monster / father.

@decair​ / vow

✦ ​

kiss meme

28.  first kiss

There’s blood on the wall, on the furniture, smeared across the floor like some kind of poor, macabre painting, littered with little bits of flesh, matted lumps of hair. Whoever it had been, they had given the human-monster a hard time - he’s naked and standing there amongst it all, blood caked up his cheek, a hand mark pressed in red against his chest. Bran almost feels bad - almost because he knows it’s his fault, almost because he knows that the man’s cravings had been pushed to their limit, because he’d been curious, because he’d taken too much of his time and gifted nothing in return.

Because he’d taken the team off the table, even for a light snack, and kept him unreasonably busy with near constant healing, Vow’s hunger had grown to a near uncontrollable place.

He almost feels bad about it - but only almost. Because as wrecked as the apartment was, as splattered with blood and gore as everything was and as still ravenous as the man appeared, he was still - Bran didn’t know. He couldn’t identify the feeling in his chest, only that he felt no sorrow about having put the healer through the pains he had.

Are you okay? He wants to ask the question, but doesn’t, watching instead as Vow crosses the room, as he steps through beams of moonlight and so thoroughly in Bran’s space with such confidence that he must have been invited. And perhaps - perhaps he had been. Bran had shown up on a night he knew he was feeding, Bran had invited himself into an apartment that tasted of blood and hunger and done nothing to stop himself.

Maybe he’s losing it. It’s possible, he thinks, as he watches one of his own hands cup the other’s face, watches as the younger leans into it with a soft noise, beautiful and dark eyes sliding partially shut as he nuzzles. It’s possible he’s losing it because -

Bran doesn’t do this. He’s never had an interest in anything beyond the chaste love he already had plenty of. He never has, but now... Something in him rumbles, the monster inside most likely, and before he realizes it there’s the taste of copper on his tongue, the feeling of warm flesh beneath it and he’s -

Vow stiffens under his touch, but he ignores it. Laps at blood that belongs to neither of them, then drags his mouth down to press against the other man’s with the kind of tenderness not expected. Soft and sweet as he kisses him once - for the first time - and then again because he can, only this time more firmly.

For the first time in a long time, Bran can say he’s hungry. 

@stygics​ :: bran.

FOR ALL THE TIMES HE’D LEANT Bran his ear, as were the terms of his present father’s joining, it was a rare moment that Shigaraki would wholly shut him down.  contested with the excuse of no time to debate as he’d picked up the unconscious girl and swept her away in the aftermath ; conversation still skirted even hours later, when Eri had come too again.  only now, when the girl had since been tucked into her makeshift bed by own, careful hands, did Shigaraki permit audience with his father … opening the floor and floodgates.  “what’re your concerns?”  she’s staying, Bran.  the look of vermillion hues speaking what he did not.  she’s mine.

Once upon a time, Bran had been an angry man, someone vengeful and prideful that had cut down more than he planted. He is no longer that man, and though his temper at times can be quick, it burns out just as quickly, a flashburn of emotion that left him empty more than satisfied. So no, he’s not angry at the sudden affection Tomura has for the young girl, so small and fragile in his hands, but he is frustrated.

Months ago, Shigaraki had struck a bargain with a monster, promising his ear in exchange for its protection. He’d broken his word. And the monster, as much as he loves the boy, is frustrated.

But the battle, he knows it’s lost the moment Tomura invites him back into his space, confronts him with a question that’s almost cold, while his gaze remains fierce and warning. Defeat creeps up his throat, tasting of bile and fear for his young charge. A sharp feeling, something he’s not felt in so many years.

@dieuour​

“ you see the good in everything. that’s why i like it when you look at me. ” ( vow )

prompts for the feels  /  accepting

He is a smudge of dark among white and green of the apartment. A lean figure of blacks and greys among white furniture and green flora. It’s accurate, he supposes, for the way he’s always lived his life, especially as of late, a morose-looking figure among a team of cheer and enthusiasm. Someone that was unchanging even as the world around him changed - like a black stain mark on a page. Unending and never really removable, ink that could not be merely wiped away. 

And it’s because of that, that he can see what lies beneath all the cheer, all the comfort of a home well lived in, all the mixed scents of flora and dried herbs, of coffee grinds and warm candles long since put out. Blood and flesh. It’s a scent that’s clung to the other man for as long as he’s known him which, admittedly, had not been very long. A scent that had puzzled him at first, until he learned, and now had become a small comfort.

The problem with being a monster is that it takes a monster to see you as you are. And, as Tomura saw him clearly, so did Vow. Not as a dark smudge in a world of ever changing bright colors, but something with more depth, more darkness, the void that consumed all and gave little back. 

