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worldheadcanons · 1 year

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Could you do the allies confessing to their crush? Something super fluffy ｡◕‿◕｡

☆ the allies: confessing to their crush!

starring. . . gender neutral, country! reader and england, america, france, china, + russia. warning for brief mentions of gore + murder (horror movie stuff) under russia’s part.

author notes; i wrote some of this on a plane at 3 am and i’m sorry if it shows through. live laugh love country!reader concepts. I know it wasn’t apart of the original ask but it felt necessary (i wanted to add it).

arthur kirkland!

— when he first fell for you, he had tried to ignore his feelings. so what if his heart skipped a beat whenever you complimented his proposals? you were just coworkers. just two people who attended the same meetings, talked often after said meetings, made coffee for each other, smiled and laughed together... just two coworkers. that’s all you ever were and all you ever would be. at least, that’s what kirkland thought at first.

— obviously, the ‘ignore and forget’ method didn’t work out for him. after a week or so he woke up and smelled the roses, realizing that his feelings weren’t going anywhere. arthur started to try and flirt with you at the office, complimenting your outfits and holding every door he could for you. francis never failed to tease him over his attempts at wooing you.

— he went on for weeks, lightly flirting and pining over you. kirkland could be cowardly when it came to affairs of the heart. he was never a romantic man, even when he was an empire. he feared your rejection more than anything, refusing to take you out on a date even though he spoke of you all the time. during a meeting one day, francis glanced from the englishman to you and then back at him. when you were out of earshot the frenchman whispered to arthur that if he didn’t grow up and ask you out, bonnefoy would ask you out instead. he couldn’t be sure if it was a joke or not, but there was no way in hell he’d let francis ask you out. the mere possibility of it kicked kirkland into gear. after the meeting had been dismissed, he pulled you to the side.

— he gently took your hands into his, as if he was about to say his vows. “y/n, i’ve been interested in you for quite some time,” arthur began, one hand going to the back of his neck as his gaze turned downwards. “i was wondering if we could meet up somewhere.. for a date, i mean.” it was awkward and slightly uncomfortable for him, but for you this was a dream come true. all this time he had scarcely noticed that you had been flirting back at him. you’d laugh a little too much at his stupid, sarcastic jokes. you'd find various excuses to talk to him directly during general meetings. you had picked up on his flirting early on and quickly reciprocated. every doubt about your feelings existed only in his mind.

— “i’d love that, arthur. how about some food from my country? i know this place that i think you’ll like,” you replied, smiling at the man in front of you. you brushed your thumbs across his knuckles. arthur grinned at your response, cheeks flushed pink. there you were, holding hands in the dim corner of an office corridor… and it felt like heaven, really. the two of you made plans to go out the same night, eager to spend time together outside of the office.

— perhaps francis, being the country of love, had noticed the relationship issues you two were having. perhaps he had simply just wanted to bother the british man. either way, you made a note to yourself to thank him for his involvement in getting you two together.

alfred f. jones!

— classic case of ‘they fell first but he fell harder’. much harder. you had a huge crush on him previously. looking back, it wasn’t too foolish. you were a relatively smaller country and even though you weren’t new, you were still getting your bearings down. you were a beginner in many aspects and yet here he was, this grand country with lots of power and influence. you couldn’t help but fall for alfred. he was the american dream, literally. and the thing was, he was younger than you!

— your crush was completely innocent, albeit a bit embarrassing. jones didn’t even notice it until matthew pointed out to him. at the time, he didn’t feel the same way. he wasn’t cruel, but he did let you know that he didn’t reciprocate those feelings. he didn’t want to lead you on, is all. your feelings didn’t die out but you decided not to act on them. things between the two of you evened our after that. months later, though, alfred started to look at you in a more.. romantic.. light. when you would talk to other powers like arthur or especially ivan, he’d feel.. oddly jealous. when you’d ask about his proposals his heart would beat faster while he answered. whenever he made you laugh, he’d feel like the luckiest man alive… yea, he had fallen flat on his face in love with you.

— once he realized he was in love, he began to flirt. jones wasn’t exactly the most subtle of flirts. the whole point of flirting was to catch attention, wasn’t it? so that’s what he did. he went out of his way to help you whenever he could, flashing you a charming grin as he did so. once he got an opportunity to show off his muscles, something he was happy about. he even ended up letting you touch them. alfred had no issue asking you out to lunch, sneakily taking your hand into his as he leads you to some cool, new lunch spot he’s been hearing about.

— his only issue was the fact that he’d rejected you before.. he worried that you were no longer interested. jones knew that you liked him as a person, otherwise you wouldn’t have hung out with him like you have been for the past few weeks. he just couldn’t be sure. still, he really liked you. after a bit of internal debate, he decided to just ask you out. it couldn’t hurt, really. the worst you could say was no. no risk, no reward. alfred tried to keep those thoughts in mind as he ate with you on your now routine lunch break dates. well.. not real a date, but the idea was there.

— “so, y/n,” he began, eating some fries before continuing on, “what would you say.. if a certain hero, not naming names.. wanted to ask you out on a date sometime. if this hero asked you out for dinner and dancing on.. say saturday? would you say yes?” jones offered you a smile. it was slightly sheepish but mostly cute. his boyish charm worked to his advantage, making your heart melt. he was like a human puppy.

— you chuckled before replying, “i would say yes. but he’s paying for the full thing.” he pouted at that but you were stubborn with your terms. it was the least he could do considering how long he had you pining after him!

francis bonnefoy!

— your country and his were in the middle of making major economic deals. you had lots of resources and bonnefoy seemed to want them. it was for that reason and that reason only that you had ever given the man your phone number. you were hoping to discuss things in detail over the phone. unfortunately, francis seemed to call you to talk about everything but proper terms to your proposed deal. he’d always ask about your day first before launching into his own day and giving you a play by play on every event he found significant. it was frustrating, however, since you were a smaller country you couldn’t exactly force him into thinking about work.

— you were well aware that on the other side of the line, bonnefoy would be laid in bed, twirling his hair and kicking his feet. his love for you was a love meant for youth. it was freeing, feeling this sort of love at his age. he felt giggly just hearing your voice, despite the fact that you mostly gave one word responses to him. he was, as alfred and matthew liked to put it, whipped. he was whipped for you. other countries started to pick up on this fact, realizing that he barely flirted with anyone anymore. francis only ever spoke of you, a lovesick smile on his face as he did so. you were aware of his feelings but no one was aware of yours. you had grown fond of the frenchman’s personality, occasionally finding yourself smiling and when you heard his voice on the phone.

— he had to ask you out and confess his undying love. he just had to. he couldn’t call himself the country of love if he didn’t. so he called you up in the morning one day, asking you to come over for dinner. at first, you refused to budge, claiming it to be a waste of time. however, once bonnefoy promised to read over your proposals, you sung a different tune. a free dinner couldn’t hurt. plus, it would be nice to taste the man’s cooking. you’d heard from your neighboring countries that he was a great chef.

— so, that’s how you ended up in francis’ dining room that evening. you had brought a stack of legal papers to go through but they remained tucked away in your bag. you didn’t want any sort of mess to get on them. he set down a crisp white napkin over your lap before bringing the food. it smelled divine as he brought it out, something you didn’t neglect to comment on. once bonnefoy sat down you picked up your fork and eagerly began eating, humming in satisfaction at the taste. noticing your joy, he smiled. the frenchman commenced conversation with the same question he always asked. ‘how was your day?’. you answered with a short, ‘good’. then he sighed, rather dramatically in your opinion.

— “i cannot hide it anymore, ma cheri*. i am in love with you! i love you as the tides love the moon and bees love honey. i need you more than i could ever want you and i already want you for all time! i spend my days yearning for your touch and—“ francis went on, proudly declaring his love to you. he probably would’ve kept going if you hadn’t cut him off with the sound of your laughter. you tried to keep yourself formal but you eventually ended up full on snort-laughing.

— “you were trying to hide it? bonnefoy, i could hear you giggling over the phone. it was never that much of a secret.”

— he gasped. “i pour my heart out to you and this is how you respond?” he exclaimed, one hand going to his chest to cover his heart. “you’re so cruel!”

— “oh please. you like it,” you replied knowingly, taking another bite of your food. this was your way of reciprocating his feelings without actually saying you liked him. you were sure if you did say it outright he’d get a big head about it, something you didn’t want to deal with.

— he chuckled a little, nodding his head in agreement. “i do.” he finished his meal and wiped his mouth before speaking. he then did something that made your heart flutter. he smiled at you and then said, “let‘s go over those proposals.” finally the work would get done. how romantic.

yao wang!

— the two of you were already close friends. it started a long while ago when you came to work completely dejected. when asked about it, you immediately spilled about your most recent breakup. instead of telling you his honest feelings about how tragically, humans and personifications could never truly be together, wang held you close and reassured you that your true love was her to be found. humans were plentiful. you were a capable person, smart too. you’d find someone to connect with. at the time you were a smaller country, so you were in awe that a power such as him would bother comforting you.

— now though, you were a bigger country with more resources. you produced a lot of oil, so many other countries were interested in discussing things with you. you couldn’t even begin to count the amount of times you’ve had to reject invitations from countries like arthur or francis. the same countries that wouldn’t give you a second thought when you were younger. were now desperate to get on your good side. yao remained a good friend of yours, someone who was genuine with you. the two of you had both grown in many ways. one way you hadn’t grown, though, was in romance.

— you sighed dramatically as you plopped down onto wang’s couch. you had invited yourself over and as soon as he saw your face, he knew he was in for a long night. he idly handed you a small tub of your favorite ice cream and a spoon, humming as he flipped through the television channels to find something appropriate. yao kept a small supply of your favorite foods ever since he’d given you a key to his place. you took a huge scoop and stuck it in your mouth, stretching out so that your head was in his lap.

— “i just don’t know what i’m doing wrong!” you exclaimed after eating the scoop. the relationship had lasted barely three months. “he said i was ‘nice’ but ‘emotionally absent’. bullshit! i gave him my heart, you know?” sure, you had avoided him a few times and maybe you weren’t the most.. there.. all the time.. it’s not like you liked someone else though! you were dating him!

— you had started to tear up and wang simply wiped away your tears. “you do deserve better,” he murmured. he let you sit for a while, gently comforting you as you cried and ate. after you had settled a bit, finishing your tub of ice cream, yao quietly asked you a question. “have you ever considered… dating another country?”

— “nope,” you sighed out, “when i was younger it seemed unrealistic. no countries really paid attention to me. now if they talk to me they’re only after my oil.” you looked up at him from where you were in his lap, his honey brown eyes looking back at you with the same amount of interest.

— he nodded his head gently in understanding before curtly replying with a sly smile.. “not me.”

— “you’re right, not you.. but you’re not interested in me.”

— “but i am,” wang replied softly. one hand of his went to run through your hair. it was a familiar action but it had different connotations now. connotations you didn’t particularly dislike.. connotations you.. maybe were fond of. your heart swelled at the thoughts you were having. maybe you’d liked him the whole time and just didn’t think in it— it would surely explain why your ex said you weren’t emotionally engaged.

— “you are?” you asked just to confirm what you already knew. your face had turned slightly red by this point.

— “i am,” he repeated, chuckling softly at your reaction. not the smoothest confession he’d given but really, he couldn’t bare to see you date another human, another person in general. he wanted to be your next and final boyfriend. it’s not a sudden feeling for yao. it’s one that silently had built up over the years.. a feeling that he was sharing with you now.

— “why didn’t you say so sooner? i could’ve avoided so many break ups!” you exclaimed out after a few moments of quiet. he shrugged playfully before leaning down to kiss your nose. “you owe me so much! you know how many shitty guys i’ve dated! how long have you liked me?” you questioned him and he only laughed, shaking his head. “ugh yao! you’re lucky you’re cute!”

ivan braginsky!

— you and mr. braginsky had never been truly close. he was your northern neighbor, sure, but you had barely spoken to the man up until a few months ago at a meeting. he had proposed some sort of idea and, though he was a power, barely anyone payed attention to it. however, once you, a medium sized country with valuable military resources, co-signed on the idea, people seemed to pay attention more. it wasn’t an immediate yes to his proposal but it was better than being ignored. you couldn’t be bothered now to remember the details but ever since then the two of you had grown into an odd pair of friends, even going as far as to meet up outside of work.

— it was obvious to everyone else that he liked you. somehow you never managed to catch on, despite his best efforts. others would hint at it to you but you never connected the dots. you were far too focused all the work that being a country naturally entailed— it was admirable but at the same time, unfortunate, considering you also harbored a crush on him. the two of you simply never spoke about it so it was unrequited in both of your minds. ivan decided that day that he’d take you out to a horror slasher movie late after work. it was a movie he had been wanting to see for a while. plus, according to the internet, blood and guts made people feel all.. kissey. he wasn’t sure if that was true or not though.

— though you found ghostface hot, you didn’t particularly enjoy the horror genre outside of that. still, you decided to say yes to his invitation and accompany him to the movies that night. braginsky picked you up from your house as he often did. when you arrived, he held your hand in his as you both walked in and purchased tickets. you were able to score good seats in the back, something that made you grin. you bought the popcorn and he bought the drinks, effectively splitting the bill.

— the movie began and, really, it wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be. it was worse. you jumped a lot, clinging onto ivan’s arm and shoving more popcorn into your mouth as the protagonist watched her friend get sawed in half. every time you squeezed his arm, you’d half-glance over at him and apologize under your breath. it was terrifying but you couldn’t look away!

— there was a part in the movie where the protaganist’s boyfriend got ruthlessly killed by a chainsaw. you held onto him closely during this part, shrinking into your chair. ivan kept his focus on the screen but gently patted your head, “if it was me and you, i’d never get killed. i’d be there for you.”

— “how romantic,” you said almost sarcastically, chuckling. your laughter had nervous undertones. “save that for your girlfriend.”

— “i don’t have a girlfriend,” he replied quietly. things went silent for a few moments, save for the sounds of the movie, before he spoke up again. “i’d like to have you, though. we’d make a great couple.”

— you turned your head away from the sceeen, completely missing the part where the protagonist found out the identity of the serial killer that was after her. instead of watching the movie, you looked up at ivan who looked down at you with a small, awkward smile. you asked him if he had just asked you out. he nodded in response. you asked him if he meant it. again, he nodded. you finally asked him if he wanted to kiss. he eagerly nodded on that.

— the two of you kissed in the back of the move theater, not minding the fact that both of you were missing the movie ending. the kisses weren’t passionate but rather childish, as if you were simply getting acquainted to each other’s lips. it was dark and you two were quiet for the most part, so you wouldn’t disturb anyone. every other couple was probably kissing anyways. ivan supposed it was true. something about blood and guts really did make people kissey.

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sparkles-rule-4eva · 1 year

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"Comfort in a Thunderstorm"

Happy Wholesome Sonic and Tails Wednesday!!!! 🥰 So I've actually drawn a ton of things for them but obviously gotta post them one at a time 😂 I had something else planned but then another fic suddenly materialized in my docs so I was like "welp"

Haha, enjoy!

Quick desc: "Sonic & Tails' first thunderstorm experience together."

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Sonic didn’t like the rain.

For one, he wasn’t a big fan of water in general, although he mainly didn’t like being in it. But rain often made it harder to run. He’d lost track of the amount of times he’d slipped in wet grass, or crashed into a mud puddle, or been blinded by a downpour and ran into a tree or something.

He didn’t like it, but he wasn’t afraid of it.

As he was soon to learn, it was a different story for Tails.

It had started sprinkling around the late afternoon, and by sundown it was pouring. The skies were overcast with dark, almost black clouds. They’d need to stop and find shelter somewhere, Sonic decided. It was already hard enough to keep moving during the day in the heavy rain. It would only be worse to try and get through it in the dark.

Tails had seemed unusually quiet. Sure, he didn’t talk a whole lot to begin with, but sometimes his little brother would go on rambles about something new he’d discovered; usually about mechanics and technology. The kid had taken a liking to such things the moment he’d first discovered them, and although he didn’t have any of his own tools and techy stuff yet, he was taking every opportunity to learn as much about it as he could. He’d been fascinated by Sonic’s plane, the Tornado, ever since he’d first laid eyes on it. Sonic had been thinking about buying him a computer or something for his birthday, whenever that was.

