#I don’t know if this is a monstrosity of a joke or if it’s actually a decent au thing

[zenmom]

When you listen to too much Fnf:

I feel like this is one of those 3am posts. And I totally blame myself for this idea 😂💀

[phantomrose96]

Prometheus

content warnings: horror. body horror. ghost show can have a little existential horror, as a treat! :)

...

Tucker and Danny sat as silhouettes in the Foley attic rec-room.

The ghoulish light of the television pinned their shadows against the back wall, pulsing in and out like fireflies at each flash of the screen. It left their backs drenched in darkness, and it made monoliths of the old furniture and piled-high boxes that wrapped the perimeter of the attic. Drafty air whistled through the gaps in the insulation. Plicks and flicks of moths beat in tone against the light of the television where the seal of the attic window failed to keep them out. Danny hounded the controller in his hands, clackering with each frenetic beat of his thumb while he mashed his buttons and leaned his full bodyweight into the assault he wrought, virtually until--

“BOOM!! Headshot!” Danny yelled with a pump of his fist. From his nonexistent peripheral vision, he could not see the way Tucker would not look at him.

“Come on, man,” Tucker said.

“Get it?” Danny asked.

“Dude, come on, like… Maybe don’t.”

Danny let out a disappointed huff of air from his nostril, spirits dampened. The wayward glow of his eye settled back on the screen: Victory blazoned across his split of the screen. You Died pulsed on Tucker’s. Danny mashed the rematch option. “Maybe get good then,” Danny said, “and then you get to make the bad puns.”

“Sorry man look I’m just—tired okay?”

“Yeah I know—”

“You can be goofy about it tomorrow—”

“I know—”

“I promise it’ll be hilarious then just—”

“Okay okay, I get it. I’ll save the jokes—”

“How much longer?”

“Hmm?”

Danny looked, and Tucker was looking now too, and it was taking all concentrated will on Tucker’s face to keep looking.

“How much longer until you’re like… You know.”

4am chimed from the grandfather clock stowed in the Foley attic. The ghostly sheen of the television splashed bright and pallid across the right side of Tucker’s face, as he stared at Danny. And it splashed bright across the left side of Danny’s face, which was the only side of Danny’s face remaining.

“I don’t know like… maybe 3 more hours, I think?” A lisp whistled from the absent flesh of his jawbone.

Tucker watched his lips. And his eyes drifted to the shadow carved dark and empty in the socket that could no longer see him, a merciful concealment of where skin turned to raw exposed flesh turned to bone.

Tucker looked forward again, and he mashed his thumbs into his own controller. Danny’s character’s skull exploded into a cloud of meat-rain before Danny had the chance to notice the match resume.

“Fine. I can do 3 more hours,” Tucker said. “And start watching your head.”

…

It wasn’t until the camping trip 4 months ago that Danny knew anything was strange.

It was a yearly Fenton tradition, which Danny tolerated and Jazz dreaded, to haul the four of them and the RV out into some swampy campground 3 hours from home. They’d roll in roaring, RV stuffed to the brim with wilderness equipment and enough mechanical monstrosities to scare away all actual wildlife. All except for the fish, who had the disadvantage of not seeing the mechanical affront to God parked with questionable legality on the campgrounds.

This year, Danny had decided he was embracing it. Because for the first time, sitting grubby and wet in the mud for 3 days sounded much nicer than his typical weekend plans, which was mainly getting his ass kicked by ghosts. He’d flagged down Valerie a week ahead of time to tell her, between gunshots, that he’d be absent for those 3 days. Valerie had taken equal offence at the request that she pick up Phantom’s slack, and the implication that she wasn’t already doing that.

But it meant the ghosts were covered for the weekend, and it meant Danny was free to do nothing more exciting than sit in the mud, which was all well and good enough for Danny. Although his hopes of leaving the weekend with the same number of scars he started with were dashed by hour 5. It was his own fault too. Jack had insisted Danny gut the fish Jack caught via a blast of the Fenton Disintegrator to the lake (unconventional, not even a fishing device, a ghost weapon he and Maddie were fine-tuning. A ranger came and yelled at them about it.) And while distracted by his parents getting told off for being menaces, Danny miscalculated the slipperiness of both fish and knife.

Luckily the RV was, among many many things, a hospital on wheels, and Jazz had quit sulking long enough to take a morbid fascination in cleaning Danny’s palm out with antiseptic that burned like acid and bandaging up his palm. For dinner that night, Danny ate his open-flame grilled fish with a little more prejudice than usual.

By Saturday, his hand hadn’t healed. Nor by Sunday. And on Sunday evening while Maddie and Jack busied themselves with packing up the tent they’d both invented and yet struggled to collapse back into its box, Danny flagged Jazz with quiet urgency.

“I think there’s something wrong with my hand.”

“Wrong how?”

“Infected, maybe.”

Jazz knit her brow in concern. “It looked fine this morning,” she muttered as she pulled Danny down onto the stump beside her and flipped open the First Aid kit latch. She unraveled Danny’s bandage layer by layer, and the concerned knit to her brow loosened to confusion.

“It looks fine. It’s barely even red.”

Danny snatched his hand back. “Yeah, and it’s barely healed at all.”

“I mean, it’s healed a little bit.”

“Yeah but. Barely.”

“It looks pretty normal.”

“Jazz my day-job is getting whacked with ghost machetes,” Danny said, tone growing a little tense at Jazz’s lack of concern. “I know how quickly cuts are supposed to heal.”

“And how quickly is that?”

“I mean. It depends. But like a day.”

“A day?”

“Or maybe 25 hours, I guess.”

“Danny, you cut yourself pretty deep.”

“26 hours max, literally.”

Jazz was staring. Danny felt awkwardly judged.

“Hey um, as a question Danny, do you remember the last injury you got before your ghost powers?”

Danny hesitated. He racked his brain and some part of him felt a little embarrassed how hard he had to search, as if it were shameful to have been so delicately uninjured before this whole thing.

“…Dash, maybe. But Dash it good at the kind of quick jabby punches that hit your nerve but don’t bruise.”

“Anything else?”

Danny fell quiet. Then brightened. “I fell off my bike last year. Racing Tucker. Scraped up my shin and knee.”

“And how long did that take to heal?”

The delight faded a bit. Danny thinned his lips thinking. “…Maybe a while.”

“Probably a few weeks.”

“Jeez, really? No.” Danny said. And he so deeply wanted to be offended, because he’d become the biggest expert in the family on getting his skin used as a ghost shrapnel canvas, which should make him the authority on injury healing. And Jazz was doubting all of that. “No. That’d heal in like. A day.”

“Maybe with ghost powers,” Jazz answered. “Maybe in ghost form. Which, currently and for the last 3 days, you have not been in.”

Danny fell quiet. He considered this information that deeply annoyed him until, with grudgingness edging to acceptance, he looked at his hand, and then his sister, and then his hand.

“….Oh.”

That night, home and showered and with the clock creeping toward 1am, Danny sat on his bed. He pooled his hands in his lap, lit by the moonlight pouring through his bedroom window. He sat an inch above his bed, in fact, hair shimmery white and his right glove removed. In the wash of moonlight he watched his palm. And there was something haunting, almost, in the way he could see the edges of the cut stitch themselves back together bit by tiniest bit. He lost himself in a grainy infomercial on his television, and when it ended, his cut was gone.

…

Phantom returned to the ghost fighting scene with an unwarranted new confidence. In truth nothing had changed. But Danny operated now with the knowledge that he was a particular kind of resilient that he’d not actually realized before. And while he did not like getting fileted by Skulker’s ghost gut-hook knife, or seared by Ember’s flame guitar, or bonked in the head by Fenton Bolas (Dad why), there was a certain delight in the “This will all not be a problem by tomorrow”-ness of it all.

Even better, he now knew that just idling in ghost mode for an extra hour or two was all it took to be right as rain again. (“This is making your Gameboy addiction worse than Tucker’s,” Sam had commented. “Well how else am I supposed to pass the time?” Danny asked while mashing buttons with one less finger than usual. “You could read a book.”)

On the flipside, it did make Danny grouchier about mid-school-day attacks, which didn’t afford him the luxury of floating around to bake in ghost mode for an hour or two watching bad tv. And unless Mr. Lancer got real chill real fast with Danny Phantom taking Danny Fenton’s English tests, it meant that any school-time fight injury had to be dealt with conventional human-style, and super-healed after school.

And Danny carried this knowledge with more bitterness than usual one fall afternoon when a fight with Technus had already gouged into the first 15 minutes of his math test, and now Danny was going to have to suck it up for the last 45 minutes if he wanted to pass geometry this quarter. Which was bullshit because that last blast Technus got on him had really fucking hurt.

Danny landed, and in his math-induced funk, he missed the particular wide-eyed way Sam and Tucker stared at him. “Here,” Danny said, handing off the thermos to Tucker, and Danny let his human transformation slip through in rings around his sternum.

“Danny stop,” Sam said, and with an urgent breathlessness that froze Danny in place. “Do not turn back.”

Confusion seeped into Danny’s blood. He let the transformation rings fade away, and he felt the thermos heavy in his outstretched hand that Tucker would not take. Heavy and wet. Heavy, and very very wet.

He looked at his hand, and his white glove was unrecognizable beneath the saturation of red. The thermos dropped from his hand, and suddenly Danny wasn’t so sure which direction was up.

“Sit,” Sam maybe said, or said something like it. Her hands were on his shoulders. He was easing in a direction that was probably down. His butt hit cold pavement. And suddenly he raked in a shuddering breath which was wet as mud.

Sam was pulling away the top of his suit, which was the worst possible place for her to do that considering how much it hurt. She was pulling right where Technus had blasted him, and Danny had half a mind to tell her off until he saw what was underneath the fabric.

“That’s not good,” he bubbled out through a lot of blood in his mouth and throat.

Baseball-sized. Like someone had taken a very large hole-puncher right to his sternum. A very good hole-puncher because it had in fact punched him straight through and run off with the little cut-out it stole. Globby flesh spilled to fill in some of the empty space. But a solid chunk of sternum, and heart, and lung, and spine, were rudely elsewhere.

Danny was in a very slippery wet dream, and his fluttering eyes agreed.

“No,” Sam said with an unnecessarily aggressive pinch of his skin. “Absolutely do not fall asleep.”

“Ow,” Danny said, maybe about the pinch but also his missing organs.

This wasn’t good enough for Sam who was a little bit ghost-shaded herself while she grabbed both Danny’s ears tight and angled Danny’s eyes to hers. “If you turn human now that’s going to be very very bad. You’re fine, Danny. You’re just in shock, I think. Focus on me. Come on, count with me Danny. 1. 2.”

“Isn’t counting sheep supposed to put you to sleep?” Danny quipped, but all the blood gurgling maybe ruined his delivery a little.

…

His heart sewed itself back together in 20 minutes. His esophagus and trachea kindly followed at the 27-minute mark, the last of the tubage knitting itself together and forming the correct kind of air-seal against anything else in his chest cavity. That was a blessing, because passing the time was easier when he could talk without re-enacting the elevator from The Shining – a joke Danny had tried to deliver several times and which refused to land.

And while he still did not have his new spine vertebrae nor sternum by the 30-minute mark, Danny could see the way the last of the white fear had left Sam’s face and the way Tucker could now face him directly. And that told him that however he looked, he no longer looked like someone who was going to die.

By the 1-hour mark, Danny sat drenched in his own blood from a fatal wound that no longer existed. And he’d missed his math test.

…

Super healing was cool. Very cool. What other kind of power lets you just walk away from fatal injuries?

At the close of a ghost fight, thermos capped, swimming in the eerie silence of a street cleared of screams, Danny stood. And he shivered. He ran his hands up and down his stomach, his chest, his back his face, pressing any pain-point to discover if his fingers would sink in wet and deep. Was it safe to transform back? If he made a mistake, would he notice fast enough? Would he be able to turn back again in time?

Alone in the snow of the Amity golf course. The roof of the mall. The back archives of the library. Danny lingered. Many places were good for lingering, and so Danny would linger, wherever and whenever he could. It made that held-breath feeling of transforming back easier, to know no part of him was at risk of undoing him.

And sometimes his hand did come away sticky. And in the black of night Danny went home, mindful to step only on the kitchen tile from which blood could be wiped up cleanly. And he was tired from too many nights of this when he pulled cereal from the cupboard and splashed milk into a bowl and cleared away the nuts and bolts from the half-undressed Fenton Disintegrator (undergoing v2 upgrades) and flickered the noxious glow of the muted television to life while his liver stitched itself back together. The tremble would not quite leave his cereal spoon hand but he’d manage.

One night Walker had blasted off half of Danny’s skull. And he lay shaking hunched on the pavement willing himself to overcome the pangs of shock radiating through his body until he had enough composure to call Tucker on the phone and ask if he could come over, if they could play Man vs. Zombie maybe, and stay awake through the night while his brain matter remade itself.

One night he had to grab Valerie by the ankle before she flew off, and she probably only heeded him because the break in Phantom’s superhero bravado unnerved her so much. “Please just stay and talk to me. Something bad will happen if I fall asleep,” he said, while holding the parts that used to be his stomach. “Define ‘bad.’” “I’ll die.” “Sounds like a human.” She shouldn’t have taken pity on him. But she did. Maybe because she was a human who would die like Danny if left on the pavement with her stomach open. Valerie stayed until the sun rose.

And he was lucky, because as a human he should have died. And Danny didn’t. He just came close, more and more and more. Until the sight of a raised ghost weapon forced a very human flinch from him.

…

“…losing an edge, you’d say, Craig?” “Not exactly. As a psychiatrist who’s worked with many veterans and active-duty soldiers, it’s common to—”

“Morning,” Jack said, flipping up his welding mask just long enough to nod to Danny before re-busying himself in his soldering.

“Dad, do you think maybe you could do that in the lab?” Jazz asked over a bowl of cornflakes, with a tone one might use when asking a 10-year-old to move his basketball game outside.

“Hmm, why? The table won’t catch fire.”

“Which is what you said last time,” Jazz said, carefully plucking up a cooled bit of metal scrap from beside her cereal bowl.

“…ffered many fatal injuries on camera, who knows how many weren’t capt—”

The television drowned beneath the screech of Jack’s welding, let up to breathe for moments at a time before Jack resumed the drowning. Danny’s eyes followed. The refurbished Fenton Disintegrator had nearly reformed, bigger than its original body, with a gaping fish-mouth twice the radius of the thing which had blasted up the fish in the campground lake.

“I just think, Dad, that you and Mom have a whooooole laboratory basement to yourselves, and I have just this one dining table to eat cereal at, so—”

“But then you kids would miss out on what I’m making. See, Danny’s interested. Danny, watch this—”

Jack hoisted the monster up. He hitched it atop his shoulder, and set his eye behind its sight, and twisted at the hip to point its open maw directly at Danny.

Danny froze.

“Dad, Jesus, at least show some trigger-discipline if you’re—Danny?”

Danny could not move. He could not move or really see. The shockwave rippled through him, and he believed for the moment that surely he’d been shot until Jazz shook him. “Danny, are you okay?”

Danny’s heart was intact but still it squeezed like it had been ripped. His legs were whole but they were numb beneath him. And he was useless too. Over what? Over nothing. Over a gun pointed at him, the sort which had been pointed at him 4,000 times before.

“…Danny?” Jazz asked, more worried than before. Jack had put down the gun, and he was staring at Danny in the same way.

And it was stupid. So very stupid. Because Danny had super-healing, and a hit from something like that would heal. It could rip him apart, and he’d be completely fine.

So it was all actually incredibly incredibly stupid that he was somehow, without even meaning to, crying.

…

The fight had ended three hours ago. And three hours was longer than only the worst of his injuries took to heal. Tonight had not been bad at all, just a bit of ripping and tearing at his leg from a bear-trap Skulker had laid (despite Skulker insisting he did not know what a bear was). And that had healed up in 20 minutes flat.

Danny lingered anyway, sitting soaking cold in the snow on the golf course. He liked that it was high-up here. He liked that the lights fanned far and wide. He liked that the razed-flat golf turf allowed nothing to hide. He wiled away the hours he ought to be sleeping, because there was a security in consciousness, in his ghost form. If he slept, he could be killed. And if he sat resting in ghost form on the crest of the golf course hill, he could not.

But he could nod off. Catching his head at each dip. But his mind fizzled and faded, rubbing against the staticky edge of sleep, enough to perhaps not notice steps in the snowfall that tracked him to where he sat.

The whir of the charging gun kicked him to high alert.

All alert, all at once, so suddenly adrenaline soaked that Danny had no sense of orientation when he spun on spot and his eyes drank in the sight of the barrel-mouth breathing to life in his direction.

“Told you I fixed the calibration on this, Honey.”

“Well at least it’s not a fish.”

Stop, Danny wanted to say. But he was paralyzed. He was dread. He was stone.

It screeched. And it roared. And with a connection of a car crash, it took greedily for itself a gibbous moon of Danny’s torso.

He collapsed. Eyes spinning. Ears ringing. Sensation like fire and like ice and like buzzing static and nothing, feeling, at all to connect to his legs.

Stop, Danny wanted to say. But he needed a mouth for that. So the second blast connected.

…

It had been an amount of time. Jack and Maddie Fenton may have stooped in the snow and collected samples to study. Danny could not know, because he’d need eyes to know. They may have crunched with their boots and mused about the resilience of ecto-flesh, more resilient than fish-flesh. Danny could not know, because he’d need ears to know. They may have picked him up piece-meal and carried him in their pockets. Danny could not know. Not without touch.

He may have been on the golf course. He may not have been. There was no ‘where’ Danny could know. He needed his proprioception for that.

There was was. There was something Danny hoped was be. This was, Danny hoped, awake. This was the only awake he could be without a brain. And if this was awake, how long could he last? And if this was awake, was it enough to heal again?

Super healing was cool. It saved you from death. But maybe not always.

Was time passing…? Was the snow cold. Was the wind blowing. Was the hilltop white under pooling lights. Was it. And did it. And was he and did he.

Was time passing?

Surely, it had been just an eternity, by now. An eternity at least.

Or had it been only one second.

Or Danny wasn’t here.

He was, though. He had to exist to feel what he felt in the moment. He had to exist even if he was deprived of the mouth needed to scream the agony that was, in its entirety, him.

…

Sun glazed the snow on the east bank of the golf course down to a slushy sheen by 10am the next morning. Mitted, in snow boots, three trespassers combed the 18 holes of Amity Park Golf Course.

“Are you sure it’s this one?” Sam asked, voice hoarse with a question that had been repeated once an hour for the last three hours between heaving breaths of clearing snow.

