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lliinnkk · 1 year ago
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Insomnia
Content: creepy whumper; intimate whumper; non human whumper: defiant whumpee
Word Count: 630
It was quiet and dark, a dim orange light twinkling softly from the lamp on the bedside table. The embrace Fuyune was being held in from behind was strong but limp from sleep. The six fingered hands wrapped around his waist were a lovingly disgusting cage under the thick duvet's warmth.
His body was bruised and battered, exhausted from the abuse, taking in and out deep calm breaths. The clock ahead read 3am. Despite his eyes begging for sleep, Fuyune still felt not a shred of fatigue.
The insomnia wasn't unfamiliar to him but it wouldn't be as bad if he couldn't feel a certain man's chest pressed against his back and breath tickling his hair. He felt the most desperate need to stay awake. Solon was asleep now but if, even for a second, Fuyune let his guard down, who knows what mercies he might withhold from him while his allies were unaware.
With no escape or even an inane entertainment, he had nowhere to turn but his thoughts. His face showed nothing, comfortably nestled into his pillow, but all he could feel was rage. A pure and incomparable, constant feeling seated deep in his chest, the only thing he could seem to think about.
He asked Kashton for advice once about how he dealt with their situation. Kash had always been a very emotional person, always the first one to start crying and screaming whenever the situation called for it (or whenever it didn't) so Fuyune found it quite strange when everyone's lives got turned upside down and yet Kash, of all people, looked the calmest about it.
When he found out, he wasn't surprised: Kash had learned to lean into and enjoy the abuse he was subjected to. Being a very dependent person already, it was like second nature learning to give up total free will and submit to someone else completely.
Fuyune didn't take to this as easily. It's not that he didn't try, he really did. He tried so hard. But to even attempt stung his chest and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, as though he were violently allergic to the very concept. It left a bad taste in his mouth recalling it. Maybe that method worked for others but not for Fuyune. There was no way he could ever love this.
The only thing he could possibly feel toward this man and this life was hatred. There was nothing that Solon hadn't taken from him. He took his body parts, his strength and his dignity. He took his privacy and autonomy and his identity. He took his entire future.
He used to have everything. A family, a legacy, power, a reputation, expectations. His life didn't look like his anymore. Did he even still have the right to call himself Fuyune? If not, what specifically was the moment that had robbed him of that title? Had it slowly decayed over time or was he doomed the moment he set foot on that island?
It didn't matter. At the end of the day, it was all Solon's fault. He was the one who put him on that island. Fuyune's life was destroyed in the lonely office room that day, the first day he met Solon face to face.
After that day, the torture continued and today it continued still. November. It had almost been a whole year since the beginning of all this and in a few weeks it would begin again with new victims. But still with the same old Solon. Fuyune prayed for the safety of whoever might come after him, that Solon might show them more mercy than he did to him, but the prayer wasn't a hopeful one.
No, Fuyune wasn't hopeful. He was never hopeful.
Fuyune was angry. So, so very angry.
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knavesflames · 6 months ago
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Anon: [Virgin reader who has Arle convinced she’s not a virgin and Arle realizes this mid-foreplay]
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Hello 😧 I’m back with this. This time I believe I’ve read it correctly!! I made this one a bit longer for the inconvenience HAHAHA, either way, I hope you enjoy it now if you see this anon.
Word count: 1428
Contents: fingering, arlecchino being a lil tipsy, soft
Nsft utc!
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You seem to realise about a year into your relationship that maybe you should have given up the lie. You’re not experienced, and if anything, you’re the complete opposite. You’ve barely kissed anyone. Arlecchino counts, obviously, but you’ve only kissed her and you’ve been lucky enough to worm your way out of sex and conversations about it every time.
Arlecchino is a busy woman, is she not? She is often away in Fontaine, or Sumeru, or Archons knows where else, it’s not exactly like she has time. Does it stop the murmured apologies spilling from her lips? No. Does it bother you? Also no. If anything, you’re worried for the day she figures it out. You shouldn’t have lied, you know this, but when the chance of being Arlecchino’s arose, you didn’t want her to come up with any reason to backtrack. So, you lied. Arlecchino is.. incredibly experienced, to say the least. You’ve heard the way the girls talk about The Knave in the town. How, way before you, she would go through three girls a night, at the same time, and none of them could think straight for the next week. You have no doubts she’d be gentle with you, and yet..
You don’t want to disappoint her. It isn’t that you don’t want to have sex, more that you’re worried you won’t be enough for her, you won’t be able to make her feel good (and that you’re nervous about your own pleasure).
So, what a shame (and a blessing) when she comes home tipsy after a Fatui gathering. You want to have sex with her so bad, so bad, in fact, you can feel it, and you wonder if this is the perfect time. She’s tipsy, she may not remember, and then you’re not really lying, are you?
It doesn’t seem to work out that way for you, though. Her kisses are as soft as always, but hungrier as she leads you towards the bedroom. Her hand is firm around your waist as she lowers you onto the bed, your satin nightdress billowing around you. You hear a small grunt as she flops down next to you before her lips meet yours again. Gracious when she’s tipsy, she is not. It’s almost comical, and you’d laugh if your head wasn’t running wild. Your hands move to remove her shirt, which is easy enough when she moves with you to help it along.
Mumbles of how good you smell and how tipsy she is leaves her lips and you manage to snicker in all your nervousness. The sound is quickly cut short by a sharp intake of breath when her fingers begin dancing up your thigh, your heart pounding more than it would, had you been experienced like you claim you are. Nevertheless, your own hands work their way under the waistband of her underwear, clumsily finding their way to where you’ve imagined touching her. You become lost in your thoughts, completely affected by the way you have to pretend you know what you’re doing, to the point you don’t even realise when she’s whispering your name softly.
Arlecchino’s eyebrows furrow and she uncharacteristically giggles as you try to find your way between her folds. It’s so clumsy, it’s almost like you haven’t done this before, and you’re the sober one. She studies you a little more, the way your lip is caught between your teeth, your breath a mix of nervousness and desire, and then it clicks. Her fingers wrap around your wrist, gently dragging your hand out of her underwear before her head rests on your shoulder.
“You haven’t done this before,” she murmurs as her lips graze against your neck. “Why did you lie?”
“I have!” You’re so quick to protest against her words, but to her, it’s just proving her point. With a soft sigh, she moves you on top of her so you can’t look away. You can tell in Arlecchino’s eyes she’s sobered up, at least a little.
“I mean this with a lot of affection, dear, but you can’t find the clitoris, and I am the drunk one.”
With a groan, you hide your face between her breasts in an attempt to conceal the heat on your cheeks. Her charred fingers move to your hair, carding through the strands as she questions you, her usually stern voice just a little softer.
“Do you want to, or are you agreeing because of me? Lie and I won’t be pleased.”
“I want to, I’m nervous.”
A low rumble leaves her throat, almost her usual laugh, and somehow more tipsy than the giggle she let out earlier. She flips the position, satisfied when she towers over you. “Then let me take care of you,” she whispers huskily against the shell of your ear. “I’ll show you how it works.”
Her eyebrow quirks, her red crosses piercing into your own irises as she waits for an answer. You pay attention the way your heart speeds up in pure excitement, and your body betrays any words that could leave your lips when you nod. You hear a hum leave Arlecchino’s mouth before her hands travel again, moving inside of the nightdress you so often wear. With your fingers twitching, you move under her waistband again, only for your hand to be gently pushed out.
“You tonight. Relax, I’ll make it nice.”
Your back instinctively arches when the pad of her thumb presses against your clit, your eyes closing as a shaky breath leaves your mouth. Her thumb pulls back quickly after, inspecting the newly achieved glisten on her skin. “So wet already,” she muses, locking her eyes on you as her thumb disappears beyond her lips. “You taste good, too.”
You make a noise that could only be described as a small whine in response. A whine of what, embarrassment? Arousal? You don’t know. Arlecchino does. Her thumb leaves her mouth with a pop before it meets the nerve bundle again, rubbing small, gentle circles to relax you. And relax you, it does, small noises of appreciation escaping you every so often.
“Ready?” She smirks against your cheek when you nod, making sure your lips are right next to her ear when she slides her finger inside of you, a shudder going down her spine at the delicious noise you made. Waiting until you’re comfortable, the finger stays unmoving until your hips buck up, initiating movement. It’s a slow rhythm, every pump and curl drawing out mewls and whines as your hands move to clutch at any part of her you can. One ends up around her shoulders, the other intertwined with her free hand.
“It’s okay,” she mumbles through her own heavy breath, clearly affected by your sounds and the movements of your hips against her middle finger. “Breathe, keep moving, keep making those pretty little sounds for me.”
Arlecchino’s words are punctuated by a particularly good curl and a small massage to the spongy spot inside of you, her own groan sounding in your ear when you flutter around her finger. “You’re so pretty. So pretty, and all mine, and I get to take you. Archons—“
The words are cut off by another groan, one that was clearly repressed for a few seconds. She isn’t even being touched, and somehow she’s receiving pleasure just from your own reactions. Either she’s desperate, or you just affect her that much. Her digits continue the movement, taking care to not scratch you with the nails she prides herself on, pressing and curling and pumping slowly until your whines are desperate and your walls are clenching against her.
“I know, baby, I know. Let it happen, hm? Remember to breathe. Good girl, you’re so good for me, aren’t you?” She breathes, smirking at your response (which is in fact, just another whimper). You feel it building and building until you feel like your skin is on fire and you’re about to explode, and then your back arches, your eyes shooting open as your hand tightens around hers. Your hips jerk up erratically, and she presses kisses to your forehead when you ride the high she’s so happy to have given you.
When you finally come down, able to make sense of the world around you, she chuckles, a low, velvety chuckle, making use of your nails to create goosebumps on your skin as she lazily drags them over your arm. “I was nice tonight, but if you ever lie to me about something as important as this again, I will not be as kind. Understand?”
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cal-flakes · 2 years ago
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could u pleaseee write a blurb abt reader accidentally hitting rages nuts while try to get comfy cuddle him and he starts swearing and like whining like a little baby cause it hurts and reader juat try’s to comfort him xoxo
ABSOLUTELY YES (assuming i read this correctly, this gif felt fitting) i hope it’s what you wanted, enjoy <33
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╰┈➀ rafe gets injured
warnings: swearing.
summary: while trying to get yourself comfortable on top of your boyfriend as you settle down to watch a film, you accidentally hurt him.
the smell of butter popcorn fills the air as you stand in the kitchen, bored. according to you, three minutes is a very long time to wait for popcorn. “you coming baby?” rafe calls from the living room, waiting for you to come watch american psycho with him. “just a minute!” you call back.
the loud beeps of the microwave break your concentration on your nails, alerting you the popcorns done. sighing contently, you open the bag, careful not to burn yourself, before pouring the contents into a large sharing bowl. sparing the kitchen one last glance to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything, you switch off the light and head through to the living room.
as you set the bowl down on the coffee table in front of him, you scanned his figure, internally screaming at how good he looks splayed across the couch. “where am i supposed sit?” you pouted, poking fun at how he’s taken up the whole damn chair. rafe smirks up at you before gesturing for you to simply climb on top of him. deciding to be a bit pedantic, you do exactly that and plonk yourself down on top of him.
nothing could prepare you for the dramatics that would happen next. “fuck!” rafe yells, possibly louder than you’ve ever heard him. your eyes widen at the scene before you. rafe rolls around the rug on the floor, clutching his crotch, possibly in tears.
at first you thought he was being dramatic and let out a loud laugh, that was until he began his torrent of curses.
“it’s not fucking funny y/n! do you know how much that fucking hurt?” rafe shouts out in a weak voice, somewhat out of breath. realising what you had accidentally done, you crawl over to him and sit by his side. rafe flinches as you put your hand on his cheek and turns to face you. “oh my god! i’m so sorry! im so so so so sorry! i didn’t mean to!” you pleaded, noticing the tears welling up over his waterline. stroking his face, you lean down to kiss his forehead while he continues his hold down below.
sighing breathlessly, he rolls over onto his back as the pain subsides. his eyes narrow at you, shooting daggers. “you are so going to regret that y/n” he jokes as he quickly jumps up. before you could blink, rafe had you locked in his arms, pinned underneath him as he began tickling you.
kicking and screaming, you struggle to get away from his grip. “rafe! i-im sorry! i didn’t mean to!” you choke out between laughs.
you could never understand why tickling made a person laugh, especially when it was one of the top five torture methods, or atleast it was in your books.
