#and i have no way to figure that out until several thousands of words in

[journeythroughtherain]

I DID IT!!

Aaaaaaaah 😭

I am mildly impressed that I can't remember seeing a single wing fic. It's honestly fascinating. I have more thoughts about the general trends and types of fics this fandom seems to be drawn to (or seems to skip entirely), but those will have to wait for a more reasonable time of day.

Maybe sometime tomorrow I'll also go over my ao3 history for an estimate of how many of these I ended up reading in the end. 🤔

I'm going to leave the tab open in my browser but now I'm finally going to allow myself to filter out everything I found I didn't vibe with (which... Will probably remove quite a bit of fics. Especially from the E rated ones. Once again I find myself at odds with the majority of fandom when it comes to certain aspects of my otps' characterization). But I did it!!

[janumun]

A Relentless Conquest (LaDS Sylus - NSFW)

Rated: NSFW/18+ Words: 10.7k Pairing: Sylus/Reader

Tags: dueling (Sylus fighting), semi-public sex, oral and vaginal sex, Sylus’s brand of manhandling, dry humping, praising, dirty talk, rough sex, wander in wonder AU/historical AU, based in ancient Mongolia, creampie, size difference, mild rich/poor class power dynamics

Summary: What happens when you end up catching the unwanted attentions of a sleazy magistrate on a day out in town? A duel for your honor — or lifelong imprisonment — is what awaits you. That is, until Sylus, leader of the exceedingly notorious Onychinus gang, and a man you dub reluctantly, an old acquaintance, intervenes and offers the immoral magistrate a deal he cannot refuse.

[A fic where Sylus engages in a precarious duel in order to free you from the clutches of a corrupt high official; wins the duel AND the prize at stake, you.]  

Author’s Notes: The things the Wander in Wonder trailer did to me were unspeakable, I had to get started on this fic right away. Another long monstrosity so it took me quite a while to hammer it out smoothly. Some terms used within, to note: *tögrögs is an old Mongolian currency and *Lungtang is the Mongolian city used loosely within this fic’s setting, as per Sylus’s alleged outfit inspiration drawn from the Mongol’s hunting fit in the current event, “Wander in Wonder” . An amazing twitter thread for the rest of the inspirations drawn for the boys’ outfits can be found here. 

Link to Ao3

Perhaps you should’ve considered your course of action through before you’d tossed yourself voluntarily into the metaphorical den of lions. Caleb did always tease you for your often impudent ways, declaring you’d get yourself into hot water someday.   

You didn’t quite think past saving the small, unfortunate child in front, when he’d careened straight into the Magistrate, staining the sickly bone white of his gaudy robes with the treat he’d been brandishing in hand. An action of careless innocence that could’ve saddled the boy with a severe punishment of thrashings at best. And at worst —   

You didn’t even wish to entertain the horrifying notion.   

You whisper a quick note of warning to the trembling child in your arms before he’s nodding his assent, making a clean dash away from the Magistrate and his burly procession of hired cronies. They do not move to stop him; the official’s beady eyes sweeping cursory across his fleeing figure before he focuses upon you once more.   

“Well then, speak up, girl. How do you plan on making up for the crimes of the filthy criminal you just let escape?” He leers at you, sending a frisson of disgust through your veins. “I do not mind much, provided you are able to compensate me in full.” He holds up two thick, swollen fingers. “two thousand tögrögs.” Your stomach revolts in near horror at the exorbitant price he names.   

“Speak, lass, do you possess the means to compensate me?”  

“...Apologies, Sire, I do not.”  

The Magistrate clicks his tongue at you, as if that son of a cur had not already anticipated your answer; your garb alone giving away your status as a mere commoner while he stood, a tall, foolish braggart of a Magistrate, who’d been a constant source of worry amongst the townsfolk as of late. “What a pity. I guess we shall have to make you pay off with what you do have on person, shan’t we?”   

His eyes rove down the length of your body in a manner greasy enough, it has your fingers itching to claw them out of his skull. Thoughts of the consequences of your actions extending to your family after — your grandmother and Caleb — are what stay your hands, firm by your side. You try and maintain that demure grace firm within your body instead.  

“What else are we to do if she cannot pay for what she has cost me, yes?” The Magistrate flourishes his arms wide and turns, towards the crowd that has gathered to watch, setting the stage for his perverse demands. “An eye for an eye, an honor exchanged for honor; that is the Law of our Lungtang, is it not?”  

None of the commonfolk dare to speak against the tyrant’s words, lest they make of themselves a new target to harass. And you do not blame them either, the burden of your reckless actions, yours to bear alone.   

The man trundles forwards on heavy steps; the large, ugly stain left across his robes growing wider in your lowered line of sight before the expanse of his bloated, sweating hand fills your field of vision. The rings around his fingers, nearly engorging the base of them as he curls his hand about your jaw to heave your gaze up towards him.   

The ugly, toad-like sweep of his tongue against the top row of black and gold teeth has a chill skittering down your spine. “You’re rather lovely, you know that?” He croaks in a low, creeping voice.   

You bite harsh into your bottom lip to revolt against the bile that threatens to reflux past your throat and onto the bastard’s face. “What say you become my whore then, dearest? I’d treat you very...” A slimy slip of the hand down the expanse of your body, to settle at your hip. “ well . And if you please me, you could even climb the ranks and become first Mistress, you know?” You judder at the stench of his breath, nearly in your face now. Unable to help the revulsion he inspires in you and you know; the cur in front takes it for a show of abashed innocence, with the way his leer stretches wider across his face.   

“I am far too plain and discourteous for a man of your stature, my lord. If there is anything else I could do for you in recompense, I would be more than delighted to offer my services.” The words uttered, sit sickly sweet on your tongue. “I have a good arm on me and can do any physical labor you may require of me.”   

The rat makes a show of deliberating your words. “It’s a pity the only ‘physical labor’ I require of you lies within my bed, dear girl.”   

You visibly recoil from his revolting touch at your arm; perhaps you aren’t able to quite keep your emotions from surfacing upon your face this time round as the man grabs at your forearm tighter, gaze darkening in simmering displeasure.   

“You know the law, woman. If you wish to run scot-free without offering anything in return, you must put your life on the line and agree to a duel with the offended party.” He chucks a thick, swollen thumb back at his minions, voice seething into a threatening octave. “And I wouldn’t suggest that unless you want them to crush that pretty face of yours.”  

You consider ending it all; cutting the bastard open for him to choke in a pool of his own gurgling blood. You think you could do it too, before his bodyguards could get to you.  

And with the loss of their Master, they wouldn’t be able to hold you prisoner within the dungeons for too long: you hoped. The stray, wild thought is all you can see within your vision.   

Your hand twitches for the dagger fastened right beneath your satchel, one Caleb had lent you for protection. Fingers barely grazing against the polished hilt of the blade, cobbling together courage to see your mad plan through.   

Before large, thick digits are slipping against yours to halt — a fleeting touch of caution — from behind, fracturing your hasty plan entirely.  

You’re barely able to comprehend the sudden, unnoticed proximity of your interloper, before a great arm is coiling fast about the expanse of your waist, snatching you swift from the Magistrate’s claws and firm against a warm, broad chest.  

“Now, what have you gotten yourself into this time?” The well-known burr, welcome, in that moment stirs joy within your belly as you reach to crane your neck to meet eyes with that familiar scarlet.  

“Sylus.” You croak in near disbelief.   

He exhales, low, against the shell of your ear, before he slowly lets go of you. “I’m away from Lungtang for a mere fortnight, only to find you scrounging for trouble, upon return.”   

Your irritation might’ve flared at his words if not for the phlegmy clearing of the Magistrate’s throat in front.   

“And who do you think you are to touch my property so carelessly, insolent fool?”  

Your ire directed from the man behind to the bastard in front. You feel Sylus’ hand soothe a flex about your shoulder.   

“My bad, honoured Magistrate.” He sweeps an insouciant palm at him, the grin upon his face edged to a dagger’s point. “We did not think you would be gracing Lungtang so soon with your noble presence. Or we might’ve arranged for a far better reception, for your Grace.”  

Each word that slips past Sylus’ lips is a sarcasm heavy barb that turns the official’s face in front purple with each syllable uttered. “That woman owes me, you dog. I shall make her my mistress, as is only fair I extract proper recompense from her for her grave offense.”  

One of the Magistrate’s men behind scamper forward in that moment to whisper urgently into his ear. The official’s eyes nearly burst out of his sockets at whatever he’s learned, wide toady gaze skittering towards Sylus as if he is indeed a rabid beast that would bite if disturbed.   

He thrusts an accusatory finger at him. “You are the Onychinus’ leader.” He spits. “That gang of lawless hounds.”  

Sylus’s mouth quirk into a vicious smile at the allegation. “That I am.”   

“You— you,” The Magistrate seems to sputter for the space of several moments before the man at his side mutters something else into his ear.   

The official straightens at whatever he’s heard, clearing his throat, once. Twice. “I am willing to pardon your crimes.” He begins once more. “Provided you can prove yourself worthy in a duel against one of my men.” The crowd around you breaks into quiet murmurs. “But,” he continues. “if you lose, Onychinus dog, then along with your little woman, you shall give up your life to my service, your autonomous tyranny within these lands shall cease to exist and you shall follow my sole command.” He pauses for a moment’s breath, as if to let the weight of what he believes to have been a devastating challenge, sink in.   

But all he earns from Sylus is a raised brow. “Sounds like a deal. Let us raise the stakes, though, shall we?” He cocks his head at the procession of guards right behind the Magistrate. “I’ll take on all your men, not just your best. Give you a real crutch to get started with.”   

The crowd of onlookers erupts into gasps of surprise and gibbering discussion amidst the concerning blue coloring the Magistrate’s face at the taunt. You desperately clutch at Sylus’s arm. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”  

He meets your wide-eyed panicked gaze with a cool, gentle one of his own. “Calm yourself down, kitten. I’ll be fine.” A large hand, he places gentle at your head in reassurance but all it does instead is send your alarm flaring higher.   

What had you roped the man into? Infuriating though he was. Sylus was a confounding acquaintance of years; you could not help be lured into irritation any time he were around — a man whose companionship you’d come to cherish in begrudging gratitude over your time together — but this is not what you’d wanted.   

Your reeling thoughts fractured by the screeching Magistrate in front. “You think you’re all that, you shameless scoundrel? Oh, you’re just a man and I’ll make sure they break your limbs, bone by excruciating bone, before we drag you bloodied and defeated, to my estate.” He spits the time of the duel to be held tomorrow in that same fury before he’s turning on you both and trudging back off to where he came from, his procession of cronies falling along right in line.   

And you’re left behind, with the metallic poison of your regret within your mouth and bone deep worry within your body as you stare up at Sylus’s form.   

The next day arrives much too soon, even as sleep evades you through the entirety of your night, spent tossing onto much too warm sheets.   

Now, having dragged yourself to dress and prepare yourself for the dreaded day, you trudge out of your home, chancing a brief, longing look upon the humble place over your shoulder, in case it were truly your last.   

You hadn’t divulged the details of your itinerary for the day — which possibly entailed getting sold into slavery to a sleazy official, by the time noon rolled in — to Grandmother or Caleb and you preferred it remain that way for as long as possible. Your Grandmother was coming along in her years, with weakened nerves now and Caleb tended to be a frightful worrywart in matters concerning you.   

“Someone’s starting the day rather early. That eager to see me fight, are you, kitten?” The familiar voice beckons. You toss a raised brow over your shoulder at your previously truant neighbour, now returned — his house having settled long vacant in his absence, over the course of his journey to Gods knew where. And the root cause of all your fretting; Sylus moves to join you by your side in two easy strides.  

“Don’t you even dare try joke about it, you absolute madman,” you mutter darkly under your breath, reaching to knock a fist against the side of his torso.   

The same old routine you tumble into, with him; you aren’t able to tamp yourself back from biting into the man as soon as he’s in your sights; the only person capable of wrenching out your honest, most reflexive reactions. And you hate the ease with which this incendiary of a man manages to drag them out of you.   

“What took over you to throw that offer out at that bastard, when you all but had a nice, even playing field to yourself? Now you’re just—” Your mouth snaps shut against the rest of your words, bitterly swallowed.   

How did you even begin to disentangle your bunched feelings on the matter? You knew how all of Lungtang chanted the tales of the fearsome Onychinus head. A conundrum of a man with a reputation as daunting as his influential mien, one that never failed to instil the fear of God in lesser men; criminals and bandits, who sought to rob their small town on the rare luckless occasion — dubbed this obscure town’s own Warrior God.   

But to you, he was also just Sylus; the man you’d grown in close proximity to since your late teenage years and a person you’d grown to care for in the natural course of your odd tug-and-push relationship.   

And though you remained constantly wary of the type of people Sylus associated with, in his particular line of work — a job you did not wish for, to bring even a modicum of harm onto your family by association with him, you could not help the restless agitation that needled at you each time Sylus left home, sometimes for weeks on end, on any number of his covert expeditions.  

And each time he did, the very nagging, unwelcome thought intruded, that perhaps this time he might not make it home.   

“Are you worried for me right now, kitten?” Sylus’s airy query breaks through your reverie, your gaze leaping to find his, fixated firm on you. Those scarlet eyes seem to lose part of their mirth at the face you’re sure you’re pulling.   

You tear your gaze away first, choosing to watch the path you two trek on, instead. “Of course, I’m worried. What a silly thing to ask.” A muted wisp of words.   

Ones that spark an immediate stroke of mild discomfiture at the admission; you prattle on before he can speak. “I know you’re strong, I know that. But just you against what — 13 or 14 grown men? More if that bastard intends on killing you. Anyone with half a wit and eye can see it’s a self-slaughtering mission from yards away. I don’t understand—” your indignant voice breaks, to throttle in much needed air into breath parched lungs. “I just don’t understand why you’d do that. I don’t understand you.”    

Help me figure out what you’re thinking; are the words you wish to speak but your voice refuses to assist.  

Sylus hums a low, throaty sound; in admission that he’s heard you.   

And then he opens his mouth to speak. Divulging a ‘reason’ that makes no sense to your muddled mind, simple though his words are. “That cad disrespected you.” Garnet tips your way to meet your surprised gaze. “That’s reason enough, is it not?”   

“I—”  

“Don’t fret anymore.” he continues. “I won't lose, you have my word.” Long, tapered digits brush gentle at your temple, in reassurance of your worries. “And once I’m done with that weasel, he won’t ever be capable of crawling within a mile of you, let alone dare a finger your way again.”   

The confession, sudden and honest, spurts warmth within your chest that readily clambers up your cheeks and floods down into your belly. A knot pulled tight within seeming to relax just that bit, in comfort of his words. Truly, he confounds you; this odd, beautiful man.   

You capture his fingers against yours in an insistent hold, halting him in his tracks. “You better keep your promise to me, Sylus,” you speak, meeting his gaze, firm on yours. “Do not forget the prize that’s at stake here. You'll come out of there, victorious. I won’t afford you any other options, you hear me?”   

A pleased grin edges across that beautiful mouth, skewing it wider. He angles forward, so that garnet gaze is level against yours. Flexing the catch of his digits in between yours before he’s sweeping your hand towards his parted mouth in a fleeting brush of lips against your knuckles. “If it is my victory the Lady commands, so it shall be done.” He elaborates, a mild tickled inflection to his thick baritone.   

You disregard his little jibing use of the title for this one instance; his solemn promise you know he’s sealed to you; in the gentle grip of your fingers against his, garnet that refuses to stray until you see the resolve of his vow settle within that gaze too.   

By the time your deliberately protracted journey finds its end at the arena, edging the outskirts of Lungtang, the Magistrate along with his chosen warriors are already there, positioned and waiting by the great stone pillars of the vast grounds.   

The coming fight having attracted the townspeople to turn up in droves to watch the weaselly Magistrate take on their best warrior — hordes of curious eyes you feel boring into the two of you as you make your way towards where the Magistrate awaits.   

“Here you are. Any later and I might’ve started considering you’d fled with your tail in between your legs.” The Magistrate crows out loud. “After all, my men shall soon prove how Lungtang’s criminal they so falsely worship as a hero, is more bark than bite.” The swarm of brutes — big and terrifyingly bulky — he’s brought along, laugh at their Master’s goading.   

Sylus, however, remains unperturbed. “Is that so? I can’t wait to find out,” he responds, scrubbing an insouciant hand through his hair.   

His apathetic response seems to key the Magistrate’s ire even higher, sputtering his rage at him. “Y-You absolute— you imbecile. I will crush you.” Creeping a hand forward for you now, “I’ll hold the girl with me. We might as well quicken ourselves, in preparation for when you inevitably fall and watch me claim my rightful prize.”   

You steel yourself against the touch, palm rising to curb his approach with a polite denial but your companion is swifter; large hand darting forth to curl a harsh fist against the official’s greasy wrist.   

“No.” Sylus speaks, voice a low, lethal burr you haven’t ever heard from him before. “I don’t think you will, Sire.” Whatever it is the foolish Magistrate discerns within your companion’s steady gaze, has him flinching in visible fright at the sight, sweat beading wide across his pale, swollen face.  

He wrenches his wrist from Sylus’s grip, as if scathed just as you angle a curious look up at the Onychinus head; his face an impassive mask — hardly unusual — before it breaks into the tiny quirk of a self-assured grin when he catches you watching.  

The Magistrate yelps in frustration, turning in on a ferocious heel. “D-Do not waste my time any longer than you have.” Barking the rest of his words; he heads toward the makeshift dais he’s had set up for himself at the edge of the ring. “Come onto the fields now so we can commence the match.”  

“Sylus,” you place a hand at his arm to stall. “Duck down for a moment.”   

He raises a careful brow at you and you think he’s going to refuse for a moment but then he surprises you in the wordless, compliant drop of his head close to yours. Allowing your eyes to trace his features; those familiar scarlet eyes steady against yours, the slope of his broad nose, sweeping into the bow of full, slightly scraped lips.   

You realize you trust this man and what he’s offered you, whole-heartedly. And so, you wish to extend the same sentiment, reaching for the precious beads adorning your neck — an heirloom from your late parents, your most prized possession.   

Plucking it up and over your head in between cautious digits before you reach to place it about his neck instead. Leaving part of your most priceless gift with him, just as you’ve decided to entrust him with both your Fates. “A charm,” you clarify, “for good luck. It has been my most invaluable escort and has kept me safe all these years.”   

Sylus mutely treks delicate fingers across the worn beads of the chain, grasping it in between a loose fist, in acceptance of your faith.  

“Return it to me once you’ve won.” You tell him, rapping a firm fist against the leather guard at his chest.   

Large, warm digits move to curve about yours, gripping your fist against himself. “As if I could turn down such a heartfelt request, sweetheart.” A spirited grin tugs at his features.  “I’ll bring your little treasure back to you in one piece.”   

“Good, I’ll wait for it.” You respond. “Now, go out there and show them the might of our Warrior God.”  

The Magistrate flourishes open an official scrolled document, no doubt detailing the terms of their duel as soon as Sylus shifts to take position within the field, on opposing side of the assembly of his hired goons.   

You move to occupy a place up front, to stand among the vast gathered crowd, observing the proceedings as the Magistrate clutches the scroll up into the air and begins to drone out the conditions of the fight and the prize at stake — your belly stirs in nausea — you . “The duel shall be declared closed when all members of a party have been knocked unconscious; or killed, under the rare, unfortunate circumstance.” His beady eyes rove Sylus’s way. “Any objections?”  

Sylus shrugs the question off entirely in the flex of an arm against his chest, in preparation of the duel. “Let us not waste our time debating inanity now, as you said earlier. Commence the fight.”   

The Magistrate’s face colours a foul purple — you hope he may truly burst — but all he does is spew a cold, curt, “Begin.”  

The arena hurtles into instantaneous chaos, along with the crowd’s rousing cheers and gasps of terrified delight as the Magistrate’s cronies hound Sylus all at once. Your body hunching forward on reflex to watch as the first set of blows streak straight for Sylus’s face but he ducks down with an agility, unusual to a man of his stature.   

He catches two of the oncoming blows against his palms. Jamming his fists tight about their wrists before he contorts them sideways in a dull crackle of bone. The men immediately buckle to their knees in an agony of groans, their peers stepping over their fallen companions after, to grab for their opponent who springs out of their way, as if dancing the men around, with a noose placed about their grappling bodies.  

A sharp jab comes right for Sylus’s side after, the crony tries and lands a hit against his ribs; the latter’s grasp flexing about his arm to break his momentum, wrenching him close into his body. Before Sylus jostles his elbow harsh into the man’s back.   

Two men lunge for Sylus, aiming for his blind spot; your scraped call of warning lost amidst the thunderous din of the crowds as Sylus rounds upon his assailants. Grabbing the man he has on hand, fingers fisting tight into his garb before he hurls him onto the approaching minions, with a force violent enough, the three go bowling straight into the dirt.   

The crowd’s cheer is raucous; wild as the grin that splits wide across Sylus’s face as he stretches his body tall to full length. “Come now, that’s surely not all of what you’ve got for me.” Sweat barely beginning to make itself known across the firm muscled expanse of his arms, his torso. He's hardly out of breath while his opponents gawk at him as if cornered against a rabid beast.   

Your heart thrills in unexpected, startled pleasure to witness the strange, sensuous virility to his almost savage visage as he paces forward on swift, easy steps, within the ring.   

You’d always known Sylus to hold a rich charisma compacted within that strong personality; an ability to entice all he came into contact with. A brilliant, perceptive mind along with that tacit, undeterred will; he’d brought flourishing business booming within Lungtang over his period of unofficial rule of the place. The uncrowned Onychinus King and a fearsome warrior; the first time you’d truly stood witness to what he was capable of, outside of devious negotiations, professional and unalike.   

And to know, it was for you that he stood in that place now, socking down enemies with the streak of a great, terrifying beast that had your heart skittering within your chest and your blood thrumming within your ears, alongside the adrenaline roiling through your veins. He truly was an infuriatingly perfect man.   

You joined your voice to the shouts of encouragement rolling off the townspeople, in waves for their Warrior God just as Sylus brings an opponent down to his knees with a violent sweep of his knee to his torso.   

“Enough!” You hear the squeaked, enraged bellow of the Magistrate as he watches the proceedings with an increasingly incensed face. Whipping his reddening face towards the crowd to shake a threatening fist at them. “Quiet down before I have you all thrown into the dungeons!”   