“It has to be this one. They said golf course there’s only one golf course,” Jazz answered, and her hands trembled against the heel of the shovel she dug into her nearest snowbank.

“Do you see any foot prints?”

“They’re melted.”

“Well check the melted sides then!”

“We checked the melted sides.”

“Maybe we missed—”

“Guys shut up,” Tucker said, and he said it low, and he said it with lips the color of ash. He stood rooted. And his eyes shifted to the crown of the hill 30 feet to their right.

Jazz and Sam shut up. Because they heard it too.

Jazz abandoned her shovel in the snow. She ran. But Sam was faster.

And it was a noise. Long and piercing and deflating. Quiet. Then starting fresh from the top. Long and singular, like the note of a bagpipe. Sam rounded the crest of the hill. And she found the noise first.

And this close, she realized what it was. The noise was relief. Because the thing lying in the melted snow was finally enough of a mouth, and enough of a throat, and enough of a lung, to scream.

[lechrts]

Die For You. ✷ Lando Norris

Pairing: Lando Norris x Friend!reader

Summary: When he’s the only one that’s allowed to pick on you. (And unfortunately someone else picks on you, and it backfires.)

Word Count: 1.1k

Disclaimer/s: fluff… kinda… defensive!Lando 👅. A tad bit of body shaming i fear …

Vera’s Voice! hi Enya. For U. i hope i did this justice.

The bar was alive with laughter and music, and you were perched at the counter, sipping on your favorite fruity cocktail. As usual, Lando couldn’t resist making a comment the moment he saw you.

“Another one?” He said, sauntering up next to you with a smug grin. “What is that now? Your third? Fourth?“ He grinned with a small pause.

“Be careful. We can’t afford to have you tumbling like a drunk mess in the streets later.”

You glared at him, already irritated. “I can handle myself, and this is my second drink. Thank you very much.” A scoff and eye roll emitted from your body.

“Yeah, right,” He replied, his grin widening. “Say that again when you inevitably start slurring your words and crying about how much you hate tequila.”

“Ha. Funny.” You deadpanned.

“I’m serious,” He pressed, leaning on the counter with a quirked brow and stupid smile. “You’re a lightweight. One more of those, and you’re topless on a counter.”

You scoffed, taking another sip of your drink just to spite him. “And I’m sure you’d enjoy that.”

“Maybe so,” He fired back with a sheepish shrug. “But I’m just looking out for you,” Another wink.

Before you could respond, one of Lando’s mates—you couldn’t remember his name, they weren’t that close honestly—wandered over, clearly overhearing the exchange.

“Seriously,” He said, his eyes scanning the glass in your hand. “Another sugary monstrosity? You know that stuff makes you bloat, right?”

The words hit like a punch to the gut. You froze, the insult hanging in the air as your self-consciousness surged.

“And for the record,” He continued, smirking like he’d just delivered the joke of the century, “It’s not exactly flattering. Just saying.”

Lando’s head snapped toward him so fast it was almost comical. But there was nothing funny about the deadly look on his face.

“What’d you say?” Lando’s voice was low and ice-cold, a tone you’d never heard from him before as her quirked a brow with a repulsed look.

His friend blinked, caught off guard. “Just telling your friend here that she’s gonna get fat if she continues drinking all that—“

Lando cut him off with a light shove, almost like it was a warning for him to shut up

“Relax, mate. I was just jok—”

“Yeah? Well, it wasn’t funny,” He cut him off sharply, now stepping forward to put himself in front of you. “Who even says that? You think that’s funny?”

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” The guy stammered, clearly starting to regret opening his mouth.

“Doesn’t matter,” Lando snapped. “You don’t talk to her like that. Ever. Got it?”

“Alright, chill, mate. I didn’t know she was off-limits or whatever.”

“Off-limits?” Lando repeated, his voice rising. “She’s not off-limits, she’s just better than your pathetic attempts at humor. So why don’t you piss off.”

The guy muttered something under his breath before walking away, leaving the two of you standing in tense silence.

“Lando…” You started, but he turned to face you before you could say more.

His expression softened as he ran a hand through his hair. “I hope you don’t believe a word he said.“

You swallowed hard, still feeling the sting of the comment but touched by Lando’s protectiveness. “Thanks for…that,” You said quietly.

“I mean it,” Lando said, stepping closer. “I know I’m a prick but it’s all in good fun.” A pause. “I also never make comments about your appearance.. considering you’re gorgeous…” He trailed off, his sly way of sneaking in a compliment making you slightly blush.

You huffed out a small laugh, your lips twitching into a faint smile. “I don’t know what’s more shocking: that you just defended me or that you actually said something nice for once.”

“Don’t get used to it,” He said, his usual smirk creeping back.

“Of course,” You muttered, rolling your eyes. “Who else will tell me I’m stupid every second they can?”

“Only me,” He added, his tone more serious. “No one else gets to. Not like that.”

You looked up at him, his sincerity catching you off guard. “Deal.”

And just like that, the teasing and bickering was back—but this time, you couldn’t help but feel a little safer, knowing Lando had your back.

likes, comments, & reblogs are appreciated! ^_^ and pls Lmk if you wanna be apart of my permanent tag list

tags! @planetpedri @halfwayhearted @wdcbox @freyathehuntress @iovepoem @piastri-fvx

[lovebugism]

hi, bug! i’ve been one of your many avid readers for a long time but it’s my first time submitting a request for your summer fic fest 🥹 could i pretty please request for jealous!mean!eddie x ditzy/sunshine!reader where he sees her ex trying to win her back? ahhh thank you ily! ❤️

thank you for requesting angel, ily :D here's a sorta part 2 to this fic! — eddie doesn't realize he's been taking you on dates until your ex shows up (jealous!grumpy!eddie, friends to lovers, brief allusions to smut | 1.3k)

bug's summer fic fest (⁠ꈍ⁠ᴗ⁠ꈍ⁠)

When Eddie took you to Benny’s Burgers that Saturday evening after your heart got broken, he fully intended for it to be the last. That was until the next Saturday came around, anyway, and he found himself hungry and thinking of you. So, sharing a milkshake at the diner became a two-time deal, begrudgingly so.

The third time was a total accident, and he’d like that on record. Eddie had come alone that day. You made a stupid joke about him stalking you when you just happened to be there, too. (Both of you were secretly hoping the other would show, of course, but neither of you would admit it out loud.)

After that, it just started to feel like tradition. Eddie didn’t feel right going to the diner without you, so he never did. Instead, he buys you dinner once a week, sits with you in your designated booth by the window, and pretends all of it is something he has to do. Because it’s much easier than acknowledging that a lifetime of Saturday evenings with you still wouldn’t be enough.

“Can I have some of your fries?” you wonder through a distressingly large mouthful of cheeseburger.

Eddie scowls. “You said you didn’t want any.”

“I didn’t,” you shrug innocently then swallow down the too-big bite. “But yours look really good…”

“Too bad,” he scoffs and chucks a fry into his mouth. “Get your own.”

You slouch against the pleather seat with your features screwed in a gentle pout. It takes Eddie a record-breaking three seconds to slide his basket of fries across the table to you.

He huffs all dramatically about ‘cause he wants you to know he’s annoyed. You rise again, beaming anyway, because you know most of it’s just for show.

Eddie watches with his brows pinched in confusion as you methodically pick a single fry from the batch. His frown deepens when you dip it into your milkshake. 

“Don’t taint the ice cream, weirdo,” he protests, exhaling sharply through his nose in place of a laugh.

You giggle through your mouthful at the screwed look on his face. “It’s good!” you insist. “Here— Try one.”

Eddie grimaces when you pluck another fry from the basket and scoop it into the milkshake. He flinches when you threaten to hand the monstrosity over to him. “I think I’m good, actually.”

“Try it.”

Your giddiness makes him smile despite himself. He concedes with a heaving sigh. “This is the last time I take you anywhere, you know that?” he grouses, mostly muffled as you feed him the ice cream-covered fry.

You smile to yourself, wider than you realize, and swipe your palms together. You’re pretty sure he’s said that to you every time he’s brought you here — yet, for some reason, he still shows up at your doorstep at seven o’clock every week. 

“Yeah, I know,” you hum with a fond sigh. “But it tastes good, right?”

Eddie’s pretty face is swirled and largely emotionless. You can’t tell if he’s disgusted or amused. “It tastes like… a potato covered in chocolate ice cream,” he deadpans.

“Wow. You’re a genius, Eds,” you muse from across the table. You cross your arms along the top of it and fight back a smile. “Can’t believe it took you two whole years to graduate.”

“Don’t push it—”

He’s interrupted, first, by the overwhelming smell of cologne (pine and lavender, achingly so) — and then by a deep and obviously forced laugh. “It didn’t take you long, did it?” a strangely familiar voice wonders aloud, deep and smooth like honey.

Your head whips at the same time as Eddie’s, both of you wearing similar looks of confusion. A tall boy with nice hair and expensive clothes (an obvious King Steve clone) stands at the head of the table. Your table.

Josh O. from fucking Mr. Mundy’s.

You force a breathy laugh of palpable confusion. “What?”

“Nothing. I was just… wondering why you never called me back,” the boy shrugs and crosses his toned arms over his equally toned chest. His smile is lopsided and perfect; his teeth are slightly crooked and perfect, too. It’s fucking annoying.

“But I guess I have my answer now, right?” Josh O. from Mr. Mundy’s continues with another hearty chuckle. “Trying all the flavors of Hawkins, aren’t we, sweetheart?”

Eddie’s chest burns, and not in a metaphorical way. The red-hot embers there set his ribcage aflame, turning himself into a wildfire of withheld rage. His nostrils flare with it as his dark eyes flit from the asshole towering over the booth, to your cowering form, and then back to the asshole again. 

He seethes quietly and waits for you to stand up for yourself. The moment never comes.

“She didn’t call you back because you’re a fuckin’ douchebag,” Eddie blurts for the both of you, still chewing at the monstrosity he’s wildly unsure of — which he can barely taste now, through his blinding anger and all.

Josh O. from Mr. Mundy’s pretty smile ebbs only slightly. He squints his glittering eyes and long lashes, fluffy brows pinching softly in confusion. “I’m sorry. Who are you again?” he wonders with a cynical laugh.

Eddie’s answer is immediate and equally venomous. “The asshole taking your girlfriend on a date, tough guy,” he mocks.

The boy scoffs. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Were you sayin’ that the night you were tryin’ to cop a feel in your car?”

You shift uncomfortably in the booth. The cracked pleather sticks to your clammy skin. You feel the tension pressing on both sides of you until you can hardly breathe. “Eddie, stop—”

“—You know, it’s real impolite to touch people without permission,” Eddie continues despite your plea, features pinched in a faux-sympathetic pout. “Didn’t your mommy ever tell you that?”

Josh O. from Mr. Mundy’s scoffs, both amused and distantly muddled. He laughs softly to himself and steps back from the table. “You’re a fuckin’ freak, man,” the boy murmurs as he leaves.

“That’s funny,” Eddie calls after him anyway. “Your mom says that, too.” 

“Eddie.”

The boy relaxes in the booth once he’s gone. His rigid shoulders deflate slowly with a drawn-out sigh. He motions across the table with a pale, ringed hand. “Can I have my fries back, or are you gonna eat ‘em all.”

His effortless deflection is almost admirable.

“I’m gonna eat ‘em all,” you joke in an instant.

“Figured,” Eddie deadpans. He reaches for the basket in front of you and plucks a couple from the dwindling pile. He pinches them into his mouth, wipes his salty hands on his jeans, and pretends nothing ever happened.

You swallow hard and avert your gaze. You cradle the cold glass of your milkshake with one hand and stir at its melting contents with the other. “Thanks for that… By the way.”

“Don’t mention it,” Eddie shrugs. “Like, seriously. Don’t. It’s gonna make everything weird if you do.”

“Okay,” you nod firmly, then glance at the boy beneath your lashes. A mischievous smirk curls at the very corner of your mouth. “So… This is a date now, huh?”

“Shut up,” Eddie frowns and takes his fries back. “It just slipped out.”

“So what? That’d make this our… Fourth date? Fifth?”

“Fourth,” he corrects.

Your smile widens. “Most guys usually get laid by then, don’t they?”

Eddie scoffs through his mouthful. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, sweetheart,” he quips in an audibly sarcastic monotone.

The rest of the quote-unquote date plays out like normal. You make mindless conversation while you finish your burgers, sharing a milkshake between you while you steal Eddie’s fries. 

You don’t tell him that you wouldn’t mind if he felt you up in his van — that you’d happily let him, if he asked; and Eddie doesn’t tell you that he goes to sleep dreaming about it most nights. 

[mercillery]

YANDERE SHANKS AND MARINE READER

WARNINGS: GENDER NOT SPECIFIED + YANDERE THEMES + NOT PROOFREAD

NOTES: I was bored and came up with this monstrosity. I don’t even like Shanks.

At first, Shanks' obsession with you doesn’t hit like a cannonball to the chest. Nope, it's more like a quiet wave that barely brushes your ankles—annoying but harmless, right? Wrong. Soon enough, that wave becomes a full-blown tide, and before you know it, you're swept away. It all starts with his simple admiration. You’re not like the other Marines he’s encountered. You’ve got this unshakable sense of duty, a moral compass that actually points in the right direction unlike most in the Navy, and a discipline that, frankly, makes you a bit of an anomaly. Shanks finds it...fascinating. And it’s not like he immediately jumps into full-blown, yandere territory. No, no. This man’s descent into obsession is slow, methodical. You wouldn’t even notice it until you're waist-deep in his fixation, and by then? Well, good luck swimming out.

It starts small. Maybe it’s while he’s kicking back, drink in hand, surrounded by the raucous laughter of his crew. But instead of fully enjoying the moment, his mind drifts—to you. You, in that crisp Marine uniform, carrying out your duties like it’s second nature. He finds himself smiling at the thought, then catching himself like, “Wait, what?” It happens again at the tavern—he’s deep in conversation with Benn, but his thoughts are far from the present. Instead, he’s wondering where you are, what you’re doing, if you ever think about him too.

And it’s in these quiet moments that the discomfort starts to grow. You’re a Marine. He’s a pirate. There's a pretty solid line drawn between you two, and it's not one he can just ignore. But the idea that you might never see him as anything more than a "wanted man" eats at him. It starts as a nagging thought, just a small itch at the back of his mind. Then, suddenly, it’s a full-on irritation that won’t go away. But here’s the thing about Shanks—he’s got the patience of a saint. You won’t catch him spiraling out or throwing tantrums. Nah, he’s not that guy. If anything, he plays the long game—the long game. We're talking years, decades, lifetimes if need be. He’s not about to rush in, guns blazing. He’ll wait, chip away at your defenses bit by bit, while always keeping that charming grin plastered on his face like nothing’s wrong.

And don’t think for a second that his easy-going, laid-back nature means he’s going to let this slide. Oh no. He might not lose his temper, but that doesn’t mean he’s not making plans—subtle ones, of course. He's just waiting for the right moment to make you realize that he’s the only option. You might think you have freedom, but it’s all an illusion.

Shanks is a master of hiding those darker intentions behind that trademark grin of his. You know the one—the carefree, charismatic smile that makes it impossible to distrust him. It’s his greatest weapon, honestly. You’d never guess that behind all the jokes, the playful attitude, and the hearty laugh, there’s something a little more… possessiveness lurking. He’s a charmer, no doubt. And charm? Well, that’s just the perfect way to keep anyone, especially you, from suspecting a thing. During your encounters, he’ll engage in that easy, casual banter, as if you’re just two people having a friendly chat on opposite sides of the law. If you ever did get the faintest inkling that something was off, he’d wave it away with a quick joke or a playful comment, and bam—you’re laughing before you even realize it. Suspicion? What suspicion?

Oh, but don’t be fooled. Shanks knows exactly what he’s doing. Manipulation? Oh, he’s practically a connoisseur of it. But he’s subtle about it—really subtle. He doesn’t need to go full villain monologue on you. No, he’s got finesse. Conversations with him are like verbal chess matches where you think you’re just having a nice chat, but really, he’s been 10 steps ahead since you said “hello.” He’ll start small, dropping hints, little questions that make you think twice about your Marine superiors. “Are you sure the Navy’s got your best interests at heart?” he’ll ask, with that easygoing tone that makes it seem like he’s just curious. But each comment is deliberate, each seed of doubt planted with care. The worst part? You don’t even notice you’re being manipulated. That’s his talent—he makes it all seem so natural.

Shanks has a way of making the pirate life sound pretty good too. Freedom on the open seas, no rules, no rigid Marine codes to follow—just you, him, and the wind in your hair. He’s not about to shove you off the Marine ship with a cutlass in hand or anything. No, he’s got more class than that. It’s all in the subtlety—he wants to make you want the life he’s offering, to make you think it’s your idea. That’s the horror beauty of his approach. And he doesn’t need to rush things either. In fact, he enjoys watching it all unfold, like a game he knows he’s already winning, even if it’s just a little at a time.

And no, he’s not sadistic or cruel about it—he’s just got that patient confidence. Every time he sees you waver, every time you start questioning just a little bit more, he gets this quiet satisfaction. It’s like watching his plan come together, piece by piece, with that percentage of “winning you over” ticking up in his mind. He’s not in a hurry. He’s got all the time in the world, and he knows that eventually, you’ll come around. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon enough, you’ll find yourself standing on the deck of his ship, wondering how you ever thought the Marine life was the right choice.

And no, Shanks isn’t the type to toss you into a burlap sack and lock you in a room somewhere—he's way more refined than that. Kidnapping? Please. That’s amateur hour. No, Shanks is the kind of guy who enjoys the chase. He plays the long game like a master strategist. Instead of brute force, he uses patience, charm, and a little bit of cunning to get what he wants. The first step? He studies you, not in a creepy binoculars-from-a-bush way okay, maybe slightly, but in that clever, calculated fashion that only Shanks can pull off.

He learns everything about you—your routines, your patrol routes, where you dock your ship, and even the little things, like your favorite taverns and preferred training spots. He takes mental notes with the kind of attention to detail you wouldn’t expect from a man who spends half his time drinking and laughing his head off. The scary part? He does all this while maintaining that relaxed and carefree demeanor, so you never suspect a thing.

Despite being a busy Yonko with his hands full you know, ruling the seas and all that, Shanks makes time for you in his own… special way. You’ll start noticing him “coincidentally” showing up wherever you are. After a skirmish with some rowdy pirates? Boom, Shanks just so happens to be there, giving you a smile like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Run into him while you’re off-duty on some random island? Oh, what a surprise! What’s even funnier is that it seems like he’s always in the same bar as you—whether you’re grabbing a quick drink after a long day or taking a breather. Of course, none of this is by chance. Shanks isn’t just lucky. He knows exactly where you’ll be. Every time you think it’s fate? Nope, it's just Shanks doing what he does best—playing the long game like a pro.

