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lace-coffin · 5 months

Note

Hi! Can I ask how the slashers would feel if they ever accidentally hurt their s/o? Gender and everything is up to you!

How slashers would react to Accidently hurting their S/O

Thank you so much for my first ever request ah! I hope you enjoy 💖

Requests are open!

Warning for blood/injury - mild sexual content/reference to sexual activity and power dynamics -unhealthy relationships (I think?)

Reader is gender neutral!

Bubba sawyer

Most likely happened via bubba playing to hard and Accidently pushing you over or squeezing you to hard. If it’s a case of them mistaking you for a victim and catching you with their chainsaw before stopping they’ll be even more in inconsolable.

Stops and stares for a minute to process what’s happened before devolving into full blown panic

She’ll drop whatever she’s doing to carry you back to the house, even if that means letting the victim escape and having Drayton yell at her.

Will hurriedly explain in rushed sign to either choptop or nubbins to go take care of the victim as he’s busy caring for you

Checks you over frantically. Please explain you’re going to be ok and help them calm down.

Once he knows you’re not in any danger he’ll feel absolutely awful about it and whine apologies to you even if you tell him it’s ok and it wasn’t their fault

Please comfort them once you feel better and reassure them.

Will insist you come up with a verbal and nonverbal sign to give if they’re Accidently messing around to hard.

Will make you agree to stay in the house out of the way when victims are around so you don’t Accidently get hurt again.

Thomas Hewitt

After another night of Hoyt berating him for things out of his control Tommy storms off to the basement to cool off. You follow him wanting to comfort him. You touch him despite him not liking physical touch without warning thinking it might help and he grabs your wrist a little to hard and you wince.

He snatches his hand back as soon as he realises what he’s done

Tommy will bring you to Luda may to have her check you over and assess the damage

Once he knows you’re safe he’ll confine himself to the basement for a few days, only coming out to eat but even then it’s tense

He’s truly sorry and feels like all those people who called him a monster and an animal were right, he hurt the one he cares about most after all

After a few days apart, a lot of hushed words of affirmation and kisses/nose bumps he’ll feel comfortable being with you again

You know to let him cool off by himself and come to you when he’s ready after a heated argument now.

Michale Myers

You jump out At Michael thinking it would be funny to catch the shape off guard for once and not the other way around. Unfortunately this backfires and he swings his knife at you, thinking it may be an intruder since you’ve never pulled something like this before. You manage to jolt out of the way but the knife still catches you in the shoulder. Thankfully it’s only superficial and will heal but it still looks like it needs medical attention.

Initially Michael looks at you unamused, granted it’s hard to tell what he’s feeling under the mask. He gives you a kind of “well If you weren’t being dumb this wouldn’t have happened” attitude. However this is a front for the actual panic he refuses to show on the surface.

Having a few cuts and scratches isn’t super uncommon when your with Michael considering his tastes involving knives in bed 😌

Usually hurting others comes naturally and without remorse to Michael and it shakes him that he’s actively worrying about your wellbeing.

It disturbs him that he actually cares about someone enough to feel remorse for his actions.

After unceremoniously pulling your shirt off and looking the wound over he makes you go to A&E

Since he’s basically an escaped criminal he can’t casually walk in the hospital with you, however he will stalk you the entire time, lurking not far behind to make sure you arrive and leave safely.

Although he usually has his guard up he vows to try be a little less bristly with you from now on if it means he doesn’t have to see you hurt and feel that awful tug of regret/worry in his chest.

Jason voorhees

You went out looking for Jason one night after he hadn’t returned to the cabin by his usual time. You were worried he’d been overpowered by a group of trespassers and didn’t have any way to communicate that to you since the woods is so vast.

Whilst looking for him you get your leg caught in a bear trap he had set for the trespassers. You howl in pain as you hear the sickening snap of your ankle between the traps jaws.

Jason was on his way back to the cabin when he heard this. Knowing that wasn’t a trespasser as he’d already cleared them out alarm bells went off in his head. He stormed to scene as fast as he could.

He could have sworn his undead heart stopped for the second time as he saw you sitting there in agony, murky blood seeping into the forest floor.

He rushes to your side and looks frantically between the trap and your teary face, he knows he’s going to have to disengage the traps and for you it’s going to be..not so pleasent.

He signs for you to grip onto his arm as he’s doing it. Since he’s already dead and regenerates he feels it’s the least he can do to let you grip his arm for dear life as he wrenches the trap from your shattered ankle. If you cause any damage to his arm (which is very unlikely) it will heal up in no time anyway.

Once he’s carried you back to the cabin he’ll be frantically following Pamela’s directions in his head for what to do and how to clean/ wrap it.

If the damage is extensive he’ll relent and let you go to the hospital, only if a trusted friend takes you though and he’ll be sitting by the window your shared cabin every minute until you return back to him.

Your no longer aloud to be out in the woods after dark alone it he’s set traps. You both carry whistles now so if he’s not home and you need to know he’s safe you can whistle to each other.

Billy Lenz

Interacting with Billy when he’s having an episode is never a good idea. You thought it would be ok to just he in the room though. As you enter Billy is in the midst of trashing his attic once again, the disgusting feelings bubbling in his chest to much to bear. You enter just as he’s thrown an old glass christmas ornament at the floor that the sorority had kept in storage in the attic. It shatters and flecks of glass scatter along the floor. One piece catching you in the hand in a nasty glass splinter. You swear under your breath and rush of to take care of it.

Billy doesn’t even realised what’s happened until you return to him after he’s exhausted himself. You bring him a sandwich and juice knowing he’ll need it after all the energy and tears he just used up.

As his hand touches yours whilst accepting the plate he noticed the bandage.

Billy essentially bristles up like an angry cat at the idea of someone hurting his piggy and demands to know who did it and what happened.

Once you tell him it was actually from the ornament he feels horrible. He doesn’t even remember it happening in the state he was in.

He snuggles into the crook of your neck and mumbles apologies into your skin.

Billy will place sloppy kisses over it as an apology until you forgive him. (Not exactly hygenic since it’s an open wound but i mean…you’re dating the attic rat)

Brahms Heelshire

When living with Brahms there isn’t usually much to injure yourself on considering the estate is fairly out of the way from the rest of the village. You most likely caught yourself on a pair of sheers. Brahms is being stubborn about you being out of the house and slings the sheers in your general direction from the door frame when you ask for them. You don’t even notice you caught your hand when catching them until you see a patch of blood on your gardening gloves about ten minutes later.

You come in to grab a tea towel to wrap your bleeding finger in, not really fazed as it’s only a small cut. Brahms was lurking from the window as you tended to the hedges, not wanting to be away from you but not yet brave enough to tempt leaving the house he’s been in all these years.

As soon as he sees it he’s panicking, it’s only a little cut and you’re not concerned but to Brahms you may as well have just came in with an arm missing. He’s instantly flittering around you asking if your ok and if your need a hospital.

You stifle your laugh at his over the top concern because you find it rather sweet, it’s not his fault he’s a little sheltered.

After cleaning the cut and bandaging it it’s totally fine. If anything Brahms needs more reassuring and coddling than you do to get him to settle.

He apologises a thousand times for his attitude because he knows If he hadn’t been stroppy about you leaving the house and passed the sheers nicely then you wouldn’t have been hurt in the first place. He promises to try be more composed when he starts getting antsy.

He may need some ✨punishment✨ in order to encourage his behaviour change and to feel forgiven 👀

He begrudgingly lets you back outside to garden after about a week.

Asa Emory

If you’re the pet of Asa then it’s likely most of your injuries are purposefully given from him and are no mistake. You’re poked and prodded often at your place in the collection. Wounds from experiments and correctional punishments when you disobey or refuse to submit are not uncommon at all. So it doesn’t bother him since he inflicted them. This also assures he cleans them with clinical precision. If you were anyone else in his collection he would leave the wounds to fester and if you died from a complication then that was just inconvenient. Not you though, you’ve caught his attention and heart. He loves you in his own domineering way.

If the wound was created by him and an accident he would give himself a hard time.

For example if he had more trouble with law enforcement than he thought he would and that led to you to spending way more time in the trunk than you usually do. You develop a sore from sitting in one cramped position for so long.

Asa would realise your hurt once you’re let out of the trunk and hiss in pain as you stretch. He makes you show him where it is so he can inspect it.

Despite Asa’s stony face his stomach is actively sinking. He knows your hurt because of him and it want even on purpose. He sees this as fault in his care of his pet and a blow to his god complex due to making mistakes. Gods don’t make mistakes.

He’ll make sure to clean it for you and even stop putting you in the trunk for a while. This does still mean you’ll be attached to him via leash or chain connected to the ring sitting on his hips where he keeps his keys. Just because your hurt and his favourite doesn’t mean he will except anything less than your complete and total submission.

He’ll be more tender and soft handed with you than usual to a while after. Punishments will be withheld until you heal. Then it is back to normal as expected.

Predator/yautja

You were wearing a new perfume you’d picked up at the market. You were only supposed to be getting meats and maybe a new fur for the bed but once the alien at the stand had convinced you to sample it you fell in love with it.

Your mate picks up on an unknown scent entering the house and stalks towards it. As soon as they catch the heat signature they throw a wrist blade in warning.

Their eyes widen and they rush to the door as they smell your tangly blood hit the floor of your house on yautja prime.

The new perfume hid your familiar scent from them and made them believe the house was being intruded on. If their face could loose colour it would as they see the wrist blade sticking through your palm, groceries discarded at the door.

They start talking at you in rapid clicks before they realise you can’t understand. After making sure to keep the object in your hand so it doesn’t bleed more and that your not going to pass out they insist on carrying you their medic instead of finding a human one.

They argue that their medicine is far more advanced and will heal your wound much more efficiently then your “ primitive ooman medicine”

Thanks to yautja medicine being far more advanced the wound is stitched shut and you’re given some kind of injection. It will heal like nothing ever happened in around two weeks.

Your mate purrs and clicks for you deep from their chest the entire time you’re having the blade removed to try calm you.

They beg for forgiveness despite it being an accident and will need reassurance that they haven’t failed you as a mate. Once you’re healed they’ll bring back an impressive skull from a hunt as an apology even if you’ve already forgiven them.

Whilst it’s healing you’re probably going be kept in the nest of furs and pulled against them whilst they purr and sooth you.

My requests are open if you’d like to send any prompts or ideas for me to write!

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murdockparker · 1 month

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Roses and Regrets - Part 1

Anthony Bridgerton x Reader

Summary: Freshly out of mourning, Lady Barlow, née (Y/L/N), makes her re-debut in society. If only she could simply ignore a certain viscount...

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: none. enemies to lovers!!

A/N: I didn't expect this lil requested fic to turn into such an event, let alone a multi-part story! so, you're welcome or I'm sorry?

next part

She was perfectly happy.

Well, supposedly right now she wasn’t.

Her husband, Lord Barlow, had passed away ten months ago, leaving her with an empty estate, a shiny title and more money than she knew what to do with. Lord Barlow was an old viscount, desperate for an heir and willing to do anything to get one.

In came Miss (Y/N) (Y/L/N).

Young, beautiful and well-bred, she was the perfect choice for any man of the ton. If only her father hadn’t a penchant for gambling. Perhaps she’d be married to a man more suited for her rather than the oaf of a dustbin she was forced to be with. She was no fool in believing in a love match for herself, rare and far between as they were, no, but she did have half a mind to imagine a kinder man as her husband. A man who perhaps cared even a little bit for her wellbeing.

No matter.

A dead man cannot care for her wellbeing either.

“Lady Barlow,” a maid knocked, entering the ornate drawing room.

“Yes?” (Y/N) did not look up from her reading—the newest edition of Whistledown had just been delivered. While she herself was never one to gossip terribly, it was quite fun to keep up with the circus of the season.

“Do you plan on attending the Danbury ball this eve?”

“I do not see the point,” she scoffed playfully, “after all, Meg, I am but a widow in mourning.”

“Perhaps her ladyship should reconsider?” Meg asked gently, placing a new pot of tea next to her lady. “I rather think it has been a socially acceptable amount of time since your husband’s passing.”

“If I am not to enjoy the perks of being a widow,” (Y/N) sighed, finally looking up at her favorite lady’s maid, “whatever is the point?”

“Perks that Viscount Barlow has graciously allowed you to use during your time of mourning—”

“The current viscount is all but twelve,” (Y/N) reminded. “He has no use for this estate in Mayfair until he himself becomes an adult, in which, I am sure he and his mother will come to make use of it. I believe if my maths are correct, that leaves me all of six years or so to use this home.”

“Forgive me my lady, but should you not be looking for a new husband, then?”

(Y/N) smiled at Meg. She enjoyed their friendship, her maid being only a handful of years older than herself, it made for a likely pair. “No one wishes to marry a widow,” she said simply, “widows are damaged goods. Every sensible man of the ton will be wanting a pretty little virgin instead.”

“My lady!”

“What?” She barked a laugh. “You know it to be true.”

“Regardless,” Meg said, clearing her throat. “Lord Barlow passed nearly a year ago, the period of mourning is rightfully over. You are expected to rejoin society.”

“Dreadful.”

“It is expected,” Meg repeated.

“It does not make it any less dreadful,” (Y/N) said. “Very well. Pull a dress and prepare a bath, it seems the ton gets to see my dreary face once again.”

—

Anthony Bridgerton was a man scorned.

Particularly by his own mother in this very instance. How foolish he had been to share his intentions of marriage this season with her—for now she spread the news like a wildfire. Every desperate mama and her equally desperate daughter came flocking to him like bees to honey.

It was only now, in the dark corner of the ballroom, that he found a respite.

“Looking a bit green, Lord Bridgerton,” a voice beside him called out.

“I am not—” Anthony had huffed a reply before even knowing whom he was speaking to. “Lady Barlow.”

“I am shocked you can recall my name,” (Y/N) laughed over her champagne flute. “Considering how many new ones you’ve had thrown at you this eve.”

“You are out of mourning.”

“Is that a question?”

“It was an observation,” Anthony corrected.

“What gave it away? My bright dress? No tear stains left on my cheeks?”

“You are here, out and about,” Anthony said. “And, forgive me for not playing along with your delusions, but I do not think you cried much at all for Lord Barlow’s passing.”

“How dare you assume such a thing,” (Y/N) faux gasped. She had intended on pressing a hand to her chest. Intended, anyway. Somehow she forgot all about the champagne currently residing it her grasp. “Damn… this was a new dress too.”

“Good God,” he laughed. “First you are spilling all over yourself like a child and now you are cursing—tell me, do all married ladies act like you?”

“I am a widow,” (Y/N) had found a cloth and begun dabbing up the spill. It had only dribbled at most, but still, it was a new dress. “I rather think I can act the way I please.”

“Like a drunkard?”

“Like a free woman,” she said, fighting every childish urge to stick her tongue out at the viscount. “I am only here to show my face, prove I am still alive and I shall go about my merry way.”

“Lady Danbury is a widow,” Anthony noted. “Yet she still mingles with society.”

“I am not Lady Danbury.”

“You are not.”

“Do you not have young misses to go and woo?” (Y/N)’s eyes hardened. “Take your pick from the litter, Lord Bridgerton, any of them would be pleased to spend such valuable time with you.”

“Are you insinuating you are not?”

“I rather thought it was a statement, yes,” (Y/N) said.

Anthony’s eyes went only a fraction wider, nostrils flaring. “Well, if that is what you wish—”

“It is not a mean of wishing,” she laughed, “but really a necessity.”

“Good evening, Lady Barlow,” Anthony sneered, smoke practically coming out of his ears. If (Y/N) had half a mind she’d call for the authorities to put that fire out, instead, she simply finished her drink and smiled wistfully at the dancing ballroom, feeling fulfilled.

—

Dearest Gentle Reader,

The season is in full swing thanks to the mark of Lady Agatha Danbury’s ball, a notable and traditional first event of the London scene. Eligible young ladies now on the Marriage Mart were enjoying their first taste at what fine society has to offer, however taxing or daunting it may be.

Our resident Capital ‘R’ Rake, Viscount Anthony Bridgerton is finally deciding on a wife, surely making him the finest catch of the season. Matchmaking mamas and their young ladies alike were seen flocking to him like petulant children asking their parents for pin money, thanks to his own mother, Lady Bridgerton’s declaration of such an idea last night. The viscount seemingly had enough of the attention, taking like a wallflower and hiding away in the back of the ballroom near the end of the evening.

His company? None other than Lady Barlow, evidently out of mourning as of last night. While the this Author is under good authority that the match between Lady Barlow and the late Lord Barlow was not a love match, given their fourty or fifty year age difference, it has taken the new dowager viscountess longer than most anticipated for her to get back into the season. A woman as young as Lady Barlow would be eager to find another husband to support her, but something tells me that she is quite enjoying her time as a widow and will not easily give that up.

While this Author has very little idea of the actual nature of the relationship between Lord Bridgerton and Lady Barlow, it is only to be assumed that it is simply not a favorable one. The two were seen making a scene by the refreshment table, a scene that went unnoticed by many prying eyes of the ton, leaving Lord Bridgerton storming away and Lady Barlow with the winning hand.

Good show, Lady Barlow.

Lady Whistledown Society Papers

—

“Brother! You are in Whistledown!” Eloise sang to no one in particular.

“I have no care that I am in that gossip rag,” Anthony ground out, rustling his newspaper. “I can only imagine it is just another advertisement of my search for a wife this season.”

“Er, yes, however—”

“However?” Anthony’s attention immediately shot up to his sister, newspaper be damned.

“Who is Lady Barlow?” Eloise asked.

“No one of importance,” Anthony could feel his temperature rising.

“Lady Barlow?” Benedict laughed. “Is that who you were talking to last night dear Brother? Is she not still in mourning?”

“No.”

“No it is not who you were talking to, or no she is not still in mourning?” Benedict gave his brother an amusing glance.

“Oh, according to Whistledown—”

“Sister—”

“Eloise, you may not recall Lady Barlow, given you only just came out this season,” Benedict began, deciding that this conversation was very much worth his time this morning. “But she used to go by Miss (Y/L/N) before her marriage to the late viscount.”

“(Y/L/N)…” Eloise looked to the ceiling, finding nothing in particular. “Oh! Is she not the woman who—”

“I am taking my leave,” Anthony said abruptly, newspaper all but forgotten.

“Escaping, Brother?” Benedict asked.

“I have calls to make,” Anthony sneered, ignoring the pleased face his brother was making. “Excuse me.”

“It seems Lady Barlow is a touchy subject,” Eloise noted as her eldest brother left the drawing room. Benedict snorted. “What?”

“You do not even know the half of it, dear Sister.”

Anthony Bridgerton, did not in fact, have any calls to make. He had no impressionable interactions last night to warrant such a visit to anyone—the Queen was still in need of naming her diamond, after all—but he had no desire to stay and be berated by his family this morning. He truly had no plan, no thought in his head on where he was going, he just simply was.

Apparently he was going to the park.

It was still early in the day, few people graced the park at such an hour. The few who did, however, were too busy reading the latest Whistledown to even notice him. Anthony saw a handful of post boys running opposite of his direction on his way here, it was only natural they scoped out this location. He knew it was going to be a problem the minute they finished reading—if Lady Whistledown truly wrote about him, which he had no reason to believe his sister was lying about, all eyes would be on him.

“Might as well enjoy the peace and quiet for now,” Anthony exhaled. He took a quick glance at his watch—half past eight. Hardly could he recall a time he took a turn about the park on his own, usually he was in the company of his family or holed away in his study worrying about expenses and the like, never did he take a moment to actually enjoy the grand weather such as the kind today. Determined to enjoy it, he sat down on a favorable bench and watched the birds swim across the pond.

“Unbelievable.”

He turned his head, only to find Lady Barlow dressed in a rather pleasantly pink dress and matching hat, a look of distaste on her face.

“I didn’t take you as the park-going type, Lord Bridgerton,” she nodded, folding her hands. She had been carrying a small red book in one of them. “Especially at such an early hour, too.”

“Lady Barlow,” he nearly sneered. “Can a man not enjoy the park?”

“Oh surely a man can,” (Y/N) agreed. “But you? You are no man.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It seems to me that you’re sitting in my spot,” she ignored his quip, readjusting her stance in annoyance. “This is where I come to read.”

“Can you not read elsewhere?” Anthony asked. “There is an entire park at your disposal.”

“No,” she hummed. “Afraid not.”

“No?” He laughed. “Surely out of the entire park you can find a suitable spot to read your—let me guess—romantically inclined fodder?”

“Poetry,” she corrected, “and no, I cannot simply read elsewhere. The shade is just right under this tree and I rather like overlooking the pond between my chapters.”

“Shame I got here first, then,” Anthony clicked.

“You…!” (Y/N) scoffed, fighting every urge in her body to stomp her foot. “You are an impossible man, surely you know that?”

“I thought you said I was no man?” Anthony’s brow quirked. “Or perhaps I misheard?”

She scowled. “You are not amusing.”

“On the contrary,” Anthony leaned back on the bench, stretching his arms and taking his claim. “I find myself very amusing.”

A duck quacked from the pond, either laughing at the viscount or agreeing with him—it was hard to tell.

“You leave me no choice,” (Y/N) said sternly, taking a seat on the other end of the bench—feeling worlds apart from the man on the far side. In actuality, it couldn’t have been more than two feet, three at most.

“Truly?” Anthony laughed humorlessly. “You cannot be serious.”

“Hush,” (Y/N) said, opening her book in earnest. “I am trying to read.”

While there had been no guns drawn, this was a duel, in every sense of the word. Both parties sitting still as statues, Anthony’s gaze trained on the pond, (Y/N)’s on her book. Occasionally, she’d flip her page to the next, huffing every time Anthony still did not get up and move on.