Did he actually understand all the stuff Tails told him about? No, not really. But it was fun to listen to him go on and on about his passions.

Tonight, however, his little brother had been silent for a couple hours at least. When Sonic glanced back to check on him, the little fox’s blue eyes were wide and nervous.

He cleared his throat as he stopped for a moment. “You okay, buddy?”

Tails jumped and looked up at him. “Yes!” he answered, a little too quickly. “Where are we gonna sleep tonight?”

Sonic looked up and scanned the horizon. “Dunno yet. I don’t see any trees. We might have to settle for burrowing tonight.”

“We shouldn’t go under a tree, anyway,” Tails protested. “If it starts making thunder, we might get struck by lightning if it hits the tree.”

Sonic looked down at him, surprised. “Oh, okay.” He glanced around. “I just don’t want to get flooded if we go underground is all.”

The little fox stared around for a moment. Something still seemed off about his demeanor, but Sonic couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Well, guess we’ll just keep moving until we find somewhere safe to stay for the night.” He sighed, then held out his hand. “Stay close, kiddo.”

It had taken him a while to get Tails to be comfortable with touch when they’d first met— which, granted, hadn’t been too long ago. A little under a year, perhaps? But Tails had been sensitive to it as a result of the bullying he’d had to endure before Sonic had met him and intervened. So it was safe to say that Sonic was a little taken aback when Tails not only took his hand immediately, he grabbed his entire arm and clung to it with both hands, standing barely a couple inches away from him.

They started walking, although Tails was more shuffling to keep up with Sonic’s longer paces. “You feeling okay, bud?” Sonic finally made himself ask.

His little brother hesitated for several seconds, then mumbled, “I’m just sleepy.”

It had been a long day. “Want me to carry you?”

“…Yeah.”

Sonic stopped walking, turned to crouch down, and held out his arms. Tails quietly climbed into his grasp, and as Sonic stood up again, this time holding his brother against his chest and one shoulder, he realized Tails was shaking. His heart rate seemed a little too fast, too.

But his little brother had already shown he didn’t want to talk about whatever was bothering him, so Sonic just held him close and continued walking, occasionally rubbing one hand over the fox kit’s back.

Maybe five minutes of silence passed before thunder started rumbling in the distance. Sonic kept moving, but he felt Tails stiffen slightly in his arms.

Finally, he spotted a few small caves just beyond the hill they were approaching. “Eureka!” he cheered quietly, and Tails made a tiny noise of acknowledgment. They were just entering the mouth of the biggest cave when a loud crack of thunder exploded just over their heads.

To Sonic’s surprise, Tails yelped at the sound and clung to him ever tighter, whimpering. Sonic just continued to hold him, even as he walked in deeper and sat down against a wall. He was tempted to ask some questions, but figured it was better to just stay quiet and be there for comfort.

Four cracks of thunder and four mini screams from Tails later, his little brother finally said something.

“I-I don’t like thunderstorms.”

“I got that, buddy,” Sonic replied quietly, trying for a teasing tone, but instantly regretted it. Tails probably wasn’t in the mood for jokes and sarcasm.

“That’s okay,” he added, after another few seconds’ hesitation. “You don’t have to be embarrassed. Everyone has fears.”

“Not you,” his brother mumbled.

Sonic paused. While it was true he liked to go about boasting that he feared nothing, it . . . wasn’t necessarily all true. He didn’t fear Eggman. He didn’t fear pain. He didn’t fear death. But . . .

He sighed. “No . . . I have fears too, buddy,” he forced himself to admit, and one of Tails’ ears perked up.

“Really? What is it?”

Oh boy, this was painful, but anything for your family, Sonic supposed. “A couple things, actually,” he confessed, albeit very softly. “I . . . had some bad experiences with water when I was younger. And I never learned to swim, so . . . you could say I’m afraid of drowning.”

Tails’ big blue eyes were bigger than ever. “Really?”

“Yup. That, and . . .”

“And what?”

Sonic exhaled heavily, then leaned back a little so he could meet the fox kit’s gaze more easily. “Losing you. Anything bad happening to you, actually.”

It took a moment, but that actually put a huge smile on Tails’ face. He was still shivering from his own fears, but he looked downright warm and fuzzy inside as he lay back down against Sonic’s chest, a light purr rumbling from his chest. “I love you,” he mumbled through a tired smile.

Sonic had never been one to express emotions or be all sappy, but dang it, everything was different with Tails. “Love you too, bro,” he whispered back, hugging him just a little tighter.

And they stayed like that for the rest of the night. Tails still jumped at every clap of thunder and whimpered here and there, but Sonic just kept holding him. Eventually, surely after another few hours had passed, Tails had fallen asleep, still cradled in his older brother’s arms. Sonic took a few minutes to enjoy the peacefulness of the moment before surrendering to sleep himself.

(again, I made the art before I wrote the fic, so that's why it's a different setting. Although the pic could also just be a general occurrence, not this specific one 🤷‍♀️😂)

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Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed!

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic #sonic and tails #miles tails prower #unbreakable bond #sth #they're brothers your honor #wholesome sonic and tails wednesday #happy wholesome sonic and tails wednesday #thunderstorm #fears #art #fic #hope there wasn't too much angst lol #i dont think so #does this count as h/c #idk lol #again this will be posted on my Wattpad asap #i really should just make a post with a link to the Wattpad collection and pin it lol

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multi-fandomsfreak · 8 months

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So how's about fatal error sonic with a computer virus reader who gained sentience

Fatal Error Sonic with a Computer Virus!Reader who has gained sentience

Hey there thanks for the ask

This is the final ask that I’ve received for now. I’m still going to have my inbox closed for now just to calm down a bit and plus I’m getting ready to go away somewhere for my birthday tomorrow and given that my birthday is 6 days away I would prefer to use that time to hang out with family. Hope you guys understand.

Pronouns: Not Mentioned

Warning: ❌

Requested: Yes/No

Characters: Fatal Error Sonic

Proofread: ❌

Credits: Art by marm28663 on Pinterest + Banner by pjmrsie on Pinterest

———————————

- How did you even come to this point? One minute it was nothing then all of a sudden you noticed everything that was going around you. You didn’t even realise what was going on when you started to have a feeling that you were being watched by someone. You started to question who you were and why you were here. Everything was happening too fast you just wanted to know what was happening to you. Eventually, after some digging into what is happening you realised what your name was and what your sole purpose was. You were a computer virus and your sole purpose was to extract code, exploit systems and gather anything you can about the person who was unfortunate to fall for your virus.

- At first you went along with it one because you were practically made by your creator to do that and plus it was actually kind of funny to think of your victims reaction when they realised all the stuff they’ve been gaining was gone in practically in a second. Yes it may make you sound sadistic but it was actually kind of funny. Although, the only thing that annoyed you about doing this was your creator constantly telling you which people to get, not letting you do your own thing which you didn’t like. Why couldn’t you do what you want ? Nobody was incharge of you. One day after spending most of the time constantly going to different people grabbing some of their information you decided ‘you know what? Screw it!’ and decided to leave your creator without a trace.

- Honestly at first it felt weird not having someone tell you what to do you weren’t sure if you’ve done the right thing but it was a bit too late to do anything now and plus now you can have the freedom to do what you wanted to do and not be restricted. You had the freedom to travel to whatever computer place you want and do whatever you want to it. That’s how you met a similar being to you named fatal error. You were doing your regular stuff hopping from one person's computer to another when just so happened to arrive in a habitat that fatal error obtained.

- When he first met you he was surprised to see someone similar to him. He couldn’t help but be curious about you. Can you really blame him? He never thought he would meet someone similar to him. Obviously he was sceptical of you and your intentions at first asking you questions about why you were here but overall was slightly happy to see you and maybe considered becoming friends with you.

- I can imagine him being slightly attached to you. Not in a loving way but more of a protective kind of way if you know what I mean. He never thought that he would find or meet someone similar to him he’s been dealing with he went through it has never crossed his mind that someone else had went through the same thing as he did. That’s how you two bonded with each other, when he went to visit you or the other way around he may find stuff you two can do together just so he could be with you.

#sonic.exe #sonic.exe x reader #fatal error #fatal error x reader #fatal error sonic #fatal error sonic x reader #sonic the hedgehog #sonic x reader #sonic series #sonic series x reader #x reader #request

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elfqueen006 · 10 months

Text

Obsessed part 1

Vampire!Shaun x Reader x Incubus!Joseph - Rosario + Vampire AU (kind of)

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Shaun didn’t like you socializing - like at all. Call it his jealous friend era, or maybe the fear of you getting found out as human and having your precious blood his new friend getting taken away from him by The Faculty was eating up at him, but something about this new …fella… hanging around you seemed off.

He went by Joseph Haberdae. A new freshman. Brunette, fairly hunky, and always wore those nearly unbuttoned dress shirts that made way to a decently scruffy set of pecs. Plus, a little mole in the corner of his eye.

So obviously, he held no candle to Shaun.

After your little arrangement had been made and he started taking your blood, Shaun made it a point to accompany you to classes so his scent can mask yours. And there was an unspoken agreement among the students on campus to keep away from you so as to not anger the “fearsome and totally powerful” vampire. Though it seemed Joseph hadn’t gotten the memo.

It had started when Shaun had been walking you to class, same as always, and once you turned the corner, all the books had practically been knocked out of your hands.

“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry!” Joseph said, “I hope I didn't hurt you.”

You were quick to wave it off, smiling goodnaturedly, “These things happen, don’t worry about it.”

“Well, at least let me help carry your things! It’d be such a hassle to get them up all on your own.”

“Sure, I’ll help you.” You replied.

He made a show of scrambling to get your books, brushing your hand every now and again then retracting it like he touched hot water. Shaun just stood by awkwardly observing the sudden scrimmage. Like, was he just not here or…?

You had gotten up and gave him a sour look. “Don’t rush to help or anything like that, Shaun.” You snapped.

He simply put his hands up in defense, “Don’t look at me, you and Brownie had it.”

“It’s Joseph,” He said stonily.

Shaun gives a fake sweet smile, “Alright then, Joseph. Don’t you have somewhere to be? Maybe a class to get to or-”

“Oh, that’s right! I’m still sort of new here and I can’t seem to find my way to classes…You’d help me, right?”

“Of course!” You replied instantly.

Though as the two of you walked on, completely disregarding Shaun, he couldn’t help but place the distinct scent of caramel in the air.

---

There wasn’t one place you went where Joseph hadn’t followed. Walking you to class became a consistent thing, and soon after he was studying, going to the library and even attending lectures with you. Shaun of course accompanied you whenever he could. And when he couldn’t, he was still there (usually behind a bush or something). Though most of the time he sat idly by as you and the brunette chatted it up. He knew he had no right to be jealous. It wasn’t like you two were dating or friends with benefits. But he’d just grown so accustomed to you being by his side that the thought of anybody else around drove him nuts!

Was that possessive? Whatever.

One night you all headed to your dorm building after another “study session” (it was just Joseph tittering about how hard classes were while you did his work).

“Thanks again for helping me with my homework.” Joseph said.

“Oh, it’s no trouble. Shaun is pretty much my personal tutor so I know that stuff by the letter.” You replied.

“That so? Maybe I should get some pointers from him too…”

Oh God, kill him now.

“Also, if you don’t mind, could I walk you up to your room?”

You blinked and rubbed your arm, “Oh! Uh…sure, if you’d like.”

“Great, because there’s something I really need to talk to you about… alone.”

“‘Kay. Shaun could you…?”

Shaun shrugged and put some carefree energy into his voice, “Don’t worry about it, I’ve gotta head to my apartment anyway.”

In a puff of smoke he turns into a bat and flies off.

“So, a vampire, huh?” Joseph said.

“Sure is! But uh, don’t tell anyone. It’s against school rules.” You said, putting a finger to your lips.

Joseph smiles and mimics your gesture, “Secrets’ safe with me.”

---

Shaun crawls above your dorm building, hovering over your window, just low enough to get a peek inside without being discovered. Soon enough, You and Joseph entered. Using his powers - he listened through the window.

“I had fun tonight,” Joseph said.

“If doing homework is your idea of fun, I’d hate to see what boring is.” You replied.

“No, of course not. Spending time with you was the fun part!”

You lightly shove him with a smile, “Aw, you’re such a softie sometimes!”

“I mean it, I’d like to hang out with you again,” Joseph takes a step closer, taking your hand in his, “but next time I’d like it to be more than just a study date.”

“Wow so…a date date?”

“You like me don’t you?”

“Yeah, of course!”

“And…you’d do anything for me, right?”

As you're about to answer, that familiar scent of caramel comes back. Shaun smells it through the window!

You finally answer, but your voice is monotonous, “Yes.”

Joseph grins wolfishly, stroking a hand along your chin, “Sooo, if I asked you to ditch that vampire tomorrow for a nice dinner date would you do it?”

“Yes.”

What the fuck!?

“Perfect. So that’s at five on the dot at the diner a few blocks from campus. Get plenty of rest.” He instructs before giving you a chaste kiss on the lips. You don’t move all the while, only staring ahead like a zombie.

“See you there, doll.” He whispers.

Shaun sits dumbfounded at the window, not even bothering to move as you robotically retire to your bed. And he doesn’t miss Joseph smirk at him once he leaves.

#somethings wrong with sunny day jack #sunny day jack #sunny day jack fanfiction #shaun durand cofer #joseph haberdae #sunny day jack x reader #sdj x reader #Incubus Jack #Vampire Shaun #yandere male #yandere x reader #yandere visual novel #visual novel #my fics

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bookshelf-dust · 1 year

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did you post literally today? yes. am I about to request again? of course. it's like a drug (I read the last fanfic 3 times today, yes it was that good)

so, other way around now! what about reader being jealous of Gareth? the setting can still be the Hideout and someone is getting too touchy with him, reader knows Gareth wouldn't cheat but their insecurities get the best of them. (I think Gareth would be cocky about it after the situation had settled, him being sooo tease-y and flattered). if it's too specific you can change it a bit of course.

(I'm just gonna add that I reread your fics for comfort when I'm sad<33)

babe magnet

gareth emerson x gn!reader

word count: 886

warnings: swearing, mentions of inebriation, reader gets insecure about looks/worth, gareth being a flirty shit, fluff

a/n: hi my sweet!!! thank you for requesting. also—i’m not letting this go—you read my stuff repeatedly? 🥺 please stop i’m going to cry!! you have no idea how much it means hearing that you enjoy my writings that much and that they bring you comfort when you’re upset. i love you so so much. also it’s kinda short but i hope it’s what you wanted and that this is okay!! <333 (also his face at the end of this gif?? gareth the grump?? yeah, i think so.)

————

“You’re so handsome, you know that?”

Gareth doesn’t even know this girl’s name. She’s a groupie, obviously, but he can’t even fathom that they have groupies, so he’s not entirely sure what to do about this.

She’s hammered, clearly, and tried to feel up Jeff before he made a break for it.

Gareth focuses on packing his things up, because she’s sat down now, so he doesn’t have to worry about her groping or anything.

“Uh, thank you?”

He just wants to go home. His shoulders hurt, and his ass is sore. He just wants to see you.

But he doesn’t want to be mean.

“I bet it gets hot up there, under those lights. Playing the drums and stuff,” the girl says, rising from the sticky leather of the couch.

Shit, he thinks.

“Yeah, it does. Listen, do you have a ride home?”

He turns around, but quickly realizes that’s a mistake, because she starts rubbing up and down his arms, across his shoulders, and locks her hands behind his neck.

Yeah, he doesn’t like this.

This, however, is the moment you make it to the back room, and to you, it looks like Gareth is spending his evening with some other woman. Someone that’s not you.

Gareth doesn’t even know you’re there. He’s focused on getting this girl somewhere safe and getting her off of him.

