#I COMPLETELY FORGOT TO HIT POST I AM SO SORRY FOR HOW LATE THIS IS

[pinkaditty]

How have you been doing, pink?? Are you recovering well?

Also I saw your tags in that one thing we did abt things we could talk abt for an hour and I almost forgot to ask: how did you get into gyaru??

hihi aya i am recovering well!! not in much pain anymore besides my legs bc they were nearly crushed in the accident but im otherwise okay! my immune system is total dogshit though so i was immediately hit with a bad cold after most of my pain had left and im STILL recovering from that cold. im so tired of being ill

and please call me mal or malibu, ur a trusted moot atp

also i read ur tags on ur post 4 the same thing and im soso curious. please. what do u know about celtic mythology....

anyways. me yapping about how i discovered gyaru. sorry! tw 4 mention of racism.

im just gonna immediately dive in2 the gyaru thing: it started when i was in my first year of college. i hadn't learned of it earlier and almost every day i wish i had discovered it sooner but so be it! i think it was in a random twitter thread about j-fashion that caught my interest. iirc gyaru was the most interesting out of all of them so i decided 2 do some more research on that one.

relevant background: by this point in my life, as all late teenagers do, i was working on completing the mesh that was supposed 2 be my sense of self and i hadn't really decided on a style that was perfect 4 me. i had styles i liked and disliked but nothing that really felt "perfect". i had robbed myself of allowing myself 2 be girly in most of grade school out of the internal need 2 be "different" and simultaneously being depressed, so i was going through my fashion discovery phase a bit late.

anyway, upon going through threads abt gyaru, i found myself just wanting 2 try it out 4 fun. id found myself more attracted 2 girly things lately, so it was hime gyaru that caught my eye first. as cool as yamanba, tsuyome, and ganguro seemed, i just didn't think i quite fit the bill 4 those, so i half-heartedly settled on hime gyaru. the label of gyaru felt right, but being hime gyaru in specific didn't feel like the best-fitting glove 4 me. this is why 4 the first month or so of being in2 gyaru, i wasn't super emotionally invested, but i found myself wanting 2 start anyway. my wardrobe slowly shifted and began 2 include things along the lines of hime gyaru outfits, which were cute! but after a while grew old far quicker than id anticipated. at first, i was dissatisfied, thinking that maybe this was just a fashion phase. despite that, i still decided 2 stick with gyaru, because i liked it, but i still couldn't put my finger on what substyle suit me best.

i should probably clarify that the reason i wanted 2 stick with gyaru so badly was probably because of the history i had found behind it after some digging. gyaru was inspired by many, many things, but an important factor was the style of western african american women in the 70s-80s. bold makeup, long nails, showy clothing, and lots of accessories were in pretty strongly then, considering the surge of black pride after the jim crow era. as a black woman myself, i was immediately inspired. it can be hard 2 interpret when you've never experienced it firsthand, but an entire life of rejection, assumption, and limitation simply due 2 a feature about your skin that you cannot control really sucks, so i, at that point, was also learning how to take pride in my own skin after years and years of being subjected to questionable, at best, and abusive, at worst, treatment from my surroundings. i was totally in awe that something made by people i descended from had become so popular that it inspired one of the biggest J-fashion movements ever. plus, i liked the droop makeup. it was a cute twist. and something really filled my heart upon discovering that japanese women created this style 2 break free from limiting beauty standards. no more conforming. no more coloring in the lines. they wanted 2 escape, and that was admirable. i wanted 2 escape, too.

after a while, a switch flipped. im not sure how or when or why, but a switch flipped. suddenly the girly, frilly, cutesy vibe of hime, roma, and himekaji no longer attracted me. i wanted bold colors, bold nails, bold makeup, and a bold attitude. i wanted 2 do away with the classic girliness of hime and instead veer towards more crass, wild, and colorful styles. "get wild and be sexy" was all i thought about. i wanted 2 get wild and be sexy and stop conforming 2 whatever the white-dominated society of america deemed appropriate. and suddenly! my favorite substyles were yamanba, ganguro, banba, tsuyome, and onee! suddenly i wanted 2 tan my skin a bit more! suddenly i liked hibiscus flowers and plumerias and wanted them in my hair! suddenly my favorite braiding hair color was blonde! suddenly i had the confidence 2 wear bikinis! it was like a tidal wave of change. once the wave had cleared, it had left an entirely new beach in its wake, and that beach was me.

2 be honest, i think the switch was triggered by realizing i didn't have 2 conform 2 the girly standard if i didn't want 2. i could just. be me. and accept the truth that it didn't matter if people liked me or not. at least i was being me.

not much else 2 tell besides that! i changed my wardrobe, started getting long acrylics (i can't function now if they're not xtra long), practiced makeup, decorated my room, changed my attitude (this took some time), and changed the way i type! the whole reason i use "2" and "4" is 4 the sake of the 'textspeak' vibe and because it's cunt. that and i use a lot of gyaru language, but with my friends specifically. im working on integrating it in2 my general lifestyle.

i still have a lot of steps 2 take, but gyaru lives in my head at this point. its been 3 long years of self-discovery, and each step has been perfect. this style is perfect. even before i discovered gyaru, when i would do my makeup 4 fun, i would draw my eyeliner downturned and connect it 2 my eye, like a droop! in a way, it was meant 2 be.

anyways that's that. i promise there's more between the lines here but im tired and its late and i wanted 2 get this ask out b4 too long. just know that if there was a gyaru version of the scarlet rot that Melania from Elden Ring has, i would have it. if you want more details, feel free 2 ask, but they won't be answered immediately... still writing a romeo x reader fic in which he teaches u makeup and that's currently sucking up most of my commitment.

[yujeong]

For a fic prompt, I’d love to read something about Pete being sick or hurt and needing care that isn’t related to aftercare post-sex. I’ve found a fair few fics centered on Vegas dealing with being sick and cared for (and Pete basically bullying Vegas into letting him care for Vegas), but haven’t found nearly as many focused on Pete in a non-sexual context. I think that would be interesting and lends itself to your style of writing (at least from what I’ve read of your writing, which is just the VegasPete posted on AO3). I love your work, btw! Thanks for being a fandom author-y’all never get enough credit ❤️

Hello, my dear anon! Thank you so, so much for your kind words and your gorgeous prompt ❤️ Generally, Vegas taking care of Pete is one of my favorite concepts. We got crumbs in the show, crumbs, and I desperately need more of that. Thank you for giving me the incentive to do it myself, though I have dipped my toes into it a little bit before with the things you can(not) change, which had Vegas taking care of Pete emotionally. Btw, I'm very sorry for being late in replying to this, but I had a bit of trouble coming up with an idea for it until I got hit with some very specific feels, and now here I am, with 5 whole ass pages of words that made me decide to turn this concept into a proper fic. Looking forward to posting it in 2025 lmao. Here's a part of it: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Pete woke up laying on his bed, with no recollection of how he got there. The last thing he remembered was going to the kitchen for some water and the noise coming out of Macau's room. It was probably because of that new game he bought last week that he wanted to play so much. His whining suggested he wasn't very good at it. Pete didn't know what happened after that. He was feeling disoriented, floaty. His head was throbbing. There was bile stuck at the back of his throat, which he couldn't swallow. His mouth was dry. His body was heavy, restricting his movements. He tried opening his eyes, but he got dizzy by the light coming in from outside. He closed them again. "Why didn't you tell me you were sick?" Fuck. When did Vegas come back? Where was Macau? Pete took in a shallow breath, trying to quiet down his heartbeat. He didn't open his eyes. Vegas sounded angry. He had to calm him down, somehow. "Vegas..." "Macau called me in a panic, because he found you unconscious in the kitchen. He thought you died. I did too, when I saw you."

Vegas was holding back tears, Pete could tell; there was a certain way his voice hitched when he spoke like that, vulnerability leaking from his tongue. He sounded small, too, like when he used to do comparisons that led him nowhere. Pete didn't like it when Vegas was talking like that. The fact that he reverted to that state because of him made it even worse. "I'm sorry." "Don't-" He didn't conclude what he was going to say. Pete could hear sniffing, but nothing else. Not looking at Vegas' face was killing him. He opened his eyes with extreme difficulty and found Vegas staring at him, with red smeared across the edges of his own eyes and sweat gathered on his forehead. He was too far away. He wasn't touching him. "Vegas," Pete said, lifting his arm in Vegas' direction, despite how much he couldn't. Vegas widened his eyes and dropped his gaze. He held back a sob. He didn't take Pete's hand. "You look the same as back then." Pete let his arm fall on the bed, stunned by Vegas' words. How could he be so stupid? He completely forgot. He didn't know why. Maybe because everything that had happened at the safehouse had always seemed like a weird dream to him, one that he never really woke up from. Pete didn't have any words of comfort to give. His stomach started acting funny. He hoped it wouldn't lead to vomiting. He hadn't done that since his adolescent days, which had been filled with boxing and violence. "It's not your fault I'm sick," was all he could offer in the end. "I should have been here, taking care of you-" "You had an important meeting with Porsche," Pete reminded him. "Fuck Porsche." He had thought about it once. How it would feel to have sex with Porsche. Pete imagined it'd be simple. Uncomplicated. Fun, even. Now, it sounded painful, more so than all the things Vegas did to him. Perhaps Vegas was right getting concerned about Pete's health after all. He felt a hand touching his forehead. It was cold and sweaty. Pete wished it could get glued there. "Shit, your fever is high. Have you eaten anything?" "No." He felt Vegas suck in a breath, before he heard it. "I'm cooking you something to eat." He tried to get up, but Pete caught him before he could escape. A low, whining sound scratched his sore throat. "Sleep with me. You look tired." "Pete," Vegas warned. "You're burning up and you need to eat." "Just for a little while. It'll help." Vegas sighed. The sound came out unsteady. His bottom lip quivered, or Pete thought it did. His vision was too blurry to be sure. "Fine, but you're taking something for the fever first." Pete smiled tiredly at him. He didn't thank him. He would hate that.

[lvrgirlrey]

can you do a Noe x reader where reader owns a little pastry shop he likes to visit because he absolutely LOVES her Tarte tatin, and her, and she likes him too but they're both too shy to admit it. One night she ends up working late and gets attacked by a malnomen but vanitas and Noe manage to save her. But in the process of saving Noe reveals he's a vampire. But it turns out she already knew because Noe is silly and has accidentally left it slip a few times?

Hit me with the fluffy

𝕒𝕦𝕥𝕙𝕠𝕣’𝕤 𝕟𝕠𝕥𝕖: this is such a cool idea i love it and thank you for being my first request! and it saves me the pain of having to think of an idea for a post XP it has been a while since i posted AND IM SORRY *^* college is hard so far but i am now calming stuff down and i finally found time to post so here i am! wont make u guys wait so long again i promise >.<

𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕟𝕥 𝕨𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕤: none, this is just fluff but there is a small mention of blood

it was late afternoon when noé archiviste pushed open the door to the little pastry shop nestled between two narrow streets. the soft chime of the bell above the door signaled his arrival, and the sweet, buttery scent of freshly baked goods greeted him, like always. his gaze immediately swept over the quaint, cozy interior, and there she was—the reason he came to this shop every week.

you stood behind the counter, carefully dusting flour off your apron, eyes focused on a tray of pastries you had just pulled from the oven. the warm light of the shop made you look radiant, and for a second, noé forgot why he had come in. his heart raced just looking at you.

"good afternoon, noé," you called softly when you noticed him standing there, smiling brightly. the way you said his name made him feel giddy every time.

"good afternoon," he replied, his voice shy as he stepped toward the counter. "i—uh—just came by to grab a tarte tatin."

of course, that wasn’t the only reason. noé wasn’t just here for the pastry, although your tarte tatin was indeed his favorite thing in the world—well, next to you, though he would never admit that out loud.

you chuckled softly, brushing a stray lock of hair from your face. "i should’ve known. it’s almost like you have a sixth sense for when they’re fresh out of the oven."

noé rubbed the back of his neck, feeling his face heat up. "well, i can’t resist. you make them so perfectly." he paused, his eyes flicking up to meet yours. "you’re, um, really talented."

the compliment made you blush, though you tried to hide it by turning away to package the tart. noé always did this—he said the sweetest things, but he seemed completely oblivious to how flustered he made you. he wasn’t like your other customers. there was something about him that had drawn you in from the first time he had stepped through your door. maybe it was the way he was so earnest and kind, or how his silver hair always seemed to catch the light just right.

or maybe it was the fact that every now and then, he’d say something or do something that reminded you he wasn’t quite human.

of course, you hadn’t said anything. you figured if noé wanted you to know, he would tell you in his own time. but you had noticed the little things—the times he had slipped and referred to himself in ways that didn’t quite match a normal human’s experience. the time he accidentally referred to someone being "alive" instead of "human." once, he had even let his fangs show when he smiled a little too wide, quickly correcting himself with an awkward laugh. it didn’t scare you, though. in fact, it made you like him even more.

you handed him the neatly wrapped tarte tatin, and as he reached out to take it, your fingers brushed for just a second. both of you froze. the air between you suddenly felt charged, and you quickly pulled your hand back, your cheeks burning.

"thank you," he muttered, staring down at the tart as though it had become the most interesting thing in the world.

"you're welcome," you replied softly, biting your lip to keep yourself from saying more. your heart thudded in your chest. how long were you both going to dance around this?

as noé fumbled with his coat, preparing to leave, you hesitated. you had wanted to ask him for a while now—maybe to stay longer, to talk more. but every time you tried, the words got stuck in your throat. so, instead, you just smiled and waved as he left, the door bell chiming softly behind him.

that night, you decided to stay late in the shop. business had been slow earlier in the day, and you wanted to prepare for the morning rush. the streets outside were quiet, and the soft hum of the oven was your only company as you worked.

the clock ticked toward midnight when you finally stretched, wiping your hands on your apron. you were about to call it a night when the door suddenly rattled. a cold chill crept through the air, and the hairs on the back of your neck stood up.

something was wrong.

the door burst open, and you barely had time to react before a dark, shadowy figure lunged at you, knocking you to the ground. you screamed, struggling to push it away, but the creature—a malnomen, you realized with horror—was too strong. its twisted, monstrous form loomed over you, eyes glowing with malevolent hunger.

just as you thought it was over, a flash of silver and black cut through the air. noé appeared out of nowhere, tackling the creature and sending it crashing into the wall. his movements were inhumanly fast, and for a moment, you just stared, shocked and breathless.

