#Less than container load
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
eshippro · 2 months ago
Text
The Benefits of Outsourcing Logistics Services
Tumblr media
In the dynamic landscape of modern business, achieving efficiency and cost-effectiveness is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge. One of the smartest strategies businesses adopt to achieve these goals is outsourcing their logistics services. By delegating logistics to specialized third-party providers, companies can streamline operations, improve service quality, and focus on their core competencies. Outlined below are the major advantages of entrusting logistics services to specialized providers:
Cost Savings Outsourcing logistics can significantly reduce operational costs. Logistics providers have established networks, bulk shipping rates, and advanced technologies that help them deliver services more cost-effectively than an in-house team. Businesses save money on:
Warehousing and transportation infrastructure.
Maintenance of vehicles and equipment.
Hiring and training logistics personnel.
By leveraging economies of scale, third-party logistics (3PL) providers can offer competitive pricing that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) might struggle to achieve on their own.
Expertise and Specialization Logistics providers are experts in their field. They are equipped with the knowledge and skills to handle complex supply chain challenges, ensuring efficient and reliable services. Their expertise extends to:
Regulatory compliance for domestic and international freight shipping.
Effective route planning to minimize transit times.
Handling specialized cargo such as hazardous materials or perishable goods.
Partnering with a professional logistics provider ensures that businesses benefit from the latest industry best practices and innovations.
Scalability and Flexibility Outsourced logistics services offer scalability that aligns with business growth. Whether it’s peak season or a sudden surge in demand, 3PL providers can quickly adjust resources to meet changing requirements. This flexibility allows businesses to:
Expand into new markets without logistical constraints.
Adapt to seasonal demand fluctuations without additional investments.
Scale down operations during low-demand periods to save costs.
Focus on Core Business Activities Managing logistics in-house can be time-consuming and resource intensive. By outsourcing, businesses can redirect their energy and resources toward core activities such as product development, marketing, and customer service. This focus enhances operational efficiency and fosters innovation, ultimately driving growth.
Access to Advanced Technology Third-party logistics providers invest heavily in cutting-edge technologies to optimize their services. Businesses that outsource logistics gain access to:
Real-time tracking and monitoring systems for cargo shipment.
Advanced analytics for supply chain optimization.
Automation tools to reduce manual errors and improve efficiency.
These technologies provide visibility and control over the supply chain, enabling better decision-making and customer satisfaction.
Improved Customer Satisfaction Reliable and timely delivery is crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction. Logistics providers ensure:
On-time delivery through efficient supply chain management.
High-quality handling and transportation of goods.
Transparent communication and tracking for customers.
Outsourcing logistics enhances the overall customer experience, helping businesses build trust and loyalty.
Risk Management The logistics industry is fraught with risks, including shipment delays, regulatory changes, and fluctuating fuel prices. Experienced logistics providers are well-equipped to mitigate these risks through:
Proactive contingency planning.
Insurance coverage for goods in transit.
Compliance with international trade regulations.
By outsourcing, businesses transfer the burden of managing these risks to their logistics partners, ensuring smoother operations.
Global Reach For businesses looking to expand internationally, logistics providers offer a global network of resources and expertise. They simplify the complexities of:
Cross-border shipping and customs clearance.
Navigating diverse regulatory environments.
Managing multi-modal transportation solutions.
This global reach allows businesses to tap into new markets without worrying about logistical challenges in international shipping services.
Enhanced Supply Chain Efficiency Outsourcing logistics promotes a seamless supply chain by leveraging the provider’s extensive networks and streamlined processes. Efficient supply chains lead to:
Reduced lead times.
Lower inventory carrying costs.
Faster response to market demands.
These benefits contribute to a more agile and competitive business model for ocean freight cargo and less than container load (LCL shipping).
Sustainability and Environmental Benefits Many logistics providers prioritize sustainable practices, such as:
Optimizing delivery routes to reduce fuel consumption.
Utilizing eco-friendly packaging materials.
Investing in energy-efficient transportation modes.
By outsourcing to environmentally conscious providers, businesses can enhance their sustainability efforts and reduce their carbon footprint while partnering with sea freight forwarders.
Conclusion
Outsourcing logistics services offers a wealth of benefits, from cost savings and efficiency to enhanced customer satisfaction and global market access. By partnering with experienced freight forwarders, businesses can streamline their operations, mitigate risks, and focus on their core objectives. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, outsourcing logistics is not just a cost-cutting measure but a strategic move toward long-term success.
Whether you’re a small enterprise or a large corporation, embracing outsourced logistics can pave the way for growth, innovation, and sustainability in your supply chain. For tailored solutions, consider working with a global freight forwarder offering door-to-door shipping and instant freight quotes to meet your needs.
0 notes
eshippro12345 · 8 months ago
Text
Tracking LCL Shipments Singapore
Tumblr media
Less than Container Load
https://e-ship.sg/assets/img/blog/tracking-lcl-shipments.jpg
Tracking LCL Shipments: Ensuring Visibility and Efficiency
In today's globalized economy, efficient logistics management is essential for businesses engaged in international trade. Among the various challenges faced in shipping, tracking LCL (Less than Container Load) shipments stands out as a critical aspect of ensuring timely delivery and customer satisfaction. This blog explores the importance of tracking LCL shipments, methods used, and best practices for effective management.
Why Tracking LCL Shipments Matters?
Tracking LCL shipments provides crucial visibility throughout the shipping process. Unlike Full Container Load (FCL) shipments, where a single consignment occupies an entire container, LCL shipments combine multiple smaller shipments from different consignors into a single container. This consolidation offers cost-effectiveness and flexibility but also requires meticulous tracking to monitor each consignment's progress.
The Methods of Tracking LCL Shipments
Online Tracking Platforms : Many freight forwarders and shipping lines in Dubai and across the UAE offer online tracking platforms where shippers and consignees can enter their shipment details to monitor its status. These platforms provide real-time updates on the location and estimated time of arrival (ETA) of the container.
GPS and Container Tracking Devices : Some advanced shipping companies utilize GPS tracking devices placed within containers. These devices transmit location data at regular intervals, allowing stakeholders to track the container's precise location throughout its journey.
Communication with Freight Forwarders : Establishing clear communication channels with your freight forwarder in Dubai is crucial. They can provide updates and address any concerns regarding the shipment's progress and potential delays.
The Tracking Process: Step-by-Step Guide
Booking and Documentation : The tracking process begins with the booking of an LCL shipment with trusted freight forwarding companies in Dubai. Proper documentation, including packing lists and bills of lading, is essential for accurate tracking.
Loading and Departure : Once loaded into a container at the origin port, often managed by logistics companies in UAE, the container's journey begins. Tracking starts as soon as the container is sealed and dispatched.
Transit Updates : Throughout transit, stakeholders receive updates on the container's location and estimated arrival times. This information helps in planning downstream logistics and preparing for customs clearance at the destination port.
Arrival and Discharge : Upon arrival at the destination port, managed by cargo shipping companies in Dubai, the container undergoes unloading. Shippers and consignees receive final notifications confirming the shipment's arrival and readiness for pickup or onward delivery.
Best Practices for Effective LCL Shipment Tracking Use Reliable Partners: Choose freight forwarders and shipping lines in Dubai and the UAE with robust tracking systems and a reputation for reliable service.
Proactive Communication : Maintain open lines of communication with your freight forwarder to address any issues promptly and ensure smooth tracking.
Document Management : Keep all shipment documentation organized and readily accessible, as accurate information is crucial for effective tracking.
Utilize Technology : Take advantage of digital tools and platforms offered by global shipping logistics providers for real-time tracking updates.
Conclusion
Tracking LCL shipments plays a pivotal role in supply chain management, offering transparency and control over the shipping process. By leveraging advanced tracking methods and adhering to best practices, businesses can optimize their logistics operations, enhance customer satisfaction, and maintain a competitive edge in the global marketplace. For more insights into optimizing your logistics strategies with freight forwarders in Dubai and logistics companies in the UAE, stay tuned to our blog for future updates and industry insights.
0 notes
moe-broey · 8 months ago
Text
LIKE..
#alfonse and mani relationship/my feelings about lif and thrasir in reverse but ALSO. a thousand other things.#it's less about the ages in this case and more about the time periods. what moe was (supposedly) like at that time#also all my mani lore never escapes containment but it's also important. that alfonse did NOT have a good first impression LMFAO#it takes a long time to understand it and even longer to make peace w it.#another core important detail though. is at the end of the day alfonse prefers moe. exactly for who it is.#i think there are qualities about moe he actually envies. in all of moe's Difficulties. it's incredibly self-assured.#it knows who it is and what it wants. it's grown into itself a lot at this point.#mani most likely reflects a moe who was 18 or 19. but the way it Is. in its desperation and posturing#alfonse is surprised to hear that age placement from moe. since to him it read more like a scared kid.#ALSO JUST... THE DYNAMIC... of moe carrying itself silly/rough around the edges vs#mani who carries itself more formally and Perfectly. and how in alfonse's eyes moe reads as the more mature one.#he never questioned its age always assuming (correctly) it's either his age or closer to sharena's.#meanwhile he was mistaken about mani's placement. bc SO severely. to him. it just seems like a kid#trying to act older than they are.#IDK last time i talked ages i accidentally started a Whole Thing LMFAOOO DON'T. WANNA DO THAT AGAJN.#but mani is a study in so many things. in growing up too fast. in unrealistic expectations.#in the gender role it was assigned at birth and just how badly that went for it. even though it Seemed#to encapsulate it Perfectly. it's also a study in compatibility and preference esp w alfonse at the other end#it's a study in just how Wrong. horroring and painful. traditional/conventional 'romance' Is for moe.#it's a study in autistic masking. and how damaging that was for it as well.#mani is a study in all the ways moe had to protect itself.#mani is just.... such a loaded fucking character LMFAOOOOOOOO#put that thing back where it came from OR SO HELP ME‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️#mani tag#* horrifying. typo LMFAOO#typing too quickly....
1 note · View note
slrcargoshipping · 1 year ago
Text
0 notes
strawberrymochin · 9 months ago
Text
The cum analysis
A slight analysis on how jjk men would cum | Gojo satoru; Geto suguru; Nanami kento; Ryomen sukuna; Toji fushiguro |
Gojo Satoru
Gojo cums hard and a lot. Like insanely a lot. He would shudder from the build up pleasure with a series of moans as he spurts his load into you. You could say you're milking him rather than making him cum. Sometimes he might cum prematurely while foreplay, which is practically a chance for you to display your dominance and overstimulate him. And when I say he cums a lot, I mean even if he wears condoms to prevent it ending inside of you, the intensity of him cumming would either end up leaking out of the condom or breaking it. If he fucks you raw, his one orgasm would end up filling your cervix upto the brim.
His cum would be thick, creamy and milky white. Super jiggly in texture almost resembling jelly. It would have a slight odour and would taste sweet considering the amount of sweet he consumes in his diet.
Geto Suguru
Geto cums a lot, but he tries to edge himself along with you wanting to sync both of your highs. He would be totally focused on making you feel good, drawing circles on your clit with his tip as his other hand focuses on streching your tight velvet walls for him to make it fit, curling his fingers inside you, drawing orgasm after orgasm, totally neglecting his throbbing penis. When he finally buries himself in you and starts thrusting himself chasing the doors of heaven he gets to experience, rolling his eyes back, swallowing his moans, he would feel his balls getting heavy and his muscles around his pelvic region starting to contract. He would not be able to contain himself and finally cum as he furiously drives you through another orgasm pinching your oversensitive nipples. He would cum in spurts filling you up so good that his cum would be oozing out your vagina messing the sheets even though he hasn't pulled out yet.
His cum would be slick and creamy. It would the prettiest pearly white you've ever seen as it trickles down your legs, when you stand up. His cum would be odour less and might be sweet or salty depending upon his current diet.
Nanami Kento
Damn. He hates making mess, you know right? He's lowkey a clean freak and would hate to mess things up, except that one time where he would lose his shit and cum uncontrollably as he fucks you on the kitchen counter, in low spurts messing the kitchen floor and you both. You just wanted to bake some vanilla cupcakes for him, however he had you now bend over the counter ass fucking you while the cup cake batter laid aside in neglectance. He would twitch uncontrollably as he fucks you senseless while his balls rams on your pussy with each thrust. The fact that he's fucking you mindlessly as both of your slick pool down, in his kitchen made his cock even more hard, as he continues cumming. He cums a decent amount of his load enough for you to feel more than satisfied.
His cum would be sticky and might smell a bit metalic. His texture would be somewhat between creamy and watery. It will be sticky as said earlier and I dunno if it's weird to describe it that way but if you swallow his load your mouth would feel sticky like umm....well.....prime from dark web...what the heck I'm even babbling.... forget you ever read this....but like all those reels if you have seen you would know the texture I'm talking about....whatever let's move on.
Ryomen Sukuna
Hail lord sukuna!! Sukuna- sama's cum would make your head go dizzy. It's almost so addictive that you would be begging him to fill you up to the brim again. And I'm not even kidding when I say this but once you've had it there's no backing away. He cums a heck lot and even after cumming three times or more his still hard cock would be pounding into your pussy mercilessly. He ejaculates fast with lots of load, thus you wouldn't have time to leak out the previous one as another one fills you up, he would creampie your pussy and press his big palm on your lower stomach just to see his cum spurting from the sides of your hole stuffed with his dick. Sukuna- sama and his dick- sama both are merciless. I don't need to explain more....Ig
His cum would be thick and slippery, and so much in quantity that you could save it up and use it as a lube in future. :⁠-⁠) His cum would stink a bit and you love the nasty humid sex smell it gives off. Might even taste metalic or salty. Have fun.