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teaxeee · 12 days ago
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if you have done this ignore this ask (you post so much i was trying to scroll and if i could see if you done this already but i couldnt, really impressive)
but
fucking gunwook in his snorlax pjamas, like my pfp because i love snorlax, if you want combine it with my last ask
if you forgot it was like: so hot that you two sweated from the heat and reader gives gunwook a slickback hairstyle with all the sweat (if i remember correctly @^@)
have a nice 2025 and can’t wait for more content from my fav gunwook smut writer💗💗
xoxo your lovre, vi💗
HELP THIS IS SO REAL?? I literally had to search for the ask u sent and I can't find it...I was like: did u send it to me or someone else? or was it something else? (do tag me in it plz) also I'm gonna sob, hope your 2025 slays and ily :( and the fact that you called me your fav gunwook smut writer :(( *SCREAMS*
Imagine you and Gunwook are getting ready for bed. You're already under the blankets, snuggled up and comfortable while he's in the bathroom finishing up his shower. After a few minutes he comes out of the bathroom, hair slightly damp and him wearing the snorlax pajamas. You knew how much he loved to wear those (and so did you when he wasn't around ehehe might have to hit me up for this-), plus he looked adorable! And the fact that he was so sleepy, barely being able to keep his eyes open and his cheeks flushed as he laid down next to you, it just got you needy :(
It didn't take long before you were on top of him, having his cock inside you while he kept his pajamas on. Surprisingly he didn't have the energy to be rough, poor baby was just so sleepy that he had his eyes closed and his hands resting on your thighs, too tired to actually grab the flesh properly. Both of you were moaning, along with him occasionally whining and babbling about how good you feel and how he can't get enough. He's gonna be clingy tho, always pulling you down for kisses while you keep lifting your hips and lowering them slowly, just wanting to feel him close to you <3
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jenchan-writingmultis · 7 months ago
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Twisted Wonderland Boys x Fem Reader in their respective Fairytales (Series)
(Azul's Part two)
Previous Part (Leona)
─────❅─────
Content Warning: This Fic will be tagged as 16+ since it is a bit suggestive along with mentions of Gorey themes (Azul), it’s very vague. I haven’t finished Book 6 and Book 7 because I’m stuck in Tartarus, but they’re not done here yet. Riddle (Suggestive Themes), Leona (Cussing, Blood mention), Azul (Obsession, Manipulation, Cussing once, Potential Cannibalism? (He eats merpeople who are turned into Polyps). The reason for potential OOC was cause I mixed both the classic Villains with the personality of our beloved boys
Due to the Tumblr Limit, Each one will be divided unfortunately, hopefully it's an easy navigation for all of you!
─────❅─────
First Batch would be: Riddle, Leona, Azul
Second Batch would be: Kalim, Idia, Malleus
List of Villains interconnecting with each character:
Riddle = Queen of Hearts
Leona = Scar
Azul = Ursula
─────❅───── Azul: “That’s all?” Your skepticism grew further while you scanned his face for any type of deception.
“That’s all” he said, leaning on the cauldron he placed his arms on the top of it, while resting his chin on his hand, he looks so trustworthy looking at you like that, if you didn’t know your Azul inside out you would have jumped into the opportunity of creating a deal with him in a heartbeat.
“Ask” You decided to take a bite on his bait, and that made Azul sneer, he walked towards you, a golden contract all too familiar was placed on your lap. “I can’t just ask you questions without having it written by contract my star” He pats the contract to your lap like he’s smoothing the paper out while calling you a little nickname he felt that was right. That was the nickname your Azul called you a lot, but right now, it made you feel uncomfortable, the situation was uncanny, grabbing the contract you tried to find loopholes that were written on it, but so far, you couldn’t find anything that dooms you to fail.
“So?” he urged you to sign away your soul faster, growing a bit impatient, he taps his arms while keeping it crossed around his body, “The contract won’t sign itself Starfish.” He turns around, giving you a reasonable distance as you contemplate about it.
Without anything to fall back to, you decided to take risk, your face turning sour as a magical pen manifested in front of you, taking it, you closed your eyes signing the contract, which made Azul’s heart beats fast, oh you’re in it now.
"Excellent!" he exclaimed, his enthusiasm palpable as the contract vanished before your eyes, you felt as if you made a mistake, wanting to grab the paper again before it vanished, but before you could, Azul's cold fingers intertwined with yours, his other arm wrapping around your fins and waist. “Now come” he commanded, as if you had any say on it, dragging you to the couch, he placed you there, a more comfortable place to sit down than the rock earlier.
The first questions he asked were straight to the point, asking if you knew him in your “real world”, you answered truthfully and correctly of course! He may not be your Azul, but he’s still Azul, and you’re bounded by his contract.
While you would be fine on the first questions, you still couldn’t shake off the feeling that you were scammed, but so far, they all were cut and dry, “What was my relationship with you?”
"You were my boyfriend" muttering that out, Azul was unreadable, humming in acknowledgement. You know he was quick with his tongue, and smart with it, of course; even if you keep your guard up, you know in the battle of wits, you lose to him.
So, the moment he traces his fingers on your shoulders, shivering at the sudden physical intimacy, he had planted his hands on your shoulders, leaning down as you kept your hands to yourself. “This is my last question” You looked hopeful, it was almost done! And so far, nothing bad happened yet, glancing to your side as he was really close to your face, you backed up a bit before looking down.
“Okay," your voice steady but your grip tight on your wrist. You tried not to feel nervous as you attempted to pinch yourself, the skin on your fins wasn’t something you could pinch on, so you ended up touching your wrists instead.
“Do you remember the first time you met a great mage?”
You look at him confused, eyebrows knitting together while you look at him confused. “What?” you tried to get any clarification for the question.
Oh, Azul was feeling gracious, an arm of his tracing your chin, “Let me clarify”
“When did you meet Azul?”
Well, that confused you more, answering him about the time you met your Azul.
You’re quite naïve, then again that question of his was bound to make you fail. Feigning sadness he pushes the hair away from your face as he leans closer. “How unfortunate, answering wrongfully.”
You feel your blood run cold as you look at him, “What-“Golden handcuffs wrap around your wrists as the contract takes effect, grounding you to it.
Unfortunately, you broke the contract, but that’s alright” he says smiling menacingly “At least you belong to me.” Kalim's part
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faithisyours · 9 months ago
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Just a Dream
Azriel x Fem!reader
Summary: after a long day you come home to the house of wind to find Azriel having a nightmare.
Warnings: fluff, comfort, talk of nightmares, mentions of family and friend death, not too detailed, though, not proof read
Word count: 2.1k
a/n: Hello, God? It’s me again. I’m here on both knees to offer you some bbg Azriel content. This man is tormented, just the way I like them. First Azriel fic, and first ACOTAR fic in general, so please don’t kill me if I get any of the lore wrong (I read these books a while ago and barely remember the plot😅). This came to me in a dream. I’m just kidding. I’m gonna quit my yapping and go now. Minors please go away. Enjoy :)
It had been a long day. Your mission had taken longer than you had expected. Rhys, your High Lord, had sent you to do a routine check on the southern border, but of course, since it was your turn to do this check, a fight had broken out, one that you had to break up, and smooth over, and make sure wouldn’t happen again, and file a report for. By the time you were done, it was already dark out.
You double checked you had completed everything you needed to do, as well as make sure you had filled out that report correctly. Gods forbid you forgot to fill in one pesky section. Rhys would be on your ass about it for weeks. Finally, when you had double checked everything and grown too tired to care if you had forgotten something, you winnowed back to the house of wind, your home.
It was quiet, not even the noise of the house settling could be heard. You tip-toed your way to the kitchen for a little something to eat, your long and busy day allowing no time for dinner. You made yourself a plate, stacking crackers, cheese, meats, and fruits atop one another. The house provided a glass of cold water for you, and you took it, thanking the house silently.
You made your way up to your room. You didn’t want to stay in the kitchen for fear you would make too much noise. So you padded up the steps and down the hallway, but before you could make it to your room, you heard muffled noises coming from inside the Shadowsinger’s chambers. At first you thought it was the noises of a well spent night, but as you grew closer, something you had no choice in doing since to get to your room you had to pass Azriel’s door, the muffled noises were that of distress.
“No, no please! Don’t!” you heard the Shadowsinger call out. He must be having a nightmare, you thought. You did not know what possessed you to open his door and walk right in, but you did. You saw the Illarian sprawled out on his massive bed, blankets tangled around his legs and damp from sweat. His bare chest heaved and glistened with a sheen of cold perspiration.
You put your plate of food and glass of water down on the dresser, then slowly closed the door behind you. You did not want anyone to find you in here, but you also did not want Azriel's nightmare to wake the whole house. You were all aware he had them, everyone in this house had them, and occasionally one would be bad enough to wake the whole floor. The fact that everyone had them made the embarrassment more manageable, but it was embarrassing nonetheless. And you did not want Azriel to be embarrassed.
You took a moment to consider how best to wake him. He was thrashing slightly, his movements becoming more rapid, and he was crying out louder now. You needed to pull him from this dream, and soon. You chose to call his name quietly, in hopes that would pull him out of his torment, but your efforts were futile. You decided you were going to have to touch him.
You made your way to the side of his bed and sat. You turned to face him, so that your right leg was on the bed, bent at the knee, body facing the headboard. You gently took his hand in yours, then slowly began tracing circles on the top of it. This seemed to stir him just a little, but not enough. He was still squirming, eyelids twitching, still calling out in distress.
“Please, don’t! Take me instead. I deserve
” he trailed off. You began calling his name, starting quiet but getting louder. You were sliding your free hand up and down his arm soothingly, the other held tight in Azriel’s scarred hand. But your efforts were still not working.
You shifted your body fully onto the bed now, kneeling next to him, making sure you weren’t pinning his wings. “Azriel, it’s just a dream. Wake up. You’re safe,” you cooed. With your free hand, you cupped his cheek, trying to stop his shaking. “Az, wake up! Please!” Your pleading was getting louder, and you were scared you were going to be the one to wake the whole floor. “It’s just a dream. You are safe. It’s just a dream.”
In an instant Azriel sat up and frantically grabbed onto you. He was disoriented, upset, and panicky, but your words calmed him. “Azriel, you were dreaming. You’re alright. It was just a dream,” you told him. You smoothed away the hair that was stuck to his forehead with sweat. Cupping his cheek, you forced his eyes to meet yours. You searched those hazel depths, trying to gauge his understanding of the situation. “It was just a dream, Az,” you repeated, and did not break eye contact until he nodded that he understood. When he started to calm down you removed your hand from his cheek, dropping it down to the hand clasped in your other one. “Just a dream,” he murmured, nodding slightly.
You suddenly became very aware that you were in a half-dressed Illarian male’s bed. Azriel was one of your dearest friends, but that didn’t make the situation any less awkward. It’s not like you’ve never been in his room, or seen him without a shirt, it was just never both at the same time. Trying not to dwell on it, you asked, “Do you want to talk about it,” for which he promptly shook his head. “Would you like some food?” you offered, remembering the plate of food that still sat on his dresser. He looked up at you questioningly, so you slid off the bed, walked over and grabbed the plate of food, then walked back, presenting it to him with a half-grin on your face.
“Why?” he simply asked, growing increasingly confused.
“I just got back from my mission and didn’t get the chance to eat dinner, so I was gonna take this to my room so that I wouldn't wake anyone up but I heard you, so
” you trailed off. He nodded in understanding.
“So this is your dinner?” he asked, trying not to dwell on the last part of your sentence, the fact that he was talking and you heard him. It was your turn to nod.
“Ya, but I think my eyes were bigger than my stomach. You can have some,” you reassured, grabbing a grape and popping it into your mouth. You lowered the plate onto the bed next to him, then sat. Az took a cube of cheese and a cracker, then slid them into his mouth in one fell swoop. He chewed slowly, then swallowed. He was sitting up now, his sheets still tangled in his legs, but he seemed to be calming down a great deal.
“There was a fight that broke out at the border today,” you offered, trying to distract him further from what remained of his dream. “Right when I was almost done, too! I had to stay an extra two hours to smooth everything over. Ridiculous!” you exclaimed. Az breathed out a huff of amusement, a small smile making its way onto his lips. “Oh, you think it's funny?” you teased with an incredulous tone. His smile was starting to part his lips, and you couldn’t resist yourself, you smiled back.
“Thank you,” he said, picking up a strawberry and raising it to you in thanks.
“No problem,” you replied. You were about to stand up and leave, but he stopped you with a hand over yours.
“What did
 what was I saying?” he asked you shyly.
“Oh um
” you were startled by his question slightly. You didn’t want to bring up a sore subject, but he was the one asking, so you guessed it was alright. “Ya know just the usual “no, please don’t”’s and the “take me instead”’s. Very chivalrous of you, might I add.” You wanted to lighten the mood a bit, but it didn’t seem to be working. There was a line between the Shadowsinger’s eyebrows, and his eyes were downcast. “You also said you deserved to go instead, but that part was a little unclear.” You didn’t mean to pry, but you were curious. And if Azriel thought he deserved to die instead of someone else because he deserved it, well you were going to have to fix that opinion real quick.
Az simply nodded. It did not seem like he wanted to elaborate on that last part, so you offered up one of your most common nightmares in hopes it would comfort him. “I often dream about my family being killed in front of me. That I am restrained or incapacitated in some way that prevents me from helping. And I always seem to offer myself in exchange for their lives. It never works, though.” His eyes were on you now, sorrow-filled hazel that glittered in the moonlight streaming through the windows. His fingers had taken up tracing lines on the hand of yours that was clasped in his.
“That's not your fault,” he whispered. You both sat there for a long minute. “I was
” he started, but seemed to think better of it. You placed your free hand over his, encouraging him to continue. He took a deep breath. “In my dream, Cassian was in trouble. He’s my brother, my closest friend, I couldn’t just do nothing. I offered myself as an alternative. Cass is so good, so much better than me. I guess I just thought
 he deserves to live,” he paused, “more than I do.” he finished, and it took everything in you not to break down right in front of him.
“Azriel,” your tone was firm. “You are good. So good. You are amazing, and so so loved. And I know it was just a dream
 but our thoughts influence them, and they influence us. Please believe me when I say you do not deserve to die in the place of someone else because it would be better, or because you are not good enough. You are.” Tears were threatening to pool in your eyes. Azriel was one of your closest friends, and your life would be incomplete without him in it. You lifted your hand to caress his cheek, pouring comfort and reassurance through your touch.
