#I really don't mind losing absolutely everything. It does feel like I can stop pressuring myself to finish stuff—

[guardian-angle22]

Tagged by @beautifulhigh & @welcometololaland to list my top 5 Tarlos scenes.

This is really going to show my Season 3 bias ngl.

#5. 2.12 "Don't make me twist your arm."/"Please do."

Their chemistry is insane when they're teasing each other downstairs and then they kiss each other so softly once they get upstairs. I'm a sucker for a good soundtrack moment and there's something iconic about having their house literally light up on fire under them while obliviously making out as Fever by Elvis Presley plays in the background. Peak cinema tbh.

#4. 3.04 "Hey, baby. Breathe."/"Welcome home, TK."

We can all agree to have these two can count as one scene, right? they go back to back. The way TK reached for Carlos as soon as he woke up and immediately noticed that Carlos wasn't breathing right even though he just woke up from a coma, is still groggy, and barely has his eyes open? soulmate shit right there. If you haven't watched this without the music. my god. do it now. & then add in how happy they both look as Carlos leads TK into the loft with his hands over his eyes, and then when TK looks around and you can see on his face when he realizes he still gets to have this despite everything? Beautiful.

#3. 3.18 "For the first time in my life, the love that I feel is infinitely more powerful than the fear of losing it."/"A thousand times yes."

I mean can I even say more about the proposal that hasn't already been said? the urgency TK felt that prompted him to wake Carlos up in the middle of the night. His speech to Carlos. All the little touches throughout. The way they both were crying by the end. It was beautiful and it was perfect for them. (the only way it could have been better is if they maybe stopped to turn on a fucking lamp)

#2. 3.08 "Hey, look at me."/"I love you."

This was their first mutual "I love you" shown on screen and while the context was heartbreaking, it was still so so sweet. Carlos being the loving caregiver, kissing TK's forehead, rubbing his knee, wanting to make sure he eats. The way Carlos tells TK to look at him and he does immediately, even though TK has been basically avoiding eye contact with everyone the entire scene will live rent free in mind for all of time, I'm sure.

#1. 3.13 "Do you have any idea how proud of you I am?"/"You're just so sweet."

Can I put the entirety of 3.13 on the list at number one? Because it's my favorite episode for them. It has so many things. It has them being domestic and flirtatious. TK being distracted by Carlos in yoga clothes. It has them fighting a bit, overcoming those obstacles, and communicating. It showed Carlos as a multidimensional character with flaws like jealousy and pettiness, but then growing through it to come to the realization that he can't be everything that TK needs at the end of the day.

But if I absolutely had to pick just one scene from it, I would chose the opening scene. TK sharing with Carlos about his meeting, finding a sponsor, & the realization of not having Gwyn around affecting his mindset. Carlos waiting up with his adorable glasses, reading articles to educate himself, telling TK how proud of him he is. TK calling him sweet and flirting with him. I just-- 🥰🥰

----

Because I'm doing this pretty late in the day, this has made it's rounds through a lot of my mutuals already. so I'm just going to tag a few people that I haven't seen do it yet (no pressure though if you're not feelin' it. but also if you have done it and I missed it let me know so I can read yours!): @morganaspendragonss @ourlegendwillbefitforverse @detective-giggles @noxsoulmate @ladytessa74 @autistic-lesbian-story-lover @tkstrandreyes @pragmatic-optimist @reyescarlos @spencessmile @poledancingghostson @sunshinestrand @mandiiigurllll

[orionicchaos]

Boys will be dandelions

a genshin impact smau | Kaveh x transmasc!reader

masterlist

THE CAST PT.2

cyno, don't. - Kaveh's friends

Kaveh - truly the school's darling. The best in his course (architectural arts), he's promised a bright future as an architect. He's bad at handling pressure though, and always finishes his work last minute. Everyone loves him, he's sociable, expressive and his smile can enchant anyone. Everyone can admit that he has a pretty face (except Al Haitham, he would die before admitting it).

Al Haitham - the school's genius : he cumulates four courses (mathematics, physics, literature and foreign languages) and his fonction as the president of the students council. He shows up at 30% of his classes and always ends up first at every tests and exams. The school is super lax with him because he's an incredible president and great at nearly everything, except feelings and communication.

Tighnari - a sarcastic, yet kind student following the biology and botanic courses. Started a ftm transition last year, and one of his only support was Kokomi at that time. Changed uni with them for the one they're currently in, and they became friends with Kaveh and the other. He's great at teaching things and a lot of students will go look for him after every class for explanations of what was going on.

Cyno - his favourite life being is his dog, a young black and white border collie named Zip. He follows the history course (the same as [Name]s). Didn't really care about what people think of him but one time he overheard other students saying he was scary, so he started to try smiling and doing random jokes... which didn't make people laugh but that's beyond the point. He's agender but uses he because it's simply easier.

Kokomi - another student who is great at school. Follows the literature course and is the book club's president. She's also Al Haitham's assistant and ze truly does god's work : without them, Al Haitham would need twice the amount of coffee he usually drinks in one day. With Bennett, they're the group's emotional support : they're both the reason why no one did a burn out (yet). Intersex and genderfluid, xe doesn't really hide it but they do not talk about it often as it's still a controversy with the other students.

Yoimiya - doesn't do so great at school but eh ! who cares anyway, she'll just take over her dad's business and that'll be wonderful. A real sweetheart, helps people when they lack self-confidence. Queen of everyone's heart but hers belongs to Ayaka : Ayato's little sister. Fan of all kind of musics before the 2000's, and her absolute favourite is Queen.

Bennett - he's not that bad at school he's just.. unlucky. Will answer perfectly to every questions of the first page but will forget there's a second. He'll run out of ink or corrector in the middle of a test, lose his notes or forget his project in the dorms. Everyone is convinced he'd be a top student without his bad lucky, seeing how much of a hard worker he is. Stopped growing at 15 and is now stuck being 5'3. If you hurt Bennett, you'll get hurt in return (Cyno put that knife away-). His favourite animals are bunnies.

Ayato - oh boy, Ayato needs coffee. A lot. He's the official head of Kamisato Corp, a multi-billionaire business, even if he's still in uni. He's helped by a ton of older employees who have been working with his parents before they died and his sister, so he mainly attends meetings and events. He's also part of the students council, and is Al Haitham's second assistant. He's quite the busy type of people, but he always makes sure to keep time for his friends. Follows an economic course. He deals with a lot of pressure and expectations from people, in more fields than one..

———————————————————————————————

• except for Yoimiya, none of them are present in Summer Love Club *cheer for me*

• Kaveh my beloved

• Also i don't understand why Bennett is never present in any smau like what did my boy do to you :(

• Don't mind the joke in Cyno's profile.....

cred : @orionicchaos

[skinni-girls-eat-books]

Tuesday, March 19th, 2024!

8:18am: I feel heartbroken truly. I want to give my love to someone but nobody wants it. I'll give it to myself I suppose. And my bois ❤️

9:15am: After this crapshoot exam I'm taking the rest of the day for mental health, I clearly need to digest what has occurred over the weekend, once again I couldn't exactly do that while my parents were visiting. 🫠 Deja vu what the actual fuck.

11:54am: I'm so drained. There's just no motivation to continue. I don't even really have anger as a motivation anymore like I'm just numb. This shit isn't fun anymore it actually just feels like a complete mind fuck just made to make you go absolutely insane. How does anyone just go on like this how is anyone doing this. And like I know I'm in a fragile state right now and to have someone manipulate me like that? Just fucking evil. I just have to continue knowing I would never treat someone that way. My integrity is all I have at the end of the day.

3:00pm: Omg I called his house phone and ended up talking to his grandma for 2.5 hrs 😂 I love her so much. Wasn't really any shit talking, just normal talking which is nice for once. I just needed to have a normal conversation with somebody besides myself 🤣 just over here about to lose my marbles. She made me feel better about myself and just I really am a caring person and he is just still distant and he's just changed his personality 180°. It really has nothing to do with me and everything to do with him. And that's ok. Him not being as bubbly as he used to be, has nothing to do with me and everything to do with him. He's not doing bad, but he's just not doing much of anything and that's ok, too. I'm gonna keep moving forward :)

10:20pm: this blows bc I feel like I'm just starting a whole new healing process all over again. Such God awful timing to have so much pressure. I feel like I'm being crushed by the weight of school, then I look past Thursday after VD and I'm like wait there's nothing going on right there? Like why is everything so poorly spaced out this semester it's like getting beat and run over by a train and instead of going to the hospital you just get the weekend to recover but then another train is gonna run through your house next week and run you over again in your bed and there's nothing you can do to prepare or stop it.

[caguaydreams]

Not so long ago I said screw it I'll post those ralsusie doodles I've had sitting around in my folders because I love this ship and I want to share these..... yyyeeeaaah I kept forgetting to do that, and two weeks ago my desktop got a virus and aaaaall of my files got encrypted and corrupted, so it's all gone. Forever. I was kinda expecting this to happen so the issue didn't carry that much of a blow, it felt actually kind of liberating to lose my ever-growing pile of WIPs to the void lol. What did sting a bit was remembering about my ralsusie works, and how many of them would never get to see the light of day (mostly because I said I would post them and then postponed it over and over—) , but I recovered a couple of them from discord and well, no reason to not post them now

This is all I have left of my old ralsusie doodles so I'm finally posting them because, welp, better late than never. There's a bit of an anecdote to that but I'm gonna write it separately on a reblog

[levisgirll]

Hello! Can you please do a Levi headcanon/scenario where he hurts his crush's feelings and makes her cry but later regrets it and tries to apologise to her? Thanks!

𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙜𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨 (𝙇𝙚𝙫𝙞 𝘼𝙘𝙠𝙚𝙧𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙭 𝙁𝙚𝙢!𝙍𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙧)

➡text: Hello there!! And omg of course I would be happy to write this out 🥺 the fact that to see levi apologize or own up to his mistakes is something that I would like to even write about- so thank you for this request! I hope you love it anon ♥ (incoming some fluff and you wont regret it!)

synopsis:  it was a long tiring day and with under pressure levi ackerman had, he accidently said something to y/n (his crush!) which hurt her feelings. levi feels terrible and to make it up for it, made y/n realize that levi and her might share the same feelings for each other.

fluff, angst, aot world, imagine fanfiction ♡ —

It was a long stressful day at the Survey crops headquarters building, and Captain Levi was assigned with many paper work to get done with.

The last expedition made Levi worry quite a lot for Y/N and her safety. Sure she was skilled, and a fast thinker but that still did not stop Levi from worrying about her. It was because he was the captain he had to worry about his squad....right?

But after Y/N getting hurt on the last expedition because she is kind of ‘reckless’ to what Levi thinks and used as an excuse, his heart sank and he then realized not only did he care about her too much, but he also developed feelings for her and with time it grew. Just her presence, the way she was, caring, friendly, confident, her natural beauty and a badass made him fall for her more.

But ever since on that day, he blamed himself for her getting injured because she was on his squad team.

The upcoming expedition was next month and he was becoming even more stressed and load with paperwork because it was a bigger mission this time they never had. Y/N obviously noticed that so after having a chat with Hanji she went by to his office and entered inside. They become more comfortable with each other so she was pleased to enter his office whenever she wanted to.

“Hi Levi, how are you?” she said with a bright smile, trying to light up the mood that was surrounding in his office.

“What do you think sherlock?” He spoke in a sarcastic tone and then let out a deep sigh. “O-Oh, Um I was wondering if you would like some help with the paperwork? I am free the whole day.” Her kind gestures always somehow warmed his heart, he liked the fact how in her free time she would always visit Levi and try her best to help him. But tonight was different, it was too much pressure loaded on him, he was not thinking straight.

He didn't respond to her offer and instead he got up from his seat behind the desk and gave her a piece of paper. “Read.” Was what he only said.

You took the paper from him and noticed....you were removed him Levi’s squad! “W-What....why.” You said so quietly but it had a very unhappy tone.

“You know why. You are too reckless, and I don't want that in my squad.” He lied and looked away, it was not because of your recklessness and never was because you were brave and perceptive. But in fact, it was because he wanted to keep you safe and away from harm because this time his squad was placed on the front and he moved you all the way on the back where it was safer. He does not want to lose you.

“I-I don't understand Levi...I though you trusted me-”

“Yea I don't trust you, and I clearly don't have time for you either.” You couldn't believe what he was saying to you, this behavior was out of nowhere and it made absolutely no sense! But, he was your source of motivation and inspiration and when he said that to you, it shattered your heart to pieces. You thought he had faith and trust in you and that's why he added you to his squad, you thought....you were important to him. Well, was important.

“Levi, please this makes no sense. At least explain to me why!” You yelled out, demanding an explanation for what the hell was evening going on.

“Don't argue with me.” He now gave you one of his hateful glares, and you know in a million years you would never be getting that from him, you were completely taken aback now. “Leave now! That’s an order L/N”.

You eyes were widen now, and your eyes were slowly starting to tear up. These words, completely damaged you and your feelings, he even called you by your last name which he never does. You never felt so hurt and your stomach sank which left you static and....heartbroken. Hearing this is a ego-killer for you. The paper you held slowly fell off from your hand, and you brought your hand up to cover your eyes and started to softly sob.

He noticed that quickly, and he wanted to come and comfort you but before he could do that you stormed off, slamming his door, y/n never wanting to see his face again.

Levi took a moment to process everything and then realized he had actually messed up everything. Both of you were so close and the bond and moments you both shared, Levi cherished that deeply. But, he ruined everything, shattered the bond, and now actually ironically losing you. He clenched his fist and closed his eyes tightly, “Fuck...The fuck is wrong with me?! Why am I so damn emotional.” And it was a fact, he was that when he bottled everything up and then let out his steam saying some bullshit.

It was days, and he didn’t even see or hear about Y/N. He did not get any sleep, staying up, overthinking his stupid mistake and regretting this all. His gilt, anger towards himself and grief started to grow by each day, hating himself how he hurt the person he had a crush on and someone he adored a lot which then lead to him thinking how to come to you with his true and deepest apology.

He tried to catch any chance to get you whenever you are alone and say apologize, but whenever he saw you, you would just jolt and try to run away and leave the place.

He then noticed from Hanji and the other scouts such as Armin and Mikasa that you were clearly avoiding Levi. He caught you by chance one evening as you were sitting down in the mass hall eating your sandwich alone so cutely and he just missed seeing that sight whenever you both had breaks and he would watch you eat cheerfully but....you were so down, that spirt was gone.

