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@exitvelo
WE'RE DANCING CLOSE LIKE WE'RE ALONE. // an independent & private multi-muse since ‘20, ft. original characters and an array of canon muses across various genres. constant low-activity. please read the rules before following or interacting. affiliated with sachingja, veilhouse, lerecueil, and stmystery.
💌 // 01. RULES. 02. MEMES. 03. VISUALS. 04. @ ⚔️ & 🦊
happpyyyy birthday dearest vic!!!!! i hope you have a wonderful day ahead of you where you can take a moment to feel proud of yourself and elated by the fact that you are so so loved and cherished in this community and amongst friends. i met you years ago now and i have been ever grateful since to learn from you and experience your friendship!! you've been so kind and welcoming every day, you're incredibly talented and so on top of it, i admire so much how actively you feed your brain with books and lore because that level of knowledge shows in your writing and what you put down. truly excellent and lovely i adore you so much!!! also just want to shout out sheik & zelda & impa in particular- i knew NOTHING about loz and these delightful cast of muses you write have compelled me so so much over the years that i get to now enjoy what loz is all about!!! thanks for being mi friend ilysm and happy birthday sweet ♡♡♡♡♡♡
havi knowing you sent this at a completely reasonable time for us and i am answering this at a time completely out of my ass and common sense tickles me a little to say the least ... but please thank you sooooo so much my angel for this wonderful and sweet message and for being a long-standing supporter and enabler of my writing niches and insanity as well as my convoluted display of loz lore and everything surrounding these games bc lord knows i'd probably have thrown in the towel if it wouldn't have been down to you, among the lovely few i stick writing with, constantly letting me do all that. your patience and your steadfastness and your humour and your incredible wit and intellect make it such a joy to be your friend and to see you share your talent and creativity with me is such a well for me to dive into, it is complete amazement !!! just so lovely to have someone as wonderful, nifty, supportive, and fun as you around, i am sending you the biggest hug and so much love thank you soooo for being who you !! 🧡💛🧡💛🧡💛🧡💛
VIC YOU ABSOLUTE LEGEND!!!! GEMINI EXTRAVAGANZA!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! it is SUCH a pleasure to know you and share a creative space with you. you have such a bright, relaxing presence, and a clear surplus of talent that drew me to you instantly and got me itching to wanna write with you!!!! and how rewarding an experience it's been. <3 your commitment to building easy but long-term rp partnerships is a lost art these days, and (~selfishly~) i'm clinging to you knowing that you are a diamond in the rough! i love how much detail you stack in your replies -- when i get a notif from you (and also when i read your stuff on dash) i giggle and kick my feet cuz i know i'm gonna get a buncha paragraphs that shoot my own yapptitude and inspiration through the roof !!! like there's always so much substance to dig into and it's a testament to how expansive your brain is !!!!!!!!! pls pls never stop writing. i am SUCH a massive fan of you. and i just LIKE you, as a person, so so so deeply much. <3 i hope you have the besstttttt birthday ever. you deserve it !!!!!!!!!!!!
aqssa the way this message had me squealing in the best way like just straight up cheesing thank you so so so much !!! T_____T please know my social capacity is soaked up by work rn in terrible ways bc otherwise i'd be in your business every damn day because i soak up every word you put out like a sponge as well, the feeling is so so so mutual. you just delight me so much and your writing is so alive and vivid, it always makes me feel like i gotta continue picking up all kinds of different books to read to expand my writing brain. you are a whole diamond yourself and i am so pleased and excited for so many more writing adventures to come on here, so thank you for being around and always so present and ready with your skill but also your time and creativity !!! makes spending time on here so worth it believe you me. thank you sooo much for your lovely well-wishes !! 💘💝💖💞
the HAPPIEST of birthdays to you, my dear friend!! 🥹❤️ i can hardly believe how long we've known each other at this point and honestly can barely imagine NOT knowing you which makes me feel lucky EVERY day. you are kind, so unimaginably loyal, FUNNY as fuck, and one of THEEEE most passionate people i know. not only do i absolutely adore that we share so many incredibly niche interests (you get me) but your enthusiasm for what you love ALWAYS has the power to draw me in too! and it goes without saying (but i'll say it anyway) what an exceptionally talented writer you are and how much i LOVE creating with you. LONG LIVE our ability to telepathically communicate the Vibes of a new dynamic every single time.
anyway i know you've been having a ROUGH time at work lately and have been feeling burned out, so PLEASE take some time for yourself today to relax and take care of yourself. you deserve it more than anybody i know. LOVE YOUUUUUUU!!! ❤️
me periodically checking in today just to scroll over this message while barraged with work nonsense ???? you better fucking believe it and it made me smile every damn time. there truly are no words for the gift of your friendship, of you as a singular person in yourself, and the absolute joy and delight and amazement and care and tenderness your friendship has brought into basically my whole adult life (like ... 10 years girl it's about to be 10 years!!) i am so thankful to know someone as wonderful and warm-hearted and supportive as you celebrates me today and every day, it always makes me wanna step up and also to send you ten hundred more crazy brain waves i know you will get 100%. i love you sooooo so much like sincerely from the bottom of my little but as you know vastly weird heart. you're a blessing on my life and i am so grateful to know you 🩷☺️🥹💖💗💓💓💖💝
🌺 Send this to ten blogs you think are wonderful! 🌺 ( also happy early birthday to one of the most original and versatile writers i've ever witnessed on this site muah muah muahhh ily )
calli my dear first of all thank you thank you but also says YOU one of the greatest and most creative writers i have had the joy of experiencing and writing and thinking and feeling with ... you are 100/10 too !!! 🩷
[41.] august being told to open her mouth and doing it before kassandra’s sentence is finished. (sorry about her)
stages of intimacy, accepting. | ft. @yharnum
as much as august learned to trust kassandra's ship, she enjoyed the steady ground of the earth just a tad bit more. the inherent truth in this was that the thing august trusted most about the ocean was kassandra, and being there with her, and knowing that her trust was rewarded with safety and joy; it had little to do with the actual element of the ocean. there was something to be said about the confined quarters of kassandra's cabin, narrow and cozy, and how handsome kass was in the low light of the lamp while the sea was hidden behind the hull of the ship and they were on their own, just the two of them, nights and days of travel to spend time on. but even so, august had missed being under the roof of an actual house, in the presence of the land's well-known noises, the look of people milling around, conducting the businesses of their days, the welcome familiarity of her own house. kass had always somehow fit her way through the doorway, with the real talent of someone with so much tenacity it was a problem sometimes but mostly just reason to swoon for august, and reasons for that she had enough. the woman she loved may had been meant for the sea first, but now she was also meant for, wrapped around august like vine, or stone to moss, and august wouldn't let go now. not with an actual, immovable bed so close at their disposal. it were the little things, weren't they?
