Bisky I Am Your #1 Fan

bisky i am your #1 fan

Monster Mayhem: Lion's Pride [PART 1]

Gender Neutral Reader x Leona Kingscholar Word Count: 3.8k

Summary: You fall into a hole. There is something in the hole. Something with teeth, and claws, and a garbage attitude to boot. Today is not your day.

[PART 1] [PART 2] [PART 3]

Let it be known, that of all the ways you could have died in your miserable and unlucky life, falling into a pit trap had not been on the list. Or, well, if it was, it hadn’t even managed to crack the top ten. And that was what was making this whole ‘sudden demise’ thing feel really pathetic.

On top it also being an uncovered pit trap. No subterfuge or class to speak of. Just a big ol’ hole in the ground that you had waltzed straight into. Ace would keel over dead laughing if he ever found out.

It was a pretty nice trap all things considered. The walls were dug into some strange sort of stone rather than just packed earth, and rings of fresh talismans curled along its sides like hundreds of ugly finger paintings. Certainly something so impressive had not been built to catch some lowly, little, idiot such as yourself. But you were here now, so that was your captor’s problem.

You were wandering aimlessly around your new prison when you stepped on something weird, and long, and thin. You paused, brow furrowing in confusion, and glanced down at whatever had found itself wedged under your heel. And, hey. That was odd. It sort of looked like a—

There was a horrible, screeching, snarl, and you wheeled back in hysterical panic as an honest-to-god lion lunged from the shadows—jerking its tail out from beneath your boot and swatting at you with its absolutely massive claws that could definitely take your eyes out. And half of your face. And probably your brain too. You fell backwards on your ass in an ungraceful heap and immediately scurried back towards the opposite wall as fast as you could. You were one-hundred-percent ready for the lion to just follow you into your little corner and murder you dead, but instead, it just stood its ground—growling, and spitting, and whipping its tail back and forth like a rattlesnake.

The thing was absolutely massive—bigger than you thought a lion was supposed to be, at least. Weren’t they just, I don’t know, like the cat equivalent of wolves? Because you’d seen plenty of wolves before on the road, and they’d never been so… looming, in themselves. And size aside, the beast was just weird looking. With thick, ash-brown, fur cut through with strange, almost geometrical, whorls of black. Now, you didn’t know much about lions (they weren’t exactly native to your little, forested, corner of the continent, after all), but weren’t they supposed to be regal? Or something? With lush, red, manes and tan hides that glowed majestically under the sun’s light? Not some… scraggly looking monstrosity with too-large canines and limbs stained in black like it’d taken a hike through a field of ash.

Its eyes were the strangest part of all of it—a sharp, emerald, green that cut through the gloom of the pit with all the efficiency of a dagger. One of them was bisected with a thin scar that ran crookedly from brow-to-jaw. They were eyes that spoke of an intelligence that no animal ought to possess, let alone one that was perfectly capable of mauling you to death without the aid of functional brain cells.

You continued your silent inspection of your new nemesis, and when your gaze hesitantly fell to its hind legs, you jolted in surprise.

Iron shackles.

Or, more specifically and horribly, a spike trap. A grim, metal, contraption that would snap into its victim like a vice, and then unfurl row upon row of jagged barbs—tangling them up like an unfortunate bug caught within the web of some really fucked up, sociopathic, spider.

You winced in sympathy, out of habitual concern for your fellow down-and-trodden if nothing else. The lion, with all its eerie intelligence, seemed to notice the pity flickering across your expression and put every single one of its too-sharp teeth on display. As if to say ‘how dare you?’ You held up your hands in surrender, hoping it looked placating and not threatening, and smooshed yourself even harder up against the wall.

After a few more moments of grumbly glaring, the beast dropped back down to the ground with a pissy huff and closed its eyes. Clearly, you weren’t worth the trouble—which was perfectly fine with you.

