#I also need to tweak a third one a little but my brain is too fried to figure that one out rn | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

byierficrecs · 2 years ago

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not sure how it's possible but your work keeps getting prettier and prettier! can i ask what your process/method is for creation?

hello! sorry it's taken me a little to reply :S first of all, thank you!! that's very sweet ^-^ anyway, i'm not sure this will be particularly insightful :( but here goes nothing:

step 1: check the form for new submissions!

and then delete them all >:) ,,,but not without copying the information to a variety of spreadsheets. behold the madness:

in this one i copy the information that was submitted as it is.

these are where i rearrange the information so a) my brain can understand it and b) so that i can copy/paste stuff while making graphics and at the time of posting.

the first one is for the captions i attach to every tumblr post, and the second is the alt text for the images. there's a third one for twitter, but it's the same as the tumblr one.

and this one is where i keep track of all the steps i follow!

spreadsheet: copying the information from the forms

proofread: open the ao3 work to quickly check that someone didn't sneak explicit stuff or something like that

read and graphic: self-explanatory

captions and alt text: registering the information in the tables i showed before

twitter and tumblr: scheduling the posts to go up

(3 and 4 are inverted, but i'm too lazy to change it now x.x also, notice how they are (mostly) arranged in groups of three; before i even proofread things, i roughly decide the general aesthetic of the graphic: dark, pastel or colourful)

i do this almost every night. since people usually submit stuff in bulk, i often spend one or two hours simply sorting through the forms.

step 2: read the stories!

i usually read a story, then make the graphic immediately after. this is so i don't mix things up and the story is fresh in my very-forgetful mind~ while i read, i try to imagine things as they happen and pick at least one element i want to include in the graphic.

for instance, for this one (post), i wanted a duck somewhere. evidently, it ended up being a very minor detail but there they are! ducklings! :]

step 3: try to imagine the graphic

this is admittedly the hardest part tbh. i stick to my statement: i am not an artist. give me a minute and i will come up with a decently fleshed-out story idea. art or visual aspects are a different tale x.x some days my creativity leaves me altogether and i just stare into space for hours with absolutely no clue of how to make a graphic for one story.

hence why i rely so much on inspiration. some days i ravage my bookshelf, some days i google "spider book cover", some days i browse spotify and look at the album art and many days i end up scrolling through the canva templates section for hours until i see something that sparks an idea.

this one (post) is random. i was stumped on what to do and then i glanced at the video i had on the background and that was that.

i look at anything and everything for inspiration,,, again, i have no idea how artists do this x.x not to imply that they don't struggle (i'm sure they do), but i'm genuinely bad at this,,, especially since i try to make all the graphics as unique as possible; i like flowers, they are pretty and go well with most stories, but i think it'd be quite boring if everything i made had flowers :S

step 4: make the graphic

anyway, when i (finally) have an idea, i go on canva and get down the first element i had in mind, or the colour i want to use, or the general composition,,, anything. sometimes the only thing i've thought about is the text.

and then i just go from there, often with no plan or ending idea in mind :S

some graphics are simple and i can get them done in two hours, some are complex and i get them done in ten hours. perfectionism is how my brain is wired and i always feel like i need to bring things to perfection, so i tweak everything a lot even if i know i could get away with leaving some stuff as it is.

alas, i try to have fun during the process and sometimes i surprise myself with making something i am super proud of!

like this one! (post). as you can see, there are a bunch of layers and details. i went in with literally no plan but i kept adding stuff until it felt good :]

it's not as simple as just sticking some of canva's assets together, though. i often have to do a lot of editing. everything in that tunnel, for instance, was just lineart (?) with no option to give it a background colour, so i had to go in with my limited artsy knowledge and paint things until they looked the way i wanted.

these are all the different canva assets i used in that one + a finn silhouette. i'm trying not to use too many silhouettes because, like flowers, it's easy and i often gravitate to that but no >:( i shan't fall prey to the impulses.

speaking of silhouettes,,, there must be an easier way to do it, but the software i use (gimp; it's free x.x) is a little confusing to me so i just end up "tracing" over the outline of photos i like.

in the process, i tend to go all,,, frankenstein.

i chopped off finn's arm in the first one :( but then i gave him a jacket for the second one because his silhouette looked cold ^-^ (also gave noah will-hair). third one i just,,, mirrored the other arm x.x 1st story || 2nd story || 3rd story

other minor changes i often have to do is recolouring stuff and the like

again, these are edited with gimp and i'm sure there are weird errors, but i felt the story needed something softer (post).

some elements i actually find from other free source (?) websites, but it's rare.

last, but not least, sometimes i do try my hand at art x.x i'm not sure i'm good in the slightest, but it's been somewhat fun to try. i tend to look at artists i like, mainly for colour palettes because i never struggle with the graphics but i get stuck when trying to draw :S

for instance, the colours in this one (post) are all inspired by the second artwork in the tweet.

step 5: double check before posting

confession: yesterday i forgot to add the author's name to a graphic. there are at least three graphics in this account that are missing the "ratings" altogether. sometimes, there are minuscule mistakes that could've been easily spotted and fixed and i just,,, didn't see them.

i often catch a million things like that while making the graphics, but things do slip at times and i end up thinking about them for weeks x.x so i double and triple check everything and i never catch everything, but i try :S

i try to get my brother to help me a little, but the dingus always says everything is okei and goes back to his shenanigans >:( he is an actual artist so it's all the more frustrating but alas, there's nothing i can do about it x.x

step 6: schedule things for posting

uh,, not much to say about this. i just add the graphics, copy the information from the spreadsheets i showed you, then add all the links and tags and leave things be :]

except,,, i don't. i move on to something else and then i go back to check for mistakes and i keep looking for errors and i sometimes change things last minute x.x

the little detail in the corner where mike is screaming? that was added a minute the thing went up,,, (post)

it's uh,, overwhelming. i know i overthink way too much (about my writing, too), but it's been ten years of getting anxious about these things so i'm not sure it'll stop anytime soon :(

the little comments you guys leave really help though! so thank you for that :]

step 7: post the thing and "rest"

again, i continue to search for errors after i post, but unless it's a big thing (like the aforementioned "i forgot to add the author's name" moment from yesterday) i force myself to leave the post as it is. my brain hates me for it, but it's the one thing i manage to do to ease my anxiety x.x

so, with the post up and big errors mended, i get to rest! for a bit! and then i have to do it all over again!

this entire process (step 1 excluded) takes around 4-6 hours (or more) so by the time i post something, i'm already late at making the next graphic :S hence why i usually take a couple free days every few graphics.

i've also been really sick lately (covid + randomly passing out because of overarching health issues) so things take a bit longer :(

it's fun though! i'd never tried my hand at any visual stuff and some graphics are admittedly lackluster, but sometimes i surprise myself with some very pretty things i make :]

in addition to the ones i've already shared, i'm quite proud of these graphics~ 1st story || 2nd story || 3rd story || 4th story || 5th story || 6th story

plus, i get to talk to a lot of nice people, read/share wonderful stories, and more importantly, do something nice for authors! so it's all worth it, i think :]

random, but i'm not sure i'll ever get to use this little guy so i want to share him :D

anyway, i could continue to procrastinate for quite a while but i have to (gues what!) go make today's graphics x.x shoutout to all the authors whose stories i randomly featured here; please check all their stories as they are all amazing.

@itsromeowrites, @ghoulsanderson, @wiseatom, @eggo-owl, @smoosnoom, @byeler, @bookinit02, @lilacline001, @astrobei, @voulezvulcan, @sevensided

i'm going to take a nap now. apologies if, after all this, i didn't even answer your question.

personal blog || support me on ko-fi x.x

#💌

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schrodingers-tits · 1 year ago

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Ok! I’m gonna mainly discuss the mental disorders he has and explain how they affect him

So first, we know about Tweek’s addiction from his parents. In my canon, they decided on Tweek’s seventh birthday that their son is old enough to help out with their business. This includes taste testing coffee, which is canonized in TFBW. Eventually, Tweek started to REALLY want to drink the coffee a lot because he gets a weird, tingly, funny feeling when he drinks it. Drinking so much coffee for someone so little caused some big problems, like the obvious anxiety/paranoia, acne, restlessness, and ✨ psychosis ✨

Anxiety disorder: the most obvious disorder. Any distressing event can cause a lot of pressure on tweek and make it hard for him to function. Because of this, Tweek has to constantly live in a state of fear and has multiple panic attacks a day. Luckily, Craig tries to comfort him and seems to work wonders on Tweek’s anxiety.

Paranoid personality disorder: the other obvious one. It’s very, very hard for tweek to perform some tasks because he worries he’ll get hurt. Tweek does research on some of these disasters to see what he can do to prevent it or stay safe. Chances are you’ll need to reassure him that he’s likely to be okay during these.

Adhd: in Gnomes, Mrs tweak claims the reason her son is so hyper is because of ADHD. It’s heavily implied that she said this as a cover up, but I still headcanon tweek to have this because I have it too and I like to self project. Tweek canonically has trouble focusing, so this could mean he might just have ADHD. The hyperactivy isn’t something to care about because of the coffee.

And now, disorders tweek doesn’t canonically have but does have in my canon:

Autism: more self projection. Tweek stims a lot mostly to let anxiety out. His special interests are Pokémon, Lego’s and animals. Funnily enough the first and third are mine too. Tweek is sensitive to loud noises, so he sometimes wears noise cancelling headphones. In my rehab AU, Tweek enters a large burnout, sleeps often, acts more soft (trying not to fanonize him, he’s just been through a lot) and is often semiverbal. He also has many meltdowns instead of anxiety attacks in this AU.

Depression: yes, even tweek gets depressed often. If Tweek loses someone or does something that makes him “hate (his) brain”, chances are hell lie in his bed all do and do barely anything. Unfortunately, he (as a teenager) has hurt himself on purpose (usually burning himself his coffee or repeatedly hitting his head on a wall) and attempted a few times. Pro tip: bring Stripe to Tweek during a depressive episode. You won’t regret it.

Epilepsy: so. Meth can cause seizures. Autism is often comorbid with epilepsy. So, if an autistic kid drinks coffee repeatedly ever since he was seven, it’s likely something bad will happen to your brainwaves. If Tweek gets very, VERY stressed, he might seize. His epilepsy seemed to have formed when he was eleven, and it got bad a year later and he almost died from a long seizure.

There’s probably more I headcanon him to have but I can’t seem to remember them well on the top of my tongue. So, in conclusion, Tweek needs a hug.

oooo! I love these so much. Personally, I also headcanon (well, semi-canon) him to have Tourette’s, due to his tics. I, myself, suffer from tics, and his ‘tweaking’ is very reminiscent of these. The way he just moves past them when talking like they didn’t happen at all is very tic-disorder-behavior.

Another one (this one definitely more headcanon-y) is cognitive/motor disinhibition. Tweek obviously suffers from paranoia, however, from the description of cognitive disinhibition, it could tie in as well. The unwanted thoughts that keep a person from focusing sounds very Tweek-like.

Next: mania. This is tied into his coffee/meth addiction, however he shows signs of it when he doesn’t have coffee. This is clearly withdrawal of sorts, but it leads to a manic-like state.

The last one is OCD. Tweek’s paranoia is a part of the reason why I believe this, though I’m not sure how canon it is. It’s more of a headcanon, as his anxiety is almost parallel to that of people I know with OCD and anxiety. Again, there isn’t much proof that I have stored in my brain, but it is more a headcanon.

Good talk!! :) /gen

#tweek tweak #south park #southpark #sp tweek #sp tweak #south park tweek #mental health headcanon

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veebs-hates-video-games · 7 months ago

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Another few assorted things, I guess, since I've been bouncing around between stuff again.

Death end re;Quest 2 will probably get its own post at some point after I decide whether I'm willing to subject myself through NG+ to see the true ending. After getting to the normal good/bad endings though my opinion so far is that I'm absolutely flabbergasted that there's so much debate over whether the first or second game is better because my experience was that literally the only thing improved in the second was the framerate, and most other stuff was at least a little bit worse.

Geometry Survivor is so close to good but just didn't click for me. The cooldowns on the abilities are all so long that I just feel like I'm sitting around with nothing happening way too much of the time and can't rely on most of them to do anything useful when I need them, and I'm pretty sure my brain is convinced the hitbox on the...ship? is like 10-20% smaller than it actually is because that's how it usually works in games like this. It seemed like most times I got hit were in cases where it seemed like I should've been able to make it through a gap just fine. I think I'd probably like it a decent amount with some small tweaks to stuff like that, but as it is it just isn't doing it for me.

I mostly only got and played Star Ocean: First Departure R because it was on sale pretty cheap while I was still in the good part of SO2R (read: the first half). I wasn't expecting as much from it because it's not a remake to the degree of the second game (it feels more like playing a PS1 game in an emulator with antialiasing enabled and a widescreen hack), but even then I still couldn't really get into it. It's so unclear what will trigger the progression of the story a lot of the time, and like three hours in I still hadn't found a compelling reason to do literally anything other than mash the A button in combat. I do hope they keep going and give the third game (I guess the PS2 one is SO3? even though there was a GBC game between 2 and that one) a proper update too though, since I never really played much of it myself back in the day but had friends into it.

And then finally A Time Traveller's Guide to Past Delicacies is saved for last because I liked it more than all of the other things in this post combined. It's short, it's weird, and I have no idea what it's trying to say, but I love the way it says it. It perfectly captures the bizarreness and jank that 90s FMV games frequently had, and it also reminds me of the early 2010s when I had the energy to keep up with weird, obscure, experimental indie games being released and saw all sorts of strange and fascinating stuff people put out there. Not enough games have live action sock puppets these days.

#death end re;quest 2 #death end re;quest series #geometry survivor #star ocean: first departure r #star ocean series #a time traveller's guide to past delicacies

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nitannichionne · 3 years ago

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August's Angel, Chapter 19: The Ladybug Ritual (Henry Cavill/August Walker Fanfiction)

Henry Cavill Fanfic List

August Angel List

Chapter 19: The Ladybug Ritual

Week 28

At 28 weeks pregnant, your baby is typically 10 inches (25.4 centimeters) from the top of their head to the bottom of their buttocks (known as the crown-rump length), and is an overall 14 inches (36.1 centimeters) from the top of their head to their heel (crown-heel length) weighing at about This week, the baby's weight is about 42 ounces or 2 1/2 pounds (1,189 grams), basically the size of a diaper bag or .

There is so much going on. With all the goings on, the umbilical cord, which was fully formed in week 12, has increased in size to facilitate the final trimester. She has entered a stage of rapid brain growth, with tissues developing those ridges and furrows we all know, as well as increased rapid eye movement (REM) sleep which promotes brain development. When her eyes are open, she can see light! As each week passes, a baby’s chance of survival outside the womb go up and the risks of life-long health issued go down. In fact, a 28 week old preemie has a 94% chance of survival.

As you move from the second trimester to the third trimester, you may see an increase in new symptoms and the return of past symptoms from previous weeks. Forgetfulness, nasal congestion, and skin changes may stick around while aches and pains tend to get a little worse.

Your growing uterus, stretching muscles, and the pregnancy hormones that loosen your joints to prepare for childbirth all can contribute to back pain.7 Research shows that low back pain occurs in about 50% of pregnancies. In the weeks leading up to now, you may have already been dealing with pregnancy-related back pain, but for many, it tends to get worse as your pregnancy progresses. Back pain and sciatica (a severe pain that radiates from the back into the hip and the outer side of the leg caused by compression of the sciatic nerve) Rest, stretches, and even what you wear or use can help with this, from shoe wear to belly belts, acupuncture to massage or therapy, and more.

The same healthy habits you've been keeping up to now should still be at the top of your list, but you may find that you need to make some tweaks to your routine to deal with new aches and pains. You'll also want to start setting aside some time each day to relax and bond with baby while you monitor their movements.

“Augie!”

"Coming!" I now know that tone, and my heart leaps as I change out of my work clothes into something comfortable. It’s a new ritual, and honestly, I kind of like it. I rush to Angel and she is smiling ear to ear. Al is sitting in a corner, looking on. It’s only an hour after dinner, and our little one has already started her evening kicks.

youtube

“I told you she likes this song,” she laughs as I get in bed with her. “She's been reacting this way since that baby yoga class in Sedona.” She gasps softly. “That’s two already.”

