#I'm a powder keg at this point

[goldilockstheory]

someone I like and respect very much described Ursula K Le Guin’s style as “twee” and it took everything in me not to immediately commit murder

[whateveriwant]

Choice

Summary: Simon forces you to choose. Him, your husband… or the other man he found in your bed.

Pairing: Simon “Ghost” Riley x Reader

Word Count: ~2.6k

Warnings: ANGST

A/N: Forgive me.

“Simon!” you gasp, bolting upright in bed.

There, darkening the doorway to your bedroom, stands your beloved husband. You thought you'd spotted something lurking in the shadows of your periphery, but rather than it being a mere figment of your imagination like you'd hoped, you've come to find out that's not at all the case.

Simon’s brows are knitted tightly together, the lines framing the sides of mouth deepening as he begins to scowl. “Fuckin’ knew it,” he grits out. “Knew you were a fuckin’ liar.” His eyes flit back and forth between you and the figure lying beside you in bed, and if looks could kill, you'd both be six feet under.

“Simon, no, wait–!” You're quick to shoo the other male from your bed even as your husband storms away. Jumping to your feet, you chase after him, tugging your shirt into place from where it had ridden up. Simon’s just reached the living room when you manage to catch up with him. “Simon, please just–”

“When will enough be enough?” he cuts you short as he whirls around to confront you. You've never seen such anger rippling from him before, and it makes you recoil, stopping dead in your tracks. “When's it gonna end, huh? You promised me you were gonna fuckin’ stop this.”

“I-I-I know I did, Simon,” your voice trembles under the weight of your shame.

He's right. After the last time, you’d told him that was it, that it would never happen again.

So much for keeping your promise.

“I'm– I'm so sorry,” you try to offer him, for whatever it may be worth.

Apparently, it's worth very little as he proceeds to scoff right in your face.

“You’re ‘sorry’?” His expression pinches to show how he takes offense to that apology. “That’s three times this month I've caught you. Three. Let alone how many other times I'm sure have been behind my back.”

Again, he’s right on the target. You’ve been dishonest with your husband, been deceiving him more times than you can even remember at this point. Though you're in no place to feel as if you're the one that's been hurt in this situation, you can't help how his biting words feel like daggers plunging right into your stomach.

Simon sighs and brings a hand up to rub his forehead, the self-soothing gesture doing nothing to soften the lines creasing his skin. After a while, he asks, “Why?” his voice much calmer than it was a moment ago. “Why d’you keep doin’ this? Lyin’? Sneakin’ around?”

When he drops his hand to look at you again, you can see how quickly his emotions have shifted from fury to sorrow. The sight of his grief almost wrenches your heart in two, and you swallow the lump in your throat, your own emotions threatening to spill forth and choke you.

“I… I don't know,” you tell him, yet another lie.

You know the truth behind your actions, the real reason you can't break this bad habit. It's because you're selfish; because you're spineless; because you're fucking weak.

Your answer, the unconvincing slop that is, isn't good enough for Simon, and his shoulders rise in a show of perplexity. “Am I not treatin’ you right? I've been withholdin’ from you? Is that it?”

You're shaking your head before he even finishes the inquiry. “No, Simon. It's nothing like that,” you say.

“Well then, explain it to me.” He tosses a hand into the air, the frustration in his tone palpable. “Because I'm tryin’ to understand what makes him so bloody special. What is it about him that makes you treat me like a fuckin’ afterthought?”

“I don't–!” you begin, the accusation immediately putting you on the defense. But then you pause and intake a deep breath, trying to rein yourself back in. The last thing you want is to strike a match against this highly combustible conversation. If ignited, this powder keg runs the risk of taking you both out with it.

You take another moment to collect yourself before releasing an audible exhale. “Yes, he means a lot to me–”

“Oh, well, I'm bloody well aware of that, thank you.”

You ignore the derisive comment as you continue, “–but you're my husband, Simon. At the end of the day, I always want you,” you emphasize. You can feel a stitch forming between your brows as they slowly pull together. “I know you're upset with me – and I understand, truly – but I… I-I just…” your voice trails off as you consider your next words.

You know what you want to say, what niggling thought you want to express. But you're not sure if voicing it aloud is the right move to take. You're trying to cool down the tension here, not potentially add fuel to the fire.

But as Simon prompts, “What?” you realize there's no backing out of it now.

You sigh. “I just think you're blowing this whole thing out of proportion.”

The way your husband's eyes immediately widen tell you it was probably better to have kept your mouth shut.

“Blowin’ thi–?!” Simon blinks wildly in disbelief, his anger from earlier surging back tenfold. His voice is venomous as he spits, “I catch you lyin’ to me, catch you continuously goin’ behind my back.” He points an accusatory finger in the direction of your bedroom. “I catch you with that filthy shite in our bed–”

“Hey, don't call–”

“–see him lyin’ there, sleepin’ on my fuckin’ pillow, and you think I'm ‘blowin’ this out of proportion’?!” he's fully shouting now, his volume having risen alongside his fury. Simon lets out a dry chuckle that's entirely devoid of humor. “Do you even hear yourself? Do my feelings mean nothin’ to you anymore? Do you– Do you even really love me?” his voice peaks as a wave of despair washes over him.

“Wha–?” Now it's your turn to blink wildly as you're caught off guard by that last sentence. “Of– Of course I do, Simon! Of course.” How can he even ask you such a thing?

“You just love him more, then, right?” The question stings like a punch to the gut.

You shake your head vehemently, asserting, “No. No, of course not!” even as you feel a twinge of guilt pricking the base of your skull.

Just as you're slightly skeptical of your own words, so too is Simon, and he brushes you off with a, “Pssh, right.”

The heightened emotions of the last several minutes persist even as you and your husband lapse into a tense silence.

As you stand there, you watch as Simon begins to harshly run both hands through his hair, not sure what you should say – if there's anything to say in this moment. Though you and he have had this same argument more times than you'd like to admit, something about this time felt different to you, felt like there were higher stakes in the mix. And as you reflect on the quarrel, you can't help how one line in particular sticks out in your mind. ‘You just love him more, then, right?’ he'd accused, bluntly, bitterly.

The idea is ridiculous to you, loving someone else more than your own husband. It sounds like something only a fool could believe.

But if that's the case, why did Simon say it so assuredly?

And why does the thought of it make your stomach clench like there could be some truth behind the claim?

After another few moments of him tugging at his roots, Simon releases a billowy breath. He briefly closes his eyes and shakes his head to himself, before dropping his hands back down by his sides.

“I don't know how much longer I can keep this up,” his voice sounds as exhausted as his body looks. As he peels his lids open to once more lock with your gaze, you feel your own eyes narrowing in your confusion.

“What do you mean?” you ask, voice quiet, timid.

“I mean you need to choose,” he tells you. “Me or him.”

That statement has you balking, the cords that hinge your jaw shut practically snapping. “Si, you– you're not serious.” This has to be some kind of sick joke, right?

“I am.” He nods resolutely. “I can't keep doin’ this – goin’ back and forth with you, wonderin’ if you're really all here with me or not,” he says, frowning. “So you need to choose. Right now. Me… or him.”

It's like you've just witnessed your worst fears materialize before you. Simon, your loving husband, has just asked you to do something that was once completely inconceivable to you. He's asked you to make a world-altering choice: pick between him and someone else.

The decision should be easy – should be obvious – and yet, you find yourself frozen, unable to speak the words you know you should say.

Simon is your husband, the first and greatest love of your life. But this other man he's making you choose between is… well, he's something else to you entirely.

When you're having a rough day and feel like the world is collapsing in around you, he's the first one you want to run to when you need a shoulder to cry on. And conversely, when you're feeling on top of the world, feeling so high up you could reach out and touch the clouds, he's the one you want to call so you can share your joy.

From the moment you met him, you knew he was one of a kind. He's got a smile that could rival a thousand suns, a kiss that could warm the coldest of nights, and the way he looks at you – like you hold the entirety of his universe in the palm of your hand – you think it could keep your heart beating long after it's chosen to stop.

He's your best friend, your other half of a whole, your personal ray of sunshine that cuts through all the gloomy rain. Simon is your husband, yes, that’s true. But this other man is your soulmate, and you know that however long you both shall live, you will love each other until you take your final breaths.

Tears start to bead in your eyes as the answer to your predicament reveals itself to you. And as Simon eventually pushes, “Well? Who's it gonna be?” you know there's only one thing you can tell him.

“Him,” you mutter, feeling the first tear spill over. “H-Him, Simon. Him. I choose… him.”

It's like the planet ceases to spin for a moment as your choice floats in the air like a ghost. At first, you think Simon must assume you're bluffing, what with the way he has no immediate reaction to your response. But as the silence stretches between you and you've yet to renounce your decision, you watch as the realization hits him like a slug to the chest.

Simon's face falls, the color zapping from his skin, and as his eyes start to shine with tears, you find your cheeks flooding with your own.

Simon blinks rapidly, his nostrils flaring as he tries to keep his emotions at bay. His brow furrows like he wants to say something – to argue something – but when he opens his mouth to speak, no words escape. He closes his mouth for a second but then opens it again soon after, once more nothing leaving him but the sound of his breath.

Open then shut, open then shut, he repeats the cycle over and over again, never once managing to get a word out. Finally, after several minutes of waging an internal battle with himself, Simon eventually lets out a low sigh of defeat.

“Then go,” he mutters, gaze falling to the floor. “Just… Just go.”

Your own heart shatters at seeing the pain you've caused your husband. But you can't take back what you've said now, and even if you could, you both know it'd be a lie.

Thus, all you can offer him is a whispered, “I'm sorry.” Any louder and your voice would break from the strain of your cries.

The room falls quiet again as you both let everything sink in. Simon, your husband, the man you'd promised forever to, just put his heart on the line, practically flayed himself open for you… and you didn't choose him.

“I'm sorry,” you say again because you don't know what else there is to do.

Simon waves your apology off with a dismissive hand, still refusing to meet your eye.

Over the next few moments, you continue to sob softly, the sounds of your sniffles puncturing the otherwise quiet house. After a while, you feel the faucet behind your eyes gradually slow to a trickle, and you wipe your face with the back of your shaky hands, swallowing down the last of your tears.

You take another minute or so to compose yourself, still standing before your forlorn husband. Once you feel somewhat well again, you clear your throat, then tip your head back to let out a short, high whistle.

Almost immediately, you hear the telltale noise of feet moving against the hardwood floor. Then, not a beat later, you see the man you'd just chosen rounding the corner to the living room.

“Come here, pup-pup. Come here,” you encourage Riley, your fourteen month old shepherd-mix, forward.

Like the good boy he is, Riley trots closer at your beckoning. But before he reaches you, he makes a pitstop by Simon, shoving his cold, wet nose into the man's empty palm.

Riley gives him a couple boops to the hand, politely asking him for pets. And Simon, for his part, despite still being obviously disgruntled, obliges and gives him a brief, dispassionate rub to the snout.

Having received his desired scritches, Riley then continues over to you, and you crouch down so you can meet him at his level.

“You wanna go cuddle with me some more? Yeah? Do you?” you pitch your voice up in that babyish way Simon pretends to hate.

Riley, however, absolutely loves it, and his tail wags back and forth in a way that says he's all too eager to agree.

“Okay, let's go!” You wave him after you as you take off down the hall.

As you both walk back to the bedroom you'd been occupying earlier, you hear Simon speaking behind you, muttering angrily to himself.

“Mangy fuckin’ mutt. Knew he was gonna be trouble,” he murmurs as he makes up a spot for himself on the couch. “First he steals my bed, then he steals my cuddles, next he'll be stealin’ my fuckin’ car…” his voice peters out the further away you walk.

“Don't mind your daddy. He's just being grumpy as usual,” you stage whisper to Riley as you approach the door to your bedroom.

Letting yourself inside, Riley quickly follows after. You shut the door and then waltz over to the bed, patting the empty space beside you as you settle in.

Swiftly, Riley jumps up to join you, taking the side normally reserved for your husband. He moseys all the way up the mattress until he reaches Simon's pillow, where he proceeds to lay down.

You roll onto your side and start to pet him, scratching that spot behind his ears you know he loves. As you do, you see that infectious smile of his slowly take shape, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth as his eyes drift closed.

The sight of him so content makes your own lips upturn into a smile. He is so sweet, so perfectly innocent, that it makes your heart want to burst inside your chest.

And as you continue to cuddle Riley, making little kissy noises in his ear, you know you made the right choice as you grin and ask him, “Who's my favorite boy?”

__________

A/N: April Fools! Hope I didn't break your heart too much lmao!

As always, I'd love to know what you thought! Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!

[vivwritesfics]

This'll Be The Day That I Die

Chapter Two - Kegger

JJ doesn't want her, not until somebody else wants her. That somebody else just so happens to be Rafe Cameron

JJ Maybank X Reader, Rafe Cameron X Reader

1.3K

Warnings: Mention of drugs

Chapter One

When she was a girl, she remembered the older kids in the Outer Banks throwing a kegger. She and John B. would watch from the Château as the older Pogues, Kooks and Tourons drank themselves silly in the boneyard.

One day that would be them, they both thought as they watched the party commence. But then she left to live with her mother.

When the Pogues later threw keggers, with John B. instigating the fun, he didn't think of his cousin. He didn't thinking about how this was something they were meant to do together.

But now that she was here, John B. suddenly remembered the conversations they would watch when they were ten.

Things had been different back then. They were both Pogues through and through. But now things were different. John B. was the biggest Pogue of them all. Living rogue, not caring about anything and anyone but him and his friends.

She was different. She wasn't a Pogue anymore. She was essentially a Touron now. Where she was once one of them, she wasn't anymore.

But she was back in The Cut now. In no time at all she'd be a Pogue once again. Just the same as them.

JJ and John B. carried the keg between them. They led the group on their way down to the boneyard, with Y/N bringing up the rear. Her hands were in the pockets of her shorts, kicking at the sand as she followed. A kegger was the last thing she'd wanted right now. As a kid she couldn't wait to join the keggers at the boneyard, but now she wanted nothing more than to go back to the chateau and go to sleep.

They set down the keg and John B. fixed her a drink. She smiled as she took it but the smile didn't reach her eyes. "Have a seat," said John B. "More people will turn up soon."

The rest of the Pogues got drinks and, just like John B. said, more people turned up. Pogues, Kooks and Tourons. John B. and JJ handed drinks to whoever approached them and Kie and Pope began mingling.

Sarah sat herself down beside Y/N. "Hey," she said, offering her a polite smile. "I'm Sarah."

They'd already been introduced somewhat awkwardly by John B. and she appreciated this. "Y/N," she said, smiling back. This one seemed more genuine. "So, when did you start hanging around with this eyes?" She asked, pointing a finger between her cousin and his friends.

Sarah shrugged her shoulders and sipped from her red solo cup. "Last summer," she answered. "We had a kinda crazy summer," she said with a laugh.

"With John B. that doesn't surprise me," she replied and finished her drink. "What's up with JJ? He hasn't said one thing to me since I came back."

"Oh you're gonna have to ask JJ about that. Were you guys close before you left?" Asked Sarah.

She nodded her head. "He was my best friend."

***

Rafe Cameron didn't normally crash the keggers the Pogues through at the boneyard. They were beneath him, childish in comparison to the kind of things he did.

But Topper was still obsessed with his sister, still in disbelief that a Pogue had stolen Sarah away from him. Any party they threw, Rafe found himself there, white powder dusting his nose as a way of coping.

He looked around the boneyard. There was nothing there to interest him. Kook girls were stuck up and boring, and Pogue girls were... don't get him started.

He walked to the keg for a drink. "Rafe."

