#and it’s an ambiguous enough situation that i can’t just. mention it!

[ahalliance]

how the fuck do you deal with. someone who most likely has a crush on you. and who knows you are aro and do not reciprocate. which he respects and so doesn’t press you for anything. and so is your good friend despite it. but around whom you still feel somewhat uncomfortable because you just. don’t want someone to have a crush on you

[endursent]

- Through the Dark

【 content; sunday x reader , astral express sunday , dry humping , a bit of pining , tight spaces , NSFW 】

【 note; i've never written smut/nsfw before, so this is treading new grounds for me, but I need to practice for gss because i want that to be juicy. expect more, lol. it'd also be nice to get requests/suggestions to stir by brain a bit if you'd like.

also, the reader's gender is never mentioned but there are gender-neutral they/them pronouns used twice in the middle to enforce that ambiguity. 】

【 word count; 3.391 | read on ao3 】

“Stop… moving so much,” Sunday strains through grit teeth, he’s trying not to sound annoyed or upset, but it’s an uphill battle. 

  “You’re moving first, I’m just adjusting,” you whisper back, you can’t tell what expression he’s making in the darkness, but you’re sure it’s on some scale of annoyance or frustration by the sound of his voice. 

  “You–”

  You hear footsteps approaching and slap your right hand over his mouth, your heart beats faster as they approach, quick taps against hardwood floors… you feel Sunday still completely, his jaw moves slightly beneath your palm as he swallows thickly. Neither of you move an inch until distant shouts sound and the footsteps fade. You still keep your hand over his mouth for a moment longer just in case. You can’t see out of the closet you’ve squeezed into… what if there’s someone listening on the other side? Just waiting for either of you to make a noise?

  Your heart continues to beat rapidly in your chest, you feel it hammering against your rib cage–and you’re sure Sunday feels it too.

  After a while, you take a gamble and lower your hand from his face, surely they’re gone now? 

  “...” Sunday doesn’t say anything, a tense silence falling between you. His voice is a whisper when he finally does speak. “... is this a usual occurrence?”

  You have to take a moment to try and understand what he means. “Ha? Being stuck in a closet?”

  “Yes,” he just grumbles, disapproval clear in his tone. 

  “... no,” you mumble in return. The how and why of the situation was irrelevant—mostly because it’s your fault and you don’t want to think about it—what was much more important is that you are stuffed into a closet with Sunday with barely any wiggle room and you’re not keen on facing a horde of angry guards who could potentially be hostile with only you and Sunday to fend them off. 

  Your limbs barely have any space, Sunday’s arms are above the both of you, his elbows on either side of your head as the space is so narrow he can’t even lower them—there’s no direction wide enough for his arm to bend. Your chests are pressed together so tightly that the ornament on his scarf has nearly poked you in the eye three times and you felt the tickle of his feathered wings against your cheekbone when you turned your head to the door.

  The rest… is the uncomfortable part—not that being pressed like sardines in a can isn’t uncomfortable in general. Sunday is slightly taller than you and has to spread his legs on either side of you so that he can fit—the closet isn’t exactly tall either, so the two of you are slightly hunched as well, thus you have to tuck your legs under him so that he’s practically sitting on them, your knees press against the wall achingly and one of your thighs is pressing very insistently and directly between his legs.

  The strain in his voice is probably only half due to the uncomfortable, hunched position, and half because with every slight move you make, you’re essentially grinding your thigh against his crotch. It’s hard not to notice the situation, but for his–and your own–sake you pretend not to. 

  Unbeknownst to you, Sunday is fighting for his life. He hasn’t been touched by another… ever? Not like this, even if accidental. He feels the tips of his fingers prickle and his jaw clench unconsciously as he tries his best not to react outwardly. 

  “Okay… they should be gone now,” thankfully your hands were bent downwards, and thus you could push against the closet door with your elbow.

  But it doesn’t budge.

  You press again, nothing. It’s locked, or blocked by something. No matter how you try and push, the door doesn’t budge.

  “What is it?” Sunday frowns, he can’t see what you’re doing and the closet doesn’t have any holes or window on the door to allow light in. “Open it, just…”

  “It’s locked,” you interrupt him. 

  He says nothing… and you can almost sense the mixture of frustration and disappointment in him, but a soft, warm exhale fans over your face, it almost tickles. “Try again,” he urges surprisingly softly. “Perhaps it’s just stiff.”

  You do as he asks, but no luck. “… it doesn’t open.”

  Sunday clicks his tongue. “Alright—stop pushing, be still,” he nudges your head with his elbow. With every press against the door, your body pushes away from it—and your thigh flexes, pressing against him further. 

  There’s another beat of silence, but you can’t stand it—thankfully, an idea flashes in your mind and you decide to give him a heads up… this will require some wriggling. “Sunday, my phone is in my pocket, if I can get it and send a message to the Express group chat, someone must be able to come and pry the door open.” Never have you imagined a more useful task for Dan Heng’s spear.

  “Can you reach it?” he asks as you shift your arm from being stuck between your stomachs and squeeze it between your bodies. His eyes squint at the feeling. 

  You bite your lip in concentration. “Probably… but I’ll need to try and stretch my thighs and waist to fish it out…” 

  “I see…” he understands what that entails, but he’s not sure he likes the idea. “Can you reach my phone instead? It’s in my coat pocket.”

  You pat around his side and try to find it, it could be easier… but to reach down you have to try and bend forwards—which means pressing your forehead and face directly into his chest. The scarf wrapped around his collar is soft… and it smells nice, like cinnamon. Though his chest itself isn’t very soft, he’s rather skinny. 

  But no matter how you reached and even tried to tug his coat up, the pocket was too far down and his phone even deeper inside. There’s no other way.

  “I’m sorry,” you truly are, you don’t want to make him uncomfortable. “Maybe if we just wait…”

  “No,” he shakes his head and you feel his hair brush against your nose. “Just do it.”

  Deciding to try and just get it over with, you nod and start shimmying your back and ass upwards as much as you can to try and create space for you to be able to tug your phone out of your pocket. And it has the exact effect expected. 

  Sunday grunts, he tries to bite back any noise and his thighs twitch before he presses them against your hips tightly, as if trying to close his legs… it’s torturous, your thigh drags up and shifts and moves against him as you fish for your phone, he can’t even reach down to still your leg or tug at himself—anything, his arms are at too much of an awkward angle to be able to bend down in the tight space, so he’s stuck just enduring the searing heat that’s pooling dangerously easily between his legs. 

  Finally, you get a proper hold of it and drag your phone out of your pants pocket, you settle back down which elicits a sound from him that shoots through both of you like an arrow. “Sorry!” you quickly try and apologise, but the soft twitching of his body signals that the apology will do precious little.

  Sunday swallows thickly, so much so that you could hear it. His body was warm before, but now it feels like he’s radiating heat against you. He doesn’t want to say anything, worried his voice might not sound right—but the position you realigned into is pressing him almost painfully flat against himself… which also means he feels every small drag or shift you make. 

  You try to tilt your shoulders in a way that lets you see your phone screen… if you can just text the Express group chat that you’re stuck, surely someone can put off what they’re doing and come let you out. 

  It’s tricky to turn the phone in your hand with only one to spare and try to unlock it without seeing the screen, where even is the messaging app again? You just try your best to guess… until you try and type, which is when your phone tilts from your fingers and clatters to the ground.

  “…”

  “…”

  Fuck. 

  An exhale leaves Sunday. “You dropped your phone.”

  “… yeah,” you sound like a puppy being scolded by its owner. With your phone facing up on the floor, he could just barely see you giving him guilty dog side-eyes.

  He couldn’t explain the frustration it brought him that now no one knew of your positions—you had managed to send a … half-message… but it probably didn’t mean much to anyone. 

—

[17:42] You: slfep dmgwlsGn f

[17:43] March 7th ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ: Huh?

[17:46] Himeko: Probably put their phone unlocked in their pocket again...

[17:49] March 7th ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ: lol

—

  The light from your phone turned off as it was left untouched for too long, and you groaned slightly. Great… now what? Surely you’re not going to be stuck here forever.

  He wasn’t going to be able to keep his composure much longer, especially not when your damned body is pressed against his like this, the smell of your clothes and the occasional brush of your hands when you move them in the little space they can be moved. 

  It certainly doesn’t help that he finds you irresistible. 

  How could he, after his world had been turned—his beliefs, his ideals and his goals all turned from reaching forward, to halting in front of a mirror, forced to confront his reflection and pick out the flaws in his own mind before himself. 

  And you treated him just as you would any other person, despite what he had done, despite his false sense of benevolence that he still worked to understand how to redirect to something more realistic, how to understand what it is that drives... 

  His thoughts are interrupted—unfortunately, because it was distracting enough—when you pat his coat again to try and find his phone, but his skin begins to tingle every time you touch him, his poor body highly sensitive from the growing tension in his pants. “S-stop, be still—please,” he breathes, his voice suddenly far closer to your ear than it was before, his soft hair tickling your cheek. 

  Oh, that was…

  You’ve never heard his voice sound like that—not that you’ve known him for long enough to hear many of the pitches of his voice could make, but the way it rose slightly and cut off before pleading with you…

  Why do you want to hear it again?     “Sorry,” you say again, losing count of how many times you’ve said it already. “Are you okay?”

  He wouldn’t admit to his predicament with a gun to his head, but… it’s impossible to ignore, and there’s no way you don’t know either. He takes a deep—shaky—breath. “You can’t… move your leg?”

  You don’t want to lie to him and say yes, your knee is aching from being pressed so firmly against the wall of the closet, and your tailbone isn’t faring better against the other wall. You can pretty much only move it side to side unless you try and straighten your knee out—which as he felt earlier, was far worse. “Not really.”

  He swallows again, Sunday is glad he’s wearing gloves and that the closet is dark, or else you would have felt his sweaty hands or seen it on his brow by now. “I see.”

  He can’t stay like this much longer, his heart thunders against his chest, he hears it clearly as his breath hitches when he tries to provide himself some relief by shifting his hips to one side—but only proceeds to drag against you again, causing maddening friction that makes his thighs flex. 

  The tension in the air is so thick you’re not sure if it’s just the fact the closet doesn’t exactly have a vent, or that your nose is a hair’s width from Sunday’s neck, but it’s making your head feel lighter and your breaths deepen the more he tries to find more comfortable positions and fail, letting out short breaths or grunts. At this point he might as well just find the relief he’s desperately holding back from chasing. It would be less painful. 

  “Sunday,” his name falls from your lips quieter than you meant to, and surprisingly, your own name leaves him equally shyly. A simple breath that made your spine straighten instinctively—causing you to poke yourself in the eye on the ornament on his scarf. “Ow—“

  “Stop moving,” his tone sharpens and you feel a palm on your head. “… nhh—“  Sunday’s body twitches, you feel a throb against your thigh and he fears he’s going to burst if this continues. “…”

  But he can’t in his right mind just ask you if he can use your thigh to satisfy this torturous ache. 

  Thankfully, your mind is usually not ‘right’. “Hey,” you muster up some courage, it helps that neither of you can’t see anything. “If you need to…”

  “No,” he interrupts you, shaking his head—and a wing slaps you in the face, you feel like your face is taking too many swings today. “No, absolutely not.”

  “You sound like you’re about to cry.” His voice is tight, but not because he’s about to cry—he might, if this keeps going for too long—but because he’s reigning in every single willpower he has to hold himself still. “Will it be better if I do it?”

  He clicks his tongue, this entire situation could have been avoided if someone didn’t trigger the alarm. He could’ve gone about his day and not had to—yet again—confront a side of himself left neglected. “No… fine, let me.”

  It was… tentative, shy, as if he thought that short and subtle movements would mean you wouldn’t feel anything or not notice too much. Every shot of warmth from his waist to his fingers and toes made him shudder and his chest tighten, it was a fight on all fronts to both keep quiet and focus on being careful at the same time. 

  It was hard to watch, or rather listen to, as the dark was still all-encompassing. 

  Maybe he would feel better if he didn’t have to think about the uncomfortable silence in the darkness. 

  You can’t reach up, your hands stuck below your chests, otherwise you would have touched his face first. He likely wouldn’t have been as startled as he was when your lips suddenly—yet gently—pressed against his. 

  “Wh—mm you—doin—m—“ it’s almost comedic how his question is only half communicated, surprised and confused by the kiss that he slowly eases into, accepting your offer and splitting his attention. 

  His hips grind against your thigh, slow at first and uncertain, but as your mouth takes half his mind off of it, he begins to move more desperately. He’s been held at a precipice for so many minutes, an agonising hour that felt so long that he thought he would surely explode in some form if it were to continue for much longer. Sunday’s lips are surprisingly soft against yours, warm and inviting as he pushes back, his hand above your head that laid on it is now searching for purchase, as if he wants to take hold of you properly. 

  The two of you pull back to breathe, and Sunday wastes no time to duck his head next to yours, damp lips brushing past your temple and to your ear. He plants wet, open mouthed kisses below it, the sensitive skin tickled by the sensation as his tongue drags against the shell of your ear. 

  But he doesn’t give up, taken by the heated moment and relaxed barriers, his hips continue to cant against your thigh, his worldview narrowing to the sensation of your warm skin under his lips, to the delicious friction created by both your pants. “Hahh…“ he breathes out, a string of saliva separating his lips from your skin. 