You gave yourself the rest of the evening to just lie around like a sad little slug and lick your wounds. Falling all that way had hurt, okay? And while the adrenaline rush of ‘oh shit, I’m going to be lunch’ had helped push away some of that initial pain, now that it was fading you could feel every twinge in your ribs, all the bruises climbing your back and the cuts littering your hands.

When the sun rose once more over the mouth of your prison, you stretched as best you could and prepared to make your escape.

Scaling the slippery, stone, walls had proved to be an instant failure. The rope in your pack wasn’t long enough to reach the top, and you smacked yourself in the face with the thing more times than you would like to admit. Trying to find grippy-bits to just crawl your way up the side like a bug hadn’t worked either. The first talisman you touched didn’t spark or bite at your fingers, but it had been seared into the stone with some sort of magic that made it slide like oil beneath your palms. And you’d plummeted back to the bottom with a lackluster thump. The lion had made some kind of huffing noise from its place in the corner, like it was laughing at you. And you fought the insane urge to flip off a creature that could just eat your entire hand in retaliation.

Next you rifled around in your pack, hoping for a miracle. You were pretty decent at throwing together little bits and bobs to create a cheap but generally functional solution. Like the time you’d rigged Deuce’s bow to spit stink bombs as it shot through the air, or when you’d managed to scrounge together a decent fishing-line trap out of Ace’s shoelaces to lure out a rogue pixie that had been cannibalizing your vegetable garden. But you’d only been heading into town for your monthly grocery trip, so the most you had on you were genuinely practical things. An emergency medical kit, a dagger, lock picks, some rations that lived at the bottom of your bag no matter where you went. Nothing nonsensical, and therefore nothing useful.

Your stomach gurgled irritably, and, well, maybe you had something useful after all.

You fished out some neatly wrapped bits of cured meats, and cheeses, and bread. You made yourself a tasty, little, sandwich, and hey? You know what? How many other Hole Prisoners could claim to have such phenomenal catering? Probably not many. You’d take that win, at least.

You were just about to take your first bite when your eyes guiltily swung towards the lion curled up and sleeping at the opposite end of your makeshift cell. It hadn’t even flicked its ears your way when you’d started to loudly rustle around in your bag. And it certainly hadn’t sniffed at the air or anything else dramatic like that when you’d unearthed your packed lunch. Which was… didn’t animals usually go nuts for tasty treats like this? The foxes that snuck around behind your cottage would scream like banshees if you didn’t toss them your leftovers. Even the bunnies that lived in the hole in the wall by your cellar had some food aggression issues.

You tore off a chunk of your sandwich and palmed it nervously.

Maybe if you fed it, it wouldn’t eat you quite so quickly.

You cautiously pushed the stack of toasty breads, and meats, and home-made cheese, towards the beast with the toe of your boot. When it didn’t move, you scooched the offering a smidge further, until it was nudging up against a paw.

The Lion lifted its great, dark, head to bare its teeth at you with a lazy twitch of the lip. You scuttled back as quick as you could, and once you were a fair distance away, it stopped glaring at you long enough to observe whatever you’d just shoved at it.

It nosed at the food with a level of apathy you didn’t think was even possible, before reaching out with a heavy, black, foot, to smoosh it ungratefully into the dirt.

“Hey!” you gasped, genuinely offended. Because you were just trying to be a polite cellmate, okay! Was that really so terrible?!

With a sharp little twist of its paw that looked far too dexterous for something its size, it speared through the meat with one of its curling claws, and raised that from the dejected pile of mush. It popped the chunk of cured ham into its mouth with a satisfied little grumble, and you felt your completely rational and not at all ridiculous discontentment ease. It lifted its head a little higher and its tail swished—not in the whipping, angry, way it had been the other day when you’d squashed it, but the gentle twitch of something closer to a cat lazing about contentedly in a windowsill. The lion kept looking at you then, with those too-cognizant eyes. You pulled another bit of meat from your sandwich and tossed it over. It caught it easily in its massive jaws with that same, contented, rumbling.