"Pogue."

He snatched the red cup away from him and walked away. The music was meh and the constant chatter was annoying. This might have been one of Rafe's worst nightmares.

Rafe looked around for the familiar face of his sister. He didn't care about her, wasn't looking around to see if she was okay, just wanted to see if Topper was nearby, and if he was ready to leave.

The first thing he saw was the back of Sarah's head. It was undeniably her though. Looked around her, looked for any sign of Topper. But he was nowhere to be seen. Topper wouldn't dare leave without him, Rafe knew that.

Suddenly, he wasn't looking at Sarah. No, he was looking at the girl sat beside Sarah, the one looking past her, staring right at him. They locked eyes for just a moment, but that was enough for Rafe.

He watched as she said something to Sarah, stood and stretched her arms up. She walked past her, wordlessly walked around JJ and Pope, heading to the water.

Rafe stood, not caring much when he knocked over his drink. He brushed the powder from his nose, shoved his hands into his pockets, and headed towards the water. He didn't make a noise, his steps obviously silent in the sand. As he walked, he watched her toe off her shoes, pull off her socks and step into the water.

"You're seriously friends with the Pogues?"

She turned quickly to look at him. "Am I friends with them? I... I honestly don't know," she said. The waves her gentle against her ankles.

"You're new here, aren't you?" Rafe asked. She was gorgeous, he realised as she looked at him. "I'm Rafe."

"Sarah's brother, right?"

Rafe's face fell. "You've heard of me."

But her smile was still kind as she looked at him. "Pope mentioned you, but not much more than that. I'm Y/N," she said, holding her hand towards him.

The way she was looking at him, she had no idea who he was. She had no idea the things he had done. If she did, she wouldn't have been looking at him with such kind eyes. She would have been running for the hills if she knew who he was.

But Rafe took her hand and shook it. "If you're looking for something fun to do, you should ditch the Pogues and come hang with me," he said.

"You got a phone number or something?" She asked, still holding her hand out towards him.

Rafe fished his phone from his pocket. He hesitated before putting it into her hands. Rafe Cameron didn't get anxious; he couldn't explain what he was feeling when she held his phone above the water. He resisted keeping his hands under it, ready to catch it.

"There," she said, handing it back to him. "Now we can hang out."

From the keg, John B. Routledge put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. "Y/N!" He called. When she looked towards him, he beckoned her over.

"I better head back," she said, pointing her thumbs towards her cousin. "It was really nice to meet you, though."

"You too," Rafe said. He watched as she grabbed her shoes and socks, and headed back over to the Pogues. Who on earth was she?"

Y/N headed back to the Pogues. She turned just once to look at Rafe as he still stood by the water. He too was watching her go, and she couldn't stop from smiling at him.

Maybe it would be nice to hang out with somebody else, she thought as she walked over to them. Besides, the one person she had been looking forward to seeing didn't want anything to do with her. He could barely look at her.

She had no idea what she was getting herself into.

Permanent Taglist: @urfavnoirette

Series Taglist: @aragingbisexual21 @f-i-z-z-ypops

[cuppajj]

Is there anything that could, hypothetically or potentially, cause distrust among the neo beasts towards one another? Something that may cause them to turn on each other is what I'm trying to say.

Also, would it be alright to ask a rough estimate of how many years the entire story spans across?

Oh definitely, the neobeasts are already trying to maintain their whole alliance themselves. Unlike when they were ancients, their relationships have been fraying. Not that it’d be necessary easy to turn them against one another, but there are factors already present:

Save Lily, everyone already doesn’t like Saint Vanilla. They are fully aware that when the threat of the original five beasts are dealt with, when he gets his soul jam half, or if he—makers forbid—actually succeeds in his fruitless ascendancy quest, he’ll kill them all. Cacao, Dragonberry and Cheese have found orchids in their kingdoms already (the former more than the latter), and Cacao is *staunchly* against him to the point he will grow hostile if Saint steps foot in his kingdom.

Versely, Saint still wants to purify all of them, seeing them in the same vein as the rest of life: suffering in sin, desperate for salvation. There’s no changing what he wants to do to them, only ways that will stall him from doing it.

Berry and Cheese are already at odds with each other, frenemies by definition. They constantly bicker over lands both of them are interested in taking, and they gave each other inferiority complexes to varying degrees (Berry more than Cheese). They can be friendly one second, but a powder keg will be enough to sever that connection.

It wouldn’t be hard for Lily to cut ties with all of the beasts (except for Saint) in general. She doesn’t need their help, and she doesn’t need to ask for their approval.

Cacao is really the easiest and hardest one because of his extreme isolation and natural avoidance of the others

As for the second question, right now I’m thinking BAAU takes place over 7 to 10 years? No idea what Crepe’s canon age is, but if they started at 6-7 years old then they’re 16-17 by BAAU’s conclusion, for reference.

However, I also need to figure out how long it’s been with the Neobeasts around, because I want the world to have already been in the process of accepting them as the new normal (enough time for Saint to have his cult, Cacao to have tamed the licorice sea, Berry and Cheese to have conquered and the latter to have rebuilt her kingdom, etc)… so that alone might be three years at least, making BAAU from Lily’s corruption to the finale upwards of 10-13 years. BUT don’t take this as gospel because this has to do with my very incomplete and very jumbled timeline, this is just a rough idea of what I have lol. You can still enjoy the au without making this info canon. Bottom line, it’s a long time

[readerthatreadsss]

𝙎𝙪𝙣𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙚 | 𝙈𝙖𝙧𝙘 𝙎𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙤𝙧

Pairing: Marc Spector X Fem! reader

Summary: You and Marc had been working together on a mission for the gods you were both in service to. And when Konshu and Isis have a disagreement, naturally their avatars would too. Only, this time, your argument leads to something much more...eventful.

Warnings [18+ activities]: Mentions of the Egyptian Gods, arguing, swearing, brief physical fight (shoving each other and him pinning you to the wall), SMUT, P in V sex, Porn with a drizzle of plot, pet names (sunshine, baby, sweetheart), dom! reader (mostly), switch!Marc, degradation with some praise kink if you squint, choking, unprotected sex (wrap your willy before you fuck her silly), oral sex (m and f receiving), handjob, edging (m receiving), face riding, fingering, rough sex, etc cause I got carried away lmao.

Word count: 4.5k+ (I'm not sorry cause this is some of my best work fr)

(not my gif but I wish he was mines)

"Shut the hell up!"

"Oh fuck you, Spector!"

Isis and Konshu stood behind you and Marc, both sharing looks of annoyance at your bickering.

You and Marc had been working together under the advisory of your Gods for the past two months. And about half of that time was spent on you and Marc arguing.

Of course, Konshu and Isis disagreed with each other occasionally, but once you two caught wind of it, it was merely a spark added to the powder keg that was your and Marc's partnership. You used the smallest point of disagreement to fuel explosive arguments that often drifted away from the initial point.

Now, the initial point of disagreement was whether or not the two of you should venture to Arthur Harrow's London village and steal the scarab that led to Ammit's tomb.

Of course, Marc and Konshu wanted to. But you and Isis thought it to be an irrational idea that could lead to your deaths, seeing as Marc couldn't keep a hold on his alter.

"If Steven comes back to the surface at the wrong point, he could get us killed, Marc!" you argued, already having met Steven on a separate accidental occasion.

"That won't happen. I have him under control, worry about your own problems," the dark-haired mercenary spat from across the room, venom lacing his every word.

"My own problems?"

You angrily walked over to where he was packing his stuff for his departure.

"Yeah, your own fucking problems."

Marc began moving to meet you in the middle of the room, throwing his open duffel bag to the floor in frustration.

"Well, right now, my fucking problem is the fact that you're so damn eager to get this over with that you're not using your head, Marc!" you shouted, your voice bouncing off the walls of your spacious apartment, "I'm not letting you get us killed, I don't give a shit how experienced Konshu says you are."

Marc scoffed, a stupid smirk airing its way onto his clean-shaven face. "And how the hell would that happen, huh, Y/L/N? How would my plan get us killed?"

You resisted the urge to smack the smirk off his perfect face- no, not perfect. Admitting that Marc Spector had a perfect face was admitting to yourself that in your spare time you had been observing him and had been quite fond of what you've seen.

And you wouldn't give the lonely-and possibly horny- part of your brain that satisfaction.

"Because we have no fucking clue what we're walking into!" you bellowed, "Right now, Harrow has no idea that we know what he's up to. So if we just strut into his village and try and steal the scarab, which will most likely lead to us having to fight his guards and showing our faces, we'll be giving ourselves away AND on his home turf too."

Tense silence passed between the both of you as Marc took in and analyzed your words.

You placed your arms on your hips, waiting for a response from the angry mercenary.

You were surprised, however, when you caught his brown eyes briefly drift down to your lips. The glance was no longer than a second, but with your job, you couldn't miss something that minuscule even if you tried.

"You're wrong," he lowly countered after a few more seconds.

You sharply exhaled, now feeling your ears burn a bright red from anger. "What?" you seethed, daring to take a step closer to Marc.

Konshu and Isis sent each other knowing glances before disappearing together, leaving you two alone in the barely furnished apartment.

"You heard me, sunshine," Marc taunted you, knowing that you hated when he used that nickname, "We're going with my plan."

"Don't call me that."

Marc walked forward and came to a stop before you, a dangerous glint in his eyes. "Or else what?" he whispered as his surprisingly pleasant scent invaded your senses.

Before you could slip and give in to the part of you that wanted to lean forward and kiss his plump red lips, you extended one of your arms and shoved him away from you. "Kiss my ass, Spector."

You immediately regret your choice of words.

"I bet you'd like that," he raised a brow at you.

You would. You most certainly would. Not that you'd ever admit it out loud.

"I wonder what your ex-wife would think about you saying stuff like this to women you work with."

The smirk immediately disappeared from his face. It was replaced with a look that could freeze hell twenty times over. And you couldn't help but smirk at the sight of it.

"You bitch," Marc seethed.

"What? You didn't think I'd find out, did you? Turns out being related to a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent has its perks," you grinned triumphantly, "You couldn't even keep your marriage stable, I don't know why I ever expected anything different for this mission."

At this, you could almost see steam fly out of Marc's ears. His eyes were nearly red when he lunged forward and wrapped both his hands around your neck. Before you could respond, the curly-haired merc slammed you against your own living room wall continuing to squeeze the air out of your lungs.

Marc panted as his face hovered above your own, merely inches between your lips, allowing his cool breath to fan over your face.

"Shut. Up," he lowly growled through gritted teeth. His tone could've convinced anyone that he was angry and boiling with rage, but in his eyes, you could see something else:

Lust.

Your constant insults and threats were driving him crazy in a way he never thought he could enjoy until now.

You smirked maniacally up at him, the lack of airflow shooting straight between your legs. "You keep choking me like this, I might end up making a mess on my own floors, Spector," you whispered.

"Go ahead, do it, you fucking slut," he spat.

You may have been desperately horny, but in no universe would you let anyone talk to you like that and get away with it.

Not for free anyways...

So you skillfully grabbed each of his hands and ripped them off your throat before extending your own hands and wrapping them around Marc's neck. His eyes widened in surprise as you switched your positions, making sure to slam him harshly against the wall.

"If we're gonna do this," you began, panting from your own arousal, "you don't get to be in charge, Spector," you leaned close enough for your lips to graze his earlobe, "I do."

You grabbed his ear in between your lips and gently nipped it, gaining a groan from the man. You'd never imagine him to be this submissive, especially not this fast, but it seems there's a lot you didn't know about Marc Spector.

"Look at you," you harshly whispered, your lips trailing down his sharp jawline, "groaning like a bitch in heat and I barely touched you."

Marc sharply inhaled while you sucked marks onto his stubbled jaw. He could barely concentrate long enough to snap back at your remark.

You used your free hand to slide up beneath the incredibly tight t-shirt he had been wearing and couldn't help but smile at the shiver that your touch sent through his body.

"You like when I touch you like this?" you cooed with pouty lips, intentionally taunting him, "You like the way my hands feel right...here?" your hand traveled further south with your words. A strangled groan sounded from his throat when you briefly palmed his growing erection through his tight jeans.

You could see him fighting his instincts to overpower you and take back control as you pressed chaste kisses on the corner of his mouth.

Soon enough, he gained back focus and brought a hand forward to grip your waist through the tank top you had been wearing. He used his hold on you to pull you flush against him in an attempt to relieve the tension in his jeans.

The sheer strength in his grip made your mouth briefly snap open and a low moan escaped your lips.

Now it was Marc's turn to smirk at you.

But you wouldn't give up the reigns that easily.

You quickly freed yourself from his hold and took a few steps back.

Marc's chest heaved as he watched you with furrowed brows, buzzing with curiosity and possibly excitement about your next moves.

A small grin soon found its way onto your face. Taking care to make a show of your movements, you slowly lifted your arms to remove your top.

Marc's dilated brown eyes followed your every move.

Once your shirt and bra were removed, you were left topless gaining a ravenous stare from Marc.

Not giving him a chance to pounce, you turned around and walked towards the soft couch on the other side of the room.

Marc followed behind you eagerly, all the while appreciating the view of you from behind, (something he had caught himself doing many times before.)

"Take off your clothes and sit down, Spector," you commanded him with a sure yet airy tone. Marc was shocked to find himself quickly obeying your orders, but with eyes like yours and a voice like that, you'd be able to get him to lift up a planet with ease.

It took Marc mere seconds to do what you asked. You followed suit by removing the rest of your clothes except your underwear.

The brunette man sat in the center of your couch with his arms splayed across the back, looking up at you with a cool expression on his face. But his eyes betrayed his true eagerness.

You took a few steps forward to meet him and carefully positioned yourself to straddle his naked legs.

The moment your skin met his, Marc sharply inhaled and brought his hands to grab your ass cheeks.

"Somebody's eager," you taunted as you began to torturously grind your clothed front against his firm member.

"I can feel your wetness through your panties, sweetheart. You want this as much as I do."

He had a point there.

You then brought your hands up his toned abdomen and at rest on each side of his neck before leaning in to press your breasts against his chest.

"Well, then," you softly spoke, "let's get on with it."

An unseen force pulled your lips crashing down against Marc's soon after. Your teeth and tongue clashed deliciously, neither of you being able to get enough.

You felt him rub his large palms against the smooth skin of your bare waist, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

You rocked your covered pussy particularly hard against Marc's pulsing erection. This gained you a low moan from him, which you took as an opportunity to shove your tongue in between his wet lips, deepening the already heated kiss.

Your hands tangled within Marc's hair, your mouths continuing to move in a perfect dance, before you felt a sharp sting against your ass.

This gained Marc an impressed yelp from your lips. "Stop teasing," he scowled.

You couldn't help but laugh at the desperation in his tone. "I'll do whatever the fuck I want, Marc Spector," you smiled, your fingers lightly swiping over his swollen lips.

It was almost as if you were in a dream sequence when you looked down at the adonis of a man beneath you. His chocolate eyes were fully locked onto yours while he gripped your hips with the force of a thousand suns. You were positive it would leave bruises the next day but you couldn't care less. His defined chest and arms glistened with a light sheen of sweat, and you suddenly felt the urge to lick them.

"Like what you see, sunshine?" he smiled up at you, trying to hide the fact that he had been taking in your features and was in awe of them as well.

"Hmm mhm," you confessed, "Let me show you just how much," you said, starting to slide off Marc's lap and onto your knees before him.

"Hey," he called out in an attempt to stop you, "You don't have to do this if you don't want to." You were surprised to hear that his tone was genuine.

But it just made you want to suck his cock even more.

"I really want to," you nodded with a teasing grin.