"noé!" you gasped, scrambling to your feet.

"stay back!" he shouted, his eyes glowing red. his fangs were bared, and you finally saw him for what he was—a vampire. but before you could fully process it, another figure darted in. vanitas. with a quick, precise movement, he held out his cursed grimoire, muttering an incantation that enveloped the malnomen in a bright blue light. the creature screeched in agony before disintegrating into nothingness.

the room fell silent, save for the heavy breathing of all three of you. you stood frozen for a moment, staring at noé. his red eyes slowly faded back to their usual color, and he wiped a bit of blood from his lip. he looked at you, panic flashing across his face.

"i—I can explain," he stammered, stepping back as though you might run from him in fear. "i'm...a vampire."

you stared at him for a second before a soft laugh escaped your lips. noé blinked, clearly taken aback.

"i know," you said quietly, a small smile playing on your lips. "i figured it out a while ago." noé's eyes widened in shock. "you...knew?"

you nodded. "you’re not very good at hiding it, you know. you’ve let it slip a few times."

vanitas let out a bark of laughter from the corner. "you mean you didn’t know she knew? i could tell the first time i saw her."

noé flushed, looking embarrassed. "but... you’re not scared?"

you stepped closer, your heart pounding as you met his eyes. "no, noé. i’m not scared of you. i trust you."

noé’s breath caught, his gaze softening. the tension between you grew thick, but this time, neither of you looked away. slowly, tentatively, he reached out, his hand brushing against yours. his touch was warm, despite everything, and you felt your chest tighten.

"i...i’ve always liked you," noé whispered, his voice barely audible. your eyes widened, and for a moment, you couldn’t speak. then, with a shaky breath, you smiled, squeezing his hand.

"i’ve always liked you too, noé."

and with that, the barrier between you finally crumbled, and the two of you stood there, holding each other’s hands, while the remnants of the night’s terror faded away into the quiet warmth of your little pastry shop.

this was such a fun thing to write i love it! thank u so much for requesting!!

[tonguetyd]

Hiiiii! I only seeing you reblogged the ask game as well, hope i'm not terribly late. 🫂💖 Also sorry if i'm repeating any question, but may i:

39, Do I prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it? 123, What colour are your towels? 140, Get the closest book next to you, open it to page 42, what’s the first line on that page?

Julie Andrew’s voice: a queen is never late, everyone else is simply early

39, Do I prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it?

Honestly both! I guess I slightly prefer behind it, but more like in a “I am taking this selfie of all of us” kinda way. It’s taken a very long time for me to like how I look in photos but now that I like it, I’m very happy getting in frame!

123, What colour are your towels?

Tan and grey (she’s boring). I do have one teal one from college that’s still kicking but it’s a kinda crappy one tbh, barely holds any water at all

140, Get the closest book next to you, open it to page 42, what’s the first line on that page?

Ok I happen to have my Bag-O-Sentimental Things near my bed today which has my “You Are OK - Finding Your Way When Life Doesn’t Feel OK” album release book from The Maine and Evan Lucy.

“But The Maine have made peace with their choice, maintaining they’d rather be at the level they are and happy than at the next level and unhappy with how they got there.”

Which HI SORRY IM DRIFT AND IM GONNA TAKE THIS AS A MOMENT TO RAMBLE ABOUT A BAND CALLED THE MAINE! Levynn I am so sorry I’m taking your ask and going on a crazy tangent - thank you very very much you are very sweet

This is literally everything I love about this band in a nutshell bc 1) this is literally a book they put out with their 7th record You Are OK which like. Need more be said on that album title? And they were just like “hey we not only want to do this record but we want to show you our headspace while we were writing it and let you know we see you and this is how we got here.”

2) the reason they can be like “fuck it lets also do a book” is because they have been completely 100% independent since 2011 (cough fuck Warner Bros cough) and it ALLOWS them to have the mindset Evan mentions. They DID the big label and the one hit in 2008. They could have probably been playing arenas and getting radio play on the alt stations long before now, but they aren’t. Which brings me to 3) because they want to do things authentically and not just churn out money.

This is the band that did a FOR FREE TOUR. AN ENTIRE TOUR!! WHERE YOUR TICKET WAS FREE. JUST SHOW UP. They *CALL YOU* when you pre order their record just to say thanks (and sometimes to prank you but that’s a story for another time #BigStimmyEnergy)

They hop down off stage right after the gig and take photos with as many people as they can. I’ve met these guys more times than I could accurately count. My cousins thought I was dating Jared the guitarist cuz I had him in so many of my profile pics on Facebook 😂 I have NEVER done a paid m&g for TM because their whole THING is “we want to meet you too. Come talk to us.” They don’t HAVE m&g, they have Pat the drummer slinging merch or the post-show hangs or walking the line while everyone is queuing. I think it’s harder to NOT meet TM than to actually meet them 😂

They make it SO OBVIOUS that they care and want to have success in the industry yes, but not at the expense of us. And that is so incredibly rare. I never question if the guys in TM are good people - I sometimes question if they think their shit through enough and definitely know they stumble like everyone. But I never question their intentions. Or where their hearts are.

They’d rather be where they are and happy than the next big thing.

I haven’t read through this thing in a while and honestly kinda forgot I had it, so thank you very much for letting me find it again (and sorry for gushing but. They are my faves. band1. Forever.)

[semiweirdshipper]

I just wanted to get this off my chest. I think the viewers of Weirdo's Slasher/Bad Guy Series deserve to hear it.

I've been writing a lot of fanfiction on my secondary account for a different fandom these past few months. And I've made a lot of new friends, one of which said something that really hit me.

She said that when she wanted to avoid writing/updating specific stories, she had the tendency to jump fandoms. And I felt that because it's what I'VE been doing. I don't think it's my slasher stories in particular that I've been trying to avoid writing, but rather the 'violence'.

All of my slasher stories were hitting that point in the plot where they needed an insane amount of violence and angst to be written, and I think I was suffocating in it. It was depressing me and making me feel trapped, I guess. So I ran off and built a secondary account to hide in.

One thing about this break I've had that I think has helped me is the people I got to talk to and the friends I made. I'm not gonna lie, they're complete nut-cases and a bit crazy, but nonetheless they're amazing people, and they helped me open up in ways I never knew possible. For once I felt like I didn't have to struggle to be strong or even an efficient writer. I just needed to be myself.

I was too afraid to be myself around you guys. I was being too hard on myself, hiding my weaknesses, trying to bite through the discomfort of what I wrote, putting on a wise facade so that everyone thought I was just some kind of inspirational saint. But I'm not a saint. I'm a 21 year old dummy who has a traumatic life and writes fanfiction to vent off steam.

I felt like I had to be the strongest so I forgot to be weak and it built on me until it finally collapsed. I was trying to help so many people that I forgot to help myself. And I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for this whole sad, stupid post. I just needed to get it off my chest.

Thankfully all the simple, fluffy fanfiction I've been writing lately has mended me a bit. You would never believe what fandom it is either. I myself can't believe it, but that doesn't matter here.

I'm trying to get back on track. I'm sorry it's a slow pace. Luckily the newest chapters for my biggest slasher stories don't involve a lot of violence. I'm gonna sort through them, work my way back up, and hopefully begin a steady update routine. My apologies if my writing appears different in any way, I'm trying to work on it.

If you're curious about what I plan to update, here's a list-

-When a Survivor Bullies

-Battle of The Imaginary Minds

-My Own Exit Gate

-Miracle of The Moonlight

-Reverse The Dancing Knights

-Fate of Broken Roads.

Yep, I plan to give them all updates. I can't promise when and I can't promise how well, but I am going to try. I'm sorry again for everything, especially including this ridiculous post. I just... Really needed to get it off my chest.

Please remember that I love you all ❤️

[claudiajcregg]

S5 Pregnancy AU - I’d love to hear about!

Welp, this is embarrassing – mostly because this has been sitting in my inbox for almost two weeks, and I kept saying “I need to write something up!” and then… I didn't. (Or rather, I did, then I forgot to post it.) Sorry for the wait, Lil! Thank you for asking <3 (I'll divide this up because I keep writing about the process and how it came to be, instead of any actual, interesting facts.)

I have talked about this one in the past though I don't have a tag for it. The gist is what it says… (Early) S5 but CJ is pregnant. I had this idea over a year ago when I hit mid/late S4 in my rewatch. I thought it'd be interesting to explore some of her disappointment at that time if you added an unexpected pregnancy to it, even if I had the idea before even getting there, lol. Think, the ending-ish of Han, or parts of Disaster Relief. (Both of which do feature! I surprisingly focus a lot on Disaster Relief.)

The thing with S5 is that the timeline is so weird, and I feel I've also created one that isn't entirely realistic but I think it works within the story. (IIRC, the season starts in “May” but also July, then the Shutdown is in November, lmao. A few of the episodes are sneaky two-parters that flow into each other… See 5-6, 7-8.) I've finally gotten out of the no-man's-land I wrote myself into and the next chapter or two, knowing myself, will deal with 7-8! There are a couple of scenes that should be fun to write! (There are so many details I want to mention that are technically spoilers for early twists…)

Every time I had the urge to write it, I'd edit whatever outline I was working in, and though I kept some details… my muse decided to make a big change early on that completely changed the fic's direction. That, and my inability to write anything succinctly. No reason why this story will cross the 100k barrier in a couple of chapters, tops. (It's sitting at 85k across 12 chapters. I think it'll be less than 20 chapters total. Hopefully.)

This might be too long to share snippets, but I've shared some either on the server or here, a couple of months ago.

For more irrelevant details on the “process”…

As I hinted at, I wrote an outline or two around this time last year, because I couldn't stop thinking about it. When I say outlines, it's a general path for the story to follow – ideas, suggestions of dialogue and/or scenes I write to myself; all focused around some sort of chapter structure. I find it much easier to write if I write down where a chapter might go, even if it's just a few lines saying “This happens → then this → finally this;” otherwise, it takes me months. Some would say that I should post it and get encouragement that way but… I hate being dependent on something I can control even less than my muse? That's not for me, thank you. Mad respect for those who work like that.

It was meant to be short – 1-2 “long” chapters per trimester, more if needed, but then interludes in between trimesters. It's not that. Most chapters currently cover 1-2 weeks, but there is not really a pattern. I was afraid of having a fic that would take over my life like the WOWO did three years ago… And it has, but I've also taken breaks and not felt too guilty about them. I definitely don't want this one to sit in my drive and have me wondering what to do with it.

(The novel, aka WOWO, aka IM AU (2021): 150k written in a little over five months, even with extended breaks over the summer. Still hits, even with all its crazy decisions, maybe because of them, but it's also been too long, and it will always remind me of someone who kinda hurt me. Attempts to replace those memories by sharing the story with others, trying to gather whether it's worth posting, have failed, lmao. One day! Maybe!)

But yeah. Uuuuuhhhh. As I've said… Twelve chapters in ten months, 85k words… It's still not done. In fact, I've repeatedly said I am unsure of how to end it (beyond the obvious), but I'd estimate it to be under 20 chapters. I'm not posting it anywhere yet because I want to be able to edit it as a whole and try to make it more consistent; to add little details as I come up with them. There's also the fact that I am not skilled enough to write a compelling story that mixes politics and emotion into something remotely engaging. As a result, the story's politics are very surface-level, and probably repetitive at points, but it's also true I've always been more interested and focused on the emotional journey and the relationship(s) at its center. (Which should surprise exactly no one who's ever read one of my stories.)

But, as critical as I might sound of myself here, I am having fun writing this and I'm committed to seeing it through. I just keep having ideas for stories down the line, putting actual show events through a 'but she also has a kid' perspective.

[the-literary-nomad]

[It's Eid so I'mma post one of my favourite South Asian romcom book ideas]

There's this girl. And she's in the arranged marriage market, right? Her parents find someone and everything seems good. The only thing is, both families refused to provide pictures so they don't know what their potential spouse looks like.

Instead each party agrees to meet at a coffee shop and explains what the other is wearing. All this communication is done between the families—they don't talk to eachother even once. [pretty normal actually]

Finally the day of the coffee date arrives. And she dresses up in the outfit she said she'd wear and goes with her mum. They park and walk towards the entrance. At that moment, her mum realizes that she forgot her phone in the car. She tells the girl to go ahead and wait near the door for her since she's an hour early any way (this fam do be like that)

So the girl goes in and instead of waiting outside in the hot sun, she goes inside. Suddenly she sees the guy in the black button down and grey jeans and a baseball hat covering his thick curly hair.

He waves at her—she realizes he recognizes her clothing. She smiles and walk toward him. She realizes that oh my god she hit the jackpot because his eyes are like the lightest shade of brown she's ever seen in her life, and his face his bronzed and his jawline clipped. Who was this man?

She sat down at the table not even knowing what had made her sit down without waiting for her mum.

Damn, how'd I get so lucky?

The guy before her looked confused for a second and then burst out laughing, "Sorry?"

Oh my god had she said that out loud?

Did she just play it off with a laugh or turn into a nervous ninny?

"Yo, Hamad! Well well, I didn't know you had company."

The guy I front of her chuckled, and his honey coloured eyes twinkled with amusement; "Neither did I."

Hamad?

"Wait, what? Oh my god." The chair slammed back as she got up, and it fell over. She bent to pick it up, but it slipped from her fingers and fell again. The loud clang echoed as though the whole cafe had gone silent to witness this interaction.

Hamad had gotten up from his chair, and walked over to help her with the chair. She was utterly mortified.

Once everything was back in its place, she took a deep breath and apologized. "I am so sorry. I mistook you for someone else. It won't happen again. Obviously. Okay I'm leaving now before I do something even more stupid."

"Wait—"

But it was too late.

Well actually in my brain her mum enters at that moment along with the other guy and his mum (he looks completely different btw. And while he is quite handsome, it's not the bonechilling Hamad kind of handsome—she realizes). And then she spends the entire two hours talking to him while also every once in a while slipping glances at the completely oblivious Hamad.

Except he isn't oblivious

He's been doing the exact same thing.

And the way she said "Damn, how'd I get so lucky?" keeps echoing in his mind.

[my friends helped me out with this part]

But wait, fun surprise, he's the potential groom's dad's trusted protégé at work.

And so obviously he's aware of the whole wedding arranging process. And they can't avoid hearing about each other..