But the townsfolk refuse to relent; their cheers rising to a deafening roar as the Magistrate nearly tumbles out of his seat to thrust a trembling finger at the ring as Sylus tosses another of his men over his shoulder to taste the ground at his feet . The attendants at his side scamper towards the arena at once. A quick, urgent rush of communication seems to pass in between the attendants and Sylus’s remaining opponents. Before the servants are tossing weapons into the ring, ones the cronies lunge for as soon as they hit the field. Rising slow once more as they brandish their newly obtained unfair advantage at an unarmed Sylus.  

A great wave of shock and indignance passes over the crowd just as you push past the row of onlookers to jostle yourself to the very front. “Hey! This was not among the rules!” You shout at the Magistrate. A sentiment the rest of the crowd joins you in mirroring but all it earns you is an insouciant shrug from the bastard, shedding any remaining responsibility of hosting a fair fight against Sylus. “And the rules didn’t indicate the participants were not allowed the use of tools at their disposal either. The opposing party’s principal should’ve brought his own if he wished for one, as well.”  

“That’s not—” Your voice breaks in agonised distress just as the Magistrate turns away from you entirely to press his rotund body back into the comfort of his seat to watch his laid-out massacre once more. Son of a cur.   

“Sylus!” You try and yell for his attention amongst the horrified cries of the crowd. “ Sylus, you don’t have to fight anymore! Get out of there, now! Sylus . ”  

His gaze sweeps over the mass of spectators for that one split moment, as if foraging for yours. Until it seems to find and fixate upon you, his mouth forming slow shape over words you cannot hear but understand on instinct, “Stay right there.”  

Your heart leaps and slams violent against the back of your breastbone with the crowd’s rising screams, just as a hefty brute lunges for Sylus; a battle axe heaved high above his head to strike a killing blow.   

The first cleave of the blade, Sylus avoids, to the tumbling pummel of your frenzied nerves. The man’s fervent swings, he dodges left and right. Avoiding another enemy’s assault with a dagger aimed straight for his gut; Sylus streaks the side of his palm flat onto his wrist in a hit vicious enough, the knife goes flying out of his grasp to stick, hilt-up, useless onto the ground. Before Sylus pummels a heavy fist into the assailant’s face, plastering him down onto the ground.   

The metallic chains of a flail come streaking for him, just as he side-steps past another heavy swing of the axe, catching the iron fetters of it harsh against his wrist. He ducks close into the enemy, manoeuvring the momentum of his attack into his own advantage, to wrench the man harsh into the fist he rams straight into his gut. Tumbling him sideways into the ground, unconscious.  

The bulldozing axe wielding maniac, now in close proximity, careens straight for Sylus on a fervent bellow, sweeping a blow straight for his head. Sylus seizes his last standing opponent’s assault against the strength of a muscled forearm. Catching the brunt of the axe’s hilt at it before he shoves back on a ferocious, inhuman show of force.   

Sylus, your heart hammers, lips forming shape over the syllables of his name in urgent prayer.   

The momentum of the wide, stone blade pushed back in such violence, sends the wielder staggering back with the weight of it; Sylus turning that precious moment of weakness to his benefit as he lunges straight for his neck, seizing it within a thick fist. The core muscles of his arm, rippling with the force with which Sylus hauls him off his feet entirely to drive the man down onto the ground with a vicious snarl.   

The combatant stops moving immediately, knocked out cold on the dirt; Sylus rising slow onto his feet as he stares at the man, chest heaving with the efforts of his strenuous exertion.   

A grave’s quietude slumps across the gathered crowd for several, tense moments.   

And then shatters into raucous chaos as the Conqueror of the duel is cheered to the high heavens; Sylus’s grin, wide and daunting, as he shifts off his fallen opponent, scrubbing a large hand back through sweat soaked locks as he starts ambling over toward the edge of your side of the arena.   

And your heart — your silly little heart — soars from its place within your chest and out for him, the high of his victory, as if it were your own, throbbing brutal within your blood.   

Before you know or comprehend it, your legs are moving; pushing past the crowds of onlookers, the wooden slates of your sandals skidding at dirt, as you fly across the ring toward Sylus. Your gaze entirely filled with your brilliant warrior’s expression shifting into surprise as you hurtle into him. And Sylus — that big, beautiful man understands — catches your careening body within his embrace; your momentum, he breaks against a half-swivel about his heel. Large, warm arms come tight about your body, wordless, without a question uttered, to seclude you further into that private space; just for you both in that moment.   

Your arms stretching about the thick expanse of his neck as you hold on hard to him; Sylus’s low exhale you feel warm gently, into the crescent of your neck as he sinks into you. The people, his duel; none of it matter when you embrace him this close against you, the adrenaline of your unbound joy, his impressive triumph settling into your thundering heart, you feel pressed against him.   

His soft, heavy laughter curls pleasant into your ears. “To the victor go the spoils, I guess.” He breathes. “Although this treasure seems particularly eager on jumping into my arms herself.”   

“Of course I am.” You press yourself away from him enough to afford yourself a proper survey of his face. “Gods, you were brilliant. Thank you, Sylus.”   

His thumb brushes just beneath your eye; a slow, testing touch. His gaze simmers in unusual, unexpected gentleness that siphons the breath from your lungs. “You need never thank me for anything, sweetheart, let alone this. I do not want it.”   

Your own relief blooming into a smile, but before you can respond; an unpleasant, harsh voice fractures through the air — the Magistrate seething and raging as he makes his way over to you both, an army of guards right behind. Clearly, the man could not stomach a sore loss; rabid fire and venom within his gaze as he trudges toward you, screaming obscenities.   

“Step back for a bit, kitten.” And you obey without further prompting, granting Sylus a wide berth for whatever he plans on doing.   

He doesn’t spare a moment longer before he’s striding forward, snatching one of the Magistrate’s unconscious minions off the ground. Hoisting him high up by the scruff of his neck. The Magistrate’s steps stagger just then at Sylus’s mad display, perhaps sensing the disaster he’s called upon him.   

But it’s far too late. “Here, have a present from all of Lungtang, Sire.” Sylus tows his arm back, wide, and aims — to the scurrying cries of the Magistrate — before he violently hurls the man in hand, right at the waddling official, bowling him and half his guards over like a stack of gambling plaques.   

“Sylus.” You gasp at his insane spectacle.  

Before the corrupt, toppled lot can even think to get their bearings back, Sylus is strolling back toward you; a quick flourish of a large hand thrown over his shoulder, in signal. “Take care of them,” he instructs out loud.   

A swarm of dark clad men melt away, on his sole command, from the crowds, to pack around the Magistrate and his men, blotting their figures entirely out of your sight. “Come on.” Sylus’s voice fractures through your reverie, his frame crowding your field of vision.   

“Whe— aah!” A hefty arm swoops beneath the back of your legs, sending frantic fingers scrabbling for purchase against the strength of Sylus’s shoulders as he hoists you up against his body. “What’re you doing?” 

He flashes a devious grin up at you, completely at odds against the bewildered shock you know is wide across your face. “Time to get out of here, sweetheart,” is all he offers in response before he’s sweeping you away from the pandemonium he’s wrought and the boisterous crowd; discarding all of that well-earned glory behind.   

The throng of on-goers tapers out the farther you get on to the road winding away from the arena; curious and awed looks alike garnered your way: at your position, and at the man — the infamous Onychinus head — who strolls easy through the streets of Lungtang, in possession of the strange woman he carries snug on the crook of an arm.  

A flush creeping hot up your face the longer this spectacle goes on until Sylus’s pace — thank the Gods above — dwindles to a halt. “This should be far enough.”   

“Yes, thank you. Put me down now.” Tapping fraught fingers against his shoulders in emphasis. Sylus raises a sculpted brow at you but relents, nonetheless. He steps past the mouth of the nearest back-street, well clear of people, before he helps you down onto your feet.   

You lean a hand across his arm, taking a moment to scramble your bearings back.   

“The brief walk back has you this out of breath, huh?” You turn a half-hearted frown at his mild ribbing; the man barely having broken a sweat himself, for having carried you all the way down here.   

“I wasn’t the one who asked you to lug me the entire way, you know,” you return.   

“What can I say, sweetheart? I’m rather protective of my treasures being made to rot too long among the grime.” He gently pinches your cheek in between thick, tapered digits; voice descending to a softer baritone. “And I won, as promised.” Long, tapered fingers skim heat across the angle of your cheekbone. “So, you’ll give me a pass this once, won’t you?”  

Vivid scarlet flitters in inscrutable emotion to witness you cup careful palms about his own, as he touches you.   

“You also pulled that insane stunt with that sleaze of a magistrate at the end there. I don’t know how you plan on getting out of that one,” you point out, but there is no actual heat to your accusation.  

He exhales a half-laugh. “That’s probably long taken care of.” Stroking the fall of your hair back against your ear. “No one will come after you now.”  

You step closer to him. “You do know I’m capable of worrying about you too, right? I’m not heartless.” His mouth quirks at your peeved admission. “...You’re important to me Sylus.”  

A streak of something akin to surprise fulgurates for a moment’s notice within that garnet gaze, at your confession.   

Your fingers trek a steady path against the painted beads of your necklace dangling at his chest. “Although I do hope you’ll never pull something like this on my behalf, ever again.” He'd brought it back to you, safe and unscathed, just as he’d said — a vow made, he had honoured.   

Relief was still warm within your chest, along with the turbulence of long nursed vexing emotions, brought forth to the surface — for a man you’d known for almost half your life — by the day’s sequence of events. “I don’t think my heart could handle it.” You huff out a soft laugh.   

An inscrutable emotion streaks across Sylus’s face, too quick to pick apart until it retreats entirely once more.   

“Unfortunately for you,” long, tapered digits sweep about yours at his chest, capturing your hand steady within his grip. “that’s not a pledge I can offer you.” His whisper is low, throaty as it settles against you and you realize the sudden proximity of your positions.   

His striking face is all that floods your vision. His gaze flickers from yours, down toward the bow of your parted lips — a remiss on his part, you can tell from how it rolls back swift to catch your eyes once more. If you did not know any better, you might’ve almost thought he meant to lean further and—  

But was it really the mad conjuring of your mind and a reluctantly hopeful heart that wished to see what it thought it did? Or had you been this obtuse on purpose all along?   

Your brow knits in consternation; this far removed from the persistent babbling of voices — your anxieties, the people, his duel, your uncertain fates at the time — and sequestered within the quiet alley; your roiling thoughts are loud and insistent.   

“And why’s that, Sylus?” You ask quietly.  

The skewed pull of his mouth is devastatingly beautiful even in its lack of mirth, this up close. “I think you know the answer to that, sweetheart. Or are you going to pretend otherwise?” His thumb strokes its gentle path across your knuckles — lighting an incendiary course — your hand still placed firm at his chest. “Whatever your choice, however, know it has always been yours to make.”  

The muted, steady beats of his heart beneath your palm seem to thrum past the sensitive pads of your digits as they skim a line past his pectorals, and up your body, warming it from the inside out.   

You swallow against the surge of a nervous fever that takes you all at once; ploughing past that pluck of anxiety at your chest, to bet your entirety on the one gamble you’re about to make.   

“Come to think of it.” Pink tongue slinks past a mouth parched, to trek a slow path across your bottom lip, end to end; the intolerable burning intensity of Sylus’s scarlet gaze scouring each single motion, sending your light-headedness thrumming higher. “You haven’t truly won yet, have you, Sylus?”   

“What?” He exhales heavily. His breathing has quickened just a snick higher, you notice, underneath your feathering ministrations. You’re fascinated by how he sounds much short of breath in this one instant than he did throughout the entirety of that match. The fact sending a deluge of warm pride and desire threading through your heart.   

“A winner is only one when he has been crowned as such, and received his dues.” You clarify, shifting closer against him.   

Stretching up on the balls of your feet until you’re a mere hair’s breadth from his face. “You however, have yet to claim your prize.” Sweeping forward until your lips are skimming against his in a tentative, testing brush of kiss — your hammering thoughts of uncertainty, of whether he wants this too, swiped clean with the soft, guttural choke of sound that slips past Sylus’s lips at your brazen initiative. And before you can bask under the simmering warmth of what that sound does to you, Sylus is curving a large palm firm within the thread of your locks, wrenching your mouth back against his in a bruising, fervid kiss.  

Eager fingers skitter at the strength of his shoulders to ground yourself against the sudden, pleasurable onslaught just as he captures your waist within the ironed grip of an arm. Almost lifting you up entirely against him until you’re suspended barely at the tips of your toes.   

His grunts are warm against the inside of your mouth as his tongue skims past the easy access of your parted lips to taste you against himself. The wet muscle sliding against yours before he sucks it into his own mouth on an approving groan of desire.   

You're nearly nerveless by the time he parts from you on a wet stretch of sound, barely enough distance, his breath cascades hot against your damp lips with each guttural word, keying you higher. “This is getting a bit too dangerous, kitten. I suggest we stop here if you don’t wish to reach a point of no-return.”  

“No. No,” Your hands flit in fervent frenzy from the stretch of his shoulders to bunch into the thick silver weave of his hair. “We don’t ever need to stop. I want this, I want you, if you do too.” Your mouth descending back against his in the dizzy crush of lips and tongue, Sylus’s groans of pleasure you drink down against your own moan.  

“There hasn’t been a single moment where I haven’t desired you, sweetheart.” He whispers in harsh breaths into the pocket of space you allow him in between your kisses. “You’re the one who said it now. So, brace yourself.”   

A hand you skim down the thick length of his neck, grazing at the base of his hair to support yourself against the large arms that cage your waist to lift until he’s driving you both back against the wall of the narrow alleyway, shrouding you deeper into shadows.   

His kiss of gentle affection skids past the cut of your cheek, so at odds against the fierce brunt of his arousal you feel grinding into your belly. You buck against the touch just as Sylus eases you down, only enough you’re on your feet now; bodies still moulded tight against the shape of each other.   

His mouth continues its work of feathering kisses across the curve of your cheek, down the delicate line of your jaw. His hips stroking against yours in gentle motions, sending the roll of his hard length against your stomach each time he guides you against himself, having you squirm in roiling pleasure, helpless against the insistence of his mouth and pelvis. Meeting his body with yours in the reflexive buck of your hips against his.   

The elongated stretch of your skirt, sending a mild frisson of frustration through your nerves to feel the restriction of your movements against his. Groaning in soft defeat against Sylus’s mouth over yours, just as he cups a large hand about the angle of your pelvis. Caressing past the flare of your behind, rucking up the fabric within a tight fist to slide it, far too slow, up your legs.   

A final brush of temporary farewell he kisses against your drenched lips before he descends, unhurried, down the length of your body; scarlet gaze refusing to relent from yours for even a single measured moment of mercy. A thick palm he traces, appreciative, down the curves of you as he pitches on to his knees.   

Thumb warming its touch against the edge of a knee, your skirts bunched at the hand fastened about your leg as it caresses a slow, sensual path up higher. The glorious sight he is, down on his knees in between the willing split of your legs; undoing in its entirety — you shudder at the devastation he brings upon you when his fingers hone their target upon the cloth of your underwear at your hip. Skating a delicate path against the knot of it before his index slips underneath it to tug undone.   

Wresting your underwear away entirely on his next sharp tug before he sweeps the mortifyingly damp cloth away from your body and under his nose for a long, obscene inhale. “You smell sweet, kitten. So much of this pretty nectar, all for me... I admit I’m more than a little flattered.” The skew of his devious smirk pulls wider at your choked sound of pleasure to witness him swipe your underwear down against his back, and pocket into the satchel at his belt.   

“Sylus,” you reprimand half-heartedly, in distressed urgency.   

“The victor takes it all, does he not? These are my spoils to have now, kitten.” His large palms are back at the skin of your legs, skimming a dizzying, scorching path up the quiver of your thighs. “Just as you are, the treasure I snatched for myself.”  

“Let me indulge in my private feast, quietly now.” He baits in heated whispers, jaw falling open as he disappears in between the heavy folds of your skirt and — Heaven help you — the sound that scrapes raw past your throat to feel the tease of his broad tongue against your drenched slit, is unlike any you’ve ever heard before. The high-pitched squeal you cut off in the hasty wrench of your bottom lip into your mouth, heated desire clouding your swimming vision to tamp down your moans of arousal, lest any passers-by, just a few feet away from your shadowed alcove, spot the indecency of your display.   

Thoughts drifting into emptiness — musing absent at how self-conscious you’d been while Sylus had carried you within his arms all the way out here; fully clothed then. And yet, here you were now, with your skirts bunched high up against your pelvis with that very same man’s wonderful tongue shoved deep inside you.  

The hot pads of Sylus’s index and middle you feel skim against the tight bead of pleasure at your apex, just as the point of his tongue seeps in at your entrance, sending your hips stuttering into his steeled grip, fast at your pelvis.   

You clamp a palm shut tight against your tapering moans, unable to smother them within yourself any longer. The heated plumes of your own breath crowding back against you with each shivered moan Sylus forces out of you.  

His mouth brushes about the length of your folds, the bow of his upper lip bumping gentle at your tight bundle of nerves. Before he closes it within the searing heat of his mouth, sucking at your increasingly swollen flesh.   

Sylus draws at the drenched slick of you like a man intent on devouring you whole, the thought drives your pleasure higher along with the rising euphoria bubbling within your body. A curious thumb parts your inner folds wider to admit the broad of his tongue deep into your slit. Your walls spasming against the breach of it as your hips judder down against the strength of his jaw.  

“You’re close, aren’t you sweetheart? You can keep up a little longer.” His smothered encouragement, the vibrations of his thick voice right against your slit send you tumbling higher upon that precipice of sweet release.   

The added, ruinous excitement of not being able to see him past the abundant frill of your skirts blazes you higher; the sole nervous anticipation of not knowing where he’d touch you next has you gushing on his tongue.   

A low, soft curse you hear spill guttural against your folds, vibrating straight up into your womb, “You’re practically weeping on my tongue, sweetheart. I like that.” Your answering moan you bury into a bite of your sleeve as you fold your arm about your face; a full body quiver long having taken you. You no longer hold control over yourself. “Grind down on my face, relax yourself. Yes, there’s my good girl now.”  

The praise having your walls grip hard at the fingers he’s worked into you now. Propelling them at an indolent, maddening pace into your depths.  

“Sylus,” you pant harshly, mind numbing into a crescendo. “I don’t — hah — can’t — much longer.” Begging for a release so, so close at hand.  

“Then don’t . Let yourself go.” His groans muted against the wet heat of you. “I’ll catch you when you fall.”   

The crook of his middle and ring fingers up into you has you spasming against the intrusive stretch of them. Opening you up deeper; the deft pads of them scrounge up a spot against your frontal walls that has your mouth flying open on a silent scream, head falling back against the unyielding brick of the alley as your fluttering insides clamp down violent against his adroit handling of you. “Right here, is it?” You think you hear his muted whispers spill throaty against the sensitive expanse of your thigh.   

Right at the junction of your hip as Sylus sinks a bite into the pliant flesh just as his thick fingers rub up against that same weak spot inside to have you disintegrating into senselessness right above him.  

You can’t fathom how he’s brought you to such complete devastation in just a few, nimble strokes of his tongue and fingers into you, against you. Never having been dragged this fast or good to the precipice by your own hand, let alone another’s. He’s away each layer of defence, piece by excruciating piece, having worked you open so thoroughly as if he knew your body like his own.  

Truly a man that sought relentless victory even in between the fall of your legs.   

And it is only when that pleasure point is one keyed far too high, with the incessant press of his third finger up into your walls, stretching you open — so incredibly full of just his digits alone — does your body fall. No longer capable of protecting yourself against the battering deluge of a release so consuming, your knees buckle underneath the hefty intensity of his ministrations.   

Sylus’s large hand, you feel warm about your rump, to curve its easy support about it, as he presses his face further into you. Waves upon waves of pleasure, drowning your keening cries against your well-abused bottom lip. A faint frisson of overstimulation stringing you higher to gain enough conscious thought back to catch his low, guttural growl searing harsh at your drenched folds, at the sensation of you gushing all over his tongue.  

You quiver in nerveless arousal to feel the fleeting brush of his kiss farewell against your slit before he rises, slow, onto his feet once more. Your body clenches in on instinctual need to catch sight of his face once more. The slick that glimmers obscenely copious across his mouth and down the strength of his jaw, the untamed, almost bestial intensity to that barely tamped heat within scarlet, as Sylus sweeps a careful thumb against your wetness has you unfurling trembling digits forward to snag around his neck, dragging him down against yourself.  

Consuming the ferocity of his kiss just as eagerly in the tongue you lap at his lips, slipping along the angle of his jaw; moaning softly at the taste of you that clings still to him. Restless fingers steal in between your bodies to reach for the arousal that strains delectable and intimidating against his trousers.  

Flittering your digits about the catch of them as you work them open enough along with the thick fingers that aid you to release him free for your hungry gaze. Your audible gasp of pleasure Sylus captures against the pad of his thumb edging just past the part of your lips.  

He’s incredibly blessed, bigger, girthier than any you’ve ever had before. The prospect of taking that thing inside your body simultaneously terrifies and excites you.  

Your dazed musings Sylus fractures in the cup of your jaw in between firm, gentle digits. “Nervous?”   

“...A bit,” you admit. Adding for good measure, “Nothing I can’t handle, though.”  An expectant hand you move to curve about the breadth of him to make your point — fingers barely able to cup entirely about him.  

Sylus’s laughter is a low, heavy burst of sound. “Don’t worry, kitten.” He reaches down to join his fingers against yours in languidly stroking the length of him. Coasting in close to your ear as he lays a kiss of dark, hoarse promise against it, “I’ll teach you to do more than just handle it.”  

Your pleased moan you throttle against his quick, vehement kiss as Sylus gathers the folds of your skirt up to bunch about your hips. Fitting himself into the space he makes, his arousal glancing hot against your outer labia; feeling him so close to where your body clenches in on tense anticipation.   

He withdraws from you on a wet slip of tongue, seizing your gaze within his. The firm fist he strokes at his length guiding the flared, slick head of him against your folds to lubricate in your wetness, bumping pleasant at your sensitive bead of nerves on each indolent stroke.  