“She likes Single Ladies.”

“She kicks too much for me on that one,” she grumbles. “Maybe that’s a post-partum jam.”

I hold her from behind and lay my hands on her womb, whispering in her ear. “She likes that Baby Shark one, too.” I almost can't hold in my laugh, knowing what her reaction will be.

“Ugh, bite your tongue!” she frowns, wrinkling her nose, but is still smiling. “Remember what some of the moms said at the office? Drives everyone crazy but the baby?”

“Well, it’s just us,” I shrug. “It can’t be worse than waterboarding.”

She shakes her head, laughing and taps my hand. “And…this is her time, remember?”

I chuckle softly and lay in front of Angel, laying my hands on her womb. “Hey, Ladybug.” I smile as my daughter kicks in response.

“We are not putting that on the birth certificate,” Angel jokes softly. “We need to narrow it down, pick her real name.”

“I know we’ve got it down to a few,” I sigh, stroking her belly. “but she’s always going to be my Little Ladybug.”

“Hmph.”

“You’re my angel,” I remind.

“And you are my man,” Angel sings softly.

We lay there in bed, talking and singing her favorite song to date, “Sail Away” and others. We have been compiling a list of songs she reacts to, and besides that the only other requirement is that the song doesn’t drive us nuts if it is on repeat. The hope is that a playlist will keep things from getting maddeningly monotonous but still entertain Ladybug.

“You made the next appointment, right?”

“Two weeks from today, yes,” I confirm. “So the baby belt is doing the trick?”

“Yes, it is,” Angel smiles greatfully. “So much easier to move around.”

“I wanted to talk about when you’re taking off—”

“Augie—”

“It’s just that I would like you to rest before the baby is born, not work till the last minute,” I plead. “You know, just exercise, invite friends to lunch, shop a bit? I’ll even take some days off to spend with you, alright?”

“But the United States doesn’t have paternity leave,” she says sadly.

“I’m still taking it,” I tell her. “I have a monstrous amount of time saved up. I was kind of a workaholic until we met.”

“So…workaholic to dad-aholic?” Angel smiles, stretching over to put her arms around my neck. “So sexy!” Her smile suddenly fades. “Ooh.”

“Ooh, what?”

“I think she’s tired now,” she smiles down at her womb. “Ten kicks in an hour. Just like yesterday—”

“And the day before that, and the day before that—”

“Augie.”

I know what she wants, and I don’t get it. “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.”

I put my arms around her and lower my head. “You ready, Ladybug?”

“You would not believe your eyes If ten million fireflies Lit up the world as I fell asleep 'Cause they'd fill the open air And leave teardrops everywhere You'd think me rude But I would just stand and stare I'd like to make myself believe That planet Earth turns slowly It's hard to say that I'd rather stay awake when I'm asleep 'Cause everything is never as it seems…"

I sang this song our last night in Sedona, looking at the red rocks and dark blue sky with silver stars. Ladybug was kicking up at storm, and I sang that, which worked, and now she and Angel love it. By the time I sing the whole song, Angel is relaxed and teary-eyed, and it looks like Ladybug is asleep as well.

“I’ll never get tired of hearing your voice,” Angel whispers.

“Good thing, it’s the only one I’ve got.”

“You’re all we need,” Angel whispers tearfully, grinning up at me.

“You’re all I need,” I whisper back, kissing her hair. I decide that I will get a music box for her, one with Fireflies on it. It will take a couple of weeks, but we’ve got time.

(Just saying, I would LOVE to hear Henry Cavill sing Fireflies.)

@mistress-of-ward @messyinsomnimaniac @jencanbeyouryengeralt @sweetdreamsofgelato @mary-ann84 @omgkatinka -ward @nuggsmum @ @the-soot-sprite @viking-raider @keanureevesisbae @henryobsessed @summersong69 @sunshine96love @michelehansel @thelastsock @tumblnewby @tenaciousneckpartypainter @rn7rocks @daydreamin83 @ruthoakenshield @musicartmayheminmyheart @kaatelyynn-blog-blog@forallthebrokenheartedthings @alphacancrii @liquorlaughslove @designerwriterchic @tamychm @nikkilynn303 @circesgirl1 @xoxohannahlee @pixie88@fckdeusername @maan24 @kaatelyyynn @october505 @absentmindr @introvertedmouse @sassy-pelican @griscka75 @kebabgirl67 @its-carlerr @cherry-piee @starstruckkittyangel @lyrarodriguez

#henry cavill #henry cavill fandom #henry cavill x reader #henry cavill fan fiction #henry cavill fanfic #august walker #henry cavill smut #august walker smut #august walker daddy #august walker pregnancy #august walker fan fiction #august walker fanfic #Youtube

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teacupfulofstarshine · 4 years ago

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LOVELY, DARK, AND DEEP CHAPTER 10

PLEASE HEED THE CONTENT WARNINGS!!! this chapter features Evil Scientist Lady and her Fucked Up WorldView a LOT, and there are also some Major Plot Events that involve Violence. i will put a summary in the end notes if you decide at any point that this particular chapter is too much - that's super valid! i will also mention here that no main characters are going to die in this story and no one dies in this chapter either.

huge huge thanks to @flamingfawkes for beta’ing!

CW: extreme disregard for human life, mentioned human and animal cruelty, toxic workplace environment, violence (both imagined and actual, mildly graphic), gun mention, minor blood, death threats, extremely unethical character, unethical science, stalking

chapter 1 // chapter 2 // chapter 3 // chapter 4 // chapter 5 // chapter 6 // chapter 7 // chapter 8 // chapter 9 // read it on ao3!

“This is the same result we’ve gotten the last twenty times -”

“I don’t care, Steven, run it again!”

Steven sighs, punching at the keyboard to run the statistical analysis sequence again. “This is ridiculous! I’ve run this sequence so many times it feels like my eyes are going to bleed. Why can’t we just turn in the results we have and -”

“Because she’ll behead us,” James snaps, “and then she’ll destroy our reputations and our families and they’ll get no severance. I have three young children at home, Steven, I need this money.” Steven softens a little, fingers running smoothly over the keys as he combs the data again. Next to him, James has a computer screen full of frame-by-frame stills of what little data they recovered from the probe before it was destroyed; Penny across the room is surrounded by ancient texts a mile high and at least three laptops.

“Why is she so interested in this, anyway?”

“It’s beyond me. Since when do we question the whims of what we’re told to do?”

Steven squints at the screen, pushing his chair back and rubbing at his eyes. “If I have to stare at these numbers for one more second, my brain is going to explode. I feel like my eyeballs are going to melt out of my skull. I wanna scream.”

James pulls up another image, staring at the blurry image of the merman before him. Steven pushes away from his own screen and squints at James’s. The merman in the photo looks young, not much older than his kid brother, but they don’t know anything about the lifespan of these creatures. He looks confused, squinting at the camera. As James flicks through the stills, the merman transitions from confused to angry to enraged, and then he attacks.

“He’s not happy about the camera.”

“Would you be happy about someone spying on you and your family?” James says, switching to the next still.

“I wouldn’t be happy if I thought someone was doing anything we do in this lab to me or my family.” James elbows Steven, but luckily no one else seems to have heard.

“This lab isn’t the most ethical place I’ve ever worked, but it pays the bills,” James mutters. “And we’re not even in the experimentation lab. We just do data analysis. We’re removed from the situation.”

Are we? Steven wonders. He sees James reach out and touch the framed picture of his daughters, and keeps his mouth shut. He turns back to his computer, watching the little spinning color wheel of his mouse as the program calculates the same numbers again and again. The results come up identical to the previous ones, and Steven clicks “Run Program” again wordlessly.

They work in silence for a while, the three of them, broken only by James’s muttering and the occasional thud of one of Penny’s books and the clicks of keyboards and mice. If they weren’t so reliant on technology, Steven thinks, there would be an enormous corkboard spanning three of the four walls, covered in pushpins and handwriting and red string connecting images. He debates actually building one, if only to increase the levity in the room, but decides against it.

He’s seen people punished or fired or who-knows-what-else for far less, after all.

Instead, after his program tells him for the twenty-third time that his results are the same (and didn’t someone say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?), Steven scrubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms and opens the data entry window. Maybe the problem with the results has to do with the entry of the data; did he input something wrong? It’s possible . . .

Here he goes again, he supposes. He stands up, stretches, and leans back to crack some vertebrae. “I’m gonna grab a coffee, take a short screen break, and go back to the beginning. Maybe there’s something in the input that I missed. You want anything?”

James groans, thunking his head against the desk. “I want something with enough caffeine to kill three elephants, please.” Steven nods, looking over at Penny. She shakes her head, and he heads for the shitty coffee machine a few doors down.

Several floors below, a young woman pulls her lab goggles up to rest on top of her head with her perfectly-pinned protocol-compliant bun. “The latest round of tests is completely done, ma’am. I think you’ll find the efficacy . . . striking.”

She takes the clipboard, glossy perfectly-painted nails pinching the sheets of thin paper and flicking between them. “I’m afraid I don’t do so well with the scientific side of things - Kathleen, was it? Explain this to me, would you?”

“Certainly, ma’am. As you know, the kill time for the most effective neurotoxin currently available, tetrodotoxin, varies from thirty minutes to four hours. Average time for symptoms to manifest is seventeen minutes, and from there the symptoms progress through tingling of the lips and tongue, headache, vomiting, muscle weakness, ataxia, et cetera. Death occurs as a result of respiratory or heart failure, and the poison is nearly undetectable if you do not specifically test for it.”

“The untraceability is a plus, but that is far too wide a range of times, and too slow a time even at its fastest.”

“Of course, ma’am, but as far as naturally-occurring marine poisons go - actually, as far as naturally-occurring poisons go, full stop - it is the most effective. Until now, that is.”

“Oh? What are your findings?”

“Which trials would you like to start with, ma’am?”

“The human trials, Kathleen. The only ones that matter. I hardly intend to go around killing mice and hoping that no one traces their deaths to a novel neurotoxin.” She laughs airily, and Kathleen nods along.

“Certainly, ma’am. The most recent data points indicate an average efficacy time of thirteen minutes for our compound neurotoxin, with a full range between nine and seventeen minutes passing before subject death. Subjects began to show symptoms around five minutes, give or take twenty-five seconds.”

“And those symptoms were?”

Kathleen flips through the document. “Seizures, vital organ failure, blindness, painful muscle spasms, suffocation from the inside out.”

She hums, tapping a manicured finger against the report. “Well, Kathleen, that is certainly impressive, especially for a preliminary human subject trial. These results . . . I must say, they are not nearly as disappointing as I anticipated when I came down here.”

“Ma’am?”

“How long have you worked for this company, Kathleen?”

“Almost five years, ma’am, but I’ve always been an assistant. This is my first time as lead researcher and biochemist on a project, ever since you . . . laid off the previous lead researcher.”

“Kathleen, let me be frank. These results are not what I hoped for. The efficacy time and symptom onset times are both far too long for my liking, and the range of efficacy time is too broad. By all accounts, I should consider this a failure.” Kathleen swallows, but remains poised. “However, you’ve managed to shave off a considerable amount of time from the tetrodotoxin readings. The range of symptom onset time is an acceptable breadth, and your results are far beyond anything your predecessor ever accomplished for me. This is truly impressive, all things considered.”

“Thank you, ma’am. How should I proceed?”

“I want the efficacy doubled - tripled - I want it upped by anywhere between four and five hundred percent. I want the pain increased, too. Feel free to increase your requests for test subjects, but get me the results I want. You said the original tetrodotoxin was untraceable?”

“That’s correct, ma’am.”

“Can you keep that feature intact?”

“As of right now, it is intact, ma’am. I will endeavor to keep it so in future experiments.”

“That’s what I like to hear. Welcome to your new position as head of this research division. Don’t let me down.” She holds out a slender hand, and Kathleen takes it, trying not to seem too eager.

“I won’t, ma’am.”

“How soon can you start this experiment up again?”

“The cleaners should be finished by tomorrow morning, ma’am, and I can tweak chemical formulas until then.”

“Excellent.” Her watch beeps, and she lifts it, pursing her bright lips as she examines the message she’s just received. “If you’ll excuse me, I have another matter to attend to. Someone will drop off your master access key for Lab Three within the hour.”

She steps into the elevator and lifts her watch up to her face, swiping through the messages from her secretary. One finger reaches out to press the button for the digital analysis labs floor, and the other taps away at her watch.

When she steps off the elevator, her secretary is waiting. “Ma’am.”

“What do they have for me?”

“Unclear. They said it was something they wanted to report directly to you and you alone, but it seems to be something big.”

“Hopefully it’s a big step in the right direction, or they’ll be taking a big step out of a job.” She relishes in the way the employees she passes all unfailingly flinch and then snap to perfect attention when they hear the sharp echo of her heels against the floor. She lifts her head and walks faster, striking the tiles with her heels like a gavel, sharp and precise against a judge’s desk.

The computer labs are disorganized when she enters, but there is a string of promising-looking numbers on the main display monitor. There is a woman surrounded by books and a man pulling up photos on his computer, and there is a third man standing in front of her like a toy soldier. She focuses on that one.

“I hear you have news for me? Make it swift, and make it good.”

He swallows, hard, and her eyes idly trace the line of his throat. If he disappoints her, perhaps she will drive her heel through it, to make an example of him. That would be far too messy; perhaps his dominant hand will do.

“I have narrowed down the location of the missing net, ma’am. I believe it to have washed up somewhere around these general GPS coordinates.” He fiddles with a remote in his hand, and the image on the screen changes. It shows an aerial satellite view of a secluded strip of beach, framed by rocky cliffs with larger rocks studded out into the open water. “It should have washed up somewhere in this one-point-three-seven-mile strip of beach. The whole area is property of one Doctor Thomas Sanders.”

She snarls. “That man. He won’t let us on that beach willingly until hell freezes over.”

The other man, the one scanning through photo stills and video footage, jumps up, knocking his chair backwards. “I found something!”

She turns towards him, and his excitement freezes and sputters into something much more controlled and terrified. “Show me.” He clicks something and pulls up video footage from one of their surveillance drones, zooming in on a particular patch of ocean along the stretch of Sanders’ beach. Her eyes widen when she sees what he’d noticed - a hump of red-and-white tail arcing above the waves before a pattern of ripples streaks off towards the cliff. He pauses the footage, rewinds it, uses a laser pointer to show an opening concealed in the cliff face.

“There’s some kind of grotto in there, hidden by the cliff. It’s on Sanders’ property, he has to know it’s there. And it looks like the merman from the destroyed drone knows it’s there too. Which means -”

“That must be where he’s keeping them.” Something burns in her chest, brilliant and terrifying and all-encapsulating, like wildfire. “We’ve found them, at long last.”

“What would you have me do?” her secretary asks. “I can arrange for a recovery squad at your earliest possible convenience, ma’am.”

“Assemble the squad, but do not have them move out. They will wait for my orders. When they go, you are to go with them.” Her secretary nods, once, sharp and sure. “Dispatch a crew to Lab One and clear it out. I want it prepped for containment, vivisection, chemical tests - the works. Get at least three tanks set up and one strap-down human table.”

“A human table, ma’am?”

“Yes. We have to deal with Sanders once and for all to ensure that he does not ruin any future experiments.”

“Will we be taking him as well?”

She hums thoughtfully. “No. Pull up the file we have on his known associate?”

A few swift clicks and flicks and a photo appears on the large screen: a young man with brown-and-purple hair, sleeves rolled up, carefully lowering a perfectly viable specimen into the ocean and letting it go, like some kind of fool. “His doctoral student, ma’am. The longest one he’s ever kept - this one has been with him a few years.”

“Excellent. When you raid the lab, take him.”

“Should we kill Sanders?”

“No. Rough him up a little, but leave him alive. Taking his protégé and leaving him alone, helpless to rescue him, will be the highest form of torture for such an insufferable person. The agony will eat him alive until his dying day.”

Her secretary nods, taking the notes down dutifully. The other employees look vaguely horrified, but she pays them no mind. No sacrifice is too great to be made in the name of progress, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a weakling who will never get anywhere in life.