Toji Fushiguro
Toji— the dilfushiguro would cum a decent amount to get your entire lower region sticky and sloppy with his mess. Your ass would pound up and down forming sticky strings, exhilarating the sound of your skin slapping as the moans of you two echoes through the empty room. His fingers would tangle itself, rolling the slick of you both only to stuff it into your mouth wanting you to lick his finger clean. He might also tell you to lick his dick clean after you both ride down your high.
His cum would be sticky, sloppy and thick. I believe it might be slight off cold like of pale white, since being broke baby wouldn't have a proper diet, that still doesn't affect the quality of sperms yk. Also his cum would be odourless.
Other parts of this series- The moan analysis | The Dick analysis
© strawberrymochin 24 | plagiarism won't be tolerated |
1K notes · View notes
kisses4kaia · 4 months ago
Text
patrick and degradation hi
you weren’t even thinking when you said it. he was pissing you off so fucking badly and there was so much happening, you couldn’t contain it.
“you’re such a fucking idiot, patrick. so fucking stupid, you’re such an asshole, god.” you grit out between groans. you’re straddling his meaty thighs, slamming yourself up and down on his obscenely hard cock, and he’s gone. his head isn’t on earth, his conscience a mere cloud of you and heat and you and pleasure and pain and you and you and you.
“fuuuuuck,” he groans out, face twisting up into an expression you’ve grown so familiar with. it’s a look of agony and desire, a red flush spreading like a forest fire from his cheeks down his neck and taking roots in his pecs. “oh please, fuck, gonna cum, baby, shit,” he’s sputtering out, abs flexing as his moans grow louder and more often reoccurring, and it’s not made any better by your biting.
dragging your teeth along his collarbone, biting down on the sweating sheen of his flesh, all the while growling the meanest fucking words that patrick is melting to hear.
“fucking pathetic, so dumb, got you brainless, don’t i? maybe i should get you like this more often, so you don’t say stupid shit anymore, hm? bet you’d like that, fucking freak,”
and he’s shaking through his orgasm, busting a gooey load into the latex of his condom as he praises your name, over and over. you slow down momentarily, allowing him a break, but a few seconds later, you’re back to chasing your high like your life depended on it. he lets you, lying whimpering and liquid for you as you meet your own peak. patrick’s limbs are tingling still, blotches of warmth making him a pied beauty underneath you for your eyes only.
less than a minute later, your gasping for air as your climax rams through you, biting your lip so patrick’s name doesn’t slip through and feed his everest comparable ego. “who knew you’d be so into me talking shit on you? you would love to hear what me and my friends say when you aren’t around,” you chuckle, still catching your breath as you fall down next to him.
“it’s my kind of dirty talk, baby.” he leans over to kiss you on the cheek, and you groan, pushing him off of you before dressing yourself and leaving him, alone in his hotel room. it’s almost like you were never even there.
660 notes · View notes
sceletaflores · 5 months ago
Text
Tumblr media
it’s the easiest thing (just love me and eat me)
pair: logan howlett x mutant!fem!reader
wc: 6.1k
anon says: nat pls speak on sub!logan...people are hating on the sub!logan agenda and someone needs to show them that they're wrong and it can be done cuz if anyone can convince them it's you mommy!
contains: 18+ SMUT MDNI, crimson! again! she's back!, slight angst, swearing, violence, light gore, somewhat dark content, religious symbolism? (idk this one got weird babes), established relationship, lowkey a toxic relationship but you didn't hear that from me, sub!logan-ish, handjob, p in v, slow sex turned rough, unprotected sex, riding, creampie, pain kink, scent kink, blood play, blood...eating (drinking? idk), porn with a tiny bit of plot, no use of y/n.
author’s note: anon i'm so sorry this took me so long...i hope it was worth the wait! it started as a short smutty drabble that somehow turned into…this? idk it got out of hand so fast. i am a proud member of the sub!logan nation but that's mostly because i think that ALL men have the potential for sub vibes like doesn't matter who he is if i want to fuck him he's probably a little subby. special shout out to my baby boo and fellow sub!logan truther @avocado-writing <3 tysm for sharing anon! xoxo mwah.
dividers by icon @saradika-graphics!
psst! want more logan and crimson? here's the to the bone au masterlist!
it’s not often that logan needs this, but you’re always more than happy to give it to him when he does…
Tumblr media
The team had a big scare earlier in the day.
It was supposed to be an easy mission, bust a mutant trafficking ring in Albany. You do assignments like these every week, and as sick as it sounds, it’s almost routine.
But this one was different. It was an ambush, and you were compromised.
Only humans, but they were smart. Waited until the team split up to attack. They had tech, things you'd never seen before.
Big guns loaded with tiny darts full of an ominous red liquid.
It was your fault really. You didn't clear your surroundings, so focused on getting to the kids that you let yourself get sloppy.
The tiny sting in your back barely registered, you don't think you would have even noticed if it didn't kick in so fast.
You'd never felt anything like it before in your life.
It didn't hurt. The rush of pain you braced yourself for never coming.
The sensation was strange—like your body was shutting down, piece by piece. You fell to your knees, shaky legs folding under you in less than a second.
You felt empty, wrong. An eerie silence trickling in to fill your insides.
Panic bubbled beneath your skin, but you were too numb to feel it. Trapped in the mounting weight of your limbs, the slow blink of your eyes, the shortness of breath despite hardly moving.
Your hand slipped across the gritty cement, reaching for support that wasn't there.
That was when you saw it, the shock of it was enough for your heart to drop. Your skin, blanched and sallow, the veins in your arms black and spreading like spilled ink.
You tried to fight it, tried to will your body to move, to react, to do something. You had to get up. You had to. The kids.
As hard as you willed yourself, there was nothing. It was like your body wasn't your own, like it had become something completely foreign.
You could barely make out the tiny voices calling for you. Pleading, frantic yelps of your name fading into a dull hum as everything went hazy. The edges of your vision blurring into a narrow tunnel.
He stepped in front of you, the same one who shot you. A cynical grin on his face and collar in his hand. You'd seen collars like it before, used on mutants to muzzle their abilities, to weaken them.
You tried, fingers barely twitching by your. Nothing. Just another shock of that cold, unfamiliar feeling shooting through your body.
“Got a big one, boss.” The man boasted into a comm strapped to his wrist, his voice sharp and grating. He took a single step towards you, smug grin still stretched across his face. “Yeah, real nice lookin' one too. She'll sell for—“
A muddy roar pulsed through the molasses filled haze of your ears, six claws flying through the air to embed themselves on either side of the man's skull with a wet, stomach-churning sound.
The collar dropped from his slackened grip with a dull bang, shattering into different pieces that slid across the floor haphazardly. A mess of wires and metal.
There were rushed footsteps before he dropped to his knees in front of you, his torso bathed in a dull glow from the overhead lights yellow shine.
There was blood splattered across the side of his face, slicking the front of his suit enough to reflect light off the leather.
Logan, perched in front of you like an angel.
Not one with a golden halo and a harp, but a indescribable mess of eyes and wings looming over you calling 'be not afraid'.
You'd never seen him so shaken before. All wide-eyed and pale as he checked you over for any major injuries. His breath coming in short bursts, hands frantic and shaky as they skated along your body for the viscosity of blood or uneven shift of a break.
He refused to let you even try and walk on your own, swept you off the floor and cradled your trembling body to his chest as he called for help. The beat of his heart was fast beneath your cheek, strong enough that you could feel it even through the thick leather of his suit.
You buried your face deeper in the crook of his neck, the pit in your stomach barely warmed by the feel of him. His scent is strongest there, so much so that in a room full of spilled blood, you could only smell him.
He was careless stepping over clawed up bodies littering the floor like a messy maze of twitching limbs and entrails. You didn't even know there was more than one guard in the room.
The evidence of his love for you, of his devotion, oozing red on the concrete.
Logan didn't even give the carnage a sideways glance as he raced you outside, back to the jet.
Trusting Scott and Jean to take over getting the kids out. The unsteady murmurs he pressed to the top of your head the last thing you heard before there was nothing.
Tumblr media
You woke up six hours later.
The sterile hum of medical equipment was the first thing you heard. The sharp scent of antiseptic filled your nostrils, and the faint pressure of a needle in your arm confirmed that you were hooked up to an IV. 
Your muscles felt heavy, like someone had filled them with lead. But you were alive.
You could feel your body working overtime, fixing itself. The sickening shift of your insides falling back into place. 
It took a few more moments for you to realize you weren’t alone.
A low, familiar rumble caught your attention. You turned your head to see Logan slumped in a chair by the bedside, his face buried in his hands, elbows resting on his knees. His hair was mussed, his usually sharp features softened by exhaustion. 
He looked different, smaller, as though the weight of what happened was pressing down on him, making him fold in on himself.
You’d seen him bloody, beaten, on the verge of death, but you’d never seen him like this–completely and utterly human.
Your throat was too dry to speak, but a small sound escaped you, and Logan's head snapped up. His eyes met yours, and in a heartbeat, he was at your side, his large hands hovering over you, unsure where to touch, like he was afraid you’d shatter under his fingers.
“You’re okay,” he whispered, more to himself than to you. His voice was hoarse, cracked with a mixture of relief and something else, something deeper. His eyes darted over your face, your arms, as if memorizing every detail just to make sure you were real.
“I'm sorry,” you managed, your voice barely more than a rasp.
Logan's eyebrows furrowed, the lines in his forehead deepening. "What the hell are you apologizing for?" His voice was gruff, but there was a tenderness beneath it. A gentleness he only reserved for you.
Your lips cracked into a weak smile. "It was my fault. I messed up."
A growl rumbled low in his chest, and you could feel the anger simmering just beneath his skin, not at you but at the situation, at whoever had dared to hurt you.
“Don’t,” he said, voice like gravel. “Don't start, none of this is on you.” His voice softened slightly as he leaned closer, the warmth of his presence enveloping you. “What matters is you’re here.”
The reassurance wrapped around you like a warm blanket, grounding you.
Logan’s thumb traced the line of your jaw, his touch sending a spark of warmth through your veins. “When I saw you on the floor like that…I thought—” He shook his head, jaw clenched as he forced himself to meet your gaze again. “I thought I lost you.”
Your fingers twitched slightly, managing to catch his wrist, squeezing it with what little strength you had. “I’m right here,” you said softly, voice clearer than before. “I’m okay.”
Logan’s gaze softened again as he looked down at your hand, his rough exterior cracking just a little more. He gently pried your fingers from his wrist and pressed your hand to his chest, right over his heart. “You scared the hell outta me, you know that?”
You tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a breathless huff. “Didn’t mean to.”
He shook his head, but there was a ghost of a smile tugging at his lips, one that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You never do.”
Tumblr media
You were fine an hour later. 
The color of your skin had returned, glossy and like new. The hollow emptiness inside of you long gone. Your abilities passed every test Charles threw your way with flying colors.
Fully recovered and finally excused from the med-bay after Hank and Jean checked you over one last time, you were given your strict marching orders in the form of extra fluids and bed rest, no matter how much you argued that you were fine.
Your health was the last thing on your mind, just a distant phantom ache each time your eyes would find Logan.
He was still shaken up, even after all the reassurance from Charles and Hank. He kept close the rest of the day, hovering, his presence more protective than usual, but he didn’t talk much.
You could see it in the way he moved, slower, less sure, like he was carrying around something too heavy to shake off. It lingered in the tight set of his jaw, the way his hands flexed as though still looking for something to fight, to protect you from.
It wasn’t hard to guess what it was. 
You hated seeing him like this, burdened by a guilt he didn’t deserve. 
It gnawed at you, that heaviness. The way he started to shut down, to close himself off in the face of fear. It was the only way he knew how to cope.
After seeing him like that, bed rest was the last thing on your mind.
You knew Logan. Knew what he needed when his thoughts got tangled up like this, dragging him under. He wasn't the type to sit and talk through it, not easily anyway. 
And even though you know he’d never ask for it himself, you knew what he needed—to be reminded, physically, that you were still here, still his.
Later that night, when the mansion had quieted and the others were tucked away in their rooms, you found him exactly where you thought you’d find him—in the room you shared, sitting on the edge of the bed. The yellow light from the bedside lamp cast soft shadows across his face, the tension in his jaw still there.
A frown tugged the corners of your mouth as you moved towards him, catching his attention with the rustle of the sheets as you sat next to him.
“Logan,” you say softly, breaking the stillness. He doesn't respond, only the slightest twitch in his shoulders indicating he even heard you. “Hey,” you try again, your voice a little firmer this time.
He turns his head just enough for you to catch the edge of his profile, the crease between his brows, weariness etched into his features.
But he still doesn't speak.
You shift, moving closer until your fingers brush his arm, the heat of his skin radiating through the fabric of his shirt. “Look at me,” you whisper, and finally, his gaze lifts to meet yours, guarded and pained. “I’m fine. I’m right here.”
Logan shakes his head, bringing a hand up to run it through his already messy hair. “You could’ve died,” he bites out, tone rough and low. “We should've never fuckin' split up. I should’ve been there faster, sooner. I should’ve��”
“Logan.” Your voice cut through his, sharper than you meant it to. You catch his hand in yours, thumb brushing against the pulse point of his wrist. “You saved me, I’m not going anywhere. I need you to hear that.”
He meets your gaze then, eyes dark with something vulnerable, something raw. He nods weakly, like he only half-believes it. You can still see the hesitation swirling through his eyes, the reluctance in the stiffness of his muscles against yours.
He needs something more than words, something to bring him back to you.