You buck your hips up against his in an impatient scratch of throaty sound. Slipping the head of him so close against your slit, it almost makes you dizzy with need.  

You are not, however, prepared truly for the actual breach of him as he splits you open in pleasure so blinding, it streaks right against your tender bead and up deep into your belly. Sylus’s guttural groans brand hot against the crescent of your neck in overwhelmed desire, a muted swear swallowed into the bite of teeth he presses into it. “Relax yourself a little, kitten, you’ve gone too tight on me.”  

You try, you truly do as you smother past your burning need to scream, for breaths to claw into your lungs; he feels too much, too good all at once, your body incapable of doing much else except accepting the slow propulsion of him deeper into your walls.

He feels almost too much for you to handle, spearing you open so far around him you didn’t even think yourself capable of such a feat. And yet, the copious arousal that slicks in between your bodies, with the voracious clench of your walls around the hard strength of him, sucking him inside, speaks volumes. Of how you’re thoroughly enjoying the feeling of being impaled upon his length.  

“More,” you pant; the slow thrusts of his hips up into yours sending your lashes flittering shut, in overwhelming euphoria and need. “I need more, Sylus.”  

He grunts in acknowledgment, large hands fixing hot fetters of flesh against either side of your pelvis as he thrusts into you, each swollen stroke of his arousal sending him impossibly deep, until you feel it may truly reach your womb.  

Sylus heaves himself closer into you, nearly pinning you against the wall with the sheer strength of his towering body, the heavy pumping of his hips into you, sending euphoria skating through your veins. Intoxicated on feeling the way he moves within you.  

A hand drifts up from your hip to grip at the flare of your waist beneath cloth as Sylus manoeuvres your body to thrust into you at an angle that drives him hard against your swollen spot of pleasure inside.   

Your hands fly in agonized frenzy to clutch at his arms, his shoulders as you grapple with the blinding pleasure he’s carving into your body. His head skews downward to catch the sensitive flesh of your neck in between the bite of restive teeth, a low moan wrenched free of your throat. His mouth strokes down the length of your skin until he teeths at the fastenings of your collar, wrenching violent at the buttons before he scatters them apart. Mouth engulfing the exposed slope of your clavicle in fervid groans.  

Your fingers skitter for purchase into the silver brush of hair at the base of his neck, tugging harsh with his increasingly heavy pace. A low whine clambering past your throat when his grip upon your body tightens once more in purpose, dragging his length to the near tip of him before he rams back into you on a guttural snarl so primal, it has you violently spasming about his thick shaft, your vision blanking in for a moment.  

Sylus’s face is a flood of savage bliss and heated concentration — the sight along with his pleasurably punishing thrusts into your walls — has your heart nearly trying to rip past the bruising beat of it at your breastbone. Hips meeting his in stuttering thrusts as your body bows up, sharp, toward him to chase a height of euphoria so in sight.  

“You’re moaning so loud, kitten.” His throaty chuckle stirs weighty into your belly. “Keep that up and you’ll draw us an audience.” Gnawing weakly at your bottom lip to instinctively tamp your sounds just as Sylus moves to drive into you on a particularly ruinous, deliberate thrust that has your legs buckling entirely underneath you.   

But he’s there to catch you, thick forearms cording about the feeble, trembling plush of your thighs before he hoists you up entirely onto him; his hushed chuckle drifting into guttural laughter. “Why try being quiet on your own when you can just make use what you have at your disposal?” His lips drive against yours in a vehement kiss of teeth and tongue, devouring you, just the way he is in between your legs. You let yourself go at last, moaning unabated into the searing warmth of his mouth, Sylus’s pace turning to near-frenzied rutting, with the sounds he wrenches from your bruised throat.  

He forces you deeper against the wall, spearing you helpless in between the cool stone at your back and the unforgiving intensity of his drilling thrusts pillaging your body. Golden deep pleasure roiling pleasant just beneath your skin, to push at the confines, until you feel like you could float out of it heavenward and never return to the ground.  

Your fevered gaze snags against the painted beads of your gifted charm about his neck, swinging vehement with the force of his propulsions. Drifting absent fingers against the worn orbs of the necklace, mushed mind admiring how truly lovely he looks like this for you; coupled along with that tight knit of concentrated pleasure, it makes you believe he truly is all yours to have. As if he belongs to you, with you.   

That sole, deranged thought sending arousal thrumming within, so blinding, your body quivers into the tight curve of a crescent, pressing hard against his chest, a peak so close, you can feel it stirring vicious into your belly. “You’re all mine to have, aren’t you? My great warrior,” you gasp against his mouth, trembling fingers sweeping for the broad strength of his shoulders as your nails drive in, harsh.

Sylus’s response; groaned heavy against your tongue, without hesitation. “You’ve always had me in my entirety, sweetheart.”  

Your body has wholly given up — a leaden weight — within his grasp, held together only by the strength of Sylus’s arms curving steeled grips about your thighs. Pounding into you with each fervid roll of his hips slapping against the back of your thighs — the profuse flow of your arousal sweltering in between your already burning bodies, the obscene squelch of it each time he withdraws from your walls only to drive back in with savage, terrifying accuracy, rutting himself so good against the spot inside that has you quivering uncontrollably around the length of him.  

Your combined sultry symphony so loud within your ears, drumming along with the thundering of your heart, you’re sure any passers-by crossing the mouth of the alley would be able to hear. Your cotton-fed mind so far gone, however, you’re no longer coherent enough to care about anyone hearing your claims upon each other’s bodies. So deeply entrenched in the sole existence of Sylus: his body, tongue, his bruising grip upon you, you love so much — scoring stinging crescents as your own signs of victory, across the broad strength of his shoulders, down the firm muscle of his arms, serving to drive him only harder into you until he’s knocking half-screams out of your throat. Swallowing them up against the hungry sweep of his tongue.  

Sylus’s thrusts into your body have turned erratic, his guttural moans heating your skin into a blazing furnace. You’re so close to release, you can feel the heavy crest of its deluge approaching — golden and ruinous.  

His grip upon the flare of your hip shifts, pressing you impossibly deeper against him, the new angle driving the length of him against your sensitive bundle of nerves on each hammering thrust. “A-Almost—” Gasping a breathless warning.  

Hurtling you so high; the frenzied pump of his hips into yours, the constant stimulation at your swollen bead sending your walls spasming so violent, you feel Sylus loose a long, guttural groan deep into your mouth. You tumble off the precipice of release just as you feel the first thick spurts of his seed searing fire against your sensitized walls; Sylus’s sultry growls keying your frenzied release so high your fingers scrape across the back of his neck to tug him harsh against your mouth. Sinking your quivering, heated desires into a vehement bite at his chest, Sylus’s digits weaving tight into your hair at the back of your head, to hold you there.  

His thundering pulse you moan against in appreciation, laving absent to soothe the reddening bite at his skin, as your body convulses with the still flowing spurts of his release, stroking at the intoxicating fever of your prolonged orgasm, filling you to the brim and over; the warmth of it you feel drip past your folds and onto his sturdy thighs.  

Taking several, long much needed moments to compose yourself as your sweat-slick face falls, nerveless, to press your cheek against the damp expanse of his chest, body still suspended firm upon the corded strength of his arms, his cock nestled snug and thick within you.  

You claw a much-needed gulp of air past a throat, long sore. “...I fear you may have to carry me here on out, as well, Sylus, because I certainly can’t move an inch right now.”  

His amused chuckle drifts warm against the top of your head. “While joined together just like this?” He teases softly. “You may truly pass out of sheer embarrassment this time if I do, kitten.”  

“Doesn’t matter,” you quip right back, half-hearted, canting a languid gaze up his way. “I think I’ll be long knocked out before any pesky shame kicks in, from how good this — you were.”  

You feel Sylus’s length twitch within your walls at your words, groaning quietly at the growing strain of his arousal, back to half-mast already. Truly, was there a limit to the man’s enduring stores of stamina?  

But perhaps, the real question was of your own insatiable appetite too, when it came to him, as you were only newly discovering — your wrecked body responding in the muted burn of arousal, kindling into slow fire within your belly, clenching weakly at him.  

“Tell you what, sweetheart.” Sylus’s skewed grin tucks against your ear as he nuzzles at your cheek.  “I’ll carry you out of here in my arms, as you wish, without the additional parade of our naked bodies. In return,” A kiss he feathers, against the angle of your cheekbone. “Come home with me.”  He asks of you, softly.

You bury your approval in the nudge of your nose against him, catching his lips against yours in a gentle, chaste kiss, “Sounds like a done deal to me, my handsome warrior.”  

End Notes: Thank you for reading! This was a very fun indulgence and I hope everyone who bagged Sylus’ card enjoyed his soft card story.

Tagging as requested: @samanthagnicole , @catboi-anon , @bitches4lifebro , @beebumbo , @hellinistical , @dangerousluv1 , @webmvie , @Cas-tiel13 , @aria-tempest , @raendarkfaerie , @lamentinee , @unhingedsillygod , @tiredas , @ladyparamount

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[justporo]

Hear me out! Tav brought a statue of Astarion to the camp but Astarion does not recognize himself in it and does not understand why their leader spent 5000 gold on a random stone man. Meanwhile the party is betting on how long it will take Astarion to guess whose statue it is.

5000 Gold

"He's not... he's not gonna figure it out anytime soon, is he?"

"Sshhh!"

Shadowheart shushed Karlach with an angry frown and a single finger thrown to her lips.

The two of them - along with your other companions observed the scene unfolding on the other side of the camp. Right where a delivery had just been made - and quite an uncommon one.

A giant stone statue, depicting... Astarion - and almost fully nude at that.

You couldn't resist when the offer had been made to you at the carnival at the outskirts of Baldur’s Gate. 5000 gold had felt like nothing for the punchline you had been about to make with having a statue be made of the one companion that couldn't remember what he himself looked like.

And Astarion, upon discovering Tav's most recent purchase, had started to throw a temper tantrum immediately, almost fainting when he had heard the paid sum out of your mouth.

The vampire had worked himself into an outright frenzy, screaming, hissing, gesticulating towards the statue, then back to you, then to the skies. Meanwhile all you could do anymore was biting your lip to stop yourself from bursting into the biggest laughing fit of your life.

The rest of the group kept observing from a safe distance.

"Istik", Lae'zel mumbled under her breath. But even the sober githyanki could barely hide a smile.

Shadowheart shushed her as well. Wyll had just been silently shaking his head for the last couple of minutes. Shadowheart had started taking bets on how long it would take the oblivious vampire to realise the cruel trick that was being played on him. Karlach, being way too optimistic, had already lost some coin to the cleric with their estimate of a few minutes.

Only Gale who had been busy this far with some of his thousand books had missed the whole spectacle so far. Just now had the wizard realised that something was going down. He eyed the fighting trio of you Astarion and stone Astarion and then the group of bystanders, trying to decipher the situation. When he couldn't make any logical sense of any of it he went over to the small onlooking group. "I appear to have missed something? What is-"

Shadowheart hissed at him to shut up, causing Gale to flinch back with a hurt facial expression. Wyll though wasn't impressed by the cleric and enlightened his friend: "It looks like our clever leader Tav has taken up the offer of getting a stone statue of Astarion for a bargain of 5000 gold without telling anyone. And now we're betting how long it's going to take him to realise it's him."

Shadowheart stared the Blade of Frontiers down. Wyll merely shrugged his shoulders. He'd faced more fearsome creatures than the cleric aplenty.

Gale just blinked several times at him, letting the words settle. Then a grin spread on the wizard's face. "I bet 100 gold it's gonna take him at least until the end of the day."

Shadowheart's furious expression lightened noticeably and she stretched out her hand to Gale. They shook on the bet. Then everyone turned back to the two Astarion's and you to continue watching the scene.

"Why in the nine hells would you get a statue of some random guy - he isn't that... Well, he is quite handsome!" Astarion yelled at you while you had to hide your face in your hands desperately trying to pull yourself together.

The vampire didn't let up: "Well, if only it had been me, then I would have understood, darling, who wouldn't want that as a piece of decor, but-"

That was it, you broke. Hysterical laughter started shaking you, up to the point where you doubled over and could barely breathe between laughing and crying from laughing.

The vampire meanwhile went through the whole spectrum of emotions known under the sun in a matter of seconds. Angered, confused, flustered. And then finally something in the elf’s brain clicked together.

He stared at the statue then at you, back to the statue and suddenly his hands wandered over his own face as if to grasp it's lines and shapes.

"You...," he started and stopped. Through your tears you were sure you could see the vampire's pointy ears turn bright pink. "That IS me!"

You were barely able to nod as another fit of laughter shook you. Astarion’s mouth opened several times but no sound came out. A rare occasion to the see the sassy rogue so void of words.

Meanwhile, a bunch of moans could be heard from the other side of camp where Shadowheart collected her won gold from the others.)

"Why would you-", Astarion began and his expression was barely readable while your laughter slowly died down and you were able to kneel back on your feet.

"Didn't you say it yourself? He's quite handsome, isn't he? Now you get to see for yourself again."

Astarion pointed an angry finger at you about to throw another fit but then his eyes fell on the statue again. Now with knowing what it was and what it meant it shut him up immediately.

He took a few steps closer to get a better look. His anger at you momentarily forgotten as he gazed upon his own image for the first time in over 200 years.

[grandmother-goblin]

Just Watch the Fireworks

Ao3 - Masterlist

Summary: It was supposed to be a sweet, innocent date. That was, until Astarion decided he wanted to have some fun with you while you were very much still in public.

Relationships: Astarion x Female!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+) for smut.

Word Count: 2.3k

Tags: Smut, exhibitionism, vaginal fingering, dirty talk, cuddling, kissing, post Astarion's personal quest, spawn!Astarion.

Firework shows over Grey Harbor happened only a couple of times a year in Baldur’s Gate. Bright, massive, loud displays that boomed over the whole city and illuminated the night sky in dazzling arrays of colors and lights. Usually they marked some sort of holiday or other celebration. Although you weren’t keen on the celebration for this particular occasion, Gortash’s coronation, you were still eager to see the show.

Plus, it was a nice way to end your impromptu date with Astarion. You two had gone out to get some supplies, but upon seeing the night market and posters for the firework show, you decided to stay a while.

Astarion had found a perfect spot for the two of you on a grassy, green hillside just on the outskirts of the city. It was one of the more popular places to watch the fireworks. People dotted the landscape, all sitting on their own little blankets as they looked out over the ocean, waiting for the show to begin.

It was kind of nice to be out with Astarion like this. 

Ever since Cazador had been defeated, Astarion had grown much more comfortable being out in the open at night. He seemed more relaxed overall, like a heavy weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. Of course, there were several other factors on both of your minds: the tadpole, the Absolute, the fact that Astarion’s days walking in sunlight were numbered.

But you two would figure it out. 

Together.

For now, you wanted to enjoy the night with him and pretend none of your problems existed. Even if it was only for a couple of hours.

As you sat between his open legs, Astarion wrapped his arms around you along with a knitted blanket, cocooning you in pleasant warmth. You leaned your head back against his shoulder with a comfortable sigh, luxuriating in the silky soft material of his shirt. “I bet you’ve seen these shows a thousand times.”

“I have,” he replied matter-of-factly, his cool breath fanning across your neck. You felt him press a kiss to your shoulder, and you couldn’t help the smile that tugged on your lips. “One year, all the fireworks went off at the same time. It was hilarious and I almost hope it happens again.”

You gave a little snort of laughter. “That would cut this date really short.”

“We can find plenty more to do, my love.” Astarion’s fingers slipped under the hem of your shirt and gave your hip an affectionate squeeze. “Now that Cazador is gone, we can do whatever we want. The night is still young.”

“Oh no,” you replied lightly. “I’m turning in for the night after the show is over. I’m exhausted.”

Though Astarion seemed to have plenty of energy, the events of the day had been starting to weigh on you. All you wanted to do after the fireworks display was cozy up in some warm pajamas and snuggle into your bed at the Elfsong Tavern. 

Preferably, you would be cuddled up next to Astarion, but you wouldn’t stop him if he had other plans. 

Most nights since you had started sharing a room with him, Astarion had been perfectly capable of keeping himself occupied while you slept. Sometimes he would read a book or work on something with a needle and thread, but you almost always awoke to him meditating peacefully beside you.

Other nights, well, he had to hunt. While you were happy to be his donor when he really needed blood, it simply wasn’t practical to let him feed on you all the time. So long as he was discreet, you didn’t mind that he took his hunting to the streets.

With his thumb, he drew idle circles around your hip as he rested his chin on your shoulder. You closed your eyes and relaxed into his touch, enjoying the feel of the heavy blanket wrapped around you and the firmness of his chest against your back.

His lips brushed against the shell of your ear and with a low and husky voice, he said, “I keep thinking about our night in the graveyard.”

A smile tugged at the corner of your lips. “Which part?”

“The part with you under me,” he muttered against your skin as he slipped one finger beneath the waistband of your pants, “moaning my name as you clawed my back.”

Heat rose to your cheeks. “Shh,” you said, your eyes darting around at the people sitting on neighboring blankets. “Not so loud.”

“They aren’t paying attention to us.” Astarion placed a reassuring kiss to the side of your head, but he didn’t move his hand. Then he cocked his chin to the starry sky above the harbor. “The show is about to start.”

Sure enough, the first of the fireworks burst into the sky. A splattering of reds and yellows against the inky night sky, the distant sounds of explosive crackling reaching your ears mixing with the sound of excited cheers from the people around you. You watched as the bursts of light shimmered away, blending into the night, just before more fireworks flowered above.

You couldn’t help but smile as you leaned back into Astarion’s touch. Squeezing his arms around you, he pulled your body flush against his. At first, you thought he was just cuddling closer. But then you felt it: a hard ridge nudged that up against your lower back.

You swallowed, but felt heat rising to your face even as you tried to ignore Astarion’s painfully obvious erection. He wasn’t doing anything inappropriate — he was just holding you. With his hard cock pressed against your back. 

Gods, was it always so hot at night? What did you even need a blanket for?

Just as you thought about shrugging the blanket from your shoulders, his fingers slipped further beneath the waistband of your pants. “I want to touch you,” he said, his lips brushing against your throat as he spoke. “Just a little bit.”

“Right now?” you asked, keeping your voice so low you could barely hear yourself over the fireworks. Uncertainty and anticipation tugged your mind in two different directions and you shifted slightly, unsure of what to do with yourself.

It had only been a couple of nights since your tryst in the cemetery, and you and Astarion hadn’t been intimate since. Not for any particular reason — there just wasn’t enough time in the day for intimacy with everything going on with the Absolute. 

Suddenly very aware of a subtle, yearning, ache between your legs that hadn’t been there a few moments ago, you pressed your thighs together hoping to give yourself some relief.

It was unfair, really, how quickly Astarion could turn you on. 

You were supposed to be on a sweet, innocent, date! And he—

“Spread your legs a bit for me, darling,” Astarion murmured, his dangerous teeth delicately nipping at sensitive flesh just below your jawbone.

He was absolutely going to be the death of you.

Glancing around, there were people in every direction you looked. No one was sitting too close, but they were close enough that they could easily hear your conversation had you not been trying to be quiet. But all of them faced straight ahead, their eyes entranced on the bursts of light blooming across the sky. 

“Astarion,” you whispered, your voice somewhere between a warning and a whine as Astarion’s fingers brushed over the soft fabric of your panties. “There are people around.”

His hand stilled, and you couldn’t help the tiny, involuntary, tilt of your hips. You could see the flash of his teasing, rakish smile from the corner of your eye. “Do you want me to stop?”

Your heart pounded in your chest as you took one more look around. 

Astarion had been right earlier.

No one was paying attention to the two of you.

Shaking your head, you swallowed as nerves and excitement fluttered in your stomach. “But—”

“All you have to do is stay still for me,” Astarion said as he slipped his fingers beneath the waistband of your underwear, “and try not to moan my name too loudly.”

Carefully, and as subtly as you could, you let your legs fall open. 

A pleased hum rumbled in Astarion’s throat as he pulled your back flush against him. His hard cock was like a brand against your lower back. “Now just watch the fireworks, darling, and no one will know what I’m doing to you under this blanket.”

Kissing your neck, the tips of his fingers slowly, steadily, circled your clit. You let your head fall back against his shoulder with a sigh, your cheeks burning as he touched you. 

Gods, he was really going to do this, wasn’t he? He was going to finger you in public and…

You didn’t want him to stop. 

You breathed in deep, inhaling the sweet piney and citrusy scent of his cologne. A comforting scent, and one that turned you on like no other because it was uniquely Astarion’s. Slowly, your body relaxed into his touch.

For a moment, it was just the two of you and the sounds of fireworks.

“Good girl,” Astarion purred as his hand delved between your legs. You couldn’t help but bite your lip as he teased your entrance, gathering your slickness on his fingertips. Slowly, he slid one finger inside of you. “It’s just me and you right now.”

He touched you leisurely, unhurried strokes. The subtle curl of his fingers made you want to arch into him. It was all too easy to forget yourself when you were with him. When he was touching you like this. 

How you wanted to return the favor. You wanted to wrap your hand around that hard length behind you and give him some pleasure as well. 

But you couldn’t. 

At least, not without exposing you both.

When he pressed another finger inside you, a shaky exhale passed your lips. Your walls clenched around him, as if trying to draw him in deeper. “Astarion, please,” you whispered, not really sure what you were asking for.

But Astarion knew.

Astarion knew exactly how to touch you. 

He knew exactly what your body needed to be brought to the edge. Oh, he knew how to make you scream in ecstasy, but he also knew how to make you sigh with pure pleasure. Like how his dexterous hands picked locks, it was like they knew all of your intricacies and exactly how to make you fall apart.

You pressed your lips against the underside of his jaw, stifling your moans against his cool skin. The heel of his palm rocked over against your clit in a steady, consistent rhythm as he shallowly thrusted into you. Glancing down, you could see that the thick blanket around you masked his movements completely.

Sneaky, clever, man. 

Of course he knew exactly how to do something like this without being obvious. Although Astarion was far from subtle, he was excellent at not getting caught doing things he wasn’t supposed to.

The only one you had to worry about was yourself.

Your face heated as his movements grew more powerful. Your fingers gripped his thigh under the blanket as your core tightened around his fingers.

His tongue flicked the shell of your ear delicately. “Do you know what I want to do right now?” he asked, his voice low and husky.

