#I think it's a really important conversation and I do wish more people were having it

[arpicityandneed]

Hell Hath No Fury

(sequel to this ask.)

18+ f!reader. on the run Winter Soldier!Bucky. Dark Bucky. Angst. Violence. Hydra. Kidnapping. Threats of sexual violence. (No actual noncon) Rumlow (he's his own warning.) happy ending.

3.9k

~

The Asset was going to be punished. Maybe not right away, and never in a way he could anticipate, but he would be punished. The truth of it rattled in his bones.

He'd had pleasure, warmth, connection. All things that were forbidden to him.

So he'd ran.

But no matter how well he hid himself, the memory of you haunted him. Your conversations, the way your pussy felt on his cock when he split you open, the way you'd bitten his neck like he was yours.

He'd spent months simply observing you before you'd started teasing him. You were quick witted, a bit of a brat, more than a bit spoiled, but never cruel. You touched him without fear and only looked at his arm with curiosity.

You'd started confessing things to him when you realized he really wouldn't speak unless he had orders to. You told him you missed your mother who'd died as a child in an 'accident' you were sure was actually an assassination to get to your father. You told him you wanted a regular life with kids and maybe a cat. You even told him you hated being your father's daughter, the weight of expectation to be perfect and a pawn for him to marry off to whoever would get him the most power.

All the while the Asset had listened, tucking away the information deep into his heart because for some reason he knew it was important. He carried you home after parties left your feet too tired to walk another step in your heels and felt his heart flip in his chest when you nuzzled into him.

Then you'd started testing his patience, showing off your curves without remorse or shame. Tempting him with the softness of your breasts, the chub of your stomach and thighs, the wet heat between your legs.

When he'd finally snapped you'd taken him balls deep without hesitation. And it made him so angry (you'd let that pathetic dildo inside you? maybe you'd fucked other men before he'd been assigned to you. he hated the thought of anyone or anything but him fucking you) he'd used you like a whore, fucking you hard and deep without much thought of your pleasure. But to his surprise the harder he'd taken you the more you responded, clinging to him and begging for more.

Your pussy was sucking him in, milking his cock for his cum while you moaned and drove him crazy with your whines. "Do it, cum in me, get me pregnant I don't care--"

He'd had to cover your mouth, your words worming their way into his brain until all he could think about was seeing you grow round with his child.

The Asset knew he didn't deserve this pleasure but your pussy wouldn't stop fluttering around him, and the second he played with your clit you started fucking squirting on his cock.

How was he not supposed to cream you after that?

Maybe leaving the pillow under your hips was over kill, but some primal part of his brain wanted his seed to take. So he stuffed his fingers into your pussy to push his cum back inside you when it leaked out. You moaned in your sleep but didn't stir.

He licked his fingers before sneaking out the window- but not before he planted his own bugs in the room.

~

"Where did he go?" Listening to your father rage at you was killing him. Bucky- his name, lost for so long but knocked loose by the shock of being with you- knew you had every reason to turn him in. But for some reason, you weren't saying anything.

"I don't know dad. I had a one night stand and he was gone when I woke up." You muttered quietly, and Bucky wished he'd had camera's installed. He needed to see you. Make sure you were alright.

"You're lying to me! These people, darling, they don't like losing an Asset like that. If you don't tell me where he went we'll all have to face the consequences." Your father's voice was tight, anger and fear wrapped together in his tone.

"I already told you I don't know!" You yelled, and Bucky felt a fierce pride in his heart. The longer he was on his own, the more emotions he was able to feel. It had been months since his last wipe and his serum enhanced body seemed to be healing at an astonishing rate. So he was able to admit, he was proud of the woman his whole being had decided was his.

"Then we'll just have to hope they show us mercy."

~

Bucky now knew what his punishment was. You.

When he'd heard the chatter on HYDRA wavelengths discussing a possible reproduction of the serum, his heart was instantly in a vice grip. Of course they'd find out, and any child of his might be enhanced. How stupid could he have been?

By the time he made it to the hotel you were gone, your father dead from a bullet between his eyebrows. HYDRA worked quickly and quietly and Bucky was forced to reckon with his choice to leave you behind.

He had to do something, and fast. The thought of you in the clutches of HYDRA did something horrible to his breathing.

So for the first time since he remembered his name, he went to the only person he could for help.

~

Stevie was still an idiot. And though Stark's son was smart, HYDRA had been stealing his tech for years and Bucky was familiar with them.

He slipped into Steve's apartment without a sound and found the captain sleeping soundly. When Bucky allowed his presence to be felt Steve was up and searching for his shield in an instant. I still got it punk.

"I need your help." Bucky spoke before Steve could panic and call his teammates.

Steve paused, blinking and fully waking up as he took the assassin that was once his best friend.

"B-Buck?"

"We don't have time for this, Captain. I need your help." Bucky hissed, his own panic making itself known. That finally got Steve's attention and he nodded, his face growing serious.

"What can I do? Anything Buck." And Bucky could tell the man meant it. He still didn't trust the memories that had started to resurface, but he did trust the man in front of him for some reason.

"There's a woman. Might be carrying an enhanced child. HYDRA has her and we have to get her out." Bucky was tired, this was the most he'd spoken in years. But Steve was smart, listened to everything Bucky didn't say. She's mine. Can't let them have her.

"I'll tell the team-"

"NO!" Bucky's voice rattled the windows as he felt ice grow in his veins. If HYDRA saw the entire Avengers coming to their base? You'd be killed in an instant. "J-just, just us. Or else they'll terminate."

"Okay Buck, okay." Steve held up his hands gently in surrender, and took a deep breath before squaring his shoulders. "Then lets get to work."

~

It had been a month since the Asset disappeared when it happened. You woke up in a sterile white room with a throbbing headache and in a paper hospital gown. Your skin crawled at the thought of someone touching your naked body when you were unconcious.

"Hello? What kind of B list movie bullshit is this?" You called, trying to cover the fear that was taking over your body with bravado.

"I can see why he likes you." Came the reply when a man opened the door, his scarred face and leering eyes making you push back into the wall to try to get farther away from him. "But too bad. He's no where to be found. Ghost man you know?"

The man seemed to be enjoying himself until a second man popped his head in, an equally ugly look in his eyes as he looked over you. "Says there's still been no alarms tripped, Rumlow. He hasn't made a move."

"Thanks Walker, good job." When it was just the two of you again, Rumlow came over to crouch in front of you. He took a lock of your hair and rubbed it between your fingers. You wanted to throw up.

"You're pretty enough I guess. But honestly I'd just fuck you to make your precious little soldier boy pissed. He's the one who did this to my beautiful mug." He grinned as you cringed away, seeming to enjoy your revulsion.

"Don't worry, as soon as you pop out his brat I'll put another one in you." The threat made your stomach twist, but thankfully that was all he seemed to want to say. He stood and turned to leave, only pausing to smile at you once more- as if he knew that's what made you the most uncomfortable, seeing his scars pulled tight over his teeth.

When he left you curled around yourself, and the life inside you that you hadn't even known about until now.

We're gonna be okay. Your daddy is gonna come get us. I know it.

~

In the end it took four weeks. Four weeks to find information on where you were being held, plan out points of entry and exit, as well as transportation.

Bucky thought he knew pain, thought he knew everything there was to know about ways to torture a human being. But hearing chatter from some asshole about how he couldn't wait to force himself on you as soon as the baby was born was a new form of hell. That asshole, Rumlow Bucky found out, seemed to be the only real leak about you.

Everyone else barely mentioned you, trying to keep their new treasure to themselves. But Rumlow couldn't help himself. His putrid personality on full display as he talked about 'some girl' that Bucky knew in his bones was you.

It was the only connection Bucky had to you, listening to Rumlow go on about how fiesty you were and how he wanted to break you. It made Bucky decide Rumlow would be the last one to die. So Bucky could let you watch if you wanted.

By the time Bucky and Steve were heading out, Bucky couldn't even sit still. He paced the outdated quinjet Steve had stolen like a feral animal on a dangerously thin leash.

"We'll get her back Buck. We would've heard if something had happened." Steve had been a good partner in this, Bucky knew. He had done his best to reassure Bucky everytime he felt like tearing his hair out. (Could only admit to himself that Steve matched up with his memories almost eerily well, kind funny and protective of those he cared about.)

"Rumlow's been quiet. What if-" Bucky couldn't finish the thought. You were his. If Rumlow had touched you in any way, Bucky would have to start by breaking his fingers one at a time.

"He would've been bragging by now." Steve muttered as he flew the quinjet to the HYDRA base, one of their smaller facilities to distract anyone searching for you.

"Fly faster."

~

Something was different today. Instead of Rumlow coming in to taunt you, you'd been left alone. Every time your door opened for them to bring you a meal you heard lots of footsteps rushing around.

"What's going on?" You asked the tech assigned to feed you, not surprised when all you got was a look.

"Just tell me some gossip dude, I've been stuck in here for weeks." You tried to hide your desperation behind a charming smile, and it almost might have worked if Rumlow hadn't chosen that moment to stroll in.

"Get away from the subject." He growled and the tech snapped their mouth shut before scurrying out.

"Looks like its your lucky day princess. You're gonna get to see your boy toy get killed." You didn't rise to the bait even as your heart leapt in your chest, narrowing your eyes at the waste of space as he started pacing. You didn't want to give him the satisfaction of a reaction.

You noticed three things right away. One was the massive gun strapped to him, one that looked more like alien tech than anything else. Second was the fact that he was blocking the door. Third, was that the son of bitch looked a little nervous, his mouth pressed into a flat line instead of his usual sneer.

"This? Oh I'm glad you asked," Rumlow held up the gun and pressed a button. The machine hummed to life and started glowing an odd shade of blue. "This is the newest HYDRA enhanced SHIELD knock off. Should even be able to destroy vibranium. Can't wait to test it out."

You heard a blaring alarm through the door, and for the first time in weeks it was your turn to smile.

"That gun you got?" You stood up, hand instinctively going to your belly as you taunted the man. "Isn't gonna be good enough. Cause he's coming for both of us and nothing will stop him. That's why you're afraid."

The slap surprised you, in your entire stay in this hell hole he’d never hit you. You cradled your cheek and glared at him with all the hate you had in your heart. You knew it would bruise, knew the throbbing pain wouldn’t go away for hours.

“Shut up! Just shut up! I’ll kill him, then I’ll kill you. But not before I get what I want.” He took another step towards you and you scrambled away, something clicking in your brain. You would have to survive—even if he touched you. For your baby if nothing else.

“I’m not going to die here.” You weren’t sure who you were trying to convince more, but the door opened again and Walker barked at Rumlow,

“He’s here. We need all hands.”

“In a minute!” Rumlow growled, but Walker shook his head.

“Directors orders.” Walker spoke firmly, and Rumlow cursed as he looked at you with something unhinged in his eyes, his grip on the gun tightening like he wanted to use it on you.

“We’ll continue this later, princess.”

You waited till he’d left before allowing yourself to sink to the floor, gasping for air as the reality of what was going on hit you. If your Soldat didn’t come for you, if he died (and fuck you didn’t even know the name of your child’s father) you’d be at the mercy of Rumlow and Walker with no way out.

You wouldn’t let that happen.

~

Bucky didn’t hesitate to slit the throat of any HYDRA agent coming his way, while Steve merely incapacitated them.

“Really Bucky?” Steve groaned as the pile of bodies grew. He had some misunderstanding that the lower ranked agents were somehow less guilty. But no, Bucky knew better. Ever single one of them would sell innocent lives for a chance for more power.

Bucky didn’t bother to respond.

12.

He moved with deadly grace, his knives slicing through the air before landing in the bodies of his enemies with frightening accuracy. He’d been armed to the teeth and hadn’t even touched a gun yet. That would’ve been too merciful.

15.

He kept a running tally of his kills as he was taught, his entire body searching for signs of you and Rumlow. Somehow he knew you wouldn’t be far apart. So as he worked his way deeper into the base and found two men, one with a scarred face that was vaguely familiar and a blonde who looked like a cheap knock off of Steve in front of a door with a heavy lock, he knew he’d found you.

“Look what the cat dragged in.” Bucky would know that voice anywhere, and he merely stared at Rumlow. He knew his icy flat stare was unsettling and used it to his advantage. But despite the fear Bucky could smell off of Rumlow as Steve finally made it to Bucky’s side, he continued to talk shit.

“Too bad you’re too late. Your girl’s cunt is good stuff. I see why you’d kill for—” The knife lodged itself in Rumlows shoulder with a sickening thud and the man cried out in pain. And then Walker tried to back away, looking for ways to escape.

“Son, just don’t.” Steve warned before the coward ran, making Steve curse before going after him.

“Open the door.” Bucky’s voice was monotone, another knife appearing in his hand before it was thrown into Rumlows thigh.

“Over my dead body.” Rumlow tried to aim his gun at Bucky, but it was quick work to break his hand and toss the gun away. Bucky grabbed Rumlow by the throat in his metal hand and began to squeeze.

“Open. The. Door.” Bucky murmured lowly, watching with satisfaction as Rumlow slowly turned purple from the lack of oxygen. Just before he would’ve snapped Rumlows throat the man gasped out,

“Open, code R-two-D-seven-alpha-eight-six.” His voice was barely audible but the technology beeped anyway, the lock turning green. Bucky loosened his grip on Rumlow but didn’t release him.

Dragged him behind as he walked to the door, hesitating for the first time since this all started. Would you even want to see him?

When he stepped inside he was ready to grovel, apologize in every language he knew.

What he wasn’t prepared for was you launching yourself at him blindly, kicking and biting and screaming,

“You’re not gonna fucking touch me!” Rumlow got dropped like a sack of bricks, gasping for air and choking on it as Bucky grabbed your hands gently, speaking as softly (he didn’t even know he could do that.)

“Это я. Я не позволю им прикоснуться к тебе.” It’s me. I won’t let them touch you. Bucky watched as you slowly stopped trying to attack him, looking at him for the first time.

“Y-you’re really here?” You couldn’t stop the way your voice trembled, your eyes darting over him as if you couldn’t really believe it.

“Da.” He nodded before looking over his shoulder at Rumlow on the ground, trying to force his body to move despite his injuries.

“You want me to kill this guy for you?” Bucky asked in English this time, making you blink in surprise.

“You can speak English? You can speak?” You blurted out in your typical sassy way, making Bucky smile for the first time in months.

“Focus, do you want me to kill him? Because I will.” He was completely serious and he watched you truly consider it for a while, before shaking your head.

“You can put a knife in his dick though.” You were completely serious and Rumlow tried to crawl away, but Bucky moved faster easily.

“Тебе не следовало брать ее.” You shouldn’t have taken her. You watched with bitter satisfaction as Bucky kicked Rumlow onto his back and threw his final knife into the bastards crotch. Watching him howl in pain made you smile, and you went to your Soldat’s side grabbing onto his metal arm.

You looked down at Rumlow and grinned. “Told you, asshole.”

Then some other guy, Captain fucking America you realized with a start poked his head in the door and glared at your Soldat.

“Bucky we need to go. Reunion can happen later. They’re going to destroy the base.” The blond spoke swiftly and your Soldat, Bucky?, nodded.

“Let’s go.”

“You’re name is Bucky—?” You tried to ask before you were swept into Bucky’s arms, his grip on you secure as he started running behind Steve.

“My name is James, but apparently my friends called me Bucky.” He explained quietly, not even the slightest bit out of breath as they ran until they found a car. Bucky set you inside like you were made of glass before coming to sit beside you and slamming the door shut. Steve took to the drivers seat with a roll of his eyes. Tires screeched as you all drove away, and for the first time since you’d been taken your body allowed itself to break down.

You breathing started to grow fast, too fast, as you hyperventilated and started to shake. Tears fell down your cheeks as you hugged yourself. Bucky reached for you and you flinched without thinking.

“It’s over. I swear I will never leave your side again. You… or the baby.” He spoke with such conviction, fierce protectiveness in his gaze when you finally did look at him.

“You knew about..?” You asked as you tried to keep your sobs in, feeling like you were going crazy with the different emotions raging through you. Fear, relief, hope, it was too much to process at once.

“I’ve been trying to get you back since the day they took you.” He admitted quietly, holding his hand out slower this time, palm up in supplication. “I’m so, so sorry I left you. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“They hurt you too. That’s why you worked for them.” It wasn’t a question, you’d seen the way his ‘handlers’ had treated him when you first met him. They spoke to him like a dog.

“I didn’t have a choice. You were what loosened their grip on me.” You took his hand, even though your fingers were trembling, and he brought your knuckles to his lips. “You saved me.”

“Then I guess we’re even.” You smiled a bit sadly, knowing it would be a long road to deal with everything that happened. But you were safe. And so was your baby. Even Bucky was back with you.

“10 minutes out to the quinjet.” Steve spoke quietly, and you startled. You honestly forgot he was there.

“Thanks Stevie.” (You noticed the way Steve’s eyes went wide, grew misty as he drove, and you wondered why that was.) Bucky carefully pulled you closer so he could wrap his arms around you, so his bones could know that you were safe.

“Where are we going?” You asked, looking up at him worriedly. “What about the baby? They wanted the baby, won’t they come for me again?”

“Let them fucking try.” Bucky growled, his arms tightening around you. “I’ll figure something out. But for now, just rest. I’ll keep watch.”

Now that he mentioned it, you were exhausted. And you trusted him. He’d come for you, just like you knew he would. And no matter what happened in the future, you knew he’d always come for you.

So you nodded, cuddled closer into his chest and promptly fell asleep.

~

Bucky carried your sleeping form into the plane, and Steve was amazed by how gentle his friend was with you. Bucky wouldn’t let you out of his arms let alone his sight.

Steve still couldn’t believe it. Bucky, who he’d thought was dead, was alive and somehow freed from HYDRA’s control. Bucky, who he’d thought was so broken by HYDRA that he barely remembered Steve, had called him Stevie like they were kids again.

And Steve knew it was because of you.

He was glad he’d put some other plans into motion while they’d been preparing to come get you. Plans that included Pepper creating a legal case in Bucky’s defense and sending Natasha to uncover HYDRA’s secrets to expose them.

It wouldn’t be easy, and there would always be people looking to get their hands on your possibly enhanced baby. But with the way Bucky was curled around you like a dragon with his treasure—Steve wasn’t worried. Anyone who tried to come for you again would have to deal with a wrath the likes of which no one had ever lived to tell.

Hell hath no fury like Bucky when it came to you.

[thenwethrowitonthefire]

Shout-out to everyone who survived a "fun" easter with the family

[thelittlemermage]

Actually, I do completely understand how and why Gen Z came to feel the way they do about internet/fandom culture. I just think their solution to fixing the issue is misguided and more reactionary than solution-oriented based on personal trauma. The open internet and fandom culture itself was never built for small children to be able to safely wander around in. There were specific spaces for children like Neopets, Disney.com games, stuff like that. You wouldn’t have a little kid on social media. There was no social media. You’d have forums and myspace at best. Youtube was literally built because the creator wanted to show an uncensored nip slip. So the idea of protecting children was not a necessity because children were not online yet in the way adults or older teenagers were online.