He was approaching you, and you then noticed that and felt your stomach sink, ‘Is he coming to me? Wait...he is, it’s only me here!’ You thought in your mind, panicking and not knowing what to do.

”Good evening.” He uttered, but you noticed there was some nervousness in that tone.

You did not look up at him and you left your sandwich that was half eaten on the plate, and got up. You lost your appetite, and you proceed to leave the mass hall, but you stopped in your steps when you heard Levi yell out. “No...d-don’t go. Please just stay for a bit.” The way he said it, was under such pain and he it sounded as if he was begging you. He really struggled doing this, but he would do it regardless if it was just to speak to you again for a bit.

He caught up to you, and took your wrist while his thumb was caressing your skin. You were still looking down, not wanting to see his face because you knew if you did now, you would tear up again.

“Can we talk please?” He said really quietly, and if the mass hall was not empty you wouldn't be able to grasp what he had said. Levi was clearly tensed and not sure if what he was doing is right, he never done this before, apologizing and talking about his feelings. But he would only, and only do this for the person he loved. Y/N.

“What do you want?” it came out more coldly then you expected and that made him hesitate. He remembered the image of your expression and you sobbing that day and it is still graved in his mind. He cant seem to get it out his head and he wanted to hear your forgiveness so it could go away.

“I fucked up, I know. But fuck, I...miss you.” He finally said, in a nervous and stuttering tone. He now moved his hand from your wrist to your soft and cold hands, and you could feel his warmth, warming your hand.

He brought up his other free hand and placed his palm on his forehead. Clearly this was hard for him and he felt such a jerk and an idiot cause all his words is now gone and he wasn’t sure how to say how apologetic he was and how you meant the world to him really.

But he know thought, How could he do this to someone who regularly checked on him, cared for him and also actually saw him as a normal person unlike the other scouts who thought he was heartless and just labeled as ‘strongest solider’. Y/N was the only who truly cared for his wellbeing and he admired that a lot. “Hey....I’m sorry. Everything I said wasn’t right. T-To be honest it was your bravery that made me fall for you...and care a lot more about you. So, please tell me What should I do to make it up for you?”

This caused you to finally look up to him and staring at his grey eyes, and after such a long time you were able to see his face clearly and close up which never fails to make your heart skip a beat. You stared at him for quite awhile, kind of surprised to what he said and the fact he was holding your hand meant a lot. But Levi took this as you still not wanting to talk to him, he wanted to say more and better things but he was quite bad formulating any more cause it him nervous and afraid to say something else to upset you further. He really did care about your feelings. “I won’t go....till I hear your answer. I waited long enough.”

You spoke, and after a long time hearing your voice this nearly made him tear up and that was because you were a big part of his life. “I can’t stay mad at you forever, so I forgive you. But, you hurted me and I cant forget that easily. But for now, Just....hold me.” You went near him and now placed both of your hands on his chest. He did not waste any second and pulled you in for a hug. It was probably his first time hugging you like this and he never knew it would make him have this fuzzy and sweet feeling like this. Of course, he would hold on to your waist, arm and shoulders sometimes during battle or when you needed some support to get up and move. But this was different, and he questioned himself how he never considered that.

Y/N and Levi both finally made up with each other, and he was really grateful for that and even the fact you forgave someone like Levi, he felt really lucky.

Of course, it will take some time for you to accept his apology, but he wont give up just yet and he really makes an effort everyday, you guys took it slow and he is more than willing to wait for you ♥

As, regret and remorse can lead a person to feel sorrow, this can cause a sense of sorrow for hurting someone such as Levi’s crush, and even though it was bad, this lead to him finally confessing and saying his true apology if it weren’t for this. Time is a healing process after all.

Once you finally sat down with Levi and talked back (after the countless times he tried to initiate a conversation or start something such as cleaning together but never got much a reaction from you) and had a small conversation with him asking how was his day. This melted his heart and he actually felt really happy inside that you finally started to speak to him. He missed your company, your sweet voice, and....that smile.

You surprised him further when you gave him tea (because he gave you so many things to somehow make you smile) and his eyes lit up, Levi never felt so happy in the last few weeks. Then he knew, that you. y/n, was his light and source of happiness. He drank the tea slowly cherishing it.

wow okay this was kind of emotional then I excepted it to be, but I honestly see a scenario like this happening where levi struggles and tries his best to own up his mistake and apologize and he would only be like this if it was to his crush and someone he loved cause this man gets nervous <3 so please y/n, give him some more hugs, he might not seem to ask for any but he is deeply inside craving for it. It’s his best comfort as it is coming from you! Anyways, please leave a like or a reblog if you enjoyed this and I hope you liked this anon 💖

[thehexxian]

Pennywise sex Drabble #2

(Non-con warning.)

You had been crying. That was obvious. Your face was red, tears dried already in your face and your eyes still dewy...

Damn that asshole! He wasn't worth of you anyway! You were always better then him! You don't even know why you bothered dating him in the first place....stupid Henry.....

He was 17 and so were you. He was the "big man on campus" of your high school and you were the beautiful, shy, quiet girl who was easily swayed by his bad boy routine. How stupid!

After only 3 months of dating him you broke it off...all he ever seems to want it to drink,hang out with those loser friends of his and tries to keep pressuring you into sex, but your a virgin...only the right guy is gonna take that from you and henry is definitely not the right guy.

You decided to cut down to the barrons, its getting dark but you don't care. You can't go home looking like this just to hear your mother with that "I told you so" speech about Henry...

He can go to hell.

You don't even realize how far your walking, how dark its getting, how chilly....youre to upset

It isn't until it begins to rain that you snap out if it...

Oh nooooo

Shit, the only place to get out of the rain is an old drain pipe...ugh...oh well...screw it. You run over and hide inside.

Minuets pass and the storm begins to rage. You know you aren't leaving anytime soon.

You begin to hear a faint sound coming from in the tunnel behind you.  Is that a bell? A jingling bell??? Here? You need to know what it is...now you really are acting stupid...follow the sound in the dark dirty tunnel..yeah that's always a smart idea...

You finally come to a grate...its a dead end, well no more venturing this way. Then you hear it again...close.... Behind you.

Before you can register it and turn your head slams against the grate. Everything goes fuzzy...you realize your bleeding, you try to regain your composure and look around, only to realize you are barely able to make out the shape of....a clown? You shake your head and your vision recenters. You see him...clear as day....a fucking clown...in the sewer.....this day gets better and better apparently...

"Now what would a little thing like you be doing down here?" He asks with a sort of giggle in his voice.

"The storm....I...I had to hide, I'm just.." You try but can't seem to form a real response...

He chuckles and notices the red marks beneath the blood dripping down. .tears...

He reaches out and you flinch, he already hurt you once...your trapped between him and a grate...

"What do you want with me?" You ask

"Well little lost birdy, i was gonna kill ya....but I see something in your mind that makes me.   Curious" he responds

As quickly as he says so you find yourself up against the grate, your face nearly against it, your hands bracing you. You don't realize what's about to happen until you feel your skirt rise up in the back...

"Please...don't..." You beg. 

That does nothing

"I see in your mind, this is something you feared doing with some boy, feared losing your precious innocence....that fear is absolutely delicious. Let's see how scares you can be little birdy" he chuckles

You feel his hands caress your inner thigh. Slowly they make their way up to your panties, you feel him begin to rub the outside of them, tracing the shape of your pussy, you don't want this......not like this!!!!!

You feel him close behind you, rubbing himself against you, you begin to feel his length grow hard against you. It feels huge, far to big to fit inside! He wouldn't!

As you mentally are freaking out over this you don't notice be has slid your panties to the side until you feel his finger against your opening. He slips it in, slowly pumping it in and out. You cry out...begging him to stop, pleading.  No avail...

Another finger joins in and soon you begin to feel heat rising in you...it feels...good...you hate this...

Minuets of this and you find yourself crying out and finding your climax.  

He withdrawals his fingers.

You hope its over....

No

You faintly hear the rustle if his clothing and then feel it...that large length pressing against your wet hole.. 

"Hold tight to those bars little birdy" he says as he slams the whole length into you in one thrust. You scream in pain. You realize blood is dripping from between your legs. 

Youre being raped. Your first time, your virginity, taken by this clown.

He is grunting and making all sorts of noises.. Telling you how tight you are, how wonderful it feels....you are screaming with each thrust. He is pounding into you hard and fast, you can't keep this up, your legs feel like jello. Like he reads your mind hearing this thought, he raises one of your legs up, forcing a new angle that allows him to fuck you even deeper. You feel that body wrecking cock of his hitting that wall of your body perfectly. Its beginning to make you hot again...

"You gonna do it again? Oh no...you have to wait to me little birdy. You can't feel good alone...we will do it together." He says

It hits you...

"Please..not inside me...don't cum inside"

"But where's the fun if I don't????"

A few more hard thrusts and he slams in harder then he has before and you feel it break that wall...his cock is throbbing and beginning to shoot thick ropes of cum into your unwilling womb....it feels like he is cumming forever...you find your climax again....

He bites into your shoulder. You scream in pain but he quickly backs off the bite.. Still buried deep inside you.

"Just a mark to show your owned"

You both still hear the rain storming. .

"Looks like you aren't leaving yet little birdy! Perfect! More time to play!!!" He sounds like a happy child..

You feel his cock harden again inside you....he isn't done...and at this point...

You don't want him to be done.. 

[makoodlesarchive]

hi hi hi! 'a gift' made me laugh so much oh my gosh. could i request a scenario or headcanons with dabi and a female reader who's self conscious of her laugh or her smile? (i'm not sure if you write for dabi or not, no worries if you don't!)

ahh thank you for requesting! this is definitely not what you had in mind and I apologise, but it fit one of the meet ugly prompts so well that i had to! this is so stupid, i’m so sorry

word count: 1280

dabi x reader

You’ve been self-conscious of your laugh for pretty much your entire life. After a few too many derisive comments at the formative age of thirteen (damn, kids were mean), you had practiced stifling your laugh until you had it down to a fine art. At most, a good joke will get a quiet puff of air out of your nostrils, or a very quiet chuckle. 

Good belly laughs were rare, purely for the reason that you were really nervous that your laugh was ugly. Scratch that, you knew your laugh was ugly. You were doing a public service, really, by keeping that sound to yourself. And you were protecting yourself from further nasty comments, which was an added bonus.

Sometimes, though, you couldn’t help it. That was the downside of having friends that knew you so well; they knew exactly what to say to make you totally lose your composure and crack up laughing. The bar you were in was a little scummy, but the drinks were cheap and the other patrons kept to themselves, leaving you and your friends free to get drunk and stupid. As your inhibitions were lowered, your control over your face slipped too and you found yourself grinning more and more at everything. You weren’t too drunk (not nearly as much as your friends, at least), but you were at the stage of tipsy where everything just seemed so much funnier than usual. 

Then, it happens. One of your friends cracks a joke, and you burst out laughing. Everyone laughs, sure, but your laugh is more like a bray and it damn near drowns out the noise of everyone else. You would normally be embarrassed, but you’re relaxed and surrounded by friends and no one in the dive bar is paying any attention to you.

You lean forward, elbows on the table and head dropped as you laugh. It only makes your friends crack up more -- your laugh might be ugly, but at least it’s the kind of laugh that seems to be contagious. Or maybe they’re laughing at you. You’re not too bothered either way; you’re used to it.

One minute you’re laughing, and the next you’re gasping as an arm locks tight around your middle and you’re heaved out of your chair to your feet, your back pressed against the length of something solid. The air is driven out of you all at once as something solid presses right under your rib cage and digs in hard. 

You splutter, both in shock and for air. The pressure relents momentarily, then comes again in little bursts. “What the fuck-” you manage to wheeze out, flailing your arms towards your friends. They’re staring at you open-mouthed, apparently just as shocked and bewildered as you.

That is, until one of your friends apparently comes to her senses, leaning across the table and raising a hand towards you as she shouts, “No! She’s not choking! She was laughing!”

“Hah?” comes a voice from your shoulder, and the pressure on your stomach finally relents.

You gasp and wheeze, and your knees buckle a little as the support behind you moves away. It takes a few seconds for realisation to catch up to you, and when it does you want to sink into the ground. 

“What the fuck? That was a laugh?” the voice comes again.

You steel yourself, and turn around on wobbly knees. When you see the guy, the wobbly knees only get worse. Fuck, he’s hot. Why you? Why would this happen to you? You laugh once and the hottest guy in the bar thought you were choking and tried to perform the goddamned Heimlich manoeuvre. 

You whimper, mortified.

Intense blue eyes lock onto you. “Damn. Here I was trying to be a nice person.”

“Thanks.” you blurt, and then promptly kick yourself. Thanks? What the hell are you thanking him for? Though, despite what he says, he doesn’t look like a nice person. He’s got a bad boy emo look going for him, and something about the scars and piercings are doing it for you for some reason. Maybe it’s the alcohol. He looks amused, but you’re worried you’re losing his attention. Without thinking, you blurt, “I think you bruised my ribs.”

Dark brows raise until they disappear into his mop of hair. He doesn’t say anything.

“Which is fine,” you say hurriedly, flushing, “Not a problem, really. I, uh…I don’t mind.”

Silence reigns as you trail off. The guy just keeps looking at you, a weird half-smirk on his face and his eyes half-lidded. “It looked and sounded like you were choking to death, and all your asshole friends were laughing at you. Wouldn’t be unusual here, but the last thing we need is a dead body and cops crawling all over the place.”

It’s probably for the best that you don’t devote much time to wondering why exactly they don’t want the police here. Any shady activities that might be taking place are really none of your business. Feeling suddenly bold, you affect a pout, “I thought you were doing it to be a nice person.”

That half-smirk widens into a full-blown grin. His teeth gleam, the whiteness a sharp contrast to the darkness of the scar tissue, and you clench your jaw hard. What the fuck? Why was he so attractive? You can’t believe that this is a real situation you’ve found yourself in. “Well,” he says, voice low and silky, “I can’t complain about the position.”

Position? You frown, confused for a moment before you remember the feeling of his front pressed entirely up against your back. You flush violently, mortified, as you realised that in the process of his attempted Heimlich manoeuvre he had just been sort of awkwardly humping your back.

“Right.” you choke out, tossing a nasty look over your shoulder as one of your friends stifles a poorly concealed snigger. You can feel his eyes tracking up and down your body, and it only makes you blush harder. You can’t remember the last time you felt so embarrassed, and you have absolutely no idea what to say next.