Another gasp escaped your lip as he added a third finger, your body stretching to accommodate him. You felt so full, and you wanted nothing more than for him to go deeper. To fill you completely in a way only he could.

“What… what do you want to do?” you panted, fighting the urge to squirm in his arms.

Whatever you did, you would not let yourself get caught simply because you lacked self control.

The heel of his palm pressed more firmly against your clit, providing delicious friction as he fucked your so gently with his fingers. “I want to bend you over, darling,” he said as he picked up speed. “And I want to taste that pretty pussy of yours.”

Oh, by the gods. 

He would never. 

It was just dirty talk but — the idea of having an audience was so incredibly hot. Especially since there were so many people around, and you couldn’t indulge in such a fantasy here.

The forbidden nature of it just made you want it more.

“I would make you come on my tongue,” he murmured as the hard ridge between you pressed meaningfully against your back. “Only then, would I give you my cock. And I wouldn’t stop until you were screaming my name.”

You were so close. Your entire body was strung tight as your walls clenched around his fingers, wishing for something bigger. Thicker.

Why did you agree to this? You wanted nothing more than to climb on top of him and let him fill you up the way you wanted. 

“Gods. Astarion,” you whispered against the scars on his neck. “I’m—”  

Your mouth fell open on a sharp gasp as Astarion’s fingers returned to your clit. Astarion captured your lips with his own, drinking in your soft moans as you came undone. 

The lights from the fireworks burst behind your closed eyes. The booming display in the sky crescendoed into a deafening roar as the show reached its finale, drowning out your already muffled sighs.

Wave after wave of pleasure coursed through you as you rode out your orgasm. Your hips undulated lewdly against his hand as his lips moved against yours. He tasted like sweet wine as his tongue flicked against yours teasingly. 

It was only when your heart began to settle that you felt the delicate nip of his fangs on your lips. His fingers, still slick with your arousal, intertwined with yours as he gazed down at you. 

When you looked into those gorgeous vermillion eyes, his pupils were blown wide with lust.

Lust, and unmistakable love.

Then his eyes flickered toward the direction of the Elfsong Tavern. “You know,” he said, holding your chin in hand as his thumb swiped gently over your lower lip. “I think we should turn in early after all. What do you say?”

You were nodding before he even finished his sentence. “Oh gods, yes.”

---

Author's Note: This is my first foray into writing anything in second person or anything xReader, so I'm sorry for any mistakes and I hope you enjoyed!

[desertfangs]

Since you write a lot do you have tips for people who want to write more?

Hi, anon! I can sure try and tell you some of what works for me!

Ignore advice that you don’t find helpful (that includes these tips!)

Writing is a process, but your writing process is always going to be unique to you, so if something doesn’t work for you, trying to implement it is only going to make you miserable. Like some people will tell you to write every day, but sometimes the pressure of that is going to be too much. Basically anything that doesn’t work for you, chuck it in the bin. You don’t need it.

Put your word processor in full screen

I write in Scrivener, which has a “composition mode” but you can also just put your document on full screen to minimize distractions. That way it’s harder to flip over to check Discord or Tumblr or whatever. Of course, I still exit out of full screen every time I need to look something up in the thesaurus and then I end up spending 15 minutes screwing around on the internet so you know, it's not a perfect system.

Work on several things at once and don’t be afraid to step away if a story isn’t working

Granted, my writing method is like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, so I tend to start a lot of stuff that fizzles out after a few paragraphs (or a few thousand words 😭😭) and I know juggling multiple things does not work for everyone.

I personally usually need at least 2 current WIPs, so I can switch to the second when I get stuck on the first. This means even while I’m ruminating on one fic, I’m writing another. But I have friends who literally can’t write on more than one project at a time or their brains will explode, so again, it’s just about what works best for you.

[BRACKETS]

If you’re stuck on something like a detail or a fact you need to look up or a piece of dialogue (“How the fuck would Lestat respond to THAT?” is my constant refrain, my cats are tired of hearing it), just put something in brackets like [Lestat replies with something flirty or witty] or [Fact check if X] or whatever it is, and then you can move on and keep going and not lose your momentum.

Set a Timer

If you're struggling to make yourself focus and write, set a timer for 10, 15, 25 minutes (whatever increment of time works for you!) and write until it goes off. You can keep going after if you're on a roll, or your can stop for a while, but it will get you into the mindset of writing. And even if that's all you do that day, hey, you wrote for 10 minutes!

Kill your need for perfection and that critic in your brain

I am still working on this but it’s true! You can make your WIP more perfect in editing. The old adage that you can’t fix a blank page is correct. And honestly, a lot of times I will write something and think ‘ugh this is no good’ and then go back and read it weeks later and really dig it. Or I figure out what it needs to make it better. (Or sometimes it still sucks and we just pretend it never happened.) But no one else has to see your first drafts! So don’t stress about making the first draft super good or agonize too much over word choice. Just get words on the page and worry about making it better later.

I hope you find some of that helpful, Anon!

[comicaurora]

are you scared of the whole AI art thing? What do you think about it?

"Scared" is the wrong word, I think. "Pissed" is probably more accurate. The technology underlying the concept is interesting, but its current form transparently functions by mining data from artists who didn't consent to have their work used like that. Arguments over whether it's "real art" or whatever aside, that is unethical and gross and a class-action lawsuit waiting to happen.

I think the people scared that this is going to replace actual living artists are severely overestimating the technology at play here and possibly don't understand computers very much.

The reason why computers are a fascinating mix of very smart and very stupid is because they are only good at doing exactly what they are told. Human thought, communication and creation is based on a process of flexible interpretation. Our brains take in patterns of light and sound and interpret them into shapes and figures and speech - a process that is imperfect, messy and susceptible to any number of disruptions from minor chemical alterations to major brain injuries. We read text and subtext and emotional undertones into what we hear, we extrapolate assumptions from the things we see. It's an extremely messy process with a lot of room for error, as evinced by miscommunications, corner-of-the-eye shadow people, "are you mad at me I feel like you're mad at me", getting hangry, assigning personalities to car taillights, audio processing disorders, and about a million other human idiosyncrasies.

Art, down to its bones, is about interpretation - the artist interpreting a slice of the world and the audience interpreting that art. This is why no two people experience the same story the same way, and why no two artists create the same work.

Computers, in contrast, are not messy. Or, to be more accurate, they aren't naturally messy. They do exactly what they are told. They have no context, no axioms, no common sense and no rules except what they're given. A human told to write a sentence over and over again and never being told to stop will eventually get bored or tired or hungry or pissed and stop. A computer told to 'while 1: printf("Hello World!")' will do it forever until the power goes out or someone notices and forces it to stop. A person told "hey man can you go to the store and get me a mango, and if they have apples get five" will acquire a mango and possibly five apples. A computer told the same instruction may well turn up with five mangos. A computer won't do anything if you forget to close a parenthesis or put in a semicolon somewhere in a thousand lines of code because it's doing exactly what it's told. The eternal frustration of computer science is figuring out why the stupid computer isn't doing what you told it to do, and the answer is always "you didn't tell it what to do right. Find the missing parenthesis. Don't capitalize that one variable."

An artist told to paint a fantastical landscape might paint beautiful mountains or flying cities or the high, arching curves of Saturn-style rings or ancient ruins or massive skeletons or any number of things. A computer told to render a fantastical landscape will, as I understand it, comb through a database it's been given by a human, find works a human or a human-trained algorithm tagged with "fantastical" "landscape" (or, if it's been made a little more complex, a word-web of other tags commonly added by a human to things tagged with "fantastical" and "landscape") and use a very impressive program created by a human to recombine them into a mashup of "fantastical" "landscapes" that may or may not parse correctly to the human who looks at it. The computer doesn't know. The computer isn't thinking. It's just doing what it's been told to do.

If we stop thinking of computers like people that are going to take our jobs and start thinking of them like tools that people use, the whole situation becomes a lot clearer. The technology isn't the problem. The people who baked in stolen datasets and the people who are using the tool to be dicks to artists are the problem. I'm not scared of the tech and I'm not scared of the people - I just wish they'd stop being dicks.

And even if we do reach the theoretical point where a computer can create art that actually stands up to scrutiny - you know, where the hands don't look like calamari plates and the eyes and teeth don't blur together and sharp delineating lines between clothing and skin don't just sort of dissolve into shadowy vagueness - I think that'll be the point we just shift into the "holy shit! two cakes!!" zone. 3D animation didn't make 2D animation obsolete. 4K screens didn't kill pixel art. The printing press didn't kill painting. Video only killed the radio star until podcasts brought them back. People enjoy lots of things.

[djarins-cyare]

Hi, thanks for checking out my writing!

I write purely for Din Djarin (though I read and rec other Pedro Pascal characters and other Star Wars media). Whilst not all my stories include smut, they usually contain adult themes and language, so they’re suitable for over-18s only 🔞

My writing is extremely detailed and character-oriented, and I research and proofread/edit thoroughly. I never start publishing something until it’s fully written. As a result, producing content takes me a while, but I hope this ensures that my completed works are high-quality, immersive experiences for my readers.

Please feel free to join my tag list.

**The emojis assigned to each fic below indicate moods rather than specific genres and are open to interpretation**

PUBLISHED WORKS:

🔷 Be-All And Endor [406,690 words]

My magnum opus; this is a novel-length slow burn set after season 2. Din has a bounty on Endor and gets more than he bargained for when Reader accidentally almost runs him down with her speeder in the forest. Over 1.6k kudos on AO3. [😍+🥰+🥵]

🔷 Never Look Down [13,160 words]

Two-part mini-series set on Nevarro after season 3, wherein Din falls for Grogu’s babysitter but resolves not to tell her… until a drunken misunderstanding results in some revelations. [😍+🫣 and a hint of 🥵]

🔷 Din Djarin: The Contractor [1,001 words]

An imagine-turned-one-shot that evolved from pics of Din holding a toolbox and the memory of Joel telling Ellie he used to be a contractor. Reader needs a repairman, and guess who shows up… [😡->😈]

🔷 The Long Goodbye [45 words]

Flash fiction in 280 characters or less. An examination of why Ahsoka came looking for Din in ‘Chapter 13: The Jedi’ rather than waiting for him in Calodan like he asked. [🥺]

CURRENTLY BEING WRITTEN:

🔷 Hush

[snippet 1] [snippet 2] [snippet 3] I was assigned the genre ‘secret relationship’ in a roll-a-trope writing challenge, so this fic follows Din and Reader embarking on a clandestine liaison that they have to hide from Karga… because Reader is our favourite High Magistrate’s niece. Multi-chapter; features sneaking around, flimsy excuses, near misses, and furtive smut. [😏🤫🥵]

🔷 Held Is The Seed

[details & snippet] [snippet] A four-part smutty series. When a guy in a cantina claims Mandos make poor lovers, Reader leaps to Din’s defence and lists several ways in which he could, in fact, be exceptionally talented in bed. Din overhears and later offers to prove her assumptions true one by one. [😍->🥵]

🔷 To See A Thousand Things

[details & snippet] [snippet - 1st one down] An extremely smutty, angsty piece based on five firsts and one last. Din has something casual going with a gun shop owner over the years, but they both discover that anything long-term will inevitably transform into something that runs deep. [🥵+😭]

🔷 Aruetiise

[snippet - 2nd one down] One-shot based on the idea of Din and Reader both coming up with reasons they can’t be together, none of which are the same and all of which are idiotic. An argument finally leads to a conversation about it. [🥺…🥹🥰]

🔷 Final Sanctuary

[snippet - 3rd one down] [snippet] Smutty one-shot (will be lengthy) based on a fantasy Din has when his shipmate spills white dip on her chin, and how he manages to figure out flirting and make his fantasy a reality. [🥵->🥰]

🔷 Din Djarin In Jarringly Domestic Situations

[details & snippet] [more details] Space romcom involving a series of encounters in which Din meets the woman of his dreams, but each time, it’s in an embarrassing or awkward situation. [😍😳🥴]

FIC REQUESTS:

I’m very open to requests because having a deadline and someone waiting on me often helps motivate me to finish!

I’m flexible in terms of content, but please bear in mind that smut takes me a lot longer to write, and I lean towards fluff rather than angst (though I’m not opposed to the darker end of the scale). I’m also not a fan of breeding kink (sorry, I firmly believe Din is a reluctant father who loves Grogu but would have to be brought around to the idea of one day having his own) or daddy kink. Otherwise, please feel free to suggest anything that takes your fancy!

Ideally, short prompts or ideas for one-shots are best because I’m the girl who got over 400k words out of “slow burn set on Endor”, so the more complex your request, the bigger the undertaking, the longer it’ll take me to research and write (and the longer you’ll be waiting).

HOW TO SUPPORT ME:

If you’ve enjoyed my writing, please consider heading over to AO3 and adding some kudos to my fics there. Also, please consider reblogging any of my fics/series masterlists here on Tumblr. Both these actions increase visibility and help new readers to find my work long after publication. I don’t have a Ko-fi because I value online encouragement and marketing assistance more than cold, hard cash.

I also see spinoff media as the highest form of flattery, so if you feel like doing anything creative based around the universes I write, rest assured I’ll be here cheering you on and crying over how much I love you! It’s my dream for my writing to inspire others, whether it’s playing in my sandbox with me or crafting something of your own.

Thanks for your support; it means the galaxy to me! 💙🩵

🌀 I do NOT consent for my stories to be copied/reposted on any other site, nor stolen, scraped or reworked by AI 🌀

[thesharktanksdriver]

Thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening me (platonic)

Prologue,

Tagged: @the-dumber-scaramouche (asked to be tagged and I shall do so for the next parts)

Gonna do a chapter for each round of Ragnarok

Within an arena that touches the clouds

Ancient stone’s that laid untouched for centuries and stood strong against the tests of time

Lays the new battleground that shall determine humanity’s fate

And in it is also you

There’s still at least a month of preparation and training before the events actually start but despite that it’s filled with hustle and bustle

Gods and humans fill the halls

Some of who you even recognize and give you happy waves and pull you aside for saying hi

It’s surprisingly nice despite the circumstances

It’s been so long that people of all kind had been gathered to such an occasion

But as minutes ticked on

And you got some of your favourite snacks due to the large concession stands with various amounts of food from various places

You end up heading deeper into the building

It thins out and you end up at the area for the human fighters

And then you open up the door to the lounge area where you see the faces of several people you recognize

And a few you hadn’t had the pleasure of yet meeting until this point

“Hello everyone, some of you may recognize me and some I haven’t yet met. I’ve gone by many names but just call me y/n”

Of the few you didn’t initially recognize in the man with shirt golden hair

Oh and no clothes with only a leaf covering his di-

Unlike the others you weren’t really shaken by his lack of clothes

During your long life you’d seen much of the human body

Your desensitized to it so you go up and give the man a hardy handshake and he does so back

Turns out he’s Adam

The first human

Father to the entirety of the human race as you knew it

Adam in all ways encompasses what you believe are humanity’s strong suits

He is kind and compassionate

Along with determined to protect not only his people but also his family

Your upfront with not being a human and being created by a god but Adam doesn’t see you any differently

Your like him and Eve

Created by the gods themselves

The only difference is that your creator cared

You didn’t notice it at first but he slowly finds himself caring for you as if you were is own child

A sentiment that had surprisingly has only happened till now

Despite your thousands of years of living this is the first time you’ve been adopted

Like there was one time you were training with Lü Bu and got injured

You were in the process of healing it before he stopped the fight and pulled you aside to check if you were ok

He seemingly forgot you can’t really die and had panicked thinking the wound would kill you

Even started getting out the gauze and glaring at the laughing general before you explained you were alright

He isn’t embarrassed though

Even keeps wrapping the wound just in case

It feels nice to be cared for in such a way

You love your father Hephaestus very much but it’s also nice having another father figure in your life

Both treat you in a caring and gentle way

As if you were glass or some ancient artifact

(Technically you were one and so was he)

Adam also introduces you to his Wife and Sons who welcome you to their small but loving family

Eve is affectionate and loving

Always showering you with praise as you show off your abilities or knowledge

She makes sure your well fed despite not needing food

And she can’t help but pinch your cheeks

As the only mother figure in your long life she takes it in pride

Oftentimes dragging you away from training to smother you in care and compliment about how your such a brave soul

Despite replying you don’t have one she disagrees

Saying that in her mind you don’t need one to have one (if that makes any sense)

You’d rather not admit it but you melt at her affection

She’s in every sense of the word warm

It reminds you of those cold winters night where you’d end up by the fire

Or a nice summer’s breeze

Adam seems to find the sight funny since your a immortal being

One who’s walked the earth for more years than people can imagine and yet his wife was reduce you to figurative mush when she pays your head and calls you a nickname

Someone that has seen both the good and bad of humanity time and time again

That is now helping her bake a pie as his sons argue about what was a better nickname for you

It’s odd to people looking in but makes sense to everyone in this small bubble

Cain and Abel are rambunctious but loveable brothers

They like to cheer you on and playfully fight with you

One or the other usually has an arm wrapped around your shoulder as they laugh at some joke the other made

The two have a lot of petty squabbles that you now end up being in the middle of

It’s fun

Especially since most conflict in your time has always resulted in heavy bloodshed

Whilst theirs is light hearted and leads to one proclaiming victory as the other sulks in the corner

Both love hearing your stories

Even more so about how the world has evolved so drastically

It’s fascinating to them both especially as so many places developed their own cultures that are so different from the others

As the arena begins to fill and time ticks down for the event to start the three of you end up buying shit tons of food

All of which are from different times periods and places for them to try

It ends up becoming a fun game for them as they guess the Irgun of which country the snack came from

Which leads to you then explaining its history

Neither would admit it but both had glared at quite a few people when they stared at you with a certain gaze

It happens enough times that both kinda now go on figurative guard duty when walking about with you

Admittedly they know you can definitely handle yourself

But your now their big sibling

And that means no creep is gonna be messing with you

Especially since you seem to attract quite a few weirdo’s due to your ageless beauty that leaves you stuck looking at least 25

You definitely pull the “older sibling card” a lot on their asses

Which makes both their father and mother laugh

They are the complete family you never had

Full of warmth and laughter as Adam looks on with a proud smile

Though Adam hates the gods he finds Hephaestus to be an exception once he does meet the man

For your father is cordial and kind to both him, his family, you and the other fighters

As you, Cain, Abel and Eve cook dinner he pulls the god aside

And both talk as they look upon the sight of Abel and Cain having a playful battle as you laugh with Eve

It makes the god tear up a bit

Happy that the man had given you what he couldn’t provide you with

Adam in return thanks Hephaestus for creating such a wonderful person and caring for humanity

And Hephaestus thanks Adam for giving you the full family he couldn’t provide

It’s something odd to say the least especially as Adam can’t help but give him a handshake and invite him to stay for dinner

Your father agrees, sitting down beside you at the dinner table as Eve pulls out his seat for him with a kind smile

Cain and Abel immediately begin asking the forging god questions making him laugh at their enthusiasm

They make him feel welcome

At home

Who knew that away from his lonesome forge would he find a place that accepted him

Humanity’s first humans to be even more ironic

Adam offers the god an apple which appears from the sky and he accepts it

Soon laughing as he bites into its flesh saying that it’s a bit bitter for his taste

Lü Bu had been a figure you had heard about but had actually never had the chance to meet

So it’s safe to say your rather excited

And he doesn’t let you down in any shape, way or form

He’s battle hungry just like a certain Norse deity who you luckily hadn’t run into yet

He makes for a good training partner

Especially since he pushes you to your limits and has you focus on your main strength without relying on your powers

It often leads to many cuts and bruises but a sense of accomplishment filling you

Something that hadn’t happened in a long time

And you suspect it hadn’t happened to him either from the barbaric smirk that stretches across his face

100% the dude who breaks down your door at 3 am to ask you about stuff you’ve seen or experienced

You don’t really sleep so you don’t mind but you are concerned for poor Cheng who was dragged along half asleep

He finds your stories of war fascinating especially at the mention of things like guns and cannons

You feel as if compared to the rest he doesn’t care about how things had advanced

If it isn’t weapon related

It’s odd to you that he’s purely driven by battle

But you aren’t the one to judge so you stick to what he likes

Some part of you keeps your friendship with him at a relative distance

Partially due to your experience with befriending men like him

Those who are hungry like him are always unsatisfied

It leads them to more and more bloodshed

And though your are no innocent person you don’t like battle that includes bystanders

His army on the other hand are some that you befriend

Cheng especially since despite being a solider he is a man of good heart and honour

How the young man found himself in Lü Bu’s army

Unlike his superior he finds your stories of the future fascinating

Especially as the world leads to more peaceful times

You drink with him and the other soldiers and sing songs with them that had long been forgotten

Kojiro is actually someone you’d only met once but it’s certainly a sight to see him again

Despite how everyone else appears as younger versions of themselves he’s old and grey

A sight of which makes you giggle a bit as you greet him once again

Despite meeting him once you both greet each other like old friends

Which others look your ways confused especially as you both explain that he asked for a battle and you royally kicked him ass

You both can remember it like yesterday

A lone mountainside road on a mid autumn’s day

A breeze making the veil trailing you flutter in the wind as you ready a weapon against him who smiles

Knowing he’ll lose but elated anyways

And when he fell against the ground with a few seconds of challenging you he laughs with that of pure joy

You both went your separate ways afterwards and now reunited

Like that day oh so long ago the two of you train often

Helping him brush up on his skills and get better as he sees how much you’d experienced since then

All these battle leave you and him winded but smiling

Laughter filling the training ground as the two of you sit down and have some tea

Adam patching up the old swordsman as you share stories to distract him

Fresh brewed tea being sipped as techniques of how he could improve are shared

Most would find this somewhat demeaning but he just smiles

Saying how he’ll take it to mind next time or chuckling as he says “I knew I should’ve used a better stance”

He ends up hanging around the other Japanese contestants quite a bit

Partially due to the shared culture but also since he can better recognize their fighting

But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t mingle outside them

Qin shi Huang is someone he ends up befriending along with Adam and Simo

He enjoys modern day snacks and foods but holds a soft spot for spicy foods

Which leads to you and him having competitions as Eve makes some extra spicy foods for the two of you to gobble down

He won’t admit it but he finds it nice that you remembered him of all people

You’d met so many amazing and interesting people in your life yet you greet him like a friend despite meeting once

Despite him being the best known loser in history (a title in which you argue with him over)

Out of most of them your actually quite happy to introduce him to you father who he regards with respect

The grey haired man greeting the ash tinged and ember trailing man who created you

Both eat sweets with bean paste and talk as you leave them to their own

Much like mythology and history both are looked down upon and both have taken different ways to deal with it

You now find the older appearing man conversing with your father or getting him some food he’d thought he’d like

It’s sweet

The moment you introduced yourself to the newcomers and walked through that door Qin shi Huang is basically throwing himself at you

Your welcome your old friend with open arms

Letting him swing you around in joy as the former emperor and you laugh in joy

His eyes traveling down to the bracelet still tethered to your wrist, as beautiful as the day he gifted it

Throughout the entire tournament and it’s wait time your old friend sticks with you

Much like his time alive he is boisterous and prideful but his company was one that you had missed for many millennia

Through you he learns of what happened to his empire

How it continued on into a nation that still lasts even today as other crumbled

How his army of terracotta soldiers still stand to guard him in death and the wall despite its age has yet to fall

Now a wonder and landmark that many travel just to see and walk along its path

He learns of its misdoings as well but he knows many were made by his influence

By his decisions of bloodshed that still seems to stain the remnants of his aged empire

The emperor also learns of your travels since his death

How you sailed the 7 seas and ran your own ship, climbed the highest mountain in the world and stood at its top, swam to the deepest depths of the ocean where light had never touched its sandy floor and ventured through the harsh jungle terrain into unknown territory

It’s honestly Aw inspiring to him how much you’d done

Sure you had done these feats over a thousand or so years giver or take (along with nothing being able to kill you)

But it’s still amazing to him how much you’d seen

How much you could do within the span of eternity

But with that comes the realization that eventually you’d run out of things to do

But he brushes the though aside as the two of you engage in a feast with him and the other emperors that came after him

You sit the closest at his side and the others stretched along a long table filled with foods ranging from his time to later on

Sometimes for fun the two of you wear your clothes from when he was still alive

You wear your old robes as does he

And the the two of you prance around the coliseum as he points at something and has you “explain!”