What happened was technology progresses at and extremely fast rate. Faster than you can move around content on the internet or develop a different culture where kids are expected to just be around. And this unfortunately happened alongside child-friendly sites being eliminated. I’d say even with those sites tho, no one should have ever been giving two year olds ipads with unrestricted internet access. None of these kids should have been in the position to be able to come across fandom porn without their parents noticing. That’s crazy to me. My parents would check what sites I was visiting on our family computer. I think these kids were failed by ignorant parents and just...our ability to create technology faster than we know what to do with it. I think it’s horrifying we have a generation of kids who were all exposed to porn at a young age. I think a lot of things they say and do are because it fucked up their view of sex. And that’s not their fault, but I think a lot of young adults probably need to be in therapy about it and idk if they’re aware. Attacking art on the internet can’t heal your inner child. But I’m getting ahead of things.

I think we can all agree a lot of shit came to a head with MLP fandom. Those guys generated an unprecedented amount of porn, even for fandom. And this was also at a time when a lot of kids were now online and looking up their favorite shows. I don’t think there could be worse timing for anything. I don’t even want to say MLP fandom was all bad, a lot of them dedicated time to rounding up nsfw images that show up in google search and reporting it. But it was definitely a huge shitshow that I think molded a lot of people’s ideas of cartoon porn on the internet.

I still find the idea of a “kid’s fandom” oxymoronic because until recently a fandom for any cartoon would not be a “kid’s fandom”. It would be a fandom of adults and teens talking about a show that as aimed at kids, but no one would find that particularly relevant. Because the people present were not young kids. Animaniacs was actually one of the first big fandoms on the internet and it was big with college students. (Btw I feel like someone is going to purposefully start something because I keep referring to kids and teens separately. This is because there is obviously a huge difference developmentally in what content say a 7 year old and a 17 year old can handle. Whether or not a 17 year old should look at adult content, it’s not going to fuck them up the way it would a prepubescent child. I think that’s obvious. Trust and believe I’d look at a lot of shit I wasn’t supposed to as a teen and that was a purposeful choice on my part. I don’t have any particular regrets about this and I don’t feel any disgust towards sexual content, nor did I at the time. But if I was a little kid and it was being shoved in my face at random, I imagine I’d have to shit to work through. So for clarity, that’s what I mean.) I think fandom in the current year would look at something like patb fandom and be like “yea, a kid’s show for kids. It’s a kid fandom.” Maybe it would be currently, idk, but until now everyone here was in their 20′s and 30′s because it’s a show from the 90′s. So I do think there’s a culture gap in the understanding of what a fandom even looks like.

Ultimately tho, and this is my opinion based on living through all of it so far, I don’t think the problem is with the type of content people make. Frankly, having grown up in a time when every other fic was untagged noncon (because believe it or not, it’s a very common fetish and I promise that has not changed as much as people act shocked and outraged by it now. The same amount of people are still into it. They’re just in an environment where all their friends would come after them if they knew and they aren’t stupid. So they join in attacking others, but just know a lot of your friends do read it on the side, regardless of what they say publicly. 🤷‍♀️I see those kudos.) and I’ve never been as disgusted and genuinely distressed by that as I have with how real living people are treated in fandom today. It makes me sick to my stomach the things people do to each other. Fanfic and fanart have NEVER triggered me. This shit does. That CANNOT be the solution. It’s an impossible fight to begin with to eliminate everything you don’t like from fandom. And really things have come a long way with tagging believe it or not. I can avoid things like never before. So actually going out of your way to attack something you don’t NEED to look at just because it exists is just stupid to me. I’m not sure how purposefully looking at stuff you hate actually helps you with not seeing the things you hate. People obviously won’t agree with me, but I don’t think your art defines your morals. Art can be/mean anything, and I don’t personally want to live in a world that dictates “immoral” art as illegal because it’s obvious where that sort of thing can lead and it’s not pretty. (I do not necessarily agree with everything people make. I just think censorship is ultimately worse like...as far as real world ramifications go.) What you do to other people determines what kind of person you are. It’s weird this is even an unpopular opinion, but it is. You can treat others like absolute trash and still be seen as a good person so long as they “deserved it” for making The Wrong Kind Of Art. Which varies depending on which fandom you’re in anyway. And I really can’t get behind hurting people for reasons that are often so arbitrary to me.

I think the issue is just. The internet exists and kids are on it and there’s no place for them. And I really don’t know what the solution for that is. Because fandom aside, the internet is the internet. There are random porn ads on any given site, tiktok can lead you down an alt right rabbit hole in a matter of hours, twitter is....twitter lol. It’s a hostile environment for anyone these days tbh. I don’t think kids should be exposed to any of that. I think childhood is shrinking in our culture. Kids don’t have a tween phase anymore. It’s like you’re a kid and then you’re expected to look and act like a mini adult. It’s sad to me. I think that’s why a lot of people want to recapture some type of innocence and childhood. You were pushed out of it way too fast. There’s some state I think that was proposing children be banned from the internet until they’re 18. While that would be cool for me, I think that’s dangerous in a different way given how a lot of extreme alt right parents are starting to homeschool their kids. I think it’s more about putting a stopper on information than about protecting kids. And I think this would have a devastating effect on queer kids in particular. So idk. There has to be something in between we can do.

More than anything I wish we could all work together to try to fix this because I don’t think people WANT to see kids get hurt. We’re all on the same side at the end of the day. But I think the environment is too hostile to actually achieve anything useful atm. 🤷‍♀️I think that sucks. I’d love for fandom to be a fun and close-knit community again. It’s something that always meant a lot to me growing up and I think it’s sad people can no longer have what I had. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

[caelum-in-the-avatarverse]

Fandom can do a little gatekeeping. As a treat.

So I finally decided to archive-lock my fics on AO3 last night. I’ve been considering it since the AI scrape last year, but the tipping point was this whole lore.fm debacle, coupled with some thoughts I’ve been thinking regarding Fandom These Days in general and Fandom As A Community in particular. So I wanna explain why I waited so long, why I locked my stuff up now, and why I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a-okay with making it harder for people to see my stories.

Lurkers really are great, tho

I’m a chronic lurker, and have been since I started hanging out on the internet as a teen in the 00s. These days it’s just cuz I don’t feel a need to socialize very often, but back then it was because I was shy and knew I was socially awkward. Even if I made an account, I’d spend months lurking on message boards or forums or Livejournals, watching other people interact and getting a feel for that particular community’s culture and etiquette before I finally started interacting myself. And y’know, that approach saved me a lot of embarrassment. Over the course of my lurking on any site, there was always some other person who’d clearly joined up five minutes after learning the place existed, barged in without a care for their behavior, and committed so many social faux pas that all the other users were immediately annoyed with them at best. I learned a lot observing those incidents. Lurk More is Rule 33 of the internet for very good reason.

Lurking isn’t bad or weird or creepy. It’s perfectly normal. I love lurking. It’s hard for me to not lurk - socializing takes a lot of energy out of me, even via text. (Heck it took 12 hours for me to write this post, I wish I was kidding--) Occasionally I’ll manage longer bouts of interaction - a few weeks posting here, almost a year chatting in a discord there - but I’m always gonna end up going radio silent for months at some point. I used to feel bad about it, but I’ve long since made peace with the fact that it’s just the way my brain works. I’m a chronic lurker, and in the long term nothing is going to change that.

The thing with being a chronic lurker is that you have to accept that you are not actually seen as part of the community you are lurking in. That’s not to say that lurkers are unimportant - lurkers actually are important, and they make up a large proportion of any online community - but it’s simple cause and effect. You may think of it as “your community”, but if you’ve never said a word, how is the community supposed to know you exist? If I lurked on someone’s LJ, and then that person suddenly friendslocked their blog, I knew that I had two choices: Either accept that I would never be able to read their posts again, or reach out to them and ask if I could be added to their friends list with the full understanding that I was a rando they might not decide to trust. I usually went with the first option, because my invisibility as a lurker was more important to me than talking to strangers on the internet.

Lurking is like sitting on a park bench, quietly people-watching and eavesdropping on the conversations other people are having around you. You’re in the park, but you’re not actively participating in anything happening there. You can see and hear things that you become very interested in! But if you don’t introduce yourself and become part of the conversation, you won’t be able to keep listening to it when those people walk away. When fandom migrated away from Livejournal, people moved to new platforms alongside their friends, but lurkers were often left behind. No one knew they existed, so they weren’t told where everyone else was going. To be seen as part of a fandom community, you need to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known, etc. etc.

There’s nothing wrong with lurking. There can actually be benefits to lurking, both for the lurkers and the communities they lurk in. It’s just another way to be in a fandom. But if that is how you exist in fandom--and remember, I say this as someone who often does exist that way in fandom--you need to remember that you’re on the outside looking in, and the curtains can always close.

I’ve always been super sympathetic to lurkers, because I am one. I know there’s a lot of people like me who just don’t socialize often. I know there’s plenty of reasons why someone might not make an account on the internet - maybe they’re nervous, maybe they’re young and their parents don’t allow them to, maybe they’re in a bad situation where someone is monitoring their activity, maybe they can only access the internet from public computer terminals. Heck, I’ve never even logged into AO3 on my phone--if I’m away from my computer I just read what’s publicly available. 

I know I have people lurking on my fics. I know my fics probably mean a lot to someone I don’t even know exists. I know this because there are plenty of fics I love whose writers don’t know I exist.

I love my commenters personally; I love my lurkers as an abstract concept. I know they’re there and I wish them well, and if they ever de-lurk I love them all the more.

So up until last year I never considered archive-locking my fic, because I get it. The AI scraping was upsetting, but I still hesitated because I was thinking of lurkers and guests and remembering what it felt like to be 15 and wondering if it’d be worth letting a stranger on the internet know I existed and asking to be added to their friends list just so I could reread a funny post they made once.

But the internet has changed a lot since the 00s, and fandom has changed with it. I’ve read some things and been doing some thinking about fandom-as-community over the last few years, and reading through the lore.fm drama made me decide that it’s time for me to set some boundaries.

I still love my lurkers, and I feel bad about leaving any guest commenters behind, especially if they’re in a situation where they can’t make an account for some reason. But from here on out, even my lurkers are going to have to do the bare minimum to read my fics--make an AO3 account.

Should we gatekeep fandom?

I’ve seen a few people ask this question, usually rhetorically, sometimes as a joke, always with a bit of seriousness. And I think…yeah, maybe we should. Except wait, no, not like that--

A decade ago, when people talked about fandom gatekeeping and why it was bad to do, it intersected with a lot of other things, mainly feminism and classism. The prevalent image of fandom gatekeeping was, like, a man learning that a woman likes Star Wars and haughtily demanding, “Oh, yeah? Well if you’re REALLY a fan, name ten EU novels” to belittle and dismiss her, expecting that a “real fan” would have the money and time to be familiar with the EU, and ignoring the fact that male movie-only fans were still considered fans. The thing being gatekept was the very definition of “being a fan” and people’s right to describe themselves as one.

That’s not what I mean when I say maybe fandom should gatekeep more. Anyone can call themselves a fan if they like something, that’s fine. But when it comes to the ability to enjoy the fanworks produced by the fandom community…that might be something worth gatekeeping.

See, back in the 00s, it was perfectly common for people to just…not go on the internet. Surfing the web was a thing, but it was just, like, a fun pastime. Not everyone did it. It wasn’t until the rise of social media that going online became a thing everyone and their grandmother did every day. Back then, going on the internet was just…a hobby.

So one of the first gates online fandom ever had was the simple fact that the entire world wasn’t here yet.

The entire world is here now. That gate has been demolished.

And it’s a lot easier to find us now. Even scattered across platforms, fandom is so centralized these days. It isn’t a network of dedicated webshrines and forums that you can only find via webrings anymore, it’s right there on all the big social media sites. AO3 didn’t set out to be the main fanfic website, but that’s definitely what it’s become. It’s easy for people to find us--and that includes people who don’t care about the community, and just want “content.”

Transformative fandom doesn’t like it when people see our fanworks as “content”. “Content” is a pretty broad term, but when fandom uses it we’re usually referring to creative works that are churned out by content creators to be consumed by an audience as quickly as possible as often as possible so that the content creator can generate revenue. This not-so-new normal has caused a massive shift in how people who are new to fandom view fanworks--instead of seeing fic or art as something a fellow fan made and shared with you, they see fanworks as products to be consumed.

Transformative fandom has, in general, always been a gift economy. We put time and effort into creating fanworks that we share with our fellow fans for free. We do this so we don’t get sued, but fandom as a whole actually gets a lot out of the gift economy. Offer your community a story, and in return you can get comments, build friendships, or inspire other people to write things that you might want to read. Readers are given the gift of free stories to read and enjoy, and while lurking is fine, they have the choice to engage with the writer and other readers by leaving comments or making reclists to help build the community.

And look, don’t get me wrong. People have never engaged with fanfic as much as fan writers wish they would. There has always been “no one comments anymore” wank. There have always been people who only comment to say “MORE!” or otherwise demand or guilt trip writers into posting the next chapter. But fandom has always agreed that those commenters are rude and annoying, and as those commenters navigate fandom they have the chance to learn proper community etiquette.

However, now it seems that a lot of the people who are consuming fanworks aren’t actually in the community. 

I won’t say “they aren’t real fans” because that’s silly; there’s lots of ways to be a fan. But there seem to be a lot of fans now who have no interest in fandom as a community, or in adhering to community etiquette, or in respecting the gift economy. They consume our fics, but they don’t appreciate fan labor. They want our “content”, but they don’t respect our control over our creations.

And even worse--they see us as a resource. We share our work for free, as a gift, but all they see is an open-source content farm waiting to be tapped into. We shared it for free, so clearly they can do whatever they want with it. Why should we care if they feed our work into AI training datasets, or copy/paste our unfinished stories into ChatGPT to get an ending, or charge people for an unnecessary third-party AO3 app, or sell fanbindings on etsy for a profit without the author’s permission, or turn our stories into poor imitations of podfics to be posted on other platforms without giving us credit or asking our consent, while also using it to lure in people they can datascrape for their Forbes 30 Under 30 company? 

And sure, people have been doing shady things with other people’s fanworks since forever. Art theft and reposting has always been a big problem. Fanfic is harder to flat-out repost, but I’ve heard of unauthorized fic translations getting posted without crediting the original author. Once in…I think the 2010s? I read a post by a woman who had gone to some sort of local bookselling event, only to find that the man selling “his” novel had actually self-published her fanfic. (Wish I could find that one again, I don’t even remember where I read it.)

But aside from that third example, the thing is…as awful as fanart/writing theft is, back in the day, the main thing a thief would gain from it was clout. Clout that should rightfully go to the creators who gifted their work in the first place, yeah, but still. Just clout. People will do a lot of hurtful things for clout, but fandom clout means nothing outside of fandom. Fandom clout is not enough to incentivize the sort of wide-scale pillaging we’re seeing from community outsiders today.

Money, on the other hand… Well, fandom’s just a giant, untapped content farm, isn’t it? Think of how much revenue all that content could generate.

Lurkers are a normal and even beneficial part of any online community. Maybe one day they’ll de-lurk and easily slide into place beside their fellow fans because they already know the etiquette. Maybe they’re active in another community, and they can spread information from the community they lurk in to the community they’re active in. At the very least, they silently observe, and even if they’re not active community members, they understand the community.

Fans who see fanworks as “content” don’t belong in the same category as lurkers. They’re tourists. 

While reading through the initial Reddit thread on the lore.fm situation, I found this comment:

[ID: Reddit User Cabbitowo says: ... So in anime fandoms we have a word called tourist and essentially it means a fan of a few anime and doesn't care about anime tropes and actively criticizes them. This is kind of how fandoms on tiktok feel. They're touring fanfics and fanart and actively criticizes tropes that have been in the fandom since the 60s. They want to be in a fandom but they don't want to engage in fandom 

OP totallymandy responds: Just entered back into Reddit after a long day to see this most recent reply. And as a fellow anime fan this making me laugh so much since it’s true! But it sorta hurts too when the reality sets in. Modern fandom is so entitled and bratty and you’d think it’s the minors only but that’s not even true, my age-mates and older seem to be like that. They want to eat their cake and complain all whilst bringing nothing to the potluck… :/ END ID]

-

“Tourist” is an apt name for this sort of fan. They don’t want to be part of our community, and they don’t have to be in order to come into our spaces and consume our work. Even if they don’t steal our work themselves, they feel so entitled to it that they’re fine with ignoring our wishes and letting other people take it to make AI “podfics” for them to listen to (there are a lot of comments on lore.fm’s shutdown announcement video from people telling them to just ignore the writers and do it anyway). They’ll use AI to generate an ending to an unfinished fic because they don’t care about seeing “the ending this writer would have given to the story they were telling”, they just want “an ending”. For these tourist fans, the ends justify the means, and their end goal is content for them to consume, with no care for the community that created it for them in the first place.

I don’t think this is confined to a specific age group. This isn’t “13-year-olds on Wattpad” or “Zoomers on TikTok” or whatever pointless generation war we’re in now. This is coming from people who are new to fandom, whose main experience with creative works on the internet is this new content culture and who don’t understand fandom as a community. That description can be true of someone from any age group.

It’s so easy to find fandom these days. It is, in fact, too easy. Newcomers face no hurdles or challenges that would encourage them to lurk and observe a bit before engaging, and it’s easy for people who would otherwise move on and leave us alone to start making trouble. From tourist fans to content entrepreneurs to random people who just want to gawk, it’s so easy for people who don’t care about the fandom community to reap all of its fruits. 

So when I say maybe fandom should start gatekeeping a bit, I’m referring to the fact that we barely even have a gate anymore. Everyone is on the internet now; the entire world can find us, and they don’t need to bother learning community etiquette when they do. Before, we were protected by the fact that fandom was considered weird and most people didn’t look at it twice. Now, fandom is pretty mainstream. People who never would’ve bothered with it before are now comfortable strolling in like they own the place. They have no regard for the fandom community, they don’t understand it, and they don’t want to. They want to treat it just like the rest of the content they consume online.

And then they’re surprised when those of us who understand fandom culture get upset. Fanworks have existed far longer than the algorithmic internet’s content. Fanworks existed long before the internet. We’ve lived like this for ages and we like it.

So if someone can’t be bothered to respect fandom as a community, I don’t see why I should give them easy access to my fics.

Think of it like a garden gate

When I interact with commenters on my fic, I have this sense of hospitality.

The comment section is my front porch. The fic is my garden. I created my garden because I really wanted to, and I’m proud of it, and I’m happy to share it with other people. 

Lots of people enjoy looking at my garden. Many walk through without saying anything. Some stop to leave kudos. Some recommend my garden to their friends. And some people take the time to stop by my front porch and let me know what a beautiful garden it is and how much they’ve enjoyed it. 

Any fic writer can tell you that getting comments is an incredible feeling. I always try to answer all my comments. I don’t always manage it, but my fics’ comment sections are the one place that I manage to consistently socialize in fandom. When I respond to a comment, it feels like I’m pouring out a glass of lemonade to share with this lovely commenter on my front porch, a thank you for their thank you. We take a moment to admire my garden together, and then I see them out. The next time they drop by, I recognize them and am happy to pour another glass of lemonade.