He nodded. “Thank you,” he said again. “For waking me up, and for your words. And for the food,” he added after a small pause. You gave him a small smile, and he returned it. You got up to leave, wanting to take a hot bath and change, but he stopped you. “Can you
can you stay, maybe?” he asked. You grinned, how could you not? You loved his awkwardness.
“Yes. But under conditions.” He waited for you to continue. “I stink, so I’m going to take a bath. And then I’ll come back in, okay? Give me thirty minutes.” he nodded once again.
You made your way to your room, plate of food and glass of water in hand. You quickly bathed, and ate, then changed into your sleeping clothes. You weren't going to lie to yourself, either. You were glad Az asked you to stay in his room. Both of you calmed each other down in a way no one else could. This was not the first time you had slept in each other's beds, either. Your relationship was strictly platonic, but Azriel’s cuddles were unmatched, and you always seemed to sleep better in his presence, the same going for him.
Once you were done bathing and changing, you made your way back to the Shadowsinger’s room. He had changed the sheets of his bed, and was now wearing a shirt. He sat propped against his headboard reading a book. You made sure to close the door behind you, then made your way over to his bed. You pulled the blankets back and crawled in, snuggling right into the side of him. He dog-eared his page in the book (an act that almost made you get back up and leave) and set it on his night stand. He sank down into his bed and wrapped his arms around you. And there you both slept, peacefully, dreaming of absolutely nothing.
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daydreamgoddess14 · 2 months ago
Note
I just wanted to say I absolutely adore your writing for River and thank you so much for providing us all with much needed River content!!
If you’re happy taking nsfw requests, I was wondering if you’d be up for writing a nsfw River x female!reader insert, where after a really shitty day, River wants to help make his girl feel good/take her mind off her day, by spending the evening going down on her? I mean
 have you seen the guy’s mouth?! He’s always doing something with his tongue and I just think he’d look so pretty looking up at you from between your thighs
 đŸ«Ł
If prompts would help
 “I told you, you would eventually start begging.” “I can never seem to get enough of you.” and “that's it, babygirl.”
Zero pressure to do this btw!! I completely understand if isn’t something you’d want to write!
Bad Day
Phewwww, did someone turn up the heat? đŸ”„
I loved this ask sooo much, you all probably heard my furious tippy tapping as I immediately opened a new doc to write this 😅
I hope I've done your request justice, lovely Anon! Thank you so much for asking me, I'm so honoured đŸ„°
As above - River Cartwright x F!Reader Insert (no use of y/n, l/n) plenty of plenty of sexy fun - enjoy!
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If you had to look at another spreadsheet, your brain would explode. You were certain of it. 
The poor cleaner. 
She wasn't cut out for bits of skull and pulpy brain matter. 
The pinchy, spiking shards of a headache were forming behind your eyes, you knew it was time to go home (even if it wasn't quite). The office was deathly quiet, everyone choosing to work from home on a Friday in order to enjoy their weekend just that little bit sooner. 
No one raised an objection when you started packing up. 
Close the laptop, wash your mug, pop to the loo, pack your stuff. 
The flurry of messages on your phone suggest River's not had a taxing afternoon, while your lack of response has him correctly guessing that it's been a shitty day. 
You fire off a quick on my way home message and drop your phone into the top of your bag, the glare isn't helping the headache.
The tube is typical Friday levels of horrific. Tourists descending by the train load, ready for a weekend of West End shows and sightseeing. 
The train lurching from side to side makes you queasy and in hindsight, you definitely should have drunk more water throughout the day. 
Climbing the stairs to the flat feels like climbing a mountain. 
God, you hope it's River's turn to cook. 
If it's not, you're getting straight on the phone to Loretta at the Italian round the corner.
The narrow hallway is pitch black when you push open the door, you sound like a bull in an antique shop trying to squeeze yourself, your laptop bag, handbag and coat through the door.
“Ugh, fucks sake,” you dump everything on the floor as soon as you're clear of the hall. “River?”
“In here,” you're about to follow the sound of his voice to the open plan kitchen living area when you spot the first candle, then the second.
There's a path of them lighting the way. 
Your heels click lightly on the hardwood floor as you approach. 
He's waiting - with a glass of wine - and after the day you've had, you could cry. 
He must see the wobble of your bottom lip because he puts the glass down and slips an arm around your waist. 
His large hand is flat on the small of your back as he pulls you towards him. 
“What happened?” He asks softly, his lips on your hairline. 
“Just too many meetings, too much going on. My head is pounding.” You sigh. It all seems fairly unimportant now that it's over. Fuss over nothing. River's hand travels down over the curve of your ass, poured into the tight pencil skirt. He squeezes lightly. 
“No dress down day for you. Have I told you how much I love this skirt?” The blush creeps from your cheeks down into the neckline of your shirt. 
The hard edge of the bad day is softening slowly. 
He offers his hand, knowing your next request like clockwork. You allow him to keep you steady while you kick off your heels, banishing them out of your sight. 
“Much better,” you murmur. 
The height difference is much greater now, it means you can bury your face into his chest.
The cotton of his t-shirt is warm and soft against your skin and his long arms wrap around you. 
You breathe in deeply. 
“I probably smell like Lamb's cigarette smoke.” You shake your head against him
“You smell like you. Like home.” You loosen your arms and look up at him. “You hungry? I'll call Lorie and get some pasta?” In the candlelight, there's a twinkle in his eye. 
“I'm definitely hungry, babe, but -”
“Not pasta? How about one of those giant calzones?” You go to move out of his arms but they tighten around you, keeping you close to him.
“Still not what I'm thinking,” his fingertips go to the high waist of your skirt, finding the hidden zip and sliding it down. 
While you're distracted by his hands, his mouth is finally on yours and he's walking you backwards towards the bedroom.
When the skirt slips to the floor, River's careful to guide you so you don't trip over it. 
“What're you up to, Cartwright?” You ask quietly, not moving your lips from his.
“Just trying to improve your shitty day.” His nose brushes against yours. 
“Haven't you had a rubbish one too?” You query, the backs of your knees bumping against the edge of the bed. He shrugs.
“I get to improve my day as well then, don't I?” 
With the lightest of pushes against your hip, you drop down onto the bed. 
“Arms up.” He instructs, pulling your blouse over your head. “And budge up a bit,” you shuffle obligingly up the bed and lie back contentedly against the heap of pillows.
“Don’t forget the candles,” you murmur as you feel his knee dip the bed between your own. His laugh makes you smile. “I’m serious, River. Do not burn down our flat.” He pinches his tongue between his teeth.
“Yeah ok. Make yourself comfortable,” he warns as he hops back off the bed.
“Why’s that?”
“Because I’m going to keep you there all night?” He poses it as a question but the smirk on his face suggests it’s definitely not up for negotiation.
“Oh,” the blush returns. 
He never fails to knock you off guard.
The candles, the adoration. 
It took a little while for him to grasp that you loved him, that you wanted to show him how loved he was.
Once it clicked with him though, there was no stopping him. 
He returns quickly, with a handful of the candles which he dots around the room, and your wine. He must have been home much earlier than you, he’s already dressed down in soft gym shorts and a plain t-shirt. His hair ruffled from the shower and still a little damp.
“Now that we’ve established I’m not going to burn the flat down,”
“It was kind of a priority.” You counter. 
His knee has found the gap between yours and he’s crawling up the bed to you. 
A predator trapping his prey. Though predator would not be the word you’d use to describe him at all currently. 
“Agreed,” he told you sincerely. “So now that’s sorted,” his hand snakes behind your back to unclasp your bra, “you should know that I intend to fully take your mind off your shitty day.” The headache is duller now, just being around him is working wonders in soothing you. 
“How do you propose to do that then?” You tease playfully.
He sits back on his heels, pulling the straps of your bra down your arms. 
With it discarded, he traps you again with one arm either side of your waist and his hands pinned to the bed. 
He leans into you, gazing intently at your tired eyes before kissing you gently.
“Just let me take care of you.” You melt into the kiss, your arms coming up to loop around his neck, trying to pull him down on top of you. 
He resists, keeping his weight on his hands which haven’t left the bed. 
The only move he makes is to run a finger down the side of your breast to your waist, tickling you into letting go of him. With a little huff, you acquiesce. 
He clearly has intentions and won’t be swayed. 
“Good girl.” He chuckles. Your thighs try to press together at the praise but his knee is in the way and feeling your legs tighten against him only makes him laugh more. 
He nudges your knees further apart and gets comfortable pressing firm kisses in a line from your throat down between your breasts.
“River -” you plead.
“Yes, love?” He looks up from your body, his annoyingly gorgeous smile perfectly framed by your pebbled nipples. “Oh,” they seem to distract him from what you were about to say and when he rolls his tongue around one of them, you forget what you were about to say. 
He doesn’t let you gather your thoughts, just continues to move down your body until he’s level with your plain black knickers. “You were saying?” He stops just as your back arches off the bed in an attempt to get closer to him.
“No idea. Please -” you whine, wiggling just a little.
“Please?” His breath ghosts over your core and it makes your cunt ache with wanting. “I think you can do better than that,” he nudges his nose against you, the cotton of your knickers providing the tiniest amount of friction on your clit.
“Ohh, River -”
“Yes, love?” 
“I need -” you breathe, wiggling a little more brazenly. 
He rests his chin on your thigh and looks up at you.
“Go on?” He asks with a wicked grin, earning him a glare from you in response.
“I want you.”
“I know, babe.” 
He hooks his fingers in the waistband of your knickers and tugs at them slowly. 
They slip down, millimeter by millimeter. 
“Tell me what you want?” 
Your patience may be wearing thin, but he’s enjoying every second of stringing you along. 
True to his word you’ve completely forgotten about your headache and your bad day. 
“I can never seem to get enough of you,” he tells you, his eyes not leaving yours. 
His warm hand pulls your underwear further down and guides your legs out of them. He’s managed to remove every item of your clothing without losing a single piece of his own. 
Watching you, the point of his tongue traces a circle around your throbbing clit. 
He hooks an arm over your thigh to hold you close to him.
“River
 River please -” you sigh, desperate for more of his touch.
“Please what, babe?” If you were in any position to argue, you still probably wouldn’t. 
Impatient or not, he knows what he’s doing to you, and he knows how much you love it.
“God, River. I’ll kill you.”
“Nah, you won’t,” he sniggers. “I’ve got all night, you know? Don’t rush on my account.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“I know I can get you to beg, however long it takes.”
“You’re cruel.”
“That’s a bit harsh. Anyway, you’re distracting me, I’ve got something very important going on here,” without further warning, he presses the flat of his tongue against your slit and glides a path through your folds. 
“Fuck, River!” You shudder against him, “please, please -” he doesn’t respond, far too busy watching you writhe and arch under his grip as he fucks you with his tongue. 
When you finally open your eyes again, you meet his gaze and you can tell he’s not as unaffected as he makes out to be. You hold eye contact while you grind against his mouth, his own hips rutting into the bed in response as he hungrily devours you. 
You can’t hold out any longer, you’ll happily beg for more if that’s what he wants from you. 
“God, please River, please. I need you to fuck me,” 
He grins against you. “I told you you’d eventually start begging.” He buries his face back into your dripping cunt, building you up again until your legs shake and you’re pushed, wailing, over the edge.
“Oh, god -”
“That’s it, baby. Another.” It’s not a question, it’s a demand. 
Your hands tangle in his hair as he goes back to your overstimulated, swollen clit and wraps his lips around it, sucking gently. 
It’s enough to have you seeing stars. 
This time, he works two fingers inside you, pumping them languidly and letting them brush against your g-spot. So close to your first orgasm, the second doesn’t take long to approach.
“You’ve got it babe, let me make you feel good,” he coaches you softly as your thighs clamp around his hand. You’ve lost all ability to speak, his name tumbles from your lips in snatches and gasps as the walls of your cunt constrict around his long fingers. He lets you down gently, withdrawing his hand and mouth slowly when you finally unclench your legs. 
“That’s my girl,” he mutters, leaving as many kisses on the way back up the length of your body as he did on the way down. “You ok?” he asks, coming to lay next to you. 
You can feel the length of him pressed against your hip and, despite being exhausted, the thought of having his cock split you open is appealing. 
You shake your head a little, a hand shyly covering your eyes. “Don’t know,” you manage to croak.
“How’s the headache?” He kisses your temple.
“Gone,” you move your hand, not wanting to hide from him. “Thank you,” you whisper with a small grin.
“Anything for you.” He stretches his long body out, his own arousal still evident.
“Anything?” You ask, palming his hard cock through his shorts.
“And here I thought you’d have no energy left,” he groaned, rocking into your hand.  
“I can never seem to get enough of you,” you mimic his earlier words and roll onto him, up on to your knees. 
Your still soaked pussy leaves a damp patch on his shorts and the heat radiates from your core. 
You tug his shorts down and the length of him springs free. 
You mouth waters, and though you’d love to feel the weight of him on your tongue, you need him to fill you up. 
You line up against him, spread your knees wide and sink down onto him.
“Fucking hell, River,” your head tips back as your tight, hot cunt stretches around him.
“Fuck,” he bucks up into you, making you gasp. “When I die
”
“Shut up,” you laugh, leaning down to kiss him. You still taste yourself on his tongue and the flashback it triggers makes you grind down onto his cock. “Silly boy.”
“I’m serious, when I go, this is what I’ll be thinking about.” He sits up, filling you even more deeply. You pull his t-shirt off him and he holds you tightly against him. With no space between your bodies, the friction is divine. 
