Not to be That Guy but like.
Am I the only one that can't stop thinking about how Tianlang-Jun says about Luo Binghe that he pretends to be cold-hearted like his mother. The hint of fondness there, the heartache in that utterance.
Like it drives me absolutely insane. Imagining her putting on a front of strength, cold and driven and unrelenting. Why does TLJ say that about her. Did she secretly look for solutions that meant reconciling with demons instead of hurting them when her sect wasn't looking? (I wonder this because I feel like his weird fondness for SQQ would lowkey track if it's connected to the woman he once loved.) Did he mean that she was tasked with basically assassinating him and she fell in love with him instead (re: failed step one)? Did he mean that she was fond and doting in her own way (e.g. conceding he was attractive, paying for his exploits and humoring him)? Did he mean that, like LBH, she thought that power would be the thing to protect her--and that it was disguising a person who was deeply and privately wounded? All four????? I don't need sleep I need a n s w e r s
Did she know about the Huanhua Palace Master's skeevy ass intentions before she met TLJ? Or did those only come to significant light after she fell in love with TLJ? Is that why she never anticipated that level of betrayal, because initially she had no intention of being with anyone romantically? And HHPM just assumed she would be under his thumb forever?? Was she furious at her own indiscretion or did she try to use the pregnancy as a bargaining chip, a way to try to stop the immortals of Cang Qiong Mountain from attacking TLJ (plus the bonus of marriage entrapment no takesies backsies this is where LBH gets it from)? Did she try to use that claim on her to dissuade HHPM from his covetous advances, framing herself as tainted so that she could finally escape? Did she dream of a life by TLJ's side, far away from Cang Qiong Mountain?
Like. Literally every single permutation of what this could mean guts me to hell. Do you ever just cry about tianxi because I--[loud bawling noises]
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do you have any plans for snaptooth or flywhisker, ever since I saw that fake map I've fallen in love w flywhisker lmao
You know, for the longest time I've been planning to have Snaptooth and Flywhisker be adopted kits of Toadstep and Lionblaze, but I'm writing an SE rework for Nightcloud right now and I have a temptation.
I found a good moment to send off Snapstorm, the best friend of Brushblaze, as a complication of a boar hunt gone wrong. It's right around the time that Brushblaze's kits are being born, and something feels odd about the fact he didn't name any of his kits after someone who was by his side for his entire life. SO I'm thinking about shuffling Snaptooth over to HIS litter.
Which leaves Flywhisker over in ThunderClan.
Lionblaze is the adopted father of Dovewing and Ivypool... and his terrible parenting caused Dovewing to leave ThunderClan, and Ivypool to be permanently traumatized. He breaks up his false mateship with Cinderheart to go be with the cat he really loves, Toadstep, and Flywhisker is adopted after being found abandoned.
Lionblaze's destruction of the ThunderClan family tree has been undone; so now he would only have three children. Ivy, Dove, and Fly. I like it, because Fly is growing up with all the expectations of being Firekin, but also holding the knowledge that her loving father... wasn't always the best, to her older sisters.
It would be cool if Fly was always a little bit of a rebel, and found a really good friend in WindClan. I could work her into the conflict of TBC better too, being accused of being in a HalfClan relationship when the truth is that Snaptooth is more like a brother to her. Then, of course, have them leave the Clans together.
Brushblaze's litter would be Snaptooth, Smokehaze, and Galerunner... and so, Galerunner would be left alone after his brother leaves permanently with Flywhisker.
But I'm still unsure. It's a big change, because I'd been planning for Fly and Snap to remain siblings in BB. But it does seem to work better, thinking about it...
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"Hey There, Dio"
July 2023 prompt "pool" / 442 words / rated g / tw; Eddie is drunk (don't know if that counts as a trigger) / @steddiemicrofic
Steve glances over the pool table, watching dark curls fall in front of the other man's face. Tattoos stretched out on his skin as he moves his arms out while holding the cue stick aiimed at a dark green ball. Steve lets a soft chuckle rip through his chest when he realizes the guy doesn’t know what he’s doing. Either that or he was too drunk to realize his mistake.
“Hey there Dio, you're supposed to hit the white ball into the striped balls.” Steve comments amused as he holds the stick against his chest. Snorting as he watches the other drunkenly move around the table to the white ball.
“I knew that.”
“Sure you did, pal.”
Steve shakes his head as his eyes land on the Dio patch on the other’s vest. Tracing the details on the image as he waits for the other to hit the ball. Which never comes as the guy misses and falls face-first into the baize. It was absolutely pathetic and Steve forces himself to hold his laughter back. Not understanding why the other was so determined to play a match with him if he was to wasted to see straight.
Instead of teasing the other like he wanted to, he moves and wraps his arm around the others waist. Sliding his arm underneath the leather jacket as he pulls the others arm around his shoulder so he could help him walk.
“Oooooh, gotta buy me a drink first big boy,” The flirting is new and it causes Steves brain to shortwire with confusion. He did walk in a straight bar right?