syd from ezra : [12.] memorizing the shape of them for the first time with your palms.
stages of intimacy, accepting. | ft. @lerecueil
sydney couldn't remember the last time she's been this close to someone, the last time anyone had touched her in a way that wasn't just to move her out of the way in the middle of service or duck behind her while yelling corner over her ear, past her shoulder. she couldn't remember the last time anyone made her feel this light either, outside of herself and yet wholly aware of her body, the way ezra managed to do with just one look at her - sometimes even less, sometimes just a message from him, thinking of her in the middle of their days, already was enough to make her feel like she was floating. it was strange and rare, for a guy to even manage to make her feel this, but ezra was special. she had seen it at a glance, heard it when he talked and could tell it when he hugged her close, when his fingers were around hers, when he let her talk his ear off about pasta combinations and different temperatures of oil in different kinds of pans, and more than that when he listened to everything else she said, took note of everything else she did. she didn't know that was possible, for someone's touch to feel like an indulgence, to stoke warmth under her skin, to make her yearn, make her want to grasp him further in her hands, make her want to let herself be caught by him. she trusted him, with all of herself, with the fire in her veins, and she knew he wouldn't disappoint.
[35.] 🍃🌋
stages of intimacy, accepting. | ft. @sachingja
maybe that awful show i did and the crazy work marathon i pulled last week depleted my social and creative batteries more than i thought …. bear (🐻) with me ….
❛ ah! but of course. ❜ a cool hand rests just under her own, sticky little fingers on all five counts. from the slight curve of her gaze she can see that determined thumb digging its way in. it’s a small effort to pull the compass entirely to herself, as if kassandra hadn’t noticed the hand there to begin with it. she marvels at the compass, a fine piece of work, and a brilliant edition for the adrastia. old barnabas had been ranting for one after the last compass they possessed had been used to promptly smash a pirate’s face in. she turns it over, a smile playing on her lips, then furrows her brows in delight. ❛ funny, this one doesn’t have your name on it. ❜
she hasn’t yet decided to claim it in an end of discussion way just yet. instead, she flips it idly in her palm— there was no worry in her poise about it being potentially snatched. at six foot someone’s problem, she had a way of holding her ground few could challenge.
and in speaking of that, she begins to recognise the woman before her. this one, with hair a few shades lighter than blood. this one wasn’t alone, kassandra had seen her crew in passing before. & she never forgot face— well, not usually, not interesting ones at least.
❛ clawhats! no, strawhats. ❜ that had to be right. this reminded her of barnbabas’ hooting over the growing potential of pirates, which she had glanced over narrow-eyed, & how quickly this lot as well had climbed their way up the wanted ladder. her smile softened, though, noticeable, her fingers remained very firmly on that pretty compass.
❛ how do you do? i don’t think we’ve been introduced before. i’m kassandra. you are? i’d know if you’d carved your name on this. ❜
the strawhats had begun to gather notoriety. if not after they decimated arlong park, then once they returned from drum island, and then alabasta, with more survival and guts under their belt than anyone might have given them credit for in the beginning ( well, anyone besides shanks, or so luffy liked to claim. ) that meant that luffy's bounty also spoke for itself, and so was his face painted on all of those damn posters, not to mention the additional ones racked up between some of their other crew members. nami did not stand out too much, not when she had her boys in front of her, but she was a strawhat just like them, for better or for worse, and when she'd have protested that name call a few months ago now she could take on that identity and wear it - if only to deepen her frown across the tall woman who was not relinquishing the compass nami most definitely saw and had in her grasp first. damn it.
" strawhats. pretty sure you've seen the captain of our ship, or our ship. they're both unmissable, " nami responded dryly, eyeing the compass in the taller woman's - in kassandra's hand. there seemed to be no way she'd hand it over willingly, but then again nami had lived a whole life before setting foot on the merry, before meeting luffy or zoro, where she became quite good at unhanding people of things they didn't really want to hand over. so this was a woman with quite an attitude and not some dimwitted idiot of a pirate who couldn't even tell his north from his south on a clear sea day; that meant little to nami in the grand scheme of things, though it didn't help that kassandra had heard of them before, probably even seen their entire crew. where on earth was zoro when she needed him? he could have probably pissed kassandra off with his presence alone, enough for nami to swipe the compass from her grasp.
fighting the urge to roll her eyes, nami uncrossed her arms and leaned against the table with other, far less useful and definitely not as well-crafted means of navigation on them. nami didn't need another log pose or compass to aid her work, but she enjoyed to have tools that spoke to her, that she wanted to feel in her grip and around her fingers while she moved them around and she thought of their ongoing journey, where to go next. that was no crime, not even under the eyes of watchful marines or nastier pirates than the strawhats themselves, but nami seemed to have found the one hitch in her plan. " i know you're not gonna hand it over just 'cause i'm asking again. so what's it gonna take? because my name is on it, and will be in the future, no matter if you have it now. meanwhile you're not a navigator. you're - " nami gave kassandra a long look up and down, the rough handsomeness of her and the easy swagger, the undone smile. " a captain. and captains don't need compasses. "
before kōji had ever entered a lab, before he had ever even formulated an actual idea regarding the purpose of his life, he had sat in his room and had stared out his window at night, into a clear sky dotted with stars all over, a bright moon that shone across the sea of trees beyond their backyard as if someone had poured a bucked of white paint all over the landscape. it had been the woods first, the leaves and ferns, the grass and the trees, that had given him a sense of peace, but the endless, vast eternity of the night sky had given him a sense of curiosity, a desire to know more, and he had followed that map once it had formulated itself inside of his head to its logical conclusion. the actuality of what was up there had never occurred to kōji until he had stood by and watched people he had barely known, who had mostly passed him by during his rotation and failed to make small talk he did not know how to endure, leave for the stars. it was a foreign emotion that had encroached on kōji then, almost like wonder but not quite, and he had spent a few days obsessively tracking their route before impa had found him and dragged him out to a proper lunch, sorry for this intern they had brought in fresh out of university and younger than the rest of them. only a few months later, satō had found his way into kōji's life, and after some more time had passed, he had decided to stick to him like glue, and kōji had allowed it, and slowly his life had turned around, something that had been quite boring and lonely before suddenly came alive, bursting at the seams with colors, because this was what satō did to everything he touched and everyone he knew and kōji was no exception, just a little tougher to crack. but he cracked, enough for satō to make himself at home, and now kōji found it quite hard to imagine his life otherwise.
