#I put so much work into his personality and his story and it all shaped who he is and how he talks

[red-leader-langfeldt]

|| I am very insane about keeping my characters in-character but at the same time I am trying desperately to keep this whole thing lighthearted and silly 😭 but like some of these M!As I’m getting are genuinely impossible to answer in-character if I’m trying to AVOID stress. Guys I just wanna have a fun time 😭 I’m begging you leave Tord alone and let me answer things in-character without CHANGING his character I am so tired I want to have fun with this and NOT have it be another stressful part of my life 😭

[itspileofgoodthings]

I think the fundamental part of growing up re: Anne of Green Gables is that Gilbert Blythe is such a good idea but Lucy Maude didn’t spend enough time on him to make him a fully real person.

[arolesbianism]

Doodle I did of my girl Juliet earlier

[doctorbeth]

Putting a teddy back together

This poor teddy bear had had a rough time. His person wrote in her original email:

This adorable teddy bear was given to my 68 year old English husband when he was a little boy. His mother had knit a little shirt for the bear with the monogram 'TC' - which stood for Teddy C (their last name.). My husband and I were going back to England for a visit after too many years, leaving one of our daughters home to take care of our dog. Because we are in So Cal and worried about fires, my husband pre-packed a few boxes with the things that he would want evacuated in case of a fire. Sadly, he put TC in the box with no lid. Our adorable dog thought it was another stuffed toy for her! Much to my daughter's chagrin, she came home to find TC had been mangled! I don't have the heart to let my husband know what happend, so TC has been hiding in a box for almost 2 years while I search for someone to fix him. I came across your info and a lovely story in the LA times about you. I am hopeful that you can work some magic on TC and restore him to something close to his original state!

And these were the diagnosis photos she sent:

He came to the hospital with a much younger buddy to be used as a comparison for shapes and stuffing. No spa photos for TC, because he was only having surgery. He had lost so much already, his family didn't want to touch his remaining stuffing.

So here he is all better, ready to go home and be hugged again:

And here he is with his buddy, two happy bears!

His family said, "He looks great!"

[gaddaboutgriffon]

The Year of the Dragon.

(Name edited, credit to @jedipirateking for the suggestion.)

A joke the fandom has been making for a while is that Tim is forever stuck at 17. What if we make that something the rest of the Batclan notice too? (I am not following cannon.)

It was just after the annual Family picture day and the new group portrait was taking the place of last year’s and looking at it they noticed 15 year old Damian is now almost the same height as Tim. And Tim is pretty much the same as last year.

Jason and Damian take the opportunity to tease Tim calling him a shrimp and other short jokes. Which Tim rolls his eyes and goes to work on a case or something with Wayne industries. But Bruce, Dick, and Alfred are more concerned, may feel guilty thinking letting him be a vigilante stunted his growth. And looking back at the photos they have of him notice that he wasn’t growing as much as a normal teen boy should have.

Bruce decides he is going to be more active in running Wayne Enterprises while Alfred plots to cut back Tim’s coffee limit. And Dick is going to help out coordinate the patrols. (He had to move back to Gotham when the Bludhaven city spirit forced all the people out before the city got blown up. It’s a long story but dick has been really down and unmotivated after that.)

Tim is not taking any of this well, and feels like his family being stifling. So he decided to start going through the basement and vault of Drake manor. Which he has been putting off since he didn’t really have time for it between patrols and WE. And in the family heirlooms vault, shoved way in the back with covered in dust and many other things sitting on top, he finds an oak box with an ornately caved dragon on it. Opening it up he finds it is velvet lined and has a large pendant that looks a silver dragon curled deep violet amethyst egg. And next to the pendant is a scroll made of thin leather.

He pulled out the scroll first and tried to read it but it was too faint of lettering to make out in the somewhat dim vault light. But what little he could make out it it was really old 14th century English and mentioned something about a coming of age. He rolls it back up and puts it aside to instead pick up the pendant. When he touches it there is a faint static shock that surprises him other then that the silver and purple necklace doesn’t seem out of the ordinary.

His phone lets off a chime to remind him that diner is in an hour, so he pack the pendant and scroll back in the box and places it in his bag with a few other items he finds interesting and wanted to look into more later. Then returns to Wayne manor to eat before patrol. It isn’t until he wakes up the next morning he realizes that he should have probably read the scroll before touching the pendant.

He wakes up to knocking on his bedroom door and someone yelling at him to get up. He had gotten into the habit of locking his door back when Damian first moved in. He yelps in surprise, falling over because his center of balance is all out of whack when he tried to stand. Now he is fully awake and takes stock of himself.

Scales?

Scales! Why are his arms covered in scales?! His hands look like a mix of paws and talons. He struggles out of the sheets to look at the rest of himself. His pjs are stretched and torn in places to accommodate the new digigrade shape of his legs. Not to mention he now has a long tail and wings and a longer neck. He rushes to his personal bathroom and awkwardly stands up on his two legs so he can get a good look in the mirror. And yep that is a distressed dragon face looking back at him. He catches himself making a weird keening sound as he plops down to sit on the bathroom floor.

Moments later he hears the sound of his bedroom door’s lock being picked. Bruce calling his name and Duke explaining he had heard animal noises from the room. Tim scrabbles to try and get the balcony door unlocked so he can escape and find a way to change back before anyone can see him, but moving on all fours and the new talon hands he is not used too take up too much time and the bedroom door is open.

Living in a family of vigilantes, their reaction time and fight or flight instincts are quick, and Tim is tackled to the floor by Duke while the others start looking at every inch of the room for clues as to what happened to their seemingly missing brother.

Bruce is looking at the dragon in Tim’s pajamas for a second before saying, “Tim? Is that you chum?”

Tim tries to answer but all that comes out is a warbling chuff. Which takes Tim by surprise and has him nearly start to cry in panic. He can’t Talk!

“Hey, you’re ok Tim. Deep breaths. Duke get off him. Breath with me Tim. In 1, 2, 3, 4. Out 1, 2, 3, 4.” Bruce spoke in his soothing a scared child voice. Tim was half annoyed at himself for how much it helped.

“B, Look at this!” Dick said holding the box with the scroll and dragon pendent instead open. Now the gem is a very pale see through purple with only a sliver on the bottom the original color.

They take it down to the bat cave and get to work deciphering the scroll. Turns out the Drake family line are descendants of some ancient medieval prince named Aragorn and that there was a family tradition that on the sixteenth birthday the child would have to live a year in dragon form to let it catch up in maturity. But after the dragon form catches up they will be able to freely shift between forms. But if they don’t follow the tradition they don’t age properly, and the longer they put off the tradition the longer they have to spend as a dragon.

And that is all I had time for before bed. So who does this affect the family dynamic? What about the relationship between Tim and Damian? How do we bring Danny Phantom into this? Does he think Tim is a ghost dragon at first?

[omaano]

Touchy subject

"The 501st was one of the best legions during the war. I've lost a lot of good men over the years - some of them would have given even you Mandos a run for your credits. And my general... My general was a good man too, but that's enough of that, I thought you were too old for bedtime stories by now."

Din just tried to figure out what the colour of the clones' armor paint meant, and why he's never heard Rex mention his CO during all the wartime stories and lectures; whereas he's already got to meet Wolffe and his general and even heard Cody mention his every once in a blue moon. (Special thanks to @witchydom for helping with the "dialogue" :3)

The rest of my Star Wars meets Hades AU project is here

I'll take a bit of your time to give a bit of an explanation why I decided to put Rex in Skelly's spot:

During a playthrough when I was looking for screenshots to use as backgrounds the first thing that greeted me was Zagreus calling Skelly "Captain" upon entering the armoury, or whatever that chamber is called. And that really decided it, let's be honest. Rex is Captain, and that is the Captain's spot. End of story.

Reading "still got it" by qigiined even before I got into watching TCW was such a personality defining experience (seriously, this fic lives forever rent free in my brain), that I really had no other option but to put the few clones that I'm willing to work into this AU somewhere around home base (the covert) - so you can guess where Cody and Wolffe are situated. Or will be, hopefully soon enough. Rex needs to be able to hang out with Cody, that's just how it is. (Rebels and TBB canon who?)

Rex deserves to teach some uppity Mando bounty hunters and other warriors who think too much of themselves a few lessons in humility and some crafty tricks. I think it would be very good for him.

As a throwaway note since we are already under the read more section, I've been thinking about sigils and keepsakes (trinkets) and cthonic companions (I know that over a year ago I inaccurately but very self indulgently designed one for Din, Boba and Cobb, that is not the point now) and while Cody can have one shaped like Boga, and Wolffe can obviously get a stuffed loth wolf (and Bo-Katan a very squishy owl)... I have no idea what shaped companion Rex could have. If anyone has any suggestions and would love to share it with me, I'd be very grateful!

[felassan]

New today from IGN: 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard's Devs Reveal New Info About Each of the Companions (and Solas and Varric, Too)'

It turns out The Veilguard really is the friends we made along the way.

Intro:

"Friendships, romantic relationships, and everything in between have always been an integral part of not just the Dragon Age series, but of BioWare in general. From Mass Effect’s Garrus Vakarian to Dragon Age’s Varric Tethras, the characters – and how they get along with the player – are inseparable from titles from the studio. But, perhaps more than any other BioWare game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is leaning in heavily on this idea, as it’s already easy to see from the marketing material. For one, the name changed from Dragon Age: Dreadwolf back in June, with BioWare general manager Gary McKay telling us at the time that it was out of a desire to shift the focus to a “really deep and compelling group of companions.” That would be followed by a first official trailer at Summer Game Fest that put the focus squarely on seven new companions that will be tagging along with the player character, Rook, in The Veilguard. With all that in mind, it’s little surprise to hear game director Corinne Busche talk about how these companions aren’t just central to the story of The Veilguard, but the gameplay and combat as well. “Building a relationship with companions has always been a staple of Dragon Age, but this time around, that relationship translates into how well you work together as a team,” Busche tells IGN. “It is how you're actually going to level up your companions, by getting to know them better. That's how you're going to unlock skill points. So when you look at all of the various abilities the companions have, there's inherent combos and synergies and roles that they'll have on the battlefield.” She uses the example of Neve, the mysterious detective mage who has a wildly useful special ability to slow time in combat. “But if I really get the opportunity to know her,” Busche explains, “whether it's platonic or romantic, I'm going to help be able to shape her skills and augment those abilities that work really well with my own personal build, so our sense of teamwork really deepens.” During our time with the game, IGN got to see some of this in action; unsurprisingly, Dragon Age: The Veilguard has an approval/disapproval system, with pop-up text on the side of the screen indicating whether or not a companion liked what Rook just did or said. But something new in this Dragon Age: even just completing a quest with a companion in your party increases your “bond” with them, whether they agree with how you handled things or not. Your relationship, Busche says, isn’t necessarily about “how much they like you, but how well you get to know them.” “This is about a found family,” Busche tells us. “That is, they have the same goals, different complications in their life, but they're all giving everything they have to defend Thedas. You're going to get to know them really well. You're going to develop trust, understanding. That doesn't mean you're always going to agree.” But, we’ll have plenty more to say about the game systems and combat later. With Busche, we had the opportunity to really dive into the seven companions at the center of The Veilguard and what they’re all about. Here’s what she had to say about each one:"

"DAVRIN Busche: “When we were thinking about Davrin, how we were going to develop him as a character, we had to think about, 'How is he going to show up on the battlefield?' And it was unique because he has this, I guess you could say, companion of his own, the griffon Assan. That makes him, as a companion, very unique, because Assan shows up on the battlefield. So we had to think about how that integrates into his abilities, where Davrin as a Grey Warden is capable on his own, but also, when does he call upon Assan and what does that look like? What happens if you're indoors?... And indeed, when you're doing some of Davrin's content, just seeing Assan gliding through the environments, you really get a sense that they care and they're protective about each other. “…When we think about Davrin and his being the representative of the Grey Wardens within the team of The Veilguard, it was an opportunity for us to really go back to some of those roots that we know our fans, our players, deeply care about. Dragon Age: Origins, of course, was so Grey Warden-forward. We want to evoke those memories, those connections that our players have. And I absolutely love when you're journeying with Davrin, not only his aesthetic, how he carries himself as a Warden, but how he interacts with his fellow Wardens. The little wrinkle of, 'Hey, there actually are some griffons remaining in Thedas,' how he learns as a Warden to train and interact with these griffons that, to our knowledge, haven't existed for quite some time, it's a learning experience on a lost art of the Grey Wardens that is really unique to Davrin's character.”"

"HARDING Busche: “To talk about Harding as a companion, I guess I'd have to go back to Inquisition. Of course, Harding showed up. She was your scout on the field. There was a light romance with her, and I think one of the things that the team didn't quite expect is how much Harding would catch on in Inquisition. Players fell in love with her, and we heard them. They wanted a deeper romance, they wanted more engagement with Harding. So for the team, I felt like it was kind of a no-brainer for us to bring back Harding, and we also wanted to reestablish that connection to the Inquisition in the world of Thedas, which occurred 10 years ago, the events of Inquisition. “Harding serves as our proxy back to those events, and you get to learn about what's happened with the Inquisition since, so she presents some really lovely opportunities for us. I will say, personality-wise and her role on the battlefield, she is among my favorites. When you see her leap into the air, unleashing these devastating attacks with her bow and arrow, I just can't get enough of her.”"

"TAASH Busche: “Taash, in the creation of their arc, is one of our more complex characters. It's a journey along their arc that is about introspection. 'Where do I belong in the world? What are my boundaries? What do I fight for? How do I become at peace with who I am?' So I love the juxtaposition, actually, between Taash's personal journey and this imposing literal dragon slayer, that sort of hard exterior and really gentle interior. It makes Taash a really special companion for me.” (When asked which companion had the steamiest romance): “I'll just speak for me personally, but at the culmination of the romance arcs, I'd have to say Taash. When I got to that scene and saw the finished version of that cinematic, I was hollering. Hollering.”"

"EMMRICH Busche: “The thing about Emmrich that is going to surprise our fans the most is his relationship with necromancy. I really love that we kind of turned the idea of a necromancer on its head here, where you think of them as these conjurers of evil, the certain malice when you hear the term 'necromancer,' but it couldn't be farther from the truth for Emmrich. There is a reverence about the dead. He has a unique relationship with death. You get to explore how he ended up in the Mourn Watch. Death has shaped this character in all aspects of his life, and we frequently refer to him as our gentleman necromancer. I think his proper, kind nature stems from that respect that he's learned about this cycle of life and death throughout his life. “Manfred is like a son to Emmrich. He very much has an affinity for this wisp, this life force that he's given a second chance through this skeletal body, and in many ways, it's the story of a parent raising a child. Emmrich, he needs to teach Manfred and help him along to develop as a character of their own, things like learning new skills, how to assist The Veilguard. Some of our most charming moments are in dealing with Manfred, and I must say I absolutely love the interactions. They just have me rolling whenever Manfred steals the show. “…In my last playthrough, I romanced Emmrich. What I also loved is as I'm synergizing with him as we're doing combos, just having him refer to me as ‘my dear’ on the battlefield. ‘Well done, my dear!’ It just fills me with joy every time.”"

"LUCANIS Busche: “The character that went through the most changes [throughout development] without a doubt was Lucanis. Lucanis is very complex. He's an assassin. He is very skilled in the art of death. The Antivan Crows, they pursue these contracts with a certain level of dispassion, but also, Lucanis is a romantic, and he's dealing with some internal struggles. He's been through a lot of trauma. He's relearning how to trust. And all of those elements come together with a richness, but it creates a lot of complexity in how we tell that story. So I'd say Lucanis is the first one that comes to my mind in terms of the thought that's gone into it, where we've had to make adjustments to really cover all facets of his character.”"

"NEVE Busche: “Neve is our confident noir detective. I love to bring her onto the battlefield because she's just so incredibly capable. She's our ice mage, so really big on controlling the battlefield, and that's actually a good metaphor to her arc. She wants to fight for change. She wants to fight for a better Minrathous, and she's going to use all the tools at her disposal to try and reshape Minrathous into a better place for all. She's very much a Shadow Dragon. This is among the mantra of the Shadow Dragons. They operate from the shadows, fighting for a better Minrathous. So as this accomplished ice mage, she's fierce. She's not going to shy away from any challenge, whether it's taking down darkspawn or dealing with the Magisterium in Minrathous.”"

"BELLARA Busche: “Oh, my dear, sweet Bellara. I relate to Bellara a lot. She is joyous. She's been through a lot, but she remains curious, optimistic. She's kind of a geek. She really likes her fiction. She fangirls over Neve a little bit. She's just so relatable, and I think that's what our players will find and fall in love with when they get to meet Bellara, is just how much you'll recognize some of those patterns and sensibilities that she holds, but don't let it fool you. She is also a Veil Jumper. She's very comfortable in elven ruins. I frequently bring her with me in my party. I like to play rogue. I like to play the Veil Jumper, or the Veil Ranger. Bellara's a fantastic companion to set up that spec with electric vulnerabilities, so I love her both on and off the battlefield.”"

Bonus rounds:

"SOLAS Okay okay, so Solas isn’t technically one of your core companions who will travel with you, but given his place in the Dragon Age story, we still had to ask about his relationship with Rook. Here’s what Busche had to say: Busche: “Rook's relationship with Solas is a complicated one. Everyone has seen, at this point, the gameplay reveal and the opening moments of the game, so you'll know things got shaken up pretty radically for Solas already. He's trapped. He's basically communicating with you as an advisor, and I absolutely love that idea of, ‘He's your lifeline right now, but can you trust him?’ And those touch points with him, ‘Do I take his advice or not? Can he be trusted? Is he going to betray me?’ All the while giving you this information that you absolutely need in order to be successful. “It creates an interesting stage for us, where, I think our fans will agree, Solas is very complicated. He firmly believes he's doing the right thing, and some of our fans will agree that he's trying to do the right thing. Others will not, and this creates a stage for you, the player, where you get to lean into those tendencies of your own as you're taking advice from Solas throughout parts of the game. I think those really interesting debates about, ‘Was he ever redeemable? Can he be trusted? Was he wrong all along?’ You're really going to be able to dive in deep on that.”"

"VARRIC Varric, while a part of Dragon Age: The Veilguard and a series mainstay, isn’t part of your core companions either. But, as fans can see in the trailers, he’s still very much in The Veilguard, so we asked Dragon Age creative director John Epler about how he’s changed since we last saw him in Inquisition: Epler: “Since the events of Dragon Age: Inquisition, he has spent the time, just briefly, obviously, [serving as] Viscount of Kirkwall. I mean, anybody who knows much about Varric knows how well a job where he sits around and tells people what to do is going to sit with him. He has been participating in the hunt for Solas. And I think for Varric in particular, that's a very difficult thing for him to do because Solas is his friend. Solas is somebody that he grew close to over the events of Inquisition. They adventure together, they work together. “And now knowing who Solas really is, that eats at Varric. Because Varric always sees, Varric believes he can always make somebody do the right thing. Varric believes he is the most convincing, charismatic, because he cares about people. And he has this belief that as long as I get a chance to talk to Solas, I'm going to be able to turn him. But as he's seeing what Solas' ritual is doing to the world around him, as he experienced in the comics, Dragon Age: The Missing, that eats at him a little bit. That's challenging his world view of him as always being the best judge of people, being able to see that somebody is able to be redeemed. And he's starting to question a little bit, ‘am I right or am I being a fool by believing in Solas?’ ”"

[source]

[latenightdaydreams]

König x First Meeting (fem)

MDNI🔞

I'm sorry for not posting as often as I usually do! There has been a lot of things going on in my personal life, but I promise to be back on my normal schedule soon! ILY all and thank you so much for everyone's patience and grace�� I hope you all have a great day/night!!

Master List ✍🏽

>cw: fem/afab, fluff, sexual thoughts

1.4k word count.

📻

.

.

Over the last three years, you’ve always just been a soft voice on the other side of König’s radio. What was first professional talk only quickly turned into deep conversations and flirting. Every mission he can rely on you to always be there. You’ve been able to help him out of terrible situations, causing the bond to grow stronger. It helps that your voice is so feminine and soothing to him.

Even though you both have never met face to face, he’s developed deep feelings for you. Other than your first name, he knows nothing about you. Are you married? Do you like men? That doesn’t really matter; men like König aren’t built for relationships, so he’s never sought you out. Why ruin something good?

König has just returned from a successful mission, his team put together a small party at the local bar for him. He sat at the bar with Horangi as everyone else spread out across the bar. In the middle of the story Horangi was telling him, he hears your voice. His eyes widen as he looks around trying to find you. Then you speak again.

The light coming in from the windows behind you formed a halo of golden rays around your body, framing your stunning shape. It’s as if König was looking at an angel, a dream come true. He places a hand on Horangi’s shoulder as to excuse himself as his feet guide him to you.

“Y/n? Is that really you?” König asks as his eyes travel all over your body as he stops a few feet from you.

“König!” You respond in such a happy tone, your lips curving into the sweetest smile he’s ever seen. He is a massive man; in height and in muscle mass. While you can’t see his face, you can see his beautiful pale eyes.

“Y- you’re here. In the flesh.”

He is trying his best to be respectful, but finding it hard to take his eyes away from your body. To see you, the body, the face, to match your voice; he feels as if this just confirms that he’s in love with you. This is exactly what he was worried would happen if you two ever met.

“It’s nice to finally meet you face to face.” His eyes meet yours once more as he holds his hand out for you to shake.

The sweet familiar giggle leaves your lips as you brush past his hand and wrap your arms around him for a hug. “There’s no need to be so formal.” You tease, causing his cheeks to turn red underneath his mask.

König wraps his arms around you, returning the hug. You’re so much smaller than him that your head barely reaches his chest. He leans down slightly and takes a deep breath. You smell like a breezy spring day. Everything about you screams home to him, he came picture himself coming home every day and burying his head between your breasts and letting the stress of the day melt off.