And it’s not just him, either. The rest of his crew? Yeah, they’re probably unknowingly complicit in all this. To them, it’s just another day, chilling, maybe gathering intel on Navy movements. Little do they know, they’re actually helping Shanks with his personal side project: you. He’s got them keeping tabs on where you’re stationed, which islands you’re patrolling, and when you’re vulnerable. They think they’re just doing their regular stuff, keeping the boss informed about any activity, but really, Shanks is sitting back, piecing together your every move. The only person who’s likely able to tell that something is up is Benn.

It’s almost comical how well it works. One of his crew might casually report, “Oh, yeah, we saw them dock at Loguetown.” And Shanks, acting all cool, will just nod and say something like, “Ah, interesting.” But inside? He’s already planning his next “accidental” encounter. He’s got it all under control, and by the time you figure out that these run-ins are a little too coincidental, you’re already in too deep.

Remember when I said Shanks is a connoisseur of manipulation? Yeah, he’s not just playing mind games in casual conversation. Shanks doesn’t just want to win you over in a chat or two—he’s looking at the long-term investment. One of his favorite tactics? Slowly, subtly isolating you from the people around you. It’s not like he’s going to come right out and tell you to ditch your Marine buddies—that’d be way too obvious, and Shanks is way too smooth for that.

Instead, he drops little hints here and there. He’s clever about it, too—he doesn’t bad-mouth the Marines outright. He’s more subtle. He’ll say things like, “Do you ever feel like the Navy’s ideals aren’t totally in line with your own? You seem like someone who’s got their own sense of justice.” He’s not being confrontational; he’s just gently guiding you to start questioning things…

And before you know it, you’re thinking, “Wow, he’s very perceptive—very understanding too.” It’s genius because it makes you feel like these thoughts are your own, when really, they’ve been carefully planted by a Yonko who’s playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers.

But of course, Shanks’ goal isn’t just to make you feel understood. His goal is to make you feel disconnected from the very people who are in the way of his love for you—your fellow Marines. Slowly, you start seeing them differently. They don’t really understand you, do they? They don’t get your struggles, your doubts. Not like Shanks does, anyway. And without you even realizing it, you start to distance yourself from them, emotionally if not physically. He’s effectively creating a gap between you and the Marines—his subtle way of prying you away from the Navy and toward his world.

You literally have no idea it’s happening. Shanks is so good at this that you think these doubts are just part of your own natural reflection. He knows that as long as you’re loyal to the Navy, there’ll always be other Marine’s standing between him and the life he wants with you. He’s playing the long game, making sure that when the time comes, your loyalty to the Marines will be shaky at best. And once that loyalty starts to crack, well... that’s when Shanks moves in for the win, ready to pull you into his loving arms before you can even realize what’s happening.

Shanks, being the smooth operator that he is, absolutely loves testing your boundaries. His touches always seem harmless—at least at first. It starts simple, maybe a friendly pat on the shoulder after a sparring match or his hand lightly resting on your lower back as he guides you through a busy crowd. Completely innocent, right? Nothing to see here. But then, over time, you start to notice that his touch lingers just a little too long. That pat on the shoulder feels more like a subtle claim. The hand on your lower back? Yeah, it’s gentle, but there’s a certain possessiveness to it, almost like he's marking his territory in the most casual way possible.

At first, you brush it off. I mean, it’s Shanks—he’s naturally touchy, right? But then it happens again. And again. And again. And again. And again…

Suddenly, you’re wondering, “Wait... is he flirting with me? Or is this just friendly?” It’s maddening, because Shanks is so good at playing it cool that you can’t quite put your finger on what’s going on. Every time you start thinking, "Okay, maybe this is more than just friendly banter," he’ll flash that big grin of his or crack a joke, and you’re back to square one. Is this guy flirting, or is he just being Shanks?

The thing is, whether you realize it or not, he’s playing a much bigger game. Shanks is slowly but surely pulling you away from your rigid Marine life, introducing you to the idea of being closer to him—literally and figuratively. Each casual touch, each playful smile, is like a breadcrumb leading you further into his world, where the rules are looser, and the lines between friend and something more get blurrier by the day.

But the kicker? You don’t know where it’s all leading. Is he just messing with you? Testing how far he can go before you push back? Or is there a master plan here, where in the end, he’s not just pulling you out of Marine life but pulling you into his life? One where you belong to him completely? Guess we’ll never know! Until it’s too late, of course…

Despite his usual laid-back, “I’ve-got-all-the-time-in-the-world” vibe, Shanks has a violent side, and it’s a side that only shows when something he cares about—like you—is in real danger. Sure, he’s all about fun, drinks, and the occasional brawl, but when it comes to protecting what he cares for? That’s when the switch flips. If Shanks ever felt that you were truly threatened, or if someone dared to make a move on you, all that carefree energy goes right out the window. Shanks would become a force of nature, and suddenly, there’s no smile, no jokes—just swift, brutal efficiency.

But here’s the thing—he’s not the type to fly into a blind rage. His yandere tendencies are more... surgical? Let’s say some pirate gets too bold and threatens you, or maybe there’s another Marine who’s getting a little too close for his liking. Shanks wouldn’t hesitate for a second. He’d handle the situation so quickly and so cleanly that by the time you realized something was wrong, the problem would already be, well, gone. Vanished. Poof. As if they never existed.

His crew wouldn’t suspect a thing. They’d think their captain was just being his usual self, stepping in to defend someone he cares about. They’d chalk it up to Shanks doing what Shanks does—protecting his own. But little do they know, it’s not just some offhand act of loyalty. No, Shanks has been calculating this for a while. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and he’s making sure that no one, and I mean no one, comes between you and him.

Now, unless you’re incredibly sharp—or just really, really perceptive—you might not even notice. After all, Shanks is nothing if not smooth. But if you start putting two and two together, you might realize that these sudden "disappearances" around you aren’t just bad luck or coincidence. Maybe you’d start to notice that the people who pose a threat to you or more specifically, Shanks' claim on you always seem to vanish without a trace. And, well, if you’re smart enough to figure it out, let’s just hope you don’t mind, because by then... you’re already in pretty deep with him.

If Shanks ever got the feeling that you were slipping away—maybe you start pulling back, doubling down on your Marine loyalty, or just seem less receptive to his charm—well, that's when things would quickly start to get concerning and worrying. Shanks is usually the master of patience, but if he felt like he was losing control over you, he’d start to escalate, just a bit. Now, don’t worry, he’d never hurt you directly. That’s not his style. But his tactics? Oh, they’d start to get a lot more aggressive.

First, he’d start by nudging things in his favor, slowly sabotaging your career in the Navy without you even realizing it. Maybe you’re framed for some minor misconduct—nothing too wild, just enough to put you under scrutiny. Or maybe he’ll manipulate a few situations to make it look like you’re getting just a little too cozy with pirates. Who knows, you might "accidentally" end up in the same place as him more often than the Navy would like. And let's be real, that doesn’t exactly look great on a Marine’s record, does it?

Shanks, being the clever man he is, wouldn’t let you see the full extent of his obsession unless it was absolutely necessary. To you, it might just feel like bad luck or a series of unfortunate events. After all, why would the Navy be questioning your loyalty? Why would your superiors start doubting your dedication? You’re one of the good ones, right? But behind the scenes, Shanks is pulling strings, slowly guiding things to make it harder for you to stay in the Marines. The plan is simple: if the Navy pushes you away, you’ll have no choice but to gravitate towards him. And who wouldn’t want to be a part of his carefree pirate life after all the stress the Marines put you through?

Now, if you’re smart enough—or just plain stubborn enough—to figure out what’s going on, that’s when Shanks might have to resort to Plan B. He doesn’t like the idea of cruelty, and he’d rather not sabotage your career directly. But if it’s the only option left to keep you by his side? He won’t hesitate to strike.

At the end of the day, Shanks doesn’t want to play dirty, but for you? Oh he’ll make an exception. After all, if the Navy is standing between him and the life he wants with you, then they’re just another obstacle to remove. And trust, if Shanks has his mind set on something, nothing—and no one—can stop him. Not even the Marines.

Ultimately, Shanks envisions a future where you’re free from the Navy, sailing the seas with him at your side—not as just another crew member, but as his equal. Or, more accurately, as his. In Shanks’ mind, this isn’t about controlling you overtly. He doesn’t want you to feel like a prisoner in his grasp; no, he wants you to believe that you’re choosing him because of his charm, his charisma, and everything that makes him, well, Shanks. You won’t even realize that, slowly but surely, you’re already tangled in his web.

His obsession isn’t suffocating—not outwardly, anyway. It’s the kind of love that lets you feel the breeze of freedom while subtly guiding your steps until all roads lead back to him. He’s sure that in time, you’ll see things his way. You’ll come to understand that his love is real, genuine, and that no one else could care for you the way he does. And when that day comes, you’ll finally reciprocate. You’ll see that this was all meant to be.

But if not? If you don’t come around on your own? Well, Shanks has all the time in the world. He’s patient. He knows how to wait, how to play the long game. He can be gentle. He can be kind. He can let the world unfold at its own pace. But remember, even the most patient man has his limits.

And when those limits are reached… well, you might not like what’s waiting for you at the end of that road.

[solxamber]

At first, I like and support the most of your work. It's well written and in a style I like. But of course, I have a little request. Diasomnia, 4, Fluff (Comedy)

You can pick on your own, if it has to be Fluff or Comedy. I am fine with the both of them.

thank you so much!

You: 1, Gargoyles: 0 || Malleus Draconia

For the Holiday Event! || Prompt: "I'm NOT jealous" ; Genre: Comedy

You loved Malleus. Truly. But there was only so much gargoyle trivia a person could endure before losing their mind.

Currently, he was waxing poetic about the symmetry of a gargoyle he'd seen in the Valley of Thorns, his eyes sparkling like he was confessing his first love.

“…and the way its wings curve? Utterly sublime. A craftsmanship that transcends time. Wouldn’t you agree?”

So then, in a fit of mischief, you said it. The words that would send your entire week spiraling into chaos:

“Sometimes I think you love gargoyles more than me.”

Silence.

The air grew thick. The moon dimmed. Somewhere, Sebek probably sneezed dramatically in the distance.

Malleus turned to you slowly, his expression one of deep betrayal. “What did you just say?”

“It’s a joke, Malleus,” you said, already regretting everything.

But he ignored you, his brows furrowing in the way that meant your next week was about to get very strange. “You think I love gargoyles more than you?”

“I don’t! That’s why it’s a joke!” you said quickly, waving your hands for emphasis.

But he wasn’t listening. Oh no, the great Prince of the Briar Valley had entered “dramatic spiral” mode.

“This cannot stand,” he said, already pacing like he was strategizing for war. “You must understand the depth of my affection. Gargoyles are… significant, yes. But you… you are far more important.”

“That’s nice, Malleus, but—”

“No! You must be convinced.”

The next morning, you woke up to chaos. Your dorm was… infested.

Stone gargoyles. Everywhere.

On your desk. Perched on your windowsill. One was even sitting in your chair, looking smug.

“MALLEUS!” you screeched, running out into the hallway only to find him waiting there, arms crossed, looking far too pleased with himself.

“Do you see?” he said, gesturing proudly at the invasion. “I have brought my gargoyle collection to you. I share my deepest loves only with those who matter most. Surely now you understand your place in my heart.”

You pointed wildly at the stone monstrosities. “HOW DOES THIS PROVE ANYTHING?!”

Malleus blinked, tilting his head. “You said I love gargoyles more than you, so I have shared them with you. This is logical."

“This is UNHINGED.”

“And yet,” he countered smoothly, “you are still more radiant than they.”

You were so stunned by his sincerity that you almost forgot you were still yelling. Almost.

It got worse.

Malleus started comparing you to gargoyles.

“Your posture rivals that of the Archguard Protector in Thornmere Castle,” he mused as you sat at lunch.

“I don’t even know what that means!”

“And your smile,” he continued dreamily, “could put the Stone Warden’s eternal vigil to shame.”

You buried your face in your hands, debating your life choices.

The next day, you walked into Ramshackle dorm only to find your living room covered in… gargoyle carvings?

“Malleus, what—”

“These,” he announced grandly, stepping forward with a flourish, “are gifts. I carved them myself to show you how much I cherish you. Each one represents a moment that I value in our time together.”

You stared at the gargoyle army invading your living space, unsure whether to laugh, cry, or faint. “You realize this still doesn’t actually prove anything, right?”

He frowned. “But you said—”

“I was joking!”

Malleus tilted his head, confused. “So… you are not jealous of the gargoyles?”

You groaned, dragging a hand down your face. “No, I’m not jealous of the gargoyles! I was making a joke!”

His eyes narrowed slightly, as if he wasn’t entirely convinced. “You seemed very sincere.”

“I wasn’t!”

“But you—”

“I wasn’t!”

Malleus sighed, looking truly distressed. “Then how am I to express my feelings for you if not through grand gestures? Do you not like the gargoyles I made?”

Your heart softened at his genuine concern, but you couldn’t let this go on. “Malleus, I don’t need you to prove anything. I know you like me. You could have just said so.”

“But actions speak louder than words,” he replied solemnly.

You burst out laughing, and Malleus looked at you as if you’d grown a second head.

“You are losing your mind,” he muttered, crossing his arms.

“Oh, I’m the one losing my mind?” you said through giggles.

Malleus nodded. “Clearly. Perhaps you have spent too much time with Lilia.”

That only made you laugh harder, and eventually, Malleus joined in, though he still looked confused about what, exactly, was so funny.

In the end, you kept one of the gargoyle carvings—the smallest one—as a memento. The rest? They mysteriously vanished overnight. You didn’t ask questions.

But the next time Malleus started talking about gargoyles, you kept your jokes to yourself.

Masterlist

[lovecla]

TAKE YOUR PAIN AWAY | quinn hughes.

chapter eight:

<last chapter> <next chapter>

➴ chapter warnings: smut (softdom!quinn, slight degradation, oral sex—m. receiving, protected sex, p in v, praise kink, overstimulation), aftercare, mentions of shitty brother.

➴ word count: 4.9k

💌 from me to you: jesus christ who wrote this!! it wasn’t me!! i swear!

౨ৎ

2024, MAY.

“THIS DOESN’T even look like a pancake, Quinn,” laughing, you stare at the weirdly shaped pancake Quinn had just finished flipping.

“Bella, your mom is being annoying. Tell her to leave me alone.” Quinn talks to Bella like a dad would to a daughter, baby voice and all. Bella, just like the traitor she’d become ever since she met Quinn, barks at you. “Good girl, aren’t you?”

“You are the worst, both of you,” you point at them, sitting on the stool and watching Quinn cook the worst looking chocolate chip pancakes you had ever seen. “I don’t know what I was thinking when I introduced you to her.”

“You were just doing the inevitable. B and I were meant to be.”

You stick your tongue out and roll your eyes.

It was Saturday, eight a.m. and the sun was already shining bright outside, making you and Quinn wake up an hour earlier so you could go for a walk in the forest surrounding the cabin.

“You used to make the most perfect looking pancakes. What happened?” You bicker, smirking when he frowned, looking down at his monstrosity pancake.

“I think they look fine. You’re just too demanding.”

He placed four of the ten pancakes he managed to make in front of you, giving you a kiss on the forehead without saying anything. You liked whenever he did things just because he wanted to.

You cut a piece and slid it into your mouth, almost biting your tongue because they tasted amazing, just like seven years ago.

He looked at you with expectant eyes and even though you wanted to mess with him a little more, those puppy eyes made it hard for you to go any further.

“They’re amazing, babe,” the pet name slipped out of your mouth like you had called him that way your entire life. “You’re still the best chocolate chip pancake maker ever.”

He smiles, eating a bite of it himself and speaking after swallowing. “Do I get a kiss for making the best chocolate chip pancakes ever?”

You pretended to think, tapping your chin with your finger. “Umm. I guess? Maybe. Let me think about it for a bit.”

He chuckles, grabbing your neck and kissing you himself. The kiss tasted like coffee and chocolate, sweet yet bitter, dreamy either way. Kissing Quinn never got old. His tongue caressed yours, the firm grab he had on your neck making you whimper softly.

“Yeah. Sweet.” He confirms after separating your lips.

You finish eating breakfast together, going upstairs so you could change into something lighter and appropriate for a hike. You put on your favorite white sports bra and leggings before putting on your Nike shoes and moving on to put your hair up in a ponytail.

While Quinn got ready, you put on some dog shoes for Bella— completely unnecessary but she looked so damn cute with them— and put on some sunscreen on her nose so she wouldn’t get sunburn.

“Why does she have nicer shoes than I?” Quinn moves behind you, while you were taking pictures of Bella looking cute.

“Because she’s mommy’s sweetest thing. Aren’t you, baby?” You talk with her, using your best baby voice and kissing her face all over.

Quinn laughs behind you. “The day you actually become a mom will be the end of everyone. Just think about how spoiled your kid will be.”

You get up from the floor, raising your brows at him. “The day I ‘actually become a mom’? Excuse me. I gave birth to Bella.”

He stares at you like you’re the craziest human being who ever walked on earth and smiles, placing a hand on your waist.

“Let’s get going then, mommy,” he jokes and you smack him on the chest, calling Bella and grabbing your water bottle.

The forest surrounding your cabin wasn’t much of a big forest, it was more like a bunch of trees lined up with a path in the middle, and you actually preferred it this way, because it was less creepy than going around in dark, deep forests with little to no light.

You and Quinn walked in silence for a few minutes, enjoying each other’s company and the view, Bella walking ahead of you both, smelling every plant she found on her way.

You could see the lake from where you were and you smiled, feeling happy and peaceful.

That was the best thing of being around Quinn Hughes.

He was calm, and gentle in a way you don’t see much in men anymore. Your last boyfriend, one of the male models who worked with you in LA, was genuinely the definition of what a man shouldn’t be.

At first, Richard was all you could ask for and more. He understood your fears as a young, inexperienced model in her first big girl job and took care of you.

But then, you started to get big, bigger than him. He started complaining about the parties you went to, the dinners, your relationship with Nicholas— a gay man and your friend— and the outfits you wore.

Then he got extremely pissed at you when you got to be the cover of British Vogue, something he’d been wanting for his entire time at IMG. You remember how he yelled and told you you were trying to be better than him, and how you would never outshine him.