My garden has always been open and easy to access. No fences, no walls. You just have to know where to find it. Fandom in general was once protected by its own obscurity, an out-of-the-way town that showed up on maps but was usually ignored.

But now there’s a highway that makes it easy to get to, and we have all these out-of-towner tourists coming in to gawk and steal our lawn ornaments and wonder if they can use the place to make themselves some money.

I don’t care to have those types trampling over my garden and eating all my vegetables and digging up my flowers to repot and sell, so I’ve put up a wall. It has a gate that visitors can get through if they just take the time to open it.

Admittedly, it’s a small obstacle. But when I share my fics, I share them as a gift with my fellow fans, the ones who understand that fandom is a community, even if they’re lurkers. As for tourist fans and entrepreneurs who see fic as content, who have no qualms ignoring the writer’s wishes, who refuse to respect or understand the fandom community…well, they’re not the people I mean to share my fic with, so I have no issues locking them out. If they want access to my stories, they’ll have to do the bare minimum to become a community member and join the AO3 invite queue.

And y’know, I’ve said a lot about fandom and community here, and I just want to say, I hope it’s not intimidating. When I was younger, talk about The Fandom Community made me feel insecure, and I didn’t think I’d ever manage to be active enough in fandom spaces to be counted as A Member Of The Community. But you don’t have to be a social butterfly to participate in fandom. I’ll always and forever be a chronic lurker, I reblog more than I post, I rarely manage to comment on fic, and I go radio silent for months at a time--but I write and post fanfiction. That’s my contribution.

Do you write, draw, vid, gif, or otherwise create? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you leave comments? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you curate reclists? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you maintain a fandom blog or fuckyeah blog? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you provide a space for other fans to convene in? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you regularly send asks (off anon so people know who you are)? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you have fandom friends who you interact with? Congrats, you're a community member.

There’s lots of ways to be a fan. Just make sure to respect and appreciate your fellow fans and the work they put in for you to enjoy and the gift economy fandom culture that keeps this community going.

[rhaenyra-storms]

STOPP your drabble of cregan was adorable, we need more stories of him!! i would like to request something for cregan, where the reader is his lady wife and is introduced to jacaerys for the first time!! it’s up to you whether they have children of their own or it’s just rickon (cregan’s child from his first marriage), i like to think lady stark!reader would become eager to talk to jacaerys and his dragon!!

thank you so much!! i literally love writing for him omg. and i would definitely freak out too if i was able to see a dragon!! :,)

it got a lot longer than expected, but i hope you enjoy!!

pairing: cregan stark x wife!reader warnings: cregan is a little overprotective, that's it, just fluff words: 1.7k

You didn't want to believe it at first.

Cregan was sitting in the Great Hall of Winterfell when the news arrived. A few scouts had spotted a dragon flying north at a rapid pace and tensions were high in the castle.

Winterfell was far away from King's Landing, as was the coronation of the new King Aegon, but the Starks and the North were still sworn to the Targaryens. You and your husband had already suspected that sooner or later, you would be dragged into their mess as well.

Judging from the little time you had spent at court in the South, you knew the Targaryen family was a horrible mess. When King Viserys made the decision to name Rhaenyra heir to the Iron Throne, you knew it would be catastrophic as soon as the old King would pass.

"Do we know who the dragon belongs to?" Your husband's deep voice pulled you out of your thoughts. Cregan always asked the right questions, to the right people, but this time... everyone seemed a little clueless.

You placed a hand on your husband's arm, giving it a little squeeze. "They will not attack alone and without an army. They don't have reason to," you said in a quiet voice, just for him to hear. Cregan gave you a soft smile as he looked over at you, but his eyes were filled with concern.

While an attack was highly unlikely, he couldn't really exclude it entirely and that was already enough reason for him to worry. He wanted to keep you safe and all the people in Winterfell.

"We should still proceed with caution," your husband answered, his hand finding yours and giving it a small squeeze in return. He then pushed himself out of the chair, towering next to you, before he addressed the rest of the people in the room. "We will welcome the dragon rider into our home. With caution. I do not want to start a war with the crown, not when we have more important things to worry about."

Cregan knew the next winter would not be far and he needed to make sure his people were well-prepared and his men were strong. You had always admired your husband for his composure and his natural talent for ruling.

Two hours later, you welcomed the oldest son of Rhaenyra Targaryen into your home. Your husband had talked to him alone at first, using the Godswood as a sight of common ground and when a servant informed you that he wished for you to join them for dinner, you knew their conversation had probably been a positive one.

"Lady Stark," Jacaerys nodded his head at you as soon as you entered the Great Hall. He was a pretty man, his black curls a mesmerising sight. However, you couldn't deny that all the rumours you had heard about his father might be true then. He didn't have the signature Targaryen white hair and from the few times you had met Lord Harwin Strong, he seemed to resemble him quite clearly.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, my Prince," you greeted him with a smile. Jace gently placed a kiss upon your knuckles.

"The pleasure is all mine, m'lady."

Cregan watched Jace closely as you two introduced yourselves to each other, but after their short conversation he felt like he could trust Jacaerys. He had been kind enough not to threaten him with his dragon. Said creature was now waiting outside the Winterfell gates and he was sure the people of the castle couldn't take their eyes off it. The Lord of Winterfell himself could only describe the creature as mesmerising and a sight to behold. And he knew that his wife would probably love to meet a dragon.

The dinner went by quite fast and the conversations were lighthearted despite the general situation of the realm. Jacaerys didn't mean to only talk about the conflict between his mother and Aegon, but he knew that he had a chance to win Cregan Stark over for their cause. And winning over his wife as well in a way would be beneficial too.

"Have you ever seen a dragon, my lady?" Jace asked you after he placed his cup of wine back on the table. You could feel your husband smile next to you. He was very aware of the fact that you had always been fascinated by those creatures. Their freedom to fly, their strength and their sheer power. Dragons were pure magic in your eyes.

"Unfortunately not, my Prince," you answered, leaning back in your chair a little. Jace had mentioned "Vermax" throughout the conversation and you knew the dragon was waiting outside the gates. Its roars were hard to miss throughout the day.

"But I would love to. One day."

"Then today might be the day. If you wish to, of course," Jace gave you another polite nod and an inviting smile. The prospect of meeting a dragon had you ecstatic in seconds, but you knew your husband would suspect danger in this situation. He was more than right for that.

"I would love to accompany you two then." Cregan sounded determined, but still polite. A subtle sign for Jace to understand that he was good-willed, but still cautious.

The support of the North was vital to Rhaenyra's cause, so Jacaerys really didn't intend to mess it up.

"Vermax is a kind dragon. As long as you mean no harm." Jace waited for your husband to push his chair back and stand up first. You followed right after, hooking your arm with Cregan's as you made your way outside.

The sight before you was stunning.

It was already dark outside, but the dragon could hardly be missed. His olive green scales appeared almost black in the dark and your husband grabbed a torch from a guard as you approached.

"Relax, Vermax", Jacaerys spoke in Valyrian, making you raise your eyebrows for a moment. You wished you would have paid more when your family's maester had tried to teach you a few simple words in Valyrian.

"They're our friends."

Vermax' eyes turned into slits for a moment, studying both you and Cregan. The dragon was probably evaluating if you were a threat despite his rider's kind words.

"I've seen more outgoing dragons than Vermax, but he's a gentle one at heart," Jace explained.

It was fascinating to hear about dragons having different personalities and being a little more like humans in a way. Some were impulsive, others were shy. As a child, you had always wished for a dragon as a pet.

"It's... He's wonderful," you whispered, feeling your husband's arm wrap protectively around your waist. Cregan would rather throw himself in front of the dragon's teeth than watch anything happen to you.

"I know. Do you want to touch him?" Jace asked, his voice soft and inviting. "Only if you want to, of course. I do not wish to make you uncomfortable in any way."

Excitement bubbled in your stomach. You could feel the heat rush to your face. All your childhood dreams seemed so close now – meeting a dragon, touching a dragon and pretending for just a moment that you could be a dragonrider too.

Cregan's grip around you tightened, a small reminder of how all of this could backfire. A cold wind blew by and you took a deep breath.

"I will be fine," you assured your husband, taking the time to plant a kiss to his cheek. A small attempt to calm him, but you knew that he would always be worried for your safety. The Lord of Winterfell only knew you were safe when you were in his arms, sleeping safe and sound.

Slowly, you made your way over to the dragon. It seemed to smell your anxiety and retreated for a moment. Jace put up his hand, a sign for Vermax to calm down – to relax. There was nothing bad that would happen.

You gave the dragon time, your heart beating wildly in your chest as you couldn't take your eyes off the creature in front of you. It still seemed wary, but after a few short moments, the dragon eventually bowed down a little, lowering itself to the ground. It was a silent invitation for you to come closer.

But you still wanted to get reassurance from Prince Jacaerys who quickly gave you a nod and beckoned you closer.

It felt like your heart was about to jump out of your chest when the dragon sniffed your hand.

Your husband was on the edge of his nerves behind you. His hand was already positioned at his sword, as if he would stand a chance against a dragon. "Careful, my love," he mumbled. He was feeling increasingly uneasy as he watched you and he let out a small gasp when you eventually laid your hand on the dragon's head.

Vermax closed his eyes slowly after he had eyed you enough. You weren't a threat. Not to him and not to Jace.

The dragon's skin was warm and hard, rough against the soft palm of your hand. "Seven hells..." you mumbled, watching in fascination as Vermax continued to relax.

Jace placed his hand on the dragon's wing for a moment, stroking it softly. "I told you he is a kind one. I would offer you a ride, but I think your husband might fall over dead if I do." It was a small jest, but it made you laugh softly.

You turned your head a little, spotting the Lord of Winterfell as he was tensing up more and more behind you. He forced a smile to his lips, trying to look more relaxed than he was. Cregan wanted you to fulfil your dreams, but he needed to keep you safe as well.

However, seeing you as happy as this, as your hand laid upon the dragon's nose, he couldn't help himself but smile a little more genuinely. His hand remained at his sword, but his shoulders relaxed nonetheless.

Seeing the joy in your eyes as Jace told you more about Vermax and the dragon seemed to be content with your presence, Cregan couldn't help but think about how many more days he wanted to spend like this. Seeing you happy was the biggest light in his world.

He'd do anything to see that beautiful smile. Over and over.

[gguk-n]

Chapter 1- Anonymous Conversations

Unravelling Max's Mystery (Max Verstappen x Online Friend!Reader)

Series Masterlist

Summary- Y/N formed an unexpected bond with a boy behind the screen. He doesn't have many interest it seems, except for reading her stupid poems.

{Reader's POV}

12/07/2012

Dear Diary, Stella is leaving for Canada tomorrow forever. Today was the last day of school before the summer break so I went to Stella's house after school. It's so shitty, how can she leave me like this and before the start of high school. I don't have any friends other than her, what am I supposed to do??? This isn't fair, first Faye moved back to her home country a couple years back and now Stella. It's like they don't even care about me. I made a google plus account so we can stay in touch. Actually everyone's on google plus, I'm just late to the party. I'm sure we'll still be close.

02/01/2013

OMG!! I think I'm in love. There's this new boy band, One Direction. Ava told me about them last year but I brushed her off saying they weren't my cup of tea, but OMG!!! They are fucking perfect and I love Niall so much. He's so cute and has the dreamiest eyes and his accent, I'm gonna faint. I bought the Take Me Home album yesterday!! I even put up their poster above my bed, hehe!! Sooooo, I may or may not be writing now. I think I'm gonna be an author. The stuff isn't great like Shakespeare but I'm sure I'll improve. I've written a couple poems and Aria read them and she thinks they are great. I'm gonna start uploading them on google plus. I made a separate page for it, under a pseudonym. If I really improve, maybe I can publish my work.

I was sat at my laptop, typing the latest story I came up with during lunch so I could upload it. There were a lot of people who were reading my work and even encouraged me. There is improvement, but then again, we can do better, I'm sure. My parents aren't very happy with how I'm wasting my time writing instead of focusing on my education since I'm in high school now. I finished typing the story and clicked the upload button, I got a comment on the post. It was from this guy, named Max, just Max. He always read all of my work and writes the nicest comments under them. I haven't spoken to him personally ever since my mother kept warning me about stranger danger and that it could be some 50 year old dude. But his comments are encouraging and make me want to write more. I hope he knows the kind of effect he's having on me.

My birthday is in a couple of days, I don't know what I'll do since I don't really have a lot of friends. Even Aria is away during that time, so I don't really have anyone to go out with. My parents are busy as always.

So, out of desperation or sadness, I don't know which one, I posted on google plus saying that it was my birthday. The first person who replied was Max as always. I really wanna know when this guy sleeps or how he gets any work done if he is online so much. He messaged me personally too, to wish me again and even asked what I did. I couldn't lie because my heart was heavy, so I told him. I literally just unloaded about not having any friends and spending the day alone because work was more important for my parents. He was so nice about it. He spent the next hour talking to me and cheering me up. He's apparently 15, from Netherlands. He loves cats and lives with his dad and sister. He sounds like a fun guy.

After that, both of us ended up chatting on google plus regularly. I would message him immediately after school and spend the next couple of hours talking to him. Some times, he'd be gone a couple weekends but it was no biggy. I'm sure he had other commitments instead of entertaining a dumb teenager.

Max's birthday is on 30 September. I wanted to be the first one, so I stayed up late to match the dutch timings and wished him. He replied a little while later. He wasn't very excited about it. I get it, maybe his friends aren't there or couldn't make it to his birthday. I was gonna cheer him like he cheered me up. I wish I could send him a present. He really was a light in dark time. When I had no friends in school I could rely on, he came like the knight in shining armour. I just want to be a good and reliable friend to him like he is to me. He is such a sweetheart. We've never spoken on call yet. I guess I'm still a little scared and we've only known each other for a few months. I'm gonna hold on that but Max is a genuinely nice person in my eyes. But his dad doesn't sound like the nicest person from what he says, but I can't tell him that his dad is shitty so I just read his texts.

18/12/2013

Dear Diary, Maxie is the cutest. I haven't seen or heard him yet but I feel like he is. Otherwise, why would he encourage me to follow my dreams? He was so understanding and gave great advice. You might wonder why I needed the advice, diary. I told my parents I wanna pursue a degree in literature and we had a huge fight since apparently I'm throwing my life away and I should try to get a proper degree that might get me a job. Apparently, I'm not thinking straight. I've been thinking about becoming an author for some time now, it's my one passion, I've realised. And if it means struggling, I would rather struggle and be happy than be in a dead end job. Just because they are some big shot business people doesn't mean I wanna do that do. ugh!!! I hate them. Maxie calmed me down honestly, he heard me out and told me it was okay to follow my dreams. I think he is such a good friend. I won't tell him that, he has a big ego as is. LOL!!

I've been gaining a lot of traction on my posts on google plus. I have a couple thousand followers but Max is the most active of them all. Max is so effortlessly funny. He did ask one time if we could talk on call, I told him that my microphone was broken. I'm still a little skeptical. I know, even though I'm literally sharing everything with him, I've never spoken on call or video with him. Maybe some day.

04/03/2014

Dear Diary, I got a new phone and a new number. The previous one was one of my parents multiple numbers but this one is my own. I feel like an adult, hehe!! I made a whatsapp, maybe I'll share my number with Maxie and we might start chatting on there. Google plus had become a bit of hassle and I'm not uploading on it like I used to. I usually only open it to talk to Max. I think it would be better to shift it to another service. He's been a little busy this year compared to the last, didn't tell me much but I think it has to do with him being in his final year of high school. Can't relate, but I hope I'm done with high school soon. It fucking sucks. But on the bright side, I've gotten close to Nia and Aria and I could call Aria my best friend but she considers Nia her best friend. I don't mind being her friend. I have Max anyways.

Max has been quite busy lately, but I don't blame him. I would be busy in my final year of high school too. Even with all that, he has taken time out to talk to me. I did share my number with him, so now instead of google plus, which is a barren wasteland, we text on whatsapp. I've suggested talking on call some time when he's free, which hasn't happened yet.

We had set up a time to talk, it was really early here but I didn't mind, I was up anyways. I couldn't wait to hear his voice. I was anxious as well, what if he's some pedophile; all these thoughts raced through my head when my phone rang. Max- Hi, Y/N! Y/N- Hey, Max!! How are you? Max- I'm good, what about you? Y/N- Yeah, I'm good too. haha!! This is so weird talking to you. Max- yeah, you sound pretty. Fuck was he flirting, is this flirting? A million thoughts ran through my head, no one's ever flirted with me before. I felt my cheeks heat up. Y/N- You sound nice too. I mean....you have a nice voice. Max- haha, thanks, this is the first time some one has said that. Y/N- soooo, what have you been up too?? You've been so busy lately. There was a pause on the other end. I heard shuffling. Max- yeah, I've been busy with stuff. I'll be done soon for a while now. Y/N- That's great I need my best friend back! The conversation flowed smoothly. It didn't feel like we were talking on call for the first time. I had a lot of fun talking to Max. He sounds like a teenager, much to my relief. He's just as funny on call as he is on text.

After that, we ended up calling each other regularly. Max would answer my calls whenever but sometimes I felt bad about calling him at the crack ass of dawn in Netherland so I would avoid calling him whenever. He is so kind and listens well but damn does he talk. Every one who knows me calls me talkative, if they heard Max their ears would bleed. But I like hearing him talk, he has the most random and vast knowledge, he's helped me write too many of my papers because I didn't have to research, I could just ask him; he's like a walking encyclopedia.

17/05/2015

Dear Diary, I think I'm in love. It's not some celebrity this time but I think it's Max. I don't even know that dude's last name but I'm in love. He not like the guys in school, he's so mature and funny and sweet and understanding and he supports me so much. I didn't know when or how but I think I love him. Obviously I won't tell him. It's prolly a crush since I have't dated anyone ever. I'll get over it, can't ruin my friendship over this. As is, he has gotten so busy. I think he is going to college. He didn't say it explicitly but why else would he be so busy right now if not applying for colleges. I don't know the dutch education system but I'm sure he busy pursuing higher education. He said he liked cars, I think he'll do something with cars. I didn't really ask in more details. I'm sure he'll tell me when he wants to. We have a chill friendship, we share when and what we want to. Alas, I hope this crush doesn't ruin my friendship.

09/08/2015

This is bad, my crush on Max has only gone on to increase. He's so kind to me, what am I supposed to do? Also he's the only one who can calm me down after a fight with my parents regarding my future. Sadly, he gotten so busy. He's gone for a while every few weeks. But lately he's been free. We've been talking a lot. He sounds a lot more rested lately too. I'm sure college is tough. But he's strong and I know he'll do it.

[Little did Y/N know, Max was busy racing across the world in Redbull's junior team. He was in his first year as a formula one driver, hence he was so busy. Max had no intentions of telling her, he liked being just Max, a guy from Netherlands who could talk to her. He enjoyed the disconnect he got with her]

[moonstruckme]

Hey lovely, how are you?

I’m not sure if I should be answering this through here, but here we go

I had already read that lil’ drabble and it’s perfect!!! Please don’t get me wrong, I really love it, but I was thinking of something a little different.