it should have not surprised him, perhaps, satō's revelation. their entire lives revolved around making sure that other people could see the other side of the moon, chart a path towards the stars. that it should become one of them did not come as such a surprise to kōji, but he found himself frozen to the pavement anyway, his entire world expanding and shrinking together at once, a weird physical phenomenon that made him feel as if he was stuck in a simulation. like he was part of one of his many equations, made to be solved by someone far smarter, far more experienced than him; satō already stretched towards the sky on any regular day, but kōji could not imagine him up there among the stars. it sunk a fear into him that he had yet to experience ever before, and when satō hugged him close kōji stayed where he was, his arms hanging limp by his side before he remembered how those things were supposed to go, and then he squeezed his eyes shut and wound his arms as far around satō as they could go, fingers digging into the flimsy jacket he was wearing. always dressed too cool for the weather while he was complaining about kōji's body temperature, who couldn't feel anything but satō's body close to his. the equation they had made him work through all but forgotten, all he could think about was satō going up there, with hideo out of all people, out of reach farther than ever possible. it made kōji feel adrift on land. " what do you mean, it's probably going to be you? " kōji asked, indignant, feeling angry and young and small all at once, like he hadn't worked here for years by now. like this wasn't how things usually were supposed to go anyway. " they have other engineers they can send up there, you are not the only engineer working here, " he added, his words muffled by satō's chest, barely audible. he was just complaining for the sake of it but he couldn't quite contain himself.
his words wouldn't change anything and neither would his protest. all he could do was let satō go and climb into the passenger seat, waiting for satō to round the vehicle and start the car, and even then he kept silent, waiting for the heating to warm up enough so he could get more comfortable. satō had been right, kōji's hands were cold, always too cold no matter the season, but he could barely focus on it or on the scenery passing them by when his head suddenly revolved around one thing only. in just a few weeks, satō would go up into space and he would be gone for ten days at least, and kōji didn't like the thought of it one bit. he would have to talk to hideo before, try and make an appointment or just corner him in the cafeteria or wherever he was doing stupid astronaut training, and tell him in no uncertain terms that he would have to bring satō back in one piece or he would be chopped liver. kōji felt so strongly about it that he twisted the fabric of his sweater around his fingers until it was bunched up in into the palm of his hand, but he didn't notice until they had finally arrived in front of satō's house. by now a familiar destination, kōji had never arrived here at night before, and it seemed almost tranquil, how it just stood there beneath the pale moonlight, none the wiser that its owner would be among the moon very soon, up there in the sky. kōji swallowed. " is someone looking after the house while you're gone? " he asked, even though he knew that two weeks was barely enough time to warrant anyone checking up on satō's house. it was less about the duration of the trip and more about the opportunity to be here, and kōji clung to it before he could really sound out what it meant. " i mean, i can stay here, if you want. it's closer to the lab anyway and you won't have to worry about all your stuff. if you don't mind? "
all in all satō was satisfied with his life. he had never set out to anything like becoming an astronaut, only ever wanted to put to paper and then to real life the things he saw in his mind and he knew he could build, whether it would have been houses or space shuttles, though he learned he didn’t mind much that for a few years now it had ended up being the latter. there was passion in his work, and care too, and he enjoyed the hours he could spend with his head stuck in some satellite or the part of a shuttle he had to make function in states of zero gravity or artificially engineered one. they were puzzled for him to put together, riddles for him to solve that he knew better than anyone else by virtue of having designed them in the first place, so it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise that his bosses considered him as one of the prospects do the engineering position on this mission they have all had been planning for years now. for basically as long as satō was working here, this was the pretty clear-cut next big thing everyone had been working on, with one of the former astronauts of the last mission being the captain they’d send up there in charge of everything and everyone else. of course satō knew he could have been the first choice to send up there too, but he was so busy with all the work he did down here day in and out that it was half of a surprise when they considered zelda and him, though knowing to leave his friend to her academic work there there would be little chance it wouldn’t be him at this point. satō wasn’t scared of telling kōji, because he felt like he could and would always share everything with him, but they hadn’t give him the actual assignment yet so this was as concrete as he could have mentioned it. in a way he was waiting for the other shoe to drop, so he could give kōji much more information than the little he had to go on now, but as luck would have had it kōji beat him to it. that quick mind of his, that whirring of numbers and time, was something satō was no match to.
when kōji didn’t respond to the hug satō pulled him into, a creeping sense of worry settled over satō as he only squeezed him closer against his chest. they were good together, and there was nothing satō worried about between them in terms of the future — it’d be a future made up of the two of them and absolutely nothing else than that would do for him — but he could tell that his boyfriend’s mind was whirring away again and getting ahead of himself. all satō could do was press a kiss against his temple and the top of his head, a bit of reassurance, before they got into his car in silence. kōji’s hands were knotted in and out of each other periodically on the drive, his eyes staring resolutely ahead, and satō took every stop at a red light to look over and check in on him. at one, he put his palm over both of kōji’s hands, kōji’s fingers a bit warmer but not by much, and kept driving with one hand for as long as he could. satō had no fear about going up into space, for he’s helped send people up there on much smaller scale by now on more than one account, and he trusted his work with zero hesitation; but he knew that kōji wasn’t as convinced, not when it was something he had no power or control over, and that there’d be little he could do to take that nagging anxiety from him. everything satō would tell him would only help as a bandaid, a temporary fix, until the day would come where satō would return and kōji wouldn’t have any need to worry anymore, would have control over the time and space between them again. if satō could, he’d give him that now already, but he knew he was, for once, limited in his ability to try to anticipate and answer all of kōji’s wants and wishes, outdone by the moon and the stars.
