Son "Crow" Masayoshi

SON "CROW" MASAYOSHI, FAE I was never faithful, and I was never one to trust. Borderline and schizo, and guaranteed to cause a fuss. I was never loyal except to my own pleasure zone. I'm forever black-eyed, a product of a broken home.

[prozny]

Locked in an old Nightmare

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

prozny:

Henryk liked it when he begged. Crow’s defiance broke at the mention of her name. Hana. It was far too easy to get him to do as the vampire pleased. Did he need his name for it? Hers seemed to suffice to get him on his knees. Hana. It made him wonder about the girl, made him fantasize about tearing her apart before his eyes. How would the faerie look like as her life was drained from her veins? He could order him to clap as it happened, to thank him for taking her life and there would be nothing the faerie could do about it but obey. His smile was wide. Dark thoughts delighted him. Crow’s face twisted into indescribable pain, that’d have delighted him more. “Show me where she lives, Kemono.” A command meant to frighten him. He wanted to watch him unravel into sheer despair.

The vampire pulled his touch away from the quivering creature. “Thank me, Crow, for letting you live.” This time he granted him a choice. He could do as he was told, or he could not. “That was smart,” Henryk noted, tilting his head as he studied the man. “I let you walk away from me once. I think once is enough.” His smile was wide. A gleam of wicked intention flashed through his eyes and he parted his lips to add: “Don’t leave Ashbourne, Kemono, and don’t let Hana leave either. If she tries — kill her.” There would be no escaping him this time, he’d make sure of that.

Crow’s teeth chattered. His body, blindly obedient to Henryk’s order, pulled out his phone. He opened the map app mutely and showed him the small pin that was marked Home. 21 Aspen Dr., Ashbourne.

The phone was shaking from Crow’s quivering. He was taller than Henryk, and had a whole copse of trees at his command, but what did that matter? He’d been forbidden to attack Henryk years ago, and there was no expiration date on an order enforced by his name.

“Thank you for your mercy, for letting me live,” Crow stammered. As a child prostitute, he had learned how to say things that made his skin crawl and say them respectfully, convincingly. “Please, show further mercy in sparing my little sister.”

He had no recourse. He had no options. He couldn’t protect her, the one thing he had dedicated his whole life to do. The hand not holding the quaking phone was fisted in his shirt.

When he heard the vampire’s next words, he began to weep. “Oh God,” he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose and drawing a long, shuddering breath to try to quiet the crying.

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

Stretch

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

bloodxspice:

“I’m not super hungry right now.  I had a pretty big breakfast,” she explained before adding, “I had three strawberry scones and some coffee.”  Just in case he thought she meant blood.  She tried not to drink blood as much as possible really.  Blood bags were fine but she hadn’t found a good enough supplier yet so she tried to get her fill on human food.  Didn’t work too well but it was a valiant effort.  “If you’re hungry though, we can go grab something.”

“No, I’m fine. Got to get back home, anyway.” Which was quite a lie, but Crow didn’t feel nearly as comfortable around Clary know that he knew what really sustained her—which was not strawberry scones. Right color, though.

“I’ll see you around, Clary,” he told her, rubbing his head with a surly smile crossing his handsome face.

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

Brave

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

faerielysloane:

It had been so fast when it happened, and Sloane was left standing dumbfounded in the shop. The road had been busy, cars passing by quickly. However, one car had pulled to the side and dropped off something, and it had not been long before she saw the man rush forward to it. Although she had watched from inside the shop at the time, she had followed the man out when the worker denied him the ability to bring the dog in.

Sloane shivered at the breeze that hit her that accompanied the rain, but she tried to brush it aside. She turned to the man just as he walked in the opposite direction. She ran to catch up to him, calling out: “Hey!”

Tugging her jacket tight around her, the blonde ducked under the awning of the next shop over to escape the rain. Her eyes darted between the dog and the man that held the dog. “That…” Sloane shook her head, the laugh that sounded from her nervous and soft. “That was brave of you.”

“Thanks,” Crow said, an unmistakably surly expression crossing his face. “Do you have a working phone?” he asked, with a guarded look over her. A tense moment stretched until he was wracked by a convulsive sneeze.

“Ah-choo!”

“Let’s get out of this cold and wet,” he muttered, and with a shy glance into her eyes, led the way to his nearby car, a blue Volvo.

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

rhyscostello:

Rhys stood there like a deer in the headlights, racking his brain for anything that would give him a clue as to how and why he was in this mess. All that came to him were dim neon lights, a crowd of faceless voices, and the potent aroma of vodka. A bar. Maybe a night club?