She refuses to be one of those weaklings.

*~*~*~*~*

Logan wakes up confused.

He’s warm, warmer than he thinks he’s ever been in his whole life. When he stirs, he moves farther than he meant to - he must not be underwater. That’s enough to send a jolt of concern through his sleep-addled brain. Why isn’t he underwater? Why was he sleeping if he was above the surface? There’s no way his dad is here, and Roman hates surfacing, where are they? Where is he? But he’s so comfortable . . .

Someone shifts beside him, an arm draping across his waist, and Logan forces his eyes open. He shifts his lower half, confused when two things move instead of one, and there are layers upon layers of thin, flat, soft things wrapping around him. What is happening?

Slowly, slowly, his mind clears, and he remembers the events of last night. He grew legs - he was a human, once, before he was mer - he couldn’t sleep underwater with Dad and Roman - Virgil was teaching him to walk - Virgil put “clothes” on him - Virgil was embarrassed that he didn’t have those “clothes” on him - Virgil took him out of the lab to sleep - Virgil agreed to cuddle him since his pod couldn’t -

Logan feels the strange burning in his face again as he shifts. He can’t see well in this new human form, but when things are close enough to his face they’re relatively clear. And Virgil, still sleeping, is close enough that Logan can smell him - he smells like salt water mixed with something sharp and something sweet and something else that Logan can’t quite identify but finds addicting nonetheless. Sunlight streams in and pools around Virgil’s face, illuminating the tangled mess of hair spread around him and flopping into his face, the small puddle of water leaking out from his open mouth onto the soft thing he’s resting his head on, the way his chest moves slowly with every breath. His arm is wrapped around Logan, pulling him close. Logan thinks he might explode if he focuses on this any more, so he rolls from his side to his back as carefully as he can, not wanting to wake Virgil. Virgil tightens his arm around Logan and mutters something indecipherable in his sleep, but he doesn’t wake.

Rather than focusing on his very confusing feelings for the very pretty man next to him, Logan focuses on what he can see of the room around him. He makes a list in his mind of things that he plans to ask Virgil about later today, including:

1: There are many draws attached to the small, smooth cliffs surrounding them. How do they stay there?

2: There are lots of “clothes” scattered all around the floor, and there were several on the bed, too. Is that normal for humans?

3: Last night, Virgil did something that made the room light up with trapped sunlight! How did he do that?

4: How did Virgil get ice to stay in those big frozen sheets in such a warm place to let the sunlight in?

5: How did Virgil make ice into that weird shape that he filled with water and drank last night?

6: How did Virgil get the water to come into this place?

7: Do all humans have a specific area set aside for sleeping? Logan and his pod usually just sleep wherever they can, but Virgil seems to have this soft slab set aside with all of these soft things to be comfortable and sleep in every night. Is this a Human Thing or strictly a Virgil Thing?

Logan looks out through the sheet of ice that protects Virgil’s area from the outside and gasps. He can’t see well, but there’s a glittering expanse of blue that shifts and moves and oh, is that the ocean?

He’s spent his whole life (well, his whole remembered life, anyways) in the ocean, and he’s seen some truly wondrous things. He travels around the world with his pod, he knows the ocean is big, but seeing it spread out like this is . . . awe-inspiring. Logan has never seen the ocean like this, and now that he has he doesn’t think he can ever not see it like this again. It’s like a perfect sheet of sea-glass, rippling and unbroken but dynamic in a way that he never really gets a sense of when he’s beneath it.

He knows that there are waves, of course. There are smaller swells out on the open ocean, and larger ones when the Second Goddess dips her fingers down from the Upper Ocean and swirls the storms to a thundering burst. There are waves along the shoreline, ones that he frolics in with Roman and batter him against the shoreline. There are waves created when he or his pod members surface. But watching the movement of the ocean from up here is . . .

Even with his imperfect vision, he is completely at a loss for words as he stares at the ocean.

Eventually, Virgil stirs next to him, and Logan turns away from the ocean to stare at him. Virgil is close to him, arms wrapped tightly around him, face pressed against him. Logan’s eyesight is not great, but Virgil is close enough that he can pick out little details of his face. There are brown face scales scattered all over him, but they seem to cluster on his nose and his cheeks. Logan has wanted to touch them for a substantial amount of time, and he can’t stop himself from gently settling the tips of his fingers over Virgil’s cheek.

His face doesn’t feel like Logan was expecting. The scales don’t give texture to his face the way that Logan’s do; the skin is smooth and flat. There are little bumps all over, but the brown scales aren’t raised off the skin like Logan expected. He lets his fingers trail along Virgil’s face. His bone structure seems to be exceedingly similar to Logan’s, at least in regards to his head. Logan’s finger rests gently on the curve of bone under Virgil’s eye, and Virgil exhales warm breath onto his palm.

Logan wonders what it would be like to have this for longer than just his recovery period. He wonders what it would be like to wake up next to Virgil all the time, to get to run his hands over Virgil’s face and arms and chest and examine the differences between their anatomy. He wonders what it would be like to learn to walk without falling over, and he feels a sharp, unexpected twinge in his chest as he realizes that getting better at walking means no more closeness to Virgil.

His chest feels strange, like there’s a school of small fish swarming around and tickling his insides and making him feel all foamy, like the froth churned up by a windswept sea. He feels like he does when he’s underwater - free, weightless, mobile, limited by nothing except his own imagination. He feels unstoppable.

Virgil makes a sudden, sharp inhale, blinking his eyes open slowly. Logan thinks that, perhaps, he might not appreciate being studied unknowingly - he hadn’t appreciated Virgil doing it, before he understood what was happening, when all he knew was the loss of his pod aching like a scraped-out seashell. As Virgil wakes up, Logan shifts, turning his gaze to the rest of the room.

Virgil makes a sleepy grumbling noise, opening one eye. Logan chances another quick glance at him, and when his eye slides open Logan is struck by its beauty. He doesn’t get much of a chance to admire it, however, before Virgil is jolting backwards like Logan’s struck him with lightning. Logan is confused, reaching out and gently touching his shoulder. “Virgil?”

“Wassat?! Wait . . . L’gan?”

“It is me,” Logan says softly. “Are - are you upset with me?”

Virgil yawns, jaw dropping to his chest, revealing a flash of teeth and a soft pink tongue. (Logan wants to lick it. Why does Logan want to lick it? Why is Logan thinking about Virgil’s tongue licking his tongue - why is Logan thinking about Virgil - what in the Seven Oceans is happening to him.) “Wh - no, no, ‘m okay, I just - woke up, forgot I had you with me, got confused about another person in my bed.” Before Logan can start to feel bad, Virgil adds, “S’okay if it’s you, though,” and the foamy, floaty feeling is back.

“Did you sleep well?”

Virgil laughs, low and rumbling, and Logan can feel it in his fingers where he touches Virgil’s skin. “I never sleep well.” He sits up, and the fabric of his pajamas shifts to let Logan see stretches of soft, supple skin that he usually doesn’t. Logan wants to touch it. He very determinedly keeps his hand on Virgil’s shoulder. “Gotta admit, though, last night was . . . better than usual.”

This appears to be the point where Virgil first notices their position - pressed together, arm slung over Logan, basically cuddling the way that Logan normally would with his pod. (No tangle with his pod has ever felt this . . . electric, this charged, this important to Logan before.) His face flares a brilliant red, and he shifts like he wants to move away but -

“I’m sorry,” Virgil says. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“No!” Logan blurts out. Virgil blinks at him a little, and maybe he was a little overly enthusiastic, but - “I sleep in a tangle with Dad and Roman all the time. I have extreme difficulty sleeping without contact with someone else. It . . . helped me greatly.”

“Oh,” Virgil says, face turning redder still, smiling shyly. “That - makes me feel better. Thanks, Lo.”

Logan smiles, and Virgil smiles too, reaching up to gently move a piece of hair away from his face. Logan thinks that, as far as deaths go, his chest exploding (which seems to be getting more and more likely every fifteen seconds he spends in Virgil’s presence, only accelerated by all this skin-on-skin contact they’re having right now) seems to be the most pleasurable.

Virgil opens his mouth to say something, but whatever it was is interrupted by a Ping! noise from across the room. “What is that?” Logan asks. Virgil, sadly, untangles himself from Logan and the blankets, sliding out of bed and heading over to one of the other structures in the room (what did he call it last night? Dex?) and picking up a flat glowing rectangle.

“Is everything alright?”

“What? Yeah, yeah, I - Thomas sent me a text, it’s a little weird.”

“What is a text?”

“It’s a kind of human messaging system, it allows us to communicate when we’re far away from each other.”

“Like a pod call?” “Kind of? I’ll explain more later, I promise, I just - I gotta go down to the lab real quick.”

“I’ll come with -”

“No!” Virgil snaps. Logan flinches, and Virgil softens, crossing the room and gently touching his shoulder. “Hey, no, Logan, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I just - this message, there’s something off. I think something might be wrong, and I don’t want to put you in any unnecessary danger. Just - wait here, okay? Wait in my room, where it’s safe. It’s probably nothing, he’s probably fine, but on the off chance that he’s not, I want you to stay hidden safely up here.”

Logan isn’t sure why this makes his face heat up slightly, but it does. “Okay. I accept your apology, and I . . . trust you.”

Virgil smiles, soft and heartwarming, and Logan is beginning to give more credence to his “chest explosion is fine, actually” theory. “Wait for me here, okay? I’ll be right back. I promise.”

He leaves, shutting the door firmly behind him, and the foamy feeling in Logan’s chest dissipates a little. He can’t quite put his finger on it, but there’s something . . . off. If Logan didn’t know better, he’d think that he was sensing a predator approaching.

But that can’t be right, he isn’t underwater. His danger senses are likely just overreacting to his disappointment at Virgil’s absence.

. . . Right?

*~*~*~*~*

Thomas is beginning to regret letting Roman and Patton (specifically, Roman) out of the large tank before finishing his first coffee of the morning.

“I want some!” Roman complains.

“Do you even know what it is?” Thomas says. Roman pouts sulkily at him.

“. . . No,” he mutters, rolling his eyes. Thomas gives him the deadpan, no-nonsense, I-am-your-direct-superior-take-the-damn-samples-Virgil stare that he has perfected over the past few years. Roman wilts a little more, and Thomas feels slightly bad.

“It’s called coffee,” he says. “It’s a hot drink that lots of people have in the morning. Some people drink it plain, and some people add things to it to change the way it tastes. It helps me wake up more and get focused to start my day, and sometimes I drink it late at night to help keep me awake.”

Roman looks less like a kicked puppy and more like Logan, eyes wide and curious. “I want some!”

Thomas, taking a sip of his own two-seconds-of-cream-five-cubes-of-sugar coffee, nearly spits it out. He looks at Roman, eyes the very sharp, very detachable, very toxic spines covering his body, and says, “No.”

Roman’s demeanor changes entirely, switching from “curious toddler” to “toddler about to throw a temper tantrum” in a heartbeat. “Why not?!”

“Because when people drink coffee without being used to it, sometimes it makes them a little crazy.”

“I’m not crazy!”

“Do I need to recount to you how many times you’ve threatened me and my assistant since we met you?” Thomas says, raising an eyebrow. “I’m not giving you coffee until I know I can trust you not to stab me with your poisonous spines that cover your entire body and can be fired at people.”

Roman pouts more, dropping under the water and letting out a gratingly harmonious string of mer that Thomas is pretty sure translates to Roman bitching about the coffee situation to his dad. Based on the pattern of Patton’s response, he’s pretty sure Patton is laughing at Roman.

More sulky chalkboard-violin music, and then Roman resurfaces grumpily. “Dad agrees with you and says no consuming strange human foods.”

“Did he laugh at you?”

Roman squints suspiciously at him. “You can’t speak our language.”

“Yeah, but I know what it sounds like when a dad laughs at his kid.” Roman, continuing to pout, sinks back into the tank, presumably to sulk some more. Thomas takes another very long sip of coffee that is definitely too hot for his mouth and turns back to his desk.

Virgil should definitely be awake and in the lab at this point. The samples he’s supposed to be analyzing are sitting in their little tubes, each neatly labelled with locations and dates and times and what, specifically, Virgil is supposed to be looking for. Thomas considers going upstairs and waking up Virgil, who’s almost never been late for work in this way, but he decides against it. Virgil is upstairs with Logan, and Thomas knows that there’s something building between them. He’s not sure how advisable that something is, but he trusts Virgil to make his own decisions.

Besides, he could probably use some practice. His water sample analysis skills are pretty rusty, he’s had Virgil doing them for years. “Virgil, you owe me big time for what I’m doing for you.” He carefully shifts the samples over to his own desk, slides his earbuds in, picks up a pipette, and gets to work analyzing the bacterial and algal concentrations for any abnormalities.

Thomas accomplishes about forty-five minutes’ worth of work before Roman interrupts him by flicking water at him and soaking the back of his neck. “Hey!”

“I tried your name, but your little ear bug things were keeping you from hearing me,” Roman says smugly. Thomas, not for the first time, considers retreating to the closet and throwing beakers until he feels better.

“Can I help you?”

“Dad wants to go hunting and bring back breakfast, but we can’t leave without you.”

“Are you not going hunting?”

“I’m going to stay here and observe you,” Roman says.

Thomas blinks. “Do I . . . need observing?”

“How do I know you won’t sell us out to your little human friends the second you get a chance? If I’m here, I can stop you. Plus, what if you do something to Logan while we’re not here to protect him? No, no, I’m staying right where I am and you can’t make me leave.” His spines ripple; Thomas steps closer to a whiteboard in case he needs to duck.

“I’m not going to do that, and I don’t want you to stab me.”

“Still! I’m staying here! Also, Dad’s bigger than me, and he’s a better hunter cause he’s faster and he’s been hunting longer.

“Does he need something to help him carry all those fish?” Thomas asks. Roman opens his mouth like he’s going to say something snarky, pauses, and stops.

“I . . . usually we just eat what we catch when we catch it. We make a pile of prey and take turns guarding it while the other two hunt. Then we make a sacrifice to the Seven Mother Goddesses and eat what’s left.”

After some debate, Thomas is able to fashion a sling of sorts from some waterproof tarps and leftover anchor rope to tie around Patton’s body. “You can put the fish in this pouch and carry them back here. Will you be able to navigate your way back to the grotto?”

“He will,” Roman says. “Dad knows more about the ocean than any human possibly could.” Another discordant song from the tank, chastising, and Roman huffs. “Dad wants me to reassure you that he’ll be fine.”

Patton settles into the mobile tank easily, and Thomas gets him down to the grotto leading towards the sea. “When you come back, let out one of your pod calls and Virgil or I will come and collect you and your catch. Take as much time as you need, okay?”

Patton reaches up and gently pats Thomas’s arm with one large, damp hand, and Thomas takes that to mean an agreement. “Alright, off you go.” There’s a whoosh and a rush of water as it flows from the tank into the grotto in a clean arc, carrying Patton with it. Thomas waits for a moment, letting Patton disappear into the open ocean, before returning to the laboratory.

Roman, for the most part, ignores Thomas. He asks the occasional question, which Thomas tries to answer in a way that he’ll understand, and leans over the edge of his touch tank, eyes guarded. Every time Thomas sneaks a glance, when he thinks Roman isn’t looking, his expression is wide-eyed and wondrous, like Logan’s usually are, but the moment he realizes Thomas is watching him his entire face closes up like a clamshell.

Thomas wonders what it’ll take to get Roman to trust him, trust Virgil, trust any human. Granted, he doesn’t know Roman’s history with humans, but he and Patton are both fairly scarred, and Thomas might not know the whole story but he’d bet a not-insignificant amount of his monthly income that the giant starburst scar taking up the majority of Patton’s chest isn’t the result of a clash with a marine creature.

He works quietly, fielding the occasional question, keeping one ear on the grotto tunnel for Patton’s return. He’s not sure how long he expected Patton to be gone, but he hears movement in the grotto tunnel far sooner than he’d expected.

“Thomas, what’s -”

“Shhhh,” Thomas says. He stands up, pushing away from his desk, but before he can say anything else, there’s a flood of movement coming from the tunnel. Bodies pour into the lab, swift and strong and carrying weapons that they immediately train on Thomas and Roman.

