#I have a lot of bugs. none of them are pinned because they are so small

[theegyal]

When I Was Your Man [ Annie x Smoke ] +18

⚠️: Anal, rough sex, black magic, gory, torture, angst, toxicity

Part 6

The old flame she never planned to reignite? She did.

This morning didn't mean a shit. She tried to convince herself. The most important right now was to teach Anders a lesson.

After cleaning her shop, fixing her altars and broken statues, putting in boxes the roots and leaves, Annie kneeled to pray. She hadn't been inherently good or neither wicked. Nevertheless, her deeds should not become the origin of her demise ; Because yes, Annie persuaded herself that the destruction of her sanctuary would ultimately have irreversible consequences on her daughter. What if she couldn't pass through Oyá death's tunnel no more ? Or if any communication between them ceased ?

"Anders..." she muttered, mystically, her jaw tightened "the night will come. For you"

In a clay bowl, one he'd eaten from, she laid the roots. Devil's Shoestring, to make his path a tangle. Mullein leaves, to cloud his mind. A pinch of goofer dust to seal it. This good-for-nothing nigga had put filth on her sanctuary, the spirits were angry, the ancestors reclaimed a deep cleaning, her daughter path to Oyá had been blurred.

A debt must be paid.

She pricked her thumb with a silver pin. She watched a single drop of her blood fall, soaking into mixing powder.

"Anders Ray Johnson," she whispered, her breath ghosting over the bowl. "You walked on my soul. Now you ain't gon' have none. No ground to stand on at all."

She blow up the cursing powder to the winds.

Back to Lizzie's, the silence in the twins' room was loud.

Stack undressed, ready to take a shower. Smoke sat by the window, lighting his pipe. Right before his young brother slip into the bathroom, he asked :

"Was it good to fuck Annie?"

Stack's breath hitched. What the fuck Smoke expected him to say ? Of course it was good. Her pussy tasted honey, the way her tits bounce from behind, the sweet smell of her hair...

"Good as much as taking the back of a gun at the temple."

A dry, ugly sound left Smoke's lips. Might've been mistaken for a laugh.

"You asked for it."

He looked out at the street. Four blocks away from here was located Sweet Mama's Kitchen. Smoke let a smug grin tug at her corner of his mouth. Whoever messed with her had to die, simple.

Yeah, Annie was his wife, and even after seven damn years she still got a hold on this soul. But, one thing Smoke hated more than anything else, was people messing with his blood. Bending over for Stack was the line she should've never crossed.

She needed a lesson and Smoke was eager to teach her.

He would be her shield and her cage all at once.

"Stack."

"See that building her food spot in ? Find the landlord. Tell'em the Smoke Stack twins ain't buying no fuckin lease. We go buyin' the whole damn block."

The young twin rolled his eyes "thought y'all were cool again. I mean after that big ass head she gave you..."

"So ? She blow out my dick and we good ? Do the shit I'm askin' you, boy" replied Smoke

"That shit gonna get uglier than Roosevelt side piece...anyway, count me in." He said, disappearing in shower.

Now that part of the plan was settled. Smoke release his grip from the rifle, take an old paper out the drawer and scratch some words.

Annie didn't give him a name. She always had this tendency of protecting dumb ass nigga from reaping what they sowed. Doesn't matter truly, Smoke knew a lot of folks who can play great detective games, some Al Capone minions with a large money appetite.

"I'm outta the town" he shouted for Stack.

When you spit in the air, be ready for it to fall down on your face. The debtor's time had come.

The curse didn't knock gently, he kicked the door off Anders' mind.

Second ago he was drinking corn liquor with friends under a big sassafras tree and the next the whole delta became his own personal hell. Mosquitoes suddenly targeted him, sun lights turned into flames, the heat burning his skin, bugs buzzed around him as if he became a putrefying corpse.

His friends' eyes turned down, red, squinting, judging.

Anders immediately rose up right in front of this dumbfounded boys, he stormed to the dusty road, side to the plantations, then close to an oxbow lake.

His brain cracked open, spilling his sins to the gators and the snakes.

"I DID IT!" he howled with a ragging voice. "I GUTTED THAT DAMN CAT! I SMASHED HER STATUES! I THREW MUD AND SHIT ON HER BABY'S GRAVE—"

His crazed rambling carried over the murky water. A truck engine cut off down a dirt road nearby. Smoke still sat in the engine, his blue hat protecting his head from the sun. He listened, heard every words.

Smoke didn't flinch. Didn't move, neither. He just sucked on his cigarette slow, the molasses-sweet tobacco crackling like it was listening too. Eyes shaded beneath the brim of his hat, he stared out at the cypress knees and the muddy water moccasins slipping through the shallows.

Anders kept shouting. Now bent over, hands clawing at his skin like he was trying to dig something out from under it.

"I cut the black cat open, the old man told me it would bring her misery —AH." He sobbed, "her baby... her damn baby didn't deserve no goddamn shining rock! I smeared mud and shit on the grave! You hear me?! Shit!" He was laughing now.

"Always talking about roots, leaves and bullshit. She rot in those now—Huh ?" His laughter became crazier.

He beat his chest like he was calling thunder down, head rocking back and forth, teeth chattering disgracing the sun's heat. His drawers soaked through with piss and fever. Eyes glassed over, all pupil. Nothing human left in them. He didn't see the world anymore, just echoes of what he'd done.

Smoke, still parked, remains in his truck. He was not the kind of guy who believed in spirits, hex or any type of magic. He did believe in Annie though. And seeing the current state of Anders, he understood her rage, because he also shared the same.

Their baby. That bastard stained their child's resting place. Fury gnawed at him, furious tears burning his eyes. He balled up the letter down on the passenger seat. He didn't need the shady dogs help now, he had to handle it, himself.

This wasn't enough. That nigga didn't pay enough for his crimes.

"...baby... baby got worms now, I seen it, I seen it..." Anders continued sneering

"Grave got teeth," he mumbled. "Grave bit me. I seen 'em eyes lookin' at me from the dirt—ain't no baby, it's a snake baby, all curled up in the blanket..." He cried horrified now, clawing at his own face.

That was it. That was the last goddamn straw.

The hot tears in Smoke's eyes evaporated, leaving behind a cold, murderous calm. He shoved the truck door open, his hand already reaching for the butt of the gun tucked in his waistband. He was gonna walk over there, put the barrel in that blasphemous mouth, and end this nigga life right now.

He swung a leg out. And froze.

Something pushed back. Not a person. The air itself got thick, heavy like wet wool, pressing on his shoulders, chest, on his face. He tried to force his way through it, gritting his teeth, muscles straining.

It was like trying to walk through concrete. A wave of heat washed over him, smelling of ozone and something else... something that smelled like Annie's skin. Her magic. Her will. A blunt, silent, invisible No. This was her kill. Her justice. And he wasn't invited.

"Fuck," he snarled, frustrated. He slammed his fist against the steering wheel, defeated.

"Shit, you ain't made her alone Bunny"

He wrenched the truck door shut and stomped on the gas, tires spitting dust. He drove straight to Juke Joint, its neon sign a lurid smear against the falling dusk.

Inside, the usual noise of liquor and lies filled the air. He bypassed it all, heading for a backroom where two hard-looking fellas, ones they brought with them from Chicago, were playing cards under a grey cloud of cigarette.

Smoke didn't waste time with greetings. He peeled off a thick wad of bills and slapped it on the table.

"Down by the oxbow lake," he said, his voice flat and deadly. "There's a crazy motherfucker shoutin' to the sky. I want him. Bring him to the basement. Don't kill him. I'll handle that part myself."

The bigger of the two men eyed the cash, then gave a slow nod. "Consider it done, Smoke."

Night fell heavy and black. In the damp basement of the Juke Joint, under the swinging glare of a single bare bulb, Anders Ray Johnson was tied to a wooden chair. He was quieter now, trembling, his eyes darting into the shadows. The ranting came in waves, weaker, more pathetic.

"...the mud, it was warm..." he mumbled, drool tracing a path down his chin. "She told me... the baby's eyes... saw me... oh god, the dirt got teeth..."

The wooden stairs creaked. Smoke descended, his shadow falling long and sharp over the dirt floor. He pulled up another chair and sat opposite Anders, lighting a cigarette, the flare of the match lighting up the cold fury in his eyes.

He let the silence stretch out. Then he leaned forward.

"Tell me again," he whispered, his voice soft as a razor's edge. "About the grave."

Anders just sobbed, shaking his head. Smoke took a long, slow drag from his cigarette, the cherry glowing a vicious red. He reached out and, with unnerving gentleness, pressed the lit end into the back of Anders' hand. The madman screamed, a high, thin sound, the smell of burnt flesh and hair filling the space.

The scream didn't satisfy Smoke. It wasn't enough. It wasn't nearly enough. He tossed the cigarette to the dirt floor and from an old table nearby, he pulled a long, sharp-looking skinning knife, its edge gleaming under the bare bulb.

He leaned in close, mumbling, speaking not to Anders but to the some presence in the room, a ghost he didn't believe existed. "She was quiet. Never even cry when she came into this world. A quiet little thing." He grabbed Anders' right hand, pinning it flat to the wooden arm of the chair. "And you... you put your loud, filthy hands all over her quiet place."

He placed the blade against Anders' index finger, at the knuckle. He didn't hack. He pressed, a single, fluid motion of steel through flesh and bone. The finger came off, dropping to the floor.

Anders' shrieked, gurgled of extreme pain. Smoke didn't even blink. He took the next finger. Then the next.

"Couldn't just let her be," Smoke continued, his voice dangerously steady as he moved to Anders' head, grabbing a fistful of greasy hair and yanking it to the side. "Had to make foolish moves. Had to bother her nap time." He brought the knife up to Anders' ear, the cold steel tracing the shell.

And, with a quick, brutal tug, he chopped it clean. Blood poured hot and fast down Anders' neck, soaking his collar. He thrashed, his sanity completely shredded, his cries now just inhuman noises of agony.

Smoke let the head fall back. His eyes, cold and dead, drifted lower.

Not only Anders mess up with his daughter but that dirty thumb he got between his leg dared touching Annie.

"Now I think about it. You did welcomed me back, pant unbuckled, right ?" Smoke laughed bitterly, his rage shifted. "Gon' ask you the same question I asked my brother" he inhaled loudly "be careful though. You ain't my blood."

He used the tip of his knife to rip Anders' drawers open. "Was it good to fuck Annie?" Smoke's eyes betrayed a pure, raw jealousy. Just thinking that this rag had pounded his wife's coochie made his blood boil.

Unfortunately for the madman, the only answer he could provide were howls and moans. These didn't satisfy the former soldier.

"I see," Smoke simply said.

With the blade, he grabbed the downed, terrified flesh and swiftly sliced it with an upward cut. A final, piercing scream tore through the basement before dissolving into a wet, rattling sigh.

"Guess it wasn't that good," Smoke faked a reflection, then got his eyes back on Anders. "Well, I know you lie. Because she's so sweet. Sometimes too reckless for her own damn sake."

He stood up. Anders slumped in the chair, life draining out of him onto the dirt floor. Smoke pulled his revolver.

BANG!

"Only wrong you done was steppin' in our way. Now rot in piss."

He walked up the stairs and out into the cool Delta night air.

The drive was long and quiet, away from the town faint lights, heading down a dark road that ran alongside the river. His hands were trembling on the wheel. The adrenaline left his body, Smoke remained tied to his half from another life.

The smell, blood and burnt flesh back the basement, echoed Chicago black alleys, that time he used to work for the mob. He'd thought he'd left that part of himself buried back north. Looked like it was just sleeping.

He finally saw it. A small wooden cabin, set back from the river, a single candle light burning in the window like a beacon : Annie's house.

He cut the engine and walked up to the porch. He could see it was clean, she got rid of any filth. The dead animals were gone, the mud on her baby's grave had been washed.

He raised a hand, knuckles stained with blood, and knocked.

One time, two time. She opened at the third.

"Elijah... what did you do ?" She spoke low

"Finished what you had started"

An angel pass through Annie's eyes

She closed her eyes, breathing deep.

"Get in the bathroom."

He stepped past her, and she closed the door, shutting out the night.

In the wooden bathroom, Smoke stood in front of the small steamed-up mirror. Annie followed his steps.

She came to him, her afro hair in cornrow braids. Her eyes were quiet, blank.

She knew what he did.

No—she knew what they did. Elijah and her.

Her fingers, warm and sure, went to the buttons of his bloody shirt.

"I can do it myself," he grumbled, pride thick in his voice.

"We crossed a line, Elijah. You should've listened to me. You shouldn't have intervened."

"I already crossed it the first night I came to you, clothes full of my father's blood." He paused. "You crossed the, Bunny. Not me"

"It was the first time I begged my ancestors to fight for me. Not to heal anything."

She kept working her way down, peeling the sticky fabric from his skin. He didn't move. Didn't help.

When the shirt was off, she started on his belt buckle. A smirk crept across his face.

"Pervert," she mumbled as his pants dropped to the floor.

"Get in," she ordered.

For a second, he resisted. Silly witch—she forgot he was the one who gave orders.

But when he looked at her, at the cold wrath carved into her face, he obeyed.

No hesitation.

He stepped into the shower.

Annie trailed him. She twisted open the shower knob, letting the cold water fall on their bodies.

She stood there, her thin brown cotton dress soaked through, clinging to every curve, her nipples hard pebbles beneath the fabric.

The hot water sluiced over his back, but he didn't feel it. All he felt were her eyes on him. Fucking witch. Standing there in her soaked dress, looking like she was judging him from on high. Her face was cold, but he knew what burned her deep inside.

"Turn around," she said.

As Smoke turned, Annie took the soap — one she made herself, smelling like tobacco leaf and honey — and started from the top. Slowly her hands washed the grime out his shoulders, dragging down the hard ridges of his back. She scrubbed like she was trying to erase the man he'd been hours ago. The man with cursed blood on his hands. The man who set foot where he shouldn't have.

She got to his waist, her fingers brushing the top of his ass. "Ain't no scrubbin' can clean what you done," she whispered. "But I'm gon' wash you anyway."

"Ain't no sage can chase the karma you gon' get from hexing that man" He replied, defiant.

Smoke breath hitched when she slid her hand round front, lower, below his abdomen. She gripped his cock, purposely, jerking him under the stream, letting her slick fingers play with his tip, hand gliding easy over the thick length of his dick.

"Mmmh— you so damn hard," she muttered, "I'm just washin' Smoke, why you ready ?"

All she could do was talk. Hoping he never turned around and witness the mess she was. Her swollen and hard nipples were pulsing under the dress, her big brown soppy breasts squeezing against each other, pulling heat up her throat.

His balls were heavy and full. She caressed them with care, sliding her softly soaped fingers between them.

He grunted, hips twitchin'. "Fuck. You ain't shit Annie"

He turned, facing her. Annie vagabond hand now released from his crotch, get on his chest. Her palm resting near his heart.

"You feel that? This drum beating hard and loud" she whispered, her voice venomous. "That's mine."

Oh, he felt it. He felt the seven years crying out for his own cowardice, the damn seven years of jerking off to the memory of her taste, her smell.

He felt the rage, knowing his own brother had been inside her.

