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the-daydreaming-show · 2 months

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𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐎𝐧𝐞 — “I am, I have been, and I was born hungry.”

𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: An abandoned son makes a decision. The cared for son is taken away.

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫(𝐬): Bruce Wayne X ScarletWitch!Reader; Jason Todd x Batmom!ScarletWitch!Reader; Tim Drake x Batmom!ScarletWitch!Reader; Jason Todd x Tim Drake.

𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠: kidnapping, mention of PTSD, weapons, threats (silent), drugs and forced drug use, death of Janet Drake, and mention of Jack Drake in the hospital, Jason is mansplaining, manipulating and manslaughter his way through this sequel.

𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞: This took a while because I had a precise plan for this sequel, but writing this chapter, something possessed me and changed everything. So, now I'm not sure what's going to happen, it's all in destiny hands now on!!!

Thanks to our beta reader, the wonderful @igotmessymind for her work, as always, I appreciate you very much!!

Now, I would like to make a special mention of @andieperrie18, who made a playlist base on the Batmom Scarlet Witch.

And I need you to admire this masterpiece, because this playlist doesn't just include songs. NOO, It also has dialogue between Batmom and Bruce at the beginning, and it's just gold. Also go to check the other playlist in her channel, they have some good stuff. The small talks and slow dancing with Bruce Wayne is one of my favorites!!!

So, thank you very much to you @andieperrie18 for your love and the dedication it took to make this playlist. I don't have enough words to show my adoration and gratitude for this playlist. So everyone, please go give them love to the playlist while reading this chapter!!

𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐔𝐬 / Prelude / Next Part

Jason knew he was not walking on good ground. He hadn't been since he was revived in the Lazarus Pit. He hadn't been when he had killed criminals to try to control Gotham's crime. Nor when he had to escape from Arkham Asylum after Batman had locked him there, under the excuse that it was best for him.

Lies.

All were lies.

He knew it now more than ever as he looked at his wall.

Jason was sitting in an old chair facing the wall, where a variety of photos, newspaper clippings, maps, and notes were displayed.

Seeing that wall told him that he was definitely slipping into a new territory of madness.

But-he-couldn't-stop. It was like he was on a slide, and he couldn't dig his heels in to stop. A part of him didn't want to stop.

Just as he hadn't wanted to soften the news of his return to Bruce, that part of Jason wanted revenge with every atom of his true self. And now it was pushing him towards that wall.

Another part of him, though, didn't want to do this. It was the part that still made him want to put his hands in his mouth to eat his cuticles, like he had done as a child. That part wanted to approach you on the street, and calmly let you explain why you hadn't sought him out. So that he could move on somehow, in a way that would make you proud of how Jason had handled everything.

But you had abandoned him.

After Bruce found out he was alive, Jason had hoped that once he told you all of it, you'd show up at his door. Jason had been ready to listen to your logical arguments and leave the whole killing thing behind.

¿Who cared about revenge and Gotham if there was a chance to get back with his mom?

Not to Jason.

You didn't; you never showed up.

And now the part that wanted revenge was screaming too loud for him to hear anything else.

So there he was, sitting in a chair, arms crossed, as he carefully admired the wall he had created.

There were pictures of you picking up Timothy Drake from school, taking him shopping, hugging him at galas, and chatting with him at fashion events. Events that you had probably only been invited to, but you had convinced the team to let you take someone else, the same way you did with Jason when he was young. You probably took him to eat at your favorite restaurant every Friday after school, like they did with him. You probably also turned off the light in his room every night after saying goodnight, like you did with Jason.

No shame; you had given everything that was Jason's to that boy.

That's why you weren't looking for him when you found out he was alive. You had replaced him with that kid, the same way Bruce had, and you deserved the same kind of punishment.

You deserved his revenge. And you will receive it.

You were in your office, in your brand's office building, a few blocks from Wayne Tower, where your entire clothing brand has done most of its business since you married Bruce. The official and original store of your brand is still in Metropolis, where it all started, but you moved the main offices to Gotham when you got married. So all of your children spent time between Wayne Tower and your building.

Usually, that was where they ended up after school.

Tim was supposed to go there after school. Typically, you would go pick him up. But that day he was staying a few extra hours at school for his Debate Club, and he would walk with his friends to their houses and meet you before you left the office that afternoon. So you were surprised when, as you were evaluating some new designs, your phone lit up with your youngest son's phone number.

“Mom,” Tim’s voice immediately sounded on the other end of the phone when you answered. He sounded nervous.

“Tim, honey,” you said, looking up at the clock. “Did I forget to pick you up?”, and immediately, your mind goes into paranoia, convinced that Tim had asked you to go look for him, and that's why he was calling you, and you had forgotten.

“No, no. Mom, it's fine,” he assured you quickly. You could hear chatter in the background, like someone was encouraging him to talk. “Mom, do you know today is Friday, right?”

Obviously, you remembered that it was Friday. On Fridays, when Tim came home from school, the two of you would go out to dinner at your favorite restaurant as a traditional mother-son activity.

“Yes, I've noticed,” you said, closing the sketchbook to give the boy your full attention.

“And we always go to eat at Julián's on Fridays after school, without fail,” he continues explaining. You assumed he was going somewhere, so you murmured an affirmation. “Well, you saw Dylan, my chemistry classmate. He and others are going to eat at a pizzeria near the school, and they invited me. After eating, we are all going to go to his house to play video games. If you're okay with that, I would like to go. Or I'll just go eat and go back home early. I-” Tim was already in babbling territory; you could barely contain your laughter when you interrupted him.

“It's okay, Tim. I don’t mind a change of plans, darling,” you assured him, and you could see his shoulders relax even from your building. “I'll take advantage and visit your father's office; I'll ask him to accompany me on an impromptu date.”

“Okay, okay. Yes, that sounds good.” Tim was smiling as big as he could, while around him, his classmates were singing victory for the afternoon they had organized. “I'll let you know where we are and call you when it's time to come home. I love you.”

Before you could tell him that he didn't need to tell you exactly where to be and at what time, Tim hung up the call, too excited about the whole thing. To which you inevitably laughed, happy that Tim had an activity, say a boy his age, and that he was so excited about it. You had met Dylan a couple of times; he was a good kid, so you were sure everything would be fine.

Jason watched Tim walk with his friends all night.

After observing him for weeks, he realized that the chic lived based on a fairly consistent routine. One that repeated itself almost around the clock for some reason, but Jason suspected that it had to do with the post-traumatic stress the boy must have had after the Joker's attack on his biological parents the year before. The boy's mother was six meters underground, and his father was on medical care for life because of all this. Jason almost felt bad for him. Almost.

This also meant that you and Bruce were very aware of the boy's routine, so if Tim were to disappear for even a couple of hours, it would ruin your plan. So he chanced it, waiting for the ideal moment to feed his need for revenge.

So when the sixteen-year-old decided to leave school one afternoon in the company of a group of other kids his age, he was clearly not on his way to your office like he usually did.

Jason took the phone out of his pocket and gave the order to start.

The group of friends went into a hidden, but sufficiently crowded, pizzeria a few blocks from the house of the boy Dylan, to whom Tim seemed closest in the group.

Jason had quickly discovered that Tim was a smart kid. He was too smart for Jay to trick him or accidentally cause him to fall into a trap of some kind.

But he had also discovered that Tim was, like Bruce, an idiot for justice.

He had watched him risk his life more than necessary for civilians while he ran around as Robin, when Jason from afar could have found about five ways to save the civilians without getting in the way. Tim jumped in to save them with his own hands every time there was a lethal risk. It could be that the weight of not having helped his parents was still eating him alive too.

But one way or another, Jason would use that to his advantage.

Jason walked into the pizzeria, followed by five other men he knew Tim would recognize. It was because he had gotten them out of jail, especially because Robin had dragged them and put them there, with the aim of getting them to help him. The proposed men didn't know he was there for that reason; they were just doing their job for the money, unaware of the mental games Jason was playing with the teenager.

And Tim Drake understood what was going to happen the moment he saw Jason. She looked him in the eyes and smiled as she casually glanced at the table of the group of friends, who were still wearing their school uniforms.

“Timothy, little one,” Jason greeted casually, putting his hands in his pockets and watching as Tim's eyes went to the way that movement revealed the reflection of a gun on his hip. “I've been looking for you!!”

Jason knew exactly how Tim would react and looked at the situation. They had both been trained by the same man at the end of the day. They were a reflection of each other, and that is why it was a dangerous game. “Are you hungry, Timothy? Because I am starving.”

Jason wasn't talking about the pizzas, and Tim knew it quickly. But he couldn't do anything, not with Jason so armed and clearly accompanied. Both were surrounded by so many civilians, and Tim's friends. His new friends, who had been patient with him and had accepted him into his group, which he had been joining since they were children. But they still tried to integrate him and invited him to things, again and again, until that day he accepted for the first time in months.

The table had fallen silent at the extra situation, but Tim seemed to know the stranger who had sat down, so they didn't say anything. But Dylan, as kind and caring as he was, saw the way the color had drained from Tim's face. So he spoke.

“Don't worry, Dylan,” Jason told him, which took Dylan by surprise since he had never told the stager his name, and he got genuinely worried now. “He just needs something to drink; he's just dehydrated. Timmy works a lot and doesn’t take care of himself.”

While talking to Dylan, Tim watched as Jason grabbed his glass of soda that he had been drinking while they waited for the pizzas. Without anyone else noticing, Tim watched as Jason dropped a pill into the drink, which was probably intended to knock him out, or at least drug him enough to make it manageable for Jason.

All without anyone else noticing, just so he could see it and know what was going on. He was faced with the reality that he couldn't do anything, and he couldn't fight, not at such a potential price. He was trapped.

It made Tim feel alarmingly alone, despite being surrounded by people.

“Here, drink something.” Jason handed him the glass, where the gas from the soda easily hid the bubbles that the pill made as it dissolved. “It will do you good.”

The two stood face-to-face for a moment as the older brother offered the glass, and Jason didn't need to make the threat for Tim to understand.

Or Tim drank the soda and voluntarily sedated himself. Or he would get him out of there in a much more aggressive way. And some bullets could be lost in that situation, so Jason could make sure that his friends were the ones who received them.

Tim could see the decapitated bodies of Black Mask's lieutenants, found shortly after Red Hood appeared in Gotham, before Bruce discovered his identity.

So he grabbed the glass and brought it to his mouth. Tim gave Jason a last pleading look, to which the boy just smiled sweetly. And your youngest son just wanted to scream for you, but you didn't know Jason was alive, and you suspected that's exactly what Jason wanted.

He wouldn't put you in danger.

Bruce would handle everything; Tim trusted that.

Tim downed the glass of soda in four gulps and didn't remember anything else after that.

𝐓𝐚𝐠 𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭: @some-lovely-day @simonsbluee @yuki-chan23 @miyakana @myst3batz @otchae @d3m0n8ch1ld @marsenbie @mynameisnotlaura @andieperrie18 @totallynotme420 @igotmessymind @amarawayne @calsjack @kodzukenmaaa @mellowdiy @noah-uhhh-what @blarba-girl @dead-sane-stuff @huhuhhuhh @ashlynnmalfoy @kimmis-stuff @undecided-shipper @justafanficsreader @poppyalice2001 @holdyuhmuda @jiabae @mara-moon @avitute @lafrone

#batfamily x reader #all for us #jason todd x batmom #batmom #tim drake x batmom #batmom!reader #batfam x reader #dick grayson x batmom #scarletwitch!batmom!reader #scarletwitch!reader #bruce wayne x fem!reader #batfam imagine #batfamily #batfamily x batmom

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seroh · 4 months

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something blue

suna, f.reader

in which you try to get the courage to divorce your cheating husband.

words: 0.7K

notes: angst; edited and reposted from my other blog

something old | something borrowed | something blue

What is a vow?

The question popped in your head as you stared at your wedding photo. It hung proud and mighty on the wall opposite your bed, so big it had seemed pretentious and self centered when you’d ordered it, but your husband had insisted. He had called it proof of his love and devotion for you. You called it overcompensation and deceit.

If only you hadn’t been so naive, so trusting. If only you had opened your eyes instead of blindly entering the fantasy world Suna had so carefully crafted for you.

“Poor girl. Poor pathetic, stupid girl,” you muttered, words not reaching the ears of the woman frozen in time, living a lie. “You really thought he was perfect, huh?”

And truly, you had. He had once seemed like the most perfect, most idyllic of men. Even months after the wedding, he still played the role of the doting and loving husband. Now, the real face that hid behind the mask plagued your nightmares, kept you up at night. The bitterness of truth wouldn’t leave your mouth, its vile taste made you nauseous just from thinking about it.

If it hadn't been for the getaway trip you had planned just because, you would've still been caught in his webs. It was your prevalent postnuptial bliss what had, in the end, shone the light on his deceit. It almost made you laugh. A cruel, resentful kind of laugh.

Instead, you cried.

‘What is a vow?’ You asked yourself again, spite rising against the pain. Was it a promise born of love? Was it an ode to fidelity? Wishful thinking? Pretty lies?

A vow, you decided, was the purest form of deception.

Even now, having known for so long what he was doing in the shadows, you still thought about his voice, his face, his smile as he declared your love eternal, and saw a man deeply in love. His eyes hadn't seemed anything but adoring, his words nothing but heartfelt. His mask had been so carefully crafted no one would've doubted his heart and soul belonged to you.

Oh, what a fool you must've seemed. You could almost see them, laughing at your expense after your many anniversaries, mocking the love you held for him, your happiness and tears after his proposal. And to think that, at some point, you had come to consider her a friend too.

His best friend. He had kept his lover right by your side, even encouraged you to get closer to her. And you were too in love with him to notice.

Suna hadn't put any effort into his affair and neither, looking back on it, into hiding it. Memories came to you of them in compromising situations, but they were just so affectionate with each other. They had been friends for so long, way before you came into the picture. It was just the way they were with each other, so how could you try to pull them apart? How could you even think he would see her that way? Were you really so insecure that you didn't think a man and a woman could be friends?

It was obvious now, of course, that he was just manipulating you with those words. Realizing it really put into perspective just how long he had been seeing her behind your back. He hadn't woken up one day and realized you weren't enough, that he needed more. She had always, always had him for herself, even back when you were just getting to know him, it was her he belonged to.

You had just borrowed him for a while, and it was time to give him back.

You stood up, wiped the tears off of your face, and grabbed the crumbled envelope beside you. As you left your apartment and went down the stairs, you realized it was for the best. Divorcing him was for the best. He had been gone for weeks now, and you weren't planning on taking him back.

You ignored the pity-filled looks the neighbors gave you, and marched to the front desk. Your hand faltered for just a second before extending the envelope to the receptionist.

"Next time the mailman comes, give this to him. To send urgently."

Your voice quavered and your fingers hesitated to let go when he grabbed it, but the old man just gave you a comforting smile.

It's time to let go, you reassured yourself.

You could only hope Suna had enough compassion to make it easy.

SEROH 2024

#haikyuu angst #haikyuu x reader #hq angst #hq x reader #haikyuu fic #hq fic #suna angst #suna x reader #suna rintaro x reader #suna rintaro angst

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kittievampire · 1 year

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Hey. Could you do an hc or fic where instead of mc coming to devildom as an exchange student but was summoneded from an other world by accident. And in the world they were taught to fight and survive in any situation and is really strong. For example they were able to fight belphi off long enough for the demon bros to come. Thanks

Ohohohohoooo shietttt

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you!

I've actually thought about this before, mainly that MC's power is comparable to that of Sebas Tian from Overlord, so I'll use him as a reference. This is a really cool idea tho

Lemme see what I have in my bag, my dear~

Click here if you wanna request!

Warnings: Cursing, Near-Death/Traumatic Experiences, MC is fuckin goated, Very suggestive (Asmo's part)

Lucifer

Would it suck if I said that bro would be slightly relieved to hear you had inhuman strength?

Just one less thing he has to worry about while you're down here

He actually saw your display of ability when you were in a fight at school

He'd gotten there a little too late, however, and witnessed you take a hard punch from a demon

Once he saw you dust yourself off before landing a side kick to the demon's torso, causing them to fly back into the wall, and cause a huge crack to form, he was probably more impressed than anything

Really, bro is more like a proud father that would ask "How did the other guy look?" After a fight involving you

Of course, he dragged the both of you away to scold you

After the other demon was gone, he began asking questions like "Have you always had this ability?", "Where did you come from again?", and "Could I possibly use you to threaten Mammon?"