“What is this?” Roman snaps, bristling. He sounds betrayed, like he thinks Thomas is behind this. Thomas picks up a heavy glass beaker, fully prepared to shatter it upside someone’s skull if necessary, but something heavy and hard strikes the back of his skull and he feels his knees crumple. Roman cries out, and Thomas struggles to push himself up. A hand fists itself in his hair and yanks him upright, sharply. Thomas exhales sharply through his teeth, but before he can start struggling, something cool and round rests against the back of his neck, shutting him up and shutting his brain down.

Roman is puffed up like a hedgehog, apparently fully prepared to defend Thomas despite his strong and inherent mistrust. Before he can begin to attack, Thomas hears the click-click-click of shoes on the hard stone floor. Whoever’s holding his head yanks him back again, and he is forced to watch as a woman walks into his laboratory.

(It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke - a sick, horrible, twisted joke.)

She has black heels, black tights, a black pencil skirt, a black blazer, and a blood-red blouse. Her hair is scraped back into a tight bun, pulled so taut it must hurt, and is held in place with a pitch black stick. She carries a - clipboard? tablet? Unclear - held against her chest, and there’s a sleek silver weapon in her right hand.

“The one from the video?” she asks.

“Affirmative, ma’am,” says the person holding Thomas’s head. The woman nods, lifting her weapon, and fires at Roman. Thomas tries to scream a warning, earning himself another painful yank from his captor, but the projectile lodges itself in Roman’s shoulder anyway.

It isn’t a bullet, but something that looks like a small syringe. Roman swats it out of his shoulder, swaying a little, but it doesn’t stop him from swiping at the - mercenary, they must be - who tries to grab him with his elbow spines. The woman frowns, lifts the weapon - some kind of tranquilizer gun? - and fires again.

Roman screams, inhuman and animal, and tears the newest dart from his arm, throwing himself out of his tank and clinging to the nearest mercenary. His teeth tear into the man’s shoulder, spines piercing through his camouflage clothing and flooding him with neurotoxin. The man collapses against the concrete, alive but unconscious, and Roman snarls at the next man as though daring him to approach. He sways, weakened but awake, and bares his teeth.

“Of course,” the woman says, tapping something on her tablet. “His naturally produced neurotoxin must be providing him with some level of natural resistance. Unexpected, but not a limitation.”

It takes three more tranquilizer darts before Roman finally slumps down into his tank, unconscious. The mercenaries look hesitant to approach him, but the woman reaches for her tablet and they scramble to action at once.

“No - no, stop, let him go, he’s not an animal for you to cart off to your lab -” Thomas starts. The man holding him knees him sharply in the back and he cries out, coughing.

They wrap Roman in thick leather bands, roughly shoving his spines flat and binding them against his skin so that he can’t attack them again. The woman nods, once, short and sharp, and they drag Roman away, letting his head bang mercilessly on the ground. Thomas catches a glimpse of a logo - emblazoned on the back of the jackets, on the back of the woman’s tablet, on the side of her tranquilizer gun - and commits it to memory. He’s going to need it, if he gets out of here alive.

“- your phone,” the woman says, and oh, when did she get in front of him.

“My what?”

His mouth runs dry as she places the tranquilizer gun under his chin, barrel pressing against his throat, and tips his chin up. “I said, give me your phone.”

Thomas blinks. “My - the desk. It’s on the desk.”

She sets her tablet down, picks up his phone, and shoves it in his face. “Open it.”

“I - wh -”

“Unlock your phone, Dr. Sanders. Must I repeat myself a third time?” She rolls her eyes. “Doctorates are wasted on people like you.”

Thomas numbly punches in his passcode, and she swipes through to his messages app, frowning before turning the screen towards his face to reveal a message thread with Virgil. “Is this your assistant?”

Thomas glares at her, he’s not going to give her what she wants, he’s not going to just give her Virgil but then the - gun, it must be a gun, what else would they be holding against his neck like this - pushes into him harder, and it’s probably bruising, and he can’t get himself killed here because then he definitely won’t be able to take care of Virgil and -

“Yes,” Thomas says, hating himself for giving in so easily. “What do you -”

She turns away from him, nails clicking against his phone screen as she sends a text message - to Virgil, presumably, and that makes his heart sink like a stone - before dropping it on the floor and stepping on it to shatter it. “I have a message for you.”

“A - what?”

“Did they really hit you that hard, or were you this stupid before we came here?” she says coldly, picking up the tablet again and tapping at the screen. Thomas groans as the man yanks him to his feet, shoving him onto his chair and pulling a roll of duct tape out of one of his multiple pants pockets. He tapes Thomas’s wrists and ankles to the chair, keeping his weapon trained on Thomas’s temple at all times, before pressing it roughly against his head and gripping his hair again.

The woman sets the tablet on his lab table, and the screen flickers to life, and then there’s a woman in front of a dark black backdrop, smiling at him like a cat who’s caught a canary. “Thomas Sanders. How long I’ve waited for this day.”

Thomas recognizes her. He knows he recognizes her. She used to be his classmate, before . . .

His head hurts, so badly that he can barely keep his eyes open, and the memory slips away. “You . . . why are you doing this?”

“Why? Because I am a real scientist, unlike you. You refuse to do what is necessary, what must be done for the progression of the species. The sacrifice of some worthless animals is necessary for humanity to reach its zenith. You would really hinder the entire human race for the preservation of lower life forms?”

“Wh - I -”

“You think that ‘preserving the ecosystem’ and ‘keeping animals alive’ makes you a good scientist, but it makes you weak. You are weak, Thomas Sanders, and if the world was left in the hands of people like you, the human race as we know it would die out in a few centuries. Fortunately, there are people like me, who understand what must be done.”

“Caring about other people and things - it doesn’t - it doesn’t make you weak,” Thomas says, chest heaving, and the woman just laughs.

“One of many logical fallacies to which you subscribe, Thomas. They really gave you a doctorate? Of course caring makes you weak. All emotions make you weak. They corrupt your data and make your experiments worthless. You must be ruthless. You must be willing to do whatever it takes to pursue your goals and achieve the height of success. But no.” She rolls her eyes, face hardening, twirling a pen in her fingers. “You insist on ethics and principles and letting emotions cloud your judgement, and that makes you a failure as a scientist. It makes you weak. Your attachments will be your downfall.”

Thomas’s eyes slide shut, head pounding, and the man behind him yanks at his hair so sharply that he knows some has been ripped out. He forces his eyes open in time to see a smile slide across the woman’s face like a knife, teeth gleaming white as sun-bleached bone.

“You won’t - get away with this,” Thomas manages. He grinds his teeth together and curls his hands into fists, digging his nails into his palms to keep himself awake. “If you leave me alive -” Thomas, stop talking, why are you reminding her that she has the option to fucking kill you “- I will not rest until I find you. I’ll - you can’t -”

“You’ll what, Thomas? If you call the police, you’ll expose those creatures you’re so intent on protecting to the world. Are you really willing to take that chance?” Before Thomas can even begin formulating a response, she steamrolls him. “It doesn’t matter. Even if you were, I’m going to take some . . . insurance, shall we say.”

“Why not just kill me?” Thomas spits. Excellent idea, Doc, poke the murderous lady with a stick like a god damn hornet’s nest, the tiny Virgil in his brain hisses. Her smile, somehow, only widens, and that’s . . . that can’t be good, can it? Smiles are supposed to be good! They’re supposed to make you happy, but all Thomas feels is creeping dread and pain, so much pain, and -

Yeah. He’s . . . pretty sure he has a concussion.

“Because if I kill you, you get to take the easy way out. Your suffering will end. But unlike you, I don’t put limits on my science. I know how to cause you the maximum amount of pain.”

Thomas eyes the toxin gun, but the on-screen woman just laughs. “Not yet, Thomas. We need something from you, first.”

“You already took Roman,” Thomas says. “What more can you possibly take from me?”

“You named it? You’re even weaker than I thought.”

“He told me his name, he’s not an it, he’s not a thing for you to play with and - and I -”

There’s a strange sinking feeling in Thomas’s chest as the woman onscreen laughs. “I knew you were emotional, Thomas, but I can’t believe this! It looks like I’ll have more hanging over your head than you thought.”

“You -”

“Say, Tommy-boy, have you heard from your precious little assistant recently?”

Thomas’s entire body flushes ice-cold and then white-hot, immediately struggling against his duct tape bindings despite the man tearing at his hair and shoving the gun into his neck and snapping at him to shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up before I do something we’re both gonna regret -

“Don’t you touch him!” Thomas snaps. “If you hurt him, I swear to God -”

“You’re not in a position to be making demands, and if you don’t calm down, I’ll paint your boring little lab bright red.” Thomas freezes, holding his entire body tensed like electricity is running through his blood.

There are footsteps on the stairs. “Doc? I got your text, what’s -”

“Virgil, run!” Thomas chokes. Virgil comes around the corner, holding his phone, staring at the screen in confusion. He looks up, eyes widening in horror as he takes in the scene.

“You know what to do,” the woman onscreen says. The other woman lifts her tranquilizer gun, and Thomas is sure that he’s screaming, his mouth is open and sound is coming out but his blood is rushing through his ears and his heart is pounding like waves against a boat in rough sea and he can’t - he can’t -

Virgil turns to run, but the tranquilizer dart hits in him the back of the neck and he collapses like a sack of bricks. The woman lowers her gun and jerks her head at the two remaining conscious, unoccupied mercenaries, who step forward and grab Virgil.

“Let him go!” Thomas screams, and his throat feels raw and his chest feels raw and his wrists are rubbed raw and his soul feels hollow and raw, like he’s been scraped out with a jagged piece of metal and only an empty shell remains. Virgil’s head lolls against his chest as they drag him down the grotto tunnel, and Thomas struggles and screams and stares after them until Virgil is out of sight.

His face is damp, and his eyes are burning, and he isn’t sure if it’s blood from his head wound or tears or some strange, morbid mixture of both.

“The greatest torture of which I can conceive,” the woman onscreen says, and it takes him a moment to realize that oh, she’s talking to me, “is to leave you alive, knowing that your precious little protégé is with me, and that there is nothing you can do about it.” She leans forward, and any trace of a smile is gone. “If you try to come after me, I will kill him. If you call the authorities, I will kill him. I already found you, Thomas. Don’t think I’m not watching. If I catch so much as a whiff of you planning something, his blood will be on your hands. Do you understand me?”

Thomas, numb and shocked, can’t even respond. “Knock him out and bring the specimens back to me,” the woman onscreen says.

“Yes, ma’am.”

He doesn’t even feel the tranquilizer dart hit his neck, but he welcomes the sweeping darkness.

(Summary: Evil Scientist Lady has been spying on Thomas and she finds the entrance to the grotto where our mer friends have been hiding. She sends her assistant and several armed thugs to invade the lab, they drug Roman with tranquilizers and kidnap him. Thomas gets knocked around a lot and is mocked for being an ethical scientist and caring about people by Evil Scientist Lady and she gloats at him through Evil Facetime before kidnapping Virgil in the same way they did Roman, knocking Thomas unconscious, and leaving him tied to his lab chair. During this whole scene, Patton is out in the open ocean hunting and Logan is safely hidden in Virgil's room.)

#starshinewrites #lovely dark and deep #romantic analogical #sanders sides #platonic TLAMP

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pink-flame · 4 years ago

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14 and 69 for Juke 😊

So I’m pretty sure I was only supposed to describe how I would write these combinations but where’s the fun in that? So I just went ahead and wrote it. Also someone else requested one that includes the bodyguard prompt so there will be a part 2 soonish. Enjoy! 💜

Bodyguard AU + Flirting under fire

Julie sighed for the third time in the last two minutes.

“Can you stop that?”

The exasperated voice expressing annoyance with her impatience was her best friend/assistant Alex. They’d been best friends since middle school and when Julie’s music career started to take off everyone had tried to convince them that working together was a disaster waiting to happen. She had worked herself up over how her being his boss would ruin everything until she finally told him how worried she was.

“Won’t you feel, I don’t know demeaned, being my assistant?”

“Jules, I’ll be assisting you to survive which you’ll never do without me. Stop overthinking.”

And five years later she was a lot better at that. She was a 22 year old successful musician, her second album and first national tour right around the corner. Unlike when they were 17 she had learned her best results always came when she was able to listen to her instincts and go with the flow.

Unless she was waiting in the lobby of her label waiting for her new bodyguard to show up. A bodyguard who was officially late, a fact that she didn’t hesitate to inform Alex of.

“By like 2 minutes, chill,” He insisted, tapping away on his phone probably arranging the rest of her day as his thumbs flew over the screen.

“Alex, if my bodyguard is late I could end up dead,” She reminded him.

“Someone’s feeling dramatic today,” Alex looked up and nodded toward the other side of the lobby. “Maybe that’s him.”

Julie turned to look and instantly shook her head.

“No way. There’s no such thing as a cute bodyguard.”

Alex raised an eyebrow at her confident statement.

“I’m pretty sure that’s just a harmful bodyguard stereotype.”

Julie wasn’t so sure. In her experience bodyguards tended to be stoic, middle aged men built like linebackers. This guy on the other hand was young, probably within a year or two of her, with shaggy hair and a bouncy energy visible even from across the room. It was true that even through his vintage band tee she could see that he was kind of ridiculously muscular but so was her personal trainer and she wouldn’t want Dante standing between her and a crazed stalker.

She stood by her first assessment though. He was definitely cute.

He was also looking around the room, his eyes landing on her and a perfect smile stretching across his face.

“You’re uh, not bodyguard is heading this way,” Alex observed.

Julie could see that.

“Are you Julie Molina?” He asked as he came to a stop directly in front of her. “I’m Luke, your new bodyguard. Nice to meet you.”

“You’re my new bodyguard?” She repeated incredulously. “And you’re not sure who I am?”

Luke shrugged, his smile seemingly unaffected by her borderline rude response.

“I was pretty sure. And your label wanted to hire someone who could blend in more easily, offer you some protection without ruining your image as approachable.”

“Oh,” Julie turned to Alex who was watching the exchange with interest. “Did you know about this?”

Her best friend smirked.

“They may have mentioned something.”

Julie was starting to feel as though she had been set up. She turned back to Luke who was still rocking slightly on his heels, standing still not seeming to be his thing. He really did not seem like the type who could intimidate an attacker but he did seem like the type who would be really distracting to have standing around if he was going to keep smiling at her like that.

So she was in trouble in multiple ways.

She did her best to keep her face neutral when she spoke again.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you too, Luke. Everyone on my team is hired on a trial basis, so we’ll see how it goes ok?”

Luke reached up to salute.

“Ok, boss. Where we headed?”

Julie definitely did not find his insistence on being casual paired with that hard to place accent attractive. Definitely not.

Lucky for her, his attractiveness was soon offset by his ability to drive her absolutely crazy. Other than Alex he was by her side more than anyone over the next few months. He followed her to recording sessions, he followed her to music video shoots, and he followed her to fan meet and greets. But he was expected to follow her on personal excursions too and he seemed incapable of doing so silently. He made running commentary on the groceries she bought (always late at night to lower the chances of being recognized). He gave her unsolicited tips on what weights she should be lifting while she worked out. And worst of all was his insistence on giving her unasked for feedback on her music.

He wasn’t familiar with her work at all, or at least he never showed a hint of recognition when she brought up her previous songs or album. But he had a lot of opinions on what she was working on now.

“You know if you added some echoes in the chorus that song could be sick,” He remarked one day as he escorted her home after a long studio session.

Julie groaned and let her head flop back on the seat of the car they were currently being driven in.

“And you know your job is to keep me alive, not actually to critique my musical choices, right?”

He shrugged.

“I’m a good multitasker.”

And the most annoying part was he was always right. At least about the music. He seemed to always sense when she was stuck and somehow pipe up with the exact thing she needed to hear to get the music flowing again. Suggesting a tweak to a lyric or humming a guitar riff he thought she should try. It got to the point where she sometimes sought out his opinion before he could offer it on his own. He was clearly a musician as well as the world’s most unorthodox bodyguard.

