#and getting that specific angle took like an hour of putting things in place to keep it at that angle then forcing myself not to touch

[witchslove]

Watch Me

Pairing: Camgirl!Wanda Maximoff x Reader

Summary: When Wanda gets an interesting request from one of her viewers, she asks you to help her out.

Warnings: 18+ nsfw content; bottom!wanda, top!reader, piss kink, mentions of smut

A/N: Just a fun little blurb in the camgirl Wanda universe. This fic contains piss kink, you have been warned.

Blurb from “The Camgirl Next Door” | Series Masterlist

——————————

Ever since you and Wanda had made your relationship official, you’d been helping her out with a lot of her streams.

It was new and exciting and it turned both of you on immensely.

Sometimes you’d star in her shows, fucking her on camera for her viewers to see. You never showed your face, however, and Wanda was okay with your decision to remain anonymous.

She also had you help her film content pretty often, finding it even more arousing to have you watching her from behind the camera while she touched herself.

The paid requests were usually pretty tame - viewers wanted to see Wanda edge herself, overstimulate herself, or make herself cum with different toys - and you were glad to help, always enjoying the view that came with it.

One particular request had Wanda feeling nervous to ask for your help.

Someone had asked her to piss on camera. She’d never filmed anything like that before, but she wasn’t opposed to it.

She just didn’t know how to ask you to film it. She didn’t know how you would react either, or how awkward it might be to pee in front of you. You’d made her squirt before, many times at that, but this was different.

There were so many variables that made her nervous, but what really caught her off guard was that the thought of you watching her do it actually turned her on.

She never considered that she might be into such a thing. The thought had never crossed her mind, let alone accompanied by so much arousal. She came to the conclusion that it wasn’t so much the act that turned her on - it was you specifically. The thought of you watching her while she was so vulnerable made her core throb.

Days went by before she finally mustered up the courage to bring it up to you, unsure of why she was so nervous when you were always nothing but understanding.

The two of you were making out on the couch, her in your lap, the movie you’d put on long forgotten, when she decided to take the leap. “Oh, I wanted to talk to you about something,” she started, breaking the kiss. “I got a new request and I need your help with it.”

Your interest piqued at her words. “Go on,” you encouraged, your hands resting on her waist as she spoke.

“It’s kind of a weird request but I think I want to do it, I just can’t really get the camera angle right on my own and you’re always so good at it,” she rambled before stopping to take a breath.

“Someone paid me to pee on camera,” she blurted out, biting her lip immediately after the words left her mouth.

You took a moment to process what she said and Wanda held her breath.

“I- wow, that’s… something,” you managed to get out, unsure of how you felt about it, but unable to deny the heat that spread through your body at the idea. “Of course I’ll help you, my love. You know I’ll never turn down an opportunity to see you naked,” you joked, alleviating some of the tension.

Wanda chuckled, relieved that you weren’t judgmental, not that she thought you would be in the first place.

“Okay,” she said, smiling down at you. “Thank you.” She leaned in to kiss you softly. “Could we do it later today? I got the request a few days ago and I’ve kept them waiting a while.”

“Of course baby,” you responded, not pressing her on why she didn’t bring it up sooner. You figured she probably hadn’t decided if it was something she was comfortable with until now.

“Guess I should start drinking water,” she jested, giving you one last kiss before getting up to go to the kitchen.

A few hours later, she was ready. She pulled you aside and led you to the bathroom, where she’d already set things up for you. You grabbed her camera and microphone from the countertop while she undressed before waiting for further instruction.

She positioned herself in the bathtub so that she was half sitting on one of the edges, her legs spread and pussy exposed.

You practically drooled at the sight. No matter how many times you’d seen your girlfriend on display for you, it still had the same effect every time.

“You ready?” She asked, wincing slightly at the fullness of her bladder.

“Yes ma’am,” you replied, pressing record.

Wanda looked at you for reassurance and found only desire in your gaze. Her teeth sunk into her bottom lip before she relaxed and let go.

What started out as a trickle turned into a steady stream of piss, splattering slightly as it came in contact with the tub. Wanda let out a breath of relief and closed her eyes at the feeling of releasing after holding it in for so long.

When she opened her eyes, a pang of arousal shot through her at what she saw.

You were entranced. Your gaze was fixated on her pussy and the clear liquid streaming out of her, your mouth open the slightest bit, pupils dilated.

She hadn’t expected you to be so turned on from watching her pee, but it was exhilarating. The way you were looking at her was making her feel hot all over.

You didn’t know what to expect going into this, but you certainly weren’t expecting your view to be this hot. You couldn’t help but stare, your arousal growing with every second that passed.

Wanda was pissing in front of you and it was one of the hottest things you’d ever seen.

Part of you wanted to toss the camera to the side and kneel in front of her as she let go, but you had one job and you were going to do it right.

When you looked up at Wanda’s face, she was staring at you intently with a smirk adorning her perfect features. You knew at that moment that you’d been caught, but you couldn’t find it in yourself to care.

Rarely did you ever rewatch the videos you made together, since you always had the real thing right in front of you, but you had a feeling you’d be coming back to this one.

Your eyes fell back down, watching as piss continued to flow from her pussy, almost letting out a whimper at the sight.

As her stream died down, you noticed you were practically panting and tried to control your breathing. Luckily, the mic was above her and not you.

You stopped recording and looked away, suddenly feeling very vulnerable.

“You liked that, didn’t you?” Wanda spoke first, teasing you.

You couldn’t lie to her. “Yeah,” you managed, still avoiding eye contact. “That was…”

“Hot,” she finished, causing you to look up at her.

“Yeah,” you breathed out in agreement, not sure what else to say.

“Come here,” she said softly, leaning forward, and you met her halfway.

She kissed you, letting her tongue slip into your mouth for a moment before pulling away. “We can talk about it later,” she mumbled against your lips. “Right now, I need you to fuck me.”

You grunted at her words, nodding eagerly and kissing her again with more fervor. You picked her up, setting her against the wall, and did exactly as she asked.

She came three times before you stripped down as well and joined her for a shower, kissing languidly as you washed each other.

The two of you eventually discussed what had transpired, acknowledging that you both enjoyed it and deciding to do it again in the future.

The next morning, Wanda left the door open when she went to the bathroom just to tease you, letting you hear her stream and giving you a partial view of her legs spread on the toilet. This woman was going to be the death of you.

Two weeks later, she peed on you in the shower and you touched yourself under her stream, coming undone before she was even finished.

Wanda was no longer nervous to ask you for help with her more unique requests, nor was she nervous to explore new kinks with you, which you were also grateful for.

What started out as a weird request from one of Wanda’s viewers turned out to be an undiscovered kink brought to light in your relationship, and the two of you had never felt closer to each other.

[velvetures]

Gearing Up & Catching On

Summary: Getting Ready for a mission, you realize someone is watching. T/W: female-coded reader, sexual themes, staring w/o consent, def not proofread.

Mission prep always came with a certain level of ‘hurry up’ that anyone outside the task force would understand easily. New variables, information, and deadlines always made traditional planning quite impossible. Therefore it made sense why most of the men just always walked around like they were moments away from being right in the middle of a week-long fire-fight. But, there were always times when things needed to be prepped. Be it a different tac vest or something as simple as a change of pants just because someone liked a different pair better and there was enough time to concern themselves with it.

In those few and far-between moments, there wasn’t ever a place to slip away and just take care of your business. Essentially, due to the very irritating fact that up until your arrival, Task Force 141 never had to think about a woman being integrated into more than just a few hours' worth of wartime cooperation. Everything from sleeping arrangements to bathrooms, to who got to sit in the front seat changed when you were adopted into the squad. It made the situation of changing clothes a little bit… different for one man specifically.

It had been made clear when you joined the task force that there was not to be a single misstep in terms of conduct when it came to you, in the specific topic of you being different from the rest of them. No crass remarks, no flirting, no staring or groping. Typically this kind of thing went… a little unspoken about. Since most of the men didn’t mind hearing that sort of thing about each other here and there. Captain Price set out to make it very understood that you weren’t to be a topic of discussion for anything that wasn’t professional simply because he believed they owed you some damn respect.

Unsurprisingly, Soap was the primary concern for a while. The Sergeant was just too fucking flirty and friendly for his own good, and it was often suspected that if someone didn’t stop him from saying something wildly inappropriate he’d end up dead inside of HQ at your hands for crossing the wrong line too far. Captain Price didn’t expect everyone to follow his orders to perfection. At least… follow his orders well enough that no one noticed how Lieutenant Simon Riley’s eyes lingered in all the wrong places at the most opportune times.

Typically you didn’t have the slightest problem changing in front of any of the team as long as you didn’t have to get totally naked. And most of the time, that wasn’t a problem. Changing from one outfit to another was just a part of daily life while on an extended mission or back at HQ; Therefore when you stripped down from your civvies to prepare to fly out, you didn’t even concern yourself with looking around the room at the rest of the team all standing within viewing angle of you in nothing more than a pair of underwear and a bra. Sitting down on the bench to put your socks on before having to go through the whole ordeal of getting pants on, you began talking yourself into the fact. Not that the pants didn’t fit… but after being in shorts or sweatpants for almost a week, the idea of pouring yourself into a stiff pair of tac pants sounded downright revolting.

Just as you put the first sock on and pulled it up, you heard the familiar sound of a towel snapping followed by a sharp curse from Gaz and an evil sort of chuckle from Soap. The instinct to look up took over and you turned in the direction of the commotion just long enough to see Gaz and Soap��� But more importantly, your Lieutenant. Standing almost like a dark shadow with his shoulder leaning against the wall and his dark eyes highlighted by the gun grease smeared all over the top half of his face.

The angle at which you sat gave you just a spare second to realize that Ghost was staring right at you before snapping your eyes back to the floor. Such a small moment, yet it was very obvious by the way he was standing that he’d been there for a good while. Long enough to get comfortable cross his arms over his chest and rest the toe of one boot against the floor to take weight off of one leg. Thoughts scrambled through your mind at all of the possible reasons why the Lieutenant would’ve been doing that in the first place but one seemed even more likely than the next.

Surely he had a professional reason, right? Maybe it was to do with the clothes you were choosing to wear and was thinking that there would be a better option for the mission or climate. Even something smaller like him having a genuine or innocent curiosity about why you liked putting on your socks before your pants. Either way, you caught him looking directly at you while you sat there in your bra and underwear. A good part of you shivered with the embarrassment of it, while the other half tried not to think about if Ghost was looking for less than professional reasons. Because, no matter how much you wanted to tell yourself that your Lieutenant wasn’t attractive… you knew it was a huge lie. In the meantime, you did your best to hide the sudden awareness of being watched and went about getting your lower half dressed so that your asscheeks weren’t out long enough for Ghost to get an even longer look.

With your shirt halfway over your head, the sound of boots on the floor stopping right behind you made your breath disappear and your heart rate spike to double it’s typical resting rate. Made even worse with your eyes covered by your black shirt, you could only hope that it was Soap coming to swat you with a towel instead of what your gut was screaming.

“You always put your socks on first?” Ghost’s thick accent and low rasp made chills run down your back. He was rightbehind you. The question was innocent enough, but that wasn’t enough to make you feel any better. Matter of fact, you didn’t even bother pulling your shirt down the rest of the way before answering his question.

“Yeah, makes tucking my pants in easier.” A fact nonetheless, but you couldn’t help feeling a bit childish explaining your habits from boot camp that never went away.

Ghost’s gruff sound of acceptance from his throat gave you the momentary feeling that he’d let you go without any more feelings of pre-mission mortification. Suddenly you feel your shirt being pulled down in the back, down over your bra band down to the waistline of your pants. Ghost, apparently being helpful while simultaneously making your heart beat so hard against your chest that you feared it might bruise against your ribs.

“Next time, do me a favor…”

“What’s that Lieutenant?” Your question comes out far more shy and submissive than you normally would sound answering someone.

“Don’t sit down,” His voice nearly drops to a rumbling snarl of a sound, bent right at your ear so it vibrates your brain in your skull.

“It’d make for a stunnin’ show.”

Comments and Reblogs are Always Helpful <3

[imaginesforeons]

Hii since requests are open May I ask if you could write something for yan! Nanami with very scared reader who's just straight up terrified of him and the situation they're in they always hide when they hear him come home shake and shiver whenever he touches then and even vomit from all that stress and fear? If no that's completely okay and feel free to ignore this, thanks a bunch and have a great night/day I love your writing!<33

Sure!! I wrote this, hope it's ok! Also, I will get to the other requests as well, but I had eye surgery a few days ago so it's slow-going. Don't worry though, no-one will be forgotten.

Yandere!Nanami x TouchAvoidant!Reader

~Nanami comes home. You aren't happy~

CW: Past kidnapping. Yandere Nanami. Forced contact but nothing NSFW.

WC: 934

REQS are open. At the top of my page you can see who/what I write for. The more specific your requests the better! :)

Buy me a coffee?

.-.-.

The room that he put you in when he had to leave could only be described as scared to impose. Soft cream walls stared at you from every angle, and an impossibly plush carpet rested beneath your socked feet. Baby blues and minty greens made up the few colors, and they were things like pillows and blankets all of impossible quality. Minky couture and goose down pillows had become your new normal, strewn across the ground and whatever sparse furniture there was, yet nothing else decorated the space. There were no lamps, no paintings, no furniture that wasn’t carefully and thoroughly bolted down; nothing could be used as a weapon. Even the window was welded shut, made of polycarbonate that was impossible to break. You would know, as you’d tried multiple times.