Apparently, this guy is taking great enjoyment out of your humiliation, because he’s still grinning lazily. “You make those sounds on purpose?”

“Obviously not, who has an ugly laugh on purpose-?” you start, offended, but you stop talking when he starts to laugh at you.

“I like a girl that’s vocal.” he leers. His eyes are really intense, like maybe the brightest blue you’ve ever seen. You should probably scoff at the innuendo, or roll your eyes, but you find yourself swallowing hard instead.

“Yeah?” you ask, your voice stupidly breathy. Behind you, your friends have started to snicker amongst each other. You would be annoyed, but you can’t really blame them; this situation is absurd. “I’m Y/N.”

His smile changes into something smaller, a little darker. His gaze drifts briefly over your shoulder before settling back on your face. “Dabi.”

“Right. Well. I should, um. Go back to my friends.”

There’s a moment where you nearly think that Dabi is about to stop you from returning to your table, but it quickly passes and he shrugs. 

You sit back down with your friends and watch Dabi drift back towards the bar. It could have ended there, if it weren’t for the looks the two of you kept exchanging throughout the rest of the night, with his expression getting steadily more suggestive and your face getting redder and redder.

And if, at the end of the night, you slip away from your friends and meet him by the door, well. You suppose your laugh isn’t so bad all the time.

[musicallisto]

without fail tag

THE “WITHOUT FAIL” TAG — List five things that you, WITHOUT FAIL, weave into or explore in your stories, whether it be specific themes or tropes, character archetypes, allusions to other literary works, what have you! It really can be anything that you consistently include in your narratives for whatever reason. Then invite others to share theirs by tagging them!

I was tagged by @deadlymodern - thank you so much for tagging me, this tag is amazing and I loved reading your answers! I can tell you have a very thorough approach to your writing & themes, it’s so cool!

(tagging people at the bottom of the post if you want to skip)

1. flowers, skies & words

grouping them together since they're all related to a wider, general literary device: symbols and allegories in my stories. Without fail, I’ll always use flower symbolism to evoke certain themes, places, characters... withered petals for death, blossoms for youth, you name it, it’s probably been in one of my stories. just consider my main WIP’s title, The Grave of Roses (Le Tombeau des Roses). It’s a little basic, and has been used time and time before in literature, but I still love it.

Other elements that often make it into my stories as symbols are planes (because I love aviation obviously, but also as a symbol of breaking free, independence, of man’s domination on mortality, what with having tamed the skies, but also his frail condition and how everything hangs on a thread). Also, the sky is pretty.

And lastly, words, stories, novels always have their place in my stories, and more often than not one of my characters is a writer, or someone who uses words and stories as some kind of comfort, outlet, or a driving force.

At its [the tombstone] foot, below the name, red roses piled up, enough of them to cover ten graves. A single vermilion bud, a wind-swept poppy, clashed with the rest of the bouquet, and Samuel knew that it was William's children who had placed it there. Only they knew that he didn't even like roses anymore, and that he would come to lay poppies on his father's memorial every time he returned to London...

The tomb was both smaller and prettier than Samuel imagined, less opulent than England would have wanted to give its precious child. The morning sun, like a caress, illuminated the epitaph, a Latin verse that Samuel had known in the past. “Bury me southward,” he heard William say so clearly that he almost turned around, "so that I can look at England and France in the same breath." His name, however, was drenched in full light, facing east, and inexplicably this saddened Samuel.

“And there it is... it's pretty, don't you think? I don't know if he would have liked it... You probably know it better than I do...”

“And why do you care about that, huh? You don't even believe in God.” “He's a writer. He believes in symbols.” “He believes in vanity, alright.”

“I think he would have liked it anyway,” he nodded in agreement, his eyes glued to the lonely poppy. (Translation)

2. parental roughnesses

this was bound to come, because I feel like we were all pretty fucked up at some point in our lives from our upbringing. I didn’t go for straight up “parental issues” because I don’t deal with like, abusive or absent parents or anything, just complicated relationships between parents and their children, but who still love each other. Oftentimes it has to do with one of the children idealizing the heck out of their parent and slowly realizing that they make mistakes and are not a hero at all, and/or unmeetable expectations and parental pressure. but it’s not like I’m projecting or anything lol

“You never knew Father, William,” Grace stopped him immediately [...]. “Don't you dare pretend you know what it's like.”

“Growing up without a father is not necessarily better than losing him in childhood! Everyone here has suffered from his disappearance, Grace. You have no idea how much I miss him, despite never meeting him. But that's all in the past now. And there's no reason for there to be another war.”

“Of course there is!” she retorted ferociously, despite the tears spilling from her eyes. “Of course there is, and they're going to send you there like Father, and you'll want to play hero like Father, and then you'll get shot down like a dog! Where's it going to be this time, huh? Above Luxembourg, just like him, or maybe somewhere in your beloved France?” (Translation)

3. patriotism

One way or another, all my stories always deal with patriotism, nationalism, pride in one’s country and more broadly speaking one’s relationship to it. It questions what it means to belong to a country, to share one culture, one language; does it justify acting in the benefit of one’s country, and where do you draw the line before you intentionnally harm others’; what even is a country, a nationality, and it what sense do you belong to one, and what do you owe it, if you even owe it anything? Is it wrong or right to feel love and attachment to your place of origin? And what does it mean to fight for your country, for its values, for its people? & other things of the like. It probably stems from my own experience as a binational person; growing up, I was always asked stuff like “but who do you root for in a football game” “but are you like really French or not?” “if Spain and France got into a war what would you do?”, and this all lead me to question “am I more French or am I more Spanish - which one am I, and which one would others perceive me to be - do I need to pick a side? And how can I express my affection to these places that raised me both differently, without undermining the other - or others? can I still be proud of my heritage given the horrors my countries have committed in the past?”. I still haven’t found a definitive answer, so my writing is just me throwing trails out to the world and hoping I’ll figure it out someday. that’s why my stories often have a war setting; firstly I just love historical fiction, and secondly it’s the perfect backdrop for all these questions to unfold.

William laughed at the idea - he, a true Frenchman! It was a very silly thought. He may have loved what he had seen of Charlotte's country, but England was not to be ashamed of any other land, for it was the only one he would love until his last breath. (Translation.)

4. just a hint of supernatural

I love me a good ghost story, and I’m a fan of everything spooky, but what’s subtly spooky, and not the gory, in-your-face horror. This particular theme may have increased since I saw The Haunting of Hill House which completely OBLITERATED ME with how it uses the house and its ghosts to tell a story of family and trauma and memories... but I’ve loved ghost stories forever. Another piece that truly resonated with me was One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad) by Gabriel García Márquez. It was my first dive into the world of magical realism and I didn’t make it out of there the same person I was when I entered. This one is not necessarily included in every piece without fail, because some are just too anchored in reality, but if it’s not a straight-up spirit or an otherworldly creature, I’ll always find a way to include an aspect of superstition, a myth, a legend, a tale from faraway that is neither proved nor disproved throughout the story. It truly adds to the atmosphere of the world, even in a very realistic and gritty setting, I believe.

I hear murmurs of legends among the soldiers. [...] One of those stories caught my attention, I must admit... It is not very special, nothing more than a children's tale, but I thought it was beautiful enough to please your Romantic soul. Some pilots speak of a cemetery, somewhere in the countryside north of London, which has something mystical about it, lost in the flowers that sway as far as the eye can see, in the calm rhythm of the wind, wrapped in the heady scent of eternal spring, and where the bravest warriors would go to rest forever, tired of their exploits and the continual explosions. No one knows exactly where it is or what to do to be buried there, but this beautiful image simply floats like a dream in the minds of many and, I confess, in mine as well since I first heard about it.

It is said that there only flowers dare to disturb the heroes in their sleep... This fragment of silence is called the Grave of the Roses.

So if I were to leave you, if you were to hear that I am gone...

With a bit of luck, that is where you will find me.

5. love

this one is broader and less obvious than you might think. Of course, I’ll always, always implement an element of romance to my story (and more often than not it’s angsty with star-crossed lovers or insurmountable obstacles or forbidden romances and whatnot), but there’s more to it. I don’t think I have ever written a story that is entirely grim and bleak, simply because I do not believe the world is built like that. I’ve said time and time again that love is my favorite thing in the world, and I believe it is the force that drives us all forward and connects us all together; love is, to me, the truest power of humanity, and its inherent purpose. And love covers all subjects and all types of relationships, but my absolute favorite ways to explore and show love in my stories is through long-lasting, rock-solid friendships (because friendships are often overlooked both in fiction and real life), and just a grandiose love letter to humanity as a whole. I’m an optimist, and many people who have suffered more than I have would deem me naive for thinking this - and I cannot blame them -, but as Anne Frank put it more bravely than I ever could, “despite everything, I still think humans are good at heart”. My stories are always born out of love and made for love. For the love of humanity and kindness and literature and love of myself, too, because sometimes I just like rereading the words and thinking, “wow, I’ve made it this far. look at me go.” In a word, yes, I would say that is what it boils down to; my work, but also what I hope my entire life and being will be. An ode to love.

“He admired you and truly loved you, you know. You were a good leader, I'm sure, and a good friend, above all.”

He thought she was going to put her hand on his shoulder, and prepared to bend to avoid it, but instead she came to rest on the polished marble of the tomb, which was already beginning to erode at the corners. The soft light bathed her hand, and Samuel's on the other corner, still resting above William's surname, the only thing he had been proud of from beginning to end.

“And I loved him too. I loved them all. If you only knew...”

well, I got carried away, as I always do when talking about my writing, but it made me miss it so much. I haven’t worked on any of my projects since literally October and I’m feeling the void rn. anyway, thank you again for enabling me to ramble about what I love most, Thais! and I’m tagging @softeninglooks, @lxncelot, @myriadimagines​, @swanimagines & @randomfandomimagine + plus any writer who wants to talk about their marvelous work <3

[lihikainanea]

No hate because I don't mean to offend it's just I've always been told otherwise and I'd like your input. Genuinely, how do you fight against a grown man that's twice your size when you're so small??? Like could you throw Bill around for example? I just don't understand how that works. I've always been told that no matter how strong a woman is, if a man twice her size takes her on she'll lose. And that martial arts won't win against a guy who street fights and you need to defend yourself.

No offence taken, bubs. I get this question a lot, and I’m always happy to explain these things to people who ask out of genuine curiosity. For people who ask out of arrogance (ie: usually dudes), I tend to prefer a more demonstrative approach.

There are a few things that make this whole “martial arts is useless against people bigger and stronger than you” thing a total misconception, so let’s outline some of them.

1) Martial arts is never about strength or force. Well, not your own anyway. The concept of martial arts was created with one very, very obvious thing in mind: That you will usually get attacked by someone bigger and stronger than you. I can’t speak for all martial arts, but as a kyokushinkai, I can tell you how we train and what we believe. Martial arts is not about your strength, or your force--but rather, it is about using your opponent’s strength and force against them. Have you ever thrown a punch at the air? I’m talking a real punch, one with your whole body weight--ever throw a haymaker like that at absolutely nothing? Let me tell you what happens: you go flying. More specifically, you pitch forward at the waist, you lean your upper body forward, you step into it as you try to regain your balance--and then your body’s natural inclination to counter that weight kicks in, and you lean back to try and regain your centre.

Now, imagine that as you throw that punch, the person in front of you just hooks a hand behind your shoulder and guides you even more into the direction you were already catapulting yourself in. Then imagine as your body is pitching forward from your own force, all of that forward momentum driving into one sole place--imagine the person in front of you just raises a knee, sinks it into your gut. All of this--every modicum of it--is your own force. Not theirs.

Additionally, there are also spots on the body where you can cause maximum damage with minimum efforts--these are called pressure points, most people don’t have more than a basic understanding of them, and they are a bitch. There are a lot of them in a lot of easy to reach places, and none of them require much more than a tap. Take your fingers--your index and your middle finger--and put them on the spot under your earlobe, right where your jaw connects to your skull. Push down there--that’s pretty sensitive, right? Now look at your hand, where your thumb connects to your wrist. Tuck your thumb into your palm.

If you tap someone on either side where their jaw connects, with that bony part of your hand--and you have a solid 5cm of space here, so you can miss and still be fine--you will knock them out. Every single time.

How this is applicable to the argument: People tend to think of fighting as a Rock’Em Sock’Em game. You stand in front and you punch each other. If that’s how fighting worked, then punch for punch--yeah, a dude who is 6′4 and 240lbs is stronger than me. But martial artists are craftier than that--and if I know that I won’t win the brute force game, then I don’t play the brute force game. After 12 years of training, I have 238975854569 other games that he doesn’t.

So yes, I could throw Bill around. But the whole point is--I would never have to. Strength would be his fight, because he’s a big dude. If I know my strength won’t win, then I won’t fight that way.

2) Speed and accuracy

Again, I can only speak as a kyokushinkai. But something that we emphasized was that there was a need, when you train, to constantly be uncomfortable. Are we throwing punches? Okay great, here put a weighted belt on only one side of your body and also these rubber bands on your wrist are connected to a guy behind you who will pull your hand back every time you try to throw it forward. Are we practicing defending against surprise attacks, or accuracy? Great, here kick this tiny ping pong ball using only this part of your foot, and wear a blindfold while you’re at it.

12 years of this.

I will reiterate that standing in front of a dude, square on, throwing timed punches--I will lose. He will be stronger than me. But thankfully, that’s...not ever how a fight works.

What allows me to win against a guy of that size is my speed, and my accuracy.  Let me tell you a little something about how people punch: people don’t know how to punch. Their features pinch in their face, and their neck tightens. An arm is drawn back--way back--and usually, the leading foot is raised just a tad, on the heel, so it’s just the ball of the foot on the ground. The fist comes through the air in a circular arc, reaching to connect to the side of your face as the person steps forward. The punch’s natural progression is from one of your shoulders to the other--if you can imagine that pathway. The entire thing is circular, it is energy-consuming, but more than that--it’s predictable.

I have spent 12 years getting punched by men stronger than me, who were trained to punch. Men who spent 20 years training to punch. I don’t see those coming, for a few reasons: they’re too fast, but mostly, we have been trained to not “give away” our strikes. Our faces don’t twitch anymore. We give no indication that a punch is coming, until we’ve actually punched you. There’s no wind up. There’s no arc. There’s no shift in weight--it is a direct line, and it is immediate. And devastating. We punch to break cinder blocks. Your face is not as strong as a cinderblock.

