#and then there’s something to consider in the vein of jacks not getting her out of the card sooner…

[chryzure-archive]

very neat that not even jacks, chrysi’s singular fate + her best friend, knows what chrysi’s fated powers are. he jst knows she can make fates like gavriel + she has something else wrong w her. and then, once she’s out of the card, what he thinks is her fated power turns out to be her witch powers, so he is very concerned!!!!

[pedroscurls]

training partners (pt. 10)

summary: with your trainer's help this last week, you slowly find your way back to yourself again... and you finally have the courage to tell hugh more details about your relationship with jack and it only makes him angrier. pairing: hugh jackman x fem!reader warnings: angst - mentions of toxic relationship, verbal / physical abuse (not with hugh!). implied age gap (hugh is 55, reader is in late 20s-early 30s), no use of y/n. word count: 2.4k a/n: anyway, we're getting into the reader's backstory with jack, so it's going to be a bit dark... and consider this the first argument between reader and hugh... gonna be a tough next couple of chapters, but trust me when i say there will be a happy ending at the end of all of this! as always, this is purely fictional! i mean no disrespect to hugh jackman. prev part. - next part.

You’d taken today off to drop your trainer off at the airport. This last week had gone too fast and while it was emotionally and mentally exhausting, it was just what you needed to remind yourself just how far you’d come. There’s still something lingering in the pit of your stomach, the anxiety that you’ll need to have a conversation with Hugh about everything that’s happened with you and Jack. He knows bits and pieces that you’ve shared before, but he doesn’t know the full picture. 

“You gonna be okay?” she asks. 

“I think so,” you nod. “I can’t let Jack run my life anymore.”

Your trainer pulls you into a hug, holding you tight. “You’re a good person,” she whispers. “And you never should have gone through what you did. He should have never put you through that.” 

You can feel tears stinging your eyes as you wrap your arms around her as well. She had been a godsend and so important in your journey in finding yourself again. She empowered you, motivated you, and helped you see just how worthy you are. 

When she pulls away, she smiles in your direction. “Hugh loves you,” she points out. “Allow yourself to be loved because you’re worthy of it. You’re enough.” 

You nod, wiping any fallen tears from your cheeks. “I just don’t want to disappoint him… What if he realizes that I’m not what he thought I’d be, that maybe all the pain I’m still working through isn’t worth it?”

She rolls her eyes playfully. “You don’t see the way he looks at you, do you?”  

You share your head. 

“Well, that man looks at you like you can do no wrong. Like you’re the only person that matters. Trust me, you are worth it.” 

“Part of me is also nervous… To talk to Hugh and tell him everything. He knows bits and pieces, but…”

“He’ll understand,” she replies. 

“And if he doesn’t?”

“He will.” 

You sigh and then pull her in for another hug. “Thank you for coming here, for being there for me. Again.” 

She lets out a quiet laugh and gives you a tight squeeze before she pulls away. “If Hugh wants to invite me back, let me know. I’d be happy to visit again,” she winks. 

“I’ll let him know. Get home safe.” 

“Remember how far you’ve come, okay?” she says. “And if Jack crosses any lines, it might be time to get the authorities involved.”

You nod in agreement. “I know… I just don’t want it to get to that point.” 

“Let’s hope it doesn’t.” 

—

Later that night, you’re sitting out on the balcony of the hotel room with a notebook on your lap. You had tried to write some talking points to go over when Hugh gets home. You know he’s going to be tired, but you know that if you don’t have this conversation with him, you may never will. 

You know he’s on his way back to the hotel and your heart races faster and faster. You can feel the anxiety course through your veins and even with the notes you had written down, you still don’t feel all that confident. It’s not the fact that you have to tell Hugh what happened, but it’s the fact that you’d have to relive everything that Jack had put you through. 

When you hear the hotel room door open, you stand up and turn to look over your shoulder and make eye contact with Hugh. He looks tired, but at the sight of you, his eyes light up and a broad smile lines his lips. This must be what your trainer was referring to… about the way he looks at you. It eases your nerves, calms you down and keeps you grounded because with Hugh, you have always felt safe. 

He steps out into the balcony with you and pulls you into his arms, leaning down to kiss your forehead. “Hi, baby. Missed you on set today.” 

You smile to yourself and shut your notebook, setting it on the chair you were sitting on and away from his line of view. “I missed you too.” You wrap your arms around his shoulders, hands playing with the hair at his nape. “How was filming?”

“It was good. Movie’s coming along.” Hugh holds you closer to him, eyes falling shut as he holds you in his arms. This was what he was looking forward to all day. Being with you. He knows that this last week had helped a great deal, having your personal trainer here had helped immensely. You weren’t so much on edge anymore and it felt like things were going back to normal. Before Jack entered the picture. “And how was your day? You get home safe after dropping her off?” 

“Oh yeah,” you nod. “It was nice having her here. Thank you for doing that, baby. You really didn’t need to and–”

“I know,” he says quietly. “But I wanted to. I knew she would help… in ways that I couldn’t.” 

“I love you,” you smile. “I’m really lucky.” 

“I love you too, baby.” He pecks your lips and then slowly pulls away. “I’m gonna take a quick shower and maybe we can order in for dinner?” 

“Wait, Hugh…” 

“Yeah?”

“After your shower, can we talk?” 

Hugh’s brow furrows, biting the inside of his cheek as his hands move to rest on your hips. “What about?” 

“Just…” you bite your lower lip. “It’s nothing bad. I just–” 

Hugh tilts his head to the side. He can sense your worry, your anxiety, so he just nods and leans in to peck your lips lightly. “Okay, baby. We’ll talk after my shower.” As he turns to walk back into the room, you reach out for him and pull him back into a tight hug. Your face buries into his chest, arms tightening around his frame as you hold onto him for a few seconds longer. 

“You sure you’re okay?” he whispers. 

“I will be.” 

—

Hugh’s shower doesn’t last that long. He tries not to overthink about what you wanted to talk about, but he can’t help the tug he feels in the pit of his stomach. Now he’s worried, he’s concerned. He quickly changes into a pair of black sweatpants and a Global Citizen t-shirt. He dries his damp hair with a towel and steps back out into the room, seeing you still outside on the balcony. You’re writing in your notebook again and he knows that you only write when you have something on your mind, something that you can’t shake. 

Quietly, he steps out with you and smiles in your direction. Hugh watches you close your notebook, setting it on the small table. He doesn’t let you get up, instead, he scoops you into his arms and then sits in the same chair with you on his lap. 

“Okay, let’s talk, baby,” he says, leaning in to kiss your cheek as he drapes an arm over your legs. Hugh tries not to make it seem like he’s nervous and he isn’t even sure if you take notice because he can see that your mind has drifted, and can feel the tension in your shoulder blades. 

“Jack–”

“What?” 

You take a deep breath and move an arm around his shoulders. “I need to tell you about– about Jack.”

“Baby, you don’t have to–”

“I need to, Hugh.” 

He can see the tears in your eyes and a piece of his heart breaks at the sight. Hugh cups your cheek and gently brushes his thumb across your skin, leaning in to kiss the tip of your nose. “Okay,” he says softly. “I’m here. I’m listening.”

You nod and bite your lower lip. “So, we were together for three years…” 

“That I knew.” 

“The– The abuse, the manipulation, everything happened so fast. I didn’t even realize what was happening until I realized it was too late.” 

Hugh tightens his jaw. He feels anger bubbling within him, but he opts to remain quiet, to keep a neutral look on his face. He knows that you need this, that you need to tell him and he can’t react because he fears that if he does, you’re going to pull away and he knows how important this is that you’re telling him. 

“I had gotten used to his insults… so much so that I started to believe him.” you’re about to get off his lap, about to pull away from him, but he keeps a firm hold on you. When you look into his eyes, all you can see is the concern in his features and the subtle desire to take your pain away. 

“Oh baby…” Hugh whispers quietly. 

“I’m weak and I’m not brave,” you continue. “And that’s because of Jack. I should have left at the first sign of his verbal abuse, but I always–” you can feel your breath catch in your throat. “I always justified his actions. Always felt like it was my fault, that he was acting the way he was and saying the things he’d say because of me. Because I was making things difficult for him.” 

Hugh tightens his jaw when you look away from him, the anger simmering in the pit of his stomach. 

“And I believed him. I thought– I thought I could give all of my love to him and he’d see how much I cared for him, how much I was willing to do anything for him. Because I did,” you say with a disappointed tone. “I did love him and when he broke up with me – he broke up with me –” you shake your head. “It was my fault. It was always my fault. Mine.” 

“Baby, no…” Hugh shakes his head and cups your cheek, his gaze locked onto yours. 

“I couldn’t even break up with him, Hugh. All of the nasty things he’s said to me and I couldn’t–” you shake your head and stand up from his lap before he can pull you back. “I was heartbroken when Jack broke up with me because he made me believe that no one would ever love me… that I wasn’t worthy of love and I fucking believed him.”

Hugh’s foot taps against the floor incessantly. He wants to reach out for you, but he always wants to find Jack and cause him just the same amount of pain – if not more. But then, he hears the words leave your lips and he jumps up from his chair. 

“He hit me once.”

“What?” 

“Hugh…”

“No no, he what?” 

You bite your lower lip and stare up at him. You can see the anger clear in his features and you gently reach out for him, but he just shakes his head. He’s fuming, hands shaking at his sides at your admission. You know this was going to happen, had even expected this reaction, but seeing it firsthand is entirely different. You don’t know how you can even calm him down. 

“I got angry because he had made me make him dinner after a long fucking day at work and–” you sigh. “After that, I learned how to fight because I knew that if he put his hands on me again, I’d fight back and–” 

“Wait, he hit you? Put his hands on you?”

“Hugh…”

“No, baby.” Tears are now pooling at his eyes. “He doesn’t get to do that, do you hear me? He has no fucking right–”

“Hugh!” you raise your voice, staring up at him. “I’m not telling you this to make you angry. I’m telling you this so you can understand why he had so much control over me, why I reacted the way I did when I saw him that one night at dinner, why it’s so fucking hard for me to see how worthy I am of this, of you.” 

Hugh shakes his head. He’s trying – truly, he’s trying so fucking hard to understand (and there’s a big part of him that does), but all he can see is this man putting his hands on you, putting thoughts and words into your mind that aren’t true. 

“Give me his number. The number he called you from a couple of weeks ago,” Hugh says. 

“No.”

“Baby, he can’t just get away with thinking that what he did to you was okay. He can’t get away with still making you feel the way that you do.”

“What are you going to do? Go and beat him up?” you ask, shaking your head. “Hugh, you’d get arrested! It’d be all over the media and–”

“I don’t care!” Hugh yells – it’s the first time that he’s ever raised his voice at you and when he sees you take a step back, it brings him back to reality. “I’m sorry,” he sighs. “I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I just– I can’t fathom this man walking around thinking like he did no wrong, baby.” 

“Nothing you do will help him see that, Hugh.”

“No? Well he hasn’t dealt with someone like me and–”

“Just stop!” 

Hugh furrows a brow. “Baby–”

“No, Hugh…” you cross your arms over your chest, wanting so badly to just get away from this all, away from Jack, away from Hugh. “I don’t need you to save me… I don’t need you to go back to my past and make things better. I just need you to understand the shit I went through is what made me who I am today. And I’m still healing… I’m still working on it, and I just–” your breath catches in your throat once more. “You’ve been so patient with me, so understanding that I figured I’d at least tell you everything because… because I will have moments where it’ll be hard for me to snap out of it.”

“I know, and I appreciate you telling me all of this, baby–” Hugh sighs. “But I can’t just sit here and not do anything about it.”

“You know what,” you tell him, opening the sliding door to walk back into the hotel room. “I’m gonna go for a walk. I can’t be here right now. This wasn’t how I thought this conversation would go.”

“Baby, no–” Hugh walks after you, watching you pull on a jacket and slip on your shoes as you grab your bag. “Please, just stay. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not mad at you,” you tell him quietly. “I just need some space right now.”

“I love you,” Hugh whispers. 

“I know,” you reply, grabbing the hotel key card and setting it in your bag. “I love you too, Hugh, but I just need to be alone right now. We both need to calm down before we say something we’re both going to regret.” 

You don’t give him a chance to respond because just as his mouth opens to say something, you’re already out the door. 

---

taglist (if links don't work, i'm sorry!): @corvusmorte - @dragonqueen89 - @whimsiwitchy - @kellyxo1

@wolviehugh - @moonxknightx - @sullyselena - @angelofthorr - @spectorrrhgf

@needz1nk - @fandomxo00 - @godlypresley - @kythefangirl25 - @callsignyourmom

@sue8724 - @squishyfruitloop - @sylviavf - @emotrash1 - @dissentientss

@sir-thisisadndserver - @absolutepie - @millajay - @itsallyscorner - @haytchee

@wolverigrl - @its-in-the-woods - @d3ad2you - @definitely-not-chill - @khxna

[turretistrying]

I watched a playthrough of mouthwashing and wanted to write something, sorry if it's trash

warnings; Mentions of blood, death, etc. Canon events through the lens of the reader. jimmy. Mentions of Anya's situation, Unwanted touching

Summary; You are the effectively the homebrewed therapist of the Tulpar, you are the safe space of the ship. You experience the events of the game

On the Tulpar crew, you were considered a jack-of-all trades. You helped in any area the ship needed help in, but if your being totally honest thats not what your job entails to you.

Your job is being a safe space. Almost everyone on the ship has some type of issues during the night or problems they can only ruminate on when everyone else is asleep, and so you have decide to help on that front. Your room is the best on the ship, while it's walls and floors are the same as everyone elses room, your bed in the real star of the show. You've long since replaced the standard-issued Pony Express mattress with something softer from Earth, while some of the inspectors of the ship tried to make a stink about it you generally ignored them about it. Anothing thing about your bed is the blankets and pillows, so many of them on one twin sized bed. Originally you only had 3 blankets and 2 pillows when you started to make the bed more comfortable, but as some of the crew came in to sleep you started bringing more each time. Same thing with the pillows.

A year or two ago you started to comfort and therapize members of the crew the best you could but eventually that turned into them coming to your bed. Nothing ever happened mind you, just lying on the same bed, sometimes cuddling if the mental situation is bad enough. Anya, Daisuke, and Curly were the main crew members you helped, Swansea didn't feel comfortable being in your room so you mainly talked to him at 'night'.

The only person you were wary about was Jimmy.

Ever since you met him, he's become increasing strange to you. Something has felt off. But.. because you pride yourself on not judging anyone on the ship, you allowed him in your room for comfort. Even though it made you feel like your skin was going to be peeled off, like static was injected into your veins. It made your comforting and safe space feel decidedly not safe anymore for you. Any time he spent time within your room it made every single alarm in your head go off, making you wish you could lock the door only to keep HIM out. Especially when he decides he 'needs' cuddles, him touching you and nuzzling into your body makes you sick, it makes you feel like he's violating you. Sometimes he tries to get in when you're already helping someone else out and you revel in the fact you're able to reject him and KEEP HIM OUT. On the times he tries to get in and you're with Anya, you notice how she tenses up at his voice. She almost starts shivering (from fear? from terror? what did he do to her?) no matter how many blankets are piled onto her pale body.

She's the person who comes to you the most often and you have a feeling you know why. Even though she doesn't say anything, you're fairly sure Jimmy has hurt her in some fashiom, just from how her demeanor changes as soon as he enters a room and talks to her. She shrinks in on herself. (what did he dO TO HER?!)

Curly is almost as frequent as Anya but you can tell he probably shouldn't visit you. He's The Captain after all, he shouldn't need help and should feel the way he does. You feel bad for him most times, and while he may be friends with the monsterJimmy, him being in your room doesn't make you uncomfortable. He confides in you about his troubles and how he doesn't know what to do next, he doesn't want to be what he is forever. You understand him, maybe not at the level he feels it but you get it. You don't want to be stuck as a space therapist the rest of your life, you want to be a notable creative, or something. You're still working that dream out.

~~

It's a few months into the shipment, and Curly just dropped the news that Pony Express was going under and while all 5 of your were going to be let go from the company with no additional help, Curly would be able to get opportunities. You don't resent him honestly, knowing what he's thinking about after most days, you're just. contemplative. While yes job hunting is going to be a bit of bitch, you have savings and a good fall back if all else fails. You also understand the feelings of everyone else, their sadness, anger, confusion.

While you're cleaning a hallway waiting for someone to need you for something else you see Jimmy rush past you. He seems... startled and angry, from what you tell of a brief glance at his side profile. You shrug and go back to cleaning, you don't care about Jimmy anymore frankly. Curly comes up behind you and asks about him and you point him towards the cockpit. He leaves and you once again get back to work... Until the ship starts shaking and you hear yelling from down the hall. Before you can really process anything the whole ship jerks and you're thrown to the floor.

~~

The ship crashed. Foam covers all areas of the ship, your room was one of the lucky few that was spared from the crash. Other's weren't so lucky.

Curly is covered head to.. knee in bandages, only one eye still intact. You don't quite like going into the medical room anymore. It smells of burning and rotting flesh, mixed with the chalky smell of painkillers. But you visit at night and simply sit there with Curly, offering him a blanket. He never wants it, you assume it's because of how his 'skin' is still exposed even with the bandages and it could cause worse pain if it got stuck to it. Some nights he tries to talk, others he doesn't.

Daisuke and Anya are now the most frequent visitors of your room. They both cry, Anya more so. You don't know what to do now, you're almost.. numb to it all. Jimmy still comes by but you're grateful for Daisuke and Anya needing you, it keeps him away. But on nights no one comes by, HE does. Somehow it's gotten worse, he cuddles far too close for your liking and mumbles things into your collarbones you can't make them out but his mouth on your skin makes you want to cry. It makes everything so. much. worse.

~~

It's been months since the ship crashed and you don't leave your room anymore. You just. Can't. Everything is too much and not enough. You hope you die in your sleep.

~~

You hear commotion outside, it sounds like Daisuke and Jimmy. You slowly peel yourself off the bed, and take off the 6 blankets. Uncovered feet touch the metal flooring, you don't flinch. You stand up on shaky legs and make your way to the hallway. They're running towards Utility so you make your way over to the living room, to see whats happened since you stashed yourself away. The tv is shattered and it seems like everyone made their beds out here, mouthwash litters the floor. You turn to medical and hope to see Anya.

....

The door is locked. You give a soft knock.

"Anya..? are you-" you quickly cough, not used to talking anymore "are you okay?"

You receive silence.

"... Yeah, I'm sorry that was a stupid question. You're not okay, you haven't been for months, especially with... him here and yelling at you nearly every day." You rest your forehead on the door,

Silence.

"I'm sorry Anya."

~~

Daisuke is dead. Jimmy tried getting him into the damaged vent and it impalied the poor kid. You almost cry, you know so much about him, his hopes and dreams. But you decide to stay quiet and observe, Jimmy isn't aware you've finally left your room. Swansea looks downright murderous, after mercy killing Daisuke by cutting right into his head with the fire axe, he stares at Jimmy in a way you once wished you could. If looks could kill.

Swansea gets up and chases after him.

You hope he gets the monster.

~~

Swansea is dead too. Jimmy somehow got a gun and killed him. You watch from the shadows as he sets up the dead bodies of people you knew so, so well. A mockery of a party you were so excited for so long ago.

He brings out Curly and sets him on the table, he grabs the knife and cuts into Curly's thigh as if it's cake. You want to vomit. You want to cry. You want to do so many things but. You simple stand there.

You want to kill Jimmy. He's killed your friends, so you want to avenge them. None of them deserved this, none of them.

You go look for that axe.

~~

You found it in utility, it has weight but you can carry it well enough to take the swing at the man that's made this into hell itself. You hear footsteps coming towards the room so you make your way behind some foam. You wait.

And wait.

and wait.

You take action and run right towards Jimmy as he's about to kill himself.

He deserves pain, he doesn't deserve the easy way out.

You swing right into his arm holding the gun and it comes clean off.

Blood comes out from it in waves.

He needs to take responsibility.

You swing once more at his other arm, another clean cut.

needs to take responsibility.

Another swing.

tAKE RESPONSIBILITY.

One last swing.

RESPONSIBILITY.

he's not dead, but he looks just. like. curly.

you pick him up, his blood gushing onto you and place him in another cyropod.

he was have to face his actions, whenever that may be.

whenever someone finds him and curly.

~~

you walk to your room, one last time.

blood trailing behind you as you slowly walk.

your time is up and you'll get to end it the way you wanted to.

in bed.

you pull all your blankets onto yourself and close your eyes,

one.

last.

time.

