#and actually what's happening is that it makes white people more comfortable to think of us as white because they think whiteness is better

[sureuncertainty]

if i have to see one more post about disney from people who don't work here or at least live in the area i'm gonna lose it

[queer-reader-07]

where's that one tweet that's like "is olivia rodrigo actually white passing or have y'all just never seen a wasian before?" because good god i am so tired of seeing people's batshit racist takes on mixed people

[dunmeshistash]

Okay I think I'm ready to write the second part of this post about Milsiril

To make it easier for me I'll just divide this into her relationship with Kabru, Mithrun and Helki (her ex-canary prisoner teammate)

First about Kabru

This is an extra from the daydream hour 5. The caption says "Something like this might as well have happened" so its probably not canon but could be. I honestly think his reaction to Milsiril visiting and being overbearing says a lot about the type of relantionship they have. This is the fakest bitch in the whole of dungeon meshi, he never says what he trully thinks unless there's an advantage to doing so, he's a people pleaser that does and says anything to make people like/trust him. And yet he immediatly converts into "Mooooooom you're embarassing meeeeee" when he sees it's Milsiril.

This translation used "Mom" but as I understand the original he uses the more formal version so I think it would be closer to "Mother" but still he acknowleges her as his Mother, and he acts like her kid in every interaction we see between them.

I really don't understand where the idea that he learned to be fake from being "forced" to be her adoptive son comes from.

(Continuing under a cut)

The other interaction we see between them is the Kabru extra from the Adventurer's Bible

Kabru comes to her with a deep fear he clearly has had even before she adopted him, he trusted her with this fear and she did not disappoint him, she comforted him and then gave him the information he needed to believe what she was saying

I'd also like to point out in no moment she discouraged him from calling his his bio-mom "Mom". He also says she taught her children everything they asked

I doubt this would only be true for him, it also mirrors something she said in the manga

"You can go ahead and learn all you want about something else." I believe it when Kabru says she made every effort to answer her children's questions. I think this is also the way she expresses the love she has for them. Plus I love the thought bubble with Kabru mirroring what he learned from her. I also love this daydream hour, she sacrifices her own comfort to do something for Kabru.

Milsiril isn't a perfect mother tho, besides the fact she is overprotective she comes from a very different culture from her children. I like to call her Kabru's white mom cause I think that would be the real world equivalent. This extra is the one I think the most about showing this context perfectly

Kabru wants to share Utaya sweets but looks at his mom looking gloomy/rejected so he talks about fruitcake instead. This very rude for Milsiril to do since she's kinda trying to overwrite his actual cultural background, but I think its done more as a "I want you to like the things I like" rather than something nefarious, and once again Kabru doesn't hide at all his distaste for it, he does the bare minimum to please his mom since she's being dramatic but he doesn't lie to her, he shows how displeased he is about fruitcake, something he refuses to do when eating the harpy omelette that is way worse, because he must make a good impression for Laios. Kabru is honest with his overbearing white mom once again.

Now a little about Rin, from Kabru's context, this is her extra in the Adventurer's Bible

(look at Helki he's such a gremlin i love him) anyway, Rin has a trauma about elves, they really mistreated her so she hates them, but when they notice she isn't thriving they go to Milsiril for help (Helki specifically I'll talk more about him next). I think this indicates she really has a better understanding of short lived kids, her kids are thriving differently from the ones the other elves try to care for. I'd also like to remember she lives secluded from other elves so while Kabru probably had lots of interactions with elves during his life, most of it was probably spent with Milsiril and her other adoptive kids. She also asks Kabru if he would do this to help Rin, he isn't being forced or anything, I also think it's good that Milsiril knows she cant take in any more kids, this to me shows she's worried about the quality of life her kids have. That is all to say, Rin is the one with elf trauma, not Kabru, because Kabru had Milsiril to shelter him from them.

Helki

This will be short and sweet since there's barely anything about Helki, he's her prisioner companion from her time in the canaries, but he was pardoned after Utaya, it says so in the Canarie's Structure page in the new adventurer's guide but I cant really find it translated again... so here's google's machine translation (I remember it saying "Retired and pardoned as a reward after Utaya", something like that)

so officially he isn't a prisoner anymore, but I think he still works as a canary, even so he and Milsiril seem quite close, he is the one to go talk to her about Rin, He is there when she's training Kabru (both laughing at Kabru and then participating). I saw people theorizing she stays close to him because he is also someone who she can feel superior to, but I don't believe it at all, he's STILL in contact with her even after they have nothing to with each other, I think they really have a friendship, and there's no point where it seems like she feels like she's better than him or that he's less than her, people seem to interpret Milsiril and her relationships in the worst possible ways every time and I don't understand why.

This segways into Mithrun

I've also seen people assuming she only got close to Mithrun because now he needs her and has no power over her, once again with the theory that Milsiril surrounds herself with people she can feel superior to. But once again, Milsiril had a change of perspective about Mithrun after seeing his Dungeon

Rather than she feeling superior to him I think rather she realized he was just like her. (And I think she's friends with Helki for a similar reason, it's probably easier to see him as an equal than other nobles)

I've also seen this part used as proof of that. "He said that you've got suspicious ulterior motives and that I shouldn't listen to you" as if that's true, but this is past Mithrun, the one that didn't trust anyone and thought ill of all his teammates, ofc he doesn't believe someone would help him without an ulterior motive. This doesn't prove much about her real motivations.

Also before she showed up, Mithrun was being cared for by servants hired by his brother, he isn't someone helpless she has power over, he is still a member of an important Noble family that has a caring brother providing for him, he can do without Milsiril, he had done without her for 20 years before Utaya happened and she quit the Canaries.

This is all to say I think Milsiril is just a white(elf) adoptive mom doing her best, I don't see much of anything nefarious about her or her motivations, she is flawed as all the dunmeshi characters are, she isn't a perfect mom, she isn't an evil mom, she's just a person.

Elves in general also see short lived species as "children" so I imagine this makes her "You'll always be my baby" attitude way worse, she really treats pre-teen/teen Kabru like he's a toddler sometimes. But she also respected him enough to go all out in training him. I think they're a family with everything that entails.

PS: I didn't get much into Interracial adoption since this is something that happens irl too and I don't know much about all the issues that entails, but in the end, in this case, it seems like a net positive for the kids she adopts considering all we see about how she raised Kabru.

[leikeliscomet]

I genuinely think the reason people leave out Black asexuals and aromantics is because we contradict too much. To fully acknowledge Black asexuality and aromanticism means questioning the idea sexual & romantic absence = whiteness. Why do you think asexual and aromantic = sexless and why sexless = white. It means unpacking what is so non-asexual about Blackness. What is so non-aromantic about Blackness. It means unpacking why Black lovelessness is uniquely heartless. It means unpacking why you're comfortable with the exclusion of Black love, but are scared by Black lovelessness. It means unpacking why you think Black asexuality can't exist outside of Black desexualisation. It means unpacking why you think Black aromanticism can't exist outside sexualisation. And vice versa. It means unpacking why don't think Black people have the actual autonomy to be ace and/or aro. It means unpacking why people more marginalised than you can make space for asexuality and aromanticism when you can't, despite it being an 'oppressor' identity. It means unpacking why the only mainstream representations of Black asexuality and aromanticism that could exist are the Mammy and the Jezebel and Mandingo. It means unpacking that sexless and loveless Black people don't benefit from these tropes. It means unpacking why sexlessness and lovelessness is seen as purity and why Black ace and/or aro people don't to be 'pure'. It means not only asking why asexuality and aromanticism is associated with being white, but actively asking why asexuality and aromanticism 'can't' be associated with being Black. It means unpacking why you can't name any Black ace and/or aro characters or public figures. It means addressing what happens when asexuality and aromanticism stop existing in vacuums and start overlapping with the identities you actually 'get'. These are the scary questions you get to ignore when you can just claim being ace and/or aro is 'white and cishet' identity instead.

[beetlejuicyy]

criston cole is such a female-experience coded character and it is exactly why he is hated so much hear me out

his whole character is built around the idea that rhaenyra seduced him, had taken his dignity and made him feel like her whore. his vow and his duty are close enough to the idea of women's purity and value. you were sullied, you have to marry the man that devalued you, otherwise you are spoiled and unworthy.

on top of that, his identity as a knight, as kingsguard means he is submissive. he is not seen having a lot of opinions or plans to how things are done, the big guys in the council decide and he has to obey to their orders.

on top of that, when he does act at last, it's portrayed in the form of scheming, behind the backs of people, and it's mostly attributed to his sentimental nature, to his inability to think straight, be logical because of his personal feelings. that's how women have been portrayed for centuries.

another thing that makes his character harder to grasp is the choice to have the same actor play the pre-timeskip and past-timeskip criston. 20 years have passed and yet people see him as the same person who refused to be rhaenyra's whore but now he is hypocritical because he is alicent's whore. 20 years have passed and, even if you can't see it on his face, he's bound to have changed too.

in his relationship with alicent he doesn't talk as much. he is obedient, she's the one in charge. she gets to say when and how things happen, he is just at her service.

his entire character is build up to revolve around rhenyra, like women's lives are supposed to revolve around men. if he refuses to acknowledge his status in his youth he is no longer allowed to later (after 20 years mind you) find some sort of comfort in another master. it's like saying "if you say you hate the system why take part in it"?

his pent up rage and hatred is evil, because what happened to him was behind closed doors where no one saw or heard of it. because if they knew of it he would lose everything, exactly the way women have often refrained from talking about their condition in fear of being villainized themselves. in the meantime, the one in power will keep their dignity and spotless reputation like rhaenyra is not even held accountable for having bastards pushed forward as heirs, not to mention the fling she had with criston.

this rant is in no way trying to portray criston cole as a saint or a good guy or trying to justify his behaviour. this is actually the problem with hotd, the effort to draw a line between the good guys and bad guys. have it be either balck or white. it's not, it can't be. you either have complex, morally grey characters with flaws and mistakes or you go watch marvel or something. even there villains are more humanized than in this petty effort of righteousness.

LE: thank you everyone who mentioned the aspect of criston being a man of colour from dorne and the power dynamic between a royal and a lower born who fought his way into the world! this rant was written in a rush and while i couldn't express the latter as eloquently as most of you in the tags/comments, i completely overlooked the former. i love looking through everyone's tags and comments and seeing your takes. as @jazzyclarinet pointed out in the comments, seeing criston's character in this light does not erase or diminish the injustice other women in the story experience.

on another note, i feel like part of the blame is on the way hbo marketed the season with the pressure to pick a side. however, i think what we've been lacking as a society in the post covid years is actual unbiased analysis of art. swallowing up content without any question and making said content a personality trait is harmful. as i said, i don't like criston as a character, but i can make these points about him simply because i watch the show critically and i don't blindly defend a character while trashing another.

[boxingcleverrr]

Popular Hades & Persephone "retellings" are, rightly, getting dunked on all over the socials right now and, as a Pagan who has an altar to the Queen, I could not be happier. But also, I feel like a lot of people miss WHY they're bad - aside from just plain bad writing and lazy tropes. Which are, yeah, also REALLY bad.

Pretty much all retellings try to wave away, or excuse, or twist the whole kidnapping bit. And I actually do have sympathy and understanding for why, when speaking from a modern perspective.

But honestly...you gotta get over it. There are other stories to play fix-it with, not this one.

The Abduction is The Thing.

Were I a little more sober I could bring up chapter and verse of the Hymn to Demeter but frankly, if you know even the middle school mythology curriculum version of the story, you SHOULD know the themes. The story of Persephone was one mothers and daughters in the ancient world held dear, because it was a reality: you will, one day, be swept away from your home to go cleave to a man you most likely know nothing about. You will miss your mother, but chances are very good that he will be a good husband, once you get to know him, certainly better than Zeus or Ares, and he will make you a queen of his home.

Leaving home to marry was often scary, and violent (look up the history of the tradition of Bridesmaids, if you don't already know it - they were originally decoys on the marriage road). Centuries later we'd have tales like Beauty & The Beast serving the same function: comfort, hope, you are leaving your safe loving home to figure life out with a (often older, powerful) stranger. Your trauma over this sudden ending of your childhood made manifest in a Beast, or a God of The Underworld.

It's wonderful that we don't NEED stories like this anymore to comfort us (here, at least, in this culture). But if you try to force them into modern vernacular it just will not work, not really, because you're gutting out the whole point just to have a more tidy romantic male hero.

I have read MANY very good ...novelizations? fanfic(? however you would frame them, but they're certainly not "retellings"), etc. that simply take advantage of the blank spaces in the myth, and there are many!

It's not explicit that sexual assault happens - "The Rape of Persephone" as a title was coined in much earlier eras, when the word was just as often used to simply refer to abduction.

"She was starving!" the gods didn't need to eat. So it's easy to read her eating the Pom seeds as a deliberate choice on her part. Like, shit, people, scholars have written whole papers on the symbolism of this moment, between marriage rites and even yeah, Seph choosing both worlds with her husband's knowing consent.

And that, I think, is the real heart of the thing. People want an utterly mundane, spelled-out story here, as opposed to what it really is, has always been, just like any other myth or religious parable: IT'S A METAPHOOOOOOR.

They don't need to be destined, or meet at a goddamned BALL and then CONSPIRE to fake her kidnapping, or shit, I once saw one where Hades got MIND CONTROLLED by Zeus?! Jesus.

