#also. do you ever think about how bright is 19. what the fuck

[whypolar]

[laugh track]

[pandorxxx]

What now?

Lo’ak (19) x omatikayan fem reader (18)

Warnings: smut, oral, p in v, praise kink, creampie.

Lo’ak was obsessed with you. You were all he ever talked about. He could go on and on about how beautiful you were, and what a good hunter you were. He loved your body. He loved how your waist was small, but your hips were full. He loved the way you spoke, so soft and subtle like an angle.

He also loved how kind you were, almost too kind. He liked that you were a pushover, made it easier for him to get what he wanted out of you. He loved how gullible, and dumb you were too. It made his plan to get you alone, and mate with you that much easier.

“Just look at her, bro.” Lo’ak stood with his back leaning against a nearby tree, gawking over the way you squatted down next to your mother, eating your food.

Neteyam looked in your direction, and then back at Lo’ak with a wide grin.

“Y/n’s hot, I’ll give you that, but do you know how many men in this clan want her? Pick a number ,and get in line.” Neteyam laughs as he takes a bite of his food. Lo’ak rolls his eyes at his brother, before glaring back at you.

“I’m not worried about those other men, she’s already mine. I gotta plan, big bro.” Lo’ak explains as he crosses his arms, smiling at you in the distance.

Lo’aks sudden burst of confidence had Neteyams eyes wide at the comment he just made.

“What kinda plan?” Neteyam asks his brother concerned, side eyeing him. Lo’ak turns to face Neteyam with a sigh before looking around.

“I’m going to trick her into mating with me.” He confesses, barely above a whisper. Neteyam choked on his food at his little brothers response. Lo’ak rolls his eyes again, glaring at his brother.

“What, you don’t think I can do it?” Lo’ak asks as he pushes Neteyams arm back.

“No I don’t think you can do it, aaaanddd I think you’re fucking crazy. Why would you manipulate her like that? You know she’s not the brightest.” Neteyam explains as he takes another bite of his food.

“Exactly, bro! she won’t even know what hit her. She’ll be mine, soon.” Lo’ak says looking back at you, as you enjoy dinner with your family.

Neteyam found his brothers plan stupid, but funny. Knowing that it wouldn’t work, he smiles and challenges Lo’ak.

“Why soon?…why not now?” Neteyam grins down at his plate as he waited for his brothers response. Lo’aks head snaps back towards Neteyam.

“You really don’t think I can get her , do you?” Lo’ak asked as he crossed his arms.

“No, no I don’t.” Neteyam confesses as he laughs in his little brothers face. Lo’ak grows angry, but accepts the challenge. He watched you get up for another plate, and took his opportunity.

“Watch my next move, dumbass!” He says to Neteyam before swiftly walking over to you.

You were getting another plate of food when you noticed the youngest son of Toruk Makto walking over to you. You had to admit that you had a tiny crush on him, but you two weren’t that close. So it caught you off guard when he stopped in-front of you. You look up to him with a big smile.

“hi, lo’ak!!” you shout as you wave at him. He smiles back and waves before taking your hand in his. The act made your heart skip a beat.

“Wassup, y/n! Listen, I wanted to talk to you about something….in private.” He whispers the last part in your ear, making your breathing hitch. You look up at him confused, tilting your head.

“Well what is it?” You ask with a big grin plastered across your face. He looks around confused, and then back at you with a sarcastic smile.

“Sweetheart, I said in private.” He lets out a nervous chuckle. You look at him confused again.

Is she really this fucking dumb? He thought

“Baby, that means ALONE.” He nods at you sarcastically.

“OOOHHHH, hahaha. Ok, Lo’ak!” You look at him with a bright smile, as you sway back and forth, tail swinging, from excitement. He shook his head as he wrapped his arm around your neck, walking away with you.

You two make it to the middle of the dark forest. he stops and turns to you, backing up to admire you under the moonlight. He bit his lip, crossing his arms.

You stand in-front of him, smiling up at him, not knowing what was next to come.

“God, you sure are pretty…” he says seductively as he tilts his head, undressing you with his eyes. You gasp at his comment, and smile again, holding your chest.

“Awee Thank you, Lo’ak! Everyone tells me that I’m lucky I’m pretty.” You say with your hands behind your back, as you sway back and forth, staring up at him with innocent eyes.

“Mhmm” he says not even listening to anything you’re saying. He was just looking you up and down with his bottom lip between his teeth.

“You’re pretty too! I kinda have a crush on you, ya know.” You confess while grinning at the ground just thinking about him, as if he wasn’t right in-front of you.

“That’s good to know, baby….Come closer, i wanna see something.” he signals for you to come closer, licking his lips. You chuckle before walking closer to him.

“Soooo, what did you want to talk to me about?” You ask, looking up at him with those beautiful eyes, almost making him lose it. He grabs your hands in his, and smiles at you.

“Y/n, are you a virgin?” He asks before playing in your long braids. you look at him confused, not knowing what that meant.

“A virgin??? What is that?” You ask pouting up at him, before sending him a soft grin. He bit his lip at the way you looked at him, it was sending him over the edge. He placed his hand on your chin, pulling you in closer.

“Have you mated with anyone?” He asks as he looks into your eyes, smiling at you.

“Ohhhh, no, not yet! My mother says that I should wait until I learn more about it.” You smile up at him, titling your head. He chuckled at your response before reaching around to caress your back.

“I could teach you ,if you want to learn more about it.” He nods for confirmation, as his hand slowly slid down your back, nearly touching the top of your ass. You eyes lit up at his response. You palmed his huge arm that was wrapped around you.

“No way! Really?” You smile in excitement, as your tail wagged faster than last time.

“Yeah, of-course! I have time right now if you wanted to start!” He sarcastically matched your tone, as he nodded at you with wide eyes. You laugh at his response, and hit his chest playfully.

“So where should we start ?” You look around the forest and then back up at him. He backs up a little bit, tilting his head at you. He puts his hand over his chin, pretending to think.

“Let’s start with a blowjob” he nods, walking closer to you again. You look at him with that stupid confused look again. He stops you before you even ask.

“Just get on your knees, in-front of me.” He nods with a sarcastic grin. You do what he says with a smile, breaking your neck to look back up at him from the new position.

“Now what?” You sit down on your knees, as you smile up at him. He smiles down at you, gripping the back of your head.

“Ok! So first you’re going to untie my loincloth.”he nods at you, rubbing the back at your head. You oblige with a wide grin. You untie it, and to your surprise, his huge cock springs out and hits his chest. Your jaw dropped as you admired it, in all its glory.

“Wooaaahh” you say in a trance-like state, as you bite your lip. He smirks at your reaction.

“Now grab it, and put it in your mouth…..then start sucking, ok pretty girl?” He stares down at your excited face. You look up at him and nod before following instructions. He threw his head back at the feeling of your pretty mouth wrapped around his cock. You start to bob your head up and down on him, causing him to grunt loudly. You jumped at the sound he made, and pulled away from him.

“am I doing something wrong?” You asked pouting up at him. He chuckles before grabbing the back of your head again.

“No you were doing well! When something feels good, you express that emotion through a moan. You get it baby?” He asks, making you nod in agreement.

“Now keep going.” You smiled before going back to work on him. He gently grabs your head, guiding you where he wants you. You started twirling your tongue around the head of his cock, making him moan loudly. He looked down at you with his jaw dropped, surprised that you knew what to do.

“Fuck! You’re way to good at this!” He panted as he grabbed your hair, giving him leverage to thrust is cock in and out of your mouth. You stop sucking, and open your mouth wide enough to welcome his thrusts. He started tickling the back of your throat with his tip, causing you to gag on him. This, in turn, sent an overwhelming amount of pleasure to his entire body. He throws his head to the sky, with his eye shut.

“You’re doing soooo good, y/n! You’re gonna make me cum in this pretty little mouth of yours.” He grunts as he looks back down at you, pulling out of your mouth briefly, causing you to gasp loudly.

“What does that mean?” You ask between heavy breaths, looking up at him with lidded eyes. He smirks before plunging his cock back down your throat, causing you to groan at the feeling.

“You’re about to see, right now, don’t worry.” He says as he thrusts into your mouth, fast and hard. Tears start to fall down your cheeks, as your eyes roll back. You moan on his cock, sending him over the edge.

“Oh shitttt!!!” He moaned loudly, while he filled your mouth with his cum. Your eyes widen from the feeling, and you try to pull away from him.

“No no no, stay right here, you gotta swallow it, ok?” He tightens his grip on your hair, thrusting into your mouth slowly, riding out his high.

He pulls out of your mouth slowly, signaling for you to open your mouth, you show him your tongue for confirmation that you swallowed.

“Such a good girl, y/n…” he smiles while rubbing your head. You smile up at him, wiping the access cum from the corners of your mouth, licking it off your fingers. You look up at him, wiping your tears away.

“so what’s next??” You ask, placing your hands on your thighs, leaning into his cock to kiss it. He looked down, biting his lip at the feeling. He palmed his cock, jerking it as he tilted his head at you.

“Mmm now, I need you to stand up.” He gestured for you to stand to your feet. You obliged, and looked up at him with those innocent eyes of yours.

“Take this off, baby….” he commands, pulls at your loincloth. You chuckle a little, quickly untying your loincloth, letting it drop to the ground beneath you. You look back up at him, biting your lip. You step closer to him, and smirk up at him.

“Now what?” You ask innocently. He looks at your dripping cunt, and then back up at you through his eyebrows.

“Turn around.” He commands through a clenched jaw. You giggle, and do what he said to. He sent a hard smack to your ass, causing you to yelp, and grab where he smacked you.

“Ouchhh!” You turn your head to him, pouting. He smirks and pulls you closer to him, ass on his pelvis.

“Bend over, touch your toes.” He commanded, pushing your back down. You spread your legs apart slightly before bending down in front of him. You grab your feet, causing your ass to brush against his cock. All you could see from your view was his legs behind yours.

“Ok!! Now what?” You ask as he wraps your tail around his arm. Plunging his entire cock inside you. You moan out in pleasure as he fills you up.

“This…this is now what.” He says as he starts moving slowly, watching his cock slide in and out of you with ease. He starts to speed up the pace causing you to cry out. You reach back to grab his arm, and he grabs yours as well.

“You are so fucking good at this!” He moans with his mouth agape , thrusting in and out of you fast and deep. You feel tears threatening to leave your eyes at the immense amount of pleasure he was sending your way.

“Lo’aaak, you feel so good.” You whine, biting your lip at the sensation.

“I know, baby! You feel amazing too.” He confesses as he pulls you up by your hair. He wraps his arm around your slim waist, and starts rutting into you like an animal. You try pulling out of his strong hold, as you felt a knot in your stomach.

“No, no, don’t run. Let me make you feel good.” He growls as he snuggles in the crook of you neck. His words, along with the rhythmic thrust makes your jaw drop, eyes rolling all the way to the back of your head, as you whine in his arms.

“Ughhh LO’AK!!! So- something’s happening to meeee!!!” You cry, hanging your head down as he fucks you silly. You clench around him, causing him to shut his eyes tightly, groaning at the feeling.

“Yeah something’s happening to me too.” he confesses sarcastically, as he throws his head back in absolute bliss.

“Fuck! I’m gonna cum so deep inside you. I want you to let go with me, ok?” He says through heavy breaths as his thrust start to become sloppy and irregular.

“YESSSS!!!” You scream, as he grabs your neck from behind. He tries to hold on a little longer, but he was about to blow.

“Fuck, NOW!” He commands and just like clockwork, you start shaking uncontrollably, eyes rolling back again, as he sends you a couple more deep thrusts before his high approached him. His eyes rolled back, as he moaned out loudly in your ear.

He thrusts into you softly, not letting a drop escape. He finally pulled out of you, still holding your waist. He bends down to your ear, and kisses it.

“How’d I do?” You ask, out of breath, looking back at him. He chuckles grabbing your neck again.

“You did so fucking good, I’m proud of you, baby.” He said through gritted teeth, as he shook your neck with every word he said. He spins you around to face him. He leans down to kiss you passionately, grabbing your neck again.

“You know you’re mine now…right?”

Umm, this might be my favorite story I’ve ever written…I’m low key obsessed. Y’all told me to make her dumb, so I made her a fucking idiot. You’re welcome😮‍💨🫶🏽 goodnight, love y’all!!!❤️

Outtie ❤️🖖🏾,

Pandorxx

[dtupdates-archive]

♡—DREAM was active on DreamFanartAcc (pt 2)! He liked:

Long time no mask art (i dont like this ASHDJK)

the dream fanart reply i got from this drawing means so much more to me now 🥹🥹

🫂🫂 thank u dream reply

spare one? 😿 i have more art i’m posting vv soon

🌅.

Dream Practice!