When the hug ends, he can still feel his body tingle where you touched him. His icy blue eyes are stuck on you, trying to study every little part of you that he can. He notices your eyes travel over his body as well, giving him an ego boost.

“Congratulations on your work.” You say grabbing his gloved hand.

“I couldn’t have done it without you, Süße.” His voice is barely above a whisper as he squeezes your hand slightly. There are so many words fighting to be said, but he doesn’t know where to begin. “Would you like to sit together and chat?”

“I would.”

Horangi turns in his seat to see König walking hand in hand with you. He raises his eyebrow and shrugs, getting up to join the crowd of people to give you both some time alone. You sit, sliding into one side of the booth and König ops to sit beside you verses across from you. He can’t take his eyes off of you or stop touching you. Three years of only knowing your voice. Three years of joking, flirting, and life saving advice.

“You’re a lot taller than I thought you’d be.” You say softly as you gaze down at his hand caressing your upper thigh through the fabric of your jeans. The sexual tension between the both of you is insane.

König chuckles at your comment while nodding his head. “I am. I’m a big man, kleine Taube.” Your thighs are so deliciously thick, he can only imagine what they would feel like underneath the fabric of your pants. His eyes drop to your cleavage before traveling back up to your eyes. “It’s crazy to finally put a face to the voice.”

“Hopefully a cute face.” You smirk and chuckle.

“A beautiful face. You’re so beautiful and small.” His face heats up at his words as his mind begins to wander about what it would be like to have you completely to himself.

“Well, thank you König. I can’t see your face but I imagine it’s just as attractive as your voice.”

He leans back in the booth and laughs, shaking his head in disagreement. “I have scars, Taube. Graying hair.” His eyes travel from your eyes to your soft pillowy kissable lips then back up.

“Maybe I’m into that.” You smirk.

It’s just like speaking to you have the radio, you’re just as flirty and confident in person and that’s very attractive to König. His hand on your thigh squeezes twice before he shifts his body to face you more. The hand moves from your thigh so he can remove his gloves, showing off his pale large hands. His fingers dance across your small palm before linking fingers with you. You place your free hand on his arms, caressing his muscular bicep. His pants grow tight on him as he feels his cock begin to harden.

Before anything else can be said, Horangi brings over two shots for the both of you. He has a sly smirk on his face as he passes one to you and then to König. “Celebration shot!” Horangi gleefully shouts.

You reach for yours and then look at König and wait for him to grab his. He does and watches you closely waiting to see what you will do. When you bring the small glass up to your lips and drink the harsh liquor with no reaction his cock twitches. What he wouldn’t give to see your lips wrap around him instead.

König looks at you and lifts up his mask, exposing his lips to you. You can see a scar coming from his cheek down past his lip to his chin. He takes the shot quickly, but before he can drop his mask you lean up and kiss him. Your lips fall on his cheek, but the corners of your lips touch and it drives him mad.

He looks down at you for a moment, not reacting while he attempts to gather his thoughts so he doesn’t just bend you over this table and fuck you in front of the whole bar. One of his hands comes up and caresses the side of your face as he leans in to kiss you again. His lips are soft and delicate at first. Slowly his lips move against yours in a more possessive and passionate heat.

Your lips feel just as soft as clouds, you smell and taste so sweet. His hand slips down your body, wrapping around your waist and pulling you closer to him. The kiss intensifies as he feels your lip’s part. He wastes no time; the tip of his tongue runs across your bottom lip before slipping into your mouth.

A small hum rumbles from his chest as he moves his hand up and down your back, moving to your side to explore your curves. You feel so perfect in his hands. You taste so good on his tongue. There is no one else. You are the one.

König pulls back from the kiss; his eyes look down into yours. All he wants to do is ravish your body and get to know every inch of you, but he knows he should take you out first. You’re more than just a hookup, he can build a future with you. He thinks for a moment, letting his eyes trail down your body once more before speaking. “Would you like to go on a date?”

“I would love to.”

“Tomorrow.”

“What time?”

“I’m free all day, Süße. You can take as much of it as you want.” You could take the air from his lungs and he’d die a happy man.

“I want it all.”

König smirks at your response. His hand lingers on your upper thigh once more, letting his fingers rest on your inner thigh. “You can have it all. Anything for my Taube.”

[klaus-littlestwolf]

(The drawings/tattoos that are used to illustrate the tattoos the boys get in this story are in no way mine and I do not take credit for them in any way (there’s a reason I’m a writer, I can’t draw to save my life 🤣). They are only used to show what the boys wanted tattooed on them by their mate. Credit where Credit is due)

Seeing them was odd, it always had been. It was very rare that I was on the boardwalk after the sun went down and when I was I always had someone with me who walked me to my car, and always freshly after sunset. I knew the boardwalk was a dangerous place at night and honestly, I preferred to avoid it, even if the night life is more fun for everyone.

Unfortunately I had to take this shift for a coworker for the rest of the week at least, and was stuck here until the Tattoo shop closed at 2am, and the only reason I’m not complaining is because people seem much more willing to tip better at night. The Lost Boys were a biker gang, and while I couldn’t deny that they are attractive and that they look like a lot of fun, I also knew better. They parked their bikes across from the shop every night, from what I could tell they enjoy pissing off Max, the video store owner, though I don’t know why.

I tried very hard not to make eye contact with any of them, just not looking up at them at all as I finished my tattoo, which was a pinup of a mermaid, and covered it up with plastic wrap, quickly checking the guy out and accepting my 30 dollar tip before shutting the register on my finger which instantly made me yelp in pain and see a trickle of blood coming from my finger. Thankfully it was only a little cut and it wouldn’t hinder my work as I sucked off the blood and quickly disinfected it, wrapping a tight bandaid around it. Just as I moved to my station to clean everything my eyes flickered up as if by instinct and caught all 4 of the boys staring at me intently which startled me but I quickly looked away and tried to calm my racing heart by getting rid of the inky water at my station. Just as I was about to put my ink away and read my book I heard footsteps walk into the front.

‘Hello, welcome to Ink-Well Tattoo Shop, if you’d like to look at my books they’re on the shelf.’ I told them, just turning around as I finished talking and coming face to face with the bleach blond leader that had been staring at me only a moment ago.

‘Ink-Well…is that a reference to an ink container people used to have on their desks or how good you are at your job?’ He asked…softly? I had always imagined their voices to be deep and dark, especially his, but while it was deep it was also gentle, at least while speaking to me right now it was but I could tell that soft voice wasn’t always so soft.

‘I think you’re the first person to prove me wrong, the owner said, “Everyone knows what an inkwell is”…no one knows what it is. And personally, I would describe my abilities much better than “well”. I’m incredible, do you know what you want today, sir?’ I asked, moving around him only to find the dark haired one right behind him and I realized how tall he really is as I almost slammed my face into his naked chest. I looked around, seeing the other two beside my chair and I took a deep breath. ‘Which one of you is getting inked today?’ I asked and the twisted sister look-alike jumped up excitedly.

‘Oh! Me! I want to do it!’ He seemed to be begging which was a strange thought as the leader nodded and he jumped to sit in the chair.

‘Okay, I’m Y/n, it’s nice to meet you.’ I held out my hand and he took it in his own, pulling me closer before kissing my hand tenderly which made my blood rush to my face. The idea that these boys are soft and sweet and gentle in any way shape or form is really screwing with me. Their presence had always been a tad bit scary with the vibe they gave off, sexy or not (and they definitely are), but for the first time that I’m seeing them it’s like they’re not projecting dangerous vibes and it was a comfort in this situation being alone with all of them.

‘I’m Paul. This is Marko, Dwayne and you met David. Y/n, I like that name.’ He flirted and I rolled my eyes, handing him a book full of images of my work.

‘I’m glad, do you know what you want to get Paul?’ I asked, and he smiled as he looked at my work, all of them now watching as he flipped through the pages.

‘I want a vampire bat on my chest. Are you able to do that?’ He questioned, looking up at me as Marko took the book and I nodded, sitting in my seat beside him.

‘Were you looking for it to be realistic, like a portrait? Because if you want something like that it’s a 6-7 hour minimum piece and I would need you to come back during the day-‘

‘Oh, we can only be here at night, I want something smaller anyway. Not cartoony but-‘

‘You want a badass vampire bat, I get you. I can definitely do that. How big are you looking to get it?’ He jumped to pull off his jacket which jingled with all the stuff he had hanging off of it before stripping off his tank top.

‘Like maybe, this big?’ He showed me the area of his chest he wanted covered and I nodded.

‘Okay, let me draw that up and we’ll see if you like it.’ It was a relatively small tattoo and he watched, leaning over the chair as I sketched it out and he was smiling the whole time, staring at me.

‘You’re really pretty, has anyone told you that?’ He asked and I rolled my eyes.

‘Surf Nazis say shit every day-though they usually go with “hot”, “sexy”, “great rack”. Things like that, pretty is a new one though, thank you.’ I knew my face was red as he watched me draw, Marko suddenly beside me, setting a chair near Paul’s feet.

‘They bother you a lot, Angel?’ He wondered and I shrugged, my face darkening even more as he called me that.

‘All day long, they’re probably the most annoying customers so my boss takes all of them since they started getting a bit too comfortable and handsy with me and the other girl. I have her evening closing shift for the week so, if they show up I get to tell them to “fuck off” which is awesome.’ I joked and they laughed along with me.

‘Well, we’ll need to make sure they don’t bother you anymore, won’t we boys?’ It was the first time David spoke again and I looked up to see him watching me draw over my shoulder.

‘Fuck yeah, no one’s gonna be bothering our Princess.’ Paul cheered and it was weirdly comforting to hear that they wanted to protect me.

‘Please, just leave it alone? They don’t know I’m working nights now so it’s all fine, and I’ll only be doing it for the week. What do you think? Do you think he looks mean enough?’ I asked, showing Paul my drawing.

‘Princess, that’s incredible! It somehow looks cute and vicious…like Marko!’ He teased, getting punched in the chest immediately.

‘Okay, punch each other all you’d like outside, but if you make his skin swell where I need to ink then I’ll hit you myself.’ I told Marko, moving to make a stencil for the tattoo that Paul wanted, nearly running into Dwayne again, who just watched me.

‘Don’t mind him, he’s quiet but honestly, he’s the nicest of all of us…usually.’ David spoke and I smiled, quickly making the stencil.

‘Would you tattoo me tomorrow night?’ A new deep voice asked and I looked up to see it had been Dwayne. I paused to pick my chin up from the floor at the sound of his sexy deep baritone voice before shaking off and answering him.

‘Of course. Do you know what you want done, because I can do anything you want but depending on the style you want I might recommend a coworker. Say you wanted Japanese, I would recommend Kevin, he is fucking killer at that stuff and if you want anything American Traditional he is bomb at it.’ I had said this because of the American Traditional rose tattoo I could see peeking out on his side though he quickly shook his head.

‘I want you. I want something like this.’ he showed me the dreamcatcher piece I had put in my book and I smiled.

‘This is one of the best tattoos I ever did, and it was so much fun! Do you want it that size?’ He nodded his head.

‘Yes, but a bit more along the Native American type style? I’d like it to look like it’s braided together…could you do that?’ He looked unsure but I just kept smiling.

‘Of course I can! Let me draw a couple of things up tonight for you and you can see what you like best tomorrow. I’m sure I can give you something perfect!’ For the first time the corners of his mouth turned up and he smiled down at me-his smile was hot cute.

‘I know you can Babygirl.’ I was startled but after hearing Marko and Paul I realized that they seem to have a thing for nicknames so I ignored it.

‘Alright Paul, stencil is done.’ I spoke, sitting back down beside him. Most of his chest hair was in the center of his chest so I didn’t need to shave where he wanted the tattoo before placing the stencil and squeezing out the inks I would need. ‘Are you ready, rockstar?’ I asked him and he grinned as I called him that.

‘Hell Yeah Princess! Ink me up!’ We chatted as I tattooed him, him and Marko keeping me engaged with the conversation but I noticed David and Dwayne off on their own and speaking seriously for a while. The tattoo took about an hour, maybe a bit more before I was finished, turning off the machine and wiping his chest down.

‘What do you think?’ I waited for his reaction after handing him a mirror to see it more clearly and he turned it away from me instantly, seeming uncomfortable before looking down at his chest instead of at the reflection and grinning at the new ink on his body.

‘Princess! This is amazing!’ He exclaimed, placing the mirror face down and moving to hug me.

‘Ah-Ah! It’s sensitive! Don’t you dare destroy my work!’ I warned, turning to lay some plastic wrap over it and tape it down after David and Dwayne looked at it.

‘You’re really talented. I’m gonna have to go after Dwayne.’ David told me, watching as I cleaned up.

‘You’ll have to go the next night cause Dwayne’s is going to take me until closing at least…what time can you get here tomorrow?’ I asked him.

‘I’ll be here right after the sun goes down, I promise.’

‘Okay, so that’s about 8. I’ll be sure my last client will be done by then. Where do you want it, by the way?’ He opened his jacket, showing me the right side of his chest and making me blush. ‘Got it. I’ll have a few options for you tomorrow. For now, Paul, that’ll be 45.’ I finished putting everything away as it was now 10 minutes after closing time.

‘Here you go Princess, be safe getting home, you hear?’ He warned and I nodded, Paul, Marko and Dwayne walking out and leaving me with David for a moment and I froze under his intense stare.

‘Paul is right you know…you really are beautiful.’ He complimented, his gloved hand holding my chin for a moment before walking out and letting me shut the gate to the front before realizing Paul had given me a 100 dollar bill which is a 55 dollar tip…maybe I can like these boys after all.

What I didn’t know was, as I walked out the back door and locked it once the place was all clean, I was being watched. I made my way down the boardwalk, grabbing a burger and fries, along with a coke, shoving the food in my bag and sipping my soda as I walked off the boardwalk and all the way home.

Unlike every other night I had walked in the dark before, I felt…safe? I wasn’t looking around like a crazy person waiting to get jumped, I just walked home and crashed into bed.

I live in an apartment with a roommate, Justin, who is always out at his girlfriends (whoever that is this week) which left me alone most of the time and I loved it. I put in a video I had rented from the video store next door earlier that day, it was a new horror movie, Hellraiser. Strange premise, awesome movie.

That’s how I fell asleep that night, around 3:30 am, and all the while 4 sets of yellow eyes watched from the trees outside.

I got to work the next night at 6 as my boss left and set my sketchbook on my table, taking 2 quick tattoos before telling the last walk-in that I didn’t have time, knowing as the sun began to set Dwayne would be coming for his tattoo and I was excited to see which one he picked. I had set up everything I would need and just as I was scheduling a tattoo for a coworker to do tomorrow for a walk-in, I heard the rumble of bikes coming down the boardwalk making me smile. ‘Okay, Kevin will take you tomorrow at noon, is that alright?’ I asked the annoyed girl who clearly just wanted her tattoo now.

‘Still don’t get why you can’t just take me now.’ She bitched and I fought to not roll my eyes as 4 sets of heavy boots stomped through the front.

‘I can’t take you now because I’m tattooing him now. Your appointment is for noon tomorrow.’ She turned and as she saw the boys she quickly ran out the front and was gone, startling me. ‘I should employ you as security here from now on.’ I teased, grabbing my book and walking over to my chair.

‘We can do that for you at night.’ Marko agreed, a grin on his face which seemed to always be grinning honestly.

‘Well I’m only working here for the week at nights so you won’t see me after that-‘

‘No! You need to keep working nights Angel, what are we supposed to do without you here?’ Marko complained.

‘Come on, the night life is more fun anyway Princess!’ I rolled my eyes, opening my book.

‘I’ll think about it. Okay, this is the first one I did, I went simple cause I didn’t know how detailed you wanted everything. Usually I put in too much detail and people hate it.’

‘It’s nice, but I was hoping for something more intricate.’ He told me and I smiled.

‘Okay, I went a little bigger with this one, but my personal favorite is this one.’ I showed him the third one and his eyes widened. ‘I researched some Native American dream catchers and tried to make it as real as I could…do you like it?’ He nodded his head slowly and I was worried for a moment.

‘It looks like the one my Ma made me when I was a kid…it’s perfect Babygirl, thank you.’ I was touched by that.

‘This is why I love my job, you can tattoo memories for people that they get to keep for a lifetime. Don’t thank me yet though, not until it’s done, I already made the stencil for it, I just knew you would pick this one! Take off your jacket.’ I told him, grabbing the stencil and looking at Paul. ‘Let me see how it’s healing rockstar.’ He hesitated for a moment before pulling his shirt up and I was stunned. ‘Holy shit!’ I stood, moving to him and touching his chest. ‘You…you heal fast don’t you?’

‘Way fast, it looks great Princess.’ He pecked my cheek before sitting next to Marko and I moved back to my chair, removing my jacket and getting ready to place the stencil. ‘Damn girl! You are tatted up!’ I tried to stop the blush that came in but I couldn’t, smiling as they all inspected my skin which had both of my sleeves done.

‘Yeah, I don’t know any tattooers who don’t have tattoos, and if you find one, don’t go to them.’ I teased, peeling the stencil off and turning on my machine to begin inking the shirtless God.

‘I need food, you guys want anything? Dwayne? Angel?’ Marko offered a little later, just as I was finishing the outlines.

‘I wouldn’t mind a coke.’ I told him and he grinned, jumping to go get food with Paul behind him. ‘How are you feeling Dwayne? Okay?’

‘I’m fine, how are you?’ He countered and I rolled my eyes.

‘I’m trying to make sure you’re not getting dizzy or are gonna pass out on me, you’re still as a statue and barely breathing. Don’t be a smartass.’

‘I’m fine, I promise. You have beautiful eyes…’ he mumbled and I just blushed, beginning to detail the braided base before moving to the feathers.

I finished the tattoo just before 2 and it came out perfectly, prompting me to hand him the mirror which he grabbed as Paul had and turned it away from me though I could swear it looked like he didn’t have any reflection at all. ‘Alright, you’re all finished. Is it what you wanted?’ I asked and he nodded, looking down at his chest.

‘You have no idea how perfect this is. Thank you Babygirl.’ He leaned down and kissed my cheek as I rang him up and I was once again bright red.

‘Look at that cute little blush!’ Marko exclaimed and he and Paul laughed like crazy. ‘Everything you do is just so cute Angel!’ He was teasing me and I wanted to hate it but I didn’t, it filled my stomach with butterflies and I was feeling awful about how badly I wanted to jump all of them.

‘Shut up.’ I grumbled and began closing up, all of them moving to hug me in one way or another.

‘We’ll see you tomorrow night Kitten.’ David told me and it felt almost like a warning, daring me not to be here which made me excited.

For the rest of the week they were there, David and Marko both getting tattoos of their own before Paul decided to get a bigger piece, dedicating a whole sleeve to his rockstar image which I found cute, starting with a killer electric guitar and lyrics from the song Lost in the Shadows. That next night was my last night on the boardwalk, going back to the dayshift the next day which they complained about loudly, insisting I switch my schedule so they could see me.

That night as I started my shift I was immediately bothered by Surf Nazis, a few of the assholes noticing me in the shop alone. I had kicked them out and the security escorted them off the boardwalk (which I knew wouldn’t last long). The boys didn’t show up at 8 like they normally did and I was a bit disappointed but I knew they would find something shiny and new to love eventually, guys like that always do.

Around 10 o’clock the assholes were back, 3 of them now walking around the shop and getting too comfortable.

‘Don’t touch me!’ I snapped as I cleaned my station, deciding to close early tonight and just take the loss if it got them away from me, their hands pinching me now and then before the one with the giant Mohawk pulled me to his chest and pinned me to the counter. ‘Let Me Go!’ I growled, punching at him as hard as I could but not making him budge.

‘Come on sweetheart, just spend the night with us, I promise you’ll have the time of your life.’ He teased just before I brought my knee up and hit him straight in the crotch, a high pitched noise escaping him before he collapsed.

‘Get the fuck out!’ His 2 friends helped him up before practically carrying him out and I pulled the gates at the front shut, locking them and making my way down the boardwalk. Unlike the last 5 nights, I was uneasy and scared again, hating the long walk in the darkness which is what made me hesitate as I got to the parking lot before trying to quickly get to the next street and away from the rowdy people. I wasn’t even halfway through the parking lot when I was grabbed, tight hands clamped around my waist and mouth as I was hauled down the beach no matter how hard I kicked before being dropped by a bonfire.

‘Hi there.’ The asshole from earlier greeted and I rolled my eyes.

‘Get the fuck away from me!’ I snapped, trying to get up only to be shoved back down onto my ass, realizing there were 4 of them now all looking down at me like it was the funniest joke ever told.

‘Oh, come on! We’re gonna have a great time, you just need to relax.’ There were suddenly hands on me from behind pulling at my jacket and I tried to pull my arms back, kicking my legs out and hitting the one in front of me in the stomach before two of them pinned me on my back on the sand.

‘You’re gonna pay for that, bitch.’ He snarled and just as he knelt down over me there was a loud shrieking sound from behind him and they all turned towards their friend that had screamed. I couldn’t sit up to see from where I was but as both men holding me suddenly let me go I knew whatever it was, it wasn’t good. As more screams rang out I rolled over, crawling along the sand and keeping my head down before seeing boots below my face that I recognized instantly.

‘David?’ I questioned, looking up and stiffening as I saw blood covering his mouth and jaw but strangely, I didn’t feel any real fear like I had moments ago.

‘Are you alright Kitten? The one night we’re late.’ He teased, leaning down and lifting me up to my feet. I turned around as the screaming suddenly cut off and saw all 4 Surf Nazi’s dead and covered in blood. I had to swallow to keep from getting sick as I saw several limbs no longer attached to their original bodies, Paul and Dwayne covered in blood much the same as David while Marko held one of the assholes in his grip with his…fangs…in the man’s neck.

