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missdawnandherdusk · 4 years

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The Boy Who Lived

Reader X Draco

Summary: A few months after the war, Draco gets attacked and left barely alive in St. Mungo’s. They refuse to treat him or take his money. You have a few things to say about that.

A/n: Look at me writing! And I’ve really been meaning to write something like this for quite some time because it is so soft and fluffy with only mild angst if you squint. Anyway, I hope y’all enjoy and let me know what you think! I miss talking with y’all.

“He... he’s gonna be okay, right?”

My heart feel when I heard the news. No matter how much I loathed the youngest Malfoy, hearing that he was in St. Mungo’s because some ne’er do well thought that the boy deserved to be tortured to almost death for what his family had done. My eyebrows furrowed as I parted from the small group of Alumni Gryffindors and watched the city behind the windowpane. I could hear the soft murmurs of Harry Hermione and Ron discussing it.

“Oh, come on Ron really!?” Hermione shouted.

“Well it’s not like he doesn’t deserve it!” Ron argued back.

“Deserves it?” I snapped turning. “Yes, I’m sure he deserved to be killed. An eighteen-year-old who fought on the wrong side of the war but walked away for his family! What would you give for your family Ron!?”

The golden trio stared at me, Hermione grinning and the other two looking dumbfounded. Not that it ever took much.

“So, your defending him?” Harry asked, his voice barely restrained.

“I don’t know, Harry,” I rubbed my face. “But I won’t stand here listening to how he deserved to be tortured for being loyal to his family,” my voice dropped ice as Ron’s gaze was focused on the floor. “I’m heading out,” I huffed, grabbing a coat.

“Where?” Harry stood. “You’re going to go see him aren’t you!?”

“Yes,” my voice was calm and soft as I paused at the door. “Maybe you’d like to join? Make sure he isn’t up to something?”

Flustered, Harry didn’t respond as I stepped outside and apparated to St. Mungo’s. The receptionist at the desk was genuinely baffled when I asked for Malfoy.

“Well, Miss, no one has gone and seen him. We were barely able to ID him. Do you think you could answer a few questions for us?”

“Uh, I can do my best? I don’t know him that well to be honest,”

She nodded and started to prattle off questions.

“Middle name?”

“Lucius,”

“Mother’s maiden name?”

“Black? I think?”

“Allergies?”

“For Merlin’s sake I don’t know,” I huffed. “I’m just here to visit him,”

“I apologize miss, but we’re not sure what to give him to medicate him. We’d hate to give him something he might react poorly too,”

“I understand,” My temper diminished. “He likes apples,” a smile touched my face. “And I think he’s allergic to feathers?”

“Feathers?”

I shrugged as she scribbled something down on her notepad. “Alright Miss, thank you for the help. He’s on the fourth floor,”

I nodded and swallowed thickly, heading up to the permanent spell damage ward. I had only been here one other time, with Neville one Christmas to see his parents. It was different being here alone and being here for Malfoy of all people.

“Malfoy,” I gave the nurse. He led me to an estranged cot near the window.

It would be a lie if I said I hadn’t gawked at the sight before me. I had seen my fair share of injured and mangled bodies with the war, but this... this seemed unnatural.

His chest was thickly wrapped, red seeping through. His arms and shoulders not faring much better. I was thankful that he was half covered by a sheet. But despite the wounds that no doubt lingered beneath the white cotton, nothing could compare to the deep gash that drove down the left side of his face, distorting his features and pulling his lips down into a permanent grimace. His cheeks were hollowed out with malnourishment and his once creamy pale skin was deathly and translucent.

Tears stung my eyes as I wrapped my arms around myself. No matter how much Malfoy irked me, he didn’t deserve this.

“Are you his girlfriend then?” The nurse asked.

“Stars, no.” I gasped. “Just... an old friend.”

“You’re both a little young to have old friends,” the nurse muttered. “Poor kid. Barely dragged himself here before collapsing in a puddle of his own blood.”

My eyebrows furrowed as I took a step closer to the hospital cot, nearing his upper half and the chair that was my destination. I winced in taking off my coat, the buttons tangled in my hair.

“Is he gonna make it?” My voice was hoarse as the question slipped out.

“If they can figure out who to bill. The Healers don’t want to heal a Death Eater much less a Malfoy.”

“Are you bloody joking?” I demanded standing promptly. “He’s just a kid! And...” I growled menacingly. “He’s going to die if he doesn’t get the medical attention he needs, now.”

“Well, ma’am, I... I can get a Healer in here but—” the nurse stammered. “It won’t be much use without a patron,”

With one final glance to Draco I hissed:

“You’re looking at his patron. Now get him a damn healer.”

Collapsing on the chair again, I sighed, mourning my savings account. I had spent a long time waiting tables and doing odd jobs, determined to move far away after school and the war finished. But it looked like that would have to wait. Besides. He was a Malfoy. If I really wanted to, I could finagle the money back from him when this was all said and done.

A Healer rushed in and ushered me out, despite my protests. I ended up back down at the receptionist desk.

“I thought you didn’t know him that well?” She asked, raising an eyebrow as I gave her my bank info.

“I don’t,” I huffed. “But I couldn’t let him die. Not because the Healers refuse to—”

She just smiled at me.

.................................

“You what!?” Ron and Harry demanded.

“Have you gone mental!?” Ron shouted.

“They were going to let him die!” I roared. “You didn’t see him! It was worse than what Harry did to him!”

That shut both boys up.

Hermione wrapped an arm around me and led me to the sofa. Ron huffed and left the room. Harry however sat on the adjacent armchair.

“He’s really that bad?” The question was barely heard.

“It’s awful, Harry. He’s got a gash down the left side of his face... it’s going to scar no matter what they do,” I confessed to my hands.

“Dark Magic tends to scar,” Harry murmured. “And they... they didn’t treat him because he was a Death Eater?”

I nodded and rubbed my face.

“What else was I supposed to do?” It was the question that had been running through my head. “I couldn’t let him die,”

“And rightfully so,” Hermione encouraged.

....................................

Every day that followed, I visited Draco. Sitting at his bedside. Each day he looked a little healthier. A little more color returned under his skin. A little more weight filled out his sunken cheeks. A little less blood was seeping through his bandages. One day I came in and the left side of his face was bandaged properly. I felt a pang of fury knowing that if it had been done sooner, there was less of a possibility of scarring but whoever decided he was worth killing among the Healers, also decided he was worth scarring. The anger faded and it left unshed tears in my eyes.

“Oh, what did you get yourself into, Draco?” I murmured.

Hesitantly I reached out for his hand. It was cold under my warm fingers. Experimentally, I felt more of his skin that was still like ice no matter where my fingers met the softness of it.

The next day I brought in a quilt and draped it over the bedsheet.

“That should keep you warm,” I murmured though I knew he couldn’t hear me. “You’ll get better soon,” it was a weak promise.

Somehow it became a part of my routine. I’d spend hours with Draco as he laid there unconscious and healing. Sometimes I’d read to him or just lament about my day—anything from Ron’s ridiculousness to what I had for breakfast, or even the flowers I noticed growing on the roadside. I did it because I knew he couldn’t hear me. I did it because he was almost easier to talk to than anyone else.

“You’re not so bad when you’re not talking,” The thought of him glaring at me for daring to say such a thing, made me smile to myself.

.................................

“He’s awake,” the receptionist informed me one day.

I didn’t reply as I ran up the stairs and burst into the long room where Draco remained. A fit of nervousness washed over me. Even though I had spent the last few weeks talking to Draco, he was still the same person he was when he went under.

Yet, I couldn’t deny how elated I was to see a grey eye meet mine, the other still trapped beneath gauze.

“Stars, Draco,” I smiled in spite of myself. The tears the stung my eyes were involuntary as well. “I know you probably don’t want to see me, but you have no idea how good it is to see that you’re awake,” I whispered, then turned and left.

Agony tore through me that night, knowing I had dug myself a grave to lie in. I kept myself away from the hospital for two days before in the middle of the night I arrived, not bothering with reception. There was no point in my lying awake staring at my ceiling when I could be at the place that kept me awake in the first place.

I knew that Draco would be asleep when I pushed the door open. The bandages from around his face had been removed, a faded pink line distorting and carving a path down his face. And I had been correct. He was asleep, his chest rising and falling rhythmically as breaths were drawn through parted lips. My quilt was still draped over him.

“I hate to make this all about me,” I sat beside him and spoke softly. “But who am I supposed to talk to... what am I supposed to do, if there’s no you? You’re the only one who listened...” I scrubbed my face.

“How daft is that? Craving someone to talk to while they’re in a coma? I should be happy that you’re getting better, but... that just means I lose you faster in another sense,” I studied his peaceful face. “Not that you’d ever know... or care.” I sighed and looked out the window at the stars about the sleeping city.

“I’m sorry, I never meant...” I huffed, rubbing my face. “Sleep well Draco, you’ll... you’ll get better soon.” I paused. “But I’m not too sure about me,”

Grey eyes watched me as I left.

It was another day that I avoided the hospital, before succumbing again. The receptionist eyed me warily.

“Did Mr. Malfoy forget something?” She asked.

“Uh...” I drew a blank. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Oh stars,” The papers in her hands began to reorder themselves. “He checked out this morning, under the pretense that he would be allowed home if he had a caretaker. He listed you,” She handed me a random document and sure enough in Draco’s elegant script was my name.

“That lying Slytherin bastard!” I shouted, then sheepishly handed her the paper back. “Anything I need to know to take care of him?”

“He has potions with him, he needs to take them every morning and evening with or without food. He needs his bandages changed daily. He shouldn’t be walking and shouldn’t stress himself out too much in fear of a relapse,” She handed me another pamphlet of rules. “And absolutely no magic. It’s going to affect his healing process,”

“The little twat,” I muttered. “Thank you,” I smiled kindly before stepping outside and apperating to the Manor, a place I had been only a handful of times.

“Draco!” I shouted, bursting through the grand front doors. “You know it’s one thing to lie the receptionist, but I paid for your sorry ass! You can at least tell me that you left the hospital! Or return my blanket!”

“M-m-miss,” A house elf stammered, appearing at my side. “Please, Master Draco is asleep,”

“Take me to him,” I growled.

“Y-yes ma’am,”

Again, all of my anger seemed to fade at the sight of Draco. He appeared absolutely ghastly. His grey eyes were trained on me, only barely open, as if it were too much effort for him. My blanket was draped over the large bed, looking out of place amongst the expensive silks and linens. I took a sharp breath in and let out an annoyed sigh.

“Hey there, drama queen,” It was barely a whisper as I sat on the edge of his bed. “What were you thinking? Checking yourself out like that? You’re not well enough to take care of yourself,”

There was a sort of fire that returned to his eyes at my words, though he made no attempt to speak.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I rolled my eyes. “You know I’m right,” His gaze dropped, almost as if he were pouting.

“I don’t like this anymore than you do,” I muttered. “But you need to get better, and you can’t do that alone. Not this.”

His eyes closed as if he were ignoring me, but his breathing evened out and I knew he had fallen asleep. A soft smile touched my face. Without the scar that distorted his features, it was almost as if nothing had changed. Almost as if there was no war. There was peace on his face. An innocence. All disrupted by an angry flushed gash.

The house elf informed me that he has taken the vial as he was instructed to earlier, and though night had barely settled in the sky, I was wary to leave him alone in the Manor. My eyes drifted to the chaise lounge that was in the corner of the lush room. Sighing, I stood, wandering to the room next door—thankful that it was another bedroom—and located pillows and a blanket. As comfortable as I could be, I settled onto the chaise and kept an eye on Draco until my eyelids were too heavy to keep open.

I was nudged awake. By the same house elf that attended to me the night before. I panicked when I saw Draco’s bed was empty and made.

“Master Draco wishes me to inform you that he is in the den downstairs, and wondered if you’d like to join him for breakfast,”

I gaped at the house elf.

“Uh, sure?” I scrubbed my face. “I’ll be down in a moment, thank you,”

“Yes, Miss,”

Sure enough, Draco was downstairs, in a silk emerald housecoat, scanning the Daily Prophet like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Is there anything that you own that isn’t green or black?” I drawled softly, taking a seat in the adjacent armchair.

“Good morning,” His voice was as tires on grovel or perhaps the groaning of a whomping willow.

“So, he does talk,” I offered a small smile.

He took a careful sip of what I assumed was tea. The house elf set out another mug for me, pouring the hot water over the small bag of dried leaves.

“You said you preferred when I didn’t,” His voice was less strained after the tea.

“Suppose I did,” I hummed, fixing the rest of my tea to my liking. “Doesn’t mean it’s not good to hear your voice though,”

His lips pressed into a thin line, his eyes trained forward, through the window panes overlooking how autumn had conquered the rest of the Manor.

“So, how are we going to do this?” He finally said. “You’re too stubborn to leave me on my own,”

I wanted to argue, but he was right. I was too stubborn.

“I... I can come in the mornings and evenings. I’ll change your wrappings and make sure you take your potions... do you need me here more than that?”

He shook a seldom ‘no.’

“I... should be off then,” I stood. “Thank you for the tea. I’ll be over around seven tonight?”

He didn’t comment as I made my way out. I hated myself but I counted down the hours until seven arrived. At work, at home, at lunch, all of my thoughts meandered back to how long it would be until I could see Draco again.

____________________________

Draco hated being reliant on anyone. He hated that he was weak. He hated that he couldn’t make it up the stairs without help. He hated the scar that pierced the left side of his face. He hated the face in the mirror regardless. He hated that you kept coming back. He hated that he wanted you to keep coming back. He hated that he had heard every word that you spoke to him while he was healing. He hated that you had said them. He hated that even when he was asleep, he could still hear your voice.

He hated that when he heard your voice pipe up in the house again promptly at seven, his heart fluttered.

He hated that you helped him up the stairs and into his room. He hated that you lead him to his lavish bathroom and sat him on the counter and began to undo his wrappings with such concentration that you seemed to tune his stammering heart out.

“Stars, Draco,” You murmured after unwrapping his left arm bandage.

He winced involuntarily. To be fair it looked a lot better than when they had first gouged the Dark Mark off his skin. And perhaps some part of him was grateful. All that was left was a skin graft and a scar in the shape of the Dark Mark, raised and angry like the line on his face.

“Dark magic always leaves a scar,” The words tumbled from your lips as your warm fingers brushed over the raised skin. He hated how he shuddered at the touch.

With all of his bandages gone—despite that his bottom half was still clothed—Draco felt bare, if not completely nude before you. He hated that too. Your eyes trialed over his chest and the marred skin that now belonged to him. Your gaze dragged up his shoulders, his neck, up the slice on his cheek, until your warm eyes settled on his.

There wasn’t pity in your eyes. Nor sadness. But rather understanding, and comfort. He hated that he noticed.

Wordlessly, you turned and began to draw a bath, filling it with what looked like a chance bath salt to you, but was the one his mother had once used for him, when he was young, and she was home. The scent quickly began to overpower the smell of sweat and soiled gauze and the hospital smell that lingered on his skin.

“I... Call if you need me,” You stammered and rushed out of the bathroom and slammed the door behind you. Maybe he hated that you left.

The warm bath water and the familiar scent calmed him greatly. It soothed the ache in his muscles and bones. As he draped the water over his skin, washing away the past few weeks. He so desperately wanted to wash you away too, but you lingered on him like the scars he couldn’t ever heal.

An excruciating pain shocked his system as he reached up to wash his hair.

“No, no, no, no,” He groaned, trying again and reaping the same results. “Oh, this is so not fair!”

“Draco?” There was a soft knock on the door. “Everything alright?”

He glared at the door; the words trapped behind pursed lips. He loathed this.

“I need help,” He growled.

Your head peered in, a gentle look on your face. You weren’t laughing at him or teasing him. You looked genuinely concerned.

“What do you need?”

“I... I can’t wash my hair,” He muttered.

“Do... do you want me...?” The question was timid. He didn’t remember the last time he had seen you timid.

He nodded.

With a few well-placed bubbles and some shifting, you entered the bathroom and rounded the tub. He directed you to the correct soaps and lathers. Before you began, your eyes darted around the room, trying to locate something. You rose and took one of the empty ornate cups on his sink. It had once held flowers or something, but it had been emptied for months. Flowers didn’t grow in the presence of Dark Magic. You rinsed it in the sink and took your position behind him again. He didn’t have the energy to question you.

Draco never thought how calming having someone else wash his hair would be. The glass you had taken from the sink was filled carefully with bath water and cascaded over his head and shoulders as your free hand kept the water from his face. Your fingers massaged his favorite lather into his hair, and he had to be careful not to let out an involuntary groan. You hummed softly as you worked, to fill the silence. Again, water flowed down his head, clearing the lather from his hair and into the water around him. Draco closed his eyes and relaxed as you reached for the oils, not afraid in your company. This time your fingers carded the oil through his hair.

He hated that he enjoyed it so much. He hated that it was over too soon. He hated that you simply got up and left when you were finished without a word and left him, half asleep, feeling incomplete without your soft lullaby or your hands in his hair.

He hated that you combed his hair for him. He hated that you were silent as you reapplied his bandages. Your eyes focused on the task at hand and not his racing heart.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” He loathed that the most.

In the morning, you undid his bindings and applied the healing balm that the doctor had sent him home with before wrapping him up again. You gently brushed his hair and ran gel through it, coiffing it like he used to. Somehow it looked different when you did it.

You rarely spoke a word as the days passed. Your morning and nightly routine with him becoming a ritual that he craved. To feel safe with you near. To relax even for just a moment for nightmares and terrors plagued his sleep. To feel more like himself, even if things would never be the same. You treated him the same. Despite the foul scars that plagued his skin.

He hated that you kept leaving.

“You’re dressed,” A smile rose on your face as you walked in one crisp winter morning. “I thought I’d never see you rid the house coat,” It was the most you had said to him since he had been unconscious.

“I thought I’d try,” Draco ran his fingers over the soft cotton of the dress shirt. “You wouldn’t believe the trouble I had with the buttons,”

A soft chuckle left your lips as you wrapped your arms around yourself.

“Is this where it ends then?”

The words shattered him more than torture ever could. He hated the thought. He hated the somber look on your face.

“Y/n, I...” Draco loathed fumbled his words.

“No, I guess this was... this was always going to end.” Your eyes didn’t meet his. “I should have just paid and left.” There was regret in your voice. Regret that he misread.

“So, you’re here for the money then?” His voice raised against his better judgement. “Is that why you kept coming back?” He couldn’t deny how deeply that wound pierced.

“What? No! It was never about the money!” Your voice raised as well. “If it was about the money don’t you think the first thing I would have done was gone to Paris to demand it from your parents!?”

“Then what was it about!? Some vendetta!? Something to goad over me!? As if you don’t have enough already!” He was gripping onto the stair railing tightly, his body threatening to collapse any moment.

“Merlin’s sake, I couldn’t let you die!” The tears he never say you shed, finally fell in front of him. “They were going to let you die!” Your head shook in denial as you pressed your arms around yourself, as it if would stop the tremors that shook your frame.

“You should have let them kill me!” He roared and you gawked at him—finally a reaction response to how he appeared. “It would make your life so much easier!”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean!?” You paced up the first few steps of the staircase, closer to him.

_________________________

I watched the light fade from his eyes.

“Draco!?” My anger turned to fear as his arm gave out and he fell to the step he was on. My close proximity allowed me to prevent him from tumbling down the stairs further.

“Stars, Draco,” I wept pulling him into my arms. He was out cold. “Don’t, don’t die on me, please,” I couldn’t stop my tears now.

I gathered him into my arms and with great difficulty, trudged upstairs, collapsing beside him on his bed. Righting myself, I gently brushed the hair away from his eyes.

“I don’t want this to end,” I confessed. “I don’t want to leave you, Draco,” I wiped away my tears. “Merlin, you have no idea how much I love you. That’s why I kept coming back,” I pressed a soft kiss to his forehead.

I must have fallen asleep beside him because I was woken by a whimper and cry. A desperate plea for someone to stop. A guttural cry of mercy.

“Draco!?” I was wide awake and alert. “Draco! Wake up!” I shook his shoulder as gently as possible.

Petrified grey eyes met mine, filled with tears and terror. Not a beat passed before he pulled me close and clung to me, sobbing into my shoulder. After the moment of initial shock, I wrapped my arms around him, cradling him against me. His cries tore deep wounds in my soul. The desperation and agony that they possessed.

“Don’t. Don’t leave me,” He hiccupped through tears. “Please, I don’t want this to end,”

I ran my fingers softly through his hair, leaving soft promises of new beginnings in their wake. It was enough to lull us both back to sleep.

When sunlight crept through the windows, my eyes fluttered open, to see grey ones studying me.

“Hello,” His voice was soft, his arm draped around me.

“Good morning,” A soft smile touched my lips as I sat up. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Draco sat up—without wincing. “Did you mean it? What you said?”

“Mostly likely yes, but which part are you referring to?” I teased softly, working on the buttons of his shirt to free him of the tight article of clothing.

“You’re gonna stay?”

“Well, not here probably, but as in I’m going to keep coming back, yes,” My fingers traced old and new scars.

“And this isn’t the end?”

“Not particularly,” I watched him shudder as I ran my fingers over his collarbone—something I had noticed months before and used against him now.

“And you love me,”

My fingers left his skin promptly as my eyes flashed to his.

“Yes,”

Part Two

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fdowling-stan · 3 years

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Why I think Farah Dowling is NOT dead

I posted my thoughts about that damn last Farah scene on Instagram, but decided to post it here to so here we go.

As awful as it looked, I am one of those people who won’t believe immediately at what she saw, especially when it comes to fantasy shows like Fate is.

Let’s just think about what we know so far - Farah Dowling is one of the most powerful fairies we got to see in these 6 episodes. She developed her powers through years and surely didn’t have enough time to show us what else she can do.

She is also very smart and thoughtful, she thinks ahead as much as she can. Will person, who is described as such, really think that, after keeping someone trapped for 16 years, won’t get any revenge back? Even if the tables were reversed, if Rosalind (evil person) kept Farah trapped (good person), Farah definitely wouldn’t let her walk always easily after that, she would get back at her. Now, imagine how angry Rosalind is inside and just waited for the first chance to destroy Farah.

And to think Farah was so careless to think she can just turn her back and walk away without expecting something like that? Come on!

Now, think about what Rosalind has just told her - Ben and Saul are trapped, Luna, Andreas and Luna’s army are already in Alfea, taking over. Under Rosalind’s command.

That means she is completely alone. With no one by her side. She would need to first make a plan how to free her friends, then another plan how to defeat 3 villains and a whole army plus some side followers (Beatrix, Dan), whilst taking back her school and making sure no student suffers from anything.

Doing everything on her own would be impossible for anyone. So she definitely needs to buy herself some time and make a good and thorough plan.

Let's take a look at how she reacts in this scene.

She carefully listens to everything Rosalind says, looking her determinedly in the eyes, showing how confident she has become after all these years.

After she gets up from the bench and turns her back on her, she sighs secretly, showing her big level of self-control and tact. In her eyes and stiff body posture we see she is waiting for what’s next. For what she knows is coming - Rosalind’s attack.

Fighting her back would be pointless. If she won, she still would be alone against all other enemies I named.

One possibility is that they might make a parallel to the original cartoon.

In season 3, Valtor trapped Faragonda inside a tree. Winx freed her using magical water from Lynphea, Flora’s home. That being said, they might use this as a chance to bring Flora to the show.

Although this sounds like a solid explanation to me, I’d prefer if Farah redeems herself alone. We want our powerful fave to thrive and rise up.

Now, let’s compare the graves. At the beginning of this damn scene, we see Farah standing over buried bodies of the Burned Ones. We can see they are protruding, as they should.

And then let’s take a look at Farah’s “grave” as Rosalind tosses her away.

The grave dissolves. Not completely, but compared to the other 3 graves it is much smaller and not protruding at all. And it isn’t made to be like a fast forwarded scene (like it is the dissolve of a grave in some period of time, it’s in that exact moment).

To repeat myself, knowing Farah has mastered many powers that aren’t even mind powers, maybe she mastered illusion. Which she, somehow, used here.

If it isn’t illusion, she definitely saved herself somehow because the difference between graves is obvious.

One way, or another, I think writers/producers (etc.) realized how important Farah Dowling actually is how huge her audience actually is and how loved she is. As objective as I can be, I think she is the most loved character of all. I came across a lot of backfire for all other characters, but not about her.

And I think they also know the show will flop if she doesn't come back, not only because of the audience's reaction, but also it would show it is lazy writing. If Andras, a non magical person could've survived a sword through his body, I am sure our powerful and beautiful queen survived a cowardly, behind-the-back attack.