[bettyfrommars]

Death Becomes Us//Part 2: When Doves Cry vampire!Eddie x supernatural!fem!Reader//True Blood AU

⚠️18+Only pls⚠️ adult themes, blood, drinking blood, enemies to lovers, eventual smut, violence, reader and vampire!Eddie both get physically hurt--but they end up okay, talk of needles, alcohol consumption, talk of addiction, mention of sex, sanguivoriphobia, talk of the supernatural, death. Word Count: 6.7k

Series Masterlist

Summary: You start your first day at Main Vein, the vampire/human crossover bar owned by Bob Newby, flanked by vampire!bartender!Argyle and you learn what a risk humans can be to vampires as you begin to navigate their world. You and Eddie have to rescue each other as you're forced to share an intimate exchange that brings you irrevocably close. Playlist

Important words/phrases for this chapter: Fanger (derogatory term for vampires) Fang Banger (derogatory term for people who like to be bitten by vampires during sex) Sanguivoriphobia (fear of vampires)

✂️

If you are in the group of people who are familiar with True Blood, parts of this chapter will feel familiar. I won't be sticking to the storyline of the show religiously, but there are so many clever elements I wanted to incorporate. Please read the warnings above, as some of the things mentioned in this chapter might not be for everyone. ❤️

--------

Death Becomes Us Part 2: When Doves Cry

For years, you tried to cover your scars up with makeup, but then they ended up looking lumpy and odd, and it made people stare even harder trying to figure out what was under the heavy layers of foundation and powder. You’d never met anyone like you before, and it made you feel a type of deep loneliness that you never talked about because you knew no one would understand.

You’d left some tuna on your porch for Dio before you went to bed, and you were pleased to find the saucer licked clean when you left your trailer the next day. You could tell that she was well fed and that your nasty vampire neighbor was taking good care of her, but you wanted to reward her for proving to Eddie that she did, indeed, like someone other than him.

The white BMW was gone, and the old van was back, parked next to Eddie’s trailer. You were more curious and interested in whatever he was up to than you should be, considering you wanted nothing to do with him.

It was still daylight out when you rolled up early to Main Vein, and Bob got you to work writing out the specials on a sandwich board in your best handwriting, to hopefully attract customers in as they strolled by on the sidewalk. You shadowed Bob as he taught you the basics of tending bar while a couple humans (also known as “breeders” in the vampire world, because vampires, of course, could not procreate) came in for a few simple beers, and one guy ordered a jack and coke.

As a child, you were always an emphatic soul; you could tell what a person was feeling, even if they told you with their words that they were feeling something else. It was a trauma response to surviving in the emotional chaos you grew up in. Now, since the accident, you could read human emotions and intentions with ten times the intensity.

Vampires, on the other hand, were impervious to your gift—or, curse, as you often referred to it.

For instance, you could tell that Bob Newby had a heart of gold; his enthusiasm was not a fake front to hide dark intentions. He truly loved his vampire girlfriend, whom you had yet to meet, and he harbored nothing but the best intentions in the brainstorming of his human/vampire crossover bar Main Vein. He believed that vampires were good people who just happened to be dead, and that we were all equals, despite the fact that they were stronger, faster, immortal, and subsided on blood alone.

You were behind the bar, concentrating on putting the exact amount of alcohol in a drink that the recipe card in front of you called for, when Argyle slid in next to you and bumped your arm. His skin felt like ice.

“Careful!” He snickered. “Don’t spill any,” but half of the liquid had already dripped down your fingers. Since you couldn’t get a read on vampire’s emotions, it was a relief for you to be around them. Feeling other people’s emotions often meant that you had to experience them, and that was not to your benefit in many cases. Being around crowds of people sapped your energy in a way you still struggled to recover from.

Argyle wore his black hair straight and parted down the middle; it was shiny and soft and you wanted to touch it. He had on a colorful, button down shirt, and a blue visor that said Main Vein on it. He nodded at what you were working on, wiggling his eyebrows. “Whadda we got going on here?”

You sighed and told him what the customer ordered. Argyle smiled and waved you off. “I got this, foxy dudette. Let the master take over,” he cracked his knuckles and interlaced his fingers, flexing his palms out before he brought things from the under bar at lightning speed.

You were more than happy to shove off and get to the group at the front waiting to be seated.

When you were half way there with menus tucked under your arm, you realized that this group was mean and anxious and desperate; a combination that made alarms go off inside of you as your skin exploded in a wash of goosebumps.

They were nice enough to your face, though. It was a woman with two men, all dressed in denim and plaid; one of the men had an American flag on the front of his t-shirt. The other one had his greasy hair squished under a trucker cap, and two missing teeth in front. The redhead woman wore an Ed Hardy tube top under her flannel, and she was pretty in a whiskey and Marlboro reds kind of way. Her smile was big and gracious as she smacked her green gum, and they followed you to a booth.

They ordered a round of beers with potato skins from the appetizer menu, and just as you excused yourself to give their order to Bob in the kitchen, the woman grabbed your wrist.

You squeezed your eyes closed until you could calm the surge that went through your body when you felt threatened, waiting for the fire behind your eyes to settle before you met her gaze again.

“Sorry, darlin’ but this is a bar for vampires, too, right?” She was bent forward, whispering to you, her pupils tightly pinned in her dusty blue eyes. There was a faded, long stem rose tattoo on her white freckled forearm.

“Um, yes,” you looked around. “Will there be more with your party? Should I bring over a menu with our plasma options?”

The two men chuckled across the table at each other as if you’d just made a joke.

“That’s okay, baby,” the woman said sweetly, releasing your arm. “But, are there any vampires in here right now? Me and the boys were just hoping to see one up close, is all.”

You thought about what they were asking you, and the fact that their emoting of desperation was getting stronger, and decided not to point Argyle out to them. They’d eventually figure that one out for themselves because he loved to show his teeth. “I’m not really sure,” you lied with a shrug. “I never can tell the difference.”

The woman frowned and turned back to the two men as they started to discuss something.

The other waitress, a human named Erica Sinclair, tucked her Main Vein t-shirt into her shorts as she joined you on the floor, rolling her eyes. Bob introduced the two of you in a rush as he flipped a burger, and Erica gave you a bored look, but her gaze did not linger on your your scars like most. “You’re new here, right? You’re smiling, so you must be. Nothing much to smile about around here.”

You told her you’d only been in town a few days as you grabbed a second round of beers for the table that had been asking about vampires. You weren’t paying too much attention when the front door opened, but then some of the other customers seemed to still, conversations coming to a halt, and Erica’s attention shifted over your shoulder, eyes narrowing.

The song When Doves Cry by Prince was playing on the stereo system as you turned on your heel to witness your neighbor Eddie step across the threshold with ease; one initial invitation was all that was needed, apparantly. According to Bob, invitations could also be reversed if necessary. It was the couple waiting behind Eddie for their invitation that alerted everyone to the presence of something supernatural.

The two behind him could’ve easily passed as “regular” mortals. They had a very mom and pop look about them; she was a brunette in a floral dress and he was in trousers, a dark blue button down, and had a receding hairline. She clutched her white handbag at her stomach, and the man with her had his hand at her back, coaxing her in.

Eddie pretended not to see you there as he cupped a hand to light his cigarette and made his way over to the bar to take his normal seat at the end to order a Fang Tang, not even giving a second glance to the vampires stuck outside. Maybe they weren’t his friends? Not all vampires were friends, surely, as you were not close with all humans.

Bob would’ve been the first to greet them and welcome them in, but he was knee deep in the kitchen, wearing his “Bob the Brain” custom embroidered apron, and when you turned to Erica, she shook her head. “I’m not a fan of the Fangers myself. It’s going to take me a minute to get used to this new world.”

Your eyes snapped to Argyle, but he was busy at the other end of the bar doing a Tom Cruise juggling act with the booze to impress two of the local Fang Bangers.

So you straitened your shirt, squared your shoulders, and made your way over to greet them.

Meanwhile, the redhead woman with the rose tattoo on her arm and the two men with her were hyper focused on the new arrivals; you could feel the cold, wet tug of some kind of rot in their veins, surging though them and clouding their rational thoughts.

At the time, you did not know that there was an underground market for vampire blood, not only for its healing properties, but the euphoric high and transcendent experience it gifted the user. It enhanced sexual performance and gave humans the mental prowess of superhuman strength. Needless to say, it was a highly prized commodity; expensive and addictive.

Hunched at the bar in his leather and battle vest, and a handkerchief hanging from his back pocket, Eddie appeared to be ignoring you as you walked to greet the newcomers. You had never professionally invited a vampire in before, so you might have overcompensated with how cheerful your tone was. “Welcome to Main Vein,” you plastered a smile across your face. “Please enter and follow me. I will show you to your seat,” you also added a slight bow and extension of your arm like you were back in theater class again.

They stepped inside with a swoosh—a sound like they were breaking some invisible barrier you couldn’t see. They asked for a booth, and the only one out of the five that was available happened behind the party that was eager to see vampires up close: now they would get their chance. This vampire couple was not at all what you envisioned when people talked of “bloodsuckers from hell”. They seemed grateful to be able to come out to a bar with regular people---perhaps it reminded them of the human lives they’d once lived.

The guy in the trucker hat with two missing teeth turned around in his seat to get a better look as they sat and you offered them the plasma menus. You explained the different categories for synthetic blood, and how each offered the same taste and nutrients as real human blood. They offered replicas of a whole range of blood types, for those vampires with discerning palettes. You frowned at the guy in the trucker hat to make him turn back around and take his seat.

On your way back to the kitchen, Erica caught you by the elbow, her eyes wide. “What did they say to you?”

“They just wanted menus,” you said with a shrug, glancing over your shoulder at the couple in question. “I don’t think they’re all as bad as they seem on the news.”

“Oh, believe me,” She gave you a dire look. “They are evil. Don’t let the Laura Ashley dress and the Newport loafers fool you.” Truly, Erica had not yet properly met more than a handful of vampires in her life, she’d only heard the rumors.

“Have you ever met one?” You asked, assuming that she’d known plenty.

“I’ve met enough of them,” she promised, hands on her hips, and then she gestured to your neighbor at the end of the bar. “I know Eddie. But that’s only because I met him...before the change. And I’m forced to be around Argyle because I work here.”

When Erica walked off, you made the mistake of glancing over at the Eddie in question, and he tried to lower his eyes to his synthetic blood beverage as if he hadn't been watching you.

Argyle was working a metal cocktail shaker over his shoulder when you came back to the bar, and he nudged his chin at you. “What’s up with the freaks?” He asked, referring to the redhead with the rose tattoo and the two beefy men with her. He filled two martini glasses with a dark red concoction and trimmed each with a tiny pink flower.

You leaned forward a bit so you wouldn’t have to yell, tilting your head. “They specifically asked if there were any vampires here tonight,” you glanced over at Eddie again, but he was engrossed in something he was doodling on a napkin. “Do you think they’re tourists?”

“Nah,” Argyle wiped his hands on the rag at his waist, eyeing the table in question. “That’s Angie Klemp and her inbred brothers. They’ve been around forever.”

You could tell by his expression that he was weary of them, and you knew that he had excellent hearing which probably allowed him to listen in on some of what they were saying as they huddled together at their booth.

Wanting to change the subject, Argyle winked at you. “You’re doing a rad job, surfer girl. These are for the vampire couple that just sat down,” he pushed the two martini glasses toward you. “It’s our signature synthetic blood cocktail. Tell them it’s on the house.”

As the night picked up a bit, you took an order to the wrong table and fumbled a glass that shattered behind the bar. While you were cleaning that up, and mumbling apologies to Argyle, a woman wearing glasses and her honey-streaked brown hair in a bob took a seat at the small table by the window. Erica had a tray of drinks in her hand, so you dumped a dustpan full of glass in the trash and went over to wait on the new guest.

“Do I know you?” You asked as you took your pad and pen out to take her order.

She clamped her top teeth over her bottom lip, tucking hair behind her ear, shyly. “I own the bookstore down the street,” she answered. “You were in earlier, but I never got a chance to introduce myself.”

Of course, it came to you almost as quickly as she said it. You’d been so early for work that you took a walk around the block and ended up wandering into the quaint bookshop on the corner with the wind chimes made from seashells in the window. You had mentioned to her as you purchased a used paperback that you were starting work that day.

“The bookstore with the cats,” you grinned, pointing your pen at her. There had, indeed, been two resident cats in the shop, lazily draped over their carpeted perches in the sun, and sleepy, cream colored bigger dog behind the front counter.

“That’s the one,” she nodded, and then she stuck her hand out to introduce herself. “I’m Robin, in case you ever come back in, you can ask for me,” that seemed to fluster her and she shook her head. “You don’t have to ask for me, I’m usually there, but if you ever come by again, that would be nice.” Her cheeks got pink as she fumbled for the glass of ice water in front of her and took a sip.

You met her eyes and told her that you be back in soon to finish the series you were reading, and then she ordered a glass of wine with her salad. You could tell her heart was racing. She was nervous and excited to see you, as if maybe she’d had to give herself a pep talk before she came in. You noticed there was a certain warmth about her that wasn’t present in other humans. Whereas vampires were abnormally cold; Robin was pumping off heat like she had a temperature, and you were instantly fascinated by her.

----------

A bit later in the evening, Eddie said his goodbyes to Argyle, and you took casual note of his departure out of the corner of your eye while you bussed a table.

What you also noticed was the way Angie Klemp and her brothers paid quickly, and got up to follow Eddie out only a minute behind him. They’d had 6 beers and just as many tequila shots between them, and you got the feeling that they were up to no good. The two men were tapping their knees under the table, and scratching their necks and hands as if being actively attacked by ants.

The pulses of emotional electricity coming off of them instantly made your pores on your scalp blossom with sweat at how panicked they were; how hell bent. But again, what would they want with Eddie? To take their picture with him? That was a common tourist occurrence in Hawkins. But, the tourists in question usually preferred the subject to look like a stereotypical vampire; maybe wearing a cape, or dressed like Elvira. As far as you could tell, vampires usually kept with the same style they had when they were turned.

Eddie did naturally have that “vampire” look, though. He was a loner, he wore all black, he had spooky tattoos, and that long dark hair framing his pale face.

You were refilling someone’s water when you overheard Erica tell a guy at the bar to stop staring at her ass before she stabbed his eyes out with her pen, and it made you chuckle, mostly because you knew she wasn’t bluffing.

Ten minutes or so later, you were grabbing napkins from the storeroom in the back hall when you heard high pitched voices, screaming at each other from the alleyway parking lot. You hesitated with your hand on the shelf, wondering if it was just two people arguing and probably none of your business, but then you heard another scream, and decided to crack the door and peek out.

You had to scan the area at first, but then your eyes widened as they took in what was happening: against the brick wall of the next building, in a parking space between two cars, your neighbor Eddie was on the ground, his neck and wrists wrapped in silver chain, pinning him to the ground. You gasped and swallowed as you saw the steam rise up from where the silver was burning his flesh, his mouth set in a grimace.

Angie Klemp made fast work of jabbing a needle into the crease of each of his elbows draining his blood through tubing into clear bags. The brother in the American flag shirt paced at Eddie’s feet, barely able to contain his need for the drug, and the other one with two missing teeth kicked Eddie in the leg and then spat on him. “Yeah? Whadda ya think about that? Not so tough now, are you, Fanger?”

You stepped inside only to grab the fire extinguisher off the wall before heading back out, careful not to make any noise as the door shut. You tip toed around so that you were hidden behind the van next to them.

Angie seemed to be doing all the work, jerking the port out to fill another bag on the filthy pavement. “Goddamn it, I knew we should’ve taken him home first. This is risky as hell.”

“There’s no time for that!” The brother with two missing teeth took his hat off and scratched his head viciously. “I need some of the blood now, can’t I just have a little bit?”

Angie threw him a disgusted look. “You’re a fuckin’ addict, Clyde. How are we supposed to make money on this shit if you drink up all the profits? Get your shit together!”

You peeked your head out from behind the van, and Eddie saw you. His eyes were black and his fangs were out, but the silver had him rendered completely incapacitated. You could only imagine that the amount of blood they were taking was also making him weak.

You lifted up the fire extinguisher to let him know you were coming to his rescue, but he shook his head, trying to warn you off.

The two beefy men were too caught up in the throws of withdrawals and had their backs to you as you came up behind them. With a mighty heave, you cracked one in the back of the head with the big metal canister, and then when the other one turned around, you sprayed him in the face with the foam that comes out of the nozzle, blinding him. He clapped his hand to his face, yowling, and tripped himself on his own feet, going down hard.

Angie slowly stood, realizing that both men were on the ground, dazed, and she gave you a nasty snarl. “Why, you stupid, cut face whore,” she bit out just before she lunged at you.

You were about to swing the canister at her face when, from out of nowhere, a huge, boxy, beige pit bull terrier lunged from the darkness, barking and growling at Angie, barring its teeth, forcing her to back up. You looked down, a bit shocked: you’d never seen that dog before in your life. Would it attack you next? Hesitant, you let the dog move between the two of you, protectively, as it curled its lip and growled.

You pointed the nozzle at the woman. “Try us, bitch.”

The pit bull started barking a loud alarm that would soon have people coming to see what the hell was going on. Angie clenched her hands in the air as if she wanted to wring your neck, and then she was shouting for the two stumbling men to get in the truck.

“Go, go, go, you dickheads,” Angie demanded, grabbing the one covered in white goo by the collar, dragging him along.

The one with the crack to his skull was bleeding down the side of his head. “But what about the blood? Let’s take the blood!”

You and your new, aggressive pit bull friend stepped in front of Eddie, your weapon ready. “Don’t even think about it, fucker.”

You waited for them to pile in the truck and speed away before you dropped the fire extinguisher to the ground with a thunk and got on your knees next to Eddie, bits of gravel cutting into your shin.

The pit bull licked your cheek and stood guard next to you, looking from you to Eddie as if it understood everything that was going on, head tilting every so often. You were too concerned with how the silver was sizzling on his skin like bacon on a frying pan to wonder about your new companion. There were still needles in his arms and you slipped them out, cringing as you did so. You watched in awe as the hole marks in his arms disappeared and healed right before your very eyes.

“Can you move?” You asked him.

Eddie could barely talk, the pain of the silver was so excruciating. That, and he was extremely low functioning after so much blood loss. If those three had wanted to end him, they very well could have. He wondered how many vampires they had trapped and drained over the past few years.

He managed a scratchy, whispered, “no. It’s...the silver…”

With a gulp, you went to work unwrapping the chain from his neck and then his wrists, peeling layers of skin with it. He was an immortal vampire, but you could only imagine how much it must hurt, and yet, he hadn’t even made whimper.

His eyes never left you as you worked on him so diligently, your brows knitted together with focused determination. His neck was kinked forward, as his head and shoulders were propped up against the brick wall.

Unwrapping the last coil from around his wrist, you noticed that the wounds were staying the same, and you met his eyes. “Why aren’t you healing?”

“I’m too weak right now,” his eyes flicked away from you. “I won’t be able to heal until I feed.”

At that, the pit bull whined, and took its cue to turn and disappear back into the night.

You looked over your shoulder at the door to Main Vein. “Would synthetic blood work?”

He closed his eyes and shook his head once, rolling it against the wall. “Has to be...human,” he breathed, bangs sticking to his clammy forehead.

His once rosy lips were pale and the mangled wounds left from the silver made you feel bad for him, even though you weren’t even sure if you liked him.

“What if I just left you here?” You asked, raising an eyebrow. “Would you die?”

The corners of his mouth stuck together as he talked. “If I don’t feed soon, I won’t be able to protect myself. More will come to take my blood, and if I’m still out here at daybreak then, yes, the sunlight will kill me.”

Your gaze moved from his ripped throat to his eyes again, hovering there. There was a thick leather cuff on your wrist that you used to cover up your scar, but you undid the buckle, exposing the underside of your forearm. You wondered if he was too weak to expose his fangs, so you used the back of one of your earrings to slice a thin opening across your skin, wincing in pain as you did so.

Eddie’s breath hitched in anticipation as you lifted the bleeding gash to his mouth. He couldn’t lift his arms, so you pressed it there, and his eyes locked on yours as you felt his tongue lick across the cut just before his eye went black and he began to suck, moaning, drinking you as a small trickle of blood dripped down to his chin.

At one point, he got some of his strength back, and his hand with the three silver, chunky rings came up to push your forearm against his eager mouth as he fed, and your heart raced at the sight of it. The passion of his need made your pussy clench around nothing as you knelt there in the grimy parking lot.

When his swallowing finally slowed, you tugged your arm away and clutched it to the underside of your apron. Eddie licked his blood-stained lips and met your eyes again. “Seriously,” he was strong enough now to brace his hands and push himself up so that his back was no longer on the ground. He leaned close as if he could read the answers in your eyes. “What are you?”

Your face was inches from his. “Do I taste different?”

“Yes,” he returned, without hesitation. The mauled skin around his neck and wrists were completely healed. “I’ve never tasted anyone like you before.”

You got to your feet, clipping your leather cuff back on, realizing you’d need to find a first aid kit before you went back to work.

“I owe you big time,” Eddie looked you up and down as he sat for a bit to catch his breath. “If you ever need---”

The back door to Main Vein opened and Erica was standing there with her arms crossed, shouting across the parking lot at you. “What the hell is going on out here? Am I working the floor by myself tonight or what?”

