#and i like having some semblance of control over it to preserve my comfort

[smol-bean-of-the-smols]

sometimes i think about how whatever my brain does makes me unable/unwilling to return to old media that used to affect me because of the likelihood of it affecting me again

[another-whump-sideblog]

Jane's Pets Chapter 93: Normalcy 

TWs in tags

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"How did you become immortal?" No reason to beat around the bush.

Jane smirks. "Why would I tell you that?"

"You want to die. I want you to die. We can work together here, I just need all the information."

"And you think that you can come up with something in your mortal lifetime that I couldn't come up with in tens of thousands of years?"

"Yes. Have you even been trying lately? Maybe it's a matter of new technology, or the number of times you try. Maybe the 100,000th time you slit your throat it'll work." 

She rolls her eyes. "I've certainly tried any new technologies that have come about since I first became immortal. I'm always trying. I'm always starved or dehydrated or sleep-deprived enough that a mortal would be dead in my position."

"Let me help. Tell me how you became immortal."

"I already told you. I got my powers the same way you got yours."

"That doesn't make sense. You're not a mage. You don't follow the rules of magic."

"That's true. I still got my powers the same way you got yours."

"I didn't get anything, everyone has magic they're able to harness. I learned magic, I didn't get it from something. Did you learn immortality somehow?"

Her eyes narrow. "No. It was completely out of my control."

"Then we didn't 'get' magic the same way!"

"We did." She sighs. "If you can't figure it out from there, then there's no way you can figure out a way to kill me. Fucking idiot."

She vanishes. Off to torture Kitty, probably. Fuck.

You'll figure it out. This is better than nothing… assuming she's not just fucking with you. You'll have to ask Puppy about that possibility.

You do your best to ignore Jane pulling Kitty downstairs. It'll only be a couple hours, then you can comfort them. Just a couple hours.

From there, it's an unfortunately very normal day. Kitty screams from the basement. Puppy cries for a while longer, but then she starts her chores, and things are as normal as they could be. You wait until she looks a bit more calmed down before talking to her.

"Jane said she got her powers the same way I did." You tell Puppy. She freezes for just a moment, then continues wiping the window she's working on.

"Does that match with what you know?"

She nods ever so slightly.

"Thank you." At least there's that. Jane was probably telling the truth. From there, surely you can figure something out…

Jane is much, much older than you. You didn't exist when she became immortal, so how could you have gotten your powers the same way she did? She didn't learn immortality, so was her specific set of powers innate in the same way that magic is innate to everything? But why would her magic work differently from everything else? Does she not know? No, she must, because Puppy nodded when you asked if she knew how Jane became immortal, and there's no way she would know if Jane didn't know…

You think about it until your head aches too badly to think deeply anymore, without coming to any conclusions. You're close though, you're positive you're close. Every day you get a little closer to-

Your thoughts are interrupted by the basement door opening. Kitty collapses at the top of the steps.

You and Puppy rush to their side, careful to not touch them without permission..

"Do we need to bandage anything? Will you need stitches?"

Kitty groans and shakes their head. They're twitching all over. Just the shocks, then… but you can't imagine that getting shocked for hours a day is safe, why is Jane willing to risk their life like that??

The thought is gone as soon as it arises. You need to focus on helping Kitty right now.

"Can you walk?"

"In… in a minute. Don't help me." Tears stream down their face. "I want- I want things to go back to normal! When I wasn't drugged all the time and Puppy wasn't muzzled all the time and you weren't- you had some semblance of self-preservation!" 

Their sobs sound agonizing, and they probably are. Their throat must be torn to pieces from screaming, and their whole body must be so sore that any movement hurts. Your heart breaks for them.

"Or, or the normal from before you went into the basement! Why'd you do that? Why'd you run away?? You just make things worse!"

You close your eyes and take a deep breath. Whether this anger is genuine or not, now is not the time to have any tough discussions. "I'm sorry. Do you want me to leave you alone?"

"No!" They sob and sob and sob. "Someday it'll get worse! Someday this'll be the normal I want to get back to! It just gets worse and worse and I can't take it but I don't have a choice!"

"I'm going to get us out of here. Things won't go back to normal, and this won't become our new normal. I'm so close, I can't talk about it very much for obvious reasons, but I promise this won't go on for much longer. You have to trust me."

Kitty just cries. They don't trust you, at least not right now.

"It'll be okay. You only have to deal with this for a bit longer. Just hold on."

"I can't not hold on! I don't have a choice! There's no getting out of this!"

"There is, there is, please just trust me-" You're getting nowhere. "Just breathe. In for four, hold for four, out for four…" You repeat the mantra until Kitty can follow along fairly easily. "There you go. Wanna play go fish?"

They sniffle and nod slowly. This whole situation is so painfully normal for the three of you. How many times have you done this exact thing? How many times have you comforted Kitty through a breakdown and offered them a distraction in the form of a game? How many times has Puppy been near while you do that, wanting to help but being unable to?

It won't be normal for much longer.

~~

I admire Peyton's commitment to maintaining a fairly normal life. It's silly, and it means I can hurt her so much worse than if she just isolated herself, but I admire it. It's gutsy. 

She has a girlfriend now. It's a new relationship, a week or two old at most. I had to find out through following her around, of course. She would never volunteer that kind of information, she's not that stupid. But trying to hide something from me was never going to work.

It would be fun to make her girlfriend's life a living hell. It would be fun to make everyone associated with Peyton suffer and suffer endlessly- she'd feel so guilty! I still get some entertainment from our current relationship, though, so I should wait until it's boring to start adding new stuff. Still, it's fun to think about.

She has a date with her girlfriend tonight. Maybe we should play that game where if she says a certain word I kill someone… what words do people usually say a lot on a date? Or maybe I could have it be something like having her make sure every sentence she says has an even number of words. As long as she has to think about it all night, as long as she can't pretend she has a normal life, anything will work.

I want to see her scared again. I want her to have more nightmares about me. Usually purely psychological torment like this takes too much work to be fun, but as long as I have my pets at home as an easy source of entertainment, I can have a longer-term project too. I want to ruin her life without ever touching her. I want to change her, make her into a shell of herself, and then, when that gets boring, take her home and see how she reacts to physical torture.

But I have to be patient. Slowly strip the normalcy from her life, bit by bit.

She and her girlfriend are going bowling tonight, so I am too. I'm really good at bowling, with so many years of practice, so I focus on trying to knock over exactly 3 pins every round. It takes her a while to notice me a few lanes down, but when she does her face is priceless.

I slip in and out of my void throughout the night, since I can't hear her without its help. Bowling alleys are loud. If anyone besides her notices me vanishing and reappearing, they don't point it out. She tries so hard to act like it's still a normal date, but both I and her girlfriend see through her.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah of course. I'm on a date with you!"

Her girlfriend frowns and keeps bowling.

Peyton can't get me out of her head. Can't stop thinking about what I might do to her, or her girlfriend, or any of the strangers in the bowling alley. Oh, this was a great idea!

When the game is done, she drives her girlfriend home and then heads home herself. The moment she's alone in her car she speaks.

"Is there something you need, Jane?"

I don't answer.

"I know you're there. Do you want to talk about it? What did you get out of following me around tonight?"

I don't answer. Peyton just sighs.

When she gets home, she does her normal bedtime routine without acknowledging me again, even though we both know she knows I'm still watching. I was kind of hoping for a breakdown, for her to beg me to appear and explain my behavior to her, but whatever. There'll be plenty of other opportunities for that.

"Goodnight, Jane."

She turns out the lights and goes to sleep. She better savor any hint of normalcy she can get- it'll only get worse from here.

A/N: Let me know if I should tag anything else, or if you want to be added to or removed from the tag list! Four more chapters before the start of season 4 :)

Tag list: @eatyourdamnpears @whump-in-the-closet @scp-1296 @thecosmicmap @quins-whump-stuff

@fuckcapitalismasshole

[adelheidvonschicksal]

NSFW Content Warning

Word Count: 1.6k

Megumi watches closely as the curse disintegrates in the mouth of his divine dog. The last of the monsters are dispatched, and Megumi can finally relax as the heavy pressure around him slowly disappears. The veil opens up to an unrelenting sky—rain finally falling down on the town for the first time in months thanks to the curse’s destruction.

His sharp gaze glances down to find you kneeling next to him, your hand buried deep in the black fur of his shikigami. “Who’s a good boy? You are. I’ll make sure Megumi feeds you lots of treats,” you praise to a happily obedient demon dog, his tongue hanging out from a joyful smile while his fluffy tail wags back in forth in tempo to your pets. Megumi huffs, rolling his eyes lightly at your antics, which causes you to glance up at him with a smile.

With an innocent grin, you plop your hand right on top of his head. He groans softly as you begin to ruffle black hair into a further mess as if such a thing was possible given his questionable hairstyle. “You too, Megumi. Good boy.”

“Cut it out.” Megumi grunts, shaking your hand off of him.

“Aw, but it’s so soft,” you say with a childlike coo causing him to turn his head out your reach as you pout about him being no fun.

If there’s one thing Megumi hates more than missions with Gojo then it would be missions with you, his 3rd year senpai. You aren’t necessarily bossy or prying, and you are definitely skilled in your technique, and there’s the bonus that you’re the only third-year who didn’t get suspended, but he couldn’t stand the way you treated him like a child even if he is younger than you. You’d always baby him and coo over him. It’s innocent on your end so he can’t get too mad, but he still wishes you wouldn’t do it.

As the rainy weather begins to grow heavier and cause his clothes to cling coldly to his naked skin, Megumi sighs and releases his technique. “We should get moving before we end up stuck here.”

“Right behind you,” you state, following alongside him.

As you reach the town again, the rain had developed into a full-blown storm, where seeing ahead of yourself is near impossible as everything comes down sideways and lightning cracks over the sky.

“You might want to hold my hand, so you don’t blow away,” you jokingly sing, your voice getting lost in the gust of winds. Megumi ignores your comment until he sees you stumble backward with another strong blow.

“Here,” he says, grabbing onto your arm and pulling you along with him because he’s really afraid you might actually blow away if this weather continues. You walk until the two of you manage to make it to a bus stop.

The two of you manage to huddle together temporarily under a bus stop shelter as Megumi tries to get in contact with your ride. You eye him patiently as he talks on the phone with Ijichi. The area is much too dangerous for someone to pick you up right now, all the missing rain coming down at once. Luckily, Gojo managed to call in a room for you at a local hotel.

The two of you walk into the room, finding it comfortable and warm compared to the cold and rain outside even as the lights occasionally flash and the ceiling fan shakes.

The only thing that bothers Megumi is the fact that there is one singular king-size bed in the center of the room. “Of course, there is,” Megumi grumbles, already warming at the idea of having to share a bed with his cute senpai and also thinking of how he’s going to punch Gojo for messing up so bad. Megumi guesses he can ask the front desk for extra sheets so he can take the floor instead of risk waking up with a hard-on and embarrassing himself.

“I’m going to go request extra sheets. You want anything?”

“What do you mean? This bed is huge, we can share no problem,” you say, and Megumi notices that your voice sounds fairly distant. He turns to see you standing in front of the hotel’s dryer. You cross your arms at the edge of your shirt and stretch to pull it over your head, your breasts raising with your arms as you arch your back.

Megumi instantly blushes.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

You blink once then twice before motioning to the wet shirt in your hands. “Drying my clothes?” you say, tossing the shirt in the dryer before going for your skirt but you pause when Megumi voices another complaint.

“Can’t you do that in the bathroom?” he asks.

“I want them dry when I get out the shower,” you answer, your lips poked out in an adorable pout as you look at him with innocent puppy eyes. “You should take yours off too before the wet dog smell sets in,” you recommend teasingly before closing the distance and grabbing his shirt.

Megumi shakes, his mind instantly dropping into the muck of the gutter as he hastily looks anywhere but directly at you, standing half-naked and alone in the room with him with your hands dangerously close to his body. You were so oblivious to the danger you put yourself in. If he was any other sort of man, he’d already tried to have his way with you.

“Your senpai will throw it in the dryer for you.”

Then, he remembers.

You’re being reckless because he’s your underclassman, unwary because you see him as a child to be taken cared of. It frustrates him but he’s too embarrassed to call you out on it. That is until you start to pull his shirt up to expose his smooth skin underneath, his pelvic lines and the thin line of stomach hair drawing to his crotch, and he prays for his dick not to rise with your hands so close to it.

”Senpai…you shouldn’t do that,” Megumi mumbles, a light blush on his cheeks.

“What’s wrong?” you ask, head cocked to the side.

“It’s just…” he pauses, unsure how to word the fact that you’re dangerously close to turning him on, “…I’m a man too.”

Megumi can feel himself grow more embarrassed as you blink at him. The wheels in your head are obviously turning to comprehend what he’s said, and Megumi instantly regrets saying anything.

Then, you smile, not the usual sweet girlish smile he comes to expect from his senpai. It’s crooked, wickedly amused but somehow seductive in a way that makes him gulp as you lean close towards him.

Megumi shudders as your breath blows on his ear, and you whisper, “Are you now? Then, show me.”

“I don’t—”

You repeat yourself more forcefully as your hand slowly slides down to press against his cock outlining, and you purposely press your breasts to his dampened chest. “Show your senpai how much of a man you are, my cute little underclassman.”

Megumi licks his lips, eyes focused on your cleavage pushing together against him. He releases a calming breath. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

You can only smile.

Megumi whines, hands gripped tight into your plump thighs, sinking into your meaty flesh in attempts to hold back your aggressive grinding but to no avail. His cock is sunk into your center, the sound of your wet pussy sucking in his girthy length echoing in his ears along with your heady moans.

You don’t stop the rutting of your hips, no matter how much those beautifully deep moans of his break upon exit from his lips and his emerald eyes tear up from the overstimulation of coming one too many times. His balls are aching, drained empty, and the strain of them tensing as he closes in on another peak echoes each time you impale down to the hilt, smacking them with your ass.

The only thing distracting him more is the strong, desperate throbbing in your silken walls as you grip around him, making it impossible for him to pull out despite the way your wetness creams and lubes around his erection.

With another groan, his throat constricts while his feet begin to cramp with his desperate squirming underneath you as he tries to gain some semblance of control, but you weren’t even giving him time to breathe, let alone turn you over and pin you.

As for you, you look absolutely blissed out with your hazy gaze locked on his beautiful face coated with sweat as he fails to hide his pitiful whimpers by biting into his bruised lips. He already knows it’s no use trying to preserve his pride, as you’ve already gotten one warning about how loud he was being, but he still tries so he can at least say you didn’t completely overwhelm him.

Yet it’s with a broken gasp that he comes for the fourth time. This time he provides a dry orgasm, his body too sore and drained too quickly to give any more. You didn’t pause, refusing to let him catch up.

Smirking, you lift off him instead, his softened cock still connected to your pussy by a thin white string of leftover cum. Megumi grits his teeth, releasing a hiss as your hand wraps around him again despite the protest his body is giving as you work him back into a premature stiffness.

“Come on, Megumi, don’t tell me you’re tapping out already. You’re a man, aren’t you,” you tease in between soft giggling. Flushed, Megumi hesitantly meets your eyes, and you give him one of those trademark sweet and innocent smiles as your hand begins to twist.

It’s then he realizes that his innocent senpai is actually a demon.

[firstofficerwiggles]

Beskar and Lace

Pairing: Mandalorian x female reader

Rating: Explicit, 18+ only

Warnings: SMUT! swearing, masturbation, voyeurism (just a touch), oral (m receiving), unprotected sex (be safe in the real world, people)

Summary: Mando takes issue with what you wear to bed, so you decide to show him some other options and spiciness ensues.

Word Count: ~8700

Author’s Note: This was an idea I had when I wrote Dress Code but I couldn’t find a way to make it fit into that story so I wrote it as a stand-alone. If you’ve read my other stuff, you should know this is the smuttiest thing I’ve written to date, but while it’s not the softer Din I’ve written in the past, he still manages to be romantic in his own way. In any case, I hope you enjoy!

“Do you always dress like that for bed?” Mando’s voice catches you by surprise. He sounds a bit incredulous and you’re caught off guard because usually you’re already in bed fast asleep before he’s down here. You look down at your simple knee-length cotton nightgown, why should he care what you wear to bed?

“Yes? It’s a nightgown,” you reply, unsure of his reason for asking.

“It’s rather skimpy.” His voice sounds gruff, and disapproving?

You just blink back at the visor in his helmet for a moment and then glance down at yourself again in confusion.

“Skimpy?” He must be joking. “This is just like a longer shirt? I know it has short sleeves but, really, skimpy?” Now your voice sounds incredulous. This nightgown doesn’t even have much shape to it anymore having been washed and worn so often. Mando is standing there rigidly though, seemingly serious. You watch him as he tips his helmet down and up as if he is looking you over thoroughly and you feel your skin heat up under his gaze.

“It’s skimpy. I can practically see through it.” He says definitively. “You should cover up more. Space is cold.” His voice is still gruff and his commanding tone is starting to irritate you a bit, although you do have to tamp down your excitement at the see-through comment. Who does he think he is? You’re not some bounty he can push around. And why are you interested in him seeing through your nightgown??

“I’ve been wearing this every night since I took this job, and I’m perfectly comfortable” you tell him “besides, I don’t see what business it is of yours.” You reply a little haughty in an attempt to keep this conversation somewhat professional, Mando is your boss after all. You’ve been caring for his foundling for about six months now.

“It’s my business if you get sick.” Mando retorts.

“I’ll be fine.” You roll your eyes at his suggestion. He’s being ridiculous. “You’re worrying about nothing.”

Mando lets out one of his long-suffering sighs as if you are the burden of his existence before telling you, “We’ll be in Canto Bight tomorrow. There are plenty of shops there and I expect you to buy yourself some new to wear to bed.”

“Alright, fine.” His tone implies that you shouldn’t argue with him about this. He turns abruptly and heads to his bunk, closing the door without another word.

What the hell was that? You stare after him, utterly perplexed by that conversation. Again, you look down at the nightgown, and while you have to admit it is looking rather old and maybe a little ratty, you would never see it as something skimpy or even something that Mando would see necessary to comment on. You wonder for a minute if something else could be bothering him, perhaps he was just taking a bad mood out on you? You rack your brain but things have been rather routine lately and you chalk it up to Mando being under a lot of stress as per usual. You head to your sleeping area, a little space you’ve carved out for yourself in a corner of the hull, and try to will your mind to sleep. Yet, you can’t stop replaying the whole conversation in your head. You also can’t stop the evil part of your mind that wants to jump for joy that Mando was looking over your body so intently. Ok, so maybe you have had one or two (or three or four) improper thoughts about your boss. I mean you’re not made of stone. He’s so tall and big and built it would make any woman a little curious. Then when you add in that constant bedroom voice that he has, it’s completely understandable. At least that’s what you tell yourself. Plus, he’s also a great father, so kind and caring towards his adopted son – your evil mind has no mercy on you. You roll over with a groan, mentally kicking yourself for your full-blown crush on the Mandalorian. I am an idiot.

I am a total idiot. What the fuck must she think of me? Din can’t sleep either; he is also plagued with thoughts of you. Not that this is anything new for him. He hasn’t been able to stop thinking about you for months and months now. Din knows that he needs your help to care for the little one and he has tried so hard to be professional around you and not scare you off. From the moment he hired you he thought you were way too pretty, but he was so desperate for the help that he told himself he wouldn’t become distracted. Clearly, that was a lie. Whenever he’s around you, he can’t stop himself from being distracted, watching you tenderly care for the child, listening for your laughter and happy words, and living for the moments when you turn towards him with a smile or a kind gesture. Oh and if he thought you were pretty when you first met, now Din realizes that you are the most beautiful woman he’s ever known. Everything about you seems to turn him on, the curve of your lips when you say his nickname, the scent of your hair when it’s still damp from the shower, the sway of your hips when you rock the baby to sleep, the few times you’ve touched his bicep between his armor, all of it.

Ugh, but tonight, tonight was the closest he’s come to losing control around you. Usually Din tries to give you as much space as possible, waiting until he knows you’re in bed before going to bed himself. Except tonight, he came downstairs earlier than usual, and saw you wearing that thin little excuse for a nightgown. His heart skipped several beats when he realized he could see the outline of your figure right through it. It had him hard and wanting in seconds and so, he had picked a bit of a fight with you to preserve some semblance of normalcy. He sighed to himself again, he had sounded like a prudish jerk. But it was the right choice, and besides, you should get new nightclothes, something that would cover you up and keep his eyes off you. Who the fuck are you kidding? You’re still going to look at her. He groans at himself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With the baby in tow in his little satchel, you explore the wealth of shopping in Canto Bight. Mando wasn’t kidding when he said there were plenty of stores here. It seems like the only things to do here are gamble, shop, and party. Mando is meeting with a client and for once, he’s given you some freedom to explore. You’re in one of the nicer casinos here and there are plenty of other tourists around, so you know that it must be safe or Mando would insist on accompanying you. Fortunately, you haven’t had to make many purchases in the time that you’ve been with Mando. He never lets you chip in for food or fuel, so you’ve mostly been saving your credits all this time. As you pass through the shops today, you marvel at the beautiful clothes, shoes, the fancy housewares, and so much more. You can’t resist buying the child a couple adorable plushy toys, including a frog that he immediately tries to eat before you gently explain to him that it is a toy. You decide to focus after that on your mission to buy a new nightgown and maybe some pajamas. You’ve made a few purchases, finding a couple soft pairs of pajamas that will be very relaxing and a very boring nightgown that comes down to your ankles, Mando’s style exactly, shows almost no skin. There’s no way he can find fault with these. As you continue through the shopping center, the baby suddenly reaches out as you pass a shop to grab something blue and silky. When you pry his little claws off the material, thankful that he hasn’t damaged it in any way, you realize it is a beautiful negligee. You look up at the rest of the store to see a lovely collection of mouth-watering lingerie. Evil You is back in a heartbeat. Maybe you should show Mando the true meaning of skimpy?

“Come in, come in!” The friendly sales woman sees you lingering at the entrance, “Everything is on sale today and we have so many fabulous items for you!” Her spirit and energy are captivating and you can’t help yourself. You follow her into the shop, letting your wicked thoughts get the best of you. You find yourself telling her that you need some sexy items for bedtime and the next thing you know you’re in the dressing room trying on increasingly delectable pieces of silk and lace. The baby has made himself at home in the waiting area sitting on a satin pillow and being fed fancy macarons by another sales woman, acting like the little prince that he is.

You admire yourself in the mirror, and although you have to admit that you look great, you can’t stop the debate going on in your head.

I am being ridiculous, buying lingerie to impress a man I’m not even involved with.

Yet! You’re not involved with him yet.

Shut up, I shouldn’t be thinking of Mando like this.

Why not? He’s hot, you’re hot, stop overthinking it.

I do look pretty hot in this.

Yes, you do! And you can buy it for yourself too. You deserve to look hot!

It’s ok if it’s for me. I can buy this for me. I’m a strong, confident, sexy woman who buys herself lingerie.

Of course you are!!!

And who is Mando to tell me what I can and can’t wear? If I want to wear something skimpy, I will.

That’s right, girl! You’ll show him!

You’ve completely talked yourself into buying several of the negligees, one of which is so sexy you’re not sure if you really have the confidence to wear it, but you’re feeling daring. You justify it in your mind by reminding yourself that everything is on sale, and who knows when you’ll have another opportunity to shop like this. You even end up getting a bottle of scented lotion that the saleswoman recommends as guaranteed to drive your man wild. Not that you care about that, you lie to yourself, it’s for you, the strong, confident, sexy woman.