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heresathreebee · 3 years

Text

Brackish and Briny Waters (five)

[Ralph Lamont x Female Reader]

Summary: Ralph apologizes and you've got baby brains, but sometimes life does nothing but kick you down. Previous Masterlist Next

Tag(s): 16+ | 1.7k words | more angst, baby fever, alcoholism, ghostly vibes

AN: GODDAMN Part 5 took me a lifetime to finish. As always no beta readers just poorly side eyeing this by myself and hoping it makes sense

THE NEXT MORNING

You barely stir when you hear the door open. You've all but forgotten last night, and yet you flinch when Ralphie tries to cuddle with you. He sighs somewhere near your ear and hugs you from behind anyways, lips brushing the nape of your neck and breath fanning over your back as he simply lies there, quiet as the grave.

There's no bruise but you can still feel his hand gripping your arm from last night. "You're being a huge dick…"

"... I know."

That is not good enough. You roll over to face him and watch his face twist when he notices the tract marks of dry tears on your face. He swallows and almost unconsciously takes your hand, smoothing his thumb over the back of your palm in a way that was meant to comfort him rather than you.

"I'm sorry." He opens his mouth again but he flounders for words. After a deep breath he continues. "We can't call Reagan. Because he won't do anything for us…"

You wait impatiently for him to explain.

"Sweetheart, if we called Reagan last night, he would have fucking laughed at us. It is step one down that slippery slope to the couple who cried wolf." He put a hand on your shoulder and looked you in the eye, "do you really think he would have done something?"

You think about it. If Ralph hadn't stopped you from calling him, what would you have said to Reagan?

I smelled exhaust fumes. Not an emergency, he would say.

I think he found us. What do you want me to do about it, too late now, he would ask.

We're in danger. I'll send a squad upstate, they should be there in 4 hours, he would joke.

"It was real," you insist. "I smelled fumes."

"I know. I believe you."

You squint at him threateningly and he doesn't give an inch. He doesn't seem like he's mocking you.

Ralph could be an asshole, but Reagan was infinitely worse. At least one of them gave a shit about your safety. The realization Ralph was right scared you more than anything. You were alone in this…

Well, alone together.

You sigh and bury your face in his neck. Your hair is tangled as shit and probably tickling his face, but your husband simply wraps you up in a tight embrace and holds you against him. It's all the apology you need.

END OF THE FIRST MONTH

Adjusting to your new life hit you like a sack of bricks early on a Monday morning. You woke up from a dream where you still lived in your tiny little apartment two minutes walk from everything. In a reality which felt more like a fever dream, Ralph was late for work, donning a tie and tweed jacket and kissing you goodbye for the day.

You never realized how much space there was in the new master bedroom. In the apartment, a queen sized bed nearly touched the walls and barely left room to creep around two night stands and a dresser, but in the new house you had room to lay on the floor and stretch, maybe put another piece of furniture in here like a bookshelf or something.

And the whole damn house was like that. You had an entire second floor to claim as your own! There is almost too much space… too much space for just the two of you.

God there's that thought again drifting into your mind unbidden, unfurling like a fern at the first droplet of sunshine. How many people does it take to turn a house into a home? Three should be plenty, your mind offers.

You busy yourself with measurements, regrouting the loose tiles in the kitchen floor, and scrubbing the blackened hell out of that downstairs bathroom. It seems to come to life beneath your hands and you can feel yourself getting excited to show guests the improvement.

The thoughts of turning your little twosome family into three persist over and over until you can't stand it any longer. Maybe it's finally time…

Ralph's late getting home by 5 minutes instead of 5 hours but he still looks tired. No mud tracks on his pants or hard set eyes. He's halfway up the stairs before you realize he's probably going to bed early.

"Hey!"

Ralph stops like it pains him. His head sags and his hold on the railing is tight like he'll fall if he lets go. The way he's wobbling he might. He is barely able to meet your eyes as he glances over his shoulder and when he does he simply grunts.

"I made dinner," you squeeze your hands together behind your back, "angel hair pasta and that sauce you love."

Ralph's eyes flicker in thought. "Be down in a second."

You wait nervously to see if he does come down. What if this is a bad idea? What if he doesn't take you seriously? Oh god what if he hates it, what if he calls you an idiot for even considering it?

Ralph does come back downstairs, hair wild from running his fingers through it. He seems to gain a small amount of energy while eating, not wanting to talk himself but asking how your day has been going.

You're definitely rambling right now. Ralph listens and listens, chuckling along but at some point he grows concerned and envelopes your hand with a worried expression on his face. "Jesus, I've never heard so many words come out of your mouth at once, it's like you're writing a dissertation over there. Are you OK, baby?"

You snap your mouth shut. God, you hadn't even come close to talk about kids for all your rambling. And then there was that weird smell…

Your blood runs cold as you recognize it. You lean a little closer to Ralph and he almost instinctively flinches away. If there's one thing you are sure of, one thing you could swear on god– Ralph Lamont has never flinched away from a kiss before. So he has something to hide. And that something has a sharp scent and explains his slow reactions and tired eyes better than anything else could.

"Have you… have you been drinking?"

It's the way he can't meet your eyes when you ask him. You know. It's beyond out of character, so much so that it's confusing and a little frightening for you.

A little drink here and there is, to you, to be expected especially considering the wealth of your new company. So why hide it? Is there something else he's not telling you?

You suddenly feel sick and too hot, ripping your hand away from his and getting up to leave the table.

He knows you get in your head sometimes and practically yells your name to stop you. "I'm… I don't know why I…"

Ralph sighs and buries his face into his hands, ashamed. All this suspense is twisting knots in your stomach. You sit back down gingerly, taking deep breaths to calm yourself down.

"Ralph," you warn, "you had better start explaining yourself right now before I lose it."

Ralph stares a hole into the table and worries his lip. The truth is he doesn't know what to say because he doesn't know why he did it. The students are easy, you are easy. Even in the toughest of times, at his lowest, he didn't drink so… what the fuck was coming over him?, he asked himself.

Something clicked. It rolled like fire in his belly given dry wood, smoking curling to the top of his throat and out of his ears. "They hate me."

"Who? Who hates you?"

"Everyone."

You looked him in the eye for the first time tonight and saw something dark looking in there. It makes you uneasy. "What makes you think they hate you, baby?"

Ralph's grip on his fork tightens until his knuckles are white before he gingerly sets the dishware down and deflates. He clicks his tongue and shakes his head with a sardonic grin.

"You wouldn't understand… and how could you? You never leave the house." He looks at you and there's a growing instability rising in his movements. "You… you don't see it. It started out as little nothings that I could ignore because it didn't matter that they didn't like me: I was new.

"Then it became lots of these little nothings. Staring and whispering and hushed silences. Tip toeing language and poking and prodding and testing me and my limits and it just… it just… it never got better…"

Rumors. It dawned on you that his frustration seemed intimately familiar to you as you had had to change schools once or twice due to a few terrible rumors that snowballed and got way out of hand. And you can imagine the sort of rumors that accompany a man with little interest in making friends who has a wife nobody knows anything about.

If you wanted to stay here long, you would need to change a few minds. You set aside your fear for a moment and make him look at you. You can see the unshed tears in his eyes and feel pity for him.

"I want to do that dinner party," you announce. "With all that's gone on, you probably didn't have the grand introduction you deserve. Let me show them how much you mean to me."

Ralph's shaking his head but he already knows you'll win this fight. For him it feels like begging for something he doesn't even want. He agrees because he already promised you could when you were ready and you needed to find new friends asap.

His sleep that night is fitful and the room's shadows seem to reach out like claws seeking his immortal soul. When the haze of whiskey finally dies down in his system he sleeps dreamless and wakes to feel somehow more hollow with despair than before.

Ralph Lamont has the distinct feeling things are going to get a hell of a lot worse before anything gets better…

@werwulfy @fundamentally-lazy @escape-your-grape @mimiscappinisideblog @go-commander-kim

#three bees writing #🐝🐝🐝✒#ralph lamont x reader #alex brightman #ralph lamont #black reader insert #1980s au #haunted house au

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violetnotez · 4 years

Note

Can I request a storyline where reader and Ms. Joke gives advice to each other to ask their crushes out. (Reader crushing on Bakugou and Ms. Joke likes Eraserhead). Also I love your Dabi fic it's so damn amazing.

Anon I know this took so long but I loved this idea ALOT. Like-literally GENIUSSSSSSSS!!!! And omg I’m so happy you liked my Dabi fics!!!🥺😭

Another fic for the @bnhabookclub event! If you wanna join in, heres the link!

Also pls ignore that Ms Jokes shoulder has disappeared I forgot to fix it 💀

Bakugo x reader

⤷ Genre: Fluff

⤷ Word Count: 2000+

⤷ Warnings: cursing

⤷ Synopsis: As your helping your hero aunt Ms. Joke concoct a plan to win over Eraserhead, the conversation somehow turns to your crush on Bakugo. Even though you feel comfortable talking about the hotheaded boy with your aunt over the phone, you don’t realize how bad that idea is until a certain someone decided to eavesdrop outside the door.

Song Recs: ⤷ Leave This Place-Lione ⤷All This Time-Deorro ⤷Start It Over-NOTD

“Okay okay, how about this one-

“Can you pass me my inhaler, because you just took my breath away!”

Ms. Joke made an over exaggerated attempt at swooning, her voice airy and theatrical. You couldn’t help but giggle at her antics, your nose scrunching at the terrible pick up line she just gave you.

“I don’t think that one will work Auntie,” you mused, your phone on speaker as you tidied up your UA dorm room.

Not many people were aware of it, but your aunt was Ms. Joke, the comedy hero. It was quite a shocker when you let that information out to your classmates, as they couldn’t understand why you had went to UA over her hero school. It was true you had entertained the idea of going, but as much as you loved your aunt-you could only tolerate her for so long. She was so fun and energetic to be around, but that energy quickly became draining after a few hours.

The thought of having to be around your aunt every day made you feel tired just thinking about it, so you had kindly opted to try UA instead. Your aunt was a little disappointed that you had picked UA over her school, but she was over the moon excited for you to finally follow her footsteps and become a hero.

It also didn’t hurt that you would be around Aizawa quite a lot-and she definitely used that to her advantage.

“Oh Cmon tho, Jitter Bug, he would love it!” She exclaimed through the phone. “That one is such a laugh riot!”

“I think you forget that Mr. Aizawa isn’t too big on jokes,” you gave her a short giggle as you began to fold the freshly cleaned clothes on your bed.

“Hm….” she hummed in thought.

“What about-I’m thirsty, and guess whose body is 75% water? I’d then give him a killer smile to go along with it-he can’t say no to me then!”

Your cheeks turned incredibly red-the thought of your aunt hitting on your teacher so openly like that? Revolting.

You made a gagging noise at the prospect, a nervous laugh spilling out.

“I swear if you do that, I will dig my own grave and lay in there from second hand embarrassment,”

A belly laugh erupted in the other end of the line, Ms. Joke’s chuckles high pitched and uncontrollable.

“You really are a hard one to impress, huh?” She said between laughter.

“That type of pick up line is a little too young though-you babies are the ones that say ‘thirsty’ all the time…”

You heard a little hum on the other side of the phone, signaling she was thinking deeply.

“Why don’t you use that one on that boy you like, what’s his name again?”

She asked good naturedly, a hint of sneakiness in her voice. “It’s-Bakugo, Katsuki Bakugo, right?”

Your eyes went wide like saucers, your body language going rigid.

“Auntie you cant say that so loud, I’m on speaker phone!” You hushed her.

Your cheeks went insanely red, your head swiveling to look at your door.

Damn you and not closing it properly-anybody walking by could have heard!

Your aunt only knew about your crush because she had noticed you staring quite intently at Bakugou at your provisional licensing exam, her questions hard to not answer truthfully. She had promised not to tell anyone, not even your parents, but she used it against you nevertheless.

You sighed a breath of relief once you were satisfied that no one had walked by, your head turning back to your phone call.

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ｡･:*:･ﾟ

Unknowing to you, someone had walked by-Bakugo.

It was later in the day and getting close to his early bedtime, so he had come up to tell you to be quiet.

It felt strange walking up to your room-Bakugo knew he was beginning to like you, more than just a classmate or a friend, yet he didn’t quite want to believe it.

He shouldn’t have all these vulnerable feelings, he should be focusing on training and nothing more. But the more and more he tried to ignore it the more and more he realized how much he truly admired you-you were so damn pretty to him, your laugh and smile always making a blush rise to his cheeks, and the way you would look at him so innocently whenever he spoke to you made his whole world light up.

He liked how you respected him, but you would also put him in his place if needed.You were really one of the few only people he would listen to, which made it even worse-you had a power over him you didn’t even know about. It frustrated him, but he cared about your opinion too damn much to openly defy your wishes.

It sucked how easily he’d fallen for you, but he couldn't make it stop, no matter how hard he tried.

Just as he trudged up the stairs to your room, he noticed the door unlocked, a strange thing for him to see since he had prepared himself to knock. Whatever-less time waiting outside your door. He lightly leaned himself against the adjacent wall, ready to yell his warning at you quickly until he heard the familiar voice of Ms. Joke speak his name from a phone call.

The hell were you even talking about?

He couldn’t help it, he had to listen in, it was him you were talking about after all. As much as he didnt want to care, he hoped it was only good things you were speaking of, his heart fluttering when he heard your aunt say “you like him.”

Was it true? Did you really feel the same for him?

Bakugo instantly felt himself to sweat, his vermillion eyes wide as he prayed the news he was hearing wasn’t a lie-you had to like him back. You just had to.

Ms. Joke laughed at your distress, her voice lighthearted and loud.

“Oops, sorry!” She said, not a single ounce of remorse in her tone. “But really, y/n, what do you see in that boy! He’s so-well-“

“Harsh?” You finished her sentence, shuffling on your bed.

“Exactly! He’s always so mean and entitled too-you can’t find another boy in UA? What about Shoto-hes a pretty one!”

You gave a giggle, your hands fiddling nervously with your hair.

“Shoto is just a friend Auntie, and besides, he’s quite reserved-Bakugo isn’t,” you sighed, “Ive never meant anyone like him before.

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ｡･:*:･ﾟ

Bakugo’s heart beat painfully in his chest from outside the door.

This was fucking wrong-he was being a total creepster eaves dropping in your private conversation.

He kept telling himself that this was all okay, because you were talking about him and it was your goddamn fault for speaking about him behind his back-

But he knew deep down it was because he wanted so badly to know. He just wanted to be reassured that there was a connection between you two and he could pursue it somehow.

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ｡･:*:･ﾟ

“He’s just so-different. He is really harsh and brutally honest-it makes him kinda unique in a way. He’s always so driven, trying to do his best to be the best-it’s infectious, ya know? I can't help but admire him for that.”

you admired him? god, hearing those words sent him over the moon. You sounded so sweet and so soft as you relayed all your inner feelings to Ms. Joke, his heart was practically swooning.

Your aunt gave a small nod at your words, her voice much more understanding.

“Have you talked to him? Tried to ask him out or do anything you little kiddies usually do when you have a crush?” She asked playfully.

You sighed, your hands combing through your hair.

“Oh I could never! He wouldn’t like me back-he’s too into his school work. And he is super harsh-god I don’t know what I’d do if he’d reject me….”

“I understand you full heartedly JitterBug,” she used your nickname again, a groan slipping out of your lips.

“Are you yiu ever going to stop calling me that!”

“Never!” She exclaimed, her voice loud and cheerful again. “Your my wonderful little JitterBug and I’m going to keep calling you that until I kick the bucket!

“But really,” she sighed, her tone much more serious. “You never know until you try! I got rejected myself many, many, MANY times-but Im still doing perfectly fine!”

You held back a small snicker-your aunt, the Jokester Hero, who can’t hold a conversation without cackling like a maniac, the one who wears the most ridiculous outfits, has a chaotic fighting style, and has been pinning over the same guy since her internship days as a rookie?

Yeah, perfectly fine isn’t the best way you would describe her.

You simply hummed a nod in order to satiate her a response, a small smile gracing your lips.

“Ugh, I just got a call-they need me to help out with some robbery,” you aunt huffed out, her tone clearly tired. You felt a little bad for the hero-she must have been having a pretty crazy day.

“I’m sorry we had to cut our call so short!”

“Oh no it’s no problem!” You reasuresed her happily, “stay safe out there!”

“You two Jitterbug! Byeeeee!” She practically yelled her goodbye into the phone, making you flinch.

You breathed a tranquil sigh, readying yourself to start studying for your tests when you heard a loud banging upon your door.

“Oi, dumbass, can I come in for a minute?” The gruff voice of Bakugo filled the room, making your blood shiver-

Bakugo?!? Wait-was he there the whole time?!?

You teeth were practically chattering from that overwhelming fear, your cheeks red and your eyes wide.

You seriously were going to crawl into a hole and never come out if he heard that whole conversation.

You crawled off your bed, your hand making their way to the door to peak it open slightly.

Bakugo’s heart was thumping violently in his chest-now he knew you felt the same for him, this was going to be extremely easy. But he still felt really nervous, especially when your hair was so perfectly messy like that and your cheeks were dusted with pink like you were already nervous yourself.

God damn, why did you have to be so attractive? It just messed everything up for him, making him feel like he couldn’t think straight.

“Hey Bakugo, I-Uh-what’s up? Did you need something?”

“Yeah,” he replied gruffly, his nerves making his hand sweat more than usual. “something like that,”

Damn quirk, he thought in annoyance, shoving his hands into his pants. “You gonna let me in?”

“Oh-uh,”you began to stutter, shifting away from the door and opening it up slightly, “sure, yeah!”

He grinned to himself at your adorableness-did you always act this nervous around him? How did he not notice you like him before-it was so obvious to see now when you were fidgeting like that.

He strutted into your room, a new found confidence in him as he shut the door of the room for you, practically trapping you in with him. A mischievous smirk graced his lips, making your heart thump against your ribcage.

“Don’t want anyone overhearing by accident cause you cant close a door right,”

You groaned in embarrassment.

Welp-he knew.

You gave him a small look, your eyes doe -like and scrunched up in uneasiness.

“How much of that did you hear?” You asked timidly.

Bakugo scoffed, that shit eating grin still plastered on his face.

“All of it, Jitterbug,”

You groaned yet again, plopping your body onto the bed in embarrassment.

How could this happen?! He was right-you should have closed the door! You covered your face with your hands, your fingers trailing against your forehead and your hair.

“God I’m so sorry, I probably sounded like a creep, I didn’t mean to-“ you tried to apologize and explain yourself, your cheeks a cherry red.

“Do you like me?” He interrupted you, his arms crossed in front of his chest.

You looked up timidly-god, was he always this intimidating?

He was standing right in front you, his overwhelming stature making you feel so small and overpowered. He was wearing this strange smirk, as if he was enjoying interrogating you.

That usually wasn’t a Bakugo thing to do, to smirk like that, but damn, was it kinda-hot. You could really only focus on that, on the way his lips curled up so softly like he was happy about something but trying to repress it. It was warm and inviting, and you couldn’t help but feel some of your awkwardness melt away.

“How would you feel if I said ‘yes’?” You tried your best to lighten the mood some what, a nervous smile slipping against your lips.

Bakugo knelt down, his body so much more closer to you. His hands went on each side of your legs, his thumbs just brushing your outer thigh. He caged you in to the bed with his arms, his face mere inches from yours.

Well shit.

You felt the blood rush to your face, your ears pounding-you never knew he felt this warm so close, and god-did he really smell like salted caramel? His vermillion eyes were boaring to yours, sending your senses into over drive.

“And how would it feel if I said ‘yes’?” He turned your words against you, his voice husky and deep form being so close.

You squirmed from nerves, your hands going to play with your hair. It was so strange being so close to him, and you didn’t know what to do.

You looked so cute flustered like this-Bakugo internally tried to remember this perfectly, mentally writing down your adorable mannerisms and facial expression to memory. As much as he loved this, you were taking too long for a reply, and he was getting a little annoyed.

“What was that? I’m still waiting,” he asked gruffly, his voice low and sultry.

You gulped, feeling a pang in your heart from hearing that type of voice come from him. Directed to you.

“I-Uh-yes, I-I do, I've liked you for a while now,” you revealed, your cheeks practically tomato red.

He smirked at your expression, slowly lifting his body with off the weight.

You looked up in confusion, already feeling cold without his warm body so close to yours.

“Good,” he replied, his voice prideful, “cause I feel the same way.”

“You do!” You practically shouted, your eyes wide with shock.

The Bakugo-“liked you” liked you? You could practically scream with happiness.

“Well yeah dumbass, why would I say that if I didn’t?” He chuckled slightly, his bright red eyes still drinking you in.

Now his nerves were coming out again, a heaviness feeling his stomach as he realized what he had to do now.

“I-I’m not good at this shit, but-

“Wanna go out tomorrow?”

You were practically screaming like a little girl internally. This was happening? Was this all just a cruel dream?

Only one way to figure out if this was real or not.

You stood up from the bed, bringing yourself close to the hot head.

Now it was Bakugo’s turn to be embarrased-he was getting too comfortable being the one to make you nervous. He forgot how you could make him so flustered, your warm smile and pretty eyes making his heart thump painfully and his mind go into a panicked standstill.

Your hands shakily wrapped around his neck, slow to see how he would react.

God, you had thought about touching his hair for so long now, it was even better than you imagined-soft and fluffy like a cloud, you ran your hands through the spiky locks. The faint smell of caramel wafted into your nose agaun, making you feel nervous and calm at the same time.

He was slightly rigid, staring at you with shocked eyes-but he seemed to not mind this. You smiled softly, your heart thumping-it was now or never.

You slowly got on your toes and leaned yourself into his lips, surprised how warm they felt. At first he didn’t move, which scared you-but he eventually began to move against your lips, a little rough but still pleasant. A flood of warmth filled your body, your hands relaxing against his body. You felt his arms wrap around your body, his lips now taking the lead and guiding you into him.

You couldn’t believe how good this felt, how perfect and surreal it was.

But you remembered-sadly- breathing was a thing, your lungs burning as you both reluctantly pulled away.

You thanked your aunt for her loud mouth in your blissful daze, because without her, you wouldn’t be kissing your crush now.

You smiled at the blonde, his cheeks dusted with red and his eyes drinking you in.

“Tomorrow sounds great.”

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bellatrixxue · 3 years

Text

Xue’s Supernatural Dare: Wendigo (S1 EP2)

Hello, everyone? How did everyone feel about the finale? Yes? Yes? Oh. Oh. Oh my. Oh, dear.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell that half-assed homophobic chicken-shit fuckbucket’s not gonna stop me, since I strapped myself onto this roller coaster already and I promised I’m not getting out until the ride’s over, so here we go, wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Also, those who are in this roller coaster with me, ready? Tag list is: @fangirlxwritesx67 @amazingiam00 @kalliravenne @indecisive20something @2musiclover2 @impossibletosleepthrough @there-must-be-a-lock @wingedcatninja @arvit

Oh my gods this recap is so cheesy I actually can make a fondue out of it. 2000s, everybody!

A WHOLE MINUTE AND A HALF FOR THAT FONDUE

FUCKJUMPSCARETITLEFUCKYOU

So we’re starting the episode with the murder scene first, eh? Is that gonna be a trend?

Oh come on, Chads, you’re out in nature and you’re playing video games? Absorb the nature...before it absorbs you!

Waitwait. Holy shit is that...is that Cory Monteith? Oh, bless his soul...

If the wendigo eats his dick as he’s peeing I’m immediately giving Jensen Ackles $100. For no real reason, I just feel like giving him money for already carrying the show on his back.

I can’t tell if it did or not, so I’m not paying yet.

Aw, Sammy...

"I should have told you the truth.” *Vine voice* BUT YOU DIDN’T

FUCKYOUINTHEASSHOhnightmare. Nightmare. So did he visit her at her grave or not? I need answers.

A week? Goddamn. Poor thing. That man-eating tree’s fucking good at his job, man.

“There’s nothing there, it’s just...woods,” Sam, I don’t know if Jess’s death hit you hard or if you got into law school by eating some ancient dick and/or pussy instead of earning that high score fair and square, but the woods “in the middle of nowhere” (your words) are known to be one of the top places full of weird-ass creatures. Even kindergartners know that.

Ehehehehehehehehe he’s so smol next to his lil bro my lil shit

At least you’re coming up with decent covers this time. No Agent Mulder and Scully ruining things for you this time around.

“Bull” oop-

Oh Dean’s a smoooooooooth operator. Good going, buddy.

AND HE GOT A COPY OF THAT DOCUMENT TEAM DEAN TEAM DEAN

Oh that death really got to Sam. I hope he doesn’t turn out to be a trigger-happy psycho. Or eat the man-eating tree and become one himself.

Oh, Haley’s a cutie! Which one’s her brother? Cory? Discount Enrique Iglesias?

Do you have a card for EVERY profession, Dean? And how do I get them too?

That is a very pretty car. I bet they wasted half the budget on that thing.

Okay, sonny boy, little bro, Broseidon, calm down.

Ah, fuck, Haley and Broseidon is gonna go into the woods, that’s more heads to worry about.

How the fuck does Sam find information this fast? I’m impressed, I take five hours to get to one article for my research paper. Or maybe I’m just lazy. So he really earned his law school interview without having to eat dick and pussy, huh.

Every 23 years? What is this, Pennywise? Are we going to see the wendigo do his best Tim Curry do his best scary clown impression? Honk honk?