pulling onto the curb by satō’s house, he didn’t kill the engine yet but instead unbuckled his seatbelt to lean over the centre console and take kōji’s face in his hands. his palms covered all of kōji’s cheeks and down to his jaw, and satō was thankful for the grip it gave him. he needed, and wanted, to feel kōji’s skin against his right now, to keep kōji from floating away from him before either of them would ever be fitted for any kind of space suit. “ hey, hey, i didn’t get any official calling yet. i probably will soon, but you’re running away with your head now. you gotta stay with me here, yeah? because i’ll come back to you, but for that you can’t disappear on me, ” he told kōji, insistent where he found kōji’s stressed gaze meeting his own. maybe satō didn’t treat things with the needed amount of worry sometimes, but he always wanted to make sure to treat kōji with all the love he deserved, to give him the certainty he first presented to him that day he sat down across from him, and if that meant he’d have to talk to twenty officials to give kōji clearance on all of his briefings for whatever this mission would be, then he’d do that in a heartbeat. for now, he just wanted to remind kōji he wasn’t gone yet, and he was more than happy to be with him in the here and now. leaning over further, satō slanted his mouth over kōji’s in a passionate kiss, pulling kōji close against him as much as he could with one hand grabbing at his shoulder, all but hauling him against his chest. “ of course you can stay here. zelda would just reorganise my pantry to her liking to play a prank on me. i trust you so much more. with you, i know the house is in good hands, ” he encouraged once he pulled away, his face flushed, thumb rubbing the spot above kōji’s ear by his hairline. satō wanted to kiss him again, so he did, until he had to breathe again. “ i would never leave without telling you as soon as i know for sure, yeah? never. i mean, i wanna tell you everything anyway, but something like this? i love you too much not to. ”
true enough she kept away from clan gatherings, the scope of her work far exceeded that of internal squabbles. aware that she when disappeared from the home for what seemed to only be minutes at a time she was convening in other worlds entirely. the vastness of her trade is what allows her to have a level-head when her intentions were under constant scrutiny by sorcerer society at large. perhaps the only man alive who could even begin to conceive of what her hands were capable of was the man that refused to touch her unless given explicit permission to do so. which was more for his own self-preservation than any display of maintaining the modesty of his wife. one need only witness what she wore around their shared residence to know she did value decorum in any shape or form. she was sloppy, unkept, yet still elegant in all the ways she maintained the fundamental riddles of her personhood. the child did demystify her, but only slightly. more grounded when she held the infant in a swaddle and hummed lullabies which had long-since been lost to thrall of time. yet he was his own question without answer too – where did such a child appear from and how did he come to be theirs?
it may seem the gojō heir was outside of this shared sphere of enigma she needed his protection. they would fashion her into a weapon for their own whims if not for the casting of his shadow over her. he makes the ultimate sacrifice, shielding her from their prying eyes with the largess of his command of infinity. in another life, they would have been well-suited to be rivals ( she had gleaned as much in the rippling surface of her scrying bowls ) in a sense, even in this life they were just that. they did not refrain from using their techniques on one another, quite the opposite. challenging one another in proximity games, crossing the barrier of eternity into his space. he may never admit to but it is a goading without words, the sudden miracle of touch that incurs no debt on either of their respective ledgers. ❛ while you may despise the postering and peacocking that goes on amidst the clans, you are also a man who can't stand boredom. you're mind craves the challenge of an intricate knot to be undone. i think there is more than enough room in that mind of yours for their theatrics and my mysteries. ❜ or perhaps her theater and their mysteries but she didn’t want to invoke his family, no one outside their unit of three, at the very least. ❛ the difference between me and them is i'm not trying to leash you, anata. ❜ interesting for him to allude to a certain torture when subjected to the wims of her esoterica. from where she was standing he seemed perfectly content with their arrangements despite all teeth gritting he had done in their first few months together. that rigidity had eventually slackened with enough suggestion on her part, as well as allowed him to catalogue her every movement with that omniscient gaze of his. some days she would engage in an uncanny mimicry of it; irises of pure cloudless sky staring up at him through her face before deepening back into the vermillion hue she wore more regularly. ❛ no, you come willing just as you said. ❜ while he accuses her he still gives in, guided by the trajectory of her waltzing steps. falling upon the untouched white of his futon, the cushioned surface parting around the vivid palette of her body. skeins of smoke and swallow-tailed wings crowding the space around her. an alien entity brought into a universe of mundanity, pure terra incognita. ❛ isn't it obvious? don't act so innocent, it's unbecoming. i want you to catch me, not just chase me. i want to see you trying for me alone. with no audience, with no threat looming over your head. only us, in this room. ❜ a gauntlet thrown or a summons, who could say? she rolls from her back onto her stomach, legs swaying in air behind her in a lazy rhythm; back and forth. making herself entirely at home in a space that had not been graced with her presence until now. ❛ do something for yourself for once, satoru. ❜
the secret everyone wanted to imagine but no one wanted to hear that she was stronger than him. between the two of them, ichihara yūko was a web spun of endless threads with endless stories and futures to tell, whereas he was always hanging on by the single one, the predetermined noose around his neck. it did not bode well for the waters he swam in to knew that, to knew that their great hope and their only battering ram was bested in walls of his very own home, as they couldn’t dare imagine someone to outpace who they couldn’t keep up with. they needed him to be unattainable, and he needed himself to be untouchable, but none of them had accounted for the power held in yūko’s grasp - even satoru, who had an inkling, had to stand corrected early on his very first assessment of his wife as she exceeded even that. the corners she could fall into, the worlds she could disappear from and appear in, little held match to what she unveil out of thin air. little could keep pace with her endlessly moving mind, the roving of her moods, or the quick deductions of even him, of even his most secretive parts. not even he could, though all he did was try.
she could have brought back a hoard of curses into their home, there were people who took bets on it not least of all among the other families, and instead she brought a child as if she plucked that out of thin air too. a child that took to her like fish to water and had the same wide eyes, moon-dark and open, that held no threads of cursed energy in them and could not tell what satoru could see but that instead matched the roaming curiosity of yūko’s own bottomless gaze. the boy would end up as her shadow, a double of her, and satoru knew this even better than he knew anything else of what was going on under his own roof. she had monopolised these rooms that bore his family’s name, turned them into her domain the way one completely remodelled a wrecked ruin into new glory, and for that he knew he didn’t need to have put up any defences. the boy was no monster and she was no evil sorceress there to condemn his ancestors or peers, and satoru was no more than a common sorcerer who fell into a bit of genetically-engineered luck. the lies the world told about them were half-truths in here, and yet he felt like he had to protect this place, the people in it, this family that was his and not his, because it was all hers. they were all hers; it was obvious that he was.