‘Holy shit…’ They all looked at me now, their faces distorted but they didn’t look angry like I would expect, more concerned as they all looked at me, Marko dropping the now dead body.

‘Relax Kitten, it’s alright. You’re safe now.’ David told me and I took a deep breath, not feeling scared in the least.

‘Vampires…makes sense…only coming out at night. The mirror thing…that’s why you heal so fast! Totally unfair!’ I whined, realizing why their tattoos healed so quickly as they stepped closer to me, Dwayne having cleaned off his face as best he could before looking me over quickly.

‘Are you hurt? We got here as quickly as we could, we-‘

‘I’m fine! It’s alright…thank you for saving me…I’m going to have to switch to working nights after all, aren’t I?’ I joked making David snort beside me while he lit a cigarette.

‘Or you could quit and just tattoo us exclusively.’ Paul proposed. ‘For the rest of eternity.’

‘W-wait, you mean-‘

‘You think we show just anyone what we really are?’ Marko wondered.

‘You were meant to be one of us Princess-knew you were ours since the moment you sliced your finger and we smelled your blood, no changing that.’ The pothead laughed making me roll my eyes before feeling David’s arm around my waist, covering my neck in blood as he nuzzled me which was a uniquely gross feeling.

‘He’s right Kitten. You ain’t gettin away from us, might as well accept it…you, our little mate, were born to be a vampire.’

Lost Boys Masterlist

Lost Boys x Tattoo Artist Moodboard

[neteyamsilly]

i will soften every edge, hold the world to its best | 4

summary ;; A father protects, that's what gives him meaning. Jake Sully has failed. PART 3 | PART 5 pairings ;; dad!jake sully x reader, mom!neytiri x reader, sully family x reader genre ;; pure angst and family feels notes / explanations ;; PLEASE READ AUTHOR NOTES. I explicitly said in the previous chapter I would NO LONGER BE TAKING TAG REQUESTS. You're just going to have to check my profile every now and then. I also will not be re-tagging the peeps I did in the last chapter’s replies, it’s just a lot 😭 I'm sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your understanding! Now I present you, the long awaited angst and groveling of Jake. Enjoy! Please excuse my mistakes if you see any. Thank you so much for the lovely comments and support, I hope the angst hits the way you wanted it / was expecting HHHHH

It’ll shine better, Jake mused to himself, rotating the lumpy amber around in his fingers to better reflect the sunlight streaming in thin rays from the hands of the dense flora above, once I dip this in that polish oil. It’s not entirely unsalvageable. 

At least he hadn’t scraped too much in attempts to give it a rounder shape, the bug at its core you were gushing about to the point of waking him up at zero dark thirty was still intact. He had been summoned from his dreams to look at a cool rock. 

Jake couldn’t not gift it to you as something to be permanently worn after that.

The problem? He was ass at this. Always had been. No drop of craftsmanship in his bloodstream at all when the Na’vi were particularly fond of their ornaments and accessories, making it themselves, in fact. 

Songcords were put together from beads, bones and stones, virtuosity was a must intrinsically woven into everyday life, methodized and irreplaceable since it wasn’t as if mass production could ever be a thing in Pandora. Everything was handmade. 

Jake’s worst enemy beadwork was in their clothing, for example, even in braids — his maladroit at it may or may not be why he wore his hair in plain dreads now. 

He wasn’t an artist or a creator, his hands were more comfortable being fit around a gun or a knife than slipping effortlessly in the rhythm of weaving or the act of making. All his end results were dreadful enough to be bullied relentlessly by his kids — except for you, that is. You absolutely loved them for reasons your mother or none of your siblings could understand. 

Jake’s blundering conscience would melt at the sight of your eyes shining and the biggest smile almost splitting your head in half as if he had just handed you the world every single time he gifted you the newest of his clunky handiwork. He didn’t know why that made you the happiest. You’d been that way ever since you saw him carving and personally adding a bead to his songcord about how he got his firstborn daughter to utter her first word: dada. 

It was important to him, so, down it had gone into Jake’s life story; putting official significance to the moment he never wanted to forget in the same thread that carried the story of him becoming Toruk Makto, just beside Neteyam’s first word, which was also dadada. (Neytiri had Lo’ak’s mam, and Kiri’s perfectly articulated mommy.)

Ever since that day, you had made grabby hands at the bead all the time when he picked you up, teethed at it like a puppy trying to grab a toy, tried to rip it off to make it yours — anything, until Neytiri made you one, but no, you wanted it from dada. 

So dada started making you little trinkets. 

He didn’t know if it was a good or a bad thing you never grew out of receiving gifts from your dad he himself cringed at. Jake wasn’t one to complain, not when someone in this life would feel such enough joy to purify thousands of blighted souls upon receiving his ugly personal work. It made him happy, stroked his ego to high heavens that his sweetheart was doting on dada to see the imperfect as the most fascinating. 

That’s why he had taken on the daunting task of making a bead for you out of the amber you’d fixated on, rasp in one hand, sitting on a thick log that cut into the little stream he and his family were spending leisurely time that day, one leg pulled to himself and one feet in the water up to his ankle. Even though he had half an ear on his four children playing around in the shallow water of the creek, all the screams and squeals of joy felt weak compared to the contained huff of amusement that escaped from his mate who had come up to Jake while he was way too engrossed in his task. 

His eyes shifted to Neytiri, watching her hop on to the log in one agile move. “Don’t laugh.”

“I am not laughing,” Neytiri said, crouching to sit, her mouth twitched upwards as she looked at the amber in his hand.

“I have eyes, Neytiri, I literally see you laughing.” His face used to burn at her openly teasing about beadmaking, but his oldest daughter’s attentions had restored his bruised confidence over the years. The slander wasn’t taken lightly these days as Jake had proudly relabeled the odd shapes of his work as a creative choice. “Right to my face.”

“You’re mistaken.” 

Jake made his jaw drop, overacting his bafflement. “Wow, gaslighting? Really?”

Neytiri hit his arm lightly. In her terms, it was light, at least. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s something you shouldn’t do to your mate.” He turned his back to her, giving a look over his shoulder. “You’re abusing me. I’m being abused.”

“Baby.”

“No amount of pet names are gonna fix my broken heart.”

“No. You are a baby. I’m insulting you.” Neytiri hadn’t even laughed, but the uplifted timbre of that sentence sure did make Jake snicker in disbelief. “If you can’t take it, maybe you should leave beading to me.”

“I would say they are fashionably off,” he defended. You carried them with delight, so why shouldn’t Jake take more pride in his work? “And you said practice makes perfect years ago, I remember the exact words—”

“Years ago. You still haven’t gotten any better at it.” Neytiri was his biggest supporter and criticizer at the same time. “And you became a part of the clan back in the day in three months Jake. Never a more unbelievable thing to me than this.” 

“I’m trying alright?” He turned back to the bead, or, vaguely bead-shaped amber, if technical terms were involved. It still had a whole adventure to embark on until it could receive the noble title of a bead. “She likes what I make, at least.”

“It’s because she’s your daughter and anything you do is out of this world. Beauty in the most unlikely places. A child’s love is pure that way.” The unexpected hypnotism of poetry in that sentence alone pulled Jake’s gaze to Neytiri’s, and for a moment, he could physically feel his heart within his ribcage being squeezed, tethering on painful, but with a joyful tinge. “She doesn’t have standards yet.”

Well, that hurt. “Damn.”

“Damm!” A pair of small and branch-thin arms wrapped around his neck from behind, and something, or rather, someone, latched onto his back. “Rahh!” 

Jake should have been suspicious of how silent it had gotten halfway into his talk with Neytiri. Turns out, you had swam underneath the log to get out of his line of sight, climbing with the stealth of a bug to come up undetected. 

Well, mark Jake down as impressed, you weren’t able to do that without being spotted until today, this was another wonderful milestone for you — you had learned impressively, taking advantage of his distraction, avoiding making noise and using water to your advantage. Neytiri must have given you some pointers. 

And now he was wondering if his mate was in on this all along, purposefully disturbing his peace so their kids could see an opening to pounce on him.  

“Oof!” Your hold on him was something he could break out of any minute with how adorably strong you were exerting yourself to make it, but he wanted to play along more than anything. Jake was acting panicked, swinging his body left and right from the waist, but really, it was just a light warm-up exercise with the easiest deadlift possible. “I’m being ambushed!”

“I got you now, Toruk Makto!” You wrapped your legs around his torso, and he felt like this was just a piggyback ride with extra steps. “Watch this, mom!”

Oh, it’s on. 

Discreetly handing Neytiri the amber, Jake stood up, bringing you up with him and fighting a smile at your clipped squeak as the height became too much too quick, causing you to cling onto him stronger. He reached behind, and within seconds, he had you in his hands, holding you from the armpits and dangling you above the stream, your kicking legs beating the air, and he cackled like a villain threatening to fling the hero from atop of a skyscraper. 

“You got me? Please.” He loosened his grip the slightest amount to give you the illusion he would let go, and you stopped struggling to scream, catching his forearms. “A measly thing like you? Conquering me? I’ll show you why I’m the king of the skies! Here I come!”

Making sure you wouldn’t get hurt, Jake threw you into the water as gently as possible, but made the angle entertaining enough so you would go flying. He wasn’t sure who’d screeched the highest, your three siblings who had you spearheading this little operation with full trust in your capabilities, or you reacting like you were falling down from an ikran midair. Either way, he was enjoying bullying his kid a bit too much. 

Emerging from the stream and shaking the water off too akin to a wet dog, your first action was to shield your siblings, open arms and whole body and all. “Nete, run! Protect Lovak and Kiri, I’ll save you!”

Jake’s evil smile looming on his kids wavered at that. 

You had problems with some letters even at the big age of eight, two vowels next to each other in one word was one of them, along with the confusion of “f” and “b”, and sometimes “p” — it made for hilarious misunderstandings Jake had to fight to be a parent about instead of busting a lung from laughing. 

One of the many unforgettable events was deemed “The Fish Incident” between Jake, Max and Norm. He had been recording Neteyam’s first catch on his own to add it to the cute memory pile he and his mate would watch in the future after all their children eventually moved out to pursue their paths. You happened to be present that time, watching intently as your big brother shot a particularly giant yellow fish, eagerly jumping down to the pond to get it and showing it to the camera with a shy, yet proud grin on his face. 

“Good job, boy!” Jake had cheered. “Say I got that fish!”

Out of the camera’s frame and making little jumps on your toes, you’d blithely yelled. “Yeah, you got that bish!” 

The rest of the footage was shaky and out of focus, the microphone hadn’t picked up any sound but Jake’s uncontrollable laughter, kicked off by an exploding snort of shock. 

You and Neteyam had no idea why, but after he’d stopped recording with tears streaming down his face, wheezing because he couldn’t stop laughing, you’d joined to laugh and play with him regardless, mirroring his excitement. 

Later though, Jake had to actively make it so you wouldn’t have to say the words kitchen and pitch (and obviously, fish) out loud, at least, in front of Neytiri. He didn’t want to abstain from having a little fun himself, so under no circumstance was she allowed to find out and correct you. And he had it going strong for a while until it slipped when he was talking about a scientist friend over at Hell’s Gate called Richard and you repeated it as “Bitchard”. The word had somehow weaseled into your English lexicon as well, and Neytiri wasn’t illiterate enough to be oblivious to what you’d merrily blurted. 

Good old days. Jake sometimes missed hearing you curse innocently. Neytiri had to take that source of joy away from him. Discouragement and warnings would be given to his kids if they knowingly cussed, of course, Kiri calling Lo’ak penis face was something he’d immediately shot down, but this was harmless, he thought. He could have let you be blissfully unaware until the day you learned the meaning of the words, or gain consciousness of the articulation errors as you grew up and naturally fix it yourself. It was only a natural part of a child’s growth.  

But he had other entertainment. The obligatory consonant you had to sometimes add to two different neighboring vowels if it was too difficult for you to pronounce, for example. Your little brother was a victim to this. Thankfully, Lo’ak wasn’t bothered to be called Lovak by his older sister, somehow thinking of it as a nickname, but Jake could bet his ass the boy would use this as infinite ammo against you once both of you were older. He would of course forget how you always protected him in play fighting like right now, of course, maybe you would remember enough to accuse him of ungratefulness, and perhaps Lo’ak would declare he didn’t recall anything such as that. 

How bittersweet of a thing it was to drift into imaginations of how his kids would be like when they grew up. Like the stinging ache Jake always got when he was confronted with the sadness of losing his children forever one day — the need to put every minute with them in a bottle, and the feeling of time slipping through his fingers, the same old melancholy each time: when it first dawned on Jake that you’d successfully sneaked up on him just now, when Neteyam had captured his first fish all on his own without assistance, when Lo’ak showed him the knife he had successfully carved by himself to get his approval, and when Kiri had tended to a scratch wound of his better than her grandmother did with precocious wisdom on her face. 

Jake was making every moment count. Just like this one. 

“Nobody is safe from me, I’ll huff and I’ll puff and blow your house in!” He jumped down from the log with the grace and intimidation of a leopard who had been disturbed while eating up the tree he’d dragged his meal on, splashing water everywhere. “What will you do, o’ mighty hunter?”

You loved being called mighty hunter by him, he saw the sparkle in your eyes. 

“Noooo!” Kiri cried, pulling on both Lo’ak and Neteyam’s arms huddled behind you. “He’ll get us!”

Your thought process, completely spooked by Jake, was painfully visible. But surprisingly, you yelled, “Scatter!” with the experience of a rave addict who would take a forty and smash it on the ground as the police closed in on the party grounds. And his kids ran in different directions, like a group of cockroaches when someone approached them, they all ran in different directions. 

Sloshing water all around to make it more terrifying, he got Kiri first, hauled her right over his shoulder when she made for Neytiri, thinking her mother could protect her, but no. Jake was inevitable. Lo’ak gave him a weak challenge trying to step around him, getting Jake to confuse his steps as if they were playing basketball, but this was his dad he was facing and not Spider, these tricks didn’t work on veterans, so now he was flush to Jake’s side, tail facing forward, carried like some strapless bag, it didn’t even put any strain on the man’s bicep. Neteyam was the last, hiding beneath the water level and holding his breath, but the little nose peeking out for air gave him away, and Jake had him up the other shoulder in seconds, the boy didn’t have enough time to run away even though he’d spied from underwater that Jake was coming for him. 

Three out of four. That left only his eldest daughter. 

You were nowhere to be seen. The delighted and struggling giggle-cries of the three kids in his arms and shoulders didn’t help at all to Jake taking his surroundings in with a keen ear, all senses attuned to spotting the stray. 

A rustle from above. 

“Attack him!” 

He didn’t have enough time to see just which branch of the trees cocooning the creek you had climbed on before all three in his arms turned on him, flailing around together in unison to get Jake to fall down and kneel, and it surprisingly worked, he couldn’t even recover between the blink of a time between them getting off the way and you jumping down on him. The height at which you did that knocked all air off his ribcage for a second as he tried to retain balance, and you took that chance to sit on his shoulders, your legs dangling from each one, grabbing onto two dreads on his head as if they were the tails of Toruk he once had held onto like leashes. 

Jake had to give this one to you, damn. When had you become a student of the art of strategizing? 

But, defeat was defeat. He had to play his part. “This can’t be!” He opened his arms, making it seem cartoonishly like he had been incapacitated. “I’ve been… bested?”

“That’s right!” The cockiness was dripping from you as you pulled on his dreads. “I’m Toruk Makto Makto now. The first of my name!”

Your siblings started cheering battle cries, repeating the word. 

Don’t laugh, he ordered himself. Toruk Makto Makto, what a title, oh Jesus Christ. 

“Alright, alright, you got me, mighty hunter.” 

“So I win?”

“Yes, you win.”

He was going to have two less dreads on his head if you kept pulling on them like this. “Hell yeah!” 

After hearing the declaration, his other children also joined in on the ‘Hell yeah!’ train. Jake supposed he could let this slide for now, you guys were too happy, he wouldn’t sully it. 

“You’re gonna rip my hair off, get down now.” You understood play time was over from his tone, and obeyed, hopping down his shoulders when he lowered you into the water, immediately attempting to rush to your siblings’ side to be celebrated, but Jake had something else in mind. “C’mere for a sec.”

He pulled you to the edge of the stream where water met grassy land, dipping his hand into the wet soil under your confused gaze and bringing his fingers up to trace a pattern on your face.

The reaction was instantaneous. You pulled back. “Ew, mud!”

“Hold on,” he gently warned, or rather, encouraged.

You let him continue whatever he was doing then, albeit not losing the laughable concern along the way. “What’s this?”

“Well, you’ve tamed Toruk Makto before an ikran. My mighty hunter should be painted accordingly, no?”

He pointed down and you followed it with your eyes. Seeing your reflection and the ‘V’ shape with a dot on your face in the water, you stopped yourself from touching it with the impulse control that kicked in at the last second, looking up at Jake, jumping up and down, unable to contain the energy, knowing exactly what he did just now. He’d recognized you as a prospective hunter candidate. “Thank you, dad!”

Jake could swear his insides liquidized at that. “Always, sweetheart.”

“Will you paint me like this when I finally get an ikran, too?”

“Of course I will.” He actually wanted to cup your cheeks and plant a little kiss at the adorable flat of your nose but the mud would be ruined, so he pet your braids instead. “As will your mother. It’s what family does.”

At the time, Jake didn’t have the slightest inkling that the paint would end up being your own blood. 

Neytiri’s bloody hands — your blood, his child, his child, his baby Jake’s entire day would stop at seeing one tear on her face — had been stroking your face, trying to hold on to you anywhere she could to soothe your flaming pain as you were squirming like a dying animal fighting for the next breath. His heart beating right behind his eyes in a massive pulsating headache, Jake was too desperate fighting his swelling panic with each noise that ripped from you to notice they had left the vague pattern of Iknimaya paint pattern in their wake. 

She did. 

And her following anguished, gasping shudder as her shaking hands hovered above your contorted face, tracing the air along the lines the blood had left on your face ended up hitting him right in the gut. He couldn’t dwell on it. He couldn’t let this random twisted sign sweep him into the roaring waterfall of torment, your life was on the line.  

Jake didn’t have any coherent memory of running back to the mouth of the cave from the family tent. One moment, he was back with his brain fried from thinking about Quaritch in the aftermath of an hour that had just taken twenty years from his lifespan, avoiding the inquisitive silence of his kids who hadn’t gone back to bed yet; and the other, Neytiri was screaming in the distance with terror worse than the anguish he’d heard her go through upon losing her father and her home. Jake had all but flown there, mind blank in swirling, spasming panic. 

Neytiri had told him he had a strong heart the first time they’d met. No fear. Even though Jake was aware he was being disliked strongly, this quality of his she had remarked on, honest to her soul. 

But she was wrong. 

That fearless fortress heart of his had begun to crumble the moment he learned of Neteyam’s existence. And with each and every new addition to their family, Jake had been rehabilitated on what fear truly was, like a baby learning a language. 

Losing. It was all about losing. 

He would wake up from terrorizing, choking nightmares with the sensation of his family being violently taken away from him when his children were in his arms, sleeping peacefully all along. He couldn’t stop it. It had spiraled out of control after the sky people came back, turning him into a paranoid, angry man who was ruled by fear. He worried for the safety of his family every day, obsessed over it — beneath the impenetrable iron mask of a leader his whole clan was leaning on, Jake was nothing more than a weak, emotionally crippled father who would lose it the more his children grew up to take reckless actions he made worse by the inability to govern his fear-curbed anger. He called it tough love. 

That tough love had resulted in this. Loss. Loss. Loss he had tried his damnedest to prevent. It was blood slipping through his fingers from a wound he had no way of stitching back together. 

The more he pushed to block the bullet entrance point, the more you fought Jake, making feral yowls that weakened into animalistic whimpers and throaty whines that all but ripped his heart off muscle by muscle, your hits and scratches didn’t faze him, but the noises. Eywa, the noises. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know you’re in pain, I know, I know, I’ll make it go away, please hold on, c’mon.” The droplets of sweat that had formed in the matter of seconds rolled down his face. You had begun to hyperventilate from the accelerating pain because of his efforts. “C’mon sweetheart. Breathe for me, breathe for dad, okay? You gotta breathe. Breathe!”

You were unhearing, lost in the overwhelming, blinding, deafening agony he couldn’t anchor or shield you from. The grunt of desperation that escaped his sore throat rattled his carbon fiber infused bones.  

Jake didn’t have time to think. His reason had flown out the mountains to be able to force one single word to form in his mindscape. He just knew he had to stop the bleeding, propelled by concentrated instinct. You were struggling too much for him to have a solid hold on you. Everything, too slippery. Too much blood. Too fucking much. The sickening smell of iron bit at his senses. 

(Was it the liver? The spleen? Pancreas? One of the major arteries? But Na’vi biology wasn’t the same as humans. Fuck.) 

Then, you were being restrained by a third party, Neytiri was too devastated to make that reasonable decision, and in his peripheral vision, he saw it was Neteyam who had sat down on your legs, restricting your movements with incredible strength. Jake couldn’t even bark at him to go away with how much Neteyam looked in control, a rock he and Neytiri both could draw strength from. Behind him, Lo’ak was a stone statue just standing there, frozen, his eyes not leaving your bloody abdomen. 

When you let out a yelp his heart could no longer stand, he yelled, “Bring a stretcher!” to nobody in particular, out of his goddamn mind. Lo’ak jumped at it, coming back to his senses, hesitating what to do for a second before he was off to god knows where. He had to take you to Norm’s, and then a doctor—

A tiny, trembling voice he couldn’t recognize as Neteyam’s reached his ears. “Dad…” 

The boy was looking at you, blown eyes shining with unshed tears, upper set of teeth sinking in his shaky bottom lip. 

You had gone slack in his arms. 