I’ve always thought of them as marshmallows attached to smaller marshmallows as limbs 🤔

I burn you? You melt me

gingerbread cookies

Whatever beautiful whatever who cares about that drapchat. I don’t even care

The lighting was just really good

Patches 💚

THERE IS A CATERPILLAR COMING OUT OF YOUR EYE BAL

drm :)

I love Paint

how could you ever say no to that face? 🫶💫

- I feel like that we're getting closer. To a brand new night ❜

They/theming dreamfanart not in a gender way but in a multiple ppl way

a lil flower doodle to get going again 🌸

your string of lights are still bright to me ✧₊⁺

hashtag fanart

Our teddy bear is back!🐻🔆- the ears I added are self explanatory

Me n the homies :)

forgot to post it here but hi guys ginger bread dream team! (and a bunch of random ninjas lol)

actually best friends forever!!

its him

HES BACKKK

the best teacher !! ✨

☆ NEED SOME MORE ☆

just drew dream team what do you guys think

I'm still not over the droncert

It’s the hair. it’s the fucking hair.

[untitled george plushie photo]

Rose colored boy 🌹🩷

didn't have time to make christmas art so here's my sapnap drawing from last year 🎅

he/theying Dranart in the way that it’s conceptually a he but also they in terms of multiplicity

[#dreamfanart (?)#dnf]

me with every dranart like i receive post dec 19

[grimalkinmessor]

10, 11, 12, 19, 42, and 45 for Shimateru? 🥺

SHIMATERUUUU LET'S FUCKING GOOOO

♠️⚜️

10. Do they share any hobbies or interests? How do these things bring them together?

The girls are fiiightiiiiing 💅✨

Nah but fr, fist fighting and sparring with their powers are a big point of quality time for them. It's how they met, it's how they "made up" (read: became attracted to each other), it's how they start and resolve arguments, it's how they let off steam, and oftentimes how they start sex. Fighting as foreplay my beloved 🙏

It's cathartic for both of them Shimazaki finds it fun, a way to let loose, and Teruki feels the same, but with more relief, because Shimazaki is the only person he can go all out against. Not because he's strong, but because he knows Shimazaki's not afraid of hitting back and giving as good as he gets.

11. How do they feel about nicknames/pet names? If they like them, what pet names do they use? If they hate them, why do they feel that way?

Oohhh Shimazaki loves to use petnames for Teru, and Teru fucking hates it, especially in the beginning. Shimazaki's favorites to use are Kitten (and all it's variations), Sparky, and Sweetheart—all incredibly condescending. At first, anyway. He likes the way Teruki's aura flares when he says them, his little lightning bolt gets so pissed off >:3 He eventually adds on Lovely once they're closer and those nicknames don't sound quite so mean anymore; if anything, they're almost -gasp- affectionate? 👀

Teru himself has a few nicknames for Shimazaki that he uses later on, standard stuff like Love and Darling. He uses them sarcastically at first, much like Shimazaki, but then he too falls into the trap of affection 😔🙏 RIP unattached Teru he will be missed.

12. Do they have a difficult time when separated from each other, or are they fairly independent?

Ahh, not really? They've both been on their own so long that I don't see them ever really becoming codependent that way. They're people that like their space and need alone time, so they work pretty well together in that respect. So yes, fairly independent.

19. Do they wear each other’s clothes/jewelry?

THIS one is fun, because while Teruki absolutely probably steals Shimazaki's leather jackets and pants from time to time, Shimazaki can't really,,,,,see, what he's picking up when he handles Teru's clothes. He can see the shape and cut of it due to Teruki's aura being all over it, but he can't exactly see the colors or designs on them. He has no way of knowing that Teru has the brightest, neon fashion sense known to man unless someone tells him, and you can bet your ass that absolutely no one is going to.

Shimazaki steals Teru's jackets and scarves and even his shirts sometimes, maybe a watch or two, and then you have this intimidating emo-looking guy waltzing around with a neon yellow scarf with like green triangles all over it. An inverted blacklight Hawaiian button-up. Occasionally a bright, hot pink wrist watch. Teruki actually thinks he looks nice though, is the thing, so I guess it works for them 😭

42. What’s their relationship like with each other’s friends/families?

Well, Teruki is kind of a runaway? At least in my head he is, rather than his parents just,,,voluntarily letting their fifteen year old live alone. So Shimazaki likely never really meets Teru's family, unless he decides to take advantage of Shimazaki's teleportation abilities and send messages to them back and forth that they can't technically track. Even then I think it would be kind of awkward for Shimazaki to interact with them given how genuinely worried they seem for their son—I think it would skeeve him out.

As for Shimazaki's family....well, I kind of have an angsty headcanon for him where his mother actually purposefully blinded him as a kid and that's what sparked his psychic awakening, so he's ALSO been a little vagabond skirting from town to town so he doesn't get put in the system, so he knows what it's like. His father was out of the picture and his mother is still in jail for, you know, maiming her kid so Shimazaki doesn't really have any family for Teru to meet now beyond the Ultimate Five, and even they don't really fuck with Shimazaki much because of how much of a dick he was 😅

I guess in that vein Teru's Meet My Parents meeting would probably just involve the Kageyama brothers, Reigen, Tome, and Dimple :')

45. How do they support each other? How do they rely on each others support?

Ack, this one is weird for me. Because again, they're fairly independent and that's because they're both very prideful and they both needed to know how to survive on their own, which they do and think they do well. It woul be hard for either of them to support the other because both of them think they don't need support.

I think the biggest thing that Shimazaki "supports" Teru through is sparring. When his anger issues start flaring up, when the guilt starts creeping in, when he feels Old Teru start bubbling back up in sneers and insults, he can count on Shimazaki to run him through the wringer until he feels right again. To take every bit of his rage and aggression without flinching back from him or thinking he's weak for it.

For Shimazaki, I think Teru mostly supports him physically. Leaning against him when he gets all quiet, dragging his hands along the walls and furniture in the apartment to make sure Shimazaki can see the shape and limits of them, holding his hand when they walk through large crowds, sometimes even combing his fingers through Shimazaki's hair when the man can't get to sleep.

Neither of them acknowledge that they're helping the other out loud, and neither of them acknowledge that they're being helped, because that shit Embarrassing™

[scattered-winter]

brother i have QUESTIONS (ao3) 3 12 19 27 29 30 and secret bonus question that was NOT included in the text post but as an additional special query , if someone (me) were trying to write an adashi fic for you for the past like two years but they were very fucking bad at committing to a fucking plot what would you want the circumstance to be

3: What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?

DEFINITELY my voltron rewrite. its about the length of an entire novel and i've grown more as a writer during this project than . pretty much anythign else i've ever done lmao.

12: How many WIP’s do you have in your docs for next year?

uh. well. i tried to count all of my unfinished WIPs but i gave up somewhere around the 95 mark. i KNOW i'm well into triple digits however. and that number will only ever increase.

19: What’s one pairing you want to explore next year?

i wanna do more stuff with danny phantom in general. romantic platonic familial etc etc etc all the things. i ALSO really want to finish my team STRQ manifesto sometime next year because i am always so fucking sick over them

27: What do you listen to while writing?

instrumental music usually!! it WIDELY varies but generally i avoid things with lyrics because its too distracting for me. problem is, im so mentally ill about instrumental music that 80% of the time THAT'S too distracting for me too bc i'll be paying so much attention to what i'm listening to that i forget i'm supposed to be writing. i literally can't win </3

29: Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

i was revisiting my STRQ manifesto today as i am likely to do and my god. i really really went off with this one here: _______

Summer sighed, and reached for Ruby. “I should put her down, too.” Qrow gently pulled his finger out of Ruby's mouth and reluctantly let Summer take her back. At the same time, he couldn't wait to get the baby away from him. He was all too aware of how small she was, how fragile. It would be so easy for something to happen to her, for his Semblance to hurt her. That all-too-familiar buzz of anxiety was climbing up his throat, making him have to resist the urge to tap his fingers against Harbinger at his side. He needed a drink. He needed to leave, before something bad happened. “I better debrief with Oz,” he said, half-turning toward the door. Summer's hand on his wrist stopped him in his tracks. She looked at him, silver eyes seeming to bore into him and peel his layers back, one by one. Her hand was rough against his skin, callused from years of battle. “You don't have to leave, you know,” she said softly. You know I do, Qrow wanted to say, but he gave her a crooked grin instead. “You know how Oz is. I'll try and swing by before I head out again, yeah?” Summer's brows drew together, her fingers tightening around Qrow's wrist like she didn't want to let him go. Her lips twitched, like she was trying to say any of the things she had to be thinking. “Would it really be so bad,” she said at last, “if you stayed? Just this once?”

Qrow looked at her, at the brightness of gathering tears in her eyes. She'd missed him, he realized, and it made his heart twist to think about how the months he's away on missions must be for her, for Tai. How they must wait, agonizing over every day he's gone and dreading that he'll never come back. It's strange, knowing that someone misses him when he's gone. Strange that he has somewhere to come home to, strange that there are people who will welcome him there when he arrives. Strange, and a little sad. He almost preferred knowing nobody would miss him when one of Salem's monsters finally did him in. Summer was still looking at him, expression pleading. Qrow sighed, and turned his wrist in her hand so his fingers were twining with hers. His other hand rose, to brush against the soft, plump curve of Ruby's cheek. “It's not worth the risk,” he said, so softly he could barely hear himself. Summer's eyes closed. Her fingers tightened around Qrow's. She nodded slowly. Qrow squeezed her hand back and carefully leaned in, pressing a kiss to her cheek. He gave Ruby's face one more gentle brush before turning to walk away again. This time, Summer let him go.

30: Biggest surprise while writing this year?

i have discovered that i am quite incapable of writing anything romantic and making it hit but if im doing some kind of platonic intimacy????? brother i will write the hell out of that shit. this probably should not have been surprising to me since i'm the most aromantic guy on planet earth but. well. i am also not a very smart man so jot that down

and in regards to your other question ,,,

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE PLS I WOULD BE SO HONORED ,,,,, you can do whatever your heart desires of course but i would love for it to be some kind of scenario in space in which one of them gets hurt and the other one yells so loud about it ,,

ao3 wrapped !!

[space--cadet-glow]

Theory/Over-Analysis: "…Infinite Pleasure Spawning" Part 2: Random Observations

Following what I'm working on for "A Certain Sage…", this Part will be a series of random observations for "…The Infinite Pleasure Spawning Drama". There's not as much to note as in "A Certain Sage…", but… Whatever. This one's just WEIRD.

The title card is a lightly-cracked egg

How and why did Belaf start laying eggs? …Even the narration has no fucking clue. ---[insert the "Anything goes in Wonderland~" joke from Phelan Porteous here]

Belaf is male, yet has somehow spawned a birth canal ---Transmasc Belaf confirmed??? ---Or did the Abyss do this, too?

Vueko says "otsukare-sama" to congratulate Belaf on laying the egg, which is basically a catch-all phrase for when someone has finished a job and/or finished doing hard work ---I bring this up because it's written entirely in hiragana, and may I remind you of that one 2chan thread where this dude basically trolled everyone by writing "otsukare-sama" entirely in hiragana??? ---This will be expanded upon in Part Three ---Also in this panel, Vueko is literally wiping Belaf's ass

The eggs look just like chicken eggs ---Apparently, the Sages were too scared to check what's inside of them

As the days pass, the eggs gradually get bigger and bigger ---And, naturally, the bigger the egg, the harder it is to "birth" ---YES, THE NARRATION SAYS "BIRTH"

Belaf disappears into his room for a few days ---He even refuses to eat, claiming that his portion should be saved for Irumyuui because she's "a growing girl" ---Speaking of which, WHERE THE HELL IS IRUMYUUI?! ---This is the only time she's mentioned; she is never seen, either. ---You'd think she'd be right up there trying to help, given her tribe's obsession with fertility???

Turns out, the eggs got stuck ---Belaf literally looks pregnant now ---That's why he was avoiding everyone and trying to starve; he didn't want anyone to see his huge belly ---He is full of eggs ---He was terrified of having to "birth" the increasingly-bigger eggs because of how painful it was getting

Wazukyan may or may not have been a chicken farmer at one point??? ---He mentions chickens and how they'd occasionally get eggs stuck; and mentions something about a "land base"??? ---If anyone can make better sense of this panel, be my guest

10. Wazukyan borrows Vueko's sex dungeon-- I mean-- "workspace"

11. The Interference Units give Belaf some sort of medicine/pain reliever ---Where was the medicine earlier when he was literally laying an egg in front of Vueko??? ---Why didn't he ask for it sooner??? ---It, like, worked instantly, soooo…????????

12. Wazukyan's bright idea? "Let's lube up the eggs! Make 'em slippery~!" ---The worst part? IT FUCKING WORKS.

13. Belaf lays eight eggs all in one go ---WHY ARE THE EGGS SURROUNDED BY HEARTS ---ANSWER ME, ANNOUU-SAN

14. PUT YOUR DICK AWAY, WAZUKYAN

15. Belaf's breasts start producing milk ---This implies that his body was producing hormones for the eggs as if they were human??? ---If the eggs ever hatched… Would they be sentient? Would they even BE human??? ---I'm scared

16. I present to you, the feminine equivalent to the "papa pole": the "mama nipple"

17. Belaf panics because he has to deliver one gigantic fucking egg ---He is terrified and Wazukyan continues to have a dopey smile on his face

18. Wazukyan gently wipes away Belaf's tears…

19. …AND THEN SLAMS HIS HAND DOWN ON BELAF'S STOMACH AND FORCES THE EGG OUT

20. The egg is, in Wazukyan's own words, "about the size of a baby's head". ---Meanwhile, Belaf's just sprawled there on the floor and hasn't moved an inch ---Like seriously; his eyes are rolled back in his head ---Is he okay?