With that, you move to straddle his lap, your knees pressing into the mattress on either side of his thighs. His body stiffens under yours, his breath hitching slightly as his hands fall to your waist almost instinctively.
“Hold on,” Logan starts, tone hesitant and hands light as they hover over your hips like he’s still scared to touch you. “You heard what Hank said–”
“I’m fine,” you repeat, finality lacing your tone and leaving no room for argument. You reach down, taking his hand in yours and bringing it up to press flat directly over your heart. The very same way he did your first night together. "Can you feel me?”
The question hangs between you, soft but weighted with purpose.
Logan’s breath catches in his throat, fingers splaying wider across your chest. The heat of his palm sinks through to your skin, lighting a fire in you. 
The steady beat of your heart under his touch is an undeniable reminder–alive, strong, with him. You can feel him relax, just a touch.
The tension in his muscles breaking down beneath you piece by piece as the rhythm grounds him, helps to pull him out of his spiral.
“Yeah,” he mumbles, barely audible. His eyes drop to where his hand rests, his thumb absently grazing the space just above your sternum. “I feel you.”
“Then trust it,” you murmur. “Trust me.”
A deep, slow breath escapes him, and something in his eyes softens just enough. You lean closer, your fingers trailing up his arms, over his shoulders, until they thread into the hair at the nape of his neck. 
You smile softly, pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead. He sighs deeply, leaning into your touch like a dog starved of attention from its master. His grip on your waist finally tightens, fingers pressing into your skin just enough to feel that edge of need—the need to let go.
“You’ve been taking care of me all day,” you murmur, scratching your nails along his scalp softly. “Now let me take care of you.”
You feel him shudder, a weak groan escaping from his slack lips. His hazy eyes search your face, pupils blown out and seeping into the warm hazel color like an oil spill over a lake.
You tilt your head, lips grazing the stubble on his jawline, moving slowly, deliberately, until you can capture his mouth in a kiss.
It’s soft at first, gentle, but you feel him melt into it, the sharp edge of his restraint crumbling as he kisses you back with a kind of hunger that fuels you.
Logan’s hands slide up your back, fingers curling into the fabric of your shirt as you take control, deepening the kiss, coaxing him further into the moment.
His mouth is warm and wet and urgent against yours, the scrape of his teeth along your bottom lip sends a thrill down your spine. 
His lips move over yours with a reverence that makes your chest tighten, as if each slick glide of your lips together is an apology, a promise, and a plea all rolled into one.
But you don’t want his apologies. You want his surrender.
His breath stutters in his chest when your fingers twist in his hair, tugging just enough to remind him who’s in charge tonight.
When your hand finds his chest, pushing him down gently, he goes without protest. His eyes never leave yours as he settles against the pillows, following your every movement as you crawl closer.
Climbing over him to perch on top of his thighs, you waste no time in reaching for the hem of his shirt, gently tugging on it in a silent question. Logan’s breath comes in shallow puffs as he nods, fingers twitching on your hips. 
You can feel the way his chest rises and falls under the tips of your fingers, the sharp intake of air when your hands ghost across the skin of his lower stomach as you lift his shirt up and over his head.
You toss it over your shoulder carelessly, it lands with a muted thump somewhere behind you, leaving his chest bare. His muscles taut and rippling as he forces himself to stay still, the dim light plays across his skin, highlighting the contours along his torso.
You take a moment to just admire him, trailing your fingers along the familiar planes of his skin. Your touch is feather light, tracing over the spots that should be littered in scars. 
The place in his shoulder where he got shot two weeks back, or where the loose shrapnel that embedded itself in his side on the last mission should be, or the skin where his shoulder meets his neck after you dug your teeth into it hard enough to bleed a few nights ago.
The way his body responds to you makes your pulse quicken—the way he finally relaxes completely under your touch, melting into the mattress. 
You continue your path down, fingers slipping through the ridges of his abs, scratching your nails through the dark hair that disappears into the waistband of his bottoms teasingly. The muscles of his stomach jump under your touch, the power of his need thrumming beneath your touch.
You drag your hand over the hard length of him, his cock thick and hot as it twitches beneath your fingers. There’s a sharp hiss bleeding through grit teeth as his hips twitch up off the mattress ever so slightly.
You lean forward, hiding a small smirk in the crook of his neck. “Logan,” you whisper, voice dripping with intent, “I want you to beg for it.”
A deep, guttural growl rumbles through his chest. It shakes your body like thunder, finding a home between your thighs. Logan’s head falls back against the pillows, exposing the tan column of his throat to your hungry gaze.
It’s almost immediate, your reaction, your bodies reaction. The pulse of your blood starts to simmer with that telltale heat, slowly bubbling beneath your skin in anticipation.
Your gaze traces along where the vein of his jugular presses against his skin enticingly, barely suppressing a full body shiver at the sight.
You slip your index and middle finger beneath his waistband, brushing against his hard cock with barely any pressure. His hips buck up again, seeking more friction, but you pull back slightly, making him chase it.
“I said beg, Logan,” you murmur, your voice low, teasing, a sharp edge to it now. Your free hand comes up, gripping his jaw tightly, forcing him to look at you.
His eyes, dark and blown wide with lust, meet yours, and you can see the war raging inside him—the urge to dominate, to take control—but then he’s giving in to you, surrendering so beautifully.
“Goddamn,” he rasps quietly, his voice rough, broken. It’s barely a word, more of a growl torn from his throat. He bites it out, quiet and foreign sounding coming from his tongue. “Please, I need—”
“Good boy,” you purr, and finally, drag the soaked fabric of his bottoms down. His cock springs free, slapping against his stomach lewdly.
You moan softly, deftly wrapping your fist around him loosely. Logan groans, you swear you can hear his teeth grind together at the first feeling of your touch where he wants it most.
He’s scalding to the touch, velvety skin throbbing in time with his heartbeat. Rock-hard and flushed an angry red, darkening even more the closer you get to the tip.
You keep the pace of your strokes tortuously slow, letting him feel every movement, teasing him. It’s addictive, watching the way he starts to unravel beneath you at the slightest touch.
His legs kick out against the mattress minutely, hands falling from your hips to grip the sheets as hard as he can in a failing attempt to calm himself.
You lean down, slick lips brushing against his as you speak, your voice soft but commanding. “You’re going to let me do whatever I want to you tonight, aren't you?”
Logan nods, his breath coming in quick pants, his sweaty chest rising and falling rapidly. “Yes,” he chokes out, eyes brimming with need. “Fuck, do whatever you want, baby. I’m yours.”
The usual dominance he carries like a second skin has been peeled away, leaving him vulnerable, laid out beneath you, at your mercy.
Your hand speeds up, grip tightening as you twist your wrist over his leaking tip. Your knuckles shine with pre-come, slick from the gratuitous amount of wetness steadily drooling out.
“You’re being so good for me, Logan,” you whisper, your voice soft and laced with praise. “So good, letting me take care of you like this.”
His response is a loud moan, his hips arching up off the bed, but you’re quick to press them down with your free arm, your thighs tightening around him.
“Not yet,” you warn, strength on display as you stop his movements. “You’ll come when I say.”
A strangled sound escapes him, somewhere between a growl and a whimper, and it sends a thrill through you. He’s right there, teetering on the edge, but he’s holding on—for you.
“Poor thing,” you mumble, idly pressing your thumb into his slit, gathering the precome there to spread it along the flushed crown. “So hard, so needy for me.”
“Jesus, fuck,” Logan whines, his head tipping back against the pillows a second times, eyes squeezing shut tighten enough to wrinkle the skin around them.
You smile, your nails digging into his chest as you shift, positioning yourself above him. The heat between your legs is unbearable now, slick all along your inner thighs as it pools from your aching cunt, drenching the soft cotton of your panties.
So desperate to be stretched around Logan’s cock, to be filled the only way he can. You roll your hips forward, the hard jut of his cock sliding through the sticky mess of your panties.
“Shit, baby,” he groans, loud and hoarse. “Fuck, give it to me, I’m ready–”
You press your finger to his lips, silencing him as you hover over him. “Not yet,” you whisper, a wicked grin on your face as you slide your panties to the side and take him in your hand, letting the tip brush against your soaked entrance, still not giving him what he craves.
Your own patience is starting to run thin, but the sound of his begging is too good.
“Tell me how bad you want it,” you say, your voice sharp and commanding as you rub the tip of him along your cunt, teasing. “Tell me what you need.”
He’s trembling beneath you, a soft whimper leaving his lips as you sink down slightly, barely letting him inside. "Please, darlin'," he groans, voice rough with need. "I need to feel you—need you so fuckin’ bad."
You finally give in, sinking down onto him in one slow, deliberate motion.
His body jerks beneath you, a choked growl spilling from his lips as you take him in, inch by inch. You don’t stop until he’s buried deep inside you, your walls clenching around him as you settle into his lap.
The feeling is overwhelming, the stretch, the heat, the way he fills you completely.
You both groan at the same time, your fingers digging into his shoulders as you roll your hips, savoring the way he pulses inside you, how his entire body reacts to every little movement.
“God, you’re so big,” you whisper, your voice heavy with lust as you look down at where your bodies meet. “You gonna be a good boy and let me ride you?”
“Fuck,” he grits, voice like gravel crunching underfoot.
His hands slide up your back, desperate and needy as they cradle the back of your head softly. “I’d kill them all,” he pants, lips messily searching for your own, desperate for more frantic kisses. “Fuckin’ all of them, all for you.”
You moan loud and unabashed, eyes screwing shut as your nails rake down his chest hard enough to break the skin. The smell of his blood breaks through the air, heady and sharp. He throws his head back, a broken gasp dragged out of him as his hips speed up.
You think back to the room in the warehouse, the floor slick with stray remains and viscera. Think back to him lifting you to his chest, of the blood spattered across his suit and face slipping against your own clammy skin.
Flashes of Logan running to you like a loyal livestock dog, covered in the blood of any wolf that dares attack his precious sheep. Staining the white of your wool red with the righteous wrath of his sacrifice. 
You roll your hips faster, bouncing with enough force to have you crying out. The tight suction of your walls pulling him as deep as he can get at this angle.
The coarse hair along his stomach drags against your throbbing clit, making white hot sparks of pleasure zing up your spine to light up each vertebrae. 
Logan presses his forehead to your chest, hot breath puffing out over your sweaty neck. You tilt your head to the side almost subconsciously, bearing more of yourself to him.
“Can’t hold back much longer,” he admits weakly, blunt nails digging into your skin sharp enough to sting. “Feels so good, so fuckin' good."
He trails off, face pinched with ecstasy as he gazes up at you. You smile, rolling your hips slowly, tiny figure eights that let you feel every inch of him pressing against your walls.
“You're not supposed to hold back," you whisper, your voice thick with need as you lean down, kissing along his jawline. "I want you to let go, Logan."
His eyes snap open, the hazel gone wild and desperate, and it’s like you can see the exact moment he breaks. The tiniest shred of self control finally crumbling under the weight of his instincts. With a low, feral growl, he surges up.
You’re on your back quicker than you can blink, stomach surging with it. You hardly have any time to react, Logan punching all the air out of your lungs as he sets a brutal pace.
The sudden intensity has you gasping, your body jolting as he takes over, fucking you like his life depends on it. 
Each thrust is hard and deep, hitting the spot inside of you, over and over again until you’re a trembling mess above him, moaning his name, your nails digging into his chest.
Logan’s grip on you is ironclad, pulling you back onto him harder, faster, his breaths coming out in ragged pants as he loses himself completely in the heat of your body.
"That's it," you pant, feeling the way your body tightens around him, the tension building deep inside you. "Fuck, Logan, just like that—"
He growls again, the sound vibrating through his chest as he slams into you harder, his pace relentless. You can feel the sweat slick between your bodies, hear the wet, filthy sounds of your bodies coming together as his control snaps completely.
“Mine,” he growls between thrusts, voice low and rough as he pounds into you, his eyes locked on yours, full of possessive need. "All fuckin’ mine."
Your body responds to his words, tightening around him as your orgasm builds, every nerve in your body on fire. "Yes," you gasp, your voice barely more than a broken moan as he hits that perfect spot again and again. "Yours—only yours."
Slowly, deliberately, you bring your hand to your mouth, biting down on the pad of your thumb hard enough to draw a thin line of blood.
The scent of iron fills the space between you, mixing with the musk of sex and sweat. Logan’s nostrils flare as he takes in the scent, his pupils dilating further, and you feel his cock twitch inside of you.
You raise your thumb to his mouth, sliding it along his bottom lip to leave behind a thin trail of red. “Suck,” you whisper softly, pressing your thumb into his mouth ever so slightly. 
And he does, without hesitation. 
Logan’s lips part, and he pulls your thumb into his mouth, his tongue swirling around the taste of your blood. The look in his eyes as he does sends a wave of heat crashing through you.
The pure devotion of the act thickening the air around you to coil the spring of pleasure winding in your lower stomach tighter.
You groan, your own restraint folding like a house of cards as you drag your nose down the column of his throat, stopping right at the base. You press a quick kiss over the rapid fluttering of his pulse before you bite down, hard.
Logan keens around your thumb, teeth digging into your skin roughly as his blood floods your mouth. 
You get lost in it, the familiar taste of him seeping onto your tongue as his cock jerks and pulses in your clenching cunt. Getting lost in the way you can feel the rhythm of his heart against your lips, each strong beat sending more blood pumping out to leak along your taste buds.
You press your chest to his, not leaving an inch of space between you. It’s still not enough, it will never be enough.
You need more, so much more.
You want to encompass him completely, to be encompassed by him.