He hadn’t even seen the moment, didn’t stop putting pressure on the wound as the dread assaulted his body. And a biting shiver went down his spine before Jake also looked down on his eldest daughter. Your eyes weren’t closed all the way, halted gaze focused on something to the side, one tear rolling down your temple. 

“Don’t do this to me.” Jake couldn’t breathe as he shook his head, he was about to lose it, about to tumble down the edge he could never climb his way up from. In denial, he didn’t lift his hands, losing all strength in his upper body and gradually collapsing forward as his forehead found yours. “Don’t do this to me, sweetheart, not like this. Please, not like this.”

The last thing you were looking at was the ikran you’d gotten.

Jake didn’t feel that very ikran making its way to their side, flapping its wings, didn’t feel anything to react when a snoot reached down and ever-so-gently nudged you, like you were asleep and it was given the duty to wake you up in the morning that day. 

Your ikran nudged you once. Twice. Thrice. Each push was harsher than the other. 

You didn’t wake up. Your eyes didn’t get their light back. 

A paralyzing numbness took over Jake’s body, all his neuron ends stunted. The moon stopped spinning, time stopped moving, he ceased existing, all at the same time. 

A piercing ringing stabbed his ears, took away his hearing. He didn’t hear Neytiri scream louder than the ikran, you were ripped from his arms, and he couldn’t move to do anything about it, just staring into the distance, at nothing, bloodied palms facing upwards in his lap. 

It was Neteyam who tried to stop his wailing mother from going mad with grief, trying to get her to set down your body from her crushing embrace even though he couldn’t take his misty eyes off your body. It was Lo’ak, frantic in his run even though his panic-frozen face gave away nothing, who had rushed back with Mo’at and Kiri. It was Tuk who had thrown herself into his arms for a hug Jake wasn’t in his body to reciprocate, his seven year old child, in tears, comforting him when Jake, as the adult and the father, should have had his shit together and be the provider of comfort. 

Instead, all he could feel was the blood on his hands, one small part in his mind making him focus on that one amber with a bug inside he’d carved for you, years ago, now in your hair.

The tears didn’t come. His world was shattering all around him, but not one tear made it to the surface. 

Someone was talking to him, but Jake wasn’t there, experiencing the moment behind a thick veil of silencing glass. 

“Open her mouth, Jakesuli.”

He looked at the source of the muffled sound breaching the ringing in his ears, painfully empty and unfeeling. It was Mo’at. In her hand, a woodsprite gently floated in the air and landed before it repeated the motion again. It was as if his brains had been emptied from his skull. He didn’t understand. He didn’t see. Tuk was clinging to him, Neytiri doubled down in waves of cries in Neteyam’s arms. Jake wasn’t there. 

“Open her mouth so I can keep her spirit here longer,” Mo’at said. “Do it now. We do not have much time.”

And Jake could breathe again, his soul slinged back into his body, feeling returning to the tips of his fingers, kicking into action. 

He cradled your body from the cold ground you were lying on, bringing his shaky hand to your tightly shut jaw. Your body couldn’t have been experiencing rigor mortis, so you must have been clenching your teeth to the point of your jaw locking to fight the pain, and he was nearly blinded from the sheer strength with which he had to hold back from hugging you. But he eventually opened your jaw with a sickening pop that made him visibly grimace, and Mo’at guided the woodsprite to slip inside the cavity of your mouth.

The bioluminescent dots on your body began to flicker the moment your mouth was closed again. Jake gave a shuddering breath at the sign of life, hands unsure if he should continue to cover the wound again. 

“Eywa has allowed her to remain. For a while.”

“Oh Great Mother, thank you!” Neytiri took one of your hands, pressing it against her cheek and kissing it over and over again. “Thank you, thank you.”

“Bring her to my tent,” the Tsahik simply stated, and Jake didn’t even stop to consider how he should be taking you to the science guys, how they were probably going to say you needed a blood transfusion and surgery right after they got the necessary tests such as MRI and blood analysis out of the way. Kiri, sniffling weakly, took the crying Tuk away so Jake could carry you. He couldn’t comfort his girls the way he wanted to, couldn’t attend to Neytiri as their sons consoled her and got consoled in return in a tight hug together; he was on the move, heart about to beat out of his chest.  

He took you in his arms and clutched your unconscious and ashen blue body tightly to his chest, your head lolling in the crook of his arm, arriving to Mo’at’s tent faster than she did — and oh, how small you were compared to him, how fragile and vulnerable. The attitude made you appear bigger than you actually were, and Jake was reminded how you were still a child from how light his daughter was, like a fleeting bird. He’d forgotten. It had been forever since he last held you like this that he couldn’t bear to lay you down on the mat. If only he could hide you away within his ribcage, away from the pain and the suffering, forever.

“Everything in this world is borrowed,” she told him, an incense was burned, salves were prepared, tools he had no idea on what they were used were brought out. Plants, herbs. Jake stood there, helpless. “Even this child, Eywa has lent to you. She is borrowed from the bosom of our Great Mother, entrusted to you. Entrusted.” Your freckles were still flickering, and Tsahik’s tone, clipped. “I will converse with her. Ask if she plans to call her daughter back home today.”

Ice washed over Jake. “No, you gotta heal her, Mo’at, I can't lose m—”

“Everything in this world is borrowed. Each breath. Each heartbeat. All children. All gifts from Eywa.” Her eyes bore into him. “I can only ask.”

Neytiri pounced on him as soon as he stumbled out of the tent, beaten and spent despite not having one scratch on his body, upon Kiri’s entrance to assist her grandmother in tending to you. 

“Your fault!” He was violently pushed back, only able to take in the woman’s bloodied, wrathful face, tear tracks freshened with saltwater she couldn’t stop shedding. “This is your fault! I told you! I told you to fix this!”

Jake was aware other clan members were watching even if they weren’t out of their homes, he was Olo’eyktan, their leader, his pride would have taken this to their own tent had this been any other debate, but now, he couldn’t give a flying fuck. Bruising his back was the weight of a failed father instead of the ornamental piece of the clan leader, it was unbearable enough. She was right. There was nothing else to be said. His mate was right. 

“Mother, please,” Neteyam was right beside them in a flash, holding Neytiri back and shielding his father from her. His sunken eyes found Lo’ak and Tuk crouching at the edge of the tent, huddled together, the youngest having the crying hiccups as her older brother had an arm around her, himself looking traumatized enough. 

“Don’t, boy.” Jake put a hand on his stone-hard shoulder, moving him aside. Neteyam took one hard look at Neytiri half-circling his father in long strides, and decided it was best if he took care of his siblings instead even if he wasn’t told outright. He ushered Tuk and Lo’ak up and away, to the other side of the tent where they wouldn’t disturb their parents by staying in the field of vision. 

Jake should have been the one to take control, but Neteyam had stepped up for it — he was a kid, too, eldest child or not. What the fuck am I doing? 

In his tumultuous sorrow, every piece of the fortress Jake had put together was coming down, every decision re-evaluated, emotion overtaking what he once thought as logic. His fault. His fault. He had ruined his children, all of them. He had thought embracing the iron will of a war chief would allow him to be a strong father figure, but it had only alienated his family. 

You had died in his arms. 

Jake contained every storm in a box inside his body, Neytiri lived those storms, she was strong that way. He would take it. Her eyes were only seeing red at the moment, the grief and wrath of a wronged mother. “Yeah, it’s my fault,” he told her, something between a whisper and a sigh. His kids deserved to hear it. “I know.”

“She is dying because of you!” Jake couldn’t escape the truth by closing his eyes, but he did anyway, like an automatic body reflex against detecting something would be hitting him. He swallowed, his mouth was drier than a desert, no relief was found in the action. “My daughter! My child! Your child!” She pushed him again, hissing. Jake didn’t do anything to stop it. “All because you told her to go today—everything, everything… All because you didn’t reach out to her. She hid that.” A shiver shook her voice. “That… because of you. You! She thought you would be angry!”

Violent horror seized his heart, ears pinning back on his head, knuckles clenching so light blue they were almost white. “I would… I would never—how could I ever—?”

But it was in character, wasn’t it? Jake always getting angry over worry for his children. Going crazy because they could have gotten hurt. Fear grows into anger, worm eating away the bark of a tree into poisonous snake. The realization hit him like a ton of bricks, chest rising and falling in big breaths, there was no air.  

“She said you hated her. Over and over again, she said you hated her. Not to call you because you would hate her for it, Jake!”

Bitter guilt and glacial shock rose from his stomach, choking him, his eyes looking at anywhere but Neytiri’s blazing golden eyes, to his children who sat together seemingly away from them but blatantly listening, to the tent flames were barely illuminating the shadows inside. His legs were weak. All that he had been breaching behind a wall to prioritize your safety flooded rancid to his mind. 

Jake got angry at you all the time that you’d expected it at your most vulnerable. That he would blame you, reprimand you for his enemy’s actions.

His memories were attacked by all sides. That you had gone off on your own for the Iknimaya everybody should have been there for, he should have painted your face personally for. That you have been hiding the bleeding out from the moment Jake had found you pinned down by the dead body of an avatar, from the moment you’d answered positively to the question of if you were hurt or not, with that rifle he’d thought you didn’t let go because of how the events had shaken you. He opened his mouth, a gaping fish, but no words came out, mute and voiceless. 

Hate you? Hate you? Hate his own child he would burn the whole world for?

His child. Suffering in silence when her nature was anything but silent. Afraid of her father when she was the most fearless of his kids when facing him.

You thought you weren’t loved.

“What have you done to our children? What has this family become? What are we if our children are too afraid to come to us in their darkest hours?” Neytiri was snarling, both fury and grief battling inside her, teeth gnashing so hard they could sharpen a knife. “What child does not seek her parents when she is hurt?” 

Unseeing, Jake couldn’t stand anymore, staggering towards a particularly large rock and sitting on it, he raised his hands to rub his face but stopped when he saw the blood. 

All yours. All his daughter’s who he had failed. Who had died in his arms thinking she was hated because Jake was a shit excuse of a father you couldn’t trust to say you were hurt that you would take the risk of dying so he wouldn’t find out. 

His daughter’s blood, on his hands. 

He put his elbows to his legs, crossing his wrists to lean his forehead on, yet unable to hide his shaking hands even if he managed to hide his face. Jake couldn’t comprehend any of this, crushed beneath the skyful of burning hot shame and the guilt dwarfing him — tears he couldn’t seem to shed found life in his eyes at him trying to blink away the memory of you clinging to your ikran at the flight home. You had been suffering the whole time and all he could think about was Quaritch when he should have been thinking of you.

“What child would rather hide her injury than let her father know?” It shocked his spine like lightning, and Jake visibly flinched, fists clenching and unclenching. “Explain this to me!” 

Shame. Shame. Shame. Jake was about to throw up, rocking back and forth.

He had nothing to say. Nothing could ever excuse this. He couldn’t wash away all your moments from this night, all a cursed film strip haunting his every breath accompanied by thorns that ripped apart his insides. 

“If she lives,” Neytiri said, pointing a curled hand at him, slowly, scarily calm, but shaking with mastered rage. If she lives destroyed Jake.  “We would be lucky if my mother doesn’t decide to perform Stxel’eveng as Tsahik!” 

Jake’s head shot up at the word, his arms dropping altogether and meeting his mate’s tortured stare. As Olo’eyktan, he had to be taught the traditions and ceremonies to the point of talking in his sleep from overlearning — this one was a long lost one the clan hadn’t performed for a long time, as the Omatikayan were faithful and loyal to Eywa and her teachings. 

Stxel’eveng was the shortened word for ‘Gifting of a Child’ — an adoption ceremony within Na’vi that didn’t even have the word ‘adopt’ in their vocabulary, simply because it was almost non-existent, most Na’vi didn’t even know the existence of such a tradition. If the parents were unable to care and provide for their child, mistreated on purpose or neglected them to the point of no return, they were to be publicly dishonored by the gifting of said child to another willing family. A knot would be formed between the three, one thread bound around the waist of the mother signifying the womb, one thread fastened to the queue of the father, and the final thread to the wrists of the child as if they were captive. The knot, then, would be severed by Tsahik to symbolize the dissolvement of the familial relations in Eywa’s eyes.

The biggest shame a Na’vi could bring upon their name. 

“No,” Jake muttered, his mind going blank yet again. Fuck the shame. Damn his name. He couldn’t lose you. It’s a stone in his throat he can’t swallow, whales on his tongue he can’t speak to save himself.

“Pray to Eywa it doesn’t happen. Because if I was Tsahik, I would do it.” Neytiri turned away from him, pushing the heel of her hands on her damp eyes. “I cannot bear this shame, Jake. I can barely breathe.”

He quivered like a baby leaf caught in a storm, a couple more tears rolling down his cheeks. “Neytiri…” 

“I lost my daughter today. She slipped from my fingers. I watched her die.” He lowered his head at her grief, vision swimming. “How am I a mother when I can't feel her pain? How am I worthy of being her mother when I saw my child’s pain and just sat there helpless? Why would the Great Mother ever want to send her back?” She just kept going, not having any mercy on Jake’s soul. “Where was I when she won against her ikran? Where was I when she had her first flight? Where was I to protect her from those demons?”

A father protects, that’s what gives him meaning.

Who was Jake Sully?

“Lo’ak, come back here!” 

Both of them turned just in time to see their youngest son running away from the back of the tent they’d been hiding, Neteyam following a couple steps before he stopped to look back, probably at his sister. 

“I’ll get him,” Jake said, soulless and absentminded. Neytiri didn’t respond, stalking back to Mo’at’s tent, just kneeling in front of the entrance, wrapping her hands and tail around her knees. Tuk turned the corner, scampering towards her and finding refuge in Neytiri immediately wrapping around her protectively. 

Jake wasn’t allowed to comfort his mate. 

But he could get to his children who needed it. Trust, Neytiri had said. Honesty. 

Walking up to Neteyam, he put a warm hand behind his rigid back, and felt the taut muscles relax underneath his touch, another wave of shame hitting at the inability to recall just when he had last comforted his boy. 

“Get Tuk. Go home. Rest.”

Neteyam turned to him, scandalized. “We will stay.”

“Neteyam—”

“Dad—sir, please. I can’t leave my sister.”

That sir was a splash of acid on his already weeping heart. 

It dawned on Jake that Neteyam was the one witnessing your moment of death. Death. A surge of nausea shot up from his esophagus, and he didn’t stop himself from hooking an arm around the boy, careful of using his hands not to get blood on the eldest, pulling him into a much awaited embrace. He hadn’t allowed him to be a kid.

“It’s okay, Neteyam,” he croaked. “She’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”

Neteyam’s arms didn’t wrap around him, unfamiliar to the gesture — crumbling Jake’s already broken heart into dust, but he did shiver, fighting the tremble. He simply said, “I pray so.”

He was still trying to hold it together — for everybody’s sake. 

Jake felt the boy’s tears on his skin, and didn’t let him go when he tried to step back to wipe them, letting Neteyam cry silently as much as he wanted. He owed the boy that much, as his father. It was the least he could do. 

Jake would stitch this family back together. He had to.

Washing the blood off his hands had taken a while. Jake wasn’t let off easy, cursed by the remaining line of bloodied dirt in his nails. 

He found Lo’ak at where it all began. The mouth of the cave where your ikran was disturbing the other ones with restless chittering, reminding Jake of a wolf howling all night at the full moon. 

His youngest son was transfixed by the blood staining the ground. Just standing there, looking at it. Jake couldn’t protect him from the sight. Not anymore. He himself could barely stomach it.

“Is sister going to be taken away?” was the first thing he asked Jake, not looking at him still. 

Jake didn’t know if he meant death, or Stxel’eveng. 

“I pray not,” he told Lo’ak, honest for once. 

And like him, the boy wasn’t sentimental or emotional enough to bear his wounds to another, even to a family member, and fell silent. “It has Toruk’s colors,” he said instead, referring to your ikran’s red, orange, yellow and black patterns. Looking at the creature, Jake tried his hardest to stand up straight when he discerned all the blood coating its neck and back from the natural red color disguising it. “I wanted to fly with her.”

Pulling him into a side-hug, “I’m sorry, Lo’ak,” Jake admitted, causing him to finally break the trance he had on the blood. Speechless at his father, proud and strong, admitting he was wrong out loud and that he was being hugged when it wasn’t like his father at all to show them casual physical affection. Jake knew what must be going through his head, he would be thinking the same if his own father had ever taken responsibility for wrongdoings, as well.  “It’s my fault you didn’t get to.”

Lo’ak’s mouth was hanging low. “Dad…”

“But you will,” he said, determined and full of hope. He had to be. For his children. 

“You think so?”

“I pray so,” he quoted Neteyam. “Your sister is stubborn. She will pull through. Don’t lose faith in her.”

Lo’ak’s grip on his forearm was painful. 

“That ikran’s lost the half of its tail fins,” the boy sniffled, thickening his voice to hide the tears. “How did it get all the way here?”

It stung in Jake’s chest. The same way you’d hidden that injury. Your ikran was fueled only by the desire to get its rider to safety, it seemed. 

It would never fly again. 

Jake looked down at Lo’ak, only to be met with him avoiding his look, still concerned with hiding the tears. “Loyalty,” he said. “Devotion. Sometimes you don’t want to lose the things you love no matter what, that desperation gives you enough strength to push through any trial by fire. You would do anything. Anything.” 

And sometimes it was fear that did it, but he didn’t mention that to Lo’ak to not put salt on their family’s injury. Jake didn’t want to think about how terrified you must have been, or he would actually go insane. He didn’t want to think about the possibility of you not making it in the end. He had to keep going. He had to push forward. Be the father this family needed him to be. 

“Come on, boy,” he pulled Lo’ak gently. “Let’s go back.”

Your ikran whined at this pitifully. Jake tried not to think. He tried not to imagine what your reaction would be upon learning you would never fly together again, and had to put down this ikran that had been devoted endlessly to you if you wanted to get a new one. 

Jake didn’t think. Because if he did, he would actually go insane from the pain. 

Mo’at and Kiri emerged from the tent only in the morning, by which the whole family was cocooned in Jake’s embrace for the first time in years before the sky people had come back. They all had scrambled to get up, waiting with bated breath for one syllable of good news as Kiri slipped into Jake’s arms, one wink from falling asleep while standing. He kissed the girl’s head, soothing her, hoping this could be you eventually. He had been praying for it like a madman. 

“Eywa has accepted to bestow your daughter back to you, Jakesuli,” was the only answer Mo’at had for them, no word about your physical wellbeing. “But only if she accepts as well.” 

“I don’t understand.”

“You must go speak with her. At the Tree of Souls.”

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[grimm-writings]

pathetic

…ft! dan heng, topaz, argenti, seele x gn! reader

…tags! fluff, pining, reader is oblivious as HELL!!!, seele’s slightly suggestive

…wc! 210 ; 319 ; 258 ; 305 = 1092

…notes! pathetic crushing… i cannot and will not ever stop vouching for pathetic pining in this house !!!!!!!

Dan Heng is painfully aware of how he looks right now.  If it wasn’t March giving him the biggest shit-eating grin, it was Himeko trying hard to look polite as she hides her giggles, or even Mr Yang pretending he isn’t paying attention.

You.  You really haven’t the slightest clue what you’re doing to him.

Every time you visit him in the Express’s archives, Dan Heng would light up.  He wouldn’t do that for any such person usually.  His excuse is that you bring him snacks.  You would never complain, saying that you’d take this Dan Heng over the one with a poker face and sarcastic bites, even if he is just as cute.

How can you say that so casually?

One particular visit, he couldn’t take your sweet words any longer.  His hand envelops yours before you could turn away from him.  The way you look back at Dan Heng makes his heart swell in ways he couldn’t comprehend.

He couldn’t get the words out.

His grip loosens and he lets you go, albeit with confusion on your face.

The door closes with a quiet goodbye, and Dan Heng throws his head back in frustration, staring at the decorated ceiling above him.

How can he go on like this...?

Topaz is not the kind of person to sit idly by waiting for something to happen.  She knows what she wants, and what she wants takes the shape of you.

You’re just so adorable!  Really, the way you act so clueless whenever you flirt with her is just so endearing!  How could she not melt?

…Well, it used to be easy.  Flirting, complimenting you, relishing in how you react; she even asked you out to dinner, and took you to the nicest place possible!  …But you’re still so shocked every time.  You still didn’t pick up on any of her advances.

For once, Topaz is at a complete loss.  What is she to do?  Grab you by the shoulders and shake you around telling you that she’s completely enamoured with everything about you, and though that includes your cluelessness, she can’t take much of it anymore?

She could nearly keel over.  Complete overkill.  She needs to be smart about this; clear, but also suave and mature.  Yeah, she can do this!

That’s how you find Numby making their way up to you, and there they drop a card in front of your feet.  They curiously look up at you as you read, although you could sense another pair of eyes watching you closely.

‘You’re cute!  Go out with me!  Love, Topaz!’

Topaz could nearly explode from joy watching your face heat up.  Finally.  Finally!  You get it now, don’t you?!

Her heart steps as you throw the card away and lean down and pet Numby.  “Oh, Numby.  Someone must have put you up to this for a prank, huh?  You should find your way back to Topaz!”

Said companion of the Warp Trotter has already fallen to her knees with her face in her hands.  You’re more work than she bargained for… but she’ll be struck down by an Aeon before she gives up on you!  Just watch her!

Argenti doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Truly, he’s making all the right moves.  He’s following examples from stories and myths, step by step.  It’s not his fault that they always end up going wrong somehow.  Maybe it’s just harsh luck…

He’s on one knee, taking your hand in his own.  Like you are royalty, he kisses the back of it, and looks up at you.

“Thank you for saving me!”  You beam, and Argenti’s brain freezes.

That’s how it all goes wrong, every single time.

He’s hopeless, how the knight of beauty stands up, turns around, and immediately feels his knees buckle and he’s down on the ground again.  Maybe he’ll stay like this for a few minutes when he finishes crying.

