#and imagine having been the person who is in charge of an empire? knowing that if you fall; you will fall with your empire?

[hollyhomburg]

Prey Animals (11)

—  Pairing: Yoongi x reader, Bts x reader

—  Genre: Omegaverse, Mafia au, Polyamory au, Found family, Suspense, Eventual Smut, enemies to friends to lovers, Healing & Themes of trauma,

—  Summary: In a world where Beta's are rare, valuable, and often have more than one pack; Beta Min Yoongi does everything he can to keep his mafia heritage a secret from his primary pack. Little does he know he's not the only one who's living a double life.

—  Words: 8.6k

—  Warnings: Physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, trauma, violence, abduction, blood, hurt/comfort, tenderness, patching up wounds.

—  Check in at the end for my notes on this chapter! — 

(92 days before, Yoongi)

Yoongi can’t see you as much as he’d like.

There are just too many things to do, family factions to check up on, disputes to settle that almost devolve into blows or burials. Headache after headache and bruised knuckles that Yoongi tries to hide from you.

He doesn’t want you to think he’s like them.

He wonders when what you think of him started to matter. Unable to place the exact moment or thing that makes him even care. He imagines Seokjin tapping the space over his heart, ‘not empty yet?’ A dizzying daydream and a sweet one.

The only sweet reprieve he finds these days are either his dreams or the afternoons he slips away to you. Only when Geumjae’s not there, only when you won’t be seen together, and his presence won’t be suspicious. Yoongi is allowed to move about as he wants, you on the other hand are not. Kept under lock and key.

“Geumjae doesn’t let me leave. He’s worried that I’ll- he’s just protective- and-”

“And possessive?”

“And possessive.” You agree, tipping your head to Yoongi in deference. “You know how alpha’s get.”

Yoongi doesn’t mind coming to you.

Monday and Wednesday afternoons are reserved solely for you. Mostly because those are the days that Geumjae regularly steps out to handle the family business. The Min’s have always been in charge of guns, ghost and stollen, distribution and protection, everything else is just background noise, though occasionally Yoongi knows Geumjae trades in bodies and blunts. Nothing he can’t move quickly, nothing that sticks around.

Wednesdays are the day that Geumjae checks in with his men, checks who’s paid their ‘rent’ this month and who hasn’t. Yoongi knows Geumjae checks over the shipments personally and those come in on Monday.

Usually, you have a good block of time to spend with Yoongi. And he can reassure himself you’re not hurt. Even if that double checking starts to feel more complacent as the weeks drag on.

Smuggling and secrets, hidden hurts and bruises. Yoongi doesn’t know when he started to sort of plan it in his head, all the way’s he might be able to convince Geumjae to let you go and the ways he could get you out.

He doesn’t brotch the topic with you, that’s too risky. But when he’s not with you Yoongi’s planning. It’s one of a dozen goals he has at this point to disrupt the movements of the family and dismantling the empire.

But that’s a pipe dream, they’re too well organized, you could never take it down from the top or the bottom, it would have to be unilateral. Yoongi has thought about how he’d do it time and time again and every time he tries to think through it he runs into the same road blocks.

There is too much loyalty, too much mutually assured destruction. One house falls and another would take its place and absorb their business. You couldn’t go house by house without the others becoming too strong.

And no one can second guess Yoongi’s motives. To cause even the slightest suspicion would be a death warrant, it has to look like he’s helpful and incompetent even if he aims to be anything but.

Helping a head’s wife escape her husband would certainly be cause for suspicion. Not enough to kill Yoongi outright, but probably enough that all of his actions, including returning to the pack would gain further scrutiny. Yoongi doesn’t want to think about what would happen if the family took a closer look. The pack must stay uncontacted. Yoongi will not drag them into this.

One life does not equal six. But Yoongi has to try.

Faking your death is an easy option. Yoongi could easily say you couldn’t be trusted and procure a body that looks like yours and plant it. Fire could take care of DNA and dental records. No one would question it if Yoongi was at the helm of the operation. No one would question if Yoongi made it look like it was him who killed you.

That way- you might be able to slip away unscathed.

He’s got a fair bit of money set aside that he could give you. Not enough to buy you a new life but certainly enough to start. He could make sure you disappear into the hazy backdrop of the world. To some faraway seaside cottage that he could come and visit. He could fix it up maybe. Live in it possibly. If the pack doesn’t take him back.

There are a lot of ‘ifs’ in all this.

The rest of the houses jostling for power gets worse as the days count down, and they grow restless. The Callender trudges closer to the 120-day mark. The gala planned at end of the season is for the lunar new year but also for the new Don. It will be the last official family gathering and once the clock strikes midnight, Yoongi will make his choice on who will rule. It has more than one grandma in a tizzy- there’s a lot of planning that goes into it.

“It’s the year of the rabbit,” someone whispers,

“Not a good year, a year for prey animals.”

“Surely it’s bad luck.”

Yoongi grows antsy too. Too often the business of the family drags him away from you.

He helps the Ahn's carry out a deal that almost goes south and misses two meetings with you in a row. You do send some pastries to the cottage, chocolate ginger cookies with powdered sugar tops- but they’re cold and a little mushy by the time Yoongi gets to them. The cinnamon still reminds him of Tae. It seems like you’re trying to make one pastry for each of them, if the coffee cake and vanilla bean scones are anything to go by.

When he can’t get to you, your text messages are his constant companion.

Mrs.Min (1:26am): if you have a sweet tooth like me, I don’t know why you’ve never learned to bake.

--- (1:31am): Seokjin bakes bread sometimes but anything with a filling he kind of fails at.

--- (1:31am): We tried to make hot pockets once.

Yoongi swears he can year you stifle a laugh over the phone. Across the city sitting downstairs because you didn’t want to fall asleep next to Geumjae upstairs. Happy to have a rare evening where he doesn’t…require you.  

You feel like you sort of know his pack already. It’s nice to talk about them. You’re the only person who Yoongi can talk to about them. The only person who doesn’t make talking feel scary.

Yoongi changes your contact in his phone.

--- (1:32am): could you teach me how to cook shit like this?

Her (1:32am): Don’t call my cookies shit

Yoongi sends a selfie of himself eating one, face dotted with powdered sugar like snow.

 --- (1:32am): they sort of look like shit.

Her (1:33am): they’re double chocolate caramel!!!!

Her (1:33am): …

Her (1:33am): Alright fine, I’ll admit they’re not visually appealing.

Yoongi laughs curling over the plate of cookies. It’s the first time he’s laughed in weeks, the first laugh that he’s had here that wasn’t fake. Yoongi looks at his phone and feels such a pang in his chest it winds him. Tae's voice whispers in his ear.

You’re going to miss her, aren’t you? If this goes south, you’d miss her.

Yoongi’s heart is in his throat when he reads your text message.

Her (1:34am): We might not have a lot of time until new years, but I can probably teach you a few recipes before then.

~-~

(87 days before, Yoongi)

More and more of the families want to have Yoongi supervise, want him to see how each of their candidates behave in hopes of swaying him in their direction. But a good portion of them are either too young, too stupid, or too disinterested in actually leading. Guided to Yoongi’s quiver by their parents and heads of house.  

The Ahn’s are in charge of weed and meth, the Miyazato’s cocaine and heroin, the Jijon’s prescription drugs and organs (kidneys mostly, but there is the rare lung transplant and the even rarer hearts), the Lucchese’s for smuggling and laundering, the Moon’s diamonds, the Camorra’s prostitution, Another for cybercrimes and counterfeiting, on and on again until Yoongi’s mind is dizzy with keeping track of who works for who.

12 families in total. A few of them have intermingled enough that there are blood relations on both sides. Yoongi’s mother was a Moon before she married his father. The title of ‘cousin’ for Moonbyul’s isn’t just that. The blood mixing is kept track of carefully, with no need for unintended incest, it’s a hobby of the auntie and uncle omega’s. There is a dating pool of eligible young omegas and alphas. The more they intermarry the stronger the bond between houses grow.

Yoongi doesn’t know what he’d rather do, play kingpin or matchmaker.

There are a few arranged marriages each year. One gets announced at a family dinner almost halfway through Yoongi’s stay. The Ahn head of house and the Luchese head of house shake hands, the perfect picture of a business deal. Both of them wishing for more grandchildren.

Which is probably why most of the grannies don’t like you.

Yoongi see’s you sneered at and tripped, notes when the houses switch to their native tongues, more often than not Korean, when you come close to hide their words from you. You’ve squashed their plans of having their third or fourth in line omega grandchild marry a head of house. Yoongi doesn’t have to ask himself why Geumjae chose you. It’s clear.

You’re as beautiful as you are easy to get along with, more than one man has been tempted to possessive anger by a countenance as graceful as yours. When Yoongi comes to check on you you’ve always got something prepared.

You need too, because that’s the only sure-fire way you’ve ever found that made Geumjae’s anger immediately subside. A way to a man’s heart is through his stomach (and between his legs) and it’s your only way to safety.

Geumjae doesn’t eat your sweets anymore. He hasn’t since the Don and Beta died. But Yoongi eats them and that’s enough to encourage your shy smile.

You learned after the first day you don’t have something prepared, that Yoongi doesn’t mind if you don’t have the food ready when he walks in. “I-I’m sorry- they’re taking too long to cook- they don’t look pretty, and I haven’t even made the ganache yet- I don’t know what went wrong and-”

Yoongi’s presence is so soothing, like a fresh breath of air as he swoops into your kitchen, opening the oven and checking it while you watch anxiously. Ready to be scolded.

“It looks like it needs a minute, do you want to teach me how to make frosting? It can’t be that hard to make ganache.” His casual tone leaves you spluttering.

“Gnash and frosting are like so not the same thing.”  

It’s the first time anyone cooked with you in years, and Yoongi dons your apron so easily. There are little strawberries embroidered along the hem, and it contrasts with the dark silk of his button-down. He lets you tie it behind his back. He always wears the scarf when he comes to see you, it’s like your little secret. Sometimes, at the family dinners on the weekend you see it tied to his wrist, the hint of red peeking out from his suit jacket.

Some days Yoongi doesn’t take it off.  

“Is there anything you don’t like? Any desert I shouldn’t make?”

Yoongi thinks for a moment, humming, turning away to tap at his phone, sitting on the countertop. Someone is calling him, but he taps away the contact the second it appears. “I guess the only thing I don’t really like is pumpkin pie.”

You lift your lip, nodding in agreement, “so mushy.”  You show him how to chop the chocolate, putting it in the double boiler, watching him while he stirs it, giving him instructions that he follows obediently.

A man, obedient for you. How strange.

He’s got nice shoulders, you realize. They’re wider than you first thought. A warm vision pops into your head; more of a string of images than a daydream. Your arms around his waist, a hug from behind. Your front pressed to his warm back, burying your face in his shoulders and rubbing your nose along his spine.

It’s brief even if it is sweet, you shake it off before it has the power to make your scent sweet. Narrowly stopping the chocolate from burning with a hand on his wrist. His scent sweetens. Like the chocolate on the air. You avoid touching Yoongi for the rest of the day. When Yoongi’s not looking you press your cold hands to your cheeks to try and calm down.

~-~  

(70 days before, Yoongi)

It’s the 6th Wednesday that Yoongi has gone over to your house, and when he checks his phone for a text from you, he finds nothing.

It's not all that abnormal. Two Mondays ago Yoongi hadn't gotten a text at all until nearly 4 o'clock. You'd apologized and told him that he should just come over if it happened again. So he heads over, hood up in disguise and to protect his face from the wind. A gnawing feeling in his chest that feels an awful lot like worry. 

There are no staff here today, none. Not a single car in your modest wrap-around driveway or 3-car garage. Yoongi knows Geumjae has a collection of supercars somewhere across the city, but knows better than to suspect he’s home. He always parks out front and leaves either the red Lamborghini or the black Spider where anyone can see and envy it. Geumjae never misses an opportunity to show off. 

Yoongi lingers outside, the windows are dark, but he can see a light just on, not in the entranceway but further inside. He sends you a text, tries to call you, and even knocks on the front door, only for it to go unanswered. He hesitates just briefly before he lets himself in. 

He doesn't have to go far to find you. You are in the powder room just off the foyer. The only lit-up space in the whole house, you are slumped over the sink, hardly able to hold yourself up. You look up in the mirror the second you hear someone behind you.

You flinch, face turning, bloody cheek catching the light. 

“Holy shit.”  

He hasn’t taken off his jacket or his shoes, he hasn’t even bothered to make sure you’re not being watched as he crosses the short distance. You flinch back again, backing up against the door.

 Your face is...a mess, a bruised cheek, the corner of your lip split, and the top of your cupid's bow swollen. There is blood on your lips, the inside of your mouth when you open it. Your chin is speckled with it as is the side of your face.

Your shoulders go down, and you speak, words muffled from the blood in your mouth. The sink is soaked in it from wall to wall. A bit drips out.

“I thought you were Geumjae.” 

Yoongi bristles, but rage makes him quiet. You pause, spitting blood into the sink. “Bit my cheek when he slapped me. It’s alright, it's fine, I'm-” you sway, teeter there and Yoongi stops you from falling over. Woozy from blood loss? From a minor concussion?

It’s anything but alright, and it’s anything but fine. Yoongi knows. Feels it in his hands, shaking with rage. He lifts his hands, hesitating before he touches you. He lowers his hand and settles for grabbing yours, tugging you through the house to the kitchen.

Yoongi does not like touching you when he's angry. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel right, even if it's not you he's angry at.

Face wounds have a habit of bleeding a lot, and mouth wounds even more so. There is a trail of blood from the bathroom to the kitchen speckling the black and white checked floor. 

It’s no better there. In the kitchen, there’s a small pool of blood on the floor. Smudged like something- your cheek maybe- had been pressed into it and dragged or pushed through it. Dried and dark.

A bowl of flour sits upturned, dotting the counter like snow and turning everything dusty. Yoongi wonders what you’d been making, what you’d almost tried to bake before your interruption.

It had been for him; you'd been baking for him and Geumjae had been there and he'd- 

Yoongi picks you up at your waist and sits you on the countertop. So angry he can hardly speak. The touch is brief, only a few seconds on your waist. But you make a small noise in surprise. “Sit.” He commands, and you follow, perfectly obedient. 

Blood dribbles out of your lips. Onto your lap. You're in your pajamas, matching blue and grey silk toile. There's blood on your collar too.

He wets a cloth underneath the faucet and dabs it against your cheek, round and swollen, ever so gently to wipe at the blood on your cheek, holding his hand under your chin to catch the blood. Your split lip. Until your skin is mostly clear. You wince and Yoongi gently cajoles you. “There you go- I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” 

Yoongi leaves you with the cloth and goes to get cotton rounds and raid the bathroom. There is hydrogen peroxide and Vaseline, it’s not ideal, and it's not a trip to urgent care or a call from a family doctor but it’s all Yoongi can do.