Maybe reader has to get a vaccine (because she was stalling to do it) and when the boys find out they were like “you need to get it, it’s for your health” and reader goes like “fine”. Well, it wasn’t fine. When reader finally realizes what’s happening she turns into this sobbing mess and it just breaks the boys hearts 💔

I know this is kinda specific, sorry. It’s what always happens to me when I go get vaccinated and I always end up crying more than I thought I would.

It’s totally fine if you don’t want to do it, though! Also, sorry if some terms were wrong, english is not my first language lol

Anyways, love you and love your work!! 🫶

Thanks for explaining babe, and for requesting <3

cw: needle, also I have once again written myself into an inaccurate emt situation and am once again asking for your feigned oversight of the erroneousness. Thank you mwah! 

emt!marauders x fem!reader ♡ 1.2k words

You’re being quiet. James keeps trying to pick up conversation, but you won’t engage for more than a few words and a terse smile before falling silent again. They’ve all picked up on it. From the driver’s seat, Remus keeps casting scrutinous glances at you in the rear view mirror. James has given up on trying to get you to talk and is just grateful you’re letting him be near you, his hand on your leg while you stare out the window. 

It’s obvious you’re upset. You like being told what to do as much as the next person, and when they’d found out you’d been avoiding going to get your vaccine they’d been more than a little bossy. Though he’d been as insistent as the other two that it was important to get done, James had honestly felt a bit sorry for you; Remus had decided you were going the next morning before you could get a word in, which would have been next to impossible anyways with the tirade Sirius had embarked on. 

James feels a bit sorry for you now, too, when he and Remus are trying to go along with your wishes and keep quiet and Sirius is, quite naturally, goading you. 

“You don’t have to be mad at us, baby,” he says, fully turned around in the passenger seat to give you his poutiest look. “We’re all on the same team here, yeah?” 

“I’m not mad,” you say to the window. 

“I get that you’re not needles’ number one fan, but you know how important this is. We just want you to be healthy.”

You shift in your seat, crossing your legs so James’ hand falls away from you. It stings a little. “Can we not talk about it?” 

“Sure, dove.” Remus’ eyes are on you in the rear view mirror again, his hand reaching across the console to cover Sirius’ knee warningly. “We don’t have to talk about it.” 

You’re quiet the rest of the drive. James is used to being around people that are stewing (years of friendship with Remus and Sirius will accustom one to that), but it makes him fidgety to think you’re angry with him. He really wants to reach for your hand. You’re too stiff to make him confident you’ll take it. 

But when you enter the curtained-off room and don’t go to hop up on the table, you don’t reject the helping hand he offers you to get up. You don’t let go. 

Remus leaves to prepare your vaccine, and you don’t seem any more inclined to talk than you had been in the car. James decides to hop up on the table beside you, putting an arm around your shoulders when you seem amenable to it, and Sirius leans against the desk, thwacking a pen in a lazy rhythm. You feel tense under his arm. 

James is beginning to suspect you’re not actually angry. 

“You okay, angel?” he asks gently. 

“Fine,” you say, clipped. It’s the same response you’d given when they’d strong-armed you into this appointment. He’s not sure if he believes you anymore. 

James is suddenly glad he came. Though Remus and Sirius had to come in for their shift and will be staying after, he only tagged along because he wanted (as always) to be wherever the three of you are. Now that he has an inkling of how you’re feeling, James is glad he’ll be with you to drive you home, look after you in case you have any side effects, and generally help you relax after this is done. Right now, you seem to be winding tighter by the minute. 

Remus comes back in, and James looks over to find your bottom lip trapped cruelly between your teeth. Your expression looks almost pained. 

“Honey…” he murmurs. 

Remus and Sirius look up in alarm as your eyes line with silver. 

“Hey, baby, it’s okay.” Sirius pushes off from the desk, sitting on your other side and winding an arm around your waist. “You’re fine, this’ll only take a second.” 

You give a little sob, reality setting in. James sees the surprise and anguish he’s feeling reflected on Sirius’ face as the other boy kisses above your eyebrow. 

Remus’ expression is carefully calm as he approaches, holding up an antiseptic wipe like a symbol of peace. “Just breathe,” he says, voice soft and slow as he pushes up your sleeve. You watch his every move, every one of the muscles beneath James’ hand tense. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. In just a little bit we’ll be sending you home with Jamie, yeah?” 

He picks up the vaccine, and you suck in a breath, pressing into James’ side to get away from it. “Wait wait wait,” you say in a rush, voice tipping up with panic as tears spill over your waterline. James' heart veritably shatters. He feels it happening in his chest, but they’ve all dealt with patients like this before. Waiting doesn’t help anything. 

“You’re fine,” Sirius promises you, helping Remus to hold your arm still while James shields your vision with his hand. “Don’t look, you’re okay.” 

James doesn’t watch the needle go in, but he hears your reaction, a wet inhale that catches in your throat followed by a torturous whimpering sound. 

He presses a kiss to your hair, whispering a quick, “You’re good, lovie.” 

Remus hums in quiet agreement. A moment later he’s setting the syringe back down on his tray, replacing the spot with a plaster. James lets his hand drop, and Sirius cheers as Remus rubs small, sympathetic circles over the spot with his thumb. 

“You did it, gorgeous!” He pecks you on the cheek, mindless of its dampness. “You’re done.” 

Another tiny sob breaks out of you, and Remus’ brow creases pityingly. He touches his lips gently over the plaster on your arm. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t realize quite how nervous you were.” 

You sniffle. “It’s okay,” you say. Your voice comes out a bit frayed, and both James and Sirius coo in sympathy. 

“My poor girl,” the latter whines. He tugs you away from James’ hold, clearly fed up with not doing his fair share for your physical comfort. “I thought you were just peeved with us. I didn’t know they made you that freaked, sweetness. You did amazing.” 

“You really did so well.” James thumbs under your lashes, collecting water on his thumbnail. “You were so brave.” 

“Don’t patronize me,” you mumble, growing sullen again. 

“We’re not, dovey, we’re not.” Remus rubs up and down on your arm placatingly. At this rate, James thinks, you won’t have any muscle pain at all. “This is more difficult for some people than others. It seems like it's really difficult for you, and I’m proud of you for getting through it. Alright?” 

He’s looking at you intently, waiting for you to confirm you understand. You go a bit shy under his gaze. “Okay,” you acquiesce softly. 

“Good.” Remus kisses your forehead. “You’re all done here, so you two can head home. If you start to feel ill or odd at all say something to Jamie, alright?” 

“I’ve got her,” James reassures them both, hopping down from the table. Sirius holds you still a moment longer, kissing the same spot Remus had before letting you go. You slot under James' arm like you always do, like it’s where you’re meant to be. “We’ll text you pictures of all the ice cream we eat and films we watch while you’re working.” 

“Fuck off,” Sirius laughs. It catches, and you chuckle softly. The sound makes all three of them breathe a sigh of relief. 

James squeezes you with his arm around your shoulders as he walks you out. 

[firenagy]

I said I could make a whole essay about why this is my favorite line in Slay the Princess and @lobsterlobotomiseslobos challenged me to go ahead and do it so here's that. Posted on discord and was told to share it here as well. This was written for a group of people who had varying levels of experience with this game, so I cover a lot of the basics.

Let's start with the very fundamentals, this is not a line that is said, instead, it is one of the first things you think of after ascending to godhood and making the decision that change is a fundamentally necessary force in the universe. Everything in this sequence is packed with necessary context, and emotions that hit only after you experience all of it, however I'll do my best to summarise it, since even players who finished the game can miss some very important info in this part.

You and Her were once one unchallenged god. The themes of self discovery and self exploration through comparison of the self with the other are crucial to the game, exemplified specially during your very first meeting with the princess. If you explore your options, talking to yourself in the form of the Voice of the Hero and to the Narrator, it's quickly apparent that this world doesn't really exist. Or rather, that the only parts of the world that exist, for all intents and purposes, are you, the path in the woods, the cabin, and the Princess. This includes things like your and her name and background, which upon scrutiny are nonexistent. Crucially, the narrator is also not real. You can talk to him all you want and he can experience some slight manner of growth, but the person whose memories and personalities make up the narrator is long gone, leaving behind an echo in hopes of guiding you to do what he wants. to kill what was once part of you.

The Narrator, or rather, the person who died in order to create the echo you meet in the game, was a normal person, possibly a human hinted by the princess' appearance. This person seems to have lived at a time so far beyond our own it's hard to describe, but is best put as the last remains of civilization living, holding out, as the very last stars in our universe burn out. As he sees it, change only brings upon death and destruction, because his world already had time to grow and prosper, with now being the end of everything. We also get a rare glimpse at the world of the narrator, beyond the faux reality, if we choose to slay Her.

That brings us to the content of the game itself, two nascent gods interacting, fighting, loving, discovering who they are. Their only point of reference for what is "real" being one another. The Shifting Mound uses a line that stuck with me to describe the state of your being,"We are oceans reduced to shallow creeks", as a way to describe what it feels to be forced down into a tiny vessel, memories erased. All of the routes in the game can be described as a journey of self discovery, with the Princess being a being of perception, your thoughts on her influence her mentally and physically. In turn, she influences you back in a far more subtler way, adding more facets to your personality in the form of the Voices.

And that is the setting of our meeting. Two gods who were once one whole being having a conversation. They were forced, over and over again, to figure out who they are. Both having nothing but fragments to go by, small pieces of what they once made up, until finally, She is made whole. The Princess' ascension into the Shifting Mound is a sight to behold, and brings upon your own ascension were you to wish to become a god like her.

In this particular ending, the Long Quiet, the god of unchanging reality, stasis, and nothingness itself decides to leave with Her, the Shifting Mound, the god of life, death, time, and ultimately, change. As you open a rift in the world the Narrator created you two see for the first time object reality. You are both left speechless by how magnificent it all is, something that wasn't made to trick, deceive, or guide you into any role you must fulfil, made with no greater purpose than to just be.

That's the crux of why this line is so important to me, after having lived, fought, loved, died, countless times in a world that was fake, created to pit you one against the other, you finally escape. You are free, and She is with you, as you are once more free to roam the real universe after being trapped in a cage for so long.

[writers-potion]

I'm trying to write a character reacting to another Character’s death, but it's getting too cringey.

Can you help?

Reacting to Death

I don't like writing reaction beats myself, I'd usually keep the inititial "reaction scene" short, but show how the character slips into thining about the dead person time to time.

Another reason why your scene may sound "cringey" might be because the overall personality of your character doesn't match the kind of reaction they would have. Not everyone has to break down sobbing the second they get the news.

The Initial Reaction

There can be so many reactions to the news that someone is dead:

immediately breaking down and sobbing

Freezing on the spot + being unable to hear/react to others around them

Feeling like the ground below them has opened up

Complete disbelief + asking the same question over and over again

Calmly noting down what they should be doing next because they feel like they'll break if they don't keep moving forward

Being angry at others around them + the world in general

Taking quick, shallow breaths / forgetting to breathe

Feeling cold all over

You can try picking 1-2 of these and keep the scene powerful and short. If this is a POV character, you can:

Subsequent Path of Recovery (or not)

Arguably, I would say that how you choose to take your character back to the death after the initial realization is more important.

Show how everyday things like a certain object, people with similar hairstyles, certain places and even weather, makes the character think about the dead.

Describe how the character eats less/ finds things less funny, etc.

Describe the character's internal desire to talk about the dead person, or wish to avoid any conversation that even remotely reminds them of the dead person.

"If [dead person] were here, they would've [done this]"

"I could still feel her smile at the back of my mind."

The key here would be to keep these "sorrow" beats short and sudden. You can show how the death impacts the choices your character makes, e.g. "The shopkeeper's wavy hair reminds me of my mother, so I follow her, chasing a ghost of my mother that wasn't really there."

[weltraum-vaquero]

Swan song

Professor Viktor x TA Reader

[PART 1]｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆[PART 2] ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆[PART 3]

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆[AO3 link] ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡

Summary: You’re a bright phD student who won’t shy away from a challenge. Getting the most notorious professor at the University of Piltover to hire you as his assistant is one of them.

Tags: Modern AU, SFW (for now…), DILF professor Viktor, romanticizing and eroticizing borsht, lab shenanigans, reader being filled with equal parts shame and lust

Word count: 7.8k

Notice: This fic is written with a transmasculine reader in mind, but that won’t come into play at all until the final third chapter of this mini-series.

Notes: A little something something while we await season two ;] The draft for this post deleted itself twice now. If the formatting looks wonky (especially in the texting section), NO, it doesn't. Shut up.

He didn’t lie. 

Which is all the more shocking, considering you attend his 8AM lecture on the very same day, and he seems more bright and alight than you’ve ever seen him.

When did he find the time?

Though there isn’t a daunting amount to your thesis just yet, you still want to believe you’ve written something quite substantial over the past months. 

You toss one glance around yourself before you follow him into his office after his lecture, and you find the stack of papers you’d left on his desk last night looking positively devoured, in the most… academic way possible. Scribbles and notes litter the margins, the edges of the papers are already somehow lightly worn. 

He must have read it multiple times.

“Coffee?” He offers.

“Yes, please.”

As he gropes the machine in search of its switch again, he cocks his brow at you. “And what was that for?”

You frown. “What was what for?”

“That… glance, before you followed me into my office.” The switch clicks, the light comes on. “Looking around like you were being followed.”

“Oh,” caught in the embarrassing act, you shrug. “I don’t know. Being cautious, I guess. Students have been looking at me a little funny, lately.”

“Much too late for caution, I’m afraid.” 

Uh oh. 

As he retrieves two paper cups, you’re left wondering what exactly that should mean.

“Why’s that?”

“I thought you were well aware of the fact that rumors would start, um… circulating the moment I made it public that I had hired an assistant.” Coffee trickles into the cups, a soothing little melody. Viktor leans against the wall beside the machine as he watches the cups fill.  “I’ve always been adamant about not needing one. It is natural for people to have questions — and to come up with, eh, answers — when I suddenly do.”

The notion of the answers students might have come up with swirls around in your brain. 

You wish they were right.

You’re glad they’re not.

You look at Viktor.

“Do you mind it?”

The coffee stops pouring. Viktor does that thing again, spreading long fingers apart to grasp both cups. And he’s quiet — for a beat longer than he should be.

“No. There are more important things to worry about than… gossip.” He sets the cups on the table, then takes his seat. He hesitates for a brief second, craning his neck before he fixates on you, motionless. Waiting. “Do you?”

“Trying not to.”

The answer makes him… deflate, somehow. It’s barely visible, for just a fraction of a second his chest sinks, before his tone is back to his composed cadence.

“You will get used to it,” he assures. “Now, onto more interesting matters — your work.”

Thank god. You don’t know how much more of the awkward tiptoeing you could have handled.

“Yes.” Your heart leaps into your throat. Acting normal has never been so difficult. “What did you think?”

“Very impressive.” He slides the stack of papers towards you. “I have made some… suggestions here and there, should you wish to take them into consideration. But, I think you struck gold with your hypothesis. Should you need a conversation partner, guidance, anything at all — I would gladly be at your service.”

“Thank you, Viktor. I really appreciate this.”

At the sound of his own name coming from you, something in him shifts. Shifts with an unfamiliar near bashfulness, he stifles a little smile into the rim of his paper cup, the corners of his eyes crinkle, he settles into his seat a little further.

“But you never held up your end of the bargain,” you point out. That snaps him out of it.

“Ah, yes. I did not.” He continues to hide behind his cup, before he finally seems to decide to take a metaphorical leap, as he sets it down and stares down at it. “I fear the unfortunate truth may be that when it comes to research, I either work better with a partner, or that… Cecil is right and I need to slow down. Though I’d guess the former is more likely.”

“You used to work with, uh…” you’re not sure how to approach the topic, “Talis, didn’t you?”

“The five basic principles of applied arcanism are commonly referred to as Talis’ princies, you do not have to feign uncertainty to appease me.”

So you drop the attempt to tiptoe around the subject, and ask, plainly:

“Why wasn’t your name added on?”

Viktor scoffs. “Talis-Sidorov-Sviboda has a terrible ring to it. Or so he’d said. And admittedly… I was more of a conduit than the co-author of his idea. He said we would name the next big thing we would discover after me, but… well, you know how it is. I dedicated myself to teaching, he retired to lead a quiet life in his gaudy mansion with his sports cars and his purebred German shepherds after he married some businesswoman.”

Though his story does line up, those aren’t necessarily the rumors you’d heard. There’d been talk of more than just a mild dispute of names, and… well, there had been… something between Talis and Viktor. But that’s about all you know.

Under your gaze, Viktor grows suddenly uncomfortable — both with the subject and the fact that he might be able to tell you know more. He’s quick to redirect the conversation.

“As for my research: I have been studying the laminal hexoin cascade in stabilized hexgems in various matrices. And though bold, I have been attempting to figure out the ideal matrix — something that will allow for close to a hundred percent energy renewal and render all other sources of energy obsolete.”

”That is bold,” you say. Your other thought, you keep to yourself: it also sounds impossible. You suppose stabilizing hexgems 20 years ago was also something thought impossible — and yet, Viktor hadn’t shied away. If anyone is apt for the job, it is him. “Any luck so far?”

“Partially. They have been yielding favorable results, but not enough to be viable energetic alternatives as of now.” He takes his cup again, bringing it to his lips in a rushed movement, drinking a mouthful, rather than a sip. Once Viktor sets it down, his hand remains on the table, fingers tapping on the shiny surface once, twice— “I could use a theorist to assist me with a few things.”

The implication dizzies you. Is he…?

But then he slides another one of his drawers open, and retrieves a stack of papers. Slanted handwriting, barely legible — you’re by now intimately familiar with it: his cursive. It litters the pages, in different inks and in pencil, diagrams, sketches… just looking at it makes you hungry to read it.

He smiles as if he’s read your mind, again.

“I was thinking it could be you.”

—

You’re invited to his office for lunch break the very next day too. And though he assures you there is no pressure in having to read through his notes by then, you disregard it.

It takes you a reread to be able to make sense of all his scribbles, but… it’s brilliant. He’s brilliant. 

It should stop surprising you by now — his ideas, his drive, his curiosity, his mind — but with every single time Vikror impresses you anew, he becomes something more distant.

As you’re marveling at his intricate weaving of concepts, it strikes you, unpleasantly, that this is the same man you’d wanted to devour just days ago. The man who’s made you coffee, the man whose sharp eyes fold at the corners when he smiles. 

You’d have deified him, had he been your teacher. You still do, especially now, after you’ve seen more of what his mind is made of. The mere notion of him becomes terribly out of reach, and you’re plagued with guilt for that night. Guilt for having tainted such a man with your thoughts. 

And yet, you still can’t help but think of his neck, the soft pink of his chapped lips, the hollow of his cheeks. You wonder what his mouth tastes like, and you want to slap yourself on the wrist for it. You should have, because minutes later, you wonder about worse things too. The scent of his skin, the coarseness of his body hair, how far up under his navel it might reach.

And when you finish reading his notes a second time and bring the paper to your nose to sniff it — hoping for a trace of him — you realize you have a problem. A serious one.

It torments you for the rest of the night, through the hours you spend writing up some suggestions and ideas, all the way to when you switch off the light, and hug whatever pillow’s within reach close.

When you get the urge to tilt your hips against it, you decide to get up and splash your face with water.