“That was completely necessary,” you tell the baby as you brush the cookie crumbs from his robe and resettle him in his satchel while the sales women box up all of your purchases. They even include a bag of macarons for the child for later; he’s thoroughly charmed the women working here, and gives everyone a happy coo and waves goodbye like you taught him. You head back to the Razor Crest, thinking that you should probably quit before you get yourself into too much trouble.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It takes a while to get the baby to bed that evening as he’s still wound up on all the sugar and is likely reacting to the buzzing energy you have going on. Evil You has decided to be sure that Mando sees you in one of your new negligees tonight. He saw all of your boxes and bags earlier and gave you a brisk nod in seeing that you followed his instructions. You even went so far as to pull out the modest nightgown to demonstrate how well you listened to him, all the while, Evil You was cackling about what you really have in store for him. While he’s still up in the cockpit, you take your time getting ready for bed. You moisturize your skin all over with your new lotion, it does smell divine, and then you put on a beautiful black silk chiffon chemise with pale pink lace trim. It’s sexy without giving too much away, but still the hemline reaches only to mid-thigh and the neckline provides a generous view of your décolletage. And unlike the shapelessness of the old gown, this shows off your figure flawlessly. Your timing is perfect as you are just coming out of the fresher when Mando’s boots hit the floor of the hull. When he turns and sees you he stops dead and is so still you’d think he’d been frozen in carbonite like one of his bounties except you can still hear him breathing, rather heavily, you think. You decide to feign innocence, blinking up at him to say, “Oh, good night, Mando! Just on my way to bed.”

He stares at you for what feels like an eternity, not moving at all, until he grits out, “What. Is. That.”

“Oh! It’s one of my new nightgowns,” you keep up the wide-eyed act, “The sales woman said it was one of the most popular styles.” You even give a little half twirl to show it off, oh Maker, I am too much. You desperately want to ask him what he thinks but something tells you that you shouldn’t push him anymore yet.

“That is not the nightgown you showed me before,” his voice sounds accusatory.

You give a dainty shrug and say, “I was feeling too warm for that one.”

Mando doesn’t respond, but you watch as his hands curl into fists making the leather of his gloves squeak with the tightness. He watches you for a few more seconds before he abruptly turns away from you and stomps back up the ladder to the cockpit. Uh-oh that wasn’t the reaction you were hoping to get from him. Should I go apologize? Did I offend him by flouting some type of Mandalorian modesty rule?

In the cockpit, Din is absolutely shuddering with the strength of his need for you. His beskar feels claustrophobic and he has to rip the helmet off his head just so he can draw a full breath. He throws himself into the pilot’s seat and is already undoing his trousers to free his rock-hard cock before he even knows what he’s doing. He pulls off his right glove and quickly licks his palm, before gripping himself roughly, so he can fuck his own fist at a punishing pace. Seeing you in that lingerie, Maker, it was better than anything his imagination had invented. Plus, the way you smelled, like some type of delicious fruit mixed with an earthy spice. He thought he was going to pass out from how fast all the blood in his body had rushed to his groin. As he pumps himself, Din moans your name and thinks about you wearing that negligee while riding his cock right here in his chair. He fantasizes about how he could tug down those delicate little straps and free your breasts with almost no effort, and how good that silk would feel swishing against his skin as he thrust up into you. It was enough to send him over the edge, cumming with another loud moan of your name. Does she have any idea what she’s doing to me?

Well, you had some idea now. Your entire body was tingling and hot after hearing Mando’s sounds of self-pleasure coming from the cockpit. After his abrupt departure, you had stayed dithering for a few moments in the hull, until you had started to climb the ladder with a plan to check on him and possibly apologize. However, as soon as you realized what he was doing up there you froze and remained out of view. You knew you should have crept back down and given him some privacy, but when you heard him call out your name, it was like nothing could move you from that spot. He wanted you. It made you giddy with desire and you felt a surge of feminine power that you could bring out such a feeling in him. Hearing Mando like that had turned you on like nothing before and you were eager to touch yourself too, but the shuffling sounds of his boots suddenly brought you back to reality and you dashed to your bed as stealthily as you could. You resorted to squeezing your thighs together under the covers and pretending to sleep as you heard him return to the hull. It wasn’t until you were certain he was shut away in his own sleeping quarters, that you finally allowed yourself to dip your fingers into your soaking folds. Holding your other hand over your mouth to stifle any moans, you drew rapid circles around your clit and remembered how Mando had groaned your name. You were so excited that all it took was one finger into your wet heat and you were seeing stars as you reached your climax. You fell into a blissful sleep, dreaming about what you were going to wear tomorrow night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next day you woke up cheerful, still high from your discovery the night before. You remembered that Mando had said his next bounty was far away and that you’d be in hyperspace for almost four days, which meant you would have plenty of time to spend with him. You practically bounded out of bed, eager to start your day.

Din noticed your happy mood right away as it was such a contrast to his own frustrated and grouchy disposition that morning. His dreams had been full of you, and he had woken up hard and needy but was too angry at his lack of self-control to let himself indulge in jerking off again. He had been banging around the hull like an angry bear for most of the morning, but when you softly approached him with a plate of food and hot cup of tea, and that beaming smile on your face, he felt himself give in a little to your positivity. Then, the friendly way you had patted his pauldron and wished him a good morning, had stifled any desire to grumble at you. It’s not her fault you’re like this.

The rest of the day had passed surprisingly well and Din found his mood lifting substantially. His usual plan to shut himself away somewhere hadn’t panned out as you seemed to seek him out all day long. First, you had him playing games with you and the baby, then, you had decided it was lesson time and you asked Din to help you with that (you were trying to teach the child colors), and then later when the child was napping, you had come to sit near him, drawing him into conversation. In addition to being around him, it also seemed like you couldn’t stop touching him. All day you had found ways to make contact, a small squeeze of his bicep to get his attention, a brush of your hand on his back as you passed him, a little pat on his knee when he praised the child for knowing what blue was, and a couple others that didn’t appear to have any particular meaning. Not that he was complaining; Din lived for those small touches. The day had turned out to be pleasant and he was looking forward to getting some better sleep tonight.

Din had just finished putting away his dinner dishes when he heard you coming out of the fresher and heading towards your sleeping area. He knew you would need to pass by him and he had steeled himself for seeing you. He felt confident that he could keep everything in check tonight, telling himself it had only been the shock of seeing you in such a revealing outfit that had provoked him so much last night. Now that he knew what you’d be wearing, he could handle it, he was prepared. Except you weren’t wearing the same thing, oh no, tonight you had some silky red number on that clung tightly to every curve and only barely covered your ass. To make matters worse, he could see your hard nipples right through the material.

“Dank farrik!”

“Excuse me?” You startled at the sudden curse being uttered.

Shit, he’d said that aloud, “I uh, I stubbed my toe” he lies to you, like an idiot. He tries to turn away from you in hopes of putting you off.

“Oh no, are you ok?” You head toward him with concern in your eyes. Fuck, fuck, fuck you’re getting closer to him and reaching out a hand like you intend to touch him again. If you touch him right now there won’t be any way he can control himself, he’ll have you up against that wall in a heartbeat, or maybe tossed over those crates, shit, get it the fuck together. He practically jumps away from you, mutters something about the fresher, and makes a mad dash to the shower. He turns the water to the coldest setting and rips off his armor and clothes as hastily as he can. The jolt to his system from the icy stream is enough to help his mind calm down a little but it’s doing nothing for his raging erection. He groans and reaches to stroke himself. Before he knows it, he’s painting his stomach with his release, coming so hard he pounds his other fist against the wall as he cries out your name. He’s thankful that at least the water should drown out any sounds.

Out in the hull, you’re lounging on your bed, trying to stay awake so you can see Mando one more time before he bolts away from you again. You know he has to have gotten a fairly decent look at you in tonight’s lingerie, but banging his toe seemed to have distracted him completely. Which was odd because you’d known Mando to sustain much worse injuries with little to no reaction in the past. Unless he was only using the toe as an excuse? Maybe he’s not really that into you? Had he dashed away to spare you any embarrassment? Perhaps last night had been a one off. But then today you could have sworn he was responding to your flirting. You’re going back and forth in your mind when you suddenly hear a loud bang coming from the fresher followed by a loud groan of your name that you can hear even over the running water. Oh, he’s into me. Evil You surges to the surface and has you readjusting your position on the bed to look as seductive as possible. When Mando finally comes out of the fresher, he is wearing nothing but his helmet and his trousers, giving you a fantastic view of his gorgeous chest and torso, bare and still wet from his shower. It’s the most of his skin you’ve ever had the privilege of seeing. You can’t keep your mouth from dropping open as you stare at him.

“You’re still awake,” Mando stops dead when he realizes you’re watching him.

“Uh, yeah, just uh, wanted to make sure, uh, you were ok?” You try to keep your eyes trained on his visor, but you keep failing, getting distracted by the muscles in his chest. Maker, looking up at him from this angle he is so tall and broad.

“I’m f- fine.” He pauses for a long moment remaining statue like, before saying, “Go to sleep. I mean, uh, you should, uh, go to sleep.” It doesn’t seem like he is going to move while you watch him.

“Ok, well, good night then.” You feel disappointed, but roll over and wrap yourself in your blankets. His sigh of relief is small but noticeable in the quiet of the hull. Mando switches off the lights and then you hear his soft shuffle as he heads to his own bed. He pauses though when he gets closer to you. It seems like he’s just standing there looking down at you in the dark, and then you hear his deep voice, “Good night.”

“I hope you sleep well,” you reply softly. He makes a slight sound that almost sounds like “yeah, right” but you can’t be completely sure before he shuts himself away in his bunk. Oh well, you’ll try again one more time tomorrow, you can wear the really sexy one, at least Evil You is still optimistic.

Meanwhile, Din is trying to figure out what the hell is going on. He can’t stop picturing the expression on your face when he was standing there shirtless. Had you been looking at him with shock or desire? It didn’t help matters that you had been sprawled out on your bed looking like the Goddess of Temptation making him painfully hard yet again. He isn’t thinking clearly, it had to be shock, you had never seen him like that, he was always covered, even if it was only in the clothing he wore under the beskar. But what if it was desire? He groans to himself. Even if it had been desire, he’d made a complete ass of himself, and what was he supposed to do now, go back out there and try to get into bed with you?

Yes, do that, you idiot.

Why so she can punch me?

She might not.

Shut up, dumbass!

Din rolls over, sighing to himself, resigning himself to another long night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s your turn to groan under the water in the shower, but sadly not from pleasure. It had been a trying day. To say that Mando had been in a mood was an understatement. He had been downright grouchy bordering on sullen. To make matters worse, the child fed off his adoptive father’s terrible disposition and had been extremely fussy all day. You had poured enthusiasm into trying to rouse their spirits, but the more you tried, the more your two boys dug in their heels and refused to be cheered. Eventually, you had given up and just settled for quiet, but the baby had taken that as a personal affront and had a very loud tantrum that had included magically flinging things around the ship. Thank the Maker you still had the bag of macarons from Canto Bight, which you promptly bribed him with to get him to stop. You’d let him eat the entire bag and yeah, that was a parenting don’t, but you were at your wits end and would have given him anything to just make the screaming end. Of course, afterwards, you had the exhausting job of chasing after him all over the ship as he celebrated his sugar high, but at least he was happy. Mando, on the other hand, had taken to working on fix-it projects on the ship, which seemed to really be an excuse for him to swear and bang at something all afternoon. You’d hoped it might help him work out some frustration, but he seemed just as grouchy as ever, barely saying two words to you since you brought him his dinner. So yeah, you aren’t feeling stellar this evening.

The plans for your spicy surprise for Mando have all but disappeared. Before coming into the fresher, you had taken a long look at both the incredibly sexy lace lingerie and the ultra-modest, covers-everything, I-give-up nightgown. You had grabbed both before coming in here, but you still weren’t sure which one you ought to put on.  As you turn off the water, you see them both sitting there, hot versus ho-hum. You know if you put on the boring nightgown, ho-hum is exactly how you are going to feel. Fuck that, I want to feel hot, even if Mando doesn’t care. Mind made up, you grab the new bottle of lotion with a smirk, rubbing the delicious scent all over your skin. Finally turning to the lingerie, you put on the gorgeous set. You weren’t kidding when you said this one was sexy. This negligee is black lace with a metallic silver thread sparkling throughout. The bodice consists of two lace panels that just barely cover your breasts and end in a deep vee right above your navel. The lace of the very short skirt is so sheer that if it weren’t for the matching panties you’re wearing, everything would have been visible. The whole look leaves very little to the imagination, but you don’t care, if this doesn’t get a reaction out of the Mandalorian, your only other option is to walk around naked in front of him. Hey, now there’s an idea! Evil You is ready to be unleased.

Din has been finishing up fixing some wiring in the hull and he is finally letting himself relax a smidgen. He’d see the bunch of fabric you’d taken with you to the fresher and he realized it had to be the modest nightgown. Finally, it seems like you’ve come to your senses. Nonetheless, he’d had to tamp down the part of him that was disappointed. This is for the best. He hears the fresher door open and before he can lift his head, he can smell that intoxicating fragrance again. It will be ok, he can get past that, he’ll just say good night and go to bed, that’s all, but then he turns and sees you. The tools in his hands clatter to the ground.

“Fuuuck” Mando swears like he’s in slow motion, drawing out the word in his surprise.

“Hi, Mando,” you say simply, but flirtatiously.

“Hi?!?” He sounds incredulous, “Is that all you- you just stand there, like that and just hi?”

“What do you want me to say?” You tip your head, coquettishly blinking up at him.

Mando makes a choking sound and then grits out, “I don’t know, maybe an explanation for how you’ve lost your mind, or at least your clothes.”

“You told me to buy something new for bed. This is definitely meant to be in a bed.” You gesture towards your lace-covered figure. “Plus, I do remember you using the word skimpy quite a bit during that conversation.”

“I meant for you to buy something that wasn’t-- hell, this isn’t even skimpy; it’s practically non-existent.” He sounds like he is in pain. “Maker, woman, how much self-control do you think I have?!?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to find out,” you retort with a little smirk. Apparently, you’ve reached the end of it with that statement, because suddenly he is advancing toward you pinning you up against the bulkhead with his hips pressed hard into you and his hands on either side of your head. You can feel the hot, hard length of him against your hip and you let out a little groan.

“Have you been taunting me all this time?” His voice has a dangerous edge to it that sends a delicious shiver down your spine.

“I wouldn’t say taunting, more like enticing you.” You drag one of your legs up the length of his until you can hook it around his hip and pull him in closer to you.

Din can’t believe you’ve been doing this deliberately the whole time. He also can’t believe he ever bought your whole innocent act. It’s clear you planned this out to get back at him for being an asshole about your nightgown in the first place. To be honest though the thought of you shopping for lingerie for him, has him so turned on he doesn’t really care. But that doesn’t mean he’s not going to have to pay you back a little for torturing him these last few days.

“Enticing me?” Mando repeats with a small snort, “You sure you want to do that?” His body doesn’t really wait for your answer though as his hand comes down to grip your raised thigh tightly and urge it higher while he grinds his hips into you.

“Yes,” you pant out, “yes, I want to do that.” His movements are making you hotter than ever as you can feel his cock rubbing against your core. Mando brings his hand back up so he can grope your breast, kneading it roughly before rolling the sensitive peak of your nipple between his fingers and then moves to give its twin the same attention. He leans in closer to you so he can speak right into your ear.

“Do you like this? Letting me rut up against you, touching you, squeezing your tits. Getting you all worked up.” He rolls his hips up to rub his cock right across your clit. You let your head fall back against the wall and you gasp out in pleasure. “Or were you already turned on from teasing me?”

“I like it,” you breathe out.

“And the teasing?” He pinches your nipple hard making you cry out. He’s turning you into a mess, but his voice sounds controlled.

“Wasn’t-- wasn’t trying to tease,” you try to sound convincing but it’s hard when he’s distracting you so well.

“I don’t know, I think you were,” Mando sounds smug now, “I think you were enjoying it. Maybe I’ll enjoy teasing you.” And then suddenly he pulls away from you completely, dropping your leg with a small thump.

“What? No, no don’t stop.” You can’t help the whine in your voice.

“Why? Too hot and bothered? Not so fun, is it?” He tips his helmet at you and it feels like he must be smirking under there. You’re a second away from just begging him shamelessly, but that head tilt does something to you; a spark of competitiveness flares within you. Evil You started this game and she’s not ready to back down now.

You roll your shoulders back, take a deep breath, and look at him, “Are you saying you’re not worked up?” You let your eyes flick down to the absolute tent in his trousers and then back up to his visor.

“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Hell, what do you think I’ve been doing up until now?” Mando runs a hand across his crotch, palming himself, as if to prove his point and maybe hoping to shock you.

“Oh, I’ve heard.” He flinches at that, seems like you caught him off guard. You push ahead, “But what an excellent idea.” You flounce past him and climb onto your bed. You lie back into your pillows and then bring your hands up to caress yourself, your fingers trailing down over your throat and chest in a seductive fashion. Your hands cup your lace-covered breasts, slowly running your palms over them and pushing them together before letting your fingertips brush over your nipples. You look straight into Mando’s visor the entire time.

“Wait, what’re you doing?” It’s as if he’s on a two-minute delay and Din’s mouth has only now caught up to the scene unfolding in front of him. This isn’t what he wanted; he wants to be the one to pleasure you.

“Well, since you don’t seem interested, I guess I’ll just have to take care of myself, like you suggested.” You let your hand drift down your body and into your panties and you let out a suggestive moan. You exaggerate your movements, performing for him.

“I am, I’m interested,” Mando insists.

“Tell me what you want.” You’re not letting him off the hook yet.

“I want to touch you like that, I want to be the one making you moan, making you wet.” Oh, he’s good.

“Ooh, Mando, you’ve got me so wet already.” You let your fingers glide through your folds.

“Let me see.” His voice sounds gruff.

You pause, considering him for a moment, “Why don’t you come feel for yourself?”

With that, Din is pulling his gloves off and striding to bed. He settles himself between your thighs, and reaches for your panties, yanking the little scrap of lace down your legs. He pushes your hand away and then just stares at you, open and glistening for him. Finally.

“You’re so gorgeous,” he tells you, “every part of you. And I’m going to touch it all.”  

His hands come to rest on your knees and he tugs your legs open wider before gently squeezing his way up your thighs.

“And how do you always smell so good?” Mando asks.

“I bought scented lotion too.”

“No, it’s more than that,” he says suggestively. You can’t respond though because Mando’s hands have finally reached their destination and the leisurely way he is just dragging his fingers against you has robbed you of all your breath. He’s gentle at first, exploring softly and driving you absolutely crazy.

“Mmm, you are wet, sweetheart,” Mando drawls out, pleased. He adds more pressure and starts to draw lazy circles around your clit making you moan his nickname. “And so responsive to me too.”

“Mando, please,” You can’t help the plea falling from your lips when he’s being so maddeningly slow.

“I like the sound of that.” The smugness is back in his voice. “Please, what?”

“More, please, touch me more” you manage to breathe out, and thank the Maker he complies. He rotates his hand so that his thumb is now on your clit and he increases the pace of those fantastic circles while letting his thick middle finger push inside your pussy. Meanwhile his other hand has been making its way up your body, caressing you through the lace, until he reaches your tits again. This time, however, he’s pushing the lace aside so he can tweak and tease your nipples directly.

“Man- Mando, feels so fucking good, wanted you to touch me like this for so long,” you say between moans.

“Could’ve just asked me, ‘stead of parading around in these flimsy little things,” he chuckles.

“You like these flimsy things though, I could tell,” you respond.

“Yeah, I do,” he admits, “Let me show you how much.” He increases his thrusts into you adding a second finger and then bending both upwards to sweep across pure bliss inside you. You feel like you’ve been on the brink of an orgasm for hours even though he’s only been touching you like this for a few minutes. You feel the waves of pleasure building up and your moans turn into cries of his name until finally the waves crest and feel yourself cumming all over his hand.

“Yes, that’s it, sweetheart,” Mando encourages you, “look so beautiful when you cum. Wanna see it again.�� He doesn’t stop his momentum even slightly.

Din is enjoying watching you fall apart completely on his fingers; you’re so hot and soft around him. He knows you will feel unbelievably good on his cock, but he wants to draw out your pleasure as much as he can right now. He feels high on the control of being the one to make you feel like this.

“Mando,” you breathe out, “I- I don’t know-- if I- I can a-again.”

“You can, you can give me another one. You’re gonna give me another one, you little tease.” His voice is firm, but it’s so sexy when he’s demanding that you cum for him. “Besides, this cunt is so tight, need to stretch you out, get you ready to take my cock.”

Hearing him say such utter filth to you is such an incredible turn on that he’s right, you can give him another orgasm and you do. The second one hits you even harder making you clench tight around his fingers, gushing wetness all over as you collapse boneless on the bed.

“That’s it, good, that’s my girl.”  

He finally slows his hand and pulls himself away from your dripping center. You watch as his fingers disappear under his helmet and knowing that he’s tasting you on them makes your already spent cunt clench again. He moves off the bed so that he can remove his armor and finally take off his clothes. You watch him, fascinated as more and more of him is revealed to you, until finally he’s standing in front of you naked except for the helmet.

“Oh, Mando, you are incredible; an absolutely gorgeous tank of a man,” you tell him, letting your eyes rake over his broad, muscular form.  You see his cock twitch at your words and he seems to widen his stance as you watch him, making himself look even broader. You admire him further, “I love how strong you are, and how big.” As you say the last word, you let your eyes drop to his erection.

“Yeah?” Din asks. He loves that you are so turned on by his body, and your praise is making him blush so much he wonders if you can see it in his neck and chest. You haven’t even touched him yet and he’s aching for you.

“Mmm, yes.” You say appreciatively as you slide off the bed and take his hand, pulling him back to you with a wide smile. You maneuver him to the bed pushing lightly at his shoulders until he takes the hint and lies back. You slip the negligee over your head tossing it to the floor so that you’re naked too. He reaches out one of his large hands and tugs you down with him until you land on top of his body in a tangle of limbs. You push up gently so that you can straddle his narrow hips with your knees bringing yourself up over him to give your hands access to his beautiful golden skin. You let your palms run over his torso and chest, up across his shoulders, lowering yourself down on him as you go so that you can place kisses on his neck, collarbone, and chest. He tries to pull your hips down but you resist so you can take your time exploring him first.

As you make your way down his body, your kisses become more passionate, opening up to let your hot tongue run over his skin. He moans out at the sensation, encouraging you to do it more so you can hear him again. You kiss his nipples, letting your tongue flick each one into a hard nub and making him arch up against you. You continue trailing your lips down his torso, and when you dip your tongue into his navel, he cries out your name and you smile into his skin. Finally, you settle yourself between his legs, looking up at him as you take the head of his cock into your mouth. The sound he makes is somewhere between a groan and a whimper, making you feel a rush of power at being the reason for that sound. You swirl your tongue around the head adding a deliberate flick to the sensitive spot just underneath. You pull off him with a teasing suck before dropping your head back down to allow you to lick up and down his shaft getting him as wet as possible. Mando is practically writhing beneath you trying to get you to take him back into your mouth. You run your hands along the inside of his thighs, shushing him gently, before wrapping your hands underneath him to cup his buttocks. You bring your mouth back up to the head of his cock and then glide down taking him in as deep as possible. You keep your tongue flat and wide to aid you as you go, and give a little hum to help open your throat. You bob your head back up before doing it again and again, each time getting him a little deeper, until you are able to take all of him.

Din has never felt anything so incredible in his life. He’s enjoyed blowjobs before but they were never anything like this. How are you able to swallow him like that? Where did you learn to do this? The way you’re sucking him feels like pure heaven. And the way your tongue is just gliding along the underside of him on your downward stroke, ugh, he feels like he’s fighting off his orgasm the entire time.

“Fuck! So good! How? Shit!” Mando sounds like a complete wreck above you letting out a string of curses and garbled sounds as you continue your oral worship of him. You look up to see his helmet thrashing about in the pillows and his fists practically ripping the blanket underneath him as he’s pulling at it so tightly. It’s too much for him and he begs you to stop, almost shoving you off him.