21. There's one last egg. A teeny-weeny little one ---AND WAZUKYAN IMMEDIATELY DROPS IT AND BREAKS IT

22. There's a Gory Discretion Shot, and we never see what was actually IN the egg ---Wazukyan doesn't react in horror or anything at all really; but then again, should we be rating gore based off of the dude who eats rats?

23. Time skip of an unspecified amount; and Vueko's out in the new garden ---The eggs were buried there to be fertiliser for the plants and flowers

24. But then, Vueko notices the grave ---Where did it come from? ---Who made it and why? ---Who or what is buried there…? ---This is never answered

THE END. I'm not joking. That's how it ends. Now, onto the theories in Part Three~!

[leofrith]

[20 Question Fic Writer Tag]

Tagged by @aeide and @ainulindaelynn 💖 I did this one a few months ago but a few answers have changed since then so I'll update those. 😊

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Six now! Four one-shots, a short-ish multi-chapter which was supposed to be a one-shot that got away from me, and my longfic which at this point I should have just waited to post but am definitely still chipping away at.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

33,030 which is almost double my count from a few months ago. Woaaaaaaaaahhhh

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Still Assassin's Creed, now dipping into Baldur's Gate 3 as well.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Still the same five fics in the same order but with slightly different numbers:

Hideaway - 149

Bright Skies - 139

Press On, Move Along - 94

Out of the Cold - 43

Honor Bound - 29

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yes! Always.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Still Press On, Move Along.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Still Hideaway.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Still hate-free, for now.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Sure do 💀 and I've posted some of it since the last time I did this. I think the only way I can really describe it is emotionally-charged, because if I'm going to horny jail it will at the very least be in service of some kind of character development. 😭

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Still occasionally poke away at the AC x Star Wars AU, but I'm not super invested in it right now. But I'm sure that will change as soon as a new Star Wars thing comes out. Since I last did this I also went digging through the depths of my writing folder and found a Walking Dead x MCU crossover that I must have started when I was like 14 years old. Absolute fucking horror show that I am so very thankful I never wrote enough to post. 🤡

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Still no, as far as I'm aware.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, except for yelling back and forth about ideas with friends. I would probably be open to it but also maybe not because I know I am extremely unreliable.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Saying "all-time" favourite feels a bit much, but as far as mental real estate and also just sheer number of words written, Leovor far surpasses any other ship I've been into. 🧍🏻‍♀️

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Since I did that ask game a few weeks ago, the Inquisitor Ahsoka/Rex starting a clone rebellion/post TCW AU has been on my mind. But I know that, realistically speaking, I'm unlikely to ever be invested enough to actually sit down and write it.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I'm trying to make a point to read more fiction and while it's possible that the few books I've read thus far lately just haven't been particularly good, it's certainly made me way more confident in my ability to write dialogue that feels like it would be spoken by real live humans and not aliens pretending to be humans. Similar deal with internal monologues. I'm convinced that none of these authors read their work aloud.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Still generally the same—overthinking comma usage, editing while I write and therefore being very slow, going back and forth between being stuck because I didn't plan enough and feeling stifled because I planned too much. Etc etc.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I try to avoid it as much as possible, with the exception being words or phrases that are used a lot in canon.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Still Marvel :(

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

Honor Bound is still my baby, but I didn't expect to actually like A Different Kind of Solace as much as I do, mostly because I didn't really go into writing it expecting to hit the emotional notes that it does. Also still Out of the Cold. There are some banger lines there.

Not tagging anyone because this one has gone around a few times recently but if you want to do it, you're welcome to pretend I tagged you. 😌

[talkinfanfic]

Hi Storyshark! I'm a big Oasis fan and I think you're such a great writer! Is there any chance you would write more Gallaghercest "origin stories"? I always love to read about how it all started and like stories that are set in the early days of the band and before Liam even joined.

Did you ever entertain the idea about writing something that touches on the topic of why Liam's relationship to big brother Paul is so different to big brother Noel? I think it's quite interesting to think about what could have happened in their childhood and youth that made Liam crave Noel's attention and approval more than Paul's and made Noel more of a father figure to him. And I think anyone who meets Liam would be attracted by his beauty and charisma, so I think it's also interesting to think about how Paul reacts in a different way to it than Noel. And the topic of Noel feeling guilty of what he's doing to and how he's feeling about his baby brother is also always so interesting.

Thanks for reading and have a good day!

Thank you so much for reading and submitting an ask, gosh how flattering! For anyone interested in my writing, you probably already know I've got a blog over here (@storyshark2005) To answer your question-- Yeeeesss actually! I've got a few ideas and WIPs going right now in the "Been and Gone" universe. It's just a matter of time and me focusing long enough to get the next one out!

Paul in particular is the story I'm probably most focused on. I was just working on it last night! I'll stick a teaser below :) But here's kind of a rough checklist of what I'll be trying to accomplish...

Gene POV - done! Summary: “The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children.” Falling down (2005 - 2019).

"A Week in Mustique" - multi POV, some shorter glimpses from multiple characters over the course of a family holiday in Mustique!

Paul POV - Paul trying to be his own man. Some possible romance with Katie. His complicated relationship with his brothers. Feeling outside.

Sara POV. - Set during and after Story IV. Honestly I had a whole thing for this, but story 4 turned out a bit different, so I'll have to mull this one over... but it'll prob flash back to Sara's upbringing, and also go into some of broke down in their marriage, which isn't JUST the Liam factor. (*cough* freaky fridays *cough)

Matt Morgan POV - A night out, late in 2022. Maybe a party to celebrate one of Noel's singles releasing. He finds out about Liam/Noel. Debbie brings him into the circle. We see Debbie stressing being the 'secret keeper'.

Debbie POV - Debbie finding the Liam/Noel thing more intense than maybe she’d thought, navigating where she fits in. The REAL start of the Noel/Debbie bit of the triangle!

Anyway here's a bit from "Paul" below the cut:

Saturday, 19 August 1978. Burnage, Manchester

“Eeyare,” Noel pokes his head in the door. He’s all sweaty, fringe stuck to his forehead. “What’s the score, our kid?” 

“One-nil to Derby. Charlie George, overhead kick.”

Noel’s nose wrinkles. “Gooner cunt. Can I borrow your guitar?” He nods to the corner behind Paul’s bed, where the cheap little Yamaha acoustic lay dusty and neglected.

“No.” 

“Well you’re not fuckin’ playin’ it.” 

“Yeah, and neither are you.” Paul adjusts the dial, swiveling from the commentary on Picadilly Sport, over to the BBC2.

“Whatever. I’ll just play it tonight while you’re out helping the old fella.” 

The dial skitters to a staticky stop. Fuck, but he’d forgotten. 

“It’s your turn,” Noel says flatly. “He’s got 32 Club tonight.”

He’s right, is the thing. Noel hadn’t come home last night till almost 3am. It’s Paul’s turn to haul the boxes of vinyl into the club, and then nurse a coke in the corner for six hours while Tommy DJ spins his tunes and then pisses away the week’s earnings on cards.

A sudden thunder of trainers pounds up the stairs, and Liam comes skidding into frame, crashing up against Noel’s hip. He’s bright-eyed and pink-cheeked, and just as sweaty as Noel, fringe split in half by a violent cowlick. He’s wearing a faded old ringer tee with Ernie from Sesame Street on the front that used to belong to Noel (and possibly Paul before him). 

“I want a Capri-Sonne,” he curls a fist in Noel’s shirt and tugs. He’s got grass stains on his knees from chasing Noel and his mates around the park. 

Liam’s a horrible little brother. Five-going-on-six, he’s lightning in a bottle, caught only just barely-- crackling and popping with a heaving, restless energy. He’s also a charming little fucker when he needs to be, which he never does around Noel or Paul. The church ladies and the aunties think he’s an angel.

Noel ignores the tugging and whining. Paul can see a fading bruise above his elbow where their Dad had grabbed him last week, screaming about some perceived slight or uppity attitude Noel had apparently been giving off.

“Hewitt nicked the Pistols record from Sifter’s. Youngie and Vince are comin’ over, we’re all goin’ round his in a bit for a listen.”

“Oh yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Noel shrugs. 

Liam butts his face into Noel’s stomach. Noel allows it, resting a hand on top of his bowl cut. Noel casts his gaze somewhere out the window, out to the clouds, barely invested in the conversation, or the little brother buzzing under his hands.

Liam gives another headbutt, drawing a scowl and Noel’s attention back.

“Fucking stop it--” 

“I WANT my FUCKING DRINK!”

Paul looks down at his scorecard. “Maybe after the match.” 

Noel looks up, distracted with Liam wrangled into a one-armed headlock. Liam has his arms wrapped around Noel’s waist like an obnoxious little squid.  

“What?” 

“I said, maybe I’ll come round after the match.” 

Paul’s not really planning to show up. He could go round Hewitt’s any day to listen to the album. And it’d be better without Noel there, anyway, talking all the way through. (Mister fucking McCharmley, was Noel. Hewitt had been Paul’s mate, originally.)

Anyway. Noel’s only asking ‘cos he knows Mam’ll ask him where he’s off to, and why Paul’s not going with. 

“Whatever.” Noel shrugs and turns out of the room, disentangling himself from Liam’s sticky grasp. “Liam, getoff--!” 

“I’m coming, too!”

“No you’re fucking not.”

“Noely!” Liam curls his fingers into the back of Noel’s shirt and tugs again, whining for his Capri-Sonne. 

“Get it yourself!” 

“Mam put ‘em on top of the fridge, I can’t reach--!”  

Noel groans but diverts down the stairs, and Liam gives out a joyous whoop of triumph.

Paul sighs, turning back to the radio. Halftime, still one-nil. He skips back to Radio 2. Which is when he hears it. 

Years and years and years later, Paul will meet this photographer friend who’s into fucking birds, of all things. Like...photographing them, and going on trips to find rare ones. This friend, she tells him about her ‘spark bird’. Apparently, a spark bird is the first bird that lights the match in you, that makes you want to get up at the crack of fucking dawn and go creeping through a marsh for a glimpse of some rare South American ruffle-headed whats-a-ma-doo. 

Paul doesn’t give a fuck about birds. But he knows what she means when she talks about a spark bird. Because Paul’s always liked music, same as he likes talking to pretty girls, and the smell of brand new trainers, and Man City winning a string of matches. 

But something about what he hears crashing through the speakers that Saturday afternoon; that strange, hitching synthesizer bit in the intro; the fast-train staccato of Keith Moon up on the hi-hat, nervous like a racing heart; Entwhistle dancing patiently underneath, holding the rhythm down; Townshend’s carelessly cool, yet exacting and luxuriant guitar work; and above it all, Roger Daltrey’s relentless, fearless growl demanding an answer to the most important question that Paul had never heard asked before, by anyone, including himself:

Who are you? 

Who? 

Who?

Paul listened that day, and then bought and nearly wore out the single over the next few months, totally entranced and unable to answer. Anything he could have mustered seemed superficial, insubstantial: ‘Paul Anthony Gallagher, son of Peggy and Tommy, brother to Noel and Liam.’ 

And what else, the question seemed to beg, what else?! Give me something real-- who the fuck are you??

Make something of yourself, it seemed to say. Find an answer.

Years and years and years later, despite the fire burning in his belly to do something, be someone...he still doesn’t have an answer. 

‘The other brother,’ maybe. 

Anyway. Fuck knows. Maybe he’s nobody. Most people are nobody. They’re born, they live and they have a few dreams, and then they die with most of those dreams unrealised. 

That’s just life, mate. It’s not that tragic a story. ***

[yumizurueleonora]

7, 14, 19, 29

7. How many ideas do you have for fics right now?:

So. So many. At all times. A few of them are

-Arata and Akito decide to team up to tease the shit out of one of Arata’s fans that is also Souma’s mortal Twitter enemy

-A certain fic of a certain universe that we’ve been working on

-More Star Trek and MOTW AU stuff

-a baby gets dropped on WEEKEND GARAGE’s doorstep

14. If you could see one of your fics adapted into a visual medium, which one would it be?:

Seasons May Turn, But Things Still Stay The Same. It’s the funniest one and I would love to see Kamui being a moron.

19. Post a snippet of one of your WIPs:

He’s still zoning out when Kuba looks past Arata and addresses Akito directly.

“And who are you?” She asks.

Next thing Akito knows, the chaotic spirit of Mizuki Akiyama overtakes him and he has the funniest idea.

“Akito. Akito Tono.” Akito says, reaching his hand out to Kuba. “I’m his little brother.”

Arata’s surprised for a split-second, but then he smirks and reaches out to ruffle Akito’s hair.

“Yeah, Aki’s such a cutie, isn’t he? He even wants to be a singer as good as me someday~”

…Akito’s starting to regret starting this.

Like, immensely.

But he can definitely turn this back around on Arata.

“Yeah, Onii-chan’s such a good singer. But, hey, you’ve never told me about her!”