  You move your leg in tandem to his grinding, you can’t help but feel his pleasure as if it were your own, the way his body trembles with strain, the breathy sounds below your chin and flex of his hips. You feel your own body respond and warmth pool needily, but you ignore it—he’s the one that’s been suffering for an hour in this stuffy space, you can wait… you try to convince yourself at least, ignoring the subtle throb of your own, at least it was just against air and not pressed against something as well—or perhaps that’s worse. 

  It’s embarrassing, Sunday echoes in the back of his mind, not only that he’s had to resort to this, but also the fact that he wants more. He doesn’t just want to rut against your thigh like this, he wants to touch you with his hands, trapped at an awkward angle over your shoulders. He wants to feel your own heat, the warmth radiating from your clothes against his a tempting tease, a longing of seeing what’s beneath. Your skin, your hair, your eyes, your neck, your lips—he wants to feel all of it. 

  Sunday mumbles your name again before his lips find your ear and the top of your throat once more, a hint of teeth as he captures your earlobe between them, a shiver running through you, you can hear his mouth and tongue so clearly... he kisses a reddened spot left below your ear from his single minded focus and his hips falter and his body twitches together, but he only succeeds in brushing his bangs against your chin and his small wings fluttering outward. The surge of heat emitting from his straining cock was unbearable, he moved faster, a breathy sound of your name on his lips again, Sunday says it for the third time as tension fills his body and all he can focus on is the warmth of your frame against his—a bit too tightly in the cramped closet—the soft warm breaths against his ear and the way your hands unconsciously started grabbing at his coat. 

  You feel him tense and groan, the choked sound foreign on his lips, you never expected to hear such a bodily sound from him, nor could you stop it from raising every hair on your arms. You hold onto him as he practically falls against you, Sunday’s breaths are heavy and his arms tremble by your head, his mind feels like it’s been tossed around a bit before stuffed back in upside down, he can’t straighten up or lie down and has to practically sit on your thigh. 

  “Are you okay?” you prod and poke at his stomach worriedly. “Was that okay? Are—“

  “Please… j-just… one moment,” he pleads, not ready to answer a barrage of questions just yet. His heart is beating so fast it almost worries him, his throat feels dry and his legs are weak. He did nothing but drag his crotch up and down your thigh and this is the state he’s left in? He can’t imagine how you would leave him if he got a real taste—

  He shakes his head and you splutter as you get a mouthful of feathers. “I… might have dirtied your pants,” he says shamefully, the sticky wetness between his legs left behind from the height of pleasure was surely going to stain you too. Though it felt good, certainly, he is having some post-clarity… for you to see him so tense and desperate as this—he always has a careful front, not more so than before, but the habit remains. 

  “I have more,” you try to assure him… you don’t have them with you, but you do own more. “So…”

  He presses his forehead against your shoulder. “… I don’t want to talk about it now.”

  A small smile cracks your lips and you stroke his side. “Okay, we‘ll talk later… how about a second grab for your phone? Now that you’re all, eh… spent?”

  “… don’t send anything until we’re dry.”

[gladiatorcunt]

summary: situationship!rafe cameron x afab nerd!reader

cw: angst undertones w/ a hopeful ending, black cat!coded reader x whatever rafe would be, suggestive action in the shower & mentions of off screen nsfw (cum and thigh fucking but the latter is a bit more graphic lol) , class differences, rafe is pathetic and weird, implied drug use, rafe beats a man but you can decide if he killed him, reader has implied mental health issues and low self esteem, ambiguous feelings on rafe’s part (he said ily but he could be lying), dark content themes, rafe calls reader kitty in both a mean way and a pet name way, if the thing with reader’s first crush sounds too real that’s cause it is 🤫, started my period while i was formatting this (i just thought y’all should know)

wc: 1.9k+

block & move on if uncomfortable !!!

consider commissioning me 🫀

“Hey, babe, would you be a good kitty and let me in?” Is what you’re greeted with when you swing open your screen door. Rafe Cameron looks pleased as punch, all things considered, soaking wet due to the pouring rain and no doubt high as a kite.

The slurred speech doesn’t alarm you as much as the river of blood flowing from his mouth.

“Jesus Christ, Rafe, what the fuck?” You try to sound harsh but the fuck is noticably softer than your other words and Rafe smiles, more blood drips down his chin.

You look over his shoulder to see his bike on its side in the dirt, it’s raining and you just know he’ll be pissed to see the mus clinging to it tomorrow. But for right now, you have an injured situationship to patch up.

He stumbles as you struggle to yank him aside, and he sways but collapses on your couch. You pinch the bridge of your nose, trying not to lose your shit immediately. The audacity of this man to waltz in on you barely alive and expect some twisted kind of comfort, after everything.

“I was studying you know, textbooks are expensive so don’t start getting your blood on them.”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, I know.”

Rafe grunts but keeps his body away from your books. That’s the least he can do, the bare minimum. You sigh and walk over him, kneeling in front of the couch. His eyes are dazed and unfocused as you brush the hair away from his forehead, but his fingers twitch.

“Why did you come here, Rafe? To me?” You whisper, tired and unamused.

You’re startled by his harsh cough, his fingers twitch in your direction again, “ ‘Was nowhere else, wanted you.”

Isn’t that good enough?

You blink dumbly at that, but you have no answer for his crazed ramblings so you slap your knees and make your way to the bathroom. You procure a wet washcloth and some measly bandages, he would just have to deal with it. Rafe’s eyes drag towards you when you kneel back in front of him and bring the cloth to his mouth.

You avoid his stare as you sop up the copious amounts of blood, praying that this wouldn’t need a visit to the hospital. In some ways, you’ve seen too much blood since Rafe Cameron decided to make a mockery of your existence. The gaggle of rich girls he used to have on each arm disappeared but he excused it by detailing his plans to lead you on in front of his friends, checking to see if you were in ear shot.

There’s nothing you did, in your mind. You stuck to yourself and somehow invited the attention of some psycho. That’s the hardest part of the situation, you can’t pinpoint a true beginning. You can only remember being in this murky middle, devoid of an ending. Rafe does have a pretty face though, unfortunately, the water from cloth making his skin glisten. You’ll throw the rag out after this, there’s no point trying to get the stain of blood out of anything.

Eventually, you’re done with the first part and have an excuse to turn away from him. You get back on your feet to reach for the bandages but a groan coming from behind stops you. You turn around and freeze when Rafe buries his nose into your lower stomach, barely brushing the top of your mound over your pajama shorts. He hisses through his teeth in pain as he pushes your shirt up with his bloodied knuckles.

“Rafe Cameron, what the hell are you-“

“ ‘Smells good as fuck, love you.”

You refuse to admit that you love him too, you can’t give him that. Okay, now shit’s really getting out of hand. He dips his head to get closer to your pussy but the second you see the tip of his tongue touch your shorts, you direct his face back to your stomach. You’ve never gone further than ‘will they-won’t they’ type touches with Rafe, but you just can’t give in no matter how much you lie awake at night thinking about it.

“All this is because of you, you know that? You fucked me up and made pummel the crap outta that guy.” The vibrations his clumsy words send through you gives you a serious case of the shivers, so you distract yourself by running your fingers through his matted hair. Because of course there’s blood on his head too. You’d usually chalk what he’s saying up to drugs and insanity, but with Rafe you just never know.

“What?”

“He said maybe I should lay off you so he could have a piece instead, and I just…. lost it. Why should some chump get a part of what’s all mine?” He says with a startling amount of clarity, voice flat and low.

You don’t designate him with a response, and truth be told he doesn’t want you too. You stretch for what in actuality is a $3 dollar package of hello kitty bandaids and rip the white coverings off a few of them. He makes god awful sounds as you apply them to his mouth, head, and hands. The mess in his hair probably isn't his but your conscience won't let you leave it alone. Something foreign to your head and your heart won’t let you leave him alone.

You decide to put the knife in your back all on your own and look up into his eyes. They’re too half lidded to get a clear reading on them but you’re afraid to rely on the emotions underneath the surface. You used to be scared that he couldn’t feel anything. Now, the idea of Rafe Cameron believing he’s in love is far more terrifying.

He’s a bit ridiculous with My Melody, Kuromi, and Keroppi all over himself, you can’t help the small smile that comes over you. You quickly flatten it before he can get too pleased with himself but the fingers curled against your tummy spasm as they spread out to caress your skin. Rafe has an unreadable look on his face as he smears blood over your womb, but you think if you step away he’ll lunge at you.

“I can help you wash the blood off in the shower.” Saying that is in no way a promise of commitment or change, but it might be the closest you ever get.

You’re used to scraps, scraps are fine.

And well, for much you pride yourself on being perfectly fine being alone, it’s achingly human to crave being loved more than anything else. You wander aimlessly because you won’t go where you’re not wanted, and for the longest you’ve been wanted nowhere. But here you are, obsessed over by someone who everyone wants.

Maybe you’re sick of trying to make all the right decisions if this is where it gets you, cold and alone. Is it so bad to not care anymore? It couldn’t be worse than when your first crush told you he loved you and then had a baby with your bully, you reason. Or when he dated one of your friends and she would “joke” about marrying you when you were alone.

The short trip to the shower is awkwardly silent, you have to lead Rafe and make sure he doesn’t trip. You stare more than any Twilight character as you help each other strip. You try to avoid the bruises on Rafe’s torso, but he chuckles about how “You should see the other guy, kitty.”

So you don’t back away when he slows the trajectory of your calloused hands and drags them up his body. Your nails are bitten unevenly, some leave scratches on his abs and some don’t. It’s exhilarating to see Rafe Caneron’s thread come undone, to watch as he tilts his head back and sighs. You rest your hands on his pecs and kiss the hollow of his throat before you can stop yourself.

You won’t mention the squeak he tries to stifle with the back of his balled up fist.

You step away from him to be vulnerable in return, his satisfaction is much more evident this time around. He rips your camisole in two and unhooks your bra too well, clearly having had practice. He cups your breasts in his hands with tenderness that you’d think is out of character for him. Rafe doesn’t even honk them in the dude bro way that you’d always assumed he would. No, he… massages the flesh in his palms between slow squeezes.

“Don’t see why you’re so insecure about these, I like them just fine.” He huffs, bending down to motorboat you before pulling you in the shower through his grunts of pain and exertion.

You notice that he doesn’t steal a glance at your pussy, almost like he’s scared of seeing it bare and puffy… and wet.

You like to feel like a boiling lobster in the shower, so you turn the dial the same direction as always. You’re worried that Rafe will hate the sting but when the water hits, he moans with an open mouth, eyes shut tight. Before your next breath, you’re pushed against the wall and now the blood’s in your mouth as you're taken into a french kiss right out the gate.

You go with it against your better judgment, until Rafe pulls away to pant against your collarbone. His next kiss is softer, shy like it’s an unknown thing to the two of you. His lips glide and mesh with yours as the water trails down in between your slick bodies. You feel like you’re going to pass out but you couldn’t care less at the moment.

You open your eyes to see the water at the base of the shower run red, and you lose yourself in the swirling motion until the pop of your honey scented shampoo bottle lid snaps you out of it.

“Turn around kitty, ‘said I'd help you scrub down.”

He’d be embarrassed if you said it, but it’s obvious he’s never done this before. He’s like a bull in a china shop gathering you up in a loose bundle and sloppily spreading the soap throughout it. You stay silent, preferring to bask in the absurdity of it all.

Washing Rafe’s hair takes less time, but like he did when you were cleaning him up earlier, he chooses to stare at you the entire time. You scratch his head to really work the shampoo in there and get the dried blood out, he latches onto your wrists and lets his eyes drift shut. He makes it inconvenient to help him when he kisses your jawline, but you allow it.

“Thanks, you’re pretty good with your hands.” Rafe whispers with a wry grin, pecking your mouth and dropping to his knees. Your pomegranate body wash in his uninjured hand. The amount he squirts onto the dollar store loofah on his other hand is a touch too generous.

You have to replace the hello kitty bandaids when the originals fall off after Rafe steps out of the shower minutes later, he insists on it. You make him lean against the bathroom counter and watch as you take a second shower to clean out the cum, he wears a petulant frown the whole time.

You’re bent over that same counter when you’re back in his orbit, teary eyes wide as he fucks your plush thighs.

The rain turns into a thunderstorm outside.

[thisfanisgonesorry]

keep talking — könig

got into cod because someone told me he was 6’9 and so i told them i wanna 69

tags: light angst, bros injured, smut, dubcon kinda, phone sex except its a walkie talkie. rushed ending lowkey, ambiguous relationship. ambiguous ending ooo. light blackmail, soldier!reader, y/n is watching better call saul (dont @ me), povs might be weird idk

⚠️

“König, how copy?”

Nothing. Literal radio silence.

“König, I’m talking to you. How copy?”

“I’m here.” He grunted after a long period of silence. “Bad copy.”

“I say again. Did you get caught in the crossfire?” 

The battlefield surrounding König had bullet shells everywhere, he laid carefully in the ground, trying to hide his large body from any further incoming fire.

“I did.”

“Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

“What are your injuries?”

“I’m fine.” He growled.

“Where are you?”

“I don’t know. Too much dust.”

“König, are you in a safe place? I’m gonna need you to stay there until it’s safe enough for someone to get you.” 

“Affirmative.” He panted. 

“I need you to say something, König.”

“Minimal damage, only flesh wounds. A few hits in the right leg.” He grunted in frustration. “I got my vest, I’m fine.”