Fighting these dudes who give nothing away, I can say that in a street fight against someone--things are moving in slow motion for me. And I can confirm this, because I’ve been jumped twice in my life. Everything the opponent did, it looked like he was moving through molasses. I recognized the sudden tensing in his facial features (as competitors, do you know where we look when we fight? At the hollow of the neck on our opponent. Because of the involuntary way it clenches when they’re about to throw a strike.) I saw the arm wind back--way the fuck back. It gave me a half a second--but that’s a half a second head start, and that’s all the time I need. I can deflect. I can stop. I can strike back.

How this is applicable to the argument: Strength and force don’t even come to the party when an opponent is faster than you, because you can’t exude force against something that you can’t grab or strike. You also can’t exude force against something that strikes you right as you’re attempting to strike it.

And because we train so much on accuracy, it means that I can hit the spot that I mean to hit, with the force I mean to hit it with, under most circumstances. Including on a moving, erratic, unpredictable target. And if I miss, then I have the reflexes fast enough to strike something that was just made available to me in my miss. Example: I go to strike a groin, and he covers? Most men have an incredibly fast reflex to cover their groin. That’s fine, because it means that his hands just went down to block my strike. And when his hands go down, you know what he’s not protecting?

His head. Off with it.

(it’s also important to note that the first thing we are ever taught to protect, is our head. This is so deeply engrained in us. And the number one thing that people always punch for, is the head. When you spend 12 years protecting it against 5th degree black belts, believe me some drunk dude in a bar is not even going to get close to it without dying first.)

3) Tolerance for pain

I mentioned before that if you have never gotten punched before, it is an incredibly jarring experience. You panic. You freeze. Your knees give out. You maybe scream, you probably start to cry, you get really freaked out. There’s so many things that play on the brain in those situations--that you’re in danger, that you’re under attack, that you don’t know what to do, that the punch caused some serious damage, that you’re in pain, that somebody tried to hurt you. All of these things are terrifying, and they’re a very natural panic response to the situation.

Over the course of 12 years, I have gotten punched and kicked at full force--my face, my stomach, my chest, my head--millions of times. Millions. It doesn’t incite panic anymore, but it sure does incite rage.

Kyokushinkai go through various exercises to numb ourselves to pain. We punch telephone books covered in burlap, to kill the nerve endings in our knuckles. When we’re past that, we move onto concrete. We whack our shins with baseball bats to break down the microfibres in the bone, so they’ll not only grow back stronger--but they’ll grow back numb. We stand there, and we let the entire class punch us. Kick us. We don’t block--we absorb it. In kyokushin tournaments, if you show pain, you automatically lose. That means that if I take a kick to the head and I grimace, if I grunt or suck in a breath or otherwise show any emotion--I forfeit the fight. Immediately.

All of this takes the shock value out of experiencing pain, and more importantly, it re-programs your brain to replace it with something else. We have been, essentially, reprogrammed. That’s the only word I can think of for this. The normal brain is programmed that when you get punched, you feel pain. The kyokunshinkai brain is programmed that when you get punched, you feel fucking blind rage.

How this is applicable to the argument: He might be stronger, and he might land the hit. But I have been punched much harder by men who have been trained to use their bodies as weapons. I have submitted my body to that for 12 years. So he may land the hit. But it won’t hurt me, because for 12 years, I have been through worse. And if he lands the hit, refer to item 2 on how I can still win. Most people throw the punch thinking it will end the fight. It’s rather shocking when you throw the punch and a harder one lands on you 2 seconds later.

4) We understand body mechanics.

This is kind of all of the points rolled into one. Martial artists have an innate understanding of pressure points, how to manipulate them, but more than that--we understand how the body moves. We understand actions, and counter-actions. We understand involuntary muscle twitches. We understand the ebb and flow, the sway, the centre lines. Gravity.

Up top I mentioned that in competition, we stare at the other person’s throat when we fight. This is not only because it’s one of the places where your peripheral vision is most effective (you can see all movement in their arms and legs), but because the body basically gives involuntary muscle twitches there before any other movement is made. If something there twitches, then something is about to come flying at your head.

But we also understand that for anybody who hasn’t been trained, a contortion of the facial features precedes strike. It’s a running joke amongst martial artists, this idea that “a punch comes from your face.” It does. there is always a constriction of the facial features before a strike.

We understand the body mechanics of a poorly thrown punch. We understand that to get more force, people will swing back, shift their weight to their back leg before pitching forward, planting their front leg, swinging their arm way behind them as their gravity shifts to the front and they launch it. A martial artist would look at this situation, and manipulate it.

So when the dude shifts his weight onto his back leg and draws his arm back--you break his back leg. Chop it down like a fucking tree, which is easy to do when his weight is on it. Or you let him throw the punch, and you move--just a slight toss to the side, guide his arm where it was going anyway if you want to, and with a little downward momentum this guy is eating pavement. And again, it’s his own momentum. You’re just nudging him to where he was already going.

As martial artists we understand centrelines and counterbalance. We understand that sometimes you need to swing things up to have enough momentum to bring them down (a double collar grab), we understand that you need to oppose the force to gain enough momentum to go with the force (a double wrist grab on you that turns into a forearm lock on them).

How this is applicable to the argument: if I could hone in on something here, and it’s only because it’s something that took me a long time to learn: we understand how to force someone to fight our fight. For years and years I would adapt to someone else’s fight. If he was a garbage truck on the mats, standing there and pounding on me, I would morph into a garbage truck too and just stand there, take it, and punch back--instead of working my angles, getting off his centre, not giving him the access to get into a punching rhythm. And against a big tall dude, a big strong dude--no, I can’t reach his head.

But I can make his head come to me.

You learn that a groin kick will lower an opponent’s hands, and it will buckle their knees in protection. Cause them to crouch. You learn that a well positioned punch low on the abdomen--say, the bladder--will fold a person in half, which brings their head much closer to you. You learn to get what you want. You want the back leg? You put yours forward. Offer it up. You hand it to them on a silver platter and let them believe they have it. You want the ribs? You throw up high, so their hands come up. You want the groin? You give them your hands. Because essentially--they don’t have your hands. You have theirs, and then bullseye.

Which brings me to my fifth and final point....

5) Adaptability.

As martial artists, we have options. We have a lot of options. We like options. We don’t believe in one fight. We don’t believe you’re ever really stuck.  But we do believe in something else, that is very dear to us. A philosophy, of sorts, and it goes like this:

Every single part of me is a weapon and every single part of you is a target.

We know how to use what’s left, we know how to use what’s available. If you have one of my hands, I have 3 other weapons I can strike you with. If I kick for your groin and I miss or you block, I now know that your head is unprotected and you’re hunched over. It means I can knock you out, it means I can reach and literally rip your ears off (sorry kids, self-defence is nasty). If I throw a punch for your solar plexus and you move, I can hit you from any angle within a 5 foot radius because that’s how I’ve been trained. If you break my leg, then I’ll remember that time that I broke my leg in competition and I still finished the fight, because I know that my adrenaline is so far off the charts that I still have a good 20 minutes before I’ll feel the pain.

If I kick and you block, I know how to throw another 3 kicks before my foot lands--all at different areas of the body. If I punch and you block, I know how to punch another 6 times and kick another 3 and one of them is bound to land, and hurt you.

How this is applicable to the argument: Everybody’s got a plan ‘til they get punched in the face. Most people start a brawl with some semblance of a plan in mind--even if that plan is just “I’m gonna throw this punch that this fucker won’t ever see coming and knock him the fuck out.”

Martial artists don’t have a plan. Martial artists wait until you reveal your plan, and then we just make sure we don’t let you carry through with it. I hope this helps shed some light, bubs <3

[doc-pickles]

this love is worth the fight

Fun Fact: I had such a hard time choosing a song from Lover, mainly because there are so many good songs on the list. (I feel like I’m gonna say that about every single day so don’t mind me) I almost went with Cruel Summer or Paper Rings because they are SUCH Jolex songs, but I kind of wanted to push myself this week. 

I ended up going with Afterglow because I knew it would be perfect for a fluffy fix it fic (my favorite type of Jolex fics hehe) and I really love how it came out. So without further ado, here’s my Afterglow, angst to fluff inspired fix it fic!

(Also, technically this *could* be a part two to my Red/I Almost Do fic. I didn’t write it that way but reading it back it could be interpreted that way since I use some of the same plot lines)

-

I lived like an island, punished you with silence

Went off like sirens, just crying

Why'd I have to break what I love so much?

It's on your face, don't walk away, I need to say…

The world, for what it’s worth, did not stop spinning when Alex Karev disappeared off the face of it. For a moment, it did feel like everything might come to a grinding halt and Jo Karev’s world would never be the same again. But the nagging feeling, the pressure in her chest that kept her up at night, began to ease the longer and longer Alex refused to answer his wife’s calls. 

Jo finds herself working late nights at the hospital, the lonely hallways a better companion than the quiet loft that she shared with Alex. No one questions her motives, if they do they don’t do it to her face, and for that Jo is grateful. The reprieve from the never ending questions about her well being were getting old, she thinks that Link might’ve yelled at everyone they know to leave her alone. Either way, the quiet moments she spends at night with herself help Jo get her mind into a stable space.

She had come to terms with the realities of her new life, that someday someone would call her and tell her Alex was dead or that he had sent divorce papers or he was in a coma, lying somewhere unable to reach her. It didn’t matter what scenario Jo drummed up, the pain of Alex leaving had come and gone sometime in the past month that she had failed to hear from her husband. 

Her feet are walking across the first floor reception on her way to the ER when Jo hears it. She only pauses for a second at first, because she is absolutely certain that she’s hallucinating things. But she hears it again, her heart and feet stopping in tandem as she listens to the voice that she now knows is really there, really speaking to her.

“Jo!”

Jo’s eyes find Alex standing behind her, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans like he does when he’s forced to confront something he doesn’t want to. His beard is thick and scruffy, Jo almost thinks he must not have shaved since the last morning they spent together. Alex’s eyes are tired, his face holds an exhausted expression, and Jo can’t will her feet to move towards the man she had presumed dead. 

“We need to talk,” Alex speaks. Jo hears him, she really does, but she can’t comprehend what he’s saying. “Jo? Are you listening to me?”

Her brain catches up finally, a hand coming to cover her mouth as Jo lets a sob break through the tension of her and Alex’s reunion. Her feet are the next to recover, moving towards Alex at a frenzied pace. Her hands are around his neck, pulling him close to her as she cries. Jo can feel the breath that Alex releases when her hands make contact with him, relief flooding both of them as they touch for the first time in four and half weeks.

“Jo, I’m so sorry,” the words are a whisper, Alex’s breath hitting Jo’s cheek as he continues to hold her just a little tighter than usual. “I… I’m sorry. I’m just sorry.”

“You came back,” her words are quiet, muffled as she buries her face in Alex’s shoulder. “You're here. You came back.”

Despite telling herself for weeks on end that Alex had left her or was dead somewhere, Jo can’t help the tears that are flowing down her face. In all of the scenarios she had gone through, Alex coming home wasn’t one that she had let herself entertain. The hope would surely break her heart if he did end up being dead or gone somewhere. 

“Of course I came back, I love you Jo,” Alex pulled back to look into Jo’s eyes, fingers coming up to brush her hair out of her eyes. “I love you and I swear I’m not leaving again unless you’re by my side. I just… we have a lot to talk about.”

“I don’t care, I thought you were dead,” Jo cried, eyes welling up with tears again as she grasped Alex’s face desperately. “I don’t care Alex because you came home and that’s all I wanted and-”

“I was with Izzie,” the words freeze Jo, her hands stopping where they were on his cheeks. “Like I said… a lot to talk about”

+

Jo finds herself sitting across from Alex an hour later, fingers nervously pulling at the edge of their sofa. She hadn’t said more than three words since Alex had told her where he had been, too scared of what the next words to come out of his mouth would be. Jo had handled a lot of rejection and pain in her life, but this blow might be the one that undid her well and truly.

“I’m sorry I didn’t answer your calls or texts. I was… busy, distracted and I... ,” Alex sighed, Jo’s eyes finally flitting up to look at him. “When I was calling people for Mer’s trial, Izzie was on my list. And she… she has twins, I could hear them in the background when I talked to her. She told me she used the embryos we had frozen, that the twins were mine. So I went to Kansas, I had to go to Kansas and see them. They’re my kids, Jo.”

The world does seem to stop spinning for a moment, Jo taking in what Alex was telling her. Her stomach dropped, panic welling up inside of her as she realized that Alex had come back to leave her, to build a new life with Izzie and their kids. Jo couldn’t stop the tears that began to silently roll down her face as her heart began to beat out of time.

“Jo? Jo, baby please,” Alex was kneeling in front of her now, hands holding hers in a desperate attempt to get her to listen to him. “Babe, you gotta let me finish. I told you I’m not leaving you, let me finish.”

“You have kids! Somewhere outside of Seattle you have kids and in no universe are you going to know that and stay here with me, Alex,” Jo’s voice was shaking, but the words rolled off her tongue so easily that she knew this was a fear she had held too tightly for too many years. “I meant what I said, you’re a good man. Good men don’t leave their kids thousands of miles away to be with their wife, we both know that all too well.”

Her and Alex hold each other's stares for a moment and Jo wants to scream and kick and beg him not to go. She can see that look on his face, the one that means his mind is far far away and she knows deep down that he’s counting down the seconds until he can leave her and get back to whatever perfect life he had already started to build in Kansas. Of all the people to leave her in her life, she had never anticipated losing Alex, especially not like this. 

“Izzie is remarried, to this great guy named Vince. He… the kids love him and she loves him and…,” Alex let out a small chuckle, tears welling up in his eyes as well. “It’s exactly the life I had pictured for her. She’s happy and she’s alive, she’s got some great kids and I don’t… I don’t feel the need to stay there and be a dad to those kids because that perfect life Izzie has? I want that, I want a big house and kids running around like crazy and I want it all with you, Jo Karev. I can’t picture that with anyone but you. And I’m sorry that it took weeks of me laying alone in a hotel room in freakin’ Kansas to realize that, but I love you so much, Jo. I don’t ever wanna not see you again.”

Jo stared at Alex for a moment longer before reaching a hand up and slapping his shoulder. The worry she had been holding onto, the fear that he was going to leave for this new life, slipped away and Jo almost cried at the relief she felt. She wasn’t shocked that he had wanted to see his kids, see the two little people who were half him. And if you had asked her, Jo would’ve bet money on Alex insisting that he needed to help raise them. But he didn't… he came back home to her. 