He doesn’t give you space to ride him but rolling your hips against him feels much closer to what you both need anyway. 
He rests his forehead against yours, his piercing blue eyes filled with love. You cup his cheek and kiss him.
“Come for me, love,” you whisper, feeling the muscles in his back tense. The hands that grip your hips hard enough to leave a mark move, and he brings his thumb to your mouth. You take it between your lips, leaving a trail of saliva behind when he takes it back and presses it to your clit.
“Not without you,” he rasps. You rock desperately into him, your own orgasm triggering as you feel him emptying into you. You slump against him, amazed he still has the strength to hold you both up. He doesn’t for long and pulls you down on top of him.
“Holy shit, River.” You pant breathlessly.
“You need talk.” 
You curl against him, the candlelight fading. Sleep is threatening to take you, but is interrupted by your rumbling stomach. 
“We should get some food.” You mutter sleepily into his chest. You try to snuggle in closer but he moves away, leaving you frowning. “Where’re you going?” He pulls on his t-shirt and shorts as the doorbell rings.
“Food. I called Loretta before you got home, asked her to send something over for about 8ish.” 
You stare after him as he leaves you with a quick wink. 
The boy really did know how to fix a bad day.
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footballlover8 · 1 year ago
Note
y/n wearing a short skirt and getting Pedro’s attention - he can’t keep his hands to himself
Short Skirt||Pedri Gonzalez
A/N: I’m so sorry this took such a long time! School just started for me again so I’ve been a little busy and I didn’t know how too begin it. I’m sorry it got a little out of theme, but I still hope you like it❀
Requested?:Yes/No
Warnings: Suggestive content, cursing?, bad translated spanish.
Please remember that English nor Spanish is not my native language so there defines will be some typos.
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"Pepi! Come here please!" Y/n yelled slightly so Pedri could come in and help her tie her top.
When he comes in he opens the door. His eyes wandered over her body, with his mouth wide open. If he had it open for a second longer he'd start drooling.
"Mi hermosa bebe...eres tan perfecta" He whispered softly as he walked over too her kissing her head.
(My beautiful baby...you're so perfect)
She blushed slightly at his compliment.
"What did you need princesa..? If I know you correctly you didn't exactly want me too rip this outfit off of you right before we're going out no..?" He teased, his finger tips moving along her exposed waist, making shivers run down her spine.
"Pepi...stoppp" She whined trying too push him away, this made a light chuckle escape his mouth.
"Okey but seriously what was it baby?" He asked her
"Can you tie my top please...?"
He didn't answer but turned her around in his arms and tied her top. He kissed her shoulder once he was done.
"There you go preciosa"
"Gracias" She bit her lip softly.
"Don't do that amor...you know it drives me crazy" pedri's thumb brushed over her bottom lip.
"Y/n! Pedri! We have too go!" Fer, pedri's older brother yelled from downstairs. They were going to a little summer get together with a few friends and teammates.
Pedri was dressed in a plain white t-shirt on top of that he wore a light blue button up shirt with all the buttons undone. He had some black loose jeans and some white basic Nike Air Force.(For reference, the picture on top)
"Fernando! Stop yelling!" Pedri yelled back.
"Now you're yelling pedrito" She giggles.
"Preciosa...you're adorable" Pedri stood there admiring her.
"STOP HAVING SEX AND COME ON!"
"FERNANDO SHUT YOUR MOUTH!"
In the car Pedri refused too sit in the front with Fernando something he usually did but this was intense.
His big, strong hand never left her thigh, it didn't annoy her...in fact it kinda turned her on. The black shiny ring on his ring finger making her go feral for him.
"Do we seriously have too go too this thing...?" Pedri asked making fer roll his eyes.
"Just because you want too have sex Pedri doesn't mean we don't want to have fun in other ways" fer rolled his eyes at his younger brother.
"You don't have too be so dirty fer, who says I wanted too have sex? Like grow up" Pedri answered making both his girlfriend and his older brother look at him with a 'be Ffr' typa look.
"You're funny" Fer laughs as he parks the car and gets out.
"Can we just go home again mi amor..? You just look so irresistible" Pedri caressed her cheek making her go soft for him. She tilts her head slightly into his hand. He smiles knowing she was giving in now. He just needed a few more secon-
"Stop making out come on guys!" Gavi suddenly opened the door straddling the two mostly her as she was very easily scared.
"Gavi! She could've hit you! Or me.." Pedri yelled in annoyance
"I was expecting a 'she could've died' but that works too" Gavi shrugged.
Pedri rolled his eyes getting out of the car then helping his girlfriend out of the car.
"How's your teeth?" The blonde haired girl asked her best friend as they walked inside the house where the little party or whatever was held.
"So much better. I'm so glad it wasn't something big...the dentist just gave me some medicine and the pain stopped" Gavi says shocked
"Wow...that's amazing gavi" Pedri says enthusiastically. It was obvious that gavi was a little tipsy.
"I know right!?"
The young couple shook their head at the boy.
"He literally acts younger than you" Pedri tells her earning a slap on the arm from her.
"Y/n! pedri!" Ferran yelled happy too see his friends in his drunken state.
"Jesus why’s everyone so drunk already?" She asked Pedri.
"Should've stayed home Huh Bonita?"
"Y/n!" mikky yelled seeing her best friend
"Mikky!" She yelled back hugging the older girl
The two girls started talking but Pedri didn't leave her side at all. He stood behind her shielding her ass for anyone who tries too look at it. His hands kept moving up and down her waist.
"Mikky!" Frenkie yelled drunkily.
"I'll go take care of him you two have fun" mikky waved walking over too frenkie.
You turned in your boyfriends arms too look up at him.
"You're so touchy today"
"When am I not?" He asked furrowing his eyebrows.
"Fair enough" She shrugged.
“okey pedri! Stop being so territorial of her! We want her too!" Anna groaned trying too drag you away from him, but with the grip he had on your waist it was impossible.
"Sorry...not happening...she's mine"Pedri shook his head.
"Come on! Two minutes!" Anna complained.
"1 minute!" Pedri groaned letting go of his girlfriends waist.
She giggled and kissed his cheek before walking away with Anna and over too the small girl group.
Pedri was literally counting the seconds and as soon as he counted too 60 pedri walked over too them and picked her up and carried her away from them.
"Hey!" You yelled surprised.
"Yeah..?" Pedri asked setting you down in front of him.
" Yeah?" You mocked slapping his chest carefully, not too hurt him.
"Yeah, yeah" Pedri shushed her.
"You look gorgeous mi princesita" He kissed your head.
"Gracias pepi..." She blushed as he smirked.
"Niña! It's your song!" Taia yelled and that's when you noticed it was in fact your song...but pedri's hands on your body was a little distracting....
Taia, mikky, Anna, Katrina and Dani dragged you over too the dance floor. This obviously annoyed Pedri.
"Come on! Dance!" Anna encouraged taking her hands into her owns, trying too get her too dance. Only a second later her body moved a long too the Rhythm of the song 'beautiful liar'.
The girls had given the song title too her because she lied too everyone about her and pedri's relationship until they were caught in a heated moment....
Pedri watched her intensely, his eyes following her every movement...the ones that seconds ago was filled with love were now filled with lust and desire. He wanted her..no...he needed her, now.
"Hermano...unless you wanna get papped with whatever is going on down there I'd suggest leaving with your girl" Fernando told Pedri which made Pedri look down and blush as he saw the little problem he had going on there.
"Yeah...good idea" Pedri groaned looking at his girlfriend dancing...her tispy body looking so beautiful...so precious...
"NinĂŁ...I think someone wants too go home" mikky smirks seeing Pedri looking at her with lust. Y/n looks over at him and giggles walking over too him slinging her arms around his neck while his went around her bottom holding her up.
"Hi.."
"Hey pretty girl..you enjoying yourself Hmm..?" Pedri asked teasingly.
"Only a little" She joked back.
Pedri laughed shaking his head
"You wanna go home Hmm...?" He asked pushing some strands of hair behind her air looking into her shiny eyes.
"Yeah.." she nodded, pedri eagerly picked her up and carried her too the car
(I guess you can guess what happens nextđŸ€­đŸ˜‰)
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a-memory-a-distant-echo · 7 months ago
Text
it's time for the long-threatened post about how to get subtitles (including translated ones) for videos that don't have subtitles.
in my experience, the methods in this post can probably get you solidly 75% or more of the content of many videos (caveats inside). i've tested this on videos that are originally in chinese, english, french, german, hindi, japanese, korean, spanish, and honestly probably some languages that i'm forgetting. my experience is that it works adequately in all of them. not great, necessarily, but well enough that you can probably follow along.
this is a very long post because this is the overexplaining things website, and because i talk about several different ways to get the captions. this isn't actually difficult, though, or even especially time consuming—the worst of it is pushing a button and ignoring things for a while. actual hands-on work is probably five minutes tops, no matter how long the video is.
i've attempted to format this post understandably, and i hope it's useful to someone.
first up, some disclaimers.
this is just my experience with things, and your experience might be different. the tools used for (and available for) this kind of thing change all the time, and if you're reading this six months after i wrote it, your options might be different. this post is probably still a decent starting place.
background about my biases in this: i work in the creative industries. mostly i'm a fiction editor. i've also been a writer, a technical editor and writer, a transcriptionist, a copyeditor, and something i've seen called a 'translation facilitator' or 'rewrite editor', where something is translated fairly literally (by a person or a machine) and then a native speaker of the target language goes through and rewrites/restructures as needed to make the piece read more naturally in the target language. i've needed to get information out of business meetings that were conducted in a language i didn't speak, and have done a lot of work on things that were written in (or translated into) the writer's second or sixth language, but needed to be presented in natural english.
so to start, most importantly: machine translation is never going to be as good as a translation done by an actual human. human translators can reflect cultural context and nuanced meanings and the artistry of the work in a way that machines will never be able to emulate. that said, if machine translation is your only option, it's better than nothing. i also find it really useful for videos in languages where i have enough knowledge that i'm like, 75% sure that i'm mostly following, and just want something that i can glance at to confirm that.
creating subs like this relies heavily on voice-to-text, which—unfortunately—works a lot better in some situations than it does in others. you'll get the best, cleanest results from videos that have slow, clear speech in a 'neutral' accent, and only one person speaking at a time. (most scripted programs fall into this category, as do many vlogs and single-person interviews.) the results will get worse as voices speed up, overlap more, and vary in volume. that said, i've used this to get captions for cast concerts, reality shows, and variety shows, and the results are imperfect but solidly readable, especially if you have an idea of what's happening in the plot and/or can follow along even a little in the broadcast language.
this also works best when most of the video is in a single language, and you select that language first. the auto detect option sometimes works totally fine, but in my experience there's a nonzero chance that it'll at least occasionally start 'detecting' random other languages in correctly, or someone will say a few words in spanish or whatever, but the automatic detection engine will keep trying to translate from spanish for another three minutes, even tho everything's actually in korean. if there's any way to do so, select the primary language, even if it means that you miss a couple sentences that are in a different language.
two places where these techniques don't work, or don't work without a lot of manual effort on your part: translating words that appear on the screen (introductions, captions, little textual asides, etc), and music. if you're incredibly dedicated, you can do this and add it manually yourself, but honestly, i'm not usually this dedicated. getting captions for the words on the screen will involve either actually editing the video or adding manually translated content to the subs, which is annoying, and lyrics are...complicated. it's possible, and i'm happy to talk about it in another post if anyone is interested, but for the sake of this post, let's call it out of scope, ok? ok. bring up the lyrics on your phone and call it good enough.
places where these techniques are not great: names. it's bad with names. names are going to be mangled. resign yourself to it now. also, in languages that don't have strongly gendered speech, you're going to learn some real fun stuff about the way that the algorithms gender things. (spoiler: not actually fun.) bengali, chinese, and turkish are at least moderately well supported for voice-to-text, but you will get weird pronouns about it.
obligatory caveat about ai and voice-to-text functionality. as far as i'm aware, basically every voice-to-text function is ~ai powered~. i, a person who has spent twenty years working in the creative industries, have a lot of hate for generative ai, and i'm sure that many of you do, too. however, if voice-to-text (or machine translation software) that doesn't rely on it exists anymore, i'm not aware of it.
what we're doing here is the same as what douyin/tiktok/your phone's voice-to-text does, using the same sorts of technology. i mention this because if you look at the tools mentioned in this post, at least some of them will be like 'our great ai stuff lets you transcribe things accurately', and i want you to know why. chat gpt (etc) are basically glorified predictive text, right? so for questions, they're fucking useless, but for things like machine transcription and machine translation, those predictions make it more likely that you get the correct words for things that could have multiple translations, or for words that the software can only partially make out. it's what enables 'he has muscles' vs 'he has mussels', even though muscles and mussels are generally pronounced the same way. i am old enough to have used voice to text back when it was called dictation software, and must grudgingly admit that this is, in fact, much better.
ok! disclaimers over.
let's talk about getting videos
for the most part, this post will assume that you have a video file and nothing else. cobalt.tools is the easiest way i'm aware of to download videos from most sources, though there are other (more robust) options if you're happy to do it from the command line. i assume most people are not, and if you are, you probably don't need this guide anyhow.
i'm going to use 'youtube' as the default 'get a video from' place, but generally speaking, most of this works with basically any source that you can figure out how to download from—your bilibili downloads and torrents and whatever else will work the same way. i'm shorthanding things because this post is already so so long.