The two of you always end up laughing until crying by the end of the day

He’s basically attached at your hip but you don’t mind at all

You’ve missed him for so long

Dinners with Adam’s family end up frequently with Qin joining as well

He ends up getting along well with Cain and Abel

The three of them joking as Eve and Adam place down a fresh meal

His whole “I’m emperor” thing can sometimes get on people’s nerves so you sometimes have to end up being a middle man

He does it partially to piss people off and cause he thinks it’s fun

It kinda is

Until he wants to pull that shit on the gods and you have to drag his ass away from their area of the arena

His is basically jumping for joy when Chun Yun gets to finally meet you

For a long time you’d only ever hear stories of the fiery woman so meeting her is actually really intriguing

Especially since she jokes that you must’ve had your hands full with dealing with him for years

That in turn makes him whine as she gives you a handshake that return wholeheartedly

She’s his only other impulse control other than you and by god does he need it

Unlike you though she’ll chew him out for doing something stupid, you call it a mom thing

When you talk with her in private she tells about how she raised him

And how she’s glad he met someone like you who became a true friend to him

Something he always needed

In return you thank her for making sure he made to actually survive

your father definitely meets the two of them at some point with how close they are to you

He’s pleasantly surprised with how the two greet him with normality

There’s respect but no formality that he got from Kojiro that would eventually fade as the two got closer

It’s just off the start they treat him as if he were a normal person

He appreciates it along with the fact they don’t stare at his deformities

Nor do they think of him lesser because of them

In fact it seems they think of him higher because of them which initially confuses him

So when he asks about it both the emperor and his past body guard explain where Qin grew up

How on the streets of a place now long changed many people were born had later gained disabilities and survived anyways through their strength and determination

Qin always respected them despite the fact they still hated him

Perhaps because just like him they persevered despite how others wanted to push them down

In many ways the two bond over the fact they were (and in some ways still are) considered useless

How they were repeatedly kicked down over and over yet got us just to spite them all

Hephaestus finds Qin to be fucking hilarious and the two find themselves cackling over stupid shit your father would make

Chun Yan also gets close to your dad as does her child whom spends his time playing with the toys your father makes for the young lad

It’s fun especially for Hephaestus as he makes small little wind up gadgets and toys

Qin now gives your dad ideas that somehow turn out really well which is funny to see

Especially as his ideas are “you know what would be cool?, a giant flying lamp for moths to follow” and Hephaestus is like “bet”

When seeing Jack again the English gentleman offers you a polite wave as Qin excitedly hugs you

It’s later on that he comes to you and the two of you share a nice time alone

Unlike the others Jack is nocturnal partially due to his uh…hobby so he spends the midnight and early hours with you

It’s was during those times you’d always felt lonely so you enjoy the company

He makes some tea and you both end up talking for hours

Topics ranging from the competition to what you did after he died

What you’ve seen

Who’ve you met

It’s all good fun especially as you explain your “wild days” in the 70’s or 80’s when you’d met and toured with some popular bands and singers

Sometime he talks of what his afterlife was like

It intrigues you a log since you can’t exactly experience death

The one place you’d never get to explore

A place where everything was eventually supposed to end up at yet you were the exception

Even gods could die yet you couldn’t

You remain like a stubborn sore

Out of the human fighters your kinda the only person who talks to him

Everyone else kinda gets creepy vibes from him

And it only gets worse when they find out he’s a killer

He also plays into that imagine as well so…yeah your the only person not fucking terrified of him

He doesn’t mind though

Quality over quantity as they say

May or may not watch Shakespeare movies with you

He hates the 90’s Romeo and Juliet film with decaprio

Doesn’t make it better when you mention the fact the actor dates girls who could potentially be their father age wise

It reminds him too much of the grimy old men who would prey on young and impressionable girls

Something you have to sadly explain still happens much to his displeasure

One thing he does enjoy though is how accessible stuff like imported foods and goods are

He now has the chance to try the various tea’s and treats from other countries that used to be fairly expensive

What makes it even more fun is that you usually have some fun story to go along with said treat

Probably ends up enjoying stuff like phantom of the opera and silence of the lambs

But to be honest he has a soft spot for stuff like low budget horror films

Just the low quality gore and bad acting makes him chuckle

Especially as you tell him the “rules” of a horror film

The two of you now make a small tradition as the days tick down for the tournament to start by watching a film a night

Your father finds Jack to be an odd fellow but one who engages in interesting conversation

Someone who was also looked down on in life

Hephaestus knows he isn’t the best person

He’s made mistakes

Been complicit in his brethren’s bloodshed of the humans he had come to love

So in some sense finding someone who is also not a good person but in some sense tries to do some good is therapeutic to him

That he is equally flawed inwardly just as humans are

Cause unlike other gods he had come to realize how both are more alike than they are different

“Gods?, I don’t exactly like many of them. But perhaps meeting them in person could shape my view”

Loki is one god whom seems to find you by complete accident yet seems to find amusement in trying to fool you

It doesn’t work

And that leads to him trying harder and thus not leaving you alone

You swear that he sticks to you like fucking super glue

Doesn’t help that he keeps nagging about how the gods are better

Your a feeble human

Blah blah blah

Your soooo ready to defeat a gif in battle just to see his expression

And how he had be intentionally annoying someone who could easily deck him across the world with a simple slap

Though despite that he is somewhat fun company

Despite how annoying he can be he also gives you ample opportunity to see the view of the other side

And it leads to discussion between the two of you as you move a chess piece across a board

Your knight taking one of his pawns as he makes an annoyed scowl

He makes a comment about having the power to take you out with a snap of his fingers

But you remind him that he won’t

And that makes him grumble as he makes his next move

It’s odd…but you come to enjoy his company just as you do with others

Perhaps at some point he began enjoying yours since he invites (more like drags) you to the god portion of the arena

Into his current room as he bitches about Odin and nephew Thor

The mention of which makes you hold down an amused chuckle

His room has a lot of snake imagery

Along with snacks as he sits down on a chair and rips open a bag of chips

Continuing on his argument about how Thor is such a sour puss and that if he has to deal with odins ravens again he’s gonna-

He pauses when he hears you laugh

for once he goes silent

You ask what’s wrong and he replies that he’d never heard you laugh before

Let alone seem amused by him

You simply reply that you wouldn’t hang out with him if you didn’t enjoy his presence

No matter how annoying he could be when breaking down your door at random times

You think that you may have fried his brain from saying you voluntarily wanted to be around him

Perhaps he feels as if people put up with him rather than enjoy his jokes and jabs

You can’t help but notice that insults towards you have steadily stopped after that

You swear Thor saw you once and then he’s on you like a bloodhound

Brunhilde had to help you after you were hiding from the red head via hanging onto a chandelier hoping he wouldn’t look up

And now that he knows your seemingly “revived” for the competition he’s hunting you down

He wants to fight you again

To feel that rush of finally having a good battle

He now looks for you in the crowds of humans and gods

Looking anywhere for your signature hat and trailing veil

Not knowing your hanging out with Loki who has a room beside him

He swears to his father that he’s gonna get that fucking battle with you

His fathers crows tease him about this

How set he is in fighting some random human he met centuries ago

But he doesn’t let up

You spend a majority of the waiting time for the tournament sneakily slinking through the halls of the colosseum

Trying to get to the human only training area where he would not be permitted into

You don’t think that would really stop him but you know for a fact Brunhilde would be pissed if he did so

Is gonna be reallly mad to find out that he ain’t the one fighting you

The time for battle now approaches and the first fight is soon to begin

Near Brunhilde and Göll you sit in their shadow covered private area for watching

Looking out onto the crowds of people who cheer

[behindthesoul]

hey! how r u? hope you're doing good!

can I request shang tsung x reader where reader asks to brush his hair? I have a feeling his hair is so soft I want to touch it 😭 anyways thank you!

Silk — Shang Tsung x reader

Masterlist

Summary: Shang Tsung allows you to brush his hair

Word count: 592 words

A/N: This is pretty short😭 anon, if you want me to add/fix anything please let me know! I hope you like it. Also, I’m doing pretty well — thank you!

Every inch of Shang Tsung was crafted carefully by the gods themselves.

He stands tall and proud, his lean figure wrapped in the finest robes Outworld has to offer. His eyes are sharp and unsettling, forcing a feeling of unease to bubble in those unfortunate enough to stand in his presence, but they never look at you with anything other than fondness and late-night desire. Slight lines of wisdom etch his face, the sudden jump from being a nobody to a man with several targets on his back would age anyone. His presence is magnetic – it would take the force of a thousand soldiers to keep you from falling in his strong arms.

His hair falls like the night sky woven into threads of silk, dark ink flowing from his head. It captures the light in glossy depths, shifting like dark water under a kind moon. When he moves, it whispers, a soft, liquid cascade, inviting you – and only you – to come closer. Each morning you watch as your lover slicks his hair back into a small bun, and you count the untamed locks of hair that fall and perfectly frame his face. Since the two of you became a joint force, Shang Tsung can no longer remember the last time he did his morning routine without a pair of eyes peering into his skull.

So of course it’s no surprise when you finally ask to do his hair.

He turns his head slightly, just enough to catch your gaze with a subtle, intrigued smile. His voice is low, laced with both curiosity and amusement.

“Hmm…not many would dare to handle me with such ease,” he teases, his songlike cadence flowing. After a pause, he adds, “careful, I may grow accustomed to this treatment.”

There’s a lack of softness in his tone, but his eyes always reveal to you his appreciation. They tell you that Shang Tsung would do anything for you.

It’s obvious he wasn’t going to deny your request. How could he not say yes? The way your eyes shined with delight over something so basic, so small. He allows you to lead him over to a chair and he sits patiently. Your fingers immediately glide through the sea of dark silk. His locks part easily, and a quiet sigh escapes Shang as a shiver runs down his spine. You pause to admire the sleek shine of his hair. Then, as you watch as his eyelids flutter shut, you take up a brush, guiding it slowly through the waves of hair, smoothing each tangle until they flow in unison with every other strand.

Each pass of the brush releases a soft, rhythmic sound, a gentle murmur of bristles gliding from root to tip – a lullaby you are only allowed to play.

“I have a certain preference when it comes to my hair…” comes Shang’s hushed voice; an obvious way of telling you what he wants to happen next.

You nod, setting the brush down and reaching to grab a black ribbon. Its shine compliments the glow in your lover’s hair. You split the hair into two almost even sections, using your hands to smooth any stubborn hairs that poke out, and then tie his hair into a half up-half down bun.

You hum, and step back to admire your work. Shang rises to his feet and walks over to you. He pulls you into his arms, silently thanking you for taking care of him.

“Will you do this tomorrow, too?” He asks, before planting a small kiss on your nose.

[jo-harrington]

Corroded Coffin Fest - Day 30 - Fame & Fortune

Summary: Fame and fortune mean nothing when you can't do things for the people who matter the most.

Word Count: 943

Rating: T

Warnings/Themes: Not FOI compliant (Eddie's mom dies when he's 10 or 11), angst, hurt/comfort-ish, minor grief, fluffy, Eddie has a big heart

Check Out the Main Post for @corrodedcoffinfest here! There's only one day left after today, but you can still participate.

Tagging: @the-unforgivenn at her request.

You can find my masterlist here.

Please do not interact if you are not 18+.

Enjoy!

Eddie Munson was used to going without.

Shit, he’d gone without for most of his life.

When he was younger and his mom was still alive, he didn’t necessarily know that he was missing out on anything.

She did the best she could. Cooked hearty meals the way a real midwesterner knew how to do—the kinds that stuck to your bones on those cold winter nights—and made sure every dollar stretched as far as it could. That way they could have anything they needed.

And even some of the things they wanted.

Wayne upheld those practices once Mom had passed, and by the time Eddie was old enough to understand the things he might have missed out on, or the things his mom and uncle sacrificed, well…he did his best to make it up to Wayne on both of their behalfs.

Admittedly, he'd been a little selfish when the first real check came in, the first big one. Souped up the van, got it a new paintjob, a little airbrushed mural on the side that matched the cover of the first album. Replaced some ratty old t-shirts, bought some new expensive boots.

He wasn't sure what Italian leather was and if it was different to American leather but the price sure was higher so that had to mean it was better, right?

But the second check, the whole thing, went to Wayne. Despite many protests and complaints on the phone.

"You said you were sending me a little something. To help make ends meet," Wayne scolded him. "That's all I agreed to."

"La la la, I can't hear you." He and Wayne shared a laugh. "Do whatever you want with it. Cash it and put it in that coffee can under the sink. Get a new car. At least get the radiator fixed on that old clunker."

"Eddie--"

"Wayne, please. Let me do this."

The next few checks were for him again. The thing about growing up without everything you want is that when you got older and you had the ability to have them...well, suddenly you had all of it.

And Eddie had all of it.

Before long his apartment was full of too much shit that his inner child desired--action figures and that really nice minifig set for DnD and all the books he could ever dream of and several really nice guitars. It wasn't until he came home with some obnoxious model of the Death Star and that he realized he might have gone too far.

That's when he tried to go back to Wayne again.

"Oh no. No more. Why don't you do something nice for yourself?" his uncle suggested.

"I've already done enough nice stuff for myself."

"Put the money in the bank. Save it for a rainy day."

"I'm already doing that too!" Eddie threw a hand in the air and then mashed it on the top of his head. "You know if mom was still around, she would let me do something nice for her. A house. New clothes. Slippers! You remember how she always wanted new slippers for her birthday?"

"You'd ask for all the change from the cupholder in the car every time I picked you up from school so you could get them for her," Wayne reminisced.

Both of the Munson men sighed over the phone, thousands of miles apart but still sharing their forlorn thoughts.

Then Eddie had an idea.

He didn't even give Wayne a chance to tell him whether or not he thought it was good. To Eddie, it was brilliant.

And it was.

He said a quick goodbye and started making phone call after phone call to see if it could happen. The band's manager, Phil, might have been curious about the request, but was still happy to help.

It was not as wild as some other things he'd been asked to do for clients throughout his career. And for that he was grateful.

A few weeks later and everything was set.

Eddie got a flight home, just a quick visit. Crashed on the couch at the trailer--but not after a bickering match with Wayne about moving into a double wide at the very least--and then went about the business that he needed to.

He drove his rental car across town to the old graveyard, and then started his trek.

Elizabeth Munson was laid to rest in 1975; her funeral had been unremarkable but attended by many friends. Neighbors, the regulars at Benny's, people she'd gone to high school with.

Eddie remembered the way a few people had passed some cash off to his uncle.

"Get her a better headstone," they murmured, over and over, glancing at the roughly hewn stone marker set into the ground. "She was a real angel."

He'd asked Wayne about it years later, and Wayne just scratched his head trying to remember. Sure, some of the money had been used for the funeral, but the rest probably went to things that Eddie needed.

School shoes and a new winter jacket.

His mom had gone without once more, so that he could have things he needed.

He hadn't thought about it until the other night on the phone.

And now, instead of that headstone in his memory, there on her grave sat a monument of red granite with an angel embracing the epitaph in its arms.

It was big and maybe a little gaudy compared to some of the adjacent graves, but it was an emotional sight to see.

He ran his hand over it reverently, tracing his finger over his mother's name with a soft, "Hey ma."

And nothing less than what she deserved.

[rummels]

weight on my shoulders

relationships: platonic Reader & Chan & Changbin word count: ~2300 warnings: none tags: fluff, platonic intimacy, gender neutral reader summary: You're in a weird and uncomfortable headspace, your friends and flatmates Chan and Changbin help you with lots of soft affection and understanding.

read on ao3

You quietly plod into the living room, your feet hidden in thick fluffy socks causing you to sneak up to the couch unnoticed. Your frame is completely concealed by an oversized hoodie that reaches down to the middle of your thighs, tickling the back of your bare legs a bit when you stop a short distance away. You’re not sure if you like the feeling, it feels a bit like tiny zips of static prickle against your skin where the fabric brushes against you just the tiniest bit. It causes you to frown, huffing a tiny breath out of your nose. Everything feels a bit…off. The figure sitting on the couch hadn’t noticed you until now, engrossed in some TV show or movie, but the quiet noise makes the man look over to you.

“Hey,” Chan says softly, a warm smile tugging on his lips.

“I didn’t even notice you coming in. You wanna join me?”

He pats the space next to him in invitation, raising his eyebrows slightly in question and rearranging his position a bit so his legs are not stretched out across the couch. You tilt your head in a curious gesture and nod slightly, shuffling over and plomping yourself into the newly vacated spot, immediately leaning into Chan’s side. It’s not uncommon for you to seek out physical contact with your best friend and flatmate, the both of you sharing and enjoying skinship in a very loving yet platonic way.

It’s quiet for several minutes, Chan again taken in by whatever is shown on TV. You couldn’t care less, your brain going both zero and a thousand miles per minute, leaving you feeling a little overwhelmed and disoriented, not really knowing what to do with yourself while thoughts zip around in your head without you really being able to grab onto a single one of them. Chan’s hand unconsciously wanders across the back of the couch to you, his fingertips starting to slowly comb through the hair at your neck. You let out a low hum and close your eyes. This is nice. Somehow grounding. Just the tiniest bit, you push your head against the touch to encourage it and let Chan know to not stop his ministrations. He looks over to you again.

“Are you okay?” He looks a bit concerned. Usually you’re much more talkative, especially after a long day at work, wanting to share whatever annoyed or excited you that day or simply let out your annoyance about some frustrating project or other. Your brain rambles at you from the moment you wake up and simply letting your thoughts out and sharing them is often very relaxing to you, especially when you don’t have to be worried about being written off as an annoying chatterbox. Which you never have to worry about with Chan. Never had to, actually. So your continued silence is definitely raising some worries in your attentive friend.

You look at him, obviously giving the answer some thought before you scrunch your nose up and nod-shake your head in a definitely a little weird display of uncertainty. Immediately, Chan tunes in on you more, his whole body angling towards you a bit more while he studies your face.

“Did something happen?”

You shake your head no.

“Are you having a bad day?”

You shake your head again.

“Hm���are you getting sick?”

Again, a definite no, you shake your head.

“So simply a bad day maybe?”

You begin to negate that too when he hastily adds “You know that would be okay too, yeah? You can have a bad day without any reason and it’s still okay and valid. Some days are just fucked.”

A small grin sneaks onto your face, knowing he is about to quote one of those silly motivational Tiktoks you both send each other sometimes. He grins back, relieved at seeing your reaction.

“And there’s no way to unfuck them. Try again tomorrow,” he says and can’t stop himself from giggling a bit before ruffling your hair affectionately. You clear your throat, it feeling a bit scratchy after actually being silent for quite some time – you hadn’t even consciously realized that until now.

“Don’t worry, I’m not feeling bad, I’m just –“ You try to find the right words, frowning a bit, “-off? I don’t know,” you trail off, hoping he might understand. You yourself are not even able to understand it but Chan is smart, he gets people. And maybe he understands. Even if not, you know you don’t have to worry, he will simply accept it and will not try to force something out of you just for the sake of his own peace of mind.

You are proven right when he softly nods his head, his eyes deep in thought until he snaps back to you and gifts you one of his blinding smiles. “Come here, babygirl,” he says while pulling you over and manhandling you into a cuddling position against his side, halfway in his lap, his hands again finding themselves in your hair again. You make a little squawking noise at the pet name but your weird aversion to speaking right now is definitely not helping your protest. Factor in that Chan knows how much you actually secretly like the term of endearment? You’ve got no ground to stand on. The voices in your head have just started to discuss if this is something to be happy or disgruntled about when you feel his fingernails scratch against your scalp and you think you could start purring like a fucking cat any second now. Fuck this. There’s no snark left in you right now to defend yourself and you actually start to feel a tiny bit more like yourself so why bother?

Chan goes back to watching his show while holding you against himself, switching between softly combing through your hair with his fingers and giving you head scritches. You feel weirdly small, which seems a bit ridiculous to you considering you’re actually exactly the same height as him and also not exactly small in any other way. But it’s so nice, you melt more and more into him, your eyes drifting shut every now and then until your weird brain swirls manage to drag you up again.

By the time the front door opens and closes again, it has turned dark outside and Chan perks up, looking over the back of the couch towards the hallway.

“YA!” A shout echoes through the apartment, announcing the arrival of Changbin as he throws his backpack somewhere into the hallway.