“Whatever that thing is, it can move.” And the sun rises on the East, Sammy. Why are you so smart and dumb at the same time? Is this his character trait? It might grow on me.

Ahhh, so Sam’s go-to move at interrogation is doing puppy dog eyes and sympathize with the person. He’d make a good lawyer, shame that man-eating tree.

Go Grandpa Exposition, go!

Go Grandpa Exposition, go, give us information and none at all!

OH GEEZ THAT SCAR. PENNYWISE WENDIGO IS VICIOUS.

Skinwalker, Back Dog...Ooh, those all sound cool! I hope we get to see them soon!

‘Corporeal’ doesn’t sound like a real word, but then again, English doesn’t sound like a real language. Sorry. Moving on.

Sam’s gonna eat the wendigo with that attitude, Jesus Christ.

AND HIS BROTHER, AT THIS RATE. If the real villain turns out to be inside Sam all along I’m gonna flip. Is that why women keep dying and burning on ceilings where he sleeps? Is he secretly Lucifer’s spawn or something?

“Oh sweetheart I don’t wear shorts”. They queer-coded him from the start and they tried to make you believe he was straight for fifteen seasons straight? And some people bought that?

Oh, crap, another crappy death treatment for Cory before he got into Glee...No, I wasn’t into Glee, I just watched a few episodes and I might hate Rachel Berry...And Lea Michele...ahem...

Dean is totally flirting with Roy shut upppppppp

OOP AND THERE ROY GOES OH THE SEXUAL TENSION IS HIGH IN THESE WOODS TODAY

“It’s probably the most honest I’ve been with a woman. Ever.” See. Bi. Bi bi bi.

So...why the coordinates, Daddy Negan? Is this a portal to Hell? A place where man-eating trees grow?

*carefully places death flag on Roy*

Ooooh the campsite is very...haunted house-y. You know what I’m saying?

That’s not Discount Enrique Iglesias, but Pennywise wendigo, yes? Those things can mimic human voices, right?

*Google searches*...There are so many versions of this tale I can’t even confirm or deny it. Dammit.

Maybe Pennywise wendigo just wants some snacks and a nice phone and GPS? Maybe he misses his family in uh, Canada or something?

Daddy Negan’s journal is a e s t h e t i q u e .

I’m so sorry, but the way Sammy smirks as he speaks with those dark, dark voids for eyes? My boy’s a demon. He’s a demon, I’m telling you.

At least Haley has some sense to her. *puts another death flag on Roy*

*PUTS YET ANOTHER DEATH FLAG ON ROY*

True, that. What the heck is Daddy Negan up to with all of this?

“Saving people, hunting things, the family business!” Okay, the way Dean said it gave me chills.

I can actually empathize with Sam here...As whiny and bitchy as he is, he has his reasons to be this way. I guess if I were in his shoes, I’d be less of a Dean and more of a Sam, too. We deal with our losses quite similarly.

Ah, the brotherly bonding moments like these little talks make the show worth it. It’s so heartwarming.

Pennywise wendigo! I didn’t miss you, why’re you here to burst my happy bubble?

I’m starting to see a slight parallel between Haley and Broseidon and Dean and Sammy. Hmm.

Nice meeting you, Roy. Zoop you go.

Haley and Broseidon are taking this rather well, I’m glad they do.

Okay, actual exposition time, thank you.

Whoa, Broseidon speaks! Donner Party! Please don’t remind me of that! Those poor people!

Hibernation and food storage. Delightful, just delightful.

TORCHING? *CALLS RAMMSTEIN*

Somehow, not being able to see the wendigo is scarier to me than what I will probably see itself. Limited budget horror can actually work well.

Oh, dear, Roy literally did a death drop. Badum tissssssssss.

FUCK IT TOOK DEAN THE ONLY CHARACTER I CARE ABOUImean I love you too, Sam! Come on, let’s find him before it’s too late!

A trail of M&Ms! Yes, Broseidon! And Hansel and Gretel refercalled it. Sammy, you and I share the same wavelength?

SHITSHITTHEYTRIPPEDANDFELLINTHEFUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

Thank the gods the Pennywise wendigo kept them right there. Chances.

DISCOUNT ENRIQUE IGLESIAS IS STILL ALIVE GEEZ BUT ALSO PHEW

Ah, Dean Winchester, I love you so much that I can’t even begin to describe it.

Also how convenient that the flare guns are there. Deus ex machina!

Haley would bode well as a hunter, look at her courage, her will. There are more hunters around than Daddy Negan and the brothers, right?

Yeah, seeing the actual wendigo makes me less scared of it now. It’s unnerving, but still.

TEAM DEAN YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAW

Graphics are...alright, but it’s the thought that counts!

Running with the grizzly bear story. Smart Broseidon. Ben. Sorry, you deserve to be called by your real name. I think with practice they could become good hunters, along with their Discount Enrique Iglesias brother! Is there a fanfiction for that? Can I write it now?

...

I AM WILLING TO DIE TO PROTECT DEAN WINCHESTER I

Haley’s a lesbian, that’s why she kissed him on the cheek only. Headcanoned. Also I have a crush on her, she’s really pretty? Like? Heart eyes???

Ah, the siblings parallels again. Let’s hope neither of the two brothers end up in the bed like that.

“Man, I hate camping.” Really. Really really. Really.

“I’m driving”

...

SAM WINCHESTER I’M SORRY I EVER SPOKE ILL OF YOU I WILL PROTECT YOU WITH MY LIFE TOO I PROMISE YOU I WILL

It’s just a sassy bisexual brother and his little snide bisexual brother on the road to kill evil creatures and find their father and I love this show? Help? Help???

I really, really see the charm of Supernatural now! I’m fully invested in both brothers and their story, and I’m cheering them both on! Let’s get Daddy Negan back and get rid of that man-eating tree once and for all!

Six stars out of five!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This dare is introducing me to a whole new world, and I really, really am glad I took that jump a few days ago, man!

Thank you everyone for reading my ramblings, and I’ll see you in the day after with the next review! Thank you for sticking with me! Buh-bye!

- Xue

#xue's supernatural dare #spn #supernatural #dean winchester #jensen ackles #sam winchester #jared paladecki #text #i had a really bad day today with my constant pain and aching from the chemo #but this really brought genuine smiles to my face!#what a good show #what a wonderful show #how the FUCK did they fuck it up later #well #i guess i'll find out when i get there lmao

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aloysiavirgata · 4 years

Text

In The Gale

Title: In The Gale

Author: Aloysia Virgata

Rating: PG

Category: MSR

Author's Notes: For @perplexistan, who asked and helped me make it better. This is shortly after settling into the Unremarkable House. I tried making sense of their legal status, but it’s simply impossible and I gave up.

Our heroes quote from Melville, Shakespeare, Sagan, Baudrillard, and (Emily) Dickens.

***

Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place And what is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place I rejoice that things are as they are and I renounce the blessed face And renounce the voice Because I cannot hope to turn again Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us And pray that I may forget These matters that with myself I too much discuss Too much explain Because I do not hope to turn again Let these words answer For what is done, not to be done again May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

***

She recites The Raven to herself on the drive in, lists all the state capitals in alphabetical order, and goes through the periodic table. Her body fizzes like a shaken soda, tiny anxious bubbles rising through her blood. They’ve done so much for this, called in so many favors. Mulder put his book on hold for a month, quizzing her with dog-eared notecards.

“Immediate treatment of myocardial infarction,” he’d call, and she’d say “MONA TASS.”

She feels a pang for the simplicity of the other life, the hiding one, where she just had to ring up cigarettes and herbal Viagra at gas stations.

***

She’s the new girl at the cafeteria table, awkward and alone. Mulder had prepared her a lunch like it’s the first day of school, and she stares at it, wishing for an appetite.

From the corner of her eye she sees two colleagues - an MRI tech and an obstetrician, she thinks - talking softly and glancing over. Scully thinks she hears “FBI,” and she looks up and smiles, uncertain.

They blink at her, look away.

***

Ybarra comes around the corner, gliding in his cassock like a disapproving ghost. “Dr. Scully,” he says, in his pinched voice.

She smiles thinly. “Father Ybarra.”

“Nurse Mossing was looking for the chart for Mrs. Sullivan. Imagine my surprise when I found it in Room 314 instead of Room 413. That’s a potential HIPAA violation, Dr. Scully. That’s a federal law.”

Scully curls her hand so that her nails dig into her skin. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Father Ybarra, please forg-”

He holds up his palm. “It won’t happen again,” he says, and glides onward.

Scully closes her eyes and leans against the wall. She breathes through her nose until the ringing in her ears stops.

***

She wants to collapse into his arms and cry when she gets home, but that would be giving in. It would be letting them down.

“How’d it go?” he asks. He’s wearing basketball shorts and a Knicks shirt, a five o’clock shadow.

She smiles brightly. “It was good. Learning curve, but good. I think Father Ybarra might be a tough nut to crack, is all.”

Mulder rubs his cowlicked hair. “Put your feet up, Scully, since you won’t wear sensible shoes.”

She does, and accepts the glass of wine he holds out. “Thanks. I’ll sleep well tonight, anyway. There are miles of hallways.”

He sits next to her on the couch. “I wrote a few pages,” he says. “I deleted a bunch, but I think there was a multi-paragraph net gain.”

“I’m glad you’re able to stop focusing on my stuff now,” she says. “Both back in the saddle.”

“Go team.”

She clinks her glass against his. She drinks her wine too fast.

***

Ybarra had come in during her rounds that morning and startled her into knocking a metal bedpan onto the floor. Scully thinks the reverberations of that sound will follow her to the grave.

She’s now in the chapel, tucked into a back pew. She’s been staring at the small altar, at the stained glass windows flanking the crucifix. The Blessed Virgin smiles beatifically down at her, a wretched sinner.

Scully laces her fingers on the back of the pew in front of her and bows her head against them. “Please,” she whispers. “Please.”

***

Mulder wakes her with tea and eggs. “You haven’t been eating,” he says, brow furrowed.

She rubs her eyes, yawning. “What?”

He sits next to her on the bed, sets the plate and mug on her night table. “You just push your food around your plate, you hardly talk when you get home. What’s going on, Scully?”

She sits up, looking at his worried face. He’s sun-browned and tousled, beautiful, with a mouth that still makes her weak in the knees. “Nothing. It’s just a lot to jump back into.”

“I’m sure it is. And I still want to help you with it.” He pulls the flash cards from his pocket, touches her wrist with his other hand. “Let’s see - causes of upper zone pulmonary fibrosis?”

She looks at the ceiling, back at him. “I don’t need help.”

Mulder blinks, stung.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. You just don’t need to hover over me. You have your own things to work on. Work on your book, patch up your henhouse. ” Her voice sounds snappish to her own ears.

His changeable eyes, now mossy green, darken. He chews his bottom lip, nodding slowly. “I thought you were one of my ‘things.’ Sorry to bother you.” He rises, walks downstairs.

“Mulder,” she whispers.

The tea goes down fine. Scully tries to eat the eggs but feels bile rise in her throat. She flushes them down the toilet instead of leaving them behind, because that is love.

***

She arrives at the nurses’ station on the second floor with three dozen donuts and two cardboard boxes of coffee. She deposits them on the desk. “Good morning, Annabel,” she says.

“Anneliese,” the woman says.

Scully nods, walks away.

***

He slides his hand up her pajama top, tracing circles on her ribs, sliding his fingers around to her breasts. He kisses the back of her neck. “Scully,” he whispers, his breath warm and ticklish in her ear.

She wants to pretend to wake up, to turn towards him and lose herself in his body. She wants to tell him everything, to be held and loved and petted and reassured. She wants him to remind her that she once stared down Congress, that some backwater priest and his prickly staff should be a joke to her. She wants them to laugh together at these silly, petty people.

But she can’t, she can’t disappoint him. He’s been so proud of her.

Scully stays still, breathes evenly until his hands move away and she’s alone again.

***

Her car rattles over the driveway, through shimmering waves of heat that rise from the crisping grass. It is the kind of late July afternoon where the sun is a hazy white ball in the west, and clouds of gnats are a permanent feature of the landscape.

Scully parks, avoiding a puddle in which a peacock is standing. Mulder has recently become enamored of yard fowl. She narrows her eyes at it while opening the car door.

“Good boy, Kevin,” she calls to it, wary.

Scully picks her way over the gravel in her thin heels. The peacock mews an alarm as she approaches, but doesn’t charge. She lets herself inside, shuts the heat and sun and wildlife outside. The house smells of coffee and microwave popcorn.

She walks into Mulder’s office and finds him hunched at his desk, typing. “Hey,” she says, and drops a kiss on his head. There’s a sketch of Baphomet taped to his monitor, her worn flash cards atop a tome about Raëlism.

He turns in his chair. He puts his arms around her hips. “Hey.”

“Kevin behaved himself,” she offers.

“You two will be friends yet, you’ll see.”

She peers at the computer. “You get a lot done today?”

Mulder shrugs. “Eh, a bit. Waiting on a few emails, and I had to run that tubing to drain the sump down into the woods. Ate up most of the afternoon.”

Scully shakes her head in admiration. “I don’t know how you manage all the multitasking.”

“Well, the book helps me avoid the house, and the house helps me avoid the book. It’s a perfect system. That Ybarra guy still riding your ass?”

She chews her lip. “No,” she lies. “I think we’re okay now.”

“Good,” he says. “I’d hate to have to beat up a priest.”

***

Scully gazes at herself in the empty locker room. She looks thin and tired, and her hair is frizzing up, even pulled back like this. All her makeup has sweated off except for smudged crescents of mascara. Her bra is the color of a Band-Aid, her underwear white and sensible. Between the two is the hard white rose of her gunshot scar, like a second navel, an artifact of a second birth. It is numb when she touches it, indifferent. There are no stretch marks from William, a tale missing from the anthology of her skin. She unhooks her bra, lets it slide down to the damp floor. Scully turns to observe her body in profile. The scar is gone this way, the tattoo hidden as well, and she smooths her hands along her ribs. Her breasts seem out of place to her when they are unbound, frivolous somehow. Vestigial.

She looks away.

***

The hospital is labyrinthine, having been constructed of various additions when funds allowed. There are dead ends, pointless staircases, and a mysterious storage closet filled with old televisions. She makes little maps on notepaper.

“So where did you work before this?” an orthopedic surgeon asks her.

A diner in Wyoming.

“I was out West for a while,” she says.

***

A week in, and Mulder has made a cake to celebrate. A bouquet of Kevin’s shed tail feathers ornaments the table.

An offering, Mulder calls it, tickling her chin with one.

A week down, she thinks, and blows out the candle. She wonders when she’ll stop counting the time.

***

Shy, he gives her a chapter to read. It’s good, and she tells him so. It’s very good. She hears his voice in her head when she reads it, his passion. She loves the esoterica tucked into his gyri and sulci.

“Your prose was never this clear in your reports,” she remarks.

“Hey if you can’t blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”

Scully laughs. “You want to read a few medical reports?”

He looks at her, suddenly serious. “Yeah,” he says. “I would. It would be nice to hear about your day for once.”

She wonders if love is the weapon that lets them wound so casually.

***

“You’re late,” Ybarra says softly.

She doesn’t explain that she’d somehow ended up at the TV closet again, that the room numbering system in this hospital had been designed by nihilists, that the nursing student had Dermabonded her glove to a patient’s forehead.

She lowers her eyes like she did at Catholic school. She promises to do better.

***

“What’s going on?” Mulder asks her for what feels like the hundredth time. “Talk to me, Scully.”

She presses her hands to her face for a moment, drops them to her sides. “Nothing,” she says again, frustrating them both. “I’m tired. It’s a hard schedule.”

He places a throw pillow on his lap and pats it. “Come here,” he says. “Please.”

She acquiesces, curling on her side with her back to him. He runs his fingers through her hair, traces the Fibonacci spirals of her ear. She wants to relax, to melt into his touch. She indulges in a Mulderesque conspiracy theory that the hospital microdoses the water with tetanus toxin to keep everyone rigid and tense.

Scully gazes at the windows, at the hard white light of summer streaming in. The curtains are blue with an arabesque pattern, and they looked very chic in the store. She wonders now if they seem desperate in this odd little house. She thinks of Meg March, dressed up in borrowed finery at the Moffats’ ball.

***

Scully clomps up the steps to the porch and kicks her rain boots off next to the umbrella stand. It contains four umbrellas and a gnarled hickory limb that Mulder claims is going to be polished into a fine walking stick one of these days. She goes into the house and is dismayed to find it stale and stifling and dark. Dust motes waft in Brownian motion through shafts of sunlight, undirected by fans or air conditioning.

“Mulder,” she calls, and there is silence.

She twists her hair into a bun as she pads upstairs, old wood satiny under her bare feet. She pushes open the bedroom door, and the air is hot and still.

“Mulder?” She needs his help with her zipper, but there is no reply.

She wrestles herself out of her silk sheath, sticky and irritating, and lets it puddle on the floor. Her bra follows. She feels guilty, as Mulder has turned out to be a surprisingly diligent housekeeper. His office is filled with perilous stacks of home improvement books and arcane journals about lake monsters, the walls papered with clippings and blurry photographs, but he seems able to quarantine his own entropy.

She is trying to do the same.

Scully pulls on soft cotton pajama shorts, a gray tank top imbued with the compressive powers of Lycra. She uses lotion to rub away the mascara beneath her eyes. She goes downstairs and out the back door, shielding her eyes against the piercing sunlight. A mosquito whines at her ear and she pinches it out of the air.

“Still got those reflexes, kid,” Mulder says from somewhere off to her left.

She turns and sees him crouched next to the hulking green block of the transformer. “All the lights are off, and the house feels like a rainforest. I take it you’ve had an eventful day?”

He sighs. “Not really. Well, not the event I was hoping for, which is the power coming back on. There was a pretty heavy thunderstorm around one and that’s when the electricity blew.”

She sits on the bottom step, knees drawn up. She likes to watch him working, a side of him they’re both still learning about. There was never much call for home maintenance at Hegal Place, or living out of cash-only motels. “You call the power company?”

He huffs. “Yeah, they told me they had no reported outages and the power should be fine. I explained that I was trying to report an outage and that it definitely was not fine and she promised someone would be here between tomorrow and eventually.”

Scully smiles. “And that’s why you’re out here toying with death?”

“Not much else to do, really. Can’t write with the power out.” Mulder sits back on his heels and shrugs. “You, uh, have a good day?”

She hadn’t. “Yep. Starting to feel like part of the team.”

“Good. You need to get your career standards as high as your standards for men,” he says, getting to his feet.

“Oh, well, that’s an obviously unattainable bar.”

“Obviously.” He sits next to her on the step. “You wear that to work? You know I think bras are a tool of the patriarchy and you shouldn’t bother, but I’m just surprised Our Lady of Perpetual Shame takes such a liberal view.”

She laughs a little. “I figured as long as I tossed a lab coat over it, I’d look like a real doctor. It worked when I was a kid.”

“Hey, that’s what I did with my badge half the time. Listen, Scully. The house is pretty tropical. You want to bunk up in a hotel until they get the power sorted out?”

Scully thinks about the convenience it would afford. Maids and room service and maybe a pool, depending. But she is tired of hotels, even nice ones. She is tired of polite signs that remind her that the pillows and towels and hairdryers aren’t hers, the tiny toiletries an indicator of her temporary status. She is tired of living out of suitcases and dressers that made her clothes smell strange, tired of running from her own life. She wants to be home.

“Nah,” she says. “We’ll manage.”

Mulder looks surprised, but doesn’t question it. “I’ll call Lowe’s about getting a generator delivered tomorrow. We ought to have one anyway out here.”

She’d always had a vague idea that Mulder had money - it was the only explanation for his complete disinterest in it. But when they’d come back, when they’d talked to his lawyers, she'd been staggered. The Vineyard house alone explained his casual international jaunts. They can have things now, endless things, and there is something frantic in her that wants to spend the money. Bingeing chocolate bunnies after Lent.

Mulder peels his shirt off, wadding it into a limp ball. He tosses it so that it hooks over the doorknob. “Still got it,” he says. He preens.

“Does the NBA realize the tremendous talent they’re missing out on?” she asks. “Do they even know that, at this very moment, a six foot tall middle aged white man is out here flinging his clothing a distance of several feet?”

He snuggles up to her, wrapping his sweaty arms around her shoulders.

“Ugh,” she says, and pushes at him. “Mulder, you’re disgusting and it’s a thousand degrees out here.”

“Hoping that cold, cold heart of yours might cool me off.” She sniffs disdainfully, and he releases her. “Scully, how do you feel about bees?”

“We have a history, bees and I,” she observes, tapping the back of her neck.

Mulder curls his hand over the scar, kneads the muscles there. “Well, these wouldn’t be fancy bees.”

“Hmmm,” she says. “I’m not inherently opposed. Why do you want bees, Mulder?”

He shrugs. “I’m getting older, and I’ve got to consider funeral plans. The last one didn’t really go as expected, so I thought maybe I’d mellify myself this time.”

She nods. “Makes sense. I mean, of course, there’s no actual proof that mellification actually occurred, but that’s never stopped you.”

“I also like honey,” he adds. “And bees are good for the planet.”

“Honey often contains botulism spores,” she remarks. “Botulinum toxin is the most lethal toxin known, and it’s estimated that as little as 40 grams of it would be enough to kill everyone on earth.” She doesn’t say you shouldn’t give it to babies, that she sweetened her smoothies with dates and maple syrup so that -

“Well, nobody better piss off my bee army and me,” he says darkly.

“Everybody eventually pisses you off. Mulder, is that old tent in the shed still? We could sleep in that tonight.”

He shakes his head. “Heavy mildew and dry rot, so I threw it out. We could sleep out here if you want, though. We’ve got that big air mattress.”

“Let’s do that,” she says. “We can put it on the porch. Tell you what - you get stuff together, and I’ll even make dinner.” Scully doesn’t like cooking, but she wants to create order, to complete a finite task. She can be domesticated again, like a lost house cat finally returned to a hearth.

“We having eggs or peanut butter?” he asks, smirky.

“I’d hate to spoil the surprise,” she snips, and goes back into their sauna of a house.

In the kitchen, she stands in front of the open fridge, letting the delicious leftover cold soak into her skin. She’ll deal with the spoiled food later. Eggs had, actually, been her plan but it’s just too hot. The stove doesn’t work, and she doesn’t have the fortitude to turn the grill on. She finds some leftover shrimp pasta that Mulder has made, some vegetables, and assembles it all into a passable salad.

There, she thinks, pleased. I’d pay twelve bucks for that somewhere. She uses her foot to scratch a mosquito bite on her calf.

Her skin is clammy, hair stringy and damp from sweat. Maybe they should just go to a hotel after all. Perhaps she should stop ascribing symbolism to every damn thing and enjoy herself once in a while. But she thinks of packing, of driving, of unpacking and somehow it’s all too much and her eyes start to fill and her sinuses sting.

Scully pinches her wrist until it passes, feeling weak and hating the weakness in herself. It’s the heat, it’s the exhaustion, it’s the heavy mental load. She considers going outside for a dip in the pond, but suspects the water will be unpleasantly warm. Instead, she drags herself back upstairs for a cold shower.

She sits on the edge of the bed, weary, and stares at a framed picture of a sea turtle on the far wall. If she lets her eyes drift out of focus, it looks like it’s swimming. She tips her head back for a better angle, watches it float across her vision. It slips away then, into the black of the deep waters.

***

She startles awake when he touches her shoulder, gasps.

“Jesus,” Mulder says, and sits next to her. “Bad dream?”

Scully sits up, dazed. “What? No, was I asleep?”

“You’ve been out cold for over an hour, but I wanted to make sure you got some food. Water at least, it’s too hot up here.”

She blinks, confused. “I don’t remember,” she says. Peering to her right reveals night outside.

Mulder holds a hand out and she grasps it, letting him pull her to her feet. She wavers and he steadies her, arm about her shoulders.

“I just need some water,” she says, defensive.

He guides her down the stairs and out the front door onto the porch. The air outside is substantially cooler, a light breeze kissing her face. She settles into a chair, stares deep into the felty dark. She still can’t remember falling asleep.

Mulder hands her a water bottle from the little table and she rolls it between her palms, the plastic crinkling. “Hey, I thought you were setting up the air mattress out here,” she says.

“No air flow behind the wall,” he replies. “Drink that up like a good girl and I’ll show you what we’ve got.”

Scully obeys and feels better. The water tastes stale, but it’s cool and wet. “Maybe you should have my job,” she says, looking up. “Caring for live people is so much work.”

“Everybody eventually pisses me off,” he reminds her. “Come on, Doc.”

She follows him down the steps and around the side of the house. Their property is vast and feral, pocked with mole burrows and rabbit nests. The floodlights are out with the power, and the house is nearly swallowed up by the vast night. Scully glances up at the Milky Way, at the waxing moon, and marvels again at the sky they have out here. We are star stuff, she thinks.

“Moonstruck?” Mulder asks.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars.”