You want to dig your hands into his skin–to peel back each layer of flesh and fat and muscle, snap each of his ribs back so you can bury yourself in the cavity of his chest before you bend them back into place. Burrowing yourself deep enough inside him to watch him heal all around you, to watch his skin stitch itself back together.
It’s a sick feeling, the need to take and take until he has no more left to give. Sick and all consuming, lighting you up like the raging flames of a forest fire that destroys everything in its path. 
When you finally pull your hand away from his mouth, he lets out a breathless moan, and you lean down to press your lips against his in a bruising kiss.
The coppery tang of your blood lingers between you, mixing with Logan’s as your teeth clash together violently, as you devour him, pouring every ounce of your control into the kiss.
You press your palm to his chest, powers surging to life over his heart. You don't need to open your eyes to see what you leave behind, the red and blue pulse of his blood lighting up beneath his skin like the neon sign hanging outside his favorite bar.
Logan moans into your mouth, tongue dragging along the point of your canines. "Don't stop," he pleads, “Please, baby, don’t fuckin’ stop.”
You can feel the energy coursing between you, a tangible thing that's threading itself between your fingers. It’s intoxicating, a connection deeper than flesh, a binding of souls fueled by blood and lust. You lean into the heat radiating from him, urging your energy to flow freely, wrapping it around his heart like a warm embrace.
“Logan,” you whisper breathily, breaking the kiss just enough to look into his wild, pleading eyes. “You feel that? You and me, we’re connected.”
“I feel it, honey,” he groans, bucking his hips, forcing you to take him deeper. “You’re everywhere. It’s all I can think about all the goddamn time, drives me fuckin’ crazy.” His words tumble from his lips, raw and unfiltered, sending another thrill of desire through you.
You whine, head tipping back to the ceiling. Drunk of the feeling of him, of his cock, of his blood on your teeth.
You've come to think that being in bed with Logan is like being in church.
There's a holiness to the way he holds you—like you’re the only thing worth believing in.
The familiar weight of his body pressing you into the mattress is the alter. The heat of him like laying in the burning flame of a candle. The strong planes of his muscles each a different scripture that you take in by touch alone, skating your hands over his skin with something close to worship.
Each bead of sweat on his skin feels sacred, a testament to the intensity between you, as though every part of him has been crafted for this moment of devotion.
The hard length of his cock carves a place for itself inside you, each heavy smack of his hips punching another desperate sound out of your slack lips. 
His breath, deep and ragged, is a chant that pulls you into reverence. It puffs against the wild beat of your pulse, his lips brushing over the fever hot plane of your skin. 
The sound of your name falling from his mouth sounds like a prayer answered.
You can’t help but close your eyes, not in exhaustion, but in a kind of spiritual surrender, like by shutting out the world, you can truly grasp the divinity of it. His blood, mixing with yours on your tongue feels like a sacrament—an unholy communion.
The air between you crackles with heat, your bodies moving together in perfect sync, each thrust driving you closer to the edge. Logan’s head tilts back, his mouth open in a silent scream as he claws at your hips, pulling you down harder, deeper.
“I’m close,” he groans, his voice strained, desperate. “Please—fuck—I need to—”
You reach up quickly, grabbing his jaw and forcing him to look at you. “Look at me when you fuck me,” you demand, your voice sharp, dripping with authority. “I want you to watch me when you come.”
That’s all it takes.
 Logan’s entire body goes taut, a strangled roar tearing from his throat as he buries himself inside you one last time, the force of his release crashing through him. The hot spray of his come floods your insides, drenching your walls in thick spurts of white. 
His hands grip you so tightly you’re sure there’ll be bruises blooming later, but you don’t care. You wish they wouldn’t fade. You want them. You want to wear his mark, to feel the evidence of this moment lingering on your skin long after it’s over.
His hips don’t stop even as he comes, a sharp cry ripping its way from his throat as he keeps fucking you, pumping you full of him like he can’t stop. 
When you feel him start to lose control like that, feel the frantic twitch of his cock inside you, you finally let go, your orgasm crashing over you like a tidal wave. The force of it rips a scream from your throat as you clench around him, your body spasming with the intensity of it.
Your abused cunt gushes around his cock to seep into the mattress, soaking both the sheets and his lower body all at once as you let out a weak mutter of his name.
For a moment, the only sound in the room is the ragged, uneven breathing between you as you both come down from the high. Logan collapses on the bed, arms circling your waist to drag you along with him. His cock stays inside of you, plugging you full of his come.
Your body trembles with the aftershocks of your orgasm, chest heaving as you try to catch your breath. 
Logan is warm and grounding under you, soft and lax. You can feel his heartbeat, strong and steady beneath your cheek, and you press a soft kiss to the skin there, a silent reminder.
His hand comes up to thread through your hair, his touch gentle now, his body relaxed in a way that it wasn’t before.
“I love you,” he whispers against the crown of your head, his voice soft, vulnerable in a way that makes your heartache.
You smile, soft and secretive in the valley of his pecs, “I love you too.”
It’s a quiet admission, the first time you’ve ever said that to each other with words. The first time you both felt the need to, because it’s nothing you didn’t already know.
Your blood dripping from his teeth lays the same claim over you as his come dripping down your thighs.
It means you're his, and he’s yours.
Tumblr media
tags are now in the comments! if you want to get tagged for any of my works just fill out this form!
Tumblr media
784 notes · View notes
orteil42 · 1 year ago
Text
some undifferentiated thoughts about my Starfield playthrough as i have them. i am a game developer with a strong interest in procedural generation and i've enjoyed a bunch of other bethesda games so this might get pretty mean sorry
(this is a long one)
starfield dialogue is already exhausting me "oh you must've been living under a moon rock ;)" get it! because they're in space! this would've been too corny for the Jetsons
there's a kind of cheap dusting of space theme over everything. the food isn't salmon but alien salmon. it's not seaweed but alien seaweed. cooking alien stir-fry. come on
cannot get over how clumsily the theming is handled. books, board games, weapon names revolve heavily around space. these people have been living on alien planets for hundreds of years yet have this unending sense of novelty about it. the game takes itself completely seriously but feels like it's attempting to parody itself
people's EYEBALLS are CLIPPING THROUGH THEIR EYELIDS
a woman is speaking to me in french. her accent is about as believable as her haircut
these are some of the worst reflection maps i've ever seen
next to nothing is interactive. you can sit in chairs and sleep in beds and that is about it. can't even drink from people's toilets. disgraceful
game helpfully crashes 5 seconds after i decide i should get some sleep. very handy!
my character has not said a single thing since i started playing. not one peep. this is an unmitigated improvement over Fallout 4 i'm so glad honestly
the more i poke around the big city the more the NPC quips feel like something out of gen-1 pokemon. can't get enough of this coffee :) this city is where it's at :) spacesuits are comfy and easy to wear
very strange sense of altered reality from the quest dialogue too. has anyone at bethesda met a person before? i move on to some mission that has me scanning wildlife on a faraway planet hoping this will, somehow, feel less alien than human conversation
just as with No Man's Sky, every planet is uniformly dotted with equidistantly-placed points of interest that you slowly make your way to (no vehicles besides your jetpack) which always turn out to be some cave or building identical to those you've cleared before
unlike with No Man's Sky, the seamless exploration is faked and the biodiversity is nil. you do get an impressive amount of raw loading screens however
the prefab bases and power stations found everywhere on planets seem to have very sparse, very specific slots for spawning consumables, which results in encountering some giant industrial installation in the middle of nowhere with, i don't know, a loaf of whole-grain sandwich bread just casually sitting next to it all proper. there is no breathable atmosphere here. who is eating this
planetary traversal is a CHORE. i am saying this as someone who loved Death Stranding
heinous "hold to confirm" buttons sprinkled in various flow-breaking places throughout the interface
enemy AI is abominable. nobody is pathing their way to get my ass. "must've been the wind" taken to the next level. an infant playing peekaboo has more object permanence
hoisting yourself up on ledges when jumping is…nice
companions randomly nowhere to be found. persists through multiple fast-travels and loading screens until, just as randomly, they pop back up
storage space is now limited! unlike in Fallout 4 and virtually every other bethesda game, your containers now hold a finite item capacity. god forbid we let the player have fun
baffling inventory UI. i imagine there's a mod out there that completely overhauls it the way SkyUI did for Skyrim. this should not be needed! how are your UIs getting worse a decade later!
scanning the precious few species inhabiting some dusty planet; one of them is this arching red root i've already seen several times before. my job done in this biome, i travel (read: teleport with a loading screen) to the polar region to find some other species. the first one i catalogue is the exact same red root again but this time it's named "boreas root" todd howard is a genius
some alien horror comes at me full fangs out. i hop on a pebble. obscenely, i am safe
procedural terrain generation beyond dull, impossibly unimaginative. these people have not had one critical thought on what makes a procedural world interesting. beginning to feel validated in my belief that only i should be trusted with proc gen. along with perhaps tarn adams
jokes aside this is making me feel genuinely insane. there have been excellent procedural generation techniques that produce compelling explorable maps for decades now. bethesda absolutely has the budget and know-how to do miles better than this yet somehow they just…do not? the same way Pokemon has decided to just no longer bother with their mainline games despite being the highest-grossing media franchise in history? hello? what is for real going on
some of the most cynical breadcrumbing i've seen in years. approaching some random cave and this person in space gear, who in the vast immensity of the infinite cosmos just happens to be snapping pictures right here, tells me more-or-less verbatim "if you like this place, you should see this other place" [other random cave has been added to your map.]
i do not like how good this makes No Man's Sky's gameplay look. it depresses me how much i have to hand it to No Man's Sky for at least not fucking up this bad. please stop making me wish i was playing No Man's Sky instead this is grotesque
i think i've exhausted my interest and patience for this game at the moment. i'll get back to the main story at some point and try some other systems ie. crafting and base-building to see if there's any engagement to be found but so far, my god. my god
1K notes · View notes
argumate · 3 days ago
Text
transgenderer said: very confused by your characterization of TV as beneficial and social media as harmful. either position seems plausible, but not both at once. id consider TV as more harmful than social media, as someone who spent a lot of time watching tv in my childhood and a lot of time on social media in my teens
for TV you have to compare it with the cultural environment pre-1950 and the effect it may have had on why society got so much nicer post-1950.
now of course there were many dramatic changes going on at the same time: child mortality plummeted so we weren't surrounded by tiny skeletons all the time, birthrates slowed and family sizes dropped, we got much richer and ate more food and suffered less disease, lifespans lengthened, everyone learned to read and children started spending more time in school and less time in factories and on farms, etc.
but it's noteworthy that everyone also started spending a couple of hours a day watching television, a giant experiment in mass media (one of many giant experiments we ran on society post-1950).
now, many people assert that it had a negative effect (television shows feature sex, violence, and commercials!) but few people say it had no effect (humans gonna human) and hardly anyone seems to claim it had a positive effect, and I find that a little strange when you think about what television typically shows: highly moralistic narratives that both reflect social norms but also shape them by modeling what we consider to be good behaviour, good relationships, and idealised families, in a context that almost everyone shares, inflected by new elite ideas about psychiatry and psychoanalysis that were obviously very clumsy but a huge leap on what came before.
compare what a child in the '60s or '70s or '80s will learn about what it means to be a child and how adults should act and parents should engage with children and with each other and how the world works compared with a child in the '20s or '30s or '40s; I think the kid raised by television may well have a better baseline in many ways!
this is all anecdotal -- maybe some enterprising academic could do a study where they try to correlate the spread of television with some metrics of social health and disentangle it from the spread of leaded petrol lol -- but there are innumerable examples of the way television is loaded with positive messages, from The Brady Bunch to The Simpsons, even television that was often viewed as antisocial or subversive or potentially harmful at the time.
I mean I was just watching the first few episodes of SVU the other day and amongst all the hard-boiled detective shenanigans and the sensationalism it basically consists of authority figures saying "people do bad things to each other, and even worse sometimes society is unkind to the victim; also rape is a serious issue and women can be cops btw" -- even as copaganda it's a progressive show for the time.
an argument that television is harmful on net needs to account for where the harm is coming from and how it influences people; there are clearly things that would be much better than television as practiced in the 20th century but it seems like a significant improvement on the culture and media environment that preceded it, whether that was vaudeville or public executions.
social media on the other hand is more complicated to analyse because there are so many disparate unrelated things happening on there, it's individualised more like the telephone network or email than broadcast television, even if some general trends are evident.
and social media obviously contains many positive elements -- I love it myself -- but the negative elements are equally obvious; whether it ends up negative on net depends on how you account for them, but it's looking like a much more complicated story than television.
some factors to consider:
the way social media selects for viral spread leads to content that is far more inflammatory than television
"doomscrolling" makes the nightly news broadcast look tame
social media creates an explicit status/attention hierarchy for the world and puts almost everyone at the bottom of it; if the message of television was "you're special" then the message of social media is "you're nothing"
social media permits mob harassment in a way that makes old shows like Jerry Springer look good by comparison
social media appears to be having effects on politics which are not necessarily positive, I would say
social media appears to be damaging gender relations for young people in ways we're still figuring out
youth suicide rates appear to correlate with social media usage
anyway, I think as a society we will develop better cultural antibodies to the worst aspects of social media over time, but so far I think AI in the form of chat bots appears to be more like television (good) and less like social media (bad).