Also, the original match doesn't work out for reasons that are nobody's fault. Which sets the stage for the romance 😂

[back to me]

The "over hearing" parts over the next year go from occasionally eavesdropping to hunting for gossip until it finally reaches agonized wanting

Okay, so after a long tedious year of back and forth and realizing how they feel, wanting to be together and convincing their parents... they're finally doing their nikkah

And after they sign the marraige contract and the imam finishes the nikkah. They go to the reception hall. She's on the stage and he goes upto her—and here all of the lil marraige traditions come into play. Finally, he gives her his signature smirk and lifts her veil. When he sees her face his smirk morphs into a soft smile. His eyes light up, widen and then an adoring look enters it. He whispers softly so only she can hear him;

"Damn, how'd I get so lucky?"

***

Is this a product of extreme loneliness and absolutely no romantic experiences? Yes, yes it is.

Eid Mubarak, guys!

[moodysullie]

Hey Sullie! I just want to thank you for all those danny bunch content!! I have two questions for you: What are your favourite roles by him and do you have a most favourite gif/pic of his?❤️❤️

Hellooo ❤️ I'm happy that you like my DB posts. Imma be real, I think I joined this fandom like suuuuuuper late, but when the time is right it's like 'that's it I've fallen to the bottom of the pit and there's no way up so I'm DEFINITELY staying' 😂

As for your questions:

1) favorite roles by Daniel Brühl: I couldn't choose only one 😭 so here's my as-short-as-it-can-be list.

- Niki Lauda in 'Rush' is guaranteed for the 1st place. I'm not a fan of F1 nor have any knowledge about it at all so I cannot say if his depiction of Lauda is accurate or not, BUT he gave one hell of the performance. Until this day, I'm still amazed how he could channel his emotions and his acting under those make-up & prosthetics. The hospital scene was a highlight. Solid AAA+++

It's sad to know that not only his fans were disappointed (in the Academy) because he didn't get an Oscar nomination, but it affected Daniel as well and it hit him really hard (according to his ARTE documentary). I know 2013 was a year filled with masterpieces here and there in every aspect, especially actors, I just wish he could get one among other nominees as well.

- Laszlo Kreizler in 'The Alienist' because there are uncountable amount of inner conflict in Kreizler. Again, I haven't read the book so I have no clue of the original, but I really like how he portrayed the alienist at that time. The healer of the mind who couldn't heal his own. A doctor who was capable of inflicting pain on others, even though it's unintentionally (he's a victim of domestic violence). A man who wanted honesty from others by telling them to face their demons but he, himself, couldn't bear the pain and face his own.

- Alex Garel in 'Eva'. There were so much subtlety, so much nuances in his performance, very repressed (in my opinion, which is totally in-character) and it paid off in the end (shoutout to Sergi Belbel, Cristina Clemente, Martí Roca & Aintza Serra who were writers for this movie.)

- Escherich in 'Alone in Berlin' because he could convince me, make me feel sympathetic for the inspector.

Man, I'm such a sucker for genius with different sides and shades in one person. Complex characters are my thing. 😂

2) favorite pic/gif of DB: NOOOO DON'T HURT ME THIS WAY 🥲 most of my fav are when Daniel was in film festivals, press con, masterclass or anything film-related. He looks sooo in the zone, like it's where he belongs.

But right now? This one

Why? Easy

I like Daniel.

I like men in white shirt.

I like men with this hairstyle (I am completely forgot how it's called at the time I'm typing this.)

I love cats.

And I like when someone I like playing with cats.

End of the story. 😌

(Also, I write this at 2am in my time so sorry for any misspelling or anything else. 😴)

[cisthehuman]

Cis Rambles #12--2024 Accomplishments

Howdddyy

It's been a hot second since I've written on here! First of all, Happy New Year! 2025! Wild Stuff!!

As this is my personal dumping ground of creativeness and personalness, I wanted to share some accomplishments from last year!

✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦

✮Personal✮

Health wise, the hormones are finally working!! My PCOS symptoms are finally becoming more manageable! I'm not bone tired randomly, my skin is getting clearer, and I feel much better in general! In November I hit 1 year of taking hormone pills, and I'm happy that I'm seeing a positive change!

I've been doing some research lately and found out that I actually have a lot of symptoms of high functioning autism recently as well. As I'm not officially tested, I'm only saying that I share a lot of the main symptoms. While it explains some things, I'd have to get a professional opinion.

Along with that I had some thoughts on my identity and I'll make a fun little post about that later~ I wanted to draw some art to celebrate. I've done little hints at how I identify to the world, but I finally feel strong enough to share this part of me properly. I am nervous and excited.

Lastly, I've mentioned before that I've mourning the sudden passing of my dad. This year will make four years, and while I know I will never be 100% whole again, at the end of last year I finally felt stronger to live for myself. I felt bound by a promise I made to him while he was still around. I let this promise consume me to a point where I forgot to take care of myself. The past few months I took care of myself, and I think I can keep my promise while making sure I'm okay.

I also read Dear Gene, which is probably not only one of the greatest BL stories I've read, but one of the greatest stories period. It totally ruined other literature for me. I started reading The Three Musketeers and I kept thinking, "I love this story but it's not Dear Gene..." LOL

✮Streaming✮

I streamed kinda consistently for at least three months! (I'm making a big guess based off my steam wrapped lol) Those streams were really fun. When I think of streaming, I think of what I heard a comedian say about doing standup (I unfortunately don't remember who said this, I'm sorry to this person)--'If you do a standup set, and you completely fail, and you still want to do standup, you're meant to be a comedian." I feel like that thinking is the same for streaming. I know for sure there were streams where there was no one there, but I was having the time of my life and planning streams like I was a bigtime streamer.

Just for fun, I wanted to list the games I finished/played on stream~

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

Our Life

Our Life 2 Demo

2064: Read Only Memories (I didn't finish it before I got on hiatus, but still played a good bit of it on stream)

A Date with Death

Magical Delicacy (only played a bit before I got on hiatus)

Makoto Wakaido's Case Files

Marlon's Mystery

Plantabi Little Garden (used for chatting stream)

Refind Self

Cats Organized Neatly (used for chatting stream)

During those months, I thought hard about my branding and while I love what I commissioned, I can see where my novice in streaming showed in the ideas I had. Because streaming is so saturated, you have to set yourself a part somehow. While I do think I was different in some ways, I think I was also a bit too scared to be out of the box with what I wanted to do.

With that in mind, I wanted to create a fun interactive-ish story for people to enter with my streams. Instead of doing a lore video, I thought of doing a lore visual novel. Well really, a kinetic story, but still! One major accomplishment was completing the main story. The extras are almost done, but main content is drafted and just needs some edits!

I also started watching some renpy videos to get a grasp on things.

Another thing I noticed when I was going over what needed to be changed was my darling streaming child Lunar. I liked her design, but I feel like it wasn't doing enough. I felt like I could push her to a stronger character visually. And through Goldbullet's community post in hopes of getting featured, I redesigned my girl!

Wow!! Dramatic change!!! I'll go through the design changes later, but the biggest one is she's not just a cat girl based off of a domestic cat! She's based off a caracal now! She's also more of a gyaru now, which is actually something I've written in her background for a while, but now it's in full effect!!

✮Gaming✮

According to my steam wrapped (is that the official name? i don't remember anymore...), I played 69 games last year (nice). I mean it was nice until it became a burden I had to bear due to the fact that I wanted it to stay at 69 so I couldn't play any new games for several weeks. Luckily I'm addicted to Galaxy Burger so we're good.

This year, I fell massively in love with Indie Games. I love them so much. Sometimes the big name studios just don't really make games that just hit that little spot in your brain. Indie games have been scratching the little itch that big name studio games we missing.

Top faves were:

Slime Rancher 1 & 2

Wilmot Works It Out

Our Life

Galaxy Burger

Tavern Talk

Yaoling

Beastie Ball

Coffee Talk 1 & 2

For some reason I forgot that I love creature collector games despite playing pokemon solely for a large portion of my life (again I'm realizing how big the signs of the possible autism is now lol)

A part of me wants to write mini reviews on some of the games I finished. I started in Bluesky in this thread. We'll see if I make longer reviews. Also follow me on Bluesky! I'm kinda done being on twitter it sucks ass LOL

✮Hobby✮

One of my major hobbies is quilting! I was able to get 2 done last year!

Music wise, I completed another album! Unfortunately, it is in the 'Hey actually put this on youtube' list. I got the video ready at least! I just...need to upload it lol

I did upload the 2024 Halloween Album! Whoo!!! Listen to it!! It's the best yet! And follow my youtube for more!!

✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦

And that's it!! 2024 in a nutshell! Another thing I did was take more breaks. I got really burnt out at the end of the year, and I finally took time away to just relax. I feel much more energized and ready to do things! I'm gonna go write up the goals for the year~ See you neextttt possssst~

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

hey hey hey it's chapter four, in which Jessie faces the consequences of some previous actions and then immediately takes worse, dumber actions.

I don't know if I'm 100% happy with it but I'm simply learning to have fun and make art messy :)

Tash stomped out of the bathroom with Jessie in hot pursuit, frantically drying off her hands on a wad of paper towels.

“Maud!” Tash yelled across the bar. “MAUD!”

Raising her voice wasn’t actually necessary, since Maud had reclaimed her post behind                                                                                                                                                                      the bar. She didn’t seem bothered to have one of her own employees yelling for her, or even especially surprised. She didn’t even look up from the glass she was cleaning when she asked what the hell Tash was screaming about. 

Tash skipped the final step to actually getting behind the bar, simply disappearing mid-stride and reappearing slightly behind Maud as if hoping to use her as a human shield. “What fuck is she doing here? You said there was an ice cube’s chance in hell of her ever coming in!”

“Well, look at that. Hell’s frozen over,” Maudie said, completely straight-faced.

“Yoohoo! Hello!” That was Jessie, of course, leaning as far over the bar as she could get. You may have noticed by now that she wasn’t good at being ignored. “Noir, babe, what the fuck is up? How long have you been back in town?”

Tash gave her a face like pure murder. “Don’t fucking call me that.”

“Sorry, jeez. Are we on a first name basis now? You prefer Tash?”

“Don’t call me that either!”

“It’s your name! What else am I supposed to call you?”

“Don’t call me anything!” Tash hissed. “Don’t fucking talk to me! I don’t know what kind of half-assed scheme you’re running this time, but I don't want anything to do with it. Leave me the fuck alone.”

“Oh, come on!” Jessie flung herself even further across the bar, a perfect portrait of plaintive despair. “Even you? I thought we were friends!”

“You ruined my life, you psychotic bitch!”

Maud cleared her throat softly, determinedly polishing up an empty glass and not looking at either of them. “As a little reminder to you girls, you're being extremely loud and everyone in this bar is a gossipy son of a bitch. Just in case you forgot.”

Too late Jessie realized that the bar had gone quiet, everyone presumably dropping whatever they were doing to focus on the free show playing out as Frostbite made a drunken mess of herself for the second night in a row. Her face burned. Stupid mistake, careless. Everyone was already out to get her, and there was no need to give them more fuel. 

She sat up extremely straight and prim, uncomfortably aware now of how drunk she had gotten and ashamed to have reached that point. She lowered her voice to a normal speaking temperature. “Maudie, could I please get a glass of water?”

“About time.” Maud nodded to Tash. “Did you finish the bathroom?”

“Yes.”

“Then you're on bar, sunshine. Be a peach and start by getting my shitfaced goddaughter some water.”

Tash made a noise that was not, strictly, a word but was very much protest given form, an indignant help that might beat be written out as “‼️‼️‼️”

Maudie eyed her cooly. “Is that a problem? You're covering for Jordan. Jordan is a bartender. Do you want the hours or not?”

“Yeah, but fuck this,” Tash said. She filled the glass (straight from the tap, no ice) and set it down in front of Jessie with excessive force, letting water slosh over the sides. Maudie sighed, long and hard.

“So, you two have history?”

“Yes!” Jessie said brightly, at the exact moment Tash offered a vehement, “No.” Jessie was crestfallen.

“Don't make that fucking kicked puppy-ass face at me,” Tash said sourly. “We did one job together, that doesn't make us friends.”

“Okay, well, I thought we really hit it off,” said Jessie, who had extremely vivid memories of Tash’s tongue deep inside of her mouth. “You're the one who ghosted me.”

Tash didn't say anything to that, but one of her eyes had started twitching and that really spoke for itself. Show don't tell, and all that.

“Great. Don't tell me anything else about it,” said Maudie. “And don't kill each other. You know what happens if people die in here.”

“They go in the lake,” Jessie and Tash recited.

“And I'm not in the mood for all that tonight, so keep your shit together.”

That was one of Maud’s favorite jokes, despite the fact that no one had ever died in One-Eyed Polly’s since she had taken over. There had been a time, though, when she swore having to drag out dead customers and give them the cement shoes had been a regular occurrence for the lowest-ranking members of the staff. So maybe it wasn’t that much of a joke.

Maud pivoted her attention to a patron who wasn’t giving her a headache, and Jessie turned the full scope of her attention back to Tash to start poking her with a stick and taking notes on how she reacted. 

“You know how to make a Frostbite?” she asked. “Like, the drink?”

Tash curled her lip. “You named a drink after yourself?” 

“I didn't. I found it on Pinterest. It's just blue raspberry vodka and lemonade with a rim of that sour sugar stuff and some mint thrown in for garnish. I've been meaning to try it. Doesn’t that sound yummy?”

Tash stared straight into her core, dead-eyed. “You seriously think we have any of that shit here? We don’t do fucking bachelorette parties.”

“You don’t have vodka?”

“Not blue raspberry. The closest I can get to your thing is some straight potato vodka with a lemon wedge. You know, if that sounds fun for you.”

“Hard pass.” Jessie took a sip of her water, tried not to wince at the taste, and considered.

Night Noir had been one of the most promising up and coming superthieves in the country, if not the world. She was a teleporter, a damn good one, with precision control that let her start a front flip on one side of the room and end it fifty feet away, landing primly on top of her target with style and panache or, possibly, kicking a security guard in the face before he knew what had hit him. Which would be fun to watch under any circumstances, but she went the extra mile and hijacked the sound systems of her targets to blast her own music and turn it into a full-scale performance. Like an Olympics gymnastics routine, except it was illegal and Jessie generally didn’t want to kiss the US gymnastics team on the mouth because they were all, what? Like, fourteen years old? No thank you!

