#I know these are terrible pictures but it almost looks like he has the sid hat looking at the tv ‘in person’ lol

[starshine-cal]

LADS INCREDIBLE DISCOVERY IN WOMENS SPORT CLIMBING FINAL LMAO

THE HAT

(When looking it up I can’t find any evidence of other non-geno-related versions of this hat that have a yellow background AND writing. It’s possible this kid found a way to do some other writing and he actually doesn’t even know the penguins but I’m still losing my shit at randomly catching this xD)

[criticallyacclaimedstranger]

Reminder [Tim Rockford x f!reader]

Read on Ao3

Rating: Explicit

Fandom: Merge Mansion ad (can't fucking believe this...)

Pairing: Detective Tim Rockford x you/cishet f!reader

Tags/Warnings: reader wears sexy lingerie but no description of body type, blowjob, deepthroating, workplace sex.

Summary: Tim Rockford works too hard, and too late. You have to remind him of what's waiting for him at home.

Words: 2,165

A/N: Y'all I am adding a new character to my menagerie of Pascal men! Dunno if I get Tim Rockford but I've been thinking about sucking his dick since I first saw him. He just has that vibe about him. Enjoy.

He is sitting astride a chair in front of a huge notice board filled with photos, notes, clippings, clues pinned to it, connected by red twine. The white shirt is straining to reach across his broad upper body. You remember a time when it had the shape of a V, now it's more of a U before connecting with the still narrow hips and flat ass.

You nod a thanks to the officer who let you in, and when he closes the door behind him, you lock it.

"Detective," you quip teasingly, but there's no response except a neck roll. He sighs deeply as he rubs his neck.

He's been working around the clock on this case. You avoid looking at the notice board, the pictures of bloody crime scenes, as you walk up to the chair.

"Tim," you speak softly, your hand landing on his shoulder. Tim twitches and looks up at you. It takes him a moment to recalibrate his brain to reality.

"What are you doing here? It must be like ten o'clock."

"It's past midnight, actually," you correct him with a wry little smile. He sighs again and takes your hand away from his shoulder, bringing it to his lips for a kiss.

"I'm sorry, my love, I'm gonna pull an all-nighter again."

You grunt. He knows what it means. You've been over this before.

He rises from the chair, moves it away before turning to you. He smells of stress and determination: smells that you know well. He's always like this when he's working a case. You don't like it, but you've grown to accept it.

He pulls you in for a hug, so fast that you almost stumble into him. His broad chest, the soft stomach with the buttons ready to pop. He refuses to go up a size for some reason. The shoulder holster, the gun at his side. Your hand slides away from it, not wanting anything to do with it, only wanting your soft man.

"I'll come home in the morning for a shower," he promises in a low whisper against your hair. "Have breakfast with you."

"No, you won't," you calmly point out. "You'll get terrible coffee and a bagel from the diner around the corner, and your stomach will be a mess by the time this case is solved."

Tim chuckles a little at that before seeking out your lips. He tastes of stale coffee, and sweet and sour pork; the flavors of a murder case unsolved.

"Go home, get some sleep," he tells you gently. "I'll call when I leave."

"Aren't you wondering what I'm doing here, at this hour?"

He blinks, like he's only now realizing what time it is, and that you're actually here.

"Is everything okay?" His hands come to your cheeks, and he searches your face. You cover his hands with yours, lowering them as you smile reassuringly.

"I'm good, Tim, nothing's wrong. But I knew you'd be working all night, and I wanted to bring you something."

His brows draw together when he waits for you to elaborate. You untie the belt around your waist, and button open your trench coat. His nostrils flare and his eyes widen when you reveal yourself to him.

You're only wearing a bra, lace panties, and stockings underneath. It's cheesy, but he likes it.

"I came to make sure you were okay," you purr, smiling at how he swallows hard, his glassy stare.

"Baby..."

"Just let me give this to you."

You undo his belt, knuckles brushing against the soft fat of his tummy. Tim exhales in a low sigh when the belt releases its hold of him. With heavy-lidded eyes, he gazes adoringly at you as you unzip his pants. Softly, he trails his hands along your sides, goosebumps rising in the wake of his touch. Your nipples knit, and his gaze drop to the stiff pebbles showing through the lace fabric of the bra.

"You're too good to me, baby," he sighs, and then his eyes fall shut as you slide your hand inside his pants. "Oh."

You cup his still soft cock through the underwear, stroke in carefully as you lean in to kiss him. His lips betray a hurry that's he's loath to rein in, but when his tongue tries to pry in between your lips, you pull away with a smile. Tim doesn't smile back, but stares at you with a drunkenness in his eyes, mouth open and begging to be kissed again. You lean back in and nibble at his full lower lip, cup his cheek with your free hand, and stroke your thumb over his mustache. His cock hardens against your other palm, and you encourage it with a firmer touch.

"Tease," he groans, hands landing on your hips, fingers playing with the waistband of your panties. A shiver runs through you.

"Takes one to know one."

You press your lips to his anew, and now your hand slips in under the worn elastic of the waistband. His cock jumps at the direct contact and your feel a patch of wet rub off on your hand. Your fingers close loosely around his cock, thumb smearing out the precum as your tongue plunges into his mouth for a hungry kiss. Tim's strong arms wrap around you, the smell of his sweaty pits hitting your nose but not in a repulsive way, instead you feel the crotch of your panties get wet, and your kiss turns more insistent. You suck his lower lip between your teeth, pull it out, and release it with a pop. Still holding his cock, you step back, pulling him gently but firmly to make him follow you. And Tim follows, hands reaching all over you, eyes burning with desire, lips swollen with kisses. You direct him to his desk and pull down his pants and underwear before giving him a little push to make him sit down. His cock is now as stiff as it can be, and you separate his legs, keeping eye contact as you kneel between his thighs.

"Oh, baby..." he sighs, surrendering to you with a pleading look on his face. "Baby, you're so good to me..."

"You deserve it," you purr as you nuzzle his cock, kissing its length, flicking your tongue at it. "You work so hard, you deserve to relax a little."

He moans again when you hand closes around the thick root of his cock. You trail your tongue up his length, ending with a soft swirl around the head, the glistening precum bringing a sharp taste to your mouth.

A few night shift officers pass by the door, but apart from that you can only hear the drone of the air conditioning, and Tim's heavy breathing which turns into an audible gasp bordering on a moan when you open your mouth and take his cock into your mouth. He breathes your name, looks down on you as you smile up at him, his cock in your mouth, one of your hands wrapped around the root, the other cupping his balls. He draws his fingers through his hair before dropping both hands to your head, petting it softly as you pop his cock out of your mouth and proceed to licking and stroking it. The low lights are casting shadows over Tim's face, but you can see his eyes, half closed and staring down at you in complete surrender. You squeeze the root of his balls firmly and are rewarded with a sharp hiss as Tim draws in breath.

"Sweet baby..."

Your cunt is heavy and warm, and your arousal starts to drip into your panties. The mossy, heavy scent rises to tickle your nose through the musk of your man, and you moan low as you suck the head of his cock before flicking your tongue at the frenulum.

"Fuck, oh God..."

Second that. You enjoy sucking his dick, always have. The different textures, the scent, the way it makes him twitch and curse and finally beg you. The sloppiness of it when you drool, the rush of adrenaline when you manage to take all of him, the tip bumping down your throat, Tim losing it when you massage his balls while letting him fuck your throat.

You draw a deep breath and swallow all of him, balls deep. Your lips shielding your teeth from grazing him, you immediately start to salivate, the pressure against your throat almost too much. You will yourself to calm down, to breathe through your nose as you know you can, and start to fuck him with your mouth. Your eyes fill with tears, and when you look up Tim, he brings a trembling hand to wipe away the first one that falls. You pull back, a string of saliva connecting your lips to his cock, and lean into his palm cupping your cheek.

"Don't hurt yourself, sweetness," he mumbles hoarsely. "You're doing so good."

"I can do it," you promise him.

"I know you can."

You devour him again, tongue pressing flat against the veiny underside of his cock, your eyes falling shut as you focus on the act, on breathing, on controlling your gag reflex. Tim's breaths come in choked groans above you, his fingers tangle into your hair, petting and gently pulling while he showers you with gratitude and praise. The cold linoleum floor is hard on your knees, but you don't let that hold you back as you do your best to blow Tim’s mind. The taste of cum grows stronger, and you press your fingers against his taint while still fondling his balls. That's his undoing: his balls twitch and you feel the length of his cock pulsate as he shoots his cum down your throat. You almost choke, so you pull back, coughing as the last of his cum splatters your chin and chest. He crouches in front of you, wobbles like his legs don't carry him, panting like he just ran a marathon, but still searches your face as you fight to find your breath through the coughing.

"I'm good, I'm good," you wheeze, but Tim doesn't stop his scrutiny of you until you've found your breath.

"Okay?"

"Okay," you nod, smiling breathlessly. He smiles back then, and heaves a big sigh.

"Goddammit, woman..."

"What?" You bat your eyelashes innocently.

"Look at the state of you. A pornographic mess."

He wipes his thumb over your slick chin and closes his eye with a deep exhale when you grab his hand and bring the thumb to your mouth, sucking hard.

"You'll be the death of me."

"What a way to go, huh?"

His chestnut eyes are warm when he opens them anew.

"I'd prefer to live for as long as I can, as long as you're in my life."

"I'm here," you reassure him, your hand coming up to his cheek, which has not seen a razor in days. He leans in for a kiss, licks at your lips and into your mouth where you share his taste with him.

He finally helps you up and tuck himself in before grabbing a couple of tissues for you from his desk. You wipe yourself clean, but when you're about to wrap the coat around you again, Tim stops you.

"What about you?" His eyes are like molten chocolate when he slides his hand inside your coat and brings you snug against him.

"What about me?"

"You're so wet I can see it through your trench coat, honey."

You chuckle. You should have known.

"Sweetheart," you tell him, languidly wrapping your arms around his neck. "If you wish to pleasure me, you have to come home."

"Oh, so only you can do dirty things to me in my place of work?" he grins, hands sliding down to your ass cheeks, barely covered by the lace.

"That's right, detective." You kiss the tip of his nose. "Gotta have something to bring you home."

"I do have that," he replies softly, touching his lips to your forehead. "I'll come home in the morning, I promise."

Before you can answer, there is a hard bang on the door, followed by a call:

"Rockford, we brought in your suspect!"

His countenance changes: his eyes turn sharp, his lips austere, his shoulders squared. He is no longer your Tim; now he's Detective Rockford.

"I'm sorry, I gotta go - "

" - and you won't be home for breakfast," you finish his sentence with a practical shrug as you straighten out his tie for him. "I know. Go do your thing."

He dips his face down to kiss you.

"I'll be home," he renews his promise. "And I'll bring bread rolls from that place you like."

You smile against his lips, his warmth spreading through your body, your cunt bottoming out at the thought of a slow morning with him.

"I'll hold you to that, Tim."

He brushes his lips over your cheek, his breath warm when he whispers:

"Keep that underwear on."

[harrylilies]

The Royal Series | Pt. VI

The Royal Series Masterlist

"What do you mean I have to take him with me? I'm going on a two- day trip with my friends." You asked your grandmother in shock.

"Which is why it's the perfect way to get to know each other. I know you don't like following the formal way so do it your way." She told you before sipping her tea.

You laughed in disbelief, shaking your head before looking at your grandpapa, Prince Philip, "Please say something."

"Darling," Prince Philip sighed before looking at his wife. "You know how Y/N hardly gets to go on vacation with her friends and this seems like a duty."

You motioned with your hands at him as you looked at her, mouthing an "Exactly.”

"Fred is 26, he will fit in with Y/N and her group of friends."

"Why are you doing this?" You whispered, leaning back on your chair in defeat.

She put her hand on top of yours, looking at you with soft eyes. "It's for the best. For you."

You shook your head, "This isn't what I want. It’s what the government wants. What you think is best."

"It's what you need." She finished for you before standing up, making you stand. "Amsterdam is an exotic place. I expect you to not do anything you might regret, sweetheart." She told you before looking down at one of her corgis, Willow.

"Oh, can I hold Fred's hand? Maybe steal a kiss or two." You said sarcastically, knowing well that you were pushing her buttons, something that made Prince Philip snicker under his breath.

"Y/N," she looked at you, "As long as it's nothing that can be held against you, harm you or downgrade you, you're free to do anything you please."

"Free," you chuckled before nodding. "Yes, Ma'am."

After she left the room, you were left with your granpapa who instantly approached you and put his arm around your shoulders, his sympathetic eyes looking at you. "But you have fun on your trip. I'm sure Fred isn't half bad."

"I know he isn't, Papa." You sigh, feeling him squeeze your shoulder. "I feel so pressured."

"Everything will be alright, darling. You just have fun for me, will you?”

//

"How was your nap?" You asked Fred politely as you and your friends sat, having breakfast in the hotel.

"Very satisfying," he chuckled, pouring himself a cup of tea. "What about you?"

"Haven't really slept. Nia and I decided to play monopoly instead." You chuckled, adjusting your jacket.

"Hear it from us first, Princess Y/N of the UK breaks royal rule and plays Monopoly. Scandalous!" Fred said in a dramatic reporter voice, making you laugh.

"Come on, you must have broken a lot of rules before."

He nodded, "I don't really go by the rules." He shrugged before chuckling, “Except for that necklace I gifted you, I’m sorry. That was my mother’s doing.”

"How scandalous and vulgar." You joked, putting a hand on your heart dramatically.

"Your Royal Highnesses are needed in our conversation." Your friend, Nia, joked. You and Fred looked at her together, "We were saying we should go canal cruising right away. Although I'm scared to shit."

"Why? Not a fan of water?" Fred asked her.

Nia shook her head, laughing. "I'm a terrible swimmer. Can't rescue myself if I ever fall."

"It's true. She swims like a sad cat." Eddie joked, laughing more when Nia swatted his arm.

"It's alright, we'll all be together so I doubt you won't get rescued if you fall." Fred smiled, putting his loosely crossed arms on the table.

"Are you saying we can fall off?" Emma asked, cocking an eyebrow at him.

Fred instantly straightened his posture and shook his head, looking back and forth between Nia and Emma. "I didn't mean that. Not that way."

Emma laughed, "I'm just joking."

"Oh." He chuckled, scratching the nape of his neck.

"Well, it's comforting knowing that we have a professional swimmer with us. Very assuring." Trevor said before putting his fork down, "Because Y/N here, said she was skipping on this activity."

They all nodded, knowing what you already told them. You gave them a sheepish smile, shrugging, "Sorry."

"Don't apologize. You fucking better make use of these 4 hours we're gone in." Nia pointed at you.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Also send us pictures." Farrah said, elbowing you.

"You're all embarrassing."

//

"Do I look bizarre?" You ask one of your personal guards, Andrew, motioning to yourself. You had a "Treat People With Kindness" black hoodie, the hood covering your head, black trousers and your black vans on. You had your sunnies on, opting to not get recognized.

Andrew shook his head, "You don't, Your Highness. I don't believe people would notice."

"Told you to call me Y/N, Andy." You chuckled, taking your phone out.

"It's a habit." Your other guard, Sid, said.

You chuckled again as you texted the one person whom you were impatiently waiting for.

I'm outside x

Almost instantly, you received a reply.

I'll let Jeffery come and get you x

You waited for about 3 minutes before the black door in front of you opened and out came a grinning Jeff. "Your Highness, good to see you again."

You smiled, "Just Y/N. And thank you, Jeffrey. It's good to see you, too."

"Just Jeff." He corrected you teasingly as you walked inside and backstage. "Harry has been all over the place since we knew you're coming. Doesn't shut up about you. Don’t tell him I said that though."

You felt your cheeks heat up, only giggling in response. You stopped in front of a brown door that had "DRESSING ROOM" beside it.

"He's inside." Jeff said, knocking. "Harry?"

"Come inside!"

You grinned, glancing at your guards who chuckled and took a step back. "We'll wait here." Sid said.

Jeff opened the door for you, motioning for you to go inside.

You took off your sunnies, holding them in your hands instead as your eyes fell on the man in ruffles in front of you who was looking down, his head snapping up once he noticed your presence.

"Y/N," Harry breathed out softly as his face broke into a grin, taking long strides towards you before wrapping his arms around you, his head buried in your neck as he brought your body closer to his. "I missed you."

Your arms around his shoulders squeezed him tighter, closing your eyes as you let his warmth engulf you. "I missed you, too, H."

At the nickname, Harry felt himself smile. He pulled back, his hands moving to your face as he softly and so gently stroked your cheeks with his thumbs. "H, huh?"

You let out a small nervous chuckle, shrugging as you wrapped your arms around his torso and looked up at him. "It slipped."

"I love it." He confessed quietly.

Your hands moved to his arms that were covered by the silky shirt, feeling so soothing and satisfying under your fingers as you looked at him. "This is the part when you kiss me." You teased him, feeling your faces get closer.

"And this is when you kiss me back."

If you could describe Harry's lips against yours, you'd use the word "melting.”

Melting was what you felt, slowly letting the feeling of his lips on yours let you loose. Melting went your worries and everything around. Melting went all the judgement and overthinking. Harry's lips absolutely melted you.

Pulling away with a smack and smiles, Harry pecked your lips once again softly. "You have very kissable lips."

"Yeah?" You looked up at him.

"Yeah." Harry confirmed, leaning down to steal one more soft and quick kiss.

"I like the ruffles." You said, running your hands through them.

"Jeff says I look like I came from the wrong era." Harry said, looking down at himself.

You laughed, shaking your head. "You look just fine. I told you that you would."

"’Nough about me. Nice sweatshirt." Harry's lips turned to a smug smirk, looking down at you wearing his own merch. "I was so nervous that I got Farrah's address wrong and it wouldn't be delivered there though."

"I told you I can get it online."

"And I told you to consider it as a gift." Harry shrugged. "Can you help me with my hair? It won't-" Harry patted his head, looking up, "It won't sit."

