#How can one not feel things about something of that magnitude? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

miley1442111 · 5 months ago

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insecurity- a.hotchner

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summary: aaron starts to overthink and doesn't realise how it's impacting the relaitionship.

pairing: aaron hotchner x fiancé! reader

warnings: angst, fluff, aaron is super insecure about his body, reader is upset with him, suggestive mentions, fade to black smut, kissing, aaron ignores reader and is kind of a dickhead, cursing, angsty for a moment (I think that's it?)

not entirely proofread

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“Not good enough.”

The sentence rang out in his mind as he knocked on your apartment door.

“She’s too young for you, she’ll get bored.”

“Hi handsome,” your bright eyes met his, your perfect figure clad in a t-shirt and jeans, your hair done how he loved, and he smiled.

“Hi beautiful,” he smiled. Adjectives became names with him. You smiled. “Ready to go?”

“All packed and ready,” you smiled.

You were moving in. And Aaron was shitting it.

“How could she ever find you attractive?” “She’s too young for you.” “Jack will hate you when she leaves you.”

He’d been a careful and logistical man his entire life, and all of that, all the walls and things he’d put in place to protect himself had disintegrated when you confessed to him and asked him out.

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“Hey boss,” you smiled, knocking on his open door. “Can I talk to you?”

He’d smiled and nodded. It was 9pm, much later than you usually stayed ‘til. It had been months of fleeting glances, scorching touches, and mixed signals. Tonight was the night you’d change that.

“Of course,” he’d offered you a seat and you smiled up at him. He thought you were gorgeous, even after the excessive amount of running you’d all had to do (since the unsub almost got away), and the long three days of no sleep.

“Can I say something? And if it’s weird, or wrong, or if it makes you uncomfortable please just tell me to shut up and-”

“I’d never tell you to shut up,” Aaron chuckled, god much he liked you was getting pathetic.

You smiled. “I’d like to go out with you, like on a date,” You swallowed nervously. “Would that be something you’d be interested in?”

Aaron’s entire throat went dry and a million thoughts ran through his head, every single one of them about you.

“She’s joking, there’s no way she’d ever-”

“I’d be very interested,” his lips moved before his brain could even comprehend what he was saying. Every wall, everything that he’d put up to protect himself, it all crumbled to the ground in an instant. You had a knack for making him feel completely raw, completely at your mercy, and he hated to love it.

You smiled. Your beautiful, indescribable smile. “Good,” you were trying to not smile so hard, but it was proving difficult when he was sitting there so prettily, so Aaron. “How about Thursday, since Fridays are you and Jack time? I know this great tapas bar?”

You even knew Fridays didn’t work since they were ‘Jack and Dad night’. Could you be more perfect? “That sounds great.”

You’d left his office with a smile on your face. He watched you leave and realised he was fucked.

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“Earth to Aaron?” You waved a hand in front of his face. “You alright?”

“I’m alright,” he chuckled. “Don’t worry.”

“Dad’s a crazy old man!” Jack giggled. You both laughed along, but Aaron couldn’t help but feel the sting. He knew it was a joke, he knew this was all irrational, but it still hurt all the same.

“Jack!’ you scolded playfully. “He’s only 48.”

Jack rolled his eyes and laughed, then got in the car.

“You’re not crazy to me,” you pressed a quick kiss to his lips and smiled. “Promise.”

He smiled back, but he was still riddled with anxiety, and he was scared. Aaron hadn’t been scared since Floyd. He was scared because he knew the power you had over him, and he knew you didn’t even know the magnitude of that power. You were his guiding star, his everything.

“I love you,” He beamed, despite the inner monologue that was tormenting him.

You softened. “I love you too. Ready to go?”

“All ready,” he smiled.

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The first week, you could tell something was up with Aaron. He was quieter, less physical, and seemingly, work was more interesting than you.

You frowned every time he came home late and left for work early, just wanting a moment or two alone with your fiancé. When you met him at work, it wasn’t much different which, granted, wasn’t unusual. He was averse to pda, especially in the workplace, and he didn’t much like sharing his personal life with the team unless it was completely necessary.

But it was getting strange when even on cases where you’d be sharing a hotel room, he’d choose not to have sex, citing that he was too tired.

Now, your sex life was great, he was great. You hadn't gone more than a week without having sex since the first time you did it, which was a month into your relationship. Had you done something to annoy him? You weren’t sure.

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Living with you was a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you were always there. On the other hand, you were always there. He dug himself deeper, hating the scars on his body and the way his hair greyed at the roots. He hated the extra fat he’d put on, and decided to work himself harder in the gym. He hadn’t gone in a while, choosing to spend his time with you instead. Why did he feel like this? Aaron Hotchener had always been a smart, logical, confident man. Now? He was scared to be shirtless in front of his own fiancé. It’s not like he didn’t think he was handsome, he knew he was good-looking. Maybe not as good as he did in his prime, but still good-looking. It’s just that you were so… young and so beautiful. You two were so opposites, he was 48 and you were practically fresh out of the academy in his eyes (You were not fresh out of the academy, you’d been working with him for years). When you two went out, people hit on you, and you had to point to him and say that he was your boyfriend. The way the guys looked at him, the younger, more attractive guys, made him feel small.

Aaron Hotchner did not like feeling small, so he decided to make a change. No sex (unless initiated by you) until he felt confident again.

When would that be, you may ask? He had no clue.

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Ok, three weeks with no sex and you were even more worried. But, at least you two had the weekend off since work was quiet and Jack was off to Jessica’s to be with his cousins.

You walked into his office to see him sweaty and clearly more tired than usual. Aaron had been coming home later, not at all interested in wedding planning, and just not mentally in the room with you or Jack in recent weeks. It was worrying you to say the least. Were you losing him? Was he cheating?

“Hey boss, here’s the reports from me, Jj, Spencer, and Derek,” You handed him the reports from the last cases, and he barely looked up at you. You felt something other than hurt and confusion started to bubble, anger. Why the fuck was he treating you like this? You’d done nothing that you were aware of and anyways, he had no right to not talk to you if he was upset. He’s a grown man, he can talk about his fucking feelings.

You walked out without another word, deciding that it was time to be angry, not worried.

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You got home later than usual, deciding to head out to dinner with Penelope after work, and when you got inside you found Aaron on the couch, waiting up for you.

“Where were you?” He asked through gritted teeth. Oh, now he wanted to talk.

“Out,” your answer was short, and ambiguous enough to warrant other questions.

“Where?” he asked again.

“Bar.”

“Y/n,” his voice was low.

“With Penelope.”

He sighed and got up, walking over to you. “Why aren’t you talking to me?”

The look of annoyance on your face made him stop in his tracks.

“Why am I not talking to you?! You’ve been ignoring me for 3 fucking weeks Aaron!” you shot back. “You come home late, you’re never here when you are here, you ignore me at work, you ignore me at home, I’m the one hanging out with Jack on the weekends, not you and we haven’t so much as kissed in three weeks. If you want me to move back out i-if this is too much for you, I can do that, I don’t mind. I’m just so sick of being treated like I don’t exist, like I’m not your fucking fiancé,” your voice got smaller as you went on, realising just how frustrated you were getting with it all. “It’s not fair Aaron.”

Aaron could feel his heart breaking, while his insecurities swallowed him up, he forgot about how it would make you feel and how it would impact your relationship. “Honey I’m-”

“I love you Aaron. I love you so much, and for a while I thought I did something wrong, like really really wrong. Like maybe I overstepped with Jack, or maybe I upset you somehow. And if I’m right, please just tell me. These last few weeks have been torture trying to figure out why you’re mad,” you begged, small tears cascading down your cheeks as emotion overcame you.

Aaron hadn’t remembered how good it felt to be told he was loved by you. Obviously you said it everyday, but it sometimes becomes ‘just a thing someone says’. But not with you. You said it with your full chest, only to people who meant something. Aaron meant something to you. He realised how he should have remembered that. He should have remembered that you had loved him despite how he looked and acted, that you stood by him during Foyet, not because you were in love with him (not yet anyway) but because you loved him (even if it was just as a friend then). You were the most loving person he’d ever met, and he felt ashamed that he;d ever let his insecurities blind him to the beautiful reality he was living. He was going to marry you. He was living with you.

What was he thinking?

“I’m so sorry Honey,” he pleaded. “I was worried.”

You stood there dumbfounded. “Worried about what?” You spat.

“I worried… that I was too old for you… that you’d look at me and think that you’re without,” he admitted. “Jack thinks I’m old, I thought it was only a matter of time before you came to the same conclusion. I’m not as young as you, and I don’t measure up in… well in looks. You’re fucking beautiful and stunning and beside you I’m just… me. Scars and all.”

You sighed and took his hand. “You’re 48 Aaron, not 77. Alright? Better yet, you’re a hot 48 year old. But you know what’s better than that? You love me. You’re sweet to me, and you treat me well. I feel the love from you everyday. That’s what I give a shit about, that we love each other. Is that not what you care about?” you asked, a hint of insecurity in your voice.

“Of course I care about that,” he nodded, glad you were letting him touch you. “I was just…”

“Getting your own head about things?” you finished for him and he nodded. “I understand. But in future please just come to me, yeah?”

“I’m sorry I made you cry,” he added, softly cupping your cheek and drying your wet eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

You cracked a smile, chuckling lightly as you cupped his cheeks. “It’s ok.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s not.”

You chuckled as you pulled him in to kiss you. “It’s alright,” you whispered against his lips. You quickly pulled away realising you had another question to ask. “You’re not cheating on me, right? Like, why have you been coming home so late?”

He chuckled and smiled at you. “No, you’re enough for me to handle.”

“So what have you been doing,” you asked.

He looked down in embarrassment. “It’s stupid.”

“I want to know,” you pushed, a smile on your face.

“I’ve been going to the gym,” he admitted, his cheeks heating up. “Don’t laugh.”

You stared at him in shock, then playfully hit him on the chest. “You bitch! We could’ve been going together!”

He laughed, then pressed his lips to yours again. “We will.”

“Y’know what else I’ve missed?” you smirked as he pulled your waist into his.

“What?” he pressed a kiss to your neck.

“Sex.”

He smirked. “Well, I do have a lot of making up to do, don’t I?”

You nodded, pulling towards the stairs. “Yes you do.”

As you two made it to the top of the stairs, he pressed his lips to yours again. “I love you.”

“Shut up and fuck me Aaron.”

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criminal minds masterlist :)

navigation for my blog :) (criminal minds, obx, the bear, marvel, top gun, the hunger games :)

#criminal minds #criminal minds imagine #bau team #criminal minds x reader #aaron hotchner x reader #criminal minds fandom #aaron hotchner #criminal minds fic #aaron hotchner fluff #thomas gibson x reader #thomas gibson #aaron hotchner fanfiction #aaron hotch hotchner #aaron hotch x reader #aaron hotch imagine #aaron hotchner imagine #aaron hotch fanfiction

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clothedwthesun · 1 year ago

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what i hate most about the dynamic aziraphale and crowley have is the way people somehow always seem to interpret it as crowley loving him more than aziraphale loves him back. and it's sooo frustrating because yes crowley is more open and honest about how he feels but aziraphale shows it, reeks of it. literally one of the things that fuel his internal conflict is that he cares for and trusts and loves crowley so much that for the first time something actually rivals his devotion to heaven, so much that he agrees to the fucking arrangement because he trusts crowley more, so much that he doesn't even know where to put it or what to do with it or how to admit to it

every single time he "chooses heaven" it's because he's allowed himself to sink too deeply into this love and that's what springs the catholic guilt into action. the final scene isn't even aziraphale choosing heaven over crowley, but him saying i can make heaven good enough for you, and he's so fucking happy because he thinks he's finally found a loophole, and when crowley says no he literally thinks he's the one being rejected. quite literally the entire show is aziraphale trying to find a way around it and explain it away and make excuses but my brother in christ he loves him so much he can't even bear to face the magnitude of it

#you people get on my nerves in such a way #do NOT speak on this man if u want me to leave u alone #aziraphale #aziracrow #good omens #good omens meta #e.txt #e.meta

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slytherinslut0 · 26 days ago

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quiet reckoning. chapter two

summary: its winter. you begin to accept the solace, until on a random night in january; you dream.

warnings: 18+, smut MDNI, mind manipulation, tom riddle is a fucking god (sorry), oral f!rec, PIV, so much angstttt, tom riddle is broken and he’s tired of fighting, outdoor sex, ooc tom for some but remember there are decades of history between these two.

masterlist and other chapters.