"I'm going to fix your mouth, but I have to put my fingers in there. Is that okay? Is that alright?" you nod, mouth too full of blood to speak.

Yoongi washes his hands before he grabs the Vaseline. He hooks his finger into it grabbing a glob on his index before he holds his other hand out for the cloth. "Spit" You spit into the cloth. "Open" you open your mouth.

Yoongi finds the interior gash warm, Warm and wet and hot to the touch. He swipes the Vaseline over it as gently as he can but you still wince. Breath hot around his knuckles. Yoongi does not keep his fingers in your mouth longer than necessary. Taking it out and whipping the blood and Vaseline on another cloth. "There you go, good, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Try to speak with your lips more, I know it hurts, but this will help it clot and stop bleeding. Leave it in for an hour and then you'll be good." 

The Vaseline tastes gross. Leaves oil on your tongue, but your mouth immediately stops filling with blood. Yoongi's fingers are out of your mouth as quick as he puts them in. You nod, eyes downturned. 

Yoongi takes the cloth from you and continues to clean. It's the softest anyone's touched you in a long time. You're selfish enough to let him do it. Is it affection or selfishness? Wanting or guilt? You can't read Yoongi's expression. Can’t read his eyes at all.

You’re wearing makeup to cover other bruises, this close, standing between your legs, he can see the spots where your skin turns gummy. He continues to wipe it away. Going farther than the blood. Down to your chin, your shoulder. Your neck, Your fingers. Your wrists. More and more horrified the more he uncovers. 

You don't stop him. You could stop him. You should. But being touched like this. The cold cloth feels so pleasant against your bruised skin. It feels a bit too good to be safe.

You have fingerprints, hand marks, whatever you want to call them. Around your neck. Big finger-shaped bruises. More around your wrists like someone has been holding you down. Your eyes are screwed shut tight like you can’t bear to keep your eyes open. Yoongi’s rag is a mess of makeup and blood. 

An uncharacteristic growl builds in his chest because- because- 

He can tell that the bruises aren’t fresh. You have to have been hiding them for days or maybe weeks because they’re already yellowing. Yoongi didn't notice them. Geumjae had tried to strangle you. To kill you. He could have, he could have done it, with his hands around your throat.  

Yoongi wonders If the abuse started before or after your marriage. Knowing Geumjae- he probably waited to show you his true colors. Married, locked in, and trapped. He must have waited until you knew too much, until you didn’t have a hope of leaving without losing your life.

The family doesn’t allow divorces. 

You immediately go into damage control. Yoongi doesn’t even have to ask where you got them before you’re defending your husband. “There are worse things. He wasn’t trying to kill me this time. He was just so angry.” Looking at them all Yoongi can think is that Namjoon would sooner cut off his own hands than lay one finger on Jin in anger. “-and you know how alpha’s are, it’s my fault, I make him angry.”

You keep saying that and Yoongi’s starting to hate it.

Yoongi can barely hear you over the roar of his own heartbeat in his ears. He knows he probably smells like the ocean right now. That he should be putting more effort into smelling gentler so that he doesn’t spook you but-

“This time?”

If he smells like the ocean when he’s sad or upset, then you smell like rain. Together you are a typhoon, a hurricane. Wind whipping, cold and fridged. The type of storm that melts cities and peels off warmth like nothing. The kitchen is full of that smell, rain, salt, and bloody brine.

You shake your head at him, looking away. You take the cold cloth from him. All but wrench it from his fingers. “Don’t, just don’t alright.”

Yoongi pushes back from the countertop and Yoongi raises his hand to run a hand over his face, realizing what he’s done wrong seconds later. His words of ‘don’t defend him’ die in his throat when he sees you prepare to be hit. Flinching and closing your eyes again.

If you’re getting abused by your husband, it stands to reason that his brother will do the same. No matter the kindness that you’ve come to expect from Yoongi, no matter the gentleness you’ve seen. He could always change. People can always change. No good will is guaranteed and no safety is forever.

His touch on your chin is gentle but you still recoil from it. Opening your eyes looking up at him. Eyes wide in surprise.

You’re beginning to realize that Yoongi is nothing like his brother. You feel like you’re always expecting him to do one thing, only for him to say and do the opposite. You wait for him to shame you when he teases you, wait for him to lie to you when he tells you the truth. He’s a man of contradictions.

You’ve never known a beta before. 

You’ve seen the way he acts around the others in the family, watching, always ready to offer an encouraging touch to the young pups or a helpful hand to the old grannies. He might complain and bitch and moan, but behind closed doors, Yoongi is as intense of a man as he is kind.

You think that out of all of them, he’s the only member of the family that you could ever learn to genuinely like.

Not love, because love isn’t something you’d ever get. Not without paying for it. 

Geumjae is always careful to remind you of an omega’s place in society, especially one like you who came from nothing and is worth comparatively little. How many times has he reminded you that you’re not worth the money it takes to house and clothe you? That you are more of a bother than you’re worth.

You need to fit the part assigned to you. The wife, pretty and young and doting. 

Your husband likes it when you’re dressed to impress, in Burberry and Balenciaga. It sends a pointed message to the other families, even if it makes you feel like an accessory. 

Feeling like an accessory is better than feeling like a nuisance, like the dirt under his shoes- like earlier, your nose shoved into your blood like a pet would be shown a mess. Geumjae's boot on the side of your face, pressing you into the floor so hard you felt your jaw creek. You take what you can get. You have been trained to accept violence where there should be love. It’s your job to look and act a certain way. It's your job to take it. 

But it’s harder with Yoongi, harder when he doesn’t seem to expect anything from you at all beyond the conversation. But maybe you’re just naive.

He’s still a man after all. 

You know best what men are truly like. How many times has Geumjae told you your only value is between your legs? The other slight comforts you provide are simply nominal.  You’re as much for decoration as the fancy designer couch or the crystal chandelier. You complete the picture of the perfect life. Powerful men like Geumjae should have pretty young wives, demure and obedient. 

You don’t know when you started to believe the horse shit that Geumjae shoves down your throat. That you were lucky he didn’t treat you worse. That his job is stressful enough to make the abuse justified.

That you deserve it. 

But Yoongi makes it hard to believe Geumjae’s lies. Especially when he talks about his pack, especially when he reacts to your bruises. You bruise easily, it’s not Geumjae’s fault he leaves marks on you. 

Yoongi cradles your face in his hand, thumb on your bruised chin. So, light it doesn’t hurt. It’s dangerous. If Geumjae saw the two of you right now, standing closer like this, Yoongi standing between your parted thighs he might-

“I will never hurt you; you don’t have to be afraid of me.” You stare at him, keenly aware that no matter the empty this house is there could always be eyes.

You could never call the brownstone home. No matter that you sleep and eat and shit here. This house is not a home, that you are sure of. It is never truly safe and there could always be someone watching. Someone who could tell Geumjae that Yoongi had put his hands on you. However gently. it doesn’t matter when it comes to your husband.

His promise tastes rotten. It's not safe for him to be around you. And yet, he holds your face so gently, that you cannot help but lean into his touch.

His hair brushes your brow, long, in your face. “I’m never going to hurt you. I promise.”

Your skin belongs to Geumjae; your body belongs to Geumjae. Every molecule in you promised from the ring on your finger and the bracelets on your wrist. When you find time to feel something other than fear- you hate it. That he’s made you into this thing. This object. You hate the man you once said you loved. No matter what your family and friends had told you about your boyfriend, then fiancé, and now your demon.

Your family and friends have long stopped asking after you. They don't come around anymore; you haven’t spoken to them in years. Whenever they call, Geumjae gets a notification on his phone. You know he has it tracked as well to keep an eye on you. And it’s easier to just not pick up than have him question you and demand you turn over your phone. Even if nothing is telling in your text messages, he’ll find something to be mad about.

Why are you downloading Instagram again? I told you I wasn’t comfortable with you downloading it, people only use it to cheat and look at pictures of other alpha’s. Why did you delete this photo from your camera roll? Did you send this selfie to someone else? See this is why I can’t trust you- you’re so fucking Nieve it blows my mind sometimes. Why would anyone be interested in you if they weren’t going to fuck you? You think she really just wants to be your friend? You’re so fucking boring baby. She’s an alpha. You know alpha’s only want one thing.

Your husband is as possessive of you as he is violent. The first time another man had touched you- just a hand on the small of your back- Geumjae had carved the skin away and cut off the other man’s hand. One finger for every second spent touching something that was his.

That is what we do with filth. We cut it out. He’d said, trailing the knife up the inseam of your tights. You should be careful you don’t dirty yourself. He’s done a lot to you over the years, made you stand under cold water until your lips where purple and the water felt like fire, made you kneel, kept you awake until you were worried about passing out, forced you to crawl, forced you to be sick. Forced you to do a lot of things you’re not proud of, that make you feel dirty.

Yoongi cradles your face so delicately, like he’s not worried about getting his hands dirty.

The scars would have stuck if you hadn’t used scar cream, and really- it wasn’t that deep or that bad, you hadn’t even needed stitches. If he’d been truly angry, he would have cut you deeper. Even in your own mind, you make it out as less bad than it is. 

There are other things that are worse than the scars. You hate the way that your husband watches you, the way that his eyes roam. You feel like he's cutting your skin off, fileting you alive with every spot his eyes touch. You would cut it out if you could- whatever makes him stare so long.  You’d cut your hair and scar your face; you’d smash all your makeup if only he would stop looking at you.  

But beauty is currency. Would Yoongi be helping you right now if you weren't beautiful? You’re not sure you want to know the answer to that question.

(Yes…he would.)

You’ll get nowhere with that line of questioning. As much for your safety as for Yoongi’s- He can’t get close to you or else risk Geumjae’s wrath. You step away from him and his touch. Returning to the floor and stepping out of his grasp. Yoongi has his blood on your fingers when he takes them away, rusty and diluted from water.

It won’t be the last time he has your blood on his hands.

“Yoongi,” you say his name chiding, like you’re scolding a small child. “Don’t you know better than to make promises you can’t keep?”

~-~

(68 days before, Yoongi)

Group dinners are routine, and while Yoongi could find an excuse to see you during the day, he’s also often pulled in 50 different directions by the expectations of his family.

He finds himself readying for dinner in a hurry most nights, eager or maybe a little panicked to check in with you. The family dinners are tense between the two of you. You maintain none of the easy friendships you've cultivated in private. You avoid him like the plague and his eyes never hover on you even once.

Both of you are good at pretending.

Geumjae sticks to your side like glue too. A hand that probably looks protective to anyone else but looks possessive to Yoongi slung around your waist constantly. Yoongi sees the harshness and pain in your body when Geumjae’s hand tightens digging into the swell of your hip. You're plush in the way that all omega's are plush, as pretty as it is distracting.

Yoongi does not let himself look distracted. Not yet. There are too many maneuvers to make, too many decisions and plays, and each of you is like a piece of a chess board.

Yoongi eats his food and quietly begins to plan Geumjae’s murder.

Knight to A1, Rook to A3, (Queen to E4, Pawn to D5).

Sometimes when you stand close Yoongi lets his fingers brush yours. Sometimes you even brush back.

~-~

(64 days before, Yoongi)

Checking up on everyone in the family during mourning times and making sure they’re all obeying the rules is one of his responsibilities as beta but fuck if it’s not annoying.

Yoongi is a different person when he's around them. He has to be.

He doesn’t know how many more aunties or grannies or omegan uncles he can handle crying into his shoulder about how the last Don was so and so, did such and such great thing, or was remarkable in this way. Only to have them compare the late Don to their grandchild or husband, conveniently eligible for the throne.

Everything is a tool. Even mourning. Even misery.

Yoongi's glad you don't try anything, not that he thinks you would, not that you'd ever defend Geumjae. Regardless of where you stand with your husband. His presence in your house will always be easy to excuse an account of how suspicious the others are of you.

He just wants to make sure the newest member of the family isn’t a mole. That excuse satisfies everyone.

Even Geumjae.

None of them suspect what he’s planning, Yoongi isn’t just a good manipulator, he’s the best.

He makes a show of it, and it has the double purpose of undermining Geumjae’s position in the family when they have a meeting. Only the heads of house and him. 13 people sat around the big table. Moonbyul has her Chelsea boots propped up on the edge of the table. Yoongi standing at the head. He infuses his words with more venom than a rattlesnake.  

“I cannot believe you’re foolish enough to bring in someone as incompetent and as stupid as you did brother,” Yoongi lies. They’re all lies lies lies- “You clearly haven’t been making decisions with the family's best interest in mind, I expected better from you.”

5 out of the 12 heads nod at Yoongi’s words. Moonbyul levels him with a cool look. Calculating. "It would have been safer for a head of household to pursue someone from within the family, let alone an outsider who had a clear lack of money or relevant connections." That much is true. “She has no use to us. It’s clear that this matter requires my personal involvement.” Geumjae won’t contradict Yoongi in front of the other heads of household. He merely nods at Yoongi somberly, accepting his criticism.

It’s not the last criticism that Yoongi has for them. Not by far. Yoongi was taught to do this job and damn it if he's not fucking good at spotting their weaknesses from a mile away.

“The sector by the docks is so leaky it couldn’t hold a fucking cup of water. You cannot be moving products in the light of day. I get that you're fucking ancient Mr. Choi and that you're grieving but switch your schedules over before you get all of us fucking caught. You won't last in jail, and that’s a promise."  

“Are you thinking with your dick or your brain Meimei? Or do you just scoop anyone off the street these days without bothering to check if they’re the cousin of the fucking mayor? It’s a good thing your son realized who she was, or else that might have made a mess that not even I can clean up. How is the donation to his next campaign coming? Is there anything else we know that we can use against him? If he asks for more than a million it's coming out of your coiffeurs not the rest of ours. I don't care if you have to sell your house in Aspen or your own fucking omega, get it done.”

He tosses insults like they're change, and the sneer on his face is not fake. “Bury your bodies, don’t prop them up at your dinner table and make them a plate. Get rid of this or I swear to God you’ll be next on my chopping block.”

And if someone dares to ask him if he's made his choice yet, he all but bites their head off. "In the last 70 days, I've witnessed nothing but profound mediocrity from you and everyone else in your line. If you have any more stupid questions, I'll gladly replace you as head of house, maybe the next one won't make me feel like I'm blowing my fucking brains out while I'm holding their goddamn hand."

Yoongi is a good actor, he wonders what they think he’s going to do with you, maybe interrogate, maybe torture, whatever it is- it’s a far cry from his twice-weekly visits to you. Knocking on the door before he lets himself in. Wiping his hands through his hair. Making himself presentable before there’s that pitter patter of socked feet towards the door. His heart beating in time with the quick steps.