He laid in the ditch, looking around the empty battlefield, only being able to make out clouds of smoke and dust as gunfire continued from the distance, the fight being gradually dragged away from him. He winced as the blood kept pouring out of his thigh.

He dug his fingers into one of the bullet holes in the pants, using it as a weak point to rip the fabric. His hands were too dirty to try and tend the wound himself, so he turned the leg of his pants into makeshift shorts; pulling the fabric down his leg and using the length of it to make a tourniquet for the wound.

“Come in, König.”

“Scheiße.. What?” He barked into the receiver. “I’m not dying, fräulein.”

There was a silence as he tried to shuffle his large body into the ditch, giving his leg room while trying to stay undetected. 

“We can’t risk that.” I finally said from the other end.

“Then talk to me. I’m not dying. Don’t treat me like it.” He spoke sternly.

“What do you expect me to talk about?”

“Anything. Just don’t mention that I’m bleeding out.”

“The mission—”

“Not the mission.” He snapped again. “Your day or something.”

“Sorry, um..” I paused, lost on conversation.

There was a moment of silence and he groaned at the hesitance before the receiver burst to life again. He felt a pang of guilt as he palmed himself through his cargo pants. He’d been shot at enough times to learn that the fastest way to get rid of pain is to replace it with something better, and in situations where first aid was out of the question for the foreseeable future, this was all he had unless he decided to just put up with it.

“Okay.” I started. “I started watching a lawyer show. It’s really good.” I started rambling slightly about the show until I ran out of information that König would care for.

I tried to jump from topic to topic seamlessly but a one-sided conversation wasn’t easy to keep going.

“I don’t really have a lot of spare time, so I’m running out of things to talk about.” I commented, noticing a lack of response. “König?”

“I’m alive.” He spoke through shaking breaths.

“Are you okay?”

“Mhm..” He nodded, despite me being unable to see him.

“I say again. Are you okay?”

“Gut. Ich bin prima.” He spoke. “Tut höllisch weh.” While I couldn’t make out what he was saying, his sarcasm and frustration was detectable from a mile away.

“English, König.”

“Hurts like hell.” He groaned out.

All of his actions could be explained one way or another, his ambiguous silence, his heavy breathing and grunting. From one end it seemed like a man in pain. On the other end of things, he had his head thrown back in the dirt, stroking himself slowly as the words filled his ears.

His breathing was ragged, hissing and panting as he tried to distract himself. He would manage to build his composure when he needed to talk through the comms, but besides that, he was a mess. Whining and grunting as he tried to focus on the sweet voice on the receiver instead of the stinging metal that was sinking into his skin.

He desperately jerked himself off, stroking his dick tenderly. “Keep talking.” He groaned. “Bitte, I’m bleeding everywhere. Hurts.”

“König..?” I began to feel suspicious at his pleas, it was so unlike him to be like this, he’d been shot before without acting this strange, he was swaying between aggressive and gentleness. “Are you..?”

“No.” He answered quickly, to the point where it raised more suspicion. He cringed at his own reaction, realising he sold himself out, and admitting it with his chest bare.

“König.” I said more sternly.

“Ich musste es tun, es tut so weh und deine stimme fühlt sich so gut an.” He groaned, using the wrong head to think, barely comprehensive as he rambled in a language I couldn’t even speak.

I took a deep inhale, his ramblings proving my point. “Say again in english please.”

“Yes.” He managed to get out.

“Yes, you’re jerking off?”

“Musste, kleine.” He panted, and while I still couldn’t make out his words, I understood that he was admitting to it, and by the sounds eliciting from his throat, it was clear that he wasn’t stopping. “Zu sagen dass es mir leid tut wäre eine lüge.”

“König.”

“Please.” He finally spoke out in english. “Please, keep talking.”

“What do you expect me to say?”

“Anything.” He groaned, and there was a moment of silence as we both sat in thought. His harsh demeanour melted quickly, he had no right of way to be a snappy colonel here as the need consumed him wholly.

“Do you expect me to talk dirty to you? Tell you that I bet you’re so hard and aching? That you’re probably leaking everywhere?”

“Scheiße, ja.” He nodded to the blankness of the battlefield, knowing that I couldn’t see his enthusiasm but wanting to express it anyway.

“And that’s all for me?”

“Ja, ja.” He panted out with need. “Need you.. Please?”

I sigh into the receiver and his breath catches in his throat, he gently massages his tip, enough to keep him going but not enough to build any pleasure. Guilt slowly began to consume him but he refused to let that be the other option. He didn’t want to sit in the dirt, bleeding out and crying out in pain instead of ecstasy.

“What do you want me to say?”

“What.. Do you want to say?” He responded carefully, keeping himself calm enough for this conversation to go smoothly. “Please, I’m.. Uh, werde abspritzen.. Orgasm.” He struggled out, his mind going blank.

“You have a lot of explaining to do later.”

“I know.” He groaned. “Tell me.”

I sucked my teeth. “I don’t know what to say to you, König. You want me to tell you how I want you buried deep in me?”

He let out a moan. “That.” He gritted.

“You’re fantasising about how good my pussy feels, right?”

“Ja, gute muschi.” He moaned, and soft slapping sounds began to be audible through the radio. I felt glad that no one else could listen into this line. He muttered incoherencies in English and German, it was hard to keep track of what he was trying to say.

The shame kept threatening to lay heavy on his conscience, though he managed to push it away every time it tried, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t come back later.

“You sound close.”

“Am.” He swallowed thickly. “So sexy. So beautiful.”

“Mhm? Want me to say something about how I fuck myself in my quarters? Gotta keep myself quiet so the others don’t hear me through the shitty paper-thin walls?” I started. “Or how I’m tight because I haven’t got a boyfriend? My Colonel doesn't give me enough time off, y’know?”

The passive aggressiveness was something he made a mental note of, something to save for later to make up for his actions. Right now, he was focused on the orgasm threatening to rip through his body. 

“Mhm, like that.” He whined, covering his mouth and his sounds becoming more muffled. “Scheiße—” The embarrassment in his voice lingered in the line for longer than his words did but it didn’t dissuade him. “Can explain this.. Later. Ah, please, right there.” He managed to curse out.

He panted and groaned, a mix of ‘sorry’ and ‘thank you’ filled the air, surrounded by something or other in german. It was hard to tell what was happening through the walkie talkie, though before I could respond, his dick twitched in his hand, spilling cum from the tip, leaking over his hand and down onto his pants.

He threw his head back into the dirt, trying to regain himself, his afterglow of bliss successfully distracting him, but not enough to not worry about the growing guilt. “Sorry.” He mumbled.

“So.. You can explain why you were out of position or why you were jacking off?”

“Both.” He breathed. “I can do both. I’m sorry.”

“Evac van is on its way, it might take a bit to find you.” I tried to bite back a smile. “You should clean up.”

“I know.” He swallowed. “Thanks, uh.. I’m..”

He sighed, knowing better than to keep apologising, mindlessly wiping his hand on his pants, not caring too much of the stain and trying to reorganise himself. He crawled around the ditch, trying to make his position more obvious to the humvee, he could vaguely see it in the distance.

“Tell me you’re not mad, right?” He spoke through the radio, trying to walk towards a more visible vantage point where the enemy wouldn’t see him if there were any lingerers despite the fact that the fight was most certainly further down the open field at this point.

I laughed through the radio, and the cackle of life it brought to the abandoned field was uneasy as he slowly tried to move towards the van.

“No, not mad, but I definitely plan to use this against you in the near future.” 

[skyeoak]

Tmagp 30 thoughts

Vocal performances all slayed. 10/10

I think there’s a lot of good and bad in the finale! But overall, it feels underbaked. (Or overplotted/overplanned?)

I’ll save my finalized thoughts on the hilltop center to see if it’s developed in further seasons, because uh, hmm. Jonny said in the live drop that carousels of horrors were his favorite to write, but they sure are not realllyyyy my favorite to listen to. They’re kind of thematic scattershot. And yeah, one of my critiques about TMA is that I don’t love how we only rarely see how the fears combine and interact. Having multiple creepy things in a curiosity cabinet -com shopping center doesn’t really solve that problem for me.

The idea of a character turning a blind eye to an obviously creepy job is still interesting, especially in how it parallels the staff of the OIAR. But that’s kinda the start and end of my interest in the custodian? It feels like this story could have been shrunk to 1/3 length and had a better effect. I just feel like this should have been a midseason statement, and the finale could have focused on having some sort of action or tension. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting the finale to have a statement at all, to be structurally in line with early TMA. Maybe a full statement/story from Celia, giving the non-TMA audience some idea of why she thinks there’s nothing to go back to in her universe. Hell. Maybe she could just. Tell Sam, uncompelled. I would have loved to see her try to convince him to jump. Convince him that her new life matters more than his (perceived) failure of one. Instead… this is another episode where I feel like the double meaning titles weigh down what the statement could be. And it’s the season finale.

I wondered early on if the finale for this season would feel more like setup for future seasons, and yep. Yep it did. It just felt like there was this inherent tension between the stakes of the story, which are already at interdimensional travel, and the level of danger it feels like everyone is in. Not to mention how Celia just drops a list of alchemical balance things out of the blue. Magnus Protocol is in a tricky situation: they need to set up a new conflict and new characters, and at the same time, Magpod has already done mega-apocalypse hellscapes and so TMagP might feel the need to go bigger. (Imo I don’t think sequels always need to raise the stakes but I understand that’s industry standard). It’s also tackling alchemy, a notoriously complex subject that’s probably hard to explain to an audience in any way that feels natural. You can’t just throw murder worm lady and screaming main character in the finale and call it a day. There’s a lot going on, less time, and I don’t know if the characterization this season was consistent (/consistently good) enough to hold the full weight of it all.

OKAY, WHELMED THOUGHTS OVER, now for the good! Surprise surprise, it’s all the little character payoffs!

Gwen and Lena’s confrontation was EVERYTHING. Gwen is kicking anthills, and Lena is so content to let her stand in them while the ants crawl up her legs. I won’t lie though, I’m not sure if this plotline will be interesting to me. I think it depends on how fast the OIAR staff can get Gwen to actually be on their side.

Sam deciding to protect Celia by pushing the archivist into the void is SENSATIONAL CHARACTER PAYOFF. (This is my interpretation of the scene, audio was super unclear once again, and there was a line change from transcript to podcast that made this super ambiguous in the actual canon audio.) My poor guy has ZERO self esteem, and still wants to be a hero. He probably realized that if what Celia just told him was true, an archivist could actually kill her on the spot. My guess is that (tma spoilers) this balanced the rift not because Celia replaced her own missing soul (plenty of folks got sent through hilltop road in that same incident) but because an archivist+a person were pulled through to replace Jon and Martin. Truly excited to see where they end up, and if this archivist gets developed more as a character next season. Also the implications of interdimensional balance on what happened at the end of TMA are… interesting.

Oh Alice. Everything in this intricately balanced house of checking up on people and soothing them and deflecting tension with jokes is about to come crashing down. I’m so sorry this is happening to you.

And yes, this is a super lukewarm episode review but I do wanna say I liked this season a lot, and TMAGP is still a cut above a LOT of horror I have read/listened to this year. I’m hoping seasons 2 and 3 will either steer further into a direct TMA sequel, angle OR steer clear and become their own thing. TMAGP is stuck uncomfortably in the middle right now. Just be the good parts of her. But completely new.

[i-write-boop-spoops]

Living with Leon NSFW headcanons

the anon who requested this is not only a genius and a sweetheart, but also super hot (don’t ask me how i know this, they just are)

sfw part 1 here

just a lot of gn! ambiguous genitals! reader getting dicked down by leon all about the house. wholesome stuff really.

NSFW under the cut

You thought you knew what Leon’s sex drive was

All the sexts, spicy videocalls, the multiple rounds you’d go for when one of you stayed over, the quickies in Wyndon Stadium etc

Turns out, you weren’t even close

He’d barely put the first box of your stuff down in his sitting room before you were bent over the couch with him deep inside you

Look, you can’t blame Leon

He just loves you so much

And he thinks you’re so goddamn sexy

Suddenly he has way more access to you and your beautiful body

All the excitement at the prospect of living together, and all those missed moments just get to him

Of course he is going to take full advantage of this situation (while obvs respecting your boundaries)

Luckily, you are more than pleased with this arrangement

Say it with me my friends

QUICKIES

You two have it down to a fine fucking art

Like literally, you have the timing perfect

You both get orgasms and a good fuck in, but still enough time to fix yourselves up and arrive on time for work

Well, you are on time

He keeps getting lost on the way rip

Hands often start wandering over shirts and under waistbands when you’re cuddling on the couch and the movie you’re watching just isn’t it

Or if you unintentionally or intentionally grind against his dick while getting comfy on his lap

SO

We know Leon’s shower is really fancy right?