“What, am I supposed to tell you about all my adoring fans?”

“Well, you always talk about Gale. Gale this, Gale that, ‘did I tell you what Gale sent me this morning?’”

Arata’s jaw drops open slightly and he turns bright red.

“Aki…!”

“Oh, you and Gale… text?” Kuba says, and Arata’s clearly unable to figure out a response, so Akito smirks and turns to her.

“Oh, yeah. All the time. He’s practically Onii-chan’s internet boyfriend.”

Arata glares at Akito as hard as he can before turning back to Kuba.

“Sorry about him. You know how kids are, Masuyo-chan. Can I call you that?”

He winks at Kuba, and she lets out a breathless laugh. Oh my god, she has a huge crush on Arata.

This is terrible. Akito hates this so much.

29. Post something you’ll never post or a scene that was cut from an already posted fic:

This is something I wrote a while ago for fun that I never posted because it’s just this one scene:

When An walks into WEEKEND GARAGE, she doesn’t know what she’s expecting, but it’s certainly not whatever the hell this is.

Kohane and Toya. Screaming at each other at the top of their lungs.

Arata’s sipping on a cup of coffee with the most exhausted look on his face, and he flashes her a glance that says “Get your partner under control.”

“Whoa, whoa!” She yells. “What’s going on?!”

“An-chan, tell Toya-kun he’s being a moron!”

“No, An, tell Kohane that she can’t possibly be a bigger fan of Tsukasa-senpai than I am!”

An freezes.

Oh. Oh no.

There’s an ooh from the corner, and Kisara, Akemi, Tatsuya, and Kotaro are all watching intently.

“Look. There’s no objective way to solve this.” Arata groans. “Can’t you just agree that you like him equally?”

“There actually is an objective way to solve this, I just don’t want to do it.” Akito responds.

“Then fucking do it, whatever it is has to be better than this!” Arata snaps. “You dragged me away from my partner for this! End it!”

Akito groans, and An shakes her head.

“Oh no, you’re not making me betray my partner like that. You call him.”

Kohane looks at her like she’s crazy, and Toya has the smuggest smirk she’s ever seen on him. God, he takes this way too seriously.

Akito sighs and unlocks his phone, dialing Tsukasa-senpai and putting him on speaker.

“Ha ha ha! Hello there, Akito! What do you need?”

Toya’s eyes light up.

“Senpai!”

“Oh, Toya! Are you calling me from Akito’s phone? Do you need anything, my love?”

Suddenly everyone that doesn’t go to Kamikou just freezes.

“Oh no, Senpai. I just needed to prove a point to someone.” Toya says. “I’ll see you at dinner?”

“Oh, of course! I’m making pasta, and I think Auntie’s making cookies?”

Toya tilts his head slightly.

“Mother’s making cookies? What’s the occasion?”

Tsukasa-senpai freezes.

“…Nothing.”

Toya’s face turns slightly amused.

“Senpai, you can’t lie to me.”

“I’m sorry! Auntie swore me to secrecy!”

And suddenly Toya’s eyes light up again.

“She got it, didn’t she? Her and father’s latest recording just went platinum?”

“AGH! Toya, you can’t tell Uncle! She’s planning to surprise him!”

Toya laughs into his hand.

“I won’t. I promise. I’ll get going right now, I think Mother could use some help with the surprise.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry! I’m helping her!”

“Please, I insist.” Toya says.

“Alright, see you!”

Tsukasa-senpai hangs up, and Toya finishes up his coffee before throwing some cash on the table.

“Thank you, Ken-san. Fuck you, Kohane. I’ll see all of you later.”

“Hey! You can’t say that about Kohane!” An tries, but he’s already out the door before she can yell at him more.

“So they’re… cousins?” Arata asks, and Akito sighs.

“It’s a long, long story.”

“I think we have time.” Tatsuya says.

[antariies]

20 19 questions for writers

tagged by @i-mybrunettelady!! ty nero :3c

tagging dama my friend dama @sylvaridreams

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

th. three.

2. what fandoms do you write for?

exclusively gw2 these days!

3. what are your top 5 by kudos?

i've only got the three published on ao3, so in order of most to least kudos is: forgive us, visions of the past: the departing, and HOW TO BUILD A CHAIR (THIS COULD BE GLORY) !

4. do you respond to comments?

yeas :•]

5. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

hmm! how to come back from the dead

6. what is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

i would say all the gift fics i've written have pretty happy endings!

7. do you get hate on fics?

no. also how is that even a thing still

8. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

no, but i love to talk about ocs fucking creepy and wetstyle on discord with friends. if i were to write dedicated smut i think it would be a series of oneshots from my commander's pov. it's not harley's fault he has so much weird and freaknasty yet incredibly story-relevant sex. pussy that launched a thousand plots.

9. do you write crossovers?

once ☝️ when i was younger and on ff.net i wrote a SYOC pokemon/pjo crossover. it's been abandoned for years. poor thing.

10. have you ever had a fic stolen?

not to my knowledge

11. have you ever co-written a fic before?

yes! we haven't worked on it in a hot minute, but @hawkepockets and i have a fic about harley and prem's historic falling out pre-personal story, featuring our many headcanons about divinity's reach and the events surrounding the great collapse :]

12. what's your all-time favorite ship?

HARLEY/TRAHEARNE/GIL THE OT3 OF ALL TIME !

13. what's one WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

ummm i have a wip called "lessons learned" and it was supposed to be a series of 2nd-person vignettes from the pov of the sylvari commander. expanding more on early personal story and how being raised/mentored by caithe and trahearne kind of fucked them up. whose bright idea was it to let miss "i will walk on my knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting" and mister "i want to martyr myself so bad it makes me look stupid" take a crack at the young and impressionable sapling anyway. now look at them. they're pushing aurene to meet the same unreasonable standards because it's the only way they know how to live. generational trauma fic. you know how it is.

14. what are your writing strengths?

give me a STRUCTURE! give me a set of RULES! if you say "here is a strict format you MUST follow" i will say "YESSIRRRR" and i will think inside of that box so hard and i will do it so good. i don't break rules but by god i'll bend them within an inch of their life. also i'm funny

15. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

more of it now and forever

16. first fandom you wrote for?

pjo high school au

17. favorite fic you've written?

due to recency bias, my fave fic is always the one i worked on last. rn it's my wip "how to make coffee"!

18. what are your writing weaknesses?

the fact that i don't do it. my turnaround time is abysmal there's like a minimum two years waiting period in between everything i publish :[ also according to my boyfriend just now he says sometimes i don't explain things enough. sometimes i expect the audience to know what kind of broth i'm making but i haven't thrown them enough bones. and i don't realize this bc the broth is already cooked in my head. it's obvious to me but not to them.

19. have you ever had a fic translated?

i've had someone ask once if they could translate my fic, but they also wanted to repost it to a different website. so i turned them down. sharing is fine, but i'm just not comfortable with my writing being reposted somewhere else even with credit.

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #197

Tomorrow is my first day doing the grocery store job for real. I'm kind of excited; it's a new situation with new people and I'll end up learning new skills as a result. But at the same time, I'm kinda scared; what if I do a bad job, or what if everyone hates me because I'm too weird?

Being autistic in a mostly neurotypical world is hard because I don't operate the way everyone else does. I tend to be straightforward and sincere, and you'd be shocked at how many people think that traits like these belong to naive losers, or else to rude people. The result is that normally, people like me for a while, and then... they don't. It's baffling, but I do the best I can to get by.

…Given that I've got 34 years of living under my belt, one would think that I'd be a little better at "getting by" by now, but it is what it is, I suppose…

I worked some more on the letter I intend to hand-deliver to some very important people, if I'm allowed an opportunity to do so. I also made a list of some of my most wholesome letters to you. I made sure to include all the ones about mental health, and some of the ones about additional story worlds that are relevant to you. I included some of the ones with my best recipes. I tried to include so many things.

Here's part of the list of what I think are some of my most relevant letters:

1, 3, 6, 7, 11, 17, 19, 21, 24, 27, 29, 32, 33, 35, 39, 42, 47, 50, 53, 54, 55, 57, 59, 62, 65, 67, 69, 76, 78, 80, 82, 85, 88, 91, 102, 122, 126, 128, 130, 136, 137, 138, 139, 147, 149, 150, 164, 169, 186.

…And here are the letters with tasty noms in them, because tasty noms are good for the soul:

4, 5, 13, 14, 17, 18, 36, 45/46, 51, 52, 54, 64, 66, 87, 104, 105, 121, 123, 132, 147, 152, 183

...Maybe you or someone else will have some other letter to suggest adding to either of these lists. I'm always open to suggestions.

…I hope they'll be able to see that a world in which you get to be safe is possible. I hope they'll be able to see that there are more options for people like us than "merciless punishment and/or destruction". The conventional narrative in my world already is that lives like ours aren't worth living, and… ya know… the conventional narrative is getting really fucking old and tired. If we take a good look around, it should be easy to see that the conventional narrative isn't helping matters at all. My world is full of scared, frightened, hurting people who have made mistakes and then don't work on themselves because they've been convinced that they're irredeemable and undeserving because of the mistakes they've made. The result of that is that the cycle of pain continues ad nauseam. It's gotta stop.

On the bright side, unexpectedly, someone posted up my petition for your safety. I don't know if the petition will ever actually be seen by the relevant people or do anything. But all the same, there are some 90 names on it now, which might not seem like a whole lot, but… still, 90 is more than 0. You have at least 90 people in your corner. And you probably have more than that; I'm sure a number of folks want to put their names on it, but are scared to for a number of reasons. In my experience, people in my world who have empathy for you tend to get mocked by others, so perhaps a number of them are simply trying to avoid the vitriol.

But you saved my life. And I am a stronger, wiser, kinder person now because I held on long enough to turn myself around. YOU made it possible for me to hold on long enough to turn myself around. I can't afford to be daunted by the vitriol now that I have sufficient courage, boundary skills, and self-worth to withstand it; I have a debt to you that must be repaid, and I will do whatever it takes to see it done. If I deserve to live, if I deserve to have this peaceful, wonderful (if not perfect or 100% ordinary) life, then so do you. If I deserve to enjoy my beautiful version of normalcy and peace (even if it doesn't look like the ideal version of these things to someone else), then so do you.

…And so does everyone deserve healing and peace. So does everyone. And not a lot of people like that idea (not even I enjoy this idea 100% of the time; I'm only human, so sometimes I get angry destructively, but I'm working on it…), but the truth doesn't stop being the truth just because folks don't like it.

I made some super fancy QR codes, too, linking to some of the nicer things I've made for you. Check 'em out:

...Aren't they pretty? It's gonna be a physical copy of a letter, so if you wanna have links, you gotta have a QR code so your phone can look at it and follow the link. Because uh. You can't click a regular text link on a piece of paper. That's not how it works, hahaha! And it's a pain in the ass to make someone type it all out. So QR codes are the way to go.

I also tried both of the different kinds of vanilla-and-rose tea, for science, to see which one is superior. I made sure the amount of tea, water, honey, and milk was identical for each cup. They are different teas, but the difference between them is so subtle as to be almost unnoticeable. In the end, I decided that the kind that comes in the tin is superior; it's just a touch more floral than the original one I am used to, even if the overall flavor is maybe slightly weaker. So that is the one I will give to you, if I'm allowed an opportunity to do so.

I'm scared for what the future holds. I'm scared for what might happen if I fail at various things. But I gotta keep pushing forward and trust my ability to handle whatever emerges on the distant horizon. Whatever happens, I know that I won't have to handle it alone. I have the hands and voices of so many kind and virtuous others to steady me if I stumble and fall down, even if sometimes my mean ol' brain tries to convince me that I don't. Fortunately, my chosen family makes it a point to remind me that I'm not alone, especially when my brain tries to convince me that I am.

Ultimately, my brain is mean because it's misguidedly trying to protect me from abandonment and disappointment. I have a long history of this. It hasn't yet caught on to the fact that I never have to return to the old world again. But it will, in time, the more I practice new ways of thinking, and the more I remind myself that the people who surround me now are very much unlike the people who surrounded me in the past.

I am going to stop writing for now; I have to get ready for bed. I want to be well-slept for my first real day on the job tomorrow.

I love you. And please stay safe out there; I'm gonna write to you all about how tomorrow goes at my soonest opportunity. You wouldn't wanna get yourself killed and end up missing it, right?

Your friend, Lumine

[goldenfox3]

For the ask meme, pick your favorite(s)! All, some, one, or none: 19, 20, 21, 26

2023 in review: fic writer asks

19. Share your favorite opening line

Going through my fics looking for the best opening line made me realise my opening lines are rather bland lmao. Something to work on in the new year ig! My favourite one is probably one of these two:

"At Harimaya Bridge in Kōchi, Tosa, two figures stand drenched in red." (Red Tide)

"Fire bursts across the sky like the flames that burned his memories away, and even the distant cheers of his siblings cannot ease the chill that grips his heart." (What Begins)

Both are from Touken Ranbu fics. The first one references both a Toumyu song and the Yosakoi Naruko Dance's 「土佐のー高知の はりまや橋で」 lyric. It also parallels the opening line of its companion fic, as it is the same scene but a different character's perspective.

