Jealousy Looks Good On You

random headcanons i have about VALORANT agents

(this got out of hand but heres some hcs i have that i like are pretty cool (probs pt. 1))

depending on the day, phoenix, skye, astra, chamber, kj, raze, neon, and reyna are completely non-understandable with their accents combined with their slang (this makes it terrible for anyone trying to talk to them about something important that day, especially when kj, raze, and skye are all hanging out together)

kj speaks in german whenever she's super mad but has also started to speak it more frequently after she teaches skye, raze, yoru, and cypher some german words (mainly curses or insults) [i had a friend whose family was Italian and she knew some words from it so she would teach us some of them. they were mainly curse words but it was funny when she called someone a bitch in Italian to their face during class]

phoenix, yoru, and jett all try to learn each other’s native languages (excluding phoenix). it takes them a while but they can at least understand them when it’s being spoken and can talk in basic sentence

people who can cook: skye, astra, cypher, brimstone, jett, sage, neon, omen, and sova

people who will cook when necessary but it is babysitter level of cooking: breach, yoru, viper, killjoy, and reyna

people who aren’t allowed to touch the kitchen with a ten-foot pole: phoenix, raze, KAY/O, chamber

the warm-up crew is a group that trains together a surprising amount

brim, sage, and viper usually train together (brim occasionally with breach)

when yoru, jett, and phoenix can’t sleep or get up early they go train together or, when they’re still up, sit and talk with kj and raze in their labs/the living area/or any of their rooms

phoenix will give anyone a hug (unless they say otherwise), usually side hugs but he’s almost always touching someone (jett or yoru mainly) in some way

(he stands close to people so their arms touch, he gives everyone a hug or high five when they leave, he ruffles yoru’s hair when he walks by or when he wakes up in the morning, he cuddles with jett and yoru whenever they’re sitting down together, he dances around with astra and neon after they make dinner, he shoves kj’s beanie down her head when they’re both stressed and tired, he flips jett’s hood up whenever he runs past and she’s stressed or upset since it makes her laugh, he flicks cyphers hat when they’re heading out on a mission)

skye always makes sure kj and raze go to sleep when she knows they'll be up late

those two care a lot about each other but they both have the unhealthy habit of locking themselves in their labs and messing around with gadgets. they used to have an alarm clock in there that brim got them so they wouldn't be in there for years, but it was destroyed after it scared kj so bad she wrecked her and raze's projects they've been working on for days

because she doesn't want kj and raze's projects to be ruined, skye always goes in quietly, sitting at one of the work stations or on a couch (that appears after several visits from skye, phoenix, jett, and yoru) and not speaking until one of the 2 notices her. she convinces them that they'll get more done/have more time if they sleep now and don't pass out and sleep for 2 days

skye, astra, and yoru talk to each other a lot, more than you would think

astra and yoru first became friends after they talked about their powers, since they both deal with dimensional stuff, yoru and skye became friends because they would both hangout when phoenix, jett, kj, and raze were on missions, practicing their flash aims. yoru introduced the two after he became a lot closer with them

astra and skye are both environmentalists and talk about the better ways they could fight and how to make the base more sustainable, which leads them (and neon and sage, sometimes yoru) to create a garden full of different plants from many people's home countries.

the garden becomes a community effort

kj and raze use spare/partly broken parts to make a sprinkler system

neon, jett, and brim use their plane to go and pick up supplies, since the base isn't really supplied for gardening

astra and skye plan everything out, and with the help of kj and viper, create the perfect place for it to be, close to the kitchen but still with plenty of light

viper modifies her poison walls and orbs to spray out water, which she gives to kj & raze on their sprinkler making journey

phoenix and yoru don't have any powers that help them with the gardening aspect, but phoenix burns away and dying or unnecessary plants in the building area while yoru uses his teleport to move supplies over

they have all the agents make a list of what they want to be grown in the garden. there's a big, ever-changing list in the kitchen that cypher updates when he gets confirmation that they can grow it and someone wants it

the garden ends up being multiple sections, each with its own climate to provide the best-growing environment for certain plants [it ends up being kind of like biosphere 2 if any of you know what that is/has been there]

after they set the garden up, agents can sign up to make food for the Protocol

astra shows phoenix how to make food from her home country

skye and brim have a bbq off

kj and raze swap recipes and meals, when they make them just for themselves

reyna signs up with raze one day and the kitchen somehow doesn’t explode, but they do end up making some fire food

skye/astra will bring the agents who are training/working food that’s comforting but also healthy so they don’t pass out

sage, jett, and neon make food for lunar new year and everyone thinks it’s amazing

all the agents have groups that they’ll train with/hang out after training with (like in warm up)

jett, phoenix, and yoru always train together, no matter who else joins

kj and raze train together a lot too, but raze will also train with reyna sometimes

skye trains with yoru a lot, as well as kj and raze. she’s trained with neon more recently

sage and viper train together a lot, as well as brim. these three train with omen a lot too, and brim with breach

sova trains with anyone who’s in the training room (mostly) but likes to train with phoenix and jett a lot (yoru’s growing on him)

sports are a big thing at the base, especially after phoenix joins (brim kept everything strictly professional before he joined but phoenix wore him down)

brim, neon, phoenix, jett, raze, and KAY/O all like basketball

viper, astra, phoenix, yoru, raze, skye, and reyna all like soccer

brim, KAY/O, and (eventually) breach all like baseball (KAY/O and breach mainly watch it cause brims watching it)

kj watches sports with raze & skye, but not usually on her own

sage, sova, skye, cypher, and kj all like watching non conventional sports like gymnastic, archery, track, etc. (mostly during the olympics)

chamber and omen don’t really watch sports but if it’s on then they’ll watch it

AU I thought of that is very significant to my mental health.