"Besides, I would never pass up the opportunity to hear you groaning and twitching like a little bitch, Spector," you taunted him as you softly gripped the base of his large dick. You were almost scared by his girth and length, never having been with a man with anything close to it before, but you did not allow your face to betray your shock.

"Is that a challenge?" Marc referenced your teasing.

"Sure, why not," you shrugged.

Marc made himself comfortable and rested his hands behind his head with a pleasant smile. He could tell from your expression that you were intimidated by his size and that made his grin grow wider.

You made sure to hold eye contact with him as you slowly licked up the small pool of precum that had gathered around his tip. You held back a moan at how good he tasted

His resolve nearly broke the moment your tongue touched him.

You wasted no time and wrapped your eager lips around nearly half of Marc's length, catching him by surprise.

"Fuck!" he sharply groaned at the sudden motion.

You quickly removed your mouth from around him. "Would you like me to stop?" you asked, damn well knowing the answer.

"Absolutely the fuck not," Marc panted. He then brought one of his hands to rest in your hair and guided your lips back to his throbbing cock.

But you immediately slapped away his hand. "Keep your hands to yourself or I will put my clothes back on and go to bed," you lied, wanting to establish even more control over him.

"You wouldn't fucking dare," Marc quickly sat up.

"You're right, I wouldn't," you didn't spare another second before attaching your lips back onto Marc's cock.

This time you were determined to unravel him even more, so you began to bob your head up and down on his length. Drool soon ran down the side of your lips as you were barely able to fit Marc's cock into your mouth, and you were nowhere near the base.

But he was still losing it.

From the side of your eye, you could see Marc gripping your couch harshly, taking deep and controlled breaths.

You decided to make things even harder.

Releasing his cock from the onslaught of your mouth, you slid back up onto the couch and resorted to using your hand to cover more ground.

As your hand gripped Marc's cock and began to stroke, you kissed along the side of his neck, causing him to swallow harshly in an attempt to hold himself back.

"Come on Marc, let go," you whispered as you quickened your hand's jerking pace, "I know you want to," you added before licking a stripe below his ear.

You were driving Marc insane. And he could barely form words to let you know it, but you could see it.

Your hand began to work Marc's cock even faster while you continued to litter his neck with kisses and bruises, causing his breathing to pick up. He began thrusting his hips upwards to meet your downward jerking, desperate for more friction and release.

"Cum for me, Marc," you urged him before turning his head towards you for a deep kiss on his lips.

"You're too fucking good at this, Y/N," he softly groaned, taking care to hold your stare.

"I'm good at a lot of other things too," you grinned.

The sounds of your hand jerking off Marc's cock echoed in your apartment as tides of pleasure coursed through him.

"Fuck I'm gonna-"

But Marc couldn't finish his sentence because at that moment you swiftly removed your hand from around his dick.

"What the hell?" he complained.

"Oh, I'm sorry were you really gonna cum before me?" you tilted your head.

Marc's eyes narrowed in your direction, his sharp jaw clenching in annoyance at your denial of his orgasm.

"This is my house, Marc, I come first," you held back a giggle at your double entendre.

You were elated to see Marc grow even more eager at your words.

Before you knew it, you felt your body be dragged from the arm of the couch and into the middle, and your legs pushed open soon after. The tear of cloth sounded through the room when Marc swiftly removed your panties and threw them to the side.

A moan slipped from your lips as you watched Marc wet his lips and then his fingers. This man was sex on legs.

"Oh fuck," you groaned when he leaned down and licked a stripe up your dripping pussy.

Your moans grew sloppier as he began to eat you like a man starved while massaging your clit with his fingers.

"Yes, oh God, yes don't stop Marc," you panted, your hands soon finding their way into Marc's messy curls.

He slowly inserted two fingers into your hole. "You're so fucking tight, sunshine," Marc commented as he skillfully used his fingers to pleasure you.

"Keep going," you replied before bringing his head back into your pussy.

But Marc surprised you once again when he removed his hands and mouth from you completely and picked you up, as if you were nothing more than a feather, and carried you to where your large bed lay in the corner of the room.

You giggled once he dropped you onto the soft mattress, watching him slide above you. He wore a gorgeous smile on his face as he held you in place and pushed a strand of hair away from your face.

His stare was so meaningful and intimidating that you found yourself blushing.

"You are so fucking beautiful," he softly spoke.

"So are you," you found yourself replying with a smile, and meaning it.

Marc leaned down and pressed his lips against yours. But this time, the kiss was softer and more gentle.

You found yourself enjoying the intimate act more than you expected and leaned into the kiss. A foreign feeling bubbled in your stomach as you continued to kiss Marc.

But you soon felt him pulling away.

Not long after, however, you felt something smooth and wet against your breasts.

You opened your eyes to see him sucking one of your perked nipples into his mouth while his free hand played with the other. Your body tinged with pleasure as Marc switched between your tits, even lightly nipping at your nipples a few times.

All the while his eyes never left yours.

You reached down and ran your hand through his hair, which was now moistened with sweat. "I want to sit on that pretty face of yours," you suddenly suggested.

"You read my mind baby."

You both quickly moved into the proper positions, with your body hovering above his hungry mouth. He roughly gripped your thighs and looked up at you through his thick lashes.

"Tap on my legs if I'm suffocating you," you softly told him, "I'd rather you not die before I get to fuck you."

Marc, however, was not the least bit concerned and harshly pulled you down onto his lips.

"Shit!" you loudly squealed as his tongue immediately went back to work on your clit.

You soon gripped his head and began rocking back on forth on his mouth.

The mercenary moaned his approval at your movements which shot straight through your pussy and made you gasp.

"I'm gonna cum already, fuck," your chest heaved.

Marc's hand moved up to squeeze your ass as you picked up speed, riding his face even harder.

You grew worried about him running out of air beneath you and slowly tried to lift yourself up, but Marc's grip on your butt kept you in place.

He wouldn't mind dying like this, he thought to himself.

Your moans grew high pitched and Marc's tongue moved at a more rapid pace initiating your orgasm.

The repeated brush of his perfectly pointy nose against your clit was all it took for that dam to break.

"Holy fuck-" you slammed a hand over your mouth to hold back a scream as you came all over Marc's mouth.

He had no issue swallowing every bit of your slick that he could, holding you upright while your legs quivered on the sides of his head.

A few seconds passed and you realized that Marc was fully prepared to continue devouring your cunt despite the severe orgasm that rocked you.

"Ease up, soldier," you giggled down at him, forcing your legs free of his hands.

"You taste fantastic, sunshine," he finally relented. You moved over to lay by his side, trying not to get lost in the way he looked at you.

"You eat pussy like a demon," you both laughed, your hand caressing the side of his face.

Marc wrapped a hand around your waist and pulled you in for a kiss.

He swallowed the moan that left you as your own taste flooded your senses.

His kisses were intoxicating.

Marc slowly shifted to hover over your body, not yet breaking the sloppy kiss.

But you caught his shoulder and shoved him onto his back before positioning yourself on his lap. "Uh, uh," you smirked, leaning down to press a wet kiss to his neck.

Marc used one hand to smack your ass while the other lined his painfully hard cock with your entrance. "You gonna let me fuck you, or what?" he grinned up at you, his gruff tone and rough accent making you wetter.

You shut him up promptly by reaching around and gripping his dick, gaining a deep groan from him. You then slowly guided him into your soaking cunt, loudly moaning from the stretch.

It was initially painful but with Marc pressing kisses to your neck and whispering praises in your ears, the pain disappeared quickly.

"There you go baby," he slowly guided your hips up and down his length.

Your shared moans echoed all throughout your room as you began riding Marc's cock even faster.

By now, he was fully inside you and with every thrust, he hit your g-spot perfectly.

"You feel so good around me sunshine," Marc wrapped his arms around your back, cradling you closer to his chest.

His words caused you to briefly clench around him which only drove him to fuck up into you harder.

But then you used all your strength to push him flat onto his back before diving down to wrap your hands around his neck.

Marc was grinning like a maniac as you choked him while bouncing on his cock.

He never thought he'd enjoy being controlled but seeing you take what you want, and use him just the way you want, made his head spin.

Freeing himself from your grip on his neck, Marc secured his hold on you and switched your positions.

Your eyes widened as Marc was now on top of you, smirking while his hands found their way around your neck. "My turn," he whispered before ramming his fat cock into your sopping hole.

"Marc! Fuck!" you loudly moaned, pleasure attacking you in waves as Marc set a brutal pace inside you. That coupled with the lack of air from his grip around your neck had your orgasm slamming into you.

"Cum on my cock baby, I got you," he talked you through it.

Marc then used one hand and reached down to skillfully rub your clit, hoping to push you farther over the edge.

You felt tears of pleasure spring from your eyes as Marc's relentless pounding and his fingers prolonged your orgasm into another one.

He eased the pressure on your neck and slowed his thrusts before leaning down to kiss where your tears met your cheek.

"You're doing so good for me sunshine, keep going," he grinned, using a hand to wipe away the layer of sweat that formed on your forehead.

You took a deep breath and grinned up at him. "That was fucking intense," you panted, your legs still twitching as Marc began slowly rocking into you again.

"Well don't slow down on my account," you urged him.

A deep chuckle rumbled from his chest at your demand. But things took a turn when he pulled out and flipped you onto your stomach.

Marc held both your hands behind your back with a vice grip as he fucked his length back into your sex.

"Fuck yes, harder Marc," you shouted.

Marc pulled your upper body to his chest with both arms and pounded into you with fury.

"This is what you wanted right?" he sneered into your ears, maintaining his thrusts.

"Yes, yes, God, yes-" you babbled.

His pace eventually grew sloppy, telling you he was reaching his own orgasm soon.

You turned your head to see his brows furrowed in concentration as he tried to hold back. "It's okay Marc," you kissed beneath his earlobe, "I need you to cum inside me, lemme feel you."

Marc's breathing began to pick up at your plea. "Shit," he panted and thrust into you one more time. The force with which he fucked into you was enough to garner another orgasm from you instantaneously.

A pathetic whine left your lips as you felt his cock twitch before painting your walls with his warm cum.

He pressed a chaste kiss to your shoulder as you both came down from your highs. Marc slowly withdrew from your heat with a satisfied groan. He then guided you to carefully lie down.

Spent from the day's activity, you complied and tried to rid your mind of its haze.

You managed to catch the sight of Marc walking into your bathroom and couldn't fight the smile that appeared when he returned with a damp rag.

"You didn't have to do that for me," you said as he gently spread your sore legs and used the rag to clean the remnants of him.

"Why do you refuse to let people take care of you?" he smiled with furrowed brows, continuing to clean between your legs.

"No, you buffoon," you rolled your eyes, "I was going to go pee anyways, so you're literally wasting your time."

"Oh."

You laughed at his dumbfounded expression. "Thanks though," you quickly kissed his forehead before making your way to the bathroom.

And then it was his turn to laugh when you stumbled into the closest wall in an attempt to walk normally.

His laughs continued despite your protests but he stood and approached your crumpled figure.

"Need a hand, sunshine?" he teased you.

You glared up at him through your lashes and reluctantly accepted his help.

"Didn't I tell you to stop calling me that?" you raised a brow as he guided you to your bathroom.

"You didn't seem to mind it when I was fucking your brains out, sunshine."

A/N: I started this in June and finally finished it even tho it's fucking December LMAO

Remember to comment, like, and reblog! And feel free to send in more requests! ( to my dom!Peter Parker request, I'm making it happen I promise)

[thenightwinggraveyard]

😂 Actually, do you have cool Naruto fic recs for someone who's never seen the show? I keep itching to start it so I can understand some of my friends' interests better but I would just rather... read things. And I know that the fics might not be accurate to personalities or plot, but if you have anything beginner-friendly or fun that might help my brain get more excited to make the effort and watch, I'll take it. I personally like relationship drama but I'm cool with whatever you've got.

i do!!! i watched naruto as a kid but i completely forgot most things so i got into it again by fanfiction. also as a side note; i apologize but i don't read from narutos point of view very often if at all as that is just a personal preference of mine, just a warning in case thats what you were looking for-- and my favourite character is sakura which you'll probably see lmao 😅

without further ado, here are some;

BEGINNER FRIENDLY NARUTO RECS

Pray My Name by Chancy_Lurking [G] [ONE-SHOT]

"Your name sounds like the kind of thing you say when you’re afraid,” Sakura finishes.  “A prayer,” Sasuke offers without looking away from the window.  (Team 7 takes a quiet moment to talk about what their names feel like.)

notes: there isn't much of a plot with this one but its a wonderful showcase of the bond that team 7 shares/could share. it floats beside canon not really connected but it could be, and i think its just a great introduction to the way team 7 should be imo!!

tdlr; team 7-centric, friendship/love, acceptance

Terror feeds the Soul by Pleasedial123 [ONE-SHOT]

Sakura is not an idiot. She was praised for her intelligence, reached Top Kunoichi at the Academy for her brains.  So it doesn't take her long after being placed on the powder keg that is Team Seven to realize she is going to die.  Kakashi, career shinobi since age-six, has no idea what the hell is going on with his little pink-haired student or why there is such fear in her eyes. So he gives her head-pats. That's what you do for scared puppies isn't it?

notes: some really good characterization with this one and a deeper look at the subtle hint of corruption/injustice in the shinobi world that canon already gives us.

tdlr; sakura-centric, sakura & kakashi, good characterization, worldbuilding

Just Killing Time by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling) [G] [ONE-SHOT]

After Wave Country and before the chuunin exam, Team 7 kills time while waiting for Kakashi to show up.

notes: an adorable small fic consisting of freindship and the idea of found family, they're just cute little kids in this and it makes me smile so hard.

tdlr; team 7-centric, friendship, found family, fluff

An Improper Apology Properly Backfires by rex101111 [G] [ONE-SHOT]

Sasuke Uchiha apologizes, or at least makes an attempt. Sakura thinks he could do better than THAT.

notes: its not every day i find a sasusaku fic that i genuinly enjoy, but this one both cracked me up and actually convinced me that they could work as a couple lmao, after some bad canon events, this fic shows a completely done sakura dealing with the fallout and it is gold. featuring naruto and kakashi as unwilling bystanders.

tdlr; sasuke/sakura(canon ship) and team 7-centric, anger issues, canon compliant(mostly), humour

Wildflowers and Incisors by Chancy_Lurking [T] [ONE-SHOT]

There’s a boy Sakura loves the way Naruto loves Sakura, in a shameless and open, but painfully unequal way. There’s a boy Sakura loves the way Hinata loves Naruto, in a way that feels no more like a choice than breathing. Neither of those boys need pretty girls. “We are all really pretty, though,” Ino assures her with a haughty sniff, crossing her leg the other way so her calf rests on Sakura’s shin. “They’re going to be strong, maybe even the strongest ever in the Hidden Leaf,” Sakura says and Hinata doesn’t need convincing, they both know it, so she doesn’t belabor the point. “So, we have to be stronger than them.” (The girls of Konoha band together as friends. Girlhood is easier in a group.)

notes: a wonderful look at the kunoichis in naruto, with friendship for once more important than love. gives them the character development and attention they deserve, but didn't quite fully get in canon.

tdlr; naruto girls-centric, girlhood and friendship, good character development

The Language of Faces by Empatheia [T] [ONE-SHOT]

Ino decides to help Sai learn to function in society. Sai does his best to keep up.

notes: now we're taking the focus off the main characters of naruto to focus on some great side characters-- ino and sai are both charecterized awesomely in this fic. they're awkward and don't really know how to function in society (being a ninja will do that to you) but they clearly grow to care and love for eachother dearly.

tdlr; sai/ino-centric(canon ship), great characterization, awkward first dates

Pushy and Loud and Brave and Proud by bluecatcups [M] [ONE-SHOT]

When Temari meets Shikamaru, she is twelve years old and she is everything she has ever been; pushy and loud and brave and proud. This is the story of who Temari becomes.

notes: thanks to this fic i fell in love with temari as a character. it is a character study at its heart and therefore it has SUPERB characterization, with believable romance and a theme of self-love. i adore this fic.

tdlr; temari/shikimaru-centric(canon ship), character study, romance, found family, self-love (TW for smut and suicidal thoughts)

NOT SO CANON COMPLIANT FUN

coming from afar & reaching for the stars by SafelyCapricious [G] [ONE-SHOT]

It had been two weeks since the trial. Two weeks since Sasuke had been given the choice of surrendering his eyes and being allowed to leave, or being stuck for five years without ever being allowed to leave the village. He had chosen the later. And Sakura isn't avoiding him on purpose, but it's still happening and she's kind of okay with it.

notes: a not so romantic retelling of sasuke coming back to konoha. i really enjoy the way sakura is characterized in this and the way all her friendships are potrayed (especially her and sai they are besties). instead of running into sasukes open arms, she decides she doesn't mind keeping to herself.

tdlr; sakura-centric, friendships, good charecterization, awkwardness, self-love

Rules Were Made to Be Broken by MotivationIsDead [T] [COMPLETED]

Kakashi wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t hallucinating. Or suffering from heart failure. “I thought you were dead,” he said blankly. He might’ve been going into shock. Obito winced and rubbed the back of his head with a sheepish grin. “Yeah,” he said, tone stilted. “There’s actually quite the story behind that.” “I should hope so,” was Kakashi’s bland response.

notes: kakashi and obito if obito decided to not go through with his villainous plan. it is a ship, but the way the bond is potrayed just hits so good. something more than friendship and simple love and instead a deep trust, with banger characterization and development. a couple steps away from crack, i laughed so goddamn hard.

this entire fic can be summarized by;

kakashi and obito: fuck it we ball.

tdlr; kakashi/obito-centric(fanon ship), fix-it fic, humour, BAMF kakashi and obito (has an ongoing sequel!!)