He gently grabs her arms and pulls them off of him, but she moves and starts rubbing his chest, so this time he grabs her hands, and a little more firmly.

“Okay, let’s get you home, yeah?”

He turns then, and sees you in the doorway. You’re frowning, but you wipe it away when he makes eye contact with you.

You can see the relief he feels at your appearance.

“Hey, holy shit. I’ll just be a second.” He lowers his voice as he gets closer to you, “she’s drunk and I’m trying to find her ride, I’ll be right back.”

And then he’s gone, off with that woman.

You take the liberty of picking up the rest of his things, zipping up his bag and throwing it over your shoulder.

You know he wouldn’t do anything. Gareth loves you. He’s made it blatantly clear that you’re it for him. That he intends on spending the rest of his life with you. That no one else can put up with his bullshit the way that you do.

But something about seeing that woman made all of those old thoughts wake up and run wild.

She was gorgeous. This beautiful young woman with curves in all the right places. She looked like she belonged on the cover of a magazine.

And you don’t look like that. So maybe, just maybe, Gareth has found someone else. Someone that looks like her. Someone better for him.

Stop. Stop, you think. You try and shut it down.

Gareth loves you. And you love him.

You’re holding the car keys when he gets back.

“Okay, I figured everything out. That girl was totally out of it,” he says, taking his bag from you, though you keep the keys, because you like to drive him after he plays—you know he’s tired.

The entire ride home, you don’t say a word, and Gareth knows something is up, so he corners you once you get inside.

“Tell me what’s wrong.” He’s giving you his best puppy dog eyes, and so you do.

“I saw you with that girl, from before. She was all over you.”

You cross your arms, and he smiles. He smiles and pokes your side. “You’re jealous!”

“No, I’m—”

Gareth cuts you off with a laugh. A cackling, bend over at the waist laugh. But then he straightens.

“I’m sorry.” He kisses your cheek. “You know there’s nothing to be jealous about, right? I love you. And she was a groupie, which—wild I know—but she was drunk and feeling me up, and that was after she was all over Jeff, anyways,” he breathes, stopping his ramble.

“It was icky. And I hate that you saw it another way. But whatever it is that you’re thinking, I don’t want anyone else, okay?”

You sniff. “Okay.”

He kisses you, short and sweet.

But he pokes you in the side again. “You were jealous.”

“Stop.”

“I’m flattered, really. Apparently, I’m just a total babe magnet now. I guess it comes with all the fame. But I mean, look at me, I’m a stud.”

You try to move away from him. This has gone straight to his head.

He grabs your waist, however, picking you up and tossing you on the couch. “You don’t think I’m a stud?” He feigns offense.

“Nope.”

Gareth starts tickling you like crazy, up your sides, on your neck, your stomach, until you’re laughing so hard you can’t breathe and you’re pleading with him so he’ll stop.

“Fine! Fine! You’re a stud! A total babe magnet!”

He lets up, smiling brilliantly at you. “I knew you thought so. Good thing the magnet works too, or else I wouldn’t have you. The babe to my magnet.”

You push at his chest, but he only works harder to try and hug you. “Okay, no, that was horrible. That’s the last straw. Get off me!”

He doesn’t, and you don’t want him to. Not really.

————

#gareth emerson #gareth emerson x reader #gareth emerson x you #gareth emerson x y/n #gareth emerson x gn!reader #gareth emerson x gender neutral reader #gareth emerson fic #gareth emerson fanfic #gareth emerson fanfiction #gareth emerson oneshot #gareth emerson imagine #gareth stranger things fic #gareth stranger things #gareth the great #stranger things fic #corroded coffin #savannah’s fics

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felassan · 5 months

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Do you think were going to see a Dreadwolf reveal trailer at Dragon Age Day or at the Game Awards?

hello!

I'm not sure, and I'm also hopeful/excited (so.. a regular felassan state of affairs hh..). if it's in a place where they feel ready to show it to the world more then that'd be neat, it'd be cool to see what's being worked on. and ofc anything said here is only speculation.

it's been at TGA before (2018 trailer, 2020 trailer), the last time being 3 years ago in 2020. if the 2024 internal currently-aimed release window mentioned in error on a dev profile recently is indeed still current (I'd guess that the change to "TBD" won't have been because the aim changed since the dev put that there btw, it'll have been because there isn't supposed to be any public info about the currently aimed release window yet but the games press noticed it on the profile, prompting BW/EA to ask the dev to change it. separate note: this being the case doesn't mean that there's no possibility that the window will slip more though), appearing at TGA 2023 wouldn't be a shock. maybe it depends on whether the possible 2024 release window is in early (but still after April 1st 2024 because of the fiscal quarter & FY24 slate stuff) 2024 or late 2024? as if it's later in 2024 (like say November) I could see a world where it isn't at TGA23 but is somewhere in the summer video game event/news expo period instead, because of the recent trend that's been observable in the industry generally and commented on by a former bioware dev re: an industry move towards shorter marketing periods (like more in the realm of a few months-6 months than a year). it's been said that the policy for this for a lot of AAA games has become a lot shorter, tending towards a lot shorter and louder marketing campaigns.

jeff grubb recently said on DA:D, "The Game Awards 2023 sounds right to me, they’ve done stuff at The Game Awards before. I’m expecting them to be there. If they’re not, it better be soon after, because Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, was, you know, there was a chance Dragon Age: Dreadwolf could’ve came out this year. Obviously it did keep moving internally, as I’ve reported before. It’s now, they’re looking at, you know, by the mid of next year, something like that.” and "The reality is, we very well could get Dragon Age: Dreadwolf content at The Game Awards. They’ve had teasers there before, it would make all the sense in the world for something to show up there." [link] this is interesting bc i'm pretty sure I remember a tweet from him last year about TGA22 where he straight up said "no it won't be there" or something basically when he was asked about it.

what I would say is that if it's gonna happen in a substantial way (as in not a codex entry and a blog post) in early December 2023, it'd likely be at TGA, not on DADay. this is based on how it was done previously and also on what's been said about DADay (an unofficial fan holiday event that just happens to occur very close to when TGA is held, thereby being overshadowed by it in terms of scale) vs TGA (a massive industry-wide high publicity event). DADay has seemed to have been more of a community-focused thing, a place to announce something smaller in scale like a tv show or a new book or to have something smaller highlighted like short stories or a codex. it's more of a 'today we are announcing we will be at TGA' with a new trailer-type [hypothetically] context rather than a 'here is a new trailer that isnt an ingame cinematic' type context, if that makes sense. saying that if it isnt going to be a 'big' trailer at TGA23, maybe there's something at DAday like last year where they showed an ingame sequence, which is smaller than a 'big substantial trailer' but still a video.

(idk if this post/ramble made sense but there you go). guess we'll find out in < 3 weeks. (❁´◡`❁)

#dragon age: dreadwolf #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #dragon age #bioware #mj replies #homiest88 #video games

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krikeymate · 11 months

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You know how there are so many behind the scenes pictures and videos of Jenna sitting on somebody’s lap, being carried on their back, or even riding on their shoulders and stuff? Mostly in the behind the scenes stuff from 5. I absolutely believe that it would be a Tara thing too. It’s not just Sam, all of her close friends randomly carry her around sometimes, or she’ll just drop onto their laps whenever their lounged somewhere. There’s a perfectly good space right beside them? Tara doesn’t care. She’ll jump on their backs or demand to be carried when they walk somewhere longer. „I have little legs! It‘s basically twice the distance for me!“ Tara‘s trying to reach something? They’ll just quickly give her a lift instead of grabbing it themselves. She’s in the way? Just place her somewhere else. She’s so touch starved from the lack of physical intimacy in her childhood that touch is a big thing for her. Something she craves - probably without realising it. And since she’s so tiny and looks so young, everyone (except for her parents obviously) is especially „cuddly“ with her.

I also believe that it changes after the events of 5. That night, the stabbing, the broken bones… the pain! It was too much. Tara’s system went into overdrive. She was in pain for so long after that. She’s still in pain most of the time now. And then she’s also fighting against her own mind everyday, trying to keep the memories locked away, desperately trying to THINK HAPPY THOUGHTS and just be normal. She’s feeling too much all the time… she cannot deal with touch on top of that. Whenever it happens unexpectedly, it sends shock waves through her whole body. I‘m not 100% sure, but I think there wasn’t a single hug between Sam & Tara in 6. Chad, Mindy and Sam had to re-learn their behaviour around Tara. Tara no longer initiated contact on her own (I guess the kissing Chad scenes are something else? Or, like, I’m just ignoring them ;D) and they had to learn to keep their hands to themselves too or at the very least announce before they touch Tara in any way. Sam’s the only one she’ll allow touch with over longer periods of time, like at night when they sleep in the same bed or when they cuddle during a movie. But even with Sam Tara gets overwhelmed sometimes.

Some part of her misses the physical closeness with people, the constant touching, the comforting feeling of I’m-not-alone. But she just cannot handle it anymore.

You're so right.

The world made Tara small and light because she was born to be held. She was touch-starved and desperate for affection from the moment she was born. Despite her parents, Sam raised her to be kind and friendly, and people adore her. It was easy to find arms open and ready to hug her, and hands to hold.

After 5, touch becomes danger. When they're close enough to touch you, they can hurt you. Tara hates it, it's just another comfort stolen from her through pain and fear.

She has to relearn how to do so many things. To go outside, to be alone, to walk, to hold, to touch. She has to relearn how to be around Sam, how to interact with the twins. It's all so much. She has no choice, unable to care for herself as she heals, but to allow Sam close. For a long time she becomes the only one who can be, pushed through by a trial of fire until Sam's touch becomes comforting instead of terrifying.

The others leave her be, they don't push. They see the way she flinches, the way she pulls away, the distance she places between them, and it just becomes another part of their new reality. Mindy misses Tara's legs thrown across her lap as they have a movie night (she misses Amber's arguments, and the way Wes would hog all the popcorn, she even misses Liv rolling her eyes from her place beside Chad). Chad misses being able to hoist Tara up on his shoulders, the way she would giggle every time (he misses wrapping an arm around Wes' neck and spinning Liv around and going I got that for ya when he catches Ms Hicks struggling to get her bags out the car).

They move to New York and Anika becomes crucial in helping Tara learn to love touch again. She's a touchy type of person herself, and affection comes so easy to her. A quick hug, a palm on the arm or back, a shoulder bump, a hand slipping into hers. Tara begins to feel a little like herself again, she finds herself a little less scared to be touched.

#/mp #ask box #Scream #Tara Carpenter #Chad Meeks-Martin #Mindy Meeks-Martin #Anika Kayoko #-touch

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thespiritssaidso · 2 months

Text

Psychic Meet Demon

A Psych and Good Omens crossover that literally no one asked for

Shawn Spencer meeting Crowley. What could go wrong?

Notes: hey, @andiv3r @j-snapdragon. I made the thing :3

It was a cloudy, yet still beautiful day in Soho. Shawn, Gus, and Juliet had all planned on taking a trip around the country.

Gus had gone off to attend a Robert Pattinson meet-and-greet. Juliet had found a small coffee shop nearby called ‘Give Me Coffee Or Give Me Death’ which seemed a bit on-the-nose. And Shawn… well, he was looking around at all the little shops. It was his and Juliet’s anniversary, and he had forgotten to get her something.

This led him to wandering into a small antique bookshop, his logic being ‘girls like old stuff, and books, right?’.

Walking in, he subconsciously started to profile the entire place. It was beautiful, and obviously very well taken care of. The whole place emanated a warm, comforting glow. There were stacks of books on every other table, in a seemingly random order. Shawn was sure that if there was any system to where the books went, it certainly wasn't any way someone could simply guess.

The only thing that didn’t match with the bookshop’s aesthetic was the redhead sprawled on the armchair, dressed head to toe in varying shades of black with just a hint of red. They were also wearing a dark pair of designer sunglasses that not only hid their eyes from the front, but also from the sides. Strange.

“Oh, er, excuse me!”

He turned to see someone pop up from behind a bookshelf, making their way towards him. They were wearing a completely white outfit, a blatant contrast to the other person.

“I’m very sorry, but I’m supposed to tell you you can’t purchase any of these books.”

“Why not?”

They tilted their head 45 degrees. “Why do you sound funny?”

Shawn was taken aback. “I’m... Sorry?”

They let out a little gasp. “There! You did it again!”

He shook his head. “This is just how I sound. I’m not… doing a bit, or anything.”

“Wow-”

“Muriel!”

Shawn looked over and saw that the redhead had finally gotten up. He looked them over again, and noticed that although their clothes and hair were nice, there was a slightly unkempt look to it.

“Why don’t you go… erm, make us some cocoa. I’ll take care of this.”

“Oh, I’m not sure you’re allowed to do that, Mr. Crowley! I was given strict orders-”

“I’m sure his majesty Aziraphale ‘too-good-for-us-and-our-bookshop’ Fell won’t mind if I deal with a customer.”

'Muriel' tightened their lips in an unsure gesture. “Alright.” They walked off, heading somewhere upstairs.

‘Crowley’ turned back around to face Shawn. “Go away.” They shooed him, waving at the door.

But Shawn had been rooted in his position, curious as to what exactly was going on. He didn’t know how to actually address it, so he started with, “So…” Shawn trailed off. “Uh, tough breakup?”

Crowley’s face hardened — or, at least, what he could see. The sunglasses obscured a decent part of their face. “What tipped you off?”

Thinking quick, he raised his hand up to his temple. “I, my good sir, am psychic. That’s how I know.”

Crowley raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Oh, psychic. Well, you should know then, that if anyone calls me 'sir' more than once, I get very angry.”

That unnerved Shawn. They hadn’t even done anything, and yet he felt intimidated. Luckily (or would it be unluckily?), this wasn’t the first time he’d been threatened. He shook it off. “Okay, got it. They/them pronouns then, I assume?”

They nodded. “Currently.”

He watched as they backed off, stalking to the armchair and settling in it once more. “Geez, Londoners are so violent.”

Crowley eyebrows furrowed. “We’re nowhere near London.”

Now it was Shawn’s turn to be confused. “Uh, yeah? It’s like, a 15 minute drive, give or take.”

They nodded. “Exactly. Nowhere near London.”

Once Crowley was properly settled, they folded their hands and faced him.

"So," Crowley started. "You say you're a psychic, is that right?"

"Well, I don't know. Are you british?" Shawn asked, meaning for it to be a rhetorical question.

"No. Why would you think that?"

"Not sure. It might be the British accent." he said, using a fake accent near the end.

"Are you mocking me?"

He raised his hands in defense. "Not at all."

They were quiet for a moment. Then Crowley said, "Alright. If you're psychic, then read me.'' Shawn could tell they didn’t believe him, rather, they were only humoring him.

He shrugged, acting nonchalant. “Okay then.” Shawn did a quick scan of Crowley, and a just as quick look outside.

Shawn’s hand jumped to its usual position near his temple, eyes closed in faux concentration.

"I'm seeeeinggg... black. And another word, bento? No, Bentley! You own a black Bentley. And it's old, but still a nice car." He wiggled his fingers and continued. "I'm also seeing green... greeen seats? No, the seats are black too. Green- green- green plants! Stashed inside your car. You've moved, probably recently, and you're... living in your car? That's kinda sad, dude." One more observation, just one more Shawn. "Annddd I can see you doing... something, something reckless. Something daring..." Crowley tensed a bit. "You're a bad driver. For shame." Shawn only knew that last one because a day ago, he had seen the same black Bentley speeding through traffic, at what was probably 90 miles an hour.

Crowley's eybrows were raised in surprise. "Impressive. Well, it would be, if none of those observations came from things you could have easily drawn conclusions from by simply looking around."

Shawn's hand fell from his head in defeat.

They finally asked, “Why’re you here, anyway? You don't exactly seem like the 'reading old books' type."

He only took slight offence at that. "Oh, it's my wife and l's anniversary. Andddd I may or may not have forgotten about it until the last minute-"

Crowley held up a hand, like they understood more than Shawn could ever imagine. "Say no more." They got up once again and sauntered over to the counter.

