#how do characterization

[mapnerdbloodbag]

(I could do almost the same thing with other ships, tho sometimes it goes both ways more...)

[soundofez]

Soma Week Day 2: Nosebleed

what how did I just never post this ??? uh here you go I guess wordpress

When Black☆Star texts Soul YOUR GOD NEEDS THE HOUSE FOR THE DAY and doesn’t respond to Soul’s furious responses, Soul figures he’s been sexiled. Again. And this time from the whole house, instead of just their room, not that he particularly enjoyed listening to his housemates last time. He debates whether he should move out or what, but rent is expensive on his own and he really doesn’t want to call his parents.

He resigns himself to crashing at Kilik’s place for the night, and tries to avoid thinking about what (or, more disturbingly, where) Tsubaki and Black☆Star might be doing right now. His classes ended early today, and he doesn’t want to hang around Kilik’s apartment like a creep, so he heads to the nearest off-campus café, which is, of course, a Deathbucks.

It’s somewhere between afternoon and evening, and the café is deserted but for a couple of staff and a guy in a baseball cap and a hoodie. Soul grabs an Izze from the cooler— no need to stay up half the night on caffeine— hesitates over the pastries, and decides to treat himself with a morning bun for putting up with Black☆Star.

He’s got his laptop with him, thankfully, because it’s Friday and Fridays are Skype days with his brother. Admittedly, he could Skype from his phone, but it feels half-assed and he hates doing that to Wes.

He’s well into a one sided vidcall (noise-canceling headphones plugged in, seeing and listening to Wes, typing responses, because he hates talking to his laptop in public) when someone takes the seat across from him. Annoyed, he glances up, catches sight of the baseball cap, and blurts, “Shit, I thought you were a dude!”

Wes’s surprised laughter is jarring in the face of the spine of a book. Starbursts bloom across his vision, and dazing him for a moment until he feels something trickling down his lip.

"Fuck, Maka, I know I deserved that, but did you have to give me a nosebleed?"

[glassworkspiderlilies]

into the dark

She’s on the side laughing while he tries to carry through his plan.

“Oh, you’re precious,” she croons, crossing her legs. He glances at her and sees a flash of black lace underneath her four-inch skirt and cringes. It doesn’t escape her notice and she grins, leaning forward and putting her chin in her hand. “You really think this is going to go through, eh?”

“For the sake of hope,” Nagito grinds out, tightening the ropes on his legs. “Hope will always triumph over despair in the end. This will only bring the others closer to a greater hope…!”

She cackles. “I love that stupid, misguided sense of hope you have,” she says, uncrossing her legs and swinging them like a child. She watches with amusement as he tapes his mouth shut and lies down, ready to put the plan into its final stages.

“Oooh, don’t do that, it’s such a waste,” she says, jumping down from the stack of boxes she’d been sitting on. She stands by, amused, as she watches him slash his legs, cries muffled by the tape. When he lies back down, shaking from the pain, she puts a high-heeled foot on either side of him so he is now lying beneath her. She kneels down, nearly sitting on his waist, giggling at his vaguely panicked look that is mixed with suspicion. She puts her fingers on the edge of the tape, threatening to pull it back. “Let me hear your despair-induced screams loud and clear, Komaeda Nagito-kun.”

They’re for hope; don’t misunderstand you hateful girl, he thinks, and she laughs again. With one swift motion he plunges his hand into the knife that is positioned to his right, knocking away the Monobear doll, his screech muted. She leans down closer, and he can see more of the stupid black-and-red bra that already peeks out of her shirt. His fingers twitch and she smiles wider, that familiar Cheshire Cat grin that makes him both sick and elated. She puts her fingernails on his cheek, nails of color of blood, it’s probably why she chose that color anyway. He can feel their pressure but he doesn’t flinch, only stares up at her with light gray eyes, the color of a cloudy day that is threatening rain.

“Pretty, pretty thing,” she whispers, grinning madly as his mouth moves furiously underneath the tape, moans of pain escaping him. “But you’re going to have to do better than that to impress me.”

That is something I have never hoped to do, he thinks, but she only smiles.

“You were always trying to impress me, Nagito,” she whispers, and there is an involuntary shiver at the sound of his name on her tongue. “Deny your love of me and my despair all you can right now, but you can’t change the past.”

He doesn’t know what she’s talking about; all he knows the fact that he and the others were all part of Super High School Level Despair, and she was their monarch—and he hates her, hates them, hates despair. But there is a purr in her voice that he recognizes; there is a pulling seduction that his body seems to remember even if he does not. He grimaces. His body remembers Enoshima Junko, though his mind refuses to, and he detests that.

He can hear voices outside as the others come to his supposed rescue. Junko smiles, digging her fingers into his bleeding hand and watches him flinch, a cry of pain escaping him.

“You can’t escape from me,” she croons, tracing the line of his wrist. “You’ve got a part of me attached to you since you simply couldn’t bear being apart.”

I hate you, Nagito thinks, closing his eyes. He repeats it in his head, over and over again, like a mantra. The plan is almost over. He knows the poison is vaporizing and dying like this is much more painful than he’d thought; he chokes on the poison, gasps underneath the tape. Junko is still over him, watching his face contort with unmistakable glee.

I hate you, he thinks again, and just as his grip on the rope that steadies the spear above loosens, Junko whispers in his ear, close enough so that he can feel her lips moving against his skin.

“You know,” she says, “Your love was always my favorite kind of despair.”

Her laughter rings in the air, tainted with poison, and it is the last thing he hears before everything fades to black.