Well, I neglected to mention in the first post that it has steps, and handles, and non-slip surfaces

And alongside his hair and bodywash stuff, he has a bottle of water-resistant lube

You often delight in feeling each other up, if not just straight up fucking under the luscious heat and pressure of the water

You definitely make use of the jets in the shower and bath

“Can I wash you back?” and your ass and your chest and your junk

And if somehow you make it out of the bathroom without ending up with him inside you

You’ll probably end up sandwiched between him and the bedroom wall anyways, towels on the floor

Outside of the house, Leon is a fashion disaster

Inside the house though, he doesn’t even wear enough clothes for it to be considered an outfit worth scrutinizing

Okay that’s not totally true, he does sometimes wear a shirt that is definitely very tight on his muscles

But mostly, especially after showering, he’s shirtless

In loose shorts

Or grey sweatpants 👀

You…. you don’t wear much either

Usually one of his shirts (which tends to be quite big on you)

And sometimes you wear shorts or leggings with it, but only sometimes

It’s for easy access really

Which is good because we all know how Lee gets when you’re wearing his clothes

Gentle morning sex is common 

Particularly on his days/morning off

Where he can really spend time holding you, kissing you, caressing you, making love to you

And then cuddle you afterwards, drifting off to sleep again

Because you're both so sleepy during this, it can often lead to unintentional cockwarming

He just gets too sleepy to move for a bit

And too caught up in how perfect and warm and snug you are around him

Not that you mind, because he feels so wonderful against your body, and so amazing and big inside you

Just because you're living together doesn't mean the sexting stops

And I don't just mean when one of you is away from home

Like, you'll just be chilling on the couch in the sitting room

When your phone lights up with a notification from Leon

Which is just a mirror selfie of him in the bathroom, glistening from his workout, in just a low slung towel and a sultry expression

With "🚿?" as the caption

You two have fucked in every room of the penthouse

Except Hop's room ofc

And have made use of basically every surface

The mirrored walls in his gym are 👌

[scolop98]

Turns out I have too many thoughts to put this in a comment and honestly it was a matter of time before I made a post about these two.

Okay so: AMC's Pantheon. Season one episode one. Cary and Renee are playing out their whole "pretending to be in an abusive relationship" shtick. We the audience find out that this is a ruse after their shouting match at dinner, when they meet up in the garage.

Everything about this exchange—their dialogue and poses, the smirk on Renee’s face, the casualness of it all—read like flirting to me. That, combined with the general reveal that they'd been faking an abusive marriage—not to mention how Renee immediately slides back into The Role after Cary leaves—had me HOOKED. AND it was our first hint that something was seriously and abnormally wrong (= very interesting) with Caspian's life/the Keyes family, so my initial interest in Caspian's subplot was heavily tied to Renee and Cary's dynamic.

Then we get to episodes two and three... and they absolutely hate each other.

(context: first video is after he shoves her to the ground in front of their "son" and his "girlfriend" in ep2. second video, from ep3, they are picking out the hammer that (spoilers) will be used to break her arm later that night)

Every interaction is clipped dialogue and frosty glares and the bare minimum effort spent to make sure you and your coworker aren't going to step on each other's toes. At least on Renee's side—sometimes Cary seems like he's trying to connect with Renee (ex: after they meet "Hannah" for the "first" time), and sometimes he just seems pissed at her (ex: buying out the hammer) (which is understandable, she's the worst. she is such an asshole and I love her for that)

And then we get to end of episode three: The Hammer Scene

Where Renee breaks her own arm because Cary is "too pussy to do it himself" (not an actual quote), and Cary breaks down in tears after leaving Caspian. When Cary shows that despite participating in this ethical nightmare, he's enough of a decent human being to not want to break his coworker's arm and also genuinely cares about the surrogate son he's raised for the last 17 years; and when Renee shows that she is 110% committed to whatever this still-ambiguous, evil-shadowy-tech-corp-backed Truman Show gambit is that she's dedicated the last 17 years of her life to.

Also relevant (to me specifically) is that this scene is sandwiched directly between David and Ellen's breakup scenes, which are some of my favorite moments in season one and the primary reason why David/Ellen is my favorite Pantheon ship. The contrast between David and Ellen's dynamic (we both agree it's healthier to not get back together, but that doesn't mean we can't still banter about old memories) & my reaction to them (WOW is it obvious these two used to be married, instant OTP) compared to Renee and Cary's power hour (i.e. performing the most jaw-dropping, unexpected plot twist in the show up to that point) did something irreversible to my brain chemistry and single-handedly kickstarted my interest in "incredibly divorced animated parents with convoluted relationship histories" ships.

In hindsight, the tone shift in Cary and Renee's interactions in the first three episodes was probably just bad continuity or one of those "characterization was not fully fleshed out when we made the first episode" situations. Aside from the first episode, literally all their scenes in season one make it obvious that Renee and Cary were in a purely professional fake marriage and were NOT friends. Renee can’t stand Cary, and he’s incredibly frustrated with her half the time. While their garage banter did an incredible job as a Reveal Scene, it's also a clear outlier in terms of how Renee and Cary's relationship is written.

I wasn’t really thinking about any of that during my first watch of Pantheon. I was thinking: "flirty coworkers in a morally fucked up job" + "clearly pissed at each other" = "hate-to-love-you ship dynamic," and then I was thinking "HOLY SHIT SHE JUST BROKE HER OWN ARM" and could not stop rotating this family in my mind. I did notice that the garage scene didn't match their later characterization, but instead of thinking about the bad writing I kept rotating the potential of that dynamic in my mind.

Later S1 developments such as "Renee sees Cary and shoots him on sight" and "now that I've put you in this hospital bed I will gloat about everything (I think) you've lost, and also we still have to pretend to be married," and "we are in different states and still jump at the first chance to throw each other under the bus, which unintentionally reads as obsession with each other" did nothing to dissuade this train of thought, mind you.

So to synthesize all this: Cary and Renee are very clearly not in any sort of romantic/sexual/emotional relationship. Renee dislikes Cary at best, and all of Cary's post-episode-one moments of concern/sympathy toward Renee can be framed through this flashback sequence:

Cary, exasperated: "And… we're gonna be working together for awhile […] Let's. Try and make it pleasant. Deal?"

Cary (reasonably) wants to get along with the coworker he's going to spend the next 17 years of his life with, even (especially) if she's an asshole.

But that plot-critical-but-OOC moment in episode one wired my brain to think about these two being close enough to banter, and through that filter their dynamic in the rest of the season looked a lot like those sexually-charged, obsessive mortal enemy dynamics that enemies-to-lovers and hero/villain shippers thrive on. Not to mention the fact that these two have lived the last 17 years in the same house and might've been sleeping in the same bed for several years to keep up appearances (I know that everyone's favorite fake-marriage duo don't sleep in the same room but TwiYor don't have to keep their fake marriage a secret from their child). It is very, very easy for me to imagine an AU where Cary and Renee would have hate sex sometimes, and I feel like it would have practically zero butterflies on the outcome of the plot. Or alternatively, imagine if they were genuinely in a relationship while raising Caspian and how insanely toxic it would be—especially since their platonic, professional canon relationship is already incredibly unbalanced in terms of emotional labour.

And the fact that one of their most emotionally charged, status quo-changing, plot-relevant scenes was paired and directly contrasted with the most emotionally charged, character arc-relevant scene of my favorite Pantheon ship (David x Ellen) in what rapidly became my favorite sequence of season? Meant I was constantly reminded of this ship (Cary x Renee) whenever I thought about why I loved this show.

Anyways that's how a tiny bit of inconsistent characterization in pantheon's first episode turned these awful fake parents into my second favorite Pantheon OTP - not in the sense of "I think these characters should be together," but more like a "can you imagine how much worse their lives would've been if they were in an on-and-off situationship at any point in the last 18 years" that I constantly rotated in my mind for weeks after finishing season one. I hope my first attempt at a proper tumblr analysis essay was coherent, I wrote it between midnight and 3 AM. As a bonus, have this edit of them that I made last summer for a "toxic/complicated/disorienting relationships" MEP

The song is Tainted Love, covered by Milky Chance and originally by Soft Cell

Also, to clear up any confusion: just because I think Renee is The Worst and an Awful Human Being does not mean I don't like her as a character. I like her character a lot more than Cary actually. She's not blorbo material but she IS "I love to hate this character" material. She's the centerpiece of the entire fucked up Keyes Family Dynamic! From an audience perspective, she acts as The Face of Logorhythm's clone plot, given how she has more screen time and direct interactions with Caspian than Cary or Julius Pope in S1, and she's so intricately tied to Caspian's "what the fuck is wrong with my life" investigations. She's an asshole, but she's a complex, interesting asshole with plot relevance, screen time, and more personality than Julius Pope, and I loved watching how she and Caspian play off each other and how that changes over time. also she's a fucked-up and evil woman and idk i find that compelling in a fictional character, sue me.

[armandjolras]

ok I have to ramble about Killing Eve’s treatment of gayness sorry. This is going to be long. Spoilers for all seasons

first of all, I think it’s noteworthy that there’s SO much casual gayness in the show. Some random mi6 guy has a boyfriend, the wedding in the finale is between two men, Helene is gay, Villanelle has many brief flings with women. And yet, there’s so much resistance from the writers towards defining or progressing Villanelle and Eve’s relationship. I feel like this is a slightly more progressive form of what Disney does with their “first gay character”, e.g. some random background character who mentions she has a wife. If they pack the show with constant references to gayness, it’s not homophobic, right? And yet there’s resistance towards making Villanelle and Eve’s relationship explicitly romantic. My guess is this was done (maybe at the request of the bbc?) to avoid being pigeonholed as a “gay show.” It’s the classic queerbaiting move of making it gay enough to get lgbt viewers, but ambiguous enough not to alienate people who might not watch it if it’s a “gay show.”

I’ve also noticed a consistent vagueness in how the cast and creatives talk about the relationship in interviews. Calling it undefinable, too complex to be a single thing, maybe it’s sexual but maybe it’s cosmic or maybe platonic, etc. It’s such a monumental relationship that it can’t possibly be labeled. That plays into the plausible deniability of whether or not it’s gay, to avoid scaring off any audiences, but I find it ESPECIALLY annoying because it feels insulting. They act like they’re doing us a favour by writing such an undefinably complex relationship — “it’s not just gay, it’s way more than that! (or maybe not gay at all who knows they transcend labels!)”

I also think they tried to maintain plausible deniability about Eve’s sexuality. The things she says to and about Villanelle are never explicitly romantic, but could be viewed as non romantic obsession. It could be argued that the bus kiss was only a distraction, and seducing Helene was for business reasons. The only sexual situation they’re in (the earpiece scene) involves Eve having sex with a man. I like these moments, but when that’s all we’re given until the very last episode of the show, it feels deliberate.

So that’s my thoughts on the show as a whole, now for season 4 specific stuff 🙃.

Season 4 throws away the central concept of the show — that Eve and Villanelle are ultimately similar and therefore uniquely understand each other. They grow towards each other, Villanelle enabling Eve to embrace her true nature as a morally grey thrill-seeker, while Eve awakens genuine emotions in Villanelle. Their relationship is weird and unconventional because they are weird and unconventional. They BOTH are — Eve definitely has Something Wrong With Her.

Instead, season 4 presents them as being innately different, with the implication that Eve is good and human while Villanelle is bad and inhuman. From Laura Neal’s interviews:

“Eve isn't a Villanelle. Villanelle isn't an Eve. They are not destined to become the same person. They are destined for different things. […]Eve is about seeking life at this moment, and Villanelle is about seeking destruction.”

“[Eve is at her happiest] amongst human beings, people like her, and she’s remembering what the world has to offer, what the normal world has to offer. And then Villanelle is in the place where she feels happiest, which is blood-soaked, steeped in killing.”

she goes on to describe Eve’s reaction to Villanelle’s death as a feeling of triumph, choosing life, and rebirth.

So to sum it up, a woman who believed herself to be straight was lured away from her husband and normal life by a murderous lesbian. The “straight” woman finally got away from the lesbian and got a new normal male partner. The lesbian lured her away again, and they had a romantic relationship for about six hours before the lesbian was shot to death. The “straight” woman felt triumphant rebirth, because she realised that she wanted a normal life all along. Plus, the lesbian has constantly questioned whether she was born broken or could change, and is ultimately is told she was born broken.

Is anybody else kind of annoyed by this??

The last thing I want to talk about is Pam, who is introduced this season as a foil to Villanelle. She’s a new assassin who is still morally good, feeling remorse for her kills and getting a nice boyfriend — very unlike Villanelle. Konstantin considers her a fresh start or do-over after Villanelle. At the end, she gets to walk away from the 12 and chooses good over evil, presumably reuniting with her boyfriend. But Villanelle, who has tried to leave the 12 over and over and kept getting pulled back in, and finally resolved to destroy them, gets killed without a happy ending. The good pure straight woman gets rewarded while the evil broken lesbian dies.

I hate to say this because it’s so corny, but Villanelle felt very important to me as representation. She’s so open and earnest about her love for women, which is something that I often find missing in fictional lesbians. Seeing such an iconic, funny, fashionable, evil character be openly a lesbian was incredible. I loved the show, though each season less than the one before, so I feel bad about complaining — but honestly it’s my gratitude towards this incredible representation that makes me annoyed with how it was handled by the final writer.

[merrivia]

The intricacies of the Captive Prince trilogy often present themselves through lines which are written with a strong narrative certainty (as if the answer is clear)* but are in fact, relatively ambiguous when you stop and think. I have already spoken about this with Nicaise here, but there are more (enough to make a little series, I expect).

Here is another one from King’s Rising:

What is the “other, darker thought” that Damen believes “at all costs must be avoided”?

More after the jump:

On a basic level, you could simply read this as about Damen's fears and anxieties. Like any of us in a dire, panic-inducing situation, it is imperative to not succumb to those fears or despair and to try and envision a way towards some kind of resolution.

There are also any number of dark thoughts Damen could be having, that he might want to avoid, like how he could technically betray Laurent to get his child back. Like how a King who was detached enough could think he could always make more heirs, and that there was no proof the child was his, and act accordingly.