Mammon

Speaking of the greedy baby boy, he actually walked in on you while you were on an enraging phone call

Baby boy just sat down on your bed, waiting for you to get off of your phone so he could have your full attention

He didn't want to bug you while you were irritated, you're scary and he doesn't want you to be angry with him!

His face pales when he sees you crush your D.D.D. with your bare hand

The device crumpled like a damn paper ball!

He yelped at the sight, sunglasses falling off of his face

You sighed and looked over at him, a smile forming on your face

"What's up, Mammoney?" You asked sweetly

"Uh-uh, nope, we ain't just gonna sit here and pretend like that shit didn't just happen, since when could you, a human, do shit like that! I thought all humans were weak!"

You just kind shrugged. "I'm a different kind of human, mind you, I was summoned here from a different dimension all together. I'm probably not like the humans you're used to interacting with."

Well, the only humans he interacts with are witches

"W-Whatever, I wanted to ask ya if ya had any money I could borrow to pay back the witches, but I might just consider taking ya with me to scare'em off."

Leviathan

The two of you were playing video games one night

You happened to be quite the gamer yourself, only you played more arguably rage-inducing games

You explained to him how you managed to punch a whole through your PC once and he totally doesn't believe you at first

"Yeah, right. A normie like you couldn't possibl-"

You showed him a photo that you'd taken a long time ago when the events transpired

His jaw drops at the damage

"N-No way!"

Is actually pretty amazed by it but lowkey still doesn't believe you until he sees you break Belphegor's wrist and sending him flying with a punch when the Avatar of Sloth attacked you

Asmodeus

Bro immediately gets horny

Especially if he finds out via you getting into a fight with someone over him

Like this lower demon will not get the hint and he puts his hand on Asmo

Homeboy is about to go fucking feral, but before he can, he sees you grab the demon by the throat and slam his body to the concrete, earning a loud crack

"Oh my, MC, I didn't realize how strong you were~"

Looks at you like how we look at the brothers

Horny bastard wants to be manhandled and carried like a bride and he'll get his way soon

Satan

Homie is sooo intrigued when he finds out

He probably saw you mid-meltdown

You thought you were home alone, that's why your door was open

So when you punched a large ass hole in the wall, homie saw it and immediately was like "IntErEstInG"

He'll definitely be the most curious about it

"What are the magical factors behind your powers?", "Do your abilities have limitations?", "Can we test to see if they rival that of a demon's?"

Will definitely try to use you for pranks on Lucifer

Beelzebub

The hungy boi saw you lift one of the weights he uses without too much struggle

He was definitely impressed

Continues eating his burger while walking up to you

"MC, you're really strong. You wanna be my workout partner?"

He believes that if you workout really hard and are really strong, you need more food

So he actually shares his food with you every now and then 🥲

Sometimes though, you'll have to explain to him that you're full and you don't need the extra protein

Belphegor

He finds out the night it happened

It's convenient, really, he was talking about how weak humans were compared to demons while holding you up by your throat, squeezing tighter

"It's pathetic, honestly. You damn humans are no more than insects that deserve to be crushed underfoot. You're better off dead."

He scoffed in amusement as he watched your hands come up to gently grip his wrist

"Humans really are weak. You think pawing at my hand is gonna-"

You break his wrist

He freezes

Processing...

Buffering...

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Of course, he'd released you

While he was in his state of shock, you managed to catch your breath and land a hard roundhouse kick to his torso, making him fly a few feet, shoes skidding across the floor

"Tch, I spoke too soon..."

Hope you enjoyed, anon!

#obey me #obey me mc #lucifer obey me #obey me hcs #mammon obey me #leviathan obey me #satan obey me #asmodeus obey me #beelzebub obey me #belphegor obey me #obey me belphegor #obey me beelzebub #obey me asmodeus #obey me satan #obey me leviathan #obey me mammon #obey me lucifer #obey me bros hcs

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kokusfluffyhair · 10 months

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hi there! i stumbled on your blog and the kokushibo headcanons are cute lol. i was wondering what your thoughts are on a modern au? like his style, what his house/apartment would be like, what he’d do for work, that kinda thing. if you answered this before or if you’re not taking requests I’m so sorry, pls ignore! have a good rest of your day :)

Kokushibou Modern AU Headcanons

(I'm going to put him in his human form for this)

A little about him

+ His name is Tsugikuni Michikatsu, but Kokushibou is a nickname of his

+ He got the nickname from other members of a kendo club he participates in

+ Doing kendo is his main hobby and he sometimes enters competitions

+ He hasn't won a competition yet and has the habit of coming in second place

+ He grew up in a small town not far from Kyoto, but he lives in Tokyo now for work

+ He enjoys the options available in the city, but it can be too busy and crowded for him

+ He's a bit distanced from his family and doesn't visit them often

His job

+ He works as an editor for a publishing company

+ He doesn't mind his job and he makes pretty good money. But he does work overtime quite often

+ His least favourite part of his job is talking to people. He's glad that his job doesn't make him talk to the public (like he would if he worked at a shop or restaurant), but talking to clients or even his colleagues is exhausting and annoying to him

+ Once he reached a high enough position in the company, he stopped going to the 'mandatory' drinking sessions after work

+ His colleagues don't really like him for that, but now that he's in an editor position, there's not much they can do about it

+ His work is always very high quality

His apartment

+ He lives in a residential neighbourhood of Tokyo, just outside of the city centre

+ His apartment is a one-bedroom. It's in a modern building, but the design of the apartment is more traditional

+ He has a collection of calligraphy scrolls that he hangs on his walls

+ He has a single indoor plant by the main window

+ One of the things he invested in is his bathing area. It would look kind of like this, and he's very proud of it:

(photo from japan-guide.com)

+ He can sit in there for hours. He might have fallen asleep in that bathtub once and is lucky his head stayed out of the water

+ He's kind of obsessed with his heated toilet seat, and if you don't use a bidet (or bidet function), he thinks you are a barbarian

+ He likes to play quiet music at home and hums along often

+ The music he plays is either traditional music or vkei

+ Liking vkei is his guilty pleasure

His style

+ He wears a typical black or dark grey suit to work. He ties up his long hair in a man-bun

+ When not at work, he usually wears his hair in a high ponytail. When it's hot out, he wears it in a man-bun regardless of where he is

+ However, he wears it down when he sleeps, without exception

+ His non-work wear is casual, but sleek-looking

+ He pulls off a nice t-shirt with jeans or trousers very well

+ Sometimes he wears well-made, high-quality sweatpants (like the kind that don't really look like sweatpants but they are)

+ He doesn't like shopping, so he probably buys all his normal clothes at Uniqlo. He did, however, invest in better-quality suits for work

+ He wears the same pair of Adidas trainers that he's had for years and somehow they're still in very good condition

+ In the colder months, he half-buries his face in a scarf when he's outside

+ He has an excessive amount of socks for some reason

+ He wears jinbei as pyjamas most of the time, but will wear some thermal sweats during the winter

+ No matter how hot it is, he will not go shirtless, even if he's alone at home

His hygiene

+ He bathes daily in the evening, and it's a ritual for him

+ He's really into hair care for the obvious reason

+ He uses the &honey shampoo/hair care line

(picture from myjcos.com)

+ He also likes the smell of tea tree-scented soaps

+ His facial hair grows thicker on his chin and moustache area. He shaves every day, but there tends to be a bit of a shadow come the evening

+ For some reason, he has this obsession about grooming his eyebrows

+ He shaves his body hair

Other things about him

+ He doesn't like Apple products

+ He wears glasses for reading

+ He sneezes a lot (whether from allergies or from having a cold)

+ He likes to cook

+ Karaage is one of his favourite foods

+ He likes to play RPGs

+ He's not good with foreign languages

+ He's one of those people who needs to sleep with a blanket no matter how hot it is

+ He's a side-sleeper

+ He gets sweaty at the back of his neck and his forehead

+ He has some random freckles on his face that he covers with concealer

+ He's a loner, but wishes he had someone to spend his life with

+ He easily feels cold

+ He's depressed, but is in denial about it

+ He tends to fall asleep while a movie is playing

+ He loves to open his window on summer nights and watch the moon and stars

#kokushibo #kokushibou #kokushibo headcanons #kokushibou headcanons #kokushibo modern au #kokushibou modern au #kokushibo kny #kokushibou kny #kny modern au headcanons #kokushibo modern au headcanons #kokushibou modern au headcanons #demon slayer headcanons

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honeyoru · 4 months

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INFERNO Chap 1 (portgas d ace x ofc)

series masterlist

pairing: portgas d ace x devil fruit user! original female character

4k words

warnings: language, mild violence, sad backstory lol

a/n: Oh no I've fallen into another fanfic and can't get up.....

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

It’s with a harsh bang on her door and a steel-toned command from her mother that Orion begrudgingly opened her eyes on her eighteenth birthday.

Not that it mattered, per say. To her, it was just another day.

But, she mused while shuffling out of bed, it’s my day to run the stall.

That was enough to put a pep in her step.

She quickly ran a brush through her hair, wincing at the tangles scattered throughout the long strands. The girl rushed to get dressed knowing her parents wouldn’t be happy if she wasn’t out of the house before sunrise.

Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table when Orion finally hurried downstairs, placing the newspaper dutifully into her father’s waiting hand.

“Lots of pirates in town lately,” her father stated, barely sparing a glance at the person he’s addressing.

Not that it’s needed, they’re all aware his words are meant for her.

“Don’t allow them to haggle,” he lowered the paper, throwing her a condescending stare, as if he were speaking to a toddler. His daughter bit her tongue, pushing down the fury that builds when he looks at her like that. “Pirates pay full price. Hell, charge them higher too,” he sneered. “If you can manage.”

The villagers of Torappu Island didn’t view pirates too fondly, apart from Orion. She and her brother had a fascination with them ever since meeting a well-known crew in their earlier days, long before her brother had gone missing in the sea, before her parents looked at her with contempt, before she tamped down her burning desire to escape to somewhere, anywhere, as long as it was off this island.

Her eye twitched just a small amount, something she was proud of given her innate desire to talk back. She dipped her head. “Yes father,” she responded in a monotone voice, careful to mask her irritation behind a dry piece of bread. Hurriedly, she swallowed and allowed her eyes to flicker towards the framed photo adorning the wall, the only of its kind in the house. The girl silently bid her late brother’s portrait farewell, knowing he would no doubt be rolling his eyes at their father’s tone if he were here.

With a thump her backpack settled against her shoulder blades, bouncing as she left the house. She offered a muted goodbye to her parents that went unanswered, not that she expected them to say anything anyways.

No one mentions her birthday.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

The walk to the town square was pleasant, all things considered.

Sure, it meant she had to push a cart full of metal items up a hill, but a breeze blew her hair gently, offering a reprieve from the heat that was sure to creep up later this afternoon. A smile graced Orion’s face when she remembered she won’t have to tiptoe around her parents until later tonight.

She was free, at least for a handful of hours.

Torappu Island wasn’t a hidden gem, a slice of paradise, or a particularly interesting place of note. It was an island in the West Blue that got business from travelers passing through, simple as that. The Navy didn’t patrol here as often, but had a base further east.

The town square that held the market was plain with a few dozen stalls. The teen arrived when the sun still hadn't risen yet, giving polite greetings to the other merchants she passed.

Her family’s stall was in the middle of the plaza, settled between a fishmonger and a tarot reader. Orion opened it promptly, pulling out the metal goods her father expertly created (something her brother used to help with) and laid them out in the exact way she’d been taught.

She ran her hands over one of the newer crafted swords with oil, a process she’d done thousands of times. It’s better to polish before selling, the girl repeated to herself. It’ll make the blades shine brighter to potential buyers.

The first half of the day went by quickly, and far too easily. She should have been wary.

More travelers than usual were flowing in and out of the market; Orion felt like she could hardly breathe in between flashing polite smiles to them all.

“Looks like Mommy and Daddy let you out of the dungeon for the day.”

She sighed.

The day had been going too well, it seemed. Tango, a tall teen who had a face littered with acne and an unfortunately beautiful smile, was smirking at her.

“Horatio,” she called out sweetly to the old man running the fish stall. “Your fish seem to be incredibly potent today.” Her nose wrinkled as she took a few sniffs, turning towards the teen who had an intense pleasure in tormenting her. “Oh wait, never mind!” Orion widened her eyes in false surprise, giving a sneer back. “It’s just him.”

She clocked a group of loud, rowdy men exiting the bar a little ways away. Potential customers.

Orion needed the idiot to skedaddle quickly if she wanted to make a sale. “Please do us all a favor and leave,” the girl sent a glare to the couple of boys flanking him, waving them away. “No one needs you three spreading whatever disease you’ve got going on to the rest of us.”

Predictably, Tango scowled, his hand covering one of his cheeks in embarrassment. “It’s acne and it’s normal !” His hand went for a pistol on his waist, something he’d threatened her with at least a dozen times this year already. Though she doubted he’d actually do anything, the spoiled brat was too pompous to ever learn how to properly use one, her right hand hadn’t left the short dagger slung on her waist once since he’d arrived. She wasn’t totally confident he wouldn’t accidentally shoot her. “At least my parents love me.”

“Ouchie,” she drawled mockingly, rolling her eyes. He’d only used that taunt for the past eight years. “Tango, put that down, we both know you’ve got no clue how to use it,” a delicate sneer settled on her face. “It’s more pathetic when you act like you can.”

The boy scoffed, unaware of the group of men coming to a stop behind him. Orion wasn’t sure how, the men had an overwhelming aura about them.

He waved the pistol. “What’s pathetic is pretending like the whole island doesn’t know how unwanted you are. What was it your father told mine, just yesterday?” he tilted his head in thought.

She braced herself, knowing whatever it was was likely true. His father was the mayor, who had nothing better to do than gossip. And Tango had nothing better to do than spread that gossip. “Akio was the only child they wanted?”

Duh, she thought with another eyeroll. “Is that all?”

She glanced at the group of men again, aware that they had paused to observe their interaction. It wasn’t everyday you saw teens threatening each other, she guessed.

“Hm.” Clearly expecting a different reaction, Tango continued after a brief falter. “He also said you’re the reason he’s dead,” he smiled wickedly.

Her grip on the hilt tightened.

It didn’t go unnoticed. “And you’re, well, dead weight to them now,” the three boys laughed. “‘Useless’ is the word he used. Even told my father how he wishes it was you who had died instead. Said your mother can’t look at you without thinking of him.”

Regretfully, she felt her right eye twitch. It’s nothing you didn’t already know .

It wasn't like it was a secret.

“And,” he added as a final blow, finally holding the gun steady. “He said he needed to get rid of the extra mouth to feed. Asked if I’d be interested in marryin’ you so he could stop seeing you every day.”

Her face screwed up in disgust at the thought, too disturbed about the last part to be hurt by the rest.

“Naturally my father declined.” Tango looked just as repulsed, eyeing her reaction. “But it pains me to see someone so desperate to get rid of their child.” With a slight fumble of the holster he finally pointed the gun at her and yanked back the hammer. “Why don’t I help them out—”

“I’ve told you before,” Orion had her dagger pulled out in record time, flipping the blade towards her and knocking the gun out of Tango’s hand with a bruising hit to his wrist with the hilt, careful to mind the sharp edge. “You don’t pull a gun out unless you’re going to use it,” she stated flatly, ignoring the incredibly amused grins the two men in front of the group wore as she flipped her weapon back over properly.

It was with a fleeting glance after they laughed loudly, drawing the attention of the teens that she noticed they had their hands placed on their weapons too.

“‘Little Miss is correct. You know what Captain says about pistols,” the taller man said to the others. Older, if the gray curls tied back were any indication. She found herself vaguely fascinated by the large, X-shaped scar crossing over the left side of his face. “And there’s that old saying of why boys like pulling on girls’ pigtails.”

“This seems to be a little more than a schoolboy crush, Benn,” the blonde next to him said, hand on his own pistol with a glare settling on the boys.

“I’d rather throw myself into the sea,” Orion spat to the delight of the older patrons, twirling her dagger and returning it to its place on her waist.