when youre tired on public transit and start thinking "let me rest my eyes a bit" thats the devil talking

Could we get a Viktor drabble where he’s doing that thing teenagers do when they written their name and your name in their journal to see how they sound with your last name?

And getting caught 👀

As you wish, anon. And if Viktor getting caught writing things about reader is your jam, might I suggest A Theory by @gaybybirth which is the fic that dragged me kicking and screaming back into writing on tumblr.

Round and around and around that long finger. How he could twirl chestnut strands so much and not have given himself a permanent little curl or even a tiny bald spot behind his ear was beyond you. As it was he had cowlick after wispy soft cowlick curling errantly in the mess of his hair. It was irritatingly endearing, terribly distracting. Had your own fingers itching every time he started up that bad habit to slap his hand gently aside and and rake your own fingers back down his scalp. Difficult not to think what it would feel like, the silk mess of that hair carded between fingers. To watch him tilt is head back, close those tired amber eyes slowly. Thick lashes dark against pale cheekbones. Let you kiss bruised, tired eyelids softly...

No.

No, thoughts ran away with you far too easily. Not even thoughts - silly fantasies. He was terribly busy, terribly important. Him and Mr. Talis. Busy building the future of Piltover and leashing the power of those terrifyingly unstable hex crystals to allow teleportation across continents, across worlds. And all you could think of was touching that babyfine soft hair that formed a v at the nape of his neck. About the way his voice was always so softly quiet, terribly gentle.

He'd let you hold one, once. A hex crystal. Dropped it into your palm and smiled at how you'd sucked breath in hard and fast as you cradled it like a live bomb. Closed your cupping palms around it with his own.

"Can you feel it?" He asked.

All you could do to swallow, throat sandpaper grit and eyes round saucers. You could feel his fingertips against the outside of your wrists, feel the brush of his thumbs against your own and the warm of his palms to your knuckles. And yes... the shallow pulsing electric vibration of the deadly dangerous crystal you held. Like licking a battery without the copper taste, and with the warning crackle through the whole of your forearms straight to spine.

Lightening in a stone, if not a bottle.

Blue luminescence reflected in gold eyes as he pulled the careful cup of your hands apart and took the stone back. Eyes only for one thing and it surely wasn't for the tech assistant in faded grey and tatty coveralls, constantly smeared in gear grease and always in the background; fixing all the little minor issues the new golden boys of Piltover managed to create with their unlimited intellect and vastly overestimated mechanical expertise.

Sure, they could both design the future, write complex mathematic and arcane problems as foreign to you as Noxian calculus... but ask either to find the actual source of a lack of power in a time train gear network they had designed? Forest for the trees, you supposed. It was fine, you were good with details, with the trees, if this metaphor held.

Details like that hair twirling. Like his shy smile. Like how you'd be under and deep in the guts of a piece of mech and fumbling blindly for a tool only to have him press it into your searching fingers. Never could figure out how he always knew exactly what you were looking for without even having been asked. Nine eighths spanner? In your fingers. Ten quarter allen wrench? Done. The finest pair of needle nose pliers? His fingertips soft against your grease stained palm as he pushed it there in silent passing. Reading your mind.

If only you could read his.

So nice then, that one night, when you’d dragged yourself out from under the guts of their latest prototype, to find him sat there alone, the only other living soul in the lab and shaking an empty pen between twirling the silk licks of his hair.

You rolled tired shoulders and unzipped coveralls to tie the arms round your waist over your sweated tank top.  Wandered over to pull the pen from his fingers and put a fresh one in hand.  So lost in thought he failed to notice.  Went right back to scribbling.  Curiosity had you glance over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of whatever incomprehensibly complex mathematics he was entrapped in.

And instead stared down at two open pages scrawled with your name.  And his.  And little rough sketches and doodles that had a heat rising under your skin with the searing intensity of a late summer sunburn.  Under your lean over his shoulder Viktor had swam to the surface, fresh pen stilling its most recent scrawl of your name before it dropped and he scooped one elegant hand under the jacket of his notebook to slam it shut and spin on you.  Luminous golden eyes wide.

Before you could stop yourself you’d reached past him fast as a striking snake and grabbed up the notebook.  Back pedaled a few steps as you flipped through it.  Your name, his name, doodles and drawings and.... oh.  You turned that page sideways and squinted.  OH.  