203 notes · View notes
opencommunion · 1 year ago
Text
Tumblr media
The Stop Cop City movement has sought to prevent the expropriation of part of the Welaunee Forest for the development of an 85-acre police mega training center: a model town to prepare the state’s repressive arms for the urban warfare that will ensue when the contradictions of their exploitation and extraction become uncontainable, as they did in 2020 after the APD murdered Rayshard Brooks.  That murder, and all those that came before, were the lodestars of the Black-led movement during the George Floyd uprisings; their demands were no less than the dismantlement of the entire carceral system. Unable to effectively manage or quell the popular street movements, the Atlanta Police Foundation set out to consolidate and expand their capabilities for surveillance, repression, imprisonment, armed violence, and forced disappearance. One result is Cop City, which has been racked by militant sabotage, land occupation, arson, and popular mobilizations, in an attempt to end the construction and return Atlanta to its people.  As the Atlanta Police Foundation was unable to contain the 2020 Black rebellion, so too have they been unable to quell the resistance against Cop City. The press reports that the project is hemorrhaging money and is mired in delays and difficulties. For their part, the city, the state, and the federal government, have in turn employed every tool in their power to destroy the movement. Last week, the Georgia State Senate passed a bill to effectively criminalize bail funds in the state; RICO charges have been contorted to target networks of support and care that surround the fighters; and last January, APD assassinated the comrade Tortuguita in cold blood while they rested in their tent in the forest. It is clear that Stop Cop City represents one of the conjunctural spear tips for expanding the existing systems of counterinsurgency that span Africa, Asia, and the Arab world.  Today the system’s belly rests atop Gaza, whose rumblings shake the earth upon which we walk. Through its Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) program, the APD has sent hundreds of police to train with the Zionist occupation forces. And in October 2023, after Tufan al-Aqsa, the Atlanta Police Department engaged in hostage training inside abandoned hotels, putatively intended to “defeat Hamas,” in an advancement of tactics for the targeting of Black people. With every such expansion, the ability of counterinsurgency doctrines to counteract people’s liberation struggles grows. The purpose of counterinsurgency is to marshal state and para-state power into political, social, economic, psychological, and military warfare to overwhelm both militants and the popular cradle—the people—who support them. Its aim is to render us hopeless; to isolate and dispossess us and to break our will to resist it by any and all means necessary. This will continue apace, unless we fight to end it. Stop Cop City remains undeterred: on Friday, an APD cop car was burnt overnight in response to the police operation on February 8; yesterday, two trucks and trailers loaded with lumber were burnt to the ground. An anonymous statement claiming credit for the former, stated: “We wish to dispel any notion that people will take this latest wave of repression lying down, or that arresting alleged arsonists will deter future arsons.”  As the U.S. government and Zionist entity set their sights on the Palestinian people sheltering in Rafah, as they continue their relentless genocide of our people in Khan Younis, Jabalia, Shuja’iyya, and Gaza City, the Stop Cop City movement has clearly articulated its solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. They have done so with consistency and discipline, and we have heard them. Our vision of freedom in this life and the next requires us to confront and challenge the entangled forces of oppression in Palestine and in Turtle Island, and to identify the sites of tension upon which these systems distill their forces. This week, as with the last three years, the forest defenders have presented us one such crucible.
(11 Feb 24)
National Lawyers Guild, Stop All Cop Cities: Lessons For a National Struggle (video, 1 hr 45 min)
1K notes · View notes
eshippro · 4 months ago
Text
Finding a Freight Forwarder: A Comprehensive Guide
Tumblr media
Introduction
Finding the right freight forwarder is crucial for ensuring a smooth and efficient ocean freight shipping process. A reliable freight forwarder acts as an intermediary between you and the carriers, handling all the logistics involved in moving your goods from one place to another. Here’s a detailed guide on how to find a freight forwarder for ocean freight forwarding.
1. Grasp the Function of a Freight Forwarder
A freight forwarder manages the logistics of shipping goods, including documentation, customs clearance, warehousing, and transportation. Key responsibilities include:
Negotiating with carriers to find the best shipping rates.
Coordinating pick-up and delivery of your cargo.
Handling customs documentation and ensuring compliance with regulations.
Providing insurance and tracking services.
2. Determine Your Shipping Needs
Before you start looking for a freight forwarder, define your specific shipping needs. Consider the following factors:
Type of Goods: Are they perishable, hazardous, or oversized?
Destination: Where are the goods being shipped to?
Volume and Frequency: How much and how often do you ship?
Understanding your needs will help you find a forwarder with the right expertise and resources.
3. Research Potential Freight Forwarders
Start by creating a list of potential freight forwarders. Use various sources such as:
Industry Associations: Organizations like the International Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations (FIATA) provide directories of reputable forwarders.
Referrals: Ask for recommendations from industry peers or business associates.
Additionally, consider logistics companies in Dubai and shipping companies in Dubai, as they have extensive experience with cargo shipping Dubai and can provide valuable insights.
4. Evaluate Their Experience and Expertise
Look for freight forwarders with experience in handling ocean freight shipments, especially those similar to yours. Consider:
Business Tenure: What is their duration of operation?
Specialization: Do they specialize in certain types of goods or regions?
Track Record: What is their success rate with similar shipments?
Consider top freight forwarding companies in Dubai and best cargo service in Dubai, as they have proven expertise in international cargo shipping and logistics and supply chain companies in Dubai.
5. Check Their Network and Partnerships
A well-established network is crucial for efficient shipping. Ensure the forwarder has:
Strong Relationships with Carriers: This ensures better rates and priority handling.
Global Network: Offices or agents in key locations to handle your shipments smoothly.
Customs Expertise: Familiarity with customs regulations in both the origin and destination countries.
Look into global shipping logistics and international logistics companies for extensive networks and partnerships.
6. Assess Their Customer Service
Good communication and customer service are essential. Evaluate their responsiveness and support:
Availability: Are they easily reachable and responsive to queries?
Transparency: Do they provide clear information about costs, procedures, and timelines?
Support Services: Do they offer additional services like insurance, tracking, and warehousing?
Consider the customer service of freight forwarding companies in Dubai and freight forwarding companies in UAE, as they often have a strong focus on client satisfaction.
7. Compare Costs and Services
Request quotes from multiple freight forwarders and compare their costs and services. Look for:
Competitive Rates: Ensure the rates are fair and include all necessary services.
Service Inclusions: Check what services are included in the quote (e.g., documentation, insurance, tracking).
Payment Conditions: Familiarize yourself with their payment terms and conditions.
Evaluate the quotes from sea freight companies in Dubai and the best shipping company in UAE to find competitive rates and comprehensive services.
8. Verify Credentials and Certifications
Ensure the freight forwarder is reputable and compliant with industry standards. Check for:
Licenses and Certifications: Such as FMC (Federal Maritime Commission) licensing for US-based forwarders.
Industry Memberships: Memberships in organizations like FIATA or local trade associations.
Insurance: Adequate liability and cargo insurance coverage.
Verify the credentials of freight forwarders in Dubai and customs clearance agents in Dubai to ensure compliance with regulations.
9. Request References and Case Studies
Ask the freight forwarder for references or case studies from previous clients. This provides insight into their reliability and service quality. Consider:
Client Testimonials: Feedback from other businesses they have worked with.
Case Studies: Examples of how they handled specific challenges or complex shipments.
Consider references from top freight forwarders in Dubai and international cargo services in Dubai for proven reliability.
Conclusion
Finding the right freight forwarder for ocean freight forwarding involves thorough research and evaluation. By understanding your shipping needs, assessing potential forwarders' experience and network, and comparing their costs and services, you can choose a reliable partner to ensure a smooth and efficient shipping process. A good freight forwarder not only handles the logistics but also adds value by providing expert advice and support throughout the shipping journey.
Explore options such as logistics companies in UAE, logistics and freight forwarding services, and digital freight forwarding companies for a comprehensive solution to your shipping needs.
0 notes
tactical-jellyfish · 1 month ago
Text
Wisdom Teeth (drabble)
I've been mean to y'all. Too much angst. Take some fluff for the winter (me having a test this week)
Warnings!: Wisdom tooth removal. Bloody spit, at one point reader is in enough pain to verbally request an opioid pill. Pain and pain medication. Fluffy <3 prob leads up to poly, they're fruitcakes about it.
The SAS teams have had to pause ops for a wide, wide range of reasons. The odd health complication is very much among them.
That being said, Price never thought he would have to pause a mission because one of his star players got a wisdom tooth infected.
You had been off on Tuesday, chewing on only one side of your mouth and not drinking anything that was even a little hotter than room temp.
Kyle gave you funny looks for it, but that was all.
Wednesday, you didn't leave your room for much at all, but that was fine. Resting up before an op wasn't uncommon. Simon did it all the time.
However, at some point between you disappearing and Johnny saying he heard crying from your room all bets were off.
The door was kicked in, to reveal a grown sergeant, teary-eyed and crying a little as they clutched their cheek with a hand.
Kyle was already at your side, trying to coax you to open your mouth for some painkillers. It wasn't working well.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You cried a little before the surgery. Maybe out of nervousness, maybe out of pain, but the nice nurse was kind enough to ignore it as she explained that you would be waking up in a few hours down four whole teeth.
She explained it to you as you sat in the stupid fucking chair, she repeated it as she gently tucked a I.V. with a small blister containing medicine into the veins of your arm.
"Alright, first the anti-anxiety drug will be administered, okay?"
She doesn't wait for your confirmation, but gently pats your shoulder and continues.
"You should start to feel a bit fuzzy, then, you'll sleep."
It takes a few sickening seconds for you to actually feel the drugs kicking in. You want to get out of this chair, to scream at something.
You never liked the dentist.
But then... the world starts to fade out. It's like you're being locked out of your body as your mind turns itself off.
You hear her counting with the surgeon–a much more awkward woman, though no less polite.
Three.
Two.
On-
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The waking up is slow, and messy.
Cotton pads lie in either of your cheeks, and you can't do much but oblige as the nurse gently coaxes you into a wheelchair, giving instructions to the bearded man who's standing in the corner.
"Make sure they don't sleep for at least a couple hours, okay? I know it'll be hard, but try to have them keep pressure on the site."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Remember the usual course, and we're also giving you five opioid pills. Only in case it gets really bad."
"Affirmative."
You know this voice, but when you see the boonie hat and the slightly furrowed brows, a spark of muffled recognition fires off beneath the haze of anesthetic and misery.
"...Old man."
Your voice is slurred, foreign to even you at this point, but he seems to know it, because he sighs frustratedly before taking the chair by the handles and steering your down the hallway out.
"I swear to- mgh, olright. Better than Soap at least."
You're loaded into the back seat of the car with the most basic consideration.
Dumped in like a sack of flour, actually. Your butt hurts now, but there's Kyle.
He snorts when he sees you, reaches forward to wipe whatever is dripping from the corner of your mouth.
It's bloody spit, but he doesn't seem surprised.
The car ride back to base is quiet, but Kyle keeps you awake.
Beyond that, there's nothing you can remember. Not till the next morning.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Johnny is perched at your bedside, scrolling through his phone until he sees your eyes blearily opening, hears your groaning as you recognize a new pain in your cheeks, and he gently coaxes your mouth open to take out the bloody gauze.
"Och, there ye are, bonnie wee thing. You look like an eejit, just thought ye needed to know."
Your tired glare is met with a laugh, but followed shortly by a pat to the shoulder.
"A'hm kiddin', leannan. Just jokin' with ye. Brought ye breakfast."
He holds up a small container of yogurt, shakes it like one would cat treats to entice a stray. You grimace as much as your painfully swollen cheeks allow, but when you open your mouth to tell him off, there's a sharp twinge that makes you close it.
This seems to earn Johnny's sympathies, because he gently guides you so you're sitting up on the bed, holding one of your shaky hands as he peels back the foil on the cup.
"Easy. Still fresh, aye?"
Your wet-eyed nod is met with a sympathetic huff.
"Aye. Dinnae fash. I'll help ye."
You should smack him for implying that you need help eating yogurt, of all things, but... you kind of do need the help.
Your body is still lethargic, sluggishly stumbling through its tasks with hazy edges and poor motor control.
He raises a glass of water to your lips, and has you take a few sips.
Breakfast takes a long time, but before you fall asleep again, he gently sets a painkiller in your mouth, and tells you to swallow.
When you do, he smiles, and bends down to kiss your forehead while you drift back off.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, here's something you didn't know before getting your wisdom teeth out.
You can't swallow for a couple days.
It's gross, yeah, but you're supposed to drool out the bloody spit in your mouth, so you don't get dry socket.
Thankfully, Kyle is there for this.
He sweeps your hair back as much as possible (to the point of getting bobby pins from the corner store for the baby hairs), and rubs your back as you drool out your toothpaste.
"I feel disgusting."
"I know, luv. You're not gonna feel good for a while."
Still, his mother's cure is the only thing he trusts himself enough to use on you. Warm, salty water. A childhood staple.
He's sympathetic to your plights, rubbing your back again as you clumsily swish it by turning your head to the sides, cheeks too swollen to move properly.
"Good job. One more."
A firm, warm hand pats your back again as you "spit" (if you can even call it that) for the final time, offering a sweet smile just for you.
"Perfect. Now you can lay back again, yeah? Nice n' easy."
You're not suffering like you were yesterday. It's new.
Your motor function is back, just sluggish.
No, no, your biggest issue right now is the swelling. Your cheeks were so puffy it hurt, and you had them on ice as often as you could.
This is where you have to thank the lord for John Price. Your captain, distant as he can be, must have at least three sets of cheek-size ice pads, because every time you come into your room, there's a new, fresh set waiting for you.
Kyle gently guides you to sit in your bed, offering a sympathetic smile as he eases you backward until you hit the pillow-ramp Johnny had built so your head would be upright.
"You wanna sleep, luv?"
"No."
Your voice is still quiet, limited by your stupid cheeks, but he smiles anyway, and sits next to you.