“You've done enough to disturb the peace, boys,” the lady who did tarot readings next to her finally said, cackling as she fussed with her cards. “It's time to return home with your tail between your legs. The sands of fate don’t wait for anybody and I need to make a livin’. Can't do it with this ruckus.”

Tango flushed at the amount of eyes now on him. He turned to leave and cradled his wrist as his eyes burned into Orion’s. “This isn’t over, bitch.”

She waved him along, unwilling to sigh a breath of relief until the trio were gone. It was an easy decision to shove the emotions over what he had said deep down.

“Now that that’s over, what do we have here, little lady?” The men peered down at her stall, eyeing the goods that were still available.

She allowed another wary moment to pass before slipping back into the saleswoman persona she enjoyed utilizing while selling.

“The best metal on the island,” she replied confidently. Her father might be awful, but the craftsman made some damn good swords.

“Ahh,” the man with the scar hummed. “Makes sense why you know your way around a blade.”

She snorted. “Only know enough to sell them.” The girl counted six men in total hovering around her table, and though she kept an easygoing smile on her face, her hand was back on the hilt of her dagger. “And to keep the idiots at bay.”

“That so?” He noticed too, smiling around the cigarette that hung precariously hanging from his mouth. “Captain’s been looking for a new blade, been a while since we’ve stopped here,” he turned around to glance at the group, missing the way her eyes widened at the word.

Captain.

Pirates. She forced herself to remain still, eyes flickering suspiciously between the men to make sure none of them tried to snag something without paying. There’d been two such cases of it today already and she sorely didn’t want to clean up blood again.

“Captain around?” the man asked the blonde who shrugged, choosing instead to look closer at a short blade.

“How much does this one go for, lass?” He picked the cutlass up.

“80,000 beri,” she answered evenly, offering a saccharine smile when he sputtered at the price, setting it back down. Father did say he wanted her to upsell, after all. She’d keep the extra since he couldn’t keep his mouth shut around the Mayor… again . “It might sound high, but you won’t find quality like this anywhere else in the Grand Line. I guarantee it.” At his stare, she gestured to a bowl of keychains she made when she wasn’t working or sleeping. “I’ll throw in one of those for free.”

“Little miss is right,” a warm voice interrupted the man’s stammering. The group parted for him easily. “Bought a sword from here a few years ago and been good to me.” A man, tan and toned, if the chest peeking out from his barely buttoned dark blue shirt was any indication, stepped in front of her and smiled so brightly that Orion had to blink a few times. Maybe they’re not pirates, after all.

No, she realized after her eyes finally made their way up to the man’s hair, so red it rivaled the tuna the old man next to her was selling. They are.

“Might even be the same stand,” the man, the captain , looked at her with a curious eye, flickering between the sign above her head and her face. He leaned in far, far too close for her comfort, grinning all the while. “Pretty sure you’re the same lass who helped sell it, if my memory serves me right.”

“Sorry,” The teen raised an eyebrow, flicking the dirty blonde bangs out of her face. She leaned back, willing her blush away; she wasn’t used to pirates smelling so good. “But who are you?” It didn’t matter that she already knew; it’d be hard for anyone to forget that hair.

Her question made him pout though, causing the small group to erupt in laughter, the other men elbowing him in amusement before wandering off, leaving just the captain and the graying man. Benn, she recalled. “She’s a delight, this one.”

Captain Shanks of the Red Hair Pirates introduced himself with a confident tone and a firm handshake, eyes twinkling as he insisted that he definitely remembered her from all those years ago.

“You asked so many questions about pirates I thought you and your brother would become one of us one day!” he smiled again. She couldn’t detect any malice or teasing in his tone as her cheeks burned at the memory, eyes prickling a bit.

“Yeah, well,” Orion swallowed. “So did we.” There’s a hint of wistfulness present in her statement, but she shakes it off, forcing a tight smile onto her face. She has to meet a quota, after all. “So what brings you to Torappu?”

Captain Shanks didn’t ask more about her brother. “Just passing through. West Blue’s always fun, but we’re headed back to the Grand Line. Pirate things to do, and all,” he winked.

He needs to stop that. Orion felt her face getting hot again.

Benn rolled his eyes.

“What’s it like,” she eventually responded when her cheeks weren’t as hot, unaware that her voice had settled to a whisper. “Being a pirate?”

Both pairs of eyes lit up at the question, looking at each other in amusement. “You asked that before, all those years ago,” the captain leaned to one side, humming and placing a hand on his hip. Orion noticed faintly that he only had one arm now. “Didn't you?”

“No, it was…” She shook her head, her mind floating to the memory before responding faintly, if only a tad forlorn. “My brother did.”

He gave her a gentle smile, having caught on to her thinly-veiled grief. “Being a pirate,” Captain Shanks said, eyes flickering to the girl’s blade. “Is the freest one can be.”

“You said that last time too.” Orion is suddenly overwhelmed by the same wave of emotions that she felt all those years ago. The ones that pushed in her chest and pulled at her heart.

With a sigh she bottled it up inside again, unwilling to think about it except for in the privacy of her blankets later. “So,” swallowing hard, the girl taps her fingers on the table in an anxious fashion, gesturing to the sword the pirate wore. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Huh?” He blinked, looking down in surprise at the change in topic. “Oh, nothing!” the man exclaimed. “It’s still just as perfect as it was the day I got it.” With a charming grin he unsheathed it, handing it to her to inspect.

She mused at the craftsmanship of the blade, agreeing that her father’s work still held up.

Not that she’d ever tell him that.

Carefully, she handed it back, shocked the pirate captain even gave it to her in the first place. He could kill me without it, Orion thought. “What are you looking for then?”

His expression seemed introspective. “Something new,” he finally answered. She felt a shift in his gaze, and his eyebrows furrowed a bit before the worry was wiped away, eyes flickering to his friend and back at her. The same teasing lilt colored his tone again. “You got anything shiny?”

It succeeded in making her laugh, and she willingly showed him several of the newer wares her father made, the freshly polished ones from this morning.

-----------------------

The bundles of beri bouncing in her bag brought a satisfied smile to Orion’s face as she strolled home the way she came, wondering how quiet of an evening she could have if she decided to skip dinner and head straight to bed when she got back.

“Ow!” Her thoughts were interrupted by a sharp, sudden pain on her head. She looked down, hand flying up to where a rock had just been hurtled into her.

Her eyes widened at the sight of it at her feet. Quickly, she bent down to pick it up. Whipping her head to the direction the rock came from, she swore. A little over fifty feet away, a large group of teenagers were sprinting full force at her, holding an array of weapons.

It took all of two seconds to recognize who was smiling wickedly at her and only one to choose whatever punishment abandoning her father’s cart would land her in over letting the group catch up to her. Hiking her bag up higher, she promptly tossed the cart aside, turned to beam the rock back and sprinted away, chancing a look behind her to see if she’d made contact. “Shit!”

Was that a pitchfork? She couldn’t stop the string of curses if she wanted to, her heartbeat thumping wildly at the ambush.

Tango had somehow gathered his entire gang to hunt her, it seemed. He shouted as her rock nailed him in the forehead (she snickered) and she couldn’t stop the insult loftily thrown over her shoulder if she tried, the pride from landing a hit while so distracted too great. It didn’t help that her usually acute awareness of when to keep her mouth shut never worked around the asshole. “Shouldn’t you be washing your face or something?”

She didn’t have to see his reaction as she bounded across the moist grass and trampled flowers. The boy simply roared. “You’ve pissed me off for the last time! I’m gonna kill you!”

“Really,” Orion huffed, adjusting the bag on her shoulder and willing herself not to trip down the steep hill. As if he wasn’t the one who threw it first!

Another wave of rocks soared over her, blending in with the setting sky against her silhouette frantically running home.

It’s her own fault, really.

She was lucky looking back one time without stumbling. It didn’t seem her luck extended to another.

Tango’s face was bright red, his eyes unable to hide how fucking murderous he was. It seemed he was serious this time.

His eyes were the last thing she saw before gravity laughed at her, and she fell hard.

Dammit. The world is a blur of round chaos as she went rolling down the hill, finally coming to a stop roughly against a pile of boulders near one of the cliffs.

It only took seconds for them to catch up to her.

“Happy birthday,” Tango sang mockingly, the bright smile he had that could be handsome if he weren’t so terribly horrible of a person blinding her.

It’s with a faint and stupid thought while her head flops back against the earth that Orion thinks she could be flattered that her bully is the only person who remembered her birthday. As it were, however, he said it while kicking her ( hard ) from her spot on the ground, so she decided to not think too highly of the action.

“Or should I say, happy death day?”

"Clever." An eye roll happened on its own accord. A handful of kicks are given all over her body in return.

Orion wheezed.

“Grab her,” Tango ordered. The others do as he says, all too eager to obey him.

Orion’s eye was rapidly swelling, she could feel it. There was a mild panic rising in her now; their disputes often ended with the girl fleeing to her house or running until he got tired.

This was different.

The boys drug her to the cliffside, the waves of the sea crashing far, far below them. Hundreds of feet below them.

She shuddered.

Alarm bells rang loud in her head. Orion knew she wouldn't be able to get away easily this time. Her right hand twitched, aching to grab her dagger and stab it through the boy’s stupid mouth but suddenly and painfully it was twisted back with a quick order. The weapon was seized and dangled in front of her.

Her bully knew all of her tells, after all.

“Here,” Tango sneered after she rose painfully on her knees, fully prepared to tackle him as a last resort.

The group surrounded her on all sides; the only open space was at her back, where the edge was. Full and complete desperation filled her lungs.

There was no way she could barrel through them all.

“A birthday present.” A dark orb was tossed onto her lap carelessly. “Eat it.”

“What?” Orion couldn’t stop the question, looking at the object with a faint groan, her ribs would no doubt be bruised in the morning, if she miraculously lived until then. “Not hungry, thanks.”

“Eat it,” Tango repeated, poison laced in his tone as he gestured to the cliff’s edge that was kissing her heels. Her heart plummeted. “Or jump into the sea.”

She licked her lips, dry from the unforgiving salty air. Finally, she looked up at him. “Why?”

“Today was the last straw,” he spat. “You’ve embarrassed me for years.”

“You’ve tormented me for years!” she yelled back indignantly, hair whipping around angrily in the wind. “I never did anything to you!”

“You lived!”

She couldn’t stop the laugh if she tried.

“He was my friend,” Tango snarled, his voice breaking a little in a way that she’d laugh at if he wasn’t about to kill her. "Everyone will be happier with you gone."

“You barely knew him.” Exasperated, she locked her gaze with him. “He was my brother.” Unwilling to indulge him any longer, she rolled her eyes. “If I jump into the sea,” Orion raised an eyebrow, sounding less terrified than she felt at the thought. “I’ll pull you in with me.”

“Crazy bitch.” Armed with the decade of memories that confirm she would, in fact, do that, they all took a step back.

Looking down, she briefly considered the object he tossed at her. It was an odd thing.

“Poison,” the whispered glee of the kids behind her tormentor carried over to her in the wind. She can barely hear them over the waves below. Briefly, Orion noticed her hands were trembling. “It’s poison.”

She should have recognized the swirls on it, but the object, a fruit, maybe, was so dark she could hardly make them out.

She would have recognized it, too, if only she hadn’t been utterly terrified at the threat of leaping off the side of a hundred-foot cliff. Her brother used to give her lectures on them when they were younger after all, eager for them both to find one and explore the oceans together.

It was a pretty easy decision, all things considered. She had a better chance of making it home poisoned than in pieces from the rocks below.

Besides, she really, really hated heights.

#honeyoru #onepiece #one piece fanfiction #one piece fanfic #portgas d ace #portgas ace fanfic #ace one piece #ace x oc #ace x reader #honeyoru: inferno #portgas d ace x oc #portgas d ace x original female character #one piece original character #one piece whitebeard pirates fanfiction

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fandomsandflyingstingrays · 10 months

Text

Stepping Stones: Chapter 9

Vee walks into school on her first morning the same way she returned to the Isles: with Camila’s hand in one of hers and Luz’s in the other, the three of them shoulder-to-shoulder as they trudge through the snow to the enormous green doors.

“It looks bigger up close,” Vee whispers, and Luz squeezes her hand.

“Make yourself taller,” she suggests, and Vee laughs a little, stretching out the legs of her human form until she’s as tall as Camila. It does make it less scary when Camila opens the door.

There’s a man waiting for them on the other side— taller than Vee and Camila both, with dark skin and bushy gray hair— and Vee quickly shrinks back to Luz’s height, praying he didn’t notice anything. It doesn’t seem like he did; he smiles when his eyes land on Vee, and he offers her his hand.

“You must be Vee. I’m Principal Hal. Welcome to Gravesfield High.”

Slowly, tentatively, Vee lets go of Luz’s hand to shake his. “Thanks.”

“We’ve enrolled you in all the same classes as Luz to make your transition easier. As long as there are no… disruptions, I think you’ll enjoy your time here.”

Principal Hal rubs a faint scar on his chin. Vee casts Luz a questioning look, and she mouths, tell you later.

Realizing the principal is waiting for an answer, Vee thanks him again, and he nods. “We’ve moved things around to give you a locker next to your sister’s, to make your adjustment easier. She can show you there so that you can put your things away before first bell, and then you two can head to your first class.”

Luz beams at the word sister, and even though Vee has had two sisters all her life, the word feels magical to her too. Sister meaning Luz. It’s sort of incredible.

“Thanks,” she says a third time. She feels a bit foolish repeating herself, but it seems to be what the principal wants to hear, because he gives her a nod.

“Good to see you, Mrs. Noceda,” he adds to Camila, and disappears into a room marked Principal’s Office.

Camila turns to Vee, placing her hands on her shoulders. “I’ll have my phone on all day. Don’t hesitate to call if you need me, okay?”

“I won’t.”

“Good.” Camila pulls her in for a hug, kissing her head. “I love you. I’m so proud of you.”

Vee leans into the embrace, holding her tightly for a long moment. “I love you too, Mom.”

Even after two months, the word, more powerful even than sister, fills her with sparks of warmth. It took a few weeks after the adoption papers were finalized for her to stop stammering over it, and even though it comes out smoothly now, it still fills her with awe. That awe makes her brave enough to step back, squeezing Camila’s hands and giving her a smile.

She smiles back, then embraces Luz and heads for the door. “See you after school,” she calls, waving at them both.

They wave back, and then Luz turns to Vee. “All right, follow my lead. The crowds in these hallways can be dangerous, so you have to navigate carefully.”

“Got it,” Vee says, matching her solemn tone. Luz links her arm through Vee’s, leading her through a sea of kids, all of them laughing and shrieking, the sheer number of voices making Vee want to slam her hands over her ears. Thankfully, Luz leads them to a hallway that’s far less packed than some of the others, and she only has to nudge one person aside to get to her locker.

She nods at the one beside it, the only cubicle without a lock already hanging from it. “That must be yours.”

She pulls her own locker open at the same time Vee does, and Vee’s stomach sinks a little as she glances between the two. Luz’s locker is crammed with books and crafts, photos and drawings, and Vee’s is an empty wall of gray.

Luz follows her gaze and smiles, reaching into her backpack. “I asked Willow to make copies of these in case you wanted to put them up,” she says, handing Vee an envelope, “and then I added a few more.”

They’re photos from Willow’s scrapbook: Vee, Luz, Willow, and Amity squinting at the TV during a late-night movie; Vee tickling a sleeping Willow’s forehead with a leaf as Luz and Amity muffle their laughter; Vee and Camila making empanadas; Vee making bunny ears over Luz’s head as Amity kisses her cheek and Hunter, Willow, and Gus beam at the camera; the whole group of them clinging to a raft, their faces ranging from excitement to terror; Vee, Willow, Gus, and Amity grinning in front of the map at the Gravesfield Historical Society. Below those are a few more recent pictures: Vee, Luz, and Hunter clutching gaming consoles and yelling incoherently; Vee and the gang from Cabin 7 sitting on the Nocedas’ porch and laughing at something on Masha’s phone; Vee arm-in-arm with her basilisk siblings on the day they all decided to try human form. Just looking at all those images, all the people she can now call family, makes the corners of Vee’s mouth turn up, and by the time she’s taped them all to the door and walls of her locker, she’s beaming.

“Looking good!” Luz says approvingly. “I can draw you some stuff later, if you want to—”

The bell cuts her off with an earsplitting ring. They exchange a look of horror and slam their lockers shut simultaneously, shoving their locks closed and running for the main hallway. It’s empty— they must have missed the warning bell entirely.