You thought about explaining to him that you could never outshine him because you worked for different brands and different people— hell, he was a male model and you were a woman. How could you outshine someone who didn’t even work in the same modelling industry as you?

So you broke up with him, another thing that hurt his ego and made him cry and beg in front of you, pleading for another chance, which you, dumbly, gave it to him.

Only for him to break up with you a week later.

After that, and after another nightly session of stalking the Canucks Instagram page, looking at pictures of Quinn for more time than it should be normal, you gave up and admitted that, unfortunately, you wouldn’t find anyone as good as Quinn.

“How do you think Jack and Luke are doing?” You ask after a while, genuinely curious.

“They’re fine. They asked about you,” he says, casually, making you smile.

“I miss them.”

“You can always call them, you know…” he suggests. “They would love to talk to you.”

“I don’t know…” you start, feeling unsure. “I don’t want to be a bother.”

Quinn frowns at you. “Why would you be a bother?”

You stare at him, forgetting for a second who you were talking to. This was Quinn, talking about Jack and Luke. But for a second, you thought—

“Madison, why are you calling me in the middle of the night?” Peter sounded angry, making you flinch.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up,” you whisper, holding the phone with your shaky hands. “I just miss you. It’s been a while since the last time we spoke.” A while meant seven months.

“Do you think I have the time to sit here and chit chat with you?” He scoffs. “I’m a doctor, Madison. I have a real job, I don’t sit around all day bothering people, taking pictures of myself for other people to see.”

“You know mom chose this job for me…” You try defending yourself, pointlessly.

“Is this a fucking therapy session? I don’t give a fuck, Madison. I need to go back to sleep. Bye.”

He turns the phone off before you even processed what he had just said to you, letting yourself cry for the millionth time since you moved to Los Angeles.

“Maddie?” Quinn’s voice brings you back to the present, making you blink fast and realize you were standing in the middle of the path, Bella sitting beside you and Quinn looking worried.

Great, now I’ve ruined the hike.

“I’m fine, sorry,” you smile, not letting it reach your eyes. “Just… well. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he wraps his hand around yours, pulling you closer to him. “Are you okay, baby? Was it something I said?”

This time your smile was genuine. Quinn never judged you for your accidental mood swings, the ones you tried so hard to hide from him; instead, he just tried to make you feel better.

“No, I think I just miss the boys,” you tell a half truth, liking how Quinn’s hand completely covered yours. “Are you sure they won’t be upset if I call them?”

“Look at your mommy, Bella, asking dumb questions,” he tried to mimic your voice, earning a slap and a giggle from you. “They won’t, baby, I promise. They miss you just as much. You’re family.”

“Ew, don’t say that!” You joke, making a disgusted face. “We just kissed each other on the mouth. That’s weird.”

“Yeah? Well, and I’ll do it again.” His phrase is the only earning you get before his lips are glued to yours again, both of you smiling and almost ruining the kiss.

Bella interrupts you both when she barks, making you seperate yourself from Quinn and smile at her, hands still intertwined with his.

“Bella, we made a deal: I give you that strawberry cookie you like so much and you let me kiss and make out with your mom. What are you doing?” Quinn frowns at Bella while you stare at him, fake angry.

“I’m never letting you be alone with her again. Strawberry cookies? She doesn’t eat sugar!”

“Well, maybe not with you. But she won’t get any more cookies if she gets on my way again.” He tells her and she barks back at him, resuming her walking.

You smile, giggling as they both start bickering with each other, while Quinn makes empty threats.

He would make a great dad, you think, as you watch him take care of Bella, giving her water and snacks he prepared for her behind your back.

You had been walking for a while, chatting about everything and anything, when you felt a single drop of water on your arm. You looked up, watching as the blue sky from before turned into a cloudy, greyish shade.

“We better head back,” you tell Quinn, stopping suddenly and calling Bella. “It’s going to rain.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s just a little cloudy.” He grabs your hand, making you start walking again.

“Quinn, look up. I just felt a drop of water on my arm and it’s cloudy as hell. Let’s go.”

“Maddie, you’re just not used to Vancouver’s crazy weather. It’s not raining.” He stubbornly said.

“You—”

You don’t even get to finish, the rain deciding to make its way down faster than you thought. Heavy yet quick drops of rain fell down on you, Quinn and Bella, getting all of you soaking wet.

“What the hell,” he shouts over the sound of water hitting the floor and quickly turns around, taking you with him. “This is your fault, I hope you know that.”

You watch Bella running in front of you, mesmerized by the fact that she knew the way back. “How is this my fault, Hughes?”

“It just is!” He shouts, making his steps faster. “It wasn’t going to rain. I checked the weather.”

You laugh, not even bothered with the fact that your hair was wet, your clothes were wet, your skin was wet.

“Well, at least it's summer rain, so it should be over in a few minutes,” you say, watching the cabin still a bit far from you. “I hope we still can go to the lake tomorrow.”

“We will,” he guarantees, even though none of you are sure of it.

You get to the cabin after a few minutes and just like you predicted, the rain stopped. Bella was soaking wet just like you and Quinn, and the first thing you did after removing her little shoes was making sure she was as dry as possible, since she didn’t let you use a hair dryer or a towel. Thankfully, it wasn’t cold, so it wasn’t an issue for her to be a little bit wet for a few hours.

You went upstairs, finding Quinn already in the bedroom you were sharing with him, shirtless and with a towel in his hands, drying his somewhat long, gorgeous hair.

You stood there for a minute, watching his body. Quinn had always been fine, that you were sure of, but this was your first time seeing him half naked after seven years— every time you’d made out with him, the only thing he removed were your shirt and panties and his boxers. And even when you were both young, he made sure not to get naked in front of you, because he didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable.

If the thought of getting uncomfortable over shirtless Quinn was something possible in the past, it sure as hell wasn’t now. All you wanted to do was get your hands all over his body.

You snapped out of it, walking inside the room. “Bella didn’t let me dry her entirely. I hope the owners don’t kill me for letting a half-wet dog on the couch.”

“I highly doubt it,” Quinn removes the towel from his face and smiles at you, before dropping his eyes to your chest for a second.

You get curious and looks down at your chest too, feeling mortified when you realize that your once white, perfectly not transparent sports bra was now just a wet piece of clothing, as transparent as a wet shirt, showing your tits to everyone who wanted to see— Quinn Hughes, in this case,

Quinn didn’t look bothered by it, but the fact that he had looked… it had to mean something, right?

It wasn’t like he hadn’t been intimate with you before. After that first night at his house, where he fingered you until you came on his couch, you both got each other off on different occasions.

But, for some reason, you never talked about going further, which sometimes left you wondering if he didn’t want it, because you certainly did; Quinn shoving himself inside of you was a very welcome thought.

Maybe now it was time for you to find out if he wanted it, or not.

Pushing your shyness to the side, you let your hair down, combing the wet strands with your fingers. “Do you mind if I change here real quick?” You bat your lashes at him, praying he would say no.

And he did, shaking his head at you and resuming drying the rest of his body.

You turn around, removing your leggings first, sighing with relief because wet leggings were the closest thing to hell you had on earth. Then, you moved on to your bra, letting it fall with a wet thud on the floor, moving around like you were alone in the room, grabbing the towel you brought with you and drying yourself, aware that Quinn’s eyes were on you the entire time.

It was weird only because your teenage horny fantasies were finally coming to life. You remember being nineteen and thinking something was wrong with you because whenever you got off, it was Quinn’s face you imagined on top of you.

And it was weird, because you weren’t even friends anymore. And even if you were, getting off to your best friend isn’t something you should do.

You are both grown. Intimacy between the two of you wasn’t anything new.

But now, as you dried your tits with the towel and pretended you didn’t feel Quinn’s heavy presence surrounding you, you realized that this was something much bigger, different from the other times.

Quinn was looking at you like a man looked at a woman.

“Madison,” he calls you, voice an octave deeper.

You lift your eyes and stare at him, still pretending that you weren’t doing anything.

“What are you doing?”

Damn you, Quinn Hughes, for seeing right through my bullshit.

Still, you decided to play dumb. “What do you mean? I just told you I needed to change.”

“Yeah, change. Not stand in front of me with fucking tiny ass panties and tits out for everyone to see.”

You drop the towel on the chair beside the bed, watching as his eyes run up and down your body, making you feel like a little deer standing in front of a wolf.

He also drops his, and it’s your time to stare at his body, particularly at the tent formed in front of his shorts. He looks huge, and the worst— best—- part is that you already know he is.

“Come here,” he orders, softly, and you’re quick to do as he says. “Wouldn’t expect a girl as sweet as you to act like a whore.”

You bit your lip, already regretting your past actions. You liked when Quinn was mean to you, but you liked so much more when he praised you for being a good girl. His good girl.

“Don’t say that,” You mumble, shaking your head.

He clicks his tongue, lifting his hand and gently running his finger over your tits. He mindlessly draws invisible lines, circling your nipples and playing with your boobs while you hold back your moans.

“Why not, hm?” He squeezes your right nipple between his index and his thumb, making you open your mouth slightly. “I always said you were well behaved, sweet; I told you you’re my sweet girl, but maybe I was wrong?”

You shake your head, trying to speak despite his hold on your nipple.

“No, you weren’t,” you breathe. “‘M sweet, I swear.”

He hums, moving on to your right tit, doing the same thing he did seconds ago to the other one. “I don’t know about that, Maddie. Sweet girls don’t undress in front of men the way you did.”

“I just—”

“If you need me to take care of you, all you have to do is ask. You have done it before, what made you stop now?”

You look away, embarrassed. Maybe the fact that Quinn hadn’t fucked you yet wasn’t his doing, it was yours.

“Look at me when I talk to you, baby,” voice steady and firm, he orders, removing his hand from your chest and gently holding your chin, forcing your eyes to stare at his. “Now answer my question, pretty.”

“I just need you,” you whisper, squeezing your thighs together, embarrassingly wet, and not only because of the rain anymore.

“You have me. I am right in front of you.”

You shake your head, letting out a frustrated sigh. “I want you. I want you i-inside me.”

“Oh?” He tilts his head. “Is that so?”

You nod, hoping and praying that he’d finally give you what you want. And fast.

He stepped back, making you almost cry with how cold you felt. Then, he locked the bedroom’s door and walked back at you, kissing your lips feverishly.

His tongue entered your mouth and his hand gripped your wet hair, roughly. His other hand pushed you back, making you sit on the bed. He steps back again, and just when you were ready to tell him to get closer, he removes his wet clothes, standing naked in front of you.

Quinn was pretty, just like the rest of him. He was thick and big, precum leaking from his red, slightly swollen tip.

“Will you show me how much of a good girl you are and get me ready for you?” He asks, and even though you know it’s rhetorical— he knows how much you enjoy having him inside your mouth—, you nod eagerly, tilting your head up and staring at him. “Go ahead, pretty.”

You take him with your hands, giving the tip a small lick before putting it inside your mouth, tongue caressing the tip like you knew he enjoyed.

Sucking Quinn off was something that you never thought you’d like so much, but turns out you’re always very eager to do so. The heavy weight of his dick inside your mouth, the difficulty to breathe while he fucks your mouth gently, the doubled attention because you didn’t want to risk hurting him with your teeth.

How he holds your hair with his right hand and how he places his left hand behind your neck, tilting your head in the right angle and shoving himself deeper inside your mouth.

How he moans loud and deep, how he praises you for being so good, for sucking him off like a pro, for being able to fit his entire length inside your mouth.

“You’re so good for me, baby,” he says, quickening his pace.

You hollow your cheeks, tightening your mouth for him and watching as he rolled his eyes to the back of his head, eager to come. But just when you thought he would give you what you want, and come deep into your throat, he pulls back, cock wet with saliva— your saliva— and runs his fingers through his hair, pushing them out of his face.

You hold back a whine, desperate to show him how good you were.

“So pretty,” he says, wiping your wet, swollen lips with his thumb, wrapping his mouth around it after he’s done. “I want you to ride me.”

You nod, not sure if you knew how to. You had never been on top of anyone before, but if Quinn wanted you on top of him, you weren’t the one who was going to rain on his parade.

He kisses your forehead before moving around and sitting on the bed, resting his back against the headboard. He pats his thick thighs, silently asking for you to sit there. You promptly do as he asks, sitting on top of him, just a few centimeters away from his dick.

He plays with the little bow in front of your panties before removing it from you, lifting your hips just enough to get it out of his way.

You were sitting naked on top of your childhood best friend, captain of the Vancouver Canucks, Quinn Hughes. And you were wet, so wet that you were afraid you’d leave a wet spot on his thighs.

He shamelessly stares at your pussy, lifting his thumb and lightly touching your clit, making you bite your tongue, the taste of copper filling up your mouth.

“You’re so wet, baby,” he smirks. “And it’s all for me.”

He sounded proud and that made you happy.

“I want you to open the bedside table drawer and get a condom for me, can you do that?”

You pout, already doing what he said. “You’ll make me do all the work today.”

“And you think I’m wrong? You think you deserve princess treatment today?”

Yes, you immediately answered in your head, not saying it out loud though. Deep down you knew that if you did, you’d only make things worse for you.

You open the condom package, not even bothering to ask how he knew it would be there, and wrap it around his cock, jerking it off with your hands once, and then twice.

Quinn stared up at you, sapphire eyes full of lust and danger.

“Fuck yourself on my cock, baby.” He ordered, making you whimper.

You lifted your hips slightly while you wrapped your right hand around his dick, sinking slowly, feeling your hole stretching around his cock.

With this position, you could feel that he was deep inside you, and you couldn’t tell if it made you feel better or worse. It’d been months since your last time and your ex wasn’t nearly as huge as Quinn is, so you were a little bit overwhelmed.

“You’re b-big,” you hiccup, sliding further. “I can’t—”

He caressed your cheek, tucking your hair behind your ear. “Do you want to stop, sweets? We can take it slow.”

“It’s been a while,” you whisper, stopping for a second so you could… breathe.

“I can tell,” he almost hisses, running his hand down your body. “You’re so fucking tight, Madison. You’re squeezing me to death.”

You both moan loudly as you finally get his dick all the way in, your ass meeting his thighs. Your insides were burning with the stretch, and you felt so full you could swear he was in your stomach.

“Fuck.” He groans, touching your clit again, making your first tears start to fall.

It was too much, but at the same time, it was just what you needed. It was overwhelming, not only because it was your first time fucking someone in months, but because you had known Quinn since you were eleven. Your affection for him ran deeper than for anyone else’s.

He rubbed your swollen clit while he pushed his torso up and kissed your lips. You let out a moan because his dick slid the slightest bit out of you, and when you broke the kiss, it got all the way in again, hitting your right spots.

“Come on, baby. Make me proud.” He whispers, gripping your waist hard and lifting his hips up while you lower yours, both moaning at the same time.

You placed your hands on his chest, searching for support before quickening your pace, watching as he planted his feet on the bed and pounded into you with force.

If you thought that making out with him was good, having sex was definitely better. His hands were working hard and fast on your clit while he pounded inside you, fucking you deep and keeping you full.

Quinn Hughes fucked you like he played hockey: to win.

Your moans were loud and you were so greatful the cabin was in the middle of nowhere because no one could hear your screams.

“My sweetheart. Make me come, baby,” Quinn knew that pet names, especially the ones with a possessive pronoun in front of them, did it for you, so this time wasn’t any different. “Maddie.”

Your name on his lips was what made you keep going, fighting the tears running down your face and the pain in your thighs. You wanted Quinn to be proud, you wanted him to want nothing but you.

You wanted Quinn Hughes to yourself, even if it were for a short period of time.

“I’m so close, baby, you’re squeezing me so well,” he licks his lips, rubbing your clit as you ride him. You can feel the exact moment where he comes inside the condom, and you clench around his dick harder, watching his head fall back on the pillow, sweat drops running down his face.

You whine, happy because he came and frustrated because you hadn’t. You were about to complain when he turned you around, his dick still nestled inside you, making you lay back on his chest, your back glued to his front.

“Hold your thighs back for me, sweetness,” he orders, making you hold the back of your thighs until your knees are almost touching your chin, completely exposed for him. “There you go.”

He pounds back into you, quick and steady, making you shiver. His hand, the one that wasn’t holding you in place, finds your aching clit, rubbing it furiously, wanting nothing more than making you come. Your lower belly felt weird, hot and cold at the same time, and you knew you were about to come.

“Make a mess for me, sweets,” he whispered in your ear, and what could you do besides what he asked you to?

You came, mind numb and shaky thighs. The room became silent, your mind as light as a feather, and your thoughts all over the place. The overwhelming feeling of wanting to be his consuming your body like a drug.

“Baby?”

Quinn’s voice sounded distant, like he was a thousand miles away from you. Your tongue sat heavy inside your mouth, and you were slowly falling asleep.

“P-proud?” You hear yourself ask, barely acknowledging his low, tired chuckle.

“Of course, baby.”

Suddenly you’re awake and inside water, which scared you for a few seconds.

“Sh, it’s just water, baby, calm down,” you hear Quinn’s soft voice behind you, now clearer and closer to you. You look down, seeing a sea of smelly bubbles and feeling Quinn’s thick thighs around you, only then realizing he was inside the huge bathtub with you, and you were laying on top of him. “Hey there, baby. You got me scared for a second.”

“Sorry,” you say, your voice cracking mid word.

“No need to be sorry. Was it too much?” He asks, and you could almost taste the concern in his voice.

“No,” you shake your head, welcoming the warm water around you. “No. It was perfect. Thank you.”

“You’re always so good to me, Maddie,” he whispers, running his hands up and down your arms, touching you everywhere. “I can’t get enough of you.”

You chuckle, wanting to tell him that you felt just the same.

“You’re unreal,” he kisses your cheek, and you snuggle closer to his body. “I’m glad you came back to me.”

Your heart stops beating for a second inside your chest, and it feels heavier now. Because being his was all you ever wanted to be, but the only thing you realised after being with him, is that you aren’t the right person for Quinn Hughes.

And it hurt.

taglist: @hischierswhore @ru-kru @alwaysclassyeagle @he6rtshaker @nope-i-am-done @nngkay 🤎

[dyli-dadi3]

Knotting

Chris thought you two were the bestest of buds, two peas in a pod... Well, he isn't technically wrong... there is a p in a pod...

Tags: smut (p in v), knotting, mating, riding, hybrid animals (both puppies), mounting, getting caught.