Smiles in Spring by Kalira [T] [ONE-SHOT]

One spring day when they are very small, Ino meets a little girl with shy eyes, a beautiful smile, and pink hair, and immediately knows what she wants in her future. Ino's never had any qualms bending the force of her will on the universe to be sure she gets whatever she wants.

notes: ino and sakura are made for eachother in this fic and the progression of their relationship is adorable. some bonus friendship with shikamarau and choji.

tdlr; ino/sakura-centric(fanon ship), romance & friendship, fluff

Genuinely Delighted by Chancy_Lurking [T] [COMPLETED]

"Lee, in spite of how brash he might’ve seemed, still appeared to be incredibly considerate and Shino would feel wrong to just brush him off. His enthusiasm about asking Shino out was completely genuine, and that was enough to make Shino feel flattered. And anyway, Lee would probably prove to be much more pleasant company than some of the other guys Shino knew."

notes: just a fluffy post-canon fic about some more wonderful side characters, with romance and friendship. lee and shino are so unexpected but work so well in this fic.

tdlr; shino/rock lee-centric(fanon ship), romance & friendship, fluff

In The Forest by Senka Hitomi (LadyTegan) [T] [COMPLETED]

When the genius of Konoha returns from a mission in a catatonic state, it is up to his old teammate to delve into the depths of his mind and pull him back out. But the dangers of the mind are many, and the road to finding him may be more difficult than she could have imagined.

notes: god i could gush about this fic for so long. everything about it delights me, the characterizations, character development, relationships and just the careful way the plot was constructed. it comes together to form a very inrtiguing and engaging fic.

tdlr; shikimaru/ino-centric(fanon ship), romance & friendship, amazing plot, great characterization

On Qipao, Flirting, and Buying Drinks by needdl [M] [COMPLETED]

Tenten turned beautiful when she was nineteen.

notes: an if neji lived au done so well. the romance is both believable and beautiful.

tdlr; neji/tenten-centric(semi-canon ship), romance & friendship, fluff, coming of age (TW for smut)

About Face by wroth_and_ruin [T] [ONGOING]

A little yellow-haired boy saves Sakura from the bullies. And everything changes.

notes: one of my all time favourite fics it is full of character and life, and the friendship between sakura and naruto is so pure yet all-consuming. they are eachothers persons, eachothers sun, and the world that is being crafted is so engaging. featuring kakashi with teenage angst.

tdlr; naruto and sakura-centric, friendship, found family, fix-it fic, character and plot development, worldbuilding

HONOURARY MENTION

Retrograde Motion by Crunchysunrises [T] [ABANDONED]

From sixteen to eleven didn't feel like a big jump until she realized that she was now the best ninja in their class. And that tiny Sasuke hates her for it.

notes: the reason this is an honourary mention is because this is the fic that got me into naruto! the first one i read, and the first one that captivated me to read all 100k words (yikes..). so despite the fact that its abandoned im still gonna share it with you in case it interests you ;)

tdlr; time-travel, sakura-centric, great characterization, shit gets done

(i didn't even realize so many of my fav fics were done by chancy_lurking!!! huge shoutout to them they are awesome)

i have some more but i think i'll leave it at this; i hope you find at least one fic that enraptures you!!

[utilitycaster]

I've gotten a couple replies of "and that's terrifying" on this post about the more stable members of Bells Hells, and, to be honest, hate that, so let's talk about it.

There's a couple reasons. The first that I still don't know who the fuck thought the Issylra half of the party split would be Team Levelheaded and not Team Abandonment Issues, because, well, it's the latter. The second is that there's been a near constant undercurrent from quite early in the campaign of "oh Orym...he's going to break...he's a powder keg" and while he's decidedly not a powder keg, we did get him finally breaking a bit, and suddenly everyone's like "HORRIFYING that the guy I kept claiming was uniquely angsty is now having a harder time with the party split than the other characters whose equally tragic backstories I've consistently ignored, diminished, and dismissed."

All three of the Bells Hells characters in Team Issylra have issues related to loneliness and being left behind, which is a common thread through the party, but notably, Fearne, FCG, and Chetney being more stable should not be surprising nor scary. Resilience isn't tied to whether or not you're somewhat chaotic, or have mechanically-induced loss of control, and that's what we're talking about here. The reason why Team Issylra is having a rough time of it - and specifically why Laudna and Orym are falling apart whereas Ashton is doing comparatively well - is because they've been constantly pretending things are okay. Chetney, meanwhile, genuinely does think the worst thing that happened to him fucking rules, and has the age and perspective and sheer survival instincts to pull through; FCG has, within the story, had to face some horrifying realizations about himself and so has some tools for this kind of situation; and Fearne is to be honest still learning that consequences are a thing that happens, but she has dealt with a few profound disappointments and is sitting with them - she openly admitted she's not terribly impressed by her parents.

On the other hand, I think Orym has worked through the earlier stages of grief, to be sure, but he's put a brave face on over it and tried to look at the bright side. Which isn't the worst idea, but it means when the things he's built that idea of a bright side upon - Keyleth's infallibility, his relationships within the Crown Keepers - are nowhere to be found, he doesn't have anything to take hold of. He adjusted to one devastating change by clinging to the constants, and now that many of the constants are gone too, he has no mechanism to process the change in their absence.

And this is Laudna's whole deal, right? I do in fact agree that her initial death was still the worst thing that's happened to her so far, but that doesn't mean she can't still be incredibly upset by major events. It's comforting to know you've survived worse, but it doesn't necessarily help you actually get through a slightly less terrible (but still pretty terrible) situation. She says she can't stop compartmentalizing or she'll cry - but like, she'd probably feel better if she'd just spent the second watch crying. Like Orym, Laudna's developed this idea that she can will things into being okay, and in the end, she can't. Leaning into the "Today SUCKS" attitude would, honestly, help her, and I'm hoping she does so.

Ashton meanwhile doesn't have healthy coping mechanisms, but they do have coping mechanisms that work in this situation (namely, drinking and hitting things). He also, more importantly, has no investment in pretending things are okay. Ashton thinks the world is full of utter bullshit that will fuck you over, and the point is to get through it, and sure, it's a very cynical mindset, but there's a reason why toxic positivity is, well, toxic.

As a sidebar, I also think that Ashton has, fascinatingly and despite their drunken talk with Laudna on the skyship, put their abandonment issues into perspective. Ashton is able to handle the current situation because, logically, they were teleported to a random location beyond their control and with no capacity to contact other people, so it's reasonable to assume the other half of the party is in the same position. No one abandoned anyone. To quote Ashton themself, actually, from episode 25, "Sometimes shit's just fucked up, and the only thing you can do because you didn't do anything fucking wrong, is get the fuck back up and do the exact same thing all over again knowing that there was nothing to learn." On the other hand, the fact that Milo saved Ashton makes that particular situation worse. If Ashton had been left to die in the street and a random uninvolved stranger picked him up? Then you can at least imagine the Nobodies had to leave, or couldn't pick them up for whatever reason, or even perished themselves. The fact that Milo was able to make this choice means the Nobodies also had the ability to make a choice, and the choice was to leave them behind, and that's what stings, and that's the unique loneliness, and that's why this situation isn't comparable.

So anyway, in summary, it's unsurprising the two people who have handled grief and tragedy by trying to quietly (in Orym's case) and not-so-quietly (in Laudna's) smooth it over are finding themselves completely unable to do so and barely holding together, whereas the people who allow themselves to be upset or, frankly, just go apeshit, are doing much better.

[madisonstarss]

Cat and Mouse (Nate Jacobs x Reader)

Warnings :toxic relationship, swearing, some elliot x reader afab reader, Degradation if you sqiunt?? sorry this is a kinda long one i got carried away

Halloween night was in full swing at McKay's house, and you were both nervous and excited to attend the party. Dressed in a sleek black cat costume, you knew heads were going to turn, espically Nate Jacobs, your ex boyfriend. The breakup had left a bitter taste in both of your mouths, and you couldn't help but hope that he'd see what he was missing.

As you entered the lively party, you couldn't help but notice Nate almost immediatley. His presence loomed over you like a dark cloud.

Nate was surrounded by friends, laughing and acting like he didn't have a care in the world, but the moment his eyes met yours, the laughter died down.

As you mingled with your friends, you spotted Elliot looking just as dashing as ever in his coustume. He had a natural charm that drew you in. Striking up a conversation with Elliot was surpisingly easy, and the two of you quickly fell into a comfortable banter. He made you laugh with his witty remarks, and his genuine smile put you at ease.

You decided to let loose and have some fun. You and Elliot ended up goofing around together, taking photos in the photo booth. He draped his arm around your shoulders, and you posed with a big smile, feeling the warmth of his presence next to you.

From the corner of you eye, you noticed Nate watching you and Elliot from afar. His jaw was clenched, and there was a tension in his body language that hadn't been there before. It was clear that seeing you with Elliot was getting to him.

As the night progressed you and Elliot continued to enjoy each other's company, dancing and laughing. The more you interacted with him, the more Nate seemed to grow agitated.

At one point, you felt a tap on your shoulder. Turning around, you saw Nate standing there with a forced smirk on his face, "Having fun with the druggie, huh?" He sneered.

You kept your composure, refusing to show him any sign of weakness. "Yes, I am. Elliot is a great guy, and I'm enjoying our time together."

Nates eyes flashed with anger, and he grabbed your arm a bit too forcefully. "You think you can just forget about me and move on with someone like him? Its laughable." He hissed, "You really can't get enough attention can you? Its pathetic how you're flaunting yourself in front of everyone."

"Flaunting? I'm just having fun with my friends." Your patience wearing thin.

"Friends? Is that what he is?" Nate spat, glancing at Elliot with disdain.

You frowned, hurt by his words. "Yes he's a friend. Whats your problem?" "My problem is that you're acting like you're over me so easily!"

"I am over you, "You shot back "And I'm not going to let your jealousy control my life."

Nate's eyes narrowed, and before you knew it, he had grabbed you by the arms, pulling you closer. The anger and frusrtaion between you between you were like a powder keg, ready to explode. "I don't believe you."

The proximity was overwhelming, and before you could think, you were kissing him out of sheer frustartion. The kiss was fuled by a volatilie mix of emotions. He pulls back, "I hate that you still affect me like this," He confessed.

"Nate, we can't just forget what happened." You said, trying to reason with yourself as much as with him.

"I missed you." Nate whispered."

"I missed you too."

And in that moment, it felt like you were both getting a second chance. The cat and mouse game had brought you face to face with your ex and led you back to each other.

~~

The next day at school, news of your reunion with Nate spread like wildfire. The whispers and gossip filled the hallways. The news quickly reached your closest friends, Maddy and Cassie.

Maddy, with her outgoing personality was the first to speak up. "Okay spill the tea, Are you really back together with Nate?"

You took a deep breath. "Yeah."

Cassie chimed in, "Are you sure thats a good idea, I mean he hurt you before.."

You nodded. "I know its complicated but we've both grown since then. Nate says he wants to do things differently this time, and im willing to see if we can make it work."

Maddy seemed uncovinced, "Promise you'll be careful."

"I promise."

And they were right.

It was a chilly Friday night, and you had decided to surpise Nate as his house. You let yourself in, planning to sneak up and suprise him. However, the sound of hush voices caught your attention. Your steps faltered and a sinking feeling settled in the pit of your stomach.

You walked closer, your heart pounding in your ears. And there, in the dimly lit living room, you saw Nate in an intimate embrace with a half naked girl.

Your voice trembled as you managed to speak up, "Nate? What is this?"

Nate's face turned pale, "Y/n, I'm so sorry, its not what it looks like."

Tears streamed down your face, and you could'nt understand how he could break your trust like this. " You promised you would change Nate."

"I know and I'm sorry. I messed up. But please, just hear me out."

The pain in your heart was overwhelming but a part of you couldn't let go. The bond between you and Nate was strong, and you still loved him deeply. "Okay, one more chance, Nate. But this is it."

But as days turned into weeks, his jealousy and possessiveness took a dark turn. He began isolationg you from your friends and family, claiming he was the only one who truley cared about you.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

Honestly the empathy sequence makes NMJ kinda strike me as an entitled/abusive parental figure. Maybe I'm just drawing paralels that aren't there, but:

Feeling entitled to JGY's time and attention? He interrupts his conversations with LXC (twice, I think), one of said times because he was eavesdropping on them AND got angry about JGY expressing fear to LXC IN PRIVATE

Not letting JGY explain himself/ not listening when he tries. At the point of the staircase scene NMJ has been poisoned to hell and back by baxia, but I do believe it's not just that. He sees his moral code as absolute certainty and his inflexible nature makes it that he doesn't take well to deviance from that. Aka has to get his way or gets Angry

I think NMJ was an absolute idiot to let JGY ppay clarity for hin after the staircase thing! That draws more into the paralel because abusive people often hurt others and then act like nothing happened, as if their target doesn't have the right to be upset (see again: qi deviating over JGY expressing fear to LXC). NMJ does this to a degree that paints him as almost oblivious imo

I actually do quite like NMJ but he's. So many shades of fucked up, Christ alive

i am going to proceed cautiously here for several reasons, but primarily because:

i have been drawn into the "is nmj an evil abuser" discourse once before on discord (in defence of da-ge, believe it or not) and i Did Not Enjoy It At All, Actually, and

while i think the behaviour described above absolutely qualifies as abusive, nmj's intentions also matter, and i don't think what nmj is trying to do can be boiled down to simply exerting coercive control over jgy. initially on the hejian front when he eavesdrops on meng yao and lan xichen, he wants to help him; the second time he eavesdrops, it's because he straight up views jgy as a threat, and decides to kill him because of it.

imo their dynamic is dysfunctional and toxic and is a powder keg set to explode essentially from the moment nmj sees meng yao killing the jin commander on the langya front, but i think calling it abusive is an over-simplification of what is going on between them.

that said, i do think there is a character in the novel canon who nmj repeatedly tries to exert coercive control over, who is fully and unquestionably under his authority and influence, and who he treats with wildly vacillating levels of either patience or explosive anger depending on the canon point, and that character is nie huaisang.

