh-why wouldn't I be?" 

That's when it clicked. 

"Then...why aren't you looking at me?" You asked, even though you were sure you had figured it out. You suddenly felt yourself get just as shy as Yamaguchi. Your heartbeat started to the race, and your cheeks started to warm up. 

"I... It's just that... you...you're really pretty, and you’re making me really nervous right now." 

Nishinoya Y. x Reader

Nishinoya flirting with you was a daily occurrence. The guy had to say at least one flirty comment to you or Kiyoko a day. You were sure that Nishinoy would keel over and die if he didn't. So let's just say that you were very confused when it seemed like Nishinoya was avoiding you.It started in the morning while you and all the other managers helped feed the teams whatever was made for breakfast that day. It was a humid day so you had decided to wear a pair of your old volleyball shorts to fight off the heat. 

You talked with the libro from Ubugawa high when the clatter of a tray hit the floor from behind you. Embarrassingly, it startled you unfortunate enough to make you scream and clutch at your chest. 

"Nishinoya!" You yelled when you saw who the culprit was. "You scared me! Be more careful."You expected Nishinoya to something around the lines of "Don't worry, sweet cheeks. I'll keep you safe." 

Instead, all Nishinoya did was look at you with wide eyes, stutter out an "S-sorry" before running out of the cafeteria. It was weird, but you didn't think much of it at first. You believed that Nishinoya had just been preoccupied with that setting move he was trying to get down. The next time that Nishinoya acted out of character was before a practice game. Coach Ukai entrusted you with passing along some advice he had for Nishinoya.

"Hey, Noya!" You called out as you walked onto the court, where the boys were stretching. You immediately caught Nishinoya's attention, but instead of him happily bouncing his way towards you, the boy got up from his leg stretches and ran straight out of the gym. 

"Hey! Nishinoya!" Daichi yelled after him. "Where are you going?!"

"Bathroom!" Nishinoya yelled back, never looking back. "Gotta take a shit!"

"What's up with him?" You heard Kageyama ask. 

"Maybe he's nervous," Hinata answered, a tone of empathy in his voice.

The whole day continued like that, with you trying to talk to Nishinoya only to lead to him running away from you. At some point, he even threw poor Hinata to get the chance to run away from you during lunch. After making sure that Hinata wasn't hurt, you went to the person you sure had some idea of why Nishinoya was acting like this.

"Tanaka!" Tanaka stopped mid winding up for a spike when you called out to him. It was after the training camp was over for the day. The other half of Karasuno's chaos duo was doing some extra practice. 

"Can I talk to you for a second?"

Tanaka jogged up to you. "What's up, Y/N?"

"Alright," You said, resting your hands on your hips to let Tanaka know that you meant business. "What's Nishinoya's deal?"

"I-I don't know..."

"Don't lie to me," You poked a finger against Tanaka's chest and made sure to stare him down, so Tanaka knew you were serious. "Nishinoya has been avoiding me all day, and I want to know why."

Tanaka groaned in frustration. He was visibly uncomfortable with spilling any of his best friend's secrets, and you honestly felt bad for him. "I...I really think you should be asking him this."

"And how am I supposed to be doing that?" You asked. "Again, he's been avoiding me."

Tanaka shrugged. "I guess you're just going to have to catch him."

And that's precisely what you did. You waited for Nishinoya to finish his practice and hid from sight as you waited for him to get out of the showers. Nishinoya was too busy towel drying his hair to notice you, and that's when you took your chance and tackled him to the ground. 

"Ow!" Nishinoya groaned out from under you. "Y/N? What the heck?"

Nishinoya tried to sit up, but you pushed him back down his legs putting more pressure on your own. Nishinoya fought back a blush. 

"Why are you ignoring me?" You glared at him. "Did I do something? Are you mad at me?" 

"What? No! Of course not!"

"Then why do you keep running from me?" 

Nishinoya looked away from your intense glare. He wouldn't meet your eyes, and he sported a bright blush on his cheeks and cute pout on his lips. The sight of him like this, combined with his hair down, made you blush. You always thought Nishinoya was cute, but at this moment, you couldn't deny he was pretty.

You snapped out of your thoughts when you realized Nishinoya had mumbled something. 

"Um, sorry, what?" You blinked. 

"I...I didn't want to be a creep," Nishinoya repeated.

"A creep? Why would you be a creep?"

At your question, Nishnoya groaned and gently knocked his head against the floor in frustration. His eyes still not meeting yours.

"You just... "Nishnoya took a deep breath and let it out before he continued, "You look really good in those shorts Y/N. I guess you just made me really nervous."

Kozume K.

You and Kenma have been dating for a couple of months now. The two of you had bonded over the latest game that Kenma had gotten and how stupidly hard the water level was. The two of you rarely hanged out after school with his volleyball practice, and your studying it was hard for the two of you to meet up. When the two of you did have time, you would spend the day at each other's houses. This Saturday, Kenma was coming over to yours.

Kenma was waiting outside your door, playing a random game on his phone as he waited for you. The game had his full attention until Kenma heard the sound of your door open, and you're cheery "Hey!" 

"Hey, babe-" Kenma choked on his tongue when he found you in the shortest shorts he had ever seen you wear. They weren't anything drastic, but there was the most leg he had ever seen from you, and Kenma could feel himself short circuit. 

"You ready for me to kick your butt at Mario Kart?" You teased, unknowingly bringing Kenma back to earth. 

"I don't think you have any room to be cocky," Kenma replied, never giving you a clue that the sight of your legs had an effect on him. "You only ever manage to win once every time we play."

"Rude," You pouted as you let him in. 

The whole day was spent similarly to how you guys usually hung out, but you did notice that Kenma was a little more touchy than usual. While the two of you played a couple rounds of Mario kart and other video games, the two of you felt like playing Kenma sat closer to you, so your legs were touching. When the two of you were hungry, Kenma kept his arms wrapped around you from behind as he watched you make food. 

Once the two of you settled down for a movie, Kenma shocked you by snuggling onto your lap. You weren't used to this much attention from Kenma, so your face had been in a constant state of red taint. You were sure that Kenma would have curled up on the other side of the couch lazily playing a game on his phone, but here he was on your lap like a cat. 

Your chest was warm with fondness, and your heart wouldn't stop racing. 

"You've been really cuddly today," You said as you ran your hands through his hair. "Don't get me wrong! I'm not complaining. I was just wondering."

Kenma squeezed your legs and snuggled up against them. "I just really like your legs."

Once you learned about Kenma's thing for your legs, you made an effort to show off your legs. It always managed to get Kenma to get blushy and get touchy. He couldn't help himself much to Kenma's embarrassment and much to Kuroo and the team's enjoyment. 

#thanks for the request!! #haikyuu x y/n #haikyuu x reader #kenma x reader #kenma x y/n #kozume kenma x reader #nishinoya x y/n #nishinoya x reader #nishinoya yuu x reader #yamaguchi x reader #yamaguchi x y/n

[flowerslightning]

Have you heard about PFA and MFA?

or the full name is ‘Psychological First Aid’ (PFA) and ‘Mental Health First Aid’ (MFA)

Can we relate it with Cloud Strife? As we all know, Cloud had mental illness and was struggling alone. Let’s take a quick look on this topic then and see if characters in FF7 ever give PFA/MFA to Cloud or to each other. This is going to be a looooong post although I tried to simplified it, so, yeah. Good luck reading this !

Disclaimer : I’m not a psychologist. I’m still a student and psych is not my major field. During my intern, other than we got exposed a lot about psychiatric disorders and ways to deal with them, we also got trained psychological first aid in emergency department. If it wasnt because of this quarantine, i would have finished my training in emergency field. There might be false interpretation here or there, forgive me for that and pls correct any mistake in this post

This will probably trigger LTD. Sorry, but I had to, Pls read this post with open mind. Keep in mind I like both Tifa and Aerith, i have no grudges agaisnt Barret, Vincent, Nanaki or Cid so I am not being bias with any of them. I forgot a lot of stuff in OG (I played it when I was really really small), so I will be using lots FF7R and AC references here (and a bit from OG, depends whatever I remember)

Good to go? Allow me to rant. Read it slowly and if u skip some of it, u’ll probably mislead my actual words, and u’ll be triggered af. Don’t come at me with madness if u dont read the whole post properly

What is PFA and MFA? Generally speaking, if Basic First Aid is about covering the wound to prevent further bleeding, then PFA (Psychological First Aid) and MFA (Mental Health First Aid) is like applying a bandage on ur mental to avoid u continue being distress. 

Usually, PFA is often associated with disaster event or terrorism, where large number of people got affected. Meanwhile, MFA focus in one person who is developing mental health prob or already in mental crisis due to certain traumas, such as vehicle accident, house burned and etc

 Pls note that, certain people NEED MFA while the others may NOT NEED it. It is important to respect their needs/wants. Some victims may refuse verbally but they ACTUALLY NEED it (CLOUD STRIFE) and maybe some victims look like they dont need it, but they want it, and its super fine to give it

PFA/MFA not only done by the professionals and it is not a professional counselling, although necessarily training is needed if u want to approach deeper in this field. PFA/MFA is also not a psychological ‘debriefing’ - in which MFA/PFA doesnt need to involve a detailed discussion of the trauma event with the victim, but instead, it is an alternative way to psychological debriefing that helps for long-term recovery. (unless if ure a pscyhiatrist, then u have to forget about MFA and ask detailed questions regarding the events to help the patient to recover)

MFA and PFA both almost the same, but I will mention more about MFA here.

MFA (Mental Health First Aid) is not just about comforting “Oh, are u alright. I’m sorry for what u’ve been through”, but it is also about assessing their needs and concerns, protecting them from harm, provide practical support and support them feeling able to help themselves and others.

The main key for these two term is RESPECT - respect victim’s dignity, respect both parties safety and respect victim’s rights to make decision. Even without the PFA, we should respect these three in whatever circumstance we are in. 

A lot of us honestly were born with natural skill of MFA bcause of our own empathy, instinct or experiences and some got trained professionally. Some of them already had MFA due to high common senses they have.  

Some of the Do’s and Dont’s when giving MFA include;

Do’s : 1. Be trustworthy | 2. Respect their decision | 3. Be aware of and set aside ur bias | 4. Make it clear to them u are available for help even they push u away | 5. Respect their privacy and personal space | 6. Do remain calm and soft when the person in distress | 7. Listen and don’t interrupt their talking | 8. Help in terms of basic needs | 9. Create connection the person with others | 10. Give hope to them | 11. Provide private place to talk about the event | 12. Respect their strenght | 13. Advice small necessary matters or give simple words of encouragement | 14. Acknowledge positive features of what victims have done

Dont’s : 1. Rush in whatever the thing theyre doing with u | 2. Be dismissive | 3. Make promises u know can’t keep | 3. Ask anything in return for helping them | 4. Exaggerate ur skills | 5. Force help on people, being pushy | 6. Pressure them to tell their story | 7. Judge that person | 8. Put the person in risk of harm as result of ur actions | 8. Force them to accept ur idea/Listening to ur rant | 9. Talk rough | 10. Being bias with the people | 11. Touching that person too much | 12. Talk with the person in negative terms | 13. Abandon the person’s feeling

To simplify, there are 3 ways for MFA to begin, and I will only talk about one of them, the one that is the hardest to do, that is when u notice someone looks distressed and ure concern about them, and leading u to approach them first without them noticing ur concern. [Am I putting the right words here?]

In Cloud’s case, who do u think the first noticed Cloud behaved oddly and went to help him first ? - yeah Tifa. U probably would say “OFC she went to help him, she met him first at the train station. That guy looked sick af, who wouldnt ask if he was alright. If Aerith/Yuffie/Jessie met him first, they would do the same”. Okay guys, that was not my point. 

Let’s focus one by one characters and see what Do’s and Dont’s MFA (Mental Health First Aid) they’ve done to Cloud and other charas. Keep in mind, none of them know what Cloud had gone through, but Cloud had showed some obvious sign he was unwell and only a few of them noticed that and took action for it. 

The symbol [X] means the Dont’s in MFA and ( ✔) means the Do’s in MFA.

Biggs Jessie Wedge -

I know there’s a thing about man helping man’s psychology and Jessie being flirty with a guy.They [X] thought Cloud was like how they saw Cloud. and they considered it as normal. They didnt see Cloud under distress so they dont have the need to concern his mental status. The good thing about them was, the three of them (✔) respect Cloud’s strenght, giving Cloud the confident to be in action. But, Jessie [X] had zero respect on Cloud’s personal space

I wanna highlight about Biggs. Biggs had an attitude of overthinking stuff, but it wasnt so bad that would cause him harm, he just cared too much about his friends. So I believe Biggs was the type that would notice immediately when his friend being strange and would give MFA (Mental Health First Aid) with his own instinct even without the person asking it.

During the Sector 7 Plate attack, where Biggs was severely injured, when Cloud said he was not a fan of kids and Biggs said Cloud had so much in common (in common of what? Cloud with the kids or Cloud with him?), Cloud gave him ‘a sad look’ and Biggs reached out his hand to Cloud’s head. Biggs (✔) remain calm and soft when dealing with Cloud’s feeling (who faced traumatic event but Biggs didnt know about it) on that moment despite his current physical status. And also he (✔) wished goodluck to Cloud, leading to prevention distress on Cloud

Marle -

Marle [X] judged Cloud for someone who had no skills, but she entrusted Cloud to take care of Tifa’s well being. Not knowing who Cloud was, Marle noticed Cloud looked glum, she (✔) offered her ear for Cloud to rant and knew right away he was not having enough sleep, then (✔) advising him to sleep more . Lol, she was [X] biased with Cloud and Tifa. Not her fault, she only knew Tifa’s story, not Cloud’s. After the Sector 7 plate fall, we saw her being the most active member to help with the remaining citizens there. Marle without a doubt had given the citizens there PFA (Psychological First Aid) , by helping them with their (✔) basic needs, (✔) create connections, (✔) put away bias, (✔) remain calm and soft. 

Barret Wallace -

Barret was the same like Biggs Jessie Wedge. I’m sure Barret thought Cloud was just fine. Barret saw Cloud as a mercenary with stinky attitude,[X] judging him like that causing Barret to gave him the same attitude too. But overall, he (✔) respected Cloud’s strength a lot

However, after the Sector 7 plate fall, Tifa and Barret were the one that hurt (mentally) the most, Tifa as usual locking her emotions, there we could see how Barret comforting Tifa by (✔) giving words of encouragement and proceed on (✔) hugging her to show his empathy. Barret also (✔) remain calm and soft spoken when talking to the survival victims of Sector 7 citizens. He also (✔) acknowledged what the citizens had done to survive

Vincent Valentine - 

Don’t be surprise Vincent was listed here. This guy here was like another version of Cloud but more mature. In addiction, they both kinda share the same pain. So, I personally think Vincent understands Cloud pretty well. In AC, where Cloud was mentally ill, Vincent saved Cloud from Kadaj and brothers and (✔) took him to safer place. That was a common thing to do. But let’s go deeper, Cloud never told him about himself, but Vincent already  (✔) aware of Cloud’s trouble with the geostigma stuff and Cloud’s current mental status. Vincent, (✔) calm and soft like always (✔) didnt hesitate to asked if all of these were just about ‘fighting’ and it made Cloud to ‘re-think’ further about his problem. He (✔) didnt pressure Cloud here, instead he was (✔) helping Cloud to understand the condition he was facing, and this lead Cloud to avoid distress.

Aerith Gainsborough -

I know Aerith was special. She was an important character and devs created her to be ‘loved’ by the fans so that her death would be tragic. Aerith did almost all the things that shouldnt be done when giving MFA to mentally ill person. Some of u may say “Duh, Aerith didnt know anything about Cloud thus she had no intentions of giving him MFA”. Yup, ure right. Aerith didnt know about Cloud’s mental status but so as all the other characters in the series. 