Persephone was yoinked into the Underworld against her will.

That's how it went.

I don't mean this in a "stay out of my belief system!" way, shit I'm a white American chick with delusions of witchery. I mean this in a "stop stressing yourself out trying to make things palatable" way:

This is a very real, very precious myth to many people, BECAUSE for at least that one event, Persephone had no autonomy, BECAUSE for thousands of years most women had no autonomy. Erasing that, sanitizing the fact that a girl is ripped out of the spring, from her mother's arms, is erasing the thing that gave comfort to women for centuries. And people can and should still find power and healing in it now!

Fill in the blanks the story leaves in whatever manner seems fit to you, there's plenty of room, but. Come the fuck on.

[whereserpentswalk]

Hi, I saw one of your latest posts talking about the gender "segregation" where you state that women's only spaces shouldn't exist. So, if that was actually real, do you think me, a cis lesbian woman, should I be using a changing room or a bathroom used also by people with penises?

I would feel very uncomfortable being naked near someone who is biologically a male and I have the right to say no, no matter how they react, cis women's feelings matter too and nobody can tell me when I should be uncomfortable, same thing goes for sports, cis women could get physically hurt if a biological male played against them and this had already happened in a school in the US.

This more confirms how you far left activists don't care about us

I do not care about people's disgust when it comes to means of segregation. Do you think that during the 1960s there was no white person who felt uncomfortable sharing a bathroom with someone with dark skin when desegregation hit bathrooms and locker rooms? Do you think there's no white person who feels that way now (hell, a big reason American suberbs are a thing is that it allows white people to live in white only places post civil rights laws)?

How is your desire to feel comfortable through segregation any diffrent? There is a group you feel uncomfortable with in a space so you want it segregated, I suggest you either not use that space or find a way to be more comfortable. Society may have a responsibility for you to be safe, but there is no responsibility for you to feel safe.

And do you think nobody wants to be segregated away from you? You're literally a queer person, there are people who do not want you in public because of the exact same uncomfortablity with you. You probably have way more in common with trans people than most cis people do. If many people were allowed to remove what makes them uncomfortable from society, you would be forced into the closet. This isn't a hypothetical, the same people pushing for removal of trans people from society have same sex relationships as their next target.

Uncomfortablity is not something society can or should protect you from.

[gravid-transluna]

In the Name of Science

words: 7627

content: birth denial, clothing birth, mutual birth, fpreg

Co-written with the wonderful and endlessly imaginative @shhhsecretsideblog

First entry into the Spell-verse, a series of stories revolving around a town blanketed by a rapid pregnancy and birth spell.

The news already had coined a name for it. Go figure, Char thought, shaking her head at the display of pure pseudoscience on the screen before her.

“Yes, that’s right,” a reporter spoke. “Emergency services have taken a census and The Spell seems to have affected every person able to bear children in the town.”

“The Spell,” Char scoffed, shaking her head. “Call it a virus, a fluke of biology, whatever. Just don’t chalk it up to magic.”

Because if it was magic, that would mean her science would be ineffectual on the obvious life growing inside her belly, now looking full-term with a baby that she hadn’t been pregnant with this morning. It rippled, hanging low between the scientist’s thighs. She placed a palm on her stretched tummy. The evidence, she thought, speaks for itself.

“Shouting at the tele again Char?” Laura said as she waddled into their lab. Her long white coat hung open at her sides, her own newly formed bump making the coat too small to fit round her frame.

“Got you a coffee.” She passed the hot drink to her boss and went over to sit on the stool by her own workstation. It took a bit of navigating, still not used to this extra weight she now carried, but eventually she plumped herself on the high metal chair.

“I mean, they aren’t wrong calling it ‘The Spell.’ What’s happening here is unheard of. All these pregnancies are popping up very much like magic.” Laura rubbed the circumference of her large belly that now sat heavily atop her thighs. She could feel the baby moving inside, it was so strange. Pregnancy and birth was never something she thought she’d experience. She understood it, she knew all about the process, but it was something else entirely actually experiencing it. And going through it all within the space of a day was a bit of a rollercoaster.

They’d done scans and knew they were carrying human babies, it wasn’t anything supernatural or alien, but it was just the speed, it was unprecedented. The baby in her womb shifted and kicked her in the ribs “Oof!” She huffed. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this.” Laura commented to her boss.

Char nodded, smothering the instinct to cup her own belly as devoted her attention back to her work.

“Hopefully, you won’t have to. We’ll find a way to reverse the process without delivery and things will—“ she paused, startled by a twinge in her stomach muscles and the subsequent squirming of the baby inside her. She cleared her throat. “Things will return to normal and we can take the time to research this phenomenon thoroughly.”

Secretly, Char’s urgency stemmed from another reason—already she’d struggled to adapt to the feeling of her body so unrecognizably changed, the idea of a passenger inside her, her body growing and stretching to accommodate it without any of her say in it. Even the tiniest signs of motherhood she steadfastly resisted, trying not to waddle or hold her heavy mound, wearing her usual lab wear instead of anything more comfortable. Yet—

She knew this was nothing compared to birth. She also knew that they were on a strict time limit. Shaking her head, she dispelled these thoughts. ‘We don’t have to worry about that. All we have to worry about is finding a cure,’ she thought.

“You really think we can find a cure before these babies are born?” Laura asked hesitantly. She knew how her boss was handling this sudden change in their bodies, and it wasn’t very well. Not that she’d admit it. She disappeared quickly into the work when it first started happening to people and completely ignored the signs this morning that it was happening to them both as well.

“I’ve heard that some people are already starting to give birth… we might not have the time. Not before these ones are born anyway.” Laura patted her bump affectionately. She wasn’t fighting this as much as her boss. Yes it was a shock, but Laura was leaning into the experience, it was fascinating.

She noticed her belly start to twinge, felt similar to period pains. Laura shifted in her chair, trying to ease the uncomfortable feeling, her legs widening on the stool to fit her rounded stomach in between. “Have you had any twinges or cramps or anything?” Laura asked.

Char glanced at Laura, absorbing the gravity of her condition, the way her midsection protruded from her open lab coat and her discomfort that so mirrored Char’s own. “Nope,” she lied easily, convincing herself that it was the weight she was now carrying, that the pressure in her hips and the aching of her back was all because of the new load in her belly.

“Well, I’m not exactly hasty to get these babies out the old-fashioned way,” Char said.

A part of her shared sentiments with Laura, though. Call it a scientific curiosity, but the process of birth was quite a marvel. Another cramp seized her belly and she stiffened slightly, bearing it without note. Her own belly hung low, having dropped without her realizing, but Laura’s taut, overhanging swell was immediately apparent to her.

How about you?” She asked while peering into a microscope.

“I’m not sure… I’m feeling something… oof—” Laura took a sharp breath as the ache peaked before easing off again. “It’s probably just my body adjusting to the quick pregnancy. I’m not in a hurry to give birth myself.”

She didn’t want to say it but the rate at which their stomachs had swelled, Laura didn’t think they would have long before the pangs of labor hit. It was difficult to ascertain how “far along” they were, given the speed in the growth, but judging by the bumps alone Laura guessed her and Char were developing at the same rate.

“We better work fast then, before either of us goes into labor.” Or both of us, Laura thought to herself.

Char pressed her lips together at the reminder, and without knowing she palmed the underside of her swollen stomach, attempting to soothe the tightened muscles.

“Yes, right. Could you come over here and we can analyze these lab reports together. Bring the files from the corner bench, please.”

Her back ached, yet she was too restless to sit and besides, she always worked while standing. She’d be damned if she let this baby inside of her intrude on her routine.

“Sure thing.” Laura said to Char’s instruction. Holding her taut stomach, Laura slipped off the stool onto her feet and waddled over to the corner bench to pick up the files.

Standing seemed to have jolted her baby, feeling the weight sink lower into her hips as it kicked. A sudden sharp tightening slashed across her belly causing her to gasp and grab on to the table. “Mnngh!” She groaned as the muscles pulled and squeezed, its intensity surprising.

“Char… hooo… I think I might be having a con-contraction…” Laura panted through the pain, hips instinctively swaying beneath the white lab coat.

Char snapped her head up from the microscope to see Laura doubled over, clutching the table. With her back flat, her weighty belly seemed to strain toward the ground, dragged downward by gravity. Char watched as Laura swayed her hips in an almost hypnotic pattern, as though instinct had taken over. Her panting, even, seemed instinctual, the sounds of an imminent mother.

“Laura? Hey—“ Char struggled to walk without a waddle, across the room to Laura. She was stopped by a squeezing in her tummy that took her breath away, the entire surface hardening painfully. She dismissed it before it even ended. ‘Braxton Hicks,’ she thought. ‘No big deal. I have time…. Laura, I’m not so sure.’

She placed a palm on Laura’s lower back and she breathed and swayed. “You’re okay,” she said, her usual brisk tone softening. “Just breathe.”

“Hoooo-hoooo…..” Laura forced herself to take measured breaths, in and out, breathing through the sudden pain. Her head dipped and her eyes scrunched, the weight and pressure suddenly peaking before gradually fading away. Slowly the assistant straightened back up and faced her friend (?) and boss.

“Jeeze, that was… intense.” She breathed, rubbing the underside of her belly. “I wasn’t expecting that to come on so fast. Guess I’m in labor. I’ll start running a log of all my symptoms so we can add to our research.” She picked up the earlier requested files and handed them to her boss, noticing a slight glistening of sweat on Char’s forehead. “You still doing okay?”

Char nodded, appearing uncharacteristically distracted. She made an effort to straighten her back, feeling the clamping around her womb subside for now.

“Fine,” she said. Then, appreciative of Laura’s dedication to their studies, “Good work, Laura. If it gets to be too much for you, let me know. Until then, we’ll work around the clock and develop a cure before you progress too far.”

And, before I do as well, Char added to herself.

Noting Laura’s significantly widened stance and the way she stroked and circled her dropped belly, Char felt a twinge of apprehensiveness.

As they worked, fighting the clock, Char listened to Laura’s pained breaths become sharper. Eventually she began to vocalize, softly at first, closing her eyes and rocking her body back and forth, making slight grunts and moaning under her breath.

Char wasn’t in a much better state. Her contractions had grown into strong, regular surges and every time her belly seized up she could only focus on it and the baby inside it preparing to be born. Born, she thought. Not if I can help it. Her familiarity with the process and inevitability of birth did nothing to halt this line of thinking. Yet with each contraction she felt like nothing else existed but her swollen, contracting belly. She released a breath after a particularly brutal one. There was so much pressure. She felt it deep in her hips, wanting so badly to open herself up all the way.

Laura let out a pained groan herself, and Char glanced up.

“H-how are you, mm, holding up?” She asked the other laboring woman.

“As w-well as can be expected… hoooo…” Laura held her heavy belly with one hand, the other leant on her workstation as she swayed through the pain. “They are really picking up now Char, oof, the pressure is a lot.”

The lab assistant had abandoned her chair a while ago, finding the most comfortable position was to stand at her desk as it allowed her to follow her body’s rhythm and its instinct to move. Plus the baby was sinking way too low to be sitting down on that ridiculous high stool. She had spent entire days on that chair working before The Spell, but that idea seemed downright ludicrous to Laura now.

Their research seemed to be slow moving, and it wasn’t entirely down to the fact she was in labor, the science just wasn’t providing them with answers, still proving to be a mystery. She’d been keeping track of her contractions, which were getting dangerously closer together and time was running out.

Whilst the waves of pain coursing through her body every five minutes were consuming, Laura wasn’t oblivious to the fact her boss was also struggling. Perhaps it was because of her own labor she could recognise the signs; the way Char kept moving around the lab and never stayed still, her heavy breathing and occasional moan, and the way her hips would shift and bounce when she thought Laura wasn’t looking. Yup, her boss was almost certainly in labor too. But Laura knew better than to ask her outright.

“Are you feeling okay Char? You’ve been on your feet for quite a w-while now..”

Char tried to imagine sitting and found she couldn’t, with the baby dropped so low, the head pressing heavily on her cervix. She knew from the strain in Laura’s voice and her repeated movements around the room that she was feeling the same pressure and slowly increasing urgency. She wanted to moan, openly sway and rotate her hips against the excruciating pressure, to release instinctual grunts with her contractions like Laura. But, not yet. She couldn’t be in active labor.

“Just frustrated,” Char growled. “We’ve barely made progress and this current batch of tests has yielded no results whatsoever…. mmgh!” She winced, closing her mouth so as not to cry out as a contraction clamped her midsection.

“Also,” she added. “I might—urgh, be experiencing some Braxton Hicks.”

“Oh… braxton hicks… okay.” Laura acknowledged calmly, knowing full well there was nothing false about the pains plaguing Char. “Just try and b-breathe through them. They’ll soon pass. You can move around you know, follow your body’s instincts if you need to, I’m sure it would help with the, errr—false labor pains.”

They continued working in relative silence, except from the unusual noises Laura found herself making through the pains. She thought she heard her boss whimper, and asked “Is there anything I can do to h-help?”

Not that she was capable of doing much, the pains were so strong now she could barely do anything other than catch her breath between waves. Laura stayed close to her work bench, not daring to move too far for fear she’d crumble to the floor. Her bump hung heavy and low off her hips, her baby was pressing hard against her cervix clearly marking its exit. A particularly forceful contract had Laura folded over against the bench, forearms on the white surface, hips jutting back, and her head buried in the crook of her elbow. Her groans had turned more primal, the pressure building to the point she almost mooed like a cow. Something was slipping down, she could feel it. With a grunt Laura felt something give and the immediate dampness that followed trailing down her leg.