“St- stop, please, stop, n- not yet.” You release him and he takes in a shaky breath, calming himself. You climb out from between his legs to lay next to him for a moment as he comes back down from the precipice of his peak.

“You are just full of surprises, aren’t you?” Mando says between breaths.

“I’d like to be full of something else,” you quip back at him.

“Oh I bet you would.” And lightning fast Mando is somehow towering over you on his knees, prying your legs apart so he can wedge himself between them. As soon as you realize what he’s up to you’re more than happy to help, bringing your legs up to hook around his hips. He rocks against you letting his cock rub up through your wetness. You’re still sensitive from your earlier orgasms and you’re even more turned on after going down on him.

“Do you want this?” Mando asks, teasing your clit with the head of his cock.

“Yes, Mando, please.” You lift your hips up in a vain attempt to get him where you need him most.

“Tell me again.” It’s a command but his tone is soft, sultry.

“Yes, I want you, Mando. I need you.” You look up at him, hoping that your expression can covey all that you feel for him, everything you’re not quite able to tell him yet.

“I need you too, sweetheart.” He says as he gradually starts to push into you, the blunt head of his cock spearing you open. He is only in about halfway when he pauses, letting you adjust to his size before he pulls out almost completely. He repeats with slow, shallow thrusts only giving you a fraction more of him each time.

“Your cunt is so amazingly tight,” Mando moans out, “feels so perfect.”

“I need more, Mando, please.” You try to keep from whining but he’s making you desperate for him. His movements are so languid and unhurried. It’s both fantastic and frustrating at the same time.

“Patience, my little tease, I know what you need.” Mando stretches down over you as he thrusts forward, gripping your hands to place them on either side of your head as he interlocks his fingers with yours. He’s still moving slowly, but this time he keeps going until he is fully sheathed with your tight passage. There is a slight burn as he stretches you open more than any of your previous lovers could, but the feeling of utter fullness is so wonderful any pain is quickly gone. Mando holds himself there for an instant before bringing his helmet down to meet your forehead in the only kind of kiss he can give you now. It’s a lovely moment, but after a bit you can’t stop yourself from grinding against him in a silent plea to make him move.

Mando chuckles at your attempt to move him, and then asks, “Are you ready, sweetheart?”

You barely get out a cry of “Yes!” before he pulls back and then drives himself up into you with such force it punches all the air out of your lungs. Gone are the leisurely teases from before. Instead, now he is moving at an inconceivable pace, fucking into you with abandon. Maker, he’s fast, and the way that he moves his hips is causing him to hit that magic place inside you each time. It’s all you can do to roll your hips up to meet his in counterpoint to his plunging thrusts. A constant string of moans is forced from your lungs along with occasional cries of his name.

“Oh fuck, you’re so good, taking my cock so well, like you were made for it.” You love hearing Mando’s filthy praise, his rich baritone voice encouraging you and making you gush around him with every word. And apparently he can feel that extra wetness, as he tells you, “You like it when I talk dirty to you, don’t you?”

“Maker, yes, Mando,” you respond breathlessly, hoping he’ll keep it up.

“D’you know how much I imagined fucking you? Taken you all over the ship in my mind. Gonna make it real. Gonna show you how badly I’ve wanted you.” The promise of acting out Mando’s fantasies pushes you even closer to the point of no return. The pleasure that has been mounting in you begins to burn white hot inside you. You wrap your legs around Mando’s waist lifting your hips up more, changing the angle just enough to let him penetrate you even deeper than before. You feel your thighs begin to quake, your internal muscles clenching down on him as your climax overtakes you in sparks of blinding ecstasy.

“That’s it sweetheart, cum on my cock, yes.” Mando keeps fucking you right through your orgasm, ramping up his speed even faster than before helping you prolong your high. It’s so good that you can feel another one building right behind it, crashing into you before you even realize that it’s happening. The pleasure is so strong your entire body is spasming with the force of your release and Mando sounds completely wrecked above you. His thrusts are getting erratic and you know he’s getting close.

You are clamped around him like a searing velvet vice, and Din is sure he has never felt anything better in his entire life. Each time you cum for him, you get wetter and the sounds of him pistoning in and out of you echo obscenely in the hull. He wishes this could last longer, but it feels too wonderful, and he can feel his balls tightening. He just wants to stay inside you as long as he possibly can. He begs you, “Please let me cum in you, please. Gonna cum, p- please wanna b- be in you.”

“It’s safe, Mando, you can cum in me,” you tell him, “I want you to cum in me, wanna feel you fill me up.”

That is exactly what Din needs to hear and he lets out a loud groan. He brings one of his strong arms around your lower back to hold you closer to him as he drives into you even harder. His entire body tenses and he cries out your name like it’s being ripped from his throat as his cock begins to pulse inside you and ropes of his cum explode out of him, covering your walls.

Mando tries to lower himself back down to you gently, but ends up collapsing a little on top of you as his strength finally gives out after the force of his orgasm. You don’t mind at all though and you wrap your arms around his back holding him close, enjoying the feel of him still inside you. He is content to stay like that for a few moments too, until he’s murmuring something about crushing you and is rolling onto his back, pulling you with him until you are curled up against his side. You cuddle with him for a bit before he gets up to get you a wet cloth from the fresher to help you clean up before you fall asleep.

When Mando gets back to you, he asks, “So, how many of those skimpy things did you buy?”

You smile up at him, “Oh there are several more,” you assure him, “Couldn’t think of anything better to spend my credits on.”

“Yeah? Good. That means I can get rid of this.” He holds up the modest nightgown you had left behind in the fresher.

You let out a laugh before asking him, “I thought you were worried about me being cold?”

“If you keep wearing those skimpy little things around me, you don’t have to worry about being cold. I’ll be in your bed every night keeping you warm.” His voice is rich with promise.

“Good. You can start now.”

---------------------------------------------

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!

Tag list: @mandosboobiez @tv-zepeda @remmyswritings @mudhornchronicles @hoodjarin @mackycat11 @sleepwithacommunist @haley7242 @boomtownboy​ @im-the-nerdiest-of-them-a11 @rueblogsthings

[leviathan-dee]

Hiya! I'd like to request some awkward Dadgil moments in Nico's van, hehe. Thank you! <3

K!! Thank you for the request bean! I know how much you love the found family trope and family fics, so hopefully this somewhat sates that need ❤

Accumulating Problems

Dadgil (Vergil, Nero, mention of Nico)

Word Count: 1190

It has been almost a month since the Sparda twins returned from the Hyperborean wasteland that is hell, sinking their roots back to Earth and acclimatizing to normal human life. The first problem was, Vergil had barely any semblance of what a normal human was, let alone how to communicate like one.

Talking with one was almost unfathomable.

Yet here he was, posterior placed upon an aged leather armchair in Nico’s van, attempting to alleviate the tension in the air with… small talk.

This is where problem number two arose. The person he was attempting to converse with was his son, Nero, a very tempestuous youngling with many bones to pick. Every so often, Vergil sneaked a glance at the devil hunter, observing how his brow creased with every bump in the road that Nico hit along the way, a familiar wrinkle forming between his silver eyebrows. Nero seemed to be munching on a bag of peanuts, the crunches resounding in the tension thick air. That was a bizarrely comforting sound.

Vergil couldn’t help but stare at times, the realisation of his own living flesh and blood sitting beside him weighing down on his shoulders like a bag of bricks. Undoubtedly, the strangeness would never leave. The fact that Nero looked like a carbon copy of himself, his strength reflecting similarities beyond appearance, would feel like he was gawking into a mirror.

Admittedly, Vergil had ogled for too long, Nero noticing his father’s turned head, making him shift uncomfortably in his seat.

“So erm-" shuffling his weight back in the futon, Nero directed his attention to his paternal figure.

“I apologise.” There was a long pause after Vergil's reply, the air growing thicker with anxious energy.

“What for?”

“It is... strange. You have my face.” Vergil cursed under his breath for the lack of tact in the comment. But it was the only way he could express his current tumultuous emotions. Nero had his face. His strength. His endurance. Even his mocking attitude amongst an enemy littered field. Nero was definitely Vergil's son, and the elder had to accept that fact. Might as well start with awkward comments on their appearances.

“Wha-”

"Tsk. What I meant was, we have many similarities."

The silver haired youngster scrunched his face quizzically at Vergil. It wasn't the first time he had trouble formulating words when it came to his ancestry.

"Well, you are my father. Or has that changed whilst I wasn't lookin'?" The uncomfortable silence stretched between them, neither able to alleviate whatever stiffness that hung in the air. Inadvertently, both father and son placed their respective palms to their hair, brushing the strands away from their own eyes at the same exact time.

Problem number three was the lack of common ground that the two possessed. Yes, Sparda’s blood flowed through their veins. However, Vergil knew nothing of the boy. What were his hobbies? How did he grow up? Hell, what was even his favourite food?

“This is ridiculous.” Vergil scrutinized the cumbersome predicament, his inability to communicate normally holding a hot iron rod to his back. How could the son of Sparda be so easily defeated by language?

Meanwhile Nero’s father was having an existential crisis beside him, the son kept munching on that same pack of peanuts that filled the silence. Shoving his whole hand into the pack of sweet treats, Nero turned to ease the tension by offering some to his father. Vergil peered at the pack, most of the flashy scarlet logo and ingredients obscured by Nero's palm.

"Peanuts, want some?"

"I… suppose." Vergil tentatively poked at a multitude of spherical chunks, the nuts sticking together with ease. Drawing them out of the bag, he tossed the handful into his gob. Unfortunately, because of Vergil’s tendency for impulsive thought and action, he neglected to observe what he was chucking down his throat. Besides, it was another good chance at starting a typical chat, hesitating to involve oneself in snacking with their son was probably a bad idea towards the road to awkward silence once more.

“They’re honey roasted, with Carolina Reaper flakes.” Nero’s smirk slowly, yet surely, melted away as the boy realised what he just fed his agonizingly stoic father. Cringing inwardly, the young devil hunter prayed that his dad had the same, if not a better, tolerance to blazing peppers and spices.

“What is a Carolina Rea-” It was then that problem number four made its guest appearance. The moment of realisation, and the foreign tickling sensation upon his tongue, was a one way trip to pained-confusion-ville. Undoubtedly, the tickle quickly morphed into a flaming inferno of a thousand tiny blades pinching at the inside of Vergil’s mouth. Tears began to well up in the corner of his once silver eyes, now turning crimson from both pain and fury at his callousness.

“Carolina Reapers are spicy peppers. Like, very spicy. Once held the record for hottest pepper on the planet, spicy.” Attempting to speak as innocently and as nonchalantly as possible as to not awaken the beast in Vergil, Nero chucked another handful into his mouth, chewing thoroughly without batting an eyelash.

“Fuck.” Tears now streaming down his face like the river Nile, a profanity otherwise unimaginable had escaped from between his stinging lips. And no matter how gently the word was uttered, both Nero and Nico heard the curse word.

“Did your daddy just drop the eff bomb? Mr. I’m too high and mighty to swear like the rest of us simple folk?” Nico’s eccentric and excitable nature transformed the situation into a stage play. The domino effect of Vergil’s careless actions, Nero’s equally careless offer, and the air of tension mixed into only what can be called a comedic tragedy.

“Dad?” Nero could barely hold back the laughter, feeling bad for never mentioning his god-like tolerance to the scoville scale. He hadn’t even noticed how this was the first time he called Vergil by his parental title, out of worry and concern.

“I’m fine.” The elder’s oesophagus was coated in liquid fire, his voice more so hoarse than nasal. As Vergil sat barely breathing, Nero stood to reach over to the freezer beside him, procuring another sweet treat.

“Here. Had a spare cone of ice cream. Usually works.” Vergil’s impulsive nature took control once more, this time in attempts to preserve his cool. No obstacles of hesitation, he swallowed the top half in mere seconds.

To be quite honest, Vergil was glad to find a difference between them so drastic. Who thought it would occur in something like sweet treats that can burn a hole in the ground like Xenomorph blood? For all he knew, that was exactly what they were coated with. Hell, he was proud of Nero for such a victory over his father, even if it did mean himself losing to a youngster.

Maybe differences are not so bad. And maybe they will grow to have a decent conversation soon. For now, he had to get rid of the smouldering pain that blanketed his tongue, and take a mental note to always pay attention to what his son offered him.

[bitchloveskcbaseball]

You Left My Heart on the Floor

Pairing: Bryce x MC

Warnings: A bit of language. Character Death. I don’t think I put anything that outright mentions the attack, but this is taking place when M/C is quarantined in the room during the aftermath.

A/N #1: Sooooo... This is a follow up to Bar Trouble that is set during the book 2 attack with an unfortunate alternate ending. And it is not a happy one. Also this isn’t heavily edited, so please excuse any mistakes.

A/N #2: Name for this comes from Carly Pearce's Every Little Thing

A/N #3: I didn’t want to forcibly subject anyone to this, so I’m not tagging anyone on this.

Bryce barely took the time required to scrub out of surgery before rushing off through the corridors. He never even really saw any of the staff he passed or heard any of the comments that were floating about as he ran past. The only thing he could focus on was getting to Casey before it was too late. He had to get there before it was too late.

He didn’t even remember flying over the flights of stairs that took him to the cordoned-off floor. Barely registered brushing past all of the various personnel that were trying to keep him from entering. His first cognizant thought after handing Kyra’s surgery over to Tanaka didn’t come until he was standing in front of the window, staring into a room that looked like it had come straight out of some psycho-horror film. The entire room was covered in plastic, an extra cot was set up but had yet to be touched, all while countless figures were milling about just outside of a decontamination chamber in hazmat suits. But, despite all the commotion, the only thing that Bryce saw was her. Her face was paler than he’d ever seen before, a marked contrast to the deep, dark circles under her eyes. Her lips were almost ashen and even from across the room, he could see the way her body was trembling. Her normally bright, green eyes were so dull they were almost completely devoid of color. Yet through it all, he could tell, without even hearing her words, that she was doing everything she could to make sure that Rafael was comfortable. Every single thing about the scene chiseled pieces of his heart away.

Then, suddenly, Casey was looking up directly into his eyes. For the first time in months. And it literally stole his breath away. But there was no relief for either of them. Her expression had quickly morphed into disbelief and Bryce was hit with the full force of everything that had happened between them.

“What are you doing here?” Even through the hostility in her tone, he could hear the weakness of her voice.

“You… I heard you were in trouble.”

“So?”

Bryce stumbled back with the force of the word as if he’s been physically struck. “I needed to see you. To check on you.”

“Shouldn’t you still be in surgery?”

“Inez called Tanaka and he took over for me. Kyra’s in the next best possible hands.”

Casey let out a harsh scoff. “Seriously, Bryce? I’ve asked you for only one goddamn thing in the past six fucking months. To get Kyra through this surgery. And you couldn’t even do that?”

“Casey – “

“Forget it. You’ve seen me. Now you can go. I’m sure your girlfriend is probably worried about you by now. You shouldn’t keep her waiting.”

Bryce sucked in a sharp breath. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected when he’d come running, but this sure wasn’t it. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t noticed the way her eyes followed him whenever they were in the same room. The glares she’d shoot in his direction when Amber was with him.

He liked Amber well enough, but, as terrible as it sounds, he only kept her around to make Casey jealous. To help distract him until Casey finally figured out what the hell it was that she wanted. Until Casey figured out that she was meant to be with him. But here they were months later and nothing had changed.

Except everything had changed. Because she could very well be dying. And he’d wasted so much time trying to play head games with her. Trying to get back at her for how she’d made him feel when she’d pushed him away.

Now, he realized, as he saw the flash of emotions through her eyes, he had done too good of a job at convincing her that he had moved on. Casey was never going to believe anything that he had to say, anything he desperately needed to say. Not that he could blame her. Why would she believe that he still loved her when he’d done everything possible to make sure she’d seen him all wrapped up with Amber any chance he got?

Dropping his head to stare at his shoes, he muttered, “I, uh… I won’t be far. Just in case you, uh, you need something. Okay?”

“Whatever.”

Without looking up, he turned on his heel and found his way into one of the evacuated rooms down the hall. Settling himself into corner of the room that butted up against the hallway so that he wouldn’t be seen through the crack in the door, he sank down until his face was buried against his knees. He’d never felt so helpless in his entire life. The one person who meant anything to him in this entire world was stuck in a room with some mystery substance threatening to take her away for good. He wanted nothing more than to be there for her, supporting her in every way possible, but she didn’t want that from him.

He couldn’t stand to be any further away from her than he currently was, though, so he hid out in the room throughout the night. He gradually inched closer to the door, in order to pick up on the pieces of conversation taking place in the hallway. Knowing that Ramsey and the diagnostics team were on the case had helped to ease some of his fears. That was, until he heard them telling her what had been in the can. Until he heard the words he’d been dreading for hours. “There is no cure.”

His entire world stopped. He couldn’t drag air into his lungs. He couldn’t see the light shining through the door opening. He couldn’t even smell the thick odor of disinfectant that permeated the air.

I’m going to lose her. No. Stop that, Bryce. They are going to figure this out. The brightest medical minds in the world are working on her case. They will fix this.

Still, he couldn’t shake the iron grip of fear around his heart. It took far longer than it should have for him to push himself to his feet. Even longer to actually figure out how to move them towards her room. This time, he was painfully aware of all the gazes falling on him as he trekked towards his destination. He couldn’t miss the pitiful, knowing looks he was receiving.

When he was once again standing in front of her window, he realized that she was now all alone in the room and his heart squeezed even harder. She was wobbling precariously as she seemed to be attempting to pace across the room. It took every ounce of self-control he’d ever possessed to not run into the room and haul her into his arms.

“Casey?”

Her movements were incredibly disjointed as she swiveled around to face him and her face was knotted up in confusion.

“Bryce?”

“Yeah. It’s me.”

“What ar – “ a violent coughing fit overtook her and very nearly brought her to her knees.

“Hey. Why, uh, why don’t you go sit on the bed for a minute, Case?”

“Can’t. Have to keep moving. Can’t solve this if I fall asleep.”

“You don’t have to solve this at all. You’ve got the best team of doctors ever working on this. Your only job is to preserve your strength.”

“Don’t… don’t tell me what to do, Bryce.”

“I’m just – “

“Well don’t. I’ve been doing just – “ Casey blanched, stumbling over to a waste bin next to her cot just before the retching started.

Bryce’s fingers itched to hold her, to pull her hair back out of her way, to hold a cool washcloth to her face. Anything to bring her some semblance of comfort. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted an extra hazmat suit, and a glimmer of hope bloomed within his chest.

“Hey, Case. There’s an extra suit out here. If you want, I can put it on and come keep you company.”

“No.” The strength behind the word was reassuring even as it cut straight to his heart.

“What?”

“You moved on. You have your … girlfriend and I’m sure she wouldn’t be pleased to find out you’d entered a contamination zone for your ex. And I … I don’t want you here. I’m just fine on my own.”

“But – “

“I said no. Now just… go home, Bryce. Just go home.”

Shocked and heartbroken, he stared at her back for several long moments before he finally was able to tear himself away from the window. He retreated back to his hiding place, unable to argue with her wishes but also unable to leave her completely. He needed to be near in case she needed something. In case she needed him.

What could have been an hour later or maybe five, he honestly didn’t know, Bryce was broken out of his contemplative misery by a commotion in the hall. He listened intently for any sort of hope or happiness amongst the chaos, but instead only heard words that had his blood running cold.

“She’s coding!”

He didn’t even remember moving, but suddenly found himself standing outside her window yet again. His face was pressed up to it as tightly as was possible, fingernails scratching at the glass. Please save her. Please don’t let her die. Whether it was a plea or a prayer, he honestly didn’t know, but he kept repeating it in his mind over and over as he watched the team of doctors trying to restore her heart rhythm as time ceased to exist.

Seemingly without warning, everyone stopped and a silence punctuated only by the harsh, flat tone of the heart monitor settled over the room.

[foramomentonly]

In the Dark I Know That You Do

Summary: I have a headcanon that Alex slept with a photographer overseas and, as a result, some tiny art gallery in New York is displaying artfully erotic black and white photographs of him. He signed the release form when it dropped in his inbox because the pictures made him feel powerful and sexy, and he figures no one he knows will ever see them.

Then I thought: What if Michael sees them?

Author’s Note: I feel the need to say that this fic, and all my other fics, like my blog, is Maria-friendly. Just putting that out there.

Title is lyrics from "I Want You To Love Me" by Fiona Apple.

Read on AO3

Alex hears a soft, shuttering click and turns his head. 

“This okay?” Josué asks, lowering the camera from his face and smiling softly. “You’re just—so fucking gorgeous, man.”

He’s squatting naked across the room, just returned from the studio’s tiny bathroom. His thighs are thick and meaty, the muscles corded as they support the weight of his body. The sight of them makes Alex burn, makes the vivid memory of him grinding down on Alex’s cock, riding him single-mindedly as Alex gripped those same thighs tight flood his senses. Alex feels weightless, somehow simultaneously above his body, and very much in it; he feels every scratch of the stiff sheets underneath him, every delicious ache from the evening’s activities, but they only serve to elevate this heightened feeling that Alex is good and right and glorious. Alex laughs, runs a teasing hand up the length of his own naked torso, his fingers catching in his dog tags. 

“It’s okay,” he says, and Josué grins, raising his camera again, the lens re-focusing and the rapid-fire, fluttering click resuming. 

Alex stares down the lens, willing the camera to stop time, to capture and hold him in this moment and this feeling forever and for real. He’s twenty years old; he’s free, he’s whole, and he’s alive within himself for maybe the second time in his godforsaken life, since the moment time failed to stop in the first place and Jesse Manes had crashed into the shed and into Alex’s sacred space, defiling it and him and the only thing that had ever felt right to him. The only person. Because time, unfortunately, doesn’t work like that.

Alex hears the soft buzz of his phone vibrate on the wooden table and looks down.

“Shit,” he breathes, picking up his phone and staring at the name and subject line next to the little e-mail icon: Josué Medina, Photo Release.

“Is something wrong?” Maria asks from across the table, and five pairs of inquisitive eyes focus in his direction.

 They didn’t plan this gathering, but Michael, Isobel, Max, and Liz were having a drink when Alex wandered into the Pony, and it seemed rude not to sit with them. Traffic petered out as the night went on, and Maria eventually joined them, and before he knew it Alex is nursing his third beer at a reclaimed wood table with five people who’ve been in his personal orbit for so long that it never occurred to him they haven’t actually spent much time together as a group. It’s awkward.

“Who’s José Medina?” Isobel asks, leaning shamelessly into Alex’s shoulder to better read his phone screen. Max, sitting on her other side, pulls her back.

“Iz, personal privacy?” he chides.

“It’s Ho-sway,” Alex corrects, sounding the name out phonetically. “And he’s someone I knew—Jesus, seven years ago?”

“Oooh,” Isobel drawls, “so he’s an ex.”

“He’s not an ex. He was—”

“An itch?” she supplies, and Alex kind of hates her.

“Sure,” he says, rolling his eyes and pretending to miss the way Michael’s briefly flash with something unreadable when they cross gazes across the table.

“So, this is a booty call?” Liz asks, chin in her hands and eyelashes fluttering suggestively. “Is he passing through town and never quite got you out of his system?” 

Alex forgives her much easier; her blood is basically tequila at this point in the night.

“Seven years ago,” Maria cuts in, redirecting the conversation kindly. “You were overseas at that point, right? First tour?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I was on leave in Italy. He was—well, is a photographer, from the looks of the e-mail, but at the time he was just a student. I don’t know why he’s sending me a release form.”

Alex scans the e-mail. It’s brief pleasantries and apologies for popping up unannounced in Alex’s inbox, all written with that easy, magnetic confidence that drew Alex in so many years ago. And then there’s the ask:

There’s a call for submissions for this arthouse photo book on queer military personnel as erotic subject. It’s not fetish; it’s art. It’s a tiny press and less than fifty people will ever see it, but it would be a big deal for me. I want to submit the photo attached and I need your consent. I know it’s intimate and I understand if you aren’t comfortable. But a guy can try, right? If it helps, it’s just for us, you know? It’s not going mainstream anytime soon.