He felt the white-hot fury of another man—a piece of shit like Anders—daring to kiss her, shove his —now chopped— dick inside her cunt. Yes, Smoke felt all of that in the frantic rhythm of his heart.

He had to remind her, to reclaim her body.

Smoke's hands snapped around Annie's waist, his thumbs digging in hard enough to bruise.

"You crossed that fuckin' line, Annie," he snarled, the words tasting like ash in his mouth.

A faint smirk touched her lips, a look of pure defiance. "We already live on line, Elijah."

Then she shoved him. All her wiry strength, slamming him back against the rough wood of the shower wall. The shock of it, the sheer audacity, blew a fuse in his brain.

In a heartbeat, he had her.

He wasn't gentle. He grabbed her by the front of her wet dress and slammed her against the opposite wall, her head cracking against the wood. Her eyes widened, but she didn't scream. Fuck yes. He wanted her to fight, resist.

He tore the flimsy cotton down, shredding it off her body until her huge, hard tits were bare, bouncing softly.

He crushed his mouth against hers, a brutal kiss that was all teeth and tongue. He owned this mouth. Anders hadn't touched it, not like this. Stack hadn't touched those bruised lips. They were his.

He bit her, tasting the blood, and the metallic tang sent a jolt straight to his groin.

His steady hand went down, grabbing a fistful of her fat pussy and coiled pubic hair all at once. He rubbed her phat clit, grazing over her moistened inner lips. Her cunt dripping honey.

He thrusted two fingers in her vagina, making her coonie talk in squelching blurb.

"Fuck—Annie you so wet"

He pulled his fingers out of her with a wet smack that made her gasp.

"Turn 'round," he commanded, his voice leaving no room for argument. "Put your hands on the wall."

For a second, she just stared at him, her brown eyes blazing with a fury that matched his own. They weren't mad at each other, probably the pressure of the whole day and its mess. A lesser man would've flinched to her gaze. Smoke just stared back, waiting.

Mumbling under her breath, she did it. She turned and braced herself against the rough wooden planks.

Smoke spread her phat cheeks apart, water sliding down the crack of her ass. Her pussy lips were swollen, sticky with juice, and still glistening from the work his fingers did.

He slapped one cheek hard, the sound echoing off the bathroom.

Smoke lined up behind her, one hand spread over her wide lower back, pinning her down while the other guided his cockhead right to her bootyhole.

No only her pussy drip but her anus became slicker, oiled by her own fluid.

"Fuck babe—ya shit so tight"

His penis base slip in her sopping small hole, with one stroke. But he didn't shove it all the way, not yet.

He let the thick base of his cock stretch her, holding himself there, feeling the tight ring of her asshole clenching around him in a desperate, involuntary rhythm. He could feel the heat radiating from her, the way her whole body was humming like a struck bell.

He leaned in close, his mouth at her ear. With a taunting voice he murmured "Feels good, ain't it bunny? All tight and hot around my dick. Just how you like it."

"Go to hell," she gasped, her voice strained. Her ass twitched, pushing back against him, a traitorous little movement her body made without her permission.

A cruel grin spread across Smoke's face. He started to pull out, the head of his cock dragging along the sensitive flesh. "Oh? You want me to stop? Aight, I can stop."

Panic flared in her eyes. She twisted her neck to glare at him over her shoulder. "Don't you fuckin' dare, Smoke."

"Then say it," he whispered, pushing back in just an inch, a torturous taste of what she was missing. "Tell me whatcha want me to do to that tight little hole of yours."

"You wish," she spat, but her voice was breaking, her pride dissolving in a wave of pure, desperate need. He could feel her trembling under his hands. He pushed in another inch, then pulled back again.

That's what did it.

"Please," she whimpered, the word ripped from her throat. Her facade finally shattered. "Elijah, please."

She called him by his real name, hope to touch his heart.

"Please what?" he growled, needing to hear it, needing to own her surrender to their shared sickness.

Her voice was a raw, ragged sob. "Please, fuck me. Fuck my ass, Elijah."

The words were a lit match to a barrel of gasoline.

With a possessive roar, he grabbed her hips, digging his fingers in, and rammed his cock deep inside her. All the way to the hilt.

A guttural moan tore out of her. Her bigs tits bounced harder, nipples spilling milk down the shower floors.

He started to pound into her forcefully. She met every single thrust, her ass pushing back, her body taking all of his big fat dick, demanding more.

"Yeah, like that," he grunted, slapping her rounded ass "Take my whole goddamn cock, Annie!"

"Deeper!" she screamed back, her voice shredded. "Mmm—Fuck Elijah ! Don't stop, beat my anus baby, drill that hole—"

He grabbed her by the waist and lifted her slightly, changing the angle, driving his dick into her guts at a new, impossible depth.

She howled, an animalistic sound of a pleasure so intense it bordered on pain. He felt her climax building, her insides clenching and fluttering around him. The feeling of her so close, of her body coming apart around his dick, pushed him over the edge : he creamed her ass inside and out.

Annie's legs gave out and she slumped against the wall.

Smoke stood behind her, his veiny thick dick covered of sperm, still hard, still pulsing.

"we ain't done yet" Annie said, lowering her gaze on his aching cock. She headed her hand and shut the water off. "The mattress"

She spoke before stepping out the bathroom.

He followed. Like a man under a spell.

She climbed onto the mattress, back arched low and wide, ass round and high. Now on all four, Annie looked back at him, her dark skin glistening, her pussy lips swollen and leaking like fruit split open in the sun.

"Bet you ain't got no damn good meal for seven years long"

He dropped to his knees behind her. Spread her peaches wide with both hands, watched that juicy creamy drip trail slow down the inside of her thighs.

He buried his face between them. Licked her like he was thirsty,starving. His tongue dragged over her clit, then down to her hole, then lower, tongue-fucking her milky ass like it was his last supper.

Annie moaned, loud and filthy. "Goddamn, boy... tryna baptize yourself or what?"

He didn't answer. Just groaned and licked deeper, tongue stiff, nose pressed to her pussy, the scent of her making his eyes roll back.

Smoke felt her pussy juice sticking out on his nose, lips, damn near his eyes. Climaxing one time wasn't enough. He wanted to penetrate her. Burying himself in her womb.

He climbed over her, lined his cock up with that soaking pussy, and pushed in all the way, slow, mean. Annie gasped, back arching, tits pressed into the mattress, the whole bed squealing under the weight of them both.

He beat that pussy like it owed him money. His balls clapped against her bubble ass. Annie took it. All of it. Back arched, mouth open, eyes rolled up. She met every thrust with her own, clapping her ass, like she was built for it.

"Say it," she hissed, lookin' back at him. "Tell me you ain't never lettin' go."

"I ain't," he growled. "You mine, Annie."

"You late," she moaned. "But you here now."

She came first, crying out, her whole body convulsing, wetness spilling down to the sheets.

He followed seconds after, cock throbbing as he spilled deep inside her, panting against her back, holding her tight like she might vanish if he let go.

They collapsed together, breathless. The mattress soaked, the room steaming.

The room was quiet now, save for the distant song of crickets and the whisper of the river not too far off. Moonlight dripped in through the crooked slats of the wooden walls, catching the sweat still shining on their skin.

Annie lay on her side, thick thighs slick with their mess, chest still heaving from the fucking they'd done. Her braids sweated. Smoke was behind her, spooning. One hand heavy on her hip.

He stayed inside her, softening slow, but he didn't move. Didn't breathe too deep. Just let his body speak what he couldn't say.

Annie stared into void.Real quiet. She was trying not to feel too much. She could still feel the echo of him inside her, every stroke sitting in her ribs like memory.

"I ain't never meant to need nobody," she said finally. "Least of all you."

Smoke said nothing. Just breathed steady behind her, eyes closed, out of guilt. He was the one abandoning her.

She swallowed hard. "When you left, Elijah... somethin' inside me cracked open."

She wiped at her face but tears kept sliding sideways down to the mattress.

"I ain't wanna cry no more," she whispered. "Ain't wanna feel nothin'. So I stopped. I stopped bein' soft."

He still didn't speak. But his arm slid around her waist, asking for permission.

Annie trembled.

"You know what it done to a woman, to be left like that?" she asked, voice breaking. "With a belly full of grief? With a baby and no name to give her but mine?"

Smoke pressed his lips to her shoulder. It was the only answer he had.

"I missed you," she said, breath shallow. "Hated that I did, but I did. Every damn day. Missed how you talked to me like I ain't scared of nothin'. Missed how you laid your head on my thighs like church pew."

He let out a low breath, like he was finally bleeding. There wasn't a day he didn't think about her. But what the use of telling her right now ? She would never believe his words.

"I ain't wanna feel this again. That hope. That softness. I don't want it," she mumbled. "Don't wanna love you and end up empty again."

"Annie," he whispered, lips dragging slow against her skin. "I ain't gon' leave this time."

She shook her head, crying. "Don't promise me that, Elijah. Don't lie in my bed and make me believe somethin' sweet."

He pulled her closer, chest flush to her back, his hand slid up to cover hers, fingers intertwining.

"I done already lied too many times, Bunny. I ain't got a place to go beside your arms."

She turned to face him. Her face swollen, tears soaking the pillow. "I can't be caring no more. I'm no longer the woman you knew"

"Well, I would just have to love the new version of yourself, even more"

And with that, Annie sobbed into his chest. The kind of tears she'd been holding back for seven long, bitter years.

Smoke wrapped her up. Didn't try to fix it. Didn't say shit else.

He just held her, heart beating heavy, whispering "I'm here" like a spell over and over until she believed it.

The sun crept through the wooden blinds, casting honey light across the bed. The sheets was tangled, damp with sweat. Annie lay nestled against Smoke, her bare back to his chest, their legs braided like roots under the quilt.

He still held her like she might vanish if he loosened his grip. Face buried in the crook of her neck. His breath slow, content. Ain’t nothing rushed in that bed. For the first time in years, Annie felt… calm.

Until a knock broke the hush.

Three soft raps. Hesitant. Then the squeaky creak of the screen door pushing open.

“Miss Annie…?” came a familiar voice, low and unsure. “Miss Annie, you home?”

Annie blinked. Took a breath. “That… that Anaya?” she murmured, sitting up, the sheet clutching her chest. “It’s still early. Why she comin’ here?”

Smoke stirred behind her, grunting sleep-heavy.

She stood, grabbed her night robe off the bedpost, wrapped it around her full frame, and padded barefoot to the front door.

Anaya stood there on the porch, shift crooked on her body, face all anxious and wrung out.

“Baby, what is it?” Annie asked, brows pinching

“I… I ain’t know where else to go, Miss Annie.” Anaya’s voice cracked. “I went to open up the restaurant like always, but there was these two big men out front. Said I couldn’t go in.”

Annie frowned. “Why? We ain’t got no damn violations. Health inspector ain’t been by.”

Anaya’s eyes darted toward the trees. “They said… said the whole buildin’ done been bought out.”

“Bought?” Annie’s voice sharpened. “By who?”

Anaya swallowed, twisting the hem of her apron. “They said… the Moore Twins.”

Annie’s body went still. Her breath hitched. Time stop.

Behind her, bare feet creaked on the floorboards. Smoke had come out the bedroom, drawstring pants loose on his hips, his chest bare, eyes already full of dread.

“Shit,” he muttered low under his beard.

Annie turned slow. Her face was blank at first, then her eyes met his.

Her eyes filled up fast, of tears. That wet shimmer of disbelief. Betrayal. Hurt so sharp it cut the air clean.

“Elijah…” she whispered. One word. But it held every piece of her breaking heart.

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[moonmaiden1996]

Love at First Sight (According to Nagumo, Anyway) Part 6

The days after that disastrous dinner blurred together into a suffocating haze of anxiety and disbelief. One moment, you seethed with anger, the next, fear gripped you like an iron vice, followed by an exhausting parade of emotions—resentment, unease, frustration. You couldn’t shake the uncanny sensation of being watched, of Nagumo’s smirk lurking at the edges of your vision even in your solitude. Even strangers' faces seemed to twist into that same knowing grin, their eyes glinting with an unspoken secret, as if they, too, knew something you didn't. You felt hunted, like prey caught in the unrelenting gaze of a predator, and no amount of rationalizing could quiet the dread curling in your gut.

The gifts started before you even stepped into your office as boss.

At first, they seemed innocent—small, almost thoughtful. A bouquet of your favorite flowers, their scent sweet but suffocating, left on your desk the morning after your promotion was announced. A bottle of imported sake with a handwritten note: To celebrate your well-earned success, my love. - N.

Then, it escalated. Quickly.

An expensive silk scarf in your favorite color. Jewelry too extravagant for casual wear. A designer dress that fit too well, as if he had taken your exact measurements. Every item a silent declaration, an invisible chain tightening around your throat. Your coworkers whispered, some envious, others amused. Some assumed you had a wealthy admirer; others speculated about a secret affair with the company owner. None of them knew the truth.

Nagumo was watching. And he was making it clear you belonged to him.

It became too much.

You called in sick, claiming a stomach bug, knowing full well it sounded more reasonable than admitting you were being stalked by a deranged man.

Working from home provided little relief. He still found ways to reach you. Delivery drivers knocked on your door every few hours, dropping off food from high-end restaurants, medications, even scented candles and plush blankets. When you stopped answering, the deliveries didn’t stop. They simply piled up outside your door, an ever-growing monument to his persistence.

Then, Aoi arrived.

She stood at your door, arms full of bags, her ever-cheerful smile not dimmed in the slightest by your obvious discomfort. Behind her, little Hana peeked around her legs, clutching a tiny first aid kit with both hands, all sweetness and light.

“You weren’t answering, so Nagumo asked me to bring this to you personally! He was so worried. Sakamoto had to pin him down before he did something dramatic… but oh, look at you! Poor thing, working so hard even when you’re sick.”

You hesitated, your grip tightening on the edge of the door. “I… I’m fine, really. You didn’t have to—”

“Oh, it’s no trouble!” she chirped, stepping inside before you could stop her. “Besides, Nagumo worries about you a lot.”

Your stomach twisted. “He shouldn’t.”

Aoi giggled, completely unbothered. “He can’t help it. He’s a little strange, I know, but he’s really sweet in his own way. He just wants to make you happy.”

You swallowed hard, watching her set the food on your table as if she belonged there. “Why?”

“Because he loves you,” she said simply, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “I just brought some medicine and side dishes so you don’t have to worry while you recuperate.”

You let out a dry laugh. “I’m not sick. The only thing I need to recuperate from is having a creepy assassin follow me around like a lovesick puppy. Did you know he’s an assassin?”

Aoi sighed, casting a glance at Hana. “Hana, sweetheart, go play while Auntie and I talk.”

Auntie. The word made you bristle.

Hana brightened. “Yay! Does this mean Uncle Nagumo is gonna stop moping? He ruins my princess tea parties.”

“We’ll see, Hana.” Aoi ushered her toward the low table before turning back to you. “Now, as for your question… yes, I know.”

Your stomach dropped. “And you think that’s normal?”

Aoi’s expression softened. “Love is never normal or logical.” She exhaled, voice tinged with nostalgia. “Sakamoto was an assassin too, you know. He gave it up for me. Left everything behind so we could have a normal life—no more killing, no more running. Just us, our shop, our daughter. He chose me over everything else.”