And you wish you could do the same thing the very next day on your lunch break, when you’re standing in the doorway of his office and he’s eating borscht. The sweet-tangy smell of vegetables, beef and beets makes your stomach growl, but your physical hunger is long lost on your otherwise preoccupied brain.

The beet red of the soup has pigmented his lips. They look kissed raw, puffy, ripe. A lavish speck of colour on his otherwise pale face, it draws your gaze and does not let it stay somewhere more respectful.

You want to taste them.

He does it for you, raspberry pink tip of his tongue darting over the plush of his lips before he swallows and finally greets you.

“Sorry,” you say, and it comes out tense, near horrified. You’ve caught him eating soup, for chrissakes, not being bent over his table. Oh, god. Why did you have to think about that? ”I’ll come back later.”

“No,” Viktor gestures to the empty seat across from him. He screws his thermos shut, and puts it away. “Please, I’ve been waiting for you. Sit.”

And you do, like the dog you feel like you are right now.

“Did you manage to find the time to read my notes?”

Oh, did you.

“I… followed your example and made some suggestions of my own. But on separate pages. Here.”

His reaction is more than what you’d hoped for. It’s more than the impressed raise of thick brows that had kept you fueled last night, it’s more than the smile you’d been hoping for. 

“You are unbelievable,” he grins, and takes what you offer, pushing his glasses up his nose before he starts reading. You selfishly use the distraction to stare at his lips again. He mutters to himself as he reads, pink mouth molding around whispered jargon, nodding. “Yes, this… this is exactly what I’d hoped for, when I’d asked for your assistance. Your fresh set of eyes is invaluable. I hadn’t thought of approaching the modification from that angle.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

He doesn’t take his eyes off the page for even just a moment, flipping it surprisingly fast, and taking it with him as he leans back in his seat. 

And decides to torture you.

Viktor traces the pad of his own thumb over the curve of his bottom lip as he takes in your handwriting. The give of the flesh under his fingertip hypnotizes, the slight drag of rough skin on soft pink one, your mind is long gone.

You think of rough fingertips on his lips, on his chest, rough fingertips on the pasty white of his gaunt lower stomach, rough fingertips in coarse hair. Rough fingertips dipping between his milky thighs, rough fingertips on where he runs just as pink as he does on his lips, rough fingertips dipping, slipping on slick skin—

You need to stop.

And you most certainly need help.

“Is something the matter?”

It feels like you’ve swallowed your own brain whole when he speaks, because your skull rings hollow when you try to come up with a reply that isn’t incoherent babble.

“Wh— me? No. Why?”

And because embarrassment loves to stick around once it has made its presence known, the stars align for the next social disaster: your stomach growls. Loudly.

“Did you not have lunch?” Viktor asks.

“I… didn’t get around to it,” you admit.

“I won’t take up too much of your time, then,” he assures. If he knew just how much of your time he’s started taking up — and the fact that you wish you could give him what is left of it to him, too.  “I would like you to work alongside me on my research. But if you don’t feel like you can squeeze another project into your presumably busy schedule, I understand. I would be glad to have you merely as… a colleague to consult with, as well.”

Is that even a question? He’s offering you the opportunity of a lifetime. You would be an idiot not take it. 

And an even bigger idiot to turn down more time spent with him.

“You don’t even have to ask,” you joke. “Yes. I would be thrilled, Viktor.”

This is his first smile you witness when his pretty boyishness doesn’t shine through. It’s a gentle quirk of his lips, no teeth to be seen, just tenderness. It makes your heart leap to be the cause of it.

“Thank you,” he says.

“Thank you.”

Silence.

Just as you’re about to breach it — he does it first.

“Would you be free for lunch tomorrow as well?”

He watches you from below long, dark lashes as you give a breathless yes.

—

“I brought you something.”

It’s the last thing you expect as you step into his office at noon, upon exchanging hellos.

You’re alight. With curiosity, above all else. And with worry — why would he bring you something? What will you do to reciprocate? 

“Thank you,” you say, though you have no idea what for just yet. “What is it?”

“I saw you eyeing my borscht yesterday.” There’s a glint in his eye that suggests more, so much so you can’t decide between flirting or digging a hole for yourself in the hardwood floor of his office. 

The middle ground is standing in his office awkwardly as he unzips his backpack.

He retrieves two thermos bottles: the one you’re already familiar with, and another that looks older, more worn, and sorely lacks the sticker you’ve so come to love and fixate on and dream about. “I, eh, I made you some. In case you wouldn’t get the chance to eat before you came here.”

Your chest swells so much it hurts. 

He made you soup?

“You… Viktor, this is… thank you. You shouldn’t have.”

“I wanted to. Have a seat.”

You practically jump into the seat across the table from his — a seat you’ve come to associate as yours, in spite of being well aware of the oppisite.

As he screws the bottle open and pours some steaming soup out into a paper bowl — god, he’d brought paper bowls — his eyes flick to you.

“But if you don’t care for borscht, you don’t have to—“

“I do care.”

And that rings true not just for the borscht.

It rings true for the soup he brings you the next day too, it rings true for every word that passes his lips. And it rings true for the time you start to spend in the insane coffee shop queue to surprise him with his preferred order and a slice of cake (a different one each day, until you figure out his favorite: cinnamon coffee), it rings true for the dark blue roughed up thermos he lets you take home the day you don’t finish the soup he brings you because you’re just so busy talking.

It’s November before you know it.

As the days grow colder, it’s not rare to be finding warmth by lavishing in Viktor’s attention as you ramble on about ideas — either for his research, or your thesis. All while he intently follows your thoughts with a smile, stopping just to shave another mouth-half-full’s worth off his cake of the day with his plastic spoon.

And once he savors the last bite, Viktor almost always flips it hollow side down, sliding it down the swell of his tongue within his mouth, removing it from between puckered lips. His cheeks hollow, he holds eye contact all the same, and it’s a mental image that haunts you. A mental image you project in your mind, nestled between the apex of your thighs. The thick of his tongue. The cushiony seal of his lips, the suction of his cheeks. 

It never becomes any less distracting than the first time it happens. 

You startle when Viktor speaks as he sets down the plastic spoon into the now empty packaging. 

“I would like you to accompany me to the lab sometime soon. When would you be free?”

You’ve been before — but just a handful of times. Mainly for him to demonstrate or disprove certain guesses, or test conclusions you’d reached together. 

“I’m free right now,” you suggest.

Viktor shakes his head. “I have a lecture in an hour.”

Right. 

“I mean… I think we could make it in an hour.”

“I prefer to take my time.” Viktor leans back in his seat, stares thoughtfully at the clock on his wall for a moment. “Would seven PM work for you?”

“Uh…” you mentally go through your schedule for the day, “yes. It should. I might be a little late, though. How about… seven fifteen-ish?”

“Good.” The flow of the word is syrupy, yet his next sentence comes out surprisingly peppy with excitement: “See you then.”

—

Though you’re well into the final week of November, it never stops bothering you just how quickly the sun sets. By the time you get to the lab, the air’s gone cold, dry, and the darkness is heavy and thick.

Viktor waits for you just outside the university lab, under the halo of the street light — perhaps just a hint overdressed for the cold, in your opinion. It’s certainly trench coat season, though his is surprisingly long, reaching somewhere along the middle of his shins. The hand he hasn’t tucked in his pocket holds his cane and is clad in a leather glove. Around his lengthy neck, a red knitted scarf lays in chunky, impenetrable layers, reaching almost all the way to the swell of his top lip and his ears. You can hardly see his smile from underneath when he spots you — but his eyes give him away. 

“Right on time,” Viktor’s tone has just as much pep to it as a few hours ago, perhaps even moreso. He rolls his shoulders, before he subtly nuzzles further down into his scarf, shying away from the biting cold. “Let’s get inside.”

He leads the way into the building, its warmth embracing you the moment you step in. The tip of your nose and your fingertips feel like they’re beginning to thaw, tingling just a hint. As you go to take off your coat, you notice Viktor isn’t in a rush. He rests his cane against the wall before he unwraps the thick, wide scarf from around his neck, folding it. He sets it on a nearby table, shucking off his trench coat, slender shoulders under a wool sweater. You watch closely as he then takes his scarf and stuffs it into the sleeve of his coat before he hangs it up. 

There’s something stiff, painful, about how he moves. You wonder if it’s the cold.

“What?” He watches you with appeased amusement.

Caught red-handed, you jump, still halfway clad in your coat.

“Nothing,” you reply, scraping for a way to deflect from your obvious staring. “Not a big fan of the cold?”

“Never.” He says it like it’s a very serious matter. “I still don’t know how I made it through my first eighteen winters in St. Petersburg.”

“You grew up in Russia?”

He laughs through his nose like you’ve told him a half good joke. “What gave it away? The accent? The surname?”

“No, I just thought… Svoboda is a Czech surname.”

With how his smile turns knowing, self-satisfied, you’re suddenly back in his office again, uncertain and nervous and asking for a job as his assistant. He could taunt you with the knowledge that you’ve looked up his last name, embarrass you a little, play with you.

But he isn’t that man anymore — not to you. This time, he feeds your curiosity, albeit just with crumbs.

“My mother’s,” he clarifies. “Sidorov is Russian — my father’s.”

Oh.

“It’s nice that they used both their names. I’m assuming that wasn’t… common, back then, and back there.”

“It wasn’t, and they did not.” Viktor waits for you to hang up your coat, watchful gaze making your every movement feel loaded with static that’s about to snap. “I added hers when I changed my name.”

Changed his name?

The image of the sticker on his thermos turns up fresh in your mind, and you can’t help but wonder…

“Well? I was hoping we could discuss more in the lab, but if you prefer the coat hanger…”

Goddamn it. Focus. You need to focus.

“Sorry.”

You catch up, then slowly follow Viktor down the hallway, into the small lab he has been assigned. It’s one of the less grand ones, but it has all it needs — from a pretty new hexion accelerator to a humble whiteboard. It smells sanitized, sterile, ozonic.

You assume your usual seat by the whiteboard while he sets up. It still doesn’t feel… right to let him do all of that by himself, but he insists upon it, so, you stay out of his way. Viktor tidies up the space just a little, finding his goggles among the mess. He slips them onto his head, elastic pulling back his soft hair into a fluffy grey and brown mess. His cane thumps against the linoleum with every hurried step — though he doesn’t seem to be hurrying on account of you being there as much as excitement to show you.

Once he’s done, he sits in front of the accelerator, slipping his goggles on, and nods for you to come. Which you do — you’d be at his beck and call beyond just the academic context. For a moment, you pluck the inviting tilt of his head and the quirk of his lips out of their context, and you plant it atop your own bed, him in just a loose shirt, underwear, lax with freshly received pleasure. More comfortable than he’s ever been, all because of you. Beckoning for you. Come here. Smiling at you when your knee dips into the mattress, tucking his index under your chin as you crawl to him, reeling you in for a kiss.

“Come closer.”

God help you.

You comply with a wildly beating heart, stepping forward until you’re close behind his sitting form, watching the accelerator over his shoulder. 

He smells nice. Like an indistinct, aromatic cologne, covering up the natural, gentle musk of his skin. You have to resist the urge to dip your head down and trace the tip of your nose along his spine, from where the bones of his neck show to where the scruff at the back of his head goes thicker, fuller. You wonder if he’d shiver as you let the scent of him imbue you… you wonder if he’d lean into it, if he’d tilt his head for you, let you dip your face into the slope of his shoulder, where his scent’s more potent.

The mere thought of him, vivid in your nostrils and clinging to your palate and the floor of your brain, rattles you with a shiver.

“I thought I’d rather show you than tell you,” he explains, wrapping both pale, bony hands around the handles of the accelerator. Steam hisses from the exhaust, flooding the room with more ozone, and gently, but certainly, the gem starts to spin behind the glass panel, beginning to levitate out of its socket, illuminating the room. 

God, you should have put on goggles too, it’s making your eyes hurt. It’s a welcome reminder as to why you chose to spend most your days staring down a blackboard rather than the thing itself. The screen right above it is more of a familiar sight to you: numbers, reading the rotations per minute, as well as energetic output, steadily increasing. 

It whirrs, magic static whirling up around the blue orb, electricity crackles. 

You can see the appeal of this over a blackboard. But you’d still take the chalk. Especially considering the deafening noise. 

Nevermind the damn goggles. You need to remember to bring some ear plugs.

“Watch the panel.” Viktor raises his voice over the hum of the machine, and turns to you, watching you from behind foggy lenses with a smile. You wish you could see the way his crow’s feet deepen. It rumbles harder, so much so Viktor almost has to shout the next thing he says, which is a shame, because his usually playful lilt is lost in the noise of it. “Not to… spoil the outcome of this experiment for you, but I implemented the conclusions we came to last week, and, it is safe to say…”

With a well-timed click and tug on a lever, the machine disengages, and the gem drops back into its socket under the influence of gravity. Its violating light returns to a faint, blue glow, like an artificially lit aquarium; fluctuating and undulating gently in its intensity. The potential energy indicator’s numbers climb back up, steadily, but faster than what you’ve seen before. 

Much faster.

You can’t help but grin with excitement. “It’s regenerating fast.”

Viktor smirks at you over his shoulder like you’re sharing a sacred, intimate inside joke. 

“It is.“

You await the verdict with a bated breath.

“How much?”

Viktor’s smile only grows, like he’s about to give you a present. And, all things considered, this is going to be one, in months’ or maybe even years’ time.

“A thirty-seven percent recovery after usage within an hour.” Viktor spins in the lab stool to face you with the theatrical self-satisfaction of a magician who just sawed his assistant in half and is waiting for the applause. You nearly forget to step back to give him the space for it, so much so your knees knock together. But there is no chance for you to apologize, Viktor is unbothered, sliding the goggles up his forehead enthusiastically, his show of complacency ditched in favor of pure excitement. “That is more than I’ve ever achieved thus far. Thanks to y—” 

His voice sticks in his throat, turning into a pained hiss.

His hair’s tangled in his goggles.

“Oh, wonderful,” he grits out sarcastically. 

A frustrated half-sigh half-groan rumbles in his chest as he pulls again and only makes things worse.

“Could you get me a pair of scissors? I should have some in the third drawer over there.”

“Wait. At least let me try first,” you insist. Reluctantly, you step closer, and after a moment’s hesitation, Viktor lowers his head for better access like a feral animal letting itself be pet for the first time. He sits still, the sound of both your breaths suddenly loud in the tall, quiet room as you’re forced to step even closer. “Could you…”

You nudge his ankles apart with the tip of your shoe.

He listens.

After a stuttering, fragile exhale, Viktor spreads his thighs. 

You take the space offered. And you try not to think about kneeling, about making a home for yourself between his thighs.

“Do you think you can do it?”

You wish he’d asked you that about any number of things, except for the goggles tangled in his feathery, soft hair.

But yes. You think you do.

It would have been a terrible shame to cut it — though some shorter, bluntly cut hairs that sit a little further back near the top of his head tell you his suggestion was not the product of a new idea. Carefully, you pull whatever hairs are looser from between the lens and the bridge of the goggles, though a strand remains stubborn. 

You try to ignore the warmth of his breath on your shirt, the intoxicating, soapy, yet distinctively human smell of his scalp, and the mesmerizing ratio of grey to dark brown, the subtle heat on the sides of your palms and wrists, resting on his head for stability.

As you separate another few hairs from the stuck strand and accidentally tug at them, Viktor has no reaction. Beyond swallowing thickly, and sitting through it dutifully. 

You wonder if he’d act just the same, had you bunched his hair into the spaces between your fingers and tugged — simply biting his tongue and chewing through the pain — or if he’s leaned into the force, moaning with it, and god, you’ve hurt him, and you haven’t even apologized.

“Sorry.” You sound twice as genuine — mainly because you apologize for much worse than the inflicted pain. “Almost done.”

“The scissors would have been faster,” he half-jokes.

His voice sounds different. A hint more… strained. He shifts in the seat, wipes his hands on his slacks.

“Would have been a shame, though. You have pretty hair.” The last part of the sentence positively escapes you, and once you hear it, you freeze. Your brain scrambles itself trying to add something that will fix the inherent following awkwardness, the horrifying realization you just called your boss pretty, the fact that it’s true, the fact that—

Viktor flinches with another accidental tug of his hair, and so do his thighs — jumping with the surprise, clenching together until they squeeze around yours. But they’re gone just as fast, flinching away with horrified urgency. Before you get to savor the supple flesh pressing into your own in another new perverted way, before you get to imagine his ankles locking behind you, tilting and rubbing your hips into the hug of his thighs.

You need. To get. A grip.

“Sorry.”

You continue on in silence, and thank everything above he at the very least can’t see the way your hands shake, because he’s staring at the floor like he could drill a hole into it with just his eyes. 

You should have gotten the damn scissors. As if through divine intervention, the rest of his hair comes loose not soon after.

“Okay. All done.” You smooth the slightly crinkled, but now free strand back down into the rest of his soft hair. 

Viktor’s dainty features come into view from below his face framing pieces as he tilts his chin up. His lips quirk into a gentle smile, his eyes sparkle in the faint blue glow, soft shadows under the hollow of his cheeks and the swell of his lip and the tip of his nose and the bone of his brow. You wish you could immortalize him in whatever way he’d let you — a sculpture, a painting, a poem. He looks ripe for kissing, eyes half-lidded and twice as dreamy as he peers at you.

You’re going to see him like this in your mind’s eye later tonight.

Nestled between your thighs, or kissing down your stomach, molten gold under long, dark lashes, sitting atop carved marbled bone.

“Thank you.” He says it quietly — like it would break the sudden holiness of the moment to say it any other way.

He’s so warm. 

You could kiss him. See what the ozone of the room tastes like in the slick of his mouth. You wonder if he’d let you, if he’d suckle your tongue into his mouth in a show of submission, or if he’d bite your lip, licking your teeth, pressing, pushing, make you earn the privilege to taste him. 

You wonder if he’d hold you, or if his curious hands would roam, tracing the front of your stomach, or your spine, or press to the middle of your breastbone like he wants to see where you’d split open for him down the middle like a ripe peach. You wonder if he’d let you dip a hand down the front of his slacks, you wonder if he’d tilt his hips into it like he’d been aching for it, aching for you. Scorching your hand with want, materialized in slick or straining hardness. You wonder which it’d be.

From where you’re standing, the distance between the apex of his chin and the space where his slacks stretch between his thighs is small — and your gaze takes the leap, searching. But the material dips and curves in such a way that you’re left none the wiser, and with nothing but a disgusting realization.

You’re staring at your boss’ crotch.

You step back from the heat between his thighs, painfully awake, aware. It squeezes and wriggles in your chest like you have a parasite lodged in the chambers of your heart. 

You’re disgusting.

You need to put an end to this.

“You’re welcome, professor.”

With that, you’re practically bolting from between his thighs, to stash the scissors away again.

You’re neglecting your job, you’re putting it in jeopardy. Putting yourself in jeopardy, risking all the rumors circulating becoming a shameful truth, you’re risking the first man who ever kept up with you, followed you where you wanted to go and took you further — you’re risking it all because he makes you unbelievably fucking horny. 

And it’s absurd. Embarrassing. You need to get a hold of yourself. 