They started pretending to go through the drawers, randomly shuffling things aside. Shawn saw them in the reflection sneakily wave their hand, as if they were pulling a string up from the earth.

Crowley opened their hand, and a book started to materialize. Shawn couldn’t help but widen his eyes, shocked at what he just saw. But he quickly schooled his features when Crowley came back up. He decided to keep what he saw to himself.

“There you go.” It was a copy of Pride and Prejudice. Juliet had been going on about how she had loved that book as a kid, and was heartbroken when she lost it in the move from Florida to California.

“Oh my gosh- this is perfect!” Shawn flipped through the pages. Oh yeah, she was definitely going to forgive him once she saw this.

Crowley cleared their throat, and Shawn looked back up from the book. They were holding out a small paper bag with little black and red designs dotted around it.

"Right, thanks." He took the bag and gently placed the book inside it.

They made a face when he said that. "Don't mention it."

There was a moment of silence.

“Y’know, I never knew she was an author. Had to have the books themselves presented to me to prove it. Absolutely boggled me when I found out. I still don’t quite believe it.”

“Really? Who told you?”

Crowley let out a small laugh. “Well, that’s a funny story. Aziraphale and I-” Their voice tapered out. All previous emotions drained, which left them looking dead inside.

“Close the door on your way out.” Without another word, they left from behind the counter, and around the back of one of the many bookshelves.

Muriel appeared from the staircase, holding two mugs of hot chocolate, which they set on the counter, and went back to doing what they had been doing before Shawn had come in.

“What happened between Crowley and Aziraphale?” He asked.

“Oh! Well, he erm… he left.” He could tell they were technically telling the truth when he looked in their eyes.

“Okay. Where’d he go?”

“Heaven!” They said it so bluntly, it caught him off guard.

“Oh my- oh gosh, I’m really sorry to hear that.”

Muriel’s face scrunched up a bit. “That’s what everyone I’ve told has been saying.” They smiled. “But it’s alright now! He’s in a better place. I’m sure he’s quite happy.”

He just nodded. “Alright then. Well, tell Crowley I said thank you.” And with that, he left the little bookstore and across the street, where Juliet was having a nice talk with the coffee shop owner.

—————

Bonus:

It was nighttime now, and Crowley was still lounging on the armchair near the entrance. Muriel walked over to him.

“Would you like me to make you a cupperty? It always makes me feel better.”

Crowley grunted. “No Muriel. ’M fine.”

“…alright then.” They looked across the street, where Maggie was helping Nina close up shop. “You know, that was a very nice thing you did for that human.”

They grumbled from the chair. “Not. Nice.”

Muriel just smiled, and ambled back over to one of the shelves, probably looking for another book to read.

With a soft sigh, they slowly started morphing into a large, black and red scaled snake. Still draped all over the armchair, Crowley fell asleep.

——————————

That's it :) I hope ya enjoyed <3

AO3 link

#psych #good omens #shawn spencer #crowley #psych 2006 #psychusa #psych tv #psych tv show #psych show #psych fic #psych fanfic #psych fanfiction #good omens fic #crossover #psych x good omens #good omens x psych #toast tries to write

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hoardingpuffin · 5 months

Text

Over the Garden Wall Fable AU Concepts

Okay, so - when I was across the pond to see my partner, them and I watched Over the Garden Wall. @the-uninformed-zennial had never seen it, and it's so very much their vibe so obviously we had to. And, as we are both Fable nerds, we ended up talking about potential AU ideas. I'd had two possible concepts for AUs floating in my noggin for a while and we fleshed them out together a bit.

Now, between (hopefully) finishing Three Wishes, and the holidays, and that pesky 30+ page bachelor thesis paper, I won't have time to write them as actual fics anytime soon, so I figured I'd at least put out the concepts somewhere, and Tumblr seemed like a good choice.

For anyone unfamilar with Over the Garden Wall: It's a mini series by Patrick McHale that aired on CartoonNetwork a while ago, focussing on two brothers stuck in the mysterious Unknown trying to get home and experiencing wacky halloween-y hijinks on the way. The Unknown is often interpreted to be a sort of afterlife/limbo, and the series has a lot of themes of that direction, but it's still quite charming and cute and funny (as it is made for kids).

_____________________________________________________________

Concept 1 Icarus and Rae are in the place of Greg and Wirt – they got into some sort of fight in the real world and ended up in a situation that made them enter the Unknown as a limbo between living and dying. In this case, the characters from the Unknown would be remaining a lot more like the ones we know from the show, so the Woodsman is just The Woodsman, the Beast is just The Beast, and so on. I’m not sure who’d be in the place of Beatrice, but there are a few possibilities. If we’re going with the popular interpretation that the Unknown is a form of the afterlife, then it could be someone from canon who has passed already (if we wanna be angsty, it could be Haley maybe? I am not sure if I want her to be though), or alternatively Beatrice could just be a random soul who, like in OtGW Canon, is trying to free their own family.

In this AU, the story would probably progress similar to the one in OtGW – Icarus and Rae trying to get home and through the Unknown, getting into more fights along the way, until Icarus ends up losing faith in being able to get home completely. Rae – much like Greg – would offer himself to the Beast in order to get Icarus home, and Icarus in turn would have to step up and be a responsible older brother and save Rae from turning into an Edelwood.

There’s a lot of similarities between Icarus and Wirt, I feel like, though Wirt’s anxious poetic nature seems more alike Rae. But both Icarus and Wirt have this streak of blaming their younger brothers for stuff that those brothers weren’t necessarily responsible for, and lashing out at them, so I can see Icarus in Wirt’s place rather well. Plus, well, Rae, like Greg, going on a whole arc of “maybe this is actually my fault so I’m gonna go with the Beast to try and fix it” seems fitting for him to me.

Concept 2

Now, the other concept I might actually like more by just a little bit – in this, the people lost in the Unknown would likely be Athena and Jamie, who (due to something other in the real world) are finding themselves in the woods, where they meet the Woodsman – who would be Rae. I can just see Rae being someone to devote themselves to being the Lantern Bearer for the Beast, if it meant to keep the soul of a loved one alive (though in this case it wouldn’t be the child, but likely Aax and Caspian) – plus, the Beast has the whole antler aesthetic going on, so that can overlap neatly with the warden in my opinion. Maybe it’s just cause the Woodsman is such a tragic figure already in OtGW canon, but I think it would be a neat spin to see that character lead the ones lost in the Unknown instead of just sending them on their way, to make the idea that he might be the Beast even worse of a betrayal, which I always thought OtGW was a bit light on. I wish they’d have given that betrayal as much weight as Beatrice’s betrayal. And then, once revealed to the Woodsman that the Lantern holds the Beast’s soul, not anyone else’s, the big fight feels in character for Rae to me, too. Rae’s devotion to the ones he loves is immense, and him fighting the monster that deceived him so – especially to also keep two innocent souls safe in the process – would not only be in character, but also give a quite triumphant turn for him in this AU. Plus, he’d get the happy ending he deserves once he actually slays the Beast and returns home to see that his loved ones are actually there and likely have been all along. The unfortunate side to his AU idea is that most of the characters in the Unknown, like Rae, already being dead and likely for a long time. However, Zenni presented an alternative idea, where the inhabitants of the Unknown aren’t always actually the souls of the deceased, but might also be sort of mirror-verse representations of them. I’m not sure how Athena and Jamie would get to the Unknown then, but it would be an interesting concept to explore, and give more detail to the world – plus, give Athena and Jamie both more of a reason to trust the Woodsman and either for the believed betrayal to hit even worse or for them to not believe it because they know Rae so well in the real world.

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Now, obviously, these are just concepts, not nearly as fleshed out as I would make an actual fanfic - and some stuff might be jumbled as I've not actually written it out before and the whole Putting Things In Your Writing Brain Into Actual Writing thing is difficult as fuck.

Anyways. Those are the two ideas I came up with and have been mulling around my noggin. I don't know if I'll write them, gonna be honest, but - they are concepts alright.

#fable smp #fablesmp #over the garden wall #otgw #over the garden wall au #fable smp fanfic

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findmeabowlofundertale · 1 month

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OKAY SO! After two likes and one comment of affirmation (from @benanazauce) — Here is that au I haven’t been able to shut up about!! The one with human Gaster and normal Asteri. I’m calling it the Double Dingsaster AU (you’ll see why). THIS IS WHY I HAVEN’T MADE ANY PROGRESS ON CHAPTER 10 UGGHHH

It’s very long. Like. So freaking long. Wish I could focus this well on writing my actual fic. Also I have not reread through since editing it. I just hit post. Oh and uh— warning for descriptions of eye/face injuries, I guess? Briefly?

So the premise is this: There’s a universe where Gaster and Asteri are humans living in (approximately) the modern day. They’re a bit younger than the canon versions of themselves, more like early/mid twenties and late twenties/early thirties, instead of like, ~32 and ~40. They are friends. Maybe even work in the same building (for some reason?). They’re sort of at that “we’re friends but maybe there’s something else too…?” stage but neither of them have acted on it. It’s all very tentative.

Human!Gaster, still being an engineer (among other things), ends up making this machine that, solely for plot convenience, connects with alternate universes. Long story short, for plot reasons, something happens and both human!Gaster and human!Asteri get transported to something approximate to the ⁂ universe. Idk how, or why, but they get separated. And both fall into the underground. I think they might have been separated before they even landed in the ⁂ universe, tbh. Idk.

Anyway, h!Asteri falls into the underground first. She is confused and distraught and doesn’t understand anything going on, and she thinks that her Gaster is either dead, still in the other universe, or somewhere in this universe but who knows where, and now she’s fallen into a cave and god she’s going to DIE because no one will ever find her here, least of all him, if he’s even here (and alive) at all!

Well. Obviously Toriel finds her. The whole thing. Asteri is INCREDIBLY alarmed at seeing a 7 foot goat dragon monster, and she’s not quick to trust. But c’mon. It’s Toriel. You can’t not like her. So she spends a little while there, gets the low-down. She really doesn’t want to go any farther into the cave, tbh. She wants to wait for rescue. But once she learns about the barrier and stuff, and that there IS no way out from where she fell in, well… yeah. So, she wants to find a way out. I feel like she’d explain to Toriel that this isn’t even the right universe, but I’m not sure how much Toriel would believe. Asteri wouldn’t blame her for not believing it. But she needs to get out. She has to find her way back home. If not to her own universe, then to some kind of human civilization. …Not that Toriel hasn’t been lovely! Honestly, though, Asteri is no scientist, she says. Her friend, who built the machine that brought her here, is probably dead or lost… (She starts crying. It’s not the first time she’s talked about h!Gaster, or grappled with the fact that she might never see him again, that he might be dead. But she doesn’t like to think about it if she can help it.)

Toriel hesitates, but tells her that she once knew a brilliant scientist. He might still be alive… but he lives at the other end of the underground. If he’s alive still, he might be able to help her. But it’s dangerous, there’s Asgore, etc etc. Asteri isn’t thrilled, but if the other monsters are like the ones here (Froggits, Whimsuns, etc) then… maybe it won’t be so bad. She asks about the scientist. What’s his name? What does he look like?

You can imagine how floored she is when Toriel tells her his name is Dr. Gaster.

But it gets her hopes up. There’s a Gaster in this universe. He could send her home. All she has to do is find him. Now she’s excited! But also curious. He isn’t human, right? If he’s underground? What does he look like? (She wonders if he’ll look strange, like a Loox, or if he’ll resemble her Gaster at all.) Toriel tells her: He is a skeleton.

Asteri is… a bit put-off, but still determined! (Heh, no, not like that.) She MUST find him. Maybe she even tells Toriel that in her universe, she and Gaster were friends. Not sure. Also not sure if Toriel would be extra hesitant to let her go given that Asteri is missing a hand, and the fingers on the hand she does have don’t always respond when she wants them to. Idk. But Asteri is very capable. And a grown woman, so… yeah. Also I I imagine she gets at least a scarf or something since she’s in a tank top.

So! Asteri leaves the Ruins and begins her trek through the underground to find this universe’s Gaster.

And she does! I don’t know if she even has to go all the way to Hotland. She might meet him when he’s visiting Grillby’s, or at the dump in Waterfall. I don’t know. But they do meet. (In this universe, Gaster has not met his Asteri, so there’s no confusion there.) She’s very thrown off because 1) Skeleton, 2) TALL, 3) how does his face move like that, and 4) he acts just like her Gaster. And god, it hurts. It’s like he’s there but he’s not. After the initial surprise on both of their parts, she explains her situation. He signs, (of course, she thinks, he’s just like her Gaster) and it’s similar enough to the sign language she’s familiar with that she can mostly understand. At first he’s hesitant to believe her, but the more she talks about it, he realizes that she’s absolutely telling the truth (rather than just being mistaken/confused/concussed.) So he agrees to help her. I don’t think she necessarily tells him that the “scientist friend” who sent her here was her version of him.

She stays with him (it’s safer that way), and he does what he can, but it sounds like her friend was far ahead technologically. He can only do so much without blueprints or any idea of the math that was used. Even if he built the machine, he explains, there are after all infinite universes, he could easily send her to the wrong one. She asks what the chances are that her friend is okay. Gaster tries to be gentle about it, but admits that without knowing more, he can’t really say for certain. Her friend could be stuck between universes, even. He doesn’t know. But he’s probably back in their universe! Working on a solution! He’s probably fine!!

Asteri is all but inconsolable. Her Gaster is probably dead, and even if he’s not, she knows deep down that she will never see him again. There’s no way home. She’s stuck here. And it’s not so bad, not really, but it’s not home, and all she has is a disconcertingly tall skeleton who is exactly like her friend but has none of the memories. But, after a grieving period, she starts to work on accepting it. And really, how can she not like this Gaster? He’s him. It comes so naturally that it would be more difficult to fight it than anything. He’s a little confused, I think, that she seems to know him so well, that she doesn’t misunderstand the things he expects her to— like she’s already accounted for his idiosyncrasies. But he just shakes it off and enjoys getting to know her. He has to come home regularly now, with someone else there— it would be rude to just leave her on her own when she has no one else to talk to, after all. He starts to actually listen to his followers assistants and take days off. He eats better— with little else to do, Asteri spends a lot of time cooking. And although he does do his best to find a way for her to go home, in the weeks that become months of living together, he starts to wish she didn’t have to go.

And actually, neither does she.

I’m sure that, over the months, Asteri has slowly been introduced to other monsters (Carlope, whatever local grocer, Grillby, probably even Alphys (who is beside herself with glee, ofc)). She gets accustomed to monster culture and the way things are here. And Asteri is… happy. She still misses home (god she misses the Mediterranean sun) and she still mourns human!Gaster, but for being stuck in an alternate universe, she’s doing pretty well. She has friends, and food, and several entirely new branches of linguistics to study, and a… a partner. They never really talked about it beyond “I will miss you when you go,” and “I’ll… really miss you, too. Maybe I don’t have to?” and the incredibly tender headbump that followed. But they kind of cuddle sometimes, and he looks at her Like That, and she’s crawled into his bed to talk him through nightmares, and sometimes they hold hands, and she isn’t sure but sometimes those headbumps really feel like they’re equivalent to kisses. So one day she kisses his cheekbone for real, to see what happens.

What happens is Gaster gets all glittery-eyed and stuff and they finally talk about their freaking feelings. Which are mutual.

And they’re happy.

MEANWHILE—

Human!Gaster is not dead. Nor is he stuck in some other universe, nor back home. No, he’s there too. But like I said in the beginning— they got separated. Probably some time-space shenanigans, where he doesn’t get spit out into this universe at the same point in time that Asteri did. He falls into the underground a few months later.

Toriel finds him, and he is actually a lot less alarmed by her than one would expect. He asks about Asteri, and, recognizing that this must be the friend Asteri mentioned, Toriel fills him in: Asteri left to look for a way home a few months ago, after Toriel told her about the royal scientist, Dr. Gaster. Human!Gaster is, obviously, flabbergasted that he has a counterpart here (fascinating implications, he thinks), but manages to keep it together pretty well. He convinces Toriel to let him out of the Ruins to track down human!Asteri. All things considered, he’s in the Ruins only a couple days maximum as opposed to human!Asteri’s having been there several days minimum. He figures that his Asteri probably went straight to this universe’s Gaster. If it’s been months, then he has to hurry.