It was a room carefully constructed, a room not meant to impose on the delicate sensibilities of the one in it. It held the same air as a therapist’s office. Or a padded cell.

You shifted, sinking deeper into your chair. Idly you thumbed through your book, but nothing in it caught your interest. You had finished reading it hours ago, but you were too shy to ask him for another, and instead simply left your finished reads on his table to show that you were done. The light shining through your window was turning a burnished gold. It was getting late, which meant soon he would be home. You felt a churning in your stomach at the thought, and gripped your book tighter in your hands, listening to the pages crinkle.

You jumped when you heard the rumble of a car’s engine pull into the drive, then the damning sound of a door opening and closing. Forgotten, the book fell from your hands, hitting the floor. You grabbed a pillow, soft and fluffy, and held it to your chest, trying to create some sort of barrier between you and what was coming.

All too soon, he was there. From across the room you locked eyes, yet before you could say anything he started moving towards you. Your muscles jumped, and it took all you had not to run. It wouldn’t work, you’d already tried.

“How was your day?” Nanami asked as he loosened his tie.

“Fine,” you murmured, casting your eyes down and staring at his feet. When a hand touched your shoulder, you winced, jerking back into the chair as if you tried hard enough you’d bury yourself into it and disappear.

Above you, Nanami sighed. Slowly, he knelt before you, placing himself between your legs and staring up at you in a way that made your skin itch. A large hand wrapped around your calf, unyielding. It didn’t hurt, but you knew it would be impossible to break out of his hold.

“We’ve talked about this,” he murmured. A calloused thumb stroked over the skin of your leg.

You shifted restlessly. “I know.” When his other hand wrapped around your calf, it took all you had not to scream. To anyone else it probably would have felt nice, witht the way he had started to massage it, but it was all you could do to hold in a scream. Instead you brought your legs in, folding them criss-cross beneath your body.

“Most people would love a massage after a long day,” Nanami said.

“Most people aren’t kidnappers,” you snapped back. 

Nanami hummed. “I suppose our circumstances are unique.” And then he ran his knuckles across your cheek.

Your skin went electric and you flinched, flailing and trying to jump from the chair. Before you could touch the carpet, a strong pair of arms wrapped around your waist. You froze, and your expression could have been enough to bring any onlookers to tears. The arms shifted, lifting you, squeezing you to his chest.

“Please, Nanami,” you whispered. “Please let me go.”

“Shh,” the man murmured, pressing a kiss against your brow. To you, it felt like a brand.

“Let me go,” you pleaded.

You started to struggle, and though you knew it was a fruitless action, there was nothing left for you to do. Twisting, you writhed in his arms like a snake, but it only made things worse. He held you closer to him, enough that you could feel it when he breathed, and when your shirt rode up your torso from struggling, his large, calloused hand found its way to your naked skin, fingers trailing across it. He made his way to the bed, sitting on its edge with you still in his hold.

“Stop it!” you shouted, pounding your fists against his chest. “I said stop!”

“Listen to me,” Nanami said. He was raising his voice, not out of anger, but in an effort to make himself heard. He wrapped one arm around your torso, holding your arms down, while the other went to your face, turning you to look in his eyes. “Listen to me, dear. The only reason I do this is out of my love for you. Can’t you see that?”

“This isn’t love,” you snarled, angry tears building in your eyes. “You’re delusional!”

“Shh,” Nanami crooned. He pressed his lips to your temple. “I know you don’t like it, but we’re going to stay here until you calm down. One day you’ll understand.”

You kicked uselessly at him, but it only made Nanami hook a leg over yours, pinning you. You sniffled, and felt the first tears coursing down your face. Nanami only held you closer, and started rocking back and forth, a motion that would have been soothing in any other context.

[whiteraven90]

hello, I hope you're having a good day <33 I saw your recent post on my dash and I was STUNNED at the animated scene! It's insane to me I get to see your characters animated. Feeling blessed to be alive to see it, I am not exaggerating. You know, one of these times where you wake up and things are a little bumpy in your life but there's one thing that shines brightly you didn't know it could give you so much excitement? Yeah, that kind of thing ((:

I took my time for the past hour to reminisce over your blog again. It is one of the places I really love scrolling through and reading your writing. I had a question, if you don't mind me. The way you have improved is truly admirable. I know this might not be an easy ask to say "hey, how did you learn how to paint", so I'll ask this instead: I don't know how long you've been working full-time in art, but when do you make time for studies / drawing for fun? If it's not too much to respond to, how do *you* study? I remembered your posts with your redlines and wanted to ask how do you go about those, or if you switch your routines based on your needs (sketches vs speed painting backgrounds etc). The notes there were very interesting, seeing the mental exercise.

Pretty sure you have a fKTON of stuff on your plate, so please don't feel obligated to respond quickly or even at all. Thank you in advance for taking the time to read my message and for all the time you take to respond in general. Love reading your responses <3

Take care, ok? <3

I'm glad the animation made you feel better! I'll put the answer under the Keep Reading thingy.

I'm not entirely sure... I think I don't study as much as I should/could. I mostly learn as I go. Standalone studies are helpful, I'm just drawn to doing things that are more fun/satisfying to me or things that actively progress my creative goals. Imperfect illustrations for my stories, and incomplete research for worldbuilding! Many people learn faster than I, and those people do a lot more studies than I, but I have no info on whether they have more fun than I. Dopamine is rocket fuel, so it's important. :)

I'm always on the lookout for reference pictures, but I study almost only when I have a practical goal in mind, I guess. Studying is part of my job too, I think? As an indie concept artist I'm supposed to build a hoard of references and pull several new/sensible things out of them, and I think part of this process is understanding the material, and revisiting even what I already know. Illustration is similar. If I'm commissioned to draw an anthro alligator, it's time to study gators. It's not separate from work.

I mean, straightforward version: I wake up at 03:30, make coffee, and start working for myself until the paying work starts, lol. Brain is fresh before noon, and tired late in the evening just like everyone else's. It also helps that the city more or less shuts up at 4am.

The studies with the redlines... I do them when I fancy drawing characters or creatures but feel out of shape. I can get discouraged, feel like I forgot how to draw. I sketch if I plan to sketch, and paint if I plan to paint or want to study colors Drawing live models helps. Studying videos of people and things in motion. Hopping down rabbit holes about how/why things work (e.g. flintlock, Davy lamp, mansard roof). Drawing from refs. Hoarding refs. Trying different mediums (e.g. charcoal, 3D, etching). Small screenshot of one of my ref boards for the animation; I'd say I studied it a lot. How clothes move, what are good clothes, how do good clothes move, lion/tiger + human + eagle anatomy (from specific angles during specific motions if/when possible), how to dive roll, proper sprinting form, how to survive falling from a great height, spearfighting, pole vaulting, poledancing, lighting, colors, environment, kicked-up sand in motion, spear types, emu/cassowary/griffon vulture feet, etc. I didn't draw studies, unless you count the animation itself (I would).

[perplexedjokist]

crane birthday, you know what that means... (no you don't, it means very short extra based off a fic I'm working on.)

✦ : 1,073 words, for a little context my fic is based in early rogue years. Jon is 24 and the rest of the rogues are similar in age! and yes, he technically can't be a therapist because he didn't go through 12 years of school. to that I say! this is gotham. they do NOT give a shit.

November 16th. 2006. midnight, exactly.

for the past week or so Jonathan Crane has not left his place of residency, after the usual big event on Halloween he's been very quiet in criminal activity. he needs a break, anyone would with the kind of time it took to pull off.

sighing and dropping one of his notebooks to the floor, he stretches in place. the last few hours he's been on the floor, six notebooks open along with files he pulled from the GCPD months ago, planning. technically researching. people, other mainstream rogues that he's debated working with before, or again. is it really planning if it's just analyzing people and their previous behaviors? the noise of Storm and Echo knocking on the window shakes him out of his own thought. he named them a bit ago when they kept returning to his apartment or giving him things when he'd come home, they're cute birds really, Jonathan isn't completely sure that Oswald had made them nest close enough to his place or not. he could've, for some reason. probably malicious reasons.

he gets up and does walk to the window, admittedly slowly. migraines are common for Crane, unfortunately. normally people would be thankful for getting a trait from their parent, Jonathan doesn't appreciate all the very annoying conditions and issues he inherited from his mother.

the girls drop a necklace and some clothes pins on his floor gracelessly, and he frowns. he doesn't mind it when they leave things for him but it's a pain to bend at any angle at the moment, he doesn't really want to pick them up.

"maybe if I just ignore you long enough you'll learn to put shit on the table." he mumbles, pressing his head against the wall in hopes it'll muffle his headache. the birds don't say anything back, that would convince Crane he's going insane, or maybe he is and has been.

that's not not relevant right now though. there's a distinct knock at the door, two beats with a specific rhythm so they sound completely separate. Harvey. at this hour? for what?

Crane debates collapsing to the floor and falling asleep, his head is pounding and if he tries to hold a conversation he thinks he might get nauseous or cry. really when was the last time he slept? a second time, notably more impatient. Jonathan groans and pushes off the wall.

when he gets to and opens the door he's met with Two-face who looks frankly like shit. he walks past Crane like it doesn't matter this isn't his place and spins on his heel in the direction of the small kitchen not too far from the door.

"why is every self proclaimed crime lord so intrusive? seriously even I was raised to say please." Crane thinks while closing the door and crossing his arms over his chest, leaning against the door in a dazed fashion.

"why are you in my house?" "you let me in." huh. funny, that's not harvey. typically two-face doesn't just go places, and harvey doesn't usually let him.

Jonathan observes as Two-face mixes something he brought himself with the jägermeister from Jon's fridge, he isn't showing signs of any of Harvey's usual behavior.

Two-face after taking a shot of said alcohol that isn't his, lets his head hang as he appears to let the burn of it be a brief distraction. seriously Crane doesn't know why he even tries to work with others if they're so disrespectful of his things. that's HIS alcohol, not that he ever uses it.

"not really, I guess. whatever. sorry for that. I'm here because the sissy won't shut up." Jonathan suppresses a sigh, he doesn't know why Selina still works with TF. both sides are very different - that's fair but god is Two-face annoying. "Harvey you mean? why's that? I don't remember 'breaking and entering' being on your normal schedule."

"you don't know?" that's an unsettling thing to say, did he forget a deal he set? has someone set a bounty on him? Crane remembers someone saying they heard he might have one. "..no?" and Two-face looks at him, really like he's an idiot. "it's November." "yes?" "you don't remember your own birthday?"

oh... huh. "you remember my birthday?" that look doesn't go away, in fact it sort of gets worse and TF rolls his eyes. "we remember basically everything. we would forget but we don't really have a say in what we do or don't." the psychologist part of Jonathan want's to press deeper and know why that is, why subconsciously they see him as important, but that can happen later.

"brat boy wants to give you something or whatever because that's good for business or something. okay? I'm just following along so he'll shut up." TF continues and Crane tilts his head. "you're by yourself."

Two-face rolls his eyes again and walks towards Jonathan, pulling out an old pocket watch it looks, and - car keys? he flicks open said watch and it has a hidden compartment. with a ring in it, which Jon could care less about, it has a compartment. that's hidden.

when he reaches for it Two-face holds up a finger as a way to way be patient and hands him the keys he had in his other hand. "you like firebirds, don't you?" oh fuck. no way. no fucking way. "you're lying."

"1982." "no -" "pontiac." "no, you're lying." "firebird."

Jonathan thinks for a second that if he could die from disbelief, he would. and also that, Harvey might be nice and easier to work with but Two-face is fun. and spending a unreasonable amount of money for something Crane doesn't usually care too much about.

suddenly he doesn't feel so bad, his headaches gone and he's a lot less tired than he was a minute ago. he's wanted that car since he was a kid, he only brought it up once in arkham. seriously their memory is incredible. thank horror herself that Harvey cares at least a little, even if it's for business.

"what's the watch for then?" "you can fit a vile of toxin in it, can't you?" Crane isn't completely sure that he won't regret this later, but he's sure as hell taking the car even if he will. "jewelry?" Two-face shrugs. "you get a lot from me anyway."

even if Jonathan has said before he doesn't wear any, maybe it's a subconscious thing. he really doesn't want to psychoanalyze anything right now.

"it is my birthday... I still have toxin left over from last week."

"you wanna test your car?" of course he fucking does. and get intoxicated, for once aging doesn't seem so bad or irrelevant. if he's going to get any older why not make it fun anyway.

[lauren-ce]

Apologies if I'm being nosy, but I just have to ask how you ended up in the Evrart Chair and also how fucked up does a chair have to be to ruin someone's back?

I'm glad you asked! For those of you wondering, this is in regards to a fic I wrote recently. At the end I complained about having sat in a chair that fucked up my back severely enough that I had trouble walking for the next two weeks (I'm still recovering a month later).

I apologize, but I'm going to answer your question in the worst way possible by writing way too much. Story time!