“I was… thinking, actually,” you begin, and want to punch yourself over how Viktor perks back up from where you’d left him. “About some things regarding my thesis that I’d like your thoughts on.”

“Oh. Of course.” You have got to be imagining the subtle disappointment in his tone. The second you let yourself believe it’s more than just a figment of your make-believe, is the second you will be doomed. 

Viktor, with all his years and experience, would and does know better than to fall for his assistant. You know he does.

“What’s on your mind?” He prompts after your prolonged silence.

If he knew the half of it.

—

You’re late.

And it’s a direct, shameful consequence of last night’s lusting, the time you’d spent frustratedly tossing and turning and thinking of his mouth and his eyes and his scent, before you’d given in past midnight, and humped your hand into completion.

Thinking about him under you, about pressing your face into his neck, about pressing him into the mattress and rutting into him until he gushes and his tired body sings for you and his voice cracks. Until he breaks for you, until pleasure itself oils and unscrews all the biological cogs of his body and he comes out unstrung, reborn.

Viktor’s in a wheelchair. 

And he looks worse for wear than you’ve ever encountered him before, slumping in the chair and massaging his eyelids with his thumb and index, seemingly gathering his thoughts. He’s dressed even warmer than usual, in a loose but thick, dark red sweater. There’s a colorful knitted blanket folded and set over the tops of his thighs. 

Viktor doesn’t acknowledge you when you come in and sit near the whiteboard, simply resumes his lecture as he regains his mental footing. And he goes on for a while, not sparing you a single glance, as he goes through powerpoint slides today, instead of his usual writing and hand drawn diagrams. 

He’s at it for a while, not as fast as his usual pace, but undeniably concise, certain. Until…

“The energy output increases proportionately to the spin, and, with powerful enough matrices, some hexgems can create force fields of their own. This is a particularly common phenomenon in unstabilized gems as well, though with the activation of their force field, those tend to also create… eh…”

Viktor stops, sighing, pinching the bridge of his nose. He frowns, mumbling something in another language, which, judging by the heavy consonants and squeezed vowel, you’d assume it’s Russian. The word must be slipping his mind, so you decide to help out.

“A shock wave.”

Viktor’s gaze cuts. He’s looked at you with disinterest before, sure, but this… 

He doesn’t even turn his head to look at you, just eyes you from the corner of his vision like something unworthy of acknowledgment. You wish you could swallow your words back up.

“Yes,” he says. “Thank you. A shock wave.”

You don’t say anything again for the rest of the lecture. 

Once the door falls shut behind the last few students who have left the room, Viktor turns to you. You wish you could shrink; and it feels like you do, when he finally speaks.

“I appreciate your intention to help — but do not interrupt me again. I know what I’m trying to say.” He sounds utterly unlike himself, both spent and angry. “I don’t need help. Especially not in the middle of a lecture.”

“Sorry.”

That alone softens him up a hint. He looks away, rubbing his thumbs against the wheels of his chair, before he speaks again. Calmer. 

“Just… do not let it happen again.”

As he slumps in his seat, massaging at his temples, you understand that his anger… might not have been as directed at you as you’d initially thought. He’d been snippy when his back hurt — having switched to a wheelchair must mean he’s in a lot more pain now.

And you understand his frustration. He’d just gotten himself an assistant a few months back, and started a new project — looking like he requires help in front of his students is certainly not doing his reputation right now any favors. 

“But if there’s other things I can do to make your day a little easier, I’d like to do them.”

“No, thank you.” He shakes his head, before he grabs both wheels and advances to where he’d left his bag. As he starts packing his things, he stops again, quietly groaning somewhere in the back of his throat. “Where did I put my pen…”

Viktor eventually finds it right behind his water bottle on the table, tossing the both of them into his bag, shutting it tightly. You expect him to wheel himself over to the ramp that leads to the exit, but he just hangs his head, massaging at his temples again, before he looks at you.

“Actually, I’d like it if you went to my office and got me a silver tin box in the… fourth drawer on the left side of my desk. Do you have the key with you, or should I give you mine?”

“I have it. I’ll be quick.”

“Thank you.”

And you deliver on your promise. You don’t run, but you power walk there, and you’re back with (hopefully the right) tin box in the same lecture hall before his break ends.

Viktor takes it from you gladly, popping it open. It contains two foils of painkillers, one already half empty, a small ziploc bag of… gummies, and at the very bottom, some dark chocolate. 

You must have pulled a bit of a face at the contents — particularly the gummies — because Viktor cocks a brow at you, before he faintly chuckles under his breath and pops three painkillers in one go.

After depositing the foil back in the box, he fishes out the dark chocolate bar. It looks to be the expensive kind, something Belgian — Viktor breaks off a piece, putting it in his mouth, before he holds it out to you.

“Peace offering,” he clarifies when you hesitate. 

You’d be a fool to turn him down. You take some — it’s rich, buttery, and melts on your tongue. It coats your mouth with its taste, dark and aromatic and unfortunately not as sweet as you thought Viktor preferred. He’d always favored the almost disgustingly sugary cakes.

“Didn’t think you’d like something so bitter,” you say.

“I do not. It sometimes helps with my migraines,” he tells you. “Sugar makes them worse. A very… devastating discovery to make, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

You wonder if right now is the right time to be curious — and you decide it might be.

“Do the migraines also affect your leg? Or the other way around?” 

“No.” Viktor shakes his head, popping off another piece of dark chocolate. “This,” he gestures at himself, the wheelchair, “was just a very unfortunate… overlapping.”

“Oh.” You grimace in sympathy. “Fun.”

“A punishment for it, more like.” 

What’s that supposed to mean?

“Let’s hope my migraine eases up on me throughout this lecture.” He smiles at you — and for the first time you’ve known him, he looks old doing it. Exhausted. The face of a man who’s seen enough hardship for a lifetime, but has yet to cave under it. 

You wish you could hold him. You wish you could melt it away, kiss it better, love it better. Whatever he’d let you.

You surprise both him and yourself when you lay a gentle hand on his shoulder and let your thumb rub a small circle over the wool. 

Though he flinches at the first contact, once something in his brilliant mind unfurls and settles, so does he. Through the cracks, tenderness shines under the fatigue. Viktor can be soft — in spite of everything im his body and his past that protests against it. “Thank you.”

You take your hand away sooner than you’d like — but at the ideal time to keep it from being anything more than a friendly touch.

“I’m glad I could help,” you say.

—

Viktor isn’t there at all next week. 

You come in on Monday to find his office empty during lunch break, and when you attend his lecture, it’s another professor from his department teaching it. The students don’t seem all too excited about the change either — and you leave before it even starts.

Heimerdinger is none the wiser about Viktor’s situation when you talk to him — in spite of their shared history. He simply tells you he’d taken the week off and had arranged for substitutes.

You consider messaging him… and ultimately end up doing so, after some internal debate. You simply text him to get well soon and that you hope he’s getting some well-deserved rest. He replies with just a plain thank you.

Tuesday is quiet. You receive a stack of midterms you need to get through from the substitute, and you do, by Thursday morning. Which is when Heimerdinger messages you.

Dr. Prof. Cecil B Heimerdinger

Good morning! I’m well aware this is on very short notice — but the substitute professor has unfortunately suffered a minor car accident. Not to worry; they only sustained small njury. However, I am finding myself forced to task you with Viktor’s lectures today. Do you think you could take care of that? Thank you.

-Cecil B. Heimerdinger

9:32

Just the thing you needed — teaching two full lectures, entirely unprepared.

Alright. You’ve got this. You’ve got this. You just need to find out what’s even on the agenda for today. You could text Viktor, right? If he answers on time, that is… he’s sick, he might as well be asleep right now. You could call, but… he said only to do that in the case of an emergency when he gave you his phone number. 

Would this count as an emergency?

Your phone beeps.

Dr. Prof. Viktor Sidorov-Svoboda

There should be a black flash drive in the third drawer on the left in my desk. It has all my lectures.

9:34

Today’s topic is LHC segments naturally occurring in unstabilized gems. Feel free to use my work laptop to familiarize yourself with the presentation before the lecture.

9:35

Me

Thank you so much! 

9:35

His answer comes a few minutes later, just as you fish the flash drive out of his drawer, and plug it into his laptop.

Dr. Prof. Viktor Sidorov-Svoboda

Good luck 👍 

9:42

It would be a lot easier to get caught up in the desire to snoop around on his laptop if you didn’t have less than 20 minutes left until the lecture. His background is disappointingly the default image, but some of his folders look undeniably tempting — not just the scientific ones, which take up most of the space. There’s some photo albums titled with the year and location: Germany 2011, Czech Republic 2009, among many others. There’s also a photo album titled Persichka. 

Who is that? 

You almost click it. But then you check your watch again and realize you only have 15 more minutes until the lecture, and decide against it.

—

For how utterly unprepared you are, it goes surprisingly well. You stumble, once or twice, but you’re glad to see that even by the end of the lecture, you still have most students’ attention.

After you dismiss the class, you don’t expect questions. But a good handful of them, a little under ten, approach your desk, whispering among themselves, before a hastily appointed representative emerges. 

“We were just wondering,” she awkwardly begins, “if professor Sidorov-Svoboda is alright. And when he’s coming back.”

“Oh.” You hope they’re asking because they understandably prefer him, and not because you did a particularly shabby job. “He texted me just today — he’s doing alright. But I can’t give you an exact estimate for when he’s coming back just yet.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

With that, all of them turn to go. After the last student has left the room, you reach for your phone, and pray you don’t see any other day-altering messages today. 

Dr. Prof. Viktor Sidorov-Svoboda

I did not mean for you to have to do this. 

10:11

You unlock your phone and jump straight into the chat.

Me

Don’t worry, it’s alright. I handled it :)

12:02

Dr. Prof. Viktor Sidorov-Svoboda

I knew you could.

12:02

Thank you.

12:02

Me

Focus on resting up and getting well soon! 

12:03

Dr. Prof. Viktor Sidorov-Svoboda

I have been. I actually feel well enough for company now. Coincidentally, I’ve gotten some ideas for your thesis and I would like it if we discussed them sometime. Would you be free this weekend?

12:05 

He wants to meet? Outside of the university? Undoubtedly for academic purposes still, but your heart squeezes and bounces and pops with the implications. 

No. You shouldn’t let yourself hope for more than just a few formal, at best friendly hours spent together.

Viktor doesn’t want you. He would never want you — he knows better. You know better.

Me

I’d like that! Saturday works for me. Where would you like to meet?

12:05

Dr. Prof. Viktor Sidorov-Svoboda

If you’d prefer somewhere on academy grounds like my office or the coffee shop, either would be fine.

12:06

My apartment is also an option.

12:06

The choice is obvious.

[avocad1s]

About the Creator: Favoritism - 2

Requested by: Multiple anonymous users

CW: None?

Characters Included: Lyney, Arlecchino, Pantalone, Furina, Wriothesley, Neuvillette, Venti, Zhongli, Nahida

Note: Long time no see! Hope you all enjoy something lots of people requested in my absence! 🙏 Also this is written before Arlecchino’s release. So there may be some OOC Harbingers lol

Part One

-

Arlecchino: “Their Grace has quite the sweet tooth. Naturally I don’t mind indulging them in the sweetest treats I can find. Spending time with Their Grace is not a privilege everyone enjoys… they constantly join my children and I for tea or just simple conversation… What’s with that look? Surely you don’t believe I would actually cause harm to them. No matter what you think of the Fatui, Her Majesty still reveres Their Grace. So naturally we would feel the same.”

Furina: “I always feared what Their Grace would think of me. I was pretending to be the Hydro Archon, I knew with just one look, they would know I wasn’t who I claimed. I thought I was ready to accept any form of punishment they deemed worthy. However when we first met, their benevolence really shined through. They really understood just how draining the past few decades were for me and even apologized for not being there…. Ehem! Anyways…! I actually have a tea party with Their Grace this afternoon! I must get the most exquisite confectioneries to suit their palate.”

Lyney: “So that’s what you wanted to ask! Well yes, there have been many times when Their Grace and I have been alone together.… and as the successor, I have to tend towards Their Grace in “Fathers” absence. Having any kind of relationship with them is very beneficial for the House of the Hearth, but them wanting to spend more time with me than with the Iudex or even Ms. Furina… well, I won’t complain one bit!”

Nahida: “My favorite thing to do with Their Grace is trading knowledge with them. Even with Irminsul, Their Grace knows bits of knowledge I’ve never heard before. They were here once before, back when all members of the Seven were still in contact with each other. I have no memory of that. So it’s only fair that I’m able to make memories of my own with Their Grace now right?”

Neuvillette: “Their Grace spends a lot of their time in Fontaine. As the Iudex and with no Archon ruling the nation, I have made it my personal responsibility to tend to their needs.… You are correct, Their Grace and I do spend quite a lot of time together, anytime I am free of my duties I always look forward to sharing a cup of water imported from Qiaoying Village and listening to whatever they wish to talk about.… Hm? No of course not. There is nothing I would deem as “too much work” when it comes to Their Grace.”

Pantalone: “There is no amount of mora I wouldn’t spend on Their Grace. No matter what they request, whether it be big or small, common or rare, I will always get it for them. Tell me Traveler, do you believe I am buying Their Grace’s attention? There are many people in Teyvat who have money, yet their gaze never leaves mine. It seems that obtaining a vision isn’t the only way to get favor from the Gods.”

Venti: “Hello there Traveler…! You were coming here to see Their Grace? Well, you just missed them! But worry not, I can sing you a song I just wrote about them! Oh…? You think that the Creator favors me? Well I’d rather it be me than any of the other Archons! All of Mondstadt believes that I’m just some bard who managed to capture Their Grace’s attention, but in reality I think I understand Their Grace better than anyone. Hehe…”

Wriothesley: “I never really expected to meet Their Eminence, but once they requested to enter the Fortress I made sure everything was in order for their arrival. Even now, they come down often just to share a cup of tea with Sigewinne and I. A lot of the prisoners believe that I have some sort of favoritism or that I take bribes from them… hm? Well I didn’t say it wasn’t true, but I didn’t think it was that obvious…”

Zhongli: “You wish to know about my relationship with Their Grace? As the eldest Archon, I take pride in having the strongest connection with them. Even now, when they return to Teyvat centuries later, it feels as if our connection has never changed. If they ever choose to settle in one of the nations, I would be honored if they chose Liyue. Everything I’ve done has been in their image, and being able to spend time with them as Zhongli rather than Morax is a privilege I will never take for granted.”

My first post back just to see how it felt to write some of my favorite characters again. Anyway, I will be opening requests so feel free to send something in! :)

© avocad1s 2024

[puckinghischier]

alli there is this idea in my head and since I love how you write Nico I wish you could write this

there is a Gracie Abrams song called In Between and I’ve been thinking about a headcanon or something based on that song so it’s like gracie is describing yours and Nico relationship

it’s such a cute song describing two people falling in love and to me it screams falling in love with Nico

really hope you could do something with this request ❤️

this is such a cute request and i hope this is at least semi close to what you were thinking of 🫶🏼

(i kinda manipulated the lyrics and left some out of certain sections just so it would make more sense/flow better)

I just can’t come between em’, they got their own thing; I wish he’d stop pretendin’, he won’t let his phone ring for more than a couple seconds oh I think maybe two

Nico drags behind his teammates as they come off of the ice, hearing the various grunts and complaints about needing an ice bath and a shower.

He smirks to himself as he makes his way to his locker, taking his time, watching the hoard of sweaty hockey players quickly trickle out of the room. Taking a peek behind his shoulder, making sure he’s mostly alone in the large room, he pulls his phone out of his bag, making sure he has no missed calls or messages.

“Cap! Thought you said no phones in the locker room this season? Or does that only apply to us lowly alternates and unlettered players?” Jack pokes fun at his captain, slapping a hand on Nico’s back, startling him.

Sliding his phone out of sight, he turns to greet Jack. “Just checking to make sure I didn’t miss anything important,” Nico gives a nervous smile.

Jack eyes Nico skeptically. “C’mon, Neeks. You’re acting like a lovesick fool. Just ask her out already.”

“Jack, I told you it’s not like that. She’s just…nice to talk to,” Nico won’t meet Jack’s expectant eyes, focusing his attention on the wooden cubby for any vibration or buzz of his phone against the hardwood.

Ever since the night he met you at one of the post-game trips to the bar, Jack knew Nico was smitten, encouraging him to do something before someone else came along and whisked you away under his nose.

“Bullshit. You’ve been glued to your phone for weeks now. Every time you hear even the slightest indication your phone is ringing, you’re jumping at the chance to answer it,” Jack calls him out on his eagerness.

“I have not been! I’m just-“ Nico’s defensive tone is cut short by the quiet ring of his phone, head snapping over to where it rests next to his helmet. His hand immediately shoots out to grab it, smiling when he sees your name on the screen.

“Hey! I was just thinking about giving you a call. Just got done with practice and was wondering if you wanted to-“ Nico stops mid-sentence after hearing Jack clear his throat, already having forgotten where he was and that Jack was standing right behind him.

Jack raises his eyebrows at his friend, giving him a much deserved ‘I told you so,’ look.

“Hang on a second, okay?” Nico puts his hand over the speaker of his phone, addressing Jack. “Can you just go shower already? This proves absolutely nothing. It’s an isolated incident,” he whispers, not wanting you to be hinted to the previous conversation.

Jack shakes his head, laughing. “Whatever you say, Cap. Hi, y/n!!” Jack shouts out as he walks towards the showers, hearing you return his greeting with a small giggle through Nico’s phone, wondering when the two of you are finally going to admit your feelings for each other.

I wish that you could see ‘em, their faces lighten up; Their past is cold and empty, they know it’s been enough; Of waitin’ on somebody, someone who doesn’t care; But he knows her name, she knows he’ll always be there

“Y/n, when are you finally going to lock that man down? You know he’s absolutely obsessed with you, right?” your best friend asks you, watching Nico glide across the ice.

Your cheeks involuntarily turn red, not knowing how to respond to her. You know how you feel about Nico, but you can’t just assume that he feels the same way. “You don’t know that. He’s just a nice guy. He could act like this towards all of his friends.”

No sooner than the words leave your mouth, Nico makes eye contact with you from across the ice. His face breaks out into the widest grin you think you’ve ever seen, your own matching his. You give him a small wave, his gloved hand returning the gesture as you watch Jack skate up to his side. The disappointment settles in your stomach the second his bright eyes are no longer focused on yours, trying really hard not to be mad at Jack, considering they are working right now.

Your best friend, witnessing the entire interaction, has her own smile on her face, knowing that you deserve someone like Nico in your life after your previous relationship endeavors. You’ve been hurt time and time again due to how quickly you become attached, always seeing the best in the worst people. Nico is different, though. She can see how much he wants to make you happy, how kind he is. If any man’s face lights up like that when looking at you, there’s a 100% chance he’s already in love with you.

Which is why, when her and Jack catch each other’s eye, a silent understanding is passed between the two, a small nod of confirmation shared.