You blinked, stunned by her sincerity.

“I won’t lie,” she admitted. “At first, it was terrifying. Knowing what he was, what he’d done. But over time, I realized he wasn’t just an assassin. He was Sakamoto. The man who loved me, who would do anything to keep me safe, to make me happy.” Her smile turned wistful. “Nagumo… he’s different, but he cares about you in his own way. He just wants to make you happy.”

You didn’t answer.

“Why don’t I put these away and we can talk more?” Aoi suggested, ever the picture of warmth and patience.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

The walls of your apartment felt smaller, suffocating. Despite the stacked dishes, the neatly packed meals Aoi had brought , you needed to get out. Have some normalcy at least.

Desperate for fresh air, for something normal, you decided to slip out for a quick errand. A simple meal, some solitude, a chance to breathe without feeling like someone was looming over your shoulder. A solo restaurant sounded ideal—less chance of being followed, less risk of running into him. Even if he did which he probably was going to do he could bother you at the restaurant. Hell, you might even have some sake while you were there, the sparkling kind that you had that time. If you had enough of it you might be in a better position to slap some sense into Nagumo once he sprung out from wherever he was hiding.

You quickened your pace, heart hammering. The restaurant was only a block away but you were determined to get off the street before the black haired assassin sprung out like some goddam jack in the box. A quiet meal, a moment of peace, and then you’d return home, lock the door, and deal with the tattooed assassin tomorrow if you could. Just one normal evening. Just—

A rough hand clamped over your mouth.

You barely had time to react before you were yanked into an alleyway, the dim streetlights vanishing behind the looming figures that surrounded you.

Panic flared in your chest.

You struggled, twisting, kicking, but there were too many. Hands gripped your arms, pinning you against the cold brick wall. A knife glinted under the flickering light.

“Well, well,” a voice sneered. “Looks like we found ourselves a little lost lamb. Our client will be very happy.”

Terror clawed up your throat.

You opened your mouth to scream...

I rewrite this a billion times. Trying to get this right....how did I do???

LIKE. COMMENT. RQUEST.

And for the love of all that is holy someone send me some requests of for Jinshi x Reader or Nagumo x reader

[n6ptunova]

i loved your chris bf hcs! could you please do one for matt? thank you and i hope you’re having a good day :)

boyfriend headcanons • matt sturniolo

a/n: thank you so much ily!! hope you enjoy thiss🫶

warnings: none

- you can’t convince me that matt wouldn’t be the type of bf who accidentally ignores you in public/groups of friends. he doesn’t mean to but he’s so awkward and doesn’t like pda much so when he tries to avoid it he avoids you altogether. it used to hurt your feelings but after talking to him he reassured you that he’s just a dumbass.

- he makes up for being distant in public when you guys are alone tho. he lovesss having you in his arms hugging his slutty waist, while he strokes your hair and kisses your head/cheeks occasionally. he’s def the big spoon most of the time.

- his love language is physical touch and acts of service, so he’ll often want to drive you to run errands together (grocery shopping, ikea visits, etc.) it makes him feel like you’re a married couple which kind of sums up your relationship with him.

- he’s also the designated bug killer, bob the builder ass bf. you got new furniture that needs to be built? he’s doing it no question. you broke something and need it fixed? he’s on it. he almost babies you honestly and he loves it but when you take it too far and act too spoiled he’ll be like alright wrap it up.

- he’s kind of moody sometimes for no reason like you’ll be making jokes or annoying him for fun and he’s just “not having it” when in reality he can’t get enough of your attention, he’ll pretend to be annoyed and keep rolling his eyes but he can’t wipe the goofy ass smile off his face.

- BABY FEVER!! every time he seems a cute baby out in public or on tiktok he turns into the biggest softy, “babe look oh my goddd they’re so cute i want one.” *hears the baby laughing* “nvm i want ten.”

- perks of dating someone with a car (ns to chris and nick! full shade actually) is you get to go on a lot of late night cruises with the top down, blasting your fav music, him using his free hand to switch between holding yours and placing it on your thigh. plus you get some privacy to….be risky! if ykwim

- matt loves when you take an interest in something he loves eg. pokemon, certain artists he listens to, cabin life, etc. he gets so excited and giddy and he’ll want to tell you everything he knows about these things. and he does the same for you but he gets embarrassed and defensive if you point it out so you just silently appreciate it.

- ^ you once caught him reading one of your favorite books simply because he wanted to talk to you about it and seeing you get all excited and passionate while talking about it.

- he’s definitely a soft launch type of guy. always posting pics where you just barely show. the back of your head, or your nails in the corner of the pic, your shoes etc. i can’t imagine him fully posting up with his gf on instagram or tiktok but maybe if it’s been a few years he’d do it for anniversaries and it’ll be like aesthetic ass pinterest vibes photos.

- matt would always be taking candid photos/videos of you and saves them in an album that’s full of just you. 90% of his screen time is his camera roll just bc he’s always looking and admiring the pics he took of you, he’s obsessed fr.

- after a while i feel like matt would start to show his silly/goofy side a lot more with you. he would so be the type to chase you around trying to tickle you- he just loves hearing your laugh. it usually ends with him pinning you down with one hand and tickling you with the other until you’re almost out of breath then he’ll stop and kiss you to make up for it.

- he’ll be more talkative with you than with his brothers sometimes since you don’t interrupt. he’s always rambling about whatever’s on his mind and apologies after like pookie you’re good talk more!!

- he’s a bit indecisive in general like where to eat, date ideas and stuff but he tries because he knows you like when he’s ‘assertive’. idk how to explain this but he acts like the stereotypical “man provides” but in a non toxic/non misogynistic way.

[gay-dorito-dust]

Could you write richter Belmont relationship headcannos or just anything for him pls

He’s a wanker (affectionate)

^^ that is also the nickname you’ve come up for him because it seems like ever since being in a relationship with him, Richter had made it his mission to be a right pain in your ass, but you loved him none the less.

Not an early bird that’s a damn fact. He gets all grumpy if he’s woken up earlier then he would like but his bed head, furrowed brows and pouty lips made him look utterly adorable that you never take his complaining seriously.

Hogs the bed and blanket to the point you have to fucking fight him for even just a smidge of it, only for your efforts to be rewarded with the corner of the blanket…needless to say you’re not impressed. Not even in the slightest.

Protective: Being a Belmont is never an easy life and Ricther is well aware of that. So I wouldn’t be surprised that he would sometimes become overbearingly protective, but just know that it comes from a good place and not wanting to see you in a situation where you’d get hurt. It’s not something he’s willing to risk after loosing his mother, so alongside being protective he’s going to be overbearing and dead set in his ways when it comes to your well being.

So if you got a problem with that, you might wanna sit him down and talk about it until you both come to an agreement.

Smug/Cheeky/Sarcastic cunt and it’s always during the worst moments possible.

Your fighting? Richter has the audacity to say ‘you look like you’re debating on whether or not to punch me. I’d happily prefer it if you were to kiss me instead.’

Spoiler: He don’t get the kiss like he had hoped.

You’re chewing him out for being hardheaded and accidentally letting it slip that you love him? This dude will smugly smirk, lean in towards you and say: ‘so if cursing me out for doing stupid shit and near enough biting my head off is your version of telling me you love me? But then again everyone’s got a unique way of telling people they love them, so I’m not one to judge.’ Only to add on afterwards. ‘I pray that I never live to see you angry then.’

His love language has to be between either acts of service or physical affection.

He’s a genuinely sweet boy with a big heart and so he would be so soft with you, especially if you to get injured with the way his hand would him you firmly and in place, but also in a way where you thought he was scared of hurt in you further and you’ll have to reassure him that you weren’t going to break and do what needs to be done to help you heal properly.

Cuddle bug. As said before, he’s not an early bird and will get grumpy when he’s awoken earily then he would like but if you were to try and move out from his strong arms, he will whine and grumble about you leaving him and won’t stop until your back into his arms where he will shut up and fall right back to sleep. Also good luck trying to get up in general because Richter will not make it an easy task for you, seriously, try and move an inch and Richter is immediately pinning you to the bed with his body weight.

He loves cuddling you as it’s a reminder that you were alive and breathing, which is extremely reassuring when he’s had a nightmare that included loosing you to a horde of vampires. He’ll hold onto you a lot more tighter after experiencing an nightmare, all you’ll have to do is run your hands through his beautiful chestnut hair whilst whispering sweet nothings to him in hopes that it’ll reach to him deep in his sleep. It does because you’ll see his face relax, his grip slacken and a soft smile graces his lips.

Idk but I’m feeling that he’d enjoy forehead kisses, giving and receiving that is. He’s gets this cute, dopey smile when he feels you push back his hair back to press your lips against his forehead, he’d also close his eyes in content and lean into your affection.

When he’s the one giving forehead kisses however, he’s always making sure to bring you in close to him to the point that there was no more space between you before pressing his lips to your forehead and keeping them there for longer then he should before pulling back to give you his award winning smile that never fails to set you aflame.

I can’t think of anything else so I’m going to end it here. 🦦

[novasintheroom]

Morning routine

♡ Pairing - Vash x Reader

♡ Word count - 1k

♡ Warnings - none

♡ Description: Vash is a pain in the morning.

Now part of the 150 Bullets drabble series on AO3.

The sun is rising through the dusty, cream curtains, and Vash is snoring in your ear.

You groan, rolling away as you continue to wake. Vash makes a noise of protest in his throat, blindly reaching for your warmth, settling on the blankets, and pulling them away to burrow in further. The cool air on your arms and legs slaps you awake. You glare over your shoulder at your sleeping man, then, groaning again, stand from bed and head for the inn’s bathroom.

Vash is still snoring away when you emerge, showered and brushing your teeth. You roll your eyes and go over to him, gently slapping his thigh through the tumble of blankets. “Hm?” he says and goes back to sleep. You give your teeth a few brushes, then poke his side. “Hm? What?”

“Get up, we have to leave by eight. Motel rules.”

Vash turns his head toward you, eyes still closed. “What?”

You snort and go spit in the sink. When you’re cleaned up, you come back out. He’s sitting up in bed. His hair is a mess of golden straw, eyes squinting and fighting to open. He looks at you and purses his lips. “It’s six-thirty.”

“Yes, and you take an hour to get ready.”

Vash groans and flops back on the bed. “Do we have to get up? This bed is comfy…” Then, both eyes opening deceptively quick, he says “Come lay down with me, I can hurry and get ready in a bit.”

You lean your weight on one foot and cross your arms. “No, because then you’ll go back to sleep.”

“Please?” He does his best puppy-eyes, lip wibbling. “I never get to cuddle with you…”

That’s a fat lie. This man is a cuddle bug and takes any chance he can to prove it. “No.”

He sits back up. There’s determination in his eyes now; he’s set on winning this. “I won’t fall asleep! Promise! Just fifteen minutes!” He sighs when you shake your head. “Ten minutes? Eight!...Six?”

“I wanna beat the heat. You’re not getting your cuddles – “ You’re cut off when he reaches out and snags your wrist, pulling you bodily back into bed. He’s so quick. Despite your protests, he flips you on your back and lays on top of you. “Vash!”

But he burrows into your neck. His hair is soft, going to your nose and making it tickle. You huff as he gets comfortable, feeling all his weight press you into the mattress. “Ah, you’re nice and warm,” he murmurs. He takes a big inhale through his nose. “You smell good too.”

“You’re such a pain,” you mutter. “Five minutes. That’s it.”

You feel more than hear his laugh. He presses a chaste kiss to your jaw, humming in contentment and nestling back into your shoulder.

A sigh escapes. Well, five minutes isn’t bad. You reach a hand up and start rubbing his back through his shirt. You feel all the bumps of his scars, the metal plates and wires holding him together. He says they itch a lot. You scrub lightly with your nails, careful, and smile at his hum. Minutes pass by like this. You’re not sure how long. But Vash is happy, and that warms your heart.

“Stampede, you’re such a sap.” You say, and smirk as you feel him still on top of you.

“Take it back,” he mutters into your skin. You blow air out of your nose. He pinches your side, and you squeal. “Take it back!”

“What? You’re the ‘Stampede,’ aren’t you?” You bite your tongue to keep from giggling.

He catches it, though. Vash shifts to rest his chin on your chest, bright blues glaring at you. “Not to you. That’s not my name to you!”

You reach up and brush a hand through his hair. “Oh, you mean ‘Humanoid Typhoon?’ AH!”

Vash sits up and pins your legs down with his hips. You struggle underneath, but his hands are already moving. The tickle attack begins. Your laughter rings out fully. His hands poke your sides, wriggle under your armpits, the crook of your neck.

“Vash! Ha-ha-ha-ha! St-ah-ha-hap! Stop!”

He lets out a few laughs, hands digging into your sides ferociously. “That’s not it! You know that’s not it!”

“That’s your name!” You try slapping his hands away, but he catches them and holds them above your head. He leans down and snorts into your neck before starting to bite at it. It’s just ticklish enough. “Vash!”

“Take it back,” is all he says, using his free hand to tickle under your knees. The shriek you let out has Vash laughing all the harder, and he moves to your thighs. You’re squirming, shaking, trying to gain the upper hand – but Vash is too strong. It’s like he’s holding down a little bug to play with.

A Mayfly.

“Say it!” He’s back at your neck biting where he can. His morning stubble scratches your skin. You squish his nose trying to scrunch your neck up. “I’m not stopping ‘til you do!”

“Birdie! Baby!” You finally relent, a few tears leaking out of your eyes and your laughs turning to wheezes. “Love! Sw-sweetheart!”

Suddenly, there’s banging on the wall next to your head. Your antics are apparently bothering whoever is renting the next room. Vash pauses and looks guiltily toward it.

Taking in gasping breaths, you cough, “Oh, you’re in trouble.”

He finally releases you after giving you a look, his smile following. “You started it.”

“Whatever!” You push him off, slapping his shoulder as he laughs and gets up from the bed. “Go get ready already!”

“Alright, alright.” He picks through his sack by the door to gather clean clothes and some soap. The bathroom door closes, and you’re left to recover from the tickle attack. Your sides hurt, your throat is sore.

He's such a pain in the morning. And you love him all the more for it.