Stubborn. Both of them.

“Will you be quiet?” Anthony said, growing exasperated. “I cannot think when you are breathing so loud—”

“You wish for me not to breathe?” She shut her book. “I never anticipated you’d wish me dead—”

“Please,” Anthony said. “You know that is not what I mean at all.”

“I never know with you. You, Anthony Bridgerton, are an enigma and I hope I never have the pleasure of truly understanding you,” (Y/N) said, fingers whiting from her grip on her book.

“So you admit it would be pleasurable?”

She wanted to wipe that grin off of his face, how, she was unsure. Idly, she thought about how a good smack to his cheek would feel. Painful in the moment but oh-so wonderful after, cathartic, probably. “I am not getting up.”

“Neither am I.”

“I am willing to die on this bench,” (Y/N) spat.

“Funnily enough,” Anthony’s voice dropped, “so am I.”

“How are you to find your viscountess on this bench?” She asked, angling her body towards the torturous man. “Surely you do not expect her to just walk past?”

“I am sure I can manage,” Anthony said calmly. “Many young ladies will walk this way when they see me sitting here."

“Even with another woman sitting beside you?”

“I rather think they’ll find you easy to ignore, I know I do.”

“Ha! You are truly something else, Lord Bridgerton,” (Y/N) sat straighter. “Insulting a polite woman in public?”

“You are the furthest thing from polite,” Anthony leaned in. “Rude, ostentatious, quite full of herself—”

“Might I offer you a mirror?” The grip on her book tightened, cover bending from the force. “Or are you afraid you’ll see horns?”

“Oh, do they match yours?” He nearly sang.

“Funny,” she clicked, finally setting her book down, lacing her fingers together in her lap. “You should run a comedy act at the circus, seeing as you are a right clown.”

Anthony stood up, whether by the force of his breath or sheer spite he will never know. “You are the most ridiculous woman I have ever met.”

(Y/N) met his height, now standing as well. “And you are the most irritating man I’ve ever had the displeasure of knowing.”

“I am going to walk this way,” Anthony said, forcefully pointing to his right, eyes not leaving hers. She did have the most remarkable eyes.

“And I will walk this way,” she pointed to her left, less force in her action but seething all the same. “Have the day you deserve, Lord Bridgerton.”

“Why you little…!”

She had already turned and stomped away, a fuming smudge of pink against the greenery of the park, growing further away with every step.

“What a wretched woman,” he mumbled, looking down at his watch again—nine on-the-dot. In the corner of his eye, something bright red caught his attention. Her book. She had left it behind.

Perhaps he would burn it.

Perhaps he would just put it in his pocket and carry about his day.

In the pocket it went. For now.

#anthony bridgerton #bridgerton #anthony bridgerton x reader #bridgerton x reader #bridgerton imagines #enemies to lovers #multi-part fic #reader insert #whoops i didn't expect this request to turn into a multiple part thing but here we are #unsure of how many parts but probably no more than 4-5?#idk

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tainsan · 11 months

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misfits (college!ateez x reader)

When your world comes crashing down, the only people who are able to comfort you are the notorious group, Ateez. You’ve heard rumour after rumour about the eight males who are ice cold, yet for some reason, they are the warmest people you know.

Please read me: {hello! so finally i have wrote enough for me to release the first chapter and i really hope it is good enough for the lovely people who have been patiently waiting. there will be more chapters to come in the future so please do look forward to them! just so you all know there is a few trigger warnings i have to go through so just in case you are uncomfortable with certain subjects to read with caution and with your own comfort in mind. at the start of every chapter i will put the warnings that correlate with the said chapter. in this story there are topics of swearing, depression, anxiety, ptsd, suicide, negelection and mental abuse. so if you are not comfortable reading these please either avoid this story or read with extreme caution. your wellbeing is more important than anything.

Now like i said in my previous post, this is going to be a poly!ateez story so hence there will be future smut and suggestive themes (which i will also put in the warnings before the chapter starts) but the message in the story is very much about past trauma and finding people who can help, heal and love you despite your imperfections.

With that all said! I hope you enjoy the first chapter of ‘Misfits’ and thank you kindly for waiting.

do not steal my work or repost on places other than tumblr.

with thanks to @musicdork and @moraxology for the help and ideas shared with me. thank you <3

-----THIS IS AN 18+ FANFICTION MINORS DO NOT INTERACT-----

Misfits, Chapter 1

⇢ masterlist ⇠

⇢ next chapter

warnings: anxiety attack, swearing, mentions of a house fire.

word count: 8.8k

Heart dropping to your stomach, you attempt to make sense of the words that are displayed on the small illuminating screen sat in front of you. Devastation hits you like a ton of bricks as you realise once again, it feels like the world is trying to punish you. Reading over the email once again, you let out an exasperated groan and let your head fall down onto your arms relaxing on the table.

“You’re homeless?” Your best friend almost screeches, scanning over the email present on your small laptop screen.

“Okay a little louder Jisung and the aliens on the Saturn will fucking hear you,” You react, your voice muffled by your clothes.

“What happened? I thought your place was in one of the nicer areas?”

Looking up from the desk, you see Jisung peering at you with a concerned expression.

“Do you remember those new tenants that moved in below me?” you ask, causing Jisung to nod his head, "Well they accidentally started a fire, and it burnt down half of the place because the owners weren’t smart enough to install fire hydrants around the residence.

“Isn’t it illegal to not have designated fire hydrants in a building?”

“Probably, I mean that’s what I get for going for the cheapest available housing I could find, they say it's going to take at least a year to repair the damage.”

"Are all of your belongings okay?"

"Not really, I managed to save most things like my books and some clothes but everything else is burnt. They say they are going to give me some money back for the damage, but I doubt it’ll be much."

"Then where are you staying now?"

"Yeji said I could stay with her for a few days, but she has a roommate moving in soon, so I have to get out before the end of this week."

"You have to start looking for a place to live __, I wish I could help you,"

Jisung lives with his boyfriend and friends in great student accommodation, there are only four rooms, yet they manage to fit eight grown men in there. Sadly, there's simply not enough space for another person.

“I’m aware of that, but all the school properties are full, and I’ve seen no flyers from people searching for roommates. There’s no way I'm looking for housing outside of the area, I would have to sell both my kidneys to afford a month's worth of rent. This apartment was the only place that was in my budget if I didn't want a roommate. At this point, I should probably start looking for a nice cosy bridge to live under.”

Jisung lets out a stifled laugh before quickly covering his mouth realising the two of you are residing in a library. Being in a secluded area, noise isn’t really a problem, yet three other people are sitting near you, resting on the opposite side of the large wooden table. Two huddled next to each other, sharing a laptop, likely watching YouTube and one with striking blonde hair resting his head on his arms, undoubtedly sleeping.

“How many days until you have to move out?” Jisung inquires, laying his head on his hand and gazing at you.

“Uh, I think like a week,”

“Oh, so it’s not like you have to move out right now,” your best friend replies, a calm smile covering his features.

“Yeah, but I doubt that somebody is abruptly going to need a roommate out of nowhere,”

Then, you hear rustling, then suddenly the guy who was sleeping on your table abruptly stands up, grabs his things, and rushes out of the library.

“Probably had a nightmare or something,” Jisung chuckles, lighting up your mood.

“When’s your next lesson?” You ask, hoping he doesn't have to leave too soon.

Observing as Jisung whips out his phone and looks at the time, he lets out a sigh.

“Starts in seven minutes, it takes like five minutes to walk there. I better get going,” Jisung replies, grabbing his books and laptop.

“Must you leave so soon? You can’t leave me here to tutor for three hours straight.” You let out a fake cry and hang onto his arm, pleading for him to stay.

“You're the one who wanted the extra credit, don't blame me!”

Bickering for a minute more, you eventually let Jisung get to his class, the two others across the table departing as well, leaving you alone.

Grumbling to yourself, you wonder why you even offered to tutor people, the extra credit is little to nothing. Alas, it’s too late to back out now as you have two people arriving soon. Typically, you only take people who you know personally, but Jisung’s boyfriend, Minho, said two of his classmates requested him to ask you to tutor, telling him they really needed assistance in maths. You hope they are pleasant because you are not about to be spending the next three hours with two arseholes.

You also typically only take one person at a time but due to your current tight schedule, you decided to just do two at once. You need the time later to look for new places to live anyway. The unknown two needed teaching in the same subject at least, works out fine.

Returning to your laptop you start typing, trying to finish as much of your lab report as you can before they show up.

“No Yeosang said she was around this corner.”

A hushed voice breaks you out of your concentration, yet you pay no interest and hurriedly get back to typing.

“You’re __ right?” A monotone voice speaks out from your left.

You turn upon hearing your name and see a guy standing next to where you are sitting. Quickly you scan over his face, noticing the way his cheeks display small dimples as his face shifts and the slit in one of his eyebrows.

“I’m San, Minho told you about us, right?”

Noting the way he said ‘us’, you turn fully backwards and see a noticeably built man standing by San, his face holding little to no emotion as he stares blankly towards you. In your mind, you hope these aren’t the two you are tutoring, noticing how intimidating their presence is.

“We are here for tutoring lessons,” the unnamed person speaks, and you curse upon your luck.

“Oh right, you can take a seat where you’d like.”

You mentally cuss out Minho for not informing you about how intense and handsome his classmates were, you let out a scoff under your breath as you start to pull out your maths textbooks.

“So, what were your guy's names, I’m not too good with names so if I forget, please don't take it personally,” you shyly confess, hoping they are not going to take it the wrong way. You detect the way some sort of stunned expression goes across their faces, but it disappears as soon as it had appeared.

“I’m Choi San, good to meet you.” San nods in your direction, his emotions still unreadable, a subtle glare still present along his features.

“San, I see. You too,” You mumble, slightly scared by his strong character. You attempt a small smile and shake his hand, trying to ignore the way you feel his eyes boring into your skull. Moving your attention to the man sitting next to him, you smile gently, noticing the way his cheeks are dusted with a light pink colour.

“Choi Jongho,” He reaches out his hand and you gladly take it, feeling slightly less intimidated by the seemingly kinder man.

Replying with your own name, you realise they already knew it, making you curse yourself for the sheer awkwardness emitting from your body as you notice Jongho and San are neither looking at you.

Slightly glancing up at you, San notices your flustered state and a faint smile ghosts his face.

Shaking off your clumsiness rapidly, you start to focus on the task at hand.

“So, what are you two looking to go over today?” you ask, opening your notebook that was conveniently placed in front of you. What you don’t expect is Jongho and San immediately look at each other with wide eyes, almost as if they are taken aback by the question.

“You guys don’t know what you want to go over?”

“No, sorry, we have been having problems with our two recent algebra assignments.” Jongho replies, his tough exterior cracking ever so slightly as he ruffles his black hair.

“Okay then,” you answer, a little puzzled at the two's sudden and strange gestures, yet you pay no mind to it as you reach into your backpack to grab your mathematics textbook. You’ve seen much stranger things in this college anyway.

When you proceed with the session you are surprised by the two men sitting in front of you. Although being very intimidating, the two are very good listeners and attentive to everything you say or do. Writing notes and nodding at almost every word you say. After an extensive explanation, you let Jongho and San try to solve a practice question. During this time, you take the time to admire the two in front of you. You can see they are extremely close by the way their bodies face each other naturally, and the way they look at each other. Meanwhile, you can’t help but wonder why you haven't seen them on campus before. Certainly, you would've heard or seen something about these two very good-looking men, knowing how much the people here like to gossip. Well after all, you have never been one for gossip and fangirling over the popular campus heartthrobs. Brushing your thoughts to the side, you start to read over the same page for the fifth time.

After the second hour, it intrigues you how smart they are, only needing you to once go over something and they already have the answer or even occasionally you swear you see one of them write an answer without you describing how to find it. Perhaps they are fast learners? Due to the fact, they are so quick, it only takes two of the three hours for you to cover everything they wished to go over, and their assignments are almost finished, just needing the final touches.

"There we go,” you exclaim, stretching your arms over your head, letting out a content groan as you let your back straighten up, "if you need future help, you can always call me." Even though it’s perhaps pretentious to offer this to such tough guys, you’re happy to be able to have such good students who actually listen. Unlike your last session which you spent way too many hours on.

Jongho looks up from his laptop with a wide eye look, "that’d be helpful,"

"Can you take my number?" San holds his hand open, expecting your phone and you are shocked at his utter forwardness. Even though you know it’s not intended in a flirtatious way, your heart quickens at the gesture, never having been asked for your number before.

Passing your phone to the male in front of you, you notice San observing the Sanrio stickers stuck to the back of it. The male lets out a short burst of air through his nose, and you don’t know whether he’s mocking you or scoffing. As you look at him to analyse his reaction, you see a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips, but it doesn’t seem in a taunting way. You continue staring at him as he puts his number into your phone.

Unexpectedly he looks up and straight into your investigating eyes, catching you by surprise, immediately looking away from him and at the open book in front of you pretending to read it, even though you know he knows you have already read over the page multiple times in the past ten minutes.

“Wait, what time is it?" Jongho asks San. Watching San pull out his phone, you see a glimpse of his phone case, it looks something like a character, but you can’t see it as he places his phone face up on the table.

"Quarter to twelve," San responds, his phone screen lighting up for a split second, you manage to catch a quick sight of his lock screen. It appears to be a group photo, with numerous faces smiling brightly at the camera. So, they have more friends.

"We have about thirty minutes till ecology, do you want to go to the canteen?" Jongho questions as he begins to put his belongings into his bag.

"I could use a snack,” San answers, stretching back into the chair, his arms above his head just as you did earlier.

"Coming with us?" Jongho asks as he stands up from his chair and pushes it back beneath the table.

Bewildered by the question, you wonder as to why they want you to come when they have been nothing but distant this entire time. Glancing back at your unfinished lab report displayed on your laptop, you feel conflicted. Yet a break from the tedious work would be rather nice. There's no harm in pulling another all-nighter.

"I could also do with something to eat," Your smile is bright as you stuff your laptop into your bag, happy to have a reason to escape the tedious work on the small screen of your laptop.

It is a rather fast walk to the canteen; it is conveniently on the same wing as the library. Expecting the canteen to be full to the brim of students getting lunch, you’re surprised to see the canteen completely empty. You are rather pleased with the serenity of the canteen, feeling at ease that there are no judging eyes watching your every move. Pacing over to the cooled section of food, your footsteps echo in the large room, then you notice San and Jongho trailing after you, looking quite lost.

"Have you guys never been to the canteen before or something?" You inquire, chuckling at their antics before grabbing a carton of banana milk and an apple.

"It's not particularly our scene, we eat our meals at our place." San answers, staring down at the banana milk in your hand. So, they live together, it makes sense seeing how close they are.

“You guys don't live in student buildings?” You question, that does explain why you've never seen them around, knowing most people who reside in the student dorms. You resume walking towards a table to sit, you grab two more banana milk before sitting down and popping a straw into your drink.

"No, we live near the new park, Eastwood Drive," Jongho replies.

This information almost makes you spit out your drink. Eastwood is not only part of a huge real estate area but one of the richest areas near our school. Absolutely no students would be able to afford that. It's an area full of houses like mansions or condos bigger than a regular house.

"Are you okay?" Jongho asks, hurriedly rushing to your side and patting your back, San chuckles at the scene and passes you a bottle of water from his seat.

"Yes, I'm fine," You say between coughs, "thank you," you take a gulp of water from the bottle before handing it back to him.

"Sorry it's just, how on earth do you afford that house there's no way you guys just have it. Did you have to sell your soul to the devil or something?"

Both males let out soft laughs and for the first time you see something other than scowls on their faces, instead replaced by gentle amusement.

"No, we didn't, one of our roommates' mothers is the owner of the real estate and she lets us live there," San answers your question.

"We do still have to pay rent, which is above average, but it's not anything like the rent we would have to pay if we were actually living there," Jongho adds, "plus we have quite a few roommates, so it's spread out pretty evenly." So, they have multiple roommates.

"I see," you hum as you let the information in. Of course, they have several roommates, the house is big enough for ten people, most likely.

"And you?" Jongho questions looking at you. His expression is back to his resting face, until he realises his question, eyes going wide he continues, “not in a creepy, I'm sorry please don't take it the wrong way!" he rambles on.

Laughing out, you wave your hands in a friendly way to dismiss his thoughts.

"No no, it's okay," you chuckle, not really sure how to explain to them that your house was recently made into a fresh stock of charcoal.

“It's kind of complicated I'll be honest," you start, San and Jongho’s expressions twitch in curiosity, "Well I was living at Coast Lane,"

"Oh, the one near the shopping centre?" Jongho inquires. You nod your head back in confirmation.

"Wait but wasn't that place burnt down a few days ago?" San asks, looking at Jongho and then back at you with a worried look. Their hearts fill with worry for you.

"Yep," you say, popping the p at the end, "that's why I said I was living," you say looking down, chucking dryly.

"Where are you living now then?" San asks, his voice laced with something similar to worry.

"I'm staying at a friend's house, but they are getting a new roommate at the end of this week, so I need to move out by then."

"Have you found anywhere to live yet?" Jongho questions, looking sorrowful. You are surprised by the amount of worry you suddenly feel from San and Jongho. However, you shake your head as 'no' and proceed to take another sip of your drink.

"I have an idea." San abruptly says standing up from his chair, catching your and Jongho's attention, "Excuse me I have to talk to someone, Jongho. Joong."

Jongho's eyes light up with some sort of awareness and he also rapidly stands from his chair, leaving you even more confused, unsure where the sudden energy comes from, you also wonder who the fuck 'Joong' is and why do they need to see him so suddenly.

"See you soon, __.” Jongho’s smile is warm and contagious, he then turns to leave with the taller man.

"Wait, guys!” You exclaim, "here," you hand them both a cartoon of banana milk that you grabbed earlier. "Drink these, you can't focus if you're dehydrated, " you say, heat rising up from your chest.

Both of the men look at you shocked at the kind gesture, surprised someone actually cares about their well-being. Giving you a thank you, the two men leave with red subtly covering their cheeks, both trying to immediately force it away before someone sees them with a giddy expression.

----

"Then they just stood up and left," You replay the events from earlier today to Jisung, who is sipping on a mojito. After the busy day you both shared, Jisung and you decided to go to a bar that recently opened not too far from campus. It is small and cosy, not too full of people, mostly students from your school rewinding from the day, just like you.

"Psycho behaviour," Jisung jokes whilst you take a sip of your drink. Laughing, you push Jisung's arm gently.

"I don't know, they were certainly intimidating but I could tell they were okay people," you exclaim truthfully. If you said that the three hours you spent with the two weren't pleasant you’d be lying.

"Do you have a crush on them or something?" Jisung inquires, rather loudly, getting far too excited. Hoping that no one heard him through the low jazz music resounding in the small bar, you quieten down your best friend quickly by covering his mouth with your free hand.

"Ji the entire bar does not need to know about my personal endeavours, and no I do not have a crush on them, they are just simply cute," you say exasperated.

“So, you do find them cute! The last time you had a crush as back in high school, this is big news,”

“There is no news dumbass, they are just cute. I find kittens cute, and I don’t want to date them.”

Jisung’s face contorts into a mixture of disgust and humour.

"Wait, what are their names?" Jisung questions his voice back to a reasonable volume.

"Choi San and Choi Jongho, I've never even heard of them, to be honest. You'd think I would've seen these handsome men bef, what is with that look on your face?" you stop your ramble as you see the very obviously shocked look on Jisung's face.

"Are you fucking serious?" Jisung says slowly.

Confused, you simply answer, "yeah they needed help with maths. it was your boyfriend who set the tutor session up."

"Yeah, because they probably threatened him?" Jisung says tensing up.

"What do you mean threatened, they were huge sweethearts," you say amused at Jisung. Your laughing momentarily halts when you see the serious look on Jisung's small face.

"What is it?"

"___, Choi San and Choi Jongho are part of that group."

Your baffled expression remains on your features, clearly unfazed by this information.

"What is that like a cult or something?" you joke.

"Girl, are you living under a fucking rock? Ateez, the group called Ateez. The super scary ones practically haunt this school. I'm surprised they talked to Minho. I'm pretty sure he's going to be scarred now."

Slowly but surely, your brain starts to put things into place.

"Wait, that group Sola told us about?”

As Jisung confirms your question, you feel the hairs on the back of your neck rise. A few months ago, you had been told by some classmates about them briefly, they were talking rather loudly about them. Apparently, they had done some terrible things when they were in high school then just disappeared for a few years. Most people thought they dropped out or moved abroad. The year they returned, they started this university out of nowhere together and have been a notorious group ever since, being known for staying foul and bitter towards everyone except themselves. Yet, nobody seems to know the reason for their ice-cold hearts. You never really bothered to keep up with the rumours or gossip, it wasn’t necessary for you to know, however you start to think maybe you should pay more attention due to your recent interaction with two of the people in the group.

"But they were nice?" your question, more to yourself than to Jisung.

"I don't know about you, but you probably got the wrong people."

You don't believe Jisung is lying but at the same time… The two men you had tutored earlier today were definitely not members of the notorious group.

Surely not.

Yes, they were intimidating, but nowhere near as bad as anything people say about them. From what you've heard about the group, they are cold, heartless, selfish, and miserable. Staying only in the group of eight, others not even daring to look them in the eyes as they pass them.

"If they were the people that you were tutoring yesterday, you may have gotten yourself into something you can't get out of. They have hundreds of fangirls, who are very possessive over them and people who want them dead. I don’t know of a single person who is fond of them. It’s best if you stay far away from them." Jisung says with a nervous expression.