[ariadnelives]

Dokkaebi Fire - A Short Story

Author's Note: The bulk of this story takes place during the events of "Force Majeure," directly between chapters 8 and 9, during the crew's time in hiding in Xiagu. It is not intended to be read in sequence. If you'd like to catch up on the series so far, you can do so on ao3 or tumblr.

“Cookie?” Pilar called into the flat as she entered, not waiting to be let in. “It's me today. Ariadne's making final preparations for her surgery tomorrow, but she'll be by as soon as she's back on her feet.”

Aoibheann sat on the armchair in the living room, pointed at the television which appeared to be carrying a local news broadcast from one of Saturn's other moons. She had a blanket draped over her lap, and she watched the news broadcast idly, taking in none of it.

“Remember, starting tomorrow, Ariadne won't remember anything beyond the six-month point in our stay here, and we have to keep it that way, so, be careful what you say around her.” Pilar laughed without joy.

Aoibheann did not.

“You know,” Pilar tacked on, “I'm a complete liar. You could dime out the whole plan and I'm pretty sure me and Ari would absolutely leap for joy as long as it meant you were talking again.”

Aoibheann glanced over at Pilar wistfully, dark circles under her eyes, but said nothing. These little responses indicated their old friend could still hear them in there, that they could get through to her, even if she couldn't muster the strength to respond. She'd barely spoken since they lost the station. She was usually a tightly-wound powder keg, full of fire and passion, and she had to direct it towards her purpose or else she’d explode. Now, it was like all that fire inside her had gone out, and all that was left of her was an exhausted shell of a woman.

She seemed able to move around on her own, but rarely found the motivation to do so. She had grown somewhat thin and gaunt, as she only ate when fed, so every day, Pilar or Ariadne or one of her apprentices would stop by to see her and make sure she ate. Sasha had been spreading herself far too thin on Ariadne's project, but still found time to check in on her and monitor her physical health. Her apprentices had removed all sharp objects, belts, and shoelaces from the premises, but Pilar thought that was overkill. She had known Aoibheann long enough to know she would never physically harm herself. Still, it didn't make it easy to watch her torture herself like this.

Pilar sat next to her, and gently took her hand.

“I hate having to feed you this stuff, Cookie,” she said, opening up a small gray package she'd brought with her. “Replicated MREs. No wonder Baltimore and Beam went to a convenience store twice a week when they were in the army.”

Aoibheann looked with disdain at the lump of meat before her, served with a mush that could only be described as “prepared grain.” She hated eating it as much as Pilar hated serving it to her.

In their small hidden town of Xiagu, all of the food came out of the replicators. Xiagu had a surplus of energy, with its passive solar collection and years of nobody to use the stored power, so nobody was worried about the expenditure of creating food and water from reserves.

Back on the station, they had only managed to earmark power for replicator use two years previously. Like most spacecraft, all of the water fixtures were powered by replicators, generating as much water as needed from a stored bank of energy, which was in turn refilled by a device in the drains which converted waste-water into energy. The food replicator could make prepared meals, but crew members would only be allowed to use it if they could make up the energy cost. This happened pretty naturally, as everybody had to use the bathroom regularly and could credit this to their account, and had the handy benefit of encouraging people to clean up after themselves-- every time you emptied your trash into the energy-reclamation chute, you added replicator energy to your canteen account.

However, back home, most people didn't bother to use the replicators, because truly, Cookie's food was better fresh than anything they could produce, and she loved making it. Here in Xiagu, however, the replicators had nothing but military-grade “Meals Ready to Eat” and raw ingredients programmed into them. When the town was alive, there had been gardens to produce the vegetables, and people to tend them, harvest them, and cook them in the many small restaurants. Now, all that was left was replicators.

Cookie's star apprentice, Yellow, had been put in charge of the replicators while Cookie was indisposed, and had very few requests for anything other than the prepared MREs since they'd been there. Everyone on the crew was required to learn to cook, from Cookie, and nobody particularly felt up to trying to fill her shoes. Everyone had pretty much accepted meals of nondescript lumps of meat, vegetables, and starches on the firm belief that any day now, Cookie would be back on her feet, doing what she loved.

Yellow was the one in charge of food distribution, and had desperately been asking Ariadne to authorize them to reopen Cookie's kitchen, with her at the helm, until Cookie was well enough to resume her post. It's what Cookie would want, she insisted, but Ariadne was taking Cookie's condition unusually poorly, and had refused to allow the kitchen to operate without Cookie present. Yellow was frustrated, but understood. Nobody would feel right about having communal meals like before without Cookie.

Pilar carefully cut up the packaged meal and fed bites to Cookie, who halfheartedly complied with each bite. She offered her a cup of tea, which Cookie held for warmth but wouldn't drink without prompting.

“Look, Aoibheann...” Pilar said, “I know you're not well. I know this has been harder on you than anyone.”

Cookie met her gaze.

“But I don't...” Pilar began, and choked. “I don't think Ariadne will go through with this with you in this condition. She cares about you too much. You know what you mean to her. To me. She's not going to put herself at risk until she knows you're okay.”

Aoibheann looked downcast.

“She needs you,” Pilar whispered. “I need you. Please come back to us.”

****

Aoibheann's mind drifted back to when she’d met Ariadne and Pilar, thirteen years previously. She had been living on the streets for two years and had only passing contact with Pilar. She had been homeless since the Hanguk-Éire massacre, when Susan Weaver’s bombs had incinerated her family’s house and restaurant, left her and her mother destitute, and claimed her father’s life. Her mother had turned to drugs to cope with the loss, and ultimately found herself bleeding out in the gutter after an altercation with a pusher who she couldn’t pay for her latest fix.

She had distrusted the new girl at first. In her experience, another new person living under the overpass was another person who might get to the good scraps before her. She didn’t need any more competition. There was, however, a certain unspoken respect between her and the Aguilar girls. They were the only kids living on the streets of that particular block, and they had to look out for one another. They didn’t talk much, but they had struck up an arrangement. Pilar needed to go foraging to keep Sasha fed, and knowing that she would have to dig through trash bins and steal from loosely-guarded shops to make this happen, she felt it was too dangerous to bring her nine-year-old sister along with her.

So, she struck up an arrangement with Aoibheann: if she kept Sasha safe while she went out on runs, Pilar would try and steal a little extra food so Aoibheann could eat as well. Pilar and Sasha had been squatting in an abandoned house on a nearby side-street, and Aoibheann could crash there in exchange for keeping an eye on Sasha. It was shelter, and food, and it was a better deal than she was getting anywhere else. Under normal circumstances, Aoibheann would’ve developed a mighty crush on Pilar, but crushes were the sorts of things normal girls got to have. Aoibheann needed to focus on staying alive.

The new girl had been Racquel when they met. She had been raving about how the world was going to end, a secret conspiracy to reign atomic hellfire onto the bio-domes. It was the standard fare of the doomsaying lunatic, so nobody paid her much mind, but she’d named Ramos and Ramos specifically in her raving, and that caught Pilar’s attention. Nobody hated the Ramoses like Pilar, although Aoibheann didn’t yet know why.

So, Pilar and Racquel started going out on runs together. Suddenly, they were bringing back more than enough food, not only for the four of them, but they even got to share it with the others under the bridge. One day, they came home clean, wearing fresh clothes, and carrying a bundle of new clothes under their arm. They told her that Racquel’s name was Ariadne now, and that they would be needing her help a lot more often. They’d found some sort of mentor, who would “get them out of here,” but they’d need to spend hours, even days, with her at a time.

Aoibheann wasn’t a fool. She knew that if they succeeded in getting out of here, that she would be left behind. She couldn’t, however, risk being thrown out on the street. She’d watch Sasha and crash on the floor of this abandoned townhouse as long as they’d let her.

Sasha seemed like such a little kid then, although Aoibheann knew on a logical level that she was only three years older.

“If you could be anything in the world when you grow up,” Sasha had asked her one day, while the other girls had been away at their mysterious mentor’s for a few days, “what would you be?”

“I’m just trying to grow up,” Aoibheann said, “if I can make it that far, I’ll see what I can get.”

Sasha scrunched her nose. “You’re not playing the game right.”

“I’m being realistic,” Aoibheann said.

Sasha breezed past this. “I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up.”

Aoibheann considered pointing out that Sasha had a third-grade education and no money, but thought better of it, and instead just sighed. “Well, it’d be a crying shame if you starved to death before then,” she said. “Let’s see what your sister left us.”

Aoibheann looked at the handful of scraps Pilar had left on the table. Pilar had stolen them an entire rotisserie chicken, which Aoibheann had admonished her for-- the abandoned house did not have a working refrigerator, she pointed out, so she’d have to use the meats straightaway or they would quickly spoil and attract flies-- and several cans of diced white potatoes, which Pilar figured would keep Sasha’s stomach full, but Aoibheann pointed out had very little nutritional value. This was, of course, in addition to the six chocolate bars Pilar had, being thirteen years old, been sure to nab on her little excursion.

Aoibheann had nothing in the way of seasonings, except for a variety of salt and pepper packets she’d taken from a loosely-supervised outdoor seating area at a nearby restaurant, as well as, on one extremely lucky day, three sets of cheap silverware and a bottle of hot sauce.

She did, however, have access to a small metal trash can with a lid, water from a neighbor’s hose spigot-- Aoibheann felt bad about this, because water was so tightly regulated on Mars and the owner would surely be steeply charged for the waste, but this was a low priority compared to their survival-- and an old gas stove that the new girl had rigged up to illegally supply them with heat.

Aoibheann had cut the meat off the bones of the rotisserie chicken and plopped the bones into the cold water with all the fat and gristle, and opened up a few of the salt packets into the mixture. She put it on the stove and let it heat up to a boil, then turned down the gas and watched as the mixture turned a translucent yellow. She eventually fished out the bones with her knife, and dumped all the potatoes, and the meat from the chicken, into the broth.

After it had stewed for a while, Aoibheann took a taste. It was thin, watery, and somewhat bland, but it would do for the time being. Using the now-empty potato cans, she scooped out two servings of soup and handed one to Sasha.

“Now, we just have to keep it just hot enough,” Aoibheann said, “and it won’t go bad. We’ll be able to eat this until your sister gets back.”

Sasha took a taste. “It’s…” she had been taught, if she had nothing nice to say, to say nothing at all, so she didn’t finish her sentence. Aoibheann had spent enough time with her to know what she meant.

“It’s a tick bland like this,” Aoibheann shrugged, passing her the hot sauce. “Give it a dash of this, it’ll be a sight better.”

Sasha complied, tasted it, and her face made it clear that while it was in fact a sight better, it still wasn’t quite tasty.

“My mom used to make potatoes with a cheesy sauce,” Sasha said sadly. “They were really spicy. Pilar’s favorite food.”

“My dad was more of a cabbage man,” Aoibheann said. “My mom handled the meats, him the veggies. Hanguk-Éire cuisine is… all about things coming together in the pot.”

Sasha added a little more hot sauce to her soup.

“I wanted to be a cook,” Aoibheann said. “Like my folks, before, all this. My dad was a cook. His dad was a cook. His dad was a cook. And so on and so on, all the way back to our homelands.”

“You could still be a cook,” Sasha said, eyeing her soup. “...someday.”

“Well, we’ll have to get your sister to scrounge us up some quality ingredients, then, won’t we?” Aoibheann said.

The two of them finished their soup, and Aoibheann noted that it was getting late, and insisted that Sasha go to bed. Sasha refused without a story, and Aoibheann tossed back a “tough titties” which was met with an infuriatingly irresistible pout.

“FINE,” Aoibheann groaned, and improvised a story.

“Once upon a time, there was a kingdom,” Aoibheann began. This was how all her stories began, they all took place in this kingdom. “The kingdom, you see, had been through every horror you could put a kingdom through. It had been invaded. It had been burned. It had been taken over and torn in half and put back together again more times than you could count. Every evil overlord you could name had taken the place over, at one time or another. So the people in the kingdom, they were always sad, and they started to wonder, would they ever be free? And then, one day, they found out, there was another kingdom, just like them, halfway round the world, and they decided to join forces. But then, after a few decades of unity and prosperity, the entire world fell into darkness, and the people of the two kingdoms had to run. They ran far away, and found a new promised land in the desert, and built a home there.”

“Then, one day, in the new kingdom, there was a little girl who lived in a little house with her ma’ and her da’, and she loved her life. The dark creature from the old world, it caught up with them. It took her da’, and burned down her house, and she and her mother had to go out into the woods.”

Sasha looked scared. “The woods?”

“Aye,” Aoibheann said, “and her mother dear didn’t last long. There were these flares of Dokkaebi Fire, the goblin lights, and mother dear thought surely she could follow them to safety… Pretty soon, the little girl was all on her own.”

“I don’t like this story,” Sasha said, trying not to betray how frightened she was.

Aoibheann sighed. “Neither do I. But see, the story has a happy ending.”

“Happy?” Sasha asked.

“Happy enough,” Aoibheann replied, “for now. See, the little girl knew not to follow the goblin lights. She ran into the dark, and there she found… a brave, dashing adventurer. A gorgeous girl, noble and good, who’d been lost in the woods herself.”

Sasha’s eyes brightened at this. “Did she have a sword?”

“A little one, aye,” Aoibheann laughed. “And she was on a quest, to find a way out of the woods. But the problem was, she had to look after a sweet, wee little baby, and couldn’t leave it long enough to make any real progress. So the little girl, she’d faced all the darkness in the world. She could handle a wee little baby! She agreed to take care of the baby while the adventurer looked for a way to save herself and the little one.”

“Did she find a way out?”

“Someday she will,” Aoibheann said, “but all she found so far was… a sorceress.”

“This story has everything,” Sasha said.

“The sorceress was as beautiful as the adventurer, and sharp as a tack, but she was untrained. Powerful magic, but she didn’t know how to use it.” Aoibheann explained, “so, together, they managed to track down the Baba Yaga, a wise but crafty old witch, who could teach the sorceress and adventurer how to find the way.”

“And the little girl?” Sasha asked.

Aoibheann thought about this. “The little girl gets to spend time with the sorceress, and the adventurer, and that sweet wee little baby,” she said, “and she appreciates the time she has with them. Someday, they’ll find their way out, and she’ll still be in the woods, but she’ll always be glad to have met them. The end.”

Sasha crinkled her nose. “That’s a bad ending,” Sasha said bluntly. “The little girl should just leave the woods with them. Then find the creature that took her house, and kill it.”

“And how’s she gonna do that?” Aoibheann laughed.

“The adventurer and the sorceress will help her!” Sasha said. “Maybe the Baby Yaga can tell her some spells!”

“Baba Yaga,” Aoibheann corrected. “Okay, so say she does. Say she tells the adventurer and the sorceress everything that happened, and they go slay the evil creature. What happens next?”

Sasha thought about this. “Maybe they fight another creature,” she said. “An octopus?”

“Why are they fighting an octopus?” Aoibheann asked, still chuckling.

“It’s guarding a treasure,” Sasha said as though it were the most obvious thing in the universe. “You have heard a story before, right?”