I think it is clear that it isn't those things, but instead is something so dark it scares him.

Having a child, we know, opens all of Damen’s wounds about family:

For Damen, to be a father means to consider what it meant to him to be a son. It tears open the grief he had been forced to lock away and makes him realise just how alone he is.

You can imagine his line of thinking. Damen believes that he failed his father, and so cannot bear that he might fail his son.

And what is one of the worst things a parent might feel they must protect their child from, when you know they won’t be physically tortured or killed? Something he has seen a terrible father do in the form of Guion? The ultimate failure to protect them?

Damen, I believe, is thinking of the potential sexual abuse of his child.

There must have been something Damen saw in Laurent’s eyes as he urgently tried to communicate something he finds hard to articulate, and which would be horrifying to say out loud to a parent. Not to mention, some hours previously he had seen Laurent’s reaction to Jokaste’s news:

Damen may not have understood the look in Laurent’s eyes then, or the “sheer horror”, but by now he’s had many hours to process what he heard. Laurent is terrified for his son. And Damen knows why, even if he can’t face it directly.

It would fit a pattern to the Regent’s mentality-after all, what happened to Damen himself, was sexual exploitation in making him a bed slave, and similarly in the assassination attempt meted out to Laurent but luckily avoided (to be drugged and raped, before murdered). And lastly, of course, and most seriously, is the Regent’s paedophilia, a topic which Damen has perhaps avoided thinking too much about.

To be clear, we know Damen is sickened by Audin offering up Nicaise, calling it by its name, the rape of a child and preferring to be tortured or killed than do it. In fact, Nicaise’s abuse and Aimeric’s both must appall him. We can see he instinctively feels and knows that the Regent’s abuse of these children are dark, immoral acts, but I think he feels so uncomfortable by it, he doesn’t quite know how to deal with it. That is classic Damen. Think of his awkwardness at the incest rumours Govart mentioned when Laurent speaks to him about. He does think on straightforward lines, shies away from the unthinkable. Layered on top of this also, I think, is him being partially stymied by the acceptance of the Veretian court of something which should be disgusting. All of us see societal injustices every day, and often feel helpless in the face of them due to wider cultural acceptance/turning of a blind eye and I think, in a way, Damen feels the same.

Furthermore, think of when Damen is silent when Paschal says he tended to the Regent’s boys. He is unable to put into words his moral repulsion- and also the whole idea would open up a box of ideological worms. Like the fact that Damen was brought up in a culture which celebrates male virility and as a result, consensually lost his virginity at 13, a kind of early sexual blooming which Pacat intended deliberately for his character. He also would have known slaves start to train at a very young age, and are transferred to the palace from the moment of puberty, though they are older on completion of training. There obviously is a clear distinction- Akielon slave training takes puberty seriously and no bed slave can ‘graduate’ without going through it, and the Regent’s interests are pre-pubescent children. But Damen has also had sex many times with slaves who have been trained (brainwashed) to serve and cannot give consent in any meaningful way. There are probably no Akielon terms, no language exactly, to censure or condemn men like the Regent. Damen does understand consent is important, rape is a crime that would exist in both worlds, and what the Regent is doing is exploitation of the worst kind- but then…isn’t slavery? You can see these difficulties effectively silence Damen, as he wrestles with his morals and feeling of hypocrisy. (Remember that it is a seismic shift within Damen to go from a man with his own retinue of slaves, to a man who knows he will ban slavery on becoming king. It isn't just that he was reduced to a slave himself, and is now empathetic. All of this and more, I think, is ticking away in the back of his mind, as he fights for his survival in terms of the overall plot of the novels).

Veretian culture is no better, and also has no language for child abuse. Laurent himself will talk of what his uncle does as a “fetish” on the one hand, and then say Aimeric “fucked” his uncle, was a “country virgin” who was “hot for it”. Yes, he does this to eviscerate him verbally, but Pacat walks an interesting line here. In the time period the books are vaguely set in (13th century ish?) the general understanding of rape, abuse, consent, age and gender**, mean there wouldn’t have been a particular cultural understanding of abuse as we know it. So Damen and Laurent both hover in a grey area of knowing something is “obscene” and wrong, but being surrounded by cultures that simply have no term or legal basis for thinking it is wrong.

The truth of the matter is though, there is no grey area when it’s your child at risk. In this moment, Damen has started to truly acknowledge the darkest undercurrent in the trilogy. One which will lead him to Laurent’s abuse. And we see Damen’s agony and his rage at what was done to Laurent and at how the society around them (his society in the moment, but Veretian too) lets these things happen without consequences:

They did indeed hear what he did, and they do not care.

Laurent too, I think, may also have had an epiphany in this moment. Damen lays no blame whatsoever at his door, would murder the Regent on sight for the evil he did to Laurent.

I think this might be the first time that Laurent is shown by an external person that he loves and trusts and respects that what happened to him was not Laurent’s fault. That it’s never a child’s fault. That he could throw an accusation of seduction and willingness at Aimeric, but that was only because that same accusation had been no doubt flung at him. Damen’s love and his righteous moral outrage at least gives him that, when Laurent's own culture won't.

So that’s my reading of the line! If you think I’m wrong, please do let me know, I love hearing alternative interpretations.

*I think this is because Pacat wrote these stories over a long time, and you can see how alive the characters are in her head, and also because I think the fact the stories were originally written in tandem with a public audience on livejournal who could interact with her in real time, and I think had a little more to work with. What’s left for the readers who come later, is what can feel like a puzzle box of a novel. It’s part of what’s wonderful about it- the gift of a writer who assumes we are intelligent and will figure it out- but also perhaps, a tiny bit frustrating. Pacat definitely embraces reader interpretation, and I’m a big believer myself in aspects of reader response theory, but there are moments I do wonder about getting it right, hence posts like these.

** I put gender here because from my cursory research, there were some legal discussions of girls as victims and ages of consent in this time period but not so much boys. If I’m wrong, I’d like to know more about it, so let me know.

[thestalwartheart]

Asking them about their family for 00q, pretty please! 🙏🥰

Thanks for the prompt, Alex! This is admittedly a bit of a twist on it, but you and I both enjoy a bit of ambiguity, so I thought I'd be forgiven for it!

You can read it below or on AO3.

Enjoy! 💖

It’s only Bond, Q tells himself. He’s just a man, for goodness sake. This whole situation is proof of that.

Q clears his throat and gestures for Tanner to give them some space in the lab, then wishes fervently for the ground to swallow him whole. He grips the edge of his desk. Perhaps, in the next three seconds, he’ll think of a way to give Bond some mind-reading powers so they can avoid a conversation. Hardly worth the risk, normally, but on this occasion…

“Before you go, 007, I’m er—”

“Spit it out, Q.”

“Right. Yes. I’m going to need you to change the password for your company-assigned laptop.”

Bond narrows his eyes. “Aren’t you a bit overqualified to be delivering messages usually sent by automated prompts?”

“And here I thought I still had too many spots to be qualified.” Bond gives him a look and Q remembers why jokes are a terrible idea in times like this. “You’re right, I am usually. But given the security fiasco with Denbigh and the merger, I’ve been doing some manual audits. Your password passes most requirements, but it’s—”

“—easy to guess,” finishes Bond. His hand twitches. Whether it’s out of annoyance or the desire for a strong drink, Q doesn’t know. He sympathises with the latter thought—he could certainly use a scotch or two himself.

“Yes. It’s linked to your file, and therefore a security risk. This isn’t something a computer would normally pick up, especially with the state of our backend systems. I’m sorry, Bond.”

Bond’s face remains unreadable, but he nods and promises to sort it out as soon as he gets back to his desk.

For a moment, Q is pleasantly distracted by the thought of James Bond sitting at a desk in an open-plan office, a human like the rest of them and just as subject to the indignities of hierarchy. Q wonders if he drinks coffee out of that awful, too-small company mug everyone’s got, or whether he’s put a few government-issued pens in it instead. Neither, probably. Bond has taste. Q would put money on him favouring better coffee and pens.

“Good,” says Q with a thin smile. “Good, thank you. You’re free to go, then.”

While he tries not to choke on the awkwardness in the room, Q turns toward a half-finished surveillance device on his workstation.

“Q?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.” At the look Q gives him, he elaborates. “I can’t imagine everyone else who failed your security audit got the personal attention of the Quartermaster.”

That’s true. All the other agents and analysts who failed it got emails written by one of his graduate techs. Q tries not to linger on the thought that he’d probably have gone out of his way to talk to Bond anyway. Thinking about it for too long would mean interrogating why, and he’s fine with living in ignorance on that particular subject.

“Let’s call it luck of the draw.”

His discretion is awarded with a rare smile. He carries it with him until two days later, when he does a follow-up check of the admin systems. It reveals a clean sheet of secure passwords.

Q leaves dealing with Bond’s for last. He knows the man has more sense than to make the same mistake twice, so Q could leave unchecked. It’s not as if it matters whether he knows the password or not; he has full remote access to everything on Bond’s laptop anyway.

But he’d be naive to believe most passwords didn’t reveal some secrets about the person whose data they hide.

Q isn't sure he's ready for more of Bond's secrets.

No favouritism, he reminds himself. You’ve checked everyone else’s. God knows Bond already gets handed enough exceptions around here.

With that rebuke to himself in mind, he clicks the button to reveal the new password.

He taps his pen on the desk twice, then laughs. There is no mention of Delacroix, nor any other baggage-laden names in Bond’s file.

Instead, translated into an agent's approximation of leetspeak, blinks the word Temeraire.

[softxsuki]

Hello, I’m.. new to this. But reading your works have comforted me … I know you have a lot on your plate, and I hope all is going well for you!! If you,,have the chance,, I’ve kind of.. not been doing well. At all. Haha,, I’ve been extremely suicidal.. for at least the past year. Everything has since fell apart. I’m not sure if this counts, but..it feels urgent, to me..?

My grandmother died, I lost my job due to my health declining so rapidly I physically could not manage. I’ve since applied to so many jobs.. absolutely no luck and.. I even lost my home. Im living with someone else’s parents, and I’m a child scared to leave their room all over again. I can’t eat unless food is in front of me, none of my friends are… good, at comforting, to say the least… I have well over 1K due for medical bills, and no one will even take me for an interview, so I can’t even pay off little by little. Lol..I pretty much moved out at 17 and have been surviving by myself for 6 years now.

Im so tired of surviving.

If.. if you don’t mind.. honestly I don’t even know what kind of scenario this would count as…. Baji has been my biggest comfort character as of late, and I.. well, would you mind,, possibly writing a scenario.. of reader who’s spiraled so far into these thoughts, and in the midst of a panic attack, attempts to.. stop surviving, if you catch my drift..

I know this is very personal, and I’m sorry to dump on you.. if you’re unable, all is well! Thank u for taking time to read my pity story haha.. <3

Baji Helps Suicidal Reader

****Please proceed with caution if mentions of suicide will be more harmful to you than beneficial.*****

Pairing: Baji x Gn!Reader

Warnings: Mentions of hopelessness, suicide attempt, crying, not being able to find a job, losing your home

Genre: Hurt Comfort

Post-Type: Oneshot

Word Count: 1.7k

Summary: In which Baji shows up as soon as you attempt to take your own life.

[A/N: Hi darling, I'm so glad you found my blog and for feeling comfortable enough to bring your urgent request to me! I'm so sorry to hear what you've been through. I can't begin to imagine how you must be feeling. Though I've felt similarly about the the whole job thing. Places these days won't even give people a chance to show what they could do. I graduated from College and couldn't find work immediately. I'm still struggling to find a job in my field even now. I have a job at a bookstore atm, but it took a long time for me to get it. I think when they timing is right though, things will work out for us. We really just need to wait for things to happen and keep working for them! But you're also going through a lot of other situations as well, so my words probably aren't that helpful, so I'll leave that to Baji. I'm here if you ever need anyone to talk to though. I've been through moments of hopelessness and feeling like leaving this world was my only option, but I'm proof that things will change. There will always be times when we fall, but we can always get back up again! Anyway, I'll shut up now and let you read. I hope it provides you with even just a tiny bit of comfort <3 i love you, hopefully we can talk again soon, you sound very sweet!

Side note: I wasn’t sure if you wanted something platonic or if you wanted to be Baji’s s/o so I left that kinda ambiguous. You could read it either way!

Baji impatiently taps his foot, sitting on his bike outside your place. Where were you?

You had texted him earlier asking him to pick you up since the people you were living with weren’t home and you just needed to get out for a while. He came rushing over as soon as he had a chance and texted you upon arriving, but you weren’t answering his texts–you weren’t even reading them. 

He knew all about your situation in life and had tried his best to be by your side and show you the support that you deserved to have. He wasn’t perfect though, at times it was hard for Baji to truly put himself in your shoes and understand what you were going through.

Now though, he was worried. Why had you texted so desperately that you needed to get out of the house? Why weren’t you answering his texts now?

He turns his engine off and hops off the bike, walking briskly to your front door.

“Y/N! I’m here,” He bangs on the door, hoping you were just distracted and forgot to check your phone to see his texts.

But he’s met with silence. 

“Y/N!” He tries again, panic settling in the pit of his stomach and he bangs harder on the door–something wasn’t right.

He brings his ear to the door hoping to hear any sign of life and that’s when he hears it, the running of water and sobs from the other side. Gathering whatever adrenaline had been building up in him, he rams into the door, which luckily flies open from the impact. The sound of your sobs grows louder the closer he gets to you. You were in the bathroom.