But obviously she was crushing on Night Noir. Jessie had subscribed to her Patreon, which meant she got a five minute warning every time Noir was about to go live on a heist and got to watch the hijacked security footage in real time. And there was nothing that she wouldn’t drop to watch it; she’d once ditched Whirligig at the club for nearly an hour to squat outside with the smokers and watch Night Noir work. Gig had pitched a fit about it, which in hindsight probably should have been the first warning sign that their friendship was severely lacking in long-term potential.

What Night Noir did was kind of like performance art. She was never just stealing; there was always a mission. She targeted the collections of wealthy bastards who were making their money by screwing people over, or the exhibitions of artists whose shitty sex pest behavior was largely covered up. There was a karmic element to it all, like Night Noir wasn’t just a thief but also the personification of justice showing up to drag people’s dark sides into the light. Once she’d robbed the largest bank in Crown City and left the lobby scattered with print-outs of extremely incriminating emails between the board of directors, simultaneously releasing them online to make sure they couldn’t be hushed up. There had been four arrests so far, with even more investigations ongoing.

She approached the game like an artist, treating the whole thing like a joke that only she and her fans were smart enough to get. Like, take the costume. It was intentionally tacky, a bright purple bodysuit straight from Party City with a big shiny fanny pack and bright yellow Docs. Since early in her career her weapon of choice had become a pair of police batons tricked out to light up every time they hit something, turning her skirmishes with security into miniature light shows, and she concealed her identity using a series of what could best be described as novelty balaclavas. One was covered in sequins, another gave Noir a pair of kitty ears.

It was all extremely dumb and tacky, unless you were in on it. Which Jessie was! She was so in on it, maybe more than anyone else. Underneath the showmanship and social justice of it all, Night Noir was just having fun. You could see it in the way she moved—never able to be totally still, always bouncing eagerly on her feet, electric when she had to stay in one place,every move telegraphing pure joy no matter how precise and controlled it was. You could always tell she had a smile a mile wide even when her mouth was covered.

That was what had really drawn Jessie to her: the sense that somebody out there was having as much fun as she was. 

She hadn’t thought it likely that they’d ever meet, given that Jessie and her brother operated solely out of Rustbelt and Night Noir seemed married to overcast Crown City, where there were more than enough corrupt members of high society to keep her busy forever. But then she’d reached out (or, rather, her geek had reached out, the tech guy who made sure those speakers were hijacked and the streams ran smoothly while Noir handled the good part): asking for permission from Sub-Zero and Frostbite to do a job in their city. A good move, since Sub-Zero was famously territorial. And he probably would have said no (and possibly iced Noir into next year for even asking) if his baby sister hadn’t spent a full weekend begging him to say yes so she could meet her crush. 

The compromise was that it was a joint operation, with the profits getting split 50/50, which was how Jessie and Tash ended up pawing at each other in a parking garage in the middle of a gig. Jessie wasn’t even sorry; seeing Noir in action had been hot as hell. She’d been right about everything; Night Noir was a woman who lived for the thrill of the job, her excitement infectious.

Then she’d vanished. At first Jessie thought that she was just getting ghosted, Night Noir uninterested in turning their little fling into a more long-term connection. Which hurt, for sure, but it happened! She was a big girl who could handle rejection. But then the Patreon had been deleted with no warning or explanation, and it had become obvious that something much worse was afoot. Jessie had spent weeks waiting for an announcement that Night Noir had been arrested and shipped off to some superhuman prison for experimentation, but the announcement never came. That meant she probably hadn’t been arrested by any government organization, because they turned it into a whole media circus whenever they caught someone with powers. So Night Noir had gone underground for other reasons, presenting a hell of a mystery. Jessie and her fellow freaks in the superhuman forums had been puzzling over it for months when she got distracted by her brother’s much more worrying disappearing act. 

And now… this.

It was very hard to square this sullen, snapping iteration of Tash with the electric Night Noir that Jessie had met in the fall. To put it gently, she looked like shit.

Tash slouched around like she was trying to disappear, black hoodie on black leggings and black shoes as if she was trying to make herself as unremarkable as possible. Where once she’d moved light on her feet, dancer-like, as fluid as you’d expect from someone who wasn’t particularly encumbered by the laws of space, now she was carrying herself with such brittle tension that she seemed liable to snap under the lightest pressure. The soft brown of her skin had gone ashy, like when she’d gone underground she’d gone literally subterranean, hiding from the sun. Back in the day she’d worn her hair in a sharp undercut, sides shaved close to her skull while the top grew in a burst of natural curls, but now it had grown out into an uneven short afro that was badly in need of love. Beneath her eyes there were bags so deep that you could have buried a body in them. 

Something had happened to Night Noir, capital letter Happened, and Jessie would never know peace again in her entire stupid life if she didn’t at least try to find out what it was.

“How long did you say you’ve been in town?” she asked, trying to take a casual sip of her gross water and slightly missing her mouth.

Tash scowled. “I didn’t. It’s none of your business.”

“Well, I mean, I was just surprised. I thought you would be doing your last semester of grad school now, not slumming it here.”

“Why the fuck do you know that?”

“Because you told me, babe. During the gig we did. Don’t you remember?”

The look of hollowed-out horror on Tash’s face suggested that no, she did not remember, and that she supremely regretted having shared anything about herself at all. She blinked, hard, like she was trying to calm herself, then leaned over the bar towards Jessie and lowered her voice.

“Listen. I don’t give a shit what you think you know about me, okay? I’m not your friend. I don’t like you. I’m not going to work with you. And you’re never getting in my pants again. Got it?”

“I hate to be that guy,” Jessie said, “but technically I didn’t even get in your pants the first time. Catsuits are kind of a pain in the ass like that, you know? No way to get below the belt without getting your tits out. I swear to god I always have to pee as soon as I put mine on, too, it’s the worst. This one time we were stealing this armored truck, but I—”

“I don’t care!” Tash snapped. “Oh my god, why are you doing this? What the fuck do you want from me?”

“Well, I suppose I was excited to see you again,” Jessie said slowly. Words were hard, she had to pick them carefully. “I was worried about you when you disappeared. You’re extremely hot and cool, and I looked up to you a lot. And you were really nice to me in the bathroom just now.”

By the look of things Tash would have been less surprised if Jessie had announced an intention to steal her organs and leave her in a bathtub full of ice. Her face softened by a small increment, at least. Still defensive, but maybe she felt a little bad for assuming the worst. She hesitated. “Right. Yeah. That sounded rough. Who was that?” 

But before Jessie could answer (and thank fuck for that, because she wasn’t quite desperate enough to spill that entire situation yet) they were interrupted in the mostly needlessly dramatic way possible: the bar door kicked open to announce the arrival of the car thief and general menace to society known Voltzz, reeking of body spray and violence. His mean, blue little eyes scanned the bar and landed on Jessie with malevolent glee, and he hacked out a triumphant laugh. “Frostbite, you frigid bitch! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

“Fuck me all the way up the ass,” Jessie said, low enough so only Tash could hear. She slammed back the remainder of her glass of water like it was something that could give her liquid courage, remembered too late what she was actually drinking, and fought back the urge to spit it out. Nothing left for it but to screw on the sugary sweet Frostbite smirk. Voice pitched up, a tone that was always just on the wrong side of condescending, and she was ready to go.

“Voltzzy, baby, there you are! Long time no see!”

An impressionistic overview of Voltzz, for the uninitiated: unnaturally platinum hair gelled up into a style that he presumably thought was flattering. Nearly always shirtless, which he claimed was because his powers kept him warm despite the doubt of discerning onlookers. In this particular instance baring his chest was letting him show off muscles that were (by Jessie’s estimation) 75% steroids and 25% dehydration, accessorized with an improbable late May sunburn and a heavily infected nipple ring. Inexplicably he’d capped off this look with an enormous and unhygienic-looking white fur coat, which made him come across like a polar bear’s burnout cousin who was going to ruin Thanksgiving by doing meth in the bathroom.

It wasn’t that Whirligig was much of a catch herself; she objectively sucked pretty badly. But watching her make a clown out of herself over this man, out of all the possible men in Rustbelt, had made Jessie yearn for the sweet release of a lobotomy. 

He flashed Jessie a smile dotted with fillings, curling his skinny lip. “Yeah, hell of a long time. I was starting to think you were hiding from me after you fucked everything up with me and Gig.”

“Wasn’t much else I needed to say to you after you cheated on my best friend, electrocock therapy. And not much else I need to see, either, since you sent me all those pictures of you weird little dick.”

Voltzz’s jaw twitched. “My dick’s not weird.”

“Yeah?” Jessie tugged her phone loose from her bra, immediately navigating to her saved pictures. “Does anybody want to come look at this and tell me if they think his dick looks weird?”

“Stop that.” Voltzz moved as if to smack the phone out of her hand, only to have her yank it away and give him a chilly stink eye. He scowled, pulling the coat up higher as if hoping he could puff himself up into something intimidating. “You know something? You’re not really acting like a girl who wants her car back.”

Jessie laughed. “Voltzzy, baby, I don’t need to be nice to you to get my car back. We both know that.”

“Nah. You’re not getting it back, period. You owe me that shit,” he said, biting the words out with vicious glee. “You dumped my favorite car in the lake, so I’m gonna blow yours sky high. What are you gonna do about it?”

“Why the fuck did you dump his car in the lake?” asked Tash, who had been watching all of this posturing with increasing distaste. 

Jessie waved an impatient hand. “I tried to get my terrible ex best friend to break up with him by proving that he’s cheating slime, which he is, but she got mad at me instead and kept him around even though he’s nothing but a glorified mook, so I decided to ruin his Valentine’s Day by taking away something he definitely loves more than her anyway.”

“Watch who the fuck you’re calling a mook,” said Voltzz, apparently unaware that there was anything else in that sentence he should be taking issue with. “Considering you’re barely even a sidekick anymore. Who’s gonna save your ass if I get sick of you running your fucking mouth?”

That sent a shiver down Jessie’s spine, in the least fun way imaginable, but she knew better than to give him a single inch. “Honey baby, I’ve never been a sidekick. Now tell me what the fuck you want before I get bored. If you think I’m going to pay you for my own car back you’ve got another thing coming, I’ll tell you that right now.”

“I don’t want your money, bitch. I want you to square up.” He flashed his fillings at her again. “Meet me out back and let’s settle this.”

God, of all the nights to get caught without her freeze ray. She rolled her neck, trying to stall without looking like she was stalling and well aware that everyone else in the bar was watching hungrily. Were these the same chucklefucks who had been toasting to her demise earlier that day? Good chance. She knew what the people from her old neighborhood were like, and most of them had nothing better to do than drink all day to get ready for the drinking they’d do at night. Losers, all of them. It had certainly been one of them who given Voltzz the heads-up that she was here, hoping for a little cheap entertainment.

“Voltzzy, baby, I don’t think that’s gonna end too hot for you. If you keep pushing this I’ll only be acting in self-defense, and that means I’m not the one Sub-Zero’s going to be mad at.”

He would, of course, but no one else would ever know that. To the outside world, Frostbite and Sub-Zero were a united front, and Sub-Zero infamously despised anyone fucking with his baby sister. Which was great for Jessie, because absolutely nobody wanted to risk getting a blizzard dropped on their heads.

Once upon a time, Voltzz had been one of the guys who could be scared shitless by the mere mention of Sub-Zero. Now he flashed Jessie an evil smile, pressing even closer into her personal space.

“I don’t think Sub-Zero’s gonna give a shit, actually. Seems like he’s pretty checked out these days. So let’s just keep it between us. Either grow some balls and fight me or let me blow up your ugly car like the coward you are.”

“Don’t pretend you think she’s ugly. The first time you saw the Nitro Pearl you almost creamed your jeans.”

“Final answer? Coward’s way out? Alright.” Voltzz stood and made for the door, acting all casual about it. He wasn’t a good actor, but it still got Jessie’s teeth grinding. 

“Jesus Christ, okay! If you want to be a popsicle so bad, we’ll do it your way!” She raised her voice for that, making sure that it would carry to all the curious looky-loos. “Meet me out back in three, alright? Let me finish my drink.”

Voltzz smirked, and mugged for the patrons so hard that several of them started cheering like this was a WWE match. He changed direction to head out the back door, passing so close to Jessie that he could give her a shove and make her slop even more water onto the bar. Great.

“You got your freeze ray, kid?” Maudie asked. Her voice was low, tense, and she was frowning more deeply than usual. Worried, even if she’d never admit it.

“Nah. It’s fine. I don’t need it.” Jessie tossed the last of her water back like a shot, slamming down the glass. “I just have to hang on long enough to knock his ass out, right? Like a  mechanical bull. Can’t be that hard. His stamina is nothing to write home about, if you know what I mean.”

Tash started to ask a question, which Jessie wildly misinterpreted.

“He can only keep it up for, like, thirty seconds,” she said conspiratorially.

“Don’t care, didn’t ask,” Tash said immediately. “What can he do? How are you going to fight him? The ray gun is all you have.”

“Okay, first of all, I can fight. I’m a scrappy little bitch, okay? And I’m mostly not drunk anymore,” said Jessie, who was in fact really only sober enough to be uncomfortable with how inebriated she was. “And he’s just, like, dumb muscle, right? He’s a distraction for hire. All he can do is run electricity over his skin. It doesn’t tickle, but I’ve had worse. It’ll be fine.”

She stood up and swayed for a horrible second before she evened out. Someone across the bar wolf whistled, followed by a wall of hard laughter.

“Hey.” Tash leaned over the bar towards her, face tight with urgency. “Don’t fucking do this. This is insane, it’s barbaric. He wants to kill you and you can’t even defend yourself. Why are you giving him this?”

“He won’t kill me. Nobody’s stupid enough to piss off Sub-Zero and Ricochet that much.”

Even a few hours ago, miserable as she’d been, Jessie would have believed that. Rustbelt wasn’t Crown City, and even the really nasty members of the local rogues gallery wouldn’t take a life lightly. Sure, Brain Squid would put your cognitive functions in a blender and leave you drooling out your own memories, but he wouldn’t kill you. The worst they’d ever had was Void-Man throwing half an apartment building into Unreality, and that had shaken the entire city to its core because of how absurdly out of the ordinary it was. Superpowered bullshit was a fact of life in Rustbelt, but homicide was not. Ricochet and N.E.X.T. stopped pulling their punches when that line was crossed, and you’d be lucky if they found you before Sub-Zero did. As much as Jessie hated to admit it, Ricochet did have a point about her brother keeping the local villain community in check.