It's winter. The first of the season is a soft, unassuming thing, nothing like the hard decay of fall. Snow blankets life and covers old memories of summer fading to fallen leaves—and you've always marvelled at it, the way frost clings to the pines—how the crystals dance in sunlight like they're celebrating.

Warmth lies dormant, hidden under the cold, yet nature still finds a way to make the quiet beautiful.

This, you think, reminds you of Tom.

In the early days of winter you spend as much time outside as you can manage, but the cold seeps in eventually—a bitter thing with the edges of frozen steel—so you give yourself grace for the rest. There's a satisfaction in the easy routine you fall into—no garden, no yard work, just stoking the fire and chopping wood, eating and reading and going down to the market when you decide an apple pie sounds nice.

Sometimes, late at night, you sit by the fire and think about all the things that have changed—sometimes, you sit by the fire and think about the things that haven't.

You try not to hate yourself for how small the latter list seems to be.

Mattheo doesn't come in December. He writes only twice—once to tell you about his wedding, and again to say he won't be able to visit after all. You try to ignore the hollow feeling in your gut as you read that last letter, but when he sends you your favourite sweets for Christmas, you decide to forgive him.

You begin to accept the solace. The kind of quiet that fills the cracks of a life left behind.

Until, on a random night in January, you dream.

It's one of those dreams that feels hyper-real—you're outside, somewhere that feels both unfamiliar and inescapably known. It's dark and snowing, your breath leaving plumes in the air, and everything—the scenery, the chill, the silence—washes over you like something you feel more than witness.

You turn slowly, looking around—your senses stretching to the stillness of the trees, the soft fall of snowflakes, the ring of silence pressing in on your ears. Then you start walking, guided by something you can't name but instinctively trust. It doesn't take long before you hear it—the steady flow of water—so you push through a stand of snow-covered trees and find a narrow creek, its edges crusted with ice that glints under the moonlight.

The feeling of familiarity hits harder, and when you look up, that's when you see it—like a ghost that is your memories—the orphanage, sitting in the distance, rising from the shadows of the night.

This is your childhood. And for a strange, suffocating moment—you feel like you're home.

But there's hardly any time to process any of this before you're moving again and find yourself kneeling at the waters edge—snow sticking to your jeans, peering down through the frozen surface into its depths. You think of Tom. You think of Mattheo. You think of the memories rippling past.

And then, as if summoned by the sheer magnitude of your longing, Tom is beside you.

"Cold, isn't it?" His voice is soft, low, as if the silence around you demands reverence.

You don't startle; you know this is a dream. You're half-aware of it even as he settles by your side, his knees brushing snow like yours, hands tucked into his jacket pockets. Instead, you exhale slowly, your breath turning to mist in the night.

Dreams don't need logic, and this one would never work if it made sense. So you give in to it, the way you'd always given in to his whims when you were children.

"It always is." Your voice echoes like a memory.

He hums in acknowledgment.

You don't look at him, not yet, but you feel him lean back—palms pressed into the snow, long legs stretched out in front of him and his head tilted up towards the sky. For a moment, you're both quiet, watching the frost turn the trees around you into statues of silver and ice.

It's then that you realize you're not cold. You're not anything, in fact. There's no ache, no heaviness, only the soft stillness of a moment suspended outside of time.

That's how you know it's a dream—because if it were real, you'd feel everything.

"You always loved the cold." He tells you quietly. You don't take your eyes off the trees. "I've yet to decipher why that is."

"It's the constant that life has never been." There's a quiet honesty in the words, the kind you'd never have dared to say when awake. But here, like this, you think you're allowed to speak the truths you bury. "Winter has never been anything but what it promised to be."

You hear him make another sound of agreement. You want to look at him, to see what might rest in the hollow of his cheek and the curve of his jaw, but something stops you.

Some instinct warns that if you do, you'll lose him.

"Winter reminds me of you." He whispers. You close your eyes at the need the words stir. "You've always been my constant."

In the silence following that, a part of you whispers; I wish you'd never said that. But this is a dream, and for a time you give in to the part of you that says; I wish you said that more.

"You've always been mine."

It feels like a memory that was never real. Like a lie. He's never been yours in the way you wished he was, but he has definitely been a constant.

Either way, you don't elaborate, regardless of how much you want to—this just makes sense to you in ways you're sure he already knows. Tom has always been your winter—soft like snow but not quite as pure. Cold like frost, the type that burns. He's the still in the chill that wraps around you, that sticks to your skin long after the warmth has crept back in. He's the devastation, the beauty. He's always been your winter.

He doesn't respond to that, and for a time, silence is the companion of the night. You wonder, faintly, if this is all dreams ever are—fragments of memory, shards of longing, the reflection of your heart's deepest corners.

You wonder, faintly, why you're dreaming of him now.

"Are you really here, Tom?" You ask without thinking, without knowing. It’s the part of you that knows he’s capable of anything. “Is this your way of visiting me without the commitment?"

From the corner of your eye, you see him smile. It's sad without being entirely tragic, somehow. "Have you dreamt of me before?"

What a question, you think. When haven't I?

"In pieces, in fragments. I dream of youth. Of memory. I feel you in every dream." You answer, thinking of the times you'd wake and feel him from your childhood. But you haven't felt him like this. Alive and real and lucid. "Never like this."

He's silent for a long time. You know without looking that his eyes are still turned to the sky. That's when you realize the truth of it: you've answered your own question.

If this were only a dream, if this were merely a version of him conjured by your mind, he wouldn't be so quiet. He'd be saying all the things you've always wanted him to say. This is a visitation.

After a moment, you feel him look at you, and that's when you cave—something desperate in you seeking his eyes, those onyx fucking eyes you've missed so much—and once you find them, you see the stars and snow reflected in the glass of them and your breath catches somewhere between your lungs and your heart.

He's beautiful like this—older, aged, weathered—he's so fucking beautiful it hurts.

"This might be the most transparent you've ever been with me," you choke out, attempting to lighten the moment, to push down the ache that's rising in your chest. But your voice wavers, betraying you. You've loved this man for so long, you've forgotten how to pretend you don't. "You look like you've seen all the things I've been too afraid to say."

He studies you then, his face bathed in moonlight that paints his skin in shades of frost and shadow. He looks like something out of a dream, like an angel of winter under the guise of a devil.

He's always been both, you think, in a way only Tom could accomplish.

"You make a habit of not saying the things you want to," he says quietly, as soft as the falling snow. You look back at the creek, trying not to get lost in this feeling that's almost like the first time he'd kissed you. "I thought coming to you like this would help you break it."

You know this isn't real, not in the way you wish it was. This is manipulation—a spell, a trick of his mind and yours, something he's managed to do through magic that's lost on you and a dream you can't control. But your mind isn't the master here, not in this realm—so when Tom puts a hand on your cheek that is as warm as summer in the dead of winter itself and turns your face to look at him, all you can think—all you can want—is to lean into the touch.

You try to pretend it doesn't make you want everything. "Tom—"

His knuckles brush your cheek and you lose your tongue. The feeling of it, real and fucking steady, makes your skin burn where he's touching you, clawing its way back into your chest like it never left.

He says, softly, "say the things you've been afraid to say."

You exhale slowly, like the words stuck in your throat are too hot to hold. Your mind is racing, a million moments in memory where you wished you would have said what you felt. His eyes are searching yours, and you're half-terrified of what he'll find in them—

"I'm in love with you." You whisper, before you have the sense to stop yourself. "I've been in love with you, for as long as I can remember."

You watch his eyes and the way his jaw works when he hesitates. You'll remember this moment forever, you think, even if the things before and after it are lost to time.

"Keep going," he finally says, running the pad of his thumb across your cheekbone. "I'm not going anywhere."

You close your eyes against his touch, trying to hold onto the sound of his voice. You've fought so fucking hard, for years, to ignore it but fuck—you've missed him—you've missed the way he makes you feel. You've missed this, even the ache it makes between your heart and your throat.

"I think of you all the time," you say, timidly, opening your eyes again. "There hasn't been a moment since I left where I wasn't missing you. I dream of you—of us—I dream of your voice and your hands and the things you've done to me." You see him breathe out, very slightly, and it makes you feel braver. "I dream of the way you used to kiss me. I dream of who you were, who you could have been. I dream of the way you looked at me in final year before you broke my heart. I hate you for it still."

He's still watching you, and his eyes seem even darker and more intense in the shadow. His hand drops from your face, landing on your knee because you're practically in his lap—you hadn't realized you'd been leaning into him, seeking out the warmth of his skin like you'd been starved for it.

The ache in your chest is so strong it makes you dizzy and you're half-terrified that he won't say anything to that.

Until finally, he murmurs, "I'm sorry."

There’s a pause. It's perplexing that somehow he looks both like the eighteen-year-old you've loved all your life, and the twenty-five-year-old stranger he's become in that time. You think, faintly, that it's not fair.

You exhale, and the sound of it hurts. "You say that like you don't exactly know what you did wrong."

You can feel the heat from his skin through your jeans—he's too close yet too far away, and the part of you that loves him and the part of you that hates him seem to be tangled tightly in the space between.

"I never knew how to love you," it’s an admission, and his voice is soft and broken enough to make the pain in your chest subside. "I never gave you the chance to teach me."

There's a million things you could say to that, a million ways you could react to those words. You don't really have the strength to say all of it, and you certainly don't have the mental to service all the grief that comes along with it.

"You did." You whisper, trying to hide the crack in your voice. "You've known."

You shift, angling your body closer to him. He's still watching you, and for the first time since that final night at his manor, you sense that familiar trace of softness in his eyes—that part of him that's been gentle for you since you were children.

"Not the way you deserved."

You take his hand, trying to ignore the way your fingers fit against his like they were carved from the same tree; his skin is rough, scarred and calloused, but it still feels like it always had, despite the years.

Safe.

"You've seen my life now." You look at his fingers as you say it, "do you think that is what I deserve?"

There's a moment of stillness between you—in which you wonder if this is the part where he wakes up out of guilt—but then you feel his fingers press harder against yours, like confirmation.

"You deserve to be happy." He says.

You're so hot you're not sure how the snow isn't melting beneath you. You're sure that's something in his control.

"And what do you know about being happy?" You say, looking up.

The moonlight is catching in his eyes and they're soft in the corners just as they were when you were young. So much has changed and so much hasn't. Part of you feels like crying, but instead you shiver when his hand runs up your arm, following the shape of your shoulder and the side of your neck, and you feel all the nerve endings in your body light up like a matchstick against the friction.

You think, faintly, that you'd forgotten this—how he could touch you without ever really touching you.

He exhales. "Only what I learned from you."

There's a part of you that wants to scream at that, at the way he can say those things and look at you and make you believe it, even if just for a moment.

"I haven't been happy in years, Tom," you say quietly. "Have you?"

His eyes flick to yours, and for a long while, the only sound you can hear is the cracking of the ice filled creek, and both of your exhales.

"No," he finally whispers, and you feel his thumb brush against the skin of your cheek. "I haven't."

You turn, angling your face into his palm. There's something heartbreakingly honest in his voice—something in the way he says it that makes you question the years you've spent wondering if he'd felt anything about you leaving, about the way he made you go.

Your eyes flutter shut for a heartbeat. It's easier to imagine it's real like this, like everything else.

And then, when you decide to open them again, the scenery around you has changed—it's bright, it's summer—there's fireflies and warmth and whitetails running through the field past the creek toward the orphanage. Tom's hand falls to rest in the grass, and you turn to look at him—

He's watching the fireflies with a look on his face, soft and wistful like he's never quite managed to be before in his life. You watch the insects hover around his hair and for just a second, you think he looks more alive than any version of him you've seen before.

"Tom." You whisper, your own voice scaring you.

He turns to look at you when you say his name, and the expression in his eyes is something completely foreign to you. You've seen him hungry, and arrogant, selfish and even angry—but here, awake in a summer childhood memory dreamworld of his own making—he looks fucking vulnerable.

"Hm?" He raises an eyebrow.