Unexpectedly, his phone lights up and you see Minho's caller ID appear. Jisung glances back up at you with a questioning look, requesting if he can take it.

"Go ahead," you push your smile and watch as he leaves to find a quiet place.

Your heart beats heavily against your chest and you feel your throat tighten. ‘Come on’ you think, this isn't the best place for you to have an anxiety attack. Possibly, it's that the new information is far too overwhelming. You are barely keeping up with your classes, your apartment just burnt down, and now you’re somewhat engaged with an apparently dangerous group that has no good stories. Feeling your breathing getting jagged and your heart getting heavier by the second, you attempt to focus on your breathing. Trying to remember the breathing exercises your mother taught you when you were younger, you attempt breathing in deeply, but it doesn't work, leaving you to breathe in and out in a fast manner. It's okay, it's okay. You repeat yourself, in an attempt to comfort yourself, but your brain is yelling 'it's not okay, look how stupid you've been and got yourself into a senseless situation again. Fucking idiot'. You put your head in your hands and start gently rocking on the barstool, tears threatening to fall out of your eyes. Unexpectedly, a presence appears next to you and before you know it, their warm hand is rubbing up and down your back in a soothing manner.

"Shh it's okay, it's all going to be okay." a deep voice speaks from your right. You don't care to look up, only basking in the way the figure's hand caresses your back in a comforting way. To your surprise, it works miracles. Your breathing is back to a reasonable state within the next minute. Only then do you look up from your hands, your eyes lock with a beautiful man. He wears a comforting smile, his eyes full of sympathy and something else you can't quite put your finger on, his hand not slowing on your back. Trying to smile back at him, you wipe the tears you didn't even know had fallen, with the sleeves of your sweatshirt before regaining the words to speak.

"I'm sorry you had to see that," you say, abruptly embarrassed that a very handsome man just had to see a small breakdown of yours.

"It's perfectly okay. I've had enough anxiety attacks to know you can't control where you have them." the man admits, scratching the back of his neck with an awkward smile on his face. The voice of the man is deep, yet soft, making you feel awfully relaxed.

"You have anxiety?" you ask, sniffling your nose.

The man chuckles and looks down at his hands, "longer than I can remember, yeah," he looks back up at you, "rubbing my back is how my friends comfort me, so I hope it somewhat worked for you too."

"It worked amazingly, it's actually how my mother used to comfort me," you express, still slightly ashamed to be sharing this information with a stranger, let alone such a good-looking one. Yet knowing he goes through the same things as you, comforts you more than you realise. The male looks around him, almost as if he’s worried someone will see him, he then looks back down to your smaller figure which is closer to him than he remembered. Clearing his throat, he steps away a little bit, concerned you would feel uncomfortable with the closeness of your bodies.

“I do need to go now, but it was nice to meet you," The man says whilst leaving the barstool to your right. Not sure why, but you feel sad that he has to leave so soon. Feeling so relaxed around a stranger has you shocked, wishing you could stay with this unknown feeling.

"Thank you," you say, grateful to have him there for you.

"Anytime.”

"I’ll see you around." You return his smile.

Nodding his head, he gives one last smile before departing the bar's exit, a growing smile adorning his features as he exits the bar.

“Hey I’m back.”

Whipping your head to the left, you see Jisung sitting back in his stool. Opening your mouth to tell him about what just happened, you attempt to get the words out but for some reason, you are unable to find the words. Not wanting to worry your best friend with your sudden onset anxiety attack, you decide to stay quiet.

What are these unexplainable encounters you've been having with handsome men recently?

----

Climbing over bags and coats, you find a seat in a calmer area of the stadium you just arrived at. Spotting Minho in the field doing some warm-ups with his team, you feel relaxed to see someone you know. When he sees you, he waves happily. Smiling, you reach for your phone to quickly text Jisung asking where he is. All of a sudden, a rush of cold air gets swept in by the wind, causing you to freeze up. Never liking the cold, you debate heavily at this moment whether you should just leave. However, you travelled all the way from Yeji’s to here in the cold. It seems like a waste to just go back, even if it freezes you to death to stay. After all, you need to support Minho, him being one of your only friends, for the football game. Jisung is supposed to be joining you but you’re sure he's busy picking out a cute outfit to swoon Minho.

Over the past few days Jisung has been trying to teach you the names of Ateez so you know to run if they approach you. Seemingly stupid, but you do need fewer distractions in the hope to graduate with honours. From what Jisung has told you, there are eight members, and they are all of similar age, the youngest being in the same classes as he managed to skip a year due to him exceeding the level of people his age. However, Jisung teaching you their names doesn’t really stick to you, never being good at names it doesn’t help that you don’t know what they look like. It would be much easier learning their names if you actually had photos so you can put a name to a face, but of course they don’t have Instagram accounts, and if they saw people taking photos of them, they’d likely murder you on the spot. Or that’s what Jisung says.

You are suddenly brought out of your thoughts when a voice sounds in your ears.

“Could I sit here?” a soft, yet deep captivating voice speaks out.

Curiously, you look to your left to see who the owner of the voice is. Surprisingly, you see a blonde male with a mask covering his face. He is standing next to the seat where you have placed your bag, and you realise he is asking for the seat.

“Oh yes, of course, sorry,” you hurriedly grab your bag and place it between your legs, allowing the male to take a place next to you.

“Thank you,” he says, a very small smile on his lips. When he sits down, he takes off his mask, and you glance at him one more time, taking in his visuals. With his fluffy hair and red tinted cheeks and a small mark of pink next to one of his eyes, he is truly a work of art. Yet, for some reason, you can't help but feel like you've seen him before.

“I'm sorry have I met you before, you seem really familiar?” you ask inquisitively, not being able to match a name to a face.

“We may have run into each other once or twice,” the blonde male puts his hand out for a handshake.

Gladly taking his hand in yours, you shake with a small smile on your face.

“It is a small world, I'm __.”

The male takes his hand away and back into his coat pocket, shivering in the icy air.

“Are you Jisung's girlfriend?” he questions.

Rolling your eyes, slightly annoyed at the question, you go to answer. It has been thousands of times that people have asked about your and Jisung's relationship, mistaking you for a couple and not just a couple of friends. After a while it gets rather irritating, the question being asked countless amounts of times.

"No, we aren't, we are just best friends, I'm pretty sure Jisung came out as gay like two years ago. Plus, he's literally dating the quarterback, Lee Minho." you chuckle slightly.

"Oh sorry! I didn't mean to offend you in any way."

"No! It's really okay, it's just I get asked a lot, so it becomes annoying after a while. I mean look at Jisung, he has baby girl written all over him."

“Cold?” he questions.

The blondie next to you lets out a small chuckle acknowledging the man you are always with isn’t your boyfriend.

Sensing a gaze on you, you turn back to the blonde male whose eyes are looking at the goosebumps on your exposed arms.

“I probably should’ve brought at least a jumper. I've been so wrapped up with exams and tutoring I’ve been forgetting everything,” you say, laughing slightly, embarrassed that you went outside wearing just a t-shirt in the middle of November.

The male lets out a laugh before speaking, “it’s okay, I understand. If I’m being honest, I've also been having so much struggle with studying, my stress is all over the place.” He wonders for a second why he even shared this with you, concerned for a second you will see him in a bad light.

“I'm sorry to hear that.” you contemplate for a moment, “Look I have these if you want,” reaching into your pocket, you grab some rescue drops. “These help me a lot,”

You place the small bottle in his hand, and a giant smile covers his face. “What? I’ve actually been looking for these everywhere and I can never find them! They’ve been sold out in every shop.” Blondie looks back up at you, “but you have anxiety you need these more than me,”

Pausing for a second, you wonder how he knows you have anxiety, nonetheless, you continue “It’s perfectly fine, Jisung’s parents work at a pharmacy back in my hometown and they send me a few of these whenever they are in stock, you can keep them.” you inform him, his smile brightening your cold mood shockingly fast. You’re not even sure why you gave him them, it was your last bottle. You guess that’s what happens when you are a people pleaser. The smile on the male’s face only grows wider, his heart jumping at your kind action.

“Thank you so much __,”

“It’s no worries, if you ever need some more, look for the loud group of small guys acting like four-year-olds.” you laugh, and he chuckles along with you, making a mental note, even though he knows he will likely never approach the group.

Before you can focus back on the starting game, you feel a soft material cover your shivering body. It is a large zip-up that smells of rich, sweet perfume. Turning quickly to the blonde guy with confusion covering your features, you hurriedly dismiss the action, seeing his arms exposed to the winter air.

“I can’t take this; you’ll get too cold.” you stop your words as he pulls out another sweater from his bag.

“I've got my friend’s sweater, you keep mine until you’re warm.” he turns to face the game, "or until Jisung sees and freaks out and tells everyone you have a secret boyfriend." he jokes.

“You seem to know Jisung?” you ask, wondering how he knows Jisung’s personality quite well.

“Well, we know each other, but we aren’t particularly friends,” blondie turns fully towards you, “are you sure you don’t know me at all?”

“I'm sorry but I really only have like two friends, I don't really go out.”

“But Jisung is super popular, aren't you in his huge partying friend group?”

“Not really, his friends are lovely but I’m only close with him and his boyfriend, I'm not too good at making friends.” you quietly mumble the last part. You look over at the blondie and see he has slight confusion on his face.

“You are so kind, I’m sure anyone would want to be your friend."

"You’d be the first to think that" you dryly admit, which causes the male to feel a twinge of pain and guilt in his heart, "I would rather stay inside all-day binge-watching television whilst eating away my stress,"

"Well, that’s one thing we have in common."

Sharing a warm smile with him, you start to get lost in your thoughts again, but then you realise a question you never returned.

“I’m so sorry I never got your name.”

“No worries, I’m Yeosang.” he has the same smile on his face, making you feel warm despite the bitter winter air. Then his familiarity dawns on you.

“Kang?” you inquire, your voice rising ever so slightly.

“That’s me,” he smiles at me, and you don't know if your heart rises because of how beautiful his smile is or because you recognise the name from Jisung’s teaching session with the members of Ateez.

“Like from Ateez,” you question, watching your words, if Ateez is as bad as Jisung is saying then you definitely need to watch your words.

Yeosang turns to you, almost looking baffled.

“I thought you didn't know about Ateez?” he questions, shocked.

“What made you think that?”

“Just a guess I suppose, being that you don't really go out I assumed you weren’t really interested in the groups and stuff.”

“Ah well not particularly, but recently I suppose I’ve gotten to know about it better.”

“You're not scared, are you?” you see Yeosang tense up a little, his eyebrows furrowed. He hopes for the best, not knowing how you will react. Surprisingly, your heart softens at this question, he seems upset for some reason, as if he doesn't want to be seen this way. You feel bad for ever acting stressed towards him.

“Don't worry, the only person that scares me is Jisung when he's hungry.” you joke out, relaxing the tension and calming him. From what you can see, Yeosang is just kind and calm. The only thing that's menacing about him is the fact he’s drop-dead gorgeous.

Yeosang lets out a small chuckle, “well I guess now I know I need to avoid Jisung if he’s hungry,”

You agree with the blonde man, whilst lightly laughing.

“Wait, but why are you watching? Aren’t you supposed to be on the pitch?” You ask him, confused, remembering Jisung informing you that Yeosang is a part of one of the school's football teams, along with someone else whose name you can’t remember at the moment. For a moment Yeosang’s chest fills with pride, knowing you know something about him.

“Someone is taking my spot today, I was told to analyse the opposing team to find out their habits and stuff, hence the notepad.”

Looking down, you notice the small notepad with doodles all over the cover, making your heart swell. Yeosang continues to talk,

“Don’t tell my tactics to Minho,” he jokes with a grin on his face, knowing Minho is on the other team.

“I would never betray you like that,” you place your hand over your chest acting offended.

Both cracking up, you speak up again, “don't worry, your secrets are safe with me.”

“Sang!” You hear a voice call from the left, and your eyes lay on another attractive man, “Coach told us to sit with him,” this male also has a notepad in his grip.

You know this guy. He works in a small café not too far from campus, it is down a narrow alleyway, covered by vines and moss. It was a very hidden spot and only locals really knew the place. Only knowing it because you walked past it every day for a year as the alleyway was a shortcut to your housing from the campus. Barely anyone goes there, the regulars being either old women or businesspeople quickly rushing in to get a coffee before work starts. Back at the beginning of the semester, you used to go to the café a lot because of the raspberry muffins, yet they stopped selling them thus forth you stopped going as much. It was also due to the fact you had barely any time to sleep, so you cut it out of your morning schedule to be able to sleep in a little. You think the guy’s name was Wooyoung if you can remember his name tag correctly. You notice he sees you sitting next to Yeosang, with his friend’s hoodie over your shoulders and a smile consumes his entire face.

“Muffin?” he looks confused, yet somewhat glad to see you once again. The nickname extremely takes you aback. “Why did you stop coming to the café?”

As far as you can recall, back when you visited the café, this server was rather distant and limited to saying little to no words whilst waiting. Seeing him like this confuses you severely. Alas, you let out a giggle and both of the boys' grins widen visibly.

“You two better get going, I'm not sure your coach wants to wait any longer.”

Yeosang stands up and straightens out his pants before turning to you,

“Hopefully I’ll see you around.” he smiles warmly. Smiling back at him, you nod. Yeosang starts to leave with Wooyoung before he turns around.

“I better see you at the café tomorrow! Plus, that sweater looks good on you, Muffin.” he winks and Yeosang slaps the back of his head. You can’t help but giggle yet feel flustered.

Yeosang and Wooyoung walk towards the coach’s section, Yeosang slightly more affected than the male next to him. Hopefully he will get his hoodie back, and hopefully it will smell like you. After this interaction, your mind was even more confused. If you remember correctly, Yeosang and Wooyoung have a very big reputation for being some of the rudest and coldest towards people. Yet they were so friendly when you were with them. Is everything all these people are saying about them true or maybe the group of eight is just deeply misunderstood?

Whatever it is, you need to talk to Jisung about this, but you will wait until the game is over.

----

The night of the interaction between Yeosang and Wooyoung, Jisung, Minho and you reside at their apartment, eating chicken and watching a shitty romcom for background noise. The rest of his roommates are out celebrating the start of the football season. You have no idea why it started mid-way through November but okay.

“I said I would come; they were too sweet to say no to!” You exclaim, throwing your head back against the couch, regretting saying yes.

“It was definitely Yeosang and Wooyoung?” Minho questions, not believing any part of my story.

“Yes! Yeosang has the birthmark next to his eye like Ji described and Wooyoung was the guy who works at that one café I used to go to all the time,”

“Well, I never knew Wooyoung worked at a café, that doesn't really match the hardcore scary image they are going for, are you sure you’re not going delusional?” Jisung admits, chuckling.

“What are you going to do?” Minho questions, passing you a drumstick.

You take a big bite, before speaking, “I should just go, if I don't show up, they might murder me as you two say. Which is very unbelievable seeing how fucking cheerful they’ve all been.”

“Well, you’ve only met four, the rest are probably a nightmare,” Jisung says, his mouth full of chicken, Minho humming in agreement next to him.

“You two are supposed to be comforting me.” you groan, throwing your head into your hands.

“Okay, don't worry __, if they have been as nice as you’ve been saying then just show up and if they aren't nice then call Chan and Changbin and I’m sure they will gladly sort them out for you.” Minho laughs.

----

Keeping your promise, you showed up at the café the next day.

Opening the painted door, the bell rings notifying your entrance. Immediately you spot Wooyoung relaxing against the counter, scrolling through his phone, visibly bored. There are only a few people in the café, mostly reading books or typing on laptops. You see a flash of pink hair in the corner, yet you lose focus as quickly as you had it as you continue to walk further in.

“Welcome to Veranda Café,” Wooyoung says unbothered, still staring at his phone as you walk closer to where all the cakes were on display. Much to your dismay, you fail to see a raspberry muffin on display.

“I see you still don’t have any raspberry muffins.” You speak out in front of where Wooyoung is standing, making his head immediately snap up.

“__! I was starting to worry you weren't going to show up.” He exclaims, a contagious smile wide on his face. Immediately putting his phone in his pocket, giving his attention to you. He leans on the counter. Extremely happy you showed up.

“I never break my promises,” you grin at the black-haired man.

“Oh, one moment.” He speaks out excitedly, like a puppy, and turns to where he was sitting. Opening up a small fridge, he brings out the biggest, most beautiful raspberry muffin you have ever seen.

“Yeosang and I made this morning for you.” he gestures over to the corner, and you see the blonde male from yesterday, he is sitting next to someone, yet you can’t see them from where you’re standing. Yeosang shyly waves and you smile and wave back. Heart beating faster and cheeks warming up, you take the muffin happily. Wooyoung smiles brightly at you, feeling prideful at the way your eyes light up from the muffin.

“We stopped making these muffins because the owner didn’t think anyone was buying them, it made me upset because I knew you liked them,” Wooyoung says, making direct eye contact with you, making you weak at the knees. Wondering how he even remembered you, you still feel thankful he thought of you, even if it was a long time ago.

“It’s a shame but I'm sure there are lots of other tasty things here too. Anyways, thank you so much, you guys are the best.” you say, sincerity dripping in your words. Wooyoung just shrugs like he doesn't care, but the big smile on his face and the redness dusting his ears tells a different story.

“How much do I owe you?” you ask, getting out your purse.

Swiftly, Wooyoung grabs your hand halting its actions, “it’s on us, for being so kind, Yeosang and one of our friends really needed those rescue drops.” He lowers his voice, “between us, their anxiety has been really bad recently, and the stuff works wonders. Plus, you were always my favourite customer anyways.” Wooyoung admits, smiling, his cheeks get a deeper colour of red. Your heart warms up once again, which is strange to you. You haven't felt this happiness in a very long time. Maybe things are starting to get better. Happily taking the muffin, you make your way to Yeosang who is reading a book.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” you inquire, repeating his words from yesterday, yet when your eyes meet the figure sitting next to him, they light up as you recognise him.

“I know you!” You exclaim, a little too loudly, causing people around you to glare in your direction. Feeling overwhelmed by the sudden attention, you quickly sit down in a shielded area, away from all the glares.

“You two know each other?” Yeosang asks, intrigued by your sudden remark.

“It is you, right?” you ask just in case you’re mistaking him for another pink-haired male.

The tall male smiles widely, “Yeah, it’s me. I’m Mingi,” he turns to Yeosang, who is visibly confused, “we met briefly in a bar the other day,”

Yeosang lets out an ‘ah’ in realisation, yet you fail to see the jealous look he points at the pink haired man as he turns back to his book. Reaching for a dessert fork placed in the middle of the table, Mingi quickly grabs it and hands it to you. Quietly thanking him, you start to cut your muffin into four pieces. You acknowledge a gaze on you, so you halt your movements and look up, noticing Yeosang and Mingi’s eyes on you. Suddenly feeling awfully small, you start to feel your heartbeat rise and your breath deepen, never really liking people watching you eat, the stares from the two make you anxious. Luckily, they seem to immediately notice your change in behaviour and start apologising.

“I’m sorry, we will look away. We were just wondering whether you were going to like the muffin,” Mingi explains, his voice stumbling over words.

“It’s okay! I’m sorry, I’ve always been kind of awkward when people watch me eat.” you confess, your cheeks heating up. The two males nod trying to remember this information for the future. Instantly, the two men completely look away and focus on their own things, not paying any attention to you. Their antics make you giggle slightly, and you look back down at your muffin. Slowly, you pick up a quarter and place it on Mingi’s empty plate in front of him. You then do the same for Yeosang. They both look up at you with wide eyes.

“This is your favourite, we can't take it,” Yeosang says hurriedly, trying to put the cake back on your plate.

“Stop, stop! I want to. I want to share it with my friends!” You blurt out before you can control your mouth. The wide eyes on both Yeosang and Mingi, make you realise what you said. You have to remember that even though they seem normal they are very clearly part of a group who apparently can kill people with their stare. What the hell are you doing? Of course, they aren’t your friends, you met them both once for less than ten minutes.

“Wait, I'm so sorry I didn't mean to say that I didn't intend to push your boundaries, we have only met like twice I didn't just assume we are friends!” You start to ramble, scared they will take it the wrong way, trying to fix your words as quickly as possible so you don’t get on their bad sides.

Before you can say anything more, Yeosang cuts you off by taking a bite of the muffin, “it tastes amazing! Thank you,”

“Woo!” Mingi’s voice calls out, ignoring the angry glares of people around him, “come get some cake!” Watching Wooyoung jump over the counter towards the three of you, you smile to yourself, glad you haven't done something that would cause future problems. Yeosang feeds Wooyoung the cake and makes an over-exaggerated reaction, “the flavours are melting on my tongue!” he exclaims in a funny voice, making Yeosang and Mingi cringe but you just laugh at his amusing antics. You can’t help but imagine how the whole group is when they are together.

For the remainder of the hour, you are just conversing with Wooyoung and Mingi, sometimes Yeosang if he wants to add to the conversation, but more focusing on his book, yet looking up intently whenever you speak. You are broken out of your conversation as you hear the bell of the entrance ring, notifying the entrance of new customers. Wooyoung groans and stands up from his chair next to you. It seems to be three girls from our school. You recognise one of them from your calculus class.

Then the next thing that happens confuses you more than any other thing that has happened. As Wooyoung reaches the counter to take their order, his demeanour changes almost immediately, you would've missed it if you had blinked.

Mingi and Yeosang seem to notice your confusion but blatantly ignore it, their smiles quickly disappearing from their faces. The atmosphere turns from warm and friendly to cold and foreign.

“What do you want?” Wooyoung asks bluntly. You furrow your eyebrows, confused out of your mind as to where the sweet friendly Wooyoung disappeared to.