[cnestus]

i recently solved a fun little bug mystery at work and i thought it might be interesting to write up a step-by-step narrative of how i did so, as a sort of example of the kinds of things i get to do for my job. this is a stupidly long post because i have no editorial self-control so i'm putting the rest under a cut.

the above insect is a bark beetle, one of a series of 6 specimens i found in a drawer at work. they did not have species labels on them, and the collection labels indicated that they were collected in 1997 from "Chinese Cedrus used for artifical christmas trees." the infested wood had been intercepted and the beetles collected and pinned, but whoever was working in the lab at the time wasn't able to suss out the species, which is extremely reasonable because even IDing american bark beetles to species can be a massive pain in the ass, let alone ones from asia.

the beetles were clearly in the genus Phloeosinus based on the shape of the antennae and the large spines on the elytral declivity (the ass area), and whoever pinned them at least got them that far themselves, but determining the actual species was going to be a lot harder. even american beetles in this genus can be devilishly hard to confidently ID to species since they often look alike and also are quite morphologically variable in ways the bleed into each other. they are pretty cool though and those ass spines are usually critical in species-level identification

btw since i'm going to be writing out this word a lot in this post, it's pronounced roughly as "flea-o-sign-us" if you're curious.

determining bark beetle species is often made much easier by knowing what tree the beetle came out of since most bark beetles (but not ambrosia beetles, which are also scolytid/scolytine beetles but a whole other can of worms grubs) are highly host-specific, usually being adapted to only a certain tree species or genus or small group of related genera.

so Cedrus is the genus for eurasian cedar trees, and there is one species of Cedrus native to china, Cedrus deodara, but that seems like an odd choice of plant to harvest and send to america for artificial christmas tree trunks. most actual Cedrus species are from the mediterranean area. however there are also some chinese trees in the cypress family Cupressaceae (+Taxodiaceae) that are called cedars, and in fact most species of Phloeosinus are exclusively found in trees in this family. one likely species is Cunninghamia lanceolata, traditionally called "chinese fir" despite not being a fir but also more recently marketed as "chinese cedar" because that's how common names for species go.

oh and there is also the tree Toona sinensis in the family Meliaceae that's ALSO sometimes called "chinese cedar" for some reason but more importantly also called "beef and onion plant" lmao, but that was an even worse candidate for an artificial christmas tree trunk and also not a known host for the beetles. easily discounted but i had a laugh.

so my first angle of attack was to assume that the collection labels were correct and the beetles were in fact from a Cedrus tree. i was able to find a list of about a half dozen Phloeosinus species known to attack Cedrus cedars, but none of them were native to china. this would most likely mean that one of the mediterranean species had been transplanted to china for cultivation, which is entirely plausible. after digging though a bunch of literature i wasn't able to find a good key for Phloeosinus species in the entire area i wanted, but found a couple regional keys covering geographic ranges that when combined covered about what i wanted. for non-biologists, this is what a species key looks like:

sort of a choose your own adventure kind of thing but for determining a creature's true identity. anyway none of the results i got from these keys led to species who's descriptions matched the one that i had. i should also mention that my specimens had a rather distinctive feature unlike any other Phloeosinus species i'd ever seen before, which was an elytral vestiture consisting of these really funky little black explanate scales:

most Phloeosinus species have some kind of vestiture on their elytra but all the ones i'm familiar with have the hairs and scales light-colored and never shaped anything like this, so i figured that the description of the correct species would surely mention these scales.

so anyway dissatisfied with this avenue, i decided that the next most likely option is that whoever made the labels for the specimens was told that they had come from "chinese cedar" by the importer and had just assumed that meant Cedrus but it was actually one of the cypress family cedars. again most of the described species do in fact use Cupressaceae as hosts.

so next i found this UN report with a (hopefully) comprehensive list of all non-EU bark and ambrosia beetle species that attacked conifer trees. i culled from that a list of Phloeosinus species listed as coming from "asia." since that was too broad of an area, i then looked up all of these species in the species catalogues listed in the report, mostly Alonso-Zarazag et al (2007), though some were also listed in Wood and Bright (1992) or Bright and Skidmore (2002), which i happen to have physical copes of. from these i could narrow the list down to just species found in china.

now things became difficult because there are no keys to chinese Phloeosinus, or at least none in english. also even just written descriptions of many of these species were impossible to find because they were all written like 60-100 years ago and usually in chinese or german or french and had never been translated or uploaded anywhere online. likewise almost none of them had research-grade (or any) photos anywhere online.

so after hours of fruitless digging, the best i could come up with was a guide to scolytine beetles of korea (PDF link), which contained a key with a handful of the species on my list and did include english descriptions of these. now one of the species in the guide, P. perlatus, IS DESCRIBED as having dark scales, and my specimens did seem to land on that species when i ran them through the key. that's promising! and the hosts were on my list of possible non-Cedrus chinese cedars! also promising! buuuut something just didn't sit right with me. parts of the species description in that paper just didn't seem to quite match my specimens, like for example the size was a little off, described as being 2.4-3.4mm long, while all of mine were in the 3.3-3.6 range. plus the photos of the species, while distressingly low-resolution, just didn't look like mine.

okay so that was dissatisfying. i'd managed to whittle down my list of suspects a good deal from what little scraps of information i could find about them through my sleuthing, either the wrong hosts or the ones that did have english descriptions available online like in that korean guide didn't fit, but i was still left with several possible candidates and no way to narrow it down further, of course this all assuming that the beetles i had on my hands even were a species that had been scientifically described and named. bark beetles are a huge group of critters and many are quite understudied, especially in asia, and a bunch of new species are described every year!

i was about ready to just give up, but then by coincidence i had a reason to email a couple of high-level bark beetle researchers about a different beetle mystery i was also working on, which was in a group that they were the authorities on. on a whim, i mentioned my Phloeosinus conundrum to them to see if they had any ideas and they recommended i contact Dr. Roger Beaver. yeah, i know right? fucking kickass name i'm so jealous. sidenote: it's so funny how many bark beetle researchers have extremely appropriate names, like two of the biggest names in the field are Steve Wood and Dave Wood. no relation.

so anyway i contacted Dr Beaver, who had done some research on east asian Phloeosinus in the past and he was kind enough to send me an unpublished provisional key to chinese species that he had written up a few years ago. using that key, i ended up at "P. pertuberculatus (?=sinensis)" which means that there was some suspicion that P. pertuberculatus and P. sinensis were the same species, just described and named independently by two different entomologists (Hans Eggers and Karl Eduard Schedl respectively), as often happened, especially in the glory days of insane 18th-20th century european entomologists describing literally thousands of new species during their careers.

now these two species WERE both on my final list of suspects of chinese Phloeosinus species that hadn't otherwise been eliminated for one reason or another, and both had Cunninghamia "cedar" trees as known hosts. Dr Beaver was then kind enough to scan and send me the original descriptions of these two species:

which i was able to use google translate on:

not the nicest translation but still an admirable attempt on google's part to deal with all the entomological jargon, and most importantly the description of the elytral scales on P. sinensis definitely seems to match my specimens more than the pertuberculatus. plus i found a paper on taiwanese bark beetles (PDF) coauthored by Dr Beaver that had a (also distressingly low-resolution) photo of pertuberculatus that didn't seem to match my specimens:

aaand finally: i'd been trying for days to access the webpage of a chinese museum that popped up as the only notable result on a google image search for P. sinensis but every time the website would time out and the cached version of the image was too small to make out any details on, but it finally occurred to me this evening that the reason was probably because my work computer or work wifi was just automatically blocking chinese websites because of america's insane paranoia about chinese spying, and sure enough i opened it up on my home computer and it fucking worked!

that's a pretty fucking bang-on match for my specimens! the scales look right, the color is right, the size is right, the ass bumps are right, the host is right, the geography is right, and the translated description otherwise seems to match! here's mine again so you don't have to scroll all the way up:

so i'm calling this 26-year mystery solved! not all of the bug puzzles i've worked on have had as meandering of a path to their conclusion as this, but i thought that this one did display a good number of the different methods i use. the biggest thing that was missing was me wandering into my lab's massive library of old dusty entomology journals stretching back over a century and digging out some old article that never got scanned and put online, as often happens, but in this case since the bugs were asian and out library mostly covers north american entomology that wasn't going to be very fruitful.

hopefully this was interesting to... somebody besides myself. if you've read this far and weren't bored to tears then congratulations you probably have the same kind of brain damage as me!

[visceravalentines]

sugar stuck in your teeth

They're grimy and tired and Benson's neck is sore. Randy gives him a shoulder rub and thinks hard about the allure of being a biological organism.

2.5k words. canon divergence, boys on the run. established relationship. implied sexual content, nothing explicit. sweat and oil and general nasty. sharing of a toothbrush. so fluffy i'm spinning it up and putting it on a stick and selling it at a carnival. read on ao3 here if that's more your speed.

They spend a full day on the road. Seven hours across Texas through scrub and sand. Nothing to see. No end in sight. Randy falls asleep in the dead-eyed sun of mid-afternoon and wakes up in the dark, dry air whipping through the car from Benson's window rolled all the way down. 

"Hey." Randy sits up, disoriented, mouth gummy and tasting of bygone Mountain Dew, bladder fit to burst. "Why didn't you wake me up? You've been driving for hours."

"Didn't want to stop." Benson's voice is rough. Randy can read the exhaustion in his posture, the way he grips the wheel with both hands. "Besides, you looked like you could use it."

Randy shifts in his seat. He hasn't slept well all week. "Well…it's my turn now. Let me take over."

"Nah." Benson rolls his neck slowly. "Town's up here in like ten minutes. Figure we stop for the night."

Randy peers through the bug-splattered windshield and sees lights in the near distance. "You wanna find a motel?"

"I'd fucking love a motel. Gimme that lukewarm shower and a box spring mattress. Fucking luxury."

As it turns out, they get none of that. The only place in town has a sign that says Closed and no lights on in the lobby. Doors all locked, despite Benson's best efforts to rattle them open. 

He doesn't say a word, doesn't even curse, just slumps defeated back to the car with Randy in tow. "You want the backseat or the front?"

"Benson, I slept for hours, I can–"

"There's not another town for forty miles and if I spend one more second on that fucking highway I'm gonna peel the skin off my face."

Randy doesn't argue. "I'll take the front."

"You sure?" Benson tosses a weary look at him over his shoulder. He squeezes the back of his neck and winces. 

Randy nods. "Yeah, I'm sure." 

The front sucks. You either have to fold your legs to fit around the steering wheel, or risk nailing the thing with your arm or your head. One time he hit the horn with his knee and scared them both so bad they ended up packing up and driving through the night because neither one could fall back asleep. 

He's had plenty of rest. Benson should get the back. 

They leave the car parked in the rear lot of the motel and pick their way through the scrub in the dark to take a piss, elbow-to-elbow. Randy barely feels self-conscious anymore. At the start he used to walk ten paces away and make Benson turn around. But that seems silly now. Benson's seen and touched every inch of him. This is nothing.

Benson zips up and takes off down the sidewalk with a haphazard sense of purpose. Randy has to jog a little to catch up. Benson holds out his arm and he ducks beneath it, the weight comfortable across his shoulders. By now Randy feels like he belongs there, pinned against his side. 

He reeks. They both do. It's been three, almost four days since they last had a shower, been making do with baby wipes and clean underwear since they left Tennessee. Randy almost can't stand it. Back home, he showered every day, sometimes twice a day if work was rough. Right now, he could scrape the grime off himself with a fingernail. 

He's adjusting to this level of awareness of his own body, like he's just now cognizant of the way his skin fits. It makes him sort of anxious. But he's coping. He doesn't really have a choice. 

And it's funny–Randy doesn't mind Benson's stench at all. He's uncomfortable with his own stink, but he actually thinks Benson smells kind of…good, maybe. In a gross kind of way. It's such a foreign concept that he keeps inhaling a little too deep at this distance just to prove it to himself. 

"What're you doing later?" Benson asks, oblivious. 

Randy clears his throat. "Um…not much." 

"Oh. Huh." Benson squints down the road towards the distant light of a gas station, the only thing in town that looks alive besides the two of them. "Well, how about I take you to dinner?" 

A smile steals its way onto Randy's lips. He hooks his pinkie into Benson's pocket. "That might be nice." 

"Yeah?" 

"Yeah." 

Benson takes a deep, thoughtful breath. "There's this place…Seven-Eleven?" He casts a dramatic sidelong glance in Randy's direction. "You heard of it?" 

"Yeah, I…I think so." 

"It's just fantastic. The beer list? Unbelievable. And the atmosphere, well…there's really nothing like it." He's talking with his hands, throwing them off balance. Randy stumbles happily along with him. 

"I don't know, um…I've heard they don't have Pringles. Like, the big can. Just the little ones." 

Benson scoffs. "Well, now, don't you worry your pretty little head about that. You can get two of the little ones if you want. It's on me." 

"Wow." 

"I know." 

"That's–that's really generous." 

"Well, you're gonna have to put out." 

Randy coughs out a laugh, looks at his shoes to hide the heat in his face. "Sounds, um…sounds fair." 

"Randy, come on." Benson laughs, gives his shoulder a shake. "You're giving it up for two cans of Pringles? You gotta know your worth, man." 

He'd give it up for less, but that's beside the point. "Maybe toss in some peach rings and we have a deal." 

Benson gives him a squeeze. "Fuck yeah, alright. Now we're talkin'." 

They pick their way through the snack aisles of the gas station, select a few staples they aren't sick of yet. Benson salutes the clerk behind the counter like he's an American hero. They make their way back down the road to the motel in silence save for the crunching of chips and cellophane. 

It's a beautiful night, still warm from the sun, everything orange beneath the sodium streetlights. Not a soul in sight save for them. This town looks like every other one and Randy likes that, likes that it's starting to feel like coming home when they stop for the night in a new place with a single stoplight. 

They lean against the trunk of the Chrysler and pass the Big Gulp back and forth. It's too late for caffeine so they got root beer, extra ice, because Benson likes to fish it out and chew on it. There's too many streetlights to really see the stars, but that doesn't stop Randy from trying. He sucks the sour off a peach ring and feels a little bit nauseous and a lot filthy and an overall, bone-deep sense of contentment. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Benson twist his head, trying to roll out his neck again. It's not the sharp jerk of his familiar tic, not quite, but it makes Randy nervous. He's been doing it all night. He wonders if it was something he said, something he did. He still doesn't know what exactly he's trying to shrug off every time, but he knows enough to tread that ground lightly.

"You okay?" he asks, tries to make it casual. He swallows the peach ring whole and has to fight it all the way down his esophagus. 

"Yeah." Benson nods, winces slightly. "Yeah. Just sore." He grips the back of his neck and stretches, lips hitched in a grimace. 

Randy can imagine. Slumped in a car days on end, cracking the damn thing all the time. He sets the Big Gulp on the trunk, thinks, hesitates. Commits. 

"Would you, um…would you want me to rub it out for you?" 

Benson looks at him warily as he considers the offer. He's slow to answer, but Randy is patient. Doesn't push it. Lets him think about it. 

Finally he nods. "Sure. Why not." 

Randy clambers up on the trunk and sits behind him. Benson leans back between his legs, rests his elbows on Randy's knees, hangs his head forward. The space between them is awkward all of the sudden. Too close, not close enough. Too many clothes on. Too much skin exposed. 

Randy is nervous and he's not sure why. He thinks fleetingly of their first time, his first time, and the way Benson's hands hovered an inch over his skin and shook a little bit. This isn't that, but it feels kind of the same. "You can…tell me to stop if you want. Whatever you want. It's okay." 

"How about you start and then we'll see." 

Randy brushes the curls at the base of Benson's neck hesitantly with his thumb before he wraps his hand around the muscle of his shoulder, gives an experimental squeeze. "Right…there?" 

"Higher." 

He moves his hand up and tries again. "There?" 

Benson hisses through his teeth, cringes. "Yeah. Fuck." 

Randy sets his hands on either side of his neck and squeezes gently. 

"Yeah. Right there."