Your breath catches before you can answer, like the feeling of seeing him like this—unguarded and unburdened—is catching up to you. He's beautiful under the moon and snow and he's beautiful under the sun and summer grass. It's unfair, you think, just how fucking beautiful he is.

"Will you ever come see me?" You force the words out before you choke on them. "For real, I mean."

He's silent, but you feel the air around you go incredibly still when you say it—like those few syllables had just caused the whole world to go quiet. Tom blinks, and for a moment you're afraid he'll say no.

Actually, a part of you is praying he'll say no—while the other part of you is praying he'll say yes.

Finally, he shakes his head. "If I did, I'd never leave."

You suppose he might not have realized what he's said, that it's just something that had come out of his mouth without thought. But somehow, it sounds more like the truth than anything he's ever said to you in a very long time. You're lost, suddenly, in the fantasy of him staying with you, of having him by your side to watch the summer nights and the winter mornings and anything and everything in between.

A part of you wants to break down at the thought. A part of you wants to yell at him, to make him see how selfish it is to offer you that.

You open your mouth to say something, but before you can find words for anything, you feel his hand on your cheek again, and your brain suddenly goes incredibly blank. He's leaning in closer to you—close enough that you can feel the heat from his lips and you're aware of how your own heart is racing—

"The next time I come to you," he murmurs, eyes on your mouth. "I'm never leaving you again."

The words make you almost dizzy, but before you can react to them, his mouth is on yours, and fireworks go off behind your eyes. He fits against you like he always has, like the two of you had been built to always have your bodies slot into eachother. You bring your arms up, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt and pulling him selfishly closer.

He inhales against your mouth and his fingers grip harder, his teeth catching your bottom lip with a bite that makes your whole body shudder. He kisses you like he's afraid you're going to disappear, his tongue hot against yours, his hand twisting into the hair at the base of your neck, pulling your head back until he can kiss your throat in the way he used to when he was aiming to leave you mindless.

His touch makes you feel like you're burning. You're so fucking disarmed from his lips on your neck and his skin on yours that you can't think—can't speak when he urges you back in the grass and moves between your thighs—one warm hand snaking up under your shirt, leaning slightly to watch the way your chest heaves with each ragged breath; and when his fingers skim your breasts you let out an involuntary gasp, arching into his touch.

"God, you're still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he murmurs drawing down to drag his mouth over your collarbone. "Time has been so good to you."

He keeps your body trapped against the grass beneath you, the sky going dark overhead. He's taking his time, you realize, with his lips on the hollow of your collarbone and his fingers tracing the curve of your hip, taking his time to worship you in the way he'd done hundreds of other nights before all this time between.

"Tom," you manage when he moves to run his tongue along your lower stomach. "You—" you can't even say it, not like this, not with his lips warm against your flesh. "This isn't real—"

He looks up from where he's working to mark a bruise at the edge of your jeans—something dangerous and dark lighting up his eyes in the moonlight.

"Does it feel real?" He rasps. "Can you feel this?" His tongue skims your belly again before he sinks his teeth in, and you gasp. "Can you feel me, sweetheart?"

Your mind can't find any words. You'd forgotten how he'd reduced you like this, how he makes it feel like you can't fucking think.

"Yes," you gasp, but the word is mostly air. "Fuck—god, Tom—"

You can't say more than that, not with his mouth where it is, so close to where you're aching for him. He huffs against your skin, not mocking, but low and satisfied and smug like it's always been.

You're going to die like this—you think faintly, when his fingers finally undo the buttons of your jeans and the summer air hits the skin of your thighs.

"Do you want me to stop?"

What a terrible, devastating question.

"I—" you gasp, arching off the grass as he tugs your jeans off your legs. "No. Please—"

He laughs, and when he does it makes your whole body shiver.

"That's my girl," the words muttered into your inner thigh. "I've missed you like this."

His tongue skims over the edge of your underwear and you're lost at the feel of it—vaguely aware of the fact that you're making far too many noises and you think you look obscene—half-undone and writhing beneath his touch, but you don’t fucking care, not even slightly.

"Please," you gasp again when his tongue dips further down, a word you're half-sure you've been saying for ages. "Please, please—"

He's torturously slow with every single little movement, kissing over your pelvis and between the creases of your thighs, taking his time to taste every inch of you like he's savouring it. You're shivering and shuddering and begging for him, you're so out of your mind you're half-sure you're going to cry.

Until finally—finally, he brings his mouth to the place where you'd wanted it to be, tugging your panties to the side and lapping up your slit—and you let out a sound that's barely even human.

"I've missed you like this," he repeats against your swollen clit. "Fuck, how I missed this."

You're half-aware that you're probably pulling his hair and making noises that aren't fit to be spoken, but god fucking dammit—you're burning up with every touch, and every movement of his tongue sends sparks to your eyes. You think you're delirious, half-sure that you've been reduced to gasps and whimpers and "please, please, please—" but it's all you can do to keep his name in your mouth, the way you're sure he'd always wanted it.

"Tom," you gasp, as he laps up your slit until his tongue swirls over your clit again, as he seals his lips around it. "Fuck! Oh—"

A part of you thinks that you would like to stay like this forever—half-undone and out of your mind in some weird dream-like state of his creation with him between your thighs and his hands holding you as his, surrounded by the fireflies and the summer in the grass where you first kissed as kids.

"You taste so good," he growls against you. "I never stopped wanting this—"

You're close now. So close you think you'll burn up in a fire and engulf the grass and the trees and the fucking air itself—but Tom seems to be able to sense that, too. He presses a hand on your pelvis, holding you steady, reminding you that he's catching you as you fall.

"So good—so, so good—" he murmurs, lapping up your slick. "Let go for me.”

You think you would have, either way—but when he tells you in that voice, when he's looking at you like that in this state of his making—you let go for him without a shred of hesitation, because you'd always known, if nothing else, that you don't own this.

The summer, the grass on the hill, the pleasure coursing through you—it's all his. It's always all been his.

You come back to yourself in pieces—first, the sound of his voice, dangerously rough, then the feeling of him pulling away and shifting until he's hovering above you again—your vision clears enough to take him in, and you think he's impossibly holy like this—with the fireflies lighting up behind his hair, with the look in his eyes and the taste of your need for him on his mouth.

"I love you," he murmurs, running a hand over your jaw. "More than what's in this heart."

He leans down, kissing you again, and you have never been so out of breath in your life. You don't have air in you to kiss him back, nor have you even the strength to try—you can't believe what he just said—this can't be—

"I love you." He repeats it, as if he heard your doubts. You know he did. "Hand to a god you know I don't believe in. I'll die trying to prove it to you."

Something breaks apart in your chest. You raise a trembling hand to his face, trying to take him in— his eyes, his jaw and his mouth, his body tense between your thighs. You want very badly to be sure this is real—that he means what he's saying, even if it's only for tonight, even if he'll forget it as soon as it's over.

"You'll remember this when you wake up?" You don’t know what to say first. "You'll still—"

The look in his eyes goes sharper, his own hand coming up to take yours and press it against his chest—right above where his heart is. You can feel it beating, impossibly fast, like he'd just run a whole marathon.

"Does it feel like I'd forget?" He asks. "Does it feel like this is not real?"

God, it's so close to real—him on top of you and his heart beating against your hand and the feel of his skin against yours and even the taste of yourself on his mouth—it's so fucking real—real enough to make you half-sure you're going to burst into tears.

"Tell me you mean it," you whisper, voice broken into fractions. "Please, please—just say—"

"I'll remember it when I wake up," he cuts you off, leaning down to kiss the skin below your ear. "There are very few things in this world I forget." He drags his mouth down to your neck, his teeth leaving a bruise you're sure will be there in the light of morning, his hands finding the sides of your hips again. "I forget even fewer of the things involving you."

You gasp out a sound that's half a sob, half a whimper because you cannot believe him and you want to believe him so badly you don't know what to do with yourself.

"Why now?" You manage when you've found your voice again. "Why now—why couldn't you have said this before—"

He lets out a dry, broken laugh against your skin, and you can feel it when his chest shudders against you.

That's when you realize he's afraid, too.

"I was a coward with all the wrong aspirations," he admits, pressing the words into your collarbone, your jaw, as if he's trying to get as close to you as humanly possible. You're still acutely aware of the fact your lower half is bare against his. "And every time I've come to realize that I'm still in love with you, I've always run away from it."

You're still trying to remember how to breathe when he moves, shifting his weight and rolling over so that you're on top of him, straddling his hips. It takes you a moment to process it—you're suddenly so dizzy again now that you can feel him, hard and solid beneath you.

Every inch of your body suddenly feels like it's aching for more of him.

"Tom—" you gasp, the words sticking somewhere in your throat. "I—"

"You're too good for me," he murmurs, his long fingers skirting over the hollow of your spine, making your whole body tremble. "You've never been anything but the only good thing in my life." He rolls his hips up against yours, his eyes fluttering when you moan. "I'm tired of fighting. I'm yours if you'll have me. I'm yours if you won't."

You think this is the most he's ever spoken. You think back to when he told you to say all the things you've always been afraid of saying.

You wonder if he's doing that now.

"You're an idiot," you manage to say, finding your voice again, the breathless words coming out as a half-sob. "You really are an idiot—"

You gasp when he jerks his hips up against you again, and you can feel how much he wants you in the grunt that slips out of his mouth.

"I know I am," he says through grit teeth. "I'm cowardly and foolish and idiotic all because I'm in love with you." Another jerk of his hips, harder this time, pulling you closer. "And I cannot, for the love of god, figure out why you don't hate me more for it."

You gasp out a broken sound that's half a laugh, half a whimper, arching involuntarily against his touch in a way that makes you sound unhinged.

"Does it ever occur to you," you manage through the aching need for him, "that I fucking love you despite it all?"

He makes a sound against your skin that's so rough and broken and aching that you'd think you're killing him—

"Perhaps I did," he grunts, shifting as you finally decide you've had enough of this and move to undo his trousers, tugging them down and freeing him. You fucking sob at how real he is—how real he feels in your hand. "I just—mmf—assumed you'd realize better one day."

Your brain feels very much like it's short-circuiting now as you wrap your fingers around his dick and give him a light squeeze, trying to get used to the feeling of him again and the way he twitches against your palm. He lets out a strangled sound as you do, one hand coming up to bite his knuckles to drown it out, and you can't believe you have that kind of power over him.

It's a thought you'll need to consider later.

"Looks like we're both idiots, then," you murmur, and you're not sure you have the strength to form any other words as crawl back up, guiding him to your greedy aching cunt, and sink down.

You think he'd probably let you drown him right here and now without even blinking, with the way he lets out a sound that's almost animal, his breath coming out in shuddering gasps against your shoulder as you take him in. It takes you a moment to adjust to him, his ego made flesh—and as you start to slowly ride you realize you'd half forgotten that anything in this world could feel so fucking good.

"Fuck—" he gasps, and you think he's never sounded like that before. "That's it. That's good—"

You've never seen him look this way—not like a man hiding oceans behind his eyes or a god about to smite his creation—but an entirely mortal man falling to pieces beneath you. Everything about the way he touches you screams I need this, I need you—and he's always been the better one at speaking through his body.

You find your pace after a moment, slow and steady, trying to give yourself time to adjust to him while also trying to find that angle that makes you go just a little out of your mind.

"Tom—" you moan, head falling back as you bounce—looking up at the night sky. "Fuck—make it winter—"

You've forgotten how it feels to be so full. Your eyes are half-open to the night sky, where Tom's magic had crafted the summer around you—and you're not sure where the words came from, but they're half-sobbed and a thought you're not sure you should've said out loud—you wonder for a moment if he'd even heard you over his own moans and the feeling of you around him—

But then you feel it.

The first snow. A light fluttering of white snowflakes, falling from some place you can't see or find. The fireflies fade out with the falling flakes that cover the sky and you can see your breath but you don't feel the cold. You just see the beauty of it. You'd be stunned if you weren't so sure that this looks like what you've always known him to be—winter made flesh.

"You'll have everything," he grits out, jutting his hips up to slam into you deeper. "Anything you want—"

You're not sure you can put together the words to say anything in return to that—everything and anything, he'd give you, and you'd like to know when exactly he broke that carefully crafted part of himself that's supposed to not love—or when you broke that part of yourself that tried to stop loving too much.

You're not quite sure how you can say this will be enough when you're already so sure you'll never get enough of this, of the way it feels when he's this deep.