The second line I just like for the imagery lmao. The character, Honebami Toushirou, is watching fireworks at what should be a joyous festival but since he lost his memories after being burnt in a fire, well...he doesn't do well with fire-anything.

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20. Share your favorite ending line

Despite my trouble with ending off fics I think my ending line selection was stronger than the opening lines. I had a couple choices here and found it harder to narrow down so I am going to cheat and put two again...

"His mind is blissfully, terrifyingly silent." (Ab Initio)

"Falcon laughs, sun-sharp challenge and the bright spark of mischief, pressing close as the smell of sandalwood and eucalyptus envelops them once more." (Slow March)

The first one is for how short and snappy it is. It gets the point across succinctly, that Blood Falcon is 1) for now free of Black Shadow's mental voice influencing his thoughts, 2) relieved at this, 3) really fucking weirded out and even unmoored by this because his whole life he's known nothing else.

The second one is again for the imagery. It's not nearly as succinct but I do like how Rob as the POV chara is characterising everything about Falcon as this brilliant, shining presence that he can't help but be drawn to. There is also of course the ~symbolism~ of the smell of Rob's bath products surrounding them both. At this point in the series neither of them will admit their true feelings for each other, but the fact that they smell the same now from sharing the bath products, allowing each other to mark and be marked...it's just another way they've insidiously crept their way into each others' lives despite not talking about any gross scary feelings ever (idiots).

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21. Share your favorite piece of dialogue

There were a lot of moments from Thousand Five I wanted to put in here LMAO. I really like the dialogue in the first three chapters in particular, that's where I feel it was the snappiest (possibly because they were doing nothing but talking in the bar there so it had to be snappy). But my favourite bit of dialogue in the fic atm is this one:

“You would forfeit the chance to properly best your rival?” Stewart lifts his chin. “You’d kill the surgeon who’s the reason you’re even alive to begin with?” (chapter 6)

I'm very fond of this scene. It's the first time Stewart quite literally puts his neck on the line for Falcon. He doesn't have the combat skill or brute force to get out of this by fighting, so he uses what he does have at his disposal: his knowledge of the other person's background and personality, as well as drawing on what relation they share and any debts that might be owed. It's a gamble, but it's all he's got. The bold way it's stated, like he already knows the conclusion, is both calculated and just his natural adrenaline kicking in. Stewart is not one to bow in the face of danger and is in fact unfortunately drawn to it, but in this case he was afraid for someone else's life (Falcon) and was perhaps not quite as blasé as he'd normally be.

Because I am indecisive here is another fave bit of dialogue...this time from Creatures With Wings:

“Do you regret it?” Ryu asks suddenly, sliding a hand behind his head. “Taking on your role as Captain Falcon, or bringing me into this. Is that why you asked?” The back of his neck prickles, helmet still trapped under Ryu’s arm. But Captain Falcon is as much an ideal as he’s a man in a costume, and when he speaks, his voice is strong. “Creatures with wings are born to take to the skies someday. To fear falling is natural. But sometimes, all you can do is take that leap and fly.”

Besides being a title drop, Andy's dialogue here is a modified version of what he says to Ryu in Lap 50 of the anime. It still serves as reassurance and motivation to Ryu, but it also contains a veiled message about his feelings on his own situation. Andy isn't one to outwardly display struggles or regrets, or to ask for help because he's supposed to be the one helping. But I like to think about a more vulnerable side to him. He's only human, even if Captain Falcon needs to be so much more than that.

So here, he's also expressing that Ryu is quite possibly the only person who could fully understand him, as someone who was destined to be a saviour in this universal battle. Maybe he, just like Ryu, had (still has) fears and insecurities and regrets. And maybe despite that, he still did it anyway because there was no other choice. But Andy...doesn't actually directly answer the questions Ryu asked. He can't. Falcon can never be anything less than a paragon. To express weakness, to waver now at the end of all things...that's not who he is. But at the end of all things...maybe he can be Andy one last time. Andy trusts Ryu enough to reveal here just the tiniest hint of weakness, reciprocating the trust Ryu has constantly shown confiding in him.

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26. If you had to choose one, what was THE most satisfying writing moment of your year?

Hmm every time I get a comment is very satisfying (especially the ones that go into detail) and crunching the numbers about how much I wrote this year compared to previous years was also fulfilling-feeling. I have a checklist of character's I've written/have yet to write in this series and it felt good to tick off a bunch and try writing so many different themes and perspectives this year. Thousand Five is perhaps the predictable answer to this question, as it is still my baby my beloved my first gameverse and longest fic. I'm happy to have published 12 chapters of it this year!

But I think the most satisfying moment was getting this comment on Rush:

This awoke something in me. Never played or watched F-Zero anything in all my life and yet these two give me life.

How gratifying is it to know that you've managed to captivate someone who doesn't know anything about the fandom with the power of your writing alone? How wonderful is it to know that you've managed to capture someone's interest based on the choice, order, artistry of the scenes your words have woven? Without any pre-existing interest in the characters and franchise doing some of the work of grabbing the reader for you? I really, truly would love to know if this anon looked more into the series after or went on to read other F-Zero fics. Getting people into the series and ship I like because of something I created is living the dream, I tell you. And it all happened because I wrote about Falcon and Stewart [redacted] in a rivals with benefits situationship LMAO.

[megamind2010]

standing outside your window knocking on the glass hard as fuck hand bleeding

3, 5, 12, 18, 19, 21, 33, 35 for my buddy nell bishop obvi

hello bitch (oc ask meme)

3. weapon of choice? any particular reason they chose their weapon? And here it becomes obvious that ive thought way more about nells personal life than their job as a superhero LMFAO i really like the weapon ideas shayan came up with… the ladybug shield and the little throwing stars (circles) i also think of her with some kind of derivative of the bb gun… something cute and nonlethal. most of her weaponry was developed with/by ted which explains a lot. similarly to ted she generally fights hand to hand but she probably has a few gadgets in her belt. maybe a ladybug taser

5. how do they typically dress? does their wardrobe lean more towards practicality or aesthetics? nell wears the same outfit to work every day (slacks, button down, sweatervest, tie, fingerless gloves, converse) because they found a comfortable outfit ten years ago. they tend to wear the same kind of thing casually as well… the gloves are a sensory thing so they tend to wear them pretty much whenever they arent asleep or showering lol but overall their entire wardrobe is extremely samey because i mean. He knows what he likes if it aint broke why fix it

12. how long have they been around? do you know their birthday? is their birthday the day you made them or another day? what do they think of celebrating birthdays? ……… I DONT REMEMBER? i think i came up with the first inklings pretty soon after colleen doran posted the original unused ladybug and blue beetle illustration which wassssssssss february 2023…? NOT EVEN A YEAR AGO? but i didnt start really developing them in earnest for a while after that I GENUINELY DONT KNOW i feel like theyve been around forever. if i made their birthday the day i "made" them it would have been too close to my birthday which felt weirdly indulgent so i made their canon birthday january 2nd :-) she doesnt tend to tell other people when her birthday is but isnt like Secretive about it, she just isnt a fan of huge displays

18. their opinion on lying, stealing, and killing? lying is fine if its for a reason or if its funny. in general her morals are in the service of preventing harm so stealing in the abstract is kind of neutral. not a fan of killing! you might ask then why she lives with casey, an attempted murderer. well you see 1. she didnt actually manage to do it 2. it was kind of funny

19. are they quick to anger? what sets them off? its very easy to annoy them step 1 be casey step 2 profit LMAO like with most of their emotions nell doesnt really externalise anger very obviously until it reaches a crisis point… many things that anger them! a big one is having her abilities/independence questioned… deliberately obnoxious behaviour… mouth sounds

21. their favorite place to be? he really does like his workplace… he likes being at home. being by himself in a dark quiet place is top tier

33. if applicable, how would your other characters describe them? i mean specifically the people around them. erm well not all of them are my characters but the people in her life casey: (under her breath) boring judgemental bitch (out loud) SAVE ME LADYBUG ted: she's a real bright spark :D booster: difficult to read michelle: really cool… but kind of frustrating at times! her dad: incredibly driven… just like his mother alex (middle brother): they work really hard even when people dont notice seb (youngest brother): SO COOL

35. do they ever return home? not very often. their family moved out of their childhood home after nell left so it's strange to go back to somewhere they didnt grow up

[maryellencarter]

1. haha no

2. Probably Leia

3. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA let's say there are a surprising number of choices I don't regret

4. Duh, who isn't on this bitch of a website

5. I has a Leia

6. Painlessly and after having done as much fun shit as possible

7. Strawberry cheese danish

8. Soccer. A little baseball but I don't run well enough.

9. Yup

10. Huh. Longer ago than I realize. I'm always *ready* to fight but it hasn't been necessary in many years

11. I like many people. If the question is "do you have a crush on someone", no

12. 60+, for my sins. There's a point where you get paranoid hallucinations keeping you awake even further

13. Oh yeah, I contain multitudes

14. So many people

15. No. Pets, like children, are too much of a responsibility for me. I like them if their humans will take them away again

16. Sleep deprived. I forgot to charge my CPAP battery and the nightclub across the street is on its usual Saturday night backbeat

17. Have not made out at all

18. I would like them to stay away from me but I'm as scared of hurting them as I am of them hurting me

19. I honestly don't know. I'd miss so many friendships if I did anything different. Causality is weird

20. I have not snogged someone, at least if I understand the term properly (open-mouth kiss?)

21. Be sleep deprived. And hopefully get back to my food stamps application

22. No. I am not psychologically able to be a good parent.

23. None currently. I got my earlobes pierced once but they never healed properly

24. Oh, English by a country mile. Spelling, grammar, analysis, writing, you name it.

25. Yeah

26. Sleep. Also for the temperature to stop getting so cold I have to break out the electric blanket

27. Great question. He probably thought I did? I think it was just his ego. He's obviously over it

28. Not technically, that I know of. Leia has other datemates but we agreed to that up front, and she doesn't have anyone else in my role. And the best we can figure, John dumped his previous ex mere hours before propositioning me, so not *technically* cheating?

29. Oh, probably. Hopefully. He deserved it

30. The difficulty of doing stuff "in bed" comfortably when your bed is a reclined driver's seat of a car

31. She says she does 🥰

32. Blue

33. BWAHAHAHAHA being fair i fucking earned them

34. I don't remember dreams much since I lost my job and don't have to get up on an alarm anymore. I think it was a stress dream about what if my new phone broke

35. Define "in front of". I last cried in a conversation with Leia, but it was over text. Generally I can't cry in front of people unless I'm so overloaded with stress that I shouldn't even *be* around people

36. Yep, right up until I snap and it's zero chances ever again

37. I have a near-eidetic memory and a deeply ingrained aversion to the ways forgiveness gets demanded of victims. I will take option three, "hit the bricks"

38. Christ, it better fucking not be. I deserve better than this

39. I was 36

40. Yeah

41. ... questions 41 through 50 appear to be missing, huh

51. Hard to choose, but Panera mac and cheese is right up there

52. No, and anybody who tries that shit on me in person can get cornered into a trauma-dump that won't end until I lose my voice

53. Turned on my CPAP machine

54. Really depends on the definition of cheating, and also whether you're talking about in relationships or on tests. There are plenty of people to whom any nonmonogamy is cheating

55. No. I'm too softhearted

56. Dear lord, I lost count by the time I was three. This is why I'm kind of baffled that it's been so long

57. Strongly depends on your definition. True as in faithful? As in one-and-only? As in at-first-sight? Something else?

58. "October's bright blue weather"

59. Hell yes. I missed it so much when I lived out Southwest

60. Not for legal purposes, but I'd like to have a handfasting or similar ceremony someday if we can ever afford it. I get jealous when my friends get married because I want to also have a day that's all about how much we love each other. And a really fancy dress

61. When Leia does, sure. Or a Southerner or drag queen who can pull it off. Random old men hitting on me, no

62. Lots of things. Music. Sunshine. Thunderstorms. Knitting. Geology. My shows and blorbos. Leia

63. Already have done and will again

64. Not clear on the question. If she was here it would be very easy for me to kiss her. But she is not here, and it would be more difficult for other people to kiss her

65. My best... look, opposite *sex* is a complicated enough concept when I'm technically intersex... but if you go to "best friend of the opposite AGAB", I think I only have three or four friends at most who fit the description? And my first thought is the one I've known the longest, who... I don't think does relationships? He certainly doesn't talk about them. So I just go sort of brain-broken out of the starting gate and do not have an answer. I suppose for argument's sake we'd discuss it like grown adults, as we have other things?