“It’s okay!” Luz gasps. “It’s not far!”

She sprints to the end of the hall with Vee on her heels, the two of them stopping in front of a door on the left. Luz pauses, glancing back at Vee.

“Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

Luz nods and pulls the door open and Vee follows her inside the room. And now there are twenty human children and a full human adult, all staring at her with unblinking eyes, and she’s positive she has just made an enormous mistake.

The adult— the teacher, he must be— recovers first. “Everyone,” he says, “this is Vee Noceda. She’s new to our class this semester.”

A wave of whispers like the hissing of a nest of snakes rises up from the assembled students. Vee swallows hard, nearly choking on her own dry tongue, and only Luz’s hand in hers keeps her from fleeing the scene.

The teacher looks at her with pitying eyes. “Would you like to say anything more to introduce yourself?”

The only justification Vee can come up with for what she says is that the introduction played well with Camila. Camila’s face had warmed, and she’d spoken with a laugh in her voice, and that’s the reaction Vee wants from these kids— so she opens her mouth and says, “hello, fellow humans. Skin’s sure weird.”

The whispers die within a split second.

“There’s two of them,” a blonde girl in the front groans, and the class dissolves into laughter. Vee isn’t sure whether she should feel relieved or even worse, but at least they’re not looking at her like she’s as much of an outsider.

One laugh in particular, more dry and knowing, gets her attention, and she follows it to find Masha cackling to themself in a desk at the back of the room. There’s two of them, Vee repeats in her head, and gives a snort of laughter of her own. If only that girl knew.

The two desks next to Masha are empty, so Vee takes a seat in the one beside them, and Luz comes to sit on her other side. She glances at the teacher for approval, and he gives her a nod.

“All right,” he says, blissfully taking the focus off of her. “Before we get into the course outline, I’m going to give you all a test to see how much you remember.” The class groans, and he holds up a hand. “It’s nothing new, all stuff you learned last year, and multiple choice. You’ll survive.”

He starts passing out booklets and scantrons, and Vee’s heart rate picks up. She’s spent every spare moment of the last two months studying Human Realm curriculum— but while she was fascinated by the literature and history, math always tripped her up. There’s just so much of it, and so many ways of doing it, and there was no way to cram all that into her head. She studied what Luz said she’d need to know for grade ten and barely managed that much— how is she supposed to know everything these kids learned in grade nine?

The teacher lays the papers on her desk, and she flips through the booklet, nausea rising. This is it. They’ll wonder why she doesn’t remember any of this, and discover she’s an imposter, and put her in a zoo, or—

Tap. Taptaptap.

The sound is quiet, but it interrupts Vee’s spiral nonetheless. She glances at the desk to her right to see Masha, their eyes trained on their booklet, one manicured black nail tapping against their desk.

Tap. Taptaptap.

And suddenly Vee’s mind isn’t in the classroom but back in Cabin 7, lying on her bunk above Masha’s in the darkness after lights-out, tapping messages back and forth on the walls. It took exactly one week of camp lectures for Masha to decide they were dead boring, and another week of everyone in Cabin 7 gathering around their phone under a blanket and memorizing the dots and dashes on the screen to become fluent in a language they could converse in without any of the speakers getting them in trouble. Vee hasn’t used it in months, but that doesn’t mean she’s forgotten.

Tap. Taptaptap.

Dash. Dot, dot, dot.

Vee fills in the circle and taps out t-h-a-n-k-s. She glances over at Masha to find a smile on their lips.

They tap out the next answer, and Vee fills it in. It only takes half the class, but the teacher spends the other half droning on about everything they’re going to be learning, so she doesn’t get to actually talk with Masha until the bell rings and they can disappear into the stream of students heading for their next classes.

“Call me crazy,” Luz says, once they’re out of the teacher’s earshot, “but were you two talking using morse code?”

“I know, I know, cheating is wrong,” Masha says, waving a hand, “but I felt like these were special circumstances.”

“Are you kidding? That’s so cool!”

“Thanks,” Vee adds, glancing at Masha. “I really owe you one.”

“Why yes, you do, and I know exactly what I want.”

“Wait— no—“

“Come on, Vee! You have to show me at some point!”

Luz glances between them. “Show you what?”

Masha lowers their voice. “Her true form.”

“She hasn’t shown you yet?”

“She has shown you? Do you have any pictures?”

“Okay, okay!” Vee cries, throwing up her hands. “If you come over after school, I’ll show you.”

“Finally!” Masha bounces up and down, clapping their hands gleefully. “Okay, I should really get to Bio, but I’ll see you at lunch. Luz can show you where we eat.”

They press a kiss to Vee’s cheek and darts for the stairs. A wave of heat floods her face, and she trips, almost plowing into a line of students before Luz grabs the back of her shirt and pulls her into a blessedly empty bathroom. Vee catches her eye, expecting to see the excitement dancing in her stomach reflected in her face, but instead, Luz’s expression is carefully gentle. It calms the flush in Vee’s cheeks, leadens her limbs, and she leans against a wall.

“I know, I know. I should have shown them a while ago.”

“Vee, they clearly like you, and they really don’t seem like the type to be weirded out by much.”

“I know. It’s just… when you grow up surrounded either by people who are like you or afraid of you, when every teacher in every school teaches every kid that you’re a monster, when you can count every member of your kind on one hand because the rest were all hunted down— part of you always expects that you’ll make people afraid. I know Masha’s probably not like that, but there are so many other voices in my head, and they’re all louder than mine.”

Luz wraps her arms around Vee, leaning her head on hers. “That’s really tough, Vee. I know there’s nothing I can say to make it better, but for what it’s worth, I think you’re doing the right thing.” She steps back, squeezing Vee’s hands. “The only way to quiet those other voices down is to let other people talk back to them. Masha will. I know it.”

…

Camila drives them all home after school, but when they get to the house, Luz convinces her to go get pizza for dinner. She rolls down the window of the passenger seat just to give Vee an exaggerated wink as she and Masha get out of the back, and Vee shoves her head back into the car with the palm of her hand. The car drives away, and she unlocks the house with shaking hands.

She follows Masha into the entryway. Closes the door behind her. What now? Does she offer them food first, or try to give some kind of disclaimer or—

If you don’t do it now, a voice in her head warns, sounding suspiciously like Luz, you never will.

And she changes. Just like that.

Ta-da, she opens her mouth to say, or here I am, or I’m ready, but nothing comes out, and so Masha turns around and sees her without any warning, her mouth open with an explanation that’s never going to come.

They don’t scream. That’s something.

But Vee can’t bear to see their expression shift, and her eyes dart to the floor, her heart slamming against her chest.

“Hey, Vee.”

Masha sounds casual, but they sounded casual when that slime-covered rat waddled into Cabin 7 in the middle of the night. Brace yourself, Vee—

“Do you want to go out with me?”

Surprise makes her nearly snap her neck with how fast she looks up. She expects them to be laughing, but their expression is bright, if a little nervous.

“What?”

“I mean, like, on a date.”

“No, no, I got that part. But— why?”

“Vee, you’re cool! In any form, you’re cool! I couldn’t care less what you look like. I like you because you’re you. Because you get flustered talking to people but will pick up spiders with your bare hands, because you’re so happy when you learn things it can make me enjoy learning about taxes, because you have enough power to drain the magic out of an evil emperor but have never once threatened someone who didn’t deserve it. That’s what I care about. And if you want me to care about you as my friend— great. We can just be that. But I feel, like, a lot for you, and I want you to know that, too.”

Vee’s chest is tight again, but for the first time all day, she’s not terrified— she’s so happy she feels like she could burst just by inhaling. She’s grinning so hard her face hurts, and yes, part of her wonders if Masha is creeped out by that expression on a basilisk’s face. But they’re beaming too, and Luz is right; that doubtful voice gets quieter and quieter under the onslaught of their attention.

“I’d like that,” Vee says quietly. “I really would.” Glancing over to the clock at the end of the hall, she adds, “we’ve got like an hour until dinner, and I’m sure Luz will stall our mom until then. We could go now, on a walk or something? I know that’s not the most romantic, but—“

“Anything with you will be romantic.” Masha nudges her, and Vee flushes, burying her head in her hands as Masha laughs.

“Is this okay?” They ask, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

Vee wraps an arm around their waist, beaming into their shoulder. “It’s perfect.”

She returns to her human form, Masha’s hold on her easy no matter what shape she takes. Her hands are steady, this time, as she opens the door, and as they walk out hand-in-hand into the winter sun, she can’t recall why she was ever so afraid.

#the owl house #toh #toh vee #toh masha #veesha #luz noceda #camila noceda #stepping stones #ray rambles #ray writes

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animeyanderelover · 2 years

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Maybe a some continuing hcs of the parent ask with shigaraki, madam red ect with how they are when the baby is is a little older? ( 4-6)

It's certainly been a while since I've written that but I'm exciting since I adore the dynamic of a Yandere having a family with their darling.

Tw: Yandere themes, unhealthy mindset, unhealthy relationship, possessive behavior, overprotective behavior, clinginess, isolation

Parents Part 2: Their child is a bit older

Madam Red

🩺Angelina is as doting and protective as ever with her little daughter, still desperate to make her happy and shower her in love. Her child is a bit more isolated as the lady fears that she might catch all sorts of sicknesses. She’s so young after all, her immune system is still so weak. You argue quite a bit with Angelina about the aspect of her isolating your child quite a bit yet the madam is too paranoid to properly listen. Fine, she’ll make sure to design the huge garden with a swing and a sandbox, that should be enough to satisfy the little girl. Madam Red is proud of how far her daughter has come, from having taken her first steps, having spoken her first word and learning day by day more.

🩺 The drawings her little sunshine has drawn for her parents are always treasured and Angelina adores it when all three of you can just do something together. At the same time there is this nostalgic and sad feeling bubbling up inside of her chest when she sees how much her little baby has grown. Her baby has grown curious, too curious of the people around her and it makes Madam Red jealous. She wants to stay inside the bubble where it is just her daughter, her darling and her forever. She doesn’t want to share the attention and wants to be the most beloved person to her daughter next to you. Grell is kept away at a reasonable distance and Angelina warns the Reaper to act normal around the child since she doesn’t want her to get dragged into any troubles.

🩺Grell is a good bodyguard since she’s strong though so that’s something Angelina keeps in mind. It’s still tradition for her to sing her daughter a lullaby or read her a goodnight story and if it’s possible, she always tries to convince her daughter to sleep with her parents. Since Ciel is the only real family she has left, he’s probably the only person she trusts when it comes to her sweet baby, next to her s/o of course. Even years after knowing her daughter, there is still this awkwardness to Ciel when he is forced to play with the small child. Especially now since she has learned how to walk and talk and constantly wants to play with him when his aunt visits. He puts up with it though since he knows that it makes his aunt happy.

Momo Yaoyorozu

💳Her love for you and her twins stays as strong as ever and by now photos fill the walls of her house and she has plenty of photo albums with special memories, even a couple of small clips. Her children are slowly growing up and it makes Momo proud and emotional all at once. They’re at the age where they might have already their Quirk so if that’s the case she has already arranged certain adjustments for both of them. As lovely as she is, if her twins have Quirks she will make sure that they won’t grow overly arrogant and think they’re better than others. She’d probably end up teaching them how to control their Quirks so they don’t accidentally lose control and will encourage them if they struggle with something. If her children don’t have any superpower that is fine as well.

🩺Both of them are special as they are though she knows that society isn’t exactly too friendly with people without any Quirks. If Momo catches someone making fun of her twins for possessing no Quirk she transform into a lion mother quickly. The type of mother who will instantly try to cheer her babies up if they’re upset about something by trying to get them to take a walk together as a family, by baking together or going for a picnic together. Anything to make them focus on something else. She knows that her daughter and her son are now at the age where they might end up arguing so she always mediates of both of them get into a fight and ends up judging fairly. She’s probably already designed two separate rooms for them though they’re always free to share the third room for them together.

💳Matching outfits for the twins still stay strong and there is even the family look where all of you wear matching pieces. Since they are now at an age where they can remember things, it’s time for the family to travel a bit around. There are two reasons why Momo has so far refused to take her twins on a plane. The first is that both of them were too young in her opinion to already fly around the world and the second one is that she wants her daughter and her son to remember their first major holiday together. Momo’s photo albums are precious to her since she likes to sit down with her s/o and her kids, go through the photos and recall the past and talk with her family about what the story is behind this picture.

Tomura Shigaraki

✋There are good and there are bad things that come with his son growing older. Shigaraki is definitely relieved about the aspect of his child not crying all the time anymore and the aspect of not needing to change the diapers anymore since he can use the toilet by now. On the other hand it becomes a bit more harder to keep him away from other members of the group and Shigaraki starts struggling to come up with excuses whenever his son asks him why him and his other parent are constantly stuck and what his father is exactly doing for a living. You always have to interject and change the subject in order to help Tomura from the uncomfortable situation. Both of you are aware that you can’t keep it a secret from your son forever.

✋Shigaraki simply fears that his son might end up fearing him if he ever finds out the truth about Shigaraki’s Quirk and what he is doing. With the age comes the fear of his son possibly inheriting his Quirk so there are constant visits to a fitting doctor so that a catastrophe can be stopped before it even happens. His son has a lot more energy than he is which is why Shigaraki struggles sometimes even if he tries to be a good father and plays with his son. There are times when he asks Kurogiri to take over for a bit so he can have some time alone with his darling. As much as he adores the child you two made, he misses the times where he could have you all for himself and your attention wasn’t always turned to your kid the moment he stumbled towards you.

✋No one can really deny that the child inherited his clingy tendencies from his father though since he hates being left alone by his parents, he always ends up crying and throws a small tantrum. So he either clings to you or Shigaraki most of the times when you are around. Other members from LOV keep on asking him about his child yet all they get back is a rude snap from him to shut up since he doesn’t want any of them near his baby. He threatens always to turn them into dust if they ever try to locate darling and child down, snaps at Kurogiri for not being able to keep it a better secret though he knows it’s probably his own fault. As soon as he returns from any business, he’s usually greeted first with his son running to him and clinging onto his leg.

Overhaul

🦠Kai doesn’t really concern himself with the aspect of what he will tell his children now that they’re at an age to comprehend things a bit better. He never bothered hiding anything from you and he doesn’t bother hiding anything from his sons either regarding the cruel and inhumane things he does. If they end up being terrified of him that’s fine as long as they don’t start misbehaving and are rude towards their own father. Kai can be rather strict when he sees the need to do so, he has moments where he just turns eerily silent and just grabs both of his twin sons by their collar, drags them towards their shared room and locks them inside for a couple of hours. He only lets them out if they have reflected on their actions and apologize.

🦠There is a weekly medical checkup since Overhaul is paranoid about the aspect of health, especially since children as little as them end up catching everything. He rarely lets one of his men interact with them, Chronostasis might be the sole exception on seldom days. Otherwise he orders everyone to just ignore his sons, he doesn’t want them to interact with the children. If the twins try to run around and talk to someone when they’re let out of their special living area and are forced to wear masks, he always grabs them by their hands with a tight grip and yanks them away. His darling and their children live in a special section of the basement, well guarded and cleaned especially well since Kai despises gems and dirt anywhere near himself or his family.

🦠The aspect of hygiene is so important so he always makes sure that the kids brush their teeth and shower daily and if one of them refuses, he just forces them to clean themselves himself. They usually have a room together but he has a special room where he takes both of them when they are sick and everything inside of their is sanitized to the absolute maximum. Coughing only one time is enough for him to be suspicious already and even if only one shows signs of a sickness, the other one is normally dragged along for safety measurements. Whilst Kai doesn’t let the boys outside very much, he tries to provide them with a variety of other things so they hopefully won’t complain too much.

Inko Midoriya

🟩Similar to Momo, Inko feels very emotional to see her baby girl growing up so fast. She’s so proud of her little girl though and her family is everything to her. She’s even more overjoyed to see how much of a great parent her darling is and how much of a sweet and caring older brother Izuku is. Mother and son most likely cried together when your daughter took her first steps and spoke her first words, the tears just flow out so naturally for both of them as they’re deeply touched and emotional. Inko is great to guide her s/o through everything though if they shouldn’t know how to act and what to do in a certain situation since she has already some experience with Izuku.

