xavier knows you too well, it’s upsetting really. where you’d usually get home, sulk, and allow yourself to marinate in your self loathing before eventually crying yourself to sleep; you’re met with kind concerned eyes and a gentle voice.
your eyes are already brimming with tears as you unlock your front door, taking in a shaky breath as you kick your shoes off. you don’t realize xavier is in your apartment until it’s too late, and for a split second you regret adding his finger to your lock.
“starlight you’re home already?”
his voice makes your body freeze in place, staring at the wall with wide eyes as you try to blink away your tears and quickly wipe your face.
“yeah, i got out a bit early today,” you clear your throat, putting on a tight lipped smile and turning around, “what are you doing here?” the words come out more strained then you intend them to, you feel your chest tighten as he rounds the corner and smiles at you.
“I remember you mentioned running out of that perfume you liked so i got you a new bottle,” the smile on his face slowly disappears the closer he gets to you, “figured I’d come leave it for you and see if you were running out of anything else.” his gaze is completely fixed on you, brows furrowing ever so slightly as he takes in your body language.
your eyes tear from his quickly, glancing around your apartment and moving past where he stood. you notice a vase filled with fresh flowers, your heart clenches at the sight.
“thank you xavier that’s really sweet of you,” your voice trembles on the last word, you hope he doesn’t catch it. “I’m uh- I’m really tired so i was gonna just sleep,” you glance at your bedroom door, the lump in your throat growing by the second.
xavier nods, already walking towards you, “okay we can nap together.” he’s not stupid, he knows you’re trying to get him to leave, he knows you’re upset. so he slips his hand into yours, tugging you towards your room.
“xavier-” you sigh out, blinking your tears back as you try and hold it together. i just need to get him out of here and then i can cry, you think. “y’know i just got my period so im gonna be real moody and mean, we can hang out tomorrow,” xavier turns to look at you, annoyance written all over his face. it catches you off guard.
“starlight you should know better than to try and lie to me,” his eyes narrow slightly at you before he lets out a sigh, his grip on your hand loosening. “you’ve been tense since you walked through the door, your eyes are slightly red which means you probably cried on the elevator, you haven’t called me any pet names and you haven’t even tried to grab my butt.”
you stare at him for a second, huffing before turning you head away from him, “i don’t always grab your butt.”
“that’s what you got out of that?” he smiles slightly and you can only pout. “plus your period isn’t due for another week and a half,” the information makes you look at him, he just smiles at you.
“do you wanna talk about it?” his voice is gentler now, crystalline eyes softening as he examines any shift in your expression. the moment you shake your head and your bottom lip wobbles he’s wrapping his arms around you.
xavier hits your senses all at once; the warmth of his body, the smell of his cologne, the feel of his hair tickling your skin. it makes the lump in your throat impossible to swallow as you quietly sob into his shirt.
“I’ve got you, you’ll be okay,” he says softly, one hand rubbing your back as the other cradles your head to his chest. he listens intently as you vent to him (in reality it’s just you mumbling incoherently between sniffles against his shirt), he hums as you speak, placing a gentle kiss to the top of your head when you finally seem to calm down a bit.
the two of you are quiet, the only sound in your apartment being your sniffles. the grip you have on him never falters, nuzzling yourself even closer to him.
“i love you so much, my pretty girl,” he whispers when you finally pull away. you frown at him, blowing your nose with a tissue and wiping away your tears with the back of your hand.
“i probably look terrible right now xav,” you mumble, still sniffling as you stare down at your hands. xavier scoffs, his index finger coming under your chin to force you to look at him.
his blue eyes stare into yours, softening as he looks at you. the corners of his lips twitch upwards. “what?” you ask, face heating up as he continues to look at you. he only leans in and places a chaste kiss to your lips, then another to your cheek, and then your nose, and then forehead.
“you’re beautiful. my beautiful, amazing, smart, talented girl,” he sighs, punctuating each adjective with another feathery kiss to your face. it’s impossible for you to not giggle, letting yourself melt into his every affection. “will my star do me the honor of cuddling with me?”
you roll your eyes at him, he wastes no time in scooping you in his arms, carrying you effortlessly to bed. before you know it, you’re being handed a hoodie. his favorite hoodie. you’re eyes widen.
“is this-”
“please don’t steal it from me,” he says half heartedly. he was going to give it to you anyway, he’d already sprayed his cologne on it for you.
the two of you end up a mess of tangled limbs and quiet giggles. xaviers breathing gets softer after a moment of silence, his eyes fluttering shut as his body relaxes. you stare at him for second, memorizing his every feature and each freckle adorning his skin.
and when you’re sure he’s sleeping and his nose is twitching, you finally speak up.
“thank you,” your voice is barely above a whisper, trembling slightly, “for being here for me even when i don’t want it.” you pause for a second, making sure he’s really asleep before speaking up again. “i hope you never stop letting yourself in.” xavier stirs slightly, you grin.
“i love you so much, angel eyes,” you whisper, kissing his collarbone before taking a deep breath and letting your eyes finally close.
and as xavier unconsciously pulls your closer to him, you find yourself believing the affirmations he makes you tell yourself. there’s no sulking or wallowing in self pity, there’s only the warmth and reassurance your lover provides you. there’s only affirmations of how loved and cherished you are by those around you.
there’s only love and soft golden flecks replacing where sadness and darkness would find purchase.
a/n: two xavier comfort fics back to back everyone act shocked
I’m seeing a couple posts revealing that Valko’s trademark finally went through.
My guess is that this is yet another piece of the puzzle as to why he got delayed. Most likely because if other companies found out that he wasn’t trademarked, you bet a competitor would snipe that wolf’s ass the second he got released in game with all his deets. Then this shit would happen.