There is a trend in architecture that took place in the 1950s which you've probably heard about! Brutalism. Overly Sarcastic Productions made an excellent video if you need a primer on the topic, but the gist of it can be boiled down to the following: concrete, functionality, utility, and more concrete (concrete was a very cheap postwar material that allowed war-torn countries to rebuild quickly)

As stated in the video, Brutalism was designed as the ultimate utilitarian style, made specifically to aim towards the ideal of a socialist utopia. Buildings for the people, made to fit their function. BUT WATCH OUT! Brutalism is often maligned as being imposing and monolithic, which is why it can be so readily confused with various types of hostile architecture, or architecture made to be the exact opposite of ergonomic. This is where the soul of brutalism dies (and why it looks so ugly: many people miss the point that it's meant to be useful and honest and not flashy).

UNFORTUNATELY, my ideal chair just so happens to look like the stuff of brutalist nightmares. It's the kind of chair that would make people cry, and yet my back is generally happiest in this specific kind of thing. I sit at the table and work on my computer a lot, so reclining is uncomfortable as it forces my neck to bend down (I'm tall). I like the hard edges because it means the chair is sturdy and won't break/squeak/move when I shift slightly. I like the straight back so I can't recline. My spine is in heaven.

All this to say, after breaking the one I usually use, I spent hours looking for a chair to fit my needs, and I thought I finally found one at World Market.

Pretty plum color, no? And the back looked like it would work, as the reclining angle was much less than many of the others I could find. So I went to test it out. It was VERY comfortable. That's where I made my first mistake:

I work on my feet. My entire job is done standing. ANY chair would feel comfortable after a day of standing! So I thought I'd picked a winner, and I took the bastard home and sat in it for four hours straight. And then when I tried to stand up again, I knew I was fucked. I had to shuffle to bed, and then I was in pain all night. Luckily it was the weekend and my wife was there to help me sit up and stuff, but still, my mood went into a downward spiral and for the next two weeks I was constantly icing my spine and using my heating pad while chugging painkillers. Lifting anything more than 5 pounds put too much pressure on my lower back, and standing up straight was too difficult since my back would seize and prevent me from breathing very well.

I'd get my revenge, but the chair got the last laugh. I had recovered enough to walk mostly normally, so I thought I'd bring the fucker back to World Market. I lifted it (with correct deadlift form, I might add): instant pain. I'd refucked my back. I managed to get rid of the chair (and get a refund), but I set my healing back a week in the process.

Anyway, there's your answer. "How fucked does a chair have to be to fuck up your back?" Not at all, unfortunately. I probably sit for longer periods of time than I should, but if there's one thing this stupid ramble is meant to stress, it's the importance of a good chair. I still haven't found a good replacement.

Take-away points: reclining chairs aren't automatically "good" for your back. Do your research! Instead of buying a gaming chair buy this, and never ever ever trust a chiropractor. (that last one has nothing to do with this story, but is just a good general rule.)

[somethingwittyandweird]

So I finished Sea of Stars today (as anyone with me on their dash will find out as soon as they scroll past this post). Long story short, I loved it! It was a really solid experience from start to finish, and I'm going to take a moment here to sing some praises.

Early on the first thing that charmed me was the environment design- it felt like I could follow my character's journey visually on the world map through the zones when I entered and exited them, which just testifies to how well made the overworld map is. The environment designs were just great in general- every place was visually interesting and some of the backgrounds were absolutely jaw dropping.

I liked the combat system! It's not hard by any means but it's fun. It starts out slow to ramp up the interesting features and many times in the early game I felt like combats were over before I got to use any cool moves, but by the time you unlock all the mechanics it's a really dynamic system. I like the choice to flatten the MP bars and skill costs and put an emphasis on alternating spending MP on two-three skills and then basic attacking to replenish it. The live mana system gives another dynamic angle that ended up feeling a lot like Octopath's BP system in execution (again, setting up a cadence of small attacks to charge -> big damage attack -> repeat) but also interacted well with the lock system. The combo attacks are a highlight and the elemental lock system encourages nearly all of them to enter the rotation. The only gripe I have is that the Obligatory Indie RPG Timed Hits Like Paper Mario, while they do have good feel once you get them down, *really* could have used a timing example on first appearance, or someplace to practice using them. When a new party member showed up with a completely different attack pattern, it took me several fights of pressing A at random times during the animation to figure out where the right timing window was. Turning on the modifier that gave feedback on perfect timing was helpful to know when I had it, but I didn't like having to guess what part of the animation I was aiming at in the first place.

The characters were excellent- though I don't have much to say about some of them, others of them felt like they were aimed directly at me and the types of character I like. There were multiple times that I was delighted to see a new character get to join the ensemble and not just remain in place. I think they were all treated well by the story and most importantly, all had their moments to shine. On that, the story in this one was also excellent- some good twists and some *really* heartfelt plot beats that will stick with me. One visually shattering moment in the middle gave me that awe-struck "oh to experience that again for the first time" feeling whenever I passed through that area thereafter. Just an overall good story well told.

Like I said in my last post, I enjoyed the gamefeel of traversal, which is surprising since JRPGs aren't really a movement focused genre. But again, with the addition of verticality, climbing up ledges and rock walls, and later on the grapple hook to cross gaps, I was pretty engaged even when backtracking- though there was very little backtracking, since the world and environments were designed as very straightforward and easy to navigate. The collectibles and sidequests were at a good challenge level where they weren't free but they also didn't take dozens of hours to scour the world for the hidden door, etc. The game also gives you a modifier that gives a radar for collectibles too making it easy to get that nice shiny completion star. And the sidequests were all worthwhile too, especially the late game character-specific questlines. The full completion reward true ending surprised me at first, but I settled into it once the feelings started to flow.

It wouldn't be fair to the game to not mention the way it wears its love for Chrono Trigger and other SNES-era JRPGs on its sleeve. If "Guest Composer: Yasunori Mitsuda" wasn't enough of a clue, the story is tucked full of easter eggs and references, combo attacks and enemies and environments and plot beats that fans of Chrono Trigger would identify easily. But I think it handles the inspiration well, being an homage that still keeps up its own identity. The lore tying it to the studio's other game, The Messenger, helps with that. It's not just "hey let's remake this game we're all nostalgic for beat for beat" and more "hey let's do our own thing but throw in a lot of nods for us and for other people who are nostalgic for this."

Overall, playing the game was great to end 2023 and finishing the game is a killer start to 2024! A very hearty recommend from me.

[spaghett-onaplate]

ok so this does all come from my own experience and nothing else, but hopefully it will be helpful!

first off, using binding tape is very different to using a binder if you ever have before. behold the shitty diagram i drew for my friend:

it's a bit hard to tell what's going on there but the red is meant to represent the tape and blue the binder - the binder compresses all the breast tissue down, making it appear flat, whereas the tape moves the tissue downward/back to near your armpits.

it honestly took about two rolls of tape before i figured out what the hell i was doing; i use body tape from Kmart (intended for holding up boobs with a strapless dress i guess?) that looks like this:

other types of boob tape or tape made specifically for binding; it doesn't really matter what tape you use, as long as it intended for use on the skin. and i would recommend sticking a little strip down for a few hours to make sure you don't have any bad reactions to it. it does get itchy for me after ehh 7+ hours sometimes

if you buy binding tape with nipple covers, great use those. if you don't, fold a little bit of toilet paper or ripped tissue over your nipples, bc you don't want the tape directly against them.

if the adhesive has a measurement on it, that's awesome, keep note of how much works for you. mine doesn't, but i always cut two strips of tape for each side, long enough to cover around this area:

(ignore the incredibly ripped guy i just couldn't find another image at that angle lmao)

going ehh not too far around but to the sides

so the purpose of the tape is to pull the breast tissue down and to the side a bit, so when you're wearing a shirt it isn't really noticeable as breasts.

also, about half of my first roll was lost because i took all the adhesive off first, and then tried to put it on. except the sticky side folded in on itself and it was a bit of a disaster. now, i just take the adhesive off gradually as i stick it over my skin, going from the (covered) nipples, pressing the tissue to the side with one hand while the other uses the tape to hold it in place.

the effectiveness will really just depend on your chest size, but don't be discouraged if the first few tries are unsuccessful, or don't last long! give it a few goes before you dismiss it completely. for me, tape doesn't work as well as a binder, but i can wear it while getting out of breath or for longer periods of time than a binder, since my breathing is pretty sensitive with both of those (and it is NEVER a good idea to exercise or get winded with a binder on!!)

i usually don't keep the tape on longer than morning->night, and don't leave it on during a shower as that tends to unstick it anyway. some people are able to keep it on for a few days, though, so look up some other tutorials and just try things out. i have slept with the tape on before and it was fine, but it did begin to unstick by the time i woke up. and in general, the longer i leave it on the more the breast tissue slides back into pretty much the same place, even with the tape still on. and the other day i wore it out on a hot day when i was busy rushing around, and a fair amount of sweat renders the tape completely useless and made it slide off.

anyway! i hope this is helpful, this is all just stuff i've learnt from experience over the past uhh bit over a year :D i don't use tape super often but it is useful if i'm going out and want to feel comfortable mentally and physically, as the binder does tend to wear on physical comfort after a while :'D good luck abram!! and please ask any other questions if you think i may be able to help

hey ouhhh does anyone have knowledge about trans binding tape that they could impart on me

[anto-pops]

Homecoming - Ominis Gaunt x Female!Reader

Summary: The carriage ride home was a test of sheer willpower. Your hands were demanding; pulling at the lapels of his coat and tugging his shirt from the waistband of his trousers to expose creamy, smooth skin. His hiss of pleasure when your chilled hands roved over his stomach sent a bolt of pure lust straight to your core, and you damn near straddled him right then and there.

Alternatively summarized as you and Ominis making up for lost time.

Word Count: 5.1k

Warnings: 18+, aged up characters, explicit content

Full fic can be found here on Ao3

All work and no play made you a frustrated and insufferable bitch. 

It wasn’t your fault though– nor was it Ominis’, really. It was easier for you to blame the Ministry for sending him away in the first place– on stupid assignments as far as fucking Romania, of all places. You’d received maybe two owls from him in the entire three weeks he’d been gone, and his lack of communication had set your teeth on edge for the last ten days. 

Again, it wasn’t his fault. Work was work, and you already knew Ominis loathed the Ministry assigned dictation quill they made him take with him, so you couldn’t particularly blame him for failing to send word more frequently. At the end of the day, you simply missed him. Longer trips away from home had become commonplace in the last few months, and every new assignment brought stronger cravings for him in his absence. Distance makes the heart grow fonder and all that, right?

Wrong. Well, half wrong. 

You grew fonder of Ominis every day– even after five years together, you were surprised to still be learning new things about him. Specific things that were prone to work you into a tizzy if you thought about them for too long. Like the infatuation he seemed to have with your hair, and how he would run his fingers through it before yanking deliciously to the side. Or his affinity for visiting every region of your body with his mouth before his cock even came into play. Not to mention the absolutely filthy way he would moan your name; the word always sounded like a prayer falling from his lips before his bruising grip would pull you on to his cock harder and faster, fucking you through your climax as he chased his own with a mind-numbing pace that would leave you drooling and begging for more. 

Of course you grew fonder of him. But the distance could fuck right off– and you were prepared to tell him as much as you waited for his train to pull into the station. Twenty long days were finally coming to an end.

It took the better part of a half-hour for the steaming pile of metal to dock and another fifteen minutes for people to begin unloading from the cabins. You anxiously scanned the crowd until you spotted a familiar coif of blonde hair emerge near the back, and then you were expertly weaving and ducking through the clusters of bodies to get to him. 

“Ominis!” you called out, and the way his entire face lit up at the sound of your voice made your heart soar. 

He was rather lucky he didn’t end up back inside the train as you threw your arms around his neck. Your hug was roughly the equivalent of a chokeslam, your shoulder digging into his throat as you pulled him against you with a strength that put a Troll’s to shame. His chuckle of amusement tickled your ear, and you shamelessly inhaled his scent, having gone far too long without it.

“I take it I was missed,” he mused, letting his wand bearing hand slide up the nape of your neck to angle your lips to his as he kissed you hungrily. The contented noises that escaped your mouth made his chest lurch with affection, and he was made aware of just how much you’d missed him when you angled your hips to press against his groin. He stifled a groan, digging his fingers into your waist as you bit and sucked at his bottom lip. 

When you pulled away to look at him, you practically growled your confirmation. “You have no idea. If the Ministry asks you to go on any more trips I’m sending a Niffler in your place.”

Ominis couldn’t contain his laughter as you pulled him against you once more, stealing a few more toe curling kisses before he was nudging you away from the platform. Your intentions were clear enough, but he would sooner lay across the tracks than give anyone the pleasure of observing you so wound up. That was a gift reserved for him and him alone. 

The carriage ride home was a test of sheer willpower. Your hands were demanding; pulling at the lapels of his coat and tugging his shirt from the waistband of his trousers to expose creamy, smooth skin. His hiss of pleasure when your chilled hands roved over his stomach sent a bolt of pure lust straight to your core, and you damn near straddled him right then and there. 

It was far from a one-sided affair– Ominis was just as greedy– if not more so. His hands were trailing up the seductive curve of your waist as he leaned over you to kiss you, that broad tongue delving deep to tangle with your own, swallowing every little mewl and moan he elicited from you. At one point, he took your hand and placed it on his lap, urging you to feel the effect you had on him. His cock strained painfully against his trousers, and your mouth watered when it twitched in response to the tentative squeeze you gave him. 

“Damn– I missed your hands on me,” his lyrical voice cast a shiver down your spine. It was hushed and gravelly, the pure desire in his tone making you press your knees together in unbearable anticipation. 