“You know you should be nicer to your customers, it would help with business,” one of the girls speaks out, looking smug as if she has immensely hurt the man’s feelings.

“You should probably focus on your studies rather than going to cafes, sitting with a random document open and pretending to study when we all know you are miserably failing all your classes.” Wooyoung says monotone, whilst scrolling through his phone, not even looking at the three girls who now have shocked and offended looks on their faces. Some curses are thrown before the girls end up storming out of the café without even beginning to look at the menu. As soon as the girls leave, Wooyoung returns to the table nonchalantly, acting as if nothing had happened. Opening your mouth to say something, it gets caught in your throat before you get the words out.

Are you going insane?

{feedback is always appreciated and i love hearing from all of you. remember you are loved.}

part two is out now!!!

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elementroar · 15 days

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Analysis of Paracelsus' initial bloodlust and its longlasting effects on A.B.A (Part 2)

Analysis behind the backstory and personal story arcs of A.B.A. and Paracelsus (part 1)

So this actually started out more of a 'funny' post, but I realized that it really is a very important insight into how A.B.A. and Paracelsus function and interact, especially for his earlier days in XX/Accent Core +R

And I wasn't joking about the vore. It's not in the erotic sense...but it certainly is in the 'literally eating parts of your partner ' sense...

Also apologies for the long word dumps, it got wordier and longer than I expected.

Paracelsus (used to) REALLY love blood

It goes without saying, Paracelsus really loves blood. Well he used to anyway.

By STRIVE, he says he felt he lost his sanity whenever he gets hyped on blood in the past. To the point, he has sworn off blood (and violence) as if it was an addiction. Basically, he has managed to go clean sometime between their last appearance and STRIVE.

To not go too far into his backstory again (which you can read here), Paracelsus is a magical axe that fed on blood and increased his own power with blood; and would use warriors as hosts to cause more bloodshed and thus gain more blood and power for himself. Paracelsus doesn't need to 'eat' blood to survive (he was left host-less for about 20 years, and now abstains in STRIVE and is just fine), making the addiction metaphor seem to be accurate.

Back in XX/ACCENT CORE, he needed to drink fresh blood to transform into his superpowered Moroha mode (this is mechanically replaced by Jealous Rage mode now). Similar to his current gameplay, he could get blood and transform by A.B.A. piercing someone with his bladed end; or if A.B.A. fed him one of three blood packs she'd have on her.

He reacts pretty much like a dog getting a treat, anticipating it when she reaches into her pockets for a pack too. And he truly didn't care where the blood comes from, even if it's from A.B.A. herself.

A.B.A. coughs up blood and all Paracelsus wants to do is have a taste. Note that he barely actually reacts to her or himself getting hit or fighting in the old games. It's kind of a stark contrast to his many reactions and concern for her wellbeing now.

Make no mistake, despite being "kinder and gentler" than how he treated his previous hosts - by not completely mind controlling her into a frenzy and caring enough that he doesn't want her to die - Paracelsus was truly obsessed with drinking blood still, and all the fighting skills and power he imparted on A.B.A. was to make her strong enough to defeat opponents and gather blood for him too. Hence the 'manipulation' he felt guilty of in STRIVE.

And he gets even more bloodthirsty in Moroha mode aka what Paracelsus is without his 'sanity'.

You're the worse you when on blood

Prior to STRIVE and Paracelsus' current sludgy form, his powered-up form gave him a goat's head and his persona changes into that of his old berserker self.

This increase in aggression and bloodlust also affected A.B.A. through their empathetic bond, making her also take joy in violence and also clearly hyperventilating and tweaking out in some animations, like she's high.

Not to mention that to fight in this mode, every time Paracelsus makes a successful attack, A.B.A. also gets damaged (hence 'Moroha' mode as it means 'double-edged'). In-universe, this could mean that Paracelsus is sapping both the blood of an opponent and A.B.A. at the same time, indiscriminately as he says.

And he seems somewhat crueler in this form, as he has an even more violent and vicious state above Moroha mode called Goku Moroha mode. He enters it by consuming another blood pack, but he also seems to bite down on A.B.A.'s hand without a care and holds onto it while he transforms.

The impact of all this on A.B.A

Picking up Paracelsus was truly a double-edged sword/axe for A.B.A. On one hand, he was older and savvier about the outside world (even though he spent like 20 years just rusting away on the ground somewhere) and having him as her emotional support key and literal weapon led her to actually daring to explore the outside world, and he provided and (attempted to) advised her on things she didn't know about.

On the other hand, Paracelsus' satiating his bloodthirst was still his main objective, and it was also hurting A.B.A. Although Paracelsus was making some effort to not outright get her killed, A.B.A's additional resilience as a homunculus probably also helped her survive take being Paracelsus' host as long as she did.

Paracelsus was the original toxic element in their relationship, and it's likely over the years he's come to realize and regrets the harm he was doing to A.B.A. constantly, and why he has completely sworn off blood and violence entirely by STRIVE.

However, his bloodlust fueled and amplified the worse tendencies of A.B.A. from early on, and this seems to have stuck with her till the present in STRIVE. Her current extremely violent reaction when feeling jealousy or anxiety is likely how she's been conditioned to do so by Paracelsus, even when he himself is no longer the source of that bloodlust.

The difference now is that A.B.A.'s new powered-up state of Jealous Rage is mainly fueled by her wrath and fear instead of Paracelsus' bloodlust. Paracelsus becomes sludge now, affected by the toxicity of her unstable emotions going haywire and her will becoming decidedly dominant over his. The one who is toxic has become inverted.

What's more, it seems that the skills Paracelsus imparted on her before also carried over and stuck with her, allowing her to fight independently since Paracelsus isn't trying to encourage her to violence this time. She's become so dominant that she now can even force a new form/transformation onto Paracelsus when she does her Overdrive The Law is Key, Key is King while in Jealous Rage.

In the game files, this red form is called the "Hyoui" form, meaning 'possession'. It being red is interesting because it seems to be a callback to Paracelsus' moniker of being the Sanguine Gale. The concept art also shows the pretty disturbing way he's being morphed into it by A.B.A. when she does the Overdrive.

When in her Jealous Rage mode, the bottom half Paracelsus' where his axe blade is, somehow becomes more axe-like than it ever has been in the games. In the earlier games, his blade half didn't change, only his head does into the goat-head. What's more disturbing is that eyes already started appearing on the axe half even while Paracelsus tries to maintain his original face as much as possible.

When executing the Overdrive, A.B.A. swings with the axe half as the sludge pulls from Paracelsus' face to form this new toothed red axe head. Is it a new persona? Is Paracelsus still conscious in his face half or in the axe half at all? Does 'possession' have double meaning where A.B.A. is possessed by her own wrath, but also Paracelsus is now the one being possessed by A.B.A.'s will into forming the red axe form?

The interesting thing too is that A.B.A. executes the Overdrive with precise strikes, liked a skilled warrior. IMO, at this moment A.B.A. ironically became the exact kind of warrior that berserker Paracelsus would have wanted and caused him to even revert back into that primal early form of his that was barely sentient. They gained perfect synergy for the attack, but both are literally out of their minds.

What started this post

Just a funny thing but the reason why I even thought of, and then looked into all this, was because of A.B.A.'s biting of Paracelsus at the top of the post. I was wondering why Paracelsus doesn't say a word of protest when she does this to him, then remembered that he used to kinda drink her blood (and turns out he too has bitten her before), and I think he's prolly thinking "I deserve this".

#guilty gear strive #a.b.a guilty gear #paracelsus guilty gear #long post is long #my analysis #paraba #arc system works #aba guilty gear

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euphorajeon · 1 year

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taste your whiskey kiss | jjk

— pairing: boxer!jk x f. reader

— genre: fluff (?) | college!au, boxer!jk

— word count: 1.2k

— warnings: long-haired, glasses-wearing jk, annoying jk, oc still wont admit that jk is hot, jk is supposed to be a cs student, making out, mention of oral sex (f. receiving), this is plotless honestly i just miss boxer!gguk T_T

— summary: long-haired jeongguk is a menace. long-haired, glasses-wearing jeongguk is even worse.

— author's note: boxer!gguk is back at last! sorry for the (again) weird summary though. i wrote this in one sitting after that YTC in Busan episode came out and jeongguk blessed us with him wearing glasses :))) anyways. hope you enjoy!

— tags: @dunixxd

masterlist | boxer!gguk masterlist

“Glasses?”

You look up to accept the peck your boyfriend gives you as a greeting while he hums a confirmation, the object perched on his nose knocking against your nose lightly. It’s sled down his nose so much that he looks like a grandpa from your point of view.

“Since when do you wear glasses??”

“Since my mom decided that putting my eyes five centimeters from my computer screen is not good for my sight.” Jeongguk’s hand moves to his nose to adjust his glasses. “She said my codes would never work if I keep mistaking commas for periods.”

You let out a sigh as he takes a seat on his desk chair, his computer displaying lines upon lines of codes you’d never be able to understand.

“You could zoom in, you know, instead of doing a staring contest with the screen,” you say matter-of-factly, sitting cross-legged on his bed. Jeongguk spins his chair around just to give you a one-eyebrow-raise.

“And where’s the fun in that?”

The playful smirk he sports afterwards makes you roll your eyes, not getting why your boyfriend enjoys flirting with danger like that.

“Besides, I can’t see the whole code if I zoom in. Hard to see where it went wrong.”

“Yeah, keep making excuses until you go blind,” you frown as you look at his eyes behind the round lenses. “I won’t help you if you run yourself into a pole.”

Jeongguk shakes his head in mock disappointment. “That’s harsh, babe.”

“That’s your reality if you keep damaging your eyes.”

“Why are you suddenly so hostile? It’s just a pair of glasses.” Jeongguk runs a hand through his long hair, visibly getting frustrated with your elevated emotions.

“I don’t know!” Oh, you do know. “Just— get back to your codes. We can talk about this later.”

“I have something else to do later,” your boyfriend bites back with just as much fervor. “But sure, I can spare some time to talk to you about my glasses.”

He turns back around in his chair and you’re left to stare at the black wavy hair that curls around his nape as he types away on the keyboard.

Despite your denial earlier, you know exactly what got you so worked up like this.

It’s the same thing you felt when Jeongguk first showed up on your doorstep with piercings and a tattoo sleeve, the same thing you felt when he provoked you in the gym, the same thing you felt when he dyed his hair to your favorite color.

You hide behind worrying for his wellbeing when all you want to do is scream how hot he is to his face.

It’s truly unfair how your boyfriend manages to look so hot even in something as simple as a pair of glasses. A pair of prescription glasses at that, too. That combined with the long hair that frames his handsome face perfectly might just be the death of you. It takes everything in you not to pull him away from his coding assignment to tug at his hair as you explore his mouth with your tongue.

Your mind is reeling thinking that all of this is just because one single pair of prescription glasses. And the hair too, you guess, but it’s not like you haven’t experienced what long-haired Jeongguk is like in bed. (He made sure you know that he was a menace a few weeks ago when his hair only reached a bit below his ears.)

By now, you should be immune to whatever shit he’s going to pull, yet here you are.

Half an hour pass before Jeongguk stops typing and lets out a sigh, turning his chair around to face you once again.

“I can’t focus when I know you’re upset with me.” His tone is curt, like you being upset is wasting his time. “So talk.”

“You’re the one who asked me to come, then you blame me when you can’t focus?” you scoff.

“Didn’t think you’d get upset over my fucking glasses.”

“You’re only wearing glasses because you’re too stupid to think that exposing your eyes to such short distance to your monitor is not gonna damage them! You’re the reason why I’m upset!”

“Oh really? Isn’t it because I look too hot in these glasses but you have too much pride to say it to my face?”

You force yourself to sound firm in your one-worded response. “No.”

“No? As in you don’t wanna make out with me right now and fog up my glasses?”

“N-no.”

You’re wavering. It’s over.

“Okay.” Jeongguk shrugs. “I want to make out with you.” The stare he gives you is piercing. “So climb onto my lap and let me take those feisty bites I know you’re dying to give.”

It doesn’t take a second for you to leap off the bed onto his lap, crashing your lips to his in a mess of teeth and tongue. Feels like dejavu when you tug at his lip ring hard enough to make him let out a whimper of pain.

“Why are you so annoying?” you manage to say in between kisses. “If you wanted to make out you could’ve just said so from the fucking start.”

Jeongguk hums, hands on your waist to pull you even closer to him. “You’re more fun when riled up.”

You grab a fistful of his hair and yank hard upon hearing his reason. “Say that again and I’ll withdraw any form of physical intimacy for a month.”

“See?” He grins. “Feisty.”

“Fuck, just kiss me.”

He does, biting your lips and licking into your mouth and sucking on your tongue you can’t help but moan. It just fuels him even further to tighten his grip on your body and steal all the breath away from your lungs.

“Should I— fuck— put on the tongue piercing?” he asks when you roll your hips against his, creating a delicious friction between your bodies.

“No,” you pant. “That thing is— wait.” You pull away a fraction when you remember his words from earlier. “Didn’t you say you have to do something else?”

“Make out with you.”

His lips chase yours but you evade them, confused. “Huh?”

“My to-do-list. For today. Make out with you. Nothing else.”

You let him capture your bottom lip between his lips to suck and chew on like a kid would to a jelly while you contemplate the meaning behind his answer.

Once you understand, you deliver a harsh bite to his bottom lip, making him hiss (in pleasure or pain, you don’t care.)

“Yeah, babe, hurt me with your mouth,” he moans, but it doesn’t last long as he pulls away with another hiss.

“Ah, gotta take these off though, it’s digging into my nose.”

He slips the glasses off his nose, a faint red mark from where it pressed too hard on his skin. You move to place a soft kiss against the flesh, a stark contrast to how you’ve been kissing each other seconds ago.

“That’s what you get for being annoying.”

“Your kiss? Yes please.”

“Shut up.”

He dives back in for your lips, but barely a second pass when he pulls away again, making you groan impatiently. “For someone who wants to make out with me, you sure are pulling away a lot.”

“Just thinking,” he says. “How about I put on the tongue piercing and eat you out until you beg me to stop? Last time you only lasted three, let’s make it five this time, hm?”

You give him six.

a/n: i haven't written in 4 months so i apologize that this is bad hehe. thanks for reading! any feedbacks here will be appreciated :D

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alagaesia-headcanons · 6 months

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I will always be so sad and angry that Eragon never recognized how horribly the elves treated him and that no one else helped protect him from it either. Oromis is so insidiously and inexcusably cruel to him and Eragon truly deserved the chance to escape that and see the damage he caused, and also to then beat Oromis into a bloody pulp. And Glaedr too, honestly. He's mostly gone unscathed in my past rants, largely because at least his personality isn't so insufferable, but he ain't shit either. He's fully complicit in all of Oromis's vile abuse, and adds to it himself in certain places. They more than earn Eragon's ire, but they all constantly belittle him and insist that they inherently know better than him about everything, and poor Eragon believes them, so he doesn't fight back. No!!! Every misgiving you have about them is true, and not only should you stand your ground, but you should also start maiming them!!!!!

Oromis's mannerisms are respectful, kind, and gentle, but they in no way indicate his actual feelings. It just serves as a guise, while their actions demonstrate that both he and Glaedr don't have a single shred of respect for Eragon. They don't trust him, they don't put faith in him, they don't care about his wellbeing, and they have so much contempt for him. And they do all that while they take everything from Eragon, demanding he sacrifice himself constantly, and not always just in the interest of beating the Empire! In some cases it's solely an expression of their resentment of him or a way to cut away at the parts of him they don't like.

And Eragon gives them everything, so earnestly and generously. Then they give him jack shit. They only give him whatever suits their intention to use him as a weapon, and even in that, they pick and choose things to withhold according to their disdain for him. Contempt is all he gets in return for his trust and loyalty.

And it makes me sad how Saphira isn't there for him in this. In her defense, she's very young and they harm her also by prioritizing her utility to them over anything else, which she sadly does not recognize either. But beyond that, the elves and Oromis and Glaedr specifically treat her far, far better than they treat Eragon. She's in no way responsible for their actions, but there are places where she enables the abuse. Most often through overlooking it, but sometimes when Eragon rightfully balks at their mistreatment, then turns to Saphira for her input, she tells him, "I trust them and I think you should be deferring to them."

Eragon is so earnest and compassionate and he deserves care, both in the form of other people caring about his wellbeing, and also through the chance for him to learn how he can and should care for himself. Yet at the end of the series, he's so conditioned to accept manipulation and abuse and I just want my poor boy to have a chance to rest and HEAL 😭

#eragon #inheritance cycle #eragon shadeslayer #oromis #glaedr #saphira #im too tired to pull all the receipts for this. maybe later. but believe me I Have Them #its a cold hard canonical fact that oromis is a cruel bastard #this was focused on him and glaedr but the other elves distinctly contribute to this too #notably vanir and arya. also the eldunari have similar issues tbh #why did brom have to die? eragon deserved an authority figure whos not a condescending asshole #catch me thinking of aus where terrible things happen to oromis as a form of catharsis :)

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racefortheironthrone · 2 years

Text

Thoughts About the OG Lyctors

Introduction

For my money, one of the most satisfying elements in Nona the Ninth was that we finally got an account of everything leading up to the destruction of Earth - notably, Harrow cuts off the retelling before the Resurrection, the establishment of the Empire, and the lyctoral ascension at Canaan House - in no small part because we get some really comprehensive information about who the original lyctors were and what they were up to.

So in this post, I want to talk about what we learned about the lyctor’s pre-Resurrection lives and what we can infer from them about their post-Resurrection lives.

M- and A-

I’ve decided to start with the “usual double act,” both because M- and A- spend so much of the narrative in close proximity, often described one right after the other, and because I think their arcs taken together are an interesting example of the ways in which Tamsyn Muir is playing with repetition and mirroring between pre- and post-Resurrection dynamics.

M- and A- aren’t just John’s first followers, they were the first team members in the original group that was trying to cryogenically preserve eleven billion people. M- was the group’s doctor, which suggests a strong continuity with her later lyctor specialty as an anatomist. Notably, John 19:18 establishes that M- made it a special cause of hers to fight against reproductive injustice in space, which is quite interesting given her post-Resurrection distaste for all thing having to do with children. A- seems to have been the chief cryobiologist - he’s described in John 20:8 as the “glycerol-6 genius,” and glycerol-6 is a cryoprotective agent that prevents the freezing process from damage physical tissues. (Interestingly, we never learn what John’s specialty is on the project.) Here, we don’t get as strong a link between pre- and post-Resurrection interests, although there may be some link to the unexplained experiments with the apples that Ianthe was doing on the Mithraeum.

John 15:23 establishes that “their usual double act” of squabbling frenemyship was absolutely a dynamic of their pre-Resurrection lives, and throughout the rest of the bubble narrative we see M- and A- acting as a pair - sometimes in opposition and other times acting as a united front. In 15:23, for example, A- is the first to believe in John’s new powers, whereas M- “was so frantic to prove something in the science had gone wrong, or right,” and insisted on putting the immaculate corpses through elaborate experiments - to the point where she has something of an atheist’s crisis of faith in John 5:18.

At the same time, both M- and A- act in concert most of the time - they’re the first to move into John’s compound full-time, they try to keep an eye on his mental wellbeing, and once they come to terms with the idea that John’s a necromancer, they’re the ones who “go raid a fucking graveyard” to see whether John can do it to more than just the specially-treated corpses of the cryo-project. Most significantly, it’s M- and A- who act as “good cop and bad cop” in negotiating with what seems to be the U.S government for billions of dollars and a suitcase nuke in the early stages of their conflict with the FTL project - a revelation that gives them a significant degree of responsibility for the dstruction of the ten billion.

As the crisis escalates, it’s M- who puts the final pieces together that there is no second wave of the FTL project, whereas A- is the one who pushes John to prioritize stopping the first wave from leaving - which leads to the crisis escalating. Furthermore, when John reveals to the group his intent to use nuclear blackmail to stop the first wave from leaving, M- and A- both side with John - although M- does get cold feet in the final hour and tries to get John to stop.

And in the final moments, M- and A- express their intent to “go out together.” A- is shot first in front of M- and John, and M- is shot trying to get their assailants to spare John’s life - which is a detail that particularly grabbed me as an inversion of her death in HTN.

G- and P-

The second pair I want to talk about is G- and P-, who seem to have been the next pair brought on to the project. Although it does seem like G- was the project’s engineer - hence the bit about “we even lent them G- at the time because they wanted to talk about coating,” presumably having to do with how to shield both spaceships and cryo cans from the harmful effects of radiation and the like - the dominant theme of both G- and P-’s arcs have to do with loyalty and familiarity.

Throughout the narrative, John makes much of the fact that “G- and I were both hometown boys” and that “he and I had grown up on the same street. I’d spotted him for mince pies all the time as kids.” On the other hand, P- "knew G- from way back” but doesn’t seem to have been as close with John - and I get the sense from the way that John keeps passively-aggressively denigrating her skills and qualifications that he was somewhat jealous of her closeness with his childhood mate.

P-’s role on the project is somewhat ambiguous - she seems to function as a kind of volunteer head of security, but all we really learn is that “she’d made detective by that point; was going on to big things in the MoD.” Unlike G- who doesn’t seem to have followed up on his engineering post-Resurrection, P-’s skills clearly put her in good stead as Commander of the Second House and Head of Trentham Special Intelligence.

G- somewhat drops out of the narrative in this middle section, while P- plays a more significant role as the one who “said...if they’re going to let us fix the world, you’ve got to make them take us seriously. Get some leverage,” and seems to have been the one to set up the deal with the U.S government. Likewise, it’s P-’s police and military connections that the group turn to in order to investigate the FTL Potemkin village. At the same time, P- has a moment of crisis when John kills the hundred military and police surrounding the compound, challenging John’s actions - although she does ultimately fall for John’s deception that it was all an accident.