🟩Very obviously this woman doesn’t care if her daughter ends up having a Quirk or not, her love isn’t defined by whether she’ll end up having some special power or not. She’ll become more protective though since she knows that people without a Quirk are usually treated like an outsider and she knows how much it affected Izuku back in the days. Izuku himself would be so incredibly protective as well since he won’t tolerate anyone making fun of his sister like this. Inko likes taking walks outside with her family and visiting a park or the closest playground. Your child is at a stage where she takes everything around her in and learns really what the world around her is like. So it’s important to take her out as often as possible so she can experience life with her own five senses. Her big and curious eyes when she asks about something is adorable.

🟩If her daughter ends up wanting to help in the kitchen that is fine though the tasks she’ll be given won’t involve any sharp objects. Inko might be from time to time a bit more clingy since she has been a bit lonely ever since her son enrolled into the U.A. High School so having her darling and their small child is a blessing for her. She likes reading stories to her child. All three of you have put very much importance and care into the design of the room for your daughter to make it as pretty for her as possible. Izuku constantly ends up buying sweets and small and pretty toys for her, he spoils his baby sister a lot.

#yandere black butler #yandere madam red #yandere angelina #yandere angelina durless #yandere my hero academia #yandere mha #yandere boku no hero academia #yandere bnha #yandere momo #yandere momo yaoyorozu #yandere shigaraki #yandere tomura shigaraki #yandere overhaul #yandere kai #yandere kai chisaki #yandere inko #yandere inko midoriya

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happysaddca · 22 days

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CONTEXT! This is a drabble of sorts that originates from a pizzaplex rp server. "You" used to work at a different location when the Afton virus hit and affected all locations. You had spent 8 years with your Sun and Moon before the virus. And now you're starting over at a new location, where you've already started feeling protective over this Sun too. Context over I'm too proud not to share

---

It’s late, very late, the kind of late that leaves your mouth feeling like it’s been partially replaced with cotton, tongue barely able to fit behind your teeth. Your fingers pluck at the thread you’d been knotting through slivers of bamboo for the past… six hours? No wonder you’re tired.

Sleep has never been your strong suit. Even as a child, you found yourself struggling to go to bed at the “proper” time and being extra grumpy when you had to be up at five to catch the bus. Your parents (let’s be real, your mother. Your father barely exists in your personal narrative except as the occasional villain), blamed you reading books and took them away. You just laid in bed instead, staring at the ceiling, letting your thoughts overwhelm you.

It’d been a point of contention between you and Moon. Your end of shift naps had come about as a compromise. It helped with your janitorial duties and you’d sleep for the last couple of hours before getting ready for school. Your use of Moon as a bed came from it threatening to burrito you like a cat and you not taking that seriously. Neither of you had put serious thought in how dependent you’d become on that little routine.

You sigh and put aside the su. The idea of making a massive sheet of paper taller than (most) of the animatronics at the plex was tantalizing, but there are no sugeta big enough for what you’re wanting, and you don’t want to think about the *how* of forming the sheet once you’re done weaving the mat. The muscles in your left arm twinge as you stretch, and you flinch, rubbing at the scars cut deep into your face. The partially finished su and its materials are put aside at the foot of the bed, and you fiddle with your headphones, turning up the music. Sinatra croons in your ear, reminding you again that you should sleep.

The pill calendar sits in plasticy judgment on the overly modern black quartz counter. You dump the rest of your coffee from last night into a mug. It’s bitter and cold, but it washes away some of the cotton building in your mouth. The numbness in your fingers and at the top of your head lingers, so, reluctantly, you pull the calendar closer.

Most of this stuff you’d started before. You flip open one of the nights, poking at the little pills, scooping out most and avoiding the smallest tablet. You’d forgotten to take the day too, so maybe that’s why you feel so cloudy. If you doubled up, well, then you’d feel twice as sharp in the morning. *It is morning*. So twice as sharp after a short nap.

Everything is downed with a swig of coffee. You’re not tired yet (that’s a lie). There’s a box sitting in the living room, waiting for you to get to it. No time like the present, so long as you’re quiet. You thumb through your playlist, skipping the next few songs, and grab a butter knife to cut open the tape.

It’s a frame for Sunny’s print. You’d ordered it right after he sent you the size of his poster, wanting it to match the frames of the other art Lilly's let you hang in the living room. Mostly from classmates or ordered online from artists you admire. It’s a very eclectic collection, and there’s not much space for Sunny’s work unless you start a second gallery wall by the window. But then you’d need *more* work and more frames and the only ones you have available are Sun’s.

Your Sun.

You pull down a *Bioshock* poster and hang Sunny’s piece instead, snapping a photo. There’s a notification from Ellis, a picture of a cosplay they’re thinking about making. You clear it without opening the text. Your feelings on *them* have become complicated, and you’re not dealing with complicated right now. You’re hanging art and making a sugeta and learning how to create the perfect mirror glaze and

Your fingers slip and you drop the old poster on your toes.

You’re exhausted. And you can’t call out, not to your internship. You haven’t missed a day yet, and you’d rather not set a precedent. You can’t take your sleeping pills. They’ll leave you groggy for days. And you can’t take your painkillers for similar reasons. Your body aches. You should shower and stretch, but it’s late and you can’t wear headphones and you play your music too loud without them. Lilly and you have a tentative agreement right now. You don’t want to mess that up. And you can’t *not* listen to your music because then your thoughts will come back and swirl around you until you’ve been pulled under and you’re not doing complicated right now.

Sinatra comes back, and you know it’s Moon telling you to go to sleep. The coffee took the edge off, but removing the edge of a cliff still leaves a cliff. You sigh and rub at your eye and push away your bangs from your forehead. And snap a picture of the poster. You can show Sunny later, when it’s not three in the morning. You’re not certain he would understand.

No, that’s not right. Sunny would understand. There’s two photos of the poster. That’s the problem. You should delete the duplicate photo. It’ll disappear forever.

You don’t delete the duplicate.

“Okay,” you say, voice inaudible to yourself. “I get it. I’ll sleep.”

You change out of the jeans that left deep red imprints against your belly and the binder that leaves your ribs aching. Everything hurts now, masking the pain from sitting bowed over your work for far too long. Your bed is soft, a pile of overly fluffy mattress toppers and pillows and blankets that you never properly remake, preferring to crawl into the nest and fish out the charger for your phone and headphones. You have to turn down the music for Lilly’s sake, but it keeps going as you yawn and snuggle into your favorite plush. It’s the DJ, shaped like a cube, something you very strongly suspect Moon hadn’t won so much as fished out of the claw game. *Well, it wasn’t cheating. I do have claws.* It’s the only FazCo branded item you keep in the open.

You snort and sigh. Things have been so *complicated* lately. Why did you seek out this Sun and Moon? Why did you come back to FazCo at all?

Okay, maybe you can do a little complicated. You pick up your phone, pausing the music. Silence tastes like cold, burnt coffee. You scroll through your archived videos, tutorials and recovery and exercises meant to help keep the muscles in your face and arm mobile. You stop in the middle of 2017, thumb trembling. The choice is taken away from you with an involuntary flinch.

*”And here we see the Moon in its natural habitat.” Your old voice comes through overly loud and tinny, and you turn the volume down as you flinch. Did you really sound like that before? “Being an absolute menace.” The camera sweeps over the ceiling outside the glamrocks’ green rooms, following a pixelated swath of nothingness.*

*“Here to serve.”* Blue. *Its voice is as loud as yours and the phone drops, camera catching a glimpse of blue and green and your own startled face before focusing on the ceiling. Moon’s hat dangles in the camera, and you can hear your old self giggling. “You need to work on your videography skills.” Moon bends over, hiding its face as a paw-like hand scoops up the phone. The world spins and it focuses on you. Younger, unscarred, trying very hard to grow out a mustache despite being only a couple weeks on T. “Here we have the overnight janitor, absolutely not doing his job and trying to keep me from doing my own as well.”*

*“Please, you do that plenty without my help.” The old you reaches for the phone but Moon holds it out of reach, still angled down to catch you trying to climb it, fingers digging in its shoulders. “I don’t let you pick out the playlist one night, and you have to pout about it. You’re a child.”*

*”Takes one to know one.” You’re still giggling in the video, but it gets muffled as Moon is dragged down to your level. You can’t see what’s happening, the angle is bad, but you remember. You’d kissed the silly bot’s face. Its giggling starts up, hands lowering, one cupping your cheek. You get a glimpse of you both, faces close as Moon pushes forward once more.*

The video ends abruptly, leaving you to stare at your own reflection, distorted over thumbnails over your past.

It’s not really that complicated, you suppose, flipping through the videos to find another. Most of them have been saved to an external hard drive, but you’ve kept a few for days like this. Days when you need to remember. When you need to cry.

You keep telling yourself it was easier away from the plex but the truth is, you aren’t sure that’s true. You lost six… eight months to recovery, then finished school and immediately started a residency. You’re still healing physically, and outside of a monthly check in with your psychiatrist to make sure you’re taking (most of) your meds, you’ve been ignoring your mental health entirely. Most of the time it’s “okay.”

You close out the videos, locking your phone. It’s dark and quiet and you feel so tired. It’s time for a nap, you decide. The swirl of thoughts settle over the sound of Moon’s laughter, and you try not to let the thoughts expand past that. Just the sound of laughter and the taste of silicone and coffee, fingers cramping as you stretch them out.

#constellations au #kinda #dca #fnaf dca #daycare attendant #fnaf daycare attendant #fnaf daycare au #the most normal pizzaplex in ohio #most normal pizzaplex in ohio

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eggluttony · 1 month

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OK, but I’m just thinking of the contrast with modern casino and having chubby cheeks double chins wall boom and zobotic have pretty well-defined features and a noticeably sharper jawline

Yesss I love the differences in all their faces, it's adorable 🥰 Modern has very round cheeks that are often obscured by his stache from the front but are very visible from the sides. And he's got a cute double chin going on but usually tries to cover it with the neck part of his bodysuit but it can be seen from lower angles or sometimes slips out more and he's a little shy about it hehe. Very round squishy face overall. 💜

Mmm so cute and squishable and kissable

God I just imagined this set of pictures being a progression of his face getting continuously fatter over time and now I'm violently horny fuck that's hot 😍

Casino Egg has a very noticeable chubby face he can't hide especially because he doesn't even button up his shirt all the way up for anything in the neck area to hide it lol. And he couldn't hide it if he wanted to, so his bigger double chin is always on full display, looking very soft and bobbing when he stuffs his greedy face. His bigger chubby cheeks are more visible than modern's even with his mustache in front too.

Then of course King Shahryar having the fattest face, plumpest cheeks that even his stache isn't big enough to obscure at all really. And he has like more than a double chin when he's at his 600+ lbs size, and he has absolutely no distinction of where his chin and neck behind and ends really. Obviously impossible to hide and there'd be no use because he's enormous anyway and his fat spills everywhere on every part of his body!

Meanwhile Boom Egg has like some cute little cheeks going on, though not too noticable until touched and caressed a little but he has a much more defined facial structure and chin, especially after losing some weight and becoming more toned everywhere else too. And Zobotnik especially has like almost no fat on his cheeks to squish in the slightest and especially not in the neck area, with a striking sharp jaw line he's proud of.

Boom Egg and Zobotnik can tease the three fatties by squeezing their soft flabby faces, squishing their chubby cheeks and stroking their big double chins, which gets them blushing because they can get a bit shy in being so fat it affects their faces so much 💜 They love feeding them and stuffing food into their fat faces, saying it's obvious they're greedy and eager for food just by the looks of their plump faces.

Then the three fatties can cup the faces of Boom Egg and Zobotnik in their big hands and trace their smaller more defined facial features and tell them how handsome and sexy they look. But they say of course their own faces are gonna look bigger in comparison to theirs! But they can't put all the blame on them because if they were such huge fatties, it wouldn't be anywhere near as big of a contrast between them XD

I love the vast difference and how cute it'd be for the fatty Eggs' double chins to squish against the skinny Eggs' faces when kissing them and the way they wobble when they stroke them. When the fatty Eggs bury their faces into the skinny Egg's necks, they can leave love bites on their defined necks, meanwhile when they skinny Eggs' bury their faces into the fatties "necks" they'll just squish into their soft pudgy double chins 💘

Also the way the fatties' big plump cheeks could be squeezed in the skinny Eggs' hands and how they'd squish up against their faces when they're hugging or pressed up against each other while taking photos together and such would be very sweet. It's so adorable 🥰

#asks #imagines #modern #casino au #boom #shahryar #zobotnik #weight gain #double chin #official

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2dmenenthusiast · 1 year

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Last Night on Earth Pt.4

(Ethan Winters x Gn!Reader)

shoot me in the face, I hate and love this chapter. some parts I really like, but others you can definitely tell I rushed through, but at this point imma say good enough and post it anyway. Lemme know what you think!

warnings/other infor: Vommiting, descriptions of gross shit like um Ethan sticking his hand in a dudes neck

Pt. 1 Pt. 2 Pt. 3 Pt. 4 Pt. 5 Pt. 6 Pt. 7 Pt. 8 Pt. 9

You didn’t think your body could survive more training without falling apart. Your limbs ached and your muscles were sore, eyes struggling to stay open as you laid in your bunk.

“Hey.”

Someone slapped your boot clad foot, effectively snapping you out of your near slumber. You grumbled and rolled onto your side.

“Not now, Harding.”

He laughed, fingers pushing into your back. “Come on, thought you wanted to shower after today?”

He was right. You were absolutely disgusting. Dried mud cracked against your skin, and you could practically feel dust settling under your eyelids. God, you were so fucking tired, though. You’d probably end up collapsing and falling asleep the second you stood under the water.

You stuck out your hands, making a grabbing motion. “Carry me.”

Someone chuckled from the other side of the room, and Lee came into your sight.

“You want a foot rub with that, too?”

Your eyebrows raised, pretending to think about it, and she slapped your shin. With a groan, you finally jumped down from your bunk, landing with a quiet “oof.” Harding was then quick to wrap his arm around your neck and get you in a headlock, which wasn’t hard considering he had almost an entire foot on you height wise.

“Ah— Hey!”

You struggled to push against his side, but it was like trying to fight a brick wall. He only laughed at your weak attempt, practically dragging you out of the room and towards the showers.

“You make it too easy, kid.”

“Ugh— Just you wait, I’ll kick your ass in hand to hand later.”

“Oh, I’ll put money on that,” Lee chimed in, her smiling face coming into view.

The hand not gripping Harding’s arm for dear life snatched out towards her face, and she jumped away with a squeal. Yes, every day of basic training, getting verbally abused by your superiors and kicked while you were down, it was hard. You were just grateful to have these two chuckleheads in your life to get you through it.

That reminded you, you had to write back home sometime soon. You knew they were all worried, least of all Lucas, but they were proud as well. When you first came to them and told them you wanted to enlist, your mother had her reservations, and Zoe was scared. But, your father held the fondness in his eyes only a dad could have for their child, and told you that if that’s what you wanted to do, then he’d support you. You knew he’d understand, considering the fact that he was in the service when he was younger.

They sent you off months ago with tears in their eyes, your mother clutching a tissue in her hand and hugging you so tight you could barely breathe. She didn’t want to let go. And if you were honest, you didn’t want to either. You’d never been away from home, not even to spend the night at a friend’s house. This terrifying unknown gripped at all of you, unaware of what your future held.

You pulled away from your mother, gently wiping at her tears, and told her everything would be okay, and that you loved her. It only made her crying worse.

You missed them. Fuck, you missed them every day. They constantly gave you updates on how Zoe was doing in school, what projects Lucas had been up to, and newer renovations your dad was working on around the house. You kept a photo they sent in their latest letter on your person at all times, a constant reminder of the unconditional love they held for you.

You couldn’t wait to see them again.

***

If you were sure about anything, it’s that you’d need to see a fucking chiropractor after all this shit was said and done. You think the last time you ached this much was back during basic training. You could practically hear your drill sergeant barking orders at you and screaming in your face. Hell, you’d spend the rest of your life climbing over walls and crawling under barbed wire while someone shot over your head rather than face another day of this miserable life you currently faced.

The only thing remotely giving you any hope was the thought of seeing your sister, safe and sound in the trailer where she said she’d be.

“Shit!”