66. This quiz has gone weirdly heterosexual, huh. Same definitions as before, same friend has seen (and encouraged) me being on my bullshit for what has to be about fourteen years now, it'd have to be something pretty stiff to override that

67. I have absolutely no fucking idea? I mean, I was talking to Logan at the beginning of this quiz, he dropped by to poke me about being too attached to my regrets because that's one of his things. But he's fictionary and also in my head

68. That really depends on how you define deep. Maybe Kat?

69. I'd better, I have one ^_^ I've always been really against the concept of soulmates, because what if you never find them? Any relationship can work if both parties put in the effort. And yet... here she is, exactly what I wanted from the time I knew I wanted anything, exactly who I knew was missing and ached to find. I never used to want to believe in reincarnation because my life was so miserable that any other incarnation would have been preferable, but now I hope I find her in every life

70. Yeah, but she'd kick my ass for it 😘 I have to go on living and enjoy life, even if I lose her. That'll be infinitely harder. (I don't think I could write again. That or I'd go back to writing 500-word depression vignettes)

70 horrible questions ... Fuck it

01: Do you have a good relationship with your parents? 02: Who did you last say “I love you” to? 03: Do you regret anything? 04: Are you insecure? 05: What is your relationship status? 06: How do you want to die? 07: What did you last eat? 08: Played any sports? 09: Do you bite your nails? 10: When was your last physical fight? 11: Do you like someone? 12: Have you ever stayed up 48 hours? 13: Do you hate anyone at the moment? 14: Do you miss someone? 15: Have any pets? 16: How exactly are you feeling at the moment? 17: Ever made out in the bathroom? 18: Are you scared of spiders? 19: Would you go back in time if you were given the chance? 20: Where was the last place you snogged someone? 21: What are your plans for this weekend? 22: Do you want to have kids? How many? 23: Do you have piercings? How many? 24: What is/are/were your best subject(s)? 25: Do you miss anyone from your past? 26: What are you craving right now? 27: Have you ever broken someone’s heart? 28: Have you ever been cheated on? 29: Have you made a boyfriend/girlfriend cry? 30: What’s irritating you right now? 31: Does somebody love you? 32: What is your favourite color? 33: Do you have trust issues? 34: Who/what was your last dream about? 35: Who was the last person you cried in front of? 36: Do you give out second chances too easily? 37: Is it easier to forgive or forget? 38: Is this year the best year of your life? 39: How old were you when you had your first kiss? 40: Have you ever walked outside completely naked? 51: Favourite food? 52: Do you believe everything happens for a reason? 53: What is the last thing you did before you went to bed last night? 54: Is cheating ever okay? 55: Are you mean? 56: How many people have you fist fought? 57: Do you believe in true love? 58: Favourite weather? 59: Do you like the snow? 60: Do you wanna get married? 61: Is it cute when a boy/girl calls you baby? 62: What makes you happy? 63: Would you change your name? 64: Would it be hard to kiss the last person you kissed? 65: Your best friend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do? 66: Do you have a friend of the opposite sex who you can act your complete self around? 67: Who was the last person of the opposite sex you talked to? 68: Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with? 69: Do you believe in soulmates? 70: Is there anyone you would die for?

[fairest]

Killing Child at Zoo

There’s little hope. Although I heard Eileen Myles writes a big novel. I often return to them in moments of world fury. In the opening essay from The Importance of Being Iceland, Myles talks about how music can “circulate melancholy” more effectively than writing. When I was 25, Jeff Tweedy told me I wanted

a good life with a nose for things fresh wind and bright sky to enjoy my suffering

so that’s what I aimed for. And that’s what I got.

I keep seeing religious people. The Amish on a casino bus. The Sunday suits in the Naf Naf Grill. A man stops me outside Buffalo Exchange and asks, “are you Jewish?” I used to think, I’m only culturally Jewish? Now I think, I’m Jewish ungenosideickally?? There’s this billboard on I-55 that says, Cultural Jews got sent to the gas chambers, too. La-dee-da.

Outside the police station, a huddle of migrants. Casualties of Operation Lone Star. The older kids compare scooters, the babies wear candy cane jammies a month early. The parishioners cook the food. The lines get longer. The mayor has to do something. With good works, without weapons, Chicago fights the war brought to us by Catholic Charities of San Antonio.

A tart espresso from a suburban coffee bar. The Persian and/or Israeli girls I lusted over in the Best Buy walk out with a TV on a dolly. I stood behind Chromebooks to get a better view of their outstretched necks, gold earrings, furry purses, the heavy sweats tucked into Uggs. The daughters of Zion are haughty, the prophet Isaiah wrote, and the Lord will discover their secret parts. The scribes probably got hard every time they recopied those words. I know I do.

Out here in Niles, all is mall. I could start 200,000 wars. The local businesses shed hours, raise prices, clean Uggs. The diner says OPEN on its curbside sign, as if to remind customers and also the staff. Niles reminds me of “Hot Rotten Grass Smell,” the opening track on Wednesday’s Rat Saw God, and this Hopperesque lyric of Karly Hartzman’s:

neon sign at the nail salon turned off and the streetlights turned on.

I get back in the car singing a different song. The song that drove her crazy in 8th grade.

At the playground, I’m thinking about Billy Woods and his kid, the last verse on Maps. Woods sings, of his child, “Anything at all could happen to him.” There’s another Woods verse, in this warm vein, on the new Armand Hammer:

I write when my baby's asleep I sit in the room in the dark I listen to him breathe I walk 'em to school, then the park Hold they little hands when we cross the street I think about my brothers that's long gone and this was all they ever dreamed People I lost to COVID-19 but it ain't do a thing to the fiends.

I chat with a Dad whose wife is boring, and he’s also boring, and I don’t remember their names but I remember his wife’s extreme bob. What did the children do before they had these leaves to roll around in? I’m only good with the names of people I love. One day I’ll forget those, too. If I learned how to pronounce Fyodor Dostoevsky, I can learn how to pronounce…

In Washington D.C., residents are stealing toilet paper. This is the closest drugstore to the Catholic University of America, where this week, at the Novitate conference, intellectuals fulfill their contractual desire to discuss René Girard. The bill says, We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, the title of the new Armand Hammer. I wonder if any of the Novitate participants will end up at this black CVS and scurry back to the white light of Catholic University plenaries, to speak coldly about desire.

Our D.C. hosts, like most petite Romans we know, work for the bomb makers. They tell us this neighborhood is killing trees to build townhouses that start in the low $800s. The death of the trees fucks with the runoff from the storms, Kate says, giving us grape leaves, and the storms worsen every year. Kate’s into trees. Her cheeks the color of the Japanese maples that stretch over our courtyards back home. Because of the Israel-Hamas war, Kate isn’t quite speaking to her parents. Or her sisters. Or maybe even herself. Betsy and Kate met on Birthright. I like to think they kissed the same Egyptian dragster.

In the Naf Naf Grill, Diana tells me all the “stuff in the Middle East” made her want to watch Schindler’s List. The “stuff in the Middle East,” I say, picking sumac onions out of my falafel bowl, makes me want to watch Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac. Particularly the scene when Charlotte Gainsbourg wraps herself in Saran to stop masturbating. When I see Netanyahu, well, at first, he looks exactly like Putin. At first, he looks like Patrick Bateman, when he kills the child at the zoo, because Bateman, like Netanyahu, is “unable to maintain a credible public persona.” At first, he looks like Charlotte Gainsbourg masturbating herself out of plastic. At first, he looks like Yul Brynner’s hardened heart. At first, he looks like the toilet paper when it’s still got a little bit of shit on it. At first, he looks like Biden’s unwaxed floss with little bits of hot dog in it. I watch The Godfather. Find a shrink-wrapped copy at Rattleback Records, the Coppola restoration. Biden and his cronies are like Don Zaluchi in the meeting of the five families. They want to “control war as a business. Keep it respectable. We would keep the [drug] traffic,” Zaluchi says, “in the dark people, the coloreds. They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.”

A date with Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. I photograph Betsy and Leo in front of a spray of pink and purple balloons. I say, three separate drink cups. I say, the popcorn already has butter on it. I’m cold because I’m still sick. Unproductive coughs.

In the theater, Leo whispers in my ear, “Is Taylor Swift still alive?” How easy it would be to take my child’s life. How quickly he would disappear. Taylor Swift, though, will not disappear. Then again she’s a woman. Anything could happen to her. She’s one of Bob Dylan’s “six-time losers” hanging around Matthew Gasda’s theater. She’s Gasda’s “Big five novelist with a forthcoming debut (typically less daring than her conversation).” Or, as Swift herself puts that, “the jokes weren’t funny I took the money.” Even at this late date, running across the stage. A goddess of forms and surfaces. Like the star in Ariana Reines’s poem, “Mistral”:

Don’t you see That between the people who want To be machines and the machines That want to be people women Are still, still at this late date Running?

On the plane back from D.C., I’ll read Sam Kriss’s laborious (in the sense of, “requiring considerable effort and time”) article about René Girard. I like to read Harper’s on planes because the altitude makes me dumb. I’m a frequent flyer. I’m a lifelong subscriber.

To Harper’s, Christian Lorentzen posts a letter from Rome. He informs us, “Nothing matters.” Another Catskills Gaza one-liner. On the ground, I read his pitchy (in the Myles sense that “writing for pay is a little ‘pitchy’”) piece on Don DeLillo. The Bookforum pages, soaked in Canh Chua Tom broth, lay flat on our kitchen island. What is the systems novel? Is it polytheism? “The war over the appropriation of Jerusalem is today’s world war,” wrote the prophet Derrida. “It is taking place everywhere, it is the world, it is the singular figure of the world’s ‘out of joint’-ness today. The three messianic religions embroiled in rivalry are directly or indirectly mobilizing all the powers in the world and the entire world order for the ruthless war they are waging against one another.” Leo sees the picture of Don DeLillo in a pink button-down and asks, “Daddy, is that’s you?”

In the intro to Pathetic Literature, Myles writes that art is something with “secondary meaning.” We locate that meaning at the National Gallery, when I open the roof patio door and Betsy spots Katharina Fritsch’s Hahn/Cock. How could she miss this ginormous blue chicken. It reminds her of her father, who died suddenly. She breaks down for what feels like an hour. Enough time for me to run out of cold breath making sure Leo doesn’t break anything by Robert Indiana. Katharina Fritsch couldn’t have known her chicken would offer my wife the release she’d been searching for all morning. In the art game, you can’t distribute “secondary meaning” evenly, and every player rolls for broke.

Walking in Bowmanville, at an unemployed hour of afternoon, the child’s dress reminds me of some modern wing painter. The blues could be Kandinsky, the powdery reds Belle and Sebastian. The child gathers orange and gold leaves in a silver kitchen colander. The grandmother says, “Hello.” The thought enters my head that I can steal this child, murder this grandmother, kill the child, too, bury it by the Metra tracks. Nobody’ll find me. Circulate melancholy. It’s genre fiction baby killers get caught.

“Killing Child at Zoo” comes later in American Psycho. Patrick Bateman, “unable to maintain a credible public persona,” is sleeping in “twenty-minute intervals” after eating one of his impossible foods, a salad with “foie gras vinegar.” He heads to the Central Park zoo. The surrounding buildings, like Trump Plaza and the AT&T building, “heighten its unnaturalness.” After calling a bathroom attendant the n-word, Bateman sees a mother breastfeeding, which “awakens something awful in me.”

He perks up when he spots the child. Offers him a cookie. “But before the child can answer, my sudden lack of care crests into a massive wave of fury and I pull the knife out of my pocket and I stab him quickly, in the neck.” When the child’s mother, “homely, Jewish-looking, overweight,” finds her dying son, she makes a sound Bateman, if not Ellis, “cannot describe,” and this monotheistic sound is the sound in my head as I spare the grandmother and child.

Bateman reasons it away, typical for him, in one of American Psycho’s Victorian moments of accountability.

Though I am satisfied at first by my actions, I’m suddenly jolted with a mournful despair at how useless, how extraordinarily painless, it is to take a child’s life. This thing before me, small and twisted and bloody, has no real history, no worthwhile past, nothing is really lost. It’s so much worse (and more pleasurable) taking the life of someone who has hit his or her prime, who has the beginnings of a full history, a spouse, a network of friends, a career, whose death will upset far more people whose capacity for grief is limitless than a child’s would, perhaps ruin many more lives than just the meaningless, puny death of this boy.

In The Missing of the Somme, Geoff Dyer and chums do a car tour of the Western Front. They eat. Drink. Make jokes about Wilfred Owen poems. It rains. It’s cold. In Ypres, they stay in an “expensive cheap hotel” with “towels the size of napkins, burn marks on the dresser.” Dyer quotes the writer Stephen Graham, writing about the post-war Ypres of the 1920s, when “death and the ruins completely outweighed the living. It is easy to imagine someone who had no insoluble ties killing himself here, drawn to the lodestone of death. There is a pull from the other world, a drag on the heart and spirit.”

I could kill myself in Gaza. Are there reasonable flights? At first, Netanyahu kills comedy, like Kramer saying the n-word umpteen times. There were many words that you could not stand to hear,” Hemingway wrote of World War I, “and finally only the names of places had dignity.” To native English speakers, who rarely suffer but protest much, Gaza is a graffiti-sounding word, like Even or Once or demise stylized as Dmise. I saw Dmise above a Chinatown garbage can. At least we can pronounce Gaza, unlike Ypres.

No matter what Leo hits, I let him run the bases, get his home run. Then I get my chance at bat. But when I run around the bases, Leo just stands at 3rd base, waiting for me to come home. Before I can, he tags me out.