He feels you kneel at his side, and prod against his armour.  “Argenti…?” your sweet, sweet voice calls out to him quietly.

“Worry not.  I am simply fighting the dirt in your honour.  Keeping the worms off of you.”

You pause.  He wouldn’t dislike being buried here like this.  Then he hears your confused laughter.  “Alright then!  Thank you very much, sir knight!”

You pet his hair and stand up again, making your way back to a safe zone.

Yes, Argenti thinks, I will stay here and fend off the insects for you, my dear.  And that is the only reason why I can’t move…

He certainly refuses to believe it’s your patience and kindness.  How silly would it be for a knight of beauty to become so immobilised by it!  How silly indeed…

Seele encourages you to stand up again.  A simple sparring doesn’t do too much harm every now and again.  She isn’t Luka; she won’t beg you for a match, but practice is good, and practice is better if it’s with a friend.

Haha.  Keep telling yourself that, Seele. 

Is it obvious yet she really wants you to just defeat her already?  She knows you have it in you.  Yeah, you’re more on the air-headed side, but you’re a reliable teammate!  Maybe it’s the fact you refuse to actually hurt her…

You apologise again when you’re back on your feet.  She doesn’t want any apologies, dang you!  Can’t you see she’s just desperate to get you to at least brush your knuckles against hers as her scythe comes in conflict with your blade?!

…So that does it.  In her mental ramblings, you manage to get her on the ground beneath you.  Your thighs cage her under you as you push her down.  Aeons, your smile is so wide.

“I got you!” you exclaim.

Seele can’t help the small laugh that escapes her.  She hopes that her face is only red to you because of your fighting.  You’re so close to her face.  You could just kiss her right now…

“Yep, you really did!” is what comes out, shakier than she would have liked.  How did you get her so weak?  You’re not even making a big deal over straddling her like this…

You shimmy off her eventually, offering your hand out.  “Time for lunch?”

Seele doesn’t move for a few seconds, before letting you pick her up.  If not a kiss, she can at least get some quality time.  The way you smile at her is enough for her.

…How you pushed her down will definitely haunt her dreams for the next week or so, though.

[multiwreckedmess]

Kinktober Day 20

Prompt: Aphrodisiac Pairing: roommate!Wooyoung x fem!reader WC: 5.4k Summary: Someone needs to put a parental block on Wooyoung’s browser. Or cut his credit card. (A part 2 to Feb.Filth.Fest)

This is a work of fiction, it does not represent Wooyoung or any Ateez member. On top of this it is an 18+ work. For my comfort and boundaries please if you are under age do not interact with this.

I feel the need especially with “rougher” prompts like this to put the disclaimer - fanfic should NOT ever be used as a guide to relationships or sex. ESPECIALLY SEX. Again, it’s fiction. Stuff gets glossed over for the sake of a good story. Please PLEASE please again, not fact, not a guide, just a fantasy.

Additional TW/CW below the cut.

TW/CW: I would classify this as dubcon as TECHNICALLY the reader is under the influence unknowingly of said aphrodisiac. Everyone in this is having a good fun time and it is merely a catalyst but still, I feel that needs to be a warning itself. Additional warnings are: bodily fluids, so much unprotected fucking, lots of pet names and degrading names used both towards reader and wooyoung (most obnoxious is the amount I’ve chosen to use “Wooyoungie” so be warned). reader body parts described as fem, also addressed as “girl” a couple of times. Mostly just plain ol’ sloppy sex.

 Wooyoung barely peaks over the edge of his phone screen as he hears the slap of a bag against the coffee table.  “Jung Wooyoung-”  “OOoh using my full name today are we?”  “JUNG WOOYOUNG,” you start again, louder and angrier. “After last time you really think another bag of these godforsaken things was a smart investment to spend your refund on?”  Wooyoung fights the tug of a sly grin forming at the corners of his mouth. “What about that wasn’t a good time? You seemed to have a good time.”  Sucking your teeth you glare at him. “Something about walking in on my roommate coated in his own cum soaked boxers, babbling about how he was dying, left a sour impression on me. Could you imagine that?”  “Hot,” he gives into the grin, a small puff of a chuckled exhale escaping his nose.  You roll your eyes, “you’re a fucking gremlin. Get rid of them, in the trash or give them to your friends. I’d say get rid of them however you want but-” you see his eyes twinkle mischievously and you nod. “Exactly. So, trash or friends. Not food for Wooyoungie. Not again.”

 To his credit, the bag disappears the next day, almost as though it’s evaporated into thin air, and the whole threat of a repeat incident starts to slip your mind. It’s completely forgotten as you haphazardly plunder Wooyoung’s side of the cupboards looking for an afternoon snack. Several weeks of aspirational grocery shopping left your side of the cupboard bare of easy dopamine hits. So when the 4pm slump came around, each week it got harder and hard to fight. That’s how you found yourself digging through his stash of popcorn and gummies of all shapes and sours. A desperate measure for a desperate person. That’s when your fingers brush against a small twisted up bag of half melted gummies seemingly forgotten at the back of the stash. Surely Wooyoung had forgotten about them, the lump of coagulated colors meshing into a mystery kaleidoscope of flavor.

 You try to only eat a few but the way they’re melted together and their sweet fruity floral flavor you end up finishing the bag mindlessly. Which is only a problem for the theoretical goal of eating less sugar. Not a real problem, a pretend problem. Luckily it provides just the buzz of sugar and serotonin to propel you through the last hours of your day.

 As you type your toes tap. Must’ve been some preworkout gummies, jitters passing through you like caffeine. Your stomach twists but it’s just about 5pm and you’re almost done with your essay so you power through, blinking to force your focus. You can barely tell how you’re twisting in your seat, thighs plastered together as you start to sweat.

 When did it get so warm? You try to breathe deeply to release the tension in your chest. Why did it feel like you were going to explode, as though you’d forgotten to breathe? Mouth dry, your gut burns and twists. It’s almost like you need to use the bathroom, almost. But you’re so thirsty. There’s no way you need to use the bathroom, you’re parched.  The whole apartment smells like Wooyoung. Like warm soil and vanilla and musk. In your time as friends and apartment mates it’s grown comforting and safe. It’s like an easy spring day cuddled up to a lover. What you wouldn’t give for one of those now. Cuddling and pressing together, just cold enough that keeping as tight to each other as possible was the best way to fight the elements. How nice it would be to put your nose in the crook of Wooyoung’s collar and breathe him in, scent mixing into the wool.  No. No more of that. Your core aches in need. No more daydreaming, especially about that brat. None.  Chugging a glass of water in the kitchen you’re still insatiable, toes tapping against the linoleum anxiously. When would Wooyoung be home? Do you have time for a quick moment alone? You hadn’t had that sort of “me” time in a bit so maybe that would help. Without thinking too much of it your shove your hand in your pants, fingers gliding between your folds. You’re already soaking through your underwear as you rub against your clit. It takes maybe a minute before you’re leaning into the side of the counter, knees knocking together as you cum. It feels good but another would feel even better.

 The apartment smells like that day, or the aftermath of that day, as Wooyoung swings the door open. Floral with a raw musky edge pervading the air. The faint electrical buzz of something vibrating perking his ears.  “Wooyoung,” you whine, still hidden from his view. “Wooyoung you didn’t throw them out.”  Instead of going straight to you, to the living room, or even to his room, Wooyoung goes to the kitchen trash, an empty plastic bag sitting on the counter. “You’ve been raiding my snacks I see.”  “You didn’t throw them out,” you whine again, tone tilting up into a hushed gasp. “You told me you did!”

 Your face is stained with sweat and tears, slightly swollen lips from biting down on them. He’s sure you don’t even notice the subtle rocking motion your pelvis makes as your thighs rub together. But he notices.  “You look desperate,” he notes aloud, eyes flickering dangerously. “I must’ve looked worse.”  The cocky smile that you’d usually be so eager to strip from his face sends a shudder through your body. The fact is, he looks like he might eat you whole and you would’ve mind that in the least. Fucking betrayed by your cunt which throbs unapologetically at the passing thought. His eyes flicker again, a knowing flicker, as your cheeks burn. If your embarrassment could generate energy there would be enough to light a city block for a day. He knows. It’s only a matter of time now.  “Can you not be like this?” You whine, fingers gripping the edge of the couch. It’s closer now than ever as you lean forward, just a little bit more pressure. Just a little bit more.

 Wooyoung cocks his head, letting the motion lead him to turn on his heel and drift into the hallway. “Not sure what you mean.”  A fresh wave of arousal floods your thighs. Insolent brat. “You fucking know what I mean.”  “You’re right, I do, I do know exactly what you mean. I’m just waiting for you to say it.” He smiles that foxy grin again. You forcefully squeeze your eyelids shut, as if he couldn’t see you if you couldn’t see him. “Did you just cum? How many times have you?”  Shame burns your cheeks. “You don’t know that.”

 “We’ve fucked of course I know what you look like when you cum.” He sounds sickeningly proud of this. Proud of being one of the few and mighty to know.  “Pervert,” your nose wrinkles and you squeeze your eyelids tighter.  “Says the one who just made herself cum in the living room while her roommate stood there. You didn’t even ask if you could. If I’d even want you to. You needed to get off that badly didn’t you? I know. I know because I did it too. I remember.”  Despite having just cum, your heart is racing. Wiggling your toes you can feel the excess energy pouring off of you. It’s uncomfortably warm. This is your penance. You want to use Wooyoung’s thigh, muscular and sturdy. Just hump the shit out of it while he sucks hickeys in your chest. The thought consumes you, the memory of the sweet little hums of satisfaction he’d made as he-  “Wooyoung!” You yelp, eyes snapping open and brimming with tears. “You have to go. You have to, I can't control it. I really can’t. Wooyoung I can’t let this happen to us again.” You’re practically begging as you feel the knife of lust twist tighter in your gut. Folding over, you shift your legs just enough to provide pressure to your throbbing core, a moan of relief wracking your body. It’s pathetic, you’re pathetic.

 It takes only a couple strides for him to close the gap between himself and the couch. Again was all he’d been wishing for since that day. Wooyoung slips in behind you, propping your back against his chest as you sob. “Do you want me to help you out, I know how,” he suggests as his fingers trace the seam of your pants up your inner thigh. Your hips buck up with a whimper.  “No, I’m fine,” you sniff.  “No? You and I both know the quickest way to get this problem solved.”  His hands splay across the fronts of your thighs, inching slowly towards the hem of your shirt. A trickle of sweat beads at your brow. The room is too hot for this closeness. Too hot for how dressed you both are. You’re burning up in this embrace but you like it, you need it. He smells so much like him and only him. Even if you purchased a bottle of the same cologne you could never replicate it. Warm and comforting and earthy. Your head tips back to his shoulder as you follow your nose to the side of his neck subconsciously.  “You must be in a lot of pain,” he coos with an air of condescension. “I know you are because I remember. You probably don’t even realize how hard your ass is pressing into my cock but I can tell you, it’s enough to leave an impression.”  “Wooyoung,” you whine again huffing as you divert all your mental energy to stilling your hips. “It’s your fault! You can’t make fun of me. You can’t tell anyone. I-I-” your lower lip trembles, breathing hard. His hand barely ghosts over your lower belly and you shake, cumming unceremoniously the instant he brushes over your mound.  You can feel the mixture of his lips and teeth and the condensation of his breath as he whispers against your ear. “Someone was in my bed earlier. Now unless you let someone in and they took a nap, there’s really only one other person that could’ve been.” Slowly his nails catch on the ridges of the denim fabric, almost plucking like a string as he strokes the rest of the way up the seam.  Moaning you bury your face as deep as you can in the side of his neck, practically drooling as your head swims with his scent. It sinks into your stomach and satiates a bit of the hunger gnawing at your insides. “Sorry,” you bleat suddenly, half muffled by him. He can feel your thighs quake as you cum again.  “Can you tell me why you were in my bed? Or did you get lost on the way to yours?”  “Smelled so good. You smell so good. Had to. Had to while I- god damn it Wooyoung. You know. Of all people. You know!” Your throat tenses, voice cracking hideously. You had gone in his room. Into his bed. You’d put your nose right into the mattress with you ass up in the air as you’d finger fucked yourself to completion, all the while inhaling the unwashed unadulterated scent of your roommate. What was worse is that you’d never cum harder or felt better.  “I promise you it’s much easier if you give in. I know you like a fight but you’re about to shake your skin off the bones.”  You sniffle. You hate how right he is. You hate how much you want him to make you cum. You hate that you can’t just be relaxed and calm and collected and cool about it. Sometimes best friends fuck, it can be that simple. It’s not that simple though, you think as your entire body flashes hot and shakes in his arms. “Wooyoung,” you whine again, twisting to face him and straddling his lap. “Do you mean it?”  Tenderly he swipes your sweat matted hair from the sides of your face and kisses your cheek. He kisses everyone’s cheeks, you remind yourself before you let your heart flutter too hard at the small action. “I’m your best friend, babe. It would be my pleasure, whenever you’re ready.”  God damn it Wooyoung, you swear internally. You’d almost rather his almost combative side than the gentle care he is giving you now. It’s less dangerous to you. You can write that off easier. Both of your foreheads meet, his lips hang loosely open, somehow plumper when you’re looking down from on top of him. From here you can see the mole on his lower lip even clearer. “You don’t say shit about this to any of our friends,” you hiss in his ear, tugging his head back by his hair. You can’t afford for him to do anything unexpected. Not right now. “No one knows about this. None. Got it?”  He chuckles, adams apple bobbing in his neck. “Still fighting?” He looks delicious, smirking under you like this. You could eat him right up. “Even when you’re humping me like horny teenager, you still want to pretend like you have this all under control.” You look down, your hips betraying you as you grind on the growing lump in his pants. It’s not like you can feel much through the fabric of your jeans, it’s embarrassing that despite this you still do it. Wooyoung’s hands rest in the juncture of your hip and thigh, subtly encouraging the action with the slight press of his finger tips. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell a soul.”  You shudder, fingers flexing and tugging at his hair. His eyes roll back with a half pain half pleasure moan. He sounds just like you remember, like you’ve been trying not to remember. Flush with the heat of arousal, your eyes lock on his. “Help. It’s your fault, help me.”

 Strength surges in Wooyoung, lifting up from the couch, carrying you with your legs locked around his waist. The warm earthy vanilla smell grows as he walks down the hall into his bedroom, tossing you onto his already defiled bed, shoving aside the toys you’d forgotten in your lust induced haze. Closing your eyes, you ball the sheets in your hands and shove the scent soaked cotton into your face. The familiarity calms your raging libido just as you feel the weight of Wooyoung sinking into the mattress.

 “I’m going to take care of you, okay?” His fox-like eyes peek up at you from below. “Can’t believe you ate them all. ‘M not going to be able to cum as much as you can.” He tugs your jeans down from your hips, followed swiftly by your underwear, nearly completely soaked with sweat and release. He doesn’t give you enough time to become embarrassed, splayed out in front of him as you are. Propping your legs back further, his lips wrap over your slit, licking into you messily. The strong flick of his tongue has your legs shaking, cumming easily on his lips.  ‘So sensitive,’ he giggles, kissing the inside of your thigh.  “It’s your fault,” you slur, head lolled back into the mattress. “Fucking gummies.”  “Yeah that’s their point. Fucking.” He slurps at you again. “God you taste good.” Lick. “Thought you weren’t as messy as I was-” Slurp. “-but you’re dripping all the way down to your thighs.”  “Nooo,” you whine and cover your face in embarrassment, knees knocking into his head gently.  “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you,” Wooyoung slurps again, this time his lips locking over the sensitive skin of your thigh and sucking a pink welt into it. A welt that only the two of you would ever see or know about. The thought excites him, erection pressed hard to the fabric of his underwear.  He’s eager and attentive and the sounds that fill the room are appropriately lewd to match. He drinks you like a man at an oasis, appreciatively humming, lips buzzing with sympathetic vibrations. Slipping two fingers into you, you cum again easily, just happy to have resistance to your spasms.  “Now just imagine if you’d left some for me,” he laughs, wiping his lips on the back of his arm. The tip of his nose glitters as do his eyes.  “You came so much last time,” you pant. His help has relieved some of the tension, or at least your hand wasn’t cramping. “-so full-so much-”  “You think you haven’t?” He laughs again, grabbing your waist and suddenly flipping you like a ragdoll. As if to make a point he pulls your hips up, dragging your front into the mattress, and pushes his full length in. You groan as the tip presses into your cervix snugly, his hips flush to the curve of your ass. His hands grip your ass, spreading you open as he slowly rolls his hips into you. “Cute little pussy seems to like me more than you do. Taking me in so nicely,” he says through gritted teeth.  Face mashed into the sheets you drool, the debauched position has you seeing stars. Almost helpless with your arms pinned below you and your ass in the air the wondrous fog of lust drapes over your inhibitions. “Cum, please, need-” you mutter, muffled by the blankets. “Need it, need you-” you chant over and over, tunneled in on the one request. Feel him cum, feel the warm release pulse and coat you inside.  “Yeah babe, I think you waited long enough for this,” he says, hands pressing into the small of your back as his hips snap faster. “I know you need it real bad. Gonna take it like a good slut for me?”  “Please.” Your earnest cries catch in the damp cotton. Blurry relief and endorphins wash over you as you clench around him. Desperate to milk him dry you slam yourself backwards. His rhythm catches and falters, fingers squishing into your flesh as he cums deep inside. The first splash of release feels euphoric, your legs giving up, leaving Wooyoung to hold your hips steady. He pulls back and rams deep again gasping and panting as he pushes himself even deeper, trying to mold you to his shape.

 Wooyoung lets you slip sideways onto the bed, cum dribbling down your thighs. “Does it feel better?” A warm towel presses to your sex.  Want burrows deep in your gut. Shamefully you remain silent. You want to tell him yes but you can’t. You need more. The craving burns worse than hunger or thirst. You hear the clink of ice cubes in a glass and open your eyes.  “You’ve lost a lot of water.” A statement of fact. Lost a lot of water to cumming. You sniff and sip the cool liquid. It doesn’t satiate you. Toes wiggling with anxious energy you try to focus on the feeling of the glass in your hand, the weight, the ridges.  “When can you go again?” Your voice sounds haunted and hoarse.  Wooyoung nods. “I thought you might- it’s gonna-” he hesitates as you rise from the sheets like a woman possessed.  “Can you just-can I just-” you start to pull him down into your arms, grinding down on his half hard cock. He winces and gasps,  “I really can’t yet babe. I promise, just a second,” kissing the side of your neck as he untangles himself and reaches over the side of the bed. “I got a friend to help with this predicament.” Like a rabbit from a magicians hat he pulls your wand vibrator up into the air. All white, large domed head tilted ever so slightly from years of usage. With a click the vibrator whirrs to life in his hand as he touches it to your mound.  You half groan half sob, “-but-need cum.” Your body shakes and thrashes as he presses more insistently. Your orgasm hurts as you clench down on nothing with a sob. Unnatural hunger claws at your chest and stomach, you feel blinded despite fully being able to see. Wave after wave crests over you as if it could overtake you but you’re parched enough to drink the ocean.  “God you look so beautiful fucked out like this,” Wooyoung watches your rapture with delight. Eyes rolling back you look like a renaissance era angel with your hair strewn out and mouth agape.  You barely breathe as you spasm below him, coming back from your experience gasping. “I need-fuck me-fuckme-please-Wooyoung,” oversensitive, you scramble backwards to get away from the whirring implement. A single click and silence fills the room, the only sound is the soft creak of the bedframe as he shuffles between your thighs.  Wooyoung holds the glass of water to your lips, “drink a little more for me.” Guiding the glass back he watches carefully as you sip down even the tiniest bit more. “Would it help if i took an ice cube in my mouth and trailed it down your body?  Dick in hand Wooyoung leans over you, feeding his length to your wanting walls. The aching empty is replaced by the comfort of fullness. It was meant to be like this. Just like this. Full of him in every way. His cock pushes his own seed from you as he thrusts, coating his length in a ring of bodily fluids.  “I want you to cum a couple more times for me, okay? Because I won’t be able to do as much as you.” The telltale buzz of your vibrator coming to life in his hand fills the void of sound. “Just let go.”  “But-cum-” you plead again like a broken record.  Long slow strokes bounce your hips back on his. “I know babe, I know,” his voice drips with false empathy. Lowering the buzzing head to your clit the shockwave is intense, your hips bucking upwards, fucking him deeper into you.  “Wooyoungie,” your voice shakes with your body. “Wooyoungie.”  Your back bows painfully as the top of your head presses into his mattress. You don’t have time to tell him further, to warn him. The euphoria you breach is like none other, your essence floods around him coating the both of you and the sheets. Wet and messy relief washes hot over you, melting what’s left of your mind.  Wooyoung’s eyes roll back, pinching his thigh to keep himself from spilling into you too soon. Even though you’d welcome it, you need it, selfishly he wants this to last. He wants to see you vulnerable and needy for him like he was for you.  To your credit, or your bodies credit, you work him like a pro, hips swiveling and grinding eagerly as you whine. “Wooyoungie please. Please I’ve been so good. Please it hurts so much. Please fill me. I need it. I need you.”  “Oh darling I love when you beg me,” he coos through gritted teeth, refusing to give in as you sob lightly. “You’ve got to work a little harder for it.”  “Wooyoung please, please,” you chant as you arch your hips up, trying to fuck yourself on him as best you can from below. Grunting and groaning in frustration. “It’s not fair,” you bemoan as he chuckles at you. “Can’t, from this angle,” you whine.  Wooyoung cocks an eyebrow at you, hips remaining stone still. “Are you gonna do something about it babe?”  With a huff you push him to his back, cock slipping from you as he settles in the bed. “You fucking asked for it. You asked for it, you dumb bastard.” You spit and swear as you settle back on his cock.  He hisses as he watching himself disappear between your thighs, your hands pressing into his chest as you sit on your throne. Claiming him. His head spins. “I didn’t ask for anything-oh shit.”  Your hips slam down on him with a vengeance. Grinding yourself on him, gasping and moaning as you use him like nothing more than a living dildo. “Loud mouth, only thing you’re good for is cum, not even-not even-shit-” you quickly lose your train of thought to another roll upwards of his hips. Bridging from his thighs he bounces you as your head rolls back, watching your breasts jiggle with the tug of gravity. You almost fall forward as he settles back down, furiously swiveling your hips back and forth over his lower abdomen. Gulping air you shudder and groan. “Going to fucking use you.”  “I like when you use me, pretty girl,” he laughs as his hands run up your front, thumb pressing between your lips. Salty and musky you lap and suck at what’s given to you as if it was your last meal.  “Seems your loud mouth is good for something.”  Carnal is the only way to describe the fire burning in your veins as Wooyoung’s hands travel your body with wonder. His hair halo’d around his head, veins in his neck protruding as he presses back into the pillow. Swearing and groping he tries to steady himself as his hips kick up, abs tensing.  “Gonna-oh shit-gonna-” he stutters. He can barely talk as he pulls all his focus to not cumming just yet. You’re so close, hips losing some coordination for the sake of speed, and he can’t let himself lose control before you do. Grunting in frustration he grits his teeth, grabbing your ass and steadying you over him. Biceps flexing and almost pinning you he grinds up into you, pressure building between his body and your clit. Your eyelids flutter and mouth falls. He’s doing a good job.  “Oh fuck-Woo-oh-” words catch in your throat, pulse dropping to your sex. The gentle pulsing squeeze of your walls draws your well earned reward from him. His release coats and spills out as you huddle over his chest, going in and out of consciousness, refractory shockwaves coursing through you.

