#also put fucking spaces after a comma

[marsbutterfly]

do you ever read something about a character so incredibly WRONG that your soul curls up a little bit?

[pygmi-cygni]

WRITING TIP: grammar. good god.

just because it's tumblr doesn't mean you can throw grammar and spelling out the window.

COMMON MISTAKES:

Not indenting for paragraphs. I know tumblr doesn't have the 'tab' function, but at least do a paragraph break. When?

If someone new is speaking

If the setting/action has changed

a new thought

think of it like the camera angle changing in a movie. Would the camera break to another room? or would you watch five minutes of bouncing and spinning while the camera moves to the right location. (Hint: it's the first one)

Big blocks of text make me homicidal. Knock it off.

Apostrophes!

It's: it is

Its: belongs to 'it'. We think it can also be it's, but it's not (see what I did there huh huh hee hee hooo boy)

Possession: Jenna's, Jess', The Twins'. NOT Jennas', Jess's, The Twin's. If there is a group, put the apostrophe after the plural 's'. PLURALS DO NOT HAVE APOSTROPHES IF I SEE THAT AGAIN I WILL REVOKE YOUR LITERATURE LICENSE AAAAAH.

Punctuation goes inside the quotation marks. "Like this." "Not this".

Dialogue punctuation.

"If you're talking and something happens," she said, dodging past a car, "you'd punctuate with a comma and lowercase." See how I didn't capitalize the bold word, or put a period after 'happens?'

Don't do this:

"If you're talking and something happens." She said, dodging past a car, "You'd punctuate with a comma and lowercase."

bad. wrong. booo.

MISUSING SEMICOLONS.

; this baby. makes a cute face ;) but is also useful!

it explains a clause, like so (an excerpt from my drabble 'Deal With It, pls read xoxoxo): "it was cozy; you'd pulled a blanket over your head and your music played gently." I said something was cozy, and then I explained how after a semicolon. It's not just a fancy comma. Don't use it like a fancy comma. it's like commentary of the actual writing. Professional parentheses.

PARENTHESES.

Don't use them. It doesn't make any fucking sense. use a semicolon or a colon or a comma or hyphens or literally anything else. underscores, even. just not parentheses. it's so weird.

WRITING STYLISTICALLY

Bold, italic, all lowercase, that stuff. use it consistently! you don't have to follow the rules if you make it seem intentional and consistent.

Bold.

emphasis, intense, eye-catching. good for a groundbreaking revelation. not the strongest choice for anger. has a staccato feel to it. punctual, concise.

Italic

wistfulness, pause, contemplation, haunting emphasis. good for flashbacks, whispering, angsty emphasis. If you overuse it, it'll feel kinda weird. i know we love her but give her some space. Otherwise it feels like pumping the gas and slamming the breaks really fast during the sentence.

all lowercase.

she's cute, she's aesthetic, she can get confusing sometimes. we need Capitals so that we can identify the Important Things. names, places, proper nouns, I know you know 'em. if you wanna start ur sentence lowercase, okay sure, but it gets muddy if you do it everywhere.

ok byeee xox

[thedoctorsthings]

BTS reactions: confession during the battle of Hogwarts

warning: kind of bad ending for Jimin (sorry) no nsfw but kissing. suicidal thoughts (it's one line don't worry), magical violence and one(1) mention of blood.

(also my native language isn't English so I got no idea where to put commas)

fluff/angst

word count: a fucking load

SEOKJIN

You had to go with everyone being evacuated. You knew you did, no matter how much it broke your heart. That damned accident had taken everything from you, your ability to walk properly, your quidditch career, and now you couldn't even fight for the school you loved, the only place you ever called home. As you're walking out the great hall he's all you can think of. You hadn't seen Seokjin since you left the room of requirement. Somewhere in the hurdles of people you'd lost him and now you were starting to worry you might not see him again before it all begins, before you're out of here to safety and he's still in here fighting for the life of the school without being able to say goodbye. All you see is people running around, panicking looking for their friends like you. Seokjin was part of your friend group, although you always felt something more for him he always saw you as a friend. Right now that didn't matter. All that was important that you could see him at least one last time, whether or not he felt the same for you was irrelevant. You're almost at the entrance to the tunnel now, just mere minutes and it's too late. Right when the front of the line starts entering you see the back of his head. You would recognise those shoulders anywhere. He's standing at the other end of the hallway and he's far away, too far away. "JIN" ,you yell and you start running towards him. "JIN" , now he turns his head. After a fraction of a second he sees you and starts running too. You push people aside as you go as quick as your bad leg permits you. He's much faster than you and when he get's to you he takes you in his arms, almost lifts you off the ground and catches you in a passionate kiss. Many times you had imagined what this moment would be like, him finally kissing you. None of it compared to what you felt right now. The whole world disappeared, all that was left were his arms around your waist and the feeling of his breath on your cheek. When you break away from each other he starts rambling. A stream of words about how he thought you'd left already and how he'd been worried sick that he would never see you again spilled out of his mouth, meanwhile he had not yet let you go. He'd be an idiot to ever do that again. "I have to go", you told him, but as you looked around you saw your chance had passed. The group of students being evacuated was gone. They'd all passed through the tunnel and you were left behind. "I will do everything in my power to keep you safe, I promise", Seokjin said as he took you by the hand, leading you to a safe space. His 7 years of messing around at night and with Filch had made him an expert when it came to secret rooms and passageways.

YOONGI

You panicked as you ran into the Great hall, looking around for your friend. You knew all your other friends were safe. You'd been together the whole time but in the chaos of the battle you had lost Yoongi somewhere. Now you could barely bring yourself to look at the bodies lined up along the wall. What if he was one of them? What if the boy you loved was one of the bloody remains robbed of their chance to even graduate? What if he was one of the poor children who's last moments were shrouded in darkness and fear? He would be taken from you before you ever had the chance to find out if he felt the same for you. Reluctantly you looked at all the faces, professor Lupin, his wife, the young boy with the camera and, oh God, Fred Weasley. This damned war was destroying everything. So many innocent faces you'd seen striding the hallways happily not even a year ago. Dread settled in your stomach as you couldn't spot Yoongi among any of the living in the room. You could barely breathe as you started walking quicker. Then, finally, you spotted him sitting on a bench on the other side of the hall. Now you were actually crying. When you've nearly reached him you call his name through tear stained lips and almost jump in his arms when stands up. You hug each other tighter than you ever have. He pulls you impossibly close while you sob into his shirt. When you look up at him, he kisses you just as hard. Everything you've ever dreamed of in the sickest of circumstances. "I love you", he whispers into your mouth. You tear away and sit down on the bench together. All you can do is sit in silence and hold each other while you try to process the horror of what has happened. "we're all too young, none of us will ever recover", you say after a few minutes. The only response he can give is to pull you closer.

HOSEOK

You're standing together on the bridge between debris and dust. Watery sunshine graces your faces. It seems like it's the first time you've felt it in months. "I always believed in him, from the very beginning. When things started getting bad I never doubted for a second that Harry would do the right thing and save us". You tore your eyes away from the view and looked at Hoseok: "Of course you did. You always believe in a good ending", you said. "do you think he'll ever recover from this?", you add. "of course not, I'm not that optimistic". You sigh: "I'm going inside. I need to find some way to contact my mother". "wait". Hoseok turns to you and takes your hands: "This whole battle has made me realise something", he waits for just a second, as if trying to gather his words. "I care about you more than I thought. All I could think about this whole time was you. Wondering if you we're okay and making myself sick with scenarios where you don't make it. I'm in love with you Y/N". Even amidst all this misery and mourning you manage to feel a kind of joy you haven't felt since the ministry started coming after people like you, muggle-borns. "I love you", you say with a smile before kissing him softly on his dusty lips. He wraps his arms around your waist and breathes a sigh of relief: "good, I was worried you'd push me on the ground again for ruining our friendship". You manage a little giggle: "that was one time, let it go". "never!"

NAMJOON

You're running through the hallways, or at least what's left of them. Left and right people are dueling. The hallways are lit up by colourful spells and stones whizzle around your ears. You have to find him. You love your friend and love is even word too soft for what you feel for him, but your clumsy friend should not be trusted to be alone in a battle like this. You take a second to look around. A death eater lunges for you but you manage to paralyse him right before he gets to you. "see, I told you those reflexes wouldn't only be useful in Quidditch". You look around and see Oliver Wood who just landed a stone on Rookwood's head. "Oliver, where is Namjoon!", you yell. "I saw him leave through the big doors? he's after yaxley". You bolt for the doors. You manage to dodge an expelliarmus curse and jump out the door. Once outside you're overtaken by horror. The familiar feeling of cold and inexpressible dread fill your entire body, worse than you've ever felt it before. Dozens, no hundreds of dementors are eerily floating over the near frozen grass, but they have no eye for you. they're all going for the Namjoon. He's hunched over and sitting on the ground. No matter how hard he had tried he had never been able to cast a Patronus, but neither had you. Now was the moment. You had to. You had to save the boy who had struck up a conversation on the Hogwarts express at the beginning of your second year because he knew you were new and had no friends, the boy you were in love with since he took you to the yule ball and danced with you all night. You thought of that night and said: "expecto patronum". nothing happend. You saw how a dementor held Namjoon's almost limp body by his face. "come on!", you begged yourself in tears. As you gripped your wand tighter you tried to repress every bad memory with images of Namjoon. slowly but surely your mind was taken over by warm memories of the boy who introduced you to all your dear friends. "EXPECTO PATRONUM" you yell now. The entire field is engulfed in a white light. A beautiful swan cleaved the darkness like it was nothing. The hundreds of dementors hissed with the ugliest sound you'd ever heard and disappeared. You ran over the grass and kneeled next to him. "why are you out here all alone, you absolute imbecile!" "well good day to you too", he said as he pulled in his arms on the ground. "I love you", you said while he rolled you over with your back on the wet grass. "about time you said that", he chuckled before kissing you like a man starved.

JIMIN

you're both hidden behind the remains of column on the courtyard. A couple of meters from you is Fenrir Greyback and two other werewolves. You can almost smell the stench from their doglike bodies. Your only chance of escape is the whole blown in the wall to your left. "they're faster than us we can't run, especially not with your wounded leg Jimin!" you whisper yell. "Okay, I'll distract them and you run." "Are you crazy! you'll never get away from them alive!" "you don't know that", he says confidently. "Jimin you can't do this, it's a suicide mission". "what else are we going to do?", he asks sternly. You remain silent. He's right there's no way out. You've lost your wand and he can't run fast. "Y/N, you've saved my life so many times. These past years there have been so many days where I was ready to end it all and all that kept me from jumping of the astronomy tower was you. Everyday you save my life by just smiling at me. Y/N I feel the warmth of the sun again when you talk to me". Tears well up in your eyes ass you grab his face and kiss him. He holds you close and whispers in your ear: "let me do this one thing for you. let me pay you back once. I'm a good fighter, I promise I'll get out of here". Hopelessly you nod at your life long friend: "I love you", you whisper. He gives you one last kiss before he jumps over the column with a war cry filled with fear and love for the girl with the eyes that hold the universe. You run. The least you could do was making sure Jimin didn't make this sacrifice for nothing, so you run like you've never ran before. You look back a split second and see Jimin cast a Bombarda spell stronger than you've ever seen. You run through the hallways until your lungs burn. you find the secret room you and your friends found years ago and slide down against the wall. You sob until you no longer feel like a person.

TAEHYUNG

"Taehyung you can't be serious! are you really not going to stay?" "no of course not, what's the point?" "how can you say that!", you yelled: "the point is to protect our school! More than that, it's to protect the whole wizarding world! Tae if we lose this war Voldemort wins and muggles will never have a good life again. Mudbloods like you and me will be killed or imprisoned! How can you just give up like that". He stayed quiet for a moment: "there's no point. This war can be fought by other people. There's no need to lose our lives". You, now seething with anger, scoff: "Kim Taehyung if you walk away now I will never talk to you again!" "fine!" he spits while turning his back. "you're a coward Taehyung!", you yell with tears in your eyes as you see him disappear around the corner. An hour later you're dueling Crabbe senior in the hallway by the main entrance. There's no time to shed tears over the friend you were hopelessly in love with. He wasn't who you thought he was. You shot spells out of your wand faster than you've ever done but the big man dodges them all. He's much more skilled than you and you both know it. By now you've realised your only way out is finding a way to escape, but it looks like that's not going to happen. You see in his eyes that he will kill you if he get's the chance. You're out of breath, your arms hurt and you know you can't keep up much longer. Then it happens. Crabbe hits your side with a well-aimed spell you don't even know and you feel an excruciating pain in your side and after that warm blood seeping down your waist. You drop your wand and fall to the floor. This is the end, you know it. There's no one in this hallway. You look at the sky one last time and let the tears flow because you will die with as sole company, your murderer. "STUPIFY!" you hear a familiar voice scream. the hallway bathes in a red light and when you look up Taehyung comes running at you from the end of the hallway. Crabbe lands on the floor next to you, completely paralysed. Taehung slides next to you on his knees and takes you in his arms. He strokes the hair out of your face and sobs "I'm so sorry Y/N". "You came back!", you sigh in relief as you wrap your arms around his shoulders. "I'm so sorry I left, I should have been here to protect you". You feel the wet of his tears against your neck and chuckle through your own tears: "yes you should have, but you're lucky you came back on time. He would've killed me I saw it in the way he moved". He let's you go just enough to look at you: "I love you so much Y/N. I'm never leaving again. "good", you whisper and kiss him like you've wanted to for so long.

JUNGKOOK

You and Jungkook stand back to back in the corridor underneath the divination classroom. You're being attacked by two masked death eaters from both sides. You're losing your battles but you can't give up because above your heads in the classroom you've hidden a bunch of left-behind first years. If you don't survive this those children are left to fend for themselves and you can't let that happen. So you fire another spell at your opponent and almost manage to throw her off her feet. Behind you, you hear Jungkook laugh: "I've never felt so alive Y/N" and then a hoarse voice answering: "I'll put an end to that soon" followed by another curse hurled at Jungkook. You burst the mask of your deatheater's face and see fire in her eyes. In that small moment of fear she's to fast for you and as she disarms you she cackles a hollow laughter. "JUNGKOOK, HELP!", you yell helpless without your wand. The genuine fear in the voice of the girl he's been secretly in love with for years gives Jungkook the adrenaline he needs to finish this. with a simple Wingardium Leviosa he lifts up his opponent and slams him through the window out of the castle. With the speed of light he turns around and does the same to the woman standing opposite of you. Both of you stand a moment in silence as you try to process what happened. You turn to look at each other and that look in his eyes tells you everything you've wanted to hear for the past 4 years. You throw yourselves in the other's arms and almost fall to the ground with the power of the kiss that follows. When you tear apart for air the adrenaline wears off and the both of you start crying. "I love you Jungkook", you say with his face in your hands. All he does is kiss you again.

[aerodaltonimperial]

"I want to fall asleep wrapped in your arms" prompt with sweet soft looking Jack. Pleae don't let it end sad, my soul can't take that rn.

(i got you, girl 💚🧡 cause i know you like it)

Hook is... not an expert in this. He is probably, in fact, the worst person that could be here for this. And yet here he is, staring up at the ceiling in the shared hotel room, listening to Jack straight up have a panic attack in the opposite bed. What the fuck is he supposed to be doing here? They just teamed up, like three weeks ago, and he doesn't have a handle on this, and he's starting to realize now, listening to Jack's breathing get thin and wheezing but muffled, because Jack's trying his best to disguise it, that all those times Jack sort of went silent halfway through a text conversation were probably this. Like, exactly this.

Shit. Hook can't lie here and listen to the guy have a complete breakdown, but he also doesn't know what he should do. He freezes, because he's shit in emergency situations, and after a few moments, he manages to get out a choked sort of, "Jack."