Ominis abandoned your mouth to press wet, hot kisses to your jaw, tilting the column of your neck back with the force of his lips. When you felt his teeth bite down against your pulse, your heart stuttered in your chest, and he heard and felt you gasp with pleasure. Ominis smirked against the wet skin, sliding his hand from your hip up beneath your ruffled blouse, scratching as he went to squeeze your breasts. The pad of his thumb toyed with your nipple for far too long, making you squirm and pant in his hold in search of more. 

Fuck– you didn’t even think climbing inside his skin could begin to satiate you. 

When the carriage finally lurched to a stop outside your shared home, you barely had time to tug your shirt down before the driver was opening the door for you both. If he could tell what the two of you had been up to moments before, he didn’t show it, simply moving aside so you could step out. 

You let Ominis deal with paying the man as you rushed to the door, eager to be inside the privacy and comfort of the cottage. You took the liberty of summoning Ominis’ bags into the living room so he wouldn’t have to, and with a quick spark from your wand the fireplace was roaring to life, casting the space in an ambient glow. 

Heavy steps in the entryway drew your attention then, and your knees buckled at the sight of Ominis slamming the front door and stalking towards you like a wolf on the prowl. His knuckles were blanched white around his wand as he maneuvered around the familiar layout, and when his free hand found your shoulder, he languidly scooped you up and rammed your back into the wall as he claimed your lips in a desperate kiss. 

You were an absolute mess as you sighed against his open mouth, kissing him back with just as much fervor. Oh, how you’d missed this. You let your fingers wind their way into his soft, blonde hair as you wrapped your legs around his waist. Pinned between Ominis and the wall, the feeling of his hard cock rubbing against your slick through your skirt had you grinding back for more.

“Missed you–” you started to say before he cut you off with a chaste kiss, then he was burying his face in your neck, those sharp teeth of his biting and sucking any part of you he could get his lips on. You moaned, “I missed you so much Ominis. I h-hate it when you leave– fuck–” 

“Me too,” he groaned and punctuated the statement with a dizzying roll of his hips. “Merlin, I missed you too. I want you so bad—“

Your nails dug into the small of his back as you clawed at him, the ardent need to feel more of him against you as strong as the need to breathe, and Ominis obliged as he tightened his arms around you and kissed you once more. It was long and passionate and everything you had been dreaming about since he’d left those three agonizing weeks ago. Before you could properly appreciate the unique scent of him, he was breaking away and dropping right to his knees to slip slender fingers beneath your waistband. 

You watched as Ominis slowly tugged the fabric down, past your hip bones and over the shapely curve of your ass, before it dropped unceremoniously around your ankles. His milky blue eyes widened when his hands ghosted over where your underwear would have been… had you been wearing any. 

His mouth fell open at the realization, brows slamming down into a serious expression as he moaned, “Fucking hell–” 

There was no helping your smug grin at how incredibly turned on he sounded, but it lasted only a second before he was gripping your waist and hauling your soaked cunt to his mouth, and then you were throwing your head back against the wall with a string of cries that only served to spur him on. 

Ominis made it his mission to make you melt under his attention. His nose nestled against the bundle of nerves at your center, dragging a sultry moan from your throat as his hands nudged your knee over his shoulder and forced more of you on his tongue. He couldn’t get enough of you— the phantom taste of you on his lips had haunted him for his entire stay in Romania, making work a fucking impossibility. Knowing you had been as eager as he was, to the point where you’d completely forgone your undergarments on the off chance he would fuck you— it was enough to have him caving to his baser urges in a heartbeat. 

As he lapped at your juices, Ominis brought one of his hands down to his cock, palming himself shamelessly through the material as he ate you out, and the sight was nothing short of sinful as far as you were concerned. When his tongue came to probe at your entrance, you couldn’t help but buck your hips against his face as you gasped sharply. 

“F-Fuck, Ominis—”

It felt fantastic— so much better than your own fingers, which had failed to get you off a frustrating amount of times in the time he’d been gone. Ominis’ ability to focus on all of you with his heightened senses was otherworldly. You had convinced yourself a long time ago that he had more sexual prowess in his left pinky than anyone else on the planet. 

The thought solidified tenfold when he wiggled his tongue deeper inside you, those full lashes fluttering open to gaze lovingly in the direction of your voice. 

Your nails scraped along his scalp in a feeble attempt to feel more of him as an immodest moan tumbled from your throat, and the hand he still had braced against your ass tightened in response. Ominis ravished you, pulling curses and pleas from your swollen lips as the fire in your gut began to spread lower, the coiling heat driving you to rut back against his mouth as hard as your trembling legs allowed. 

“Fuck, Ominis– please, I’m so close–”

Ominis drew in a long breath as he held you fast to his rapidly moving tongue. The weight of your cunt pressed against his lips was making him lose any semblance of control over himself, the blood pulsing through his cock bordering on painful and demanding to be addressed. His desperation to take you on the bed had to be fucking palpable, and as you finally tightened around his tongue and your release cascaded over you, he barely waited a full minute before he was pulling away to pick you up again. 

“You’re incredible,” you felt him mutter the words into the crook of your clammy neck, and all you could bring yourself to do in response was whimper. “You’re going to listen good for me, hm? Going to let me fuck you until you’re crying my name and begging for more? That’s what you want, right?” 

You were still caught up in the euphoria of your orgasm– the small twitches emanating from your body were his only indication that you were still alive. 

Laughing against your shoulder, you felt Ominis move off the wall with you still boneless in his grasp as he made his way to the far corner of the cottage. “Of course you’ll be good, just listening to you I can tell. You didn’t even try to stop yourself from riding my face– so needy.” 

That teasing tone in his voice was enough to bring you back to the present moment. You didn’t even know if his wand was still in his hand, but it didn’t matter either way; he knew every inch of your shared home almost as well as he knew your own body, and he expertly maneuvered you to the edge of the mattress before throwing you down on the plush surface. 

Any sounds you made were immediately swallowed up by Ominis’ lips on yours again. Your noses and teeth knocked together as you drank in the lingering taste of yourself on his mouth, and when you raised your knee to arch closer to him, he boldly ground his cock against your leg, and your brain officially ceased to function. 

Glorious as the moment was, it was rudely interrupted by the fabric of your blouse beneath his fingers, and he really didn’t have the patience for any hindrances any longer. With an animalistic snarl Ominis was yanking the center seam apart, the buttons flying off in every direction and pelting the floor softly. Your gasp of shock overshadowed the noise– a brilliant red flush swept over your torso, trailing Ominis’ hands as he cupped your breasts and kneaded the skin beneath his fingers. 

“I thought about you every second these last few weeks,” Ominis started to say, trailing one burning hand down against your folds in a way that left your head spinning, before he was silently slipping a crooked finger into your slick heat. You gasped at the sudden intrusion, your chest hitching as Ominis’ other hand came to gently curl around your neck. He applied a gratifying amount of pressure on the sides of your windpipe, pulling a choked wheeze from your parted lips. “I thought about how I would take my time when I got home– mapping your parts again like I did the first time. But to be quite honest with you, I can’t bear another second without you around my cock. I think I’ll skip any more pleasantries for tonight, what do you say?”

His thumb came to rub at the renewed slick coating your sensitive clit, and your head kicked back against the pillows with a wanton moan. 

“Please–” you choked out through clenched teeth– the spots that danced in the corners of your eyes were so blissfully titillating, you never wanted Ominis to remove his weight from your throat. All you cared about was his cock– how it would finally feel buried in you to the hilt, hitting that sweet spot that you knew would reduce you to a pile of limp mush. 

“Please what?” Ominis’ voice sounded foreign, even to him. His blatant lust for you diluted his words, and his grip on your throat tightened just enough to leave you clenching your knees around the hand he had buried in your aching cunt. 

One of your hands shot up to grip his slender wrist as the other fisted in the blankets, and you wanted to cry– your need for him was so intense– you would agree you were a damned Hippogriff if it meant he would give you what you wanted, what you knew he wanted as well. “Please fuck me, Ominis. I can’t take it anymore– I want your cock, I missed your cock– please–” 

Your airy voice was his final straw. He relaxed his grip on your throat, and the greedy breath you drew into your lungs was effectively stolen as Ominis leaned down to claim your lips in a hungry kiss. His trousers were irritatingly tight, but he couldn’t be bothered to waste any time on painstakingly removing them, so he slid his finger from your wet heat to hastily undo his belt. Arousal clouded his mind, and the first few attempts at removing the leather strap failed with a string of curses on his lips. 

In an impatient attempt to move things along, your fingers drifted up to help Ominis take off the belt, but the immediate and positively indignant furrow of his brows quickly conveyed exactly what a bad idea that was. 

Not quick enough, though. The hand on your throat flew to both your wrists in a flash, and then he was throwing your arms over your head with that hidden strength you knew always lurked beneath the surface. “Keep your hands to yourself, darling,” he purred the demand against your lips, and the sound of his belt finally falling from his waist was like music to your ears. “Or do you need help? Do I need to physically restrain you to keep you from doing the simple things I ask of you?” 

Part of you leapt at the idea– to be completely at Ominis’ mercy, hands restrained while he used you for his own pleasure– your own protests and requests forgotten. But a larger part of you wanted to feel him now. It had been three fucking weeks. If he wasted another second teasing you with his fingers or his hands– or even his Merlin be damned belt, you were going to combust. So you shook your head and whimpered out a meek, “No, please– just fuck me already Ominis– I’m sorry– please, I need you.” 

You heard his belt clatter against the floor somewhere far away, your mind suddenly flooded with the taste, the smell– the ripe, undeniable feeling of Ominis all around you. He had shoved his trousers down around his hips, allowing his cock to spring free from its clothed prison. It stood arched and proud against his narrow waist, the swollen head peeking through his foreskin, and your mouth watered promisingly at the sight. 

He adjusted his hold on your wrists; snug and secure. When he finally nudged his head against your entrance, your nails dug into your palms with the effort it took to not grab his hips and pull him into you all at once. A keening sound came from somewhere in your chest as he pushed in more, instantly thrilled to be feeling him inside of you after so long. Those hazy blue irises followed the sound of your stifled gasp as he worked his cock into your overwhelmingly wet heat, taking it all in as he committed your raspy moans of his name to memory. 

Ominis gave a shuddering groan, leaning back to brace himself on his arms once he was fully seated inside of you. His length was considerable– the fact that you could actually take all of him was a bonafide miracle, and the way he felt pressing against your walls was an absolute and utter God-send. 

“Oh fuck,” he moaned from above you. His face betrayed every thought racing through his mind. The brief moment he waited before pulling his hips back was more for him than it was for you– he was overcome with the sheer sensation of you encasing him. When he finally did move, however, both of you were sighing in earnest at the euphoric sensation it brought you. “Fuck, you feel incredible, love.”

One of your favorite parts about laying with Ominis was watching him. He was always so expressive, making it relatively easy for you to cater to his desires when it was you working to pleasure him. But when the roles were reversed like this, you enjoyed watching the ecstasy you brought him wash over his lithe body. His eyes narrowed in concentration with each slow thrust of his hips, and the way he was grinding against you while fully sheathed in your cunt made your eyes cross. The hands he had previously manhandled you with were now tracing every ridge of your body– featherlight and testing at first– but then his blunt nails dragged over your pert nipples and pulled a guttural whine from your throat. That muscle in his jaw ticked at the sound, and before you knew it, Ominis was mercifully picking up his pace. 

Your name tumbled from his lips as he came to dig his fingers into the skin of your waist, angling your hips up just enough so that when he pulled back and plunged back in, the head of his cock reached far deeper than anything he’d offered you before. 

“Fuck!” You screamed and flexed your fingers in Ominis’ grip. “Oh my– Merlin, that’s fucking– Ominis–” 

Nothing coherent was coming out of your mouth, but Ominis didn’t seem to mind as he swiftly slammed his cock into your pulsing core again. No, if anything he loved hearing you reduced to a mewling, unintelligible pile of limbs. It riled him up more– leaving him desperate to fuck more disjointed words and phrases from your wicked lips. Your magnetic aura always drew him in, that ancient magic of yours acting as a beacon whenever he was apart from you. Joined together like this– fucking the composure straight out of you– it brought that gravitational pull to new heights, and his hand tenderly felt its way to your cheek. 

Ominis’ thumb swiped through a few tears that had slipped out the corners of your eyes, and you turned your misty gaze towards him, willing your muddled brain to focus on his face through each rough thrust of his hips. 

“Are you alright?” he asked, the concern in his voice apparent, but he didn’t cease his ministrations– thank Merlin. 

“Y-Yeah, f-fuck– feels so good, Ominis, you’re amazing– I missed you, I missed you so much.” Your reassurances had an affectionate warmth spreading in his chest, and when he leaned forward to capture your lips once again, he damn near passed out as your walls clenched around him. 

With a growl, Ominis released your wrists and was sitting back on his heels to grab at your calves. You had the good sense to lift your legs in assistance, and as soon he had you in his burning grasp, he was folding your knees up to your shoulders. A sharp cry ripped from your throat as his cock plunged back in, followed by a string of sinful moans as you were left to feel every deep, delightful brush of his shaft against your cervix. 