“I made that,” you beamed. Because you had. And it had taken you ages to balance out the perfect spice-salt-sugar combination for a proper cure.

The lion looked entirely unimpressed.

You sighed and sat back against the wall with a string of irritable mutterings. The lion made another one of those huffing noises, like it had earlier when you swore the thing was snickering at you. And then it closed its glowing, emerald, eyes and slipped back into its seemingly never-ending nap.

The rest of the afternoon and evening passed in relative peace. Despite its lackluster (read: fucking rude) response to your earlier offering, come dinner time, you still slid the beast a makeshift plate stacked high with meat. It ate the food without complaint, which was better than outright scoffing at you, you supposed. You started to hum some nonsense under your breath, just for something to do, and the lion made a noise like you were physically torturing it. So instead you shifted to folding and refolding the scrap bits of parchment paper from your wrapped rations into ugly, veritably unidentifiable, origami shapes. This was apparently deemed acceptable, as the lion just sighed and rolled over to make itself comfortable for the night. Irritably, you flicked one of the little flowers you’d made at its dumb face. But it shot wide and landed somewhere off by its paws. The beast didn’t even bother to twitch its ear at you.

The next morning came with little fanfare, and you stared longingly up at the warm light of the dawn.

Your eyes once more roved across the spiraling talismans dripping from the walls, and the great, iron, trap that certainly wouldn’t have belonged to any ordinary sort of hunter.

“You’re not a real lion, are you?” you asked, and the thing had the nerve to roll its eyes at you. You bristled and again had to tamp down the urge to do something very, very, stupid, and which would no doubt end in your immediate disembowelment. “Yes, yes. Laugh it up. I only mean that because—I mean, you can understand me, can’t you?”

Another long, slow, eye roll. Like it was making damn well sure you could see.

It was a lot harder to bite down your anxious ticks and ramblings when you knew you were speaking to something that could maybe speak back, rather than just a wild animal trapped at the bottom of a hole (there was a very good reason you lived in a quaint little cottage in the middle of fucking nowhere), but you grit your teeth and soldiered on.

“Alright then. Fine. I just wanted to say then. Well. I mean—I could… You know.”

When you held out the lockpicks from your bag, the beast’s eyes lit with genuine interest for the first time in this entire nightmare situation, and a teeny bit of your nerves eased.

You gestured to the spike trap entangling its legs and the lion turned to sneer at the mess of sharp ends with a genuinely bone chilling snarl.

“I can probably get that off—unlock the mechanisms, I mean,” you explained. “But you have to, you know—” You made a theatrical imitation of gnashing teeth over the meat of your forearm, “—not eat me.”

The Lion sat up on its haunches and its tail twitched restlessly at its side. After a long moment where you were genuinely concerned that the thing would rather eventually justbleed out and die in its trap rather than let you touch it, the lion raised its head and perked its ears in an imperious sort of way. And then it dipped its chin—a nod.

You scooched forward cautiously, pausing every few feet or so to make sure the thing wasn’t going to change its mind and maul you. The Lion just huffed at you, and shifted to give you better access to the horrible agglomeration of cold metal twisted around its limbs. You reached out carefully, the picks a light, familiar, weight in your hands. It was certainly a complicated looking contraption, but you’d yet to encounter something you weren’t able to break with enough force of will and sheer, dumb, luck. So you grit your teeth and got to work.