Jack, on the other bed, makes a noise that's caught somewhere between a sob and a terrified whine, and holy fuck, this is bad. This is, like, Christopher's ankle bone just snapped mid-way across the lacrosse pitch bad. Finally, Hook's limbs obey his commands as he climbs out of the bed and crosses the space separating them.

"Jack," he tries again. Jack's curled up, miserable and shaking, and Hook's pretty sure his breathing is coming so fast he's gonna hyperventilate and pass out in about five seconds. Hook reaches forward, fingers against Jack's bicep. "Jack, it's just me."

Is that the right thing to say? The wrong thing? Fuck, Hook doesn't know, but it seems not to really do anything, and he just can't listen to this. He pulls the blankets up and slides in next to Jack's rattling form, and when he loops his arms around Jack, he gets a startled inhale for his efforts.

"Hey, it's just me," Hook whispers. He's close enough to press his cheek against Jack's ear, feel the wisps of the man's curls against his skin. "It's okay, it's just me."

"I'm sorry," Jack says, warped. It sounds like a battle on the way out, and you know what, Hook's more pissed than upset now. He's fucking pissed that Jack's been put alone in hotel rooms for weeks and weeks after being betrayed by the very people he'd once believed in. He's absolutely furious that so many people allowed Jack to simply... slip out of focus, out of mind.

His arms tighten. God, he's mad. He hauls Jack in closer to his chest and curls his knees behind Jack's, and they lay there like twin commas as Jack struggles to get his breathing back to normal. And when Jack's chest is rising and falling beneath Hook's arms at a more measured pace, when he's no longer wheezing in frantic chestfuls of air, Hook shifts so that he's got his fingers wrapped around Jack's wrist.

"I'm sorry," Jack says again. He's more collected now, and yet the repetition is even worse, filled with self-loathing.

"Don't be. You don't have to be."

"I'm not..." Jack trails off. Hook thinks maybe he'll bolt right outta the bed or something, but he doesn't. He turns over until they're face to face, and there isn't much light in the room, but Hook catches moisture glistening on his cheeks. Fuck. Hook's gonna fucking kill somebody for this. "I'm not like this, usually."

"What, human?" Hook returns. And he doesn't really think about, probably should think about it, when he lifts a hand and swipes his thumb across Jack's face.

"Everyone has left me," Jack says, hushed, almost like he doesn't want the words to escape and can't bite them back. "Everyone leaves."

"I won't," Hook promises. "I won't leave."

"You didn't want this when you came out to help me. You don't need this."

"Bullshit," Hook snorts. "We're a team now, Jack. We're friends."

Jack goes quiet. And then, "We're friends?"

Maybe they aren't. Hook's not really an expert in that, either; all his past friendships seem to have imploded at his feet. But he chose this one, didn't he? He didn't have to do anything, and he had anyway, because he'd wanted to. Jack had needed help, and Hook had wanted to help him.

The same thing is true for tonight.

"We can be," he says, almost a whisper. His hand is still on Jack's face, and he thinks that's probably something he should change. Because this... isn't what friends do, he doesn't think. He'd jumped in without really thinking about it, and now he's having to level with himself as to why.

Jack's eyes are big and bright and reflecting the bit of the street lamp that's filtering in through the curtains. He's impossibly soft here, against the hotel pillow, exhaling against Hook's chin. "Do you want to be?"

"I don't know," Hook says, and it's more honest than he meant it to be.

It's not the answer Jack wanted, it seems, because he wilts a little bit, nodding. "Okay."

"No," Hook says, instinctive. The last thing he wants is for Jack to turn inwards and disappear. "I don't..." Jack's chin falls, and Hook pulls it back up, thumb dipping beneath Jack's jaw. "Jack."

He gets a single moment of wide, startled eyes before he moves. He doesn't really think about it, he just does. He pushes forward to get their mouths aligned, and Jack gasps. And yeah, this is probably why Hook went out that night, offered his hand. But Jack's kissing him back, so they have to be on the same page. Jack's fingers are threading through Hook's hair and he's parting his lips, and at least this time, when he loses his breath, it's for a much better reason than having a panic attack.

"Hook," Jack exhales, light and hot, and he's still grasping at Hook's head, still angling their mouths together.

"I won't leave," Hook says again. Jack fits here, somehow. They fit together on this hotel bed. They fit together in the ring, and they fit together as Hook swallows back all of Jack's aborted little gasps as they end up thoroughly dizzied, kissed dumb.

It isn't until they've broken apart, as their chests are flush together and heaving, that Jack whispers, "Stay here? Please?" His hands slide to the back of Hook's head. "I just. I want to fall asleep like this. With you."

"Okay," Hook says, like that's not exactly what he wanted, too.

Jack turns over again, so they're spooning. God, he's warm. He's warm, and he's soft, and Hook presses one last kiss against Jack's shoulder, into the cotton.

"I'll be here when you wake up." It comes out softer than he anticipated, but Jack must hear it anyway, because he tangles their fingers together, and his palm is warm, too.

"Okay," Jack says.

When they wake up the next morning, they're still entwined. The sunlight streams in onto the pillow and illuminates Jack's errant curls that escaped during the night, and Hook just thinks not friends. They're not friends.

Jack opens his eyes, finds Hook, and smiles, soft and wide.

[loathemetc]

Deltarune Theory: Another Weird Letter.

God okay, pulling out this again. My track record with Deltarune theories has been... Bad? Like okay, I don't have any crazy long-held beliefs that have been debunked, but I tend to rush to put out a theory right after new info drops based on my first thoughts and then literally disagree with what I came up with like, a day later as the information settles. I still thought Gaster and the Knight were the same guy right off the heels of Chapter 2 before thinking about it for a minute.

So fuck it, let's do it again, we got another weird letter!

So the first noticeable thing is that this doesn't really resemble any other mysterious characters (or characters we know of's) text. I mean, there's not much to pick up on, the only defining feature here is weird spacing, and a decent amount of commas. Which is also true of the weird valentine from earlier in the year, but this text lacks the caps lock and whimsical personality. The weird valentine also never broke line without punctuation. And if the weird valentine didn't match Gaster's text, this matches even less.

Now, as kind of an aside since I forgot to ever make a post about this, but I believe the Valentine was from the egg man behind the trees, and therefore the egg man is not gaster. There's a video about this but it only gets to the point like 30 minutes in so here's a quick chart.

So, if the prose style itself only tells us that it's not Gaster or the egg man (Or Spamton or Queen or Rouxls or-), then what can the actual contents of the text tell us?

Well, first it raises the question of if this is even a tease for Deltarune at all. It is Undertale's anniversary after all, and the mentions of best friends, 999999s, nothing being able to hurt you anymore, and laughing flowers with scary faces do paint a very "Asriel and Chara" kind of picture. Especially with the earlier damage font 9 gag evoking Chara in the newsletter. It's certainly a possibility, one I won't dismiss, although there are some odd things about it. If it's from Asriel, he never picked laughing flowers with scary faces, considering he was one. (See Addendum for correction) And it seems less likely to be from Chara, as they seem like the one who would like the number 9 in that way.

I could just leave it at that, (AND I SHOULD HAVE) but we should examine what it would mean if this was in fact a tease for Deltarune, and, if I'm right, Chapter 3 specifically. You can't really get more Asriel and Chara vibes in Deltarune than Asriel and Kris's house, after all, so of course the vibes are similar. I do feel like this paints a very deliberate picture. Where would we expect to see laughing flowers with scary faces in Deltarune? The trash can in the Dreemurr house of course, more accurately it's dark world variant. The flowers in the trash have often been speculated as a Chapter 3 secret boss since Chapter 2 released, although here it seems more like we're getting the perspective of a character who has surrounded themselves with these flowers, and perhaps this is our secret boss instead. Who's to say, as while this letter is shrouded in the mystery you'd expect from a secret boss, so is most of Chapter 3 right now. The mention of good memories definitely fits the vibe of the sadder aspects of the dreemurr home Chapter 3 may touch upon. I think it's probably safe to say this is a chapter 3 character that we might find in an area representing the trash can, but isn't the trash flowers themselves. Maybe something else that's been thrown away?

What's less safe to say is who this character is, so this last part is a lot more speculative based on things we already know. People have tried to place the mysterious character "Mike" in any role you can think of, so I might as well try here too. We know Spamton knew someone named Mike, who he seemed to be on good terms with. If the letter was written by Mike, then Spamton is definitely someone you might expect to enjoy high numbers.

Let's take a look at something else Spamton said too (featuring another Liss cameo in one of my theory posts.)

If you're not caught up, we can assume the Cathode in question is Tenna, the TV boss of Chapter 3. Whatever Tenna and Mike's relationship may be, Spamton seems to want them far away from each other. So, given the contents of the letter, maybe Mike is hiding in whatever trash can equivalent area Chapter 3 may have among the flowers, to lay low and keep off Tenna's radar? That's about as speculative as I'm willing to get for now.

AH FUCK LEMME ADDENDUM THIS ALREADY.

The way this is written made it hard to parse for me but it seems more like it's not be about laughing flowers with scary faces but rather Chara's laugh and scary face. The wording kind of fucked with me there.

So it really does just seem like it's about Chara and Asriel. See what I meant about my bad track record?

[rxqueenotd]

The Girl Next Door part VII

Pairing: Jeryd Mencken x OFC

Warnings: dubious content, affairs, sexual content, alcohol consumption, my improper use of commas, JFK references (a warning within itself)

A/N: I can’t remember who posted that photo up there^ but BLESS! Up until this point, this entire fic has been a slow burn. I hope everyone had fun while it lasted because it’s finally about to kick off. Big thanks to @vivalafae for talking me off the ledge multiple times while writing this chapter and @runningwiththefoxes for being the love of my life. Also, there’s a cutesy little playlist I made for this entire shit show, if anyone is interested in it, lemme know.

WC: 2539

I became more delusional the further we drove. Each mile marker was an omen, a declaration of how removed I was from real life. Our premeditation personified when he insisted I leave my car parked at the university after class on Friday.

“It’ll look weird if we leave together with multiple bags,” He told me. He was right, after all, but the notion still didn’t put me at ease.

The more secretive he became about our destination, the antsier I became.

“I don’t like surprises,” I told him as I gazed out the passenger’s window.

“Lighten up, Olive,” his hand on my inner thigh squeezed reassuringly, bunching my dress up even further under his fingertips, “just trust me.”

Trusting him was also easier said than done, but I did it with the type of ease that made me feel gullible, diminutive. Like I had folded myself up into delicate pieces to fit into the intricate, hollow spaces containing all the lies I had told and would tell in his name.

Nevertheless, he drove on, and so too did my desire for him, stretching endlessly like the highway laid out before us.

By the time we arrived in town, four whole hours later, I was content to continue spinning the web.

A fly does not struggle in a web in which its very wish was to get caught.

“I used to come here every summer with my parents before they divorced,” I told him, my wide eyes reflecting back to me through the window as I realized we were in Cape Cod.

“We’re going to Hyannis,” he said, squeezing my thigh as he continued to drive.

“To live out your Kennedy fantasy?”

“Which one are you referring to?” He glanced over at me with an impish grin, “The one where my brains are blown out of my skull or the one where I veer off this bridge up here and land in the pond?”

He jerked the wheel to the right, his car veering dangerously close to the edge of the road before realigning the wheel, crossing a small bridge as I grabbed onto his forearm, my mouth agape in a silent scream.

“You’re a fucking asshole!” I dug my nails into the tender flesh of his forearm to solidify my point.

“Can you swim, Olive?”

_________________________________________

“It’s beautiful.”

Settled on a bank directly overlooking the sea with unfiltered access to the beach, I stood back and took the house in with all its charm. Snowball hydrangeas teetered in the breeze, accenting the yard and picket fences, adding softness to the gray cedar siding. In typical New England fashion, the house was weather worn, but warm and inviting nonetheless. White adirondack chairs formed around a dining table on the concrete patio, only a few feet away from the entryway of the house.

“I used to think this place was a mansion when I was a kid.” He said as he came over to unlock the door.

He opened it, inviting me inside.

The house was swathed in navy blue linens, neutral shades, and pale pastels throughout, giving it a pop of warmth amongst the white planked walls. The living room and adjoining kitchen was bathed in natural light from the surrounding colonial style windows, spilling onto the natural wood floor, shining blindingly into my eyes as I made a right down a long hallway.

“Last door on the left,” He said from his place behind me, but I kept walking, stopping long enough to run my hands across the markings on the first door frame I passed.

‘JM’ and ‘JA’ had been etched in pencil along the door’s frame ranging from midway up my thigh, spanning to above my eyeline. A simple two digit year was beside every entry.

“Are you JM or JA?” I turned back to look at him as he made his way up to inspect the markings.

“JM.”

“Jeryd Motherfucker,” I joked and he looked at me with a grin.

“It’s French.”

I only nodded in response, running my fingertips along the scattered pieces of driftwood that hung along the hall’s narrow walls as I sought out the bedroom I would be sleeping in.

The bedroom was functional and simple, its shaker furniture characteristic of the quintessential New England style. A four poster bed sat against the far right wall under a bare window, a bookshelf directly across it on the opposing wall, with a dresser nestled into an alcove beside the windows leading out to a stunning view of the coastline.

“What a view,” I mused as my fingertips danced across the windowpane.

“Yeah,” He walked up to join at my side, never taking his eyes off mine, “What a view.”

_________________________________________

The rest of the day was spent in town, perusing the little shops that littered Main Street, fighting through tourist sludge, and a quick trip to a local market to pick up non-perishable necessities. It felt normal and fun doing such casual things with him. For a while I was oblivious to anything but the pleasure of being with him.

He chose Pain D'Avignon for dinner. We drank Belgian beer on the intimate patio, people watching, until my Dutch courage kicked in, willing my curious nature to take the lead.

“Why did you bring me here?”

“Here, to the restaurant,” He asked, stopping long enough to take a pull from his pint, “or to Hyannis?”

“Hyannis.”

“Don’t question my motives, Olive,” he lowered his eyes at me, “Can we have dinner without an interrogation?”

“Sure,” I sat back in my seat and nodded, “Whatever you want.”

His eyes sparkled like crystalline snow, more gray than blue at that particular moment, possibly due to the beam of sun that had broken through a small sliver between two buildings across the street. I surmised, though, they reacted to my giving him the reins to do whatever he pleased.

At some point, after a hearty serving of Wellfleet oysters, I lost all interest in questioning his motives.

We both watched curiously as a small boy, no more than three, picked up a glob of cotton candy pink ice cream from its cone, lobbing it directly at his mother as they crossed the street away from us.

“We used to be able to sit and enjoy each other , too.” His mother looked over at Jeryd and I, laughing sarcastically as she combed her fingers through the sticky concoction leaking from her blonde curls. She grabbed the ice cream cone, now covered in fingerprints, and tossed it in the garbage can a few feet from us. All the while her kid screamed bloody murder as he was dragged away by, what I assumed, were his older siblings.

“Enjoy it while it lasts.” She offered us a genuine smile and rejoined her clan.

“I don’t know if I’m fit for that type of nightmare,” he laughed, tossing his napkin on the table.

“Kids are gross,” I laughed out and he nodded in agreement.

“And codependent,” He added.

“I guess that’s why I’m an only child.”

“Surely you couldn’t have been that awful of a child, Liv.”

“There was no real reason for them to try for perfection a second time when they got so close the first time around.” I flashed him a big smile, and he reached across the table, dragging the palm of his hand down my forehead, slender fingers down the bridge of my nose, gripping my chin with a delicate squeeze.

“For what it’s worth, I think you’d be a good dad,” I offered, obviously on my way to being drunk because why else would I have said something so out of pocket?

“You don’t know that much about me.” He eyed me over the rim of his glass as he finished his beer.

“I guess I don’t.”