Ominis set a brutal pace, shifting his own legs apart to pound his cock right into where he knew your sweet spot was, taking advantage of the fantastic angle your raised legs offered. Your cries grew louder, needier, and before you knew it you were ripping the pillow out from beneath your head to sprawl freely across the bed and arch towards him with as much give as you were allowed. Ominis felt you contorting beneath him and whispered filthy praises in your ear, his lust-dark eyes driving you mad as he squeezed your legs and told you how good you were being, how pretty you sounded, and how nicely you were taking his cock. 

Before long you could feel the telltale coiling in your gut returning, and you knew you wouldn’t last much longer. Ominis wasn’t far behind– he honestly could have come hands free earlier just from having you half-sat on his face– but this new angle allowed him to brutally slam his pelvis against your ass, and the sound of skin slapping against wet skin threatened to send him over the edge. 

He bent down, pushing your legs back farther as he kissed any coherent thoughts from your mind and slammed his cock into you. “C’mon love, watch me– watch my cock drag those pretty cries from you– let me hear you.” 

Following his request was harder than you imagined– you were fucking boneless. Your head struggled to cooperate as you lifted your neck, but Merlin, was it worth it. Ominis’ pale cock glistened with your slick, the firelight casting a brilliant glow over his sweaty, porcelain skin. The supple muscles in his shoulders flexed beneath his shirt with the effort he exerted to keep you bent precariously in half, and his kiss swollen lips parted around a keening groan as he ground his balls against your ass. 

“Fuck, Ominis, s-so fucking good– a-ah–” His thrusts grew in intensity, and you wanted to complain when he released one of your legs and let it fall limply to the side, but that was before the now free appendage found your sensitive clit and pressed hard, tempting circles against it. Your head flew back in ecstacy, unintelligible pleas falling from your lips left and right– and you were almost certain you were drooling all over yourself, but you couldn’t begin to give a shit about it with Ominis pounding you and rubbing your clit and wearing that unbelievably seductive expression like some sort of convoluted sex-demon. 

Fuck– the mere sight of him ramming into you, desperate to have you falling apart on his cock, was everything you’d ever need. 

“I’m gonna come, fuck– Ominis I’m close, please let me come, please.” 

“Come, darling. You can come.” Ominis buried his face in your neck as he let out a positively erotic whine, your begging causing his mind to completely empty, and when your walls seemed to constrict and suck him in further, he nearly lost it then and there. “That’s it– come on my cock, let me hear you– come for me, love–” 

You cut him off with a desperate cry of his name, arching your back so it was flush with his chest as your nails flew to his shoulders. They dug into the material of his shirt in a last ditch attempt to pull him closer to you as you fell apart around his cock. Ominis moaned, the sound long and low as his fingers tangled in your messy hair and pulled, the sting making you buck involuntarily against him– and if he didn’t come now he was positive he would drop dead on top of you. 

Ominis pumped harder, his own rattling moans growing in volume as he chased his orgasm. His pace was fast and rough as he slipped his arm under your waist and held you fast to him– those slender fingers digging into your body with bruising strength that left you clenching around him, and his hips began to falter as his own release coursed over him like a deadly tidal wave. You felt him shoot his load deep inside of you, and you whimpered at the sensation– your legs shook wildly on either side of him as he slowly rocked against you, milking every last drop from his twitching cock. 

It took a while for the two of you to catch your breath and come down, both of you salty with sweat and so beyond content with it. Ominis was absurdly careful as he pulled out of you, and you shivered as you felt his hands drift over your naked body, pressing and soothing with gentle touches and chaste kisses. You watched through hooded eyes as he backed up further, then leaned down to press a delicate kiss to your overstimulated clit. Your breath caught in your throat, and you couldn’t help the small jolt your body gave at the unexpected touch. 

“All mine,” you heard him mutter from down near your nether region. Despite the raunchy activities you’d just partaken in, you flushed a brilliant red at his tone. It was predatory– almost feline, and you felt his hands grip the soft skin of your inner thighs before his long finger was pressing against your leaking hole. The digit pushed his milky semen further inside of you, and you gasped. “And this is yours– a keepsake, for waiting so patiently for my return.” 

If you weren’t so drained, you would have jumped up from your spot and flipped him over to go again, his lewd acts of reverence making you dizzy with want. 

But alas– you were exhausted. Ominis looked fatigued too, his full day of travel finally beginning to catch up with him now that he’d gone and emptied three weeks worth of cum inside of you. You watched as he traced the delectable outline of your hip bones with his hands before he slid off the bed to lazily tug his shirt over his head, and then he was quickly shedding his trousers. He tucked his softening cock away in his briefs as he maneuvered his way back to the bed, feeling for you instantly. 

You let his lithe arms tug you against his bare chest, burying your head in the crook of his neck and intertwining your legs with his so that all the softer parts of you were flush with the harder parts of him. 

It was easy– exactly the kind of simple life Ominis had always craved. As loathsome as it was to perform the bulk of the Ministry’s leg work overseas, coming home to you each time made every second worth it. His head craned sideways to place a tender kiss on top of your head, your hair tickling his nose. “I love you,” he murmured affectionately, his eyes drifting shut. 

“I love you more,” you countered easily. It drew a breathy chuckle from Ominis, and you felt his broad hand spread across the small of your back as he held you tight. 

The two of you fell asleep like that; cocooned in the familiar safety of each other’s arms, sweet nothings drifting from your lips until Ominis’ steady breathing lulled you into pleasant dreams of your own. The last thing you found yourself thinking about as sleep overtook you was how you would absolutely be sending a Niffler in his stead the next time the Ministry came calling. They could pry him from your cold, ancient magic wielding hands. 

For the first time in three weeks, you and Ominis slept soundly and uninterrupted.

[little-spoiled-brat]

Heyy!!! Could I request angst/hurt/comfort prompt 23. there's so much blood." and 24 "i know it hurts. i'm sorry." with Levi and also with a happy ending please!

WRITING PROMPT # 6:

"there's so much blood."

"i know it hurts. i'm sorry."

pairing: levi x reader

cw: mentions of blood, spoilers for season 3 part 1, angst but fluff in the end

- stab wound -

in a matter of twenty four hours, the entirety of the survey corps were suddenly called criminals. all activities outside the wall was put on freeze, and eren and historia was getting demanded to be handed over.

the entirety of levi's squad and hange's squad fled from the safehouse, heading to trost in attempt to get eren and historia to commander pyxis - using jean and armin as decoys in case an attempt kidnapping was made.

one thing led to another and here you are now, on some random roof, closely watching the wagon that held both eren and historia when levi suddenly landed next to you.

"levi" you said, briefly looking at him before turning back to the wagon that was stuck in the middle of a crowded road for the past few minutes now.

"well?" levi asked, looking past the roof and watching the wagon as well. you took notice of the focused look in his eyes, you can tell that he had something in his mind.

"the road is crowded but nothing unusual. it's not much farther from pyxis, how's the body double mission?" you said, turning to levi as he didn't take his gaze off of the wagon.

"a success" levi muttered, the tone of his voice cold and stoic but you still felt that there was something still quite off about the whole thing despite it being a success. "you don't look that happy"

"no" levi simply replied, narrowing his eyes as he got lost in thought for a second. you let him think about whatever thought he had in mind, turning back once the wagon started moving again.

"y/n, do you remember when i told you about the time i lived with kenny the ripper when i was kid?" levi suddenly said as you looked at him, eyebrows furrowing as you slowly caught up to him.

"what do you have in mind?" you asked, catching up on the possibilities of what's going to happen in the next few minutes.

"something's off. the military police can't be behind this. they're far too arrogant, they wouldn't use amateurs. assuming the wagon was being followed and the group was trailing their target... he wouldn't care about using amateurs. if a group was trailing their target, it would be from both rear angles and a place high up, with a view" levi explained as you listened closely, finally figuring out what felt wrong about the entire mission.

levi was about to continue when a thud caught the both of you off guard. you turned around, seeing kenny the ripper himself as you found yourselves in the wrong end of a gun of an odm gear that looked like it was specifically made to kill people.

"y/n!" levi yelled, his instincts and reflexes kicking in a millisecond faster than yours as he rushed towards you and scooped you up in his arms.

gunshots emitted throughout the area as the two of you were ambushed. levi quickly attached himself to building after building, trying to get away from kenny and his squad.

"shit. you go after the wagon and retreat with the others. be careful and kill them if you have to" levi ordered as you nodded, attaching yourself to a building and going after the wagon.

you turned around a corner to see the rest of squad levi already following after the ambushed wagon with an unconscious eren and historia on it.

"go after it! we can't afford to lose eren and historia! they're used to killing people so kill them first if you have to, levi's orders!" you yelled at them as they replied with a crisp 'roger' before going after the wagon.

jean and armin managed to get control of the wagon for a few minutes when someone from kenny's squad pointed her rile at jean. you rushed towards him, aggressively lunging at the woman and tackling her to the ground.

the two of you ended up in an empty alley, battling to disarm each other. you managed to pin her down, pressing your blade against her neck but a sharp pain on your side caught you off guard.

you screamed in pain, feeling the knife lodged in your side. you quickly slashed her on the neck before rolling off of her. you leaned against the wall, groaning in pain as you left the knife in to prevent yourself from bleeding out of an open wound.

the world started spinning, your hand was covered in your blood as you willed yourself to stay awake. you shook your head, trying to keep yourself conscious but the pain was too much and everything went black.

meanwhile, the mission to retake eren and historia failed and squad levi was forced to retreat to the abandoned warehouse. levi quickly scanned the people that made it back until it hit him that you were no where to be seen.

"where's y/n?" levi asked as the cadets all looked at each other, finally realizing that ever since the battle ended, they haven't seen you. none of them answered the raven haired captain as levi ran a frustrated hand through his hair.

"fuck. stay here, i'm going to find y/n" levi said, the worry in his voice didn't go unnoticed by the cadets. they nodded, knowing that he wasn't gonna be able to stop himself from going out and searching for you.

levi hurriedly rushed out of the warehouse, going back to where the battle with kenny's squad occurred.

"y/n!" levi called out, flying around as his mind raced. worry washed over him like a tidal wave as he looked in every alley, behind every building but didn't find a single trace of your whereabouts - walls, not you. anything else but you.

you regained consciousness, face contorting when the pain quickly settled in again. you whimpered, tears falling down your cheeks from the amount of pain you were in. you needed to go to the warehouse, find the rest of your squad before you bleed out to death.

slowly, you pushed yourself up, using the wall as support. you bit your tongue to stop yourself from screaming in pain and began to drag yourself out of the alley.

"y/n!"

the voice of your lover reached your ears as you forced yourself to walk further out of the alley and to the open where, hopefully, levi would find you.

"y/n! brat!" levi called out, his voice seemingly getting closer. you gritted your teeth, dragging your weak body out of the alley.

"levi!" you called back, knees giving in as you fell to the floor. you held your side and shook your head when you felt your consciousness starting to leave you again.

levi landed in front of you a few seconds later, pulling you in his arms as you weakly fisted his shirt in your blood covered hand. his eyes widened upon seeing the knife lodged in your side and the amount of blood you already lost.

"damn it. there's so much blood" levi muttered to himself as he carefully scooped you up in his arms. you whimpered, burying your face in his chest as more tears fell from your eyes.

"i need to get you patched up. stay awake for me" levi instructed as you nodded, he attached himself to a building and started bringing you back to the warehouse.

you focused on him, keeping your gaze on his grey-blue orbs to distract yourself from the agony the stab wound was causing you.

"mikasa, armin! get a first aid kit!" levi commanded once he landed in front of the warehouse. a series of gasps left the cadets as they immediately prepared everything to get you patched up as quickly as possible. levi carefully set you down on top of some crates as sasha handed him a first aid kit.

"take watch of the surroundings, i'll take care of this" levi said, ushering the cadets out of the room as they nodded. he opened the first aid kit, grabbing everything he needed to patch you up.

"i need to take the knife out, this is gonna hurt. hold onto my hand and i'll give you a countdown" levi said, helping you carefully pull your gear and shirt off as you muttered a small 'okay'. you held onto his hand and squeezed it, fear washing over you as he pressed a kiss on your forehead. "three... two... one..."

you screamed in overwhelming pain when levi started pulling the knife out. you tapped on his hand, silently telling him to give you a break as tears cascaded down your cheeks.

"it hurts" you whimpered, breathing heavily as you screwed your eyes shut. levi ran his hand through your hair, pressing kisses on your forehead repeatedly.

"i know it hurts. i'm sorry" levi apologized, absolutely hating how much pain you were in. you took a few deep breaths, squeezing his hand and nodding for him to continue.

"three... two... one..." levi counted, quickly attaching his lips to yours to distract you as he pulled the knife out. you desperately kissed him back, gripping onto his other hand as he successfully took the knife out of your side.

"good girl. good job, y/n" levi said, immediately cleaning the open wound and stitching it close. you continued to hold onto his arm as he worked on patching you up.

"just a few more, hang on for me" levi said, finishing up the stitches before wrapping your middle in a bandage. he gave you a kiss on the lips and slowly helped you sit up.

"careful. there you go" levi said as you sat up and he helped you put your shirt back on. you wrapped your arms around him and pulled him closer. you rested your head on his shoulder, burying your face in the crook of your neck.

"thank you, my love" you muttered against his neck as levi smiled and kissed your temple.

"you feeling okay? you tired?" levi asked and you nodded at both questions, feeling your eyes drooping shut from exhaustion. he nodded, holding you in his arms until he felt you fall asleep.

as carefully as he could, he brought you to the makeshift sleep quarters the cadets have set up. laying you down gently and draped a blanket around you.