“As long as you can tell a hawk from a handsaw,” he says, and tugs her along.

She follows him to the back of the house and then stops, smiling. Mulder has hammered some old two-by-fours into a frame, draped the structure in white bedsheets. Inside, the air mattress is piled with sofa pillows. Outside, camping lanterns, candles, and two strands of solar lights make it into a kind of fairy circle.

“Mulder,” she says, delighted. “This is ridiculous.”

“Indian Guide saves the day,” he says.

“Your architecture badge is definitely more impressive than your fire badge,” she says, walking over to the little tent. He’s brought her salad inside, and there is a cooler packed with ice and water bottles. Cans of bug spray sit at the flap. She crawls inside, suddenly ravenous.

Mulder joins her on the mattress, which bounces in response. “Remember my water bed?”

She laughs, piling food on a plate for each of them. “What a swinging bachelor you were.”

She remembers the water bed fondly, the leather couch and the fish and the postage-stamp bathroom in his apartment. It shouldn’t hurt still, but it does. She knew herself there, her place on the map. She eats her salad, wistful for Chinese food and beer at that battered coffee table.

“Scully,” he says.

“What?”

“Scully.”

“Just middle-aged nostalgia, I suppose,” she murmurs.

He reaches out to take her hand. “You’re scarcely middle aged.”

She smiles, squeezes his fingers. “If you go by life experience, we’re both about two hundred years old.”

“Like those Galapagos tortoises. But you need to tell me what’s going on at work. You won’t disappoint me.”

It can be very disagreeable to live with a profiler.

Scully drops his hand. She bites at the fleshy part of her thumb. This is real, she thinks. This place. It is not down in any map; true places never are. She can only deflect for so long, and her armor is rusting away. “I’m afraid,” she whispers, then chances a look at his face.

His eyes are soft, searching. “Why?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know, I don’t…” Her sinuses sting again and she presses her palms hard into her eyes. “Please.”

Mulder’s hand on her back, in endless, gentle figure eights. He pulls the elastic from her hair and lets it tumble down to her shoulders. He shifts so that her back is to him, his long legs on either side of her body.

“Mulder, what -”

“Shhhh,” he says, and gathers the hair at the crown of her head. “It’s not a real sleepover if you don’t get your hair French braided.”

Scully blinks. “Since when do you know how to braid hair?”

“Little sister, absent parents. Now stop moving and talk.”

She keeps her head very steady, thinking of her own sister’s deft fingers when their mother was too busy for anything but ponytails. Mulder tugs at another little section of hair. Scully thinks she might be okay if she isn’t looking at him, if she can’t read herself in his eyes.

Moth shadows dance across the white sheet wall, drawn to the flickering candles outside. It fascinates her that they never figure out that fire burns. “I don’t know how to do this,” she says, and her voice is thick.

“To talk, or to be still?” he says in his Oxford psychologist voice.

She isn’t sure of what she means either. “Yes,” she says, with a hiccupy laugh. “Both.”

“Me too,” he says, slipping his thumb through the strands behind her ear. “I don’t know how to do this.”

She swallows hard. “I just...I’ve always had something to consume me. I had the FBI, we traveled all the time, and then we were running and I thought it was hard but it was so easy to just survive. There were no decisions. I didn’t care about, I don’t know...plates.”

He pauses in his work. “Plates?”

Scully chews at a hangnail, frustrated. “Just things, the things you buy for a house. Long term things. I did with William and then…” she trails off, her chest tight. “I feel like I’m playing a game sometimes, like improv theater. Fox and Dana Build A Home.”

“Fox and Dana?” he repeats. “Surely not.”

“Well, we’re hardly Mulder and Scully anymore, are we?” Her stomach clenches and that’s it, she sees. That’s the fear.

He finishes the braid and fastens the elastic at the end of it. “Of course we are,” he says. “We are who we are.”

She turns to him then, the whispering anxiety back with a roar. “And who is that, Mulder? I was plain old Dana Scully until I met you. And we had this life, this strange and wonderful and terrible life where I was Scully because I was your partner and now that’s over. It’s all nothing.” She’s crying openly now, quietly, and it feels cleansing.

“You’re still my partner,” he says, and his eyes are shining too.

She wipes her nose with a paper napkin. “Am I? At what? I go to work and see patients but I forgot there’s no closure with the living. People get sick and get better and get sick again. It doesn’t end. And this house, the power is always going to go out and the chickens will always be hungry and -“ she stops, feeling hysterical.

“You don’t have to work,” he says softly. “The settlement from the FBI, my inheritance…”

She shakes her head. “You know I have to work.”

He sighs, rubs her knee. “I know you do. But it doesn’t have to be this. It doesn’t have to drain you.”

He’s right, of course he’s right, but he’s also so terribly wrong that she wonders if he knows her at all. She has to be a doctor for her father, for William. For him. She has to see something through. Scully smooths her hand over the back of her head, feeling the even ridges of the braid. Mulder is so competent with everything he does, so easy with himself. He’ll get his damned bees and become some kind of honey magnate in no time.

“People at the hospital, they ask me what I did before. And I don’t know how to answer. How can I possibly answer that question? I just say I was with the government, but that isn’t really the answer, is it?”

Mulder shrugs. He’s never felt the need to explain himself to people. “It’s true.”

Scully stretches out on her stomach across the mattress, chin on the pillows, watching the moths again. They tumble like acrobats, untethered in the thick air. “There’s this number called Graham’s number, used in Ramsey Theory, which is, well, nevermind. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, it was in the Guinness Book for being the largest specific number used in a proof at the time. And Mulder, this number is so big that writing out all the digits would exceed the bounds of the known universe.”

“Nobody likes a math nerd, Scully.”

She rolls onto her back to glare at him. “Yes they do, they give them Nobel prizes. Anyway. A whole new notation system, Knuth Notation, had to be developed to express these massive numbers. Graham’s Number, Tree(3), et cetera. And I feel like that at times. That there’s this endless amount of vital, inexpressible information inside of me that is so essential but that I have no way to share.”

She blinks a few times, spent by this unburdening.

Mulder stretches out next to her, propped on his side. “You can express it to me,” he says, massaging her temple with his thumb.

Scully closes her eyes. “I feel like a ghost sometimes. How do you do it, Mulder? How do you just keep moving forward without getting lost?”

He sighs. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but you have a tendency to compile people into perfect specimens, then measure yourself against that imaginary standard. It’s the precession of simulacra.”

She looks at him, indignant, then realizes he could be right. “Well,” she says. “It’s possible. But Mulder, is that such a bad thing, to want to hold myself to the highest goals?”

He tugs her onto her side so that she’s facing him, nearly nose to nose. Her lips feel tingly. “Yes,” he says, stroking her hair. “When the goal isn’t attainable. And when it puts everyone else on pedestals where we’re ill equipped to balance. And when it puts you in a constant state of frustration and anxiety. No one is perfect. Not even you.”

“I don’t want to be perfect,” she lies. “And I don’t need you to be either.” That part is true, at least.

He laughs in reply. “Apropos of being Galapagos tortoises, Charles Darwin once said ‘I am very poorly today, and very stupid and hate everybody and everything.’”

“He rode the tortoises,” Scully says, calming. “I can’t defend his methodology.”

“See? You’re better than Charles Darwin.” He kisses her forehead.

“Well,” she says. “Well.”

“Scully, look. You’re not alone here, feeling at sea. I went to the feed store and some guy picked a fight, shoved me pretty hard with his shoulder. And this reflexive part of my brain wanted to grab my badge, stick it in his face, and put him against the wall for assaulting a federal agent. But I ignored it and bought the chicken feed and just headed out. And I felt like, is this who I am now? Some pushover with yard birds and home improvement books?”

“You made a little fast and loose with your authority sometimes,” she says, thinking of Roche. She curves her palm against his cheek, thumbs the fine ridge of his zygomatic bone.

He bumps her nose with his. “You broke into a secret morgue.”

“You made me.” She sniffles, laughs a little. “The good old days.”

“These can be the good days too,” he says. “They can, if we work at it.” He traces her mouth with his finger.

“Okay,” she says. Hope stirs in her, a thing with feathers. “Partners?”

“Partners.”

He kisses her, in their small tent, in their ring of light.

#xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #my fic #iwtb

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severusthehalfbloodprince · 3 years

Text

Asphodel & Wormwood

Date: January 2nd, 1979 Location: Cokeworth - Under the Willow Tree Tagging: @mcrningecans

Lily found the owl on the windowsill that morning.

She’d woken up before James, which was rare these days. Neither of them were sleeping, not really. The madness kept them awake. Neither of them could fully comprehend a world without Harry; neither of them could comprehend a world where they might be able to be with him. They weren’t living in this reality, but in the promise of a new future, and while Lily knew that had to be unhealthy, it was easier than thinking about the alternative. It was easier than walking into his nursery, and seeing the boxes piled high.

So, instead, she made herself a cup of coffee and prepared herself for one last day at her old job. One last day as a potioneer. It wasn’t bittersweet; she’d already done this before. Although, last time she’d done it, it was to be a mum. This time, it was to fight for a future where she’d get to be one for longer. Of course, the owl made her pause, and with a quick scratch to its chin, she read the sloping handwriting with a sinking sensation in her stomach.

He’ll have your eyes.

- S.S

They hadn’t spoken since Hogwarts, but Severus Snape had lived and he had known her son. And, so it seemed, he remembered everything. Lily swallowed, taken aback by what this might mean. Did other Death Eaters know? Because, while she had never confirmed it, she was certain Severus had joined Lord Voldemort’s ranks after school. Her mind swam with the possibilities, of what it might mean; of what Voldemort might do if he had the knowledge that they all had. But, if he had known, wouldn’t he just have come already? Swept his hands clean of the Potters and be done with it?

No, Lily needed answers, and as much as her stomach sank at the thought of seeing Severus again, she couldn’t help but start writing a note to James. She left the teakettle with a warming spell on the stove, and signed the letter with a small heart, and ran out the door, apparating quickly to the old park.

It hurt, being here again. Lily could see them playing in the field; smaller versions of themselves, of course, full of life and laughter. She wondered what had happened to them; what had happened to Severus. What had she done to make him think that he couldn’t be good? But, no, that was no way to think. Severus had chosen his own path. He’d made his choices. Even now, as Lily stood under their old willow tree, she began to question seeing him again. Still, he’d said Harry had had her eyes.

There was only one way he’d know that.

Somehow, she could still pick his footsteps apart from the crowd. The long, slow steps. Lily didn’t have to turn around to know it was him, and for a second, she debated not looking at him. Maybe, it would be easy that way. But, she wasn’t a coward; she wasn’t going to let him take her pride from her. So, she straightened, looked him dead in the eyes, and managed out a simple “Hello, Severus.”

After that, it was his turn to do the work.

Waking to a world so familiar; yet so foreign had sent Snape’s mind reeling with what it all meant. What information was out there that could harm him, Lily, and bring about that cursed time he had merely survived in? Who was privy to it all - and to how much? Did the Dark Lord return to this time as well? Was he defeated? There were many questions swarming his mind; buzzing about relentlessly, without any guidance from Dumbledore to help sort through them. As far as he knew, Severus was on his own until he found others that remembered as well. If they even believed the outcomes to be true.

Seemingly alone, Severus knew the next person he had to see: Lily Potter. Confirm that she was alive and well. Before any prophecy was read - before any target was put on the Potters’ backs. Although, he had to know...did she remember as well? If so, how much did she know? Did others seek her out as well? No matter the case, Snape also knew that it was a long shot to get to agree to meet him. And so, to both find out if she had any memories of what was to come, and get her to meet with him, Severus crafted a message that would intrigue her either way; and bring her to a familiar place; a place they once called home. Filled with happiness and cheer from a lifetime ago.

Dressed in his new robes, Severus clasped the last of his numerous buttons on his sleeve before apparating to their old park. The setting caused a slight flinch on his countenance, pushing away those horrid memories of his family from so long ago...slowly walking up to the willow tree. The flash of fiery red hair stopped him in his tracks for a moment. So many years...so much heartbreak...that had been all too real for it to have been a dream. But she was there. Lily.

His heart sped up and Severus glanced down at himself with a gulp. Was he ready for this? Could he change what was to come? Keep her alive? As he stepped forward, Severus briefly thought to his first words to her son, “Tell me, what would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?” to which he thought had been a clever in using the language of flowers as a way to tell the boy that he had cared for his mother and regretted that he couldn’t do more to help; taking those regrets to the grave. And now, here she was...flesh and blood; tangible; as beautiful as ever; kind; and most of all, brave.

“Lily...” Severus replied quietly - as if a mere whisper would cause her to disappear with the wind, “Apologies for the cryptic letter,” his hands folded in front of himself as he stood up straighter, not sure where to begin, “I had to see for myself that you were alive...that...” he looked down, suddenly struggling with what needed to be said; what was important; or the emotions rising in his throat, tightening it, “That you had returned as well,” his brows furrowed, wondering if those memories were still intact; if he could do as he did for Harry - show her all that he knew, “Voldemort killed me before I could see his downfall - see if Harry had won.”

Severus shook his head, realizing how strange it must have sounded and pulled away, “None of this makes any sense.”

#convo #c: Lily #Lily 1 #date: 01.02.1979 #cokeworth #asphodel & wormwood

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maemi324 · 4 years

Text

Black Coffee

Hey there friends! It’s been a while hasn’t it? Today i come at you with a new piece for a new My Hero character! Well new to me writing him. Here we have....Villain Deku! Inspired by this tiktok! https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJUywn9t/ it just screamed Villain Deku to me. This is my first time writing him, so if he seems a little OOC, that’s probably it. Here are some songs I listened to while writing this 1. headless waltz- Voltaire 2. Don’t go by the river- Voltaire 3.House of Myth, Such horrible things, Gorey Demise, Grave Robber, Greatest Show Unearthed, Aim for the head, Buried Alive- Creature Feature 4. Spooky Halloween Mashup, Syndicate: Underground- Cover by Peter Hollens. Warnings: Robbery, Guns, violence, let me know if theres more I need to tag please! Only edited by me, so I’ve probably missed some stuff! With that! Let’s get into it!

Dawning light streamed in through the windows, the scent of coffee heavy in the air, steam from the hot drink you made rising softly. Soft music flowed through the room, other employees taking the chairs off the tables and whipping them down.

You sipped your drink, your eyes barely staying open as you leaned against the counter. It was far too early to be awake. Pain flashed through your mouth as you reluctantly swallow, your tongue protesting not only being burned but the now cool air that touched it.

It was too early for your own nonsense.

As the sun rose in the sky customers began their daily migration to the bean and leaf juice they all craved. Thankfully it was still rather early, only a handful showing up, and even fewer deciding to take a seat and enjoy their purchases.

“I can help whoever’s next?” you call out, closing the cash register and looking up to the new customer with a bright smile.

Bright viridian eyes stared back into your (e/c) colored ones, ones that you hadn’t seen in a very long time, since middle school in fact, his green hair cementing just who he was. Recognition dawned in his eyes.

“Y/N?” “Midoriya?”

A surprised laugh bubbled up, catching you by surprise, “I haven’t seen you in months- years even!” a short glare from your manager got you ready to enter in his order. Taking a peek behind him you saw that the line had lengthened considerably. “Y-yeah, it has been quite a while hasn’t it?” He stated his order, as you typed it in and gave him the total amount. He must have been pretty tired still as he stared into your eyes. You waved a hand in front of him, snapping him out of his daze as his face flushed a deep red, frantically digging his hand into his pockets to fish out his wallet- where had the damn thing gone- oh it was in his hand already.

Even after all these years, Midoriya was still just as much of a spaz as he’d always been. He moves to the drink pick up location, leaning against the counter as you made his drink. “I wish I had more time to talk, but with the line growing…”

“Well What if I came back later today? Or tomorrow?” You prepped the cup, adding a drizzle of caramel to the sides, offering him a kind smile

“Yeah, I’d like that,”

You handed him his drink and sent him off with a wave. A disgruntled Karen decided to ring the service bell as you hadn’t jumped back to take her order.

Why did it have to be a Karen?

Unfortunately you were unable to see him later on that day.

However, just as you turned the sign from closed to open that next morning, you were surprised to see those same bright eyes aimed at you.

“Well, you’re here quite early” you teased, opening the door for him as you walked in. It would be a while yet before people came into the little shop. He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes looking tired with circles under his eyes, “It’s been a long night,” He laughed off your look of concern, “Just work, nothing too terrible! I just thought I’d swing by earlier before I had to get back to it”

Your coworkers paid no mind as the two of you walked to the counter as you made him and yourself a drink, taking a seat at one of the tables. No one was here and wouldn’t be here for a good half an hour.

“So tell me, how have things been? Is your mom alright?”

“Huh? Oh! Yeah she’s doing fine, still at the same place! She’s retired now actually” “Oh, good for her! I hope she’s enjoying it” you sipped at your coffee, thanking just about everything that you didn’t burn your tongue in front of him.

“But what about you Midoriya? Last I checked you were wanting to become a hero?” While it would have been hard to be a quirkless hero, It wasn’t impossible. It probably wouldn’t get you ranked in the top five or even the top twenty, but so long as you were a good hero, what did rank matter?

His eyes shifted from contentment to something a bit more sad, a deep sadness that surprised you. Just as quickly as it appeared, it was gone, a hesitant laugh served as a cover. “Well, I did try, but eventually I just gave up. It just hit me that no matter how much I worked, I’d just be in the way of the pros. I could do some things sure, but...it’s not...it wasn’t enough. So I took a step back and found myself getting into computers, fixing them up, making sure they’re running properly. It’s...It’s nice”

You place a hand over his, an overwhelming urge to comfort him raced down your bloodstream. His hand jolts at the sudden touch, but he doesn’t bat your hand away. “I always believed you’d make an incredible hero” it made you feel guilty that you hadn’t been there for him when he clearly needed someone, anyone even just to listen to as his one and only dream crashed around him.

“I know you did, I appreciate it (Y/N),” he offers you a more content smile, “But I’m happy where I am now, really! Plus if I was a hero, I might not have met up with you again”

You let go of his hand, though not before he gives it a gentle squeeze, picking up your drink and taking another sip.

“I’m glad to see you're happy though, you said you were fixing computers?”

“Yeah! It’s not a big thing really, just a little repair shop. Clients bring me their various electronics, I clean them and fix them up! It can be really challenging sometimes, especially when it’s an older model! I swear I’ve seen some that I could have sworn were from the early nineties!”

You listened as he rattled on about his clients, his eyes lit up, a subtle blush on his cheeks as he talked with his hands. More than once you had to back away from getting a straw to the eye, but you hardly minded.

It became a regular thing, He’d come to the shop at various hours of the day, typically right at opening, on your break, or right as the last customer shifted out the door. You always had his favorite drink ready for him, though you had to fight him to keep him from paying. You didn’t mind after all, paying for his drink. He somehow always managed to sneak in the exact amount into your pockets or purse before he left, leaving you to discover it when he was far and unable to take it back.

The ass.

The more you met up the more open he became, you both talked about work and your grievances there. Now you were talking about anything and everything, TV shows you’d recently watched, movies you were excited to see, stupid stories about Karen's getting owned was a personal favorite.

However His favorite happened to be the news. He was still hero obsessed as he’d always been. However, there was a more...critical insight into it.

“Ugh” he huffed out, turning his attention from the TV, though muted, the subtitles were still on. It was currently showcasing Endeavor, how he rescued some civilians from a collapsing apartment building, from a disgruntled worker who had turned to villainy when kicked out of their apartment. They decided to take revenge on the landlord, though it quickly turned to chaos as the entire complex crumbled.

“What is it?” You paused from chewing on the straw to take a sip, “ is it Endeavor?” You knew damn well it was, but it was better to let him process through his words. “Yes! Look at him, smug as can be. He doesn’t even care about those people he rescued, He’s shown no comfort towards them, not even a glance to the children he’d saved. He acts as if he’s too good for them. A real hero would be reassuring, give a sense of calm to everyone involved in a rather tragic turn of events” he sipped at his drink angrily, nearly choking on it as you patted his back.

“ You mean a hero like All Might?” you offered, knowing that the hero had a special place in his heart.

Instead of the perky response you would have expected, his lips turned to a thin line, staring into a far off place beyond the TV.

“Yes....just like All Might”

Figuring he was still going through the appalled emotions from Endeavor, you didn’t press the matter, turning to focus on something else, his latest client, or even a Karen you had encountered earlier that morning. He took your bait readily, eager to listen.

It took you awhile to notice, but during your lunch breaks, on the days he didn’t come in early, he would always be watching the news. He’d rip them to pieces with a barely concealed snarl. He’d rant and rave, while keeping in mind the other customers. He talked about the villains even, and how they were people as well, forced into unfortunate situations, where were the heroes then?

As much as you would have liked to stay in the hero worshiping normalcy, the more he went on the more you began to realize, heroes were actually rather corrupt. You could feel yourself becoming angry alongside him. Why did they do that? What about the people they were rescuing? What about these so-called villains?

You shook your head from your thoughts, looking down to see your next customer that afternoon, a young girl no more than ten years old just out of school and looking to buy a snack and a small drink.

You sent her off on her merry way, happily sitting down at a table and munching on her snack. Checking your watch, you realized it was time to take your lunch. You sat down at your usual booth and waited for Izuku, sipping at your own drink.

The bell by the door went off, your eyes instinctively looking to see who had entered. Time slowed down as three men came in, guns at the ready and masks pulled over their faces. The first had a black mask, the second having a red one, and the third having a white one.

“Alright! Nobody moves, and no one gets hurt!” the first one shouted, as horrified shrieks went off in the small shop. “Put your hands up and go over there!” he motioned with his gun to collectively gather in a corner. You obeyed along with everyone else in the shop.

The second one aimed his gun steadily at the barista at the register, “No! Not you, you’re going to fill this with all the money you have!” He threw a bag over at the barista who shakily picked up the bag where it had landed, tears running down her cheeks.

The third held out a bag to the gathered group, “ Put anything valuable in here! Watches, Jewelry, Money, Phones, all of it!” He shouted, an elderly woman shakily began taking off her earrings, another gentleman taking his wallet out.

The young girl stared with wide eyes, tears falling rapidly down her cheeks, face red as she tried to be quiet, but her hiccups would not allow her. When red looked over at the little girl, her wails increased tenfold.

“Hey! Shut up before I give you a real reason to cry about. You don’t want that do you?!” he shouted, taking a step forward the girl took an extra step back as she put her arms out in front of her to protect herself.

“I said QUIET!” he raised his hand.

Your body moved on it’s own.

You took the hit for the young girl, your cheek stinging from the impact. That didn’t matter, not over the safety of the little girl, the roar of your heartbeat thumping against your cheek.

“What the hell?!” “Just leave her alone! She’s a little girl, she’s just scared!” You held your arms out, effectively blocking her from view. The elderly woman took the girl to her side, watching for the slightest movement from the robbers.

“ So you want to take her punishment? Is that it brat? Fine,” He shoved you down to the ground easily, glancing over to the young girl, “Take this as an example of what happens when you disobey me!”

You couldn’t hear anything, your sight blinded as well as his foot collided with your stomach, sending you rolling across the ground. He pinned you down as he punched you, over and over again, arms, stomach and your face, seeing stars as your head hit the ground.

Izuku...Izuku please....

You didn’t know what you wanted from him, whether it was to save you from the pain somehow, or to not show up at all in fear he’d try something heroic like you did.

The shop doors burst open, a cloth or tape like substance shooting out from someone you couldn’t see, wrapping quickly around the robbers, dragging them to ram into one another, the shock of it making them let go of the guns they held so tightly onto. You faded in and out of consciousness, even though the sounds of battle continued on.

It was all a blur as you slowly came back into reality, sitting in an ambulance being checked over by a nurse. The other heroes who had arrived stood before you, scolding you for your actions.

“What were you thinking?! You put yourself and the girl at risk! They could have made you watch as they hurt her!”

What was I supposed to do, let her be beaten?

“There were so many other things you could have done! Next time think through your actions before you do anything!”

What could I have done? You fail to mention what else I could exactly do. I didn’t even know what I was doing.

But you didn’t say that. You took the abuse as the nurse began to shoo them off, proclaiming that they’d made their point, nothing more could be said. It wasn’t long before the nurse gave you your results. You were a bit battered but otherwise alright, you’d bruise like hell but you amazingly didn’t have a concussion. Once you were home you were to Ice the bruising spots. With that they sent you with your things back home.

Upon entering your home you changed out of your clothes, something bubbling under your skin. It felt so up close and in your face you couldn’t decipher it. You changed into some incredibly soft shorts and tank top, wincing as you moved to change.

The silence was too much in your apartment, with shaking fingers you called the only person you could.

“(Y/N)?” “Izuku..” something in you snapped as you heard his voice, a sharp gasp turning into a sob. “(Y/N)? What is it, what’s wrong?” “I...Can...can you come over? Please? I...I don’t think I can over the phone” “What? Yeah, Yeah of course, I’ll be right there!” You gave him your address and hung up after that, flopping onto your couch and hugging a pillow.