The door is only a crack open, but he races toward the noise, slamming the door fully open and takes in your state; puffy eyes as tears run from them not that he could distinguish your tears from the hot water that was pouring on you from the shower-head. You were sitting in the tub, soaking wet with a bottle of pills in your hands.

Your breathing was erratic as you struggled to open the bottle, but Baji is quick to act. He’s in the shower with you in a second, the burning water scalding his body even through his jacket, but he doesn’t care since it’s now not hitting you anymore. He snatches the pills from your hands, throwing them out the bathroom door and into the hallway where you can’t see them. In your state of panic, you start to flail around, seeing that bottle as your only escape from the mental pain you were experiencing. He finally turns the water off and hoists you up, your attempts to push him away and hit him futile. His adrenaline is still high as he lifts you from the tub with ease and onto the bathroom floor where he plops down next to you, out of breath.

You can’t seem to calm your breathing down as you clutch your chest, searching all around you with wild eyes, looking for a way out. Anything to end your suffering–anything. But then you feel strong arms wrap around you in a hug. You beat down on his back, trying your best to shake him off you. Let go of me, you think to yourself. Maybe you meant it in a different way, Let me go. Let me be free from this pain. But deep down, you wanted him to continue to hold you in place.

“Y/N please-” His voice cracks, making you go still in his arms. What were you doing?

“Please, I’m here. You’re not alone, I’m right here and I’m not going anywhere,” he cries, “So don’t leave me.”

The man who had nerves of steel was breaking right in front of you.

He held you tight, as if he was scared you’d just vanish between his fingers. 

What feels like hours passes by with you both still soaking wet on the floor, clinging to each other, but you slowly manage to calm your breathing and sobs thanks to Baji’s help. 

He had been silent the whole time, focusing on just making sure you wouldn’t try anything else while he was around.

“I’m sorry…” you finally say, resting your head on his shoulder, “I’m sorry you had to see me like this.”

He finally loosens his grip on you, but continues to hold you close, caressing your still damp hair, “Why?”

That was a great question. One you couldn’t answer in only a few minutes. Baji knew the basics of what you’d been through, but he didn’t know the turmoil of what you were going through internally–only externally.

“I’m just…tired. Tired of surviving, tired of suffering. I’m barely scraping by. Is this what life’s supposed to be like? I look around at all the happy faces. Everyone seems to be living the ideal life and I’m just here, so why should I bother to exist if I don’t matter.”

He takes in your words, thinking them over, probably repeating them over and over in his head.

“You matter,” he decides to say, “You matter so much. Even if you only matter to one person, isn’t that enough to keep trying? One person can eventually grow into two, and three, and so on.”

“Baji…you don’t know what it’s like. I’ve already tried for so long. It’s been six long years. I’ve tried to see the good in my situation for six years, and yet I only keep getting pushed farther and farther past my limit. I can’t find a job, and because I can’t find a job, I can’t pay off my debt. I’m living in a house that isn’t mine with people who aren’t my family. I’m alone,” you cry out.

By now you had freed yourself from Baji’s arms, but he reaches over and grabs your hand, squeezing it reassuringly, scared that you’d run away from him.

“But if you leave now how do you know that tomorrow won’t be the day that things change?” He asks you, “Look, I know I can’t ever fully understand what goes on through your mind or what you’ve been through up till this point, but you can’t know what your life will be like a few months from now–hell, not even a few days from now. Everything can change in a second, you just need to be around to experience it.”

He brings your hands to his lips, peppering tiny kisses to your knuckles.

“I love you, a lot Y/N. Too much to just let you leave like this. Let’s try focusing on today. Each day has its own troubles, so why should we think about the future and worry ourselves even more for problems we haven’t reached yet? We’ll cross those valleys when we get to them. Right now, I just want you to focus on yourself, getting back on your feet and in a better state of mind,” he tries to console you.

His words definitely reached you. Truth be told, you knew things could maybe change, but it was hard to move forward with such uncertainty. Why couldn’t you know what would happen with your life five years from now? 

“But what if things don’t change. I don’t want to live like this forever. I don’t want to suffer anymore,” you confess, hot tears running down your face.

Baji turns to face you, gently wiping your tears away.

“But what if they do? Don’t you want to stick around to find that out for yourself?” He asks.

You stop and think it over for a moment; a life where things finally turned around–you finally getting called in for an interview and getting a job, receiving an income and finally getting to pay your debts off. Having your own place where you felt comfortable and maybe starting a family of your own…yeah, that did sound nice. As impossible as that future sounded, it was something you craved.

“I guess I do,” you sigh, “Though I wish it could happen now.”

“I know. I wish it could happen now for you as well. I hate to see you suffer so much, but you’re not alone in this. I have your back. So let’s keep fighting okay? Together, let’s see it through till the end when things finally turn around for you.”

“Baji, you know I can’t just feel better overnight. I think I’ll be okay for today, but who’s to tell when I’ll spiral like this again.”

“Then I’ll be here to get you through it again.”

A wave of gratitude flew through you. You don’t know why Baji arrived on time when you were fully ready to leave this world a few minutes ago, but now you were thankful that he had stopped you. You didn’t want to hurt him or leave him alone, but you found a little ball of hope appearing in your heart. Though tiny, it was still present and you hoped it would continue to grow and become reality one day.

“I’ll try.”

“Good. Then shall we go? You said you wanted out of here for the day, right?” He goes right back to treating you like he usually would–something you were grateful for. You didn’t want him to walk on eggshells around you after witnessing you at your lowest moment.

“But we’re still wet,” you point-out, looking at his clothes that were still clinging to his body.

“The wind will dry us,” he heaves himself off the floor and holds a hand out to you, “Let’s go.”

You give him your hand as he helps you off the floor. What did you have to lose? At this point you didn’t care, you just needed to get your mind off everything.

Baji leads you out of the house, grabbing the bottle of pills on his way out and throwing them in his jacket pocket, making a mental note to discard them later. You walk past the open door with a lock that was now busted off the wall. You’d have to explain that to the people you lived with, but you’d face that problem when you got to it–just like Baji said. 

You hop on behind him on his motorbike as he passes you his helmet, making sure it’s securely on your head before he drives off. 

For just a moment, the wind seems to blow all the worries from your mind. With your arms wrapped tightly around Baji’s torso, you close your eyes and think of those better days he had spoken about.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to see if they could really happen…

REQUESTS ARE OPEN :D

Posted: 2/15/2023

[gojonanami]

I just read 'Is It Over Now?'.

I've been wrecked.

I knew, from the moment I clicked on it, that I would be met with heartbreak. However, that intuitive knowledge hadn't prepared me well enough for the heartbreak that ensued.

The idea of Suguru breaking up by lying about cheating is believable—and clever. I've thought long and hard about why the people closest to Suguru had been unable to see the signs of him falling apart. I chalked it up to several reasons��increasing amount of missions and lack of awareness surrounding mental health circa 2006-2007, perhaps. But the idea of him lying about cheating is just incredibly believable in that, I feel, that causes so much insecurity, doubt, hurt, pain and anguish in the wounded partner that it would make sense that they would want to recoil away from them and maintain their distance. And so that narrative thread fit nicely with the overarching narrative thread of Suguru wanting to separate himself from those around him.

I've got to say, as well, that the way you write is beautiful. The way you charted his descent is beautiful. I can't pick out all of the lines that stuck out to me off the top of my head because there were so many, but just the way you wrote was so clever.

********************************************************************

Actually, thinking back, that line about him drowning in Okinawa was extremely powerful. And a clever callback. It's clever, in my opinion, in that it doesn't feel overwrought.

And he didn’t even have his dignity — he had left that behind when he had lied to your face. Lied because he knew it was the only way you’d leave, and he couldn’t risk you staying. He couldn’t let your fingers dig into his sides, as he let himself drown, he couldn’t watch you choke on water along with him — no, no, it couldn’t happen.  He had long drowned — on that beach in Okinawa. 

And there are so many other examples in this text that I absolutely loved.

********************************************************************

And the way you wrote about Satoru? Him coming in when she was having a day off? The backstory of him liking her in the past and that being ambiguous?

I loved this passage in particular:

You roll your eyes, “Satoru—” and he’s swallowing your retort with his lips — and you can’t help but compare them in your mind, he was so much more aggressive than Suguru was. Suguru’s hands slid over your hips and thighs as if he had all the time in the world, while Satoru’s clung to you desperately, as if you’d dissipate under his fingertips, “should we be doing this? Suguru—“  “Cheated. Murdered. Left us,” And his lips slide from his lips to your jaw, before his teeth graze right under your jaw, drawing a gasp from your lips.

I just think the interplay between them and the way he answered her is incredibly clever.

********************************************************************

And you know what I loved? The fact that he mentioned Suguru. The thing is... I believe that that is incredibly in character for Satoru. Of course he'd mention Suguru in a situation like that.

“How can we not?” he murmurs, as his hands slide up your thighs to squeeze your ass, “is this the bed he fucked you on? Is this the way he touched you?” and he’s parting your thighs, large palms holding you apart, as his half lidded eyes linger on the wet patch on your panties, “is this how wet you got for him? Am I special?” 

Honestly, I loved the sex. I love how passionate and needy, and handsy Satoru was. I loved that he just wanted to touch, grab and feel her as much as he could. I loved that he wanted to overwhelm her with his fingers.

********************************************************************

(Just as a note, the following passage made me blush:)

Suguru was big, so fucking big that the first time he fucked you, he couldn’t even fit in your tight cunt. He had to give you multiple orgasms, prep you right, stretching you out with his fingers and tongue, and even a dildo, until you could fit himself with lube. And Satoru definitely wasn’t as thick as Suguru, but he made up for that in length — fuck, how deep would that reach? A pretty curve at the end with lovely veins running up that made your mouth water, white pubes dotting along it that were shaved, but grown out — likely from being away on missions for so long. 

********************************************************************

And you know what I also loved? I loved that despite the fact that she slept with Satoru and despite the fact that he made her forget about Suguru for a moment, she still thought of him at the end of the day because she just couldn't not to. He was her soulmate and it was a bond so deep that morality couldn't override it.

And as Satoru’s soft snores filled your ears, the only thing on your mind was the one person who you wanted in your bed right now. 

********************************************************************

I love that Suguru thought of her while he was away. I love that he dreamed about her.

And you know what's clever? Is that he was sleeping in his dream. Isn't that kinda cool?

That aside, I loved the softness of their interactions. Her gentle caresses, his sleepy smiles, the longing, passionate kisses...

“Still asleep?” your fingers run through his hair, “such a lazy-bones on your days off,” and your lips trace over his jaw, making his lips curl despite the draw of sleep, “gonna leave me hanging after last night?”  And your lips find his, sliding over his with practiced ease, the same way you breathed — it was natural, as his fingers find purchase in your hair, sliding back to your neck. Again and again, your lips cannot part his, if you can’t breathe without him — cannot exist without his touch.  And when you do part, he’s smiling, black fringe falling in his eyes, “So needy in the morning,” Suguru’s voice is gravelly with sleep, even as your fingers card through his black locks, “when did you become such an early riser? Usually I’m the one dragging you out of this bed kicking and screaming,” 

The dialogue is believable. Authentic. It is soft. It carries with it a tone of familiarity and love that would obviously be present in such a relationship. This fragment of a phrase is one of my favourites—'his lips curl despite the draw of sleep'.

And I love how that idyllic vision of them together—how that glimpse of her reassuring him and peppering him with loving kisses—just dissolved into a nightmare, a telltale sign of his descent into madness.

And Nanako and Mimiko snapping him out of it? And them leading him back to her by planting the idea that he could save her? Brilliant.

It makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Suguru did what he did because he thought it would protect the people he loved, but at the same time, he knew, on some cognitive level, that his approach was the wrong one to take and that he had just gone so far there was no way of going back.

And so it absolutely makes sense that his delusional thinking and perhaps his desperation for closeness and love would lead him back to her via this thorny promise of redemption.

********************************************************************

I almost have no words for this section.

I don't even know where to start commenting on this section. I just...

Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

I love that she didn't ask for the keys back or change her lock. It makes sense, I think, for her to wish to have him back. I can just imagine her lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling, and listening to the sounds of the silence, trying to ascertain any new sounds and listening out for the sign of the lock turning.

I also love this passage:

But the logical side of him knew you didn’t have the skill to do so — you were a grade 1 — a cut above the rest, but still, your abilities weren’t enough, but emotionally…he may let you kill him, if only to spare him the agony of having to kill you — but he knew it’d kill you just the same. 

I love it because it mentions psychology. You are absolutely right—of course psychology plays an important part in battle. It plays an important part in sports. In concerts. In almost anything and everything.

And so I love that you mention that he would let her kill him because Suguru, in my interpretation of him, is a person ruled by emotions and so of course, in my mind, it makes sense that he'd be okay with dying by the hand of the person he loves.

And him reminiscing old memories in her (or is it their?) apartment was just so brilliantly executed. You didn't linger too long on the descriptions, but you didn't need to. They were like fleeting ghosts—just gut-wrenching enough to leave their presence known.

And just the way you executed the sex scene? Her resolve just breaking down because of him? Him calling her 'pretty'?

And you know what else I love? Him noticing Satoru's marks.

“I do, I do, I know I said a lot of things, I need you to know, I need to explain, if you just let me—” and his fingers are sliding along your jaw, and finds uneven skin, and his eyes lingers, as his fingers tilt your chin up to find a fresh hickey left underneath.