Aerith was [X] being pushy with Cloud, in lots of ways, from making him as a bodyguard for free to forcing him to wear a dress. She [X] forced Cloud to accept her idea about meeting Andrea, dance and gown. She also [X] forced Cloud to help picking the flowers. Aerith [X] didn’t let Cloud to have his own decision [X] neither giving him a chance to talk,  and [X] abandon his feelings (cough..uhm, Aerith resolution). She also had [X] no respect on Cloud’s personal space and [X] too much touching and leaning to him. Aerith also [X] put herself in danger and that worried Cloud.  She [X] looked down on Cloud in someways too

However, at the Sector 5 slum, where the hooded man appeared, Aerith noticed Cloud was having trouble with himself, she (✔) encouraged Cloud to keep himself together. Also, throughout the entire game, Aerith always remind the team to (✔) have hope in everything. Her positive vibrant attitude was what (✔) made everyone able to believe in themselves. She also (✔) ensure Marlene’s safety and protected her. She was able to (✔) remain soft and calm when approaching Marlene. Remember Betty? Aerith took her time to helped her out and she even (✔) respected the little girl’s strength, (✔)slow and steady when saving her and (✔)soft spoken

Tifa Lockhart -

Tifa met Cloud at the train station, saw him being ‘not-so-fine’ state despite Cloud claiming he was completely okay. Tifa didn’t know what Cloud had gone through and  she (✔) didn’t pressure him to talk about it. She even helped him to (✔) find a place to sleep even when Cloud never asked for it. Tifa unconsciously was the first person to give Cloud MFA without knowing what Cloud had faced previously. And Cloud, on that moment, he really needed a help. Tifa also (✔) stated that if Cloud need anything, she would help him with it

Tifa (✔) remain calm everytime Cloud had sudden headache, she didn’t leave him alone and (✔) didnt put any pressure on him by asking question. During the (✔) Alone At Last, they had privacy Tifa asked about what happened after he left Nibelheim. She (✔) listened and didnt interrupt him, (✔) neither pushing him to talk more. Moreover, Tifa (✔) put a distance with Cloud, dunno if she was the one who was being uncomfortable or she actually (✔) respect Cloud’s personal space and privacy. Tifa (✔) didn’t force him to stay at Midgar, she asked him and was glad Cloud would stay for a while. Tifa was no doubt (✔) respect all Cloud’s decisions too. Also, don’t forget, Tifa also helped Cloud to help (✔) make ‘close connection’ with the Avalanche members and people in Sector 7 slums. She also (✔) didn’t do much touching with Cloud (Well, I mean, she didnt touch him in clingy way)

In AC, Tifa (✔) encouraged Cloud to have hope for Geostigma and the family

Tifa did [X] put herself in danger by becoming Corneos bride participant and that gave Cloud trouble (but Tifa ensured him she would be fine on her own previously) And btw, in OG, I read about the fans questioning why Tifa [X] didnt tell Cloud the truth. I would like to argue this matter. TIFA IS A CHARACTER WITH REAL HUMAN FLAWS, she too had her own traumatic event and was not really sure of herself on what to do. However, considering what Tifa had done for him, Tifa had helped with Cloud’s psychology the most.

I know Cloud was putting up a font, and that made him to have condescending attitude, and people couldnt see what Cloud was hiding behind the the bravery face. However, all of us as fans acknowledged the pain Cloud was suffering in the entire FF7 story. Some of the characters like Tifa, Marle, Vincent, Biggs noticed it and they took actions for it, while others, I do personally thing, they were hurting the Real Cloud’s mentality more. 

Long story short, Tifa was the one who gave mental health support the most to Cloud, followed by Vincent (AC), Biggs and Marle. Aerith did the worst with Real Cloud's mentality + she then died, mking Cloud be more miserable,

However, Aerith actually had the best way to give MFA/PFA to children, but maybe the worst to Cloud. While Tifa gave the best MFA to Cloud which helped him to get himself together through out the entire time

Alright thats the end of my talk. Thank you for being with meee

#final fantasy 7 #final fantasy vii #cloud strife #character analysis #final fantasy theory #advent children

[ymir-me]

We will be just fine - a Levihan fanfiction

Rated T

Hurt/Comfort - Fluff

read on AO3

“Will this pain ever end?” He scoffed, unsure of how to respond to such a hard question. “Never,” he finally said, still watching the night sky. “But one day, you will wake up feeling better than the day before. You will never forget, but you will be fine.”

thank you to @fullmetal-hellmouthchemist dearest for the amazing beta job, u da best <3 <3

She shot the hooks of her ODM gear with skill, soaring several meters from the ground. Hange had always been extremely agile and flexible, her movements clean and elegant. Without an eye, though, it was harder to adjust her depth perception, making it almost impossible to move around without occasionally crashing against obstacles.

One mistake and she could end up as Titan shit (if only Titans had a digestive system), a fate she couldn’t risk now that she was the Survey Corps Commander–she needed to get better and better, she needed to perfect herself. She couldn’t waste Moblit’s sacrifice or betray Erwin’s trust, especially not as they looked down upon her.

The pain of the loss never faded, never dulled, not once. It was always present, lurking, waiting for her to be unoccupied to attack. Hange tried to drown that feeling by working until the first lights of morning and training until her muscles ached; she had skipped more meals than she could remember because thinking about food made her stomach sick. She was so tired.

One flip, one jump, a wrong move and she slammed against a tree with her back. The air left her lungs all at once as she let out a choked sob. She shot the hook again to reach a higher branch and sit on it to catch her breath.

“Fuck!” she screamed, and she punched the poor trunk.

“Oi, shitty eyes. What the hell are you doing up there in the middle of the night?”

She looked below her and there was Levi, standing on top of the roots of the tree.

“Just training, why are you here?”

“I was looking for you, couldn’t sleep,” he shrugged. “I made tea and brought you some bread because you’re apparently trying to starve yourself.”

She smiled softly and fixed her glasses over her nose, they were a bit too tight on her still-fresh wound. Levi being so attentive wasn’t really a surprise—he cared deeply about his soldiers’ and colleagues’ well-being, and they had been close friends for years now. However, facing him in that moment, as broken as she felt, didn’t sound like a good idea in her head.

“I appreciate it very much, but I think I’ll exercise some more. I’ll meet you inside when I’m finished.”

Hange rose on her feet and resumed flying around, leaving Levi alone with his thoughts.

Her declining to spend time together was new, but not completely out of character: she had lost two of her best friends in a matter of days and was coping badly, as most of their comrades did. The Survey Corps was accustomed to losses and grief, some deaths hitting harder than others. He knew how she was feeling at that moment and really wanted to cheer her up somehow, or maybe find solace in their shared experience.

After all, he had lost Erwin too. And Kenny, just before their commander.

He turned around to enter the barracks when a dull noise caught his attention. He couldn’t hear the gas of the ODM gear anymore, nor the metal wires pulling their user around.

“Oi, are you okay over there?”

No response.

“Hange,” he called again.

No, that silence couldn’t be good. Levi started running towards the woods and saw a bunch of fallen branches on the leaf-covered ground, clearly cut with blades. Hange was nowhere to be seen; she must have gone deeper into the forest. He followed the path and suddenly, out of the corner of his eyes, Levi spotted a figure dangling from a branch, like a puppet attached to its strings, upside down. Unconscious.

“Hange!” His voice shook in his throat as he rushed to free her from the gear, undoing the belts as fast as he could. Her body slumped on his; from his position, Levi did his best to secure her head and neck on his shoulder while carrying the rest of her limp body, tightly pressed against his.

As he approached the only lamppost around, he froze in his tracks for a second: there was blood dripping from a cut on her forehead, and some of her bangs had stuck to it, creating a bloody, matted mess. He lowered Hange to the ground, on the grass, and took her cloak off, using it as a pillow to let her head rest comfortably. Levi frantically checked for her pulse and breathing. Both were steady and clear; the cut wasn’t deep, and her neck was okay.

She was alright, she was alive.

With the help of her canteen, he rinsed her head from the blood and parted the bangs to keep them from falling over the wound again.

Suddenly, her eyes opened wide and she moved to sit upright, only to be blocked by Levi’s hands on her shoulder and forehead, pressing on the cut.

“Hey, calm down. You’re okay, you’re okay. You managed to knock yourself out,” he said calmly, pushing lightly to lay her down again. She hissed in pain.

“I miscalculated and crashed against a tree. I need to train more.”

“You need to eat and to rest, and to face your grief once for all, stupid. If you keep acting like this, you’re going to make yourself useless. You’re jeopardising their sacrifices by acting like this,” he reprimanded her, maybe a bit too harshly,

“I can’t sleep and I can’t eat, I can barely see from the eye I’ve got left and now you’re telling me I’m not allowed to be in pain?” She smacked his hand away from her in a fit of rage she was struggling to control.

“You know what I meant, Hange-” he tried to say, only to be interrupted by her word-vomit.

“I really don’t, Levi. I’m tired! I am tired of fighting, tired of this pressure left on my shoulders. I-I miss Erwin, and Moblit, and Nanaba and Mike-”

She stopped talking: she was afraid to let it all out, afraid to explode once for all.

Never being a man good with words, he tried to provide comfort by gently caressing  the angry skin around her left eye, her cheeks, her temples with the tips of his calloused fingers. He didn’t necessarily enjoy touching people, but touching Hange, for some reason, wasn’t something he hated; if anything, it was something he felt he needed , from time to time. She was a touchy-feely person, always looking for physical contact with her interlocutors, especially if they were friends.

Levi reached for her and lifted her body up from the ground, enveloping her in what he felt like was a very awkward hug. Hange, however, felt like she had received the final blow: she started crying uncontrollably, tears streaming down her cheeks, pained sobs filling the quiet air of the night. Hiding her face into Levi’s shoulder, she cried for what she felt like hours, clutching his shirt tight in her fists.

He let her vent her pent-up feelings, rubbing her back in an attempt to soothe her. When she finally calmed down, he was still struggling to find the right words (that didn’t really exist), so he simply opted to let his mind speak freely, as they were used to do.

“The only thing you can do is believe you will never have to regret your choices, or the others’ sacrifices. Our comrades believed enough in the Survey Corps’ cause to give up their lives and they entrusted us to carry on until the end. It sucks, but we need to keep fighting until we’ve fulfilled their wish. And the living count on you to stay by their side, too. You’re the only one they’ve got left.”

Hange sniffled, feeling tears welling in her eyes again because Levi was talking about himself: they were the last standing veterans, they had no family left, and their friends had been decimated by the Titans (and, lately, by some humans too).

He had lost so, so much; so many people in his life had died and left him alone in this cruel world and she, overcome by grief, had selfishly thought her friends had left her alone too. But she wasn’t alone, not while they still had each other.

“I’m sorry, Levi.”

He just waved his hand to say it was okay, it’s not like she had to apologise for something.

“You hugged me first tonight, you clean freak!” she teased him playfully, pinching his arm.

“Don’t get used to it, shitty glasses,” he replied and let her go, getting back to a sitting position. They enjoyed the silence surrounding them for a while, both watching the stars shining above their heads. Hange‘s voice broke the silence first.

“Will this pain ever end?”

He scoffed, unsure of how to respond to such a hard question.

“Never,” he finally said, still watching the night sky. “But one day, you will wake up feeling better than the day before. You will never forget, but you will be fine.”

She smiled, thankful for the honest reply, and proceeded to lift herself up a bit again, balancing on one elbow, the other arm tugging lightly at Levi’s hand. He sighed, clearly faking annoyance, and lowered to envelop her in yet another, much needed, tight hug. Who needed it more, they shall never know. His hand slowly stroked her damp, tangled tresses while his forearm sneaked around her neck to hold her close; Hange’s arms tightened around the man’s body as she settled into his embrace, wallowing in his warmth.

“You will be fine,” he repeated in a whisper. “We will be just fine.”

_________

Maps stretched out Too many miles to count Let's just say we're inches apart And even closer at heart And we'll be just fine

Another pin pushed in To remind us where we've been And every mile adds up And leaves a mark on us And sometimes our compass breaks And our steady true north fades We'll be just fine

We'll be just fine We'll be just fine We'll be just fine I know that we will

I just know you will

Time moves slow When half of your heart has yet to come home. Every minute's adding up And leaving a mark on us

I can't get you out of my mind I can't get you out of my mind I can't get you out of my mind I solemnly swear I swear that I'll never try

We'll be just fine We'll be just fine We'll be just fine And I know that we will

We'll be just fine We'll be just fine It's a matter of time 'Til our compass stands still 'Til our compass stands still

(West - Sleeping At Last)

#levihan #levi x hange #not fma #shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan

[xlady-saya]

i’ve had a love of my own [ch 3]

Relationships: andrew/neil

Summary: Despite everything Neil could’ve imagined for his life, he never thought he’d be here, finally giving the world the interview they’ve always wanted.

It’s been decades, but even with his numerous accolades and sports wins, he finds that they’re the least important thing about his life.

Neil can’t help but laugh. Andrew would be so annoyed if he were here.

Of course, Neil only wants to talk about him, and the life they spent together.

Tags: interviews, post canon, major character death but not how u think I swear lol, neil is an old man retelling his memories about andrew, cheesy romance, post retirement, see more tags on ao3

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He expects pain, he always expects pain.

His head hits the floor and his vision floods with red, the headache spreading like a fog through his skull. For a moment, he's back on a cold basement floor, and his legs won't work, they won't move.

The vision wobbles though, the voices of the past aren't as clear. It's been so long since he's been taken back to that place, to the body of a nineteen year old with nothing to save him. Even now, it's not as strong. The memory fades in and out until the roar of the crowd shatters it completely.

Neil's not on the basement floor, his father is dead. Yes, at the age of thirty-five he's come to accept that, to smile at the thought.

He knows something is wrong, because he does smile in his delirious state, and someone above him makes a choked, sobbing noise. His frown returns. He thinks it sounds like their team captain, and she's calling, yelling for someone...

There's a referee whistle and an uproar that follows. It's probably a few seconds, at most, but his awareness moves at a slug pace. He tastes copper and tries to grip his racquet, but he must've dropped it.

Must've...

Neil tries to move, but when he does his body jolts. Like being next to a speaker blasting sound, his spine vibrates and his cells scream. He thinks they might be breaking apart. Is that possible? He'll have to ask Aaron.

His eardrums ring from the cries of panic around him, but they're not his own. The gasps and screams of fear are not his, though they probably should be. Any other time, he'd be in an anxious stir, wondering if the puppet strings holding him up would finally snap.

He freezes, his body refusing to let him move.

But it's not pain.

If it were pain, he could power through it, he could move with a strain and a groan. If it were pain, he could cry and freak out and wonder what happened.

That's how he knows it's bad. This isn't a normal accident, a typical injury. This is something serious.

All at once it comes crashing down onto him, and he forces his eyes open.

The lights of the stadium are mind-numbingly bright and there's people trying to get his attention, but he doesn't care. Neil pushes the fingers someone is holding up aside, trying to sit up and hating himself when he can't. A few seconds. At most.

He tilts his head towards the goal, because even in his state he knows the Exy court by heart. That's how he's measuring time. It's only been seconds, because there's no way Andrew would take any longer to get to him.

He watches the blond sprint the remaining few feet, brutally shoving anyone out of the way. There's a snarl, and commands being barked.

"Back the fuck off."

"Don't touch him."

"Neil, can you hear me?"

Neil's throat is too dry to respond, but he squints his eyes up at Andrew, scanning his face in that infuriating way he does when he's trying to get a rise out of his boyfriend. Yes I can.

The hands around him grip him harder, probably enough to bruise, but Neil can't feel it at all. Ah, not good. Not good at all.

He expects Andrew's face to morph back into annoyance, or the begrudging amusement he always directs at Neil when he's being a little shit like that. Then he would know it's alright, it's not as bad as everyone is making it out to be.

It does not.