Benson's all tension beneath the skin, stiff and warm under his cold fingers. Randy thinks about the color of his muscles, the white of bone underneath them. He's pretty sure he's never touched anyone like this before, not even Benson, not like this. Not friendly or sexual, just…intimate. 

"If you want me to stop, just–just say so, okay?" 

Benson grunts an affirmative. His skin is oily and his muscles are taut as bowstrings, so riddled with knots it feels like buckshot lodged in his flesh. Randy presses his thumbs in deep and pushes up along his spine, again and again, feels a flush of satisfaction as Benson melts back against the car. 

"Fuck," he moans. 

"Hurts?" 

"Yeah. Don't stop." 

Randy's nothing if not good at taking orders. He falls into a rhythm, slow and steady, works over his neck and shoulders and back again. Benson swears up a storm and lets out a low whimper whenever he hits a sore spot. 

"Sorry," Randy murmurs every time. 

Benson never replies, but that's okay. He doesn't tell him to stop either.

At first his hands are balled into fists against Randy's knees, but after a while they go slack. He relaxes, finally, allows Randy and the car to support his weight. It's a selfish thought, but Randy hopes he's the first person to do this for him, or at least the first in a long, long time. Benson doesn't have a lot of firsts left. He wants this one. 

Before long, his hands are cramping and he worries he's going to rub his neck raw but doesn't want to stop touching him, doesn't want to forfeit this new familiarity with his body. So he eases up, cheats a little bit, combs his fingers through his greasy hair and scratches at his scalp. It makes his chest feel tight, the way Benson leans into his touch with his eyes closed and groans under his breath. 

When he finally pulls away, Randy tries to subdue his disappointment, until he turns around and reaches up to hook a hand behind Randy's head. 

"C'mere," Benson mumbles, tugging him close and meeting him halfway for a kiss that tastes like peach rings and root beer. Randy grips his forearm and for a second, in his mind's eye, everything drops out and disappears into the void, save for them and the car and the stars. 

When he breaks the kiss Benson doesn't let him go, holds him in place with their foreheads pressed together. Neither of them speak. Randy focuses so hard on Benson's breathing he forgets to breathe himself. There are words, but they creep by in silence like animals in the dark. 

"We still got water in the back?" Benson says at last. 

"Mmhm." 

"I'm gonna brush my teeth. Change into my jammies." His jammies are a pair of basketball shorts made of more holes than fabric. 

"Okay," Randy says. 

Neither one of them moves. The crickets chat amongst themselves in the brush. 

"You still want the front?" Benson asks. 

"Sure." 

"Thanks." 

"No problem." 

Benson sighs softly through his nose. He lets go of him and steps back, shuffles from one foot to the other and stares at Randy for a long time, hair sticking up in all directions. Finally he goes to dig through the backseat for the water jug. 

"Looks like a bunch of fuckin' raccoons live in here," he mutters. 

Randy chuckles, looks at his hands palm-up on his lap. He's got Benson's skin beneath his nails, his sweat and oil worked into the whorls of his fingerprints. He's never been so close to another person. Spent his whole life maintaining a safe distance from everyone around him, treating his body like a blast zone. Now the idea of distance is laughable. They share everything but toothbrushes. Hell, he's been inside him. Randy always figured he would never reach that level of connection with anybody. 

He brings his hand to his face and hesitates for just a second before he sticks his thumb in his mouth. The salt of Benson's sweat is familiar on his tongue. He tastes his skin on his skin. He knows him. He knows him. And Benson knows him right back. 

He's craved this sort of intimacy his whole life. Laid awake alone countless nights and ached for it, mourned bitterly for what he never had and assumed he never would. But now he lies awake with Benson beside him and basks in how wrong he was. In how real he feels in his arms, wearing a second skin of grit and spit and whatever else. 

He doesn't want to sleep in the front. 

Randy twists to call over his shoulder. "Hey…um, Benson?" 

"Yeah?" he says around his toothbrush. 

"You think we could…both fit in the back?" 

Benson spits on the asphalt. "No." 

"Well…could we try?" 

Benson snorts. "Fuckin' clingy, huh?" he says, but he sounds amused. Randy feels those dark eyes appraising him like a pair of hands fumbling at his clothes. He tugs absentmindedly at the collar of his shirt. Well, Benson's shirt. "Yeah. We can try." 

Randy hops off the trunk and joins him in the evening routine, bumping shoulders, bumping elbows, their voices small and close in the night. 

"Gonna sweat to death together back there," Benson says. 

"That's okay." 

"If you say so. Think I might skip the jammies. That cool?" 

"That's–that's fine, yeah. That's good. Hey…is that my toothbrush?" 

"No, yours is green."

"That is green." 

"No it's not." 

"Yes it is, the light makes it look weird." 

Benson looks at the thing again. "Oh. Whoops. Does it really matter?"

Randy gives this serious consideration, thinks about his mouth and everywhere it's been. Thinks about the state of the rest of him. Thinks about pressing his body to Benson's in the backseat, sticky with sweat, breath on his neck. 

He wants to say yes, it matters, but he doesn't feel it. He tastes salt on his tongue instead.

"I guess not," he shrugs.

Benson hands it to him. 

"Your turn, then." 

[bluemoonsunrise]

Demons and Savages

pairing: tsu’tey and human!avatar driver (fem presenting)

content warnings: graphic language, alien vs human differences, the RDA sucks, fuck u miles quaritch, tension you could cut with a knife, enemies to lovers. (also, i don’t like to capitalize sentences on tumbler :3)

word count: …idk :D (roughly edited sry)

pov: 2nd person so you can add yourself in. for writing/plot purposes, your character is named eris ramsey. i’ll use the name sparingly but i can’t take myself seriously writing y/n— so please just work with me here. i promise it’ll be worth it. (i hope)

< previous chapter

———🌌———

SUMMARY: earth was dying and your sister was, too, but cancer killed her faster than humans were killing earth. when she passed, she not only left behind an empty apartment full of memories but a billion dollar avatar without a driver. in a desperate attempt to not waste that money, the program she had spent the last five years preparing to join recruited you— her twin. of course, you agreed. there was nothing left on earth for you. there was nothing left on earth for anyone— that’s why people like your sister were sent off to pandora.

when your sister had spoken of pandora, it seemed like a dream.

the RDA promised it would be like a safari adventure.

truth was that pandora is beautiful. beautiful and unlike anything else across the whole of the universe. it is breathtaking— and that’s because what chases you through the forest hunts with the intent to kill; so you best run like hell even if your lungs are on fire. beasts and monsters of all kinds lurk out of sight waiting for the right moment to kill you dead— but none are as dangerous as him.

the blue shadow with the bow.

chapter four

— weak hands —

“if i want to get us any closer to peace, i’ll need to put in a lot of work.” you said as you logged the events of your day. you could hardly keep your eyes open. for a rest day, you felt more worn down than you did on days you spent entirely in the forest. “if i want to gain back trust the omatikaya once placed in the avatar program, i have to pass two tests.”

“tsu’tey says it will take months for me to even think about passing the first test. in order to complete iknimaya and claim an ikran, i have to be strong. i have to have a fighting spirit. a strong heart, he says. i have to learn the ways of warriors. it is no easy challenge— but an ikran would kill me otherwise.”

“he told me that he doesn’t doubt my heart.” you said softly. you looked at yourself on the screen and covered your cheeks with your hands as you saw color rise into them. “he just doubts that i’ll be able to pin down the damn thing before it kills me.”

“i think that’s all for today. lots to be done. tomorrow i start archery. fun, huh? i hope. really, i do…alright. see ya.” you reached out and clicked the recording off.

you had no energy to eat. you had no energy to do anything at all. when you climbed into your bunk, you fell asleep as soon as your head hit the pillow. it was hard for you to sleep most nights— but exhaustion made it easy for you now. it reached out its arms and enveloped you in its warm embrace.

you dreamed of the riverbed and the stars. you dreamed of the bugs that floated by. you dreamed of the way the water sounded sloshing against the shore of the riverside.

you dreamed of him, too.

you dreamed of running with him through the grass. the way he chased you. you could almost feel your chest burn as you ran and ran and ran. even in your dreams, he caught you. he tangled you in his arms and lifted you off your feet.

you didn’t hesitate to kiss him.

you had wanted to kiss him today. it was an insufferable itch that you wanted to gnaw at with your teeth— but you couldn’t.

when you woke in the morning to the usual alarm set for all those in the avatar program, you could not have been more frustrated. you buried your face into the pillow and groaned into it.

you didn’t want to dream about him.

you didn’t want to think about him the way you always did. he was supposed to be your mentor. a teacher. a guide. not someone you dreamed about kissing.

you didn’t want to face him.

after the hot springs, you two returned to home tree as if nothing happened. he got you food and you sat with others in the clan and listened to their stories. you listened to their songs. tsu’tey told stories of his own. he did not sing alongside the others but the faint smile on his lips showed his contentment.

and that was it.

all day, you rested in the livelihood of home tree with him. eating. talking. laughing. introducing yourself to those who dared to approach you. those who let you join their circles. you helped string beads and craft twine. mundane, small things that you enjoyed more than you thought you would. while most of the conversations were held in navi, you were able to pick out bits and pieces.

it wasn’t until after dinner when you made your nightly walk with him to your hammock that what had happened between the two of you weighed on you. he didn’t say goodnight. he didn’t spare you a glance. he hit you with his shoulder as he passed and hissed under his breath.

you did not want to see him— but he was the first thing you saw when you opened your eyes in your hammock.

“get up. now.” tsu’tey said. his tone was sharp. lethal. there was no patience to be found in him.

you did your best to get up quickly. your head spun with the daze of shifting. he grabbed your arm to steady you— but he dragged you down the center column of home tree without any warning.

“agh— dude.” you muttered as you tried to pull your arm free. “stop it.”

“walk.” he said, pushing you in front of him.

you didn’t fight against him. it would do you no good. once you were out of home tree, you shrugged him off. thankfully, he went willingly. without a word, he flicked his head towards the direhorses waiting.

you approached mitsia with gentle hands. she pressed her snout against your face as you said hello. reaching up, you formed tsaheylu with her and swung yourself up onto her back. with a soft pat to her neck, you urged her to follow behind tsu’tey.

he moved with purpose today and mitsia ran fast to keep up with him.

you rode into the thick of the forest. you had to duck low onto mitsia’s back as to not get snagged in the low hanging vines. all sorts of sounds resonated in your ears. the rush of wind. the chirping of pandoran birds. squeaking and squawking. thundering hooves. snapping sticks.

when tsu’tey finally came to a stop, it was by a pond. he hopped off his direhorses back and clicked his tongue as a thank you. when you slid off mitsia’s back, you thanked her with a soft kiss to her face.

you felt bitter as you met his eyes.

what he had told you yesterday lingered in your mind. mitsia was yours. maybe not like how an ikran could be, sure, but you were certain that she would come only to you if you called.

“good girl.” you whispered as you patted her neck.

“come here.” tsu’tey said, his tail flicking behind him like a feral cat.

you parted with your direhorse and sighed as you stood in front of him. you expected him to start with a lesson on archery. he carried two bows on his back. instead, he grabbed your hands and scoffed at them.

“you have weak hands. small fingers. they will bleed.”

you ripped your hands out of his grasp. “you don’t know shit. they won’t bleed.”

“they will.” he said, snatching your arm. he tapped his fingers against your bicep. “no muscle. children have more strength than you. i bet you would not be able to pull yourself up whilst climbing a tree.”

“would you cut the shit?” you pulled your arm out of his grasp and scowled at him. “you’re pissing me off.”

“you will fail today at archery. many times. just as you failed at riding pali. you are weak. you will have troubling drawing back the arrow. i doubt you can aim.” tsu’tey said.

“but you will learn.”

your mouth closed. the anger in your expression lessened as you watched him pull one of the bows off from around his shoulder. it was simple. dark wood. strong string. it was heavy— but not as heavy as his. not as well-crafted and expertly designed. not at pretty.

“first rule of bow,” tsu’tey said as he stood up straight. “you must be like tree. tall. strong. always strong in your belly. for everything. be strong in your belly.”

you mimicked him. standing up straight and tensing your core, you held yourself in the same tall posture. you matched his breath. over and over again, you told yourself what to do like a mantra: keep tense but don’t suffocate. don’t suffocate. breathe. in and out. in and out.

tsu’tey lifted the bow and assumed a shooting stance. no arrow was drawn, but he pulled back the string. you could see the tension in his belly. you could see the firm stance he held in his shoulders. more importantly, his legs. like two pillars on the ground, he appeared unmovable.

he appeared strong.

and you knew he was.

“when you draw back the bow, you must use two fingers. always two fingers. it is how you keep the arrow aligned. draw back is hard when you start. bows are strong and they fight against you. that is why arrows shoot so far.” tsu’tey said as he lowered his bow.

“you try.”

you took a sharp breath and tightened your core. you did your best to mimic the stance he held. before you could even drawn by the bow, he was all over you. he spread your legs further apart with his own. he smacked you on the hip and you were quick to place tension there. a grunt of approval was all you earned. he did the same to your shoulders and you were quick to straighten up.

“that is proper position.” tsu’tey said. he tapped your stomach lightly. “firm. strong. it is good. it is powerful. keep this habit of strong core and you will learn the posture fast. it will be as easy and natural as swinging up onto his the back of pali.”

“right,” you said softly.

“now draw back the bow.” he said.

you hooked two fingers around the string and pulled. your lips thinned and your brows knitted together as you pulled harder. and harder. the bow seemed unwilling to bend and you were quick to let the string go.

“bad. again.” tsu’tey said with an impatient flick of his head. “you did not even try.”

“i did try. the bow feels like it’ll break if i pull at it anymore.” you said with a small huff.

tsu’tey hooked his bow over his shoulder. he snatched yours from your hand and you could only watch as he pulled an arrow from his quiver, loaded the bow, and shot it.

it stuck straight into the dirt, the calling card swaying in the breeze.

“it did not break.” tsu’tey said, handing it back to you. “you are not strong enough to break it because you are not even strong enough to draw it back.”

you felt your chest burn. you took the bow back without another word. ignoring the way his constant belittling was beginning to hurt, you did your best to draw the bow back. you kept your core tight, your posture tall, and your breath even. you pulled back as hard as you could. at a certain point, the resistance gave way and allowed you to pull back fully.

“yes.” tsu’tey said, cupping your elbow. “now hold this position.”

“it’s hard,” you whispered, your fingers gripping the bow with all your might.

“hold this position until i say so or i will make you run to home tree and back.” tsu’tey said.

you had to grit your teeth. you kept your stance locked. you kept your core tight and yourself tall— but your breathing soon gave way. the bow was large. it was heavy. the string was thick and harsh against your callous-less fingers. soon enough, you were shaking.

squeezing your eyes shut, you fought not to let the string pull your arm down. the seconds felt like hours and the minutes felt like days. unless it hadn’t been minutes. you had no idea. everything was moving too slow and with each moment that passed, the odds stacked against you. your bicep was burning. your core was cramping. your hands were beginning to sweat. your breaths came in small gasps.

“release.”

you let the string fly from your finger tips and the bow snapped into shape. if an arrow had been loaded, you wondered how far it would’ve gone.