“Fucking asshole! Maybe you should’ve started with the ‘I’m staying in Seattle’ part so I didn’t start spiraling out,” Jo exclaimed, her hands coming up to hold Alex’s face, just as he had done for her. She met his nervous eyes with a smile, leaning down to kiss him chastely. “I’m glad you aren’t left wondering about what could’ve been, about them. But maybe call me next time? Please?”

Alex nodded, Jo’s fingers running over the thick beard on his cheek as she kissed him once more. She knew that he would need time, that despite him coming back home to her seeing his kids was a huge shock. Alex had stood by her side more times than she deserved though, walking him through this was nothing compared to the psycho ex husband and the biological mom trauma that she had saddled him with. 

“I want it all with you too, you crazy man. White picket fences and a dog and kids and everything we didn’t get growing up,” Jo let a chuckle slip from her as she rested her forehead against Alex’s. “I missed you so much, I’m gonna keep you in bed for a few days just to make sure you remember what you’d be missing if you left me.”

Alex’s deep laugh sounds then, the sound that Jo had been so desperately craving to hear. She kisses him again, hungrily brushing her tongue against his lips and pulling him onto the couch without a second thought.

“I promise you Jo,” Alex’s breath is hot against Jo as his fingers trail under her shirt. She fights off the urge to close her eyes in pleasure and meets his eyes again. “I’m always gonna come back home to you.”

“I promise you Jo,” Alex’s breath is hot against Jo as his fingers trail under her shirt. She fights off the urge to close her eyes in pleasure and meets his eyes again. “I’m always gonna come back home to you.”

[ma-gic-gay]

Finally, the legal proceedings begin again, with testimony from rather dull people, if he's being honest. The jury, it's clear to him at least, is fairly calm at the moment, but there's not a chance in hell that Cyrus is getting off. Not this time. And that terrifies him.

A man with nothing to lose is a very dangerous man. A mobster with nothing to lose? Absolutely fucking terrifying.

A few hours and legal spats between Diane and Helstrom later, court is adjourned until tomorrow, at 8 am. Which, he calculates, leaves Cyrus with a fifteen hour period to cause havoc before the next day.

He sighs, "C'mon, let's get you home," to an unresponsive Carly. "Carly?"

"What?" She asks, snapping back into reality.

"What are you thinking about?" Jason asks, mind running with concern. After all, normally when she's zoning out while thinking, she's making a plan.

And the last plan she made landed them in this courtroom.

"The testimony. I mean, they're genuinely trying to make it seem like you or I would concoct some plan and lure Cyrus into raping and kidnapping me. What the hell do they think of us?" Carly asks, a single tear dripping down her face. "I mean, neither of us are perfect, I know, but to think that I'd do that- that you would do that, it's insulting!"

"They're trying to get under our skin, okay? There's proof they're lying through their teeth right now, Carly. Cyrus is a sick bastard and he's going to jail for the rest of his miserable life. You and I get to walk free while he rots. We will win this." He says, sitting back down in his chair to hug her.

Carly lets out a sad laugh, "God, I hate this."

"I do too."

"I need to get out of here," she sighs, standing up. "You coming?"

"I'm the one who's driving, of course I'm coming," he smiles, holding up the keys just above where she can reach. "Ha, very funny. You're in no shape to drive. Let's go."

"You know, if you would just let me drive, I would be a lot happier right now because I'd have something much better to do than-" Carly starts, stopping her statement suddenly as they leave the courthouse.

He surveys the area immediately, seeing not one, not two, but three armed guys who don't exactly look like cops aiming right at the pair. Fuck. His fingers play at his belt loops, but he doesn't have a gun on him today; it's a court day, why the hell would he bring a gun to a courtroom? That's just plain stupid and it's practically asking to be arrested.

His instincts kick in and he realizes they're gonna make the shot. Unlike the other (relatively shitty) gunmen, assassin's, whatever Cyrus calls them that he's sent after Jason, these ones actually look like they're capable of firing a gun correctly. And they're getting paid hinges on whether or not they hit Carly and him.

Bullets fly out of all three guns at the same time and he shoves Carly out of the way, yelling, "Run!" and ducking down himself but it's too late.

He's been shot, he can feel it as he stumbles onto the ground. His head pounds in his skull and he swears for a minute he can feel his brain. Ow. "Jason!" Carly screams and he can hear her footsteps as he tries to figure out where he's bleeding. "Get back here you sick fucks!" She screams even louder at the gunmen, which probably means they're gone. "I'm going to shoot you myself the second I lay eyes on any of you I swear to god."

Turns out they were just getting paid to shoot him. Carly was just the way they'd manage it.

That knowledge is somewhat comforting as the pain of the bullet continues to hit him in waves, coupled with that of banging his head on the ground when he fell from it. It's a very painful situation for the assassin, who can hear himself moaning in pain.

He's enveloped by a haze of blonde as she cries, pulling out her phone. "I need an ambulance immediately at the courthouse. My best friend was shot in the chest and he's got a head wound." That explains the pain; a chest bullet hurts pretty damn bad. It's not a fun thing. Hence why he doesn't normally shoot in the chest, but rather either a non lethal area or something like the head or the heart. The head wound, though, that doesn't make sense. If he's got a head wound, shouldn't he be unconscious by now? "Well I'm not exactly sure why he got shot, lady, but you better get an ambulance here before I sue this goddamn town for negligence of a shot person!"

A chuckle leaves his throat through the pain as the world starts to get fuzzy around the edges, despite his best efforts to have it not happen like that. "Jason, no, keep your eyes open! Look at me!" A frantic Carly screams, pulling what looks like a really ugly scarf out of her bag and putting it over where he assumes the bullet is. "Just keep your eyes open. Focus on me."

In the distance, he can hear an ambulance's siren. "Of course I'm doing everything I can to keep him conscious, what the hell do you take me for?" She snaps at the lady on the phone through tears. Even when she's witnessing him get shot (and possibly dying, though this isn't exactly the way he planned on dying), of course she's still fighting random people.

"Carly, stop harassing the operator," he says, though he can feel it use quite a bit of his strength as the fuzziness intensifies.

"You do not die on me, Jason Morgan, do you hear me? I am not letting you die because of me, I will not be able to live with myself if you die like this and I have to witness it. Keep your eyes open and just focus on me," Carly practically begs as the sound of the sirens intensifies. They're probably getting closer to being here, maybe even pulled into the parking lot. He can't tell.

As Carly's rambling about something, he can't hear her very coherently anymore, the world turns black around him. Vaguely, he can distinguish the sound of her sobs and the pressure of the scarf around his chest.

"Jason, please, please, please, open your eyes," Carly begs, sobs overtaking her pleas as the ambulance approaches. This isn't happening, this is a nightmare, he's not actually shot and possibly dying. Right? He's fine, right?

"Ma'am, we're going to need you to step away from him so we can do our jobs and help him live," a random paramedic instructs her, earning a scoff as she backs away a few feet.

Who the hell does he think he is, ordering her around like that? Acting like he knows a damn thing about either of them, or like he's got any authority. He could be dying right now for all she knows! "I'm riding with you in the ambulance," she declares. "And you won't be able to keep me out so don't even try to."

"You'll just be taking up space-"

"I've been in these plenty of times before. There's more than enough space and," her voice breaks, a quiet sob leaving her lips before she continues, "he has the keys."

Shaking his head at her, the paramedic signals her to get in and she does just that as Jason's loaded into the ambulance her. "Don't die," she begs quietly to the unconscious man. "Please, god, don't die. This can't be the bullet that kills you."

"Say a prayer in your head," the paramedic says to her and she snaps.

"Stop acting like you know what I'm going through. I don't care if you don't understand what's going on here but let me explain it to you: your job is to make sure my friend here doesn't die. Got it? You can give up on ordering me around any minute now because I'm not in the goddamn mood to listen to it." Carly snaps, tears of rage streaming down her face.

The rest of the ride is mainly silent, save for a few sniffles and sobs from the blonde. With her luck, someone will be at the hospital and this'll be front page news tomorrow.

When they arrive at the hospital, Portia immediately takes Jason's gurney and brings it to a trauma room with a slew of nurses behind her. At least he's getting five star treatment, she thinks, sitting down slowly in a chair.

He got shot protecting her. And now he could die because of it.

"Carly, what's going on here?" Sam asks, storming over.

"Jason," she starts, voice breaking and unsteady as she continues, "got shot outside the courthouse. They're, uh, taking a look at him right now."

"What?" Sam asks, disbelief evident in her tone. "How did he get shot?"

"We were leaving the courthouse and I was fighting with him over driving home and I noticed these three guys, they had guns aimed at us. He noticed and I was stuck there, wondering what the hell they were doing outside of the courthouse and he shoved me out of the way. But," she continues, feeling shame and dread crawl into her veins as she watches it unfold again mentally, "he was too late in saving himself. He got shot in the chest and he fell to the ground. I kept thinking to myself, I've got to save him, I've got to save him for one of the million times he's saved me, so I call an ambulance and wrap his chest in a scarf. And I was begging him to live and bickering with the operator when, suddenly, he stopped showing any response. I don't know if he's dead or alive."

Near silent sobs are all that's heard for a few minutes by either of them, both trying their best not to scream. "He could die," Sam notes, "because of you. Because he has this need to protect you, Jason could die."

"What?" Michael asks, heartbreak evident on his face and killing Carly's heart even more. "What happened to Jason?" When he's met with silence, he asks his question again, "what happened to Jason, Mom, that Sam's blaming on you?" She meets his eyes and sees that he's begging for the truth.

"He got shot." The words seem to echo more than she expects, the full weight of them only now hitting her as she sobs loudly in the middle of the hospital, not caring who hears.

To be continued later in this life.

e

[wickedbarnes]

𝕬𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖑 𝖎𝖓 𝕯𝖎𝖘𝖌𝖚𝖎𝖘𝖊 (Pt. 4) | John Wick x Reader

Part 3

WARNING: Angst. Blood.

NOTE: If there are any med student readers here, I apologize deeply if there's any inaccuracy when it comes to the age of finishing med school and I'm sorry if you're triggered that the reader didn't take up her residency training right away. Basically, I apologize for any medical inaccuracy in this chapter. I'm no med student so please be gentle :(

--

You knew the Continental very well and what it does and what it caters for. You had been here once when Viggo had visited Winston and as much as he hated you being here with him, he had no choice at the time. You were around ten and you could remember some assassins looking at you with piercing cold eyes. That's what you felt right now walking alongside John. You knew the stares were meant for him but you couldn't help but feel that most of them were meant for you.

In the back of your mind, it wouldn't be long for Viggo to find out that John has you. You wouldn't say that he's holding you hostage since you willingly went with him. You could only imagine the bounty that will be placed upon his head. And somehow, you felt kinda guilty.

"Good seeing you again, John." A woman with jet black hair greeted John and looked at you for a moment before walking passed you.

"Perkins." John would say, greeting the woman.

"I'll have you for two night?" The concierge, which you remembered the name was Charon, asked John as his gaze averted to you.

"Depending on business it may be more." He replied and you took the time to look around the hotel, noticing that it changed quite a bit the last time you've been here. You met the eyes of some assassins who probably knew who you were or wondering why you were here with John Wick. If you were in their place you would've wondered the same.

"Let's go." John would tell you as he grabbed the key to your room before turning back to walk away from the reception desk with you when you two suddenly stopped when Charon spoke.

"And as always. It is a pleasure, having you with us again... Mr. Wick." Charon gave a knowing smile to John before he shifted his gaze to you.

"Same goes for you, Miss Tarasov. Welcome back to the Continental." You gave him a nod and forced a smile on your face at his words.

"Thank you, Charon."

The ride in the elevator was quiet. Even when John opened the door to your room, you hadn't spoke a word. You took the opportunity to look around the room and noticed there were two beds, which you were thankful for. John placed his stuff on the bed to the left while you made your way over to the window to watch the city outside.

"I couldn't risk you getting away. That's why I asked for a room with two beds." John spoke after some time as he watch you solemnly take in the scenery of the city.

You nodded at his words as your mind drifted back to your father and Iosef. You already knew Viggo had found out you weren't in the mansion anymore. You could only imagine how enraged he'd be and the circumstances he'd go to in order to get you back.

"I know you hate me right now, Y/N, but-"

"Who said I hated you?" You asked, cutting him off but kept your gaze in the window, "I don't hate you. In case you want to know."

John was taken aback by your words. And it frustrated him that you didn't somehow despise him for what he's about to do. It frustrated him on how calm you are in a situation like this. Somehow, he wanted to see you angry at him. He wanted to see at least fear in your eyes whenever you looked at him but there was none.

And that somehow made him more guilty than he already is.

"John, I can't promise you if you'll be safe here." John looked at you and you took his silence as a means to continue what you were going to say, "Papa would know by now that I'm gone and that you broke inside the mansion. He won't hesitate to place a huge bounty in your head. And if I'm not mistaken, maybe the bounty is worthy enough for someone to break the rules here in the Continental."

"I know that." He replied and you hummed softly in response.

"Y/N, why are you like this?" His question caught you off guard that you couldn't help but turn around to face him.

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean." John snapped at you making you jump slightly as he stood up and slowly made his way towards you and you couldn't help but carefully back away from him each time he took a step closer.

John took note of your body language. You were intimidated. And to him, that's a good thing.

"Why are you so calm? Do you secretly want this to happen? Do you secretly want your brother dead, is that it?" His words emitted a gasp from your lips as you stopped and looked up at him, immediately forgetting your fear of him as anger slowly bubbled inside you.

"This is the last thing that I wanted, Wick." You spat, "If I wanted this to happen, I wouldn't have warned Iosef that very night he stole your fucking car. You have no idea what goes inside my fucking head everytime I lay my eyes on you. And you had absolutely no idea how hard it was for me to accept everything that's happening right now."

Your breathing became heavy and you willed yourself not to cry in front of him. You refused, absolutely refused to let him see that side of you. That weak side of you.

"I'm like this because as I've said, I already know what's going to happen. Anger is fueling inside of you, John, and you crave vengeance for what my brother did. If I asked you, begged you even to stop all of this right now and return me to my home, would you do it?" Your question took John off guard once again but his expression surprisingly didn't falter but his silence caused you to laugh bitterly at him.

"I thought so." You whispered and walked passed him as you made your way to your bed, sitting down at the edge of it as you let out a breath you didn't know you were holding.