Andrew's expression remains stripped of his calm, of his restraint. All the things Andrew cultivates, the neutral indifference he shows the world...it's all gone.

Once again, because of Neil.

And Neil hates it, he wants to reach up and cradle Andrew's face in his hands and will him back into a sense of peace, into contentment.

Instead, all he sees is panic, a desperation he's familiar with but hoped to never see again. Like if Andrew could, he'd shelter Neil from the entire world, hide him away in his chest until he was all healed.

Neil tries to move again, one fruitless attempt to show Andrew he's alright.

All he gets is a sickening crack.

--

He doesn’t realize how silent the meeting room has become until he stops speaking.

Neil cuts himself off there, squinting down at the floor as the static buzzes around him and tries to cling to words that are no longer forming.

No, no.

Neil bites his lip.

"Sorry, that's not right," he says, slicing through his recount of Andrew's expression. He recalls the way Andrew’s hands tightened around Neil's trembling form as if he could put him back together all by himself. Neil still feels the light pressure on his skin, and reaches up to graze the back of his neck. He swears there's the slightest dip, another part of his body Andrew left a permanent mark on.

It's not a memory he's afraid of, or one he's sensitive about. It's just—

Neil looks up.

At this point, Blake and Rayah have gotten comfortable. They're sitting, shoes toed off and legs up on the comfy meeting room chairs. Rayah's manicured nails are eating through the thread of her stockings, body tight with nervous energy. They both blink, as if shaken out of some dream. Neil's never prided himself on being a good storyteller, but he guesses with a life as random and convoluted as his sometimes was, it's hard not to be a little interested.

Blake has the most apparent reaction, squinting at Neil before looking at Rayah for confirmation that Neil did indeed stop there. "...what?"

Rayah, forgoing all professionalism at this point, puts her hands in front of her as if to ask: and?

Normally, Neil might smile, but something begins to unfurl in his gut.

Yes, he knows what the problem is, but weighing the risk is a lot harder than he thought.

Can he entrust that kind of knowledge to these people? Is that reckless?

Is it really his life story if it's not at least a little dangerous?

He knows if Aaron were here, he would scoff, though more fondly. 'You always have to get those around you in trouble.'

Perhaps, but he'll be careful. If he relays this right...if he leaves blurry spots...

He can still get the important stuff across.

"I don't want to start there," Neil says, sighing. "Everyone knows what happened, it was all over the news."

Why waste time repeating details that can be viewed online in a video?

Before it was confirmed the injury was condemning Neil to an early retirement, most of the coverage had been about Andrew's severe reaction. His unwillingness to leave Neil's side, the way he shoved people away like they weighed nothing...

It annoyed Neil to no end how people's main reaction had been to finally say 'oh, so he does care.' For so long, that's all Neil wanted; he wanted people to accept Andrew's devotion, to acknowledge other sides of him that disproved the heartless whispers. Though, once that day happened, Neil realized people didn't deserve to see the evidence. Even when provided it, they twisted it and used it as even more of a reason to doubt them. After all, if Andrew cared so much, why didn't he show it more often?

Even now, decades later, Neil has to bite his tongue from going off into a rage fueled rant. He glares down at the floor, like he could burn the world to pieces.

Andrew put himself in such a vulnerable position just for Neil on that day, showing so much. Like Baltimore, his restraint was gone, focus turned entirely on Neil for the full span of his recovery. Andrew never viewed Neil as a weakness, far from it, but that intimacy was not something he readily liked to share.

For good reason, too. It belonged to them only, at least while they both lived. But on that day, it had been on full display for people to pick at, while internally Andrew's entire being probably screamed and twisted itself inside out.

Worried.

If Neil could've gone back in time, he would've been more careful, he would've made sure people didn't get to see Andrew like that and make their foul assumptions. In their years together, they'd made a silent, but unrealistic promise to try and spare each other pain. It was hypocritical of them, two people so familiar with how unforgiving the world could be. Would be. They never fooled themselves into believing things would always work out right away, or at all. Yet...they worked so hard to make sure neither of them had to experience fear.

And that day, Andrew had been terrified.

Neil knew it wasn't his fault, but old habits die hard. He'd been hung up on it for a while, always hellbent on protecting this person of his.

He and Andrew were insufferably the same in that way.

Months and months later, Andrew had flicked him in the forehead and told him to knock it off, that the past couldn't be changed. They could only move forward, and resume their fragile promise. No more martyr cards.

They both were all too familiar with how life could be disrupted, but Neil had still felt petty about it, about how people overlooked this commitment to one another based on a five minute clip. The urge to clear up Andrew's reputation had probably begun there, waiting to be ignited in his old age.

He wanted people to understand Andrew's actions that day weren't out of character in the slightest. They had no right to look on and judge.

Especially not with what happened later, the way they both had to mourn the life they'd built together, for fear it would be snatched away.

Yes, Neil kept those nights close to his heart, locked in his mind for no one else. Too raw, too exposed. Deadly.

But now, well, it's the most important part of this whole question, unavoidable. Andrew's immediate reaction to Neil's injury had been explosive, powerful, but not nearly as telling as what followed.

Rayah stutters, catching up with Neil's meaning. She leans forward, but her pleas fall on deaf ears. "Yes but...Andrew's reaction was so strong--"

"And again, everyone saw," Neil reiterates. He closes his eyes, trying to find patience he no longer has. If he ever did. He sags further into his wheelchair, contemplating it all. How to best go about it. "I just...this was supposed to be about the sides of Andrew people didn't see."

And maybe about sides of him too. Weird, how he tricked himself into that one.

"But it would help people understand your relationship more if you went more into detail about his protective side," Blake tries.

He's right, but that's exactly why Neil can't start there. It barely scratches the surface. He sighs, knowing this is already a stupid idea. Yet, if he's trying to share the true sides of how hard Andrew would've worked to keep him safe, he has no choice.

Neil nods, smile sad. Those hours spent in Andrew's arms, waiting for death, feel so far away now. Back then, his world had been crumbling, and now it's but a piece in the timeline.

He never let himself feel grateful for that, he realizes.

"Yes, but that was just a glimpse of it, albeit a violent one. It makes for something more engaging, climactic, I'll give you that." Neil huffs.

That's what's good for interviews, but Neil's made it clear he doesn't give a damn about that.

"But what I can give you is better, more important," he promises, because it's true. He swallows around the lump in his throat; even now, his mind is not so willing to give away the last of his private moments. But if not now, then when? "Andrew's protectiveness took a lot of forms, and I'm not saying the circumstances surrounding my retirement didn't affect him in the ways seen in the video..."

He knows they did. The panicked expression flashes in his mind once more.

"But I think what happened after that would make more sense," Neil says, and already the potential consequences make him shiver. Force of habit; his blood runs cold whenever he thinks of a black car, a loud cane hitting hardwood. "It would help people understand."

Blake and Rayah exchange a look, feet hitting the floor slowly. Neil assumes at this point they can sense his strain, the foreboding mingling with the air. "You mean...your recovery?"

"No," Neil whispers, and holds off, because Sydney comes in right on cue. Her entrance makes the two journalists jump right out of their seats, but her presence is so standard for Neil. He could hear her footsteps in the dark and immediately know it's her.

"Alright, I'm sure you all must be hun--uh," she stops, jumping a little herself at their reactions, about the air in the room around her. She blinks once, takeout menu in hand. Brown's. The usual, and Neil's favorite. It was Andrew's favorite place to take him on dates when he was retired, according to Andrew 'only old people eat here.'

It never failed to make Neil laugh.

Sydney's smile is cheery at first, especially when her eyes rest on him, but it falls soon after. As Neil grew older, he learned letting people in was actually a good thing most of the time. However, he's still painfully aware of the downsides.

Sydney tenses up from whatever look is on Neil's face. Years of caring for him have made her attuned to his mood, the subtle mannerisms which make up any one of his given reactions.

And she can sense dread like a smell, potent and coppery.

It must be something else that comes with the territory, of years spent at Andrew and Neil's side.

She's there next to him in an instant, checking his pulse and looking around at the table to see if anything's wrong. It makes Neil chuckle when she goes as far as to check his water, like it can be accidentally poisoned right in front of him.

She looks between Neil and his guests, takeout menu clutched in her hand to an almost distorting degree, but Neil reassures her no protection is needed. He touches her wrist as tight as he can, given his lack of grip, and presses down until she lets up on the menu.

She blinks down at where they touch, then back up again, brown eyes squinting in confusion.

As safe as Neil plans to be about this, he doesn't want her anywhere near them.

"Sydney. Brown's is fine. Get our usual okay?" Neil says, and hopes his stare is as piercing as he means it to be. He's never asked her like this; she always knows. They've shared the same lunch together for years, and she probably still knows Andrew's order too. It's deliberate, and while he hates ordering her around in such a way, it's necessary here. He'll make it up to her somehow.

But he needs her to leave.

"Yes, of course, but...is something the matter?" She asks slowly, staring him down.

Ah Sydney, she always knows too much for her own good. Neil can't help but smile at her. Her perceptiveness matches his own at times, and maybe that's why she was so comfortable attending to him. She seems to understand in an instant, so he doesn't baby her with trying to hide the gist of what he's about to get into.

"Go put in the order, close the meeting room door and whatever you do, don't let anyone else come in," Neil instructs, letting go of her with one last imploring squeeze. "Knock when you come back, I shouldn't be long."

He watches her swallow and nod, glancing back at the two reporters. They're sitting up straight again, but not due to any expected politeness. They're more than aware of how in the dark they are, but Neil is guessing they've read up on him well enough too.

They should know they're about to step in a little deeper.

"Okay," Sydney says, veneer of calm back in place. She takes Blake and Rayah's orders and then leaves, not bothering to linger. "Excuse me."

Neil waits until her steps completely fade from the outside hallway before he turns back to his guests, expression grave.

Old threats echo in his mind, reminding him of the old can of worms. He's not even sure if they even apply anymore, but he took them seriously enough when the Moriyamas gave them to him, he still shudders to think about defying them. He's probably been forgotten in that world at this point, but he can never be too safe.

"I'm going to make something clear about this part of the story," He begins, and shakes his head when Rayah grabs her recorder. Nothing recorded for this, only notes. If that's even smart… “For your own safety, you are not to ask too many questions about this particular incident. No names, no affiliations, not even questions about how they looked. You're going to wait until I'm dead and gone before you release it, and edit it so it's as vague as possible. Not the Andrew parts, but the rest. Don't let it fall into anyone else's hands."

He trusts himself to be careful enough where no connections can be made, no assumptions tied back to any one family past or present. But...insurance is paramount.

From the way the reporters look at each other, Neil almost wants to laugh at the assumptions they're making. The mob is in many ways a business; it's built upon negotiations, psychology, and ties. It's not entirely the bloody, underground image the movies portray.

But...it can be.

"Okay...what is this about?" Blake asks,

Neil smiles ruefully. "I'm sure you know all about my father's line of work." He grimaces, and amends: "The Butcher, I mean."

They nod instantly, probably unsure if it was okay to bring it up. In most cases, no, and he won't be doing it again. His father is good for context, nothing else.

"We...we know you gave up a lot to the FBI, that you got out of that life," Rayah says, like she's reading text right off his wiki article.

He guesses that's fair. No one knows much; his father's gang got caught, died, and Neil testified against the rest. Signed, sealed, done.

"That's what the news reports said, easy to spin," he responds, clicking his tongue. "Poor Neil Josten, a victim of one evil man and his gang. But it was never that simple, and I was never free, not for a long time."

He'd viewed it as freedom though. It was the best outcome he could've asked for, given all he'd been prepared for. He'd been given the unlikely chance to cultivate and build his life, but it always felt suspended, and they knew it. One wrong move for any of them, be it himself, Jean, or Kevin, and those chances would be revoked.

It hadn't really occurred to him how suffocating that reality was until his time ran out.

"You were still in the mob?"

Neil shrugs.

"I had some debts that needed to be paid, to people much much more powerful than my father. You would not even begin to understand how deep these organizations run or how influential they are. I was tied up in it for a lot of my career, and it all came to a head when I got hurt."

After the sickening crack, Neil doesn't remember much. But part of him had to know he'd never play again, and for him, that was a death sentence. He'd been prepared to make his case to the Moriyamas when he reached normal retirement age in his forties. He'd studied up on as much as he could, ready to show them how much of an asset he could be. He could still make them money, still be an important public figure. If nothing else, he could do menial tasks so they'd be benefited.

It didn't have to end with Exy, and he'd been hopeful Ichirou would see things his way.

The injury derailed his confidence in those plans, and as much as he'd prepared for that eventual confrontation, he could not ignore the very real threat:

What if Ichirou didn't care? What if he'd decided Neil's purpose had run its course?

It was something Andrew had not been willing to consider, but Neil had.

Neil sighs; he's not afraid of them anymore, whether or not that's a good thing is yet to be seen. Rayah and Blake stare back, not truly comprehending the seriousness. Why should they? They've never been so entrenched in those systems. They haven't seen what Neil has.

That's alright, he'll just have to do what he can and trust they'll take him seriously.

"I need your agreement that you get it, that you'll listen to me," he says, and for dramatic flair, he adds: "This is not a game."

He plays on their fears of movie mafias, and hopes it works. If he's being honest with himself, it's for selfish reasons. Neil would never want this to fall back on Kevin or the remaining Foxes.

"We understand Neil," Rayah states, hand over her heart. As if that means anything to him. "We'll be careful."

And whether or not they actually are, it no longer matters. After all, this is his story. He'll choose what goes into it.

So finally, when the question comes, he's ready.

"What happened?"

--

The x-rays stare back at him.

Neil's honestly not sure why he's being shown them; he knows what they mean, but he didn't need to see the actual fractures to know the end result.

Neil doesn't move as the doctor finishes reviewing them, stepping back to let Neil process. He wonders if this is where the reaction is supposed to go. If this is where most patients would cry or scream or begin asking their delusional questions.

Maybe that's why the doctor looks so shocked when Neil does nothing. Neil leans back in the hospital bed, aching and unable to move his legs, carefully wrapped in casts. He's a little surprised himself. This is where he should be asking when he'll be able to play Exy again, right?

This is where he begins to panic, where he needs the press of a hand on his neck.

Well, he'd still gladly take that, but more so because he wants it, not because he needs it.

Andrew is a comforting, but imposing presence at his side. He hasn't slept or eaten anything since Neil was admitted, refusing to leave Neil alone for even a moment. His calm facade is back for everyone else, but Neil's been tracing the poorly locked away fear in those eyes for hours.

And now, here is confirmation of what they both already realize. Neil can't bear to look over at Andrew in the moment, but he can sense the tension, the tight coils of reality crashing down on the blond's shoulders.

The doctor looks between the both of them, before dropping what Neil supposes is the final bomb into the quiet air. But he knows.

"I know this is not easy to process," the doctor says, slow and unsure, but Neil only blinks at him. "In time, with the right amount of physical therapy, you'll be up and moving again, but it will be an adjustment. Competitive sports simply...won't be an option."

He stops listening after 'time' comes out of his mouth. Time. How funny.

There will potentially be no time for anything.

Neil wonders if he's being rational or pessimistic. He's always known what this moment could mean, and he's dreaded it. He would spend years with nightmares, flinching at black cars or preparing for how he could persuade. Lie. Anything.

Whatever he could do to keep this, to spare both himself and Andrew the pain.

Now, the life he's developed and the life he loves is being threatened, but the dread has decided to spare him. Maybe that's more of a sign of his final moments than anything else.

He doesn't want to run, or wallow, or waste what little time he might have left.

He only wants...

Neil finally looks over to Andrew, tilting his head just so. It hurts him far more to see the look on Andrew's face. It's expectant, waiting to follow Neil's plan of action. Whether it be to skip town or scream or gear up to fight...

Andrew's looking for something, ready for anything, and Neil can't give it to him.

I just want to be with you.