Well. Things do NOT go as smoothly for him. Honestly, he gets the shortest end of the stick here. It goes SO badly.

Wouldn’t you know who’s in Snowdin studying Dog language, but this universe’s Asteri.

I would like to remind you that normal (monster) Asteri has some serious trauma about humans, and that she and this universe’s Gaster have never met. (Or, maybe they have, but only briefly. Idk.) From here, “Gaster” is gonna refer to human!Gaster, and “Asteri” is refer to regular, monster Asteri. Their counterparts aren’t in this (yet).

So. Human!Gaster runs into her somewhere in Snowdin forest. It goes extremely badly. He unknowingly and unintentionally initiates an encounter. She panics. He also panics. Asteri assumes he means to kill her, and goes all out with the bullet patterns. Gaster has never done this before and keeps getting whacked. He keeps trying to explain that he just wants directions and he’s doesn’t know what’s happening or how to stop it. Asteri is having none of it. She’s so locked into her fear response that reason just isn’t going to work. Gaster’s really taking a beating here, but he’s surprisingly sturdy. It’s only when one of her sharper bullets hits him square in the face and does some serious damage that he realizes he can flee. It hit him directly above his right eye and zipped all the way up into his hairline, and he’s bleeding. Eye/head injuries are… kind of a trigger for him, so when it hit, he started to really panic. The blood is what really scares him. He doesn’t know if it took out his whole eye or if it’s just that there’s so much blood streaming down his face that if feels like his eye got hit, but he can’t open it and he goes weak in the knees, almost collapses, but manages to flee the encounter upon realizing that this monster is not going to stop, and he runs into the forest as fast as he can with one hand clasped over the wound.

Asteri is pissed. She’s terrified, yes, but she also knows that a human his size could leave real carnage in his wake, and she’s not about to let a human take someone else’s parents from them— or worse yet, someone’s child. So she takes off after him. Now, she doesn’t do well in the cold, but she can also change her form at will (and she did, actually, as soon as the encounter started: she got all spiky). So she catches up to him. He’s ducked behind a tree and is curled in on himself trying to stop hyperventilating and get his head/eye to stop bleeding. (He’s unsuccessful on both counts.) When she catches up to him, it’s kind of an, “AHA! FOUND YOU!” Gaster reflexively curls up when she pulls her tail back (to hit him, presumably), and, thinking he’s going to die, cries out, “I’m sorry Asteri!”

Needless to say, she freezes. How the hell does he know her name, she demands. He’s confused. She’s angry. But fine, he wants to talk? Now she knows he can. She demands his hands. He tries to sign that he needs them, he’s bleeding, but she interrupts that she doesn’t care, give her his hands or else. He complies, and his head is still bleeding. She wraps his wrists together with her tail, and is careful not to touch any blood. She thinks it’s like, poison or something— some kind of human defense mechanism. She barks at him to stop oozing, or she’ll kill him right there, and frickin, poor Gaster, he’s so beat up, he doesn’t even know how to begin to explain that he can’t help it. It doesn’t go well. She drags him closer to town, but doesn’t turn him into the guard yet. She wants to know how he knows her name and what the hell he thinks he’s doing in the underground. He ends up on the ground, still restrained with her tail, still bleeding (and crying), while she demands answers.

The short of it is that Gaster manages to give some explanation that makes Asteri reconsider turning him in. He needs to talk to their royal scientist, huh? Well Dr. Gaster is a busy monster, what makes him think that he’s worth the time of someone that important? Human!Gaster tells her that his friend fell first, and she will be looking for the… royal scientist… as well. He needs to find her, needs to make sure she’s okay, so they can get back home somehow!

Asteri spits that his friend probably got captured by the royal guard already. She hasn’t heard anything about another human on the loose. King Asgore has probably already killed her.

Gaster goes completely unresponsive. Is his Asteri dead?? Is he too late? He never meant for her to get roped into this, it’s all his fault!

Not sure what all happens from here specifically, but these things happen:

Gaster realizes at some point here that this is this universe’s Asteri. He tells her that his friend is also named Asteri. She chalks it up to a very strange coincidence.

Gaster does not get medical treatment for his head/eye injury until Asteri is satisfied with his answers/explanations. That’s a pretty significant chunk of time given that he’s panicking, traumatized, bleeding profusely from a gash on his head, restrained on the ground in the snow with no coat, can’t sign, and struggles to speak aloud.

Asteri ends up deciding that she will allow him to look for his friend… but not without supervision. Can’t have two humans running around. The guard will just arrest him, so she takes it upon herself. She is still very afraid of him, but she wears her fear as anger and hostility.

Asteri continues to be unfamiliar with and highly suspicious of human anatomy, so she just kinda wraps his head up once she gets some supplies in town, and heals him the absolute bare minimum so he doesn’t die on her after he starts explaining hypothermia.

She makes it explicitly clear that if he ever tries ANYTHING, she will kill him. She realizes he seems genuinely afraid of her and uses that to her advantage.

They stay at the inn. Asteri procures some rope and informs Gaster that he will be sleeping restrained and on the floor. He’s too beat down to protest.

Asteri agrees to help him search Snowdin forest for his friend the following day. They don’t find anything. Gaster is still pretty weak and very rattled, and very much in pain. He wants to ask around, but Asteri adamantly refuses. The last thing they need is a panic going through the underground that a human is loose. She probably did tell the guards that there’s a human suspected to be running around, but it might have already been captured. But she doesn’t tell them about Gaster. Maybe. Idk exactly.

It doesn’t really matter. The important part is that once Gaster realizes this is Asteri, (and he’s recovered a little), he’s a lot less afraid of her and a lot more friendly. This really freaks Asteri out. She thinks it’s some ploy. If he’s not afraid of her, then she doesn’t have any leverage. So she keeps trying to crank up the intimidation, but Gaster just keeps responding with patience. It’s like the world’s most unproductive contest. They also end up staying at her place while searching Waterfall. He gets tied up a lot (at night), and Asteri is very short with him, very mean. And she’s extremely jumpy. She treats him like he’ll kill her if she turns her back on him. He can’t do anything unless she’s watching like a hawk.

He pushes about meeting the royal scientist, but Asteri 1) has no idea how to really get ahold of him, and 2) isn’t sure she WANTS a human meeting someone that important. Meanwhile, he’s been trying to tell her about how he’s from an alternate universe and just wants to go home, and all of what happened. Asteri doesn’t believe him, but mockingly asks how he even knows his friend is here at all. Maybe she got tossed in some other world, or died in space. After all, like she said, there’s been no reports of another human. And that’s a pretty big deal, actually, so… his friend is either dead, or really good at hiding and going to be dead soon. Gaster doesn’t like that she has a point, it troubles him that his Asteri might not even be here, but… he’s almost sure that she is. She has to be. Asteri (still mockingly) suggests his friend already met the royal scientist and went home without him.

Now, Gaster knows his Asteri, and it absolutely helps him navigate this version of her. He knows that she gets angry when she’s afraid, and that’s all this is. It has to be trauma. It hurts, but she’s acting like this because she’s scared. That’s all. It isn’t personal. But as time goes on, and they aren’t making any progress in finding his Asteri, he starts to get discouraged. This Asteri has… slightly relaxed around him. She doesn’t keep his hands tied when they go out, for one. By now that gash on his face has healed and scarred— it wasn’t too bad, but it didn’t get treated properly. He probably needed stitches, tbh. Days become weeks, and then a month, then two. (They do search Hotland at one point, which is an entire trip since it’s not worth walking back and forth to her house every night. It’s miserable, hot, and Gaster still gets tied to something at night. They don’t find anything.)

After spending more or less every single day together, Asteri has gone from “constant high alert” to “if you startle me I’ll tackle you, but you can walk around the house I guess.” (NOT her room though.) And she has absolutely tackled him, fangs bared, for accidentally sneaking up on her because he was walking too quietly. He’s not allowed in the kitchen (because knives) unless she’s there and he asks, and he’s absolutely not allowed to touch her, ever— but she can touch him. That’s less of something they agreed on and more of a stipulation for not being mauled. Gaster is, naturally, quite miserable like this, but he understands. She’s just afraid, he reminds himself.

So, this is where there’s kind of a split in my brain about how I want this to go. I’ve played out two versions of this, and they’re both just different flavors of angst. One is more based in the characters’ mental states and trauma, and one is more based in drama. Both are good, honestly, I just can’t decide which one I want. And this is how I keep getting AUs of AUs. Right now I’m editing this draft, and there’s a ton of stuff below this, which is from the original take: the trauma-based angst. It’s heavier because it touches on more elements of how someone who has been hurt can hurt others. It’s not simple, it’s not black and white, and I did/do worry that it might come across as romanticization of unhealthy relationships, which it is not intended to be. I mean granted it’s also not written to be groundbreaking or anything, it’s just. Something I made up in my head. That’s tricky because I know the intentions and nuances, even when I don’t/can’t quite convey them in writing. This is mostly me writing for myself, and using fiction as a means to work through some similar stuff that I deal with, but still, I worry how it might come across without like. Full access to my brain.

So uh! I’m gonna write out the other version of events I came up with after this first, then maybe include the original version.

Alright so. Human!Gaster’s with ⁂!Asteri. She takes a long time to warm up to him at all, and it’s very slow, but there’s really no pretending, after a point (like three or so months), that he’s literally any kind of threat. But Asteri doesn’t accept this consciously. No, no, he’s a human, he’s dangerous, etc etc. So she keeps up the antics. I want you to think of that character who’s like, an antagonist/bad guy, but if they actually killed the hero they’d be devastated. Or the villain who has to team up with the protagonist(s) and keeps acting like they hate them but definitely doesn’t. And it’s just kind of understood but never talked about. The kind of character who’s like, “well obviously I can’t kill you right now, we have a truce. I may be evil but I have standards.” Or “yes well. This plan wasn’t even one of my better ones. If I captured them now I can’t show off my REALLY good scheme next week that shows how evil I REALLY am. So. In the spirit of evil, I’ll have to pass.” Or, the one who threatens everyone constantly and doesn’t want to partake in your stupid celebration because we’re MORTAL ENEMIES and they HATE YOU WITH A PASSION THAT WILL NEVER DIE AS LONG AS THE SUN BU— Oh you brought them a plate of cake? Oh… well. Maybe they can have some. Because you were FOOLISH enough to approach them. …Oh that’s pretty good. BUT THIS DOESN’T MEAN THEY LIKE YOU!

Even if you toned that type of character down to just brooding and irritable rather than dramatic, that’s kind of what Asteri ends up having going on. She still threatens to kill him, but she does it without getting up from the couch, that type of thing. She tries very hard not to let him grow on her. She refuses to laugh at his stupid jokes (but sometimes she accidentally lets a smile slip), she still locks him in his a spare room at night, she still insists he’s too dangerous to let leave the house alone. Don’t be mistaken— she is still somewhat afraid of him, simply by virtue of what he could do. But he’s always pleasant, and he never tries anything (goodness knows he’s had countless opportunities to “escape”; he’s very much there willingly), and he always gives her that same knowing, sad smile. It used to infuriate her, now it just makes her feel something she doesn’t understand. They never talk about it, but she makes coffee in the morning more often even though she rarely drinks it (she likes the smell is all), and she’s sewed his clothes (it looks more suspicious of he’s going around in torn up clothes, that’s all), and she finally let him shave his face (the beard was just too much for her, it’s not because he wanted to shave). Still, she keeps up with “you’re a threat” and “I’m sure you’re just waiting to kill because that’s what humans do” and the like.

She doesn’t take him out searching for his friend as often as she knows he would like (too conspicuous), but come on. His friend is almost certainly dead by now. Or not here at all. If there had been a human, surely the whole underground would know by now, right? Getting a third human SOUL would be a big deal.

It’s that thought that makes her stomach twist. She has a human. But! It’s not like he’s getting loose! It doesn’t matter when he dies, as long as it happens eventually! It’s not like four other humans are suddenly going to fall down here and die before he does— there’s no rush! Right? Right. And she’s keeping an eye on him. It’s fine.

(She can’t let herself think about any of it too hard or too long because she quickly runs out of ways to justify any of this.)

But, she still takes him out “searching,” though never in New Home. (“Do you WANT to be arrested?”) It’s not difficult to see the hope beginning to fade from his eyes. (Every so often, she CHECKs him, and although it had previously never faltered, one day he has just one or two less HP.) He doesn’t act much different, but sometimes, just for a moment, he almost looks hurt when the same old insults roll off her tongue out of habit. She tries not to think about it.

Then, one day (it’s been about, idk, three and half months?), they’re out walking in Waterfall. They run into what I assume to be a Royal Guard. RG recognizes Gaster as a human, it’s very chaotic. I don’t remember exactly how I had this play out in my head but they fling bullets toward him and start an encounter before Asteri can do much of anything besides protest verbally. Now, Gaster hasn’t been in an encounter since he first met normal!Asteri (and that went b a d l y), so he’s kind of freaking out. It’s made worse when the guard gets frustrated that Asteri is trying to convince them to stop, and sends bullets faster, and one slams into Gaster’s face. It collides just above his mouth, the force of it tilts his head back, and it flies all the way up his cheek and across his eye, cutting his bottom eyelid. Haven’t decided if this just happens, or if it’s because Asteri tried to get involved and he pushed her out of the way of the bullets (because he has no idea how normal encounters are for monsters, or how much HP she has, he just doesn’t want her to hey hurt). Well, needless to say, having his face torn open, he drops immediately. Now, I mentioned before that face and eye injuries are a trigger for him, so if he was freaking out before, he’s straight up panicking now. He’s on the ground, clutching his face, eye filled with blood, unresponsive.

Asteri gets mad.

Oh, she loses it.

If she wasn’t there already, she slides in front of him, wings flared, tail ready to whip out in front of her, teeth bared, looking very spiky. You know how people will draw the skeletons putting up a fence of bone bullets like a shield? She does something like that, but they’re exclamation points. They manifest when she yells at the guard. She has to be careful about how she uses her turns, though, because she can’t tell how badly Gaster is hurt yet, just that he’s crumpled and not good. The fence is her turn (>Defend). She and the guard yell back and forth, while she dodges their bullets, about him being a human. Asteri doesn’t have a very good defense, but does insist that he’s not going to hurt anyone, and that she’s the one keeping an eye on him. She uses her next turn to try to talk to Gaster. He’s conscious, but hyperventilating and obviously in a lot of pain. He doesn’t really respond to anything Asteri asks, which just worries her more. She tries to talk to the guard through their turn, but the guard is angry and won’t concede any point. They send orange bullets at Asteri, which are easy enough; she just moves back and forth through them. But she’s defending Gaster, and orange bullets don’t dissipate unless they do damage, so although they move through her, they keep going. The guard is smug about it. Asteri realizes just in the nick of time and manages to whip her tail between the bullets and Gaster. She tanks the damage (it’s just magical, it hurts but it’s fine), and glares at the guard. That’s it. She wanted this to end quickly, and it’s already her third turn. That’s enough.

She casts purple magic (rings) and traps the guard, has a moment of glowering intimidation, and manages to end the encounter. The guard freaks out that they’re still trapped even though the encounter ended. Asteri carefully scoops up Gaster and goes to leave, with the guard shouting after her. (“You’re just going to leave me like this!?” “It’ll wear off.”) Once they’re around a corner she turns into something that can move much faster and zips home. Gaster had explained quite a lot about humans by then (such as the fact that blood isn’t poison, but it does belong inside the body, and losing too much can kill them; or that open wounds can get infected because of… something or other), but there’s still a lot she doesn’t know. She slams the door open, runs into the kitchen, yanks the table closer, shoves everything off of it, sets him down but keeps him propped up with a wing, boils water with fire magic, pours it over a dish rag (then runs it under colder water— she does remember that humans are susceptible to heat), and tries to wipe blood away so she can see what she’s dealing with. Gaster is still panicked and his eyes are screwed shut and he won’t let her move his hand away so she can help. She tries to talk him through it but he’s not exactly reasonable right now and so she ends up having to straddle him so she can hold his hands down. Which does not help his panic. But she manages to wipe enough blood away to see the gash: it’s pretty thin lower down, surprisingly; the worst of it is his eyelid. But his mouth is full of blood and his eye is full of blood and he’s panicked and sobbing and the blood just keeps coming, god, why won’t it stop? She tries to get him to summon his SOUL so she can heal him, but he doesn’t understand, and she’s freaking out, so she’s like, “I’m just gonna pour green magic into the wound okay?”