“resolve is something i don’t have to teach you. that was good enough for now.” tsu’tey said with a small nod. “strength can always be built. willpower cannot. it takes a strong heart to have discipline.”

“and i have a strong heart?” you asked even though you already knew his answer.

“yes,” tsu’tey said even when you didn’t think he would. he looked over the whole of you. his eyes lingered on your mouth. “you have a very strong heart. it is why eywa smiles upon you when i do not.”

“why are you being so rude?” you asked. you turned to face him and shook your head. “seriously. why? did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something?”

your phrasing confused him but he did not attempt to understand. “because you have angered me.”

“i’ve angered you? how?” you asked.

tsu’tey hissed and waved his hand. “no. just be quiet. be quiet and do the one thing i taught you. practice your stance so that you do not make a fool of yourself when you attempt to shoot an arrow.”

“if you’re going to be a dick to me then no.” you tossed the bow at him.

he caught it and his eyes widened in a terrible, terrible way. fury. the disrespect of your action could’ve turned him red. he grasped the air beside your head — as if he wanted to crush you in the palm of his hand — and bared his teeth.

“get out of my sight, demon.” he murmured through his teeth. “we are done. if you are going to act like that, you can sing songs until you lose your voice.”

“no,” you said. suddenly frustrated, you reached to grab the bow back. “i’ll do it. just give it to me.”

“no,” he held it away from you. “you have caused disrespect. you will try again when i tell you. today you will remain weak and unskilled.”

“i’m not weak. stop calling me that.” you whispered with your breath tight in your throat.

tsu’tey laughed at you. “if you tried to show that you were strong today, you showed wrong. your heart is not aligned with your body. and i don’t know if you have a mind at all.”

you shoved him.

tsu’tey stumbled back. he scowled at you, his face pinching in anger as he tilted his head. soundlessly, he warned you not to do that again.

you shoved him again.

he smacked you upside the head. hard. really hard.

“ugh!” you complained, caressing the back of your head. “you are such a fucking jackass!”

“i don’t know what that means, demon, but you are that, too.” tsu’tey hissed.

“it means you are the worst person i’ve ever met! you are mean and cold and cruel! you’re a jerk to me all the time! it’s like you’re allergic to being nice!” you exclaimed all at once. the words just came rushing out with no thought to if he would understand them at all.

“because i don’t like you,” tsu’tey said through his teeth. he glared down at you and stuck his finger in your face. “you and your people are a curse on this land. you are a sickness.”

you laughed at him. “then why did you want to fuck me so bad?”

tsu’tey’s fiery resolve seemed to falter. staring down at you, his ears pinned. he sighed under his breath and looked away. “great mother grant me patience.”

“you won’t even deny it?” you shook you head at him and laughed again. you knew you were rubbing dirt into wounds. you should’ve been careful considering he could’ve done the same to you. “is that why you’re so mad at me? because you want to fuck me?”

he wouldn’t look at you. like a bull, he huffed out of his nose. his face twitched. his tail flicked sharp and fast. frustration had never looked so good on someone. he was a master at it.

“i’m the weak one?” you tutted you tongue and whispered, “some warrior you are if you can’t fight against desire.”

tsu’tey grabbed you by your face. squishing your cheeks between his fingers, he hissed at you. “you never shut your mouth.”

“you don’t even realize what you do to me. you fault me for my poor judgment when you’re the one covering my eyes.” tsu’tey said.

“m’not— doin’ an’thng.” you tried to say between your squished lips as you struggled to free your face from his grasp.

“you are. you don’t even know it because you are a demon in the skin of my people. you rubbed your scent on me at the river. you started a chase game. you asked me about mating. your body was crying in the hot spring.”

“you look at me with those eyes…”

tsu’tey’s grip on your face lessened. his hand clasped around your throat lightly and your hand still flew to his wrist. you couldn’t draw breath. not because he held you too tight but because you forgot how to.

“i— i don’t do it on purpose.” you whispered helplessly.

“i know,” tsu’tey murmured as he ran his thumb along your throat. “which is why i hate you even more. you have no control over your instincts. you have no control over your body. your mind fails you, demon.”

“and my body is failing my mind because of it.”

staring at him, the look in his eyes made your knees weak. he was staring at your mouth. his fingers flexed around your throat. as your eyes met, you stepped forward and tried to kiss him.

“do not…” tsu’tey murmured, glaring at you between the inches that separated you.

you raised your hand up to his face. as your fingers brushed against his cheek, he flinched. his ears pinned. he could’ve hissed at you— but his expression turned warm as you glided your thumb across his lips. his pupils dilated.

“can i have the bow back?” you asked in a whisper. “i’m sorry for throwing it at you.”

rationality seemed to comeback to him. he let go of your throat, his fingertips grazing the beads of your top. your eyes never left each other. he handed you the bow and you took it— or tried to. he didn’t let it go, either. the longer you stared at each other, the more convinced you were that he would kiss you.

you wanted him to.

a sharp yip sliced through the hair and something hit the ground. tsu’tey pushed the bow at you and turned. looking over his shoulder, you saw her. she’d jumped down from the trees above. her bow was in her hand, a magnificent piece of woodwork. her tail flicked as she met your gaze.

neytiri.

“oel ngati kameie,” tsu’tey said, gesturing the act.

neytiri returned the gesture. when her eyes fell upon you again, you signed i see you. she dipped her head the smallest bit and gave a lazy wave of her hand. you couldn’t be offended. that was more than tsu’tey usually gave you.

the pair conversed in navi. they spoke too fast for you to understand. they spoke low, too, as if tsu’tey knew you would be able to understand them if you tried hard enough. some pieces you picked out.

forest.

nantang.

moron.

demon.

they were talking about you. you rolled your eyes and scoffed under your breath. was tsu’tey informing her of how bad your posture was? how weak you were? or was he trying to convince her that you weren’t anything at all.

had she seen you two…

your stomach knotted and you felt sick. if she had seen you two touching and…oh, lord in heaven. you were dead meat. dead. dead before you could be reborn.

tsu’tey whistled and the direhorse returned to the archery clearing. mitsia came to your side and brushed her face against your shoulder. you turned to look at tsu’tey. he mounted his direhorse and pulled neytiri up after him.

“we return to home tree now. quickly, demon.”

you mounted your direhorse and were quick to follow after him and neytiri. one of her arms were hooked around his waist. you had no time to feel jealous because all you felt was sick. had she seen you both? would you be placed in front of the olo’eyktan and the tsahik and scolded? worse, would you be banished? executed?

you could hardly walk straight as you entered home tree. when you arrived, people were in uproar. tsu’tey was quick to come to your side and grab you by the back of your arm. you looked up at him but he did not meet your gaze and you weaved your way through the crowd of people gathered by the meeting circle.

“mawey!” the tsahik said, raising her hands high into the air.

silence followed— all but one voice. as you and tsu’tey broke through the crowd of people, you saw him. for a moment, you recoiled at the sight of tactical jeans and an RDA issued shirts on a blue figure.

regretfully, it took you a moment to recall that face of his in his avatar body.

“jake!” you exclaimed, your pupils blowing wide and your ears perking.

tsu’tey hissed as you pulled your arm free from his grasp. you didn’t care. not about anything else. you nearly tackled him to the floor as you threw your arms around him. jake caught you, stumbling to keep you both upright. a near cry slipped passed your lips to see a familiar face.

to see a true friend.

“holy shit, eris.” jake breathed as his arms tightened around your waist. it had taken him a moment to register your blue face, too.

“what the hell are you doing here?” you asked as you pulled away. when you met his eyes, you saw the scratches and the bruises on his face. you lifted your hand to his jaw and gasped softly. “jesus, jake, are you okay?”

“they really should’ve put us through ground training. i may know my way around a gun and hand-to-hand combat, but that’s all useless out here in these woods. i nearly got torn to pieces by a pack of these ugly ass wolf-things trying to keep norm and grace safe. norm got hurt and so i did the only thing i could which was distract them and run.”

“thankfully that blue valkyrie over there found me.” jake said with a glance toward neytiri. his brows raised and he smiled at you. “her and a group of hunters. they saved my ass.”

before you could say anything else, the tsahik approached. she raised her hand and instinctively you stepped away from jake. you bowed your head. jake stiffened as the tsahik grabbed him by his chin and examined the cuts on his face.

“you know him.” the tsahik stated a fact and she glanced at you.

“yes. he’s in my program. we work for grace augustine.” you said.

“nice to meet you,” jake said with a polite tilt of his head.

tsu’tey stepped forward, speaking words that jumbled in your ears. you picked out what you could. what was important.

how many demons!

you clenched your teeth. you knew exactly what he was asking. how many of you would come here? your arrival had been an accident. a pure chance of fate. was jake’s run-in with the nantang the same? or was it planned?

from his volatile expression alone, tsu’tey seemed to think you were now being planted here.

“you.” tsu’tey hissed as he grabbed you by the back of your neck. “walk.”

“hey, woah, woah, woah.” jake pulled his face away from mo’at and turned. he stuck his arm out, hitting tsu’tey in the chest. “you best take your hands off her right now or we’re gonna have a fuckin’ problem.”

tsu’tey bared his teeth.

“jake,” you whispered his name and guided his hand back towards his side. “it’s fine…”

before jake could say anything else, tsu’tey pushed you along. you tried your best to shrug him off but he wouldn’t let you go. his grip was tight. too tight. tighter than it had ever been as he guided you up the center column of home tree.

“ow!” you hissed as he shoved you into his hut by the back of or your neck.

“sit.” he demanded, pointing to the floor.

you were quick to drop down. you watched as he paced. you could see the thoughts running through his mind. you tensed as he crouched down in front of you. staring into his eyes, you’d never been afraid of him. never truly.

you were now.

“who is that man?” tsu’tey asked in a lower, calmer voice than you expected.

“jake sully,” you said. you wracked your brain for anything else remotely useful. “he…he’s new to the avatar program like me. he is a marine.”

“marine?” tsu’tey asked.

“warrior.” you said.

tsu’tey seemed to scowl. he rolled his eyes and shook his head. “demon warrior ends up here? by chance? tell me truthfully and i’ll reward you with not killing you…has this man been sent here?”

“no,” you said. the word jumped from your throat. all you could do was shake your head. you were trying to convince yourself more than you were trying to convince him him. “i— i mean…i don’t think so.”

“but he could have been?” tsu’tey asked.

“not by grace…”

your heart sank. grace would’ve never sent anyone to infiltrate the omatikaya— but quaritch would.

he could.

he already had…

jake was a marine just like him. it was too easy. it was too perfect— and it was a real possibility.

had you not given the colonel enough information? did you not have the skills to give him the kind of information he needed to know? did he tangle jake into this because jake could find out exactly what it is that he wanted to know?

how the hell to kill tsu’tey.

you stared into tsu’tey’s eyes and you both knew there was only one way to get answers.

“i need you to return to your body and find out what you can about how he ended up here. if his story matches with grace’s…maybe eywa has a a twisted sense of humor after all.” tsu’tey looked past you and spoke in a whisper, “if this demon warrior has been sent to spy, it wouldn’t be the first time your people have sent someone here to do such a thing.”

your stomach dropped. you knew all too well the kind of spies they sent to infringe on the na’vi. you knew, too, the kind of man who devised such a thing.

maybe jake really had been planted here…

“okay.” you exhaled a soft breath and placed your hand on you belly where the anxious pit sat. “alright…but if i go back now i won’t be able to come back until tomorrow.”

tsu’tey leaned in close and placed his hand on your tummy. your eyes fell closed as he dragged his lips across your forehead. the pain in your belly melted away like ice cream on a hot day. you exhaled the breath you held trapped in your throat.

“na’vi warriors are brave.” tsu’tey looked down at you and tilted his head. “are you brave?”

are you a na’vi?

that was the question he did not ask.

where do your loyalties lie, eris?

“hang tight, okay? i’ll be back as soon as i can.” you said softly, your breath all tangled in your chest.

“i don’t know what ‘hang tight’ is but i will know relief once i see you again.” tsu’tey said.

heat flooded your cheeks and your ears perked. your tail swayed and you knew your pupils were as wide as the moon you’d never see again. slowly, you dipped your head and signed, i see you.

tsu’tey dipped his head the slightest bit.

he could see you, too, even if he was stubborn.

“go.” he ordered with a stern wave of his hand.

and off you went.

— 🌌 —

each time you returned to your body, you grew to hate the lab lights even more. you pushed yourself out of your link-pod. a group of specialists were surrounding jake’s pod. his face was displayed on the screen beside it. grace was smoking a cigarette with a look of utter defeat plastered on her face.

how many idiots was she going to lose?

two.

because there were only two people stupid enough to get lost— you and jake.

“you’re back early,” grace said as you made your way over.

“what’s going on?” you asked through the dryness in your mouth. whether it was because you hadn’t had water since this morning or the fact that you were anxious, you couldn’t tell.

“the marine got himself lost and separated.” grace sighed. she put out her cigarette on the top of jake’s pod and shook her head.

“how?” you asked even though you already knew.

well, you knew what jake told you.

but was jake’s story the real story?

“we were out on an excursion gathering samples. tree roots so that i could test my new hypothesis on the almost neural-like connection the trees have to each other. we stumbled too close to a viperwolf den and it was like the seventh circle of hell opened up on us.” grace said.

she looked up at the screen displaying jake’s face and rolled her eyes. “for as hard as he is to work with in the lab, tactically he’s a blessing. our trigger-happy marine sprung straight into actions and kept norm from getting his face torn off.”

“the funny thing is,” grace tapped jake’s pod and looked down at you. “he didn’t even shoot a single bullet. he used himself as bait and angered the pack. he was gone into the trees. norm’s avatar suffered some nasty injuries. i couldn’t wait to bring him back and so we had to leave jake.”

“i’m just hoping the poor bastard is somewhere safe.” grace said with her lips pressed into a thin line.

“jake is in home tree.”

grace’s brows drew together and her lips parted— but no words came out. not a sound.

you’d never seen grace speechless before.

the cogs turned in her mind and she nodded once. “and you were sent back because there’s no way in hell you didn’t recognize him. i’m sure that did not bode well with your teacher, huh?”

you shook your head. “no, ma’am. tsu’tey is now questioning whether or not we’re being planted in home tree to…to spy on them…”

it was difficult for you to say.

grace pursed her lips and placed her hands on her hips. she inhaled a long, slow breath. when she let it out, all the tension she held went with it.

“well, i can’t really blame a skeptic for being skeptical, can i?” grace ran her hand through her short ginger hair. whatever she was thinking, it made you even more nervous when she stared at the red button that would pull jake from his link-pod.

“what?” you asked. the silence was nearly killing you.

“tsu’tey and i share a similar fear. if selfridge finds out one of the marine mutts is now in home tree, he’s going to tell the colonel. if the colonel knows, he’ll use jake to his advantage— and the last thing i need is for miles fucking quaritch to get his hands anywhere near my program.”

“we need to go.” grace said. she looked down and you and seemed to hesitate. “pack whatever you need. we won’t be back here for a while.”

your brows drew together and you shook your head. “what? where are we going?”