Andrew's eye twitches at the sigh which leaves Neil's lips, fond and gentle. Neil knows better than to touch him right then, but he wants to. He wants to tell Andrew to let go of all that strain, to just whisk him away and they can go on a date, they can rest or rewatch that one movie that freaks Neil out.

But Andrew only looks like he's fighting back a snarl at Neil's passiveness, and Neil won't waste time explaining. It's not hopelessness he feels, but the weird mixture in its place is no more warm or sweet. It's a different kind of pain, mixed with resignation.

It's so opposite of everything Neil has ever been, but he's not willing to let Andrew help him this time. It's not selfish, it's not the martyr card Andrew will accuse him of.

He's simply at the end of the line, and he's going to spend it how he wants.

Neil turns back to the doctor, just one question on his mind. "Can I go home? We can afford in-home care."

The doctor's jaw drops before he collects himself, not really in the mood to argue with star athletes whose careers just came to a halt. That, or he must know all about Neil Josten, and how he's not prone to listening to anyone's advice.

The doctor is silent for a minute too long, outside the limitations of Andrew's patience, and he flinches at the way the blond's hands tighten on the bed rails. Neil's heart skips a beat at the sound of Andrew's knuckles popping, at the redness of his hands.

The doctor takes the hint. "I'll get the paperwork set and get a wheelchair," he says. "A nurse can escort you--"

"No," Andrew says, the first word he's spoken in hours, and it leaves no room for argument. Neil smiles down at his hands, wrapped in white hospital bands and connected to wires. Yes, that's where he'll be selfish. He'll let Andrew watch out for him, for a little while longer.

Though, Neil is old enough now to know Andrew never minded.

The doctor waits for more, but gets nothing. He takes the x-rays with him when he goes, pity sweeping over them for reasons Neil no longer cares about. "Very well."

The door clicks shut, leaving only the sound of Andrew's harsh breathing mixed with the steady beep of vital monitors. Neil really does hate hospitals, but even more so today.

When they're alone, the roles reverse, and it's Andrew who won't look at him. The blond starts to pace the floor of Neil's private room, wearing the linoleum thin and only stopping to glare out the window. Whenever his phone rings, he silences it, before eventually just turning it off altogether.

And through it all, Neil can't help but smile at him. He doesn't think it's the pain meds; he's aware, clear headed.

There's guilt there too, but he knows Andrew won't have it. Neil once again wishes he could spare Andrew this anxiety, this helplessness. But well, at least Neil is here this time, for however long that is.

Andrew walks forward a little too fast after another sharp turn, and nearly trips. Then, he really does growl, fists shaking with the need to lash out at something. It's been awhile since he's seemed so rage filled, but Neil doesn't bother poking him about it. He's happy it's abnormal now, that he's so used to a calm, content Andrew.

Neil's heart squeezes in sadness unrelated to his career. He watches Andrew stop, the anger shaking him but rendering him unable to do much else but tremble. He stays put in the middle of the room, looking everywhere but at Neil

Neil supposes he expected that.

"Andrew," he tries, a beckoning tone that Andrew is so weak to on most days. He means for it to be playful, but it comes out a small whisper, pleading. It gives too much away, and that's when Neil starts to feel the beginning edges of his own stress.

All he knows is he wants Andrew next to him, he wants to feel Andrew's pulse, his warmth. Right now, he thinks, come here. It's childish and unrealistic, he only just found out about the x-rays. Word wouldn't travel that fast, but to think that any moment could be his last and Andrew wouldn't be touching him.

Andrew tenses instantly, and while he doesn't meet Neil's gaze, he's at his side again just as fast, grip tight and unforgiving on Neil's hand. Never babying, but reminding Neil he's real too. They're together, and nothing will change that until they know Neil’s fate for sure.

Still, they need to address it. They've grown past the days of trying to read each other's minds. Neil can imagine how Andrew is feeling, but he'd rather not. He wants to hear it, he wants to hold all of it like he holds Andrew.

However, he's not surprised when Andrew cuts him off when he tries to open his mouth again. The grip on his hand is bruising now, but not commanding. It's desperate, and it cuts Neil even deeper.

Andrew exhales shakily, holding up their hands as if to speak, before placing them down on the stiff sheets once more. Neil's familiar with all sides of Andrew, even the unsure side, the hesitant one. It doesn't make it easier to process.

He wants to tell Andrew it's okay, they can both look out for one another, even when Neil's the one physically broken, but Andrew shakes his head.

Not yet.

"I don't want to talk about it," Andrew finally admits, voice rough and scratchy, and all Neil can do is nod. He's not trying to fight, not here, so he doesn't dare point out that eventually, they'll have to.

He just sighs, and brings Andrew's hand close to his chest so he can feel it beat, full and proud.

"Let's go home."

--

Over the next few days, he gets settled in, their bed modified and moved to better accommodate the nursing supplies Neil needs. Andrew still keeps it at the best vantage point, angled so he can watch the door. Andrew tried to make the case for getting a separate cot to allow Neil as much room as possible, but Neil refused.

He's going to have things remain as normal as possible, soaking up Andrew's presence as much as he can. While he can.

For the first time in years, Andrew's perch changes. Instead of having his back pressed to the wall, with Neil protecting him from the open room, he tucks Neil in instead, becoming his shield in yet another way.

It's a small barrier, it would buy Neil maybe...oh, a second of time, if he even could get away. It makes Neil pout; he likes it when he's the one keeping Andrew safe, but he knows he's in no position to physically do so.

Now, his attentiveness has to come in the form of hard conversations and requests, ones Andrew hasn't even let him bring up yet.

Neil tries more than a few times to comment on it, to lead them down the road of conversation Andrew is avoiding, but Andrew just bundles Neil up. More often than not, Andrew moves Neil's arm too, so it's wrapped around the blond's waist.

It's a deadly arrangement, because it's unbearably cozy. As much as he hates it, the medicine makes Neil sleep a lot, and he's always worried he's going to wake up to more than Andrew's attentive face and steady breathing.

Neil doesn't think Andrew has slept more than a few hours, but Neil can't judge. The dread he'd been relieved of at the hospital now sits like a veil, much worse now that he's home. There's more to cherish here, more to miss.

He doesn't want to be anywhere else, but at the same time he doesn't want it taken away.

The cats take to sleeping on his chest or curled into his side, little protectors themselves. Neil wonders if they have a sixth sense, if they can tell something is wrong. If they can, they're a lot more subtle about it than humans are.

The main example of that is Neil's Foxes. They all call, first in a frenzy and then on a strict face time schedule organized by Andrew. It lets Neil sleep, as much as he wishes he could talk to them forever.

Still, he can only take so much of the tension in the air when they do. His Foxes aren't sheltered, nor are they stupid. They're all too aware of Neil's contract and how it's about to run out. If Neil's being honest, he's shocked he's lasted this long with no word from Ichirou, but none of the Foxes dare to bring it up.

When Kevin calls, his face is haggard and eyes wide, but he barely gets a word out before Andrew threatens to hang up. The panic in Kevin's face dissolves into something sad, pitying, and Neil has to grab Andrew's hand to force it away from the button. His hand shakes in warning, but lets Neil guide him.

“Neil…” Kevin says, swallowing down what Neil guesses to be bile, because Kevin has always reacted so strongly to any indication of things going wrong. Neil nearly feels bad. Things haven’t gone wrong for Kevin in a long time, and he’s glad. As if sensing Neil’s guilt-ridden smile, Kevin blinks at him through the screen, fishing for answers he no longer needs. “What am I supposed to…”

Do?

And they say Neil asks stupid questions. He shakes his head fondly. “Nothing. You won’t have to do anything. You’re Kevin Day.”

You’re strong.

It’s something Neil’s known forever, though it took a while for Kevin to start acting like it. With all his progress, Neil can’t imagine this being a setback.

Kevin’s hanging jaw clamps shut.

It's then Neil really looks at Kevin, sees how he's aged. There's some silver that's starting to show in his hair on the side, a fact they all like to poke fun at, but his features are just as young as they ever were. Deep brown eyes locking away a cautious fire, a constant burn. He knows he and Kevin have never been the type to get all emotional with one another, but when he smiles at Kevin's worry, at the fire wanting to be let loose...

Well, he hopes Kevin can tell how much Neil appreciates him, how they don't have to hash out more painful things. Also, he hopes Kevin picks up on the subtle threat in Neil's eyes, a burn all his own. Kevin Day isn't supposed to be controlled by fear anymore, and that's going to be a rule regardless of if Neil is around to enforce it.

He lets them sit in silence like that until Kevin nods, and utters an impossibly small: “I promise.”

And naturally, Neil understands.

They talk about Kevin's game, about Thea, about some docu series Kevin is in love with. All the while, Neil nestles himself into Andrew's warmth, and forgets anything is wrong.

The rest of his team learns fast. Allison takes to scolding him in the way she always does, but meticulously avoids any mention of the future. Instead, she reminisces on the vacations she made him take with her; Rome, Spain, that one random town in Montana.

She gives him a mix of good and bad memories, the places they went, that one rude waiter she almost fought in the parking lot.

It makes him laugh, and he's glad to be able to exchange jabs with her. It's only at the end where her mask cracks and she lingers a bit too long, telling him goodnight one too many times.

The calls blend together, each with their awkward goodbyes.

In another hour, he’s listening to Katelyn’s excessive cheer, overcompensating for the gloom carrying through the phone lines. She’s holding a picture of the four of them, when they went to Alaska. “Remember when we made Andrew get in that plane to fly above the glacier? He was terrified!”

At least Katelyn knows how to get his mind off things: bring up Andrew.

She talks too much, like she always does, but Neil appreciates her stories about bitchy patients and scandalous coworkers when her vacation tales run out.

“What about Sandra? Is she still being an asshole?” He asks, an invitation to talk about anything other than his injury. It’s not that he’s in the mindset to really care, and he suspects Katelyn doesn’t either. She’s on autopilot, in need of direction. Despite every attempt to veer them away, she’s biting her lip raw during her pauses, scanning Neil up and down.

Concerned. Too much so for his liking, and he throws another topic at her.

“O-oh yeah, you won’t believe what she did yesterday Neil! She—”

And Katelyn latches onto whatever prompt he gives her, so unwilling to upset him. No matter how much it’s eating at her to behave so selfishly, she’ll do it for him without question.

It's also a welcome distraction to the way Aaron keeps glancing over at Andrew on their call, gaze strained and worried. Neil is glad he's not the only one thinking of Andrew's feelings, but not even Aaron's prodding gets Andrew to talk to Neil about the elephant in the room.

“Andrew, have you been eating?” Aaron asks, and gets nothing. That’s not exactly common anymore, and Aaron glares at the silent treatment. “Neil’s not a baby, you can leave him for a few—”

“Sweetie,” Katelyn whispers, placing a hand over Aaron’s. Her eyes echo an acceptance that hasn’t processed for Aaron yet. He looks at her in disbelief, and then back at his brother, almost pleading with him.

The call ends quietly, even with Katelyn doing her best to fill the void.

Neil can’t blame Aaron for his denial. Aaron wants to pretend it’s all normal, that Neil will be here day after day, forever. Funny, how he’s just like his brother in that moment, unwilling to swallow reality.

Neil stares at him before they hang up, willing him to see the logic. Neil wants nothing more than for Andrew to take care of himself.

But things are not normal. As long as Aaron frames things from that lens, Andrew will never listen.

Neil tries though, on his end. He tries and tries, and feels his patience running thin. He doesn't want them to be left with anything unsaid. He wants to hear Andrew's voice, even if it trembles.

"If you don't rest, you won't get any better," Andrew says during one call break, trailing off. Neil can only sigh at the tone, throat too closed up to snark. He wants to ask Andrew if he's talking to himself, because obviously he's being the delusional one this time.

Neil wonders if he should consider this a good thing, that Andrew has let himself have hope.

Neil hides his expression in his pillow, unwilling to let Andrew see an ounce of the realization that he can't fulfill it.

The calls pile up, and Andrew's grip on Neil's waist tightens with each passing comment.

Dan and Matt try to fill Neil in on as much of their lives as they can in order to offer him a distraction. They're horrible at avoiding the topic of Exy, fumbling every time they do, but it makes Neil smile each time. He hasn't let it sink in that he'll never play again, but it doesn't hurt as much as he thought. It's more of a dull ache, a yearning to run free and win, but one he can manage. Exy stopped being his entire world some time ago.

Nicky, the one Neil considers responsible for that realization, is all about Neil's recovery. It's almost daunting, since Neil hadn't exactly let himself think about anything past the end of this week.

But Nicky doesn't let Neil or Andrew escape the conversation, and Neil has to fight back his smile.

“Andrew! Don’t ignore me, I want to know that you’re taking care of our boy,” he nags, scrolling through his laptop too fast for him to be able to actually read anything. Neil imagines the cursor bouncing off the sides of the screen. “I’ve been reading some articles…what treatment plan do they have Neil on? Is the hospital even reputable? I’m getting Aaron in on this or so help me—”

Nicky has come to read Andrew well, in his own way; he asks Andrew a plethora of questions because he knows it gives Andrew something to focus on. A task, a purpose. He asks about every mundane detail, from Neil's medication to his sleep schedule, to physical therapy and onward.

“I say you create a color-coded schedule, so you don’t miss appointments. And buy a real calendar for fuck’s sake! We can start planning things to do when you’re better Neil!”

Andrew tenses at that one, but it doesn’t deter Nicky in the slightest.

He doesn't shy away from the idealistic future, because he must sense it's what Andrew needs. Nicky probably needs it too.

"And Neil, no getting into any fights," Nicky scolds, pointing his finger into his phone's camera thirty minutes later. Neil has barely said a word. "We can't have you backsliding."

Neil huffs, nodding along with him. Andrew has relaxed a little bit where Neil is lying on top of him, but not nearly enough for Neil to be satisfied. That's how Neil knows his boyfriend is more than aware of their situation; Andrew's not delusional, only stubborn.

The world will have to pry Neil out of his cold, dead hands, and that's exactly what Neil's afraid of.

"What if I don't start the fight?" Neil asks, against his better judgement. It's supposed to be lighthearted, but it comes out more serious than he'd planned. Shit.

For the first time in hours, Andrew's gaze slides to him and stays there, peeling him back until there's nothing but rawness. Nicky's laughter dissolves slowly, hanging in the air with Neil's words. Neil tries his best to send Nicky an apologetic look for breaking his efforts, for reminding them all of the other possible option. The probable one.

But, Nicky has a reputation as the strong one.

He huffs, throwing Neil a sad smile, like Neil is so stupid and he loves him for it. Nicky's not there, but Neil tenses, like he's being crushed in one of his hugs anyways.

"It's okay," Nicky says, glancing between the two of them. "Andrew will—Andrew will keep you safe."

Nicky swallows, breathing choppy, but nothing compared to Neil's. Neil's might stop altogether, but Nicky doesn't back down until Neil gives him that same, tired smile.

Neil hears his words from years prior, echo in his head.

Andrew will protect you.

Neil's smile quivers at the edges, and for someone who seldom cries, Neil feels like he's been skirting the edge all day. His face hurts like he's been sobbing, muscles pulled taut and eyes red from how much he's had to rub them. His throat is raw from how many times he's choked on every emotion, good and bad, but no tears come to expel the chemicals of rage and despair. It's like he's bottling those up too, savoring them for as long as possible.

"I always do," Andrew eventually comments, the usual deadpan, and Neil's heart nearly bursts in his chest. He can't stand Andrew sometimes, is what he wants to say, but that's not true at all. Instead, Neil burrows into Andrew's chest, uncaring that Nicky can see, and can't bring himself to say anything else.

Nicky signs off cheerily, saying he'll talk to Neil soon, and Neil's body hiccups in response.

He can't anymore.

He just can't avoid it, he won't.

Neil listens to the sound of Andrew placing his phone on the nightstand to charge, and then hears him shake one of the pill bottles, weighing when it'll be best to give Neil the next dose. The sound pisses him off.

