#I'm not getting better because this is just what my brain is like now

[scaryscarecrows]

Some favorite 'older' media, for the Positivity:

Books

-The Shadow of the Wind. I don't know what it is. It's an experience. Just. Just trust me, go on the journey.

-Dracula. You know I gotta throw some love on Dracula.

-Jurassic Park. THE BOOK WAS BETTER. SO MUCH BETTER.

-Red Dragon. I'm sorry for any psychological trauma this may cause.

-The Gemma Doyle Trilogy. Still pissed about the ending, but a good series.

Movies

-Clue. Tim Curry's here, you cannot complain when Tim Curry is present.

-Father Goose. Haven't watched it since my dad passed, because he loved it and I'll probably cry like a little bitch the entire way through, but it's actually funny.

-Evil Under the Sun. Agatha Christie adaptation. With Maggie Smith. And others, but, well, Maggie Smith. C'mon now.

-The Silence of the Lambs. Just gonna leave that here.

-Jurassic Park. Just the first one. The book was better, but the film was admirable. Do both and you can form your own opinions! :D

Games

-Alien: Isolation. Top contender for Scariest Game I've ever played in my goddamn life.

-Bloodborne. It lives up to the hype.

-The Last of Us. Look, it's not a happy game. I'd hesitate to say it's a fun game, even. But it's a Good Game.

-Monument Valley. Very soothing, but still a bit of a brain teaser. Wonderful aesthetic.

-Kirby Air Ride. GOOD LUCK FINDING IT: Nintendo is run by killjoys. But if you can find this Gamecube game, you will have FUN. (I wish they'd remake this. I would pay full new-game price and not even gripe a little bit. I might even preorder.)

TV

-Okay, I know, I know, The Penguin just finished but it DID finish and you should watch that.

-Samurai Jack. Animation: flawless. Sound design: God's jealous. Just. Trust me. Trust me here.

-Get Smart. It's funny, it's aged better (in spots) than you might think, and there's a LOT OF IT.

-M*A*S*H*. Yeah. It's aged too well. Honestly, this one maybe should be a little mandatory.

-Are You Being Served? Funny as shit. Just. Funny as shit.

man cannot subsist on live service games and ongoing series alone you have to read or watch or play something that is complete and self-contained and ideally 5+ years old every now and then or you will die badly

[drdemonprince]

I’ve only just read your Burnout piece on Substack and it made me think of the anon you answered awhile back about anti depressants and anti anxiety medications.

I’m Autistic and am on anti anxiety medication which basically masked all the warning signs and symptoms of Autistic burnout. Those usual indicators I usually can pick up on which indicate I’m doing too much and not resting enough weren’t present on the medication.

I felt good (although very numb like the anon said) so I kept on taking on more and more and initially thought it was great! I’ve never been able to commit to things or work on multiple projects at once even ones that super interest and excite me because I get overwhelmed and burnt out quickly.

But without the warning signs I kept going and going until I started to feel really weird. Disassociated, not sleeping, upset stomach, drinking a lot. I thought everything was great so it took awhile to piece together that this is maybe what Autistic burnout results in when it’s covered by meds.

I’m now slowly withdrawing from the meds. I figure the authentic anxiety is better than false measures of “success”.

So just a warning to Autistic people I guess, I don’t know if what I’ve experienced is common or just subjective but it’s worth being aware of.

This is pretty much how I feel about psychiatric medication for myself, as well. I want the warning signs. I want to notice my body and brain rebelling. A lot of psychiatric drugs are somewhat effective at making us feel more numb, for a while, which is why they are used as a stopgap when a person's situation is unmanageable. I'm a big believer in the "Affect as Information" Hypothesis: when we feel like shit, that means something about our circumstances simply has got to change. Often that means giving up responsibilities, letting people down, letting things go.

I even feel the same way about weed. I have a lot of friends who use weed daily to manage their overwhelm, and it seems to work great for them, and potentially I should be doing the same thing. But I am terrified of having a massive dependence on a large quantity of weed in order to function, and when I *did* use weed daily, it became a baseline need and made me dissociate even further from myself. I now take the desire to use weed or otherwise get blasted as a signal that something is amiss and that I'm overwhelmed and seeking escape -- that doesn't mean I don't listen to that desire some of the time. I get high and/or drunk on the weekends pretty often. But I don't want to lose touch with my body's warning system. AND I have the immense luxury of being able to change my life circumstances when things get to be too much. If someone doesn't have that freedom, well, sometimes substances are the best thing you can get - be that psychiatric or off market.

[sunnydust2003]

Vent:

It's official

I'm scared of her rn because since i deleted my DA account, she won't leave me alone.

She's still stalk and harassing me despissd facts, i left this god awful website.

She's calls me like a pedo, zoophilia, child murder and etc with no proof and took out of context.

Like explame this as possible i am:

1. Pedo stuff:

The reason why she's call me a pedo because i favourite parody of Cuties which was make funny of pedo which i favourite because i like people make fun of this type people who deserve that from piece of shit but i regrett favourite this art.

And one thing, i hate Cuties because you know why.

I'm glad it's got remove from good.

2. Zoophilia:

She's calls me a Zoophilia just because i comment of one my friends art of "Oh No, He's so Hot" gif of Squidward from picture of Donald being muscular (it's not fetish art btw) and she's believe i have crush on Donald which i don't have actually crush on Donald Duck.

Do i like Donald Duck, yes but do you have crush on Donald.

The answer is fuck no.

Donald isn't my fictional crush.

3. Shipping Ren and Stimpy.

She's believe i ship Ren and Stimpy just because of i comment one of person which i ask person where she's start ship Ren and Stimpy because i like heard when they start liles ship or anything.

Beside i don't ship Ren and Stimpy because i see them as friends and nothing else more.

4. She's hates when someone favorite artwork just because they don't like.

She's blame me of i favourite Spongebob x Vocaloid: Lust because she doesn't like song which okay fine but why you blame me from this.

Oh yeah because he's was prevent to female or some shit which btw i never actually listen to Lust or anything because i'm not interest on song.

Only i favourite because artwork was amazing and that's why favourite art in first place.

5. She's blame me over i ship something.

She's blame me over i made status about i cringe myself when i used ship Elsa and Selena Gomez just because i thought it's was adorable.

Keep mind, i was minor back the day, i didn't have brain development until i get olded and realized:

What the fuck is wrong with me.

Idk what's wrong with my younger self when ship this two.

I'm glad i stop ship this two because it's was weird af.

6. She's calls me a child murder.

Yup she's calls me a child murder because of i was hyper about FNAF movie and says i'm only watch movie because i want see kids get killed which wtf are you talk about?!

I'm not watch movie because kids get killed, i'm watch this movie because of how adoption of game it's was.

And i'm glad they didn't show kids get killed in movie because last time i have experince with kids get killed is was hard to watch.

7. She's rant about how i so called treat my friends shit.

Now yes, this was true i was asshole about my friends about whole of "Freddy hates his friends" but i was only mad at this because my friends is remind me of toxic cartoon community and i don't want my friends become one of them but since i watch AOSTH and Scratch, Grounxed and Coconuts are become my new favorite characters, i realized i was asshole towards my friends and i apologie to him from real this time and he's accept this apologie.

This now, we talks about Freddy fight Peck or other his interest, hell i even give him a idea and drawing based of i comment on this because i want make him a happy and i love make friends a happy.

But what really pissed me off is she's lying about me so called sent my whiteknight to my friends which it's was bullshit because i don't even have whiteknight and don't want harassing my friends over this.

I may was asshole but at least i apologie about my action and i want improve myself.

She's just lying herself with no proof of this.

8. Finally she's get trigged over i made one meme of Lincoln get kick out which was meant be make fun of toxic TLH fanbase of how overprotective Lincoln when Lincoln is no better.

Now if you see Such No Luck, i made meme this because i want pissed TLH fans off because how over sentisive about this when Lincoln is no better because he's was lying about he's got bad luck just want have free time when he's could tells his family honest.

Before you say, no i'm not defense Lynn Jr and facts, both of them are unlikable.

So yeah.

9. She's blame me over the facts, voice actor of Abby (Back at the Barnyard) is anti vaxxer and she's say i should proud of her because she's so called cares her children which i have question:

If she's so called cares her child, she shouldn't realized maybe i should protect my kids from infection but nope, she doesn't give a fuck about her children and forced on people who tells to wear mask is canceled culture which prove me a point, she doesn't care from children.

And i want talks about her double stands ass because i like how she's called me a pedo when she's also defense Rev Says Desu who is lolicon and she's defense him by saying:

"Oh he's not going after a real kids, they are just fictional characters" which is gross af.

And thing is she favourite of My Melody and Kuromi from Sanrio x Yu-Gi-Oh pillow sexual which remind me of:

"My Melody and Kuromi are underage" which is red flags because how she support this type shit.

So remember i tell you about she's thinks calling me a child murder just because i was hyper about FNAF movie.

About that, she's also double stands because she's calling me a child murder over FNAF movie but yet, she's have favourite FNAF on her DA.

Hey are you same person telling me about i'm so called support child murder just because of one movie but yet, you favourite FNAF despised facts, you just said to me i support child murder but i guess, she's become stupid af and acting like she's a innocent person.

Yeah fuck this bullshit.

So yeah, i'm done with this shit.

It's time to move on from good.

So yeah, if you reading this:

Please leave me the fuck alone, i don't want have deal with you or anything.

I just want get free from stalker and harassing i got from you.

So please leave the internet and get some seriously help.

[jitterbugjive]

Okay... I'll Accept Holiday Letters...

So, anyone who has followed me long enough knows by now how I get around the holidays. Seasonal depression kicks in, and bad memories of old toxic Thanksgivings and Christmases flood my brain any time I see or hear reminders of them. Plus there's some trauma from living in poverty and having very little around the holidays and the only people willing to exploit my mentally ill mother for work was the Salvation Army who basically pay pennies. And there's a whole lot more I don't like, like the cold, Christmas Carols, etc.

However.

The last couple of years I finally got to have proper family holiday get togethers since the toxic people in the family are gone now, and it was very healing for me. I still despise the holidays, don't get me wrong, they are mostly miserable for me. I generally tell people to not address the holidays with me.

But... I've been going through a LOT this year. Especially the last 6 months with my mother being manic and getting her whole life messed up. I've also been dealing with another family member experiencing psychosis on and off as well that I haven't felt comfortable talking about. The results of the election and things Oregon was voting on are not helping me feel any better, and I fear that winter depression is going to be hitting me like a truck. I can feel it creeping in already now that the weather is getting under 40F. On top of that, my family isn't in a state right now where anyone can feasibly host Thanksgiving or Christmas, so it's a bit of a lonely one this year. Sure, I have friends I can spend time with, but I was just getting used to the family dinners. Overall, this is just going to be a very hard winter for me.

And for once, I'm going to ask people to lend a bit of the Holiday Spirit (tm) my way, because I really need some pick-me ups to get through the rest of the year. Basically all I'm asking for is for people to send me letters of encouragement through my PO Box. Gifts and fan art are welcome too, I keep all my fan art safe. I'd prefer not to get flat-out christmas cards unless the cards are really nice or creative and have a lot of thought put into what's written in them. I could just really use some kind words and there's something that feels a lot more personal about physical letters that I can store away and pull out on a rainy day.

Please note I have a pea brain that can't read cursive very well, so if possible I'd prefer it be in plain print or typed out.

If you send treats they need to be shelf stable and properly sealed, no home baked goods.

My P.O. Box: (Can be addressed to Jitterbug or Jack)

16055 SW Walker Rd #274Beaverton, OR, 97006

And if anyone's feeling generous I do have an amazon wishlist that people should be able to buy and send stuff from without needing to be the middleman. I don't update it much and a lot of stuff is outdated but you should be able to organize it by priority to get a better idea of what things I'm most interested in. You can even add other stuff to the order that isn't on the list and it will still be shipped to my P.O. Box!

AMAZON WISHLIST

[dailyhmsw]

HIHIHI!!!! i’ve been seeing that you’re accepting asks now and it’s been such a joy to read them and know this entity (you :]👋) of daily awesome art better. as a bystander who follows you. your work is so neat and i will never hush up about it‼️‼️

as for my ask….hmmmmm…..what’s your favorite like…aspect of either an element you included in ur personal hms designs, or one you’ve seen in others’? it can be themes, color palettes, psychology, demeanor, metaphors—anything! examples include celestial theming, how a character thinks/a struggle they’re dealing with, or parts of their design that mean something literally or metaphorically. objective observations??

i’m really inspired by how creative the cj fandom is. no design is superior over another ofc, as how people interpret the characters reflect what they like and see the fellas as. interpretation is an art form! wow. writing that makes me realize that chonny’s fandom came from him interpreting music into his own thing (and ergo hms narrative), and then the fans interpret that narrative into their own thing. the loop never ends 😔💀/silly

FIRST AND FOREMOST, THANK YOU ^_^ !!! i agree also, the fandom never fails to inspire me, everyone in it is so crazy talented and makes me even MORE insane about the stupid guys from my songs,,

NOW favourite aspects,, there are a lot of things i love seeing on different hmsw designs but one thing i will always be insane for is when people make them look distinctly inhuman,, i will forever preach about robot/android mind or creature animal heart or whatever the fuck soul is (empty vessel?) because whatever they are they're NOT humans!!! not entirely!! and i love when people write this into their behaviour too! making mind stiff and speak more robotically while heart is always fidgeting and jittery and he has claws and these massive uncontrollable wings.. auaygauaghj

another thing is when people include aspects/colors from the others into their designs,,,.... for example heart with red accents or mind with purple accents and so on..,, or better yet when people include orange in their designs AUGH. it's so good

CELESTIAL THEMING IS ALWAYS BANGER of course heart and mind as the moon and sun is absolutely perfect, but i also like when people throw other planets into the mix?? and i love soul as the stars, it fits him well, but i'm personally subscribed to the headcanon of soul as the sky,, which holds the sun and moon,,,,

something i do personally is to always break up their faces, if that makes sense? with heart's blindfold, mind's screen and soul's shadow/clouds ...,, the face is something that makes your brain recognize what you're seeing as a fellow human, but as previously stated, i love when there's something Wrong with them, so maybe their faces being broken up makes them look much less human...,, hehehe

there are countless things that i love to see on these character designs and if i wanted to rattle them all off we'd be here forever. but i'm just saying, i haven't seen a single design that i haven't liked!!!!! i'm talking a lot about visual details here because once i get started on their psychology i never shut up and i don't want this post to be too long HJAHAHHA but yeah!! cheers!