Alex doesn’t understand half of what he’s reading; well, he’s unfortunately very familiar with the dark side of fetish since he lost part of a limb and gained a prosthesis. It’s the reason he’ll never re-activate his Grindr account. But the rest goes completely over his head, so he just taps the icon to open the attached image file.

It’s. 

It’s intimate, all right. 

Erotic, for sure, though the image stops short of full nudity. 

And, before he can really fully process what he sees, it’s tugged out of his hand by Isobel’s bony fingers.

***

Michael is trying to focus on the conversation around him—on Maria, beautiful and loose by his side; on Max, reserved, but happy, flanked by his best girls; and decidedly not on Alex, staring at his phone with a dazed expression, lips parted softly and quirked in a barely-there smile. He shouldn’t care that Alex is receiving an email from a long-lost fling, or that he’s staring at said email as though transported. Michael is so fixed on not watching Alex out of the corner of his eye that he misses Isobel leaning over to pluck Alex’s phone out of his loose grip, and jumps at Alex’s cry of protest.

“Excuse me!” Alex says, turning towards her incredulously, but making no move to take his phone back.

“Damn, Alex,” Isobel whistles, tapping at his phone with two fingers to enlarge and then zoom in on the screen. “Save a horse, ride an Airman.”

Alex rolls his eyes, but there’s a proud, playful smirk pulling at his lips.

“Lemme see!” Liz cries, reaching across Max for the phone. Max looks back and forth between Liz’s grabby hands and Isobel sliding the phone her way, then shoots Alex a plaintive, deer-in-headlights look.

Alex shrugs.

“Isobel probably already forwarded it herself,” he says easily, and Isobel nods shamelessly.

Liz picks up the phone eagerly, mouth dropping open in an exaggerated grin, hand on her chest, faux-scandalized. Michael watches Max’s eyes dart over in curiosity, then quickly away again, back straightening and eyes fixed forward. He coughs gruffly.

Liz passes the phone across the table to Maria. Maria hesitates, looks questioningly at Alex.

“It really is fine,” he assures her, eyes sliding to meet Michael’s gaze next and raising a brow, almost in a challenge. Michael gazes over Maria’s shoulder and inhales sharply.

The image is in black and white, maybe so it will pass as high art rather than cheap erotica. Though Alex in the picture looks anything but cheap. He looks—He looks fucking sinful. He’s lying on his back on a small, messy pallet bed in what looks like a sparsely-furnished studio apartment, clearly post-coital. His hair is short and messy, soft tendrils sticking out at wild angles. He’s clearly naked, but his closer leg is bent at the knee, foot planted on the mattress, preserving some semblance of modesty. Michael notices with startling clarity a small bead of sweat caught mid-roll down the crease of his hip. One arm is thrown over his head languorously, the other resting on his chest, long fingers tangled in his dog tags. He’s thin, the outline of his ribs visible thanks to the stretch of his arm, but his body is toned and tight, the small swell of his bicep and the curve of his quad and calf muscles evident even at a distance. His head is turned towards the camera, dark, hooded eyes gazing directly down the lens, full lips quirked as though in acknowledgment of his audience. 

It’s the expression that truly unsettles Michael. He knows that look. Intimately. Has spent hours and days and years, a whole lifetime coaxing that look onto Alex’s face with his hands, his mouth, his reverent touch, and all the other ways he’s pressed unspoken truths into Alex’s skin. Alex is at peace, lazy and comfortable and confident in his body, in its form and how he’s using it. This is an Alex blissfully alive and shameless in his own skin, absent the unrelenting control with which he holds himself back, the careful disassociation and denial of his own needs and desires. This is Alex basking in himself rather than swallowing himself whole. It’s intimate and sexy and, until now, Michael had thought only he had seen Alex like this. Only he had earned it.

Michael tears his eyes away from the screen, away from an Alex that’s no longer just his to focus on an Alex that isn’t his at all.

“So, this guy wants to display it or something?” Liz asks.

“Sort of,” Alex says. “There’s some kind of art book he wants to submit it to.”

“Would you get paid?” Maria asks, and Alex snorts, taking his phone back from her when she holds it out to him. 

“I posed for it for free, so I think that window is closed.”

“So you knew he was taking it?” Michael asks abruptly, and Alex furrows his brow.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. 

Michael is suddenly aware of several pairs of eyes on him, and he nods hastily and stammers, “Good. You know. That you weren’t—that you didn’t not know.”

“So what are you gonna do?” Isobel asks, examining her manicure. She seems bored with the conversation now that there’s nothing in front of her to ogle. 

Alex takes a breath, looks down at his screen again.

“I’m gonna sign the form,” he breathes, and Liz actually claps in delight.

“You sure?” Michael can’t stop himself from asking, even as Maria kicks him with the heel of her boot under the table. “Doesn’t seem like something you’d be into, is all.”

Alex narrows his eyes and quirks his lips teasingly, but there’s a bite in the tone of his voice when he asks, “You trying to slut-shame me, Guerin?”

“Never,” he drawls in return. 

Their eyes lock and their smiles slowly fade. 

“I would never,” Michael adds, softer and more sincere. Alex nods once, looks away.

“It’s a gorgeous photograph, Alex,” Maria says, smiling warmly at him. “If you want to share it with the world, I say go for it.”

“And I say let’s go for another round,” Isobel declares, holding up her empty glass, officially over it. “Michael, I believe this one is yours?”

“It’s mine, actually,” Alex says easily, effectively ending the conversation. He grips the table for support as he slides out of his chair and stands, pocketing his phone as he goes. “I’ll be right back.”

***

They’re saying hasty good-byes in the parking lot, Liz and Isobel piling into Max’s car, Max extremely sober behind the wheel. Maria heads back inside to help her staff close up, and Michael stands quietly with Alex, waiting on his rideshare.

“You seem pretty sober to me,” Michael comments, pulling his jacket tighter around his torso.

“I’m tired,” Alex admits, “and my leg is bothering me. It’s just easier for tonight. I’ll pick up my car tomorrow.”

He glances sideways at Michael.

“You don’t have to stand out here with me,” he says. “Go inside and help Maria.”

“Why’re you releasing that picture?” Michael blurts, not realizing the words he’s speaking until they’re out there, irretrievable, and Alex turns slowly to consider him.

“I liked remembering how I felt when Josué took it. I felt free,” he says quietly, and Michael is shocked he’s even deigning to answer. “I was far away from Roswell and everyone in it. I felt strong, like I was in control for once. Maybe if the photo’s out there, that feeling won’t seem so far away.” He smiles mischievously. “And, I mean, I looked good. Hadn’t been too long since basic.”

Michael catches his gaze, holds it.

“Did I make you feel free?”

Alex’s smile is small, but genuine.

“You used to,” he breathes. “For awhile you were the only thing that made me feel that way.” 

 Michael feels his whole body release, as though he’d been holding in a breath, clenching every single muscle unconsciously. Alex shakes his head.

“What?”

“That’s too much pressure,” he says. “No one person can be everything good for someone else.”

Michael looks down and kicks at the dust and grime of the parking lot with his boot, and thinks of Maria.

“I told you I couldn’t be your medicine,” Alex continues, “but I think I was doing the same thing to you. Maybe that’s why I reacted they way I did when you started acting out.”

They let his confession hang in the air between them before Michael, now in possession of a one-track mind apparently, speaks.

“So you aren’t worried someone you know is gonna see it?” Michael asks softly.

Alex shakes his head.

“That’s why it feels safe,” he says. “New York, the 'art scene.' That’s a whole nother world.”

Michael nods, stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

“So, what if someone wanted to see it?”

Alex looks at him blankly.

“What if I wanted to buy a copy?” Michael explains. “I mean, you’re right. You were in spectacular shape back then.”

Alex bursts out laughing.

“Not like now,” Michael goes on, grinning as Alex’s shoulders shake. “You really let yourself go, private.”

The silence between them as their laughter dies is the most comfortable of the night.

“I’m okay with that,” Alex murmurs as a car pulls into the lot and a notification pings on his phone. “Good luck tracking it down, though.”

“Alex?” the driver of the car asks, rolling her window down an inch.

“Yeah,” Alex says, and pulls the car door open.

“Night, Guerin.”

“Sweet dreams, Fabio.”

It takes Michael three months to find the book after Alex mentions that it's out and his photo made the cut, and it takes some intense eBay stalking at that, plus he's out $60—indie press, my ass, he thinks as he clicks purchase. 

[coffee-stained-brain]

I don’t know if it was intentional or not (and frankly, I really don’t care), but David Tennant’s portrayal of Crowley is such a beautiful, honest reflection of what it is like to have adhd. He managed to capture the good parts and the hard parts and all the ways the good parts and the hard parts overlap, and I am just really thankful for it. 

Some of the ways, in no particular order, that I recognized little bits of my own experience through his performance:

Given the choice between self-preservation and showing the tiniest amount of affection to someone he loves, self-preservation loses every time. 

For the most part, he is way toned down when anyone other than Aziraphale is around. When he’s with Aziraphale, he doesn’t have to work quite so hard at manually willing his brain to function “normally”. He trusts Aziraphale. He is comfortable around Aziraphale. 

The few notable exceptions the the above are when he is overwhelmed and caught off guard. In those moments, his symptoms come through a little more, regardless of who is around. 

He has a huge, impending deadline with literal life or death stakes. He is stressed and overwhelmed trying to come up with a plan. The next time we see him, he is watching a movie. 

He fell for asking questions. I cannot adequately convey how deeply, how viscerally, I relate to that. 

He loves so fiercely that he tends to push those very same people away. He knows that he has this tendency. He has no idea how to control it. 

He doesn’t like the damp. 

He is sensitive to bright lights. (Okay, I know the sunglasses really have so much more significance than that, but the first time I saw the series, I didn’t catch any of the deeper significance because I just thought, yep, he wants some semblance of control over the brightness of his environment, that checks out. Yeah, Hell is dark, but it is also filled with florescent lights, and those things hurt!)

He talks to himself all the time. He argues with himself. He questions himself. He is often not particularly kind to himself. 

His brain moves faster than his mouth. 

He either does not sleep at all, or he sleeps for the better part of a century. There is very little in between. 

He appears to survive solely on coffee and alcohol. 

He is overly imaginative. 

He is overly compassionate. 

He uses analogies to make sense of the world, but he isn’t always great at communicating those analogies. 

He arrives at the church, yes, but he arrives late and apologizing. 

He has 2 functional items in his apartment, plus a smattering of things that make him happy. He literally does not bother with anything else-- like paint for the walls, or a second place to sit.

He often zeroes in on a seemingly inconsequential background detail and can’t let it go. 

He is often overwhelmed by a sudden flood of emotion, and he’s not great at hiding it. When he is happy, he is so happy. When he is grumpy, everyone knows. When he is hurting, the hurt is right there at the surface, whether he wants it there or not. 

Despite his stress and inability to plan adequately, he’s actually really great in a crisis. 

His signature move is pausing time. 

He is what you might call an out-of-the-box thinker, except he doesn’t mean to be, he just can’t see the box and so he doesn’t really understand how everyone else knows where the lines are. 

He very often toes the line of what humanity tolerates as socially acceptable. He is just far enough away from socially acceptable for people to be aware that he’s different, but just close enough that nobody can really put their finger on why. 

Despite everything, he seems to have a tiny inkling of faith. 

[roominthecastle]

post--“620″ ramblings about stuff & things

so 620 picks up one week after the succulent goose incident. Despite those 7 days, our Red remains as angry and hurt as he was before (if not more), which is our first key point. “I can neither kill... nor trust... nor forgive.” It’s quite an unsettling thing to hear, to say the least, and Liz, unsettled, immediately counters w/ “You forgave Dembe.” This Liz vs Dembe thread that’s been earnestly pulled on since 618 gives us the second key. It reaches all the way back to the first episode of this season where it gets established why such a comparison is not working as an argument: “That’s different.”

In both 620 and 601 we have a moment where Liz and Red try to drag poor Dembe in between them as an “example” to deflect pressure, but each immediately rejects this stunt bc they both know that the nature of their relationship is different. The forgiveness of a parent (figure) is not forthcoming for Liz bc Red’s feelings for her are not really those of a parent. This exact issue emerged after her faked death, too, and Bokenkamp touched upon Red’s point of view already, i.e. how the parent figure would have to forgive but the romantic partner is, in fact, conflicted [x]. But I’ve already written a longer piece on this duality, so I won’t get into it here.

And Red’s been struggling. He is heartbroken again and not as a parent. A parent’s heartbreak is equated to “being impaled by a unicorn” and -- still barred from being in her life -- it’s little Agnes whom Red watches riding a unicorn on the carousel. :)

With Liz, Red is suffering through something else that 100% parallels what Liz went through w/ Tom re, love, betrayal, and forgiveness. She was in limbo where she couldn’t kill, she couldn’t trust, she couldn’t forgive. She lost control and cold fury was the only way to get some of it back. And then she gave in to hope and “forgave every lie and believed every promise” only to get betrayed again. Red describes his predicament the same way: she “has lied and deceived me and I've forgiven her every time” and “I knew but I let my hopes convince me that she wouldn’t betray me.” This ties straight back to the idea of being in love == being rendered powerless, which is part of a larger quote from James about self-deception vs true romantic love. Part of this had a cameo in S2 and another is echoed at the end of this episode (the greeting card bit).

The topic of appearance vs truth is the third key that slides neatly into the broader question of Red’s identity. We have two important scenes that poke this issue:

one w/ Ressler when he questions Dom’s story and Liz’s willingness to gloss over the holes to preserve a neat surface appearance: “But is it the truth? Does it make sense that this is the answer?”

and the other is w/ torture master Teddy who points out how Red lives a charade: “The code's like the suit and the hat. You feel good wearing it. Look good, too. Million bucks. But, and I gotta think deep down you know this, it's like lipstick on a pig. It can cover a lotta sins. End of the day, it's still trayf.”

and all this nicely echoes Dom’s words from the previous episode (the “architect of this charade” who’s “stepping into the lie”) and the way Red kicks off the whole show in 101: “Everything about me is a lie.”

Red wears a disguise, is the point. “Raymond Reddington” is a lie he’s been inhabiting for a yet to be fully uncovered purpose. But ever since he met Liz, he’s been longing to break from this. It’s clearly expressed in all those emotional moments he shares w/ her, e.g.:

“I haven't been home in years. But if anyone can give me a second chance, it's you.”

“Sailors have been navigating by the stars for thousands of years. Odysseus spent a decade at war. But his biggest battle was finding his way home. That's Polaris, the North Star. That's how sailors used to find their way home. When I look at you, that's what I see. I see my way home.”

“It may be hard for you to imagine, but I once had a relatively normal life... bills to pay, play dates, family, some friends, people to care about. Lost all that. // Lost how? // In Mexico, there are these fish that have colonized the freshwater caves along Sierra del Abra. They were lost. They found themselves living in complete darkness. But they didn't die. Instead, they thrived. They adapted. They lost their pigmentation, their sight, eventually even their eyes. With survival, they became... hideous. I've rarely thought about what I once... was. But I wonder...if a ray of light were to make it into the cave, would I be able to see it? Or feel it? Would I gravitate to its warmth? And if I did, would I become... less hideous?”

When Red looks at Liz and Agnes, the deep longing for that past self w/ a wife and daughter stirs in him. It surfaces when she tells him her simple yet distant dream of walking in the park w/ her husband and daughter. They want the exact same thing. This is consistent throughout the seasons. He’s been gently signaling this to her and she’s been fleeing from it bc he is just... too much and the idea of him in that role in her life is an attractive yet scary image (see her steamy dream of him in S2 that blends sensuality and dread as Red, having murdered her husband, stalks up to her bed asking what she really wants).

Red’s anger as a way to reestablish a semblance of soothing control and Liz’s refusal to face the truth to protect herself are what we have in that last scene in 620. “father figure” is a buffer zone, always has been, it’s part of the charade Red lives while wearing Reddington’s identity. Despite having pushed for the truth, she is now trying to lock him into this lie, telling him that that’s what he will always be. And if you keep in mind those quotes above that show how Red longs for a past life around her, then you can see how her words likely inflict more pain.

This brings another quote from Red to mind:

“You said something before. The truth doesn’t matter, that the only thing in this world that matters is just the appearance of truth. I fear you might be right about that. Lately I find that the truth has become… so elusive. Often imaginary. But in the end, it’s all that we’re left with, isn’t it? What is real, what you can taste and touch and feel. The words that pass between us as we look each other in the eye are… all we have to hold on to. The truth. I hold it dear.”

In their first scene where Liz talks about finally having the opportunity to be completely honest w/ each other, they sit face to face. And then promptly dance back from it all, esp Red. Then she soon admits to Ressler that she might be closing her eyes to the whole truth to keep things simple, safe and "sweet”. And so in their last scene, there is no eye contact at all as she tells Red that it doesn’t matter who he once was (never mind that months ago she was willing to put him in jail to find out) bc this fake identity is who he is and who he will always be, which apparently dictates that he must play father and grandfather.

The sheer arrogance and presumptuousness of this statement are already begging for a strong rebuttal but it also nicely reflects Liz’s tendency to make things about herself while brushing aside how others might feel or think. She did this w/ Tom when she refused to see who he really was and tried to convince herself he’d changed. And she does this to Ressler, too, when she tells him she knows he did everything bc he thought it was what was best for her, never mind that that was not Ressler’s motivation at all and he, in fact, said that to her already. Her last scene w/ Red has this vibe to it.

The fact that Agnes is part of this park scene is no coincidence, imo. Red is not comfortable w/ playing Liz’s dad. If he were, he wouldn’t have denied being her dad when she asked him in S1 (since wearing Reddington’s identity provides the wiggle room here), he wouldn’t have winced and cringed every time she referred to him as “father” in S5, and he wouldn’t have had the same reaction at the end of 620, either. He doesn’t embrace it, he doesn’t like it, he just endures it. There was a (sadly discarded) line back in S1/S2 about how he would be willing to play any role she wanted him to play but I believe something has changed since then. Even back in 102, he enthusiastically offers her the role of girlfriend and when she refuses, he flatly tells her that she can play daughter then. The preference on his part seems consistent but it will always be up to Liz to give the green light. Or the red one.

He wants to be a father to Agnes and he’s already confessed it in 319 (“I would give anything to be a part of that child's life... hold her... watch her grow.”). And the only time during the park scene when we can see the cold tension melt off him is when he sees the little girl. And when he hears Liz’s decision to bring Agnes home, his stony demeanor crumbles completely.

This is also where another part of that quote from James mentioned above seeps into the dialog: when Red remarks that Liz’s code is not a code but a greeting card -- confused, self-deceiving bullshit (just like Teddy called his code part of a charade designed to hide the scary truth). They are still not being honest w/ each other, they don’t look each other in the eye, they are still dancing around the actual truth at the core of their relationship. Red is deeply hurt, all his hopes seemingly dashed, which drives him to clam up even more and detach to mitigate the pain. He can’t kill but he can try and kill his true feelings for her, I suppose. And Liz is still afraid to face what it is exactly that fuels his intimate commitment to her, so she draws a line in the sand, declaring it permanent. But...

“You know the problem with drawing lines in the sand? With a breath of air, they disappear.”

James stated -- while talking about TBL -- that he’s not interested in material that doesn’t have a romantic/sexual aspect to explore. He also said that he is fascinated by Red and Liz’s relationship, that Red’s feelings for her are strong, complex, and complicated, and that neither is sure of the true nature of their relationship.

so bottom line (to quote Ressler who’s fast becoming the only voice of reason now that Dembe left): Red locked in the surrogate parent role just bc he wears Reddington’s identity for a different, still mostly unknown purpose -- is it the truth? does it make sense that this is the answer?

nope.

And I think it’s interesting that Cooper was designated as a “spokesperson” when he is in the dark about what happened between Red and Liz: the one who is mostly in the dark speaks about a family bond but his assessment (of love, faith, commitment) could easily pass for a wedding vow, too. It’s nothing but fitting, imo.

This latest fallout created a huge fracture in the Red/Liz relationship and I don’t expect them to repair it in the 2 episodes we have left this season. But Agnes is back and I think she will be the glue for these two idiots in the long run, allowing them to slip into a family rhythm that could potentially coax some buried feelings to the surface -- feelings both are trying to ignore at the moment.

[styomi]

Friday Girl: Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Huangshan Maofeng Tea - Yellow Mountain Fur Peak

Prompt: Sees the others' living space

Quote: "It must be hard with your sense of direction, never being able to find your way to a decent pickup line."

Kuga Terunori was in high spirits. Though, it wasn't his usual cheery self. No, this was different. He was in extremely high spirits. Genuine ones. There was some kind of a different spark to the way he moved that wok around, and there was a spring in his step as he served the food he'd made with absolute pride. Heck, he even bothered to thank the men at the Chinese Cuisine RS for taste-testing. Altogether, this odd occurrence made the second seat of the Elite Ten quite interested.

"You got some new spices that will burn my tongue off, Kuga?" Rindō asked, sitting on the chair at the Chinese Cuisine RS, her legs pulled up on it in a very unladylike manner. Nene would definitely scold her if she saw that.

"Maybe," Terunori blew her a raspberry, but still served her food. He knew by then exactly how to avoid questions from the persistent and quite nosy second seat - feed her. Rindō was easily distracted, like a small child or a curious animal. Terunori planned to use every single one of the tricks and tips on how to avoid the Elite Ten in order to hide Mayumi from them.

It wasn't that he was ashamed. No, far from that. Mayumi was nothing to be ashamed about. She was, in fact, everything to be proud of. However, Terunori was all too familiar with the nature of Tōtsuki students and staff. After all, he was one of them. Arrogant, snobby, determined, childish and borderline insane was how he would describe anyone at the school, in just a few adjectives. And, he knew how Rindō was. If she found out about Mayumi, Terunori could kill his peace at The Emerald Dragon goodbye. Rindō would definitely bring the whole council there.

"Eat up, eat up," and so Terunori opted for the safest path out of that minefield. "Eat up and get out. You know, leave, hurry, go, bye-bye sempai!" He shamelessly urged her, waving his hands for her to get out.

"But I'm bored, Kuga!" Rindō bored was always trouble. He knew that he needed to redirect her attention as quickly as possible to something other than his private Friday afternoons. "Entertain me! Kuga!"

"I heard they needed some help with identifying grasshoppers at the Insect RS," actually, he'd been asked to help. After all, they had wanted to spice the grasshoppers up and make them the traditional Chinese way. However, due to the bags being unlabeled, the two types of grasshoppers, differently preserved, had gotten all mixed up. Terunori had never quite fancied eating them, so he'd been avoiding going down to Insect RS and try grasshopper after grasshopper from three shipments of mixed bags.

"Grasshoppers?!" His tactic had worked brilliantly, as Rindō polished off her plate, placing it into the sink and bounding off with glee. "Thanks for the food, Kuga!"

But, Terunori 's hard day was just starting. He hadn't slept that night. In fact, he'd been having trouble sleeping for a while. He knew what he had to do. He just had to do it. But, the task was beyond daunting. It was more daunting than facing Tsukasa in a Shokukegi. Alright, perhaps he was exaggerating. Perhaps it wasn't that bad. But, it still got his hands to falter in their movements through the recipe whenever he thought to what he had to do. The stopwatch dinged, telling Terunori that he had to go if he planned to be on time. And, he had to be on time, because everything had to be perfect. He would make certain that it was perfect.

The Emerald Dragon was busy, as always, when he got there. He was just on time, right past noon. The girl who greeted him at the door wasn't Mayumi. It was the Chinese server who always gave him sly looks, as if she knew a secret even he didn't.

"Welcome back, Terunori-bocchama," she greeted him, giving that coy look once more. Terunori didn't rise to the challenge, though.