But amidst all of this, your brain has gone blissfully, blissfully silent—the only thing that's going through your head is his name. Every thought you've ever had, you're sure, is just a synonym of his name—every letter that's ever been made, somehow leading back to his name—every word and every story and every language and every poem somehow all trying to say; Tom, Tom, Tom. I am fucking in love with him.

"Harder," you gasp, and he complies like he'd die if he didn't—flipping you over so you're on your back beneath him.

You're a broken, moaning mess in the snow as his dick splits you open—half-dazed by the way he's looking at you now, as if he's still somehow in disbelief that you're in this position—that you're under him and you can still love him, that you've seen every side of him and you want more.

"This—fuck," he moans, his snow covered lashes flutter. "This never left my mind. You—never—"

You think you're drowning in him. You're certain you're drowning. He’s everywhere—the snowfall and the trees and the sky—surrounding you in an a world carved out of himself and you're met by the thought of how much it doesn't surprise you.

"Tom, oh, god, I don't—I need—"

"I know," he gasps. "I know, I know, I know—"

You moan and clench and think again how he's never sounded this broken. He's never sound this desperate. He's always been so stoic in every single god damn way and you think now, as he's buried in you and over you and all around you within the winter dreamland of his fucking creation—you think you finally understand that he knows he's broken.

"You have me." He says.

You think it's a promise, and you think it's a declaration. One he's never made with as much conviction behind his eyes as he had right then. You think you've never been this certain of anything in your entire life—that there's snowflakes on your lashes and clinging to your hair and he's never looked this beautiful and you've never been this sure of it when he says he's yours.

"I love you," your words broken on a moan as he slams deep, teeth digging into your shoulder. "I need to cum—Tom—fuck—"

"Say it again," he gasps, his voice rough and raw and guttural as he slips his hand down to your clit, fingers swirling over it. "Say it again, I need to hear you say it—"

Your hands grab at the snow and at his shoulders—you're not sure you're ever going to remember how to say anything else ever again—

"Tom—Tom, I love you, I love you, I love you��"

You can see the moment you say it that he breaks, and you love it—you love being the reason why, having some of the power over him for this one single second, seeing the look in his eyes that tells you he'll give you anything you ask for, no matter how much he's ever tried to deny it before, how much he's ever tried to be anything else to you but someone to love you back.

You say it again—I love you, I love you—and it's the only spell that's ever broken him.

He cums with your name in his mouth and you marvel at it because fucking hell he's different—like a man falling apart, like a man who's been holding back for so long it aches—you think this is the only piece of him that no one else in the whole world has ever seen or gotten to touch, and it's yours, all yours—so with that, you're cumming too, climax shattering the both of you at the same time, and it's a long moment before either of you move or breathe or blink. You just lay there connected until the clarity starts creeping in, and you realize this place is crafted by his subconscious.

"You can control your dreams," you finally whisper, after a long moment of nothing but the distant sound of snowfall and the occasional night creature. You're still breathless, still dizzy, your eyes still half-opened and unseeing as he's still buried inside of you, his hair tousled and still sticking with snowflakes.

He makes a sound that's half a laugh and half a gasp at that. Probably because he can’t believe, after everything that just happened, that that is the first thing you choose to say.

"I can." He says, slowly pulling out of you.

Now it's your turn to laugh. "And do you always lure girls to your dreams to have sex with them?"

"No," he murmurs, and you think it's a simple enough answer, before it's followed by a pause. "Just you, I suppose," he adds a beat later, and you can almost hear the smirk in his voice.

You try and shove him off of you, but it's half-hearted—you've forgotten how to move your arms.

"Prat," you murmur, no real venom behind it, because you like his smirk, and you like the way he laughs. "So this is all...a product of your subconscious, then? You conjured me into it?”

"Yes and no." He says, and you feel him pull you closer to him, your body half draped over his as he stares up at the sky above you. "I'll explain when I come to you."

"And when will that be?" You ask, your head dropping against his shoulder, your eyes already fluttering in exhaustion.

"Soon," his lips find the top of your head. "As soon as I can."

You're drifting to sleep—you can feel it in the edges of your mind, but everything is blissfully quiet there, and you like the feel of his fingers in your hair.

"When you come, bring me a plant.”

He makes another sound that's half a laugh and half a chuckle at that, as if he's more fascinated by your request than anything.

"Any plant will do?" He asks.

"Preferably a flower." You manage to murmur as your eyes slip closed. "Something that can withstand winter. That will revive come spring."

You can hear the smile in his voice before you completely surrender to the sleep that overtakes you.

"You'll have it."

And you know, in between the edges of consciousness and sleep—that no one else has ever seen him this way, and no one else ever will. And that's the thought that you wake with, even when you find yourself alone, in your cabin, snow falling outside your window.

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shy-writer-999 · 2 months ago

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Summary: Let's balance out the end of kinktober with some toottthhhhh-rotting levels of sweetness. We'll make up for it tomorrow!

CW: Afab reader w/GN language. Teeny tiny bit of smut. Short and very sweet!

MINORS DNI. NSFW CONTENT.

What do you look like when you’re angry?

How do you grieve?

When you’re sad, do you shut down? Do you curl up in bed and heave sobs, or do you favor silent tears trailing down your cheeks?

Among others, these are the things Law wonders when he thinks about you. He wants to know you—to really know you. To be privy to your faults, habits, and your quirks. The things about you that no one else sees. Intimate moments of suffering along with the day-to-day.

Do you talk to yourself when you’re alone?

What does your hair look like right when you get out of the shower?

What’s your favorite time of year?

His heart contorts into alien shapes when he sees you. He clams up. You have no way of knowing the intensity of his emotions, the weapons of desire that his heart and brain exchange. The magnitude of your presence assails his senses, quickens his breath, stops his heart.

He’s well acquainted with the way you laugh and the way your lips turn into the smile that he looks forward to every day. He tries to act normal around you, and he succeeds. He succeeds too well, in fact, he’ll never have a chance with you until he does something out of the ordinary.

He stares sometimes. You notice that, at least. But you try to play it off.

Law can only tolerate so much anguish until it bubbles over.

When he works up the nerve to kiss you, his hand lingers on the small of your back. Your eyes are open from shock and you’re rigid. You’ve mused on how his lips feel, if his kisses along your jawline would tickle, if he would run his fingers through your hair. What would his fingers feel like entwined with yours?

But Law’s thoughts about you go deeper than that. He passed that point—the point of fantasizing about being intimate with you—months ago. He still indulges, of course. When he does, he’s fixated on what your face would look like pleasure-ridden and fucked out. How your breasts would feel in his hands.

The day that Law kisses you, he makes you blush first. He’s awkward, or, if not awkward, something akin to it. When he smiles at you, sits by you at lunch, and finds you in the some random corner of the ship later, he knows that today is the day.

The desire and ardent admiration are festering inside of him and he can’t take it anymore.

He wants to know what your skincare routine is and hear your scratchy morning voice. He wants to wash your plate after dinner, to treat you as nicely as you deserve. He wants to give you the world, but your lips haven’t even met yet.

When they do, the world fades away. You melt into his embrace; rigidity dissipates when you realize that he wants you—that your desire is mutual. It’s like getting struck by lightning; an electric current sends sparks where your skin meets.

His rough hands feel soft as they cup your cheeks. When he pulls away, he holds you there for a moment. It's silent as he watches your cheeks dust pink and your eyelashes flutter.

“I think I love you."

oy vey my heart hurts. i need this man stat. TT^TT

here's my masterlist and here's my october posting schedule.

tomorrow is the last day of kinktober!!! :0

finally, trick or treat? (tumblr links)

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skaldish · 5 months ago

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Alright folks. Here it is, my theory of what Ragnarok actually represents. It is very messy and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to actually convey my understanding clearly like I try with most things, because genuinely this is shit I would write a doctorate-level thesis on.

But we're going to try anyway.

So. After doing a lot to try to replicate animistic thinking, as well as taking a VERY deep read of the Norse myths, my theory is that Ragnarok is specifically allegory for societal collapse—the "end of the world" imagery and such is meant to convey what this feels like.

Recall what Odin says in Grimnismal. It goes something like this, since I can't be arsed to find the exact quote:

Huginn and Muninn fly over the world every day; while I fear Huginn ("thought") may not return, I fear Muninn's ("memory's") absence most.

When a society collapses, so does it's memory. It loses its technology, its methodologies, its paradigms, and everything it has learned about the world up to that point. Gone. Entire chapters of history erased.

What causes societal collapse is not always a conquering force, but is oftentimes the result of circumstances that a society orchestrates for itself. Think Rome.

People who have gone through societal collapse will probably develop an invested interest in figuring out how to prevent it entirely, so they don't have to start society all over again.

It's one thing to preserve the memory of "things collapsed and here's why" using a story. But it's another thing to do what apparently the Norse people did, which is cultivate a methodology for cognitively hardening their own society against collapse, using stories as a way to do it.

Like...I'm not kidding when I say they legitimately knew how the human mind works, and then built an entire system of stories and narratives that intentionally support the mind's freedom, cultivation, and agency. I can only convey a fraction of how this works in this post because the rest requires a deep-dive into behavioral psychology and neurological development.

All the tales leading to Ragnarok demonstrate various instances where the gods choose to follow their own agendas at the expense of the real people and forces in the world. All of these little things contribute to the magnitude of the event that is Ragnarok.

The tales represent these transgressions using allegories rather than literal events. This is because these stories were designed for children, who don't process information through a prefrontal cortex like we do as adults. They don't have them yet. But this gives kids an intuitive understanding for how circumstances of collapse feel, so they can recognize them in all their forms.

Loki is an allegory for the mischief we feel as children, and for the behaviors we demonstrate before we get to the age where we start valuing cooperation. In the myths, every time Loki causes mischief in ways that creates problems, the gods get mad at him and threaten Loki's life until he fixes his mess. Loki eventually becomes vindictive, kills Baldr in a jealous fit, and then is punished by being bound and buried beneath the ground, only to fight against the gods in Ragnarok.

The surface-level takeaway is a lesson in parenting: If we punish kids for their mischief, they're going to become vindictive adults, and these adults are going to have it out for the rest of society because they've been disenfranchised.

But it doesn't just end here. Consider how we punish ourselves for our own sense of mischief, beating ourselves up for having "problematic" thoughts and trying to bind and bury those thoughts in the depths of our mind.

These thoughts come from a place our mind known as the limbic system, which is focused on avoiding pain and seeking pleasure, and—most importantly—does not understand the world or make decisions using logic and reason, but in terms of what feels enjoyable and what doesn't.

We tend to call this system our inner child.

When we punish our inner child, that child starts doing exactly what Loki does and resorts to malicious and petty tricks. We can hold this behavior at bay until something causes us to "snap" (like Jörmungandr's tail does) and out comes the malice of the disenfranchised inner child, which creates a terrible cascade of social consequences for us.

Now, if we were to listen to these stories as kids, we would naturally be very upset whenever Loki was threatened of punished, because we think out of the limbic system at that age and Loki is meant to represent us—specifically, the state of being a kid. We would see what comes to pass, with Loki being imprisoned and fighting the gods against Ragnarok, and it would become clear to us that there's consequences for punishing mischief AND also causing too much of it.

Now I don't know about you, but I was very motivated by a sense of justice as a kid. Hearing Loki's arc would have inspired me to learn how to be friends with my sense of mischief while also learning to use it in ways that were cooperative and social, because this would have been how I could right the wrong I felt was done to Loki. It would also mean my own limbic system will not fight against me in the future, but be a modality of thought I can always access. (This is the beauty of the way the Norse myths are crafted; they are designed to instill knowledge of the world using mechanisms that reinforce one's own sense of agency and competency, so rather than being told the moral of this tale, it sets me up to run right into the conclusion it wants me to draw, but in a way that makes me feel smart and therefore inspires me to value it.)

The binding of Fenrir serves a similar allegory. When we become explosively angry in the way that Fenrir represents, it consumes our wisemind the same way Fenrir consumes Odin during Ragnarok. But this only happens if we bind Fenrir/our anger. By demonizing this nature of ours simply for existing, it will not only refuse to listen to us, but also turn against us. Remember that Fenrir was willing to socialize and cooperate with the gods before his betrayal.