[localplaguenurse]

Falling Head over Heels (Pantalone x Male Reader) pt 8

WE ARE FUCKING BACK! (I immediately started hacking my lungs after typing this, I'm sick :P)

To make a long story short, for the past few months I've either been really busy, really depressed, and usually both. Also for some reason chapter 8 was already hard to write and I don't know why.

ALSO before we get into the fic, @your-local-furby drew some absolutely lovely fanart of MC apologizing and seeing the library from the previous two chapters. I think it finally kicked my brain back into gear lmao.

Without further ado, please enjoy!

@thedeimoshimself @eli-chris

It feels like the ground beneath me is sucking me in.

I feel myself sinking,

I wish the ground would swallow me whole.

Embarrassment washes over me and swallows me whole. I feel the air leave my chest I want to break free but I feel like I’m drowning. 

You take the page you’re scribbling your notes on and crumple it into a ball. You’ve reread your rough draft and decided the arranged wedding scene you had planned wasn’t tragic enough. The blind musician is tasked with performing for the prince’s wedding, but his heartbreak causes him to mess up his performance, which causes everyone to notice he’s crying, including the prince. You’re trying to convey the feeling of knowing every single person in the room is watching you during the lowest point in your life, but it’s just not coming together in a way you like. You’ll run it by Alik later.

Technically, Alik is no longer your editor as a result of your deal with the Yae Publishing House. Still, they’re one of your few friends, and their workload has lightened since your previous publisher terminated all of those other book deals. Now they’re acting as your beta reader before you send off the next draft to the editor at the Yae Publishing House. It’s actually making progress go a lot faster, so much so you might only need one final draft of the whole story before it’s finally published, as opposed to multiple drafts. 

I do not need sight to know everyone in the room is looking at me. I feel it in my broken notes that trail into nothingness. I feel it in the resulting silence. I feel it in the quiet murmur spreading through the room.

I feel tears in my eyes as I drop my head down, praying no one sees me crying. If I could, I would sprint out of the room, out of the palace, so no one is witness to my heartbroken embarrassment. I’d run so fast, the prince would have no time to chase after me. It would be for the best anyways. He deserves his perfect and beautiful bride, and I am no bride, I cannot verify if I am beautiful, and in this moment, I could not feel anymore flawed as a person and human. 

A knock on your door breaks your concentration. You’re dreading whatever is on the other side, but know it’s better to get this over with. 

“Yes?”

The door opens, and your mother pokes her head in through the gap. She offers a smile. “We have company. Come say hi, please.”

“I’m… kind of in the middle of something,” you reply, “and I’ve told you that I’m going to see Alik when I’m done writing.”

“How is she, by the way?”

“They’re fine.”

“And Maria? How’s she?”

“She’s alright, I think. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

“Well, tell them both I say hello. Anyways, if you have a minute, I would like you to come downstairs. There’s someone I’d like you to talk to.”

It takes you a moment to recognize what this is, mostly because it’s been a while since she tried pulling this off. When you realize what’s happening, you just shake your head and look at your mother. “Which family friend is this?”

She gives you a very unconvincing look of confusion. “My dear, what do you mean?”

“Mother, please.”

“... Ana. Anastasia.”

Anastasia is your younger sister Adéla’s friend. Much like your sister, she’s only a year younger than you, but unlike your sister, she actually likes you. Adéla and you have butted heads throughout your lives, as siblings tend to do and especially with such a small age gap, but Adéla has taken it a step further saying that it’s your fault her childhood was so “miserable” as she puts it. She claims that your diagnosis made you the centre of your parents’ attention until your youngest sister was born, and then they focused more on her than Adéla. Conveniently, she’s never had any sisterly drama with her, only you. You feel for her, but there was only so much you could do at the time, seeing as you were eight years old.

“Absolutely not,” you tell your mother.

“But you two got along so well when she would visit,” your mother insists, “and she’s become a fine young lady since the two of you last spoke! Don’t you remember reading together when you two were little?”

“I’m sure she’s beautiful,” you say, “but Adéla will throw a fit if she finds out you set me up with one of her friends.”

“You don’t know that.”

“And I don’t want to find out,” you tell her, “and I told you I don’t like being set up on dates.”

Your mother lets out an exasperated sigh. “I’m just worried about you, okay? I want to make sure my son is happy, healthy, and I want him to find someone he can settle down with. Your brother was already married at your age, and Adéla’s going to be having another baby soon.”

“Yes, but I’m not Pavel or Adéla,” you say, “the dating scene is different for me, and playing matchmaker isn’t going to make me feel any better or help me.”

Your mother just looks at you. That sad, pitiful look you know all too well. It stopped pulling on your heartstrings long ago, but sometimes it’s just easier to indulge her than it is to fight her on it. Besides, she means well, you think, it just can’t be helped that she doesn’t know her son has no interest in women.

You sigh, and stand up, much to your mother’s delight. “I’ll say hi, and that’s it.”

She grins, and she motions for you to follow her.

----

“... and she just happens to be single, too.”

Alik sets their glass down. “Interesting. So when’s the wedding?”

“It’s not happening,” you reply, “thank the Tsaritsa for that.”

“I’m honestly surprised your parents haven’t put you in an arranged marriage yet,” Alik comments.

“How many viable marriage candidates do you think there are that would be thrilled to marry someone who’s not only going blind, but could pass it on to their children as well?”

“Depends on how much the family is getting paid.”

“And it would not be much.”

The tavern is surprisingly quiet tonight. You chalk it up to it being the middle of the work week, not as many patrons willing to get drunk if they have work early in the morning. Currently, you and Alik are sitting at a table in the corner of the room while a few older patrons mill about, chattering on about their own lives at the bar. It’s actually rather nice, you think.

“What would they try to sell your bride to be on?” Alik asks.

“Um…” You look into your half drunk glass, trying to think of something funny. You clear your throat, straighten your posture, and put on your best business smile. “Here’s a fine young man who has no real work skills, and it’s not like they would do him any good since he’s considered legally blind and has between thirteen and fifteen years before he is fully blind. His only profitable skill is writing, though he doesn’t make enough to support a household. His blindness is also genetic!”

“By the Archons, at least say one nice thing about yourself,” Alik teases, though there’s a subtle sincerity to their words.

“I think I’m decent,” you say, “I think I might even make an okay husband, but I don’t think I’d be the kind of husband Pavel or my father are.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” Alik replies, “there are plenty of families and couples where the husband isn’t always a provider. Besides, you’re not really a ladies man to begin with.”

You shake your head. “It’s not even that, it’s just… you know I try not to make a big deal of me going blind, but it’d be naïve of me to pretend that it’s not, and especially if I was in a relationship. Whether I like it or not, whoever I marry is going to inevitably become my caretaker. There will come a day where I’m going to need help, and I’ll rarely be able to return that favour.”

“That’s why it’s in sickness and in health,” Alik comments. They reach across the table and take your hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “For what it’s worth, I think you’d make a good house husband, before and after you start seeing the world how Maria does.”

Maria is Alik’s cousin, and one of your few very close friends. She has been a big help to you in writing your book as her blindness is similar to the main character’s. While he was born blind, she actually had vision when she was born. Unfortunately, she suffered a very severe head injury when she was very young. She has little to no memory of her life before she lost her sight as a result, as well as having some developmental problems growing up. These days she’s doing much better, though her eyesight is still gone. At most, she can detect if there’s light, but that’s the extent of it. 

“Do you have permission to make jokes about her being blind?” you ask.

“I not only have permission, but that’s not even the worst joke I’ve gotten away with.”

“I don’t want to know.”

“For the best.”

Your table goes quiet as you and Alik take a moment to drink. You try not to cringe at the taste of whatever the hell Alik recommended you try. It’s a beer, and you can taste that, but it’s a lot more bitter than you like. Still, they bought it for you, it would be rude to spit it out.

“You don’t have to drink that, you know.”

“It’s an acquired taste, I’ll get used to it.”

You see a smile twitch onto Alik’s lips, and even if they try to hide it, you can see a shit eating grin from miles away. 

“Okay,” you say, “out with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You thought of something terrible, I want to hear it.”

Alik glances around the room, assessing how audible their comment would be. You take a sip of your drink, and they grin.

They lean in. “I’m sure Pantalone would be happy to hear that.”

You immediately sputter, spraying Alik in the face. They yell, swiping at their face as if they were sprayed with acid. You cough as what was left in your mouth goes down the wrong pipe. “Fuck, w-why’d I take a drink–”

“Did you have to spit that in my face?” Alik asks.

“Shut up,” you wheeze out. You give one more hearty cough, your throat and chest burning, and you can breathe again. You sit up, rubbing your chest through your shirt while Alik wipes their face and the table with napkins. You look around, and see the few patrons staring at your table. You painfully chuckle, and turn back to your friend. “S-Sorry, I should know better by now.”

Alik shrugs. “I’m not wrong, am I?”

“I told you that in confidence,” you whisper.

“You actually told me before the tea party,” Alik tells you. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s starting to show in your book.”

You feel your face flush, and you narrow your eyes. “I think I would know if I was writing about him, thank you.”

“The prince was a lot more arrogant in your first drafts,” Alik explains, “but in more recent iterations, it’s been toned down a lot. He’s also a lot more understanding of the musician’s blindness.”

You’re confused. “Well, yes. My first drafts are years old, so I’ve had to make some adjustments to better fit my writing style now. Besides, I’ve read too many stories about asshole love interests that don’t really learn anything, they just get tragic backstories that authors think justify their shitty behaviour. I’m not adding my characters to that pile.”

“No, I agree on that,” Alik says, “but even then, he was still a solid character, arrogance aside. He was just a spoiled prince who had to actually think about other people for the first time in his life. Like he’s never had to deal with someone with a disability, and doesn’t know how else to feel other than annoyed. In the more recent drafts, he still doesn’t know how to deal with it, but he’s a lot more willing to make up for the disrespect, where the old version did it, but complained the whole time. It just so happens that this change happened right when you met him for the first time.”

“That’s… hm.” You take a sip and don’t spit it in Alik’s face. “You’re on the right track, but I don’t think I was writing all of that because of a crush.” You feel your face flush warmer again. “He was a bit of an ass at the party, but since then he’s become one of…” You take a moment to count names on your finger. “... six or seven people that aren’t patronizing about me going blind. I’d just been putting up with most of my family either coddling me or being inconvenienced by me, but he’s a rare instance of someone making accommodations, but not making a big show of it. That’s why the book was like that until I met Pantalone.”

You stare into your glass. “And… a-and it’s why I enjoy his company so much…”

Alik doesn’t say anything. You look up, and you see their expression has softened a little bit. They lift their drink up to you, and you smile and lift yours up.

“Cheers.”

You both take a swig, and somehow the disgusting drink tastes sweeter going down. Your face feels warm, and you wonder why you’re still blushing when you see you’re already halfway through your drink. Alik has a similar glow in their cheeks. 

“That’s really sweet and cute,” Alik says, “but I do have to ask you something.”

You feel whatever warm feelings you’re feeling lessen when Alik’s softened expression gains a hint of concern. Their smile looks awkward by comparison, before they sigh and lose it altogether. You’re already dreading what they’re about to say.

They hesitate for a moment, and when they speak, it’s in a whisper. “Do you like him, or do you like what he’s done for you?”

“W-What?”

“I wouldn’t ask that if we were talking about anyone else,” Alik clarifies, “but I have to ask when it’s him. I don’t want to rain on your parade, I’m happy you like someone, but… he’s a harbinger. One of the more likeable ones, but not without flaws.”

“I know…”

Alik sighs. “Look, if it were some other handsome rich man, I’d say go for it. The fact it’s a harbinger specifically makes me a little worried, I won’t lie.”

You sound like my mother. “It’s a crush, not an engagement,” you tell them. “We enjoy each other’s company while he works with my father and sister. I just enjoy it differently than he does.”

“Still, even as friends, I’d be cautious. If not for what he’d have planned, then for what others might have in store for him.”

You take a swig. “You want to know what’s funny? You’re the first person to bring up his enemies as a point for why I shouldn’t get near him.”

“I am not.”

“No, seriously. My mother doesn’t want me near him because he’ll probably, I don’t know, kill me or sell me or steal my ideas, depends on the day. My father thinks I’ll ruin everything those two have built together, which I still don’t know why Pantalone is working with him.”

“Maybe your dad’s indebted to him or something.”

“...”

Alik notices your silence. They say your name in a soft voice, seeming worried by your expression. Your father’s not in debt, is he? The business isn’t as prosperous as it was when you were little, but job markets change all the time, and the economy is ever fluctuating. It’s purely the result of what happens when a business runs for as long as it does. Sometimes an empire doesn’t crumble, but rather dies slowly.

“Hey, are you okay?”

You snap out of it. “I’m, uh, I’m fine.” You push your seat back and stand. “I’m just, um, I’m going to go to the washroom for a second.”

“... Okay? Just watch yourself.”

“I’ll be fine,” you call out over your shoulder before immediately bumping into someone. Unlike with Pantalone, you actually manage to catch yourself before you fall. You know that Alik is holding their head in their hands, possibly stifling laughter too for a little extra salt in the wound.

“Archons, sorry,” you immediately blurt out, “I didn’t see you there.”

The ginger haired man laughs. “Oh, no worries comrade! Just be more careful next time!”