if the video you're using has any official (not autogenerated) subtitles that aren't burned in, grab that file, too, regardless of the language. starting from something that a human eye has looked over at some point is always going to give you better results. cobalt.tools doesn't pull subtitles, but plugging the video url into downsub or getsubs and then downloading the srt option is an easy way to get them for most places. (if you use downsub, it'll suggest that you download the full video with subtitles. that's a link to some other software, and i've never used it, so i'm not recommending it one way or the other. the srts are legit, tho.)
the subtitle downloaders also have auto translation options, and they're often (not always) no worse than anything else that we're going to do here—try them and see if they're good enough for your purposes. unfortunately, this only works for things that already have subtitles, which is
not that many things, honestly. so let's move on.
force-translating, lowest stress mode.
this first option is kind of a cheat, but who cares. youtube will auto-caption things in some languages (not you, chinese) assuming that the uploader has enabled it. as ever, the quality is kinda variable, and the likelihood that it's enabled at all seems to vary widely, but if it is, you're in for a much easier time of things, because you turn it on, select whatever language you want it translated to, and youtube
does its best, anyhow.
if you're a weird media hoarder like me and you want to download the autogenerated captions, the best tool that i've found for this is hyprscribr. plug in the video url, select 'download captions via caption grabber', then go to the .srt data tab, copy it out, and paste it into a text file. save this as [name of downloaded video].[language code].srt, and now you have captions! 
that you need to translate, which is actually easy. if it's a short video, just grab the text, throw it in google translate (timestamps and all), and then paste the output into a new text file. so if you downloaded cooking.mp4, which is in french, you'll have three files: cooking.mp4, cooking.fr.srt, and cooking.en.srt. this one's done! it's easy! you're free!
but yeah, ok, most stuff isn't quite that easy, and auto-captioning has to be enabled, and it has some very obvious gaps in the langauges it supports. which is sort of weird, because my phone actually has pretty great multilingual support, even for things that youtube does not. which brings us to low-stress force translation option two.
use your phone
this seems a little obvious, but i've surprised several people with this information recently, so just in case. for this option, you don't even need to have downloaded the video—if it's a video you can play on your phone, the phone will almost definitely attempt real-time translation for you. i'm sure iphones have this ability, but i'm an android person, so can only provide directions for that: go into settings and search for (and enable) live translation. the phone will do its best to pick up what's being said and translate it on the fly for you, and if 'what's being said' is a random video on the internet, your phone isn't gonna ask questions. somewhat inexplicably, this works even if the video is muted. i do this a lot at like four a.m. when i'm too lazy to grab earbuds but don't want to wake up my wife.
this is the single least efficient way to force sub/translate things, in my opinion, but it's fast and easy, and really useful for those videos that are like a minute long and probably not that interesting, but like
what if it is, you know? sometimes i'll do this to decide if i'm going to bother more complicated ways of translating things.
similarly—and i feel silly even mentioning this, but that i didn't think of it for an embarrassingly long time—if you're watching something on a device with speakers, you can try just
opening the 'translate' app on your phone. they all accept voice input. like before, it'll translate whatever it picks up.
neither of these methods are especially useful for longer videos, and in my experience, the phone-translation option generally gives the least accurate translation, because in attempting to do things in real time, you lose some of the predicative ability that i was talking about earlier. (filling in the blank for 'he has [muscles/mussels]' is a lot harder if you don't know if the next sentence is about the gym or about dinner.)
one more lazy way
this is more work than the last few options, but often gives better results. with not much effort, you can feed a video playing on your computer directly into google translate. there's a youtube video by yosef k that explains it very quickly and clearly. this will probably give you better translation output than any of the on-the-fly phone things described above, but it won't give you something that you can use as actual subs—it just produces text output that you can read while you watch the video. again, though, really useful for things that you're not totally convinced you care about, or for things where there aren't a lot of visuals, or for stuff where you don't care about keeping your eyes glued to the screen.
but probably you want to watch stuff on the screen at the same time.
let's talk about capcut!
this is probably not a new one for most people, but using it like this is a little weird, so here we go. ahead of time: i'm doing this on an actual computer. i think you probably can do it on your phone, but i have no idea how, and honestly this is already a really long guide so i'm not going to figure it out right now. download capcut and put it on an actual computer. i'm sorry.
anyhow. open up capcut, click new project. import the file that you downloaded, and then drag it down to the editing area. go over to captions, auto captions, and select the spoken language. if you want bilingual captions, pick the language for that, as well, and the captions will be auto-translated into whatever the second language you choose is. (more notes on this later.)
if i remember right, this is the point at which you get told that you can't caption a video that's more than an hour long. however. you have video editing software, and it is open. split the video in two pieces and caption them separately. problem solved.
now the complicated part: saving these subs. (don't panic; it's not actually that complicated.) as everyone is probably aware, exporting captions is a premium feature, and i dunno about the rest of you, but i'm unemployed, so let's assume that's not gonna happen.
the good news is that since you've generated the captions, they're already saved to your computer, they're just kinda secret right now. there are a couple ways to dig them out, but the easiest i'm aware of is the biyaoyun srt generator. you'll have to select the draft file of your project, which is auto-saved once a minute or something. the website tells you where the file is saved by default on your computer. (i realised after writing this entire post that they also have a step-by-step tutorial on how to generate the subtitles, with pictures, so if you're feeling lost, you can check that out here.)
select the project file titled 'draft_content', then click generate. you want the file name to be the same as the video name, and again, i'd suggest srt format, because it seems to be more broadly compatible with media players. click 'save to local' and you now have a subtitle file!
translating your subtitles
you probably still need to translate the subtitles. there are plenty of auto-translation options out there. many of them are fee- or subscription-based, or allow a very limited number of characters, or are like 'we provide amazing free translations' and then in the fine print it says that they provide these translations through the magic of uhhhh google translate. so we're just going to skip to google translate, which has the bonus of being widely available and free.
for shorter video, or one that doesn't have a ton of spoken stuff, you can just copy/paste the contents of the .srt file into the translation software of your choice. the web version of google translate will do 5000 characters in one go, as will systran. that's the most generous allocation that i'm aware of, and will usually get you a couple minutes of video.
the timestamps eat up a ton of characters, though, so for anything longer than a couple minutes, it's easier to upload the whole thing, and google translate is the best for that, because it is, to my knowledge, the only service that allows you to do it. to upload the whole file, you need a .doc or .rtf file.
an .srt file is basically just a text file, so you can just open it in word (or gdocs or whatever), save it as a .doc, and then feed it through google translate. download the output, open it, and save it as an .srt.
you're done! you now have your video and a subtitle file in the language of your choice.
time for vibe, the last option in this post.
vibe is a transcription app (not a sex thing, even tho it sounds like one), and it will also auto-translate the transcribed words to english, if you want.
open vibe and select your file, then select the language. if you want it translated to english, hit advanced and toggle 'translate to english'. click translate and wait a while. after a few minutes (or longer, depending on how long the file is), you'll get the text. the save icon is a folder with a down arrow on it, and i understand why people are moving away from tiny floppy disks, but also: i hate it. anyhow, save the output, and now you have your subs file, which you can translate or edit or whatever, as desired.
vibe and capcom sometimes get very different results. vibe seems to be a little bit better at picking up overlapping speech, or speech when there are other noises happening; capcom seems to be better at getting all the worlds in a sentence. i feel like capcom maybe has a slightly better translation engine, of the two of them, but i usually end up just doing the translation separately. again, it can be worth trying both ways and seeing which gives better results.
special notes about dual/bilingual subs
first: i know that bilingual subs are controversial. if you think they're bad, you don't have to use them! just skip this section.
as with everything else, automatically generating gives mixed results. sometimes the translations are great, and sometimes they're not. i like having dual subs, but for stuff that Matters To Me, for whatever reason, i'll usually generate both just the original and a bilingual version, and then try some other translation methods on the original or parts thereof to see what works best.
not everything displays bilingual subs very well. plex and windows media player both work great, vlc and the default video handler on ubuntu only display whatever the first language is, etc. i'm guessing that if you want dual subbed stuff you already have a system for it.
i'll also point out that if you want dual subs and have gone a route other than capcom, you can create dual subs by pasting the translated version and the untranslated version into a single file. leave the timestamps as they are, delete the line numbers if there are any (sometimes they seem to cause problems when you have dual subs, and i haven't figured out why) and then literally just paste the whole sub file for the first language into a new file. then paste in the whole sub file for the second language. yes, as a single chunk, the whole thing, right under the first language's subs. save the file as [video name].[zh-en].srt (or whatever), and use it like any other sub file.
notes on translation, especially since we're talking about lengthy machine-translations of things.
i default to translation options that allow for translating in large chunks, mostly because i'm lazy. but since an .srt is, again, literally just a text file, they're easy to edit, and if you feel like some of the lines are weird or questionable or whatever, it's easy to change them if you can find a better translation.
so: some fast notes on machine translation options, because i don't know how much time most people spend thinking about this kind of stuff.
one sort of interesting thing to check out is the bing translator. it'll only do 1000 characters at once, but offers the rather interesting option of picking a level of formality. i can't always get it to work, mind, but it's useful especially for times when you're like 'this one line sounds weird'—sometimes the difference between what the translator feels is standard vs formal vs casual english will make a big difference.
very fast illustration of the difference in translations. the random video that i used to make sure i didn't miss any steps explaining things starts with 'æ‰€ä»„äœ çŹŹäșŒć­Łæ„'. here's how it got translated:
google: So you come to season 2
google's top alternative: So you come in the second season
bing's standard tone: So here you come for the second season
bing set to casual: So you're coming for the second season, huh?
reverso default guess: So you come in season two
reverso alternate guess: You'll be participating in season two
capcom: So you come in season two
yandex: So you come in the second season
systran: That's why you come in season two
deepl: That's why you're here in season two
vibe: So your second season is here
technically all conveying the same information, but the vibes are very different. sometimes one translator or another will give you a clearly superior translation, so if you feel like the results you're getting are kinda crap, try running a handful of lines through another option and see if it's better.
ok! this was an incredibly long post, and i've almost definitely explained something poorly. again, there are almost certainly better ways to do this, but these ways are free and mostly effective, and they work most of the time, and are better than nothing.
feel free to ask questions and i'll answer as best i can. (the answer to any questions about macs or iphones is 'i'm so sorry, i have no idea tho.' please do not ask those questions.)
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writingquestionsanswered · 7 months ago
Text
Struggling to Focus on Plot vs Everything
Anonymous asked: I'm currently outlining (whilst still figuring out my plot and everything), but I keep getting sidetracked. My brain is trying to plant seeds to help me figure out the overall story, but it's distracting me from getting the main story line plotted out because instead I'm trying to come up with every possible scenario for why things happen. This method is exhausting, though, and I'd rather have a solid story line first, then flesh it out from there. Ultimately, I feel like I need to figure out my story's timeline and the main events, because I want that all sorted before I tackle how the characters experience it. It's just really overwhelming and when I try to pluck out the big pieces, they crumble into smaller pieces.
[Ask, and subsequent ask, edited for length and content]
So, if I understand correctly, it seems like part of you just wants to get down the actual plot of the story, but when you try, you end up delving into all these deeper background details?
What I'm thinking is this: if you're able to, I would start by doing what I think of as a "holistic summary" of your story... sort of like a brain dump but in general chronological order from beginning to end. It doesn't have to be perfect... you can backtrack, jump around a little, and go on tangents as needed. The point is to just get down as much of the story as you know... and as much as your brain will want to flesh out in real time... just to get it out of your head.
Sometimes, just getting it all out of your head on paper in one single container can help free up your brain to focus on the backbone of your story... the actual framework all of those details need to adhere to.
Another thing that might help, if you haven't done this already, is to look for a story structure template to help you tease out the story. There are loads of them out there from Save the Cat Writes a Novel! to Larry Brooks Story Structure, Three-Act Story Structure, the Snowflake Method, The Hero's Journey, Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet, Derek Murphy's 24 Chapter Outline, Gwen Hayes' Romancing the Beat, Shawn Coyne's Story Grid, The Seven Point Plot Structure, Dan Harmon's Story Circle, The Five-Act Structure, James Scott Bell's A Disturbance and Two Doorways, Kishƍtenketsu Structure, Story Spine, and a bajillion others... The key to using a story structure template is to know it doesn't have to be followed exactly. They're not there as molds to cram your story into... they're more like "suggested itineraries" for a road trip. This is an ideal route with some popular stops along the way, but you may wish to alter the route slightly or make some different stops. Many writers actually use bits and pieces of different templates to suit their needs or the needs of their story.
Sometimes, just choosing a random template to tease out your main plot can be enough to help you see exactly what the main plot is, which makes all the other stuff fall into its proper place as character development, back story, and world building.
I hope this helps!
‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱‱
I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!
♩ Questions that violate my ask policies will be deleted! ♩ Please see my master list of top posts before asking ♩ Learn more about WQA here
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no-see-um-incorrect · 1 year ago
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could you maybe write a mini fic about Charlie and Casper having a cuddly night in
(no problem boo I got you❀)
I am buzzing with excitement over the fact that Charlie was just confirmed as a chronic a little spoon so I hope you enjoy ïżŒ
It was a long day. A long day of short tips and short tempers. Charlie was used to dealing with rude ass customers and people who take basic human decency as a suggestion. But today it was just getting to him. and he needed something to help it. or more correctly someones.
“Casper I’m home!” he sets his backpack down, takes off his shoes and hangs up his puffer jacket and hears scampering and footsteps coming down the stairs followed by a familiar chattering noise. “hey there little buddy” the little masked ball of fluff snuggles his face against Charlie’s pant leg “I told you daddy was coming home” Casper walks up to Charlie and wraps their arms around his neck and pulls him into a kiss. Charlie polled them closer into a tight hug.