I want to go on the record to say that this was a speculative joke and I did not have insider information.
And for clarification here is Wikipedia’s definition of the two for people who don’t know the difference between the two.
This does raise another big question though…
Why did they delay his trademark?
More than likely those posts about Valko being a risky move because he wasn’t being mentioned in-game by name before his big release AND because Infold managed to keep him under lock and key until from I recall just mere days before his reveal stream on 6/22 (I could be wrong about this) are true.
Disclaimer: This order of events is all speculation from the crumbs we have been given and my own deductive reasoning. Do not take any of my speculation as fact.
They knew they were taking a risk and if the general public didn’t receive well to him, then they could just cancel the trademark before it got approved and scrap the whole project entirely with no baggage of having to be forced to use Valko. No trademark? No problem. He could become another company’s issue with no repercussions on Infold’s part whatsoever.
I do have to applaud Infold for doing this because in this day and age of all the companies sticking to ‘playing it safe’ or ‘doing bad things to scrape a profit and we can’t do a damn thing about it’ is getting old.
And honestly? The way they closed the story in January left a kind of ‘what now?’ kind of situation, which left it open to endless possibilities. Albeit, they really should have left a teeny tiny nugget of foreshadowing then and there of where it was going and it would have left players itching for more.
I bet money because of the very loud anti-Valko fans in China and the smear campaign, they were gonna move along with the cancellation.
I think the very loud anti-fans were just fuel for the fire (or they could have been bribed by the competitors - who knows) and was coincidence.
OR the competitors already knew/found out he wasn’t trademarked THEN ran the smear campaigns to pressure Infold to cancel Valko altogether THEN they could fight in the pit for his trademark.
And when the antis got involved and when the harassment against Infold started by going to their front door and doing the opposite of peaceful protesting to the point they had to hire security to protect themselves, THAT was when the CCP had to step in and take control of the situation to prevent this whole thing from getting out of hand and to investigate on whether or not the allegations that the public were saying about Valko was true.
(This part of the story happened within a span of a couple of days, IIRC).
The gag order was put into place to protect Infold (the LADs team specifically) from promoting anything. They were allowed to post about big issues and delays, but they had to be extremely objective about it. No fluff or sugar to persuade old and new players to download the game.
I say the LADs team specifically because Infinity Nikki, another Infold IP, has been consistently posting new videos on their Youtube channel about a new update for the past week or so.
If the allegations were true, the LADs team would have been fucked.
If the allegations weren’t true, anyone who promoted the falsities were fucked.
Turns out the latter was true and all the people involved that got found out will most likely be answering to Infold’s legal team in the near future, if they haven’t already. I have heard that there might be a possibility that some of the people involved are minors so good job on ruining your entire life over a pixelated wolf man.
But still, the negative feedback might have been loud enough to tip the scales into cancelling Valko and LADs most likely was in the mindset to cancel the project.
However they got blindsided by something - the power of the global players.
Boycotts, spamming everything about where Valko is, continuous emails and feedback to Infold, petitions with an overall signer total of possibly near to or in the MILLIONS, positivity posts, donating money to wolf conservation instead of spending it on LADs, art, fanfics, voiceover ASMR work, an adult pleasure toy (yes, this one is real), cosplayers, plushies, merchandise, zines, and everything else in between. In the span of three weeks we were all pumping out fire content like we were in overtime.
Our positivity was so strong, I was seeing people drop works in the span of 24-48 hours after the reveal that looked like it would have taken weeks to make. And that is honestly an accomplishment I have to give a standing ovation to.
It was so strong that it warranted a mention from the CCP to Infold and the LADS team and nudge to rethink the cancellation because if they didn’t, the game was going to die.
The numbers don’t lie. The game has tanked in the last few weeks (shoutout to @cairoblair for tracking this information twice on a daily basis) on both CN and global servers and everyone agrees. If Valko isn’t released, the game is going to die.
And if they decided to release Valko after the gag order is lifted, most of us will flock back to our wolf boy, but we will never forget what happened and what we fought for.
We didn’t fight just for Valko, we fought for the game’s existence. We were fighting for the other five too.
This is just fan theory, but I believe that despite being in their own separate bubbles with you, at the end of the day, the LADs will fight and protect each other. And if one of them was to fall, the other five wouldn’t hesitate to take a bullet for them.
I’m not a business person, but I am a logical one. And if my money making machine stopped making money, I would definitely put the thing in the machine to make me money especially if people wanted to have it in the machine to put money into said machine.
And if Infold and LADs comes out with a statement at the end of the month when the gag order is lifted that they will be sticking to their guns and not moving forward with Valko, they are not shooting themselves in the foot with this one.
No, no, no. Keeping Valko cancelled will become a suicide mission for Infold.
I don’t think Infold expected any of this to happen. It’s been 20 days since he was cancelled—he hasn’t stopped trending on X, we reached 7 MILLION posts on X yesterday, his Weibo topic is ABOVE the app’s (LADS), his song is number one on various platforms, so on and so forth. Not to mention we have almost 250,000 signatures on ONE petition.
Bottom line, not releasing him would be suicide. In 2026, LADS has made around $30M each month. In July? They haven’t even surpassed $1M. It’s THAT bad.
Releasing Valko is the only way to save the game—literally. If they don’t, they’re going to lose over half of their player base, and almost ALL of their heavy spenders. LADS will likely sink very quickly if he isn’t implemented.
I’ll add on to the last bit—as a business student, you hit the nail on the head. Companies operate based on what’s going to get them the most ROI (return on investment). They’ve spent over two years and MILLIONS developing Valko—not releasing him would be an insane hit to their ROI metrics. The only logical way forward is to rescind their cancellation statement and implement him into the game.
Assuming they’re under a gag order, fingers crossed that August will bring good news.