You stare at the man, eyes widening. His smile grows, almost reaching the dull blue of his eyes.

“Why the surprised face?” he asks jovially.

You sigh and shake your head. “I have got to stop meeting harbingers like this.”

[hetrosjistin]

No you know what, I thought I was done, but I'm not.

The problem with this shit is that it misses the point of having shit like the crows in Thedas at all.

You can't sanetize stuff and have it have the same impact, it's not just the hollowness, it literally reduces the conflict to a nothing burger.

You know why Dorian is, perhaps, one of my FAVORITE goddamn characters in the entire DA game series?

BECAUSE HE LITERALLY HAS TO GO THROUGH DEPROGRAMMING HIMSELF OF HIS RACIST SLAVER CULTURE! It's not enough that he wants to oppose the Venatori and all that nonsense. It's not enough that in inquistion, he literally went to the part of the world where he's taught they ENSLAVE people like him and burn out their brains if they're not good little obedient pet mages.

He goes there because it's right and that doesn't make him magically a perfect and good person. He's STILL flawed, he STILL has the baggage of his culture, and ADDRESSING IT is a constant fucking undercurrent of his dialogue and interactions throughout the game. How he is both proud of everything his civilization, the oldest extant civilization in the world, and horrified by the excesses of it's bad actors, and as time goes on his REALIZATION of how horrific each and every element of it is.

Like, when the Venatori take over minrathos. It's depicted as something ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE but frankly? That implies things were pretty okay before that!

What would ahve been SO MUCH MORE INSIDEOUS, would have been to show how LITTLE things had changed. Oh, have the burned out ruin of the hide out, have a few ventatori guards standing here and there, but now show how ABANDONED AND CALLOUS they all are. They don't -need- to set up a fucking police state, Tevinter already HAS IT IN PLACE. You don't NEED fucktons of venatori guards around docktown.

But by doing it the way they did they robbed so much of the substance of Tevinter from the game.

Like I'm actually on board with some of the changes. The Broodmother thing about the darkspawn was handled just about as well as it was ever going to be handled in Origins, so them all but abandoning them from the lore as time went on is a smart move IMO. Making significant changes to the dark spawn with the blight is a big deal, and a smart move.

But the draining of life from all the rest is unpardonable.

Have the Lord of Fortune -not give a shit- about other people's culture. It's pretty, it's bling, if it was so important why wasn't it better guarded? Why was it so stealable? Have that be a FLAW in their goddamn thing as FUCKING PIRATES.

Have the found family elements of the Crows, have them have a whole blood debt and true contract society thing. Have us confront the fact that if someone fails a contract their life is FUCKING FORFEIT. Play up the whole idea that found family can be JUST as toxic. Play up the idea that these orphans and street kids taken in by a fucking -assassin cult- effectively are molded to SERVE the interests of the nation as members of the 'family'.

I was -so- incredibly happy with inquisition where they CONTRASTED Blackwall so hard with the order at large. The Grey Wardens are a -death cult- created to fight the APOCALYPSE through wrote tradition and absolutely seething loyalty to the idea that they are the thin line against the darkness.

Play that up, show how god awful the anderfels are scoured of life by the blight and still infested with dark spawn. GIVE THE FIRST WARDEN A NAME AND WHY THE FUCK IS THIS GUY IN FUCKING MINRATHOS?! Play up the ENTIRE IDEA of what's wrong with them and contrast it with -our- experience of wardens from, basically, wardens who never actually underwent the indoctrination process.

Someone else on this hellsite said that the longer you think on veilgaurd instead of playing it, the worse it gets and goddamn is that the truth.

Problematic fiction is good because it coaches us through stories on how to fucking DEAL with actual bad things.

By sanitizing your fiction you rob it of it's ability to -teach- the audience any lessons beyond 'bad people bad'.

Why Fenris could Never Cameo in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

In the run up to Dragon age: The Veilguard, I was almost certain that Fenris would be our main legacy character from previous games. Not only has he been central in the comics released between DAI and DATV, he is an escaped Tevinter slave who's plot revolved around magisters, magic and the structural prejudices surrounding elves in Thedas. Not only that, but he's canonically in Tevinter killing slavers currently so he's geographically in the right place for us to meet him.

About halfway through the game though, it was clear to me: Fenris could never cameo in The Veilguard. Because he'd break it.

How the Veilguard treats Thedas is...odd to me, to say the least. I will be writing another post about how much I adored the expanded big lore in this game (the titans, ancient elves were spirits, where the blight came from etc.) and yet while these large lore expansions worked for me, the actual culture of modern Thedas is entirely softened, its sharp edges filed down until it's a sanitised fantasy world devoid of what made the franchise so vibrant and compelling in the first place.

So let's start with Fenris and slavery. In all three games, the reality of slavery is pushing at the corners of the world. In DAO Loghain allows Tevinter Magisters to enslave elves in order to raise money for his war effort. In DA2 Fenris is fighting to be free from slavers who will not leave him be, let alone the reminders that the city was built by slaves which are everywhere. In DAI one of the two possible mini-bosses is Calpurnia who was a slave, and characters such as Gatt and Dorian both show us how much slavery is tied into Tevinters culture and success.

But DATV the first game actually set in Tevinter where we get to see the famed Minrathous...it's like the game purposefully wants to avoid the issue. I can feel it tilting the camera away to not allow me to see. Slavery is mentioned, but never talked about in depth or as a specifically ELVEN problem in Tevinter. This might have been done to be less problematic, it feels ignored.

We are in DOCK TOWN. We are at the DOCKS. You would think that slaves from all over Thedas who are being smuggled and bought by various groups would be everywhere. You would think that the injustice in dock town would be partly built on the back of ships we've seen in the comics crammed with elves in chains. This is the world Dragon age set up for us. And yet...nothing. zilch. A tiny easily skippable side quest where we free a couple of venatori slaves, but only one of whom is an elf.

None of our Tevinter characters seem to have been influenced by their culture even a little bit when it comes to how they view elves; there is no moment when Neve fucks up and says something prejudiced, no moment when Bellara or Davrin are distrustful of her for being a Tevinter mage.

The same goes for Zevran; a character who epitomised the issues with the crows. The crows have consistently been characterised as very morally dubious assassins who kill for the highest bidder and who buy children on the slave market and torture them as they grow in order to assure that they reach maturity able to withstand torture without giving away a client's name. Zevran is very explicit about the fact that if you fail a contract your life is forefit.

Nobody responds particularly to you if you're an elf. Nobody trusts rook less for it in Tevinter. Nobody treats Rook any differently. Even DAI had better mechanics for this; with nobles in Orlais less likely to trust you as an elf.

Considering one of the main plot points of this game and what makes Solas sympathetic is the fact that he was fighting against the slavery of ancient elves...you'd think the game might want to mirror that in modern Thedas. It might want to show us how characters fighting to end slavery in Tevinter are similar to Solas and how the society Solas fought against was similar to the one that characters we love such as Fenris have fought against in modern Thedas. Maybe we'd want to explore how in a world of slavery like this, how could the answer NOT be to tear it all down? Maybe we should have that option at the end of the game so it really can chose whether we agree with Solas and his plans or not.

Adding Fenris to this game would entirely break the game because Fenris refuses to allow you to look away from this horror. He is a sympathetic character who had to learn to trust mages again because of course he didn't trust them. Of course he didn't. Fenris wouldn't allow the camera to shift focus because he's literally covered in the lyrium scars that show how slaves are used as experiments in Tevinter. Fenris WOULD question Neve on how she feels about elves and slaves. Fenris WOULD have things to say about Lucanis and the crows (let alone the fact Lucanis is an abomonation). So he could never be in this game; he'd drop a bomb on it's carefully constructed blinders to the very society its supposed to be set in.

And yet, in DATV, the crows are presented as...a found family of misfits and orphans? The politician who opposes the crows having absolute power in Antiva is framed as a comically evil idiot who doesn't understand that the crows are ontologically good. Yet...they're NOT. Crows in this game act more like a secret rebel group than an assassin organisation. We see no crow taking contracts with the VERY RICH venatori magisters despite being hired killers. We see crows just refuse to kill people despite having a contract because 'its crueler to leave them alive'. The crows don't feel like the crows here, they feel like a softened version of a cool assassin group who are cool because they wear black and purple.

Our pirate group are also sanitised; the Lords of Fortune are good pirates who only steal treasure that's not culturally significant. Theyve clearly read the modern critiques of the British Museum and have decided to explicitly stop anyone levelling similar critiques at them. There is no faction of the Lords of Fortune who aren't like this, no internal arguments about it. Everyone just. Agrees. And is able to accurately tell what a cultural artifact is vs. what treasure that you can have yourself is. Rather than showing us why a pirate stealing cultural artifacts might be bad (like in da2 where such a situation literally causes a coup and a war) it just tells us it's bad. But also pirates are cool so we still want them in our world.

This issue seaps into Thedas and drains it of any of the interesting complexity and ability to SAY anything that this franchise had before this game. It becomes a game about telling and not showing rather than the other way around. The games have ALWAYS asked questions about oppressive structural systems and their interplay with society, religion and culture and how these things can affect even the most well meaning character. Dragon age at its best IS a game about society and how society functions both for and against it's characters and what happens to societies built on cruelty and indifference. The best bad guys dragon age has given us are those who are bad because they embody these systems or have been shaped by them. Our main characters have had to wrestle with questions surrounding how to exist in these systems, fight against them, learn and grow.

Yet every group you come across in DATV is sanitised and cleaned up to the point of being as non problematic as humanly possible. None of our cast of characters have to wrestle with where they came from or the world that shaped them. None of them have to confront their own biases. They start the game perfectly non-problematic and end it that way too.

And this just...isn't what Dragon Age has been in the past. It isn't why I love the franchise. The whole game just felt, in a way, hollow. And this was a CHOICE and it is why the legacy characters are few and far between. Too many dragon age characters are just too...angry and complex for this game. You can feel them pulling their punches on this one. I have to imagine they did this because they didn't want to be criticised or have too much controversy? But I think it honestly goes far too much in the other direction and just makes it bland.

I can't imagine what I say here will be unique, but it is the basis for a LOT of my other thoughts on this game so I wanted to get it out of the way first. The softened Thedas and characters make this game by far the weakest in the franchise.

[casscainmainly]

I know your not really much of a Jason Todd fan but I kinda wanna hear your opinion on this. Is the Bruce Wayne Brainwshing Jason Todd still canon? If so so you think it’s out of character for Bruce to do this.

Also how do you feel about Bruce’s characterization in modern comics in general actually?

Honestly it’s one of the reasons I’m kinda hesitant to read the comics, because while I’m super interested in all the lore- both Batman himself and his family (especially Cassandra she sounds awesome I love characters that show unwavering, intense dedication to compassion)I DONT want to read comics where Bruce is like, a completely awful paranoid asshole with none ofhis redeemable qualities (I got interested in Batman via clips of the JLU/BTAS)And according to a lot of Batman fans his characterization in this respect has been on a downward spiral for years now.

Like I’m not even a “god dad Bruce Wayne” person, I think his actions regarding Stephane Brown make a lot of sense for him actually and play into the effect that Jason Todd’s death has on him well and kinda wanna read me about that outside of fanfiction.

PS.Sorry if this ask is long and kinda random, I know this is mostly a Cassandra Cain blog.

Interesting question!! I'm not an expert on Bruce or Jason, so I'll answer to the best of my knowledge. I'm assuming Bruce brainwashing Jason is a reference to Gotham War, when he injects fear toxin into Jason's brain to make him afraid anytime he experiences adrenaline. I haven't read this so I can't comment too much, but this breakdown is useful if you want context for what led Bruce to this moment; it did happen in an in-continuity comic, so yes, it is (unfortunately) canon.

Some things to note for the context of Gotham War is that Bruce is grappling with Zur-En-Arrh, a sort of second personality. While this doesn't make it good writing, Bruce is not 100% in-character when he injects Jason. Whether or not that absolves him of wrongdoing is questionable, but it's a little unfair to Bruce as a character, and even to Chip Zdarsky as a writer, to think the thing with Jason was meant to be an in-character moment. So while I do think injecting Jason is out of character, that's kind of the point of the arc.

That's not to say the run is well-written. I can't judge myself, but many people dislike this run for numerous reasons. But this is just one of Bruce's modern runs - there are many more amazing Bruce comics out there. Ram V's Detective Comics and Scott Snyder's Absolute Batman are two fantastic takes on Bruce (though the latter is an alternate universe and ongoing, it's so far extremely entertaining!).

There will always be better and worse times for a character's characterisation, and you will encounter some horrible stuff in canon, but you'll find some life-changing stories too. You sound like you genuinely want to delve into comics, so please do! Don't let the risk of reading something bad stop you - there is so much good in here, stories that will make you laugh and cry and stick in your mind forever.

Since you're specifically looking for dad Bruce Wayne stuff, here are some recommendations!

Batgirl (2000): a very nuanced portrayal of Bruce as a dad to Cass. Definitely not a Good Dad Bruce at all, but he genuinely loves her and tries his hardest. 5/10 on the Good Dad Bruce scale.

Tynion's Detective Comics (2016): very good starter comic in general for the Batfam, and Bruce has numerous sweet moments with Tim and Cass (Steph too, if you count her as a kid). 8/10 on the Good Dad Bruce scale.

Robin & Batman (2021): not 100% sure if this is in continuity, but it's 3 issues and a lovely depiction of early Dick and Bruce. Features very realistic mishaps on Bruce's part, but sets up the foundation for a strong, beautiful relationship. 6.5/10 on the Good Dad Bruce scale. (This is also getting a sequel featuring Jason!)

World's Finest: Batman/Superman (2022-): an ongoing series that is pure comic book fun. Robin!Dick features heavily here, and there's some wonderful Batdad moments. 8.5/10 on the Good Dad Bruce scale.