You’re already pink-cheeked and smiling shyly, ready to take his coat. “I’ve got it- I’ve got it” he tries to insist. But he suspects it has more to do with your trained countenance than any real want to take care of him. He lets you hang up his coat.

The scarf on his wrist remains tied. Your fingers skim it when you help him take off his gloves.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner- grannie was a little distraught” In truth- the old woman had cried into Yoongi’s arms for a good two hours; it had eaten up most of his morning. You never fail to smile at Yoongi when he appears in your kitchen. Practically bouncing on your heels.

Maybe he can give you this, just this.

Your house always smells sweet. With vanilla, with melted sugar, with milk. Scents that make Yoongi ache. You bake every day, unaware of the fact that the scents you conjure with your hobby make Yoongi think of people he loves and misses daily.

He doesn’t know what his family thinks he’s doing with you, but letting you chide him gently over the way he's folding the egg whites probably isn't it. "They're so fluffy, are you sure they're not like whipped cream." Yoongi slides his finger through them.

"Don't. Trust me, egg whites are yucky." 

He spends his afternoons with you munching on the sweets you’ve created and tea and coffee, once you learn that’s what Yoongi likes- you always have a pot ready when he comes knocking. Warm and thick on the air like Namjoon's scent. Imported beans from Taiwan, Thailand, and everywhere until you find the one that Yoongi likes best.

And on the days where it doesn’t hurt as much- when you don't feel prone to jealousy or worry or when you need a bit of hope, you ask Yoongi about his pack.

It's always small questions. Idle and not too deep. It’s not exactly a safe topic and you try not to get into scary territory.  Tip-toeing here and there around things that you really want to say, really want to know, filling up on lemon tarts and custard-filled pastries, on cranberry orange biscuits and jammy cookies.

You know them by name and by scent. And Yoongi only brings them up when he feels like he can handle the pain. Or when you bake things that smell particularly like home, like the den, like them.

It helps that with every day away he makes them safer. With every day gone he brings more distance between them and him and the possibility of the pack getting wrapped up in this gets slimmer and slimmer. The odds are never non-existent, but they are better. He’s a dangerous man to love and Yoongi knows that. He was always on borrowed time. He knows they probably don’t see it that way, but it makes Yoongi feel better about leaving them.

He’s going to have a lot to explain to them if he ever makes it back. Yoongi puts his odds at 20- Maybe 10%.

“The one who smells like honey?” You clarify, “Your honey? Jimin.”

“Jungkook," he corrects easily, Yoongi tips his head good-naturedly. "Jimin smells like vanilla, Jungkook's honey.” The sweetness coats his tongue, almost conjuring Jungkook in thin air by how much Yoongi yearns.

"Your honey?"

"Yes, my honey." Your fingers are sticky, your smile too. Yoongi reaches up to wipe your cheek. “He would love stuff like this, he’s a total muscle pig but he only really works out so that he can eat as much food as he wants,” Yoongi says the words hushed. Like they’re a secret. He doesn’t mention anything about Jungkook’s seizures.

You hide your smile in the lip of a teacup. “I’ll have to make it for him one day then.”

It’s a soft sentiment even if it’s another impossibility. The promises are just another way that you and Yoongi play pretend.

~-~

(57 days before, Yoongi)

Regardless of the Don’s position remaining unfilled and the rules imposed, bloodshed can’t always be avoided. It's always something, a gun that accidentally goes off at the wrong moment, some bad product that finds its way onto the streets and sends the media into a tizzy. Today it's a dock worker who doesn't want to pay the usual fee, who foolishly thinks that things will change now that there isn’t a sole person in control.

But he's wrong, Yoongi is in control.

He's called in to help, and he’d had to leave the man in a bloody heap, barely breathing. He'd heard more screams while he was leaving. Yoongi doesn’t want to think about how painful it must have been. Walking away with heavy footsteps.

He’d made sure to wash the blood off of his hands and change his clothes before coming over, but he’d forgotten about the bottoms of his shoes, walking all over your rug and tracking blood into the house. You don’t level it or him with any distaste, no matter how much he apologizes. He can tell you don’t really mind.

He wonders how many times you’ve had to clean up blood in this house and how many times that blood has been your own. You have the cleaning ladies who move through the house like wraiths’. But they're in your husband's pocket. You clean it up before they have a chance too.

Yoongi gets on his hands and knees with you, no matter that you tell him he shouldn't.

"I'm your equal when it's just the two of us, you don't have to act like that- subservient," he says, "I'm not Geumjae."

Oh, if only Yoongi knew how painfully aware you are of that.

Both of you scrub the floor in companionable silence. Not too worried about leaving evidence that anyone with more than a wandering eye would find. The quiet seeps in until you ask him.

“Did you kill him?” Yoongi can’t breathe around the tension in his chest. You touch his hands, and somehow- you don’t expect them to be as warm as they are.

Warm monsters cannot survive the coldness of hell.

“No. But I could have.” He closes his eyes, admitting it after a moment. “I left that for someone else but I probably shouldn't have, they-”  he breaks off, hums, “I doubt they made it quick."

You trace along with one of the bruised knuckles delicately, making a small noise in the back of your throat.

It feels too close to forgiveness, but Yoongi cannot move his hand away.

~-~

(49 days before, Yoongi)

It’s an uncommonly warm day for December, uncommonly sunny outside too, as the light cuts through the barren trees. He can’t help by notice the way that you look towards the open windows, cracked to let some of the stale air out by the cleaning ladies who left before Yoongi arrived. Letting in the distant sounds of the city.

A car horn blares and slips over the stone wall like a tantalizing promise, the sound of people on the sidewalk talking is gentle and sweet. Your house is big, but there’s no real distance that separates you from them here. Maybe 10 feet of driveway and another 10 feet of garden.

Yoongi wonders, not for the first time, if the walls are to keep the world out or to keep you in.

He sees you lean your cheek against the side of the couch and stare over the edge of it, a empty teacup abandoned in your lap. Eyes closed against the tantalizing breeze that slips through the open window.

“We should get out of the house, go somewhere.”

Your eyes open, and you blink, sleepy. You must have a nest upstairs, Yoongi is struck all of a sudden, by how he’s never seen it. Omega’s nest to feel comfort. Collect blankets and soft things and pillows. He imagines you must need a great deal of that- comfort and rest. He’d like to see it, if you’d let him. But it’s an intimate thing to ask, an even more intimate thing to see. If Yoongi where an alpha, the question would be akin to asking for nudes.

But Yoongi isn’t an alpha. He puts his coffee cup down.

“Geumjae doesn’t like it when I leave the house without him, he’ll be angry.”

Yoongi stands up from the settee and holds out his hand for you.

“If he finds out, we can tell I made you.”

You hesitate, staring at his open palm before you take it and let him pull you to your feet.

The two of you raid the coat closet for mittens and scarves and dash out onto the city streets with a breathless giggle. Dodging passersby and pressing close in your own little bubble. Your hand isn’t in his yet, but it brushes his often.

It feels stolen, savored, like a penny that you find on the sidewalk, round and coppery golden.

He drags you through the narrow city streets, treating you to gelato at Venchi. He gets pistachio and you get strawberry. Even though it’s winter, the hot cocoa he gets you warms you up enough that you hardly even feel it. Yoongi’s smile makes you feel like it's summer. You sit at the back of the shop and talk about everything. You talk about the wedding he missed, about the family, about anything but your husband.

You rarely meet eye contact but you’re both good at steering the conversation into safe territory. You like a lot of the same music- and once Yoongi gets started talking about it, he really can’t shut up. You’re a fan of the same drama that Tae and Seokjin like to watch. That’s the first time Yoongi sees your face light up.

You don’t have great proprioception. You’re always reaching for something, always hitting your hip on the table as you walk by. You almost step into the street at one point, teetering off the edge of the sidewalk so close that he has to grab you back from the edge.

You lean into his space a little, blinking at the sudden loud noise, the car speeding past and honking at you to get out of the way. His hand is a vice around your upper arm pulls you in closer than should be proper. You whisper a small thank you with wide eyes that look up at him like you’re surprised that he thought to make sure you weren’t in harm’s way. Yoongi doesn’t know how you almost walked out into traffic, how you didn’t see the car coming. 

“Are you dizzy or something?”

“A little,” You confess.

You remind Yoongi of a clumsy baby kitten or maybe like an alley cat that hasn’t yet committed to a life of kibble and wet food. Like you want to trust him but can’t. You look at Yoongi like you’re half scared of him and half hopeful. He remembers feeling that way, so desperate for something good to hold onto but so conscious of the fact that to hope means to invite disappointment. That to trust is to be betrayed. That anything good, cannot possibly stay for long.

He understands it. Yoongi is a patient man.

(He thinks of trying to make up for the bloodshed he’s caused. Life by life. Yoongi is not absent of blame. Yoongi is still a cog in this machine that helps it run. He’s at least partially responsible for all the carnage the family has caused. At the end of the day, he only tries so hard to limit their destruction. 

But if he was going to make amends in some small way, you'd be a good place to start.)

Yoongi actually does manage to find a small gift for Seokjin. Delicate gold rings that should fit the omega's hands. At a little shop that you find tucked between the eyes of a bougie bakery and a store that sells designer lampshades (if you can believe that there is a market for such a thing).

“You know his ring size?” You tease, Yoongi nods. Blushing. Yoongi has known Seokjin’s ring size since the second month he knew him. Has kept that information in his back pocket. Somewhere in his things back home there is a wedding ring that he’d never given Seokjin, a cheap diamond, small, just a singular star in the center of a thin band. It's all that Yoongi could afford at the time.

He'd always had it in the back of his mind, Proposing. Marrying Seokjin. But then Seokjin met Namjoon and then Yoongi fell in love with him and really, alpha's and Omegas belong together. Mating isn't the same as marriage.

Maybe, when he gets back- if he gets to go back, they can talk about it. If Seokjin even wants him anymore.

“Must be one lucky omega then.” Yoongi blushes and you smile. Yoongi pulls you closer under the guise of staying warm. It's a cold night, the sky is bright and clear.

"You'd like him, I think he'd really really like you too."

“Tell me about Seokjin again.” Yoongi happily obliges.

The two of you walk home, the nighttime darkening and sweetening as you stand close. Yoongi holds the bag to his chest. Neither of you looks up, but above you in the night sky, there are twice as many stars as usual.

~-~

Yoongi walks you home and then heads back to the cottage, a pip in his step. A lighter feeling than any he’s had in months fills his heart till it swells too full. Halfway to happy. He walks up to the front of the cottage, thinking of what to text you.

What’s your favorite song? Do you have a favorite food I could teach you how to make? How about tomorrow? What are you doing tomorrow? Can I steal you away again? Can I steal you away for good maybe? Would you let me?

Yoongi texts you, and you text back. He's got his keys in his hand. Fingering the scarf tied to his wrist. Smiling softly to himself. Completely unaware of the danger that lurks just beyond the edge of the shadows.

Yoongi is just getting his keys out when he feels the gun press to the back of his head.

Yoongi turns, training kicking in, but before he can see who it is the person hits him in the back of the head. A pistol whip. Brutal but effective. He hits the concrete, and a sweet-smelling rag gets pressed over his mouth. Knees pressed to either side of his hips to keep him down.

Everything goes dark.

~-~

(Read the first Version of this story Here)

Notes:

-The part where Yoongi’s talking about how he’d take down the family if he could reminds me that in the version of the story where the m/c stayed with Moonbyul- she’d have managed to take everything down on her own. She would have managed to do what Yoongi couldn’t.

- I am very very heavily considering renaming the first arc of bily when it does get put into print. I think the story (chapters 1-11 in the og version) would be called ‘prey animals’ but idk yet. Let me know what you think of this name.

- Yoongi calling the m/c ‘her’ is like…ugh I kind of love it. It’s so simple but so like- romantic. Like if you asked him “do you love her” at this point he’d be like no, but he’d know exactly who you were asking about. It’s just an itty-bitty crush at this point. I don’t think he truly realizes he has feelings for her until after two chapters from now.

- The red Lamborghini that Yoongi mentions is actually the same car that the m/c gives Hobi later in the story just fyi,

- Okay so I know that like- mma fighters seal up wounds with Vaseline and I’ve had to do it on occasion too, but I’m not exactly sure if they can be used on interior mout wounds. Honestly in the office where I work, we just pack it with gauze so! Maybe this is a big fanciful but it is indulgent to me and I like the scene so I’m not changing it.

- Ah reading these parts where the m/c talks about herself and thinking of how the pack and Tae in particular start to love her is so <3 I’m so sad for her I just want her to be there already.

- (trigger warning; sexual abuse.) tbh, I think that the m/c’s ed started when Geumjae used to make her vomit on his dick after she at too much. He’d purposefully wait until just after she’d eaten. And he started to shame her for eating a lot and not being able to put out. So, she’d stop eating so that he wouldn’t make her vomit and then maybe a few times- he’d praise her for getting smaller and it was a vicious cycle. I also think that occasionally he probably fucked her very very gently, almost lovingly and normally, just to fuck with her head. It was still rape, she still wouldn’t have consented to it if she’d had a choice. But Geumjae was really one fucked up motherfucker, he really did her in. I could go into further detail about all of it, because a lot of what the m/c went through is also what I went through, but I think I can leave it at that. You should know I’m doing okay, that no one’s touched me in 6 years and that is so good! Other people view celibacy as a bad thing but tbh, I’m so happy that my body has been mine for so long. I’m so happy that when I want pleasure it’s my choice and my choice only. Wow this note turned into more of a diary entry lol but what else is new.

- OH I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT IT BUT- meimei is actually my older brothers nickname. It’s relevant to this that you understand that my whole family speaks Chinese but me, like- both my siblings and my mom are fluent but I never learned. And meimei or 妹妹 means ‘little sister’ in mandarin- ie what my older brother would call me. And ofc I didn’t know it meant little sister so I called him that back, like I still call him that more than his real name. And it wasn’t until years later when he moved to China and I went to visit and called him that in public and at a very fancy meeting with all his bosses and coworkers and they absolutely died laughing. From what I understand that was his nickname for the rest of his time working for that company. it was a very funny ‘Li is not bilingual’ moment in my life, he’ll always be Meimei to me though. I wrote it in as a little tidbit here. My brother might be a bit of an asshole sometimes, But he’s never corrected me and has never asked me to stop calling him that.

- The line ‘twice as many stars as usual’ is a reference to the poem the two headed calf- If you haven’t read it already I very much encourage you to seek it out. It makes its rounds on the internet every few months but sometimes I feel like a two headed calf. I may not be around for long, I may be a freak of nature, but that which makes me different makes me see the world in a fantastic way. There are twice as many stars for me. Twice as many reasons to hope. I know love exists because I can write about it.