I just loved the execution of this scene.

I love how it circled back to the connection, weirdly, between Suguru and Satoru. Satoru mentioned Suguru and Suguru mentioned Satoru. They overrode each other's marks and touches. And, as it seems, from the scene at the end, Satoru would do it again—override Suguru's marks, that is.

********************************************************************

(Just bringing to your attention another passage that made me blush furiously.)

“It fucking matters because this is my pussy, isn’t it, baby? I fucked it first, I fucked it best, and I need to know what others did while I was gone, don’t I?” and a third joins the other two, pulling another moan from your lips,“but if you won’t tell me, I’ll just use both, fuck you with all five fingers and tongue if that’s what you want to do,” 

********************************************************************

Also, I just wanted to say that I loved the reveal. I love that she was so tortured by the fact that she slept with Satoru that she couldn't help but just blurt it out, revealing all her feelings, because with Suguru, she could have no boundaries. They were eroded. And of course they would be—he's her person.

And that reaction of his? It's just so believable. That blank look of shock. It is authentic. Reading it, I instantly knew that look. I recognised that look. It is a haunted look, a look of repressed anguish. The way you chronicled it was just beautiful.

“Suguru,” and he’s pausing, eyes meeting yours with a flash of concern, but the words tumble out with warning, just the way he had done with you, “I slept with Satoru,”  And he’s silent — emotions roll in and out on his face — confusion, hurt, anger, and acceptance — they all fall away as he’s only staring off to the side, unable to even look at you. Words fall away, stopped in your mouth after the bitter truth that’s left it and you wonder — is it over now? Seconds feel like hours — your fingers curl into the sheets, looking for something to hang onto, to ground you. Why did he have to start this? You were fine with the burnt ashes of the love he had scorched over, but now he started a fire, and you didn’t want to put it out. You didn’t want to go out. 

I love this, too:

“Suguru,” you murmur, and he’s leaning over you, pressing a sweet kiss to your forehead, and your hand reaches for him, cupping his cheek, “I love you,” and you do — you always loved him, you always would — there was never anyone else. Only him. But the words can’t find their way out of your mouth, sleep calling for your attendance, as your fingers run through his hair, pulling his hair tie off, and carding their way through his long hair, “I love the long hair,” you hum, eyes fluttering and heavy with sleep.  “Do you?” His voice is gravelly, as he leans down, his lips finding your own for moment, before reaching for a bath towel you had slung over your metal bed frame, as he cleans you up, “how much?”  “Too much, Sugu,” he chuckles softly, as he finishes cleaning you and himself up, pressing soft kisses to your thighs, as he moves to get up and put the towel in the hamper — your hand catches him by the wrist, “Don’t go,”  And his gaze softens, as he shakes his head, “I’m just taking this to the hamper, I’ll come back to bed,” and your lips form an unfairly cute pout, but you relent, letting him walk away to the bathroom to dispose of the towel, and when he comes back, you’re already asleep, curled up. 

I love this because it just shows that, no matter how hard she tried or whatever she did, she would just always love him.

And I love that you softened the weight of the hefty confession by writing that quip about his hair. So clever. It also made me wonder, for a second, as I was reading it, whether he was talking about her love or her hair. Regardless, obviously it's her love, but that slight ambiguity, I find, is quite charming.

And I love the gentleness here... the soft kisses on the thighs? The brief kiss on the lips? The kiss on the forehead? It's just so incredibly soft and loving and precious and tear-inducing.

********************************************************************

I just really loved this fic, if you couldn't tell already.

It's heartbreaking. It's charming. It's clever. It's sexy. It's gut-wrenchingly sad and so beautiful.

I loved it.

(Thank you for writing it—for taking the time to think about it, plan it, execute it, edit it and publish it.)

ok I reread this ask like five times and it’s so utterly sweet I don’t even know how to fully respond???

this fic was definitely born from me listening to ‘is it over now’ on repeat when 1989 tv came out, hence the title. i couldn’t stop associating it with suguru when I listened to it, and then the idea formed in my head and it wouldn’t leave until I wrote it.

suguru was a character I didn’t care for until I watched / read the plasma vessel / premature death arc. and then I just fell in love with him and his character. as someone who suffers from various mental illnesses and masks super well in person, I really related too hard to suguru suffering while no one saw it. even lying about it to satoru’s face. and I really, really wanted to chart his descent, as you said, and I’m so glad it came across so well for you.

honestly a lot of these lines too were inspired by other Taylor swift songs I didn’t mention — like “it would kill you just the same” is a reference to my tears ricochet (which I think is a satosugu coded song for sure but in this fic is also reader coded). the imagery of drowning actually came from me listening to clean (tv) while writing this fic. anyway just a small tidbit based on some of the lines you picked out!

there’s so much I wanna say to respond to all of this but I feel like it will just come out as grateful yammering and just, to put it way less eloquently, word vomit of happiness. this made my day truly. thank you so much for taking the time to write this - picking out lines from my fic to talk about is literally so sweet and I don’t even know how to thank you. I appreciate you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[vacantgodling]

Genji Shimada, for the send a random character headcanon asks?

(I'm only on the second chapter of Cage, so sorry if you mentioned this info later)

--@ceph-the-ghost-writer

(haha no worries i don’t really mention any of my “specific” headcanons in this story cuz i’m more worried about the plot lol—but thank you for reading actually i’m touched 🥺🥺)

Sexuality Headcanon: bisexual or pansexual — perhaps gray or demiromantic cuz before cyborg-ness i can’t see him wanting to be tied down to anything, after cyborg-ness i feel like finding someone he can connect with on a deep level due to this whole situation is more precedent for him wanting to be with someone. he’s down to fuck tho; maybe a little less eagerly than before but in general he’s dtf in my mind lol

Gender Headcanon: cis boyo but i feel like being a cyborg does like. affect how he feels about himself generally so i’d almost lean into calling him slightly nb because of that, if that makes sense

A ship I have with said character: for genji i have varying ships but the two most prominent tend to be genji/baptiste or genji/lucio. neither of them appear in cage properly but in a different fic that’s on hiatus, storm chasers, he and bap are a thing (i also just ship bap with a lot of people LMAO)

A BROTP I have with said character: him and cassidy! from canon they technically have a more ambiguous relationship. it’s said that genji didn’t communicate with other blackwatch members after he went into regular overwatch (so this would include cassidy), however i Highly Doubt that the two of them would’ve had a completely terrible relationship the entire time he was in blackwatch. plus, with the recall i feel like it’d be a chance for them to sort of reminisce about the bullshit. so idk—in my mind they’re better friends than canon maybe wants them to be but just because they’re best friends (to me) doesn’t mean they don’t butt heads.

to expand on this, i feel like cass is the only person genji can be completely candid with. with zenyatta he’s focused on healing and being a better person and being one with himself (with occasional teasing), he and angela have a complicated relationship (**to me), and he’s not very talkative towards other people now that he’s older (and he’s much more serious). i feel like cass would be able to break down a lot of his barriers and they’d appreciate each other’s dry sense of humor and in some ways they hold each other accountable to things.

this was a whole rant and a half but their bro-hood means a lot to me.

A NOTP I have with said character: gen/cy. i don’t ship anyone with mercy (for the most part. i’d really have to think if i wanted to ship someone with her but idc that much) but i specifically hate this ship because like. idk. it’s the doctor/patient power dynamic that i don’t like. like she knows his cybernetics, she built him and saved his life and i just feel like that uneven ground to start a relationship at all. i feel like in general, the canon and most people don’t develop angela enough and i feel like she’s kind of an overbearing type but also extremely certain and stubborn of her own morals and values and kind of thinks she’s right over everyone else. i feel like at a certain point she and genji wouldn’t be able to connect or relate to one another—between him wanting to reconnect with hanzo, to finding enlightenment with zen etc etc. so like idk i feel like people who ship this are kind of in a fantasy land where the characters are just perfect and happy and don’t actually like. take into account potential friction.

plus the savior complex is just 🤢

A random headcanon: it’s small but i don’t think genji likes sweets. i got hella headcanons about his tastebuds and how they don’t work (which does show up in cage—chapter 5 i believe). but i think it’s funny the juxtaposition how genji is viewed as more of the sweet/open/fun brother but his tastes are more umami and bitter, but hanzo is seen as more cold/standoffish/mean but he really likes sweets :3

General Opinion over said character: it’s thanks to @valeffelees that i actually have a more nuanced opinion of genji. ngl i used to HAAATE him back when i first got into overwatch because the fandom was so hostile towards hanzo and hanzo is my fucking blorbo so that it irritated me that genji got preferred treatment. however, these days, i don’t think you can have one without the other and i think he’s a really deep and interesting character that people don’t actually put effort into exploring. like even though cage is about han and cassidy it’s also VERY MUCH about genji and putting some goddamn effort into exploring him and his emotions in a way that i’m satisfied with

[rebornologist]

♡ In the bedroom w/ Esper Mammon✧

Warnings: 18+ utc!! tentacles mentioned, D/s, bondage, ambiguous mammon genitals always bc they could be one sex or another... or not tbh idk and idc use ur imagination & follow ur heart <33

When it comes to sex, Mammon is generally pretty quiet, mostly murmuring instructions, some dirty talk and purrs of satisfaction when their pet gives them exactly what they want, and the occasional breathy groan. When they’re on the receiving end though, they can get much louder. It will take you a while to get them comfortable enough to let you take the reins, but after you get a taste, you won’t be sure if you’d ever want to let them go. They have such a sweet voice, and you’re guilty of making them cum over and over, milking delicious little cries from them until they’re hoarse. Luckily, they don’t talk much normally, so there’s less suspicion the day after when they’re completely silent and avoiding everyone’s gazes, especially yours..

They can be a bit embarrassed about people hearing them through the walls and may take the extra precaution to muffle the noises with their powers, but it’s clear that they can’t quite cover everything up when you have their head spinning. In the case of them doing the dirty work and bending you over to rail you senseless though, they love binding your wrists and keeping you spread open for them, reaching around to hook their soft fingers into your mouth and turning you to see your fucked out expression and drool coating their digits.

Oh, speaking of drool.. despite how quiet they are, they’re probably one of the messiest in bed. They’re shameless when it comes to shoving their pointed tongue as far into your mouth as they can manage, until your moans are muffled when they mercilessly fuck into you with their fingers or even slick tentacles. You might end most sessions almost uncomfortably sticky, but they’re careful enough to clean up before running a hot bath to soak in or changing the sheets to fall asleep together.

The most torturous thing with them is their patience and generally low sex drive. It may seem as if they're greedy for your pleasure even more than their own, but the case may just be that a lot of their pleasure is derived from the mental stimulation and power play of it all, so they’ll spend hours toying with you if you let them (but when you’re gagged and blindfolded and strung up in silken ties, you really have no choice, huh?*) until they themselves are burning up with desire. Once they're at that point though, they will not stop until either you tap out, or they've cum multiple times and are almost painfully overstimulated. I have mentioned it before, but they never hold back with the mocking every little whine and whimper that comes out of you, and the embarrassment absolutely soaks you to the core. You would not have guessed that such a mild and caring person in the day-to-day could be so mean, but they’re always full of surprises.

But fear not, you’ve recently discovered their weakness for strip teases. You had the bright idea one day to do a little roleplaying, put on some nice clothes that can be peeled off piece by piece, and sat them down in your shared bedroom with some dim lightning and mood music. They were naturally very skeptical and deadpan in their confusion with the situation, and how 'if you wanted them to play with you, you could just say so'. They completely had the wrong idea, clearly, as you tied them down and made them promise to behave for you. Intrigue overtook them and they absolutely could not deny you the pleasure, especially when you circled them like they were your dinner (and they would be), eyes half-lidded and pupils blown wide in the darkness, ghosting touches over them and slowly, agonizingly shedding your coat to reveal the lacey layers underneath. That’s when it clicked in their head, and they felt the strain in their nether regions as they eyed you hungrily. Any complaints that they had were quickly silenced by you gripping them by the nape roughly and nipping at their neck. They swallowed a whimper as you cupped their sex and rubbed softly, feeling the swell beneath your fingertips. Now the tables have turned from the usual affairs, and oh you loved the power you had over them. It may not be as long of a night as when they’re the one calling the shots, but who knows.. you’re just as full of surprises and Mammon is at your mercy, for you to test the soundproofing of the room walls.

*jk they respect tf out of the safeword/gesture/literally any indication that you’re done. over it. enough. Fin.

once again I am not proofing this bc of the finals week of it all. All my well wishes for @seirenspinel for rqing more Mammon content... I am so soft for them ngl I felt so evil penning this one lol

[marsgod]

I adored the cyborg!reader request as a HUGE mecha fan!

if you don't mind, may I request a cyborg!reader that malfunctioned/went unconscious and was taken to Ignihyde for them to be repaired by the Shroud brothers, but...their memories were displayed and it turns out, they were a war soldier who was created to be a weapon by their evil father. How would their s/o react to that?

Characters I request: Idia, Kalim, Lilia (but you can pick one of the two if three is too much!)

I’m so glad yoy liked it! i try to keep the appearance ambiguous so ppl can look however they want^^

Also i’m so sorry it took this long;-;

⇢ Idia, Kalim, lilia x Cyborg! Gn! Reader

⇢ Warnings; Gn! reader, Cybord/Robot!reader, mentions of war and trauma, daddy issues

Idia Shroud

He isn’t.. shocked by what he finds, he barely processes it in favor of respecting privacy, but he’s definitely curious. He assumes what he saw might’ve been a movie. A really graphic and gory movie.