Tom Taylor's Nightwing: probably the best dad Bruce in modern comics, and has very sweet moments with Dick throughout. One big caveat is the characterisation can be off, so I recommend this only in the context of Bruce being a good dad to Dick. 10/10 on the Good Dad Bruce scale.

You also can't go wrong with either Batman and Robin (2011) or (2023), which focus on Damian and Bruce (haven't read either but 2023 in particular seems to have good dad Bruce). Batman & The Signal and Batman & The Outsiders (2019) have great Duke-Bruce moments, while Bruce Wayne: The Road Home: Batgirl is the best Steph-Bruce stuff we'll ever get that isn't wildly out of character. Batman and Robin: Year One is currently coming out for more Robin!Dick and Bruce relationship cuteness and drama.

I hope that answered your ask! I am mostly a Cass blog but I do love to talk about other characters so no need to apologise :)).

[satureja13]

Why Vlad and Ji Ho wear the same sleeping shirts Extended Version - Part 3 Part 1 is -> here, Part 2 is -> here

Jack: "We tried the shirts on. They fit perfectly, but... Sai blamed himself: 'Omg Jack, when something is this cheap, there's always a rub! Oh, why didn't I check back? It's my fault! Vlad will kill us. He's never going to wear such cheesy stuff!' " (Editor's note: Back then it was really problematic with Vlad. He only wore one kind of each piece of clothing and had several of the same pants, shirts, you name it. And everything plain black. Even after two years, he was still mourning the death of his first love, Wesley.) Jack: "But my hyper brain was already a few steps ahead. I had a plan. Sai wasn't convinced it would work, but he played along. Because anything was better than getting killed by Vlad...

And a few hours later, I went to his room - with his new shirt... He was standing in his bathroom, bare-chested and said: 'Oh, if I only had a shirt to wear!' Vlad huffed: "That's certainly not what I'd said. Rather something that I'd kill the one who didn't do the laundry..." Jack: "I did do the laundry! It just went wrong..." Vlad: "What I didn't know that because no one told me and you'd chosen to lie to your best friend - for years!" Jack: "Can I go on now? You can thank me later." Vlad: "I doubt that, but go on already."

Jack: "So I showed Vlad my new shirt: 'Look what I've got! The limited edition Han & Leia shirt!' Vlad: 'I don't know. Doesn't like Star Wars at all. Is it legit?' Jack: 'Sure it is. It's featured on the official website and it's the original label inside!' Because I'd urged Sai into creating a fake site and tore the labels out of my other Star Wars shirts to sew them into the fake ones ö.ö' ... " Vlad felt like he fell into the abyss: "You did - what? Why would you even do that? Just to make me wear a stupid shirt?" Jack: "You will thank me later?" Vlad doesn't even know what to say anymore: "Ach!"

Jack: "I told Vlad I got these shirts for all of us because they are kind of insider Star Wars shirts. And that I even got Sai to wear it because there was nothing screaming 'Star Wars' on it..."

"No one would see us in them anyway and it was kind of showing our love and support for each other after everything we'd been through. And so Vlad eventually agreed to wear it!"

Jack: "And whenever we saw each other wearing those shirts, we'd say 'I love you' and the other repeated 'I know'."

Jeb: "Aouwww! That's sweet." Jack: "Right? *Jack ogled Vlad* One can't be mad at me for bringing us closer together, right?"

Jack: "A few days later, I went over to Ji Ho. We hadn't had the best start together so I gave him the shirt to make it up to him. And told him what we'd say to each other when we met wearing those shirts. To make him feel welcome and a part of us, you know?"

Jack, with a side look at Vlad: "Ji Ho didn't ask nosy questions, like some other people I know. He just put the shirt on and seemed genuinely happy." Ji Ho smiled shyly: "I'm still." Vlad: "I can't believe you even dragged Ji Ho into this madness!" Jack: "You will thank..." Vlad didn't let him finish his sentence: "I warn you!"

Jack just continued with the story: "Ji Ho was very shy back then and he didn't talk much. He went through a lot, like all of us. So I thought we'd practice. I showed him the scenes on youtube and told him about Star Wars."

Jack: "It took me a while to lure him out of his shell, but eventually he got it. Jack: 'Ok, once again for good measure: I love you.' Ji Ho: 'I - I know?' Jack: 'That's how we do it!' "

Jack: "I was glad we'd been able to finally put our first gone-terribly-wrong encounters aside. *Jack shot Vlad a glance* So this shirt already showed it was worth all the troubles."

Jack: "We all know that Ji Ho had been very afraid of Vlad in the beginning and Vlad avoided Ji Ho due to that curse. One evening, Sai, Vlad and me just hung out together in my room, it was late and Vlad was about to leave. We all said our I-love-you's and I-know's and when Vlad opened the door he just spotted the shirt on Ji Ho and he automatically said 'I love you' to Ji Ho."

Jack: "Ji Ho was so startled, he said nothing at first, even though we practised. But eventually he whispered 'I know'."

Jack: "And this is why Ji Ho and Vlad wear the same sleeping shirts for years now!" Vlad: "RUN, Jack!"

And Jack ran.

Skully: "But why do only Ji Ho and Vlad still wear them?" Saiwa: "You must know that Jack and I shipped Vlad and Ji Ho from the very beginning. Vlad had been suffering for two years. Mourning Wesley's death and trying to get over with what happened at the Castle. Finally he showed interest in someone else. So we thought these shirts should be a them-thing ^^' And it became. Vlad continued to wear it even though Jack and I didn't after a while. And Ji Ho too. He didn't even like Star Wars ^^'. Somehow this shirt connected them through all those months when all hope seemed lost they could ever be together one day. *Sai looked after Jack and Vlad and sighed* COME BACK NOW, YOU IDIOTS! THAT MURDEROUS CREATURE IS STILL OUT THERE!" And, as if on command, the creature screeched and rustled in the ventilation shafts again ö.ö' And Vlad and Jack ran back to the bridge...

Jack's story inspired Skully to sing:

'… I wonder how we can survive This romance But in the end if I'm with you I'll take the chance

… Oh, can't you see it, baby? You've got me going crazy

… Wherever you go Whatever you do I will be right here waiting for you Whatever it takes Or how my heart breaks I will be right here waiting for you Waiting for you'

Right here waiting - Richard Marx

Good choice, Skully! Fits so well for the both of them <3

From the Beginning 🔱 Underwater Love 🔱 Latest

Current Chapter: starts ▶️ here Last Chapter: 'Here comes the Sun' from the beginning ▶️ here

📚 Previous Chapters: Chapters: 1-6 ~ 7-12 ~ 13-16 ~ 23-29

[theshiftingwitch]

How do I approach the 3D when persisting? If I know that the 4D is the real reality and the 3D only reflects it, will my manifestations come if I know I have it in the 4D, but I'm still hoping for it in the 3D? Like can I know that I'm in my DR in the 4D and that there is no waiting to get into my DR there because I already am, but since it's impossible to ignore the 3D and as far as I know not necessary, can I still hope for my 3D to change...? But since I am persisting, I know that it will change and I'm relaxed because I know that the 3D is just my old thoughts and that it will change soon into my DR.

I feel like most of LOA bloggers don't specify what should your thought process be when it come to the idea of acknowledging that you haven't shifted yet in the 3D, when it is impossible to not do that. I feel like it's inevitable for me to wake up and be aware of the fact that I still haven't physically shifted and it can't really leave me indifferent, but I can just remind myself that it is okay because I have already shifted in the 4D (which is were it matters and it will happen soon in the 3D). In conclusion:Is it okay to expect the shift in the 3D and know it's done in the 4D?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Hope is a wonderful human emotion. It's the drive that keeps us going. If you're hopeful, you're doing something right.

I never really agreed with the loa community on what to do with the 3d. The general consensus is to ignore it, and while that can be helpful for some, others find it hard. So as long as you're not spiraling in despair and agony, you can do whatever you want.

In this case, gaslight yourself.

What do you mean I haven't shifted? I'm literally in my Dr right now! Can't you see, this is literally my Dr room. I'm confused why you think I haven't shifted? I'm currently in Hogwarts or mystic falls or Los Angeles or Narnia or whatever your Dr may be.

Your subconscious can't see. It doesn't have eyes, it simply believes whatever you tell it.

Lie to it.

Lie through your teeth. Lie till you can't keep up with the lies anymore. Lie until your brain fries off. Just lie. Your conscious mind will be confused for a period of time, but it won't be the first time your senses were wrong, so who says you're not in your dr right now?

It's definitely better than feeling defeated every time you wake up.

Happy shifting ❤️

[dreamsofbroflovski]

Gunslinger!Kyle Broflovski x Reader - lovin' what your lovin' does to me

Also available on ao3!

Summary: You and your partner, Kyle Broflovski, are both gunslingers, roaming the United States on horseback looking for fights to pick and bounties to collect. But when the promise of a better life becomes clearer on your horizon, can you really go for it, change everything you know and take roots for the first time in your life? You find out in the best way possible.

Warnings: Wild West AU, Explicit Sexual Content, Explicit Language, Cunnilingus, Vaginal Fingering, Mating Press, Breeding, Impregnation, Mentions of Pregnancy, Period-Typical Sexism

A/N: There it is. My however-many-thousand-words-long tribute to one of my favourite gingers.

Fun fact, I'm actually as childfree as they go. Got a whole list in my brain of reasons why I really shouldn't have kids. However, if a certain ginger jew from Jersey knocked at my door asking me to be the mother of his babies, I'd just ask "how many?" and get right to fucking work on that.

If some parts of it sound weird, I really did write this instead of sleeping because I wanted it up ASAP and it's crazy.

“Look alive, my dear. We’ve arrived.”

I was jolted out of my thoughts by the gentle voice of my partner.

It was nearing the middle of summer and I was really feeling the dog days. The sun showed me no mercy as it tried to set ablaze what little skin I had showing to the world, which was basically just my unprotected arms. I had been on horseback since dawn without even mentioning a break, and hadn’t exactly considered that the weather at 4am, before sunrise, might’ve been slightly different from what I was currently experiencing now that the sun was at its peak in the sky.

I guess the only salvation when it came to my foolishness was that I wasn’t alone in it. As I turned to the man at my side, matching my horse’s slow speed on his own mount, I saw him wipe some sweat off of his face with the green bandana he kept tied to his neck - being tortured by the heat even more than me, inside of his heavy leather coat.

My partner. My lover, Kyle Broflovski. Notorious gun-for-hire, same as I. We had met many years ago, when he and I were both just seventeen - but life had already taken its toll on the both of us, leaving nothing except two jaded young adults with very little to lose. By then we were already gunslingers, I was here and there committing petty thefts while he worked as a watchman for some merchant in the region. I took his side in a saloon fight that turned into a huge shootout - not proud to say a huge part of its escalation was his fault, but well, at least we won - and the thrill of going through a life-or-death situation together might’ve created a bond between us right at that moment, because from then on we rarely left each other’s side.

We started out merely as colleagues, but feelings quickly grew, and how wouldn’t they? He was handsome, intelligent, kind, honorable and great in bed. Everything a woman would want, if she ignored the ‘outlaw’ part, which I wouldn’t and didn’t even want to. Now, eight or nine years later, we still roamed this godforsaken country together - making money by offering protection services to basically anyone who needed bodyguards or an extra pair of shooters defending their property, and also by tracking wanted criminals and delivering their filthy bodies to the law enforcers looking for them; sometimes living, sometimes dead. Sometimes it felt like he kind of preferred it as the latter.

But as he looked back at me and I allowed myself to get lost in his shining eyes and jovial smile, it dawned on me that, at least for now, that was gone. We were on vacation, so to speak. For the last couple of weeks we had been on the road almost non-stop, all so that we could make it to our destination as quickly as possible. 

Today’s leg of the trip had been rather quiet, save for the occasional snorting of one of our horses, but I liked it that way. After so many years with Kyle, I had come to enjoy even those moments of silence: we talked so much every single day, but even when we didn’t say anything I still felt comfort in just being by his side.

Plus, it had been the first time in a while that we managed to just not have to say anything. For the last year or so, we hadn’t been running by ourselves, instead making use of the connection and safety of a small group with other outlaws. Life with them was decent - we didn’t exactly love each other or keep any type of code, but we’d help wherever we could to make sure everyone’s lives were running smoothly. But it was very clear that my true loyalty was only to Kyle, and his to me. 

So, when about nine months in he started to become visibly bothered and complain more, unhappy about having to set up shelter right next to people he didn’t exactly trust, we started planning our exit. We were used to it just being the two of us anyway, so there were no worries, we just had to plan the exit in a way that wouldn’t create a fuss. The opportunity came in the best way possible - a few weeks after our first talk of leaving, Kyle picked up at the post office a letter from his best friend, Stan Marsh, inviting us to go to his farm just one or two states away for a few days' stay. We left camp at night, after everyone was already asleep, and set out on this trip to meet up with the people we were most likely to actually consider family.

Kyle and Stan had known each other since before even being born, one could say. Randy Marsh and Gerald Broflovski were very close friends as children, though they followed very different paths in life: while my partner’s father took to the books and became a lawyer, the Marsh patriarch bought a plot of land not too far from the small mountain town where they lived and built a small but sturdy farm, which expanded over the years and made decent money. It was called Tegridy - apparently, it was supposed to be “Integrity”, a word Mr. Broflovski taught Mr. Marsh, but the latter didn’t really know how to write it; and, by the time he finally learned, it was already too late and the whole region already knew it by the wrong name, so it stuck.

And that’s how Kyle and Stan grew up: kept close as can be from the very start. Mr. Broflovski would take his family to the farmstead whenever he found a little free time and the boys spent their afternoons playing in the open fields, fishing in the stream nearby and helping Mr. Marsh with tasks around the farm once they became old enough. They saw each other turn from dim-witted boys to respectable young men, and the world seemed infinite for them, bright-eyed adolescents who could experience all the great things life had to offer without shouldering any of its burdens.