John stood there and let your words sink inside his head. But a tiny voice told him that this was no time to linger around and feel bad for the Tarasov girl. Without saying a word, John made his way out your room and made sure the door was locked from outside.

Once he was out of earshot, you finally let out a sob as the tears that started to well up in your eyes cascaded down your cheeks. Your body shook as you cried hard and much to your knowledge, John heard your little whimpers just in time he made his way inside the elevator.

And somehow, he felt a slight pain in his chest when he heard your cries. Because he knew deep down it was because of him. The guilt was seeping more into his veins.

--

John did his best to put pressure on his wound. This wasn't anything he hadn't experienced before but it still hurt like a bitch. Unfortunately, the doctor wasn't in. So John had to make do on stitching his wound on his own and he wasn't really a pro with that and he doubted you'd even help him.

Upon opening the door, he stumbled his way inside and locked it behind him as he took a deep breath, trying to readjust his vision since he was losing blood after all. He could feel his legs shaking and soon, he found himself collapsing on the sofa. The sound had made you jump in your sleep.

Fluttering your eyes open, you had tried to remember what time you had fallen asleep. You sighed at the thought of crying yourself to sleep. Sitting up in your bed, your gaze fell on a beat up John who was clutching his wound. You stared at him for a moment before you carefully stood up from your bed and slowly made your way towards him.

"May I?" You asked softly as John looked up at you. In his vision, everything was a blur but your face, as cliché as it sounded.

He gave you a nod and carefully removed his hand where you took the chance to inspect his wound. The stab was deep and if he lost anymore blood he'd be unconscious and that wasn't a good sign. Almost immediately, you tied up your hair and made your way towards the window where you draped the curtain over it. Making your way towards the small liquor cabinet in the room, you quickly poured some whiskey in a glass and placed that on top of the small table next to the sofa where John flopped down. Then, you made your way to the bathroom where you hoped there was at least a first aid kit inside.

"Bingo." You whispered to yourself as you saw the familiar looking kit. You then proceeded to thoroughly wash your hands to avoid infecting John's wound before you made your way outside and placed the kit on the space next to John.

"Are you still able to take your suit off?" You asked and John gave you a nod before he carefully took his blazer off, followed by his pants and his dress shirt. Eventually leaving him in his dress pants.

"Do you have any other wounds on your legs?" You asked and John only responded to you by shaking his head while you put on some latex gloves as he grabbed the glass with shaking hands and took a sip of the drink you gave him.

You nodded, opening the kit where you grabbed a needle and a thread and began to sterilize it, not wanting to risk giving the beat up man an infection. Soon enough, you began to carefully suture John's wound, completely being oblivious to your surrounding including the fact that John was staring at you while you were patching him up.

John took a big sip of his drink and poured more into his glass once it got empty. You never failed to frustrate John and somehow, he couldn't do anything about it. Well, he can. But killing inside the Continental is like signing your death sentence. And he didn't want to kill someone innocent.

But you frustrated him in a way where you were doing something someone in your place wouldn't do. Who in their right mind would patch up the man who's going to kill their family? He was slowly convincing himself that you might be truly insane.

John silently watched as you furrowed your eyebrows and bit your bottom lip causing him to gulp as it reminded him a lot of Helen. He remembered how Helen would have the same expression on her face. Eyes focused, eyebrows furrowed while she absentmindedly bites her own bottom lip whenever she does something that requires one hundred percent of her attention.

He couldn't help but take another big gulp of his drink which made you look up at him for a second as you averted your gaze to the now empty glass.

"Don't tell me a small needle is hurting you, John." You lightly teased as you began to loop the end of the thread.

"Not really. It's more frustrating, to be honest." He replied which caused you to laugh softly before putting on a sterilized bandage on top of the stitched wound. Once that was done, you began to clean up the area and picked up John's bloody clothes before standing up from the ground but froze in your spot when you felt John's calloused hand around your wrist.

"Why are you doing this?" He asked, his gaze steady on you as you looked back into his warm brown eyes. Letting out a sigh, you sat down on the space next to him on the sofa and placed the first aid kid and John's clothes on the floor.

"You could've just let me bleed to death. Anyone would've done that but you didn't. Why?" You could feel John staring at you as if he was trying to read your mind and trying to see into your very soul.

"And risk being framed for Excommunicado? I don't think so, John." You spoke, "If I let you bleed to death, I might get framed for killing inside the Continental and we both know that's unwise. Second, I don't think I could handle someone dying when I know I could've helped them."

"What about Viggo? Iosef? Can you handle them dying when you know you could've helped them?"

"If I decide to get myself involved, would you let me? Why did you even take me here with you in the first place?" You backfired.

"I didn't take you, you willingly went with me." John stated to which you hummed in response.

"Isn't that what you would've done the moment you found me in the kitchen? Let's face it, John. If you wanted to kill me, you would've done it the moment I had my back towards you. You had the opportunity to pull the trigger when you held me at gunpoint but did you?" John was speechless yet again as he watched you lean back on the sofa, "Unless you plan on killing me after all of this is done. But you don't seem to be the one to do something like that. You strike while the iron is hot."

"How can you be so sure?" John questioned you. Without thinking twice, you grabbed the gun that was hoisted in John's pants, took his hand and made him grab the gun before you pressed your forehead against its mouth.

"What the hell are you doi-"

"Shoot me."

"Wait, what?"

"Pull the trigger and shoot me." You repeated, keeping your eyes on him.

"Y/N, you don't know what you're talking about-"

"Shoot me, Jonathan." You said, your voice firm as you cut him off again. John looked into your eyes, trying to find at least a sign if you're bluffing or not. But he was disappointed to see how serious you really were.

"You want me to shoot you?" He asked, his voice gruff as he tightened his grip on the gun.

"Did I stutter?" You replied, still keeping your gaze on his eyes.

"We're in the fucking Continental, Y/N." He said in gritted teeth.

"If you really wanted or needed to kill me, John. It wouldn't matter if we're in the fucking Continental or not." You moved closer so the gun presses firmly against your forehead, "Shoot me."

John placed his finger on the trigger, his eyes never leaving yours and vice versa. It seemed like hours when the both of you stared at each other and before you knew it, John slowly lowered his gun and placed it on the wooden table beside him before he poured another shot of whiskey in his glass, his head turning away from you.

"I thought so." You whispered and stood up, carrying the kit and John's battered clothes with you as you put it in the hamper and made your way inside the bathroom where you locked the door behind you.

At that moment, you didn't know what you feared anymore. The Baba Yaga or your own self.

[mbti-notes]

Do you have an opinion on the affects of social media on developing cognitive functions, specifically teenagers? I am asking with regard to navigating my son's adolescence. He is 16 and while the last few years have been more turbulent than previous years (with no doubt more to come) I think the road has been made substantially smoother as a direct result of me being able to access your blog, thank you. I don't feel inclined to limit his social media use, it's a part of life now, but it would be

[con’t: helpful to have some signs to look out for. I originally typed my son as Si dom with T preference and was trying to encourage his Te but now I’m thinking he’s more like INTP so I’ve changed my strategy to keep an open mind (and develop the patience of a saint LOL) and help him make the right decisions for himself. He has become more reckless and scattered lately with high value placed on acceptance from friends. Could this be Ne or does social media have a larger influence?]

I’m glad that you find the blog helpful and I admire your devotion to parenting. You raise a lot of interesting issues, though I may not be the best person to ask since I tend to have a negative opinion of social media. Parenting teenagers requires walking a very, very fine line between giving them enough guidance to avoid bad decision making vs giving them enough freedom to learn proper independence. It’s a very hard job. Sometimes, the only way to know that you’ve veered too far one way or the other is by making the mistake and then adjusting your approach - lots of trial and error. Every kid is an individual, so what works for one kid won’t necessarily work for another. Being able to adapt to their needs is the key point. It’s art more than science.

Everything has its positive and its negative side. Human beings tend to be short-sighted and easily rationalize bad decision making. When they really want to do something, they are much more likely to envision the benefits of doing it and this then blinds them to the costs. To be a good parent, I think it’s important to teach children how to recognize negative consequences and navigate them more intelligently (i.e. objective assessment of pros and cons that produces rational decision making). However, this is only possible if parents themselves are capable of it. You can’t expect kids to learn how to do something well without someone to teach them or model it for them. Unfortunately, I know plenty of adults of all ages who misuse social media just as badly as their kids. Kids learn predominantly through example, so you have to be the first one to follow the rules that you set. If you don’t follow any rules yourself, they won’t see the point in following any, either. For example, if all they see of you is your nose in your device, why would they put theirs down?

I don’t believe in banning kids from social media, but I do think it’s a good idea to be smart in limiting its usage. Social media shouldn’t be a substitute for real and meaningful human interaction, it shouldn’t take up so much time that important things get neglected, it shouldn’t interfere with maintaining good physical and mental health, and it shouldn’t be used as an escape. Teenagers become harder and harder to supervise as they get older because they increasingly have their own life going on. At a certain point, there’s no imposing rules on them because violating their autonomy only leads to rebellion.

A better strategy is to sit down with them to talk about the importance of using social media in HEALTHY ways, talk about why limits are necessary to avoid the negative/unhealthy aspects of it, and negotiate with them to come up with sensible limits that both of you can live with. If YOU also spend too much time on social media, then it’s even better to join them in adhering to those limits, to model the behavior that you expect from them and give them the feeling of being in it together. When you place limits on one aspect of life, it’s a good idea to expand yourself in other ways so as to minimize the feeling of “missing out”. For example, if you use social media for social connection, then compensate for limiting social media by making more effort to go out and join interesting social activities. Putting limits on fun means increasing boredom, so make sure that the boredom is addressed with a healthier option.

Social media is relatively new, so there isn’t a big enough body of research about its hidden effects or underlying costs. The few studies that have been done about social media mostly seem to suggest that misuse/overuse has very detrimental effects on psychological well-being. The spread of misinformation is a big problem (i.e. it makes people stupid). Cyber-bulling and violation of privacy are big problems. When you are so plugged in to other people’s lives, it’s hard not to engage in social comparison, and this often results in negative self-appraisals that diminish self-regard. This is particularly destructive for teenagers because they haven’t yet developed a very strong sense of self and are very likely to use other people’s judgment as a barometer of their own self-worth. Adolescence is usually the time that people start to grapple with level 2 ego development. It’s important for teenagers to learn how to socialize well and fit in with others, but it’s also important for them to learn the dangers of choosing the wrong socializing methods.

People at level 2 ego development are very prone to: experiencing shame/anxiety/depression via negative social comparisons, blindly following the ingroup (and rejecting the outgroup), and sacrificing self-care as they succumb to peer pressure. Helping them is not a matter of trying to stop them from doing these things, because you can’t, since doing these things is a natural part of that stage of development. What you can do is offer them guidance about self-care and help them think more critically about the best ways to handle peer pressure (i.e. give them options/strategies for working through real situations), in hopes that they’ll learn how to make better decisions. In the event that they make a bad decision, review the mistake with them. Reflect with them to figure out what went wrong and work with them to brainstorm ideas for how to avoid the same mistake in the future. Ask them what they could’ve done differently (this encourages N development). The PAIN of making mistakes is an efficient way to learn, which means that you shouldn’t be in there “helping” to the point that they don’t feel the pain of their mistakes.

Discipline is necessary for giving kids a sense of structure. To internalize a sense of structure is to possess a mental framework for making good decisions (usually requires developing the judging functions). At the very least, a child should have their parent’s way of critical thinking at hand whenever they aren’t able to solve a problem entirely on their own (i.e. “what would mom/dad advise me to do?”). Always be transparent, fair, and consistent in how you punish kids by explaining your decision, why it’s necessary, and what lesson it’s meant to teach them (e.g. self-care, intelligence, respect, patience, etc). This makes it more likely that they eventually internalize your moral lessons and learn to use them even when you’re not present. If you punish unfairly or disproportionately, if you’re a hypocrite, or if you’re inconsistent with punishments, you risk losing their respect, which, in their mind, means that they no longer have to listen to you.

Unfortunately, some kids don’t learn well the first time around and you have to discipline them to get the point across. You can develop a punishment scale that begins with a mild punishment for the first mistake and then increase the severity of the punishment for every instance of repeating the mistake. While I admire your patience, I’m sure you know that laissez faire parenting also has its problems. Overly permissive parents run the risk of losing their child’s respect because it’s easy to fall into the trap of devaluing your own needs whenever the child tests your rules and boundaries, and they will absolutely trample your boundaries if you give the impression of not having any. When you devalue your position of authority in the relationship, you encourage kids to do the same, and then you become a mere source of food or money and nothing else to them. This also enables them to be narcissistic in their approach to others.

I’m not sure how good you are at communicating, just in case it’s needed, I’ll continue on to say that I believe that one of the most important elements of parenting is establishing a strong sense of trust. If your kid trusts you, they’ll feel more confident about making independent decisions because they know that you’re there to help them should they need it, and sometimes it’s enough that you’re with them “spiritually” in their memory of lessons learned. The best way to build trust is to keep the lines of communications open. Good communication isn’t about trying to pry information or performing the role of judge jury and executioner. People, let alone teenagers, won’t want to communicate with you if they suspect that all you’re doing is judging them or just looking for an excuse to criticize them (and teens likely get enough of this from their peers).

Communication should come from the heart, use inquiry and sharing of feelings to show that you genuinely care about what’s going on with them. Good communication should work both ways: listen to each other carefully, be transparent about your motives, be honest about how you feel and what you need, negotiate compromises, and respect each other’s individual autonomy. You should model the kind of respect that you want them to give to you (I can’t count the number of times that I’ve seen parents trying to teach their kids to be more respectful… by shouting at them angrily). When they are out of line, remain calm, hear what they’re feeling (validation), then explain to them that you/people are more likely to take them seriously when they express their feelings maturely. Give them an example sentence of how to express feelings or requests respectfully.

Teenagers are emotional creatures, they live in the emotions of now and don’t respond well to appeals to the future. This can’t be helped because it’s part of adolescent brain development, so give them some leeway to get their feelings out, but use the chance to teach better communication methods. Sometimes it’s necessary to give them cooling off time before instigating a serious discussion. Recklessness is usually rooted in emotion. Some kids are reckless out of boredom, some out of anxiety, etc. Try to identify the underlying emotion that’s motivating the problem and then you’ll have a better chance of coming up with a good solution. For example, if boredom (or excess energy) is the motivation, then enroll them in productive activities to fill up their time. If anxiety is the motivation, then they need to learn better emotional management skills, perhaps get them a bit of light counseling on the topic from school or a local community organization.