You walked to the back end of the van to tell her you’d be right in, and when you turned back to say something to Vampire Eddie---he was gone.

-------

“What the hell were you thinking?” Erica blanched as she helped you wrap up your arm at the desk in Bob’s office. “You know these Fangers eat people, right?”

She was still yelling, but you were trying not to take it personal. “Well, he didn’t eat me, so I guess there are exceptions.”

“What the hell do you call him drinking your blood, then?” Erica had a very soft touch while bandaging you up, careful to make sure she cleaned the wound and inspected you to make sure you didn’t have a bite mark.

“You girls okay?” Bob came around the corner, flushed, his face red and glistening in sweat from a long night behind the grill.

Erica jerked her thumb over her shoulder at you. “This one decided to play vigilantly in the parking lot to save one of your vampire buddies.”

Bob beamed. “Aw, you made a vampire friend? They’re awesome aren’t they?”

This time, you and Erica exchanged a confused look.

---------

At the end of your shift, Bob and Argyle stayed to finish up with two vampire customers at the bar who were lingering. With a heavy sigh, you took your blue, blood-stained apron off, grabbed things from your wood cubby in the back, and then walked with Erica down to the end of the sidewalk. The two of you had to split up and go in separate directions because your hearse was parked at the curb, and Erica only lived a few blocks away. You offered her a ride home, but she declined. You could feel that she had some personal issues weighing on her heart, and besides that, she had a deep well of emotions inside for the people she cared about, and it took her a while to trust people and open up. If you didn’t have your curse, you’ve might’ve just assumed she hated you.

It was late, but because of growing vampire population in civilized areas, there were several lights in windows, and the low hum of conversations drifting down from higher up apartments. There were streetlamps on each corner, but the dark side of the building cast a heavy shadow on you as you fumbled for your keys.

You were just about to unlock the door when you heard the shuffling of footsteps, and then before you could turn, the hard edge of a rope edge dug into your neck, gagging you, and then you were yanked back, off your feet. You tried to scream, but it only came out as a gargle. Your ass caught most of the fall to the pavement, but then your head clapped back onto the hard surface and it caused a ringing sound in your skull. The person holding the rope around your neck pulled it tighter, and you struggled, kicking your feet, trying to get free.

Angie Klemp and her brother in the American flag t-shirt were standing above you, sneering. She kicked you in the ribs and you wailed at the pain. She squatted down to mock you. “Oh, darn, I guess that fanger boyfriend of yours isn’t around to return the favor now, is he?”

They were dragging you now, pulling you by the neck around into the alleyway where no one could see what they were about to do to you.

Your vision was getting blurry as you heard the woman's voice again. “You cost me five thousand dollars worth of fanger blood, and we’re gonna take it out of your ass.”

The rope burned as it slipped off your neck and you were somehow able to roll on your side and stand, just as one of the men punched you across the face and you went down again, coughing, tasting blood. You were on your hands and knees, trying to catch your breath, and one of them kicked the steel toe of their boot into your stomach, making you double over in pain as they laughed, tears squeezing from your eyes as you tasted bile.

You wondered if you were going to die there.

In a blink, with spots in your eyes, you tried to focus as you swore you saw the guy in the trucker hat get his neck broken right there where he stood. His head twisted all the way around, forced by seemingly invisible hands, and then he slumped to the ground, dead. Before the other two could figure out what was happening, you saw Eddie pick the guy with the American flag shirt up and throw him onto the hood of a car, his head crashing through the windshield with a bloody splat. Angie tried to run, but Eddie caught her by the back of her neck and picked her up off of her feet. With one hand, he threw her into the nearby dumpster and slammed the lid with a bang.

This had all been done in seconds; he moved at the speed of light.

You were on your side, choking on blood, feeling scared as your vision began to tunnel. But then, strong arms were lifting you up as Eddie scooped you against his chest, “I got you, I got you,” he murmured against your bloody head. “You’re gonna be okay.”

You might have blacked out for a bit because when you opened your eyes, you were on the grass in the park across the street, propped up against a tree. You mewed in pain as your head throbbed and you choked on a sticky pool of blood in the back of your throat.

Eddie took his jacket and denim off as he knelt in front of you, revealing the Metallica t-shirt he had on. You tried to hold your head up as he produced his fangs and sank them into his own arm, and then held the leaking bite marks out to you.

“You need to drink my blood, so you can heal,” he said. He didn’t want to scare you in that moment, but you had a serious gash in your skull, and he had no idea how bad that kick you took had affected your internal organs.

You tried to push away from him, your eyes wide. “I don’t want to be a vampire.”

“You won’t be,” he assured you. “Believe me, I don’t want this for you, either.”

There was a tenderness in him then that you were noticing for the first time. You’d been taken by surprise, but under normal circumstances, you would’ve been able to handle the Klemps on your own. You weren’t used to feeling helpless and in need of someone’s care. You could feel the blood dripping down your neck and your vision was starting to fade again.

“Just a little bit,” you breathed, sticky lips parted.

Eddie cupped your head in one hand as he brought his arm over, similar to how you had fed him earlier. The weeping holes from his fang marks were right in the middle of one of his tattoos and you closed your eyes as your mouth latched on, nursing on him like your life depended on it---which it did. It tasted ordinary, like sucking on a penny, but it felt like velvet on your tongue, warming your insides.

Consumed with a sudden lust for the juice in his veins, you sucked harder, whimpering, and you didn’t see it, but Eddie’s eyes went back as he growled in the back of his throat at the pleasure of the sensation. You drank until your brain stopped throbbing, and then you rested your head back against the tree, a smear of his blood across your chin.

You noticed Eddie was close to you, his mouth at your temple as he licked a bit of your blood from a scratch there as it was healing. You jerked to the side, surprised to catch him wanting to sample you again.

Your eyes locked. “What do I taste like?”

He searched your face, aroused by the sight of his blood on your mouth. “Like...memories. Like ice cream and summer breeze and suntan lotion melting on warm skin.”

Your lips were almost touching as he confessed this to you. There was no vocabulary for him to properly explain the many layered depth to your blood; it was sweet and savory, and it also tingled in the back of his throat like pop rocks or fireworks and made him feel alive again if only for a few moments.

You lifted your hand to your throat to find that the rope burn was gone, and your ribs didn’t feel like they were broken. You were just about to ask him another question, but then he was on his feet in a flash, putting his jacket on.

“Also,” he flipped his hair out of the collar of his leather. “Now that you have my blood in you, I’ll always know where you are,” it sounded more cryptic than he meant for it to, and so he added, “just in case you ever need my help again.”

You frowned. “But, how will you know if I need help?”

He busied himself rolling his cuffs up. “I’ll be able to sense your fear.”

You were letting that sink in when he spoke up again. “And don’t be surprised if you have some dreams about me.”

“Dreams?” You raised an eyebrow.

He turned his head and rested his tongue between his teeth as he figured out how to say it. “The sexual kind.”

“Oh,” you looked down, suddenly embarrassed. He stood there shuffling his foot on the grass and you had so many questions for him. How had he become a vampire? Was it something that he chose, or was it forced on him? How long had he been one? You were trying to choose which one to ask when he spoke.

“Hop up,” he said, gesturing for you to get on his back like you were a little girl. “I’ll take you back to your hearse.”

Normally, you hated when men tried to pick you up, but Vampire Eddie carried you across the street like you weighed no more than air. You had your arms around his shoulders and his hands were cupped under your thighs; the vanilla sandalwood of his hair blew across your face in soft tendrils. He lowered you to the ground once he got to the parking lot, and you both looked down the alleyway at the Klemp bodies that Eddie had dropped in his effort to rescue you.

You swallowed. “It’s illegal for vampires to kill humans,” you said in a hush. “I don’t want you to get in trouble for this. I’ll tell the police I was---”

“No police,” Eddie stopped you in a gruff voice. His jaw muscles flexed as he turned to you. “It’s also illegal for humans to drain a vampire for sport,” he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his inside pocket and bit one with his teeth to pull it out of the pack. It bounced there as he talked, squinting one eye at you. “I’ll take care of them, you don’t have to worry about it, princess.”

Since he’d just saved your life, you decided to let him get away with the pet name.

He lit his smoke and took a tight, hissing inhale before aiming the exhale over your head. “I’ll stay here to make sure you get on the road okay.”

You looked down at yourself. “Yeah, I suppose I should get home and take a shower,” you noticed that your bag was in the gutter next to your front tire and you bent to pick it up, along with your keys up. “Guess I’ll see you around the trailer park.”

Inside the hearse, you watched from your rear view mirror as vampire Eddie leaned his back against the wall to smoke and make sure no one bothered you. He picked something off his tongue as you started the engine, and then you lowered your head to shift into gear.

You were not surprised this time to find him gone when you looked up.

-----

"Dig if you will the picture of you and I engaged in a kiss The sweat of your body covers me Can you my darling? Can you picture this? Dream if you can, a courtyard An ocean of violets in bloom Animals strike curious poses They feel the heat The heat between me and you How could you just leave me standing alone in a world so cold?"

-- When Doves Cry//Prince

------

Part 3: The taste of you

——-

Thank you for reading!

[saturnneedsspace]

My whole world was flipped upside down the other day when I found out there was a lot of Sam haters in the spn fandom. I simply do not understand.

Yeah, sure, Sam did some messed up things. But so did every other character in the show.

He got addicted to demon blood because of Ruby and this alien feeling that was cast upon him because of John. His own father thought he was a monster, so you gotta know that's gonna do something to your self esteem and cause you to go out of your way to be accepted.

He traps himself in Hell with Lucifer to save his brother and the rest of the world, knowing how much trauma that will cause him. And when he got out, he didn't have a soul, which all the fault lies with Cas on that one. And when he got his soul back, he wasn't the same. The sheer trauma he had from being roomies with Lucifer was more than enough to drive any normal person insane, and he still endured silently for a long time, before he went so crazy he was forced to be put in a mental hospital. He physically could not sleep because Lucifer was taunting him so much. And the only way he ever got better was because Cas took all that trauma into himself.

Yeah, maybe Sam didn't look for Dean when he was in Purgatory, and instead spent his time with a woman instead, but he had no clue where Dean was. The last time he saw his brother, he stabbed Dick, and then him and Cas disappeared into thin air. There was no clues whatsoever to where he was. And all Dean ever wanted was for Sam to have a normal life, so after he presumes Dean dead, he does what he thinks his brother would have wanted for him.

He's angry at Dean for Gadreel, and rightfully so. His brother took away his choice in the matter by tricking him into saying yes. He was ready to die. He told Death to make sure he can't be resurrected. He wanted to die. And yes, obviously as a brother, you don't want your younger siblings to die. That's a given. But he took away Sam's choice in that and forced him to be possessed, which is where most of his trauma comes from. He was possessed by several, terrible people at one point, and it was literal torture for him. He watched helplessly as his own hands murdered and hurt many people, some of them being his own friends and family. And then it just gets worse when Gadreel forces him to kill Kevin later on.

Sam searches the ends of the Earth for Demon!Dean and even when he's told several times to stop going after him, he doesn't listen. He knows he was mistaken when he didn't look for Dean in Purgatory, so he fights to make up for it by searching for him now. Dean tries to kill him, tells him to go away, leave him be, and Sam doesn't. He does everything he can to cure him. And he does with the help of Cas. He never gave up, even long after Dean already did.

And Sam releasing Amara wasn't all his fault. Charlie, Cas, and (reluctanlty) Rowena agreed to help, too. They're all just as guilty as him. And as much as I hate saying that about Charlie, considering it got her killed, it's true. They all helped remove the mark. They all released Amara. It wasn't their intention, but they all wanted to save Dean from himself and from hurting others. They all knew how much it hurt him to not have control over his anger. They were all just trying to help and were prepared to face the consequences of that, no matter what they were, because it was for Dean and they all loved him. (This is excluding Rowena at this point obvi)

Sam is the only one who cares for Jack after he's born. Yes, Cas would've defended that kid with his life if he were still alive, but he wasn't. Only Sam and Dean were. And the first thing Dean does when he sees Jack is shoots him. Sam talks to him. Sam understands him. Sam was him. He relates to the kid in a way no one else probably could, and so he fights his brother about it. He fights to protect the misunderstood kid who's defined by the blood that runs through his veins, though he desperately tries to prove it's not who he is. People only say Dean and Cas were Jack's fathers. But Sam was Jack's first father, the first person to see him for who he truly was.

And then he shot God, getting himself injured in the process and ultimately helping them take Him down. He was a vital character through the series and sacrificed so much. He didn't deserve all that happened to him, and frankly, it makes me mad when people hate on him.

[applepiesupreme]

American Apple Pie

Pairing: Low/Mid Honor Arthur Morgan and female OC.

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Savigne Ricci is a temporary guest at the Van der Linde camp. Her path crosses with the enforcer of the gang, Arthur Morgan, and despite their differences, a relationship develops between them. Whole lot of smut and fluff, slow burn-ish.

AOC link:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/54945853/chapters/144374053

Chapter 18

“The hell is she doing?’’

“Making a ‘earthen oven’, apparently,” Hosea answered before he re-inserted his pipe back between his lips and continued to watch Savigne stomp on what looked like mud. 

Dutch scratched his neck. “For?”

“Baking stuff would be my guess.”

"Getting’ a bit domestic here, ain't it?" Micah said from the tree he was leaning against. He spat to the side. "Don't like it, Dutch. Thought this here was an outlaw camp."

Dutch just watched in silent contemplation, his coffee in one hand, cigar in another. To Hosea, his dislike for Savigne was obvious, as was the effort he made to conceal it. Concealing his thoughts and emotions was second nature to Dutch, something he did reflexively, almost unconsciously. He lived life like it was a game of poker, cards always held close to the vest.

Hosea shrugged. “Why shouldn’t she? Pearson has a whole setup, nothing odd about cooking in camp.”

Dutch hummed his agreement, gently rolling his cigar between his fingers, a contemplative look on his face. They sat in silence and watched Savigne as there was little else to do in camp. It was a hot day and everyone else had either rode out or had ran back into their tents for shade. 

“You know Hosea,” Dutch said at last, “I’m surprised you’re not with me on this. That you can’t see how this…” waving his cigar towards Savigne, who was now plastering the wet mud over the dome she had built out of sand, “...isn’t good for Arthur.” Jack ran over to join her and she was showing him how to help. He looked excited to get his hands muddy.

Hosea gave him a sidelong glance. “Not sure what you mean. Arthur looks in a better mood to me.” That was an understatement but an intentional one. He knew losing this tug of war had wounded Dutch’s pride and it wouldn’t do anyone good to scratch that scab.

Arthur didn’t look in a better mood, he looked happier than Hosea had seen him in years. His version of happy, of course, which was a lot more muted compared to other folks. For Arthur, happiness was a lack of restlessness, of a state of peace. Happiness was less brooding, less running away from camp or spending days in his tent, glumly re-evaluating his life choices. Not getting drunk every night and going around picking on folks, needling and teasing them to rile them up for the chance to get into a fight. Hoping Bill or Javier or John will take the first swing so he can pummel them because Arthur was bigger and stronger than most of them, more experienced in fistfights and, with whiskey in his veins, as formidable as a cardinal sin.

“Sure,” Dutch consented, “But that only means he’ll fall harder when things go sideways. As they must.”

“How so?”

“She’s not coming with us,” he said with a tinge of exasperation. “Look at her! The woman is building a kitchen while we’re running from the law.”

“I don’t know why you can’t just enjoy things as they are. None of us know what comes tomorrow. If we did, we’d still have the money from Blackwater, for one thing.”

“Forget about the past. We all made some mistakes, I’ll give you that. Can we at least agree that we can’t stay around much longer, given the state of things?”

“It’s a big country. Have you ever considered that we can make it if we scatter?”

“Scatter?” The surprise on Dutch’s face was the first genuine emotion he had seen today.

“Well yes, I mean we don’t have to hang around each other like a clump of kitten. People here can go their own ways, can’t they?”

Dutch blinked at him. “Their own ways? To do what? People here are here because they got nowhere else to go.”

“Pshhhh…they’ll find somewhere to go when they have to, trust me. You telling me Pearson can’t do nothing by himself in the world? Not like we suckled him on our bosom, the man joined us fully grown. All these people joined us from somewhere, and except for John and Arthur, none were children. They’ll go back to that somewhere.”

Dutch shifted in his chair with discomfort. “We are family.”

This nonsense again, Hosea thought. Sure, Arthur was family to him. He couldn’t love him more if he was his own blood. But that’s exactly why he was ecstatic that this whole situation with Savigne had worked out. It could be Arthur’s last shot at some domestic bliss and Hosea pitied any man who never got to experience that. His short years with Bessie had been the pinnacle of his life and he would give anything to relive them.

“Even in families, children leave and go about their own lives,” Hosea pushed.

They were silent for a long time. Savigne was stomping on mud again and adding what looked like hay to it. Jack was right there with her, stomping along.

“So you mean to tell me we should just what – part ways?” Dutch huffed eventually.

Hosea chewed on the stem of his pipe. It had gone out a while ago, but he enjoyed the weight of it between his teeth. 

“What use of sticking together after the last job is done? Can’t live like this forever.”

“I don’t see why not?”

“Live like some religious commune? Didn’t take you as one for that sort of thing, Dutch.”

“Doesn’t have to be like that,” the other man snorted. “Life is easier together, isn’t it? You need something, you got all of us to help you. Javier needs something, Mary Beth needs something – we’re all here. Protection for our folks…people are social creatures for a reason.”

“Aren’t you tired?” Hosea said finally, turning to him. 

“Tired?”

“Of being the leader. I mean why not just take your woman and enjoy life without the headache of how to provide for a bunch of grownup folks?”

Dutch rolled his shoulders. It had been clear to Hosea for a while now that what had started as a necessity and a few men taking young Arthur and then John under their wing, had grown into something bigger for Dutch. He went about crying how hard his job was all day, but at the merest suggestion that he didn’t really need to do it, acted offended. Hosea was starting to believe that Dutch didn’t really want things to change because he didn’t want a life where he wasn’t the leader of a group. 

“What’s that woman doing now?”

He glanced up at Molly, leaning against the tent pole and looking like she had just woken up. “I believe she said it’s an oven.”

Molly snorted. “Is she going to bake bread or something? She’d be more useful helping Ms. Grimshaw.”

So would you, Hosea thought, but of course didn’t say it. 

Molly strolled to stand behind Dutch, giving his shoulders a massage. Their audience had turned into four. Savigne and Jack were heading to the water to wash off their muddy feet. 

“Stomping in mud like a peasant,” she muttered. “Baking bread. At least the other one was a proper lady. What was her name?”

“Mary,” Dutch said, absent-mindedly. 

“Yes, that one. She was prettier. Graceful. Don’t understand what he sees in…her.”

Hosea ignored her. Savigne got along with most people in camp, but ever since her relationship with Arthur had become official so to speak, there was an underlying current of resentment towards her from some quarters. Arthur wasn’t hanging out with them as often or volunteering for as many duties in camp as he used to. He would still come and sit by the fire most nights, but he was more distant and now divided his time, especially his time in the evening between them and Savigne.  

They watched Savigne and Jack play in the water, splashing each other. “I like her. She’s a headstrong woman, goes her own way,” Hosea mumbled around the stem of his pipe, trying to defend them without overtly defending them. “They're just enjoying each other's company, no harm in it.”

"But see here," Micah drawled, "that bothers me none. They wanna play house, it's a free country. But gotta say, I worry if Arthur is getting a bit soft."

"You worry that the guy who beat your face in is getting soft?" Molly snorted and didn't see the baleful look Micah shot her way. 

"Arthur is fine," Dutch interjected mildly. “A woman isn't going to change him. He's just having fun."

Hosea bit his cheek because he knew this expression on Dutch. Dutch was worried. He was protective, you could say even possessive of Arthur. He had always depended on Arthur's skill set more than anyone else in camp. But ever since the Blackwater business, Dutch was convinced - nay, obsessed - that Arthur needed to be present for every job. He hadn’t been there that day and things had gone sideways in a big way. He wasn’t wrong - Arthur was the best gunslinger in camp, he had the nerves to see things through, he had undying loyalty to the gang and a good, clever head on his shoulders to improvise. John was perhaps just as good in shooting folk, but he was a wildcard - the man had run away for a whole year because he was fed up with his nagging woman and his wailing kid. That’s something Arthur would never do. Well, would have never done. Before. Now all bets were off of course.

All in all, Arthur was the queen on Dutch’s chessboard, and any game was infinitely harder without a queen. Unfortunately for Dutch, now he had gotten a taste of something different, something Dutch simply couldn’t provide for him and he was liking it. No wonder Dutch resented Savigne. Maybe he saw Savigne the way he saw all opposition: someone acting with the sole intent to undermine him.

Molly grimaced and went back into the tent.

“He’s more than a son to me,” Dutch said, relighting his cigar. “But she has him wrapped around her little finger, can’t say I approve.”

As opposed to wrapped around your finger, Hosea thought darkly. 