 You wake first, his head rests on your soft stomach, bobbing with each inhalation. His hand is still intertwined with yours, both of you sticky from the day’s escapades. It must be well past dinner as your stomach churns with hunger. You have no concept of how you’d gotten here but likely in large part due to his care.  “Feelin’ be’er?” Wooyoung slurs, his thumb slightly stroking yours.  “Hungry,” you groan.  Wooyoung cackles, “it was a lot of energy, need fuel I’m sure.” His fingers escape yours, traveling the juncture of your hip and thigh. Everything still feels hazy but at least it’s quiet. “Are you settled? You good?”  He sounds almost hesitant, it tugs at your heart unexpectedly. You don’t really want it to be over but it is over. The burning subsided.  “I think I need-” you mutter sheepishly.  “-one more?” He finishes your statement with a question, perking his head up. “I think, maybe, I’m definitely running low but-” he babbles even as he’s pressing himself between your thighs. “If you need me to-”  “-if it’s really too much I can-” you start to babble back to him as his lips meeting your navel, leaving you squirming and gasping.  “-it really seems like you still might be dealing with some residual effects. You’re being too nice to me.” Wooyoung is already scooping his arms underneath your torso, hands wrapping up and over your shoulders as he pushes himself easily into you again. It feels like home, warm, cozy.  Eyes rolling back you sigh contentedly. The slip of the remnants of cum lessen the drag of his member but still the indescribable completeness leaves you breathless. Not much is said between you, deep unfettered groans escape muffled into eachothers shoulders. As frenetic and messy and animalistic as each previous session had been, this one was equally as tender.  Wooyoung’s loose lips want to spill confessions of love and desire. Fucking you as if the deeper he reached the more you’d be convinced of his love until his cock brushes your cervix.  You groan and curl below him.  “Too much?”  “Just stay a minute, let me,” you hook your legs over his and plant them into the mattress. Slowly you wind your hips, round and around. The gnawing hunger claims your gut again but this time, this time it isn’t a gummy or a drug pulling a trick. Eyes rolling back you groan again as you grind your clit against his pelvis.  “That’s my girl,” he murmurs almost as an afterthought. The words fall from him easily, unintentionally, and yet leave you gasping as you tip over the edge. Clawing at his back, unbothered by the potential to leave a mark. You almost hope you do, in case he was thinking of going out any time soon, so the next bitch knew someone had been there.  Panting he leans back and away from you, onto his haunches, hips still slowly and shallowly rocking into you. A smirk forms as he surveys the damage. “That good?”  “Cocky bastard.”  His smirk turns to a full foxy grin, “she’s back to the sane I see? I guess I should just-” he pauses before pulling back even more threatening to pull completely from you  Before you can stop yourself, you’re clambering up towards his chest, pawing at his shoulders with a small whine as you sit yourself back on his length. “You’re an ass.”  “You love me,” he says as he presses his forehead to your shoulder. God damn it he’s right, but you won’t admit that. Instead you reciprocate the bend of his head, burying your nose in his neck. Sitting in his lap and rocking with your limbs tangled it’s a different speed than your frantic needy drug induced fucking. More sliding and writhing. Wetter as well, sweat and spit and cum layered from previous rounds. Clingy and breathless. Falling and molding into each other as though two bodies could mesh into one if they simply tried hard enough.  Wooyoung litters your body with kisses for fear his unbusied lips will spill pillowtop confessions. His body aches from overstimulation but still his promise to take care of you drives him forward. The burn in his gut clenches his jaw as it sears down his legs. Slowly he works his mouth all the way down to your breast, arms cradled in the arch of your back as his tongue laves across your nipple. His cock throbs painfully as your walls clench in response.  Unaided by the magic of the gummies you start to break down yourself. Sex burning to the point of numbness you can barely summon the effort to even do the minimal rutting and rocking you have been.  “You can give me one more, right?” You groan out.  His hair tickles you as he nods a yes, lips tingling on you as he moans.  “You’re so so good Wooyoungie. You’ve been so good to me. Use me however you need.”  Wooyoung doesn’t need as much as he wants. Wants you to feel his love. He moves without a second prompting, tumbling the two of you backwards and hoisting your legs up into your chest. His hips pummel yours as he puts all his focus into chasing his high. You no longer whine or moan, you grunt with air forced out with each powerful thrust. The light behind your eyelids burns black as your head swims. Shaking in his grasp the constant squeeze of your desperate cunt spurs him forward. He has to cum. For you, he has to. Even through the searing pain in his inner thighs, you asked him to. He wants to. Lower lip jutting out in concentration, his mouth starts moving without his focus to stop it.  “Fuck, I love you,” he blurts, a weak dribble of cum splashing against your walls. Fingers digging into your ass and the side of your thighs, you can feel his length pulse as his brow furrows and gasps. “I love you so much, fuck. Hurts. God damn it,” he reiterates as he falls forward between your thighs, crushing you chest to chest. “I love you,” he continues to mumble, spit soaking into the pillow pressed to his mouth.  In a bleary haze you pat his shoulder mutely. How can he be so strong and so frail at the same time? Even as he whines and confesses his undying love, your heart swells. You need rest, you need a shower even more. The list grows in your mind as it defogs, listening to him until all that’s left is his slow steady breathing.

[doctorbeth]

Jigsaw Teddy Bear

It's been a while since I've posted about a jigsaw puzzle patient, and I just sent one home, so I thought I'd share his story today. :-)

Mr Theodore E. Bear, known as Teddy to his friends, was not feeling well. Teddy's person wrote:

When I was born, my father bought me my first (and only) teddy bear.  That was 66 years ago.  Sadly, our new pup tore it up.  I cannot describe my heart break.  I lost my dad in 1999 and this was the only personal thing I had left from him.

Could I please get an estimate on fixing him?

I would so appreciate your efforts. 

This is the photo she sent of her Teddy:

She actually had both eyes, and the tears were pretty clean, but Teddy had lost a significant percentage of his head and front body. We agreed on a treatment plan to include a spa (thereby removing Puppy saliva), and he flew to the hospital from Arizona.

When patients are in pieces like this, spa photos can be a bit... disturbing, so I don't send them. Suffice it to say that given his age, the surviving cream and brown parts needed to be separated to be safely cleaned, and I kept his googly eyes out of the water.

Once he was dry, surgery proceeded. It's a bit complicated when you aren't sure what his original shape was. I sent this photo I found online to ask if it perhaps looked like him:

It was so close, his person thought it WAS him at first! But there were issues I could see with this sample. For instance, when teddy arrived one eye was on cream fur. So using this as a guide, but keeping that in mind, I went about putting him back together. There's a fur whose reverse side is a really close match for older, well loved bears like him, and I used that for the darker brown areas. For the missing cream areas (which were really more of a yellow) I used a smooth minky fur.

Here was the first set of photos of Teddy:

Well, it turned out that despite the eyes being on yellow cream on arrival, his person remembered them on brown. That memory is what is important, so that part of his face needed to be adjusted. Also, the head and muzzle were a little too big, as was the nose... but his body was looking good!

Here's the next set of photos (without the nose on... it'd go on once we got the muzzle size/shape right).

That was right! And then there was the new nose, which was embroidered:

All set! His person wrote:

Love it!

Thank you!  

He’s perfect!

Oh, and lest you think I forgot his heart of original stuffing, he did get it, it just goes in at a different time with jigsaw animals that need lots of adjustment. Here it is being made and installed:

Teddy made it home safe and sound. His person wrote: Thank you so much!  You saved him and a huge piece of my heart! Teddy is HOME!  He’s wonderful and I so appreciate your hard work!

[velvetures]

omg I luv ur writing!!! is it possible to get a story thats like, ghost (or whomever) is stretching and training together but there’s alotttt of sexual tension, and ghost ends up hard and they notice it bc of the position they’re in? (Like he’s restraining reader and his bulge is right in their face😭)

Tension

A/N: I went kinda wild with this one... please excuse my filth. :)

Summary: You've always driven Ghost just short of losing his self-control. Some peeping, close combat training, and seeing you do yoga eventually snaps the fine line warding off the Lieutenant.

T/W's: NS/FW 18+ ONLY, fem reader, rough sex, overstimulation, tension, inappropriate horniness, p-in-v sex, unprotected sex/creampie (don't do that IRL), fingering, multiple orgasms, standing missionary?, a hint of rushed consent, big feelings, manhandling ofc, and I don't proofread well.

Ghost had watched your late-night training routine many times. A bit of a jog to get warmed up, some plyometrics on one of the mats, and then some light weights. It would leave you in a glittering sheen of sweat under the dim lights; jewel-encrusted as you’d wait until the last hour of your workout to pull out headphones and start doing yoga.

After looking up some of the things you did, the Lieutenant knew enough about it to understand that it wasn’t just some bullshit thing you felt worked. It held some actual merit on plenty of applicable skills. And fuck did you make it look good. From the simple stuff like laying on your back and just breathing, to the more mind-bending positions like the *Sirsa Padasana -*one of those Ghost needed to know the name of- after watching you stay almost entirely still like that for five minutes. He’d seen a lot of the different ways soldiers practiced not only strengthening their bodies but their minds while training. And the way you spent so much time in yoga practice… he felt like there wasn’t any question as to how you had such control over yourself in the field.

In the beginning, Ghost found himself unable to interrupt your… sessions? for the unfounded reason that his presence huffing and groaning while running or lifting would interrupt whatever silence or isolation you preferred. At least, the silence he assumed you wanted since he never saw you in the gym when the sun was still visible. Instead, he’d just come to the edge of the windows and peek to see if you were still there; Deciding how close you were to finishing up before going back to his quarters and waiting until he heard the sounds of your footsteps walking past his door. But he’d been caught after a while.

And it opened up and entirely different kind of training that Ghost wasn’t prepared for.

You had been more than happy to share the gym with him, almost begging that he join since you never had “company” this late at night. Not that his “company” was much more than his body just being in the same room, but it never failed him to see just how utterly calm you were at the thought of him lingering around you. Most people flinched or shied away, but you never did, and even when you twisted yourself into the most ridiculous looking shapes and put yourself into vulnerable positions, it didn’t effect you at all that he could walk right by you or possibly be watching.

He was always watching.

It made hand-to-hand combat drills more interesting too.

Gaz had been partnered up with you initially, seeing as he could be the most patient and actually give you clear pointers without sounding too harsh. He’d been quite happy with your progress over the span of a few months, and quickly gave Ghost a task that became his most challenging mission to date. Teaching you how to fight without losing his own mind being that fucking close to you for nearly two hours multiple times a week. As if personally viewing your workouts late at night wasn’t bad enough, he actually got to feel just how much the yoga strengthened you when he had to grapple your little body and try to pin you down. Teaching you to block fists without seeing them coming, locking knees with opponents three-times your size, avoiding handcuffs, knives, and other non-projection weapons came with a cost.

Ghost wouldn’t really be focused on your techniques or reaction time nearly as much as he’d be concerned about the way your hips ended up flush with his, or just how easy it was for him to just slip one arm between your thighs and effortlessly manhandle you onto the mats. It was hard keeping a clear head when you just made fighting feel a lot more like aggressive foreplay. Hell, you sounded a lot more like you were being fucked too. Nothing but little grunts and groans when he’d secure one arm behind your back, or little pants as you fought off his punches and forward drives to kick one of your feet out from under you. s

“Don’t let me holding anything in your house I your legs,” He felt himself growling out the order as you fought underneath him to pull your legs free from between his thighs.

“If I pin you, you’re dead.” The words were harsh… and it’s why everyone thought Gaz would be a better fit.

But that hadn’t been enough, and now here he was, half-sweating and half-hard, trying to make sure his cock didn’t brush up against you long enough for you to notice that you were playing more than just one game with him. While your strength didn’t match his own, it was your flexibility that made you competent enough to have even been thought to be put into a spar with him. You could twist yourself up and out of spaces most grown men would never think about, and it did give Ghost a bit more challenge trying to combat how hand-placements knowing you were about as slippery as fucking water. And without attempting a conventional tactic, you’d gotten yourself free of his legs and wrapped back around his back with one leg and an arm pulled in a headlock.

Ghost gave a frustrated sigh, feeling his air supply being hindered but not actually cut off. You’d misjudged his windpipe -probably due to the mask- and tightened down less than an inch away from perfect. It was a good counter move, but not lethal. And that was unacceptable. Hardly any force was needed to pry your arms from around your leg and literally throw you belly-down onto the mat, both arms pulled tight behind your back with his legs pinning yours down securely. You wiggled and jerked against him, ass brushing the base of his ever-present erection, and it forced him to let you go. For nothing more than the safety of his own pride and insurance that you would go another day without your Lieutenant’s perverse thoughts becoming known.

“I thought I had you that time,” You pant, coming up to sit on your knees across from him with a frustrated look pinching your eyebrows. “What did I do wrong?”

He had to give you credit, you were so damn teachable. Always asking questions and stopping in the middle of a fight to expect some kind of explanation instead of just learning through trial and error. Naturally, he’d been partial to ignoring you at first but when you wouldn’t engage after asking a question until he said something, he realized that there was no use. So, he did what he could do best. Teach by example.

Slow… example.

“Come here,” You got back up to your socked feet and walked right up to him, sweat clinging to the tip of your nose and dripping down the side of your neck. He had the insatiable urge to rip his mask up and lick that bead from your collarbone to the pulse point jumping under your skin.

With one hand he turned you around, your shoulders tight to his upper stomach and placed his forearm against your throat in the same way you’d done just a moment ago. It made things hard since his arm hardly fit in the gap to begin with, but he could feel you swallow easily, letting him know he’d found the correct angle.

“Your arm hit off to the side,” He tightened down just a little, feeling your body tense up as he began putting pressure over you. “When it should’ve been straight.” With the smallest adjustment, his left hand palmed the top of your head, holding you still while the bulk of his muscled, right forearm pressed flush against the right side of your throat, and his massive bicep flexing to apply pressure to the other side; forcing a hissing sound from your mouth.

Your little hands came up to grip his arms, not exactly pulling him away or fighting the pressure. Both hands curling around his And while he knew he shouldn’t actively be testing just how long you could go before passing out, Ghost found himself waiting patiently just to see what would happen under the stress. There for a split second, your muscles suddenly went slack and he honestly thought you’d already lost enough oxygen to faint. But when your fingers still pressing against the veins in his arm started slowly moving in a little wave of tapping motions, he was proved wrong.

Right away he remembered seeing you do it before. In the times your yoga practice was a little less than comfortable or you were actively trying to push yourself further than you’d gone before. Something like a little tell, or coping mechanism that allowed you to focus without exerting too much energy to something else outside of the main stimulus. Another little thing you did that Ghost found so much more interesting and downright strange about you. How clever you were doing things differently than everyone else.

“Alright, enough,” He let go and pushed his hand in the gap of your shoulders to put some pace between you.

You stumbled forwards, taking a gasp of breath and turning around to Ghost with a heavy flush settling in your cheeks and a bloodshot tint in the whites of your eyes. You brought a hand up to your neck where a faint outline of his own arm had pressed into you, your fingertips tracing the outline with a little bit of an embarrassed smile on your face.

“Any reason you didn’t fight back?” He questioned, flattening out his tone and looking at you with a pointed glare.

You shrug, looking down at the floor for a moment. “I… was trying to feel it. The pressure I mean, and see if I could resist you.”

Ghost rolled his eyes, trying to keep from barking out a laugh. He’d not even used his actual strength to apply pressure. It was nothing more than the literal bulk of his arm just fit against your throat. Hearing you think otherwise gave the Lieutenant a deep stroke to his ego, even giving his half-hard cock a good wave of stimulation as well. He couldn’t find it in himself to not give you correction though.

“You couldn’t resist it, kid.”

“Excuse me?” The offense you took surprised him. Ghost took a couple steps closer to you, settling his hands on his hips.

“You. Couldn’t. Stop. Me.” He punctuated his words with a flat, and uninterested tone to mask the sudden intrigue he had after actually managing to keep the thundering beat of his heart under control.

You, with your calm demeanor. Patience beyond humanity. Body from his own wet dreams… A better man would’ve known how to stay away from you and ignore the desires to bend you to his own will. A good man would be like Gaz. Train you with only your best interests in mind. Develop your weaknesses without thinking of all the ways he could use them against you in the most twisted and deprived ways. Learn your body and train it to be even more dangerous than it already was. Not spend every second during sparring using it as an opportunity to have you under him or wrapped up in his arms so tight you couldn’t get away.

“Looks like you can’t stop yourself, L.T.,” You answer with a confidence and direct stare directly at his belt.

The remembrance of his cock straining against his pants became much more significant that his own comfort and control in that moment. Halting all thoughts aside from the way your eyes swirled with unspoken questions and plenty of ideas forming that Ghost didn’t nearly have the ability to respond to. A cold rush of panic spread through his body, and he immediately turned his back to you, spitting out some kind of dismissal as soon as her could manage it.

“We’re done today, go get cleaned up.”

Later that day, you’d not seen a single glimpse of Ghost. You’d not really meant anything mean by the mention of his… excitement, while training. It was understandable, seeing as you’d both been quite close and in very vulnerable positions that could easily skew anyones mind past the straight and narrow. You’d be lying if there weren’t times that you thought about the different ways your body could be really manhandled by your Lieutenant. He was undeniably attractive with his gruff voice and often bitter character. It made Ghost who you knew, and while you knew most people wouldn’t understand, you felt comfortable and safe around him.

Even when you felt his erection pressing against you while teaching you how to defend yourself in close combat. That whole ordeal was in the forefront of your mind in such a significant way that even Soap noticed it while you were putting together some dinner for the pair of you. Nothing special, just some pasta and chicken, but you’d nearly boiled over the pot of spaghetti twice now, and the Sergeant wasn’t so oblivious to not notice.

“You good?” He nudged you, taking the spoon from your hand and scooting you out of the way politely as to take over the cooking while you had such a hard time focusing. You’re slow to respond, still a little stuck trying to sort through your own feelings and the attempts to sort through what had happened, if it was your fault, and how in hell you were going to try and make an apology for overstepping bounds.

“Um… I have a question,” You speak up, wrapping your arms around yourself and watching Soap stir the chicken in the skillet.

“If you were sparring with a girl… and you got hard, does that mean you’re into her?”

You felt like a high school girl gossiping with her friends about how to tell if guys were crushing on you. Such a stupid question would’ve gotten you in a lot of trouble if you’d asked anyone other than Soap. Johnny looks over at you, a smirk on his face and his eyes alight with mischief. He turns around and leans against the counter with his lower back resting there causally, glancing around the kitchen and living area to see if anyone was around before answering you.

“Well lass, I can’t be sure of nothin’ more than theory…” He rubs a hand over the short and scratchy stubble growing out on his cheek. “But, if I really liked her, yeah… I’d probably get a little excited doin’ somethin’ like that.”

The topic falls into a somewhat comfortable silence after that; Allowing you to eat you dinner on the couch, stewing over not just the sight of Ghost standing right in front of you, obviously turned on in some way or another as well as Soap’s -unknowing- confirmation. Therefore by the end of your pasta, after a long stint of attempting to read a book, and debating if you’d just fucked up a very important relationship within your squad, you found yourself getting changed into some comfortable clothes and heading back down to the gym.

You didn’t bother warming up with a jog, or any real kind of strength training. You needed some kind of way to focus, and yoga was the only surefire way to shut out any other thoughts. There was just enough dedication required to work through poses correctly, that after less than ten minutes of gentle flow you’d lost a lot of the edge cutting into your peace of mind over Ghost. You’d been working on extending your ability to remain in Kapila pose, and got almost two minutes over your record when you heard the door to the gym snick open, followed by heavy footsteps walking past you towards the weight rack.

It was nearly one in the morning. No one looked for a hard workout this late night other than your Lieutenant, and he was the last person you wanted to face right now. Fuck… he was the whole reason you were pushing your limits right now, nearly reaching into the painful edge of stretches just to force your breathing and mind onto the center of balance and exertion. With your face mere inches away from the ground, sweat drips off your nose onto the mat you’re sitting on and makes a quarter-sized puddle by the time you’ve finally felt like you’ve held to pose long enough. Your flow lead you into Compass pose next, beginning the opposite leg and physically guiding yourself into a position meant for nothing more than to release tension lingering in your body. It takes a while to feel your joints and tendons finally giving up to the stress in your mind, making the hold on your foot behind your head more manageable.