“Fair enough,” Aoibheann said. “And then, say, they beat all the creatures. What then?”

“Happily ever after,” Sasha said triumphantly.

“Well, you’re a sight more deft at this than I am,” Aoibheann said. “Let’s get you to sleep, I’ll do better next time.”

Aoibheann swaddled Sasha in the dirty, tattered blanket that they’d found a few weeks earlier, sat out in the hallway, and began to cry.

In the present day, Aoibheann thought back to her sobbing in the hallway. At the time, she was convinced that Ariadne and Pilar would surely abandon her when they finished training with Blue. When they started building their first spacecraft in an alley under the bridge, she’d defended it from thieves and scrappers at knifepoint, even thinking that they would use it to leave her behind. When, against all odds, Ariadne had built a spaceworthy craft, she was stunned into silence when they invited her along.

“Don’t be dumb,” Pilar had said, extending a hand to her “of course we’re taking you with us. We started this crew to keep Sasha fed. How are we gonna do that without a cook?”

And so, Cookie had been born. As the goblin lights lit the way to ruin, Pilar’s hand pulled her onto the right path.

****

Now, Pilar’s hand was busy cutting up bites of nondescript meat and placing them into Aoibheann’s mouth.

“Do you remember… back in our street urchin days,” Pilar asked, “Me and Ariadne would come home from Blue’s, put Sasha to bed, and then you, me, and her would stay up late gossiping. We’d show you all the cool stuff Blue had taught us in our lessons, and you’d take the ingredients we’d stolen for you-- better ones, after you started giving me lists-- and you’d teach us how to cook like you.”

Aoibheann almost smiled, and Pilar saw it.

“Alright, you’re right,” Pilar said, cutting her another bite and placing it in her mouth. “Nobody can cook like you. Don’t let it go to your head. But you taught us to cook better than most people.”

Aoibheann accepted another bite wordlessly.

“You know, Ariadne used to use Blue’s tricks to fix up that abandoned house, Alan’s house, and I used to show you all the martial arts tricks, and you’d be rapt with attention,” Pilar said. “When me and Ari started dating, we had a friendly debate about it. See, I thought you had a crush on her, and she thought you had a crush on me. Joke’s on us, turns out you were more than capable of having both.”

Aoibheann came close to smiling again.

“Funny, that’s a fond memory now. Back then, it was the worst year of our life,” Pilar said. “Wonder what we’ll remember fondly from now, when we’re older.”

Aoibheann’s fractional smile faded away. She couldn’t imagine anything worth cherishing from this time. But then, she couldn’t back then, either.

“And we don’t have to talk about…” Pilar cut herself off. “I mean, the… what we’ve had together… The unspoken closeness between the three of us. Rare as it might be that we’ve acted on it, it’s still special to me. To us.The problem has never been that we don’t feel about you, the way you feel about us. If you wanted... what’s between the three of us... to be more, it’d be yours in a heartbeat.”

Aoibheann looked down at her lap.

“We’ve always loved you, Cookie,” she explained. “And don’t get twisted up on the definitions. Every sense of the word. Whatever you’re thinking I surely can’t mean… I mean it. I don’t know what’s going on in your head. I just hate to think that… I mean… we’re going into the most dangerous time we’ve ever faced. If something happens, to me or to Ari… I just want to know you know what you mean to us. To me.”

Pilar gave her another bite, and Aoibheann didn’t fight her on it.

“Do you remember our wedding?” Pilar asked, and laughed. “Of course you do. Hard to forget something like that. Do you remember how angry you were that we wouldn’t let you cook us a grand feast?”

There was a spark in her eyes that demonstrated that she had not, in fact, entirely let this go.

“We stole the supplies for hamburgers from a local grocery store, and made Beam cook them,” Pilar said. “We actually almost got caught, pulled over for speeding on the way home. Ariadne told the cop her name was Ariadne Baltimore. Small town, local cops, everybody knew their parents, they figured they’d just miscounted the sisters, and let her go. Idiots.”

Pilar sighed.

“You weren’t allowed to cook because Ariadne needed you by her side,” she explained. “You were her maid of honor for a reason, Cookie. Our crew, our marriage, our family… where would we be without you? Would we even be us?”

Pilar offered Aoibheann another bite, and she didn’t take it. Pilar looked concerned. She hadn’t eaten nearly enough to be satisfied yet.

“What is it?” Pilar asked.

Aoibheann opened her mouth, thought hard, her eyes darting back and forth as though she was trying to make sense of something she couldn’t put words to.

“Aoibheann, are you… are you alright?” Pilar asked. “Should I get Sasha?”

Aoibheann shook her head vigorously. She had been lost in her depression for months, wondering if she was really better off waking up in the morning, but suddenly, the floodgates had come open, and she couldn’t wait one more second to let out what had been eating at her and destroying her soul ever since they’d lost the station.

Her voice was dry and raspy. She had not spoken more than two consecutive words in weeks, and her body vehemently protested the sudden change in this policy.

“Was it my fault?” She asked, thinking back to a conversation she'd had with their tormentor years ago. “Did I do this to us?”

****

“Excellent work today, everyone,” Cookie’s voice boomed through the kitchen. “The festivities went off without a hitch. This is an anniversary our captain won’t soon forget.”

“Thank you, Chef,” her crew echoed back.

“Dismissed,” she said to the assembled kitchen staff, and then quietly approached one of the greener pirates who’d recently started the galley rotation that was mandatory for the whole crew. “Libby, a word?”

Cookie ushered Libby into a small room at the back, which she used for prep when she was working on more intimate, personal projects. This was the room where she prepared birthday meals for Spacebreather, Ariadne, and Sasha. This was the table on which she’d painstakingly crafted Ariadne and Pilar’s wedding cake. The small walk-in freezer was the one where she’d had a brief, clumsy tryst with Blue on a rare visit to the station, after Cookie had enraged her by challenging her to a contest to see who could make a better mole negro oaxaqueño sauce, and then winning it.

Libby had been invited into the inner sanctum, and the look on Cookie’s face made it absolutely clear that it was not an honor.She was in deep trouble. Worse still, there was a salt shaker on the table in front of her.

“Do you think this is funny, lass?” Cookie asked. “Is this a fun game to you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Chef,” Libby said, actually looking somewhat convincing.

“The cap of the salt shaker was unscrewed. One shake, and dinner would’ve been ruined.” Cookie said. “It was your responsibility to set the table in the captain’s quarters.”

Libby got immediately defensive. “Anybody could’ve done that,” she said, “I didn’t do it, it’s totally unfair that you--”

“Anybody could’ve,” Cookie said. “But I gave you a responsibility. You were responsible for the Captain’s table. You signed off on a table with an unscrewed salt shaker on it. That makes you responsible for the salt shaker, whether you placed it there or not.”

“How is that fair?” Libby replied indignantly.

“Lass, why do you think Ariadne requires all crew to complete a rotation in my kitchen before they’re cleared for field service?” Cookie asked.

“She needs someone to cook for her?” Libby asked derisively.

Cookie sneered. She did not care for Libby, and never had. The girl seemed to attract drama. How, she wondered, could someone with so few friends be so perpetually in the middle of a falling out with a group of them? “And why do you think my standards are so meticulous?” Cookie asked.

Libby declined to answer, because she knew her honest answer would get her in trouble, but her face betrayed what she wanted to say: “Because you’re a huge bitch?”

Cookie answered her own rhetorical questions. “The skills you need to be successful in here, will be invaluable to you out there. You didn’t go over your loadout with a fine-toothed comb. You didn’t take the responsibilities you were trusted with seriously. You allowed your crewmates to operate with faulty equipment, that, had I not intervened, would’ve caused the mission objective to fail.”

“To be clear,” Libby said, “the ‘mission’ was serving them dinner.”

“IN HERE IT’S DINNER,” Cookie bellowed, her eyes full of all the rage and fire that she kept tamped down in her heart every second of every day, and slammed her fists on the table, knocking down the salt shaker. The chrome lid clattered off, and salt spilled onto the teak countertop. Cookie wordlessly grabbed a pinch of it and tossed it over her left shoulder. “In here, you fail in your duties and it means dinner isn’t very good that night. Out there, you fail in your duties and your sisters in arms die. That’s why Ariadne makes you work with me before you’re allowed to work for her. You can’t be trusted to handle the stakes out there if your team, and your commanding officer, can’t even trust you to do your job correctly when the stakes are only whether tonight’s chicken will be a little dry. Is that crystal clear?”

Libby looked as though she was about to protest, or accuse Cookie of being melodramatic, but Cookie cut her off. “Think very carefully about what you say next,” she said, “and if you’re lost as to what answer I’m looking for...” She pointed at the band that she kept tied around her head, so that even if one of her brilliant red hairs slipped out of its tight bun, it would still not fall into her face. It was white, and said, in bold black text, “YES CHEF.”

Libby grumbled. “Yes, chef,” she said. “next time, I’ll check the table settings more carefully.”

“Glad to hear it,” Cookie said. “But I think it’s important that you know… I know you put the shaker on the table.”

“What?!” Libby snapped.

“If the Captain, or her first mate, were to be poisoned, I would need to be able to verify who’d done the deed.” Cookie said. “Every step of my meal preparation is accounted for. There is a record of every action taken in this kitchen, cupboard-to-table. If something goes wrong with a meal, within seconds I will be able to identify the point of failure and exactly who was responsible for preventing it. Of course, it helps to have a private video feed into the captain’s quarters.”

Cookie tossed her communications device onto the table, and hit play. It projected a small, but surprisingly clear, hologram of Libby setting the table, smirking as though struck with an idea, and unscrewing the cap of the salt shaker.

“You have… a security camera… in their quarters?!” Libby asked.

“I’m the only person in the system they trust with it,” Cookie said. “I trust them with my life, and they trust me with theirs. Now, I gave you a chance to confess to your little prank, and you decided to lie, to pass the buck onto someone else. I’m afraid I can’t let that slide. I’ll have to fail you for this rotation. Come back at the start of the next one and you can reapply.”

“What?!” Libby snapped again. “I’m two days away from finishing! I have to start my galley rotation over again just because you caught me playing a harmless prank on your little pervy peep-show?”

“Call it pervy if you like,” Cookie said dismissively. “The nature of my relationship with the captain and her first mate is enthusiastically sanctioned and is, frankly, none of your concern. The behavior you showed in here, would’ve only spoiled Captain Ariadne’s dinner. If you showed the same level of carelessness and irreverence out there, it might’ve gotten someone killed. ‘Harmless’ indeed. You’re not responsible enough for field work until you can prove you can handle kitchen duty.”

“This is bullshit,” Libby said, gathering up her things to storm out of the room. “Like it even matters whether that bitch’s little dinner is ruined.”

Cookie slammed her fists on the counter again.

“Captain Ariadne is the greatest woman who ever lived,” Cookie growled, “and if I hear you speak of her like that in my presence again, you’ll lose a hell of a lot more than your galley rotation.”

Libby moved to storm out, but Cookie rushed the door and held it shut.

“Now, you listen to me, you little twerp,” Cookie said, jabbing a finger into Libby’s chest, shaking with anger. “That woman pulled me out of the gutter-- pulled all of us out of the gutter. There is nothing more important than the work she does, and we are the beating heart that allows her to do it. So if you want to be a part of this crew, you’ll show her some goddamned respect and start taking your work fucking seriously.”

Libby looked furious.

“What do I want to hear?” Cookie asked pointedly.

Pilar was astonished. “You think… because you were hard on the Nameless in her galley rotation… that she went totally off the rails, tried to kill us, and drove us out of our home?”

“Yes, chef,” Libby grumbled after a beat, and Cookie allowed her to pass.

****

“She tried to say we were like a cult,” Cookie said weakly. “That we were just minions blindly following Ariadne’s orders. That we turned against anybody who didn’t fall in line.”

“Is any of that true?” Pilar asked rhetorically. “Does the crew actually act like that?”

Cookie let the tears come. “I do,” she said. “What if she… how do I know she isn’t holding my devotion, my zeal, against the entire crew?”

“You… blindly follow Ariadne’s orders?” Pilar asked, entirely rhetorically. “That’s a surprise, I thought you really believed in our mission.”

Cookie was taken aback. “I do!’

Pilar smiled. “There’s some of that fire,” she said. “I’ve missed it. Aoibheann… when is the last time Ariadne actually gave you an order?”

Cookie had to think about this, but came up short.

“Exactly,” Pilar said. “This is what’s been eating you, all this time?”

Aoibheann looked afraid to reply, so she just asked what she’d wanted to ask, ever since they were driven out of their home.

“Do you forgive me?” She asked. “Does she… does she forgive me?”

Pilar looked Aoibheann square in the eyes. “Cookie, you’ve never needed our forgiveness. An insane terrorist attacked our home. There’s nothing you could’ve done to prevent that.”

This was not what Aoibheann wanted to hear.

Pilar sighed. “Of course we forgive you, Aoibheann,” she said in a voice that sounded entirely earnest, but using words that betrayed how sarcastic she was being: “for not allowing someone who turned out to be a sexual predator and an actual serial killer tamper with our food and ruin our anniversary. We forgive you for being the most devoted friend we’ve ever had. Because someone else mistreated us, it must’ve been wrong that you treated us right. We will always forgive you for loving us, Aoibheann. You will never lose our forgiveness for that.”

Aoibheann was struck speechless again.

“Don’t go quiet on me,” Pilar said affectionately, “I just got you to talk again! I’ve missed your voice.”

“I appreciate your taking care of me,” Cookie admitted, “while I’ve been… not myself.”

Pilar gently put her hand on Aoibheann’s, and gave it a squeeze, and then told her the most reassuring truth she had.

“The Nameless is a user,” she said. “She wants a bunch of people who act like puppets and put her well-being first. Ariadne spends every second of every day encouraging her crew to think and act for themselves, and to put each other’s well-being above all else. That’s why she thinks Ariadne’s a tyrant. Not because you defended her honor after a sociopath tried to ruin her anniversary and then called her a bitch.”

Aoibheann felt as though she’d just received absolution for something that had been dragging her through the muck for months. How could she not believe Pilar, of all people? She began to cry openly.

“Hey, hey,” Pilar said, “it’s okay! I got you.”

“I’ve let the crew down,” she said, “had them eating this flavorless mush for however many months. I’ll be back at a stove first thing in the morning, don’t you worry--”

Pilar laughed. “Aoibheann… Cookie, I’m glad you’re back but… don’t push yourself too hard, okay? Let your apprentices handle it for a bit. Besides, you haven’t walked by yourself in a pretty long time. It’ll take a bit before you’re seaworthy again, let alone fit to run a kitchen.”

Aoibheann looked downcast. “Well, I’ve spent enough time sitting around like a lump being no good to anybody,” she said indignantly.

“You’re plenty good to us,” Pilar said flatly, “just by being here. We love you, Cookie. You don’t need to… justify your existence by being a devoted servant.”

Aoibheann was uncomfortable with this sentiment, and it showed on her face. This was, after all, how she showed her affection for Ariadne and Pilar. How could she show them her love and devotion without being able to cook for them?

“I don’t know how to…” Cookie began. “Please… Please, just… tell me what to do.”

Pilar sighed. She knew Cookie was far too devoted to her duties to go completely without orders. “She and I will be back in a few hours, for dinner. Let her hear your voice. Tell her you love her, and wish her luck on her procedure. If you have the strength, give her a hug. And, most importantly, just… please, be okay. Be kind to yourself and take all the time you need to get back on your feet. We’ve only got the one Cookie, so take care of her for us, okay?”

Cookie smiled, and squeezed Pilar’s hand back with what little strength she could muster.