"My usual table, Chunhua-chan," he grinned cutely at her, enjoying the slight jump of her eyebrow when he didn't take the bait. "I'll have Huangshan Maofeng, with the pot."

"Understood, young master," Chunhua bowed to him politely, then vanished from the traditional table which he sat at comfortably. It had been at least a month since he'd gone stargazing with Mayumi. And, their Fridays at the Emerald Dragon had changed. She stopped by his table often, just for a chat, and spent her breaks in pleasant conversation with him, rather than alone in the back. On the other hand, that had made it incredibly hard for Terunori to actually get some work done. He would always have different mixes of spices that he would try upon leaving the Emerald Dragon. But, those times were gone now. Now, he left the tea shop with only millions of questions in his brain, scurrying around like his workers when the recipe was new. And, he didn't mind it one bit.

"Hello, Terunori-kun," Mayumi offered him a small bow as she passed and Terunori felt the feeling from before in his limbs again. His hands were trembling, and he ended up squeezing the life out of the small recipe notebook.

"How hey are you?" How did he manage to botch that up?! Hey, how are you? How hard was that? How?! Terunori felt his face flush, hoping for the earth to simply open up and swallow him. But, instead, all that happened was Mayumi giggling, her hand coming up to cover her mouth.

"I'm doing good, what about you?" Terunori wanted to slap himself and try and get past these yips that he was having. It was beyond embarrassing.

"Good," he chose to stick to one-word answers. After all, how hard would it be to mess those up? "If I were to ask you out on a date, would your answer be the same as the answer to this question?" However, his brain had decided to stop cooperating with his mouth at the most unfortunate of times. And, apparently, it had decided to spill out all the silly pick up lines he'd looked up in the past week. Mayumi's head tilted to the side, in absolute confusion.

"E-eh? What?" Terunori was only aware of his mouth opening again and the blush on his face intensifying to almost impossible proportions.

"Cupid called. He wants to tell you that he needs my heart back." Curse his brain. Work, dammit, not the mouth, but the brain! However, there was no cooperation. Judging by Mayumi's growing smile, she found it beyond amusing. "I'd say God bless you, but it looks like He already did."

"Oh my God!" She finally broke at the last one, bursting into laughter and successfully gaining them the attention of the whole tea shop. Terunori spotted Chunhua practically dying in a corner behind the counter, wheezing. However, his brain wasn't done placing him into yet another degree of mortification.

"Do I know you?" Mayumi's head shot up, the girl trying to hold in her laughter. "Because you look a lot like my next girlfriend." And she lost it again, putting her hands up to physically try to stop him from going for more backup lines.

"Stop, stop, oh God, Terunori, please stop," she wheezed through laughter, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes as she tried to stay standing. "I'll go out with you, just please, no more lines!"

"Today?" He really wished his brain would connect to his mouth and put some kind of impulse control filter on it.

"Sure, today," Mayumi agreed, nodding. Maybe, though, his mouth was doing a fine job of it.

"After work then?" Terunori finally gained some semblance of control over himself, looking at the girl brightly.

"Sur-oh, I can't," Mayumi frowned. "I need to go home to change, because I dirtied my clothes today. I've only got the uniform here." Terunori couldn't help but look down at the qipao which suited her more than he could ever word. It was alright with him, going on a date in that silk dress. Though, he probably wouldn't be able to hold himself back from taking his hands off of her form if she did wear it.

"I can drive you?" he suggested with a shrug. "Then we can decide where to go, Mayuchin?" Terunori could tell that the tension that had been present like a fever in his body was draining, leaving him feeling slightly boneless. Though, he still managed to grin brightly at the girl, slipping into his comfortable persona that he'd developed after entering Tōtsuki.

"Oh, alright then," Mayumi smiled at him, then bowed and walked away to return to her duties. Chunhua passed moments later, tapping him on the shoulder in a rather patronizing manner.

"Nice going, bocchan," she coyly remarked. "Top comedy marks." And she was gone, leaving a horribly blushing Terunori in her wake.

Mayumi didn't live in a 'good' neighborhood. Then again, she didn't live in a 'bad' neighborhood either, if he dared to be a little more objective. Her building was one of the many, almost indistinguishable ones, that lay on the peaceful street. When Mayumi directed his driver, telling him where to park, Terunori couldn't help but stare. The two exited the town car as he asked, unable to stop himself.

"How do you know which one's yours?" With a tilt of his head, arms crossed, the boy glanced between the buildings. Mayumi didn't get offended. Instead, the girl giggled.

"Well, I used to have that issue," she admitted, fishing out her keys and waving him over to follow her into one of the numerous similar buildings. "I used to remember that mine was the fourth after the willowy tree, but they cut it down some time ago. Now, I just kinda know?"

"Ah, instincts," Terunori laughed to himself, and she joined in. The girl led them into the building, the lights turning on automatically. They entered the elevator and she pressed the fifth floor. Her door was on the left, number twenty-three.

"Here we are," Mayumi said shyly, unlocking the door and turning on the lights. Terunori stood still for a second, not really sure how to proceed. The girl took off her coat and hung it beside a tall mirror, toeing off her boots and entering. "Coming?" Terunori nodded, mimicking her actions and following her inside.

It wasn't a big place, he could see that immediately. In fact, compared to his own apartment, it was tiny. To the left, there was a small bathroom, and to the right, a closed room which he deduced had to be her bedroom. The hallway led them straight into the living room, with a small couch, low coffee table, and sitting pillows. There was a soft carpet under their feet, as well. The apartment didn't have a TV, but Terunori spotted a laptop on the couch. The living room connected to an open kitchen, separated only by a small counter, behind which he found a surface designed to making food. Cupboards lined the wall inside the kitchen, and he eyed a tall fridge, as well as a sink and a dishwasher. There was also a microwave and a coffee maker in the corner, which didn't look much used.

"Cozy," Terunori commented, swinging back and forth on the balls of his feet. Mayumi placed her bag next to the coffee table and turned with a nervous smile.

"It's not much, but it's mine," she told him.

"No, no, it's great," Terunori smoothly lied. He felt like it needed more space. He needed more space. Perhaps she could move into his own apartment? Yes, that would be quite nice. He wouldn't mind sharing the space, especially as Mayumi seemed rather tidy.

"It's really not," the girl frowned, letting him know that she'd seen through his lie. "It's smaller than I would've liked it to be. But, this is what I could rent from my salary at the Emerald Dragon. So, nobody can interfere with the space."

"Ah, overbearing family?" Terunori suddenly understood. She didn't want to use her family money to get her own space. She wanted it to be hers. Only hers. Even though he'd never faced that kind of an issue, he could understand it.

"You could say so," Mayumi grinned. "I'm just going to take a quick shower and change, make yourself at home." The girl took out some things from her bag and went into the room near the entrance. Terunori was left awkwardly standing in the small living room. When she exited her bedroom again, he stopped her, despite the change of clothes and the towel in her hands.

"Say, Mayucchi, wanna have our date here?" He smoothly asked. When she looked at him with an inquisitive glance, Terunori quickly elaborated. "I could cook us something and we could watch a movie? I bet you're tired from all the work you did today." With a smile from him, he knew that she was sold.

"Um, alright," the girl agreed. "Then, if you don't mind, let's do that." Terunori eagerly nodded, pushing her towards the bathroom.

"Go, go, shower," he paused in his movements for a second. "Do you like spicy cuisine?"

"As long as it's not too spicy, I'm alright," she told him before he finally pushed her into the small bathroom, catching a glimpse of the insides of the room. A toilet, a low shower, a big mirror and multiple shelves stacked with products.

"Okay, have a good time in the shower," Terunori grinned, closing the door on the girl's amused face. He went back to the living room with a determined face. Terunori wandered into the kitchen, opening the fridge and the cupboards, inspecting her supplies. "Not too bad," he grinned to himself. "I can work with this."

And, Terunori started working his magic. He'd decided on making the usual, traditional Chinese food from the available ingredients. The dishes would be sweet-sour chicken with rice and dumplings, and the nian gao as dessert. He knew that he would have to get a bit creative with the dessert, but the rest could be made with ease from the contents of Mayumi's kitchen.

Terunori found an apron next to the fridge and tied it behind his back, washing his hands at the sink, before he got started. He resisted placing a little more than necessary spices from his back pocket into the chicken while preparing it. He kept holding himself back, as Mayumi wasn't a big fan of spicy things. He got so absorbed in his work, that he didn't even notice when the girl herself joined him, opting to sit on the counter from the living room side.

"Woah, you scared me!" Terunori balked, placing his hand over his quickly beating heart when he turned from the stove, only to see the girl curiously watching him. She giggled, her hand going up to cover her mouth.

"I'm sorry," Mayumi apologized. "You seemed like you were in your element, so I felt bad interrupting," she watched as his hands moved with practiced precision, quickly over the numerous ingredients, getting the dough for the dessert ready. "You seem to be an expert in the kitchen." She mused, making Terunori falter in his movements. He hadn't meant to show her. Heck, he needed to slow down. Terunori purposefully started slowing down gradually in his usual routine.

"Ah, I suppose I'm not that bad," he laughed.

"Where did you learn how to cook so well?" That question made him stop short. Then, his hands continued working as he heard that the chicken was ready for the next stage by the sizzling of the oil.

"Nobody's ever asked me that," he chuckled, thrown off. "I had a caretaker growing up, since my parents were always busy with work," Terunori divulged a secret he rarely brought into the open with anyone. "She had this way of making the house smell really homely, with her cooking. She was Chinese and she always made the spiciest things. I suppose I learned a lot from her." He concluded with a shrug. True enough, he had learned a lot from the woman. But, those had merely been the seeds to the tree he'd grown on his own. His skills weren't those which one would use to cook every day in a kitchen for the family. He was a chef. He was a chef worthy of his 8th Seat, regardless of the spiciness on the menu.

"That's really cute," Mayumi giggled again, making the boy turn around, red-faced, and pout at her.

"Don't make fun of me," he whined.

"Oh, I'm not," Mayumi slid from her spot on the counter, walking over to him while he was finishing up the chicken. "I just find you really cute, Terunori-kun." That got his face to become even redder. And, then she completely destroyed him by snaking her hands around his middle, head resting at his back for a brief moment. Terunori felt his body go into overdrive, suddenly more aware of every place which Mayumi touched, rather than the food in front of him. A gentle kiss pressed right under his ear, before the girl pulled away. "Honestly, I'm surprised that you're this cute. I always thought that you were kind of creepy, always watching me silently." Terunori managed to collect himself enough to retaliate.

"Well, it's kinda hard to gather the courage to talk to a girl for us guys, alright?" He shot back with another pout on his face as he continued checking on the food and adding things here and there.

"True, it must be hard with your sense of direction," Mayumi mused with a smile on her face. "Never being able to find your way to a decent pickup line." Terunori balked, turning to her.

"They were all decent, I'll have you know!" That made her laugh, and honestly, he didn't even mind that she was laughing at him. The way she looked at that moment, in her oversized sweater and tights, with that long hair still damp from the shower, laughing merrily in the kitchen, it was more mesmerizing than her working at the Emerald Dragon. She was exquisite, and Terunori knew that he would never let her go.

"Decently hilarious, sure enough!" Mayumi laughed and he couldn't help joining in. Yes, she was truly exquisite, like the rarest of spices or the most delicious of teas. He was certain that he wouldn't be letting her slip through his fingers anytime soon.

That's all for now folks! I hope you enjoyed :D

Next chapter prompt preview:

Prompt: Takes a photo together Quote: "I was going to go for a suave pickup line, but I got all flustered when I saw you."

Looking forward to your feedback on this :D

[flatstarcarcosa]

house/home

Ship: wilson and wilson at large warnings: exploration of trauma and PTSD, references to abuse note: this ended up being similar to the last thing i did, what started out as a simple headcanon exploration turned into an emotionally charged, rambling piece that at one point, turns into a story. it has not been proof read yet. 

                                  --------------------------------------------

slade and i discover pretty quickly after the move to vermont that simply packing my shit and taking care of any lingering obligations in florida i was tied too is not, in fact, the entire solution to my problems. 

which of course ties into the larger theme of our whole relationship at this point in that we’re both just constantly attempting to run away from our problems, our pasts, our trauma all while scolding each other and saying it doesn’t work like that. 

he finds i don’t get settled right away. or even within a few weeks or months. the vermont house, for all purposes, for the longest of time, is not my house. it is not my home. i quickly default back into the same mindset i have had my entire life, drilled and beaten into me since i was a child that if someone else has paid for it, if someone else has bought it, if someone else has acquired it and is allowing me to use it, 

it is not mine. it is theirs.

which of course, that’s not the mindset that slade is coming from. he picked the vermont house because it made the most sense logistically. it was already there, sitting and waiting. filled with belongings he could never fit in elsewhere, filled with dust, filled with ghosts of memories past. 

it made sense to use it. 

so when we finally arrive, both regretting the initial idea of turning the move into a road trip, my things are waiting in storage containers. two large ones, sitting in the driveway and blocking access to the detached garage. 

the house smells of pine and wood and must, having been shuttered up for so long. he comments that he can’t exactly remember the last time he was here, and he opens windows and adjusts the thermostat as he moves through. 

everything is decorated in warm colors and wood, brown furniture and carpeting, and old linoleum in the kitchen that has seen better days. it’s distinctly him, and his presence coats everything i touch, as if his absence has meant nothing. 

which it probably hasn’t. after all, a house is four walls and a roof and completely unconcerned with the on-goings inside it.

my things get moved in at an easy pace, boxes stacked out of the way in the basement while we try to figure out placement. 

slade jokes we’re both going to have to pick and choose on the books; my amount added to his exceeding the capacity. he comments something about adding more bookcases in his study, and he trails off when he mentions something about adeline always wanting that done years ago. 

there’s pictures of her in his study. her, and grant, and joey. more pictures of the three of them alone or together than there are of slade with them all. one in particular, that i find by accident stuffed behind a novel about Achilles, specifically has slade’s face cut out of it. i don’t ask. i don’t have to. 

over the next few weeks my presence adds to his. 

we have a fake argument about the two batman statues i have, me putting them on shelves in the living room only to find them in absurd places the next day. he puts one in the freezer, another in a garbage can. 

my small collection of novelty mugs makes it’s way into the kitchen, along of course, with my shot glasses. we decide to donate my coffee maker, as slade’s is bigger and still functional. 

at first we come to what seems like the logical conclusion that my bedroom items will go in his room; in the master bedroom. we put my bedframe in the basement, wrap the mattress for now and leave it leaning next to it. my sheet sets go in the closet, i add my pillows to his bed. 

my shampoo and my facial cleansers sit next to his in the bathroom, our toothbrushes resting in the holder. my cologne next to his. my clippers in the box under the cabinet, next to a tiered container holding make up. my nail polish nestles next to his beard trimmer. 

as the weeks go by, little by little i try to claim the offered spaces as my own. 

i wake up one day to find he’s changed the living room furniture, i’m not sure why, and he seems oddly evasive about it. he jokes something about one of the kids throwing a party once, someone leaving nasty stains. he always meant to replace it. 

he always meant to do a lot of things, he says. 

i realize we’re both being crushed by our own innate guilt, whether rational or not, and that all we’ve done is try to run away from it again. 

and of course, it hasn’t worked. it doesn’t work, it will never work, because you cannot run from these things. they are a train, and you cannot outrun a train. 

i find myself wide awake one night, the sound of him breathing softly and measured next to me, and i’m staring up in the dark at a still unfamiliar ceiling and i realize that nothing is right,

none of this is right, none of this fits. 

i am not, yet, accustomed to this new space. im unused to the noises of the house settling, the noises inside and out of it, and i lay there in the blinding dark desperately searching for something familiar to latch onto before i sink to the bottom 

and i find nothing. 

even his warm, solid form right next to me isn’t enough to tether me to the present and once again i’m overcome with the unalienable need to run. 

he finds me on the back porch hours later, having apparently rolled over and noticed my absence, half a pack of cigarettes butted in the ash tray next to me, another one trailing smoke into the sky from my hand. i am still not calm enough to speak, and knowing that i will have to feels like a vice on my chest.  

my mind races to prepare answers, the raging urge of self-preservation steering towards the right answers, and the correct answers, and the answers the other party wants to hear, and it is a habit i never foresee myself breaking. 

the entire time i am screaming at myself to stop because it’s not necessary and it is not appropriate. and logically, i know this. my brain acknowledges the commands yet tells me so sorry there’s nothing we can do to stop this, it’s a train after all. 

he picks out a cigarette of his own, gently pulling the lighter from between the fingers on my other hand. he sits down on the edge of my seat, to my right of course, always to my right and the side he can see from. he exhales a lungful of smoke and for a few moments, the questions don’t come. 

my brain stops misfiring, the synapses all seeming to come to a stop as they compare now to then and finally decide, yes 

yes we can stop now. 

yes, you were right, now is not the same as then. 

a semblance of control returns to my body as he reaches behind me to lean on the back of the chair. 

“where’d you go?” he asks, casually, simply. as if that’s the most logical question to ask, as if that makes perfect sense, and i almost want to scream

because it absolutely is.  

and yet, even still, “what?” is all i can choke out, and i know my attempt to cover it with a cough from the cigarette is as see through as glass, but i do it anyway.

“you went somewhere,” he says, tapping ash. his fingers trail up my back, coming to rest at the nape of my neck, his thumb rubbing circles against my hairline. 

“i...i don’t know,” i say, and i want to cry all over again because of how far away and how small i sound. 

“hm,” is all he responds with. he nudges me with a knee, and i slide over and allow him to sit fully. i stub out my cigarette and immediately reach for another one, and he flicks the lighter and doesn’t comment on the chain smoking and for several minutes we say nothing. 

i know he’s waiting on me to invite him in. to give a cue, a sign that yes i’m fine now and yes i will be fine and yes i will give you a new list of all my problems and you can find out how to fix them, because that’s what you constantly try to do, because that’s all you know how to do, even to the point of creating problems just so you can solve them.  

and i cannot give him that because i know deep, deep within the most choked off parts of myself that there are just things that cannot, will not be fixed. 

and they cannot be run from, either. 

but they can accommodated. they can be unearthed and they can be tended to and they can be allowed to breathe and perhaps if i stop trying to strangle myself into the submission of others, i could get a foothold in my own mind. 

“could you maybe...move my bed and some of my stuff in the basement to one of your spare bedrooms?” i ask, and i hope that the fearfulness i’m feeling at daring to ask for something to be done for my comfort isn’t drowning my words. 

he lets out a smoky sigh, tilting his head back and looking up at the stars as he brushes his fingers against my steaming cheek. 

“i forgot how much you need a space of your own,” he says. my brain, still partially controlled by ghosts pulling on the strings of trauma, searches desperately for anything in his voice to justify the panic. for the annoyance, the exasperation, the condemnation, 

and yet there is nothing to find. 

“of course,” he says, “we can clear out one of the spare bedrooms and we can move as much of your stuff into it as you need.” 

he stresses all the right words in all the right ways so that it doesn’t come across as sarcastic or demeaning in response to my obvious needs and for a moment i could swear i black out as everything that i’ve fought for so long to snuff out explodes into sparks. 

i drop my cigarette at one point, completely unaware i’ve done it as i lean forward and press my head into his chest, fingers coiling into his shirt and he slips an arm around my waist and tugs me closer, leaning me against his hip in what feels like a practiced motion that he’s done hundreds of times.  

“i’m sorry,” i say, breathing the words into him. 

“that’s fine,” he says. “you’re fine.” 

“i know,” i say. 

we fall into silence for a while, interrupted only when i hear him sniffing, and for a moment i think is he crying too, now? did i start this?  then suddenly he’s swearing, jumping out of the chair and nearly knocking me to the porch, and i’m so startled all i can do is blink like a confused animal as i register the smell of smoldering wood.

“your cigarette is burning a hole in the porch,” he says, stepping away to turn the light on. 

and as i watch him go to reflexively grind the cigarette out with his foot, stopping when he realizes he’s not wearing shoes to turn and grab one of my boots from our shoe stand just outside the door, i can’t stop the laughter that bubbles up from my core. 

i hear a train whistle in the distance, and i can’t make out if it is a real whistle, or my auditory wiring misfiring, and i don’t care. i’ll ask him tomorrow, if there’s train tracks somewhere nearby, because it settles in the back of my mind that there will be a tomorrow, and a day after, and a day after that, and it wraps around me like a fuzzy jacket. 

he offers a hand and i take it, and it slips down to my waist as he leads me back inside. 

“you know, you don’t have to try to burn our house down to get my attention,” he says as the door slides shut behind us, and there’s the faintest hint of a smile on his lips as he speaks. i catch sight of the moonlight streaming in behind him, and it imposes on my eyes the sight from what feels like so long ago, 

the sun light beaming down on him in a florida parking lot as he looks down to grab for the dog’s leash, a stranger in my home saving my only friend from running head first into traffic while hunting a lone lizard

and i think what are the odds, 

that then is, in fact, so similar to now. 

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 40

In which oaths are bent, bonds are formed, and Egwene is both awesome and kind of terrifying.

Chapter 40: The Tower Shakes

Siuan awoke with a start. Something was wrong.

Oh so very many things, Siuan. Where to even begin?

Gareth Bryne is a blademaster? Did we know this before? Also he’s shirtless, for those who appreciate such things. Siuan certainly seems to.

He’d buttoned up his high collar, marked with three stars on the left breast

I thought WoT military rankings were denoted by knots, not stars?

“Scout’s report. Something is going on in the city.”

“Something is wrong.” “Something is going on in the city.” Alright, we need to have a talk about what exactly constitutes a report. And also about specificity in general.

Bryne seems to agree, and the scout gets as far as ‘bursts of light’ and ‘dark shadows’ near the Tower. That’s…helpful to those of us with the benefit of foreshadowing, but not so helpful to the in-world layperson.

Though I suppose Siuan is among those who have had the benefit of foreshadowing, as Egwene did tell her about her dream of the Seanchan attacking.

“They could be Shadowspawn, my Lord,” the soldier said, trotting after Bryne. “Stories tell of creatures of shadow that fly in such a way.”

Stories like ‘The Nine Rings’, perhaps?

Either way, Siuan and Bryne know a plot point when they see it and figure that this must be Egwene’s predicted Seanchan attack on the Tower. Bryne’s confused about the lack of a ground assault, but as someone who’s adjusted his own strategies to account for instantaneous travel it seems like he’d be a bit more openminded. And nervous; tactics that don’t seem to make sense should be something of a red flag to a skilled general, I should think.

“Well,” Gareth said, “so long as they attack Tar Valon, they are no problem of ours.”

Except Tar Valon is a problem of yours. That’s the entire point. You can’t unify the Tower if you sit on the sidelines as it’s attacked and think ‘at least it’s not us’. This isn’t a ‘their issue’ versus ‘our issue’ – it’s all your issue, and treating it as anything else only reinforces the sense of division when there needs to be unity. Their entire purpose here is the Tower, one way or another; they can’t just sit back and watch it try to defend itself without their aid.

“I’m getting her out,” Siuan said suddenly, surprising herself.

Bryne spun toward Siuan, into the light of her globe. His chin was shadowed by evening stubble. “What?”

“Egwene,” Siuan said. “We need to go in for her. This will provide a perfect distraction, Gareth! We can go in and grab her before anyone is the wiser.” He eyed her.

“What?” 

“You gave your word not to rescue her, Siuan.”

Not only that, but how would it look to those in the Tower if the one who has so long claimed to be their Amyrlin and stood for Tower unity and tried to get them to see how Elaida was destroying the Tower around her just up and vanished when the Tower is attacked? How would it look if she were to disappear the moment the Tower needs all the help it can get defending itself? Surely that would undermine her efforts more than just about anything else could.

But Siuan and Bryne aren’t looking at this the way Egwene is. Their thinking is aligned with the Rebels, not with the notion of a unified Tower. They, too, are part of this division – hard not to be, given that they’ve declared war on Elaida and are camped outside the Tower and preparing for invasion and war…but it’s not division they need, right now.