“you good baby?”
“yeah
I just really missed you today” Casper gave him a kiss on the jaw and a good squeeze “well you’re home now. I already got your towel and PJs ready so all you need to do is get in the shower and I’ll order food. Sound good?” He nods and heads to the shower
After he’s done in the shower he gets changed into the baggy pajama pants, Casper had ïżŒcleaned for him. Casper had washed his bedtime Sweet Pete’s shirt but Charlie’s brain wasn’t cooperating with the fact that he had fabric on his chest and arms so he went shirtless. He walked out of the master bath into the bedroom and sees Casper just getting done putting on their own jammies ïżŒ
“ooOoOoO titties out? Hell yeah!” “yeah for some reason a shirt just didn’t feel right” Casper wraps their arms around Charlie’s waist and kisses his neck “there little busy tonight so the foods going to be at least a half hour-45 minutes. Hope that’s OK” “that’s fine Cas. I can wait
.do you wanna go lay on the couch till they get here?” Casper nods and they make their way to the living room. Casper plopped down on the couch back first, and made grabby hands towards their standing boyfriend. Charlie rolls his eyes and crawls on top of Casper laying his head on their chest.
Casper starts running their fingers through Charlie’s hair. They wrapped their legs around him and kissed the top of his head. All is content.
That is until they hear a little chattering before Charlie feels a soft fluffy mass on the dip of his back.
“is that the little guy?” His speech muffled by Caspers chest. Casper let out a mischievous giggle, which is the only answer he needed. “want me to move him?” Charlie shook his head before nuzzling his face deeper into Caspers chest. “if he wants to cuddle he can cuddle. but I ain’t moving for shit” Casper kissed the top of his head and lightly traced their fingernails down his neck and shoulders up and down. Charlie tightened his arms around their torso. and although the feeling was muffled, they could feel him kissing their chest. ïżŒ
“I love you Charlie” he lifts his head up and gives them a kiss “love you too Cas
I needed this Today” “well it’s here anytime you want it baby you just say the word” they give him a soft kiss on the forehead, and he lays his head back down on Caspers chest, this time snuggling into the crook of their neck ïżŒ
The end
I could’ve made this with a lot more angst than there had to be. Hope you enjoy. ïżŒ
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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 10 months ago
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Loved your latest post about Kaz's views of hierarchy. It made me think of why Kaz has Inej fire the dealer who was skimming. Why didn't he do it himself? And when he asks her how it went and she says "nothing I couldn't handle," he says "not what I asked." Was he concerned for her safety?
No other blog has content like yours! The literary analysis is top notch:)
Hello and welcome to episode two of DK Finally Gets It Together And Answers Her Asks Because It's About Damn Time (working title)
Episode One - Kanej Embassy Roof
Thanks so much for your question, sorry I have taken an absolute eternity to reply, but let's talk!
Kaz routinely delegates any job he can that he thinks is safe to do so, as long as he doesn't feel concerned that someone else will get it wrong if they do it he will pass it along to someone else because he takes the bulk of the work of the entire gang, both physically and in terms of business and financing, so it's not entirely surprising that he would pass this job along to Inej until we learn that he was concerned it could go wrong and Rojakke could retaliate. I think the implication here is possibly that Inej would be the only person he could trust to do this other than himself, in direct contrast to the chapter 3 quote "to say he trusted Inej would be stretching the point, but he could admit that he'd come to rely on her" - I remember when I was reading for the first time and we got slightly later into the story I had to go back and check that I'd read that line correctly because 'either I'm misremembering or this boy is a liar'. Inej is already the only person Kaz trusts except himself (and Jesper to some degree, but in a different capacity because as much as he trusts Jesper's loyalty he would never rely on it to the extent he does Inej's for what I think are two main reasons firstly that he's more actively aware of the way he distances himself from Jesper than he is Inej and secondly because he doesn't doubt the possibility that Jesper could be bribed with gambling money or threatened by his debtors, as he is to reveal the Ice Court job to the Dime Lions) but it's possibly debateable as to whether Kaz has actually seen that in himself yet.
Kaz works very hard to emotionally distance himself from Inej, and I think there could be a balance of that in the implied concern for her safety that you brought up with the "nothing I couldn't handle" "not what I asked" quote. The scene that follows had several examples including the famous "My darling Inej, treasure of my heart", which I've done a sole analysis on before and touched on in the embassy roof scene analysis, and I think that we could argue to some extent there is a concern for her safety in this statement but it's, either intentionally or subconsciously, shrouded in the implication that he doesn't trust her to have done the job well and he needs to know if he has to pick up the loose ends.
I hope this was interesting and made at least some sense, sorry it has taken me such a very long time to reply, and thanks for reading! <3
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luimagines · 1 year ago
Text
That Dragon au Part 3
Masterlist
First Chapter/ Previous Chapter/ Next Chapter
@cafecourage dis is for you buddy!!! I feel like this is self explanatory now.  I hope you enjoy this cluster truck of a chapter. XD
Content under the cut!
Chapter 3: Secrets Revealed, Emotional and Otherwise
"I wanted to explain Cia's behavior as well as the rest of the nobles." Warrior sighs and leans into Enno’s touch. "I should have known better than to drop off and assume she wouldn't try anything else."
He hums and closes his eyes. "It’s about your headband and some.... traditions and rituals we have here. She knows about them. And Cia got a bit pissy when she saw I was following through with a few of them."
“I
 see
” The events of the night were a tad bit clearer but it still seemed like they were missing a piece of information here. There is no way Enno would have had the grace to word things correctly but they had to ask, “So
 you threw fire at her without the fire rod somehow?”
Warrior coughs and he turns away, looking at his vanity. "Something like that.... You...know what her deal is right? Why is she attached to me? She... was getting somewhat better but now?"
Warrior sighs. "This was just the cherry on top. I don't know how much more stern and firm I need to be with her. I’m going to have to get borderline violent."
“Mhm, honestly I forgot she survived and didn’t die.” Enno blurts. “Not that I wish death on her. I just
 I guess I didn’t pay any attention. I tend to space out.” 
Saying that they didn’t willingly play her part of the story was a bit weird and not something he should know. “Why not run away from all of this? Seems a lot more trouble then what it’s worth. Maybe space would do her some good too.” Enno plants their face into his hair, “but I don’t know what is going on here so maybe just dropping everything to escape isn’t a good idea.”
Warrior snorts at their first sentence, quietly down to listen to you talk.
"Cia can see in every and any timeline. There's not many places I would be able to go without her finding me." He hugs them, letting Enno lean into him. "Good idea or not, it's certainly tempting. I just... I wanted to be subtle but I miscalculated. That headband is pretty special. Cia knows it. It's one of the few things  I didn't get rid of when-... when..."
He goes silent for a moment running his hands up and down your back. "I used to have a decent amount of stuff but Cia would hint at wanting it. So everything I knew she would like I tossed. Everything I have is either sentimental value that she can't fathom, want or knows about or new... The headband is actually one of the oldest pieces and it was her favorite but I... I couldn't get rid of it."
Warrior takes a deep breath. "My mother wanted me to give it to someone special. And it.. matched your clothes so I thought... well... who would be more deserving..." He sighs. "I was so caught up in wanting to do something right, I forgot she even knew about it."
"As for the nobles-" He continues. "It’s... typically tradition amongst them to give a gift to the one.... to the one you wish to court. Everyone knew my mother and recognized it. I'm sorry."
Enno stiffened up after hearing him fully out. Their mind goes back to the drawer in his dresser, the one filled with all the small trinkets and valuables. There is a lot they wanted to say to him now that he has opened up to them about this. “Don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything.”
They tried to reassure him. “You didn’t ask for Cia to come over here and scream at the both of us. You didn’t ask to basically be stalked. You didn’t ask for literally anything that had happened to you. You’ve done everything right tonight. Don’t let that be twisted.” 
They restarted petting his hair just so they could do something else if their words couldn’t help him. It wasn’t their strong suit and they knew it. “I will protect that headband with my life. I never met her but I want your mom to be proud that you gave it to me.” 
The courting aspect of the headband went over their head, they were more focused on Warriors emotions.
"She would have liked you." He smiles. "I'm glad you liked it. But I still should have warned you about Cia at least, or told Zelda or Lana as back up or something. You didn't deserve it."
He holds them a bit tighter and tucks his face into the crook of their neck. 
"Thank you." He gives their neck a tentative kiss. "I'm sorry it’s been a mess."
They tilt my head for him, giving him access and laugh. “What are you talking about? The only thing that happened was me getting out of a social situation I didn’t want to go to. I think I deserve that.”
They wave him off. “I think I’m more pissed that Cia made you throw out stuff, then her screaming at me. It was like she is trying to make you hide your stuff like a dragon.” That was potentially a bad timed joke, “or like the Vet. God knows we only need one hoarder in our group.” 
They were as smooth as sandpaper.
Warrior snorts. "For one thing, we're all hoarders. Legend just has the most stuff. And another thing is that Dragons don't typically hide it. I simply had to or Cia would have taken advantage of it."
He yawns again, relaxing against them now that the danger has passed. "It's a shame but I've learned to live with it. I just have to rebuild what I had and it'll be ok again."
“Oh. Ok. So we aren’t dancing around the dragon thing.” Enno sighed in relief. They didn’t actually think he would tell them what he and the others are. Enno kept trying to keep him from unrelaxing, hoping to distract once more.
Warrior hums. "The dragon thing? What dragon thing?"
He blinks, looking up at them.
Enno blinked back at him, re-evaluating what he just said. “Nothing I misheard.” 
They go to play with his hair again, twisting and twirling it gently. “I’ve just noticed some things you have done, and it just reminds me of what dragons would do in the stories from my world. That’s all.”
Warrior moves his head and adjusts his position so that he's laying right next to them, face to face. "You have dragon stories? Tell me some. I'd love to hear them."
“Well- they aren’t all the same.” No longer having anything to do with their hands, they just awkwardly hold them out in front of themselves. Messing with the sheets, they speak again. “We have stories about good dragons, bad dragons. It’s really a mixed bag. A personal favorite is about a farm boy who finds a dragon egg and has to raise them while also figuring out what kind of dragon the baby is. I was able to see it unfold the same way as your adventure. If we’re ever able to go to my place I’ll show you.”
Warrior frowns at the loss of contact but he's quick to straighten his face.
"What happens to the dragon?" He says quietly. "How does the story go?"
He takes a breath and reaches over to tuck Enno’s hair behind their ear. He then reaches down to grab their hand and he laces their fingers together. "Is the dragon evil in this story?"
Enno laughed quietly, shaking their head. "No no no. If anything Mir is an idiot, but I love him and Evan." 
They take Warrior’s hand to use as a fidget toy. "There isn't an ending per say. But Mir finds out he is the last of his kind. Evan, despite being younger than the Wind at the time, was able to comfort his friend. They are under a pack, if one became evil the other would kill them. But even then, Evan once almost got possessed and Mir was able to guide him back and deny the power that was being pushed on him. They are both good boys."
Warrior smiles. "Sounds like it."
His thumb rubs against their knuckles, his other arm coming up to tuck itself under his head.
"There's some dragon stories here, but half the time we can still go meet the dragon behind it. Like... there was a rumor that Volga the dragon knight knew Time as a child." His smile drops a bit ruefully. "It was interesting to see that interaction on the battlefield."
"He's the guy that tries to fight you right out the bat right?" Enno asked, mostly because they didn't want to be so knowledgeable. Even though there’s very few people who knew about that. "He seemed annoying, please tell me he was beat up by a 7 year old."
Warrior chuckles. "Dang, you knew about that too?"
He lets go of them, pulling up his sleeve on his other arm. "He left this parting gift after that fight."
He lets his hand hang between the two of them. "That little boy..... almost burst into tears at the sight of him. Between wanting to run to him and his obligation to fight him, it left that poor boy frozen. Volga was equally horrified even as he took a fighting stance. I don't think he had a say in who he could fight."
Warrior muses. "Like a spell or something. Volga kept telling him to run, to get away. The rest of us were just confused."
Enno brought his arm up to give the wound a few kisses. Enno whispered, keeping his hand close to their face. "Depending on the timeline, Time either killed Volga or set him free. I didn't realize he was the same dragon from the fire temple. Is it normal for dragons to have Hylian forms?"
Warrior's jaw clenches and his breath hitches when they kiss his scarred up arm. His gaze softens some more. "He doesn't like to talk about it."
Warrior watches them intently, trying to take in as much detail as he can even through the dim lighting. 
"Yes." He whispers. "Every dragon I've met has a Hylian form."
Enno continues to give the scars attention. 
"Do I know of anyone?" They asked, bringing his hand to their face to nuzzle and kiss it, looking at him expectantly.
Warrior has been watching their lips as they traveled and his skin. His heart begins to pound when they reach his hand and cradle it gently. His entire mouth goes dry and he finds himself pinned under their gaze as you speak.
He has no other choice but to answer them honestly. To lie to them would be to dishonor both Enno’s and his own intentions.
"Yes." He says a bit breathlessly. "You've met quite a few."
Enno hummed, rubbing their thumb over his knuckles. "Really?" 
They were so close and they were actually shocked that he hasn't caught on yet. 
"May I ask who?" They asked again, trying to urge him to tell them. They mostly wanted to see his half form in a clearer way. Without anything blocking them.
