#shells writes

[its-shells]

“So,” Grian says, “this is awkward.”

Scar says nothing. Scar had said nothing for quite a while, honestly, sitting cross-legged in the void and playing with the hem of his cloak. Or with the flower stems woven through the hem of his cloak, as it were. Lilacs and poppies. Grian had thought it painfully ironic the first time he saw them. Scar hadn’t. Not until now.

“So,” Grian says, again, “I can explain? I think?”

He can hear stifled giggles behind him, Scott and Pearl discussing the last moments of the fight. He feels Martyn’s heated glare between his shoulder blades too, knows that he’ll be getting an earful about taking his final life whenever the fourth winner can get his hands on him, but at least Martyn’s been kind enough to leave him at the mercy of the fifth for now. Or not kind enough, as it were. Whether or not Scar has any mercy for him is an open question.

“Explain what,” Scar says. It’s not a question, which is just as well, since Grian doesn’t really have an answer.

Can he explain?

“Well,” he says, “there’s these death games.”

The death games he technically started, and then technically couldn’t stop. The death games that weren’t meant to be blood sacrifices, but probably count as happening on somebody’s altar. The death games that no one ever wins, but technically–

“Technically, the people who win them get to keep their memories.” He scrunches up his nose. “Or, uh, recover their memories of the previous ones, I suppose. Which is what’s happening to you. And Martyn, and Pearl, and Scott, and I was the first, so–”

“One heck of a headache, right?” Pearl yells behind them. “Was even for me, and you’ve got four whole timelines to deal with!” She flops backwards onto the floor, which is the void, pressing the back of the palm to her forehead theatrically even as she peers up at Scar through parted fingers. Scott rolls his eyes and grabs her hand.

“Give them a moment, Pearl,” Grian hears him whisper. “I know you weren’t there for Third Life, but I’ve explained it to you a dozen times, so–“

“So,” Scar says. “Third Life was real.”

It’s a strange way of putting it for someone who hadn’t remembered it at all until now.

“That’s a strange way of putting it for someone who hadn’t remembered it at all until now,” Grian says, because he’s always loose-tongued after dying. Scar stares at him, unblinking.

“That’s a strange way of thinking for someone who declared the first ever game a double victory,” he says. His head is tilted to the side.

Grian stares back.

“That didn’t count.”

“It didn’t not.”

“You didn’t remember until now.”

“I didn’t not.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Doesn’t it?” Scar shrugs. He plucks a flower from between the dark threads. It’s a poppy. “No less than the rest of it. No less sense than me waking up with sand between my toes, or burns on my arms, or bamboo in my pockets. No less than the dreams. Those didn’t make sense either.”

“It’s not like you ever asked me to explain.”

“Would you have?”

“Not the point.”

“Isn’t it?”

Pearl is still giggling. Martyn is still staring. Scott is quiet.

“Maybe it is,” Grian admits, quietly. It’s not an apology. It never will be.

Nor is it forgiveness, when Scar leans forward to tuck the poppy behind his ear. Nor will it ever be.

Sure feels like it sometimes though.

[dem0batz]

I'm plagued by thoughts of Him

🔞CW: (adopted) brother/sister kink

[dem0batz]

OpaLADS Love and Deepspace AU

Summary: This storyline follows MC!Reader and her relationships with the love interests in the game Love and Deepspace, meaning she is romantically involved with ALL 5 of them. This series is just my silly little interpretation of the guys and events based on my gameplay. Every fic is connected and while I don't post my updates in chronological order, the "chapters" below are listed in order of events for my timeline. **Updating to add: since I don’t write fic much anymore, I’ll likely focus on Sylus, Caleb, and Zayne in this dynamic as they are my mains.

Author’s Note: A couple of my earlier written chapters may undergo some rewriting at some point to reflect consistencies in my plot line.

Read on AO3

Chapter List

Apple Spice and Oaths | Caleb x MC!Reader

Rotten Right to the Core | Caleb x MC!Reader

Love and Deep Gossip | Zayne pov

Love and Deep Charades | Sylus x MC!Reader

Love and Deep Possession | Sylus x MC!Reader x Zayne

Unexpected Dinner | Zayne x MC!Reader

Just Pretend | Caleb x MC!Reader

Curiosity Killed the Kitten | Sylus x MC!Reader

Misc

Catching You Reading a Smutty Book; Sylus, Caleb, Zayne edition

How the LADS care for their chronically ill/disabled MC

LADS x Dungeon Master!mc/Reader

vampire!MC x human!Caleb

[its-shells]

Here’s the thing: Grian would kill for him, and it should be enough. 