“Ummm… Char? Hoooo… I think my water broke.” Laura whimpered into her arm, not daring to move.

Char turned when she heard Laura’s animalistic groans and grunts, undeniably the noises of a woman deep in labor. She saw Laura standing wide-legged, a wet patch forming on her lab trousers and puddling the floor beneath her. Her cheeks were flushed with exertion, and Char knew she was feeling the same pressure against her widening cervix as herself, increasingly overcome with the sensation of the head moving into position, the instinctive need to open herself up for the baby getting ready to come out of her.

“Laura—! Hooo um, okay,” Char faltered, taking large waddling steps to Laura and cursing the weight in her pelvis and the unwieldiness of her belly. .Normally in control of the situation, she felt lost at the sight of Laura’s waters puddled on the floor. This was an uncontrollable variable. No matter how much they wanted to keep their babies in, once their bodies decided it was time there was little they could do. But Char wasn’t ready to give in yet.

“I’ll, mmgh, find you some towels,” she promised Laura.

In the hallway she suffered another contraction, and found herself vocalizing freely without Laura around, lowing insistently and arching her back. Without knowing, her knees bent slightly, beginning to sink into a squat. She realized what she was doing and tried to hold herself upright against the hallway wall, but by then the contraction was upon her and she felt a sudden burst of fluid from between her legs.

“Oh…. shit,” she murmured, panting hard.

When she returned with the towels, she met Laura’s gaze and knew that they were both feeling the urgency of birth. They were almost out of time.

The contraction had waned when Char left the room and Laura slowly righted herself and breathed quietly, taking stock of the situation, letting her body adjust and working with the new sensations. The baby was definitely on its way, there was no doubt about that. The breaking of her waters had helped ease the excruciating pressure which had been building, but Laura became more keenly aware of the shape of the baby in her womb without its cushioning.

Taking deep and steady breaths, Laura tried to calm her mind and body. It was during this almost meditative state that she heard the unmissable sound of a woman in deep labor from the corridor. She knew exactly who it was.

Char was a very methodical woman, set in her ways, but she was strong and determined which was a necessity in this field of work. Laura respected her immensely. But it was no surprise to the assistant that her boss was fighting this and seemingly was fighting it to the very end. At some point Char would admit she was in labor, she would have to if she was going to birth her baby. Laura just hoped she would be able to help Char through it when the time comes, and not be consumed by her own birth.

When Char came back she was flushed and sweaty, but gritted a smile as she passed Laura a towel. Laura noticed her boss kept one for herself… strange.

Laura threw the towel on the floor and used her foot to wipe the liquid that was now puddled at her feet. Her trousers were wet but she didn’t want to take them off, she might have known Char for years but wasn’t quite ready to be walking around half naked in front of her boss.

“This baby is definitely coming, I can feel its head right down in my pelvis.” Laura announced, cupping the underside of her large swell almost trying to hold it up. “How are you holding up Char through your… practice contractions?”

Even without her announcing it, Char could tell how close Laura was to birthing her baby, her stance and dropped belly unmistakable as signs of her imminent birth. Laura, she knew, was dependable, and though Char would rarely admit it, she relied on Laura and her stability and her easier personality tended to balance Char’s own stubbornness. Her patience was beginning to wear Char down, and she almost admitted then. The head was huge against her dilated cervix, and she could feel it oriented, ready to descend. Everything was moving painfully downwards. She could no longer even pinch her knees together, so wide was her gait. It felt as if the baby would drop out of her if she spread too wide.

“I-I think I’m, I’m in—“ Char was cut off by another contraction, doubling over with an urgent grunt, so unlike her normally composed and cool attitude. “Ohhhh,” she moaned, closing her eyes. She gritted her teeth, eyes squeezed shut as the contraction began to peak and she clutched blindly at her rigid, taut belly.

“Oh Char…” Laura said, waddling over to her boss, keeping one hand on a bench for support. “I think you’re in labor, hun.”

Char was completely doubled over, clutching her large and heavy belly, and grunting wildly. There was no way she could keep denying her situation now surely. Laura put a hand on Char’s back and rubbed up and down her spine in support. “It’s okay, just breathe through the contraction. Slowly, don’t panic, in and o-outttt…”

Laura was cut off by a contraction of her own, and without her waters it was aggressive and forceful. She immediately spun around, grabbing the nearest bench, and groaned deeply as she fell into a slight squat. The baby was slamming against her cervix, squeezing its way into her birth canal, and Laura had no choice but to push with the force of the contraction.

She tried not to panic, to stay calm, but the head filling her canal was almost making her nauseous. She wanted to tell Char but couldn’t speak, not that her boss could do anything as she was dealing with a contraction of her own right now. The only option left was to ride the wave, and follow her instincts.

Over the din of her own uncontrollable noises Char could hear Laura’s straining groans as she bore down fiercely, primal with the urgency of a birthing mother. Char tried to change her posture but the feeling of the baby descending, pressing down forcefully against her cervix was too much for her to bear standing, and she clasped her hands on her thighs as she squatted, desperate for relief. The contraction peaked, and though she tried to control her breathing, sucking in air at first, by the ends of her breaths she found herself grunting slightly. She gave a gasp, realizing that she was pushing. No! No, no! She thought desperately. You’re a scientist. This is your lab, and you have control. Try as she might, it was impossible to assert control over her laboring body. Her baby was coming, and she was pushing. Still, she tried to resist the urge to push, panting and blowing as the pressure grew and her back flared with pain.

Laura’s contraction seemed to subside a little before Char’s, and Char saw her belly visibly heave as her uterine muscles relaxed. She let out a grunt as the contraction released her. They made eye contact as Char’s contraction began to fade as well. Char shifted her gaze.

“We…. w-we,” she panted, trying to regain her breath. “We have to find this cure. Right now.”

“Char…. Even if we do find a c-cure… what do you t-think is going to happen?” Laura said sternly as she heaved herself back to standing. “These babies,” she patted her bump and also Char’s for effect, “are coming and no cure is going to make them disappear.”

Laura had seen the way Char literally squatted to the ground and pushed, and her clothes were also damp on her bottom half. “I’m saying this as both your friend and colleague, you are in labor just as much as I, and we should prepare for their arrival.”

Laura waddled awkwardly, bowlegged, back to her desk and grabbed a drink of water. Still panting after the latest contraction, she picked up a pen and carried on making notes. “I’ll help you as much as I can, noting everything down about this rapid pregnancy, tracking my symptoms and experience, but we’re going to be giving birth soon. Both of us.”

Char glared weakly as Laura patted her belly. She’d known Laura to be one of her only lab partners to actually stand up to her or challenge her, but even then she was firmly gentle. This was no different except of course so steeped in labor herself Laura had a bit more edge to her, biting just a little. She knew how Laura was feeling. Their babies were so low, pushing heavily into their canals and forcing their bodies to deliver, and she wanted nothing more to stop what she was doing right now, squat down, and let it come. Magic or science, Char and Laura were experiencing their most natural, primal instincts.

But—she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. No, this was HER body. An intruding passenger wouldn’t change that, even as it inched its way through her birth canal and demanded she work hard and concentrate on nothing but pushing it out. Char made a laborious effort to straighten somewhat, though her stance wasn’t much narrower than Laura’s own bowlegged waddle.

“Not, urgh, yet,” Char said. “I’m not having this baby. Mmm…. hoo, I’m grateful to you, Laura, for holding it together for this long. But you n-need to deliver. Please, don’t burden yourself. I’ll finish this cure on my—hmnh, hm. My own.”

She painstakingly toddled to her research table, lifting the hefty weight of her belly as though it would keep the baby from dropping any further.

“Okay, do whatever you wanna do Char.” Laura resigned herself to losing this argument. Her boss was determined but this was next level, bordering on complete denial. Well if Char was feeling even half the sensations Laura was, she’d succumb to this birth soon enough.

Laura needed to prepare for the imminent birth, her recent pushing was a sure sign the baby was close. Slowly, and whilst always holding on to something, the assistant rummaged through the drawers and cupboards in the lab. “Do we have anything we could use for clamps to cut the cord?” She asked aloud, not really expecting an answer from her disgruntled colleague. “Ah, this could work.”

She collected the equipment she’d need to clamp and cut the chord on her desk, and moved the towel on the floor with her feet again mopping up the new liquid that she’d trailed across the floor, not realizing she was still leaking. “I’m gonna go get some more towels.” Laura again spoke aloud but knew her boss had disappeared into her own world.

Laura barely made it to the doorway when another contraction struck, and damn they were close together. Her fingers gripped the wooden frame as her body sank downwards again, the pressure building and building between her legs. “Mnnnghhhhhhhh!!!” Laura grunted, muscles contracting and squeezing the large head further through the birth canal, to the point she could feel herself start to open slightly. “Nghhhhhhh the head…. I can feel it…” Laura mewled as she squatted.

Char listened to Laura’s preparations in the background, doing her best to tune out both Laura’s words and the feeling of a massive head lodged in her birth canal, stretching her from within. Her legs trembled, nearly buckled even without a contraction. She resented herself for pushing but knew from her last contraction that she wouldn’t be able to help from bearing down again. The urge to push, the pressure, it was blurring her vision, and her head pounded dizzyingly. A mantra repeated in her head: ‘Hold it in. Just hold it in a little longer.’ Her stomach felt like a hard stone weighing on her middle even without a contraction. She tried to focus, pulling herself into a chemical analysis of her own birthing fluids she’d swabbed from the towel.

Suddenly, she heard Laura’s loud grunting and her attention was drawn to the doorway to see her assistant bent and squatted, pushing hard into her trousers. She felt a tug of concern.

“Laura? Hun, you okay—?”

The head, she thought. Oh god, she’s still wearing her work trousers.

Before she could even take a single step towards Laura, she felt another contraction grip her. “Oooof,” she grunted deeply. Her knees began to give out and she was forced into a squat even as she tried to remain standing. Gripping the table for dear life, she groaned and growled. Don’t push, she thought. Don’t—

“Ohhhh.” The head shifted down. Her powerful internal muscles shoved it through. “OH—I’m—I-I’m pushinggggg, mmmmgh!”

Laura was consumed by the sensations thrumming through her entire body, it was as if something primal was happening to her - new and unfamiliar, completely out of her control, and yet her body seemed to know what to do. Her knees widened and she sunk deeper into the squat, opening her hips as much as she could. Leaning into the contraction, using it, Laura pushed the heavy weight down. It felt… productive. She knew it was what she should be doing.

The location wasn’t ideal, and she hoped she still had time to collect more towels and set up a more comfortable birthing area. But whilst the contraction raged, Laura submitted to it, letting it work her baby down, slipping further and further towards its exit.

Somewhere in the distance she heard her name being called. After a long push Laura gulped a breath and turned her head to see Char squatting at her desk and crying out that she was pushing. She would laugh if her body hadn’t forced her into another push.

They needed to get set up and quick, Char looked like she was suffering just as much as Laura was. When the contraction waned just a bit, Laura stopped pushing and somehow managed to haul her body back to standing. Char looked okay, well as she could given the situation, riding out a contraction and holding on to the sturdy frame of her workbench.

“I’m getting more towels, hang on Char!” Laura shouted, hoping her boss would hear over the groans Char was making.

Waddling ever so slowly, the head sitting right behind her lips, Laura went off to the cupboard to find more towels. They’d soon need them.

Another contraction struck mere minutes after the last while Laura was in the cupboard but she was not as successful this time in staying on her feet. The force of the contracting muscles and slashing pain splitting her open brought her to her knees. She clung on to the shelf in front of her, her heavy belly squished between widened thighs, and she pushed hard wailing with the effort. The head was peaking through, pushing apart her folds in her underwear. But her body was driving this journey, Laura was just the passenger. After a solid minute the contraction let up and when she released the push with a gasp, the baby slipped back into the birth canal. With a trembling hand she felt the fabric between her legs, she was definitely bulging, but the head wasn’t crowning just yet. She breathed deeply, gathering her strength before getting back on her feet. She needed to get back with the extra towels, not just so she could birth her baby there but so she could help Char. She’d need a friend and the support right now, and so could Laura.

As Laura submitted, pushing freely and loudly as though nothing else mattered in the world except getting her baby out and getting it out now, Char resisted her baby’s inevitable birth. Panicked, she gulped in a breath, trying to ease up on her furious pushing as she felt the head filling her opening thoroughly. It was beginning to bulge her, though her lips remained shut. The pressure and incredible sensation of the head sitting low at her opening, almost ready to exit, was almost too much to bear. She mooed deeply, from the back of her throat. Her belly tightened even harder than before, squeezing her like a vice and she couldn’t help but push again. The baby strained against her opening, and she could feel her most delicate area distending obscenely.

“Oh god!” She cried, throwing her head back as her thighs spread and she pushed again and again uncontrollably. The urge was undeniable. She was subject to her body and right now, it was telling her to birth her baby. Here, now, into her trousers. She felt helpless. Out of control.

“It’s coming,” she moaned. “Ohhh, it’s coming!” She knew this deeply, intuitively, with an age-old maternal instinct. She was ready to birth her baby. But she felt alone and vulnerable.