Ever since that shit with Wesker and Jill back in Africa, Chris hasn’t been able to relax. He tosses and turns at night, plagued with the face of Jill, of all the citizens he had to kill just because they were robbed of their humanity. The whole debacle had left him feeling incredibly lonely and filled with the overwhelming sensation that he was never fully alone. Every time he closed his eyes, even for a second, it was like he was in Africa all over again. It got to the point where his coworkers had noticed.

—

“Hey, Chris, you’ve been acting off, lately. " One late night, a guy in HR spoke up when he decided to stay and mess with the thick stack of paperwork that was growing on his desk. 

“Really?” Chris mumbled the words, more interested in the hissing of the coffee machine that was currently spewing out the liquid gold he needed. The sound was familiar to him, something that wasn’t the screams of pain and despair that he also got familiar with.

“Yeah, it’s like you’ve been distancing yourself. It’s making your paperwork late.” The little shit huffed, crossing his arms. 

Of course, he didn’t care about him, he was just there to ensure his performance was running at full speed. Not like he expected anything else, that’s why he never really talked to the guy. He just partook in the mandatory check-ins to say what is going good and bad in management, only for nothing to be changed because it isn’t “important.” He learned pretty quickly that the BSAA was good for one thing and one thing only, fighting bioterrorism. As long as there was some new monstrosity to humans running amok, their agent’s mental health could wait. 

“I hadn’t noticed,” Chris muttered, grabbing the steaming pot of instant coffee and poring it into his mug that was printed with the BSAA logo. 

“You know, I think you’re due for some company,” The guy said thoughtfully. What was his actual name again? Todd? Tom? I think it was Tom…

“How I spend my very limited free time isn’t your problem,” Chris said flatly, finally looking up at Tom. “And besides, I don’t have time to foster a new relationship.”

“Oh, I’m not talking about that,” Tim said, smiling at him like it was some kind of joke. 

I don’t have the time or patience for this.

“I’m thinking like a pet or something. Animals have been used for therapy forever. I think you need something to soften up that rough exterior of yours.” Ted chuckled, bringing his hand up to shove Chris’ shoulder. He just took a step back.

“…”

“If I can’t deal with a relationship, what makes you think that I can take care of a whole other life?” Chris huffed to save the man some embarrassment. Man, this guy was denser than that loaf of banana bread he tried to make for Jill when she joined S.T.A.R.S. with him.

“Geez, man, are you dense? I swear you live under a rock…” Timmy sighed.

Are you serious…?

“Haven’t you heard? Those new ‘hybrid’ things are all the craze right now.” If they’re being described as things, it can’t be good. “They’re humans, but animals.”

Chris raised his eyebrow at this. “First of all, how is that even possible? And second, why hasn’t the BSAA or government in general shut that down?”

“Well, the guy who was originally splicing all that DNA was arrested, but they couldn’t just kill the little fellows he made, so they put them up for sale. Not everyone could care for their new pet slash human baby, so some got loose and bred like rabbits. They’re everywhere now. Are you seriously telling me you haven’t seen one yet? News? Alley? Other friends?” Billy said.

Chris paused. “You’re telling me that there’s half animal, half-human creatures walking around the city?” The image in his mind was horrific.

“Yeah, they’re kind of cute, cute like a kid and a puppy at the same time,” Ben said with a smile. “But anyways,  brought it up ‘cause I think you’d do good with one. They’re easier to train than animals and can do all the same things we can, so you won’t feel bad for leaving them when you’re out doing that bioterrorism stuff. Brady has one.” 

“Who?” He knew a Brad once.

“...Brady? He sits right across from you.” Oh right, toupe. “Right, it’s just late,” Chris said, taking a sip of his coffee so he could at least try to properly wrap his mind around the bombshell Bill just dropped on him.

“Yeah, he says she’s the best thing to ever happen to him. But don’t tell his wife he said that.” 

Chris let out a dry chuckle, his mind moving on from the papers he had to do. Maybe he could look up these ‘hybrids’ once he got off of work.

“I’ll think about it.” He said before leaving Ben at the coffee machine.

—

It took way less effort than he expected, the papers quickly being filled out since he was getting more and more eager to find out what these hybrids looked like. If Toupe and Bennie thought they were good, as well as everyone else, they couldn’t be that ugly.

Before he knew it, Chris was sitting at his desk, the word ‘Hybrid’ typed up on his monitor. His finger governs over the enter button. Despite all the admittedly cute descriptions, he still couldn’t shake off the fear that they were just the same as all the bioengineered organisms he fought against. He’s killed his fair share of zombie dogs.

Forgetting the zombie dogs, he had always wanted a regular dog. So he amended his search, changing it to ‘Dog Hybrid’ and hit enter. 

The results were instantaneous, and he had to admit, they were pretty cute. The ones on the top of Google had round faces, chubby cheeks, bright eyes, floppy ears, and bushy tails. He then looked at maintenance. There was already an abundance of forums describing how to take care of them, what to expect depending on the type of species they derived from, and just some silly stories people wanted to share.

He was sold, and before he knew it, he had made an appointment to a shelter that houses hybrids to see if he could find one.

Of course, he always thought of having a tough-looking dog, big and fluffy. What he didn’t expect was to walk up to the front door and be greeted with two pups playfighting in the small enclosure just past the glass display. When he walked in, they both turned to look at him, yipping with pure energy.

He turned his back to them to greet the front lady who had been looking at him. “I’m here for a consultation? Last name Redfield.” 

The lady smiled, walking to the little gate on the side of her to let him in. “Just go down the hall and to the left, there’s a lady there that will help you from there.”

The lady she talked about was very sweet. She didn’t stare at him too long, or ask about his dark eyebags, or even the fact that he didn’t have unstained clothes to wear. She just asked him how much maintenance he was willing to expend for caretaking, as well as some personality inquiries. She said it was to “match him to the perfect pup,” since they only housed dogs.

With that, he was led through so many isles of dog-human things that he didn’t know what to do with himself. Despite the tempting allure of a companion to have when he came back home, it was all a spur-of-the-moment thing. He had yet to accommodate another living being in his house, and the thought of leaving a senior hybrid or puppy alone for long periods was beginning to weigh on his heart all over again.

—

“He was cute!” You said happily, flopping onto Leon’s side. “Imagine what it would be like to be adopted by him.”

It was a pastime for the two of you to look at the people who walked past and theorize about their lives, about what it would be like to be chosen by them. 

“I don’t know, he looks like he could crush my head with his bicep.” Leon grimaced, holding his head.

“Oh, but that’s the fun part!” You giggled, pressing your face to his side as your tail wags behind you. 

“I guess he looked interested.” Leon smiled, pouncing on you to nip at your neck. You squealed, trying to kick him off of you as he tried to pin you down. “Leon, that tickles!” You tried to catch your breath when he finally pulled away to sit down on the padded floor of the display case. “But that’s the fun part!” He said with a mockingly high-pitched tone as he smirked.

You huffed, jumping on top of him as you tried to repay the favor.

—

“I’m sorry, none of them called out to me,” Chris said, walking back to the front as he tried to ignore the pitiful looks of the hybrids he left behind him. Man, this was a bad idea.

“No worries, I’m glad you don’t feel the need to force yourself, we get a lot of people who fold, only to return them weeks later saying that they couldn’t deal with it.” The lady smiled, waving goodbye as Chris entered the front of the shelter again. 

He tried to ignore the way the two of you immediately stopped playing to lean up against the barrier of your enclosure. Both of your tails wagged, and he tried to push out the sound of “He didn’t get anyone! Do you think he came back for us?” coming from your sweet mouth. 

God, this was a bad idea.

“Are the ones in the front available?” He found himself asking the first lady. “Those two?” He awkwardly pointed at the two pups that were climbing over each other now that he specifically pointed them out. 

“I knew it!”

“We’re free!”

“Of course! They sure are the energetic type… Are you sure you’ll be able to handle them?” The lady said softly. He couldn’t blame her, he had answered her caregiving question with low maintenance.

“Don’t listen to her! We’re well-behaved!”

“Yeah! We’re so good!”

“I’m positive that we’ll be fine.” Chris smiled. No, I’m not, but I can’t say no to those cute faces…

“Well then, just sign these papers right right here for adoption, and then they’re all yours.” The lady smiled, reaching underneath her desk to produce two packets of papers. On the top of each of them were your names. The handwriting was messy, but the glitter pen used on yours made him realize that the two of you signed your names yourselves. The realization was heartwarming, and with the revelation, he could see the personality woven into the childish signatures. This was going to end up great.

—

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

God, he couldn’t have been more wrong. The two of you were endless bounds of energy, like two Tasmanian devils living in his flat. He had thought that the two of you were more human than dog, able to have self-control and discipline like Benjamin had said, but he quickly realized that he adopted two puppies that took a liking to chewing up all the shit in his house no matter how many times he said no. 

But he was a man, a stubborn one at that, and he was determined to give the two of you a forever home.

He’s had to put child-proofing on almost all of his furniture and cabinets so that you two didn’t get into his stuff or shred the legs of all his furniture to shit. Eventually, he had to go back to work, where he’d look the two of you in the eye and say “Be good” like a disapproving father before leaving. No matter what was happening at work, his mind was preoccupied with all the things the two of you could be getting up to. He was starting to think of getting a sitter.

When he came home, his blood ran cold. Pained whimpering. Did somebody get hurt? Was someone in danger? 

He rushed into his house, finding the source of his sudden anxiety spark. You. His jaw grew slack as he saw you straddling Leon’s thigh, the poor pup fast asleep as you rutted against him. “Hey!” He gasped, grabbing your arm and pulling you off of him. “No! That’s bad!” He admonished you, his ears aflame as he watched you whine and squirm in his grasp. He didn’t know what to do, and he would rather go back to Africa than see that again.

“N-No, feels good! I feel funny, and it helps.” You huffed, kicking your legs. 

All the ruckus woke up Leon, his eyes fluttering open as his pupils focused on your whining form. “Huh?” He said softly, sniffing the air and leaning in closer. “Dad… She smells sweet, what’s wrong?” he said thoughtfully, bringing his nose to her crotch and sniffing. 

Oh god. “First of all, I told you, I’m not your Dad. Secondly, you need to back up. She’s…sick.” He said tentatively, not wanting to even think about what she’s feeling right now. “Sick?” You said softly, looking up at him with big eyes and a tail between your legs. 

“You’ll be fine; you just need to stay in your room for a bit to cool off; it’ll feel better.” Maybe if she stays alone for a bit, she won’t go into a full-blown heat… 

—

That didn’t work. 

You were fine for a bit, cooling down and reporting that the feeling in your tummy went away, but as soon as he brought you to the same room as Leon, you’d complain all over again. He didn’t know what to do, he read about this, but he supposed that it was his fault for not asking more questions about the… condition the two of you were in. Well, he guessed that he should have asked way more questions.

But these were the cards he was dealt, and he couldn’t keep an eye on you forever, so he left work today with a very serious talk to Leon. “Don’t let her touch you, no matter how much she begs. And if you want to nap, please sleep in your room. Alone.” 

Simple, precise, and direct. Of course, he had already told you about what was happening. That it was completely normal, but that it needed to be controlled. He just hoped that you wouldn’t have to suffer for so long. He was already looking up vets to have you spayed.

—

“Dad said we can’t!” Leon sighed, trying to keep his distance as your sickeningly sweet scent saturated the air around him. He could practically see the way it colored the atmosphere. All pink and flowery and like candy. It made his head spin and cock twitch. Wait, that was new. “But it hurts, Leon! I’m all hot and achey and it’s the only thing that makes me feel better. Don’t you wanna make me feel good?” You pouted, walking closer to him again. Only this time, he didn’t take a step back.

“We’ll be quick, he won’t even know! Dad said it’s normal!” You argued your case, coming in closer and closer. 

“I suppose… You do feel sick.” Leon sighed, sitting down on the couch. You immediately crawled into his lap, whimpering as you pressed your slicked-up pussy against his thigh, the wetness permeating through the pair of soft shorts you wore. Leon groaned, the smell of your arousal making him feel dizzy but good at the same time. “Maybe this isn’t so bad…” He said as you rutted against his thigh. “D-Do you need anything?” He asked, hands hovering over your hips. “You. Oh my god, you smell so good, Leon.” You groaned, burying your nose into his neck and inhaling. 

Leon had no idea what was going on, only that you were sick and maybe he was getting sick, too. His skin felt feverish, and now there was a throbbing in his pants that was becoming increasingly hard to ignore. He was drawn to the scent, not like he needed to be pulled, you were drowning him in it. Choking him with your intoxicating scent that made his hips buck and his mouth water. He knew he should be stopping this before it got too far, but the voice in his head was screaming more, more, more! He groaned, wrapping his arms around your waist in a tight hug, pulling you in closer to rut against his erection. 

“Oh god, yes, Leon!” You sobbed, unsure whether to continue indulging in the pleasure of the now or try and soothe the ache deep inside of you. But you had to, the throbbing was borderline painful.

You slipped out of your shorts, tugging his cock out of his sweats. You didn’t know how, but it was like you knew that this was what you needed, the voice in your head yipping in glee. You paused when Leon whimpered, his hips jerking, jolting you up with him. “That feels good, too?” You asked. 

“Yeah, feels good…” He whined, gripping the fat of your hips. Never in his life has he felt this good, like putting ice on a burn, eating watermelon in the hot summer heat, or eating a sandwich after getting out of the pool. All the static in his brain cleared, and all that was left was the overwhelming urge to do something with you. He didn’t know what, but he felt like this was as close as it was going to get.

God, was he wrong. There was something better, and it was called ‘being deep inside your best friend as she bounced on your lap like a professional pogo stick rider.’

He was cussing like a sailor as you engulfed him, everything coming full circle as he realized that this was what he was meant to do for the rest of his life. Nothing else he would ever do would compare. He was sure of it. Your pussy was like a godsend and he couldn’t get enough. He tightened his grip, snapping his hips up into your sopping heat as he pulled you down, trying to get as deep as possible. It wasn’t enough, there was a missing piece. 

You were a trembling mess, clenching around him and making him whine as he tried to go faster, feeling a ball of something wind up in his chest. “O-Oh my god, Leon, I-I feel something.” You gasped as he groaned, shoving the both of you to the ground as he mounted you. He pushed you into the ground as he arched your back, snapping his hips into you at a brutal pace as his voice grew higher and whinier. “M-Me, too. Wan’it.” He whimpered, moving faster, until he nearly screamed, your pussy clamping down on him as you came. He didn't stop, couldn't stop, the need to fuck you overwhelming. But he didn't last much longer. In just moments, he was cumming ropes and ropes of thick cum into your pussy. The whole thing was overstimulating and honestly a little terrifying. All of the dizziness went away, there wasn't a trace of static, nor was there a voice begging for more. He suddenly felt complete, and that was alarming, not to mention the fact that his dick was swelling inside of you. “H-Hey, are you okay?” He said in alarm. Despite your moans, the feeling of stretching your pussy like this made him nervous.

“So good… Feel so much better…” You mumbled into the hardwood, eyes droopy and body like putty. “That's good…” Leon murmured, finally relaxing with your confirmation and tugging you with him as he flopped to the side, spooning you. He stayed still, his body automatically knowing the process. It was as if he was on autopilot. The thought made him chuckle. He was made to please you.

—

Chris dropped all his things at the front door when he saw the two of you fast asleep.

“Shit!”

I love puppy Leon so much it's not even funny. Trust that he will be back for more.

[nezoriy]

Trans people in Ukraine: transition process, legislations, healthcare, and social attitudes 

Kyiv, 2024. A protest for adopting bill #5488 that defines hate crimes and introduces harsher punishments for them. The author stands second to the left. Photo source

Whether it’s Ukraine, Palestine, or other “third world” countries, the issue of queer rights is often used even by the relatively well-meaning liberals to claim: “We shouldn’t help them, look how badly they treat their queers!”

Of course, the ethical argument against it would be that no one deserves genocide and not that “the situation is not that bad.” But anyone who has argued online at least once knows that’s not how it works. So the argument I'm here to make is:

Trans rights and lives in Ukraine are not that bad.

I’m a trans man living in Kyiv. I’m currently medically and legally transitioning, I have a lot of trans/nb friends and try to involve myself in activism. So I have both first-hand experience and up-to-date info to talk about the issue.

Let me be very clear here: things are not perfect. 

We still don’t have a lot of legal protections we need. The human factor and community networks matter a lot. But it’s not the “leave the country if you’re trans” levels of bad, and haven’t been for a while. 

Compared to some Western European countries with rights for self-id and third gender markers, Ukraine is obviously not that progressive.

However, after learning more about the UK’s trans issues, as well as the various US states’ anti-trans legislations, I was compelled to write this text because I wanted to say from the bottom of my heart: “Shut the fuck up” to everyone who wants to say something about how backward Ukraine is. 

In Ukraine, trans and other queer people can live their lives relatively freely. And what’s even more important: in contrast to a lot of “developed” countries, the situation with trans rights and social acceptance is actually improving. 

(Am I afraid that our society and legislators will slide backward with the influence tr*mp will have over the whole world? Yes. But that’s another issue entirely. And historically, even during his first term, our laws actually improved.)

So, if you ever find yourself arguing about Ukraine, here is everything you need to know to also politely ask everyone bemoaning “poor” Ukrainian queers’ fates to shut up.

In the first part, I talk about general vibes, and in the second one, I go into the transition process in way more depth than was necessary. This monstrosity absolutely got out of hand, if I’m honest. Maybe I need to try to shoot a YouTube video so people can use it as background noise.

Read on Medium or keep reading here.

In any case, enjoy!

How do trans people in Ukraine live? Laws, attitudes, and vibes

Kyiv, 2024. A protest for adopting bill #5488. The author stands second to the right. The poster says “Stop violence against transgender people. Adopt 5488.” Photo source

So, you’re transitioning. What life in Ukraine has in store for you?

Ukrainian trans legislations

There’s a clear legal procedure that allows Ukrainian trans people to change their gender marker and all of their legal documents.

In Ukraine, there are some laws to protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. 

There are also laws prohibiting hate speech/discrimination in the media. They don't protect from misgendering, insensitive jokes, and stereotyping. But show me a country where they do.

There are no laws prohibiting trans people from using the right bathrooms.

Unfortunately, you can only transition medically and legally once you turn 18. Minors can get a psychiatric diagnosis (but not F64.0) but they don't have access to puberty blockers. 

There are still quite a lot of hate crimes. Police are often not investigating them properly. They get classified as “hooliganism” instead of a hate crime. The good news: more people are reporting them, and NGOs are actively working on these cases. Bad news: the bill to define hate crimes specifically and introduce harsher repercussions for them has been lying in the parliament for more than 2 years. Activists are actively advocating for adopting this bill. In general, there’s an understanding that it might be done in the coming years.