- Ooh did you like the new plot twist? This wasn’t in the first version of the story.

[thetruthwilloutsworld]

If anyone knows a thing or two about sex scenes, it’s Sam Heughan. Over the past decade, the 43-year-old Scottish star of Outlander, the cult-hit historical drama, has filmed hours of notoriously raunchy footage in his role as Jamie Fraser, the dashing 18th-­century Highland rebel, with his wife, Claire – a time-traveller from the 20th century, played by ­Caitríona Balfe.

Yet two years ago, Heughan, as one of the executive producers (with Balfe), introduced an intimacy co-ordinator to choreograph such scenes, which had been criticised by many as excessively violent.

“The industry’s completely changed since Outlander started,” Heughan says, sitting in a Soho bar on a visit to London from his home outside Glasgow. “Not just our show but also shows like Game of Thrones were very graphic, with no room for the imagination, in a way that’s quite jarring now. As young, keen actors, we were just expected to get naked and go at it. Caitríona and I formed a bond and trusted each other, but there were times when we were pushed too far.” He was especially troubled by a scene involving full-frontal nudity in ­season one, when Jamie was tortured and raped by his rival, Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies). “That really didn’t sit well.”

Everything changed following the MeToo scandal, leading ­Heughan to employ Vanessa Coffey to choreograph the sex scenes. “So now everyone knows what the boundaries are, like in a football or rugby match. It’s been so helpful and freeing, and it was because I didn’t want younger actors to go through what we’d gone through. Now, the scenes are sexually charged, but not gratuitous.”

Despite his heartthrob status, Heughan – who’s 6ft 2in, with the strapping physique his role necess­i­tates – is modest and thoughtful company. He also had Coffey enlisted to co-ordinate his latest pro­ject, Channel 4’s erotic thriller The Couple Next Door, filmed during the short break between Outlander’s seasons nine and 10, in which he plays Danny, a policeman living in a Leeds suburb in an open marriage with Becka (Jessica De Gouw).

“We didn’t want to make a salacious or seedy show about swingers,” Heughan says. “It’s about the psychology behind it – what is it to be in an open relationship where two characters love each other so much that they can invite people into that relationship? I think it’s possibly the greatest form of romance to allow your partner this, if it’s the itch they need to scratch. My character struggles with it.

The couple’s (initially) strait-laced neighbours are played by Alfred Enoch and Eleanor Tom­linson, who in 2019 finished five seasons as Demelza in Poldark. With Outlander about to start ­filming its final season, she and Heughan compared notes on moving on from a huge, long-running costume drama.

“It’s emotional. For me, the prospect’s hugely bittersweet. It feels like getting out of an institution. Outlander’s like a family, it literally defines who I am.” After all, Heughan has created an empire of Outlander spin-offs, including books, television travelogues and his spirits brand, The Sassenach – named after Jamie’s nickname for the English Claire – not to mention his charity, My Peak Challenge, which has raised nearly £5 million to fund a variety of causes, including ­hunger relief and blood-cancer research. “I’m ready for new challenges, but also nervous about what it’s like in the real world,” he says.

Still, he felt now was the right time to wrap. “Outlander could have finished after the ninth season, but, personally, I felt we hadn’t quite got there. So now we have the problem of pushing the writers to do something that’s hopefully satisfying for the audience, but also exciting.” So Heughan doesn’t yet know how Outlander ends? “No idea, and it’s really tough because Diana [Gabaldon, the author on whose novels the series is based] has written so many books.”

The show has a vast international fanbase; VisitScotland has cited a 67 per cent rise in visits to the show’s locations, such as Culloden and Inverness. “I do feel like I’m an unofficial ambassador for Scotland, and sometimes I don’t think the show is given enough credit for what it’s done for Scottish tourism,” Heughan says. “I think the numbers are even bigger than they say, because reams of Americans are just making their own itineraries. Doune Castle’s numbers are up 800 per cent, it’s been completely renovated as a result.”

The show has also transformed the local film industry. “For 10 years, we’ve been employing ­people at over 200 Scottish locations, we’ve started an intern scheme, we’ve built a studio with five sound stages where there was nothing before. So it’s going to leave a legacy.”

The son of an artist single mother (his father walked out when he was a baby), Heughan spent his early childhood in the Borders, his teens in Edinburgh, before studying at Glasgow’s Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, where his mentor was third-year student James McAvoy.

Having worked in London and Los Angeles, Heughan fell back in love with Scotland when he was cast in Outlander. Initially against independence, filming the first ­season in the run-up to the 2016 ­referendum transformed him into a vocal advocate. “Scottish politics right now is a bit of a mess, which is a shame, but maybe they’ll find a new rallying cry. We’re a great wee country with amazing resources, most of which are controlled by the British. Similar small European countries have great identities.”

Initially, Heughan is hesitant to discuss the issue, aware taking either side will provoke a social-media backlash, but then he decides: “Why can’t actors have opi­n­ions? The problem is you have to come down on one side, there is no room for deb­ate. Everything has be­come so aggressive and then social-media algo­rithms mean you only get to see one side of the argument.”

He had his fingers burnt when last month he signed an open letter from Artists for Palestine UK, alongside the likes of Tilda Swinton and Steve Coogan, which accused the Government of “aiding and abetting” Israeli war crimes, but failed to condemn Hamas’s terrorism. The following day, Heughan rescinded, saying he hadn’t “fully understood” what he was signing.

“I was maybe naively calling for peace, which is what we all want, but, unfortunately, that situation is so complex, I can’t understand it all,” he says now. “As an actor, you have a platform, but if you put your thoughts out there, you upset ­people, but you’re also damned if you don’t say anything.”

Heughan’s taking time to navigate a potential post-Outlander career path. “I’m a workaholic, but I have to be discerning. Whatever I do next, I have to feel really passionate about.” Possible plans include directing and exploring a different side to Scotland than misty heather and bagpipes. “I think that underbelly you see in [Ian Rankin’s] Rebus and Irvine Welsh is very interesting, there are still pockets that are very hard and gritty.”

Back in 2005, he auditioned for James Bond in Casino Royale – the role that eventually went to Daniel Craig. Now, there’s a new vacancy. “I’ll throw my hat in the ring,” he says, grinning. “I’d be a brilliant Bond, I’m good at action and I’d bring a lot of ­emotional intelligence.”

There might even be space for a personal life. Heughan’s mystified by “facts” he reads about his private life online. “There’s so much ­nonsense that’s completely false – apparently, I have a daughter. News to me!” he says, flushing. The truth, he says, is that Outlander leaves no time for relationships.

“It’s insane hours and takes over everything. Caitríona’s carved out a beautiful family for herself that she protects very well, but I’ve seen how hard it is for her to do that. I want a cat, but I’m too scared even for that, how would I look after it? One day, maybe,” Heughan says, dreamily.

Posting again as some people had difficulty opening the previous link.

[janglingargot]

Oh, hey, are we dropping Vandelay family headcanons in the tag today? Because oh boy, have I got some headcanons after doing the math on the various timeline stamps that we're given throughout the game.

So here's the thing, right? I honestly don't think Roxanne's kids have the same father, for starters. No judgment, for the record, just observing! Hear me out:

That fifteen-year age gap seems to indicate that Kale was born in Roxanne's early twenties, right around the time she was getting Vandelay Solutions off the ground as a startup. He has her last name, and we never hear anything about a father, which indicates to me that the bio dad was not in the picture. We know that the company's rise was meteoric, going from one woman selling products out of the back of a truck, to the biggest company of its kind, in just three years. (We also know that Vandelay Technologies was well-established enough to be doing major disaster cleanup by the time Korsica was a child, and she's about six years younger than Kale.)

What that says to me, personally, is that Roxanne was not super involved in Kale's upbringing. She was young and passionate and extremely busy with her flourishing tech startup, and I assume that by the time Kale was a small child, she had plenty of money to make sure he was being taken care of, by other people. I'm not judging her too harshly for this: I'm sure she justified it to herself as the best way to support her child, and vanishing into your brilliant work at the expense of family time is the kind of behavior that countless male tech geniuses get a free social pass for.

Fast forward to fifteen years later, and Vandelay Technologies is a stable empire. Roxanne would have been in her late thirties or early forties by that point. She's older now, more interested in parenting, and it's sinking in for her that she's mostly missed her first baby's childhood and he's grown into someone she has very little in common with. She's got all the resources she could ever need at her fingertips now, if she wanted to try single parenting again and do it properly this time.

Enter Peppermint, who I honestly think was a planned-for and dearly-beloved IVF baby. (All the physical features she shares with Kale, mostly coloring, are also shared by Roxanne, and they're built quite differently; it's not at all hard to imagine them having different genetic fathers.) This time around, Roxanne kept her home life and work life so meticulously separate that Macaron didn't even know she had a daughter. I think whether Roxanne thought of it that way or not, Peppermint was kind of a do-over child, a chance for Roxanne to be a "real" mother and a hands-on mentor.

The way Peppermint talks about her upbringing, it seems like she felt an enormous amount of pressure to follow in Roxanne's footsteps, which she eventually rebelled against by running away. She was the late-in-life child, the mother's daughter, the technically gifted protegé. With her talents and interests, she would have been the obvious choice to inherit the company and carry on the Vandelay legacy.

But did Roxanne really want Peppermint to be her little mini-me? I'm not so sure, especially considering the things she says during their reunion. Given Pep's age and the implication that she ran away when she was no older than eighteen (she's 23 and Kale has been in charge at Vandelay for at least five years), not to mention the things she says about Kale's manipulative behavior, I strongly believe that Kale had a hand in exacerbating the misunderstandings between mother and daughter. Kale obviously deeply resented his baby sister for being "Mommy's favorite", and was probably dripping poison into her ear throughout her teens, if not well before that.

Deliberately souring their relationship must have seemed like his best shot at inheriting the company, and we know Kale was eager to ride his mother's coattails and do as little real work as possible. For that matter, he must have hated the idea of being supplanted by this upstart baby who got all the attention he never did, born when he was nearly an adult himself. I have no doubt that Kale did whatever he could to convince Peppermint to get out of Roxanne's life, not to mention his own.

[fanfic-obsessed]

Mediation...?

This one I came up with as I walked to work, and so we will all explore it. It is a Post Empire AU. I know, I do not usually go for post-empire, but the horror and humor of this idea spoke to me.  

Let’s take a look, yeah?

The AU part is that both Obi Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker survived through the end of the Empire. So we don’t have to deal with too many changes too early, Obi Wan was severely injured and in Bacta for the entire time of the OT (or he got injured again just before the events of each movie, whichever works better). 

After Vader comes back to the light, he is fitted with prosthetics that actually fit (including being the correct height). He is still required to wear a mask ,but it is more like Plo Koons than Vader (covering his mouth and nose but not his entire face). The burns he got from Mufastar meant that he had no hair, and the suit he wore for those years meant that he was unnaturally pale. As a consequence he no longer looks like Vader (not just because he lost 5 inches in height with the correct legs).  

Most of the galaxy does not know that Vader and Anakin Skywalker are the same person. Anakin was also largely forgotten, and the few who did remember him (without knowing the Vader connection) would quietly muse about how much Vader seemed to hate Anakin Skywalker, the Hero without Fear (there is no doubt in my head that the person Vader hated the most was Anakin). 

The Rebels do know that Anakin and Vader are the same person. Even as they are working to build the New Republic, no one is quite sure what, if anything, Anakin Skywalker should be charged with (War crimes. So many war crimes, they would need to invent new war crimes specifically for Vader-Though to be fair he is not the only living member of the Empire’s ruling body for this to be true). If he does need to be charged, and they could figure out what with, does his fall to the dark side constitute a mitigating factor (some kind of diminished capacity) or an enhancement (like a hate crime)? Where does killing the Emperor fit into any sentence he would have to serve? Is there even a way to enforce any sentence that a court could impose?

All of these questions and more would have to be answered before any trials could commence (including: how far does “following orders” mitigate actions, and how far up the chain of command can that excuse be used?). In the meanwhile Anakin hangs awkwardly around with his son when he is able. 

Luke wants, deeply, to help his father become comfortable around people again. He also does not quite…understand is probably the best term…understand the depth of the horrors that Vader/Anakin created in his 20 years in the suit.  In his mind he knows, and has been told, most of what Vader has done, but to a certain extent he separated Anakin and Vader in his mind so there is a bit of disconnect (Some understandable cognitive dissonance). 

He is at least aware enough that he is not looking to find Anakin friends among the rebels, who would naturally think of Vader first (and thus it would be uncomfortable for all involved). He understands that asking someone like Leia to try and befriend the being that tortured her then blew up her planet is not a good idea. 

But there is one person he knows thinks of Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader as two different people. Obi Wan Kenobi.  Who is decidedly avoiding Anakin (in this Anakin can not blame him, the return to the light means that he does actually need to face everything he has done), but is also low key avoiding most people. Mostly Obi Wan is staying around the clones that still live (both to help those clones with their own guilt over their actions while chipped, the fact that their aging has finally been brought to human normal,  and frankly because he likes them more than most people these days-I imagine at least Cody-CodyWan for the win-, Rex, Gregor, Appo, and Wolffe but there are a good crowd), and the few Force users that survived the Purge. Also spending time with Leia.

Now a few things need to be made abundantly clear at this point. Luke does not know of the horrors Anakin perpetrated, as opposed to Vader (For all that Palpatine labeled him Vader before the march on the temple, I always headcanon that his last act as purely Anakin was the slaughter of the children in the council chamber but even then he did not truly become Vader until after he finds out that Padme died), not really. Few enough who live remember the march on the temple, what it meant that the temple (the home of the Jedi) was pillaged and burned. Fewer still ever knew that it was Anakin that led the march and slaughtered the children.  

Oddly enough, Anakin Skywalker is the only person in the galaxy who knows the true horrific extent of his own crimes. 

So Luke, with all the best of intentions, notices that Obi Wan is avoiding Anakin, and decides he will help his father and his teacher/mentor/uncle/that weird dude that lived in the desert makeup. Luke is attributing the awkwardness to Anakin’s 20 years as Vader (which, if we are being completely honest, is the least of the issues between Anakin and Obi Wan).

Luke decides he is going to hold something like a mediation to bridge those 20 years. Anakin is, at this point, incapable of denying Luke anything and agrees (in spite of the fact that even he can tell this will go poorly). Obi Wan does not actually agree as Luke does not tell him what they are meeting for, but once he arrives is semi blackmailed by Luke (leveraging the whole ‘you told me my father was dead thing/you lied to me my whole life’) which really only works because Obi Wan is also fairly vulnerable to young Skywalker children who remind him of the people who Obi Wan has lost (Satine would have done something similar, Obi Wan think nostalgically). Thinking that an audience would help create a more neutral location, Luke makes sure that Obi Wan is accompanied by a few of the clones (Appo in particular), and that Leia, Han, and Mon Mothma (as one of the few people who remember Padme and Anakin) are in the room. There are others. 

