#*Me slightly concerned*

[julijbee]

girlbossing too close to the sun.

[fuctacles]

<<5 | 6 | 7>>

The relief Eddie feels when Steve agrees to stay is almost like a drug itself. He still rolls a joint for each of them, of course. 

The movie is just as bad as Gareth promised, and Eddie finds himself looking at Steve almost as much as he does at the screen. With just a few puffs in, he's loose-limbed and relaxed, chuckling at the more ridiculous of the director's choices. It's a little terrifying that they know how blood looks from their own experience, but they try not to think about it right now. 

The movie is slowly coming to an end, when Eddie notices Steve's eyes drooping. He doesn't feel as tired himself, the adrenaline of their encounter fighting with his weed tolerance, but he imagines it took a lot of stress from Steve to come here. He's glad he could provide his friend with a safe space and comfort to finally relax. He plucks the almost finished joint out of his hand and Steve only blinks at him sleepily. 

"It's okay man, you can sleep here," Eddie reassures him while snuffing the joint out. "I can play you the end tomorrow."

Steve makes a noise that sounds like agreement and wraps the borrowed flannel shirt (double borrowed, since eons ago it used to be Wayne's) tighter around himself. 

Eddie watches him settle against the back of the couch and wonders what he can do to make this man feel loved and wanted. How he can overwrite whatever cruel thoughts the world has taught him. For now, all he can do is reach for the blanket on the back of the couch and hand it to Steve, who gratefully pulls it over himself. 

====

The memories of going to sleep are hazy, but slowly Eddie comes to while scratching the dog sleeping next to him. He hums in contentment, happy to wake up close to a warm body, even if it's just a pet. He nuzzles against its nape while scratching along its spine, his senses slowly clearing up. 

"I'm gonna go make breakfast," he says eventually. "I better see human Steve in the kitchen before I'm done."

Despite how cozy the bed is, he steps over the dog, whose tail pats loudly against the mattress. Eddie eyes him, unamused. 

"I'm serious. Only humans are getting scrambled eggs on my watch."

Twenty minutes later, he's happy to see Steve sitting at his kitchen table, dressed in the same sweatpants from last night. His chest is bare, but he'll let it slide this time. He picks up a mug from the cupboard. 

"How do you take your coffee, buddy?"

Both of them freeze. 

Eddie lets out an awkward cough, pouring coffee into the mug. 

"Sorry about that. Force of habit I guess. Uh, milk?"

"Yes, please." Steve nods so Eddie leaves enough space in the mug to pour in some milk. "No sugar."

Eddie nods, and he can feel Steve's stare on his back. 

"I don't mind," he says, and Eddie whips around to stare at him. "You calling me that. It's nice."

Eddie hums, adding milk to the coffee.

"Yeah?" He cocks his head, handing him the mug. "Here you go, buddy. Enjoy," he says and reaches out to scratch the back of Steve's head. 

He doesn't back down, even when he realizes what he's doing, and he can see that Steve reacts just as instinctually, leaning his head into the touch. But then he jolts away.

"Fuck, sorry."

Eddie frowns. 

"Don't be sorry. You're my friend, just like the dog. I can scratch you a bit."

Steve doesn't look convinced. He sips on his coffee to focus his attention elsewhere. 

"It's good, thank you," he says, licking his lips. "Shouldn't you be keeping an eye on the pan?"

"This conversation isn't over, Harrington!" Eddie declares, skipping back to the stove. Thankfully, he has a habit of making his eggs on a low fire so they turn out as creamy as possible. Scrambled eggs were the only thing in his life he was able to find patience for. 

"Any plans for today?" he asks later as he sets the plates for Steve and himself. He pours them both more coffee, remembering to add milk to Steve's. He smiles at him thankfully. 

"Not really," he shrugs. It looks like he's trying to find the right words without incriminating himself too much, so Eddie patiently waits for his next words. "All I've been doing lately is walking around the dog park, so..." he trails off.

He's implying that it's all been dog-Steve lately, human-Steve making no plans to hang out with his friends or go on dates. Eddie feels like it's his mission to change that. For whatever reason. 