I realized then and there that it would never just be dinner with him. My internal monologue would always fire on all cylinders, leaving me musing to myself about a future with him, his past, and everything between where we sat now and where we would go in the future. His mother’s words fueled my delusions even further, nowhere was safe, every place leading back to what she had said days prior. It was never just dinner. Every place led back to his arms, to his grasp. Him still virtually a stranger throughout, where I stood, open and transparent, ready to be sought out and read, cover to cover. Oftentimes I found myself desiring to be the painter instead of the muse. Thus, it was easy to see a future with him. To imagine things far beyond my scope. But it’s always easier to not see the forest for the trees, isn’t it?

“Where’d you go just then?” He asked, bringing me plummeting back down to earth.

He reached across the table, seeking out my balled up fist.

I hesitated, eventually unfurling my palm to him.

“Why are you so scared to touch me, Olive?”

His fingers danced across my palm, his nails following the trails of the deeply etched lines.

“I’m not scared to touch you.” A lie if I had ever told one. All I did was lie. But it came so easily when I was looking at him. That in itself should’ve scared me away. But it didn’t. It never did. Never would.

“What do you want from me?” I asked him.

He angled his head to the side, an inquisitorial look painting his features as his lips pulled into a smile.

“What do you want to give me?”

“You say that as if I have a choice in the matter,” I laughed dryly, pulling my hand back from him like a scolded child.

_________________________________________

A subdued energy overtook me once we were back in the cottage and I walked on eggshells contemplating what would come next.

I washed my face and brushed my teeth like I normally would that time of night, alone with myself and my thoughts just long enough to realize the gravity of the situation and let it all come crashing back down on me. Nothing like looking in the mirror and seeing the problem staring back at you.

When I exited the bathroom, he trapped me between his body and the wall, looking down at me like prey caught in a trap.

“You have a choice,” He grasped at the halter strap tied intricately at my neck, unwrapping me like a gift from the neck down.

“Do I?” I wriggled to accommodate him as he slid the dress down my stomach and over my hips.

He nodded down at me, grasping my jaw to tilt my head up to him.

“Everyone has a choice.” He worked my mouth open with his, enough for his tongue to find solace as it tangled with mine.

He broke away long enough to speak with his tinged sarcasm, “What’s your excuse going to be tomorrow?” He asked, “‘I was drunk.’” Parroting back the words I had said to him the night I embarrassingly apologized for kissing him in his car.

“I’m not sorry.” I looked up at him, reaching down to grasp onto his collar. “I wasn’t sorry then and I’m not sorry now.”

“Maybe I’ll be sorry tomorrow,” I shook my head and looked down, feeling transparent and small under his gaze, “Maybe I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life, I don’t know.”

He grasped my chin, pulling my face back up to look at him. We were still for a brief second, staring at one another as if we could read each other’s minds.

He was quick to hoist me up by the back of my thighs, wrapping my legs around his waist, and we bounced around the hallway, my fingers combing through the hair at the nape of his neck as we did a dance of sorts through the narrow hall and into the bedroom.

When he laid me out on the bed, I leaned up towards him, practically tearing him out of his clothes. He took his time undressing me, exploring every inch of my body as he removed the remnants of my dress. Each time I’d rise off the bed to touch him, to graze my hand across his chest, he would press me back into the mattress with a smirk. He went down and pulled off my panties as he kissed around my navel and teased my inner thighs with his lean fingers. Just when I least expected it, he dipped his head low, licking a stripe through my folds, never taking his eyes off mine.

I took a deep breath and laced my fingers into his while he worked his tongue, exploring places I had never imagined him. My other hand raked through his scalp, pressing him further into my cunt.

He came up for air as I felt myself on the precipice of an orgasm, crawling his way up my body to hover over me. When he kissed me, I tasted myself mixed with a flavor that was unmistakably him.

I wrapped my legs around him, letting my body follow his lead as he pressed himself into me. Usually he was quick and relentless upon entry, but that night, he took his time filling in gaps, touching places he had never been before, places he had never seen.

A sort of unfettered pleasure transpired between us. One born from pure, unbridled lust between two people who knew right from wrong, but chose the latter because burning out simply felt better than fading away.

He moved his hands over my lower back and ass, grasping for purchase, driving himself further and further into me. I laid there, clinging to him for dear life, as I plummeted into an intense orgasm. For a while, it was hard to discern where one began and the other ended. We melted together, and each time his face would end up in the crook of my neck, moaning and groaning into the sensitive skin, I would nod along, pressing chaste kisses to the side of his head and into his hairline.

That night, I would lose all sense of fear in regards to him. I would, instead, get lost in his sea blue eyes, the light freckles that littered his cheeks and chest, the scar on his chin. I would watch closely as his shoulders flexed with each thrust, my hands roaming over his flesh with amazement as his body worked its way into mine. The tiny part of me that longed for normalcy, a foundation in which I could build from, got tucked away when he pulled back to look at me with his icy blues. The intensity was there, it would never fade, but a longing that I finally understood and felt deeply myself, shone through then.

He drug the palm of his hand down my forehead, pointer finger down the bridge of my nose, crescendoing with a tender kiss on my lips.

I fell in love at the tender age of twenty-two, in Hyannis, at a cottage by the sea, under the weight of a married man. It was simultaneously one of the best and worst things that I would ever do in my entire life.

Tag list: @aurorag98

[pancakeke]

I wrote a bunch of paragraphs about nothing in particular again so here it is under a readmore so it doesn't take up space.

like 8 years ago when people used tumblr more via desktop browser than its app, I put a 3rd party metric tracker in my desktop theme that logged how people were referred to my blog. it also captured what pages of my blog people viewed.

at one point during this time I reblogged a piece of pixel art from a japanese artist. they came to my blog through their activity page, and then searched my blog in a couple different ways for the terms "ドット" and "ドット絵" ("dot" and "dot art", as in pixel art). I checked those search urls myself to see if they found anything but there were no results because I never used those terms or specifically tagged pixel art in any other way.

ever since then I've made an effort to tag all pixel art I reblog with the term "pixel art". that artist was probably hoping to find more art to check out and it bums me out that my tagging system wasn't thorough enough to help.

this is why I have my current specific tag system lol. it keeps evolving but having the ability to find stuff you're into without jumping through hoops is really handy. (the site-wide post and tag searches return sooo much bullshit. it's a slog sifting through thr noise whenever I use those to fill my queue due to the sheer amount of manga caps, polls, liveblogs, personal posts, and fics posted without readmores...)

if only the way to view all tags you've ever used still worked. I think it caps at 500 or 1000 now and is also chronological so the first 500 or whatever tags you ever used show up in the list. then there's a hard stop and it does not update as you delete posts or use that mass tag editor to remove certain tags for your blog entirely.

I went through my used tag list earlier this year to unify certain tags and remove tags that I stopped using in favor for other ones, but I only got like 400 tagged terms down the list. maybe downloading my blog data would show more. the trick I mentioned uses your desktop blog's archive page. the tags are in its code so you can use "inspect element" to view it. I remember scrolling a lot to load a bunch of posts on the page but cant remember if this was required or I just did it to see if I could access more tags.

it's formatted all fucked and hard to manage but you can copy and paste the long chunk of tags into one cell of a spreadsheet and then use Data options to split them into columns by commas (or whatever punctuation separates them, I forget). a wide list is a huge pain to view so from there you can click on a cell containing data, click ctrl+a to highlight all data in thr row, copy, then paste special as "transposed" to turn the copied row 90° so it pastes as a column. the spreadsheet will wide as fuck from the hundreds of columns so honestly its easier to paste the transposed data into a new tab and delete the original vs clicking in the column to the left of your transposed data and then pressing ctrl+ shift+right arrow to select all rows to the right, then deleting the extra rows.

if you're in Excel you may have to use the "delete rows" option from the "home" tab and then save the sheet using "file > save" (do NOT save via the save button on the upper left corner or ctrl+s). this returns the sheet to a manageable size for scrolling (plus reduces its file size). this piece of shit software usually retains the sheet width/length even after you delete hundreds of columns/rows unless you use this trick of deleting specifically via home tab + saving specifically through the save menu.

I got a round number of tags when I did this which makes me think there's a cutoff.

[silvernyxchariot]

“dni gamers” you post about games im confused?

You're not confused, just ignorant. You omitted "meta-slaves" in your question purposefully.

The "meta" in my DNI is used as an adjective that is attached to "slaves/gamers," in other words, meta "slaves AND gamers." The whole part is separated by commas.

I'm not targeting all GAMERS as a whole. Only a select few. And thank you for providing another example of media literacy and reading comprehension being dead.

I will now use your question as an explanation post of what "meta" means as I have observed it:

"Meta," after a quick Google search, is an acronym for "most effective tactics available." In Genshin/HSR terms, the characters and builds that produce the most damage and help you clear content. But with characters that cause a lot of damage and clear content faster, their popularity begins to intertwine with the meta. My opinion of meta is as follows,

"I believe the meta is a good outline on how people can start to build their characters and teams, but it should not be forced down everyone's throat as the only way to play."

I've seen the issue of players fighting and arguing over character builds... everywhere, TikTok, YouTube, HoyoLab, Amino, and Twitter.

If you cannot build and rotate characters on your team to make them "synergize," as everyone loves to throw around, that's YOUR fault. Genshin is an open world, action-adventure game. Players have every right to play the game however the fuck they want. If you play only the meta or only want to talk down to others who don't play the meta, stay with your own kind. The rest of us who like to play the game and customize characters however we want will be having fun.

This will become more "expressive" from here on out.

People have also attacked me for my Kaveh builds specifically and his "synergy" with Al Haitham because I play them together. And to that last point, I say, skill issue. I finished the Abyss with my non-meta Ayato and HaiKaveh team. I've cleared content and events with a trial version of Wriothesley and Neuvillette, both of whom are on-field damage dealers. So, what's the excuse then. There are people who make my blood boil because all they do is talk about meta builds and big damage. The way they give advice is essentially, "My way is the only way to play." When it clearly is not, esp. because artifact RNG is different for everyone. So, for example, the Catch on Xiangling is good for them, but Scarlet Sands or Hu Tao's weapon might be better for others.

Much like my take on art and artists, if the player did not ASK for "advice," they did not CONSENT to your "advice." They did not consent to your "help." You just want to be haughty and feel good about yourself by pretending you're helping. "But if it's out in public, the player is consenting to criticism." Do you use that excuse for sticking your nose into everything even when you go to work or public spaces? Keep your hands and mouth to yourself, but clearly, the people who raised you failed to teach you manners.

With my rant mostly done, as for more casual players like myself, give me your characters and teams that you WANT to work on and how you want them to be build. I will work with you, not against you. But if you want it to work, you have to put in the work and collect the materials.

Examples: DPS Barbara, fuck yeah. Pyro YaoYao, Bet. Healer only Furina, plausible. Plunge DPS Kaveh, GIMME. You still play DPS Yanfei? SIS, SLAY.

TL;DR: Genshin is an open world adventure game and mostly single-player. Play however the fuck you want. The meta-gamers and meta-players (is that clear enough for you) have no right to lecture or criticize you for your play style.

[alienjaded]

Hoping you are haunted ...

Dear Soulmate,

I've found a totally anonymous way to write to you, so get ready for the sappiest, sloppiest, shit-storm of a limerent love letter that you will ever never read.

I wonder ...

If you were to, somehow, someday stumble upon this letter, without knowing the writer behind it, would you recognize my voice? Probably not; I'm being intentionally twisty with my prose. But maybe I would still faintly sound like a vaguely familiar ghost in your head ... I wouldn't mind that. I think it would be cool to haunt you, just a little bit.

Interestingly, total anonymity is total freedom to be one's self. I can speak more honestly and fearlessly to the void than I ever could to myself. Or you, of course. And while I am here, in heartfelt, whole candor, I just want to say ...

I love you. More than she does. More than the other she did, or her before her, or any preceding, current, or future hers that are not me. More than you loved any hers. Much more than you loved me, if you did at all. I love you more than I love writing ribbony sentences, misusing commas, and inappropriately playing with sexy enigmatic semicolons.

I know you know that, and I hope that it haunts you. Just a little bit, for a very long time.

You know what? Being human really fucking sucks, sometimes. I guess this is why we've emerged concepts like Heaven and Hell. And why we tell ourselves stories of ultimate power, ultimate sacrifice, ultimate nothingness, ultimate reality, and ultimate love. Because it's all fucking weird and stupid and incredibly intense ... and absolutely ultimately bonkers.

We walk forward and backward, side to side, diagonal, and ... that's all. We're forced into an orientation that feels like reality, so much so, that we'd go insane if we did not believe it. And yet, my up is down to someone in China, and they're up, my down, is no less true than my-up-their-down. We have demonizing monotheism that externalizes shadow after shadow, and demonic monism that swallows it with light and all-ness. I am miles away from you, achingly unallowed to touch your skin, and I am also the pants that you are currently wearing (or not wearing). And I am also your skin.

Somehow, in a world that makes so much room for ridiculousness, on a planet of paradoxes orbiting in pristine mathematical precision as it spirals into entropy, there is no way for us to be together. I hate practicality - it is my undying antagonist - and, quite possibly, the only pathway to your heart.

Why did you have to be so put together? I just want to kiss you. Tempt you, tease you, taste your tongue. Crawl on you. I want to love your body and breathe your breath. I want to be so deep inside of you, that I'm wearing your skin. I want you to penetrate my soul, hard. I want to be your soul. I love your soul.

I want to be your untouchable Madonna, perfectly preserved in rose colored memory. I want to be your whore. Probably mostly your whore ... I want to be a swirling kundalini genie, a disembodied force that can descend on you in your bedroom - jezebel and Lady Folly all at once, just for the chance to lick your toothbrush and use your shampoo. I get to confess this all to a priest soon. Maybe Jesus can save me from this absolutely transcendental yearning.

The anticlimactic outcome of this fire storm, apart from the odd spontaneous orgasm, is that I get to grow old only sometimes sadly staring into space, as I think about how my entire being constantly aches for yours. And I am just powerless to the mercy of time now. My only catharsis is that I can now imagine myself punishing you with an onslaught of convoluted run-on sentences, knowing full well that you've probably perfected the art of quickly forgetting irrelevant pining women.

Still, can't you help but feel that our story fell a little flat?

Maybe I am delusional. Maybe you felt nothing close to what I did. That's okay. Whatever. Really, it's fine. You were, even if only in fantasy, the greatest romance of my life ... If I had ever had you, I would tell you that you were the best that I have ever had. Instead, I'll just say, I wanted you more badly than I have ever wanted anything.

I'll hold fast to the dream that perhaps a tiny, intuitive part of you likewise recognizes that our connection was something blindingly intense.

Ultimately, it's all f i n e. C'est la vie, et la vie continue. You anchored yourself to something simpler and safer than me. Virtue, pride, principles, tradition, academia, the matrix, a head filled with montrous, repressed, unsatisfied passion (yes?); I'd say that I hope it was worth it, but that would be a lie, and I don't have to tell those when I am anonymous. I will say, though, that I honestly hope that you are happy. And I also honestly hope that you are haunted, just a little bit, for a very long time.

Your Soulmate

[alligatorjesie]

Love how you state right at the top of reply how you 'did tag this properly'

Then proceeded to actually tag it how you fucking should have to fucking start with

but still did not fix the tags in your original post

That's really fun. </s>

The correct tags you're looking to use so you don’t end up coughing your hate everywhere with your uncovered mouth you filthy fucking animal are:

Anti-fandom

Anti_fandom

or Antifandom

The tag you don't want to use is;

Anti Fandom

with the space

like you did correctly in this reply post.

because ya kinda understand what you did wrong there now, don’t you?

Here's a little tumblr coding basics 101;

if I made the tag

'Zuko dies in a horrible train crash after Godzilla shit on the tracks'

That entire tag will now show up in the zuko tag, the godzilla tag, the shit tag, the train tag, so on and so on.

Because that's how this website works.

Tumblr considers spaces in a tag kinda like a new instance of a tag. A comma in the code acts like a ‘stop’. When you type out a full sentence with spaces it considers those spaces ‘tag breaks’.

It'll do the small work for you and ignore the instances of 'The' or 'In' and 'A' but everything else that could potentially be a keyword gets thrown into the site-wide tagging system.