He made her a better writer and if the way he grinned when he particularly liked one of her ideas was any indication, she thought she might make him better too.

She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of saying that out loud though.

So they went on like that for a few more months. Julie never brought up his trial period again and he continued to both annoy and intrigue her daily. So far he hadn’t actually had to do much protecting though. He had helped her escape a few overly excited twelve year olds once but that was about it.

Until it wasn’t.

Julie had heard plenty of stories about celebrities whose over enthusiastic fans had crossed the line to full on stalking. She just never thought it would happen to her. She always felt so close to her fans, so connected by the music she made for them. But when she came home one day and found the door to her condo ajar she realized she may have been a little naive.

She knew she should wait for Luke, he had been held up in the lobby checking in with the building security but he should be right behind her. He always did a sweep before leaving her for the evening. But it wouldn’t be the first time she had neglected to lock her own door when she left. She had so much on her mind right now. Maybe...maybe she had left it open?

She had the whole top floor of the building to herself, you needed a special key to even get up here in the elevator. It was hard to believe someone else had managed that.

Julie eased through the slightly open door and hesitated a few steps inside. Everything seemed normal maybe…

Then she heard it. Someone was in her bedroom and it sounded like they were going through her drawers. Her stomach sank. Should she run for the door? Or would that alert whoever was in there and send them after her?

Suddenly there was a presence behind her and Julie was just on the brink of letting out an involuntary yell when a familiar hand came down to grip her shoulder.

“Shhh,” Luke whispered directly into her ear. “Come on.”

He guided her backwards to one of her closets and pulled them inside quickly, somehow managing to pull the door closed behind them soundlessly. Julie’s heart thumped wildly in her chest as she tried to keep her breathing silent. Luke positioned himself between her and the closet door, keeping one hand on her shoulder and the other resting over his belt.

Did he have a knife hidden under that band tee? A gun? Why had she never asked any questions about how exactly he was prepared to protect her before?

Still. She had to admit she felt as safe with him as she would with anyone. All of the characteristic movement she associated with Luke had drained out of him, leaving him incredibly still but still thrumming with focused energy. He was listening at the door and she could see his brain cycling through calculations of what he would do next. She had a sudden fear of him leaving her, even if it was in an attempt to defend her.

She reached out without thinking and grabbed for his hand that had been resting on her shoulder and wrapped it in hers, holding on for dear life.

He glanced back at their linked hands and then up to her face offering her a soft smile that felt more like the Luke she knew. Somehow just that was enough to let her breaths come a little easier.

“You’re ok,” He whispered.

She nodded but didn’t drop his hand.

“Did you see them? Are they armed?”

He nodded once and Julie swallowed hard.

“Just stay put for a second,” Luke whispered again. “Backup is on the way and I’ve got you.”

Julie nodded. She believed him.

She focused on keeping her breathing steady and quiet. Soon she had calmed down enough to realize just how close they were to each other. It was a small closet just meant to toss a coat or two into when you walked in the door. Julie considered herself lucky that she hadn’t gotten around to putting anything in this particular closet or she would have been smothered by fabric right now. As it stood she was seated on the ground pressed directly up against Luke where he crouched against the door, their bodies touching in just about every way they could be.

This was not the time to be thinking about how big his eyes looked from this close or how those little bits of his hair that flipped up were tickling her cheek or how he smelled really, really good.

It wasn’t the time but that didn’t stop her from thinking about all of it.

Fear did strange things to people, ok?

Only it wasn’t just the fear because she had definitely noticed all of those things before. They just hadn’t been quite so in her face. Literally.

“Thanks,” He whispered, amusement clear in his hushed tone.

Julie snapped back to reality.

“For what?” She whispered back.

“You said I smell good. Really, really good,” He replied leaning in even closer so he could say it directly into her ear.

Julie froze in mortification.

“I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“No, that didn’t happen.”

He leaned back as far as he could go which wasn’t far and smiled before reaching up with his free hand to push a curl away from her face.

“Whatever you say, boss,” He said with his most annoying smirk.

Only she wasn’t annoyed. At all.

Trouble.

She had known he would be trouble.

Suddenly a floorboard creaked directly in front of the closet and Julie dropped his hand so she could slap her own over her mouth and muffle the whimper that tried to escape.

Luke was suddenly all business again, raising his finger to shush her before reaching for the door handle. Before she could react he had yanked the door open and was leaping out.

Julie thought she might have screamed but she wasn’t sure. She heard a scuffle but kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut, afraid to open them and see Luke hurt and her stalker coming straight for her.

A few long seconds later she heard the sound of the police arriving at the same time that a hand landed softly on her arm. She flinched slightly and opened her eyes to see Luke staring down at her, thoroughly out of breath but seemingly unscathed.

“You ok?” He asked.

She nodded and allowed him to pull her to her feet and lead her out of the closet. Thankfully the police had already hauled away whoever had been in her apartment but there were a couple of officers taking notes and speaking into their radios.

One approached them where Luke was keeping her upright with an arm around her shoulder.

“You’re a very lucky lady, Miss Molina. He was unarmed and your boyfriend had him in a heck of a headlock when we got here.”

Julie blushed.

“He’s not my...wait. The guy was unarmed?”

She looked up at Luke with a look that clearly demanded answers.

“He had a pen,” He shrugged as though the significance should have been obvious.

It was not.

“A pen?” She repeated. “You made me think he had a gun!”

“Hey, do you know how many ways someone can kill you with a pen?” Luke insisted. “Spoiler alert, it’s a lot.”

The cop looked back and forth between them with confused amusement.

“Well, we’ll leave you to it. We’ll check in with your building security and try to figure out how he got in. In the meantime you might want to look into hiring some protection.”

Julie felt Luke bristle next to her and couldn’t help but smile smugly.

“You’re right, I might.”

Then they were alone and Luke was moving through each room, checking for himself to see that everything was as it should be.

Eventually on his third check, Julie grabbed his arm and pulled him to a stop.

“Thank you, Luke. For everything. As much as it pains me to say it...you were amazing today.”

He grinned, and suddenly he was the Luke who followed her around and annoyed her with how right he was about everything again.

“Yeah, well, you’re amazing everyday, Boss. So I guess we’re even.”

Julie could feel herself blushing again.

Trouble.

She was in so much trouble.

#trope prompt game #fanfiction #juke #jatp #my fics

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moinsbienquekaworu · 2 years ago

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I did MATH for my OCs. Listen, I have a lot of creative energy right now, and I need to focus it on something but classes just aren't it. In other words here's the updated chronology for all my Jedi, now with Lineth, some tweaks to their ages and how long their apprenticeship lasted, and a CRC version because that seems to be what they would have been using? Timeline comparison with canon to come because I didn't feel like it tonight.

Yes, the CRC one is annoying to read, I'm considering remaking it honestly because it's almost as hard to figure out a date on it as it is on the BBY one. I could just shift it sliiiightly and it would be 5 to 10 to 5 to 10 again... hmmm.... Tomorrow afternoon when I'm bored mayhaps.

Inspired by that one post from @/spotted-newt that talks about older Padawans 😌 I just love the idea that they either needed a longer time or they just had so much stuff to learn. In Korcha's case I'm also playing with the fact Harches live centuries (how many? fuck if I know) and the idea they might mature a little slower. Debated making Reil a little older to accommodate both the few years in between his apprenticeship and Devafe's and his disability but I think 15 years is long enough for him to master what he needs and wants to know. I mean both he and Korcha have to let go at some point :') I don't know how long Lineth's apprenticeship would have lasted if the war had miraculously ended instead of everything else that happened, but she would certainly have needed time too. Lots of confidence to gain and trauma to work on :) Having their ages written down is very strange but it helps put it in perspective.

Anyway this was it, next time on Ram's OC show and tell: probably more SW OCs let's be honest they are taking up a solid third of my brain right now

#this post dedicated to the beloved mutuals who like my posts and i assume read them #tomas parsp and pigeon if you are reading this i love you so so much thanks for being my audience #i do it because i'm having fun but it's better when you can share it with people #i cannot express how nice it is to know i'm not just shouting into the void #it's going to be a year since i created them in like a month or two and they've come so far along... i love them #i worry about not having a clear vibe pinned for stellar and jellyfish but hey. they're just not done yet.#they have time to cook some more. it'll come. i'm pretty sure of these guys because i thought them up last year #wow i have an ocs tag now #wow i have a ramble tag now #star wars

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sugarmaplewings-fics · 4 years ago

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Disclosed

Pairing: Bakugou x reader x Kirishima

Warnings: Like, two sex jokes? Nothing that crazy. Once again, gay, bi and poly as fuck. Oh and language too.

Author’s note:

So uh, I guess this ends the saga of Little Secret. I’m still doing Kiribaku fics, but I guess I just had a bit of a theme going here in this trilogy. I tried to focus more on Eijirou in this one since he kind of got pushed to the side a bit in the other two stories. Little Secret had more of y/n’s omniscience, while Big Secret was more Bakugou driven (big brain hehe).

You can probably ignore the ending of this since it’s really really cheesy and it was the only thing I could think of at the time I wrote it (I think this is another one of my fics that I finished at 3 am or something).

Anyhow, I’d say this is my favorite part of the trilogy in some ways! It’s super soft and fluffy, and I really like how I wrote it out. I seriously hope you enjoy it!

I love you guys!

-Sugar

☆*･゜ﾟ･**･゜ﾟ･*☆.☆*･゜ﾟ･**･゜ﾟ･*☆

As much as Kirishima loved being a hero, honestly, he loved his days off more.

He watched from in front of the counter as you amicably bickered with Bakugou, bustling around the kitchen still in your respective pajamas.

"I'm just saying we could have something other than cinnamon rolls for breakfast," the blond man pouted, tailing you as you walked from the fridge to the oven.

"It'll be fun," you said. "Geez, we don't have to keep up with that hero diet you set up every day. It's our day off, let me have my sugar and carbs."

Bakugou began to grumble something about the amount of chemicals that were probably in the pre-made pastry dough, but you paid him no heed. The little cheerful beeping tones of the oven sounded through the room as you set the temperature.

"How long is that going to take?" Kirishima asked.

"Like half an hour," you said. "Need a snack 'til then? We need to eat these oranges before they go bad."

"Sure, I'll take one." You tossed the orange fruit to him, which he caught easily and began to peel.

"You want one, 'Tsuki?"

Bakugou grumbled a "Fine" and you handed him his, taking a third for yourself.

Normally, you may have been able to wait until the sweet pastry rolls were done, but instead you'd spent the last two hours very slowly waking up and cuddling in bed.

As per usual, Katsuki had woken up first, letting his eyes adjust to the warm tones the room had taken on with the rising of the sun. He remembered today was his day off, and a final bout of tension left his shoulders. His back had previously been pressed against Eijirou's, but now he decided to turn himself over to face him. Peeking through scarcely opened lids, Bakugou glimpsed your form on the other side of Kirishima, scarcely visible as you snuggled into his chest. Bakugou allowed himself something he only saved in silent, private moments like this: a smile. Just a small one, barely even lifting the side of his mouth. But he couldn't help it. The sight of his perfect boyfriend and girlfriend fast asleep in each others' arms brought him such an overwhelming feeling of compersion, he simply couldn't help himself.

Bakugou draped an arm over Kirishima's side, rubbing at your forearm with gentle strokes of his fingers. You hummed in your sleep, pushing yourself even closer into the red-haired man holding you. The blond breathed in Eijirou's heavy, musky scent, letting it flood his nose and instill a sense of unparalleled calm over himself.

The shifting motions on either side of him caused Eijirou to begin to blink his own eyes open, shedding the foggy haze of sleep from his mind. Dreams from his previous night's rest danced and fleeted at the edges of his memory, before they were ultimately discarded and lost to the unrelenting abyss that is abandoned remembrance. He felt warm. Warm, and comfortable, and happy, and perfect.

Eijirou noticed the steady movement of the arm placed over him, signaling that Bakugou was awake. You, on the other hand, slept on; eyes lightly closed, lips parted with breath, gently clasping the front of his shirt. Kirishima slowly pressed a kiss to your forehead, followed by another and then another.

His soft lips combined with the soothing motions of Katsuki's hand finally brought you smoothly out of your slumber, groaning a bit in your consciousness.

"You two awake yet?" Bakugou's voice sounded from over Kirishima's broad shoulders. It was a little gruffer than usual from sleep and it made you smile.

"Yeah," Kirishima answered for you, meeting your (E/C) orbs with his own.

You pulled your arm from under Bakugou's hand, moving it until your fingers were able to intertwine and lock with his over Eijirou's side. He felt safe under your loving union, tying yourselves together over him so the three of you became one unit.

That was how your morning had started. For a long time, the three of you laid there, chatting in low tones as you and Katsuki snuggled into either side of Eijirou, who later turned to lie on his back to tuck each of you under an arm. The experience was nothing other than peaceful, the three of you content to simply lay in each others' presence.

Ever since that one fateful afternoon nearly two years ago, your lives could scarcely have improved more. Inviting Bakugou into your relationship was the best decision you'd made, and now here you were. The three of you had graduated from UA and begun your lives as heroes; Eijirou still worked as an indispensable sidekick under Fatgum, while Bakugou was still in the process of getting a hero agency of his own off the ground. But today was a day you had settled on to spend completely together, and it was all going just wonderfully.

Somehow, the idea had gotten into your head that you'd make cinnamon rolls for breakfast, so once you and your boyfriends eventually crawled out of bed, you set about fulfilling the urge.

Kirishima popped another orange slice into his mouth, watching you absentmindedly as you pulled out everything you would need. Which, to say, wasn't much, seeing as you were simply baking them from a can. As you pulled out the pan and cooking spray, Eijirou's red eyes flicked over to Bakugou, who had removed the cardboard tube from the fridge again. The redhead fought back a smirk as he watched his shared boyfriend scowl at the ingredients, thinking back to his almost monthly 'your body is a temple and you should treat it as such' lectures he'd give the two of you.

You caught sight of him as well, striding towards him and plucking the container from his hands. Bakugou started grumbling again, turning and exiting the kitchen to presumably go get dressed or something.

Kirishima took the opportunity to come up behind you as you popped the cardboard cylinder open, letting the preformed dough puff up as it met the air. His arm wrapped loosely around your waist as he bent a little to place his head on your shoulder. "Need help with anything?" he asked.

"No, thanks," you said, taking the unbaked rolls and filling your pre-sprayed pan.

He hummed and straightened, moving so he could lean against the counter. He noticed your orange next to him, partially peeled and abandoned. Taking one of the remaining slices from his own, he held it out towards you. "Hey, babe."

You turned and caught sight of it, smiling as you took the little slice between your teeth. You pulled it into your mouth as he pushed from his end, and you began to chew. "Mmm, that one's good."

Eijirou grinned back in agreement and ate the last slice. He reached for your abandoned one, working his nails beneath the pliable peel. "So what made you buy cinnamon rolls? Other than the fact that they're delicious, that is."

"Cold nostalgia," you said, tweaking the dough in the filled pan so it looked right. "I saw them at the store and thought to myself, 'Hey, I remember eating those. I could totally make them myself. Tasty.' Also I thought you might like them. We can all share." You picked up the pan in one hand and carried it to the oven, checking that it was the right temperature and sliding them in.

"I'm not sure about Katsuki," Eijirou said, picking some of the white fibers off another orange slice. "He didn't seem too thrilled."

"Meh," you said, fingers tapping out twenty-seven minutes on the oven timer, bringing more happy beeps to your ears. "If he doesn't eat any of them, there's just more for us, I guess. But you know how he is. You think he'll crack in front of us or wait until we leave?"

Eijirou smiled as you walked back to him, running your hands up his sides affectionately as you grinned up at him. "I'll bet one of us will find him having one in the middle of the night," he wagered.

"You're on," you giggled, swiping another orange slice from him.

"Hey! I would have given you some if you had asked, you know."

"Oops." You slid the slice slowly into your mouth, keeping your eyes on his own. A burst of sweet citric juice filled your mouth as you bit down, and you shut your eyes for a second just to fully enjoy it.

The sensation of a finger poking at your nose caused your lids to flutter open. Your eyes crossed to look at the offending digit, rolling back up and focusing on Eijirou's face.