After a few minutes of poking, the first spiral of jagged spikes loosed with a rusty groan and the lion noticeably perked up—like it was shocked you’d managed anything at all. You decided very resolutely that you weren’t going to allow yourself to be offended by the implied emotions on the face of an animal, and continued your work. Your tongue poked out of the corner of your mouth as you focused, intent, and slowly—steadily—the barbed monstrosity gave way beneath your gentle fiddling. Every now and again, one of the spikes would ease itself from the lion’s hide, and you had to fight the urge to fuss over the oozing, painful, wounds that were exposed. You were almost there, you reminded yourself feverishly. Just a little more, and—

The last of the iron fell away with an echoing clatter, and immediately the lion reared up with a roar. But instead of lunging at you and your very accessible throat like you feared, it crouched back on its battered hind limbs and craned its head towards the open hole above your heads, and the blue, sunny, sky beyond. A swirl of strange, sandy, magic began to seep from the beast’s mane. The green of its eyes glowed hot and bright amidst the outpour of arcane energy, like the sole light in a storm. And then its fur was fading, its limbs cracking and groaning as they folded in on themselves into something more contained—more bipedal. The strange, geometric, patterns along its coat rippled like living things. They expanded and contracted as the creature did, before eventually settling into some new pattern that you hadn’t seen before.

And there, standing before you now, was a man. Tall, and lithe, and tan. With a head full of thick, dark, hair that looked startling like the mane that had just poofed from existence—except now it was twisted through with braids, and precious gems, and the occasional patchwork of beads and leather. The inky shapes settled themselves along his biceps, curling into the skin contentedly as if they’d lived there all along. There was still a pair of tufted, feline, ears atop his head, and a long, thin, tail whipping back and forth at his rear. His teeth were still much too sharp, and those eyes of his much too feral. He observed his clawed limbs with distaste, letting out a sigh that seemed to rattle his bones.

“Of course it’s still fucked,” he grumbled. His voice was deeper than you were expecting—smoother, too. Like it was meant to belong to someone regal and powerful, someone doling out orders and ruling nations. Not a sad, little, half-man-half-lion trapped at the bottom of a pit with an ever sadder, littler, human.

After a minute or two of what was clearly some very displeased inner reflection, he raised his hands over his head. A pale, dusty, magic swirled along his fingers, not dissimilar to the stuff that had coiled out from his furs. You watched in awe as one by one, the talismans began to burn away—disintegrated into nothing.

Once he had finished utterly decimating what had once been a nearly foolproof trap, he turned and looked down at you for a long, tense, moment with an expression that you couldn’t quite place.

And then he was leaping out of the hole with all the grace of a hurricane—tearing through stone and dousing you in waves of dust and debris as he went. His claws tore into the sides of his prison like it was made of paper, leaving deep, jagged, gashes in their wake. Some of the wall seemed to melt beneath his attacks—collapsing into a thin, sandy, mess beneath the weight of his irritation. With one, final, swipe that shook the pit from base to rim, he leapt out of the dug-in prison cell entirely and vanished from your line of sight. Lo, the Angry Lion Man was free at least. And you? Well—

“Hey!” you shouted after him, enraged. “Thanks for nothing, asshole!”

And so, despite all your hardships and good deeds, you were still stuck at the bottom of a fucking hole.

You stomped around for a bit, kicking at rocks and ranting at nothing. Once you’d tired yourself out enough to think a bit more rationally, you sat back and took stock of your continuing predicament. With the talismans burnt out, you might be able to try climbing out again without slipping down in the messy remnants of gooey, protective, spells. And actually, the guy had destroyed quite a bit of the stone in his rampage. There were enough tall heaps of fresh rubble that you’d probably have plenty of leverage to try and use your rope again.

So you went around collecting all your little scraps of paper, your meager personal items, and any bits of fabric that had been scraped off in the initial tumble. With traps as intricate and expensive as this, it was better not to leave behind any traces of one’s presence. Just in case the owner of said trap tried to go sniffing around for his lost quarry.

The rope ended up being a resounding success, and you hauled yourself out of the pit with a surprising amount of ease.

Once you were out, you breathed in the clean, crisp, air and looked around. Absolutely no sign of Mister Lion-Shifter to speak of. Or, well, there was a clear trail of dusty destruction leading towards the forest, so you would assume he’d run off somewhere in that direction. But you were well and truly alone again.