(Honestly, I believe this is why ulfheiðnar existed the way they did. Even though the animalistic rage of ulfheiðnar was too terrible for domestic society, it was not demonized, but instead given a social function. People would learn to understand and partner with their own sense of rage, and I'm guessing this is also how they were able to keep their sense of reason and priorities straight even while going berserk from psychoactives.)

These two examples serve to illustrate how societal collapse stems from binding or punishing our own natures. But also fearing our own nature as mortals factors into it.

For example, Naglfar. This is a ship constructed of dead people's fingernails, and its completion is part of what signals the beginning of Ragnarok. But as the story goes, we can delay Naglfar's construction by trimming the nails of the dead before we bury them.

Naglfar represents "neglect for the dead," and this is significant because the act of no longer viewing the dead as people is sort of like the canary in the coal mine for no longer view each other as people...and no longer seeing people as people is what defines Ragnarok.

A society is at peace when its people have no fear of death, and having no fear of death comes only by incorporating death as a normal and familiar part of life, just like we do with birth. Our relationship with death is a litmus test for our relationship with our own humanity—if we fear the dead and cannot see them as human beings, then we are always going to fear a part of our own humanity, and be at war with it. The simple act of keeping the nails of the dead well-groomed because it stalls Naglfar's construction was a way to remind people why such a simple act was profoundly important.

And these are just the things that I can think of off the top of my head that are the most obvious examples. There are—and I shit you not—multitudes of these things laced within the Norse myths.

(I haven't even gotten to the part about how the Norse creation myth uses what the womb feels like to characterize it. Telling this story to very little children helps them establish a sense of familiarity, belonging, and secure attachment with the entire world from the get-go. If they learn the world is everything they've already experienced, then their bodies will never be afraid of it, because nothing about it will feel unknown or unknowable. Like, how fucking dope can you get.)

So here's where we get to the really dense irony of all this: Why we don't pick up on all these nuances as Westerners and have so far missed this entirely.

It is for two reasons.

The first is because our society values the things that the Norse people identified as contributing to societal collapse—namely, the act of conquering/competing against other forces and conquering/competing against our own natures. The transgressions of the Aesir are not things we register as problematic because to us they're normal.

The second is that we don't think animistically. The way we are taught to convey, interpret, and transmit information is designed PURELY by and for the prefrontal cortex, with neglect to everything else (if you ever wonder why Americans look weird in how we behave, this is why). But because we only prioritize communicating this way, we're missing out on all the context added within the Norse myths. These myths function the same way Old Norse kennings did, in that they are designed to speak to ALL areas of the brain at once and in tandem, but if we only engage with it using one part of the brain, we're only going to get a small piece of the picture and the rest is going to look weird.

(Little experiment for you: Try to logic something out in your mind or think through a complex problem without using words or sentences to do it. Use any other kind of thought-process besides language. I promise you that not only is this possible, but it yields a completely different kind of experience and conclusion than you might otherwise reach.)

Honestly, I don't even think Snorri himself fully understood what he was looking at when he was recording the Norse myths. I think he was just writing them down according to how they were told, word-for-word. But his cluelessness is our good fortune now, because he not only preserved the cultural stories, but also what I consider an entire cognitive technology.

And every time I look at it, I can't help but think about the generations of people who sat around the fire in the dead of winter, weaving, crafting, and figuring out better ways to fortify their society, raise kids so they became fine and truly fearless people, and conserve information. This is, as far as I'm concerned, real magic.

They knew some shit.

#ragnarok #zan speaks #norse paganism #I'm sorry if this is incomprehensible #I tried

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mesetacadre · 1 month ago

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Lessons from organizing the collection and shipping of aid to the areas affected by the flash floods in Valencia

Nationalism still plays a deciding role in the subjectivity of the student body and broader population. The outpouring of popular support and individual donations eclipsed in 4 days the combined amount of attention for Palestine in a year, despite the death toll being ~10,000 times greater, and destruction orders of magnitude greater.

Periods of flux and reflux have been very heavily contrasted. The aid which reached us decreased substantially every single day. If the collection began on a Tuesday with an overwhelming amount of material, by Friday, barely a few people stopped by. This very clearly demonstrates the reactivity of the working class when it comes to facing an issue.

This reactivity also manifests in the things themselves that people donated. Valencia very quickly received tons of clothing, and by the second day, people in the ground unanimously said to stop donating clothes, and the official collection points set up by the state stopped accepting clothes. Despite this, clothes continued to be donated en-masse. In my collection point, around a tenth of all products donated was non-protective clothing. I think this is the case because of two reasons. First, because instead of buying products explicitly to donate, people emptied out their closets. Given how much clothing is just thrown away per capita each year, I think it's a safe assumption to take. Second, because instead of stopping to research what Valencia needed at the time, most people wished to donate something immediately, perhaps to feel better about having helped out, to forget about it by next week. The sharp dropoff in donations supports this.

In the organizing side of things, people are still heavily conditioned by reactivity. The collection point was at first spearheaded by two inexperienced people who by the end of the first day were already drowning in pessimism and burnout, stating that it was impossible to organize the ~50-70 people who were in some way involved at our collection point at the time. These are people with a very admirable instinct, but who lacked any tools, experience or even ideas to properly organize as was needed. This was magnified by the virtually no help given from the university's institutions.

Of the people willing to continue organizing the aid, there are some groups who stand out because of their focus on agitation to place political blame. While this is very necessary and not at all contradictory, their enthusiasm for this blame was inversely proportional to their enthusiasm for the collection of money or aid. These groups have transparently outed themselves as opportunists, grifters, and hippies.

We have not stopped organizing to continue to deliver aid, pivoting to the collection of money in order to buy the more expensive tools that nobody donates, such as shovels, water pumps, and more. Even as this continues, more and more people have lost all interest in helping. Valencia's most affected areas, workers' neighborhoods, still need help, and a good portion of the food that was donated will perish sooner rather than later. There has even been another flash flood, less destructive but still serious, in Málaga, and this time no official support networks have been set up.

So what can be concluded from this?

Activism is useless for any kind of defined political or social goal. Most of nothing has ever been achieved by a handful of people deciding to show up at a place and burn out in a few weeks. As things stand, we can't rely on coasting on the comings and goings of mass outcries, conditioned by that day's news cycle, and by a desire to never stray too far from one's individual behavior.

Any kind of political organization with its own goals must learn to have constant work, to set its own rhythms in periods of social calm such that burnout is avoided, but experience can still be scraped off every street, classroom and workplace. And it must also be prepared to encompass the rapid acceleration of a mass's movements, it should be ready for the limits of the organization to exceed themselves, and temporarily encompass those people willing to do temporary work within the organization's structure. This is how a social base is slowly built, and how communists can begin to demonstrate the validity of their positions properly. Not by being the most extreme voices for its own sake, or by unduly inserting ourselves into spaces without much sense, but by making whoever is willing an active participant of our own structures, methods and analyses.

#seriousposting #there is more nuance to this of course #with the mass structure / vanguard structure balance

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astralis-ortus · 7 months ago

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thunders of rage

✱ boyfriend!bc x gn!reader

— even through the worst days, you're still my priority.

w.count → 1.1k genre → fluff, comfort warning → mild cussing, reader had a bad day and lashes out at chan :(, one time jump, kissies, chan referred to as chris, reader referred to as baby and babe a.n → based on this request! tysm for requesting♡ ⋆ see masterlist

the word terrible doesn’t even cover the magnitude of bad luck you’ve been facing for the past 10 hours.

from waking up late for work, buses not operating due to a strike and causing the subway being jam-packed, getting absolutely roasted by your supervisor for someone else’s mishap, having your work ruined by a coworker, to barely surviving the somehow never-ending rush hour while running only on a single piece of toast you had in the morning—you’re absolutely in no condition to socialize, even for the slightest bit.

“hey, babe,” your boyfriend’s cheery voice was the first thing you heard as soon as you stepped inside your shared apartment. noises coming out from the speaker on your living room were the thing you noticed next—and you swear you’re so close to losing your sanity.

“how was your day? i saw you barely ate your breakfast when i got back from the gym. are you okay?” oblivious to your nonexistent reply, chris had his eyes glued to the game while he continued to talk. “i haven’t decided what to make for dinner, by the way. do you—”

“can you decide that on your own?” you finally cut your boyfriend off, tone of your voice catching chris off guard. you’re not one to speak sharply—you know it might offend the other party even when you didn’t mean to, and chris knew that about you.

so when he heard that tone being used against him, chris knew something is absolutely wrong.

“let’s get ice cream, then?” chris immediately paused his game and shifted his focus onto you. he sees it now—the seemingly permanent subtle frown on your forehead, the nonexistent glint on the reflection of your eyes, the messy bun on top of your head.

something stresses you out. bad.

“sure.”

chris watched your exhausted trudge head towards the kitchen and grab a glass of water, contemplating the best course of action to get grumpy you to cheer up even just for a little. “and some pizza? or some dimsum? while we wait i’ll run a bath—”

“goddammit, chris!” the loud sound of cup slamming on the countertop startled chris out of his sentence, eyes wide when confusion, irritation, and hurt started to mix in his chest. “i just told you to decide it on your own! stop bothering me! do i need to make every decision for you? god!”

the room fell silent as chris tried to digest the words you aimed at him—but it felt like his head was on static. it only took him a second to get up and grab a hoodie, suppressing any reaction his instinct was telling him to do before he said something he would regret.

“i’m gonna go cool off,” chris quietly said as he headed towards the door, momentarily stopping to look at your tense back. he desperately wanted to stay—but he knows you needed time to be on your own.

“you should cool off too.”

and with that, chris left.

it’s been nearly two hours since chris left, and after a cup of warm tea and a long bath later, guilt finally caught you up in its tight grip.

you knew what you did towards chris was wrong—chris was simply trying to make sure he’s getting something you like because he knows only then your mood would seem to improve, but instead, all you did was accuse him of trying to bother you.

thoughts ran through your head while you stare at your boyfriend’s phone number, thumb hovering over the green button as you try to piece an apology in your head. you’re genuinely worried—it’s getting later in the night, and you still haven’t heard even a single peep from chris. you can’t help but feel worried.

but just as you were about to press the call button, your ears finally picked up the sound of your front door cracking open—chris is home.

“baby, i’m ho—”

chris stopped in his tracks as he felt warmth suddenly enveloping him—you’re hugging him tight, face buried on the span of his chest.

“i’m sorry,” you quickly whispered, barely allowing him time to process what happened within the span of 5 seconds. “i was wrong. i shouldn’t have acted like that. i just really had a terrible day, and—”

“hey, hey, hey,” chris couldn’t help but chuckle, finally wrapping his arm around you after he finally set down the plastic bags on the countertop nearby. “breathe, baby. slow down. you’re okay.”

peering up at chris, your guilt only seemed to dig its claws deeper when you saw his dimpled smile, beautiful eyes gazing right at you even after the sharp words you threw at him.

you felt like crap.

“i’m really sorry,” you croaked another apology, now near tears with the tip of your lips turned down. “i really acted like an ass back there but you still became the bigger person between us. i would’ve understood if you shouted at me, but—”

“baby,” chris shook his head as he gently cradled your face, pads of his thumbs running softly against your cheeks, “i would never forgive myself if i ever raised my voice at you, even during a fight. you’re my girlfriend—you’re someone i need to protect, and that’s what i’ll always try to do.”

the way chris loves you never fails to render you speechless.

some might say you’re the bigger romantic between the two of you—date plans, endless whispers of ‘i love you’s, constantly wrapping yourself around his arm. it’s all what people would see; but you know the nights chris would pull you closer when he notices your tossing and turning, allowing you to settle to the rhythm of his heartbeat. you know the days when he would buy you a single stem of the prettiest sunflower or the loveliest bloom of rose, all because you said you’ve always liked flowers but never the huge bouquet. you know how he would always walk on the side nearest to the road, and the way his arm never left the curve of your waist.

you know the subtle ways he remembers—his ways of saying i love you, and you would never change that for anything in the world.

“kiss me.”

a chuckle rumbles in chris’ chest to your request, beautiful twinkle in his eyes turning you warm and fuzzy. he then gently tipped your chin, whispering a soft ‘i love you’ as he brought his lips onto yours, relishing in the way swarms of butterflies burst under your feverish skin.