If there is one thing they learn throughout the three iterations of a death game, it’s that nothing is more extreme than finding yourself on the wrong end of the sword. (Or a flint-and-steel, or an arrow, or a stalactite – they take the world apart, and use it all for weapons.) There’s nothing worse you can do than die, and consequently, there’s nothing better someone can do than kill for you. It’s a declaration of love equivalent to shouting from the rooftops, to carving a heart out and handing it, beating, to someone else. (And it doesn’t even have to be your own heart.) 

Grian would kill for him, Scar learns, very early on. Grian rigs up minecarts and laughs manically as they go off. Grian spends hours hiding red TNT blocks beneath the sand and lecturing Scar on what levers to pull if he wants them to go off at the right time. Grian collects the dripstone (because sand is too precious a resource to waste just yet) and mounts it diligently to a cobblestone roof. 

Grian comes back huffing, speaking of his boiling blood and revenge. He tells Scar that the TNT trap wasn’t his fault, that the ones responsible will pay, that this world will bow to them yet. Grian collects sand, a pitiful echo of the past, and shoves it in Scar’s face as some grand achievement. 

Grian drops the dripstone. 

Grian kills for him.

Grian kills BigB. 

Well, really, Grian kills Ren, and doesn’t quite remember that this would also kill BigB until later, but who is Scar to complain? He should be happy to know that Grian would kill for him, no matter who the target is, and if his secret soulmateship goes down in the process, well, then maybe he should be happier still.

Except. 

Except Grian makes BigB a grave. 

Scar had died on him so many times and never got one. Scar had died to him, just like BigB did, and still was left with nothing but sand and cacti to choke on as a ghost. Grian had jumped, is the thing, instead of making a grave, and shouldn’t that be a better declaration? Shouldn’t he be more content with the statement that amounted to “I can’t live without you”, than a statement that amounted to “I will mourn you for as long as I live?” Grian had died for him, and Grian had killed for him. How dare he expect anything more? 

How dare he want smiles, want confessions, or a beautiful sunset behind a hill as they talk? Grian kills for him; how dare he want anything else, even if the thing he wants is just some whispered words? 

Grian laughs, and snarks, and screams. Grian kills and dies when he’s fully devoted, because it’s a death game, and there’s nothing that will ever matter more. Grian doesn’t – because why would he – spare, or live. 

So really, really, what does it matter if all Scar wants is some bread?

[its-shells]

There is so much poetic justice going on around him.

There’s Grian and Scar, for one, which is enough to exhaust a whole season’s worth of poetry. The allies, the murderers, the fatal flaws, the victor and his final kill. As if that doesn’t cover it, there’s Impulse and Bdubs, the traitor and the betrayed, the two stubbornly insisting on a marriage through gritted teeth. Whoever said the universe doesn’t have a sense of humour is in for a bit of a reality check.  

And here’s the reality check – there’s Scott and Pearl. Except Scott doesn’t even pair up with Pearl, he chooses someone else – and yet, the person he chooses isn’t Jimmy. And Cleo hands him the flower, a daffodil, too yellow, and Scott makes a joke. And Jimmy jokes back, and the poetry around them shatters.

Sometimes, history makes the most impact when it rhymes. Other times, it falls intentionally out of rhythm, and that’s when it trips you up the hardest. Except you shouldn’t be tripping up right now, because your life is tied to someone else, and it’s no one you’ve ever really cared about.

Jimmy is not the first to die if the messages in the chat are to be believed, but it doesn’t matter if it’s nigh simultaneous, even if he does come second. He comes to gasping for breath, the pain of an explosion he didn’t see stinging at his limbs, and there’s a voice above him, apologetic as anything, and he thinks he should be angry, but he is not.

The universe doesn’t offer him his poetic justice; it doesn’t offer him revenge or a second chance. It shoves a stranger into his arms and tells him to go on. And maybe it expects him to be angry, but Jimmy is fond of defying expectations.

It’s okay, he says, dusting off his knees. It’s okay, he says, and his words feel light, free of the weight of past lives and past expectations and histories to be rehashed, free of old wounds that are just waiting to be reopened. It’s okay, he says, and Tango smiles at him, unfamiliar but friendly, and jumps head-first into making the kinds of plans that would have taken a backseat to emotions should those have reared their ugly head this time around.