When someone arranges a tag as one word (either by actually making it one word or using a hyphen) Tumblr will look at it and go 'Ah! This is one word!' and sorts it accordingly.

To Tumblr 'anti' is an active(awful) tag so when you tag something 'anti reylo' it will sort it into the anti tag and reylo tag accordingly.

Meaning the regular joes who are just going about their normal business in their fandom space and haven’t preemptively blocked the anti tag or you personally will now see you being an asshole to us in living color.

Over the fact 'you think' the zutara ship is more morally upstanding because it has less ‘problematic’ issues over a nearly identical canon ship, reylo, which is Ben Solo and Rey from Star Wars, and the also non-canon Harry Potter ship, dramione.

They're fictional fucking ships.

bodycount don’t really fuckin’ matter because the fake people they killed are fake.

There's no moral supremacy over one vs the other.

Uncle Iroh was a decorated war general so I'm pretty sure his body count is higher than everyone in the room but since we get to only see him in ‘jolly old man trying to stop his stupid nephew from becoming his monster of a father’ mode so we kinda forget he's a fuckin' war general.

and you know what man

I just don’t fucking know what crack you smoked to come up with this one

so here we fucking are

And since op tagged this so poorly when they made the original post trying to put my whole fucking fandom on blast

like some kinda beacon

a whole ass reylo showed up would ya fuckin’ believe it?

after tagging the reylo fandom?

Well that reylo is now here to help you get your facts straight and to ask you once again with feeling to fix those tags and find your nearest exit buddy

Anyways, basic fucking coding lesson aside:

This isn't a case of 'if you dislike it you should just scroll past'

this is a case of 'Why the fuck are you even fucking here?'

I'm glad you got zutara, a nice enjoyable ship that I also interact with on this demon’s asshole of a website because it has such striking resemblance to reylo, to look at fondly and enjoy but there is no fucking reason for you to come into other Incredibly Similar Fandom's Tags

LIED ABOUT SHIT ABOUT THOSE CHARACTERS/SHIPS OUTRIGHT

then tell those people their ships are worse 'because the writing was bad'.

you said and I quote: Kylo also has a worse record than Zuko: murdering his dad, oppressing countless people, killing civilians, and maiming people.

Kylo Ren is a weapon of war being used by a tyrannical madman who has been in his head since childhood.

he was convinced to kill his father by this madman and regrets doing it so badly his entire moral compass gets upended and he literally kills that same madman The Very Next Fucking Movie, not for power mind you,

but because he wanted to save Rey

He even still regrets killing his father in tros, a point JJ needed to so sloppily rammed in there he just copy pasted a whole fucking scene from his last movie.

Kylo never kills a single civilian throughout the entire trilogy. The town of people he killed at the beginning of TFA are Resistance members. He is not responsible for the planetary system being blown up in TFA that was Hux and Snoke

Kylo Ren Only Kills Combatants Of War For The Entire Trilogy.

(go on @fanfic-lover-girl , go check for yourself. It’s only 3 movies. I’ll watch them with you. Again.

We'll see who's right about these little details, the person who has seen these movies over and over or the person who admits they ain't watched them once)

you just straight up lied about a character to make yourself feel better about your fictional ship.

And that’s just fucking nuts to me man.

What the fuck ass backwards world are we living in that this is the hell you choose to raise? There's 2 wars going on and the fucking nazis are back but this is what you wanna put on blast?

That reylo and dramione are worse ships because the writing isn’t good to you?

I assure you the fans in these fandom have gone above and beyond to fix the bad writing brought on by their imperfect creators but the shit you’re complaining about ain’t even problems. You’re just making shit up

How Fucking Nice must it be to have people who made your media be perf little snowflakes but it is not our fucking fault JJ is a fucking moron and JKRolfing is a massive terf cunt.

(Rian tho is actually perfect and is responsible for 75% of Ben's character growth in canon so bless that man he did his fucking best but I digress-)

People have created whole fucking short animated movies and detailed comics along with incredibly well written fanfictions to correct what they didn't like about the story.

‘death of the author’ at work baby.

Unless you’re the fucking fandom police your opinion on what is good media vs bad mean don’t mean jack fuckin’ shit brah.

so,

kindly,

Fuck off.

PS:

You know being told to kill myself nearly 1000 times over the past year and a half ain’t been a fuckin’ cakewalk enough without the added shit frosting that is people in fandoms trying to talk down to other nearly identical fandoms.

This banner ain't a fuckin' joke. I have been told to kill myself this many times by antis posting hate into the reylo tag.

Assholes like you are 1000 times worse than all the fictional bad men combined.

You're going after real people.

Do better

Anyhoots here’s a fuckin’ picture of my cat she’s fucking adorable

Demonization of the Enemies to Lovers Trope

I find it very disingenuous when Zutara antis compare or lump Zutara with problematic ships like Reylo and Dramione. Anyone who makes a claim like this should have not any opinions about ATLA respected. Because they obviously did not watch the show.

There are major differences that set Zutara apart from Reylo and Dramione.

Zutara vs Dramione - Friendship

Zuko and Katara reconciled and became very close friends in season 3. Draco and Hermione disliked each other in canon and the best of their relationship was civility. Dramione could have served the same narrative function as Zutara by representing union after war but Dramione lacked the canon building blocks that Zutara had.

Zutara vs Reylo - Redemption

Zuko has a powerful redemption arc. But even when Zuko was an antagonist, he was never truly evil. And Zuko's actions towards Katara (eg tying her to a tree) were not completely monstrous. Zuko and Katara never crossed any boundaries while enemies. When Katara starts showing compassion to Zuko, it is in season 2 when Zuko is no longer an active threat (eg. offering to heal Iroh and their emotional moment in the catacombs). Compare this to Reylo where there are all these romantic undertones while Reylo and Kylo are still enemies. Kylo also has a worse record than Zuko: murdering his dad, oppressing countless people, killing civilians, and maiming people. And Rey for some reason, before Kylo does anything to deserve it, begins to feel sorry for him. Unlike Zuko, we don't see Kylo truly atone for what he did to Rey. Not to mention the abusive elements in their relationship such as Kylo calling Rey worthless.

The point is that people need to stop demonizing enemies to lovers ships. And stop lumping healthy ships like Zutara with more toxic ships like Dramione and Reylo. It's not a fair comparison.

[arodrwho]

for someone who writes very... what’s the word, uh. not methodically. there’s a specific word and it’s related to “hack” but isn’t “hack.” formulaic? for someone who tends to write in a very formulaic way and gets caught up in how pretty they think they sound and makes scenes either 8 years longer than they need to be or 5 months shorter and misuses italics and is in a committed relationship with the em dash and only knows how to write 3 characters and never updates consistently and often leaves typos and sometimes skips words out of sentences and says the opposite of what they mean to say and has skewed interps of canon pretty frequently and generally is kind of an insufferable writer in many ways -

i sure do have a lot of opinions abt tiny unimportant nitpicky details of other ppls’ work

[greymoonfeelings]

How about “I thought that you said that you’d passed your test.” “No, I said I could drive, I never said how well.” with Eddie Munson? 💖

Thanks Vee!! Idk how good this is but I had fun writing it. This is for all the homie who drive like animals but still managed to get their license 🍻

Bad Driver

Pairing: Eddie Munson x GN!reader

word count: 745

summary: Eddie experiences your driving for the first time.

warnings: none! (except way too many commas)

drabble below cut

Eddie had heard stories about your time learning how to drive. How you once drove into a brick wall when you’d zoned out behind the wheel and the estimated number of curbs you’d run over hitting double digits. That’s why when his van ended up in the shop and you had offered to take over his job of driving the two of you to school, he was wary, to say the least.

However, you had convinced him after swearing that those incidents had occurred during your early days and that you passed your driver’s test, so how bad could you be? After all, Eddie himself had never experienced your driving so it wasn’t fair of him to judge from a few stories.

His agreement caused you to cheer on the other end of the phone, promising to be at his trailer at 7 to pick him up. You were excited to return the favor after a year of him driving you to and from school every day.

The next morning you greet Eddie with a kiss when he climbs into your mother’s Subaru and force him to put on his seatbelt for safety.

The drive starts smoothly, you focus on the road and only tap your fingers against the steering wheel to Eddie’s music rather than giving a full performance like you normally would, but then you start telling him about your weekend and blow through a stop sign while distracted.

No biggie, Eddie thinks, there was no one at the intersection anyways.

He decides to take over the conversation so you could direct all your attention to the road in front of you. He passes the time by explaining the new storyline he had come up with for his D&D group as you continue through Hawkins.

The car approaches a four-way intersection with lights at the town square. The light hanging on your side flashes yellow as you speed towards it. Eddie expects you to stop and wait your turn, but instead, you press down harder on the gas pedal.

He prepares to make the sign of the cross and pray to God to spare his life, something he’d never dreamed of doing before as the traffic light changes to red, but you continue to speed through the intersection, causing at least one car to honk at you.

“Ah, fuck off.” You wave casually as if you didn’t almost cause a car crash.

“Maybe you should slow down, babe. You’re hauling precious cargo.”

“Eds, I’ve seen you go 50 in a 35.”

“I was trying to get you home in time for the Grease showing.” He defends.

“And I'm trying to get us to school on time so you can actually graduate.”

All you had to do was turn into the school parking lot and then he would have safely arrived in one piece, but at the speed you were going, Eddie could see this going wrong.

Eddie desperately clutches the handle above his window, bracing himself as you take a sharp left turn sending the two of you, as well as all the loose items in the car, flying sideways. You also manage to partially run over the curb.

You laugh nervously and mutter, “I hope no one saw that.”

By the time pull into a parking space, narrowly missing someone’s brand-new corvette, Eddie is prepared to make the sign of the cross and pray to God to spare his life.

When you finally put the car in park and take the keys out of the ignition, Eddie breathes a sigh of relief.

“Fuck, I’ve never felt that close to death in my life.”

He boyfriend slumps against his seat, clutching his chest to try and steady his racing heart.

“I thought you said you passed your test!”

“No, I said I could drive, I never said how well.” You clarify while gathering the supplies that had fallen out of your backpack due to your erratic driving.

“Oh come on! Was I really that bad?”

“Yes.”

Eddie cups your shocked face, giving you a sweet kiss on the lips.

“Baby, there are so many things that you’re good at, but driving isn’t one of them.”

“You’re lucky I’m in love with you, Munson.”

“And I love you, but I am never getting in a car with you behind the wheel again.”

“Fine, but if anything happens to my Mom’s car while you’re driving it we’re dead.”

“Babe, we’d be dead if you’re the one driving it.”

[mashkaroom]

AP style is the worst style guide ever to exist istg. The idea is that it's optimized to the printing needs of newspapers, many of which still use presses that involve the pressing of an etched metal sheet to paper, which is why, for example, it avoids using italics (book titles are put in quotations, e.g.). I was also told that AP's punctuation usage is meant to minimize space, because newspapers are so space sensitive -- this was specifically in response to why AP doesn't use the Oxford comma. But that HAD to be a fucking lie, bc AP also puts spaces around em dashes and also around elipses???? At first with the elipses I was like "oh, do they do spaces when it's to shorten a quote and no spaces when it's for effect? Because I see the utility in that" NOPE!!!! If you wanted to indicate a pause in your writing you'd be obliged to write "That was ... interesting." Also, punctuation is always inside quotations. As in 'The "style guide," as it was called, should better be considered a style-less villain, leading innocents astray.' WHY is the comma INSIDE? Do you pronounce the comma????? No the fuck you don't!!! It just goes on and on. AP asks you to put 's after single common nouns (the virus's reach) but not after proper nouns (Kansas' schools). My brother in Christ WHY??? Maybe I'm not looking closely enough, but i cannot find any precedent for that. It literally just seems like they randomly chose it. They also have their own state name abbreviations, which ALL take up more space than the normal ones we're used to. Wanna know how they abbreviate west virginia? W.Va. WHY DO YOU DO THIS

[winterhawk-olympic-bang]

Here is our second 2022 Writer Workshop post, written by @flawedamythyst. Have a read and then head over to the Discord Server where we have a channel  for you to take part in a discussion based on the post, with chances to  share your own ideas too.

Writing Dialogue

Guest Poster: Flawedamythyst

Writing Dialogue

In some ways, dialogue is really at the heart of writing. If you get it right, you can use it to drive the plot, round out your characters and engage your readers in a way that solid lumps of prose don’t tend to.

There are a variety of different aspects to look at with it, so I’m going to concentrate on Punctuation & Formatting, Dialogue Tags, Less is More, Subtext and Characterisation.

Punctuation & Formatting

Most of this is pretty basic but it never hurts to go over it again as a reminder. Mistakes in formatting dialogue can lead to a reader getting confused, or having to reread to be sure who is speaking.

This section comes with a caveat that this is how I was taught to format dialogue in the UK, and that other languages/cultures may differ on some points. That said, this is also the most common way to see dialogue written within fandom and so least likely to trip your reader up with punctuation they weren’t expecting.

“I don’t understand,” said Clint.

Natasha sighed. “Of course you don’t.”

“Do you ever?” added Bucky. “Seriously, it’s simple.”

“It’s not fucking simple,” said Clint with exasperation, “it’s fucking space travel!”

You use double speech marks to indicate speech and the punctuation for the dialogue goes inside the speech marks, such as the question mark in ‘do you ever?’.

You use a comma at the end of dialogue if you’re then adding the dialogue tag (the ‘said Clint’ bit) on afterwards, and a lower case letter for ‘said’ as if it were part of the same sentence. You also use lower case after a question mark or exclamation mark.

If the dialogue tag comes in the middle of a sentence of dialogue, like in the last sentence above, you use commas and small case letters to keep it all tied together. Depending on how you think Clint would say that line, though, it could be separated into two sentences, in which case it would be punctuated as:

“It’s not fucking simple,” said Clint with exasperation. “It’s fucking space travel!”

That points more of an emphasis on the second part, rather than making it run on from the first, so you use a full stop after the dialogue tag, then start with a capital letter.

You can also end sentences with ellipses or dashes, which don’t require any additional punctuation after them.

“It’s not space travel, it’s just a low-level planetary orbit,” said Bucky. “The only risk is-”

“The only risk is what?” interrupted Clint.

“Is if we… Hmmmm…” said Natasha.

Always use a new paragraph for every speaker, regardless of how little they say. Putting two different speakers in one paragraph is an easy way to confuse a reader about who is speaking, as is separating one person’s speech into multiple paragraphs unnecessarily.

If you do have a character telling a long story or something else that means they’re saying enough to need to be split into paragraphs, you don’t close the speech marks at the end of the paragraph, to indicate that the same speaker is continuing in the next section.

“So then Spider-Man said it would be a great idea to go surfing,” said Clint, “and we all headed to the beach, where Antman got us some margaritas, to get us in the mood, you know? And then Deadpool got us some boards, I don’t know where from, and well, you know. Shit got real.

“I swear, I had no idea it was going to end like it did. Who knew Thor could summon lightning underwater? Or that Namor would react like that if he did?”

If your character is directly quoting someone else, use single quotes to indicate that.

“At which point, Deadpool said, ‘you ain’t seen anything yet, baby’ and, well. That was when it all went to hell.”

If it’s not a direct quote, you don’t need to punctuate it at all.

“Thor announced he was the God of Tequila Shots and bought us all another round.”

Any internal dialogue or thoughts would be written in italics to distinguish it from the rest of the text.

“I only had one or two of the shots, though,” said Clint, adding in his head, Well, four or five, but who’s counting?

Dialogue Tags

It feels like there’s been a fair amount of discussion around fandom about dialogue tags, specifically the over-use of ‘said’, and I want to be very clear that there is absolutely no need to be nervous about using it.