“Laura,” she gasped, couldn’t say much more than that. “Laura, oh god, it’s coming and I’m pushing! I need to hold it in! Just a little longer!”

She could hear Char’s wailing from the corridor, becoming fast apparent the lead technician was losing her fight against the inevitable. With one arm carrying a load of towels, the other hand pressed against the wall as she waddled heavily back to the office. On walking into the room she saw her friend and colleague in a deep squat, white-knuckling the work bench, chin to chest and pushing. Loudly.

“Oh Char, it’s okay hun.” Laura shut the door behind her and dropped the towels beside her friend. “You have to breathe as well as push darling.” She said as she staggered to her own workbench and grabbed the medical supplies she’d collected. With the baby playing peek-a-boo into her underwear, Laura knew their time was almost up.

Cumbersomely, Laura got down to her knees beside her boss, putting the clamps and scissors on the pile of towels. “Shhhhh it’s okay Char, don’t fight it. Use that contraction and push with the pain.” Laura rubbed a hand up and down Char’s back, trying her best to support and encourage through this.

Unfortunately with their labors progressing in tandem, Laura’s role as carer was snatched away when the next contraction tore its way across her midsection. Instinctively, without intending to, her body was pushing with the pain and she could feel the baby start to leak through again and stretch apart her lips. She went to all fours and rocked, sinking backwards towards her heels whenever she had to bear down.

“Mnnnnghhhhhhh! Come on baby….” She groaned before gasping another breath and pushing hard again. She didn’t care that she was still in her work clothes, or that she was on the floor of a laboratory that was covered with two lots of amniotic fluid, she was simply following her instincts and soon the baby stopped slipping back in and stayed, keeping her lips in a perfect oval shape.

“Ohhhh god… I think it’s starting to c-crownnnn….” The assistant managed to huff when the contraction eventually dulled.

Char’s belly refused to fully relax at this point, now constantly flexing with forceful surging contractions, but there were brief moments of respite where she could pause in her pushing and some awareness returned to her. Laura, she realized, was beginning to tent her pants with pushing, on all fours with her back arched and her hips shoved forward, trying to make as much room for the large crowning head as possible. She was pushing the head into her clothes, Char realized, bulging them ridiculously, and between her spread thighs more fluids dripped and leaked. At the same time she processed this she realized that her own clothes had never been discarded, but she made no effort to remove them in her precious few moments before her body would force her baby further out of her. Instead she clung onto the naive hope that she’d miraculously stumble upon a cure while crowning into her pants, feeling the head beginning to press up against her underwear and part her lips slightly. Laura, she could tell, had offered less resistance to her body and had made more progress in her pushing, the head sitting permanently, she calculated from the bulge in Laura’s pants, at around a half-crown or more.

“Hey,” she croaked hoarsely, barely able to manage anything but grunts with her clenching belly. “You—you need to get your pants down, hun. Head’s coming out.”

Painstakingly, she began to squat down, moaning as the head was pressed back slightly into her sensitive lips by the tension of her underwear. It felt so low, so full, she needed to open up, she needed to push, relieve the immense pressure, yet her friend, yes friend, not just assistant, needed her. As she squatted low, she hooked her fingers around Laura’s waistline.

“I need, urgh, I need you to get your legs together. Mmmm, we gotta get your pants off, ‘kay?”

She was surprised to see Char moving in her peripheral vision, but Laura could pay no mind, for this baby wanted out and it wanted out now.

“Grhhhhh!!! It’s coming out… mnghh!” Laura cried into the next push, bearing down and feeling the head stretch her wider and wider. Her hips were so full, her pelvis felt like it could snap, the pressure of this baby’s head - this large and heavy mass - *needed* to come out.

Char’s attempt to remove her trousers was fruitless, though the black fabric was stretchy and comfortable with the expanding of her stomach, it was not elasticated enough to be pulled over the wide angle of her legs. The baby sat so low, right at her entrance, stretching her entrance wide with the emerging crown. There was no way in hell she would be able to put her legs closer together.

Instead, she widened them further. “Hmngh! Can’t… baby… coming…I have to pushhhh-mnghhhh!” Laura’s face sunk towards the floor, dropping to her elbows and opening up her hips to the skies. It was coming out, she could feel it sliding slowly out of her into her stretchy clothing. All she could do was push…. Pant and push again.

Char watched in utter fascination as Laura pushed with total abandonment, entirely consumed with the baby coming out of her, every last thought focused on the overwhelming, intense, undeniable urge to push. The bulge in Laura’s pants grew, stretched her thinly and Char could scarcely believe that such a huge head could come from her, pass through such a narrow opening with so much force. She removed her fingers from Laura’s waistline, realizing the impossibility of such a task at this stage in Laura’s labor. She was pushing it out into her pants, and there was nothing Char could do about that except cup the growing bulge as it emerged from Laura’s opening into the straining fabric.

It was terrifying, watching Laura push without regard for anything else. As she felt a powerful contraction wrack her own reddened, exhausted belly, she knew there was no stopping this. She was giving birth and was about to push a baby out into her pants exactly as Laura was doing now. She growled fiercely, deep in her squat—the perfect position. Her knees jackknifed and she opened her hips as wide as they could go. Against her opening the fabric of her underwear arched with the coming head as she bore down immensely. Her face turned bright red with her hardest push yet.

“Oh GODDDD!” She bellowed. “It’s COMING, I’m pushing it OOUUUTTTT!”

Her lips parted, wider and wider, trembling and convulsing around the head as it burned and stretched her. She jerked, trying to escape the ring of fire and yet she couldn’t stop pushing for a minute. She was in the final stages now, and the only way the burn would stop was when she had pushed her baby into the world. Instinct took over completely. This was what her body needed her to do. This was what SHE needed to do.

Even though they were consumed with their own births, Laura found comfort that at least they were together through this. Each laboring woman was not alone.

But the strength required to birth these babies, who didn’t even exist 24 hours ago, would be down to the mother. Gasping for air Laura pushed again with everything she had, through the pressure and pain and the burning ring of fire that had her mouth open in a silent scream. The baby’s head had to be almost out by now, surely!?

Despite being beside each other Char’s bellowing voice seemed so far away to Laura. Nothing else registered beside the baby being born into her pants. She growled with another push and suddenly yelped when the head slipped fully out.

“Oh my god oh my god…” Laura muttered over and over and pushed herself back up on her knees. She scrambled at the waistband of her elasticated trousers and pulled them down to her knees along with her underwear. Her baby, she had to get to her baby, the maternal instinct cried in her head. With a trembling hand she felt the newly born baby’s head that was now wedged between her thighs. “Hi…. baby… oh my gosh you’ve got hair!” Laura was in shock, but also in awe of what her body had just done.

It was only after the head was born that Laura properly heard the cries of her friend. “Char…” she muttered and saw the other woman squatting and huffing, red-faced, chin to chest, with an obscene bulge protruding from her clothes between her wide legs.

“Oh my god Char! Your baby is coming out!”

Had Char any piece of mind she might have answered with her customary sarcasm: oh really? I wouldn’t have guessed. Instead, the only sound that emerged from her mouth was a long lowing wail that only deepened and became more guttural as the head filled her bottom so thoroughly, and it felt as though her pelvis was creaking open to allow the massive head through. She opened slowly, barely pausing to take a breath as she bore down without repose. Dimly, she was aware of Laura’s own baby dangling between her thighs, having pushed the huge head out, and with renewed efforts Char grunted the head further and further out. Her lips tautened and thinned, red with the stretch. The head reached a full crown and for a moment Char pushed and it didn’t move, solid mass wedged tightly in her opening. She gasped, scared for a moment that it was too big, that there was no way she could push something of this size out of her body.

Then she heard Laura cooing to the head between her legs, and something stirred within her. She realized that the dread she’d been facing was being replaced with something like motherhood, her body responding naturally, automatically, to Laura’s awe and wonder. Char realized that she wanted to meet this thing she had carried inside her for a mere twenty-four hours.

“C’mon BABYYYYY!” She shouted, bearing down furiously. Her lips slipped around the head, and then—with a splash of fluids and a grunt of relief, Char freed the head into her pants.

Laura watched in fascination as Char grunted the head further and further into her clothing, it was huge. Char had been fighting this throughout the entire pregnancy and in that moment Laura understood why some women balked so much away from birth. It was hard work. But then she saw a change in her friend, the way her eyebrows furrowed with determination, the slight readjustment of her hips as she took a breath; she was no longer fighting against her body and was readying herself to meet her child.

“You can do it Char, push!” Laura called as Char bore down. She wished she could move to support her friend physically but she was still mid-way through her own rapid birth to risk moving.

Tears begun to well in her eyes at the thought of their babies, the exhaustion of labor and the stress of the last 24 hours hammering her emotions.

By the time Char had birthed the head of her baby into her pants Laura was already feeling the pangs of the next contraction and the baby’s head turned slightly in the palm of her hand. “Oohhhhh… mhhh okay okay… you ready little one?” She panted, pulling in air through her nose, widening her legs apart to steady her balance and preparing herself to push again. Both hands were between her legs when the contraction really got going and all too soon she was pushing once more and felt the shoulders stretch apart her already sore lips.

With trembling fingers, Char reached down between her legs, feeling the hard slick roundness of the head she’d just pushed out between her legs. She gasped. The aftershocks of her contraction clutched at her belly.

“Oh… oh, my—that’s a baby. I just gave birth.”

The evidence was conclusive. But she could scarcely believe that she’d pushed an entire baby through her birth canal and out into her pants. The experience she’d just been through, the effort, the haze of contractions and the hard pushes as she focused on nothing but expelling her baby, and the intense sensations throughout her body. It was all unbelievable. Inching down the waistband of her trousers, Char struggled them to her shins and sank to her knees. She panted in disbelief, feeling instinctually that this was *right,* that this was what she was meant to be doing. Her identity had irreconcilably changed to that of a mother and as she caressed the head between her legs, she felt a rush of contentment. Char was a scientist, an expert in her field, but now it all paled in comparison.

She glanced up at Laura, seeing her shock and awe mirrored in her eyes as she lifted her baby from between her legs and rested it against her chest. Laura smiled exhaustedly at her.

Char began to pant as another contraction took hold.

“Ooh—“ she exclaimed. “You’re ready…. c’mon, you’re ready to be—UGH! BORN!”

Her baby slipped between her lips with a spray of fluids and immediately she sank to the floor, sighing in immense relief.

Laura fell silent with her final pushes, holding her breath as she bore down, the head filling her palm as the shoulders squeezed their way through. She gasped another breath and pushed with everything she had, this was it, she could feel it. Come on baby…

Once the shoulders were freed Laura wasn’t expecting the speed of which the baby slipped out and the hush of fluid that came with it. Catching the slippery newborn Laura gasped, relieved and shocked, and immediately brought the babe to her chest.

“Hey…. Oh my- hey baby.” She cooed, eyes welling with tears as she looked upon this little miracle that had grown in the last 24 hours. When the baby started to cry she instinctively rocked and hushed the infant “it’s okay… you’re okay.” She said, wiping the blood and fluid off the newborn's face.

Laura had barely caught her breath back when Char started pulling down her trousers and panted heavily, a baby’s head hanging between her open legs. A second later Char was mirroring Laura’s actions and pulling her own baby to her chest and sobbing with relief.

“You did it.” Laura said softly to her friend. “We did it. I can’t believe they’re real, we just had babies.”

The Spell might currently be a scientific mystery, but as the two women sat exhausted on the floor cradling their newborns, the research could wait. For now, the scientists were in awe of the new lives they’d just birthed.

[tododeku-or-bust]

could you elaborate a bit on that post abt (not) wearing headphones in public/playing your phone out loud? i was under the idea that it was nice to not play stuff aloud bc ppl might have migraines or be sound avoidant, but didn't realize i might just be seeing it from a white perspective, and id love to learn more

All right! First, check this link out: Xochitl does a far more eloquent job of explaining the idea than I would:

I assume that you're specifically honing in on my tag about the "white right of comfort".

Okay, so here's the thing. You're allowed to find public noise annoying. I too, find public TikToks and music annoying! And if you have migraines and such, I can understand how it would be impolite and inconvenient.

But what you're NOT allowed to do, is feel entitled to the public and prioritizing your OWN comfort in it over everyone else to the point of DEMANDING that it conforms to you or it's "bad". Especially when there are things you as an individual can do to prevent this discomfort.

While this gross sense of entitlement is very first world American in nature, it is extremely White American in nature because white Americans actually have the social power to enforce what they believe is the "right" thing based on their own standards.

For many cultures around the world and for many people of color, noise in the community is a GOOD thing. It's part of being a community. I feel safer if the people around me feel safe enough to be outside, to exist and to be, visibly in public.

And you got to understand, while many white people think they're genuinely in the right for believing that being loud on public transit or in the public is worth enforcing as a "bad" thing, people of color have literally already been killed for it. A Black teenager was shot in the face for playing music that a white man didn't like. A Black mentally ill man was murdered in front of EVERYBODY on a train because he was having a mental breakdown. This sort of policing ALREADY HAPPENS to us. Hell, even white gays with any sense of community should be aware of how queer gatherings would be shut down for "noise" (when in reality it was bc it was homophobia).

And now people want me to empathize that YOU'RE oppressed by... noise? On Public Transit?? IN PUBLIC?? Kiss my ass lmao.