“Well good thing waters free then.” Steve says amused. He doesn’t know who this guy was but he was determined to make sure he was safe for the night.
“Noooo, not water.” The man tosses his head back almost causing both of them to flop back onto the pool table. Steve grunts a little at the amount of weight he has to lift before he gets a better grip on the other to help him walk over to a booth. Being dragged down to sit next to the orher as the man tosses his legs over his lap. Tilting his head a bit, before moving forward and licking the side of Steve’s face.
“Finder Keepers.”
Steve's face scrunches up a bit as he tries to lift his hand up and wipe the spit off from his face. Trying his hardest to be mad at the other whose eyes have grown wide all of a sudden.
“You’s the most prettiest boy I ever met.”
And oh god tonight, was going to be a long night.
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Lucid Dreamer (2/2)
part 1
Gepard stalls almost a week before he finally goes out to the safehouse, and it takes him a couple days to find it because Sampo didn't have the time left to be wasn't super specific about the location. But he does find it.
It's pretty bare bones, really. Gepard knows that was probably to be expected, but… It feels crushing, when he realizes there are so few personal things here. It's nothing specific to Sampo. Just some food, some medical supplies. A cot and a heater and a lot of mismatched blankets. Nothing to remember someone by.
But he does find the letters, in a metal box stashed away under the bed.
There are two for him. Three for Natasha, and two for Seele. One for Hook, one for Serval, one for Pela, one for Bronya.
Bronya's is mostly business. They knew each other from the whole Stellaron incident, but not much beyond that, and the incoming catastrophe is a more pressing matter. Seele's is actually two copies of the same letter, and Gepard realizes why when Seele is so angry she rips the first one up without reading it. He gives her the copy a couple days later, and she slinks off without a word.
Pela seems completely normal after hers is delivered, but Gepard knows better than to trust that. The next day, he finds her asleep in bed with Serval, bottles abandoned on the floor, both their eye makeup smeared and running and Pela's glasses horribly smudged and crooked on her face. Serval doesn't read hers in front of him, but she's clingy with Gepard, Pela, and Lynx for quite a while after. She throws herself into her work a lot. She insists the heater from the safehouse is busted and she needs to keep it. It's too dangerous for use by someone who's not an engineer. Might burn their house down or something. Gepard doesn't argue.
Hook's letter is short, with easy to read words. The rest of it is actually a treasure map, and she and the moles spend the next several days running through the Underground, finding hidden candy and toys. Hook asks them when Sampo is coming back, because one of the marbles she found from his map looks green, just like his eyes, and she wants to give it to him. Natasha shoos Gepard out of the clinic before he can even begin to think of an answer.
Natasha refuses to let him see what's in her letters, which ok, fine, he'll respect that. He hears from Bronya who heard from Seele who heard from Natasha herself though that one of the letters was a map and the other a catalogue, with all of Sampo's hidden "warehouses." Gepard promptly marches himself back out to the frontlines, where he can turn a blind eye. If a ton of stolen goods suddenly enters the black market, and if the orphanage and the clinic suddenly have new supplies, well, technically that's none of his business.
Gepard goes to bed, curls up under mismatched blankets and closes his eyes.
He doesn't dream.
One of Gepard's letters was also business, like Bronya's and Natasha's. He and Bronya follow everything meticulously, down to the letter, because there has to be some good to get out of all this, there has to be. Gepard can't let it all be for nothing, it would bury him.
And so the catastrophe passes. Not without casualties, and not without a lot of damage and destruction. But Belobog survives.
And after that, time just kind of…goes on. Gepard has been a part of the Silvermanes since he was old enough to enlist. The Fragmentum had gotten so much worse in the years before Welt sealed the Stellaron. He knows the statistics, it is literally his and Pela's jobs to keep track. He knows when he sees a face everyday in the camps and then it's suddenly gone. He's not unfamiliar with things like grief and loss.
He still catches himself checking the trashcans and the supply crates and soldiers' footprints sometimes, though.
But there comes a night where Gepard goes to bed, holding the mismatched blankets to his face, and he dreams. And it's strange, it's off, it sticks with him. Sampo doesn't look the same. He's thinner. His muscles have atrophied. He looks like how Gepard has seen soldiers after months in the hospital.
The most unsettling difference is there's a scar across the left side of his head, Gepard can see it over his ear, peeking out past his hairline, carving towards his cheek. Sampo is always careful about his face. Gepard once saw him dodge a Fragmentum monster and literally let it cut across his neck just to keep his face clear. He wouldn't let that happen for nothing.
Their actions in the dream itself aren't new. Sampo seems tired, run down and worn out, but he announces his presence with aplomb by lobbing a bunch of smoke bombs off the rooftops and sending his soldiers scrambling. Same shit, different day.
The new part is what he says when Gepard chases him out to the edges of the camp, tackles him into the snow. Gepard pins him to the frozen ground to detain him and Sampo doesn't even fight it, just looks up at him like he's seeing sunrise for the first time in months.
"I'll be home in one week."
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