"i love you, brat" levi whispered and kissed your forehead one last time.

[nhaneh]

@sarenraegalpaladin @wildstar25 <tired thumbs-up gesture>

@archantropy

So I want to point out that I only work 15 hours a week due to reasons of fatigue, so when I say it's been what I've been more or less working on for the last 2-3 months... that's not nearly as much time spend as it might sound like. Especially since I took a good chunk of it in the middle to do put together more of a robust framework for dealing with messaging and logging and error handling and those kinds of things.

Anyway, the place I work for is primarily concerned with maps, and the automated process I'm gradually working my way through trying to optimise basically forms the last step in making some of those maps presentable. What it basically does is it gets the GIS database to spit out a map of a particular region as an Adobe Illustrator document, and then runs that through a number of steps to make it more attractive and legible - making street names more readable, replacing placeholder symbols with more detailed ones, placing potential landmark indicators and so forth. It basically takes a rough map of a region and turns it into the kind of map that you might see at bus stops and the like.

So if everything works without issue with eventually rolling it out on the production side, it might end up being used quite a bit!

The situation is basically this entire process is run by a .NET application built in C# which communicates with Adobe Illustrator over Microsoft's old COM objects model. Unfortunately, when Adobe went from CS5 to CS6, they... really did a mess of that interface - specifically it made using COM calls extremely slow for some reason, to a point where running commands via COM is just prohibitively slow - as they remain to this day. So when Adobe stopped allowing the use of CS5 on license entirely and they were forced to "upgrade" to Illustrator CC, the best suggestion they were given was just to port the actual processes over to Adobe ExtendScript (basically a 20+ year old modified javascript parser) and just have the .NET application invoke .jsx scripts which would then do all the actual actions necessary.

Part of the problem is - it's my understanding that a lot of the developing and maintaining of all this has been done by a single person? And they've generally been too busy for there to really ever be much time allocated to just going over all of it and tracking down exactly where the various performance- and stability issues lie, at least not enough to really address them. I also believe they haven't really had someone with both the interest and expertise to look into potentially using C++ and Adobe's Plugin SDK to put some of the more demanding functions into compiled plugin form.

Either way, from everything I've found so far, the majority of performance issues they have tend to fall into one of two categories - either A. cases where much of the work is still being done via .NET through COM, or B. opening(/closing) other Illustrator documents to copy graphical elements from them.

This particular situation was entirely a case of B.

Basically what that particular step does is take a given layer and look through it for designated placeholder symbols to replace. When it finds a target symbol it calculates which angle said symbol is pointing, then resolves that to an index value from 01 to 16, appends that index to a given path and opens the resulting file name, copies the graphics contained within that file over the placeholder, closes the file it opened, and then deletes the old placeholder. And then it moves on to the next placeholder it can find to do that all over again.

Now on my (albeit slow) PC at work, Illustrator takes roughly 2-4 seconds to open a document, and another 1-2 seconds to close it, meaning each symbol found needed some 5 seconds just to open and close the source file. Given the particular map I've been using as my test case has a whole 81 symbols to replace in one of the four layers it needs to go through... that's a lot of time.

So the first thing I did was just look through finding all the symbols to replace first, so I only needed to open each symbol file once - that took it from 3-5 minutes down to a bit under a minute. Then I tried putting all the different angles into a single file that separated the different angles up by layer rather than by file, at which point I managed to do the whole thing in about 7-15 seconds, which was good, but required the need to build combined symbol files that combined the separate indices.

But Adobe has this CC Libraries thing where you can put symbols and import them at a fraction of the time it takes to open a file, so I went and tried to look into if maybe that was a possible route. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to access these libraries via the Plugin SDK, but - I'm pretty sure I found out how it imports them; which is to say, Illustrator treats symbols in a CC Library like a bunch of discrete Illustrator document files, and when inserting one into the current document, it creates a particular type of art object called a PlacedArt, and then does a thing where it just parses the content of an Illustrator file without actually opening it up in the program, replacing the empty PlacedArt with the contents of the provided Illustrator file. And, it does this in a time span that's roughly only 100-400 ms.

So now that step takes only about 3-5 seconds.

I don't know if there's any particular part of the SDK documentation that actually mentions this as a thing you can do, or if it's something that you might be expected to be aware of if you're actually familiar with using Illustrator on a regular basis (I'm very much not), but I basically just chanced over it in the SDK docs while trying to figure out what exactly Illustrator did when importing symbols from a CC Library. So a lot of it was really just being stubborn, lucky, and having the benefit of being able to really analyse stuff more in-depth because in between my only working 15 hours a week and the company getting a pretty good chunk of my pay subsidised for disability reasons, it doesn't cost them all that much money to have me digging into these kinds of things, at least not compared to having a regular full-time employee doing it.

Still, I'm kind of proud of myself. I'm not going to pretend I'm some old-skool C++ wizard or anything, and stackoverflow definitely deserves a big part of the credit, but hey at least some of what I know can be actually useful!

Spent the last however long at work reworking this step of an automated process running via Illustrator that on my work PC used to take about 3-5 minutes.

Anyway it now takes 3-5 seconds instead lol.

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Looking for a Place to Happen

Warnings: non-consent sex and rape (series), age gap, general stupidity.

This is dark!biker!Sam Wilson x reader and explicit. 18+ only.  Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Series Synopsis: There’s lots happening in Birch and you find it all too amusing.

Sister series to Smalltown Bringdown, When the Weight Comes Down, Little Bones, and Fully Completely

Note: We’re starting Sam’s installment but this weekend I’ll probably only be catching up on my headcanons and drabbles because I’ve been a lazy bitch and I’m sorry to those who have been waiting.

Thanks to everyone for their patience and feedback. :)

I really hope you enjoy. 💋

<3 Let me know what you think with a like or reblog or reply or an ask! Love ya!

Chapter 1: I've got a job, I explore

💀💀💀

The sleepy town of Birch was awake. 

In those last weeks, the arrival of outsiders had roused the attention of many once passive residents of the timeless territory. Those brick buildings unchanged by the tick of the clock inlaid into the old tower above the library that chimed every hour on the hour. They still stood with only chips in the mortar but the air tasted different. The frost was more bitter and the sky more grim. An omen of something no one could predict.

It was the perfect setting for a screenplay. The isolated town with its unsavoury secrets and the visitors who threatened to bring them to the surface. It was inspiring to you, to imagine what was hidden behind the stern wrinkled faces of the town elders and under the jackets of those men who wore the cut of the local club. The bikers ruled the town covertly but everyone knew that Bucky Barnes’ palm was lined with the map of Birch.

As a bystander, an unnoticed observer, just another ant in the hill, you watched from the side and amused yourself with the drama of others. It was like a soap opera or another HBO hype machine. Those things you aspired to when you could be free of this ho-hum town.

The snows added to the natural gloom of the place. The deep heaps smothered the noise and harkened back to those days of colonial settlement. Forgotten, desolate, fearful. 

You ventured down in your heavy boots that stretched to your knees and pushed your chin down into your scarf. As a child, you ran and jumped in those piles, now you were out of breath just trying to walk past them.

You stopped in the bakery that doubled as the only café, a place where the owner, Babs, tried to to intimidate the last caffeinated trends. She was always a few seasons behind but you didn’t mind so much. 

You ordered the salted caramel mocha and waited patiently as the quiet woman fought with the steaming machines. She was older than you but you’d work with her for one summer during high school, only five years ago. She had the eyes of a child still, but there was something worn in her. As if she’d been exposed to far too much in her three or so decades in that place. She was a harbinger of what you didn’t want to become.

You thanked her for your drink and set out once more into the billowing winds. Birch winters were never kind but this one was crueler than most. Your teeth chattered as you blew the steam away from the lid and hugged it with your mittened hands.

You stopped short as you heard the familiar ding of the diner door across the street. You recognised the mechanic who kept to herself and once growled at you in the grocery store. She stormed across the street, followed closely and quickly by a black-haired man you’d only seen once before. He was one of those outsiders who came to deal with the club men.

You sped up as you sensed chaos brewing and pulled out your phone as you balanced your paper cup in your other hand. You flicked your camera on just as you got to the front of the shop and the man grabbed the mechanic. You let out an ‘oop’ as she turned on him and you aimed the lens at the couple as they fell into the snow, the man’s shoes giving little traction to his steps. 

You moved closer, stunned by the scene, and kept your cell phone rolling as you found a better angle around the snowy walks. As she choked him on the ground he elbowed her and she coughed as she rolled away. She snarled as he clamoured to his feet, slipping and sliding as he marched away.

You killed the recording and watched the man cross the street again, nearly wiping out as he did and when you looked back to the mechanic, she was gone behind the clattering door. You chuckled to yourself and tucked away your cell. It was prime footage for TikTok; with a bit of editing, it would be comedy gold.

💀

You stomped up the steps of your grandmother’s house, this time through the front door as you heard her chair rocking in the front room. You usually took the stairs in the back as you paid her to live on the upper floor of the duplex. You checked in with her daily, she didn’t get out much more than the occasional trip to the grocery store when you couldn’t or you dragged her out to join you for a tea at Babs’.

“You’re late,” she grumbled as you set your cup down and unzipped your coat.

“For what?” you scoffed.

“It’s after noon and you don’t even come down to say hello? A ‘good morning, nan’,” she harrumphed.

You chuckled and hung your coat before shoving your boots over on the mat. You grabbed your mocha and leaned on the doorway as you watched her crocheting in her chair, reruns of some court show playing from the boxy television.

“I was working,” you said, “sent in some stuff for review. Hopefully not much work to be done.”

“I don’t know how you make money on that interweb,” she bemoaned, “I don’t trust it.”

“Maybe you’d trust it more if you used the Netflix subscription I got you,” you crossed your arms, “then you wouldn’t have to watch trash daytime TV.”

She shrugged and muttered under her breath. She could be crotchety but you liked her sense of humour. Your aunts and uncles never came around because they just took it as spite. You were the only one who knew how to handle the jaded old lady.

“Maybe you coulda looked out the window,” you snickered, “quite a show going on in town.”

“Hmm, what’s that?” she stilled her needles and reached for her tea stained cup.

“Just a fight. You wouldn’t believe it, that lady mechanic beat the shit--”

“Language,” she huffed.

“Anyway, she had this guy in a chokehold. It was awesome.”

“What guy?” she squinted at you over her glasses.

“I dunno. Some out of towner. Remember I told you about that burly dude hanging around the library?”

“There’s more?” she sucked on her teeth, “those bikers have never been good news and now they’re bringing in more.”

“Yeah, well, what’re you gonna do?” you sniffed as you took out your phone and rewatched the scuffle with the volume down. You shook your head and opened up your TikTok. 

“I don’t understand why you’re always on your dang phone,” your grandmother pestered.

“I’m not always on my phone,” you smiled at her smugly, “there are those time when I’m listening to you prattle on or you know, making you tea, oh, and cooking you dinner. What was it I did last week? Oh that’s right, I got Pippin out of the crawlspace.”

“I’m too old to be chasin’ that cat all around,” she huffed, “where is he anyway?”

“He’s your cat, I don’t know? Last time I saw him, I sent him back out the window for shredding my charger.”

“He knows you need to give it a rest,” she laughed to herself, “got your nose to that screen too much.”

“And what do you do, old lady? Crocheting doilies to put where exactly?”

She gave you that dry smile, the one that said watch it but carried a hint of humour still. You hit post and put your phone away as you waved off her irritation.

“Well, you know what, I sit all day at my computer, doing who knows what and you know what it got me?” you taunted, “a large mocha!” you sipped as you sat on the sofa and grabbed the remote, “and it’s paying my rent and putting bullet points on my resume.”

“Mhmm,” she scowled, “just remember, real life ain’t online. Those videos you’re always laughing at like hyena, that’s not reality. You forget it and it’ll come back and bit you. ‘Specially with those bikers.”

“Oh, nan, you know too well, don’t you? Didn’t you have a fling with one back in your hippie phase?”

“Two, actually,” she raised her brows, “I was young and stupid. Not like you, but still.”

“I love you too,” you chirped and sipped from your cup, flicking the station to Jerry Springer, “that’s more like it.”

💀

Your usual TikToks were sarcastic and dull complaints about your small town life. The response was less than pleasing but it gave you an outlet to vent. You liked to goof around and document the very specific type of weirdos that resided in Birch. But the video of the fight in the snow blew up your phone and made it difficult to ignore the buzzing as you went back up to your room to eke out the last of your captions for the ad agency.

When at last you could call your day hard-earned, you logged off and sent in your hours to the agency. Social media promotion was easy enough but the working gigs for a thousand different companies was tedious. You hoped you could build your portfolio enough to manage a single corporate page as you continued to chip away at your creative outlets.

You picked up your phone as you waited for Netflix to load on your tiny smart tv and flopped onto your bed, not two feet from your desk. You hit the icon in the upper panel of your phone and scrolled through the notifications, pausing to turn on another episode of the cable sitcom from ten years before. You snorted as you read each comment but the number under the video made your eyes round. The thing was bound to go viral.

As usual, you went down to help with supper. Pippin, the orange tabby, returned to cry at his dish and you fed him too. Your nan peered through her glasses at a crossword as she tasted the tangy pasta sauce. 