Unfortunately, just a few weeks before Kyle turned sixteen, his whole family was taken from him in a violent gang attack, caught in an ambush on the wagon they were riding while coming back from a trip, stripped of every valuable they had on hand and then shot dead. My partner wasn’t present at the time of the crime, so he was spared - something that he struggled with the guilt of for many years, and that was his primary motivation for becoming a vigilante: going after criminals just like those who wronged his family, to take them to justice and, more importantly, making sure their sentences were served. 

When Kyle showed up at Stan’s doorstep for what would be his last conversation as a man without blood in his hands, it took a lot of arguing and convincing from Kyle for his friend to not immediately pack his bags, saddle up and ride alongside him. Stan eventually relented, settled for receiving Kyle’s letters and some rare visits, took over the farm and married a lovely young woman named Wendy Testaburger.

A lovely young woman who, turns out, hated Kyle and I’s guts fiercely. She came from a well-off household and left a comfortable life to be with Stan, so I guess having a pair of shabby gunslingers as the closest friends of her new family didn’t sit right with how she was raised. It also didn’t help that, every time we were around, Stan would drop everything he was doing and stick to us like a tick to a dog’s fur, asking Kyle non-stop about everything we were up to and making us fill him in on every single chase and shootout and bounty delivered, without leaving any stone unturned. His interest in the life was very noticeable, even if he tried to deny it during the multiple arguments we heard him have with Wendy when they thought we were sleeping. The new Mrs. Marsh was absolutely terrified that our constant presence would have a bigger impact on him the longer we stayed, and that someday our wicked ways would win Stan over and he’d ride off into the sunset with us and make her a widow - or, worse in her mind, a divorcée.

Her worries only waned after a particularly long stretch of time we spent at their place. Kyle had gotten badly injured in a shootout against one of our bounties - and, although my quick thinking managed to stabilize the situation to where he was no longer in danger, we still needed to lay low for a while as he healed, and sleeping on the dirt in tents moving from place to place was not it. So I found ourselves a wagon and showed up unannounced to the Marsh residence with Kyle and all of our belongings loaded on it. 

My guess is seeing the dangers of the job in real time and how precarious our day-to-day life really was had been a wake-up call to Stan, since after that his begging for me and Kyle to retell our epic stories had diminished considerably. With this, Wendy was finally able to rest assured that she’d keep her husband, and she was willing to get to know us better and have actual positive interactions. At least something good came out of that whole mess - to this day, Kyle’s left shoulder didn’t work as good as it used to, and he still felt this overwhelming pain at random times.

That is all to say the four of us had a very strong bond forged through years of experiences together, delights and torments shared - a bond that would never waiver even when Kyle and I were on the other side of the country cleaning up the trash and delivering bounties around the most different jurisdictions. So, when we received that letter with Stan and Wendy scolding us because we hadn’t seen them since before the lady got pregnant with their fourth and urging us to come back to Colorado for she was now on the last leg of that pregnancy, we figured it was the least we could do to pack our stuff and ride to Tegridy Farm to spend a few weeks with the Marsh family, helping wherever they needed to make sure that these last couple of days, or the few right after childbirth, would go as smoothly as possible.

It had been about two or three weeks that we had been on the road now and we were finally at our destination. To my side, the very familiar farm spanned across the land, its decent area determined by some flimsy wooden fences in need of fixing. The structures and inside the boundaries of the fence for the most part didn’t match its state of neglect; the cultivation fields with the seasonal crops were well-kempt, the stables and barn had a regular repair schedule, and the main house - the crown jewel of the property - stood elegant in the middle of it all, always clean and pristine courtesy of Wendy’s presence. The only other thing that might’ve seemed neglected in the farm was but a shadow behind the main building - the old house where Stan had lived during his childhood, which hadn’t been inhabited since his mother died, but that he also didn’t seem to have the courage or time to take down completely. 

As we crossed the wooden gateways and made our way inside the farm, the first member of the Marsh family to notice our arrival was actually their elderly chubby dog, Sparky. Stan originally bought him as a puppy to train so he would protect the animals and the land from intruders, but he quickly realized that this dog was a huge wimp and just wanted to play all day, promptly fleeing whenever he sensed danger. However, everyone had already taken a liking to the tiny fellow by then, so he became Wendy and Stan’s personal companion, sleeping inside of the main house and growing up alongside the kids as their pet. When he saw the outlines of us on top of our mounts riding towards the building, he started barking happily and ran as fast as his legs could take him, making a turn when he got to our horses and matching their pace alongside Kyle’s.

His barking must’ve alerted the other members of the household, since not long after he started, we noticed Stan getting up off his chair on the porch. “And look who’s finally here!” He announced as he walked towards us with open arms and, not long after, we saw Wendy’s smiling face appear in one of the second-story windows, her hand waving excitedly out of it as we approached in our steeds.

“Oh, come on, we didn’t take that long.” Though he had essentially just been scolded, Kyle had a glowing smile on his face. Just this moment made almost all the tiring parts of travel worth it, to see how glad my partner would get to see his brother after so long and realize that nothing had changed. To have those moments of his youth back, even if for just a short stay.

“Almost a whole year, Kyle!” Stan retorted, slapping the side of his friend’s arm with his raised hand. “Wait a little more and you might as well have come for the kid’s wedding by then.”

Our mounts slowed to a stop as we reached the front porch, and we heard the thundering noise of several footsteps bolting down the stairs inside. Before we could even dismount, the smiling faces of Stan’s two eldest children - a boy and a girl - ran towards our horses, shouting excitedly and asking questions too quickly and with too high-pitched voices for me to even begin answering them.

“Easy now, children.” A much more soft and pleasant voice managed to be picked up by my ears among the ruckus, and my eyes darted towards the door immediately. Wendy Marsh stood by the doorway, her current youngest child - just shy of two years, if I had my math right - hiding behind her legs. My best friend had one of her hands resting on top of her belly, bump visible even under the loose-fitting maternity dress she wore, and I felt the guilt strike at me on sight; It had been too long since we last saw these two, she had gone through all those changes to her body and mind across multiple months, while I was off somewhere shooting people. I felt like an awful friend.

And then she did something that reminded me exactly how she was more than capable of handling this situation by herself. “YOU DARNED LITTLE RASCALS! SHUT UP THIS INSTANT AND LET YOUR AUNT AND UNCLE SPEAK!” This bellowing, infuriated version of Wendy’s voice had the kids fixing their postures and closing their mouths in an instant, not even daring to breathe loudly anymore, and they gave us one last glance before sprinting back quickly inside the house. The toddler followed suit, waddling after its siblings as fast as its tiny legs could carry it.

With the coast now clear, Kyle quickly slid off of his horse, in a swift movement that only comes with years of doing that multiple times a day. I stayed on top of mine, however, and right after dismounting Kyle made his way to the side of my steed, raising his arms towards me. I turned my whole body to his side and let Kyle take hold of my waist, lifting me off the saddle and putting me on the ground with ease. I was more than perfectly capable of getting out on my own, I had as much experience with this as he did - but this was something he fancied doing, he wanted to be a gentleman whenever he could and there weren’t many opportunities in our daily life for him to fill that role, so he loved to have that little moment and I learned to appreciate it. Plus, he’d get fussy if I didn’t let him do it, so I humored him every single time.

“C’mon, Wends, no need for that,” I turned to her as my boots hit the dirt, “Stan’s right, it’s been so long. They’re kids, they’re just happy to see us.”

“Well, but they’re not giving you a hug before I do!” And she didn’t have to wait any longer, wrapping her arms tightly around me as soon as Kyle let go of my waist and moved his body out of the way. I hugged her back carefully, trying not to put any pressure on her belly, something that she didn’t seem a lick concerned about but kind of worried me a little bit. I heard my partner’s boots kicking the pebbles beneath its soles as he power walked towards Stan to give him a hug as well - although in their case it was more of a side hug, slapping the palm of their hands against the other’s backs amidst laughter. The type of salute men usually shared, not as tender as the displays of friendship between us women, but just as heartfelt. 

After a minute or two like this, Wendy let go of me and gave me one last warm smile before going over to Kyle and giving him a quick hug, and I took the opportunity to do the same to Stan. Even if we weren’t as close as him and Kyle, he was still like family to me. We didn’t linger on the greeting, though; My best friend could get quite possessive when other women were near her man, even if it was just me, and I wasn’t gonna make that lady angry if I could avoid it. 

I swiftly took my spot next to Kyle again, and Wendy did the same near Stan.  “You’re looking gorgeous, Wends,” I stated with a smile. “Really glowing!”

“(Y/N)’s right. Baby number four, too! Stan, you must be proud!” Kyle stretched his arm out and placed his hand on Stan’s shoulder, shaking him teasingly. Stan just laughed and shoved his friend’s hand away from him, but when he straightened his stance again, his chest seemed a little more out than usual and his chin a little more high up. With his pride visible like this, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a rooster, or a peacock with its feathers all spread out.

“Thank you so much, you two. You’re really sweet,” Wendy wrapped her arms around her husband, hugging him from the side, face as happy as could possibly be - but then those smiles turned into a pout. “But don’t think being sweet is going to redeem you! You’ve barely written to us these months! We’ve been worried sick!” 

“Good thing we’re here now to tell you all about what we didn’t write,” Kyle said as he walked back near our steeds. ”Just let me hitch the horses somewhere out of the sun. I won’t be long.”

“No need.” Before we could take action, Stan quickly put two fingers to his mouth and whistled loudly, catching the attention of a nearby farmhand passing through, who stopped in his tracks and beelined to us. It was a young man, couldn’t be older than eighteen, with tanned skin from the hours under the sun, strong arms and a serious expression. “Oi, Milton. Take these horses here, lead them to the stables with the others and give them some water. Ah, and make sure they’re fed, they’ve been hours on the road.”

Milton gave a quick nod and took our horses by the reins, leading them slowly towards a big building to the left of the house. We followed him with our eyes for a couple of seconds, in silence. “Well, anyway, let’s take this conversation inside as well,” Wendy suggested, gesturing with her arm towards the house, her expression softening. “I’m sure y’all don’t want to wait out in this sun any more than the horses did.”

And she was damn right. We excused ourselves in and went through the doorway, sighing in relief as we found ourselves in the shade at last. “No issues on the travel, I assume?” She asked with a smile as Kyle took his hat off and put it in the hanger next to Stan’s.

“Just a tiny quarrel with the sheriff last town back, nothin’ major.” It had actually been a little bit more than that, but we didn’t want to worry our friends. The sheriff, an extremely unpleasant fellow who spent more of his time harassing the local ‘working girls’ than actually doing his job, seemed to have a real problem when people who actually wanted to stop crime came along. So, when we showed up to the town with a local thief tied up on the back of Kyle’s horse - captured in an extremely convenient encounter nearby - the so-called law enforcer decided we were ‘trying to come for his position’ and threw the tantrum of a lifetime looking for any reason to have us arrested. Luckily no guns were drawn, we left as quickly as we arrived, but the stress of the whole situation still stuck to us for a couple miles after that.

“Fuuuuck, I hate that feller. Please tell me you beat his ass.” Though Stan apparently had tried to make his dislike of the sheriff known only to Kyle, he did so in a rather loud tone, which made us all turn to him. “Short fat motherfucker loves to pull on my dick whenever I’m in town for anything. Pisses Wendy off, too. Damn failed abortion is what he is.”

“Language, Stanley!” Wendy chided, glaring at him. We heard a couple of giggles, quickly suppressed, and I turned my face upwards - on the second floor, leaning on the balustrade near the staircase, the children gathered, looking down at us and listening in on our conversation.

Kyle and I could only bend over ourselves laughing as the heavily pregnant Wendy chased upstairs, going after her much faster children to try and give them a thorough scolding as they yelled out their brand new vocabulary, while Stan made sure to quickly leave the scene so as to make it harder for himself to be next.

Oh to live this life on the daily.

༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚𓆩♡𓆪༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚

The rest of the afternoon went by without any issues. Kyle and I managed to take our first proper bath in days, which was extremely appreciated, and then our attention was almost immediately snatched by the Marsh children. My guess was they didn’t get many visitors on the farm, at least not many that were interested in hearing what small kids have to say, so now that they had people to talk to they were sure to teach us all the new things they had learned and play lots of different games with uncle and auntie.

With evening approaching, Wendy prepared some roast beef with mashed potatoes and fried red tomatoes with garlic, along with a whole apple pie for dessert - under the pretext that since guests were over they had the obligation of making more food to be sure we wouldn’t starve, and maybe spend a little more on the process. She knew Kyle and I would be fine with whatever she prepared, her cooking was so good she could probably boil tree bark on her stove and make it the best meal we ever had, so I knew the sizeable dinner was more a satisfaction of her pregnant whims. We all ate until we almost couldn’t fit in our pants anymore, and after the couple put their kids to bed, Stan brought out a nicer wine and we chatted our more mature matters well into the night. 

After a while, Stan and Kyle decided to go out for a smoke and a night walk around the property, leaving me and Wendy to clean up the dinner mess so that we could ‘talk about our feminine issues’, whatever that meant. So we picked up the dirty tableware and took everything to the kitchen, where she had previously set up two buckets - one with warm water and soap, one with clean water - for the dishes.

After we set everything on the counter and she tried taking another step going for the filled buckets, I immediately put my body in front of her, blocking her next steps. “No no no, little mama!”, I declared, putting both my hands on Wendy’s shoulders and pushing her slowly towards the smaller table in the kitchen, which they used for breakfast. “You’ve already done too much today and been on your feet all this time. Now it’s my turn.”

She tried huffing, stomping her foot and going around me, but my grip on her shoulders was strong enough that she couldn’t, so she bitterly relented and took a seat on one of the flimsy brown chairs near the table. “I’m pregnant, not disabled”, I heard her snort behind my back as I finally let go of her and turned towards the pile of dirty dishes.