“No, not at all,” Rhys assured the man, his voice pathetically cracking. “At least I don’t think so.” His methods of investigation weren’t conventional by any means, but seduction was not his go-to. That would get too personal, too intimate, and he wasn’t one to mix business with pleasure. 

Knowing the man’s name by now through means of a lead, Rhys stared fixedly on Crow’s face, any lower was… private. Laughing nervously, Rhys asked him, “I don’t know, maybe. I don’t remember if that― Is that what I did?”

Crow was a faerie, and the truth of the stranger’s honest surprise in finding Crow in his bed was obvious—everything was obvious when you can read minds.

“Relax,” Crow said, his lips twitching up in a smirk. “I get the sense you don’t know why I’m here. Makes two of us. Looks like we made some drunken mistakes, though.” He stood up, nude as the day he was born, and stretched. He began looking for clothing that seemed like his.

His back was now to Rhys, showing off the latticework of ropy scars marring his otherwise perfect form.

Someone had obviously taken offense to something Crow did. There was an odd quality about the scarring—like his flesh had grown to manhood around them. Even a layman could guess he’d gotten them as a child.

[matildahunt-blog]

Chance Arrangment

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

matildahunt:

 Matilda finished a few notes and she nodded. “ I certainly won’t be restraining you in any way.” She assured him. As for finding him someone he can talk to about his ptsd. She was certain she could look around and find him a good doctor to talk to. But in the mean time that was all stuff they could worry about as the time went on.   “ Now, as the matter of payment. You mentioned you were saving money for a car yes?” she asked recounting their conversation over e-mail when they made the arrangement to meet. 

“Yes ma’am,” Crow said, still blushing and off-balance by her kindness. “Mine is on its last legs, and if I want to get it certified to carry the children from the Children’s Home I work at, I need a newer model. But—money is, as ever, tight.”

His eyes ducked, squirming in his seat. He hated asking for or dealing directly with money. It seemed terribly rude, though that particular cultural more hadn’t been in vogue for a century at least, even in Asia.

[clarice-dagny-archived]

To dye would be an awfully big adventure

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

damienxhunt:

bloodxspice:

Clary was nervous up until the point when Crow started to actually work on her hair.  He was gently but had that fierceness one needed when it came to working in such a profession.  She was still curious about the whole ‘Roger’ thing but again, she held her tongue so he could concentrate on his work.  In fact, for once in her life, the little vampire didn’t say a peep.  Like a doll, she was silent and obedient, knowing better than to disturb the stylist.  She did everything he said, following from station to station as he started the actual dying process. 

“No, nothing like that,” she said when he inquired about why there were so many blood suckers around.  “I mean, there could be but I don’t know about it.  We kinda were forced to move here,” she said shrugging momentarily before correcting herself and going back to being perfectly still.  They’d all gone there on their own free will, but given how much weird shit had gone on in the town and how many of there were in fact arriving daily, she didn’t buy it.  There had to be some kind of supernatural force at work.

@damienxhunt​

He could hear them chattering about and Damien let out an audible sigh before lifting the magazine to cover his face for a while. The process seemed tedious, stripping one’s hair of the old dye and making sure Clary wouldn’t go bald from all the chemicals. 

The smell was nauseating and the whir of the machines were grating but from the chaos he could pick up what the small vampire was wondering abut: why everyone seemed to be flocking towards Ashbourne. Damien finally lowered the magazine and he glanced at the pair; Clary’s  hair was wrapped in foil and Crow focused his attention on her, he hummed before taking out his mobile to send Jerry the doorman a message that he won’t be coming in for the afternoon.

@crowmasayoshi​

Crow made a noise of slight disgust. “Rough to be a faerie in a town so consumed with vampires,” he commented. But his hands in her hair were still gentle and competent.

They went from station to station, in what was to a non-hair care professional a dizzying array of steps.

Finally, Crow leaned her back. “Okay. Do you want a magazine? You have to sit like this for a good little while. I’ll let you know when you’re done.”

@bloodxspice​

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

Swim Lessons

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

julietbowman:

There was a story there, Lee could tell. But she didn’t press it. “Right. No holding under, no grabbing. I can do that.” Lee said, nodding in agreement. “Well I’ll be a very good teacher. I promise you there are no better hands you could be in.” With that Lee reached for the hem of her shirt and then paused. “Uh, do you mind-?” She said, holding up a hand and making a turn around gesture. She knew it was rather a moot point because they were both going to be in the water, but she just didn’t like men watching her while she stripped.

“I look forward to it,” Crow said, transparently grateful for the help.

At her reminder, he swiftly turned his back to her, staring over the ripples of the broad lake. A nearby loon was floating with her brood, paddling through the water. He loved loons. He stayed up late some nights listening to their mournful calls from the lake.