He doesn't want medicine, he doesn't want to sleep.

Even as he thinks it, just resting against the pillow makes his limbs feel heavy, dragged underwater by rocks. It's so easy to give into the lull, to the noise around him blending together into blurbs and nonsense. Funny enough, it's Andrew's touch that snaps him out of it.

It's typically the last push Neil needs before falling back under, but this time when Andrew's thumb lingers over Neil's face, tracing the shell of his ear, Neil can't put it off any longer.

Maybe it's how much he loves that touch, how much it means to him. He's not sure. He just knows he has to get a reaction, he wants Andrew to see him.

Neil moves to shift, and the inevitable happens. Andrew's hand darts out to stop him, already beginning the gentle process of rolling Neil over himself. That's when Neil tenses, staring up at Andrew with defiance in his eyes.

The blond is wearing a tank top, muscles on full display, so Neil catches the exact moment Andrew freezes up, shoulders coiled in preparation for a fight. Neil would smirk in any other situation; he'd never hurt Andrew, but his being never ceases to scream: threat.

In Andrew's case, Neil has the power to bare down on his throat, spilling all his emotions onto the clean sheets.

Andrew's eyes, so tired and dark, spark to life. Yes, Neil thinks. That's what I want, come back to me.

But Andrew's expression is one of warning, one that says 'I don't want to talk about it.'

Neil can't hold off anymore.

Without breaking eye contact, Neil moves again, and winces at the pain that shoots up his body. Andrew clamps down on his waist, stopping him, and then pushes down again for extra reinforcement. The gesture yells at Neil to stop, to not do this, but that just makes Neil squirm more.

"Neil," Andrew warns, breaking their eye contact. Neil can't help but glare; he feels like he's been doing almost nothing but staring at Andrew, taking in the contours of his face and the faded freckles leftover from summer. Any little detail, Neil has latched on. His memory is nothing like Andrew's, but he's sure he'd be able to recount every mole and curve if asked. It might mean nothing if he's six feet under. There will be no one in the afterlife for him to tell, to remind, but he's Neil Josten. He's stubborn as all hell, and won't let himself forget even something as minor as the crooked line of Andrew's nose.

Yet, Andrew won't look at him, won't address the hurt bubbling in his chest, just as strong as Neil's. That's not what they do anymore; they've always shared, and this will not be the exception.

Neil pushes Andrew's hands away and moves, but okay...he's not the smartest. That time hurts, and Neil's wince turns into a full-on groan.

But it's fine, he thinks, not laughing at the joke. It's fine, because it's the last straw.

Andrew rips the excess blankets off the bed, kneeling onto the mattress until he's boxing Neil in, but it's less an intimidation tactic than a request. Stay, stay right there. When he speaks, it's a horrible mix of anger and desperation, a calmness cracked clean in half. "Stop trying to move, and stop fucking staring at me," Andrew says, and Neil shakes his head.

"There's no point--" Neil tries, willing Andrew to understand what he's talking about. But oh, from the way the blond flinches, Neil knows he does. "I'm going to try to fight however I can, but—"

A hand claps over his mouth, and Andrew's capacity for gentleness is fraying. Neil knows it's his fault, but he doesn't mind. He wants Andrew to show him whatever he's feeling, even if they both hate it. Andrew looks down at him, and Neil catches the slip up. The way Andrew's gaze traces over the top of Neil's nose, the shape of his brows. Taking everything in, just to make sure his perfect memory got nothing wrong.

Realizing this, Andrew scowls, and buries his face in Neil's neck to stop the urge.

Andrew is careful in his panic regardless, maneuvering so he's not pressing down on Neil too hard. His legs are angled away but unwilling to release Neil completely for fear of him hurting himself more. Neil sighs, relaxing his muscles in a show of surrender.

Okay. He won't move anymore.

"Hey..." Neil whispers into the quiet Andrew leaves in the wake of his smothered rage, raising his hand slowly to card through the blond's hair. It's textured and unkempt, but Neil missed the feel of it. He's no stranger to comforting Andrew, but the blond hasn't let him do as much in the last few days.

Neil presses down on Andrew's neck when his panting starts to dissipate, and counts the cars that pass outside on the street below.

"I can't stand that look on your face," Andrew states eventually, and he turns his head to the side so his voice is clear. Nothing unheard. "Like you're giving up. Like you're trying to take me in for the last time."

Like it's thank you, goodbye.

Andrew would know that look well, Neil supposes.

Neil cannot accept it. The hurt burns through his vocal cords at the vulnerability, apparent even through Andrew's neutral tone; he never wants Andrew to feel like that, but he also wants Andrew to be alive. Prosperous. "You're the one always championing rationality. You know things aren't fair, but now what?" Neil whispers, and his fingers halt in their ministrations, cramping up from the weight of it all. He finally chokes on a sob. "Just because it's me? You can't accept it?"

Andrew surges up, unable to avoid it any longer. His hands come up around Neil's face, digging into old scars. Those problems feel so old now.

"Nothing is going to happen to you," Andrew spits out, and Neil's skull vibrates from the force of the grip.

"You can't promise that anymore," Neil says, but he can't shake his head when Andrew is holding him so tight. Andrew scowls down at him, and a loud noise from outside makes them both jump. Neil's panic filters in, rushed like he's on a countdown all over again. "They're going to come. They're going to take me away."

He bites back adding: 'and you're going to let them.'

He knows that's unrealistic to ask and stupid to assume, but Andrew must hear the insinuation anyways.

There's a long pause, broken up only by Andrew's humorless laugh. It sends shivers down Neil's spine. Dark, lifeless. Neil doesn't miss that sound. He knows what Andrew's real laugh is like.

"Are they?" Andrew asks, tone razor sharp. Despite this, his grip lessens, thumb gently swiping over the nearest burn mark. "Neil, you must not know me as well as I thought."

It's selfish, Neil knows that much. It's selfish to ask Andrew to let him be the sacrificial lamb again. It's not how they do things, it's not what Neil promised. But he doesn't want a world without Andrew, even if he's no longer in it with him.

"Andrew..." He tries, but it's fruitless. Andrew rolls over and adjusts Neil carefully, pulling him up so as to not cause anymore of the mind-numbing pain from earlier. Neil fits so easily against him, and he doesn't fight it this time.

He's so tired of fighting, if it can be called that. In the end it's just the two of them doing what they always do: stubbornly holding onto one another. It's mutual, wanted, and Neil was shortsighted to think Andrew ever saw this gesture as detrimental.

At a certain point...he guesses it's just love.

And that makes him hold on even tighter.

"You're not going anywhere," Andrew reminds, and pries Neil's fingers off his shirt one by one until he can lace their hands together. Neil hadn't realized he'd been physically echoing his wants, stretching out the fabric til it's warped. "Stop it."

Neil laughs at the familiarity of it. It's breathy, and it soon gets swallowed up by the sounds of the covers as he burrows in closer.

This is just how it'll be.

Neil won't convince Andrew to accept it, but that's alright. He'll just have to do what he can when his fate arrives at their door. If he had it his way though, he'd sit like this forever, with Andrew so close and real.

A few more calls pass after Neil naps, and it's Renee who finally stands up to Andrew in her own way. He should've seen that coming. No one else would be quite as acquainted with darkness, with the cruelty of the world.

She's finishing up telling Neil about the book she's been reading, and her goodbye trails off. "Just..." She whispers, smiling in the same old way. Yet, her next words are nothing like the pragmatic Renee he's come to appreciate. He guesses everyone has their limits. "Don't go, Neil."

Neil's face falls, and he says nothing. There's nothing to say, and she nods. Neil doesn't have time to think of anything else though, because Andrew doesn't allow the call to continue.

Stiffly, he leans forward to disconnect the phone. "Goodbye Renee."

The dismissal is firm, but Renee's smile remains until the very last moment.

Neil is grateful, knowing someone will be around who gets it.

Andrew says nothing, busying himself with Neil's blankets, and Neil prods at him until he stops. "You have to forgive her."

"I don't have to do anything," Andrew reminds, fluffing Neil's pillow. Or...more like punching it. Neil sincerely hopes they don't spar anytime in the near future. "She shouldn't have said that."

"She said it because she knew she'd be the only one who could," Neil says, and Andrew's silence is telling.

Because you'll need her.

Renee is too important for Andrew to cut off long term, even if he hates that she can see what he refuses to. She'll be there for him, no matter what.

Thinking he'll get no reply for all his trouble, Neil leans back onto the newly fluffed pillow and startles when Andrew speaks again.

The blond's hand slides over his waist, fitting Neil against him snugly before rolling onto his back again. He's never not watching the door.

"Tell me something," Andrew starts.

"Always."

Andrew rolls his eyes at the sentiment, but meets Neil's gaze. Neil wrinkles his nose in the way that usually makes Andrew kiss him, but no such luck. Ah, so it won't be a fun question.

Andrew searches for a long time, the way he does to make sure Neil won't lie.

Right now, Neil wouldn't dream of it.

"Why now?" Andrew asks, and holds up his finger at Neil's confusion. "My scared little rabbit, always afraid of being caught by the wolf. Death is staring you down, but when you saw those x-rays, there was no panic."

Neil slumps a little more, turning just enough to avoid being scolded; he doesn't need the reminder, he feels the emotions fly back into him. In the moment, he'd simply felt resignation. He recalled his plans of course, as clipped and disorganized as they were given what happened. Ways he can appeal to Ichirou, ways he can prove his worth that don't involve his game.

There was no immediate panic sure, because there's only so many ways this can go.

But there was fear.

He doesn't question why for very long, since the answer is lying right next to him, breath held and waiting.

Slowly, Neil rests his hand over Andrew's heart, and feels the pace pick up almost instantly. Alive, pumping, never stopping. Andrew has been a constant for so many years, and he's a survivor, just like Neil. He has so much to offer, so much Neil appreciates and admires about him. He thinks of every touch and kiss, all the flicks of Andrew's fingers and deliberate presses into his skin.

Neil's hand curls into a fist, and he's fixated even now, right where his skin meets Andrew's. "I'm not scared of dying anymore, about someone chopping me up and ending all my potential."

He'd reached his potential. He'd helped score the winning goal at the Olympics, he was in the hall of fame. He's won countless championships.

"Andrew, I'm just terrified of leaving you here," Neil says with a great amount of strain, face contorting at the thought. An ugly, overprotective snarl, but not nearly as threatening as usual. It dissolves soon into something far more pitiful and packed with yearning. "Of not being with you."

"Stop," Andrew says again, more urgent this time. Neil can't even point out how predictable he's becoming, how his threats mean nothing these days. Andrew is aware, he just can't help it. It's the only way he can fight those thoughts of Neil's, and it's still not enough. Andrew's arms tremble as they wrap around Neil, a fortress. He's in a cocoon, safe from anything the world can throw at him. Andrew's rage is palpable, and once again, there's nothing to take out his helplessness on. So he repeats and repeats: "Just stop."

And there's that unspoken promise Neil can't refute, no matter how many things are trying to prove it otherwise.

"Nothing could ever take you away from me."

And with that ringing in his head, Neil falls under.

#andreil #aftg #all for the game #andrew minyard #neil josten

[immortalcoelacanth]

Smile for Me Oneshot: Pickle Jar

I’m back on my Smile for Me kick because I love the game and epilogue! Gillis and Randy are adorable and I felt inspired to write out how the meeting between the two of them might have potentially gone. Word count: 2800 Summary: “PIKL” jars were hard to open, but you knew just the tough, strong guy to handle this. 

The Habitat could be a strange place at times, or all the time depending on your perspective. You had gotten used to the collection of, quite literally, colourful characters that you encountered and interacted with at every turn, but it seemed as though every day you ended up meeting someone new.

 Case in point being Randy Hapukurk.

 The pickle craving poet that you had found at the bottom of the stairwell. It had been a relief to encounter someone that was as socially anxious as you were, although it was for very different reasons. You were “too” quiet, while Randy was just…

 Different.

 It honestly made you a bit sad to see how nervous he was, but you were happy he felt safe enough to talk to you and ask for a favour. Granted, it was not a favour that you could really complete on your own. You had taken a moment to show Randy that you both shared the same soft, pathetic, little baby hands which would make opening the pickle jar he had more challenging.

 But he still believed in you, and he had entrusted you with the pickle jar in the hopes of granting him sweet, briny salvation. Now you just needed to figure out the best way to open the jar.

 As you started to walk away from Randy, he called out to you. “O truest friend, I send you well wishes and fortunate tides on your quest to open the salty elixir!”

  You grinned and sent him a thumbs up. You had no clue how you were going to accomplish your quest, but you were certain you would find a way! Randy seemed like such a sweetheart and it made you all the more determined to help him feel happy.

 After exiting the stairwell, you did try your best to open the pickle jar on your own, face twisting into a frown as you struggled to get the lid to move. You smacked it a bit and held the jar so hard when you removed your hand you could see the rim of the lid imprinted on your flesh.

 You hissed and shook your hand to dull the somewhat numbing pain.

 Ronbo took note of your plight, taking a quick drag of his cigar before speaking. “Youse sure is struggling with that jar. Like you could use some help…”

 A quick, eager nod was your answer. Yes, surely Ronbo was strong enough to open it for you. The flower on the top of your head swayed in time with your nod, making the clown smile at the sight.

 “But I’m busy, someone needs to look after the carnival and keep people smiling.” He continued, and you felt your smile drop in disappointment. “Life responsibilities you wouldn’t get.”

 You let out an annoyed huff. It was somewhat annoying that everyone assumed you were younger than you actually were and treated you like a naïve kid. Although, for most it seemed like the title of “kid” was one more so born out of affection rather than a label. Either way, it was nice while also leading to some personal annoyance.

 … Not that you would ever mention it, or could mention it, anyways.

 You were snapped out of your thoughts when Ronbo started speaking again, gesturing towards the carnival and the various Habiticians that were scattered across the grounds. “Check and see if there’s a tough guy clowning around. He should be able to help ya. Hnk.”

 Tough guy…?

 As the realization of who he was talking about dawned on you, you smiled brightly and nodded in thanks. This got another grin out of Ronbo, who waved as you quickly strode into the carnival grounds in search of your target.

 Where was he-aha!

 Gillis was hard to miss with his intimidating frame and towering height, but he always seemed so… quiet, as though he did not want anyone to notice his presence. You had seen firsthand how much of a sweetheart he could be, both with his love of cute things and the empathy he was willing to express if he felt someone needed it. He had made it clear that he hated people judging him from your interactions with him, and it was something you could relate to. Unconscious expectations and the disappointment when those expectations were not met-

 You shook your head. Nope. Not getting into that while you were trying to cheer someone up.

 Wanting to further distract yourself from your previous train of thought, you waved as you got closer to the bouncer, hoping to catch his attention. Soon enough, he noticed you and waved back.

 “Hey!” Gillis greeted before looking around and crouching down so he was closer to your height. In a much softer, hopeful voice, he quickly asked you a question. “Did you grow any new flowers to show me?”

 The slow, somewhat sorrowful, shake of your head caused a frown to appear on his face. You winced at the thought of disappointing him but, well, you had not been able to grow any new flowers here. The only seed you had been able to get your hands on was just barely budding. When you got out of here, you definitely needed to start dropping off flowers at… wherever he lived.

 You hoped the quick pat on his shoulder helped convey your apology.

 Despite his dismay at your answer, he was quick to put on that macho act as usual, standing upright as a serious look crossed his face, though he was careful to make sure you had moved your arm before he did so.

 “GOOD! FLOWERS ARE FOR BABIES, NOT MACHO GUYS LIKE ME! So, what if they… look really pretty when the sun’s shining, and all the… f-fuzzy bees land on them…”

 You waved again to catch his attention, cutting off his mumbles about how wonderful flowers were, and how cute bees could be. As he directed his focus back to you, you held out the pickle jar. A pleading expression crossed your face as he processed your unspoken offer.