You flinch at the sudden noise, also moving your head a bit but Chan suddenly has a rather firm grip in your hair and keeps you in place. Eyes widening, you feel like your pulse is suddenly going down in a very relaxing way. What the hell? The effect is too nice to fight against though, so you decide to go with it and stay where you are. Maybe Chan really does know best. Your own brain definitely doesn’t feel like it’s able to deal with any responsibilities and decisions right now.

“Tone it down, Binnie.” Chan’s voice vibrates against the side of your face. Huh, when did you slide all the way over to rest your face against his chest? You instinctively try to perk up again in surprise, you’ve also started to develop a bit of crick in the upper part of your back from the position you were in. This time Chan lets you but keeps his hand at the back of your neck which you are weirdly thankful for. Changbin chooses that moment to stick his head into the room and, seeing the two of you cuddled up on the couch, wiggles his eyebrows in a suggestive manner while smirking like the little gremlin he sometimes tends to be.

“You’re trying to win them over while I’m not home? Unfair business, Christopher,” he playfully scolds Chan and again you manage to smile. Yay, an emotion!

The two of them like to put up a whole charade of pretending to heroically and dramatically trying to win your heart over, each trying to ‘win’ against the other. All three of you are very much aware of the fact that this is all a game. You love them both to bits, would probably gladly cut off your own hand for them if the situation demanded it. But you’re also all very safe in the knowledge that nothing sexual would ever come into your relationship. Between you preaching about open and honest communication, Chan’s will to provide and care and give love and Changbin’s absolute lack of any kind of shame or reservations when it comes to feelings and affection, the three of you have created a very nurturing and loving environment in your shared apartment.

Chan’s chuckle is audible next to you before he speaks. “No wooing today, I’m just trying to cuddle y/n’s brain into submission because we’re feeling a bit weird today,” he explains, his thumb rubbing small circles into the soft skin under your ear while his hand lays on your neck.

“Oh no, do we have a scrambled brain today?” Changbin sits down next to you on the couch and leans closer, peering into your face like it may just give him all the answers on its own. You nod and pull a frowny face.

“They don’t like to talk right now.” Chan lets you out of his arms as you reach over for Changbin, going to lean your forehead against his big shoulder. But he reaches down and cups your face in his hands, holding it and looking at you while obviously thinking something over.

“Can I try something?” he ends up asking. “It might help but you need to tell me if you feel uncomfortable with it today, you know I will not be mad if you do, right?”

Having no clue which brilliant idea he has cooked up underneath those fluffy curls, you nod your head in agreement. You don’t need to worry, that much you definitely know.

Changbin hurries to shoo Chan off the couch and pushes you down with sure hands until you’re fully laying down. You only manage to look up at him for a couple of seconds before he is once again pulling and pushing at you until you end up on your stomach. He also tugs at your hoodie a bit until it doesn’t form any big creases against your body anymore and then you feel a warm hand at the small of your back.

“I will lay down on top of you now, is that okay?”, he asks softly and you feel a flutter of excitement in your chest. Yes. That would be perfect actually. Suddenly the fact that he’s not already settled on top of you seems almost cruel to you and you wiggle around a bit, nodding your head in clear agreement and permission.

He can’t help but poke your butt – of course he can’t – before crawling over you and then slowly letting all of his weight push down against you. You let out a small grunt of contentment, the air getting pushed out of your lungs and you feel like your bones turn into liquid. Perfect. This is exactly what you needed. Like putting on 3D glasses in the cinema, two separate yet connected, overlayered parts of yourself seem to finally slot together and begin to form a coherent version of yourself again. Changbin moves around a tiny bit still, finding the perfect spot and position to rest in while you turn your head to the side, peering into the dimly lit living room, your eyelids fluttering a bit.

Chan moves into your field of vision and crouches down to be at eye level with you. He’s got his signature ‘proud loving parent’ smile on and usually you would tease him for it – to hide how much you absolutely love get looked at like that – but right now it’s perfect for your mushy brain. He reaches out and tugs a bit on your hood.

“Would you like to put that on?”

You feel even less like talking right now, your body and mind almost like molasses. It’s a sweet, heady feeling and you smile, blinking slowly once and hoping he understands. He cocks his head to the side and raises an amused eyebrow.

“Is that a yes?”

You give a slow long blink again, probably smiling like an idiot. He chuckles and reaches over, slipping your hood over your head and arranging it in a way that makes you peek out of it like a little ferret out of its den. The fact that they know you so well, aware that you like to have your hearing muffled sometimes, feeling safe inside your hoodie, makes you so happy that you give another slow blink while contently scrunching up your nose with a smile. Chan boops it with his finger and stands up.

“You okay down there?”, you hear Changbin checking in from somewhere on top of you and you give a tiny wiggle so as to not accidentally throw him off of you but still answer his question ….somehow.

“Perfect. Just let me know when I should get up again, please don’t just yeet me off when it gets to be too much, alright?”

You wiggle again, completely settling in now and closing your eyes. Your head is not quiet, it never is when you’re awake. But right now there’s only a soft song buzzing in the back of your mind – you probably heard it somewhere on your way home – while you think about the new movie that’s running in the cinemas and you wanted to go to with both Chan and Changbin, your mind switching over to remember the time you all went to Changbin’s problematic cousin’s birthday party last month to crash it as a fake throuple, nearly sending the whole conservative side of his family into a collapse. Also there’s this brownie recipe Felix shared with you, maybe you’re gonna try that out tomorrow…

[ya-zz]

oou, if ur down for it how about bitter ex!Ram who's realized Genji's trying to ask reader out :0 he still holds this bit of possessiveness towards reader and it's even worse because it's "his brother's pet human" - so like there's this undertone of Genji being a "replacement" in Ram's perspective. you can try to connect this to canon, but this is more of like an imagine, like 'if x and x did this, how would x react-'

also i don't mind if you decide not to write this :b i just like seeing characters i'm currently obssessed with in different situations LOL

happy holidays! (if u celebrate) and a happy rest of your december!

May have went down a little more... possessive route for this...

Ramattra x Reader (gen)

Word count: 1071

The omnic had been watching for awhile. Too long, almost. He watched you from the sidelines, the way you grew, the way you healed past the relationship he once had with you. It pained him at how well you moved on in the last few months.

When a certain cyborg came along and started flirting with you, however, something began to grow within Ramattra’s circuits. Something dark, hateful… spiteful.

Ramattra still wants you, that he cannot deny no mater how many times he tries to think otherwise. He needs you by his side. You were the only person who was capable of loving him and he just had to fuck things up. 

Back then, he wanted you all to himself. Who wouldn’t? You were the best thing that had ever happened to him and to everyone. You made hearts flutter and smiles warmer. Ramattra, dare he say, was obsessed with you. 

He still is. 

His systems would go back to the nights he shared with you, hands roaming bodies, static moans and cursed whimpers all but filled his receptors. Many nights he would sit and watch everything like it was a movie until it went back to the fateful day you had packed your belongings and left him. 

You wanted no part of his liberation. Despite trying so hard to convince him that there were thousands, if not millions of humans out there who cared for and adored omnics, Ramattra wasn’t convinced and so went ahead with his war.

Years had passed since then and here he was, sitting down in the garden meditating alongside Zenyatta whilst you and Genji were training across the field. 

“Does he always watch over you?” The ninja asks you, peering over to the omnics sitting away from them. 

“No. I think Zen asked him to join him on some meditative stuff.” You shrug. 

“I mean- he’s watching you.” Genji gets a little closer, voice getting quieter. 

“You can tell behind the faceplate?” 

Genji nods. “I picked a few things up from Master Zenyatta.” He picks up on how Ramattra’s hands clench on his knees and he knows exactly what’s going on. 

“Huh.” You look over at the omnics before shrugging the thought off. “He can watch all he wants, I don’t care.” 

The cyborg chuckles, moving his focus back onto you. 

Ramattra couldn’t pick out the conversation as the wind rustled within his receptors, only seeing you and Genji turn to look at him, lips moving but muffled voices. He knew that you were talking about him though, and that only made the anger rise within his circuitry. 

…

…

The larger omnic had picked up on several mannerisms with the ninja. The way his face softened when he was with you, the ghost touches, the way he laughed when you told a joke. Ramattra was slowly but surely figuring it out that Genji wanted you. 

Whether or not it was to spite him, he didn’t care. The fact that Zenyatta’s pet human was flirting with you was fuelling this hatred inside of him. 

He found you wandering the halls and stopped you. 

“I see that ninja has taking a liking to you.” He states. 

“That is none of your business.” You spit back, clearly frustrated at the sudden interaction. 

“He is not good for you.” Ramattra crosses his arms over his chest, his tall stature looming over you in an almost hostile way.

“Oh, like you’re any better?” You stand your ground. “At least he didn’t start a fucking war.” 

He vocaliser clicks. “I had my reasoning. You did not listen to me.” 

“I listened. How could I not when that’s all you were going on about for months!” Anger began rising within you. “That was all you focussed on.��� 

“I needed you.” 

“No. No you fucking didn’t.” You speak through gritted teeth. “All you wanted-”

“What I wanted was peace for us omnics.”

“By brainwashing them?” You cock your head to the side. “I may not be the fucking brightest around here but I do know that the way you used those poor omnics was not right.” 

Ramattra keeps his optics on you. 

“You used your own people!” Tears prick at the corners of your eyes. “I ended it with you because I couldn’t stand the way you were thinking. You were too wrapped up in that.. that… liberation of yours that you never had any time for me!” 

Something inside of Ramattra begins to hurt. 

“So help me god, if you get in the way of anything, of my happiness, I will fucking end you myself.” The tears finally spill as you storm past the omnic who stands there almost dumbfounded.

Never once had you raised your voice at him, let alone in the hostile tone just seconds before. Ramattra had to take a moment to process your words, to process what you just threatened to him. 

He turns around but by that point, you had long left him. 

…

…

The next time you saw Ramattra, he had pinned the ninja against the wall by his throat. His tone was angry, no, he was seething with rage as he threatened to end Genji’s life. 

You didn’t hear how it started, but you certainly ended it by pulling Ramattra away from the cyborg who then fell to the ground gasping for air. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” You shout, coming between the two men and staring the omnic down.

“Putting that ninja in its place.” Ramattra scoffs before turning and walking away from the scene. 

“Are you okay, Genji?” You ask, kneeling down and putting a hand on his shoulder. 

“Yeah.” He coughs. “Didn’t think he’d come for me.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“He still wants you.” Genji looks up at you. 

“I know, but that does not give him the right to attack you like that.” 

You help the cyborg up, helping him access the damage before escorting him to the med-bay.

Meanwhile, Ramattra was sitting in his room feeling rather content with himself. The jealousy was all but rising within him the more he knew you were hanging around with his brother’s pet human. He still wants you, he needs you. 

The omnic could only sit back and wait as his plan starts falling into place. He will get you back by any means necessary and if that means turning Genji on you, then he will do just that.

[itsnotablogsblog]

POPPY AND NOAH A NEW DUO? RUMORS ON DATING? Is this PR or Simply Mediocre?

FANS GETTING HEATED?

POPPY WANTS FAME AND NOTHING ELSE?

Hi, hello. If you are looking at this post, I am solely going to journal this through your social network.

Let me first introduce myself.

I am an anon. But you can call me Maria.

Here on this tumblr is tea spilt over thousands of tweets on twitter.

More so to Poppy and Noah.

Now let’s get the story straight. Poppy. Oh yes that word that echoes through one persons ear, right to the next. But how did she manage to become one of the controversial people that now has a million streams globally?

That’s a question we’re going to answer today.

It seems like a lot of people are heated. More heated than anything else that Bad Omens themselves have been experiencing in this delusional roller coaster of drama for the past few decades.

But why Poppy?

Moriah or Poppy as her nickname developed fame over YouTube. Spilling fame doing nothing but making videos of herself, involving quite a lot of YouTubers along the way.

Though her career was launching, a lot of people seemed to not like her due to various reasons.

Now that she’s with Bad Omens and frontman Noah Sebastian, it seems that she has started a whirlwind of chaos and drama.

But why?

Let’s start with the most popular and most listened song VIOLENCE AGAINST NATURE.

Since it’s mainstream people have been listening to it, and taking their own opinions on it. But it seems the farther it was to promote Poppy’s new album it seems like it was a way to get poppy in the spotlight.

Take it as alleged because we will never know about it.

But back to poppy 😃.

Some say she’s a mediocre artist just searching for attention. Which I agree with the most.

But with Bad Omens that’s something completely different. Front man and lead singer Noah Sebastian chose to write a song and have Poppy play the lead verse and chorus of this song.

But why?

Easy. Ever since their OST DEBUT for their comic book series came out, they chose to and yes chose several and various artists to collaborate with. This included We Are Fury, Erra, HEALTH, and many more.

But something about Poppy stood out than most. Her vibrational voice that just kept people guessing for more. Yet, the outcomes and situations now have escalated more into chaos than anything else.

Now that she drove back to the social media and social platform of fame once again, it seems like she’s leaning more on Bad Omens than her own personal album.

Why?

To promote her albums, so she can get the spotlight she always wanted. Although I highly hate this. To say.

But why Noah Sebastian?

Does she have something that she likes about him? Or is it just to get Noah’s fame and attention? More so to get it away from Bad Omens. Causing a whirlwind of controversy.

As for many of us we know Bad Omens didn’t get the easy fame most people would expect right away. Not until their third album “THE DEATH OF PEACE OF MIND.”

Came out.

Millions of streams and over 165 streams on Spotify, with a golden record now on hold. It seems to me their 10 year contract with Sumerian Records that somehow Sumerian made them more attracted to the public audience in less than a week.

Now with Poppy being involved and involving herself with Bad Omens seems to be causing a lot more problems.

To the extent where Bad Omens might be blocking fans due to the extent of hating on Poppy more than anything in this world.

So is it really a PR Stunt?

To me it definitely seems and looks like it.

But why are fans heated over such a popular figure and now public figure? Noah Sebastian?

It’s an easy answer. Because people are taking it way too far and personal that it seems as if they only want Noah’s face on every cover except for Poppy.

Either way this has caused rumors on them dating whether or not this is true, Poppy made and asked her way towards the metal scene.

This wasn’t due to dating Noah Sebastian.

She wants the same thing as Noah. To be famous. So where do these fans have against it?

Easy.

She’s just not built for it.

It’s driving people insane, to where they’re just sick of seeing Poppy’s face all over the place. Whether or not it’s with Noah, or herself alone.

Noah’s New Potential and “New Partner”

Now this leads to people even saying that they’re excluding the rest of the band. Including Nick Folio, Nicholas Ruffilo, and Jolly or Joakim Karlsson.

In which RockSound included a magazine with just Poppy and Noah on the front cover.

Now that’s a whirlwind of fucking chaos. From various people stating that the band is breaking up, to Poppy and Noah dating.

Listen. I’m just here to spill the tea here. Noah and Poppy aren’t dating. She wants clout and attention.

She doesn’t even know what she’s doing. Which is oddly ironic considering this mediocre woman finds and slithers her way to fortune.

But anyways.

What do you guys think?

Personally, I think it’s just complete nonsense and waste of time.

I mean my only question is why would Noah Sebastian himself actually want to work with Poppy???

Is she something special?

[jakegooglyeyes]

Naiad - 1/3

This is a shorter series I've written for quite a while. I need a little fluff to help cope with stress. I came up with this solely because Jake is a Sagittarius. Prone to a lot of mistakes because I wrote and edited this sleep-deprived.

Next

Pairing: Centaur!Jake x Nymph!reader (f)

A centaur has fallen in love with a naiad for a very long time. He deems himself too brutish to be near you, satisfied with watching you from a distance. Until one day, he hears the river goddess cries out for you, her child who was taken by humans.

Word count: 2300

Warning: mild violence/gore, butchering of Greek mythology, Jake's self-loathing and mild horny thoughts, repeating the word "gentle" about a thousand times

Tagged: @gyllenhaalstories (as promised)

Minor DNI

Your breath catches in your throat, a ragged gasp as you realize you cannot remember how long you have been running. Exhausted and thirsty, your legs are about to give out, and painful cuts cover your bare feet.

You try to call out to your mother for help, but you have strayed so far away from the river that your voice can no longer reach her. Looking behind, all you can see is towering trees and darkened sky. Crawling into a hollowed tree, you pray to the gods that the humans will not find you here. You are so frightened by the thought of what they will do if they capture you.

Just as the footsteps get closer, you hear a twangling sound of a released bowstring and something sharp piercing through the air. Whoever attacks them must have caught the humans off guard. They scream and curse in words you can not understand as bodies hit the ground one after another. The bowstring sings its song a few more times. The last human let out a pathetic grunt and then, deafening silence.

You cautiously peek out from behind the tree, the stench of blood and smoke hitting you instantly. A gruesome scene lays out in front of you: several bodies sprawl on the ground, arrows protruding from their chests, their faces twist in agony, illuminated by the flickering flames of fallen torches. Judging by their bloodstained clothes and scattered weapons, these dead men were your pursuers a few moments ago. Now they lie still without light in their eyes.

"Are you hurt?"

A rumbling voice calls out from the darkness between the trees and the tall grass.

Startled, you retreat into your hiding spot once more, eyes fixating on the shadow in front of you. You can only make out a tall figure moving through the bushes and hear the sounds of hooves treading on the ground. Your heart pounds with dread. Your legs feel like lead, aching with exhaustion, and even if they could still move, there was no way you could outrun a horse.

"Please, come out. I mean no harm."

The figure comes forward, emerging from the shadows, and into the flickering light of the torches. You realize the sounds were not from a horse. Instead, they belong to one of the centaurs guarding this part of the forest. The chase drove you far from your home, leading you into the dense forest of the beast-men.

You slowly crawl out from the hollow tree, the silence of the forest amplifying every creak and groan of the branches beneath you. You eye the centaur with every bit of caution. Even though he saved you, and there has never been enmity between your kind and his, you cannot trust a stranger, especially one that looks half a human male and half a savaged beast.

"You don't speak the tongue of man?"

You do not understand what the centaur is saying, but you can at least tell there is no hostility in his voice. So you remain still, waiting for his next move. Your eyes are glued to him as your heart thumps loudly in your chest.

He lowers his equine body into a kneeling posture, his muscular legs folding gracefully, to reassure you he is not a threat. Then, his hand reaches out, his fingers gently closing around your ankle in a reassuring squeeze. He carefully assesses your injuries, ensuring his fingers never brush against the open cuts.

"Thank the gods you didn't sprain your ankle, but your feet are still bleeding. Let's get you out of here before more humans come."

As soon as you feel his touch on your skin, thoughts flow into your mind. His genuine intention is apparent, and you can almost feel a sliver of his emotions. It's warm, like a mother's tender embrace, a comforting river enveloping you, yet with an untamed wildness that you have never experienced.

His powerful arms close around you, one supporting your trembling form, the other gently cradling your knees, as he effortlessly lifts you into his broad chest. Feeling safer in his grasp, you cling to him for support, letting the centaur carry you away into the dark.

You think to yourself as you watch his eyelashes flicker in the dim light; they are so long and beautiful, like that of a cow. The short, bristly hairs on his face catch your eye, sparking a bit of curiosity. Mother had said only men grow hair on their faces. His enigmatic charm held you spellbound, making it impossible to look away.

The centaur, unaware of your gaze, moved silently between the trees, the rustle of his hooves the only sound disturbing the forest's silence.

"If the humans purposely chased you away from the river, they might have set up traps in case you try to find your way back. So we must take the long path around the hills to avoid them."

Though his words are a jumble of unfamiliar sounds, his voice has a calming effect, easing your fear-struck mind.

The hands holding you are firm and secure, keeping the sharp branches away from you as he treads through the forest like tracing lines in the palm of his hand. The exhaustion washes over you as you nestle against his chest, his steady breathing comforting you.

The centaur knows that your kind can pick up on the emotions of others through touch, but he is unsure how much you can actually perceive. So he tries to focus on getting you to safety, hoping to suppress his deepest desire enough that it will not disturb you. Never in his life could he imagine being this close to you, let alone being allowed to touch you like this.

For the longest time, he was content with watching you from a distance. He often came by the river where you and your sisters bathe at the heat of noon, shielding himself behind the trees, for the nymphs would vanish at the sight of anything resembling a man. The centaur would spend hours gazing at your naked form as you rest on the mossy stones, eyes unable to tear away from the contour of your body.

He never asked for more, never dared. Seeing you every day was enough to soothe his aching heart.

The goddess' cry for her daughter stirred all the creatures in the forest this morning, including his herd. He raced down to the river bank, every instinct urging him to find out what was going on. He couldn't stand the thought of something terrible happening to you, his mind and soul reeling at the thought.

His heart sank as he scanned the faces of your sisters, unable to find the one he sought.

The human footprints in the dirt, still damp and fresh, guided him along the trail until he found you, fortunately, in the domain of the centaurs.

The gods knew how much he wanted to trample those despicable men, to pulverize their flesh and bones under his hooves, making them pay for thinking they could defile you with their filthy hands. He would have gouged out their eyes, ripped out their tongues, leaving them to suffer a slow, agonizing death, but he held back, wishing to spare you the gruesome sight.

He wouldn't want to frighten you anymore than you already are.

The gentle rocking with each step, the earthy scent of crushed grass, and the warmth of the centaur's embrace lull you into a deep sleep. His chest rises and falls with each breath, and you can feel the steady thump of his heart against your ear. It reminds you of the sun's warmth on an afternoon you would spend with your sisters, coming to the shore to pick flowers and watch little creatures foraging.

After some time has passed, you are roused from your slumber by the feeling of the centaur lowering you down on a patch of soft moss. You open your eyes, blinking against whatever light the stars can provide, and see that he has carried you to a small cave, the scent of damp earth filling your nostrils.

The remnants of sleep linger for a moment, but your senses start to fully return.

The memory of being chased by the humans is still fresh in your mind and your body tenses in reaction. He notices your discomfort and kneels down to meet your eyes.

"I didn't mean to startle you," he said, his voice low and gentle.

"Please do not be afraid. You need rest, and I need to find something to treat your wound. The humans will not be looking for you this deep into the forest."

You feel his gentle hand stroking your hair and your cheeks. As he drapes his fur cloak around you, the scent of wood smoke and wild musk settles over you, and you feel your fear melt away. He leaves the cave to confirm there are no predators nearby and to allow you some rest.