Jack feels the same way about Nico as your best friend does about you. Nico deserves someone like you after all of his past failed relationships. All of the girls taking advantage of his loving nature and kindness because they want the status that comes with dating a professional athlete, moving on to the next sport when they get bored with Nico. Jack having been there to pick up the pieces, Nico getting far too attached far too quickly with all the wrong people. But watching the way you always look at Nico, like he’s the only person in every room you’re in, he knows you’re someone Nico needs to keep around.

So, Jack starts putting his part of the unspoken plan into motion.

“Go, do it now,” Jack encourages Nico.

“Do what? What are you talking about?” Nico turns to face Jack, trying to not be annoyed he’s stealing his attention away from you.

“Ask her out, duh? Now’s the time. She can’t say no in front of all these people, right?” Jack gives him a slight push, skating him right over to the glass.

“I don’t want her to say yes because she’s been put on the spot, Jack. I want her to say yes because she genuinely has feelings for me,” Nico protests, trying to stop himself from being pushed towards you.

His efforts are pointless, hearing Jack yell out “Y/n!!” loud enough that you’re able to hear him through the glass.

“Hi!!” you giggle out, laughing at the pout on Nico’s face.

Nico looks up at you, pout immediately dissolving. “So, can I expect a win tonight or am I going to end up being some kind of bad luck charm, since it’s my first game?” you shout at Nico, being brave and taking your friend’s encouragement to heart, attempting to be a little flirtatious.

“Are you kidding me? You could never be bad luck. If anything, I think this will be our best game this season,” Nico perks up a bit, skating a little closer to the glass, wishing the barricade wasn’t there, wanting to hear your voice and see your blushing cheeks without the slight blur from the scratched surface.

“I don’t know if I can handle that kind of pressure,” you laugh out, unconsciously leaning forward, focused on how much you love the way Nico’s hair flares out in little tufts on either side of his helmet.

“No pressure, just the truth,” Nico shrugs. He catches Jack out of the corner of his eye, remembering the younger forward’s words as he was pushed over here against his will. The small look of expectancy on Jack’s face pushes Nico to take the risk, deciding he’s done tiptoeing around his feelings for you.

“In fact, after we win this game due to the luck you have running through your veins, why don’t I take you out for a celebratory dinner? Or drinks? Or ice cream? Or whatever you want?” Nico starts rambling, his nerves sky rocketing once he sees the soft surprise take over your features.

You’re beginning to think the blush on your face is permanent at this point, feeling it grow deeper at his question. You’re trying to think of a clever response, not wanting to seem too eager, but you blurt out “Ice cream!” before your brain can stop your mouth.

Nico chuckles in both relief and amusement.

“Uhm, I mean, that sounds fun,” you try to recover. “As long I’m not blamed when this supposed ‘good luck’ backfires on everyone.”

Nico shakes his head, assuring you that’s not possible. The sound of the buzzer signaling warm ups are over startles you, feeling embarrassed at how much you jumped.

“Meet me after the game, okay? I’ll be in the tunnels, waiting,” Nico shouts before he skates off, giving a small wave.

Watching him glide away, something tugs at your stomach, telling you he’ll always be there waiting for you. Not just after games. Not just tonight.

Jack and your best friend look at each other through the glass, having witnessed the whole conversation. You’re so focused on Nico’s retreating figure that you don’t notice the air high five they give each other.

She toes the line between em’, he says he’s new at this; There’s holy ground beneath them, and sparks fly when they kiss; He hates it when she’s crying, he hates when she’s away; Even at their worst, they know they’ll still be okay

It’s your first time dealing with Nico being on the road for this long (over a week) since your impromptu ice cream date months ago. They ended up winning the game, so Nico kept his promise. By the time the game ended, however, every ice cream parlor he drove you to was closed.

He ended up taking you to the grocery store, telling you to pick out any flavor you wanted, and he’d take you back to his apartment for an ice cream party. He casually bought 10 half gallons of ice cream, because he claimed he couldn’t decide on a flavor. He set up an extravagant topping bar, too, and did a whole bit as if he worked in an ice cream shop.

Ever since that night, your ice cream dates became a routine, meeting him at his apartment after home games, bad days, and just nights you wanted to see him. The two of you were determined to eat through all of the ice cream he bought, Nico complaining that all the extra sugar was slowing him down on the ice.

Tonight, however, you were sitting in your apartment with your best friend, upset because you haven’t heard from Nico in three days.

“I’m sure they’re just busy, Y/n. I have a hard time believing Nico would just ghost you,” she tries to reason with you, not liking how down you seem.

“I thought that on day one, then again on day two. But then you came over and Jack has been messaging you for the past hour, so they’re obviously not busy right now,” you huff out, staring at your cold, black screen.

Despite how much time the two of you have been spending together, nothing has really changed between the two of you. There’s never been a conversation about what the cuddles on his couch mean, or the fact that you’ve been coming to all of his games that are in Jersey. You never discussed what it meant when he gave you one of his jerseys to wear, and you still haven’t given it back. Not a word about it was shared the night you tagged along to the bar with him and the rest of the team and he drove you home, walking you to your door because you were a little too tipsy, only a small goodbye shared after you stood in your doorway, staring back at him for an eternity.

“Well, Nico is the captain. Maybe he’s got other stuff going on that Jack doesn’t. Do you want me to ask Jack why-“

“No!” you’re quick to interrupt. “I don’t want him thinking I’m some level 3 clinger when we’re not even dating.”

She just rolls her eyes, everyone but the two of you aware that you’re basically dating without the label.

“Alright, I won’t. It was just a suggestion,” she puts her hands in the air, surrendering.

Looking at your phone again, you sigh at the lack of activity.

“They’re coming back tonight anyways, right? Maybe he’ll call when he gets back in. He might be asleep on the bus or something. Yeah, I’m sure that’s what it is,” you reassure yourself.

You best friend texts Jack anyways, tired of seeing you freak out over this, wanting to know why Nico just suddenly went radio silent on you the last three days of their roadie.

~~

“Neeks,” Jack nudged Nico, knowing he was awake.

“What? I told you I just wanted to be left alone to sleep. I’m tired,” Nico snapped, his mood matching yours, even from miles away.

“Okay, mr pouty butt, no need to take my head off,” Jack responded, earning an eye roll from Nico. “Just wanna know why you’re in such a bad mood when you know you can call Y/n at anytime.”

Nico hadn’t talked to you in three days and it was killing him. Luke had made a comment about how often he called you, sometimes two to three times a day, and it made him worried he was being annoying, considering the two of you weren’t even officially together. But, he hadn’t heard from you, either, so he didn’t want to be the one to break the silence incase you really did think he was being clingy.

“I’m just…giving her space,” Nico shrugged, not wanting to get into the details with Jack on the slightly smelly bus.

“Whatever you want, man, but maybe you should call her when we get back. Just so she knows you’re not ghosting her,” he advises, not wanting to tell him that you’re sitting at home pouting just like he is. He didn’t want you to find out your best friend had betrayed your trust, either.

It’s like an alarm went off in Nico’s head. He never once thought that you’d think he just up and quit talking to you for no reason. Or because he didn’t want to. Because god, did he want to. All he ever wanted to do was talk to you. First thing in the morning, before he goes to bed at night, when he’s bored, when he sees a stray cat, when he passes by your favorite bakery, when he sees someone with a cup from your favorite coffee shop, always. He always wants to talk to you.

“Shit, you’re right,” Nico sits up, grabbing his phone and opening your contact.

~~

“Uhh…he’s calling me,” you blurt out, finally seeing the Nico’s contact picture pop up on your phone screen, watching his smiling face with whipped cream everywhere stare back at you. “What do I do?”

“Answer it, dummy!” your best friend rolls her eyes at you.

“I don’t know if I want to,” you tell her, still just watching it ring. “He did just ghost me for three days, what if it makes me look pathetic?”

“Oh my god you’re not going to look pathetic, just answer the damn phone!”

You watch the phone screen go black, the decision being made for you.

“Well, I guess that answers that one. Or…doesn’t answer it,” you look up at her.

“I swear, you’re both so helpless,” she groans out, raking her hands down her face in frustration.

“Maybe he’ll get a taste of his own medicine,” you say, the taste of the words on your tongue bitter, knowing you should have just answered the phone.

“Whatever, I’m going to pick up Jack. He said they just got in, incase you were wondering,” she tells you before leaving your apartment, leaving you to sulk alone, again.

~~

Nico rushes over to your apartment, praying that you’re still awake so he can fix this. After you didn’t answer his call, he freaked out, thinking he’s fucked this whole thing up before it even started.

Jack told him to just wait until tomorrow and try to call you again, but Nico needed to fix this now.

Nico barely puts his car in park before he’s running into your building, pressing the elevator button over and over again in hopes it’ll make the door open faster. Once he finally reaches your floor, he’s speed walking straight to your door, knocking on it like his life depends on seeing your face.

“Y/n! It’s me!” he tries not to shout, but he makes sure he speaks loud enough for you to hear him through the door. “Please open up. I wanna see you. Wanna talk to you,” he pleads.

He’s about to start the harsh assault on your door again, at this point trying to wake you up in case you had gone to sleep, just needing to see you and fix all of this.

He hears the lock click, his breath catching in his throat.

When you open the door, he’s met with you clad in your pajamas and hair haphazardly thrown on the top of your head in a knot. You look confused, not expecting to see him outside of your door this late at night.

“Nico?” is all you say, not knowing how else to react.

“Hey,” he breathes out, thinking about how cute you look right now, even if there is a frown on your face.

“It’s one o’clock in the morning, is something wrong? Didn’t you just get back? Why aren’t you home right now?” he sees you staring at his tired eyes with sympathy.

“I had to see you,” is all he can manage to say, not exactly having a plan.

He hears the small giggle come out of your mouth, loving the sound.

“Okay, well here I am,” you respond to him, switching your weight from one foot to the other.

Nico shakes his head, like he’s clearing his thoughts. “I had to see you, and fix this.”

He watches your face morph into confusion. “What do you mean?”

Maybe he was just being paranoid? And dramatic?

“This. Us. The fact that we haven’t spoken in three days,” he starts, knowing he was right when you stand a little taller, like you were bracing yourself. “I swear, I didn’t mean to just go silent on you. Luke got in my head, made me think I was being annoying. I got a little crazy thinking about how ‘we’re not even dating, why am I being so clingy right now?’, but then I realized, I want to be clingy. I want to talk to you every hour of every day. I want to be dating you.”

He hears your gasp. “You…what?”

“I want to be your boyfriend,” he speaks softer and slower this time. “Hell, according to Jack I basically already am. But I want it to be real. I want us to be real.”

He watches the tears fill your eyes.

“Hey, hey, hey. No, I didn’t mean to make you cry, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he reaches forward, pulling you into a hug.

“No, it’s fine, I’m not-“ you can’t finish your sentence, Nico squishing your face into his chest.

“I’m new to all this, okay? I don’t know what I’m doing half the time, I don’t have much experience actually dating people. I didn’t want to scare you away by moving too fast, but then I kinda did the opposite, huh?” he keeps talking, his nerves getting the best of him once again.

“Nico, listen to me,” you pull back, looking up to meet his brown eyes. “I want this too.”

Nico breaks into a smile so wide you think his skin is going to split.

“I don’t know how to do this either,” you confess. “I don’t know how to get used to you being gone all the time, I don’t know how to have these conversations, I don’t know how to keep myself from falling so fast, but I want to figure out how to do it with you.”

He wipes at the tears under your eyes. “Even if they’re happy tears, I don’t like seeing them in your eyes.”

Once again, that blush that seems to be a permanent fixture on your face makes an appearance.

“I’m sorry I didn’t answer your call earlier. I was being a brat and trying to give you a taste of your own medicine,” you confess, embarrassed.

“I’m sorry, too. For letting Luke get in my head and then pouting because you never called me,” he responds, sounding just as guilty as you feel.

“Promise me we won’t be bratty with each other again? I don’t like it, it seems very out of character for us?” you ask, looking up and resting your chin on his chest.

“Promise,” he tells you, staring down at you.

You move your head back, feeling the moment intensify.

“I’m going to kiss you now, okay?” he whispers.

“Okay.”

His lips feel exactly as you imagined, soft and plush, slotting against your bottom lip perfectly.

As you walk backwards, leading him into your apartment, you can feel the sureness of this. How right it feels. How, no matter what comes at the two of you, no matter if it’s something big or a silly little misunderstanding like tonight, you’ll always come out okay on the other end.

He laughs at her eyes, at her smile, at the glasses on her face; She loves how he talks late at night, when there’s no one else to say; How she’s beautiful and funny and smart like nothin’ he’s ever seen; He’s good to her, and she wants it more than everything in-between

“I can’t believe they made us sit through that god-awful play,” you say as Nico unlocks his door. “I mean, the entire thing was in French. I don’t speak French! And neither does Jack! I swear, I love my best friend, I do, but just because she was a French double major in college doesn’t mean everything we do has to be in French.”

Nico chuckles at you, having understood the play quite well. “I told you I could play translator if you wanted me to, but you said no,” he takes off your coat, hanging it on the small set of hooks in his entry way.

“It was more fun to make up my own plot,” you shrug, taking off your shoes and making your way to his couch.

Laughing at you again, Nico makes a pit stop in his kitchen to make both of you a small bowl of ice cream before joining you on the couch.

“You know, I really like it when you wear your glasses, you should wear them more often,” he blurts out, handing you your bowl.

“These bug-eyed things?” you pull a face, earning a real, belly laugh from him. “I’m sorry? Does my face look funny or something?”

He waits until he catches his breath to reply. “Not at all. My beautiful, bug-eyed girlfriend.”

You don’t know why you even buy blush anymore, not ever having to wear any around Nico. “I love that you always say things to give me an ego boost,” you joke.

“I’m being serious,” he responds, the change in his tone confusing you. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. You’re the smartest woman I’ve ever met, and the funniest jokester I’ve ever interacted with.”

“You did not just seriously call me a ‘jokester’” you deadpan, ruining the moment.

“Hush, woman, I’m trying to compliment you here,” he lightly scolds, earning a laugh from you. “I’m trying to tell you how much I love you, and you’re caught up on my choice of words.”

You’re stunned to silence. “You…love me?”

“Of course I love you? I’d be crazy not to,” he takes the bowl of half-melted ice cream from your hands and places it on the small table in front of you.

“I’d be crazy not to love you back,” you tell him, sliding your arms around his torso as he crawls over to hover over you.

“Glad neither of us are crazy then,” he whispers onto your lips as he meets them in a kiss.

The kiss is slow and sweet, both of you taking your time savoring one another. You can taste the caramel ice cream on his lips, enhancing his already intoxicating taste.

You think about how hard you’ve fallen for this man. You think you fell for him on your first ‘date’, really, just too scared to say anything until now.

Unknown to you, Nico is thinking the same thing, kicking himself for not telling you sooner.

You also think about how much you love living life with Nico. How he always seems to know how to cheer you up when you’re upset. How he brings you coffee and bagels every morning on his way home from workouts. How he plans double date nights with Jack and your best friend, knowing that you feel like you neglect her sometimes, being too caught up in your life with him.

He treats you better than you’ve ever been treated, not being used to having someone be so attentive and all in as he is.

Nico was the surprise you didn’t know you needed. And while you can’t wait to see where the two of you end up in the future, you love the moments like this, and everything in-between.

[hoshinasblade]

i am in a depressive episode, the next posts will not be very fun

being hoshina soshiro's best friend comes with obvious perks. among that long list is his ability to always be available in your time of need. maybe years ago you would think this is just normal - people who care about you are usually only one call away. unfortunately for you, being on the other end of hoshina soshiro's kindness - even as just a friend - bears a consequence: the possibility that you will fall in love with him.

and fall hard for him you did.

it is the fourth time this month that he is picking you up drunk from a botched double date. hoshina doesn't know why you keep on agreeing to be set up to random men by your officemates, and he pondered on asking you once but ended up shutting up about it at the end of the day. your dating life is not his business even if he wanted it to be.

"i got her," hoshina assured your girl friend as you clung to his shirt. he had ample time to change from his uniform and in a rush, worn the first thing he got his hands on from his dresser. "i'll take care of her. good night."

"if you're gonna get drunk all the time, at least ask me out for some shots too," he mumbled, knowing that you can hear him but will most probably not understand him. after fixing his seatbelt, he turned to your side to secure yours. this close he couldn't even smell the alcohol on you, just the scent of your shampoo and the fading perfume on your skin.

"you awake?" your eyes were closed but he couldn't tell if you were sleeping. he waited for a few moments only to be met by your silence.

then you sighed deeply and exhaled from your mouth before speaking. "i like you, did you know, soshiro-kun?"

it did not even sound like a question at all; it lacked the intonation, it was missing the curiosity. hoshina knew that it doesn't matter if he knows you like him - right now, you are confessing; right now, you wanted him to know.

it would explain a lot of things too, really. it never takes you more than an hour to respond to any of his messages during the day. shamelessly, you have also put him on your speed dial - "only important people get to have this honor", you reasoned. you always say his name in such a way he had never heard anyone else do.

hoshina grimaced.

"i know, you already told me thrice this month now," he responded. he expects you will forget the entirety of this conversation tomorrow anyway. he was about to start the engine of his car when you stirred. "i wish you would tell me that when you're sober," he said before driving away.

[ohisms]

✱˚｡⋆ ↪ 𝐌𝐎𝐌𝐌𝐘 𝐂𝐀𝐍'𝐓 𝐒𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐏 ! ( a collection of sentence starters from season  1 of nbc's “ good girls ”. adjust phrasing as necessary . will be updated in the future . mature themes are present . )

specificity is good , but that's over the top .

chill , i'm like two minutes late .

alright , everybody be cool and nobody gets hurt .

do you think i could make it in L.A. ?

i don't need all that . i just want to be super famous .

you know , i'm just not really much of a church person .

maybe next time you'll take security more seriously .

oh my god , can you please just listen to me for one damn minute ?!

shame on you . shame on all of you .

move it before i shoot your face off , let's go !

you should probably get yourself a lawyer .

why is it so crazy ? i mean , it's a victimless crime .

can't you have my back on one thing , ever ?

this is me helping you not ruin your life .

damn . that was a good sell .

i should have been more careful , i panicked .

no ! i mean ... i don't know . maybe .

we're gonna rob that store .

have you lost your mind ?

we can't sit back and let everything be taken away from us .

no one's gonna fix this . we have to do it ourselves .

[ name ] ... hello ? are you okay in there ?

how did you have the money for all of this ?

i'm here to clean up a mess , [ name ] .

it's not a knock , we all have our strengths and weaknesses . you're a beautiful dummy . it doesn't make you a bad person .

this is five grand . enough for a plane ticket , and to get you started .

i guess you won't mind if i go to the cops , then . right ?

i handled it because you couldn't .

you've got a little ... on your face , kind of looks like blood .

what am i looking at right now ? WHAT am i even looking at right now ?