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dinogoofymutated · 8 months ago

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Hi! so far I've loved everything you've written about Kurt, Logan and Remy. 🧎🏻‍♀️

Could you write something about Kurt? where together with reader they are in the kitchen of the mansion because they can't sleep, and she finally tells him her concerns about the magnitude of her powers and Kurt with his heart of gold tells her beautiful things to calm her down and make her laugh, the rest to your imagination, I would appreciate it, you write great! Thanks 💙✨

SFW! Nightcrawler/Fem!Reader

Ok so I will admit that I made this a leeetle self indulgent. I was trying to think of a power someone could really struggle with and a fun one that I thought of was having necromancy, but having such respect for life and death that it feels wrong. I thought it would fit well with a Kurt fic because it's something that almost feels sacrilegious, and it's good to have a fuzzy blue elf assure you that you aren't a monster :) I know its def not power ambiguous, but I hope this is okay :)

Also, I know my writing style is a little different in this one, And thats because the first few paragraphs set the tone for my writing when I start and tbh I think this one just flowed from my soul to they keyboard.

TWs: nightmares, necromancy, gross descriptions of rotting flesh. Extreme self-doubt and self-consciousness. Basically angst with a happy ending.

You’ve been having nightmares again. They hardly seem to stop, but after a break in between the terror, you'd become too relaxed. Too comfortable. You felt defenseless when they started to begin again.

It’s always the same dream, different font. Bones cracking, flesh ripping as it’s forced into place, natural or not. Skin rotting off of once human bodies, sockets where eyes used to be. It was horrifying. You’d see your family, friends, acquaintances, everyone. Dead. Brought back to life by your power, the power you were still so afraid of. You were always afraid of zombie movies as a kid. Anything rising from the dead, anything breathed back to life in some sick and twisted fantasy. It was ironic that your very own strength was the thing you had always been the most afraid of.

Of course, as you aged and the professor took you in, the fear began to wear off. Mostly, it did. The professor not only taught you how to control your powers but also how to work around your fear. You can remember the confusion you felt when he had set a box of ancient bones in front of you. Fragments of titans, dinosaurs who had long since passed. Bones that would never be matched to an accurate set, parts of them being crushed to dust by the cruelty of time. Bones that only you could breathe to life, to bring them together as a whole again. It was convenient, the professor had told you, that you only needed a fragment to do so. He spoke as if it were a service to them. Most importantly, he brought you a box of bones that weren’t, and never had been, human.

He had taken the fear out of your power. Given you an option you had never considered before. Bones without flesh, without living family. Fossils that would serve you as you were serving them. You were… happy, with that. You were content. You could handle bones. You could revive these ancient skeletons without fear, and fight with them without worry. That didn’t change the horror of knowing the capacity your powers had.

So the nightmares remained, and your sleep had become sparse.

This particular night you were restless. Unable to sleep despite how tired you have been, but it’s hard to rest when there is only terror waiting behind your eyelids. After a while, you decide to give up trying.

The path to the kitchen is one you have memorized, even in the dark. You’ve always been told never to eat sugar before bed, but the only thing you want to comfort you at this moment is hot chocolate- so screw it.

You try your best to be quiet while fishing out a pot out of the cabinets. The stove makes a click as you flick it on, filling the pot with milk before stirring it as it warms. The automatic task is comforting, falling into a routine you enjoy. You’ve just added the coco mix when the sound of a *Bamph* greets you.

“Guten abend.” Kurt whispers, walking over to stand beside you. You give him a tired smile that he returns with a yawn.

“I’m sorry if I woke you.” You say, face returning to a frown Kurt thinks you wear far too often. Maybe it’s good that he’s here because you realize you made far too much of the sweet drink than you had meant to. You get a mug for him, heart fluttering as his hand brushes your own when he takes it from you, thanking you quietly.

“You did not wake me, Schatz. I promise.” Kurt says, pulling out a chair for you with his tail as he sits at the table. You nod silently, placing the pot in the sink and filling it with water before you join him, leaning against his shoulder.

“Did you have another nightmare?” Kurt asks after a moment. His brows are furrowed in concern, and you fail to stop him before he takes a sip from the scalding coco, burning his tongue. He scrunches his nose as he sticks out his tongue, making you giggle for a moment. He thinks your laugh suits you much more than your frown, even if it happens to be at his expense. Your face falls slightly anyway, and he wonders if he could get you to laugh if he did it all over again.

“...No. Not tonight.” The words come out as less than a whisper, and you doubt he might hear it if it weren’t the middle of the night. Little did you know he’d block the world out if he had to, just to hear you speak a little clearer. He hums in response, and you feel his tail slowly wrap snugly around your waist, the very tip idly stroking you in a comforting manner.

“...Do you wish to speak about them?” Kurt asks after a moment. You huff slightly, feeling the hot steam from your mug warm your face as you do so. Still too hot, you think to yourself. Flashes of those horrid nightmares come to mind, and no matter how quickly you try to shake them off, they remain. You choose to think of Kurt instead. Sweet, kind, comforting Kurt. You want to bury yourself in his arms, sink into the feeling of his skin, and never let go, if only he would let you. He would without a second thought, if only you had known. You think carefully about your next words, and the visions of flesh and corpses hardly leave you.

“Am I a monster, Kurt?” You hear a quiet, cut-off gasp from Kurt, and he turns to you. His face is pained, and he sets his mug down to place his hand around your own, still clasped around the hot cocoa.

“Of course not. Only a fool would think so.” His words, although comforting, only leave you with a worse sting in your heart. You can’t hold eye contact with him, staring at the reflection in your mug instead. Only a fool would think so. You halfway wonder if you count as a fool, then.

“I, just… My powers, what I do. What I am capable of doing. It’s not right.” You take a shaky breath in, desperately trying not to break down here and now. “It’s disgusting. It’s horrible. Every time I find myself comfortable with myself I am reminded of what is possible and I spiral. I don’t want it. I don’t-”

“Liebling.” You let out a sob at the sound of his voice. Kurt is hunched over, pressing his forehead against your own as he desperately tries to catch your gaze- but you can’t. You can't bear it, and you close your eyes tightly. Kurt takes the mug from your hands. He cups your face as he wipes your tears, and you feel like even more of a monster as he does so. Sobbing as a man with a heart of gold wipes your tears away with love and care.

“Please, look at me,” Kurt whispers. You try to stop the tears, embarrassed as you fall apart in front of the man you hold so dearly, but it’s hard. It’s so hard. Your chest stings, your throat is sore, you’re sure your nose is running, and yet he still holds you so gently. When your breathing evens out just a bit, you convince yourself to open your eyes again.

Kurt’s gaze is simply concerned. There is no horror, no disgust, nothing but worry for you. Nothing but kindness. You wonder if you could be even half as good as he is.

“You are good. You are kind. You are strong enough to stand by your morals despite the nature of your powers telling you otherwise- and you have the strength to continue to use them and fight your fears anyway. You are one of the most incredible people I have ever met. Do not let your nightmares tell you otherwise.” Kurt’s hold is steady against your cheeks, and your own shaky hands reach up to hold onto his wrists. You sob again as he speaks. You know. You know this. Others have told you, but these words all felt like lies. All but the ones you’re hearing from his mouth. Your tears are slowing, and Kurt leans forward to press a kiss to your forehead, leaving the skin tingling. You whisper quiet apologies for crying, and he shushes each one, gently wiping your face with the soft sleeve of his pajama shirt.

“I would not be here if I didn’t want to care for you, my love,” Kurt says softly. Your eyes widen, taken aback by his words. He called you many things. Liebling. Schatz. Love. But never my love. The words waken butterflies in your belly, and Kurt takes a moment to realize what he’s said. He swallows nervously, but he doesn’t pull away. You don’t either. The two of you are treading a line that you both desperately want to cross.

Kurt is the first to lean in. He does so slowly, toeing the line between you. His gaze remains on your own as he closes the space, nose nuzzling against your own as he gives you the time to back out if you wish. But you don’t. You want nothing more than to have what he is so freely giving.

Kurt kisses you softly, lovingly, and for once the horrors have quieted and are cleared from your mind. All there is now is Kurt, and his soft love. He kisses you a second time before he pulls away, still as close to you as he can be without falling out of his chair. You wonder how he can see beauty where all you see is terror. He wonders if you have any clue just how much of a good person you continue to be.

He knows he would gladly spend the rest of his life showing you.

#x men 97 #x men #x men comics #x men 97 x reader #x men headcannons #kurt wagner #kurt wagner x reader #kurt wagner headcannons #nightcrawler headcannons #nightcrawler x reader #xmen nightcrawler #nightcrawler

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yearningaces · 1 year ago

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Thinking and thoughts here

Could you just imagine the impossible with me? Being in a loving marriage with your beloved husband -who you believe is human because why wouldn't you? He looks and acts like every other human and monsters aren't real. And he just adored you so very much, he communicates when he doesn't understand something or when a miscommunication is had. He never fights with you but you both work together to fix any problems, and focus on showing how much you care for each other. Truthfully he's the model husband. Almost to a scripted degree, but you've never felt so adored. Especially when he mirrors your affection and never seems to expect anything explicit, nor want it either. It feels safe, and comfortable... So why do you feel the sense of dread in your gut as you're looking at him right now?

Well, it might be how he's standing in the doorway, bag of takeout in hand, smile on his face. Mirroring how he always stands. But it's a brief moment, a flash of dark lines almost like thread wrapping around his joints, moving him like a giant flesh puppet.

And just as quickly as they were seen- they're gone again. Just your loving husband, Dorrin. Standing tall and gazing down, as though the mountain was watching the river below. Absolutely enamored and unyielding to everyone except you who he'd mold himself to better love as time goes on.

At your expression, his smile fades into a look of concern. His gaze follows yours, to his hand. And the brief flash of threading is gone but he knows exactly what you've seen.

His gaze returns to you, hollow. Slowly setting down the bag he was carrying and slowly crosses the room to get to you.

He seems... Empty. As if any signals for how he should be acting have been cut off. His looming figure almost listless as he gazes down at you with a dull gaze, no life behind his eyes. After a moment, his voice finally rings out. "Has this one displeased you, little love?"

You feel an inherent wrongness about how your beloved husband is speaking presumably of himself as if he isn't even here, with a slight stumble back it answers his question well enough.

Dorrin slumps, like a wind up toy who's finished it's final dance. The voice that drifts through the air is so familiar yet leaves your brain trembling at the sheer magnitude of the being behind it even if unseen. "I apologize, this puppet has proven defective for its sole purpose. Rest assured, such an oversight will be rectified promptly. Only the best shall be allowed closest to you."

With a horrified expression you can only watch as Dorrin- what you know to be Dorrin is... Folded away. Limbs snapping together into a ball not unlike when a child is ready to toss away their doll. And it's... Not there anymore. No blink of an eye, no noise or sight, it was there and it wasn't. And now you stand in the empty living room of a home you've shared with someone you thought you knew so very well.

What do you do?

What can you do?

You can feel gazes on you still, the same when that thing would watch you while you rested together. You can try to move towards a door or even a window and find them consumed in darkness. There is no threat here, but you are not allowed to leave at the moment.

You don't know it yet, but Dorrin just wants to keep you safe in the home he's so carefully crafted for you alone. Tonight he'll leave a new puppet at your door, identical to the last hundred that had done something leading to any inconvenience on you. You've never noticed before, and he doesn't know how to condense himself into a small enough form to be loved by such a miniscule creature he's so deeply fallen for. But that puppets strings weren't good enough to remain hidden. The new one will be better.

Only the best for you.

He will ensure it.

(Basically what happens when an endless creature of Eldritch being falls for a little bitty human? Why not craft a puppet to express his love for them on a scale they can comprehend! But those fickle puppets- never perfect enough for his little love)

#letters of yearning #x reader #monster boyfriend #monster romance #gender neutral reader #asexual reader #monster x reader #Dorrin the creature

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milliesfishes · 3 months ago

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hii same anon again! feel free to ignore if you don’t want to do this ofc - but a perfect lake day with coryo but then you can tell something’s off. he then finally tells you about how he was reassigned to district two and doesn’t have any choice but to go and you two are both so heartbroken. and then maybe having to actually say goodbye? :’) guess i want to cry lol

⋆౨ৎpeacekeeper coryo breaks up with you⋆౨ৎ fem reader x coriolanus snow

Coriolanus’ lips found your fingers clasped with his hand, and you smiled slow and soft like sunlight. His other arm was resting lazily over your hips, the weight a comforting thing as his chest supported your back. It was perfect. Everything about it was perfect.