“I know, I know,” was my reply while I picked up the first dirty plate and dunked it into the soapy water. “But you made this whole dinner for us and it was delicious, Wends. Lemme do this for you, will ya?”

“You helped with the fried tomatoes,” she retorted.

“Sure, but I’m not the one with a whole baby inside me.”

She giggled. “Not yet.”

My hand stopped in the air halfway through grabbing a dirty wine glass. “Come again?” I inquired as I turned to her with raised eyebrows.

“You tell me, (Y/N)! Ever since before I met you you’ve been running from place to place shooting people for money. Don’t you think it’s time you and Kyle settled down, bought a house somewhere? Maybe you two could even get married and finally stop living in sin.”

Her comment had me rolling my eyes, but I still let out a chuckle; the Marshs weren’t all that religious by any means, and Wendy was a particularly outspoken proponent of women’s right to choose how they wanted to live, so I knew she was just taking a jab. “You have no right to use that against me, miss,” I pointed a soapy wet index finger at her, “Not when I know all about what you and Stanley were up to before your daddy let you get hitched.” It was true and she knew it. After we finally became close friends, I was Wendy’s main confidant, and she’d told me all about her relationship to Stan prior to the marriage - tales in great detail about the different places where they met and spent the night together in secret when they were younger. They had lived basically a whole second relationship together away from prying eyes, and the only people who knew about it were within the same mile radius right now.

Hearing this, she smirked and lifted her left hand close to her face, so I could clearly see the back, and I knew then and there that she’d had the last laugh. “And it worked.” With her other hand, she pointed towards her left ring finger, and there was no pretending I hadn’t noticed the shiny golden wedding band she always kept polished to perfection.

Although we had been partnered all those years and were as close as two souls can be, legally Kyle and I weren’t married. We reckoned there was no need, we already spent every single moment together, putting ourselves in danger for each other during the day and sleeping in the same tent at night. Take away the expensive ceremony and we’re husband and wife. Plus, weddings were usually very religious affairs, and not only were we both very distant from that reality, there was also the tiny fact that we were well-known gunslingers (no matter how lawful we thought ourselves to be, killing someone, even a criminal, is still a cardinal sin) and I’m sure your usual religious leaders aren’t willing to officiate for people like that.

And then there was the matter of children. I had always wanted them, it was one of my plans for life, but I had pushed that aside the moment I picked up a gun for the first time. Kyle and I didn’t keep residence on the same spot for too long - we’d lived places, worked for people for a while, but nowhere that we could actually safely stay for years on end. Our normal life was that of setting camp everywhere, to avoid being tracked by any enemies we made along the way, having to move extremely quickly - and sometimes even that wouldn’t be enough and we’d have to face conflict head-on. We could never do that with a child in our arms, it would be a recipe for disaster. Besides, with my age, I just felt too old for them at this point; all the mothers my age had their kids way earlier and it felt weird to start now, like I wouldn’t have anything in common with them. That ship had sailed.

I knew all of that and I was alright with it. My love for Kyle didn’t need no overpriced dress or ring to be real, and we didn’t need kids to have a real family. Hell, so many couples go through that whole song and dance of getting married only to end up cheating and abusing each other beyond belief! If that’s what marriage is, then I don’t want any part of it, thank you very much. We were doing fine. 

So it was the little girl inside of me that felt that little stab of jealousy seeing Wendy’s shiny jewelry and huge belly - the little girl that did grow up flipping through wedding catalogs to see the pretty dresses, that spent her childhood thinking of the names she’d give for her future children and hearing stories about young ladies who met their Prince Charmings and lived their happily ever after, before life took its turns and made her into a killer. This little girl would’ve loved to have a house and kids, and would’ve taken Wendy’s offer in half a heartbeat, but she didn’t have the right to live anymore. 

So as it came, it went. I went back to the dishes, acting like this conversation hadn’t affected me any more than our other casual chats during the day. “Wendy, we can’t,” I said as I splashed a handful of forks inside of the now cold water, “We’re gunslingers, in case you forgot. We don’t have a house like you and Stan do. Ya think a child should grow up living like we do? That ain’t fair.”

I heard the drag of her chair as she got up from it and moved towards me, but before I could turn to tell her to sit down again, she had already closed the distance between us with very quick steps. “You don’t have to live like you do.” She grabbed my right hand between hers and looked me in the eyes in a way that seemed almost like she was pleading. “We told you already. There’s the old house in the back you can take, it just needs some fixing up, Stan would be glad to do it. The kids love having you around, you can help care for them and if you have some we can help too, they can grow up together-”

“Wendy, we’re not gonna live on your farm!”, I interjected before she could go any further in her crazy rambles. Rambles that it wasn’t my first time hearing about - both in letters and in person, she’d sometimes go on about how we should create roots and start a family somewhere nice, while underlining how the farm had all this space and needed more workers and the kids could use a few more friends… “This is y’all’s house. We ain’t gonna impose on your life like that.” I wriggled my hand away from hers. ”And gunslingin’s our job, it’s all we know to do. We wouldn’t know how to live like you do. So just drop it, please.”

She patted her now free hand against her dress to dry it and didn’t seem to want to look at me anymore. “The beauty of being alive is that you can learn.” I heard her say meekly, which made me feel extremely bad that I had been so firm with her when she was so excited about her ideas - but I didn’t want to give her hope, or rather, give myself more hope by listening to her.

I reached to pick up another dirty dish from the pile, but my hand grabbed at nothing. While giving Wendy’s babbles my undivided attention, I had mechanically done all of the washing, now everything just needed to be dried and put away. But, as I stretched my arm out to grab a clean dish towel, it was her time to stop me in my tracks. “I’ll take it from here.” She declared as she reached for the rag before I could and snatched it out of my range. When she heard me gasp and scramble for a rebuttal, she added: “No buts, you must be tired, y’all were on the road all morning and then the kids were also a handful. You’re done for the night.”

“I ain’t going to bed anyway,” I noted, “If you want me to do nothing then I’ll stay here with you ‘till you’re done.”

“Don’t worry about me. It’ll be quick, I’ll dry this all off, and then I’ll go out to call the dog back inside anyway, might as well give the men a shout to come to bed too.” She shrugged as she picked up a wet plate.

I honestly wanted to argue a bit more and not leave her alone like that, but my aching back was very interested in what she suggested - I had spent my whole morning on the back of a horse and then the whole afternoon chasing after zippy children. I sighed in defeat and nodded, earning from her an earnest smile. “Very well then, but tomorrow everything’s on me. Don’t wanna see you up and about before noon, understood? Good night.”

I turned on my heels to leave, hearing her giggle behind me. “Sure thing, (Y/N).” I started walking out of the kitchen, but just then she uttered: “Just… Think about what I said, alright? Good night.”

I looked back over my shoulder to see if she was going to say or do anything else, but her back was already turned to me, as she stared at the window above the counter, watching over her property.

I suppose I ended up doing what she last told me to do in the end, because our little chat really stuck with me through the next minutes.

༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚𓆩♡𓆪༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚

Even after all the time I spent getting myself prepped for bed, Kyle still hadn’t returned by the time I was done with it. So I picked up a book from Wendy’s collection - reading was one of her main hobbies, growing up educated as she was, and she kept it up even after moving to the farm - and cozied up under the blanket of the guest room bed. I was happy to have something different to read this time; Kyle and I had a couple books with us, we liked to read whenever we had the free time, but it’s God awful having too many things when you’re always moving from place to place, so we kept our assortment to a minimum. Turns out it’s very easy to get annoyed at a book when it’s the only one you ever read, and those I had in my bag were starting to become a real eyesore.

This one I had in my hand I’d never seen before, but the cover was nice enough and the summary got me on its hook, so I was pretty intrigued. It was this fictional story about an outlaw who got diagnosed with a terminal disease and spent the rest of his life trying to atone for his sinful deeds, while also uncovering some truths about the people he was most close to. Without even realizing, even during the first paragraphs, I had grown attached to the main character - his sorrow as he looks back at what he managed to do with his life, when he remembers all the bad things he has done that brought him to his current situation, and the way he tries to change and make the lives of those he loves as easy as possible with the time he has left. 

It put me into deep thought rather fast. That character managed to change everything about his life, his core beliefs and priorities, when faced with the inevitability of death. He didn’t think he could, in his mind he was doomed to be nothing more than the sins he committed, and to pay for them when the time came for that - but, although he didn’t manage to live the happily ever after everyone wants out of life, he still managed to protect those he loved and leave an everlasting mark on the people around him.

‘The beauty of being alive is that you can learn,’ Wendy’s voice echoed in my mind again, teasing me with promises of a better life. Maybe it wasn’t too late for me and Kyle to change. We had something most others in our line of work didn’t have the luxury of - we had people willing to help us. But then again, did Kyle and I want to be helped? We had never considered such an option besides drunkenly debating those hypotheticals every once in a blue moon. It was possible that he didn’t even want something like this, and I’d rather bite my tongue out and never speak again than do so and lose him forever over it.

The sudden squeak of the ancient guest room door opening shoved me right out of the depths of my brain into the real world. Kyle was back from his long walk, whistling absentmindedly some random tune he probably picked up at a saloon. The rather acid stench that usually accompanied someone who had just smoked didn’t enter alongside him, and that I was glad for; He had obviously taken the time to air himself out and get all the smell out of his body before coming back in. I wondered if Stan had the same care towards his pregnant wife. “Sorry I took so long, Stan just wanted to show me the new horses and we ended up going for a ride on them.”

“No problem. I found myself something to do anyway.” I closed the book in my lap and lifted it briefly to show him the cover, before setting it on the nightstand, as far as I could from the candle that was also on top of it.

“You’ve gotta tell me what this one is about later.” He sat down on the narrow bench in front of the bed and began taking off his boots. “Did you and Wendy have fun together?”

“Sure thing, it was real nice”, I answered, “Lotsa great talking about our feminine issues and stuff. What about you, macho man?”

My voice carried a hint of sarcasm that he picked up on immediately. He turned his body slightly so he could look at me. “Sorry about that, I guess.” He rolled his eyes. “But you know you and Wendy don’t have the same kind of conversations Stan and I do. That’s what we meant.”

“I know, I know, I’m just playing with ya.” The reassurance that I wasn’t actually mad at him or his friend for the earlier comment made him relax a little. He turned his back to me again and started unbuttoning his shirt as I kept talking. “We really had a nice talk, her and I. It feels so good to be back here.”

“You don’t know how happy I am to hear that. Let’s make the most of the next days then.”

As he got up from the bench to remove his pants, I took the opportunity to take a good look at his body. Kyle had a very lean build, it was quite hard for him to gain weight and build those big muscles some other guys had, but he was by no means weak; doing stuff at camp, handling bandits to bring them to jail and the exercise it all took made him a very fit guy who could stand his ground even without a gun. He was also quite pale, at least for someone who spent almost all his time outside, and had plenty of freckles peppered all around his soft skin. I remembered Milton again, the farmhand Stan hired, and wondered if working on a farm every day under the sun would make Kyle look like that too - I hoped not, I loved my partner the way he was, didn’t want him to change a thing. But I knew it wouldn’t: After many summers together, the only thing I ever saw the sun do to Kyle was make him redder than a tomato all over, and his skin would usually start peeling a day or two later, which was why he preferred to wear long sleeved shirts even in the hotter months.  

There they were, the thoughts of being on the farm again. I blinked and focused my blurry eyes on Kyle again. He had stopped undressing. “Everything alright, honey?”, he inquired, looking at me with a frown.

“Ya, it’s nothin’. Just thinkin’ ‘bout how handsome my man is ‘s all.”, I was quick to answer. He shook his head with a smirk and, without answering, went back to taking off his undergarments.

When he was fully in the nude, he made his way towards the bed, not bothering to put on any sort of sleepwear. In that, he matched me - besides the bedding, there was nothing covering my body. This was normal for us: there was literally no part of our bodies that the other hadn’t seen, so why bother hiding anything? Besides, it made everything so much easier when we didn’t have to spend time ridding ourselves of all that fabric before making love. It had made for some embarrassing situations in the past, where we had to jump straight out of our beds, guns drawn, prepared for trouble; but, no matter how much we told ourselves that we really needed to stop being lazy and start wearing our pajamas, we’d still lay down the next night in our birthday suits, because there was no shame anyone else could make us feel that was more important than the feeling of his warm skin against mine.

“But you wanna know what’s funny?” Kyle commented as he pulled up the covers on the right side of the bed to lay down beside me, “Stan asked me again what I thought of the old house. Said this time we’re not getting away.”

Him bringing this up came as a shock - my eyes widened and I felt a cold shiver run down my spine. Was this man a seer or something? How come he knew to bring up exactly the thing that was eating at my mind the whole night?

I managed to keep my cool and let out a laugh that might’ve sounded a bit too loud for comfort. “Wendy did the same thing to me!”, I yelped, “The way they talk about this with us you’d think they were tryna sell us the farm.”

“They really want us to move in.” He let out a deep exhale as his head hit the feather pillow after a whole day with very little rest. “And he did say Wendy would talk to you and have you hooked on it. That by the end of the year you’d have ‘a bun in the oven’ and I’d finally know the joys of being a father.”

“I’m sure it was just the wine talking. You know Stan’s a major lightweight.” Again with my deflecting. The truth was I didn’t want to give away that Wendy’s suggestions were slowly building a nest in my heart, because I knew it couldn’t stay. Maybe joking around a bit with Kyle would remind me of the situation we were in, that this idyllic little house life we led was only temporary, and that we were bound to go back on the road after a few days, in search of more work. All I couldn’t do was make my current interest too overt, and I would forget about it just fine.

“Eh, I don’t know… He seemed pretty serious to me. Not like he does when he’s drunk, and I’d know that.” He turned on his side, facing me, and I could see the reflection of my candle’s flame dancing inside his olive eyes as he stared intently. Either he was really captivated by it, or he didn’t want to look at me for some reason, and that made me even more worried. He stayed like this for a couple of minutes, during which the room fell to almost complete silence, only broken by the crickets outside or the occasional cackling of the tiny flame. “And… What did you think?” Kyle finally asked, lifting his face toward me, studying my features just in case they gave a different answer than the one that would come from my mouth. “About what Wendy said, I mean.”