As if speaking of the devil, Arthur rode into camp. He jumped off his saddle and walked towards them. His eyes flitted shortly to Micah who took the cue and slunk away. The animosity between those two kept getting worse. The more serious his affair with Savigne became, the frostier the cold in Arthur’s eyes turned at the sight of Micah.

“Dutch. Hosea.”

Hosea looked at his blood covered shirt and checked his face if he was drunk, but no, Arthur seemed sober. Business then, not personal.

All three looked up when Savigne squealed with delight at Jack holding up a frog. Arthur’s gaze shifted. “The hell is that?” he waved his hat at the new structure by his tent.

“Behold!” Hosea chuckled, “Your new oven!”

He grunted, puzzled. “She goin’ to bake bread or somethin’?”

“I reckon you’re gonna find out soon enough.” Hosea gave Arthur a side glance. “And don’t you forget about poor old me if she does.” Molly came back out and, saw the disinterest in Dutch’s eye, gave him a pouty, hurt look and walked off with a bottle at hand. Hosea smacked his lips and said he’s going to check on the Braithwaites and ambled away, leaving the two man to their talk.

“You don’ wanna send me out with him, Dutch,” Arthur growled. “One of us ain’t coming back from that, I tell ya that.”

”Can you drop this nonsense?” Dutch said, exasperated. He noticed the frosty flicker in Arthur’s eyes.

“Nonsense?” was the low, disbelieving question.

”He paid for his mistake. He was drunk.”

”Don’ care. I killed folks for less.”

”He knows you mean business,” Dutch tried, softer. “He’s never getting near her again, he’s not stupid.”

”Unless he drinks again you mean. Since yer buyin' that bullshit.”

”We’re all here,” Dutch insisted. “He won’t dare…”

”We was here that night. And I don’ remember anyone else puttin’ their fist in his face.”

“I don’t remember you doing it for Jenny,” Dutch drawled and watched the other man tense up. It felt good to tarnish Arthur’s newfound halo. This playacting was tiresome. He knew who Arthur was in his heart - a mean old dog: loyal and steadfast, but also selfish, brutal and cold. Only time he played the hero was when it either amused him or benefited him. He had mellowed a bit when Isaac was around and tried to be a better, worthier man for Mary, but it hadn’t stuck. In fact, after those affairs he had only turned meaner. To him, that had been Arthur’s prime - a dependable man who was not afraid of getting his hands dirty. This…boy, playing house in an outlaw camp, following a woman’s heels like a puppy wasn’t his real self. 

There was a long moment of silence. “I know I ain’t no knight in shinin’ armor, goin’ ‘round saving folk, Dutch. Guess you could say, I didn’ care enough,” the younger man sighed finally. “Truth is, Jenny wasn’t my woman. She was a sweet girl, but I didn’ know her or cared one way or ‘nother.” He shrugged, unapologetic, eerily reminding him of the old Arthur he knew for the first time in months. “That ain’t the case no more. Fact this man has done it before means that’s his nature, so maybe think on that.”

”I get that,” Dutch said, frustrated. “And I’m telling you, she’s safe.”

"Don’ feel safe to me,” Arthur crossed his arms and leaned back on the tent pole, looking out.

Dutch was offended at the implication: Arthur didn’t trust him. When the onion was peeled down to its last layer, this was at the heart of their conflict and it infuriated him. He was reluctant to take it head on though, because this Arthur was a different man and could possibly not fall for the “How dare you!” outrage card and then he would have no other play left.

"We need Micah,” he tried instead and ignored the other man’s grimace of disagreement. “You know how many folks we lost. Micah is an excellent gunslinger, even you can’t deny that. I’m just thinking of the gang here.”

"You sayin’ I ain’t’,” was the dark chuckle of a response. 

“Forgive me but yes, I think your priorities have…shifted.”

The dismissive shrug surprised him. Was a time, this argument would have offended Arthur greatly. Dutch felt a subtle fear creep in that he was already too late to reel him back in, that he was standing at a station, bag at hand, waiting for a train that had long since passed.

“Aren’t we family? Does the gang mean nothing to you anymore?” he said, barely keeping his voice from shaking.

The deepest cut he could inflict and Arthur merely tilted his head in thought. Unbelievable!

“Family,” the younger man huffed finally. He bounced off the pole, turned around and gave him a long look. “Am I family?”

“Of course you are. I would call you my son but you are much more than that to me.”

The gunslinger nodded as if expecting this answer. “All them years, I did as you asked, when you asked, how many times you asked. Didn’ I?” He nodded again to himself, not waiting for an answer. “Now I’m askin’. If I’m family, show me. Send this rattlesnake away. Whatever slack comes with it, I’ll pick it up, y‘ave my word.”

Dutch clenched his jaw. “As soon as he’s not useful anymore-”

The other man stepped closer, shaking his head. “No. Today. Now.” He gave Dutch an intense look. They stood glaring at each other for a moment.

"Son…” Dutch tried.

Arthur waved his argument away, eyes locked to his.

He swallowed, feeling boxed in and hating it.

"Y'ain’t gonna do it,” Arthur said finally. There was bitter amusement in his tone. But something else, too. Something like…a hushed understanding. The moment hung between them and once again he was overcome by the feeling that he had missed the train.

"You have no right to-” he jumped to his feet, insulted.

To his amazement Arthur stepped around him and kept walking. He called after him but received not even a hesitation in his step. He watched in disbelief as he marched away and Savigne jumped up from the table she was sitting at to come around to meet him. That smile on her face, the look in her eyes... he hated it. He had saved Arthur, raised him better than his own father, taught him how to shoot, how to shave, how to read, gotten him his first woman, given him a purpose in life. What had she done other than batting her lashes and parting her legs?

He watched how Arthur stopped a small distance away from her, rigid and tense. How she noticed his posture and hesitated. 

Savigne changed her mind and stepped back, wary of his anger and unwilling to play games when he was in this mood. Suddenly her innocent attempts at mischief seemed crude and petty.

"You want to sit down?” she asked cautiously instead, turning to pull out a chair.

He gave her an inscrutable look and didn’t move.

"You okay?” she said quietly, unsure what to do. Last time she had seen Arthur angry was when he had bashed Micah’s face in and that Arthur, calm and collected like this one on the outside had been capable of such nonchalant violence, that the memory still made her nervous. She didn’t think he would hurt her, but she didn’t want to worsen his mood with her clumsiness.

"Waiting,” he said through clenched teeth, his chest heaving.

"For?” she asked, pulse strumming.

"Yer thing,” he said finally, somewhat softer. When she still didn’t move: “Unless ya don’ wanna no more.” There was bitter disappointment in his tone, as if he expected the rejection. Why he wanted today what he obviously so begrudgingly, reluctantly endured, she didn’t know, but he had a vulnerability, a tension about him since he had set foot in camp and it had only grown deeper after his talk with Dutch.

She set her jaw and stepped up, took a breath of courage and hooked his shoulder to pull him down. For a moment it felt like he wouldn’t comply, a childish pettiness in his refusal because he had been reduced to asking for it, but then he stiffly bent down and allowed her hug. She was surprised when she felt his left hand on her lower back, almost in an awkward attempt to hug her back. She kissed his cheek and whispered “Welcome back”, hands tightening on his shoulders and lingering longer than usual.

She stepped back when she felt him nod. His eyes flicked to her and she thought that they were a shade softer.

"I hesitated,” she huffed, brushing her blouse, “because your shirt’s bloody and disgusting.”

The small grin of relief that broke out on his face was like the sun piercing rain clouds.

“Fair,” he said and his mood visibly lightened.

"I got you something,” she said and pulled out a chair. “Come sit.”

His eyebrows rose as he stalked over to take the chair and turned it to sit with his back to the camp. She ran to the tent and returned with a bottle and two shot glasses. She placed the bottle in front of him and he took it to inspect the label.

"Luther said it’s the good stuff,” she moved to sit to his right. “I don’t know much about whiskey, hope he’s right.”

He grunted and uncorked it, poured both glasses and held his up. She clinked her glass to his. “To luck!”

"Sure could use some more o’that,” he grumbled, but she was glad to see the corner of his lips curl up.

He gulped it down in one go while she took a sip. Whiskey went straight to her head.

He smacked his lips and rolled his tongue around his cheeks.

“Well?”

He grunted in approval and poured himself another shot. “Smooth,” he said, reading the label again. “Why’d ya get this fancy stuff?”

She shrugged. “Why not?”

"You got a raise or somethin’?”

“I just came into some money.”

"That so?”

"Yeah. $200 a month that I don't have to pay as rent anymore.”

He gave her a sheepish look and she cackled, pleased. He chuckled despite himself and shook his head. “Should ‘ave known,” he mumbled and sipped his second glass.

Dutch’s phonograph started suddenly and Arthur grimaced, shifting his gaze to the lake.

Savigne glanced towards the camp, then back at him, her eyes crawling over his bloody shirt. She rose from her chair. “I’m going to get some water. Then we’ll clean up. Take the table in please?”

"Yes ma’am,” he sighed. 

She went and collected two buckets of water, one with soap and without. When she returned to the tent she told him to undress. He did as told, amused. She wiped him down with soapy water first, taking her time, gliding the washcloth over the strung, rigid muscles of his shoulders as the fingers of her other hand found knots to untangle. She pressed, burrowed, kneaded and watched his head loll as he grunted in satisfaction. She traversed his broad back, down his narrow waist to draw lazy circles on his buttocks, her free hand mimicking the motion on the other cheek. He squared his feet and she glided it along his inner thighs, down his legs as she kneaded his calves and then back up in the front, stroking slowly and gently between his legs, feeling him harden at her touch but ignoring it, gently caressing his abdomen and then up his chest. Then she took the washcloth in regular water, wrung it and did the same thing, just as slowly to rinse him off. He was fully aroused by the time she made her way to the front and stepped up to her, a hand playing with her locks, his eyes set on her face, his breathing faster. She didn’t shy away from his erect cock and gently wrapped the washcloth around it and stroked it meticulously, her other hand caressing his trembling stomach muscles. His hips twitched towards her, drops of water glistening on his dark pubic hair. He uttered a low moan and panted with need but she ignored that too and moved up to finish his chest.

He reached for her but she danced back and started to unbutton her blouse. He wasn’t in the mood for rejection and stepped after her, slapping her hand away, resuming the unbuttoning himself. “Don’t rip it,” she murmured to slow him down. He peeled off her clothes and leaned in to kiss her but she pushed him away. “You have to wipe me off first,” she whispered and handed him the soapy washcloth. She smiled coyly at his frustration and he bit his cheek to imply that he would play her games. For now. He mimicked her movements and despite his full blown erection, his touch was deceptively light and gentle. “Missed a spot,” she whispered when rushed, and “wet the cloth again” and “Do that part again.” He gave her a look, pupils dilated, but stubbornly did as told.

It took a while but as soon as he was done he grabbed the back of her neck and jerked her towards himself, to give her a hungry kiss, his other hand squeezing her buttocks. “Ya done teasin’?” he mumbled into her lips, the fingers on her nape rough. She struggled against his grip and he chuckled darkly, kissed her again, holding her head in a vise. Whatever had been on his mind earlier was the furthest thing on his mind now, that was for sure. Savigne knew he was in a mood, had known it since he had walked in with a bloody shirt and those hiked shoulders, and she loved that she was the outlet, the cure for his frustrations; that she was the well that he returned to drink from again and again.

“Time t’make you dirty again,” he grinned before he hoisted her up and walked over to drop her on the table, settling between her legs. His hands ran up her upper legs, fondling hard before light fingers danced over her folds, making her yelp and bite her lip.

"Yeah, think ya done teasin'," he smirked when he felt the wetness there and he grabbed her hair to kiss her again, his other hand on her lower back, jerking her flush against himself.

"I don’t think…this table will…hold me,” she tried between rough kisses. His skin was still wet, sticking against hers as she ran her hands over his shoulders. Arthur ignored her trepidation, stroked himself twice and promptly guided himself in. She held her breath as his swollen head breached her. He grabbed a buttock to pull her on himself, slowly rocking in, then back out, then in again a little further as she panted into his mouth. Like a pendulum gaining force, in and out and back in until he was fully sheathed, pulsing in her, filling her and stretching her. He groaned at the sensation and paused with the effort to remain in control. 

Then he kissed her again, hands hooked around her thighs to pull her in. Since that first night, every encounter was colored by his unabashed want for her and it coiled a spring in her gut. That look he gave her with hooded eyes, the tension of his fingers against her flesh, grabbing, clawing, pulling at her - all reflections of his desire for her and it wound up her body, breathing life into it like winding gave life to a stopped watch. Dutch’s phonograph was blasting an aria in the background and distantly she was thankful for the cover because when he started to move again the table creaked fiercely. She crossed her ankles behind him and he pulled her closer still, one arm across her lower back to hold her in place, the other hand splayed on the table behind her, allowing him to buck with more force.

He rocked into her unhurried as his lips traversed her neck and shoulders, his hand kneaded her buttocks. Too soon the friction against her inner walls started to build and her moans became harder to contain. She started to claw at his shoulders and hips. He pushed her back then and when she fell on her elbows he leaned in to kiss her breasts with a wild hunger, suckling her nipples, gently biting the plump flesh, licking and scraping his teeth at the sensitive underside. Savigne whimpered as he crawled over her to loom, hips rolling and bucking faster now, wet skin slapping against wet skin. She arched her back and he sharply jerked her ass half off the table, angling her before he resumed his pounding.

Her arms wobbled and her ankles uncrossed when she fell flat on her back. Her threw her legs over his shoulders, bending her in half when he leaned over her again. His right arm wound against her thighs on his chest to secure them while his left hand grasped the edge of the table above her head. She tried to mumble a protest about being bent over awkwardly but it evaporated when he continued bucking into her, reaching deeper yet. Soft cries bloomed between her gasps as he fucked her into the table, folding her on herself. She gripped the forearm above her head, felt the corded muscles straining with the pressure of his hold. Her other hand cupped his cheek as he grunted, huffed and groaned above her, watching her face while he rolled his hips and rocked into her harder and faster. 

She cried his name and he peeled her hand from his cheek to guide it between them.

“Touch yerself,” he whispered, eyes never straying from her face. She immediately recoiled, feeling exposed when she was trapped under him like this, in full view of his hungry gaze. He rolled his hips and smacked into her with with vigor, forcing a shudder of gasps from her. He snatched her retrieving hand and guided it back between them, his eyes sharp as ice. “Do as yer told,” he growled, his voice low and hard.

She glided her hand over her swollen folds and whimpered. Reaching lower, her fingers parted around his cock pistoning into her, making his breath stutter. His eyes were glued to hers as she moaned helplessly and did it again, eyelids fluttering with ecstasy, fingers gliding up and down, brushing and massaging herself and him at the same time, pulling a sound from him she had never heard before. Sliding and caressing, pressing and dabbing, closing and spreading again until suddenly the tightly wound coil in her gut unfolded so fiercely that she spasmed, rising on the back of her head, digging her shoulders into the table, convulsing with the force of her orgasm. Her heels sharply dug into his shoulder blades as she distantly felt his hot mouth close on a nipple when her back arched. A moment later he spat a whisper of a curse followed by a series of moans and his hand gripping the edge of the table clenched hard enough to make the wood sing.

When she finally remembered to breathe again, his forehead was between her breasts, hot breath painting her skin and her legs were still slung over his shoulders. He whispered a husky “Christ,” before he shakily straightened, carefully dropping her legs from his shoulders and snaking his hands around her back to pull her up. Her muscles twitched and shivered as they elongated after being pressed awkwardly. She sat in his embrace, feet dangling as he huffed into her neck.

"Don’ move,” he whispered long moments later and pulled out to walk away. She swayed on the table, a trembling flushed mess. He returned with the washcloth and wiped between her legs, threw it back into the bucket and bent over to place open mouthed kisses on the inside of her thighs while she combed her fingers through his hair. He kissed his way up, over her stomach, licking the faint bite marks on her breasts and throat, kissing her jawline and finally kissing her mouth, hands cupping her face.

His eyes were that amazing shade of blue green when he pulled back, calm and gentle, as if he wasn’t the man who had fucked her mercilessly minutes ago.

"Ya okay?” he asked quietly. He was always distinctly gentle with her after an episode like this – not exactly apologetic, but more careful in how he handled her, more doting. Almost as if his superiority of size and strength over her excited and aroused him, but afterwards there was a veiled undercurrent of guilt or shame for using these advantages against her.

"I’m...okay," she panted, wiping her hair off her face. The music continued in the background and they listened to it for a while, foreheads touching, hands caressing; trying to extend that weightless feeling of the afterglow just a little longer. "And you?" was her belated question, intentionally vague and broad. 

"Am now," he sighed.

Not for the first time she wondered what he used to do before they met when he was hot and heavy like this because at times she marveled at the force of his sexual frustration. Odds were, a lot of drinking and fighting. And probably pleasure houses, if if he was into that sort of thing, since Mary married a long time ago. The idea stirred a sour tinge of jealousy in her, even though she knew she didn't have the right to be jealous with whatever came before her. Didn't she have old flames herself? Still, it was hard to counter an emotion with logic and she struggled with it. Maybe that sort of thing was nature or maybe it was the lack of it growing up, but despite telling herself she's above such petty things, in her heart of hearts Savigne had always been jealous when it came to affection and though she knew it to be more casual for a lot of folks, she couldn't grasp the concept of sex without at least a little bit of affection, so naturally she was jealous of that, too. It was ironic, really, because half the time she was correcting Arthur that she isn't "his" woman and that she didn't belong to anyone and yet here she was, wondering who else had been touched by him, kissed by him, filled by him.

A little annoyed at herself, she pushed against his chest and he stepped back with some surprise, allowing her to jump off the table. "I'm going to refill the buckets," she said, starting to put on her clothes. "I'm all sweaty, can't sleep like this."

"I got it," he countered and pulled on his cotton pants and left with the buckets. 

She gathered and placed the dirty clothes in the baskets and sat on the bed waiting. He returned and gently slapped her hand away when she reached over. He wiped her off and grabbed her arm when she turned to put on her chemise. "Did I hurt ya?"

"No," she stammered and smiled. Then more assured: "No." She knew that he didn't mind hurting her at all; in fact, there was a side to him that greatly enjoyed it, but he was cautious in mapping out her borders and red lines.

She turned again but he didn't release her, nudging her to look up at him. "I need ya honest," he said seriously, those eyes crawling over her face, prodding, searching for the reason of her mood change. Arthur was surprisingly intuitive and perceptive. At times she was amazed how quickly he read her mood swings. Even when he couldn't exactly guess what was going on with her, he almost always knew that something was and the more time they spent together, the eerily better he got at it.

"I am," she said and gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek. "I liked it. Which should be obvious unless you're blind and deaf."

He nodded and let her go. Eventually they lied down facing each other as the last notes of the music died out. 

He was perched up on his elbow, thoughtful and quiet, gliding his hand over the lingering marks of his iron grip on her body. 

"Tell me what's in yer head."

"Mostly it's nonsense," she sighed. 

"Like why yer here?" he said a long while later, eyes flicking to her face. 

“What do you mean?” she asked, cautious. 

“Here. In camp. With me.”

He was a man of few words and at times untangling his meaning was an art form.

“Shouldn’t I be?” she said finally.

He grimaced, his fingers caressing her hip, her rib cage, shoulder and back down, watching the cotton of the fabric smoothen under his hand. “Can’t think why,” he said, attempting casualness but she heard the timbre of self-doubt. He was one of the most confident men she knew but at times revealed a surprising tendency for self depreciation and the events of the day must have rattled him somehow.

“I know we’re very…different,” she tried. “But different things sometimes complete each other, no?”

He was silent for a while, seemingly thinking about that. 

“If I was to leave, would you come with?” he said suddenly, before his eyes shied away again.

“Leave where?”

He shrugged, his warm palm gliding up and down and up and down. “Don’ know. Somewhere else.”

She thought on it for a while, caught a bit off guard. They hadn’t been together for very long but in all these months, he had never asked anything of her. Now he was suddenly asking for something very big.

“Would you want me to?” She said carefully.

He scoffed. “Ain’t I askin’?”

“Okay then. Probably,” she said.

This seemed to surprise him and his hand stilled momentarily on her hip as he gave her a long look.

She snorted at the doubt in his face, amused.

“Why?” he said at long last. 

Because I love you, you fool, she thought. “It’s not the shooting lessons, I’ll tell you that,” she said instead. 

“Y'ain’t sick of me yet?” he pushed.

She wondered if this is what she sounded like when her stupid inner voice babbled in her head.

“Wouldn’t be here if I was.” 

He didn’t seem mollified. She cupped his cheek and he stilled, finally meeting her gaze. 

“It’s the tent,” she whispered as seriously as she could. “I really like this tent.”

A smirk bloomed on his lips. “Honesty at last.”

“Clearly it’s all calculated,” she said, waving her arm about. “Besides, I might need saving again, smarter to stick around you.”