Truthfully, you loved every allotted day off he spent with you. It was a treasure amidst a sea of mundane days filled with labor and exhaustion. He smoothed every rough spot for you, made every ordinary trouble melt away.

Turning in his arms, you let your cheek fall against his chest, the metal of his dog tags cool from your time in the lake. Many a time you had fallen asleep with the rectangles pressed to your skin and awoken with his blood type imprinted there.

He let you move against him, quiet and stoic as always. Today in particular he'd been reserved but you assumed it was stress, not minding the lack of talk. Only when you were settled did he adjust his arms, one large hand splaying over your bare back. You hadn’t bothered to redress, and nor did he.

It was funny- a month ago he would have had his clothes on immediately after drying off, wary of the surroundings of nature he was so unfamiliar with. Now he sat upright, not against the tree like anyone from town would have done, but it didn’t matter. As long as you fit between his arms nothing else mattered.

Picking at the blanket underneath, you murmured, “I hope it can always be like this.” A bird’s whistle carried from the trees, flung out into the expanse of the glassy lake. His fingers stilled where they had been roving up and down, causing you to look up at him, meet his stormy blue eyes.

Right now, they were filled with thunderclouds of oceanic magnitude, and you sat up straight, brow knitting. Was he upset? Worried about something? "Coryo?"

The lake lapped calmly at the pebbly shore, the opposite of the mass of dread circulating and hardening in your chest. It was a buildup; you knew it was. He kept your fingers laced with his when he murmured, "I'm being transferred."

It felt as though someone had shoved you off the edge of something dark and looming, and now your body was flailing helplessly, plummeting to the jagged rocks of the unknown. Hovering clouds darkened the spot of sunshine you'd been lying in, and goosebumps rippled over your arms.

"Transferred?" You could only manage the single word, trying to leave out the accompanying emotions. Your efforts were in vain.

He gave a single nod, and you let out a little breath, looking away. The only that could have shocked you more than meeting was him leaving you. He'd looked so out of place that first night at the Hob, as if he didn't know what to do with himself.

It was hardly the same man staring back at you now, the lines of his face stiffened.

You sat all the way up, moving closer to him, knees pushing his thighs further apart. He took your hips again, trying to get you to stay still, but you refused, determined as ever. Framing his face with your palms, you searched him desperately. "What do you mean by transferred?"

"I took the advancement test. I passed. Now they want to send me to Two."

Your poor heart began to ache all over again. Every word from his mouth was eating at it like sugar to a rotting tooth. "Two."

"Sweetheart." He gently held your wrists, pulling your hands away from his cheeks. The more you looked at him the more you hurt. But you'd never been able to tear yourself from him yet. Though your time with him had been brief, Coriolanus had quickly become your favorite person, the only one you wanted to be with. You wanted a sea of endless nights cuddled to his chest, or under his arm at the Hob. Gent's girl is what the other Peacekeepers called you, lifting their bottles and grinning.

Tears began to prick your eyes. "You never even told me you took the test."

"I didn't know they would ship me out," he said with an edge, swallowing. "I thought maybe I'd be promoted here and get to stay. But they want me somewhere else."

"You're leaving me." It felt so selfish to say it that way. The man you loved was escaping the mousetrap of District Twelve and you were condemning for it. In all honesty, this was a chance you knew you would have jumped at had it been you.

Coriolanus breathed out through his nose, and you suppressed a chill both from the temperature and the look on his face. He didn't reach for you, letting you have your space as you tried not to cry. It was only when the first crystal drop leaked from your eye that his hands found your waist, pulling you back into his chest.

Your tears soaked his chest, and you took in sharp breaths, trying not to go hysterical. It was bad enough that he was comforting you when you were supposed to be excited for him.

All you could think of were the things you would miss. The barely-there lilt of his lips whenever you said something sweet or funny, The feel of his hands on you. Soft confessions he made when it was dark in your small home save for a candle, kissing your forehead when he left to get back in time for curfew. The way he kissed- like he'd been hungry his entire life and only you could satiate him.

A choked little sob bubbled up and darted past your lips when you realized exactly how alone you'd be when he was gone. Family long passed, being with him had been the closest you'd felt to home in a long while. Where do you go when your home is a million miles away?

To the bed he'd held you in, you gathered. To the places he used to be. It would be a measly substitute for what you really wanted.

"I'll write you," he promised, adjusting the daisy he'd plucked and put in your hair earlier. His body was growing taut, and you knew he was fighting internally as much as you were. "We'll...it'll be okay."

Maybe somehow you had always known he wouldn't be here forever. Given his origins somewhere that may as well have been universes away, you knew he wasn't destined for life in a place like this. With the simplicities you had learned to make enough.

You could almost see the path the future embroidered before you. Crinkled letters under your pillow because that was the closest you'd get to holding him again, hours emptied of his presence. It drained you like a rainy day, and you slid your arms around his torso. His chin dropped to your hair, one hand at your waist and the other fingering the strap of your damp crocheted undershirt.

A plea for him to stay nearly rose on your lips, and you lifted your head, wishing you were brave enough to say it. But you knew nothing could stop it now. The echoes of your desire were fading into the background as he breathed in through his nose, pressing his forehead down onto your head.

The way he held you spoke volumes, and you mentally penned it to remember for late. Your wet hair had been sticking to his chest like seaweed, and he brushed it behind your shoulder. "I...I'll miss you." Though his voice was steady, you could hear the cracks in the foundation. "I love you," he was really saying.

You allowed yourself one final sniffle before lifting your head, cupping his cheek and pressing your lips to his. His warm fingers found the nape of your neck over your hair, just holding you there until you pulled back. "I'll miss you too," you breathed, twin tears trickling from your eyes.

Ever since you knew him, you had watched the mask he'd worn as a young man from the Capitol chink and crumble away. Perhaps he had realized he didn't need it here. Not where humanity was in its barest bones, the natural world a pure comfort. In a romantic way you knew it was you too. You gave him all you had in the way of love, unearthing the undeniable fact that he cared for you that way too.

Coriolanus' hands found your cheeks, and he kissed you once more in a way full of longing. He searched your eyes, letting his forehead lean against yours. In that moment he looked almost desperate, matching you. Without closing his eyes, his lips pressed to yours in the tiniest of pecks. "I love you."

Maybe that would keep you warm at night when he was nothing but memory.

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xiaq · 3 months ago

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Hello! x I’m really inspired by the way you start and complete projects and move onto the next and speak of your work and plans with such positivity and innate capability. If it’s okay to ask, I’m curious if the way of which you move in action comes naturally to you, or if you have any recommendations for how to interact with momentum and action? Thanks so much!

Hi! Thank you so very much. I actually deeply struggle with executive function/task paralysis. But when I was in grad school, my therapist gave me fantastic advice: keep the end goal in mind, but break big tasks into smaller pieces and then only focus on the next piece, and celebrate completing that piece.

Current example: I want to make a cool, intricately carved, dresser. That feels like a big task. But it can be broken into 10 steps. 1. find old dresser 2. sand 3. paint 4. glaze 5. make carving molds 6. paint carvings 7. glaze carvings 8. apply carvings 9. seal 10. new hardware

Right now, I'm only focusing on step 8. And that feels manageable and fun rather than overwhelming.

I do the same thing with my writing. I outline my books so I know the general plot and character development that needs to occur in each chapter. But I only focus on writing one chapter at a time. If I was thinking about everything I have left to write every time I sit down, I'd be paralyzed with the magnitude of work ahead. But just one chapter--where I already have solid working parameters––well, that feels like something I can accomplish in a few hours.

(Sometimes, depending on my mental health, I need to do this with simple day-to-day tasks. Like, "walk the dog" isn't a singular item. It becomes 1. Get dressed 2. put on shoes 3. put on Deacon's collar/leash 3. Walk to the park 4. walk home. But then as I mentally check each of those things off, I get a little surge of validation/pride in my accomplishment, as silly as that sounds.) (For certain projects, I'll even make myself a genuine physical chart and put stickers on it as I complete items.)

Anyway. I have no idea if that helps with other folks' approaches to momentum/action, but that's what makes my brain happy, anyway!

#answered asks #executive dysfunction #task paralysis #adhd

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redhoodinternaldialectical · 1 year ago

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Every time I learn something new about Batman: War Games I lose my mind a little bit more cause just, just fuckin, look okay so here's the thing:

Stephanie Brown tries to implement a contingency plan of Bruce's just after he fires her from being Robin and because of that gets tortured to (almost) death and no one knows she survived.

THIS STORY RUNS IN THE NEWS:

So, you know, anyone who might be paying even half a fucking ounce of attention to news about ROBINS would definitely absolutely notice this!!!

And then very very soon afterwards Jason comes back and specifically targets Black Mask to ruin the criminal empire he tortured Stephanie to get

As a way to torment Bruce about the fact that he doesn't take care of the nastiest criminals and they continue killing people

And how Jason should have been the last to die

and SOMEHOW

these two things are in no way related and Jason has nothing to do with or say about Stephanie Brown, fellow Robin, fellow martyred soldier, fellow child dead due to Bruce related villains.

HOLY DEAD SIDEKICKS BATMAN, DO YOU COMPREHEND THE MAGNITUDE OF MISSED OPPORTUNITIES HERE????

please walk with me down a timeline in which:

Lost Days Jason at first just tries to go after the Joker and can't because who he's really mad at is Bruce.

Then he sees Who Really Killed Stephanie Brown and the utter horror of another Robin dying on Bruce's watch (not just dying, but tortured to death!) is what convinces him to try to straight up kill Bruce via car bomb

Roman Sionis is no longer merely a tool against Batman, but another figure to demand vengeance be brought upon, another attempt to give Bruce a chance to right his wrongs and do what needs to be done

The confrontation with him and the Joker being all the more tragic due to how obvious Bruce's answer would have to be once Jason knows Bruce isn't going to avenge Stephanie either

Does Jason, once he escapes the rubble after UtRH is over, kill Black Mask anyways? Does he decide to avenge her himself? Or does he think that she too would demand that of Bruce, and find his death by a different hand unsatisfactory?

If he doesn't kill Black Mask, then when Steph is back, I feel confident he approaches her, tries to reach out to the other dead Robin, almost certainly makes the offer now that he can ask her. Does she take him up on it, gaining an ally and slipping into a far darker role? Does she instead refuse, either appealing to forgiveness or far more interestingly refusing both vengeance and forgiveness? How would Jason handle a refusal, which I gut instinct feel is more likely?

If he does kill Black Mask, then when Steph is back Jason drops his corpse at her feet like a loving housecat with a dead lizard and she has to grapple with her feelings about having someone really and truly avenge her!!! Like how DO you react to someone who you have been warned is wildly dangerous and mentally unstable coming up to you and saying, "I'm glad you're back, like me. I'm sorry you're back, like me. I made sure you could rest knowing he was dead, because I know what it feels like."

Like no matter how each character reacted to this happening there would be so much high stakes emotional shit to explore with both of them!! Revenge I feel like is such a pivotal thing for both characters, they mirror each other in so so many ways, they could be really interesting together if DC would just fucking let them!!!

Jason had a criminal father who he missed and wanted to avenge. Stephanie had a criminal father who she wanted vengeance on.

Jason started off as a fairly gentle soul who progressively became more violent and more hopeless as he was exposed to genuine horrors during his time as Robin. Stephanie starts off violent, angry and rash and finds her own courage and hope through her time as a crime fighter despite of the horrors she's been through.

Jason went to Africa and died there after Bruce failed to save him. Stephanie was taken to Africa via a fake death in order to save her from Bruce and the vigilante lifestyle.

I just...

There's just...

There's SO MUCH HERE I am genuinely fucking confused as to how this is not all deliberate?? And it's all just left on the cutting room floor because for no reason apparent to me they all just decided Stephanie and Jason were not gonna interact!

AAGHHHH!