Pilar picked up the now-empty tray that the MRE had been on. “Now that you’re back, do I have your permission to start up the kitchens? Let your apprentices do some real cooking?”

Cookie nodded her head.

“Then I guess this is truly an event worth of celebration: you’ve had your last Meal-Ready-To-Eat,” Pilar laughed. “I’ll see you tonight, Cookie. I want to put some meat back on your bones, so I’ll be cooking, and I expect you to be looking over my shoulder and barking orders at me the whole time.”

Cookie looked at her and smiled, and Pilar’s heart melted. It had been a long time since anyone had seen that.

****

Cookie’s apprentices stood in a straight line at the back of the Hotpot Spot, an abandoned restaurant that Sweettalk had identified as her childhood favorite. Cookie, wearing the chef’s coat she’d fled the station in, freshly laundered, and her trademark “YES CHEF” headband, limped into the restaurant, supported by a cane that Sweettalk had fished out of her childhood home, and said had belonged to her grandfather.

Cookie was still not back to full strength, but her apprentices could see the fire they’d come to fear and love had returned to her eyes.

“As you may have noticed,” Cookie announced, the natural loudness of her voice undiminished by her time indisposed, “I have been… unwell, of late. As such, I am unable to resume my duties at this time.”

Her staff turned to her chief apprentice, Yellow, for guidance. Yellow remained silent, so the rest of them did as well.

“It’s alright, kids,” she said, stamping the cane on the ground loudly. “You don’t have to pretend. I’m not my old self yet. It’s fine. I wouldn’t feel right resuming my post here anyhow. This isn’t my kitchen. I’ve called you all here because you are the apprentices most equipped to run a kitchen of your own.”

Yellow nodded in assent.

“As such, I have a new directive for each of you, until such time as we’ve retrieved my kitchen, and I’m back to my usual vim and vigor, each of you is to select one of the defunct restaurants in this town, take your pick of the remaining staff and any available volunteers, and you will run your kitchens to the standard I have taught you.”

Cookie sighed.

“I know what you all think,” she said. “I know what you’ve said to me, in the past. You think your best is only a pale imitation of my cooking. But I need you all to know that… isn’t true.”

“Chef?” Yellow asked.

“I was the fourth person on this crew, lass,” Cookie said. “The first person to join, after the founding members. At the beginning, we had one mission: Keep Sasha Fed. There is nothing I value more highly than that mission. I live for it, and if I’m blessed with the chance, I will happily die for it. We may have expanded the definition of ‘Sasha’ to include everyone we love, but this mission is and will always be my life’s labor. Food doesn’t just sustain us. It is love, in physical form. The Captain and the First Mate have been very gracious to me, in the time we’ve known each other, by allowing me to show them my love and devotion in the way I’m able to offer. Over the last nine months, they have shown me the devotion was not one-sided, and given me the love I was able to accept. So your mission is, as it always has been: get in the kitchen, and show your love to the crew. Fill their bowls with it, in the way only you can, with or without me. And when your cup is empty…”

Cookie choked up a bit, and did a halfway decent job masking it.

“...When your cup is empty, allow those who love you to fill it back up, until you’re ready to pour from it again.”

After a long, uncomfortable beat, her crew shouted back “Yes, Chef!”

“I have been derelict in my duties,” Cookie said. “I let you go this many months without loving one another properly, because you wouldn’t do it without me.”

“Chef, permission to speak freely?” One of her younger apprentices, a quiet young boy who specialized in pastries, piped up.

“Granted,” Cookie said.

“You never ordered us not to run the kitchens without you. In fact, before…” He paused carefully, then opted to leave it unsaid, “before, you always taught us how to take the lead for the rest of the crew, when you had to cook for the Captain’s table. We wouldn’t run the kitchens without your say-so because…”

“It’s okay, lad, no need to be scared of the likes of me,” she reassured him.

“We were ordered not to,” he told her. “The Captain was very clear: ‘There’s no crew without Cookie.’”

Cookie leaned on her cane and looked a bit sad.

“She couldn’t handle it, Chef,” Yellow explained. “Knowing somebody else was doing your work, while you were suffering the way you were.”

Now Cookie could feel her heart melt. “She said that, did she?”

The young baker boy winced. “She said that there’s nothing more important than the work you do, and that everything the crew does, is just so you can do it,” he said. “She said… well, she said she was derelict in her duty to you, and that she couldn’t replace you until she’d made it right. Until you’d forgiven her for letting you down.”

Cookie laughed. “We’ve known each other a long time, indeed,” she said. “The captain is a sentimental one, I’m afraid. She blames herself for all this. For my condition. Don’t tell her I said this, but she’s still more Catholic than she’d like to admit.”

Everyone’s eyes flared at this. Of course none of them would tell her she’d said that, as they all valued keeping their heads attached to their necks too much. Cookie was one of the only people in the system who could get away with saying something like that in front of Ariadne.

“She could never let me down if she tried,” Cookie said, “and even if she did, I will always forgive her. That you can repeat to her. Now, that’s enough prattling on from an old fool. You all have restaurants to open. To work!”

“Yes, Chef!” Her apprentices all shouted, and broke formation to claim their restaurants.

“And remember,” she shouted after them. “If you talk to the Captain, this was her idea!”

She had, in fact, passed her forgiveness along to Ariadne the previous day, before her surgery, and assured her that she didn’t need forgiveness, the same way Pilar had done to her. After her procedure, Ariadne wouldn’t remember Cookie giving her consent to reopen the kitchens, but she was delighted that when she came out of it, she seemingly remembered, on some level, that she had been absolved of all wrongdoing.

She was relieved when, during the fight Alicia staged with her, Ariadne had suggested they put her apprentices to work in the kitchens. Despite being set back several months, she was done punishing herself, and letting everyone else punish themselves with her. It was a do-over many were not fortunate enough to get, and after all she’d lost, Aoibheann was not one to turn her nose up at a second chance.

****

Months later, when all this was over and Sasha’s medicine and a lot of good eating had restored her muscles into mostly proper working order-- she still felt uneasy at times, and preferred to keep the cane on hand, just in case-- they were repatriated to their home, the Nameless had been defeated, and the station had erupted into a celebratory frenzy. Yellow and the kitchen staff had burned the candle at both ends to supply enough party snacks to keep anyone from drowning in all the wine. Two former crew members, Baltimore and Beam, had returned to the station to join in the celebrations. Sweettalk and Sasha had, believing themselves slick, pulled Ghostrunner and her new girlfriend Vigil back to their quarters. Alicia had brought Blue back to the station and, in the haze of wine, loudly announced her intention to start a relationship with her, before disappearing back to her own quarters. Cookie and Blue had, despite their past rivalry, a deep, abiding respect for one another, and Blue was one of the few people who was authorized to do as she pleased in the kitchen. Cookie knew firsthand that after Blue’s enthusiastic and athletic lovemaking, she would likely need something to eat, and a bit more wine, so she’d set a bottle of red and a bowl of fresh mozzarella in conspicuous locations in the hopes that she would find them. Cookie was, uncharacteristically, not in the kitchen that night.

If she had learned anything from the past year, it was that she had to sometimes set the weight of the world down, and allow the people she loved to take care of her as much as she took care of them. So, as had become tradition, once per month, she would retire to the Captain’s quarters instead of her own, and allow her friends to show them how much they loved her. Pilar spent the day marinating meats, just the way Cookie had taught her, and Ariadne had built a heating element into her personal dining table so that Pilar could cook them some of Cookie’s favorite foods.

They would then retire to the bedroom for a night of passion-- Ariadne always had some new device she’d built and wanted to show off. Being married to Spacebreather, she was in the unfortunate position of being a bit of a pillow princess, but not on pillow principle, and so never had anyone else to use it on, and Cookie was the only person other than Ariadne who Spacebreather was willing to touch. They would spend this time laughing, and experimenting, and making sure not an inch of her, or the captain, went unkissed, and then they would fall asleep in each other’s arms, all the while gossiping and reminiscing the way they had back on Mars.

Sometimes, on these nights, Cookie would think back to what Spacebreather said to her, during her episode, about how if she ever wanted something more between them, she could have it.

The thing was, she didn’t want something more. She treasured these nights they had together, but as far as she was concerned, nothing had changed about what they were to her. They were her best friends, and they were her calling in life. She would, to the best of her ability, serve their mission with almost religious zeal. Even unto her death, she would prioritize keeping her loved ones happy and healthy. She had already loved them, more, she believed, than she could ever love anyone else, even when they had started an exclusive relationship with one another, and she was just a heartbroken teenager pining after them both. How could she want something more, when she couldn’t even imagine something better than what she already had?

The first time the three of them had ever fallen into bed together, years after Ariadne and Pilar had made it clear they were soulmates, they had been a ball of teenage hormones, propelled by a raunchy party game that had gotten a bit out of hand. Aoibheann had awoken mortified and furious at herself for daring to succumb to her own desires like this. Her whole life, whenever she’d allowed herself to love something, it was taken away, and that only when she accepted that something was beyond her grasp, would she stand a chance of being lucky enough to attain it. She was sure that by admitting to her wants, and acting on them, she had ruined everything. Except, Ariadne and Pilar noticed her embarrassment and simply chose to behave as though nothing had changed. It had happened only occasionally in the past, and each time, Ariadne and Pilar would wait for Cookie to bring it up. Otherwise, it was completely unspoken.

The one crucial difference was, now, Aoibheann “Cookie” Gyeong, once the saddest girl on Mars, had finally accepted that it was okay to want, and to act on those wants, that this was not following the goblin lights to her death as her mother had. She, who loved her life so much that she shut down for the better part of a year when she feared it had changed irreparably, spent most of her time refusing to acknowledge what she loved about it. She did her job, showed her love, and asked for nothing in return except for the ability to keep doing it.

“You know,” Ariadne said, running her fingers through Aoibheann’s long, smooth, bright red hair, as a sleeping Pilar cradled them both in her arms, “we don’t do any of this for you. We do it because we like doing it. It’s fun for us.”

Cookie laughed. “Oh, I hadn’t noticed,” she quipped.

Ariadne smiled, and told her something she’d waited years to be sure Cookie would be ready to hear. “Thank you,” she said, “for being my friend. For loving me. For making what we do worth it.”

Aoibheann shot a smile right back. “I could say the same to you.”

[agentmarvel]

💔💰“i hate you” AGHHH IM SORRY BUT I NEED THE ANGSTTT

nothing to be sorry for! 😁 i'm glad for any and all prompts, especially the ones that let me hurt people's (and my own) feelings. 😘

john price x gn!reader

cw: none, but prepare to be a lil sad

prompt list here

mdni - 18+; minors and ageless blogs will be blocked

John won't look at you as he slides the envelope across the desk. You're a but confused as you pick it up, opening it. A letter slides through the torn flap, and as you unfold it, you catch two words just beneath your name - the spark that ignites a powder keg.

Dishonorable discharge.

"Are you fucking kidding me, John?"

"I'm sorry. It's the only way."

Your eyes flit up from the page, the burning rage consuming you like wildfire. Every nerve is raw - frayed, flayed, and exposed - and your blood has become kerosene.

"Please, love - "

"Fuck you," you snarl, throwing the letter aside and standing abruptly. "You had no fucking right."

He looks like you've just slapped him across the face. Was he expecting you to react favorable to this? Was he really delusional enough to think you'd thank him for destroying your career?

You level him with a harsh glare, cutting him off before he had the opportunity to make excuses. You point an accusatory finger at him, but keep your distance. You're liable to start swinging if he gets any closer.

"You don't get to call me that anymore, John! Not after you went and pulled this shit!"

"You have to understand, darlin'. There was no other way; now, we can - "

"There is no 'we' anymore, Captain." Reality settles in like a bucket of ice water dumped over your flaming head. The tone of your voice turns cold and detached. "You gave that up when you went behind my back and ruined the life I've worked my ass off for."

"I know this is a shock, and it's not the way we hoped it would happen, but we can start our life now. Together. Just... take some time to think about it, yeah? Take all the time you need. I'll be right here when you're ready."

You look him square in the eye, jaw set tense.

"You don't get it, do you? I hate you, John. I will never forgive you for this."

[haggishlyhagging]

It would take Diane Joyce nearly ten years of battles to become the first female skilled crafts worker ever in Santa Clara County history. It would take another seven years of court litigation, pursued all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, before she could actually start work. And then, the real fight would begin.

For blue-collar women, there was no honeymoon period on the job; the backlash began the first day they reported to work—and only intensified as the Reagan economy put more than a million blue-collar men out of work, reduced wages, and spread mounting fear. While the white-collar world seemed capable of absorbing countless lawyers and bankers in the 80s, the trades and crafts had no room for expansion. "Women are far more economically threatening in blue-collar work, because there are a finite number of jobs from which to choose," Mary Ellen Boyd, executive director of Non-Traditional Employment for Women, observes. "An MBA can do anything. But a plumber is only a plumber." While women never represented more than a few percentage points of the blue-collar work force, in this powder-keg situation it only took a few female faces to trigger a violent explosion.

Diane Joyce arrived in California in 1970, a thirty-three-year-old widow with four children, born and raised in Chicago. Her father was a tool-and-die maker, her mother a returned-goods clerk at a Walgreen's warehouse. At eighteen, she married Donald Joyce, a tool-and-die maker's apprentice at her father's plant. Fifteen years later, after working knee-deep in PCBs for years, he died suddenly of a rare form of liver cancer.

After her husband's death, Joyce taught herself to drive, packed her children in a 1966 Chrysler station wagon and headed west to San Jose, California, where a lone relative lived. Joyce was an experienced bookkeeper and she soon found work as a clerk in the county Office of Education, at $506 a month. A year later, she heard that the county's transportation department had a senior account clerk job vacant that paid $50 more a month. She applied in March 1972.

"You know, we wanted a man," the interviewer told her as soon as she walked through the door. But the account clerk jobs had all taken a pay cut recently, and sixteen women and no men had applied for the job. So he sent her on to the second interview. "This guy was a little politer," Joyce recalls. "First, he said, 'Nice day, isn't it?' before he tells me, 'You know, we wanted a man.' I wanted to say, 'Yeah, and where's my man? I am the man in my house.' But I'm sitting there with four kids to feed and all I can see is dollar signs, so I kept my mouth shut."

She got the job. Three months later, Joyce saw a posting for a "road maintenance man." An eighth-grade education and one year's work experience was all that was required, and the pay was $723 a month. Her current job required a high-school education, bookkeeping skills, and four years' experience— and paid $150 less a month. "I saw that flier and I said, ‘Oh wow, I can do that.’ Everyone in the office laughed. They thought it was a riot. . . . I let it drop."

But later that same year, every county worker got a 2 to 5 percent raise except for the 70 female account clerks. "Oh now, what do you girls need a raise for?" the director of personnel told Joyce and some other women who went before the board of supervisors to object. "All you'd do is spend the money on trips to Europe." Joyce was shocked. "Every account clerk I knew was supporting a family through death or divorce. I'd never seen Mexico, let alone Europe." Joyce decided to apply for the next better-paying "male" job that opened. In the meantime, she became active in the union; a skillful writer and one of the best-educated representatives there, Joyce wound up composing the safety language in the master contract and negotiating what became the most powerful county agreement protecting seniority rights.

In 1974, a road dispatcher retired, and both Joyce and a man named Paul Johnson, a former oil-fields roustabout, applied for the post. The supervisors told Joyce she needed to work on the road crew first and handed back her application. Johnson didn't have any road crew experience either, but his application was accepted. In the end, the job went to another man.