he was a frontier she felt no remorse conquering, and conquer she did over and over. did she know it? that he was waging wars against the rest of the world that seemed dull compared to the fortress of himself he had to be in here, so that no one could read it from his face, so that no one could tell that there was someone here that pulled him apart and pieced him back together, and that knew all of his weaknesses without ever having needed to tell her. yūko knew him so well that every arrow she fired in his direction hit its target, dead-centre, and he let it happen if only to take note of just where he was so easy to digest to her. if she knew him, he had to know where she loved to strike him, and how heavy the damage she dealt was on all her blows. “ well, the world is dreadfully boring. everyone talks about the same things, worries about the same things, and expects me to be the one to do something about their whining. i’ve heard it all my life. who wouldn’t grow bored of that? ” he told her from his place in the doorway, the blue of his eyes watching her, overlaying versions of her, mark his rooms as if they were just another sad ruin for her to redecorate to her liking, for her purposes. maybe that’s all that was.
the spark of something dangerous flickered alive in him when he saw her fall onto the futon, a butterfly in a field of snow. she conjured illusions around her at the best of times but this was reality forming one of his most common ones into the picture he was staring at now. it compelled him forward, as yūko always did, knowing exactly what she had to do to get him to move into action - she was his very own battle to fight, with no audience and two projected winners or else he knew she wouldn’t even play, and he was keen to ask when their circling of sharks had become this dance between two lonely and hungering souls, dancers with no partners yet but on the verge of a lifelong commitment. and wasn’t that funny, that they were married and now he thought of lifelong commitments? as if there would have ever been the chance for it to be anyone but her. no, yūko didn’t know to what extent satoru chose this for himself, chased her, to the wedding and all the way to here.
one of his legs folded in where he loomed over her, so they were nearly face to face. “ you have no idea, yūko. every day i am trying to get to you. and it makes me laugh sometimes, when i realise i’ve been trying to get to you again. did you think i didn’t? even this space between us is part of it, giving you everything in this house. you are a very hard woman to catch. ” his fingers traced the side of her face, infinity rendered down to nothing, as she always cancelled him out quite deftly but this time it was all his own doing - to let her spread herself out in the glacier of this land, a room so cold without her. “ the moment i break all of this down, i am never going back. i will be someone else. that’s who you’ll get if you want it to only be the two of us in here. ”
Fomalhaut — Sender leans against Receiver’s back. marianne and connell <3
◗ PROMPT COLLECTED FROM A STUDY OF STARS ░ ACCEPTING.
[ 𝑻 ] he cramped grocery store is a temporary oasis from the sweltering Italian sun; droplets of drying sweat dot his hairline, and the sun-kissed skin of his arms are covered in goosebumps courtesy of the A.C. unit blustering above their heads. The cashier, an older man with heavy brows and disdain written all over his face, is focused on the football game playing on the TV in the corner — and it’s lucky for them that the World Cup is on, otherwise Connell would be far more stressed looking for excuses to keep lingering in the shop. He tears his gaze away to search the fruits and greens section for @exitvelo, her name on the very tip of his tongue, when he feels her arms slide around his waist. ❛❛ I was wondering where you'd gone, ❜❜ he says quietly, greeting her with the settlement of his hands above hers, tugging her arms tighter and her body closer to his.
Warmth spikes where they touch, her front a scorching wall all along his back, but this is a heat he can handle far better than the heatwave simmering outside — even as it slips through his pores, into his veins, his bloodstream made up of only her. Her soft perfume is a welcomed respite from the tropical scent of his sunscreen, filling his nostrils and his fingertips with the urge to grasp a pen and put it all to paper. Were it not for the looming presence of the cashier turning his back on the football game in his periphery, he might have spun in her arms and slanted his lips over hers. Instead he picks up one of the jars of cherry tomatoes he'd been pretending to consider purchasing, and (seeking her linguistic expertise) angles it so the label is visible over his shoulder. ❛❛ How do you say this? Pomodorini? ❜❜ A small smile curls his mouth, embarrassment nowhere to be found for he knows he lacks her talent; instead it is laced in knowing amusement, patiently awaiting her gentle admonishment of his butchering of the language. ❛❛ Pomodorini — ? ❜❜
there was levity to him now, to them. marianne used to imagine what it would be like to feel this permanently, this calm he so effortlessly inspired in her even when everything else around them felt like a hailstorm, and now she found it was unlike anything she’s ever felt, even unlike the time they spent together before he left. where her heart bruised at the idea of going back down any of those old haunts she used to dwell in during their school days, she didn’t think she’d enjoy any overdo of their past as much as she’d enjoy italy. the stone around them was warm to the touch, unbearable if you stayed out in the midday heat too long, but she loved the long and sunny afternoons, the mild mornings, and to see him walk around with a weight cast off of his shoulders and an ease to his walk that made him even more beautiful to him than usual. would he write about this moment, she wondered, as they wandered through the small grocery store. sometimes he grew so quiet, focused on crates of tomatoes on sale while she picked out cheese that would go nicely in a salad or on the grill. he didn’t jump feet higher when she wrapped her arms around his middle, his back solid against he cheek, and she nearly had to chuckle for it - for how much they’ve grown, how he was there now, unafraid, and she didn’t know fear with him either.
as she turned her head past his shoulder to look at what he had in hand, his voice rumbled against her chest in a feeling so familiar she had to keep herself from moving even closer to him, as if they could fuse together by sheer attempts of trying. in the dark it was so easy, how she fit against him like a sheet of paper, but it was easy now too, her bare shoulders against the fabric of his t-shirt, the AC keeping both of them from melting like popsicles and fully enjoying this moment. “ close, very close, connell, ” she told him, unable to suppress her own smile when she could hear his before she could even see it. repeating the right pronunciation, she took the jar of cherry tomatoes from him and put it into small bag on her arm, next to the cheese and the salad and a bottle of wine whose label was barely eligible but was almost sold out; a good sign it any. these days, marianne was able to look for these things and find them, all because he was next to her. not unwinding fully, but curling her hand around his arm, she looked up at him. “ i am suspecting you’re doing half of this just to hear me speak italian, do you now? ” she joked, gently pulling him along to the crates with oranges and lemons. “ are you enjoying yourself? ”
august from sim : [ 11AM ] an empty public playground, equipment hot from the sun.