It only took him twenty minutes to arrive, but it felt like forever and a second simultaneously. The swift knock at your door startled you out of your blank and racing thoughts. He was dressed in casual clothing, some jeans and some random white button up, a thin green vest over top. Your vision blurred as he stepped in at your allowance, going head first into his chest as you sobbed. He grunted from the impact, but wrapped his strong arms around you regardless. “ Shhh, shhh, it’s alright, I’m here. I’m here” he cooed softly into your ear, “ Here, let’s go to the couch alright?” You nodded but didn’t let go. You shuffled your way to sit on the couch with him, only parting to readjust his hold.

“There was an attempted robbery at the shop today,” you sniffed, resting your head on his shoulder, “ There was a little girl there...she was so scared, she was crying. The...one of the robbers got angry at her, which made her more scared. So I...I took the hit for her”

He lifted your face gently, examining the forming bruise. His frown showed his worry, but he didn’t comment on why you ran to this girls side, “ I was wondering about this black eye I see” You nodded, continuing your story, “Yeah...He didn’t like that I’d taken the hit for the girl...so as an example he beat me up. I don’t remember too much after the ‘heroes’ arrived.” you spat.

“But the heroes arrived and saved everyone, that’s good right?” he prodded. If you had been more aware, you would have heard the underlying tone in his voice. He didn’t really believe the heroes had done well, not with how you spat their name as if it was venom.

“They told me i was stupid for putting myself in front of the girl, that I should have done something else! What else was I supposed to do? My body moved on it’s own! They could have tortured the girl to get a rise out of me, or hurt the both of us…” As you said those words, another sob tore from your core. “Maybe they were right, maybe I should have just...I don’t know. I’m so sorry I didn’t think of anything faster.”

Izuku cut you off gently cupping your face in his hands, thumbs softly brushing away stray tears. Your eyes refused to meet his.

“Oh darling, look at me,” hesitantly you looked into his eyes, filled with concern, determination and...something else you couldn’t quite place, but it was so soft...so powerful. “You’ve done nothing wrong, you are perfect darling. Without you, that girl could have ended up beaten, or worse!”

The endearment was new, but not unwelcome, his words wrapping you in a soft blanket of safety.

“You did nothing wrong, you are perfect, everything about you, you’ve done nothing wrong. So please, don’t apologize” You leaned forward to hide in his chest as his words brought a fresh wave of tears. He gently rubbed your back, taking care if you so much as winced to move his comforting circles.

“It isn’t right that they lectured you. You had just gone through a traumatic event, you needed reassurance, kindness. You aren’t trained to be a hero, you acted on instinct. An instinct that hardly anyone else in that room had. They acted so wrong to you” he whispered, “Those ‘heroes’ are what's wrong with the hero society as a whole. Things need to change”

“But I don’t know how to do that, or where to even start” you whined, your hiccups slowly dispersing.

“Join me”

Wait...what?

“Join you...I don’t...I don’t understand…” You look up at him, searching for any hint that it was a badly timed joke. You found none.

“When I told you I worked with computers....I wasn’t lying, but only technically. You see, I work with this group, as a hacker. We’re going to show the world what these heroes really are, and the need to fix them. The roaches will have nowhere to hide, not from the public, and certainly not by the hero commission”

That was...quite a bit to process. He was a Villain?! All this time?!

You were shocked, your heart sinking to your stomach. “Why...why didn’t you tell me?” You knew why the second you said the words...but you needed to hear if those were the same words he’d say back.

“If I’m being honest darling...I was scared. You were always so kind, so soft hearted, to learn you were talking with a villain? Plus, it wasn’t like I could just...tell you in the shop right?” the corner of his mouth lifted up into a slight smirk, though it quickly vanished.

You thought back to today, how angry the heroes had made you. How many others did they tell the same thing when they were just trying to help? How many children paid the price? How many people?

But the feeling of fists landing on you echoed back in your rapidly increasing heartbeat. You couldn’t do that again, not against a villain, not against heroes, not against anyone!

“I...I’m not cut out for villain work Izuku, you see what happened to me! I...I couldn’t go through that again...I don’t want to go through that again”

He pressed a soft kiss to your forehead, warmth blossoming from the spot. “You don’t have to, just...supporting me is enough, more than enough” he took your hands in his, gentle circles rubbed into them. “You wouldn’t have to quit your job, or move, or anything, just knowing you support me? It fires me up, I have to do this, for you, for everyone, to right the wrongs that have been done. What do you say?” his green eyes were lit up in hope.

Your hands squeezed his, “I do.”

#my hero academia #bnha #my hero academia Izuku Midoriya #bnha izuku midoriya #midoriya izuku #izuku x reader #izuku #izuku midoriya x you #bnha reader insert #bnha reader #villain deku #villain izuku #reader insert #maemiwritesBNHA

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adultswim2021 · 3 years

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Space Ghost Coast to Coast #85: “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” | December 7, 2003 - 11:30 PM | S08E04

Happy 20th anniversary, Adult Swim. And, boy, what a momentous episode of Ghost do we have here to celebrate. There are a number of episodes where the guest is an event unto itself and this is truly one of them. Frequent punchline William Shatner is an absolute cunt... and a proper legend. His cuntiness and legendary status are two things that seem to be at odds with one another, and the Space Ghost crew have managed to come up with an artfully idiosyncratic episode to match Shatner’s weird-guy-ness. It’s a classic for sure, and important. But (making a “smug dipshit” face) is it funny?

YES! It’s FUNNY! I will admit though, the first time I saw this episode I didn’t quite know what to make of it. This is partially because I’m very much a Star Trek agnostic. I’ve never been into Star Trek. In the last few years I’ve watched most of the pre-Next Gen motion pictures for inane list-making reasons, and I enjoyed them to varying degrees, but Star Trek is truly not for me. I’m more of a... well, I’m not a Star Wars guy either. What’s the other one? Uh... Spaceballs. That’s it. I’m more of a Spaceballs guy.

But I feel like I’ve absorbed a lot of Star Trek lore through cultural osmosis. I vaguely understand that William Shatner has had some deliberately-paced choreographed fight scene on those rocks from Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. When I hear music similar to the the music that Jim Carrey hums in The Cable Guy, I’m pretty sure whatever it is I’m watching is doing a Star Trek thing. And yes, I’ve watched every single Red Letter Media “Mike and Rich talk about Star Trek for 4 hours” video. But even today, after having picked up more Star Trek knowledge on my journey to the grave, I still have this nagging feeling of “I only sort of get this”.

Still, this episode has a handful of screamingly funny lines, and the episode ends wonderfully, with Space Ghost in his death throes, suffering the ultimate indignity of dying in front of William Shatner. There’s also the part where Zorak asks why everyone in Star Trek is black, and a part where Moltar nervously reads from his fan fiction (from a book labeled TARD WARS, hahaha). Shatner, who has a reputation for being arrogant and difficult, is as good a sport as one could hope. The show makes good use of his hammier moments, and only shits on him slightly in the process. The most notable moment is when Shatner says to Zorak “didn't you and I fight to the death?” to which Zorak replies “That sounds pretty dumb, man”. I’ve actually quoted this line many times. It’s one of the best.

Also, for those of you who like to track these things: the show features callbacks to other episodes and shows; the handimen at Zorak’s apartment are clearly extras from Sealab 2020/2021, one of the Leprechauns from Aqua Teen Hunger Force shows up, and there’s a poignant callback to classic Space Ghost episode “Banjo”.

The title motif of this season is naming the episodes after Allman Brothers songs, and I always wondered about this one. Maybe I’m reaching, and it’s probably too disrespectful to be true, but I always thought that it was somehow a veiled reference to Shatner’s wife, whom he supposedly killed or let die. It’s simply too dark to be true, but it’s the first thought that immediately jumped to my mind when I first heard the title of this episode. Am I stupid for thinking this? Am I stupid because it OBVIOUSLY is a reference to that?? I simply do not know. I would like to know.

MAIL BAG

The big anniversary is upon us. What are your 20 favorite things about adult swim for 20 years going. Don't sleep on this question!

I gotta do SOMETHING special, so I might as well do this. More thought could have gone into this, but I spent about an hour trying to come up with episodes or moments from 20 different shows and putting them in rough chronological order. I limited myself to one episode/scene/moment/joke/whatever per show so it’s not all Space Ghost jokes. So, here we go:

Sealab 2021: “I, Robot”. Adult Swim proved it could be brilliant right out of the gate with the stealth premiere of “I, Robot”, but for Sealab it’s all downhill from here. (2000)

Space Ghost Coast to Coast: Space Ghost stops in his tracks to reminisce about the time Bobcat Goldthwait said "crack a window". The entire episode “Kentucky Nightmare” is brilliant, but this moment in particular so uniquely captures my sense of humor that it’s inexplicable. The dumb look on Space Ghost’s face when he stops in his tracks. Goddamn. (2001)

Aqua Teen Hunger Force: “Mayhem of the Mooninites” I tried very hard to make this all be individual jokes or scenes or whatever, but this is another episode where the entire thing is just line after line and I can’t really pick. This, “I Robot”, and “Kentucky Nightmare” is like a perfect trio illustrating how good Adult Swim really was right out of the gate. (2001)

Home Movies: Jason casually reveals that his parents have no idea who Brendon and Melissa are and that he spends most of his free-time making movies with them. This is the episode “Storm Warning” which is overall one of the best episodes of Home Movies, but this scene is probably my favorite. Illustrates how simple and hilarious the comedy is on this show. (2002)

Tom Goes to the Mayor: the end scene in “Undercover”, where they’ve shoddily reversed Tom’s various unnecessary surgeries and called him “Taumpy Tears” to boot. Positively sublime. (2006)

Metalocalypse: Dr. Rockso’s music video. From the episode “Dethclown”. I was never in love with this show as much as the true fans were, but there were a handful of incredible episodes. This episode basically tells one joke over and over and it’s very funny. It really ends with a bang showcasing Dr. Rockso’s shitty music video that celebrates cocaine use. His singing voice is hilarious. (2006)

Assy McGee: I am the only person in the world that defends Assy McGee as being “actually pretty good” and it’s all entirely due to this one line: Assy McGee (a pair of naked buttocks with legs, whose ass functions as his head) is forced to attend a black tie event and is just milling around wearing nothing but a black bow tie. Through clenched anus he delivers the line “I can barely breathe in this penguin suit”. The whole show is worth it for that joke. I don’t even know what episode it is except that it’s from one of the first few. I might not even have the line exactly right. But, I remember laughing so hard. I may not have laughed at Assy McGee again. (2006)

Saul of the Mole Men: The opening theme song. And nothing else. (2007)

Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!: Jim and Derrick. I should pick something more user-friendly maybe, since this episode almost entirely relies on being familiar with Tim & Eric’s previous episodes. But goddamn, this episode is such a funny concept (which is basically Tim & Eric doing an alternate MTV-ified version of Awesome Show) (2008)

Moral Orel: “Numb”. When Moral Orel suddenly stopped being a quirky Adult Swim comedy and suddenly started doing episodes that resembled art films. This episode is a fucking masterpiece. I remember sobbing the first time I saw it. There are a few in season 3 that are like that, but this one is my favorite. (2008)

Check it Out! with Dr. Steve Brule: Terry Bruge-Hiplo reviews “Dumpster’s Children”. Another bit of comedy that I’d describe as “inexplicable” and “sublime”, and it all hinges on an old man’s mouth. Holy fuck. I don’t think I’ve laughed harder than this at a TV show since. (2010)

Delocated: The ending of “Mole”, an extended Face/Off riff where Jon goes undercover as the scary mobster Sergei. In the final moments of the episode he marries a woman, fathers multiple children with her, and only then is pulled out of the mission. The episode is a tour-de-force of comic acting by Steve Cirbus, who is graciously allowed to shine for most of the episode. But man, that ending is fucking wonderful. (2010)

Venture Bros.: The ending of “Operation P.R.O.M.” a flurry of emotions hit me when “Like a Friend” by Pulp starts playing. The scene is so well done and weirdly touching. Brock realizes that deep down he gives a shit about the Venture family and is genuinely terrified something might happen to them. And then he gets to slaughter a bunch of Zorak monsters, which is also weirdly sweet. It’s even touching on a meta-level knowing that Jackson and Doc tried many times and failed to include licensed music in the show. I love Venture Bros, but I think we’d all be better off if this were the series finale. Sorry. I had to say it. (2010)

The Heart She Holler: The first scene with Patton being taught the way of the world posthumously by his father on a VHS tape. The first season of this show is amazing, but that scene, especially where Patton does a little Japanese bow and says “oh, hot dog!” is just hysterical. Literally every time a hot dog comes up in conversation my wife and I quote it. Please, do not scorn her, it’s not racist when SHE does it. (2011)

Eagleheart: The All That Jazz inspired finale. “Paradise Rising” is mostly a masterpiece, and how it ends is so fucking incredible. Easily the most under-rated show on Adult Swim and I’m not just saying that because... you know (mimes dick-sucking) (2014)

Rick and Morty: I watched the first two episodes of Rick and Morty, thought it was good, but for some reason didn’t become a devotee until my wife made me watch the Mr. Poopybutthole episode. It’s still my favorite episode, I think. (2015)

Brett Gelman’s Dinner in America: The “Dinner with” specials are all really good, but goddamn, this one hits. Should be shown in schools. I am going to go to every grade school in my county with an AR-15 (to get past the guards, of course) and I won’t leave until they call an assembly and they let me fumble around trying to find it on vimeo and play it for the students. (2016)

The Eric Andre Show: Eric interviews Steve Schirripa. The bit where he has an intern dip his balls in Steve’s spaghetti sauce is hilarious, naturally, but I’m here to showcase the running gag where every time Steve complains how hot the studio is, Eric just wordlessly hands him an ice cube until Steve explodes. It’s one of the most childishly hilarious things I’ve ever seen. It’s perfect. (2016)

Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace: The Pick-Up artist sketch. I’m mostly unimpressed with MDE, and all but a few Sam Hyde bits leave me cold. But this sketch is a crowning achievement. I mean, I think these guys suck politically and are more mean than funny, but their sensibilities yielded one really incredible piece of comedy. Okay, I laughed at the blackface sketch too. There. You dragged it out of me. (2016) Joe Pera Talks With You: This show is beautiful and I love every episode. But the episode “Joe Pera Reads You The Church Announcements” Wherein Joe discovers a new-to-him song and can’t stop listening to it, is one of the most joyous episodes of television I’ve ever seen. A gateway episode. I tell everyone to please watch this one first. (2018)

#adult swim #space ghost coast to coast #adultswim2021

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blossom-hwa · 4 years

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Bloom - HAN JISUNG

did i purposely edit this fic so it had exactly 11111 words? you bet

if you read moonstruck remember what i said about a series of nature spirit stories? well HERE’S PART TWO

(i will add links later because my posts don’t show up in the tags if there are links so anyway screw tumblr ig)

Pairing: Han Jisung x fem!reader

Genre: fluff, angst, nature spirit!au

Triggers: mild violence

Word Count: 11k

The trickster fae are known for destruction, not growth, but one repenting fae helps a mortal bloom.

Spinoffs: Perfect | Tiny Steps (I’ll Hold Your Hand)

SKZ Masterlist | Whispers of Nature

They say danger lies within the forest that marks the southern border of the village. But at this moment, you can’t really bring yourself to care.

If there is danger, let it come. You’re far too tired to think of the consequences of your actions and even if they result in death, you would rather die at the hands of Mother Nature than those of your fellow villagers.

But you forgot about the infamous screech owl. Just the thing that killed several foolish children who ventured into the forest several years ago.

It swoops down without a sound.

You wonder how an animal so large can move so quietly.

Then you see its eyes screaming rage and murder and your body finally moves.

Curses stream from your lips as you throw yourself to the side, landing hard on the pretty green grass. There’ll be a stain on your tunic after this that’ll be a pain to wash off.

If you get out of here alive.

It swoops down again and you veer left, pushing yourself to your feet. Wind whistles and the owl screeches and you scream.

This is how it ends, I guess.

Then something shimmers into being and the owl stops sharply, an expression mimicking your fear rising into its eyes. You remain rooted in place, eyes fixed upon the being in front of you.

The boy looks around your age. He glows in the fading daylight, his bare feet floating above the forest floor. Blonde hair falls down to his neck, and when he turns around, you can see it brushes across the top of his forehead, nearly hanging into his eyes. Green tunic. Brown pants. His clothes are so simple and plain, but he wears them like a prince.

He smiles at you, a heart-shaped smile that leaves you wondering what kind of being he is.

He turns back around and you don’t know what he does, but with a last screech, the owl flies away. You rack your brain for any clues on what this beautiful boy could be, but he faces you again and your mind goes blank.

He’s really rather beautiful.

“Hello.” Even that one word sounds so warm and inviting. Sparkling eyes glimmer with mischief. “What does a beautiful lady like you in this dangerous forest?”

It takes a moment to get your voice back. “Nothing much,” you finally reply.

“Pretty humans don’t belong in forests like this, where danger may lurk in any corner.” He floats a little closer, his glow beginning to warm your skin. He drifts down until he’s standing (is he really standing? He looks a bit translucent) in front of you. If you leaned forward just a few inches, your lips would touch his. “Especially not those with eyes as beautiful as yours.”

Your breath hitches. He’s staring at you with an uncomfortable (yet somehow alluring) intensity that wipes half the thought from your mind. No one has ever stared you in the eye with anything more than malice, fear, or disgust.

And certainly no one has ever said your eyes are beautiful.

“I wanted to be alone,” you get out. “Solitude.”

His eyes sparkle. “Very dangerous,” he says, nodding gravely, but you can see understanding in the curl of his lips. “I don’t know if you’re brave or foolhardy to seek solitude in the forest, especially so close to dark.”

“Foolhardy, probably.” You shiver slightly as the cooling wind sweeps across your skin. “Thank you for your help with the…”

Oh.

Realization fills your mind. Only a few beings could frighten an owl with their mere presence, and only one happens to glow.

He is one of the fae.

“Are you from the faerie ring?”

He has to pick up on your sudden shift in mood. All mortals know that fae can be dangerous, even lethal, in their intentions and tricks. The first thing village children learn is if they ever happen to stray into the forest, they must avoid the faerie ring. The fae have kidnapped many children, and never do they bring them back.

You know the guarded look that must be upon your face – you wear it every time you walk into the village square. But despite your realization, nothing changes on the fae’s shimmering, translucent face – he keeps grinning that same heart-shaped grin. He dips into a deep bow. “At your service, my lady.”

“Oh,” you murmur, stepping back. It’s less of a murmur than an exhale of surprise, really. No one has ever shown you such respect before – even if it is teasing, as this bow seems to be. But when the fae rises, you sense no malice. Only gentle mischief.

Silence stretches between you two until you clear your throat. “Well, Lord fae, thank you for your help with the owl.”

“It was my pleasure.” If possible, his smile grows wider.

“If there was possibly something I could do in return…” you trail off, lost in thought.

“Actually, there is.” His face holds an expression of pure innocence, but glinting eyes tell you too late that you may have made a grave mistake. The fae holds out one hand. “May I have your name?”

You almost say it. After all, when someone asks for your name, it is only polite to give it.

But typically, those who ask for names are not fae, trickster beings of high power. For them, giving a name means giving control. And when names fall upon the wrong tongue…

You don’t want to know what will happen next.

Mouth clamped shut, you think quickly, staring at the outstretched hand. Finally, you speak, words slow and careful.

“Lord fae, I’m afraid I cannot give you my name for it belongs to me and only me,” you reply politely. “But if it so pleases you, you may call me Nae Ireum.”

It’s the oldest trick in the book, telling a fae to call them by “my own self.” You know he would never fall for it and the laughter bursting from his lips tells you that you were right. As he laughs, you school your expression into one of slight amusement, but you know you cannot quite hide your fear.

What if he does not take your refusal lightly?

“Very good,” the fae chokes out, laughter gone. “You are a smart one, my lady.” He drops his hand to his side and smiles widely. “You have been taught well.”

“I taught myself,” you reply in a moment of brazen confidence.

“Then you must be a wonderful scholar.” He winks. “If you will not give me my first request, then at least allow me to escort you to the village.”

What?

You blink. “Why?”

“It would only be proper for a lord to escort his lady safely home,” he teases.

Maybe you smile shyly, but no one but this fae is here to confirm it, so you ignore the heat rising in your cheeks. “I’m not your lady,” you mutter.

“Of course, my lady.” His tone turns cheeky and you realize winning against this fae will not be possible. So instead of releasing the retort upon your lips, you only sigh. He grins in victory. “Let’s go!”

He stays with you for the entire hour-long walk back to the village, keeping you occupied with flirty words and teasing grins that make you feel as though you are simply speaking to a handsome boy, rather than a millennia-old fae of the forest. For the first time in years, you feel light of heart. His gaze rarely strays from yours but he does not make you feel uncomfortable, not even with your strange green eyes. No, he speaks to you like a human being, like someone who has a life and a story and a soul.

The sky is nearly dark by the time you reach the edge of the forest. “Thank you, Lord fae,” you whisper, feeling suddenly shy. His glow and his gaze make you feel warmer in the sunset.

His heart-shaped grin grows gentler. “It was my pleasure. If I could, I would kiss your hand.” He winks. “Alas, this form will not allow me to do so. Be safe, my lady. And keep the tears out of your eyes – it will only make them more beautiful.”

With those last parting words, he disappears into a soft flash of light, and you are left to wonder if the last few hours were only a figment of your imagination.

. . . . .

Jisung dozes slightly one day in the warm light of the fae realm. The queen seems to be in a good mood, for the weather is pretty and picturesque, and even the pixies have ventured out of hiding to dance among the waving blades of grass.

In the past, Jisung may have toyed with them, played little pranks and sent them fleeing back into their gardens. He would have laughed at their hatred towards his kind and taken pleasure in heightening that hate. But today, he only keeps his eyes closed and lets the pixies flit around him. So long as they cause no harm, he won’t either.

Then a small disturbance triggers in the back of his mind and he sits up, a half-frown, half-smile upon his face. Someone is near his faerie ring.

Maybe it’s the person he hopes it will be.

Green eyes flash through his mind. Not the forest green of the dryads (who didn’t wake up the entire time you and Jisung were causing a ruckus, which is really a testament to how soundly they sleep), but paler, realer, more intense. Still, though, Jisung finds one thing in common between your eyes and theirs: your quiet strength. The strength of the earth.

Jisung wouldn’t mind seeing you again.

He summons himself to the ring, where a pleasant surprise greets him. At the sight of your shocked face, he grins. “Back so soon, my lady?”

Your bright green eyes look slightly dazed, which is to be expected – the ring has power, and it likes to pull unsuspecting mortals towards it. Thankfully, you have enough presence of mind to resist, though Jisung feels a little put out by your backing away.

“Yes,” you answer shortly. You shake your head slightly as though shaking off the pull of the ring, and when you look up again, your eyes are clearer.

“For solitude again, or for something else?” His smile grows wider as he comes to a realization. “Perhaps you just couldn’t wait to see me again? After all, you took the trouble to find my ring.”

He prays he doesn’t sound too hopeful.

You snort. “As if,” you sniff, though your eyes betray your amusement. “I came out of curiosity. To see if I could find the forbidden faerie ring.” Your legs wobble slightly, as though you’re tired. You very well might be – Jisung knows you must be a long way from your village. He lies down flat on his back, hoping you get the message. When you sit cross-legged next to the ring, he knows you have.

“You dare sit in the presence of your Lord fae?” Though his voice sounds affronted, your nonplussed look tells him you see the lightness in his eyes.

“I believe you are trapped within your ring, Lord fae,” you deadpan. “If the legends are true, it weakens your magic.”

“Perhaps.” The wind blows, and Jisung relishes the feeling of fresh air against his brow. “But I could still curse you and your family from within this ring.”

“If you wanted to curse me, you would have just let the owl have its way,” you point out.

Jisung laughs, truly laughs. It’s been a long time since he’s spoken to someone new, and he is very glad that you are the someone new. “Astute observation, my lady.” With a sigh, he pulls himself up and winks at you. “A lady with a mind as sharp as her eyes are beautiful.”

The same sparkle rises in your shy eyes and Jisung delights in the sight. Truthfully, you are not the most beautiful woman he has seen. Over his millennia in the fae realm and the mortal plane, he has seen many fae and humans who are more conventionally gorgeous than you. But your eyes are alluring, your smile is sweet, and even with your quick tongue, you exude a sort of elegance and tired kindness that Jisung hopes will never fade.

“You’re not translucent anymore,” you note. Jisung knows you’re trying to change the subject and kind of wants to keep teasing you, but he’s in a good mood today so he lets you keep going. “Does that mean you’re fully bound to the ring?”

You really do know your legends. Jisung is impressed. “You are correct, my lady.” His smile only wavers very slightly. “When I accompanied you back last time, I sent a fragment of my soul. It was not my physical being.”

He then waits for the inevitable next question – “Why are you bound to the ring?”