The crucial moment is when John chooses G- to carry the suitcase nuit to Melbourne for the negotiations with the government(s). “I wanted G-. P- volunteered to go with him, but G- said he wouldn’t arm it if P- was in range. P- went off at him, but it was one of those times where he held his ground against her.” It’s a fascinating example of dueling sacrifices, as P- is either trying to save G- from being sniped or is trying to go down with him, while G- prioritizes saving P- at his own expense - which is an interesting reversal of what happened during their Lyctoral ascension. While they die later, their fate is essentially sealed the moment that they are separated.

C- (and N-)

One character who speaks to the potential opportunities and dangers that lay in opening up the group is C-. As we learn in John 20;8, “C- was brought on by the oversight execs for contracts, you know, checks and balanced, but look where that ended up, she was on our side before the first year was over.” While it is somewhat surprising that C- was a corporate lawyer specializing in contracts rather than an academic (given her post-Resurrection pursuits), we do see right off the bat the way that John was able to use his significant charisma to circumvent attempts to control him from the outside.

C-’s outsider status is further confirmed by the fact that we learn in John 5:20 that C- was the one member of the original team who was English rather than a Kiwi (I’m assuming that M- and A- were Kiwis, given the way that John seems to have stuck to people he knew pretty well for his early team, and his education was solidly in the home country). It was in NZ that C- meets her cavalier-to-be N- (a local artist), which starts the extended plotline where C- refuses to admit to her relationship with N- until the very end - which could be a result of the fact that “C- had been raised little-England Anglican.” (Incidentally, I’m not quite clear what Muir means by that - the “little-England” movement was an anti-imperialist movement in the UK but from a rather conservative and xenophobic perspective. It’s not used very often in conjunction with “Anglican” - the only thing I could find is that T.S Eliot was described as a “little-England Anglican.”)

In the middle phase of the narrative, C- is present mostly as the project’s legal advisor who is active in trying to prevent the Energy department from cutting off power, and then “she’d managed all the contracts and told the cops we needed to be in there to make sure disposal and records were handled properly,” in order to buy the project breathing from. Notably however, C- chooses to live with N- offsite rather than move into the compoung, suggesting a degree of independence even as she leaves her job. At the same time, C- does get stuck in to M-’s experiments despite really not being cut out for working with dead bodies. (A sign of her predeliction for matters of the spirit?)

C- somewhat drops out of the narrative for a bit, until after John acquires his suitcase nuke. However, she really comes to the fore in the wake of this acquisition as the one member of the team who really challenges John on this point: “Pick one. Are we more interested in proving this new plan is bullshit, or in saving you...it can’t be both. Pick one and stick to it. Decide what you give a fuck about.” Similarly, when it comes down to the final conflict between John and the FTL project, it’s C- who pushes for John to use his growing necromantic powers to actually do something about climate change: “can’t we gin up some kind of miracle...any way to stabilize the North American glacier? Any way to trap atmosphere over the North Territory, show them we can fix things here?” This opposition culminates in C-’s final challenge to John once he initiates nuclear brinksmanship:

“C- said, John your problem is that you care less about being a saviour than you do about meeting out punishment.

I said, C-, I was just your best man!

C- said, You still are. That doesn’t change the fact that you can be quite the most appallingly vindicative person I have ever met.”

More than any other of the original lyctors, it’s C- who manages to see John Gaius for who he really is - a man whose genuine desire to save the Earth and the ten billion living on it was ultimately outstripped by his wounded need for revenge against the trillionaires who had undermined his solution and destroyed his reputation. While I’ll get into issues of post-Resurrection memory later, I don’t think it’s an accident that it is seemingly Cassiopeia of the Sixth who is the first of the lyctors to reach out to the Blood of Eden and enact a secret plan for the secession of the Sixth. My guess is that Cassiopeia’s relentless intellect wouldn’t let her remain content with the narrative that John had spun about the Resurrection and the Empire’s mission - and that this led her to make contact with the Messenger cadre of the Blood of Eden, who seem to be focused on the preservation of old Earth knowledge, allowing her to check their records against the Imperial records held by the Sixth and come to some sort of understanding of the lies that John had been telling for five thousand years.

In contrast to C-’s thematic importance to the bubble narrative, N- is really only present as a romantic interest - with C- finally deciding to come out of the closet and marry N- in the final day before the destruction of the Earth, which serves as a kind of final moment of happiness before the inevitable downfall. N-’s one main contribution to the project seems to have been that, once John decided that “they want to call us a cult, let’s be a cult” that it was N- who designed the new religion’s aesthetic presentation, since “N- already had eyeliner and capes.” This suggests that Anastasia wasn’t the only goth among John’s lyctors...

M’s nun

Perhaps the most surprising revelation from John’s narrative is the dramatic role played by the unnamed person who can only be Cristabel - she’s a nun and the Eighth is the most pious of the orthodox Houses, she’s M-’s best friend and works closely with her, her only other association in the group is with A- Jr. the brother of A-, and her major act is a suicide meant to provoke metaphysical transformation - rather than Anastasia.

Cristabel enters the narrative somewhat late, after John’s made the discovery of necromancy and has begun raising the dead and healing the sick. While the rest of John’s scientific buddies are flying in the dark somewhat, Cristabel uses her deep knowledge of the New Testament to provide advice about how to handle a burgeoning religion - “Christ never said no and never asked anyone to pay and got way too much attention and brought the heat down on everybody” - and help the group get religious cover from the Vatican to avoid being labelled a dangerous cult.

Most significantly, Cristabel is the one who makes the most consequential discovery in the burgeoning field of necromancy by pointing John in the direction of the soul: she tells John that the reason he can’t bring people back from the dead is that “their souls are gone,” and then later tells him that “the last frontier I couldn’t cross was the soul. M-’s nun of all people was convinced that this was the element I was missing, and that finding it...would bring us closer to God.” And then, during the final 24 hours, Cristabel decides to force John’s hand by making him witness her suicide - although given the context of her earlier speech about reaching out to God versus pushing away from God and fear and grace, she clearly sees what she’s doing as an act of sacred martyrdom - which enables John to first perceive the nature of the individual human soul, and then to make contact with the world-soul that is Alecto, enabling John to become the Necrolord Prime and gain the power needed to destroy the sun and the solar system. This makes her possibly the most consequential Catholic figure in human history - and it lends an entirely different, equally tragic air to her and Alfred’s suicide pact at Canaan House, suggesting both an inevitability where the same personality drives push to the same conclusion but also suggesting that John probably anticipated what was going to happen and chose to do nothing to prevent it.

At the same time, I don’t want to reduce Cristabel to a martyr complex. Cristabel also had a close wortking relationship with both M- and A- Jr., working with them to uncover the FTL project’s fraudulent manifests, and working with A- Jr. to attempt a last-minute mediation during the nuclear standoff.

Ulysses and Titania

The second-most surprising revelation to come from John’s narrative is that we learn that Ulysses the First and Titania Tetra, the sexy-party-having founders of the Fourth House, were the first two corpses that John was able to preserve and pilot around in the very advent of his discovery of necromancy:

“my two kids, the guinea pigs, they were U- and T- on their certificates, youi know their old names. I thought about using those but it didn’t seem appropriate. They weren’t around to say yes or no. I was starting to really care about that. What they would’ve thought, what they would’ve wanted...so I brought them into the room with the bodies and I was all, Let me introduce you to...Ulysses. Let me introduce you to Titania.”

Ulysses and Titania are obviously distinct both from the rest of the original first wave of lyctors and the second wave of lyctors who John met after the Resurrection, in that they were fully dead already before necromancy was even a thing. This raises a rather important question: where did their souls come from? This in turn raises a bunch of others: Did John somehow manage to pull their original souls from the River when he resurrected the rest of the original Lyctors? (Did the River even exist prior to the Resurrection?) Did he stuff completely new souls from the ten billion floating around into these pre-existing bodies?

Leaving aside matters of the soul, I’m fascinated by the interpersonal implications. How did John treat Ulysses and Titania once they were up and alive, since on the one hand he had this deep Pygmalion-like obsession with their bodies in a way that really presages everything he got into with Alecto, while on the other he didn’t have the pre-existing relationship with them that he had with the original lyctors he had known in life? Were they his favorites?

The second generation

So what do we say about who’s left? Well, one thing that we can say is that we have to revise something of our understanding of the different generations of lyctors - the Locked Tomb wiki has Cyrus and Valancy as first generation lyctors when they don’t appear at all in John’s bubble narrative and so must have come up post-Resurrection, while Ulysses and Titania are described as second wave when we know that they were there in body, if not in spirit, along with A-, M-, G-, C-, N-, Cristabel, and A- Jr.

Another thing we have to grapple with is the fact that, as we learn during John’s raising the dead and healing the sick for online clout period, John was fully capable of curing cancer long before his powers were enhanced by lyctorhood with the earth. This has understandably raised some comments because of the implications for Cytherea the First. A lot of people have asked why John allowed her to live with cancer for ten thousand years when he could have cured her at any time - and I’m certainly one of those. However, after talking it over, I think I have the answer: we know that Cytherea and Loveday only went along with the lyctoral process because they thought it would save Cytherea’s life. If John had cured her cancer before they went through with the Eightfold Word, Loveday would have flatly refused to go through with it and would have resisted any attempt to make them proceed, given how hostile she was to John and the other lyctors for putting a sick woman through the rigors of travel and scientific investigation. If John had cured Cytherea’s cancer after they went through with the Eightfold Word, she would have turned on John instantly instead of waiting for ten thousand years. I think John did nothing because he wanted Cytherea as a lyctor in his service, one more finger to hurl at his enemies, and nothing more.

Finally, I want to say a few words about Anastasia. The last chapter of Nona answered a lot of theories that had been floating around about Anastasia, Alecto, and the Locked Tomb: no, the Locked Tomb on the Ninth wasn’t a decoy with the true tomb being located at Canaan House, yes, Alecto was inside the Locked Tomb, and no, Anastasia was not the Body or the Nonabody. However, we do learn that inside the Locked Tomb there is “Anastasia, tucked where nobody would find jher: Anastasia, all bones. Not really Anastasia. but Anastasia’s body without the meat on it, snuggled right into the curve of the rock, ready to close the door whenever it was opened.”

This tells us a lot about what happened to Anastasia: it doesn’t seem that she completed the Lyctoral process, but rather seems to have gone the revenant-haunting-your-own-bones route pioneered by Doctor Sex and later by Palamedes. More importantly, at some point - possibly when Anastasia and Alecto were sealed inside the Tomb? - Anastasia and Alecto entered into a pact that bound Alecto to the line of Anastasia, a pact whih includes some unspecified favor to be done and a cavalier-like pact of service.

Initials and Memory

Finally, I want to close by talking about the most consequential decision John made in the Resurrection - namely the decision to bring back both “my loved ones” and “anyone I feel didn’t do it. Anyone I feel had no part in it. Anyone I can look in the face of and forgive” without their memories. I’ll quote the section in detail:

“In fact, G-’ll be easiest - he won’t remember the compound - none of them will have to remember anything. I know where rememberance lives in the brain, and he won’t have any of it...”

“Teacher, why?”

“They won’t forgive themselves...they’ll spend the rest of their lives asking what-ifs. “What should we have done? How could we have done it differently? Did you need to do it?”

While John posits his actions as esentially benevolent, driven by a desire to prevent mental suffering, and imbue his loved ones with a “blessed ignorance” as he put it in HTN, it’s abundantly obvious that what he really cares about is avoiding that last question. He wants his friends back, but he doesn’t want them to be able to question or challenge him for having gotten them and everyone else killed. We see him already beginning to think about this during the final siege of the compound when he says “People don’t forgive, not really. Once they doubt, you’ve already lost them. That’s what was sacaring me about the others. Had I already lost my best friends.”

So while John displays an enormous amount of self-pity because he’s the only one left who’ll remember the old world and who’ll laugh at his jokes, ultimately John chooses his own isolation by remaking his friends without their memories. As with Ulysses and Titania, he tries to remake them while staying as close to the original as possible, changing the names but keeping the same initials because he’s unimaginative and nostalgic.

But anyone who knows even a little bit about the brain knows that it’s pretty much impossible to separate personality from memory - the existence of the self is essentially the result of the brain constantly rewiring and reinforcing itself over time, creating new connections and new associations, resulting in a constantly evolving moving target that we think of as a continuous and authentic whole. And from everything we’ve been able to compare about the original Lyctors before and after Resurrection, they’re way too similar to their prior selves. They have the same personalities, the same relationships, they make the same decisions and the same mistakes, over and over again. So rather than being pure blank slates, I think John left quite a bit of their previous selves intact - I doubt he would have wanted to start with object permanence, language acquisition, and not touching fire, and he definitely would have wanted to hang on to useful things like Mercymorn’s medical skills or Gideon’s engineering know-how or Cassiopeia’s facility with logic.

Here’s another thing about the brain: it’s incredibly plastic. Even when parts of the brain are damaged by injury or disease, it has this fascinating ability to re-wire itself, forging new connections that reconnect separated areas. Who’s to say that, across ten thousand years, this didn’t happen to at least some of the original Lyctors as they pondered the mystery of the Resurrection?

One last thought:

“You want Cyrus, Augustine, Cassiopeia...you want Gideon the First, and Gideon the First is dead. He’s not coming back. Oh, God, Gideon,” said Pyrrha suddenly. “Gideon...G-, you died for nothing.”

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth spoilers #ntn spoilers #spoilers #mercymorn the first #augustine the first #cassiopeia the first #nigella shodash #cristabel oct #alfred quinque #ulysses the first #titantia tetra #gideon the first #pyrrha dve #anastasia the first #samael novenary #alecto #nona the ninth

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yelenasdiary · 9 months

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Hi !

I have a request, you don't have to write it :)

But, Like Nataha was sa her whole childhood by Dreykov [and his men], and when she confronts him in his office she breakdown and stabs him repeatedly to death and after. After that she sobs in a corner then dissociate. She is later comforted. Like there is angst feels despair but fluff you know ?

Thanks 😊

It's Okay, I've Got You

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x Reader

Summary: After helping Yelena & Nat take down Red Room, you find Natasha in a state you’ve never seen before.

AC: Please only read this if you are comfortable, I will not be mad or offended if you don’t feel like reading this. With every SA related fic I write, please make sure to double check the warnings before continuing and of course, if you ever need a friend to talk to for whatever reason, my DMs or asks are always open!

"Lena, where's Nat?!" you asked as Yelena came running out of the damaged building. She shrugged, "she said she was going after Dreykov" she replied. Worry quickly filled your mind as you knew that Natasha would've been done by now if she had won the fight. "Stay with the others! I'm going to go get her!" you said in a hurry before racing off into what used to be Red Room.

"Natasha?!" you called out serval times but no answer, you checked every room you passed just to be sure, still calling out her name. "Nat! Can you hear me?!" You called once more but still, no answer. You walked the long hall, opening every door until finally you found her, and it wasn't a scene you expected to see.

Natasha was sat in the corner, covered in blood with Dreykov's lifeless body only meters away from her. Her combat knife still in her hand as she looked miles away from where she was. You'd never seen her like this, she doesn't notice you standing in the doorway or how you slowly walked up to her and kneeled in front of her. "Nat?" You spoke softly but she wasn't there.

Gently, you placed your hand over her shaking hand that still held the knife that clearly killed Dreykov. You took the knife from her carefully and placed it besides you before looking back at her. It was obvious to you that she was disassociated and had no idea that you were even kneeling right in front of her, and you didn't want to frighten her by any means.

"Nat, it's me, it's Y/n. I'm just going to check to make sure you're not hurt, okay?" you spoke before you gave her a check over and to your relief none of the blood on her seemed to be coming from her. Your heart broke at the scene in front of you, there wasn't much time to waste but you didn't care about that right now, all you cared about was Natasha and her wellbeing. "If you can hear me Nat, I'm here" you spoke softly before you kindly wrapped your arms around her and pulled her into you.

Instantly the redhead broke into a sob as she clung to you, "he's gone now, he can't hurt you" you spoke softly as you comforted the assassin you proudly call your girlfriend but you knew that right now and in this moment, she wasn't the girlfriend you knew and loved so deeply but instead she was a scared little girl who needed know everything was okay, that she was loved, protected and most importantly, safe.

You knew little about the things that went on in Red Room but you knew of the sexual assault Natasha endured from the hands of Dreykov so you let her cry into your arms as much as she needed too until Yelena came looking for the two of you.

"Y/n, we have to get o-" Yelena came running into the room, stopping her words when she saw the state of her crying sister in your arms. "Natasha" she spoke softly as she took a few small steps towards the two of you. "Lena, she's okay, I promise. Get the jet started, we'll be there in a moment" you looked at the blonde when you felt Natasha's grip on you tighten. She needed space and you knew as much as she loved Yelena, she didn't want her to see her big sister like this.

There was no argument from Yelena, she simply nodded and made her way back to the jet. It only took a few more moments before you were able to walk Natasha to the jet, keeping an eye on her the entire flight home.

----

Once back at the compound, you ran Natasha a shower which she sat on the ground letting the water run over her as she stared into space. You told Yelena to let the team know that Nat will be taking some time off and that you'd explain things at a better time but for now, your focus was solely on Natasha and making sure she was okay.

While she was in the shower you grabbed her favorite Pjs and laid them out on the bed before you made sure you had other essentials like fruit and bottled water to make sure Natasha would eat. You didn't want to push her in any form to talk to do anything she didn't want too, you promised yourself that you'd be whatever she needed.

Nat came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel. Even with a wet face you could tell she had been crying as she looked over to you. "It's over" she spoke before sitting down on the end of the bed, "it's really over, he's dead" she added as you sat down beside her. You placed a hand on top of her knee, your thumb stroking her skin with care as you nodded at her words.

"What do you need love? Whatever you need, I'm here for you. If you want to talk, I'm here to listen, if you need to cry, I'll hold you, if you need to scream, I'll join you"

Natasha smiled softly at your offer, thankful to have somebody love her for her, somebody who wasn't scared of her or ever held her to her past. "I don't want to do what I always do, I don't want to push this down anymore" she spoke, placing a hand on top of the hand you had on her knee. "I thought killing him would make me feel better, that somehow it would free me from the memories I have but honestly, it just brought it all back and I felt like I remember more than I've ever remembered. I want help" she explained as tears built up in her eyes once again.

"I want professional help. This isn't something I can play off anymore, I know that now" Natasha added. Gently, you cupped her face, wiping the tears that broke free from her eyes, "I promise you Natasha, you're not alone. You are the strongest woman I know, and I'll be here to hold your hand through all of this, all will. We'll get through this together, no matter how dark the days get or how hard the storm comes crashing down, we're in this together"

Tears uncontrollably streamed from Natasha's eyes as she crashed into you, wrapped her arms around you tightly, as you wrapped your own arms around her and placed a kiss on the top of her head. She sobbed once again in your arms and no matter how long she needed to let out her emotions, you held her until she was ready to get into her pjs and even after when she curled up into a ball in bed, you were there to assure her she was never alone. Not now, not ever.

#natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff x reader #fanfiction #black widow #marvel

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theeoriginals · 1 year

Text

soft touches

summary: after a rough night, joel miller proves that he is soft in his own way

pairing: joel miller x f!reader (no use of y/n)

a/n: absolutely no one asked for this but here i am, pining over a man that's old enough to be my father. also yea i think we all saw the joel/tess scene in the first episode and went a little insane

warnings: mentions of violence, tlou spoilers (i guess ?), i have not played the game so this is purely based off of the show. angst, but mostly just yearning and soft thoughts mentions of tess, but this kind of exists outside of canon so it doesn't really matter

It was supposed to just be a simple trade, but lately, everyone in the QZ has been on edge. It's not all that surprising that they try to ambush her, but after living this life for so long, she's never unprepared.

Even with her over preparedness, she doesn't manage to get out of the fight scrape-free, and she almost dreads going home for a second before she sucks it up and begins the trek through the abandoned buildings and dank alleyways. It's dark now, luckily, and it had rained until the sun went down, so her boots are practically caked in mud when she finally reaches her building.

Like every time she makes it back safely, in mostly one piece, she spares a silent thanks to whoever's listening that kept her from getting busted by a FEDRA agent. For the most part, they knew who she was because of Joel, and they left her alone in fear of him cutting their supply off, but there was always a straggler that wanted to prove a point. Even after 20 years of this, FEDRA agents still tried to pull ridiculous power plays.

She uses the edge of a stair to scrape a majority of the mud off of her boots before she stomps her way up to the old apartment, announcing her presence to the man most likely waiting up for her.

There's little fanfare when she opens the door and forces her boots off her feet, and the dim light provided by the lanterns and candles cast shadows over her face until she stands upright.

Unconciously, a smile pulls at her lips when she sees the familiar face sitting before her, and she sees the barest hints of relief on his face up until he sees the dried blood on the corner of her mouth, and the bruise already forming beneath her eye.

"Joel..."

He barely lets her get his name out before he's in front of her, hands gently turning her face to examine the extent of the damage. "What happened?"

She sighs, attempting to shake him off. "Joel, I'm fine,"

"You don't look fine,"

"Oh, thank you," She huffs. "You really know how to flatter a girl."

Joel gives her a deadpan look, entirely unamused at her sarcasm. Heaving another sigh, she brings a hand to cover his where it lays on the curve of her jaw. "Tell me what happened."

"I went to go meet the guy like I told you, and he tried to get away with everything. I guess he thought I was just some messenger, so he tried to rough me up. Obviously it didn't work, because I'm fine."