Same-sex marriage is not legal. However, there's a bill to introduce civic partnerships. And there is an explicit understanding in society that queer people will benefit from it the most. Unfortunately, it's also been lying in the parliament for 2+ years. Activists work hard to change that. The main detractor is the council of the churches. 

There's some gray legal area around the issues but there's a common understanding that trans people are not allowed to adopt children. They also can't retain custody over their under-18 children if they change their documents.

Society at large

The author presents his painting “A time to plant and a time to uproot” about his experience of transitioning during the full-scale invasion during the Ljubljana Pride events in 2023.

According to recent polls, social attitudes toward LGBT+ people are improving by the year. In 2023 a poll showed that 64% (info in Ukrainian, use Google Translate) of people expressed neutral or positive attitudes towards queer people (compared to 54% in 2022). The number of people who have negative attitudes towards LGBT+ was 33,9%. Contrast this with 60,4% in 2016.

For some trans people, it's hard to find work if their documents do not match their looks. When it comes to hiring practices, the anti-discriminatory laws often don't work because obviously a business can refuse to employ you citing other reasons. However, all of this depends highly on the industry and specific employers. For example, most Ukrainian IT companies are okay with gender-nonconforming and trans people. They, along with NGOs, often have anti-discriminatory company policies. It’s harder to get employed when it comes to customer service jobs. However, I’ve heard positive personal anecdotes there as well. In general, the situation is improving compared to even 5-10 years ago, but there's still room for growth. 

The major public force that opposes queer rights, and one with the most influence, is the Council of churches (which includes most major denominations that exist in Ukraine.)

In general, in mainstream liberal circles, it's no longer acceptable to be openly transphobic or homophobic. For example, a lot of large bloggers, who consider themselves nationalists (which used to be synonymous with anti-queerness) are publicly supporting queer rights as a marker of a civilized society and progress regardless of their personal beliefs. 

Increasingly more mainstream liberal media is trying to give positive coverage to the queer community, from using the right lexicon to shooting special materials dedicated to queer and trans issues. Still, it’s also quite common even for some of the well-meaning media outlets, and especially bloggers to misgender trans people, use clickbait headings, and so on. The vast majority of media were incredibly confused regarding the right pronouns when covering Nemo’s Eurovision victory.

3rd Forum for Transgender and Nonbinary People, Kyiv, 2024. The slogan reads “TRANS*forming the reality.” The author stands to the right. 

Increasingly more queer books are getting published, including those by Ukrainian authors.

There are right-wing organizations that specifically target queer people, harass them online, even attack physically, and threaten queer events. Just yesterday (November 9th, 2024) a bookshop canceled a presentation of two Ukrainian LGBT+ books because they were threatened. However, by year right-wing organizations with explicitly queerphobic agenda are becoming more and more inconsequential in mainstream society. There's an understanding that most of these groups, although claiming to be ethno-nationalists, are actually funded by russians, and they look up to russian "traditional values" as opposed to the "decadent" West even to the detriment of our victory. 

TERFs are also not mainstream and don't have any actual political sway. They’re only loud on X and Facebook but they don't have their own organizations and most mainstream feminist NGOs are explicitly queer- and trans-friendly. 

Ukrainian queer community

There are a lot of LGBT+ and trans NGOs that promote queer rights, advocate for the community, collaborate with the legislators, and help out the community (including materially). 

There are a number of publicly open trans and nonbinary activists.

The hormones are quite costly and there's no way to get them free from the country. However, the NGOs are often offering hormones as humanitarian help for free. Most of the time, I myself get hormones this way.

All in all, since 2010 (and especially 2016) the number of trans organizations grew and their work has become more influential. 

Military

Ukrainian LGBT Military NGO. On their website, they state they have a separate online community for 15+ trans people who are currently serving in the military or are veterans. 

There are no legal protections or mechanisms to regulate the relationships of trans people with the military. That's also a huge zone for growth the activists are working on.

The state also doesn't provide people in the army with hormones. 

There's an NGO for the LGBT military. 

There are open trans people in the army. But most trans men I heard of are in stealth.

LGBT+ people, even the open ones, may face some discrimination in the army from their comrades and officers. However, the mainstream idea communicated by lots of military people is “I might not personally like queers but I don't care who you are as long as you're busting your ass for the victory.”

When going through the TCRSS (Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support, local military administration) evaluation, except for the good old regular transmisogyny, transfems may face additional scrutiny and negative attitudes from medical professionals and officials because they may be seen as “draft dodgers.”

A personal note: I'm in the process of changing the documents so I haven't communicated with TCRSS yet. I won't dwell upon it but I have to say for the record that I'm absolutely willing to accept not only rights but also responsibilities that come with an “M” gender marker in documents. So, if I'm considered to be fit for the military, I won't try to avoid it. Moreover, my consciousness dictates that I do have to serve. Still, the process of going through the military medical board scares me a lot – way more than the military service itself.

A bit of history: the transition until 2016

The author’s art.

Until 2016, the transition process was frankly all kinds of fucked-up. 

To get access to legal recognition and healthcare, a person had to go through a doctor's board evaluation. The doctors (including psychiatrists and sexologists) were predominantly educated in the Soviet Union where all kinds of queer people were considered deviants with psychiatric disorders (and often, in the case of gay men, criminalized.) So, the board was incredibly transphobic and homophobic. It used a questionnaire full of questions relying on the worst kinds of gender stereotypes: “Would you rather be a plumber or an artist? If you were a journalist would you write about sports or art?” 

If you didn't look like a very stereotypical version of the gender you're transitioning to, down to the underwear, you were fucked. 

If you let them know you're not straight, you were fucked. 

And there was only one board for the whole country, in Kyiv, so if you haven't "passed" the assessment the first time, it was way harder to get reevaluated. 

Even if you got the psychiatric diagnosis and got access to healthcare, to be able to change your gender marker and documents, you had to get sterilized.

I personally know some people who didn't want to go through this shit so they went on HRT and instead of changing the gender marker just changed their name and surname in their documents (we are allowed to do that for non-trans reasons without any issues.) This way, at least when they are signing documents and so on, they won't see their deadname constantly. They also kinda hoped that people checking their documents would just skip over the gender marker or think it's some kind of mistake. 

Side note: both a sad and funny aspect is that you can change your name and surname just because you want to, but you can't change your patronym or drop it altogether. And it's always, always gendered, so if you went this way, from Olexandra Olexandrivna Ivanova you'd become an Olexandr Olexandrivna Ivanov (-ivna being female suffix, the male version would be -ovich.

Thankfully, thanks to the efforts of activists, the legislation around the transition changed, becoming way, way more relaxed. It's been in place since.

Legal and medical transition in Ukraine

Kyiv, 2024. Author at a protest for adopting bill #5488. The hashtags read “human rights,” “inclusivity,” “equality,” “safety.” Photo source. 

After some confusion in 2016 around the procedures, they’ve become quite established. I started the medical transition in 2023 and legal – in August of 2024, so the info is as up-to-date as it can be.

#1. Getting a psychiatric diagnosis of “transsexualism”

If you go about your transition the proper way, the first thing you need to do is get a psychiatric diagnosis. Ukraine's healthcare system is still working with ICD-10. The country is committed formally to moving to ICD-11 but there’s a common understanding it’s really unlikely to happen until the war ends. 

Under ICD-10, the diagnosis you need to get is F64.0 “transsexualism”. Yeah, yikes. 

You need to go to a state psychiatrist, the diagnoses from the private ones are not valid. 

De jure, you should either keep in touch with a doctor to be observed for 2 years or spend 2 weeks in a hospital. Most of the time, it's understood to be a day hospital, so you visit every day but don't sleep there. But it’s up to the doctors, so there were cases when a person spent the whole time in a psychiatric hospital. Obviously, the person is kept in the ward of the gender they were assigned at birth. You can imagine that for a lot of peopl,e the experience is quite distressing, especially considering that Ukrainian state psychiatric clinics are really not fun places to be in.

Considering this, a lot of people look for workarounds – and find them.

In some hospitals, you can pay a "voluntary contribution" (a bribe basically). The price tag for this in Kyiv’s main psychiatric hospital is around UAH10.000 ($250). 

In some hospitals, fortunately, there are friendly doctors (and/or doctors who themselves belong to the queer community) who can help you out willingly. 

In any case, if you can get arrangements in place, you just visit a couple of times and the hospital puts the necessary dates on the documents without actually keeping you there.

How do you get evaluated for F64.0

In a psych hospital, you get the bloodwork and some other physical examinations done (for example, a cardiogram, a lung x-ray, nothing invasive.) 

You talk to a psychologist who assesses your general mental state. 

And you talk to a psychiatrist and write an auto-biography focusing on your transness specifically.

The evaluation is still often based on strict gender binary and gender stereotypes. It is implicitly understood within the trans community that for example as a trans man you have to present the narrative that you always played with cars and not dolls, preferred the color blue, befriended only the boys etc, etc. Friendly psychiatrists know that this is bullshit but often still ask to narrate your story like this in case some of the higher-ups have any questions. 

Correspondingly, even if psychiatrists are aware of the nonbinary spectrum, nonbinary people still have to present a very binary narrative to get the diagnosis.

Being non-straight does no longer automatically mean you don't get the right diagnosis. However, a lot of people still prefer to hide it if possible. I told my psychiatrist I'm bi with a preference for women (which is true) and had no problems because of that. 

It is implicitly understood that if you're already on HRT (DYI, found a very friendly private endocrinologist, etc), the whole process is likely to go easier for you. That was my experience: I just emphasized that I've already been on HRT for half a year and so much happier for it.

When getting a diagnosis gets more complicated

Because of the war transfem people now come under more scrutiny and the evaluation has become way more strict than before 2022. Some doctors plainly refuse to do it at all. The reason is that the doctors are afraid that people trying to go through an mtf transition just try to avoid the mobilization. 

There are cases, especially in the regions, of doctors refusing to deal with our trans shit. But legally doctors are not allowed to refuse to provide trans healthcare. So if you know your rights you can either press them or file a complaint. In any case, you can just go to the next state hospital and try your luck there.

A lot of psychiatrists refuse to give you F64.0 if you are currently depressed or especially have some more serious psychiatric diagnosis. A lot of them go like "well, go treat your depression and then come back." Obviously, it's absolutely bullshit because a lot of trans people are depressed because of gender dysphoria but it is what it is. Most trans people advise their peers not to disclose their other diagnosis when undergoing this evaluation. 

This part is often the most hard and stressful. If you have your diagnosis, the rest is usually easier. Well, mostly.

#2. Endocrinologist, HRT, and the certificate of transing your gender enough

The author after 2 years on HRT.

Once you have your F64.0, you go to an endocrinologist. For HRT, private ones are okay. They make you do a lot of bloodwork and then prescribe HRT. 

Most of the time, trans people go to the doctors that other trans people recommend. There's an understanding that there's a high chance a random state doctor won't be educated enough in trans healthcare. Because of this, I haven't heard of cases of mistreatment or refusal to work with a trans patient. 

When you're on HRT for some time, you get a medical document from your endo that you've been on hormones for long enough and your secondary sex characteristics are now aligned with your desired gender.

#3. “Sex correction” certificate from a family doctor

With the document from the endo, you go to your family doctor (a GP). They get you a medical document that states you have "corrected your sex". Except for the family doctor, it should have the signature of one other doctor and the head doctor of their hospital. 

Most of the time it's just a formality. Legally, family doctors can't not do it. So, if they are refusing to help you, you can file a complaint and pressure them legally.

In my case, I signed a contract with a family doctor who's explicitly queer-friendly and has already helped quite a lot of trans people. I needed to go to her hospital (in Lviv) to be physically present, but everything went quickly. There were no additional examinations or assessments, no questions asked, we just needed to sit in a queue for a bit and the head doctor signed my documents.

#4. Birth certificate change

To change your gender marker, you first go to a civil registration office, and with the documents from the psychiatrist and the family doctor, you file a request to make changes to your birth certificate. 

There are cases when the officials try to refuse to do so, quite often out of ignorance. The officials are not legally allowed to refuse to file a gender marker change request if your documents are in order. So, once again, you can file a complaint and pressure them into registering your request.

There are also cases, however, when the document from the family doctor is not done 100% right according to the regulations (most of the time because the doctor didn't know how to do it right, not out of maliciousness), and the officials refuse you because of it. In this case, they are legally right, so most of the time you have to ask the doctor to reissue the certificate.

Because of the war, you can go to any registration office in Ukraine, and they request the info from the registration office where your birth certificate was issued. The downside is, they legally have 3 months to do so.

Side note: I'm at this point now. The registration office made a request to the hospital that issued me the "sex correction" certificate to confirm it, and they haven't gotten a response yet although it's been more than 2 months. This request is not necessary but also not illegal. If my birth certificate is not ready in 3 weeks, I'm likely going to contact the paralegals from a queer NGO and file a complaint.

#5. Changing the national ID and other documents 

The sign reads “to the European country – progressive laws.” Photo source. 

With your new birth certificate, you go to a center for providing administrative services (just as well, during the war any is okay, not just in the neighborhood you're registered in) to change your national ID. I was shocked to learn that in some countries, including the UK, national IDs are not mandatory. In Ukraine, they are, and they are a primary document you use for identification. Basically, no one ever sees your birth certificate. It takes about 2 weeks. Then you can change the rest of the documents: passport, driver's license, tax documents, educational documents (if you want to), and so on. 

#6. Registering with the military office

Regardless of the "direction" of your transition, after changing your ID, you're supposed to go to the Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support (TCRSS) – the local military registration organ. That’s where things get tricky once again.

For context: all people with a “Male” gender marker are registered with a TCRSS when they are teenagers. People with “Female” markers are not. They are only registered if they become bound for military service for other reasons (for example, doctors.) 

Under the military time law, all people who have an "M" marker have to be assigned to a TCRSS, and have their personal information updated in person or in a special app ("Reserve+"), and go through a medical board’s assessment in a TCRSS. The whole process is quite complicated even for cis men as on the one hand it is highly bureaucratized. There are literally cases when a trans man who had his uterus removed had to go through and have the certificate to confirm it still has to go through an assessment by a state gynecologist to prove he hasn't somehow grown his uterus back in the meantime. And on the other hand, there’s a lot of gray legal areas where decisions depend on the individual official’s assessment. 

The main decision dependent on the human factor is: whether a person is considered fit for military service (then they get mobilized effectively immediately), "unfit for military service," or "fit in a limited capacity.” Before the full-scale invasion, “limitedly fit” was equal to "unfit." Now it usually means you either have a temporary delay of mobilization and you have to show up every 6 months to prolong it, or you're mobilized and get assigned to a second-line position pushing the documents instead of being on the front lines.

Most psychiatric diagnosis, including F64.0, is a reason to consider a person either "unfit for military service" or "fit in a limited capacity." So, what does it mean for trans people?

Transfems who changed their gender marker to an "F" have to show up to a TCRSS and get themselves excluded from the military register because now they’re not bound for military service. 

Transmasc people with an “M” marker, as it follows logically, have to show up to get registered. They go through a military medical board like cis men. 

Most of the time, transmascs are considered permanently "unfit for military service." However, this decision is up to the TCRSS’s head officer.

Communication with the TCRSS is honestly a huge issue trans activists are working on. People transitioning in both directions often face a lot of misunderstanding and outright hostility from the military medical board and officers.

Most trans women want to get excluded from military service and face discriminatory attitudes basically because the state doesn't want to exclude them, and a lot of officials think they are just transitioning to avoid military service. So they can face a lot of hate and contempt. 

A lot of trans men on the other hand may be willing to serve in the military but can't do so because of the psychiatric diagnosis. There’s a conundrum because often trans men willing to serve don’t get to, and those unwilling to serve get told “well, you’re a man now so fuck off to the front lines because you’re disposable.”

As I’ve already mentioned, it all comes down to the human factor, and unfortunately in a lot of cases, people working in TCRSS are uneducated and bigoted. And because there are no specific legislations regulating the relationships between trans people and the military, the officials get to exercise their bigotry.

Crossing the border

Besides not getting mobilized while walking down the street, getting your documents right with the TCRSS is important because it defines whether or not you can leave the country.

Transfem people with an "F" gender marker who get the documents done and are excluded from military service can travel outside Ukraine. There are unfortunately quite a lot of cases of trans women having trouble crossing the border if their documents are not crystal right. Recently there was a case of a trans woman who wasn't allowed to cross the border: despite having an "F" in her passport, she skipped the TCRSS step, so officially she still was bound for military service. Unfortunately, the border guards were legally right. 

Quite often the border guards are putting under a lot of scrutiny even those trans people who are legally allowed to cross the border (transfems and transmasc with an “F” marker.) That's also an issue activists work hard on. 

#7. Gender-affirming surgeries in Ukraine

The author’s art. On Instagram 

People are allowed to get gender-affirming surgeries and are not required to get any to change their gender marker.

The context you need to have about Ukrainian medicine: we have free state medicine; insurances exist (but they are not really widespread. Some companies, especially in IT, pay for them, but according to 2019 data only about 9% of the people have them); and there are also lots and lots of private clinics. Those are often quite costly. But they are also well-staffed and well-equipped, and in most cases, you can get an appointment with a doctor for the next day or within a week.

So, gender-affirming surgeries are available, but almost exceptionally at private clinics. This means people have to save up quite a lot and often travel to Kyiv or other large cities to get them. But there are no waitlists and patients can get good healthcare without facing any discrimination.

There are however cases of trans people getting free healthcare at a state clinic. Mostly that happens when the doctors are willing to help them out. In the documentation, they state a diagnosis that qualifies for free healthcare (any trans-related diagnoses are not.) For example, one trans man I know got free top surgery at an institute for cancer research, presumably because in the documents the doctors claimed he was at a high risk of breast cancer. Another trans man got a free hysterectomy at a state hospital. Although he was put in a women's wing he claimed he got treated well.

I got a mastectomy at a private clinic just over a month ago. For that, I had to provide the F64.0 diagnosis and the "sex correction" certificate from my family doctor. Another doctor I consulted with only does the surgery if you've already changed your ID.

The price both doctors asked was UAH75.000 (about USD 1850). (For reference: the median salary in Kyiv is UAH 25.000 (USD625) a month.) My surgeon claimed that in part the price is so high because she has to rent a surgical room only in private hospitals as the state ones don't want to deal with this kind of surgery.

From the initial consultation till the surgery, it took about 2 months and it was mostly because I was gathering the funds.