A water skater passed him, little feet skimming the water. He smiled into the water, waiting for his teacher to be ready.

“This isn’t so bad,” he muttered to himself.

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

Kind

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

cal-rook:

“True, but even atypical siblings I think retain some aspects of a normal sibling relationship.” Cal knew they’d been through a lot of hardship, though not exactly all the details. Still, they seemed to act like siblings to him, if with a closer bond than most. “Well, if you want someone to encourage her to get out of the house or show her around, I humbly offer my services.” Cal grinned, not necessarily meaning it in a dirty way but he was always happy to show someone a good time, whether that just meant taking them out to a club or other, more intimate things. 

“Then clearly you should be working with them. I don’t think it would suit me, personally.” Children made too many demands on you, though Cal didn’t hate them. He’d just been careful not to have any of his own over the centuries. “Dye Hard? Of course, it would be a pun. But I’ll be sure to. You may be the only one I can trust with my hair.” 

They seemed to have reached their destination, at least a dirt road that the suspension of the car didn’t do much to stop the shock of. Luckily they didn’t drive far and Cal grinned as Crow grabbed the necessities before he climbed out of the car. Cal laughed. “You know I am, darling, but I don’t mind proving it to you again.” He let Crow take the lead, as he didn’t know where they were going, but he was interested in finding out.

Crow groaned. “Don’t make the moves on my little sis, Cal,” he reprimanded, leading the hike into a trail that led up through to a shallow river that fed into the lake below them.

It would be a few minutes of effort to get there, but the canopy was thick and green and the grasses and wildflowers high—perfect weather and setting to put a faerie at his ease.

Crow laughed. “I didn’t make the name, Dye Hard. But I do like it. Of course,” Crow said blithely. There were professional stylists to the stars that didn’t know as much about hair as Crow did. It was his passion and his guilty pleasure—hobby barely covered it.

Crow trailed his fingers through the high, sweet summer grasses, ignoring the way the juices stained the white shirt he was wearing green.

At the top of the trail, the broad river cut through the loam, the silvery fish darting here and there to bypass the round boulders that some ancient glacier had left in their path.

Crow hitched his sleeves up, the sunset starting on the horizon in sparks of red and gold. He jumped from rock to rock, trying to spare his good shoes from the water.

He clambered up the biggest boulder, which had a dry, flat top, still warm from the sun.

He poked his head over to see if Cal needed a hand, the sky lit up scarlet behind his hair.

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

Swim Team

@ofautumnx

Another day, another attempt to swim. Sheer determination was all the kept him going. His phobia tried to stop him every morning he went swimming, but phobias were made to be mastered, in his opinion.

So he was here, in black swim trunks, eyeing the water with trepidation. He glanced at a woman next to the soft lapping shore of the lake. She appeared to be drawing, a fit distraction from his fear sweat and goosebumps about getting in the water.

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

Charity Case

@completely-cedric

Crow went to the Sanatorium because frankly put, there was no way he was going to Pandemonium. Damien Hunt was the lesser of two evils by far, and the less time Crow spent around Henryk, the better.

Crow was in the Sanatorium, nursing a beer. He brought the drink to his lips, looked around the bar, and nearly spat the sip he’d taken out.

Putting his drink down resolutely, he slapped some money on the bar for a tip and stalked over to the offender.

“Hello,” he told the con man. “Remember me?”

And remember the children’s march you bankrupted, he wanted to add, but let it hang in the air.

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

Flood Plain

Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, June 1617

@brandfrost

The rains came on sudden and hard. Crow, a foreigner in a strange land, tried to hug a cliff. The rain beat down harder than Crow had ever felt before, high winds slamming him repeatedly into the rock wall lining the path until he was bruised, disoriented, and bleeding from a collection of scrapes.

There had been only one other traveler on the road, a dour European man Crow could barely see in the rain.

A crash echoed, a great shearing sound rolling down the mountain, and Crow realized he was next to an entrance of a cave, a darker shadow through the torrential rain. The wind plucked at him, just as the rumbling grew louder.

Ahead of them, the side of the cliff cut off, a huge mound of mud and stone rolling down over the road.

Landslide, Crow realized. Grabbing the other traveler thoughtlessly, he pulled him into the jagged mouth of the cave.

Only minutes later, the clay and mud slammed down the trembling cliff from above them, burying them. Crow caged his head in his arms and screamed, stumbling away from the entrance and soon bumping into something.

There was an old statue in the cave, from before the days Indonesia had become Islamic, some ancient God in a state of disrepair.

The rumbling quieted, the landslide over. Holes in the shallow cave’s ceiling let in rain and air so they wouldn’t suffocate.