But - that’s not true, is it? Bran has given much back, so much of himself in the process. And he didn’t absorb life around him, he encouraged it, from the small graces of Tomura’s slipping humanity to the - admittedly sometimes criminal - kindness of Reginald. He tried to tend it, like a garden, but sometimes he felt the weeds were too many.

Regardless, the comment - the confession - near whispered between them as a coffee is held out draws as much comfort as it does fear. Not of Vow, who was as soft as he was not, who was as kind as he could be vicious, as giving as he was hungry, but of himself. Of, if that was seen, what else could be gleamed? How many of his failures were obvious?

He almost withdrawals, reflective eyes going red as he looks away, towards sheer curtains that hide them from the world, but not the world from them. For a moment he wishes Vow were on the other side, away enough so that he could not see, but that Bran could still see him, observe him, enjoy him from a safe distance. Because, while he consumed killed and consumed to feed? Bran had killed and left flesh to rot out of ego. While Vow lived as he lived because he needed to survive, Bran had done so much worse simply because he could.

“I do not think -” His voice is as soft as ever, as deep and clear as it has ever been, but there’s fragility in his expression, he knows this, which is why he keeps his gaze trained away. “I do not think what you are thinking of doing is wise.”

PESTILENCE SAT UPON HIS TONGUE with a natural guile.  slicking silvered tongue and coating, thick, his throat, teeth, and lips.  body WRETCHING and luring forth a pitiful sound caught somewhere between a groan and cry as he lost all control.  as autonomy was STRIPPED AWAY like meat falling from bones.  like sinew cut away with razor precision.  fingers scraping against the cold of the pavement painted in blood, decay, and - body heaving once more, adding to the mounting unpleasantness.  emptying already scarce fulfillment of his stomach.

eyes burned despite the distinct absence of tears.  throat raw and dressed with stomach acid.  nose too accustomed to the scents of any and all bodily gore to remember to be bothered — .

this time is worse.  the sole thought that emerged from the splitting pain of his skull and overall ACHE of his body.  faintly registering the sound of Bran’s voice, but despite his efforts to dissect even a vague conceptualization?  were all but futile.  unable to offer him a sound nor even the opening of his eyes - merely willing himself to stay STABLE.  to rend himself FREE.  feeling the phantom pains of a man no where near, yet ever-present.  with fingers like claws digging ever deeper.  molding him into his own image ; just another pet project.

maw hung open … saliva dripping as naught remained in him to depart.  luring only the unpleasant soundings and jolts of a few dry heaves.

mind racing as he knew he’d need explain - .  need justify.  need … lips moving wordlessly.  chest ACHING as he tried and tried and tried.  frozen in place as he was forced to endure the cutscene … useless and irrelevant.  POWERLESS.  bare hand finally splaying upon the ground - concrete cracking with an echoing BOOM throughout the otherwise silent industrial district.  fractured like the ice overtop an ocean - ready to give way and DROWN OUT all else.  merciless in it’s devouring waves … until hand was pulled away …  until body was shifted.  feeling warm hands suddenly upon him and pulling him back to reality.  jaw clenching with a choked breath - head snapping back as if PAINED by the touch alone.  Bran - ?  eyes squeezed shut as all he could manage was to clutch closed his gloveless hand in a desperate act of PROTECTION.

can you feel the very air around you bend to my will, Bran? can you taste the change upon your tongue?

how does it feel to know that you are HELPLESS to save him?

It is everything he has come to fear in life come to fruition in a second’s span. Rot and life spilling out on the ground beneath them. The sickly sweet smell of death. The feeling of power, so much power, bleeding out from the young man before him, splitting concrete and earth and causing a rippling of shakes deep within the earth’s crust. He could feel it all, smell and see it all, and with it sinks in the kind of hopelessness he has not felt in decades, perhaps centuries.

With it comes a kind of desperation he has not known since he was a child - and with that knowledge of things he has not thought of since changing.

The earth rumbles, discontent with the boy’s assault, and Bran reaches for the last bit of knowledge of access, slaps a hand down into coagulating blood and spit, feeling it seep into the grooves and nooks of his fingers while his other hand reaches up to cover his charge’s already closed eyes. A word is murmured as he tucks the boy against him and he leans back -

They fall. And continue falling. At first it’s like falling from a great height, with gravity tearing at clothing and flesh and hair alike - and then it’s nothing like that at all. A weightless descent into nothingness and somewhere something cracks loud and echoing in vast nothingness. For a moment, all there is pain - would be pain for the both of them - the kind of intense crushing pressure that Bran wielded so well in defense of Tomura and then nothing. Just them, gracefully falling into nothingness, Bran’s breath stopped and his flesh too warm, nails sharp where they press into the boy’s side as he tucks him closer against his chest.