At a recent trans event for activists, I got the information that there's a group of doctors in Kharkiv that do bottom surgeries for both trans men and women and they are quite good at it. I haven't looked into it more properly yet but still – good for us.

TL;DR

Trans people do face discrimination. There are no opportunities for legal and medical transition for minors. And there are some legal gray areas, especially concerning military service, when the lack of explicit anti-discriminatory laws and proper regulations leads to bigotry from officials.

But the legislation around trans rights is improving, not getting worse, and there are procedures for legal and medical transition. 

Social attitudes are also improving steadily – the acceptance of queer people in society grew almost twice since 2016, and more than half of Ukrainian society is neutral or positive towards the LGBT+ community.

[s-che]

Monsterhearts 2: Plotting Anti-Plot

Last week I had the fortune to MC (and play) Monsterhearts 2 for the first time as the Dream Library begins a unit on monsters, monstrosity, and monsterfucking which will carry us through November, and boy howdy am I glad we managed to do it. 

For those who (somehow) don’t know, Monsterhearts is a game that bills itself as being about “the messy lives of teenage monsters.” It cites Twilight, Buffy, Ginger Snaps, The Vampire Diaries, and The Craft as media touchstones, it’s not joking when it says that these monsters are 1. messy and 2. teenagers. Monsterhearts is angsty, horny, frightening and, above all else, extremely fun to play. On top of that, Monsterhearts is also one of those games that, if you’re in a certain sector of the indie RPG scene, people will remind you is extremely fun to play all the fucking time. It feels sometimes like every designer I know has a good Monsterhearts story, and as much as Avery Alder’s reputation on a larger stage has been defined by The Quiet Year, I get the sense that for people who like what Monsterhearts is doing it’s an extremely hard game to beat. 

So to be totally honest, I was more than a little anxious MCing for my first time actually playing the game. There’s a sense in which hosting a game which you know is great can be way harder than hosting games you think might be bad — after all, if the session goes poorly, there’s nobody to blame but yourself. On top of that, Monsterhearts moves through some tricky territory: underage sex is a core element of the game, and the eight “Small Towns” (short, pre-prepped settings for quick starting the game) all deal more or less explicitly with histories of racism and colonialism in communities across North America. While these are interesting places to go in play, the idea of taking them on myself as host made me shy away a little bit (and I’m excited in the next session to look at things from a player’s perspective). 

All in all, though, I think the session was a resounding success. I went in with basically no prep and as much familiarity with the book as I could get (not enough to realize the quick reference sheet we were using for the first half of the session was from Monsterhearts 1, but so it goes), relying on the game itself — which leans away from strictly organized plots and encourages you, in true PBTA fashion, to let characters and their needs bounce off each other until the conversation goes somewhere interesting — to get us smoothly into play. I would call my efforts there a mixed success: while Avery has a real skill for writing pedagogically, giving you the explicit frameworks you need to get into play (if you’ve never begun a session of The Quiet Year by reading the rules book aloud to each other, you should go fix that now), the session was hampered a little by some awkward pacing and uncertainty: partially driven by my chronic tendency to waste time on slowly establishing things in one-shots rather than swinging as hard as I can in the first five minutes and letting the players lead from there and partially by player character relationships that lead to clear, decisive actions... which left one of our players bored at work while the other two went off adventuring. We ended up taking a moment, after returning from the normal mid-session bio-break, to chat and refocus ourselves, figuring out where we wanted to go and what we wanted to see in the last hour or so of the session, and then jumping back in and — thankfully — playing hard to reach a strong conclusion. In the end, I’m not interested in tracking down exactly where the first half of our session lost its footing (although I have some ideas for how I could have hit harder as an MC). I’m more interested in celebrating the way the table was able to come together, talk explicitly about what we wanted, and get the game somewhere satisfying for everyone involved. We closed on, among other things: an underwater fight between the Fairy (Mermaid?) Queen and a Kraken-Leviathan-Hellmonster, a throuple sneaking off from a beach party to hook up, and the messy end of a South Jersey summer (complete with a tsunami and a beached whale front of the boardwalk). It was a good time. 

Most striking to me in this moment, however, is the way thinking about Monsterhearts as a plotless game positions both me as MC and the other players. It really speaks to the way that capital-T The capital-C Conversation works in Powered by the Apocalypse games (good ones, anyway) to let play flow not according to the rules of a paced narrative, but along lines of player interest and highly-charged emotional incident. It is, I think, part of what makes all the PBTA games we’ve played in the Dream Library sing (in no small part because we pruned the last unit and didn’t play any PBTA games I think are bad, but that’s a different conversation) and it suits this game — with it’s emphasis on sex and messy desire — extremely well. It also fits in nicely with a point I’ve heard a couple of people make recently: that thinking of RPGs as first and foremost collective narrative engines is, at the very least, a narrow view. 

Anyway, this week I’m fortunate enough to be joined by a new host (hi @jdragsky) so I can check out MH as a player, then we’ve got a couple of two-shots planned for the end of the month before we move on to our next monstrously intimate game: Bluebeard’s Bride. You want in on an upcoming game? Have a link. You want to hear more about Monsterhearts? One of my players wrote up some of her thoughts as well.

Otherwise, well, get out of here. Scram.

[1moreff-creator]

Hello! Not sure if you share headcanons regarding ships, but if so, then do you have any in regard to Xanace? Feel free to discard this if otherwise ^^

Hello! You know, I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about ships outside of some jokes here and there, but I’ll see what I can do! No Killing Game AU because I don’t know what to do within the KG, and mostly fluff because I'm not an angsty kinda mood :v

Getting Together

-Xander and Ace disliked each other upon first meeting in Hope’s Peak, kinda like canon. You know, Ace’s rudeness annoyed Xander, who scared Ace in return.

-But… they shared classes with Mai, who was hellbent on everyone getting along. Somehow she manages to get them to talk in friendlier terms, and they actually find out they have quite a bit in common. I hope you know enough about Mai for that to make sense.

-They start acting a bit like each other’s impulse control, with Xander getting Ace to back down from meaningless fights and Ace rightfully calling out Xander whenever he gets in too deep in something revolution-related and doesn’t get the help he needs (“what? So you think you’re so much smarter than all of us that you’re the only one that can steal those documents? How about you go sleep for the first time this week and I show you how easy it is!”)

-Ace starts feeling safer around Xander because of his inhuman strength and general protectiveness, and Xander starts feeling like he can relax around Ace. Ace is actually pretty funny when he's not being mean, turns out.

-Ace is actually the one to confess first, and he did it by writing a love letter because he was too scared to say it out loud... prompting Xander to first ask Whit and Arei if they were pranking him, because "there's no way Ace writes in cursive." The misunderstanding got resolved quickly, and they got together.

Fluff

-Ace is uniquely capable of getting Xander our of the worst of moods. If Xander's feeling broody and doesn't wanna talk about it, all he has to do to cheer up is watch Ace's silly antics for a little bit, and he'll be fine.

-Whenever Xander gets pissed off at some form of corruption or another, Ace will join in on the hate, even if he has no idea what the situation is.

-Ace likes calling in Xander whenever he gets scared of something, which is pretty often. There are a few dents in Hope's Peak's walls where Xander threw something at a spider on Ace's behalf.

CW: Eating disorder

-Xander always makes sure Ace eats the right amount and healthily, he's inescapable in this aspect. Funnily enough, Ace actually really dislikes a lot of the food Xander makes (way too spicy for him, it's canon the Rebel eats with a lot of spice), which helps him find the motivation to make proper meals for himself as to avoid being forced to eat those monstrosities. Conversely, Xander actually likes Ace's food... provided he's allowed to add a few metric tons of condiments and spices to it.

CW Over

-Xander gets roped into the Halloween Trio (Veronika-Arturo-Ace) movie nights that Vero drags Ace into. He doesn't actually like horror movies (particularly gory ones), but he enjoys it because Ace consistently clings to him for comfort during the scary parts.

-Xander loves Ace's family, because it's so big. 9 siblings?! He knows it's a little weird, but a lot of them remind him of his own family before they, y'know... so he likes hanging out at Ace's house because it kinda fills that hole in his heart.

-A lot of Ace's siblings make fun of Xander's British accent. He's learnt to accept this. They also make fun of Ace a lot, but they do it less in Xander's presence because he scary.

-So much corruption in the horse racing industry gets exposed, courtesy of Xander. So much.

(I don't actually know how corrupt that industry is but based on a quick google search, and given there's money and gambling involved, I'm assuming "at least quite a bit")

-Arei: "How did Ace Markey get a boyfriend before you?"

Whit: "I guess he was done... horsing around xD" (<- Actually very depressed about this fact)

-David is very supportive, since he wants to support anything his idol friend wants to do. He also happens to be mostly exempt from Ace's insults, since Xander gets sad whenever Ace says something bad about him.

-Ace: "Basically you're stupid and Xander's right."

Min: "Do you have any idea of what we're actually discussing?"

Ace: "No, and I don't need to."

-Xander isn't scared of horses or horse-riding, so he asks Ace if he could take him on a ride some time. Ace finally does it one day, except he rides the horse at Ultimate Jockey speed to get it over with faster.

Xander still isn't scared of horse-riding, but he'll probably never ride behind Ace again.

---

I hope that's enough! Thanks for the ask!

[sgtmickeyslaughter]

Happy Birthday Ian Gallagher!

May rolled around again, and Ian turned 28. The weather was weird, hot and humid one day, cold and rainy the next.

The hardcore work schedule they both agreed on for the early part of the year so they could travel in the summer was wearing on both of them and Ian was exhausted by the hyper vigilance he put himself under when the weather started fluctuating and the days grew longer with the onset of spring. He was heartbroken and disappointed that beautiful days set off alarm bells in his head, signaling a manic episode could be eminent. 

He didn’t want to celebrate his birthday, he told Mickey as much and received only a glance and an understanding confirmation from his husband. His family would throw a party regardless, it was scheduled for next weekend, but on the thursday that his birthday actually fell on, Ian wasn’t feeling celebratory. 

He wasn't sad or depressed at the idea of turning a year older, he just wasn't up for performing birthday joy he didn’t really feel for anyone else. 

But when he woke up, naturally and not to the sound of his alarm, Mickey was kneeling on their bed expectantly holding a cake. A lumpy, lopsided thing poorly covered in white icing he probably made after Ian fell asleep last night.

It had patches of bare chocolate cake sticking out between the crumby white icing and it threatened to topple over, ready to smear the blue poorly iced Happy Birthday Ian all over their comforter. 

Ian looked between the cake and his husband for a second, confused. Mickey pulled a face after a while, “blow it out, dipshit.”

There was one candle sitting in the center and Ian was pretty sure they had used it before, and that definetly wasn’t sanitary, but he propt himself up on his elbows and blew it out anyways, causing Mickey to grin slightly before setting it on the nightstand.

“I know you don’t want to celebrate, but I just wanted to give you a little break” he explained softly. “I called Verde growers and pushed our pickup back a little so we don’t have to leave till noon.”

Ian flopped down with a huff, it was probably about 9am if he had to guess. “Yeah?” He asked, patting a hand down on Mickey’s thigh and rubbing slightly.

“Yup” Mickey confirmed, learning forward to kiss Ian lightly. The smell of the faint smoke from the candle wafted between them.

“And you made a cake” Ian stated, glancing over at the sugary monstrosity.

“If you can call it that” Mickey joked, pulling the plate onto his lap boxer covered lap and sitting with crossed legs, producing two forks from behind him.

Ian sat up with him, comforter falling away revealing his shirtless chest. “Just one bite ‘cause-”

“Cause cake for breakfast will upset your stomach. Yeah, I know Gallagher. Fuckin’ pansy.” 

The cake was definitely box mix and the frosting was the tinned kind, but Ian looked down at the poorly drawn letters and grinned, genuine warmth pooling in his chest as he watched his husband clumsily lick frosting from his bottom lip. 

Ian swallowed and took the cake, putting it back where it was and pulling his husband in until he was sitting in Ian’s lap, bodies pressed together. He wrapped his arms firmly around his waist and leaned his face against the center of Mickey’s chest, rubbing his forehead against the soft material of his tee-shirt. 

He couldn’t remember the last time he woke up without an alarm, it felt good. He felt well rested and settled with his husband’s heavy weight against him. 

“You okay?” Mickey asked, running a hand through his hair. 

Ian leaned his head back, blearily looking up at him. “I’m good, thank you.”

“You’re my big guy,” Mickey said, quietly teasing. “I had to do something.” 

“‘M your big guy” Ian agreed placing his head back down, this time with his ear against Mickey’s chest, content to listen to the rhythmic beating of his heart. 

Maybe they’d spend the rest of their extra time in the morning to make breakfast, or take an extra long shower, or leisurely get each other off, but all Ian wanted to do for the moment was hold his husband and revel in their closeness. 

And what he wanted, he was going to get. It was his birthday after all. 

[thewardenisonthecase]

Free me

Lucanis Dellamorte x Grey Warden!Rook (Dawn Thorne)

Read on AO3

Summary: What if Ghilan’nain had actually managed to get her hands on Lucanis?

There's angst and sadness ahead. Hurt, no comfort.

When they arrived on Tearstone Island, Dawn realized that she would have to separate the team. Harding would lead the others to create a distraction, while she, Davrin and Emmrich would head straight to Ghilan’nain.

Foolishly, Dawn thought things would be fine. Her team was prepared, all of their allies were there to help. 

Everything should have been fine. 

But when they actually met the elven goddess, everything had gone downhill. It had all happened too quickly. 

Bellara taken by Elgarn’an. Harding falling to her death, as she shot various arrows at the monstrosity that was Ghilan’nain. 

And where in the Maker’s name was Lucanis? 

“He was taken before arrived here.” Lace explained, once the two groups met halfway. “He insisted we continue without him.” 

Davrin had taken the shot against Ghilan’nain. And while he was successful, it allowed for Solas to put his plan into action, trapping Dawn in the Fade. 

How did this all happen? How did everything get so out of hand? 

Maybe she did deserve to stay there, in the prison of regret. Maybe that way, no one else would have to die. 

‘No.’ She told herself. ‘If you stay here, then people will die. You need to get back. Save Bellara. Find Lucanis. They need you.’

It was with that resolve in mind that she found her way out, after making peace with Varric’s death. 

But it was once she returned to the land of the living, that she learned the terrible truth. 

. 

Rook, there’s something you need to know. 

Something that happened while you were gone.

You might want to sit down. 

Those were the first things she heard when Dawn came back from the Fade. She had been glad, at first, to be back amongst the living. 

There had been tears and hugs, as her friends expressed their happiness at her return. She had only one question for them. 

“Do we know what happened to Lucanis? When the teams were separated.” 

Dawn saw her team turn their smiles into frowns, as they looked at each other. It was Davrin who broke the news to her. 

The distraction team had been ambushed. Lucanis had stayed behind to drive them off, so that the rest of them could flee. The Demon of Vyrantium, a name he had gained from killing Venatori, had shown its wings, but this time, he had been overwhelmed. 

They had taken him to Ghilan’nain, and she had made him into her last creation. 

“I-I-I don’t understand.” She said, wanting to believe this was all just a terrible dream. Perhaps she hadn’t fully escaped from the Fade. 

“Tell me this is all a joke.” She pleaded to her fellow Grey Warden.

“Dawn…I’m sorry.” The solemnity in Davrin’s voice had confirmed the worst. 

That this was all real. 

.

‘I know there is no Maker’ she told herself ‘but, if by some chance, there is someone out there listening. Please. I beg. Don’t let me find him on the battlefield.’ 

Dawn had never prayed before. And perhaps, she shouldn’t, but at that time, it felt like the only thing she could do, besides clinging onto hope. 

Even before they uncovered the truth, she knew that a mage’s prayer meant very little to the Maker. She knew her plea had already fallen into deaf ears, but it had not eased her pain when she saw a giant creature flying above them, before diving down and landing in front of the group. 

When she looked upon it, she knew it was him. Dawn covered her mouth as she saw what that bitch had done to Lucanis. 

His legs had been broken and elongated, making him taller than anyone should have a right to be. His feet and hand were twisted into claws, with pointy talons at the end. Patches of dark feathers sprouted from various places within his body, not fully covering him except for his arms, legs and neck. They looked painful, as the feathers had been stabbed on to him and she could see blood oozing from them. Writhing veins of blight encircled his torso and from his back, there was a gigantic pair of wings, made of leather, skin and feathers. 

But the worst part had been his face. 

His face had remained painfully human. His brown eyes, however, were now red, with black streaks coming from it like tears, down to his cheeks. His hair and beard were almost indistinguishable  from the feathers and she wondered if they still felt like hair. 

While everyone stood still, looking at the abomination he had become, Dawn took shaky steps forwards. 

“Lucanis.” She whispered his name, and his head snapped towards her. With inhuman speed, he ran and stopped in front of her. 

Dawn had always been taller than Lucanis, but this time, it was her that had to raise her head to look at him. Her eyes filled with tears, as she felt his ragged breath on her.

She raised one hand to his face, touching his cheek. She wiped a stray tear that fell from his eye. 

Mimicking her, Lucanis raised one talon to her face, and she hissed when, in an attempt to caress her cheek, he had drawn blood. 

“Dawn…” He whispered, his voice raspy, as if talking was too painful for him. 

She sniffled. “I’m here.” 

“Dawn…free…me.” Lucanis begged. 

She knew it would come to this the moment her fellow warden had told her. But she did not want to do it. 

“P-please.” 

Her already shattered heart broke again as Dawn unsheathed her dagger - the very same Lucanis had gifted to her.

“For protection.” He had told her. “So that I’m always protecting you, even if I’m far away.”

The irony tasted bitter on her tongue. Her hands shook. 

“I can’t…Lucanis, I-” She sobbed and his featheary hand covered her own, bringing the knife closer to him. The hand that held his cheek moved to his neck, as she held him before finally stabbing him. 

Lucanis had been the one to show her where to stab, to give the target a clean death. 

“Thank…you.” His knees buckled, and she sat on the ground, holding him in her lap, as his breathing became worse. 

She cradled his face and kissed his cheek. It was probably unsafe to do so, as he was blighted, but she did not care. The taint already ran in her blood regardless. 

“I’ll never forget you. I promise.” She said, in between sobs. 

Her tears washed away the black tendrils from his face, his unfocused eyes meeting hers. 

She saw him raise his hand, trying to reach her face. “Mi cielo…my Dawn…I-” 

The hand fell to his chest, as the words died in his tongue, his spirit - and Spite - finally free from his flesh. 

Dawn held him close to her chest, like a mother cradling her child. She did not know how long she had spent like that, holding his cold body. A rage flooded inside of her, coming out as hot tears, so many that she believed she could drown the world in her sorrow. 