Now Luke has all the best intentions with this, but he is, at best, missing some very critical information. At worst he is taking after one of his father’s worst traits (so sure he can fix a relationship that is not his, and is probably better left broken). 

Both Anakin and Obi Wan silently agree to humor the sunshine boy.  At first they try to keep it to lighter disagreements and misunderstandings  (who saved who and who made the situation worse kind of thing). Anakin brings up at one point being unhappy that Obi Wan hid his children from him for almost 20 years, Obi Wan corrects that he hid them for almost 10 years from Vader, since he believed Anakin actually dead for the first 10, during which Vader maintained that Anakin was dead. Anakin withdraws his objection.

Then Anakin brings up the limb removal on Mustafar (which causes most of the room to go still, no one but the clones-whom Obi Wan had told- knew about the Mustafar fight). Obi Wan shoots back with an slightly irate rejoinder that it was a really measured response considering that Anakin had just: led a group of brainwashed soldiers into their home and slaughtered as many men, women, and children that he could; choked his very pregnant wife; ignored repeated attempts Obi Wan made to end the fight without further violence. 

It was at this point that Appo started to have a panic attack (being one of the few surviving Clones who was actually there in the temple).  Obi Wan looked over at Luke, apologized and said this was not a good idea.  Then left with the clones, all trying to calm Appo back down. 

The entire room is just…dead silence. Like Luke everyone, barring Anakin who did know this was going to go so badly, had sort of forgotten that Obi Wan was more than the weird desert guy who hung around with the clones, and sometimes Leia.  Luke is sitting there, really pale (He did have good intentions).

Like the people who realized the Jedi suffered a genocide when the Empire came into power had mostly died, the few that had survived all these years had buried that knowledge under the subsequent horrors of the Empire (They also largely forgot, or didn’t understand the horror of the chips both in the context of Order 66 and following orders in the Empire). It was not done out of maliciousness, or even ignorance, because the Jedi and the Clones (in that they lost everything of themselves and their culture in a moment) may have been the first genocide of the Empire but it was not the last. 

I’m not sure where it would go from there, other than Anakin is charged with so many war crimes and accepts whatever punishment is determined.

[hannibals-favourite-meal]

.⋆｡His Pick｡⋆.

Kylo Ren x plus size reader

His Choice Masterlist

She never thought this day would come, and she certainly never imagined that he would be the one to buy her yet fate has come to collect

Chapter Warnings: implied reader was kidnapped and manipulated into being a pleasure slave, dubcon, reader is sold to Kylo, blood

WC: 741

Minors DNI

Library- @hannibals-favourite-meal-library

There are many things of value in the galaxy, ranging from money to food. But where true power lies is in the obtaining of the most rare and precious things. The Empire tried but their focus was too narrow, too conservative. That is why they fell. The First Order was shiny and new, they did not enslave or create, they incentivised their troops. 

And by far, the most luxuriously awarded were those who ruled. Hux received far more money than a normal person could ever dream of for his role, Phasma had her power and weapons. And the young Padawan of the Supreme Leader, he would receive his compensation soon enough.

In the throngs of upper class, there was a rumour, a whisper of a planet where there were no rules for those who had the coin. And on the edge of the desert, by the wreck of a destroyed Jedi Starship, there was a brothel. A brothel so vast, you could find anything or anyone your heart desired, and if you could pay, you could take them home.

The dilapidated palace exploded with activity when it was revealed that the First Order was on their way, the feared Kylo Ren leading the charge. The youngest of the slaves had been stuffed into a decorative outfit much too small for her plump frame, her heavy tits spilling out around the gold triangles tied with flimsy string that had been her top. She was forced to stand beside the other more experienced slaves, dressed in a similar manner, as the huge black ship finally landed before them.

This was the day she feared more than anything. She had been warned by the others that all who came to this planet on the edge of the system were cruel, coming here to get a slave for themselves and then abandoning them when they broke. And with the last in the long line of women being the largest of the women, she was more coveted, going for a much higher price so only the richest, cruellest being would take her.

But whatever she had imagined, it couldn’t have been worse than this. 

The first time she laid eyes on him, he had been surrounded by stormtroopers, but he was still over a head taller than even the biggest of his soldiers. His black cloak and helmet hid every part of himself from the universe, leaving her staring at the blank slate of a man that appraised her. His gloved hand cupped her full cheek, almost fully covering the side of her head. Her heart hammered with anxiety as the Supreme Leader’s pet tilted her head, getting a good look at her scantily covered body.

Power radiated off of him, drowning her, making her feel incredibly small as she fell into his shadow. He did not need to speak for her to know the threat he posed. If any disobeyed or rebelled, they would be killed before their pleading could escape their lips.

With a nod to the hutt that held her chain, she was given over to a stormtrooper and a huge purse of money dropped at her previous captor’s feet. “Wait please-“ A yank on her leather collar shut her up quickly, making her stumble forward and collapse to her knees on the course sand. The red fabric that had been covering her soft inner thighs fluttered before her as she caught herself, hands digging into the hot ground. 

Kylo paid her no attention, simply turning his broad back to her and making his way back to the ship, his black robes standing out against the bright desert landscape. His helmet bobbed as he gave silent orders to his troops who quickly fell back into line.

“Get up slave.” The stormtrooper growled as they pulled on the solid metal chain, forcing her further into the sand. She whimpered and attempted to pull herself up without exposing anymore of her body to the many people that surrounded her, including her new owner but only succeeded in cutting her hands on a sharp rock embedded deep within the sand. 

The slave stumbled to her feet, bright red blood dripping down her fingers and staining the sand below her. “Pathetic.” The trooper grumbled, giving her only a moment to right herself before tugging her forward, forcing her to follow them. The dark hull of the ship closed in around her, sealing her away into her tomb.

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[skellymom]

"Bring Me To My Knees" PART 1

Crosshair/Hunter x Reader Non Gendered SMUT++

Dividers by the talented: @saradika and @4ngelic-wh1spers

Background: Reader and Crosshair are separated from the group during the rescue of Omega and Tech from Mt Tantiss. Two broken people trying to get by in the galaxy. Then two broken people finally dealing with what happened to their group.

Word Count: 2.3K

Warning: Star Wars Canon violence, angst, sadness, crying, guilt, stuff blowing up, swearing, kissing, intercourse, heavy petting, hair pulling kink, smutty/lemony content, lovers triangle with Hunter and Crosshair.

FOR CLARITY, THERE IS A HUNTER FLASHBACK SMUT SCENE IN THIS CHAPTER. THE CROSSHAIR SMUT SCENE IS IN CHAPTER 2. Broke this up in 2 chapters because I just couldn't stop writing...and 4K might be too much for one sitting.

*YES! I know Mesh'la is Mando'a speak for beautiful. However, I personally think it sounds pretty sexy when someone uses it while going to Pound Town. I like it better than baby, honey, girl, boy, lover, whatever. My personal kink. If you aren't caught up, there's a whole Tumblr discussion about if the Clones would even use this language. PLEASE just let me have this one word. Thanks.

I purposely wrote the reader in this fic to be of no specific gender. Tried to carefully craft the sexual scenes to accommodate either gender/non gendered/trans/genderfluid/non-binary. Everyone has hills, valleys, sexual organs, nipples, and erogenous zones. I wrote them into the story, but it's up to you dear reader to put your imagination to work. Hope I have done a good enough job that you can enjoy yourself with Hunter and Crosshair without breaking immersion!

Explosions and blaster fire filled the air as you, Phee Genoa, and The Batch escaped Mt Tantiss.  Wrecker led the charge, firing away and punching imps.  Phee behind him with a group of prisoners she freed from the facility.  Hunter, his arm around Tech who was barely able to walk, blaster out firing.  You and Omega supported Crosshair bringing up the rear of the group. 

The Empire attempted to lock down the facility, engaging all doors on every level.  Hunter got Tech past them as they started to close.  

He turned with Tech in tow to shout, “Y/N, Omega, bring Crosshair!  Hurry!!!” 

You and Omega would never make it with the slow progress Cross was making.  Grabbing Omega and with a healthy heft, you slid her across the highly polished flooring.  She barely exited past the threshold just as the doors closed.   

The last thing you and Crosshair saw was Omega loudly protesting while Hunter grabbed the back of her tunic to yank her out of the way.  And the look of total panic on Hunter’s face. 

“Leave me.”  Crosshair weakly slumped against the steel hallway wall. 

“SHUT UP!  Too late for that!!!”  You grabbed Cross’ arm and attempted to pull him up. 

He refused to move.  You were warned he might be difficult. 

“GET UP NOW YOU FUCKING MOP!!!”  Viciously kicking his upper thigh in heated frustration. 

That got his attention.  Crosshair’s head flicked up.  Anger in his eyes. 

You grabbed the front of his tunic with both hands, hefting him up, spitting with rage “I’M NOT DYING HERE!  GET UP YOU UNGRATEFUL ASSHOLE!!!” 

He managed to stand with his arm around your shoulders.  Pulling your blaster.  “How do we get out of here?” 

“How should I know?  Been locked up all this time.” 

“KRIFF!  Knew I threw the wrong person under the door!!!” 

“Didn’t ask YOU to save me.” 

You gritted your teeth and shot the control panel to the door the rest of The Batch disappeared through.  The doors managed to only open a few feet.  You literally stuffed Crosshair into the gap.  His protests were muted by the sound of screams and explosions.  He got stuck halfway through, then you put a foot in his ass and pushed.  He popped through falling into a crouch on the floor.  

“You’re INSANE!” 

“YES!  KEEP MOVING!!!” 

Running up to Cross, you grabbed the back of his tunic and pulled him to his feet.  Both of you ran across the hangar bay.  The Marauder and Phee’s ship were gone.  You weren’t upset, they HAD to leave in a hurry.  It was total chaos.  

You both made a beeline for the first empty Imperial ship available.  Entering, you slid into the pilot’s seat and put up the gangplank.  Then commenced firing on every non-friendly that approached.  Some of the other Imperial ships got caught in the crossfire, exploding dramatically.  Crosshair buckled himself into the co-pilot's chair. 

As your ship left the hangar, two fighters followed in hot pursuit.  You kept the craft low and entered the thick forest, shooting down trees in your path.  Crosshair held onto his seat white knuckled. 

“You’re going to get us killed!” 

“Got any better ideas, Fly Boy?  We’re sitting ducks out in the open.” 

He shut up and held on. 

One ship pulled away from pursuit.    

The other followed.  You kept firing, making a path to evade your pursuer.   

He didn’t last long. One tree you felled, dragged another with it as you passed.  It caught its wing, flinging the ship to the forest floor, exploding brightly behind you. 

Pulling the craft up out of the forest, you ascended... 

...where the other Imperial fighter sat waiting! 

Close enough to see its pilot in the cockpit, waiting to open fire. 

The end of the line. Crosshair inhaled sharply.   

The ship exploded suddenly.  And your craft flew through the fiery remains. 

“Didn’t think I’d leave you?” Hunter’s voice came over the comm. 

You nearly burst into tears of joy.  “Oh, THANK STARS!” 

“Let’s get out of here!  Echo’s sending jump coordinates...” You immediately heard blaster fire over their comm. The transmission broke up. 

“HUNTER???”   

Static.  “...ing to...GO!  Can you hea...” More static.  Comm went dead.  Nothing. 

“HUNTER!  HUNTER...COME IN!!!  CAN YOU HEAR ME???” 

Crosshair shot you a horrified glance. 

The little bit you could discern, your Sergeant’s orders were to leave the planet immediately.  What if they needed help?  You couldn’t leave HIM...them behind! 

You brought the ship around and could see a craft trailing fire and smoke behind it.  Looked to be the Havoc Marauder making its way off world.  Several Imperial fighters were gaining on it.  Kicking your ship into gear and taking off in their direction.  You picked off two and allowed the Marauder to make the jump to hyperspace. 

The last ship circled round. 

Panicking, locking up, “Where did they go?  I don’t have coordinates!” 

Crosshair’s terse voice came from the co-pilot's seat, “Pick ANY!  We don’t have time!!!” 

“But...we...” 

“DO IT or we die!”  Dark eyes bore into your skull.  “I’LL DO IT!!!  You make the jump!”  He furiously typed something into the craft’s dash. 

“Jump...NOW!!!” 

The Imperial fighter on your tail, firing. 

You sat frozen.  Your hand a lead weight on the jump lever. 

“DAMMIT!”  Crosshair slammed his hand on top of yours, shoving the lever over.  The black star-studded sky elongated; bright blue light burst through the windscreen. 

You sat staring through the windscreen of the ship, blue blurs whizzing past. 

“Y/N?” 

A hand suddenly on your shoulder. 

“WHAT!”  You jumped and snapped upright. 

“You...went away for a while...” 

Staring at Crosshair’s unreadable expression. 

“We’ll find them.  Take some time, though.” 

Nodding, you relaxed back in the seat.  “Yeah, gonna take some doing.” 

Handing the soup bowl to Crosshair, he sulked...and refused to eat...again. 

“You NEED to eat.” 

He sneered. 

“Don’t make me regret getting you out of that facility.” 

Cross sighed heavily and took the bowl.  He STILL wasn't eating, just staring into it.  This man was driving you insane...if you didn’t kill him first. 

“It’s actually pretty good for a ration packet.  Provided you eat it while still warm.” 

“Why are you bothering?” 

ON YOUR LAST NERVE. 

“Why did YOU bother pushing us into hyperspace...if you want to suffer and die so badly?” 

Silence. 

Suddenly you had the urge to slap the damned bowl out of his hand.  “REALLY???  Let your skinny ass STARVE!  Ungrateful son-of-a...kriffing...GAH!  FUCK!!!” 

Your sudden anger sparked something. 

Crosshair slowly smirked. 

“Knock it off and DRINK YOUR FUCKING SOUP!”  Getting up, stalking off, mumbling angrily to yourself...hoping the tiny food galley didn’t have any knives. 

Checking up later, you found the bowl empty.  Cross slumped in the chair; eyes closed. 

To anyone else, it would look like he was napping.  You knew better. 

You picked up the bowl to take it back to the galley. 

“My compliments to the chef.” 

You rolled your eyes. 

“I meant it.” 

“Whatever.” 

Cross opened his eyes, aiming for an argument.  “It’s a compliment.  Take it or leave it.” 

“I don’t trust you.” 

An unexpectedly hurt expression flickered across his face.  “This isn’t about the soup, is it?” 

“No genius.  I was warned you’re a constant shit stirrer.” 

“Well, Hunter was never my biggest fan.” 