It was the first thing Changbin asked when the faerie ring appeared. It was what all the dryads asked when they sensed the presence of their new neighbor. In fact, the only ones who hadn’t asked Jisung what happened were Hyunjin the water nymph and Chan the guardian, and that was because they were the reason why Jisung had ended up bound to the ring in the first place.

But the question that comes from your mouth is not the one he expects. “How does that happen? How do you separate your soul into different parts?” Your eyes are wide with curiosity, but not for him. For fae in general. Somehow, that comforts Jisung much more than attention on him would.

So he struggles to explain the process, fumbling over his words in a way that no Lord fae should, but you only nod and listen and smile and frown with singular concentration. You listen to his words closely, asking more and more questions until Jisung can’t answer them anymore and is forced to admit his lack of knowledge on the topic.

“So the Lord fae is not all-knowing, I see,” you tease. The sun has just begun to set and you are standing up, brushing bits of grass and leaves from your clothing. The blue tunic may look faded, but against the backdrop of the forest, you look like you could be a gentle nymph. One who helps, not harms.

“Did I ever claim that I was?” Jisung shoots back. He won’t lie – he can’t lie, in fact – his pride is a little bruised. However, his pride is not worth as much to him as it used to be. He can’t help the laugh that escapes from his lips again – he likes you too much. “Will you need an escort home?”

“You would escort me anyway even if I said no.” But despite your resigned tone, you look at him with a smile on your face.

“You are not wrong in that statement.” He grins. “Shall we go, my lady?”

(The next time you see him, you ask for his name. “If it so pleases you,” he grins, repeating your words, “you may call me Han.”)

. . . . .

Several months pass and you are very proud to say you haven’t shown Han your crying face once since the first meeting. But comfort and solitude were what drove you to the fae in the first place, and it is hard to pull up such deep roots.

You arrive at the ring with your tears mostly gone, but eyes still puffy and rimmed with red. You don’t call for him this time – in fact, you’re half-hoping he doesn’t come, so you don’t have to reveal this weak side that disgusts and saddens you.

You wish you were born stronger. Strong enough to fight the villagers’ sharp words and disgusted looks, strong enough to at least run away. But you can barely feed and clothe and shelter yourself as it is, so there is little to no chance of either event happening.

“There’s my lady.” Han’s teasing voice sounds beside you and on reflex, you look around slightly. Quickly, though, you drop your head, staring straight at the grass in front of you.

“What’s this?” You hear the rustle of grass, indicating that he, too has sat down. “My lady won’t respond to me?” The mischief in his voice turns to concern. “What’s wrong, my lady? Why are there tears in your pretty eyes?”

Because my eyes are a blight upon my being.

Because they bring the hatred of the village upon me.

Because no matter what you say, I can’t think of them as truly beautiful.

Because you may be lying to me.

“Han.” Your voice is small but steady and you take comfort in that. Still, you do not look at him. “Do you truly believe my eyes are beautiful? Or are you only playing another fae trick upon a poor mortal like me?”

Silence.

“My lady.” His voice is serious, yet you can sense the small smile in his tone. “With all your knowledge of the legends of my kind, will you tell me that you don’t know that we cannot lie?”

Embarrassment crawls up your skin. You do know the legend, but truth is multifaceted. There are many loopholes that the fae dearly love to exploit. “I do know, Lord fae,” you say, “but when you say my eyes are beautiful, it does not mean that you find them beautiful. It only means that at least one being between our planes finds them beautiful. It does not mean that person is you.” You snort. “And it certainly is not a member of my village.”

A sigh escapes from the lips of the fae next to you. “You never cease to amaze me,” he mumbles, more to himself than to you. “Your words are true. Yet I will promise you that I have only thought of myself when I tell you that your green eyes are some of the most beautiful I have ever seen.”

The tears start welling up again and you can’t bring yourself to look at the fae. Your mind knows his words must be true, for fae cannot break promises and they cannot tell lies, but your heart cannot believe it.

“Do you know what your eyes remind me of?” he asks.

You still don’t look up.

His tone turns a little pleading. “My lady, please look at me.”

You finally do, red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks and all.

“They remind me of freedom.” A small, different smile plays upon his lips. It isn’t sad, exactly – more nostalgic. Wistful.

“Freedom,” you echo.

“I was not always bound to this faerie ring, you know?” His tone is a little teasing, a little self-deprecating, a little angry, but also a little repentant. “When I was free, I used to travel the earth. It was green, green as far as the eye could see. It was beautiful.” He smiles at you. “Your eyes are the same green as my Mother Earth.”

You’ve never seen him this way – pensive, wistful, a far cry from the teasing sarcasm and snark you are used to. Your fingers itch to touch him, to comfort him, but sense still overrules your heart. To place a limb inside the ring could possibly be suicide. You will not risk that.

(Yet.)

The rest of your time together passes in silence. He doesn’t ask for an explanation of your state and you don’t offer him one, only taking comfort in the whispering quiet of the forest around you and Han’s warm presence beside you. As the sun begins to set, he asks if you would like an escort home. The smile on your face is more genuine as you stand up and nod.

The walk is also silent, though not uncomfortable or strange. But as you reach the edge of the forest, as he’s just about to disappear, you whisper, “Thank you.”

Han flashes you his heart-shaped grin – a little gentler, a little less teasing than usual. “Of course, my lady.”

. . . . .

One month. A full month passes before Jisung senses your presence near the faerie ring again. He reappears with a half-upset, half-overjoyed smile on his face, ready to teasingly berate you for not coming sooner and interrogate you on the reasons why. But the teasing words die upon his lips when he sees your state.

Because for all the sadness and strange words of your last meeting, he never expected that this was the reason behind your silence.

He’s never seen these bruises and cuts upon your skin before. A couple of faded scrapes are normal for anyone, and a few small bruises from when you fell, trying to get away from the owl. But this time, blotches of purple and green litter your arms while a small but fresh, healing cut slices your shoulder. A black bruise mars your right eye.

Jisung’s fingers itch to take your hand, to pull you close, to examine each and every cut and bruise upon your skin and exact revenge from those who caused them. For once, he wants to leave the ring for a reason other than to satisfy his selfish desire for freedom.

But he cannot. The invisible walls of the perfectly-shaped ring prevent him from touching you the way he wants.

“Who did this to you?” he murmurs instead, trying to hold back growing anger. “And why?”

You smile a little as you sit, though it’s cynical and sad and nothing like the genuine happiness you have shown him before. “Someone heard me speaking to you the last time you walked me back.”

“And?” Jisung pulls bits of grass from the ground out of frustration. “What of it?”

“They think I’m a witch.” Your clear, green eyes stare into Jisung’s, and suddenly, everything makes sense.

Why you wanted solitude.

Why you cried last time.

Why you asked him those strange questions about what he thought about your eyes.

He sits in silence as you explain. They think the devil took your soul when you were young, you tell him, and he cursed you with those horrible green eyes. The eyes are too different, too strange for the villagers to accept in their rural beliefs. They think of you as an abomination. The only reason they have not killed you yet is because they are afraid that watering the earth with devil blood will only make the Mother angry.

“Your parents?” he asks when you fall silent.

You laugh, but the sound holds no mirth. “They wish I were dead.”

Jisung stays quiet as he tries to wrap his mind around that. The closest thing to a mother he’s ever had is the Faerie Queen, and though she deals harsh punishments at times (he is exhibit number one), she has never wished death upon her subjects. She is mischievous, capricious, and a lying trickster, but to her subjects she is just and fair. She would give up her life for them.

Your voice breaks into his thoughts. “The other villagers pity them,” you continue, “so they get attention and pity and sorrow. I get nothing.” You pause. “Except you.”

He doesn’t know why that hits him so hard. You only spoke two short words. But those words give him such an indescribable warmth in his chest that he can barely control his intense desire to hold your face between his hands with the gentlest touch of the wind.

“So I couldn’t visit for a month,” you continue, oblivious to Jisung’s predicament. “They suspected I was going out to do witchy things, so I had to stay in the village so suspicions would fade away. I go out on my own a lot, anyway. They usually leave me alone unless something bad happens.”

“Why?” Jisung asks, recovering himself.

The cynical smirk on your face makes Jisung feel like his heart is breaking in half. “Because they blame it on me.”

To be fairly honest, Jisung doesn’t exactly know what to say to that. Sure, he’s been blamed for some small things he didn’t commit, but the faerie queen has her Sight and he’s always been acquitted. All his punishments have been justified, something he’s reflected on over the thousands of years he’s remained bound to this ring.

He can’t understand the injustice of your situation. Humans think fae are the tricksters and the manipulators, but how much better are they, with their aversion to strangeness and any sort of difference?

“Humans,” he huffs quietly, angrily pulling out another blade of grass. He does it with such force that he can hear the grass scream in pain. His eyes widen as he sees all the little piles of grass he’s pulled up around him and immediately he soothes a hand over them, attaching them back to their severed roots.

“I’m a human,” you point out with little venom. In fact, you’re staring at his hands with a hint of wonder and awe upon your face, nothing even close to annoyance or outrage. “But you’re not wrong.”

Jisung doesn’t know what to say in response.

“I don’t know, though.” You look up at him again and your eyes are impossibly clear. Minutes ago they were cloudy and upset and confused, but now they hold only clarity of thought. “What if I didn’t have green eyes?”

There’s another unspoken question that Jisung can hear as clear as day.

Would I have grown up exactly like them?

Jisung can’t deny that you probably would have. That had it not been for all of the misfortune caused by your strange green eyes, you would have been a happy, but clueless and far less accepting villager than you are today.

In all likelihood, you probably never would have met him.

“Your eyes have more benefits than simply making you beautiful,” is all he replies. He thinks for a moment. “I haven’t experienced all your sorrow so perhaps you will think the opposite, but I think your green eyes have given you more fortune than misfortune in creating your character.”

You don’t smile. You only nod. But the deep gray clouds that envelop your head clear, bit by bit, until the last tear has dried on your face and your lips rest in a neutral line, instead of turned down at the tips.

If Jisung weren’t bound to the ring, he would hold your scarred hand tight, as tight as he could without hurting you, to give you some sort of comfort to anchor you to your Mother Earth. But since he can’t, he contents himself with the fact that he can see the shining glimmer he yearns to see returning to your beautiful eyes.

. . . . .

Some villages call it May Day. Others call it Earrach. A traveler once told you, far away in Gaul, they call it le Jour de Printemps.

Your village just calls it the spring festival. Simple, formal, traditional, just like your village’s relationship with your Mother Nature. She gives you the fertile earth with which to grow the crops you celebrate in fall, during harvest season.

Well, not you. Them. You haven’t gone to a spring or harvest festival in years.

The air around your little shack is even more silent than usual, with all the villagers gone to the square to celebrate the new planting season. Girls in their white and pink dresses, boys in their buttoned shirts and nicest pants. Every family, no matter how poor, owns a set of clothing to wear for the spring and harvest festivals. If they are too poor to make one themselves, a neighbor will pass over a hand-me-down, or even sew a new one.

You weren’t an exception, at first. If you looked carefully, you could probably find an old white rag or two that used to be a spring festival dress. But as you grew older, fewer villagers wanted to take notice of you, so you have no traditional spring gown to wear for today.

There is one set of nice clothes you sewed for yourself a few years back, however. It isn’t pure white for spring, nor pastel pink for fall. It’s pale blue. But the village weaver charged a price sky-high for the nice cloth he makes specially for the festivals (even though he sold it to the next mother for half the price he gave you), so you ended up with this instead.

Not that you can really complain. The fabric is soft and clean, if a bit dusty – a result of not having worn it in over a year – but you’ve taken care of it. For what reason, you never really knew.

Maybe Mother Nature was quietly preparing you for today. Nudging you to make a dress and preserve it so that you could look presentable on the first spring festival day in years that you are no longer alone.

Still, though, you’re not quite sure why you slip on the flowy blue dress that feels so comfortable against your skin. You don’t understand why you don’t put on another one of your rougher tunics, slip on the trousers that have grown a little loose against your thinning waist. You’re not sure why you find yourself running the wooden comb through your hair not just until it’s untangled but until it’s smooth, and you’re not sure why you braid some of it back from your face in a style you have seen some of the merchant girls wear.

Black slippers, still worn but not as tattered as your everyday boots, go on your feet to finish the look. The dress doesn’t fit very well – you’ve only gotten skinnier since you made it – and the shoes are a little too tight, but no matter. You have no mirror so you couldn’t try to primp even if you wanted to, so you take a deep breath and head into the woods, ignoring the faint music and cries of laughter in the distance. And when you walk into the clearing where the faerie ring lies, you don’t have to wait a second before he appears.

He calls you “my lady,” again, with that same flirty grin he wore the first day you met. You don’t know why those two words mean so much to you. At first, they meant nothing, really – they only served to make you smile a little bit because, well, that was Han. Han the fae. That was what he was – flirty, grinning, a distraction. A glowing light in the middle of a village of gray.

For the last few times you visited, he didn’t call you by your nickname. Maybe it was just the look on your face because you know you didn’t feel the best on those last few trips. In fact, most of them were spent in comfortable silence or murmured conversations. You haven’t heard your nickname in a while.

Now, those words feel like they mean so much more than they used to. His tone is still flirty, his lips still smiling his heart-shaped smile, but he looks warmer. Feels warmer.

And though you should never feel this way around a fae and their ring, you feel safe.

“Why the fancy dress, my lady?” Han asks, jolting you out of your thoughts. His grin has only grown wider – is it trembling? No, it can’t be, there’s no reason for him to do so – and he’s looking at you with eyes that have never sparkled this brightly before.

You open your mouth to respond before realizing you don’t have an answer. Why did you dress up, really? What was the point?

You opt for a simple response that doesn’t really answer the question. “It’s the spring festival.” You sit down on the grass, careful not to wrinkle your dress. “I wanted to dress up a little for once.”

Even as you say it, though, you know that’s not the full reason.

“You don’t usually dress up, then?” he asks, sitting down as well.

How do you answer that question without giving the truth away through your expression?

The answer: you don’t. In fact, you haven’t even spoken a word before Jisung’s grin turns into one of mischief. “So you dressed up for me!” he sings.

“What – no –” you splutter, desperately trying to keep up a façade of calm as your cheeks heat up. You deny it, even as his eyes crinkle into slits of joy and mischief, as he laughs and teases your attempts at hiding your embarrassment. But in the end, you have to give up. He will drag this on forever if you don’t.

And the more you think about it, he was part of the reason you wanted to look nice. For once in your life, you wanted to look beautiful for someone whom you cared about. For someone who might care about you.

For someone whom you want to care for you.

“In all seriousness, my lady,” Han says when the two of you have calmed, “you look enchanting. Even more so than usual.”

The gentle, heart-shaped smile he imparts to you makes your heart jump, and you feel warmer inside than you have in years.

. . . . .

A lull in the conversation occurs just after noon, when the village is so loud and joyful that you and Jisung can hear music and laughter from all the way up on your forested hill. Jisung takes the silence as an opportunity to gauge your true feelings today.

He knows you must feel at least some happiness. Your laugh and smile and snark and sarcasm have all been quite natural. However, as your eyes wander over to where the music is coming from, he notices a soft, sad, wistfulness that overtakes your expression, leaving a shadow of your previous joy in its wake.

Jisung knows enough about human customs that on festivals like this, they dance. Girls dress up in flowy frocks while boys put on their starched shirts and they whirl about, smiles and laughter abounding.

Your dress is a dance frock. Your slippers are dancing shoes. With a pang, he realizes you shouldn’t be here. You should be with friends, kicking up grass as a handsome boy or two or three spin you around in celebration.

“You know, if you want to dance, you could dance with me,” he says softly. Truly, today, he means no deceit. He hasn’t in a long while, in centuries, really, but today he wants you to know it and be sure of it. He wants you to know that he means no harm to you.

That he will never mean any harm to you.

Your eyes snap to him, gaze guarded and unreadable. He swallows but continues. “Come into the ring,” he proposes. “I promise I won’t hurt you.”

“You know as well as I do that a fae does not make a promise without expecting something in return.”

Jisung can tell you don’t mean to hurt him with this statement. After all, his brethren are not known to be the kindest of Mother Earth’s creatures. He himself used to be less than friendly. So he doesn’t take offense at your words and only notes the longing gaze you give the ring that speaks far more than your cool words.

Your words are true. A promise for a promise – that has always been the way of the fae. But Jisung doesn’t know what he could ask from you in return.

But he does. It’s always been at the back of his mind, he thinks, but he hasn’t allowed himself to dwell on that until now. There is something he wants – one thing, something beyond even his own freedom. Because he feels like if he has this thing you could give him, he would feel free even in the confines of his ring.

Promise me your love.

But he doesn’t say it. Many of his fellow fae delight in ruining love, in causing mischief and strife between couples, in raining heartbreak upon those foolish enough to fall. But his punishment has taught him the consequences of meddling with affairs of the heart. Centuries of being bound to the faerie ring have given him enough time to think and ponder and discuss such subjects with Chan, the wise forest guardian, Changbin, the quiet moon child, and even Hyunjin, the water nymph who used to loathe him.

Jisung will not interfere with love. If his experience with Hyunjin has taught him anything, it is that true love is just that – true. It cannot be coerced or threatened in or out of existence.

He is sure he feels true love for you. But a heart must be given, not taken, so he does not ask for yours.

“Then promise me your happiness,” he finally bargains. “Promise me that for the rest of today, you will laugh, that you will smile, and that it will all be real.”

“You request something easier said than done,” is your quiet reply. “Why not ask for something tangible? Something stronger, more powerful?”

“Are you saying there is something more powerful to me than a simple smile upon your face, my lady?” His lips curl slightly. “If you are asking me to be more selfish, believe me, this is my most selfish desire – to always see happiness upon your face. For your happiness brings me mine.”

Sunlight dazzles on your blue-clad figure, sparkling on your shining hair and face. As Jisung waits for your response, he can’t help but think that the broad daylight only heightens your earthly beauty.

You are no willowy, graceful moon child, it’s true. But you are a true child of the earth. Rooted, solid, steady, nurturing, loving.

And Jisung could think of nothing more perfect.

It’s a very slow smile that spreads across your lips, but as it does, Jisung thinks that perhaps it is the most beautiful smile of all.

“Then, Lord fae,” you begin quietly, “make your promise, and I will make mine.”

“I promise that I will allow no harm to come to you here from the moment you enter this ring,” he whispers, his breath nearly catching in his throat.

“And I promise to smile with only true happiness for the rest of this spring day.” Your green eyes shine.

Jisung holds out a hand, feeling his fingertips touch the invisible barrier that keeps him trapped within the faerie ring. Then he feels a different sensation, one he hasn’t felt in centuries – warm skin against his own.

The same slow smile remains upon your lips as you look up at him, fingers loosely grasping his own. And with the simple grace of a fluttering leaf, you step into the ring.

. . . . .

The year’s summer is not a kind one. Warm, humid heat rests heavy upon the village, and bugs fly everywhere. You live rather out of the way, so when you’re at home, you don’t get the full force of the bugs and illness, but when you go to the marketplace, you see the effects on the rest of the village.

Red bites littering tanned skin. Clammy sweat dripping into dazed eyes. The absence of a single cool breeze makes the heat almost unbearable as you quietly make your rounds.

Many shopkeepers are absent that day.

You expect what’s coming next. They will bar you from the marketplace in the hopes that keeping away the witch will keep away the sweltering symptoms of a sweaty summer and the dreaded summer sickness.

So the day comes when you are forced to turn away from the market – not that the handful of coins in your pocket would have bought much anyway – and head back home. Only this time, you don’t have to go as hungry as previous years. In the shady forest, you tell Jisung of your predicament, and though he looks a bit like he wants to make the villagers suffer, he only shows you a few places where you can gather wild, edible plants, so long as you thank the Mother Earth for them and leave enough to grow.

“They really think you are a witch?” Jisung asks quietly one hot afternoon, when even the shade of the forest isn’t enough to keep away the overwhelming heat of the day. You’re back at the faerie ring, a basket of fruit next to your figure lying prone on the ground. Sweat drips down your face and onto the grass, but when you look over, Jisung doesn’t even look warm. He looks the same as usual.

Once upon a time you might have been unnerved by how otherworldly he is. Upon first glance, he is perfect, almost unimaginably so. You remember the first day you saw him in the forest. If you’d been in your right mind, you might have bowed to him as a god.

Yet after so many conversations and walks and lazy afternoons, to you, he is human. He stutters. His mouth can’t keep up with his mind sometimes. He has flaws. And he looks like a human boy, a boy with whom you could easily fall in love. Deep brown eyes that always hold a twinkle of mischief. Heart-shaped lips that look so kissable. Round cheeks that you could squish all day.

There is no use in fighting it, really. You are in love with your Lord fae, and you can do nothing about it. Every day you see him feels like another step into his dizzying embrace, another step into his full heart.

You think you’ve been falling for him this whole time, really. Perhaps on that first day, when he showed up and saved you from the screech owl and labelled your eyes as “beautiful,” it was not yet love. Maybe a simple crush. But on the afternoon you came to the ring with puffy eyes and tearstained cheeks and he only teased and comforted you, you think your crush started turning into love.

He makes you feel safe. If he didn’t, why else would you keep coming to the ring? Why else would you have stepped into the ring, and danced with him with no music until sunset?

But he’s still a fae. Despite your love for him and everything he’s done for you, everything he’s promised you, you can’t help but still second-guess his true intentions. Fae are not known for their kindness – only their ability to exploit lies and their inability to break promises.

He’s never made a promise to you that he hasn’t kept, one half of your brain reminds you.

He’s only made a few promises to you, though, the other side reasons.

You nod to Han’s question, too hot and tired to do anything more.

“Do you want to know what a real witch is like?”

When you look up, his eyes are smiling with his lips, telling you that the grin is genuine. The knowledge of this only makes your lips curl until you’re smiling too, and the heat of the day falls away as you sit up to listen carefully.

Han tells you the lore behind witches, a race that rarely comes into the open. They do not fly on brooms or stir bubbling iron cauldrons filled with poisoned liquids, he says, but they do make potions and they do perform spells (in cauldrons of other metals, for iron burns magic). Just like humans, there are good witches and evil witches. The good ones often remain in hiding, posing as doctors and apothecarists, while the evil ones wreak their havoc. That, he tells you, is why humans have such twisted feelings about them.

“You are not a witch, my lady,” he concludes, looking over at you. The setting sun has tinted the sky pink and the light makes a pretty flush against Han’s skin. Your heart speeds up when you see the softness in his face. “Witches are born of at least one witch parent, and your parents are villagers. I sense no magic from you. So if they call you a witch again, know that they are the ignorant ones, not you.”

“You always know what to say to me, Han,” you murmur, ignoring the thumping in your chest. “Thank you.” The words rise to your lips before you can stop them. “I always feel safe with you.”

His hand lifts slightly as though to touch your face, but you are not inside the ring today – you haven’t entered since the day you danced with him. So his fingers lower, and even though you think it best for the two of you, you still ache for the feeling of his warm skin on yours. “Do you remember the promise I made you last spring festival?” he asks.

“You promised you wouldn’t hurt me when I entered your ring,” you reply, curious as to why he’s bringing that up now.

“Perhaps, but you do not remember my wording.” He smiles. “I promised you that I would allow no harm to come to you here from the moment you stepped into the ring.”

It takes your mind a few seconds to work through that. Then everything clicks. “You –”

“You will always be safe in the ring,” Han interrupts, his eyes shining with softness. “Always.”

You feel a tear bubble in your eye but you blink it away, hoping he doesn’t notice. “Thank you,” you whisper.

He smiles again. “Of course, my lady.”

. . . . .

As the days pass, as the heat gets worse, you finally tell him of the summer sickness. The sweats, the chills, the fevers that overtake the villagers in this hot, humid weather.

You don’t have the fever. Many times you have reassured Jisung that the sickness never touches you – you live too far away from the village to catch it from someone else. Anyway, they always kick you out of the marketplace at the beginning of summer, so you don’t have any chance to get it. Bugs don’t really touch your little hill either.

But the sickness still takes a toll on you. Perhaps you don’t grow ill, but Jisung can see the sick fear growing in your eyes, in your shortened visits to the forest. A new splotchy bruise appears on your leg and you tell him you tripped over a rock.

That’s a lie.

After he doesn’t see you for fourteen days straight, he sits you down when you finally return, voice trembling, and demands an explanation. He cares about you so much, he realizes, his heart can barely stand it. When you didn’t come day after day after day –

“My lady, I thought you were gone forever,” he chokes out, trying to keep the wobble out of his voice.

Your eyes immediately fill with guilt and sorrow and you bite your lip harshly, eyes downcast. “I’m sorry,” you whisper, words wavering.

“Just…” Jisung swallows. “Just tell me why. Did I do something? Or was it the village again?”

So you tell him. The summer sickness is worse this year, worse than any other year you’ve been alive. Four children have already died, as have two adults and one of the village elders. And the villagers need someone to blame it on.