You laughed, taking a hold of his wrist to get it away from his head.

"Sit down." You urged him to the vanity chair, him sitting and giving you a wide toothed comb. You began to softly comb it, enjoying how luscious and soft in felt. "So, are you coming tonight?"

Harry looked at you through the mirror, his eyes focused on how concentrated you looked as you combed his hair gently with a faint smile on his face. "Do you think your friends will like me?"

"You already liked Farrah as far as I know and she liked you. My friends are fun to be around, promise." You nodded, glancing at him through the mirror before looking at his hair.

"What were their names again?"

"Eddie, Nia, Trev and Emma." You replied instantly before your move hitched, pursing your lips. "And-and Fred." "Fred?" Harry repeated, "Don't remember a Fred in the text you sent me a couple of days ago."*

"Yeah, he's just," You gulped, shrugging your shoulders. "He's just a friend of ours that joined last minute."

Harry nodded, his index and thumb moving to graze his bottom lip; something you picked on was a habit of his when he felt nervous or in thought.

"What are you thinking about?" You asked gently, putting the comb down before softly beginning to run your fingers through his hair to fluff it.

Harry sat up straight, lacing his fingers together in his lap as you both looked at each other through the vanity mirror. "You know I don't consider you a fling, don't you?"

"Uh," your eyes moved to look at his hair again instead of him, shaking your head slightly. "I didn't actually."

"So you," Harry paused, stopping your hands from moving by grabbing them and putting them around his shoulders instead. "You think you're a fling?"

You shrugged, feeling his thumbs gently stroke your knuckles. "I don't know, I-" You stopped, "I don't really know what do you consider me, Harry. Whether you see this going anywhere or you're scared. Or if you feel like I'm too much to handle or not. I don't know if you think this is worth it. Or if-if you just think this is adventurous and risky, gives you that thrilling feeling. It happened to me right after uni and I think I stopped understanding people's intentions ever since. When it comes to that I mean." You confessed, giving him a pursed smile after you finished as you looked back at him. "I don't have history, Harry. I don't-" You paused, shaking your head as you let out a low laugh, "I don't know."

"Y/N," Harry said softly, holding your hand and moving you till you were in front of him, letting you stand between his legs as he looked up at you.

His hands moved to hold your waist, looking up at you as you rested your hands on his shoulders. "Then I will tell you what you don't know. What you should know is that I like you. I really do. I don't care about your status or if you have guards around you all the time. Fuck it, I don't even care if I have to wait for you for three hours outside your flat and behind bushes because your grandmother isn't with us being together. I," Harry chuckled, shrugging his shoulders, "Call me a sap, a total cliché tosser but I have never felt like this about anyone before, Y/N. So here I am, an hour before my show begins, with everyone outside and the world oblivious to me having Her Highness Princess Y/N of the United Kingdom in my hold and me only caring about everything that you wish you can show to everyone, including your family, and about being there when you try new takeout," he chuckled,

"And what I'm trying to ask you is, do you want us to be-" Harry stood up, towering over you and wrapping his arms around your waist.

And there you stood; oblivious to his heartbeats that Sarah could probably use instead of her drums, his body hot and his nerves feeling as though they were about to get wrecked.

"Do you want us to be together? Exclusive?" Harry asked, "Do you want to be my girlfriend, Y/N?"

You let out a small laugh of shock, looking up at him before raising your eyebrows. "Are you serious?"

"Dead serious." He nodded.

Instantly, your hands cupped his cheeks and you brought your lips to his in a deep, strong kiss, tilting his head slightly to feel all of it before pulling away. "Are you sure?"

"I can't stop," Harry said, almost heaving, "I can't stop thinking about you," he pecked your lips, "Kissing you," he kissed you again. "Knowing that you're mine. That I'm yours. I can't fucking stop thinking about it, Y/N.” His hands were than tangled in your hair after dropping your hood, his eyes looking into yours. "Fuck," He licked his lips, glancing at yours before looking back into your eyes. "What have you done to me, you minx?”

You giggled, "I haven't done," You shook your head. "Anything.”

"Lies." He joked with a smile drawn on his face.

"Think I just became your girlfriend."

At the confirmation, Harry only pressed his lips to yours.

//

"What do you mean you didn't tell him about Fred?" Emma asked as you sat on her bed in the hotel, watching as she towel-dried her hair.

"I mean I didn't tell him about Fred. I told him that he's our friend."

"Why did you do that? You're together now, Y/N. He should know." Nia said, plopping beside you on the bed.

"What do I say?!" You groaned, "Hey Harry, by the way, I'm somewhat arranged to marry Prince Fred by my grandmother and the government. Hope it's alright." You sarcastically said.

"Okay, I don't think she should tell him." Nia said, looking at your other friends. You chuckled, shaking your head at how easily convinced she was.

"It sounds bad," Farrah said before turning to look at you as she fixed her hijab, "But put yourself in his shoes. What if he knows about it later when it's already too messy?"

"I won't let it reach that. I'm going to do something about it." You said, glancing at your friends. "It's not like I'm going to allow that marriage."

"Still." Nia said before she popped her newly red-coloured lips.

"If I really did put myself in his shoes and I know that the woman I'm with is basically arranged to marry someone else, I'll probably run off because what's the point of fighting against the queen and the country’s fucking government? I’ll be done for." You opened your arms questioningly.

"Didn't you say that he told you he doesn't care if he hides behind the bushes because your grandma doesn't support you?" Farrah asked, pointing her mascara at you. You nodded. "Then there you have it. A keeper."

You sighed, about to drop on your back when Nia's hand on your back stopped you. "You ironed that suit. Don't mess it up because your life is fucked up."

"Wise words." You mumbled, sitting up. You nodded, standing up and looking at them. "Alright I'll tell him,"

"Yes." They all breathed out, nodding.

"When it's the right time." You continued, hearing them groan in response. "We've just got together today!"

"Look, baby," Emma approached you, putting her hand on your shoulder, "We'll be here for you whenever you decide to do whatever you want. You're a grown woman and you handle complicated shit everyday in your life. We trust you, okay?"

You smiled, nodding. "Thank you, Em."

"I second Em."

"Third her." Farrah smiled at you, blowing you an exaggerated kiss.

"That jumpsuit looks good on you, by the way."

"Speaking of looking good," Nia began, standing up and scrunching her curly hair as she looked in the mirror. "Fred isn't half bad. He's decent."

You, Emma and Farrah looked at each other with surprised smirks before looking at Nia who noticed the change in the room, looking back at you. "What?" She asked, furrowing her eyebrows. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Like what?" Emma challenger her teasingly.

"Like I just told you I want to shove my tongue down his throat." Nia replied.

"Your words, not ours." You teased her, laughing when she gave you a "come on!"

You raised your hands up in surrender, "Just think I should let you know that I'm a taken woman and as far as I know, he's single."

"You three," Nia pointed at you, raising her eyebrows, "Are shit, do you know that?"

"Come on, it's almost 7. We better leave." Farrah said, checking her phone.

Meeting with the guys in the lobby and getting into the cars, you all drove towards the restaurant which Eddie told you was one of the best. Harry had texted you prior, telling you that he was almost there.

"Better early or I won't get the friends approval." He had texted.

Walking behind Trevor who turned to look at you over his shoulder, "Can I give him the if-you-hurt-her-I-hurt-you talk?"

"Absolutely not." You scolded him under your breath before chuckling.

"Geez, fine. Guess I'll stick to the embarrassing stories."

"Trev-" Trevor speeded off while snickering, letting you stop behind Fred.

"You look nice, Y/N." Fred smiled softly at you.

"Thank you, Fred. So do you." You smiled back, nodding your head.

"I was uh," he cleared his throat, looking behind you for a second. "I was meaning to ask you about something."

You nodded, urging him to. "Sure, what is it?"

"Is Nia-" He looked behind you again before lowering his head and voice, "Is she seeing anyone?"

Not knowing how to contain the grin, you glanced behind you at her before looking back at Fred. "She isn't actually. Want me to put in a good word for you?"

"No, no, I-" He shook his head instantly before looking down at you, "Would you? Would you do that?"

You hummed, nodding. "Of course."

He nodded, "Yeah, that would be-that would be nice."

You chuckled before nodding at him and looking in front of you, grinning when your eyes fell on the one person you absolutely wanted to kiss.

"Come on. Let's meet that boyfriend of yours." Emma whispered in your ear as you all walked towards the table where Harry stood, his hands behind his back and a welcoming smile on his face.

You were almost standing in line, watching your friends greet Harry who was grinning, shaking everyone's hand.

"It's nice to finally meet you, Harry." Emma smiled at him before sitting down; not before looking at you and giving you a discreet “ok” hand sign and a thumb up.

You approached him, smiling when he quickly leaned in, greeting you with a peck on your lips. "You look incredible." He whispered.

"You look handsome, too." You replied. Harry pulled your seat out for you, making you sit near him as he sat at the head of the table, you sitting on the first chair to his left.

"Y/N told me you went on a canal cruise, how was it?" Harry asked, smiling as his hand rested on your knee.

And so, the conversation started flowing naturally and easily, filled with laughter and playful banter.

"I saw the video, that one you posted on your Instagram story," Eddie pointed at you before looking back at Harry, "You're bloody talented, mate."

"Right? You have amazing vocals, Harry." Farrah agreed.

You smiled as you looked at Harry, seeing his cheeks slightly turn to faded pink, making you put your hand on his on your knee. "You should hear him live. It's exactly like the studio version." You told them.

"Hey! We should definitely go once." Emma suggested, looking around at everyone on the table who agreed.

"You're welcome to any time." Harry politely said with a sheepish smile.

"Any time isn't convenient to these two royal highnesses." Trevor motioned with his hand at you and Fred, making your smile falter slightly.

Harry's eyebrows raised before looking at Fred, "Oh, excuse me. I wasn't aware that you were-."

You looked down, your ears almost perked at the conversation as the girls eyed you. Fred chuckled, nodding. "Eh, piss off,” he joked, “It doesn't matter. I'm probably going to give it up as soon as I can."

"Oh," Harry almost absentmindedly began rubbing your knee with his thumb, affectionately. "But why? If I may ask so."

"Y/N can tell you about it or she probably already did. Expectations, force, control, all that. No offense to you, darl," Fred looked at you for a second before looking back at Harry. "It's the whole marriage thing that tipped me off." "Marriage?" Harry asked confusingly, seeming interested in the talk.

"You know what? I think royal talk is the last thing we need right now," Nia interrupted them, you releasing a breath. "Harry, where's your next show?"

[drunkenoctopus]

So uh, @norcumii said princess switch and my mind went here. I have no time or skill to do anything more so feel free if anyone wants to add/run with it. Just tag me so I can read and gush over Obi-Wan/Rex.

Baker Rex. Just wants to spend a quiet Christmas with his friends. But his best friend Anakin is going on a diplomatic trip with his fiancé Padme. Ashoka is heading over to her new girlfriend's hometown and its fine, he'll just stay home and work on some new Christmas recipes for the shop.

However before he leaves Anakin drops the bomb: he signed Rex up for the most prestigious baking competition Stewjon's Sweet Spectacular. Anakin knows Rex's confidence hasn't been what it was ever since he left the military, especially after his awful experiences at Krell's Kakes (that bastard stole Rex recipes and worse) so he's hoping this would help his best friend realise that he really is the best.

Rex is hesitant at first but this competition is a huge deal and when he hears Krell is in the competition he has to go! This could be the chance to finally prove he really is better than that kriffing bastard.

Meanwhile Cody is preparing himself for the marriage to Stewjon's youngest Prince. Its not that Cody minds really, he knows that Mandalore needs this alliance, and the Prince is pretty nice and kind. Its just that this isn't the picture Cody had in his head for his future. (He'd be happy being ori'ramikad his while life probably) But his dad Jango is counting on him. Boba is next in line to be Mandalor so it has to be Cody. (There was some talk about one of the Duchesses possibly but his father thought this alliance was too important) And Cody, well he'll do anything for Mandalore's future.

Excpet when he gets to Stewjon, it's so different from home and they have so many traditions and he feels like he's getting them all wrong and he keeps putting his foot in his mouth and the prince is kind but he needs some breathing room and needs to get away from this impending future for a minute.

So when he sees this random guy who somehow *looks exactly like him* (with blonde hair and no scar) he can't help it. Cody and his personal aide Wooley hastily make a plan (involving some boxes of hair dye and scar makeup and lots and lots of hats). But Cody will finally get some time to come to terms with his upcoming wedding and Rex will get to play with the handsome prince.

Obi-Wan knows his future spouse is trying. And he's trying in return, to be kind. He knows this is nothing but a political alliance. To cement the relationship between Mandalore and the Stewjoni jedi once and for all (especially after the disaster that almost happened with his uncle Count Dooku a few years ago). Mandalore needs their aide and they need to avoid the fallout of that almost disaster.

But he wishes there was someone else, his future spouse can only look at him for so long before panicking. His older brother, Mace and his daughter the crown princess Depa have the country in hand, and it's Obi-Wan's duty to make sure the alliance sticks. (He's always had a fascination with Mandalore and actually secretly dated one of their Duchesses once, but he supposes she didn't care much for him if she's not up for consideration).

He's really trying to be patient and teach his spouse all he needs to know about Stewjon (after all they will be splitting their time between the 2 nations as ambassadors) but he thinks Cody's getting overwhelmed.

So he's glad that when he suggests a break from formalities it seems to work! There's a new light in Cody's eyes and his smile is doing something different as he talks about himself(and oh is that a flutter in Obi-Wan's chest?) and he's passionate and sarcastic and actually has some great views on politics and maybe this might not be so bad! Now Obi-Wan is actually looking forward to the end of the holiday when they officially announce their engagement at the Spectacular. (Obi-Wan is also low key wondering if he can get away with hand feeding Cody little pastries on national television.)

Rex switched places with a prince. Well Ven'Alor. But same thing really. And now he has another (beautiful) prince smiling at him like he hung the stars. What the kriff is his life?! (How does this even happen? He knew his dad Sid adopted him on Naboo but he never asked about his birth family before Sid died. Is it somehow possible he's related to the Mandalor?!)

But Obi-Wan's smile is really something else. And he's so sweet, and kind and he listened when Rex went off on his tirade about military reform and laughs at Rex's terrible jokes, and he doesn't know why Cody would run away from this. Cody... Rex keeps forgetting that this is just for a little while, that he has to give up Obi-Wan soon, and maybe he's not ready to do that. So he pushes it out of his mind and focuses on that stunningly sly smile Obi-Wan keep flashing at him (he's also wondering when is it appropriate to kiss that smile off the prince).

[zahra-kha]

Dear Diary 36

I’ve written in you less and less of late. This makes for less of a chronicle of my life if I don’t write in you diligently doesn’t it? Well, to be honest, I don’t feel like I need to remember every detail of my life. Especially with everything that’s been going on lately.

However, not all of it has been dark spots. Some of it has been grey, some of it has been bright. I’ve been wading myself through uncharted territory and I can’t say I’ve always made the best or correct decisions but I’m also not perfect. 

I wrote in my previous entry that I didn’t know what I was supposed to do now that my troupe was...the way it was. I didn’t know what my purpose was here in Eorzea. If I’m honest with myself, I’m still not entirely sure. I’m frightened, nervous, and there are times when I feel alone. The people who I thought were my support - it’s a mystery if they ever really cared about me (which I’ll get into in a bit) - turned out to be a source of immense pain. I’m trying to recover from that but I wish I could explain to people how difficult that is. How hard it is to trust again when family betrays you.

There’s insecurities there that weren’t before. When I spoke to Sid, I initially told him that it probably wouldn’t make a difference if I left to return home, because everyone had their lives and everyone would eventually move on with their lives. I said that, but I didn’t really mean that. To be honest, I was just scared. It’s easier to leave than to be abandoned, easier to walk away than learn later you were never wanted or needed. Easier to pull away than get rejected.

But my whole life I’ve been running. I walk forward so I can run from something that’s been chasing me. I felt like this time if I moved forward, without looking back on what I’d gained, I’d lose something really precious. And I felt like something in me would break and never recover.

I spoke with Sid for a while at the Bojza camp - it was helpful. I wasn’t looking for answers, I don’t think I was. Maybe just some clarity from my chaotic thoughts. It was easy to talk to him. He was kind and patient with me as I rambled. He didn’t try to push me in any direction, and I was grateful. I wanted to know a bit more about him, I felt maybe he understood a bit of what I was feeling. I thought maybe if I understood him, it’d help guide me to a decision. Was that selfish? Writing that down, it almost sounds as if I was using his feelings and experiences. But I also genuinely wanted to know more about him. I think he’s an interesting person that carries a profound sadness, but it also seems he’s managed to find happiness and a sense of purpose. 

That’s what I want, a sense of purpose again. Sid wondered if maybe what I’m searching for is what I lost - my family. I conceded that maybe that was it. But I’m just so hesitant in calling another group family again after what happened. I spent half my life with those people, and none of it was real. I loved them, but I was just a means to an end for them.

It would break me, shatter me beyond repair, if I fell into that trap again with everyone currently in my life.

I want to, I so badly want to believe and trust in them. They’ve been there for me, they’ve helped me, healed me. Cared for me during this whole ordeal. Hells, they have bled for my sake. And of course, I have not hesitated to jump into the fires for them as well. But that’s completely different from fully giving my heart. I just...can’t. I’m trying, but every time it’s like something cold and hard grabs hold of my throat and claws down, screaming I’m a fool. Fear consumes me, and I feel as if I’m drowning.

For now, I’m just content to be here. Sid helped me organize my thoughts and realize my path lies here. I want to heal here, and be around the friends who have shown me care. I want to relearn how to believe in true bonds again. I want to walk forward and see where the road takes me, and I don’t want to be afraid - I don’t want to do it alone.

That’s what I’ve decided.