He snickered, amused, but his gaze was unmistakably warmer.

“Of course once I learn to shoot, it’s a different story.”

“Well then I ain’t got nothin’ to worry 'bout,” was the smug retort.

She gasped and slapped his hand away but he didn’t move, just grinned at her with that damn gaze she couldn’t hold.

“Said you liked it,” he drawled, hand gliding over her hips, eyes more playful.

She flopped on her other side. “Unlike you, I’m working tomorrow. Let me sleep.”

She felt him reach over to the lantern on the crate and turn it off, then settle behind her, arm draped over her. 

“I like being with you,” she said a few minutes later, more somber. “It’s not that hard to understand.” The camp had grown quiet, all she could hear was the lap of the water and the buzzing of insects. 

He was silent for a while. “I ain’t a good man,” he said finally.

“What does that even mean?”

“You forget what I do for a livin’?”

“Oh…” she mumbled, “…that.”

“Yeah. That.”

She thought of his bloody shirt from earlier, his odd mood since. “Did something happen today?” she asked.

It took a while, but eventually he said “Had to do somethin' I ain’t proud of,” with some reluctance.

There was a very long silence between them. Savigne didn’t have Arthur’s sharp perception, but she was convinced that he was at last asleep. His heartbeat was steady and his breathing low. 

“When I was twelve or thirteen, I was transferred to this orphanage in a small town for a few years,” she whispered to the darkness of the tent. “There was a Tommy there. Some kid, maybe like early twenties, who was a menace. The meanest person you can imagine and crazy, too.” 

When she had been in her own tent, she would sometimes talk to herself. Because most of her life was spent around others, in rooms with multiple bunk beds, in meal halls filled with other kids, in crowded classrooms, having a place that belonged just to her, where she was alone was a luxury. Talking to herself in the privacy of her own tent had been an affirmation that she had earned it, that she had made it.

“He had his own gang. He wasn’t even that big; he was a gangly, wiry kid, but you know how some people have that something that others fear and follow?” she asked, a rhetorical question she didn’t expect an answer to. “He had that. There were men older than him in that gang, kissing up to him all day, acting like foot soldiers to him. Anyway, Tommy would go around causing all kinds of mayhem, beating folks, robbing them, extorting them, you name it.”

“Eventually he found out that Mister Stiller…” she hesitated, trying to think how to say it, even though she was her only audience. “He…uh…‘liked’…his daughter…a little too much.” Her face heated up in the dark but she kept still, not wanting to squirm and wake him behind her. Thinking of Elizabeth always made her want to squirm.

“Everyone knew about it. They pitied Elizabeth. Folks were extra gentle to her. Like, they would give her free cans of food when she went grocery shopping or an extra few feet of cloth if she was at the tailor or they would give her a discount if she needed new shoes. As if all that would make up for the horror that girl was suffering through every night,” she hissed, clenching her jaw. 

“But nobody had the courage to do anything about it. Not the so-called law, not the judges, not the churchgoers sitting next to him every Sunday. Because Mister Stiller was an important man and he owned half the town. But, you see, he didn’t own Tommy.”

“One night Tommy broke into his house, slapped his wife around when she tried to stop him, dragged Mister Stiller out to his horse, took him god knows where and beat the living shit out of him. I mean, ‘breaking both arms, both legs, cracking his skull, splitting some of his ribs’ kind of beating. It's not like Tommy liked Elizabeth or anything, it was the principle of the thing, you know? Unlike all those ‘proper’ townsfolk, he wasn’t willing to look the other way. Mister Stiller miraculously lived, in case you’re wondering, but he never walked again. He never ate solid food again. Among other things. Can’t say I’m sorry about that.”

Something hooted outside and she wondered what it was. The tent swayed gently in the summer breeze, shadows moving. Arthur was warm and quiet behind her. Everyone in camp sounded asleep, too. A sense of belonging came over her, of comfort, of…home. Something about the moment was perfect and she paused, mystified and spellbound by the feeling.

“Now, people knew it was Tommy, of course,” she whispered on after a while, “But once again, nobody did anything. That’s small towns for you. Probably smart, considering the boy had his own army at that point and besides, nobody was eager to become the next Mister Stiller.”

“I think on that sometimes and I think ‘so was Tommy a bad man?’ And I think, yes, he probably he was. To many people, most people even, he definitely was a terrible man. But I bet to at least one person in that town, he will forever be the greatest man who ever lived.” 

She listened to the steady drumming of his heartbeat on her back. Her mind went to the day when she was standing in that dark pantry, her wrists tied, terrified. She couldn’t make out the muffled words outside the door but she sensed the intent, an inkling of what was waiting for her and it had made her shake like a leaf. She didn’t know if she had the strength, the resolve to go through it, to go somewhere else in her head when it happened, and then when it happened again. And again.

“You’re never going to convince me that you’re not a good man,” she whispered, trembling with the memory.

She jumped with surprise when his hand slowly moved to cover hers. She slightly curled her fingers around his, anchoring the hold. He didn’t say anything but she felt a warm kiss bloom on her shoulder like a flower. 

She thought she would be up all night, haunted by old memories, but she was fast asleep when another hoot came, not that much later.

[therentyoupay]

18. "You look lost." for jelsa ??? :3c

from this askbox meme!

"On the contrary," she says, slotting a hand over one cocked hip, sending shimmering fractals of reflected light across the inner walls of the glacier. "I live here."

Jack blinks. "Okay. So... Am I lost?"

The look of mild antagonism in her eyes disappears, and the judgmental slant of her brow softens into something more perplexed and curious than defensive. Jack twists his staff behind his back with a flick of his wrist—partly to seem unarmed but mostly to fill the silence.

"Are you?" the woman in white asks, her gaze narrowing at his bare feet on the ice. Concern curves into the lines of her mouth, her brows. "How did you get in here?"

Jack wasn't sure how well 'Oh! I was just flying around and passed through this funny-looking cloud and found this super cool glacier in the middle of the sea and decided to poke around!' would, no pun intended, fly.

"I don't know," he shrugs, sloooowly making his way closer to where she stands in the center of the cavern. He is careful not to watch her directly, and instead makes a show of looking up and around and admiring the giant slabs of ancient ice—he can feel the Old Power in them, kind of similar to how Manny feels—but out of the corner of his eye, he can see that she still stiffens up, wary of his not-so-subtle encroaching. Her shoulders, he notices, are bare. He tightens his grip on his staff, behind his back. "How do people usually get in here?"

"They don't."

Interesting. "How did you get in here?"

She doesn't answer him, which isn't a surprise at this point. "You aren't wearing any shoes," she observes, a question mark hanging in the freezing air of the chamber.

Jack knows he should try to be polite—has actually been working really hard on it, thank you very much—but he can't resist just a tiny bit of cheek. "I'm not," he agrees, and to emphasize his point, he takes another step closer to her with a cheerful glint in his eyes. He crosses both hands behind his back to clutch his staff behind him—relaxed, but ready.

You're like me, Jack knows, but not?

The woman in white's gaze travels over his hoodie, his old pants, his messy hair. It lingers on the drawstring cords at his collar: on the frost that lingers there. Her gaze snaps to his like an accusation. Like a wish.

"You're like me," she says, "but not."

Jack feels the magic in the walls, threaded into the frozen veins of this ancient labyrinth of secrets. Some instinct inside compels him to slowly reach out a hand and twist the molecules of air above his palm into sparkling diamonds of swirling snow, delicate and fragile: he watches her as she watches, transfixed, as his snowflakes dissolve into the air and become a part of the very fabric of the cavern that contains them, forever with the memory of this moment. Her eyes widen, and her fists clench.

Interesting.

"I don't think I'm lost," Jack says, slowly, like he might to a skittish deer; he knows, in this moment, that she has never met anyone like herself, either. I think we were supposed to find each other, he knows, but does not say.

The woman in white considers him. Raises her delicate palm aloft. Jack swallows. Now who's the deer?

Watches as, from the fabric of time and space above her palm, she pulls forth a wave of Old Magic so powerfully condensed that Jack nearly stumbles back—only catches himself at the last moment, as his staff drops to his side, at the ready—and the woman in white's Old Magic coalesces into a tiny flake of glimmering ice and snow. She briefly closes her eyes, and warmth suffuses the flake, dissolving it exquisitely into nothing but memory, and leaving the air of the cavern alive and singing.

The woman in white looks him in the eye; he'd gotten rather too close when he'd thought he was being sneaky, and now it's hard to meet the blue of her gaze. But he does.

"I don't think you're lost, either," she whispers. She glances at his hands.

Jack swallows. The air in the cavern surrounding them feels alive. He feels like he could do anything; when her gaze returns to his, he knows it. For whatever reason—we are supposed to find each other.

Slowly, through the heavy invisible energy sending sharp shocks of electricity over his skin, Jack Frost reaches out his hand to the woman in white, and waits for her to take it.

→ on ao3

[zenlesszonezero]

You feelin' fired up now? Make way for the undefeated Champion! —Welcome to New Eridu!— PS5™/iOS/Android/PC | Version 1.3 "Virtual Revenge" of Zenless Zone Zero, HoYoverse's urban fantasy ARPG, is out now

[sequinsmile-x]

Stained Glass Windows - Chapter Forty Two

Life was complicated, but they wouldn't have it any other way.

-x-

Hi friends <3

Hope you are all okay. Thank you so much for your continued love of this version of them, it means the world. Lily might be here now, but I still have so much of their story to tell <3

I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I am excited to know what you think!

Happy Sunday!

-x-

Words: 3k

A full list of warnings for the fic can be found on the Series Master List and will be updated as we go along.

Read over on Ao3, or below the cut

Emily had always hated hospitals. 

When she was young, only a couple of years older than Jack was now, she’d sprained her wrist. They had just arrived in Paris, and she’d fallen over whilst running around on the hardwood floors, her socks not giving her the grip she needed as her father chased her, both of them laughing as Elizabeth rolled her eyes. When Emily fell, her little hand reaching out towards the ground in a last-ditch attempt to stop herself, her father picked her up immediately, soothing her as she cried, not able to bear anyone even touching her wrist. 

Elizabeth had not gone to the hospital with them. Her glare aimed towards her husband as she said she had work to do, and that it was his fault Emily was hurt. 

Her memories of all were hazy, everything seeming so big and scary as she leant against her father, desperately wishing her mother was with her, whilst everyone around her spoke in a language she didn't yet know. She was sent home with a soft splint on her arm and a new hatred for something that had never entirely gone away. 

When she had her surgery to donate some of her liver to her mother, she left the hospital a couple of days before the doctors wanted her to. She happily signed the forms agreeing she was leaving against medical advice, ignoring the pull in her abdomen as she packed her bag and the nausea that took days to shift. The thought of being just down the hall from her mother, of being so close when the emotional distance had never felt so substantial, was too much to bear. 

She wanted to do the same now, to go and recover in the comfort of her own bed. To see her husband all the time, and not just during the allotted visiting hours as she had the last three days. She wanted to take her daughter home.

If it was just her to consider she was sure she’d already have left the hospital, or at the very least tried to convince Aaron to talk to the doctor and nurses for her, but it wasn’t just her. 

It never would be again. 

No matter how much she was told Lily was okay, that the emergency that had happened in the lead-up to her birth hadn’t caused any damage, the concern lingered under Emily’s skin. She found it difficult to be separated from her daughter. She turned down any offers from the nurses to take Lily to the nursery. She preferred to keep her nearby, even if it meant she wasn’t getting the amount of rest the doctors and Aaron seemed keen on her getting before she went home. The thought of being separated, of not being able to see her little girl, was enough to make her chest get tight, the fear that had spread through her veins as she was being prepared for the surgery she was recovering from making a return any time Lily was out of sight. 

She paces her hospital room with Lily in her arms, pleased to finally be wearing her own pjyamas that Aaron had brought in for her, not the scratchy gown she’d worn for the first couple of days. Her doctor had encouraged her to move around, and it just so happened Lily seemed to like it when she was on the move, her cries quieting down whenever Emily gently rocked her and softly sang to her in French. It made Emily smile, her habit of singing to her bump when she was pregnant clearly having paid off. 

She looks up as the door opens and she averts her gaze as her nurse, Alice, raises an eyebrow at her. 

“I was told I couldn’t carry anything heavier than her,” she says, patting Lily’s back, “She’s lighter than my cat for god’s sake.” 

“That wasn’t my concern,” Alice says, nodding past her to the little paper cup with her pain medication still in it on the side table, “You didn’t take your painkillers.” 

Emily clears her throat and adjusts her hold on Lily, internally berating herself as it makes her wince, pain from her incision lancing up her abdomen, “I don’t need them.” 

Alice hums and walks over, gently taking Lily from Emily, “Let’s have a little look at how Miss Lily is doing,” she says, resting the baby in her bassinet so she can do her usual checks on her. Emily lowers herself onto the bed, her hand pressing into her belly as she does so, the pain making her screw her eyes tightly closed, “You really should take the medication.” 

Emily groans, opening her eyes and looking over at the nurse, “I’m fine,” she says again, not sure she believes it herself, and she looks at Lily, smiling as she sees her shifting about, her limbs moving in short, sharp movements as Alice checks her over, “Is she okay?” 

Alice smiles and nods as she wraps Lily back up in her blanket, “She is perfectly fine,” she says, turning back to look at Emily, “Unlike her Mom who had major surgery three days ago and is refusing to take painkillers.” 

She sighs and reaches over to the bassinet, smiling as Lily’s tiny fist wrapped around her baby finger, the tight grip soothing the anxiety that had been building in her chest. 

“I’d just…rather go without them if I can,” she says, swallowing thickly, avoiding Alice’s gaze as she continues to stare at Lily. She looks up and the understanding look on the other woman’s face, combined with the pain she was struggling to ignore, makes her say the part she’d never said out loud, “Addiction…is a bit of an issue in my family,” she says, biting the inside of her cheek to stop herself from crying, looking back down at Lily, “My mother she…” she clears her throat again and shakes her head, lifting the hand that wasn’t next to Lily to wipe a stray tear from her cheek, “Anyway, I’ve always been hesitant with taking anything stronger than Tylenol once a month when I get cramps.” 

It was something she’d struggled with whenever she’d been prescribed painkillers over the years, bright orange bottles that stared back at her, the pills and her future visible through the coloured plastic. Her transformation into her mother both her greatest fear and what she’d once thought was inevitable. It meant she’d always shoved the bottles to the back of the medicine cabinet, or returned them to the pharmacy unused, smiling in the way she’d been taught to as a child as she ignored the confusion from the pharmacist at the sight of the unbroken seal. 

It was a concern she’d only ever shared with Aaron before, something she knew she wouldn’t be sharing with Alice if it wasn’t for the hormones she was still completely at the mercy of, and he understood. He shared the same fears because of his father, and she’d had to convince him to take painkillers after he was attacked by Foyet. 

“What we’ve got you on is a very low dose,” Alice says, putting Emily’s glass of water in her hand, “And you need it so you can recover quicker and look after that precious little girl of yours.” 

“She’s right you know.”

Emily rolls her eyes at the sound of her husband’s voice and looks over to the doorway to see him standing there, a soft smile on his face. 

“Hi, honey,” she says, her voice overly sweet, a warning sign that he’d become familiar with during the last few weeks of her pregnancy.  

“Hi sweetheart,” he says as he walks over and drops a kiss on her forehead before turning to look at Lily, lifting the tiny baby up into his arms, “How are my girls doing?” 

“Lily passed her checks with flying colours,” Alice says, heading towards the door, “Your wife, however, could do with some convincing to take her painkillers.”

Emily narrows her eyes as Alice leaves the room, muttering under her breath as Aaron sits on the bed next to her, “Just when I was starting to like her.” 

Aaron chuckles and presses a kiss to her temple, “You should take your medication, baby.” 

She sighs and rests her head on his shoulder, tilting her head so she’s looking down at Lily, reaching out to run her knuckle over the newborn’s soft cheek. 

“I know. I just…” she drifts off, the vulnerability that was as overwhelming as her exhaustion thrumming under her skin stopping her from putting it into words. 

“I know,” he says, not needing her to say it. He knew her better than she did sometimes, and she was sure now was one of those moments. She was awash with hormones and was exhausted from having a baby, her usual ability to compartmentalise left somewhere back in her second trimester when she used to be able to control her emotions, “I know, Em,” he says, smiling at her as he looks up from Lily, “But you need to look after yourself so you can look after her.” 

It’s a dirty trick and they both know it, her need to look after the people she loves well known to override any sense of self-preservation. He knows if it was just her, if she was in the hospital because of an injury she’d got on a case, he would struggle to get her to take anything. She glares at him for a second before she reaches for the paper cup with the medication and the glass of water, taking them with little fanfare. 

“Clever,” she mutters as she puts the glass back down and raises an eyebrow at him when he smiles. 

“I thought so,” he says, winking at her before his attention is pulled down to Lily who starts to cry, “You’re okay princess,” he says softly, rocking her slightly, “You want Mommy?” 

Emily smiles as he passes Lily over, love blooming in her chest as she takes her into her arms, the fact she was someone's mom now, that she had a little girl, still somewhat settling in. 

“Hi, sweet girl,” Emily says, smiling as Lily settles down slightly as soon as she’s in her arms, a small sense of pride washing over her, “Do you think we can convince Daddy to break us out of here early?” 

Aaron chuckles and kisses her cheek, his arm looped around her shoulders as he pulls them in closer, “Not a chance.” 

___

Two days later, she sighs in relief as Aaron pulls the car into the driveway, wincing as the car comes to a stop, the jolting of the vehicle making her groan.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he says as he stops the car, his eyes meeting hers in the rear-view mirror. She’d insisted on riding in the back of the car with Lily, her hand on the car seat the entire journey. Aaron had driven slower than she’d ever known him to, something he’d attributed to having ‘precious cargo’ in the back of the car. 

“That’s ok,” she says, her voice strained, the drive more difficult on her than she thought it would be, “Can you get her?” She asks as she undoes her seatbelt, groaning as she pushes the door open, “Even I think picking her up in the car seat is probably a bit of a stretch right now.” 

“Of course,” he replies, getting out of the car and doing as she’s asked, unhooking Lily’s car seat and smiling as he lifts it up. Lily was fast asleep, her lips in a small pout that reminded him of how looked when she slept, and he makes a mental note that the car seemed to be something that relaxed her, the exact opposite of what it had done for Jack when he was this small. He closes the car door, and is only partially surprised when he finds his wife already at the stairs of the porch, her hand on one of the bannisters as she prepares herself to take the first step, “Sweetheart, let me help you.”

He makes it to her side quickly, leaving her bags in the car to collect later, hopefully when he’s convinced her to take a nap, and he doesn’t miss how she rolls her eyes at him.

“Aaron, I’m fine,” she says, purposely ignoring how the short journey from the car to the house had made her slightly breathless, her grip on the bannister giving away the discomfort she was in. He knew she’d weaned herself off of most of her medication already, now only really taking it when it was time to try to get some sleep. He knew it was important to her, so he didn’t want to argue with her on it, instead settling on simply helping her where he could. 

“I know you are,” he says, not acknowledging the way she glares at him in response as he loops his arm around her and places the hand not holding Lily’s car seat on her hip, “But think about it this way, you’ll be doing me a favour.” 

She narrows her eyes at him, leaning slightly into him without realising she was doing it, “What do you mean?” 

“Well,” he says, attempting nonchalance, “This way I get to hold both my girls as we walk Lily into the house at the same time.” 

She knows it’s nonsense, just like she knows she realistically cannot take the stairs herself without his support, but she loves him for it. Loves that he knows her well enough to not outright tell her she was being stubborn, but offering her an alternative instead. 

“Well,” she says, finally resting more of her weight on his side, one of her arms snaking around his back, “Who am I to deny you that?”

He smiles and kisses her forehead before he attempts to walk up the stairs, “Ready?” 

“Wait,” she says, gripping his hip and stopping him, “I’m not about to walk into a house full of people am I?” She asks, frowning at the thought of it, “Pen kept texting me about a welcome home party and-”

“I very firmly reminded her of what happened last time she crossed boundaries,” he assures her, one of the corners of his lips turning upwards as he thinks of the conversation he’d had with their friends just the day before when he confirmed Emily and Lily were coming home but wouldn’t immediately be up to visitors. They were disappointed, Penelope visibly more so than the others, but understood, “I told them when you’re ready, we’ll let them know.” 

She nods, breathing out a deep sigh of relief as she leans in and kisses him, “Let’s go inside,” she says, looking around him at a still-sleeping Lily in her car seat, “It’s too warm out here for her.” 

Aaron helps her up the stairs at her pace, not saying anything when she grips at him with enough force to wrinkle his polo shirt as they finally make it to the front door. He briefly places the car seat down on the porch and digs out his keys. He unlocks the door and picks up Lily again, guiding Emily into the house with his hand at the small of her back. 

They walk to the kitchen and as soon as he has placed the car seat on the counter Emily is unbuckling Lily, smiling contentedly as she lifts her into her arms, holding her against her chest. 