Now, though? Now that was all out the window. Voltzz wasn’t exactly being subtle with his hints that he knew Jonas was AWOL, and if he’d managed to piece that together with the two fried-out brain cells he had left then all bets were off. Finding out that Voltzz knew your secret was like finding out that the neighbor’s dog knew your credit score; at that point, you had to throw in the towel and assume you were boned.

And if everyone really hated her as much as Maudie said, which was looking unfortunately plausible, and Jonas had been the only thing protecting her, well. That didn’t bode very well for her at all, did it?

Jessie looked over at Maud, seeking a second opinion. Maud, grim faced, tilted her head toward Tash and raised her eyebrows, her classic the kid’s got a point expression. For good measure, she threw in a little seesaw motion with one hand, which was a deeply discomfiting response to a question about whether or not Jessie was going to be murdered. Fuck.

“Well,” she said. “Guess I’ll take my chances. Nobody calls Frostbite a coward.”

Tash was seething, jaw clenched tight. “Why the hell are you doing this? Just leave right now, get the fuck out of here before he comes after you!”

Jessie shook her head, once. Her mind was feeling exceedingly clear, draping an eerie sense of calm over her. “Can’t run. Bad for my image, and the image is the whole job. If you don’t have your reputation, you don’t have shit. I’m going to be fine, and when I come back I’m buying this little cutie a drink.”

“You’re not coming back, dumbass!” snapped the little cutie in question. 

Jessie didn’t answer, except to blow Tash a little kiss and sashay to the back door like she was making her way down a catwalk. The patrons hooted and hollered for that, thrilled to see a woman shimmying away to her humiliation and possible death. Jessie tossed them a cool middle finger on the way, which only made them cheer louder.

Outside, in a dirt lot large enough that it had once housed softball games for shitheads, Voltzz was waiting. 

And he was putting on a show.

The fur coat had been cast aside—right into the dirt, the fucking moron, think of the dry cleaning bill—and a pair of ugly gloves had been strapped on, black and fingerless with exposed wires all over them. Not a great look, but he did have arcs of lightning jumping from his palms and spreading out five, ten, even fifteen feet away from him, when he’d previously only been able to move electricity over his skin. So. That was bad.

“Voltzzy, baby,” Jessie said, with flat surprise. “You have a new trick.”

A vicious shark’s smile. “Just for you, bitch.”

Okay. So this had been the goal; he’d never actually wanted to blow up her car. This was about showing off a new level of power in the ugliest way possible, making an example of her in the process. Cool. Jessie swallowed, hard. 

“I’m gonna get the electroshock treatment, huh?” she asked, determinedly conversational. She started edging to one side, taking small steps to the left and maintaining a wide distance. There had to be a limit to his range, right? Everyone had limits, even A-listers. “Can I ask a question before you fry me? It’s the gloves amplifying your powers, right? That looks like some ugly-ass N.E.X.T. tech.”

“Yeah. Ain’t from N.E.X.T., though. I got a hookup,” Voltzz said smugly.

Which was enough to grab Jessie’s curiosity even in these dire circumstances. “What do you mean, it’s not N.E.X.T.? Is somebody stealing their trash again? Are you working with fucking Junk Witch? Come on, dude, even you’re too good for Junk Witch.”

“Nah, fuck her. This is all from scratch. Brand new dealer in town.” He snorted, lining up his hand in her direction in a way that was unmistakably taking aim, fingers cocked like the barrel of a gun. “You don’t need to worry about that, though.”

There was nothing else for it: she hit the deck, rolling around in the dirt and gravel in the world’s most expensive jeans. The electricity in the air was strong enough that she felt her arm hairs standing up, but at least she wasn’t dead. Yet. And judging by the portion of the wooden fence that exploded, Voltzz’s aim was bad—he’d hit a point at least a foot over her head, two or three feet to the left.

Just for you, he’d said. Even wallowing in her cave of sadness, Jessie had been keeping obsessive tabs on the villainous goings on of the city. Nobody could get away with shit without it hitting the internet within twenty minutes, and a loser like Voltzz getting such a substantial upgrade would have been news if anyone had seen it. Whatever he had strapped to his hands, she doubted he’d ever given them a proper test run before.

Unfortunately, his aim didn’t actually need to be that good if he could unleash a little lightning storm every time she tried to get close to him, and evidently he just loved unleashing his little lightning storms—this entire period of deduction in Jessie’s mind palace was, in fact, taking place as she scrambled around avoiding everything he was throwing her way. She could hold her own in a brawl, sure, but she was used to the incredible convenience of a ranged weapon. Losing the freeze ray was really like having a hand tied behind her back, and also getting an ice pick to the skull for good measure.

What she needed was a distraction, which conveniently came hurtling out of the sky a second later: Tash’s bird-bone frame, dropping a steep twenty feet straight down to kick Voltzz smack in the skull and send him staggering to the side. She disappeared into a backflip before she could touch the ground, materializing at Jessie’s side in a beautiful three-point landing. 

“Hey,” she said breathlessly, springing to her feet and offering up a wooden baseball bat. “This is for you.”

Jessie was extremely familiar with that bat, which Maud kept beneath the bar in case of emergencies. It couldn’t do much against a pissed off lightning man, sure, but that hardly mattered. There was someone on her side! Someone who cared enough to want her to defend herself!

She took the bat and gave it a twirl. Not her first choice, but beggars could hardly be choosers. She looked back at Tash, still bouncing in place and light on her feet. “What about you?”

“Don’t need it.” 

She could have sworn Tash winked before vanishing again, disappearing just as she rolled into a forward flip and reappearing at exactly the right height to kick Voltzz right between his shoulder blades, knocking him flat on his face as he snarled and grunted like a feral hog. From there she was just taunting him, popping in and out of existence while he swore up a blue streak and lunged fruitlessly after her, panting hard as he launched increasingly erratic fistfuls of lightning her way.

Interesting thing about that: he was relying on his powers less and less, swinging furiously after Tash with his fists. He kept looking at his gloves, though, waving his hands impatiently, making moves like he expected something to happen that wasn’t quite materializing for him.

Ah—he had to recharge now. 

Idiot.

Which wasn’t to say he was harmless. Tash was good but her luck wasn’t boundless, and with a wild lunge Voltzz managed to grab her arm and give her the electric eel treatment, passing it directly from his own skin. Not deadly, Jessie knew, but certainly not a picnic, as Tash’s scream indicated. It was time to move. 

She hauled ass, rushing up behind Voltzz to slam a homerun into his knee, jab him in the kidney, bringing him crashing to the ground. She rested the bat right up alongside his skull so he knew he was in danger while Jessie contemplated her next move. 

Tash was at least still upright, although she was twitching badly with the shocks dancing through her body. She was too little, not an ounce of padding on her to act as insulation.

“Are you okay?” Jessie asked. Cliche as it was, in the moment it felt like it was just the two of them, her eyes locked on Tash’s in a moment of adrenaline and solidarity. Even hurt and shaking, Tash looked more animated than she had in the bar, her features alive with excitement and her eyes flashing. There was the old Night Noir who’d stolen Jessie’s heart.

Voltzz, as if sensing that she was critically distracted by that gay shit, grabbed her arms and pumped her full of electricity.

Okay. Okay. It wasn’t fun. Jessie could feel every pore in her body and her teeth were rattling loose, it hurt a lot more than it had on previous occasions when he’d zapped her ass and those hadn’t exactly been picnics, plus he was hanging on tight and showing no signs of letting go. Distantly she could hear Tash yelling; it was nice that she cared. But she didn’t need to worry, because if there was one thing Jessie could handle it was being stubborn enough to hang onto something long after it stopped being a good idea.

She leaned into Voltzz’s shithead embrace, wrapped her arms tight around his neck, and bit into his ear.

According to the internet, where Jessie spent way too much time, it only took about seven pounds of pressure to rip off a human ear. She had no idea how you actually calculated pressure, but what she did learn in a fucking hurry is that if you hold tight and don’t let a little thing like electrocution deter you, you can really put the fear of god into someone.

Then there was a lurch. The power went out, as it were, and Voltzz went limp in her arms. Jessie unclenched her jaw, which hurt like a motherfucker, and spit out whatever was in her mouth. She didn’t want to know. Voltzz hit the ground, Tash standing over him. All of the old swagger was gone again; she was wide-eyed and rabbit-scared, the bat shaking in her hands. 

“I shouldn’t have done that. Oh my god, trauma to the head kills people. What if I killed him?”

“Nah, he’s fine. I watched this fucker fall three stories and face plant on a parked car once. He got right up and kept running, didn’t slow him down at all.” Jessie drew the back of her hand across her mouth and was relieved to find that she only wiped away a trickle of blood. It was hard to see exactly, given the undignified angle Voltzz was at now, but his left ear still seemed to be attached. Mostly. Jessie twitched, residual shocks still pinging around inside of her, and tried to focus. “Superhumans have, you know, the force field.”

“What?”

“There’s, like, a little pocket of Unreality that surrounds all of you, especially when you’re powering. Most of you can’t make it stronger except for people whose, like, actual whole gimmick is making force fields, but think about it. Most superheroes are constantly walking off shit that would kill a normie, right. Getting thrown into walls and caught in explosions, just really taking a beating. And you heal faster. Come on, none of this works like it actually should. People are supposed to die when they get electrocuted as much as we did. It all works like cartoons. Did you seriously not know about this?”

Tash looked appalled, shaking her head slowly. “No. Why do you?”

“Well, I read. And my buddy Xo explained a lot of it to me. They’re, like, the smartest person in the world about this stuff.” Jessie cleared her throat, sad thinking about Xo but also reminded of Voltzz’s shoddy N.E.X.T tech. “Hang on. I need his gloves.”

She groaned and knelt down over Voltzz’s prone body, rolling him onto his back after she wriggled his wallet out of his pocket and jammed it into her own bra. He was obviously breathing, for whatever that was worth, and he groaned lightly when she moved him, which was probably a good sign even if it didn’t seem to make Tash feel any better. Jessie peeled his gloves off of his dirty little hands, frowning at how DIY they looked up close. N.E.X.T. tech that hit the streets was always sleek and polished, even when it was cobbled together from spare parts, but this looked like it had been assembled with a stapler in somebody’s basement. Who the fuck was making something that was so janky and so effective at the same time? And why didn’t Jessie didn’t know about them? This kind of information never would have gotten past Jonas.

“Voltzzy, baby,” she said. “Can you hear me?”

He groaned miserably, which was about as good as he was going to be able to do for a while.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Jessie said. “Give me my car back. And then don’t ever bother me again.”

She left him there in the dirt, tossing her hair back and flashing Tash a smile that tasted like blood. She’d have to run to the bathroom as soon as she could without looking like a wiener. “Thanks for the assist, babe. Hell of a second date, huh?”

“You’re deranged,” Tash said flatly. She was restless now, shifting from one foot to the other with her eyes darting around like she was expecting someone to bust up this little rumble. Unlikely, because everyone knew what happened to people who tried to interfere at One-Eyed Polly’s, but Jessie could cut her some slack for being nervous. 

“Come on,” she said. “Let me buy you that drink.”

The patrons inside were somber as a funeral, watching with apprehension as Jessie made her grand return, blew a few kisses to no one, and then hoisted herself up onto the bar to make her victory speech.

“Excuse you,” Maud said lightly. 

“One second. Listen up, motherfuckers.” Jessie stared around the bar with a determinedly pleasant expression, flashing a winning smile that was a thousand times more unnerving than just letting herself look mad. “Ice cold drinks are on Voltzz for the rest of the night, because I’m feeling generous and I want that man’s credit ruined. But remember which way the wind blows in this city, and remember that it blows cold, motherfuckers. Whichever one of you tipped him off that I was here, you might want to run along home and get a head start on winterizing your pipes. You know why.” She laughed, which no one echoed, then made a show of rifling through Voltzz’s shitty duct tape wallet and handing his credit card down to Maudie. “Alright, that’s all I had to say! Let’s get the drinks flowing!”

The people of Jessie’s old neighborhood were a lot of things. “Stupid” was one of them, as was “mean,” but so were “flat broke” and “opportunistic.” Hardly anyone was going to pass up a free drink. The ones who wanted to run waited until they’d had a beer, then took off with mumbled excuses and furtive glances in Jessie’s direction. She gave them friendly little waves, fingers wiggling, as a dismissal, then turned darkly to Maud.

“I want their names. I need to know who sold me out.”

And Maudie, bless her, raised an incredulous eyebrow at that. “I’m sorry, do I look like a secretary to you?”

“Right, sorry. Got a little ahead of myself.” Jessie cleared her throat and took another sip of champagne that had been left behind the bar since New Years. “Do you know where Tash went?”

Turned out she was hiding in the kitchen with the rat-loving fry cook, scarfing down fries with a hollow-eyed focus that suggested she had reverted completely to autopilot. Jessie had heard that power use burned calories off like nobody’s business, to the point that Ricochet had compartments built into her suits to stealthily stock up on high-calorie energy bars. Evidently Tash was feeling the crash.

“What the fuck do you want?” she demanded, apparently retaining enough presence of mind to stay hostile. 

Jessie shrugged. “A friend, mostly.” 

“Not interested. And your speech sucked. Villain monologues are always lame as hell. It’s all stupid fucking narcissistic bullshit, running around playing dress up and thinking it makes you cool. I’m so over all of it.”

“What the hell are you doing working here, then?”

That was the right question, judging by the way it made Tash scowl.

“None of your business. We’re not friends.”

“Well, at least let me buy you that drink. I asked Maudie and she says you can kick it for the rest of the shift if you use Voltzz’s card on the expensive shit."

Tash sighed, hard and long-suffering, but she was done fighting back against the pressure. This was just the latest long and stupid night in a string of long and stupid nights in her long and stupid life, and for the moment she was sick of being sober.

“Fuck it,” she said. “Let’s go see what's in the cellar.”

more of jessie lying wetly

chapter one

chapter two

cool art by @hamandeggbun

and brand new shiny chapter three. on god I am not allowed to post another one until I finish writing chapter ten.

The interior decor of One-Eyed Polly’s had changed precious little since the last time Jessie saw it, although the floors were a little more scratched up and the felt on the pool table had acquired some upsetting new stains. The only thing that had changed was the enormous NO SMOKING sign on the back wall, right where everyone could see it. 