"And him?"

"Well, I don't think he'll be leaving that building without some help."

A distant gleam of humor glimmers in Joel's honey-colored eyes, but his relief of her wellbeing takes over whatever pride he may feel at her handling the situation with what was most likely a show of explosive violence.

Gesturing to one of two chairs at the lopsided kitchen table, he pushes her towards it and she takes a seat, eyes watching as he grabs the bottle of whiskey off the top of the fridge and an old rag that would probably have to be thrown out soon.

He pulls up the other chair in front of her and she scoots forward so her knees slot in between his legs, and Joel mutters something unintelligible as he douses the rag in the whiskey and lifts it to her split lip.

"Might hurt," Is all the warning she gets before he swipes it along the skin and she jerks at the initial touch, eventually settling and letting the faint stinging become a faint sensation in the back of her mind.

When he moves on from her lip, swiping across the dried blood from a scrape on her cheekbone, she looks at him with exhaustion suddenly setting into her bones.

"I got the ration cards, by the way,"

He stops briefly, eyes flicking down to her mouth before he looks back up into her eyes. "What?"

"I didn't let him get away with the ration cards like he tried," She supplies, seeing the words process in his mind.

Joel blinks slowly, pulling away from her slightly before he shakes off whatever thoughts had been running through his mind. "Stubborn girl,"

A smile pulls at her lips and closes her left eye, letting him poke and prod at the swelling with minimal wincing. "It worked out in our favor, though, huh? We'll be eating good for a week straight, baby,"

Joel huffs out a breath, giving her an exasperated look as he finally sets the rag down on the table. "You're lucky it wasn't more than one guy."

"Right, 'cause I'm obviously on my deathbed. I'm a frail, weak little girl who can't fight or–"

"Alright, smartass," He covers her mouth with his hand, cutting her off with a stern look she dutifully ignores. "Next time I'm coming with you."

Pushing his hand off her mouth, she rolls her eyes. "I doubt there will be a next time. Most people don't do business after you break a chair over their back, but you know what? We can certainly try."

"You broke a chair–"

"Who did what isn't important," She stands from the chair, shucking her jacket off as she walks back towards the bed. "What is important is I'm home now, and it's my turn to keep watch, so–"

"Go lay down."

She pauses, jacket sleeves still stuck halfway down her arms as she turns to look at him. "What?"

He points to the old mattress, giving her a look like she was crazy for thinking she would be doing anything else. "Bed."

"Right... but you heard me just now, when I said it was my night to watch the radio?"

He nods slowly, still looking at her like she was stupid. He had a way of doing that, a look that she sometimes thought was just for her, because it wasn't like the other times he looked at people like they were stupid. This one at least had some warmth behind it, but then again, she always thought Joel was warm. Tess had called her delusional more than once, but everyone was a little delusional in their own way, especially in the world they lived in now.

"Yeah," He shrugs, still watching her. "But that was before you came back here looking like you got your ass beat. So now you're going to sleep, and I'll keep watch."

And– he'd kind of just insulted her again, but there was unwavering concern and fondness in his words, so she knew it was useless to try and argue. He was stubborn at the best of times, and completely unbearable at the worst, and she knew that Joel Miller was a man used to getting his way, one way or another.

So, she shrugs her jacket off the rest of the way and practically falls into the bed, her exhaustion catching up with her with the sudden permission to sleep.

Minutes pass in silence as her eyes grow heavier, and in the last moments of consciousness, she hears the creaking floorboards shift under his boots as he walks over to her.

A calloused palm rests on her cheek and she hums lowly, unable to keep her eyes open as she leans into the touch. "Joel,"

"Go to sleep, honey." His voice is low and gravelly, and it's the last thing she hears as she slips into the escape of the dreaming world.

The last thing she feels is the press of his lips on her forehead, and she has the fleeting thought that yes, she may be a little delusional when it came to Joel, but she wasn't that far out of reach with her thoughts. Not when he treated her like she was this soft, breakable thing that deserved nothing but soft touches.

#joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller fluff #the last of us #tlou #the last of us hbo #the last of us fanfiction #fluff #angst #smut #joel miller smut #the last of us fic rec #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x you #tlou hbo #joel miller hbo #tess servopoulos

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inamindfarfaraway · 6 months

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The Morality of Mabel and Dipper Pines

Warning: Dipper Levels of Overanalysis Ahead

I’d like to make it clear at the start that I love both of these characters equally and they’re both good people, just in different ways. But I’ve seen a lot of criticism of Mabel’s flaws and less of Dipper’s, so I’d like to contribute to the discussion of their respective characters by exploring a divide between them I haven’t seen talked about much.

Mabel really wants to be a moral person. She places a lot of intrinsic worth in the concepts of ethics, like kindness and fairness and the wellbeing of others. Being a bad person could be considered her worst fear. It’s definitely up there with her other greatest fears of losing her relationship with Dipper and the inevitability of change, and those fears developed later largely in response to Ford and the baggage he brought with him.

Dipper just doesn’t care about that as much. That isn’t to say he’s a bad person! He's compassionate, selfless, brave and unquestionably heroic by the end of the show. They both are. But it sticks out to me how differently they think about ethics. For example, Dipper literally kills Wax Sherlock Holmes, while Mabel is so averse to hurting someone’s feelings that she can’t bear to break out of a false, one-sided relationship with Gideon until Dipper's life is at stake. You see what I’m getting at here? But I have more evidence! Buckle up, this is gonna get long.

Compare how they treat their rivals, Pacifica and Robbie. These are ordinary humans with no real authority over them who, age and class gaps aside, they're basically on even footing with in confrontations, so this is a good metric for how aggressive they are when upset and how much they hold grudges in mundane situations.

In “Irrational Treasure”, Mabel is deeply hurt by Pacifica’s mockery to the point of giving up her silly identity, and sets out to prove her wrong that she can be competent. But at the end, when presented with the opportunity to destroy the Northwest family’s fake prestigious legacy that they use to justify putting others down, she declares, “I’ve got nothing to prove” and lets it go. She’s secure in herself. Her motivation is satisfied. Why bother putting more pain and strife into the world? It’s Dipper, who has been only been hurt by proximity to Mabel, who insists on exposing the truth specifically to spite Pacifica and takes away that “Man, revenge is underrated. That felt awesome!” Revenge is arguably a form of justice, especially in this sense of revealing an unfair lie, but still, he takes great pleasure in bringing an enemy down for the sake of it, not to fix the damage they did.

In “Fight Fighters”, Dipper’s vindictive streak returns. He manipulates the ridiculously powerful Rumble McSkirmish into brutally beating up Robbie on the fraudulent charge of murder, threatening Robbie’s life. He didn’t realize Rumble would try to kill Robbie, but he was fine with him severely injuring him. Rumble is a fighting game character, a superpowered master martial artist. Robbie is a normal fifteen-year-old. This is not a sportsmanlike matchup. By the end Dipper learns his lesson and takes responsibility, but so does Mabel about hurting people to try to have a perfect life and people still complain about that!

In “The Golf War”, Mabel is again the twin with a bone to pick with Pacifica, but Dipper takes her rivalry more seriously than her and is more willing to be mean about it. He encourages her to cheat when she doesn’t want to, justifying it because Pacifica is “cheating at life”. Understandable, but still underhanded. While Mabel bonds and buries the hatchet with her rival by the end, outright declaring their rivalry to be stupid, Dipper holds onto it, refusing to forgive Pacifica at all and disapproving of Mabel's offer to give her a ride home afterward despite the pouring rain and her absent parents. He still wholeheartedly considers her “the worst” (and tells her so to her face) at the beginning of “Northwest Mansion Mystery”, even though he saw her and Mabel help and protect each other in their fight against the Lilliputtians and Pacifica thank Mabel and accept her apology.

In “The Love God”, Mabel’s compassion is on full display. She makes it apparent that she wants everyone she knows to be happy, to the point of making a chart to show her friends’ feelings with stickers, and goes out of her way to help Robbie just because she doesn’t think any human being should be so lonely and sad. Dipper initially has no sympathy for Robbie’s misery and sees the twins and his old friends leaving him to rot as a good thing.

Dipper just invests more emotionally into hating people and is more willing to play dirty. Mabel prefers to see the best in people, forgive, deescalate conflict and turn enemies into friends whenever possible, and has more respect for honour and sportsmanship.

Compare the insecurities they highlight in "Society of the Blind Eye". These could have been their last words spoken with their memories of the summer, so they are fully candid and vulnerable.

Mabel confesses, “I only love some of my stuffed animals and the guilt is killing me!” She reprimands herself for not having sincere affection for all the people in her life… who are inanimate objects, hence this being a joke about how immature and overly sentimental she is. But she’s telling the truth! Not being honest about your feelings toward someone who loves you (as toys are assumed to love their kids) is wrong. It’s something a bad, or at least flawed, person would do. We also know that it’s something Mabel can do with real consequences - she loves Dipper unconditionally, but her frequent teasing of him instead of letting this on damages his self-esteem more than she intends and often realizes - and when she does realize as in “Little Dipper”, she’s ashamed of herself. Her guilt is that she’s failing morally, that she hurts the people around her despite her good intentions.

Dipper admits, “Sometimes I use big words and don’t actually know what they mean. I mean, I’m supposed to be the smart guy! If I’m not the smart guy, then who am I?” He primarily thinks of his worth in terms of competence. Dipper is generally not that confident, at this point in time. He has an intense drive to prove his worth. He is acutely aware of his physical and social shortcomings. But the one thing he knows that he does well is analytical, deductive and strategic thinking, and so to always have value he’s built his entire identity around being particularly intelligent. He’s the planner, the mastermind, the guy with the specialized knowledge and important big words who people have no choice but to respect and listen to, because a lifetime of loneliness besides Mabel has taught him that given a choice, they probably won’t. Except just like Mabel’s all-loving attitude, there’s an element of performance. He doesn’t know everything; he’s inherently irrational to a degree like everyone else. So he tries to seem smarter than he is. His guilt is that he’s failing intellectually and practically, that he isn’t contributing enough to be worth something.

This is where Dipper diverges. He wants to be ethically good less than he wants to be good AT things, and respected for it. But they both beat themselves up when they don’t live up to their self-assigned archetypes of All-Loving Hero and The Smart Guy, when they aren’t good enough by their own unreasonably high standards.

"The Last Mabelcorn" deconstructs Mabel’s fixation on her moral perfection. Celestabellabethabelle, who I will henceforth call C-Beth for short, manipulates it to keep her out of the unicorns’ way. She makes manifest Mabel’s fear that she isn’t good enough no matter what she does. We see Mabel push herself further and further to try to prove herself, much like Dipper in episodes like “Dipper vs Manliness”, and emotionally unravel until she’s miserable, self-loathing and openly listing her vices in a way never seen before. But this isn’t productive! Wallowing in shame doesn’t motivate her to be better! She needs to learn that although she isn’t perfect, the virtues she has are good enough to work with to both get out and kick C-Beth out of her head. She decides to stop worrying about meeting an impossible ideal of goodness and just focus on doing good, by using efficient (if violent, and therefore immoral under certain paradigms) methods to protect her family. Her plot in this episode has its detractors and I understand the criticisms that the message wasn’t handled as well as it could have been. But I think it does okay. Mabel definitely reevaluates her need to feel like a good person here. She switches from prioritizing what’s important to her, the validation of being "pure of heart", to what’s important to others and in the bigger picture, simply getting the unicorn hair to keep Bill out of the Mystery Shack.

Finally, compare the twins’ disastrous errors in judgement in “Scary-Oke” and “Dipper and Mabel vs the Future”, when they both accidentally unleash terrible forces of evil upon the town and set in motion a local apocalypse.

Dipper recites an incantation from Journal 3 that causes the dead to rise as bloodthirsty zombies, desperate to prove to the government agents before they leave that the supernatural is real and warrants their help investigating, driven by both his desire for knowledge (his tool to feel secure in himself) and more immediately his fear of being dismissed as unworthy. He is emotionally vulnerable, but still creates the dangerous situation on his own initiative. Since he doesn’t need a blacklight to read the spell and the beginning of the episode established that he’s already familiar with all Journal 3’s visible entries, he knows what the spell would do. He doesn’t realize how many zombies will appear and how dangerous they’ll be. But he is aware that there are risks. Plus, the Shack is hosting a party full of innocent civilians and Mabel has explicitly asked him not to interfere with weirdness. The one thing she told him not to do that night was raise the dead! And what does he do? Raises the dead.

Mabel is actively deceived and manipulated into giving who she believes to be Blendin Blandin, an expert in time-altering technology, what she believes to be an item of such technology, with the intention of warping time to extend the summer for the town. This is a selfish choice. But on top of how emotionally compromised she is, sobbing in despair after “the worst day of [her] life”, consider her internal logic: the end of summer is going to mean the trials and tribulations of growing up for both her and Dipper, and they won’t even have each other if he gets his way; Wendy is already going through that and has told her how awful high school is; she overheard at least some of the Stans’ conversation at the end of “A Tale of Two Stans”, meaning she might know that Stan will have to give up his home and business once the summer is over; and she and Dipper both have true friends here who they will miss and be missed by, as opposed to their memories of Piedmont where we only see them supporting and comforting each other and never hear of any friends. And it isn’t like she’s the only one having fun! Stan is happier than ever, Ford is back home, Dipper’s come into his own more than she could ever have anticipated. He’ll still get to delve into the mysteries of this town that he loves so much. But she’ll be there too. If you want more Gravity Falls, you can see where she’s coming from. She genuinely thinks that “just a little more summer” would be a positive experience for everyone, with plenty of good reason. Yes, she’s recklessly messing with powerful forces that she doesn’t understand. Yes, she isn’t nearly as suspicious of this sudden miracle solution as she should be. But she has no evidence that this would harm anyone.

Their responses after making their mistake are also noteworthy. They’re both horrified and remorseful. But Dipper expresses no concern for the agents for the rest of the episode when it looks like they’ve been killed due to his actions. He even nonchalantly remarks that he thought they were dead when he sees them again. Mabel, however, reaches to stop Bill and begs him to “wait” before he knocks her unconscious. Then she’s imprisoned in Mabelland, which is designed to make her never want to leave and based on how it only occurs to her after she renounces it that the neon colours and repetitive background music are too much even for her, may additionally have a direct, if subtle, influence on her mind. So she’s a little distracted from her guilt. But by risking her life to fix the repercussions of her actions and save the town, she shows much more responsibility for the townspeople’s lives than Dipper showed for the agents he’d tried so hard to impress. He just happily went about his business for weeks believing he had two people’s deaths on his conscience. Never even looked into whether they survived.

These differences in their personal moral philosophies add another layer to the parallels between the two generations of Pines twins. Typically, Dipper parallels Ford and Mabel parallels Stan. But less so here! Like Mabel, Ford very staunchly believes in abstract moral theory, namely that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. He holds a grudge for weeks against Stan saving him from being lost in the dimensions through the portal, because it endangered the rest of the world by creating the Rift. It was a good deed with good intentions… but it didn’t only make life better for everyone. To Ford, that means it isn’t good enough. Hmm, which younger twin has a problem with judging anything short of ‘pure good’ to not be worthwhile? Also like Mabel, Ford’s self-righteousness is often hypocritical, considering his pride, selfishness and willingness to disregard the possible negative consequences of his actions, e.g. trusting Bill and building the portal in the first place.

Like Dipper, Stan is willing and ready to use underhanded methods to win against his enemies, to lie, cheat, steal and leverage assets he doesn’t really have the right to. He’s more inclined to be aggressive, spiteful and smug. As for holding grudges, even to an unreasonable extent, he personally despised a nine-year-old child even before he knew that the child was a bad person. He would absolutely summon Rumble McSkirmish to attack a rival for him. He prides himself on his cunning, another form of intelligence, and prioritises being good at what he does best over holding the moral high ground. He is shown to have lifelong insecurities about Ford being better than him in other fields (and thus explicitly valued more by their father); so his pragmatism is his way of trying to always be useful to the people he loves, and indeed a key way he shows them his love.

#gravity falls #mabel pines #dipper pines #pines twins #gravity falls analysis

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underdark-dreams · 4 months

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I got too excited and finished the second chapter 👀 [ch1]

A Strand to Climb - Ch.2

Tav finally catches up with her wizard at Sorcerous Sundries; Rolan has some complicated feelings about seeing her again.

Tags: Reunions, Mutual Pining | Word Count: 3,042 [Read on AO3]

The next day dawned just as gloomy and gray as Rolan’s mood.

He hadn't slept well in his chilly room at the Tower; the flesh beside his brow was bruised deeper than he’d realized. His fretful dreams of shadow curses and illithid monstrosities had been laced through with the dull ache in his skull.

As a result he’d been short with the customers this morning. It didn’t really matter—no one cared about the boy behind the counter. People tended to look through him, if they looked at him at all.

No doubt his bruised and beaten appearance made people uncomfortable. Rolan knew Lorroakan didn’t care a jot for his wellbeing, but he did wonder why the man wouldn’t avoid damaging the first face people saw when they walked in. It couldn’t be good for business.

These days Rolan found himself more of a shopkeeper than a student, after all.

With that thought in mind, he pulled the large book of figures up onto the counter. At least there was plenty of work there to occupy him—Lorroakan had been an atrocious bookkeeper.

By the time midday dragged along, Sorcerous Sundries had cleared out almost completely. The sky outside the wide front entry had darkened further from the approaching storm. Periodically a humid breeze would gust through the doorway. Each time, Rolan had to grab hold of the pages of his ledger before he lost his place.

Eventually he shoved the thing aside in impatience, thunking a heavy potion bottle down on top to weigh down the page.

From its hiding place among the scroll shelves, Rolan instead pulled out a stained and dogeared volume: Suspended Ceremorphosis. He'd swiped it from the tower while Lorroakan was engaged with yet another so-called Nightsong hunter.

Lorroakan certainly wouldn’t miss the text. He hadn't maintained the protective spells on the reference section of his library the way he had the sections on spellcraft and the Weave. Evidently he thought everyone must have the single-minded and incurious lust for power that he did himself.

Rolan had never thought of himself as having a weak stomach, yet he found he had to take the text in small doses. The only thing that kept him reading it was a promise he’d made to Tav many moons ago, on a night when hope was easier to come by.

Whoever had authored it must have been a surgeon—more likely a necromancer. Each gruesome detail was described thoroughly, almost lovingly in some passages.

Rolan forced his way through as many pages as he could manage. Combined with the painstaking diagrams of each stage of the infection and transformation, he found it painful reading. Especially when it directly concerned one of the people he cared about most in all the Realms.

Who knew if Tav still even needed his help after all this time? She’d proven herself far more resourceful than him on many occasions. Maybe she was already on the trail for a proper cure by now. Maybe he was just wasting his time.

Rolan abruptly pushed this book aside too, turning back to his ledger again for the reprieve of sordid coin.

All things considered, Sorcerous Sundries was thriving. The citizens of Baldur’s Gate were shaken, borderline terrified by the recent march of the Absolute's forces…and frightened people spent gold on anything they thought might keep their families safe. Rolan summed last week's numbers a second and a third time, convinced he must have added a figure somewhere.

A brash voice outside pierced his concentration. Rolan glanced up sharply to the open doors, quill poised on the page.

Suffering hells. Aradin again? Whether or not he’d actually been involved in this week’s clumsy burglary attempt, he should have the common sense not to show his face.

The mercenary had been no rosy presence back at the Grove, and he was a constant bane at the magic shop ever since Rolan had been placed on front desk duties. He was always appearing to insist on a private audience with Lorroakan, or some great sum owed to him, or some other equally improbable outcome depending on the day.

Just as Lorroakan had accused him of last night—ungratefully—Rolan had finally taken it upon himself to charm the metal construct at the door to turn him away on sight.

As he watched, Aradin jabbed a threatening finger into the construct's face, as if it might be intimidated into compliance.

Thick fucking idiot, Rolan thought viciously. He had no patience for this today. Right as he set down his pen, someone else caught Aradin's attention from behind.

If not for her change in attire, he would have recognized Tav’s figure at first glance. But then Aradin shifted slightly as he spoke, and Rolan caught sight of her face.

The city seemed to be treating her well; he was relieved to see it. Her features were bright and well-rested for once, despite the scowling line of her brows as she squared her shoulders toward Aradin.

For the first time in days, Rolan managed a faint smile. She never did like bullies.

She'd commissioned fine new armor—perhaps from Dammon's forge up the street. Tav shone like an aasimar despite the overcast day behind her. The thought occurred with not near enough force to distract him from gaping at her lovely face.

His face. Zurgan—

Rolan’s spine straightened with a jerk. Why hadn’t he prepared for how she might react? How he might explain his pathetic appearance? He’d forgotten to anticipate any of it properly, and found himself blinded by panic.

There was no time to unfreeze his boots from the floor—Tav and her companions were already sweeping past Aradin and into the shop.

Her gaze landed on Rolan before any of the rest even noticed him. His heart hammered in his chest as he watched her expressions play out in quick succession: dismay, then concern, then indignation.

The way her eyes traveled over his face made Rolan wish he could melt into an invisible puddle. But such powers were beyond him—all he could do was stand mute as Tav drew up to the counter in front of him.

“Welcome to Sorcerous Sundries.” Rolan spoke the usual lines, and hated the falseness of his voice as he did so.

Tav only blinked at him for a moment. “Hi,” she replied softly.

The two of them looked at each other for what felt like an age. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, in truth. Her eyes were wide and wholly inescapable. Rolan found his mind full of many words, all of which refused to exit his mouth.

“Oh shit, Rolan? What happened to your face, mate?”