If you look at any of your favourite actual-published-books, you’ll probably see that the majority of dialogue tags used ‘said’, and you’ve never really noticed or thought it was getting repetitious. That’s because like a lot of other very common words or phrases, you read it without really taking it in. Other dialogue tags, like the ones you get in those lists of ‘words to replace said with’ that go round periodically, will stand out more to your readers and actually will start to feel like they’re slowing the dialogue down.

That said, you want to mix up both the formatting and the phrasing of your dialogue tags so they don’t get into a pattern.

“I love you,” said Clint

“I love you too,” said Bucky.

“I want to be with you,” said Clint.

“Yes, please. Let me take you out on a date,” said Bucky.

This begins to feel a bit robotic, and it’s harder to feel the emotions within it. If you change it up a bit, it flows much more easily. ‘Said’ might be the majority of your dialogue tags, but other common words like ‘replied’ or ‘added’ will be just as easy for a reader to skim over.

“I love you,” said Clint.

Bucky found a smile for him. “I love you too.”

“I want to be with you,” added Clint, taking his hands.

“Yes, please,” said Bucky, squeezing his fingers in return. “Let me take you out on a date.”

This also mixes in action beats, which are ways to separate out dialogue with something the character is doing at the same time, which helps fill in a bigger picture of the scene beyond just the words.

Action beats are a great way to keep a story from feeling too dialogue heavy but it’s not always easy to concentrate on them at the same time as getting a conversation to flow naturally, so sometimes I do write out all the dialogue, then go back through and add in some action around it, so I can make that work right as well.

There’s a rule of thumb for keeping a scene from becoming too dialogue heavy - the Three-Beat Rule. It says that you should have a maximum of three dialogue beats at a time, after which you should insert a dialogue tag, action beat, or another character’s speech. Dialogue ‘beats’ can be understood as the short phrases in speech that you can say without pausing for breath. Sometimes they correlate with actual sentences, sometimes they don’t.

Like all writing rules, it’s really more of a guideline, but if you do have a character doing a lot of talking, it’s worth going through and making sure you’ve broken it up a bit.

If you do have a long conversation, it’s always a good idea to set it somewhere more interesting than just on a couch staring at each other. Give them something to do at the same time and it’s much easier to break up the dialogue. It also gives you a way to show emotions by talking about more than just their expressions and voice tones.

This also helps with the problem that I think a lot of authors run into, which is that they have a ‘favourite’ action tag that keeps popping up. Mine is sighing - sometimes I reread a scene and I’ve got them puffing like bellows with every other line. If there’s something else they’re concentrating on doing, you don’t need to keep falling back on sighing. Or shrugging or eye-rolling, or whatever other favourites you might have.

It doesn’t need to be anything particularly interesting. Even just having someone make coffee or playing with a dog gives you something to hook the dialogue to to round it out and give a sense of the scenery. There’s a post about it HERE that goes into a bit more detail.

It also feels more natural, because most of the time when we’re talking to someone we are doing something else at the same time, even if it’s just fiddling around with something.

“I wanted to talk about last night,” said Bucky, resting his hands on the kitchen table.

Clint hesitated in the action of filling the coffee machine. “Do we have to?”

Bucky pressed his lips together, staring down at his clenched fingers. “I really think we do.”

“Okay, fine,” said Clint with a sigh, pressing the buttons to set the coffee machine humming. “Go for it.”

This does also mean you can skip out on some of the dialogue tags, because the action tells you who is speaking. Generally speaking, if a character is doing an action within the same paragraph as some dialogue, they’re the ones speaking.

Adding emotions by conveying tone of voice can be done through dialogue tags and action tags. Consider the difference mood conveyed by the below:

“I love you,” said Clint.

“I love you,” murmured Clint.

“I love you,” said Clint in a muttered tone.

Clint looked back at the coffee machine, speaking in a low, gruff tone as he said, “I love you.”

All of these sentences gave your reader slightly different information about how Clint is saying it and, therefore, how he feels as he says it. For something like ‘I love you’, you probably want to think through how he’s saying it in your head, and try and convey some of that in the dialogue tag, but if he was just offering Bucky milk in his coffee, it would probably be overkill to invest that many words/emotions into it, unless there’s some subtext you’re trying to convey. We’ll talk about that properly later.

It’s not always necessary to give every line of dialogue a dialogue tag, which can speed up the feel of dialogue, but it’s vital that it doesn’t become confusing to readers as to who is speaking. In a two person conversation, you can probably do two or three lines without specifying, but as soon as there are three or more characters, you should indicate in some way who is speaking for every line. Even if it feels obvious to you, remember that readers aren’t seeing the scene in their head the way you are.

With all the Avengers around the table, the meeting quickly got out of hand.

“We’re going to put no tequila shots in the Avengers charter,” said Steve, firmly.

“No way,” said Clint. “We’re not kids, we can-”

“You obviously can’t!” snapped Natasha.

Thor slammed his hand on the table. “I am the God of Tequila Shots, and I will not be denied my birthright!”

“I still can’t believe you guys went on a spree without me,” said Tony. “I mean, come on! I’m Tony Stark! I’m all about the tequila-fueled regret!”

Steve tried to regain some order. “Look, the media reaction has been-”

He didn’t get the chance to finish as everyone else talked over him.

“Having a billionaire funding us might be a good idea next time,” said Scott thoughtfully. “Paying for an Asgardian to get hammered is not cheap.”

“Hammered,” repeated Clint, and started to snigger. He caught Scott’s eye and they were both gone, collapsing into laughter while Steve huffed and rolled his eyes. The meeting didn’t really last much longer.

Bucky caught Clint’s arm and held him back when everyone else left. “Did you mean it?” he asked once they were alone. “What you said this morning?”

Clint took a deep breath, eyeing the uncertain look on Bucky’s face. “Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“If it’s not- If you’re not, I can shut up and never mention it-”

“No! No,” said Bucky, grabbing Clint’s arm. “It’s perfect.” He smiled and leaned in, and just like that, they were kissing.

The first part, with all the Avengers together, needs clarity about who is talking to be clear. The last section, with just Clint and Bucky, can skip out on the tags to keep the flow going.

The final thing I want to talk about when it comes to dialogue tags is epithets. It’s very easy when you’re going back and forth between characters to feel like you’re overusing their names, and reach for an epithet instead. Don’t do it.

In the same way that readers skim over ‘said’, they skim over character names other than to note where the dialogue is coming from. If there’s more than two people in a conversation, it’s important to be clear about who is speaking, and the best way to do that is with names.

Epithets slow down reading speed and, in some cases, just confuse things. I’ve read fics where someone has used ‘the older man’, and I have had to stop to try and remember who is canonically older in a pair of characters, or even where people use ‘the taller man’ and I’m stuck on ‘in the comics Clint is taller but in the movies Bucky is, so which are they referring to?’

I would say the only time you use an epithet is when your PoV character doesn’t know someone’s name, in which case I would pick a characteristic that would be most obvious to them and stick with it, so the reader can start to treat it as a name as they read.

Bucky had never seen this guy before, he’d have remembered if he had. Who the fuck actually fought with a bow in the 21st century?

“Hi,” said the archer, “you must be Bucky Barnes. Wow, I was not prepared for how hot you are.”

Bucky glared. “And who the fuck are you?”

The archer just winked. “Wouldn’t you like to know, soldier?” he said and then jumped out of the fucking window.

Bucky hated him already.

As soon as the PoV character finds out a name for them, start using it instead.

Less is More

It’s very easy to go overboard with dialogue in a fic, which slows down the action and can be boring for a reader. Generally speaking, there’s no point in including small talk or the kind of filler chat that real life is full of. People on TV or in movies rarely bother with greetings or ‘how’re you doing’ or talk about the weather, for example, because it keeps the scene tighter and focuses on the important stuff.

A good rule of thumb is to think ‘does the reader actually need this level of information?’ If you’ve got your characters in a restaurant, you don’t need to write out them debating their menu choices and then ordering from the waiter, because unless there’s some other information included in it, the reader doesn’t actually care what they’re eating/drinking. You can skip all that with a line of prose and cut to the meat of a conversation, and it moves the story along much faster.

The exception to this is if the small talk is key for character development - for example it’s a first date and they’re both nervous, and focusing on talking about the menu because they don’t know what else to say. Or you might have a character who doesn’t want to say something they know they have to, and going off on a tangent about the weather, or what they had for breakfast, instead of saying it. In that case, the interest to the reader isn’t the actual words, but what is underneath them. We’ll look at that later.

You also want to avoid excessive exposition or infodumping in dialogue. It can feel like an easy way to worldbuild, but it just ends up feeling clunky or like weird over-sharing to the reader. People don’t usually offer up huge chunks of their backstory in casual conversation, or go over things that the person they’re talking to already knows.

Not to give away one of my previous fandoms but the example I always think about for this is in the Pilot episode of Supernatural, when Sam says:

“The way we grew up, after Mom was killed, and Dad's obsession to find the thing that killed her. But we still haven't found the damn thing, so we kill everything we can find. You think Mom would have wanted this for us? The weapon training, and melting the silver into bullets? Man, Dean, we were raised like warriors.”

This is all information Dean already has because he was there all through their childhood, and it is SUPER WEIRD for Sam to just dump it all on him as if he was an outsider. Don’t do this, guys, don’t be Eric Kripke trying to shortcut on laying out backstory. You have plenty of time and space within a story that’s at a WHOB wordcount to work information in more organically.

Dialogue generally feels more realistic if it’s kept short and sweet. Most people don’t talk in long or convoluted sentences and will generally use shorter, more common words. There’s not a lot of time between deciding to express a thought and opening your mouth and letting it come out, so it tends to come out in the easiest way.

There are exceptions to this, of course, such as Tony Stark, who loves run on sentences. They’re not particularly complex ones though, they’re just a sign that his mind is moving faster than his mouth and he’s gone on a ramble. If he’s talking science, or you’ve got another character with a deep level of knowledge on a specific subject, they’re going to use more technical language, but by and large most people keep it simple in most conversations.

You can play around this a bit, of course. If you’ve got someone who has been practising what they want to say, it’s going to sound more formal and speech-like than if it’s just coming out organically.

Bucky cleared his throat. “Clint, it has come clear to me over the last few months that, in addition to our interests and hobbies being compatible, the time we spend together is very important to me, and is when I feel the most content about my current situation. As such, I wondered if you would like to increase the amount of time that we spend together.”

Clint blinked at him. “What?”

Bucky sighed, his shoulders slumping. “I like hanging out with you. Can we hang out more?”

You can see that the dialogue sounds more natural when Bucky just uses shorter, easier sentences. You can make dialogue sound really unnatural and clunky by trying to be too clever with it - for those old enough to remember Dawson’s Creek, that’s a good example of dialogue that sounds fake. No teenagers ever talked like that. (I haven’t seen Riverdale, but I’m given to understand it has a similar problem, if you’re looking for a more up-to-date reference.)

That said, there is one area with dialogue where it’s best not to keep it how people actually talk. If you sit down and listen to a conversation properly, you’ll notice that people use a lot of filler words, that they stop sentences and restart them in a slightly different way to make what they’re saying clearer, or sometimes just straight up phrase things as confused gibberish because they can’t remember a particular word and trust their audience to get the gist of what they mean.

Don’t do this in written dialogue. It becomes difficult to read very quickly and you want to make things easy for your readers. Filler words, like um and ah, should be kept to a minimum, when you specifically want to show someone hesitating or being unsure.

Subtext

I mentioned above that the only time you should really include small talk is when there’s something else going on beneath the conversation that you want to use it to show. Almost every conversation has subtext to it, and it’s important to know what that is and how you’re going to convey it to a reader when writing a conversation.

The weight of how a character feels about someone, along with their current mood (which might be completely unrelated to the conversation) all play into how they talk to someone, and can usually be worked out by reading between the lines. Someone might get snappy and irritable during what seems like a completely innocuous conversation, because it’s come on top of a bunch of times that person has let them down, or a sleepless night followed by being kidnapped by Hydra.

You can use this subtext to drive dialogue in a story to reveal all kinds of things about your characters and their motivations. This matches up with what @drgirlfriend said in our previous workshop on Character Arcs, but on a smaller scale. You have to know what your characters are being driven by to know how they are going to express themselves, and they’re rarely going to come out and just say it. Sometimes that’s because they haven’t really worked it out themselves, sometimes that’s because they don’t want to talk about their emotions, but if you use it right, you can show a lot about them and what they want, in dialogue.

“Are you going to the gala later?” asked Bucky, reloading his gun as Clint pulled his bow off the rack.

Clint shrugged as he checked the bow over. “Wasn’t really thinking about it.”

Bucky nodded to himself, glancing back at the targets. “Steve wants me to go. Got me a suit and everything.”

Clint stopped in the action of pulling a quiver over his shoulder. “Seriously?”

“Seems to think it’ll help my reputation,” said Bucky, trying not to sound as defeated by the prospect as he felt.

“Huh,” said Clint, finishing up with getting his gear on and heading to stand at the target next to Bucky’s.

He didn’t add anything else and Bucky almost let it go, but the idea of that neat, polished tuxedo waiting upstairs for him, so completely different to anything he was used to wearing, made him open his mouth again.

“If you don’t have a tux, I bet Tony could sort something out for you in time.”

Clint was silent for long enough to nock an arrow, aim down the range, and fire. “I’m not exactly going to fit in with those fancy bigwigs.”

“Then we can hide in a corner together,” said Bucky, and then let off a spray of bullets so he wouldn’t hear Clint’s answer, because that had felt too close to what he really wanted to say.

Once his clip was empty, he glanced over to see Clint giving him a careful look. “If anyone calls me Hawkguy, I’m coming straight home.”

Bucky couldn’t hold in a relieved grin. “That seems fair,” he said, feeling some of the tension in his shoulders relax.

On the surface, this is a fairly dull conversation about whether or not Clint is going to a gala. If there was no subtext about it, the writer would probably just skip it in favour of jumping straight to them both heading out for the gala, which gives the same information without wasting the reader’s time.

However, by including it you get to show rather than tell each character’s motivations. Bucky’s subtext here is ‘please come to the gala with me I’m scared of formal occasions’, while Clint’s (harder to get across as he’s not the POV character) is ‘I don’t feel important enough to go to a gala’. You also get the next level down of subtext, which is Bucky’s ‘having you around makes me feel more confident’ and Clint’s ‘I’ll do things I’m not that keen on if you ask me to’, which gives the reader information about their feelings for each other.

This kind of dialogue helps with the ‘show don’t tell’ aspect of writing. You don’t need to have Bucky actually straight out say that he wants Clint to come with him for moral support, because the subtext is there for the reader to pick up on, and it feels more organic and more satisfying to read a story that isn’t force feeding you information.

It also tells you deeper things about the story. Bucky is still feeling insecure about public events and is worried about his reputation, so you’re sign-posting that it’s fairly early in his post-Hydra recovery. He’s taking Steve’s advice on what he should do so he’s at least a bit emotionally dependent on him, and Steve clearly feels like he’s in a position where Bucky needs that kind of support from him. If you start a fic with this conversation, most people are going to mentally insert it into the canon/fanon timeline at a certain point without needing you to spell out exactly when you’re setting it.

You can use subtext in dialogue to highlight relationships without needing to give a backstory. An in-canon example of this is Clint and Natasha’s Budapest exchange, which tells you that they’re close, they’ve worked together a lot, and they have a friendly bantery relationship. My example above tells you a lot about both how Bucky relates to Steve and how he feels about Clint without needing me to put it down in black and white.

This is useful because most of the time people don’t actually talk about how they feel about the people in their life, and even less often to their faces. People find other ways around expressing how they feel about their friends, especially men in modern Western society. If your dialogue includes a lot of people just straight up coming out with what they’re thinking or feeling, it’s not going to feel as real as if your characters talk around a topic or bury it under layers of dialogue.

And that makes it even more satisfying for a reader when a fic reaches an emotional climax and someone who has been prevaricating comes straight out with an ‘I love you’.

Characterisation

So, then we hit the aspect of dialogue that fanwriters have to deal with but most published authors don’t: how to make your characters sound like the voices your reader already has in their head for them.