“Wait.  Please...”  His voice was broken, begging.  Mortified.  

“Viktor.  Do you...”  You were going to tease him, grinning, delighted.  Until you looked up and saw him wilt, the fine splay of one hand hiding half his face as he slumped back onto his lab stool.  Oh no. 

Still, you weren’t giving that book back.  Yet.  Tucked it behind the small of your back in the waistband of coveralls and closed in on him.  Very much emboldened by all the scribbles on those pages, lovely spidery litany of your name over and over again intertwined with his.  Had you slot yourself between the long spread of his lean thighs.  Permanently stained and calloused hand tugging away the one that hid his face by the wrist.  

He resisted, and for a strained second you felt sure he was going to rise, spindle legs carrying him backward off the stool and out of the lab.  But instead he gave, and let his hand drop, heat burning fever under pale skin beneath.  Hot as steam burnt steel under your fingers as you caught up the fine angles of his face.  Glad he didn’t seem to mind the scent of gear grease and petrol on your skin.  Or how rough your thumb was as you slid it over the little freckle under his eye. 

“Have you settled on one?”  You couldn’t help your teasing nature, had to ask.  So pleased he would be so obsessed as to fill pages with your names together.

“Please.”  Still pained, he tried to pull his face from the frame of your hands, tried to reach round you to grab the book back.  Instead you caught his arm behind you and pressed it higher as you leaned in.

Took a chance and pushed your forehead to his temple.  Watched him exhale a shiver and turn amber eyes up toward yours.  So close you could see the flecks of brown and green imbedded in the gold depths.  Unable to help yourself, you pressed him.

“What else have you written about us?”

peristalsis - ii.

selkie!soap x reader. depression. suicidal ideation. strangers to "lovers." 4.9k. . Running away from life to the Scottish Hebrides, you meet a man who won't leave you alone. . Masterlist. Ao3.

previous

You sleep long enough that, when you wake up, you have enough energy to cry.

It’s a big one. The kind of cry that threatens to turn your throat out, with how hard you sob. Alone in the cottage, far away from anything resembling civilization, you wail like wounded animal, choking on your own tears and mucus, losing track of your body buried underneath the covers—

But it happens at a remove. You watch yourself implode from someplace deep inside, not entirely sure why it’s happening at all—but long past trying to figure it out.

This is how it’s been for a while. There’s nothing special about it anymore. Nothing urgent. Most of the time, you are a blank space of a person, a vacuum where joy or rage or fear should be, but occasionally some maelstrom or another kicks up to fill it in, and your only course of action is to ride it out until it ends.

You’ve stopped trying to fix it. And you’ve stopped hoping anyone else can, either.

So you cry, until at last, you’re empty again. Or you’re too tired to continue. The difference is negligible, but functionally irrelevant. Once it’s done, you get out of bed.

The pressure in the shower is as weak as Johnny reported, but the water is indeed warm when you turn it on; you stand naked under the flow, arms hanging at your sides.

The day stretches itself out before you with nothing to occupying it, just as you’d planned. Nothing to work towards; no effort to put forward. Nothing, thanks to your choice of locale, to feel guilty about not seeking out.

A day of peace and utter quiet.

Suddenly—violent banging, somewhere in the cottage. It startles you; you jump so sharply at the noise that you smack your wrist on the soap caddy attached to the shower wall. The banging comes again—annoyed, you realize with no little bemusement that someone is at the front door.

You wrap yourself in a towel and hobble out of the bathroom to answer it, a piece of your mind on your tongue, dart-shaped and ready to fly—

Of course it’s Johnny.

Johnny, big and burly in a sweater, kilt, and pelt once again, two paper cups balanced in one large hand and a grocery bag hanging from the other. Whose dark brows shoot up his forehead as his eyes travel with surprise, and blatant appreciation, down the dripping length your body.

“Well, good mornin’, bonnie,” he purrs.

“What,” you grunt. A cold breath of wind chooses that moment to force its way through the door, gasping across the shower water still running in rivulets from your hair to the rolled edge of your towel. Goosebumps erupt from your bare skin in millions of simultaneous pinpricks—you flinch bodily at the chill.

“Ah, hell’s bells, don’t just stand there,” Johnny says, following the wind. “It’s freezin,’ go on, let me get in, hurry.”

You let him step inside, for some reason, and he shuts the door behind him with the heel of his boot. He wastes no time after that, heading to the kitchen to set down his things.

“Brought breakfast!” he says cheerfully. “There’s this bakery on Barra I thought you’d like, fresh doughnuts and coffee. Dunno how you take yours, but there’s sugar in the pantry and cream in the fridge.”

“I don’t want breakfast,” you say.

“What? ‘Course you do. I’m no’ takin’ you seal-watchin’ on an empty stomach.”

He starts unpacking the grocery bag and setting things on the counter while your jaw hangs open. Several things occur to you to say—I never agreed to that and what the hell is wrong with you, for starters—but your stomach growls at him before you can. The aroma of fresh-baked pastry wafts through the kitchen when he opens one box, and he turns to grin at you, cheeks dimpling.