It’s around that time you begin hearing the sounds of squat plates clacking against each other alongside the rich and room-filling sounds of Ghost’s quiet grunts and groans. Resisting the strong desire to imagine what his legs look like, flexing under the weight of the bar. Using massive thighs and such explosive power to push the multiple hundred pounds he’s holding over his shoulders over twenty times for racking the weight. It’s all in the sounds you can’t ignore due to forgetting your headphones. Damning you to an onslaught of delicious sounds that would’ve fell on deaf ears anywhere else on base. Overshadowing the tinges of pain in your body with the commanding nature of the Lieutenant even when he wasn’t seeking it out.

You spent nearly an entire half hour trying not to put too much weight on Ghost’s presence, working at this point just to get through your flow without drawing too much attention to yourself, or giving any reason for Ghost to say anything to you. You’d not prepared anything in the way of an apology, and you couldn’t begin to formulate one with clanking metal and his suggestive sounds filling your ears. Maddening… downright sinful in nature. Enough to make any woman squirm. And fuck were you utterly terrified that you’d chosen to wear such light colored grey leggings, because if you’d move in just the right way, the dampness growing there would be painfully obvious.

In a headstand, choosing it for nothing more than your confidence in it, you’d closed your eyes and started tapping on the mat with your fingers. Picturing your own spine and tying a string to it, using that thin string to draw your vertebrae straight and tall, lengthening your entire body and deepening your breaths. You nearly fell flat on your face when you feel fingers graze the back of your knee and tease over your calf. The wiggle in your concentration stacks your weight over your head and forearms on the floor and pitches you towards the ground.

Right away, an arm wraps around your hips and swipes you off your own control and kept you from falling to the ground. Instead of hitting your mat or the concrete you had your eyes on, you feel nothing short of muscle and stocky build pressed against the entire backside of your body as Ghost holds you upside down not unlike a sack of flour or a sniper rifle. The back of your head hits against his lower leg and you grunt a little, taken by surprise and once again finding yourself at the mercy of Ghost’s strength alone. You’re about to speak up, and are cut short by the Lieutenant literally spinning you right-side up with his free arm, holding you eye-level with him.

“Distracted?” His eyebrow raises above the cut out of his -much thinner- almost athletic mask missing the trademark skull painted on it. His hand palming your ass felt like it was branding the skin under your leggings, leaving you speechless and hanging on nothing more than the sounds of his breaths hissing through the mask.

“You… you spooked me,” You mutter, one hand bracing on his shoulder and the other somewhere on his chest… you couldn’t quite gather enough spacial awareness to connect the dots. “Made me jump is all.”

Ghost chuckled, “Spooked you?” Even his tone was mocking of the ridiculous idea you knew was so full of holes, it wouldn’t hold water. “Touching you s’enough?”

Looking down at your body pressed against his; the direct contrast of your cream colored knit sweater and his tight-fitting black shirt, the embarrassingly long distance between your feet and the floor. Everything about this meeting with Ghost was so far different than when you met on level ground in the sparring room. Then, you both knew the intentions. How to work around each other and how to go about pushing the right buttons. But now… you weren’t even close to feeling like having any power, and you were certain that the Lieutenant could feel it radiating off of you.

“Maybe it is.” Replying back, you feel his fingers dig a little into the flesh of your ass a little harder.

“Maybe its not what I’ve done that’s bothering you… but what you’ve been thinking about,” He challenged you back, looking over at the mat you’d been using. “Why you came here, pushing so hard… Ignoring me.”

All the air in your lungs evacuated when he so accurately saw right through your skull and into the deep recesses of your head. Enough that you were nodding your head just enough for Ghost to let out something of and amused kind of sound. Short of real laugher, but not nearly enough to call it a breath. Either way, there was no hiding now. You admitted it right to his face, looking deep in those dark eyes with a level of intensity you had never seen from him before.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s in your little head?”

You hadn’t the slightest idea where to begin. Should you admit that you were hungry for more about his thoughts on you? Or just admit that you’d been struggling all even with the guilt of enjoying the thought of him lusting over you and having the power to call him out over it? So many ideas popped into your head, spinning it around so quickly that y the time you spit out an answer, you were already in the changing rooms in the back of the gym; Ghost carrying you towards the counter with a mirror. He sat you down on it, slotting his hips between your spread thighs and rubbing those massive hands up your thighs like he was savoring the feeling of your muscles tensing up under his touch.

“C’mon. That was an order, soldier.” He pressed, actually pinching at the creases of your thighs made all the more defined with you sitting. “D’you have somethin’ you want to ask me? About training earlier…”

You gasped softly, twitching when his fingertips traced over the indentions in your thighs marking dimples and other imperfections that you would’ve loved to go unnoticed by his wandering hands curling around your hips and back towards your ass again, sliding you flush against his chest. Forcing you to visualize the heavier rise and fall of his chest, shadows defining the valley between his pecs and the heartbreakingly gorgeous width of his shoulders caging you in. Masterfully, this man was drawing words out of you in such a confident and almost inescapable seduction. Yet the only question you’d been struggling with was answered with nothing more than the soothing voice and teasing touch of a man who had you wrapped around his finger.

“Hmm, no questions?” His head tilted a bit, seeing you so flustered over nothing than a couple little touches.

Enjoying nothing more than how you looked at him so surprised and innocent, despite knowing just how fucking turned on you were after spotting the totally soaked crotch of your leggings after approaching you during your headstand. Unable to resist you any longer, Ghost tipped your chin up a bit to meet his gaze and purposefully softened it. Wanting to ease you into this a little more, humming lowly when your pretty lips curled into a sweet smile. Letting your head rest in his hold with every ounce of trust you showed in the field and one the mats during conditioning.

“I have a question for you. Did you like it…? Seeing me standing there with a hard cock, knowing you were the sole reason for it.” He traced his finger down the bridge of your nose gently.

“How does it make you feel inside, knowing I want to feel every inch of you. Taste your screams of my name and the slick dripping out of your cunt onto those fucking leggings you’re wearing.”

“F-felt… good,” You sputter, face flaring brightly. “Liked it a lot.”

His hands kneading harshly at your ass quickly came up to the high waist of your leggings and tugged, hard. Breaking stitches and even tearing the material on one side as he pulled those skin-tight leggings off your legs; Growling deep in his chest when the sheen of your arousal spread on your skin under the florescent light. You held on to his shoulders, helping him just enough to make sure he didn’t totally ruin your bottoms.

“I knew you did,” He snarled, throwing your pants behind him and giving you a very clear smile from behind his mask. “Such a good solider, too bad she’s a dirty little slut for her Lieutenant’s cock.”

You could help the guttural moan you let out when his fingers dipped between the slick folds of your pussy and so very gently rubbed over your swollen clit. Using his hips to keep your thighs from locking his hand into place. Ghost was as calm and collected as ever, giving you an almost placating look as you squirmed and fought between the desire to back away from the sudden intense stimulation and the desire for more. His other hand held your chin steady, tutting at you like he was disappointed when you bit your lip to try and muffle the sounds of pleasure he was giving you.

“No, you’re not allowed to do that.” He pinched your clit, making you yelp loudly and squeeze your thighs against him until they shook. “You’ll sit there and let me play with you until i’m finished, okay?” Ghost actually nodded your head up and down for you. “That means I hear every fucking sound, because they’re all mine.”

You couldn’t remember how many times you came around Ghost’s fingers before the entire countertop you sat on was pooling with your cum. Feeling it stick to your skin and the wet sensation of his mask dragging over your body as he licked and bit at your skin until the pain melted into such overwhelming ecstasy that you couldn’t hold your upper body of your own strength. You’d slumped your forehead against his chest, blabbering utter nonsense and struggling to manage just how Ghost could expertly play your body to his own desires. With a swollen and exhausted cunt still clenching around his fingers, you were being lifted off the counter and up into Ghost’s arms with the hot and thick head of his dick teasing your dripping hole.

“G-Ghost… can’t take it. Can’t take more,” You groan, clawing at his shoulders and back as he gently rolls his hips just enough to give you a taste of what he was about to stretch you out with.

“Oh yeah you can…” His breathless chuckle made your stomach churn. “You can. And you will, because I need you to come around my dick.”

In one fatal movement, you were speared onto Ghost’s cock down to the base. Crying out his name as your walls spasmed to adjust in time. Adjusting his hold on your body, the flexibility he’d lusted over while watching you worked to his advantage as he held you by your thighs, dropping your pussy back down over him. Releasing the first of many wet, sucking sounds that earned you such a deep moan of your own name that you impossibly tightened around him.

“Thaaatt’s ittt,” His punched-out praise only urged you on, creating deeper and more unavoidable desire to please him. “Such a good fuckin’ slut. Dripping down my balls… fuucck. You’re gonna make me come.”

The idea of Ghost filling you with his hot release poured hot, honeyed feelings of pleasure. You couldn’t believe there was a feeling such as deeply effecting as this. The shocking weakness in which you felt completely absorbed in to the point that you saw past the rough exterior Ghost was presenting, and understood that he wasn’t taking with your physical self, but everything else that you could offer him. Closeness, support, trust beyond what others had given… maybe even love. Sex hadn’t felt like this before. Especially the filthy way Ghost was fucking his cock up into you so deeply your cervix was curving to mold around his tip. But the connection was there and so strong that your heart was burning in your chest.

“Doin’ so good…” He murmured, wet mask brushing against your cheek and fanning damp breaths over your sensitive skin. “God m’gonna keep you right here forever,” He groaned, biting at your cheek through his mask. “My little toy. Let me make you feel good…”

That wetness in your bright eyes as you nodded up at him, whimpering broken pleads and begs for him to do it. To claim you… fill you up over and over. Never spend another day without Ghost either right next to you, or his semen dripping out of you as a reminder that you’ve been possessed by such a powerful and commanding man that would stop at nothing to drive you out of your mind with pleasure. Such intense emotional and physical feelings that sent you careening over the edge of a earth-shattering orgasm that left you quite literally screaming out his name at the top of your lungs, feeling a heavy pressure in your lower stomach break. Clamping down on Ghost’s cock and feeling overwhelming wetness soaking his pelvis and dripping down onto the floor in a gush of splatters.

“Shhiitt!” Ghost shouted out your name, stuffing his cock as deeply inside you as he could.

Feeling jets of his release flooding your pussy and overflowing the tight space until it rolled down your inner thighs in thick pearl rivulets. His hips rocked against yours, stuttering as they grew weak and his cock overstimulating against the texture and tightness. Right away the bruising grip on your ass and thighs loosened, and on unsteady legs Ghost moved you both back towards the counter and reluctantly drew himself out of you with a hiss. Too fucked out to even respond in a noticeable way, you just kept your weakened legs and arms wrapped as tightly around him as you could. Shivering with aftershocks of nearly-fried nerves and overworked muscles.

You were cradled against Ghost’s chest, with both arms protecting your body. His head resting atop yours, listening to your breaths and feeling the way you began to slowly wind down, made that much easier by his fingers trailing up and down your spine and whispered praise scratching an itch deep in your heart and brain. He was taken by you, so small and made that much smaller with nothing but that soft sweater covering your form and the little hands you’d fisted into his shirt. So pretty, and if it wasn’t for seeing your skills as a soldier, he’d think you were as breakable as a hand painted, porcelain teacup.

Duty to protect and provide washed over Ghost. So strongly that even the small chills rising on your legs were distressing him beyond what would’ve felt acceptable. He wanted you warm and feeling safe with him after taking so much for so long that you could hardly hold your own head up. Moving you again to his quarters was his next task, and he very quickly had you gathered up in his arms and the large towel you’d brought to the gym draped over your bottom half so that neither of you would have to fuss with the wet leggings that had been unintentionally soaked by your final orgasm. Ghost didn’t even bother picking them up off the floor since the right side had been ripped apart beyond repair or wearing again. Mentally, he already had plans on replacing them.

But there would be a lot of things that changed sooner than later.

He’d done everything to stay away. Pretend that he didn’t want you deep in his very bones, and ignore how heavy of a struggle it became to deny simple closeness to another human being that meant more than a cooperating operator. You would be nothing less than his sole purpose in working for. Ensuring you had everything you needed and more than you could ever ask for. He’d take nothing you gave for granted, including the total control of your body for him tonight. And he’d be certain that the next time he touched you… he would do it the right way instead of allowing the desperate side of him to try and swallow you whole. You deserved more than a rough and dominating man. And he wasn’t sure how to even go about becoming something he’d long abandoned for no other reason than survival.

But fuck if he’d be damned if he didn’t dedicate the rest of his life trying.

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[eddiernunson]

Ice Cream, Bikinis, and Other Ways to Torture Him | Older Rockstar!Eddie x Harrington Fem!Reader | 18+

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Edit: this tagging system sucks. I just fixed it! Sorry if you weren’t tagged originally!

Summary: The stories of Eddie Munson, front man of Corroded Coffin and his music filled the Harrington household, his albums on shelves and picture frames hung of your dad and him, young and dumb. You’re home for the weekend, which just so happens to be the same weekend Eddie is in Hawkins on a personal errand. The longtime crush on him bubbles to the surface as you meet him, giving into the temptation of small summer dresses and bubblegum gloss for the fun of it. Until your dad is called in to an emergency work meeting. Then the fun of torture becomes temptation.

Warnings: Older Rockstar!Eddie, Harrington!Reader (Steve’s daughter), multi chapter build up, excessive use of nicknames, no use of y/n, (major) use of marijuana, perv!Eddie, general horniness

Describes: long hair, shorter than Eddie by a few inches, reader is described to look like her mom (can be ANY race) with Steve’s freckles. No skin colour or body shape/type

Word Count: 4.1k

Chapter 3

The heat is unbearable, the kind that provides the motivation not to do anything but lie in bed all day spread out so one could confuse them as a starfish. It’s hot enough the house wide AC feels too weak for a job this tough and needs to call in backup. The fan that stands alone rotating as it blows cold air through your room is nowhere near enough backup. 

Your skin feels sticky, your hair as far away as possible from your sweaty skin as you melt in the sweltering heat. One more than one occasion you’ve scooped under your tits to wipe at the sweat that has pooled there, coming up with miraculously slick hands. 

Fuck it’s too hot for clothes. 

The summer sun has been working late night shifts as of late, staying out until 8 or 9. As much as you revel in the longer daylight hours, today you’ve decided you hate the sun. You check the time, hoping it’s 3 or 4 in the afternoon already, having decided to forego your phone due to its inefficiency from distracting you from the heat and therefore lost track of time. 

It’s only 12:30. 

You swear softly, in a quick decision you can’t stay still anymore and need to go in your stash to fucking relax. You put on a light tank top and short jean shorts, lifting your hair off your sticky neck into a bun as you pocket your phone, some joints and some cash for an ice cream cone. 

Smoke a joint on the way, indulge on some delicious ice cream then stumble back home for what will probably be quality time with your vibrator. Seems like a decent plan.

When you get downstairs Eddie is lounging on the couch with one leg over the armrest, sunken in the corner as he watches the tv with a glazed look in his eyes in a muscle t-shirt and his long locks in a bun. He seems to share the same sentiment that it is too damn hot. His eyes shift to you as you put on your flip flops, sitting up with loud curiosity on his face. 

“I’m going to go for a walk and get some ice cream, it’s too fucking hot,” you tell him, one hand on the scorching door handle. You hiss, shaking it in a jerk move as you glance down at it. “Ow.”

”Yeah, I learned my lesson the hard way,” he observes, stretching as he stands up, his arms over his head as the lift of his shirt reveals a tuft of dark hair. 

You shake yourself out of it, opening the door quickly underneath your shirt before the handle has a chance to burn your skin again and step out into the blistering sun, putting the sunglasses over your eyes as you reach the end of the driveway. Behind you a set of running footsteps startle you, the slapping of sandals on pavement having you turn to face a set of wild curly hair falling out of its ponytail as its owner catches up to you.   

He’s smiling ear to ear, bearing those dazzling dimples when he sees your perplexed face. “A walk for some ice cream sounds really nice, when I thought about it.” You blink up at him, processing his words and distracted by the sheen layer of sweat on his toned arms. It’s a dangerous automatic shut down on your brain. 

Eddie falters, stepping back as you continue staring up at him, jaw slack and speechless. “Unless, you’d prefer to be alone—“ 

You finally snap out of it, almost swinging to grab his hand out of pure reflex. “No, um, it’s just a bit of a walk and I was gonna take my time and uh…smoke for a bit.” God, that sounded terrible.  

His eyes light up, his wild grin back on his face in a flash. “A joint and ice cream? Now that’s a hot day.” He starts putting his hair back into the ponytail, a god damn scrunchie, starting ahead as you stand dumbly on the driveway. ”Now you wouldn’t mind turning this into a blunt rotation would you?” 

Are you kidding me? Like are you actually fucking kidding me? 

“I only got two joints,” you hold them out from the stash in your bra apologetically, as you pretend to hesitate in accepting his offer. 

He yoinks one out of your hand, lighting it in a flash. “Joint’s a joint,” he states, warbled from the blunt in his half open mouth. He closes his eyes as he takes a big inhale, bliss taking over his face as it hits his lungs. “Oh that’s some good shit.” He passes it to you, clearing his throat. “Who’s the dealer these days, because that did not come from a dispensary.”

“How—“ you stop at his raised brow, grinning around the joint as you take your first inhale. God, that hits the spot. “Right. It’s some kid named Mickey. Mickey…Carver, I think.”

Eddie's fingers brush against yours as he takes it back, looking pensive as he breathes it in. “So you’re telling me that Jason Carver's son is the new dealer?” He breathes it out, grinning maniacally. “Fuck, that’s poetic.”

You’re about three doors down already, but you’re already feeling it. Usually you take much more time between inhales, not wanting to be stoned in the convenience store. It’s at least another three blocks away. “Right…I forgot his dad is the mayor. I think he’s like the black sheep of his family.” 

“Oh, sweet justice,” he mutters, yet you find yourself having no interest in the context. “Would your dad happen to know about this little past time of yours?” 

You take another inhale of the joint, absorbing the ache in your lungs for a moment longer than you usually do. “I don’t know if he does.” You shrug, stumbling past one of the sidewalk cracks. “I’m not all that covert about it.”  

“How much he smoked in college, I don’t think he’d care,” Eddie comments, chuckling. 

You stop, staring at Eddie with your mouth half open. Eddie is yanked back, tugged by his hand on your wrist. Huh, when did that get there? “You okay, there, sweetheart?”

You’re so fixated on your dad smoking you don’t even have time to process his use of the nickname. “My dad smokes pot?” 

Eddie bursts out laughing, his eyes crinkling shut as he throws his head back. “Your dad has absolutely smoked pot, sweetheart. Only every time he comes to see us in concert.” 

Yet another thing that short circuits your brain, staring at him as if he grew a second head. “When has my dad seen you in concert?” 

Eddie’s eyes go wide, his laughter stopping almost altogether. “Oh shit, I don’t think I was supposed to tell you that,” he mutters, seemingly fixated on the bushes right next to the house you’re standing in front of. 

“When does my father come see you in concert?” You glare, stepping forward more into his personal space with your hands arms tightly crossed. 

“Every tour since you were born?” He answers, giving you a weak smile as he grimaces. 

“What!?” You bark, tightening up your crossed arms. “Every concert? You’ve been going on tour consistently for the last 22 years!”

He throws his hands up in surrender, smoke floating up from the last remaining bits of the first joint still between two fingers. He holds it up for you, face just a bit cautious as he says, “You look Iike you need this.”

You yoink it from his fingers, taking a deep enough breath to kill the joint up to the filter. You’re not sure if its the company, the heat, or the weed, but this news really threw you off, and yes, you really needed it. The filter lands on the ground when you flick it, mindlessly pulling out the next joint and your own lighter from your bra.

As the end glows in amber, you take another deep inhale, forgetting Eddie’s still only a few feet away in front of you. You basically accidentally shotgun him. You pass it to him, seemingly completely unfazed by the puff of smoke you just blew in his face. 

You jerk your head, suddenly remembering you’re supposed to be going for a walk. “Walk, we’re supposed to be walking,” you mumble to yourself, stepping away from Eddie as he laughs out a cloud. 

A hand lands on your shoulder, startling you as you continue on the scorching pavement. You haven’t even hit the first crosswalk, yet and you’ve gone all fuzzy. You jerk your head back in surprise, turning your head to look up at him inquisitively. 

“Sweetheart, you’re drifting,” he answers, using his wrist to fix your diagonal gait. “I think you’re very stoned.” 

“It’s possible,” you muse, allowing the overwhelming scent of his cologne to float to the back of your mind. If it was the first thing, it would be the only thing. 

The conversation quiets down for a bit, Eddie still keeping you somewhat steady as he continues to pass you the joint back and forth. 

You’re in the middle of a mental spiral, thoughts coming and going, passing through like thoughts on a road until one particularly flashy thought passes by. “I had no idea he was going to your concerts,” you chirp out of nowhere, waiting for the light to indicate you can cross. 

“To be fair it's not the best place for a kid,” he mutters, trying to make you feel better. 

“‘M not a kid,” you deadpan, smoking a little bit of the last of the second joint. 

“Compared to me, yes.” You glare at him, wanting to wipe off that stupid little smug grin off his face. “Regardless I’m sure your dad just needed some time off. He’s a single father of four kids, for Fuck’s sake.” 

“I didn’t tell him to knock my mom up four times,” you mutter to yourself, earning another scoff from him. 

“Wow, your filter is down, huh?” He chuckles, leading you across the crosswalk and towards the convenience store. “Don’t give your dad a hard time, he’s trying his best.” 