“The Amyrlin is confident that she can care for herself.”

“I thought I could care for myself too,” Siuan said. “And look where it got me.” She shook her head, glancing toward the distant spire of Tar Valon.

Oh, Siuan. One can almost forget, sometimes, just how far she has fallen and how much she’s been through. Because she just keeps fighting, and doesn’t dwell on it…but then there are moments like these, where you remember alongside her.

And from that perspective, it becomes easier to see why she is so immediately determined to go get Egwene out of there.

“When Egwene speaks of the Seanchan, she always shivers. Very little upsets her—not the Forsaken, not the Dragon Reborn. Gareth, you don’t know what the Seanchan do to women who can channel.” She met his eyes. “We nee to go for her.”

Egwene is facing her worst fear right now; Siuan is right that very little upsets her, and there’s not much that can genuinely frighten her at this point. But now the Seanchan are attacking, as she’s known they would and dreaded they would and no one listened to her, and now they’re there and Egwene can’t even channel, and she’s effectively alone. Being treated as a novice and then a prisoner in the Tower, and embracing pain was one thing; there, Egwene had her sense of self and her absolute conviction that she was fighting for a necessary cause. This must be so much harder, to face the people who collared her and enslaved her and have haunted her nightmares. It’s not a pain she can just embrace; it’s a fear she struggles to even be rational about—and for good reason. But now she has to face even that, and somehow do so in a way that won’t undermine everything else she’s doing.

No pressure or anything, Egwene. Just face some of your worst fears and traumatic memories while effectively powerless and still more or less a prisoner in a hostile environment you’re trying to win to your side right after you’ve just been handed a massive shock in the form of a list of all the Black Ajah who surround you by a woman who died in your bed. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

“I will not be a party to this,” he said stubbornly. “Fine,” Siuan spat. Fool man! “Go take care of your men. I think I know someone who will help me.”

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Fine.

Egwene!

Maybe it’s because I’ve been sitting on last chapter’s cliffhanger for a few days now, but I feel even more invested than I should be in whatever is about to happen. I think it’s also because there are a few layers to this: on the individual character level, you have Egwene facing her worst fears and memories from probably the entire series so far in a very direct and immediate way. She hasn’t had any contact at all with the Seanchan since TGH but they’ve left a very clear impact on her psyche, and so there’s a lot riding on a battle with them at this point in the series, when character arcs are being wrapped up and the final stage is being set. It’s always exciting to see a character face and potentially even overcome their fears, or be confronted with and have to somehow deal with something traumatic from their past…but of course, that’s not all this is.

Because there’s also the level of not just Egwene’s own character arc, but her role as Amyrlin in the struggle for the Tower. She’s a girl facing some truly horrific memories, but she’s also trying to defend the Tower itself, and still trying to unify it from within, to win it over to her, to claim authority so that she can preserve the Tower and the Aes Sedai. And so she has to face this fight not just as herself, but with the additional pressure of having to face it as a strong Amyrlin, having to face it on the entire Tower’s behalf. To protect not just herself but all of them.

And to do so from a position of what should be no power at all.

So there’s…a lot riding on this; multiple arcs and storylines could turn on this one battle. It’s a critical point on several different levels, and they all feed into and play off of one another, so it’s this sense of hundreds of threads all being pulled into this one single point, this one climactic event around which everything will turn and on which so much depends.

I’m excited to see how this goes, is what I’m trying to say here.

“The Dark One!” Nicola wailed. “The Last Battle! It’s come!”

“Nicola!” Egwene snapped, straightening up. “Control yourself.”

Yeah, Nicola? You are really just not helping. That is absolutely the last thing Egwene needs to deal with right now.

But that’s part of what makes this so…I can’t think of a good word. It’s part of what makes it feel like the stakes are so high here, part of what drives the tension and importance up, part of what makes it feel like something that’s about to be monumental and very likely impressive. Is there a word for the anticipation of the particular brand of awesome that comes when a character comes well and truly into their own, against the greatest of obstacles? Because I think—at least, I sincerely hope—that’s what we’re about to see here. And this is the sort of thing that builds that sense of anticipation and…investment, I suppose.

It’s that sense of everything piling on top of Egwene, coupled with the belief in her that she will triumph.

Because there is so much being put on her shoulders right now.

Faced with one of the only things that has the power to upset or frighten her, she cannot afford even a moment or a semblance of weakness. It’s not fair, but there it is. She has to be strong for all of them; she has to be their strength, and reassure those who need it, and there is no one to reassure her. She has to help Nicola through her fear, and likely help others; she has to be someone they can draw strength from in order to face this…but all of that strength has to come from somewhere. And so she has to find it in herself, not just for her but for those around her; she has to not only find it but be able to give it away freely. While faced with one of her greatest fears, she cannot look to anyone else for comfort or reassurance, and on top of that she must provide it. It’s the price of the role she seeks to claim but damn.

Although…not to minimise the difficulty of the situation she’s in because it really is A Situation in every possible way, but I’ve always found it actually easier, perhaps oddly, to remain calm and in control and capable in a situation that’s difficult or frightening if others are depending on me to do so. If you’re the one who has to see everyone through something, there’s almost a kind of clarity to be found in that particular form of pressure. Not detachment, exactly, but the ability born of necessity to set aside your own sense of fear/stress/other immediate negative emotion and just…deal with the situation because someone has to. So maybe there’s something to be said for that.

Of course, this is taking that to an extreme—to put it mildly—so…there’s that.

Portions of the Tower’s wings below were alight with flames, and to her horror, Egwene saw several gaping holes directly in the sides of the Tower.

All of her efforts and holding it together and it’s like the Tower is just determined to fall apart around her in any way it can. In the way a three-year-old is absolutely dead-set on not eating their vegetables, and if that means throwing the entire plate on the floor then, well, that’s what’s going to happen.

Also I feel like this is probably not what the Aes Sedai were going for with the whole ‘flame of Tar Valon’ image. Like, WRONG METAPHOR. ABORT, ABORT.

Soldiers would soon follow. Soldiers and sul’dam. With those leashes. Egwene shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. The cool, seamless metal. The nausea, the degradation, the panic, despair, and—shamefully—guilt at not serving her mistress to the best of her abilities. She remembered the haunted look of an Aes Sedai as she was broken. Most of all, she remembered her own terror.

Oh, Egwene. It’s too much, to ask her to somehow face all of that and not be afraid. And none of those in the Tower even know; none of them have been subject to the a’dam and few seem to know or believe or understand what it means that Egwene was. There’s no one she can look to for the comfort and reassurance she could so desperately use right now, no one to draw strength from, but she has to. She has a moment to herself, now, to wrap her arms around herself and try to hold herself together, but she’s not going to get more than a moment, and she’s going to need to do so much more than simply hold herself together.

The Tower shook. Fire flashed in the distant hallways accompanied by shouts and wails of despair. She could smell smoke. Oh, Light! Could this really be? She wouldn’t go back. She wouldn’t let them leash her again. She had to run! She had to hide, flee, escape…

No!

She pushed herself upright.

No, she would not flee. She was Amyrlin.

And how much determination does that take. This is so much more than deciding to embrace pain, and succeeding at it. This goes beyond pain; it’s something that may as well have been specifically crafted to hit her at her most vulnerable point, to strike directly at her worst fears and make her feel at her most powerless—especially as, right now, she effectively is.

And to decide not to be, to decide not to give in to that, is such an incredible effort of sheer will and determination.

She is Amyrlin, even now. She is Amyrlin through pain and imprisonment and she will be Amyrlin even through this. That is not just her role; that is who she is, and she will not back down from it.

Nicola huddled beside the wall, whimpering. “They’re coming for us,” the girl whispered. “Oh Light, they’re coming!”

“Let them come!”

Egwene al’Vere is HERE and she is STANDING HER GROUND and anyone who tries to get her to do otherwise can FUCK RIGHT OFF, THIS ARC ENDS HERE.

Given just the facts of the situation, the bare bones of it, it could so easily be her own darkest hour. Her greatest fear, the ones who held her prisoner and tried to break her mind coming to destroy the Tower that’s already falling to pieces around her despite everything she tries, and her powerless to channel more than a trickle, much less stand up to them…and yet it’s as if through sheer will she decides that it won’t be her Darkest Hour, because She Says So.

Blessedly, enough time had passed to dull the forkroot slightly, and she was able to grab a faint trickle of the Power. It was tiny, perhaps the least amount of the Power she’d ever channelled. She wouldn’t be able to weave a tongue of Air to shift a piece of paper. But it would be enough. It had to be.

Like when she had to read Verin’s list by the light of a single candle, there’s a sense of contrast here with the immense power Rand used a few chapters ago that I really like. I’m not even completely sure I can articulate why. But the way it suggests that she…makes her own power, I suppose. Something about strength and where it comes from and what it really is.

“I will protect you,” Egwene said. “I promise.”

She’s facing her own worst fear but she just calmly puts herself in the role of protector, and despite her apparent lack of strength in the Power right now, there’s no sense of doubt. She has the kind of strength that can back up statements like that even when it seems impossible.

It’s a sign of how much she’s grown since she last faced the Seanchan. Then, she had raw power but little practice with it; she was just a girl still new to the world outside her village, unsure of her place in it and still stubborn and determined to fight this nightmare but what could she do against something that could break experienced Aes Sedai? And it left its mark on her…but now that it’s time to face that again, after that moment of panic and remembered pain, she finds this source of strength in who she has become—who she must be, and who she has chosen to be. She is Amyrlin in truth, and in that is a determination and a strength greater than her fear.

There’s this sense not that the fear born of those experiences and trauma has lessened, but that she has grown and found her own strength and self and so it looks diminished in comparison, when it comes time to truly face it again, because there’s so much else to her that can push against it.

Anyway, Egwene has found herself…a crowd of novices. Her first allies in the Tower…Egwene, what exactly are you planning, here?

“I’m going to teach you how to link.”

Oh. That’s…resourceful, certainly. Pragmatic. But just a little bit…not quite ruthless but something akin to it.

They’ll be stronger, linked. Perhaps more able to defend themselves. But as Egwene acknowledges to herself, it’s not something usually taught to novices; she is pushing them out of necessity…as was done to her. She promises to protect them, but she’s also aware that they will need to be able to defend themselves; she cannot realistically hope to keep them out of this completely. She went to the harbour chain herself and ended up captured because she didn’t want to send a novice unnecessarily into danger, but now she doesn’t have that option—at least, not as she sees it. And so she readies them to fight.

Hopefully, at least some of them would figure it out. 

What mattered was that Egwene now had the Power. A fair measure of it, almost as much as she was accustomed to without forkroot.

She’s preparing them to defend themselves, but she is also using them. Out of necessity, and because she’s trying to defend all of them and has to somehow make that possible when she herself is all but powerless, but using them nonetheless.

To weave a gateway?

She hoped that the gateway would open in the right location; she was going on Siuan’s instructions, which had been somewhat vague, though she also had Elayne’s original description of the place.

Oh! The angreal storeroom! That’s clever. So she’s using them to make the gateway, but perhaps just for that. She doesn’t seem to be sending them straight off to fight, or bringing them with her to where the fighting is happening; she’s using them as a source of power, but maybe only to make a gateway to a different source of power…interesting.

“Are you escaping?” Her voice was edged with fear, and not a little hope, as if Egwene might take her, too.

“No,” Egwene said firmly. “I’ll return in just a moment. When I come back, I want at least five good circles formed!”

Egwene’s not going anywhere, not while the Tower is under attack, but I wonder if maybe she should think about getting the novices out, via gateway, to somewhere they can be safe. But then maybe there isn’t enough time for that. Or maybe that’s the cold pragmatism: they can’t afford to weaken the Tower further. She doesn’t approach it from the same place as Rand, and she hasn’t gone in the same direction or nearly as far, but Egwene too will do what must be done, and sometimes that means making decisions she might wish she didn’t have to. She doesn’t want to put novices in harm’s way, but harm’s way has come knocking on their door, and it’s not just them but the whole Tower at risk, and she has to work with the situation she has.

I don’t think it’s moral event horizon material, but it’s definitely one of the more morally grey decisions Egwene’s made recently. And I love it, because that’s the sort of decision I like to watch characters make, but I will certainly not deny that there’s an element of harsh pragmatism to it.

And now she has her own absurdly strong sa’angreal. Which brings us to a different potential parallel.

She looked at the three novices, smiling broadly. “Now we’re ready,” she announced.

Let the sul’dam try and shield her while she was wielding one of the most powerful sa’angreal that the Aes Sedai possessed. The White Tower would not fall while she was Amyrlin!

There is still an element of fear, there, and while I don’t think it’s her primary motivator I think it does still play a role. Her first thought is that she has enough power to protect herself – let the sul’dam try and shield her. As if she has to take that second to reassure herself that she will not be taken again, that she will not be made helpless, that she can face them. Which is, you know, understandable. To not let her have even that moment of…need to reassure herself, need to touch that vast Power to feel secure in facing some of her worst memories, would I think take something away from this scene, because it would be making her too perfect. She’s human, and that’s the point; she’s human and she’s afraid and she’s able to do this anyway.

But her next thought, and the one she focuses on, is that the Tower will not fall. She is not just Egwene al’Vere; she takes a moment of thought to reassure herself on that front, and then she moves on to the bigger task: not protecting herself, but protecting the whole of the Tower, for that is her duty as Amyrlin, and there is no place in that for Egwene al’Vere’s own fears.

Does Gawyn have to be in this chapter? Can’t we just…not?

Bryne stepped up beside her, hand resting on the hilt of his sword. He eyed her with dissatisfaction. Well. She wouldn’t let him be the judge of her honour.

A bit too late for that, Siuan; how much laundry have you done in the last few months?

And now too late to decide that going to Gawyn is a terrible idea.

“Are we being attacked?”

“No,” Siuan said, glancing at Bryne. “But Tar Valon might be.” “Egwene!” Gawy cried, hurriedly doing the last loops on his belt. Light, but the boy was single-minded.

YOU DON’T SAY. And he doesn’t exactly have a track record of strong decision-making skills where Egwene is concerned. It’s single-mindedness without perspective, which is a terrible combination on every level.

I’m not sure I agree with Siuan on the necessity of a rescue operation in the first place, and I think Bryne has a point, but I also have a reasonable amount of faith in Siuan’s ability to assess a situation and make the pragmatic decision based on what she sees. Gawyn, on the other hand…getting him involved means they’re committed to this, because he is not the sort of person who can take in additional information as it becomes available and adjust his decisions accordingly. Which means he is THE LAST PERSON YOU SHOULD BE INVOLVING IN THIS, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING.

Case in point: Gawyn doesn’t even take half a second to ask specifics of what’s happening, or to think about whether or not this will work, and the logistics of it – he hears ‘Tar Valon’ and is immediately 110% committed to this fool’s errand, and doesn’t seem to worry that they’re working on almost no information whatsoever. Because since when has that stopped him from acting as if what he ‘knows’ is a certainty?

ARGH.

It was so much easier to like him when he wasn’t tangling up the plotlines of characters I like more. Watching a character make bad decisions in relative isolation, when he’s the one who will suffer for them, is fascinating. Watching a character make bad decisions when the repercussions will most likely be felt by other characters is irritating.

Also one of my greatest pet peeves in fiction is when characters make terrible decisions Because Of Love, so that’s not exactly helping.

This would all be so much easier if she could create a gateway, but she didn’t have enough strength in the Power for that.

Well, you could always borrow some novices.

“Then come with us,” Siuan said.

“I will not be party to you breaking your oath again.”

“Egwene said we could do something if it looked like she was in danger of execution,” Siuan said. “She told me she’d let us rescue her then! Well, the way she vanished from the meeting with me tonight, I’m inclined to think she’s in danger.”

“It isn’t Elaida who put her there, but the Seanchan!”

“We don’t know for certain.”

“Ignorance is not an excuse,” Bryne said sternly, stepping closer to her. “You have made oathbreaking far too convenient, Siuan, and I don’t want it to become a habit for you.”

Of course, she would argue that she’s not breaking her oath so much as bending it, which seems like something you might appreciate, Bryne, given that it’s what Brought You Together, after all. It’s a sign of true love! Or something.

“Aes Sedai or not, former Amyrlin or not, people must have rules and boundaries.”

How adorably Lawful Good of you.

“To say nothing of the fact that you’re likely to get yourself killed attempting this!”

And that’s just adorably transparent.

Then again, everything about these two has been SUBTLE AS A BRICK, and yet they still haven’t managed to actually work it out between themselves. Schoolchildren, I swear. Schoolchildren who could run rings around you politically and militarily, and then throw you a paper aeroplane note with ‘do you like me? Tick yes or no’.

“Blasted woman,” Bryne said from behind. “You’ll be the death of me.”

…I worry. That gets rather close to Min’s vision, and is second only to ‘we’ll talk when I return’ for Famous Last Words in fantasy.

“I’ll come,” he said, hand gripping the hilt of his sheathed sword.

*raises eyebrow*

“But there are two conditions.”

“Name them,” she said.

“The first is that you bond me as your Warder.”

Awww. About damn time, too. Also, I think this is the first time we’ve seen a man make this request of an Aes Sedai, rather than the other way around. Granted, we’ve mainly seen bonding situations that are more anomalous than ordinary if the narrative statements about such things are to be believed, but still, it’s kind of…sweet. It’s nice to see that it can happen this way.

And then she just bonds him right there. Alright then. No sense wasting time, I suppose.

Emotions! Concern! Romance! So much sweetness I think my teeth are rotting!

“Would that I could give this to each man in my army!”

Siuan sniffed. “I highly doubt that their wives and families would approve of that.”

Once again there’s this dissonance between what we’re told about the relationship between Aes Sedai and Warder and what we’re shown.

Maybe it’s just because I am not really a fan of romance subplots in the first place, but I sometimes feel a bit cheated that we’re presented with this form of bonding that is meaningful and important and platonic – something all too rare in the genre – only to have it turn out to JUST KIDDING actually be romantic in almost every major-character instance.

But Siuan and Bryne are not a particularly annoying couple, and they’re even relatively sweet, so okay, fine, I’ll try not to hold it against them.

“You said you had two requirements?”

“I’ll tell you the second at a later time.” Bryne still sounded a little breathless.

That’s fair; bonding is one thing but this doesn’t seem like the best time for a marriage. Wink, wink.

That would actually be a kind of hilariously ironic second condition: ‘I’ll go along with what I consider to be oathbreaking but ONLY IF we can swear a different oath entirely to each other in exchange’.

“It’s odd,” he said, smiling. “I can sense your emotions now. For instance I could tell…” He cut off, and she could sense him growing just faintly embarrassed. He can tell that I half want him to demand something indecent of me! Siuan realised, aghast.

They even flirt like schoolchildren. The former Amyrlin Seat and one of the best living generals, and they’re basically pulling each other’s pigtails and giggling over what Siuan’s blank-cheque promise could be used for.

Luckily they are in fact adults, and can set aside their hilariously incompetent efforts at flirting because there’s something just slightly more important to deal with at the moment.

“What’s happening?” Gawyn asked.

Something about that just sent me into uncontrollable laughter. Like, that one oblivious question just sums up approximately everything about Gawyn’s entire character. We have Matrim ‘battles interest me’ Cauthon and Nynaeve ‘“I won’t shout at you!’ Nynaeve shouted’ al’Meara and now Gawyn ‘what’s happening’ Trakand.

Now if only you’d pause for maybe ten seconds every now and then to try to actually find an answer to that question, Gawyn, you might not find yourself in these situations.

“We don’t have to go in alone. […] That means our chances of surviving long enough to take Egwene just improved. Which is fortunate, since after what we’re about to do, she’ll undoubtedly want the privilege of killing us personally.”

I mean, you are probably not wrong there, Siuan. Not that that’s enough to make any of them reconsider, of course. And I suppose it’s not a bad idea to at least enable an option B should one become necessary, but…yeah, I’m still very unsure about all of this.

But! On the plus side! Maybe it’ll piss Egwene off enough that she’ll finally break up with Gawyn! (Shut up and let me dream, okay?)

And now we seem to be with Adelorna. Fitting, I suppose, that we get to watch a battle for the White Tower through the eyes of the Captain General of the Green Ajah. But you know what this also most likely means? Do you?

Outsider POV of Egwene motherfucking al’Vere. Also known as: precisely the sort of thing I live for.

Anyway. Yes. Adelorna.

Who is really not having a great day as she runs through the ruined corridors of the White Tower and I’m reminded, just a little bit, of the Prologue. Ruined corridors and horror and death…

Adelorna felt ashamed. The Battle Ajah indeed! The Greens with her had stood only minutes before being defeated.

I wonder if this will serve as a kind of wake-up call. There’s a lot about the Green mission statement that’s admirable, but for all that they don’t seem to have a lot of practice, nor do they behave like an organised, trained, cohesive military unit. The fact that they don’t train to use the Power as a weapon is an obstacle, but even more than that I think they struggle because they’ve fallen prey to the same tendency as most Aes Sedai: they act as individuals and don’t know how to set that aside and function as a group.

She froze; she sensed channelling coming from her right. That could mean invaders, or it could mean sisters. She hesitated, but gritted her teeth. She was the Captain-General of the Green Ajah! She couldn’t just run and hide.

This, though, is the admirable part. She’s watched friends and sisters die, and one of her Warders seems to have been killed, and the Tower is in chaos and under attack, but she’s not going to back down. She’ll face this and she’ll go down fighting.

It’s a similar determination to what Egwene herself showed: this is her role, and she cannot allow her own personal fear to hold her back. She won’t give up, even in the face of horror.

She rounded another corner and nearly stumbled out of a rift in the side of the Tower. She teetered on the exposed ledge, looking out upon a sky filled with terrible monsters and lines of fire.

Think there’s a metaphor in there, perhaps? Just a bit? Holes torn in the Tower, leaving it riddled with unexpected and sudden dangers that an Aes Sedai can find herself teetering on the edge of, looking out into vastness and danger because the Tower cannot hold against that as it is, and they are all at risk of falling.

And Adelorna’s reward for her determination to continue fighting is to be shielded and collared.

This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.

This is the White Tower, aloof and untouchable. Except it’s not; it’s vulnerable and cracked and unable to unite itself enough to stand against these threats. This can’t be happening, because the Tower is meant to be invulnerable and all-powerful…but it isn’t. And for some of them, I think this is the first time where that realisation actually hits.

Then, shockingly, the collar unclipped from Adelorna’s neck and fell to the floor. Gregana looked stunned for a moment before she was consumed in a blast of fire.

Does being collared count as a life-threatening situation? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t exactly disagree with the actions here. But it seems to me that Siuan’s promise is not the only oath being strained to the breaking point in this chapter.

Especially as two more sul’dam are killed by lightning and fire here, not just the one who actually put the a’dam on Adelorna. It’s interesting that Adelorna doesn’t immediately wonder how that’s possible.

A woman in white stood atop the rubble a short distance away, a massive halo of power surrounding her, her arms outstretched toward the fleeing soldiers, her eyes intense. The woman stood like vengeance itself, the power of saidar like a storm around her. The very air seemed alight, and her brown hair blew from the wind of the open gap in the wall beside them. Egwene al’Vere.

HELL. YES. This is very much a Sanderson-style image but it’s also EXACTLY WHAT I’M HERE FOR . Egwene’s own I am the storm moment, standing surrounded by power like a…force of light.

And yes, there are absolutely some darker edges to this. She is killing with this power despite the oaths she has promised herself to live by, and she’s still surrounded by a group of novices. There’s definitely more of a parallel to Rand here than when she was reading a list of names by the light of a single candle, unable to summon enough of the Power to do more than that but also not needing to.

It’s a harsh image…but she is the Amyrlin in the midst of a battle for the Tower’s survival, against those who would kill or enslave them all, and it’s also an incredibly powerful image. She who should be a prisoner frees Aes Sedai from collars, she who is dressed and treated as a novice commands immense Power and has true novices achieving what the Aes Sedai seem incapable of: organised fighting, and unity, and success against this force that seeks to destroy them. She who has been beaten and disdained by the Tower stands to defend it when no one else seems able.