The second she stepped inside of the bar the universe conspired to give her the entrance of a stranger blowing into town in an old Western, with the jukebox pausing between songs and conversation hitting a lull just as she stepped on a creaky floorboard, drawing all eyes to herself. She flashed an ice cold Frostbite smile, tossed her hair, and wished desperately that she’d worn her costume. It would make her look like a total douchebag, sure, but it would also remind everyone she was dangerous.  

Jessie strode back to the bar like it was a catwalk anyway, but the whispers and mutters that followed her were not promising.

“Still owes me twenty dollars.”

“Did I tell you she blocked me?”

“I thought she got arrested.”

“What did Sub-Zero say?”

Okay. Okay. Not awesome, but it was fine. They could say anything they wanted about her, but how many of these washouts and wannabes would actually try anything? None of them. They didn’t know that she was unarmed and floundering without her brother. She hadn’t worn her costume because she didn’t need to; her reputation was still strong enough to protect her. Not to mention she wanted all of these dweebs to see her wearing jeans that cost more than their mortgage payments and choke on the jealousy.

Maudie was behind the bar, grayer and butcher than ever. Her face was lined now, enough that it gave Jessie pause. Was her godmother getting old now? When did that happen?

Not that Maud was letting it soften her up at all. She raised a bushy brow at Jessie by way of greeting and launched right into putting her through the wringer. “Well, well. Look at that. A real-deal supervillain graces us with her presence. Thank you for deigning to descend from the gravy train, your highness.” 

“Aww, Maudie, come on. Don’t be like that, it’s my birthday.”

“As if I don’t know. Did you get your card?”

“Did you send one?”

Maud rolled her eyes, hard. “Of course I sent one. What kind of schmuck do you take me for?”

Of course she wouldn’t know; Jessie hadn’t checked her mailbox in at least a week. 

She realized, with despair, that there were tears crowding up around the edges of her eyes, little pinpricks begging to be let loose. When had she gotten so sappy? She wasn’t even most excited about the crisp fifty dollar bill that Maudie always tucked inside of her cards, although that was a relief. It was mostly that someone had even remembered she existed and wanted to do something nice for her that was really turning her into goo. 

“Well, I appreciate it,” she said, choking down her onslaught of emotions. Maudie would hate her making a scene like that; she never knew what to do when people cried. “But, hey, I’m not here to talk about me. How are you doing? Are you feeling alright?”

“The hell do you mean, do I feel alright?”

“Well, you always said that you’d only make people stop smoking in here over your dead body. And now nobody’s smoking, so I figure you must have gotten real close to having a dead body.”

Maudie snorted. “We had a scare last year. Doctor thought he had something, turned out not to be serious. But you know how the dames are. Next thing I know, nobody’s allowed to smoke in here and I’m getting yelled at if I don’t eat vegetables and go for a fuckin’ walking every morning.”

She shook her head, fondly exasperated. The dames were the two iron-tongued femmes Maudie had been in a relationship with for decades, largely considered to be the real masterminds behind One-Eyed Polly’s. According to Maudie, they only kept her around to look pretty and serve the drinks.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jessie demanded. “We could have helped with the bills, or I could have brought over soup. Something.”

“I didn’t want to bother you, kid. Your brother made it pretty clear that you were busy.” And then, before Jessie could apologize or otherwise risk making things sentimental, Maudie cleared her throat sharply. “You want a drink, or what? First round’s free for the birthday girl.”

“Yeah? Let’s do a straight whiskey and a burger,” Jessie said, knowing damn well that she’d be drinking nothing but dirt cheap beer for the rest of the night. “Do the fries still come with that, or is it extra?”

“It’ll be a cold day in hell when I charge people extra for a side of fries. That shit comes with the burger,” Maud said gravely.

There were a lot of things that could stand to be improved about One-Eyed Polly’s, but the food was not one of them. So what if the fry cook telepathically talked with rats? He could work a grill. The basket that arrived in front of Jessie contained a beautifully constructed medium rare burger packing the exact correct amount of grease, surrounded by steak fries that had been seasoned to absolute perfection. Pardon Jessie while she drooled a little bit. 

“Hey, Maudie,” she said, half a burger later. “You still have Joney’s van?”

Her godmother raised an eyebrow a fraction of an inch, which for Maud was an expression of profound skepticism. “I’d love to know how the hell you think I could’ve lost it.”

“No no, that’s not what I meant. I just wanted to see if I could grab it from you.”

“Can’t get your car back from Voltzz, huh?”

“Hmm?” Jessie asked, playing dumb.

“Do not try the bimbo act on me, Jessica Jolene. You know damn well what I’m talking about.”

“God. How did you even hear about that?”

“Are you kidding? I hear about everything in here. We had a bunch of schlubs in here doing shots at noon because they thought Ricochet dragged you off for good.”

“Okay, tacky.” Jessie licked her lips, her mouth suddenly feeling extremely dry despite an abundance of gloss. “Maudie, can I ask you a question? It seems like I’m maybe, um, not very popular around here.”

Maud stared her down with eyes like chisels. “That’s not a question.”

“You know what I mean!”

“I don’t know what to tell you, kiddo. They hate your guts.”

“Maudie!”

Jessie’s complaining was cut short by a sweaty, nervous-looking man appearing from the kitchen and hurrying to Maudie’s side. He shot Jessie a look that could really only be described as distrustful, then leaned in close to deliver his message to Maud. She shrugged him away almost before he finished speaking, peeved by his damp proximity.

“So get her shift covered. Why do you need my permission for that? Call Billy. Or, hell, see if Tash can make it in. She’s always dying for extra shifts. Tell Jordan I’ll come sort her out in a minute and then get your ass back out here to cover the bar. The dishes can wait.”

Maudie sighed and turned back to Jessie as her dishwasher departed, shaking her head. She suddenly looked about a hundred years old. “Kid, I miss the days when the worst I had to deal with was bartenders coming in drunk.”

“What happened?”

“One of my girls, Jordan. She’s got that fucking, what do they call it? Void pox? She kept going see-through when she came in but she swore she’d be fine. Except she’s not fine, she started getting these little cartoon demons popping out of her head. Pretty harmless, only about this big, but if I never have to kill another one with a broom it’ll be too soon. Anyway, I had her sitting down in the back, but now she’s starting to make things levitate and I can’t have that. I need to find her a ride home.”

“Could I come see her?” Jessie asked with, in hindsight, way too much enthusiasm.

Her godmother hit her with a look that was genuinely withering. “You can keep your ass right here and be nice to Nikesh while he tends the bar. And you can leave Jordan alone. It’s a 24-hour bug, she’ll be back to normal tomorrow.”

“I know that!”

“So drop it, then! For once in your life, don’t get so pushy about this superhero shit.”

Maud ducked back into the kitchen on that deeply unencouraging note, sending poor Nikesh back out to hold down the bar in her stead. He studiously avoided Jessie’s gaze when she asked him how his night was going, spitting out single syllable answers until she gave up and asked for a hard cider, which he provided without once actually turning his face in her direction. Jessie dropped a five in the tip jar anyway, because she believed very firmly that you were supposed to tip generously unless the waiter had purposefully set you on fire and maybe even then. Running through the last of your money in the entire world was no excuse to be a lousy customer.

The problem being, of course, that she had hoped this would be a case of spending money to make money. She’d shell out a little for a night at One-Eyed Polly’s, reestablish herself as a villain of the people, and announce that she was hiring to thunderous applause. Henchpeople out the door, heaps of cash secured, the money that she’d pissed away on bottom shelf booze now a worthwhile investment. 

Unfortunately, all of that had depended on there being someone, anyone, left in town who didn’t hate her guts.

“Hey, Nikesh? Do you like working here?”

“It’s a living,” he said, still looking down. 

“If I offered to pay you, like, five times what you’re making right now, would you work for me?”

“Fuck no.”

“Ten times?” 

He actually looked at her for a fleeting second, his gaze touching off hers for just a moment. Jessie was vomitously aware that there was something that looked a lot like pity in his face. “Look, lady. It’s not about the money. It’s about not wanting to get my ass kicked.”

“Jesus Christ. Am I really that bad for business?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Is that why you won’t even look at me?”

“Yeah. You understand. Can’t look like we’re getting friendly.”

“Respect. You gotta look out for number one, Nikesh. I can throw a drink on you, if you want.”

“Yeah? That might be good, actually. We could make people think I said something really nasty to you. That could actually be great for my rep.”

Jessie groaned, resting her face in her hands. This was going to be an absolute non-starter. Polly’s was the biggest rat-hole in town; everyone knew that this was a place where people would turn a blind eye to almost anything. Everyone put aside their beef here, because the place would never function if they didn’t and no one wanted to be the asshole who ruined the only functioning villain bar in town. If a bartender was too scared to even look at her directly, Jessie’s reputation must be worse than dirt.

Why? Because of last night’s embarrassing little tantrum? Couldn’t be it. Nobody complained about the time Voltzz snorted bath salts and went on a rampage, or when Incinerator got drunk and started taking potshots at cop cars. Hell, if anything they’d both gotten more popular after that. Jonas might sneer at the lack of precision and control, but Jessie had tried to tell him a thousand times that people liked to see a supervillain go a little off the rails. It was aspirational, right? It let people imagine what they might do, if they had the power to really cut loose.

Why was she different? Sure, people hated to see a woman having fun, but that couldn’t possibly explain all of it. Maudie could probably explain it, whenever she finished mopping up the poor sap with the void pox. Maudie heard about everything. 

In the meantime, she might as well try to make the most of her evening. If she wasn’t going to be making new friends, she could at least have a little fun. Who cared about her bank account? If she was screwed, she might as well go out with a splash. 

“Nikesh? Open me up a tab. It’s my birthday and I want shots.”

***

Jessie Chilton was not a lightweight. Despite spending most of her early life watching her father get eaten alive by booze she had an exceedingly friendly relationship with alcohol, and could usually hold her drinks pretty well. Jonas had never touched the stuff, erring hard on the side of caution, but Jessie knew that she could stop any time she wanted.

Her miserable 26th birthday was not that time. That night she drank like the world was going to end, because it very possibly was. Her world, at least, and what else was she supposed to worry about? She knew damn well the scope of what she could be held responsible for, and presently it was mostly downing as much tequila as she could.

Which meant she ended up in the bathroom, eventually, because all of that liquid had to go somewhere, and in the time-honored tradition of wasted girls everywhere she got weird about it. While Jessie sat in the cramped and questionably-lit stall she started thinking about how she’d very nearly been born in this very room and what a miserably inauspicious start that was, and how perhaps she should have known that her life was always doomed to go down the toilet despite a decade or so of delusionally believing that she might be meant for something better. She wished that she had some friends to cry to, and briefly regretted the loss of Whirligig. Getting sloppy drunk and crying in club bathrooms together had been about the only thing that friendship was good for, but sometimes that was all she needed it to be. 

In the absence of anywhere else to turn Jessie called the person who had almost always been there for her, until he spectacularly wasn’t.

Hey, Joney. It’s your favorite sister. And I know what you’re thinking: ‘Jessie, you’re my only sister, why are you doing exposition like a lunatic?’ Well, it’s because you haven’t been acting like I’m your favorite sister lately, or like you even know me, so I figured maybe you needed the reminder.

Did you even notice it’s my birthday? You’ve never forgotten it in my entire life. But you know who remembered? Uncle Ray. And Maud. And that’s fucking it. And Ricochet was soooOOOOOOoooo mean to me this morning. Like, you wouldn’t believe. She’s getting way too cocky, if you ask me. You should come back and kick her ass into orbit. Remind her who’s boss around here.

You should come back in general, actually. I miss you. But I’m also mad at you. It’s, like, a real dick move to take off and not even leave me with any money. I mean, I had money. Past-tense. But it’s gone now. I could have, like, I could have definitely spent it better. Smarter? I got these really stupid expensive boots with real crystals on them and then when I tried to return them they said I couldn’t because there was a scuff on the toe, which is like… whatever. I’m wearing them right now even though they’re way too fancy for Polly’s. Might as well get my money’s worth.

But I also just don’t have anything. Like, where’s the bank account? Where is the bank account, Jonas? I earned half that money, so why can’t I… I mean, you literally never told me how to get into it. To my money. Which I guess in hindsight was, like, I should have had a problem with that way sooner, but you made it sound extremely reasonable! And now I’m this close to Uncle Ray throwing me out on my ass, because I couldn’t pay the May rent and I can’t pay the June rent, either, at the rate things are going. I opened a tab at Polly’s and I don’t have enough to pay it, so now Maudie’s going to be mad at me, I think. I don’t know, I’m not even actually sure how a tab works. Isn't that stupid? I'm, like, so mad at myself lately got how much stuff I don't know.

Everybody’s mad at me.

And you won’t even call me back, and I can’t even afford toilet paper, so that’s, like, a lot. And I’m not handling it well. And I’m drank as a skank at Polly’s, in case you couldn’t tell, so go ahead and get your panties twisted up about that. I’m fucking spiraling, buddy. I’m in my fucking up era out here.

So. You should come home.

Or at least tell me where you are or what you’re doing or why you left, okay? Because I hate no knowing that. We’re supposed to tell each other things. And I’m scared about what’s going to happen if you’re gone much longer because, like, everything is going wrong. And I think you might have really left me screwed here, okay? Which is crazy, because it was supposed to be you and me against the world, but I’m not fucking seeing it right now. 

By this point Jessie was crying and snotting pretty hard, absorbed enough in her own agonies that she didn’t realize she wasn’t alone in the bathroom until someone rapped lightly on the door of her stall and almost scared her shitless.

“Hey. You okay in there?”

It was not the voice of someone particularly warm and fuzzy or confident about checking in on a stranger, which actually made it a little sweeter that they’d bothered.

“I’m fine,” Jessie lied, wetly. “I’m just, like, I’m on the phone.”

“Yeah, I can hear that.” Whoever they were, they were sorely tempted to leave it at that and go back to minding their own business. Jessie could tell. Outside the stall, a pair of tennis shoes that had been worn damn near to dust rocked back and forth, weighing the options. “I just wanted to say that they’re not worth it. Whoever’s making you feel this bad, you shouldn't waste your time on them.”

“Okay,” Jessie said. And then, into the message she was still leaving for her brother: “I have to go, a nice girl in this bathroom says you’re not worth it. Please call me, love you, bye.”

“Great,” the stranger said dryly. “Crushed it.” Their beaten-in shoes scuffed away, back over to the sinks. Had Jessie missed an entire other person pissing next to her? God, that was embarrassing.