“Welcome home, Lily,” Emily says, smiling at him as he walks the few paces towards them, careful as he wraps his arms around them, well aware of Emily’s residual pain and just how delicate and small Lily seemed. 

“Welcome home,” Aaron repeats, kissing Emily’s cheek to hide how his words catch in his throat. He cups the back of Lily’s head, content to let himself be relaxed by the familiar scent of his wife’s shampoo and the way she seemed to already be wearing motherhood like a fine perfume. A natural to it like he knew she would be, something he knew he’d have to reassure her of in the days to come when the realities of having a newborn in the house would settle in. 

They hear a distant meow in the house, followed by a familiar pitter-patter of paws on the hardwood, and Emily chuckles, disconnecting herself from Aaron as she heads to the living room where she knows she’ll find Sergio. 

“Come on, sweet girl,” she says, walking slowly to the living room, closely followed by Aaron, “Now you’re home it’s fine for you to meet your best friend.” 

He looks around, his eyes falling on photos they kept on the wall, and the gaps he knew would be filled with pictures of Lily, of the adventures they were all yet to share. The house covered in memories that Emily was insistent on displaying, an overcorrection of sorts of growing up somewhere where her photos had been limited to her mother’s office, as if her pride in her daughter was something to hide. 

He joins them in the living room, and the sight he is greeted with eases something deep in his gut. The house had been far too quiet when he’d been there the last few days. The usual life that ran throughout it, that made everything brighter, was nowhere to be found without Emily or his children. It was only now, with Emily and Lily home safe, that he could finally relax. The fear that had overwhelmed him ever since they told them Lily was at risk during labour, the fear he hadn’t yet let himself fully feel, fades away. Pushed into a box he knows will open one day, but for now, he lets the joy override it. The sight of Emily holding Lily close and gently murmuring into her skin, Sergio standing on the back of the couch and sniffing the air curiously, unsure about the new person in his home, the balm Aaron had needed for days. 

This house wasn’t his home, they were, and he didn’t know what he would have done if he’d lost them. 

-x-

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[vicvinegarandhughhoney]

the harder the rain, honey the sweeter the sun

Fandom: AP Bio

Pairing: Jack Griffin/Lynette Hofstadter

Prompt: Motion Sickness

Jack gets motion sick. That's it.

(TW for vomit)

Read here or below the cut

“Ralph, if you do not let me sit at the front of this goddamn bus I swear I’m going home right now.”

Jack’s late to the school trip, because of course he is, and Lynette watches him from her window seat at the back of the bus with a bemused smile on her face. He's stood outside directly facing Durbin, arms crossed like an army staff sergeant even as his entitled behaviour spills over into brat territory. He apparently wants to sit at the front. Bad. 

“I’m sorry, Jack, but you arrived nearly-” Durbin checks his watch. “Half an hour after you were supposed to get here- if you'd been here on time, I might have been able to get you a seat near the front, but I'm afraid there's nothing I can do now.”

Jack huffs exasperatedly, turning to glare at his front-seated opponents. “Half the kids up there could easily swap seats to somewhere further up the bus. It's ridiculous.”

Durbin shrugs. “Maybe, but they're all settled now. You’ll cause commotion if you try to change them all around like that. You know how many rivalries there are in high school, Jack? Hundreds.”

“I don't care whether they declare world war three because of me, Ralph! Just move them around!”

But for once, Durbin is putting his foot down. He shakes his head, and gestures to the door of the bus. 

“Not possible. Now c’mon, man. Go sit down before you make things harder than they have to be.”

Lynette can tell Jack is pissed- he has that same vein popping in his neck which appears when someone criticises Henry David Thoreau. Still, he seems to consider admitting defeat on the bus front preferable to embarrassing himself by pushing it further, so with flaming cheeks he storms up the steps and down the aisle towards her. The moment he flops into the seat next to her, she arches a brow. 

“Is it so bad sitting next to me?”

He sighs. Shakes his head gently, even as tension remains in every limb. “It’s not that, Lyns. I would’ve got you to sit next to me wherever in the bus we ended up.”

She frowns. “So? What's the big deal with sitting back here then?”

There's a split second where Jack’s cheeks flush even redder, right before he composes himself and shrugs. 

“It’s… it’s nothing. Just- you get a better view from the front, s’all.”

A better view? She’s not about to press it, but God is he particularly bad at lying today.

The engine soon starts to rumble, and Durbin stands at the front of the bus to begin his spiel about seatbelts and behaviour. They’re going to the Toledo Museum of Art, not MOMA, but evidently the future reputation of Whitlock is at stake here. Durbin means business. 

Jack seems a little distanced during the speech, which is to be expected. Lynette catches him fiddling with his buckle for a while, shifting in his seat to get comfortable, rummaging around in his bag, etc etc. At one point, she reaches out a hand to catch his, hovering as it is over a bracelet on his other arm that he's been slingshotting against his skin for a minute straight. 

“Hey, you’re gonna hurt yourself if you're not careful.” She chides gently. 

Jack doesn't say anything, merely rouges a little further and pulls his sweater secretively over his wrist so the bracelet is no longer visible. Huh. Odd. 

“Alright,” Durbin finishes, clapping his hands together. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

He swings round to sit down, and almost immediately the bus lurches forward. Lynette doesn't miss the way Jack’s hands leap out to grab hold of the edges of his seat (even if he does pull them away again almost as soon as they find purchase). 

She raises an eyebrow in silent question, but he keeps his gaze forwards, Adam's apple bobbing. If she were a betting woman, she'd wager that something's bothering him. 

If only she knew what it was. 

The first ten minutes of the journey Jack spends with his eyes shut, hands fidgeting in his lap. He flinches at the occasional bump in the road but other than that? He's still as a statue. 

Things take a turn around the twenty minute mark, though. He opens his eyes, and there's a slight flash of panic in them- one that he conceals well except when they roll over yet another speed bump, at which point his pupils dilate with obvious fear and his hands reach down again to grip at his seat. His moments of stillness are over, too. Now, he’s shifting uncomfortably in his seat like no position is bearable for his old bones. Lynette grins. 

“These Toledo roads too juddery for you, old man? You look like you're worried you're gonna step off with bruises.”

Jack wears an unbelievably fake smile for a second, until another pothole wipes it clean off his face- as well as, apparently, every ounce of colour.

The flush on his cheeks has completely disappeared, replaced by an uncanny pallor that Lynette has only seen on him once, when he was so sick with the flu he couldn't even hold his own head up. She frowns.

“You alright?”

He nods, too quick to be sincere, then hurriedly leans down to rummage through the bag at his feet. From it he withdraws a little orange pill bottle, pours a few into his hand, and tips them back shakily. Follows it up with a meagre sip of water.

Lynette spies the label just before he shoves the bottle right back down into the bag.

Dramamine.

Oh. Oh.

He must notice her expression change, because he suddenly looks at her imploringly. Desperately. She expects him to tell her they need to pull over, but instead he swallows, appearing more nauseated by the second, and murmurs,

“Please- please don't tell anyone.”

Lynette's heart breaks a little.

“Oh, hon, you know that I’d never tell anybody something you didn't want them to know… still, do you want me to go see if Durbin can get a seat change?” Jack’s eyes widen, and she puts a reassuring hand on his arm. “Look, I know you don't want him to know, but I’m sure that if he understood the reasoning behind you wanting a seat near the front, he might… Jack?”

She realises far too late that his eyes widening was not in fact a response to her suggestion, but instead a far more dire warning.

Now, he closes them entirely, trembling a little as he breathes rhythmically. There's sweat beading on the back of his neck.

“M… think I’m gonna be sick…” he murmurs weakly.

It's hardly a surprise. He's so pale now that it's even clear to some kids across the aisle that Mr Griffin? He isn't feeling so hot.

Lynette swears under her breath. Unbuckles her belt.

“Alright, hold on, Jack, just hold on- I’m gonna go tell the driver to stop, okay?”

As she stands, he gropes shakily about the air for her arm, before finding and clutching it.

“W-wait, Lyns, don't go.” His eyes remain squeezed shut. His other hand keeps that vice-like grip on his seat.

Lynette feels truly sorry for him. God, she does. She can see kids from further away in the bus starting to gossip now- after all, she's stood, and her boyfriend is holding her arm like it's the only thing keeping him tethered to this realm while he swallows convulsively.

“I gotta get the driver, sweetheart, but I promise I'll be back.”

She reaches up to briefly swipe her thumb along the jut of his cheekbone; watches him melt, shuddering, into the touch before she reluctantly pulls away and hurries into the aisle. The bus continues thundering along the roads, sending her teetering this way and that while she tries to move forward in a way that makes even her queasy. She dreads to think how Jack’s holding up with the movement.

Eventually, she reaches the front. Durbin is sat talking to Helen, but he trails off when he sees Lynette approaching the driver.

“Ms Hofstadter? What are you doing?”

She ignores him. There isn't time for explanatory remarks.

“Excuse me, driver?”

The guy’s wearing shades and a little earpiece (way too high-end for goddamn Toledo) and at first he doesn't seem to hear her, so she clears her throat and tries again.

“Excuse me? Driver?”

He starts, eyes flitting from the road to her desperate expression.

“Uh, can I help you?”

“I need you to pull over.”

Durbin leans forward to tap her on the shoulder.

“Uh, Miss Hofstadter, I’m afraid we can't just-”

“Ralph, it's important.”

“-stop the bus for every whim, we'll be there soon and-”

“Ralph.” Lynette says brusquely, turning to look at him. “If we don't stop this bus right now, Jack is going to… Ralph… everywhere.”

Durbin frowns, mouthing the words as if to make sense of them. It takes a few seconds, but soon his own eyes are widening with realisation.

“He’s…?”

“Motion sick.” Lynette confirms with a nod. “And he's not looking good back there, Durbs. We have to pull over. Now.”

Thankfully, Durbin sighs. Nods to the driver, who's been listening in to the conversation and looks pretty damn eager to spare his bus from the havoc which could ensue if he doesn't follow Lynette's instructions.

The moment she knows the bus is starting to slow, she speedwalks back up the aisle towards Jack, who’s now hunched over, whole body trembling slightly. He has a fist held to his mouth, the other arm now slung protectively around his stomach.

“Hey, sweetheart?” She crouches down next to him in the aisle, uncaring that everybody’s eyes are now on them. “Jack?”

She rubs him gently on the arm and he rears his head, looking utterly miserable.

“We’re pulling over now.” She soothes, stroking the wispy hair at the back of his neck, damp with sweat. “Just a few more seconds and we can get off this bus, alright, hon?”

He closes his eyes again, groaning softly as at last the movement grinds to a halt.

“Alright, up we get, sweetheart. That’s it. Nice and slow.”

Clearly too sick to give a shit about how he's perceived, Jack lets Lynette half haul him up from his seat, her hand remaining on the small of his back as she walks him down the aisle of the bus towards the door. His steps are wobbly. Everything's still trembling.

By the time their shoes hit the asphalt, Jack’s footsteps grow more urgent, and Lynette follows him into the woods by the roadside. He’s clearly hoping to get far enough in that his unravelling isn't witnessed by the multitude of high schoolers only metres away, many now with their faces pressed against the glass to see what's happening. Unfortunately, though, his body isn't so kind as to let him get out of sight before he doubles over, retching painfully.

Lynette’s brow knits with concern. “Oh, Jack.”

Her hand moves to rub circles into his quivering back, all his muscles taut with anticipation. One of his fists is still held vaguely in front of his mouth, the other hand splayed out on his knee.

“It’s alright, hon. Just relax, okay? You’ll feel better afterwards, I promise.”

He shakes his head briefly, wordlessly, but immediately ducks back down again as his body makes another attempt at expelling everything in his stomach. This time it’s pretty successful, and Lynette turns her head away, eyes closing with sympathy at the sound of his breathless heaving.

“There we go. Good job, Jack. You’re doing so good, sweetheart.”

She continues to reassure him for another minute give or take, wincing every so often at how violent and painful everything appears to be, until at last it dissipates into panting and the gentler sound of Jack spitting into the dirt. 

Accompanied, at last, by a weak exhalation that sounds more like a sob. 

“It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re alright… Feel any better?”

Shakily, he pulls himself upright and swipes at his mouth with the back of his hand. Turns to her, tears of exertion and defeat running down his cheeks. 

Nods. 

“D-don’t feel so s-sick, just… just t-tired. And- and e-embarrassed.”

Lynette surreptitiously takes his hand. Squeezes it. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about, Jack. These things happen, right?”

“But the kids-”

“The kids have 15 second attention spans- they’ll see a sculpture that looks kinda like a penis at the museum and this’ll be a distant memory.”

Jack swallows, still shaky. “I- I guess.”

“You ready to head back to the bus, hon? Durbs is bound to let us sit near the front now, and you can take some more Dramamine as well. I’m pretty sure you puked up that other stuff.”

The tips of his ears redden slightly as he nods. He still looks mortified, but at least when Lynette gently tugs on his hand, he follows her back to the bus (even if he does avoid looking up at any of the windows). 

There's a lively buzz of chatter when they approach, but the moment they ascend the stairs, the whole vehicle sinks into silence. Jack’s grip on Lynette's hand tightens. 

“Hey, Jack.” Durbin says, voice soft. Lynette's sure this tone frustrates Jack more than anything. He isn't weak. He isn’t delicate. 

Well, maybe he is a little, but that's okay. It doesn't mean he needs to be spoken to like he's about to crumple at any moment. 

“I got a few of the kids to move.” Durbin continues. “Hopefully the seats up front’ll be, uh, better for you. Do you…” He looks up tentatively to Lynette now. “Does he need a bag or something? We carry a few for the travel sick kids but-”

Jack pulls away from Lynette and walks quickly to the new seats, ignoring Durbin’s small plea for him to hang on. Lynette watches him slink into the row of two seats that's now free and buckle himself into the one nearest the window, cheeks aflame and eyes fixed on the scenery outside. 

She turns back to Durbin. “I’ll take one of the bags just in case.” She says in a low voice, slipping the one she receives into her pocket. “But for the love of God don't compare Jack to a travel sick kid, and don’t speak about him like he isn't there.”

Durbin stammers. “I- I wasn’t trying to-”

Lynette sighs. “I know… I know. He’s just feeling a little sorry for himself, and the last thing he needs is more humiliation- even if it isn't intentional.”

She gives him a small smile to show she isn't really upset (her tone often slips into confrontational when Jack’s wellbeing is concerned) and quickly slips into the seat beside her boyfriend. He’s still looking blankly out the window, Adam's apple bobbing every so often to conceal the rising emotion. 

Carefully, she reaches down for his bag (already placed at his feet by a student- probably Heather) and retrieves the little bottle of Dramamine. She measures out a couple of pills and holds them in the palm of her outstretched hand for Jack.

“Hey. Sweetheart. Gonna take some more meds for me?”

He turns slowly towards her, cheeks still stained with tear tracks. Thankfully, he doesn't put up a fuss about the Dramamine- merely tips them back and settles into his seat. It's a clear sign that he's exhausted. 

“Here.” She offers him his bottle of water. “You know what I say about dry-swallowing shit. C’mon. Chase it down with something. I think you need the fluids anyway.”

His hands are still trembling when he takes the water bottle (it could be why he was reluctant to get it himself), and he swallows the sips extra cautiously like he's still afraid he’ll hurl at any moment. 

“Good job, Jack.” She whispers. 

At the front of the bus, Durbin stands up briefly, directing a questioning glance and a thumbs up towards Lynette.

We good to go?

She gives him a reciprocal thumbs up.

Good to go. 

In truth, she really isn't sure whether Jack is good to go. She doesn't know how travel sickness works, whether he's going to be fine now that he's got everything out of his system or whether the moment the engine starts back up again, she’ll need to reach for that bag in her pocket. What she does know, however, is that the longer they stay stopped here, the more Jack is going to feel the weight of everybody's eyes on his. The more the shame will grow. 

So she sits back as the bus rumbles to life, and reaches out to take his clammy hand in hers.

It doesn't take long for him to drift off- the medication, the stress, and pure physical exhaustion render sleep inevitable. He tries to fight it at first, perhaps still too self-conscious to submit to yet another display of ‘weakness’, but his blinks grow more languid by the second, and his breaths begin to slow of their own accord. The endless Ohio roads melt into one great snaking blob in the steadily misting window pane. 

His chin tips forward a few times, then jerks back up, before at last Lynette eases his head against her shoulder, squeezing his hand. 

“Go to sleep, sweetheart.” She murmurs into his ear as the kids chatter about nothing important around them. 

He sinks fully against her. Clearly, permission was all he needed. 

She snakes a hand around his back so she can wrap her arm around him and subtly stroke his hair. Pulls him even closer. Presses a kiss to his forehead. 

Half a mile down the road, they’ll arrive at their destination and the kids will file out of the bus. Some will pause in the aisle, curiosity piqued. 

“Is Mr Griffin alright?” They’ll whisper, touchingly conscious of keeping their voices down. 

Lynette will smile gently. “He hasn’t been feeling very well, that's all. He’ll be alright soon, I promise.”

They’ll nod their heads sympathetically, and soon will file off like the rest. Jack and Lynette will be left alone. Even the bus driver will abandon his post for the time being. 

Still, Jack will sleep. 

Still, Lynette will stay. 

[shadyb00ts]

A Long & Brutally Honest Review of The Tortured Poets Department

So, if you follow this account for some reason, you'd know that four years ago, I wrote about how the albums folklore and evermore made me a Swiftie again. Those two albums were a big part of my 2020 and represent the evolution of Taylor Swift that made me care about her work again. Before that point I suppose I had been more of a casual fan of Taylor, and I never really got into Pop Taylor that much save for 1989. But when she released her pandemic duology, it really hooked me, considering she was playing to her greatest strength--storytelling. I kind of consider them her best work by far. Fair warning, I'm going to bring up folklore and evermore a lot in this review, so to simplify, I'm just going to refer to the two projects as folkmore.

2020 was definitely a high point for me in terms of general Swiftie-isms. 2021 also continued that with the re-releases of Fearless and Red, albums I deeply loved as a teenager. And then in 2022, she released Midnights, her first brand new autobiographical pop record since Lover in 2019, and uhh... I never did a full-fledged review of Midnights, but needless to say I didn't like it all that much. I thought it was a downgrade from the masterpieces of the folkmore duo, and only a few songs stood out to me. A lot of the project I thought was bland and generic for Taylor. I didn't really consider myself a Swiftie anymore after the Midnights era.

Well, I didn't think she'd somehow manage to make an album worse than that one, but here we are.

The thing about me is that, ever since folkmore, I always set myself up for disappointment when it comes to Taylor. When she announces a new project, I always hope that she does something that would really surprise me. Something new and unexpected, something that showcases her growth and evolution as an artist. As a pop music enthusiast since I was a child, I've grown used to pop stars reinventing their image, having unique and distinct eras to keep things fresh and keep everyone guessing.

I wish Taylor did this, and I think according to her fans, she does. In my opinion, Taylor likes to put herself in a box, and this album is the perfect encapsulation of that. Like Midnights, this album is a collection of songs that sound like they've already existed for years from her other albums. Barely any of the tracks made me feel anything really, and any one of them could belong in her other pop albums like Reputation and Lover.

As usual, she teamed up with her decade-long sole producer Jack Antonoff, and honestly, Jack Antonoff has made some great things in the past. Take Lorde's Melodrama for example, one of my all time favorite albums. He did some very interesting, out-of-the-ordinary production on that album. He's shown that he's capable of making really great stuff. This time around though, he created some of the most boring, snooze-fest synthpop I've heard in a while, with very little variety between songs.

Now I love synthpop as much as anyone; some of my favorite artists are MUNA, Allie X and Lights. Their brand of synthpop, however, has more of a grandiosity to it, a presence. Taylor herself has also proven that she can do synthpop of that vein, as 1989 had some great examples of it. This time however, she does nothing to elevate these milquetoast beats. A particularly scathing review I saw coined it as "dog water synth". There's so many recycled production elements, melodies and chord progressions. Taylor, not only am I begging you to work with anyone other than Jack Antonoff, I'm also begging you to stop having soooo many songs on your albums in C major. I get it, that's your key of choice and it's been that way since the beginning, but my god. Probably half this album is in C major. Please find another key.

So the production left a lot to be desired, but what about the lyrics? Taylor's strong suit has always been songwriting, right? And this album is supposed to contain self-proclaimed "tortured poetry", so it'll probably be her most beautifully written works yet. Right?

Well... no.

Something I've noticed about Swifties is that the majority of them only care about lyrics. If you pore through their live reactions of this album, the one thing they're listening for is lyrics. They don't particularly place any value in vocals or production, really anything outside of what Taylor wrote. They even make a meme out of pulling out a dictionary anytime Taylor drops a new project, cause Taylor's metaphors and word choices are so complex.