the places she had gone to for him, to see a glimpse of him in the madness of the world, and would do so a thousand times over in the same vein the sun greeted the earth every day. this one was not as outlandish as some of the others, possibly the calmest besides their respective homes, but she found the abandoned playground almost charming - deserted by kids who had to come in for lunch, or having to keep their heads down at school, or that wanted to play somewhere else after years of growing up around the corner. the empty set of swings was perfect for them, which mattered more, and august swayed to the side every few times to gently bump her foot against simeon's leg, a routine motion that transplanted some of the warm calm she was feeling towards him, hopefully, though she knew something as futile as trying to tame simeon was never what she tried to achieve with this. in a world filled to the brim with prying eyes and mouthy words, she only wanted him to feel a sense of support, a constant, and the truth of someone who knew him being someone who could touch him, not anyone else who barely understood what he did or how his thoughts circled and flew.
as the quiet slowly settled over them, august rested her head against the sun-warmed metal of the chains the swings were hanging from, to watch simeon where he was explaining to her the intricacies of his next project. he was admirable to her like that, like no other, how he could swallow down all his memories and be pulled away by them like driftwood but he refused, he walked and stared ahead, and he built himself up time and time again with the inventory spirit of arctic explorers or the shapeshifters she knew to travel almost everywhere on the sole basis of wanting to be someone else somewhere else. he hadn't traversed the ends of the world yet, and he couldn't turn from a man into a falcon or from a mouse into a ghost, but he could wear faces like they were all there to play with, nothing beneath it to be extracted for truth, and he was fascinating with this kind of consistency. many found it polarising, and sometimes august wanted to ask him to be allowed to pull the masks away to see the deeper tells of him, but she knew he'd always come aroud in due time. there was always something truthful to him and his play-acting, the core of him, feather-light but wrought through with all the different threads of feeling yet to spill.
after a while, she bumped her hand against his and tucked it free from his grip on the metal to hold it in her own. like this she was skewed away from where the swing should actually sit, but she took his palm in between both of hers and looked it over. the lines on it were a bit red from the sun, but his hands were soft - always were so, testament to his caring devotion to himself - and august pressed the pad of her index finger to one of the lines, from the ball of it to the sagging skin between thumb and index finger, and felt beneath it the familiar hum of his ambition and beneath that, his desire to run, always to run, as if he could turn his devotion to himself into a parachute if needed. " you'll do well, " she told him, smiling at his hand and then up at him. she closed her fingers of his palm, hiding away the lines, and nudged him with her foot again. " you'll do really well. but sooner than later you'll need a break. not because i think so, and not like this one. an actual one. you'll feel it, won't you? ignore it at first but then you'll be able to tell. don't be scared of it, yeah? "
like clockwork, accepting. | ft. @lerecueil
( 𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐁 ) ; our muses instinctively grab each other while they’re scared. lucy gray + link
the pond in its eerie stillness, the full moon lining the slight ripples in the water silver. all haze in the pale burnishing. given the dark she does not float as aimlessly as she would in the day. even so she dither on her back, letting her body sway in the weightlessness as she observed the silence of the far-off constellations. finding familiar creatures in the clusters of distant lights, recalling the covey myths surrounding wily foxes and clever songbirds. not quite alone, she never truly is especially these days. between the crickets calling out to one another in the wood and the rustling of field mice in the underbrush there is always company to be found not too far away. link at times has the bearing of a silent animal, there is feral sensibility coiled underneath his resolute reticence. neither the disguise nor what may lay beneath is enough to scare off the musician. no, she held fondness for mysteries – a story waiting to be uncovered. she belonged to that same kind, that fathomless, unknowable tapestry.
running her fingers along it when she let him; scars that alluded to histories she was only beginning to know the shape of. turning just as the chorus of howling begins to draw near, a wolf pack on the hunt she would know that call even in her dreams. while it would be wise to remain in the depths these silver-backed predators were nearly as strong swimmers as they were sprinters. half-submerged she has wadded to the cusp of the shoreline, waist-deep as the whole ferocious lot of them encircled the rocky beach. ❛ link… ❜ a cautionary whisper that nearly dies on her lips as she watches @exitvelo curl in on himself. planes of marred flesh unfurling into tufts of dark fur, rough hands giving way to paws tipped in wicked claws. once fully realized he is easily the largest amongst the encircling predators. so much so that a single rumble from the pit of his throat is enough to send the onslaught whimpering back into the forest. a few of the braver stranglers attempted a swipe at him but were knocked back but the sheer weight of the warrior turned monster.
still snarling as she took her first waterlogged steps back onto solid ground. a slight shake to her knees as she began a tentative approach. perhaps unwise, she was more frightened by nearly encountering the pack than she was with the lone wolf before her now. ❛ i take it those ain’t friends of yours? ❜ breathlessly, humor meanders onto her tongue. dark as the liquor she preferred as there was always a shred of something dire in her jokes. on the cusp of notion neighboring unease but it sounded more like wonder. kneeling a foot or so away from his hulking form seeking out eyes that remain unchanged despite the rest of him. ❛ my just a barrel of surprises, you are… mama always said to mind the pretty ones, they always got their secrets. ❜ a loose fist is held out to him then, fingers splayed in a gentle encouragement. humming the begins of a toon, the melody taking shape across her lips as she sings a fragment of an unfinished ballad. ❛ some kinda miracle, that’s what you are. ❜ music to quell even the most starving of brutes.