I've been on trains where a man was legit growling at me like he wanted me dead. Another i saw Teens high on crack. Another where people beg and people sleep and people listen to music. And you know what I did? I turned my OWN music up and went on my way. Because at the end of the day, the only person I control is me!

And if people were REALLY concerned about others welfare, they would COMMUNICATE. no one is willing to say "hey, I have a headache, do you mind-" bc they're afraid of the rejection, so it's easier to demand "well EVERYONE SHOULD BE LIKE ME". Mhm. Learn to confront your issues. But you're not "unsafe" bc music. You're just annoyed, and you'll get over it.

In summary it really gives me "I can give you something to cry about" energy. Bc y'all swear y'all don't understand the existence of an HOA but here yall are replicating the same Karen behaviors, and y'all don't even realize (or maybe even care) how racist you sound. But why would you lmao, that makes you uncomfortable! And damnit, you have a right to comfort!!

[headspace-hotel]

I hate a lot of trends in climate-change-aware nature writing, but this is one I particularly detest: works insisting that we live in a "post-natural" world.

The lostness, bewilderment, aching, and searching in this piece is understood by the author to be an all-consuming and universal dysphoria, when it is actually a highly specific predicament that the author put himself into: He tried to understand the universe exclusively through the point of view of white people.

I mean that Purdy takes the colonizer point of view without realizing that it is a colonizer point of view. He thinks the colonizer point of view is a universal document of the authentic, naive encounter of "humanity" with "nature," instead of burning wreckage left over from the apocalyptic destruction of a rainbow of ideas and cultures.

It feels weird to be talking about this as a white person, but it shouldn't, any more than it should feel weird to say (as a white person) that aliens didn't build the pyramids.

Very little of what he's writing about would exist or make sense without European colonization of the world. Purdy constantly says "we" and "our" in reference to things that are very restricted to a particular cultural point of view, as if totally oblivious to the idea that other cultures and other perspectives even exist. When he searches for historical references to chart "human" relationship with nature, history goes like this: Pre-Christian religion in the British Isles->British monarchy-> George Washington-> Industrial Revolution->Thoreau.

He manages to repeatedly stumble over giant hunks of colonialism embedded in every concept he's thinking about, like boulders obstructing a pathway, and pretends so hard that they don't exist that his points are janky and meandering. For example, his discussion of Helen Macdonald's book H for Hawk, touching upon human identification with the landscape and with non-human "nature," blunders into this:

Those who love (certain parts of) nature are often making a point of preferring it to (certain kinds of) human beings. The problem is not only literary. Macdonald describes an encounter with a retired couple who join her in admiring a valley full of deer, then remark how good it is to see “a real bit of Old England still left, despite all these immigrants coming in.” She does not reply, but is miserable afterward. The meaning of landscapes is always someone’s meaning in particular. Confronted with all of this, Macdonald tries to shake off the complicities of her own identification with the terrain: “I wish that we would not fight for landscapes that remind us of who we think we are. I wish we would fight, instead, for landscapes buzzing and glowing with life in all its variousness.” The alternative that Macdonald wishes for is, of course, not an escape from political-cultural projection onto landscape, but another approach to that same practice — really, the only one a 21st-century cosmopolitan is likely to feel comfortable embracing. 

AND THEN HE JUST SEGUES INTO THE NEXT POINT LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED. Like don't worry about it :) We will simply project onto landscapes in a non-racist way :) because we aren't racist anymore in the 21st century :)

The next book he discusses is Landmarks by Robert MacFarlane, which is basically about how the vocabulary of landscape in English is sterilized and monoculturized, and contrasts that with Scots Gaelic. This is how Purdy explains the thesis of the book:

 Our sense of what lies outside ourselves has been blunted by “capital, apathy, and urbanization” — enemies likely to draw a range of friends, from cultural Marxists to Little Englanders to those who would like to see a bit more effort, please. But behind this scholarly sketch, Macfarlane’s work is testament to a pretheoretical obsession with unfamiliar ways of encountering places. We disenchanted and distracted (post)moderns describe terrain, he complains, in terms of “large, generic units” such as “field,” “hill,” “valley,” and “wood." (...) Many people who have lived intimately with landscapes have had words for nuances of form, texture, and use. Macfarlane’s purpose in Landmarksis to gather these words as proof of how precisely it is possible to name a place, and so, perforce, to know it.

Why is Gaelic endangered? Because of an effort to extinguish its speakers' culture. This article I found on it talks about the history of the language's decline, and it's strikingly similar to what happened to indigenous people in the Americas and Australia, with children being put in schools where they were beaten with sticks for speaking their native language.

This whole essay is about Purdy's general disappointment with nature writing, his craving for an ineffable Something, some sort of magical, primitive identification with the natural world. In the very first paragraph he claims that the pictures of animals on nursery walls are "totemic" and quotes a guy saying that zoos are an "epitaph" to the relationship between people and animals. It's never very clear what he means, but he uses the term "animism" repeatedly, such as when he says this about MacFarlane's goal in writing Landmarks:

His quarry is an animistic sense that Barry Lopez once identified in “the moment when the thing — the hill, the tarn . . . ceases to be a thing, and becomes something that knows we are there."

Given that ambition, Landmarks, which Macfarlane calls a “counter-desecration phrasebook,” can be disappointingly thin as a lexicon. Too many of the terms are simply dialect or Gaelic for some generic form, such as “slope,” “hilltop,” “stream,” or “tuft of grass.” The effect is less pointing out how many things there are to see than cataloguing how many names there are for the same thing.

This is Purdy missing the point, perfectly crystallized as though frozen in amber. He is oblivious to the clear subtext of a language showing a culture's connection to its home, and of the violence against that culture. The Gaelic language doesn't make him feel primal and mystical the way he wants it to, therefore it doesn't mean anything to him. MacFarlane doesn't make him feel a magic animistic connection to nature, therefore his book must have failed at its task.

Who gives a shit? Gaelic isn't FOR you.

He discusses another book about a guy that hikes a bunch of Cherokee trails, but I don't know what to say about that one, observing it through the sludge of the reviewer's unwillingness to recognize that historical context exists. He summarizes his disappointment in a confusing way, using the Gaelic language as a symbol for an obscure and inaccessible place where the answer to your personal emotional cravings lives (???) Then he talks about a kind of epistemicide, or extinction of knowing, of nature, but again, totally oblivious to any relationship to colonization.

Every inhabited continent has been denuded of ecosystems and species. Most North American places have shed wolves, elk, moose, brown bears, panthers, bison, and a variety of fish and wild plants, which were all abundant four hundred years ago. 

Wow, I wonder what happened four hundred years ago?

This writing acts like the dominant Eurocentric attitude towards the world is universal, but the author is haunted by this nameless specter of the possibility of a different way of thinking, which he treats as some kind of mystical, primordial state hidden in the past instead of just a different cultural perspective.

Not only does he not recognize that his own cultural perspective of Nature is dysfunctional and unsatisfying because it was created by exploitation and genocide of other cultures and their symbiotic relationships, he acts like other perspectives don't exist. Take his perspective on forests and the mycorrhizal network:

Wohlleben’s emphasis on interdependence and mutual aid is part of a recent tendency to recast nature in an egalitarian fashion — as cooperative, nonindividualist, and, often enough, hybrid and queer, in contrast to the oaks of generals and kings. Nature does answer faithfully to the imaginative imperatives and limitations of its observers, so it was inevitable that after centuries of viewing forests as kingdoms, then as factories (and, along the way, as cathedrals for Romantic sentiment), the 21st century would discover a networked information system under the leaves and humus, what Wohlleben calls, with an impressive lack of embarrassment, a “wood wide web.”

Listen, I don't think this is accurate to how Europeans thought of forests throughout time, let alone "humanity" in general. The emphasis of power and competition in ecosystems emerged after Darwin, in collusion with capitalism and "race science." Trees have been symbols of life, wisdom and selflessness, and regarded as sacred or even sentient, for centuries before that. But on top of that, this is just blatantly pretending that only white people's ideas count as ideas.

It's the same dreck as all the other "literary" writing about climate change: self-pityingly and unproductively mourning "Nature" and a fantasized "wild" state of the Earth, ignoring colonialism, treating human influence of any kind on other life forms as something that either destroys them or makes them soft and "tame."

I'm tired of reading nature writing from people that obviously do not go outside, or if they do, they do it in such a suffocatingly regimented, goal-oriented way that they can't just sit outside and relax.

Maybe I shouldn't be such a hater if I want to do nature writing. But my love of nature is WHY I am a hater.

[prying-pandora666]

I don’t know how to say this tactfully, but I’ll do my best.

If other fans online have convinced you to see the gentle, optimistic, empathetic, fun loving, whimsical, forgiving, wise beyond his years genocide survivor, as a sexist, racist, xenophobic, abusive, pro-colonization, sexual assault perpetrator who doesn’t care about anyone else and doesn’t understand trauma…

You have been LIED TO.

Please just think for a moment!

ATLA was banned in China from the beginning for a reason. Because they didn’t want anyone empathizing with a character based on Tibetan monks. Why? Because they are an actual oppressed and persecuted minority IRL. Their religious leader lives in exile. Their second most important spiritual figure is the youngest political prisoner ever taken (and to this day no one knows if he’s alive or dead!). China has actual prison and labor camps. Tibetan people get sent there for “re-education”.

Can you please think about what these “fans” are saying when they stomp all over this allegory in TLA and try to frame Aang as the oppressor?

Do you really think it’s appropriate or these people who call Aang all these horrible (and inaccurate) things are being in anyway fair when they call Aang “white coded”???

Even without the real world context, Aang is explicitly the only survivor of a genocide. The last of his people. He has lost more than anyone else in the entire franchise. There’s a reason he clings so hard to Appa.

Do you think it’s fair to compare a 12 year old misreading signals and trying to kiss a girl who already consensually kissed him before, and immediately backing off and giving her space when she says no, to rape?

Tweens and teens miscommunicating and trying to comfort each other with kisses, only to realize that’s not what their friend needed and immediately backing off is the same as having your body violently violated against your will? The same as having your “no” ignored?

How do you think this makes survivors feel? To see people use their experiences as a shield and cudgel for ship discourse? It certainly upsets me as someone who experienced intimate partner violence, let me tell you! And I know I’m not the only one.

And how is it in anyway feminist or pro-Katara to ignore her own agency and deep love she shows for Aang? Yes, that includes her own crush on him! It IS reciprocated!

Lastly, you don’t need to demonize Aang to ship whatever you want to ship. Please understand that the majority of these takes are bad faith and born out of bitterness and insecurity over a friggin FANON SHIP.

And none of it is necessary! You can ship whatever you want! You don’t need permission or excuses. You can just ship them! You can make your case for why you like another pairing better without misrepresenting what happened in the show and what these characters are like, let alone what they represent.

There’s already plenty to work with in the show as it is! Otherwise why bother?

I’m imploring fans taken in by persuasive and manipulative metas to please just think about it. Get off social media and rewatch the show for yourself thoughtfully.

It doesn’t need to be like this.

[clockwayswrites]

City Pigeons Part 12 CW: blood, past trauma and experimentation

Jason could almost go to sleep. He wouldn’t, not when he was the only Bat in the apartment, but it would be so easy to. Danny made a really good weighted blanket.

It seemed once the kid got over touching someone, he basically became a koala. Cass and Danny had spent the morning wrapped around each other on the couch. Cass was playing one of her weird clicking games and Danny, blue bear in his lap, was scrolling through articles on the tablet that Tim had brought him the other day.

Now, though, Cass was out on a snack run and Danny had slowly slumped over until he was laying across Jason. It wasn’t minded. Jason could admit he still had some trouble with touch himself, but it was easy to be there for Danny like this.

The problem was, Jason needed to get back to Crime Alley for at least a few nights. He was already past when Red Hood should have made an appearance. It he didn’t go back soon, rumors were going to start that he was dead. Again.

Jason waited for Danny to start searching for a new article to read to ask, “Are you alright with meeting someone soon?”

He didn’t expect Danny to tense like he did.

“Robin?”

“No, Dandelion,” Jason said, stroking Danny’s white hair. “N talked with Robin and he knows not to stop by like that without warning. We’ll have him over when you’re comfortable but not before.”

“Okay. Sorry. I don’t mean to…”

“None of that. He freaked you out,” Jason said. “I know he didn’t mean to, and from our guess it’s not his fault how he feels like to you, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t. It’s okay to set boundaries.”

“He… doesn’t feel weird to you?”

Jason sighed. “No. I guess I don’t sense it. I didn’t know you had died until you told me.”

“Oh.” Danny’s voice was small and quiet.

“But I knew that I had died— the others know it’s too,” Jason was quick to add. “It’s alright that you died. No one will think differently of you.”

“They might. It’s… you’re different than me, I guess.”

“I don’t know, because I don’t know what happened to you, but I actually hope so. The way I came back wasn’t pleasant.” Jason had to take a breath before he continued. “I was murdered by a rogue in town called the Joker. I woke up… we’re still not sure when exactly, but somewhere about half a year later. I didn’t have any of my memories, but I still had most of my injuries.

“I was picked up by some people you might hear us refer to— the League of Assassins. They put me back together about a year after my death by tossing me in something called the Lazarus Pits. Those things come with a price though, one that I’m still paying. Coming back was… hard, in a lot of ways.”