She wadded up some genuinely horrific single ply toilet paper and dabbed at her face, hoping she didn’t look too atrocious. All of her makeup was waterproof, which had to count for something. “Hey, thank you for that. I really needed someone to snap me out of it. I was being so pathetic.”

“Whatever,” said the voice by the sinks. “Don’t beat yourself up. I’ve been there, I get it.”

Jessie’s heart was getting squeezed around like one of those awful tubes full of goo and glitter and little plastic animals, the kind that everyone used to make jerk off motions. Who was this? Would they still be so nice to her if they knew who she was? What were the odds she could salvage a single actual friend out of this wretched garbage fire of a day? It didn’t even have to be a lifelong bestie, just someone she could have a few drinks with. 

“My name is Jessie,” she said hesitantly.

She heard her new friend sigh. “I’m Tash.”

“Do you come here often? I’m not asking that in the pervert way, I’m just curious if you’re, like, a regular.”

“I work here,” Tash said, with as much contempt as anyone had ever had for their workplace.

“Oh. Do you like it?”

“Sucks shit. But, you know. You do what you’ve got to do.” She cleared her throat awkwardly. “Are you okay in there? I’m gonna get my ass reamed if I let somebody drown in the toilet.”

“No, I’m okay. I’m just, you know.” Which was a fucking nothing explanation, but Jessie’s voice was still damp and wavering enough that it presumably got the point across. “I need a moment to get it together.”

“I hear that,” Tash said. “I usually use the walk-in when I need a second.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s not very big, but it’s quiet. And the cold kind of helps pull me together, I guess. Stay focused.” She cleared her throat again. “Sorry to dump that on you.”

“No, that’s okay. It makes sense,” said Jessie, noted cold enjoyer. “Do you keep anything fun in there? Maud’s never let me see it.”

“You know Maud?”

“Yeah, since I was a kid. Isn’t she the best?”

“She’s a real son of a bitch. But she's the only boss I’ve ever believed when she says she gives a shit about me, though.”

“Sounds like Maudie,” Jessie agreed fondly. “Anyway, what’s in the walk-in?”

“Fucking nothing exciting. Burger patties, mostly. I don’t know. Like I said, not a lot of room.”

“Plenty of room for you.”

“Yeah, every time I have a total breakdown at work.”

“Does that happen a lot? No judgment, obviously. Pot .”

“I don’t know.” Tash sighed. “More often than you’d hope. Which is never, obviously. We don’t have to talk about this.”

“What’s your favorite color?”

“What?”

“Your favorite color,” Jessie insisted. “I love asking people that. Nobody ever cares after you turn, like, twelve, right? But I care. And it’s a lot more chill than talking about, you know. Our favorite places to completely freak out in a shithole bar.”

“Okay. Sure,” Tash said. Everything about the strain in her voice suggested she was not naturally inclined towards whimsy, but at least she was making the effort to play along. “Will you assume I have clinical depression if I say gray?”

“Yes.”

“Well, joke’s on me, because I love gray and I do have clinical depression. But purple is also good. I like purple.”

“What shade? Eggplant? Periwinkle?”

“Just a nice, medium purple, I guess. Like, the platonic ideal of purple.”

Jessie had no idea what a platonic ideal was or why anyone would ever need to specify that they weren't trying to have sex with a color, but she was sitting on her stupid little toilet nodding like an idiot anyway because it felt so good to be making a connection with someone. “I dig that. Purple is good.”

“What about you?”

“Oh, cerulean for sure. With sparkles, ideally.”

“That’s blue, right?”

“Yeah. My jacket is actually, like, that exact color, I can show you.” Jessie sniffled tremendously, getting shakily to her feet and pleased to discover that she was feeling much more sober than when she’d wandered into the bathroom some time ago. And now look at her! Practically having a whole meet cute. What a turn around on the evening. “Okay, I’m coming out now. Don’t gag if my makeup’s a mess, I’m going to fix it.”

She tossed her hair and stepped out of the stall, at which point several things happened to her in rapid succession.

Tash was standing underneath one of the humming, flickering lights that barely managed to illuminate the dark cave of the ladies’ room. She struck a slim figure, drowning in a huge hoodie with two skinny black-clad legs sticking out like a cartoon character. She was wiping down the sinks but turned as Jessie emerged, the fuzzy light illuminating her from the back like a bargain bin halo.

The first thing Jessie noticed was that Tash was a lot shorter than she had been expecting.

The second was that Tash had beautiful eyes. 

The third was that those beautiful eyes and indeed her entire face were curdling up in horror as recognition set in.

“What the fuck,” she said. “Frostbite?”

The recognition and reaction alone weren’t surprising, given the colossal combined levels of notoriety and bad PR Jessie was currently enjoying. The part that nearly knocked her on her ass was that recognized Tash back.

“Oh my god!” she exclaimed, overjoyed and utterly failing to read the room. “Night Noir? Holy shit, girlie, I thought you were dead!”

[fishyartist]

Holiday truce art for @ectopal, I REALLY liked the mysterious framing of you prompt “Danny Phantom disappears. There’s a phantom haunting Casper high” so I made a little one-page comic trying to capture that!

[irrelevantpsychosis]

loved the relationship headcanons!

may i also suggest merc cuddling headcanons?? how do they cuddle with their s/o??😭❤️

I'm so glad you enjoyed those! I'm really appreciating these asks btw, they keep me busy^^

.

.

.

.

.

Tf2 mercs and how they cuddle with their s/o

Scout

He may be skinny as hell but his cuddles are surprisingly warm

He ends up wrapping his entire body around you and won't let go

Though it does get a Little awkward when he falls asleep, he moves around a lot in his sleep

You guys end up cuddling a good bit because of him too

He ends up just pestering you until you stop what you're doing and let him hold you

Soldier

Just kinda holds you close to his chest

He's pretty sweet about it tbh

After a long day of battles, some cuddles with you is needed for him

Quite often he ends up talking about different things he's done in battle, like how many people he hit with a shovel

Pyro

Omg so many cuddles with this cutie

They love to wrap the both of you in a blanket and just cuddle while watching some of their favorite shows or just being there with each other

Sure it's a little awkward because they keep the suit on but, c'mon it's pyro, why would anyone refuse cuddles from them? (well, we know why but shhhh)

Most definitely has balloonicorn somewhere in there with you guys

Demoman

Quite often you get cuddles from this guy after a long day as you two go to sleep

He usually holds onto you with a hand on your waist or back, it's always nice and warm

He's most likely drunk so he falls asleep pretty quickly, but at least he doesn't move much when asleep

If he doesn't immediately fall asleep then you might get a little kiss on the forehead

Heavy

Omg some of the softest and warmest cuddles with heavy

He's a pretty big guy so you're usually completely buried into him

if you're having trouble sleeping he'll hold onto you and tell you little stories, some to do with his family, others to do with his work with Mann co.

Engineer

Really sweet cuddles with engie

Usually keeps you close, softly rubbing your back

If you listen closely you can hear him humming a bit, half the time he doesn't even realize it

Sniper

He 👁👁

As long as no one else is around then he's down to cuddle

You two usually cuddle while laying on top his van at night, just laying there together, watching the stars

When you're actually going to sleep he makes sure to keep you close, usually having lay on his shoulder

Though it can be a little uncomfortable at times because man is lanky, but then so is scout so-

Damn you can tell how down bad I am for him😭

Medic

He's pretty too tho-

He not entirely a touchy person but he won't entirely mind if you want to cuddle

You might have to pull him away from work to do so because mans needs a break sometimes

This guy either moves around a lot or is dead still when asleep there's no in between, so it's either really easy to cuddle while asleep or you get woken up with him rolling over on top of you

Though when you guys are awake you're usually laying on his chest while he reads or smth

Spy

Cuddles with him mostly consist of you sitting on his lap leaning into his chest

I'm sorry my brain is broken and I have zero ideas left😭

My apologies for posting this so late, I forgot Tumblr existed for a minute bsvdhsvd

[queen-of-deans-booty]

LARP and the Real Girl: Part One

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~2.3k

Warnings: canon angst and violence

Author’s Note: I am so sorry I haven’t posted. I was sick with the flu and completely forgot about it. I will be posted both episodes now!

I do not own anything from Supernatural. All credit goes to their respective owners. Any and all comments on these are appreciated.

Joanna is at that age where she is mimicking you and Dean. You have to be careful what you say, what you do, and how you react around her. She is becoming bolder and more confident in what she says and how she acts. She takes after Dean, for sure, but you see your confidence start to shine through in her.

Most people dread the terrible twos, and you know something is just beginning to creep up behind you. The best thing you can do is to teach her not to throw tantrums or to ask politely for something, but it doesn't always stick in her head. She is still learning, no matter how slow it may seem.

You're trying to make her lunch, but she thought it was a good idea to scream her tiny head off. She is sitting on her booster seat at the kitchen table while Dean is trying to read some files he gathered for a potential case. He doesn't look bothered, but if Joanna continues, he will have a headache. Sam is somewhere else in the cabin, but you don't care about him right now.

"Jo, please stop screaming," he says.

"She wants her food. I told her to be patient, so that's what she'll have to do," you shrug.

You quickly place the food on her plate before setting it in front of her. She raises her arm as if she is going to hit you, but you quickly shut that down before it becomes a problem.

"No. We do not hit people," you say in a stern voice. She whines and tries to wiggle out of your grasp, but you're not letting up. "Hitting people is wrong. It is not something you do."

She begins crying, but you roll your eyes in slight irritation.

"You are being dramatic." You wipe her tears and push the plate closer to her. "You are fine. Eat your food." She knows she is being dramatic, so she stops crying to eat her food. "She gets this from you, you know."

"What did I do?" Dean says.

You shake your head and leave the kitchen to do some other chores you need to finish before heading out. You head to the laundry room where Sam is there, taking out the dry clothes and folding them. He's been doing all of your chores lately as a way to say he's sorry. You hate the drama between you and the brothers, and all you want to do is forget about it and move on.

"You don't have to do that," you say.

"Yeah, I do."

"No, you don't," you sigh. You walk into the laundry room and grab an article of clothing to fold. "You made a mistake. As long as it doesn't happen again, I can overlook it. The twins are fine."

"I will never do something like that again. I promise. If I have a problem with you, then I will make sure to talk about it with you first."

"Sounds like a plan," you smile.

"Hey! You two! Come out here!" Dean calls from the living room. You and Sam leave the laundry where it is to join Dean in the living room who is on the phone with someone. "Yeah, I got it. Thanks."

"Who was that?"

"Garth. We need to lose the GPS on our phones because he's been tracking us and other hunters to assign cases to."

"Total Bobby move," Sam chuckles. "Did you find something for us?"

"It's close to where we are in Farmington Hills, Michigan. A dude got ripped from limb to limb inside his locked apartment."

"That's never good," you sigh.

"Maybe after this, we should take a couple of nights off and go see a flick or maybe hit a bar or two. You know, have some fun," Dean suggests. "You remember fun, don't you, Sammy?"

"Let's focus on this case. As long as we're waiting on Kevin, that'll be our fun."

Dean rolls his eyes, but you don't comment on this. You know Sam gave up a lot when he ditched his girlfriend to hunt with you and Dean, so you're not going to make a bigger deal out of this than it is. You quickly finish the laundry while Joanna finishes eating, and then all four of you are on the road headed to Michigan.

You get there in record time, and you're easily accepted into the apartment building where the crime scene is. You let Sam go off on his own while you and Dean hang back for a second.

"Listen, I've decided to forgive Sam for what he did," you say. "The kids are okay, I'm okay, and as long as he doesn't do it again, we're going to be okay."

"Yeah, I agree." You moan in pain and stretch your lower back that aches from the weight of two kids. "Are you okay?"

"I have terrible lower back issues. Having your kids is a blessing, but carrying them is a bitch. You're so lucky to be a man. I wonder what it's like."

"If you were a man, you two would be having a very different relationship," he chuckles. "For what it's worth, I think you're doing an amazing job."

"Doesn't feel like it sometimes," you say honestly.

He pecks your lips and shifts Joanna to the other side of his body before walking into the apartment with you. Sam is already talking to the sheriff, and you flash him your badges with a smile.

"Sheriff, this is special agent Rosewood and Fry."

"Like I was telling him, you guys are quick. We haven't even got the body out yet."

"Well, the FBI is all work and no play," Dean says and looks at Sam.

"You know, why don't you give us the tour while my partner looks around?" Sam says.

"Alright, Follow me."

The sheriff takes you and Sam into the bedroom while Dean stays in the living room with his EMF reader to see if this might be the work of demons. The victim was killed in his bedroom, and his body is still on the bed underneath his sheets. However, the sheet is flat where his arms and legs should be. The walls are stained with blood, and his limbs are scattered around the floor.

"His name was Ed Nelson, thirty-one years old, and an insurance-claim adjuster. He lived alone, which was a real shocker, considering his place is full of toys."

Toys as in action figures and other trinkets a kid might collect.

"What happened?"

"There is no sign of forced entry. Near as we can tell, he was tied up and pulled apart. He died of shock or massive blood loss. Dealer's choice on that one. We did find clear rope-burn marks on his wrists and ankles."

One of Ed's arms is on the floor, and since you can't bend and look at it, Sam does. He pulls back the cloth to reveal a black tree symbol. It could be a tattoo or something more, so you file that away for a later time if you need to use it.

"Was there anything missing from the body?"

"You mean aside from the arms and legs? No," the sheriff chuckles.

"What about the neighbors? Did they hear anything weird?" Sam wonders.

"Uh, the neighbor downstairs said she got woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of horses stomping their feet and galloping. We didn't find any hoof prints. She probably heard a TV, was having a bad dream, or she was high as balls. Fortunately, we got a real lead off his cell phone."

"What did you find?"

The sheriff brings you back into the living room and removes his notebook from one of his many pockets.

"According to the phone records, Ed's last call was from a guy called Lance Jacobsen." Dean comes out of the kitchen and shakes his head, which means he didn't find anything with the EMF reader. "He's an accountant, also in his thirties who also lives alone."

"How is he a lead?"

"The two of them talked together for fifteen minutes, and then Lance sent Ed all kinds of angry texts. Some of them were your typical threat stuff, but some were a little weird."

"Weird how?"

"Like 'you shall bleed for your crimes against us', followed by the emoticon of a skull. There's this beauty: 'I am a mage. I will destroy you'. These kids today with their texting and murder. My men just brought Lance into the station for questioning."