You shook your fist at the tree line for good measure, before turning around and starting the miserable trek back home.

Everything was as it had been when you left. Your chickens were quite happy to see you, happier yet obviously to be fed. You greeted the various other woodland residents that had taken to living out of your ramshackle little home (the foxes in particular were quite happy to nibble on the remaining scraps of bread and cheese in your bag). Your garden looked a little munched on, but nothing too terrible. All and all, things were… fine. It was honestly a bit underwhelming.

Later that afternoon when you were dumping out your bag to give it a good clean and restock, a dozen little, horrible, paper creations fluttered down to your kitchen table. You decided you would keep them, ugly as they were, as a kind of trophy for making it out of the Hole in one piece. Look at me, world. I—nothing more than a humble idiot—managed to survive in a Pit Trap alongside some sort of Skin Changing, lion, man. Who only almost mauled me twice. And here are the paper blobs to prove it.

Except—huh. That was a bit strange. You’d made a nice little flower too, hadn’t you? The one that you had tried (and failed) to shoot into the lion’s face. It had been the only piece that looked even halfway like it was supposed to. You’d checked every bit of the hole pretty thoroughly before you’d escaped, so certainly you would have scooped it up. After a moment of silent fretting, you shrugged and deposited the others into a nice, glass, jar. It had probably just been buried beneath the rubble or something.

Something had spooked your birds. You frowned out the window and into the rain. It was a gloomy, grey, day, and normally all your little farm friends would hunker down in their wooden huts to avoid the drizzle. But you could hear the geese honking and the chickens squawking in that indignant way of theirs as they flapped around and made a general nuisance of themselves.

There was a hard knock at your front door—a heavy, sharp, rap-tap-tap against the aged frame that sounded entirely unfriendly. You snuck a glance through the little, round, porthole and nearly doubled over in shock. You yanked the door open before you could think better of it, and there on your front porch, looking half-drowned and wholly grouchy, was the Lion Man.

His emerald gaze settled on you like a tangible thing that you could feel digging along your shoulders. His lips quirked up into a loose smirk that was entirely feline in its smug satisfaction and unfairly attractive. Especially considering he looked like someone had dunked him in a lake. His round, tufted, ears flicked irritably beneath each drop of rain.

Your brain whirled into overdrive, coughing up wave after wave of scenarios—each more outlandish than the next. Maybe he had come to eat you, to get rid of any witnesses. Or maybe this was the start of some epic quest, like you’d managed to save some Skin Changer Prince or something and were now due to be swept up in some wildly entertaining political drama. Or maybe he had come to thank you finally, after abandoning you so outright. To grovel and apologize for leaving the person who had so selflessly rescued him.

“Well, herbivore?” he huffed instead, crossing his arms irritably over his chest and rolling his eyes at you in a way that was far too familiar. “Aren’t you going to invite me in? It’s wet out here.”

You smiled—perfectly, utterly, serene. And slammed the door in his face.

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barbatos-mybeloved

11 months ago

i hold your head deep in my arms // dazai & ango sickfic drabble

originally posted on 7th jun 2024

warning for non-graphic vomiting

read on ao3! / 928 words

———————————————————————

dazai is sixteen, slumped over the toilet in the cramped bathroom of bar lupin. the light above his head flickers in a seemingly random way; combined with how much whiskey he had, it makes for an unsettling, almost ethereal experience.

his throat and nose burn. he’s barely eaten today, but his stomach is keen on removing every last drop of alcohol until he’s shivering and barely able to hold himself up.

his body crumples against the bathroom wall as if his head were a massive paperweight, barely having the sense to wipe his mouth with a clammy hand.

he thinks he’ll just fall asleep here. the poor soul tasked with closing the bar will find him eventually. kick him out. then he’ll stumble home, alone.

at first he thinks he’s hallucinating when a warm hand presses into his upper back, too drunk to tell left from right.