“It wasn’t Hunter.” 

This seemed to surprise Crosshair. 

“Echo...he’s a bit of a shit stirrer himself.  Takes one to know one.” 

Cross raised an eyebrow. 

“Oh...and Wrecker thinks you take yourself too seriously.  I think his actual words were...he needs to unclench his butt cheeks.” 

Raised the other eyebrow. 

“But Wrecker was incorrect.” 

“Oh?” 

“As far as I can tell, you DON’T have an ass.” 

Crosshair leaned forward, slight smirk around the edges of his mouth. 

“Been looking...have you?” 

“I think most people would say you’re just a torso with legs...Toothpick.” 

He genuinely smiled at the new nickname. 

“More soup?” 

“Yes more, Soup.” 

Nights were difficult and Crosshair struggled to sleep through. Awakening to hear him working through a nightmare. Sometimes he would mutter, groan, and thrash about, eventually snoring again. This happened several times a night. Other times he would awaken, panting and sweating, trying to remember he was no longer imprisoned on Mt Tantiss. 

At first, he turned down your attempts to soothe him. That didn’t last long. It became a habit of you sitting next to his bunk on the metal floor, talking him through it. Eventually, you just crawled into bed and laid there next to him. It was certainly more comfortable than that damned hard floor. 

Crosshair’s breathing settled into a regular rhythm. Stars, it was warm and cozy in this bunk. The idea of walking across that cold decking to your own bunk just seemed depressing. Five more minutes and you’d get up.  

That didn’t happen. Two minutes in and you passed out cold. 

(You like a song to go with the scene? Please check out this song. It "literally" FUCKS!!!)

"Mmhmmm...” 

The deep bass of Hunter’s groan making you wetter as his hard cock slid in and out of you.

“Ohh...fuu...mmm...” Words were difficult when he kissed your neck like this. Whispering sweet things in your ear while gently fucking your brains out. 

Laying on your sides, facing each other. One leg thrown over his hips, both of your hands deep in his curls. Grasping them with ferocity. The pain brought him pleasure... 

Hunter slid his hand down your back to firmly grip your buttocks and picked up the rhythm of his thrusts. 

“Kriff...can’t wait to do this...with you...in our home...all...the...fucking...time...” The last four words he spoke with each luscious stroke of his member. 

“Huuunter...” Your eyes rolled back into your head. 

“Got...a nice...little planet...just...for us...” 

Heat and intensity rising in you. 

“You...want...that...too...?” 

...sliding in... 

You gasp...” Yes...” 

“Yeah?” Cajoling you with that sexy fucking voice. 

...sliding out... 

“YES...” 

...sliding in... 

“Tell me, Mesh’la.” He’s shuddering. 

Your back arches “YES!!!” 

Hunter reaches out and caresses your face... 

...and you awake with a start. Crosshair had an expression like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Pulling back his hand suddenly. 

“Wu-what???” He stammered. 

Trying to shake off your sleepy arousal...slurring. “Did...YOU jus’ touch...Mah face?” 

“WHY are YOU still in my bunk?” 

The dream-feeling melting away...your brain having to process the waking world... 

“...because...your nightmares... I’m the dumbass...who makes sure you sleep.” 

Silence. Crosshair studying your face. 

“You’re welcome.” 

“Well, I’m NOT having one NOW.” 

“Ships cold during the night. Ain’t going nowhere.” You rolled over, giving him your back. Maybe...you could pick that dream back up? 

“Fine. You can stay if YOU stop moaning Hunter’s name when you spoon ME!” 

You rolled back over shocked. 

“Yes, you did.” 

“What else did I say...or do?” 

Crosshair grinned like he knew too much and rolled over without answering. 

Weeks passed as you and Crosshair bickered your way slowly through the galaxy.  The Empire tamped down tightly on most of the planets in the system.  The Outer Rim while wildly dangerous, seemed mostly untouched and safest. 

You both did side jobs to keep yourselves fed while trying comm channels and leaving messages with close contacts about the rest of The Batch’s whereabouts.   

Everything seemed to lead to a dead end.  Like they just disappeared. 

In your heart of hearts, you knew Hunter would NEVER stop looking for you both...even if Cross had his doubts. 

The open-air market on some back water Outer Rim moon provided a distraction. The textile stand caught your eye. Beautiful scarves...you picked up a jet black one with fine silver metallic strands running through it. 

"Good choice. It compliments your hair." The elderly shop keep stepped from behind a long quilt hanging behind the counter. 

"Marv! Are you flirting again?" An older woman approached clearly teasing her husband. 

"Now why would I do that when I have you, my sweet Meiloorun? Besides, here's their partner now." 

Cross sauntered up to the counter, amused at the comment. 

"Hello honey" He teased. 

You rolled your eyes, ignoring his "greeting." "Toothpick, what do you think of this scarf?" 

"Hmm, not really my style." Cross reached down to pull another scarf from under the pile. "Now this one..." 

It was rusty red with fine intermittent broken off-white stripes dispersed through it. Crosshair draped it around his neck. "What do you think?" 

The blood drained from your face. 

"No..." You dropped the scarf and hurried away from the stand. 

Cross caught up to you a few moments later...still wearing that damned scarf.  

“Soup!” 

You kept walking, angry...and hurt. 

"Care to explain?" 

Stopping and grabbing the fabric in your fist. "That's HIS scarf...NOT YOURS!  

Cross softened. Not a trace of snark on his face. "You WERE in love with Hunter." 

"We are STILL in a relationship, Crosshair! Just because Hunter and I are apart doesn't mean that ended." 

Crosshair stared into your eyes with such an intensity...it was difficult to keep eye contact. 

"So...I complicate those feelings." It wasn't a question. He didn't need to ask. 

You noticed his eyes changed from brown to grey in this perfect light. The light of the sun starting to set on this backwater moon. Almost the same color as his brother's eyes. 

You sighed deeply, letting go of the scarf. Your hand dropping to rest, open palmed on Crosshair's chest. 

He stepped closer, placing his warm hand over yours. 

“We’ll find them.” 

“How? We’ve been looking...” 

He squeezed your hand. “Marv and Mel...they’re a front for The Rebellion. Gathering intel and recruiting volunteers to fight the Empire.” 

You looked up at Crosshair with renewed hope. 

“They know where we can find Rex. He’ll be able to help us.” 

You nodded. So many thoughts going through your head. 

Cross took the scarf off and slid it over your head, to rest around your shoulders.  

“C’mon Soup, there’s a place around here with those Space Cakes you like. My treat.” 

He led the way hugging you closely. 

PLEASE like, comment, and/or REBLOG!

IF YOU WISH TO BE ADDED OR DROPPED FROM MY TAG LIST, PLEASE MESSAGE ME! Don't just comment as I might miss it. Thanks!!! <3

To read Part 2:

https://www.tumblr.com/skellymom/744276448825769984/bring-me-to-my-knees-part-2?source=share

[nutcasewithaknife]

Let's talk about Li Xiangyi and Control!

Thank you to @istgidek1234 for putting up with three weeks of screaming and also more-or-less co-writing this with me <3.

Short disclaimer before diving into it: This is going to be part 1 of a 3 part series, one for each of liansanjiao. It’s hard to think about control and MLC and not realise that all three are fighting to take control of their own lives. They all do it differently for different reasons but it is a crucial, defining feature for each of them. It inevitably makes their relationship with each other a delightful heartbreaking combination of understanding but also never really seeing each other. 

For now, let’s begin with our protagonist.

Li Xiangyi, wunderkind beyond compare who crashes and burns and then walks away. Li Lianhua, a man determined to bury his past self and become a whole different person, a ghost haunting its own end. And yet! Neither Li Xiangyi nor Li Lianhua can exist without trying to stay in control in any given situation. This is me trying to slot together the pieces of how and why he’s like that.

[WARNING: long, long post ahead].

As Li Xiangyi, the world makes him its Hero. He goes with it, but he has his own standards of what he as a Hero must do. He creates and leads a whole new sect, befitting this image. But it's not just a generic Really Good sect, is it? It has purpose. The Sigu Sect is built to ensure the coexistence of the Empire and the Jianghu, to ensure justice in the latter without sacrificing its independence. Li Xiangyi does something far more nuanced than the Hero Figure ever needs to do - he looks at a system that needs fixing and decides he should be the one to do it. He's taking control of the story people fit him into by making it fit his own sense of righteousness, goodness and honour.

He may be doing that through a Sect, but he makes himself the keystone. Remove him, and it all falls apart. He makes decisions on the fly without consulting the people involved (not telling Shan Gudao aka his co-sect leader and founder about the treaty) because he is sure that he knows what's best. Imagine the kind of constant control he must have needed to maintain over any situation to be able to make such an impact on the politics of this world. But he doesn't stop being the one in charge. And most people just let him, see it as his natural place, so it's all good! He is stretched thin across a dozen different responsibilities, but they can never get the better of him, because he is Li Xiangyi.

It looks like arrogance, and to an extent it is. But it’s also more. Is it his reluctance to trust the abilities of anyone else more than he trusts himself? Is it habit? He grew up being pitted against his brother as proof of his Master's worth, the love he has known has always been tangled up with this burden of expectation, which he never fell short of. He is always the best. He is adored for it. A teenager who has never known defeat before, exalted by the world! Of course he went along with it, moulded his sense of self and worth around it. He has spent far too long defining his worth by living up to the expectations of those who love him. But that sort of adoration is always fickle, always conditional. 

The thing about never losing is that you don't stop to consider what happens when you do. When the burden grows too much to stay under his control, it's because he has lost for the first time. Qiao Wanmian leaving hits him hard, I think, because he was doing so much! He was meeting every expectation of who he should be, was it still not enough to have her love? There is anger and doubt. He alone decides on the treaty with Di Feisheng. And then Shan Gudao is killed, Li Xiangyi is betrayed, and it's the last straw. Losing for the first time in such a terrible way makes him furious, at himself and at those who he thinks betrayed his trust. He doubles down. He tries to seize back the control he's lost - all by himself as always - because it's the only way he sees to fix anything. He does it when dealing with betrayal and grief and rage the likes of which he's never known. The only way to fix the grief unraveling him is to get his brother’s remains back at any cost. And it ends in a massacre of thousands.

Li Xiangyi thinks that his blunder was the arrogance in believing he could fix the world in any way. His answer is to walk away. He has caused enough harm to the world as Li Xiangyi, so he will no longer be him. He no longer can, not with this poison in his body and with how badly he's let everyone down. The poison limits his abilities and makes him terminally ill. He can no longer rely on or control his own body the way he always has been used to. Those first few years must have been awful, while he was still learning how to live in this new state. It’s no wonder he finds some peace in shaping his immediate environment, in building a new life. He cooks, gardens, has a home he builds and looks after, has Huli Jing. He also gives himself a new direction, a new purpose - to put his past to rest, to repent in the only way he can. 

Knowing is also a way of being in control. If Li Xiangyi's tool to keep control was the power and authority of the hero figure, Li Lianhua's are his lies (the biggest of which is his innocuous presence, his uselessness beyond being a physician). Li Lianhua loves to stick his nose into things and find out the truth, and he is good at it. These lies are his new weapon, stronger than the sword up his sleeve now - he uses them to stay in control of the situation. To decide who is allowed to know what. He also puts them as a shield between everyone who tries to come close, because he himself is one of the things that nobody is allowed to know.

It is while becoming Li Lianhua that the change happens - he goes from meeting every expectation to dodging even the potential of one more doggedly than ever. He must shape the rest of his life alone and make it his own and nobody else's. He will be Li Lianhua, no longer burdened by the world's expectations. Just his own. All that he expects from himself is deeply personal - find Shan Gudao's body, bury him with their shifu, and die. It is only right that he has nobody at his side - he let down every single person who had once loved him. Nobody else should bear this burden with him, because it is his and his alone.

And then come along Fang Duobing and Di Feisheng. One doesn't give a flying fuck about the lies and the other knows him well enough to see right through most of them. Fang Duobing is at first annoyingly naive, overzealous to do good (like SOMEONE used to be), then endearing, and then dangerously forgiving and caring. He is the most lethal attack to Li Lianhua's self-imposed isolation because he has no expectations, and isn't the slightest bit intimidated by Li Lianhua or Li Xiangyi (re: @potahun’s meta on lxy being a burden because he is just too good). He's the first who talks about Li Xiangyi as a person, not a legend. There's no getting rid of him, but Li Lianhua will be Li Lianhua. He lies and hides and dodges and lies again, well aware that he's hurting him each time. But he will keep doing so, because love always comes with expectations and he refuses to live up to those.

And then, enter Di Feisheng! The only one he considered trusting as an equal before it fell apart. Also the bearer of the revelation that the past is much more convoluted that Li Xiangyi knows. The past, which was the one thing Li Lianhua has seen as a permanent fixture, a mark of his failure, just got worse. He was manipulated. His Shixiong orchestrated all of this expressly for his downfall. Instead of alleviating Li Xiangyi's guilt, it makes it worse - had he been a better leader and known better, he may have avoided falling for it. Had he not been the person he was, maybe his brother wouldn't have become the man he is today either. 

And as before, the more things spiral out of control, the more Li Xiangyi doubles down. He knows better than to try and fix the world this time, he has long decided that the thing he can control is his own life, away from the legends; he needs to know what the truth is, so he can decide what his end should be. But the more he learns, the worse it gets, because his entire life - the people he was closest to, his own identity - is being reshaped. The entire goddamn story is his attempt to have some measure of control of his past, present and future - of his story - while everyone and everything is flying right in the face of it. He distances himself from the legend of Li Xiangyi so he can live as himself. He copes with the past by trying to cut it off and by taking charge of his future, but guess what! The past is a living, growing thing of the present, long out of his control - he knew nothing of Shan Gudao’s hatred. Nothing of his heritage. Nothing about the brother he'd lost. This rogue past is also twisting his present and future out of his control.

Towards the last few episodes, we dare to think he's starting to learn how to share the burden. That he might be letting Fang Duobing and Di Feisheng be a part of this, he is trusting them and himself not be alone all over again. And then! The fucking Styx flower!!!! This excellent meta by @angryteapott really explains it the best. Once again he makes a decision alone, in the name of ensuring that everyone that matters to him stays safe. He knows Fang Duobing will fight it and Di Feisheng will probably commit regicide if he gets wind of it. He doesn't even consider working out an alternative, and makes that decision for everyone's good, because he knows best and the others are better off not knowing.