“More basil,” she snipped.

“Well, I asked if you wanted to help,” you muttered, “I think it’s good.”

“Hmmp, I need milk,” she jutted her chin out, “for my after-dinner tea.”

“You couldn’t say something like three hours ago?” you blinked.

“I could have but I didn’t,” she snickered. You rolled your eyes and she took another forkful of penne and filled in another line on her puzzle, “ah, no hurry, girlie, you know I’m patient.”

“Patient? You?” you chuckled as you took your plate and shoved it in the microwave to keep it warm. The ancient thing had a dial and the door stuck, “I’ll just go get it over with.”

“Don’t forget your mitts,” she called after you as you tramped into the front room, “it’s cold.”

You pulled on your knitted cap and matching mitts. You zipped up your parka and shoved your feet into the deep boots. You grabbed your wallet and buried it in the spacious pocket. You bounced out the front door and down the steps as the sky sent down another coat of powder for the night.

You went up White Forge Street and through the short path behind the diner that led to the main road. You glanced over at The Asp, the beacon of the dull town, and turned towards the grocer. Like anywhere in Birch, the store was outdated and stuffy. It felt like stepping into another time with the paper bags and chunky tills.

You went down the center aisle and stopped at the fridge to search through the frosted glass. Your nan only drank whole milk and the last time you carelessly grabbed skim, she whined that even Pippin wouldn’t drink it. She was particular but that was just her nature. You couldn’t say you were any less fussy in some instances.

You grabbed a jug and the door slapped closed against the worn rubber seal. You headed up the candy aisle and brushed your woolly thumb over your chin as you considered gummy bears or Reeses’ Pieces.

“Hard choice?” The deep voice jolted you.

You snatched the box of chocolate and looked over at the man in leather, his chin tucked down behind the collar as snow dusted his shoulders.

“Sure,” you said as you brushed past him.

The cut of the leather told you he was better not entertained. While you thought the men amusing, you weren’t stupid enough to engage with them. You rarely listened to your grandmother but she was wise in her own way. 

You knew a girl in highschool, she was fucking around with one of the club men in her junior year, she ended up with a baby and no support. You didn’t think he was into you that way but he could hardly have innocent intentions.

“How’s the old lady?” Clayton asked as he rung in your order at the end of the belt, you moved along with the groceries and pulled out your wallet.

“The usual, you know? She’s tryna quit again. Don’t know how long it’ll last.”

“Oh yeah? I’ll keep a carton aside for her,” he kidded as you felt your phone vibing in your back pocket.

“Don’t encourage her,” you swiped your card and punched in your pin, “although I don’t know what’s worse; the smoke or her sucking on those mints all the time.”

“Oh, it’s not the bitchin’?” he laughed.

“That, too,” you scooped up the paper bag and put your wallet away, “have a good one.”

As you came to the end of the first counter, you were nearly cut off by the club member as he swept around from till two. His own purchase of a car magazine and jerky was tucked under his arm.

“Ah, sorry,” he smiled, a sparkling smile, almost charming.

“No worries,” you continued on and he followed close behind.

“Those mitts look real warm. ‘Specially in this weather,” he said as you pushed open the door.

“Uh huh,” you kept on as your boots crunched out into the snow.

“You know where I can get a pair. Leather isn’t exactly thermal, you know?”

“These? My nan made ‘em. I’m sure Clayton got some hung up back there,” you looked across the street as you stepped up onto the ledge of snow between the sidewalk and the road.

“Am I bothering you?” he asked.

You looked at him dumbly and almost laughed in his face. You glanced back across the street then down towards The Asp.

“Sorta,” you answered.

“Make you a deal. Leave ya alone for your name.”

You eyed him. He was older than you like many of the Commandos. At least a decade, likely more than that. You chewed on your hesitation and cradled the bag more firmly against your side. His eyes strayed as he tried to see through the thick layer of your coat.

“Nah, I’m not s’posed to talk to strangers,” you said and hopped off onto the road.

You heard him behind you as he struggled to follow and as you came up to the other side, he came parallel with you and kept stride with you easily.

“I know you’re young but you’re not a kid,” he intoned, “what’s the harm in a name?”

“It’s a small town,” you stopped short of the end of White Forge, “I think I know enough about you to avoid you.”

“Oh ho, is that it? Well, I’m Sam, I’m not a stranger now, am I?”

“Not interested, Sam. Sure there’s women your own age over at the bar,” you nodded behind him.

“You wanna come see? Maybe have a drink?” he gave a crooked grin.

“You don’t give up, do you?” you shook your head, put off by his forwardness.

“Well?”

“Not tonight, Sam,” you turned around and headed down White Forge.

“Then what night?” he asked but you didn’t answer and he didn’t follow.

You turned down onto your street and refused to look back in case. It would be best not to mention the run-in to your nan, she was paranoid enough as it was. Besides, you’d forget about it by the end of next week.

[fanfics4all]

Banished

Request: Yes / No  roan x reader (smut preferably) where you get banished from skaikru about a month in after landing on earth and you meet roan. since he’s wounded and you’re a healer you patch him up and end up travelling together and become rlly close?? idk i read your trick or treat fic and it was my favourite roan fic i’ve read (and i’ve read them all...no shame)😭 @szhead31​

Requests are closed <3 Have a nice day/night

Roan x Fem!Reader 

Word count: 1735

Warnings: SMUT!

Y/N: Your Name 

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“What do you mean I’m kicked out?” I asked Clarke and Bellamy. 

“Y/N, you’ve been a danger to the camp.” Bellamy said with his arms crossed. 

“A danger? I’m a damn healer!” I shouted. 

“And half of the people in our infirmary are because of you!” He shouted back at me. 

“Enough!” Clarke shouted, stopping anything before it started. 

“Y/N, Bellamy’s right. You’ve been fighting everyone in camp and with the Grounders wanting to kill us, we need to think of the bigger picture.” She said and I scoffed. 

“Ya know what? I don’t even care anymore. Screw all of you and I hope the Grounders kick your ass!” I shouted and stormed out of the dropship. I went to my tent and grabbed my shit then left without another word. Those assholes can kiss my damn ass. 

*One Month Later*

I was out hunting in the snow. I don’t entirely remember how I got here, but I was alive so that’s all that matters. I had the perfect angle on the deer I was hunting when all of a sudden a scream scared it away. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I groaned. I decided that I should run and see who was screaming. Maybe someone from camp got lost and I could fix them up, it was the damn doctor in me… If I heal them maybe they’ll see I’m not as bad as everyone says I am! I pushed myself to run faster and found a man leaning against a tree with a serious wound in his stomach. I’m honestly surprised his guts weren’t falling out. I kneeled down by his side and quickly pulled out my supplies. 

“Who are you?” He asked with a groan. 

“I’m here to help, who are you? What happened?” I asked as I started to work on his stomach. 

“I am Roan, Prince of Azgeda.” He answered then hissed in pain. 

“Don’t move, I need to disinfect it before I stitch you up. Here, bite on this.” I said and pushed a cloth into his mouth. He bit down on it and continued my work. It took about a half hour to patch him up enough to get him somewhere safe. 

“Where did you learn to do that?” He asked as we were walking through the forest. 

“My Father was a doctor, he taught me everything I know.” I answered with a small smile. 

“Your Father taught you well.” He said, returning my smile. 

“Up ahead, there’s a small cabin I found, I’ve been staying there.” I said and pointed at the building ahead. He nodded and the two of us quickly but carefully made our way into the cabin. I laid him on the bed and checked his wound again. 

“If you’re a Prince, what are you doing out here alone? Shouldn’t you have guards with you?” I asked. 

“I was banished so my people could join with the Commander.” He said sadly. 

“Your parents banished you?” I asked shocked and he nodded sadly. 

“Why are you out here on your own?” He asked and I bit my lip. 

“Same reason you are. I was banished because my people thought I was more dangerous than the Grounders.” I answered and his eyes widened slightly. 

“Why?” He asked. 

“I was a healer to my people, there weren’t many, but the two people that basically put themselves in charge kicked me out because I kept fighting people. Those people talked a lot of shit about me and I was just making sure they knew not to mess with me, turns out that putting your own people in the infirmary while at ‘war’ isn’t a great idea.” I half laughed. 

“How long have you been out here?” He asked. 

“About a month, maybe a little more.” I shrugged. 

“You’re strong.” He smiled and his eyes slowly started to close. 

“Get some rest, I’ll check on you in the morning.” I said and walked off to make myself food. 

*Another Month Later* 

Roan had healed well. He was strong and wanted to get better. He was actually a very good patient and did everything I asked of him. The two of us got to know each other while he was healing and he was amazing. At first he was pretty reserved and hesitant to let me into his life, but eventually he opened up to me. He was sweet with a very strong sense of loyalty. When he was finally better I thought he would just leave, which broke my heart at the thought, but he stayed. He explained to me how he was a bounty hunter and asked me to join him on his adventures. I had agreed, but we always ended up coming back to the cabin we now claimed as ours. The two of us knew we had developed feelings for one another, but we never fully confessed. Sure we acted like a couple, but it was never solidified. That was until we got snowed in our cabin with no way of leaving. 

“I suppose it’s good that we got extra food yesterday when we were out.” I said and Roan smiled. 

“I suppose you’re right.” He said and joined me in the bed. Roan pulled me towards him and I rested my head on his chest. We sat in silence, revelling in the warmth that our bodies gave to each other. After a few minutes Roan pulled my face up to look at him and he did something unexpected. He held my chin with two of his fingers and gently kissed me. I was breathless when he broke away, his eyes shining as he admired me. 

“What was that for?” I whispered. 

“I just finally got the courage to confess how I feel.” He said and I smiled with a slight blush dusting my cheeks. 

“I feel the same way.” I said and kissed him again. The kiss started off as sweet and loving, but it quickly turned hotter. The two of us were feeling each other’s bodies and enjoying the feelings. When Roan dipped into my pants I pulled away. 

“Wait, I’ve… I’ve never done this before.” I said, blushing deeply and looked away. Roan grabbed my face and made me look at him. 

“Let me teach you. We’ll be nice and warm after.” He said with a small smirk. There was something about Roan that made me trust him with all of my heart. 

“Okay…” I whispered. Roan pulled my shirt off and then my pants were quick to follow. My arms immediately went to cover my chest. 

“What about you?” I asked. He smirked and rid himself of his clothing, naked. Roan gently pried my arms from my chest and smiled. 

“Beautiful.” He hummed and kissed me, making my cheeks turn pink. 

“No need to be shy, Y/N.” He promised. He gently pushed me to lay on the bed and his lips went to my chest. 

“Roan…” I breathed, lacing my fingers into his brown hair. He pulled my underwear from me and looked up at me for consent. I gave him a small nod and he moved to my entrance. The sensation was overwhelming as his cock entered my pussy for the very first time. Delightful flashes of tingles coursed through my body. It felt amazing, until he broke through the one thing that indicated I was indeed a virgin. I grunted at the sharp burst of pain in my pussy. He held still, deep within me. 

“Are you alright? Did I hurt you?” He whispered in my ear. My breathing was fast and shallow as I felt my walls absorbing his shaft. The sharp pain dulled to an ache, but was slowly overcome by a heavenly feeling of fullness. The tingles from him pressing against my clit increasing as his body moved subtly with each of his deep breaths. 

“It’s okay… I’m fine.” I finally whispered. Roan’s hips pulled back slowly, his gaze still concentrated on my face, probably looking for any signs of pain. He stopped with the head of his cock placed just in the entrance on my pussy. He teased me for only a moment, making me moan and grip the sheets. 

“Please don’t tease.” I begged. 

“Sorry love.” He said and pushed back inside me. One of his hands found my clit and I arched my back as he played with it. My muscles eased, allowing the pain to dissipate. Roan’s thrusts began to build pressure in my stomach and stars in my eyes. The soft pleasure washed over me with ease. My breaths were coming out in shallow stutters as I tried to hold back my orgasm. I was throbbing around Roan and he could feel every second of my building pleasure. 

“Roan, fuck!” I choked out as I withered on the bed. 

“Harder, harder please!” I begged, squeezing my eyes shut. Roan leaned down, capturing my lips in a messy but loving kiss as he did what I wanted. The ache in my every muscle released all at once. A shudder ran through my body as my orgasm took over me. 

“You look so beautiful when you cum like that.” Roan praised, and it only made it better. Roan pulled my legs over his shoulders and hit a deeper spot inside me. 

“Oh my God!” I shrieked. My back arched off the bed as Roan slid into me with the deep, angled thrusts. My moans were loud, escaping my lips with every other thrust he made. His hips rolled against mine with his hand still trying to pull another orgasm from me. I gripped the sheets tighter as I jolted upward from his powerful force. 

“Oh fuck! Roan!” I screamed, pleasure bursting through my veins. I was cumming for a second time tonight.

“Oh Y/N!” He moaned as he came inside me. I whined when he pulled out of me. He gave a small chuckle and pulled me into him under the blanket. 

“Warmer?” He asked and I nodded. 

“That was amazing.” I sighed happily. 

“We can do that as often as you want.” He smiled and I captured his lips in a kiss. 

“I think I want to do that all the time.” I said and he laughed. 

“Whatever you want, my Princess.” He said and I smiled. This was what earth was all about. This was my new start.