“Do you get dressed, bonnie,” he says. “It’ll still be here when y’get back.”

It is less polite than he perhaps intends it to be, given that his gaze travels appreciatively across your bare shoulders. You cross your arms fruitlessly over your chest and, nothing else for it, retreat to the bedroom, feeling his eyes on you the whole way.

You return to the kitchen after having pulled on wool leggings and the same fleecy sweater from the day before. Johnny, one hip set against the counter, has a cup of steaming coffee in one hand and a half-eaten cruller in the other, crumbs at the corner of his mouth.

“Got anythin’ heavier?” he asks around a chewed-up mouthful. “Gets cold out there.”

You look down at his bare calves, broad and taut and covered in a down of dark hair. “You seem alright.”

“I’m used to it,” he says, shrugging—the muscles flexing under your gaze.

You purse your lips. “I don’t have anything.” You hadn’t intended to leave the cottage overmuch.

You approach the counter. Johnny does not move a centimeter, forcing you to stand close as you pick through the two boxes of doughnuts and feel the body heat radiating off of him, displacing the scent of fried dough with his musk.

“That’s all right,” he says. You’re close enough to hear the way his voice hums deep in his chest. “I can keep you warm.”

You snatch a plain glazed from the box and take two very large steps away from him. The hair on the back of your neck lifts as you press against the sink behind you. If he notices your reaction, it doesn’t seem to bother him in the slightest—he lifts the cup to his lips and drinks, eyes sliding closed with simple, obvious pleasure, dark lashes curling against his cheek.

You take the brief respite from his gaze to stare at him. In the morning light, on a full night of sleep, you can almost believe that whatever you’d seen in him yesterday had been nothing more than a misfire of exhausted synapses. An overlay of a dream; a circadian prompt to rectify nearly seventeen hours of sleeplessness. You’d been cold, and tired, and hungry. That was all.

You bite down on your doughnut, not really tasting it. The nerves along your spine twitch and contract around the memory of his flashing gaze.

His eyes open again, and he smiles at you. “Good?” He flicks a look at the single bite you’ve taken, looks at your mouth, and then waits for your reply.

“It’s fine,” you grumble. Then, “How did you get here? I didn’t hear the truck drive up. Do you live close by?”

“Sometimes,” he says. He looks pleased that you’ve asked, that you’re interested at all, and you immediately regret inquiring. “Live on a boat, me. Moored in the cove right now.”

“A…boat,” you say.

“Aye.” A wisp of dark hair, something he must have missed when he gelled his mohawk this morning, flutters as he nods. “Nice and cozy. Not as grand as all this, mind.” He gestures around with coffee and doughnut at the less than five hundred square feet of the cottage. “But it’s still a sight nicer than some other places I’ve slept.”

He’s likely hinting at his military service. “Okay,” is all you say, unwilling to entertain it.

He smirk—undeterred. “We’ll take her out once you’re ready.”

“I never said I was going.”

Dark brows lift. “Got somethin’ else planned for today?” he asks, incredulous, as if he never imagined you wouldn’t want to hang out with him.

“No, I—”

You wrack your brain. You have no intention of explaining to this complete stranger that the last thing you’d wanted to do, when you booked this trip, was really anything at all—and in fact, you hadn’t even considered that that might be something anyone else would care much about.

Much less proactively address.

“No,” you repeat, sulking.

Johnny considers you, chewing. His eyes do not stray, this time, to places they don’t belong; but there’s an insight to them. A sharp awareness. A perception in his gaze that is just as undressing, as if whatever is going on with you is visible to the naked eye.

“I figure,” he says, slowly, as if to coax, “you put your wee shoes on, an’ I’ll pack this back up, and we take it along.”

“You don’t have to do this,” you grouse. “I don’t need you to, like—be my tour guide.”

“Aye, but that doesnae mean I don’t wanna,” he retorts, smiling.

He shoves the last bite of cruller in his mouth and gazes patiently at you as he works it with his jaw, the muscles flexing along his temples as he chews.

Exhaustion, your constant companion, stares you down alongside him. It would take so much more energy to fight him than to go along with whatever he has planned. Energy you just don’t have anymore. And going along doesn’t mean you have to pretend to enjoy yourself—it’s not like you care enough about Johnny’s self-esteem to conjure up a happy face to show him.

You can go, and be a bitch about it, and once you do maybe he’ll realize you’re not at all worth the effort he’s making, and then finally leave you alone.

“Fine,” you say, which is how you end up on a fishing trawler headed south toward, ostensibly, a colony of breeding seals.

It’s an old vessel—that much is obvious. Its edges and corners are dull with the passage of time and constant maintenance, scuffed by innumerable passes-over with cleaner and cloth. Mildew competes with the aroma of fresh varnish as Johnny leads you onto the bridge, which is mercifully closed in from the ocean wind.

The interior is mostly wood of a warm, orangish variety—you can’t tell if that’s a decision made with aesthetics or function in mind. The space comprises a kitchen, surprisingly well-appointed with a stove, sink, countertop, and fridge, and a small sitting area with both couch and booth seating. Surrounding windows allow in the grey light of the morning.