This can be one of the hardest things about writing fanfic, matching up your writing style with the way the characters are presented in canon so that they feel ‘right’ to a reader. I would say it’s especially hard in a fandom like Marvel, where there are already a bunch of different canon versions of each character - MCU/comics/other adaptations, not to mention the generally agreed on characterisations that fandom uses for them.

Ultimately, it comes down to having a strong voice for them in your own head and knowing how they sound to you so that you can then communicate that to a reader. If you ever find that slipping, it’s a good idea to have some form of media that you go back to and remind yourself of how they sound, and what speech quirks they have. Reread the comics that hold the best Clint voice for you, rewatch Falcon&Winter Soldier, reread a fic that you think gets the dialogue pretty much spot on, whatever makes you ‘hear’ the voice in your head, so you can translate that onto the page.

There are various different layers to getting a voice sounding right for a character. The first is probably accent. In MCU canon, neither Clint nor Bucky have particularly strong regional accents so although it’s tempting to go full Brooklyn drawl, or make Clint super midwest, it will feel too much for your readers if you’re writing a canon fic, and not fit with the way they ‘hear them’.

Accents in general should usually be kept to a minimum in writing. Even if you’ve introduced an original character with a strong accent, writing every line of dialogue with an emphasis on it can easily become difficult for a reader to understand and, unless you are extremely familiar with an accent, it’s easy to get the little details wrong in a way that stands out to someone who knows the accent better than you do. Sometimes it’s better to just put a descriptor of the accent in the dialogue tag than it is to try and sound it out phonetically. Slipping in the occasional colloquialism will keep your reader reminded of it.

Beyond accents, most people have various quirks to the way they speak - particular ways of phrasing things or sentence constructions they rely on. An example of this is Clint’s ‘Aw, xxx, no’ from the comics. Slipping some of these in does help tie the voice back to the character, but over-using them can be a bit tiring for a reader and reduce the impact of them.

Also pay attention to how much/how little someone actually speaks. Bucky is generally fairly tight-lipped in MCU canon, especially in the movies. You might find yourself skipping dialogue from him at all in favour of just a glowering look or something. Clint is more likely to throw out jokes without really saying anything important, so he might take up some of that space.

And then this is all affected by who your character is talking to and the current mood of the conversation. Bucky is much more likely to say more when talking to Steve in a relaxed atmosphere than he is to a SHIELD agent he doesn’t know in a tense situation. Clint canonically likes to make people think he’s dumber than he is so will play that up in front of people he’s not sure about, but might be more open about his actual level of intelligence with Natasha.

The amount that someone’s dialogue is informed by these kinds of quirks and how distinctive their voice is depends on their personality. How open is someone about their actual thoughts/feelings? How blunt are they when calling other people out on their bullshit? Will they just melt out of the room when there’s an argument, or dive right in to get their point across? Making a character feel like themselves involves thinking about all of this - it may make your plot a lot simpler if Clint would just tell someone that he’s fucked something up, but how real is that to who he is?

Someone like Natasha doesn’t have a particularly distinctive voice, because her schtick is all about fitting in wherever she is and being fairly unremarkable. Tony, on the other hand, probably has the most distinctive voice in the MCU, because he has so many quirks and because his personality is large that it overflows into how he talks. I love writing Tony exactly because of this, because you can make him sound just as if RDJ is speaking in your fic, but I know other people hate writing him for the same reason, because if you get it wrong a reader finds it easy to tell.

Also consider that some characters do a lot of code-switching, and so might sound really quite different depending on who they’re talking to or where they are, especially in terms of accents, slang and the level of swearing going on. This can be a good way to show different layers to a character, or add in details like how relaxed they feel in a given situation.

Swearing is a bit of a tricky one for fandom writing because we all know that the level of swearing in canon is curtailed by outside forces, like Disney’s pearl-clutching, rather than being an actual reflection of how that character would express themselves. As a sweary person myself, I assume that most MCU characters would be swearing a great deal more than they actually do, and so slide a lot more swearing into my fics. I think you have to consider which characters you personally think would have potty mouths, and under what circumstances they’d start throwing F-bombs around.

I don’t think I’m qualified to talk on this as if I’m an expert, but I didn’t want to go without mentioning Clint’s HoH/deafness, and how that might inform on dialogue. There have been discussions already on the WHOB Discord about how to write sign language, and the general consensus was that putting it in speech marks and treating it as you would any other kind of speech is the best way to do it. You can use ‘signed’ instead of ‘said’ and it will read just as easily.

If most of a conversation is in spoken English and then a sign or signed phrase is thrown in - for example, if Clint wants to convey something secretly to Natasha in front of a lot of bad guys - then formatting it as you would any other foreign/non-English language to convey the difference is fine. I tend to use italics for that, to show that I’ve translated from what was actually said, but I know other people have other ways they like to do it. As long as you’re consistent and it will make sense to a reader, it doesn’t matter much how you do it.

The other aspect that might be affected is just how much dialogue Clint might easily hear/understand from lip-reading, either with or without his hearing aids. Canon is fairly inconsistent about it and, of course, if you’re writing an AU in which he lost his hearing in a different way to canon, it’s really up to you. As long as you keep it consistent, whatever you decide is probably fine, but it is worth thinking about whether or not having someone give him important information in a whisper is going to play right with a reader.

So, you’re probably now quietly freaking out that there’s so much to remember and you really just want to write two dudes having a chat about their feelings so they can bone already. To be honest, we spend so much time in our lives either talking or listening to other people talk, that you can avoid over-thinking it too much and just write and see what comes out once you’ve got the voices in your head. If you’re not sure if something is sounding right after it’s down on the page, the best thing to do is to read it out loud to yourself and consider the following:

Would someone actually say this in real life?

Does it move the plot forward or develop a character?

Is it easy to say or do you fumble over the sentence?

Do you pause in certain areas where you haven’t written commas? Or not pause in places where you did?

Can I imagine the actor saying it/it being written in a speech bubble above the comic character’s head?

[emotionallyits2009]

deancas fic rec list!

hello everyone! happy christmas to those who celebrate it, my gift to you is my fic rec list that i said i would make like a month ago. the only thing it is organized by is canonverse vs alternate universe. tried to cover a variety of subjects but there are in particular many fics of the genre “postcanon where cas is human and he and dean live together and slowly finally get their shit together” because i know what i’m about, son. HOPE U ENJOY. and if you wanna talk about any of them or rec me other fics please do. :) 

Canonverse:

where the weeds take root by deathbanjo, 30k, explicit “Are you happy? Y’know. Just—being here,” Dean says, gesturing to the yard with his beer bottle. “Being with—I mean, you used to fight in celestial wars and—and save the world. Now you’re growing vegetables and talking about chickens.” There are many fics set in a post-canon universe where Cas is human and he and Dean live together and slowly fall into a relationship. Imo this one is the best of the best of that genre. This was one of the first fics I read back in July when I was getting Back Into Supernatural where I was like oh fuck I’m like in this. Dean builds Cas planters and bookshelves and a chicken coop and they fight and work through it.

Cuckoo And Nest by komodobits, 10k, explicit For a long time, Castiel thought that every earthly possession other than the immediately necessary was excess to requirement. But Dean – Dean who named his car, who keeps a photograph of his mother in his wallet, some thirty-plus years after her death, who still has the crumpled ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign with a sleeping pelican emblazoned on it from the Microtel outside of Roanoke where he first kissed Castiel, clumsy and unsure, under the unsteady fluorescence of an exhausted bathroom bulb – is sentimental. It puzzles Castiel, where Dean draws the line between what is meaningful and what it is worthless. Really Gets the dynamic of Cas doesn’t think Dean wants him to stay/Dean thinks Cas will leave the first chance he gets. Also a nice example of Cas thinking he’s not wanted if he’s not useful/powerful and being told otherwise. Another all-time fave!

lonely hearts by outphastthemoat, 4.5k, gen He thinks he might give up having his own anything just to be able to step foot inside the room next door and sit on the edge of Dean’s bed instead. This one is for the CAS GIRLS who know what LONELINESS feels like.

Helionneiros by aeli_kindara, 24.2k, mature In which Dean visits his mother, and Claire takes Cas on a hunt. I’m always on the lookout for more fic with Claire and Jack. Jack doesn’t show up until the end here but the relationship between Cas and Claire is really nice.

Crawl by aeriallon, 11k, explicit It’s been almost four years since Castiel left Kansas; he'd eventually settled in an island town where he has a job, a house, and a life without the Winchesters. Every winter, Dean drives down to the coast to see him. Another fic where Cas is human but in this one he took some time for himself and got some distance from the Winchesters! He gets to be competent and weird as a human and we love that for him. I must warn you all that this fic contains one use of the phrase “making love” which would normally put me right off but it’s still worth reading. The first of a three-part series.

home where you hold me by microcomets, 1.6k, gen Cas and Dean, in the moments between their battles, ache for quiet spaces. Technically this is a coda to 10x20 but you don’t need the episode for context. Short and very sweet.

Build a Home by domesticadventures, 20.1k, teen After they save the world, Dean expects Cas to come back to the bunker with them. He doesn’t. This one is so cute it’s like what if once they were done saving the world Sam and Dean actually invited other hunters to move into the bunker with them. Obviously Dean wants that to include Cas but doesn’t know how to use his words.

the taste of gravel in the mouth by deathbanjo, 22.4k, explicit This is what Cas gave up Heaven for: greasy diner food, shitty motel rooms with even shittier cable, long car rides spent in complete silence except for the same six tapes playing over and over again, and a burnt-out husk of a man who can barely hold a conversation anymore. Angst fic! They go on a road trip and Dean is severely fucked up post-Mark of Cain.

Unknown Quantities by xylodemon, 8.6k, explicit No one ever tells Dean anything. Another nice getting-together fic.

Creature of Habit by trinityofone, 5.2k, teen The more you love someone, the more you want to kill them. Or: How Cas developed some bad habits, and Dean coped surprisingly well. This one is ancient by destiel standards (written during season 5) but it manages to nail the married couple vibes they give off in later seasons. Cas is a bitch and Dean likes him so much. <3

The (Mostly Accidental) Courtship of Dean Winchester by Tuesday, 11.2k, mature Angelic marriage rites were never intended to go quite like this. Another old one that is a lot of fun! They get Accidental Angel Married and if you don’t enjoy dumb fanfiction tropes like that I don’t know what to say to you.

Vena Amoris and Other Old-Fashioned Bullshit by pyrebi, 4k, teen In which angelic marriage bonds are apparently stupidly easy to trigger, Cas wages multidimensional war in Heaven, Dean can't catch a break like ever, Sam rather enjoys being a dick, love saves the day, and nobody consummates anything. The OTHER accidental angel marriage fic written in 2010. 

Crazy Diamonds by pantheon_of_discord, 24.8k, explicit A week ago, Dean was pulled out of Hell. Now, he’s apparently woken up in 2018, and the angel that a mere twenty-four hours beforehand had threatened to chuck him back into the pit is sleepily pouring himself coffee and wearing Dean’s second-favourite Zeppelin shirt. It all seems like a perfect happy ending, but with Hell’s scars still so fresh, Dean can’t imagine how he could have possibly gotten there. At the same time, the Dean who went to sleep in the bunker, right next to Cas, wakes up on Bobby’s couch in 2008. He’s instantly bombarded with questions by a Lilith-obsessed brother and a man who’s been dead for years, and must decide between keeping his finally-perfect life intact, and the lives he could save by re-writing history. Regardless of these choices, both Deans are trapped in the wrong decade, and their only way back lies with a Castiel still very much under Heaven’s thumb – one who might find the future Dean describes difficult to believe. Time travel is FUN. There’s an excellent part where (minor spoilers) future!Dean is like, “Guess what, asshole? You like me so much you marry me!!!!!!!!!!!” to 2008!Castiel that made me laugh out loud the first time I read it. Also just a good reminder of how most problems in life are temporary and if you could go back in time to talk to your younger self you’d be like, “Hey man. Chill out. You get through it.”

The Path of Fireflies by museaway, 63.7k, mature After his humanity is restored, Dean wakes up in bed with Castiel, a wedding ring, and no memory of the past twelve years. There’s a lot of amnesia fic and djinn fic out there were Dean wakes up ~suddenly together with Cas~ but I like this one in particular because he’s initially very confused and kind of a dick about it until he acknowledges that being with Cas makes him happy.

take the long way home by dothraki_shieldmaiden, 95k, explicit Three months ago, when Dean decided to retire, he thought his life was going to end up differently. He'd thought that he might get to have it all, Sam, Cas, Jack, and nice little place to live. Instead he gets Sam and Jack off on their Summer of Love Tour, radio silence from Cas, and a never-ending road trip consisting of himself. Still reeling from the loss of his grace, Castiel travels the country in search of hunts. Driven by a need to prove his usefulness, he pushes himself beyond all limits of endurance. Together, with the help of a few friends, a crumbling Victorian house, and a stray cat, Dean and Castiel patch themselves back together and create a home together. Do you wanna read almost one hundred thousand words of Dean and Cas having extremely intense feelings but refusing to voice them aloud? Haha of course you do that’s why you’re here. There’s also a lot about Cas adjusting to being human and being depressed about it which might resonate if you’ve ever felt weird about having a body. To be honest the author could stand to use a few more commas but there were also half a dozen moments that made me put my phone down and drag my hand slowly over my face and whisper “oh my god” to myself which is like, the ultimate measure of a good fanfiction so it gets to be on the list.

like moses and batman and james dean by saltyfeathers, 31.6k, explicit dean used to turn tricks. over a decade later, he met cas. Have you seen the fanon (apparently pioneered by Mr. Jackles “Original Deankin” Ackles himself) that Dean used to prostitute himself to feed himself and Sam when they were younger? Are you interested in exploring that concept in fanfiction? Well, this is the only fic you need. Mind the tags on this one! It’s not what I’d call happy but it’s good.

Some Assembly Required by narrow_staircases, 47k, mature It’s September of 2005, and Dean Winchester, in an attempt to outrun old mistakes and painful memories, finds himself in southern Kentucky on a wild goose chase. He’s completely certain this weird religious movement he’s “investigating” is a hoax, despite the miraculous healings people report, and he’ll be back on the road in a day or two. Things are looking up when he meets Cas, an awkward (and gorgeous) graduate student who’s actually doing honest-to-god research into the local tent revival meetings. When that research takes a weird and personal turn, Dean’s left to face two very serious realities: one, this may be a real case after all, and two, he’s fallen way harder for Cas than he should ever have let himself. Stanford-era AU of Dean trying to avoid his father and getting in over his head on a case.

Alternate universe:

And This, Your Living Kiss by opal_bullets, 57k, mature Only a very few people in the world know that the celebrated and reclusive poet Jack Allen is just Kansas mechanic Dean Winchester, a high school dropout with a few bucks to his name. Not that it matters anymore; life has left him so wrung out he never wants to pick up another pen. Until, that is, a string of coincidences leads Dean to auditing a poetry course with one Dr. Castiel Novak. The  professor is wildly intelligent, devastatingly handsome...and just so happens to be academia's foremost expert on the poetry of Jack Allen. Mundane AUs in this fandom have to be really, really good to catch my attention and this one is! It’s exactly what it says in the summary and the characterization is spot-on. 

Out to Drift by deathbanjo, 20.9k, mature Dean drives a black car with a loud engine. He lies too easily. He keeps a gun in the back of his jeans, and Castiel isn’t sure, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Dean has killed someone before. Two people in fucked-up unstable situations meeting and forming a connection. Honestly guys I really just love deathbanjo.