Your foot caught in a large tree root and you stumbled into Ethan’s side, almost falling on your face if it wasn’t for his hold on you. Your body twisted uncomfortably and hot pain shot through you, fingers gripping the man’s shirt as he adjusted you.

“Come on, we can make it. Just a little further,” he said.

He tried tugging you along, but you resisted. Pulling yourself away, you kept your hand on his arm and shook your head. “I can’t. You— you have to go on ahead. I’m dead weight.”

Ethan’s eyes were wide as he digested your words, frantically moving his head back and forth and gripping your shoulders.

“Hey, hey! Don’t talk like that! We can still do this, I—”

“Christ, Ethan. I’m not asking you to leave me for dead,” you huffed with a smile.

You took a moment to look at him, and the urge to rub out the crease between his brows that held all his concern for you made your fingers twitch. You’re not positive if he really cares about you, or if he just needs you to get to his wife. But you didn’t particularly feel like making that distinction just yet.

“I can make my way back to the trailer on my own. It’s not far. You can go get the arm and meet me back.”

“And what happened to the second rule, huh? We do this together.”

He seemed desperate, like letting you walk away was signing your death warrant.

“And three: if we’re separated, we meet back at the trailer.”

Ethan huffed out a laugh, “Are you really trying to loophole your way out of this?”

Lips turning up in a smirk, you pushed your hand against his chest, getting some distance between you. “My rules, remember? I think I can bend ‘em a bit if I need to.”

You finally turned your back to him and began making the familiar journey back to the main house. His footsteps followed a bit after, and you thought for a moment he was going to escort you. Like he was that damn paranoid that you were going to die without his watchful gaze on you all hours of the night.

“You better still be kicking by the time I get back!”

“Yeah, right in your face, dick!”

His laughter echoed around the trees, and his footsteps went off in the other direction. The silence that filled the night air quickly surrounded you, nothing but crickets and wood creaking as the branches swayed in the wind. You must admit, you felt a bit unsettled without Ethan at your side. Without his constant questions and his god awful dad jokes, you felt alone.

You brought a hand up and lightly slapped your cheek.

Let’s just hope the asshole makes it.

Something in your head was yelling at you to turn back and go for him. That separating was as bad of an idea as Ethan said it would be. But you knew you had to keep going. You’d only slow him down, and that’d get both of you killed.

You wonder how long it’d take for your father to come after you. What monster he’d regenerate into before trying to tear you all limb from limb. And Lucas. Whatever sick games he was devising for all of you, you weren’t sure you wanted to know.

That was one thing that unsettled you. The fact that Lucas was already messed up before the mold got in his head. A neighbor boy went missing some years back, one that your brother had over a few times. You couldn’t prove it, but you knew he had something to do with it. He had been showing all the signs. You found buried animal corpses in the backyard one day, your stuffed animals and toys cut open and disfigured. You were just grateful he never went after you or Zoe. No, that would make your parents too suspicious.

Hand reaching up, you felt in your jean pocket and felt the coolness of your mothers wedding ring against your fingers. Maybe she was somewhere, looking down at you. You never took much stock in those beliefs, especially since this whole thing started. But it was never bad to hope. To think that maybe she was your guiding hand in all this fucking mess.

The light from the trailer shone through the trees, causing you to pick up your pace with your gun out and ready, and your heart raced as you got closer. You prayed to anything and everything that Zoe wasn’t hurt.

She’s there! Just behind the door—!

You rushed up the steps and burst through, calling out your sister’s name with a large grin on your face. It slowly dropped though when you realized the trailer was empty. No sight of her anywhere.

“... Zoe?” You turned every corner, looked in the closet… Nothing. “Zoe?!”

The phone rang, and you swore you were going to give her a fucking earful as you picked it up and pressed it to your ear.

“You worried me sick, ya know?! Where the hell are—”

“I’m so sorry, but Zoe can’t come to the phone right now! I thought she uh, needed a lil’ time out. She and Mia are keepin’ each other company,” Lucas laughed.

Eyes widening, your heart raced and your hand slammed down on the countertop. “Lucas, I swear to god, don’t you fucking touch her! I know you really want Ethan and I. Just let them go!”

“Nuh-uh! I got big plans for all of ya’ll. You want that head so bad, right? Feel free to come get it! But only if you participate in a little uh, activity I’ve put together for you both.”

Your eyes squeezed shut, angry tears brimming around them as your fingers curled into a fist. If it was possible, you’d reach through the phone and choke the fucking life out of him.

“Fuck you, Lucas! I’m not playing your sick games anymore!”

“Awww, now don’t be like that. Now, what I need you to do is take a peek inside the fridge there. Come on, you wanna have some fun, don’t ya?”

Chest shuddering with a deep breath, you adjusted your fingers around the phone, feeling like you were about to break it in your grasp. “You better hide, Lucas. Because I’m not gonna stop ‘til I find you and fucking bleed you dry!”

He started to speak again, probably to throw another childish insult your way, but you slammed the phone down onto the cradle before you could hear anymore. The phone was picked up and thrown across the trailer, the cord ripping out of the wall as it clanged loudly to the floor.

You wanted to scream. Yank your hair out. You wanted to wrap your hands around the little bastard's throat and squeeze until his eyes popped out of his sockets and he was choking on his own blood.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!

FUCK!

Your fist slammed into the closet door, no doubt reopening what had previously healed, and you collapsed onto the bed with your head in your hands. You were acutely aware of the fact that there was still some disturbing gift in the fridge left by your brother, but you didn’t want to look. What if it was some part of Zoe? You couldn’t take knowing if he hurt her.

God, you were just so tired. All of this running around, looking for the serum. You were still skeptical about it even working. And if it didn’t, shit, you don’t know if you’d be able to handle it. You always tried to remain strong. For you, for your sister. No matter what or who came at you, you didn’t let it slow you down. You pushed and pushed and pushed until it fucking hurt. Until you almost broke. But this. The one hope you have of getting out of here turning out to be a complete and total sham.

That would break you. It would break Zoe. And all hope and reason would be gone.

Your hand sweeped over the covers, gently grasping them before you laid down and curled up on your side. You pressed your face into the pillow, the tears you desperately tried to hold back slipping down your face.

Was this it? You’d just lay down and wallow here in your pain and misery?

But it hurts so much.

It always fucking hurts. No matter which way you wrap it, what direction you take, whatever you do differently. It never stops hurting.

You could feel your body sinking into the bed, pain pulsing through your muscles.

Get up. Get up. Get up!

I can’t

You don’t want to.

No. I don’t

Your throat burned and your chest ached as you choked on a sob, slamming your fist into your chest and gasping. You just wanted it to stop. You didn’t know if it ever would.

I should’ve been faster, Zoe. I’m sorry.

The door to the trailer creaked open, followed by a male voice calling out your name. You were half tempted to tell him to leave, too embarrassed to have him witness you in such a weak state. You knew he’d try to comfort you, try to give you words of encouragement and tell you to keep going. You didn’t want to hear any of it right now.

He called your name again, his footsteps getting closer. They stopped right next to you, your back facing him, and it was like you could feel the air around you shift with his sudden concern.

“Hey… Hey, what’s going on?”

His voice was soft. Gentle. Having him near you again… it was comforting at the very least.

Shaking your head, you sniffled, nose full of snot and your face crusty with dried tears. “She’s gone… He took her,” you muttered.

The bed sank with Ethan’s weight, his leg touching yours. “Lucas. Listen, we’re gonna get her back. Her and Mia.”

You raised your hand, pointing towards the fridge. “He left us something.”

Following your finger, Ethan hesitantly stood from the bed and walked over. You held your breath when you heard the fridge door open, and he softly gasped. You swallowed down the lump in your throat.

“Is it her?”

The gap of silence between your question and his answer was too long for your liking. Like he was keeping you guessing and in suspense. But you breathed out a sigh of relief when his voice finally reached your ears.

“It’s the deputy.”

With a wince, you rolled onto your other side and looked down the trailer at Ethan staring into the fridge with a look of horror on his face. He slowly let it shut and met your eyes before making his way back to you. He cautiously looked you over, assessing the damage done to you by your mother and whatever other monsters you ran into during the night.

Your bandages were soaked through and dirty, your face covered in muck and debris and your blood seeping through your clothes. You looked like hell. And Ethan was sure he didn’t look any better. But you… You were so strong. So diligent and thought out in everything you said and did. Ethan wasn’t sure if he met anyone nearly as stubborn and headstrong as you. No one would probably come close.

He located the first aid kit from when he last used it and sat beside you, draping one of your arms over his lap. He was slow and methodical as he unwrapped the ruined bandages. You realized he was just as gentle as when he first did them. Back when he didn’t even know you. Ethan was the type of man to give you the shirt off his back if you asked him to. He was someone honorable. Devoted. That you knew now. And you admired it. And here he was, taking care of you when he didn’t need to. Wrapping your arms when it was probably pointless. They’d just get ruined again. You’d just get hurt worse than before.

Why did any of it matter?

“How’s your back?” he asked, his voice soft.

You shrugged. “Hurts.”

“Well, I’d say that’s a bit of an understatement,” he chuckled, finishing wrapping your other arm.

You looked at the clean bandages and slightly flexed your fingers, making sure you still had feeling in them. Ethan got up at some point, you could hear the water from the sink running, and he came back with a wet rag in hand. Sitting back down next to you, he reached out towards your face and paused just short of your forehead, silently letting you know that he was going to touch you. You didn’t flinch. Not this time. But still, he took care in making sure you were okay.

When the cool rag touched your skin, you sighed and closed your eyes, and you could practically hear Ethan smile. He was happy to see you take a moment. To not be so on guard all the time.

“You know, I don’t think getting me all nice and prettied up is gonna increase our odds of getting out of here.”

Ethan chuckled, the rag swiping over your jaw. “I don’t know. Might stop those weird monster lookin’ things in their tracks for a moment.”

You scoffed. “You flatter me, Winters.”

Once he was done wiping your face, he went to pull away, but you grabbed his wrist and sat up on the bed. Silently, you grabbed the rag from him and started cleaning up his own face, sharp features dulled by the dirt covering them.

“Oh I see. Now we’re doubling our chances,” he said, a grin on his face.

Your fist lightly jabbed at his chest and you dropped the rag onto his lap with a small chuckle. “I don’t really think you’re their type.”

He shimmied his shoulders, straightening himself up. “I think I clean up okay.”

“Yeah, okay Fabio.”

He stood from the bed and helped you up, making sure you had your balance. Your muscles and bones ached and screamed in pain, urging you to stop. But you knew now that you couldn’t. You had to keep going, no matter what.

“We have to go back into the house. Get a key or something.”

Shaking your head, you looked through your closet and picked out a clean shirt. You signaled for Ethan to turn around, and he did without question. “So we’re participating in his fucked up games then.”

“Hey, I don’t like it either, but what other choice do we have?”

You sighed, clapping him on his shoulder once you were properly dressed. “Great. Just know I’m gutting him when we find him.”

“I’ve got no objections.”

Checking your gear, you and Ethan made sure you were fully stocked up before leaving the trailer and walking back up to the main house. As soon as you opened the back door, a flood of emotions filled you that you couldn’t quite place. Grief. Longing. Nostalgia. It was overwhelming to say the least. You had so many good memories growing up here. You were loved and cared for. You tried not to let your current situation tarnish those memories… But needless to say, it was difficult.

“Where are we going?” you asked.

“Basement. Gotta find the cop’s body.”

You had a full body shiver at the thought of going down there, making a disgusted noise. Ethan turned to you with a raised eyebrow.

“You scared?”

“I’m sorry, have you seen it down there? It’s something out of some sick prick’s nightmare.”

“Pretty sure this whole place is some nightmare.”

You sighed, checking behind the door decorated with a scorpion. “Yeah. No need to tell me twice.”

You let Ethan take the lead into the basement, knowing full well how capable he was by now at protecting himself and you. If anything proved it, it’s how well he handled himself with your mother. Not to mention the fact that he’s survived long enough without your help at first.

It was darker and more decrepit than you last remembered it. Slime and mold covered the walls, entrails of something decorating the floor. Your nose turned up at the stench of rotten flesh, plastic bags stained red scattered around each room you searched. You never knew what went on down here. You never cared to. But the innocent screams you heard late at night told their own story. One’s that would stick in your mind until you met your own end.

Something rumbled not too far off, and you both paused, weapons at the ready. After a moment of brief silence, Ethan shrugged.

“I feel like I’m hearing things at this point—”

The wall in front of him exploded and out came one of those mutated monsters, scrambling towards him on all fours

“Shit!”

He pumped the creature full of bullets until the cylinder was empty, and it collapsed to the floor with a final breath. He turned to you, chest heaving.

“What the hell was that thing?!”

“Another one of Evie’s friends. We don’t see that kind a lot, but keep an eye out for more just in case.”

Ethan nodded, reloading his revolver and continuing forward. Glancing down at the dead creature, you frowned. How could a little girl be capable of this? So much destruction. So much hate. She wanted a family. That’s what she always said. That Mia was her mommy. What happened to her to make her like this? Who did this to her?!

The thought made you angry. Some fucking government corporation experimenting on little girls and profiting off of it. What kind of sick fuck would do something like that? You knew about bioweapons during your service. Many of your peers thought it was bullshit. Made up. But seeing this… It all confirmed it as reality. Your reality.

By the time you made it to the Dissection Room, you felt like you wanted to vomit all over Ethan’s back. The sights and smells were almost more than you could handle, a constant stone in your throat as you swallowed back the bile threatening to rise up. You weren’t usually this squeamish, having seen a lot of disturbing and unsettling things in your life. But comparatively, this was so much worse.

You and Ethan gazed at the headless, rotting corpse of the deputy, his limbs stiff and his body cold as rigor mortis set in. His veins were black and that same gooey substance covered him, suggesting that the infection had spread through his body.

Poor bastard.

You glanced at the wooden board placed next to his head and skimmed over the crude handwriting, barking out a shocked laugh. Once Ethan read it, he shook his head with a groan.

Prove you’re a real man— stick your hand down the pig's throat!

“Oh, absolutely not.”

You immediately stepped away, arms crossing over your chest. He looked at you with wide, expecting eyes.

“You’re really expecting me to do this? He’s your brother!”

“Ah ah— adoptive. I think that’s the key word in this situation here. And I’m pretty sure he’s speaking to you here, Hoss.”

With a sigh, Ethan rolled up his sleeve and flexed his hand, slowly and reluctantly pushing his fingers into the deputy’s neck. Your hand slammed over your mouth as you watched him get up to his elbow in this guy, his flesh squishing and squelching as Ethan searched around for the key. He let out a grunt once he found it and slowly pulled his hand out, and the trigger on your gag reflex finally released as you bent over and emptied your stomach.

Now, normally you’d hold onto a smidgen of shame and would’ve swallowed it back. But now? You were okay with being an upchucking coward for just a few moments.

Ethan mumbled out a curse and hurried to your side, but you put your hand out and signaled to him that you were fine.

“God, that’s fucking disgusting,” you gasped out, wiping the back of your hand over your mouth.

Ethan didn’t say anything, simply staring in horror down at his hand, covered in blood and other mysterious substances he didn’t want to think about.

“Think I’d rather get my hand cut off again,” he muttered, wiping his arm on his shirt.

He shoved the snake key in his back pocket, which you had no objections to because fuck being in charge of carrying that nasty thing. The speaker in the room came to life with a sharp ring, and Lucas’s voice followed after.

“That pretty little thing will help you find the two keycards you’re gonna need to join the party we’re havin’ over here! Y'all gotta earn your way!”

“Oh go fuck yourself,” you sighed, hands gripping your knees. From the lack of response, you're guessing Lucas didn’t hear you.

“Come on, the sooner it’s over with the better.”

You took to Ethan’s side without further complaint, and you both proceeded to scramble all over the house for doors with the large snake charm on it. It wasn’t very difficult, one leading to Lucas’s childhood bedroom and the other leading to the master bedroom. They sent you under and over, scouring around for those two stupid fucking keycards while dealing with more stupid monsters in this stupid house! By the time you finally found both of them, you stomped up to the glowing locked door with murderous rage on your agenda. The target? Your brother. And anything else that stood in your way.

Once the door clicked open, the only thing lighting your way was the flashing lights and the fluorescent glitter covering the floor. You climbed the stairs, and the words “LET’S PLAY” were painted in glitter across the floor and ceiling.