The Amyrlin Seat is not nice, and at this moment she’s certainly not gentle, but she is what the Tower needs right now. A source of strength and power and determination, someone who can stand against those who seek to bring the Tower down, someone who can hold it together and fight for it. Because she is fighting for something here, not just against something (though there is definitely an element of that, I think).

Blasts of lightning flew from Egwene’s open hand, flashing through the opening in the wall, and something screeched and fell outside. Adelorna stepped up to Egwene, embracing the Source, feeling a fool for having been captured. Egwene struck again, and another of those flying monsters fell.

“What if they’re carrying captives?” Adelorna asked, watching one of the beasts fall amid Egwene’s flames.

“Then those captives are better dead,” Egwene said, turning to her. “Trust me. I know this.”

Um…yikes. It’s not quite on the level of ‘forgive me for calling this mercy as well’ because for one thing this is in the middle of a battle and the Seanchan attacked first and while Egwene might be on the offensive in this particular instance, the whole thing is being done in self-defence and defence of the Tower. Also, harsh as it is, it would probably be…unrealistically idealistic to assume that they could rescue those captives and defeat the Seanchan without some collateral damage.

Some collateral damage is, perhaps, inevitable; both for the Amyrlin Seat and the Dragon Reborn. Natrin’s Barrow wasn’t horrifying because people died—that’s happened before, at Cairhien and outside Ebou Dar and at Dumai’s Wells, to varying degrees of horror—but because it was balefire and it was so calmly and coldly planned and because it wasn’t even a battle and perhaps above all because Rand didn’t care.

And that’s where Egwene gets a little dark here; she lets herself go a little bit into that colder place where those losses can be dismissed as better dead. It’s still not to the same extent or on the same scale, but it does feel a little bit like hardening herself to that fact in the moment so that she can keep fighting.

I think part of it is that, for all that she absolutely has grown since she last faced the Seanchan, and for all that she is fighting for something here, that fear does still exist, and she’s still not entirely capable of perfectly rational thinking where the Seanchan are concerned. Which is entirely understandable, but it does give her this colder, harsher edge here, because of that part of her that is reacting out of fear and vengeance.

But for all that, she has not lost sight of what she is fighting for; above all, she is standing in defence of the Tower, in a sense standing as the Tower, to protect it as much as she can. And I’ll be curious to see how she deals with all of this after the battle is done and it’s not a case of immediate necessity; as last chapter showed, she’s very capable of putting emotion aside for a time, and processing it later, which is a little different from shutting it off completely. I feel like that’s a little bit of what’s going on here; she does have to prioritise, and she has to be able to focus on defending as much of the Tower as she can, and so for the moment—combined with the fact that there’s a fair amount of trauma associated with the Seanchan even if she’s mostly handling it—that results in a somewhat harsh pragmatism. But I don’t think she’s treating that as a permanent state, and again, she is fighting for something here. It’s more a ‘that is an acceptable level of loss’ and she just can’t dwell on it right now, more than ‘I no longer care because I am completely dead inside and will do anything it takes to get to the end at any cost’. We’re still quite a ways distant from that, methinks.

Egwene marched down the hallway behind them, like a general at the battle lines. “Well,” [Adelorna] said. “You have done nicely to organise, Egwene, though it’s good that an Aes—”

Adelorna? Shut up. How can you think she looks like a general and in the next breath address her like a child? Also she is apparently the only one organising an effective defence right now, so maybe cut the bullshit.

Seems like Egwene is on the same page.

“I am in command until this threat passes. You will call me Mother. Give me penance later if you must, but for now my authority must be unquestioned. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Mother,” Adelorna found herself saying, shocked.

Yeah. Right now is not the time to be fighting about who’s in charge, or trying to claim authority over the one person who’s actually getting shit done.

Egwene’s not trying to seize power here for herself; she’s establishing the chain of command in the middle of a battle because all around her is chaos, and there isn’t time for anything else. Someone has to take charge, and so she did, and for that to work it has to be recognised. Yes, she wants to be Amyrlin, but she wants it because she believes that is what the Tower needs…and right now, it certainly doesn’t seem like she’s wrong. Her first priority is the Tower; her own interests are secondary. First, they need to survive this.

“Where are your Warders?”

“One wounded,” Adelorna said. “One safe, with the other. One dead.”

“Light, woman, and you’re still standing?”

Adelorna straightened her back. “What other choice do I have?”

Egwene nodded. Why did her look of respect make Adelorna swell with pride?

It’s such an honest respect, and earned. Adelorna’s pretty damn impressive herself, all things considered. Her first reaction may have been to treat Egwene like a child, but she was also quick to understand the importance of a clear chain of command, and she’s still fighting despite the fact that one of her Warders was just killed and she was just collared. So yes, of course Egwene respects that, and doesn’t try to hide it. And Adelorna deserves it. It’s a nice exchange between them, I think because it’s so simple and honest.

“Well, I’m glad to have you,” Egwene said, resuming her walk.

It’s honest, and also very matter-of-fact. There’s no jockeying for power here; neither of them is trying to assert her authority excessively or argue about how to continue. It’s just…this is the situation, I’ve got it under control so right now I need you to work with me, but you’re also badass and I’m glad to have you here, now let’s get back to work. Simple, honest, respectful, effective.

“I’ll have one of the novices show you how to unlock the bracelets, but don’t take any risks. Generally, it’s easier—and much safer—to kill the damane.”

Again…yikes. Necessary, perhaps, but once again there’s a harsh edge to that. I’m also still very curious about the fact that Adelorna hasn’t at any point questioned—aloud or even to herself—how this squares with the three oaths.

Though of course there is the not irrelevant fact that the damane, horrible as it is, are either enemy combatants or weapons in the hands of enemy combatants, and they’re currently in the middle of a battle, and that means the options are a little…limited. Self-defence is a pretty key factor here.

But  it comes back to the same thing: they shouldn’t be fighting the Seanchan. They don’t have much choice, because the Seanchan are trying to kill and capture them, but this entire battle should not be happening. They should be working together, not killing each other; they should be preparing to face the Last Battle. But…events have made that all but impossible, and there are some pretty enormous differences of opinion and worldview and methods between Seanchan and Aes Sedai, and so here they are. Forces of the Light, fighting against one another.

I had hoped that maybe this battle could somehow lead to Egwene establishing the treaty Rand could not, but that’s…not looking particularly likely right about now.

Egwene’s openly using Travelling in front of Aes Sedai now; it seems like the days of that being kept secret are…limited. I’m honestly amazed it’s been kept this secret for this long.

“We need to stop them and destroy any to’raken we see, with captives or not. If there’s any chance of stopping them from returning to Ebou Dar with someone who can Travel, we must take it.”

I…get where you’re coming from, because Travelling is absolutely a game-changer, and in the hands of the Seanchan without a peace between them it’s a pretty terrifying concept, but…I also think it’s way too late for that. Too many know it, now.

It does create a very zero-sum approach on both sides here: the Seanchan have been told to capture as many Aes Sedai—marath’damane—as possible but kill the rest. Meanwhile because of this last attempt to keep Travelling from the Seanchan, Egwene and the Aes Sedai are now approaching this not just with the aim of repelling the Seanchan but killing or capturing all of them. So that can only end well…

“You could have run,” [Adelorna] said. “You could have fled at any time.”

Yeah. Take a minute to think about that. And what it means that she hasn’t. That she’s here, facing this same nightmare you are, when she doesn’t have to be. Fighting for all of you, who have treated her like a child at best and an enemy at worst.

Egwene turned back to her, looking through the portal. “Fled?” she asked. “If I left, it wouldn’t have been fleeing you, Adelorna, it would have been abandoning you. I am the Amyrlin Seat. My place is here. I’m certain you’ve heard that I dreamed this very attack.”

She is the Amyrlin Seat, and now Adelorna and anyone else who sees her here can see that she truly believes it, and is committed to it. It’s not just something she says; she’s not just in it for power. Here, when she could so easily have fled, she instead chooses to stand and defend the Tower, because to do otherwise would mean abandoning them. Because she is the Amyrlin, and that means fulfilling the Amyrlin’s duties, no matter how difficult or dangerous they may be. She is the Amyrlin, and she is fighting for the Tower, because that is what she has chosen.

Next (TGS ch 41) Previous (TGS ch 39)

[omgkatsudonplease]

恭喜发财!!! Sòng Zǐchēn/Xiǎo Xīngchén Please!

In a quiet inn just out of Lanling, Song Zichen and Xiao Xingchen encounter a lady of remarkable beauty and sadness, clutching a box to her chest. 

“Madam, you look like you need assistance,” says Song Zichen, the words still difficult to push out of his throat even at the best of times. She looks at him through her veil, saying nothing. “I know Daozhang Xiao has not been on the best of terms with the Lanling Jin Sect, but perhaps we could help you as individuals.”

The woman hums thoughtfully, examining his pallid complexion, his darkened clothes. “You are…”

“Yes,” says Song Zichen, bowing his head. “I was killed, once.” 

“How is it?” she asks. “Is death preferable to what you have right now?”

“I feel fine,” he replies, looking over at Xiao Xingchen who is sipping pensively at his tea. “There are times when I lose control, but…” He shakes his head. “It is not nearly as dreadful as you might imagine, Madam.”

“Then perhaps,” she says, looking down at her box, “you could help me after all.”

The body lies inert in an array in a back chamber in Lotus Pier, preservation talismans on every part of its body. Sect Leader Jiang leads the woman into the room, his expression irritated the entire way. 

“Sister, I must leave,” he says, looking as if he’d rather do anything else. “Sect Leader Lan has rallied the others. I have to make sure A-Ying and A-Yuan don’t get caught in the crossfire, again.”

“Bring them home safe,” says Madam Jin – for who else could this be but the Regent of Lanling? – finally lowering her veil at last. She places the box at the head of the body, taking a deep breath. Finally, she unlatches the box, placing the head of Sect Leader Jin atop the body.

“This other thread was created by a great demonic cultivator,” says Song Zichen, frowning as he examines Sect Leader Jin’s shoulder. “I don’t think we can replicate that.”

“No matter,” says Madam Jin. “We’ll do what we can.” And she takes a thread of her own spiritual energy, and begins to stitch her husband’s head back onto his body.

The two of them and A-Qing stand by while she works, though A-Qing bores of it after a moment and goes wandering through the halls, her cane tapping idly against the floor. Madam Jin continues to stitch, her hands gentle and her eyes determined. In the distance, the sounds of cultivators taking off can be heard. 

“Where are they going?” wonders Song Zichen, as Xiao Xingchen finds a spot on the ground to sit and wait. “Why is Gusu Lan rallying the other sects?”

Madam Jin’s laugh is a little harsh. “Things have changed, Daozhang Song,” she says, her voice bitter. “Brothers turn on brothers, the peaceful rally for blood, the innocent die at the hands of the guilty… it’s unimaginable.”

“Where are they planning to go?” wonders Xiao Xingchen.

“Yiling, I imagine,” says Madam Jin. “Where the Master of Shadows once lived, and may still hide.” With a flourish, she ties off the string and cuts it, before sitting back with a soft sigh, tracing the cheek of her husband’s corpse.

“He should not have died,” says Xiao Xingchen, his own hand searching for Song Zichen’s. Madam Jin sniffles, putting her head in her hands. 

“He should’ve seen his son grow up,” she says in between her sobs. “Should’ve been there for him.” 

“Who did it?” wonders Xiao Xingchen, though something in his expression suggests he might have his suspicions.

Madam Jin shakes her head. “Only the most vile of traitors,” she replies, her voice poisonous with hatred. “One that would smile and flatter you whilst plotting your downfall. One who never forgets anything, not even the smallest of slights.”

A shadow passes over Xiao Xingchen’s face, and Song Zichen has to place a comforting hand on his shoulder. 

There’s a sudden tremor in the ground. Sect Leader Jin’s eyes suddenly fly open, his pupils white with rage. He knocks Madam Jin back with an arm, causing her to yelp in surprise. 

“Madam!” shouts Song Zichen, immediately drawing his sword. But Sect Leader Jin falters, having already recognised his wife’s voice. Slowly, black begins to seep into his pupils and he lowers his arm, mouth working furiously to try and grind out some semblance of words. 

“D… arling?”

Madam Jin looks up, tears running down her cheeks. “Zixuan?”

“D…arling.” The words are gravel in his mouth. Song Zichen remembers the feeling well. “I… am here.”

“Zixuan,” sobs Madam Jin, flying into her husband’s arms. He looks winded, though there’s no wind in his lungs to knock away. Slowly, his arms come around, gently cradling her. 

“I… I cannot stay. There is a call.”

Song Zichen had felt it too. A pull towards Yiling. The ground tremors again. “We must go,” he agrees, helping Xiao Xingchen back to his feet. 

“Is there a battle?” asks Xiao Xingchen, his hands already on the hilt of Shuanghua. Song Zichen has half a mind to ask him to stay behind – his friend has seen too much death, and dealt it too many times whilst being tricked by Xue Yang. But the set jaw and the determined grip tells him that’s a battle he’ll end up losing.

Xiao Xingchen has woken screaming in the night too many times to count, but he still carries on. Still tries to help, to restore integrity to his name. Who is Song Zichen to stop him from doing that?

“My love,” breathes Madam Jin to her husband, pressing her forehead against his, “please be safe.”

“I no longer fear death,” he replies simply, taking her hand and kissing her knuckles. “And I will requite mine, if you wish.”

“I would love nothing more,” she replies. “Take your revenge upon the man who slaughtered you, my love. He tore you away from me, from our son.” With a smile, she tucks back his hair, using her remaining string to tie it in some resemblance of his old hairstyle. “Come back to me.”

“Meet me in Yunping,” he replies, kissing her once before clambering to his feet. Madam Jin hands him a cloth parcel, containing his clothes and weapons, before stepping out of the room. 

Song Zichen and Xiao Xingchen also rise. “We’ll meet you outside,” Song Zichen says. 

Sect Leader Jin nods, and begins to pull on his robes.

After the siege that almost was, after the remnants of the Stygian Blade’s corpses have been dispatched, the cultivators of different sects all begin slowly making their way across the river to Yunmeng. In their haste, all they can cobble together is a small fleet of fishing boats. The unconscious Master of Shadows and Wei Wuxian share one alongside the juniors and the fierce corpses. 

“Mama’s going to be so excited to see you,” says Jin Rulan, sitting beside his father. Sect Leader Jin sends a glance towards Song Zichen, who hides a smile in the sleeve of his robe.

“Is he going to wake?” Wei Wuxian asks the Angel of Death, who is feeling the Master of Shadows’ forehead with a frown.

“Eventually,” she says. “I’m not quite sure, though. He’s been through a lot lately.”

Wei Wuxian snorts. “Understatement of the century,” he mutters. The Angel of Death quirks an unamused eyebrow in a way so reminiscent of her Master that it makes him choke and duck his head in embarrassment.

“Song Lan,” says Xiao Xingchen suddenly from beside him. Song Zichen raises an eyebrow, turning back towards his friend. The breeze flutters stray strands of Xiao Xingchen’s bandages; the moonlight makes his pale face almost silver. Truly the bright moon and gentle breeze, Song Zichen thinks wildly. If his heart was still working, it would’ve skipped a beat. 

“Yes?” he ventures. Xiao Xingchen takes his arm, leans his head against his shoulder.

“It has been a long time since I last felt at peace,” he says. “And yet right now… that is all I can feel.”

Song Zichen smiles at that, and presses his lips to his friend’s hair. 

[dragontag420]

Valentine’s Day (Rah)

Rah has a GREAT idea for a Valentine’s day present! Maybe....

Rah/Coypu, Gen.

Read it on Ao3! [Link]

This was originally shorter bUT! Jack sent me his Valentine’s Day Message first so I... may have edited it to incorporate that aheheh @jacketyjackjack-fr

Rah knew he'd be coming. He couldn't believe they'd been together over a year now.. Their second festival of love together, maybe there was a chance he'd found love for the long term.

Since the large, scaly man had come into his life things had gotten horribly hectic, a change which he had initially been wary of, but might now be pressed to admit that he enjoyed. It brought variety to what had once been completely controlled and monotonous. Rah enjoyed the monotony and the sense of control that accompanied it, but integrating Coypu into his life had become a challenge. And no challenge could defeat the Scribe of the clan SedAhrkMen.

Still, the festival was coming again, and although he'd heard nothing from Coypu, there was a 99.9% chance he'd be showing up for it. The thought alone caused Rah to blush and clear his throat, adjusting the papers on his desk. The way his mate doted on him was most certainly excessive and unnecessary. But... He had to admit it was pleasing to be so loved and admired. Over time he'd started to feel more deserving of the attention and affection, but he wasn't entirely sure how to match it.

Coypu was thoughtful, and his gifts reflected that, although often they were a bit crude and suggestive as well. Rah wasn't exactly comfortable in his ability to match such a thing, but was determined to get him something in return as well. Something... meaningful. Something important.

He'd been tapping his pencil for days on the subject when inspiration struck. He'd been processing acquisition forms for fabrics and threads from the marketplace, scratching his head in frustration at the notes CONEX had left, likely vague and hard to read on purpose. He'd nearly dropped his pen and gotten ink everywhere in surprise. Of course! His lok'vin!

He hadn't added anything on to the strand of flying fabrics above his lair in a very long time. Traditionally lok'vinne would have any sort of nice or interesting fabrics on them, but Rah preferred to keep his clean, with only the most meaningful flags and fragments on it. His own personal banner, his title as scribe, relevant pieces from major events, Loquat's old banner, things like that.

Throwing the forms to the side he had rushed to CONEX's workshop, slithering impatiently through the piles of fabrics and the minefield of half-finished projects. He'd proposed his idea to her and they'd had the mock-up done in a matter of hours. She’d kicked him out immediately afterwards to work.

When the day finally came he tried his best to hide his enthusiasm, the box tucked away on the small shelf of his work desk. He kept glancing at it, the ribbon perfect and prim. He smothered another smug grin, prideful and very sure he’d outdone his boyfriend this time. 

When Coypu arrived he had a letter and a box of his own, the usual flirtatious smirk fixed firmly in place. Rah accepted the gift and the kisses, rolling his eyes playfully at the winks thrown his way. He opened the letter, which simply read “Happy Valentine’s Day”.

“Did you write this yourself?”

Coypu’s chest puffed out, “Sure did!”

“Your penmanship is much better,” he smiled at it softly before placing it gently on his desk. “If I didn’t know any better I’d think you were trying to write well.” 

That got him a laugh. He took the heart-shaped box and roses next, untangling it carefully and placing the flowers to one side. He’d have to get them water, soon. Perhaps even preserve a few. The box itself was filled with... ribbons? Awards. He shifted through them a little, noting one which seemed to read “best butt award”. Clearly he’d have to read them all later.

He frowned slightly as he got to the real present, a necklace and.. a ring? He looked up at Coypu, head tilted a bit in confusion. He didn’t have a chance to ask, Coypu already telling him.

"I ain't gonna do anything too wacky today, but, I was just thinkin' it'd be nice to one day settle down or somethin'. And who else am I gonna wanna settle down with 'sides you? I'm not askin' you to marry me or nothin',” he scratched his head a little bit bashfully, “not yet anyway... But I'd sure like it if you thought about doing so."

Rah stared at the box in his hand, trying not to notice that it was trembling slightly. He swallowed thickly and bit his lip. Coypu noticed the tension building in his shoulders and reached out a hand, placing it on the small scribe softly. Had he been... out of line? He hoped not.

“You ok?”

Rah tried to nod, but it came out as more of a jittery twitch. He squeezed the box in his hand and turned his head, looking around. “I’d.. Um. Perhaps I should... sit down.”

Coypu nodded slowly and gently steered him towards his stool. The worry was evident on his face. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’a assumed, um-”

Rah shook his head in quick tiny turns, “No! No. I- I’m just.. Oh wow, I...” He let the box rest in his lap and ground the heel of his hand into his eye, only mildly surprised that it was somewhat wet. “Marriage is.. gosh, um.. It’s.. different here.” He let out a shaky breath, “I just... I’m not saying! No! Or.. yes.. or.. well I don’t really know what I’m saying, um.”

Coypu put a hand on his back and rubbed slightly, “Take your time. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

With a grateful nod, Rah cleared his throat, tucking his hands firmly under his legs on the stool and trying to regain some semblance of composure. “I.. If I’m completely honest I’m simply awestruck by the very idea that-” his voice broke slightly, falling to a hoarse whisper, “That you’d so much want to stay with me. For the very fact.”

The laugh startled him, and he looked up at Coypu. “That’s it? ‘Course I wanna stay with you, darlin’! Who wouldn’t!” He kept rubbing circles on Rah’s back, and brought his free hand up to wipe at a single stray tear on his face. “I’m not proposin’ or anythin’. Just... maybe think about it, yea?”

Rah nodded and sniffed, still overwhelmed by the gift he’d been given. The real gift seeming to be the strong bubble of warmth that had planted itself in his chest. 

He wiped his eyes again with the back of his hand, leaving a small smear of ink on his cheek. He gestured to his desk, “I got you a present, as well.” He gave a small laugh, “Somehow in the same vein of thinking, I suppose...”

Coypu got up to retrieve it, bringing over the small package and turning it different directions as he walked back over. “This paper is so fancy. Damn.”

“It’s just shiny, is all.” He smiled as Coypu sat back down next to him. “That’s not the present, though.”

“Well I know that!” Coypu huffed and started trying to peel the paper off carefully, but still managing to mangle it pretty good despite his best efforts.

It was a box, small and flat. Inside it, wrapped in tissue and folded carefully was some sort of cloth, heavy and dark. Coypu pulled it out carefully to look at it, turning it this way and that. It was various shades of green and somewhat iridescent, the primary color being similar to Coypu’s own shade of green. It was elaborately embroidered with thin golden thread, soft patterns and whirls forming a thick border on the lengthy piece of fabric.

He tilted his head, clearly a bit confused. “Is it.. clothes? Don’t think it’ll cover much, babe.” He winked, “Unless that’s the idea.”

Rah gave a long and frustrated sigh, shoulders deflating a little bit. He wasn’t upset with Coypu, but rather with himself for not even thinking about the fact that his boyfriend likely wouldn’t even know what it was. Suddenly he was nervous. If he didn’t know what it was, then... it probably didn’t have much meaning to him, which meant it really wasn’t as much of a gift as Rah had thought it would be.

He placed his own box to the side on the table and reached a hand out to flatten the large piece of cloth some. “I-It’s a flag. For the lok’vin. For my lok’vin.” He cleared his throat and stretched it fully, the long shape a rectangle with a triangle cut out of one end. “You know.. The um, the large ropes in the sky? They’re on all the houses and the buildings and we each have one, and of course I-I guess it might not actually mean much to you now that I think about it, but the fabrics on them all usually mean things o-or have a um, purpose.” He shrugged and smoothed it between his hands nervously. “I wanted... to put this on mine. It’s.. It’s for you. It means you.” 

He pointed to a thick line of text embroidered onto the bottom edge. “This is.. our language. It’s your name. And.. a small title. I....” Rah let go and ran his fingers through his hair nervously, “It’s silly, isn’t it.”

Coypu held the cloth up higher, squinting at it. He lowered it into his lap and turned to Rah with a large grin, shoving his face into his boyfriend’s and planting a solid kiss. He pulled back and continued to grin, running his fingers over the section that Rah had said was his name. “I love it!”

“I get it! It’s like puttin’ my name on the mailbox!” He laughed loudly and draped the flag over Rah’s head. “So you’re sayin’ I’m important to you. And askin’ me to move in with ya’?” He wiggled his eyebrows and winked.

Rah blushed and pulled the flag off of his head. “You already basically do, I’m simply commemorating your importance in my life and-”

Coypu cut him off with another kiss, pulling back a few inches, his smile much softer and eyes gentle. “I get it. It’s perfect.” He kissed Rah again, pleased when the scribe leaning forward into it, a small hand coming to rest on Coypu’s leg. 