Warrior keeps rubbing his thumb against your skin, endeared that you'd return the action.
He's silent for a while before he speaks. "Everyone in the group. With the exception of Pinky. And every Zelda you've ever met."
Enno moved forward, collapsing onto him and relaxing onto him. "Finally." They hugged him and tucked their face into the crook of his neck. Warrior blinked in surprise when they collapsed into him. He's shocked but certainly not complaining. 
"I didn't know how to ask about it. Can I see that other look you had when you came in? I've been thinking about it since then."
Then their other words register in his head. Warrior groans, wrapping his arms around them. "You saw that? That was completely unintentional."
He sighs but does as they request. He grows in their hold, his wings coming to wrap around them. "I'm not really the coolest or strongest dragon of the group, but I can certainly hold my own. My treasury isn't by any means impressive but you can have whatever you want from it. If you want that is. I had hoped to explain more in the morning."
Enno pulled back smiling, taking him in fully. "Coolest and strongest doesn't matter to me." 
They duck down kissing his face all over, purposely ignoring his lips. "Cute, cute, cute, cute." They whispered and hugged him again. "I'll help you rebuild your horde if that’s ok. You’re adorable."
Warrior's heart was pounding. Enno could feel it as they leaned against him. His eyes begin to gather some water around the corners. "Ah.... Ok."
He hugs them back, tucking them under his chin. "The size of my hoard doesn't really matter as long as you’re a part of it."
He trails his claws gently over their shoulder and back, watching in fascination as the hair rises on their arms. His tail sways behind him and he bursts into a powerful purr, vibrating against their very bones. "I doubt you'd even say that to my full form. But I appreciate the sentiment."
Enno let out a sigh as they felt his claws be drawn over their skin. 
"You’re right. You will be absolutely adorable" Enno stated, brushing his hair out of the way, giving a kiss on his nose. "I am happy that I wasn't crazy. I saw little flames from your mouth and thought I was seeing things."
Enno held back, trying to not go overboard on the compliments and shift to lay comfortably on him.
Warrior's eyes widen a fraction as he blushes scarlet. "I... can't always control that..."
He laughs nervously. He combs his hands through their hair, going down the length of their back then back up again. "A lot of dragons have a domain where they specialize in their power, or their magic. Volga and mine both have flame as our domain. He's bigger, stronger and older than me though. I went into that fight knowing I'd lose."
"It was adorable." Enno snorted. "You’re here now though. You’re alive and survived." 
There was a moment of silence as things felt content. "Right now though. You need to sleep." 
They gave him one last kiss on the jaw. "Tomorrow is going to come around soon, and it’s going to be a ride. So let’s rest and so we can support each other with clear minds."
"That sounds like a lovely idea." He breathes out, tickling their hair with warmer than normal breath. "You need to sleep as well.... And maybe this time, keep the door closed? We can deal with them when the sun is up."
He grumbles. "I'm not excited about it but I will have to answer for something’s... Maybe I can get away with it...who knows?"
A bolt of guilt shot through Enno at the reminder. “I’m sorry I won’t.” They nuzzled into him, trying to forget previous events. “And let me take the fall for you. I was the one that kicked Cia in the stomach.”
They snuggled up closer, drifting off a bit. “We will take on tomorrow together. Don’t forget we are a team now. “ Their words slurred together as they fell into a deeper sleep. “But it’s bedtime. Nighty night Mister.”
Warrior snorts, loud, and right into their ear. "I'm sorry, you did what?"
He giggles and lets it rest. "There's nothing to pin the blame on you anyway. I might have... set fire to some stuff. That's what I was talking about. Goodnight."
Enno smiled and finally fell asleep. Warrior waited for a little moment longer, taking the time to admire them in his bed. It was surreal. He didn’t think they would have agreed as quickly as they did. Maybe he simply had to ask. With his own smile, he lays down, curling over them with a quiet purr. He falls asleep within moments.
There is a loud banging at the door, waking both of them up. It also didn't seem to stop unless it received an immediate answer.
Enno let out a grumble, pinning Warriors down before he could get up. “We are pulling a prank on them.”
Warrior huffs and shifts back into his full human form. "I had my wings, sweetheart. Be careful."
He yawns and tries to keep the morning breath away from you. "What do you have in mind?"
The knocking hasn't let up.
Enno swooped down and started kissing him deeply, angling his face up so that they could get a better reach. Before Enno returned back to his lips, for good measure they messed up his hair. When they pulled back, they looked down and smirked. 
“Let their mind wander with what happened here.” I said, tugging his shirt collar down, giving him a more disheveled look. “They won’t bother us anymore if they don’t want to see what could be happening here.”
"This is unexpected." He moans. 
He huffed and pulled them closer, kissing and nibbling right back. Warrior moved up to entangle his fingers into their hair. He grunts. "This only works if it's both of us, Love." 
Enno laughed. “Not if I’m on top.” 
They tried to make their hair messier but only ended up fixing it in the process. They reached for their glasses. 
“There’s someone at the door. We can’t do any more.” Enno sighed out rolling next to him.
“Unless you want to take your shirt off to sell the effect.” Enno whispered. “Put on a show, why don’t ya?” 
Warrior raised an eyebrow and sat up. Enno had to move to make room for him. He shucks off his shirt. 
He smirks. "Better?"
He gets up, ruffling his hair for the hell of before he gets out of the bed. "I'm coming! I’m coming!"
He pulls open the door. "What?"
"LINK! ABOUT TIME YOU OPENED THE DO..." Lana shouts before she cuts herself off. There's a brief moment of silence where Warrior moves to stop her from looking into the room and seeing his company.
"....Zelda... needs you...." She speaks out. "Your friend too."
"Do they have to be involved?" Warrior sighs, leaning on the door.
"...Mhm..."
"Fine." Warrior spits. "But we need to get dressed."
Lana squeaks again, her voice going up an octave. "Of course."
Feeling sheepish, Enno leaned forward. “If it means anything, I’m sorry Lana. I thought you were someone else. I probably should go back to my room to get dressed.”
Warrior spun around to face them. "Cia isn't going to let this slide. Hold on, I'll go with you."
He kicks the door shut with his heel, leaving Lana flabbergasted on the other side.
"I don't trust her as far as I can throw her." Warrior says, throwing on a different shirt. "I don't want her near you."
He throws his boots on, tussling his hair as he stands up again. Enno crossed their arms, turning for his own privacy. 
"Can I wear your scarf to annoy her more? I woke up and picked violence." A yawn managed to escape at the end of that.
Warrior paused, full on freezes and he methodically continued what he was doing. "Yes."
He coughed into his hand, not doing a good job of hiding the giddy smile that bloomed across his features. "What a brilliant idea."
"Great! You can show off those kisses." Enno joked, tracing small shapes on the door. "Can we keep the band here? I’d rather not have it get stolen. Unless you think it’s a good idea for me to have it."
Warrior walks over to his dresser taking out his scarf and walking back towards you. "The band can stay. It's ok."
He takes his time wrapping his scarf around them, making sure it fits snug and secure around their neck. 
"The scarf is enough." He giggles and steps back. He looks proud and happy. "Perfect."
Enno felt warm with it on, but it can also be because of their blush. “I know you are, thanks for reminding me.” They teased before leaving. “Come on, I’m not meeting with the Queen of all people in your pajamas. I know we want rumors to fly but I don’t want to be this dramatic.”
Warrior's smile was smacked off of his face and was replaced with a blush. "Well you don't have to say it like that."
He goes to reach for their hand, his finger just brushing against their before he pulls back, nervous. "You seem confident. Do you remember the way back?"
“Nope!” Enno grabbed his hand and began to swing it between us. “I can get lost in a paper bag. But luckily I have a lovely knight in shining armor to help.”
Warrior flushed warmly and squeezed their hand. "I am at your service."
He leads the way back in the way they came the night before but takes a different turn.
"If I remember correctly, Her Highness gave you the room with the western balcony." He muses taking the runs throughout the castle. He sees the door and b-lines toward it picking up speed. "You're going to have to be a bit quick. If what you have planned is going to work, we need to be in her face soon."
Time, who was nearby, now fully dressed as well, noticed them going to the room as well
“Seems like a busy morning.” He arrived with Pinky the night before and it appears that Wild was already in the room as well. He was still angry over the previous night’s events but it wasn’t as bad as it was before. He goes to open the door for all of them walking in.
Enno let go of Warrior and headed directly into the room. “Busy is another word for, I’m going to throw someone into the sun.” They headed to their stuff and dug around for a change of pants and for their belt with pouches. “If I stop a murder be proud. Because a stabbing might happen.”
Pinky perked up, finishing her food and looked at the door. "Oh hey Enno. You...." 
She looked at Warrior. "You know what- Tell me later. I want details."
Enon waved her off as she went into the other room. Warrior stood guard by the door.
"Time, Pinky wants to go shopping but she's broke as hell." Wild blurts.
"Wild!" Pinky tried to turn to him to shut him up but he was holding onto her hair, braiding it as they all talked.
"Get her something pretty while you're at it." He continues off handedly. "And get her a brush for her hair because this one is just plain awful."
"It's not that bad-" She got cut off.
"It's broken in three places and you said it yourself you've had it for years. It's time for a new one. I would have been done by now if it was better. " Wild pauses and points the brush at Time. "She needs her own stuff. Do it."
"Wild please." Pinky blushed out of embarrassment. "Time, I'm sorry. ignore him."
Warrior looks back in for a second. "There's Chelsie's off on Turner Street. You can buy clothes for all seasons there. Cheap but decent. It'll be enough to hold you over until winter. Then we'd have to get you some real protection."
"I don't have the money." Pinky waved him off as well. "I was just.. fantasizing about it. We're going out, right?"
She looked at Time. "I was thinking about what would be there. You know, window shopping." Cue the annoyed look towards Wild. "Not actually buying stuff."
Wild rolls his eyes, looking at Time. He mouths ‘she needs it’.
Time hummed and crossed his arm pretending to think about it. He knows he has enough money. That wasn’t the question. “Alright, let’s get you some new things Little Lady.” He gives the young woman a pat on the head before turning to Wild. “You coming cub?”
“I can tag along for a bit. But I want to meet up with Twi.” He says finishing the braid. “You’re good to go.”
“Wow, come out and everyone is leaving.” Enno laughs, coming out of the bathroom, still in Warrior’s tunic but the belt was giving it shape, making it look more like a dress. They had neaten up their hair and tried to put on the scarf the same way Warriors had done it.
Pinky flushed and looked away, trailing her hand over her hair. she brought it over her shoulder to look at it. "Thank you Wild."
The Champion winked. "Any time."
Warrior brightened upon seeing Enno and made his way to fix the scarf just a smidge.  "You look great."
Pinky nodded and stood up, clapping happily. "Looking good, Enno!" 
Time took a breath and nodded their way, showing his own approval. Warrior took their hand again without any hesitation. "You guys be safe. Enjoy what Hyrule has to offer."
Then, without any hesitation, he leaves the room with Enno in tow.
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victorluvsalice · 11 months ago
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VITD Sims Lookbook: Alice
And finally, with Victor and Smiler done, we finish off with some looks for our lovely Cutter, Alice!
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Alice gets straight into the custom content with one of her everyday outfits, wearing the blue swatches of the 1890s Working Girl set by @vintagesimstress! And unlike the last time I showed her in this outfit, this time she has the apron overlay to go with it. XD Looks good on her AND gives her the proper working-class vibes!
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For bedtime, Alice gets a pretty nightgown -- and much like Smiler, while they're not era-appropriate, I had to give Alice the cute bunny slippers too. XD What, we know she likes white rabbits! If I remember correctly, that nightgown is a dress that comes with the Cottage Garden Fan Stuff Pack made by @plumbobteasociety -- I thought it looked nice as nightwear for her.
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For that semi-formal party everyone's going to, Alice gets a Realm of Magic top and skirt that make her look at least somewhat respectable. While I think the outfit as a whole is a little pale, I really wanted to use that top on her -- I think she looks good in it. And the skirt ended up working with it pretty well (which is good, because it took me ages to find one that actually went with the top. Some of this shit is HARD to match, let me tell you!).
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And for a formal occasion -- well, unlike the boy and the non-binary person, Alice doesn't need to rely on CC here. Get Famous provides a beautiful Victorian dress for her to swan around in! (Though I should probably download a few for her anyway, for variety's sake -- or at least a couple of hats that might go well with this outfit. Head looks a little naked here!) She looks ready for a day in Brightstone, doesn't she?
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Okay, admittedly I didn't intend this outfit as an athletic outfit, just another everyday one (though I suppose Alice COULD wear it for working out). And this Cats & Dogs dress is probably a little too modern to fit the proper BITD vibes. But I really like it for the simple reason the patchwork skirt looks like something Alice made herself -- finding and saving up scraps of fabric so she could have something else to wear besides her iconic striped blouse and black skirt. And you can't deny, it DOES look good on her!
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And finally, for those chilly days, Alice gets in on the cozy vibes with a cherries-and-flowers theme -- the sweater (and I believe the skirt) is from Cottage Living, while the hat is a recolor created by Plumbella (from "illegally downloading clothes for my sims," in this SimFileShare folder (as you might imagine, it's the one called "beret")). She looks pretty comfy -- and those boots were definitely made for stomping around the streets in the snow and rain.
And that's that! Hope you enjoyed this look at what my VITD characters would probably wear in their universe. Next time (after Valicertine's Day), we're back to the Chill Valicer save for store shenanigans and magic shenanigans! See you then!