“Bought it off an old bloke on Lewis,” Johnny says, taking his place at the wheel, which is in a little alcove off the kitchen.

If you’d thought steering a boat would have curtailed his chatting, you’d have been wrong—he seems to have no trouble with that and talking, incessantly, at the same time, as he pulls the vessel away from the cove and into the open water.

“All his family moved to the mainland, he told me, an’ this is after generations fishin’ these islands, even makin’ it through the Clearances! No money in it anymore, he said, not like you could make in some office somewhere countin’ someone else’s money.” He checks something on the dashboard in front of him, but it doesn’t distract him for long. “Held on for a while, but people just kept leavin,’ an’ he was gettin’ too old to go out on his own. Got such a good price on it, I think he was just happy someone else was gonna take up the tradition.”

“Did he sell you the cottage too?” you ask, and then dig your nails into your wrist for encouraging him.

“Yup,” he says. “No one else wanted it, but me? I saw somethin’ special about it.”

He turns to smile at you—no doubt pleased you made the connection. You avert your gaze.

“Imagine someday I’ll have my own family here,” he continues. “Good place for it. Nice and slow, not like city living. Can hear yourself think out here. Perfect place to have a few wee ones.”

“If people stop leaving,” you mutter.

He turns to you again. “I’m no’ worried about that,” he replies. He’s still smiling. “You came here, after all.”

You have nothing to say to that.

The trip is a short one—Johnny brings the trawler alongside an island he informs you is called Mingulay, a square mile smaller than Vatersay’s tiny dot in the North Atlantic. Unlike the latter, he says, this island has not been inhabited since 1912, and has been completely reclaimed by the ocean and its wildlife.

After he drops anchor offshore, Johnny disappears down a steep flight of stairs below deck, which he had not offered a tour of, and emerges a short time later with a large, bulky coat.

“Didn’t I tell you?” he says proudly, holding it out by the shoulders. “Here, turn ‘round.”

You pause in the middle of reaching for it. You don’t know exactly why you comply—it occurs to you that if you grabbed for the jacket, he could simply not let go of it, and you would end up exactly where he wants you anyway. So you lower your arm and, resigned, give him your back.

He steps up behind you. Warmth pours off of him, more than you think any human body should be able to generate.

You hear him inhale, deeply, as he brings the jacket to your back. As you slide your arms into the sleeves, you feel his exhale on the nape of your neck, teasing through individual follicles of hair.

“There w’go,” he murmurs, much closer than you expected.

You can hear the low hum of his voice in his chest; his hands linger on your shoulders far longer than they need to, heavy, big enough that his index fingers brush along your collarbones.

When his hands make to slide down your back you step away from him and fumble to zip the jacket up; he chuckles lightly behind you. When you turn to face him, his lips are curled—smug.

“Alright then,” he says. “Let’s get out there.”

He rows the two of you to shore in a small kayak, two pairs of binoculars in your lap as you huddle away from the wind. You’ll be walking to the haul-out, he says—getting too close to the breeding grounds, which he calls a rookery, would spook them, possibly causing a stampede.

“It’s grey seals we’re gonna see,” he explains as the two of you pick your way across the rocky landscape. “Not the biggest haul-out you could see, some colonies get into the thousands, but we’ll have it all to ourselves.”

He insists on taking your elbow every time the two of you cross particularly uneven terrain, even though you don’t need it. You think he takes your attempts to shake him off as proof of your lack of balance, because he grasps you all the tighter every time.

“I’m not a child, Johnny, I can walk on my own,” you finally snap at him.

“Just bein’ a gentleman, bonnie,” he replies nonchalantly. He does not let you go.

As you get closer, you hear the seals before you see them, and when their voices reach you across the open island, you stop dead.

Groaning, grunting, hissing in a cacophonous chorus. Some part of your hindbrain double-takes, reshuffles itself—some ancestral instinct always on the lookout for predation. If you’d been given a chance to guess what a colony of mating seals might have sounded like, you’re not sure you could have guessed what they sounded like.

Certainly not like what you hear now—

Like people.

Johnny grins at you when he notices. “Aye, it’s a right ruckus, innit?”

He leads you up a small rise, where he has the two of you settle belly-down over the machair to overlook the wedge of rocky coast that the colony has claimed for its own.

And when you finally see it—it’s underwhelming.

Perhaps two hundred long, fat bodies, in varying shades of brown and grey, lay indolently along the rocks, in groups of three or four, some heavily galumphing from one place to another while others roll occasionally from side to side. The shifting winds catch their scent and blow it uncaringly into your face; you nearly gag at the admixture of dead fish and ammonia.

It doesn’t escape you that this is a rare thing to witness; you are not wholly immune to the fact that you are only a hundred meters away from something most people only encounter on a screen. It’s just that without a swell of awed music in the backdrop, or a narrator’s breathless wonder at the miracle of pinniped life, what’s left for you to observe is a population of wet, stinking animals, shitting where they lay, vocalizing without cease while they laze about doing basically nothing.