I managed to tell Quin (Leo?) a bit of this, I hope I didn’t worry him too much. I was a bit under the weather when the truth came out, I’d been shot on the battlefield and was recovering - but it was a good talk. It’s amazing, when I first met Quin, I don’t think I had a good impression of him, and I don’t think he had any real impression of me. Now I think of him as a silly little brother. 

Speaking of, Quin and Erith got fake married! That was...interesting? I probably should have done more to stop it but it wasn’t official so I didn’t really see the harm. Uh, save for Erith putting Quin at shotgun point. I don’t know, I don’t really like getting between their dynamics because they have a really unique relationship but it’s quite clear they deeply care for one another. So I just go with their antics. Should I though? Am I enabling bad behavior?  [There’s a drawing of a dizzy Zahra along the margins]

I wonder if festivals bring out romance? There were quite a few couples seeking blessings and marriages, so I guess maybe they do? Erith was looking for a husband for Bernon so there was that. I didn’t really know how to feel about it. Not really lonely? Wistful, maybe? I can’t say I’m looking for a profound relationship, but I think having someone to laugh with and share small moments with would be nice.

Maybe...not quite the same as what Erith and Quin have. Being at shotgun point is frightening. I completely understand why Quin started drinking. Heavily.

I’m rambling, but my mind has been all over the place. I’m avoiding talking about what’s really going on in my head because I’m not sure if writing this down, reliving it, will be easy.

I’m talking about my confrontation with Sahrin.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I demanded answers from him. I think I was expecting him to explain why Sai did what she did. I was hoping he’d smile at me and tell me everything was a misunderstanding, or that they’d been acting on their own accord and he hadn’t know anything.

I didn’t mind Gail putting pressure on him - she understands what it means to be a leader, and how hard it can be to have people do things behind your back, and the heavy responsibility that leadership entails.

I also realize what I’d done to him - I appeared out of no where and threatened him into a meeting right after he’d seen everything he’d built up burned to the ground. Of course he was confused, of course he wanted answers. I’d given him nothing. I’m sure he tried to look into it on his own, but he likely didn’t get very far since he’d been gone so long deal with Armand and was unaware of all that’d been going on.

No one is omniscient, but I wasn’t entirely in a caring mood. People I had once cared about deeply had tried to kill me more than once - I was tired.

Father once told me that there are always two sides to a story, and what you know is always just a small part of a whole. He said it’s always good to know and understand the full picture of things, but never let that knowledge influence how the ending needs to be written. And if I can help it, I should always be the one holding the quill to those short chapters in my life.

Sahrin told us about Sai and Esila, and then he told us about the foundation of the troupe and what its original purpose had been. The first troupe they’d all been in - I knew they had worked for the government covertly, doing their bidding under the belief they were serving their nation. Even if it was unpleasant, someone has to do it.

Sahrin and the others felt the troupe wasn’t looking at the real threat - the Empire. And I suppose I can understand their fear. With the way the empire was expanding, the idea that Thavnair would have remained a free nation forever was questionable at best. The Empire wanted to be a world power, once they’d conquered all they’d truly desired, why not take Thavnair too?  Would we had really been able to stop them, if they had truly put their forces to it? 

"We’ll be on their list eventually.” was a legitimate fear. It was one I’d heard on the lips of some nobles and commoners growing up. Not everyone liked the Empire in Thavnair. Not everyone felt the arrangement we had was beneficial. For all the ones who welcomed them for business and trade, there were those who feared them. 

I guess Sahrin had been one of those people. He’d become frustrated with his troupe and decided to form his own. Except he couldn’t be normal about it, no. He took others who had anti-Imperial sentiment and they all decided they were going to bring in children to train and raise them - and by raise I mean brainwash - into perfect anti-Imperial fighting tools.

I cannot express the emotions I went through upon hearing that.

I mean, yes, it’s preferable to bring children into a troupe’s fold because it’s easier to train a dancer when they’re younger, more flexible, and their minds retain things easier, than to start them when they’re much older. I’m going to try and give them the benefit of the doubt and hope that’s what they - no, what Sahrin was thinking when he started this. I don’t want to think of Sahrin as a bad person. There’s just a part of me that refuses to do that.

But I can’t...forgive him for creating the troupe with those intentions. It really doesn’t matter that ‘he grew a conscious’ with me and changed his mind. Congratulations, I guess? Maybe one day when I’m not feeling so angry I’ll send him a cookie for deciding not to be quite the terrible person he could have been.

Okay. I’m feeling petty. And angry. And hurt. But his admission ripped the floor of my reality right out from under me. I admired him, looked up to him - I had wanted to be like him. I had wanted to grow up and eventually be a role model to others because of him. And then to learn all of that had been based on a foundation of lies - that I had initially been nothing more than a tool for his ambitions...

Even if he had changed his mind, clearly the others hadn’t, and that hurts. And he knew that. He’d known and I guess had been trying to change them. But you can’t change people who actively choose to hate - even if they feel their cause is righteous. There is a right way to go about change, and using - hurting - children is not it.

Sahrin helped us decipher some of the letters, and it honestly made a bit more sense when he put them into perspective. It looks like Esila really was trying to sell me out to some guy named ‘Darling’. I don’t know why he wanted me so badly, but apparently, Cecilia was getting traded to Sabe, and I was gonna get sold off in some auction had everything gone well. In exchange, I guess they were going to get their audience with Orhan and incriminate Sahrin. Sahrin guesses this was all to get a connection back to the old troupe.

They wanted a way back to the old troupe so they lied, cheated, and were even willing to kill to do it. The warmth, smiles, all of those good times we had were all fake.

I was at a loss of what to believe in. I felt like an idiot for falling for their schemes for so long. I should have seen it - hadn’t I grown up surrounded by scheming adults? I should have known better by now.

I told Sahrin I never wanted to see him again, and then after that the rest of the night was a bit of a blur. I know everyone came back to my apartment. I served them drinks and sandwiches. I wanted to make sure Quin was okay. Outside of that, I don’t remember much. They left and I remember taking Bitey and  Fènghuáng away. I still haven’t gone back to the kennel to pick them up. 

I went back to my apartment and I just...suddenly I hated everything about it. It reminded me of home, of my troupe -  and everything went white, then red. My heart felt heavy and my eyes burned. I think I screamed. I know I cried. And then I fled. I ran and ran and ran. Until my legs turned to rubber and my lungs screamed and I fell down...somewhere. I didn’t recognize the surroundings. I think I was around a lot of trees and sand. I just know the breeze felt good against my skin, and the grass was cool and comforting. 

I cried, an ugly, gulping, gut wrenching cry - until there wasn’t anything left. And then I sat back against the cliffs and stared up at the sky until the sun rose. I didn’t want to return to the apartment, so I didn’t.

And then the next day I went and dyed my hair black. I need to find some white clothing, to mark the passing of the troupe, my family, and for Esila. The Esila I knew and loved - not the one who wanted to trade me to I guess slavers. The woman I had known to be a good person.

I will mourn her death, because she had lived, and she had brought me joy, even if it had been made of lies.

[himbowelsh]

7 from the kiss prompts with runner/chuckler pls xx

sha-la-la-la my oh my, looks like the boy’s too shy  💋 (accepting!) 7.  routine kisses where the other person presents their cheek/forehead for the hello/goodbye kiss without even looking up from what they’re doing

Vera doesn’t quite understand what Hoosier means, when he opens the door to them in the middle of Sid Phillips’s already bustling house party, and declares, “Finally! Someone to tell me I’m not crazy.”

“Got the wrong guy for that, buddy. Unless you ask real nicely,” Bob declares, patting Hoosier on the shoulder as he steps inside. 

Hoosier shrugs him off with a grunt, hardly sparing his friend a glance. “What makes you think I’m talking to you?” He looks offended at the idea. Instead, his sharp gaze is fixed solely on Vera, drawing her inside before she even has a chance to say hello. “You. Somebody with actual eyes in their head. Thank fuck you’re here, cause I can’t take another second of this.”

“Hello to you too, Bill,” she remarks fondly, shrugging her coat off and handing it off to her waiting boyfriend. Bob smirks over his shoulder as he abandons Vera to Hoosier Smith’s mercy; Vera, quite content to be abandoned, just smiles back. She enjoys Hoosier, for all his idiosyncrasies. He’s coarse and forthright, says exactly what he means… and always smiles like he’s got a secret, and sharing it with you is an act of remarkable magnanimity. Vera loves to be in on those secrets, passed so sparingly from Hoosier’s lips to whoever he chooses to honor. She loves figuring them out. She loves figuring him out  —  sometimes thinks she’s almost got it.

“Look,” he declares without preamble, keeping one firm hand in the center of Vera’s back to guide her through the crowd. Though a little baffled, Vera is nonetheless intrigued. She follows, waving at a few faces she recognizes, flashing grins of greeting that Hoosier doesn’t acknowledge at all. It’s a full house tonight, the crowd swarming through Sid’s downstairs parlor and dispersing amidst his family’s substantial living rooms. The upstairs is blocked off out of common decency… but no doubt, a few couples will find a way to sneak up there, trusting the Phillipses to have guest bedrooms to spare. No doubt Bob will want to give it a try… and, at some point, Vera might even agree.

For now, though, she could do with a drink. Relief ripples through her as they step into Sid’s kitchen — a picture of modernity, marble floors and countertops highlighting the latest microwave model his father’s been able to afford. A few kids have taken advantage of the chic coffee maker; a few others have scattered ice chips and rock salt, dissected lime slices forgotten on the counter. If there was a bartender, he’s gone. It’s every man for himself, and the drinks are flowing.

Hoosier sets her up very strategically near the doorway, in a perfect vantage spot to survey the room. “Wait here,” he declares, adjusting her shoulders at an angle.

“Rum and cranberry juice,” Vera informs him, like reading off a price tag.

Hoosier smirks. “Lady with taste.”

As he goes, her eyes follow himself across the kitchen. It occurs to her, not for the first time, that Hoosier is blunt to a fault; it wouldn’t kill him to elaborate a little more, especially when he wants something. Vera’s got no clue what she’s supposed to be looking at, or for. as her eyes drift from Hoosier to scan the kitchen, she finds herself at more of a loss.

There’s Stella, perched atop the counter with her legs crossed, steadied by a young man with both hands on her hips; if they twitch too far sideways, the drinks forgotten beside them will spill everywhere, but neither one looks concerned. Sid’s red headed friend Eugene is frowning at his highball like he doesn’t know what to do with it. A harassed-looking Jay is trying to pour out a plate of chips and salsa, but people passing by keep stealing them as quickly as he can lay the snacks out. Standing behind the island, which doubles as a bar, Chuckler and Runner have set up and are taking orders.

Vera catches Chuckler’s eye. Immediately, he breaks into a grin, calling out a greeting to her. She waves back, perching on her toes to be seen over the crowd. God knows this dress looks great on her — Bob stared for a solid minute, before declaring turquoise was suddenly his new favorite color — but the matching flats do nothing for her height. Chuckler’s tall enough that he can be spotted anywhere.

Hoosier makes it to the bar just in time; Chuckler has already nudged Runner, and they ignore their friend in favor of calling out to her. “Hey, Vera!” Runner says, voice carrying easily over the music and chattering crowd. “Who’s entertaining you over there?”

“You guys, as always.” Hoosier looks supremely put-out, which is Vera’s cue to leave her assigned spot. She joins Hoosier’s side, laying a fond hand on his arm while bracing herself against the bar. “Bill’s my date for tonight. I lost Bob somewhere on the walk in.”

“His loss, not yours.” Runner is already mixing up her drink order, movements deft and confident. “Anything you feel like, tonight — Sid’s given me official bartender status, cause I’m the only one who knows how to make a decent screwball ‘round here.”

Chuckler puffs up with pride. “I’m helping.”

“Help,” Runner scoffs, shaking a steel thermos violently. “That’s one word for it. You see what he did over there? You see that?”

Vera has, in fact, seen the mess left on the counter. Her lips purse in sympathy.

“Do you know how dangerous cutting lines can be?” demands Chuckler, defensive on principle. “The juice squirts. It’s like acid.”

“Don’t say you got it in your eyes —“ He leans in, proving exactly that, in more explicit detail than Vera would like. Her frown turns into an full-on grimace. “Ooh, Lew.”

Runner sets two drinks in front of them, sliding a whiskey towards Hoosier and Vera’s crimson concoction, adorned with one of the lethal limes, her way. “Ahh, he’s fine,” he declares, smacking Chuckler in the center of his broad chest. “Look at ‘im — healthy as ever.”

And that’s when it happens. Vera’s not sure what she was expecting, really, when Hoosier demanded she look — but Runner’s hand lingers where it struck Chuckler’s chest, and almost on reflex Chuckler turns into him. Just like that, they kiss. The peck on the side of Chuckler’s mouth is so deft, so effortless, that if she weren’t looking right at them she might think she imagined things.

Neither of them bat an eye; they just go right back to what they were doing, Runner mixing and Chuckler setting out glasses, like it’s any other day.

Hoosier pinches her hard underneath the bar top.

With no one else reacting, Vera finds herself at a loss. A few seconds pass, threatening a silence bound to be awkward, before she summons her most charming grin and swipes her drink off the bar. “Alright, you guys,” she says lightly. “We’d better go track down Bob.”

“Save the poor bastard whose ears he's talking off,” Hoosier adds, deadpan.

“A rescue mission. Right.” Vera claps his arm, subtly towing him away. “We’ll see you around… keep up the good work!”

Chuckler and Runner have other customers, and more orders to fill. They just wave, Chuckler sending Vera another bright smile, as their friends go on their way.

To his credit, Hoosier waits until they’re out of the kitchen to shoot the elephant in the room. “You saw it, right? You saw that shit.”

“I saw it.” She doesn’t know what else to say. Her head is still kind of spinning from it. Eager for a distraction, Vera takes a sip of her drink. Her eyes widen— possibly larger than at the moment her two friends smooched. “Oh my god, this is actually amazing. Why is this — he actually knows what he’s doing.”

“First time in his life.” Hoosier still clutches his rum; the expression on his face makes it clear he’d have preferred the whole bottle. “They been doing that all night. All week. It’s been going on for fuckin’ weeks.” He rounds on her, and for the first time, Vera sees desperation in his eyes. The worst part is, she gets it. “And every time I bring it up to your boyfriend, he looks at me like I going the crazy. Can’t decide if he’s blind or I’m stupid, but they’re definitely…”

“Dating,” Vera decodes promptly.

“You think?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“I…” Hoosier blinks, mirroring Vera’s baffled expression, with twice the consternation thrown into the mix. “Well, how the fuck do I know? I’m not dating either of ‘em, I dunno what they’re like.”

“The kissing speaks for itself, Bill,” says Vera, gently, feeling like she’s telling a child their goldfish has died. 

A familiar voice from behind them cuts through the awkward atmosphere like a hot butter knife. “Kissing?” Bob echoes, sidling up behind Vera just to wrap an arm around her waist. She leans into him, because he likes to show off in public, and went through the trouble of wearing her favorite cologne tonight. When she turns her head to greet him, he’s grinning, a wicked gleam in his eye. “Don’t tell me you went off and had fun without me?”

Hoosier must be relieved for the distraction. He smirks. “A lot more fun without you.”

“Bill unhooked the bra on his first try,” Vera adds brightly.

Bob clicks his tongue, looking between his best friend and girlfriend in a terrible impression of abject betrayal. “Showing me up, huh? I thought we were friends.” Sensibly, he doesn’t give Hoosier the chance to reply. Instead, he scans the crowd around them, eyes narrowing. “You guys seen the terrible two around here?”

“Just left them tending bar in the kitchen,” Hoosier replies; as quickly as it vanished, that same harassed look floods back over his face. “They’re doing it again.”

“What?” 

“Don’t give me that. Vera saw it too.”

“Saw what?” Bob demands, innocent as a Catholic schoolgirl. When he looks toward Vera — honest-to-god question plain on his face — she stares at him for a moment before shaking her head.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

“Noticed what?” Bob demands, voice rising an octave as he darts between Vera and Hoosier. When Vera rounds on the only other sane person here, expression demanding an explanation, Hoosier just shakes his head. I told him, the mile-long look in his eyes declares. I told him more than once.

If he really hasn’t noticed, there’s no choice. They’ve got to show him. With a nod of agreement, the two set their conspiracy into motion. Hoosier seizes Bob’s arm, tugging him through the crowd, while at his side Vera encourages in the gentlest, completely non-pushing way possible. Bob lets out a squawk of protest, because he was just talking to someone else with an interest in the French and Indian War, he could introduce them — but Hoosier isn’t having it.

“Leave me to deal with it on my own, then tell me you didn’t notice… shitty eyesight, piece-of-shit observation skills for a goddamn journalist — quit dragging your toes, Leckie, and get in here.”

They come to a stop in the doorway, roughly where Hoosier left Vera ten minutes ago. She settles her hand on his shoulder and declares, “Wait.”

“Wait — for what? I’m not even allowed a drink?”

“Shut your mouth and open your eyes,” Hoosier hisses.

It doesn’t take more than a few minutes — that’s the incredible part. They don’t have to observe any longer than it takes for Vera to finish her drink until, out of nowhere, Chuckler proves their point again. This time, he catches Runner with a kiss as he’s squeezing by to serve a drink on the other side of the bar. Runner doesn’t even acknowledge it, save for the ghost of a smile flickering across his lips. When they maneuver past each other again, Runner squeezes behind, and his hand goes somewhere that makes Chuckler jump.

“Yeah,” Vera affirms, nodding to herself. “Definitely dating.”

“Nah,” replies Hoosier. “My money’s on fucking. They don’t have the emotional intelligence.”

“What am I looking at?” asks Bob.

They both turn on him, baffled.

“You didn’t,” Vera says — then stops, takes a deep breath, and tries again. “You didn’t see them do that?”