“Oh,” Danny said. He clung a little to Jason’s shirt, like he wanted to make sure Jason was still there. It was a feeling Jason understood all too well. “I, um, don’t think I’ve ever stayed really dead for more than a minute or two. At least not like… not like you were.”

Jason rested his hand on Danny’s back, feeling him breath. Feeling him… feeling him not breathe.

“…Danny?”

Danny clung tighter to Jason’s shirt. “Go ahead, ask.”

“Are you… somewhat dead right now?”

“Yes.”

Just one word. A simple answer.

“Okay. That’s— okay. I’m glad there’s a reason that you’re not breathing,” Jason said and pressed a kiss to the top of Danny’s head as he tried to calm his own pounding heart.

“I think B.B. knows. I usually… it’s habit to breath but sometimes I forget and—”

“She’s good at noticing things.” Jason would have to talk with her. “But that goes to what I said, right? None of the others will thinking of you differently.”

“Even if…”

“Even if anything.”

Danny sat up and Jason resisted the urge to reach for him. It took him a moment longer to release Jason’s shirt. Jason sat up slowly and waited for Danny to get the words out he was obviously working on.

“Can I show you?”

“Course.” Jason braced himself for anything.

“It might be bright, close your eyes.”

The flash still shown through Jason’s eyelids.

“Oh.” Danny’s voice wavered horribly. “I didn’t think of that.”

“Danny?” Jason was reaching forward even as he opened his eyes.

It was good he did.

He had to catch Danny as he wavered dangerously. Danny’s who hair was black. Who’s eyes were blue. Who looked all the more like Bruce’s son. Who was bleeding red.

-

“Jesus and Mother Mary,” Dick cursed, resting his forehead against his wrist’s.

Cass came over and peeled the bloody gloves off for him. “Breathe.”

“I am breathing,” Dick wheezed.

“Badly.”

Jason barked out a laugh at that. It was unstable in a way that reminded the room of worse days.

The door banged open and they all jolted, everyone but Cass, who was better than that, and Danny who was still out cold.

“Shit, fuck, sorry,” Tim rambled. “Is he stable?”

“Yes,” Cass answered. Her voice was calm, but but Duke could see the way that she fidgeted. For anyone else it wouldn’t be called fidgeting, but the way that she untied and retied and untied the trash bag in his visions told Dick otherwise.

Cass was as worried as the rest of them.

“Signal?” Tim asked. He came into the room, tablet already pulled up to record everything.

“Hard for me to say,” Duke said with a little shrug. He wished he could say, but he was still trying to understand what he was seeing. “The guy is… he’s like no one I’ve ever seen before. But I think he’s getting stronger.”

“That’s— holy fuck.” Tim paused as he finally got a look at Danny.

“Really looks like the old man like this, doesn’t he?” Jason asked. He was trying to hide how his hands were trembling by keeping his arms crossed. Everyone in the room let him pretend.

Duke sure wouldn’t have wanted to be the one Danny collapsed on like that. It was bad enough being the third one there as he swung over from his patrol. The cuts had still been appearing on Danny’s skin, ripping him apart like he was nothing.

He didn’t look much better all bandaged up.

“I think the cuts were ones he must have sustained before changing forms before he even met us,” Duke reasoned. “They… felt old.”

Dick rubbed at his face. “So the whole time they were there just waiting to bleed?”

Jason laughed again. “Waiting for him to be alive again.”

Slowly, Dick dropped his hands and looked up at Jason. “Jay?”

Okay, so they were at the point of forgetting cape-names now. That was a great sign.

Confusingly, Jason looked to Cass, who actually fidgeted.

“He doesn’t breathe. He does, not always. His heart beats, not always. It is like he…,” she twisted her hand as if trying to grab onto the right word. “Like he relaxes and forgets.”

Well that was weird. Dick nodded to the monitor that he had helped hook up. “He’s breathing right now and the monitor says his heartbeat is hella slow, but steady.”

“This is his alive form, I think. More alive form,” Jason said with a shrug. “His other form is his more dead form. He said he’s never stayed ‘really dead’ like I was. I think ‘really’ was the important word in that. He stressed it like it was… a technically or some shit.”

“Or a loophole,” Tim said. He was watching Danny with his head tilted just slightly to the right.

It was a pose that had Duke straightening up in attention. “What do you see that I can’t?”

Tim glanced at him and then back down at Danny. “The scars don’t match.”

“Ti—Red, please just say it,” Dick pleaded, exhaustion hanging on his words.

“Sorry, I was. I mean, the scars he has now don’t exactly match the scars he had in his— what are we calling it? Dead form?”

Jason flinched.

Dick’s eyes flicked from Jason to Tim. “Let’s go with… ghost. Undead, you know?”

Tim continued on valiantly. “His scars don’t match with what he had in his ghost form. There are a few like around his neck that I think are one-to-one and a lot of them are in the same place from what I can see and might be the same? I’d have to take photos and compare. But… he has more in this living form, I’m sure of it.”

“Okay, right, so that’s a thing,” Jason said. He slid down the wall he was leaning against until he was squatting. He hung his head between his knee and wrapped his hands around the back of his neck.

Duke could see Jason passing out with enough probability that he slipped out of the room to grab some sour candy for Jason and an icepack for the back of his neck. Being honest with himself, Duke could use the moment out of the room. It was a lot to deal with.

Man, someone would have to do something about the bloody couch too… Dick sighed and took the time to send a message to Babs about it as well as an update. Knowing her she had a list of all the furniture in all the safe houses and could get a slipcover ordered on same day delivery. At least he hoped so. Everyone was taking this pretty hard and they didn’t need the reminder.

Duke figured the bad reaction was pretty fair though, they had thought that Danny was getting better and now his healing was going to be set back. Dick would be guilty because he hadn’t been here, Jason going through his issues about kids and violence and death, and Cass already counted Danny as family. She was never good when family was hurt. It was even worse that Danny should have been safe, he was under their watch.

Duke set the pack of candy and ice pack down next to Jason’s foot, close enough that he should be able to feel the cold, and backed up to his corner. It was best not to touch right then. He wasn’t afraid of Jason ever hurting him purposefully, but he was also very aware for Jason it might not always be purposeful.

Cass joined him, leaning against his side, and Duke wrapped an arm around her. Tim was tapping away on his tablet, mostly muttering to himself, but Dick had gotten up to peer over his shoulder.

Jason tore open the packet of candies and popped one in his mouth.

They’d be okay.

It would take work, but they were Bats. They were stubborn.

Dukes wrist buzzed. The tracking number for slipcover flashed across his hud. It would be there by 9 pm.

They’d be okay.

-

Everything hurt. Everything ached all the way down through his skin and muscled and bones. His breath caught in his chest, ragged and frayed like his lungs were full of shattered glass.

He tried not to make a noise.

He tried to stay quiet.

They would notice him if he made a noise. He couldn’t take any more attention. He didn’t think he’d survive more attention. God, that thought was almost enough to kill him. Once he would have done anything for his parents attention and now—

There was a hand in his hair. It was gentle.

Oh, he was crying.

“…going to be okay. We have you, Dandelion, and we’re not letting them touch you ever again. The two Reds will make sure it can never happen again. Once you’re better they’ll take a little road trip.”

That was… that wasn’t… a sob broke through Danny’s lips and he didn’t stop it. He didn’t even try.

He wasn’t there.

He could make noises.

He was safe.

“Danny? Hey, are you awake.”

Danny nodded as much as he could manage.

“Hey there,” Nightwing said, voice so kind that it just made Danny cry harder. “Can you open your eyes for me?”

Danny shook his head.

“Okay, that’s okay, thank you for answering me Danny. How’s the pain? Um, squeeze my hand once if it’s okay, twice if it’s really bad.”

Danny squeezed it three times.

“Really, really bad, huh? Okay. Okay… we can give you some pain meds through your IV. We have you on a saline drip because you looked really bad. We didn’t want to give you any meds without your consent though. Are you alright with some pain medication? Once for yes, twice for no.”

One squeeze.

“Okay, let me go—”

Danny clung to Nightwing’s hand a tightly at he could. His breath stuttered around the glass.

“Not leaving, Dandelion. I’m going to text Red Robin, okay? He’s in the living room. Hood and B.B are out… running an errand. They’ll be back soon. I’ll text Red and he’ll bring the pain meds.”

Danny nodded. Nightwing shifted around, but didn’t let go of Danny’s hand. The breathing calmed, got easier. Danny let out a slow breath.

“Hey Danny,” a new voice said. “The medication will make you feel fuzzy and maybe disoriented. You’ll probably sleep a lot. We don’t want you to wake up panicked. Is there anything we can do to help you know you’re here with us and safe?”

“Bear,” Danny croaked. He wet his lips and tried to continue. “Smells that aren’t… Touch. Warmth.”

“Red will get your teddy bear as soon as the meds are hooked up and we’ll work on the other things. One of us will always be here with you,” Nightwing said.

Danny squeezed his hand again.

“Okay. We won’t leave you alone, Danny, we’ll keep you safe. You’ll be okay.”

Danny trusted that.

It was surprising.

He didn’t think he could trust anymore, but Danny trusted that, trusted them.

The warmth of that thought followed him back into the black.

---

AN: This all Danny's fault, not mine! He decided to reveal his form early and then... welp.....

...Stay delightful, darlings?

[solkara]

❛ 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐈𝐃 𝐄𝐘𝐄 , alicent hightower and rhaenyra targaryen ❜

⌗ 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 , being blind was a blessing and a curse that you had to navigate from a young age but you were lucky to have two friend's willing to do anything for you

⌗ 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 , alicent hightower x fem! blind! reader x rhaenyra targaryen

⌗ 𝐬𝐨𝐥'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 , this was actually meant to be a one and done this but I think I'm gonna make it a two part so I can write it to the best of my ability without being rushed !!

house of the dragon masterlist , next part

⌗ you weren't always blind. you had your sight till you were age ten. when an assassination attempt gone wrong left you blinded. and since that day people only looked at you for what you had lost. not for what you had left. all they seven kingdoms saw a poor fragile high born girl with no sight.

⌗ but your best friends rhaenyra and alicent didn't. they saw you as more than your blindness. and dare you say they were the reason you had gotten though some of the darkest moments in your life. going out of their way to include you in everything they did.

⌗ walking hand and hand with you through the castle. reading your favourite stories. telling you the lastest court gossip. and showering you with gifts when your spirits were low. the greatest gift they ever gave you besides their friendship was your cane.

⌗ made of snow-white wood with a silver ornament on top of your house crest. over time you learn how to see without actually seeing. by tapping or banging your cane you would listen to the vibrations and gauge how near or far everything in the room was. and over time you got use to the darkness. finding a strange comfort in it.

⌗ life was good. you had everything you needed. but there was one thing that gnawed at you. something you craved that you knew you would never get. marriage. as being blind made you damaged goods and their for unwedable. meaning you would never have a family of your own.

⌗ your best friends noticing your sadness asked you what was wrong. as they watched you break down into tears and sniffles. the two held you as your tears fell. and once you were calm enough they began soothing you insecurities. "one day the seven shall grant you your wish" "you will make an amazing mother"

⌗ but deep down the two knew that they were far too in love with you to allow you to be wed off to a man. that most definitely did not deserve you. not like they did. and gradually over time their beautiful friendship bloomed into a beautiful romance.

⌗ with soft touches and gentle kisses. late night conversations about the future ahead of them. but all that came crashing down when alicent married viserys. rhaenyra was incensed and you were confused. how could this have happened? while you tried to hear alicent out the targaryen wouldn't listen to a word of it. dragging you away so you wouldn't have to either.

⌗ and so began the tug of war over you. with neither the hightower and targaryen willing to give up. though your time was mostly monopolised by rhaenyra. with the white-haired girl rarely ever leaving your side. spending countless nights in your room. but alicent still managed to find ways to see you. and though you still couldn't forgive her fully for betraying your trust. you did try your best to be there for her.

⌗ you were there when she gave birth to all her children. a comforting hand as she screamed and writhed in pain. stroking her hair and kissing her hand. whispering words of comfort in an attempt to soothe the girl who you still had so much love for. but that became so much more difficult once rhaenyra started having children.

⌗ that was when alicent's resentment how come she was being punished for doing her duty. while rhaenyra could bear bastard children and go unpunished. she got everything. the love of her father. the title of heir. you. oh how she hated how she had gotten you. how she manipulated you into staying by her side with her and her bastard children.

⌗ the hightower couldn't understand how you could still stand beside her. after she willingly betrayed you for another man and bore his children. unlike alicent who never wanted to have viserys children but had to out of duty. though she never really saw her children as viserys. as in her mind they were yours and hers.

⌗ and she was tired of you being taken away from her. so tonight she was going to do something about him. so under the cover of night she went to see you. slipping into your room she watched as you lay peacefully in bed. you looked so peaceful in nothing but a white silk nightgown. approaching the bed alicent slipped under the covers with you.

⌗ her hands immediately began exploring the body she had been denied for so long. closing her eyes alicent couldn't help but bury her nose in your hair. inhaling that comforting scent that seamlessly brought her comfort. wishing for nothing more than to drown in it. but as the hightower allowed herself to get lost in the touch smell and taste of you against her lips and body she hadn't noticed that you had started to stir in you sleep. "nyra?" you said in a hushed mumble.

⌗ alicent said nothing in response. as she silently lulled you back to sleep. seething that you called out of rhaenyra and not her. as the auburn continued to touch and kiss you as you slept she failed to realise that another figure had entered the room. and had left just as quickly. but all alicent saw was a sliver of white hair.