An important part of establishing trust that is often overlooked is the notion of equality. A parent-child relationship is naturally unequal in power, but it doesn’t have to be excessively and unnecessarily unequal. There are a lot of different kinds of communication, since people communicate with different intents/purposes depending on the circumstances. More often than not, parents only talk to their kids in “parent mode” of ordering them around, interrogating them, or criticizing them. If this is the only mode that kids get to see from you, then they will view you as an authoritarian and their approach to you will be rooted in fear of punishment and the desire for escape. This makes it very difficult for them to trust you because you’ve taught them that your role is to supervise and discipline and nothing else, which means that everything they do will be as far away from your watchful warden eyes as possible.

There’s no avoiding “parent mode” as a parent. However, you can avoid making that the ONLY mode. A better strategy is to pick your battles wisely so that you use parent mode as sparingly as possible, especially with teenagers that are always pressing you for more freedom. But if you’re not using parent mode, then you have to know how to communicate with them in other modes, otherwise, communication tends to dry up quickly. To build trust, do more activities with them and spend more time talking to them in a way that establishes both of you as persons on equal footing. To be clear, I’m not talking about the cliche of being friends with your kids; I believe that you should maintain the position of parental authority until they reach adulthood. I’m talking about communicating heart-to-heart so that they get to know who you are outside of your parental role. Be more willing to share your feelings with them such that they feel encouraged to share theirs with you. Within reason, share with them what’s on your mind and let them in on what’s happening in your private world. You don’t want to let them in completely, however, because you still need to command enough respect to have some authority over them. Talk about problems you’ve encountered or struggled with and how you felt about them, but also talk about what you did to resolve them, which gives them good examples to learn from.

Rebellion is a natural reaction to feeling excessively restricted, and it’s natural for teenagers to feel restricted regardless of whether you are objectively restricting them, because their main preoccupation is independence. Children tend to project their psychological problems onto their parents, and you can make it harder for them to demonize you by humanizing yourself enough for them to empathize with your experience. By communicating in heart-to-heart mode more often than in listen-and-obey mode, they learn that the relationship between you matters in its quality of love and care, not just in whether they follow your rules. When you successfully establish a sense of mutual appreciation for each other, they learn to see you as a person with your own needs and desires, and then they’ll have less desire to rebel against you. If your kid understands that your “parent mode” is just one part of you but that the greater part of you is a fellow human, then their rebellion is likely to take a softer, more respectful form. As a result of trust and good communication, they are more likely to consider negotiating with you first before running off to do something dumb just to spite you. Let them know that you’re always open to calm and sensible negotiations/compromises because it gives them the sense of having some say in the matter. As you gradually “equalize” the relationship through heart-to-heart communication, it’s then easier to transition into an adulthood friendship with them in the future.

From the child’s perspective, I distinctly remember when my parents switched modes with me, perhaps you can recall your experience as well. My mother had a strict rule of never involving kids in adult affairs, ever. Both of my parents come from big families and they all grew up together in a small town (11 siblings between them), so there was always lots of drama going on behind the scenes, but my brother and I were completely oblivious to it growing up. My parents were quite stoic with us and we never really knew what they were thinking, so the relationships were often quite strained because communication was virtually non-existent.

You can imagine my shock when, one day, in my twenties, I was just minding my own business as usual and mom comes into the room and complains about this or that relative. She proceeds to tell me the entire 20+ year backstory of their horrible relationship. I thought she had gone mad for spilling all this shocking info to me out of the blue. Signs of early onset dementia already? But then I realized that this was a role change. I was no longer the kid who had to be kept in the dark. I was now a person who was worthy of being treated as a confidant and even someone smart enough to seek advice from. It was a bittersweet moment. Sweet because, starting in adolescence, people hanker to be treated as an adult by their parents. Bitter because she had decisively given up her authoritarian role and now I had absolutely no cause to keep rebelling against her, lol. The point is, she could’ve given up her authoritarian role more gradually by easing me into the role change in mid-to-late adolescence. We wasted many years being at odds with each other because she couldn’t recognize the ways that I had matured. And some parents aren’t flexible enough to ever make the switch.

In the end, you can only do your best. If I had to come up with a motto about parenting it would be that “Attention is love”. Just be attentive and respond to what’s important to them. Teens appreciate your care even when they don’t show it or claim to not want it, so long as you respect their emotional needs.

PS: There’s already a parenting title on the resources list about teenagers and social media that might be of help.

[fatechica]

You don't need to post this on your blog or anything, I just hope you don't feel pressured to change how you write because of recent drama. I say ignore those people. If they don't like it, if they jump to ridiculous conclusions, that's their problem. Your writing is good, and the people who read it will know it's good, and the people who know you know you are good.

Anon, first of all, thank you for the kind words about my writing and thank you for giving me an out with regards to answering this publicly. I appreciate both so much and thank you so much for your kindness and consideration.

That said, I’m going to do the ill-advised thing and wade into this. Not because I desperately want to, but because there are things I need to say that I think should be part of this discussion. 

A NOTE BEFORE I BEGIN:

While I welcome honest debate about the nuances of this general topic, I will not engage in dishonest, hostile attacks. I am not afraid to turn off all anons and continue on Tumblr mostly as I have been: as someone who primarily reblogs gifsets and graphics and occasionally posts links to my fanfic. I cannot be bullied off this platform - in fact, I will not. I have been around for too long to let people hiding behind the safety of anonymity dictate to me what is and is not allowed.

It is not up to anyone here but me what my level of involvement is in this fandom and in this space and no one has the right to decide for me. Go ahead and block me from seeing your content directly if that’s what you want (if that’s even possible - I never know with Tumblr sometimes). But I exist on Tumblr for reasons other than Stranger Things (weird, I know, considering that’s all I reblog) and my self-worth isn’t tied up in this platform. So, with that said….

To start, to say that I am disappointed in what I saw today in the Stranger Things fandom is a massive understatement. Regardless of what caused this - regardless of your opinion on what is, essentially, a gray area (as in an area that not everyone agrees about the definitions of) - ganging up on and bullying people is completely unacceptable. If you can’t see why that’s wrong, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Fandom should be a space where everyone feels like they have a place. Not the same place that you have or I have. But if they want to participate in their own corner, there should be somewhere they can look at and go “yes, that is where I can be”. And this is regardless of what that might look like.

For example, I hate the Harringrove ship. Like with a passion. I think it’s incredibly disrespectful to Steve’s character and I cannot understand the leaps of logic required to turn Billy’s storyline into something worth redeeming. I think it’s also incredibly exploitative of gay relationships and it squicks me out to no end.

Does that mean, however, that I don’t want people who do ship them to have somewhere to go? Of course not! People have a right to engage in a piece of fiction however they choose (because, at the end of the day, it’s fiction and the characters on the page literally aren’t physically harmed). And it’s not up to me to say what isn’t allowed.

But, conversely, I don’t have to see it if I don’t want to. No one can force me to read Harringrove fic or engage in Harringrove posts on tumblr. But, here’s the thing: I’m responsible for curating my own fandom experience. Which is why I filter out the Harringrove tag on AO3 and block the Harringrove tag on Tumblr.

I would never, however, go the Harringrove tag or find a popular Harringrove blog and harass them. Even if I think it’s wrong. Even if I think their ship is exploitative. I would never try to drive people out of a fandom because their experience doesn’t mirror mine, because they get enjoyment out of something differently than I do.

But, that’s about a ship portrayed by actors who are of age. Which is where the very gray area in what happened today comes into play.

I think we can all reasonably agree (even though I know there’s some people who won’t) that explicit material about characters portrayed by underage actors is wrong. And, when I say explicit, I mean play-by-play, detailed descriptions of sexual acts.

Some people will disagree with me. That’s fine. I literally cannot stop anyone from having their own opinion about fictional characters.

(I know some people will argue that it’s different when they’re aged up and they’re imagining different people as older versions of the characters, but that’s between you and your conscience. And, like with Harringrove, I just don’t wanna read it at all. Nor do I want to write it.)

But there is a massive difference between writing about exploring healthy, emotional intimacy (which often includes suggestions of physical intimacy since a lot of, though not all, relationships are made up of both) and writing smut meant to titillate.

The first is character-driven, diving in and showing how people form healthy relationships. The second is just exploitative.

The first is about coming-of-age when you’re in love and you don’t know how to handle everything and you’re figuring it out as you go. The second is about shock and arousal.

The first is about balancing the emotional and the physical, about trust and respect and love, about how it feels to be head-over-heels in love with someone; it’s about how we grow and mature and set healthy boundaries. The second is about pornography and that’s it.

The first sometimes includes hints of sensuality and suggestions of more. The second is only about the physical and nothing else.

(And, yes, I’m aware there is a whole sub-genre of “Porn with Feelings”, but this fandom has not really embraced that as a sub-genre so it’s not worth mentioning.)

Now, like I said, we can all pretty much agree that the second one is wrong. 

But the first one? That’s up to your comfort level. It’s up to you to decide where that line is.

You don’t want to read fiction about older teenagers navigating relationships, which often includes dealing with their own sexuality? Well, then, the back button is your friend.

You think anyone who suggests that something physical happens between teenagers means that the author is imagining those very teenagers having sex? Well, then, that’s you projecting onto that author. You don’t know what went through that author’s head when they wrote it.

If you think that everyone who writes anything or suggests anything intimate about characters who are played by underage actors are immediately imagining those characters played by those actors having sex, then you are no better than the people you’re accusing of imagining that very thing. Because guess what?

Now you’re imagining it, too.

I have to say, it takes a lot of nerve to go into someone’s writing and tell that author what they were thinking when they wrote it. I know once a piece of fiction is released into the world, the author loses the ability to control how it’s interpreted, but authorial intent IS A REAL FUCKING THING and NO ONE is allowed to dictate to an author what he or she was thinking when they wrote it.

Because unless you’re a mind reader, you have no goddamn clue what that author was thinking. And if you get offended by what you’re reading then, like I said, the back button is your friend.

Which brings me to the final thing I want to say at the end of this very long essay: we have got to stop gatekeeping in this fandom.

Believe me when I say that gatekeeping and purity trolling in all forms has led to the downfall of many fandoms and fandom communities (see: ALL OF LIVEJOURNAL). I’ve been there - I’ve watched it happen. There is literally no better way to stifle creativity and fandom growth by dictating what is and is not allowed in harsh, black and white terms.

So, if we want to have a healthy fandom where open discourse is allowed, where people can share their interpretations of the characters and explore what must be going through their heads as real people growing up might be experiencing, if we want to make this a place where people feel included for years to come, if we want to have a space where people can create and post and share, WE NEED TO STOP DOING THIS.

Learn to agree to disagree. Learn that some people have different boundaries of acceptable and appropriate than you. Learn that most people do not approach sensitive topics from a place of exploitation and titillation.

I’ve long been concerned that we aren’t mature enough as a fandom to handle nuanced discussions like the one that didn’t happen today.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t have a lot of hope for this fandom if things continue on the way they are. And, though I’m not going anywhere for the time being, I hope that I’m proven wrong. I hope we can learn the difference between inappropriate and uncomfortable; I hope we can learn how to have nuanced, respectful discussions where we disagree and separate to our own corners to experience fandom how we want to experience fandom.

I hope that we can figure out how to grow up as a community.

But absolutely nothing I saw today tells me we’ll be able to do that.

[sicklylittlesnowflake]

you don't have to write it if it doesn't speak to you, but i just read and loved your fic where peter calms tony down from a panic attack, and now i offer a Good Concept: Peter trying to help Tony get through a meeting at SHIELD when Tony's spacey and in pain from a headache/fever?

@taylortut !!!! I really like this prompt girl!!

In the course of his lifetime Tony has witnessed the discovery of alien life, multiple alien invasions, discovering that the very threads of his reality all coincided within 6 stones, and yet he had never been more confused in his life up until this moment.

Everything Nick Fury says seems to be a jumble of words that don’t seem to be any language, perhaps some alien language but even then they’re barely even audible. They’re all slurred together and seemingly slowed down like his VCR tape had just malfunctioned.

He feels warm and hot all over and he felt like his face was on fire but his lower half was stuck in the middle of the arctic, and he wanted to scream. There was part of him that wanted to throw a tantrum and crawl up on the floor wailing in agony, but he was a grown man who was much respected with a very strong image to pursue and doing such a thing was..out of character, to the say the least.

Tony doesn’t remember the last time he felt this sick, hell, he doesn’t even think he’s ever felt this sick in his entire life. He grits his teeth together as he braces this headache that comes in ravaging like a hurricane in his head, destroying every cell in his brain. His fists are balled intensely in an attempt to anchor himself through this whirlwind of pain, and he doesn’t know if he’s really not concealing his discomfort well at all or Peter is just this observant but either way he can sense that the kid is staring holes into him.

Peter, as always, is kind and loving, with a soul softer than his damn hair, which is pretty damn soft. He doesn’t stare at Tony with malicious or judging intent, he stares at him with genuine concern and worry, and this sort of nervous energy he sort of sees in himself. He knows this kid isn’t his, but it sure feels like it.

Peter doesn’t quite know sign language all too well, he’s only just started after all (because he was an avenger now, all the avengers know sign language for Clint, why was he any different? and yes, Mr Stark, he was an avenger now) and he seems to be making up his own bizzaro form of sign language, which mostly consisted of an equally outlandish series of facial expressions. Tony has absolutely no clue what this kid is trying to communicate, but he can only assume is a, ‘you okay?’

As dumb and ridiculous as this exchange is, at least its amusing and it’s giving him a break from everything else that’s going on.  Peter’s great at that. He gives him a little break from everything in the world that’s shitty and bleak and shows him what’s right with the world. His headache hurt a little bit less.

Tony raises an eyebrow in amusement.

Peter shows a bit agitation, frustrated he can’t quite get his point across, not wanting to interrupt Fury who seems to still be going on about these Ravagers he doesn’t really understand, and tries mouthing his message, but Tony pretends like he doesn’t understand, because yes he’s sick but he’s a little shit and being sick doesn’t stop that.

Peter, who’s directly in front of him, gives him a look that just tells him he knows what he’s up to. He looks absolutely done with him. He sighs dramatically,  and goes on listening to some guy who’s started drone on and on about budget control. Tony knows he’s not really listening though and trying to discreetly check in on him, and he makes a mental note to see about teaching Peter a thing or two about stealth.