Johnny does not seem to notice your disillusionment; he hands you one pair of binoculars, and directs your attention to activity along the shoreline. You follow to where he’s pointing; one larger seal is hassling a smaller one, which snarls at the aggressor as it thrashes around with its substantial bulk.

“Little one there—” Johnny says, “that’s a female, probably obvious. Big one knows she’s ready to mate, can smell it on her.”

The female bares her teeth and lunges at the bigger male, which flinches back but holds his ground.

“Doesn’t look like she agrees,” you mutter.

“She’s just givin’ him a hard time. She’s all in heat, see? Just makes her cranky,” Johnny says. You feel his eyes on you, and lower your binoculars to look at him. “She’s got to fuss to feel all in control.”

You flush. “Right.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No,” you say. “He’s—he’s just bothering her.”

He gazes at you for a moment, contemplative. Corners of his mouth quirking upward. He does not reply for a long moment, long enough that you have to avert your gaze from his.

“Nah,” he finally says, and you don’t think you’re imagining the low, sultry note in his voice. “She wants it bad as he does.”

You scowl, uncomfortably perceived, and return your binoculars—the pair is still facing off, gurgling and growling at each other. The female is slim, almost sleek, unlike most of the other seals populating the rookery.

“Is she sick?” you ask.

“Hm? Oh, no, she’s alright. The mums lose a lot of weight when they nurse. Takes three weeks, and they don’t eat in the meantime.”

“Jesus.”

“Be nice if the dads ever brought ‘em a bite, aye?” Johnny agrees. “Deadbeats, the lot of them.”

The two of you survey the colony in silence for a moment. As the morning wears on, the cloud covering thins overhead, allowing cool sunlight to filter through. The temperature doesn’t rise in response; begrudgingly, you tug Johnny’s jacket a little tighter around you.

Then, suddenly, his hand lands on your back, between your shoulder blades.

“Got some pups over there,” he says. “Look, by the kelp.”

You find them; smaller bodies, white dinged with wet sand and dirt, lounge near their mothers or wriggle with aimless difficulty. They’re fluffy and round as plush toys, with shining black eyes and noses, and once Johnny’s pointed them out you can differentiate the higher, sweeter pitch of their cries from the overall cacophony.

“Sometimes,” Johnny murmurs, “search and rescue’ll get called out because someone thought they heard a baby crying. Some kid stranded or lost, right? Turns out to be a baby seal.”

“That’s kind of scary,” you say.

“Aye,” says Johnny. “Always makes me think that’s where the old legends come from, about seal people or mermaids.”

A small ways away, some of the mothers lay with their pups far into the surf, letting the waves break over them. You watch as one mother thunks her large head overtop of her pup’s as the water rushes toward them; the pup wriggles, and then, as the wave engulfs them, it begins to thrash, whipping up a panicked froth.

“Time for swimming lessons already?” Johnny muses. “Seems early.”

You’re horrified. “She’s going to drown it!”

The hand still on your back pats you consolingly. “Just watch,” says Johnny.

The wave reaches as far up the shore as gravity allows, and then begins to recede. The pup’s thrashing calms as the air meets its face once again; the cow allows the pup to lift its head, and after a few sputters, the pup seems no worse for wear.

“They’re hardier than they look, bonnie,” Johnny says.

His hand, heavy and warm even over his borrowed jacket, slides down from your shoulders to your lower back, and then he rubs, slowly, side to side, as if to comfort you—but the knobs of your spine contract at his touch.

“Last of the births this season, looks like,” he says. “Mum’s getting ready to leave—probably not the only one.”

Something hard drops into your stomach.

“They leave their babies?” you ask.

“Aye. Once they’re done nursing, they mate, and then they go.”

You look back at the other cows with their pups. One baby has its muzzle to its mother’s belly, quivering and suckling, while she lays with her head on a patch of grass. She looks uninterested—more, she looks disinterested. As if how voraciously her pup is nursing has nothing much to do with her, and she’s bored of even having to think about it.

Bored—and already looking forward to the next part of her life without a baby in it.

“That’s horrible,” you say.

“They’re solitary animals, bonnie,” Johnny says, not ungently. “The only time they’re really all together is for this.”

A line tightens between your stomach and throat, and you feel it start to build between your ribs. A tremor—foreshocks. The wind picks up, bringing a sharp chill off the ocean and up the rise that cuts into your stinging eyes, abrades the naked skin of your hands and the exposed part of your neck.

When you look through your binoculars again, you wonder how many of the pups you see have already been abandoned.

“Aw, bonnie,” Johnny says. There’s a kind of pity in his voice that has your hackles raising.

“I want to leave,” you say, yanking away from his touch and shuffling down the incline. “Take me back to the cottage.”

“Bonnie, it’s okay!” Johnny protests, rolling to his back to look at you as you stand. “The pups make it, they figure out how to fend for themselves.”

You glare at him, vision blurring. “All of them?”

Some part of you knows you’re being irrational—knows that nature is a cruel home, and that many children face worse fates than the seal pups. Abandoning the young, the needy, is no aberration; it is, in fact, far more the standard than the human practice, which lingers for decades—

Most of the time.