“we’re going full blue.” grace turned and sucked in a tight breath. she cursed inaudibly. “sorry about this jake.”

grace slammed her hand on the red button.

a swarm of people rushed over and grace was quick to open the hatch. you saw her begin to shine a light into jake’s eyes before the two of them were swallowed up by white coats. slowly, you turned away. you had to pack.

grace was sending the team incognito to try and sway the iron grip miles quaritch would hold on jake if he found out where jake’s avatar was.

grace was worried about the wrong avatar driver.

because you were about to become the colonels spy in both bodies.

thank you for reading :) hope you enjoyed! and thanks for the patience, too. i wish i had more time to write but alas… see ya when i see ya :P —moony

tag list: @plantgirliewholovespandora

next chapter >

[s-che]

If Systems Don’t Matter, Why Are You So Embarrassed?

hey gang. this play report is, as you may know if you've been paying attention, coming in just about two weeks late, which is not ideal. this happened because i have been very busy with work, because i am poor. if you like what i do here and want to make me more busy with this kind of stuff and less poor, maybe consider tossing me a couple of bucks? it would mean a lot. Now back to ur regularly scheduled content.

Sometimes it’s fruitful to have a collaborator in order to riff, bounce ideas off each other, and generally intellectually pollinate. Sometimes it’s good to have someone who can fall on a sword so you don’t have to. I’d be remiss if I didn’t start this month’s reflection on the Dream Library book club by calling out the tremendous amount of work the internet’s own @marvelousmsmolly has been doing in the last little while to keep things afloat.

We played, talked through, and read Vampire: The Masquerade this month, along with some guest excerpts from Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Hunter: The Reckoning, and probably Unicorn: The Saturnalia for all I know. These collectively make up a small part of something called the “World of Darkness,” a universe which I’ve been told is entirely separate from something called the “Chronicles of Darkness” in ways I don’t entirely understand. They were published by a company called White Wolf until White Wolf was sold, and then a team called White Wolf inside a series of larger companies until they were summarily — and rightly — dismantled following the spectacularly bad decision to pin real-world Chechnyan anti-gay purges on in-universe vampires. We’ll get back to all that in a second. 

I picked the game — Vampire, that is — to close out our fall semester on Monster(fucking), advocating for it in part because I suspected it would make big claims about what it could do narratively and fail mechanically to deliver. And, while I was right on that count, what I couldn’t have predicted was how hard the bug (the vampire?) would bite, and how seriously Vampire-mania would sweep the Dream Library.

I think @wildwoodsgames hit the nail on the head at the very tail end of our discussion thread, when they called Hunter: The Reckoning “a game playing with a lot of very potent ideas that it is not super responsible with.” 

This is a statement could be truly made about every scrap of World of Darkness I’ve read (which was none, to be clear, before we started this month). They’re games which constantly sit on the edge of juiciness and fail spectacularly, stumbling instead into some of the most short-sighted and often willingly edgy alt-history stuff I’ve ever seen. But — like I said — I’m going to have to come back to a lot of that later. 

I have two big takeaways about VTM:

I. VTM is comic books

Intertext and serial fiction get a bad rap, sometimes, in our current moment of bloated and collapsing franchises — of Glup Shittos and Marvel’s Sony’s Spider-man’s The Avengers. But before the content mill gets really grinding there is a real joy to be found in reading something and seeing the shape of a whole world fill out behind you. I know a lot of people find that pleasure in the EU Star Wars novels. When I was a kid, I found it mostly in Middle-earth — except, I should say, for one long summer at my grandparents’ house when I tore through my cousins copy of Marvel’s (Sony’s Spider-man’s) The Runaways. 

Big 2 Superhero Comics  — because they’re serial and because they’re short and because they have a long history — have a really lovely way of finding interesting niches in old worlds and running with them. In a real way, VTM tries to do the same thing. The whole structure of the World of Darkness relies on the fundamental premise that a big interlinked all-happening-at-once world is, in fact, cool. But it also — maybe because of the way the game is inviting you to make your own OC and carve out your own niche — tends to focus on the thing comics does, finding an interesting nook or cranny where more stories could be told rather than flattening everything down into one grand “Skywalker Saga.” 

By way of this interest, VTM resists the narrative black hole that so many “worldbuilding” IPs fall into. There are no Jedi to take center stage, no Aragorns into whose narratives the lovely story of The Hobbit disappears. And if there are — well, I haven’t read about them. I don’t have to read about them. Vampire gives me the space to do my own thing. It also gives its writers the space to make massively bad decisions — and, holy shit, there are so many bad decisions in these books. Famous instances, yes: the Vampire Chechnyan thing and Werewolf’s relationship with indigeneity — but also small corners full of some of the stupidest ideas you ever heard. Moses Maimonides, Mossad agent. V5’s inexplicable fascination with 9/11. An entire Wraith section on the Shoah. Some of this stuff swings around and is almost juicy again — but who on earth who ever greenlight it?

2. VTM is embarrassed to be a game

It isn’t a new take to say that VTM fails to deliver on its compelling setting with an equally compelling set of mechanics, but it did astonish me to realize how much the actual text of the game buys into the narrative that rolling dice and thinking about rules is a secondary function of a game in comparison to the almighty narrative. You see this in suggestions geared to streamline combat, but you also see it in the eighteen pages of in-universe fiction which come at the start of the book before the rules narrator can get a word in sideways. VTM exists setting first: they are desperate to prove that you could strip away all the numbers and still be playing VTM. I have two thoughts about this:

There’s a certain appeal to the way VTM seems to think about this, which we could call a Brennan Lee Mulligan “get the rules out of the way and let me RP” approach. The fact that Brennan and VTM have this in common is, more or less, unsurprising to me knowing that Brennan has a background in large-scale LARP, where clearing the explicit mechanics to let roleplay happen is a massive design priority. VTM has its own long history of LARP and I do think it’s radical to recognize that there is something to a game beyond the mechanics. To play in the VTM world — whether with a d10 or a cloak or by writing fanfiction — is to play VTM, and I’m glad to see a system take pleasure in that (especially because its explicit mechanics aren’t very good).

That being said, I wish participants in this sort of “clear the rules” roleplay-first style recognized more explicitly the mechanics they aren’t getting out of the way: social dynamics, narrative structures, relationships to knowledge and authority and the ability to hold a room’s attention which absolutely structure freeform RP as much as any “then roll Xd10.” The presence of these social dynamics, especially, has been a massive recurring theme of our Monsterfucking unit as a whole, as game after game seems to really struggle to design for their inevitable presence.

All in all, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed VTM — although I liked reading it and thinking up a character more than the live play. I think it’s a game that’s perhaps uniquely ill-suited to the Dream Library’s format and the rapid cycling-through of games it entails, but there’s something to be said for the way the setting itself gripped me. I wanted to tell the story of a little freak’s descent into evil, even if I didn’t have the time for it. Maybe I’ll go play 1,000 Year Old Vampire.

Next up — well, more like currently — the Dream Library is taking a little winter break. Not an actual break, of course: we’ve already had a festive session of Wanderhome, Molly is hosting a session of Never Stop Blowing Up set in a mall around Christmastime soon, and then maybe Hanukkah Goblins? We’ll see.

If you want to get in on any of that, hey. Click this link.

If not, I’ll see you here next month.

Peace

[rozeliyawashereyall]

Guys I'm back (not really)!!! I missed you all so much and- oh wow I missed too much, huh.

I'll start with saying that I'm doing okay now! My mental health has improved a lot and I'm very proud of myself :) however! I'm still on break, I just came here to address a few things.

Now to what's happening in the bug army—and lemme just say jeez. I did not expect to come back to drama, especially with how small this sub fandom is.

English isn't my best language so hopefully I'm not being rude saying these-

Most of my information came from @audioroleplayconfessions and a few friends of mine

-Now~ about the discord server. A lot has happened and I won't be getting into too much detail about it. One or two of our members weren't in the best place and sought out help from me and a few others, they're both okay now and are getting proper help ^^

None of us are exactly okay in the head in the army, I don't mean "insane" I mean "just need a safe environment to vent". And that's exactly why the discord was made! But unfortunately it went past an after school comfort club and more of a therapy session.

Thankfully! Me and the mods are being especially stricter on the rules and are actively enforcing them better!

This is still our first time making a server so of course we aren't the best at it, but we're all trying! I do hope that anon can feel safe there again.

that's all I'll say about it, so let's close this topic already.

-The favoritism! Now sure what to say on this one tbh, just that no one owes you anything! If you're so insecure that you have to seek validation from strangers online—and having panic attacks that you aren't being noticed, maybe the problem is with you. Most of our amazing artists that get slightly more recognition is because they're one of the first batch of bugs to appear in this fandom!

It honestly just feels like you're putting the creators on a special pedestal, above everyone—while they're all very talented and incredible people, they're still human. Just like you, just like me. They try to interact with everyone they can and it's clear every person helping with the gator boys series is trying their damn best.

I genuinely do hope you're doing okay now though :(

I'm always here to help and support you if you need it! But now, it's best if you take some time off to focus on yourself! Take a mental health break, it'll do wonders to you, I would know! I'm taking one now ^^

-that one anon ask that was very clearly about me but they didn't say it.

I'm not too fussed up about it, just a little sad I made someone feel that way

I'm not sure what I did that gave you the impression of "annoying" and "pretentious" of me, but I'm really sorry that I did anyways. I do hope you'll still consider joining our little army, and so we too can be friends! I'm sure you're a great person!

Do know I'll always greet you and new members with open arms! <3

Oh and thank you so much to the people in the reblogs that defended me—giving you all the biggest digital hug ever

-and lastly~ I really, really hope none of us gave you a bad impression of us or the VAs! Everyone here is a wonderful person! From talented to kind to fun! Gator boys is an awesome series and we all just wanted to create a small group to fangirl and boy about it X3 I'll admit things have gotten a bit too far, but me and the founders are trying our best to keep everything under control.

Now, I'm not too good with words—but, I'm very sorry about everything that happened these few days, but I promise everything will be okay from now on! We'll all make sure of it!

Gonna be putting this post in my pinned for a week just in case-

[victimeyez]

TIL Tommy is queer? I have no idea how I missed that. Also, in the nicest way possible, how? /gen

Ps. Ik it's worded a bit weird idk I couldn't figure out how to fix it

Thank you!

Tommy is queer! Wow, I guess I haven't really specified it in Professional Victim I guess? But yeah I mean. Caius didn't force-bi him lol

In The Professionals he has a crush he fantasizes about but I haven't talked about his ex boyfriends in Pro Vic yet.

I assume you are asking what specific labels his sexuality falls into beyond the umbrella term of queer. I'm going to take this ask in good faith, and I'd like to explain a bit about being queer, especially since it's pride month. (This becomes a long personal tangent that then links back to my characters and their sexualities.)

There are many labels that people make for their sexual and romantic attractions. Some people like using these labels to share information about themselves, or find communities of people with similar experiences. Labels can be helpful that way. But attractions can be more complex than Gay and Straight, or Gay/Straight/Bi, or Gay/Straight/Bi/Ace, or Gay/Straight/Bi/Ace/Pan... etc etc. These terms can be helpful, but they can also feel limiting in what they convey. Some people will use combinations of labels to represent themselves, like being a Bi Lesbian or Demisexual Aromantic, etc etc.

Things can get even more complicated when you throw gender into the mix. Does being a gay nonbinary person mean you are only attracted to nonbinary people? Do transbians have a different experience coming to terms with their sexuality than cis lesbians? The thing is - that depends on who you ask, and it's none of anyone's business but their own!

Boxes and labels can be useful, and can even be validating! But there are also a lot of us who feel restricted by those boxes and those labels. MAYBE I could find - and form - a string of enough labels that they could form an approximate explanation of my gender and sexuality, but I doubt it, and I don't want to. I went through a lot of labels. I'm straight. I'm cis. I'm bi? I'm a lesbian? I'm genderfluid? I'm asexual. I'm pansexual. I'm trans. I'm GNC trans? I'm gay. I'm demisexual? I'm just...me.

Learning that there was an umbrella term felt like freedom, where before I felt like I was trying to pin myself in place like a bug. I'm queer! I'm happy that way! I'm also genderqueer and happy that way! The specifics of your sexuality - and gender! - doesn't have to be treated like some kind of diagnosis.

I don't know any specific terms that could possibly begin to explain my relationship with sexuality and gender... as a transgender man who came to understand his sexuality as a woman who likes women, as well as a woman who likes men, a woman who likes people of all genders and no genders at all...and then as a man who likes men, a man who likes people of all genders and no genders at all, who's now treated like a gay man yet also likes women but associates his love for women as being a woman who loves women but was expected to be a woman who loves men in a straight way...I can't explain it. But I don't owe an explanation to anyone. I am queer. Some people use queer interchangeably with other labels, or in conjunction with them, but I'm queer, period.

When I tell someone I'm queer, people often ask me what I REALLY am though. "Oh so actually you're bi." "Oh so you're gay." Wrong! I am QUEER. I understand that not everyone knows this, or means ill, but I think it's disrespectful to try to push someone for detailed information on their attractions or "correct" someone who says they are queer. I don't offer it for my characters either, because there is no need to.

Most of my characters are queer, including Tommy (and Caius!). Tommy likes men, and Tommy likes women. Does that mean he's bi? Trick question - he's queer! The specifics of his exact percentage of attraction to any gender - or lack thereof - doesn't matter.

TLDR; this comic.

Thank you for reading, I hope you are enjoying it, and happy pride month! Go forth and do queer things!

[poke-professors]

what is the most insane thing that you had to do for research purposes (for all of you)

(//they're only going to share the things that won't get them canceled and/or arrested❤️ they're all criminals to a certain degree)

Wouldn't truly call it insane but more, interesting? And also silly haha! I once (during my youth! I wouldn't be capable of doing this now) disguised myself as a Pikachu (don't ask too much questions haha!) and spend 3 months in the wild with a herd of them! This was a success as I collected an important amount of data but I ended up being attacked by a Pidgeot! I'm pretty sure I still have scars from it!

—Oak📝

As you may already know, I'm a Pokémon breeding specialist and as you can guess to make research and to calculate the most frequent state of a pokémon at birth you need lots of data. Which sometimes ended in me having to take care of hundredth of baby pokémons at the same time with only my assistant to help me... You need quite the mental for that... Thanks Ho-Oh, my clumsiness doesn't tend to trigger when I'm taking care of babies!

—Elm🍍

You know me, I'm an explorer! And sometimes I go to zones that aren't where people aren't allowed, not even researchers... I'll avoid talking about it too much as I'm in already in trouble with the Leagues of multiple regions for it, haha! But please, if a place is forbidden to public, there's a reason. I'm a professional and yet my children almost became fatherless more than once because of how careless I can be!

—Birch🗺

I'm not as reckless as my colleagues, so I'll go with the times where I, not really lied but didn't say the complete truth about my research either to be sure to be able to study in peace without having the League on my back, they of course are informed of the entirety of the thing when said research are done. Let's just ignore what I could have done in my youth, will we?