“are you done?” comes a quiet, hesitant voice. ango, dazai registers. ango has seen him like this before, only once or twice, though. he later explained that oda thought ango to be more of a comforting presence, so he’d always send ango to check on dazai instead.

dazai shrugs, unmoving. his eyes are shut, his breaths coming in soft pants.

ango frowns. he opens his mouth to say something else when, of course, dazai gags again. ango’s arm darts out to redirect dazai’s head back over to the toilet, the rest of his body soon following suit.

he throws up again. and again.

ango’s whole arm wraps around dazai’s smaller body, mostly to hold him upright, but also for an attempt at comfort. he doesn’t say anything. his own body is starting to droop sideways, as holding someone else up while tipsy is far from easy. ango only turns his head away and waits.

soon, there’s a break in the retching, and ango glances over again. he finds dazai trembling now, white-knuckling the edges of the toilet, saliva dripping from his lips. ango’s heart nearly stops.

he looks so tiny.

his hand moves on some instinct, brushing dazai’s dark, unkempt hair out of his face. he can’t read dazai’s expression thanks to the bandage over his eye, but he can guess at it.

and then dazai heaves again.

ango clicks his tongue, maneuvers himself so he can better hold dazai, then stops as he hears something else. a high-pitched, quiet sound that ango could have easily mistaken for a rat. his chest twists again.

dazai is only dry-heaving now, but he still looks to be in pain with every movement. his trembling is only worsening. then, just as ango brings a hand to his back, he hears dazai murmuring. “no more...”

ango had vowed to stay silent, not wanting to upset a drunk higher-up, but his mouth moves before his brain can catch up.

“it’s alright,” he mumbles. the hand on dazai’s back rubs in tiny circles. “you’re almost done.”

“it hurts...” dazai trails off into another weak gag. it sounds like he can’t get a deep breath in.

ango’s stomach drops as dazai progressively becomes more pathetic. he’s seen him be ill, but he’s also seen him laugh it off afterwards before promptly heading home for the night. ango didn’t even think dazai had it in him to be so… pitiful. his heart genuinely twists at the sight.

“i… i know it hurts.” a rather stupid thing to say, ango thinks, but whatever. “try and breathe for a moment.”

it takes him a few tries, but dazai slowly starts to calm down. he can hardly pull his head out of the toilet before immediately sagging against ango with his entire weight.

it’s warm. dazai can’t help but loosely wrap his arms around ango’s waist, burying his face into his chest.

oddly enough, ango had never really thought about dazai’s age too much. he was a mafia member and friends with oda somehow, and that’s what mattered to him. he didn’t need to know any more than that.

yet now, with slow arms coming to hold dazai’s shivering, thin, cold body, ango truly understands. this is a child.

“i’m here,” ango murmurs, holding dazai against him. he wants to warm him up at least a little bit before they leave.

—

dazai’s memory of this is fuzzy in the first place, but he can really hardly remember what happened afterwards. he thinks ango took him home that night, unsatisfied with letting him wander back to his shipping container alone.

the one thing he does remember is how it felt to share a bed with ango. the way dazai curled up against ango’s chest, ango’s warm, soothing hand in his hair. how warm dazai felt.

now, dazai is twenty-two. his phone buzzes for the fifth time in ten minutes; he knows it’s kunikida. he’s late for work.

dazai pulls his head out of the toilet bowl, leaning back against the wall with shaky limbs. his stomach is screaming at him.

in his delirium, he mistakes atsushi’s number for kunikida’s and punches out a short message, then tosses his phone aside.

he can’t walk. he knows he’ll throw up again, so he might as well stay in the bathroom. it isn’t like he’s planning to do anything else today.

he blinks wearily, eyes heavy with exhaustion as he stares at the tile. and just as he shuts his eyes, he hears that low, gentle voice.

it’s alright.

dazai smiles a little. he grabs a towel from the floor, wraps himself in it and curls up on the tile. he’s warm from fever.

i’m here.