 “Oh! Uh… you need me to open this weak jar? Cause of your baby hands?”

 You quickly nodded and, to your surprise, Gillis seemed rather hesitant to help, growing a bit sweatier.

 “That’s WAY too easy for me to open! I’d be wasting my time when I could be doing, uh, other TOUGH, MACHO things! Yeah-huh?”

 The pleading expression on your face as you held the jar out to him again certainly caused him to pause. His flustered state intensified as he took in the… cute expression on your face-

 It was too much.

 “Ok, if you REEALLY need my help with this… task. BABY task. I’ll open the jar, easy peasy…”

 After he took the jar from you, you grinned and clapped your hands. Yes! That jar stood no chance against Gillis, and you knew it! You watched as he took on a determined stance, holding the jar in one hand while the other rested on the lid. In fact, it was as though the entire carnival had grown silent, the anticipation building…

 “Time to… FLEX-”

 You watched as the bouncer slowly struggled with the lid, turning it one way and then the other to try and loosen it up. His eyes were narrowed, teeth gritted, and you swore you could see the veins in his arms bulging due to the amount of power he was using, but the lid just… refused to budge!

 Not wanting him to give up hope, you clapped your hands together and did your best to cheer for him, despite your naturally soundless state.

 To your surprise, your clapping and supportive state seemed to actually be helping him. Slowly, slowly his grip tightened…

 “Hrngggggg…”

The hand on the lid started to twist…

 “GrrrrAHHHH-“

 And the lid popped off.

 It flew somewhere in the distance, as though Gillis had accidentally thrown it during its removal, but you were certain you heard something breaking in the background, like a window.

 Hopefully, no one would have to pay for that.

 Gillis stood in front of you, panting slightly and sweating quite a bit, but he looked victorious as he offered you the pickle jar. “Heh… super easy… huff…”

 You placed the opened jar down off to the side and leaned forward to quickly hug Gillis. Normally, you would never have instigated such contact, especially if you did not know whether the recipient would want it or not, but you wanted to make sure he fully understood how grateful you were.

 And a small part of you had wanted to hug him since you first realized how soft the bouncer was.

 He, naturally, stiffened up at the gesture and quickly looked around to see if anyone was paying attention. Once he was certain that no one was looking at either of you, his eyes quickly grew watery and he let out a sniffle.

 “F-Fine, you can have one… hug. A Baby Hug.” Gillis relented as he carefully hugged you back. “Not like I like… hugs… um, thanks…”

 You looked up at him, tilted your head to the side, which the still sprouted flower on the top of your head mimicked, and grinned. Communication would forever be a painful hurdle for as long as you remained at the Habitat, but hopefully this was enough.

 Based on the blush and smile present on Gillis’ face, you were certain it was.

 With your thanks and hug properly delivered, the opened pickle jar was collected, and you set off to deliver Randy’s briny salvation, waving at the other Habiticians as you went. There were still so many you needed to cheer up, so much work that needed to be done, but you could worry about that later.

 Randy was your focus now.

 The trip back to the stairwell took no time at all, and you were soon greeted by a cheerful exclamation from Randy. “Oh, pungently fragrant flower, the wind carries a briny scent! I see the sweet nectar has been unsealed.”

 You grinned at the theatrics before nodding your head. A true, genuine smile took over the poet’s face as he leaned over, performing a mock bow, and waited. Quickly picking up on what he wanted you to do, you lifted the jar up and dumped it over him.

 Immediately, Randy was covered in the strong-smelling substance, pickles nearly falling to the ground before he managed to deftly catch them. When the jar was empty you placed it off to the side and watched as the tinted green Randy smiled at you.

 It certainly seemed like you had managed to cheer him up.

 “Thank you, o faithful friend! The glorious smell of pickles, one could weep… sniff, sob.”

 The praise and thanks were appreciated, but a part of you felt bad knowing that Gillis would not get the recognition that he deserved. If he had not opened the pickle jar for you, you have no clue how else it might have been opened. Besides, you had a feeling the bouncer could use the confidence booster!

 You sprinted away from Randy, ignoring his confusion and questions as you gestured for him to stay put. You could only imagine the stares you were getting as you dashed back towards the carnival, nearly bumping into Putunia in the process. After waving apologetically at her and ignoring her insistence that you needed to continue practicing your tackles to “take down the Green Menace”, you swiftly made your way over to Gillis.

 Panting a bit thanks to all the running you had been doing so far, the morning was barely over, you nearly bumped into the bouncer as you came to a halt, hands on your knees as you took a moment to catch your breath.

 This, naturally, drew Gillis’ curiosity and concern. “Uh… you okay?”

 You looked up at him and nodded before reaching out and grabbing onto one of his arms. Using all your strength, you did your best to tug him towards the stairwell.

 As expected, he did not move an inch.

 “Heh, your Baby Muscles aren’t enough to move a MACHO MAN like me!” Gillis exclaimed before his bravado turned to confusion. “What’re you doing?”

 Doing your best to convey your intent, you gestured towards the courtyard, still tugging on his arm. He seemed pretty confused by what you were trying to do, but ultimately relented and allowed you to pull him towards the courtyard.

 “NICE TRAINING, FLOWER CADET!” Putunia called out, throwing her fists up in the air. You awkwardly sent her a thumbs up before continuing with your task.

 It took far too long in your opinion to get Gillis to the stairwell, but you eventually managed to. Randy was still standing where you had previously left him, seeming to bask in the heavy smell that now engulfed him. He was snapped out of his trance when you, and Gillis, got close enough.

 “Hello, o fruity flower! What has caused your swift return?”

 You pointed at the confused bouncer and mimed opening a pickle jar to the best of your abilities. The poet was able to quickly decipher what you were trying to portray and shifted his attention from you to Gillis.

 There was already a blush forming on his face.

 “Oho! So, this sweaty fellow is the one who freed my salvation from its glassy cage?”

 “Uh, yeah?” Gillis hedged, somewhat unsure of what to say. “Opening that jar was SUPER easy for a TOUGH GUY like me!”

 “A magnificently muscular specimen, then!” Randy proclaimed before bowing to Gillis in thanks. “You have my external gratitude, savior of pickles!”

 “Uh… YEAH! Did… did you really need those pickles so bad?”

 “Indeed, I did! I have craved their glorious juices and brine as a fish craves water! You were vital in helping accomplish my wish, according to our flowery friend.”

 The bouncer scratched the back of his head, still somewhat flustered by the praise but now starting to calm down a bit more as the conversation progressed. “W-Well, if you need a BUFF, STRONG MAN to open more jars, I’m the guy you should look for!”

 Randy’s eyes practically sparkled with joy at the offer. “How wonderful! I shall write poems that praise your strength and victory over the might of the pickle jar!”

 From there, the conversation continued with the topic shifting from focusing on the challenge of opening jars to shared interests. While Gillis was not a poet, he certainly seemed interested in listening to some of Randy’s poetry, and it made you happy to see that the two of them were getting along and enjoying the other’s presence.

 Who knows, maybe they would become friends because of this.

 When there was a break in the conversation, you took the chance to wave and catch both of their attention. You gestured towards the courtyard, indicating that you had to leave.

 “Safe travels and good luck on your quest, o flower friend!”

 “Yeah! And… uh, Maynard says hi…”

 You mentally cooed at that; it was good to see that Gillis still cared for the toy bear and nodded in understanding. With everything settled, you took off and resumed your duty of trying to cheer up those in the Habitat that were still sad.

 Someone had to help them, even if you were the least qualified person to do so.

                                                 xxxxxxxxxx

 The next time you saw Gillis and Randy interacting was about a day later. As you made your way down the questionable stairs, you noticed that the pair were seated at the bottom, talking about something. Curious and not wanting to disturb them, you quietly crept down to the landing above them and waited there, looking down at them.

 Due to Gillis taking up most of the space, Randy was somewhat squished up against him, not that either of the pair seemed to mind. In fact, Gillis appeared to be downright infatuated with whatever Randy was saying-

 Oh, he was reciting some sort of poem! A poem that Gillis was enjoying based on the smile he had, and perhaps he was enjoying just being around Randy too.

 The blush on his face certainly made you think so.

 The soft-spoken words between them went unheard by you for obvious reasons, but you were glad to see that they were enjoying each other’s company! They looked cute together, too! Your heart melted as you watched Randy lean against Gillis, enthusiastically gesturing to something on one of the pages he had been reading from. The bouncer was sweating drastically at this point, but there was no denying how content he looked with the situation.

 You stood up and made your way back to your room, intent on leaving the two lovebirds alone so they could have some peace and quiet.

                                        xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I hope you all enjoyed reading this oneshot and thank you so much for reading it in the first place! I hope to continue writing more Smile for Me fics, especially since i have some ideas, so hopefully you’ll see more from me in the future! Thank you all so much for your support!

- ImmortalCoelacanth

#my story #fanfiction #smile for me #sfm #second person pov #reader as flower kid #gillis socco #randy hapukurk #pickle jars are a struggle

[lemongogo]

Bro talk about shigahawks

HHFHN I WANT TO ! I have so much on my mind but rn im in that weird space where i cant form coherent thoughts so ill just give u a quick glimpse of wht i think

kel @transkeigo made a rly good post on peak shigahawks and tumblr user @waxwingedhawks also mentioned smth i really like

i think the most interesting thing to me is the parallels between their origins !! how they were both shaped and forced to fit into certain roles and how they never really had a choice in wht they wanted to do (hawks into heroics and shigaraki into villainy). tenko wanted to be a hero and hawks wanted to live an easy and stress-free life (obv not something the #2 with his own agency established at 18 y.o sounds like)

so they have rly interesting viewpoints shaped by their experiences that, imo, compliment each other rly nicely . additionally, they’ve never canonically interacted before so it kinda lets me project what i want to see between my 2 favorite characters onto them DKGKG. like.. i love to think about how shigaraki is actually a rly understanding and empathetic character? he knew what overhaul did to magne, to the league, and how they were never “one and the same”. not even from their first meeting. he entrusted the league w autonomy to do what was necessary. he, upon hearing abt his teammate’s concerns and complaints before mla, immediately delivered everything they asked for (and more) once he had the funds to. when he stated that he wanted to destroy everything, he mentioned, everything with the exception of what the league appreciated. hes. really thoughtful w those close to him. and i like to think his relationship w hawks would bring that out in the both of them. hawks cares a lot, too !! look @ how he regards tokoyami and the other UA kids around him. 

but at the same time like. villain hawks is so good. soooo good to me. better than his current/original character arc. imagine the leader of the plf w the #2 hero . im 😳😳 . and cmon. u cant talk abt these characters, especially shigaraki, w/o mentioning how undeniably cool they are. theyre both stubborn fucking idiots & have tight attitudes. they work hard for what they believe in,. i think of hawks killing jeanist (i can dream) nd shigaraki doing That to overhaul and the mla. like. they feed off each other bro, they’re gonna work together to achieve the ideal society they both want :)! . no one can stop them

pls like. the aesthetic. i like it sm. i also like to think of ways theyd annoy dabi and it cracks me up

shigahawks babey ! i cant wait until they finally interact woooooooo

#shigaraki #hawks #shigahawks #asktag #Anonymous #shiganatsu is good too #shiganatsu is gamer / jock bf but shigahawks is gamer / chad bf KFGKFJ

[ships-for-you]

For @sdrawberiee

Again, I’d like to point out that the character/s may be out of character. Also, I haven’t proofread any of my works, as if that wasn’t obvious enough, so please message me if you find any words that are out of place or misspelled. Anyway, let’s get on with it!

For Diabolik Lovers, I ship you with Laito!

Surprised? In all honesty, so are the rest of his brothers. The realization was significantly more devastating for the the eldest triplet, the foundation of his morality, everything he ever believed in, the only world he’d ever been accustomed to, disintegrated into nothing. Should he feel relieved? Was this what was best? Was this why he had not been able to identify your intentions. Your arrival at the mansion was not expected, much like the arrival of the blonde that arrived a few moments prior. Just as the eldest was about to announce the arrival of another bride, you knocked upon the heavy oak doors of the vampires’ mansion.

You were fully aware of your position and your mission, ensure the prospective bride survives the awakening. You felt pressure as you were not certain whether you were capable of fulfilling the responsibility entrusted to you. You were much more of a character that resolved conflict through means of communication, rather than act as a knight who would disperse it through means of recklessly protecting a target. You see, as generations of vampires evolved, vampires have developed an extremely strong bloodlust. Drinking blood directly from a human became a far too euphoric feeling which resulted in most of them completely sucking a human dry which, is definitely, what your master feared. He had instructed you to stop the brothers from over-feeding from the bride. Whatever it takes, you must do so, even if you it was at the cost of your own life.

Needless to say, they had welcomed you, or as how they would normally welcome a seemingly defenseless human to their home. Your presence never truly sparked the fedora wearing triplet’s interest as he thought you had a fairly average physique, duller hair in comparison to the girl that had arrived earlier, and your brown eyes were barely visible behind the thick lenses that you wore. Honestly, you looked so...average. All the brides in the past have at least had something that invoked a sense of lust within him and yet he felt nothing of that nature for you. “She’s more of a sacrifice than a bride.” Is what he thought as you introduced yourself and were escorted to your own private room parallel to blonde.

You attended the very same academy as they did and you did your very best to monitor the brothers and their interactions with Yui. You smiled as you remember how cute she looked once she accidentally walked in to your room in the attempts to escape one of the brothers, she really was pretty. Her bright pink eyes seemingly staring into your soul. You promised to help her should she need it to defend herself and she thanked you however told you that you needn’t do so as she would only be a burden to you. You waved it off.

As you were surveying the area for any of the brothers, you ended up on the roof. The rooftop was a place that you frequented as you loved seeing the moon, there was something strangely romantic about it. Romantic wouldn’t be the best word to describe the feeling, you’ll admit, however it was the first word you could think of. Staring up at the moon longingly in hopes that someone was staring up at the same moon with mutual feelings was always a concept that intrentested you.

As you neared the metal bars, you heard a whimper and a dark chuckle and you hurried to the origin of such noises. You saw the very human you were thinking about to faint in the hands of one of the triplets. You exhaled deeply and calmed yourself before approaching them.

“Laito, must you feed from her where anyone could have caught you? Reiji wouldn’t appreciate such behavior.” You’d chide him. He’d remove himself from the blonde’s neck, causing her to slump over. “My, my, don’t tell me you’re jealous of our little moment, little masochist.~” He cooed as he turned to fully face you, his eyes narrowing in a flirtatious manner. You shifted your gaze to Yui, hinting for her to run as fast as she could, which did not go unnoticed by the vampire. “You know, if you were jealous, I wouldn’t have minded if you joined us.” He whispered lowly. “I wasn’t jealous.” Was all you said, not used to being in close proximity with the pervert.

“You shouldn’t feel so ashamed to give into your desires, it’s not as bad as you think.~” he licked your neck to entice you which only earned him a grimace. “R-Reiji asked for u-us to return, i-it’d be best if we returned to the limo.” You remarked. It wasn’t a lie nor was it the whole truth, you’d like to think you saved the second son the time and effort of finding his own brothers. “Aw, is that so? Well then let’s go,” he dragged you alongside him, ignoring all the stares and whispers of the other students of Ryoutei Academy. “Don’t think I won’t punish you for ruining my fun, my little masochist.~” he continued with a dark chuckle which effectively frightened you and yet it didn’t sit well with him. That wary look upon your face didn’t excite him as much, it wasn’t as fun as it was with the other girls he flirted with. You really were different, whether it be in a positive or negative way, he did not know.