[ name ] , this is life or death .

i choose death . GIVE ME DEATH .

i have ... sort of a favor to ask .

it's not like you can't afford it .

what do you need that much money for ?

thank you for making me completely humiliate myself for no reason .

this is what winning feels like .

i'm gonna need you to say it with me . we are winning .

it's not like you're gonna kill me .

you don't have the guts . you're not killers .

thought you'd pull a fast one , huh ? make a quick buck ?

girls like you , you never think things through .

you've done this your whole life . you make these big messes and expect everyone else to clean it up . then you just ignore it .

you can't leave me here forever .

you are an incredible liar .

when bad things happen to good people , everyone goes crazy .

if it could happen to us , it could happen to anyone .

roll the dice . tell them to pull the trigger . see what happens .

hey , looks like we've got a survivor .

i am going the speed limit . i don't wanna get a ticket .

where does he think he's going ? boy , this is hard to watch .

if you go to the cops , so will i .

i thought we were done with this .

oh ! you'd rather just declare a kilo at customs ?

– or we could just steal it .

are you hearing yourself right now ?

do not call me crazy .

what if we get caught ?

there's always a choice .

dude , it's never gonna end . unless we end it .

i'm not gonna shoot him , i'm just gonna scare him a little !

forgive me lord jesus , i did not mean to shoot that man .

are we supposed to knock or something ?

i wanted my music for the road trip .

how long has it been bleeding like this ?

i need to take you to the hospital , i think you need stitches .

i wish everything could go back to the way it was .

i had no damn idea how good i had it until it was gone .

i know you hate me right now .

i'm sorry . i suck .

i had to do something really , really important .

what's more important than me ?

is there something you want to ask me ?

just making conversation .

you know the tradition is jordans over a phone line , right ?

be outside in two minutes or you're dead , i mean it .

it's so crazy , even saying it .

you asked for this ? you ASKED for this ?

you can't sign people up for criminal activity like it's a bake sale !

that is NOT what i meant when i said i'd do another job .

so you think you get to pick and choose what you do and when you wanna do it ?

no , i'm sorry . that is not gonna work .

what's your gut say ?

i can prove it ! i mean i can't ... but i want to .

why should i apologize ?

chill out with the cayenne .

maybe we need like , smelling salts or something .

well , i want him to not die in my house .

i am so tired of almost dying .

hey ! ... don't be mad .

you're a dead man .

shut up , just don't say anything . i will handle it .

just say you're sorry .

i wanted to do something nice , so that maybe we could start fresh .

i'm not proud of my part in everything .

oh , yeah ? what does that mean ?

[biolumien]

Hiiii!!!! 😊👋 So I only just started Kaiju no. 8!!! New to the fandom and not a manga reader. Idk what’s going to happen in the next episode—all I know is that Hoshina better not d*e lol.

Anyways!!! Obviously I am a huge Hoshina fan/simp!!! I really like your blog and I have enjoyed your Hoshina fics!!!!!! 🥹 And since your requests are open, I wanted to know if I could perhaps make one??? 👉👈

If so, I was wondering if you could do something sort of related to your “say it!” fic??? Like where Hoshina (+ reader) somehow bumps into the ex from operations you mentioned in the fic??? And reader gets SUPERRRRR jealous (lord knows I would be especially if said ex was really beautiful and smart) and insecure. Maybe reader acts a bit distant/moody after the encounter but once Hoshina realizes what’s up he immediately reassures reader and let’s them know how much he loves/cares for them???

Sorry if this request is weird or doesn’t make sense to you, I’ve honestly just been thinking about a similar scenario ever since reading that fic of yours 😭😭 anyways thank you so much for your time 🫶❤️ and please never stop writing, your fics are beautiful 💖💕

notes: hihi; thank you so much for your request; i hope that this is okay; you sent this in before the most recent episode but hoshina's a fairly important character to the story of kaiju no 8 overall so he'll be alright... i combined this with a slightly different ask which also surrounded jealousy but with okonogi; it's very briefly mentioned though.

jealousy as the crux

soshiro hoshina x gn!reader no warnings should apply, i think. wc: 837

hoshina always maintained rather easy conversation with a lot of people—friendly conversation that sometimes got the better of your self esteem when he teasingly doted on okonogi or otherwise. 

you’d tried not to bring it up, to not bother him—because envy and jealousy like that was an ugly emotion, of course. it wouldn’t be right to burden hoshina with them–mostly because you weren’t even sure how he’d react. he was plenty envious on his own, you think–key point on think. but it might have been for more reasonable things, surely. like the envious desire to become stronger, or something noble like that.

nothing quite like yours. 

but stumbling on hoshina’s ex was never on your list of priorities at all. 

so the fact that she was here—was her name amaya?—only made you more uncomfortable. you barely knew anything about her other than the fact that okonogi spoke her name with strained reverence, cautious to never bring it up around hoshina. hoshina seemed to be uncaring of it all, even so–as if he couldn’t be bothered to remember. 

she was smoking indoors, her eyes tired and weary. 

hoshina didn’t seem to tense up when talking to her, which strangely irked you more. 

“hoshina,” amaya says, approaching hoshina with a raised eyebrow. she pats his shoulder, and he chuckles.

“you look well,” hoshina murmurs. 

“hm. well as i’ll ever be.” her eyes flit to you, her eyes narrowing. you felt uncomfortable under her gaze, as if you were some unique kind of insect to be pinned up in a collection. “this your new partner? they’re cute.”

“hm?” hoshina laughs. “aren’t they?”

the compliment doesn’t feel good, somehow, as it usually does.

“thought you said you wouldn’t date again,” amaya says, dusting off some ash off the tip of her cigarette, taking another breath before blowing it away from the two of you. “not that we really were.” she snorts. “you were too much of a coward last time.”

“hey,” hoshina says, sounding mock-hurt. “i figured we were better off as friends.”

“hm.” amaya exhales. “whatever you say.”

“i wish you’d sound more enthusiastic about this,” hoshina retorts, laughing again. it’s the same laugh he has when he talks to okonogi, that same doting laughter–but it also wasn’t anything special. it was the same kind of laughter he had when he talked to you, though perhaps it was tinged with more fondness when he spoke to you.

if there was anything hoshina was, it might’ve just been annoyingly consistent.

"it's hard to be enthusiastic surrounding you. your sarcastic energy exhausts me," amaya drawls.

you turn away from the conversation at this point–and yet you can feel amaya staring daggers into the back of your head. 

“i’ll let the two of you finish this up,” you say, and your voice sounds far more obviously strained than you’d like for it to be. 

hoshina was allowed to talk to other people. but why did amaya irk you so much? was it just the irreverent way she spoke, the way she seemed to be watching you so intently for no reason? what the hell was her problem? as you stormed off, your footsteps grew angrier as you continued to mull over it. no, seriously! what was her problem? 

but what was yours, being jealous in the first place? you were being irrational–worried because you wanted hoshina’s attention for yourself but of course it wasn’t right to worry this badly about it to the point that envy would turn your stomach like this, create the brittling sensation in your heart. it wasn’t right, and the fact that you knew it wasn’t right made the whirling sense of bad in you feel worse.

you rub your face roughly, trying to shock yourself into trying to just be fucking normal.

“hey.”

hoshina’s voice is quiet when you turn around, and his face is contemplative, brows furrowed in worry.

“are you done? talking to amaya?” you ask.

“for now,” he says. his eyes focus on your face, concerned now. “are you okay?”

“i’m…”

the words die in your throat.

“i don’t want to be jealous,” you say weakly. “of whatever’s going on. but, i–”

hoshina’s hands are on your face before you can even finish your sentence, squishing your cheeks together.

“mm, i see.” hoshina blinks, humming. “why didn’t you just say so earlier?”

you blink.

“you’re not… mad?” you ask.

“mad?” hoshina raises an eyebrow, cocking his head. it looks cute. “should i be?”

“no,” you say. “i–or, i don’t know. maybe? yes?”

“which is it?” hoshina asks, a teasing smile on his face before his brow furrows a bit. “if you would have just told me earlier i could have easily just told you that there’s nothing going on between me and anyone else but you. i chose you. don’t forget that, okay?”

you blink.

“and i love you,” hoshina says, completely straightforwardly, with sure honesty. “don’t forget that.”

you nod, and he squeezes your face, leaning in to kiss you on the lips.

[celtrist]

Hazbin & Helluva Vs. Aromanticism

(Aka: I have a problem with the Spindlehorse team about this, not shippers.)

(Also this is mainly about Alastor but can go for Octavia and Mammon too.)

Alright, so I've cleaned up this uh... rant, to make things a little more clear hopefully. But to summarize here, this is about the team's lack of commitment when every other character is allowed full confirmation of their orientations but these (potentially) aromantic characters aren't.

While I have no beef with shippers (I think you can ship whoever with whoever you want, I ship Alastor too on occasion), there is some conversation about how the fandom might be a bit of a reason WHY they "can't" be confirmed as aro. But again, my main problem is more with the showrunners than the fandom at this point about this.

I'll also be getting into why it's "important" and the double standards against characters being aromantic.

This is not an attack, ship however way you wish (again, I do it myself). My intent isn't really to stop the shipping, that would be ridiculous. But more so to give my thoughts on why it's BS characters like Alastor can't be confirmed as aromantic when other characters are allowed confirmed orientations.

I will start off by saying I don't mind the shipping of Alastor. While it's NOBODY'S business but mine, I suppose it's important to clarify that I'm someone who does currently identify as aroace. I might be wrong but who cares, it's how I think of myself now at least to some degree (I do after all still have fictional crushes. Real-life romance is not an interest for me though, don't like 'em).

I'm gonna get what I don't think people talk about enough on both sides of being for and against shipping Alastor, and then I'll talk about the shippers as they're (I realized) not my main issue at this point.

A little history: So Alastor has been long time confirmed as an ace character. He hasn't been confirmed as being sex-repulsed or anything, but I can personally say I don't mind either flavor of him being repulsed or favorable (though I imagine the series will lean towards the former to counter everyone else's sex-favorable attitude and for jokes). This statement was initially taken VERY poorly by fans who, at the time, were shipping radiodust and radiobelle/charlastor, one more than the other. Care to take a guess which? The answer will not surprise you.

But then people realized "Oh, asexual doesn't mean he COULDN'T get with someone" and people even went further to "Being asexual doesn't mean he CAN'T have sex", both very true statements. So shipping was back on the menus boys! And his asexual was certainly blurred a bit (to the point where it wasn't even him being sex-favorable asexual as much as just not asexual, something that still happens but certainly not as bad). But overall, people were taking his canonicity as asexual with as much grace as a duck.

So here's where MY problem comes in. While I have some gripes with shippers, I had an epiphany that "Oh. It's not really the shippers I have a problem with. It's the people WRITING THE DAMN CHARACTER". Which, might I just say, is so much worst.

The shippers, while they got annoying at some points and certainly can be still, are just having fun. Because shipping just happens to be the way most people like to interact with characters in the media they're into. Hell, I am no different. I just have the misfortune of only really getting into rarepairs most of the time (curse you my bizarre tastes). I've even shipped with Alastor, I like AngelicSmile/radiojoy quite a bit.

Back on track. Now, what do I mean by my main problem being with the writers more than the fans with this? Well, queue this darling of a clip about the topic (this is the only clip I've found of the live stream, feel free to watch the whole video but just wanted the clip here).

This. Single. Clip. Infuriates me.

Vivzi, while I'm sure not meant to, pretty much implied "Alastor being aromantic and 'non-shippable' would ruin people's fun". I'm sure she meant it as a way to keep others from policing shippers (which didn't work, it still happens), it really just reads as "a character being aromantic is not a fun character". Like there's something wrong with being aro.

Not to mention some other things that would contradict this statement:

Viv in the past said "fans are allowed to ship outside character orientations", so... what makes that so different here with confirming Alastor as aromantic?

It being confirmed is not relevant to the plot. Great, so is every other orientation not relevant. Why can't Alastor be confirmed as aromantic but Vaggie can be confirmed as a lesbian or Vox bi? What does Vox being bisexual have to do with the plot? Neither is relevant to the plot, but one can be confirmed but not the other?

People were gonna ship him ANYWAY. Like, there's really no point in pretending. They were going to anyway because of the first point I already mentioned, but also people ship against canon orientations ALL THE TIME. It's just gonna happen and there's nothing wrong with that in of itself.

You've kind of just implied it's canon by not wanting to say specifically him being aromantic is canon or not. If Viv had just said "I don't wanna confirm his romantic orientation because...", then this statement would be fine and fair I suppose. But she had to call out him being aromantic specifically. And I mean, he COULD be something else (he was slated to be a couple with Mimzy originally after all), but the context doesn't seem like that would be the case. Plus, would she really feel the need to hold back from saying "Alastor is homoromantic" or biromantic or heteroroman- actually yes for that last one probably.

So riddle me this, with these points, why the FUCK would it be so wrong to confirm Alastor as a canonically aromantic icon and help get MORE REP for this very very very VERY underrepresented orientation? And I've thought of a few reasons to this, one of which being to avoid the same backlash that they got for Alastor being ace. Which, DID HAPPEN WHEN THE VOICE ACTOR AND SOMEONE ELSE ON THE SHOW CONFIRMED ALASTOR AS AROMANTIC BUT BACKTRACKED ON THE STATEMENT.

To which, fine. THAT'S on the fans (especially as no one would've complained if he was confirmed as homoromantic, which is a double standard VERY PRESENT in this fandom, but also many others quite honestly). But I can see another reason is to avoid others policing shippers about it.

Which, if that's the case, shit luck it's happening anyway.

To cower away from this orientation because of fans being upset says a lot, both about the fans and the creators. There is a whisper of "Alastor isn't allowed to be aromantic". That "being aro isn't allowed or appreciated".

We live in a world that at this point has a lot more lgbtq+ characters than ever before. At this point, there's just a lot of gay/lesbian and bi characters, and that's wonderful. But, there's barely a handful of aroace characters. And when they are, nobody wants to pay attention to that part of the character. So why can't the deer man be aromantic? I would imagine it would honestly make things a little better ship wise because ship wars wouldn't occur seeing as, well, there's no ship to be fought for. None of them could be canon.

So you might see where I'm leading into this, but I can only really think of one real reason Alastor being aromantic just "can't be confirmed" where as everyone else's orientations can be.

His popularity. Like, that's weird but walk with me here. Alastor is the most popular character in the fandom. There's honestly no denying it, he just is. And what do people do with the most popular character?

THEY SHIP THEM OFF IN A LOVEBOAT.

But wait, if he's aromantic, he can't be on a love boat. THIS IS BS-

And then... the outcry. And we HAVE seen this happen. I mentioned before, he was stated to be aromantic on two occasions by two people who work on the show, one of which is his voice actor (which I'll be fair, I personally don't think VAs always know the characters they play the best, that's the writers). But they had to backpedal because people DID complain. People WERE upset. So it's kind of shown just aromantism isn't really welcomed, at the very least not for a character like Alastor.

And that's the key: "Not for a character like Alastor". But if it were say, Niffty or Mimzy who are either overlooked or just not very popular, THEN it's probably more than okay for a character to be aromantic. Because no one wants to ship with them much, so they can be aromantic all they want.

AKA. The aro community is allowed the scraps but not the dinner.

At this point, you've probably noticed I switched gears from the creators to the fans because I DO think they could be a reason why Alastor "can't" be confirmed as Aromantic. I'll give credit, I'm pretty sure it's mainly on twitter and wouldn't be surprised if it was a "loud minority" thing going on, but the people have spoken. They vehemently cannot STAND the idea of Alastor being aromantic.

But I don't have a problem with these people quite honestly- I mean I kinda do, but my main issue is the lack of commitment when the other characters are allowed confirmed orientations. Why can't aromantic people get confirmed rep? Because "it'll ruin people's fun?" That's such a crappy reason because it's just saying being aro is bad on some level or isn't okay. Why can't the aromantic community get the dinner this ONE TIME? It's one character in a pool of many others that are canonically gay or bi, so why can't the aro community have this ONE popular character?

I'm not even asking for people to stop shipping him, I think that's perfectly FINE. It wouldn't change the canon. I'd appreciate more LOVE given to the aromantic identity (and I'm talking about the far end of it, so absolutely NO interest in romance as many have used aro Alastor but it still comes off as just normal shipping, but that's just me). There's such a double standard to the treatment of aromantic characters to the other characters in these shows (because Octavia and Mammon are in the same boat here), and the reasons given are so crappy that they sound more like off-hand excuses.

Again, I don't MIND people shipping Alastor, or Octavia, or Mammon who is randomly shipped with Adam the most. Let me repeat:

YOU. ARE. ALLOWED. TO. SHIP. THESE. CHARACTER.

But what I have a problem with is that these characters aren't allowed to be OFFICIALLY aromantic. How would it feel if this was a gay character? That they didn't want to confirm it but there's been indications with past statements and even in-universe stuff indicating so? I WANT Viv and her team to STICK with what route they were gonna go with.

And some might argue "what's so bad with nothing being confirmed?" Other than the fact every other character's orientations are allowed confirmation and Viv's crappy way of putting it in not confirming anything. There's, by all technicalities, nothing wrong.

However, if I may pose a counter, why is it fair for people to demand or ask for gay representation or confirmation but not aromantic? Because it's "not ruining anything"? If that's the case, I'm inclined to say that may be a bit aphobic. Because how is it that a character being aromantic can "ruin" the character or something, but a character being gay DOESN'T "ruin" the character. It's a double standard that I don't think most people realize or want to say because you don't want to be dissing on gay stuff.

But WAKE UP SHEEPLE. The gay stuff has PLENTY of things by this point. Whether through fan works or official media, it is growing and it is growing rapidly. And we should be HAPPY about that. But alternatively, Aromantic (and asexual) rep BARELY gets any attention in either fan works or official media. People would be UPSET if a ship like Angel Dust X Vaggie or Stolas X Verosika got into one of the top most popular ships. But Alastor? Nah, it's fine.

Again, while I don't mind the shipping itself, hopefully, you can understand how it might feel to see one of the most popular ships involve a character that goes against their orientation and it's YOUR orientation. It doesn't. Feel. Great.

And not everyone who ships Alastor even would LIKE him to end up with who they ship. Some people just like it staying in fanon. I have met SO MANY nice people who ship Alastor with characters that I personally don't really like him shipped with. But it's clear that I don't think THEY'D mind if he was confirmed aromantic because it doesn't change their life. They'll still keep shipping him because that's fun for them and that's FINE. People explore themselves through characters with confirmed orientations and they don't always line up with canon, and that's FINE. I don't think people should be policed on shipping with the deer man, they're just having fun. Would I appreciate a little more love for the aro identity? Sure (I mean just look at Alastor's ship weeks activeness vs. his aro week activeness), but if that's not how people have fun they shouldn't be forced to do stuff with it.

But Alastor being seemingly "not allowed" to be confirmed as aro has set a precedent that there's something wrong with being aromantic. And personally, it makes me feel a tad unwelcomed sometimes.

It's the precedents. Again, why is every other character's orientation allowed to be confirmed but Alastor's isn't? What is so wrong with him being aromantic? Hell, he might not even BE aromantic. But at least I'd KNOW instead of floundering around hoping upon a star for some aromantic representation.

It's okay to be gay but- WHOA HOLD YOUR HORSES THERE. WE'RE GONNA HAVE TO PUT A PAUSE IN THAT ARO BUSINESS YOU GOT THERE.

A character's worth is in how shippable they are. And if they're aromantic, they're not shippable. And unfortunately, there are just enough people to throw a hissy fit about it that Viv doesn't want to confirm it.

Because apparently being aromantic would "ruin" things.