“Hey, now, what I thought doesn’t matter.” It was now my turn to look away and stare at the flame, wanting to just blow it out and dunk the room in darkness, all to not continue this conversation. “You know it’s just silly daydreams she has. They don’t get out as often as they used to, with the children and whatnot, so she stays inside and comes up with stuff like this.”

Kyle rapidly sat himself up in the bed and cupped my face in his hands, turning it so that we could finally be looking at each other. “You know your thoughts are the only ones that matter to me.” He stated firmly, gazing into my eyes with even more certainty than that which he had in his voice. “I don’t care about what Stan or Wendy want. But if you have something to say, you have my full attention, no matter what it is.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, bringing my right hand up and resting it on top of his. It was fine. I knew I couldn’t just lie to Kyle here, he’d figure me out. And, with all his brains, surely he could come up with a logical explanation for my troubles and help me see the most sensible path. “Look, I’m sure they mean well and it’s such a pretty idea”, I started, “I’d love to do that if our lives were different. But as it is it wouldn’t stick, honey. There’s no point in pretendin’.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

I expected all sorts of reactions from Kyle, but not this one. His hand withdrew from my face as he pulled his upper body slightly away from me, but still kept his stare fixed. Both his eyebrows were raised and his eyes were wide, and his mouth fell slightly open as he breathed through it. He looked like someone would if they heard something they didn’t want to, or received disappointing news; which wasn’t how he usually reacted to those situations - Kyle was the type to argue his point to the bitter end, so disagreements usually came with a lot more anger instead of sadness or anxiety. This time, he seemed hurt.

“Oh, honey… You know why.” I rested my hands on top of my chest, feeling my heart accelerate, and trying to ground myself before the shock became too much. “We can’t put a child in a world like ours. Would be torture.”

He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be a world like ours. We can live here, at least temporarily, and then we move somewhere else. Stan already gave us the go.”

“Kyle, you know we have targets on our backs!” I tried moving my body closer to his, like that might get the point across easier, my voice denouncing my increasing concern with his reaction. “All these people we sent to swing, their buddies always try to come after us. Stan and Wendy don’t deserve this. We can’t risk them.”

“How? We’re in the middle of bumfuck nowhere!” There it was, the anger flaring his nerves. It always happened when something hit close to his heart, he felt the need to explain himself and make the people around him ‘see reason’ - I knew that behavior too well, though I wasn’t normally on the receiving end of it. But right now this wasn’t about logic or reason. These were his wishes. “We’ll disappear. I’ll change my name, you’ll change yours, we fake our deaths, these people don’t remember anything anymore after a couple of months anyway!”

Although I kept on nervously laughing, he was hitting all the right points, the points my own heart made when it wanted to feed on the delusions for a while longer. Kyle was very good at that - if he thought something was the better option, he’d twist both Heaven and Hell to make it make sense. “Oh yes? Well, say we go through with it, what do we know about ranch life?” I let out another nervous laugh. “Can you plant anything? Feed cattle?”

“Does that even matter?” In a quick movement, he climbed on top of me, knees at the side of my thighs as he straddled my legs, the blanket draping from his shoulders since he didn’t bother getting out from under it. We didn’t break eye contact for a single second. “You know I learn fast. If I-You want this, then we can figure it out!”

Clarity struck me like a bullet. Did he just say ‘I’? “Stan… Didn’t really talk to you about anything, did he?”

He shook his head again, less enthusiastically this time, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “Do you remember a couple months ago, after you and I left the gang, when we talked about life with a house and kids and what we’d do if we had that?” I nodded, before realizing that he couldn’t see the gesture anyway - but he took my silence as agreement and continued talking. “I sent Stan a letter soon after. At first it was just to vent, but then he replied with their suggestion and I thought… Well, we could at least try.” The end of his sentence brought with it a faint smile to his lips, and he opened his eyes again slowly.

For the first time in this conversation had my little fit of laughter been genuine. The three of them had put all this in motion right under my nose, based on one wishful conversation we had, which Kyle had taken to heart and made sure to come to fruition. “I thought you liked the hunt, though” I said, head tilting to the side. “Liked bringin’ people to justice an’ givin’ ‘em what they deserved, no?”

“I like that, but I love you.” He answered without missing a beat. Felt like he was plain waiting for it. “And besides, it’s not like we can’t be virtuous people and do what’s right even without spending all our lives chasing after criminals. Our honor comes from our hearts, not from the barrel of our guns.”

Good ol’ Kyle with his smooth way of talking. It was one of the many reasons I fell for him - though his day-to-day life was rough and he shot outlaws for a living, deep inside he was still a very caring man, someone intelligent who saw all the bad in the world and still chose to do good. “Where did you even learn to talk like that?” I chuckled. “You shoulda been a writer, not a shooter.”

“Who knows? Maybe I’ll get started on that now, since I’ll have more time.” Taking my hands in his, he kissed my knuckles lovingly. Then his thumb grazed my empty left ring finger, his touch, as soft as his rough hands would allow it, lingering for a couple of seconds. “After the wedding, that is.”

“Wait, you serious?” This night was getting so filled with surprises, I might just believe someone if they said Sparky was a human in disguise. “No need for that, my dear. I’m already yours.”

“But I want to do it.” His hands let go of mine and he moved his body closer to me, giving me a quick peck to the forehead. Then he suddenly grabbed the blanket and yanked it to the side, throwing it on the floor and leaving both our bodies completely exposed. “And we gotta do it quick, before you start to show.”

Before I could ask him what I’d start to show, he pulled me by the shoulders and smashed his lips against mine fiercely. My hands shot up to grab his curls, making him groan into my mouth and deepen the kiss - and there it was, the now faint taste of the cigar I hadn’t smelled previously, spicy and earthy, but it tasted like the sweetest thing on the planet just because of the sheer passion we shared right now.  

As I felt Kyle’s hand drift up from between us to knead at my breast, I broke the kiss with a gasp. “Wait, here?” I asked, surprised, though the corners of my mouth curved up, snitches of my excitement.

“Now.”, he declared, straightening his legs and propping himself up in his arms to give me space to slide down and lay beneath him, with my head now on the pillow and my legs spread. When I broke eye contact for just a second and finally looked down, I saw his dick was already almost fully hard - was the simple idea of getting me pregnant enough to make him like that?

“Can’t wait to see how you’re gonna explain this to them tomorrow” I said with a giggle as Kyle lowered his body, putting his weight on his elbows, and planting kisses all over my face. My subdued laughs quickly got replaced by soft hums as he started going down the side of my neck with his lips, while his hips started rocking against mine, his cock grinding against my body and the tip spreading some warm precum over my lower abdomen with each slow movement.

His answer, unlike most everything he ever said, was simple, direct, and left no leeway for questioning. “Well, it would do them some good to get used to it.” I felt my face burn like the damn candle as he said that, and my pussy starting to drip with wetness, the arousal soaking into the bedsheet. He stopped his kisses for a moment to put his mouth to my ear, and when he whispered his next declaration, it felt like it was going straight to my cunt: “Because I’m keeping you filled up now. Make you mine all the time and no one can do a damn thing about it.”

“Oh, you gonna change your mind when I’m all big and swollen…”, I drawled feebly. Disputing his claims was getting hard now since my brain was getting foggy with desire, but I still had to try, even if just to hear him singing praises to me some more.

I felt his left hand coursing through my body, stopping with his palm flat on my midriff, feeling almost cold with how hot I was getting all over. “Absolutely not,” He whispered again, “You’re gonna be even more fucking gorgeous when you’re carrying my child. I’ll make love to you every single night.”

My hand started to move down between our bodies, too, as I tried to reach for Kyle’s throbbing cock, wanting to make him feel good - if I couldn’t with pretty words like he did me, at least I knew I could do it with actions. But, when my fingers touched his leaking tip, he immediately took his hand off my belly and gripped my wrist, moving it back to the side of my body. As I looked at him with a puzzled expression on my face, he simply shook his head, gave me another peck to the mouth and started pushing himself down on the bed, only stopping when his face was level with my pussy and his palms were flat at the side of my hips.

Just by seeing him there, I could feel my walls clenching around nothing, almost like they begged on their own for his loving and experienced touch. Kyle was a damn great lover and from the very first day we laid together it was like he knew all the right ways to make me come undone, and he had no shame about anything he did to achieve it - most of all, he was eager to do it. By God did this man love to please me. If that was what was waiting for me every night from now on, I could very easily get used to everything else.

He started planting small kisses on the inside of both of my thighs as he pushed my legs slowly up, my knees now almost hitting my chest. His lips felt soft and endearing on my skin, but this was not where I wanted them - and he knew it, with the way he held my gaze the whole time as he did it, his eyes glittering with his teasing ways. Every few kisses, he’d break the sequence with a slight graze of his teeth on my skin, the softest of bites, but enough to make all the fine hairs in my thigh rise up in a pleasurable goosebump.

Just as I was getting tired of the wait and was contemplating pulling at his hair to bring him away from my leg, it was like he had read my mind again. He let go of my thighs and put his hands on my hips, not quite gripping them, but steadying them in place. I closed my eyes and sighed contentedly as he licked a stripe from my already very wet cunt to my clit, giving it a very quick kiss at the end, which made me wonder for a second if he was about to start teasing me again and how long for. But then all thoughts left my brain as soon as he started swirling his tongue over my clit, in a pattern I didn’t know or care about, making me squirm almost immediately and dig my nails into my palm.

His tongue slithered down, making its way to my entrance, and my hips started rolling against his mouth, trying to help his movements as he fucked me with it. He’d grunt every now and then as he did it, lost in the satisfaction he felt by pleasuring me, and sending the vibrations through my heat, making me even wetter. I could feel him staring at me from down there, too, despite my shut eyes; He always paid attention to every reaction of mine, licking and sucking all the right parts that he knew made me squirm.

Then he moved up with his mouth to focus on my clit again and my hands darted down to grab at his hair, my palms hurting at the spots where the little crescent shapes from my nails had formed. I felt one of his fingers circling my entrance, gathering my arousal before plunging fully deep inside, my walls almost sucking it in. Another one soon followed and he started pumping them in and out while curling them upwards, massaging my sweet spot perfectly, still never missing the pace of the swirls of his tongue on my hardened bud.

It became too much too quickly. The dam holding back the river of my climax broke after not much longer and my orgasm washed over me violently, every single muscle in my body tensing up and my thighs pressing strongly against the side of my lover’s head while my hips rocked against his mouth, chasing my pleasure to its bitter end. One of my hands darted up to cover my mouth immediately, muffling the loud cries I let out as it happened, my one and only moment of clarity during the whole release.

And even then Kyle didn’t stop his ministrations, his hand covered with my juices as his fingers kept pushing inside, making way through my tightly clenched walls. After I came down from my haze, however, the overstimulation started to become rather painful - only when I managed to collect enough strength to tug at the back of his hair rather fiercely to pull him away from my cunt did he stop, and even then I swore I could see for a brief moment a hint of disappointment in his eyes.

Kyle positioned his body between my legs again and took his time to run one last stripe along my slit with his fingers, the ones he used inside me, before bringing them to his mouth and licking them clean, with his eyes closed. He did this every time, not wanting to waste even a single drop of me. I was his favorite whiskey and, when it came to that, he was a damn alcoholic.

This time it was me putting my hands on Kyle’s shoulders and bringing him down for a kiss, running the tip of my tongue across his lips lightly, tasting my love in him. When we parted, gasping for air, I leisurely ran my hands over his upper body, caressing every inch of him they could reach - his cheeks, then down his neck, around his collarbone, his chest, until my left hand stopped at his shoulder, on top of his biggest and most visible scar.

Kyle had plenty of scars, these things came with our line of work, but this one was different. Not caused by a bullet or a knife, but rather by fire itself - a dynamite explosion that caught us by surprise during a shootout in this very state we were currently in. That fire almost took my lover’s life, dragged both of us into months of suffering and stress, and even years after it was extinguished we still carried with us not only the trauma, but a physical reminder of everything it claimed. 

The physical scar itself was a bit rough to the touch and full of small streaks and bumps all over. It spread all over his shoulder into the right side of his chest, his upper arm, and a bit over his back. Across the years, its color had faded from a gruesome brown to a slight reddish tint, but it still had a jarring contrast to Kyle’s pale skin. No part of it was delightful, if I’m being honest. Yet I’d kiss it every single night, caress it at every opportunity and massage it with expensive essential oils whenever those were available; because I’d take a whole life with that scar over even a single second of the alternative.

“You saved me, you know,” He murmured with a sigh.

“I know, because you say it all the time.” I chuckled. “But we ain’t gotta talk about that anymore, dear. You know I’d do it again.”

“Not that day. Well, yes that day, but also all the others before and after that.” He lowered his head closer to mine so that our noses and foreheads were touching, and his warm breath ghosted my lips, bringing the lustful haze back to my brain. At this point I didn’t know what I wanted to do more: Hear his voice forever as he whispered his praise and love towards me, or kiss him until I could feel all these words inside of my skin.

My partner took himself in his hands and started to slide the tip of his cock up and down between my folds, from my entrance to my clit, making my whole body twitch a little when he got to the still very sensitive bundle of nerves. “And you might just be about to save me again,” He continued, aligning himself with my entrance, “You’ll be the perfect wife and mother. My wife and the mother of my babies.”

Kyle pushed himself inside of me slowly, inch by inch, being extra careful as his big and thick cock stretched out my cunt. It didn’t hurt much, I was used to it after years of taking him regularly, but he still wanted to make sure I was comfortable every single time before continuing. 