“I think my strategy is better than yours,” he says on the walk home. This is the first time I hear him use the word strategy and one of my thoughts is, post your child’s revelations online, like Don DeLillo wearing his pink shirt.

I press Leo on his strategy. “Well, Daddy, your strategy is just, chase me. But you never catch up. My strategy is, stand and wait to get you out. My strategy is better than yours.” So my child does understand war.

Suddenly Zionist friends who moved to Townhouse, California. When will the suffering cease? The husband and I saw Father John Misty once. When Misty sang “Total Entertainment Forever,” which begins

bedding Taylor Swift every night inside the Oculus Rift after mister and the missus finish dinner and the dishes,

in Milwaukee, I felt the absence of the horns that play on the studio album. My friend didn’t. Not all of us circulate the same melancholy. Still, I miss him. I miss those abandoned futures.

[bratshaws]

goodness gracious 29. brb x oc

a/n: this chapter went everywhere three times before I wrote this version down. Also, when I found out that a+ man beef Bradley Bradshaw speaks Spanish I love my fucking mind.

check out the fic's playlist made by the sweet @wiipes !!

pairing: plus size!oc x rooster

warnings: mentions of Carole's disease, Bradley deals with a lot of shit :(, Bea worries a lot.

chapters:

1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11/12/13/14/15/16/17/18/19/20/21/22/23/24/25/26/27/28

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-

“BALL!”

Beatrice quickly snatched her head towards the direction of the said ball, cupping her hands together to toss it over the net, hitting the opposite side with a slam.  It’s their first day of practice, their team of six separated into three so they’d play against each other in this empty open gym.

She didn’t know how Evelyn did it, maybe her parents helped her out a bit - not that she’d ask her about it - on keeping it vacant until they were done. Beatrice,Shells and Carmen were together, while Evelyn, Eliza and Jennifer were the opposing ‘team.’ Beatrice now remembered why Evelyn was team captain, denying as she might, she had the presence of a Navy Vice-Admiral within herself. She commanded the court without ever raising her voice and her firm stares were enough to understand where everyone was doing something wrong.

She was serious about this game, just like she was with everything else, with an eagle’s focus on doing a good job no matter what. Beatrice admired that so much, she wished she could have just the smidge of confidence Evelyn had for certain situations. She was still nervous about this game, nervous about the other team, nervous about letting people down.

Evelyn didn’t tell them much about who they’d be playing up against only that they are a professional team. She didn’t prod Evelyn either, she knew that the other woman would share information with the others when she felt like it. They stopped the practice a few times whenever Evelyn commented how their poses were off or if their set wasn’t strong enough.

It was intense but it had a good reason to be. “Alright,” Evelyn says after they’ve been practicing for one whole hour, “Water break guys.” She keeps the ball next to her side, following the other women as they sit on the benches close to the water cooler. They were sweating and panting like dogs, it’s been a while since they had such a strenuous workout like that. Even if she and Shells had Tiff’s class, their bodies got used to it now but when it came  to volleyball their joints just screamed from time to time thanks to disuse.

Carmen was the first to break the silence when the others were still drinking water, “Hey Ev, what can you tell us about this other team?” she asks, her bright pink hair pulled up in a ponytail with some strands sticking to her temples and forehead.

Evelyn thought about it, bringing the water to her lips to take a sip, “They are ‘professional’,” she air quoted, “As in they were part of regional championships but had…certain issues.”

“Issues?” Eliza asks, her hazel eyes shining with worry, “What issues?”

“Temperamental issues.” She says, “They are a bit over the top and think they are great. I actually met their team captain back when Prof.Richards told me and she is…” Evelyn’s face grimaces for a second, “...something else.”

Jennifer, the youngest of them all at the age of twenty three, scratched her hair underneath the headband with a frown, “So they won’t make this easy on us.”

“Nope, doesn’t help they are all clearly younger than we are.” Evelyn says, “They are eighteen to nineteen at best, the captain actually called me old timer.” The collective gasp of surprise and disgust echoed around the empty gym, but this was Evelyn and Evelyn always had a comeback, “So I just told her to fix her diapers before talking to me and I don’t think she appreciated it.”

They laughed together, but Beatrice furrowed her eyebrows with worry with her chuckle faltering into silence, squeezing the edges of the bench they were seated with a frown, “They will come at us with a vengeance.” she whispers, “You said they had temperamental issues, they’ll definitely throw insults at us…or worse.”

“I’d like to see them try and pick a fight with us,” Shells laughed, “I know karate, I can put them down in seconds.”

They all stared at the blonde with confused glances, Carmen arching one eyebrow “Weren’t you like eight years old when you left karate class?”

“I still know the basics!”

Evelyn frowns, holding up a hand to stop the conversation, “We are not going to beat anyone up.” Shells deflated with a scowl, crossing her arms over her bust, “This is for charity, we are just doing this because Professor Richards was one of the nicest people while we were in college, this is just a favor to him.”

The other girls quietly nodded, Shells muttering a ‘this is some bullshit’ under her breath before they got back to practice. She couldn’t say if it was because Evelyn explained the opposite team would be younger than they were or because they got a bit pissed about the captain calling Evelyn an old timer - which was messed up since her and Beatrice are both twenty nine, so she took offense to it as well- but they were a lot better than one hour ago.

Fire in their eyes as they tossed the ball back and forth, no score in mind, but Beatrice’s side definitely won according to Shells. Their time was up when they heard people wandering inside, quickly grabbing their things to get out of there and give them space while still regaining their breathing.

Beatrice stepped out and immediately smiled, seeing the Blue Bronco parked not too far from there with Bradley leaning on the hood with his hands on his pockets. He tilted his head in her direction when he heard the sound of voices, smirking as he pushed his lower back off the hood, “Who’s that?” she heard Carmen ask, watching Beatrice speed up her step to meet Bradley halfway, “Wait, that’s Bea’s boyfriend??”

“We told you she was dating,” Shells added, trying to hold back a snicker when the three other women just stared wide eyed, “Why the shock?”

“God, good for her,”Eliza commented, “She deserves someone better than that prick.”

“He’s really tall,” Jennifer whispers, still staring at Bradley and Beatrice, “And big,where did Bea find him anyway??”

“At the Hard Deck, he’s an aviator.” Evelyn said, she knew the three women had no malice in their questioning and no second guesses if Beatrice deserved Bradley or not. They were just genuinely surprised, and happy, that Beatrice had someone. “You guys know she’s working there.”

“I mean, yes,” Eliza adds, “But wow, what does the Navy give their pilots? I expected them to be…I don't know, skinnier.”

Meanwhile, Beatrice leaned up to kiss his lips with a little smile, completely oblivious to her friends chatting a bit farther from them, “Hey, gorgeous,” he coos, “How was practice?”

“It was fine!’ she replies with a smile, “I’m a bit sore but it’s okay, I just need to get used to it again.” She turns her head to where her friends were, seeing they were all in a circle talking amongst themselves Evelyn looks back at Bea, giving her a smile and a ‘go on’ motion with her hand, signaling she didn’t have to stay. The brunette nods, waving them all goodbye as Bradley takes her bag from her hands, tossing it on the backseat before they get inside.

Beatrice sighs, frowning at how sticky she is thanks to sweat, pulling her ponytail up into a bun to cool her neck a bit more. When he drives them away from the open gym, his eyes dart to the left with a furrow of his brows. He didn’t know if he was seeing things, but he was sure he saw the same red truck from the supermarket back on Halloween on the opposite side of the street, parked with its windows up.

Something inside of him made him keep his eyes on the truck by the rear view mirror until it disappeared. Now, he could be very wrong and it was just a coincidence that a similar truck was parked close to an area where Beatrice would be, but the back of his mind told him to keep that truck’s memory fresh in case he’d need to.  Again he chose to not tell Beatrice, not yet at least, seeing it would only make her feel nervous about coming back.

He couldn’t see the plate numbers from where he was, but he noticed there was a bulldog decal glued to the trunk, a simple white one of a bulldog growling at the viewer. Bradley moved his gaze away when they were far enough, trying to shake the uneasy feeling when Beatrice talked to him about the game and the team they’d go against. There was a pang in his heart when she said the other team called Evelyn, a twenty nine years old, an old timer. “Ouch,” he touches his chest, “What does that make me then?”

“They were just stooping low, Roos,” she says, laughing at him, “The girl wanted a reaction out of Ev and she just told her to change her diapers before talking shit.And if I’m completely honest you look nothing like your age.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I mean, Leo is one year older than you and he had a bit of a breakdown when I told him how old you were.” she says, shrugging, “So you look a lot younger than you are.”

Rooster chuckled, puffing his chest as the words hit his ears, straightening himself on the seat. That was an ego booster if he ever saw one, he couldn’t lie. He had a giddy smile on his lips as he repeated the words over and over in his head, “I’m flattered.” he says, dropping one of his big hands from the wheel to her thigh, rubbing the fabric of her leggings as he drove them away. 

After taking a quick shower once she got home, she couldn’t help but take a good look at her bare reflection. Normally she wouldn’t do that, but she’s been noticing how easier it has become after a few months, having someone like Bradley being so…interested, certainly helped.

He called her a goddess. Never would Beatrice describe herself as one, she could call herself pretty, but a goddess? Her damp hair framed her face, water droplets sliding down her neck to the valley of her breasts, disappearing on the curve of her stomach. While she hasn’t changed much physically - she still had her soft stomach and hips- Tiff’s class certainly gave her more muscles than she thought it would.

Her thighs were firmer now as did her arms, but she still remained the same as she was even before she joined. Beatrice bit her lower lip, running her fingers to a fading hickey on the side of her neck, twisting her body and seeing that the one on her left buttcheek was disappearing as well. 

She smiled however, even if her cheeks reddened with the memories of these past days or how Rooster decided he’d spend most of his leave with her, in her house, even bringing some of his stuff to sleep in. And he loved her. He loved her without any shame within himself. She cupped her own cheeks, feeling the warm flesh touch her cooling palms, closing her eyes with a smile.

It was a dream come true. Something people said a girl like her would never get unless she changed her body. But he got interested in her, with her body like this! God and he was so, dare she say it, insatiable in a way she had never had someone feel for her before. It’s the way he’d rake his eyes down her body, or how he’d kiss her neck or how he’d pick her up in his arms during love making. When he talked to her before they went to the wedding, about how he didn’t want her to doubt herself around him, she was surprised she didn’t cry.

Maybe that’s why the confession came out like it did, from both of them, she felt so relieved and happy with him. She wouldn’t trade this feeling for the world. With one final smile at her reflection, she slipped on dark jeans, a white t-shirt and a red and green flannel before she walked out towards the stairs.

She blinked in surprise seeing him at the bottom of the stairs, supporting himself on the railing and smiling up at her, “I’m sorry,” she said softly while her feet padded down the steps, “Did I take too long?”

“No, I just wanted to be here when you walked out.” he says with a grin, letting go of the railing to pick her up, supporting her ass on his arms and carrying her down the rest of the way. She laughed, holding herself upright by hugging his neck, thanking him once he put her down, “You look very comfortable.”

Beatrice smiled, the sleeves of her flannel fell over her hands - just how she liked it - before she pulled the sleeves up to run her hand through her hair, “I am. I really needed a shower, especially after today.”

Rooster followed her to her kitchen, where she opened a cabinet to pick up a glass and fill it with water. Beatrice blinked, seeing he was just leaning against the wall, staring at her in silence, “What?” she asks with a confused smile, watching him shake his head with a little grin.

“I just like looking at you.” he murmurs, loving how her cheeks immediately redden and she picks up her glass of water, “Because you are just so pretty.”

“Oh my God, stop.” she giggles, looking away from him only for Rooster to step behind her, tugging her close to himself from behind. She looks up at him with her lashes fluttering, “You just like making me blush.”

“That I do, I won’t deny it.” He finishes his sentence by pressing a noisy kiss to her lips, “You still up for going out?”

Beatrice smiled brightly, “Yes! I haven’t been to an amusement park in years!” she says, when he suggested the two of them went earlier that morning she couldn’t hide her excitement. She always loved amusement parks, it was always so fun for her…also when you have a large family, it’s good to have options of what to do when it comes to entertainment. 

Truth is, neither had he and while he had a bit of a distaste when it came to clowns, he couldn’t help but think that’d be a good time for them to spend together. Plus, it was Wednesday, so it wouldn't have a lot of people.

-

There were a lot of people. 

Rooster and Beatrice watched with wide eyes as the crowd moved about the amusement park. While not a huge park, it still had attractions that called people’s attention like roller coasters and a ferris wheel and several stands with food or prizes. 

Beatrice pursed her lips, her hand clasped to his as she looked at the people walking by through her sunglasses, “Well,” she begins, “It’s not so bad, right?”

“It’s not, no,” he says, leading the two ahead. He really thought that there would be less people, if not because it was the middle of the week, because the weather was getting colder. But alas, neither of those prevented people from coming. “Where do you want to go first?” 

“I don’t mind!” she smiles, getting closer to him “Let’s just walk around a bit.”

“Sounds good to me,” he says, bringing her closer to him to press a kiss to her scalp, his arm draped over her shoulders as her fingers played with his. Sure there were a lot of things to do and games to play, but they weren’t in a hurry.