—Rowan🍰

Not directly research purpose but it did happen during an exploration to collect data in the wild. It was back when I was still an assistant, my father's assistant to be more precise. We were in Pinwheel Forrest for quite a while and we were both getting tired. Just when we finished taking notes, we got attacked by a Mightyena. None of us were prepared, Pinwheel Forrest is bug types dominated and surely didn't have any Mightyena in it, and it was all alone too, probably separated from it's herd. It pinned my father on the ground and... I didn't think that much before acting, I just knew none of my pokémons would be strong enough to beat it. I grabbed a stick, the biggest and strongest I could carry, and started beating up the pokémon until it stopped moving. I still regret it to this day, but the image of my father all bloodied still flashes in my mind sometimes. He told me he'll be alright, that we'll both be alright.

I love pokémons, I love them more than anything. I just didn't have a choice that day.

—Juniper🫐

Uhm– to light up the mood, here is a stupid mistake I've done! You're allowed to laugh at me btw (No, you're not! –Kuikui🌴) SOOOO! It was at start of my research on Interdream Zone and like– the third time I entered it. So I do my job, collect my little Dream Orbs and all, and when I have to leave the IDZ, the radar's function to do so suddenly DOESN'T WORK?? At first I wait a little hoping someone like Professor Fennel would notice my absence and understand what was happening but after some hours I understood I was on my own for this one! So, what I did, WHICH IS VERY IRRESPONSIBLE AND YOU SHOULDN'T DO IT, is beating up the radar like that shit owed me money– it did work and sent me back to reality but there's a world where the radar would have totally broke and I would have been stuck in the Interdream Zone forever because I was being an idiot. 💔

—Burnet🌊

I ain't better than my wife, cousins! I wanted to study the difference between snorlax and komala's sleep habits because me and Raphaël Oak discussed it quickly and I thought it would be an interesting subject! So, naturally, I start observing the 'mons sleeping and write down how they move during their sleep and things like that and wait for one of them to wake up! Sounds easy, right cousins?...

8 days. I stayed awake 8 days in a row. From what I was told I started to talk gibberish and act weird so Guzma knocked me out when I wasn't paying attention! Quite the idiot, ain't I? (You can say you were experiencing a sleep depravation psychosis, you know? –Juniper🫐)

—Kuikui🌴

Went to collect data in town about the level of pollution in the air and the effects of it on pokémons. During strike day. In Lumiose City. I knew what I was throwing myself into and still regretted doing so...

—Sycamore☕️

Not bad... But none of us beat Professor Sada and Professor Turo! Might they rest in peace.

—Juniper🫐

[dragonsdendoodles]

hi! just wanted you to know that I love your art and you have some of the most correct Enoch hcs ever.

will you please provide some more?🥺🥺🥺

please?

Thank you so much!!! Absolutely I will, I will talk about that one all day if you let me

When he’s not around, Horace can be found with a homunculus chilling somewhere on him, usually in his hands, on his shoulder, or on his hat. Just so Enoch can keep an eye on him. Not that he’s worried or anything (that would imply he has feelings)

He gets along surprisingly well with Olive and Claire when he’s not actively trying to annoy them. They’ll follow him around and he’ll let them play with his homunculi or put on puppet shows for them, and if she asks he’ll carry Claire around and give her piggyback rides, though most of the time he’ll pretend he’s annoyed with her for asking.

He’s very good with kids in general, just completely subconsciously. He doesn’t have a clue how that happened. In his words, small children like him and he has no idea why.

He has a love-hate relationship with his scars from the end of TDODA. Some days he thinks they’re badass, but some days he also gets really insecure about them because of other people’s reactions to them. When that happens, he’ll refuse to leave the loop or even sometimes his room for the rest of the day.

Enoch is actually very shy when meeting new people. If an ymbryne-in-training or someone new or important comes to the loop to talk to Miss Peregrine, he’ll spy on them from outside or from another room, but if they try to actually talk to him he retreats to the basement and doesn’t come out until they’re gone.

He can play trombone. Notice I did not say he could do it well.

He can also play piano, but that’s less a headcanon and more something kinda confirmed by MOW when he’s stated to have used up six hearts teaching a skeleton to play piano.

He was bullied pretty badly by Abe in the short time they lived together, but none of the kids fully believed him when he said something. He doesn’t blame them—he was new, and when he was new he was even more prickly and defensive than usual, so they’d usually assume he started it and was upset Abe was finishing it when he almost never did. He never told anyone how bad it got until he vented about it to Horace almost a century later, who now completely resents Abe. He refuses to let anyone even mention it to Jacob for fear of tainting his grandfather’s image in his head.

Enoch is one of if not the pickiest eater in the entire house. He has lived weeks off of McDonald’s French fries from the present and Jacob’s retrieval of them for him because everything else sounded like poison.

Noor introduced him to Hot Wheels and he is obsessed. He has a collection of them in his room and Miss Peregrine had to make a rule within the first day that he can’t put mouse hearts in them and make them into homemade RC cars because they’re too small to see on the floor and Bronwyn nearly got a concussion from trying to dodge one thinking it was a bug.

If he has any pride merch from the present at all, regardless of orientation, he has pins and buttons. Nothing else. Enoch does not see the point of all the different flags and symbols but he does see the beauty in being able to chase Horace around the house trying to stab him. The fact that the pins haven’t been confiscated is a miracle.

He chews on things to stim. Favorite objects include every pencil he has ever owned, a lanyard Jacob gave him from a college he’s never heard of, his nails until they start tasting like formaldehyde, and Horace’s fingers. Horace has given up on trying to stop this.

I have many, MANY more should you want more. Mostly for Enoch and Horace but for any of the kids really I think about them A Lot

[tachimichishrine]

"high school"

⫭◦⨝◦⫬

doa + hunting dogs {high school AU! hcs}

warnings: none!! just keep in mind this isn't an xreader!!

decay of angels

nikolai is, without question, the class clown, and head of the drama club

the teachers HATE him

he asks waaaaaay too many questions, and all the time, too

and they're so random???

they'll be in the middle of a test and he'll ask the teacher "how's your marriage doing right now? how's your partner, are they doing well?"

lowkey gets kicked out of the class daily

now spends most of his time playing cards with the secretary in the office

bram sometimes gets sent there as well, just because he's in the mood to take a nap

however, he doesn't really say that, he'll make up some kind of excuse like "oh it's my medical condition, I have limited energy" because he's paraplegic, even if it's bs

he's also that one edgy kid who sits in the back of the class discussing the end of the world

he??speak??so??oddly??

"death cometh for thou," like dude okay no need to talk like that???

the only person who actually understands what he says is fyodor, the reigning chess champ in the school

he's also very tired all the time, but he doesn't sleep, he'll just answer a few questions here and there if he's forced to, just to shut up the teacher

does the absolute bare minimum effort to pass class because he thinks it's all useless

"you have great potential, and I'm sure you understand all the material, fyodor, so with just a bit of effort-"

"thank you for the advice."

gets up and leaves 💀

fukuchi is the gym teacher that yells all the time and tells students to do pushups just because he feels like their face is mocking him

everyone either loves his class or dreads it

nikolai is fine, he's not all that athletic but he can run pretty decently and, worst case scenario, he just needs to bug the teacher and get sent to the office again to complete his game of poker with the secretary

fyodor hates gym class

with a burning passion

I CAN'T EVEN ENVISION HIS STICK-LEGS RUNNING PROPERLY SKJGKSJFG

hides under any large object and waits it out

bram is in a wheelchair so he just smugly looks at coach like "haha sucker!", only to be given dumbbells and told to do upper body workouts

now, fyodor and bram are hide-from-gym-class buddies

sigma is in preschool

yk since he's like 3 years old-

CHUBBY CHEEKS

he's so precious unlike all the other toddlers, but he does cry a lot

A LOT

LIKE WAY TOO MUCH

"sigma, you have to share your blocks with our friends, okay?"

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

the caretakers still love him tho

BABY SIGMA BABY SIGMA BABY SIGMA BABY SIGMA

hunting dogs

jouno and tecchou are the upperclassmen, which is surprising given how many braincells they share between them

jouno is hands down the pretty popular jock on campus and all the girls FALL TO THEIR KNEES

he does get in trouble every once in a while for bullying people or threatening them, but he has practically seduced the principal at this point, so it's no biggie

tecchou is that one kid who raises their hand in class and gets everything wrong

he's great in gym class, though, seeing as he likes to work out in his spare time

some girls try to approach him while he's doing his own thing and staring at the ground but he's like "wait."

"...wait? for what?"

"the ants"

"...the ants???"

"you were about to step on them."

girls have now stopped trying to approach him

tachihara is the Bad Boy™ with Family Issues™ and Inferiority Complex™

he gets in trouble A LOT

unlike Nikolai, it isn't for harmless questions or disturbing the class, it's for beating up someone else and egging someone's locker and placing a pin on the teacher's chair and-

needless to say, the teachers hate him with a burning passion

he's taking teruko as his apprentice in chaos, given she'd be around two year younger than him

she doesn't get in trouble bc (assuming this is a different school and everything) the gym coach fukuchi defends her in front of the school staff ALL THE TIME since she's his favorite student

she's surprisingly good at most subjects, except...

m a t h 

she screams and throws a full-on tantrum by tossing her math book outside the window then setting it on fire because this girl CANNOT survive variables and constants and graphs and parabolas

fly high, math notebook 😞✊🕊

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 13 Thoughts: Phone Bug

A big episodes for small reasons. Not much world-shaking happened but just enough was said about just the right things. A lot to get into in this one around the incident. We're starting to have the curtain pulled back. Just a crack right now, but that's just more reason to be cracked.

Spoilers for episode 13, and all of TMA, below the cut.

Not a huge amount to touch on in the date portion of the episode other than a couple of sentences. Yeah, Sam is a gifted burn out that's sad about not getting experimented on. Same old same old. But Celia has a baby. Jack being Celia's kid I wasn't expecting mostly because of how that figures into her timeline. She's very heavily implied to be TMA's Celia but based on what she said if she is then she's been in TMP's universe for at least 4 years. A "couple of wild years" and Jack's "just over a year old". Plus 9 months and it's a lot longer than it might've appeared. None of that stuff tripped Freddy's possible lie detector either that I heard.

If you work under the assumption that the voices are who most people think, and they started roughly when they arrived, then that's a fairly major time discrepancy. The voices are about a year old but Celia has been around for 4.

However, it doesn't strictly rule that out either. Firstly, we know that moving between universes isn't actually one-to-one time-wise. Anya Villette went backwards 2 weeks when she crossed over. So them arriving at different times could support the idea that she's TMA's Celia further. Her general explanation of events could also be explained by this too. If she's not there willingly, or is there willingly but it didn't quite go to plan, a couple of wild years while you get your footing in a world you don't belong to isn't far fetched. If she was there looking for the voices then her showing up so relatively late could be explained by her baby too. So it's certainly not a dead and buried theory yet.

While Jack isn't Jack Barnabas he and the voices are about the same age. If people want to go rabid over that.

Gwen and Lena's little chat has a similar amount to really dig into. It's nice to see Gwen dealing with it all, and it's annoying we still don't know who died, but Lena does have a lot to say in a few words.

The world is full of opposing forces, some benevolent, most not. In order for the wheels to keep on turning, all these forces need to be monitored and balanced. That is where we come in.

This probably the most information we've had on the OIAR to this point from the show itself. I think most of this was safely assumed before this point. They've been doing a lot of monitoring, categorisation, and the only responses we have seen have been tamping major spikes down. A world of opposing forces is also a given. We are being led to believe that these are analogous to the 14+1 but there being benevolent ones if that's true is a big mix up. If you take the above timeline idea a step further and say the 14+1 arrived much earlier (or it doesn't matter because of how they're temporally weird) the benevolent ones could be native to TMP. They could be all TMP had.

Her assertion that the OIAR is a balance on these forces is interesting. Beyond the obvious stuff it also leans into an idea I've been throwing about regarding Starkwall. In the perception of Starwall might not really be the whole picture. The San Pedro Square massacre could've been an easy scapegoat to pin on them for the OIAR to split with them. A split caused by a disagreement in ethics. Starkwall thus far hasn't been shown to have an incredible disregard for human life based on Ep 7. The OIAR definitely has been. It could just be a PR move because the massacre was too big to contain but that feels like the least interesting way to handle this. A faction that's all in on monster hit men splitting with a faction who is against it has more room for interesting drama and worldbuilding IMO.

Balance was also a very large aspect of TMA in the end. The OIAR working towards that balance isn't as noble a goal as it might sound. Or it at least has the potential to be an incredibly misguided goal.

Okay, with all that mostly out of the way onto the incident itself. I enjoy this one a fair bit. Very different to what's come before it but with another recurring theme. We're starting to see a couple of patterns emerge now although it's too early to start naming things. I don't think there is a lot to really get into but this one was written by Alex, had a new VA, and was a recurring idea. Which does all point to this being quite important as these things go. All the episodes will likely tie up quite nicely in the end but this one seems quite relevant currently. In any case this was a fun one and I'm kinda curious how some of the elements within it will tie together. Mainly the gambling and insects.

Also, super weird they went with Zorrotrade for this. Because that's a real thing. Or was a real thing? It might be dead now, but still.

Post-incident chat has nothing I really want to comment on. More Alice and Sam is always good, even if Alice is trying really hard to not seem very upset.

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

Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet

DPHW Theory: 4622 doesn't seem particularly noteworthy. It's interesting from a thematic angle how this differs from Rolling With It. Both obviously very linked to gambling but this one lacks the compulsion elements. Which is a good indicator that H is linked to that sort of thing. Not that I need to convince myself of that further.

CAT# Theory: 3. Insert screams et cetera, et cetera. More seriously there still isn't a convincing pattern to this. Although I might be swinging back to my original tria prima and/or triple deity interpretation.

R# Theory: B is where I was thinking it'd end up while listening. So that's nice. Not much to add to this. Much like with DPHW the more information that lines up with the theory the less there is to talk about it because I've already done the hard bit.

Header talk: Gambling (Application) -/- Murder. Other than Application being a pretty weird Subsection I'm not sure there is much to dig into here. Although it does likely confirm he's dead. Which does make it a little strange that his statement wasn't read by one of the Freddy lot.

[scrapplescribbles]

ive gotten so many asks from people in gaza about donating, and i'm gonna try to be better about reblogging pinned posts and stuff in the future since admittedly i have not been. as a message to them, im not currently in a position to donate, and i don't have a large platform, so i guess i figured i couldnt do anything to help, but this has been bugging me for a while so i wanted to pull out the ukulele and say that its not that i dont care its just that im a wee teenager and i dont know what to do 😭 im sorry i cant do much else than spread the word to like 5 other people but i'll try to do at least that

EDIT: i am aware now that these are scams and i have taken down all the reblogs i could find. however i am leaving this post up because i want to have documentation of past mistakes because erasing every mess up is not a good way to learn or encourage growth. again i am a wee teenager and i dont know a lot of things. i still cant donate anything, and im glad i never was able to give my money to people who didnt really need it like they said they did. so here's what ive learned from this: my emotions and beliefs are very easy ways to manipulate me. i'll be more careful about that in the future. also i am very blind to the room that is sometimes helpful to read. none of the people i have interacted with have been engaging with these scams. i just looked up the accounts that said they were verifying the scam accounts, and i have been informed by the great tumblr itself that they are not to be trusted either. so here i am to say "whoopsie. wont do that again" and move on with life