“Fucking dickhead,” you muttered. And maybe it was stupid of you considering the fact that you were ignoring Ethan’s concerned calls of your name, but you barged into the next room without thought. Your only concern was finding Lucas and killing him.

Luckily, nothing threatening was in the vicinity, besides a chair with an old CRTV sitting in front of it.

“Wow. Spooky. Careful, it might bite you,” Ethan said from behind you, lightly nudging your shoulder as he scooted past you and sat in the chair.

“Shut up, dork,” you mumbled. Before you could get another word out, the tv turned on by itself and the image of your brother fiddling with the camera popped up on the screen.

After a moment, he finally sat back and chuckled to himself, a satisfied look on his face. You immediately wanted to slap it off.

“Ethan. E-than! Hold on, hold on. I got somethin’ for ya.” He pulled something out of frame, and you quickly recognized it as the D-series head Zoe said she had. “You know what this is for? You know what Zoe wants to do with this?!”

He laughed maniacally, like he had it all figured out. And maybe he did. Maybe this whole ordeal ended with him winning and the rest of you dead. But you wouldn’t give up until he was dead and burned.

“Hooo-Wee! She thinks this thing is special! Nuh-uh. This— this right here is special.” He held up his hand, and in his other was a pair of pliers. You both watched in horror as he grabbed one of his fingernails and tore it off, leaving nothing but a bloody and raw nail bed behind. “You see, not everybody wants to turn back the clock!” Another nail, and you winced.

He suddenly turned to look at something off the screen, throwing the pliers down. “What?! What, Eveline? I’m just trying to show them! I'm trying to show them that not everybody wants to go back to how things were!” You doubted Eveline was really in the room with him. She could do that, make people see hallucinations of her without really being there. You’ve seen your fair share.

“Zoe’s a stupid bitch! She doesn’t understand that I don’t wanna go back to how things were before my father found y'all. That fuckin’ orphan neither! So,” he turned back towards the camera, getting way too close for your liking, “You can, um, crawl around that filthy, rotten house all you want lookin’ for them ingredients. But you ain’t gonna find a goddamn thing!”

You stepped away from the TV, looking for something long and preferably made out of metal.

“You wanna make that serum? Ooh, baby. You’re gonna have to come through me. You hear—”

A long steel pipe swung into the screen, causing Ethan to jump out of his seat with a loud curse as glass shattered onto the floor and sparks flew. You huffed out a breath, dropping the pipe and letting it clatter to the floor.

“Yeah. I hear you, asshole.”

You moved forward without a word to Ethan, too busy stewing in your own frustration, and he followed without question.

He was a fucking psychopath. Even while you were growing up, something was always off with him. You tried getting along as best as you could in front of your parents, but behind closed doors, you fought like anger was the only emotion you were capable of sharing with one another. He always teased and pushed you around. When you first started living with them, it wasn’t bad. It only got worse as you grew older.

Some days you could keep the peace, Lucas only being a mild annoyance to you at the best of times. But he would constantly poke and poke and poke until you fucking snapped. And he got no greater joy out of anything else than watching you get upset.

You’re not sure if he ever considered you his sibling. If he just thought you were some orphan that his parents took in out of the goodness of their hearts. He never got along much with Zoe either, but he didn’t pick on her nearly as much as he did with you.

3 out of 4 though? You were okay with that.

Your hand shot out and pressed against Ethan’s chest when you entered the next room, silently pointing towards the rectangular bomb with a glowing red light attached to the wall, along with the tripwire extending out from it. Raising your gun, you shot at it and watched it explode.

“He’s probably got this whole place trapped. Keep an eye out and shoot whatever bombs you see.”

“As if this guy couldn’t get any more sadistic,” Ethan said, heeding your warning as he made his way further into the room.

“This probably isn’t the worst of it.”

Ethan raised a hand and unenthusiastically shook it around in the air. “Hooray, can’t wait.”

Being so tedious and careful with every move you made was making you impatient. That was always your Captain’s main complaint about you. Impatient and stubborn. It’d probably be engraved on your headstone if you didn’t make it out of this alive.

Probably shouldn’t say that out loud.

You adjusted your grip on your gun, trying to ground yourself somehow so you didn’t go flying off the handle and rushing through the place. You’d have to say bye-bye to your limbs if you did that, and you didn’t feel like parting with them just yet.

How the hell am I gonna kick Lucas’s ass if I’m legless?

Shooting the last bomb, you rushed towards the metal door ahead of you and tested the handle to see if it would open.

It didn’t.

Of course.

Could someone forget to lock the door? Just once.

Ethan busied himself with the electronic keypad next to it, closely examining the worn numbers and cracked screen. The sound of metal rattling caught your attention, and your eyes snapped to your brother’s face pressed against the door.

“I know— fuckin’ passwords, right? Why don’t you try 0814.” Ethan furrowed his brows, fingers hovering over the keypad. “No-no-no-no! 0612. No, wait! It’s 0514. Come on, take a chance! You never know.”

You pulled the hammer down on your gun and shoved it between the holes in the door, the barrel lined up with Lucas’s head. “How about I fuckin’ blow your brains out instead?”

His eyes slightly widened and his lips slowly turned up in a grin. “Now, you know that won’t do much. I’ll just come back.”

You huffed, chest visibly rising with a deep breath. “No… But it’ll feel damn good.”

He had the nerve to laugh. Of course he did. He felt nothing, the sadistic prick.

“Yeah? Let’s see what happens to Mia and Zoe then when I get back up. Come on. Do it.”

A hand was on your arm, Ethan quietly muttering your name. “It’s not worth it.”

With a sigh, you slowly lowered your gun, reluctant to listen to Ethan. But you knew he was right, and you didn’t want to risk anything happening to Zoe or Mia if Lucas made good on his word.

But then he laughed again. “Awww. Like a trained dog— Shit!”

The bullet went clean through his leg, and he hurriedly limped away into the darkness.

“Feel better?”

You shrugged. “A little.”

A secret door opened next to you, and with nowhere else to go, you cautiously went forward.

“So,” Ethan began, “the whole Special Forces thing. You got any stories to pass the time?”

You let out a chuckle. “Sure, but none of them are nearly as crazy as what’s going on right now.”

“Well I’d be kind of worried if they were. Come on, even if it’s something small.”

Letting out a sigh, you and Ethan entered what looked to be a… barn? Since when the hell was there a barn on your property?

“Well. Ummm— Oh! There was the one time we had to apprehend the supplier of illegal weapons to a local terrorist group. They tried holing up in a building for a few days until we smoked ‘em out. Was kind of a shitshow.”

Ethan picked up a large battery, bringing it over to the panel on the wall.

“Oh—” you cut yourself off with a laugh, hand waving around, “And there was this other time Harding—”

The panel exploded into flames, causing you and Ethan to stumble back. Blue and white lights flickered and spun around the room, and your brother’s annoying voice came over the speakers.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the barn fight! Keep it clean, y’all— we have rules!”

A metal shutter on the far side of the barn raised open, and the first thing you saw was yellow acidic liquid spewing through the air, the groans of something large and grotesque following it. The monster that came charging out was nothing short of those two things, it’s body fat and lumpy. Its small arms dangled at its sides, and its legs were so skinny you were surprised it could even hold its body up.

“Holy fuck!”

“Nothin’ fucking holy about it, Winters!”

You just barely dodged the creature's spray of vomit, the smell burning your nose hairs and leaving smoke where it hit the ground.

“What do we do?!” Ethan yelled, making his way up to the second level.

“Uh, maybe shoot the thing?!”

You pumped round after round into the monster’s body, it’s fatty tissue practically absorbing every shot. Its large fist came swinging at you, and you rolled under it’s arm. Thank god it wasn’t as fast as everything else you’ve run into.

“You got anything stronger?! I don’t think normal bullets are gonna work on this thing!”

“Uh, I have a grenade launcher!”

You practically stopped in your tracks.

A grenade launcher?!

“Where the hell have you been hiding that?!”

Ethan was frantically stuffing a round into the chamber, all the while running from the creature's attacks who had taken a sudden interest in him instead of you. “Does it matter?!”

“Yes! It absolutely matters!”

He lined it up and shot, the grenade exploding on impact and flames engulfing the monster’s body. It groaned loudly, but it wouldn’t go down because nothing ever dies that fucking easily around here. You shot at its back, trying to distract it while Ethan reloaded, but it was no use. That thing really took a liking to him.

Maybe cleaning up his face did work.

“Ethan! Get out of there!”

Reaching into the pack attached to your leg, your fingers grasped a heavy grenade and hurriedly pulled the pin. You threw it up next to the creature as Ethan got far enough, and it shook the floor when it blew up in the thing’s face. Letting out a groan, it fell onto its back and rolled around until its body exploded, pieces of disgusting flesh going flying.

“Fat man down, fat man down!” Lucas chimed in. “Meh— he was never my favorite anyways.”

Your heart beat like a drum against your chest, frantically trying to calm down your breathing as you raised your middle finger high in the air and slowly spun in a circle, hoping Lucas would see it.

Racing down the stairs, Ethan hurried to your side and checked over you.

“Are you hurt anywhere?”

Oh, you’re hurt everywhere. But you knew that’s not what he meant.

“The fucker didn’t get me, don’t worry. How about you?”

He said he was okay, just some mild burns from where the vomit splashed him, but otherwise he was fine. You both stumbled over to the elevator, pressing the large red button on the wall and letting it take you up. Hopefully you didn’t run into those things again.

…You definitely would, knowing your luck.

You cleared your throat, catching Ethan’s attention. “So… Was it like, up your ass this entire time?”

“How in god’s name would I fit an entire grenade launcher up my ass?”

Looking down, you gave his behind a quick, appreciative glance. “I mean, not like you ain’t got nothing goin’ on back there.”

Ethan sputtered and practically choked on his own spit before barking out a laugh, a light red coloring his cheeks.

“Well, add that to my list of assets to distract these things.”

The elevator door opened, and Ethan walked ahead of you. Your brows raised, and you muttered to yourself quiet enough so he couldn’t hear.

“They’re not the only ones.”

#Ethan winters x reader #ethan winters imagine #ethan winters #resident evil #resident evil 7 #resident evil biohazard #re7 #resident evil fanfiction #resident evil imagine

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esmerelda-and-alouette · 1 year

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here are a bunch of different headcanons for each of the firsts and then some extra people because i feel like it and i want to post more 😌:

what’s something surprising that sephiroth does that others may not expect?: sephiroth can get embarrassed very easily. he can actually be quite insecure. however, he can hide it really well behind his cold and numb expressions and voice. plus, he’s too embarrassed to even admit that he’s embarrassed about something. one time, in an interview, he spaced out for a second and accidentally “admitted” to the entire country that he does professional photo shoots with his hair. i mean, he does anyways. not professionally, but still. everyone laughed it off, including him, but afterward he spent an hour or two just going uugghhHHHHH into his pillow.

what is genesis’s bad habit?: genesis picks at his nails a lot. whether it’s biting, picking the skin off around his cuticles, or ripping the excess nail off, he does it very often and it grosses angeal and tseng out. genesis has been doing it ever since he was a child though. at first he started doing it because he’s a very obvious perfectionist and he wanted his hands to look perfect, but now it’s just sort of a nervous reflex. you wouldn’t expect it because he’s so clean and neat, but it’s a very big reason that he has to wear gloves. he’s very insecure about his habit and how his hands look so he wears the gloves (also because they’re warm and he thinks they look badass), but he can’t stop.

what is enough to bring angeal to tears?: bittersweet endings, especially related to family. holy shit, angeal sobbed when he watched Coco for the first time and miguel sang to mama coco and she was forgetting her dad. that got him D E E P in the feels. it doesn’t get him as badly as bittersweet family endings, but also animals. animals dying or sacrificing themselves gets him bad too. he had a dog growing up, but because they were too poor at the time, he had to give the dog up. ever since then, animals have always got him.

does zack swear?: the short answer is yes, zack does indeed swear. he wasn’t allowed to at home because his mother and father didn’t want him to and would wash his mouth out with hot sauce if he ever cursed, so he was a little hesitant to cuss when he entered SOLDIER. one time, he bumped his arm on the edge of a chair during infantry and he said, get this, “aw shit” (whatttt???), and got so nervous when he realized what he did, but literally nobody around him cared lol. in fact, some of his buddies in infantry actually cheered when he did because they were so proud of him for letting the word “shit” come out of his mouth because he refused to say a curse word. now he swears, but not super often. it’s more just habit that he doesn’t, but he’s not afraid to swear now. except when he’s around genesis, of all people. genesis doesn’t like zack swearing and will hit him with a book if he does (not loveless though, it’s too precious to hit zack). the best part about it is that genesis swears too, he just trolls zack.

what is something small that aerith enjoys?: painting! aerith loves to paint. think of rapunzel from Tangled and you get the idea. every single wall of her room is covered ceiling to floor with paint, and she wants to paint the ceiling but it makes her a little dizzy to look up on a ladder for that long. she collects little rocks from the creek right by her house and paints them. she has a little collection and keeps them in a special chest, which she also painted lol. not only does she love to make art on surfaces like wood and stone, but she also paints clothes. she’ll sketch out a pattern on pieces of cloth and then paint on it with fabric paint so her mother can sew it into clothes, blankets, pillowcases, etc. it’s an effective pastime for her.

what is cloud’s morning schedule?: to put it simply, he doesn’t have one. but, if he does, the only constant is copious amounts of coffee. It really just depends on the day for cloud. sometimes he’s up at 6 in the morning. sometimes it’s 2 pm. whatever time he wakes up though, it wasn’t enough sleep. as you’d assume, he is very grumpy whenever he does end up waking up, and he brews at least 2 or 3 cups of coffee each time. and downs all of it. each. time. which may not sound very impressive to you, because i’m sure you may consume extensive amounts of caffeine, until you realize that that is cloud’s starting amount. he has roughly 2 1/2 cups about every 3 hours. and goes to bed at 12 am. so we’re talking roughly 13 cups of coffee per day. I have zero idea how he’s still alive. he just shrugged and said “how else am i supposed to stay awake?”. this man istg.

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fanmoose12 · 2 years

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Hey, I see you are a talented writer can you make a headcanon from this photo thank you.😊

Three days, for three fucking days Levi has been stuck in the damn barracks.

One little mishap during the training, one careless move that had his ankle swelling, and he was declared out of commission and strictly ordered to rest until his injury heals.

And so he was left all by himself, and while the rest of the scouts, his comrades and friends went behind the walls, putting their lifes in grave danger, all he can do was try not to die out of boredom and go crazy with worry.

He tries to ignore it, of course, does his best to distract himself from those insidious thoughts, but no amount of reading, sleeping or cleaning the barracks can get concern out of his system.

He worries constantly, about everyone: Erwin was a smart man, a capable soldier and an excellent commander, but he grew too used to Levi's strength and sometimes relied too much on it, and so Levi wonders - would he change his tactic this time? Or put someone else in his role of defender? And Mike, if thrusted into his shoes, would he be up for it? Would he perform just as well? And what about his squad? Going into battle without him for their first time, would they make him proud? Or break his heart?

And what of Hange, that four-eyed freak that wormed her way deeper into his heart than anyone else? Before venturing off with the others, before leaving him all alone, she promised, she swore to him that she'd be good, that she'd be careful, that she'd return safe to him, but how he can be sure? It is Hange, the brightest of minds, the wildest of hearts, who would make sure that a titan doesn't creep up on her, that she doesn't miss a giant hand moving to grab her, that she stays focused on a path right ahead and not one of the creatures that fascinate her so much?

Is her assistant vigilant enough to keep an eye on her? Is the rest of her squad just as capable?

Levi doesn't know, Levi isn't sure, and his life, full of sorrow and filled with tragedy after tragedy, taught him not to be hopeful as well.

And so he spends the three longest days in his life, cleaning every corner of the barracks and obsessing over the wellbeing of his comrades. And while these thoughts consume every second of his day, it's thoughts, anxiety over Hange, his ridiculous, laughing four-eyes that keep him up at night and push him out of the bed to wonder around empty barracks, no matter his injured ankle.

But he not only worries, he misses Hange, terribly, more fiercely than he thought was possible. The thoughts of her cloud his mind, her laughter rings in his ears and her face - with lips curled in a smile, eyes crinkling from too much laughter - is etched on the back of his lids.