"We're gonna need to take first crack at the suspect," Sam says.

"Like I said, Agent, it's your world."

There's nothing left to do at the apartment, so you three leave as quickly as you can without the sheriff. He called it in that you three were coming, so when you arrived, no one seemed surprised to see you there. One of the officers at the station escorted you to the interrogation rooms where Lance is sitting by himself. When he sees you, he becomes more nervous than he already is.

"Lance Jacobsen? We're with the FBI."

"The FBI? I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe Ed's dead," he cries.

"Lance, take a deep breath for me, okay?" you ask. "Just breathe for us."

Lance stops crying for a moment, but then picks it right back up.

"Lance? Lance, just breathe. Just breathe. You're fine," Sam says calmly, and Lance listens to him. "We just need to ask you a few questions. Try to calm down."

"We want to know about the texts you sent Ed last night."

"I told them when they brought me in that those texts weren't from me."

"Your phone and Ed's phone say otherwise," you state.

"No, I mean, they were from me, but they weren't from me me."

"Did you really think that sentence was gonna clear things up?"

"I'm sorry," he sighs. "This is all a big misunderstanding. Those text messages were from Greyfox the Mystic to Thargrim the Difficult. Our characters in Moondoor. Moondoor is a game that Ed and I play. We're LARPers. Live-action role-playing? We play Moondoor every other weekend at Heritage Park. All the info about it is on our website."

"You guys have a website?"

"Yeah, one of the players designed it. In fact, if you log onto the site, they should have posted pictures from last night's feast. I was there all night."

"What does any of this have to do with the texts?" Sam asks.

"I play a character named Greyfox the Mystic. I'm a very, very powerful mage in the game. Ed is... was Thargrim the Difficult of the Elder Forest, son of Hargrim and Bouphin, brother to--he was Lancelot to my Merlin."

"Well, if you guys were so tight, then why the threatening messages?" Dean asks.

"We were both named to the queen's honor guard in anticipation of the coming Battle of Kingdoms this weekend. I thought he broke protocol, so I called Ed after game hours and accused him of cheating, and then I challenged him to a duel."

"A duel?"

"Wands and swords at dawn."

"Now, when you say 'wands', do you mean magic wands?" Dean asks.

"No. Un-magic wands, agent. Because what I really want in a duel is an un-magic wand," he says sarcastically. "Yes! Fake wands! It's a game! I can't believe it."

Lance starts sobbing again, and that's your cue to leave. You three get up and leave him alone. Lance says there is a website, so the best thing to do is to look it up. There is a computer being unused at an empty desk, so you take a seat and log into the website.

"So? Do you believe 'Dungeons & Dragons'?" Sam chuckles at his own joke.

"He didn't put a whammy on us. Those weren't crocodile tears, man. That's not our guy. Let's check out the Moondoor site, see if Lance's story checks out."

"Way ahead of you," you state. A big banner with the words: "Welcome to Moondoor, Michigan's Largest LARPing Game" flies across the screen. "Wow, and I thought we needed to get out more."

You click on "Picture Gallery" and then on "Festival of the Endless Night." A picture appears of Lance dressed in costume and holding a tankard, followed by two women, one of whom is kissing him on the cheek. Another picture scrolls on screen showing Lance who is smiling.

"It actually looks kind of awesome," Dean comments.

You and Dean look at him, and he quickly wipes the smile off his face.

"Here's a video," you say.

"Moondoor. A world of intrigue, honor, and passion," the narrator says. The video is all flashy words and people dressed up in costumes. "Four kingdoms: followers of the Moon, Elves, Warriors of yesteryear, and the dreaded Shadow Orcs. All will fight on the fields of never in the biannual Battle of Kingdoms. Pick up a sword or a mace. Take control of Moondoor and defend the current ruler, the queen of the Moons."

Your jaw drops when you see who is on screen. Charlie Bradbury is in costume, smiling and accepting the crown. You haven't heard anything from her since she helped you with Dick Roman, so you have no clue what she's been up to.

"Looks like we're visiting an old friend," you smile.

Suddenly, commotion breaks out as officers rush to the back of the station where the interrogation rooms are. Someone calls for the ambulance and the coroner, and you know that something happened to Lance. He was found with blood running out of his eyes and nose. He is found dead inside of his empty interrogation room.

The sheriff was called back as the paramedics did their thing. You have no clue as to what got to him inside the locked room, but thankfully, there are cameras inside.

"You're gonna want to see this," the sheriff says to you three.

You follow him over to a different computer where the footage from inside the room is played. Lance is normal until he starts scratching at his arm and coughing up blood. You notice something on the inside of his arm, so you play it back again and freeze it on his arm. Just like with Ed, Lance has the same black tree symbol on his arm, and now you know it's not just a tattoo.

"He has the same one as Ed," you comment.

"Maybe they had matching tattoos. I mean, they were brothers in arms. Do you recognize it from anything?"

"You mean besides from a Tim Burton movie? Looks like the only thing they have in common aside from the mark is LARPing."

"Like I said," you grin, "it's time to visit an old friend."

x

Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary​​​ where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)

[musicandbooksaremyhappyplace]

I agree with you on the settling down part I mean every one has their own specific definition of settling down so it's a personal choice.

Ooo that's a unique question. I tend to listen to whatever music suits my mood so if i'm feeling myself i lean more towards Cardi b and Nicki Manaj and that type and if I'm sad I will listen to artists like Ethan Jewell and such and if i'm just vibing I'll listen to stuff like The Neighborhood and Chase Atlantic. In case you couldn't tell i have a broad range of music lol.

I'm really basic for this but I am in love with the enemies to lovers trope. There's just something about the I hate you but I would kill for you trope that hits different. Nothing comes to mind right away when i think about examples because I've been in a dry spell of not feeling like reading lately but I just bought a court of thorns and roses so I'm reading that.

I often daydream about becoming really rich and having control over my life. Or how I would escape if I got kidnapped. Also (don't judge me) I think about sex about 70% of my waking time.

Do you have a behavior that you do when you get anxious that isn't normal for you? Like you clean or sleep or anything?

What is something that you can't forgive in a person? For me it's if someone cheats on me or makes fun of one of my friends a step to far.

You get stranded on a island but you get to take 3 things, what are those three things? (excluding electronics)

Dude I saw this post and was like "oh i'll answer it in a few days!" and then completely forgot about it until I was hanging out with my brother yesterday and it just popped into my mind so sorry about that!

@tiredneutron

wow you've traveled a lot! I've always wanted to travel but never got to do it, as of yet but i'm hoping i can in a few years. i think i've said that before actually lol.

i love all three guardians of the galaxy soundtracks. I've listened to them so much that i have most of the songs memorized by now.

i associate depression with my stomach because whenever it's really bad i can't eat and i don't want to eat so that's a rather hard thing to deal with because my depression comes at random times and often stays for days or weeks so i don't really eat during those times. other than that i don't really associate any other negative feelings with my body.

this kinda dumb but several years ago i gave my brother a salt and pepper shaker that's one unit, and he and his wife still use it which makes me happy because getting someone a gift that they use makes me feel useful.

do you talk to yourself?

do you prefer movies or shows?

what is something that you have made/designed that you are proud of?

@tiredneutron

[raidenshogunmommy]

I LIKED YOUR FIRST POST/FANFIC 😭😭 part 2 pls 🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️

I'M SO SO SO SORRY FOR HOW LATE I'M REPLYING!!!

Part 1 Scara (one-shot) continuation

Ok. So as I have stated earlier I won't be giving a continuation for Yae. But I will add more characters for the prompt. So I hope you enjoy!!

"You thought this was real?" Pt 2

Tags: genshin impact, gn!reader, drabble

Warnings: tevyat in complete ruins, mention of dead bodies, injured reader,(pls lemme know if I forgot smth) –Kaeya's part

Reader is convinced they're delusional/ hallucinating

–Fischl's part

Characters: I present to you monstadt's eyepatch duo betraying you: Kaeya, fischl

Genre: angst

Kaeya

"Well well well, look at you trying to control your tears from welling up and not being very successfull." He remarks watching your eyes become full with tears not in flow.

There you both were in the midst of a destroyed tevyat, one practically devoid of any life, with the smell of rotting bodies and blood in the air. Your right knee was horribly injured, just the fact that you were even able to stand right now despite that and the words that just left your lover's mouth is honestly a miracle.

You helplessly wondered if maybe your hearing was damaged too after the final war, because it was very well possible what with all the clanking of weaponry, all the screams of people dying, buildings falling down and elemental energy in chaos. And you had stuck by him through all that just for it to end with the death of your world and him just taking your entire relationship away.

Both of you covered in blood, gashes and cuts staring at each other, one with eyes of amusement the other with disappointment. Because after all that you honestly didn't have the energy to feel worse, you were already at rock bottom.

"Looks like you got what you came for. I hope you're happy now." You say in monotone, barely staying conscious now, the injury on your knee getting worse as you kept standing.

"I am. Thanks for your concern love. It doesn't seem as though we will ever cross paths again as you seem to be on the brink of death. Guess this is goodbye." He smirks as waves his hand at you and turns around.

As soon as he does, your vision goes black and you collapse.

Kaeya hears the sickly sound of your blood soaked body hitting the hard ground, and it takes everything in him to not immediately turn back around and beg you to wake up, it takes everything in him to keep walking away from you.

Fischl

She stares at you with her chin high and mighty, as you stare right back at her completely shocked.

"Is this one of your pranks? Or some scenario you came up with in your head? Because whatever it is I assure you is not funny and I hate it." You say slightly taken aback but in a calm voice because being with Fischl has always been kind of a rollercoaster.

"I'm dead serious. And sort of amazed myself that you are actually that naive." She states in a matter of fact tone.

You just keep looking at her as the image of your weird and amazing girlfriend starts to slowly break piece by piece right in front of your eyes. Were you experiencing delusions right now or something?

Suddenly your mouth started feeling very dry, but didn't you just have water a second ago? Was your head spinning? Was your heart speeding up?

She looked at you and decided that the conversation was over. She had said what she came to say and she'll spare herself the trouble of answering your annoying questions about not being able to believe her and your constant need for confirmation.

You didn't know if you were hallucinating or if she was really starting to look farther away. Not wanting to accept the situation you were trying to manipulate yourself into making this to be some horrible nightmare or that you were going crazy.

You looked down making sure you were still standing on concrete. As soon as you looked back up, she was already gone. Was she ever even there to begin with? Were your insecurities playing a trick at you?

Next thing you know, your getting drunk with Venti at the tavern, as Fischl comes to take one last look at you without your knowledge before taking off, to who knows where. Wherever it may be, all she knows that it will be a place without you and she doesn't know if she could ever survive in such a place.

Well, there you have it!!! Finally, the much requested part 2!!!

[threepointseven]

Dinner

Fandom: Obey me!

length: short-ish?

genre: Angst

pairing: demon brothers x MC

summary: It’s MC’s turn to cook dinner tonight as she skips to the kitchen to happily make dinner. She makes a feast but no one has come to enjoy it. She wonders why and finds out at 12 am as their DDD buzzes. 

Part two! part three!

As my DDD’s clock landed on 8 PM I smiled knowing that it was my turn to cook dinner. I walked out of my room and into the kitchen, opening the fridge to be surprised at how much was in there.

“Im surprised Beel didn’t steal everything throughout the day…”

I mumbled to myself, I quite enjoy cooking for the others…It’s calming and I love seeing their joyful smiles and worthless quarrels when they’re eating my food on the table.

Lately Lucifer has been very busy, I mean he’s always busy but he’s been exceptionally busy this week. I don’t exactly know why but I plan to do my very best tonight to cheer him up!

As I get ready my kitchen tools, and my ingredients, I roll up my sleeves, ready to prepare a feast for the brothers and I,

40 minutes go by, im halfway done and there’s no sign of anyone… The house of Lamentation is peaceful when its quiet. As much as I love the silence it’s strange to not see Mammon bugging me or Belphie clinging onto me..

“I wonder where they are…..Beel is usually here to come smell the ingredients by now, or Asmo going on live and recording me cook…..”

My confusion is interrupted by the sound of the oven’s piercing ding

“Oh well, at least when they come they’ll have a feast prepared for them!”

I pick up my oven mitts and open the oven, steaming hot air washes over my senses. The smell of the baked goods I made covers the room. The sweet and salty smell leaves a proud smug on my face as my excitement takes over.

Almost another hour goes by, making good food for all 8 of us isnt exactly an easy task!

As I lay down the last few plates, the warm smell leaves me satisfied. Small bits of sweat trail down my neck as I had been dealing with heat and fire for a while in the kitchen.

My lips formed into a small sweet smile, proud of the dinner I made for the brothers and I.

As my stomach grumbles I have to control myself from eating it all,

I lift my arms to stretch and I make a small noise.

I look around the room to realise that they aren’t here yet. None of the brothers.

I hum to myself as I start walking down the hallways knocking on everyone’s door and telling them dinner’s ready.

Not even Lucifer is here…

Assuming that they’ve gone out for a little I sit myself on the dinner table and happily wait for them to come back.

I pull out my D.D.D to kill time

An hour goes by and I worry as the food went completely cold,

A frown forms upon my face as I worry about where they are.

I refrain myself from texting them or calling them knowing they might be in an important meeting.

Another 30 minutes go by, still happily seated on the left side of the dinner table, ready to warm up the food when I hear the slightest sound of the door opening.

My eyelids start to get heavier as I try to keep awake.

I last for a few more minutes and I start to get dizzy, craving a bit of sleep.

As I hear the ding of my DDD I look to see what it is. I can barely focus on anything as I figure out that Asmo posted something on Devilgram, I unlock my DDD to see what it is.

My vision starts to fail on me as I see Asmo and quite a pretty person in what it seems to be the RAD uniform and Asmo taking a selfie. I get confused as I look at the caption to see

“Just met the new human exchange student, aren’t they such a babe?!”

I can barely process anything as I fall sleep with my DDD still in hand and the previously hot food still neatly placed on the dinner table.

As the clock hits 12 AM my DDD buzzes

“Im so sorry we couldn’t come to dinner MC, I forgot to tell you we’re visiting the new human exchange student. They’ll be staying with us and they seem quite nice.”

-Lucifer

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

this was inspired by a tiktok i saw on my fyp of sheep mc making dinner and no one coming to eat it cause they were all greeting the new exchange student! sadly i didnt have it saved but once i do find it i’ll link it!