The towering Tiefling hellfighter spoke up before either of them could. She was peering at him from behind Tav’s shoulder with an expression of guileless concern.

“Karlach—” Tav wheeled on her with a soft admonition.

She was trying to spare his pride. For some reason, that made Rolan feel lower than ever. As Tav turned back to him with a tight smile, he hoped the patchwork of bruises on his face hid its flush of abject humiliation.

Tav opened her mouth, but Rolan rushed to speak first. “I expect you’re here to see Master Lorroakan.”

Something flickered behind her eyes. “We are,” was all she answered.

“Then you’ll find the portals to the Tower upstairs. Do be careful to choose correctly the first time, it’s a great deal of trouble getting back in here if you don’t—Lorroakan has little patience for anyone who might waste his time—”

Rolan was fussing with his ledger and rifling through the pages as if it contained much important work he had to get back to. Anything to avoid looking at her anymore.

“Right…thanks, Rolan.” Tav’s voice was uncertain. He clenched his jaw against a sudden pang of remorse. “See you later, then?”

Rolan nodded tersely down at his work. He made no other answer.

She lingered for just a moment as the rest of her friends departed for the staircase. Then Rolan heard the metallic clinking of her plate armor as she too moved away.

He kept his head bent doggedly over his book as she did. Rolan’s eyes pretended to move over the page, seeing none of it. His ears were trained behind him to track Tav’s footfalls on the stairs.

When he heard the rushing whirl of a portal activating above, he stayed frozen for a few seconds to be sure. Then he shut the ledger with a snap.

And like a shameful coward, he ran to hide.

At least Rolan had enough sense to summon his master’s projection before he turned on his heel. Not a familiar incantation, but he glimpsed the Weave successfully materializing from over his shoulder as he swept toward the concealed door under the great staircase.

His fingers fumbled for a key at his belt—the one Tolna had lent him his first day. Once the door latched behind him, he stumbled down the dark stairs into the ancillary storeroom.

The place was full of more dust than anything else. Rolan coughed and sneezed several times before he managed a simple cantrip to light one of the torches along the wall.

Then he sank down onto an empty crate, slumped against the bookshelf behind him, and leaned the tips of his horns back against its dusty volumes.

What in the hells was he doing?

Living the life he’d chosen, Rolan answered himself. Tend the shop, ascend for lessons—sleep and repeat.

For how many years? One, two? Five?

Five years as a wizard’s apprentice was rare, but not unheard of. And Lorroakan didn't strike him as a man who readily dismissed his apprentices from service.

What exactly did he expect Tav to do for the next five years? Surely not wait around for a pathetic wizard-in-training who didn't have the strength to fight back against his own worthless master.

Sitting in this damp basement, surrounded by cobwebs, Rolan couldn't think of a single good reason why someone like her might still want someone like him.

An old, familiar feeling slithered through his gut. Unwanted.

It was true that Lorroakan had proved more of a disappointment than he could possibly have imagined. But the man had one advantage over every other archwizard Rolan had written to over the years, pleading for a chance to prove himself.

Lorroakan was the only one who had accepted him in.

Whatever the archwizard’s many deficiencies, they did nothing to change the other advantages this apprenticeship could grant him. Notoriety, privilege, access. The wizarding circles of Faerûn didn’t open for just anyone, especially not a bastard Tiefling. Not unless you had connections.

So what if he had feelings for Tav. Strong ones. Ones he sometimes wished he could make disappear…despite the way she continually visited his dreams. This apprenticeship was something Rolan had dreamed of for far longer.

And what about her feelings?

She'd told him she loved him many times during their last brief nights together at Last Light Inn. On one particularly memorable occasion, she'd been naked on top of him.

Rolan had replayed the moment in his head too many times to count, yet it never failed to set his heart racing.

But those were moments when blood ran hot from freshly escaped peril—moments suspended in forgiving shadow. Under the harsh light of day, perhaps Tav could finally see him clearly.

Rolan’s hands rose to his face. He prodded and felt along its planes with his fingers, gritting his teeth as he rediscovered each fleshy bruise and scrape on its surface. He was a mess of a man.

Abruptly, Rolan shook his head to clear away all this self-pitying nonsense. His thoughts turned back to Tav’s current audience with Lorroakan.

He wondered what they spoke of. Perhaps the Nightsong; perhaps her parasite.

If Lorroakan knew anything about Illithids or ceremorphosis—an idea that seemed more laughable by the day—Rolan prayed to all the gods that he’d have the decency to share his knowledge with her.

Whatever the subject, their conversation was brief.

Rolan’s ear caught the muffled hum of the portal once again and knew Tav and her companions had descended from the Tower. He waited a few more minutes to be sure, then rose to trudge back up to the main floor. When stepped back into the light, she and her companions were gone.

Rolan had no right to feel as disappointed as he did. He was the one who’d hidden from her like a child, after all.

As his feet dragged him back behind the counter, Rolan realized that in his haste he’d left out the stolen book on ceremorphosis—turned open to a particularly gruesome illustration.

He thanked his stars that it had been Tav and her friends paying a visit. Another customer might have been put off by the sight, enough so that a complaint made its way back to Lorroakan. The archwizard was jealous as a dragon when it came to guarding his hoard, however little personal interest he took in its riches.

As he picked up the tome to hide it away again, a small slip of parchment fluttered from between its pages to land on the counter in front of him. Rolan turned it over, then felt his heart repeat the motion.

Had he truly never seen her handwriting before? The letters were small and even, yet clearly written in haste:

Let’s talk alone. I love you

ps thank you for the research

Whatever information Lorroakan had provided her, if she was thanking him for reading a dusty book, it must not have been worth much.

Despite every weight pulling on his heart, Rolan reread each word several more times. Then he slipped the note gently into the pocket of his robes.

—

“Hey! You coming?”

“One second,” Tav called over her shoulder.

She hastily fit a postscript onto the small scrap of parchment. Then she slipped it like a page marker into Rolan’s book and laid his quill back on the counter.

It was obvious that Rolan wanted to avoid running into her a second time. A sad pang ran through her at the thought, but she couldn’t really blame him. She’d never seen him looking so miserable—not even that night after his siblings had been taken to Moonrise.

Lia’s words from yesterday rang in her ears. I don’t think he’s treating Rolan well. Whatever dark things Tav had imagined, they hadn’t prepared her for the sight of Rolan’s face—plainly dappled with weeks of brutal mistreatment.

Her fingers clenched hard at her sides. Tav glanced up at the shimmering projection of Lorroakan behind the counter and quelled the furious urge to put a fist right through its vapid smile.

As she jogged back out through the atrium of Sorcerous Sundries, Karlach turned to fall into stride beside her. The other two had walked ahead, clearly unaware that they’d left anyone behind. Gale was gesticulating animatedly about something; Wyll listened politely at his shoulder.

“So that Lorroakan’s a real prick,” Karlach remarked with characteristic bluntness as they walked.

Tav gave a harsh laugh. “Read my mind.”

“How d’you think he knows about the Nightsong?”

She had been asking herself the same question. Her mind’s eye conjured up the circle of runes in his study, the one he’d indiscreetly shown off to them on this very first meeting.

It had Balthazar’s fingerprints all over it.

“Probably has a background in necromancy,” Tav guessed aloud. “No way to know for sure.”

Karlach’s palm rang against plate metal as she clapped it between Tav’s shoulder blades. “Until we kick his arse and charm it out of him, you mean.”

Tav only smiled weakly in response. Inside, she could scarcely wait for the day when Lorroakan would get what was coming to him.

Beside her, a mischievous chuckle was rising from Karlach’s chest. “Hells, imagine when we tell Aylin. She’s going to tear that man apart.”

“Let’s not tell her just yet,” Tav said in a rush.

She felt Karlach’s eyes search her face. “Why not?”

Tav looked down at the cobblestones as they continued. “Rolan and I need to talk, Karlach. Whether or not he wants to, I owe it to him. He should know everything before all the Nightsong’s righteous vengeance comes down on his archwizard’s head.”

There was a pause. “You don’t think he knows?”

“No way.” She looked up at Karlach then, her face steely-certain. “Rolan would never do something like that.”

“Yeah…you’re right. Forget I said anything,” Karlach added, her tone apologetic. Before she knew it, Tav felt a warm arm jostle around the pauldrons on her shoulders.

“Listen, Tav, it’s gonna be okay. You and Rolan will talk it through, or maybe you’ll just fuck his stubborn wizard brains out again—”

“Karlach!”

“Oh come on, like everyone doesn’t already know?” Karlach was cracking up loud enough that Wyll glanced back from in front to see the commotion. Tav couldn’t help an embarrassed laugh, but she hid half her face behind a hand.

Before long, the dark stormclouds gathering above put a pause on the rest of their errands in the Lower City. It seemed wise to just wait out the weather at their rented room in the Elfsong.

Karlach did make some excuse or other to swing by Dammon’s forge instead—despite the fact that they’d been just yesterday.

Tav said nothing, but she wasn’t fooled. To borrow Karlach’s words, if anyone needed to fuck anyone else’s brains out, those two were obvious candidates.

With thunder rumbling on the horizon, everyone else settled into their private corners of their quarters for the rest of the afternoon. Shadowheart and Lae’zel turned to meditation; Gale to the large stack of books that he always mysteriously managed to fit in his pack. Astarion was curled in front of the fire, his lips moving silently as he pored over a book on Infernal.

For a few hours, Tav found herself with no plans and no responsibilities.

Though her new armor from Dammon was exquisite, she exchanged it for some more inconspicuous clothes, then pinned her heavy hooded cloak around her shoulders for the inevitable rain.

And with everyone else occupied, she slipped unnoticed out of their rooms and back down to the streets.

#rolan x tav #mutual pining #bg3 rolan #rolan bg3 #tav x rolan #sage and soldier #bg3 fanfiction #bg3 fanfic #rebgrrl writes #underdark dreams #i think i love them

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dumborangecat · 7 months

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The new episode killed me so now i’m gonna talk about the toxic doomed yuri (Petrigrof)

Okay so the bus scene, omg the bus scene. I’ve seen a few people criticise Simon for not going with Betty, or even considering going with Betty, and while he’s definitely not perfect, that’s not one of the things to criticise him for (stares at the implied professer/student dynamic)

Simon would never have boarded that bus, it’s just now who he is. Simon is calm and collected (pre-iceking ofc), he thinks things out a lot more and doesn’t make those kinds of impulsive decisions like abandoning his current life for 6 whole months on a complete whim. If Betty had maybe mentioned her feelings earlier, and invited him on the trip, I wouldn’t be suprised to see him go on it. But as it was, Simon had only just been presented with the idea that he was even wanted on the trip, and had 0 time to do anything with that. If their roles were reversed, and it was Simons trip, he would have gone and saw Betty again 6 months later.

Meanwhile Betty is much more wild and impulsive, even in her everyday life (as seen when she litterally chucks a can of cherries at simon instead of just handing it to him or having him come get it) her deciding to abandon her trip and stay with Simon is completely within character for her. She makes more decisions that entirely disregard what she wants all for Simons wellbeing, not because he wants her to do that, or is encouraging her to, but because thats who she is!! Her impulsively is only worsened when Simon comes around because now she has someone to throw everything away for! Someone who, for as much as he loves her, is either too dense or too naive to realise that’s what she’s doing! If the roles were reversed, she probably would have boarded that bus with simon, because that’s who she iss!

Simon and Betty were never going to work out well, even without the Mushroom war and Ice King/Golb junk, Betty constantly sacrificing her ambitions for Simon, and Simon never realising thats what she’s doing, was always going to lead them towards an unhealthy relationship, the only reason that never happened was because of all the magic stuff, they just never had enough time together for their unhappy ending to play out like that.

And all that’s not even mentioning their obsession with one another, ep 8 did make it seem almost as if Simon wasn’t as obsessed as Betty was, but he absolutely was, perhaps not at first but he definitely is now. His entire life is in complete shambles without her, if he wanted too Simon could begin his research again and start a new life in ooo, but he can’t because Bettys not there. He’s so hung up on her that even 12 years later he was still trying to bring her back! He loves her just as much she does, they just don’t show it the same way!

(I mentioned Simon not realising that Betty practically throws her whole life away for him, I don’t mean he doesn’t see her impulsive tendencies, he does, and he loves her for them, he just doesn’t realise how damaging they are)

(Not related to my previous points) But also something about that whole flash back seems odd, it feels like the definition of ‘looking at something through rose-tinted glasses’ the question is just whether he was downplaying his own actions, or Bettys. It’s possible we’ll see Bettys POV of how it went down, but honestly I think that would add more confusion to everything, as she also looks back on their relationship through ‘rose-tinted glasses’, so i’d like to see how they show us what really happened.

They make me want to scream, they’re only gonna get sadder next episode and i am not ready

#sorry this is a mess #i still haven’t recovered from the episodes #god they make me sick /pos #adventure time #fionna and cake #simon petrikov #fionna and cake spoilers #betty grof #petrigrof #this makes it sound like i’m criticising betty for being impulsive #i’m absolutely not #all girls deserve to be a little insane somtimes #as a treat

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little-box-of-autism · 1 year

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My Opinion on Spider

@peachycrime asked for this, so....

Anyways, buckle up because I ain't gonna hold back, and I'm going to be as brutal as winter in Nunavut.

Let's start off with the obvious;

Spider is sixteen years old.

He is a child, and as such, should not be expected to be held to the same standards as an adult.

But more over - and I know some might disagree with me on this - Spider is a child that was neglected and thus abused because neglect is abuse, and I'm not touching on the shit with Neytiri just yet.

The clearest example of Spider's neglect is the scene where Spider is running from Hell's Gate, the first one we see him as a kid rather than a toddler or teenager. Spider is at best seven in this scene, and yet he is allowed to run into the Pandoran jungle (because from the comics and other sources, we know that while the Omatikaya is close to Hell's Gate, it isn't beside it) unattended despite the fact that the jungle is dangerous even to an adult na'vi, let alone a human child who could feasibly die just by tripping over a rock and falling in a way that could damage or dislodge his mask, which he relies on to breathe.

If Spider had fallen, if his mask had been damaged or dislodged, there was no one there to help him.

There is a wooded area near my house that is filled with trails and is generally considered pretty safe, but I still wouldn't let my seven-year cousins (who don't rely on a mask to breathe) run around in there unattended.

Already Spider's hair is beginning to mat (they are mats, not dreads) and there is no way that the adults weren't aware of it, which means they allowed it.

Now let's get onto some other things I've noticed throughout the movie (and the comics, though I'm mostly focusing on the movie.)

"Stray Cat" is what Jake refers to Spider as, and I don't know if this may just be me, and my ASD, but I find calling/comparing a child to a stray cat to be dehumanizing, and maybe it's purposeful because it's a lot easier to ignore the neglect of a "stray cat" then a child.

Spider from the moment he is captured is very aware of the fact that there will be no attempt to save him which is devastating because even with the knowledge that a rescue from Bridgehead is improbable, the clear lack of hope in Spider is very telling in how he views his worth and value.

Jake, someone who was in the military and worked for the RDA, however briefly, would be aware, at least to some degree, of what would be done to Spider in order to get information, and he does not actually express any concern for Spider's wellbeing or safety, only thinking about what Spider could possibly tell the RDA.

Despite how close the younger three Sully kids are to Spider, they never express any worry or concern for Spider openly in front of their parents. Do I think that they were worried about Spider? Yes, but I do also think they knew they couldn't express this concern in front of their parents, specifically Neytiri.

The only adult who shows any real concern for Spider during the vast majority of the movie is Quaritch despite him technically having the least reason for why he should be concerned for Spider. As Quaritch states, he isn't the same Miles Quaritch that was Spider's father, and unlike Jake, Norm, Neytiri, or Max, he didn't watch Spider grow up. His connection to Spider is minimal in comparison to other adults in Spider's life, and yet he is the one who shows Spider the most care.

Now onto the matter of Neytiri, I can understand her reasons and I can empathize with her trauma, but she is an adult who is punishing a child who has not done anything to her besides exist. We wouldn't condone this in real life and to me, trying to excuse her actions is troubling to me because of the message it sends to people that have gone through something similar. You can still empathize with Neytiri and the trauma she suffered while acknowledging that her actions towards Spider are wrong. Trauma is a reason, but it isn't an excuse and as an adult, it is on Neytiri, not Spider, to manage her trauma.

We also have to consider how her actions affect her relationships with her children, specifically Kiri and Lo'ak.

Kiri is the most obvious, she and Spider share a very close bond that is displayed both in the comics and in the movies, and Kiri has argued with Neytiri over her treatment of Spider. This obviously would put a level of strain on their mother-daughter relationship, especially when you take into account that Kiri often feels 'othered' and considers Spider to be one of the few people who not only understands her but also does not judge or think differently of her.

With Lo'ak it's more nuanced but Neytiri's constant hatred towards Spider due to him being a 'demon' very likely has an effect on Lo'ak who already clearly has issues with his 'demon' blood that sets him apart from other na'vi.

In the end (because I need to end this somewhere before it just becomes a never ending rant) Spider is a child who was neglected and abused for who his father is, and his action of saving Quaritch is completely understandable in light of the fact that Quaritch is the first adult who took care of Spider and had - in Spider's eyes - saved him from death twice now.

One last time I want to make one thing clear;

Spider said "don't hurt her."

Kiri said "don't kill him."

And I cannot shake the fact that at that moment Kiri genuinely believed that her mother was capable of killing her best friend and was pleading for Spider's life.

If that doesn't bother you deeply, then I don't think you are ready for these types of discussions.

Now I am open to discussing my opinion in a mature conversation, but I will not tolerate dramatics nor will I entertain blatant ignorance. If you cannot engage in discussions with at least some level of maturity and willingness to understand different perspectives, don't engage at all.

#miles spider socorro #spider socorro defense squad #spider socorro protection squad #spider socorro #atwow spider #avatar spider #atwow #avatar the way of water

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orionsangel86 · 11 days

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Lucienne/Lucien - How the Librarian Became the Chief.

In The Sandman Netflix adaptation Lucienne is a stand out character and second only to Morpheus in importance, screen time, and centrality to the story. Lucienne is Morpheus's loyal Librarian, second in command, ruler of the Dreaming in his absence, and often times a voice of reason and advice for our dutiful King of Dreams. She is so well respected in her position that the other castle residents consider her their boss and would rather go to her for guidance and command than Morpheus himself. She takes care of Dream's ravens and even appears to have the power to create new ravens from newly deceased mortals like she did with Matthew. She is clearly extremely close to Morpheus, and is one of very few people he seems to actually listen to and trust. Lucienne's role in this story can not be underestimated.

So it may come as a surprise to any fans of the show who haven't read the comics to learn that Lucien (as he is called in the comics) is afforded very few of the above traits. In fact Lucien is no where near as close to Morpheus even by the very end of the story, as Lucienne is at the beginning. It is this difference that has fascinated me since I first started diving into the comics after falling in love with the show, and its something I view as extremely important when considering how the story is being adapted into a kinder, more sympathetic universe surrounding our central protagonist.

Lucienne's role is expanded greatly from her comic counterpart, and her relationship with Morpheus is shown to be much deeper. This is evident practically right away at the end of episode one when Lucienne comes to greet Morpheus upon his return to the Dreaming following his escape.

The way she runs over to him as soon as she realises he is back, and lovingly takes his hand and is so pleased to see him is a far cry from the comic where the first thing Lucien does is bow.

So right at the start we see a very different form of relationship here. Where Lucienne is already displaying a level of care and devotion beyond the expectations of a servant, Lucien however, is exactly that.

The servant thing has caused a bit of contention among fandom in the past. I think the confusion could come from whether or not you see Lucien or Lucienne first. Lucien IS a servant of Dream. Lucienne is more like a vice president and royal advisor. Those are two very different things after all and that difference only becomes more obvious the further you go into the story.

Lucienne accompanies Morpheus throughout his return to his crumbling kingdom, helps him as he attempt to repair the damage, follows him to Cain and Abel, and watches over his meeting with the Fates. She is by his side from the moment he returns until the moment he leaves again for the waking world to begin his quest to recover his tools, and she is responsible for Matthew's reincarnation as the new Raven and instructs Matthew to stay with him because of her concern for Morpheus's wellbeing on his quest.

I cannot stress enough how much none of this is in the comics. Lucienne shows a level of care towards Morpheus that just isn't present in Lucien in the comics. After the first meeting with Lucien at the gates of the Dreaming, Lucien doesn't appear again until he is instructed by Morpheus to conduct the census of the Dreaming. He only appears again in the Doll's House very briefly and has no involvement in Morpheus's decisions during that arc, which takes place very rarely in the Dreaming.

That's not to say that Lucien isn't a very trusted servant of Morpheus. He is the closest to Morpheus of all the residents of the Dreaming except only Matthew. But I think a lot of what we see in the show of Morpheus and Lucienne's dynamic is inspired by much later in the comics. I also think that it speaks loudly to the change in Morpheus as a character. Show!Morpheus has people almost right away who care about him and want to help him, whereas comic!Morpheus is extremely isolated. It is clear in the early comic stories that comic!Morpheus keeps himself at arms length from basically everyone. He does not have a bond with Lucien, he did not have Jessamy, and at that early stage, he didn't even have Matthew. All of this of course was primarily to make show!Morpheus a more sympathetic and likeable character - you gotta give your protagonist people who care about them, it helps raise the stakes after all.

Taking Charge - Lucienne is the real boss

One of my favourite parts of the Dolls House episodes in the Netflix show is the conflict between Morpheus and Lucienne due to the other residence and Dreaming servants going to her for advice and instruction first rather than Morpheus. Bearing in mind this only takes place less than a year after Morpheus's return from imprisonment, it speaks volumes as to how Lucienne has taken the role of leader of the Dreaming in her stride.