It's okay, Jimmy says, and goes to gather up his stuff, and finds nothing, and helps Tango build a base, and finds some cows, and Gods above, he has so much to do, but he does it without ever falling out of step, without a heart he shares with another skipping a beat, like he might have if the world chose him to take a part in its poetry.

It’s okay, Jimmy says, and his voice is even, and he's surprised to find that this time, he means it.

[its-shells]

“There’s a joke here somewhere, you know,” fWhip says, behind him. “A goblin and a toy walk through a rift…”

Jimmy has heard the footsteps, but he is startled by his voice nonetheless, snapping to attention in that way that would’ve caused his hat to fall all funny and crooked over his eyes if he were still wearing it. He’s sitting on one of the benches by Scar’s flowerbeds, the ones that have shriekers hidden beneath them, he’d learned that one the hard way, and watching the sun as it sets over the main street of an amusement park his deputy had rambled to him about during late nights in Tumble Town. It’s strange, to see it with his own eyes when he’d half-convinced himself that Scar was making it all up, that he had nowhere to go back to and so no reason to leave. But here it is, and it is beautiful. How Jimmy misses having reasons to fault people for things.

“‘M not a toy,” he says after a pause, lazily. FWhip hops over the bench and settles down next to him, blue hoodie and ginger hair and Jellie ears headband and all. Jimmy really wants to say he looks unfamiliar.

“Well, not here you aren’t,” fWhip shrugs, giving him a once-over. “Wonder why. Seriously, this server has dwarfs, and slimes, and everything… wonder what it’s got against my ears.”

“Is it weird?” Jimmy asks, half to carry on the conversation, half because he’s curious. It stopped being weird for him approximately ten minutes in, but that’s because he’d never really gotten used to the whole – cotton in his lungs, a foot or so away from the ground thing. That wasn’t him, not really, just a joke taken too far in a world that doesn’t understand jokes. But fWhip is a goblin, proudly, he collects gold and lives in caves and stuff. FWhip is a goblin, except when he is a human, apparently. Does this server also not understand jokes? Or does it understand them too well?

FWhip shrugs again. “Not really,” he says, honestly, as far as Jimmy can tell. “I mostly forget when I’m not around mirrors. I mean, I’m a bit taller, and when I raise my arms, they’re not–“ he squints and lifts a hand to cover the setting sun in front of them – “green, but for the most part, it’s alright.” He chuckles. “Maybe that’s weird.”

“Maybe.”

“Is it weird for you?”

“Nope.”

“Figures.” FWhip shifts slightly on the bench. Jimmy isn’t looking at him, but he catches the sidelong glance thrown his way. “You like it?”

“The server? It’s got pretty builds.”

It wasn’t a question about the server, and they both know it, but fWhip doesn’t deign to correct him. Jimmy inclines his head slightly, inspecting the cobblestone pavement beneath his feet. It reaches just up to the edge of the bench and no further, because Scar built it, and Scar is nothing if not detail-oriented. When terraforming, at least.

FWhip is staying in his hotel, just off of main street. Personal invitation, he hears. Jimmy is… well, he might build his own place.  

Or go live with Grian, but that’s, like, the last resort. The man is living in a giant rock. Jimmy has standards.

“The rift is open, you know,” fWhip says. “Everyone might just decide to go back soon.”

They might. Though they probably won’t – they’ve never been anything less than a curious bunch, to their own detriment, and Jimmy knows for a fact that at least two of their friends are still carrying a grudge about all that skulk under their bases, even if Pix had offered to clean it out (for them, not for him yet.) It’s prime time to plot in retaliation, or maybe to take part in whatever Christmas plans the hermits are whispering to each other about through chat, Pearl and Grian off to build a sleigh that will undoubtedly look as beautiful as anything they’ve ever touched. Jimmy wonders what Christmas is like on here.

“I doubt it,” he says. “I mean, an eye for an eye, right? We have to get revenge for the inconvenience.”

The inconvenience of him getting an entire villager trading hall, or of fWhip getting an entire minecart system between the segments of his base. The inconvenience of farms, more efficient than anything they’ve ever built themselves, and of sorted inventories, and of a colourful hat, and laughter.

The inconvenience of a killer robot, he reminds himself. Stuff’s fair, actually.

“That we do,” fWhip agrees. “But at least it’s open, so we’re not stuck. Think it’ll put us back to how we ought to be?”