Crow wondered how to grow plants to burn without alerting the man to the fact that they hadn’t come here naturally. His teeth chattered, the stones icy when he crouched down close to them. His ears were ringing from the roar.

“This is great,” he muttered in Japanese. “Hello,” he told the European in Dutch, “My name is Crow.” He used Kraai, the Dutch word for Crow. "What languages do you speak?”

He began subtly healing the bruises and scrapes, touching his chin and frowning at the blood.

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

Dentist’s Office

@arbormorgan

Even faeries need to go to the dentist. Herbal healing wasn’t a remedy for everything.

It should have been perfectly normal. He was sitting in the waiting room, pawing through an outdated copy of Home & Garden. He looked up and found himself staring in the face of a nightmare.

The security on his building four years ago was great. The video was crisp and clear.

It had shown this face, in the cold minutes before Crow’s lover was murdered.

He had studied that face. He had spent time with it, as you should when you first meet an enemy.

Faced with it now, on a real person in his vicinity, he went white as a sheet. His hands were shaking so bad he dropped the magazine, and he hadn’t noticed until it had hit the ground with an attention-grabbing slap.

He needed to play pretend that he was a human, because if she realized he was a supernatural, he was dead. 

Dead as Cole was.

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

Meet the Teacher

@lebelleloup

It was a tradition in the Home that the children picked who represented them on parent-teacher nights, and Alex had been emphatic as a sixteen-year-old can be—he wanted Crow to come. It was Crow’s day off tomorrow and he’d worked a double shift today to cover someone, but that didn’t matter at all. He’d been meeting with each teacher in turn, taking copious of his drawn notes, mixing and matching the faces of teachers to the stories Alex told of people he liked, and disliked. This was the last teacher of the night, and Crow sipped his coffee to stay alert.

Alex deserved to have someone alert looking after his best interests and addressing his academic needs.

He walked into the bright classroom, smiling at the diagrams and colorful posters on the walls.

“Ms. Beauchamp?” he asked, offering his hand. “I’m Crow, Crow Masayoshi. I work for Frost’s Home, I’m Alex Zhu’s mentor.” He’d been the last one called by just about every teacher, thanks to Alex’s Z name. He was last in line for the history teacher, too. Sitting watching the couples waiting for their turn, he’d been glad Alex wasn’t here to realize that he was the only one in this class who didn’t have a two-parent household. He hadn’t even seen a single parent family, nor a same-sex couple. It made Crow vaguely nervous, and sad on behalf of his charge.

And maybe a little pocket of sadness left over for a little boy named Beast who’d raised his little sister since he was half Alex’s age.

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

Ding Dong Delivery

@barleyjawsbenjamen

Crow leaned on the doorbell, face in a permanent moue of displeasure, hearing the sharp buzz from the room inside. He didn't stop leaning on the doorbell, the underweight Yorkie puppy in his arms licking his hands still despite its eyelids drooping in tiredness. Crow was pretty tired himself, after one-by-one finding homes for all the dogs he could manage. Bulky shopping bags on his arms contained puppy chow, toys, a halter and leash, all manner of things important to the care and upkeep of a dog. Crow hated puppy mills so much. This poor fellow in his arms, the last of his brothers and sisters, had had a rough go already, at such an early age. But Crow was hoping the person whose buzzer he was leaning his weight on at three in the morning would change that for him.

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

scwyeriism:

“I actually volunteer,” he replied, “and more then likely I’m going to bring another one of these adorable bastards home with me. I swear to god I need to get a bigger house” he snorted, looking at the small dog in front of him. “Alright, this one?” he began to explain, “likes to lick his nuts and then kiss you. I’m 99% sure he knows what he’s doing too. But he’s sweet, I might get him”

Crow smirked. “You’ve just described 90% of dogs, sir. You should definitely get him. He needs a home, and he’s starting to get stressed in the shelter.”

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

aubrey-belvoir:

“But you’re not denying it…” She whispered loudly, allowing the prying ears to hear every syllable out of her lips. Crow replayed her tactic, yet Aubrey knew she won the marginalized vote; a Black female psychologist with a whispered history of abuse. How would Crow top that? “Just because you think everything is a trick, doesn’t mean it is.” She sniffles convincingly, wiping away the salt water tears as numerous bystanders murmured quiet “guys, let’s talk about this somewhere else” or “Bre? Want to talk?”

“I can’t believe you!” And with that, she ran out in a fit of tears, allowing co-workers whom she conditioned through years of small talk to chase after her.

Crow controlled himself from rolling his eyes. He let her go, fully aware this wouldn’t be the last time he was at odds with Aubrey Belvoir.