⌗ and by the time the next morning had came alicent was still laying next to you. but left before you woke up. as she walked back to her room with a pep in her step she bumped into the last person she wanted to see rhaenyra who smirked at her like she had been blessed by the gods. and a few moments later she found out why. as the good mood alicent hightower came crashing down.

⌗ you were leaving with rhaenyra and her family to dragonstone. and there was nothing she could do about it. alicent cried for hours after hearing the news. even going as far as to get on her hands and knees in front of you in an attempt to get you to stay. but to no avail. as once again rhaenyra had gotten what she wanted.

anon , Could I request (if it's alright with you ofc ) Blind Reader X Rhaenyra and Alicent (or one of them ) OR Visenya and Rhaenys . Readers blindness is due to R saving them ? Now, reader is a strategist or hand on the council ? If the idea is okay with you ofc , anything you wish 🙂

[sweetlittlefawntears]

the grave ♱

au : i’m really upset cuz there’s like no good ghostface ellie fics … just ones where she kills ur entire family which is um. definitely interesting so i took it upon myself to write one hehehe i hope u all enjoy this one !

cw : fem reader x ghostface ellie, blood, murder, ellie is kinda a perv, panty stealing, breaking and entering, strap on sex, ellie is a bit degrading, slapping, (not hard), murder obviously but don’t worry i didn’t describe it in detail at all its just hinted at, intentional lowercase, that’s it i think uhhh …

wc : 2.5k ♡

౨ৎ ever since you moved into a new apartment in new york, you had been super scared to live all on your own. it was your first time living by yourself, just a freshly out of the house person making it through life and college in this huge city. and when there started being murders documented near your apartment building, you started to search for a roommate. you set up an ad on the bulletin in the front lobby of your apartment, and soon you were living with another girl who also attended the school you went to. your best friend dina had told you about her, and when you two met you instantly clicked. her name was ellie. ellie williams.

౨ৎ she was a very attractive 20 year old, with auburn hair that reached her shoulders, and eyes deep and green like sea glass. she had many tattoos, and was a deep and interesting person. but she had a secret. she was behind every murder that had happened in the past months. she loved seeing you scared over the thought that someone might be able to break into your now shared apartment and kill you or ellie, and she loved getting to be the one to comfort you.

౨ৎ every time you tried to talk to ellie out of going out at night, she brushed you off, insisting she’d be fine. truth was, she wasn’t really going to bars or the library or anything like the sort of what she told you. instead, she was plotting to kill her next victim. she didn’t just kill randomly. she killed people who were horrible. people who were sex offenders, people who hurt you…people who got too close to you…and more. she tried to not kill every night, as it made you too worried to be away from her for too long.

౨ৎ you kept up with all the murders, wanting to figure out who did them. however, you knew you really hadn’t the slightest chance, you didn’t even know where to begin. ellie thought it was so cute how obsessed you were with the person committing the murders. “you know, i used to think ghostface was hot until there was an actual fucking person playing ghostface where WE live.” you tell ellie one night. “oh my god, you watched the movies? you seriously think ghostface is hot?” ellie says as she looks up from the joint she’s smoking, pale smoke swirling and hazing in the air. “i said i used to think he was hot.”

౨ৎ ellie fooled herself that if you knew she was ghostface, you’d accept her for who she was. she just wanted to make people pay for the things they did to society. but she knew that was almost certainly not the case, no matter how bad she wanted it to be.

౨ৎ one night, before going out, ellie was snooping around your room. you were in the shower, softly humming to yourself, which ellie thought was so adorable that she was smiling to herself as she looked around your bed. she eyed a shelf filled with cubbies, all full of your folded clothes. she pulled the cubbies out until she found the one that had your underwear in it. she pulled out a pair of soft white cotton panties, with little cherries on them. she held them up to her face before shoving them in her back pocket. she continued to look around your room before picking up a small polaroid of you and dina. she kissed the polaroid of you before putting that in her pocket as well.

౨ৎ she walked over to your shared bathroom and knocked on the door. “yeah?” you half-shout, shampooing your hair as you peek around the curtain. “i’m heading out…” ellie says. “okay just, please be careful ellie!” you shout back before going back to your shower. ellie grabs her bag before walking down all 15 flights of stairs to get down to the lobby. it’s around 10:00 at night, and she’s plotted this murder for a while now. you had told her about a man who had assaulted you at a halloween party a year ago, and she wanted revenge on him.

౨ৎ she walked down the street, before slipping into an alley. she continued to walk backstreets, until she found the building where the man lived. she slipped into the apartment building, trying not to look suspicious. it was pretty late, and there was no one hanging around in the halls as everyone was on high alert of the murders. ellie slips into the man’s apartment and…well…you can guess what happens next.

౨ৎ the next morning, you wake up to ellie back home, already making you breakfast. you step out of your room, wearing cute small tight pink shorts with a lacy pink trimmed tank top. your frilly and cute socks on your feet tread lightly across the floor as you approach ellie. she loved the way you dressed. you looked like a cute innocent bunny. exactly the opposite of ellie.

౨ৎ ellie hands you a plate of toast, eggs, and bacon and you thank her before you two sit on the couch and turn on the news. you two watch the news, which had become a regular habit of yours to turn on. low and behold, the murder had obviously been reported and was being covered right now. you listen intently, hearing about how the man was found with over twenty stab wounds. “oh my god, i know him! he was a dick, though.” you say to ellie as you finish your breakfast. you take your and ellie’s plates to the sink before ellie speaks up. “hey, could you get me my phone from my room?” ellie asks, not thinking anything of this.

౨ৎ “of course.” you say as you walk over to ellie’s room, hair swinging as ellie stares at you whilst you walk into her room. you immediately see ellie’s bag on her bed. you walk over to her bed, looking for her phone as you see a knife sticking out of the pack. when you go to investigate further, you see that the knife is covered in dried blood. you open ellie’s bag to find a ghost face mask and more dried blood all over it. your mind starts racing. your roommate…? but, there’s no way. it couldn’t be her. it just couldn’t. you pick up the knife into your hand, turning it over and running your soft finger over the sharp blade. you don’t know how to feel. on one hand, you love ellie. but on the other…

౨ৎ ellie walks in. “hey, what’s taking you so…” she looks down at the bloody knife in your hands, and her eyes dash back up to your wide eyes. she’s speechless. “ellie…are you…” she quickly walks over to you. “i’m…this isn’t how i wanted you to find out, i…” she trails off, before grabbing your hand and gently but firmly pulling the knife out of your fingers. “ellie…i just…can you explain to me why?” ellie sighs and sits down on her bed before hiding her face in her hands. “i just…there’s a lot of bad people in this world bun, y’know? and so many of them deserve to be in jail but they aren’t, they…they have to be punished somehow.” she tried to explain through some slight sobs. “ellie…i..” you stutter, not sure how to respond. “i still love you, ellie.” you finally say after what felt like hours of silence. she looks up at you, eyes glassy. “are you serious?” she says, holding your forearm as your arm rests on her shoulder. “yes. yes, i am. i just, need some time to process this. but…i can look past it. i meant it when i said ghostface was hot.” you laugh, trying to relieve some of the tension.

౨ৎ the next night, ellie comes into your room. you’re sitting at in a little reading nook the was built into your apartment, with a view of the city from a window covered by a sheer white curtain. you’re sitting in the nook, curled up with a book. with she leans against the doorframe, looking at you. she smiles lightly to herself. “hey, ellie.” you say, looking up at her. though you knew she was behind the murders, you had come to terms with it. after all, she was doing it for a good cause…right?

౨ৎ she came over to you and put her hands on your shoulder. “hey bun.” she runs her hands over your arm, which makes you shiver. you shut your book before standing up to look at her. “not going out tonight?” you say as you look at her. she cups the side of your face. you look at her before deciding, fuck it. you kiss her, sloppily, which she loves. she takes your bottom lip into her teeth before biting softly on it. she pulls away, looking deep into your eyes. “are you sure you want this?” she says, still looking at you intently. “yes, ellie, just fucking kiss me…” you say as she pulls you in immediately.

౨ৎ her hands trail up behind you, rubbing your back with one hand while the other goes to cradle the back of your neck, still locking lips in a passionate kiss. she backs you onto the nook, sitting softly beside you, tracing her hand along your thigh, still locked in to the embrace. you would never admit that this was your deepest desire, kissing the person behind the ghostface mask. you were so obsessed with the case for a reason…you wanted to feel the person behind everything kiss you, feel their hands on you, making you theirs…

౨ৎ you felt ellie’s hands trace along your waist, as she slips them under your shirt to feel your soft skin on hers. “ellie..i want you so fucking bad.” you whisper into her ear as she bites and sucks on the skin around your neck. “shh…bun, i know…i know…” she says softly as she starts to take off your shirt. “this okay, pup?” she says as she reaches and tugs at the ends of your shirt. “yes.” you say softly as she swiftly pulls the shirt over your head before tossing it on the floor. she looks down at your bare skin. “no bra…?” she says, slightly surprised. “i’m at home, why would i need to wear one?” you say, rolling your eyes. ellie starts to kiss your neck as she rubs one of your sensitive and soft nipples between her fingers. you whimper softly as she pulls at the tender bud. she helps you move so you sit with your back to her chest, as she trails her hand down into your shorts. she slips them off before rubbing your cunt through your lacy cotton panties. “fuck, bun, i’ve barely touched you and you’re so fucking wet…bend over for me.” you immediately do as you’re told, bending yourself over onto the little nook, ass up in the air like a dog. you bury your face into a soft pink fluffy pillow shaped like a heart.

౨ৎ “goddamn, i wish you could see yourself right now, so fucking pretty, all ready for me.” she trails her hands down your sides before smacking your ass, leaving a burning pinkish hand print on the side of you. she palms and gropes at your thigh and ass, wanting to feel up every part of of you. “shit, baby…” she says as she unzips her pants, pulling out her strap. “shit- g’na fuck this pussy so good-” she says as she grabs a knife from her jeans, cutting off your panties before throwing them on top of her jeans. those were definitely now hers. she drags the blade across your thigh, not enough to cut, but enough to make you whimper. “i wanna fucking mark you up so bad.” she says as she drags the blade a bit deeper, letting little beads of blood pill on the knife. “ellie-!” you scream out as she drops the knife and rubs the blood around on your thigh. “fuck, baby, you’re so goddamn beautiful.” she brings her bloody hand up to her mouth before tasting your blood on her fingertips.

౨ৎ she grabs your ass before sliding herself into you. “you okay, baby?” she says as she starts to speed up her movements slightly. you barely mutter out a “yes” before she starts to speed up, thrusting into you, hitting the back of your gummy walls. you moan out ellie’s name like prayer. you hear her fucking you, the sound of your wetness and her soft grunts and moans fill the room. your mind is absolutely blank, only focusing on how good ellie is making you feel. she places a few soft kisses down your back. “you’re taking me so fucking well, fucking small pussy just begging to get fucked, huh?” ellie smiles to herself.

౨ৎ you felt her thighs brush against the back of your legs, fucking you just roughly enough to make you feel amazing. ellie’s hand shoved the back of your head into the pillow you were cradling. “i was gonna go easy on you, but since you don’t seem to be complaining…” she keeps up her movements inside you. “ah- ellie! i...im-” you moaned out, not being able to stifle your cries. you felt your neglected puffy clit cry out as ellie moved her hand to rub the sensitive bundle of nerves, kissing your back. as your milky white cum poured over her strap, she thrusted a few more times before pulling out of you. if you weren’t absolutely fucked out of your mind, you would’ve been embarrassed your roommate saw you like this, ass up in the air, cunt dripping and wet. as she helped you up onto your bed, pulling up a fresh pair of underwear on you and helping you put back on your shirt, she caressed your thigh where there was a scab forming over the small slit where she cut you.

౨ৎ “i’m sorry bun- i just, kinda got lost in the moment-” she said before you cut her off. “shut up, i fucking loved that. next time can we do it with the mask on?” you smile at her. “so i did a good job?” she says, like she wasn’t just rearranging your guts and making you scream and tear up just a few minutes ago. ellie gets up and brings you some water before you two cuddle each other.

౨ৎ “so…you wanna keep doing this then?” she says as she kisses your forehead. murderer or not, ellie was in your life no matter what.

♡ hai so basically this def didn’t turn out how i wanted oh well even tho i proofread there’s probably still mistakes sorry … i’m trying desperately to not make ellie sound like a stone cold fucking man during sex i’m really sorry bro it’s hard tbh i wanna make her dominant but also not afraid to moan and praise u when ur fucking help me 😭 i hope u all enjoy man i lowkey dipped my balls into this srsly ♡

[sundrop-writes]

Hiii !! I wanted to request a reaction for Derek, Emily and Spencer

When Single Parent! Reader (GN is fine !!) has to bring their daughter to the BAU for a little bit and she won't stop following the Character around and doesn't want to leave "her new friend" when its time to go? Thank you sm in advance if you write it !! 💕💕

i might swing by later with a dif request, this was the first thing my sleep ridden brain blessed me with ;p

I love this so much (I have been in such a parent fic mood since writing the Dad Spence fic, Star thank you so much) - I think this idea is so adorable, I love it!!!

(I wrote Derek's part and then trailed off and left this in my drafts for a few days, so sorry if there's a huge disconnect between the characters' parts. Ooops.)