"We could start preparing for the end-of-summer party," he offers. "Make a grocery list and shit and go shopping."

"It's almost a month from now," Steve points out.

"Good, plenty of time for planning."

Steve just stares at him over the rim of his mug. 

"Robin was going to help me," he says in the last-ditch attempt at being difficult. 

Eddie raises his palms.

"And I'm not stepping on her toes, but you gotta spread your friend circle a bit, man. The more the merrier."

Steve sips on his coffee, thinking about Eddie's offer. Eventually, he nods. 

"Okay. Do you have something to write on?"

Tags: @noodle-shenaniganery @jaytriesstrangerthings @imaginary-maggie-waggie @samsoble @croatoan-like-its-hot

@dragonmama76 @storyranger @scoops-aboy86

[nohoperadio]

There's a weirdly poignant sort of... metaphysical tragedy in the fact that pain, which evolved as a helpful signal to alert us when bad things might be happening to us, grew into becoming... well, basically the Bad Thing. To the point where by universal consensus the very worst thing you can do to a being like us is torture them (i.e. trigger the warning signal as strongly as possible while perhaps deliberately avoiding causing "actual" harm). And there are tons of illnesses and injuries and disabilities that massively impact people's quality of life, ranging from annoying to depressing to driving people to suicide, basically purely because they're very physically painful, while the underlying bodily dysfunction that the pain is supposedly "warning" of is either relatively minor or literally non-existent.

The capacity to feel pain is a good and important thing, some people lack it and that's generally awful for them, only in a universe unrecognizably different from ours could we ever do without it. But isn't it awful to think how if only there was somebody up there to adjust the settings for us, they'd probably only have to tweak them the tiniest bit to keep 99.99% of the benefits while saving us from all the most extreme miseries forever?

The mechanism didn't have to be perfect for natural selection's purposes, it had to be good enough that the average individual in the average situation would be motivated to stay more or less out of trouble. Measured by the metrics nature was working towards, she could afford to be a little slapdash with the exact implementation, and she was. In doing so she opened the door to infinities of evil and suffering that wouldn't otherwise be conceivable. All this only had one chance to happen, and it happened that way. There's nobody to be mad at--I'm mad about it, though.

[chiropteracupola]

an assortment of my temeraireverse fic-dragons!

[cygnet and honoré are from fifteenth-century britain and france, aquilillus, flavia magna, and bán are from second-century britain, and cipachcoatzin is from sixteenth-century mesoamerica]

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

I’ve been laughing for 5 fucking minutes about Howdy just wetly slapping on the floor with a slide sound affect after emerging and everyone just staring at him really amazed yet absolutely disgusted, I’m going into orbit

behold, the Majestic Product of Metamorphosis ✨

[zyrlovesmizu]

modern au! Mizu when you injure your leg while walking back home with her.

“Get on,” Mizu demanded harshly, but with a tone laced with worry, after inspecting your wounds.

Flustered, you wave your hands defensively, “no, no, I.. I don’t need that, I’m fine, I’ll just-“ before you could reply, she quickly shifts herself closer to you, immediately forcing you up.

“I didn’t ask,” she snickered, huffing as she shifts your weight comfortable on her back.

Your cheeks heat up as your hands naturally snake around her neck. As embarrassed as you were, deep inside was a growing feeling of comfort. You were being carried by your girlfriend, a fucking dream. You punched her playfully on the shoulder to which she tightened her hold around your thighs and chuckled, “just relax goddamnit!.”

You tried to maintain this facade of annoyance, only to fail miserably. Resting your head on her shoulder, you stifle an obvious smile, “you sweet son of a bitch…”

The streets were devoid of people, nobody to witness the situation. You sighed, relieved that nobody was here to witness how vulnerable you were but equally disappointed, having anticipated for someone to comment at how cute the two of you looked. When you guys reach home, she tended to your wounds with a smirk, “you liked that, didn’t you?”

“Shut up.”

[sircolinmorgan]

ENDEAVOUR | 9.03.

[jeeaark]

I think having the light bounce off of Greygold's illithid eyes helps a lot since it means we can track his eyeline, which, for lack of a better term, "humanizes" him.