A hand on her shoulder brought her back. “We’re gonna make them pay. For Lucanis. For Harding. For Bellara.” Darvin said. “We have to go. We have to go avenge them.” 

When she looked up at him, she also saw tears in his eyes, though he would never admit it. Dawn nodded. 

She held Lucanis’s face one last time and whispered “When this is all done, I’ll come back for you and I’ll make sure they bury you somewhere beautiful, far from the ocean, so that your soul is always looking at the sky and the sun.” 

She kissed his forehead, grabbing onto Davrin’s arm as she stood up and let him go. 

[orions-choker]

+:★:+* Chapter Four: Fight Fire with Fire +:★:+*

Warmth flickered across Y/N’s face as she leant over the plethora of lit candles. Her face barely illuminated in the dimly lit room. She smiled, pursing her lips and letting out a soft puff of air plunging the room into complete darkness. The silence that followed was short lived. Excited cheers filled the room as the lights were flicked on.

Y/N was confident in her abilities as a football player as she was tackled by a group of people. She stood sturdy, unsure of who was even surrounding her at the moment. “Happy Birthday Y/N!” was the exclamation from the chorus of people surrounding her. She pulled herself away from the suffocating embrace.

“Thank you! Thank you!” She called out with a grin. Another set of familiar arms wrapped around her, she smiled at the sight of the mop of blonde hair beside her. “Thanks James, you really didn’t have to do all this.” She hugged him back tightly before pulling away.

Her brother shrugged casually. “Don’t give me all the credit, you will be pleased to know we all planned this for you.” He pointed casually to the other three band members behind him who were currently surrounding their kitchen table grabbing booze. There were a lot of bodies packed into their house, most of whom she didn’t know. She assumed it was bands from the area, roadies, general drunk metalheads. She hadn’t made a whole lot of friends aside from the boys and her coworkers but she appreciated that they had invited so many people to celebrate her anyways.

“Surely just an excuse for them to all get shitfaced.” She laughed, wrapping her arm around James’ side and walking towards the collection of alcohol awaiting consumption. “Ironic considering I can't even buy this shit yet. “ she grumbled. It was the big 20. It was hard for her to believe she was 18 when she met all these boys who became her family, she had turned 19 shortly after their first tour and here she was now a year later spending another birthday with them.

Lars passed her a solo cup full of mysterious liquid he had prepared for her. “As if we ever need an excuse to get drunk.” He quipped. Y/N sniffed the drink curiously, her face twisting up as she was hit with an amalgamation of every liquor she could think of. She took a brave swig anyways. It burnt like liquid metal going down her throat, her whole body shivering in disgust as she pounded it back. She had to play catchup with the guys anyways, she was the only sober one at the moment.

As she pulled back from the drink she met eyes with a frowning Kirk. “You didn’t have to actually drink that dude.” He shook his head, taking the cup from her hand and replacing it with a cool beer. “You want to actually remember your birthday right?” He leaned back against the kitchen counter with a tight lipped smile. She had noticed him doing that a lot lately, she missed seeing his face brighter, missed seeing his cute teeth and the way they got caught on his bottom lip.

She shook her head with a giggle. “No, it's way more fun to have no idea what you did the night before isn't it?” She joked taking a sip from her beer, her shoulders relaxing as it washed away the taste of the previous monstrosity. “Kidding, Kidding!” She defended herself as she watched Kirk shoot her an annoyed glare. “Of course I don’t want to forget all the hard work you guys put into this for me.” She moved to stand beside him, resting her head on top of his shoulder.

Y/N shivered as she felt his fingertips scratch gently at her scalp, running his hand through her blonde locks. She mused that she needed a haircut as his hand reached her mid back, she never liked keeping it this long, too much hair to maintain and tease every day. “Then you better slow it down girly, why don’t you go get some of your cake, I made Lars promise not to get anything weird put into it.” He laughed lightly, his shoulders shaking and disrupting Y/N’s resting place against him.

She reached up, pressing her soft hand to the skin of his cheek and patting him gently. “And that's why you're my best friend, and my favorite.” Y/N missed the blush that settled across his tan skin as she turned to the table. Y/N was surprised by the amount of care that went into this cake, clearly they had gone to a real bakery for this one, rather than a shitty grocery store cake.

It was a gorgeous two tiered cake, plain white but in its simplicity it was pretty. She grabbed a piece and was delighted to find it was a vanilla lemon flavor. She smiled, turning around with a piece on her fork. She held it out wordlessly to Kirk and he dipped down, graciously taking the offered bite. His eyebrows raised as he swallowed. “That’s good, why am I surprised.”

Y/N took another bite with an enthusiastic nod. “Right!” She mumbled softly around a mouthful. “You guys really outdid yourself!” She smiled, her eyes twinkling brightly. She all but devoured her slice of cake before moving on to her third drink of the night. She had built up an impressive tolerance for booze after drinking with the guys for so long, but Lars’s initial drink had her feeling a little dizzy and silly.

Venturing into the crowd of people Y/N spotted a familiar head of long black hair, she lit up in excitement as she bounded over to the taller woman. “Steph! You made it!” She grinned, hugging the other around her waist. She and her coworker had become good friends in the year and a half she had been working at the bar. She pulled away, letting her hands rest on the hips of her friend as she looked up.

Steph looked a touch out of place, her clothes much darker than the rest, her hair teased and huge all the same but her makeup was thicker and heavier. Despite that she seemed to be getting along rather well with the people around her. She leaned down, pressing a kiss to Y/N’s cheek leaving a dark lipstick mark against her skin. “Hey pretty girl, happy birthday.” She pulled her close into her side, leaving Y/N with a deep blush. “Of course I did, I wouldn't miss this for the world, plus you're leaving me soon I needed some time with my favorite girl.”

Y/N keened at the words. Her little crush hadn’t gone anywhere that's for sure. Of course she was pretty sure she was hopelessly devoted to Kirk, it didn’t stop her from staring at Steph’s pretty lips every time they were near each other. It made working with her very distracting. “I'm sorry!” She pouted, her voice raised over the music. “It’s kind of a tradition for me to go on tour with the boys, I’ll be back home before you know it.” She assured her friend.

Feeling another presence beside her, Y/N turned to see Kirk, an awkward look on his face as he looked between the girls. She smiled at him, “Oh! Steph this is Kirk, Kirk this is Steph my work wife.” She joked. He turned and smiled at the taller woman.

“Ohhhh so this is Kirky.” Steph teased, using Y/N’s affectionate nickname for him. “I have heard plenty about you, pleasure to meet you.” She stretched her heavily decorated hand out towards him, her rings and bracelets gleaming in the light.

Kirk’s lips quirked up a bit at that as he gripped Steph’s hand in his own. “Oh really? What does she say about me?” He asked teasingly, his eyes darting to the side to catch a glimpse of Y/N’s horrified face. Steph opened her mouth to speak before Y/N reached up, clamping her hand over her friend's mouth.

“Nothing important!” She smiled tightly at Kirk. Steph playfully bit into the flesh of her palm causing Y/N to screech and pull her hand away. She frowned at the teeth marks left behind. “Girl what the fuck?” She looked up at her with a frown as she rubbed at the indents on her skin.

Steph cackled, something akin to a witch. “Honey that’s nothing, I’ll bite you harder next time.” Her grin held something more playful behind it. Her eyes unashamedly trailing across Y/N’s exposed neck and collarbone. “Catch you later, beautiful.” She said disappearing further into the crowd of bodies.

There was a pleasant heat underneath Y/N’s skin as she watched the tall woman walk away from her. Her trance only interrupted by Kirk coughing to gain her attention. His eyebrows raised curiously as he eyes the lipstick stain against her cheek. He held a pack of cigarettes in one hand as he gestured towards the front door with a nod of his head. Y/N nodded wordlessly, following him outside to their front yard, the chill night air embracing them .

“Sooo,” Kirk started, slipping the smoke into his mouth. “Steph was it? What’s the deal there.” He asked curiously. His hand came up to cup around his lighter as he lit the cigarette. Y/N still frowned as she watched him, a bad habit he couldn't kick but she didn’t bother fighting him on it anymore.

Y/N shook her head with a blush. “I know what you're implying, and no.” She said firmly, she pretended not to notice the way his shoulders relaxed. “Steph is like a mega babe, but she’s all talk, she has a boyfriend.” She explained dismissively. She leant against the outside of the house as she watched Kirk blow puffs of smoke into the air.

The red hot cherry of the smoke fell against the asphalt of their driveway as Kirk flicked it, his shoe coming down to stomp out the heat. “Is that the only reason?” He asked curiously. He had been the only person Y/N had been honest with her feelings about. She wasn’t 100% sure how well her brother would react to her being into chicks as well, or if he would really care at all. But Kirk held no judgment against her as her best friend.

“Hmm,” She thought for a moment. Even if Steph wanted her she was pretty confident it wouldn’t be enough to reel her in from her insufferable crush on Kirk. “No, there's other reasons, it's nothing more than a schoolgirl crush.” She nodded at him confident in her reasoning.

He nodded back at her with a reassuring smile, his hand came to rest on her cheek. His thumb rubbed at the skin removing the lipstick there. Like he had been waiting for that response. “Want to share those reasons with lil ol’ Kirky.” The playful teasing dripping from his voice had Y/N swatting his hand away, annoyed.

“Some things are better kept private even from you.” She stuck her tongue out at him. She watched as he finished his smoke, dropping his butt into an old coffee can they kept outside as an ashtray. He leaned forward, pressing Y/N further against the side of the house as she took a step backwards. His arms came forward to box her in.

Y/N’s breath hitched in her throat as he leaned down into her space. They were close enough that their air intermingled, a mixture of sweet cake, booze, and cigarettes. Her hands came up to press against Kirk’s chest, trying to keep some distance between the two of them. She laughed in confusion, her voice coming out high pitched and cracked. “Kirk the fuck you doing?”

He grinned down at her, Y/N couldn’t help but focus on the way his crooked canine gleamed from the corner of his mouth. “I was just thinking how unfair it is that you let that Steph chick bite you when you know how bad I’ve been wanting to practice being a vampire.” He cackled out his head dipping down lower.

Y/N’s brain short circuited as she felt the gentle ghost of his lips across the skin of her shoulder, and then a sudden zap of pain. He chomped down against her skin playfully. It wrenched a surprised screech from her throat as he laughed heartily, quickly stepping back to avoid a punch to the guts. “What the fuck dude!” Her face was bright red as she began her assault against his arms and chest with her fists.

Kirk’s laughter filled the air, head tossed back as he grabbed Y/N’s hands to stop her. Tears sprung to his eyes as he took in her flustered state. “Hah, oh my god you should have heard yourself! You sounded like a kicked puppy.” He was pleased with himself, Holding Y/N’s arms in place until she calmed down.

With a huff Y/N kicked at his shin. “You’re such a dick you know.” she grumbled. As Kirk released his grip on her. She rubbed at the now sore spot on her skin. “Thats so fucked up you bit me hard! Its gonna look like I have a fucking hickey you weirdo.” There was no anger or venom in her voice despite how hard she tried.

“Happy birthday sweetheart.”

[koreis]

Made another sticker a while ago :3 might print it later.

The joke behind it is that Sabo is the kind of guy who would favor psychological torture and he’s plain unhinged and what better torture than threat by chicken? An acquaintance actually put a terrible image in my head after I drew this. Here’s a block of text about it:

The man’s back is to you. He’s dressed in blues, midnight vest and icy shirt, but his warm golden curls seems to bounce with sunlight as the breeze sends them dancing. He cuts a regal figure in the nothingness, with his back soldier straight, like the kind of gentleman one’s parents would want them to bring home. However, you’d have to get to know him first. He turns his head. He’s looking at something. His eyes are the purest black, or are they the darkest blue? You wouldn’t know. What is he looking at?

You blink. And you’re in a chair. Looking through the eyes of someone from another life, or maybe another future. The colors are all wrong, too dark, and something is swimming. You think it’s your head. The man is there again. His face is youthful, boyish.

He’s far away, but he’s noticed you’ve awoken. He smiles. It’s a nice grin, but too much teeth to be a friendly one. Barely anything is visible, but a light shines above his him. A halo. You think. He sets his gaze on you, heavy eyes adding pounds to your shoulders. You squirm and find your movements stopped. You’re bound, trapped between those eyes.

“You’ve never made this easy,” he says, words echoing down the hall. He’s shifts his foot, taking a step toward you.

“Perhaps because they’re a far greater threat to you than anyone who would look for them. Unlucky for you, I’m not anyone.”

Another foot.

He’s captivating. Maybe it’s the bad lighting that makes you focus on his face, the delicate features behind blonde curls, the slight upturn to his nose, or maybe it’s just his face. There’s a scar running through it, over one eye. Objectively, it’s ugly, but to you, it’s like a flame.

Another step.

And he may be getting too close. He’s a stranger, and you’re a captive. Perhaps this situation scares you. It should. It’s bizarre. But you feel like you’ve met him in a dream once.

He’s holding something. Bright yellow, with red lips. A crude imitation of a bird, a monstrosity.

You want to ask about it. Ask about him. Anything. But you have no words.

He squeezes it and it groans something dying. He squeezes it again, and it wails.

You decide that you don’t like it. But you don’t have to words to make him stop.

Another step, and he squeezes it again. Twice now. Four times. The halls echo with its tortured screams.

And finally, his eyes are level with yours. Dark swirling storms. Your noses are almost touching, and his grin is feral. Fearless. All teeth, with a hook to his lips. And he holds his cursed bird next to your ear. It caresses you, smooth and gentle. Your breath catches. He squeezes it, and your head feels like drowning.

It sounds like death, like hell. The repeated wail of the ill at ease, the buried but not at peace, the restless. And then it stops. And he giggles with glee. Sweet and charming. Your eyes refocus. His face is dazzling.

“So. Will you tell me where they are?”

You can only answer in silence.

He frowns. “I can subject you to this forever you know.”

Your heart jumps at the threat. And you finally find your words. Some of them.

“What are you even looking for?”

He scoffs. “My memories. I know you have them.”

Memories? What memories? You blink again, and he’s holding the chicken in your face. Right. That’s what it is. A chicken. Out of the corner of your vision, you can see him watching, cataloging your reactions. He bares his teeth.

“So,” he starts, “What’ll it be?”

~~~

This is a whole excerpt of nonsense that I just wrote btw. TLDR: someone told me that they imagined Sabo walking toward them squeezing the rubber chicken in a menacing manner—I couldn’t unsee it.

I just moved into college, which is very exciting and scary. Working hard on the next chapter of my fic; hopefully it’ll meet my and readers’ expectations. Idk how writers manage to keep a balance between canon and divergence as well as in-character and expansion of character, kind of like finding the middle ground between salt and pepper in a dish. I guess it’ll come with experience. I’m so happy and weird about so many things right now. It’s a growing up thing me thinks. Love you guyss :333333

[strandnreyes]

tagged by @alrightbuckaroo @carlos-in-glasses @reyesstrand <3

a little more than usual because it’s a nice and happy part for a change

“Alright, let’s go try this chocolate thunder brownie.”

“Do you think Mateo will kill me if I get something else?” Carlos asks as he gets out.

TK shoots him a look from over the top of the car. “Oh, please don’t tell me you’re one of those people who likes pistachio.”

“I wasn’t going to get pistachio.”

“It’s butter pecan, isn’t it?” he asks like he’s personally offended. “Carlos, you have to understand that that’s worse.”

Carlos ignores him, scanning the packed tables for an open one. Nancy seems to notice the problem, too. “Should we grab one while you order?” she offers.

“Sure,” Carlos nods, listening to their orders and then following TK to the line. 

“Maple Walnut? Rum Raisin?” he reads off the menu posted next to the window. “C’mon, which one of these monstrosities is your favorite?”

“They can probably hear you, you know.” 

“I don’t think that sixteen year old behind the counter will care too much that I think Rum Raisin is a bad flavor.” 

“What if that’s the one I want?”

TK stares at him, dead serious, and says, “I’m not buying that for you.” 

Carlos raises a brow. “I didn’t know you were buying it for me at all.” TK doesn’t say anything to that, still studying the menu, and Carlos adds, “I was going to get mint chocolate chip. Is that an acceptable flavor for you?” 

“Toothpaste?” TK looks disgusted and Carlos shakes his head, laughing. 

“You’re impossible,” he mutters until he sees TK’s grin that shows he’s just joking.

They place their order and TK pays for all of them without thinking twice. He shoves the rest of his change in the tip jar and then he and Carlos shuffle over to the pick up window. 

“I’ll take a bite of yours and maybe Mateo will spare me,” Carlos decides after TK actually ordered Mateo’s recommended flavor.

TK looks affronted as he pulls out a stack of napkins from the dispenser. “Who said you’re getting a bite of mine?”

“Payment for the ride.” 

TK purses his lips, a gleam in his eyes as he leans closer to Carlos and murmurs, “I didn’t know we had that type of arrangement, Carlos.”

“Shut up,” Carlos rolls his eyes, hiding his smile at TK actually mentioning their deeper relationship for once. 

The bored teenager chooses that moment to come over with four cones and they take two each, carrying them to the group and bending their legs awkwardly to sit down at the sticky picnic table. TK’s knee brushes against Carlos’ and it remains there all through Mateo’s interrogation on why Carlos’ ice cream is green and Carlos steals TK’s cone, taking a lick to say he tried it. TK pretends to be disgruntled with how unsanitary it is, but they both know that he’s not exactly a stranger to Carlos’ tongue.

They were one of the last ones in line for the day which means the place starts clearing out while they finish their ice cream. Carlos licks off the bit that dripped down his thumb and then smiles while TK tries to find the bit of chocolate on the corner of his mouth. Carlos has mercy on him and takes the napkin, wiping it away. 

It’s dark by the time they’re bidding goodnight to Nancy and Mateo and TK takes advantage of that, leaning over the middle console of the car to kiss Carlos. Their tongues swirl together in a mix of both of the flavors. 

As Carlos is about to break some speeding laws to get them back to the house, TK points him in a different direction instead. He ends up parked at the end of a dead end road overlooking the bay where TK clambers over into the driver’s seat as soon as the car is off. His elbow hits the horn, his head bumps the ceiling, and his knee comes too close for comfort for Carlos to be up for anything that’s about to happen, but eventually he makes it to Carlos’ lap, laughing as Carlos scoots the chair back and they fall into a kiss.

tagging @three-drink-amy @heartstringsduet @liminalmemories21 @rmd-writes @taralaurel @welcometololaland @hoko-onchi-writes if you’d like!