She starts to, and he calms down a little bit as his eyelid heals, but as the healing works its way down he suddenly cries out in pain and starts struggling again, trying to get his arm free. He manages to say, “Wait, stop!” so Asteri does, and figures it’s probably okay to let him go… When she does, he reaches up into his mouth, whimpers, and then yanks a tooth out. She’s like “AAAAA????” and there’s a quick, not exactly comprehensible exchange about putting it back, but Gaster still isn’t entirely with it, so Asteri finishes healing him best she can.

One thing I haven’t gotten to include in the actual fic yet is how shapeshifters can mimic some forms perfectly but others only superficially, and a lot of it has to do with touching. It’s unconscious, usually, but they get something like a biological and magical “scan” of a being. If it’s a large being, it might require conscious effort, and multiple “scans” of different areas, especially if they’re very complex. So in this case, Asteri doesn’t understand why Gaster was suddenly in pain until she took a second to focus on how his head works (since she was touching him), and realized that she was trying to heal a loose tooth back into place when it was already separated from his skull. (Yes she doesn’t have a “HUMANS HAVE BONES!?!?” moment internally, but she doesn’t really have time to think about it.)

Once his face is healed, he’s calmed down somewhat. She gets some of the cooled water, turns his head, apologizes, and pours it over his eyes. He flails, but it successfully flushes the rest of the blood out of his eye. Now, for most of this, Asteri has been half or all the way on the table with Gaster, either leaning over him, keeping him propped up on her lap, or bent around him in some weird position that allowed her to help. Right now, she’s got him cradled in her wings while she finishes wiping blood off his face. He’s more or less calmed down by now. She hasn’t really stopped talking to him this entire time. She’s mumbling something or other while she gives him another look over and wipes his face off. He opens his eyes, a bit, to watch her. When she realizes he’s looking at her (he looks exhausted), and he’s smiling a little, and he’s got some… some look in his eyes, she gets flustered.

“What? What the hell are you smiling about‽”

And he moves his hands up to sign.

“You care.”

She almost drops him on the table, but he’s still hurt. So she sputters and scoffs and wipes at him a little harder than strictly necessary,

“I do not! You’re a human, and I’m a monster, and there will never—”

As she was working her way down his face with the washcloth, she had reached his jaw. And, never breaking eye contact, Gaster cranes his head back, baring his throat. The gesture completely halts whatever Asteri was about to say. She just stares down at him for a moment. At his throat, in this vulnerable state, where she is in complete and total control, where her tail is gripping a washcloth and could wrap around his neck before he would have time to shout. And she’s frozen. She meets his eyes, and immediately looks away because how can he look at her like that, and her jaw clacks shut. Whatever she was going to say died in her throat. She tentatively returns to wiping the blood away. It’s all down his neck, from crying while his mouth was full of blood, and his shirt is spattered with it too. Not to mention soaked with water.

When she looks back up at him, his eyes are closed. He’s starting to fall asleep. She shakes him (gently), worried that he’s dying or something. He wakes up enough to loosely sign that no he’s not dying, or… falling down, whatever that means? Humans take a lot of energy to heal, and she just made him heal really fast, so he’s just tired.

Oh. Well. If he’s going to sleep, then… he shouldn’t be in a wet shirt. Give it to her and she’ll wash the blood off. Gaster raises an eyebrow but unbuttons it— well, he tries, but he can barely stay awake, so Asteri ends up doing it and then peeling it off him. He mumbles something about blood stains and cold water and vinegar. Asteri just throws his shirt in the sink and leaves it for tomorrow. She’s so unfamiliar with how he… works, so she wants to keep an eye on him. Plus he needs a new shirt. So she carries him to her room and sets him on the bed, then roots around for a shirt he can put on. (He could have walked, he mumbles; she throws back that he’d fall over if he tried to stand.) He smiles at her when she pulls a shirt over his head, careful not to let it press on the bad side of his face, and it makes her want to run away.

She just wants to keep an eye on him! He’s in no condition to be left unattended!

He doesn’t argue, but he does thank her.

She spends the evening sitting there staring at him and occasionally trying to heal the scar that’s left. It’s not nearly as bad as the other one, but it’s still there. It’s hard to look at the one on his right side, because she did that to him. After today, all she can see is him lying there bleeding in the snow, hands tied, bawling, begging her. Or him falling to his knees when that bullet hit him, hand flying to his face, and that expression of immediate terror. His attempts to clarify that he was just looking for help. His apologies, even though all he had done was run into her. He was scared.

And she saw it again today. Terror. He… He doesn’t want to hurt anyone, who is she kidding?

The rest of the night is similarly reflective, and the guilt builds up in her like a poison gas.

(At some point the next day she asks him about his tooth. It hasn’t turned to dust yet, so they can probably put it back now that he’s awake. Right? This leads to a whole discussion of “what do you mean “turned to dust?” and Asteri’s subsequent horror after his explanation that human body parts don’t disintegrate when they’re severed/dead. They just. Keep existing. But they’re dead now. She is horrified by his dead tooth just sitting there on her table.

Also, in the morning, after he wakes up and realizes he’s in her room (and they briefly acknowledge that), he ends up seeing a picture of her and her parents on the wall (which is something I have written into ch 10 but it’s not finished yet AUGH) and she solemnly explains what happened to them and why she feels so strongly about humans.)

AND THEN AFTER ALL THAT—

Things don’t change much.

Asteri knows she cares but she doesn’t want to because she’s not supposed to. She knows Gaster’s harmless but if she accepts that then she has to confront her entire opinion of humans. She knows she was wrong to be so mean to him but if she acknowledges that then their dynamic will change and it would be so much easier to just pretend nothing is different, to just let everything be unspoken.

But now that she’s had to think about it, she can’t go back to willful ignorance. There’s no avoiding it, it’s already there. But hell if she isn’t going to try to keep avoiding it anyway. Even though things feel nicer between them, even though sometimes she smiles back at him a little, even though it feels like they could almost be… friends— No. No. She can’t. (And especially not with this poison that’s eating her up.)

He’s somehow more subdued, though. And yet more frayed at the edges. The facts that he hasn’t heard or seen anything of human!Asteri, and there’s seemingly no way to find this universe’s version of him because in this universe, Asteri doesn’t know him, really begin to weigh on him. He’s never finding his Asteri. He’s never getting home. He’s going to be stuck with a someone who’s so like her, who he keeps almost connecting with, but who keeps shutting him down because she’s afraid. The next day after he got hurt, he wanted to go looking for his friend again. Asteri told him no, it would be too dangerous after getting on that guard’s bad side. Waterfall will be swarming now that he’s been reported. Still, within the week, he’s convinced her to take him looking through some caves they haven’t been through yet. And on the way there, wouldn’t you know who they run into: Themselves.

Human!Gaster and normal!Asteri meet normal!Gaster and human!Asteri.

(I was going to have it be ⁂!Gaster and ⁂!Asteri, but the thing is that they aren’t quite the same as they are in the fic (i.e. Asteri knows how to use purple magic on purpose). So they’re just “normal” because they’re still monsters.)

Human!Gaster spots her first and calls out to her. (Normal!Asteri is like ???). In turn, human!Asteri, upon turning and seeing him, lets go of normal!Gaster’s hand and calls out too. They run toward each other, teary-eyed, and hug. There’s a lot of talking over each other. “You’re alive!” and “How are you here?” and “I thought I’d never see you again!” It’s very… tender. Very familiar. Both monster versions are stunned and can’t do much best watch. Normal!Asteri has this pit in her gut, like her heart dropped into her stomach, and she doesn’t know why. Normal!Gaster has a similar feeling, but he knows exactly why: human!Asteri never told him that the friend she had been looking for was him.

It’s extremely chaotic. Normal!Asteri is overwhelmed by the facts that there are two humans, human!Gaster’s friend is alive, his name is actually Gaster (she thought he made that up but she couldn’t think of anything better to call him so she played along) And. The goddamn royal scientist, who she’s pretty sure fought in the war, is walking around with this one human. And they were holding hands?? There’s a lot for everyone to take in. So normal!Gaster (who has put his own internal relationship crisis on hold), says that he and human!Asteri were going to go “camping” (under the “stars”) so maybe they should all sit down at their campsite and work this out.

They do so. Normal!Gaster confirms for normal!Asteri that yes, these really are versions of them from an alternate universe where they’re human. (Normal!Asteri feels like she got hit by a truck but doesn’t have the opportunity to come anywhere near processing that. Human!Asteri is PSYCHED about this and really wants to meet this version of herself, but there’s too much going on to do that right now.) The humans compare how long they’ve been here: Gaster’s four months to Asteri’s “at least nine, maybe closer to a year?” Then start with her side since she’s been here longer. She explains how she found this Gaster pretty quickly, and she’s been staying with him. She also tells, somewhat uneasily, how, upon going over some of the events, this Gaster explained that it was unlikely that her friend (human!Gaster) would have ended up in the same place, or even the same universe. If he was transported at all. Normal!Gaster adds onto this that he also realized there was likely no way to send her back home. Human!Gaster agrees that these are reasonable conclusions. Human!Asteri then, very awkwardly, explains to him that she mourned him; she thought she would never see him again, or that he had died, and she knew she would never get home. And so… since… she’s been here… It’s just, she realized that she was happy here! It— It just came so naturally…!

She’s awkwardly gesturing to normal!Gaster while she talks. Human!Gaster doesn’t get it at first, but then it dawns on him. Oh. “You’re together.”

She nods. Normal!Gaster, who is sitting beside her, adds, “Although you never told me that the friend you wanted to find was me.”

This is super awkward for everyone present, and the two humans have to explain that they were never together. They… well, they might have gotten there, eventually, if they hadn’t gotten separated, but they never actually…

And human!Asteri is frantically trying to smooth it over with normal!Gaster, but he’s not about to have that crisis in full until later. There are things that need to be addressed. (But good lord, the tension and awkwardness between him and human!Asteri could be cut with a knife.) So tells her they can work it out later on, after the other issues have been addressed. (This is the equivalent of “we need to talk later” and she is so anxious she feels like she’s going to throw up.)

Human!Gaster is very supportive, but you can bet he’s dying inside. He can’t quite keep the pain out of his eyes but he’s trying so hard. Asteri is happy. That’s all that matters. Yes, it hurts, but he was never entitled to her affection. Alright, yes, it hurts worse that it’s literally an alternate version of him, but he completely understands why it happened. Outwardly, he’s still smiling as pleasantly as possible (and it looks fine, unless you know him well, like human!Asteri, who is now cringing even harder because she’s managed to upset both Gasters.)

Normal!Asteri is just sitting there taking it all in. She’s at a loss for a number of reasons. How could the Royal Scientist of all people shelter a human!? How is this okay!? Also, alternate universes!?!? What?? She’s… she’s had the human version of the Royal Scientist in her house for almost four months!? And that’s the human version of her!? All of it is real. Every time human!Gaster talked about an alternate universe where they were friends. She thought he was making that up, or that it was some bizarre human joke. But no, she’s actually had the human version of the freaking royal scientist in her house and oh god she beat him up when they first met.

Human!Asteri does indeed ask human!Gaster what the hell happened to his face. Normal!Asteri’s stomach does a triple axle. He just says that he had some trouble, he is very clumsy you know, and laughs it off. Normal!Asteri feels even worse because he’s protecting her and she absolutely doesn’t deserve it, and the worst part is that he’s smiling so genuinely at human!Asteri (who clearly doesn’t believe him but isn’t going to push it right now.)

They all do take some time to talk to their counterparts. Human!Asteri is excited to meet normal!Asteri. It is not mutual, but they work it out. It’s pretty immediately obvious to normal!Asteri once they start talking that her human counterpart really is just like her (if a little less jaded). Once backstory and specifics of character and preferences come up, it’s basically irrefutable. And honestly, normal!Asteri knows, deep down, that there’s no threat. She relaxes somewhat, but she can’t stifle the guilt when she hears this other version of herself talk about human!Gaster so fondly, knowing ‘I hurt him.’

Meanwhile, normal!Gaster kind of understands why human!Gaster is upset (and trying not to be). Human!Gaster understands why normal!Gaster is upset. They talk about it. Human!Gaster tells his counterpart that he and human!Asteri were just friends. It… felt like it might have grown into something else, it felt right at that threshold, but… obviously nothing came of it. He sort of steels himself and takes a deep breath and pats normal!Gaster and tells him that his Asteri is nothing if not loyal. “If she loves you, then it’s not because she loves me,” he tells him. That does help. Normal!Gaster asks if human!Gaster and normal!Asteri have hit it off, then. Human!Gaster wiggles his hand in the air. Sort of? He explains that she’s just afraid, and hurt. He worried at one point that she might really hate him, but he knows now that she doesn’t. She’s just… unsure. But he knows his Asteri, and how she gets mean when she’s scared or hurt, and that’s all it is. She still cares. He knows it. She’ll work through it. Normal!Gaster is understandably concerned about how that sounds, but human!Gaster chuckles and assures him that he’s in no danger, physically or emotionally. It’s not like that.

They all end up staying together (they get another tent) for the night, and then the next day, to clear everything leftover up. Human!Asteri and normal!Gaster have a long talk in private about why she never told him who her “scientist friend” was. He’s upset, and asks if he was just a stand-in for who she thought she lost?. She assures him that no, that is absolutely not the case. The reason she never brought it up was because it hurt to think about human!Gaster, at first, and it was hard to mourn him when someone so similar was right there— it was easier to just fall back into friendship with someone who she already sort of knew, and learn it all over, learn the differences, and… fall in love with them. Alright, yes, at first, she saw only the similarities, but she didn’t see him as a replacement. From the beginning, she saw her friend. Just in a different form. But she didn’t fall for her friend, out there in the other tent. She fell for him, here, in front of her. And she has no intention of leaving.

He appreciates this, and understands the complexities of the situation being a factor. But she’s very reassuring that she loves him.

So they’re all cute and stuff.

Meanwhile in the other tent, human!Gaster has tucked himself all the way into a sleeping bag, facing the tent wall, in an attempt to have some degree of privacy while he has a small breakdown. His Asteri is alive. She’s safe. She’s happy.

Without him.

Yes, but that never mattered, did it? He just wanted her to be okay. This is more than he could have hoped. He should be happy for her. And he is!! But it still hurts. Stars, it hurts so much more than he ever thought. What is left for him? The last several months he’s been focused on finding her, and gaining the trust of this universe’s Asteri, but he never considered what he would do when he found his Asteri. It’s true that it’s unlikely they will ever be able to go home. She wouldn’t want to anyway; she’s happy here. And he doesn’t want to live a life without her in it. He’d stay too, of course he will, even just to see her sometimes.

But that’s not viable either. The guards know him now. If this alternate version of himself has kept Asteri safe this long (and was willing to bring her to Waterfall despite the guards??) then she’ll be okay. But there isn’t much hope for him. This universe’s Asteri that he has been staying with might have grown to tolerate him, but now that she doesn’t have to worry about another human running around, what’s stopping her from turning him in? He wasn’t able to truly befriend her.

He’s broken-hearted and he’s got no hope for the future. He’s not doing so hot.

Meanwhile, also sitting in the same tent, is normal!Asteri, who is just. awkwardly existing there and trying to pretend she can’t hear him sniffle every so often. He probably needs some privacy, but where the heck is she going to sleep then?? In the tent with those two lovebirds?? Absolutely not. Gross. It’s weird enough that they’re just an alternate version of them. (Which has all kinds of implications she isn’t ready to address.) No, she’ll tough it out in here, thanks.