“Okay.” He nodded, “If you say so then I believe you.” 

Emboldened by the newfound knowledge that Coypu was considering marrying him of all things, and pleased that his gift had supposedly gone over well, he slipped the hand on Coypu’s leg in further.

“Of course... I never said I only got you one present,” he said with a grin. 

[everydayanth]

Time is Money or... Identity?

This became something of a thought-experiment paper... I don’t expect many reads here, but I’m working on getting more comfortable sharing thoughts, particularly on the internet, rather than keeping them in my head and getting annoyed when no one wants to talk about them, lol, so here goes....

It started with this image popping up three times while scrolling through the dash:

And then I had some thoughts....Sorry it’s so long. I suppose this post in itself is an experiment.

Things like this, collections of ideas concentrated into a few spectacular people (Renaissance artists, Baroque composers, WWII scientists, etc.), make me wonder about philosophy vs. aesthetic, and if what really sets progress in motion is competition and a group of people who feed off each other’s asking of questions and discovery of answers.

Can we fresco and entire ceiling? Sure, but it will be painful and probably kill you. Can we art better by understanding anatomy? Sure, but you’ll have to snatch some bodies, or let someone else do it first. Can I make music do this instead of that other thing? Sure, but then you’ll be copying that one guy, try this even cooler new idea! Instead of repackaging the same idea into new models or melodies, they pushed the boundaries of known into connections that traversed the unknown, adding bubbles to the collective mind-map of human knowledge and intelligence. That’s what makes them special, right?

I’m currently reading The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf, and I’m doing it slowly on purpose, reading all the materials referenced (Kant, Hume, Goethe, etc.) as a personal exercise in understanding a period of time/culture rather than simply Alexander Von Humboldt the person (also, it’s a good book, but the author is very biased-in-favor, so I’m trying to read it in tandem of others who were more critical). Anyway, I’m going through the part where a group of young men require each other’s thoughts as stimulation and inspiration to new ideas, how they challenge and change what is and feed off these new connections, even as they are being recorded by scientists and artists who would become ultimately more preserved in historical documents and textbooks.

And that seems to be the key, one brain questions and answers, another questions that answer and answers itself, and so on, agreeing on very little outside of context, but pushing each other into new territory. It only takes one four-minute mile to prove it can be done at all. But if we’re caught up in the ethics of how to question and answer, then aesthetics quickly become more desirable. So the cultural understanding, particularly with Millennials, seems to grow weary of argument and become: if I can’t discuss policy (because the nuances are extreme or not understandable/accessible to me, or most often because my voice is denied and change is unattainable), I can at least look good while it slowly chokes me to death.

And while it’s easy to write it off as narcissism and entitlement, perhaps it’s only because what we deem “looking good” is one of very few things we can generally agree upon, everything else is hopeless, creating a cycle of nihilism where hopeful people are considered naive or dumb. Sure, there are different styles of aesthetic, and we label those subgroups with passionate adamance, but I think even the most minimalist among us can appreciate an aesthetic collection of clutter when done well. We share an ideology of quality that makes art and media that was once appreciated by few an aesthetic that is valued by most - Marvel comics vs. the MCU, SF/F shows like Lost or Game of Thrones becoming cultural phenomenons vs. the elusive Geekdom prior to the Star Wars movies. Aesthetic unites us where every other aspect of nationalism and group identity divide us by philosophy - our perceptions and understanding of geography, history, culture, language, or enemy (traits of nationalism, yeah, I’m citing my own article lol) are all based on complex webs of experience, education, world view, etc.

We focus on aesthetics in literature, visual arts, and technology, business branding, business models, and even the application of science to the public. Aesthetics becomes the focus of energy because it is where we find freedom of identity in a world ready to challenge any semblance of diverse thought. We agree on aesthetics, because they fit a model and communicate efficiently if we are something to consider good or bad.

But that false dichotomy is severely flawed because projections of reality and reality itself are two vastly different things. Dichotomous thinking is a way to simplify the world when it becomes too complex too fast, it is a tool used to make choices, like making a pros-cons list or an if-then projection in order to decide to do or not to do, to be or not to be. It is often supported as a tool of control, and becomes extremely dangerous when it begins to dictate our identities and understandings of the world. When there is no us-vs-them, what idea can we rally around?

To start, we have a lot of inclusion to do, because discussions of philosophy, art, and science all start with time, and you know who doesn’t have time? People who need to make money in it. So when we skew our education systems to favor those who have time (and therefore money), we allow economics to dictate progress in philosophy and art and science, we hand over control to those who profit most from dichotomous thinking. And when we do that... well... money will favor some things over others, like product over research, revenue over investment, aesthetic over thought, etc. until deviating outside of that cycle is nearly impossible if not unsurvivable.

We’re in a loop, where making money is the goal, because there is no other option, research needs support, and research’s only support comes from money, and money wants more money, so research is limited to whatever gives us money.

Has that always been the case?

Renaissance artists were successful if they demonstrated the church’s power, gaining the church support through aesthetics, not challenging its philosophy (well... not directly anyway). That church profited (and still does) greatly from the development of dichotomies and used art and emotion to encourage this thinking, often as a way to control the lower classes.

Baroque composers (or Romantic, Classical, and Modern ones for that matter) were successful if they sold shows and inspired attendees to purchase their music, again, often sponsored by those in financial power and following the requested agenda (and again, not always directly, often including illicit subtext). Stepping too far away from what was popular and appropriate meant they lost sponsorship and public interest. Thus, the freedom of the starving artist vs. the conformation of the sell-out dichotomy.

And WWII/post-WWII scientists were successful if their work was supported by government institutions, particularly military or intelligence branches, and advanced the prospect of victory over a consistent manifestation of physical enemy (Nazis, Russians, soldiers, and spies). 

The money comes when the proof is clear, not when it’s being searched for, and then only after decades of scientists and artists have died in poverty after discoveries of curiosity, not agenda. Progress, then, is controlled by public interest... or else private investment, and must, therefore, conform to the expectations of one or the other, often balancing the greater of two evils, it seems.

This is not a disrespect of those genius giants before us. I’m just noticing a pattern in the system of prosperous aesthetic periods and less progressive philosophical ones. We see the results of the philosophers only when they are applied aesthetically, and those aesthetic focal points divide the world into answers instead of questions, so it can seem that large progress has been made, when perhaps it was in-process for quite some time and was completed when a group of people crowded around the concept with the financial support of a capital agenda and the peers to push the boundaries of answering the questions that had been asked before them.

Most of the giants whose shoulders we stand on are invisible, it seems we only recognize the ones who present the answers aesthetically to our culture of origin. The “discoverers” of America are preserved in record because of their historic access in writing, but also because of their royal and religious backing. 

Many scientific theories were proposed prior to our Western heroes by individuals those heroes had access to reading, particularly those outside of our Western vernacular. Darwin had access to tons of theories, but I’m not just talking Lyell and Linnaeus here, but the likes of  Zhuang Zhou, al-Jāḥiẓ, and Ibn Khaldūn, whose names are ignored even in evolutionary biology/anthropology classes. 

We remember Apple’s ipod, not the saturated market of mp3 players before it; we discuss the unveiling of the iphone, not the industry and inventions that already existed. And while the fun of literature is often disassembling its parts, we don’t discuss the mythology or market predecessors to Harry Potter, because it was the new aesthetic of young adult. That’s a bold claim, and much more subjective than the tech/science ones, but I think it’s important that we recognize this across industries and throughout our culture, not simply within the aesthetic streamlining of technology. Our immediate “successful” heroes make money because they provide and aesthetic that applies to many philosophies.

We don’t diversify our education because we admire the end result of science, rarely considering the entirety of work that went into final discovery or product. We try to explain science in chains of linear progression rather than the mind-map of questions and ideas and artistic or political influence that it is.

Progress then, depends a great deal on affluence and we exist in a culture of “who you know” rather than a balance of who AND what you know. Sure, there are always exception, but is it any surprise that we younger generations are obsessed with image? 

Success, it seems, is directly correlated with it, and while we know genius takes more than money, success seems to exist outside of it - in fact, success rarely seems to involve genius itself at all anymore, but pure aesthetic. I’m thinking of the likes of Steve Jobs, who cultivated a following through his personal branding and rhetoric that helped change an entire industry, but often did so through aesthetics, not invention. 

We have grown to idolize the firsts as people who invented something, however, the reality is that those tech giants and big names rarely invented, rather re-modeled and presented something aesthetically compatible to society. We do not celebrate the inventor of the piano, but rather those composers who presented us with an aesthetic style for it. 

But that makes sense, because science’s value is in application. Who cares about dark matter? Well, no one (except sci-fi authors lol), yet, because it has no application to the public. But projects are still funded by institutions and government because our curiosity drives research and the potential outcome (weapons, control, power, money) justifies investment. How much money our government spends on NASA is directly correlated to the expectation of results, in the 60s, that was a way to defeat our perceived enemies, now, for some, it’s useless and should be privately funded.

I’m getting a little off topic, but my point is that what we deem “progress” is often only the part of the iceberg that we see, and rarely the whole of it. So what we see in the initial photo as a culture is a group of genius scientists (yes, again, respectfully, I am not denouncing the discoveries or large amount of work put in by any individuals here), rather than the prosperity of the Industrial Revolution, whose amount of excess-everything funded work that wasn’t considered necessary, until it was. When we fear a limit of resources, we understandably become more controlling over what we spend money on as a society, but even in limited resources, there are those with excess, who can then more easily control what is considered valuable or not. 

So, to be a successful genius, one must have access to funding, and to do this, one’s work must fulfill an agenda of another who has or is access to funds. This often entails being well connected, which includes a performance of image, false confidence, and the crucial understanding of the mind map of philosophy, art, and science in the intended discipline, which is often only accessible to those who fit the desired cultural template of the controlled upper class (read: wealthy, white, male, and upperclass-educated, for historical America anyway). 

Which means that in idolizing the presenters of knowledge, we value the aesthetic of it, the pretty package wrapped around a completed idea, more than we value the process of it. And this is dangerous because we repeat it everywhere, in politics and government (we might value the cheaters who take a shortcut as a symbol of intelligent application, or those who represent an aesthetic we agree with without looking into their application of policy), justice (social justice often values the aesthetic meaning of an outcome of a problem, rather than deconstructing the process by which that outcome was reached), education (we use standardized testing to represent a student’s ability to memorize outcomes - or the aesthetic of looking intelligent, rather than demonstrating an ability to apply knowledge and understanding), business (we herald in those who present us with a desired aesthetic brand - Apple, Starbucks, Google, etc., rather than investigating the potential corruption of human conditions that leads to that aesthetic; or else using a popularity rating of stars as peer-approval of a brand rather than developing our opinions out of experience).

Even in our personal lives, it is more important to be perceived as positive and confident than to investigate and deconstruct what might be making us unhappy. For me, it was health, I didn’t like how I looked or felt, but was obsessively told that I’m great, I shouldn’t feel that way. My negativity was rewarded, victimization was encouraged, and the conclusion seemed to always be leaving everything as-is.

Eventually I had to say fuck it and stop seeking the support and understanding of friends, utilizing spite to rebuild a healthy life, which isn’t the only option, that was my choice, but our obsession with aesthetics became a lose-lose for me. I didn’t want to look like a photo-brushed-whatever model, which seemed to be everyone’s assumption, I just felt unhappy because I was unhealthy and unproductive in my life. 

But that’s a bad aesthetic, or maybe not one at all and that denial of aesthetic might be the worst part. I didn’t fit into a box, not out of any higher intelligence, but because I could never pick one. This story is much more complex (and for the record, Jake was instrumental in helping me develop and maintain a health plan) and could probably be unpacked into an entire book of an extended metaphor, but put simply, I want to be a minimalist some days and a traditionalist other days and my brain is just a clash of ideas. Even my wardrobe reflects this, lit-nerd some days, world-traveler other days, outgoing-athlete, and even the occasional clash of weird accessories that is dancer-chic, lol. 

I was feeling stuck by a body that was in endless rehabilitation and recovery (long story, broken bones), and I didn’t like it, so I wanted to change it. But that proactive idea was met with passionate defenses of body-positivity (which does have a place in society as a whole) and a focus on aesthetic (”you look fine”) rather than philosophy (well I don’t fucking feel fine). And I can’t help but think it’s because aesthetics are things we can agree on, or because they are safe, and to change aesthetics or to request a focus on philosophy, makes people scared about the burden of change.

So I have a revision to my own idea of what curates success:

Successful genius exists in a place supported financially, often by an agenda that is commonly more afforded to those who already fit a familiar cultural aesthetic of money or power, armed with an understanding of connection and access to un-biased and diverse knowledge and education (again, often most commonly afforded to those already in the upperclass), surrounded by a group of similar individuals who provide competition as well as resources and connections that progress the understanding of concepts in non-linear objectivity, and present finalized ideas to the public in a consumable and digestible aesthetic package of understanding that does not require extensive negative change on behalf of the consumer.

If that is true, I think it answers the cycles of science in ages of philosophy and reason vs. aesthetics and image that creates the popular science vs. art false dichotomy. STEM is more easily objective, and objective is more easily packaged and sold, therefore we create an art vs. science dichotomy and science wins - but only if it’s presenter understands enough about art to package it aesthetically. Social sciences are doomed by their own use of inductive arguments, complex layers of pattern and observation that don’t have a single objective Truth, rather a layered perception of potential truth, which is not easily distributed - it’s not a pamphlet, it’s a book. 

Ain’t nobody got time for books.

It explains the Millennial obsession with image outside of an individual psychology of narcissism, by looking to cultural understandings of success and value. And while deviating from traditional models of progress - looking at thought as a mind map of connection rather than linear funnel of detail (while still applicable and useful), it illustrates the time lapse between discovery and progress. There is a gap between the actual discovery of knowledge and the generalized application of that knowledge, and that gap is filled by whomever presents the information most effectively or efficiently, sometimes accurately, to the public. That presenter is then considered successful, valuable, important. That importance leads to respect, time, and freedom.

So Millennials are emulating what they need to look like to be considered successful (fake it ‘till you make it and all), while science emulates linear thought in the same way. Linear thought can be more easily objective and packaged for public access, taught in schools and accepted by society. We create a dichotomy of linear and non-linear thought and say they have pros and cons or specific uses and applications, but I think in the same way our predecessors argued about Empiricism vs. Rationalism (read: art vs. science) until we understood them in tandem, we are at the point of having to understand linear and non-linear thinking not as opposites, but as extremes on a spectrum, most useful when balanced. 

It’s complex and complex things take time to understand. And time is money. And money is freedom. And freedom is happiness.

Perhaps this explains why dichotomies are so popular - they fit an aesthetic, and they remove the exhausting layers of philosophy that exist inside our own identities. Dichotomies limit the complexity of an idea into two extremes, and  when we define ourselves by an image rather than our modes of thought, much of our decisions can be made by whatever aligns with the image. We can feel free by the illusions of power or choice, while minimizing the effort it takes to get to that freedom, and maybe it makes us feel happy for a minute. 

However, while we spend much of our decision quota in a given day on deciding which aesthetics to consume or conform to, those choices are still influenced by those whose agendas are funding our understanding of the world through science and art. Is it any wonder we’ve created a dichotomy of disconnect in every way. What I mean is that it is easy to make irrational choices based on feelings of aesthetics (easier, not always easy), and when our culture divides aesthetics into categories, they are predictable, marketable, and controllable, so we must separate the world into understandable groups.

If this is true, then maybe it’s not the internet or social media or Millennial entitlement that is separating us. Maybe it’s the control of wealth being recycled into similar agendas to produce work that conforms to or provides evidence supporting already existing biases in science. Keep us too busy making money to have time to understand it and too loyal to brands to investigate the money, and too exhausted of choices to discover ourselves. So the freedom of choice that we find in aesthetic dichotomies - the ease of making decisions and lowered exhaustion of not analyzing those experiences, is actually a sacrifice of identity and agency to those funding our research and creating the requirements of aesthetic conformation . 

This is getting a bit conspiracy-theory-esque, but dichotomies are good for reducing choices and controlling groups, however, they do not inherently exist outside of a few basic dualities (like light and the absence of light, or dark), they extend out of a focus on aesthetic and a disapproval of thought, voice, and criticism. Or, to simplify, they are social constructs to organize information.

So if this all related in some way, if science and progress is inhibited by the agendas of the elite, and we are very aware of our elite, how do we trust it? How do we step out of the aesthetic-obsessed cycle and into forgiveness and understanding and patience and... time?

And perhaps more importantly, how do we develop a way to support science AND diversify it? How do we make the next photo like this include races and genders across a spectrum of ideologies? How do we create a collective group of genius that exists outside of a capital agenda, is it even possible? How can we encourage investment over revenue when so many Americans (and people around the world) feel they don’t have enough time to make money to survive, or choices to spend thinking about philosophy, policy, and what they believe in vs. agreeing with something that seems to vaguely align with their desired aesthetic identity? It’s not laziness, I don’t think, but over-work, we’ve reached our daily capacity and the sacrifice of demanding more is...less.

I struggle to pick an aesthetic and it has helped me break that easy black-and-white view of the world, but that is a fight I am exhausted by every day. It would be so simple to pick an aesthetic and run with it, to define myself by a collective idea and make choices based on what matches it, but that swings with my emotions, and maybe that’s closer to the problem? 

We have done some weird shit with emotion, from disregarding it as feminine or “weak,” to writing it out of strength and art and science. We have created a dichotomy between emotion and logic and then mapped it into our brains as hemispheres of thought. We made a taboo-aesthetic of sadness (I mean, look at Inside Out’s character development of Sadness, but they did a good job using balance as the answer) and disregarded most emotions beyond contentment or positive excitement as bad, which is, surprise, starting to look like a mistake. We’ve branded empathy as weakness; we are simultaneously admiring, and for many worshiping, empathetic individuals while funneling our money into heartless heroes who we deem successful. Maybe it’s our emotions that have faded, beaten out of us or encouraged into silence, leaving us lonely and dependent on our chosen aesthetic to find any pieces of identity that might lead to authentic happiness. Maybe emotion is what keeps us in just-enough chaos to challenge the agendas that control our choices by keeping us unpredictable? Or perhaps they are what unite us beyond aesthetic.

Maybe staring at that shelf of shampoos and conditioners, over half of which are produced by the exact same factory and owned by the same company but branded with different versions of you in mind and with how you will feel looking at them taken into account, is extremely overwhelming. And some days you feel lazy and tired and you just grab that same ol’ thing. But occasionally you feel rebellious or responsible, and you investigate and make a completely different choice because maybe you are made of a layer of realities held together by your collective experience of life that creates a unique worldview, that thing that we conform to an aesthetic or maybe an emotion, or philosophy, or a conviction of values, and maybe that thing cannot be predicted. Maybe our models predict an aesthetic, not a person, and maybe that’s a duh, but it’s not a logical concept I consider on a daily basis of rhetoric hailing technology and AI as all-knowing and capable of perfect reason.

Maybe it’s our chaos that is trying to be organized into compartmental identities of aesthetic ideologies: minimal, vintage, grunge, professional, bad-ass, athletic, urban, feminine, boho, whatever it is. And those who challenge it are in for a much more difficult life of choices, each of which must be broken down into action-and-consequence, current emotion vs. future potential, the history and creation of a product, etc. We don’t have time to ask our coffee if children were kidnapped to harvest it, we have an image and this specific coffee or product fits it; we are too busy trying to be successful so that we can eventually have the freedom to fully identify ourselves and be happy, and we see by cultural example that our desired success comes from aesthetic.

Capitalism creates a need for money, and that excess capital is often syphoned into the remnants of pre-constructed systems. I don’t have the expertise to divide that into its logical components yet, but maybe our adoration of monarchy as seen in our popular media, art, and entertainment, has us assuming the elite among us deserve their position, romanticizing the trials of poverty as obstacles to be overcome, and forcing racial stereotypes into equally damaging aesthetics - the white female, incapable damsel in distress, vs. the black female, independent queen who can survive everything on her own. This is not a real dichotomy, it’s a shitty stereotype, but you probably wouldn’t know it from the outside looking in, or perhaps from the inside itself, if you felt the need to align with a specific aesthetic, or even to invert that pressure into the opposite aesthetic. Businesses thrive by utilizing those dichotomies, and sometimes by creating a solution to them. So if they are useful to some, perhaps that’s enough reason to be suspicious of the agendas that tell us how to think or make our lives easier. 

I feel like I’m saying a lot of stupid things while feeling my own brain nodding along and going like oh, here’s a dichotomy and there’s another dichotomy and all dichotomies are false dichotomies, and I know all this in formal educated argument, but when it comes to daily application, I want to just be a cool millennial who has health insurance and can grab takeout without humming about the cost and what I might be able to pull together from the fridge. That doesn’t mean brands or aesthetics, despite the market’s attempts to the contrary, just the means to survive financially with a bit of excess time for myself to think and be bored and contemplate the world with other people so we’re all a bit less lonely and more emotionally adjusted.  

Diversity, money, research, science, art, aesthetic, it all seems to come back to identity and time. Time to make choices, time to reflect and think about identity and emotion, time to deconstruct and criticize reality, time to investigate corruption, time to gather knowledge and resources, time to exist along other humans rather than floating away, isolated and ungrounded from the world. Therefore, successful geniuses also have time to exist outside of a singular aesthetic and enhance our understanding of the world in order to develop positive changes that we often label “progress.”

How do we give people more time so that they don’t have to divide the world into aesthetics and dichotomies in order to keep up or attempt to be successful? Does giving someone time allow them to feel successful? If that perseverance of success was in order to gain the time, would we then use the time to curate individual identities that we feel comfortable and confident in? Is time what it takes to be happy? Is time what separates the classes in America?

How do we un-do “time is money,” particularly in a capitalist economy and remember that time is also thought and connection and values and friendships and more than obligations?

How do we remember that time is identity?

Is time a renewable resource? Or are we. 

[thistaintedsoul]

2019

New Year new me to me is a sack of shit! As if changing one's habits and personality like a light switch could work on the stroke of 12.

I'm not one for resolutions because I think a goal can be reached as long as your mind is set and you have the will to complete it and it doesn't matter when started.

Nonetheless, I'm going to try my hand; here goes:

Resolution 1. Read at least one book a week. According to Alexa there are 52 weeks in a year and I plan to take advantage of that considering I have 'Our Shared Shelf' book club to catch up with (which I highly recommend) and Stephan King's recommendations from his memoir (a good read, and I must note his list is 3 pages long ( I know I'm in way over my head))

Resolution 2. Blog once a month. This is quite the stretch for me. I have never written anything for anyone to read before, so this is definitely new to me. I'm trying to step out of my comfort zone. I usually have trouble sleeping, maybe getting things off my mind could help some. I'm thinking these blogs will probably sum up the month I've gone through and perhaps thoughts on current events. Who's to say?

Resolution 3. Work out three times a week. I've had this goal for sometime now, however life and mostly work get in the way of that. Most of the time I'm extremely tired to even get out of bed or lift a finger. Still I want to stick with it and this time mix it up a bit. I'm thinking swimming in summer, running in spring, cycling in Autumn, and shivering in winter.

Resolution 4. Save money. This one has always been something I've tried to do but FUCKING life, ya know. It's sometimes a bitch!

Resolution 5. Focus on MY happiness. This will be hard, I have to remember to not sweat the little things. I've cut the toxic people out of my life and self preserved. I am learning to heal and taking the time to being content with loneliness. Trying to accept my past and move on is rough. But I want to be fully and unapologetically HAPPY.

I'm hoping against hope this year and I know it will be hard. The world is chaotic and maybe this will help me with what little control I have of my life that seems a mess. It kind of feels like it's slipping through my fingers. I'm going to be 29 this year and I just want some semblance of control, that I can have some sanity in my life in a fucked up world.