"You wanna hang out, then?"
"Yes."
The afternoon is good, for you.
Kyle is there. The whole time.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of course, every surgery comes with the odd fuck-up.
No one should be up, but you're going insane with pain.
It's a sharp, stabbing thing, focused in the gum of your lower right jaw. Almost as sharp as the tooth's initial infection, but more than enough to bring significant distress.
Simon is an odd man, and you two have never been the closest, but when he opens your door in a t-shirt and boxers, you don't even care a little bit.
"Wha's happenin'?"
The Mancunian gruffs concernedly at you, watching as you hold your cheek and shakily take in vain breath in the hopes of calming yourself.
"Get an opioid, Lt. Please."
"Fawk."
Right after that, he's off like a horse to the races, and you're in the silence again, holding your cheek as you try to ignore the way your eyes swim with tears that you refuse to shed.
It's a mercifully short two minutes, even if it feels like half an hour.
Simon's hands are gentle, opening your jaw and setting the horse-pill on your tongue, looking into your wet eyes as he raises the glass to your lips.
"I know, I know. Jus' swallow."
He stays with you as you pant for the breath you've lost, wide, scarred hands on your shoulders.
He exaggerates his own breathing so you see the clear rise and fall of his chest. His lips lose their frown as you slowly start to mimic it.
The dispersal of the pain med is fast, thank goodness, but then Simon has a tired you to deal with, still trembling in the fingers from the sudden spike of debilitating pain, though you can't feel it.
"Are those skeleton boxers?"
He's starting to think your favorite pastime is asking stupid fucking questions, but still, some part of him feels relief.
You could have asked about the lack of mask, but you didn't. You just wanted to know about the halloween boxers.
"Sergeant."
His voice isn't as firm as it should be, but when he sees your exhausted look, he still sits down on the mattress with you.
"Stay. Jus' till I fall asleep."
You don't have the balls to ask for it. Not when you're this vulnerable. So you treat it like an order.
Simon won't be chewing you out for it.
Not now.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kyle and Johnny stand in the doorway to your room, snickering to themselves.
Never thought they would see big boy Lt with the firecracker that drove him up the wall, surely.
Still, after taking a couple pictures (blackmail for Johnny, photo album for Kyle), they just... stand and stare a little.
"Ye ken... we could jus'... join in?"
Johnny poses the question. Kyle nods.
"Yeah. To make sure they're sleeping well."
They both know damn well that's not why. But fuck it, a cuddle pile never hurt anyone.
Especially not you, considering how gentle the pair are when maneuvering your sleeping form.
If Simon opened his eyes and just so happened to see this buffoonery in action, he closed them right back up after.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Price sighs in exasperation when he sees it, but smiles as he tips down his cap just a little.
"Fuckin' rookie. Gonna be the death of me."
But he knows you won't. Because he sees the way Simon's lips curve up in sleep, or the way Johnny and Kyle cling to you.
He should call Laswell, finalize your placement.
The boys wouldn't complain.
324 notes · View notes
renthony · 3 months ago
Text
I want people who watched the stage show/movie version of Wicked and went "oh this is kinda gay" to know that the queer themes of the musical are:
Put there on purpose. The stage show had multiple queer people involved in adapting the novel to the stage.
Steeped in the context of early 2000s American politics. This show debuted two years after 9/11 and is loaded with Bush-era social commentary.
Less prominent than they are in the book, which was written by a queer man and contains explicitly queer characters with zero ambiguity. Elphaba is bisexual and intersex. She and Glinda share a bed and a kiss in the Emerald City. Elphaba's father is bisexual, and both her parents are in a tragic doomed polycule with a man who acts as a third parent to Elphie until everything goes to hell. The book is fundamentally a queer narrative. If you watched the musical and thought, "I really wish this was a little more gay," read the book. It's very different than the musical, but if you are desperate for Explicitly Queer Wicked Content, go read it.
232 notes · View notes
villainessbian · 2 years ago
Text
Concept: most aliens can get anxious, can get scared, can get fight-or-flight. What most aliens do not get, however, is stress. Stress is a weird thing even by human standards. It can build up over time or be something tied to a very limited situation. It can be caused by a lot of things, and it comes in a lot of different ways. But it's a core human reaction, when a situation is wrong, it causes stress until it is righted. And it even affects different people differently!
Cue Human Cassandra, on a ship with her friend and co-worker Human Pauline. The ship is crewed with a mix of species. It's a cargo ship - load up in a space port, unload in another, get news and supplies during their stops, and live as an ever-shifting family as some of the two dozen crew members, give or take, get replaced. Some leave come payday, and new ones come looking for the thrill of low-level adventure, experiencing warp drives across the safer roads of the known universe.
But getting the supplies you need, or want, in stops is never so easy. Humans are new to the galactic community, and their needs misunderstood. Most broad-edibility food is bland for them, but that's okay. A big enough bag of their condiments can last them years. But ADHD meds... now that's less easy to get, the further from Earth you are. And a contract too big for their captain to pass on came up, much farther than the two humans expected.
Cassandra's mood deteriorated, her work priorities out of order, her sleep schedule in disarray. Little by little, she grew restless, shifting moods and gears unpredictably. A few weeks in and she was a mess, barely able to keep up with the minimum her job doing maintenance and running safety diagnostics for the route charting team required of her. While Pauline could help with the mechanical aspects of keeping the ship running, picking up the "slack", the safety had to be double-checked by the charting and pilot teams. When the curves of asteroid probability reached beyond a certain level, several hundred simulations had to be run, time-consuming processes had to be used, to avoid any collision at speeds beyond speed c. Some truly exotic things happened to ships that experienced those, but none of them contained the words "surviving crew." A safe route avoided any probability of collision over .1% and when going faster than light, any choice of course required thinking in 3 dimensions plus relative time to navigate dangerous probability fields in one piece, finding time-specific corridors and accounting for a dozen variables at once.
After she had a breakdown over a path she would normally have been able to find in under a minute, Pauline spoke to a concerned pilot team member:
"You have to understand her, this is a stressful situation and she's doing her best..."
"What do you mean by 'stressful'?" Gabalt asked. The furry little creature stood on two arched legs, and barely reached up to Pauline's shoulder, opening three wide eyes with curiosity and concern in equal parts.
"Things are... getting difficult for her, and keep getting more difficult because she does not have medication to help her brain be efficient. It makes her tired, and inefficient, and as it goes on, she's less and less able to cope with the situation. The longer this goes on, the worse it gets, and that is stress. Getting more tired because it takes more energy to deal with the situation, and less efficient because she's more tired, and things get harder because she's less efficient, on and on until something can solve the problem and the stress goes away."
"That sounds... hard. Do all humans have to deal with this?"
"Well, everyone has sources of stress, but she's got a disability. Without her meds, she gets stressed all the time. Not a lot all at once, but it always adds up."
"Oh no! So she'll be stuck like that until we get closer to Earth?"
"Most likely, yes."
But the most momentous thing to happen this day was not her breakdown. Not an hour later, alarms blared up. The simulation holograms all displayed blinking red masses - the less-travelled "safe route" was not as well protected! An asteroid range had been detected cutting through the border field, and it was in their way!
Pauline froze up, not knowing what to do. Gabalt was too surprised to act fast. All the courses from the ship's library of regular manoeuvres suggested a crash chance of over 60%, and mere seconds to act before entering the field!
Before anyone could react, Cassandra came in running from her corner to the front of the bridge, slamming the warp drive shutdown button. Most holograms stuttered and collapsed, the exit from FTL essentially dividing one or several of their dimensions by zero.
Looking quickly at the few remaining ones and gazing at the screens showing the current outside situation like a large window would have - plus a few critical extra points of data - she adjusted the angles manually while everyone still shuddered from the gravitational and temporal whiplash of suddenly coming back into normal time. Unblinkingly, she spotted the asteroids on the route while the ship was still going, if not at relativistic speeds, still fast enough for a single pebble they met to vaporise the Whipple shields, the outer hull, the inner hull, the crew members, and the hull again coming out if they but grazed it. Confirming the angles visually, she played with the reaction wheels, the thrusters, the gravity drives, to divert the ship's course just enough to miss a collision while not risking any grave injury on board. There was no time to react - if anything showed up straight ahead on the "unaugmented" outside view screens, it was too late to not get splatted. After half the crew had had the time to get thrown to the side or on the ground due to the rough handling, she'd managed to avoid any crash.
Gabalt was reeling. While it was surely not impossible, these was the kind of moves experienced veterans would never wish to attempt, and the margins for error were ridiculously low! She'd saved the ship and everyone on it, whereas she'd been unable to do a simple safety run so soon before?
Pauline was white as a sheet, but this was nothing compared to Cassandra, shaking violently and breathing unevenly.
"Pauline? What is she doing?"
"That's... probably the adrenaline."
"What's it for?"
"It's from stress. When it comes it overcharges the body. It's like the traditional, 'fight or flight' instinct from survival in prey-predator paradigms, it lets you move fast but paralyses thought... it feels pretty bad after a lot of it is released though. Now she's crashing down, must be harrowing."
"How did she do that? And you said her thoughts were paralysed for precision manoeuvres?"
Cassandra's voice came, nearly a mutter: "I just... had to. do it."
Gabalt needed to understand what happened.
"What do you mean you had to? Someone had to do it, but why you?"
"It- it was very stressful, I saw you freeze, and so."
"But... but HOW did you do all that? That was extremely complicated, few pilots -whose main craft is directly piloting- would want to even try doing that when given a choice!?"
"I had to. do it, so I did. I couldn't. couldn't make a mistake."
"This makes absolutely no sense."
Pauline interrupted. "She just works like that. Lots of stress and when people freeze up, humans with her condition... sometimes, surprisingly, function better in the moment than others can."
"Ah. So it's a human thing. of course, it's a human thing. NOTHING MAKES ANY SENSE WITH YOUR ACCURSED SPECIES" the diminutive pilot pouted.
And so one more story of the humans doing the impossible spread around. Humans of a subtype, more easily harmed, sometimes unstable and needing help for the simplest things... accomplishing odd, unthinkable, borderline heroic feats under duress none could be expected to withstand - but only then. Cursed, blessed? No story-teller seemed too certain. But the "magical" species never stopped surprising all others. And a new proverb developed: "it's not over until the human says it is".
5K notes · View notes
bestanimal · 6 days ago
Text
Round 3 - Mammalia - Carnivora
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
(Sources - 1, 2, 3, 4)
Our next order of mammals is Carnivora, mammals specialized primarily in eating meat. A diverse order, Carnivora contains the living families Canidae (“dogs”), Ursidae (“bears”), Phocidae (“earless seals”), Otariidae (“eared seals”), Odobenidae (“Walrus”), Mephitidae (“skunks” and “stink badgers”), Ailuridae (“Red Panda”), Procyonidae (“raccoons”, “coatis”, “ringtails”, “kinkajous”, and kin), Mustelidae (“weasels”, “badgers”, “otters”, “Wolverine”, and kin), Nandiniidae (“African Palm Civet”), Viverridae (“civets”, “genets”, “Binturong”, and kin), Herpestidae (“mongooses”), Eupleridae (“Malagasy mongooses”), Hyaenidae (“hyenas”), Prionodontidae (“Asiatic linsangs”), and Felidae (“cats”).
As the sixth largest order of mammals, Carnivora is very diverse and exhibits a wide array of body plans, varying greatly in size and shape. They usually have large, conical, thick, stress-resistant canine teeth. Most species have eyes on the front of their face, pointing forward. They often have a very well-developed sense of smell. Some carnivorans have retractile or semi-retractile claws. Carnivora is separated into two suborders, Caniformia and Feliformia, with Caniforms containing canids and their relatives and Feliforms containing felids and their relatives. (Yes, even in taxonomy, there is a dichotomy between cats and dogs.) Caniforms have longer jaws and more teeth, with less specialized carnassial teeth. They also tend more towards omnivory and opportunistic feeding, while the feliforms, other than the viverrids, are more specialized for eating meat. Some carnivorans have secondarily evolved mainly herbivorous diets. They exist in almost every habitat, from the polar North to hyper-arid deserts to marine seas.
Male carnivorans are usually larger than females. Some species are social while others are solitary. Some species only meet to mate, some form family groups organized around a breeding pair, and some involve a single male or males leading a harem of females and their young. Carnivores usually invest a lot into their young, teaching and raising them to adulthood.
Carnivoramorpha as a whole first appeared in the Paleocene of North America about 60 million years ago, as small marten-like or civet-like predators of insects, lizards, and other small vertebrates. Feliforms and Caniforms split around the Middle Eocene, about 42 million years ago. The precursors to the living feliforms remained forest-dwelling, arboreal or semi-arboreal ambush hunters, while the caniform precursors were more mobile, opportunistic hunters.
Tumblr media
Propaganda under the cut:
Canids tend to live as monogamous pairs. Wolves (Canis lupus), Coyotes (Canis latrans), African Wild Dogs (Lycaon pictus), and Dholes (Cuon alpinus) live in groups that include a breeding pair and their offspring. Wolves may even live in extended family groups. Living in family groups allows these animals to work together to take down prey larger than themselves.
The Domestic Dog (Canis familiaris) was the first species to be domesticated by humans, from the Wolf (Canis lupus), more than 30,000 ago when humans were still hunter-gatherers. Domestic Dogs have evolved alongside humans, adapting to better understand and communicate with us, read human body language and expressions, and smell human emotions. Both dogs and humans release oxytocin while spending quality time together, a sign of a strong social bond. Over 340 breeds of Domestic Dog have been selectively bred for tasks such as hunting, herding, pulling loads, detecting a variety of scents, protection, and companionship, with various breeds also filling roles in therapy, aiding disabled people, and assisting police and the military.