Of course, he’s seen war and bodies and torture in videogames and media, but that’s different, that’s fake, and his lover didn’t have to go through those and suffer through them and survive it. Idia felt tears brimming his eyes, a knot in his throat when he learned about the reasoning behind your creation, he can’t imagine creating an ai, a damn near human robot and making a weapon out of them. Your “Father” created an amazing technology and they eventually became so much more, so human.

Idia almost wonders if you were like this, ‘human’ when you were in the war, if you’d felt anything when you looked at the many corpses, previously people with families that were slaughtered. Idia feels guilty and wouldn’t say it, but he wishes you did.

Idia wouldn’t do that to you, ask and make you recount your experiences for his own curiosity, he might force the both of you to make at least one meaningful conversation discussing it, but he’d rather you come to him first about your issues.

Kalim Al-Asim

Of course he’d be there to witness the memory firsthand, Kalim would be too worried to not be there for you, with flowers in hand. Kalim, when he see’s this admittedly horrific memory of yours, it takes a bit to kick in that “Oh, that’s real and they were there and probably went through a great deal of trauma while being there” but once it does ooooh boy

Imagine a mom who’s trying to bring up a sensitive subject but has no idea how to do so, and she’s gently trying to tell you that you need some damn therapy. If you somehow don’t see past this and don’t understand, Jamil would probably tell you simply what Kalim is trying to.

Kalim, while being a people person, isn’t amazing at confronting bad situations in a way that validates you or any of that. Not to say he says “Why’re you complaining, others have it worse”, Kalim knows and does the basic “it’ll be alright” with a pat on the shoulder and maybe some other words of encouragement, but he’s never been through this, the war you’ve apparently lived through, forced to watch others suffer and surviving. An entire war vs. murder attempts due to being royalty, while neither is good, neither of them align enough to be the same.

That being said, Kalim is also too desensitized to how messed up any of it actually it.

Lilia Vanrouge

Lilia had lived through wars, and he hates talking about it but he sits you down to tell you that it’s okay and that you’re not just what your father created you to be. You’re so much more than that. That Lilia still loves you with all his heart. That if you need to talk, he might not know exactly it is you’re going through or what you’re feeling, but he’ll do whatever it could take to make you comfortable.

Lilia is mad that, despite being originally made for it, you were forced to live through that. He know’s the screams of absolute hell, and wished that for you to not experience any of it, all while you already had. Not at you, never at you, Lilia knows you didn’t know better, you’d just been created and were just doing what you were told to do. It wasn’t your fault, it was your father’s for forcing that upon you.

I imagine their s/o’s being very quiet whenever it’s brought up, disassociating when anyone else tries to confront them. They’ve never talked about before, and they remember it perfectly like it still just happened.

They know they should talk about it, but it’s hard and they know it’s not a common thing for people to have gone through. Being made and forced to do something just for the sake of someone’s approval, but in this case, being created for war with no greater purpose. You weren’t made to make it this far. You weren’t made or planned to feel.

[the-lone-witch-and-secret-room]

Camila Noceda and Flawed Parenting

A perspective by a flawed person with loving but extremely flawed parents

I’m genuinely baffled at some people’s hostile reaction towards Camila. Like… do any of you have flawless parents that always know the best solution instantly, make no mistakes and never get emotional?

My parents are great. They’re super supportive and I love them very, very much. Overall I think I got very lucky in the parents department.

But god, they are far from flawless. I still live at home, and despite all the good, there’s moments when I can’t take my dad anymore. He’s the kind of dad that stayed up until two am to help me with homework when I was in school, and he does so, so many things to make sure I’m happy. I know that. But despite all of this, I have told my mom in emotional moments before that I’m not sure if I can keep living with him, because for all his good sides, he has a couple of fatal flaws that sometimes make him unbearable.

My mom listens to me and is very open to being educated on certain topics, but she has her flaws, too. She hates when I fight with my dad, and gets so torn up about it that I’ve once apologized to my dad out of fear of her getting into a car crash otherwise. She’s very vocal about certain flaws of mine, and sometimes uses the things she does for me as leverage against me when she gets very emotional.

And both of my parents pay a lot more attention to my brother because he needs it more, because he’s more of a “problem child” while I “seem so capable” even when I’m not.

And guess what? I’m not a perfect child. I make mistakes sometimes, some of them pretty severe. Just like Luz, I’m the kind of person that struggles to communicate certain issues of mine to her parents. I’m stubborn, and when I get emotional, I say very hurtful things sometimes. So do they.

And this has nothing to do with my parents being horrible or abusive. They’re neither of those things.

The takeaway from this should not be that my entire family is made up of terrible people, but that we’re all flawed in our own ways, despite loving each other and trying our best. There’s things about my parents I wish I could change, and there are things about me that my parents wish they could change. And to an extent, that’s perfectly normal.

In our strengths and flaws and frustration with each other, we’re all human.

Specific, spoiler-y Camila and Luz things under the cut since this got very long.

We have no indication that Camila has a pattern of emotionally manipulating Luz. Her “emotional manipulation” as I’ve seen some people put it, is people for some reason thinking that the second you become an adult, you’re suddenly perfect and can no longer make mistakes, lest you’ll be dubbed horrible and abusive.

The whole concept is absurd to me. There is no perfect way to parent. There simply isn’t. Of course, there’s some genuinely abusive patterns that are horrible and inexcusable. But out of the parenting styles that aren’t, which one works depends on a number of factors, one of which absolutely includes that every child is different and has different needs. Camila is an amazing parent for Vee, giving the kid everything she’s ever longed for. She’s not an ideal parent for Luz. And that’s because Luz and Vee have fundamentally different needs.

Likewise, Luz is a pretty great child for Eda, but not a perfect fit for Camila. Luz relates to Eda a lot more than she relates to her mom, and that’s why the two of them have an easier time understanding each other. Both of these mother-child relationships exist, and one is not more doomed to fail than the other, but I think you’ll agree that the better you understand someone and where they’re coming from, the easier it is to communicate, pick up on certain signs, etc.

As mom and daughter, Camila and Luz are both flawed and have issues seeing the other’s perspective because of how different they are. And we should simultaneously acknowledge both of their roles in the issue and give both of them the space to learn and grow past those issues.

Luz struggles to communicate her problems. She doesn’t want to burden people in the demon realm, and it’s a given that this started out as not wanting to burden her mom. So she keeps quiet about her issues. Camila tries hard but can’t read her daughter’s mind, so there’s only so much she can do to understand and help the way Luz needs her to. Hell, Eda, who Luz is a lot more open with than her mom, struggles to help her, because Luz doesn’t tell her what’s wrong. I don’t see anyone calling Eda a terrible mom for that.

Camila tries her best, but she struggles to understand her daughter because of this, and because of how fundamentally different they are. She loves Luz’s creativity, we actively see her supporting it in the new episode—she keeps the weird stuff Luz made because she thinks Luz will regret throwing it away, and even plays along in what she assumes to be some elaborate role play because “she’s glad Luz kept her creativity even though it’s not made things easy for her at school”. But at the beginning of the show, said creativity got out of hand and people got hurt. Luz could’ve gotten hurt. So of course Camila had to interfere. I love Luz dearly, but she thought it was okay to bring snakes to school and set off fireworks inside a school building. Creativity is great. Doing reckless stuff that causes people to get hurt is not.

In sending Luz to camp, Camila tried to have someone else fix her issue because she didn’t know how to help Luz. That was a mistake, and a bad one at that, but she’s realizing that. She looks disheartened when Vee tries to throw out Luz’s stuff, because she never meant to change her daughter or take that part of her away. She just thought Luz needed a reality check—which, for the record, is something the narrative actually agrees with.

Luz spends her time in the demon realm getting reality check after reality check, realizing that even her ideal fantasy world where she has everything she always wanted doesn’t mean she’s free of consequences. She goes overboard constantly, causing:

-Eda to be forced to fly into a trap because Luz is chasing a fantasy (Witches before Wizards)

-Eda to almost be branded by her sister because Luz doesn’t think through why Eda doesn’t use magic to publicly announce her presence constantly (Once Upon a Swap)

-Eda and the twins to get kidnapped by a Slitherbeast because Luz stole Amity’s wand (Adventures in the Elements)

-Her friends to get hurt when she goes overboard trying to help Willow (Wing it like Witches)

-Eda to be captured and almost petrified because Luz thought she could just steal from the Emperor with no consequences in an attempt to help (Agony of a Witch)

I’m like 90% sure these aren’t even all. None of those make her a terrible person, for the record, but as all humans are, she is flawed and makes bad choices. She learns from these experiences and matures, just like her mom had hoped she would at camp. She’s also made friends there, which was another thing Camila wanted for her daughter.

You’ll probably realize that a lot of Luz’s behaviors I mentioned follow one of two patterns: 1. Luz’s idealized fantasy world causing problems, when she walks around with rose tinted glasses and gets people in trouble in the process because she hasn’t thought about the consequences, and 2. Luz trying to help someone she loves, but instead making things worse in the progress. The issue with this one is often that she doesn’t communicate her ideas/listen to the people she’s trying to help—like when Willow and Gus said they’ve had enough of Grudgby, or how she never actually talks to Eda about the healing hat idea before doing something reckless.

…does the latter one sound familiar to you at all? No? Because it’s the exact same thing that Camila did.

Some of the things Luz does are reckless and actively endanger others and herself, and that’s something that I think we need to acknowledge before judging Camila. As Luz’s mom, it’s Camila’s job to interfere in those situations. That she made a mistake while trying to protect Luz doesn’t make her a terrible person, especially as, again, the narrative proves her right to an extent.

I’m not saying her making Luz promise to come back and stay isn’t something that hurt Luz—it absolutely is. But it was born out of desperation. She’s emotional and in shock. She’s so full of pain and regret. She just wants her fourteen year old daughter home safe, and there’s nothing abusive or even morally ambiguous about that.

From Luz’s perspective, what she says is absolutely heartbreaking, but from Camila’s, it’s perfectly reasonable. I doubt Camila has the full picture, but even if she does, she’s had a full fifteen seconds to process that her daughter has not only been lying to her for months, but chose to leave her, and is in the demon realm of all places. Of course she’d be emotional and upset about that! Who wouldn’t? Camila isn’t a robot. If she’d been calm about this I’d be way more concerned, honestly.

My parents don’t get mad that easily, but if I would lie to them for weeks on end, they’d be pissed off too, not even taking the running away from home part into account. That’s a normal thing. People don’t like being lied to. Camila is absolutely devastated in that moment because she’s scared that Luz left because she hates her, when Luz actively states that her leaving wasn’t about her mom—which is another thing we should really be acknowledging.

Abusive parents suck and abuse should obviously never be apologized or trivialized, but saying something hurtful in the heat of the moment isn’t the same thing as being an abusive parent. My parents have done this. I’ve done this. And yes, those things can be emotionally manipulative, but there’s a huge difference in whether that’s a habit or a person speaking out of hurt and desperation in a very specific context. I doubt there’s anyone on the entire planet that hasn’t had a bad moment where they’ve said something like this because they were hurting. People lash out when they hurt, and they beg for reassurance when they’re scared. That’s something we all do.

The whole mindset of “all parents have to be perfect and can never get upset or make any mistakes” is harmful as hell, and honestly also very unrealistic. No parent is perfect, and especially people like me who have a relationship with their parents that’s very good overall should know that.

Once you have a child, parenting is a non-stop learning process, every day for the rest of your life. Taking away that room to grow and expecting perfection isn’t helping anyone, especially not struggling single parents.

And I see Camila as someone who is very willing to learn, because at the end of the day, all she wants is for Luz to be happy. Let’s give her some time to wrap her head around this whole situation. Let’s see what she says once she sees for herself how happy Luz is in that world, may it be via the videos eventually coming through or Camila visiting and meeting Luz’s found family, her friends and her girlfriend.

Ultimately, I don’t think Camila will force Luz to stay at home, but we have to give her some time. She wants what’s best for Luz, and she’s gonna need some convincing that a dangerous magical world is what’s best. I feel like that’s very normal considering the circumstances.

Her and Luz need to work on their communication on both ends, they both have things to learn, but I’m certain they’ll manage to fix their relationship in the long run.

If the bunk bed is any indication, I think Vee is gonna stay in the human realm permanently while Luz sleeps at home but keeps attending Hexside in the daytime. That feels like a solution that keeps everyone happy, and allows Luz to spend time with all the people she loves. I can’t see her being forced to choose at the end.

As a closing statement: Eda isn’t an ideal mom, Amity isn’t an ideal friend or girlfriend and neither is Luz, Lilith isn’t an ideal sister… but that’s because no one is ever an ideal anything. Being flawed is a big part of being human. Everyone has different facets to their personality. Their flaws are what makes them such great, relatable, believable characters.

And I feel the same way about Camila. She’s an extremely believable character that reminds me of my own parents, flawed but very loving nonetheless.

(Also honestly, I think it’s pretty telling that some of you guys immediately bash the black single mom that’s obviously trying her hardest while giving the benefit of the doubt to Alador, who has been portrayed as neglecting and threatened his six year old daughter on screen. This was already a thing before we knew much about either of them, and I’m disappointed but unfortunately not very surprised that it still is.)