#jason todd #stephanie brown #dc comics #damian's tomfoolery

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shootingstarwritings · 2 months ago

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Body a Day #8: Football

Coach Bryce could feel his hair turning gray as he thought about the team’s current dilemma. “It’s a real shitshow,” he sighed, looking over to gauge the reaction of his beautiful coworker, Sharon Fletcher; she was a renowed researcher at the university and the target of the coach’s heart.

Ever since the two of them had met, Coach Bryce had tried to ask her out for some kind of date, but she was either oblivious or uninterested. However, such a cold reaction only served to fuel Coach Bryce’s passion.

Today, Sharon was once again uncaring to Coach Bryce’s bemoaning. She simply unzipped her lunch-bag and pulled out her meal. Bryce spoke again, voice just a tiny bit louder so she could definitely hear, “All of my players, suspended. Can you believe it?”

Finally, Sharon’s gaze met the coach’s. “All of them? Oh wow, I knew that they had done something wrong in that party last week, but I had no idea it was something of that magnitude.”

“Yeah, well… can’t say they don’t deserve it. But we’ve got a game coming up, so we’re gonna have to just concede it,” said Coach Bryce. He inwardly smiled to himself as he saw the normally stoic Sharon’s expression squeeze into a look of genuine sympathy. At least he had that small comfort in such turbulent times.

However, Sharon’s expression quickly turned into something akin to a predatory grin. A shiver went down the coach’s spine as she began to titter. “Tell me something, Coach Bryce,” she said, leaning in to whisper into his ear. “Can I trust you to keep a secret…? And also sign an NDA beforehand? I think I have a solution that’ll make both you and the Dean happy.

Coach Bryce, neck sweaty and goosebumps running down his arms, just said, “I-I’ll do whatever you want.”

~o~

The Delphi Project was the university’s pride and joy. It was also the most highly-guarded secret the university had. “Delphi was where Apollo’s oracle rested and delivered her visions of the future. It was believed to have been the center of the world by the Ancient Greeks, and…” Sharon continued the history lesson, but Coach Bryce soon stopped listening. Instead, he fumbled around with the buttons of the uncomfortable lab coat he had been given prior to entering. Not only that but the goggles were annoying as well.

“Please do not remove that,” said Sharon with a tight tone and a forced smile. “Lab policies, as I’m sure you’re aware. Right, coach?” Embarrassed, Coach Bryce gave a grunt of affirmation, and Sharon continued the tour. She continued to speak some nonsense or another before stopping in front of a large machine with two pods that resembled tanning booths connected to it. “The Delphi Project concerns itself primarily with human consciousness. Essentially, it is the next step to reaching the digitization and transfer of ‘the soul.’ Some of us here even believe that this is how humanity can reach this place called ‘Paradise,’ or ‘Nirvana.’”

“Oh yeah, heard of their music once or twice," said Coach Bryce, enthusiastic now that he could participate in the discussion. "Dunno if it’s my cup o’ Joe, to be honest, but to each their own!” he said with boisterous laughter.

Sharon’s smile seemed to grow even tighter and her voice became the tiniest bit more strained as she spoke. “Right. Well, as I was saying, the purpose of this machine is the transfer of consciousness. While we have been able to digitize and transfer the human consciousness—the soul, as some would call it—we haven’t been able to find any sort of machine with the space large enough to store it. Nothing… except for another human vessel.”

In other words, the only thing that could be transferred is one person to another. It took a few more explanations for Coach Bryce to understand that, but he got the basic idea. Once he understood that, he could guess what was Sharon’s plan.

“So what you want to do is transfer other people into the bodies of my team, so technically we can still play while still punishing the knuckleheads.” Technical or scientific knowledge wasn’t his forte, but his mind was still crafty and strategic. Once he understood all the pieces on the table, he could put them all together quickly. “Will the Dean even agree to this? Seems… kinda risky. And will my players be okay once this is all over?”

Sharon smile sweetly and assured him that all tests have shown that both parties have suffered no side-effects from the experiments they’ve done. “However, if there is even a single dissenting voice, we will not go through with the experiment. That last thing we would want to do is carry this out without anyone’s explicit consent. We are strict with ethics here. As for the Dean, I believe I can convince her. Delphi is our pride and joy, even if we can’t be out and proud about it. Of course, there is one more caveat to this whole thing you must agree to, coach.”

~o~

To say that the players were shocked and horrified would be an understatement. Coach Bryce gathered them all in the locker room to break the news, which only made their voices even more irritating as they echoed in the small room. Some of the players cried foul, others argued that his was invasive to their rights, while a few let out a few swears about letting a bunch of losers parade around in their bodies. “All right, that’s enough!” Coach Bryce shouted. “I know it’s a weird prospect, but if we want even the slightest chance of making play-offs, we can’t afford to forfeit this next game.”

As always, it was easy for the coach to rile up his players. None of them dared to argue when Coach Bryce brought up the incident that put them in this Catch-22. “And, if I’m being honest… I’ll be in the same boat as y’all,” he said, looking down to avoid his team’s shocked looks as he recounted what Sharon had told him.

“Day of the game, I’ll have to borrow your body in order to properly observe the test subjects during our most important trial run. Don’t worry, you’ll only lose your body for a weekend, at most,” Sharon had said with a most bewitching smile.

Thinking about her tone and voice as she said all of that, Coach Bryce couldn’t help but grow the slightest bit aroused. He hoped that none of his players could see how flushed he was recalling that night. Of course, he also omitted that last part—there was no need for the team to know how uneven the whole deal actually was.

“Even after all of this, we’re still a team!” Coach Bryce suddenly cried out. Not only did he need to convince those last few fence-sitters, but he also needed to distract himself before he got hard in front of all the players. He hadn’t been able to get off properly ever since a messy break-up with his former girlfriend, so Sharon’s siren voice kept bouncing around his skull.

A nice speech would be a good distraction for now. He continued to bellow out platitudes about staying together and how they were all in one boat at the end of the day. “So, please consider. This may be our chance to not throw away everything we’ve worked all semester for. Think about it. Later… we’ll put it to a vote. If we come to a unanimous vote, we’ll go through with it. So if anyone feels uncomfortable, we’ll decline and throw the match.” He retreated back to his office and took a deep breath. Already, there was a plan forming in his head.

When Coach Bryce returned to take the vote, he made sure that the votes could not be anonymous. Just by glancing at the expressions on the players’ faces, he could tell that the majority was willing to go through with it, but there were a few sparse dissenters spread throughout the crowd. However, when he asked, “All in favor?” everyone raised their hands. The peer pressure assured that their fate was sealed. Coach Bryce nodded and told the team that he’d email them Sharon’s instructions.

Later that night, Coach Bryce jerked himself off as he imagined the idea of Sharon being inside of him.

~o~

Game night came and went, and nobody in the audience nor the opposing team suspected any foul play. All the players performed as well as they usually did, baring a minor hiccup or two. The only anomaly that anyone noticed was Coach Bryce, usually watching with a red-face and barking orders at the team, was perfectly stone-faced the entire match, even when the team just barely clutched out a win.

Later, Dr. Sharon Fletcher looked down Bryce’s thick, hairy hands. Due to the various tests they’ve run with Delphi, being a male wasn’t new to her, but she was still surprised by just how masculine the coach was. “Ah, I got distracted again,” she said to herself as she returned to the report on her laptop. It was difficult to type at the speeds she was comfortable with, but that was the price to pay for valuable data at such a close distance.

“Overall, subjects found themselves quickly adapting to their new forms, which supports to the hypothesis that muscle memory is one of the most important factors during learning. It’s possible that…” Coach Bryce’s thick, masculine fingers stopped and stared at the screen. It was one of Sharon’s most frustrating part of being a scientist. She loved getting her hands on interesting data and interpreting it, but it was when she had to stop and write down her thoughts that she found herself unable to commit for long periods of time. “This will revolutionize the field of learning, but…” She let out a sigh before packing up her laptop to leave. Coach Bryce’s office, with all of its football posters, brights flags, and pictures was not the ideal environment to sit down and type out her reports. She would continue in the library tomorrow. With that settled, she left the office and began the trek to her home for the weekend.

Just before Sharon transferred into Bryce’s body, he had given her a copy of the key to his apartment. “It’d be odd if they saw my entering and leaving your home,” he had told her. Well, he had elaborated on the point for quite a while, Sharon hadn’t been interested in his hearing his logic. Her thoughts then and even now were, Why bother caring about who sees you spending time with you? It was nothing to do with how well you can do your job.

Either way, Sharon took the bus to and allowed his muscular legs to carry her to Bryce’s apartment. She thought about it as another opportunity to further her research, but there was something so fascinating about just moving about with Coach Bryce. His natural, mature gait was addicting. Just for research’s sake (her own fun), she continued to walk around the hallways and even up the stairs, forgoing the elevator. Even after climbing several stories, she didn’t even feel the least bit tired. In her old body, she would’ve been halfway dead and anemic by the time she reached Bryce’s apartment, but now she was hardly out of breath. Fascinating, she thought to herself, mistaking her lust for curiosity.

Without thinking, Sharon made her way to Bryce’s apartment and began to shed off his clothes until her borrowed body was clad in nothing but a shirt and a pair of boxers. Oh, huh… I hadn’t meant to take off so much of his clothes, she thought to herself, but her body had moved without her knowledge. Still, Sharon saw no reason to not allow it to continue. It was better to allow the body to continue its natural habits.

It was for that reason that, after drawing a bath, Sharon dipped Coach Bryce’s into the bathtub and relaxed his sore muscles. “Phew… oh, this feels so nice,” said Sharon. After such a long day of experiment, research, and overworking herself, it was nice to relax in a bath. If she could, she would spend all day in a bath and enjoy this nice, burly body. She raised his arms and rested them behind his head, apparently a natural position for the coach to be in with a bath. With soap and a loofah sponge, Sharon explored Bryce’s body. His personality wasn’t anything special, but she enjoyed the way that his body moved whenever he worked out in the gym or in the field outside in the lawn. The sweat dripping from his bearded chin was nice. Usually, Sharon wasn’t really interested in dating men, but their bodies were nice to look at.

And, as she groped and massaged various parts of Bryce’s body, Sharon realized just how nice it was to touch them like this. “Ohh… ohh…! Oh my god!” Somehow, this was the most sensitive body she had ever transferred into. Was the coach simply that much more sensitive than the other hosts, or was the process itself magnifying the sensitivity to touch? Sharon’s scientific mind was going on overdrive while just about every part of her was busy indulging in Coach Bryce’s appealing and overly sexual body. “C-Coach Bryce, y-you’re so… ngh… ahh…!” The moans that escaped his lips drove Sharon insane as well. It became a feedback loop: Sharon, hoping to draw out more data and more moans from Coach Bryce groped his body, which only drew out more automatic moans from her borrowed lungs.

It was also the strength and the sheer amount of command that Sharon had. The thick, almost sausage-like, fingers and powerful core and moved at her command. Coach Bryce was like a glove for her to put on, nothing more. The power behind it was intoxicated. Each muscle obeyed Sharon, and it was because she deserved it.

Coach Bryce’s body stiffened as it felt the inevitable happen. The waves of pleasure that nearly threaten to shatter her very mind. Sharon grit her borrowed teeth, groans of guttural and masculine ecstasy only just barely restrained for the first few torrents of cum that launched high into the air. However, Sharon could not contain it for much longer. She tilted her head back, tongue sticking out as Coach Bryce’s hips thrust on their own as the last of the world-shattering climax erupted through the jiggling, hairy frame.

This is the first time I’ve ever masturbated with such intensity, Sharon thought to herself. She had explored the other test subjects—other professors and coaches at the univerity—and Coach Bryce was definitely her favorite. She had to test out just how and why his body was so sensitive. Yes, she needed more tests. She needed to take over the bodies of all her previous test subjects and continue to explore and compare the pleasure that came from each of them. Only then would her hunger for pleasure and data—two things that were basically the same to her—would be satiated.

Of course, that should be easy to accomplish. Just about every person in campus owes me a favor, and the Dean will certainly enjoy this delicious data—especially if I record it all for her. I wonder how much freedom I can have if I offer to give the Dean such an opportunity? I’m sure she’ll love it now that we know it’s perfectly safe.

Sharon sighed and sank even further into the warm, now slightly milkier, water. Her new muscles certainly seemed to enjoy the sensation. Now all she had to do was to just enjoy the weekend in the perfect body for it.

#male possession #male body possession #body a day

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