“You didn’t see ‘em do it last week in the diner? Or the other night, in the back of your car? Or on my goddamn couch?” At Bob’s blank stare, Hoosier slowly leans in, seizing him by the arm with a calm fierceness almost guaranteed to bruise. “They’ve been doing it for the last few weeks. Everywhere.”

“It’s almost cute,” Vera muses. “They make it seem easy. Bob, you’ve never kissed me like that.”

“Like what?” Bob exclaims.

“Really?” says Hoosier. “He ain’t ever kissed you like muscle memory?”

Vera regards her boyfriend for a long moment. Bob shifts under her gaze, helpless and inflamed at some offense he wasn’t even aware of making. His ignorance is his one saving grace — Bob Leckie has never played dumb in his life, so genuinely missing what’s right in front of him is the more likely bet. It’s all a matter of perception, Vera supposes. You see what you want to see.

Or, in poor Hoosier’s case, what you don’t.

“Don’t worry,” Hoosier declares, clapping his friend on the shoulder. “I’m sure if you ask nice, those two’ll be happy to give you pointers.”

“Pointers for what?” Bob demands, two seconds away from choking on his own bafflement.

There’s no point telling him. He’ll have to figure it out on his own eventually… and until then, Hoosier will have to put up with fifth wheeling between Bob and Vera, and whatever’s going on behind the bar. Runner’s shoulder bumps against Chuckler’s own, casually affectionate, and it takes all of Vera’s self-control not to, “aww,” out loud.

Maybe soon her boyfriend will be as quick on the uptake as those two are with their kisses.

[ohsweetflips]

DAO really was the best game, the lore the ability to absolutely wreck shit, the fact that they didnt do that bullshit ‘all sides are grey’ and clearly showed oppression. I think of my warden, an elven mage, and wonder how she’ll be rewritten more than anything.

right like!!!! i love each dragon age game with my whole heart and they all have super special places in said heart, but origins handles a lot of the social problems really well, or at least from the perspective that i play it as (also an elven mage!)

the rest i’m putting under the cut bc holy shit i can talk abt dragon age a lot. also nothing is proofred. i’m so sorry this got so long i hear “bioware” and “grey morality” and i go wild

(pls talk to me abt dragon age.....)

(also please don’t reblog this!!)

like i understand da2 having a type of grey-morality thing bc the final battle was choosing between the mages and the templars (tho imo they could’ve done better than “the mages hate us bc we keep them locked in a tower and there are multiple accounts of us abusing them and therefore some of them turn to blood magic so therefore we should kill all of them” but still, in a setting like that where the Main End Game Choice was mages vs. templars, then that is understandable)

(but also i haven’t played da2 in a couple years so maybe it’s more nuanced than that)

but inquisition! it’s weird bc inq has a super special place in my heart. i’ve played it 6 or 7 times to completion, not counting the other times i got 20/30 hours into it before external forces distracted me. inq is overall the game i think abt the most, most of my playthroughs average over 100 hours, it’s the only game that i have all the dlcs for, for me it’s the easiest to replay, and yet there’s so much that frustrates me abt it! like, i’m gonna avoid talking abt the actual parts of the writing that bother me, bc that can be it’s own standalone thing, but imo it felt like they never actually solidified what actually caused the mage/templar war? there are those that say anders started it (seems likely), then there are those who talk abt fiona leading the rebel mages in the war? and there, of course, is the “the templars have done wrong but so have they mages and therefore you’re shamed either way for what you do” like i Get what they’re trying to do, trying to encourage players to explore their options and really delve into their own moral values of the game and not just adhere to what the game says, but idk the way they always went abt it always rubbed me some type of wrong

i think part of it is bc, when people mention circle mages turning to blood mages and demons and such like that, it was always framed as “ah these evil mages!” and not “[if these are circle mages] most likely their want for freedom pushed them to that”

does that make it right? no, not necessarily! look at uldred from dao! imo, he was wrong! i don’t like the circle and my warden herself has a complicated relationship with it, but i like that you can say “hey! this is wrong!” without legitimate plot-based “but what if it isn’t?”

of course there will always be companions who push for the more chaotic/harsh choices (morrigan is the one i have the most experience with giving me disapproval for being what i think is nice) (still love her tho), but i think dao handled “okay, look at the big picture, and really think abt what hill u want to die on” stance well

and then there’s the way the mage/templar thing is handled in inquisition vis a vis companions. specifically cullen. and, listen, i as a player have a very complicated relationship with cullen and my heros do too lmao. and i really don’t want to get into the nuances of that bc that can 1) turn into a fight i don’t feel like having and 2) can be it’s own discussion, but basically, from my own perspective, he’s a well-written character who makes for a good antag to a mage-siding hawke in da2 bc of how pro-templar/anti-mage he is. again, don’t agree with any of it (honestly da2 alone puts me on the “okay fuck this” level w/ his character), but it does offer an extreme that is interesting to see. origins is more complicated bc in a game not directly stepped in mage/templar and also a game that stems from 6 different origin stories, it’s very easy to be a non-mage and be like “why do i care abt this guy” (if you get what i’m saying? like i got immediately invested in saving the mages bc my first warden was a circle mage so i was very put off by being told to kill all of them, as compared to if i played a non-mage origin and didn’t really have that background knowledge). but overall, origins and da2 puts cullen on the “pro-templars, mages are more dangerous than they are good side.” and then inquisition is where things get interesting!!

and, for a quick ref, i’m very into getting invested in my characters and really figuring out their morals and what they would actually do, or at least think, so dai becomes interesting bc i play as another elven mage who has never stepped foot in a circle and never will. so, bc of that, i play him as naturally more inclined to not initially Think abt cullen’s past like as a templar bc, as a dalish mage, i hc that he does not know what actually goes on in circles (as compared to my warden, a circle mage, and my hawke, an apostate) (but i hc that, overtime, as he has more and more experiences with templars, he becomes more cognizant of that) (but bioware doesn’t give me the option to just dictate everything my camris lavellan is thinking akjsjkdjk)

and dai-cullen, imo, is actually very interesting! and, tbh, i do have to give it to bioware. i feel like i’m abt to say an unironic controversial opinion, and i feel like i’ve already talked abt the nuances of all of this, but i do think dai did well at reworking cullen’s character. however, i feel like that was also done to feed into the grey-ness of the mage/templars. and, imo, i think they almost did well at actually making cullen show regret for how he treated mages. almost. again, i think there’s a lot of nuance! bc we do see him show some type of regret for how he treated a mage!warden (if he said all that shit like “all these people’s blood are on your hands” if u talk abt not wanting to kill innocent mages) and we do see him step away from templar life (that is, if you tell him to stop taking lyrium)

but!!!! there’s One Thing that puts a thorn in this, and it’s that cullen says something along the lines of, “meredith wasn’t all wrong, she had reason” like bitch!!! no matter what side you choose in da2, you fucking fight meredith!!! she’s wanted to kill innocent mages/make them tranquil even before anders blew up the chantry!!! meredith was all wrong!! she was evil!!!!! she was objectively a harmful person!!!!!!!!! bioware really makes this bitch the final boss of da2 and then has the audacity to say “but maybe she wasn’t all bad” in dai like WHERE IS THIS FOR ORSINO??? ORSINO ISN’T ALL BAD, IS HE???????? OH BUT HE IS BC HE RESORTED TO SUDDEN BLOOD MAGIC IN THE LAST TEN MINUTES OF THE GAME, AS COMPARED TO MEREDITH WHO WAS A DANGER FOR THE ENTIRE FINAL ACT and i digress but the fact that bioware is trying to redeem cullen but also showing that he still sympathizes with a woman who 1) turned against the templars and 2) Literally Everything She Did To The Mages always makes me “hmmmm are u really trying tho :/”

also tho one thing i’m actually not the biggest fan of is that cullen is like “oh i knew hawke in passing........ knew varric in passing.............” meanwhile let’s just cut to everything that happened at kirkwall. this is my own opinion bc i see varric as hawke’s #1 but i personally think that at least half of the comraderie varric and cullen sorta-kinda-had in inq was varric testing the waters of “okay what is cullen going to be like if and when hawke shows up”

also tho i will say a hot-take of mine is that if cullen gets to be redeemed by bioware, then i want something for anders, too, but i doubt bioware would do something so clearly pro-mage. but it could be two sides of the extreme! extremist templar gets redemption, extremist mage does, too! come on, bioware, show your grey morality

(again, i think it’s interesting what they did with cullen in dai and does give some sympathetic light but i also do think the reworking of his character was working towards bioware’s moral-greyness agenda with dragon age. not that that’s necessarily a terrible thing, i understand them wanting some nuance, but it’s the way they do it. like, you can show bad templars and bad mages and still not have “but who is really the bad guy? the oppressors or the oppressed? who is it really?”)

(and also just bc i feel like i need to put my own player claim in this, my opinion on cullen is complicated and also i’m gonna be completely forth-right with u, dear anon, i appreciate cullen in inquisition but, as a whole, he can be terrible to ur warden in dao (that’s not me being shifty it literally just depends on the choice you make in broken circle) and in da2 he’s a nightmare, so bioware had to do a lot of legwork in dai) (tbh tho in my personal-player opinion, if i was to ever romance cullen in inq, it’s not gonna be with a mage)

god this got so out of hand anon i’m so sorry you probably didn’t want this messy essay but i just love talking abt dragon age!!! i think abt it a lot and i have five years worth of headcanons and i have a family tree set up for my surana/lavellan bc of some bullshit i pulled and also!!!! bioware’s writing can get so frustrating but i also think it’s so interesting to pull apart and discuss bc i think the bioware has actually shifted from pro-mage (origins) to neutral-mage (da2 kinda) to anti-mage (dai) and i feel like So Many Choices with characters and their plots reveal that!!! so it’s a frustrating agenda but i also just love dragon age so much that i can’t help but get excited and talk abt it!!!

like, as all things, i do believe there are times when grey morality does work, but, at least from a mage-siding perspective, it hasn’t really landed well for dragon age. bc, and i don’t want to drag in real-life scenarios bc i feel like it would be incredibly inappropriate of me to use any oppressed minority as a comparison for a fantasy world, but it’s the age-old thing of people saying the shitty “but the oppressed fight back and therefore they’re just as bad as the oppressors!” and that’s like....... not how it works.

but also you’ve caught me in a wonderful mood so i feel like, if i was in a bad mood, this would be a lot more “and fucking bioware can’t make a goddamn decision on what side they actually support so instead most of the companions are gonna made rude remarks abt you supporting mages and the ones that support you are seen as distrustful and fuck this and fuck that” but i think that is the joy of loving something with you’re whole heart and also saying “there are so many things abt this that piss me off and so many things that i would change”

and also!!!! ik bioware probably killed my warden so like rip electra surana but i would love for the warden to make an appearance in da4 as a temporary companion/advisor. but! but!!!!!! i also don’t know how much i trust bioware with my “elven mage who is alistair’s mistress and preferred the mages and wanted to free the circles and etc etc etc” bc... idk how to explain it? like, i don’t want them taking my warden and putting words in her mouth that go against choices i meticulously made in dao

[theassofwonder]

A Cord of Three Strands (Is Not Quickly Broken)

Part One Part Two Part Three Part 4

PART 5-EVGENI

((Unfortunately i can’t include the hyperlink to skip the smut if one so chooses, SO you scroll from “ The number of times he has dreamed of this scenario is ridiculous and embarrassing” to “After they’ve  cleaned up, put on some semblance of pajamas, and have tucked themselves into bed”. ENJOY!!!))

He should be used to this by now, Evgeni thinks, watching Sid glare groggily at the coffee maker as it fills the carafe. Sid’s been in Moscow for more than a week; Evgeni shouldn’t be surprised every morning he finds Sid in the kitchen before him and Anya. He shouldn’t be melting into a puddle each time Nikita gravitates into Sid’s lap. He knew going into this when he agreed with Anya that he’d give himself the chance to let his feelings for Sid- be on the front burner, so to speak.

But he’d spent so long keeping them on the back burner that he’s not entirely sure what to do now that he has permission- from Anya, and from himself- to act on those feelings. He doesn’t know how to talk to Sid about it all; hell, he’s not sure how to talk to himself about any of it.

“Good morning, Geno,” Sid yawns. Evgeni almost hates how he doesn’t hate Sid’s accent, how he rounds out the vowels, how he still pronounces every syllable.

“Morning,” he grunts. He doesn’t wrap his arms around Sid’s midsection like he wants to, doesn’t kiss his cheek and rest his chin on the top of his growing mop of curls. Instead, he leans back against the island across from him, head bowed, and eyes closed, trying to get a few more minutes of rest before he really has to be awake.

“You’ve been doing this for how many years now and you’re still not a morning person?”

Evgeni lifts his head, his breath catching at how…fond the smile Sid’s giving him is. “Yeah, well-“ he clears his throat, feeling the blood rush to his face. “Old dog, bad tricks?”

Sidney tips his head back and laughs, his beautiful, honking laugh that makes him sound like a goose, and Evgeni can’t help but stare at him: the little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the way his mouth stretches over his teeth, how the tilt of his head seems to elongate his neck and make Evgeni want to lick and bite every square inch.

“I’d try to correct you with the right wording, but I have a feeling you said it wrong on purpose.” Sid’s grin is blinding, too bright for how early it is.

Evgeni tilts his head a little. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.” He grins, more of a bearing of teeth than a display of joy. “Bad English.”

Sid lets out the goose laugh again. Evgeni likes how pink his face gets and makes a silent bet with himself to see how many times he can pull that laugh out of him during his visit.

X

Evgeni will never be over how exhilarating it is to be on the ice with Sid. He’s always felt at home in a rink, with skates on his feet and a stick in his hands, but with Sid- well. He feels like they were destined to share sixty-one meters of ice.

“What’d you have to do to finally get him here, huh?” Kadarov mutters, smirking a little. “Sign away your life to the NHL?”

“He’s just getting over a tough breakup. Besides,” Evgeni says distractedly, watching Sid familiarize himself with the rink, bigger than he’s used to. “I already promised him ‘Penguins forever’.”

Evgeni freezes, and from the corner of his eyes he can see Kadarov shaking violently. “Mikhail,” he starts, but Kadarov cuts him off, waving his left hand erratically. “It’s fine,” he says, voice high-pitched. A giggle lets itself loose and Kadarov doubles over to brace himself with the wall.

“What are you laughing for?” Evgeni hisses, cold with fear. “This isn’t a laughing matter, what the fuck?” He sees Sid skating over, looking concerned, and tries to swallow his panic.

“Everything okay over here?” Sid looks between Evgeni and Kadarov, confused and lips twitching, like he thinks he should be laughing too.

“Told Kadar joke,” Evgeni lies. “Is terrible joke, think his brain is broken.”

Sid nods slowly, the space between his eyebrows wrinkling slightly. “Okay. Uh,” his gaze slides over to Kadarov, who is no longer under threat of death by laughter, but is still chuckling to himself and shaking his head. Sid blinks and looks back to Evgeni, confused, and a little lost.

“How do you like ice?” Evgeni tilts his chin up toward the rink. “Feels okay?”

Sid looks over his shoulder, the left corner of his mouth ticking up. “Yeah,” he says. “It’ll definitely be a bit of an adjustment, but nothing I can’t handle, ya know?”

“Of course,” Evgeni sticks the tip of his tongue between his teeth, biting down gently, privately drooling over the color that flushes high on Sid’s cheekbones. “Sidney Crosby can handle anything.”

X

He’s still thinking about that blush when Anya accosts him late that night, cornering him in front of the large double sink in the bathroom. Her eyes are wide, her brows furrowed, her bottom lip red like she’s been biting it viciously. “Zhenya,” she says, the hem of her shirt gathered between her clenched fists. “I need to tell you something.”

Evgeni turns off the faucet and rubs his hands dry on his jeans. “Is it something I need to be worried about?”

Anya scrunches her face up, the space between her eyebrows closing. “I don’t think- I don’t know.” She sighs, folding her arms over her chest. “Maybe.” Anya purses her lips and pivots on her heel to march through to the bedroom, where she begins pacing at the foot of their bed. She stops suddenly, facing Evgeni. She gives a trembling exhale and just- falls backward onto the bed, arms spread out perpendicular. Evgeni almost wants to laugh, but he knows if he did Anya wouldn’t talk about what’s bothering her, so he keeps his mouth shut and sits down next to her legs.

Anya presses the heels of her palms against her eyes, groaning. “I don’t know how to tell you,” she admits. “It’s nothing bad, I swear, and it’s so stupid, Zhenya, god!”

“Hey,” Evgeni interjects. “Careful now, that’s my wife you’re talking about.”

Anya lifts her hands to make a show of rolling her eyes. Evgeni raises an eyebrow and she sighs. “Fine,” she relents. “So it’s not stupid. But it’s-“ she makes a face. “Immature, I guess?” the corner of her mouth ticks up, and she looks a little to the left of Evgeni’s head. “It feels like I’m a schoolgirl again, getting a silly crush.” The nostalgic, far-off look in her eyes disappears as she makes eye contact with Evgeni. “Or it would,” she continues regretfully. “If it didn’t also feel like I was betraying your trust.”

Evgeni tries not to get stuck on the first thought that pops into his head, but he can feel panic start to cling to the edges of his consciousness as he mentally goes through recent interactions Anya’s had with any male coworkers or friends. He starts second-guessing everything in the span of a half-second, and if his mom hadn’t brought out his baby pictures after Nikita was born, he would be doubting that too, but-

“I think I’m falling in love with Sidney.”

A split second of nothing.

A train braking too hard, too soon; the wheels sparking against the rails.

He opens his mouth to speak, to ask when, and how, but what comes out is-

“That’s so fucking hot.”

“Zhenya!” Anya snaps, springing into a sitting position, face flushed. “What the fuck, Zhenya, that is not-“

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” he yelps. “That’s not what I wanted to say, I’m sorry, that was incredibly inappropriate, I’m so sorry, sweetheart, I won’t- I swear to God, Anya-“

“I mean,” She makes a face, half apologetic. “You’re not wrong.”