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secretobsessionstuff · 2 years ago
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🙊: So if I’m hearing you correctly, you need more Blair requests for balance
 Yes? No? Yes. 😂
Blair and Dakota have been eating healthier and hitting the gym more to prep for their wedding. They’re committed but it totally sucks, so they decide to allow themselves one cheat day every other week. They pick up all their favorite snacks, junk food, desserts, etc, and usually spend the day pigging out, binging Netflix, and cuddling. Blair pigs out more than usual because Dakota surprises her with her favorite *insert food*. She packs herself to the absolute max, feeling sleepy and content even with her belly the fullest it’s ever been. Unfortunately, while Blair was busy filling her belly to the brim, her belly was busy coming down with the stomach flu she’d unknowingly caught earlier that week. NOTE: Her belly is bigger than it’s ever been, sickness bloat on top of the food, all of it loudly roaring and gurgling nonstop. It’s gonna be a long night

Hello 🙊anon! Thank you so much for being patient since I know this request took a long time to be answered. I hope you and everybody who asked to see Blair next likes it. 💙
-------------------
Blair decided she wasn’t going to go overboard with this cheat day. Maybe one bowl of chips and a can of pop. That would be enough. She’d been feeling proud of her progress as the wedding day got closer and closer. She was excited about showing off her toned arms in her dress. The muscles in her shoulders and biceps encouraged her to keep this streak of good habits going. 
And honestly, she wasn’t in dire need of this cheat day. Sure, it was going to be nice to eat junk food with Dakota while they watched The Queen’s Gambit, but the Queen was still going to dominate the chess board whether Blair indulged in sweets or not. Their night of Netflix and cuddles was all she needed to feel satisfied. 
Usually, Blair would be vibrating with excitement as the cheat day got closer, but she’d been feeling sluggish and heavy throughout the week. Though her muscles were looking good, she wasn’t feeling 100%. Junk food would only weigh her down more. Yeah, it was decided; this would be a small night of indulgences.
And then that mindset when out the window as soon as Dakota unveiled what he’d been making her. She came home to the smell of cheese melting in the air. She too began to melt. All that stubborn refusal to indulge sloughed right off her toned shoulders when she saw the mac and cheese bubbling on the stove. Suddenly, her mouth watered, and her body craved something comforting and warm. After a tiring week, she realized that letting herself enjoy food might be exactly what needed. 
“Babe, you shouldn’t have,” she told Dakota as they prepared binge food for the binge watching. 
“Yes, I should have, and I did.” He kissed her cheek as he handed her a bowl of pure happiness. “I know this week hasn’t been the best at the gym. You’ve been pushing yourself so hard, and I can see it paying off. You deserve this break.” 
He was right. Blair needed this. Two weeks ago, she was smashing personal records, but she could feel herself slowing down. The last three days at the gym showed that she was getting tired. It was time for a break—a break filled with cheese, chocolate, and salty snacks.
So, they watched a young girl kick ass at chess while melting into the couch. Dakota began feeding Blair at one point because she was too tired to reach for another brownie. She licked the chocolate off his fingers and sighed. “I’m so full.” 
“Nah, I’ve seen you do more,” Dakota said. 
“Well, it fits with the theme of the week which is ‘I could have done more’. More reps, more time
” Blair trailed off as movement in her stomach made her place a hand over her abdomen. Despite Dakota’s insistence, she couldn’t eat anymore. Her belly was full with mac and cheese, chips, and pop. 
As soon as she’d taken that first bite, she knew it was going to be a glorious cheat day. 
It had been a good day
for ten minutes. Then she got full, and she got full fast. Her stomach protested a lot sooner than it should have. “I’m sorry for being negative. I thought tonight would cheer me up.” 
Dakota placed his hand over hers, on the mound that was her stomach. “Hey, it’s all good. You’re allowed to have these days. You wanna talk about what’s keeping you down?” 
“I just—” she shifted around on the couch, trying to find the best position for her bloated belly. “I feel off. I don’t have as much energy and I’m so fucking sore.” 
“Sore from working out?” 
“No, it feels different.” She didn’t know how to explain it, but it was almost like the soreness that comes from the flu or a fever. She wanted to try to put her thoughts into words, but her stomach was talking enough for the both of them. The organ let out a loud gurgle and followed it up with a hearty belch that made her shiver. She quickly covered her mouth as Dakota chuckled. “God, my stomach hurts.” 
Dakota ran his palm across her bloated belly. He let his thumb glide beneath the waist band of her pants, feeling the crest of her belly. He followed the slope down, amazed at how swollen it was. Her skin was warm. Very. “Bee, your stomach is so bloated and noisy.” 
“I’m sorry.” 
“No, don’t apologize.” He traced up the opposite direction now, again letting his fingers follow the curve. Her belly dipped sharply towards her ribs and chest. “I didn’t see you eat that much.” 
“I don’t know why it’s so upset,” she moaned low in her throat until a pocket of air started to come up. She swallowed thickly but couldn’t make the pressure go away. The burp escaped loudly and wetly. It took her belly from overly full to outright nauseous. “Ugh, Kota, I feel sick to my stomach.” 
“Do you want to move to the bathroom?” 
Moving sounded like the worst possible idea. She imagined her tummy bouncing up and down, sending the contents sloshing into her esophagus. “No
I don’t know. I just want to feel better.” 
Dakota could hear in her voice that she was beginning to worry. “Alright, we’ll stay here and I’ll rub your tummy, how’s that sound?” 
“Okay,” she mumbled. She put her head on his chest and watched his hand glide under her shirt. She’d never seen her abdomen to distended. “Mmm, I don’t like this.” 
“Shh, just relax.” Dakota used his other hand to play with her hair. He rubbed circles and lines across her body, hoping to lull her into a state of peace. 
Her stomach certainly wasn’t at peace. He could feel it shifting and gurgling under his palm. He rubbed her stomach for twenty minutes, all the while it continued to make sick noises. Blair too made slight noises of discomfort. His touch was comforting but not enough to take her mind off the nausea. 
“Honey, it doesn’t sound like I’m helping very much,” Dakota said. “What if we talk about something to distract you from the pain.” 
“Fine. But no wedding stuff. Too stressful.” 
“Got it.” 
“And no food.” 
“Obviously.” 
“And no work” 
Dakota pouted. “Aw, I was gonna ask about your assistant. I wish I had an assistant.” 
“Piper is shadowing me. She’s not technically an assistant.”
“How can I get a shadow?” 
“I don’t know. Go out in the sun?” 
Dakota laughed and hugged her closer. “And how is your shadow doing with her training?” 
“She’s great. Although she missed a few days last week because of
” Blair blinked quickly as her brain worked faster than her mouth. She couldn’t get the words out when the thoughts came rushing in. All of a sudden, she felt her cheeks drain of colour. Her stomach dropped and a cold sweat broke out across her skin. 
“Because of what?” Dakota looked down at his glitching girlfriend. She got tense in his arms. He could feel the muscles she’d been building tighten. “Bee, you okay?” 
Blair could only shake her head. The hand over her mouth stopped her from speaking. The saliva accumulating in her mouth and the nausea rising in her throat was largely due to a psychological response. Like a placebo effect, but not quite, she knew for a fact that she was about to vomit up her cheat day. She knew this, because a few days before Piper had missed work because of a stomach bug. Bugs tended to scurry to a new home, especially when a new breeding ground gave hugs at the end of every shift. This bug took its time decorating and moving into Blair’s system for an entire week. It renovated and redesigned her stomach and intestines, making itself at home. And now, her system was packed with junk food that just didn’t match the dĂ©cor. 
Blair shot up from where she rested her head on Dakota’s chest, but it was too late to make a move. She gagged into her hand and lurched forward. Muddy orange vomit came shooting out of her mouth, spewing between her fingers and dripping down her wrist. 
“Holy sh—okay,” Dakota exclaimed as he too tensed up. He quickly sat up from his slouched position as sick landed on his chest and stomach. His sweater began soaking it up. He switched to breathing through his mouth when the sour stink of half-digested cheese and chocolate filled the space. 
“Oh God, honey,” he cooed when Blair heaved again. He placed his palm on her lower back, feeling how rigid she’d become. “It’s all going to be okay. Breathe.” 
But Blair couldn’t breathe. It just kept coming. The sick fell passed her lips in chunky waves that made her cringe and shiver. At least she managed to aim the third wave away from the both of them. It landed on the floor by the couch, just narrowly avoiding their sock covered feet. That would not have been a pleasant sensation if she missed the floor. She could only imagine how Dakota must feel. A sob clawed at her chest when she thought about everything that happened. 
“I’m sorry. Kota, I’m sorry,” she mumbled as she wiped her mouth with her sleeve. Her chest hitched with every sharp inhale.
“Shh, baby. Relax. No need to apologize.” Dakota rubbed her back. “Give me another good breath.” 
She did so slowly, letting a shaky inhale fill her lungs. The exhale was steadier, which they were both happy about. 
Dakota gave a firm pat in the middle of her shoulder blades. “That’s it.” He wiped a tear off her cheek. “Are you alright now?” 
Blair shook her head. “I’m sick.” 
“Yes. Yes, you are.” Dakota looked down at the sludge on his torso. “This is cheating cheat day, you know.” 
Blair let out a weak laugh, before going back to what she was saying. “No, like I’m actually sick. Piper had the stomach flu last week.” 
“Damn
well that explains why you’re so warm,” Dakota said as he thumbed her burning cheek. 
Blair sniffled and nodded. Moving once again seemed like the worst thing in the world, but she knew this break from vomiting was not going to last. She also knew there’d be many permanent stains if they didn’t start cleaning now. 
Dakota must have been reading her mind. “Go sit in front of the toilet. You still look pale.” He thought back to the seconds before she lost it all. “Fuck, Bee, your face got so white. I thought there was a ghost in the living room for a sec.” But his fiancĂ©e did not have the energy to reply with anything witty. So, he just kissed her temple and sent her away. “Go, I’ve got to clean this up before it sticks.” 
“Give me your sweater. I’ll throw it in the bathtub.” 
Dakota stripped. Now shirtless, he realized he too was very bloated, though not from a bug but from overeating. This had been one hell of a cheat day. 
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defectivehero · 1 year ago
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What do you want to see/read more with heroes and villains?
This is a great question, and I can only hope that I'm both doing it justice and also interpreting it correctly...
I suppose I'm not quite sure. If I'm being perfectly honest, I haven't quite been active in the hero/villain community on Tumblr in at least a year. The concept was staring to bore me, and I soon felt pigeonholed by the same broad labels that were supposed to be freeing for my writing.
As you've probably noticed, I haven't been very active on this blog recently. I'm writing a lot of fanfiction on AO3 and my other Tumblr... and now, I find that when I have the itch to write, I turn to fan fiction because it has pre-established characters and universes that I can then bend to my own will and desires. It's much easier to avoid the pitfalls that can plague the hero/villain content, because there is already at least some minimum foundation of knowledge required for fanfiction pieces to be comprehensible to the audience.
With that said, I think I'd like to read more hero & villain pieces that utilize one or more of the following qualities:
Satire. I really enjoy pieces that—to some degree of consciousness—have a sense of awareness. It doesn't necessarily matter how this awareness is cultivated, but it can manifest in different ways. Here are some examples that come to the top of my head:
the hero thinking about their role [either in life or in the story] as a hero, and how this commitment to heroism influences their own actions. sometimes, this shows through in their backstory; other times, this shows through in their own conceptualization as a hero.
same thing goes for the villain–how they interpret their own villainy can have a massive impact on the story. how do they see themself? do they think themself to be evil—and if so, to what degree—or perhaps taking on the burdens that others aren't courageous enough to take?
some acknowledgment of existing tropes. I've seen this executed quite well in a simple moment of dialogue, with a hero or villain poking fun at the situation they find themself in. humor is an effective weapon during moments of tension in stories, and it also introduces a new feeling to a concept that may already exist elsewhere. (but, again, as I'm sure most of you have seen, if humor is the only thing going for the piece, then it is likely going to feel uncomfortable or even cringey. gotta have some balance!)
I also enjoy pieces that don't spotlight romance. This is mostly because, a lot of times, the romance can feel either rushed, forced, cliche, or a combination of any of these. A hero falls in love with a villain, forbidden relationship, blah, blah, bLAH. It's been done a million times before. And, honestly? There's much more nuance and creativity in the components of a rivalry/tense alliance/hard-won friendship than in a hero/villain love story. Don't get me wrong, romance can really enhance a story—but I prefer it to show through in smaller actions and ambiguous, undefined relationships. It feels more meaningful that way.
Lastly, I'd say that I really enjoy stories that use a hero/villain dynamic but show it through different characters. This can show through in mythical beings, creatures, and humans that aren't a "hero" or a "villain." Detectives, pirates, vampires, fairies, aliens... There's nearly limitless potential!
The truth of the matter, in my opinion, is that the hero & villain dynamic has already been thoroughly explored. This community on Tumblr has been around for a while. Selfishly speaking, I miss the days when heroes & villains were a new and fresh concept—when the tag didn't have many followers and there was an air of excitement and intrigue to it all. About a year (and a half?) ago, I got so frustrated with this that I purged my entire blog and nearly deleted all my work.
The reasons I've detailed are why I've been recently struggling to write the dynamic. I don't want to create something that has already been created and, unfortunately, that is very difficult to accomplish now. But! This question has gotten the rusty cogs of my motivation to start whirring away. I'm going to challenge myself to utilize and uphold these standards I have listed out here.
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