You wanna move on from your dad so you’re no longer feeling guilty as you stare at his toned arms.  Like, right now. Your eyes fiddle around the sidewalk, looking for any suitable topic of conversation. Anything. A chorus of laughter fills the air, your attention snapped to it immediately. As soon as you see the culprits, you blanch in disgust, jerking your attention back as you approach the convenience store entrance. 

“Oh, god, gross,” you groan, stumbling as you push the glass door open. 

Eddie trails a few feet behind you, leaning down as he asks, “Wh-what just happened?” 

The repetitive motion of ice cream scooping hypnotizes you, catching you in a trance until Eddie bumps his hip into yours. “Hmm?” 

“Outside. What was that?” He asks, pointing towards the door. 

Oh, right, that. “Oh, my ex boyfriend,” you explain, wondering if you’re swaying on your feet or if the store just turned into a boat all the sudden. “Two years of my life I’ll never get back.” 

“Which one was he?” He asks, putting one hand on your shoulder to steady you again.  

If he were anyone else, you’d shrug him off, literally and metaphorically, offended at their need to ‘take care of you,’ so to speak. But your lowered inhibitions and inexplicable draw towards him allow the words to free flow out your mouth. “The idiot with the Oakley sunglasses hitting on what is probably the youngest girl he can without getting arrested— ooh they have cookie dough.”

Eddie chuckles, one hand on your shoulder as he pushes you forward. “They called for you about five times now, sweetheart.” 

Oh, oops. 

The teen with braces and her hair in braided pigtails, clearly working as a summer gig, looks annoyed as you stumble forward. “I um, want one scoop of cookie dough and one scoop of cookies n’ cream in a chocolate covered waffle cone, please.” 

As she gets to work, pulling on gloves for what is probably the thousandth time for the day, reaching up for a cone off where they sit stacked Eddie leans in to say, “You know that’ll melt by the time you get home, right?” 

You watch the girl scoop the ice cream, your grin growing wider with each addition of ice cream. “That makes it all the more fun to eat,” you smirk, biting your lip playfully. 

The teen, Emma, you hazily notice from the name tag, holds out the cone with a measly single thin napkin. You have the foresight to understand the single napkin won’t be enough, but not to grab more. 

You dig in humming as the first taste of cookie dough has a perfect little chunk of doughy goodness as Eddie orders a chocolate and vanilla soft serve swirl. 

In mid bite you cough, almost exaggeratedly looking back and forth between your ice cream and the soft serve coming from its machine onto the cone. “What?” He asks, rocking on his heels. 

You take another taste, “Nothing,” taste, “just,” holy shit this is good, “um…”

“Just…?” 

He interrupts a rather delicious lick, eyes closed as you tilt the cone for a better angle. “Wha?” 

“Oh, my god, thank God Steve’s out of town, or he’d kill me,” Eddie chuckles, grabbing the cone from Emma. 

”Why?” You ask, the ice cream remaining on your lips as you take another bite. 

“Because you are outrageously stoned- here you go, sweetheart,” your bottom lip pouts out at the use of the nickname toward the blushing teen, crossing one arm across your stomach as the cash register dings. 

You have half a heart to thank him for paying, glad you wouldn’t have to hand over sweaty underboob cash as you start your way out when you hear your name, vaguely, then loudly. Oh god. You are not prepared to be hounded by—

“Andy!” You grimace, wiping some excess dessert from your jaw. “Hi! You here on break?” 

“Oh,” he rolls his eyes, that same old cocky look smeared on his face. On Eddie it’s charming. On Andy it’s nauseating.  “I dropped out in the first semester. I did not need to stay very long to know I know more than any of those pompous assholes.” 

Hmm. You’re astounded. At his gull and that he knows what pompous means. “Guess all that talk about getting out of Hawkins was just talk,” you mutter, sloppily taking another bite.  

You must’ve mumbled, as Andy leans in like he has no idea what you’ve said. “Huh?”

“Nothing,” you dismiss, missing Eddie glowering at him over your shoulder. 

“Well, now that you’re in town,” he starts, brazenly grabbing you by the elbow, “what do you say we take some time and uh, revisit old times, yeah?” 

You jerk your elbow away from him, your face squishing up at disgust by his sleazy voice suggesting you lie under him one more time for a rousing, unsatisfying round of mediocrity. “Ew, I’m good.” 

“Now don’t be like that, pretty peach,” you always hated when he called you that, the reminder sending a chill down your spine that had nothing to do with the ice cream itself. “What’s one more night?” 

Only now do you realize he’s only tightened his grip on your elbow, ice cream in your other hand nearly forgotten as the hair on your arms rise. Eddie pops up, the memory of his prescience and the terror that takes over Andy’s face both send a rush of relief right through you. 

“Take your slimy little hand off her, you pathetic little weasel,” Eddie’s voice is rough and assertive, the soft serve ice cream miraculously held stable in his other hand as he starts to bend the arm that was on your elbow unnaturally backwards. “She said ‘ew, no’”

”Ow,” Andy’s once bravado is turned weak, wiggling like a worm on a hook as he cries out his little yelps of pain. “Okay, okay!” 

“If I want unsatisfying and awful sex, I’ll let you know.” Hmm, you glance back down to the cone that melted only the littlest bit, the top layer now softened and flowing down to the chocolate covered crust.You take a bite from the chocolate, the mix of cookie dough flavour with the chocolate exactly what you had in mind the whole walk over. ”Get lost, Andy.” 

You feel Eddie close behind you as the sweltering sun welcomes you, a town wide sauna you don’t think you’d ever be so glad to walk into after being engrossed in a fridge temperature. “God, if never see Andy Lewis again, it’ll still be too soon, fuck that creep.” 

“You dated him? For two years?” Eddie asks incredulously, having already eaten a chunk of his sweet tasty treat. 

“Low self esteem and a parade of gaslighting would have you believe that he was the best boyfriend ever,” you sweetly smile, squinting your eyes as you take yet another bite of the cookie dough starting to blend with cookies n cream. As the blend explodes your taste buds, some trails down your fingers messily in the hot sun, completely rendering your soaked napkin useless.   

His eyebrows furrow, giving you a look of what you assume can only be pity for a girl who thought that was a good boyfriend and had minuscule self worth until some dude in her freshman English class begged to eat her out. You still go to those receipts when you need the confidence boost. 

Unfortunately for you, when you’re stoned and the very idea of sex crosses your mind, it sends you down a spiral. The unsatisfying sex with a gross sweaty Andy isn’t the thing that set it off, but the first time your legs shook certainly turned the faucet on. Next to you, Eddie takes your silence in stride, allowing you to float in your own hazy brain as he works to finish his cold treat before it disappears at the unforgiving hands of the blistering heat. He’s seemingly lost in the taste, the desert already down to the hilt of the cone as his tongue scoops, disappearing as he focuses on the flavour.

The drop of ice cream splashing your toe alerts you of the multiple trails of cream coloured sugar, your ice cream starting to resemble soup. Dammit. You start cleaning up your hand, quickly stroking your tongue down your hand as you attempt to grab control of the situation at hand. Your hand remains sticky as you move on to the ice cream soup that has cultivated in the chocolate shell, no more semblance of where cookies and cream started and cookie dough ended. No matter, guess it’s just a melted milkshake at this point, you shrug, starting to drink, grateful you haven’t eaten much of the cone yet.  

Eddie starts slurping a little louder as he gets to the end of his soft serve, a noise you allow to simply exist in the background like white noise as arousal seemed to steadily pool deep in your gut. At this point you’re not sure if it’s the extra joint or the attraction you know better than to act on but his exuberant wet noises and grunts of satisfaction seem loud, flooding your ears until it’s all you can focus on. 

Maybe you shouldn’t have worn shorts, the arousal having surely made its way down your thighs and past their frayed edges right below your ass. “You that stoned or did your ex boyfriend just spook ya?” 

You blink back to Eddie, chewing on the last few bites of the chocolate cone. It's sadly not the same without the last little bit of ice cream tucked in. “Hmm?” 

He looks at you pointedly, raising his brow as he starts to brush the hair out of his eyes, fixing the wisps of black bangs. 

“Oh,” you giggle, the sentence finally registering. “I forgot I ran into Andy, honestly. I’m just super stoned and really need to—“ you cut yourself off, swallowing what is suddenly a very hefty case of cotton mouth, “take a shower,” you amend, ignoring Eddie’s intense stare. 

It could’ve been intense, but the more you focus on the ever increasing need for friction, the more you grow increasingly aware of everything he’s doing. 

“I just smoked a lot more and a lot faster than what I’m used to,” you mutter, fidgeting with your bun, at this point a mess of strands. 

Eddie leans in close, using his pointer and middle finger to lift your chin up to face him. He’s much closer than you expect, able to see the finer details on his face even the most HQ photos couldn’t reveal. You blink, suddenly unable to remember the basic function of breathing. 

“Next time don’t push yourself too hard when you know your tolerance isn’t as good as the person you’re smoking with. You could’ve told me.” Strange, he doesn’t sound disappointed, not in you, anyways. Just at your flagrant disregard for your own limits. His voice is smooth, yet demanding, sending a shiver down your spine. 

“O-ok,” you stutter, thinking about the pads of his two fingers against your skin, picturing him taking the pointer and shoving it past your lips. The mental image quakes your knees. God you should’ve known your body would react this extreme to Eddie, weed has always been a catalyst for raging lust. 

Unable to handle the eye contact for much longer, you rip your chin out from his grasp, recognizing the shrub you usually walked past on your way to school.

“I-I really need that shower,” you mutter, walking ahead of him to the long, windy driveway leading up to the Harringtons. Eddie’s flip flops smack against his heels step by step steadily behind you as you open the door, remembering Eddie’s haste as he tried to catch up to you. 

He says nothing as you rush up the stairs, slamming the door behind him as he saunters into the living room to fool around his guitar. 

The blasting air conditioner should be refreshing after spending an hour or so in the hot blazing sun with no water, but it does little to off-set the raging fire coursing through you. Your face feels hot, stretching to scratch an itch you know can only be scratched one way when you're as blitzed as you are. 

It’s one thing to picture him when he’s a million miles away in LA or on covers of magazines, but its another entirely when he’s right downstairs after a walk in during which he defended your honour. 

You switch back to it, his commanding tone and demonstration of strength as he so effortlessly pushed a boy whose name you don’t even want to think about in this cloud of overwhelming desire. You open your eyes, standing in the middle of your room, the weight of your hand trailing over your skin suddenly heavy but doing its job all the same. 

You kick off your sandals, having forgotten to at the front door. The shorts and thong come off as well, having no patience in teasing yourself as you normally do. Your head meets your pillow, legs spread as you start to make yourself comfortable. 

As soon as your core meets the air the stark realization of how wet you are sinks in, the arousal slick down your thighs at this point ready for something more… You feel the sharp exhale deep in your belly, rolling over you in an impatient wave begging for some kind of relief. 

As your fingers start to roll across your clit, you gasp in how wet you are. It usually takes a vibraor and some self teasing to get this far, Jesus. For some reason the fingers aren’t doing enough, whining needing as you attempt to get the friction you so desperately need. 

As two fingers slide through the weeping, begging hole you grind the heel of your hand against your clit, desperately lifting your hips up to meet it. Right now you don’t even have to picture him doing anything particularly dirty like his hips rolling against yours as he fucks into you or his pretty brown eyes peering up from between your legs. 

No.

Just the demonstration of his strength as he so easily yanked the asshole’s arm back and his commanding, harsh tone was doing it for you. His sun-kissed skin, the halo of bright yellow sun surrounding his curls, his toned arms…his lips so close to yours, that was enough to get you halfway there. 

And loud enough for any potential wandering ears. 

-

Thank you so much for reading remember replies and reblogs are the best way to support fic writers on tumblr

She might get juicy next ch

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[felassan]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard info compilation Post 2

[Link to Part 1]

Post is under a cut due to length.

There is a lot of information coming out right now about DA:TV from many different sources. This post is just an effort to compile as much as I can in one place, in case that helps anyone. Sources for where the information came from have been included. Where I am linking to a social media user’s post, the person is either a dev, a Dragon Age community council member or other person who has had a sneak peek at and played the game. nb, this post is more of a ‘info that came out in snippets from articles and social media posts’ collection rather than a 'regurgitating the information on the official website or writing out what happened in the trailer/gameplay reveal’ post. The post is broken down into headings on various topics. A few points are repeated under multiple headings where relevant. Where I am speculating without a source, I have clearly demarcated this.

Character Creation

It is the best CC BioWare has ever made in a game [source]

The faction we choose will determine who we as protagonist Rook were before they were recruited to put a stop to Solas [source]

Certain conversation options are only available to Rooks of certain factions. For example, Grey Wardens get conversation options that are focused on the Blight, as they know more about it from other people. It also impacts how people talk to Rook (reactivity from characters and then faction reactivity from plots relating to that faction) [source]

Faction choice affects a lot of things [source]

There aren't unique missions (I think this means like the playable Origins in DA:O), but faction choice does set the course for Rook for the rest of the game [source]

"body customization and morphing. From more muscular characters, to curvier builds, and just about any shape you want to give your character, there are all sorts of toggles to adjust so you can give them any figure you want". "There's even features that let you choose proportions, so you can alter their height, give them wider shoulders, and much more" [source]

There are makeup options [source]

There are tattoo options [source]

The hair uses a "Strand system" to "make them behave and move in a believable way for the different races" [source]. (Fel note/speculation: I think "race" here refers to irl, as opposed to like human vs qunari or something, as the language they are using for human/elf/dwarf/qunari is "Lineage")

There are 4 voices to choose from for Rook: two feminine and tow masculine (one American, one British for each) [source]

In CC, 'Lineage' is the game's parlance for race i.e. human, elf, dwarf, qunari [source]

We can pick Rook's name, but the dialogue calls them 'Rook' [source]

In CC we can "make a few key decisions that will impact how The Veilguard begins" [source]

"I really do think its our most feature-ful character creator ever." [source]

Story and lore

In the opening segment of the game (see more on the story's opening moments here), we're too late and Solas' ritual worsens, so Rook and the companions go to stop him. When travelling to the next location (Arlathan Forest) in the chase after Solas, the characters travel through an eluvian [source]. The Forest is where his ritual is taking place. Varric then asks the player if he should confront Solas, and players then work to take down the surrounding statues in order to stop the ritual. "I won’t spoil what happens next, but I’ll just say the player and Veilguard have a tall task ahead of them if they want to save Thedas." [source]

Four of the 6 faction options for Rook (Mourn Watch, Lords of Fortune, Veil Jumpers, Shadow Dragons) are "rooted in northern Thedas" [source]

Certain conversation options are only available to Rooks of certain factions. For example, Grey Wardens get conversation options that are focused on the Blight, as they know more about it from other people. It also impacts how people talk to Rook (reactivity from characters and then faction reactivity from plots relating to that faction) [source]

There aren't unique missions (I think this means like the playable Origins in DA:O), but faction choice does set the course for Rook for the rest of the game [source]

A line of dialogue Dorian had at the Winter Palace in DA:I about what Tevinter is like informed the devs' approach to bringing to life the setting of Tevinter: ""There's a line in Dragon Age Inquisition that we always like to call back to," Epler says. "Dorian goes to the Winter Palace, which, up to that point, is probably the most impressive thing you've seen [as the Inquisitor], and [he] says something like, 'Oh, this is cute.' And we had to ask, what does it look like? What is Tevinter if Dorian sees that [the Winter Palace] and thinks that?"" [source]

The fact that Minrathous used to be the land of the elves was factored into the location's design. John Epler: "You can see the architecture has changed. It's become a lot more elven focused. And something that we've kind of hinted at, but we've never really shown explicitly, is the idea that Tevinter is built on the bones of the ancient elven empire. Tevinter itself, Minrathous itself, all the magic you see, that's just a pale imitation of what the elves are capable of. So you'll start to see as you get deeper into the game, the elves, for example, worked Lyrium into their building materials. Tevinter can't quite figure out how to do that. So instead, you'll see more gold and gems, kind of imitating it, but not ever quite approaching what the elves are able to do, and really creating that continuity of the space. Obviously, Solas isn't too thrilled that this world is the way it is, because he lived in a time of miracles and magic, and even the most magical place in Thedas isn't magic like the elven people used to be able to do" [source]

At the end of the opening portion of the game there is a "jaw-dropping title card cliffhanger" [source]

On the opening sequence: ""One of the things we wanted to do with this game is make the prolog feel like the final mission of a different game," John Epler says. "We really needed to get the stakes, the spectacle, right off the bat. Obviously, players who had been waiting to confront Solas have been waiting for just this moment."" [source]

Each companion has their own storyline that runs parallel to the main story [source]

You cannot succeed without the companions. Each of them has a reason why they need to be part of your party, why they need to help you stop the end of the world [source]

All 7 companions are recruited in the game's first act [source]

The firey demon looking guys shown near the start of the Gameplay Reveal are Rage Demons. Demons in general got a revamp in this game "to more closely align their look", this can be seen with the shades and the Pride demons as well. "they’re creatures of emotion so they have a spectral nervous system look" [source]

The Pride demon the group fight at the Solas face-off in the Gameplay Reveal video "was more a direct tie to Solas than anything else, but it didn't escape us how much it echoed the beginning of DA:I". they wanted to show the stakes and the scale of Solas' power [source]

Characters, companions, romance

Harding was one of the earliest characters that the devs wanted to bring into DA4, because she was such a fan favorite. She is this game's 'traditional returning' character [source]

Each character's romance flavor or style is different. They don't want every character for the romance to feel the same. They want everyone to have their own flavor that's appropriate to them as a character [source] [two]

"We found as we were building a story, more than ever before, it's a story about the people around you; a story about building this team, and working with them." [source]

Each companion has their own storyline that runs parallel to the main story [source]

You cannot succeed without the companions. Each of them has a reason why they need to be part of your party, why they need to help you stop the end of the world [source]

All companions are pansexual (specifically pansexual, not playersexual) [source]

Their pansexuality may come through in what we learn about their backstories [source]

No companion romance is race-locked [source]

Companions reference their past experiences or partners, and they reference who they'll become romantic with. [source]

If you don't romance a character, they may find a different partner for themselves. This could be within the companion roster itself or outside of it in the broader world. [source] For example, if the player does not romance Harding, she may get together with Taash [source]

The game is rated M [source]

The game contains nudity [source]

We can start flirting with the companions pretty early [source]

All 7 companions are recruited in the game's first act [source]

It is not until later parts of the game that you really commit to romance and things get pretty spicy [source]

The nudity, spicy things etc is more towards the end of the game [source]

The devs want the companions to be relatable and fully realized. So things get spicy, but in a more relatable way for people than e.g. some of the more shocking and comical scenes of this nature in Baldur's Gate 3 [source]

How sexually explicit the scenes are varies between characters. Some are more spicy than others. They have diverse personalities like in real life. "Some of them are more physical, more aggressive, and some of them are more... we have a gentleman necromancer [Emmrich], for instance, that is more intimate and sensual." [source] "some characters may be a little more steamy while some characters maybe a little bit more innocent" [source]

The romance and relationship system is more fleshed out than in previous BioWare games. A character's romance will be better woven into their personal story arc and into their involvement in the core questline of the game [source]

"BioWare has also worked to ensure that getting to know your characters as friends feels just as satisfying - and that just because you're not banging your buddy, their (platonic) relationship with you will still continue." ""One of the things we tried to do with The Veilguard is it's not just romantic relationship building," Epler continued. "You need to get to know a person before you can really build that kind of relationship with them, and if you choose not to build a [romantic] relationship, we never want to feel like you're being cut off. There's no 'okay, well, their arc isn't progressing, I'm done'." We want to make sure the non-romantic relationships are deep as well, with friendships not just for companions and yourself, but also between companions across the party."" [source]

GDL reprises his role as Solas [source]

Gameplay, presentation, performance etc

The game has a photo mode [source]

Combat is fast-paced [source]

If you pause the game using the ability wheel you can scan enemies to learn more information about them [source]

Each of the 3 main classes is distinguished by how it generates and spends energy for abilities [source]

Each of the 3 subclasses for each 3 main class promise to offer some meaningful distinctions from each other [source]

for this, rogues have momentum. You build momentum by attacking, by dodging, by parrying, and you lose it by being hit, so there's really a focus with rogues on avoiding damage, avoiding attacks. They build momentum quickly, but they lose it quickly. Warriors have rage, which they build a little bit more slowly, but they don't lose [source]

Attacks can be cancelled [source]

Regarding enemy weaknesses, some of these are elemental. In other cases their defenses are more vulnerable to specific types of abilities [source]

Combat seems to be a matter of managing our abilities as best we can to whittle down enemy defenses and take advantage of their weaknesses [source]

Over the course of the game we get access to three abilities per companion as well as an additional two abilities we can slot, and an additional ability that coms off of items that the devs will not talk about for now [source]

Fully offline single player, no EA account linking, no micro-transactions [source]

The game uses advanced rendering tech in Frostbite, nice subsurface scattering, high quality meshes, while having a striking pseudo-painterly look [source]

There are blood spatters in the game [source]

Production values on the game have gone through the roof. It looks like a big improvement on what came before [source]

On the music: "lots of foreboding tunes mixed with epic flair" [source]

Good voice acting, great facial animations, good hair tech, busy-looking environments and worlds [source]

It's not open world. "There are open areas you can explore around in, but it's mostly structured/mission based, sort of like Mass Effect." [source]

There are difficulty options [source]

They will talk about PC spec stuff at a later time [source]

There is probably an option to see damage numbers [source]

There are many reasons why the game is M-rated [source]

There are lots of abilities, with 3 swapped in on the wheel at any one time [source]

There are a bunch of accessibility options and they will talk about these soon [source]

The ability wheel gives you flexibility to enhance your playstyle. If you don't want to use it at all, you don't have to and that's no issue as shortcuts are available [source]

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