Jisung wants to personally set fire to the entire village when he hears that. He can’t imagine how anyone could have the heart to look you in your strange, sharp, green eyes and say that you are the cause for an entire village’s troubles. That your lovely green eyes are the mark of a devil.

How narrow-minded could a person be to not see the beauty that lies in your character?

But he used to be the same way, he realizes with a jolt. Humans, to him, used to be mere playthings with no emotions, no lives, no meaning. They existed for his entertainment and that was all. Perhaps he did not see them as the cause for every single one of his troubles, but isn’t the thought the same? He didn’t see humans as real, living beings, just as the villagers don’t see you as one either.

He is glad he has changed. He hates the Jisung he used to be, but at least he has grown from that terrible prankster fae. He truly is glad he has changed.

He is glad he met you after he changed.

“So I couldn’t come over for a while,” you say, breaking into his thoughts. “I… I didn’t want them to have more reasons for thinking I’m a witch. It’s bad enough that I’ve never come down with the sickness. If I had, maybe they wouldn’t think I was the reason.”

Jisung wants to take your hand. He misses the feeling of your fingers intertwining with his. It made him feel safe. Cared for. Loved.

He settles for letting his fingertips touch the edge of the ring, pressing against the invisible barrier that keeps him from leaving. And after a few seconds, you place your hand down to touch your fingertips against his.

It is enough for now.

“Remember, my lady,” he whispers, refusing to look away from your eyes that always drag him in. “You’ll always be safe in the ring. No matter what.”

Even though you duck your head to nod and Jisung can’t see your green eyes, he knows that there are tears in them. He can see it in your slightly-trembling shoulders, in your fingers that shake against the steady earth.

And his heart aches for your troubles, hoping they will end soon.

. . . . .

The worst is always yet to come and you realize this as you’re sprinting, barefoot, over the forest floor. Your time in the village was never going to last. Sometime or another, a fuse was going to light the bomb created by your existence.

The fuse comes in the form of the fifth child’s death from summer sickness.

They came to your shack with old pitchforks and kitchen knives and rusted swords. You heard the shouts, saw the torches, and there were only two words echoing through your mind.

Run away.

You might’ve gotten away without them seeing if you hadn’t made so much noise wrestling through the bushes. On a normal day, the noise doesn’t matter because no one comes around here and you can trample over whatever you want. But it is night, the villagers are screaming bloody murder, and you don’t have time to worry about stealth.

When they reach the edge of the forest, their torches simply burn the bushes to the ground. Your head start is dwindling fast and you waste more of it as you stand at the edge of the forest, all of the warnings you’ve been given about the forest racing through your head. It may be safer during the day, you think, but what horrors lie in the dark of night?

Then Han’s words, soft and clear and kind, push them all away.

“You will always be safe in the ring.”

His smile.

“Always.”

You steel yourself and dart into the trees.

Pure instinct fuels your body. You can’t see anything except for the faint glow of fire behind you and the farther away that is, the better. Trees materialize out of nowhere and their branches catch in your flying hair. Rough stones slice your feet. A small animal races past your feet and you have to stifle a scream. More than once a sinister presence lingers in the shadows as you fly past, but you cannot take the time to give into your terror.

Torchlight burns. Voices shout. The forest fills with fear – the villagers’ fear of you, your fear of them, nature’s fear of you all. You stumble over hidden rocks and bumps and bushes and all the time you’re wondering where is the ring? Why am I not there yet? Is this the right way?

But then you see the sparkle of the pond nearby, a pond you have seen so many times on walks with your fae (in his transparent form, of course). He’s told you many stories of the water nymph there. But today you don’t care about Hwang Hyunjin. His pond only serves as a marker. As something to show you your path.

The race uphill is nearly torture. Without your shoes – even the tattered ones – the hill feels so much rougher and stonier than it normally does. Even the bed of grass can’t fully disguise the sharp bumps that dig into your feet.

He isn’t in the ring. You didn’t expect him to be, not now, but for a moment, your mind flails wildly.

What if your fae doesn’t come?

A glance behind tells you the villagers are still chasing. A few are climbing up the hill. You have no choice.

“HAN!”

You jump into the ring.

For a moment, the ring is empty save for only you. The first villagers trample nearer but their steps grow slower and their howls of rage and fear turn to frightened shouts and whispers as they realize where they are. You lie in a heap on the ground, all heaving gasps and shaking limbs and trembling lips.

Then warm arms embrace you, pulling you close to a chest with a steady heartbeat that calms your erratic mind and breath. Han’s thumbs stroke smoothly, sweetly, on your skin, and the pent-up tears begin to escape your cursed eyes.

“You are safe,” he whispers in your ear. “In my ring, you will always be safe.”

Some foolish shout rings through the night and a pitchfork sails through the air. You instinctively start to cry out no, Han, watch out! –

With a single flick of a finger, the pitchfork falls to the ground outside the faerie ring, harmless. Silence again takes over the clearing.

“What is the meaning of this?” he hisses.

His words are ice cold. You have never heard this tone before.

“L-Lord fae, she has infected our village with the summer sickness,” a trembling voice says. “Surely you see –”

“Your children are infected with the festering hatred you have for all things strange,” he spits. “Her eyes have no weight on her character. She is no witch. She bears no blame for your village’s summer sickness.”

Silence, except for your ragged breaths.

“Do not touch her.” His hand strokes your hair gently, coaxing out the last silent tears, a contrast to the blades of his tone. “A lord will always protect his lady, no?”

. . . . .

You make no effort to leave the ring that night but even if you did, Jisung wouldn’t have let you go. Not after the fear he saw in the villagers’ eyes.

Fear is often more dangerous than anger, after all.

He does not sleep the entire night, only holds you close, even when your shaking sobs stop and you slump, asleep, against his chest, tears still rolling down your face. His heart breaks a little more every time he looks down at you.

If this is how I feel, Jisung wonders, how did Hyunjin survive? When his love was snatched away from him, never to walk the earth again?

A new wave of shame and respect for the water nymph washes over him every time such a thought comes to mind. For if Jisung feels so strongly about you being merely hurt, he cannot imagine what pain Hyunjin endured when he lost his lover.

No wonder Hyunjin loathed him so much for so long.

You wake with the dawn. Had it not been for the slight fluttering of your eyelashes, he wouldn’t have realized at all. For a brief, terrified moment, Jisung wonders if you will break away from him.

But you don’t. You don’t move closer, but you don’t move away. You don’t protest his hands stroking your hair rhythmically, only close your eyes and sigh a little.

“Thank you for yesterday,” you finally murmur. “I’m sorry I cause you so much trouble.”

Your green eyes open and they look tired. So, so tired.

Jisung wants to bring the life back to them.

“It was no trouble,” he replies. “It is never trouble to care for those you love.”

When your eyes startle, Jisung realizes what he’s said. He’s just confessed his love for you. Though he’s known it for weeks, the words leaving his lips still make him feel a strange vulnerability in your presence. But he doesn’t regret it.

“Those you love,” you echo quietly. Though there is a tiny smile on your face, your voice is sad. “How could a fae as powerful as you love a –”

“Stop.” Jisung can’t listen anymore. “Stop it.”

“But –”

“If there is anyone unworthy of your love,” Jisung interrupts, “it is me. Not the other way around.”

You remain quiet this time.

Jisung sighs. “I think it’s time I told you how I was bound to this ring.”

He tells his tale with hot shame and sorrow creeping up his cheeks and choking his throat. He tries his hardest to keep his voice steady but fails as he speaks of Hyunjin’s first love with the cloud nymph, the wisp of a girl who made him smile in ways Jisung had never seen before. Now that he knows the love that Hyunjin felt, it is so much more difficult to speak of it. To know that he ruined it.

He tells of the pesky sprites who goaded him into meddling with that love. With a heavy heart and hanging head, he reveals the prideful, selfish, despicable faerie he once was, one who could not back away from a dare and treated all of those around him as toys.

“We all knew Hyunjin and his nymph were fated to fall in love,” Jisung says. “It was just something we could see, plain as day. So the sprites dared me to play with fate. To end their love.”

Jisung doesn’t want to look at you. He can’t stomach the fact that you might be looking at him with disgust and shame, all of your previous lightheartedness with him gone. If you did, he wouldn’t be surprised – he deserves it.

But your grip on him doesn’t loosen. If anything, it tightens. Jisung finds the strength to go on.

He never meant it to go so far, he explains, as though that makes it better. He only wanted to break their love apart. He found a jealous, spurned suitor of the nymph and talked him into goading her to leave Hyunjin.

Instead, the suitor killed her. And the waters that raged through the forest for weeks after her death would have killed all the life there had Chan, the guardian, not called on Mother Earth to placate the water nymph’s anger and sent for the faerie queen to punish Jisung.

“That’s why I am bound to this ring,” Jisung says. “I am bound here until two things happen.”

“What are they?” you ask.

A small, genuine smile spreads across Jisung’s lips. “I first had to help Hyunjin find love again.”

A willow seed from Jisung’s esteemed collection. One of the seeds of the first willow that ever grew from Mother Earth’s mantle. It did not matter that the nymph who grew from the weeping willow that now drapes across Hyunjin’s pond was mute, that she could not speak. Her strength won Hyunjin’s heart. And after seven centuries, Hyunjin has forgiven Jisung.

“The second condition?” you prompt when Jisung falls silent.

Ah. He doesn’t want to tell you this one. He doesn’t want you to think that all of his love for you has been faked, has been solely for the purpose of attaining his freedom. But he will not lie to you.

“I had to find someone who, in the words of my faerie queen, would be foolish enough to love me,” he says.

With this admission, Jisung can practically hear the thoughts rolling around in your mind, bouncing off the walls of your skull and manifesting in doubt, uncertainty, and fear. “I know what you must be thinking,” he says hurriedly. “Did I only keep you around to break my curse? Truth be told, I didn’t think of that until several months ago, the day of the spring festival.” He laughs a little.

“At the start, never in my wildest dreams did I think I would fall for a human. But you were interesting. Clever. Intelligent. Your beautiful eyes may have caught my attention, but it was your soul and your mind that caught my heart. I wanted to keep talking to you.” He smiles. “On the day of the spring festival, I realized I loved you, my lady.”

Your fingers tighten around his.

“But it was I who loved you, and truly, I couldn’t think of a reason why you would love me.” His smile turns sad. “I found myself thinking of the curse and wondering, what would I do if you loved me back?” He swallows. “Do you remember our promise that day?”

By now, you’re looking into his eyes. Your gaze is a little unnerving, but Jisung forces himself to stare at you. “Yes,” you answer.

“I almost asked you to promise me your love,” he says, somber. “But by then, I knew that love must be a gift. I could not take it from you. So I asked for the next best thing – my lady’s happiness for just that day.”

Silence.

“After you left that night, I thought about my feelings. It took quite some time to sort through them all.” He smiles tentatively and his heart lightens when you smile back. “I realized that I didn’t care about my freedom. I wanted you to love me just because I loved you, even though I didn’t deserve you. I didn’t care about breaking the curse. I only wanted you to love me back.”

He’s done. He’s told you everything. His heart pounds as he waits for your response.

Will you leave him?

“Do you still want that?” your quiet voice says. “Do you still want me to love you?”

His heart is threatening to burst. He nods jerkily. “A thousand times, yes,” he whispers.

“I think I’ve loved you since the day I came to you, crying, and you asked no questions, only comforted me.” Your voice is low, quiet, small, but soothing. “I realized it the day of the festival, the same day as you. But I could never quite trust you, it felt like. You are a fae. I am a human. In my mind, I thought this could never happen.”

Jisung wants to protest but holds his tongue. This is your time to speak. He will not interrupt.

“But I trust you now.” Your shining, teary eyes look up at him with an emotion he’s never seen directed at him. He’s seen it on Hyunjin, looking at his willow nymph. He’s seen it on Changbin, gazing at his moon girl.

It hits him that you love him too.

“You’ve told me much, and there would be many who say you still do not deserve love, Han.” Your voice pulls him out of his thoughts. “But I think you have repented. I think you have learned. The fae I know is a far cry from the prideful one of centuries past. He has given me safety, comfort, hope, love.” A smile graces your lips. “I think I love him.” You shake your head. “No, I know I love him.”

You sit up with a wobbly smile on your lips and Jisung stares straight into your bright, lovely, green eyes, glowing with the rosy light of dawn. “May I?” he asks, his voice barely a whisper.

In return, you nod, and his lips fall onto yours.

Jisung has had many kisses over his millennia-long life, to the point where he once thought he couldn’t feel anything new anymore. But your lips are nothing like the ones he’s kissed before.

Chapped, dry, they shouldn’t give Jisung the bliss he feels. He’s kissed lips far smoother than yours. But it is not the lips he kisses, Jisung realizes, but the person to whom those lips belong.

A little sigh leaves your parted mouth and Jisung pulls you closer, holding you with the gentility of the morning breeze on his skin, pressing his lips to yours. An hour could have passed or even a day, and he would never know. He only knows the bliss he feels that moment.

Too soon, you both must break away for air. And even though tears still stain your cheeks and Jisung’s hair has been mussed by your hands, he has never felt so content in his life.

“Give me your name,” he whispers, pressing his forehead to yours. “Give me your name, my lady, and I promise I will do all there is in my power to keep you safe from harm. Give me your name, and I promise I will travel to the ends of the realms to keep you happy.”

Your thumbs stroke his cheeks and he leans into your touch, eyes fluttering in bliss. “Give me yours and I’ll give you mine.” A hint of that long-lost mischief dances in your eyes even as tears threaten again to fall down your face and Jisung wants to cry. He’s waited to see that expression on your face for too long. “I want to know you, Han. All of you.”

Hyunjin once told him that when he loved someone, he would feel no fear giving them his name. When he loved someone, he would trust that they would use his name only out of care. They would not toy with it. It would sound different in their mouth. It would sound safe.

At the time, he just cackled and made some dumb joke about how he definitely wasn’t Hyunjin’s love, then. The two had proceeded to drown the forest with their bickering until Chan came over to separate them.

But now, as he hears you repeat his name once, quietly, whispering it on your tongue, he knows what Hyunjin meant. His name is safe between your lips and yours is safe between his.

Jisung’s heart bursts.

He stands, pulling you up on shaky legs. For the first time in over a millennium, he steps out of the faerie ring, ready to leave the perfect circle of flowers and grass forever.

“Where does my lady wish to go?” he asks. His grin couldn’t get any wider.

Your smile is more enchanting today than it ever was, and your green eyes sparkle in the rising light of the sun.

“Anywhere, as long as it’s with you.”

#inkidz #stray kids #skz #stray kids scenarios #skz scenarios #han jisung scenarios #3racha #han #fluff #angst #triggers #violence #nature spirit!au #stray kids han scenarios #whispers of nature #bloom #scriptura-delirus

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readerinsertdepot · 4 years

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The Sound Of Pulling Heaven Down

Pairing: Azumane Asahi x fem!reader

Summary: The first in a collection of oneshots centered around your budding relationship with Asahi as you both navigate through adult life.

Asahi helps you through a rough breakup.

Rating: T (for now)

Tags: Emotional hurt/comfort, friends to eventual lovers with a dash of pining?

Word Count: 2.2K

Somewhere, far away from here I saw stars, stars that I could reach It was a midnight, a silent twilight Fell down, beyond the ocean beach

“Asahi?”

His chest tightened the second he heard your voice over the phone. A delicate rasp that you attempted to mask with the slow, steady pacing of your words. But he knew.

“Can you meet me at the station?”

He always knew.

“Um, of course! I’ll be right there! Just wait for me, okay?” He answered, cradling his cell between his shoulder and head while he struggled to get his shoelaces tied fast enough.

“Okay.”

The relationship that had been built between you and Asahi over the last three years was an odd one. You had met each other in high school but never made it past friendly acquaintances. Even though you had been in the same class, your social circles didn’t quite sync up, especially considering he spent most of his time with the volleyball club and you did not. It wasn’t until a chance encounter in the lobby of your apartment complex that the two of you had started to become close.

After you had a break down and dropped out of your first year at university, you felt lost -- not quite ready to start your life and not quite ready to go home. You were a big fish in a small pond at Karasuno, but once you moved to Tokyo, you found yourself drowning. Asahi had become your life raft in the huge, unfamiliar city that had threatened to pull you under. Occasional meetups to catch up quickly turned into movies every Friday night and beer and ramen every Saturday night. Casual conversations about the weather and missing high school became long discussions about worries, aspirations and everything that came with growing up. You each had someone to confide in and suddenly, you could breathe again.

You were both near inseparable. Until your on again off again boyfriend of five years reappeared into your life about four months into the friendship. You had fallen so hard for him at such a young age, you missed all the red flags. But Asahi saw them. And he hated it. He hated the way your boyfriend treated you like a child who was incapable of making a sound decision yourself and required the majority of your attention. The man was more often than not the cause of your downward spirals, whether it was with a snide comment he made about one of your choices or when he decided to break it off with you because he simply got bored.

It was a vicious cycle he was all too familiar with. You would call. You would timidly ask him to meet you somewhere – usually the train station. He would drop everything he was doing and go straight to you. Then he would stay, just listening, until you felt like you could handle being alone again.

This wasn’t one sided, however. For all the times you called him crying, you were there to talk him down from his self doubt and panic attacks. The things he had been slowly improving on since he was seventeen but couldn’t fully shake. But, with your help, they had become softer and less frequent and it was amazing how you could do that.

One of you was always there, ready to pull the other back up if either of you ever fell, no matter what.

The train car you both sat in was nearly empty and almost completely silent, except for the soft whimpers coming from your hunched frame, swallowed up in a dark, oversized hoodie, sitting next to him. Asahi kept his eyes focused on the large window containing the passing scenery. The houses grew few and far between and then eventually turned into rocky formations that stood firm against the harsh waves of the ocean.

He remembered back to the first night you had called him. The way he grew frantic upon hearing the graveness in your voice. He ran up the stairs to your apartment three floors above his, taking two steps at a time, forgoing the elevator because he was afraid it’d be too slow. You jumped and whipped your head around when Asahi burst in with a loud slam of your door.

The sight of the large man in your doorway, panting with a panicked expression on his face mere seconds after you hand hung up with each other caused you to forget everything except that moment. And you laughed. Not at your friend, but out of relief. Relief that you somehow managed to have someone in your life that would care enough to run to you like that. It rumbled up from the pit of your stomach and bubbled out of you, tears still streaming down you face, further alarming your confused friend who rushed over to crouch down in front of you, unsure of how to help. You reassured him that his presence alone was enough once your fit had subsided and then suggested that the two of you go sit up on the roof.

That was the first night he had witnessed one of your breakups, and he could not for the life of him remember the reason why it had happened in the first place. That was also the night that you vowed to be a support for him with the same amount of selflessness and enthusiasm that he had been for you. And, that was the night, up on that roof with the cool night breeze and city lights reflected in your eyes, that Asahi realized he was falling in love with you.

Together, the both of you walked along the water’s edge, not saying a word. Asahi was always careful not to push you into talking. He knew you would open up when you were ready. You always did. His eyes were trained on the sky, its unique shade of pink caused by the mingling of the twilight’s oranges and purples. He didn’t even notice when you had stopped to remove your shoes and socks.

Once he realized you were no longer next to him, he turned back, catching you a few paces behind him, slowly crouching down to the sand. He walked back and sat beside you, watching as you palmed at the sand, its coarse particles falling through your soft fingers. You started digging, deeper and deeper, until you reached the damp earth, pulling it up to form small mounds. Then Asahi, catching on to what you were doing, began patting down the sides of your makeshift sandcastle.

“He said…” You swallowed hard, refusing to allow the sob you felt traveling up your throat to escape. Asahi continued to scoop up sand, silently waiting for you to finish your thoughts. He looked up a moment and caught a glimpse of your eyes, red, glassed over and puffy. His chest felt heavy and suddenly it was difficult for him to breathe, tears of his own pricking at the corners of his eyes. He cursed internally and tore his gaze away, the empathy he felt towards you too intense.

“He said he was tired of this….” you tried again, “That he needed to be with someone with more direction.”

Asahi took in a deep, shaky breath. “That’s not fair. You shouldn’t be punished for trying to find happiness.” His hands formed tight fists, the skin turning lighter from pulling over his knuckles. “I’ve always wished I could be like you, [y/n]. You’re able to just… jump. I’ve gotten better at it but… I still can’t really bring myself to do it. Not like you.” His voice remained gentle but was steady as his frustrations spilled out of him all at once. “So what if you don’t know exactly what you want for yourself? You’re not afraid to take risks and if something bad happens, you pick yourself right back up and try something else. [Y/N], that’s a gift.”

Air was stuck in your throat and your eyes grew wide, frozen in place by his words. All this time you had been told that you were unreliable and that you needed to settle down. That even though you were able to support yourself on your own, your constant job hopping made you irresponsible. Then here was Asahi, telling you he admired it, that it was valuable, dismantling years of insecurity in less than five minutes. You blinked a few times, taking time to process what he had said and attempting to bring yourself back to life. Suddenly you stood straight up, eyes cast out to the horizon. “I think I’m done,” you firmly announced, startling your friend.

Asahi slowly rose to his feet, side eyeing you suspiciously, unbale to get a read on your expression. This had definitely been one of your quicker outings. “You sure you’re ready to go back?”

You shook your head, gaze still fixed on the waves, “No. With him. We’re finished.” Your legs moved instinctively towards the ocean. “I’m tired of talking through the same things and I don’t need to keep doing this to myself.” Asahi’s hand reached out to catch your shoulder but caught nothing but air as you marched further out into the water, the freezing ocean eventually rising to above your knees. His eyes grew wide and a familiar panic set into his face, finally registering what you were doing.

Once the water had reached your thighs, you turned back to see him, swiftly pacing back and forth while calling out to you, trying to figure out the best way he could bring you back to shore while staying as dry as possible. A smile crept onto your face and broke out into a fit of giggles, the calming sensation of relief overtaking you. The kind that only he had ever been able to provide for you. Asahi stopped immediately in his tracks when he heard the melody of your laughter.

He caught a glimpse of your smile and the anxiety that had commandeered his senses dissipated, relaxation instead melting away the stiffness in his muscles. His breath hitched as he felt heat rise to his cheeks. That was the smile that told him that there was nothing to be afraid of. That smile meant more to him than anything in the world.

You closed your eyes, took a deep breath through your nose, and fell, giving way to a soft smack the moment your back hit the water. The sound of vast emptiness filled your ears, allowing you to focus on the rise and fall of your chest as you floated there. Even from thirty feet away, you had been able to see the tenderness in his eyes when he looked at you, further amplifying your feeling of weightlessness.

When your eyes opened, they were met with the dim twinkling of stars against a muted blue sky, signaling that it would be night soon. You thought back to Asahi, who was no doubt sweating bullets at the fact that you had not returned and smiled. He had proven time and time again that he would always be there for you. He had taken on such a huge part in defending your happiness you hadn’t realized that he actually made up the majority of it.

For so long, you had believed you wouldn’t amount to much. That your life was marked by more failures than it was by successes. But you had been wrong. The only failures had been when you allowed your fear to control your life. And while you had learned some hard lessons, the happiness that grew from them far outweighed the pain. It took a while, but Asahi had shown you that your happiness was worth more than anything else.

And you loved him for it.

Asahi slumped into his seat and let out an exasperated sigh once you both had settled yourselves on the train home. “Damn, [y/n],” he began, a hand clutching his chest. “You’re going to give me a heart attack one of these days you know that?”

A playful smirk formed on your lips as you remembered back to the way he nervously rambled on about how you were going to get sick when you trudged back to the beach. The only thing of yours that had remained dry were your shoes, which he carefully guarded until you returned. He had also kindly rushed to the nearest gift shop to find some suitable bottoms for you to wear, too embarrassed to have his giant hoodie that you practically swam in be the only thing you clothed yourself with.

You lightly pushed against his side with your shoulder and allowed yourself to linger there. “You love it.”

He coughed erratically, a desperate ‘I do’ choking him. The spontaneity you had brought into his life was, in fact, something he loved, though he wasn’t sure how much more of it his poor heart could take. But he would try, for you.

Asahi cleared his throat, “You’re super lucky you left your phone at home, you know?" He had attempted to change the subject, hoping the rapid beating of his heart would subside soon. He doubted it.

“Yeah.” You looked up at him through your lashes before looking back to the window, opaque with the night sky, causing your small, relaxed frame and his large, stiff one to be reflected back at you. You were unsure if the heat that radiated off of him or the recent revelation of your romantic feelings for your friend was causing you to feel flushed. Either way, it dangerously inviting. And it felt like home. “I know.”

So never look behind you, spooky people bring you down The world is ending there's a party by the bay I'll wear my suit and tie, we’re eye to eye and toasting To the way you put that smile upon my face

A/N: I NEVER would have thought I would be inspired to write for Asahi while listening to Blue October. But here we are. And I have a few more ideas swirling around too! So thank you so much for reading and stay tuned.