But it also indicates how Morpheus' change in the show is coming at lightening fast speed compared to the comic. In the comic, Mervyn doesn't make these observations until the Brief Lives arc, and this is indicated at that point to be a very new thing - triggered by several years post fish bowl of having to face his past decisions and mistakes (and a string of scorned ex lovers one after the other ending in a horribly matched rebound relationship with a murderous witch that subsequently rejected him and triggered him literally seeking out destruction). Lucien was only put in charge of the Dreaming when Morpheus left to go on his trip with Delirium. It is during that trip that Morpheus realises how competent Lucien is and capable of running things without problem in his absence.

Mervyn's insights are made clear here:

This is the only time in the comic that anyone dares mention that someone other than Morpheus might be the boss - and it is in no way as directly spelled out as it is in the show. "You're practically running the place" and "you secretly run this place" are quite different statements. The first only makes an observation about Morpheus's current lack of interest (in Brief Lives) in actually running his realm. It implies that Lucien is doing Morpheus' job for him, but does not go as far as to outright call Lucien the boss. Whereas in the show, that's exactly what Mervyn does.

In the comic, Morpheus overhears Mervyn's speech and immediately points out his reasoning for leaving Lucien in charge, for promoting him and giving him more authority.

Because no one ever technically undermines Morpheus in the comic, there is no conflict here. Morpheus trusts Lucien as his loyal servant and gives him the power to rule in his stead (but only when he is absent) and there is no "secretly report to Lucien first" attitude among Matthew and Mervyn. We can perhaps interpret that this might be happening behind the scenes by this point in Brief Lives, or even just before the BL arc when Morpheus was distracted by his rebound murderess, but it is never actually directly stated that this is going on.

The tension between Morpheus and Lucienne in the show is born out of the conflict over Lucienne's position and Morpheus feeling undermined by his subjects, and its storytelling gold. But the only reason such a story works in the show is because Lucienne is so important to Morpheus in the show, because their relationship goes so much deeper than the relationship in the comic. Lucienne is not a servant, she's his god damn vice president and she knows it, and he knows it too. Throughout episodes 7 and 8 specifically he reaches out to her for her opinion and advice on the Vortex situation. He talks things through with her and seeks out her guidance. It is clear that he relies on her and it is only at the end of episode 8 when Lucienne disagrees with his punishment of Gault, that in his anger, he dismisses her.

Lucien/ne the Royal Advisor

Where Morpheus in the show seeks out Lucienne's advice and opinion frequently especially during the Doll's House arc, I have to stress that this never happens in the comic. Comic!Morpheus just does not have that kind of relationship with Lucien and does not seek his counsel at all, even though Lucien does try to give it on occassion, usually when Morpheus is about to do something extremely stupid and probably damaging to himself and the Dreaming. To name a couple times:

Season of Mists - before Morpheus returns to Hell:

Brief Lives - before seeking Destruction:

You'll note that in both these times Lucien's words of caution are completely ignored.

You'll also notice that in both times Lucien is taking a path of polite caution. Lucien very rarely speaks his mind to Morpheus, because he knows it won't get him very far to do so. The only time Lucien truly loses his cool and speaks freely is in The Kindly Ones (spoiler alert)

At this point in the comic story Morpheus has basically all but given up and accepted his fate and its fucking depressing AF. Lucien is well within his right to shake the bastard HARD and snap him TF out of it. I STILL think he was too restrained here tbh!

My point here is that Lucienne already speaks her mind quite freely around Morpheus in the show. She expresses her opinions and thoughts and gives him her advice. This is such a well established dynamic by the point of the argument that it is clear that Lucienne is offended by Morpheus's dismissal of her.

Take this exchange from episode 9:

Lucienne: "Rose is weakening the walls between realms" Matthew: "You gonna tell the Boss?" Lucienne: "No." Matthew: "No?" Lucienne: "It's none of my business." Matthew: "Er, since WHEN?" Lucienne: "Since Lord Morpheus reminded me that I'm merely a librarian and should concern myself with my books from now on." Matthew: "He said that?! What's wrong with him!" Lucienne: "Nothing is wrong with him. He's always been this way. He's just been away so long I'd forgotten. He's determined to deal with the vortex and the missing Arcana by himself. Without anyones help. So any news must be reported directly and exclusively to him."

It's worth pointing out here that whilst this is framed as Morpheus being a stubborn idiot, in the comic, he does in fact deal with the vortex and the missing Arcana by himself mostly and is not so much helped but saved at the last moment by Unity Kinkaid who realises what is happening in a dream and goes to save Rose, which also saves Morpheus from Desire's trap.

In the show, Morpheus has people who care enough about him and his realm to want to get involved and help him, not out of a desire to undermine him, but simply because they care about him. That is a drastic change from the comic at this point. Morpheus in the comic is constantly shown to be struggling under the burden of his own responsibilities and this is highlighted by the fact that he doesn't really get any support or assistance, and is far too prideful to ask for it. Lucien gets the promotion and chance to rule in his absence, but it is never framed as a job he shares with Morpheus - at no point does Lucien take the burden of his responsibilities off of him. This is no Samwise Gamgee "I can carry you" moment unfortunately. Lucien does not have the power nor the bond with Morpheus to undertake such a task because Morpheus keeps him at arms length throughout the comics - but Lucienne? Well, time will tell how that may change.

An Apology from the King

In a shock horror twist that comic!Morpheus would sooner die than do himself (ha) the great emo King of the Netflix universe gives Lucienne an apology for his behaviour (sort of).

Episode 9 displays the tension between Morpheus and Lucienne following their "break up" perfectly. Morpheus is clearly in the wrong, and Lucienne is clearly hurt by his dismissal of her support. Yet even after the fight, he still seeks out her advice in determining the cause of the disturbances in the Dreaming. He goes to her first before investigating himself (something that comic!Morpheus wouldn't even consider doing) and is surprisingly capable in swallowing his pride here even though it is clearly a struggle for him.

Later in the episode, once he realises that Lucienne was right about the disturbances, he seeks her out to tell her so, and to confirm that she was right and he was wrong. This is again something that I can't fathom comic!Morpheus doing, even nearer the end of the story I don't believe he does so, certainly not to Lucien. Fiddlers Green drums this point home when he says this:

Fiddlers Green: "... still his time there appears to have changed him as it has changed me." Lucienne: "How so?" Fiddlers Green: "Lucienne, he came to you and told you he was wrong. It was very nearly an apology. The Morpheus I knew was incapable of that."

This further reinforces not just how much Morpheus has changed in a short time, but also how much he respects and cares about Lucienne and their continued relationship.

Platonic Life Partners? Co Ruler and Closest Confident of the Dream King

When I set out to write this meta, it was with the aim to highlight Lucienne's elevated role from her comic counterpart. To try to stress the importance of her character in the show and what this means for the future of the story in the show. By the end of the last episode, Lucienne is practically granted co-ruler status of the Dreaming while Morpheus works on his creations. He asks her if she can "take care of things while he works" which she agrees "with pleasure".

I just... I can NOT stress ENOUGH how much comic!Morpheus needed this person in his life. Even though Lucien looks after the Dreaming whilst Morpheus is away in Season of Mists and Brief Lives, it is always as a last resort with Morpheus continuing to check in on Lucien during Brief Lives as if he expects trouble, and he always seems a bit confused when Lucien tells him all is fine. As if he can't quite understand how the Dreaming could be okay without him there (and I mean, after the trauma of watching your realm which is also technically a part of you crumble to dust I suppose you would be a bit attached to it!).

Comic!Morpheus constantly struggles under the weight of his responsibility. His entire thing is that he is desperate to step away and not be who he is but he simply does not have it in him to do that. He is far too bound by his rules and responsibilities. For Morpheus in the show to be given someone to support him in his rule as King and assist him with the burden of his responsibilities is actually a hugely mindblowing change to the comic, and could honestly have huge repercussions on the story going forward. Not only that, but the Morpheus in the comics is painfully lonely. He desperately needs companionship but he keeps everyone at arms length. He never allows his subjects to get too close to him, even Lucien. Even Matthew isn't afforded the same level of closeness in the comics as he is in the show. In the comics, the ONLY character who Morpheus is close to is Death. Which says a lot by itself. The second character he gets closer to as time goes on is Delirium. Which also says a lot. Think of the characters in terms of their concepts. Morpheus has no close friends in the comics (even his relationship with Hob Gadling in the comic doesn't have half the impact it does in the show) and keeps all those he interacts with at arms length except for Delirium and Death.

But show!Morpheus? He has a Matthew who is already so very devoted to him, a Hob Gadling who waited an extra 33 years on hope alone that he would return to him, and a Lucienne who rules by his side, offers him support, guidance, counsel, companionship and probably a good helping of love. How can this Morpheus possibly carry the same deep loneliness as his comic counterpart? How can this Morpheus be buckling under the weight of his duties when he already has his Samwise Gamgee right there by his side? It poses an interesting question for how the show will handle future story arcs, though it could all prove to simply make for a much more painful story, where we happen to have many more characters to react and show the deeply painful grief that we all feel at his eventual passing - or maybe, just maybe, this is a universe where Hope never died...

#the sandman #dream of the endless #lucienne the librarian #lucien the librarian #sandman meta #sandman analysis #sandman comic spoilers #sandman speculation #dreaming librarian day #lucienne the sandman #this got away from me a bit #and it is 1am and I am posting it #even though it prob needs an edit #but i set out to post today and i damn well will #well its still today in america anyway #I hope you all enjoy this #now i plan to go visit the dreaming #goodnight and sweet dreams zzzzzzz

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fluffysucker · 1 year

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And you come back to me.

Bucky Barnes x Reader

He is back. He is here. He is home.

Written in third pov. Minimum use of Y/N. But lots of female pronouns lol.

Always had this idea in my mind and just decided to write it. Lmk if you like it. Likes, comments, reblogs are very highly appreciated

"Can you, please, stop?. You are driving me insane." Her roommate's voice got her out of her head. She was pacing around the living room nonstop, the floor underneath almost wore off.

She looked at her friend, Allison, with the same look she had had on since it happened. Her pleading eyes holding back tears. Her lips trembling from anxiety. Her friend could almost see her nerves burning down with worry.

"I'm sure he is okay." Allison tried what she had been doing for the past days. Reassuring her.

"You don't know this." She almost shouted at her roommate.

"If something had happened, we would have known." Allison pointed to the TV screen that has been playing the news ever since they found out.

"Yeah, sure. Because the people want to hear about the wellbeing's of the former Winter Soldier." She couldn't help the sarcastic comment from coming out. She wasn't delusional. She knew very well how the media saw him. How the public thought of him. She just didn't find it in herself to ever care.

She moved to sit in between her bestfriend and her boyfriend on the coach they were taking. The man, Louis, was almost living with them at this point.

"He is fine, Y/N." Allison added, trying to soothe her friend's worries.

"Then why hasn't he shown up, yet?." She rested her head on the cushions, letting the dark thoughts consume her.

"I'm sure saving the world takes a bit of a time." Louis spoke. He has been watching her lose her mind for the past few days.

She knew they were right. They were giving all the logical answers to her paranoid questions. But she couldn't help it.

The pain of losing him was like no other. She knew pain all her life. But the day Steve Rogers showed up at her doorsteps with the sad guilty look in his eyes, she felt her whole world crashing from beneath her. He was her world.

The pain was suffocating. It was everywhere and she couldn't escape. She was drowning in the wide ocean with no sign of a shore near. The rocks on her lungs were only getting heavier by the day. The burning fire was eating everything inside of her and nothing can put it off. The pain was so intense that she could feel her body hurting some days. It was translated into her fatigue body.

Five years were a long time. However, it didn't make it any easier. She just figured out how to live with it. How to wake up every single day, knowing it was another day where he wasn't here, and continue her day. How she shouldn't write down stuff happened so she could tell him next time she would meet him. How someone she had known for most of her life wasn't here anymore.

She worked so hard on grasping this idea, but it was so painful. Even when they weren't together, they would still write letters and notes for each other. Now, there was nobody to write to

Their love wasn't an easy one. So many hardships were thrown their way, and they survived them all. And it's was finally the time to have their chance of normality and live the life they deserved. Fate had a different saying. He was ripped away from her.

It was so cruel. So damaging. And she can't say she survived this time.

She put on the act. Just like everyone else. Keeping up with a routine and living a life she barely wanted. Pretending he wasn't always her first and last thought.

She fooled herself into thinking she could try and move on. She never failed in something more. In the past five years, she went on 3 dates on total. And not one of them she even stayed till the end.

She could almost swear she was haunted by him. His face blurring to all the people she knew. His voice ringing in her ears. His soft touch lingering on her. Her mind was playing sick games on her.

She lost the hope of him coming back ever again. Steve explained everything. He was gone. The love of her life was vanished into thin air like he never existed. So when the snap was reversed and everyone was said to be back, she couldn't help it but wanting this to end. To have him back.

However, her mind was getting the best of her. With the news of Tony Stark and Natasha Romanoff sacrificing their lives for the greater good, she was stressed, to say the least. She knew him and knew how he thought his life didn't matter anymore , especially with all he had done. She wishes he would know how much he mattered to her. She never stopped reminding him, but she knew him too well.

It's been a couple of days of pure chaos and joy. People were reuniting with their loved ones. And there she was, sitting in between the only people she cared about in the last years, waiting for him. Hoping he would show up.

The thought of him not wanting to be with her anymore crossed her mind more times than she would like to admit. She didn't know what had happened there or how these years passed for him. She couldn't tell.

Her friends tried to ground her back to Earth, keeping the hope bright in her spirit. They were fighting the worst-case scenarios from occupying all her head.

They stayed with her for a while longer. Unlike her, the couple had other people who were blipped back, and she wasn't going to ruin their happiness by keeping them tied up beside her. They should be celebrating, not fighting her demons. While she appreciated their support, she couldn't be selfish.

They knew it was no vain fighting her. So they left. They reached the bottom of the stairs and were about to leave the building when they saw him.

He kept looking around like a lost child. He looked exactly like the pictures she kept in her bedroom.

"Oh my god." Allison couldn't contain it to herself. He turned around very quickly when he heard the words. He was lost he didn't sense their presence.

"Oh my god. You are here." He couldn't help but look at the woman weirdly. He was pretty sure he didn't know her. Maybe the other guy did. But she seemed very happy to see him.

"You must not know which apartment it's." It was like she figured out the solution to the most complicated mathematical problem.

"It's the fifth floor. Apartment 20." He couldn't hide the surprise look on his face when the woman gave him the answer he was indeed looking for.

"You are for Y/N, aren't you?." Allison had to ask when she saw his hard gaze

Allison smiled at the way his face softened immediately at the mention of her name. She could swear she saw his body relax a bit as he nodded.

"Great. She is in apartment 20 on the fifth floor. I'm Allison, Y/N's roommate." The over friendly woman moved away from the stairs to let him use them.

"It is nice meeting you. I'm sure we will be meeting properly again." She was gently pushing him to get up. She wanted her bestfriend to finally have this moment.

He took the hint and nodded his head as he went up. He felt a bit happy knowing she had someone. Someone who looked so cheerful and helpful.

He couldn't deny that his heart flattered at the thought of her talking to people about him. Maybe she still loved him. Maybe she still wanted him

Even with Steve constant reassure that she was still very much in love with him and all her attempts to move on ended before they even began. Once everything died down for a bit after Tony's funeral, he finally gathered enough courage to ask about her.

"Surprised you didn't ask during the fight." Steve teased him as he was the one who witnessed their love for each other most of all.

Little did Steve know, the minute he opened his eyes back in Wakanda, her name was the first thing blurting out of his mouth before Doctor Strange showed up and told them to get ready for the fight.

All these days, he had to fight the urge to ask about her. Was she snapped, too? If not, was she okay?. How was she doing?. So many questions running endlessly in his brain.

He couldn't say he was surprised when Steve told him they stayed in close contact all these years, claiming it was his bestfriend duty to look after her. He also couldn't say he wasn't so grateful to the blonde for doing so.

Steve gave him her new address, reassuring him that she would be so happy to see him. That his worries wasn't true at all.

And here he was now, standing at her door. He kept moving his hand up and down his jeans to calm down himself. He wanted her to be happy, yet he didn't know what he would do if she didn't want him anymore?.

He took a deep breath and stopped the wild thoughts from taking over. With every bit of courage in his body, he lifted his hand and knocked on the door.

"Go away, Allison" Even muffled behind the door, her voice sent a wave of calmness through him. He knocked again softly.

"Allison, I said go be with your family. I'm fine. " He smiled at her. Always so selfless. His heartbeats were starting to pick up. He couldn't wait to see her again. So he knocked again.

"What the hell do you...." Words died at the tip of her tongue once she opened the door and saw him. Her eyes wide open and her jaw almost hitting the floor.

He let his eyes scan her up and down. God, she was so beautiful. She dyed her purple and curled it. She had a different style of clothing. She looked different but still the same somehow.

For him, it was a couple of weeks since he last saw her, but he knew it had been years for her. So he let take her time staring at him like a ghost. Which was kind of true.

She couldn't believe it. He was standing in front of her. Looking just like the last time she saw him. Long hair locks resting on his shoulder. Steel blue eyes deeper than the ocean. All black on outfit. He was here.

"Bucky." It was a tiny whisper. But it didn't miss him.

"Yes, doll." He let her set the pace and choose the next step.

The pet name only he called her sent shivers down her body. His voice so deep, yet so sweet on her ears.

She knew they were back, but she couldn't let herself believe it was really him. Her mind played all sorts of tricks on her, and she wasn't ready to fall victim to a new one.

She thought the lack of sleep combined with overthinking and stress would result in these hallucinations. He was a fragment of her imagination. An new type of coping mechanism.

She needed to make sure he was real. So she stepped forward slowly, lifting her hand to touch his cheek. Fully expecting him to disappear.

She gasped when her fingers made contact with his beard. And he couldn't help but lean his hand into her touch.

"You are here." It wasn't a cruel game. Her wish came true.

"I'm here." He pressed a soft kiss on the palm on her hand.

The gesture sent electricity through her body. A wake-up shock. It was no hallucination. He was real and he was her.

"Bucky."

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, standing on her tiptoes to reach his height. He instinctively wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her even closer.

Like all the weight was lifted off her. It stopped hurting. She was finally free. His significant scent entered her nostrils, making her chest flatter. She buried her face in his neck, wanting to feel all him at once.

Bucky took notice and understood. He moved one of his arms from her waist to her hips, supporting her to wrap her legs around his waist, which she happily did.

She wrapped herself around him like a baby koala. She felt the tears forming in her eyes. For the first time in her life, it was happy tears.

"You are back." Words escaped her mouth. She let her guard down, and her brain wasn't haunting her.

"I'm. I'm right here." Bucky said as he walked the two of them inside and closed the door with his feet.

"I'm back, and I'm not going anywhere, doll." He knew she needed to hear this.

"I got you, doll." It felt so marvellous to hold her. She fitted perfectly between his arms.

It's been weeks for him, and he couldn't believe how much he missed her.

They stood like this for a bit. The only sound in the room was her sniffing. Then he moved them to sit on her coach.

She didn't let go of him. Taking over his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. She needed to feel every bit of him to stay grounded. He didn't mind at all. He even pulled her closer to him again.

"I missed you so much." She couldn't keep the tears anymore. They fell on her face freely. He pressed a kiss to her forehead before wiping them away.

"I'm so sorry." Bucky knew it wasn't his fault, but he also felt the need to apologise.

He rested his forehead against hers, giving her all the contact she could need to be sure he was really here.

She closed the small distances between them and pressed her lips to his. And just like that, she could feel life return her. The cup of water after running in the desert for days. Rocks on her lungs broken into pieces. A lifeboat came and saved her from drowning. All feeling she never thought would go away. All gone and replaced with the familiarity of him.

He kissed her back happily. The kiss was soft and gentle. Serving its role as a reminder that they are back. Together.

They wanted to stay kissing for eternity, but the need for air made them break apart. She pulled away for a bit, looking at his eyes. The eyes she missed so much. The eyes that filled her with warmth.

"I love you so much, Bucky. Losing you was the most difficult I had to go through, and I could never get over it. You are my life. My reason to be. My saviour. My sanity. My everything. My love. My man."

She wanted him to know how much he he truly meant to her. How madly she loved him. How deeply and hopelessly she was in love with him.

"Life without you was meaningless. It had no color or taste. You give my life a purpose. You make me want to live. I love you with my whole heart and more. I never thought I could love someone so much, but I'm so in love with you, Bucky."

She wanted to declare her undying love for him even if it was cheesy. She wanted him to know how devoted she was to him. That it would take all her life to get over him. And she won't succeed. Only her death would make her forget Bucky Barnes. And she wasn't so sure about this even

His eyes glossed with tears. He couldn't comprehend how someone would love after all he had done. Especially someone so sweet and amazing. It must be the world's atonement for all his suffering. And he didn't deserve her.

However, he would never let her go. Only a fool would let a dame like her go. He would cherish her and take care of her for the rest of his life. He would never let anything happen to her. He would die before she would get hurt. He wanted to spend all his days loving her.

He kissed her, trying to show her how much she meant to him, too. Pouring all his emotions into the kiss. Even in the 40ths, he never felt this for any of the ladies he knew. This deep unconditional love. Only for her. Y/N. His doll. His girl

She pulled away with a true smile on her face. She rested her head on his shoulder. Seeking all the comfort and safety he provided. He tightened his grip around her. Pressing soft kisses to her face. Letting themselves sink into each other

He was back. He was here. He was home. And she couldn't be happier

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