When the last day of the expedition rolls around, his impatience reaches new highs and becomes so insistent that staying still stops being an option for Levi. He polishes the floors in each room until each floorboard shines brightly, eliminates the smallest specks of dust, and after his palms turn red and swollen from all that hard work, he starts pacing around, coming to stop only when the pain in his ankle gets so sharp that it becomes unbearable.

He goes out to find his horse then, jumps on to it and rides into town. Once there, he enters a cheap bar, buys a bottle of some retching alcohol and thrusts it into the hands of a garrison soldier, who, after that show of kindness, has no other choice but to let Levi get to the top of the wall.

He sits there for minutes, long hours, watching the sky turn pink, then purple then finally fade to black; when stars come out, he tries to count them all, Hange's voice ringing inside his head, as he remembers that night when she told him about constellations. So lost in his task, he almost misses the moment when stars start to vanish, and faint lines of light appear on the horizon. He stands tall, ignoring the pain in his leg, as the sun comes out in fully.

And when figures, small, practically miniscule at first, one by one appear in his line of sight, his heart swells, his worry heightens and he rushes to get down to the ground.

He lands on the soft soil just as the giant gates start to open.

His heart beats too hard, too fast, gets stuck in his throat, as he waits, waits - those short moments that he spends peeking at the slow developing gap between gates seem much longer, far more torturous than the last three days combined - waits.

When the figures start to turn discernible, the tight grip around his heart starts to lessen. The relief fills his body - Levi first sees Erwin, then Mike, Nanaba and the rest of their squad, then Petra appears, with Oluo riding right beside her, Gunter and Eld not far from them; his eyes travel further, searching, searching - he nods to every scout that catches his gaze, but the one he looks for isn't there.

First sparks of fear, gripping, dizzying, fire up his insides as scouts continue to trickle to the safety of the walls, the narrow line of them almost coming to an end, and yet there is still no sigh or sound of her.

He refuses to believe in it though, despite all his senses screaming at him that it's true. He digs his feet deep into the ground, stand still, as unmoving as statue, and looks forward, waiting to see that messy, beloved mop of brown hair.

Where is Hange, he almost asks Erwin, but words get stuck in his mouth, as the worry he had been harbouring for three days straight starts to turn into very tangible fear.

When the gate starts to close back, and his fingers start to go numb from how tightly he curls them into fists, he sees them, the members of Hange's squad. First goes Nifa, then Abel, then Keiji, and at last Moblit and...

No one.

There is no one - no laughing idiot, no goofy dork, no lovable weirdo.

Breath gets caught in his throat, his chest constricts painfully, wrecking a wheeze out of him- but he continues to watch, stubborn, hopeful against all fucking odds.

It becomes dimmer, that hope, almost nonexistent. The gates are nearly closed again, and Levi's ready to wrench his eyes away when-

When someone else runs inside, someone wild, full of life, someone noisy and filthy and irritating and-

So fucking loved.

Levi runs to her, doesn't care about the curious eyes of the townspeople or the amused gaze of his comrades. He forgets about his injured ankle, almost trips in his haste, and when Hange is close enough for him to reach out, Levi catches her in his arms.

"Shorty!" she laughs, breathless, joyful, alive. "You wouldn't believe it, but I lost my horse out there! Erwin made me walk all the way to-"

Levi doesn't allow her to finish, his lips crash against hers, as he kisses her with all the passion, all the worry and love that he feels. The position is awkward, Hange has to bend her knees to make up for their difference in height, but Levi doesn't care. He cares for nothing - not for the whistles of the scouts, not for the shocked gasps of the common folk.

Everything he cares for in this moment is in his arms, pressed tightly against him. And when he finally breaks the kiss, he keeps Hange close, his fingers like a vice around her wrist.

And in an answer to her questioning gaze, he can only murmur, "You fucking reek, four-eyes."

Hange's laughter rings loud and clear, sounds so happy; Levi's lips twitch up in a smile of his own.

His weirdo was finally back with him.

#decided to write a little fic instead :)#levihan

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nanoland · 1 year

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i’m publishing a new book! here’s the first chapter!

Dough is a contemporary M/F small town romance that’ll be available for purchase on December 23rd; HOWEVER! you can, if you like, preorder it right now, as preordering is a way of helping out independent creators like myself who don’t have a marketing department at our disposal. i’d be really, really grateful if you did.

here is the link!

and here, as promised, is the first chapter:

Chapter 1

Lucy Laufenberg’s Christmas display was, once again, the talk of the town.

Last year, she’d constructed an entire cookie forest, with wafer trees and coconut snow, through which a herd of gingerbread reindeer cavorted – one with a fat juicy cherry on its snout – their respective positions and size carefully calculated to create the illusion of depth. An architecturally-accurate cabin of pocky and marzipan had nestled in the background, a snickerdoodle pathway leading up to its front door, beside which stood a beaming fondant Mrs Claus.

Adorable, her customers had said.

Genius, the mayor had said when he’d come round for a photo op.

A waste of God-given talent, Pastor Carl of the local megachurch had said in reaction to the banner she’d put up over the display reading ‘Happy Holidays!’, and she was proudest of that.

This year, just to really fuck with Pastor Carl and his Facebook Flat Earth freakshow, the theme was cosmology. The Earth, a marzipan geoid, orbited a sun made from yellow cake, both elevated by thin, transparent plastic rods to seemingly hover against a black liquorice backdrop. The stars were one hundred and seventeen vanilla cookies, nestled amongst nebulas crafted from purple-pink candyfloss and dark chocolate pizzelle singularities.

To render her creation adequately festive, she’d added a bright red fondant sleigh being pulled by a fondant rocket ship, racing a pair of gumdrop meteors.

“Heck, kiddo,” said her Dad when she texted him a picture. “Guess that engineering degree wasn’t a total waste after all!”

The inevitable self-loathing spiral that line would have usually initiated was, thankfully, quickly cancelled out by the already-existing spiral of anxiety she’d been caught in all morning.

The magazine people were coming round at noon.

There would be photographs taken.

In between shovelling batches in and out of the oven, she’d dusted and polished every last inch of the shop. While one hand was giving a customer change and handing over a dozen hot croissants in a brown bag, the other was applying Tarte Maneater Voluptuous Mascara. When Antoinette arrived, dapper as ever in her waistcoat and tweed hat, Lucy left her in charge while she ducked into the kitchen to finish bullying her dense brown locks into an Amy Winehouse-style beehive decorated with delicate snowflake hairpins.

“Very nice,” said Antoinette, her white sleeves already rolled up and busy placing shortbread triangles into a pale peach box emblazoned with their looping logo: The Sugar Palace.

Lucy glanced at one of the six full-length mirrors that lined the shop’s walls to make it look bigger than it was, studying her gold nails, sparkling heels, and very favourite cute, deep green babydoll dress with frills and big, functionless wooden buttons running down the front, currently obscured by her apron. “Not too much?”

Her best friend and staunchest ally was firm: “No such thing as too much. You’re a goddess.”

“Aw.”

“Feel good? Feel powerful?”

“Yeah. Totally. Totally powerful.”

“Good. Now, there’s your coffee. Have a sip, then process what I’m about to tell you with patience and decorum.”

One month older than her, Antoinette Reynolds was the only childhood accomplice who’d stuck with Lucy all these years and Lucy was still ashamed that it had taken her so long to recognise that she had anorexia – long enough that her by-then business partner, ever proud and fiercely independent, had been well into her first battle with recovery when the truth had come out. The last half decade had brought marked improvement for them both, health-wise, though Lucy was still compelled by habit to check with a glance how brittle Antoinette’s nails were looking as she gently placed the mug in Lucy’s hands.

Lucy shut her eyes. Took a sip. Set the mug back down. “I’m prepared.”

“He’s back.”

“Back?” she hissed, spinning towards the shop’s front window. “No! No, no, no! He’s visiting his grandma in Atlanta! He’s not due back until tomorrow!”

Though her cookie cosmos partially obscured her view, through the candyfloss clouds and gleaming glass she could just about make out a thirty-year-old pickup with duct tape where its back window should have been and thick mud coating its tires. “Dammit. This is not okay, Ant. I went out of my way to ask his brother when he’d be back. The magazine people can’t see him. Absolutely not.”

Antoinette sighed, absently brushing a strand of her artfully messy bob out of her eyes. “Lucy, I get it. I do. This sucks. It’s a blow. But let’s be rational here, right, and let’s not make any hasty… Lucy?”

Lucy was already out the door.

He’s not getting away with this, dammit. He’s not.

Her holiday displays were only one of many ways Lucy worked her ass off turning her little shop into the cutest thing this side of town.

The front of the building was painted duck-egg blue with creamy yellow stripes. Dense flowering bushes grew in wooden tubs on either side of the main window, dribbling purple petals everywhere. A small cobblestone path meandered down to the road, flanked by a dozen lawn flamingos wearing bonnets and berets. Off to the side stood a perfectly-pruned lemon tree from which hung a charming handmade birdfeeder.

To be clear: Lucy hadn’t been trying to make the colourless, featureless block across the road crummy by comparison. If anything, she’d been trying to draw attention away from its dowdiness.

Alas, the result was the same. As The Sugar Palace had blossomed, Murkins’ Laundromat had become ever greyer and meaner-looking.

(As had its owner, Antoinette was fond of saying.)

But you couldn’t get to Strut Murkins without first wading through an army of half-feral relatives.

A grubby adolescent nephew, Kyle or something, sat warming his ass on the pavement next to the truck like he was guarding it – like there was a single human on Planet Earth who might want to steal it – and smoking a cigarette Lucy tore right out of his mouth as she passed.

He leapt up with a strangled ‘The fuck? Bitch!’ that elicited an amused chortle from the tall man with the world’s most God-forsaken mullet striding out the front door carrying a bulging garbage bag; Bronco, Strut’s younger brother by a decade, twenty-something and looking, as per usual, like he’d spent the morning traipsing around the woods.

(Maybe he had. Rumour had it he was a poacher.)

Getting in Bronco’s face, Lucy snarled, “You let the kid smoke? He’s a child, for God’s sake.”

She punctuated her sentence by throwing the cigarette on the ground and stomping on it, her sparkling heels failing to deliver the decisive ‘thud’ she’d have preferred.

“Hell with you, lady!” Kyle screeched.

Bronco shrugged, which was his default response to everything. “Eh. He’s a li’l shit.”

Then something else, low and incomprehensible as he glanced away. Like her, the Murkins clan wasn’t from round these parts. Some trailer park in Alabama – that was the rumour. Their accents supported it. Lucy got the distinct impression that those accents thickened, quite deliberately, when they were talking to people they didn’t like.

“You said your brother wouldn’t be back until Wednesday,” she insisted.

Another shrug. “Strut does what he likes.”

Bronco resumed walking, flicking his fuming nephew’s ear as he went by. Gritting her teeth, Lucy stepped inside the laundromat and was instantly assaulted by the only thing worse than holiday carols; holiday bro country.

‘That Christmas tree ain’t the only thing getting lit this year!’ sang FGL, making her wish she’d brought a baseball bat.

The twins were perched like exotic birds atop a tumble dryer, all gangly limbs and bangles, Priss painting her nails black while Barb groped her own left breast.

“Would you cut that out? Customers gonna think you’re a perv,” sneered Priss, tossing back her long bottle-blonde hair.

Barb, drabber and with a buzz cut, snapped, “The internet said this is how you do it! Catch ‘em early and the doctors can zap ‘em with a laser. Catch ‘em late and they gotta hack your tits clean off. I’m being fucking responsible, you whore. And you should be, too! You wanna work in Hollywood one day, yeah? How’re you gonna do that if they’ve hacked off your tits? Not like you’ve got anything else going for you.”

“Where’s Strut?” Lucy interrupted, before they could descend into one of their habitual screaming matches.

Seemingly at the sound of her voice, the baby, playing in a plastic laundry basket placed below the twins’ dangling feet, started to cry. Dee, real name Dorothy-Amber-Leslie Murkins, was the only member of the family with big, beautiful green eyes, doe-like and dewy. Everyone else’s were blue and squinty. Lucy endured ten seconds of silent, identical squints before giving up and stalking over to the back room.

“He’s busy!” Barb called.

“So am I,” muttered Lucy, pushing the door open and finding Strut Murkins standing there with his dick out, pissing into an empty Coke bottle.

Stream unfaltering, he growled, “Y’all mind?”

He was a broad man with close-cropped dirty blond hair whose body language had two settings – looming and skulking – and was, Lucy guessed, somewhere between forty and forty-five, with deep frown lines and thin lips prone to curling.

“Told you he was busy!” Barb chimed as Priss cackled. Evil little rats.

They all expected her to clutch her pearls and flee. Damned if she’d give them the satisfaction.

“A word, Mr Murkins,” she said icily, glaring at the bottle, because what was the alternative? Pretend it wasn’t there? “Please.”

At last, the stream trailed off.

Strut gave his dick a brisk shake before tucking it back into his pants and screwing the cap back on the bottle. “No time to chatter today, girlie. Some of us work for a living.”

He put the bottle down on the floor, just close enough to Lucy’s feet that its contents would splatter all over her shoes if it toppled.

Her eyelid twitched. Behind her, Dee was still wailing, atonal and shrill. “You have a bathroom.”

“Toilet’s fucked. Plumber won’t be here ‘til late afternoon. Nothing be done about it,” he informed her airily, then added, with a nasty grin, “unless a fine, charitable person like yourself feels inclined to let us use the one in your shop?”

Inspecting her nails, she said, “Mm. I’m afraid that won’t be possible today. Photographers from Transcendentally Domestic will be coming by. The shop needs to be pristine. The whole street, ideally. That’s why I’d appreciate it if you’d move your truck to somewhere a touch more discrete.”

She’d deliberately adopted her snootiest voice, knowing that it was the fastest way to piss Strut off and that pissing him off was the fastest way to getting what you wanted out of him. He’d explode, call you names, make threats, and then Bronco or the twins would reluctantly intervene and tell him to chill out and cooperate before someone called the damn police.

The police, she’d noticed, were the only people, the only entity that not a single member of the family cared to fuck with. Antoinette’s leading theory was that Strut used the laundromat to smuggle cocaine in and out of town.

True to form, storm clouds were already gathering on Strut’s face.

“Hell’s wrong with my truck?” he growled. “That’s my legal goddamn property. Can park it wherever the fuck I like, thank you oh so very much.”

“Well, no. You can park it where the law says you can park it. Now, at the moment, where it’s parked wouldn’t be a problem – if it weren’t for the picture, Mr Murkins. I believe we’ve already had a conversation about the picture.”

Dee unleashed a particularly piercing cry and Strut cursed and stuck his head out the door to yell, “Brats! Y’all deaf? Feed the fuckin’ baby!”

“Already did!” Barb hollered back.

“Then check her fuckin’ diaper!”

He turned back to Lucy with folded arms and a sneer. “Picture on the truck’s a damn masterpiece. Took Bronco three days to spray paint that shit on.”

“No, it didn’t. It’s an anime mermaid with comically huge breasts. It looks like it took half an hour and as I have told you before, it’s not in keeping with the neighbourhood’s tone. I run a bakery renowned for its cookies and sweets, Strut. I have little, impressionable children coming in every hour of the day. What will their parents think, seeing that… that monstrosity?”

“Eh. Frankly, you got off lightly,” he drawled with a shrug. “Bronco’s a furry. He wanted to make her a sexy fox ‘til I put my foot down.”

“Regardless. Please move the truck. At least until the magazine folks have come and gone. Then you can move it back, with my blessing.”

She graced him with a tight smile.

Scratching his stubble and pursing his lips, he said, “They’re gonna – what? Do an article ‘bout that weirdass school science project you got in your window? Why? Who gives a shit?”

Prick.

“Transcendentally Domestic is currently putting together a series on small female-owned businesses and the challenges of managing a start-up in this economic climate. It’s actually very interesting.”

Bronco burst into the room, almost knocking over the piss bottle and brandishing a phone. “Strut! Call for you. Think it’s Sergio.”

Taking it, Strut gave her a final glance, grunted, “Answer’s no,” and stalked out.

“Your lesbian friend’s looking for you,” Bronco told her, oblivious to her clenched fists and gritted teeth. “Says the magazine woman’s here.”

#books #bookblr #romance novels #mf romance #writeblr #indie publishing #selfpublished

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