[cryinginthebackseat]

you’ve got more poison than sugar - part iii

part i  part ii  AO3

Fandom: Call Of Duty

Pairing: Russell Adler x Bell

Words: 6.572

Warnings: here’s where the smut tag comes into play, boy with a copious amount of power play and yeah, it’s messy af

Author’s note: after three months, a couple of brainstorming in the bathtub, delays, revisions and self-doubt, chapter 3 is finally done. i hope you'll enjoy it. also, i don't think i have to warn you what will go down in this chapter.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Fast forward to twenty-four hours since he discovers that Bell is fucking someone, Lazar drops about half a dozen of dusty manilas on his desk. Adler’s eyes sweep over them. He recognizes Bell’s handwriting etched across the memo attached to one of the folders right away.

He picks it up. It’s becoming second nature to him lately; drawing himself to her, an ineradicable magnetic force pulling his end of the pole.

A muscle on his jaw twitches.

For a moment, Adler despises her. He allows himself to really despise her. She’s started something in his head- a war; an intangible, unmanageable riot and if he lets her, she’ll rearrange him until he’s insane.

And he can’t let that happen. He’s the one holding the leash here, not vice versa.

“This is what we have on Dragovich’s activities in Yamantau,” Lazar informs him, pulling him back down to earth.

Adler stands, keeping his face easy, neutral. “Is this everything?”

“So far, yeah. Bell says she’ll let us know if she digs up something more from the archives though.”

Bell- the Bell in question- can be heard sighing, like she turns the corner and finds herself at a cul-de-sac; hunching over her desk, reading, her fingers keep buttoning and unbuttoning the top of her shirt, madly distracting (him).

She remains in her seat, for pretty much the remainder of the day. Eyes glued to the pages before her, factory-like dedication. She hardly looks up when Sims borrows her pen or when Park stands over her, sipping her coffee, inquiring about her progress behind a plume of smoke.

The only- truly time Bell ever lifts her head from her work is when Mason approaches her desk. She gazes up at him, notes forgotten, a kittenish smile etched across her face, come-hither eyes that could have time hung in motion, or held at ransom, perhaps. Mason’s own smile is full-blown, too wide, too genial, as he stalks closer and closer to her table, her whirlpool.

Adler does a double-take, like his eyeballs only functioning for the first time. He might as well be hallucinating it because no... this can’t be right, can it?

But then Mason is touching her hand, a blink-and-you-miss-it movement that was not lost on Adler and oh, she’s looking at him hopefully now.

The knots in Adler's stomach are vertiginous. Realization rings in his head like a gunshot, nearly leaving him in a daze. There’s no denying it. Not when the exchange unfurls before his eyes like a broken, warped film reel and there’s nothing to stop him from seeing it.

The thought of her and him haunts the rest of his waking hours, until there’s absolutely no telling how far he’s fallen into his own pit. 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ( Alex Mason fucked her that night.

Mason was in her bed; beside her, above her, under her. Inside her. He imagines her fingers digging into the mattress as Mason rolled her onto her stomach, mouth trailing down the ladder of her spine. Their breaths intermingled in the seraphic glow of her hotel room.

Alex Mason fucked her. It shouldn't leave an acrid taste in his mouth, but it does.)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ She haphazardly reaches for the mug and takes a hearty gulp of its content. It’s not hers.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry,” Bell says, mortified and places the mug down noisily on the desk. “I’m sorry, I thought it was mine.”

The rim of his mug is now stained with her lipstick. Adler bites down on a careful retort.

He thinks he knows now. Why he lets it happen, why he thinks of her in metaphors, why she gives him that vertigo. The answer is at the tip of his tongue- he can almost taste it, like spoiled milk or rancid gardenia. But it’s much easier to ignore it until the words grow diminuendo and disappear, that he thinks he imagined it all along.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

You can’t obsess without turning around and getting lost in the middle.

Or losing a part of yourself in the process.

The idea of obsession, to obsess, perhaps is a far riskier thing for a person to have than playing the knife game, blindfolded with absolutely no telling where to start.

Yet we all do it, despite knowing the very dark flipside it possesses.

Perhaps it’s the very nature of humans, tucked deep within the pigeonhole of our minds, suffused by the very promise of bogus achievements that usually leads most of us insane, thinking that obsession is essential to living. But without it, artists are corporate slaves, slack-jawed know-it-alls moving stiffly in the middle of the hullabaloo that is our world; Paris would be just as unrecognizable today without Napoleon’s artistic legacy.

Obsession is good.

Obsession is dangerous.

The very dichotomy should have us all warded off of it.

Yet, again, we all do it. Again, and again, and again until it taints our veins. And it’s always far too late until you realize, that yes, now all you see is her, the air has been poisoned by her perfume, that her name is now forevermore engraved in your skin, like an overgild tattoo.

That you end up in downtown Berlin, out of sight, out of mind.

He finds them there, in a shoebox-sized cafe. Ill-lit, low-ceiling, coffee-stained floor that shows the wear of three decades worth of boots, pantoffels and high heels and Adler is sitting in his car, nursing a beer with but one all-consuming, perplexing thought:

Bell and Mason.

Someone told him they arrived together, about an hour ago. The cafe has become their usual haunts, his source said, ever since they’ve returned from Ukraine and Adler just can’t wrap his head around this- them. In his head, they’re wholly different entities. Two proper nouns separated by a conjunction, or a comma if mentioned in a list.

They’re the kind of opposites that he thought don’t attract, yet here they are.

Perhaps it's inevitable, both are products of brainwashing. Maybe they sensed one another, speaking in code, like detecting an RF signal from a nuclear bunker.

Then the doors to the cafe swing open. They step outside, cheeks flushed, his arm wrapped around her waist, her lips glueing on the slope of his neck. Shaded eyes watch them from the opposite street, his disgust obvious.

Now, Adler wonders how this all began. Someone must have made the first move.

He wonders if it was her. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"You wanted to see me?"

Adler looks up from his desk and nods. "Lock the door behind you."

And Alex Mason, the root of all this trouble, obeys. Looking somewhat uncertain under the scrutiny of the harsh lights, and shuts the blinds. Unlike Woods, he takes a seat at the chair Adler sets up before the desk.

"What is it?" Mason asks, after a long, almost unending silence. His curiosity seeps through the room.

There is very little control when the first domino falls. Oftentimes, once it starts, it’s like crossing the Rubico n and the next thing you know, you are lying flat on the ground in some theater, 23 fresh stab wounds decorating your body and the beat of your pulse seems dim and distant, everything feels cold except your blood; warm, bright and thick like gasoline, crawling into every space until it goes into your throat and strangles you, kills you. Fini, kaput.

But then again, he's not Caesar and this isn't Rome.

Adler pushes the first tile.

"How long has this been going on?" he asks without fanfare, tight and composed as ever. Never mind the way his eyes ignite like cold blue fire behind his glasses.

"How long has what been going on?"

“You and Bell." And Mason blinks at him in surprise. Bingo. "I saw the two of you leaving for her hotel from a cafe in Downtown Berlin last night. So don't bother skirting your way around this.” Adler leans forward across his desk. He’s a man on a mission- there’s no stopping him now.

“Now, let me rephrase the question, how long have you been fucking her?"

"Hold on, hold on, you were stalking us?" Mason asks, waspish.

Adler winces inwardly. "I was keeping an eye out for my asset.”

“Asset?” Mason hisses, like Adler just blasphemed. “Jesus Christ, Russ, is that all she ever is to you? An asset? She’s your protégé, for god’s sake- a person! What is wrong with you?"

"Plenty. Or apparently, so I've been told.”

"I don't find you amusing.”

“I'm hardly ever,” Adler parries. Mason remains silent, yet the tilt of his lips translate exactly what words can't. "And you haven't answered my question."

“Bullshit. I don’t owe you anything."

"Listen, Al-"

"No, you listen to me. You may be calling the shots around here, but this has absolutely nothing to do with you. Whatever- or whoever - we're doing in our spare time is none of your business, do you understand? So you can just drop it," Mason seethes, bitter, and, much to Adler’s surprise, rises to leave. “We’re done here.”

"That's where you're wrong."

Mason has only managed to put a few paces between them before he turns around, once again stepping inside this metaphorical boxing ring.

"What?"

"This has everything to do with me," Adler says coolly. "You said it yourself, I'm the one who calls the shots here. Meaning, anything that could potentially fuck up my operation is my concern and I have the right to intervene should it needed. This, being a case in point."

Mason looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “What the hell does fucking her have to do with this whole operation?”

“Everything.” He says it like quiet resignation. It’s time to acknowledge the truth, he thinks, to that unusual idea that has been swirling in the deep recesses of his mind, that everyone’s weakness is varied.

Achilles had his heel, and Adler has her.

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to, Al. You don't even know her."

Mason gives him a level stare. "And you do?"

Adler is so hard-pressed to say 'I made her' but even he wouldn't stoop that low.

"That is beside the point,” Adler tells him instead as he turns to his vice- one of them, at least- and lights it.

“There is literally no point to this conversation.”

“The point is, stay the hell away from Bell. I'm saying this for your own good."

"My own good or yours?"

Adler does not flinch, but his hand does ball into a fist under the table, how the fingers curl and then flex.

"Don't be ridiculous. I gain nothing from this except assurance." It's a lie, it's the truth. There's no in between. He doesn’t know which is which anymore. "You, on the other hand, I'm sure the old ball and chain wouldn't be near as thrilled about hearing this if word ever gets out."

Mason is quiet for a beat.

"Is that a threat?"

"Only once I pulled the pin," Adler replies, a dangerous undercurrent in his voice.

But the thing with Mason, he'll come to realize later, is how much, like with Bell, weaving through his mind is like trying to grasp for purchase in the dark as he, once again, does the unpredicted and smile- a venomous grin warps his face, like he’s mocking him, challenging him to move his piece on the board and make this mistake.

Adler stares back, surprised despite himself.

He shocks him further by saying, "Go ahead, then. Pull the pin, throw the grenade, tell her. See if she cares."

Adler’s eyes narrow at his askance. He then drags his attention to Mason’s left hand, and something grave and familiar rises in his chest.

The absence of the metal band around his ring finger tells him why.

“You know where to reach her. If anything, I’m sure she’d trust your words better than anyone else’s. So please, do it.” And Mason’s so goddamn sanctimonious about it. He’s clearly expecting this particular reaction out of Adler. It only leaves Adler angrier.

Another long pause stretches, heavy and unkind.

"Fine. Maybe she won't mind, but I'm sure the Agency wouldn’t be as tolerant.” Adler takes one last drag of his cigarette. He has that ‘Having nothing, nothing can he lose’ look on his face that makes Mason frowns. “Not when you’ve been fraternizing with the enemy.”

"What?”

"Bell. She’s not who you think she is, Al. Tell me, who do you think is the sorry bastard we saved in Trabzon?”

Mason blinks. His face is blank with shock, then he shakes his head. And he keeps shaking it, almost manic. If he laughs, which one would come first, he wonders, the gun or his fist pummeling the side of his face?

“You’re lying.”

“And why would I lie to you about this?”

"No, no, no, Woods- he told me the guy’s dead,” Mason says, his words are shaky.

“He’s not. And he wasn’t a he."

A crease forms between Mason's eyebrows, the starting of another frown.

“Hold on, if she’s helping us get Perseus then why is she the enemy?”

"Because she doesn't know that."

"Doesn't know what?"

"That she's the enemy."

Mason holds his gaze for a moment, his expression tense, like a slingshot.

And that cold elastic band finally snaps.

“What did you do to her?” He’s openly glaring at him now, mouth tight, an icy fury that is no longer dormant and for the first time since Adler has known him, he finds the man dangerous.

Adler takes a steadying breath. “We did what had to be done.”

"You sick son of a bitch. You brainwa- You-” Mason clamps his mouth shut, trembling hands finding his head. “Shit. How could you?"

Adler ignores his colorful outburst.

“She resisted every form of interrogations we threw at her, Al. We had no choice but to implement MK-Ultra as a last resort. We needed what’s in her head.” Mason is silent in reply. Adler continues, “Look, it’s nasty business, I know, but some of us have to cross a line just to make sure that line's still there in the morning. And as much as I hate agreeing with Hudson, he’s right. We need to preserve our way of life.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to play God,” his voice is resentful and crisp. “Do you have any idea what you are doing? You could jeopardize everything, and for what? You’ve seen what this- this experiment did to me, this won’t end the way you think!”

“Lightning never strikes the same place twice.”

"You’re really willing to gamble on that?”

Adler scowls. “I don’t gamble, Mason. I calculate. And if by some chance I was given a second chance, I’d do it all over again. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Mason doesn’t say anything at first, his loaded gun stare never falters. Then, “The flag may be different, but the methods are the same.”

"What was that?”

“Someone warned me, a long time ago, about how people like you will use people like me or Bell as pawns in your own game. You’d do whatever it takes to get what you want- and my, how you get results, don’t you? But you’re actually no different than the rest of the assholes you're fighting against,” Mason tells him, like he’s spitting out acid in Adler’s face.

“Bell may be the enemy- heck, she could be the architect behind all the chaos Perseus has done, but what you’re doing to her is vile and unethical. There are many ways to make her spill the beans, yet you chose the most immoral method there is out there. I sincerely hope you rot in hell for this."

Before Adler could formulate a response to his tirade, Mason stands to his feet.

“You want me to stay away from her? Fine. Consider this as my formal resignation. After Yamatau, I’m done. I’m out of the team. And if you know what’s good for you, you stay the fuck away from me because I don't ever want to see your face again, do you hear me?” he snarls. “If you think Woods is dangerous, Adler, just remember I nearly could have killed my own president."

Then Mason turns on his heel and walks out of the room, once and for all. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The fist is very much expected, and so does the pain that follows.

"You're out of your fucking depth, shithead," Woods spits, venom lacing his words.

Adler doesn't even bother to retaliate.

He doesn’t see the point. He didn’t think it would get this far. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The garage grows quiet and stodgy with now Mason and Woods are out of the picture. Everyone settles back into their own normal rhythm, the same routine before both men set their feet here almost a week ago.

Hudson doesn’t take the news of their departure kindly, naturally. He stands in Adler’s office, pacing, fuming. Adler ignores him, trying to nurse the skull-splitting migraine he's having at his desk instead. The nasty black eye hidden underneath his glasses. A secret locked, the key thrown away.

His headache, thankfully, has subsided when Sims takes a seat on the other side of the desk, hours later after Hudson left.

"I'm not trying to cause an alarm here, but you'd better watch your back."

Adler's brows furrow but doesn’t look up from the papers before him. "And why's that?"

"'Cause I think you just pissed off the wrong beast," Sims tells him. Adler pauses, then lifts his head to look at his cohort. There's genuine worry flashing over his face.

“Are you talking about Bell?”

“Who else?”

If she's a beast, then what am I? What he wants to ask, but there's a knock at the door and he swallows the words down his throat.

"Come in," Adler says, pretending to be reading again.

The door opens and Bell, fucking Bell, enters his office. It's like watching a tiger pass by your hiding spot in near dark. Neither he nor Sims breathes a word.

Bell's gaze immediately swings to him, like a cosmic pull. She's watching him as she wanders over to the desk and the weight of her stare burns him like Greek fire.

He pushes the documents close, all the while returning her stare. He is never the one who backs out of a challenge, and at this point, he knows that she probably knows that. Maybe that’s why she initiated it in the first place.

"Bell, what is it?" Adler asks firmly, in possession of his full power in this place.

Bell produces three diskettes from her pocket. Something odd definitely shining in her eyes.

"These have been lying on Lazar's desk for hours, but he's busy, so I thought I'd deliver them to you myself," Bell says. And he's trying to work out on her angle but she is unreadable. As always.

Adler nods, frustrated and indignant. "You can leave them here. Thank you."

It is only once the woman leaves that the two agents share a dark, significant look. That was too close.

And it goes without saying, something needs to be done about this. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

March 7th. A's insistence on raising the dosage is illogical. Recent behavioural analysis indicates depression. Will monitor for the next few days. Considering lowering the dosage instead. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The elevator reeks of smoke, cheap Soviet air freshener and something far more poisonous than the devil’s spider, silky hands.

It embodies the woman standing next to him right now- this special animal, emotionless, a constant mystery wrapped with a warning sign.