"Bep," he said, the note accompanying his action.

You booped his nose in unhostile revenge, beginning to giggle as a mini-war began. Eijirou used the pad of his pointer finger to jab lightly at your face, making a new sound effect with each one. You had the advantage since both of your hands were free; tapping both your index fingers on his torso, face, and shoulders.

"Boop."

"Beep."

"Bap."

Bakugou shuffled back into the kitchen and watched your cheerful assaults on one another, both his cheeks and his heart warming at the sound of your giggles. "What the hell are you two doing?"

"Being in love," Eijirou said, proceeding to poke at your cheek. "Get over here, Katsu."

Bakugou just tched and wandered over to the oven to look at the baking rolls. "Dumbasses."

"Better hurry up, 'Tsuki," you said, stepping closer to Eijirou. "Or else you're going to miss out on the kisses."

"Oooooh-," Kirishima drew out for a second before your lips met his. He reciprocated, noting how you both shared the same orange-citrus taste. Out of curiosity, he peeked his eyes open to meet Bakugou's.

The blond man scowled, finally stomping over to you. "Fine. But I'm going in the middle." He wedged himself between you two.

"Yay!" Your arms wound around his slim waist, resting just above his hips. Your lips attached themselves to the base of Bakugou's neck, while Kirishima smooched at his mouth. It was quiet and sweet for a moment, each partaking in another's lips until you were satisfied, swapping positions when necessary.

You separated from Bakugou, running your thumb over his cheekbone for a moment as you looked into his eyes. He'd gotten better about asking for and receiving affection over the years you'd been dating, but it still brought warmth crashing through your system every time.

"Eiji Baby?" you asked, keeping your eyes on Bakugou.

"Yeah?"

"How much time is left on the oven?"

Kirishima glanced up at the glowing digits. "Eighteen minutes."

You hummed. "I'll get started on the icing for my rolls."

"Our rolls," Eijirou corrected, grinning at your over-the-shoulder eye roll you gave him as you made your way to the pantry to grab some powdered sugar.

Bakugou had the same reaction as you, tsking under his breath and moving to lean against the counter next to Kirishima. His position wasn't held long however, since you soon returned with your bag of sugar and the carton of milk, shooing them away so you could use the space. You pulled down a bowl and poured in some sugar and milk, beginning to mix it into a thick liquid with a spoon.

"Need a taste tester?" Kirishima asked hopefully.

"Eiji, this is pure sugar."

He glanced back at the ingredients. "Yeah."

There was something undeniably satisfying about watching the powder mix with the milk, going from fine and crumbly and turning into a sweet liquid mixture to later be drizzled over your pastries.

Maybe it was the motions of your hand as you manipulated the spoon. Maybe it was the ambiance of the room, surrounded by the two men you loved and planned to spend the rest of your life with. Either way, the song that had quietly been thrumming at the back of your mind wandered to the front, and the next thing you knew, you were humming.

Bakugou and Kirishima looked up at the sound of your voice, small smiles spreading their lips. Eijirou recognized the tune you were quietly singing to yourself, quickly adding his voice to your own. Your cheeks heated when you met his eyes, yet you continued to hum along with him. For a moment, you were both content with hitting the notes (or at least, trying to in some people's cases) wordlessly. But then you came upon the chorus, and it was as though you simultaneously reached a shared agreement that it should be belted out properly.

"S'GONNA TAKE A LOT TO DRAG ME AWAY FROM YOUUUU! THERE'S NOTHING THAT A HUNDRED MEN OR MORE COULD EVER DO! I BLESS THE RAINS DOWN IN AFRICAAAA—"

Bakugou watched you with an expression of general disgust and confusion. This was an act, of course, for the most part. He could never quite get used to the spontaneous concerts you both would occasionally throw, singing whatever obnoxious song that came to your minds. You probably only had one brain cell between you two, and it was a tossup of who got it for the day. But there was something about it that made his heart stir and his neck prickle. Maybe it was the absolute glow about Kirishima as he threw back his head to belt out lyrics. Maybe it was the way you had taken the spoon out of the icing bowl, singing at it as if it were a microphone. Bakugou would die before he ever joined in, but he never objected to watching.

The moment the song finished, you started on another. Kirishima turned to you as a new idea struck you. You lifted your hands to a sort of air guitar, playing a bit of the intro to the song in your head before beginning to sing again:

"We're no strangers to love. You know the rules, and so do I~"

Kirishima smiled, liking the way you thought. He admired your sense of humor and how well you went along with goofing off with him. The redhead let you sing the first verse, dancing around the kitchen space from him to Bakugou, looking at each of them as you sang some of the lyrics and wiggling your eyebrows.

It wasn't long before Eijirou jumped in again, joining you as you sang to Katsuki. "Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and, desert you~"

Eijirou took your spoon as you rocked out on your personal invisible guitar, going to town on chords that didn't exist.

Bakugou fought down the butterflies swarming in his stomach at the sight of you two having fun. You would lean against him and grin up into his face from one side, while Kirishima draped an arm over his shoulders and passionately sang into your spoon. Katsuki noticed that some of the icing had dripped down onto his hand, but the redhead seemed to not have noticed.

You paused to giggle at Kirishima, who started taking the song as seriously as he could. His eyes were squeezed shut, fist curled into a ball as he drew out some of the lyrics as though it were so much more than an old-timey memed love song. You let your voice fade as he did his own thing, only offering it as further back up vocals. Eventually, he reached the final reiteration of the chorus, and let himself riff on the final lines as a finisher. When he was done, he opened his eyes, finding that he had even kneeled down on the floor a little in his passion. He stood and grinned, and you enthusiastically applauded his performance.

"That was for you, babes!" he said, pointing at his small audience of two.

Bakugou scoffed, but you could hear how it was a little choked from how cute he had found it. The liar. Both you and Eijirou could see how his cheeks had changed a few shades darker right in front of you.

Kirishima strolled confidently back up to you, swooping each of you into an arm and kissing Katsuki full on the lips without warning. Bakugou's eyes widened at the contact, cheeks burning even more than before. Eijirou pulled back with a satisfying smack of his lips, diving in to give you the same treatment. As per usual, you were more receptive to the kiss, more than happy to throw your arms around his neck and partake in his lips.

"Enjoy the song, there?" you teased once you pulled back, tracing your fingers under his jawline.

"Hell yeah!" Eijirou flashed those perfect sharp little teeth of his in yet another heart-stopping grin. Did he have any idea what that smile did to both Bakugou and you? He had to know it turned your hearts to pure hot chocolate, right?

"Got a song rec, Bakubabe?" you asked, turning to your blond boyfriend. "You mustn't be excluded from our concert on this fine morning."

Katsuki rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Doesn't matter anyway because your shit rolls are almost done."

You glanced at the oven timer, which was, in fact, counting down the seconds until it went off. "Ha ha ha! My children!"

You slid out of Eijirou's hold to grab your oven mitt out of its drawer. The oven went off with a drawn-out beep the moment you stepped up to it, cracking the door open and taking a peek inside. A wonderful smell hit you in the face along with a gust of hot air, and the sight of six perfectly golden cinnamon rolls greeted you.

"Look at them!" you said as you pulled them out with your mitted hand. You turned off the oven and canceled the timer before walking back to the counter to let the pan cool.

"Can I ice them?" Eijirou asked, coming up behind you to get a good look.

"Not yet. They have to cool first."

"Aww, man."

You pulled out a new spoon to use for frosting, since the previous one had been breathed all over. Next you began to clear off the counter, picking up any pieces of orange peel abandoned from breakfast.

Kirishima leaned against the counter again, taking a deep breath of the cinnamon roll smell that had flooded the kitchen. "I love it when you bake, (Y/N)," he said. "It's so much fun. The kitchen smells great, everything always tastes great—"

"Always?" you asked skeptically with a smirk.

"I guess there was that one time," he admitted. "That was—that was probably not a very good idea."

"If it weren't for me," Bakugou cut in, "you would have burned the whole house down."

"An artist must experiment with her craft." You flipped your hair a bit, turning back to your kitchen maintenance. There wasn't much to do. Between both yours and Bakugou's preference for a neat house, your counters usually stayed pretty clear.

Eijirou glanced at the bowl of icing, dipping the tip of his finger into the white mixture. "You know what this looks like?"

"No," you and Bakugou said at the same time firmly, understanding what he meant immediately.

"Shot down," Eijirou said. "You're right, that wasn't that good."

You putzed for another minute, finally hovering your hand over the cooling pan. "That should be good enough."

You had Eijirou harden the tips of his fingers to hold the pan as you began moving the rolls out onto a plate. He started humming again as you drove the spatula under the baked goods.

"Seriously?" Bakugou asked, having inched closer to watch. "Again with the singing?"

"I've got a song in my manly, chivalrous heart," Kirishima said, turning to grin at him. "Can't help it. I'm in the zone."

"I'm liking this zone," you said. "It's fun."

You pushed the icing bowl to Eijirou and took out another spoon for yourself, dipping it in and allowing the sugary liquid to drizzle over the golden brown confections. Kirishima did the same on his own, still humming the tune of Be A Man from Mulan and nodding his head to the individual notes. You danced along with him, moving your hips to his favorite Disney song.

Kirishima's eyes wandered down to your swaying movements. You really did wear those shorts nicely.

You jumped at the sensation of a large hand gently grabbing at your butt. Turning, you saw Eijirou's slight smile on his lips. "Eiji?"

"What?"

"Didn't you get enough last night?"

Kirishima shrugged, finally removing his hand. "Can't a man admire his woman's perfect body?"

You rolled your eyes, tapping the sugar-coated spoon to his nose.

He blinked at the cold sticky sensation, going cross-eyed in an attempt to look at the drop of icing. "Yeah, I probably deserved that."

You smirked and rolled your eyes as you went back to icing your cinnamon rolls, watching Eijirou out of the corner of your eye. He was trying to figure out if his tongue was long enough to lick it off the tip of his nose, but so far, of course, he was having difficulties.

"Idiot," Bakugou said, taking Kirishima's chin and turning his face to his. He captured the sweet white droplet between his lips and swiped his tongue over it.

Kirishima's eyes widened at the gesture. "Katsuki?"

"What?" Bakugou shot him a teasing grin. "You had something on your face."

You chuckled at the two of them, tearing off a roll from the bunch. Eijirou noticed your action and took one for himself, cheeks a little pinker than usual. Bakugou watched as you both bit down.

Eijirou bounced a little on his toes as he chewed the sweet bread. "So good!"

You smiled and nodded in agreement. "Mhm!"

Bakugou looked from you to Kirishima, then to the plate of warm rolls.

"Sure you don't want one, Katsuki?" you asked. "They're pretty good."

The blond sighed, finally grabbing a roll for himself. "It's too late to be cooking breakfast now."

"He cracked!" you said, turning your gaze to Kirishima.

"Did not." Bakugou aggressively took a large bite out of his cinnamon roll.

"You said you weren't going to have any." You cocked your head at him, taking another bite of your own.

"Did I?" Bakugou smirked at you and licked a bit of frosting off his lip.

You thought back for a moment. Maybe he hadn't. He'd certainly acted like it though.

"Well, do you like it?" you prodded.

"Sure." Bakugou shrugged and examined the cross-section of his roll. "Probably would have been better if you'd actually made it yourself."

You folded your arms. "Too much work. I wanted a cinnamon roll and they had them in the store. Simple as throwing them in the oven."

"But the preservatives," he argued.

"But my lacking baking skills. Besides, now I'll live forever."

"Hah? That's not how that works, dumbass."

"Well, I think they're perfect." Eijirou cut in. He put an arm around you and Katsuki and pulled you into either side of him. "You've got the spice—" he kissed Katsuki on his cheek, "—and you've got the sugar." He kissed your cheek.

"What the fuck, Shitty Hair."

"I'm not always sugar," you half-heartedly protested, snorting a little at his cheesiness and ignoring Bakugou.

Eijirou paused for a second, considering. "Yeah, okay. But . . . my metaphor."

"Your metaphor is stupid."

You swatted at Katsuki. "Oh, shut up. What are you in this situation, Eiji?"

He thought for a moment, then shrugged. "I'm not sure."

"Hmm . . . maybe you tie us together," you said, beginning to run your fingertips over his forearm. "Roll us up tight in your arms."

Both Kirishima and Bakugou blinked at you for a moment, cheeks dusted a shade darker than normal.

"So we're a cinnamon roll?" Kirishima asked.

"Ye—"

"I AM NOT A CINNAMON ROLL!" Katsuki shuffled against Eijirou's arm without really trying to get away.

"I think you are," you said. "What do you say, Eiji? He's an adorable smol bean—"

"No."

"—too precious for this world—"

"NO."

"—protecc at all costs—"

Bakugou threw the remaining third of his cinnamon roll at you, and it bounced off your head onto the floor.

"HEY—!"

He slipped out of Kirishima's arm for real this time, making an advance towards you. You ducked out of the redhead's hold too, running off to the living room.

"I PUT MY HEART AND SOUL INTO THOSE ROLLS, KATSUKI!" you called behind you.

"Sure."

"JUST ADMIT YOU'RE MY PRECIOUS BABY CINNAMON ROLL."

"Never!"

Eijirou listened to the sounds of his partners chasing each other through the house. Finishing off his morning treat, he smiled, thinking about how lucky he was to have the two of you. You no longer hid anything from each other, and everything was laid out in the open. Your futures were bright, and Kirishima knew in his heart that you'd forever be happy as long as you were together. From now on, your feelings would remain disclosed.

☆*･゜ﾟ･**･゜ﾟ･*☆.☆*･゜ﾟ･**･゜ﾟ･*☆

[Big Secret]

[Little Secret]

Taglist: @loxbbg @runrabbitrun3 @basicaegyo @iiminibattlehero @katsugay @nabo39 @pyrofanatic @sendhelpimstupid @sokkasangel @xoxopam4

#bakugou katsuki #bakugou x reader #katsuki bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #kirishima eijirou #kirishima x reader #eijirou kirishima x reader #kirishima eijirou x reader #kiribaku x reader #bnha x reader #mha x reader #reader insert #sugar fics

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potentialproblem01 · 3 years ago

Text

Minor Acts- a Jan/male reader fic

For @thesunflowersutra You wanted some fic, I have delivered. A week late but who’s counting.

Also posted on my AO3 if you prefer to read it there, mark for later, etc, whatever.

Minor Acts- 1.6k E-rated pwp smut

Jan looks at you over the cherry of his burning smoke. You'd been planning this for a while now, pouring out papers and schematics across the floor of his room. The work was finally coming to fruition.

Tension had been growing since you’d levered yourself off the floor earlier that day, nearly slipping on a stray paper before hauling Jan up too, ending up pulling him into your space. There'd been the hum of tension and anticipation as you packed bags and gathered supplies.

The plan was solid and it worked. The two of you watched the bomb go off from across the bay hidden by the night and old ocean-swept trees and distance. Coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other behind matching smiles watching the flames catch, shockwaves echoing across the water. The collapse of the human anaesthetic of TV.

You turn to him, euphoria of a well executed plan simmering and transforming into something a little more wild and further untamed; less satisfaction and more hunger. The discipline of the fight slinking out of you as you catch his eye, trailing over his nose and his scruff.

He sees you looking and like always, it’s a battle of who gives in first. You chuck your cigarette aside.

You’re never really sure who wins or loses these games but you lean in first, catching his bottom lip. The night stretches unlimited by possibility as you push him over on the blanket, climbing on top and sitting across his hips as you feel his interest start to grow. He can feel yours assuredly as you press him down, ribcages preventing you from getting closer.

The wind had died down from the day and the peace of starlight and calm water tempers the flare of need you have despite the carnage across the bay. You go slow, enjoying his taste; nicotine and the sweet remnants of the joint from earlier, cheap wine from lunch, the salt and freedom of the sea.

He gets his hand under your shirt, trailing over your abs and toying with the band of your jeans. His eyes glitter in the dark, full of mischief with the promise of indecent misconduct. His hands move back up, across the thin lower ribs and brushing against your nipples as they push up, encouraging you to lift your arms and discard your t-shirt. The worn out cotton lands in the grass and you move your hands back down to him, getting one hand in the longer hair on top of his head and a forearm to the side to keep from smothering him. His arms come around your middle, digging into the soft muscles of your back.