𐚁 , COMFORTING ACTION PROMPTS ( * accepting!
the forest knew more than any other place he had ever been in. not even the old citadel with its riddles and its caved-in ceiling, white stone and fine greenery, could compare to all the secrets and tells accumulated under a canopy of trees. lucy gray was one such secret, one he never even knew existed until she stumbled over his sleeping form the way a wild bird sees the first bloom on a barren tree, and he had not tried to uncover her but rather let himself be reeled in by the sway of her voice and the truth in her song. even when she told him that most of what she sang about were stories shared to her by the covey, there was something distinct in her voice even he could hear, that he could sense to weave through every word of her songs with the sincere feeling of someone who had not shut off her heart. this was no mystery to him, who had bled and nearly died with an open wound for a heart, and made him maybe trust her too easily. but no matter, she did not expect anything from him, expect to know what he knew, and to give her company even in the quietude where others would rather prefer to be alone.
it was like her presence woke him from a constant state of wandering. she sharpened his eyes and his ears, woke up the howling wolf in him with an ease he hadn't fully felt outside of his home's borders, but the wilderness and its wielding mistress compelled him more than that land ever could, or so it seemed. he had not noticed just how much of his attention was directed at her, floating in a blurring vision of pale moonlight and a kaleidoscope of colours he only ascribed to her - the rich warmth of a burning violet, the pristine bloom of yellows and oranges, the home-spun truth of an off-white lightness found in her underdress - and that wrapped around even when she was freed of them more or less. this was his mind playing tricks of course, similar to his eye being able to tell real night from infected darkness back then, and his ears turned in tune with the sound of other wolves, not him, coming near them; coming near her. where she wadded close to him, his head snapped to the side in time to see the cluster of wolves, like moon-sickles, all too close to her.
before she could reach him he was already gone, the turn of his jaws and the maw of his teeth widening, and when he found himself in a shape he only kept to when he was with epona, there was no point to dwell on what he was doing. as a wolf, he moved swifter and had little trouble to take on the pack that stalked across the beach, the rough growl past his throat doing most of the work to keep them at bay, but he sniped at the loitering rest of them, and pushed them away with butts of his head, then all of him, until they finally disappeared again. baring his teeth at them again, instinct from the times he did so at all the foes in hyrule, his ears only stood back from his fur again when her voice reached him. lucy gray approached him slowly, but the sound of her was familiar, and so was the sight of her even from this much lower vantage point. when she held out her fist, he bumped his snout against it, telling her, no good moment to ever bring it up, a whine low in his throat. where others would have left in screaming shock, she was . . . taking in the shape and size of the beast of him, just how she would dedicate her attention to any forest dweller she met. her tune in the air, he tugged his hind-legs in to sit at her feet and listen to her hum, knowing he'd turn back any moment but wanting to give her this moment as he was, letting that fear run off of both of their backs. he wouldn't even notice the scratch against his nose untl he was human again, and it didn't matter as long as she was safe.
[01.] 🌙📁
the longing could accumulate inside of eli endlessly, water creating an ocean where there was nothing before. he thought he had gotten used to the feeling of wanting something, someone, but the flings and relationships he had all failed in comparison to the tearing of his heart whenever he was with hideo, and more so whenever he was away from it. such was the nature of his work, where there was always distance by the merit of his drive to create and hideo's own identity wrapped up in his job, but that made the time they had together all the more matter, all the more important. it didn't matter where they were, on the other side of the world or hideo's place, as long as they had each other - though eli tried to cut back on his habit of shooting back to back all too often these days, trying to find a pace that benefitted not only his need to cut his teeth on his profession, but also one that gave him the space to just be. the reward trickled in slowly, the days he'd have ahead of him where he could just be around hideo without having to do much more than read scripts and maybe prepare some press, but even then nothing could kill the thrill from the first days: when hideo showed up on set, eli's dreams pulled out of thin air, and monopolised the end of eli's shooting day with the aptitude of a man made for this.
which he was, truly, down to the marrow. if anyone were to ask elijah about his boyfriend ( which people did now, more often than not, albeit to test how much they thought eli was making it all up ) he'd have nothing to sing but praises, a litany of increasingly hoarse hums of pleasure and delight. when hideo kicked the door behind them shut, pushing eli up against it in a move so swift eli was pretty sure they knocked over the wardrobe department's coat-stand they so kindly lended him, eli couldn't care about much more than the motion in itself, the proof of hideo's hands on him, his mouth on his, a bruising kiss that left eli breathless and scrambling for sense, his fingers digging into the fine fabric of hideo's jacket to push it down his arms, past his elbows. " off. i don't care how much it cost, " eli demanded, hands pulling at hideo's clothes. for that to work hideo had to stop touching him for a moment, but eli made up for it with another kiss, even more insistent than the first, his tongue licking into hideo's mouth to the point he almost forgot what he wanted to do because of the attention it demanded of him.
hideo commanded eli easily, just by being here, and he knew he made eli weak in the knees by the way his dark and serious eyes watched eli, let him take his jacket off and throw it onto the cramped sofa, barely able to fit eli on his own here on every other day but now seeming like a somewhat vital prop to the dance they were doing. hideo's jacket was black, and the shirt beneath was non-descriptive white, and eli needed to see less of that too. he sneaked his hands under that fabric too, hideo's skin warm under his palms, something he had missed so much, missed for days and weeks, and that he needed to have everything of today, tonight, until whatever time the pd's decided to continue shooting. being alone was good for him in the sense that it kept him more focused, but hideo being with him was better in every other way. he smelled like home where eli kissed his jaw, his neck, buried his face in hideo's shoulder to inhale him. " i didn't know you'd already be here. thought i'd see you tonight, " he mumbled at the same time as he pulled at hideo's shirt with his fingers, the desire to see all of him, feel all of him, overriding any other little sense eli had left to begin with. hideo always did that, crashed over him like a wave, and eli loved to let it happen.
stages of intimacy, accepting. | ft. @sachingja
his entire existence had been marked by the departure of anything he held dear, and by his own resolute, silent desolation. jinman had wondered if he had ever revealed too much of himself, of the shadows that loomed larger than the light, this dread that had never found a resolution, had only built up inside of his own chest until he had crumbled beneath the weight of it. for so long, he had never considered to stay for anything or for anyone, not beyond the mere necessity of making sure that his younger brother was cared for; there had been a hundred exit routes established beforehand, in case that unattainable goal ever became reality. he had made his peace with the inevitability of his demise and had adjusted his everyday life accordingly, the daily interactions with other people never reaching beyond the surface of the mundane, his employment largely nameless and faceless; the attachment people from his past had tried to maintain did only hinder him along the way to a soft, light end, and so he did not welcome them, rejected their advances and their desire to linger on what had passed him by and only reminded him of his own failure at what others succeeded in so easily. there were glimmers of hope, of course, that young actress who had knocked at their door to bring him that token of gratitude, which was a token of recognition more than anything else. but the first morsel had been eunah at his kitchen table, in front of their door, that day she arrived before his brother and they had spent an hour in almost startlingly comfortable silence. it had never felt like a burden, had only made jinman more curious to figure her out, this woman who he could recognize so easily.