Once I gave him a smile and a small nod, he started to push in and out slowly, letting me feel every single twitch of his cock inside me and every one of those veins I knew so well pressed against my walls in their entirety. He quickly built up momentum, however, and soon the room was filled with the squelching sounds of my wetness being pounded against, his hips striking my body and the bedframe hitting the house’s wooden walls perfectly synchronizing with it. After a while like this, without warning, he picked up both my legs and brought them over each of his shoulders, pushing my knees back against my chest, my toes touching his hair as they curled in pleasure.

Kyle was hitting my cervix with every strong thrust now, sending sharp and slightly painful stings that jolted through my lower abdomen with every smash of his soft head against that barrier. And yet, every time I felt those, I just wanted more and more; Having Kyle deep inside me in this position always managed to cover all the right spots inside of me, I just wanted to hold him, keep him there. And I knew he was feeling just as good as I was - the sounds coming from his throat were getting louder and louder as he shut his lips tighter to prevent them from turning into full brown growls, his fingertips whiter than ever since his grip on my hips was so fierce I was sure by tomorrow I’d have a few bruises there.

“K-Kyle… Aaaaah… Give… Me…” I whimpered between moans, stretching my arms towards him, nails scratching against his skin as I tried to grab his hips, keep them glued to mine forever.

“Lord… You want me even more, do you?” He responded with shaky breaths, and I immediately felt it when he picked up even more speed - a move made even easier by the amount of slick built up in and around my pussy -, jackhammering into my cunt and making me see stars both from pain and pleasure. 

At this point I should’ve known there was no point in even trying to hide our sinful sounds anymore, but I still felt like I needed to do it. I tried to pick up Kyle’s pillow from the side of my head and put it over my face to muffle my constant cries of satisfaction, but my partner immediately grabbed it from my hand and tossed it back in its place with a growl.

“No. Don’t hide it. I want to see it. The face you make… When you cum for me and I stuff you up to the brim.”

The scene he described burned into my brain almost immediately and I could think of nothing else. For him to fill me up, give me a baby, make us a family - it was all I wanted out of life now, and the mere thought of it was enough to have my muscles tensing and that familiar pressure on my lower abdomen to start building up again, threatening to snap. “Please, Kyle,” I whined, “Breed me. Give it all to me… I need it…”

“I know you do, darling...” He leaned closer to me to give me a kiss, the clash of our lips messy and awkward with our desperate need to touch each other and the fogginess in our brains, but we didn’t care. I just wanted to have him as close as possible. “I need it too… Cum for me, please. I want to feel you milking my dick to the last drop.”

He needed not ask further. For the second time that night I felt my whole body burst into electricity, my cunt spasming like crazy as I tried to give Kyle exactly what he asked of me, exactly what I felt like I was meant to do all along. My legs trashed all over near his shoulders and my back arched as I lost control of my body with the waves of pleasure that washed me over.

The tightness around his cock as my walls fluttered around him and my face contorting in absolute pleasure as I came were what finally did him in. Kyle threw his head back while he came undone inside me, grabbing my hips and pulling them towards him as he buried himself deep into my core, his manhood throbbing, painting my walls with his seed. The sensation was extremely new to me - I felt the warm spurts painting my walls, filling me up and leaving Kyle’s mark somewhere no other man could ever reach.

I wasn’t used to Kyle finishing inside of me. Considering the everlasting battle between our higher than average libidos and our fear of having children, the closest compromise for that was having him do it on my breasts, belly, mouth, face, even ass if he was feeling wild enough. On the rare occasions where he did cum inside, I couldn’t even enjoy it - my brain would immediately be flooded with stress and worry, shutting down any other sensation, and I’d spend the next month or so losing sleep waiting for my next period so I could finally be at peace again.

But here there was none of that. I could relax and ride out this high with him. I let him have his moment, heaving my exhaustion away quietly as I admired the red flush on his pale skin and the sheen of his sweat under the candlelight, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he panted like his lungs weren’t big enough for the amount of air he needed to live. When he finally opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was me, I felt wrapped up in his love all over again.

When his breathing started to steady, I figured he’d get himself off of me and take his place by my side on the bed. Instead, he just laid his whole body on top of mine, somehow being careful enough to not crush me under his weight as he collapsed.

“Kyle?” I gave him some quick taps to the shoulder with my fingers after a minute or two like this in silence, when I’d started to worry that he might just fall asleep. “C’mon, dear, you gotta scoot over if you wanna sleep.”

“Hmph… Sorry…” He groaned, with a sluggishness that made clear he was indeed just a few sheeps counted away from deep slumber. “Wanted to make sure to keep it all in. Don’t wanna waste…”

Even though he clearly didn’t want to, he slowly moved away from me and rolled to his side of the bed. When his dick withdrew from me, I suddenly felt a bit empty and wondered briefly if I couldn’t have tried to sleep like that or at least stay a little longer.

“Sorry, my dear,” I planted a kiss to the side of his head, “But you know, if you don’t get me pregnant tonight, we have plenty of time now.”

I sat back on the bed briefly to blow the candle out on the nightstand, plunging our room into almost complete darkness. As soon as I laid my head back on my pillow, Kyle brought his arm over my body and pulled me closer to him, nuzzling my hair.

“We have plenty of time now,” He whispered, with more energy in his voice this time.

And we definitely did.

Dividers by @cafekitsune

[tomato-puppy]

one of the weird aspects of my loneliness and attempts to date is that a VERY high percentage of people i find attractive on dating apps have "t4t" in their bio. idk what this says about me or where my attraction lies. but that's not the point.

I'm used to that feeling of not being "an option" to certain people, like knowing that a woman i find interesting/attractive wouldn't even consider dating me because she wants a man who has a higher education or someone who works out at the gym. I'm used to not being attractive enough, wealthy enough, smart enough... to have a chance. but since i realized i was queer, a new factor of exclusion now applies to me, something I have never even thought about before.

being cis makes me unwanted to certain people. it's not even a "not ... enough". it's something else entirely.

strange feeling.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

hope you feel better soon!

I am riddled with ailments, but I stay silly!

[mysterious-dark-shadow]

I sometimes re-read posts from "The Before Times": from before the Sewage Flood of '22, before we discovered the Slow Methane Leak that had been gassing the house for YEARS, before Felix was officially diagnosed with HOLE IN THE BRAIN.

This specific post was during a time when we were desperately trying to figure out why things were getting better in some ways and so much worse in others. Felix especially was dealing with mental and physical issues that should have gotten better after he quit his super stressful job.

The information we have now doesn't invalidate the conclusions Felix came to in the original post: his hormones were all over the place & his diet needed changing. And responding to those issues helped eliminate some symptoms that were specifically related to those problems. The changes helped him have a clearer head a year later when I ended up going crazy* from methane overexposure.

The fact that we had been working with doctors for several years actually helped us out a lot when it came to Felix's migraines. When we finally got to a neurologist, he could see that we weren't chasing painkillers. He ordered the MRI for Felix's head that we had been trying to get for soo long. And fought insurance to give us the prescription that actually made a difference in the severity of the migraines Felix suffers from.

And today we have a much better handle on our physical and mental health. We learned how to talk to each other about what's going on in our heads. We learned so much about how to help each other physically. We know what it looks like when one/both of us are suffering from methane exposure, and how to get the gas out of our living environment, so we can actually unpack boxes of stuff that we haven't touched since early 2022.

We are literally getting our past back. There are art projects that Felix was in the middle of that were boxed up alongside the reference books that were sitting on the same table. Trinkets and keepsakes that were on the shelves of bookcases and cabinets from our adventures, separately & together, are finding new spaces in our apartment. Our dried boutonnieres from our wedding day were briefly on display and then quickly put in a cabinet because our cats are rose-eating monsters.

Sometimes I wish I could reach back in time to 2020-2021 us, but I don't know what I'd say. What we went through in 2022 was horrific. We are still picking up the pieces. What kind of warning could prepare past-us for what was to come?

And then I remember a strange encounter we had early in 2021. We were in the beginning stages of our channeling experiments. I was the channeler for a specific entity that had previously given us advice that had turned out to be prophetic, so Felix at some point asked them, "What is the most important thing we should know for our future?" The entity made a painful grimace that made my face ache for a few hours afterwards, then said, "Keep going. No matter what happens, just... Keep. Going." They refused to elaborate, and Felix dismissed the entity soon afterwards. We were puzzled by the cryptic nature of the message and the swirling mass of negative emotions - anguish, fear, anger, regret - that my body felt at the moment the entity grimaced. But we followed the advice, reminding each other that we should "keep going" when times were difficult and situations seemed impossible to overcome.

I now realize that I don't have to reach back in time to warn anyone. Someone else already did. And now I pass on that advice to you in hopes that it helps you as it has helped us so many times:

Keep going. No matter what happens, just... Keep. Going. _____________

*I'm not using that phrase lightly. I completely lost touch with reality and ended up in a hospital psych ward for 12 hours. The hospital didn't handle me well (symptoms hand-waved as "THC overdose" with no tests confirming that diagnosis...), but the event did shock me back into reconnecting with reality again.

Having Mental Illness

It’s hard to talk about my experience with mental illness sometimes because I’m not diagnosed by a professional for “everything I have.” For instance, in my household we all know that I have depression and anxiety, but it’s not really nailed down on my medical chart whether I have Generalized Anxiety or Major Depression. I’ve talked to my doctor about my anxiety, my “moods” as it is usually termed in the doctor’s office, and had my spouse at my side during the discussions, and been prescribed Zoloft for my symptoms even, and the takeaway has been:

My doctor doesn’t want to diagnose me with a mental illness, because no one wants to figure out what the insurance will do. Or what the protocols for it are. Or what the exact diagnosis should be. My therapist had further insight there: finding someone who can make the right diagnosis for me is one thing. But there could be several different diagnoses for what I could have, depending on what treatment plan they wanted to bill for, or what my insurance covers, WHICH CAN CHANGE.

And all this time, we’re just trying to live this and figure out how to do right by me and the body and brain I have.

It’s why I keep thinking I need to explain myself here. There’s no catch-all term for whatever it is that I have. There’s a lot of medical interactions between my hormones, my mood, my sleep cycle, and my information processing ability. Sometimes at 2AM I decide it’s time to read a paranormal encyclopedia, and that’s just because my body is not going to be good at doing anything else at that time, because that’s what the chemicals in my body say to do.

So, I mentioned my hormones–one reason I’ve been quiet is because I don’t want people to think that transitioning will cause you harm or that transitioning people are “crazy.” But I’ve had some severe mental health effects from my hormones being way off-balance at times, and I’m finally able to talk about it. One reason I’m able to talk about it again? I’m finally GETTING my hormones.

Last year when I switched to topical rub-on testosterone instead of intramuscular injection, it was because I was unable to do the shots anymore. My needle fears ramped up and I had to switch over. Well, turns out the absorption was never working right for me because I was getting allergy injections in the same area as I was rubbing the cream on, and apparently the testosterone got into my bloodstream instead of the lymph system, and made my levels seem incorrect? Gods it was nuts. Anyway my insurance cancelled rub-on hormones on January 1 with no warning anyway, so it’s a good thing I was planning to switch to subcutaneous injection. Which I did yesterday after being without my rub-on hormones for 3 days.

My body feels like a submarine that goes up to get air and down to dive below at times completely dependent on my hormone levels and nothing else, and my hormone levels basically all last year were bonkers. It destroyed my sense of time right as I and everyone else were all locked in our homes. My stress has ramped with the news cycles, making me unable to sleep some nights until my body finally exits hypervigilance.

There’s not a cure for this, or any single diagnosis, or a treatment other than to take care of myself and keep going.

I’ll keep going.

I want to open up more about my mental illness experience, and what it does and how I get through it, but I’m going to warn you that my mental illness doesn’t follow the discourse. It fucks the discourse. I’m a person who has decided to stop driving because I don’t like how I might react to the unexpected behind the wheel, and I still vote, I make big financial decisions, heck I make winning investment picks. Sometimes I can’t walk out my front door, and it’s not for any logical reason, and I even know logically with my brain at the time that nothing bad will happen if I go outside. Still, sometimes I can’t walk out my front door, and in those times I realize that I don’t actually have to. Because last year we as a household realized that I could no longer do the things I’d done all the previous years before, that something in my mind and body had drawn a line and said I couldn’t go ignore those boundaries anymore.

I can’t watch TV like a “normal person.” Ads really mess with me and so I often avoid commercial television, for instance. But I also have trouble sitting down and absorbing something on a screen, I’ll often have to walk around, or I’ll need to watch the show out of order, or see it “filtered” through commentary or memes, because that’s how my brain decided I was processing that day. But the conversation I have with my spouse about the subject at the end of the day is still rich and fulfilling, because I’m still having an experience of the subject, be it a show or a video game or a news event. I just take it in in a very particular way, and sometimes that way changes depending on my mood and a bunch of other factors.

Heck, my diet changes how much I can focus and think. We’re still figuring out what does what. There’s a lot of rabbit holes to chase down. At some point we discuss what’s worth putting up with versus what actually needs treatment, because when things aren’t very clear-cut you need to prioritize. Also, having a lot of different medical issues at once means that you sometimes get overwhelmed and don’t know what order to address it all in.

I communicate in GIF and youtube format on here sometimes because I don’t really have a way to articulate the feeling or thought I have other than to show something that seems to encompass it all in an abstract or more psyche-oriented way. I really enjoy being able to do that here, and to get out the things I really want to express in an environment where people let me experiment with communication. Thanks to all of you for that. Except the bots. You’re not sentient, and that’s kind of weird.

Oh yeah. Mental illness and its interaction with hormones. Are completely ruining my ability to plan things and have been for like half a year now. So thank. For your pati. Ence.

[uncanny-tranny]

Every time you think, "Oh, I don't have [x condition], I'm basically cured!" that is the devil talking. You aren't cured, you are likely going through periods of your symptoms waning. Don't cease whatever you're doing to help yourself, like medication, for instance, because it's likely you still have the conditions or symptoms, even if you aren't noticing them as frequently or severely.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

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