Needless to say, he never lies. He brought you to his room and drank and drank from you, hoping to not only satisfy thirst but also, to elicit the usual excitement he would feel from seeing your pained expression. It didn’t take long, as you had not struggled, when you fainted. He placed you in his bed and thought about what he would do next, people are their most defenseless when unconscious after all. He hovered over you, his knees on either side of your hips, and his left hand beside your head. His right hand trailing your face from your eyelids, to your cheeks, all the way to the lower roots of your neck. He dragged his fingers through your hair and watched as it fell from his grasp. Your hair was smooth, he’d, give you that. He started to unbutton your uniform’s blouse as slowly as he could to somehow elicit any sexual sensation to no avail. He stopped after he unbuttoned the third one that was situated above the middle of your sternum. Has he lost it, or is he just not feeling it tonight? He stared more at your figure before sighing and resorted to his last attack, a light kiss on your forehead. He then settled on laying next to you. He ended up falling asleep flat on his back, staring at his room’s ceiling.

When he woke up, he unconsciously reached out to your side on his bed only to find you nowhere in sight and let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding in. Strange. His bed was still warm indicating that you had left recently although he had not interest in finding you. There were...things he wanted to discuss with himself.

You, on the other hand, laid on your bed confused. You felt around yourself to check if anything had been taken from you and found nothing new on your body. You sighed in relief and calmed down a little only to be interrupted by one of the brothers by asking her to do something for them, as usual.

Needless to say, your relationship with the brothers was a long one. You were a naturally bubbly and talkative person and so when you realized that there was a fair amount of strain in the their relationship, you could only marvel at how they’ve managed to stay somewhat sane. You valued communication with those you cared about and the communication they shared with another. You’ve come to care for them as you tried to understand the hardships they must have faced when they were younger which had manifested into who they are today. You may never truly understand how they must have felt as you’ve never personally experienced it however, you sympathized with them. They did not ask to have whatever was given to them and so you tried to correct the lessons that were taught to them with your words and actions.

They all thought you were pathetic. Honestly, what sort of impact could a human have on one of the most superior races that roamed this world? That was there first mistake, assuming. Time and time again, you’ve proven their assumptions wrong with your actions. They couldn’t decipher your intentions as the term, “kindness from the bottom of your heart” does not register in their mind instantly. This boggled Laito the most as he was usually the best at deducing the intentions of humans as they are all the same in his eyes. Subaru was one of the most skeptical as he held little to no trust for you nor your gender as his convoluted relationship with his mother altered his thoughts. He steered clear of you, which wasn’t much of a problem as he stayed in his own private quarters. It was in the rare occasion where he would cross paths with you and saw your attitude whilst interacting with his brothers and as you consoled the shorter blonde was he nearly convinced. Nearly.

As for the eldest triplet, he was still deeply bothered. What were you trying to do? What did it have to take for you to stop? It’s almost as if you truly cared for them. It’s as if you loved them. “Like that really exists.” He sarcastically remarked under his breath as he watched you talk to Kanato. “Love does not exist.” He thought bitterly as he walked away, not wanting to see you with any of his brothers for a while. He was so baffled to the point where he consulted Reiji, as suggested by you in the past, which he was only answered with a surprisingly vague and misleading answer. “Ask her yourself and the answer may become clear to you.” Was all he said and showed him out of his room.

At this point, he had become desperate in a sense. He came into contact with more women (and the occasional men) in the salacious sense in order to see whether he would find the answer somewhere there. Unfortunately, he did not and so he decided to confront you...albeit in a not so calm manner.

Once you were alone in your own room, fixing your books for the following day, he apparated behind you and immediately pushed your shoulders against the nearest wall. He gripped them tight as his knee came to position itself in between your legs. He narrowed his eyes at your pained expression, the very same face he had grown accustomed to as he seemed to be the most physical with you. You whimpered as the pressure became unbearable and you would only whisper a weak, “let go.” He didn’t comply to your plea however loosened his grip. He decided to be frank, no need to prolong the confusion.

“Why do you insist on helping us? It’s pitiful, in all honesty. You don’t merit from it whatsoever.” He hissed. He’d finally get his answer, whether he needed to force himself upon you or not, he definitely will. “Because I care.” Was all you said, it was the truth, what more did he want from you? He slammed your entire torso against the solid wall behind you before glaring at you with such intensity in the attempts to intimidate you.

“Oh please, like that’s the truth. Do you honestly believe that I’d buy that excuse of yours? Care as unconditional as you claim it does not exist.” He’d drill on. “It’s called love, Laito. Care as unconditional as mine is called love.”

“Love is an artificial feeling that people have made up to hide their underlying lust, it’s not what you think it is, little masochist.” “Perhaps love is not what you think it is.” You’d retort bravely as you saw his resolve weaken a bit. “Then tell me, little masochist, if I’m so wrong about love, what is it then?” Desperation laced his words as he so badly wanted to resolve the problem that he had been faced with for weeks on end. There was a moment of silence before he felt the soft surface of skin come into contact with his face.

“Love is acknowledging your imperfections yet allowing yourself to change for the betterment of those you care about.”

#ship #diabolik lovers #diabolik lovers x reader #Laito Sakamaki #anime match up

[hylukotranslations]

B-PASS - June 1993 Album: Darker Than Darkness -Style 93- Text by: Yasue Matsuura

Atsushi Sakurai (Vocal): “I have to be kind to myself. I shouldn't torment myself too much, because I'm a weak one.”

Did it ever happen that what you wanted to write about at first changed during the recording ?

What I want to say is probably only one thing, that's how I think today. So, when I consider that as songs, I have to use many words to explain, in order to say this only thing. I thought that I'd like to, not to distort what I want to say, but to make it come out and bring it out. If I only fill melodies with words, what I want to say has a risk to end quickly (laughs). So, in the lyrics, there are numerous words that I pronounce as the character that I play, and today I think that it's better to sing enjoying it.

So today you enjoy your lyrics.

Yes. I think that what I want to say is in only one line, and the rest are explanations.

Then has your way to write lyrics changed ?

It changed. Before, I wanted more time to write lyrics and think about them. I've even hadn't one month to think about their essence. First, I feel that for this melody I'm sure that such words with such atmosphere match the most, but before writing the words, the impression that I get from the songs or melodies, the time that I had to wait to let these things come out from inside me, I didn't have enough of that time... I had to concentrate, to do all I can to not to let escape my sensations.

When U-ta told me that you have written on your notebook many words and thoughts, I thought that you had many things to say.

After all, I practically couldn't use them at all, all what I had written there.

What was written on it ? But maybe there were only drawings (laughs).

I've drawn too, my face for example (laughs).

What, really !? I want to see that !!

(laughs) It's a notebook where I've written only poems and words that can't be lyrics. There are imaged words, like direct words. Maybe they are words that I have controlled inside me.

That is to say ?

What I've written in this notebook is what I want to say, but is also controlled by a part that isn't that... Yes. Since there is this me who says things directly and another me who uses images to say things vaguely, inside this same book.

And you were also impatient because of this lack of time. Have you ever thought, I wish that the songs were soon finished, or have you ever wanted to hurry Imai-kun or Hide-kun ?

Ummm. I rather thought, I wish that there were songs that match these words. Since I always have the passive position, something that isn't in me can come out from the two of them, and I have to wonder in my way, what kind of impression do they want to express ?

Don't you tell them : this is what I'm thinking about, or I want to sing that kind of song ?

No I don't. I can't say that. Because I myself think : I wonder what I want to sing. After all, I measure the timing for what comes out unexpectedly, and at the time where I begin to write, the songs come one after the other, but since I'm concentrated on the first song, I don't listen at all to the other songs. Because if I listen to them without attention, what I felt without attention at the moment go somewhere. And between us, there is a kind of relationship of entrusting and being entrusted. For example, saying responsibility would be weird, but in my case I'm at a certain point entrusted with the initiative to write lyrics and sing. Of course, it's something that is possible because there is trust between us, it's a relationship of entrusting and being entrusted but where we express our opinions and are attentive to the others. It's always been like that, when we five do a recording.

You don't continue arbitrary your work without being concerned with the others.

That's right. First of all, all of us are in the studio, right ? Unless something unexpected happens, it's something normal for us to be there.

For example, if you are worried about the lyrics or songs or if you saturate, do you ask the members for advice or suggestion ?

Not directly, but I can somehow ask them : "what kind of impression would be good", or : "how should I sing to sound cool".

Do you also count on them for the psychological aspect ?

The only fact that they formulate words helps me greatly. When what I was vaguely thinking about and what the members say match, I feel relieved, like : ah, that's great.

When I ask the members : what kind of lyrics is Atsushi writing ? they say : they are still temporary lyrics, or : since we let him take care of that we don't know.

It's because I always write until the last limit (laughs).

Not because they want to keep that secret.

No. And rather than seeing reactions from other persons, getting reactions after singing is more strait. Because it's not about words on paper but rather seeing if they match the melodies and atmosphere, if they fit the general tone.

During the recording, on what are you based on ?

Maybe on writing cool lyrics. If I succeed to write that I feel good, the persons around me would feel good too, and the songs get even better. I think that that's what I aim during each recording. I don't feel confident (laughs) but I strongly think that I want to go there, to write something cool.

What you call "cool" is not only about something good-looking, right ? Showing your miserable side or sadness is also linked to what you call "cool" ?

Maybe, yes.

I think that this aspect appears in the song "Lion", which is included in the new album.

(embarrassed smile) Oh no, I'm an uncool one you know.

Do you ever feel loneliness during the recordings ?

Yes, it can happen that I feel loneliness, I don't know for the others... When I write and sing myself, there is a part in me that can't help rejecting what is around. But maybe that's my personality (laughs). There is a part, maybe a cunning part that only myself can understand ? I think that a part of me that the others can't easily understand probably shows itself. A part that they think they somehow understand, but not everything... But since I like loneliness, I savour it. I manage to feel preciously this loneliness peculiar to the recordings and that I can't savour in my everyday life.

On the contrary, when do you feel that you are not alone, that you are five in the band BUCK-TICK ?

Since it's something that is always there, maybe I don't need to be conscious of that. It's been a long time since I haven't gone to the studio just to listen to the mix down. These days I was recording the vocals and on the way I listened to the songs that were mixed down. This sound that we created all together with such effort, when we could all together listen to it once it was richly dressed up, I could really feel the band that we are. It's the joy of creating one thing all together. At that moment, I could forget all what I was suffering for, worrying about.

This time your lyrics are positive. We can feel something that we couldn't feel from "Kurutta Taiyou (Mad Sun)".

Actually I was thinking : be positive. Maybe it's impossible to change completely oneself from its roots, but one can change its way of speaking, right ?

Maybe you've become more adult.

No no, ummm. It's because I'm kind.

You say that yourself !

(laughs) I've become able to be kind to myself. I thought that I shouldn't torment myself too much, because I'm a weak one.

Ah, I see. Then you were tormenting yourself too much so far.

I've become someone who wants to be seen as I am. Finally.

--fin

translation: hyluko [livejournal] scans: tigerpal [livejournal]

NOTE: these translations are not mine also might not be very accurate. i took them from hyluko’s site using the wayback machine. thought they’re great to share. if the owner is around and wants me to take them down i will!

#バクチク #櫻井敦司 #Darker Than Darkness -Style 93- #Buck-Tick #Atsushi Sakurai #translation #b-pass

[stagnot]

more thoughts about episode four based purely on leaks.

GENDRY BEING LORD OF STORM’S END.

so, like. eons ego, i talked about why i agreed with the fact that making gendry the immediate lord of storm’s end is poor story telling. here are some of my tags then:

#lkjasdsd lmAO like??????? i KNOW i should probably root for him or whatever #bUT THAT POST. IS. CORRECT. #G/ENDRY IS A LOWBORN. #HE CANT READ. HE CANT WRITE. #he..... he even struggled to ride a horse my dudes. #HE HASN'T GOT A PROPER EDUCATION LADS! #he can't just waltz up and be like ''guess im your lord now'' like?????? #aside from g/endry's whole DILEMMA about being a lord in THE FIRST PLACE #which is: A Lot of Issues to deal with tbh because g/endry has a Major Distrust in the monarchy / hierarchy system as a whole.# it just.... wouldn't make sense. once the b/aratheons are officially extinct. i... am pretty sure #there is already another house set to rule @ storm's end as is. #like..... i'm not saying i oppose to g/endry being legitimised. i actually think it's - fair? somewhat? 

#he had done a lot. if not protecting one of s/tark's heirs (a.rya) FOR YEARS on the run and even being proactive regarding it#he agreed to go on a mission beyond the wall. which. experience-wise. was a VERY DANGEROUS thing for him #(he was raised in the south so the climate could've easily like. killed him? if not the dead? lol.) #and then he made dragonglass after dragonglass under the north's allegiance. so yes. i dont mind g/endry being recognised #and one of the things to recognise him with was to give a title. that was how things worked back then i would assume. you do your work#you give men lands and titles and wives (ew. but lets face it. true.) 

#but............ just automatically making him a lord of storm's end is. Not Okay #there will definitely be a political unrest because g/endry is a FOREIGNER and A BASTARD BORN #and just. i have like. a whole thought out process of what would've happen #but like. i'm gonna stop here because eeeep!!! i dont mean this to sound negative-ish it rlly isn't!!!! #i just wanted to make it clear that yeah. i may have to do more research about it #but g/endry won't automatically inherit his family's castle just because he's got the blood u know? and thats it #anyway skdjhksjf i'll: Shut Up now.. probably.. #out of character.

additional facts remain:

if we’re following leaks, i have suspicion that the one who’s naming him lord of storm’s end are daenerys or jon or both of them, together. here is the thing: the stormlands have never canonically bent their knees to daenerys. i won’t understand why they would take daenerys’, whom they most likely will see as a foreign ruler (and a targaryen, no less - who they’ve got bad blood with from robert’s rebellion), and jon’s, who is a bastard regardless of his titles, words for the matter.

no, i understand. this doesn’t mean gendry couldn’t be legitimised. i think matters can be arranged regarding that - because, for what he’s done? heck yeah, i want all of his effort to have some of that sweet rewards, my dude. brienne of tarth, technically, is a knight from stormlands as well — she would’ve vouched for gendry’s service, and, like, they could’ve easily made an agreement that, hey, because gendry has done very good work, the stormlands can also give their blessing to name him as gendry baratheon.

i’m just miffed that he’s immediately made lord of storm’s end?????? dude. that’s. a castle. he’s immediately given a castle???? a whole ass land filled with people to rule????? like????? technically, of course, he can have a claim to it — but do we honestly think since the death of stannis, the stormlands are, what, roaming around without a proper second-house in-command to take care of them? do we honestly think the stormlands, who are proud and stubborn and literally known for their hotheadedness are just gonna, what, let some two rulers they barely knew just..... decide their lord for them?

again, please be aware: gendry is an uneducated, lowborn bastard. he can’t read, he can’t write, canonically - from the books - he can barely ride a horse, and he has zero experience leading men (unlike brienne, who was in charge of a troop, or maybe even jaime, who was a kingsguard). he’s a baby???? 

YES, of course! he can learn all of that. but it’s. not going to be easy. gendry being named lord of storm’s end will cause a political unrest within the stormlands itself, because firstly: they don’t know who gendry is, why should he be their leader; why should they entrust their men and welfare to him? and secondly, gendry is unfit to rule — he’s got SO MUCH to learn before he can be hailed as one of stormlands’ own. thirdly, gendry — WHO HAS A LONG DEEP-ROOTED HATRED FOR HIGHBORNS ARE GONNA PANIC AS FUCK Y’ALL. i feel people just brandishes this away, but not on my watch. fourth, politics aren’t that simple. two people saying he’s a lord doesn’t make him a lord. it’s gonna be more complicated than that. and i.... im gonna emphasise on that. 

im not even gonna touch on the arya/gendry thing cause im just re-writing all of their story with people at this point sO

#why .. why u give toddler a crown ... #a smol house crown why .. #he just wnat rest.. #// #/// #got spoilers #got negativity

[crisisdeltax]

Fear is but a moon revolves around Saturn 2

A\N: A mythical au where dbh characters are symbolic beings and RK900 “Fear” is on a mission assigned to him by his supervisor Amanda “Fate”, he has to guard a human. 