You give him another kiss before peppering his face with them: cupid's bow, tip of his nose before dropping them across his beard line. He lets out a soft sigh and grinds up against your ass, using his grip around you to lift himself into you, being his usual needy self. You press down with your hips, angles of your bones clicking with his, your arousal trapped between you. He still struggles with trying to create some friction but you don’t let him.

You latch onto his neck, nibbling and sucking to bruise, pulling his head back to give you space to work. Torturing him when he so clearly needs you. You pull on his hair a little more, not to hurt but to tell him to behave.

You sit back and pull him up a little, letting go to get his shirt off too. His rough skin tastes like the sea as you lick at him. Down over the soft swell of his pec to lavish his nipple in reward for a job well done today. He mewls so pretty, soft chest fuzz sliding against your afternoon coarseness.

You nose along his skin before crossing over to the other side, giving the same reward to the other nipple. He moves his hands to your hair, dragging fingers across the shorn velvet part at the base of your skull before tugging on the longer strands. You resist his insistence to hurry as you back down his body, savoring his impatience as you kiss down his linea alba, playing with the hair there.

You hook your fingers into his waistband, sliding them around to undo the button and pull them down and off. You stand up to shuck your own jeans off too, reaching for the backpack. He props himself up, watching you halo orange in the firelight. The night air is cooling you faster than the draining remnants of danger.

You packed the lube in the side pouch.

You settle back between his legs popping the cap and squeezing the cool liquid across your fingers. Tracing down the seam, pressing the soft skin before skipping down and pressing gently into his hole. He’s still a little open from the morning and your finger sinks in so easy. He’s wiggling, begging for another and you oblige; he did so good today, he’s earned it.

You dip in a second finger, pushing at the heat of his ring before hooking up and pressing gently at his prostate. He lets out a soft shout, not prepared for you to get to him so quickly. You usually take your time, but you have no patience for that tonight as your work burns behind you. There’s something driving you to skip the foreplay and get right to being close, like a final closure to the plan. Like spending the stolen cash. Like hanging the stolen art.

The papers in the morning will speculate about an accident but the evening editions will display the note he left about TV being the opiate of the masses on the front page.

You dip in a third finger, pulling at his ring teasing and lilting. Feathery touches to his thighs and the cut of his hip bones. He’s a squirming mess beneath you, so beautiful in the dark and smelling like the remnants of plastic explosives.

You withdraw your fingers and pull him in by the hips, grabbing the lube again and drizzling some over your cock before spreading it over yourself. You grab his hips to line yourself up before pulling him up your thighs to get close enough. You angle his hips with one hand and guide yourself to his hole with the other before pushing in, the resistance light as you enter him.

His face makes the most exquisite scrunch as you stretch him open again. You fit yourself in and let go of his hips to drag a slick hand up his stomach, lube sticking to his happy trail. You tweak a nipple before leaning in to steal a kiss. He kisses back with a whimper, chasing your lips as you pull away and grip his waist.

You thrust slow and sure, his heat incredible in the night air and you want this to last.

His skin is warm against you, sticky with the ambient salt, his hair stiff with it. When you run your hand through the strands, they stick out in every direction, softening him in your eyes. Here, under you, he’s hardly just a hard-eyed revolutionary, he’s one of the most beautiful people and minds you’ve ever met. You’re pretty sure the image of him spread on your cock as a satellite station burns behind you casting long orange shadows across the salted bay will stay with you forever.

You keep thrusting in with easy and slow strokes until he looks so fragile he might cry. You like when he cries but now is hardly the place to put him back together after. You pick up the pace, changing the angle by getting further under him.

He soon starts to shake, tightening around you. You’re not near enough to the edge to come at the same time but you think you’ll have plenty of chances to synchronize in other aftermaths. With another drag across his prostate, he’s coming, ropes painting his stomach and reaching up his chest. Some hitting you. In his blissed out state, you fuck into him with abandon, seeking your own release until you find it burning through your core and burying deep inside him.

You stay there, buried in him, panting. He’s starting to come down to earth himself, looking at you with hazy brown eyes. Your breaths eventually even and a calm settles over your little beachy cliff. The stars are obscured now by the smoke and light of the flames but you can feel them up there, twinkling away because everything is as it should be.

You pull out of him, cock soft and wet with lube and come. You back away to wipe off with the edge of a blanket and lean in to look as your come dribbles out of his ass. It’s one of your favorite sights. You plant a kiss on both his thighs, licking up some of his cooling come before wiping the rest away with the blanket too.

He lets out this beautiful sigh and you know he’s about to pass out. You’re safe for now. Content. Something bordering happiness crawling up the base of your brain stem. You hate to think it’s love but if the bomb detonates...

He falls asleep after he comes like he usually does, exactly in the position you left him in. His arms are splayed on the blanket, legs pushed out from his hips where you cleaned him off.

You let him sleep for a while. The sirens have only just started blaring, red and blue lights not yet flashing across the water. He’s gorgeous when he sleeps, looking much less angry with the world. He’ll have another idea when he wakes but for now you bask in the heat of the flames and his love. Tomorrow will be another plan.

After all, what’s a minor act of terrorism between lovers?

#daniel bruhl fanfiction #jan weingartner #jan edukators #the edukators #jan x reader #male reader #daniel brühl #daniel bruhl smut

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itsclydebitches · 4 years ago

Note

Um one thing i wanna ask is why do you want penny to stay a robot? She would have been hacked again as it wouldn’t make sense for someone not to try it again... ignoring the pinnochio allusion thing cause of course RWBY shouldn’t follow fairytales like a script, but just thinking about practicality as the problem would just occur again.

Also, people complaining about how its a problem they cured her illness (having the virus)... why would you want her too keep the virus when its literally about to kill her and the cure is right there???? I dunno some of the complaints have me a bit confused and i need clarity on them.

Like, If they didn’t grab the relic for themselves, they would have been hunted by ironwood for penny, she would have been killed for the powers to open the vault etc... if they went to the vault with penny without their plan, she would have died... its all a lose lose for penny to me at least

Questions are genuine and I’m not trying to be rude or anything :)

Happy to explain, anon! :D

I’m going to break this up into three parts: The claim that people are upset about Penny’s virus going away, the idea that she’s in more danger as a robot, and the assumption that she had to be made human to fix this problem.

The first is the easiest to tackle simply because I haven’t seen any of this myself. I don’t know why someone would “want her to keep the virus when it’s literally about to kill her.” My guess would be that there’s been some miscommunication at play. I’m not saying just because I haven’t seen these takes doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but rather that I have seen a lot of critical takes since Saturday and they all boil down to the fans being upset that Penny’s android identity was removed, not that the virus was removed along with it. Of course we’re happy about that additional outcome, we just believe it would have been possible — even easy — to achieve that same outcome without taking a core part of Penny’s identity along with it (more on that below).

Secondly, if one of the main arguments for Penny getting a human body is “It’s less dangerous” then I personally don’t find that persuasive. Yes, it means no one can try to hack her again... but it also means Penny can die all the horrible, messy human deaths that she was previously immune from (within the boundary of how long Pietro can give her aura, anyway). We saw it happen on screen. Penny was able to go from this

to this

purely because she was an android. Penny, due to her synthetic body, was able to be torn apart and then — pretty casually it seems, based on Pietro’s comments — be put back together, given more aura, and booted up with absolutely no downsides. Penny shrugged off death with a smile! No human body can do that. So yes, she’s vulnerable to hacking as an android, but she’s vulnerable to everything else as a human, things like Nora’s scars and Yang’s lost arm, things that android!Penny would have shrugged off. Each body has its benefits and its downsides, with my personal belief being that, from a combat standpoint, a synthetic body has far fewer downsides and far greater benefits. But that opinion aside, objectively I don’t think a human body is intrinsically safer for Penny in the long run, especially not after her biggest moment in the series was coming back from the dead. She can’t do that anymore.

Which then touches on our third topic with the question: Why couldn’t the show have fixed android!Penny in a way that ensures she can never be hacked again? See, we have to remember that RWBY is a constructed, fictional story. Nothing “has” to happen. Or rather, nothing has to happen until the writers impose limitations on the text that the viewer expects them to adhere to. For example, if you impose the implied rules of 1. “Our four main characters will make it to the end of the series” and 2. “A character, without aura, will die from a spear through the gut,” then RWBY has to find a way for Weiss to survive Cinder’s attack (rule #1), but that solution can’t be, “Weiss is just randomly okay after a deadly injury, I guess” (rule #2). Hence, we get the solution of “Jaune unlocks his semblance and heals Weiss for her” and it works! It’s a solution that viewers like because it obeys all the rules, both overt and implied. Meanwhile, the problem with Penny’s solution is two-fold. The first is that it contradicts the entire journey she’s been on of “Android girl learns that she’s real and human just the way she is,” which I’ve already spoken about extensively (there are other posts on that), but the second problem is that the show ignores other possibilities and makes up new rules solely to reach this ending.

Why is Penny made human? Because of Ambrosius’ rules. Why do those rules exist? Because the writers said they do in this episode. It’s not that they introduced these rules episodes or even whole volumes ago, thereby requiring that they adhere to them once Penny’s life is suddenly caught up in them (like with the Jaune example). Rather, the viewer only learned these were limitations while Penny was being fixed. So the writers could have just... not included those. There’s no reason why, in developing Ambrosius’ abilities right then and there, the show couldn’t have made them into something a little different. Have Ruby go, “We want you to magic up an anti-virus program that will heal Penny completely, with no chance of the virus returning. Thus, when you create something new, it doesn’t matter if that program disappears. The virus is already gone!” If the response to that is, “But Clyde, Ambrosius can’t create something he doesn’t understand” that’s a rule that the writers just made up. No one forced them to suddenly impose that limitation. It was a choice. Or even if we have to have it for some reason, you’re telling that the group gets to have the schematics for their escape route — essentially inventing a teleportation system because Whitley looked at airship flight paths for a few minutes — but they can’t have Penny or Pietro draw up an anti-virus program? There’s no reason why these rules couldn’t have been tweaked to cure android!Penny.

There’s also no reason why Ambrosius needed to be involved at all. As just mentioned, Pietro exists and many fans (myself included) thought he would be the solution. Imagine for a moment we had a slightly different version of these events. Penny’s virus is briefly halted by Jaune and, finally given a moment to breathe, she asks where her father is. Last she saw, he was floating in a dead Amity after Cinder’s attack. This reminds Ruby that hey, Pietro made Penny! He’s just as smart as Watts and is far more knowledgeable of her systems. Maybe he can help? So the group heads to Amity and, due to the same techno mumbo jumbo that launched Amity in the first place, or had Klein heal Penny after her crash, Pietro says yes, he can get rid of the virus. Better yet, he can slightly redesign Penny so that she’s made un-hackable in the future, using (again, mumbo jumbo) parts from the now useless Amity. But it will take time. It’s then that the group receives Ironwood’s message and learns that they don’t have time. The reality that Penny will not be cured before the hour time limit necessitates that they come up with a creative way of dealing with Ironwood. Enter Emerald. Her semblance can make it seem like Penny is there, despite her being fixed by her dad miles away. We get an extended fight with Ironwood and, at episode’s end, the new and improved Penny catches up, ready to open the vault for them, this time of her own free will.

Now, obviously I just made this up off the top of my head — far from perfect — but a scenario like this:

Remembers that Pietro exists and lets him/Maria as an assistant do something for the plot

Re-uses Amity now that it’s just a floating pile of junk metal

Creates a scenario where we get to see Penny and Pietro confront the fact that she was created to be a tool (sorry I originally made you so easily hackable/put a self-destruct in your brain)

Maintains all the main story beats like Penny’s near escape, Ironwood’s message, and using Emerald’s semblance

Makes space to tackle other issues like the complaint that Ironwood was taken down too quickly

Achieves the desired result of healing Penny without taking away her android identity

Proves that, because we can easily come up with another solution, the idea that she “had” to become human is inaccurate. There were always other options

Hell, we can even ask why the story bothered with a self-destruct threat in the first place. Seriously, why did Watts do that? I have my own headcanons, but the show never says. This act is the entire BASIS for Penny’s conflict and the show didn’t bother to a) say why he’d do this or b) explain why he’d do this when Salem would presumably like having a Maiden to control. It’s counterintuitive and the show never grapples with that. We have no canonical answer here. More importantly, what else changes if Penny’s self-destruct order is taken out of the narrative? Absolutely nothing. She’s still hacked and struggles to keep Amity afloat, still flies to Ruby, still wakes up and needs to be calmed down by Nora, still tells Whitley her order, still fights the Hound, still tries to escape, still tells Ruby to kill her so she doesn’t open the vault, and Ruby still realizes that opening the vault might be the answer. They could have taken Penny to the door and nullified the virus by letting her do what the virus ordered. Penny is fine now, they snag the Relic, and the group proceeds to save all of Mantle and Atlas. The only thing this self-destruct sequence brings to the narrative is a reason to give Penny a human body. That plot-point was introduced solely as an excuse to give Penny a human body. That never had to happen. It’s not that the writers had a story where, by the rules already in place, they truly had to change Penny to ensure they didn’t lose her, it’s that the writers carefully crafted a story that existed to justify their desire to change Penny. That was always the end goal. They decided they wanted this to happen and that’s the problem here. That they took a character who has spent her entire, fictional existence learning to love herself as she is and crafted a bunch of unpersuasive, needless, and contradictory scenarios specifically to get Penny to a place where they could erase all that.

There’s no version of Penny that exists who truly had to get a human body to survive because Penny is a fictional character. Everything she does and experiences is thought up by our writers. Thus, at some point they thought up the idea to erase her android identity for a completely human one instead — the part a lot of people are upset by — and then made some messy attempts to write a story to justify getting that ending.

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #mymetas #Anonymous

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cottoncandyjester · 4 years ago

Text

Day five- roleplay with tanaka ryunnosuke

At this point who needs sleep when you are late writing smutty fanfic

also let's ignore the fact that this story is all over the place

This story contains: a male reader(thank the stars), roleplay, anal fucking, crossdressing, toxic relationship, feral tanaka, bit of angst, reader being the brother of kiyoko

"k-kiyoko- fuck you're so tight for me baby"

Sharp thrusts made you twitch as you pressed your hands onto the kitchen counter feeling the male pound your ass while his hands worked their way under your shirt tweaking your nipples and kissing along your neck.

This was the third time this week he's made you dress up like her and honestly you couldn't take it. The feeling of betrayal and pain filled your chest everytime you had to put on the stupid black wig, you weren't even enjoying it anymore.

Tanaka noticed that you stopped moaning, this caused him to stop and he looked at you with a confused expression now pulling some of the long black hair away from your back to kiss along your shoulders now pulling out of you.

"babe, what's wrong? Wanna do another position?"

Your silence was scaring him and he gripped your arm pulling you back now hugging your from behind while his hands trailed under the school girl skirt he had you wear his fingers brushing against your cock only to feel that you weren't exactly hard.

"hey, kiy-"

"shut up!"

You elbowed him in the ribs hearing him grunt and fall as you were now fighting tears while you threw the black wig onto the ground and faced your supposed boyfriend with a sharp glare.

"did you only go out with me cause we're related? You couldn't have her so having her twin brother was a close second"

The male flinched at your words seeing tears roll down your face, he felt a sick feeling bubble inside him as he stood up and felt a wash of embarrassment and shame flood him.

"t-thats not true! I love you but, I just..like her too"

You tensed up at his words and let out a light scoff before walking past him and towards your shared bedroom

"let me know when you make up your mind"

With that you left him there to think and he felt nothing but pain and sorrow, why was he so damn obsessed with her. Why couldn't he let her go? He heard the shower running and without thinking he walked towards the room

"I like [y/n], not her. [Y/n] is the one I'm in love with"

He chantes this to himself while he walked closer and closer to the shower now hearing your sniffles from the shower and it broke his heart.

He let in a sharp breath before pulling the shower curtain back now flashing a huge smile to you, you were his boy.

"[y/nnnnn]! Let me join you in the shower!"

"no, get out"

He winced but refused to let his smile break now still standing outside the shower, just what the hell was he doing?