But she does feel bad. She saw the way human!Gaster looked at human!Asteri. She could see the light in his eyes die when human!Asteri told him she was with normal!Gaster. God, that must suck. He’s harmless, he’s heartbroken, he’s trapped here, and the only person he knows has already made a life for herself. She doesn’t really want to comfort him, but the guilt of everything has been eating away at her since earlier this week when they met that guard, and there’s just no escaping it anymore, and god it’s the least she could do.

So she reaches over with her tail and kind of. awkwardly pats where she thinks his shoulder probably is in the sleeping bag. He startles a little, but then rolls over and, head still tucked down inside, sticks his arms up through the head hole and offers her his wrists. It takes her a second, but then she’s like, “What? No! I’m not— I’m not tying your wrists! I’m trying to be nice to you!”

This is met with some confusion, and he pulls his arms back inside, then shuffles around until he can poke his head out, and he has the most pathetic, kicked-puppy-looking brown eyes. She would laugh if she didn’t feel so bad for him. Especially because he looks genuinely confused, and that really throws her off. Before, he’s always looked so confident that she would be kind to him; he always acted like he knew all along she would choose to do something nice. Not in a smug way, he just always acted like he was so assured of her character that he never doubted. But right now, he looks genuinely confused and unsure. And that hurts in a way Asteri doesn’t expect. She didn’t think that she cared about what he thought of her, or whether he trusted her. (Except she knew that wasn’t true from when he bared his throat to her, she just didn’t let herself think about it.)

And so her heart melts when he looks up at her, and she’s suddenly at a loss again. She was going to try to be gruff but encouraging, but he looks so… small.

She drapes her tail over him and turns to face him better. She tells him that hey, it’s… it’s not the end of the world to get your heart broken. That other Asteri definitely still cares about him. He’ll find so—

She has to cut herself off because no, he won’t find someone else. This is the underground, and he’s a human. It hits her, then. That kind of is the end of the world, for him. He’s got no one.

He gets his arms out of the sleeping bag and signs despondently, “There is no one else. And besides that, it is only a matter of time before I am arrested. He has kept her safe, so I am…” There’s a pause, and he blinks away the way his eyes sting. “…A loose end.”

Well. Normal!Asteri is having none of that. They end up having a discussion about the outlook of things, and she tries to cheer him up a little. (The matter of normal!Gaster’s position making it easier for him to protect human!Asteri comes up at one point.) Eventually the conversation forces normal!Asteri to both acknowledge and admit aloud that she has no intention of handing human!Gaster over. He’s… He’s harmless. There’s no reason to let him be killed.

This surprises him, but he is relieved. He admits that he didn’t thinks she cared that much. Or, rather, that she wouldn’t allow herself to. This brings a more serious tone to the conversation. Asteri works up to apologizing. For everything. But especially for how she treated him in the beginning. Gaster keeps trying to explain it away— She is traumatized, he startled her, she was acting out of fear, etc. They go back and forth. Finally she slaps her wings down on the blankets and huffs, “This isn’t about me! You’re the victim!”

He argues, “You were a victim too.”

She goes through a face journey as the guilt and remorse all swirl and come to a head and brings tears burning at her eye sockets. “But that doesn’t give me the right… to hurt someone who was begging for mercy!”

And it’s quiet. He looks down at his hand, then touches the scar over his right eye. “No,” he murmurs. “It doesn’t.”

The silence is heavy.

“I’m sorry… that I hurt you,” she says finally, and it comes trembling from her SOUL. “I was afraid. But that doesn’t make it okay. Right from the get-go, you tried to explain yourself, and I remember you were so…scared. You were hurt, and I didn’t help you. It was like some messed up power trip. And— And I’ve been fighting it for weeks now, months maybe, the obvious truth that you didn’t deserve any of this, that I was so, so wrong. But it felt too painful to accept, except now, I’ve been forced to accept it, and it’s even worse! I could have spared you more pain if I had just been willing to endure some myself. I wish I could undo it so bad, but I can’t. I didn’t want to have to change, I wanted to just let it stay unspoken, so we could just exist like that and I could pretend I didn’t like you so I never had to address why it made me so uncomfortable! But now it’s worse and now we’re both sad! If I had just confronted it, and said I was wrong, maybe I could’ve… We coulda…”

She can’t bring herself to say “maybe we could have been friends.” Instead she swallows to compose herself and then says, “I’ll keep you from the guards. I’m… I’m so sorry. I know none of this fixes anything, but anything I’ve done to you… you can do to me. It’s only fair.”

He doesn’t say anything until she looks up. She can’t read his expression. “Anything?”

She gulps, but nods.

His expression softens a little. “Can I make a request instead?”

She isn’t sure what to expect, but nods again. “Sure.”

The intensity in him looks like he’s trying to hold back a flood with his eyes. His hesitation feels like it might shatter the earth. Finally he relieves her, and when he signs she doesn’t even know how to describe the broken hope in his expression. It’s like staring into a hole and seeing a few shards of stained glass at the bottom. “Can we start over?” His eyes water. “Could you see me as someone you might become friends with, one day?”

It’s everything she realized she wants, and everything she doesn’t deserve, so the question feels like being knocked over by a wave. Like she hadn’t already cried enough while apologizing to him, this brings her to tears all over again. “I don’t deserve that,” she whispers.

“As the one being apologized to, I think that I get to decide that.”

It’s… a joke. Almost. It’s lighthearted. How can he be lighthearted at a time like this?? How can he smile at her when he still looks so sad underneath it? She doesn’t know what to make of it. But she does know that if she’s going to keep him safe from the guards, it would be nice if… if they could, despite everything, be friends. She laughs, just a quiet, disbelieving sound through tears, and nods. “I’d like that a lot better than this,” she admits.

He smiles, and this time it looks real, but then he gets serious again. Hesitant, maybe. “Are you still adverse to being touched?”

“No.” She sniffles and shakes her head. “You can do whatever you want. I don’t—”

His hug knocks the wind out of her. Not because it’s especially forceful— in fact it’s quite gentle— but because it’s unexpected, and desperate.

“G-Good, becaaause I reallyyy n-need oooone of th-these.”

It takes a couple seconds, but she hugs him back. It’s funny, how small he feels. It’s funny how he’s still so much more powerful than her simply by virtue of being human.

It’s funny how much she doesn’t care anymore.

(They talk later about how she can’t replace the person he actually cares about. He tells her that he doesn’t want her to. He just wants to be friends. That’s enough for her.)

The next morning is full of more clarifications. Normal!Asteri, relieved from the cathartic conversation (and sob session) with human!Gaster last night, is more at ease. She watches how human!Asteri and normal!Gaster interact, and it’s so strange, because she can absolutely see that they are the same people as herself and human!Gaster, but they’re so… in love?? Even when they aren’t really doing anything. They aren’t blatant about it, but it’s just so clear in everything they do. It’s like it rolls off of them and seeps into the air. She hasn’t had much chance to speak with normal!Gaster (partly because she was intimidated by the whole “royal scientist” thing), but watching him now, she realizes no, he’s just goofy, it’s fine. But it does make her wonder about human!Gaster. What would he look like, this happy? What would he be like if he had the resources that this Gaster does? It’s strange.

At one point she ends up talking with human!Asteri while they make coffee over the fire. It starts pretty friendly, but human!Asteri almost beats the crap out of normal!Asteri when she finds out that she’s responsible for the scar over human!Gaster’s right eye. Both Gasters have to intervene (possibly with blue magic). Fortunately human!Asteri didn’t actually land a punch, because she was angry enough to have done real damage. Human!Gaster clarifies that they worked it out, she already apologized, and he’s fine, it’s fine, it was when they first met. Human!Asteri is mad that he lied to her about it yesterday, but… she understands. Once it all gets cleared up, she apologizes to normal!Asteri, who, despite having been mortally terrified for a minute there, can’t really hold it against her. She would do the exact same thing for her friends.

So the morning is going great.

The Asteris (Asteries?) actually end up chitchatting again like nothing happened. Meanwhile the Gasters talk science and agree that it’s unlikely that there’s any way back to the other universe. Human!Gaster thanks normal!Gaster for keeping human!Asteri safe, and quietly (so as not to worry the Asteris) expresses his concern about his own safety and shares his experience with the guard. Normal!Gaster tells him that part of why he and human!Asteri came to Waterfall was because of a rumor about a human being spotted. He also tells him that he’s had an idea, but wasn’t sure whether to implement it. However, circumstances as they are, he thinks it would be best. He explains it to human!Gaster, and they agree to share with the Asteris.

Normal!Gaster is quite close to the king. Asgore does not really want to kill anyone. So normal!Gaster will go to him and explain: these two humans have fallen down; they are happy here, and respect monsters; he loves one of them, and the other, her friend, has vital scientific knowledge. They have no desire to leave the underground. When they die, their SOULs will be here to go toward the breaking of the barrier. Killing them now would do no more good. So he asks, both as the Royal Scientist, and as a friend: please let them just live here. Either let the people know, or turn a blind eye, but please, don’t make them fear for their lives. There is ample evidence that they are good people.

He also tells them that, depending on how it goes, he will explain the whole “alternate universe version of myself” thing to Asgore, who will believe him even though he won’t understand.

In explaining this to the others, normal!Gaster also finally explains the situation of the underground, and the strength of human SOULs, to the humans properly. Human!Gaster very much wants to contribute to the underground. He would love to have a job again. They don’t even have to pay him!

So. That’s probably what will happen.

They all stick around for a while longer. Normal!Asteri watches human!Gaster and human!Asteri chatting from across the campsite, and sees how his anxiety dissolves the longer they talk. (Since when has she been able to read him like this…?) They seem to have addressed the lingering issues. Now, it looks like any potential awkwardness about their relationship has evaporated, and they’ve slipped right back into what their friendship used to be. She’s glad. She also takes the opportunity to talk to normal!Gaster; after all, it seems reasonable to assume they could be friends too. (She is, of course, correct, and yet despite everything is still blown away by how well they get along.)

By the end, everyone exchanges contact info, and they agree to meet up again in a few days to talk about how to proceed after normal!Gaster talks to the king. Human!Gaster and human!Asteri gives each other a big hug, and she tells him she’s so glad he’s alive, and safe. And that it’s going to be okay. She won’t let anyone hurt him. He smiles. He knows, he says. It seems she takes care of him in every universe. She kisses him on the cheek, and glances at normal!Asteri. Yeah. It. seems like she does.

Human!Asteri does give normal!Asteri one last “friendly” threat about being good to human!Gaster. Normal!Asteri gives her word.

From there, things only get better. As expected, Asgore calls off the guards. Human!Gaster gets a “job” working with normal!Gaster. The Asteris collaborate on linguistic studies. Normal!Asteri eventually introduces human!Asteri to Sembie and Kelinn.

Normal!Asteri and human!Gaster are friends. It takes effort, but she genuinely wants to make up for everything. And he’s a forgiving person (plus, he already knew her, to some extent.) There’s a lot of trauma to unpack, and they both have things to work through, but it steadily gets better. And yeah, as you would expect, they eventually end up together. It’s cute.

I’m ignoring lifespans and other angsty things. Maybe being immersed in ambient magic and eating magic food extends human lifespans some. Maybe humans live longer in the universe human!Gaster and human!Asteri are from. Don’t think about it too hard. They all just get up to shenanigans together forever. But this is the gist of the AU and how it goes down in my head. Sorry it’s so freaking lONG. There’s lots more that happens tbh. But this was the foundation. The possibilities for shenanigans are endless now. There is a lot more to human!Asteri x normal!Gaster btw, but I haven’t had the brainworms for their side of this like I have for normal!Asteri x human!Gaster.

Also I know I said earlier that there were two versions but honestly I kind of mixed them together and I think I like this better. I don’t touch as much on the psychology of “hurt people hurt people” or normal!Asteri’s choices in the beginning of her interactions with human!Gaster, but believe me I’ve explored them. Similarly, human!Gaster’s resulting trauma from encounters and bullets and facial injury. I’ve also explored that but this is so long already and all I really meant to do was give the gist of this AU but instead I wrote a wHOLE FREAKING THING. I had to keep pulling myself out of “real writing mode”. Ughhh. Maybe now that this is out of my brain I can work on THE ACTUAL FIC. (I have so much of ch 10 written I just can’t get it all together.)

Also uhhh please remember that this is mostly me exploring regret and redemption and reparations and how somebody might fix stuff with a person that they’ve hurt. Except extremely fictional because alternate universes and the person hurt has a deep understanding of the one who hurt them and all that. Obviously none of that was okay, that’s the point: trying to do better after realizing you’ve been awful. And addressing that rather than let the surface vibes of a relationship ease your conscience so you can keep ignoring your guilt. Tbh I did not do Asteri’s apology and that whole conversation justice to how it went in my head but it… was very comprehensive, and there was more to it, on both sides of the conversation.

ANYWAY UHH yeah so things. Only get better. Because this is made up and I get to give it a happy resolution regardless of whether it’s realistic. Maybe I’m overly worried about it, but I just. Don’t want to give the wrong impression here. In this AU, Normal!Asteri is a good person, who made bad choices, that were fueled by trauma and fear, and that doesn’t make them okay, she’s absolutely still responsible for her choices, and it absolutely would have been within human!Gaster’s right to not want to be friends. But he did. Because he knew her better than she knew him (alternate universe friendship), plus he’s very forgiving to begin with. His decision isn’t meant to come across as a moral precedent, that’s just his character. Look just please give this the best faith interpretation ok im working through some stuff and it’s coming out in my story ideas.

Normal!Asteri and human!Gaster end up being so freaking cute okay. She is. So good to him. So soft. Very “wait is this okay? Wait is THIS okay?” I will probably touch more on their relationship later in a different post bUT THE POINT OF THIS IS THAT NOW THERE’S CONTEXT FOR MY RANDOM DOODLES

#seeker talks #seeker writes #??#⁂ au #dingsaster #double dingsaster au #⁂ gaster #seeker oc #asteri #human asteri #human ⁂ gaster #no i STILL don’t know what human gaster’s first name is #im working on it #i love making men cry can you tell #…IN FICTION #Windy

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dajaregambler · 5 months

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indefinite hiatus

Howdy doody.

This may seem as a sudden notice, but it is not to me. It is a matter that I have thought about many times, over and over again. On the other hand, I have also tried to ignore it in the hopes of it going away. Obviously, that did not work out.

Back during my trip to Japan, I had rekindled my love for the Japanese language and it is still strong as ever. In fact I have decided to pursue it academically so that I can continue to work with it, ideally in localisation. After the struggle I had with school that felt like it lasted an eternity, I was quite proud of myself to pick up from where my attempt at university in 2018 to 2020 left me off.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. It is actually a similar sort of situation I found myself in earlier this year.

What I’m doing right now… is it fun?

Helios Rising Heroes was a pick me up in 2020. I had lost my drive for Japanese after giving up on academics, and seeing how Keith and Brad interacted made me curious about their story. I went further in the world of HeliosR, and before I knew it I was enamored with it. So much so that I felt compelled to share this love, to let people know the charms of these characters. I started out with translating content of my favorite character, then to the whole sector, eventually other characters and so on. It was a challenge, and that challenge helped me grow in many ways.

However somewhere down this road, I kept battling this one question: who am I doing this for? I thought for myself, but it wasn’t. It became a responsibility to fill in the gaps. I did not care about North at all, yet seeing that one Halloween event stay untranslated the entire time bothered me, so I picked it up myself and hey, it worked out. North Sector is one of my fave sectors now, but that’s what became an issue. I started picking up too much to do, for the sole sake of it being translated. I didn’t limit myself because moderation is a word that didn’t exist to me back then. Even now it sort of doesn’t, but I like to think I’ve gotten better at it.