Johnny has no response. He holds your angry gaze, brows drawn low, mouth pressed into a thin line. It’s the first time that cocky aura, which seems to rest in every fine line on his face and every angle at which he holds his body, is completely absent.

He isn’t reflecting your anger back at you, though—he’s internalizing it. Letting it hit him, you think, and trying to use it to figure you out.

You do not want to be figured out.

You scoff again. “Take me back,” you repeat, and then you start walking in the direction you came, without waiting for him to follow.

Johnny drops you off in the cove, and thankfully does not linger this time before he departs—he bids you farewell after rowing you to shore, contemplation on his face, and then leaves you to yourself.

You retreat, seeking the cottage’s empty quiet.

As you perch on the couch you listen to the radiator hum—the wind blow over the reeds in the thatch roof—your own heart beating a drum in the arteries of your neck.

Percussive. Quick and hard. Like heavy knockers on a door. Pounding as if to burst through.

You realize you’re still wearing Johnny’s jacket, and you throw it off, disgusted with yourself. You get up and pace, and try to ignore it lying in a heap on the floor.

You do something you swore you wouldn’t do the moment you set foot on the island—you turn your phone back on.

True to Johnny’s word, there’s no signal. You picked this island, this part of the world, for a reason; for the past several years, a slow exodus from the British isles has vacated the need for dedicated cell towers or satellite or internet access, especially given that the only ones who remain are too old now to want it or need it or know how to use it.

It’s isolated. Cut off. Left behind by anyone with better options, and only clung to by those trying to preserve the only way of life they know.

Some kinder part of you belongs with that demographic; the part that was telling your mother the truth, before getting on the plane.

The rest of you holds your phone up and starts walking around.

In the furthest corner in the bedroom, you find a single bar of signal. A tiny chip of connectivity—a thin, frayed thread. Something you lied to yourself about cutting.

It’s a weak connection. Unstable. It could take a while—you stand there, waiting.

The screen dims. You tap it again.

Blank.

You unlock it, look through your apps. Wonder if maybe your notifications are bugged by your new SIM card.

Nothing—

No one.

You whip around and, with a cry, pitch the thing at the far wall—it hits the stone with a crunch, falling to the floor in pieces.

You’re out of the cottage then in a mad dash, door slamming behind you, driving yourself back into the wind. Far away—you want to be far away, far from everything, so far that nothing could possibly reach you. You trudge down the path toward the beach, banding your arms across your chest, shivering in the cold, and yet you hardly feel it.

Not worth it. No point. Waste of your time. Energy. All of it. Stop trying. Stop wanting. Nothing. Nothing. You want nothing.

You’re halfway down to the shore, not really knowing what you’re going to do when you get there, when you catch sight of a body on the sand.

You gasp, a sharp breath down your larynx, and freeze in a dead halt.

The body is completely still.

A swimmer? A diver? It’s dark, like it just pulled itself out of the ocean—or washed up—

Then, it moves. A twitch, a ripple across its bulk, and your chest rapidly decompresses.

A seal. It’s a large seal, lounging alone on the beach.

You stand motionless. You’re very close—much closer than you and Johnny had been at the rookery. You hadn’t contended with the sheer size of the animals, tucked safely up and away from them, but there is no illusion of distance now.

It’s the biggest one you’ve seen today, you’re sure of it. Bigger, you think, than most adult men. Its pelt is a riot of every shade of grey, splashy, like liquid paint thrown across a canvas. Black speckles scatter overtop of marbled white and cool slate, and down the center of its back is a broad, dark line, soft at the edges, which reaches all the way up to the top of the seal’s head.

The bull—it must be male—turns over. It lifts its head, and opens its eyes—

Fear suddenly zips up your spine as it looks right at you.

You stumble backward and trip on your own feet, landing hard on your ass. Johnny’s care with keeping enough distance from the colony rushes back to you, along with the warring couple’s bared teeth.

They can’t move that fast on land, right? They aren’t interested in people, right?

You scramble backward. It’s so much bigger than you ever would have imagined. If it got to you—threw itself over you—it could crush you with its weight alone—

The bull watches you placidly. Unperturbed.

You pause.

Its small eyes are dark and glossy—watchful and focused. The whiskers on its muzzle twitch a little as it takes you in. It breathes, deeply and evenly, huge body expanding and contracting at a slow, calm tempo. Its—his—nostrils flex, widening and narrowing, as he blinks docilely.

Unafraid.

If anything—curious.

Then he snorts, and wriggles in place. It startles a laugh out of you, more reaction than humor. Still watching you, the bull lowers his head back down, resting it again on the sand.

Your heartbeat abates. He doesn’t move again—nor does his attention leave you. Slowly, you sit up.

Wary. No sudden movements.

He doesn’t react; only continues to watch you.

You draw your knees up. Wrap your arms around your shins, and dust a bit of sand from your leggings. Rest your chin in the crevice between your knees.

There’s an intelligence in the bull’s eyes that is fathoms deep. There is a massive gulf between his experience of the world and yours, millennia of evolution separating your species from his—and yet…as you hold his gaze, you recognize the look in it.