According to the Creation Myths of the Serer People, jackals were the first animals on Earth, and the first intelligent beings before humans, and will be the last. In some stories, the jackal is sent to Earth by Roog as a messenger, and in others as a fallen prophet for disobeying the laws of the divine. The movements of the jackal are carefully observed, because the animal is viewed as a seer who came from the transcendence and maintains links with it. Although believed to be rejected by the other animals and deprived of its original intelligence, it is still respected because it dared to resist the supreme being who still keeps it alive.
The Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus) is the largest land carnivore, with adult males weighing 300–800 kg (660–1,760 lb) and being 200–250 cm (6.6–8.2 ft) long. Females are smaller at 180–200 cm (5.9–6.6 ft) with a weight of 150–300 kg (330–660 lb). Adults may stand 130–160 cm (4.3–5.2 ft) tall at the shoulder. The largest Polar Bear on record, reportedly weighing 1,002 kg (2,209 lb), was a male shot at Kotzebue Sound in northwestern Alaska in 1960.
The word “panda” derives from the Nepali word “ponya”, which means “ball of the foot” and “claws”. The Nepali word for the endangered Red Panda (Ailurus fulgens) is "nigalya ponya", which has been translated as "bamboo-footed", due to the animal’s adapted wrist bone which allows it to grip bamboo. When the Red Panda was first described in 1825, it was named an English shortening of this name: “panda.” For more than 40 years the Red Panda was known as simply the panda: the one and only panda. However, when the vulnerable Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) was described in 1869, it was also given the name panda. Historically, there was much debate over the taxonomic positions of these two species, as they were both carnivorans that had adapted to a very specific diet of mostly bamboo. However, we know today that the Giant Panda is indeed a bear and not closely related to the Red Panda, which is the only living member of its own family.
The endangered Giant Otter (Pteronura brasiliensis) is a semi-aquatic predator of north-central South America, and is capable of bringing down animals as tough as a small caiman. Giant Otters live in extended family groups, and are highly social with each other, but extremely territorial of other groups. Battles between groups sometimes break out at the boundaries between territories.
Weasels (genus Mustela) have a behavior called the “weasel war dance”, which consists of a frenzied series of hops sideways and backwards, often accompanied by an arched back and a frizzed-out tail. The weasel war dance happens when the animal is excited or happy, and often occurs after they have caught or killed their prey, or are playing.
Ferrets (Mustela furo) were domesticated from the European Polecat (Mustela putorius) around 2,500 years ago. The Romans used ferrets to hunt rabbits, rodents, and moles, as they are specifically adapted to squeeze into holes after prey. Genghis Khan, ruler of the Mongol Empire, is recorded as using an army of ferrets in a gigantic hunt in 1221 that aimed to purge an entire region of wild animals.
The smallest carnivoran is the Least Weasel (Mustela nivalis). Average body length (not counting the tail) in males is 130 to 260 mm (5 to 10.2 in), while females average 114 to 204 mm (4.5 to 8 in). Males weigh 36 to 250 g (1.3 to 8.8 oz), while females weigh 29 to 117 g (1 to 4.1 oz). Despite their diminutive size, Least Weasels are still effective predators, and can take on prey up to the size of a rabbit.
The North American Black-footed Ferret (Mustela nigripes) declined throughout the 20th century, primarily as a result of declines of its main prey, Prairie Dogs (genus Cynomys). In 1979, it was declared extinct. However, a small wild population was discovered in Meeteetse, Wyoming in 1981! A captive breeding program was launched, using these ferrets, and a reintroduction campaign was put into play. Today, over 200 mature individuals are in the wild across 18 populations, with four self-sustaining populations in South Dakota, Arizona, and Wyoming. In 2008, the Black-footed Ferret’s IUCN status was changed from “extinct in the wild” to “endangered”. In February 2021, the first successful clone of a Black-footed Ferret, a female named Elizabeth Ann, was introduced to the public. She was cloned using frozen cells from Willa, a female Black-footed Ferret who died in the 1980s and had no living descendants. This exciting development opened the doors to a new option for introducing much-needed genetic diversity into the captive breeding population. Elizabeth Ann could not breed herself, due to a condition unrelated to the cloning process, but in 2024, two new Black-Footed Ferret clones, Noreen and Antonia, were also cloned from Willa’s frozen cells. Antonia has since birthed a male and female kit, and Noreen is waiting for a suitable match.
The Honey Badger (Mellivora capensis) is famous for its strength, ferocity, and toughness. It is known for being able to fearlessly fight back when cornered, sometimes even dissuading Lions (Panthera leo) and Spotted Hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) from attacking it. It often raids beehives in search of honey and larvae, and is unbothered by bee stings, which have trouble penetrating its thick skin. They have been observed to kill and eat Black Mambas (Dendroaspis polylepis). They are also highly intelligent, and have been observed manipulating tools and performing complex problem-solving. Despite all this, they are only dangerous to humans if provoked, and most of their reputation comes from their willingness to defend themselves.
There are three species of raccoon, and the small, critically endangered Cozumel Raccoon (Procyon pygmaeus) is the rarest of them. It is native only to Cozumel Island off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. It is estimated there are only around 192 mature individuals left in the world.
Walruses (Odobenus rosmarus) have powerful, mobile lips that they can use to generate high-powered suction. They do this to feed on one of their favorite prey items: clams. A Walrus can suck the meat out of a clam by sealing its powerful lips to the animal’s shell and withdrawing its piston-like tongue rapidly into its mouth, creating a vacuum. They can also use their mobile lips to whistle in the same way humans do!
The Baikal Seal (Pusa sibirica) is the only species of exclusively freshwater seal. They are native only to Lake Baikal in Siberia, Russia. The most recognizable characteristic of the Baikal Seal is its large, dark eyes. Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world, and has varying levels of light intensity. The seal’s large eyes allow it to take in as much light as possible in this environment.
The African Palm Civet (Nandinia binotata) is the most genetically isolated Carnivoran, being the only species within its whole superfamily.
The Jaguar (Panthera onca) employs an unusual killing method: it bites directly through the skull of mammalian prey, between the ears, to deliver a fatal blow to the brain. It does this with a powerful bite force of 1,500 PSI. This bite also allows it to pierce the shells of turtles and the osteoderms of caimans.
When Cecil the male African Lion (Panthera leo leo) was killed in July 2015 by Walter Palmer, an American recreational big-game trophy hunter, there was international uproar and a change in the atmosphere regarding trophy hunting. There was also worry amongst the scientists who had been studying Cecil’s pride that his cubs were now in danger. When one or more new male Lions replace a previous male(s) associated with a pride, they often kill any existing young cubs, to ensure that only their bloodline is produced going forward. However, Cecil had formed a partnership with another male lion named Jericho. When Cecil was killed, Jericho took over the pride but did not kill Cecil’s cubs, and also protected them from any rivals.
The Domestic Cat (Felis catus) was domesticated from the African Wildcat (Felis lybica) about 10,000 years ago. Ancient Egyptians revered the Domestic Cat, and families would take their dead cats to the sacred city of Bubastis, where they were embalmed and buried in sacred repositories. Cats eventually replaced Ferrets as the pest-controlling housepet of choice in Ancient Greece and Rome, as they were considered more pleasant to keep around the house. Like dogs, they have adapted to live alongside us, evolving new vocalizations, body language, and behaviors specifically for communicating with humans, and generally becoming a social species (the African Wildcat is typically solitary and territorial). Today, there are over 41 breeds of Domestic Cat, and they are kept mainly for companionship and pest control. Unfortunately, they have also become one of the most abandoned pets.
The Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) is regarded as the fastest-running land animal. It is capable of running at 93 to 104 km/h (58 to 65 mph) in a sprint.
The Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) is threatened by poaching and the illegal wildlife trade in Indonesia. They are captured for use in the production of kopi luwak. Kopi luwak, also known as civet coffee, is a coffee that consists of partially digested coffee cherries, which have been eaten and defecated by the Asian Palm Civet. The cherries are fermented as they pass through a civet's intestines, and after being defecated with other fecal matter, they are collected. What was once a traditional drink, made from coffee cherries collected from civet feces in the wild, has become increasingly commercialized due to international demand and curiosity. Now, to meet demand, Asian Palm Civets are captured, kept in battery cages, and forcefed nothing but coffee cherries. The civets in kopi luwak farms are kept in abysmal conditions which include isolation, poor diet, small cages, and a high mortality rate. Kopi luwak is one of the most expensive coffees in the world, with retail prices reaching US$100 per kilogram (2.2 lbs) for farmed beans and US$1,300 per kilogram for wild-collected beans.
In some countries, the African Civet (Civettictis civetta) (image 4) is threatened by capture for the perfume industry, as its pheromone civetone is often used as a natural musk. The Calvin Klein-brand male cologne Obsession utilizes synthetic civetone, making the cologne highly attractive to feliforms. Obsession is sometimes used in the field to attract wild cats to camera traps, and is also used in zoos and sanctuaries as scent enrichment.
Mongooses (family Herpestidae) are one of at least four known mammalian taxa with mutations in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor that protect against snake venom. This makes them fierce and effective predators of venomous snakes.
The Spotted Hyena (Crocuta crocuta) lives in large clans which can consist of up to 80 individuals. These clans are typically led by females, though they can occasionally co-dominate with a male. Clans are run by a matriarch, and her youngest female cub will become the new matriarch when she passes. When a male co-dominates with a female or is otherwise able to lead, this is because the male was born to the matriarch of the clan and has taken the rank directly below his mother.
The Aardwolf (Proteles cristatus) is a small, basal hyena that mainly eats termites. Like other animals adapted for eating termites, it has a long, sticky tongue.
Carnivorans usually occupy a very important part of the ecosystem, and most apex predators are carnivorans. Apex predators can be considered ecosystem engineers, due to the huge impact they have on their environment. One of the most famous examples of this was the reintroduction of Wolves (Canis lupus) in Yellowstone National Park. In 1884, the state of Montana instituted a bounty on Wolves: one dollar per Wolf killed. Wolves were considered a “menace” to Yellowstone’s wildlife, and more concerted efforts mounted to exterminate them. The Elk (Cervus canadensis) population began to explode, and they grazed their way across the landscape, killing young brush and trees. As early as the 1930s, scientists were alarmed by the degradation and were worried about erosion and plants dying off. By the 1970s, there were no resident populations of Wolves in Yellowstone, and Wolves had been almost completely eradicated in the lower 48 states. In 1974, the Wolf was listed in the endangered species act.
Starting in January 1995, Wolves from Canada began to be relocated to Yellowstone National Park. In the years that followed, wolves brought the Elk population down and their presence protected the open valleys from overgrazing, as the fear of predators kept the herds on the move. Willows (genus Salix) began to grow larger, with an increase in size of 1,500% by 2020. With the foliage returning to the park, Beavers (Castor canadensis), Lynxes (Felis lynx canadensis), Wolverines (Gulo gulo) (image 1), and many other formerly reduced species began to rebound. Beaver colonies have grown from 1 in 1995 to 19 by 2015 with four active dams in use. The dams build wetland ecosystems, used by millions of other species. This is an enduring example of a Trophic Cascade: a powerful indirect interaction that can control entire ecosystems, occurring when a trophic level in a food web is removed or added.
Even though domestic carnivorans like the Domestic Dog, Domestic Cat, and to a lesser extent, the Ferret, are some of the most popular pets in the world, most wild carnivorans have been, and still are, unfairly demonized. Many species have been overhunted, resulting in extirpation in some areas. Even early “conservationists” did not understand the value of predators, considering it a boon to the ecosystem to wipe them out entirely. Bounties are still placed on carnivorans today, and many ranchers and farmers push to have them completely wiped out to protect their livestock. If you cross the border of Yellowstone into a nearby town, you must be ready to hear all about how Wolves are evil creatures who kill for pleasure, and are going to kill all the precious Elk. It is a constant uphill battle to reintroduce carnivorans who may have been extirpated from their historical ranges. Yet in some places, humans have learned to coexist with these important parts of the ecosystem. One of the best ways to support carnivorans is through ecotourism. Locals tend to see more value in the predators they have to share space with when visitors are both excited about and bringing in tourism revenue because of these animals.
142 notes · View notes
noirsdoll · 3 months ago
Text
inspired by this anon ask!!
Tumblr media
-> pretty please? part two
all aboard! | the dinner party | room for three | nothing even matters
pairing: curly x wife!reader
words: 3.0k
tags: dubcon, referenced rape, baby trapping, semi-public sexual stuff, mentions of jimmy’s abuse towards anya, anya gets an abortion, reader is the worst person alive, there’s an actual smut scene this time, no crash au
notes: wasn’t planning on writing a second part but the brainrot got sooo bad uh reader gets even worse imo… writing the anya part caused me physical pain IM SORRY also i need to walk all over curly he’s so…
read it on ao3
Tumblr media
Mrs. Grant Curly.
It sounds just as good as it feels. When Pony Express became fully automated, you lost your job just like everybody else. You were lucky that, when the dust settled, you’d made your mark on Curly.
Walking down the cargo ramp, displaying your fresh baby bump, courtesy of him, you've never felt more secure. Sure, Curly proposed to you more out of necessity than want and you got married at the courthouse, but you don’t care. That white picket fence dream you’d been chasing is now a reality.
Of course, you’re the one that cooks and cleans around the house— you didn’t expect anything less, you were sure that Curly had a housewife fantasy rolling around somewhere in that empty head of his. It’s nice, it keeps your hands busy and your mind free, because while he might be the one ordering you around, you’ve never felt more in control in your entire life.