He will die. So what? Di Feisheng will be forced to move on and find a purpose beyond Li Xiangyi. Fang Duobing will be heartbroken, but he is meant for better things than a life of following Li Lianhua around. He himself can no longer live a carefree life as Li Lianhua, because the world has hijacked his story once more and he barely knows what the truth behind the stories is anymore. He had a brother he lost. He is the lost prince. It was just one story after another. Is it really any surprise that being in charge becomes more necessary when all of his past has been a lie?  As @istgidek1234 put it, him throwing himself into every issue that comes his way is a way of finding his agency and taking control of his narrative. He is lost, and he doubles down. Li Xiangyi, Li Lianhua need to die and he is too tired to build another life. And so he leaves, to choose and control at least his end.

But, well. As any of the people he left behind would tell you, he doesn’t know jack shit. Li Xiangyi's mistake 10 years ago wasn't trying to fix something unfixable. It was trying to fix it all by himself. In his attempt to tie up the strings of the past, Li Lianhua makes the same awful mistake. He presumes, he keeps everyone out of the loop, he decides for everyone who loves him because he knows better. He is so arrogantly presumptuous! But isn’t it more? It’s also the fear that his very presence will hurt them again. That any attachment will come with strings that will make him into someone he is not once again. He must remain unattainable. He's so caught up in controlling his story that he tries to untangle it from everyone else's. But he can't. Leaving means they will simply carry him forever in their grief. Over and over, the story tells us that for those who really love him, losing him is the greatest pain. Over and over, Li Lianhua decides that he knows better, they will be better off without him. 

There is, of course, the more meta reading of the ending (check out @redemption-revenge's amazing post about it!). The one where Li Xiangyi is simply closing the chapter titled Li Lianhua to begin another, away from the gaze of the world and beyond the shape of this story. Maybe that’s a version where he lets himself be found by Fang Duobing and Di Feisheng. Where escaping our scrutiny allows him to be vulnerable enough to accept their companionship without too much of the lies and presumption, where he can find and make peace with himself and live. 

[lovingdabeessss]

Ok so in v3 when Nora is having her breakdown she mentions that 'Glynda doeant yell at them As Much anymore' and Im still reeling at this piece of info(im in my lonely team jnpr being glyndas fave team camp) but basically imagine Pyrrha going to Weiss and Yang for help bcs her teammates are like Blake and Ruby But Worse and Pyrrha is kind of at her wits end. Yang whos a pro at this point is like 'girl, I gotchu. Weiss get planner'

I feel for you in being a only believer of a amazing hc especially because in this context it makes SO much sense for them to be her favorite like

She’s in charge of all the student to student sparring which is Pyrrhas specialty so she interacts with her a lot there we’ve seen Glynda clearly being investigated in them from day one on her comments on Nora and ren’s team up and if they get in trouble all the time with her it could be a sign of how much she cares but I can TOTALLY see them having the “you get in trouble so much that I see you so often that we now have a positive relationship”

Jaune broke into beacon and Nora and ren are lawless orphans and none of them have any idea how to tackle the curriculum jaune at least had been going to a school even if it wasn’t one for this and Nora and ren at least know how to fight even if it was more like a “if we have to” situation when they ran into grim or if Nora was bored so all of them together even out pyrrha being actually perfect

I can totally see jnpr going to Weiss and Yang for help

Good news is Yang is the kinda honors student that would let the entire class cheat off her like she wouldn’t do someone’s homework for them (except for Blake’s she definitely did Blake’s when Blake spent like several weeks trying to take down a crime empire on zero sleep) but everyone can take a picture of her work and copy it

Weiss is NOT the kinda person you can cheat off of Pyrrha is really determined to help people succeed on their own however that’s really hard to do with her entire team

JNPR being glyndas favorite team makes a lot of sense they’re very entertaining

I think her relationship with team Rwby is interesting because two of them are her coworkers/ friends children who were raised to be this one of them is a teenage wanted terrorist trying to escape from the terrorist organization and one of them is Weiss schnee which is it’s own thing

[starrystevie]

steve harrington, luxury hotel heir, who wants nothing to do with the family empire. steve who remembers running away from every hotel he was dragged to as early as his memories allow, who stood in the lobbies and screamed until his throat was raw and his mother was so embarrassed she would take him outside.

he grows up knowing it’s in his cards to take everything over once he gets old enough and he despises it. the very idea of being in charge of the hotel chain has his skin crawling, electricity humming through his veins, makes the joint in his jaw constantly tense. rebelling isn’t really an option, not unless he wants to be kicked to the curb, so steve fights back in the smallest ways possible. he grows his hair a little too long, he wears his muddy reebok sneakers with his fancy suits at dinner parties, he snorts out a laugh with a roll of his eyes when his father introduces him as the future of the company.

it all gets to be too much. when steve, freshly 24 and old enough to take on more responsibility, tells his father that he won’t do it, that he won’t be a pawn in their game anymore, he gets cut off. credit cards canceled, fancy loft apartment lease forcibly broken by his father, access to the garages of bmws and mercedes taken away. he could get it all back, return to the ice of luxury he always knew, only if he could prove to his father that he could be a leader the company is proud of.

which is how steve finds himself working at the front desk at a smaller property of theirs in a place that should be named bumfuck, indiana. it’s the only hotel in town, which keeps them steadily busy with a bustling lobby bar and restaurant, as they’re the only lodging for out of town guests. he hates it, hates being confined behind the desks he’d look at with disdain as a kid in uncomfortable slacks and button downs that mirror his uniform now. he has to smile and schmooze and works off upgrade commissions and force himself to not stare off into space during the slow hours, imagining a life that could have been.

he’s been working there a little over a month when summer hours start and the lobby band comes back for the busy nights. it’s nothing exciting, a jazz band of sorts complete with a sax, but their guitarist catches his eye. he’s all long hair and smirks, leather and boots, and exactly the type of person mommy and daddy harrington would lose their minds over. he’s a way of rebelling all on his own in a gorgeously perfect package.

steve catches his eye as they’re setting up next to the bar for the night. the wink he confidently flashes causes the guitarist to stumble a bit before sending back a wave and a shy grin of his own, cheeks flushed the prettiest pink. there’s a phrase rattling around in the back of his head, something about not mixing work and play, but all steve can think of is tangling their fingers and pressing a kiss to the man’s temple before running away wherever together with his father’s angry face fading away behind them.

it’s too tempting of an idea not to try, especially when the guitarist keeps looking at steve with the same look he’s sure to be giving him. especially when they’re both ducking their heads with upturned lips only to glance back up and have their eyes meet again and again. especially when he comes over to the desk after the band's first set and slides a piece of paper with a name and phone number over to steve dotted with x’s and o’s and a smiley face.

and the thing that bothers steve the most is that something amazing could come out of this whole mess and he'd owe it to his father for giving it to him. he's still going to try, though, especially because some hotel band guitarist named eddie is smiling at him like that.

[atlas7seo]

Voltron has become my Roman Empire.

Hear me out. I wish the Blue Lion was the left hand of voltron instead of the right leg. I know crazy. Just let me explain my insanity.

So season 3, I think, the lion switches always like bugged me. I know that's like not uncommon, but like Keith and Lance are not alike. Like you're telling me that Lance is enough like Keith that the Red lion just is okay with that?

When I first watched the show, I thought lion assignments were based on personality or on a paladins' motives and goals. And I always thought Allura was more like Keith than Lance was to Keith. Not that I'm saying Allura should have been Keith's right hand man.

Keith and Shiro are very different, and their leading styles vastly differ from each other. Based on flashbacks I can see the similarities between Zarkon and Shiro, but not Shiro and Keith. (At least before the weird keithification of Shiro after he came back)

So to alleviate this issue of lions not matching paladins, what if Keith was the first left handed black paladin. I know Keith is right-handed, but like imagine. Keith is the Red paladin so as a leader Keith wouldn't need someone like a red paladin to help him lead. Unlike Shiro who soemtimes needs that impulsive push. Keith has that personality and thought process already. But what if he needs someone like the blue paladin which was already proven when Lance took Red. But that bugs me because that just implies Lance needs to take similar position to Keith. So if hypothetically the Blue Lion was the left arm instead of right leg then it could be a clear visual indicator that Keith is a different type of leader to Shiro.

He's LEFT handed so he doesn't need a right hand man like Red, but a Left hand man! Where Blue takes the position of 2nd in charge. And that could make it so everyone has to struggle more under Keith's leadership after they form Voltron because different dominant hand. It's like learning to fight all over again. Because let's face it, Voltron combat got old really fast. So adding this would spice up combat a little more. Add some uncertainty to the conflict.

Also, then Allura, who I think fit the red paladin more because honestly Allura was just kind of mean and rude sometimes for what reason? Also stubborn like Keith. She fits the "hothead" type more in my opinion. AND then she would be piloting the same lion as her deceased father and that would be such an interesting character conflict! Trying to live up to expectations. PLUS in that one episode where they fight the old paladins, Allura can literally FIGHT HER FATHER! Think of the angst!

So yeah there's my insanity that Voltron has created in me. Honestly it sounded better in my head, but im committed. The Blue Lion should be the left hand instead of the right leg and Keith should be left handed.

I cannot believe my first real post is about Voltron.

[sylvanas-girlkisser]

Please please please expand on this milf campaign I need to know more

YEAH!!!!!!!!

So backstory first: imagine a cross between a lovecraftian elder god, and one of those christian momfluencers who just WILL NOT STOP having children due to an unexamined breeding kink. That's Illucia Starsong the woman who ate the gods.

Anyways 2 bazillion years ago the world basically existed in her image, then 1 billion years ago her 7 daughters (each themed around an element) teamed up to kill her. But then they chickened out last minute and instead trapped her inside the vault of her castle, and placed said castle at the bottom of a frozen lake.

The daughters went their separate ways, with Althaya (whose domain is nature) being the only one who tried to keep them in contact. A big part of Althaya's self image was being a healer and caretaker, so after a century or two of more and more of her sisters going no contact, she got married to a demon summoning warrior king. Cause you know, she could fix him.

So when that didn't work out, and her sisters weren't around to emotionally support her after the breakup/help her trap her ex in eternal torment underneath the roots of a tree, she decided to enter her villain phase.

Fast forward to now: After spending ages ruling an evil empire from the shadows Althaya, now going by matron Sortrose, has decided that if not even having children is going to fix the sense of loneliness she feels inside, her only choice is getting mom out from under the ice. Everything was way better when mom was in charge anyways! They were a family, and everybody loved her and saw what a kind and generous person she is!

So the high concept of the campaign is: the party having to track down the other 6 of Illucia's daughters and help them work through their issues so they can stop Althaya from unleashing the biblically accurate milfpocalypse.

And of course, since all her daughters have been around for a while, they're now all milf-aged, but because there's an in-universe justification, they don't count against my milf quota!! Also since the sisters are all some flavor of dyke, it means I also get to give them milf-aged girlfriends/wives who also don't count against my quota!!! #milfmaxing

So here's the seven sisters and their respective element and flavor of milf:

Ammanhue (magic) - witch milf

Aglaroth (Earth) - army/dad milf

Althaya (nature) - evil queen milf

Asper (air) - fuckboy butch milf

Aunrak (water) - paladin butch milf

Allustriel (fire) - unfuckable scientist milf (she's aroace)

Armillah (ice) - auntie milf (yes she has packed the party lunch, more than once)

Also a few other key milves from the story

Vivian Trench - detective milf, who is also a litteral cougar lady

Rhiannon - travelling magic item seller, with the approximate vibe of a used car salesman

Mocauhqui and Delilah - a couple of revolutionaries, who after succeeding in overthrowing the colonizers are doing a GREAT job at handling their trauma.

And of course my personal favorite: Azzy (aka. Azganriel the angel of love)

So, since Illucia is such a great and normal mom, when she learned her beloved daughter Asper was battling depression and addiction, she was like "I know what will help: a girlfriend who will act as a second mom when I'm not around." So then she created an angelic being in her own image, with limited capacity for independent thought, and sent her off to be Asper's girlfriend/caretaker.

It worked out about as well as you can imagine, but in the process, Azzy gained self-awareness which she used to be a huge slut. Her and Asper are bros now, and instead she's dating Aunrak.

So you've got this literal angel, loose fitting white gown and all (and a pair of melons to concuss a dragon), who is dating the most paladin to ever paladin. But she's also an endless source of innuendos, and will take any excuse to get her tits out, which never fails to turn said paladin wife into a tomato.

[spacetrashpile]

ok for a moment would you all please indulge my deranged empires ramblings.

so in sausage’s 3/13 stream, there was a moment where he was in the mirror dimension looking at what was left behind when blood sausage pulled the tower into the empires s2 world. the blood pit was still there, and slowly being covered in skulk. while sausage was looking at it, there was an invisible creature in it who’s particles he noticed and who he demanded show themselves. he was then attacked by phantoms and ran off.

when i first watched the stream, i had shitty headphones on, so i didn’t hear the later very obvious wandering trader noises. so while it definitely was a wandering trader, i didn’t notice it at first, and it seems like sausage didn’t either?

so while rotating that whole stream in my head, i was rotating who or what the invisible person could’ve been. obviously it wasn’t INTENDED to be a person, but i’m considering: what if it becomes a person?

and if it were to end up being a person, who could it be?

while it could be an npc, i want to toss in the idea of there still being an emperor left behind in the mirror dimension.

as we learned from later in the stream, when blood sausage sent sausage to a very small mirror dimension of sanctuary, prison/mirror dimensions only extend so far, leaving a flat and featureless expanse of land where the spell doesn’t cover. the mirror dimension gem made for sausage is clearly much larger than the one blood sausage made, as we know from the end of s1 it extends to at least rivendell. this would also explain why blood sausage had so much more trouble escaping, but the dimension has to stop at some point.

we also learned from that later portion of the stream that these mirror dimensions can have copies of the people who were in the real dimension. this was already heavily implied from the end of s1 and blood sausage mentioning that he had killed “everyone” in his dimension, but now it’s clearly confirmed. so this, at least to me, leaves the possibility that mirrors of the emperors existed here.

so, indulge me. imagine that sausage makes that trader into a person, or even just imagine a situation in which they were a person all along. which emperor could it be?

there are two requirements here, for me. 1. it would have to be someone who could’ve slipped blood sausage’s mind for quite a while, at least until he successfully got distracted by the knowledge that sausage was again alive and dimension hopping. 2. the person couldn’t live too close to mythland, or anywhere else, really, because that runs the risk of blood sausage walking into their empire one day and realizing he never killed the guy in charge.

this easily takes most of the server off the table. the twins are gone, because we know blood sausage hates them the most. there's no way they escape him for this long. scott is also a no go, because if xornoth is, as is so heavily implied, dead, then so is scott. everyone close by is also off the table (jimmy, shrub, joey, and katherine). pearl is a complicated one, because there’s no reason he wouldn’t have killed her, but he also outright said they’d never dueled. perhaps he killed her in some other way, or he just meant they didn’t duel on this specific server? idk, this is all hypothetical anyways.

so this leaves the three furthest empires: the ocean kingdom, mezalea, and pixandria. i doubt blood sausage could’ve ever forgotten the ocean queen, what with her being jimmy’s brother, and how magnificent her kingdom was. and if he ever went there, mezalea is literally right there too, and joel would be unable to escape his notice either.

and that leaves just pixandria. the gap between pixandria and the ocean isn’t huge, i’ll be honest, but i think it could’ve been enough to successfully dissuade blood sausage from going looking, especially because he didn’t seem to care much as much about pix as some of the other emperors.

if anyone could’ve escaped his notice for the last 1,000 years, it would be king of life and death himself, pix. pix and sausage never had a good relationship, even outside of the evil thing, so sausage demanding he show himself, if strange enough already, especially when pix has no way to prove that’s not the man who’s been haunting down every living thing he finds for the last millennium.

to tie it into what’s actually happening in cannon, pix has ties to both wandering traders and the phantoms that drove sausage away. and going further, the thing that finally allowed blood sausage to break through was a ritual that sausage performed with candles taken from the vigil, pix’s life work. (what the hell is up with that, by the way??)

look this is just me ranting, i know, but please just imagine it all for a moment. imagine pix, so closely tied to death for his entire series, being the last man alive, with the ever present knowledge that he’s one wrong step away from death. imagine the last candles he ever placed in the vigil for each of his friends. imagine him, huddled up against the wall in a pit full of blood and skulk, praying the invisibility holds, as a man with the face of someone he thought he might’ve known, once upon a time, demands he show himself. imagine it with me.