Jimmy watches the sun set over the horizon, and says nothing.

[its-shells]

“Is it, like, super insensitive to say I’m glad I wasn’t the first one to die this time around?” Jimmy asks. He’s perched at the rooftop of Grian’s new base, not that far off the ground, like he thinks he belongs here. 

Grian shrugs. 

“It’s an understandable sentiment,” he says, voice even, as he busies himself with tending to his sugarcane farm. “Maybe the universe decided you need a break.” 

Jimmy snorts. Grian can hear the rhythmic tapping of his feet against the wooden wall as he dangles them over the drop. If he fell right now, it would hardly hurt. 

“And the universe said, stop dying first, dude, seriously, here, I’ll kill someone for you,” he says. He gives the universe a comically low voice. “And I said thanks, much appreciated.”

Grian wonders if he’s as far off the truth as he thinks he is. If there’s merit to looking at a quirk of fate through the lens of predetermined malice on behalf of the powers that be. If there is, Jimmy is probably as screwed as the rest of them. 

“Once the universe starts saying things to you, you should probably run,” he advises (pointless if he’s wrong, futile if he’s right). “Never ends well.”

Jimmy snorts again. He gets up to his feet, backs away from the drop before sliding down the grassy hill towards where Grian is still staring at his sugarcane. Silence sits between them patiently, like a tamed wolf. Grian wonders which one of them had tamed it. 

“What do you think Scar will do when he finds out?” Jimmy asks, finally. His shoes are half-sunken into the wet dirt below their feet, but he isn’t paying it any mind.

Grian considers it.

“Laugh, probably.” That sounds like a very Scar reaction. “And steal my villagers. And then maybe build me a grave.”

“Do you need a grave? Wouldn’t that be a little, I don’t know, morbid?”

“It’s the thought that counts, right?” Grian shrugs. He’s never made Scar a grave before, but that’s beside the point. “Maybe he can build it on my lawn. To remind me of my own mortality and all that jazz.”

Jimmy gives him an unimpressed look. They both know that there’s enough irony in Grian’s referring to his own mortality to rival the irony of his death (and isn’t that a high bar to set, killed by trying to save.) 

“I did promise no do-overs,” he adds after a pause, because Jimmy just continues looking. “Again. The next time. So technically, it counts for me as much as it would for anyone.” 

“Technically, other people don’t just choose to not have do-overs in a hardcore world,” Jimmy hums. Grian looks back at the sugarcane. 

“Did I invite you here to get all philosophical?” 

“You invited me here to die, I think.” “Not like that.”

“No, not like that,” Jimmy agrees. “But it’s not like you expect me to live.” 

Grian doesn’t argue. He wonders if coal miners expected anything of their canaries apart from being kept alive themselves. He wonders if that was still too high a standard to set for a bird who stayed by their side only because they caged it. 

“It’s okay,” Jimmy smiles, and his smile is almost convincing. “It’s not like I expected myself to live either. But I’m still here, eh?” 

“You’re still here,” Grian agrees, though he doesn’t give either of them the satisfaction of finishing the thought (But I’m not, echoes in the air around them). He watches a thick droplet of water roll down a sugarcane stalk, and wonders then what the canary would do if it suddenly found itself cageless.

For both their sakes, he hopes it would be something worth watching. 

[its-shells]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: 3rd Life | Last Life SMP Series Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: EthosLab & BdoubleO100 Characters: EthosLab (Video Blogging RPF), John Booko | BdoubleO100 Additional Tags: background bdubs & impulse and joel & etho, Double Life SMP: Session 4, Unreliable Narrator, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Discussions of Last Life Summary:

“I wouldn’t know,” Bdubs says, slowly, “how you are as a partner on red.”

Ah.

This might be the most they have spoken about it since their second foray into a death game had wrapped up, roundabout as it is, and now that they are speaking about it, Etho decides that it was for good reason, actually. Not that it bothers him, really. It’s just… well, he isn’t sure. It’s just, he supposes, that Bdubs is kind of right. The first game is barely worth mentioning, and the second – they both know how that ended.

Hey look, I did a writing! Specifically, it was a writing for the Life Series Fanwork Exchange, and my gift is for @ellytra. I watched Etho’s POV of Last Life for this (and was immediately obsessed, of course.) Is this in character? Who knows! But I enjoyed writing it. Hope you enjoy reading it too :D