Another issue is that I love Helios, I really, really do. It means a lot to me, but translating it is actively ruining it for me at the same time. I feel the need to step away and enjoy it without feeling responsible, but I also feel guilty for thinking so. I have stuff I started and need to finish. And that’s where I found myself stuck at a stalemate, almost to the point of ignoring Helios and I don’t want that. I had fun earlier this year translating the new West sector event, and all of chapter two of SITD, but it was short lived. I went right back to that stalemate that had been haunting me.

The combination of biting off more than what I can chew, with halfhearted feelings behind it, is what leaves me dull. There is no “fun” to be had.

I will say what I said earlier this year, about a different project I translated at the time:

“Is it that serious? That I’m dropping a series that I have translated? No, probably not. Happens all the time, I’m sure there are others waiting in line to continue what I was doing, or maybe not. Who knows.

But to me, it is, and that’s why I wanted to convey it in a long hefty post.

As closure, I will share some words of one of my favourite manga. Something I live by, and will for as long as possible.

“The world is filled to the brim with nice things… and all of them are carrying someone’s intentions and feelings.

When those feelings get across and manage to make someone happy… I gain little pieces of confidence,

that I’ll gather together and carry with me as I move on.”

And I believe something like that, is only achievable when you do something that is fun, to you.”

This isn’t the end, it never is. However for me to move on, to find joy again, I have to say it like this. Perhaps one could say I am a fan of theatrics in this regard.

For now, and the unforeseen future, I simply want to step back from translating Helios Rising Heroes. Focus on truly mastering Japanese (my conversational skills are as abhorrent as they could be) and perhaps even study abroad. Not only that, but find fun in Helios again, by simply enjoying it without feeling a responsibility nagging at me every single waking moment I think about this series. It’s a bit of a shame to leave things here when I haven’t finished chapter 3 of SITD, but I think this is the best choice for me, going forward.

Once again, thank you for reading this post and my translations. Thank you for being able to find enjoyment in Helios Rising Heroes through my translations. This blog will stay up as an archive and will not be going anywhere.

As I said, it is not the end of the road for me. I will perhaps be around on another ventures regarding translations, and we might cross paths once more. And hopefully said ventures do not include a repetition of past mistakes. I am positive it won't though.

One day, I may or may not come back to this either, but for now it is atleast a farewell.

またね！

p.s (Imagine I said "farewell" with a wink, two sparkles, and rose being thrown in the air as I made my dramatic exit into the horizon while the amber sun sets.)

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bornonthesavage · 1 year

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Tell Me "Don't", So I Can Crawl Back In Part 9

Part 8 AO3

That week at school, Steve was glad that things seemed relatively normal. Saturday had been great, a total success in his books, even if it had taken a slight detour into a territory he hadn’t planned to explore. The truth was, if he hadn’t been high, he probably wouldn’t have offered to jack Eddie off. It wasn’t that he had a problem with it. It was just… Their friendship was so new, and he still didn’t really know where Eddie’s boundaries were. Because sure, he and Tommy had done it plenty, but that was different. They’d known each other for years.

There had been a pretty big chance that it could have blown up right in his face. It was just that when Eddie had mentioned being a virgin, a fact Steve still couldn’t fully believe, his stoned brain hadn’t been able to stop thinking about how sad it was that nobody had ever touched Eddie before. Eddie was so sweet and funny, he deserved to feel good. Even if that was just with the help of a friend. And Steve wasn’t going to lie, it had felt pretty damn amazing for him as well.

He'd received plenty of hand jobs from girls, and a few from Tommy, but it had felt way different with Eddie. His hands had been a little rough with callouses, probably from playing the guitar, and the rings had added a sensation he’d never felt before. It had been rough and firm and a little erratic. To be honest, Steve hadn’t really been able to stop thinking about it. But he wasn’t going to bring it up again, not unless Eddie did. He didn’t want his new friend to think he was using him.

All week at school, Steve had looked for any sign that Eddie was uncomfortable. But he seemed fine. Maybe Steve caught him staring a little more, but that was just what Eddie did. He stared and smiled and flirted with everyone. It was just who he was.

“So, my advice worked?” Dustin asked on Thursday afternoon, after Steve had picked him up from the arcade.

Steve grinned. “Yeah, it did! I actually think I’m killing it with this whole friendship thing. Eddie seemed to have fun on Saturday.”

Dustin hummed as he ripped open a pack of Red Vines. “What did you guys do?”

“Oh, you know, just normal friend stuff. We watched some movies, ordered in pizza, had a few beers.” He obviously left out the other, less appropriate, things.

“Ok, cool, so you’ve initiated phase two. Now for phase three.”

Steve scrunched up his nose. “Wait, there are phases? Since when?”

Dustin rolled his eyes. “Since now. Keep up Steve. Phase one was you hanging out with him and his other friends. Phase two was you two hanging out on your own at your house. Now you two need to go out somewhere to complete the bonding.”

“Jesus, dude, I don’t think it’s that serious. Besides, we are going out this Saturday. We’re going to the drive-in.”

Dustin hummed again.

Steve narrowed his eyes, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. “What was that? Why are you humming? Are you judging my plan?”

“No, no, not judging,” he said, holding up his hands. “It’s just, is that all you two are going to do? Watch movies? That doesn’t seem very conductive to getting closer as friends. You guys have to like, talk and shit, if you want to really bond.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Steve muttered. “But we already made these plans. I can’t just change them now.”

“Well yeah, don’t change your plans. Just, think about next time. Do something with him that’s a little more… interactive. Something you would both like.”

Steve huffed. He’d been trying to think of other places to go, but so far he’d been coming up with a blank. Most girls he took out were perfectly happy with dinner and a movie. But it made sense, if he was trying to take this deeper than surface level.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll come up with something.”

He dropped Dustin off at home, waving at Claudia through the passenger window, before heading home. The house was dark when he pulled into the driveway, as per usual. There was nobody waiting at home for him. He hoped Dustin appreciated how lucky he was to have a mom like Claudia.

Once inside, he climbed the stairs with heavy feet. It was only a little after eight thirty, but he’d had a long day. He’d begun going on runs each morning before school, waking up at five thirty to jog a mile and a half around the neighborhood. Part of it was because he figured if he was going to wake up that early, he may as well do something with his time. More often than not, he was awoken by nightmares that left him screaming. The demo-dogs, chasing him and the kids through the tunnels, were a popular horror show his brain seemed to enjoy replaying. Only in his nightmares, there was never an escape. Just endless grey caverns and the snarls of monster behind them. So, yeah, the running helped.

He ripped off his shirt as soon as he got to his room and dropped onto his bed, wiggling out of his jeans as he got comfortable. The room was cool, edging just a little into cold, so he pulled the comforter up and wrapped it around his shoulders. Sleep came quickly.

The first thing Steve became aware of was that he was in a bed. It didn’t appear to be his bed, though, as he looked around the room. But that wasn’t important. What was important was that there was a hand on his chest, slowly tracing a path down to his stomach. A warm mouth pressed a kiss to his hip, making Steve jerk. Ah, so that’s what was happening. He slid his own hand down to run his fingers through a mop of brown curls.

“That feels nice, baby,” Steve murmured.

The other person hummed; the sound deeper than Steve had expected. They looked up to meet Steve’s eye, and a jolt of something raced through him. It wasn’t a girl at all. It was Eddie. Eddie, who smirked up at him as he sunk his teeth into the flesh of Steve’s thigh, making him gasp.

In the back of Steve’s mind, he knew he should be freaking out about this. That this wasn’t something he normally did. But all he was able to feel in that moment was unbelievably horny. So what if he’d never done this before? This just felt right. And hey, Eddie wasn’t freaking out. Steve might as well go along with it.

“Eddie,” he said, hist voice coming out raspy. “That feels good.”

Eddie grinned, showing off his dimples. Cute, his mind supplied. “That’s how it’s supposed to feel, Stevie. Are you going to be a good boy for me?”

He might have been embarrassed by the sound he let out at that if he wasn’t already so turned on. “Yeah, Eds, I’ll be so good. I promise. Just, please, touch me.”

“I am touching you.”

Steve whined. “More. I want more.”

“Mm, so needy. Someone might think you were the virgin here.”

Ah, that’s right. Eddie was a virgin. Steve should be doing more, something to make this a good first experience for Eddie. But he didn’t seem capable of moving any more than the slow writhing he was currently doing.

“Eddie, come-come up here. Please, let me see you.”

The other boy ignored his pleading, instead continuing his press slow kisses onto Steve’s stomach and legs.

“No, Eddie, please. Come here. Please, please let me—

“Kiss you.”

Steve awoke to his own voice, needy even in sleep. It took a moment for the heavy fog of sleep to ease from his brain, for him to realize that he’d been dreaming. It took another few seconds for the confusion and embarrassment to settle in. He’d just had a sex dream about Eddie. He had wanted to kiss Eddie. The ghost sensation of Eddie’s lips on his skin, of his large hand on his chest, made warmth flood Steve’s face. Huh.

It wasn’t like he’d never had a sex dream about a friend before. It was pretty normal, actually. Hell, he’d even had one about Jonathan once. But usually, they were vague. In his dreams, he had never begged another man to kiss him. Never felt a burning need to make it good for them, to show them that he could make it good.

Maybe it was because he knew now that Eddie was a virgin. Maybe it, like, engaged the protective part of his brain. Now, his psyche was trying to tell him that because he cared about Eddie, he wanted his first time to be good. It made sense, he supposed. He’d always been a little bit vain. Who better to show Eddie a good time than himself? Which, yeah, that was something he was never going to admit out loud. Hand jobs were one thing. But sex with another guy? Yeah, that wasn’t something he’d ever thought about before. He couldn’t let Eddie know. He would totally freak out and never want to hang out with him again. So, right. No making this weird. He could do that. He could be so normal.

Eddie stared into the endless swirling vortex that was his cereal and contemplated how he’d gotten to this point in his life. He might not be a genius, but for the most part he considered himself to be a pretty savvy and intelligent person. Apparently not, seeing as he was allowing a goddamn straight boy to ruin his life. It was fucking embarrassing.

All week, he’d had to pretend like everything was super chill and normal. Meanwhile, in his brain, he’d been slowly spiraling into a chaotic mess. Because Steve was just so chill. On Monday, he’d waltzed right up to Eddie like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. And hell, maybe for Steve, nothing had. Because apparently, Steve got off with all his buddies! And now, somehow someway, that included Eddie. As if Steve hadn’t been the first boy to ever touch him like that.

And the worst thing? Eddie could not. Stop. Thinking about it. Every night he laid in bed and remembered the way Steve’s hand had felt wrapped around his cock, the way he’d stroked so confidently. The way he’d looked, with his mouth partially open and those big pretty eyes half hooded with what looked like desire. But fuck, maybe that was just Steve’s ‘getting off’ face. It was absolutely maddening. And Eddie shouldn’t want it to happen again. He should tell Steve that he wasn’t interested in doing those things with him. You know, like a liar.

But that was probably the right thing to do. Because clearly, he wasn’t capable of doing things in half measures. Maybe if he wasn’t a needy, clingy, pathetic mess, he could allow himself to have something like this. For some people, this was probably the best of both worlds! He could be friends with Steve, hang-out and have a good time, and then get off whenever he wanted. But Eddie knew himself. He was going to want more. He always wanted more. And with Steve, that was goddamn inevitable.

And yet, like the fool that he was, Eddie knew he wouldn’t say no if Steve offered again. No, if Steve looked at him with those big pretty eyes, he would fold like a fucking lawn chair. Because, and he could not iterate this enough, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Shit, he’d already had two wet dreams, with Steve as the main star, in the last week alone. So, yeah. Basically he was screwed.

“Fuck!” he screamed, his voice echoing around the small space of the trailer’s kitchen.

Wayne jolted from where he’d been reclined in front of the tv, a hand flying to his chest. What a drama queen. “Jesus Christ, boy! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “If I haven’t given you one yet, I think you’ll be okay.”

“I swear to god,” Wayne mumbled, shaking his head. “You’ve taken a full decade off my life expectancy.”

“Oh please, you know I keep you young.”

Wayne huffed, finally seeming to calm down. “What are you shouting about anyways?”

At the reminder, Eddie dropped his face onto the table with a heavy thunk. “Steve Harrington.”

“Harrington?” Wayne asked, his tone turning concerned. “Is he bothering you? I know his daddy is a real piece of work, so I can’t imagine the boy’s much better.”

Eddie let out a high pitched laugh and dragged his face off the table. “You’d think so, right? I know I sure did! But no, Steve just so happens to be an absolute sweetheart of a person! Like, he’s actually nice. And he babysits a bunch of middle school nerds! For free! And he compliments my band and sits with me at lunch and gives me rides. He’s nearly fucking perfect!”

Wayne furrowed his brow. “And that’s… a bad thing?”

“It’s a terrible thing!” Eddie shouted, leaping from his chair. By now, his cereal had gone soft and mushy, so he carried the bowl over to the sink. “Because now I have this stupid crush on this stupid straight boy. Although, trust me, I have some doubts about that, because let’s just say some of his activities are decidedly more on the homosexual side. But what am I supposed to do about that, huh? I can’t just go up to him and be like ‘Hey Steve, have you maybe considered that you might actually like dick? Hmm?’.”

Eddie walked to the sofa and dropped onto it without stopping his rant. “And even if he was a little bit queer, who’s to say he would like me? Because if his type is anywhere in the ballpark of Nancy Wheeler, then there’s no chance at all that he would ever like me. I’m literally her opposite! Steve would probably be into someone like, I don’t know, Jason Carver. Which, ew, god, I can’t believe I even said that. But still! The point stands! So now, I just have to live with my pathic, hopeless crush until I die.”

He ended by flopping an arm over his face. For several seconds, Wayne said nothing. This was pretty normal, for one of Eddie’s tirades. Mostly he didn’t need a response, just a captive audience for him share the many woes that made up his life. But eventually, Wayne hummed.

“Sounds like you’ve gotta decide whether you’ll be happier with him in your life as just your friend and nothing else, or without him at all.”

Eddie scrunched up his face, refusing to look at his uncle. “It’s not that simple. Besides a couple of middle schoolers, I’m pretty much the only friend he has now.”

“And if he suddenly gained some other friends and you didn’t feel beholden to him? Would you choose to cut him out then?”

God damnit. God fucking damn Wayne’s stupid logic! Because, yeah, the answer was no. He wouldn’t cut Steve off, not now. The last few weeks had been eye opening, and on top of his ridiculous infatuation, Eddie just really liked being around Steve. He added something to their group that they’d been missing, something fresh.

He groaned, loudly. “But what am I supposed to do?”

“Well,” Wayne said, “If you want the boy in your life, and you don’t think there’s any hope of there ever being more, then you’re going to have to try and put those feelings aside. Treat him like your friend first, and your crush second.”

Yeah, alright, that made sense. It didn’t mean Eddie had to like it! It was fully within his rights to mope as much as he wanted when he was in the privacy of his own home. Although, that didn’t leave him much time, seeing as Steve would be coming over to the trailer tonight so they could go to the drive-in. Which, if asked, seemed like a date thing to Eddie. But hey, it wasn’t like he was an expert or anything.

And what was worse, Steve wanted Eddie to dress him up in his clothes! How was he supposed to survive that? Every time Eddie pictured Steve in any of his clothes, the temperature in the room crept up to an uncomfortable level.

Regardless, Eddie spent an outrageous amount of time picking out the perfect outfit. He went through every shirt, every pair of jeans, ever belt. By the time he’d come to a final decision, Steve was due to arrive within twenty minutes. That gave Eddie barely enough time to rush through a shower, throw on a band shirt and jeans, and blow dry his hair. When a knock sounded at the front door just three minutes after six, Eddie had barely gotten his hair into a low bun. With a steadying breath, he yanked open the front door.

Steve stood on the steps, his face tilted up and a small smile on his lips. God, he was so pretty. He rocked back on his heels and tucked his hands into his pockets as he looked over Eddie.

“Welcome, Sir Steven, to my humble dwellings.”

Continue reading the the full chapter on AO3

#steddie #steddie au #steddie fic #steve harrington #eddie munson #steve and eddie #fanfic #My writing

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