Yes! That! Specific expressions like silly side-eyed glances would be null and VOID with only well. Void eyes. It looks like Greyg is wearing sunglasses taped on to their face like they're playing poker 24/7. Sometimes the void eyes are cute. Sometimes it's unnerving. But sometimes there is also a very real disconnect with how they wish to accurately express themselves.

Like trying to describe impossible colors to the folks with humanoid eyeballs that are incapable of perceiving.

Like If psychically sharing what color a platypus truly is would make you go insane, then lemme tape a goshdarn UV flashlight to my head, so I can share with you at the very least a green platypus. (I have no idea if this example works but it amuses me. ) Maybe Greygold feels silly wearing UV flashlight taped to their head, but it's certainly a lot simpler waving a uv light around their friends than to have their friends constantly try and figure out what the hell they mean by Green Platypus. And Greygold certainly would rather tape a UV flashlight to their face than have their friends not believe them when they say that Platypus is Green. I suppose it's Greygold's "Shirtless Disaster" attempt at trying to be as transparent as possible with their friends. While keeping their shirt on.

[mylonelydreaming]

Every time some gamerbro tries to use the Akkala dream house you build to *disprove* zelink I laugh tbh.

Clearly Link intends to abandon Zelda... by building a family home (with connotations in Akkala) with two of everything set up in it and a scholar's study in a location where Silent Princesses grow nearby.

Because obviously, Link doesn't care about anything, Link would never simp! ...even though he even only wants to face the Demon King to find a clue on Zelda and is straight up werid and pathetic thinking "My sweet princess 🥰" when he thinks she's ordered him to fight naked

[ratatatastic]

7.30.24 (x)

[theredch3rry]

Remember how I said Gem was my spirit animal… then Scar goes & introduces her at the hermit Twitchcon panel as “be careful around this one” yep… that’s my spirit animal.

[anthonycrowley]

the fact azcrow is one of the top pairings on ao3 will never not be completely fucking bonkers to me tbqfh

[outeremissary]

Bringing out a funny question for the asks that I know already exists in some form. What is the worst thing Balthazar does in their story?

God. What a question when he’s done So Much Shit that the one big list I have isn’t even comprehensive. I think in terms of scale of impact it might be blowing off Jamandi’s summons for the sake of personal relationship drama. That’s not a very interesting or funny answer but also HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE DIED. And it truly does come from such a lack of concern for the lives of others- he’s not particularly fond of Jamandi and feels she demands more than she returns, so in his eyes her life and the lives of every other person on that plain just don’t matter very much. In a petty way, he’d like for her to suffer crippling losses and get off his back. The faceless masses of Rostland who absorb the brunt of that are just numbers to him. And more importantly, how could Jamandi and the threat that is currently firmly a Her Problem be considered in the same breath as Tristian at all?

In terms of smaller scale things… being pretty willing to help Jaethal do Basically Anything isn’t really great when that culminates in super murdering Nortellara, and also having endorsed her holding that unlucky Nortellara look alike against her will all fucking game prior. That’s not awesome. That doesn’t speak well of someone. I know that on my romance run there was a feeble last minute “wait maybe we shouldn’t murder your daughter for…. reasons” that she rejected (still a funny move of hers) but that’s not canon to me. The canon of my heart is very much Balthazar having been All In on killing Nortellara and being upset that Jaethal might be willing to consider backing down because he was at the time trying very hard not to think about if maybe he had an important relationship of his own to mend. Murder your daughter so I don’t have to think about the consequences of my own actions Jaethal :/

But of course there's also this so really who can say

[prompt list]

[briebysabs]

Sakura Haruka has to be one of the most shippable characters I’ve ever seen. The guy pairs so well with almost everyone.

[heart-wit-strength]

lowkey think we sleep on the fact that the one time she displays behavior of a 13 year old in Newtopia resulted in very casual attitude towards discipline through physical violence

[thehoardofthegreatdragon]

*sees a sudden uptick of comments on Black Cat Cafe*: BNHA fandom are u guys ok,