Him, seeing you. And seeing you see him. The pendulum swinging between awareness of each other, and recognition of that shared awareness.

An empty space in the cloud cover passes overhead; sunlight touches the earth, warms it briefly before disappearing again. You wonder a little why this bull isn’t with the other seals.

Johnny would probably know.

“I didn’t come for you, you know,” you grumble at him.

The seal blinks. Awareness notwithstanding, you don’t share any language.

You sigh. “I guess you didn’t come to see me either,” you say.

But you don’t move away.

And you stay like that for a long while, you and he—regarding each other as the wind breathes out across the shore.

next chapter early access

a/n: follow for more seal facts™

Also huge thanks to Lev for trawler listings/info. Didn't explore it much this chapter but Soap's boat will show up more soon :)

Arcane's odd quirks :]

Sfw fluff with gn reader :)

Warnings: Trauma, medicine, needles, bombs mentioned briefly

❀ —————————————— ❀

Viktor- Doesn't like brushing his hair. There's no real reason behind it, actually... he just forgets to do it and then it becomes super tangled. When he was younger, he used to use those detangler sprays that smell like pear or green apple. Brushing his hair for him will probably become a daily routine since he's always working, and he's very appreciative of it too. Viktor makes sure to give you a big embrace and lots of kisses before you leave the lab.

Jayce- Doesn't like to wear shoes? Sometimes you'll walk into the lab and home boy just has his floor grippers out... Viktor will just be standing there in disgust and look at you- mouthing "this is your man". Sometimes he tries to lock toes with you if you don't have shoes on, and his feet are always super sweaty; not the ideal situation for you. Jayce is really romantic about it though; at least he says he is... You'll receive random pictures during the day of his feet

Vi- Really hates loud noises. It's connected to her childhood; she always feels like she immediately goes back to the factory where she lost everything. Vi will probably move out of Zaun because of this, and would love to move in with you if you live somewhere peaceful. Her dream as a girl was to move some forest or mountain where she could live more naturally, and there wouldn't be loud noises of the city

Jinx- Actually really good at administering medicine and shots if you need them. Since she grew up around Silco, she learned how to prep needles and measure medicine to the right doses. Jinx often jokes that she could've been an amazing nurse if she wasn't a crazy bomb addict; it becomes harder to deny after a while of seeing her work. She even gets super focused, which is rare for Jinx, if it happens at all

Caitlyn- Animals love her much, it's a little creepy. Once you two were on a romantic walk through a local park when a bird just landed on her shoulder. She didn't even look phased and just gave it a piece of bread from the picnic basket you were carrying. If you ask about it, Cait just says it's always happened, even when she was a baby. This makes it really hard to go on dates around the city; dogs and cats will walk up and demand all her attention

Ekko- This boy is a BEAST at crochet. Makes you sweaters in record time, and even makes some for your pets if you have any. It started off as just a hobby for when he was bored, but it quickly evolved into a mini business when he got older. Ekko once knit all of his workers gloves when it was super cold in Zaun; most of those workers still wear them when the winter months roll around. His favorite thing to knit though is little ducks, and he gives most to you as gifts

Silco- He draws a lot of architecture that he likes around Zaun. The first time you see him do it is during one of his days off; he was sitting on the roof of his apartment and just sketching everything his eyes could see. Silco normally likes to sketch alone, but he'll invite you do lay on his lap while he overlooks Zaun. It's a really peaceful moment for both of you and he asks you to join him again sometime soon

Sevika- Loves writing letters to you, even if you live with her. Everyday you'll find a letter on the counter where she expresses how much she loves you in a different way each day. Sevika finds it difficult to express how she feels in words, so she will usually write letters or notes in place of the words she can't say. Sometimes her letters detail how she just wants to leave Zaun behind and live with you somewhere across the sea. She knows it's a pipe dream, especially with her work, but she can always dream

Vander- Gosh this man is an amazing cook. He adds just the right amount of spice and seasoning, which always balance out the entire meal. Vander doesn't only make underground food; somehow he found a cookbook that details recipes from all over Runeterra. The first time he used a recipe from Shurima was an eventful time... since he wasn't familiar with the food, he added too much spice and Powder almost ended up in the hospital

having some villainous gender with my autistic wife

“Did you see the way that little girl looked at me? Kids. Little kids. They grow up believing that they can be a hero if they drive a sword into the heart of anything different. And I’m the monster? I don’t know what’s scarier. The fact that everyone in this kingdom wants to run a sword through my heart or that sometimes I just wanna let ‘em.” “We have to get you out of here. Over the wall. We won’t stop until we find some place safe, okay? We’ll go. Together. No matter what we do, we can’t change the way people see us.” “You changed the way you see me... Didn’t you?

NIMONA (2023), based on the comic by ND Stevenson, who came out as transgender in 2022

Alright, my account where I write all my little whatever's @baby-greatness is like.... gone to the world? It's pissing me off so I'm moving back to the main, give me a moment to reconstruct 💀