He’s dying. He’s dead, and he’s in heaven, because he’s under the same roof as the two loves of his life and the one he’s married to is both okay with him being with the other one and that she wants to be with him too. (The number of times he has dreamed of this scenario is ridiculous and embarrassing.)

Anya must be able to tell what train of thought his mind is going down because she blinks, eyes wide, then folds her legs under her and smirks. “You like that,” she hums. “Me, with Sidney.” She caresses the edge of his jaw with her knuckles. There’s a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes so Evgeni leans into it, closing his eyes and exhaling over her wrist. Anya kisses his cheek, dragging them up to his temple. “How many times have you imagined it? Be honest.”

“So many,” he breathes. He tries to tilt his head back to kiss her properly, but she halts him with her thumb over his lips and the rest of her hand cupping his chin.

“Were you watching?” She asks lightly. “Or were you with us, participating, touching us both?”

“Both,” he rasps, and she slides her thumb into his mouth, pressing against his tongue, keeping his mouth open.

Anya hums again and nips at the crest of his ear. “What does he do to me,” she asks, almost begging, but not quite. She straddles him, groaning as she rubs against the hard line of his dick, still trapped in his pants, her thumb slipping farther into his mouth as he gasps in return. “What does he do to you?” She slides her thumb out, dragging it down the center of his chin. Evgeni makes sure to look her in the eyes as he says, “Everything”.

It’s a race to see who can get their clothes off first, and Anya has the advantage of apparently not wearing underwear, so Evgeni is stuck at the end of the bed with his shirt off and pants around his knees while his wife is stretching out on top of the covers, the pillows like a halo around her dark hair.

His wife is hot and he’s a simple man; sue him.

“Zhenya,” her voice lilts, as she bends her knees, planting her feet flat on the duvet, and running her long fingers up her delicious thighs. He shoves his pants the rest of the way off and nearly breaks his nose on her kneecap in trying to get up to her fast enough. He’s about to kiss her when she stops him again, pushing him away with the tips of her fingers against his forehead. He’s man enough to admit that he whimpers.

“If you’re good,” she says, carding her beautiful fingers through his hair, pressing down at the back of his skull, guiding him to her chest. “Are you going to be good for me?”

“So good,” Evgeni breathes, and licks broadly over her left nipple.

Anya tugs on his hair lightly, not enough to hurt- not yet. “Tell me one of your fantasies,” she breathes. “I don’t care which one, just-“ her breath hitches Evgeni bites at the skin just below the nipple. Her eyelids flutter, as if she wants to keep watching him. “Make me come,” she orders.

Evgeni licks at her left nipple once more before kissing down the side and across to her right one, alternating between soft, barely-there brushes and open, wet things that barely quantify as a kiss.

He resists the urge to suck a hickey into the bottom of her breastbone.

He gives her right nipple the same treatment as the left: broad licks directly over, sharp bites underneath, all while his hands trace the skin around her ribcage.

“One of my favorites,” he murmurs, kissing a line down her torso, “starts just like this. I’m making you feel so good-“

“Could be- better,” Anya gasps, her stomach jumping under his hands and lips.

“And Sid knocks on the door. I tell him we’re busy, but he just knocks again, you know stubborn he gets.”

“Uh-hhh,” Anya whines, as Evgeni slips two fingers into the tight, wet heat of her cunt.

“So I tell him,” Evgeni mutters, licking slow, broad stripes between the lips of her labia. “I tell him that he either has to leave us alone or join us.” He spreads his fingers and starts to push them in and out, slow, but not gentle. “And he comes in, of course.”

“Sidnechka!” Anya cries out. Evgeni covers up his smirk by replacing his fingers with his tongue, moaning when his wife’s thighs close around his head like a vice (or a boa constrictor, catching its prey), her hand almost tight enough in his hair to pull it out.

“Is that what you call him,” he gasps when she lets him free, replacing his fingers and driving them in fast but shallow. “In your head, is that what you think of him? As your Sidnechka?”

Anya whines, her shoulders hunched forward, the shorter strands of her hair sticking to her face with sweat, her eyes wild.

“Do you want to hold him? Kiss him?” Evgeni partners a particularly sharp thrust with a slight pressure of his thumb to the side of her clitoris. “Do you want to put him on his knees?”

“Yes,” she sobs, her back bowing, right hand digging into his scalp and her left clenched in the sheets.

“You want him to make you feel good, make you come?”

“Yes!” Anya cries, so loud it’s almost a scream.

Evgeni lets her tug his head up, almost bringing his fingers out too until she clamps her thighs shut around his wrist. “Was I good for you, my love?” he murmurs.

“Just kiss me, you fucking idiot,” Anna pants, and- well. It’s certainly no hardship to obey his wife’s demand.

She keeps her hand in his hair, scratching her nails against his scalp soothingly, tugging sharply when she decides he’s having too much fun teasing her. “Make me come again,” she says. “And then fuck me.”

“With my fingers again? Or my mouth?”

She bites his lip, hard enough that it’s still stinging when she pushes him back down her body. “Both.”

He normally tries to spend as much time as possible eating her out, but he senses that she’s a little too impatient for that tonight, so he only spends a little time warming her pussy back up with his mouth before he starts back up a grueling pace with his fingers.

“So,” he says, biting a soft impression of his front teeth into the inside of her thigh. “I told you one of my fantasies.”

Anya hums, her eyes closed, her lips turned up.

“So it’s only fair if you tell me one of yours, right?”

“Is that- so,” Anya asks, her voice hitching in the middle.

“Oh yes,” Evgeni murmurs, curling the tips of his fingers.

“God,” Anya gasps. “I want his mouth on my tits.” She twists one of her nipples, as if to make a point.

“Yeah,” he hums, tonguing the side of her clit. “You want his mouth on your tits while I’m eating your cunt?”

“Oh, shit,” Anya whimpers, her fingers clenching deliciously tight in his hair. “Fuck, I want him eating my cunt.”

“Am I sucking your tits, then, in this hypothetical?”

“No,” Anya says, digging her nails into his scalp. “I’m sucking your dick.”

The vibrations from his moan push her over into her second orgasm, easier than the first. He kisses the crease between her thigh and groin as she comes down, one of his thumbs still moving up and down between her slick labia. He kisses his way up her body, ripping open a condom packet as he settles his forehead between the valley of her breasts.

“Would you want him to fuck you,” he murmurs, pushing himself up, putting his weight on his left forearm, sliding the condom on with his right hand.

Anya makes sure they’re holding eye contact when she says, “I want him to come in me and for you to eat me out after.”

Evgeni grips the base of his dick so tight it hurts to keep himself from coming. “Good God, woman,” he chokes.

“I have never gone easy on you,” Anya chuckles. “Why should this be any dif-“ she cuts herself off, gasping when Evgeni thrusts in. “Different,” she breathes, eyes slipping shut. She slips her hand from the top of his head to the nape of his neck, squeezing slightly, her thumb an insistent pressure at the hinge of his jaw. “I want to put him on his knees,” she murmurs, her knees squeezing his hips between them, telling him that he’s allowed to move. “I want to hold him while you fuck his face, when you fuck his ass. I want to show him how to fuck you best, to sit on his goddamn face and keep him there until he’s covered in my come.”

She keeps up a near-constant litany of words while he fucks into her, pausing only to breathe or order him around some more. It’s exhilarating, Evgeni thinks, one hand tight around the curve of Anya’s hip. Finally being able to talk about Sidney- what he wants to do to Sidney- and for her to snap back with her own fantasies? It’s a wonder he hasn’t come yet.

“I can’t wait to get my hands on his ass,” Anya groans, clenching her pussy down on his cock. Evgeni moves one of her legs from around his waist to up over his shoulder. “Fuck, Zhenya, as soon as you get your shit together, I want my hands on his ass.” Evgeni growls in response, snapping his hips faster. “Promise me, Zhenya,” Anya gasps insistently. “Promise you’ll let me, as much as I want.”

“I- promise,” Evgeni gasps, trembling, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose, as his muscles lock up. He’s careful to pull out slowly, and lets the bed catch him as he drops to Anya’s right.

“Fucking Christ,” he pants, chest heaving, blinking white spots from his vision. Anya only hums in response, her eyes closed and a smug grin on her face.

X

After they’ve cleaned up, put on some semblance of pajamas, and have tucked themselves into bed, Anya turns to him. “I know Sidney’s here for you,” she starts, her voice soft. “But I can’t help but feel like- like it’s meant to be all of us, you know?”

“He’s only here because of you,” Evgeni points out. “Because of your kind heart. You convinced me to ask him here, even though I know it hurt you in the process.”

She looks away but doesn’t deny it.

“You’re the one who convinced him to come here,” Evgeni continues. “Sidney Crosby, the most stubborn man I know.”

“It’s not like it was that hard to convince him anyway.” Anya rolls her eyes, but the way the tips of her ears pink up betrays her. “Besides,” she says, pulling Evgeni in for a kiss. “I have a feeling it’s going to be fairly easy from here on out.”

[thewordreaper]

Be Prepard

(My 3rd story for @short-story-slam as usual this is an independent story that falls into my supervillain universe. You don’t need to read anything else to read this but reading the 1st story will this make this so much more funnier. Trust me. And if you’re intrigued by my story here’s another story from this universe.)

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Tanveer, the most successful thief in Hyderabad, ran along the balcony railing. Look carefully. Her usual disguise of shifting greys and blues had been discarded for a suit of green with a red mask from which red lines ran down to her shoulders.

A plan was in motion, carefully planned and currently being perfectly executed.

Just as she leapt onto the next building, her phone rang. A lesser person would have been thrown off balance. But she was prepared. She was prepared for everything.

Are you jealous yet? You should be.

Her phone would ring only if one among a select five people called. If anyone of them called at this time of night, there was an 85% chance of it being an emergency. It was exactly 85% which was very confusing. There had to be some slight errors in the calculations somewhere. Perfect percentages were a nightmare. Nevertheless' she left her volume on because there was no one else competent enough to deal with their problems.

You should be jealous by now, whether you want to be her or be friends with her. Either one is fine.

"Hello?" She said putting it up to her ear and cursing quietly when she realised she hadn't pressed the receive button.

"Hello?" She repeated after doing so.

"Tanveer! Thank god you picked up. You have experiences with boyfriends right?"

Tanveer stopped midstep, one leg still in the air, held her phone in front of her and just looked at it.

"Tanveer?" Said a weak voice from the phone.

"No." She said finally, putting the phone back to her ear. "I have never had a boyfriend. Never wanted a boyfriend. You're my best friend. You know this!"

There was a groan from the other end. "Well, who knows what you've been up to in Hyderabad? Probably going out every night."

She was technically right but Tanveer wasn't going to admit it. She didn't need Roshini to be mixed up in all this. Let her enjoy her normalcy.

"I've been working. If anyone is partying all night it would be you."

"That reminds me. I need to invite my boyfriend to Kai's party day after. Its some cool Dj thing. I did tell you I have a boyfriend right?"

"You may have mentioned it." Admitted Tanveer, stepping over a broken section of the railing.

Here's a fun tip, destroy you railings to prevent thieves from using them as a freeway.

"I thought you had given up on love."

"Meh. You know I love you right?"

"You don't. You don't. You would not be calling me at one o'clock in the night to gush about your boyfriend if you loved me."

Which is rude. If you can't gush about your boyfriend in the earliest hours of the morning when can you?

"I wasn't planning to stay up until one. I was texting him and it became flirty. Which is a first. One sec, I need to check if my mom is secretly listening."

Tanveer sighed as she took stock of her surroundings. Two houses to go.

If any of you, comfortably reclining on a sofa are thinking oh only two houses left. That's not much, let's see you run across two houses in the night while holding a phone to your ear. And it will be pitch black as well because that's the price of pollution. Start carpooling.

"Anyway, he sent me a shirtless picture."

"Which you didn't want?"

"Well, technically I asked him for it."

"Is he secretly a cyborg or something? Roshini there is no conceivable reason why you would call me!"

"He's usually really bad at pictures. Absolutely terrible. He sent me a selfie the other day and I had to take five minutes to convince myself that he's actually good looking and fairly competent at everything else."

"Please do not describe his shirtless picture with me. I will throw my phone away. I will throw your phone away and I'll find him and throw away his phone as well."

"It probably won't make a difference. He keeps loosing or breaking his phone. Now that I'm thinking about it, his job doesn't give him space to do a lot of photography."

"What does he do?"

There was a panicked silence as Tanveer inspected a window on the top floor. The security guard would notice her if she took more than two minutes to find a window she could enter through.

"Uh..homeopathy? Natural... medicines? And stuff. People's health-related."

"Doesn't really seem like the sort of thing that gets your phone broken."

"He has a lot of hobbies. Like pyrotechnics."

"Did he blow himself up while taking a picture? You accidentally killed him didn't you? Come on Roshini, that's so careless."

The window opened up easily and she soundlessly slipped inside. Which takes practice.

So much practice that it's almost not worth it. Especially when it's your toe that gets stabbed every time. Tanveer has never stubbed her toes in her life.

If you're not jealous yet, you're obviously not a human. Give up already, you've been found out.

"Have some faith in me."

"No." said Tanveer as she made her way downstairs. Roshini groaned again.

"Anyway, this picture was good. I am kind of attracted to him. But what do I say?"

"That he's hot maybe? Why are you asking me this?"

"I did." She said sourly. "He thought I was making a pun. This is ridiculous, maybe I should break up with him. How do you even break up with people?"

"Roshini have I ever dated anyone in my life? Do you seriously have no other friends?"

There was silence. Tanveer took advantage of it to cautiously open a door. A crooked hinge caught her mask, and as she moved forward, it pulled a strip of fabric from it.

"They all cut the call within a minute." She said at last. Tanveer cast a look at the sleeping couple in the main bedroom and decided it was worth continuing the conversation. "When did he send the picture?"

"Ten o'clock."

Tanveer sighed as she slid open the closest. She lifted a few saris out of the way to reveal the safe. "He probably already thinks you want to break up with him. What's his name anyway?"

"Advaith."

"I know an Advaith." Sais Tanveer darkly.

He was more popularly known as Zeher, was obsessed with destructive plans and derailed every conversation you had with him. At least Roshini wasn't dating him. To make matters worse, that guy had a permanent place in the league of evil because he's healed most of them at least once. She smiled as Roshini continued to complain over the phone. This night would secure her seat.

She removed the blade from her pocket. She had made several replicas of it and made modifications of her own to Revanth's original design. It was never wise to have a single supplier of weapons.

"It cut through the top of the safe with ease. After carefully sheathing it again, she reached in and pulled out its contents. She sandwiched her phone between her ear and shoulder so that she could use both her hands.

"Why don't you just tell him he looks good and set up a date or something?"

"Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"I'm not sure of anything. I have no idea about relationships!" She said pretty loudly.

It is possible that her voice, paired with the slamming of the cupboard door was what woke up the sleepers. It is possible that they had a very strange circadian rhythm or perhaps they were victims of terrible nightmares that chose to return them to consciousness at this exact moment. That must be why they woke up.

"That's just great." Said Tanveer.

"What is?"

"My roommate just walked i."

"And you complain about my sleeping habits."

"You're my best friend." Muttered Tabveer, as the owners of their house continued to wonder if they were dreaming or not. "Although that might change once you die of lack of sleep."

"Do you want me to hang up?"

"Nah. Just keep talking for a while."

"Sure. Well, I was talking to him the other day and.."

Tanveer allowed her friend's chatter to relax her brain as she snuck out. The light flicked on right as she was at the doorway illuminating her memorable outfit and the huge 'T' emblazoned on the back. She froze for a second before rushing up the stairs. Panicked voices rose behind her and someone was screaming over the phone. They had definitely noticed the gold chain she had dropped near their bed. She stopped at the nearest window and fished something out of her pocket. It was a little glass orb. She threw it at the glass pane. There was a terrific sizzling noise as a hole began to grow from the centre of the pane.

The voices from downstairs were still rising, sirens could be heard from the distance. Far more interesting was the storm clouds gathering in the distance. A sure sign that the states current favourite hero, Typhoon was approaching.

"What's all the noise?" Inquired Roshini.

"She's decided to dismantle the fridge."

"I'm not envious of you. How come you never complain to me about her?"

"I don't really see her a lot admitted Tanveer as she slid through the now nonexistent window. As she left the house far behind there was a surge of lights as whatever had been in the glass orb started eating through the concrete. Soon it would look like it was blown apart by the wind.

"Oh my god!"  Yelled Roshini, which would have scared nearly anyone. But as we've established before, Tanveer is prepared.

"What happened?"

"Dude there's some serious stuff happening in Hyderabad right now. How are you not aware of this?"

"Just tell me." Said Tanveer checking her bag. She had dropped nearly everything she had stolen in the balcony of the house, where the hero would surely land. Only a bundle of notes remained.

"You know Typhoon right? The hero guy? Apparently, he just broke into a house to steal stuff. They have eyewitnesses and footage of him on the crime scene and everything."

"Interesting." Sid Tanveer, pulling her own cape out of her bag. Printed on the back was a huge, swirly 'T'. Here's a quick tip for all you wannabee heroes out there. If you're choosing a name, don't steal it from a supervillain.

Tanveer smiled. "I feel pretty lucky right now?"

"I really don't know why. Typhoon's done now I guess. No one will want to associate him with his name anymore."

That's sad." Said Tanveer tossing the bundle up and catching it again. An added bonus. The seat on the league would be another bonus. Getting rid of a hero with no violence or suspicion? It was unheard of.

"Aren't you concerned that somebody will break into your apartment?"

"Don't worry," Said Tanveer, the true Typhoon of Telangana, about to reclaim her title. "I'm always prepared."