Tag list: @les-bio-lie​ @tashy-bear​ @ashwarren32​ @hollie-blogs-blog1​ @schisbro87​ @lover-of-books-and-teas​ @nerdygaloresposts​ @teenwolfbitches28​ @genius2050​ @drw0301bieber​ @lady-of-lies​ @ravenmoore14​ @ravenempress101​ @cillianchamp​ @rowanthomasknapp​ @rachelxwayne​ @emo-godess-loves-you​ @now-imagine​ @bruisedfists-and-splitlips @vanessa-kom-skaikru​

[bonkers-4-hatter]

Perona X !Female Reader - Ghosts of the Festive Bash

“Horo-horo-horo! You look so adorable (Y/N)!” Perona clapped and smiled at the outfit you showed her. She took you shopping since she was throwing her annual Halloween Bash and she wanted you to look cute and after claiming you didn’t have any cute clothes, well cute to her standard, she dragged you to the mall and that’s where you’ve been for the past few hours.

“Are you sure, it’s not too tight right?” You spun around looking at the dress at all angles and smoothing out the material. 

“You look cute! It’s not tight and besides you’re cuter chubby, you know this.” Scrunching your nose at her through the reflection she blanched at your face. “That face isn’t cute, stop it.” Sticking her tongue out at you, she waved you into the dressing room again. 

“I’m getting you that dress, it’s going to be so cute and perfect for the party!” Sighing you knew you would lose the fight and just changed out of the dress and put your street clothes back on. Perona always went overboard on her Halloween Bashes, but it was her favorite thing to do and you were happy to help especially if it meant she was happy. Many thought Perona was selfish and maybe she was when she was younger, but ever since you met her and you both started dating and moving in with each other, she wasn’t selfish. She would help you when you needed it, surprise you with cute clothes or plushies and even took care of you when you felt down.

Did she have selfish tendencies? Sometimes, but she was working on those and that’s all you could ask for. 

Perona always had a ghost theme to her Halloween Bashes, but it was a specific ghost theme. This year it was Sanrio ghost themed. Cute and spooky were two words that described Perona the best. 

She wanted to do a bit of a couple costumes which is why you were at the mall. She already got her costume, which was a pink and white frilly dress with My Melody’s face on the front paired with a pair of pink ears. Going with her theme she just bought you a purple and white frilly dress and she’ll be putting Kuromi’s face on it and she already ordered you her signature black spiky ears to wear as well. 

You’re not going to lie, you loved how cute it was and you were okay with it. “Alright, off to the party store! We have so much to get! Horo-horo-horo!” She grabbed your hand and led you to the next stop. After Perona had her fun in the store, your car was filled with hanging ghost figures, caution tape, pumpkins, fog machines, balloons, honestly you felt like she grabbed half of the store.

After you got home and unloaded the car, you both got to work decorating every inch of the house in ghosts, pumpkins and anything and everything you had. “A little to the left (Y/N), yes! Right there, perfectly cute!” Huffing and puffing, you made your way down the ladder as the final hanging ghost was put on the ceiling. Your whole living room, kitchen and dining room were covered in the little cuties. Some were white, others were orange and there were a few that were pink. 

After the other decorations were put up and the food was placed out with cutlery and plates ready, you both heaved a sigh and took a quick rest on the living room couch. Perona hugged your soft side, squeezing you like a giant plushie. “So soft and warm, my precious (Y/N) is so cute.You wrapped your arms around her as well as you both relaxed for a bit on the couch, surrounded by your army of little ghosts.

There honestly wasn't anywhere else you’d rather be.

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

[llamagoddessofficial]

Thank you @eldritch-and-tired for commissioning this lil’ /Reader piece of @megalommi‘s Sans, Baggs. I will ALWAYS be a simp for this sexyman. Enjoy!!

Tw: injections, unwilling hypnosis/mind control

...

You giggled.

The light was so pretty. Swirling, undulating, cyan and magenta warping and shifting in and out of one another in an endless hypnotising rhythm. It made you think of a funfair... spirals everywhere, from the tops of the stalls to the decorations on the rides, to the signs leading you around to those huge lollipops that tasted tooth-meltingly sweet. Happy memories, carefree, far away and non-solid but still wonderful. What were you doing? You couldn’t remember anything. You liked blue and purple, they were everywhere, all around you, such pretty colours. 

Pretty, pretty...

“... there we go. easy now.”

... You didn’t realise he was even there until he (somewhat cautiously?) spoke. Your senses were just colours. The voice was odd and a bit disembodied at first but slowly, slowly, you became aware of its source- a face hovering just over you. The awareness spread to your body, too... you were bent at an odd angle with your feet just barely lifted off the floor, your back flat on a rather uncomfortable table, gravity pulling your hair and cheeks. And he... he was just a few inches over you, pinning you by one of your wrists.

...

A tight and tense, cutting smile, clear signs of stress around his face and shoulders making it obvious that this was the smile of a man on the edge and not one of any particular joy. Deep sockets, so wide they looked borderline painful, glaring down at you with so much intensity...

... You could feel his body heat. And his breath against your face. Your heartbeat, your slightly itchy nose, how tight he was holding your wrist.

“... Mh... Huh?” You said, ever-so articulately, vision spinning in the same direction as the swirls emanating from his left socket. A similar way to how the world rocked when you were dizzy... except for you, it never righted itself. It just kept spinning and spinning and spinning. Everything was so bright, as you fell under a pleasant fuzzy sensation burrowed into your chest and mind, blanketing your thoughts as if you were just in the middle of a nice dream where nothing much mattered.

“shh...” 

When he gently closed his gloved fingers around something you had gripped in your pinned hand, you put up no fuss, loosening your hold and allowing him to take it... when did you pick up a scalpel? What an odd thing to have. The back of your head hurt and your knuckles felt the telltale aches of having been tense a few moments ago, even though they were now just an unwound coil like the rest of you.

... Dr. Baggs let out a long slow, breath. You could feel it against your nose and neck, he was that close... his mouth open barely a crack, the magenta hue of his tongue glinting against his fangs. 

“... alright.” He said, voice silky, gentle on your thrumming ears and head, sockets easing around the edges as he calmed down. The bluish shadows of sleep deprivation under them became more apparent as the tension in the room, face and posture waned. “that’s better.”

... Yeah. You thought, relaxed and calm. It is.

... He gave you the bare minimum of personal space, leaning back and helping you to sit, lifting you with the perfect combination of gentle but firm as if he knew you’d immediately feel so dizzy when you became upright. Your hands moved up and held onto his shoulders to steady yourself- the fabric of his lab coat was surprisingly soft, it was very nice to touch. 

... He was so close. Supportive but strict hands on your elbows, your knees on either side of him, he smelled like... the artificial flavouring they added candy that just wasn’t quite natural. And a specific, scented brand of antiseptic; clean and sterile and prepared.

“... well.” He hummed, reaching out of sight for something with one hand. Your forehead would bump his collarbone if you leant forward any more. His voice was so soothing and calming, especially since you were only a few inches from his clavicle... you were getting pretty close to shutting your eyes at this point, but a prick in your arm kept you from completely nodding off- you barely noticed it, too busy studying the aesthetically pleasing purple trim to his coat and enjoying the funny fuzzy sensation in your chest and temples. Oh, he suddenly had a full syringe in his hand that he was putting a cap on... where did he get that? 

“i knew from the start you’d be uncooperative, but... not that kind of uncooperative.”

He held something up to your face. You opened your mouth, (wait, why am I opening my mouth...) and he quickly placed it on your tongue. You swallowed, again, without knowing why... it was like your body was following a list of instructions that you couldn’t see or hear. Someone else had taken the wheel; tugging the right strings to make the right parts of you move when they were needed. 

... You didn’t think about it much. No panic, no confusion, no considering the implications. The thoughts were disconnected... just ships in the night, sailing by your muffled brain. All you could really think about was how whatever he’d given you was very strange and bitter and ew, you cringed, an odd acrid taste lingering in the back of your throat.

... Another prick in your arm. That’s weird, he keeps pricking me. Oh well. This time, you looked just in time to see him removing a now-empty syringe; he wiped where he’d poked your forearm with something very cold, then placed a little circular red band-aid over it.

...

There were six other band-aids on that forearm. Two green, three navy, one black... and now the red one.

Hm... I feel like I should be alarmed by that...

Again, all you could think about was how nice you felt right now. Dizzy, warm, safe. Like you’d had a little too much to drink, but now you were laying out in the sun with your friends... I miss the sun...

“most of my ‘patients’ are at least... consistent.” Baggs hummed, continuining to hold you carefully by the elbows, predicting your post-jab swaying. He didn’t seem to realise he was talking aloud, just a scientist observing his experiment, and you weren’t really paying enough attention to what he was actually saying- too many words to process, boooring. “uncooperative awake, uncooperative under. you’re always displaying aggression toward me... and yet as soon as you have no control, there’s an obediency so immediate it’s borderline subconscious. rather fascinating.”

Instead, you...

“... Sexy voice.”

...

...

“... what?” 

Apparently, that was enough to finally break him out of his thoughts. You glanced up at Baggs’ face, still only a few inches away, you kept forgetting where things were around you... the cushion around your soul never wavered but for a moment there was a little blip in the swirls. A slight interruption.

“Mmmhm.”

...

... His expression sort of... well, ‘melted’ was the wrong word. It was more akin to the sun peeking out from between two clouds. The detached, observational, scientific air to him thinned and began to evaporate... revealing something a little more warm.

The razor and unfriendly edges of his smile were rounding into something organic. Perhaps even, daresay, resembling forward. 

“my.” He purred. “how forward of you.”

“S’very nice. Very smooth...” Your tongue felt... eh. And your arm, where he’d poked you, was starting to itch. “And you have a nice face too... handsome man. I think so.”

...

His smile started growing even more, and he leaned back an inch or two as if to look at all of you and make sure you were really the same person he’d brought into this examination room less than an hour ago. “... oh really?”

“Yeah...” ... Your hands had been just holding onto his coat... but, spurred on by your sudden drunken confidence, you properly looped them around his neck.

... He blinked, but he only let himself appear taken aback for a moment or two. Despite how ominously his magenta eyelights glowed in his dark, shadowed sockets... you could tell he was enjoying himself, and this sudden turn of events. “i’m flattered.”

You laid your head on his chest. It was getting kinda hard to stay upright. 

... Your nose scrunched.

“Funky smell, though.”

That was enough to get an actual laugh out of him- albeit shortlived, his skull cocking like a curious mirthful bird. “are you... genuinely telling me that i smell, darling?”

“Yeah. Because it’s true. You’re gremlin.”

 “i’m... gremlin?”

“Mhm.”

“stars. i wish i could tell pap about this.”

Your body shifted, enough to make you lightly squeak- things were spinning so much that it took you a minute to realise Baggs had picked you up, an arm hooked under your legs and another around your back.

“you’re all done for the day, pet.” His eyelights had become a thrumming, almost amethyst colour as he looked at you, a far gentler shade of purple than his previous headache-inducing magenta. You weren’t sure what’d caused that but you weren’t complaining. You weren’t sure what’d caused him to carry you either, considering he usually just brought someone to collect his ‘patients’ for him... but, again, not complaining. “it’s time to get back to your room.”

“I feel funny.” You mumbled.

“that’s normal.”

He started walking. The halls all looked the same, as he moved through them, blending into one another... white and sterile, a few doors dotted inbetween if you were lucky but mostly just the exact same tiles and patterns and lack of anything that would clue you into the fact that people had actually (at some point) existed in this area. 

“Hm... is this where you work...?”

A little chuckle. He was sounding further and further away. “yes. this is my job, dear.”

“It’s so g... ug-ly.”

“oh? you think so?” Baggs’ tone had become... light? Perhaps a little teasing. 

“Jus... put up some nice posters, or something.” Your head was so heavy. Since when was it this heavy? You had to rest it against his chest, feeling that nice fabric against your cheek, hearing an equally nice humming sound from inside his ribcage. “Paint the walls. It’s so... white. Clini... ...clinicic... Calic...” 

“clinical?”

“... Yeah.Tthat.”

A gloved phalange touched your arm. It was probably an attempt at a comforting gesture- stroking the skin. “good to know. i’ll make sure to pass that eloquent advice along to the decorating team.”

“Good.”

He brought you to a cell-like room. It was... vaguely familiar? A bed with one pillow, thin white sheets... some strange posters and a window with bars over it. You felt like you’d spent a long time in there, but it was impossible to think straight enough to actually muster up any memories.

Baggs laid you down on the bed, slowly, handling you like you’d fall apart at any moment. You made a little noise- it wasn’t a very soft bed... but it was good enough. And your body felt so strange and tired that any soft surface honestly was nice enough to lay down on forever.

“comfy?” He asked. Since when did he inquire if you were comfy?

“M... no. S’whatever.”

...

You peeked at him, crouched by your bed... and you reached out, pressing your inexplicably heavy finger against the top of his nasal cavity in a booping motion. You mumbled a little victorious “Silly skeleton.” 

...

He took your hand in his gloved one, gently, before it could go limp and flop down. You couldn’t really make out his expression at this point.

“don’t tell the other subjects...” He murmured... he sounded amused, at least. “but i think you’ve become my favourite.”

“Course.” You shut your eyes. “I’m... m’amazing.”

“... yes. course.” 

A feeling, like a kiss on your hand, before he placed it by your side.

“... go to sleep.”

...

And just like that, your body obeyed him before your head could even process what he’d said, and you were asleep.