[strangeshyguy]

I remember seeing the premier trailer for Robotomy and the main characters Thrasher and Blastus stood out to me as two robots that would have been henchbots or minions working under a villain but didn't know who. A few years later, I watched this show Wander over Yonder, and saw the first villain, Lord Hater. At first, I imagined these two pairing with Hater similar to the villains from AOSTH (yes it was an old guilty pleasure), but after watching the second season of WOY and discovering Lord Dominator, I realize instead of Hater, Dominator having these two robots working for her actually makes up the "Terrible Trio" trope (personal favorite trope). The inspiration behind this came from an anime series called Time Bokan's Yatterman with its main villains the Doronbo gang, and a Western animated show "The Venture Bros" with the show's villains the Monarch and Henchman 21 & 24. The terrible trio's goal after Dominator's downfall would be to rebuild her villain reputation, finding and collecting Volcanium X or other powerful artifacts to power her future empire, and whether to conquer the galaxy this time or go back to destroying it (regardless the latter being in vain since the dead planets grew back life), but only to be constantly foiled by Wander and Sylvia, stronger villains, or actual galactic heroes (or a galactic government system if WOY would establish one).

Personally, if it weren't for the fact that both shows were mistreated badly by both their respective networks and cancelled, this trio could work together, why?

Dominator's minions are mostly robots she made. So, after her defeat, I like to imagine she required assistance and buys off parts of Thrasher and Blastus from a sleazy merchant with all the money she had left to build herself personal henchbots, but realized these robots are majorly harmless, and she can't afford any more for better robots, she would have to modify them from the ground up to be bad bots.

Thrasher and Blastus grew up in a planet where robots destroy each other on a daily basis, even having to move from planet to planet 6 times very month because they keep destroying their own planets, so even if Dominator still had her destructive nature, these two would be cool and just roll with her plans since they're used to planetary destruction.

Dominator doesn't have friends, nor does she have any interest in making one. Thrasher and Blastus are robots who have their own thoughts and even feelings, something that makes them stand out from most other robots, so having them work, interact, and get along with her would make some potential character development for Dominator while still being a villain.

Thrasher and Blastus from the original show may not be bad guys, but from what their school taught them is to become destructive and violent robots, something these two tend to struggle with but in some miracles still manage to pass and prevail. I imagine they would barely graduate and get pawned off to be someone's personal henchbots.

Dominator would be the boss of the group and in charge of how to rebuild her empire and ship and in occasions make plans for giant mecha robots (since she made her first ships and robots by herself). Thrasher and Blastus not only would provide their strengths, but Blastus coming up schemes and scams to raise money to build up Dominator's ship and robots, and Thrasher providing logical planning and advice to their boss, being the level-headed of the group.

Thrasher and Blastus had some experience on having feelings of hope, love, and friendship, that it literally almost got them killed, being sent to a giant sun, so they would destroy anyone who holds that ideology, especially Wander. Not to mention Jack McBrayer voice both Wander and Frenemy from Robotomy, who was obsessed with being Thrasher and Blastus’ friend, they went to meet Frenemy in person just to destroy him, so I imagine when Thrasher and Blastus meet and get to know Wander, they would straight up attack him, and anyone associated with him on sight.

(I also did some redesign for Dominator's attire; personally, I didn't like her official design from the show, especially after reading the reason why she dresses similar to Hater, so I gave her outfit some red and black to go with Blastus' blue and Thrasher's yellow, and designed her helmet based on Weenus' head design, since both characters look almost similar.)

[historia-vitae-magistras]

I do but they were sunk to the bottom of whatever the fuck tumblr did with my blogs.

Jack was first. The first Pākehā, or New Zealanders of European extraction, trickled into New Zealand in the very late 18th and very, very early 19th century. Ships boys were recruited as young as aged five and most of the early Pākehā lived with Māori were either shipwrecked sailors or awol convicts and Jack was kind of both. The first round of the Napoleonic wars were in full swing, and while France thought about invading the impoverished little convict dumping ground, it never came to fruition. The refocus of British military resources from the empire to the deference of the home islands saw something of a slump which also drove people to take to the sea. It was a popular choice for unwanted sons, perhaps seeking anything more than their daily misery and their imaginations full of swashbuckling stories giving them a solution. With Brighid gone, Arthur’s general indifference and little care from whomever was in charge of him, Jack fled a flogging and eventually rolled out out of a ships hold onto a wet, rainy island so green he thought for a moment he’d somehow find Brighid on an emerald isle she’d once described.

The first democratic aspect of life in early Australia was hunger, and it was barefoot, sea-sick, half starved and with the scars of at least a few careless crop marks on his back for disobedience or 'laziness' that Jack first found himself face to face with who would be the the most important person he would ever meet. He was the crest of the wave of imperial misery, created from an idea of human suffering that would see few parallels. It marked him head to heel. She was small, round, still a little unsteady on little legs but bright eyed, the plague of empire not on her doorstep just yet. Her name was Aroha. He would call her Rosie. On a windswept cliff in the far north of New Zealand, in the place where the Maori believe their final journeys begin, the pohutukawa grows.

That’s where they met. He had never seen a rose, only knew that they were red flowers that important people wore. They were a symbol of the powerful and he wouldn't find the words for many years, but he knew that he would never know anyone who could be more important to him. It's something he will repeat throughout their lives, Jack running, running, running, always running. But somehow always rolling to a rest wherever he may find her. This first time, they looked at each other for a long moment, recognizing, as much as they could, the importance. It lasted for all of five seconds before he was picking her up, squeezing her within an inch of their lives. He might have never been that happy before. She thought the smell of him could gag a maggot but that she could listen to his laugh for the rest of her life. And she would.

[malsfefanfics]

tells us about davi

Well, right now, there's not much to know about him, since his story is still a little in the works. But this is basically him at the moment.

Davi lived with his family in Duscur in a mountain village that prided itself on raising strong warriors, but whose primary focus was mining. This village was about two days travel on horseback to the nearest smiths. He lived with his mother, his twin brother Rui, and his grandfather, who was sort of the person in charge in the community. His father had passed when he was very young during a border skirmish. Their village prayed often to the Earth God and the War God, given how close they were to Faerghus.

Davi lived with his family, learning mining songs and blacksmith songs, training with any weapon he could get his hands on, and cooking with his grandfather. He would also take time to play with the other children and he was very interested when travelling merchants came to town with new things he wouldn't recognize. Due to a certain aspect about him, he wouldn't be in line to succeed his grandfather, but he didn't care. Over the years, his curiosity lead to him trying to learn the languages of their neighbor nations, and even attempted to adapt some of their stories into song, eventually leading to him wanting to pursue composing operas based on Duscur's religion. He lived a happy, peaceful life.

Until one day, when he, his brother, and their mother were taking ore to the smiths village to be forged. Through a cruel twist of fate, his family got caught up in the inciting incident of Tragedy of Duscur. They weren't involved in the assassination plot. It was truly just a matter of "wrong place, wrong time" He lost his brother and mother that day. And he barely survived by the skin of his teeth. Were it not for Graham, who defended him against a soldier who almost got him from behind, and Chliodna, who took him and Graham into her home deep in the forest and healed their wounds shortly after, Davi would be dead. Once Graham was well enough to travel again, they returned to Davi's village, but by then, most of it was gone. His grandfather was gone. Most of his friends as well.

After that, anyone from his village that survived prepared to travel. The plan was to travel to one of the surrounding nations and hope to settle someplace private, but due to circumstances, they never managed to leave Fódlan. Graham and Chliodna took it upon themselves to be Davi's guardians, and that eventually lead to them growing close and getting married. Davi's group eventually found themselves settling in an abandoned farming town in the Empire (one that had been left to ruin due to demonic beasts. They make it work.), having picked up many people along their travels. Their home is incredibly diverse in cultures, and Davi eventually became a pillar in his community similarly to how his grandfather did.

For canon-compliant AUs, I imagine he ends up at the monastery due to the fact that he is in need of further education, but due to extenuating circumstances, he can't enroll like a normal student. So he decides to pose as a mercenary, and makes use of what resources are available to the public (or to those who make it down to Abyss). Before he left, though, Davi was given a suppression charm by Chliodna to hide his Crest, and Graham warned him to try not to get too close to anyone, especially those in the Blue Lion house or the Church, so that his Crest won't be revealed. This becomes very difficult when someone asks to spar with him and he ends up shattering a broadsword in a single swing, catching the attention of literally everyone he's trying to avoid.

If he's not recruited before the time-skip, he will leave the monastery and return to his people. He wouldn't be playable after that. I like to imagine that Davi, due to his upbringing, could potentially open up a branching story path where Byleth can choose to defect to other factions with Davi or encourage him to stay and fight with their group. But I'd need to work on that a little more.

Other than that, some minor details I imagine about him.

His favorite color is orange because he loves the color of the sky at sunset

If the Tragedy of Duscur didn't happen I imagine he'd be very similar in personality to Clark in My Adventures with Superman

The first time he ever saw a real opera, he definitely cried

He can sew, but is very slow about it

He's the one you want to take with you to buy a new weapon because he knows good quality

Has long, black, very thick hair that he usually leaves loose or partly tied back behind him.

Is fluent in the languages of Fodlan, Duscur, Sreng, Almyra, and Dagda. Currently studying the language of Brigid.

He's completed at least one opera he himself composed

He is BiAce.

When he's in casual wear, he tends to dress in more traditional clothing from his home. Particularly his father's kilt, which was the only memento of him Davi was able to preserve.

But yeah! That's Davi!

[beardedmrbean]

Oh sorry didn’t know you have a special tag for me now. Of course ac mirage is glorified and gaming form of Baghdad. But what the gaming does as while we play in a golden age, the character we plays as those we fight for suffering from the corruption and wickedness of the time as no era is perfect.

Well you lived through it, but I think a lot of modern historian have guilt over the reactions towards Arabs after the Iraq invasion and 9/11. So they double down hard on Muslim “achievements” to show they are not savages

But it lead to them infantilizing brown people and demonizing the west.

Which we got women king because black activists hatred towards white people. I wonder how many native Africans are going to treat black Americans like me like a plague after that movie?

But why I pointed out mirage is that, audiences want non white civilizations to be shown as PEOPLE not the equivalent of fictional young adult novels noble savages take on them. Show the good, show the bad, show the humanity

Also I think the main issues with Islam stuff is because the left will call out Christians crimes against people. While forcing a Hindu to be side by side with a Muslim. Obviously varies, but I learn about the Kashmir Hindu genocide that happened on January 19th, 1990

It disturbing that such a religious genocide happened only about 10 years before my birth.

You gave yourself that tag, sort of at least, called yourself that and it made me laugh so I decided to run with it.

Well you lived through it, but I think a lot of modern historian have guilt over the reactions towards Arabs after the Iraq invasion and 9/11. So they double down hard on Muslim “achievements” to show they are not savages

Bush 1's Iraq war didn't really do much in the way with public opinion, up till 9/11 the Muslim community was a pretty solid republican bloc

Then they moved left, political party wise culturally they're still pretty solid red they just know the DNC will bend over and take it from them in the name of diversity points.

Case in point, imagine what would have happened if the city council that banned all but government flags on government buildings had been made up of white Christians.

They're be riots, and you will be hard pressed convince me otherwise.

Which we got women king because black activists hatred towards white people. I wonder how many native Africans are going to treat black Americans like me like a plague after that movie?

Can't find the video but at one point there was a gifset of it on here where the person was asking black Africans, probably in South Africa, if they taught about American slavery in their schools.

Their answer was a good one and the response on here to the gifs was exactly what you would expect from the perpetually offended, self absorbed, and self important people who would comment on this kind of thing.

'The whole world isn't America' they have their own history to teach and SA wasn't involved in the transatlantic slave trade anyhow, not that I'm aware of at least.

The response on here can be summed up in a single reaction image.

I'm seeing stuff with a bunch of African countries acknowledging their role and apologizing including Benin which contains the territory of the former Dahomey empire.

Not shockingly at all they're also still unironically seeking reparations, which I'm sorry no refunds on the merchandise you sold us (to put it crassly)

Depictions we're likely going to have to deal with, which I'm ok with that to a point, it's a romanticized picture of the people, time, and place.

We imagine knights on horseback charging into battle full armor on then going to do battle on foot when their loyal steed is killed.

We don't think about the fact that they couldn't take that stuff off to go to the bathroom so they just shit their armor and did battle with poopy feet, among many other nasty gross things.

So to A point I think fictionalizing things for entertainment isn't so bad, just so long as they don't go too far with it, people have different lines for that kind of thing too.

As for that last bit, posted this a couple days back.

Here's a highlight for you

Some took notice when this centuries-old religious conflict flared in 1989, as Sudan's jihad slaughtered 2.5 million Christians and enslaved perhaps 200,000 more. It ended only in 2005, when the U.S. helped broker a peace deal; in 2011.

I haven't verified those numbers, but it's Newsweek I feel like someone probably did.

Also these guys,

made the mistake of kidnapping a bunch of girls, if they'd just kept kidnapping boys to brainwash into becoming child soldiers nobody would have cared,

example

but wait no they're talking about the boys right there!!!!!!!

Yes well

10+ times as many boys per year and now they're mentioning finally

Sorry this took a while, I had a bunch of other stuff going while I was putting it together.