Do you remember that meme of someone talking about the show Rick & Morty? Some fan of that show made this long post about how a person has to have a very high IQ to understand Rick & Morty. The show where the most popular joke is an entire episode where Rick turns into a pickle and shouts "I'm Pickle Rick!!!!" for the entire runtime. Well, that same phenomenon is happening again with Swifties and this album.

I've seen more than a few of her diehard stans claiming that anyone who critiques or dislikes this album just doesn't understand "basic reading comprehension" or the concept of metaphors. That this album is just too smart for their tiny little brains to grasp. Mind you, this is an album with gems such as "You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate / We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist / I scratch your head, you fall asleep / Like a tattooed golden retriever" and "Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto" and let's not forget her romanticizing the 1830s "but without all the racists".

I resent the notion that this woman is exempt from criticism. Everything she writes is not gold. It boggles my mind that the same person who once wrote things like "Your Midas touch on the Chevy door / November flush and your flannel cure" or "Leaving like a father, running like water" or "I made you my temple, my mural, my sky / Now I'm begging for footnotes in the story of your life". She's proven time and time again that she's a very capable, very creative songwriter. And honestly, some of that is still present in this album, albeit very few and far between. It's bogged down by the above examples, which I think are some of her worst writing to date. And I thought "Hey kids, spelling is fun!" was bad.

One of the reasons the folkmore albums captivated me was that Taylor really flexed her storytelling muscles and wrote songs from other people's perspectives, even creating fictional characters. The song "this is me trying" from folklore is one of my favorite examples of this, a beautiful song about characters who are struggling with suicidal thoughts and alcoholism. Another standout in terms of writing is "epiphany", where she draws parallels between soldiers dying on beaches in World War II and the modern-day soldiers that were hospital workers during the height of the pandemic.

This was the type of shit that she never wrote about, because up until that point, her work had been 90% diaristic confessions. And yeah, that was the initial appeal with Taylor, that she was a small town girl whose songs felt like diary entries and you could really relate to her feelings. I remember listening to songs like White Horse and You're Not Sorry as a teenager and crying over a cheating ex that I never even had. Taylor was always really good at making music that perfectly sounded like whatever feeling she was trying to convey, and it's what made them so relatable.

Whenever she writes autobiographical songs nowadays, however, as a billionaire superstar writing about very specific scenarios and high profile relationships in her life, I find it hard to relate to anything, really. In this album for example, plenty of the songs are about her summer fling with Matty Healy, someone who I couldn't care less about. I was looking for songs about Joe Alwyn, because it was the longest relationship she had ever been in and he was a huge part of her life. And sure enough, songs like So Long London and loml did make me feel things, because I felt that her heartbreak was genuine over this relationship ending. So Long London is easily the best written song, because it's sincerely coming from a place of pain that many can relate to after a years-long love story ends. That to me encompasses the "tortured poetry" she was talking about more than any of the other songs were able to convey.

But like I said, most of this album is about Matty Healy. I have absolutely no idea what this man did that made her dedicate an entire album to him, a person that really does not matter in the grand scheme of things. He's a gross weirdo, so I mentally checked out during a lot of the songs centered around him, because no Taylor, I can't relate to the feeling of being a pop star that just got out of a seven year relationship and had a brief fling with a nasty lead singer of a band that's no longer relevant. That is a very specific thing that you went through that I have no strong feelings about, nor do I care about that much. I liked The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived though, I guess. I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to it, but it was decent and I liked the outro portion.

Another song I liked at first was Florida, the collaboration with Florence Welch. I think I liked it initially because A) Florence, B) it was finally something that sounded unique and different, and C) Florence's verse has a callback to the song "no body, no crime" from evermore which I thought was cute. But honestly, after a few more listens, the song is... Yeah, it's bad. The chorus is very grating to my ears, and not even Florence could save it. She sounds great of course, because it's her, but the song itself is just not giving what it's supposed to.

And then the other chunk of the album is about her current boyfriend, football player Travis Kelce. Because who couldn't relate to the feeling of being an international pop star dating an NFL football player? It's a very universal experience, like who hasn't, y'know?

Yeah, as you can tell, I didn't care for these songs either. I'm so tired of hearing about that man and their relationship. Everything I've heard about them being together has been completely against my will.

On top of the 16 songs on the standard album, she surprise dropped another one called "The Anthology", and that title piqued my curiosity because an anthology is a collection of different stories, so I thought she was bringing back the folkmore vibes. Turns out it was as if somebody sucked the life out of those two albums. This may sound harsh, but the Anthology portion of this album sounds like if you bought folklore and evermore on clearance. Just like the bulk of the first 16, I felt nothing. Out of 31 songs in total, I only liked 2 or 3.

This may sound a little mean, but I think I've made it pretty clear that I just... don't care about her life anymore. I don't find her experience as a global superstar selling out stadiums and flying around on her private jets to be interesting. It's certainly not relatable in any way, either. The reason I hold the folkmore albums in such high esteem is because yeah, while there are some autobiographical songs in there, the majority of them are fictional works. I've kinda been spoiled by those songs, because now I know what Taylor is capable of. I want her to go back to writing songs from other perspectives and really challenge herself, step out of that mediocre pop box she's put herself in ever since Midnights. I say all this because she's proven she can do it, so she doesn't need to backslide. She doesn't need to downgrade.

The best analogy I can think of is this. If you play Pokemon, then you know that whenever a Pokemon is evolving, you can press the B button to stop it from happening. I think the folkmore albums were her evolution process, and then someone pressed B and put a stop to it, and that's how we got Midnights and now this. Maybe she pressed the button herself, and she just likes to stay in her little comfort zone because she knows that her billions of fans will like whatever she does at this point. That's why I believe Taylor and Jack barely put in any effort with this project, because they don't have to. Swifties will like whatever they put out. They don't have to try new things or challenge themselves. It's an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" situation.

If you're a Swiftie reading this, and you didn't really love this album, I just wanna say that it's okay to critique it. I have plenty of artists that I stan, but I'm not going to love everything they do or whatever they put out. I can be a huge fan of someone and still use my critical thinking skills, still have my own opinions. Don't be passive or follow whatever the popular consensus is.

On the flip side, if you love this album, then please don't try to make it seem like it's this complex poetic masterpiece that only smart people get. Don't act as if Taylor is exempt from criticism, and anyone that dares to critique anything she does is just stupid or "doesn't get it". That's a very reductive and small-minded view of music criticism, and media literacy in general. No artist or their work is above critique. Period.

Anyway, that's pretty much all of my thoughts. Thanks for reading this all the way, and I appreciate you for caring enough about my opinion! And remember Swifties, use critical thinking skills and please don't dox me!

[doggyboyf]

WARNING: extremely long poorly written post ! dbd skin/character concepts ive been thinking about tonight/i just want to see bc some of these are based on these being easy ideas and others being impractical that i just wanna see Nemesis: this is brought on by my 1. dislike of his blighted skin and 2. realization of what a missed opportunity it is to not give him a Mr. X skin, its literally perfect they're both tyrants with almost the exact same build, only issue is X's gloves :/ i don't see a way to make nemmie's visible infection rate work or his tentacle make sense so i admit that's an issue, but... maybe his late game look could work better? sadly that does get rid his iconic look i'd actually want for the skin tho hgvbhjbvhb 2nd concept i have for nemmie is impractical and would possibly better as a skin for a non RE killer but i'd just love to see it and that's a RE1 tyrant skin, i just love the original tyrant design Wesker: imo an impractical skin i just want to see wld be his re5 final boss design, he just looks fucked up and i love it hvbhjhbhjhb Misc: 4: i only have one full idea and that's the plaga knights for knight, it just works really well hbhjhbghjhb 7: i absolutely love the idea of a re7 eveline skin for sadako/onryo but that's licensed on licensed so yknow, not gonna work hgvhjhgvhb, a lucas baker skin for legion would actually be so cool but they already have hunk, his build fits perfect for frank tho WAHHHHh i want that rlly bad now hes so yucky i love him hvhjhgbhb, marguerite baker while itd a be a stretch would be a really fucking cool skin for plague, her lantern would fit perfectly for plague's weapon and she could spit out bugs instead of vomit (i know that like, isnt something that go through the effort to do, i just think it's really cool hgvhjhgbh) and lastly jack baker would work really well for trapper, he honestly just fits perfectly ^^ 8: another licensed on licensed skin that wouldn't work but i love the idea of, donna beneviento/her doll angie for chucky, it'd genuinely work so well, just like in the game shed be in the background while angie takes front stage as chucky doing the killing, donna only actually appearing when picking up a surv just like charles ghost does for chucky, another legion skin idea,, (i love legion jhbhjhb) the dimitrescu daughters i think would really work well as skins for them but im also thinking theyd work for nurse! i feel like consider lady d's popularity shed be a skin people would want but i genuinely just don't see anyone she'd work for? plus her height makes things,, difficult jhbhjhbgh, i do have an idea for moreau! i think blight would work perfectly! lastly mother miranda... she'd have to be a skin for plague i think, but i could see nurse working too, i prefer plague tho hvbhjhbhb Pig: honestly i think she wouldnt be that hard to modify but that's probably just my lack of game design understanding, i think these concepts fall more into a "i just want to see these" mindset but i rlly think they're reasonable, i think a john kramer skin would be rlly good, already got his cloack basically modeled bvbhjhgbvhb, i also think in the same vein a hoffman skin would be rlly cool but i think thatd require a whole remodel Survivor concepts: Saw: i would've liked to see ppl like adam and lawrence or daniel (i love him but he rlly isnt important enough hghh) RE: 1: barry :3 i just love barry <3 4: ashley <3 she deserves to be in the game as a skin at least imo 5: excella gionne, shes an antagonist tho so i dunno, josh stone! i like josh a lot and i'd love if he were there 7/8: ethan winters! i really would love to see ethan in the game, i am a huge mia fan so i gotta say i would be so fucking happy with a re7 mia survivor with like a re8 look skin but i 100% want her base design to be re7, lastly just a skin of chris's re8 look :3

[zenlesszonezero]

You feelin' fired up now? Make way for the undefeated Champion! Welcome to New Eridu!— PS5™/iOS/Android/PC | Version 1.3 "Virtual Revenge" of Zenless Zone Zero, HoYoverse's urban fantasy ARPG, is out now

[hello-nichya-here]

Was Meg White a good drummer?

*sighs eternally* Yes, she was. She was the perfect drummer for The White Stripes, and I can't believe some dumbasses still try to argue otherwise in 2023

Ya know what? Let me rant about Meg White now that you gave me the chance, because this woman:

1 - Was the reason the band started in the first place. Jack said many times that jamming with her ONCE was enough to let him know that they had something special (musically speaking) and it just HAD to become a band instead of just being a one-off thing, or just something they did for fun. And let's not forget, she is reason the reason behind the NAME of the fucking band.

2 - Was an active participant in creating the songs all the Stripes fans, including the ungrateful bastards that shit-talk her for no damn reason, absolutely love. Yes, Jack made the lyrics, but he usually wrote them while playing the piano. The final versions we all know came to be when he AND MEG would "cover" them together, to turn it into THEIR music. Jack also trusted her input so much that they would rework on any song she said she didn't like or didn't feel quite finished yet.

3 - Usually had a very "simplistic" childlike way of playing the drums. That made perfect sense for a band with a guy like Jack, whose deal is "restraint forces you to be creative" and "the best ideas are the ones you have when you think like a kid." Her drumming was a feature, not a bug. "We Will Rock You" is a ridiculously simple song, yet people still treat it as the classic it is, and give Queen a ton of respect for it. But Meg does exactly what she was supposed to, in that exact same vein, and suddenly "The White Stripes deserved a better drummer" (funny how we never see Jack get called a shit writer despite trying to keep lyrics extremelly simple, huh?)

4 - Had to perform without a setlist because once again Jack just has to be different. She had to immediately recognize any song he was playing (and he had plenty to choose from), remember how to play it, AND adapt to Jack's constant improves - which often included stuff like interrupting a song, playing part of another one for a minute, then go back to the first one. All while suffering from severe anxiety and performing in front of HUGE audiences - some of which, as we know, were dying for her to make any mistake, no matter how small, so they could go "See? I told you she sucks!"

5 - Could often go fucking nuts on the drums when necessary, to help Jack build momentum, and then just suddenly stop or go back to normal whenever he gave her a cue - and again, he liked to improvise, so she had to be ready for EVERYTHING.

6 - Had soooooo much chemistry with Jack on stage that it became a show in it of itself. Let's face it, rock is often as much about the "image" as it is about the music (and this band sure knows it considering their thing of only wearing red, black and white to stand out and be memorable), and by God, I cannot think of The White Stripes without picturing all the times I watched a video of some performance of theirs and thought "Jesus Christ, get a room."

7 - Was a joy to watch when she was just on stage, not giving a fuck, and having fun while playing the drums. I don't care what people say, to me she had as much stage presence as the guy that took her last name.

Bonus: Wrote "Little People." I know, I know, that song is not one of the big ones, but I think it's dope and this is my post. Jack could have easily just sing the lyrics while not touching his guitar, because that song is all about Meg creating the rhythm and the melody with her drums (like she did in "Little Room", another treasure). It's simple, catchy, and an underrated gem.

Bonus 2: She sang "In The Cold, Cold Night." I know, nothing to do with drumming, but that song is in my top 10 AND was frequently played in the show long after it's release. She managed to secure a little moment by herself in the spotlight despite not really being a professional singer, and that just shows, once again, that she could deal with ANYTHING her band-mate threw at her.

Meg wasn't just a drummer that was allowed to tag along to the Jack White show because they were married/siblings, like some people love to pretend. She was his partner and a core aspect of what made the band so great. There's a reason why when she retired from her music career, Jack didn't just get someone to new and continue using the band name. He KNEW it wouldn't be the same, he knew Meg was as irreplaceable as him. If either of the two is missing, then it's just not The White Stripes.

It doesn't matter how much some trolls try to pretend Meg was useless or even holding Jack back. The simple fact that they praise Jack's work on their dyscography proves they are wrong, because they're weren't two people coming up with stuff separately and then stitching it together. Jack's riffs, intros, solos, outros, and the instrumental chrous like the one in "Seven Nation Army" were only able to exist because he and Meg were playing off of each other, exchanging notes, trying new stuff, keeping up with each other, working and creating music together.

If you like The White Stripes, you have to thank BOTH of them for it. It's that simple, and I don't know why people are still struggling to understand that.

[tvlbct]

⌕   . ˚   ⅋.  「   RYAN GOSLING.  FORTY THREE.  CIS MAN.  HE/HIM.  」JACKSON "JACK" AMBROSE,  otherwise  known  as  TALBOT,  joined  the  libertalia  thirteen years ago  as  a  PHANTOM.  around  libertalia,  the  PISCES  has  a  reputation  for  being  DRIVEN  &  DISCONNECTED perhaps  because  they're  best  known  for  recovery of the florentine diamond  of   which   they  are  most  proud.  while  preparing  for  a  heist,  they  listen  to  LE PERV  by  CARPENTER BRUT. makes  sense  considering  they  remind  me  of:  long and spidered scars covering spare flesh across the back, shoulders & chest; a mouth always busy with gum, toothpicks, or licking lips to keep fixation at bay ... to keep from lapsing into old habits; the dregs of a southern accent lost to the wages of time and purposely forgotten; && a switch flicked to turn on work mode, where humanity and emotion are dropped in lieu of efficiency in the vein of a job well done - nothing less than 100%.

triggers for military mention, child neglect, gambling && emotional / physical abuse.

one thing was incredibly clear to jack ambrose from the moment he could comprehend the hand that life had dealt him: nothing would come easy, and nothing would be worth the time if it was.

his mother always had the ability to making a decent living for her son and herself, but squandered all of her earnings on selfish means instead. she was certainly a beautiful woman: alluring both physically and with a wit sharp as a blade’s edge, but all of her attention had always been selfish. surely it was habit taught to her from a young age, something she never bothered to break before she involved herself in other human interactions, but it was likely her beauty and charm that had seduced the man who impregnated her - and the likes of his name were never so much as whispered around offspring. jack has never known the his name.

babies should be a joyous occasion, and yet alessia ambrose found a way to make it entirely self-involved. her body had to bear the pain, her child was what made everyone so pleased, her creation. anyone who dared to involve themselves in the mess of his mother’s life was sure to see how narcissistic the beautiful woman was, and yet no one pressed a finger onto the issue.

but such is the way of the world, so often are children abandoned to their fates.

he was a beautiful baby, but grew to be an awkward toddler, an awkward little boy. alessia made no attempt to hide her disgust at how her creation could be so gangly and ungainly, could stow away for hours with quiet toys that suggested knowledge more than play with other children. but perhaps that was for the better — she couldn’t very well brag and show up with something like him, her offerings would be meager in comparison to children who were the spitting images of their beautiful parents. simple genetics, the awkward transitional period of a child, were held against he who knew nothing of the world or such disgust from his mother. jack was six, and alessia ambrose was the love of his life. all mothers should be, for little boys.

but as he grew older, as his awareness developed, and as the blinders fell from his eyes jack became aware of his mother’s feelings. while he was utterly devoted to her, drew pictures of her at school or told stories about my mom and me, she was ashamed of his too-long legs and thin cheeks. his loss of innocence came across the dinner table ( boxed macaroni and cheese again, so mom could go out again for the night ), when he told her “ i love you, mommy ” and alessia heaved a sigh and responded with a perfunctory, “ yea. ”

grades meant nothing. educational achievements meant nothing. unconditional love from a child meant nothing, and jack began to realize that if he wanted something more than boxed macaroni and cheese for dinner every night ( if alessia even bothered to make it ) he would have to get it himself. however it wasn’t as simple as taking it — simply taking things earned him a swift but stern slap across the face and if he hadn’t learned in his younger years, jack surely understood alessia’s feelings with those.

he learned his charm from her, but it wasn’t easy being the odd child he was. still, with a desire to achieve, jack applied himself to the art of manipulation. he discovered it was simple with the charm of youth: people were more likely to assist if you added a few tears, a little naivety. his teachers began to understand his plight as home was difficult when he spun the yarn of his mother having become deathly ill. his peers found him appealing when he shared goods pilfered or traded from others ( without their knowledge for the former ), and the reputation he earned himself in his prime formed the personality that perfected at puberty.

while all of these tricks worked outside of the household, jack never managed to pull the wool over his mother’s eyes. but where unconditional love once stood in tolerance for alessia and her narcissism, now contempt remained. jack fell out of love with his mother at twelve, and never looked back.

on the summer at the end of his freshman year of high school jack left an odd-looking boy. in the fall of his sophomore year he returned transformed, as if the summer heat had been a chrysalis and the ugly caterpillar emerged a butterfly. now if you held up a picture of alessia ambrose beside jack you could see he was her child, all it took was a shot of growth hormone and the deepening of his voice. ice blue eyes were the stark difference between the two of them ( ignoring the blond hair that sprouted from his face if he didn’t tame it back to stubble every four or so days ), and alessia noted how much she despised the way he stared at her now. it made her skin crawl if only because it seemed as if he was looking through her.

and he was. now he saw her for what she was: a selfish woman who had only wanted him to brag about her own achievements. but he hadn’t been worth bragging about when he was small, and now that he towered over her she wanted him to be seen with him. but jack refused, perhaps a little too politely for her to understand at first, and it was only in a binge of some substance abuse that he took a stern hand with her. only when she struck him first out of a dead sleep — staring at him for near twenty minutes before lashing out at him. it was the threat of never touch me again that he punctuated so perfectly, threatening to hold back no means to defend himself should she raise another hand at him.

alessia mourned for herself the loss of her baby boy. all that was left was a man who was nothing more than a reminder of her failed relationships throughout the years. you’re just like them. you’re just like them.

but he was nothing like them. perhaps the only similarity being how much he despised her, as they all did in the end.

he finished high school unceremoniously, didn't bother to inform his mother when he graduated (the day, the time) and moved on with his life. she couldn't recall the last time she saw her son, but alessia understood that she never would again. and like so many wayward young men from broken homes, he'd sought a chance to make something of himself: the military.

boot camp, where drill sergeants shouted the smirk off of his face. then the navy, where he learned how to hold his breath for an incredible amount of time. then the SEALs, where he learned that his body was both softer and stronger than he'd ever imagined. breaching, combat, triage, whatever they needed of him and jack couldn't deny it. he excelled at the tasks he was given, specializing in the collection of information and specifically the reconnaissance involved with his specialized unit.

this was what captured the attention of the professor. initially hoping to acquire jack as an asset just a few years prior, he was required to finish a tour before he could formally be discharged from the military. at the age of thirty his CO shook his hand and once more jack disappeared from sight.

his skills with breaching came in handy. trading his name for talbot - trading military tact gear for private sector (as he liked to call it), trading existing formally in the world for more off-the-grid, his life changed. talents from his youth (pilfering from his classmates, sleight of hand) were polished and combined with the formal training the US military had provided ... talbot was a phantom, and a damn good one.

of his accomplishments under the professor's employ, talbot's primary distinction was the recovery of nelson's chelengsk: acquired with old connections and information, skill, and a bit of luck. presently he's pleased with his contract ... existing in a gray area where even his closest of "friends" only knows him by his alias, where he's been able to make much more of a life for himself than he ever would have if he'd stayed back home in the southern united states.