it was almost befuddling to be on the other side of what had been his daily life, his everyday. now, he found himself pausing in front of apartment listings and considering buildings in their neighborhood with bigger space and more rooms. he wondered what it would be like to trade their separate homes and merge it into one, what he had done before and had tried so hard to erase from his mind had suddenly become a memory superimposed over his presence, like the afterimage of a dream. whenever he saw eunah interact with the world around her, with her grandmother and with his brother, he wanted to keep her closer, wanted to always see the gentleness on her face that broke through the cool detachment she wore so easily, that came to her as quick as it did to him. they could have their own space, jinman thought, could share more than just this bed in her room or the mattress on his floor. the possibilities were vast and endless and he often found himself paralyzed by that, choices he had long discarded that suddenly seemed to be worth indulging in, worth to consider even. dongman would jump at the chance, he already knew without having to ask him, but jinman did not want to make any decisions without asking eunah first, already felt too imposing in her life, too out of place; he was nothing like those slick and beautiful actors, directors, writers, was far more solid than that and stuck out like a sore thumb for that matter alone. he had never fit in with the crowd dongman had made a home with and did not know if he ever could or would, but he knew that for her, he would do anything. if she would have asked him, he would have bent the earth in half only for her.
with a low hum, he allowed himself to press his mouth to the crown of her head, a gentle kiss he left there, lingering before he bedded his cheek on her head and held her closer, still. " you did? " he asked, a murmur, genuinely surprised by that statement though he probably should not have been; like a red string tied around their wrists, they had always belonged to each other but had simply never known, had too many near misses that were only resolved by his own brother. that alone almost made jinman scoff but he knew how much they both meant to each other, so he could only be glad for what had transpired. " you just have to say the word. " he added, after a moment of careful consideration. not many could deal with the flare of his temper but eunah seemed to almost revere it, mystify it, and jinman was glad; if he could protect her, he would. if the unrest and discomfort could find another outlet, he would gladly accept it, trade it for eerily silent nights in bathrooms with nothing but his own thinning breath as company. after they had been silent for a little longer, after he had felt her breathe against him and was assured by the familiarity of that motion and by how easily she fit against him, as if it was always meant to be that way, he rubbed his fingers over the back of her neck and said slowly, the words only coming to him gradually, but they were important so he had to verbalize them. this promise which meant more than any other vow to the both of them, though he would vow it in front of anyone who might want to hear, too. " i thought my purpose in life was to live so lightly no one would notice if i left, " he murmured, unsure if she could even hear him, while his thumb rubbed steadily back and forth. " but i don't think so anymore. i think i would like to stay for as long as you will have, for as long as you will let me. for whatever you want from me. i would give you everything. "
something pressed insistently behind her breastbone, the kind of feeling she never knew how to name until that watch told her what it was. told her after it recorded to her the moment he brought back a whole crate of sweet potatoes, after he did the same with the cabbage, and carried them inside with her and his brother without letting her grandmother move an inch. it wasn't gratitude, and it wasn't pride, but something else, something men rarely made her feel: belonging. she felt something not unlike it with his brother, that understanding she hadn't experienced at all, as well as with miran, who was an addition to her group of friends, her family, that felt like a sibling she never had. but never had it come to her as unbelievably strong as it did with jinman, whose shoulders carried too much for her to alleviate all on her own and yet made her want to try, and whose inscrutable face, always downturned, softened and turned placid when she put a hand on his shoulder or curled her arm around his back ( as far as she could anyway. ) it was curious to realise she could experience a feeling she never really had explored before, the antidote to loneliness, that made her stand ten feet tall just thinking about it, but she usually preferred for the world to not seize her up when she was with jinman. not because she didn't feel secure, but she felt too much of it, and wanted to keep it between them and just for him, so nothing could tarnish a feeling as tender as a spring flower, easily swept away by the wind she knew how to employ by the force of her words.
they both had in common this cold air around them. she was a menace at work, known for it too, and has made it a point to wield it when she needed it. jinman was the same that way, far more ready to pounce than even dongman could be, and the only person eunah's ever met who was as outrightly honest as she was, though here he grew tamer, under her touch. she remembered when her grandmother saw him, this oak tree of a man, carrying food inside with his brother tucked in close behind, and her eyes swept over them to eunah as if to ask how she suddenly found not only one but two men who proved themselves to be useful for once, instead of the complete fads she's seen her granddaughter walk away with at the gate of their house. jinman fit into the space despite its narrow ceiling and walls, he fit into her bed somehow, and he fit into her heart more than anything else, a home made there that made her less miserable on the daily. it wouldn't be long that her grandmother would sit him down again, ask him how often he was here despite the days he spent gone working, and then eunah would either brace the mortifying fact that the three of them were now living together, and she'd have to tell dongman, or that her grandmother would suggest to her, sly as ever, to find a place for her and jinman together. never has eunah lived anywhere else really, but she imagined it, a place as nice as this, nicer than the one jinman and dongman lived in anyhow, that smelled like him and held his clothes in a wardrobe and had one bed, one mattress, for the two of them. it burnt as fierly through her as the sense of belonging he instilled in her, her heart beating like a drum.
" i wanted to see what it was like to really see someone lose their temper for me, you know? i heard about you doing that for dongman and i couldn't stop imagining it. now i know, i'll say the word, " she said, her words muffled against the fabric of jinman's sweater. his chest was warm against her nose and her cheek, he was always so warm, like a heart for her to hide away in, a flame lit only for her. she freed one of her hands and curled her arm around his side, resting not really far against his back but she bunched his sweater in between her fingers and pulled at him like she'd pull a branch forward to see its leaves. jinman wouldn't budge at all, not with such a careful motion, but she could leverage herself even closer against him until her ear was flat against his chest and her nose too, and his hand on her neck rubbing back and forth send a pleasant tingle down her neck. like this she couldn't see the room past his shoulder, or smell anything that wasn't him, and she could knock her knees against his to beg for space there, squeeze her way in between, two puzzle pieces completely fitted against each other, all gaps filled. when he spoke again, his voice was low and careful, deliberate where he drew out his words, and making the back of her head ring a little in return. so much so that she let it sit there for a moment, the meaning of what he was telling her, before she told him, " no, don't ever leave. i want you to put down all your weight on me. i want to feel that you're with me, that you're here. so don't live too lightly anymore, because i'll notice. i'll notice right away when you're not with me. i do, all the time. tomorrow, i will already miss you when you leave through the door. "