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Tag list: @lacklusterswirl @purpleshadows1989 @madsaialik @velvetlighthouse @ohlooksheswriting @focusdumbass

[tellywoodtrash]

Sanjivani - Week 6

Overall Plot

Holy shit, what a fucking week. Lots of interpersonal developments (read: dhamakas!) Shashank ousted Juhi all those years ago (on the request of Rahul) because he was in love with her?!?!? Shashank is also possibly Sid's father, or somehow personally associated with him?????? Rishabh's background is revealed too!!!!! Phew. I am dizzy.

The Medical Stuff

Not that much focus on the medical stuff this week. Neil's dad is quickly diagnosed with Legionnaire's disease and I assume cured (since we didn't see him after that, and Neil happily went along to Sid's for Ganpati.) There's an old friend of Shashank's whose wife had a nasty fall and is showing some pretty bad effects of concussion. Sid's injuries seem to be the priority right now.

The Acting

Dude. Sayantani, what a stellar actress. I could not take my eyes off her in the the scenes where she's at Juhi's house. Her eyes glittering with a strange sort of determination, almost like a suicide bomber, as she presses the button to detonate life as Shashank and Juhi know it. Fucking amazing. She blew (pun unintended!) even Mohnish outta the water, with her ice-cool, unperturbed performance, standing up to him so ably! Gurdeep too, had a nice couple of scenes, alternating between Juhi being disturbed at what she found out, as well as having to take charge of one crisis after the other, and she played it with such grace and poise. Surbhi had a more toned-down week (other than the scenes when Sid gets injured.) I particularly liked the apology scene and the scene where she's praying for Sid. I'm watching YPNTKH rn, and find Namit to be waaaay more polished in that than he is here? How did his dialogue delivery and acting regress a level or two, when he’s so damn steady there? Now I'm legit suspicious of the director(s) of this show, coz if they're not extracting the best out of their two leads, who have proven to be much better performers than they’re exhibiting in this show.... What are they even there for?  

The Characters

Sid: Watching YPNTKH has given me a new appreciation for Sanjivani!Sid (he's called Siddhant in that show too!) because he's a much better character here. He's a soft boi who isn't hyped up on ego and toxic masculinity, and I really really love and appreciate that. His admonishment of Ishani (during her apology) underscores his true character; he glossed over her poor behaviour towards him in public and even the fact that she slapped him, to focus on how she was ready to blow up her own career and throw it all away over a past she had nothing to do with. He's an excellent mentor who truly cares for his team and wants to make them the best doctors that they can be. Also, I'm so, so heartened to see how accommodating he is of Ishani's germophobia. Everyone else treats it as a quirk or inconvenience, but he truly takes it into consideration, asking for consent before coming in contact with her (at almost every instance they're close by - not just once for effect and done - I hope they maintain this aspect for good), or protecting her from unwanted contact from others. His crush on her is just so adorable - checking if she’s okay while he’s carrying her, remarking he’s glad that he didn’t punish her for her insubordination because he likes seeing her all soft and contrite; his bashful glee when she gives him a flower, the (mischievously) proud grin as he watches Ishani walk off to give Rishabh what he deserves; gently guiding her to where the best views of the Ganpati fest are, all the while shielding her from unwanted contact from strangers; semi-consciously dragging himself on top of her, to protect her from the gunde!!!!!! What a good, good bean he is. He's truly so beloved that seeing him brought in injured paralyses the whole hospital in shock, and they all unite in both dawa-and-dua ways to ensure he pulls through. Please show, I am fucking begging you; do not ever ruin this character by making him a typical Tellywood hero. Keep him soft and respectful and lovable forever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I deserve a male character like this after all the fuckery I’ve been through the years!

Ishani: Ishani finally comes around to seeing Sid for what he is. Even before she learns that he wasn’t the one to blame for the poster drama, she opens up about her emotional issues to him, perhaps the first person she's let in for over 20 years now. Not only him, we see she lets in his mom as well; letting her smear colours on her face, hug her, and feed her sweets from her hand, even asking for more. Really sweet and shows the willingness to make progress on her part, for people who really matter. We also see the side of Ishani that's fiercely protective of those she considers her own; lambasting Rishabh for trying to play with Asha's career, and taking on a whole group of rowdy men who were harassing her, but as per usual, her impulsive side creates more problems than she ever accounts for. Couple that with her tendency to self-blame to a destructive degree, and our girl has a lottttt of work to do, mentally. I really liked the scene where she's praying for Sid, and she says that Sid is her friend, he's everyone's friend here, and they all really need him in Sanjivani. That's all the emotional development that's appropriate for now; what the fuck is this sudden realization of "love" that's coming outta nowhere acc. to the promo for next week???? Please! It's too fucking early for love and all. Friendship, maybe a confusing infatuation of sorts because he’s been her saviour multiple times now, that's it. Not CAPITAL L waala LOVE and all. Also not a fan of how she was just paralyzed and clutching at Sid and weeping after he got injured, instead of doing something helpful. Like, it's hard to believe she's a good doctor when she reacts so emotionally in scenarios like these. I think her skills extend only to diagnosis and she should maybe focus on that, instead of the surgical part.

Asha & Aman: Asha's woes against the patriarchy continue. First with Rishabh threatening to derail her career by bringing her family into the picture, and then those random drunkards at Ganpati. She does pull together nicely though while Ishani is panicking tf out, and manages to insert a chest tube for Sid to alleviate the internal bleeding. I’m glad that she finally opened up to Ishani about why she’s so competitive and bullheaded at work, which in turn leads Ishani standing up for her against Rishabh. A solid girl!love bond growing there and I am thrilled! Aman toh... Lol, continues being Aman. He offers to beat Rishabh up for Asha, roams around the hospital like an errant 10 year old, just generally having a gala time, unlike the others who are there to focus on work. I really cannot read the vibe between these two; are they just really good bro-sis type friends, or is there a romantic undercurrent? I can't tell. Either way, they're good together, and I don't mind whichever way it develops.

Dialogue(s) of the Week:

Asha [when Ishani freaks out that she threw away the literal white flag she was carrying to make up with Sid]: Ab ke ho gaya???? Wapas se teri overacting; dekh, sahi dustbin mein daala hai (iss baar.)

Aman [literally rolling into the scene on a razor scooter, seeing the yellow rose that Asha suggests Ishani give Sid]: Chee, chee, chee chee; itni gareebi aa gayi, ki yo peela phool dene laage tum log? Arre, manne bol diya hota, english waala phool mangwa deta, phoren se. Lekin [scoffs disdainfully] tumhari marzi... [scoots away]

Rishabh: We finally conclusively know who the worst fucking person in this show is so far. Ding ding ding! Winner winner, chicken dinner! This dude is just something fucking else. He threatens to fuck up Asha’s career if she tells anyone about the poster drama. He is a classist fucker who puts down Asha’s background to Ishani, saying she has “gaon waali harkatein.” He doesn’t give a shit if Sid dies of his injuries, to the point that even Vardhan is taken aback with how vitriolic he is. A truly vile creature, this one. We finally find out that he’s the son of the canteen waale chachaji, which explains the confrontation on the day Sid was called in for his investigation (Sid says that only he knows Rishabh’s “asli aukaat”, before Rishabh rudely pushes past him and the canteen chacha who came to offer them both chai.) All his LV belts and fancy car and show-shaa is just to hide his actual economic background and as such, he prevents his father from interacting with him while in Sanjivani. He’s terribly rude and dismissive of him, to the point where the dad wishes it was Rishabh who was battling for his life instead of Sid, who’s always been more of a son to him. Yiiiiikes. Anyway for all his bluster, I am happy that he’s properly terrified of Ishani, who threatened to fuck. him. up. if he steps out of line as far as she and her friends are concerned.

Neil: I was hoping we’d see more of the Neil-struggles-with-medicine-and-his-father’s-expectations plot, but it was done away with for this Ganpati wala track. Maybe next week? Shout out to him for his adorable wardrobe filled with cartoon characters, even a Tweety Bird waala kurta that he wore to Ganpati!

Rahil: Ride or die for Sid, and I’m so glad these two soft boys are best bros. They deserve each other. He seems to be pretty close with Sid’s mom too, which makes me wonder what his family situation is? It was nice to finally see Rahil integrated into the group of residents, teaming up with Asha and Aman to get the truth out of Rishabh. I also like that despite his own terrible injuries, he takes charge of the situation when Sid is injured and gets him the first aid he requires at the moment by instructing Asha/Aman/Neil what to do. Nice progress from that first case where he was panicking and Ishani had to step in. He’s inconsolable when they reach the hospital though, and unwilling to leave Sid’s side to get his own injuries looked at. Best boy, all the love for him!!!!!!!! 

Shashank: Lord above, what a week for poor Dr. Shashank. All his children are spontaneously combusting and giving this poor man the worst week of his life (probably.) Anjali unrepentantly blew up his personal and professional relationship with Juhi, Juhi is freezing him the fuck out (I refuse to believe that he has any romantic feelings for her unless he says so himself, out loud), Sid has been brought in at the brink of death, and Ishani is on the verge of a breakdown blaming herself for what happened with Sid. For godssake, this poor man is still recovering from a VERY MAJOR BRAIN SURGERY! Could y’all cut him some damn slack, you terrible little brats!?! He’s trying his best to manage; diplomatically addressing the issue with Anjali, trying to engage in conversation with Juhi, comforting Ishani and friends about Sid, but gosh, he’s really struggling to keep his head above water. Also, the overwrought reaction about Sid......... We’re supposed to think he’s Sid’s father right? But would they really do that to this character???? Make him romantically involved with Juhi AND have an illegitimate child with another woman? Very unlikely that they’d make him such a horndog. So one of these plotlines has to give up, and I really hope that it’s the Juhi one. I can begrudgingly tolerate him being Sid’s dad, but being in romantic love with a woman who was canonically a daughter-figure to him for all these years? Un-fucking-acceptable.

Sid’s mom: We don’t have a name yet, but Aarti Bahl (aka Ekta Sohini) also played Nurse Padma Bansal Gupta (Shashank’s second wife) in DMG after Shilpa Tulaskar left. So is she Padma here too, or a whole new character with the same face? As for why the previous actress was replaced, I have a feeling it was because she didn’t look age-appropriate and/or conventionally “attractive” to be paired against Mohnish for this “is Shashank Sid’s father?” plotline. I’m not sure what to make of Aarti’s acting, she seemed very stiff with that forced smile throughout the Ganpati function; and wasn’t too impressive in the scenes where she was panicking and hiding from Shashank either. The scenes I really liked her in were when she was lovingly fussing over Ishani, and later in the hospital when she remarked how proud she was of Sid for standing up to protect the honour of a woman. She has a very soft and calming voice, and her dialogue delivery is really pleasant and soothing, so I’m hoping I grow to like her in this character.

Juhi: Juhi’s not really having a great week either, but she’s a boss bitch who has everything (mostly) in control and I am so fucking happy to see that. I’m glad she didn’t fall apart over the “truth” or try to leave Sanjivani over it - curtly stating to Shashank that she’s signed a contract and intends to honour it, unless he fires her again. She has a brief confusing moment with him while conducting a motor function assessment to determine his fitness to do surgery again, but other than that, she’s all pulled together. She’s mostly brusque with Shashank, trying to prove that she deserves to be here because of her capabilities, and trying to break out from under his shadow to be a proficient COS in her own right; but she’s also gently firm with him when he emotionally barges in trying to help with Sid, insisting that she has it under control and assuring that she will not let anything happen to him. It’s so great to see her balance both her medical/admin skills as well as the firm-yet-empathizing demeanor so ably.

Anjali: Oh Anjali. I love you but you have some serious daddy issues that you need heavy-duty therapy for. On one hand, I understand why she is so resentful and passive-aggressive the way she is (Sayantani’s portrayal compels us to peek beneath the layers!) but on the other, she really had no right to throw Shashank under the bus like that. But I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the way she did it - so bloody spectacularly; unfazed at getting slapped by her father in front of her “rival”, chugging down a whole glass of wine and insulting Juhi’s cooking before she left for the night. So tragic, yet so fucking hilarious. On a professional front, I’m predicting that she’s gonna tire of this Luxury Ward COS post real soon, since it only seems to have her stand around kowtowing to rich assholes like a receptionist of some sort. I can only hope that she wises up to Vardhan’s BS soon enough, instead of serving as collateral damage and falling into the quagmire he’s planning with Rahul to target Shashank/Juhi.

Vardhan: Not much of Vardhan this week other than him entering that secret room he’s built for Rahul in the Luxury Ward. Good. I prefer him in small, controlled doses. And at least we have some clarification that even with all his shady crap, he’s not as horrible a human being as Rishabh - stating that even though he doesn’t like the way Sid operates within Sanjivani, he hopes he pulls through in surgery.

Overall Rating: 4/5

[ariahearthockey]

Love Me, If You Will - Chapter 1

Prologue

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Fandom: Men’s Hockey RPF

Pairing: Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin

Tags: 2017 NHL Playoffs, Concussion, Memory Loss, Medical Inaccuracies, Unexplained Medical Conditions, Alternate Reality, Time Travel (sort of), Pining, Fluff, Porn With Feelings, Happy Ending (sort of)

Soundtrack: Dancing On My Own - Calum Scott

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Chapter 1

Sidney wakes up with a weird feeling churning in his gut. His head is pounding, the room is spinning and the air is unseasonably cool for summer. The sky outside is still quite dark, sans the burst of deep orange brimming low on the horizon. He rolls over to his side and squints at the clock on the nightstand, and it confirms his suspicion. It is a little more than an hour before his alarm is supposed to go off and he groans in annoyance.

There is no way he can go back to sleep in the state he is in—with the nagging headache and all—but the idea of leaving the warmth of his bed seems really unappealing. He tries to recall if he has done anything stupid the night before like drinking his own weight in champagne to merit him such dire consequences, but he knew the answer is 'no'. The action can be justified easily since he has just won the Stanley Cup two years in a row, but he dislikes hangovers more than anything. So, like a petulant child, he buries his head deep in his pillow and pulls the cover over his head as an effort to will the pounding in his head to subside.

Then, he hears it. The noise of someone snoring, low and deep. It goes on for a little while before the bed moves, and a hand sneaks up around his waist and tugs him backwards. His back collides against a flat, sturdy chest and the warmth from it almost made him forget the one big question in his head. Has he brought someone home yesterday and totally forgot about it? Say it isn't so because no matter how many times he has done this, he still dreads the awkward morning after that is almost guaranteed when they are both much awake later, especially when he doesn't remember a thing about it.

He doesn't think he was that drunk, even if so, he is usually more careful about bringing his hookups back home. One blabber mouth could mean scandal and it is unlike him to have total blackout like that. But before he has the time to contemplate his actions or that of his alcohol tolerance, he is distracted by the bursts of warm breath against the back of his neck, soothing him and arousing him all at the same time. The sudden rush of blood in his body eases his headache a little and he hums quietly when he feels the soft press of lips against his nape, sucking and licking lazily until his skin feels tender.

And then there lies the most difficult dilemma. He contemplates if there should be a repeat of what he’s had yesterday—call it a refresh of memory or whatnot—or there should be some kind of resistance on his part before things get even more awkward. On one hand it seems like the right thing to do, not taking any more advantage of whoever that is in bed with him right now, because duh, he was raised to be a gentlemen. But on the other hand—where even the most chivalrous of a man would have a difficult time to resist—is the evident hard bulge that is currently digging into the crease of his ass. It feels huge to say the least, and he shudders just thinking about how delicious it will feel if he gets to ride it until he comes.

And then a groan comes from behind—all low and breathy—and it all but sends his blood rushing towards his own dick. His breathing picks up when the hand on his waist slips underneath the waistband of his sweats, and plays with the coarse hair near his crotch. His body grows hot and wired, and any thoughts of not wanting another go with this stranger is conveniently tossed out the window, together with his dignity as he spreads his thighs wider. The stranger seems to like it, and he groans that deep, throaty groan again. He has to bite down his own lips just so he doesn't make any more noise that could embarrassed himself further and relents himself to the soft touch of the very skilled fingers. But then, like sticking a stick into a spinning wheel, something in that voice makes his eyes shoot wide open, and when he realises why the voice sounded so familiar, he is more awake than being doused by a barrel of icy water.

"Mmm, Sid.."

A million warning alarms start to go off in his head at the same time. He knows that voice, he knows that accent and he knows it far too well for it to be real or for it to be moaning his name like that. He bounces away from the bed so quickly, it is an awe he doesn't trip over his own feet and fall flat on his face. Instead, he stands a few feet away from the bed, feeling absolutely flabbergasted and confused as hell.

"What the fuck! What are you do—uh—"

The rest of his sentence dies in his throat as he takes in the picture in front of him. Geno, naked as a jay bird, is stretched out on his bed, with a wonderfully tousled bed hair and a sleep-warm face. The lack of light in the room hides absolutely nothing at all and honestly, he isn't sure where to look, or if he should look. It is not to say that he has never seen Geno naked before, quite the contrary actually. With them being on the same team for a little more than a decade, he has had his fair share of Geno's nakedness in the locker room. But, to be perfectly fair, never has he thought he would be seeing it in a setting quite like this.

"Sid? Baby, why you leave? Is cold. Come back and I'm make you warm."

With that, he is officially more confused than he has ever been. He is almost 99.9% certain that he is in some kind of a dream. It would have been one hell of an elaborated dream, but only that will explain why Geno is calling him by sweet endearments or touching him intimately or fucking grinding his hard dick against his ass.

"G—Geno. What—what are you doing in—in my bed?" Sidney sputters through his line of question.

As baffled as he feels at the moment, he can't deny that Geno looks exceptionally good in his bed. When Geno raises his arms above his head and gives his body a good stretch, it makes his throat dry all of a sudden. There is so much of Geno on display—the long stretch of his pale body, the dark hair decorating his chest that trickles down to his abdomen and all those prominent lines when his muscles flex underneath the taut skin. And then there is the very impressive package that he felt against his ass not too long ago.