Time seems to slip away, and when the centaur finally returns, his hooves thudding lightly on the ground as he carries a handful of fragrant herbs with him.

He carefully cradles your feet in his hands, and you can feel the heat of his palms as he works meticulously to treat your wound. The centaur scoops cool water from a nearby creek, gently washing your wounds and soothing the pain. He then secures a clean cloth tightly around them, stopping the flow of blood.

You reach out and place a hand on his shoulder, indicating that you are thankful for what he has done for you.

The centaur glances at you, his eyes briefly meeting yours, before he averts them with a hint of shyness. He is not used to being this close to you. He was in a hurry when he carried you here, so he only had enough time to take in a glimpse of you.

He is relieved to see you safe. And now, as his eyes scan your form, he can't help but notice the graceful curves of your body, the very same ones that has haunted his sleep for so many nights. He remembers the times you would appear in his dreams, bare and soft, lazing in his arms, humming your alluring songs.

In those nightly delusions, you would allow him to kiss and caress you, to worship you like his own goddess. Mouth would taste your burning skin, and hands would knead your yielding flesh.

Yet as you sit in front of him now, in person, he feels filthy and unworthy.

His kind has always been wild and violent. Sure, he has shamelessly begged for a favor from Aphrodite. But he was sure the Goddess of Beauty shuns creatures like him.

A delicate touch on the centaur's cheek, soft as a butterfly's wing, pulled him from the depths of his self-loathing. He looks up to see your captivating eyes filled with concern. You must have felt his anguish even though you do not understand what or why.

"Are you trying to comfort me?"

A bitter laugh escapes the centaur's lips. He wants to avoid you, but he cannot. He becomes greedy for your touch, driven by the longing for your affection, even if you are just worried about him because he saved you.

The sorrow you felt begins to fade, replaced by a quiet peace. It's maddening, this inability to communicate with the centaur. You want to thank him and ask him about so many things. But alas, you can only "talk" through gestures and listen to his little thoughts whenever you touch him.

Thank you.

You tell the centaur, hoping he can understand. He seems shocked that you are willing to speak to him.

Your voice fills his head with the most beautiful melody he has ever heard in his life. He would gladly follow, even if you commanded him to plunge into the depths of the underworld or to slay a mighty god. He wants to tell you how much he adores you. His mouth opens and shuts, but no words come out.

"I… Don't worry about me. You must rest. We need to leave in the morning."

After a few words, he fixes the cloak that has slipped off your shoulders before guiding you onto the moss layer. You understand he wants you to sleep.

You shiver in the freezing cold of night, tapping the space next to you, signaling that he is invited to sleep beside you. It will be warmer that way. The centaur's mind wrestles with his heart, reason clashing with desire. The internal struggle is quite clear.

Eventually, he sighs and surrenders. His equine body lowers until he gets into a position where his human half can lie down.

You move your mouth to utter a word, hoping he will understand. Your name. He looks on with disbelief, then delights. He takes your hand and presses it against his chest, letting you feel the raw, beating pulse of his heart beneath his ribs.

"Jacob."

Jake.

"It's Jacob."

Jake.

"It's… Never mind. Jake it is."

You repeat his name, earning a wide grin from him. He does not seem to mind that you decide to shorten his name. Actually, he looks a little too eager, practically bursting with excitement.

He pauses to indulge in the way you look at him before whispering in a hushed voice, not worrying that you do not comprehend his words.

"I swear on my own flesh and blood, I'll let nothing harm you."

The centaur wraps you in his arms. His initial reluctant fades away. When your steady breathing and a slight smile reassure him he did not repulse you, he pulls you into a tight embrace, silently praising Aphrodite and her miracle.

While he knows he is asking for too much, he wishes Eros would spare him from the coarse and unsavory thoughts that were forming in his mind. The golden arrow was painful enough.

The night goes by as you rest snuggly against the centaur's broad chest. You drift off into a sweet dream, comforted by the gentle embrace.

His thoughts are so tender. Though there is something else, deeper, darker, and far more primal. But you are too exhausted to notice.

[sariahsue]

Let Me Count the Ways

Chapter Nineteen - Epilogue

[Ch 1] [Ch 2] [Ch 3] [Ch 4] [Ch 5] [Ch 6] [Ch 7] [Ch 8] [Ch 9] [Ch 10] [Ch 11] [Ch 12] [Ch 13] [Ch 14] [Ch 15] [Ch 16] [Ch 17] [Ch 18]

“So who was he? The boy you loved so much.”

It was evening at the Eiffel Tower, and Chat Noir sat and leaned against a beam. The weather was clear, the sunset was golden, and Ladybug was curled up in his lap, lazing against his chest as he traced his claws across her stomach. 

They’d gone on several dates in the last few weeks, and he thought it might be safe enough to finally satisfy his curiosity.

She didn’t answer immediately, just hummed absently while she considered. “I finally got over him enough to see what was right in front of me this whole time.” 

Chat Noir felt his face flush. It might have embarrassed him a few weeks ago to display how easily she made him swoon, but he didn’t bother to hide it now.

“It would compromise my identity,” she said, “but I don’t really care anymore.”

He nodded, and his hold on her tightened. That was so much more than he had ever expected and wished for.

Ladybug launched into an explanation. “Okay, so do you remember that first year we fought together? How Chloe’s class got akumatized a lot?”

“Almost everyone in the class got it at least once.”

“Right. I was in that class. And so was the boy I was crushing on.”

Chat was intensely interested, leaning forward and shifting her in his lap. 

“I’m explaining this to you,” she continued, “so you don’t make fun of me.” 

“Why would I?”

“Because.” She let go of him to hug herself. “I’m not like all the other thousands of girls who had a crush on Adrien Agreste. I personally knew him. We were close friends back then.”

His breath caught at his own name, and it took several seconds for it to return to a normal pace. He wasn’t sure his heart would ever calm down. Not only did she love him now, but she had loved him the entire time.

That also narrowed down the list of people she could be. It had been several years, but he still remembered the roster. Chloe, Lila, Alya, Rose… all those girls he knew couldn’t have been Ladybug. They’d been heroes and villains he and Ladybug had fought either with or against. Their looks were didn’t match, their personalities were too different, and he ruled them all out one by one, until–

“I hate to give you bad news,” he said after several seconds of recovery, “but I know who you are.” 

She shrugged, leaning against him again. “I figured you would. You got to know my class well after a year of fighting them.”

“More bad news.” He swallowed around the heart beating in his throat. “You didn’t get over Adrien.”

“I did!” she said, jerking backward. “I love you! More than anything.” Her eyes were wide and insistent, begging him to believe. “I love you with my whole heart. You’re the only person for me. I love only you, I mean it. Why– Why are you smiling?”

“Because you’re lying.” 

Her face flooded red, like she’d just cast her Miraculous Cure. And just like the real Cure, Chat Noir was left with the feeling that everything was right where it should be, and safe, and whole. When he cupped her face, she grabbed his wrists to steady herself.

“You love Adrien,” he said, a smile coloring his words. “More than anything.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off with a kiss to the cheek. When he pulled away, her face was scrunched in confusion.

“You love Adrien with your whole heart.” A kiss on the opposite cheek. 

Her expression was unwinding, growing loose with what he hoped was comprehension. He waited, holding her. This time, he was the one silently begging the other to believe.

“Adrien is the only person for you.” He kissed her on the nose. 

Ladybug - Marinette - didn’t let him get far, holding onto his neck to keep him in place. Are you serious? her expression asked him. You’re not making fun of me right now?

He let his wide smile answer, and one more repeated line. “You love only Adrien, I mean it.”

Chat Noir leaned in one more time, kissing her smiling lips. When he pulled away, he found himself wrapped tightly around her and encircled in her arms. Just where he’d always wanted to be. 

“That’s what I said,” she replied. “I love you, Adrien.” 

THE END

----

Tag list: @clawsout83 @trippingovermyfeet @tbehartoo @yoonjae20 @random-cartoon-fangirl

Author’s note: Thank you for reading! I loved working on this story. When I started, I literally asked myself the question, “How obvious can I make it before he catches on?” and it was so fun to write him being super dumb about everything! 

Special thanks to my betas, @jennagrinsoverml, @h-sunnywet-d, and @ladyofthenoodle. You made the story stronger, and I’m grateful!

(Self promo warning) Click here to see my other stories. (Lots of one-shots and a handful of longer stories.) Be on the lookout for my Square Dance fic in Nov. and my Big Bang in Jan. I’ve also got a ton of drabbles that I have ideas for, plus a few one-shots and longer fics that I’m excited to work on!

[paullicino]

Six Years - On PTSD and Choosing Life

Content warning: This essay very frankly discusses mental health, trauma, gaslighting and suicide. It also links to discussions of abuse and sexual assault.

If you are experiencing thoughts of suicide, know that you are not alone and help is available to you or anyone who might need it, such as the Samaritans, the Suicide Prevention Hotline, or this list of other crisis hotlines and this list of international support resources.

This was reposted from my Patreon.

There are blue skies today. The sun bounces off the mirrored windows of a skyscraper downtown. It cuts straight across my balcony and shines onto my wall. A few blocks away, the staff of my favourite café will share their latest gossip with me, as they always like to do, and maybe later tonight I will make good food and play games with friends until unwise times in the morning. Isn’t life full of wonderful things?

You can find them everywhere. And I certainly do. Sometimes I’ve found them in the intimate, up-close details of a famous oil painting, between the notes of a new song heard by chance, even in the rustling at the bottom of a dumpster, which becomes chittering and then fur and a tail and then direct eye contact with a tiny criminal whose only felony was hunger. I’ve found them amongst perfectly crafted sentences that capture thoughts and feelings and hold them forever on the page, in the silence of the impossibly wild mountain wilderness a thousand miles from home, in the first moments that I’ve taken someone’s hand and watched the gaudy lights of some forgettable venue play across the lines and the shapes of their face.

That’s so many wonderful things to live for. And I can get overdramatically passionate about the tiniest, silliest little details.

I’ve been trying to write this for a long time. I had three significant dreams during that period. In the most recent, I had moved into a dark and barren basement, with most of my possessions still in boxes. Some old friends from long ago came knocking. They pressed their faces against the small windows and tried to force the ageing door. “Where did you go?” they kept asking, their voices entering through every crack. “What happened?”

Six years ago this month I destroyed my suicide note. I burned it on a rainy August night and watched it curl into a tiny, helpless twisting of ashes and charred plastic that no longer had any power or purpose. The note was inside of a ziploc bag, a choice I’d made to ensure its integrity and survival against any of the several different plans I’d made to end my life, and this had melted into black strands of hair-like debris that reached up to nothing. One or two of my handwritten words remained half legible in this mess and tried to reach beyond the flames, to share their intent with the world, but they would never again mean anything to anyone.

I made videos of the burning and took a few pictures, a sort of ritual of recording, then I told a close friend what I’d just done, and then, for a very long time, I set the image as the wallpaper on my phone. It would be an ever-present reminder to me of my choice to stay alive. It was supposed to help me feel strong, though the truth is that I rarely did. It was the worst, most harrowing and most damaging period of my life and with help, honesty, insight, therapy, time and invaluable connection with others who have either seen the same things that I have or had comparable experiences, I managed to fumble and fight my way through it all. But I will never be the same. Six years is a long time and I am still profoundly affected by so much. I am still trying to understand things. I am still trying to figure myself out, to make sense of my identity, my situation, my experiences. To work out where I went and what happened. And I am still trying to move on.

These words are something about that ongoing experience, that work in progress, and about the dual significance of a span of six years. It is not so much about causes or causers, but instead about consequences and changes, and that’s for three reasons.

The first is because what happens after and as a result of trauma is so enduring and significant, perhaps even the most significant consideration of all, and it’s how we find ourselves discussing things like spans of six years or, for some people, far longer. I want to try to explain some of that sort of intensity and that sort of timescale.

The second is because it’s my hope that this is the most helpful way for me to talk about all this, the most illustrative to other people, the most constructive. I could have chosen many approaches, some which I believe might have been more harmful and destructive, and I don’t generally want to be a punitive or destructive person. Ultimately I think this is the most positive and productive approach.

The third is because I’m still not ready to unpack many things, as so much is still ongoing. I am not at the end of this, not out of the woods, and I think I need to know that I’ve reached the end of whatever journey I’m on before I can return to the start.

There is, allegedly, a power in choosing how your own story is told. So I’m choosing to tell it this way and, I hope, with the awareness that any exercise of power requires consideration and responsibility.

Six years is a long time, and while I’ve been trying to write and rewrite this thing for months, those months still pale in comparison to more than half a decade. A lot has changed in six years, and yet I also wish some things weren’t still the same, that I would have been able to make more progress, that I would have been able to create more distance.

Because, while I am six years from that burning note, from that summer rain, in my memory and my mind it doesn’t work like that. I still find myself beside that moment in time, like I could open the door to the next room and once again be right there.

---

Writing this has been very difficult. Writing is supposed to be one of the things that I am best at, and in the past words used to spill out of me so regularly that I wrote a tri-weekly diary, but I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that my relationship to writing has changed. It’s not just that this is a difficult topic. It’s that words don’t come as easily or as fluidly as they once did, making it much easier, all too appealing, to simply not push myself. To avoid things entirely.

But I wanted to write this, in part, because it would be another act of not giving up. I wanted to show myself what I could do, what I still can do, and that, even if I’m changed, I’m still stubborn enough to fumble and fight my way through.

---

I want you to imagine a house. It can be any kind of house, that part isn’t important. What is important is that the house is your home and you have lived there for a very, very long time. It is comfortable. It is safe. It is so intimately familiar that it is a part of your identity. Perhaps you grew up there, or you raised a family there, or you retired there. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s your home and that everyone knows you live there.

Next, imagine that you have a terrible day. The worst day. And at the end of this terrible, terrible day, on a bleak and dusky evening, you expect at least to be able to come back to your house, your home. You take the same route back to the same address, where you see the same building stood before you and open the same front door, ready for the comfort of a place you’ve made your own.

You enter this space that you’ve known for so long and you notice something is wrong. The first clue is something small, perhaps a lamp missing from its usual spot, or you collide with furniture moved somewhere unexpected. You feel for a light switch that is now on a different wall. You stumble on the stairs as you make your way to a bed that is hard and unwelcoming. In the morning, the light from the window is not only a different shape, but cast in the opposite direction.

The changes stop being so subtle. After you notice that a carpet is suddenly faded and pale, you open a closet to find it is twice as deep. Some of your possessions are missing. The spare room no longer has a skylight. The kitchen is a different colour, with different appliances, with no back door, half the size it once was because the walls have been moved. There are new rooms whose arrival and contents are both equally inexplicable. Your most cozy corner is now cold and uncomfortable. You must relearn the entire layout, from bathroom to basement, because moving around the way you once would only causes you to stub your toes, to trip, even to fall.

Your friends don’t understand why you no longer enjoy going back to your house, your home. They don’t understand why you screamed at the different closet, why the sunlight on the wall makes you nervous. Being in your own home now hurts and scares you. How can you possibly relax here? But this is still your same house, at your same address, the one that everybody knows. You can’t argue that it isn’t. And if you invite a friend inside, after ranting about everything that is different, they ask “Why did you change all this? It’s so much worse.”

What can you even say in return? “I didn’t”? That shit’s insane.

But that is how it feels, like I live in a house that isn’t my home. Sometimes I don’t recognise myself. Sometimes, on the worst days, I don’t know who I am any more.

“Where did you go?” ask the voices, entering through every crack. “What happened?”

---

Last summer, a man came roaring down my street in his flawless luxury emerald convertible. I remember him well. He had dark sunglasses and a tan suit jacket and a hairstyle slick with oil, like he was being a parody of a rich man from an eighties film. He surged through the stop sign right in front of me and I let him know what I thought of his public display of privilege and indifference.

“Go a little faster, you cunt,” I yelled. “Maybe you can hit a kid.”

He swivelled his head, looked back over his shoulder and stared straight at me.

He also slowed down.

It was then that I realised the volume I must have used to project myself, over the noise of his engine and toward a driver already continuing down the street, meant a few of my neighbours had likely heard me too.

I’m not sure I cared.

I used to be a more modest and deferential person, and often that is still the case. But often it is not. I have less patience. I have less fear. And I have less trust.

The fear thing is great. Last autumn I walked across a narrow, quivering suspension bridge with no care for the drop below. Later, I found another far narrower, far smaller one and, all by myself, alone in the woods sixteen kilometres up a trail, I jumped up and down on the thing until it shook and swung.

I used to be terrified of heights.

My sense of fear isn’t gone. But it’s both so much more manageable and also, quite often, a thrill. It’s taken me a while to realise that I increasingly seek out things that are exciting, risky or extremely stimulating. I am frank with strangers. I am quick to make decisions. I am keen to try new things.

It doesn’t sound so bad, does it? That’s because it isn’t. Not all change is bad and not every consequence of my experience has been negative. Slowly, gradually, I am learning to appreciate a few of the changes, to lean into them. While one part of me feels sad that I’m less trusting than I used to be, another part of me sees this as more practical. I’m far quicker to drop something or someone like a rock the moment I sense things that I don’t like, and my sense for such things is certainly sharper than it used to be. Am I always right? I don’t know about that. Perhaps some people have been casualties of an overabundance of caution. Or paranoia.

That might just be the new cost of doing business.

---

It was some time in early 2020, while talking with my GP and taking some evaluations, that we began to look at my behaviour more closely. A year before, I’d talked extensively with a therapist about anxiety and about a growing sense of discomfort and distrust. I had far less patience, particularly for those who pushed boundaries, violated or were exploitative, often regardless of whether these things even involved or affected me. Anything that felt uncomfortably familiar, whether it was something I saw in a film, caught on the news or heard about on social media, could ruin my day. I would become jumpy, irritable, scared, or simply unable to do much beyond lie down and try everything I could to banish the feeling that my chest was being crushed. This might take hours. One evening, an ex found me curled up on the floor, ashamed of my own sadness. On another evening, a routine trip to see an exciting film turned into a sleepless night of panic and distress.

I began taking tests and found myself either dismissing the results or retaking them over and over in an attempt to get different answers. The outcomes kept telling me I had the symptoms of PTSD. This was far too dramatic a result and there had already been enough drama in my life already. I myself was too much drama.

Anyway, I thought, having the symptoms isn’t the same as having.

Sometimes I think about how, during some of my most difficult moments, the toughest weeks and months that I didn’t really know how I was going to get through, I made a lot of haphazard decisions motivated by panic and fear and ignorance, by doing my best to improvise and cope and adapt. Some things worked out. Some things did not. Probably the deciding factor there was luck and I’m not really sure I can look back with any wisdom or insight.

I didn’t always know what to do, what to say, who to trust, or how much to trust, how to respond to new information and changing situations, or what in holy hell might ever work out. My response to all of this was to keep secrets or to be cagey, to avoid places and people, to suddenly and liberally cut others off through a mix of ghosting, avoidance and outright blocking, or to occasionally have three-day long anxiety spikes in which I remained highly activated, oversensitive and endlessly insecure. During one of these, someone teasingly pushed me to take part in something that I didn’t want to, something that wasn’t even a big deal, and I was so close to breaking down that I had to almost run from my friends and find a quiet place to catch my breath, all the emotions in my body somehow pinched into a single point somewhere in my gut. During another, a laptop accidentally nudged half an inch sent me into panic mode, manifesting a feeling like a blade of ice slicing straight through my pulmonary artery.

These sorts of responses and behaviours would happen even in spite of all the various combinations of therapy and medication and support I was cycling my way through. I don’t feel proud of how I handled many of these things. I would love to be able to say that I handle them so much better now, with the aid of wisdom and insight. Perhaps sometimes I do.

Sometimes I have simply made terrible decisions and, looking back, I am still not sure how I might have ever done any different. I am lucky that the vast, vast majority of those decisions didn’t fuck things up further.

---

It’s a magnificent day as I write this. The world is jade and azure and gold. The sky is exquisitely, flawlessly blue. Every leaf is rich with the gloss of summer. The sun is setting into the sparkling sea beside a succession of fading distant mountain ridges, each hazier than the last, the furthest so indistinct it looks almost like mist, a ghost of an idea two thousand metres tall. Container ships the size of city blocks sleep in the bay, their hulls traced and wrinkled with rust from a lifetime of global migration. As the growing shadows of slowly swaying trees reach their way toward me, the last light of the day glides over the ground, over the grass and even over my body itself, like spilled wine gushing from a glass. It colours everything the sweet shade of nostalgia. The air is gently warm and the grass is soft beneath me.

I love days like this. They are one of the reasons why I moved here, why I put so much time and effort and energy into relocating halfway around the world. Into building the life that I wanted, piece by piece.

And I love so many of those pieces. I love my little apartment, with the balcony that I always wanted, with its ragtag assortment of secondhand furniture collected one item at a time, with its shelves tucked in here or squeezed in there, never quite tidy enough to look presentable. I love my walkable neighbourhood, with its shops and cafés and cats that follow me from block to block, or critters that peer out from between bushes in the rustling dusk. I love how low cloud creeps in to cover the tips of the skyscrapers downtown, or how the jagged outline of mountains shape the horizon in almost every direction. I love trying to make things, especially with other people, and the reward of being creative, of being silly or being funny. I love all the things I’ve learned to cook, or the ways I can warm myself up on a cold day, or the late nights I can so often indulge, with no care for what might come tomorrow.

I have so much to be grateful for and so much to be proud of. So much here. So much now.

Pretty soon, the sunset will transform the whole sky into a gradient of colour. Someone somewhere will be playing guitar on the beach, and maybe they’ll be good. Stars will appear in the sky, above the familiar urban zodiac traced out by the city lights of apartment buildings. If I stay up late again, the dawn sky will turn the royal blue of an emperor’s cloak. And then all of this will happen again.

I have so much to be grateful for. So much to appreciate.

---

A few weeks ago I had my first nightmare in some time. They still happen. The specifics matter less than the broad themes. Deception. Gaslighting. Manipulation. Boundary violation. All of it in plain sight, yet still unseen, making me feel like I’m helpless, like I’m crazy, like I have no hope of ever being believed.