He had a fourteen days leave and god damn it he’d enjoy it however he pleased. And if he wanted to spend it at an amusement park with his girlfriend, he’d do so. He did however flinch when he saw a clown giving balloons to kids not too far from them, subtly trying to avoid the colorful man and hoping Bea wouldn’t notice, but she did, turning her head up to him, “You don’t like clowns?”

Bradley just kept the clown within his line of vision, memories of when he was a little boy and had the unfortunate luck of finding the It miniseries by accident. He had never really recovered from the fear, even if it was small now, part of him was still hesitant about approaching the jolly entertainers, “Not really.”

Beatrice smiled, hugging his torso, “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.” she says, leaning up to kiss the curve of his jawline but didn’t stop walking when he turned them away from the clown, going farther and farther until the man disappeared from their view. 

He smiles, kissing her scalp one more time,“Going to protect me from harm, are you?” he joked, but he didn’t expect Beatrice to look at him right in the eyes with her face firm, telling she’d always try her best to. God he loved her so much. 

But her attention went somewhere else, her head tilting up when she saw they were approaching the ferris wheel, “Oh wow!” she says, stepping closer to the silver and blue ride “It’s huge! Can we go? The ferris wheel was always my favorite ride!”

Bradley just nodded with a smile, that only got wider when they got in line and she kept looking up. There was something about Beatrice being so excited about stuff that warmed his heart a lot, it was so endearingly genuine, like she wanted to enjoy every second of it no matter how mundane it’d be.

They entered one of the round cabins, sitting next to each other, with Beatrice immediately looking behind her to watch the wheel move up as she lifted the sunglasses to her hairline. “I love this.” she whispers, sitting on her knees as they get even higher, her happy gasp when they could see the horizon - the blue turning into purples and pinks as the sun went down - was one of his favorite sounds, “It’s like we are flying….I-I mean, not that we are– you know how it is to fly, I just mean we are very high.”

“I know gorgeous,” he says, leaning back on the seat to look down to the ground, where the people turned into moving colorful dots the higher they got, hooking his sunglasses on the collar of his white tee. Their cabin stopped on top of the wheel, “Why is this your favorite ride?”

Beatrice is still looking ahead when she says it, a wistful smile on her face, “I dunno, I just like this a lot. I was never one for roller coasters or intense rides like that…me and my nonna would come to the ferris wheel and just spend time here quite often.” she giggles, “Sometimes we’d try to sneak back in line to go again, but never really worked.”

“You two seemed very close.”

Beatrice’s smile dimmed and she sat back down on the soft pleather covered seats as she looked at him, “We were.” she says quietly, “I don’t know, she had a very young soul and always said to live life to the fullest. One time, she picked me up from school and took me to a spa.” she chuckles softly, reminiscing, “Then we went out for ice cream and she brought me home past curfew time. She did tell my parents, but they thought I was with her at her book club.”

Bradley’s own gaze softened when her voice lowered volume, he could identify the pain in her eyes easily when talking about her nonna. “When I was a kid,” he begins, startling her out of her sad thoughts, “My mom and I used to go on the bumper cars. It was dingy, clearly dangerous and there was rust everywhere, but it was so fun. We’d always use the blue car because it was my favorite color.”

Now it was her time to soften her gaze at him, smiling sweetly, “She sounds amazing,” she whispers, “She seemed to be a lot of fun.”

Bradley smiles, “She was.” but then inhaled sharply, scratching his jaw - he still remembered the last image of his mother was of her lying on the couch watching tv - “It’s been…a few years since she passed.” he got home and she wasn’t moving anymore, he couldn’t even call the ambulance with how much his hands were shaking. 

Mav? He couldn’t call Mav. He was alone now, God he was so alone. He was alone and scared and he wanted his mother back and his father and Mav– a soft touch made him snap out of his thoughts, Beatrice’s thumb rubbing his cheek.

She just looked at him with an worried gaze, before she engulfed him in a hug, pressing his face to her shoulder while her hand caressed the back of his head, “It’s okay Brad,” she whispers and he feels his shoulders easing the shuddering and his own breathing calming down, “It’s okay.”

He hadn’t even noticed he was shaking, nor that he was breathing hard, nor that there were tears coming out of his eyes. He just wrapped his arms around Bea’s waist, clenching his eyes shut tight while trying to calm down. He was reminded of how Beatrice told him he made her feel safe and… he noticed that she made him feel safe too. Normally he’d go through these moments alone, in his room, sometimes in his office because he didn’t want anyone to know it, but it felt so good to have her with him.

His heartbeat slowed down and his mind drained out the dark thoughts of what he could’ve done, what he should’ve done, why wasn’t he faster and why hadn’t he paid more attention when she started showing symptoms. His mind only had the soft shushing of her voice and the smell of lavender. She kept caressing his hair, gently combing the golden-brown strands with her fingers, the soft fabric of her flannel shirt reminding him of a blanket with how soft it was, “It’s okay,” she repeated, “You are okay.”

He was okay. He wasn’t alone anymore.

Bradley inhales her perfume one last time before he pulls his head up, his hand coming up to wipe his eyes but she’s faster. She brings the sleeve up to her hand, gently dabbing the tears away from his cheeks “I’m sorry,” she says “I shouldn’t have brought it up.” he’s shaking his head but she continues, ‘I-I didn’t mean to-”

“Bea, stop,” he holds her hand, sniffling to himself, “You don’t–don’t have to apologize. You really don’t.”

“But–”

“No, no,” he sighs, “You couldn’t have known this would happen.” she still looks worried, her own eyes shining with tears as she fidgets with the ends of her now damp sleeve, “Bea…look at me,” she does with much hesitance, her eyebrows curved downwards and big green eyes glazed, “I’m serious, I’m not mad at you…I…” his own words felt stuck to his throat, so he tried to regain his thinking process, “...I’m usually alone when this happens.”

“Alone?” Beatrice frowns, “Brad…”

“I know,” he chuckles sadly, leaning back against the seat and rubbing his hand over his face, “Yeah…fucking sucks. But it’s not your fault, it really isn’t, okay? I know you didn’t mean to…I just remembered a lot of stuff I hadn’t thought about in a while.”

She still didn’t seem convinced if her expression was any giveaway, pushing herself away from him with a deeper frown. Bradley knew, he knew she was beating herself for what happened and overthinking on how that would affect how he saw her.”Gorgeous,” she says nothing, nor moves, “Gorgeous look at me.” she shakes her head, biting her lower lip hard with her fingers clenched together so tight he could see them turning pale. “Bea,” he scoots closer, grabbing her clenched hands in his, rubbing her fingers to bring the circulation back, “Bea, I am not mad at you.”

She gives him a suspicious side glance, “I’m not, I swear.” he brings her hands to his lips, kissing her soft skin before he places her hands on his cheeks just like she does on her own. He keeps her hands there, noticing how her shoulders slowly relaxed and her worried gaze moved back to him.

“...are you sure?’ she asks quietly, looking at him by the corner of her eye.

“I am very sure.” he says, still keeping her hands on his cheeks, “You didn’t know, you made an innocent comment.”

Beatrice looked away from him then returned her gaze, “...okay…” she murmurs, “If…if you are sure…” Bea said quietly, their bodies jolting a bit when the cabin finally moved back down. He stepped out first when they reached the bottom, offering her his hand to which she hesitantly took, keeping her eyes on her shoes or around herself. 

Stupid girl, stupid girl…tsk tsk tsk. Can’t you keep your fucking mouth shut? You’ll lose him, you’ll lose him forever now. You did it. 

Beatrice closed her eyes briefly, letting Rooster guide them through the crowd as she tried to calm herself down now. She hated thinking that her words triggered something out of him, even if it wasn’t intentional, she didn’t want to repeat it. Blinking her eyes open, her vision sharpening to her surroundings, she noticed they had stopped walking and Bradley was looking at her, “...I’m fine!”

“You are blaming yourself.” he says softly, “For something that wasn’t your fault.”

She tries to reply but she’s only able to move her mouth without words coming out, her fingers digging on the fabric of her flannel shirt before she just nodded mutely. She didn’t agree it wasn’t her fault, but she did agree she was blaming herself.

Bradley sighs, taking her to the side of the Haunted House, leaning against the green and purple walls with his hand still holding hers, “I’m serious when I said I wasn’t mad.” she chewed her lower lip again, “I haven’t talked about my mom for a while, you couldn’t have known.”

“But I should–”

“Be careful?” he suggests, “When talking about my mom? I don’t want you to do that, Bea.” she frowns, looking at their joined hands instead of his brown eyes, “I like talking about her, I love talking about her and I wouldn’t want anything more than to talk about her with you.” he got closer to Beatrice, wrapping his arms around her in a hug, her closed fists pressed against his chest as she stood immobile, “You are my girl, you are the woman I love…I’d want to share about her with no one else but you.”

Beatrice made a sound against his chest, then tilted her head up to look at him, looking to where one of her fingers was following the leaves design on his shirt. “...okay, Brad.”

“Okay?” he arched one eyebrow, “For real this time?”

“For real.” She looks up at him with a tiny smile, making him sigh out in relief, kissing the top of her head before he pulls back from the hug. She does feel a bit better, the angry gremlin like voice in the back of her head disappearing until there wasn’t anything else. He brings her close to his side, regaining the same position from when they got to the park a few minutes ago.

The sun was setting and the families in the park were switched now by couples and groups of young adults. The temperature also dropped, making Bea snuggle closer to Bradley and then blink up at him, “How are you not cold?” she asks, looking at his short sleeved Hawaiian shirt, with surprise. 

“Well, someone called me very hot once, as I recall.” he says, smirking down at her and her blooming red cheeks, “So I don’t care much for cold.” Bradley leans down to kiss her head yet again, his free hand sliding into his front pocket as they walk without any hurry through the rest of the amusement park.

Neither of them felt like going to the other rides, honestly they were just happy to walk around. With what happened earlier now in the back of their minds, they thought about enjoying the night before it got too cold for them to stay out.

However, they did have a lot of fun at the games of skill, with Beatrice winning a large elephant plush she’d definitely give to Bianca and Bradley winning Beatrice glowing rings that would run out of battery the second they stepped out of the park. But she did kiss him in thanks either way.

Now they were both sitting on the hood of his car, sharing a huge pink cotton candy as they watched the people walk into the park they were minutes ago. She let the sugar melt in her tongue before speaking, “You know what was my favorite park food?” he rips another piece of the cotton candy with a questioning sound, “Candy apples, not caramel apples. The red ones with the sugar layer around them.”

“You mean the fucking rocks that taste like apples and are meant to break your teeth?” he laughs, then slaps his hand over his heart. “Also, ow? How the hell do you think they are better than caramel apples?”

“I mean, caramel apples are nice,” she smiles at his offended ‘nice??’, eating another piece of the artificially colored sugar cloud “But they lack the crunch.”

“You can put literally anything on a caramel apple to make it crunchy.”

“Sure but then you lose the taste of caramel.”

Bradley huffs, ripping a huge chunk of cotton candy and shoving it into his mouth, “Caramel apples are far superior babe. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to greatly disagree with you.”

Beatrice giggled, bumping his shoulder playfully before offering more of the sweet treat, “We’ll agree to disagree then.” She taps the heels of her boots together as they sit there, tilting her head up to the sky to see the stars glinting above their heads. Once they are done with the cotton candy, Bradley tosses it on the trash can as if it was a basketball. The stick flips in the air before landing inside with a metallic ‘twang’ and her boyfriend fist pumps at the victory.

Beatrice’s smile widens as she tilts her head at him, moving closer so there was no space between them. He lowers his arm so it lands on the expanse of her thigh and his head turns so he kisses her forehead, his mustache tickling her scalp when he does so, “You know, I noticed we had dessert before dinner.”

“Would cotton candy even be considered dessert?”

He tilts his head to the side, “True…caramel apples would be considered dessert since they are so much better than candy apples.” he purses his lips with a smile, giving her an amused look.

“...I’ll ignore what you said so I can ask you if you want to have dinner.” she giggles, “Do you want to have dinner?”

“Hell yeah,” he pushes himself off the hood, then turns around to pick her up by the waist and lift her up before she could do it herself, “I’m feeling…tacos.”

“Tacos?”

“Quesabirria tacos to be exact.” he says with a grin, “They are so fucking good. There’s a food truck that has the best quesabirria tacos I’ve had in ages. Ooh, or al pastor too. Maybe some chicharrón too if I feel like it.”

Beatrice blinks at him with a confused smile, “That was the smoothest Spanish I’ve heard.”

Bradley grins, “Cariño, hablo español.” he says with a shrug, enjoying how Beatrice stared at him with wide eyes and her face turning a violent shade of red, “¿Qué? Soy un hombre lleno de sorpresas mi amor.” he leaned down to press a kiss to her parted lips, his poor girlfriend looking like she forgot how to speak, “Come on babe, do you want tacos or not?”

Beatrice blinked her shock away, then followed Brad inside the Bronco still digesting her boyfriend spoke Spanish as fluently as if he was a native speaker.

He was indeed full of surprises.