"I'm sleep. Of course I'm in bed." Geno says it like it is the most obvious thing in the world. And it is, except that it isn't.

"Well, yeah. But what are you doing sleeping in my bed? And why are you uh—," Sidney questions again with his hands waving frantically in the air, "—naked?"

"Huh? I'm always sleep naked. I'm tell you, is more comfortable and easy if want fuck." Geno replies with a confidence that will normally make him laugh but right then it just made him want to pull out his hair.

"Wh—what? Okay, Geno. Listen to me. You're in my bed, naked, and with me in it. And you and I uh—we almost—" Sidney is too embarrassed to finish that sentence but judging by the sly grin adorning Geno's face, he doesn't have to.

"Yeah, I'm know, baby. And if you come back, we continue. I'm blow you, then I'm fuck you."

Sidney feels his body going through a tornado of emotions because he is simultaneously shocked and turned on by what Geno said. He shifts on his feet, trying to hide his hardening dick tenting in his sweats. "Oh my god, Geno. How much have you got to drink yesterday?"

"Drink? No drink, Sid. You know I'm never drink before game day."

"What game day? We just won the cup, G. There is no more game until the summer's over or did you forget?

Geno seems to catch on onto the confusion now as he sits up on the bed and looks at Sidney, concern written all over his face. Sidney feels his cheeks heating when he catches himself tracking Geno's every movement—because Geno in his birthday suit is fucking too hard to ignore. He has neither the self control nor the time to chide himself for not able to tear his gaze away right now.

"Sid, you okay? Head hurt? Come lie down, take rest."

Sitting down sounds really good to him at that moment. After all he has gone through since he woke up, he really need to sit and give himself some time to gather his thoughts a little bit. But then, "I would but you're still very naked."

Geno holds up his hands in surrender before he pulls the sheets up to his waist (as if that will help) and pats his hand on the space beside him on the bed. Sidney resigns and goes to him, sitting himself just a few inches away from Geno. He doesn't make any more movement once he is seated, because he doesn't want to accidentally strip Geno of his cover or something equally as mortifying.

"Sid, you feel not good? Head okay?"

Sidney shrugs. "Yeah, no. It's fine. It hurts a little when I woke up, but it's fine now."

"Sid sure? 'Cause Vyas said keep watch for symptom."

Vyas, the head of their medical team, is one hell of an annoying bugger. "Yes, I'm sure, Geno. I have gone more than a month without any symptoms now. I'm fine."

Something in Geno's face tells him that he might have said something wrong—which he really isn't expecting at all. He basically just told Geno that he is symptom free for quite a long amount of time but Geno is looking at him as if that is a terrible news. Like, okay—his head still hurts a little but that is just the champagne's doing. Otherwise, he feels perfectly fine.

"Sid, Nisky crosscheck two days ago. Vyas say is concussion so maybe Sid confuse." Geno explains gently like he is afraid to startle a wounded animal.

"What? What are you talking about, G? We've beaten the Caps a while ago, eh? And we just won the fucking Cup."

"Sid." Geno begins as he scoots closer to Sidney and cups his hands to Sidney's face. "Sid, is okay. I'm know maybe you forget and Vyas say sometimes is normal. But Sid, we not finish round two yet."

Then the confusion starts to really set in because that is just not possible. Sidney remembers clearly that they were well pass his minor concussion and went on to defeat the Caps, then the Sens, and then fucking hoisted the Stanley Cup in Nashville after they shut the Preds out in game six. "Geno, what the hell are you talking about?"

"Today is game four, Sid. Sully say you take rest and then be ready for game five, remember?"

He knows that if he is smart, he should say 'yes' just so he won't attract more unnecessary attention that will surely leads to more unnecessary tests. But then, "No, Geno. We already took out the Caps and then we move on to play the Sens and beat them in double overtime and then the—wait. Geno, are you pranking me? Is this a prank? Shit, did Flower put you up to this? Oh my god, of course he did. I can't believe I actually fell for that. Good job, G. You got me. Ugh, Vegas's gonna have to choose some other goalie because I'm gonna fucking kill Flower!"

"Sid, wait. Okay, calm down. I'm promise is no prank. I'm kill Flower for you if he prank."

"What do you mean it's not—of course it's a prank. If this whole thing isn't a prank, then why do you keep telling me that we're playing the Caps today and more importantly, you waking up in my bed naked?"

"Um, because I'm live here?"

"Oh, right. That's real funny, G. Ha-ha."

"Wait, Sid. You really not remember?"

"What don't I remember?"

The silence that stretches on after that makes him really uncomfortable. It is like the inevitable moment when the blood starts ringing in the ears just before someone is about to receive a monumentally bizarre news.

"Sid, we married. We married for five years."

_/_/_/_/

[knifeshoeoreofight]

Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

(sorry that cover photo is so huge, not sure how that happened)

Zhenya has missed people before. He’s been away from someone he’d been in a relationship with before. Nothing, though, has left a void quite like Sid’s absence has.

The whales’ migration can take up to two months, or more. Magda will stop to feed or socialize, and she’ll slow down if her baby needs to rest. The soonest that humpbacks start showing up in Labrador and Newfoundland is around the month of April. It’s February now.

Zhenya’s saving grace is the sheer amount of work he has to do. He’s got his neglected research to compile and to analyze, and he has to either start planning out his classes for the next term, or start preparing to resign.

He has a little money put away, but not the amount he’d have if he’d had any idea that he was going to be uprooting his entire life.

“What are you going to do?” Flower asks him gently, over the tub of coral samples Zhenya is helping him with. Zhenya just looks at him, unable to answer.

“We’ll ask around,” Letang promises. “See if there are any openings in the Maritimes.”

“What about MUN?” Fleury says, lighting up. “Their marine biology program is great.”

Zhenya knows about Memorial University of Newfoundland. He corresponded with a few of the researchers there before arriving in the Maritimes to begin his own work.

“Don’t know,” he says, shame rising in his throat. “Don’t know if my English good enough for teaching at university level.”

“Mon chum,” Letang says, clapping a hand on his shoulder and giving him a little shake. “You just spent most of a winter teaching a merman, who you had zero words in common with at the onset, how to communicate in American Sign Language, a language that you yourself didn’t even speak before now . I think you can handle teaching some snot-nosed freshmen the difference between their echinoderms and their cnidarians.”

“Okay no,” Geno says, wrinkling his nose. “Those so different—“

Flower cackles. “See? You could do it. People love an accent. It’s been scientifically proven that you listen better to a speaker with a foreign accent. I saw it in an article somewhere.”

“Where? Buzzfeed?” Letang teases, before being sidetracked by the sample he’s working with. “Oh good job mon bébé, polyps out!”

Fleury stifles a laugh. “See, I told you,” he whispers to Zhenya. “You’re within your rights to mock him mercilessly.”

Zhenya watches Letang, dark, sleek head bent over his work. “It’s fine,” he says, and smiles. “I understand.”

Fleury knocks their shoulders together companionably. Comforted, Zhenya gets back to work.

***

They’re finishing up last minute tasks before they start flying out. Letang and Fleury—

He really, really should stop thinking of them that way.

Kris and Marc-Andre.

Kris and Marc-Andre are suffused with excitement about returning home to their families. Zhenya has accidentally turned up in the background of enough Skype calls home that when Veronique calls as Marc-Andre is packing to leave, she greets Zhenya warmly as well.

“You should visit sometime!” she tells him, and Marc-Andre sits upright.

“You should! he exclaims. “You have some time before you, uh, need to be in Labrador. Come stay with us! Stretch out those savings a little bit.”

Zhenya feels relief sweep through him. “Really?”

“Really,” Vero says with a warm smile. “We have a guest room.”

That night, like he does every night, Zhenya checks the satellite data right before he falls asleep, to check where Sid and the whales are. The tags pinged next to each other, right where they should be.

It’s the first night since Sid left that he falls asleep with some measure of peace.

***

After that it’s a whirlwind of packing, changing flight details, and trying to explain to his parents over terrible quality video chat that he’s resigning his tenure track position and moving, jobless, to Canada for the foreseeable future.

His mother is just upset but his father gives him a long, assessing look and asks: “So. What is their name?”

Zhenya is almost relieved. “Sid. His name is Sid.”

His mother closes his eyes at the pronoun. They know about his bisexuality and what it would mean if he ever got serious about a man. He knows how much they love him and yet how worried the political and social climate in Russian make them.

“Does he make you happy?” His mother asks, her voice wobbly.

“So happy, Mama,” Zhenya says. Because it’s true.

It’s all she needs to hear. “Alright. Be happy, baby, and be safe. And send me a picture of this boy, I want to see him.”

He sends her a carefully selected and cropped photo of him and Sid, cut off well before Sid’s waist, his webbed hands hidden and his mouth closed over his sharp canine teeth. Kris had taken it as they sat on the boat, Zhenya with his hands raised as he explained something, Sid gazing at his face with an expression that manages to be focused and warm all at once.

“Oh Zhenya,” his mother texts him after he sends it. “He loves you so much. I can see it so clearly. I’d love to meet him someday.”

“I’d like that too,” Zhenya replies, and hopes it will be possible one day.

***

Most of the time he’s staying with Vero and Marc-Andre he works feverishly on his paper about whale vocalization, just to have it out of the way. The rest of the time, he’s organizing the massive amounts of data they have on Sid, from video footage to field notes to all the teaching materials they’ve amassed.

Marc-Andre helps him whenever he’s free, and Kris comes over often to lend a hand as well. Zhenya feels bad as they hole up in Marc-Andre’s home office, leaving their bemused wives talking in the living room.

“Maybe…” he says to them both. “Maybe it’s okay. To tell Vero and Cath. I know was my idea not to tell, and I’m so thankful you do for me. But maybe won’t hurt, to let them know.”

“Oh thank god,” Marc-Andre cries, and drapes himself dramatically over the table, dislodging about three carefully sorted stacks of paper. “It’s been killing me not to tell her.” He take a deep breath as if to start shouting for his wife but Kris plasters a hand over his mouth.

“For fuck’s sake. Let’s get some basic data together and wait until all the babies are in bed, at least.”

They edit together a Cliff’s Notes string of video clips, and get ready to let the women in on the secret.

***

“So,” Kris says, when they gather in the Letang living room that night. “We, us and Evgeni, have been working on something special. We weren’t sure how much was safe to tell to whom, but. You both obviously deserve to know what’s happened this summer.”

Cath and Vero exchange glances, and then turn back to Kris, standing in front of the TV where they’ve hooked up Zhenya’s laptop.

“We knew something was up,” Cath says. “Just not what.”

“Okay, so.” Kris explains. It started when this guy-” he points the remote he’s holding at Zhenya. “Found some weird noises on his hydrophone recordings, and we invited ourselves over to help investigate.”

“Coral so boring, need distract,” Zhenya says with faux sympathetic understanding.

“Shhhh, you,” Kris continues. “So we took a boat out, put the hydrophones back in. This is what we heard.” He plays the audio. Cath and Vero look at each other, clearly unsettled.

“Just wait,” Kris says, and plays the footage of the first time Zhenya saw Sid.

It’s strange, to see everything unwind on the television, like some kind of film. To hear the stunned gasps of the women, and to imagine what all of this looks like to someone seeing it for the first time.

“Oh my god,” Vero breathes, hand hovering in front of her mouth. Cath’s eyes are wide as saucers.

They’ve got footage from the time they started teaching Sid to the time his ASL was nearly fluent. Like this, Zhenya can also see how Sid looked at him, from the start. With fascination, then with affection, then with something more. He can see the same progression bloom in his own face.

Cath gasps at the next clip, one Marc-Andre or Kris must have taken when Zhenya wasn’t looking. In it, he’s leaning over the side of the boat, and Sid has raised himself in the water to meet him. It’s the pure, naked love in Sid’s eyes that makes Zhenya’s breath catch, and makes him feel like he’s dived deep, water pressure pushing in on his chest.

He doesn’t feel like he deserves that look.

When all the clips are finished playing, the women sit back, stunned and speechless. After a long moment, Vero turns and looks at Zhenya.

“You, and he?” she asks, clearly not sure she should ask.

Zhenya pulls his shell necklace out from under his shirt. “Yes. He’s— yes. We’re.” He can’t finish.

“Ah,” she breathes, and to his surprise, she gets up and comes over to wrap her arms around him.

“That must be hard,” she says, and Zhenya buries his head in her shoulder. She smells of lavender laundry detergent and peach shampoo. He hadn’t known he needed the hug and the acknowledgement of what he’s going through, until this moment.

Vero takes his face in her hands, and behind her Cath gives them a still-slightly-dazed smile. “You’ll be okay,” she tells him. “What happens next?”

***

What happened next, is Zhenya books a ticket to Newfoundland, and keeps watching the satellite feed, and gets used to missing Sid the way humans adapt to any kind of pain.

[littlebitwriter]

My TOY STORY 4: The Toy Story film Pixar would never make!

My Toy Story 4 isn’t for the kids. I’m taking it to a different place. It’s the Logan of the Toy Story franchise. The tone is true to the original trilogy but more adult. It’s like Logan meets Sausage Party meets Cabin in The Woods. It’d be a Toy Story film that would be a comedy horror film or black comedy. Going to places you would never think Toy Story or any Pixar film would go.

The bio of my Toy Story 4 is ‘Toy Story 4 is an upcoming American 3D computer-animated ‘black comedy’ film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It is the fourth installment in Pixar's Toy Story series, and the sequel to Toy Story 3 (2010). It is the first Pixar film to receive an R-rating. In my mind it would be the highest-grossing R-rated animated film probably of all time.

It is the finale to the franchise. If a kid who was around seven in 1995 watched and loved the first Toy Story then grew up falling in love with film and genre fiction that kid would be around thirty now. This is a film for the kids that grew up with the first two Toy Story films and cried their eyes out during the third but doing a completely different type of movie that ultimately shows why you shouldn’t have continued the franchise.

Since Pixar is just a extremely collaborative company they’d need like a writer’s room for Toy Story 4 with Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us), Drew Goddard (Cabin in The Woods, Bad Times At The El Royale), Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3), Michael Green (Logan, Blade Runner 2049) and of course Pixar masters John Lassetter and Andrew Stanton. Even though it is my idea I wouldn’t ever put myself in the writer’s room for a film of such anticipation of Toy Story 4. I think this is a group of writers alongside the Pixar genius of John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton that could 100% do this film justice.

I may not be super in-depth and very vague about the film but I hope it makes sense. It probably is really bad. I’m sorry, I’m young and dumb.

The idea in terms of story is quite a bit like what the team behind Toy Story 4 is actually going to be doing. This would be a Toy Story film with a feel that’s the mix of Little Miss Sunshine and Logan with a lot of dark satirical ideas about society, a lot of plot twist and story turns, that you would never expect. It would be the craziest, darkest, and scariest Pixar film yet but also one that could go toe to toe with many arthouse indie pictures for a ‘Best Picture’ nomination at the Oscars.

The film is set ten years after Toy Story 3 and the toys are at a dumpster. At the beginning of the film you don’t know how the toys got there but they are all completely torn up and nearly destroyed, this dumpster is almost treated like a post-apocalyptic wasteland/underworld for toys. There’s the toys at the dumpster and then on the quest to find this treasure that could save everything. It’s them going across the world on this road trip and there’s this villainous character called ‘The Mad Toy Doctor’ who knows of a toy’s sentience and knows of them as living beings trying to go after this treasure as well. Throughout the film a lot happens but by the end the toys of course win but there’s a heartfelt emotional ending. That ends with a Sopranos-esque ‘Cut to Black’ with instead of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ it’s You Gotta Friend in Me.

Each character individually is going through their own thing going on, Many of the other toys are still around Woody, Buzz, Bo-Peep, Jessie, Slinky, Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head, Rex, Barbie, the little one eyed green aliens, and all of Bonnie’s toys from Toy Story 3 are dead and their remains are seen across this dumpster, throughout the film not at all really acknowledged.

WOODY: The film opens with Woody giving a voice over narration in the film and setting the tone for the movie. Particularly with an f-bomb. Then later you get a look at Woody’s eye and you can see it has fallen off and he makes use of an eye patch looking almost like John Wayne from 1969’s True Grit. Woody feels as if he’s failed all of the toys his friends. Throughout the film he’s on this quest of redemption and for a treasure he and the toys are looking for. Woody is viewing himself as the hero this western spaghetti western cowboy who will do the hard things to save the day. Buzz reminds him that he’s just a toy. Woody doesn’t know how to handle everything and dealing with the fact that to Andy and to Bonnie he thought of himself as more than a toy almost like a father figure of some kind weirdly enough. So Woody would have an arc throughout the film and in the end make a sacrifice to save his friends alongside Buzz.

BUZZ LIGHTYEAR: Buzz Lightyear has become completely unconfident and has become the furthest opposite of everything he thought he was in the first Toy Story film. Where he thought he was a space ranger instead he’s going through this existential crisis. Eventually he and Buzz make the ultimate sacrifice.

Jesse: She is dealing with the death of Bullseye and she is in a relationship with Buzz Lightyear. She is very depressed throughout the film.

Barbie: Dealing with the death of Ken and in a secret relationship with Mister Potato Head.

Mister Potato Head: Cheats on his wife and has an affair with Barbie and feels guilty ever since Mrs. Potato Head’s passing and commits suicide.

Bo-Peep: Bo-Peep has still never come back but there’s this dark twist that the Mad Toy Doctor is using Bo-Peep as a way to get to the toys. She was tortured and killed by the Mad Toy Doctor.

Rex: Rex is personally my favorite character in Toy Story, there is a scene where I kill him off and it’s really sad.

Slinky: He gets broken and tortured by the Mad Toy Doctor.