[inactivebcthiswebsitesucks]

Her Royal Highness Princess Marjorie Iona Friseal of Scotland

In the eye of a hurricane When I got one foot in the grave I’ll dig my boots into the dirt And face the rolling thunder

I’m five generations of blazing a trail Through barbed wire valleys and overgrown dells I’m barefoot and bareback and born tough as nails Whoa, whoa, whoa

I’m four-fifths of reckless and one-fifth of jack I push like a daisy through old sidewalk cracks Yeah, my kinda crazy’s still running its courses with Wildflowers and wild horses

It’s in the water in my veins That bread of heaven falls like rain So I’m taken care of either way Make something out of how I’m made Until I hitch a ride on glory’s train

I'm barefoot and bareback and born tough as nails - Early Life

To put it simply Marjorie was never born to be a lady. She loved the skirts and pretty dresses that adorned her but her love for the effeminate stopped there. From the moment she could notice the young princess resented the difference with which she and her brothers were treated. Marjorie wanted to learn the dance of swords and how to show a bow. To get muddied exploring the crags and moors. Instead she was held inside. Lessons on needlepoint and how to act like a proper lady. At aged eight she had enough and began sneaking out to the training yards in the dead of night. Wiggling from the warmth of her featherbed she trudged stolen garments in hand to have a go at the training dummies. Her first attempts were hilariously disastrous. It was only after her brother Caelen followed her one night that she began to improve. With his tutelage she began to become adept at both sword and bow. She took hits from him that would leave bruises and welts. When asked about the injuries she would simply claim she fell. Her governess was even fired under suspect of abuse. Once good enough, she would often swap places with her brother William. Disguised as him underneath training armor she would get lessons from the masters at arms themselves. It invigorated and enthralled her. On a good day she earned her little brother praise on his improvements. On a bad her father would be called down to give them both a lashing.

When her eighteenth name day came, she was offered a horse of her choosing as was custom. Rather than choose the dainty Arabian, a true lady's horse, that was presented to her, Marjorie picked out Fargus. A draughty war horse colt. He had been reserved to be a well-respected guard's personal mount, but the princesses insistence meant that Fargus became hers.

When I got one foot in the grave - Before the Alliance

Marjorie's adventurous spirit did not quiet as she aged. It soared as her parents gave up on trying to control her. She even shed the love of pretty dresses that had carried through her childhood. Now she adorned herself in more practical clothing, still finely made but better suited to a fight. The bodices clung to her figure, adorned in mail and the breaches that completed the look were fit for any princess. To complete the look a longsword was a constant companion at her hip. When out riding a bow at her back. Marjorie participated in tourney's and fought alongside Scotland's men against the Vikings. Many men proposed to her and she refused them all. They wanted a trophy, the youngest princess of the kingdom to show off their own power. Marjorie would be no one's pawn. Her power was her own, not to be shared with those who had not earned it.

Despite familial nagging she chose to remain single and at twenty-seven was practically considered a spinster. Her love was for the wildness that ravaged her soul. Of course wild adventures led to remarkable circumstance. Such is the tale of how she fell in love with a warrior of one of Scotland's enemies; a member of the Madsen Clan. Their love burned hot and fierce, brought upon by an initial skirmish between the two. Swords had been drawn and minor blood spilled. When they came away panting for breath, neither having gotten advantage over the other, it was as if their souls collided.

Though no maid, the news of Marjorie's pregnancy shocked the royal family. For her own protection she was kept out of the spotlight, her absence explained away by sudden illness. Nine months passed with a plan for the babe to go to his father. A bastard in Scotland and a son of the enemy Marjorie feared for her child's life. She wanted him to be raised to know his own power. To be a true warrior like his father.

The child's father disappeared right before the birth. Left with no other option, she snuck the babe to Hal. As leader of the clan he would protect the child. Her son. Baird.

Until I hitch a ride on glory's train - Present Day

Marjorie strives to become in a position of power. She wants to rule. Not as princess or queen, but as a leader deemed worthy in her own right. Six months have passed since Baird's birth. The family mourned the 'death' of her child and Marjorie herself spent weeks locked inside her rooms. She mourned for the lover she had lost and the son she would never know. Slowly she began to pick the pieces of herself back up. Vowing that once she ruled she and her son would be reunited as kin.

Currently the only contact she has with the babe was through the occasional visit carefully planned and hidden. Those stolen moments were never enough, yet they had to be. For her son's safety as well as her own.

Her experience in battle has earned her a place at the table with her father and brother. From it she is able to argue that her interests and ideas be present. With that ability she has been able to gain a bit of control. Enough control to keep her son hidden and occasionally help Hal Madsen. Marjorie does not believe in the total nihilation of either party. They can each get what they want through sacrificing lesser empires. She resents Scotland's alliance with the the clan of Ragnar Eskilsen. With the formation of the alliance she believes Eskilsen clan has grown weak. Painting a target across Scotland's back.

Misc. Facts

Like many men, Marjorie has frequent affairs. While she doesn't share them with the other kingdoms her family is well aware of her trysts.

She seeks to have a hand in the current politics and uses conversations and the like to better her position and is slowly trying to build up the amount of those loyal to her.

The longsword Marjorie currently carried was forged with steel from her lover's weapon. It was all that was returned to her after his disappearance.

Frequently wanders off to wherever she pleases. Often goes looking for bandits or trouble to keep herself entertained.

[talenlee]

Story Pile: Big Trouble In Little China

Big Trouble in Little China is one of those movies that guys like me have opinions on, in the same vein as Knives Out and I want to make sure that whatever I’m doing here I’m not being boring. This is complicated by the way that this movie is appealing to guys like me by being a really fun action movie with sweet special effects and quotable lines and magnetic personalities and action scenes and a few brutal deaths while also being made by people with a lot of thought in their head. The result is a movie that yes, is a wonderful brainless action setpiece where you see a seven foot tall demon ghost get hit by a truck, but also a fascinating piece of Asian-American cinema, complete in how it blends together all forms of ‘Asianness’ to an American perspective.

I’m doing it, aren’t I.

I don’t intend to spoiler much about this movie. There’s some talk about the kind of movie it is and its broad general forms but I’m not going to give away how it ends or what happens in any specific way unless you imagine looking at the poster this is somehow all going to be about negotiations. There’s one minor detail but it’s not going to change much if you know it ahead of time that someone gets captured. Also, content warning, this movie is dated! This movie is a 1986 movie focusing on Asian-American actors, and as good as it is at avoiding some specific storytelling beats it’s still a work that if we tried to make it today, we’d make differently and with a greater priority on the ways people are and behave.

There’s also a scene where a dude gets so mad he explodes.

Alright, the story in summary. Well, without telling you how it ends, Big Trouble in Little China tells the story of Jack Burton, a long haul trucker who uses a CB Radio to truly be one of history’s first great posters. He is a lantern jawed bemulleted muscled up slab of lunk who fancies himself the main character of a story that he lives every god damn day. While visiting a friend on his route, there’s a conversation about owing money and then he’s abruptly ensnared in a kidnapping that turns into a criminal gang war and then the demigods who throw lightning around show up and he watches a bunch of people get murdered in the street.

What follows from there is a classic story about a girl getting kidnapped and a guy rescuing her except the guy is Jack’s bestie and Jack spends multiple parts of the story struggling to keep up. And I mean really struggling, at one point he knocks himself out and misses most of a major fight. Don’t worry, we get to see those fights, they’re cool as hell, just, y’know, Jack is on his face for them.

In the end, heroes win, villains lose, the how and why are all pretty predictable but very fun. This John Carpenter dude can make the heck out of a movie, I’m thinking.

Now with that out of the way I want to address what I would consider the ‘most obvious’ piece of critical observation. Big Trouble In Little China is a movie that is deliberately playing with the audience expectations and the type of movie it is. The kind of movie Big Trouble In Little China looks like is a well-established, well-known genre. That genre can be said most agnostically to be a movie where a character arrives in a new location and his presence and extremely different way of doing things breaks up and changes a status quo to save the day, but you might notice that very neutral way of describing it skirts around some pretty loaded words.

Stated more directly, movies in this genre are about some nonwhite cultural space where a white guy arrives and experiences it for the first time, then fixes the problem they have without any kind of specialised knowledge or expertise. Bonus if it’s a group of people dealing with something really complicated or difficult and to him it was solved by being better at their culture than they are. This is sometimes summarised as the ‘mighty whitey’ narrative, which is a great way to make fun of the simplified story, which is a good thing to do because this kind of story sucks real bad and is racist in a way that’s sometimes hard to properly explicate. How wet is a fish, you know?

Big Trouble In Little China is aware of this trope, and, as deliberately as it can be in the context, resists its framing. The way Big Trouble In Little China is discussed, normally, is to point this out. Hey, get a load of this, did you notice that Jack Burton is not positioned as the protagonist of this movie, but rather he’s the sidekick of the main character? And that’s true and it’s cool but it’s also not something I feel like I get to bring to the table because it’s not only a known thing but it’s so well known I knew about it before I ever watched this movie.

Instead what came up to me is the way this movie handles most of its identities.

In Big Trouble In Little China pretty much nobody is who they think they are. The easiest example is that Jack Burton is playing John Wayne without realising he’s actually Shortround. And I mean that Jack Burton is playing John Wayne. It’s not that Kurt Russell is playing John Wayne; he’s playing a guy whose whole template for How To Be is trying to impersonate John Wayne. What makes that especially interesting to me is that he’s doing the affect without all of its character. Wayne has an accent, but he also has a delivery.

In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, John Wayne says the word ‘pilgrim’ a lot – 25 times. It’s basically a pronoun for him. If you listen to it, it’s got a good template for how Wayne delivers words; he holds the M and concludes it with a sort of ‘uh’ sound at the end. Even when he’s not drawling it, even speaking it quickly, that’s part of his delivery. Burton doesn’t have the accent, but he does the same thing, holding the tail of words and dipping them up again. It’s a really interesting choice because however it was intended it makes me think that Jack Burton is a guy who watched a lot of John Wayne growing up and uses that as a template for what he thinks the kind of man he is should be.

Thing is, Margo is in a similar boat to Jack. She doesn’t know the kind of story she’s in. To her, she’s in an intrepid plucky reporter story, something in the vein of an Inspector Gadget or Nancy Drew narrative, where whatever is happening out there, over there, her job is to get the information, which will solve things. Knowing what’s going on, putting what’s going on into the record will sort everything out because that’s the power of the free press. In her introduction, a character is mentioned and she immediately demonstrates Stuff She Knows. It gets her an equally abrupt ‘who the hell are you?’ kind of reaction.

David Lo Pan’s scheme relies on being able to find an appropriate bride, but his assumptions about what makes an appropriate bride (a Chinese lady with green eyes) meant he spent a thousand years rolling some very big genetic dice and only finally got his number in the 1980s. But that assumption of an appropriate bride failed to account for, y’know, the vast number of people in a population more likely to have green eyes, until it was explicitly put in front of him. Again: assumptions about identity, about what ‘counts’ as who you are.

It’s honestly a really clever series of moves the movie makes. You start in a truck, implying that it’s going to be a movie about travel. Then you get stuck, then you see a mob movie break out, then it becomes Mortal Kombat before there was Mortal Kombat, and then it becomes a ghost story and suddenly it’s Indiana Jones in Just Below San Francisco. The movie repeatedly uses the way you assume things are supposed to work to set up a scene and then doesn’t do the scene you assumed it might, while also looking like the scene should really once you know how it goes.

Consider Eddie Lee. This dude is a maitre’d at Wang Chi’s restaurant. He’s in a suit, he’s not interested in getting involved in the fights, and he warns Jack about getting involved. When Wang Chi and Eddie Lee go to deal with the baddies, though, Eddie stands side by side with his friend and fights with him. Everything in the story up to that point sets him up to be a joke or a loser, or if we’re going to see him fight it’ll be revealing of something special. Then the movie shows that not only is it not special it’s unremarkably good. Eddie Lee’s identity is presented to you one obvious way, and then you’re shown that your assumptions about the obvious aren’t true.

Big Trouble In Little China sustains itself through these kind of violations of your assumptions and it doesn’t make a big fuss of it. It’s there when you look back on the whole narrative, but throughout it there’s this constant thread of asking you what you assume about the characters you’re seeing and what they’re doing.

What I’m saying is that Jack Burton is a trans dude. The signs are all there, right?

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[tonaken]

18+ headcanons_ HAIBA LEV

FIA'S NOTE_ sooo this was requested by my beloved @highlev for her one and only Lev 😌 I tried to keep it as realistic as possible but if it’s not, feel free to consider him an ooc!Lev. Please forgive me if it took ages, life and tumblr were trying to have my head on a platter 😭, but I hope that you all enjoy I went a bit overboard hehehe

WARNINGS_ LEV HAIBA x fem!reader, smut, needless to say that he is aged up, male masturbation, porn viewing, descriptions of porn, graphic descriptions of male genitalia, mentions of light impact play (spanking, nipple slapping, cock slapping), dom/sub dynamics, switch!Lev, graphic description of male receiving oral sex, mentions of fem receiving oral sex, size kink go brrr, praise kink, a dash of toxic masculinity that melts off when he meets you

W_C_ 1.6k words

★soooo….LEV HAIBA, the model

★Tall, fine and playful

★Very playful, but more on that later 😉

★He’s a very successful model though, always on the road: walking down a runway, posing for some fashion magazine cover or going to castings 

★And when he’s not working, he’s traveling or he’s working out 

★His life gets hectic very easily, so I imagine he has limited time for himself, relationships or sex

★When he’s stranded alone in some hotel room he likes to destress by whipping out his twitter bookmarks iykyk 👀

★He takes a warm shower and throws himself on the bed, slipping a hand under his bathrobe as he scrolls and looks for something that appeals him

★Sooo Lev is tall, meaning that it’s only obvious that he has a heavy size kink, which means that you can bet that most of his bookmarks are girls being split in half on big dicks, pussy dripping and eyes watering my clit jumped 🫣

★His big hand palms at his cock, fingers dragging along his warm shaft

★I see Lev having a really pretty dick. Long and smooth, with one greenish vein that twists to the top on the underside

★I feel like it’s also on the thinner side, but it curvessss so you know he will be hitting that sweet spot 🥴

★His thumb toys with the pink head, smearing the clear droplet of precum that buds when the girl in the video starts sucking on that huge cock she’s presented with, lips slippery and stretched out

★He starts stroking himself properly when she starts riding the lucky man, hips flicking and dropping as she moans and whines

★I feel like he wouldn't wear earphones, probably out of laziness, mostly because he doesn’t care; the volume is not that high anyways

★I also think he likes videos where the woman is rather noisy; not porn level screaming, but audible. He likes sex to sound like…sex he’s noisy too, but I will speak on that later

★But the thing he loves the most are those POV videos, where it looks like he’s doing the fucking

★He likes the ones where there’s some light manhandling, like a bit of tit or ass grabbing, a bit of hair pulling, maybe a few spanks my twin fr 🤞🏾

★And you bet that he cums instantly when she scrambles on her knees, tongue sticking out to drink all the cum she’s given

★She looks so little compared to him, and he loves the submission of the act yes he’s a dom …kinda

★He cums in his hand, a few spurts ending on his washboard abs; but if he gets too carried away, he cums on his phone screen, too lost in the moment to realize that that hot, wet mouth isn’t real, but just a bunch of pixels :(

★I see him as one of those guys who suffers from post-nut clarity, like, as soon as he wipes his screen and himself, it hits him and he feels a bit silly that he came all over himself like that

★He’s still a horndog, though, so you know he’ll be looking for another video to bust a nut to if one is not enough

★He’s generally kinda satisfied with jacking off, even if feeling some good pussy grip on him more often would probably solve all his problems that pussy got power

★Now, when he meets you, pretty little thing, he’s bricked up 🧱

★He acts like a player, trying to flirt with you with stupid pickup lines and dumb shit that just makes you giggle 

★mans thinks he’s a jokester, but you laugh just because he looks more silly than anything 🤭

★He has this little boyish smile that wins your heart over

★And he is a tree, a fine one of that bro’s gorgeous ong 😳

★It doesn’t take much for you to hit it off, and I assure you that this man’s mind is a damn swamp the whoooooole time you’re together

★You lick your lips and now he’s thinking about you sucking him off

★You touch your hair and he’s thinking about pulling on it

★You bend over and he imagines smacking that ass

★Brotha’s starving 😬

★But you’re pretty af 💅🏾💅🏾💅🏾

★And when you do drop the coochie on him (whether immediately or a bit later it doesn’t matter, you do you 🥰) man’s in heaven

★Pussy tight, pussy clean, pussy fresh 💁🏾‍♀️

★I’m sure he’s a cheeky pleasure dom

★Like, he’ll make you cum nonstop, but he teases you at the same time for it he’s doing his best to not fall into a pussy-induced coma cause that pussy’s life changing 

★He’ll talk your ear off, just to stop himself from making the cutest noises ever

★He’s an ALpHa mALe 🙄  yes he listens to those podcasts, but he stops once he meets you

★He has a sweet side to him too

★You can tell when he sucks on your nipples, or when he kisses you, and even when he eats you out

★He’s so gentle with his mouth, you’d never guess that he taunts you during the whole thing 😳

★But that is usually quick-lived, because then he’s back with his usual self

★He’ll have you ride his abs, to hen tease about how desperate you are or he'll finger you with those looong digits of his before having you lose your shit on his cock <3

★He loves pushing your legs up to your ears, unable to stop plunging into you

★He didn’t know he went swimming 🤔 under the sea 🎶🧜🏻‍♀️🦞🐠🐙

★You just keep taking him in and smearing him with your cream, the same cream he will have you lick off him later 🫣

★And when you do, his knees risk to give out

★Your pink tongue looks delicious as it collects your own essence from the milky skin of his cock

★The way you suckle on the tip has his head spin

★And when you line up the seam of his ball sack he’s borderline shouting i told you he was loud

★He groans deeply when you pop one testicle in your mouth, swishing it around and drooling all over it, as your hand tugs on his dick

★His balls are a bit small, round and tucked right under the base of his cock, whether it's hot or cold wrinkly ballz 4L 🤪

★Needless to say, but you’re slobbering all over that shit 😌

★And that’s where the power dynamics switch and he’s all putty in your hands 

★There, I said it, Lev Haiba is a switch and I'LL DIE ON THIS HILL 😤

★He tries to fight it off in the beginning and I assure you that he looks so pathetic while doing so

★His face is all scrunched up and red, like if he were fighting for his LIFE

★Like broooo RELAXXXX 😂😂😂

★Tomato lookin ass 😒

★God FORBID this man makes any sus sounding noise, or else he’ll be stripped of his aLpHA status 🙄

★But once he gets comfortable, the whines that flow out of his mouth???

★Pussy is DROWNINGG

★They’re so soft and needy 😩

★And when he’s about to cum, he’ll be all breathy and he’ll be choking on his moans, unable to finish his sentences whewww 🫦

★And when you ride him, titties all in his face, he’s so gone that maybe a small “ma’am” could slip out BUT IDK, you didn’t hear that from me 🤷🏾‍♀️🤫🤐

★He also develops a sort of inverted size kink??

★He likes that you’re smaller than him and that he lets you have control over him 😏

★He likes it when your smaller hands grab onto his arms and pin them against his chest while you ride him

★He could push you off, but he wouldn’t dare challenge you, not with that look in your eyes 

★A good boy indeed 😌

★And remember how I said he likes a lil spank here and there?? Watch him go CRAZY over a little slap on his nipples or the head of his hard cock 🤭

★Maybe as a punishment hehe BUT WHO AM I TO SPEAK these are just SPECULATIONS, your honor 😅

★And DO NOT be afraid to tease him back 

★Sometimes Lev likes to take back his control, by being all high and mighty

★But say that you’re not having it this one time, do not hesitate to put him back in his place by giving him a taste of his medicine 😏

★And even if he looks bitter that you’re trolling him, he loves the back and forth, and, besides, he’ll forget this whole power play thing when he’ll be drooling all over your pussy, hips humping the mattress in desperation 😌

★I see him having a praise kink too

★According to canon, he proclaimed himself as Nekoma’s ace

★And then he becomes a model, getting literally PAID for looking good

★So it’s not far fetched to consider him a bit full of himself 🤷🏾‍♀️

★So why wouldn’t he want you to tell him how amazing he is when he’s balls deep inside you? 🤔

★Bonus points if you’re babying him and rewarding him for following your instructions 

★You have him cum on your tongue, but instead of being all submissive, you are giving him permission to do so, eyes low and mischievous

★You look sinful with your tongue painted in white, looking up at him as if he were the one using you

★Truth is, whether he’s in control or not, he loves how you’re always his little cumdump <3

★And best believe that you do too

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