Joyce set out to get road crew experience. As she was filling out her application for the next road crew job that opened, in 1975, her supervisor walked in, asked what she was doing, and turned red. "You're taking a man's job away!" he shouted. Joyce sat silently for a minute, thinking. Then she said, "No, I'm not. Because a man can sit right here where I'm sitting."

In the evenings, she took courses in road maintenance and truck and light equipment operation. She came in third out of 87 applicants on the job test; there were ten openings on the road crew, and she got one of them.

For the next four years, Joyce carried tar pots on her shoulder, pulled trash from the median strip, and maneuvered trucks up the mountains to clear mud slides. "Working outdoors was great," she says. "You know, women pay fifty dollars a month to join a health club, and here I was getting paid to get in shape." The road men didn't exactly welcome her arrival. When they trained her to drive the bobtail trucks, she says, they kept changing instructions; one gave her driving tips that nearly blew up the engine. Her supervisor wouldn't issue her a pair of coveralls; she had to file a formal grievance to get them. In the yard, the men kept the ladies' room locked, and on the road they wouldn't stop to let her use the bathroom. "You wanted a man's job, you learn to pee like a man," her supervisor told her.

Obscene graffiti about Joyce appeared on the sides of trucks. Men threw darts at union notices she posted on the bulletin board. One day, the stockroom storekeeper, Tony Laramie, who says later he liked to call her "the piglet," called a general meeting in the depot's Ready Room. "I hate the day you came here," Laramie started screaming at Joyce as the other men looked on, many nodding. "We don't want you here. You don't belong here. Why don't you go the hell away?"

Joyce's experience was typical of the forthright and often violent backlash within the blue-collar work force, an assault undisguised by decorous homages to women's "difference." At a construction site in New York, for example, where only a few female hard-hats had found work, the men took a woman's work boots and hacked them into bits. Another woman was injured by a male co-worker; he hit her on the head with a two-by-four. In Santa Clara County, where Joyce worked, the county's equal opportunity office files were stuffed with reports of ostracism, hazing, sexual harassment, threats, verbal and physical abuse. "It's pervasive in some of the shops," says John Longabaugh, the county's equal employment officer at the time. "They mess up their tools, leave pornography on their desks. Safety equipment is made difficult to get, or unavailable." A maintenance worker greeted the first woman in his department with these words: "I know someone who would break your arm or leg for a price." Another new woman was ordered to clean a transit bus by her supervisor—only to find when she climbed aboard that the men had left a little gift for her: feces smeared across the seats.

In 1980, another dispatcher job opened up. Joyce and Johnson both applied. They both got similarly high scores on the written exam. Joyce now had four years' experience on the road crew; Paul Johnson only had a year and a half. The three interviewers, one of whom later referred to Joyce in court as "rabble-rousing" and "not a lady," gave the job to Johnson. Joyce decided to complain to the county athrmative action office.

The decision fell to James Graebner, the new director of the transportation department, an engineer who believed that it was about time the county hired its first woman for its 238 skilled-crafts jobs. Graebner confronted the roads director, Ron Shields. "What's wrong with the woman?" Graebner asked. “I hate her," Shields said, according to other people in the room. "I just said I thought Johnson was more qualified," is how Shields remembers it. "She didn't have the proficiency with heavy equipment." Neither, of course, did Johnson. Not that it was relevant anyway: dispatch is an office job that doesn't require lifting anything heavier than a microphone.

Graebner told Shields he was being overruled; Joyce had the job. Later that day, Joyce recalls, her supervisor called her into the conference room. "Well, you got the job," he told her. "But you're not qualified." Johnson, meanwhile, sat by the phone, dialing up the chain of command. "I felt like tearing something up," he recalls later. He demanded a meeting with the affirmative action office. "The affirmative action man walks in," Johnson says, "and he's this big black guy. He can't tell me anything. He brings in this minority who can barely speak English . . . I told them, 'You haven't heard the last of me.'" Within days, he had hired a lawyer and set his reverse discrimination suit in motion, contending that the county had given the job to a "less qualified" woman.

In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled against Johnson. The decision was hailed by women's and civil rights groups. But victory in Washington was not the same as triumph in the transportation yard. For Joyce and the road men, the backlash was just warming up. "Something like this is going to hurt me one day," Gerald Pourroy, a foreman in Joyce's office, says of the court's ruling, his voice low and bitter. He stares at the concrete wall above his desk. "I look down the tracks and I see the train coming toward me."

The day after the Supreme Court decision, a woman in the county office sent Joyce a congratulatory bouquet, two dozen carnations. Joyce arranged the flowers in a vase on her desk. The next day they were gone. She found them finally, crushed in a garbage bin. A road foreman told her, "I drop-kicked them across the yard."

-Susan Faludi, Backlash: the Undeclared War Against American Women

[jedimaesteryoda]

It will never not be funny that in spite of all the complaints of people slighting his house, Lord Walder slights his own family more than anyone else.

If I'd known how they'd shame me, I would never have troubled myself to make the journey. Why did I need to ride all that way to see Hosteen knocked off his horse by that Tyrell whelp? I ask you. The boy's half his age, Ser Daisy they call him, something like that. And Danwell was unhorsed by a hedge knight! Some days I wonder if those two are truly mine. My third wife was a Crakehall, all of the Crakehall women are sluts. Well, never mind about that, she died before you were born, what do you care? -AGOT, Catelyn IX "He picked her because she's fat," Lord Walder said. "You think Bolton gave a mummer's fart that she was your whelp? Think he sat about thinking, 'Heh, Merrett Muttonhead, that's the very man I need for a good-father'? Your Walda's a sow in silk, that's why he picked her, and I'm not like to thank you for it. We'd have had the same alliance at half the price if your little porkling put down her spoon from time to time." -ASOS, Epilogue

You can tell he actively hates his family, giving his son a demeaning sobriquet and literally calling his granddaughter a "pig." He doubts whether his sons are his for being unhorsed when he was never renowned himself for his skill at jousting. He knows they're waiting for him to die, and trying to earn his favor since he controls the purse strings, making him feel contempt for them.

What's he got to be so puffed up about anyway? Only two sons, and one of them's a twisted little monster. I'll match him son for son, and I'll still have nineteen and a half left when all of his are dead!"

Yet, he never blames himself for creating the situation. He sees them as disappointments when none of them were ever bold enough to ask what his accomplishments were prior to the Red Wedding? For all his remarks of Tywin being so puffed up, while true, Tywin at least had accomplishments he could point to. He fought in the War of the Ninepenny Kings, won battles, crushed rebellions, served ably as Hand of the King and became father to a queen. Walder on the other hand never won any tourneys, or performed well at the tilt or even melee. He never personally fought in or served in any distinction in battle as far as we know, and his only distinction was getting the title "Late Lord Frey" for his sons showing up to support his liege lord after it was clear who had won. Nor did he ever have a position at the royal court. His biggest victory was a massacre in violation of guest right, the Red Wedding that earned widespread condemnation and contempt.

He had all those children as a vain way of overcompensating for his insecurity over other houses looking down on him, ie he's more manly for his fertility and fathering more sons than any other lord in Westeros. But with having all those kids, his younger sons and their progeny have valid concerns over what happens when he dies. They have no lands or incomes of their own, and that would leave them in precarious positions. (Also, somehow, I think Tywin's sons will outlive all his.) He treats them more as pawns and tools giving them less reason to love him.

His parenting style ultimately resulted in a dysfunctional house riddled with factionalism with every Frey looking out for himself as Merrett put it. Once he dies, the powder keg is going to go off and the Twins will be rife with civil war. None of his progeny will likely mourn him or at least not for long.

[magewolf-the-artist]

Domestic K-9: The Worst Pokemon Evolutions Ever

Oh boy, time to explore the ramifications of trauma and how it impacts people!

(Note: I do NOT have trauma or PTSD, although I've done a fuck ton of research on the subject for a different story and am applying the things I learned here. If anybody with any kind of trauma or PTSD spots any inaccuracies, please please PLEASE feel free to let me know. I wish to portray these issues with as much care and respect as possible)

So here I've display the three, I guess, stages of these fuckers. Life, the immediate response to, y'know, everything, and how they're holding up now. Except for Rosemary because I'm kind of an asshole to my blorbos. But obviously with Charles and Susan, they are not in any way "fixed" or even "healed" from their trauma, they moreso stabilized and got used to it. And now let's finally get into it!

SUSAN WOODINGS: So in life, Susan was generally closed off except for a select few amount of people and, while she could be snippy, she was actually pretty chill despite always looking like she wants to murder everybody in the general vicinity. Basically she looks a lot meaner than she actually is.

In death though, that's a completely different story. For the first year or so she had an EXPLOSIVE temper and would blow up over the smallest things, like a powder keg kept near sparklers. If the facility had a swear jar and money, she probably could've funded college for Sophie, Edd, AND Molly. She said many hurtful and cruel things to people she was close to (mostly Charles) that she now deeply regrets. It's all water under the bridge at this point but it still sometimes keeps her up at night.

As of the current point in the timeline, she's since calmed down quite a bit. She's less likely to snap over small shit unless it's Bon, to which she will gladly be just as bitchy as she was. She does have bad days though and is generally much more easily irritated and snippy.

CHARLES BROOK: In life, Charles is the ultimate dad. Easy going, friendly, very jokey, admittedly kinda naive, loves his kid. In death... well...

When they first got to the facility, he was an absolute wreck. He had resisted giving into Bon up until the point where he was starting to fade and, absolutely terrified of the idea of being Thanos snapped out of existence, reluctantly possessed the Boozoo animatronic. But even still he deeply regretted that choice. As well as that, he was extremely distraught about leaving his daughter and wife behind, on Lily's birthday no less, and that he was never found. He spent the first several weeks consumed by the intense misery and grief and was incoherent at best and delusional at worst. As previously mentioned, he got it into his head at some point that if he could just break down the walls, he could escape and constantly flung himself into the solid concrete walls. It didn't help that Susan wasn't terribly understanding and had little patience for this.

After a few weeks passed though, he began to stabilize and was generally able to recover a semblance of his goofy, friendly personality. That's not to say the trauma hasn't impact that though; he has to constantly distract himself or else he'll have a full on breakdown and desperately tries to change the topic whenever his death or his family is brought up. He and Susan have also since smoothed things over and Charles holds no resentment towards her now.

ROSEMARY WALTEN: Everyone's favorite sad mom!

So in life, Rose was generally kind, caring, humble, creative, and introverted, although she had come out of her shell since her younger years and was perfectly capable of being social.

But in death... hooooo boy, buckle up chucklefucks, 'cause this is gonna get SAD

As previously mentioned, Rosemary is a mess. Constantly crying, completely drawing into herself, rarely speaks to anybody but Rocket, and is unable to bring herself to do anything outside of draw, think, or cry. She's kinda just frozen in time, unable to stabilize like Charles and Susan, which is why she has no stage 3. The closest thing to that I can confidently say she's gotten is pouring herself into her art and caring for Rocket, but even still it's not much.

[lovelesswiki]

sometimes i joke about how loveless could be easily ended by just handing soubi a gun and whatever he chooses to do with it would end loveless (yes, morbid sorry), but i do legitimately think that one of the most frustrating parts of where loveless 'ended' is that it's pretty clear from the results of the battle that there is a massive stalemate between the ritsuka-soubi-seimei where everything feels like a powder keg that's an instant or two away from blowing.

i think a lot of that comes from soubi, who actually holds a lot of the power here but none of the ability to utilize it. loveless can't go on without soubi, but it could go on without either ritsuka or seimei (likely not with both of them unless someone could talk soubi down from a very literal ledge). ritsuka has no fighter and cannot do anything on his own other than make the choice to return to goura, which is pretty much the only option in this case other than not doing anything.

seimei's case is even more interesting. i don't recall if his motivations are really gone into (hello i am very slowly rereading ill get there eventually (whenever my job stops killing me)) but my theory has always been that he took soubi back because he didn't think nisei was up to beating moonless alone but knew 1. that soubi could, and 2. not winning would halt everything. and he was right on both counts. nisei lost, soubi won, and seimei was only able to get away because soubi was there at all.

that gives us this weird little triangle of a lingering stalemate threatening to blow up. seimei's plans now hinge on soubi. he might not be utilized for all of it, but seimei seems to be well aware that he needs soubi and nisei won't cut it for what he needs. ritsuka needs soubi to do anything tangible about seimei. he's essentially needed by everyone in this situation. technically, seimei can't do much without him (since nisei seems to be incapacitated post moonless battle) and ritsuka can't do anything without him other than try to talk things through. this isn't stated directly iirc, but i think seimei is also balancing on a very fine point of ritsuka completely giving up on him ever being his brother again, and i think more than anything seimei is aware of that and is instead waiting for ritsuka to make the first move.

i think it's interesting how much of this power rests with soubi and also how much of whatever seimei's plan is relies on soubi being too depressed/out of it or too obedient to realize that he has power in this situation. any move he could make has the potential to actually end loveless, whereas both ritsuka and seimei are relying on him to either stay obedient or make up his mind/do something. if soubi defies and goes with ritsuka, seimei doesn't have the firepower to win and thus, the story wraps up. if he stays with seimei, seimei's plan goes through and seimei wins, story wraps up. if soubi takes himself out of the game in some way, then neither ritsuka or seimei win and the story wraps up because it's now a no-win situation.

loveless ends up with this three way powder keg set up and ready to blow and honestly if i think about this any longer i'm just going to get sad again that we're still resolutionless... endless, even.

[fortunelowtier]

Long post but bear with me, i have a lot of thoughts and im still kinda frazzled after...everything.

As someone who is fascinated by world history, the most fascinating/hopeful/terrifying part about this election is the fact I'm starting to see the beginnings of textbook radicalization in the hearts of zoomers/millennials. It's fascinating because this is the first time I've seen what I've read in history happen in real-time in my own country, it's hopeful because I know what will be born from this radicalization once the smoke clears, but it terrifies me because I know what happens in between.

The zoomer/millennial generation has always romanticized the whole "be gay do crime"/ "overthrow the government" mentality and have done so for quite a while, media about overthrowing oppressors has been pretty popular among that specific age group ESPECIALLY since 2016, but even following the 2016 elections it was always just seen as understandably hurt and upset people expressing rage through threats of violence they didn't really intend to do or had the guts to act out on. When people joked about offing Elon Musk it was never seen as a genuine threat.

But when news first broke that Trump had been shot, there was a sense of anticipation in the air that I had not felt since the Queen was hospitalized. Then the news broke that not only was he ok, but as the months passed and it dawned on everyone that not only was it likely staged, not only was it supposed to act as a way to make his followers see him as a martyr, but that it was working. People knew that following his 2 staged assassination attempts and Biden dropping out he almost certainly had this election in the bag

But following this election, I think that was when something deep inside a lot of these people finally snapped

This is the first time I'm looking at these groups, seeing the genuine hatred and rage that has built up over decades of being marginalized and shit on and thrown to the side by the government finally spilling over. I'm seeing posts about arming themselves and Twitter threads recommending which handguns to use and which ammo type to use, im seeing posts about protective gear to wear during protests, people mentioning The Anarchist Cookbook, etc

And it really, truly dawned on me that on Tuesday tens of millions of people just reached their absolute breaking point. I am seeing genuine French Revolution-era radicalization happen in the hearts and souls of 2 generations of people in real-time, and it fills me with equal parts hope and fear

We have reached the point where marginalized groups are no longer looking for pepper spray or mace to defend themselves but are actively looking for lethal measures and I think if anything that should help make it click with yall as well that we are very likely about to enter the most violent time in recent history. For better or for worse I don't know, all I do know is that the United States just became the most primed powder keg on the planet, and it would be in our best interest to prepare for the boom