The Mad Toy Doctor: The villainous character. He calls himself a ‘doctor’ and creates new villainous toys that he sets out to kill the Toy Story gang. The villain is almost like Sid from the first Toy Story and Donny from Ted. However he is an old, old man He sets out to make the toy sentience to the public but by the end of the film is sent to a mental institution. The voice actor of this character in my mind would be Tim Curry. He would be the scariest villain in any animated film. He’d be the guy if all the pixar movies were connected that Carl Fredrickson from UP would punch in the face. The toys he creates are his own Buzz Lightyear, a G.I. Joe/Snake Eyes eseque toy named Jon, a Transformers looking toy who goes by the name of Morpher. He’s like the Superman villain Toyman almost. He is also in love with this old lady who is his wife who is really a baby doll he aged up.

Yeah it would be a yucky, freaky but hopefully funny Toy Story movie. There’s no humor in this post that I wrote but there 100% would be a lot of humor and heart in the film. It would be a true Toy Story film deconstructing all the classic tropes. However the film would be a lot better than what I have written here particularly with the writers I would love to see behind it. It’s a film that I would want from the franchise and could potentially be a real game changer for Pixar. Making not just a good kids movie but a legitimately good movie.

This may be terrible idea but I thought people would be interested :) I hope everyone has a lovely day! It’s just my weird dream Toy Story fanfiction. Very underdeveloped. Hopefully you enjoyed it.

LittleBitWriter

1/27/19

[ythmir-writes]

Requesting "Summer" & "Giles" from MidCin please, 'cos summer has been hoooot and having long hair now is terrible and suffering :'D

(AN: Ahhhhhh lovely leo! thank you for dropping by! and i know how you feel! im getting flashbacks of my time when i still had long hair myself ohman. it was hellish! so here’s something for Giles and his incredibly beautiful hair. I hope you enjoy!! AND ALSO ijustgotta say - the first things in my head for this prompt was all art you know, like Giles in muscle shirt sitting in front of a fan with ice cream. Giles under the sun struggling with ice cream. Giles in beach shorts. Giles with barbecue on the beach . Giles in a summer yukata. Giles in ponytail in swimming shorts in a pool. Giles hugging the airconditioning like in that meme- im gonna stop now)

SUMMER

fandom: Midnight Cinderellacharacters: Giles Christophe 

The chilly spring mornings were long gone, replaced by an almost oppressive heat that made even the shortest walk to the convenience store down the block an arduous trek. Giles would have gladly stayed in the sweet embrace of air conditioning. 

But they had run out of ice cream. 

And he had bet on the wrong side of the coin. 

“It’s only fair.” Leo had told him, grinning from ear to ear and nearly shoving the tote bag into Giles’s crossed arms. 

Giles had refused to take it. “One more time. Toss it again.” 

“You picked the wrong side four times out of five.” Sid had been guffawing the entire time, wheezing as he clung to the edge of the table “Just go get the ice cream already.”

“The walk isn’t even ten minutes!” Leo had added.

“Ten minutes of pure unadulterated hell.” Giles had said through gritted teeth, making Leo and Sid laugh harder still.

It was not that Giles hated summer. As a matter of fact, he appreciated the longer days, the endless green, and took joy in seeing the colors that came back after winter robbed them from the earth. Only that if he was granted by the gods the opportunity to tweak any season, he would not hesitate to remove summer from the equation and have a longer spring and fall.  

Wysterian summer was the worst in the world, sometimes reaching a hundred degrees and was humid beyond compare. Summer rains, if there were any at all, did nothing to help with the heat except make it worse because of how short they were. 

Giles fantasized about how convenient the summers were in other countries. He should go on vacation to somewhere colder. Like Stein. 

He was barely halfway and he could already feel his skin prickling at the heat. The back of his shirt was already sticking to his back and somehow he felt like he was getting heatstroke.  

This was how he was going to die. Under the summer sun. Buying ice cream for his friends who somehow managed to rig a freaking coin toss.

“Overdramatic ass.” Giles admonished himself, hearing Sid and Leo’s laughter in his head. “Just get it over and done with.” 

He picked up his pace, turning around the corner and almost weeping at the sight of the 7-Eleven. He bought the ice cream (three tubs so there would be no excuse until sundown), lingered at the magazines just so he could recharge, and then started to muster the herculean effort it would take to go back outside. 

Somehow it was worse than he remembered. Somehow the sun seemed closer to the earth. Somehow, he just remembered that he forgot to lather on sunscreen.

“Giles?” 

Giles turned towards the voice, felt the gentle caress of cool air and the rush of heat as the convenience door was opened and closed, and saw the girl waving at him. “Hello, Lana.”

“I didn’t recognize you with your hair up.” Lana grinned. “Wow. Did you braid it yourself?”

“Yes.” 

“It looks amazing.” Lana stepped closer. Giles hoped he did not smell of sweat and despair. 

“Thank you.” 

“You should teach me how to do it next time.” Lana continued. “But more importantly, I’m shocked seeing you outside in this weather without being near the beach.”

Giles raised his tote bag. “Lost the coin toss.” 

“Ah.” Lana raised her own bag. “Same. I swear Elise rigged it.” 

“I accuse Leo of the exact same thing.” 

“Why are our friends like this?” Lana shook her head in mock exasperation. “We should just totally ditch them and -” Lana stopped, eyes widening in inspiration.  “We should head for Alyn’s and make the meanest tallest ice cream cake in the shortest amount of time possible.” 

Giles grinned. “Send pictures for everyone else to salivate on?” 

“And pretend there’s still more but we ate all of it already.” Lana barked out a laugh, already turning on her heel. “Let’s go.” 

Giles followed her out, half-expecting to melt under the sun, for his skin to burn as punishment for leaving the comforting embrace of artificially cooled air. 

He didn’t. 

His feet felt lighter. The sun felt less cruel. The colors less harsher and somehow more vibrant than they already were.

“Race you to Alyn’s?”

Giles’ heart dropped. “It’s three blocks away.”

“Loser forfeits one tub!” Lana did not wait for him to agree.

Giles swore under his breath and tried to catch up. Lana knew he didn’t race. Lana knew he could literally keel over and die this time for real. He knew she knew and yet - 

Giles was also thinking that if losing the coin toss turned out to not be so bad after all, then maybe losing a tub of ice cream might not be so disastrous either.

04/182

[mst3kproject]

Trained to Kill USA

Looking at my catalogue of Episodes that Never Were, I realize I have been rather biased in my choice of genres.  It’s not something I did intentionally, I just happen to like monster and mad science movies, and such films are often my favourite episodes of MST3K, so naturally they’re the first thing I go to.  But the show never limited itself by genre, and though I’ve managed to dig up a couple of Eurospy and 50’s Rebellious Teens movies, there are several things notably lacking.  I have not yet tackled a proper western, for example, nor a biker crime spree picture.  Time to pick up the slack.

I therefore present Trained to Kill USA, which I ran across quite by accident while searching for a copy of She-Gods of Shark Reef that didn’t make me want to claw my own eyes out (I never found one).  It’s got Sid Haig from Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II in it and Richard Slattery from San Francisco International, and it’s a nihilistic revenge movie as depressing as The Sidehackers and featuring an incongruously cheerful opening theme song that makes me think of Girl in Gold Boots for some reason. I’m not sure why, but Trained to Kill USA particularly reminds me of the latter movie, maybe just in its general late-60’s-early-70’s aesthetic and Ted-V-Mikels-like incompetence.

We begin with a couple of thugs under the leadership of a man called Prophet, robbing a liquor store and then fleeing from the sheriff, to the accompaniment of a terrible song and some egregious pan-n-scan. They stop at a farm where they assault the owner, elderly Mark, break his stuff, and try to rape his daughter Mary, but then flee when the man’s son Ollie arrives.  Mark wants Ollie to come with him and chase the two down, but Ollie refuses.  Later, however, the gang decides to steal Mark’s gun collection so that they can rob a bank in town, and during this heist Mark shoots Prophet’s buddy Parrish.  Believing Ollie to have been the killer, Prophet vows revenge.

That’s quite a truncated summary – a great deal actually happens in between the first and second attacks on the ranch, and almost all of it feels irrelevant.  Prophet and his men commit crimes, and Ollie sits around and drinks and has flashbacks. I know these scenes are supposed to be establishing character and so forth, but they just come across as filling time before the final showdown.  A family in a camper van get killed.  Ollie’s army buddies beat up Prophet’s men at a gas station.  Prophet fights with his girlfriend.  None of it’s presented in a way that makes the audience want to care.

Like a number of other movies I’ve reviewed, Trained to Kill USA is not this film’s original title.  It was released as The No Mercy Man.  Multiple titles are a common feature of terrible movies, but what’s interesting here is how the change re-focuses the audiences attention.  The No Mercy Man referred to Prophet – his friend Parrish uses that descriptor for him, and it suggests that this is his story we’re watching.  Trained to Kill USA, on the other hand, is obviously a description of Ollie, which leads us to expect rather more of him than the movie initially offers.

The film is actually equally about both men and their inability to fit into society.  Ollie is too damaged by his experiences in war to ever lead a normal life, while Prophet exists in a world where black men are automatically assumed to be criminals and there is simply no other role he can fill.  I think we’re supposed to see them as a pair of tragic figures driven inevitably to a confrontation that destroys them both.  It’s a little hard to say, because the movie is really bad at driven inevitably.  When it tries to set up fate and forces beyond these characters’ control, all it manages are a set of coincidences.  If there’s supposed to be a feeling that this all means anything, the movie misses it by miles.

Even more damaging to what I assume are the film’s ambitions (I’m really not at all sure what this movie is actually trying to do) is the fact that neither of these guys are characters we can root for. Prophet complains that his intellect could have taken him places were it not for his appearance: he is a tall, intimidating black man, and so people treat him as a thug.  Yet Prophet is the very stereotype of that thug, gleefully and gratuitously violent and a rapist of white women.  In both the RV theft and the bank robbery his original plan is to commit a crime in which ‘nobody gets hurt’, but in both incidents he drops this idea the moment something starts to go wrong.  The movie tries to bring some depth to him in his apparently sincere affection for his girlfriend Sally (the moment when he leads her in a circle around the fairground is the only thing in the movie that feels like real emotion), but he turns on her in the end, too, blaming her for the loss of his job.

Then there’s Ollie – he is a steaming mess of PTSD and we feel sorry for him, but we do not like him.  Actor Steve Sandor behaves like a robot and rather creepily looks like one, too. There’s something about his skin that makes him look like plastic.  If he is to be a tragic figure we should really have some idea of who he was before the war hollowed him out, but we see him only as the damaged hero, surrounded by people who are making his trauma worse.  His father is an old grouch living vicariously through his son, and his friends brag about his accomplishments in a way that triggers him repeatedly while they don’t seem to give a shit.  The movie seems to want us to root for him to give in to the violence in order to protect his family, but that is exactly what Ollie himself does not want and, indeed, is the worst possible thing that could happen to his already fragile mental health.  We do not want Ollie to be a hero.  We want him to get away from all this and into an environment where he can heal.

I honestly think the writers were trying to do something with this movie.  They believed they were going to make an important statement about war and racism and how both are damaging to the psyche.  They were trying to give us a tragedy about two gifted individuals who could have been so much more than what the world forced them to be. All they managed, however, was Trained to Kill USA, and the movie sucks.

The photography was bad to begin with and the pan-n-scan did it no favours at all – many shots look bizarrely off-centre, as is evident in the screencaps.  The characters are as flat as a creationist’s earth.  Fight scenes are awful: I don’t remember a single punch that I believed hit anything.  People go leaping over fences ahead of explosions that are obviously nowhere near them.  The ‘Vietnam’ flashbacks are shot in front of some trees in someone’s back yard.  The dialogue is terrible: characters say things like ‘Ollie, you’re the most decorated man in the state!’ and that’s supposed to be subtle exposition.  The Oblivious Camping Family have ‘victims!’ written all over them, to the point where they seem to belong in the opening scene of some slasher movie more than they do in this.  And at the time the film was made it didn’t matter that everything in it was outrageously, garishly seventies, but in the hindsight of a more fashion-conscious age, It just makes it that much harder to take any of this seriously.

The harder this movie tries to build tension, the worse it fails.  There’s a scene in which the criminals confront the Sheriff outside the bank, and while we should be on the edges of our seats, waiting for the bullets to start flying, all we’re seeing is a bunch of guys standing around awkwardly, exchanging terrible dialogue that aims for ‘badass’ and falls on its face.  The bank robbery itself is a free for all of guns and bombs.  It’s hard to tell who’s on which side because we’ve never met half these guys before, and both the criminals and Ollie’s army buddies seem to take such joy in violence that it’s hard to care about what they’re fighting for. The most memorable bit in the scene is the stunt guy who does a perfect flip as he falls from a roof.

At the end, the criminals attack Ollie’s family and he is forced to relive all the things he most wishes to forget as he finally takes them on.  This fight scene almost becomes effective in its brutality and crudeness.  There’s no choreography or sense of justice, just Ollie and Prophet beating the shit out of each other for reasons that have almost nothing to do with either of them.  When Ollie wins, it’s not in any way a victory.  Under constant pressure to give in to the violence, Ollie has lost, and it’s impossible to tell what the movie wants us to feel about this.  The ridiculously cheesy final song, with lyrics like no-one understands you ‘cause you can’t be understood, seems to agree with my gut instinct that this is a disaster, but didn’t we just spend the whole movie waiting for Ollie to kick some ass?  Haven’t we been told over and over that he is the only one up to the challenge Prophet presents?

As the credits roll, we’re left in a similar place to where we were at the end of The Sidehackers – nobody won.  Ollie will continued to be a shattered man held together by alcohol.  Prophet, who was supposed to look redeemable, is now beyond redemption because he’s dead.  What happened to the girlfriend Prophet blamed for getting him into all this trouble, we’ll never know.  How Ollie’s family feel about what he’s now done we’ll also never know, which is particularly annoying because their opinion of him was so important earlier.  Shouldn’t they come to understand why they’ve been treating him badly?  If you try to take their stories at face value, Ollie and Prophet both deserved far better than this shitty fucking movie.

[sistercelluloid]

If The Sound of Music is one of your favorite things, you’re in luck: On September 9 and 12, TCM and Fathom Events return the gloriously restored musical to the big screen.

Back in March 2015, when the new print kicked off the TCM Classic Film Festival, Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer—who still clearly adore each other—gave us a glimpse of their Music memories during a pre-screening interview with Sid Ganis, first vice president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Ganis kicked things off by asking who in the audience had never seen the film—and the first hand to shoot up was Plummer’s. Turns out that during the film’s New York premiere,”all the males went to a bar,” Plummer laughed. “We’d kind of seen it, you know? So we spent most of the night in the bar. I can’t do that any more like I used to, damn it.”

The actor had derided the film in the past, even jokingly referring to it as The Sound of Mucus—and at one point, didn’t think much of film work, period. He and Andrews touched on that, and more, during their conversation:

CP: Funnily enough, I was asked to do The Sound of Music on Broadway…  Mary Martin took a shine to me but her husband said, ‘Mary, he’s 29 years old, darling…” And of course Theodore Bikel did it beautifully.

In those days I thought the stage was it. You think the theatre is so intellectual but then you think, ‘What am I doing?!? They pay so well in the movies!’ But early in my movie career, you’ll see me walking around not really knowing where to go.

Working with Julie, though… I sort of fell in love with her when I was sitting up in the theatre balcony watching her as Eliza Doolittle. She’s wonderful… an old-fashioned saint… you’d follow her into battle the way you would Joan of Arc.

JA: <laughs> You called me a saint? How dare you, sir! Ruining my reputation! We’ve always been great chums though.

CP: And for all I’ve said about the film, I think this is the primal family movie of all time… it’s a fairy story brought to life—the last bastion of peace and innocence in a terrible time.

JA: Richard Rodgers’ daughter Mary said it was the one show that translated better to the screen from the stage—of all those walloping hits! And everyone making the film was at the peak of their talents. And the quality of the music is phenomenal.

CP: The arrangements were extraordinary—just magical!

JA: And a huge orchestra!

CP: Well, yes, as someone who was trying to sing above them…

JA: And the beautiful Alps and the children and the nuns…

CP: …could have been really mawkish!

JA: You made it less saccharine—you made it have an astringency because of the way you played the captain. And without that, we would have been sunk, my love. I really mean that. You and [director] Robert Wise made sure of that. With his innate good taste, he saw the problem, that it could go that way.

He was a gentleman and a gentle man. And of course was one of the editors on Citizen Kane. He had a great sense of economy of emotion. He taught me something—he said, ‘Julie, look in one place only, don’t look left-right-left-right, keep still.’ What a gift that was! That huge close-up—be still! I guess we were rattling back and forth in some of the early dailies that he saw.

And the wonderful choreographers went ahead to the locations and took measurements of how many steps for each number, etc. so when we got there it was all laid out for us!

CP: We filmed backwards, first in Austria and then back to California. And you were always carting oxen up a hill or something…

JA: I was on top of the carts, going up the hill with the cameras! Often in the mud! Austria has Europe’s seventh-highest annual rainfall… but the rain made so many beautiful, glorious puffy cumulus clouds in the background. When you see the movie, notice the strength of the background, because it made a difference. Robert Wise said that gave a texture to it. It makes a difference… it wasn’t just a picture postcard.

CP: And the cameramen didn’t try to soften Austria. They almost shot it as a documentary.

JA: Not all of the locals liked us, though. We had the speakers set up outdoors, and one  farmer came out with a pitchfork and screamed, “You’re ruining the milk from my cows!” Did you have any problems with things like that?

CP: I went straight to the bar.

And on that happy note—much like the one it began on—the Q&A closed, and the curtain rose…

It rises again this weekend. Click here to be transported…

The Theater’s Alive with THE SOUND OF MUSIC! TCM Brings It Back This Month If The Sound of Music is one of your favorite things, you're in luck: On September 9 and 12, TCM and Fathom Events return the gloriously restored musical