I thought about it all day. The situations, the faces and the fears. This is the way it’s always been and once one of these nightmares visits you, it stays for a while. It’s like a small stain, an odour that gets into your clothes, the stink of cigarettes after a party the evening before.

Can you wash out a stain? Sometimes. With the right substances, with the correct regimen. And with some aggressive, persistent scrubbing.

One summer night years ago an ex woke me up because I had been thrashing about in my sleep. I had worried her by rolling around and muttering like a madman. Was I having a nightmare, she asked, and it wasn’t just that I was, but that I had them all the time. Every week, at least, each leaving that same gross feeling of violation and abuse. The anxiety medication that I had been prescribed was helping me sleep more, but it also seemed to make my dreams more vivid and profound. It was either that or barely being able to sleep at all, woken by the slightest of noises, up before the crack of dawn because some unresolved tension in my body overpowered all tiredness and fatigue. Even with medication, the smallest of things could still turn me into a nervous wreck, and one night I cried cross-legged on my bed as I explained to my ex not just that I had interpreted a few of her utterly inconsequential actions as a sign she wanted to leave me, but also that I might always be like this. Forever.

The nightmares began a few months after I burned my note. It was right after I opened up to another friend about what was going on in my life, and their response was to tell me about something else that had happened, the full story of an event from another six years before, from distant 2012.

It’s not my tale to tell, but six years is a long time to not know the full story of something. A long time to be deceived, to find out you’ve been lied to by someone you trust and that your ignorance has affected many decisions that you’ve made. Again, I am lucky that the vast, vast majority of those decisions didn’t fuck things up further. But some did.

Six years. It hit me then how long it can take for people to feel able to talk about something, as well as continue to be affected by it. How far the ripples travel and who they touch. And now, here I am, with my own six years.

That discovery was one of several experiences that transformed me into that person having three-day long anxiety spikes, remaining highly activated, oversensitive and endlessly insecure. That person thrashing about in his sleep. That person yelling “You cunt,” down his street.

---

I’ve written before about my physical health and my relationship to my body. I was anxious about things being wrong with it long before I had thorough examinations and validating diagnoses, but as part of those treatments I wrote about, a trio of doctors warned me about how stress was worsening every condition and symptom I experienced. Stress was ruining my health. I was having so many migraines that my GP sent me for an MRI that revealed how those migraines were changing the white matter in my brain.

I would have to do something about this.

Those doctors would help me do something about this, as would other professionals, and their help was invaluable. This would be impossible to tackle alone.

Sometimes I think about people I’ve heard say such things as “It’s not your responsibility to fix someone else,” and, while I don’t disagree, doesn’t such a phrase also imply it’s surely somebody’s responsibility, in this society that we all share, built from things that help us support one another?

Otherwise we’d be suggesting that people fix themselves.

Sometimes I think about people I’ve heard tell others, or themselves, or sometimes the world via the spontaneous and sneeze-like broadcasts of social media “It’s on you to fix your shit,” and I wonder if that’s where that sentence should terminate, if that’s exactly how it should be phrased, if those are really the words that everyone, or anyone, needs to hear.

Because sometimes I also think of another clumsy analogy I once put together. It’s a scenario in which I describe a pedestrian struck by a car, perhaps one driven by a rich cunt with dark sunglasses and a tan suit jacket, perhaps even one that has mounted the curb or surged into a crossing. The pedestrian is knocked down, maybe immobile from the pain and injury that comes from a broken pelvis or fractured leg. An ambulance is summoned, a customised vehicle equipped to transport them to a hospital. In that hospital, that specialised medical facility, a team of trained experts will use skills and equipment to triage and manage, to analyse the pedestrian’s injuries, to provide relief and to chart a course toward recovery. There will be x-rays, there will be drugs, there may well be physiotherapy. I doubt at any point that the person lying in the street would be told, by someone coming upon the scene, “It’s on you to fix your shit.”

No. Not any more than they’d be expected to walk to the hospital, to interpret their x-rays or to prescribe their own medication. Indeed, if they attempted any of these things themselves I wouldn’t be surprised if someone along the way communicated to them some more polite version of “What the holy fucking fuck do you think you’re doing?” and “You’re in no state to do this yourself, let alone know what you need,” and “Fucking hell. You’re at your most vulnerable right now. Fuuuck.”

Hopefully.

Once, many years ago, I knew someone who broke their pelvis. It takes months to recover, maybe a year or more for a limp to fully disappear. And it requires all kinds of help and oversight. It worked out. Doctors and medical professionals can be remarkable.

I have read a lot of books and papers over the last six years. I have listened to a lot of podcasts and interviews. I have been recommended a lot of material by therapists, by friends, by fellow PTSD sufferers. One well-known trauma expert I was pointed toward is Canadian psychologist Dr. Gabor Maté. And he says this:

”Everybody is born needing help.”

He means that it’s a fundamental element of the human experience.

---

Sometimes I go running and sometimes I go to the gym. The reasons I do this are complex, ranging from wanting to be healthier, to wanting to feel better about my body and how it behaves, to feeling like I am making progress with something. That last one is particularly important, because I’m doing something where I’m objectively able to recognise change.

When I run, an app tells me how far I ran and how long it took. I can’t disagree with the app, because it’s entirely objective, and so when I have a bad day, feel terrible and wonder what the point of anything is, the app still shows me that I achieved a reasonable or even an improved time.

It wasn’t always like this. I was bad at these things. I run better than I used to. I perform better at the gym than I used to. I have the metrics to prove it, and while I’m not a particularly dedicated or regular person with my exercise, I still keep at it and I still see improvements.

Whatever it is I’m doing, these apps and their statistics all offer me the same, very simple analysis:

“You’re doing better.”

I motivate myself to run, to go to the gym, to go on twenty-five kilometre hikes over difficult terrain, but I don’t do these things without some kind of help that comes from either expert resources, advice or training.

I don’t exist in a vacuum. None of us do.

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Help is important because it offers things like perspective and expertise and informed advice. And don’t all of those things sound so extremely important?

How about we imagine that our immobilised pedestrian wasn’t collected by an ambulance. Let’s imagine instead that the driver of the car that hit them stepped out of their vehicle, shook their head, put their hands on their hips and said “Look what you’ve done.”

And then “It’s okay, I know what’s best for you,” before carrying the inert person into their car and driving away. Perhaps even unseen. No witnesses.

If such a thing happened, in this society that we all share, with that person at their most vulnerable, who is responsible then? Who is responsible for what happens next? Who is responsible when that pedestrian, forever limping, says things like “It was my fault, I shouldn’t have been walking there,” or “I should have been looking out,” or “I should have been more visible,” and so on?

A lot of accidents and injuries and collisions and whatnot can be traumatic, scary, confusing. “How do I make sense of this?” asks that person, whether carried away alone in a car, or surrounded by doctors in the emergency room, or anywhere else they may happen to find themselves. “How do I deal with this?” And who might be around them at that moment to help answer such things?

And what will they say?

Perhaps you know someone who was, metaphorically, struck by such a car, before being then carried away by a driver with all sorts of ideas about what’s best, and who later blamed themselves for everything that happened. I don’t know.

I do know how important it was to receive the right help from the right people.

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It’s hard to know exactly what to do. You may respond to your trauma with a desire for revenge, retribution or restoration. You may not have the insight or the time or the means to do anything much at all. There is the ideal of what could or should happen when harm has been caused, but there is also the uncomfortable reality of how such things actually play out, of how long justice can take, of who is granted credibility, of how complex social dynamics can quickly become, of how awkwardly and uncomfortably people can react when they discover something they would rather not have, or that they have been misled, or so much more. We’ve all seen such things play out secondhand and firsthand.

I have had six years to consider the most helpful way to respond, the most constructive, the most positive and productive. I am still considering. I don’t have much in the way of answers or advice there.

Sometimes I think about the anonymous Broken Teapot essay, with all it has to say about the complexity of dealing with abuse dynamics, of harm happening within a group or community, about social consequences. It was written over a decade ago now, but it remains a very relevant piece of writing that brings up all sorts of considerations around responsibility, about trying to come to terms with trauma and abuse, and about how people might try to use systems or processes to try to solve things in unhelpful ways or even for their own ends.

People can have a lot of opinions about how to handle trauma, how to respond to abuse and how to leap into some sort of process of justice or accountability or reparation or even plain old revenge. So many opinions.

It’s exhausting.

Back in 2020 I tried to write something about all these complications and considerations that I was going to title The Calculus of Abuse. Like much else, it rots in my drafts folder.

Sometimes I think about how many of the ways that we push people to address both their trauma and the things or people that have caused their trauma only makes things worse. I am sceptical about the practicality, value and effectiveness of processes of justice, reparation and accountability. I think a lot of people believe that they will fix things, that they will be fair, that they will spotlight situations and systems and people that cause harm. That, in this cold and unflinching exposure, justice will be done and books will be closed on long and difficult stories.

And I think that’s because we see this happen now and then. Sometimes it happens very publicly. It seems to at least occasionally all work out.

Sometimes I think about friends who were excluded from social circles because they spoke up about something creepy or problematic, because it mattered less what actions or behaviour someone had demonstrated, even what could be proven, and much more who was more popular, or that the status quo be maintained, or that applecarts not be upset. I think about how different people share or don’t share their traumas and their experiences, what they include and what they leave out. I think about people who weren’t believed, people who were misrepresented, people who were shut down. I think about people who spent so long trying to get a handle on their trauma that any thing or person they might want to stand up to already had so much time to prepare, to seed the ground, to dig in, to get a head start. And I even think about the capacity people have to improve, to feel regret, to move forward as better humans. It’s a potential that I hope exists in us all and the writer Kai Cheng Thom seems to agree, saying that even those who cause harm themselves need help to “exit harmful behaviour patterns.”

Sometimes I think about what a friend of mine said about abusive people just being "regular people with very limited tools." And that’s not so different from a child. Doesn’t that make you feel sad?

I think about all of these things because how could you not? How could you not worry about how taking action to address a terrible thing would, in fact, only make that terrible thing even worse?

There is a paper by the American psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman called Justice From the Victim’s Perspective that touches on how many processes and pushes toward addressing abuse and trauma can be retraumatising, without any guarantee they will lead to a meaningful outcome or significant change. It touches on how legal processes and systems can be manipulated to further harm and harass those seeking redress, or how disparities of power and status and money can immediately put the damaged and disadvantaged people who try this on the back foot. It touches on difficulties presented by such things as burden of proof, especially combined with the challenge of a memory minced by traumatic events. How does someone demonstrate and prove trauma, or gaslighting, or manipulation, or anything else?

It also talks about how not everybody seeks such things as justice, restitution, revenge, or not always in the ways that we think, and for a multitude of reasons. These can vary from worrying they won’t be believed or that the process will serve them, to wanting to move on, to the idea that it may be pointless, as some “offenders are empathetically disabled… not capable of a meaningful apology, so they can never provide anything to victims that would be useful.”

Both this and the Broken Teapot essay also feature people examining how they themselves have handled abuse and trauma. I think this is probably the most difficult part of many years of therapy, reading and reflection. Sure, it sucks to have been harmed by an event, a situation, a person or a system, but at some point you also start asking yourself difficult questions like “How do I avoid something like this again?” and “Did I do anything that made this worse?” and “Was I codependent, did I enable someone or did I perpetuate something with my reactions or my responses?”

“Abuse dynamics aren’t so simple,” says the Broken Teapot essay, at one small but very important moment, not long after “I was not solely ‘a victim’. Is anyone?” And, after all those years of therapy, reading and reflection, I’ve come to believe that abusive people and systems gain at least some of their power from how you interact with and respond to them. If we were, all of us, perhaps better informed, we might understand, avoid or escape so many difficult things so much sooner.

And while both the Broken Teapot essay and Justice From the Victim’s Perspective talk a lot about sexual assault, their considerations and their examinations of consequence are more broadly applicable. This reflects how I find myself relating to so many stories of trauma and abuse, regardless of what the specifics of any incidents might be. It’s because I recognise the same things in the subsequent developments, reactions and outcomes, much like I might recognise the same chord pattern in different songs. I see people trying to understand their own changing behaviours, trying to articulate why they won’t do a particular thing or go to a particular place any more, trying to both explain and understand how their body or their health has been affected. The specifics don’t need to be the same for so many of the consequences to be. And I recognise and am much more attuned to recognising those consequences.

Both these pieces of writing are also very good at illustrating one of the most important things that you can learn about trauma, and that is, whatever happens or whatever choices you make, things can never be put back in the box.

Trauma is never erased.

---

Here’s what I think is another of the most important things we can learn about trauma, which is that people are generally very bad at dealing with it and are even worse at dealing with it if they are unsupported. And even if they have all the support in the world, they are probably still going to make bad choices, self-sabotage, lose perspective and do things they regret.

They will probably be foolish, be confused and be likely to make choices that could hurt other people. They may not have great insight or work against their own best interests. That doesn’t mean that they get a free pass. It doesn’t mean we are obliged to simply accept these behaviours. But I think these are realistic expectations that we should have.

In his pioneering book The Body Keeps the Score, the psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk writes that many trauma responses are “irrational and largely outside people's control,” coming from people who are “rarely in touch with the origins of their alienation.” An awful lot of the book is about helping such people to find ways past this, rather than disregarding them or pushing them away, even though this will be difficult. I don’t remember anything in the book that comes close to “It’s on you to fix your shit.”

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While one part of me wishes many things had not happened, feeling both weaker and sadder, another part of me acknowledges that I have gained new skills and strengths. And one of the best things about what I’ve gained is that all this doesn’t just help me, but can also be applied to help others.

That’s a good thing.

I’m a tiny bit wiser than I used to be. A lot of reading and talking to experts and digesting all sorts of media leaves its mark. It’s not just that I know a little more about myself and my experiences, it’s that I can now better recognise parallels to those experiences in other people’s situations, behaviours and pasts. I anticipate slightly better, seeing problems further ahead, and I have a stronger sense of what I need to drop or to avoid.

I’m doing better.

---

I don’t have much that I can write here in terms of the specifics of therapy. I would describe a lot of the process of unpacking and analysing the causes of my PTSD as being extremely painful, like trying to both tidy up and then reassemble broken glass with your bare hands. The things that brought about your PTSD are shameful and harrowing. Their analysis can also be, through a process that can variously be sad, scary, frustrating, educational, validating and empowering. It takes a long time and requires expert assistance, which means the help you need can be a somewhat scarce resource and very, very expensive.

You pay for your trauma for a very long time.

---

I discovered one of the most beautiful sounds in the world some time after 2016, some unknown amount of time after I moved into this apartment of mine, with its balcony and its skyscraper views. I don’t remember now when I first heard it, but it’s been years now and I still adore it whenever it happens. It’s small and subtle and can happen at almost any time of night or day. It’s a sound that makes me think of safety and independence, of making my own space and then occupying it. Of security and stability.

I really, really appreciate security and stability. Much as I increasingly seek out change and crave new experiences or opportunities, these things feel so much better if I can enjoy them with the understanding that I have some sort of foundation under me. Something solid. No matter how small or how far away. Some place of safety.

The sound happens when it’s raining. Whatever metal it is that rings my balcony is hollow, so that when rainfall strikes it, it responds with a kind of subtle but sonorous singing. This ringing isn’t the specific sound I’m talking about, though. That sound is slightly different, something that rises above this other background arrangement.

When a particularly large drop of water hits my balcony railing, it gives a flat, gentle ping of appreciation. The background patter of the other raindrops will continue and then, again, after some irregular interval, presumably as water has collected from the balcony above into a particularly large drop, the ping will sound again.

I heard it one morning this spring, months ago now, right after I woke up and not long after I had started writing all this. I lay there in bed on a day the colour of slate and cigarette smoke and I thought about how the world is made up of so many beautiful, tiny things. Ping, goes one of them, and maybe nobody else on the planet notices or cares. But I try to remind myself of this and how my life is full of so many other probably stupid little things that I like, that I love. Don’t lose these things, I try to tell myself. Don’t forget about them and don’t forget to notice them when they happen. You gave yourself so many more of them when you chose to stay alive.

You get a lot of time to think on days the colour of slate and cigarette smoke.

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You’ll notice I say “sometimes I think about” a lot here, when reflecting on less positive things, and you might consider this a writing device or a cheap hook or some other writer’s cheat. It partly is, but it’s also a truth. I do think about these things, and so many other things, very often. I think about one or another of them almost all of the time. I find it very hard not to think, to turn my brain off, and the unfortunate truth is that it reminds me about things to do with my trauma almost every day. It has done so for six years now and, as we’ve already established, six years is a long time.

Evenings can be the most difficult time. While I’ve always had a flippant attitude toward sleep schedules, I never used to have trouble going to bed. Some nights my brain will never switch off. My memory is overflowing. It doesn’t matter if I’m tired, it makes no difference if I’m exhausted. The rules around sleep are different now and I think I’m still trying to relearn them.

One therapist described the traumatised mind as like an overflowing wastepaper basket full of difficult memories that are constantly falling out. Any new addition can cause one or many of them to spill and scatter. Time and therapy can help to more properly sort them and make space for other, new things.

What a good analogy.

Occasionally, there might be a suggestion of ADHD sent my way. I can understand why things would look that way and a lot has been said by people more experienced than I about how ADHD and PTSD can seem similar. I think if ADHD had ever been the case some mental health professional or other member of the medical community that I’ve dealt with would have spotted this by now. But no. I’m distracted by some memory or flashback. I’m avoidant, or I’m in need of some thrill or stimulation. I might be full of nervous energy or unusually, intensely focused on something because it feels so good to be thinking about something I enjoy.

And sometimes things are bounding out of that wastepaper basket like clowns out of a clown car. I can feel like I've lost a lot of control over my mind and it's all I can do to rein it in. Some days I have coping strategies and some days I'm sick of it and wish I didn't need to have to cope.

And so I keep myself busy with the stimulation and the novelty that I crave. With people. With events. With runs, with the gym and with twenty-five kilometre hikes. Whatever it takes, whenever I can. It’s not ideal. I’m still figuring out what I need. I don’t always get the balance right. Sometimes unexpected things make me very emotional, either very sad or very frustrated, and I rarely know in advance what might do that. Sometimes I sleep less than four hours a night. Sometimes I want to be alone. Sometimes I desperately need company. I probably seem very strange.

But, let’s not forget, in the past I would lose whole days. For hours, my chest would feel like it was being crushed. I might be found curled up on the floor, ashamed of my own sadness. The nightmares would come every week. So things have clearly, obviously, demonstrably improved.

I’m doing better.

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I still suck at writing. I don’t know how to fix that yet. I still very regularly feel like there is a gulf between me and so many other people, even my friends. I still have outsize reactions to irrelevant, immaterial things. I still lack confidence in my own personal calibration. "Many traumatised people find themselves chronically out of sync with the people around them,” writes Bessel van der Kolk. Yeah.

Toward the end of its six season existence there is an episode of BoJack Horseman where an actor reacts angrily to some improvisation and unexpected physical contact that happens during filming. Her colleagues are confused as to why she does this, and perhaps she doesn’t understand herself, but we the audience know that this a response to a physical assault by the titular character some time before. She never finds out, but this leads to her missing out on perhaps the biggest opportunity of her life, after a director discreetly describes her as erratic.

There is no further development with this plotline, no resolution to be had. Nobody finds out why she is like this, nor wants to, nor sets things on a new, better course. I try to remind myself that this sort of thing can be happening all the time, to try and grant people some grace and compassion, but also I try to remind myself that this is me. I have my versions of this behaviour. Maybe fewer than I used to, but still. I can be erratic and I have to face the consequences of that, as well as minimise it as much as I can.

I recently stopped buying fresh fruit from my local store because they would repeatedly put mouldy, furry produce on display. The last time I discovered this, I was holding up a box of ostensibly shiny, blood-red strawberries to once again discover the mass of fuzz hidden underneath. Food is expensive enough as it is, I thought, and it doesn’t also need to be garbage. Too late, the look on the face of the customer standing next to me clued me in to how vocal I’d been with my three-word expression of disgust and displeasure.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

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You’ve read a little about my first dream, about old friends. You’ve read a little about my second dream, the nightmare. Here comes my third, from earlier this summer.

I dreamt that I was trying to get home again. I was confused about where I was, trying to remember a route through unfamiliar Vancouver alleys. It was evening, not yet dark, but the time between when you lose the long shadows cast by the last of the sunlight and begin to wear the rich, jewelled canvas of the stars. None of  the people I stopped and spoke to knew the streets I named. None of the alleyways I walked down took me in familiar directions.

I never found my way home, but I never stopped trying. Perhaps this does indeed mean I haven’t reached the end of whatever journey I’m on, that I can’t yet return to the start. I think it’s both practical and pragmatic for me to accept that the next six years might still present me with many challenges. That I will have bad, directionless days. That sometimes I’m going to fuck up and fall short.

I woke up to another bright, warm summer’s day, far later than I meant to, and I made myself a fine cup of coffee and a rich breakfast that I would be foolish not to enjoy.

Sometimes I think about suicide. Those thoughts haven’t left me yet and I’m not sure they ever will. Sometimes they arrive strong and loud and insistent, from out of nowhere and with all the power of a thunderbolt in a storm. Sometimes I want to be a shining example of how to conquer PTSD and sometimes I'm so sad I can’t get out of bed and sometimes I am just pissed off and angry. Each day is still different. But tomorrow I will wake up and perhaps I will think to myself “There are blue skies today,” or perhaps I will hear ping, or perhaps I won’t need anything at all to feel great. And perhaps there will be some undeniable sign in the day’s events, in my behaviour, even in the world around me, that demonstrates to me how much I’ve improved.

Each day is still different and today the glib part of my personality says “I sure hope you’ve improved, it’s been six years! That’s six years of painful PTSD examination, therapy, medication, reading, research, specialist appointments, many thousands of dollars spent and a god damn MRI of your weird and messed up brain.” And am I being disrespectfully flippant of my own experiences when I add that having an MRI of my brain was, at least, kind of cool?

Because another part of my personality wants to remind me I’m wiser, braver and maybe even a little more able to help others, people who I will remind myself can’t be expected to fix their own shit alone. People who shouldn’t be pushed aside, in this society that we all share.

And I don’t regret calling that cunt a cunt.

It’s been six years and each day is still different and this morning, when I pause to ask myself how I’m doing, I find I have the most simple of answers.

It’s three words.

“I’m doing better.”