Adler is tempted to shut his eyes.

Or get out of here. He doesn’t dwell well in this atmosphere, this limited space shared with her alone. He probably should have listened to Hudson about taking Bell for this mission, but she’s the only one he trusts who won’t fuck this up. Not to mention her spotless Russian has proven to help them blend in with the crowd seamlessly.

He needs her, whether he would admit it aloud or not.

But she puts his head in such a spin.

She’s been near-mute since they departed from Germany. She barely acknowledges his questions and orders, barely looks at him. She’s been treating him as if he’s another shadow on the wall.

He rubs the side of his jaw. Something does need to be done about this.

“Are you going to stay quiet forever?” Adler asks. He’s bad at this, but he can’t stand her silence for much longer. Not to mention, they’re at the Lubysnka- the fucking lion's den. If she wants to wallow over Mason’s absence or sinks into whatever melancholic feeling she’s in, she can do it later.

Bell hums, her mouth curls up like serpentine. Adler sketches a confused frown.  And she says, “I don’t know. Should I?”

And then, sudden and swift, Bell undoes the cuffs of her uniform. Beady eyes never leave his.

The sight catches him off guard. Somewhere in his mind, he curses something like ‘you’re a beast’ and ‘what the hell are you?’ at her, all in negative connotations. The effects she inflicts on him is maddening.

“What are you doing?” Adler doesn’t bother to hide his surprise.

Bell shrugs and gestures to the duffle bag at their feet. “Gearing up.”

Oh. Embarrassment wells up in him. Fucking hell, this woman will be the death of him.

Her fingers quickly move on to the buttons, still indifferent, nearly tearing them from the seams. The first glimpse of her skin and Adler can’t help but give in, openly stares at her in a way he has never imagined before. Her clavicles like daggers glinting in the lamplight.

Curiosity is a dangerous and heavy load.

He should have closed his eyes.

“Enjoying the show?” Her voice pulls him back from his musings. Her eyes still zero in on him, cutting him to pieces.

Her cleavage comes into view.

The lines on Adler’s face grow taut.

“What do you want, Bell?” He asks, intending for a bark but it ends somewhere like a plea.

“I want many things. As of right now, I want Alex’s cock inside me.” And Adler nearly chokes on his own breath. Bell, eagle-eyed as ever, caught the movement. “But it seems someone insists on being in control of everything, isn’t he?” she snaps.

Adler’s back goes rigid. Trepidation bubbles up in his chest.

Of course, she knows.

“It's not about control.” Adler turns around. He doesn’t quite know what he’s avoiding at this point, her flesh or the truth. “It’s about what’s right.”

He hears her uniform touches her floor as she laughs, mirthless, like broken chandeliers. “I didn’t know whose cock I’m riding is any concern of yours.”

“It is when he’s a member of the team,” he seethes. “What you’re doing with Alex will only lead to complications. And I can’t have tha-”

“Because this is all about you, isn’t it? It’s about upholding your precious reputation in the Agency, controlling the narrative the way you want it no matter how many characters you kill off in the process. It’s always about what you want.” Bell interrupts, not missing a beat. “You selfish motherfucker.”

"This has nothing to do with my reputation in the CIA."

She scoffs. "Spare me the crap, Adler."

Adler turns to fully face her again and holds his arms open, the way someone is facing the firing squad. “Fine. Fine, yes, I’m a selfish motherfucker. I did it because I thought it could ruin the operation. Is that what you wanted to hear? Now, what are you going to do about it?”

She says nothing at first. He silently catalogues her movements as she steps towards him now, half-naked and furious. He feels pinned.

Then, “What do you want me to do about it?”

His mouth dries at the implication. She is temptation, benediction, the coarse ice block before the carver.

How terrible it is to lose control, even just once.

A knowing, vicious smirk flashes over her face. Adler feels like he’s just shown his hand.

“You are one selfish bastard and a coward to boot, aren’t you?” Bell sneers before he has a chance to respond. “At least, Alex was brave enough to make the first move, but you…” her gaze raking up and down his figure coldly, a jeweller presented with second-grade imitations. Wind her up and this honey bee stings.

“You’ll always be the man who hides behind his shades,” she says, dry as dust, and steps back and snatches her clothes from the bag.

This is, without a single doubt, the longest elevator ride he’s ever experienced in his life. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Adler arrived back in Berlin breathing a little harder. Worry wrapped around his neck like a noose, placed by Bell herself; the judge, jury and executioner.

The knot tightens every time his mind refers to her.

The agency trained him, specifically, to keep calm under pressure. He didn’t coin the title “America’s Monster” from his colleagues for nothing. They don’t fear him because he’s hot-headed or thinks in large-scale violence— guns blazing, napalm-induced flames over the hill in the morning, bloodied knuckles and fractured jaw, blood-soaked soles tarnishing the white marble floor. Someone can point a fucking shotgun to his face and he’ll barely flinch. Only monsters remain impassive to direct threats of violence.

But there’s something about Bell that elicits this visceral, primal reaction out of him. Something strange and new; lightning about to be uncapped from its chains.

It chokes him, frightens him to the core.

How gauche is it, don’t you think, that his own mind is conspiring against him?

Now, in the garage, where it dawns on Adler that she’s probably the only person who can make him walk around the city, feeling like a fool, he decides he’s had enough. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“I’ll drive you back.”

Adler apprehends Bell outside the garage. He kind of assumed she’d have a pistol aimed at his head right now, but she spins around, hands shoved deep inside her pockets and clayey mouth curls in distaste.

“Get in the car, Bell,” Adler says tightly, almost adding please.

But he would not beg.

The brunette remains rooted in her place. For a moment, a calculating look crossed her face. Always, always that sharp mind of hers turning and he wonders where it would take her this time.

“Try asking nicely,” she demands.

Adler’s eyes flash. She really is testing him. But fine, he'll play her game.

“Bell, would you kindly get in the car?” He is all but snarls, teeth gritting. Bell hardly wavers- he wishes she would waver for a change.

She does what he asked of her, finally, the shadow of a smirk on her face mocking him. Adler follows suit, teeth still clenched together, and starts the car and drives away.

It's sort of like a deja-vu, he supposes; him and her in this very same car, except that stupid krautrock music is absent this time. Neither says anything for the first twenty minutes. Everything feels heavily still.

Until he realizes she’s probably waiting for his move.

This might gloriously blow up in his face, yes, he knows this. Especially remembering the last time he was alone in a tight space with her, it had cost him his pride.

And his mind.

But he’s been here before, in the eye of the storm. He was at his calmest here. He has his cards prepared now.

Adler inhales deeply.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he utters resolutely. He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t want to. “I was out of line, I admit it. Your affair with Mason should be no concern of mine but I really am just trying to look out for you.”

It’s weak, he knows. The words feel more like an anchor than an actual apology in his tongue anyway, but Adler didn’t expect that Bell would give him nothing. Not even an acknowledging hum, a scathing retort, a scoff. Nothing.

A twinge of irritation brews in his stomach. Why does she insist on playing games?

The car comes to a stop. They’ve arrived. Adler wrests his hands from the steering wheel to say something harsh to her, but Bell is already stepping out of the car.

She stands on the sidewalk; an enigma in royal red, and her lethal, all-seeing eyes gravitate to him in the night.

There is a long paralyzing beat where they just stare at each other- which seems to be a running theme between them lately. Adler is fuming, as he is confused.

It feels like hours, centuries, eons, but, like all magic, the spell is broken. Courtesy of a stranger hailing a cab behind his car.

Bell turns and walks inside the building. She doesn’t bother sparing him the final glance or extend her appreciation for the ride back and Adler thinks to himself, this universe, god fucking damnit, nothing makes sense here.

But it is also in moments like this that the world spins, when he notices a singular, significant detail that makes his stomach roll, nearly throwing him off balance:

Bell left the passenger door open.

And he’s insane- he has to be, right? He’s looking too much into this. It doesn’t mean anything. His mind conjures an image, like a graphic guideline or something, step one: get out of the car, two: make your way around and close the passenger door, and third: zoom out of the neighborhood while your sanity is still intact, all in that order. Easy to comprehend, to follow.

Adler only does the first two steps. He’s ass-backwards doesn’t even bother to digest the third step.

He enters the hotel instead and takes in the surroundings. The lobby is pointedly bare, but warm and smoky. The concierge is reading behind the counter- a young, wiry boy with shocking bleached hair- with headphones on. It’s late, he probably doesn’t expect anyone to check in at this hour.

A movement by the staircase catches his interest. He sees Bell climbing up the steps slowly, leisurely. Adler makes his way there.

Halfway reaching her floor, Adler has the inkling that she knows that he’s following her. Also, because the next she does is glancing back at him over her shoulder. He waits for her to push him down the stairs or wrap those delicate hands around his neck. She does neither. She doesn’t want him gone.

Yet, his mind betrays him. Only because she doesn’t know what other atrocities he’s committed to her.

She stops by her door, opens it and goes in first. Adler, without waiting for a formal fucking invitation, slips in behind her.

Her room is much smaller than his. The TV is still on- a German dubbed of All the President’s Men is playing- a stack of books and meds lying haphazardly on the desk table.

The door clicks shut behind him. Bell wanders over to the table and turns off the TV. Her back to him.

She doesn’t bother turning the light switch on. The green neon of the hotel sign outside illuminates the room, bathes her in it, making her look even stranger and faraway.

He doesn’t take off his sunglasses.

“What do you want, Bell?” Adler is all but snarling. His anger comes in a bottle with a twist-off cap. “I’m fucking sick of playing your games. I apologized, I admitted I was wrong- I fucked up, but what more could you want?”

Jesus, and now he’s losing his temper over a brainwashed Russian who rarely talks. How did it come to this?

She tugs off her gloves. Once again, barely acknowledging him. Apparently, if ignoring him is an art form, she is the fucking Monet.

Until:

“Take them off.”

Adler blinks hard behind his glasses. Like he’s just stepped into a whole different earth.

His mouth moves.

“What?”

“Your sunglasses. Take them off.”

He stares at her back. Trying really, really hard to make sure he’s not hallucinating this, but then Bell turns around, a finger tapping against her arm, waiting.

Realization hits him like an uppercut in the face and nearly leaves him in a daze. He’s walked into a trap. That much is clear as day. She wants him to suffer as she does. An eye for an eye.

Adler holds no modicum of control in her domain, not unless she gives the reins. Once again, she plays the judge, jury and executioner at her own court.

But, like before, he’ll play her game.

There, the glasses are off. His eyes, bare, blue like fractured ice, meeting hers. In the dark, he feels her eyes shift to assess his bruise.  

His heart booms against his ribs.

"Kneel,” she says glibly.

He obeys, again. His legs and hands don’t shake, but his mind is much less governable than his limbs. No, the CIA didn’t prepare a manual for situations like this and he doesn’t trust his instincts to help him dance his way around this.

Nor does he want to.

The thought fucks him up to a degree.

Adler should have known that it wouldn’t take an entire nation or continent to bring him to his knees, no, no. That would have been too easy, anyway. Although history has dictated and taught him that women are never to be underestimated, Adler hasn’t expected that one woman would be able to do the deed and succeed.

But then again, when that woman is Bell, he supposes anything is possible.

When Bell approaches him, he’s unable to take his gaze from her. Her eyes spangle with determination, an avenging soul in the neon lights. Her fingers work on the sash of her coat. The line of her mouth is flat and inscrutable. The air crackles with electricity and a promise of the unsayable, the unattainable.

She stands over him now, gloveless and coatless. She’s powerful like this and he can only crane his head up at her, ceding his fate in her hands, against his better judgement. She catches that.

Suddenly, something unpleasant breaks on her face, like when one’s smelling something foul or pungent.

Bell reaches down and grips his jaw painfully in one hand, her nails digging into his skin, and tilts his head sideways. Strange that his stomach leaps at that.

“Say you’re sorry,” she spits furiously. “And say it like you fucking mean it.”

He feels, suddenly, triumphant and chuckles darkly. Eight fucking long weeks and the beast finally shows her claws.

“Try asking nicely,” Adler parrots her words from before, not a beat missed. Two can play that game, he thinks. "Or are you above niceness, Bell?”

Her grip tightens.

"You’re one to talk,” Bell says. Then, rubs the pad of her thumb over his scarred cheek and it feels like forgiveness, or the beginning of it, at least.

His confusion spikes.

Her nose skims down his jawline.

A better, sensible man would apologize. He'd squander it until his tongue burns acid, he'd beg for her forgiveness like a man asking for repentance before his god.

“Why did you do it, Russell?” Bell whispers against his skin now, baleful and raspy. Her chest rising and falling too rapidly.

But he’s a sick bastard, a selfish motherfucker, a heartless monster. All he does is hurt the people around him. He doesn’t get to take from her, not after what he's done.

Still, Adler catches her wrist. Relishing the way her wrist bone grinds under his hold. He pulls his face back to look at her.

“You know why.”  

Her eyes flick dangerously to his lips.

Desperation really can make the most vulgar things tolerable.

“Then prove it.”

So he does. As his hand reaches up to her neck, past the delicious column of her throat and with a precise swift, Adler grabs a fistful of her hair, the feminine gasp escaping her mouth is like a jolt to his groin, and kisses her.

Bell responds in kind. That little beast. She grasps his collar and drags him up to his feet, impatient with want. She laps at him, bites and sucks. His free hand snakes around her waist, pulling her impossibly closer.

She pulls away, catching her breath, and his teeth skim down her jaw, her neck. He bites her there in retaliation, on the delicious junction of her neck and shoulder, into the fabric of her shirt, making his intentions clear. Bell chokes in surprise and scrapes her nails over his scalp.

It hurts. But with pain, along comes pleasure and it’s good. It’s so good, Adler melts with a shaky breath.

His gloves come off first. Next, she pulls him free off his jacket, his sweater and snakes a hand between his legs, stroking him. He bites off a strangled ‘fuck’ into her throat. He’s worked up real fast already. Adler manages to make a short work of her shirt, unclasping her bra before he’s all but pushes her onto the bed.

Adler settles above her, capturing her lips in another feverish, hot-blooded kiss. He tugs her zipper down and slips his hand inside her pants. Her cunt’s everything he’s come to expect: wet, warm and oh-so wrong. She sucks in a breath. Her hips move against his hand. His blood sings. She throws her head back against the pillow, while his finds her earlobe.

“Has this proven my point, Bell?” he asks. His answer starts on a moan and ends with a breathless ‘yes’.

He doesn’t let her come that easily. No, he wants to drag this out for as long as he can until it drives her mad. So, Adler peels the rest of her clothes away, pulls her shoulder and turns her onto her stomach. He pins her down, hard. She gasps loudly against the white pillowcase, her hand fists into the sheets.

Adler slots himself behind her. His hand tracing along her spine, followed by his mouth, just how he fantasized once upon a time. His other hand quickly undoes the snap of his pants. Everything has been poisoned by her and her only; she is in his tongue, his veins, his mind, his lungs. She takes the centrefold of his mind and it's ridiculous.

He presses himself against her ass. His mouth falls open. Her body trembles. She’s all sin and racing hearts and sweaty flesh. She’s perfect. His now free hand slides up to the nape of Bell’s neck, reaching her throat, pressing down. She makes this high-pitched, demanding noise as she moves her hips back against him, leaving him wanting, helpless at the thought of having her right here, right now, in the warm neon glow of her hotel room.

“Please,” Bell begs. He groans in response and he gives it to her. Fuck, he’d give her anything if she begs just exactly like that.

When Adler is finally inside her, he thinks his world drops dead. He sets a merciless pace. He is not a gentle man and there is nothing gentle in the supple arch of her back, a rose bent backwards in the wind, as he pants along her neck before he pulls out, twists her onto her back again and pushes deeper into her until she comes apart underneath him (he’s made sure she begs for it- please, Russell. Oh god, Russell)

(He didn’t have to. Russell Adler is never the kind of man to fall for his dark side, but Christ knows he is only one man)