“I need you to breathe,” The words whispered come from behind him, but everywhere else as well. Bran’s smoothness mixed in with with countless voices of others. Like the voices, there seems to be too much of him suddenly, his hands large and cumbersome as one continue to cover his eyes and face, body strange and seemingly endless as it cushions their downward movement. “I need you to breathe and stay calm.” They continue, endless in variety, endless in amounts. “Can you do that for me, Tomura?”

BRISTLED AS HE WAS, he recognized the shift - the change in Bran’s posture alongside his tone.  acknowledgement.  and whilst it did nothing to ease the tension within frail form, Shigaraki nonetheless continued.  settling into his decrepit seat as if it were a throne.  “it’d scarcely crossed my mind prior.”  answered with a casual shrug - honesty plain.  vermillion meeting burning coals.  “Chisaki Fujiko.”

There’s a part of Bran, tiny and small, that’s amused at the answer to the why - because why would it have crossed his mind before someone caught his interest? He was still but a boy with a man’s plan of destruction, and the ability to do it at his fingertips. He was so close to success, close enough that he could taste it and why - why would he busy himself with things like romantic affection and interest? Bran, himself, had been the same once - for all of his human life. Ambition to change over all else worldly things - it’s what had ended him in the end. And because of that, perhaps he should be kinder in the moment, perhaps he should be more encouraging - a connection to someone outside their ranks would do him perhaps more good than harm. But then -

@stygics.  because I’m a bitch that likes to hurt exo

THE SOUND WAS SOMETHING UNHOLY.  a sputtering cough WRACKING hallowed lungs and rattling through the frail corpse he carried upon burdened shoulders — scarred lips peeling back in time to the back of gloved hand nearly slamming into clenched teeth.  body heaving as he crumpled — not daring to reach outwards to halt the other.

BLOOD SPLATTERING.

staining teeth an unnatural hue as tainted ichor dripped from rotted maw / bruised hand … not merely a vibrant red, but intermingled within was something dark.  blackened and rotted.  DECAYING from the inside out.  eyes squeezed shut as ivory locks fell about and slicked into the mess beneath … knees never quite registering the cruel CRACK they’d made upon concrete.

Scent is a strange thing in the company of Shigaraki in that his was always making a mess of Bran’s brain. He didn’t - well, to put it blunt, he didn’t smell great even after the monster managed to coerce him into baths, and no matter how much he try to make the other more pleasant to the nose, nothing really stuck. There was a perpetual scent of decay and sickness around him, which only made Bran both nose blind and overdoting - like a father who only got to see his child once a year and wanted to cramp every bit of love into that time period.

Which was... not a usual feeling for him, in the least, especially not regarding someone so - proud as the young boy. There are times when Bran sees too much of himself in him and it - it did terrible, awful things to his conscious, and he wanted to pour everything he had that was good left in him into the boy to try to fix some of the holes he could see.

It was a project. A quest on top of a quest, as Shigaraki would say, and his senses were all over the place when it came to him. Which is why, when he hears the cough, everything in him stills. Which is why, when he hears the blood splattering on the ground, everything in him turns to ice.

“Tomura..?” He starts to question, turning before the words are really formed and then he’s just - there, in his space. Smelling the sickly sweet of decay and feeling cool skin under his fingertips. There’s something wrong - he can smell it now, lying in wait under everything else, like a darkness, a shadow hiding among shadows. And he can feel it too, something strange and unnatural and not right. “I need you to -” Tell him what to do? The sentence seems ridiculous, so he stops it before it can continue. He was the adult, the father, the monster of too many lifetimes and eras past. What could Tomura tell him to do that he wouldn’t already know?

BITTERNESS STEEPED QUICK IN crimson pools.  where once there was a casual calm about him?  now was but a RAGING STORM returned.  the eye, but an accidental ploy as tone turned sour — .  shoulder slouching as sigh was heaved.  gloved fingers taking root at throat.  “a relationship, Bran.”

@stygics :: bran needs to fulfill his parental role in full

IT WAS NOT OFTEN THAT Shigaraki found himself unwittingly speechless. “I - .”  sentence dying in his throat and leaving tongue to awkwardly swipe over dry lips.  vermillion hues cast to the side in a rare display of consideration to his phrasing …  “I should think I’d like to consider companionship.”  blinking once.  twice.  finally looking back to the other, expression flatlined.  “I would … value your thoughts on such.”