"if you are hoping for shower sex it's not happening"

"[y/n],

Come on I'm trying to make it up to you! I was wrong okay? I shouldn't have done that"

You could tell he was being honest and couldn't stay mad at him for long but honestly you just wanted to mess with him at this point as payback.

"hmm, I'll forgive you..if you can actually give me good sex"

He winced at your words and felt anger bubbled in him as you damaged his pride, he simply glared at you as you washed up before getting up and drying off leaving him in the bathroom but not for long since he followed you to the bedroom

"I give great sex!"

"hmm, debatable"

He scowled but stopped when he watched you change clothes, into a schoolgirl outfit now sliding the frilly underwear on before sitting on the bed on your hands and knees presenting your ass to him teasingly

"h-hey I thought you said no ki-"

"I did. But who said we couldn't still roleplay? I want you to see me as me alright, senpai?"

He shuddered at the nickname and before he could stop himself he was pulling the panties aside before pressing his tongue against your hole

"senpai hmm? Yeah I'm your senpai and your senpai wants you to be a good schoolgirl and let him fuck your brains out"

You held back a laugh when you felt him rip the panties off you now moving to press his cock against your hole rubbing against you.

"[y/n], you look so cute like this but i want to see your face"

He turned you around pushing you down onto the bed his mouth watering at the sight of you.

Your cock twitching and poking up from the skirt, your shirt pulled up exposing your delicious nipples and your face flushed as you felt his intense staring.

"holy shit- you, are so fucking cute. Have you always been this damn cute?"

With that he snapped and pushed his cock inside you watching you squirm and moan from surprise before your reached out and your nails digging into the male's shoulders as he slammed his hips against yours again and again

"[y/n], [y/n] my kouhai, my cute little underclassmen. Do you like senpai fucking you?"

"ah! Yes senpai please!"

Your cute moans only made him feel more feral as he pounded into you his hands now stroking your cock from under the skirt watching you arch your back and his tongue found its way to your nipples licking them and even leaving bite marks along your chest.

"my [y/n], my sweet fucking [y/n]"

How did he ever see you only as kiyoko? It was way more amazing to see you as you. You were so cute under him that the thought of you even being related to his ex girlfriend slipped from his mind

"senpai loves you, only you. You're senpai's cute little schoolgirl"

Tanaka watched as you drooled while he held you close and made sure to make you scream his name over and over.

"is my baby going to cum? Going to make an utter mess like a cutie?"

Your response was pointless babbling and moans as tanaka felt close and he didn't even warn you before he was pulling out and coating you in his cum watching as your cummed along his hand and yourself.

"oops- heh sorry bout that"

"am I really, all yours?"

Your question made him tense and he couldn't help but stare at your sleepy eyes. He simply chuckled before leaning down kissing your cheek and lips

"[y/n], you're absolutely mine and only mine."

With that he watched you fall asleep only to feel a pounding in his chest as he watched you

You were way cuter than kiyoko, that single thought made him hard and before he could hold back he was back to thrusting and moving his hips, you were his so he can do whatever he wanted right?

Taglist

@jennasquishy8

@may-machin

#yandere imagines #haikyuu smut #yandere haikyuu imagines #haikyuu imagines #tanaka ryunosuke x reader #tanaka ryunnosuke

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chibimyumi · 4 years ago

Note

Your translations are so cool! I like how you emphasise cultural and situational context. Do you have any tips for native English speakers on learning Japanese?

Dear Anon,

Thank you very much!! When I translate people are usually like: (Ô_ó) “why are you still tweaking that ONE word?” And then I go: __ φ_(Ò_Ó ) “How dare?” So I’m really happy you like my translations!

I think the carefulness with which Yana writes the dialogue is as much part of her characters as their explicit actions are. I know Kuroshitsuji is notoriously hard to translate so I would never blame any non-decade-old-fan for mistranslating anything. It’s just that sometimes nuances get lost in translation... allowing me to make a series of that.

Now about tips for learning Japanese...

Tip One - Use a “hanger”

Though cheesy, my first tip is to find a way to stay (re)motivated. Learning Japanese as a foreign language is discouraging to begin with, but perhaps especially so for native English speakers. Native English speakers speak the world language for mother tongue, meaning they grew up with the entire world accommodating to their own “normal”. Native English speakers in general are given very little incentive to learn a foreign language, and therefore notoriously easily discouraged compared to non-native English speakers.

I myself compare a foreign languages to a coat. You don’t always wear the coat, you probably don’t need it at home, but it will come in handy in certain settings (outside your home). When you’re not wearing the coat you shouldn’t just let it lie around crumpled, or constantly hold it in your arms because it will tire you. Make sure you have a “hanger” to hang this “coat” to, to help you hold it. I think having an interest is the best type of “hanger”.

For Japanese learners, it is often anime/manga, maybe J-pop, maybe dramas. Whenever you are exposed to your interest, don’t just sit back and watch. Actively wonder: “what was just said, and how was it said in Japanese?” By asking this question, you can tie your interest to your interest in the language itself.

My student uses Earthlingo to keep learning Japanese interactive and fun ^^ I myself never tried it before, but he highly recommends it.

Tip Two - Have a framework

The second tip I would like to give is that you always need framework to learn a language well. With any language you start with learning individual words. Usually you start with a list of words you just need to learn by heart...and it can get dry very fast. And after a while your memory just gets saturated, and you start confusing the words.

I compare words to pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. It is possible to understand and remember words on their own, but it takes more effort. Look at this jigsaw piece underneath. What’s that? Well...... They LOOK like white bars... maybe they’re white feathers of a wing? Or are those fingers?

When studying words, try to study the word in a simple sentence, then you learn all the words in the sentence too in one go while you’re at it.

Rather than just learning:

指＝ yubi ＝ fingers

Try instead:

セバスチャンの指がきれいです

Sebastian no yubi ga kirei desu

Sebastian’s fingers are pretty.

In this way you give a word context, a framework to fit it in, and you also learn simple grammar as you go. Visually it is a bit similar to seeing a piece in a completed puzzle. Without having to crack your brain, you will have a framework to fit the word into.

Tip Three - EXPOSURE!!!!

The third tip I must urge any language learner to remember is actually the most important one: EXPOSURE!!! Keeeeep yourself exposed to your target language in ANY way possible. Even if you’re not actively learning a language, your brain will be actively taking information in! ESPECIALLY if you’re young.

Even if it’s only for 10 minutes a day, make sure you spend every day exposed to your target language a little. By doing so you will train your brain to get used to the language pattern.

After you have attained a certain level of vocabulary and grammar, make SURE to keep using the language actively. Don’t be afraid to suck! I don’t want to discourage you, but you WILL suck at the beginning, all the way until you feel like you suck moderately. As perfectly illustrated in this tweet, this is how 99% of Japanese language learners experience the language. But still, don’t be discouraged, it’s normal! (Even native Japanese speakers say their Japanese sucks!)

The most important thing to learning a language is exposure, because your brain cannot afford to go rusty. And oh my oh my, does language rust quickly! After a while of not speaking English I just feeeeel my tongue knitting up. After a while of not speaking Japanese I go: “how do I A I U E O???”

Make sure you find a sparring partner, be it online or live.

I hope this helps!!! (*´▽｀*)ノ⁾⁾⁾

Lost in Translation I - Sebastianese and the JP death trap known as Keigo

Lost in Translation II - Beginning of Sebastianese

Lost in Translation III - Meyrin’s “Chinglish”

Lost in Translation IV - Meyrin’s “Chinglish” II - Yana’s amazing logic

Japanese in Kuroshitsuji - THE TRAPSSS OMG

#tips #Earthlingo #Language learning #Japanese #Language #Kuroshitsuji #Yeah JP WILL try to discourage you but don't be discouraged!!!

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a-simple-lee · 4 years ago

Text

Lunch break

Description: A quiet day in the BAU doesn’t always mean a peaceful one, especially when Reid’s around.

Author’s note: my first criminal minds fic because @squirmycuddles made me start watching and I immediately noticed the Spencer tword potential and. Well, I had to write something. Hopefully I’ll write a few more fics in the future, energy levels permitting

__________________________________________________

It’s almost midday. You can finish documenting this case before then, you’re sure of it, but there are a couple of pages missing from the paperwork. You glance across the office; Reid will have spares, probably - he’s spinning back and forth in his chair, and he looks a little absorbed with the book he’s reading. Hopefully he won’t mind if you ask.

You stride over to his desk, holding the incomplete file, and poke his shoulder; but he swings in the opposite direction at the last second, so you end up missing and nudging his collarbone instead. The detective immediately lets out a small squeak, shoulder hunching up to protect his neck.

“Hey-oh. Sorry, sorry, Spencer.”

He gives you a halfhearted glare. “You know I’m ticklish.”

“Well, yes, but it was an accident. Promise.”

“Alright. What do you need?”

Lunch break rolls around, and you manage to get everything done in time, texting Elle and the rest of the day’s field team to inform them of your progress. Morgan leaves to buy his lunch, offering to pick you up something on the way, and you’re left alone with Reid.

You spend a couple of minutes absorbed in your computer, going through your emails, but there’s nothing new. Just as you’re settling into the quiet that comes with a less crowded office, someone pokes your side, and you do a terrible job of concealing your flinch away from them; it’s Reid. He’s stood by your desk, holding a mug of coffee. You try to school your expression from a surprised grin into a faux-irritated smirk.

“Do you mind?”

“Sorry.” He smiles, not at all sorry. “I was going to ask if you wanted a coffee.”

“Ah-you-what?” The words don’t come out quite right. You’re still trying to pick yourself up after having your concentration broken.

“Coffee?”

“I’m alright, thanks,” You pause, observing Spencer’s face for a second. “...That wasn’t an accident, was it?”

Spencer frowns. “It was, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Seems you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. “Oh. Oh that’s fine, sorry, yeah, it’s okay.”

“What do you mean accident-?”

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing, I misunderstood.” Uh oh. You move to leave your desk, stepping around Reid and panicking when you realise you have no excuse to be leaving the table. In your haste, you pick up an empty mug and hope that moving it to the squad of other empty mugs on the opposite end of the desk doesn’t look like a poorly disguised escape attempt.

“Were you talking about earlier? Did you think I was trying to...oh. Are you ticklish?”

“...The BAU doesn’t need another target for that. They’ve already got you.”

“So you are?”

Sirens are blaring in your head. Your mind rushes through the potential ways the conversation could go. If you say no, there’s a chance he’ll drop the subject. But do you want that to happen? Saying yes would be willingly backing yourself into a corner. “Uh.”

That moment of hesitation is the only excuse Reid needs to reach out and tweak your side. It earns him a jolt and a bitten-back yelp. He grins. “that’ll be a yes, then.”

“Spencer…” Your hands raise up, palms outwards, to keep distance between the two of you.

Before you can start backing away, Spencer’s there, stepping behind you and wrapping his arms around your waist in a hug, hands swiftly latching onto your sides and squeezing. You get about two words into a strangled protest before your nervous system catches up with him, and the rest of the sentence dissolves into laughter.

“You know, for someone with mandatory self defence training, that was a pretty terrible attempt to stop me.” There’s a note of smugness in Reid’s voice that makes a blush start to spread up your neck. He darts his fingers up to your ribs, hooking his index fingers towards the back of your rib cage, thumbs planted more towards the front, and squeezes again, eliciting a squeal from you.

“Wait, wait-this is not fair-” Your knees are getting weaker by the second, and despite your efforts to squirm out of Reid’s grip, you remain trapped.

“Sure it’s fair. If you’re referring to our physical abilities, I mean- you’ve got the same amount of training as I have, and the same experience. Now, I am taller than you, but that hardly affects the fairness of this specific situation. I’d say we’re pretty much on a level playing field here.” He pauses to zone in on a spot near one of your ribs that makes you snort. Your hands fly up from batting at his to cover your face.

“Reid-” you start, voice bordering on a whine, “Please-”

“Hm. I don’t think you’ve finished a single sentence in the past five minutes.”

You reluctantly bring your hands away from your face to speak, trying your utmost not to let giggles interrupt the words. “So...so what?”

“So, you’re getting increasingly embarrassed. Blushing, stammering, increased pauses between words, use of fillers like “uh” or “uhm”. You’re thinking a lot about what to say before you say it.” He spiders over your stomach and you almost fall backwards into him.

“Oh, you are not profiling me.”

“Eh, it’s light psychoanalysis at most,” Reid grins, going right back to where he left off. “You hardly did anything to stop me coming behind you, so either I got lucky or you weren’t trying to get away. Also, you just hold onto my wrists rather than pushing me away. Third, you haven’t once told me to stop, which leads me to believe you don’t actually want me to. Simply put, you like being tickled.”

“Spencer!” He’s slowed down a little bit, but your thoughts are still too much of a mess to form a proper sentence, and his occasional pinches to specific spots on your sides have you laughing intermittently.

“It makes sense, when you think about it. Tickling is frequently seen as a way of bonding, and can be viewed as a form of physical affection. Both physical affection and laughter supply a decent amount of endorphins to the brain, so a need for some sort of combination of the two doesn’t seem too far fetched, especially for individuals who are touch-starved. That, and it’s...actually kind of cute.”

“Don’t-” You break off when you realise your voice was definitely a little whiney this time.

“Don’t what?” He drills his thumbs into a spot near your hip and you break out into hysterics.

“You’re embarrassing me.”

He has the nerve to tut. “I know. But it’s not very difficult.”

“Oi!”

“You’re not exactly subtle about it. For example, you cringe slightly when I say the word “tickle”, and, and earlier, you covered your face for a solid thirty seconds after snorting. You’re embarrassed about your own reactions.”

“I did not snort!” It’s ridiculous to deny, but Reid’s too quick, and you’re too embarrassed, so you just start clutching at straws.

“Sure you did,” His hands reenact their earlier movements, and much to your dismay, you hear yourself snort again. “Just like that.”

“Okay-okay, point taken!” You feel him repeat the motion again, and do your best not to give him the specific reaction he’s looking for, instead falling into silent laughter. “Spehencer!”

He takes that as a signal to back off, finally letting you go from his hug and patting you on the shoulder. You lean back against a nearby desk, and take a second to catch your breath.

“That was unnecessary.”

“Not unwanted.” Spencer counters, looking smug as anything.

“I never said you were right.”

“You never said I was wrong.”

You let out a huff. “Oh, just...Forget it, c’mon.”

He sighs dramatically, giving a slight shake of his head. “Eidetic memory, sorry. Can’t.”

“Rude.” You pick up a file from the desk and try to swat at him with it, but he’s already bounding away towards his own workspace. Just as you give up trying to hit him with it, Morgan walks back in through the door.

“Hello.” He nudges the door shut with his foot and quirks an eyebrow at you brandishing a file in the middle of the office.

“Oh, hey. Get your lunch alright?” Spencer doesn’t look up from his coffee. It’s probably cold.

Derek holds up a paper bag and puts it on his desk, glancing at you as he takes out a smoothie, then two boxes of food.

“You look hot, you alright? Want me to open a window?”

“Do I? I’m...fine,” You reply, realising your blush probably hasn’t quite faded yet. “Don’t worry, that’s. It’s fine.”

“Sure?”

“Yep.” You get up to grab your coffee mug from earlier. Derek tilts his head slightly.

“Hang on, no…you’re embarrassed.”

“Morgan.”

“What happened?”

“Absolutely not, Derek. No.”

You hear Spencer give an amused snort from across the room, and toss a crumpled-up piece of paper in his direction. It completely misses him. “Shush.”

Reid grins into his cold coffee. “Didn’t say anything.”

“Good. Don’t.”

“Oh?” Morgan’s glancing between the two of you.

“Shush. Both of you. I need lunch.” You slide some cash in Derek’s direction to repay him.

Morgan just turns around in his chair with a shrug. “Alright, alright. Suit yourself.”

You sigh, and finally go to make your coffee. What a morning.

#tickle fic #criminal minds #ticklish!Reid #reader insert #spencer reid #derek morgan #*posts this and runs*#Writing reader inserts will never not feel overindulgent but alas #here I am #writing what must be my twentieth one #ah well #some things never change or whatever #fanfic

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