But all the joking and lighthearted tomfoolery doesn’t last long and it fades quickly and the storm starts up again. He feels awfully lightheaded and his head hurts so much, his whole body is heavy and he feels lost. It’s like he’s disconnected and disassociated and he’s simply hovering around, him and his body seeming to not connect. He feels a little delirious like his entire body is slowly dying off in a desert and his face is burning.

He feels like his body is begging for rest, gripping at his chair to anchor himself as he’s hit with yet another tidal wave of pain, nausea, and hot and cold waves and Peter seems to sense this. He eyes him worriedly, trying to keep up his discreet charade but he gives it up.

“Do you guys want some water?” Peter chirps up suddenly, interrupting the guy who’s still on about budget control, earning himself an annoyed look. He blushes a little as he realises what he’s done is a little rude, but to him Tony’s welfare is more dire right now than how much money is being allocated towards a new doorway.

“You can get some if you want, Mr Parker,” He sighs, teeth gritted and quickly resuming his bit.

Tony shoots Peter a tired look but the kid is gone in a flash, and when he’s gone it’s like everything is much worse because there’s no one to sulk at. He stifles a cough into the tailored fabric of his suit jacket, going relatively unnoticed which he’s glad for. He lets himself slump just a little, not too much, he still has an image, but he lets that image go just the tiniest bit.

Every second Peter is gone seems to last an eternity and a half. The world does by in this agonisingly slow pace, it seems to blur out of focus so his headache is heightened and he can practically hear his head throbbing. He feels so incredibly faint and so horrible he doesn’t know if he’s even here, it’s a nightmarish version of his life that is so surreal and trippy without the promise of a high.

Eventually Peter returns with a cart full of glasses, and passes some to random people in the conference room. Tony thinks about how out of place he looks, but he understands it for him and it makes him love the kid a lot more now. He wheels the cart towards the him, and passes him a glass of cold water that his brain is crying tears of joy for, as well as a oddly folded napkin.

Tony eyes it suspiciously and lifts the fold to reveal two aspirins and all he can do is give Peter the look of pure gratitude and euphoria.

Peter deliberately drops a napkin to crouch down and whisper, “I got them off this really nice lady called Daisy–you owe me one.”

He discreetly pops the pills into his mouth and gives Peter a nod, taking a good sip of his water. He doesn’t normally accept good actions like this so casually, but he lets his pride go because the sense of gratitude and appreciation he feels outweighs any sense of gargantuan ego he has.

And then everything felt like it was going to be fine. ‘Hell yeah I’m gonna make it through this’, Tony thinks proudly, his headache hurts and the cold and hot waves are rushing up and down him in the most uncomfortable way but he can handle this. He can hold on. Things are actually going in his favour for once. Everything is okay in the world.

But then hell breaks loose and Tony’s world is entirely shaken and flipped and nothing is okay.

He doesn’t exactly know what’s happened because his mind is focused solely on not passing out and keeping up a healthy facade, but he thinks Thunderbolt Ross said something that pissed off Fury and they’re yelling and they’re so loud and there’s more voices yelling and it’s all meddling and it’s just too much.

There’s a ringing in his ears and the room is closing in and Tony can hear his heart thumping and he can feel it and the dull roar of the ringing is now a shrill shriek. The lights seem to be fading in and out and the sounds only seem to get louder and everything seems to be heavier and weighing down on him

and Tony is drowning.

Tony swallows hard as his heart races and his breathing shallows and his hands are sweating. He grips the chair hard and tightly and the pressure he’s applying is so much he can feel the skin of his palms straining and his skin burns. He looks around wildly, his lip trembling and he’s shaking and he feels so lost. He feels so sick and his body cannot handle any more and he’s losing control fast and Tony more than anything hates losing control because he feels like he’s floating away and he feels so hauntingly light.

He desperately wants to ground himself and come back because he’s so terrified he’ll float away so far he can never come back. But then his gaze locks upon Peter’s and it’s like he’s grabbed his hand just before he’s fallen off the cliff into nothingness.

And he still feels like he’s teetering off the edge but he’s still here, and as Peter gives him the kindest look he’s ever seen he feels himself being brought back up to the surface slowly but surely. Everything else seems to fade into a dull roar and he focuses his entire entity on to him.

‘Breathe’, Peter mouths, and he begins to breathe in and out slowly and steadily, gesturing for him to follow suit.

Tony nods shakily, and slowly tries to match him. He’s off tempo and he’s rushing, coming in a bit too early but he gets a sense of the rhythm and follows him, never once tearing his gaze, completely locked on him. And he feels safe. He’s still here.

Peter gives him a smile, a proud smile, and Tony’s left wondering what he ever did to deserve such a sweet person in his life.

Peter’s face shifts and he pulls out his phone, pretending to read a text, and it’s really obvious, and the mental note Tony made to teach Peter about stealth seems to climb up quite a bit.

“Uh, guys?” Peter interrupts the chaos that is Shield’s conference room, earning a particularly venomous look from that budget control guy from earlier.

“Yes, Mr.Parker?” Ross sighs.

“Uh, I just got a text from Mr Rhodes and he says he needs myself and Mr Stark like..uh..urgently?” Peter lies.

“Just go,” He brushes off quickly, seemingly uninterested and diving right into his angry tangent.

Peter gestures towards Tony, raising his eyebrows and heading towards the door. Tony follows, the journey a horrendous trek that seemed to leach every single joule of energy remaining in his body. He keeps himself straight and professional, but the moment the doors closed he feels his knees buckling and his body becoming light and his world begin to tilt.

Peter was quicker, his instincts alert and responsive and in a swoop his arm was catching him and pulling him upright, supporting and caring.

“We gotta get you home, Mr.Stark, I’ll call Happy,” Peter suggests, his grip strong but not hurtful in any sense.

“You shouldn’t see me like this,” Tony laments, remorse and shame lacing his words.

“Why not?”

“Your role models shouldn’t be weak.”

Peter is silent for a moment, but he softens, “All my heroes aren’t perfect.”

“Captain America was the scrawny little guy from New York,” Peter explains softly, and chuckles, “Just like me.”

“Dr Banner has some mental health problems. Hawkeye is hard of hearing. Black Widow used to be an assassin. Winter Soldier’s going through some pretty serious trauma, and so is Falcon. The Scarlet Witch worked with Ultron. And Thor..uh, he seems pretty perfect but uh, I’m sure there’s something–oh yeah, he’s got pretty strong emotions he can’t resist sometimes.”

“But my point is.. All my heroes aren’t perfect . And neither are you and that’s okay. It helps me know that I can be somebody too, you know?” Peter says, and looks over at him to give him a reassuring smile that tells him everything will be okay.

“I..didn’t have a lot growing up and seeing that my favourite heroes don’t have everything makes me feel like I can really do something with my life, you know? All I need..is that drive to make the world better, right? So yeah, no, I gotta disagree with you Mr Stark, my role models don’t have to be always strong. They just gotta keep trying.”

Tony can’t help his smile, “The whole world should be like you, kid. Kids like you remind me about why we do this.”

Tony puts a hand on his shoulder and brings him a bit closer, “Now, enough sap talk and let’s get me the hell home.”

[dothewrite]

ooh okay okay well i don't really want to pressure you as you seemingly have quite a lot of scenarios (i also hope you're feeling/feel better soon enough) so if you don't want to do this you don't have to! but a scenario with dazai's fem partner where she can't control her ability and she's like losing control over it and dazai is the only one that can help her (obvs). you could just write a little drabble if you haven't written the characters before and just nede to test it out or something

This is a long time coming, so thank you so much for your patience! I had a lot of fun writing this- but I’m a slightly worried that this is more fem!character centered than Dazai due to the scene I chose and the nature of her ability, but… oh well. This is pre-detective agency Dazai, with his new partner (an OC of mine, actually) training, of all things. I hope you enjoy, and I hope you like (and understand! because there might be less exposition than I thought) this!

“Again.”

Youcomply wordlessly.

Youhand is also bleeding, the thick, resin-like liquid trickling down from yourknuckles, and the trail of blood running down your nose fails to block thesmell of charring flesh.

Yourflesh.

Itburns some more when you begin to channel the ache in your chest through toyour fingertips, to the soles of your feet, until everywhere except your heartfeels alive from the buzz. It takes a lot to turn emotions into raw energy, themutation of the pangs of the heart, the dizziness of the breath, the tearsirritating your eyes: you pull them all into you, and then out. Like aburn, like a burst.

Andyou burst.

Youdon’t need to look up from the ground to feel his exasperation. Dazai clickshis heels together against the harsh, concrete ground of the empty warehousegenerously offered by Mori for your training, and you can hear his reprimandsin your mind’s eye.

Onlythat, he never does. He never says a single word of disapproval at you, andsometimes you want to beg for it. Beg for the way he beat into Akutagawa, theway he ripped him apart and turned him into something more- because the silencehe offers is a lack of air that leaves you shaking.

“Again.”

Again.

Youdon’t burst this time, you fizzle. More of your wrists bakes from all the heattrapped in the confines of your body, and the pain cuts into you like glass.You wonder if your flesh has cooked well enough to eat.

“Youcan do this in three more tries.”

Theenergy left in your calves sparkles up and stings you in between your eyes.Your eyes, although perpetually tired and half-lidded, widens to look at yourpartner. The partner you don’t deserve, the partner you almost killed, thepartner who, for some reason, deigns to help you train even if you’re nothingcompared to him.

Yourmouth trembles. “How do you know?”

Dazaismiles- he never smiles- and it makes you want to fall to your knees inreverence and terror in equal measure.

“Foreach time you fail, I’m going to tell you something. I think the third time’sthe charm, don’t you?”

Youdon’t, but you have no other option. Your nod is filled with a quiet acceptanceand an unforgiving muscle ache, and your eyes close to try again.

Thefirst try, you think of beauty. It gives you a sense of peace that caresses youwith moonlit waves and the crashing crests against pillars of stone, and yousigh. A fire starts by your ankles, and your lip is almost bitten through withpain.

You’restill trying to taste the air on your tongue as a change from the flecks ofsmoke in your lungs, when Dazai steps forwards and places a soft hand on yourshoulder.

“Mynew burden almost killed me,” he whispers.

Thetears aren’t imaginary. You can feel them somewhere behind your throat, and youstill can’t breathe. He steps back, and this time, without any oxygen or sight,you think of guilt.

Severalmemories float back into your mind, pale and unexciting. It’s a recent feeling,and all the things from the past only feel… boring. Your brother’s horrifiedface as you slice your foster parents in half is simply put, uninspiring, andyou wait patiently until Mori’s face burns into view. It’s Dazai right after,and you feel disgusted. At yourself.

Thefloor rumbles, even though your feet still burn, and a splitting headache growswith each shimmer of air around your hands. Still nothing changes, and itcreeps away from you like leaking wine on a carpet until you’re limp againstyour spine and you’re spent.

Thefootsteps come again, and the hand you feel almost as heavily as the hand ofjudgement touches you a second time. “When will you stop being adisappointment? Mori will tire of you. As will I.”

Youdon’t need to think of loss. It hits you before you’re alone again, and youthink that maybe you can no longer stand. This is why you hate these sessions,why you hate this ability of yours- your small, little dead heart can’t takethis. Can’t take the sheer amount of emotion that you need to hold in yourbroken frame for you to be of use. Each time, all it is, is pain, rage, andmore pain. You feel like roaring, but the abyss has abandoned you too.

Somethingcracks, and it isn’t your bones. It’s a small little dent that splits intobranches underneath your feet, and a stab of hope carves itself halfway intoyour heart at the movement. Yet, when you breathe in, it stops.

Thesilence sinks into your marrow, and Dazai is mute.

Thirdtime isn’t a charm when it with you. When failure is so absolute that not evenMurphy’s Law can change the unmovable truths of the universe that you are lacking,you are a disappointment and that you will be abandoned.

Dazaismiles again, but doesn’t walk closer. He tells you, in case you needed to hearit out loud for you to believe it.

“Whata shame. But then again, you always knew you were.”

Itis your turn to smile. It’s a bright, beautiful one that calls death back infrom its winter because this is an emotion you recognize, that you live withand it keeps you company on the coldest of nights.

Youaren’t aware of when it starts, but it doesn’t stop, and you don’t need tocontrol it. It spreads and spreads and spreads, like a shallow bank in amonsoon, and everything starts to shake, starts to break, and you are joyousbecause you remember what it’s like to be yourself again.

Self-loathingcracks at the creases of your eyes like it does the iron lined walls, flowsthrough your body like honey and it also flows through the shaking ground,almost like an earthquake, and all the glass breaks around you, like snow inthe heat of summer. You hear Dazai’s pleased clapping, slow and measured, andyou twirl a little in your position, just a quick three-hundred and sixtydegree spin, and the mountain of crates and tin cargo boxes erupt from theirorganized pile- like a metal volcano, or a human-fueled microwave, andeverything you can see, you can destroy if you wish it.

Then,when the mirth of familiarity fades from you like a the aftermaths of a storm,it quietens. All becomes still except for you, trembling uncontrollably fromthe leftover energy that thrums through you like an instrument, like a harpthat plays its own song when nobody’s looking, and Dazai’s hand is on youagain.

Itis without spite, without pity, and he quietly murmurs, “that’s enough.”

Youstop trembling.

Everythingto you, stops.

Dazaiis smiling at you again, slow and measured, so you nod, and let your hands fallto your sides.

“Wecan continue tomorrow,” he tells you, and you begin to turn around to face theexit, “this was suitable progress.”

Perhapshe is happy, perhaps he is indifferent, but you most certainly don’t care. Youalready suffer through so much of life through your ability, you can’t envisiona day to day life with all that simmering through you. No, Dazai’sassistance is invaluable, and you bow a little from your waist before paddingout of the warehouse.

Youdon’t have the faintest impulse to look back.

NoLonger Humandoesn’t control your energy- that doesn’t need suppressing, quite the opposite,in fact. No, direction is a challenge, but it will be worked on. The gift, ofescaping your gift for a while, turns off more than the blood thrumming throughyour ears. It turns everything off, all that isn’t required, all that you don’tregularly feel, and you become yourself again once it all shuts down.

Fora glorified empathetic emitter, you feel exquisitely little.

Thedirection you head towards is a natural movement, gentle and measured againstthe meticulously tiled pavement thanks to the government, and you think thatit’s time to reward yourself for a day’s work by filling in the absence of anyrecognizable emotion in you with some hot tea, and a good book.