Requests are currently - OPEN

How would Derek Morgan, Emily Prentiss, and Spencer Reid react to your daughter becoming attached to them? (Derek, Emily, and Spencer x GN!Reader)

Warnings: mentions of corporate/white collar crimes (embezzlement, etc.); mentions of the reader being threatened by white collar criminals, mentions of criminals threatening to kill a child; as it says in the title, the reader has a daughter but the reader's gender is not described in any way; surprisingly, for this one, I didn't give the daughter a name. idk, I think that's it. (Edit: now fixed so that the reader is actually fully GN and I am so sorry about the mistake before!!!)

It was a pretty basic case. You were an attorney working on a large company merger - you had found evidence of millions of dollars being embezzled, and when you had copied the files with the intention of bringing them to the IRS, you had started receiving threatening letters. It weighed on your conscience - you knew that the men who ran the company had more than enough money and resources to make you disappear, likely leaving your daughter an orphan, leaving her to wonder what had happened to you for the rest of her life. When you received another letter with photos of your daughter at her preschool attached, now threatening her - you had made your decision fully.

You took your files and evidence to the BAU - you had met Rossi at a seminar he gave, talking about how sociopathy is incredibly common in corporate circles - how sociopaths do very well in corporate jobs due to their driven, goal oriented, emotionless nature. And warning signs to look out for if someone is using those traits to cross into dangerous territory. It was a seminar you had gone to out of curiosity, but you were glad that you had taken his card and you were able to contact him now.

He invited you to the BAU, and the team offered to take your case - to find out who was threatening you and bring them to justice.

Derek found you incredibly beautiful.

He was intrigued by your looks at first, and when Hotch mentioned that someone needed to interview you and get the full details from you in order for the team to get a better perspective on the case, Derek volunteered immediately. He hadn't gotten a full briefing - too eager to get to talk to you.

He came into the room with a bottle of water for you, looking to comfort you with his smile and his charms, and he was surprised when Penelope came back into the room and a small girl came barreling toward you, incredibly excited to tell you that she had gotten M&Ms from the vending machine (which Penelope had taken her to).

Typically, Derek didn't go for people who had kids. Any other time, with any other person - it would have immediately turned him off. It would have dampened your attractiveness in his eyes. He generally had a 'no single parents' policy, because he thought that dating someone with kids was just a lot of baggage. But seeing you - he was immediately taken with you. And seeing you with your daughter, somehow made you instantly more attractive.

And he thought the way that you scooped your daughter up into your lap and let her feed you M&Ms with her chubby little fingers was all too cute. It was unprofessional, but the case definitely wasn't the only thing on his mind that day.

Penelope took your daughter out of the room again while Derek interviewed you, and it was only when you spoke of the fear you felt for your daughter - the potential of her being her by the anonymous person, that you actually teared up. Derek couldn't help but to pull you in close, holding you tight in an effort to comfort you (secretly loving how tightly you hugged him back) - and it was in that moment that he vowed to himself that he would do whatever it took to protect you and your child. He would always keep the two of you out of harm's way.

And he certainly tried his hardest to accommodate your daughter when he found out that the two of you would be sticking around the office for the day - to ensure that you would be protected until the team found out who had sent the threats. He got her a kids meal with a toy when he ordered lunch, he knew there wasn't much in the office in the way of "toys" - but he swung by Garcia's office borrowed something she had that was fuzzy and lights up (with the promise of returning it) and he scrounged up a blank pad of paper and some coloured pens so your daughter could have something to do.

It wasn't surprising when she excitedly ran over to his desk and gave him a picture she had drawn of him - a very cartoonish muscled man with his same facial hair and an eggish bald head. His exaggerated features in the picture made you and Morgan laugh, and before you left the BAU for the day (when your safety was assured and the local police were on their way to arrest the men who had made the threats to you) - you found a different pen and wrote your number on the bottom corner of the picture for him.

He knew that something in you had changed him when he started thinking about taking you on a first date in the park - something your daughter could enjoy as well, rather than considering what bar or late night restaurant he was going to take you to.

Emily was surprised by the entire thing.

She hadn't been around children since, well - she was one. Due to events in her past, and due to the way her mother treated her, she never imagined herself being a parent. Ever. She was someone who thought that she was just naturally terrible with kids, like her own mom was. She hadn't met the person she thought that she could settle down with, so she never thought that kids were in the cards for her. So it definitely caught her off guard when your daughter seemed to take to her like a duck to water.

It was in her natural instinct to comfort you. You were so shaken up about the whole thing, the anonymous danger lurking in your life - and she took some extra time to assure you that things were going to be okay, that the team was the best, and they were going to catch whoever was doing this.

She thought it was a natural kindness to get down on your daughter's level and ask what she was playing with, to compliment her cute little doll and then take her down the hallway to grab a snack to give you a few minutes to breathe. The little girl was sweet and Emily didn't mind spending some extra time with her.

On their way back along, your daughter plucked a crossword puzzle book off Emily's desk and asked what it was, and Emily explained it - so then she took a few minutes to find some crosswords for children online and printed them out, and when she came to delivery them, alone with some pens, your daughter enthusiastically asked if Emily would sit and 'show her' - and while you said that Emily was busy and had other work to do, Emily shrugged and said she had a few minutes to spare. Again, she thought it was common manners, sitting with the girl on her lap while she guided her through the puzzles, praising her intellect when she got the answers right.

She didn't see the way you were looking at the pair, pure affection bubbling up in your eyes.

When the day was over, and it was cleared as safe for you and your daughter to return home, the little girl let out a loud complaint that she didn't want to leave her 'new friend Emily' - and Emily couldn't have predicted the way that those words tugged at something in her chest. She didn't know what led her to kneeling down at the girl's level, promising to see her that weekend when she had a free day - that was, if you didn't mind. Getting nothing but a bright smile from you, and feeling a certain spark there.

(She had to resist the urge to punch Morgan in the ribs when she walked back to her desk to nothing but teasing, how she was getting 'the whole family package' on 'her first date'.)

Spencer found the whole thing (secretly) adorable.

It is no secret that Spencer loves kids. He is very good with kids, and it's clear by the way he acts around kids that he definitely wants kids of his own someday. He hasn't met 'the one' yet - the person that he's going to have kids with. Whether that's through the natural, old-fashioned way or through adoption. But he did always imagine that if he raised kids of his own, it would be from infancy.

He never imagined that the person he was meant to be with would stumble into his life with a child that was already walking and talking - but when he met you and your daughter, it felt so right. Even if the circumstances were a bit dark.

He interviewed you about the whole situation, and when you apologized for crying and getting emotional, he was quick to assure you that it was natural - you were shaking, and though Spencer was usually someone to avoid touch, he found his need to hold you so overwhelming. He didn't regret his choice to wrap his arms around you when you hugged him back tightly.

When your daughter burst into the room (no longer occupied making paper airplanes with Emily and JJ), she was quick to ask why you were crying, extending out a small chubby finger to point at you, seemingly warbling with half-baked tears of her own at seeing you so upset. Spencer knelt down and assured her that everything was going to be okay, and then he moved to distract her by taking the little paper airplane out of her hand and telling her that he knew a trick to make it fly so much farther.

And he did. It was simple aerodynamics and folding techniques. And then they stood near the top of the bullpen, silently trying to get Morgan to look up by flying planes onto his desk - and the man couldn't bring himself to get too mad when he heard childish giggling coming from your daughter every few minutes.

You truly felt those butterflies for Spencer turn into more when he showed your daughter a trick that ended with a fake flower somehow coming out of his sleeve - something feathery and pink that he tucked behind her ear for her to keep, having her smiling and laughing brightly on a day where you had been wracked with worry, fearing for her life.

By the time the day was over and both of your safety was assured, you weren't surprised that she didn't want to leave him. And you made the bold move, telling him (rather than asking him) - that he should come over for dinner and a movie on Saturday, and then leaning over to gently whisper in his ear that the two of you could enjoy a another, more adult flick after your daughter was tucked into bed. Your daughter was too excited at the prospect of seeing Spencer again, tugging on his pant leg, waiting for him to agree - and he was speechless at the implications of what you had said.

He couldn't even think of the word 'no' if he tried.

So, it was a date, then.

Criminal Minds Masterlist

[noimnotmae]

𝐌𝐈𝐗-𝐔𝐏 𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐏 — Lando Norris⁴

summary: After landing in Miami for his race, Lando carelessly places his bag next to an identical one as he rushes to the bathroom. And in a hurry, you mistakenly grab his bag, thinking it's yours. And during the next five days in Miami, everything took an unexpected turn, escalating into something far bigger than either of you had anticipated.

˚꒷︶꒷꒥꒷ lando norris x female! reader 🔸

Ｐａｒ�� ２

Ｐｒｅｖｉｏｕｓ Ｐａｒｔ

— "So wait, the guy from the airport is staying at our hotel?" Lhea's eyes widened as she leaned closer, her excitement evident as she listened to your story. "Did you get his name?" she asked eagerly. You nodded, grinning. "His name is Lando Norris, I think," you replied, watching as Lhea quickly pulled out her phone to investigate. As she typed, you leaned in to peek at her screen, only to find Lando's Instagram account. "Lhea!" you exclaimed in surprise.

She glanced at you with a smirk. "What? I just want to make sure he's safe for you, and single," she teased, prompting a playful shove from you. "We only met once–" you began, but Lhea interrupted with a finger to your lips. "Twice, actually," she corrected with a grin. Before Lhea could say anything else, the taxi pulled up to your destination. "We're here," announced the driver, and you quickly paid before exiting the car.

Lhea eagerly showed you her phone. "You need to see this," she urged. "F1? Like the fast cars?" you exclaimed. Lhea nodded enthusiastically. "And there's a race today, tomorrow, and on Sunday," she informed you as you walked, her attention divided between her phone and the surroundings.

"Let's discuss this more at Liv's place, okay?" you suggested, slightly concerned about Lhea's distracted walking. She nodded in agreement, turning off her phone and tucking it away. "You're right, we can't leave Olivia out of the conversation," she acknowledged, finally focusing on the path ahead.

[Texts]

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lhea_theitgirl

Miami, Florida

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lhea_theitgirl reunited at last 🎉 . . . more

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ynusername took you a while to get here

lhea_theitgirl xoxo

livduh tea time 🍵

lhea_theitgirl yknow it girl 😘

ynusername whoop whoop 😋

user1 lovely 😍

user2 trios >>

user3 full fit?

[Irl]

Olivia warmly welcomed you and Lhea into her apartment, which looked much the same as your last visit, albeit with a few new additions– mainly, an abundance of cat-related items. You and Lhea settled your bags on the couch as Liv disappeared into her room briefly. "I'm raiding your fridge!" you called out from the kitchen, already opening the refrigerator door in search of a drink. "Go ahead," Liv replied casually, emerging from her room with a ginger cat nestled in her arms.

Instantly drawn to the feline, you and Lhea approached Liv, cooing at the cat, who seemed less than thrilled with the attention. "Why so grumpy?" you cooed, cautiously petting his head as he attempted to bat your hand away. "He's not a fan of meeting new people," Liv explained with a grin. "But look at those adorable white socks!"

Clearly, the three of you shared a love for cats. "Anyways, let's get to the point, shall we? We have somewhere to be in a few hours," Liv said, glancing at her watch. You and Lhea didn't press for details and followed Liv outside to her backyard, where a table and chairs were set up.

Seated comfortably, Liv placed Bib on her lap and turned to you and Lhea. "So, spill. What's the story?" Lhea wore a wide grin as the two of you sat across from her. "Let's start from the beginning, when YN found who had her bag and whose bag she mistakenly took," she began, earning a chuckle from you. "Well, that same person happens to be staying at our hotel. And when I looked him up on Instagram, turns out he's some kind of celebrity–" Lhea's explanation was cut off by Liv's question. "How did you find his Instagram?" she asked, to which Lhea replied, "He introduced himself to YN. Anyway, turns out he's actually an F1 driver."

"No way. Oh my god, talk about coincidence or fate," you and Lhea exchanged confused glances as Liv continued, "Remember when I mentioned we were going to this big event because my brother and his friends couldn't make it?" Lhea grasped your arm as if she had some sort of revelation, while you remained confused. "I can't believe it..." Liv shook her head, a grin spreading across her face. "We're going to watch the race today!" Both Lhea and Liv squealed with excitement, while you sat there, utterly baffled by what was happening.

Glancing at her watch, Liv rose to her feet. "Time to go, let's go!" she exclaimed, prompting you and Lhea to follow suit, still trying to process the whirlwind of events.

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[Texts]

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ynusername

Miami, Florida

liked by lhea_theitgirl, livduh and 989 others

ynusername idk how we got here. anyway, go Ferrari? . . . more

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lhea_theitgirl girl, we're here for McLaren

ynusername I retract my earlier statement, let's go McLaren

livduh unbelievable 😂

user4 you're an F1 fan??

ynusername no, lol. just had an opportunity to attend the race for today

user5 one day

user6 Forza Ferrari ❤️

[Twitter]

Ｐａｒｔ ３ — Ｍａｓｔｅｒｌｉｓｔ

A/N : Part two, whoop whoop. Idky but I feel this part is such a mess. lmao, let me know what you think :)

tagged: @doofenshmirtzevil-inc @barcelonaloverf1life

If you want to be tagged for this series, just let me know in the comments.