You’re having the former crew over for dinner at your shared house, tonight. Fortunately, Jimmy got locked up for what he did to Anya quickly after the Tulpar’s touchdown, so you won't be seeing him for half a year, at least. The attendees are you, Anya, Daisuke, Swansea, and your lovely husband, Curly.
You cling to Curly’s arm, beckoning everyone in. Your guests crowd around you, admiring the ring Curly wrapped around your finger. A glittering diamond, so heavy it weighs down your hand. Curly smiles awkwardly.
“Wow, it’s gorgeous!” Anya says, with a clear hint of jealousy. You got a ring out of that trip and she gets an abortion.
“Damn, the Captain must be loaded!” Daisuke exclaims, tugging your hand closer for a better inspection.
Swansea nods. “It’s a good investment. You seem like a hard worker.”
“The hardest,” you say with a grin and a coy glance at Curly. “Dinner’s on the table. Pot roast.”
Everyone tucks in, one of the few non-synthetic meals they’ve had since their return to Earth, except for Daisuke, of course. You wonder how much his mom earns and how much it differs from Curly. For all you know, he could be a basement dweller for the rest of his life with no worries.
Curly sits beside you, eating quietly. With your free hand, you trail it up his thigh. You’ve touched him so many times before, but he still freezes up a little. Fortunately, you’ve done it enough that he knows better than to say anything, continuing to eat, albeit stiffer.
Your hand passes over his cock, right over the fabric of his nice suit. He looks so good in dinner formal— that tailored suit hugs his waist and somehow contains his tits. You’re glad you married him.
You hold a conversation with Swansea– something about gas prices and advice about your future kid— all with your hand gently running along the line of Curly’s dick. You honestly don’t care if they see, your cooking is good enough of a distraction.
You turn to look at the side opposite Curly and see Daisuke staring. Not at you, but at your hand— the one on Curly’s cock.
The both of you lock eyes and he looks away, his tan skin flushed rouge. You watch him for a moment, intrigued, slowly pulling away.
Nothing else happens for the rest of dinner, everyone migrates to the living room afterwards. Swansea’s showing Curly something in the garage and Anya’s in the washroom, so that just leaves you and Daisuke.
You lean back on the couch beside Daisuke. “So… what’re you doing now that the Tulpar’s done for?”
He rubs the back of his neck, wearing a suit— an expensive, designer one. “I dunno, Swansea’s having me join his freelancing business— and I think he’s great and all but like, I’m nowhere on his level.”
“I think you’re pretty capable, Daisuke,” you smile. “If not, I’m sure my husband can network you somewhere.”
Daisuke glances down at your pregnant stomach and back up. “So, you and the captain, you’re really like, married and all that?”
“Yeah, why?”
“No, nothing, it’s just— it seems kinda out of nowhere.” He shrugs, looking away. “You really spooked us when you announced it on the ship.”
“We’d been together for a while, it’s only natural that something would happen,” you laugh. You expected it to— you’d have poked holes in his condoms if he had them.
Daisuke swallows. “How long have you been together?”
You think for a moment. “Since maybe about… halfway through the trip? We just couldn’t keep our hands off of each other, really.”
“Oh, wow, that long?” He looks at you with a furrowed brow, contemplating.
“Yeah… is something wrong?”
“No,” he shakes his head, “I just feel stupid for not noticing.
“You’re not stupid, Daisuke. I said you were capable, remember?” You grin. “He just likes to keep things private, you know?”
“Private? But you two were…” He doesn’t finish the sentence. Is he talking about what he saw at the dinner table?
Daisuke glances past you and you hear footsteps, it must be Curly and Swansea returning from the garage.
You decide to play a game.
Tumblr media
“... so then I figured I’d return to my roots. Go back to being a car mechanic,” Swansea says, halfway buried in a cardboard box.
“Right…” Curly holds the box steady for him, watching Swansea root through his spare tools like a raccoon.
Swansea springs up with a new wrench in hand— one that looks exactly like all the others he’s found laying around in Curly’s garage. “The missus wants me back to work already. Can you believe her?”
“It’ll be good for your joints,” Curly says, setting the box down.
Swansea tosses the newfound wrench into the pile of all the other hammers and pliers and wires. It thunks against the dull metal. Curly pats the dust off his suit, Swansea doesn’t seem to be worried about the condition of his own.
“Nah, she just wants to nag. She’s good at nagging.” Swansea laughs, patting Curly on the back and knocking the wind out of his lungs. “Get used to that, huh? You keep telling yourself it’ll end eventually and it never does.”
Curly takes a moment to regain his breath. “Thank you, but she doesn’t nag.” You do something far worse than nag.
“Yeah? Well, it’ll be something or another. It always is with women.” He pops his back, groaning. Swansea gestures to his pile of knick-knacks with his head. “I’ll have these all back to you by the end of the month.”
Curly nods. “Thanks, Swansea.” He’s never seeing those tools again.
After hauling it all to Swansea’s rusty pickup, they head to the living room. That’s where Curly sees you and Daisuke. He hears you too, and he wishes he couldn’t.
“Oh, you’re talking about me feeling him up during dinner? Yeah, Curly’s into being humiliated. He always has me do stuff like that when we’re in public.” You shrug. “I think it’s nasty, but you know, gotta keep the husband happy.”
Curly stops dead in his tracks, unsure of what to do or say. It’s like a car crash, all he can do is watch, powerless to stop the careening vehicle.
“So… you do stuff like that all the time?” Daisuke’s voice is shaky, breathless.
“Yeah, most couples roleplay.” You look so at ease. Curly feels sick. “Have you ever tried anything like that, Daisuke?”
“What?! I, uh, no, I haven’t.”
“That’s a shame. I’m sure if I talked to him, you and I could work something out—”
“Honey?” By some force of God, he’s compelled to speak, walking forward to the both of you.
You turn to him, your eyes lighting up. Curly would be flattered if he didn’t know your true intentions. Time with you has told him one thing— you’re constantly scheming. This is your newest one. But why drag Daisuke into this? Just to spite him?
Maybe you’re switching targets. That could be a good thing, but Curly can’t bring himself to feel that way– especially when it’d just be another person getting hurt in his stead.
He was never hurt. You’re a pretty girl, of course he’s wanted it, he was just confused. That’s why he never pushed you off, that’s what makes it all okay.
“Ah, there’s the man of the hour,” you smile, “we were just talking about you, nothing important.”
Curly glances from you to Daisuke, whose eyes are so wide they swallow up his whole face. “Yeah, had a feeling you were. Why don’t you go check on Anya? Swansea and I have some business stuff to talk to Daisuke about and I doubt you want to be around for that.”
“Of course,” you beam, getting on your tiptoes to kiss him. You leave with a flurry of your dress around the corner.
At least Curly can say you aren’t bad to look at.
Tumblr media
“Fuck, fuck, where did I put it?”
Anya rifles through her tiny purse, sorting through makeup and pills and her phone, searching for the one thing she really needs right now. She feels frantic, lamenting not wearing a dress with pockets. Eventually she finds it, pulling out a wrinkled period liner that was shoved to the bottom of her bag.
Getting her period is a reminder of Jimmy, a reminder of the fact that she’s not pregnant anymore, that she’s safe from him now. Anya never knew her period could be so comforting.
Just as she grabs a hold of the pad, she hears a knock on the bathroom door. “Who is it?” Anya shoves the pad back into her void of a bag, trying to disguise the crinkles with her voice.
“Can I come in?” It’s you. One of the few friends she has.
“Yes, of course.”
You enter, baby bump first, and Anya has to look away, wringing her hands. She doesn’t mean for the gesture to appear so rude, but she can’t help it.
“Is everything okay?” You ask, moving your head till it meets her gaze.
Anya nods on instinct. “Yes, I’m fine. Just… parties make me exhausted sometimes.”
“I get it, totally.” You sit on the edge of the tub, with Anya leaning against the counter. Everything in this bathroom is so blindingly white— it reminds Anya of the room where she got her abortion— operation.
“Um, congratulations on you and Curly’s marriage, if I didn’t say it already.”
You smile, “Aww, thank you, Anya. Truly, I’ve never been happier.”
“That’s good,” she purses her lips, debating if she should ask the question. “On the Tulpar, you told me that Curly made you do things. Is everything okay with you and him?”
“Yeah,” you nod. “Sometimes people make mistakes, confuse a situation for something it’s not, you know?”
“Ah, really?”
“Oh, all the time.” You say it like it’s obvious. Something winds in Anya’s stomach. “I figured, it was just all in my head, really. You just wanna feel special sometimes. I talked to Grant and apologized for saying a thing like that and now it’s all better.” You gently pet a hand over your stomach. “Plus I get this little guy as a reward for all my hard work.”
Anya swallows. “Right, yeah.” It feels like she’s being crushed from above. She can’t breathe, blurting out each word. “Do you have a pad, by any chance? I only have one and I don’t think it’ll be enough.”
Slowly, you shake your head. “Sorry, I don’t get those anymore. I’m pregnant, remember?” You chuckle. “Will you be okay without an extra?”
She nods. “Yes, I might have to leave early, though.”
“Alright, well, come get me when you want to leave so I can show you out.” You pat her shoulder, smile a warm smile, and leave the way you came.
Anya collapses in a heap once the door closes.
Tumblr media
Like all good things, the party eventually comes to an end. You stand at the door with Curly’s hand on your waist, the perfect picture of a couple as you see your guests off.
Once the door shuts and the porch lights click off, Curly reaches for his tie’s knot, loosening it with a sigh. “Did you have fun?”
“So much fun.” You lock the door, heading down the hall to the bedroom. “How was your business talk?”
Curly trails after you, undoing his suit jacket. “It’s boring. It always is.”
You reach the bedroom, standing by the foot of it as you unzip your dress and step out of it. Curly looks like he wants to say something, so you stay silent. Poor thing, it’s like speaking his mind hurts.
He’s halfway down unbuttoning his dress shirt when he strings the words together. “Am I not enough for you?”
“What makes you say that?” You know exactly what he’s talking about. You just like seeing the way he questions himself when you question him.
You unclasp your bra, your tits drooping. You hate the way you look pregnant, you have to avoid seeing your reflection like a fucking vampire. It’s a means to an end, that’s the only thing that’s reassured you.
“That whole thing with Daisuke— you can’t just say stuff like that in front of other people.” He’s gaining a bit of a backbone, it surprises you. “I want this to work.”
“Then we both need to step up, right?” You move closer. “I cleaned the whole house and cooked dinner just for you to spend most of the time hiding in the garage.”
“We were working, it wasn’t like it was on purpose—,”
“No, it was on purpose. You’re being a bad husband, Grant.” You gesture to your belly, the final nail in the coffin. “You can’t act like this when I’m pregnant with your baby, okay? You have to be a father to your child.”
You stand there, fuming and for a moment you actually feel angry. Your performance is so convincing even you believe it.
“Hey, don’t be mad, please.” It’s the best argument he’s got, especially when he tips your grumbling face up to meet his baby blues. “I fucked up today and I’m sorry, okay? I’ll do better, promise.”
Fuck, he’s so perfect. He caves like clockwork, hearing him admit it’s his fault gets you soaked every time. You kiss him, soft and slow. “Could you help me take off my heels, then? My feet are killing me.”
You sit on the edge of the bed and Curly takes a knee, the same way he did in your crew quarters, promising to buy you a ring the second he landed. And he always keeps his promises.
He undoes your heels and you watch on with an easy grin as he peppers kisses along your ankles and the top of your feet. You expected him to do that, Curly’s so predictable. He keeps his eyes on yours, searching for your praise. He kneads your feet a little too, massaging out all the aches and pains.
His mouth trails higher and higher until it reaches its end destination— your shaven pussy. You can never get a good look with the baby bump in the way, so you make him shave it. It’s one of his favourite tasks– like a sensory toy for a toddler.
Curly’s tongue laves over your slit and he eats you out, thick eyelashes fluttering closed as he takes his time with you.
Your orgasm makes up for the fake anger you lobbied at him— it swallows you up and spits you back on the bed with a limp spine. You deserve it, honestly, all this acting really takes a toll on you.
Your favourite part is when he gets on the bed with you, big burly arms caging you in. It feels like the entire world’s been closed out and it’s just you and him. Nothing but his warm body pressed so tightly to yours. Two puzzle pieces that fit.
Curly fumbles a little in the dark, but eventually his fat cock is splitting you open, that same perfect cock that knocked you up all those months ago. It feels just as good as it did the first time and all those subsequent times after.
His eyelids fall to half mast as he looks at you, and that’s how you know you have him. So easily ensnared, what’s the point of an argument when you can just spread your legs and he comes willingly? You’ll have to try it next time, see if your pussy does a better job of speaking for you.
The mattress creaks with every slow movement. Unhurried and hard is the rhythm he always chooses, constantly searching your expression to make sure he isn’t hurting you. Not that you’d mind.
It would just remind you of that night in his quarters, when he’d snapped and he was no longer the Curly you’d grown obsessed with, when you were half sure he might kill you. Since then, you made sure never to push him that far again, to only play games you were certain you’d win.
And Curly filling you up after a long day is a sure bet.
He cums quicker than you’d like, but you’re too tired to berate him. He’s done enough today. Crowded up against his chest, you play with the hair there, winding the short strands around your fingers.
Too fucked out for malice, you both talk for a while. On baby names, on family, on being better. You only care about one of those. You’ve been set on the baby names ever since you scratched them onto the metal wall of your quarters back on the Tulpar— right above the heart with both yours and Curly’s names.
You just tell him you haven’t decided yet.
Tumblr media
157 notes · View notes