#asahi x reader #azumane asahi x reader #azumane asahi #asahi #haikyuu #haikyuu!!#fanfiction #The Sound Of Pulling Heaven Down #All That We Are #my writing

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rockislandadultreads · 3 years

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Mysteries for you: book recs

Raven Black Shetland Island Series, Book 1 by Ann Cleeves

Raven Black begins on New Year's Eve with a lonely outcast named Magnus Tait, who stays home waiting for visitors who never come. But the next morning the body of a murdered teenage girl is discovered nearby, and suspicion falls on Magnus. Inspector Jimmy Perez enters an investigative maze that leads deeper into the past of the Shetland Islands than anyone wants to go.

The Rising of the Moon by Sheila Connolly

"Dinty's Bar has occupied the same corner in Cambridge since before I was born. Not the Cambridge with the glitzy shops and exotic restaurants catering to parents dropping their little darlings off at the Big H, or the Cambridge filled with techy wonks. Dinty's keeps a toehold in the back end of Cambridge, between Central Square and the river. Its patrons come from the neighborhood and they're pretty consistent: blue-collar, mostly construction workers, a scattering of cops and firefighters, all Irish in some way or another. Somehow this little area called Cambridgeport has escaped the gentrification that has crept through the city, and that's the way the people here like it.

I'm the one who doesn't belong. I was one of those pampered students, and when I graduated I didn't know what I wanted to do, or at least I knew what I didn't want to do. I wanted some time with no grades, no letters of recommendation, no internships and interviews to make a professor or parent proud. Nope, I just wanted to stick around for a while and breathe. My bewildered parents didn't put up much of an argument, and as a graduation present they gave their baby boy enough cash to put a deposit on a top-floor apartment in a rundown triple-decker, with enough left over to buy a bed and a kitchen table with a couple of chairs.

I heard about the opening behind the bar at Dinty's through a friend of a friend, and I'd wandered in with no expectations and gotten the job. Just for the summer, I thought. Three summers later I'm still here. After one of those increasingly rare calls from my folks, I try to convince myself that I'm collecting information for a novel that I'll probably never write. Mostly I'm drifting and watching. It suits me, at least for now."

Surrender the Dead by John Burley

When Erin Reece left Wolf Point fifteen years ago after graduating high school, she'd planned to never set foot in her childhood hometown again. But an urgent phone call from her father's doctor leaves Erin with no choice but to return to a place filled with painful memories and wounds that never closed. Two decades ago, people in Wolf Point started disappearing without a trace—including Erin's mother—and no explanation was ever found.

It's been years since the last disappearance, but the town is still steeped in suspicion and haunted by the ghosts of the missing. No one is thrilled to see Erin back, including her former best friend, Robbie, who has changed from a spirited, fearless boy to a reclusive shut-in.

Then a body is discovered, buried in a makeshift grave for years . . . on the Reece family's land. The police reopen their investigation, and the evidence against Erin's father is damning. After such a long time without answers, the community wants justice. It's up to Erin to clear her father's name, but the path to the truth will force her to unearth long-buried secrets and confront a terrible evil. Because in Wolf Point, everyone knows more than they are letting on . . .

Wrong Alibi by Christina Dodd

WRONG JOB Eighteen-year-old Evelyn Jones lands a job in small-town Alaska, working for a man in his isolated mountain home. But her bright hopes for the future are shattered when Donald White disappears, leaving her to face charges of theft, embezzlement—and a brutal double murder. Her protestations of innocence count for nothing. Convicted, she faces life in prison...until fate sends her on the run. WRONG NAME Evie's escape leaves her scarred and in hiding, isolated from her family, working under an alias at a wilderness camp. Bent on justice, intent on recovering her life, she searches for the killer who slaughters without remorse. WRONG ALIBI At last, the day comes. Donald White has returned. Evie emerges from hiding; the fugitive becomes the hunter. But in her mind, she hears the whisper of other forces at work. Now Evelyn must untangle the threads of evidence before she's once again found with blood on her hands: the blood of her own family...

#mystery #mysteries #mystery books #reading recommendations #book recs #recommended reading #ebooks #overdrive #libby #library #to read #tbr #booklr #booklist #book list

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victorsandvanquishers · 4 years

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Hey, it's me again, the anon who requested a pitou and kite fic! Sorry for responding so late! I was thinking prompt #47 '' This place is creepy." Preferably shippy, but I'll leave that up to you! Thank you so so much!

Since this one was more of a scary prompt than an angsty one, this fic is a mixture of romance and horror, and rate T+. Thank you for sending in the last request! I hope you like it! (~˘▾˘)~

“This place is creepy,” Kite groused, trying to wipe the black dust off his fingers and onto Neferpitou's navy jacket, “and disgusting.”

Neferpitou purred into the taller man's neck, hands cold as stone underneath Kite's sweater and pressed against his stomach. Kite drew in a long breath as Neferpitou's lips ghosted over his collarbone and up his jaw. When his lover met his eyes, he finally exhaled.

Any other place, and Kite would have drowned in the liquid gold of their eyes.

“Are you listening to me?” Kite deadpanned when a hand went over to his butt and pinched lightly. He barely flinched. “This place is nasty, Pitou; there's filth everywhere.”

Neferpitou gave him a coy smile and went to press their chests together, only to be met with a firm hand to their chest. Neferpitou blinked in confusion. “Huh?”

Kite picked up his dirty finger and showed Neferpitou the remnants of the black dust. “I'm not having relations with you in the basement of a condemned building,” he said pointedly.

Neferpitou bit their cheek before answering. “Why not?”

Kite forgot how dumb his lover was. For an esteemed surgeon, he was surprised the shorter of the two had survived the playground, much less the grueling trenches of medical school. Alas, what would he know? He was just another poor scientist living off scraps academia threw his way.

“... because it's disgusting,” Kite said finally.

Neferpitou seemed to consider his answer. “It's just dust-” they began, but Kite was looming over the shorter of the two before they could get out another word.

Kite huffed and turned to leave, while Neferpitou groaned dramatically. “We can't have sex in your office again; it's too small!”

“We'll just have to hold it together until the apartment is finished,” Kite mumbled back listlessly. Kite was still living with roommates, and Neferpitou still lived with their family, and their shared lovenest wouldn't be ready for their arrival for another month, and motels were out of the question because Kite was poor but prideful, and refused to get a single single room unless they were splitting the costs in half.

Neferpitou knew Kite didn't have half the money since he put most of it on the down payment for their new home, and so they'd found random little places to drag Kite into so they could canoodle for a little bit, and occasionally go at it like bunnies. The first place was Neferpitou's office, but that was an almost-tragedy when Neferpitou's nurses almost walked in. The second place was the attic of Ging Freecss' pawn shop, but once they'd come downstairs, Ging had threatened to kill them both. The third time was in Kite's office, but the space was so small and cramped, a bookshelf almost toppled over and took Neferpitou's life (and Kite's underneath theirs) in the middle of their passionate lovemaking session.

And now they were in a dilapidated building set to be demolished over the next few months, and apparently Neferpitou had found it while driving around town in their brand new Cadillac Kite refused to christen with them because it was new and butt sweat could and would ruin the leather. It wasn't even Kite's car, and he'd been furious for it when Neferpitou had first asked.

Water dripped somewhere in the darkness and Kite shivered. A single bulb was the only bit of illumination in the room, and it was well past closing hours for the local shops. The nearest convenience store was a good four blocks up the road, and Neferpitou had parked their Cadillac next to it. Water dripped again, and Kite grabbed his partner's hand and began dragging them up the stairs, because to hell with late-night canoodling in some abandoned building, they'd just have to suck it up and brave it like all the other touch-starved souls of the world. At least they had Skype calls and dinner every Friday night at the Chinese joint next to Kite's current hovel.

Something skittered close by and Kite willed his fear to stay silent. It was a bloody basement in a bloody building, and they were leaving damn it, karma shouldn't so cruel. They hadn't even gotten to the raunchy part!

“Stay quiet, move slowly,” Neferpitou whispered suddenly. Kite almost jumped, but Neferpitou had somehow gotten a grip around his waist, and steadied him before he could make anymore noise.

Water dripped, and that eerie, skittering noise seemed to come from somewhere much closer this time.

Kite was frozen, his mind blanking to the hellish three months he'd spent stranded on a lonely mountain, in a tiny country close to the arctic, all for the sake of his bloody fucking research, alive now only because Neferpitou had been trekking through that mountain on a leisure trip since they'd lived mere miles away, all the while Kite had believed he'd been transported to Hell after the blizzard had separated him from his research party, and left him stranded in the cold little mountain that felt so, so much like an island.

“Count to three,” Neferpitou whispered softly into his ear.

Kite blinked back tears, but counted to three in his head and then exhaled. He counted to three again, inhaled, counted to three, and exhaled. He repeated the exercise until the fog in his head lifted and he could hear the water dripping again. The skittering had since stopped, but now there was something else.

Kite noticed a pair of rheumy, red eyes watching from some yards away.

“Pitou,” he whispered gravely.

“Slowly,” they warned, releasing Kite's waist. “Get to the landing, and then run.”

Neferpitou didn't turn to face the eyes, but Kite could barely tear his gaze away. The door to the basement had long since broken down, so it was a matter of six or seven more steps until they reached the landing, and after the landing, there was only a couple of yards until they reached the street because the building had lost its front door too, and most of its windows, and it was supposed to be abandoned, but instead-

“Kite,” Neferpitou whispered deadly soft into his ear, “up.”

Kite's feet moved slowly up the stairs, but he couldn't tear his gaze away from the eyes watching their every move. He counted to three and leveled his breaths, blinked a few times, and yet the eyes didn't disappear. He should have been hallucinating, but he wasn't, and so he moved, up, up, and up until he reached the landing.

When one foot was on the landing, something flew across the room. It was only after Neferpitou yelped in pain that Kite broke out of his haze and looked down at the thin, wiry fingers wrapped around Neferpitou's leg.

“Pitou!” Kite barked, and without thinking, he pulled Neferpitou up and dragged the creature's hand up the stairs with them.

Kite saw blue, emaciated fingers in the dim moonlight, too thin to be human. It almost looked like a certain hand he'd encountered on the lonely mountain, a hand belonging to a thin, wiry creature too tall to be considered human, and yet it had offered Kite its hand anyway, and Kite had almost taken it... Almost.

Just then, Neferpitou yanked their own foot straight, and stomped on the creature's hand with all their might.

A screech rang throughout the building, but the creature let go, and it only took those two fateful seconds for Kite to yank on Neferpitou's hand one more time before they reached the landing together, booked it across the abandoned first floor, and jumped out of the rectangular hole where the door used to be.

Its screams followed them well into the streets, and only after they were in the Cadillac and speeding away did Kite finally realize that the creature's eyes hadn't been red after all.

They'd been bleeding.

They'd cocooned themselves in Neferpitou's room at the royal estate of the esteemed House of Chimera, the oldest money in the city, and one Kite would have declined entering any other time, but not tonight.

Kite had wrapped a bandage over the red imprint left on Neferpitou's pale white skin. They'd pouted and held a pillow close to their chest while Kite had finished dressing the wound, but as soon as the first aid kit had been put away, Neferpitou had tossed the pillow aside and wrestled Kite into a comfortable spoon.

Kite held Neferpitou's hands to his chest while they grumbled about how they didn't give a damn if their mother walked in to see them canoodling their lover, they were thirty years old, damn it, they'd earned the right to canoodle. Kite could have grumbled along, but he found his thoughts drifting back to those bleeding red eyes and those wiry, thin hands, and the bone-chilling cold he'd felt when he'd thought Neferpitou was going to be snatched away.

“Kite,” Neferpitou whined. “I'm sorry. I'll keep my hands to myself until the apartment is ready,” said the person who was currently feeling up Kite's chest as if their hands were made solely for that reason.

Kite sighed in response, softly squeezing Neferpitou's hands. Then he closed his eyes and laid still.

Soon, Neferpitou's snores drifted through the room, but Kite dwelt. With his eyes closed, and his back to his lover's chest, he dwelt on the rheumy, bleeding eyes and the emaciated hand, and he thought, and he thought, and he thought – and he remembered.

Kite's eyes shot open when he heard a skittering sound move across the wooden floor of Neferpitou's room. He didn't even have to move because slowly, a pair of bleeding red eyes emerged from the shadows, and Kite could only scream while it reached out its hand.

“Rise and shine!”

Kite's eyes shot open. Bright rays of light filtered into the grand room while he took deep, loud breaths.

“... Kite?”

Neferpitou was already up and dressed. Kite blinked back the fatigue and picked himself up. Before he could trudge his way to the bathroom, Neferpitou pulled him into a hug.

They barely reached his chest, and yet, they'd saved him – over and over again.

“I'm fine,” he assured the shorter of the two, but Neferpitou didn't believe him, and merely grumbled into his chest.

“Pitou,” Kite said, “I promise.”

“I'm sorry,” they mumbled into Kite's chest.

Instead of repeating his words, he wrapped both arms around his beloved and hugged them back. The red eyes and wiry hand clawed at the back of his mind, but it didn't matter if they reminded him of the dead bodies he'd discovered lined against each other in the snow on that lonely, as if one day they'd all decided that enough was enough and let the mountain take them together. It didn't matter if those bodies looked alive, with their red eyes and blue hands, those frost-caked lips that looked almost as if they could still speak. It didn't matter if the creature they'd found in that basement was likely a wraith that refused to depart their world. It didn't matter.

Nothing mattered – nothing, but Neferpitou.

“Let's make out,” Neferpitou tried, and instantly, Kite bonked the shorter of the two on the head and made his way to the shower while Neferpitou wailed about their broken skull.

And Kite smiled.

#Hunter x Hunter #hxh #neferpitou #pitokai #kite hunter x hunter #avafanfics

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hopeaterart · 4 years

Text

The shittiest family reunion in the history of ever: chapter 6

This was supposed to be the chapter where Holly kicks Polnareff’s ass, but I changed plans at the last second. I also sprinkled in some soft Jotaro/Kakyoin content because this fic is nothing if not self-indulgent. And including Bandanaboi’s ‘Jotaro is accidentally a banchou’ idea.

Jotaro quickly made his way out of the classroom, making his way through the sea of students with Kakyoin not far behind him, holding hands and making sure that he wouldn’t lose the redhead. Kakyoin simply followed him, visibly uncomfortable with all the attention he had gained as ‘the new transfer student with red hair’.

Jotaro slowed down as they came outside, slowing down so Kakyoin could stand next to him and getting his phone out. The redhead stood close, reading the text messages between the taller boy and his mother. “What’s Kitahara?” He asked, turning his head toward Jotaro.

He shrugged, putting his phone back in his back pocket. “She’s talking about a family sushi restaurant. It’s not right next to our street, but you can easily walk there. And beside their sushi, they also make ramen, kaisendon, udon, and kare raisu. I don’t eat the kare raisu I think it tastes like shit, but the sushis are good, the rest is okay, and apparently I have a ‘difficult palate’.” He then did air quotes to emphasize his point, and Kakyoin snorted.

“Oi, Kujo!” The two boys turned toward the voice, seeing a bunch of other students come toward them, all looking like delinquents.

Jotaro groaned, and Kakyoin turned toward him. “You know them?”

“Yeah. They’re a bunch of punks I helped win a fight once, and now they won’t leave me alone. Come on, let’s go-” Jotaro had the time to grab Kakyoin’s hand and turn away, the redhead in tow, before a guy with way two many ear piercings was next to Kakyoin with a hand on Jotaro’s shoulder.

“How ya doin’, Kujo?” He asked. Kakyoin heard Jotaro take a deep breath, his shoulders rising with it, followed by a hiss of ‘five-foot rule, Sugawara’, and the boy’s hand shot off his shoulder, taking a few steps back as Jotaro turned his head toward the group.

“What.” He finally said, and a small girl with bleach blond walked up. The face-mask covering the lower part of her face, the dark eyeshadow around her eyes and the very long-skirt reminded Kakyoin of old-style sukebans. “The punks from Karasuno are starting to act up again. What do we do?”

Jotaro narrowed his eyes. “Are they harassing anyone from school? And is Noguchi back on his bullshit?”

“No, and no.” The small girl answered.

“Then don’t do anything. If they come anywhere near the school, you guys can handle it. If Noguchi comes back with re-enforcement, don’t try anything and come get me as fast as possible. Got it, Sakurai?”

The girl groaned. “It’d be easier to ‘get you’ if you actually gave one of us your phone number!”

“Fuck off!”

“Hum, excuse me?” Kakyoin suddenly said, gaining the attention of the small group. “I’m currently living with Jotaro-san. If you have a message you want to relay to him, I could probably help.” He then got out his own phone, pointing at it as if to emphasize his point.

The group looked at him as if he had grown a second head. “And who are you supposed to be?” A guy with a pompadour and bandage over one of his eyes asked, and Kakyoin nearly dropped his phone in surprise.

It was the guy he had puppeted the nurse to stab in the eye on his first day, back when he was being mind-controlled.

“... Kakyoin Noriaki. I’m new.” He finally answered in a small voice, looking to the ground as he felt shame well up. He looked up at Jotaro as he felt the taller boy squeeze his hand.

“If any of you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave Kakyoin-kun out of this shit.” He hissed, looming over the group of teenagers. The only one who didn’t back down was the diminutive blond (Sakurai, her name was Sakurai), who simply nodded and got her notebook out, turning toward the redhead.

“Alright, but I still need to be able to contact you fast. Kakyoin?” The redhead raised his head, and after exchanging numbers with Sakurai, the two boys parted way with the group of thugs.

Jotaro pulled his hat over his face. “Yare yare daze...”

Kakyoin looked up at him, lifting an eyebrow. “Didn’t know you were in a gang.”

“I’m not.”

“They seemed pretty convinced you were in charge.”

“If I don’t help them beat up the delinquents from the other schools, they always end up coming after me. If I help them, they both leave me alone, and I get to punch out assholes.” Jotaro explained, Kakyoin nodding slowly.

“What’s the deal with this Noguchi person?” He asked, tilting his head. Jotaro groaned.

“My bully until I snapped in 2nd grade and started beating up people. We regularly had fist fights until 9th grade, and then he asked his parents to put him in a different school because I ended up putting a teacher in the hospital for being a creep. He still tries to harass me sometimes, and ” Kakyoin blinked in surprise.

“You put a teacher in the hospital?”

“I put several teachers in the hospital. Some of them are still recovering.” Jotaro told him, shrugging nonchalantly. “I hate people who try to use the weak for their own gain. My dad made sure to teach me that.”

“Alright, so we’ll have the usual family-size plate of sushi, with a bowl of ramen on the side for my brother.” Holly told the waitress, who nodded before walking off. Holly turned toward Jotaro. “Maybe you could-”

“No.”

“You didn’t even let me finish!”

“I’m not going to pay for that one time I ordered kare raisu. It tasted like shit anyway.”

“It’s basic decency and not going against the law!”

“It was bad and they should feel bad for serving it!”

“So... uh... Kujo-san.” Kakyoin started, turning toward Sadao and trying to avoid the argument. “You’re a musician?”

Sadao blinked. “Uh... yeah. Pianist and song writer, but I can also play the guitar and drums.”

“Are you a solo artist?”

“No, me and my group have been together for... over twenty years, now that I think about it.”

“Uh.” Joey noted, joining the conversation. “You’ve been with your group for longer than you’ve been married to my sister.”

“Your group has also stayed together for longer than the Beatles.” Kakyoin noted, and Sadao laughed nervously.

“Yes, well... we’re practically partners in crime at this point. And we take breaks when we need to.” He noted. “We... used to be pretty infamous in our first few years. Shoko’s change from teen idol to jazz singer did ripples, and Yuichi and Kaede did not know how to stay out of trouble. Add to that our difficulties with agents...”

“What difficulties with agents?” Jotaro asked his father, turning toward him with a confused expression. “They all- all three of them- you guys always end up with cocaine addicts for agents, somehow!”

“Jotaro, being addicted to drugs isn’t a moral failing on their part.” Holly told her son, and Sadao nodded in agreement.

“No, but treating us like producing music is the only thing we’re good at is.” Sadao hissed. “Personally, I couldn’t be happier to never see these fuckers ever again.”

“You’re... surprisingly amoral.” Kakyoin noted, and the shorter man shrugged.

“I’ve been told that.” The discussion ended as their sushi and ramen was brought to the table, everyone thanking the waiter (Joey slightly behind the other four) before they started digging in.

“Anyway, Jotaro.” Holly piped up, turning toward her son. “Anything new happening at school?” The teenager shook his head between stuffing two sushis in his mouth.

“Any girlfriend?” Joey asked teasingly. Jotaro rolled his eyes. “A boyfriend, then?”

Jotaro shook his head, swallowing his bite. “I don’t. I’m not...”

“Jotaro, I’m sure we told you before, but your father and I don’t care whether or not you like boys instead of girls-”

“It’s not that.” The teen cut his mother off, shaking his head. “Can we talk about it at home? When we’re not in public?”

“Of course.” Holly reassured him, and the group resumed with eating their food, this time in silence.

About half-way through the dinner, a man with tall with hair and blue eyes approached them. “Excusez-moi,” He started, “j’ai besoin d’aide avec le menu, et je me demandais si vous pouviez m’aider?” Everyone looked at each other with confusion in their eyes, trying to decipher what the strange man had just said.

Holly finally took the reins. “Sorry, I didn’t understand... do you speak English?”

“Right! My apologies, mademoiselle, I didn’t realize.” The man excused himself with a smile that was just forced enough to put Kakyoin on edge. “I was asking if you could help me with the menu?”

“Literally the only good thing this restaurant serves is sushi, how difficult can it be read the menu- what?” Jotaro turned toward Kakyoin, who had put a hand on his shoulder. The redhead shook his head, a frown on his face.

“I have a bad feeling about this guy, like I saw him back when I... wasn’t myself. Just stay back, and be ready to call out your Stand.” The redhead muttered to him. Jotaro’s eyes widened, before nodding gravely as his mother invented the stranger to sit down at their table.

“My my, what a lovely little group we have here!” The man started. “Family, I suppose?”

“Why, yes! Well, beside Kakyoin-kun, he’s my son’s friend.” Holly declared cheerfully as said friend grabbed a napkin, cutting a strip of it with a knife he got out from his pocket. She blinked. “Kakyoin-kun, what are you doing?”

The redhead blinked, before smiling awkwardly. “Don’t worry, Ho- Seiko-san,” he remembered in the nick of time she liked to be called a different name in public. “Just making some origami.”

“Alright! Tell me when you’re finished, please?” Holly asked, and Kakyoin nodded. He quickly folded the paper, the discussions between the rst of the table’s occupants fading to background noises. If this guy really is on Dio’s side, then he won’t resist...

“Aaaaand ta-da~” Kakyoin exclaimed, showing off the small origami star to everyone at the table. Impressed sounds came up for everyone, Holly taking the star and passing it around.

“You did this with a napkin?” Sadao asked as the star ended up in his hand, an inquisitive expression on his face. Kakyoin nodded, and the older man flashed him a surprisingly cute smile. “You’ve got some talent, then.” The teenager blushed at the praise, but quickly snapped out of it as the paper was passed to the stranger. Moment of truth.

“Indeed, this is impressive!” He started, slowly lifting the little paper star to his neck. “You know... I know someone with a mark shaped just like that on the back of his neck...”

Called it.

“STAND BACK, HE’S AN ENEMY STAND USER!” Kakyoin yelled, summoning Hierophant in a shower of watery green sparkles. Jotaro and Joey followed suit, the purple warrior appearing in a burst of stardust and a being with multiple fanged mouth in what looked like a sound’s wavelength.

At the same time, a strange knight-like being shimmered into existence next to the stranger, who clapped as if he was congratulating Kakyoin. “Bravo! How did you guess I was after them?”

The redhead’s mouth turned into a snarl, a watery hiss coming from Hierophant. “With DIO parading around naked every chances he gets, it’s kind of hard not to notice the literal tattoo on his ne-”

“Birth mark.” Joey suddenly said, his head turned toward Kakyoin with his eyes round like saucers. “It’s a birthmark, it’s not his, and we’re gonna have to talk about that later.”

“Oh? Awfully bold of you to assume there’s gonna be a later, Monsieur Joestar.” The stranger mocked Joey. A growl built up in the taller man’s throat, echoed and amplified by his Stand’s.

“Alright, alright, everyone calm down.” Holly called out, getting up and gesturing with her hands. “Let’s not fight inside of the restaurant. Causing a scene is the last thing we want. Kakyoin-kun?” She turned toward the redhead with an unusual harsh expression. When she saw the redhead flinch back in surprise, it softened. “We’ll talk about this... Dio person later, alright?”

“... Alright.”

“As for you,” the only woman in their group turned backtoward the stranger, glaring.”What is your name?”

“Why, it’s Jean-Pierre Polnareff!” He answered.

Holly nodded, a forced smile appearing on her face as she folded her hands, slowly making her way to Polnareff. “Well then, Polnareff-san, I am Holly Kujo. And I-” She suddenly cracked her knuckles, yellow light and darks vines wrapping around her hands and forearms. “Will be your opponent.”

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