Chp1

Chapter 2

On Earth, Fear stood in front of the house where his mission will soon be born. Eyeing the neighborhood, he concluded that it’d be an easy task, to guard a human in such a quiet and hospitable environment, perfect for a mortal’s childhood stability; a good school close to the house, a local store at close range and a not so bad park nearby, what more could a mortal ask for in their short life?

“A hospital..”

A foreigner voice spoke and he heard it as though it was in his mind, subtle but sure. It sounded excited. Definitely not scared or cautious of him. Most unnerving of all it can penetrate his thoughts?

Fear was passive towards his unclear discovery. Whatever it was, it was unfamiliar and rather intrusive. He needed it to speak again so he kept his thoughts in motion as though nothing had happened for whatever that voice belonged to, his thoughts are no longer his own.

There is a charitable clinic in the town not far for a human’s vehicle which Fear knows the parents own, he just saw the father drive away in one.

“Ooh, you mean the cars? These are handy indeed.”

The voice intruded on his train of thought again and he frowned at its implication, not because it was undesired, but more because intrusion was not a thing he ever fancied.

“Don’t be so displeased with me,” it asked dejectedly, but the amusement in its voice was far from subtle.“I’m trying to help you.”

Enough games.

“Show yourself” Fear ordered, his grey eyes flashed in warning.

“What if I don’t want to?” Not afraid and still amused, it giggled.

“Then I shall make you.” He said nonchalantly while commanding his shadows to seek the intruder, yet whatever that creature is, it still wasn’t afraid of him.

Fear’s shadows are not beings, they are reflections of himself that take no form. They are able to smell fear in mortals. They seek it, feed it, and let it consume the poor mortal whole, if the mortal lets them. But if these shadows are not able to smell the fear, then their task will be harder but never impossible. For fear is as constant in every being as death is inevitable.

The intruder kept quiet, as if hiding. Does it think this is a game?

“Not at all, I have never seen your shadows in action, I’m quite flattered.”

Flattered?

“Ooh yes, for I have never been seen as a threat, let alone by the O' mighty Fear himself.”

“Then don’t flatter yourself.”

“Oh, am I not to enjoy being a fearsome creature of the dark?” It mocks.

“I hardly believe you are of the dark, let alone fearsome”

It gasped dramatically, before it giggled again “Well, you are not wrong…”  The creature paused as the shadows pointed behind Fear, his eyes followed meeting a pair of feline eyes.

Fear’s eyebrows arched a bit, questioning, as his shadows disappeared literally into thin air.

A cat?

“It was worth a shot,” it murmured, hurt, as it groomed it’s now obvious form: a black cat with eyes matching his own in color, its attitude however so very far.

“I like your shadows, they act like your personal guard dogs, it’s cute.”

The feline said in a dreamy tone while its tail kept swaying back and forth. It sat lazily over the ledge of a first floor window.

“As a lady though, I am hurt by you referring to me as it, have you no decency?!”

The feline, -lady- came down from her spot and stretched her body while yawning, “That’s not my real form, since Fate assigned me to your case, I have had this urge to remain a cat. I find myself very comfortable as one, I wonder if it has to do with compatibility, you apparently like cats, so you’re fond of me already—”  she spoke giddily and fast, like a child given a chance and has no one around to stop her.

He tuned her out, his mind making the connections needed to understand the situation fully, he should have expected no less from Fate, especially when she openly told him she had a little surprise, he didn’t expect it to be an intrusive feline though.

“Hey, I’m not just an intrusive feline. I’m way more than that.”

“A chatterbox intrusive feline?”

Fear didn’t need to read her mind to know his reply pissed her off, it’s clear in the way her tail tapped the ground impatiently, it made him feel … deeply satisfied.

“Offended, but I have a big heart, so I will forgive you. It’s obvious that I’m  the bigger person here—”

“I see no person here.”

“It was a metaphor, I’m not a person but I’m obviously the bigger one —”

“What are you?” He spat out impatiently.

“I’m a wish,” she stated it in a manner that made it look like it’s the most obvious fact in the universe.

“And not just any wish, I’m your wish. The moment you took the hourglass in your palm, we were bound,”  she spoke proudly, the last part a bit higher than the rest for the dramatic effect, Fear was buried in deep thought that he knew she has access to.

A dark being such as him should never carry emotions or follow their personal dreams and wishes. He fails to see the wisdom in Fate creating him a wish. Why would she send him such distraction on a very simple mission. If anything, this seems to be a hazard for his task. Perhaps it’s a test of sorts.

With these thoughts in mind, the intrusive feline jumped up onto his shoulder, sitting comfortably with her tail round her legs and head nuzzling his cheekbone “Till death do us part,”  she added smugly.

“Then I shall inform my brother immediately.”

“I feel attacked,” She gasped “I thought you are already fond of me. Seems like I have to make more effort, even though I’m so lovable.”

Fear gave her a side nonchalant look, which she returned with a stare of her own before she rested her paw over his cheek,

“You are quite likable.”

She winked before she jumped down and he could swear he heard a click with her wink that doesn’t sound natural for the entire feline species.

“I believe now is as good time as any for me to introduce myself,” she cleared her throat, “among my kin I’m called Wonder, and I wonder why,”  she giggled yet again as if it was funny before she composed herself and resumed. “Don’t worry, I know why I’m named Wonder, it’s because I wonder a lot which is healthy for my existence as a wish, to wonder always and—”

As she talked, Fear has made up his mind that he would take the matter of this talkative feline to the higher-ups. Whatever Fate’s wisdom is, whatever the bond between them is, this should be broken.

“ It can’t be broken, I just entrusted you with my real name, the higher ups won’t allow you—”

“Watch me.”

“Listen, you have to accept it. I’m a part of your mission now, that’s all you care for, right? I have seen your memories, your life is boring, I tell you, But not anymore since I shall accompany you always, my humble existence will help you reach for your inner self and seek to let go to your own wish, aka me—”

Isn’t she tired of her own voice?

“Of my own wisdom you mean?! How can anyone?”

“Have you lost your ability to be serious? Or is everything a game to you?”

“I can be serious if you wish me to be, as your wish I’m only compelled to act however you like me to act, and apparently you seem to wish for a talkative intrusive feline companion.”

Fear has never heard anything more ridiculous or confusing in his existence. If this thing is actually his wish and she is compelled to be what he wants her to be then he wished for her to disappear.

“Do you have a name with which you would have me address you?” She asked and Fear wasn’t sure if she was mocking his earlier thoughts or sincerely asking. Didn’t she know who he is? Wasn’t she the one who can access his memories and read his thoughts?

“I know you are Fear but this is your title not your name, same as I’m a wish,” she waited for his reply but it was quiet and his thoughts were blank so there was nothing for her to read.

“Then I shall call you Nines.”

Nines?

“Yes, you are the ninth of your title, all eight before you have perished. Also I felt attracted to call you that which means you probably wish to be called that and—”

“It’s not even a name.”

“And you call me intrusive, you have been interrupting me for the past ten minutes I can barely speak. And no, Nines is a beautiful name and it fits you, since now we have shared our names, our bond will last to the moon and back, to hell and beyond, to heaven and above—”

Fear was becoming used to tuning her out by now as if she is some background noise he can’t seem to turn off. He really has to take this matter to the higher-ups.

“Come on Nines, let’s investigate the house where our little baby human is gonna be born. We have to make sure it’s safe for our baby to grow healthy. Your mission is my mission, if you die, I die and I quite like life unlike you—” she kept on chattering as she made her way to the house.

Maybe the higher-ups will have to wait a little for the intrusive feline was right for once, he needs to see the house. Silently with a subtle frown, Fear followed his little wish.

A\N: I didn’t want to add an OFC but I couldn’t find anyone in the dbh fandom who share the same personality as Wonder, I mean I thought about Chloe or Daniel or even Ralph but I couldn’t feel it, you can also consider Wonder as you/reader if you would like, either-way I hope you guys like this one and hope it made u smile. Thanks for reading thus far.Special thanks for @the-darklings your reply alone motivated me, hope u like.

#rk900 #original female character #detroit become human #detroit: become human #nines #dbh au #my writing #mystical au

[barnesbabee]

I am back with a bit more family drama..yay!

I asked my cousin so we gucci. My cousin's getting married in august. They'll have 2 reception afterwards for her side (us) and his side (her in laws) on different days. On the reception day of my cousin's side, we wear blue / baby blue (complimentary colour to her reception fit). Its been discussed with us, and his immediate family. But his mother disagrees with blue because she doesn't think it'll be a suitable colour. My cousin told us on the day she told her m.i.l, the m.i.l was like "haih ok fine", reluctant. And few weeks later when they met up again ... the m.i.l pulls out her outfit for the reception on OUR side and gimme a drum roll please ...... Its dark maroon / burgundy. So her future m.i.l completely disregarded my cousin and her son's decision and went ahead and bought an outfit only she wanted. Rightfully, her son is down right upset with his mother. It gets worse. On the day of the reception on his side, we wear peach tones .... and she bought a green outfit. The couple is so fed up they just ... ignore her now.

Story 2. So our aunt, the one that asked if she could make a dress instead of our traditional fit, she problematic. And no, we aren't being dramatic. She steals our stuff, slyly. Nearly every time she visits us (our extended family), at least one item goes missing, only to be found (by accident) somewhere in her possession. Grandma's plate, knife, pots pans, maybe jewellery, my uncles dress shirt, etc. I understand there a condition for chronic stealing. But she just also doesn't have that nice of a character to begin with. She also lowkey the reason for family fights but I'm not supposed to say the details so ill keep it there 🤐. We also think she brainwashes her husband (my uncle) through stuff (we believe in like curses / black magic) that caused us to be so .... iffy around him nowdays. Not the best character to begin with but he wasn't bad ... until he got married. I do have one grudge i hold against him.

There was a time when we were kids, we played at the mcdonald's playground. I was probably 6/7 yrs old. Admittedly I was rather the rough kid but i was by no means violent or intentionally rough. While playing, my cousin fell from the slides, had to be taken to the E.R and apparently I was at fault. Which i was not. At that time, I was left in the care of my aunt and uncle (the ones mentioned above) bc my mom had to rush somewhere and entrusted her only child (then) to her older brother. Otw to the E.R in the car, my uncle was really mad like ... real angry with me for what had happened and reached his arm back and pinched me really really hard. He only pinched once but he was raising his voice and blamed me for being stupid during the entire ride. which is pretty uncalled for considering that cousin is not even his son ... 😐 and my eldest uncle, the father was not even mad at me. We got back to eldest uncle's house after hearing that my cousin isnt severely injured and only needed a night in the ward to monitor his head. I didn't cry once. Not even when my uncle pinched, yelled and blamed me. Until we got back to the house and my grandma asked me what happened and ofc i also included what happened in the car. I broke down when i told what happened in the car and was hysterical for my parents to come for me. Ofc, they were furious.

So yeah ... :D sorry if its so long, i have no idea how to tell stories that are shortened 😅

Listen I did NOT know you could send asks this long but Im here for it axjaod I love it

I love thw way some MILs ignore the bride's and groom's wishes as if the day has anything to do w them???? Like people arent there to see you bestie, ans it's not mesnt for u to be the star calm down

This fucking ESCALATED bro it went from 'my aunt wants a different dress' to 'my aunt is controlling my uncle through black magic' BRO what a ride

But thats really fucked up idk what to say other than stay safe my guy and pls tell me how the wedding goes and if anyone is murdered or something bc thats the only logical progression to this Ig 💀

[markoftheasphodel]

Let me add something to what I asked previously. Nanna's dialogue about her 'understanding how her mother felt seems to be cause of this as other people said the same. I posted about it on reddit with my username being RJWalker (u/RJWalker if you're not familiar with reddit) if you're curious since I link it. The line referencing 2 dialogues she has with Finn in FE4 and with Delmud in FE5. It has nothing to do with incest. However, if this was not your issue with Nanna, then I'd like to hear it.

I read that post of yours this morning along with the replies. Your post is quite correct as far as the origin of Nanna’s lines (and I do agree the decision to use dialogue that can only be unlocked with Lachesis is paired with Finn as a basis for any of Nanna’s quotes in FEH is… interesting). As you said, virtually nothing about the legacy characters is truly new information– it’s information and dialogue from the games and official sources, gathered up and collected in one little package per character. Maybe there’s some degree of self-awareness of things that were relayed by third-party or the narration before, but that’s about all that’s new.

The problem is how the information is deployed– the context of what’s included and what’s not. The conscious choice was made to depict FEH!Lachesis as a young woman bereaved of her perfect brother and explicitly not interested in any lesser men. Likewise the choice was made to present Finn as someone who blatantly has never gotten over Quan with only a single mention of an ambiguous “someone” left as an apparent window for het-shipping in case fans from Ye Olde Shipwars still care, I guess. With Nanna, the FEH package is heavily slanted toward her lineage as a daughter of House Nordion (I assume they make clear she is Eldigan’s niece in part so that no one assumes she’s his daughter, because newcomers to the series have no more likely candidate facing them based on Heroes– and that’s the devs’ own damn fault). 

Except that Diarmuid doesn’t actually get a mention, which is odd. One would think the long-lost brother to be a relevant piece of characterization given they did use the “How mother felt” line, but he’s not. Nor is Eyvel, despite the years she spent mothering this girl. I assume Eyvel is among those included in the Lvl 40 quote about “people who were hurt” in front of Nanna’s eyes, but that’s it. Not that any character deserves acknowledgement by the devs in FEH dialogue, but again someone made these choices on what to omit and what to present, just as someone made the (bad) choice to erase Ethlyn’s legacy to Leif.

None of this is wrong (OK, Lachy’s art is wrong) and some of it is EXACTLY what one ought to expect based on the actual game texts– again, as you said, almost none of this information is new or surprising. But there was other information that could’ve been used with both Lachesis and Nanna to present a different frame of reference and therefore a different sort of young woman. Lachesis might’ve mentioned the ordeal her retainers went through on her behalf, thrown some shade at Grannvale for trashing the place, mentioned Elliot being a pig or even referenced (gasp) Beowolf or Dew and the picture would’ve been a little different. Maybe drastically different. Nanna could’ve mentioned Eyvel and Mareeta, something more of village life besides one oblique reference to not being used to lots of people– or, perhaps clarified her prior anger and her resolution of it in that “how mother felt” line. But we got what we got, and that’s OK.

Now, Cipher. Cipher is not OK. This new card, “Entrusted Feelings,” featuring Nanna, wouldn’t have set me off in and of itself. Everything on that card is true; she was indeed the carrier of the plot device letter that calmed Ares down. But her previous cards also defined her as more “Eldigan’s niece” than anything else… and this comes after the truly objectionable presentation of Lachesis as “Brother-Pining Lady” which was when I had really had enough of this sis-con horse-puckey and asked some non-existent deity to take these headcanon dead horses to the damn glue factory.

I did not and do not expect actual confirmation of Finn/Lachesis in canon or any spinoffs because a) it was something the devs didn’t want to start with and b) they’ve had plenty of chances. I am not upset about “mah OTP” but I do think it’s shitty that “Finn’s (adopted) daughter” is now being presented exclusively as “Eldigan’s niece” when Eldie’s been a corpse for Nanna’s entire life and had jack shit to do with her upbringing or survival unless he was watching over her as a benevolent ghost, I think it’s shitty that Lachy’s remarkable character arc is compressed into “loved brother, had kids somehow, went missing” and I think it’s triply shitty that Nanna’s own character is being impacted as a result of these two factors.

What we’re getting isn’t inaccurate to SNES canon. It’s just that one or two chords are being hammered again and again, ad nauseam, when three or four would’ve made for a better song.

#rjwalker243 #jugdral meta #house nordion issues #long post #text post #jugdral spoilers #mah otp #sort of