#anyway i have more to say but i should probably stop with the disjointed tags and see if anyone has made any fan art yet lol

[ashleeofjupiter]

Yeah, okay.

I just finished Life is Strange: Double Exposure and, despite my apprehension in the lead-up to its release... it's safe to say that I'm back on my LiS shit.

I have so many thoughts and feelings fja;vnrisfjkd;

[limitlessgojo]

Blood Bound: Red Strings of Fate (Ch 10)

Warnings: Action, Coarse Language, Fighting, Descriptions of Blood

Previous Chapter: Wait For Me

Next Chapter: Kyoto-Tokyo Goodwill Event

Tags: Soulmates AU, Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Fem!Reader

Taglist: @lessie-oxj @rizzo-nero @whoreuc @fkngkumiko @isl3t @gojoussunglasses @onepotatostand-blog @s-t-f-u-b-i-t-c-h @sunaswife

Notes: If you want to be tagged for every update, please mention it in the comments below ty <3

We are halfway through the story~ I never planned for this to be over 40k😅 but I've added some integral scenes in the later chapters. Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 10: Invisible Ties

You couldn't sleep at all the few nights that followed. Mai and the others noticed your fatigue. They worriedly asked about you and let you cuddle into them and nap when you had some free time.

Miwa even let's you stay with her in her room at times, and it does help for a bit, but you don't want to bother them. And something was telling you it wasn't just regular fatigue.

You sometimes zone out in class and could barely stay awake during physical training. Eventually, you consulted Utahime about your possible insomnia.

You had a feeling it was tied to your feeling of unrest over your soulmate bond. It didn't help that your soulmark was stinging and all your heart wanted was to be with Noritoshi. There was a strong sense of unease over this bond.

You pulled down your sleeve to reveal the mark on your wrist flashing madly like a broken stoplight. You groaned and shoved your face into your pillow.

You've taken to wrapping a black velvet ribbon on it during the day, to not attract attention. If this light flashing keeps up, you might have to use a thicker fabric.

◇◇◇

Noritoshi was feeling the same uneasiness you did. He tried to shake it off and act as natural as he could around you, but even he was still shook at how quickly your negative emotions transmitted over the bond.

He was in his room and it was past 11. He tried to get to sleep, but found that he couldn’t so he tried studying. He was actually distracted for once, looking over his desk at the soulmate record and diaries of Hotaru and found himself reading them.

◇◇◇

On the other hand, you were restless in your room.

"I shouldn't bother Noritoshi senpai but..." You glanced over at your clock. 12:06am. Just past midnight, he was surely asleep. And yet you found yourself grabbing your pillow and blankets, and quietly making your way to his dorm room.

It was as if your body was moving under the command of your red strings. Pulling you back to the man who was responsible for messing you up like this.

You stood outside for a good 5 minutes, contemplating on whether or not you should knock. You haven't had a proper sleep in nights and it is starting to show in your studies.

Finally, you decided to quietly knock a few times. A beat passed and there was no response. You were about to walk away when the door opened. He was awake to your surprise.

He was in his dark navy Kimono, hair wrappings undone. Some strands of his hair fell over his eyes. At that moment, you thought to yourself that he was the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

“Can I help you y/n?” He was staring at your pillows and blankets.

Ah right. All of the sudden you feel so small and dumb for coming all the way here for no good reason. “Ah, Noritoshi senpai. Um, good evening.” You scrambled for words.

“I, uhm, I’m sorry I can’t really sleep- Ah what I mean to say is that I haven’t been sleeping well lately and I was wondering if I-” a cold gust of air blew past you and you shivered.

Noritoshi’s eyes widened at this and he pulled you into his room and closed the door behind you. He was so close, your face turned bright red. Way too close for comfort.

He seemed to get the hint and took a step back from you. “So you want to stay the night with me, is that what you’re getting at?”

You stayed still before slowly nodding, then looked up to see his reaction. His face was like stone, nothing was giving anything away. He didn’t look so happy to see you in your opinion.

“I’m sorry to disturb you…. I was gonna…. ask… if I ….. could … sleep …. on … your floor…, “ your voice was getting smaller and softer with each word, heart clenching painfully. Your fists tightly scrunched up in your blankets.

Suddenly he leaned down close to bring his face to yours and raised his hand. You flinched and closed your eyes tightly, expecting a “no.”

He cupped your cheeks gently and touched the bags of your eyes with his fingers. “You’ve been looking so exhausted lately, I was actually going to bring it up to you, but I wasn’t able to catch you earlier today. Just share the bed with me.”

You blinked. What. Did you hear that right?

You looked at him with wide eyes. His face was red too. “Is this okay with you? I really don’t want to overstep my boundaries… Last time….” you opened your mouth then realized you didn’t come here to dump all the shit that’s troubling your mind onto Noritoshi.

‘I’m sure he also has it hard on his end’. “Ah, never mind. Thank you so much senpai.” you smiled up at him.

Noritoshi’s chest hurts to see you fake a smile towards him. Time and time again, he’s loved watching how expressive and honest you are with your emotions.

He’s seen your genuine smiles more often than not. Seeing you like this just felt wrong.

“Tell me.” He said.

“Ah- it’s really nothing, I know you’ve been dealing with so much on your end, you’re also stressed, I’m just thankful that you’re letting me stay here in your room-” you were rambling without realizing it.

“Tell me. Don’t hold back. I can feel your unease through the soulmate bond.” he said sternly.

Noritoshi was starting to understand that you both had to work through the negative emotions each one feels together. That’s the reason for the soulmate bond. Ignoring it would be like dragging yourselves through mud.

You got the gist of his line of thought, having the same realization at the same time. You spoke cautiously so as not to offend him, "This has been bothering me. Last time in your room, it just felt like you were treating me as an outsider and it hurt. Like I thought that we were more than that, but maybe it's just me. Also, you once said I didn't know who you are. So I just…. Wanted to understand you better..."

Noritoshi’s eyes softened, and he just couldn’t resist you anymore. He pulled you towards his bed and set down your blankets and pillows. Then turned back to you, “Can I hug you?”

“Of course.” It was fun to see him blush and awkwardly hold his arms out towards you. You stepped into his space, grabbed one arm to throw around your shoulder, and the other around your waist. As he didn’t seem to know where to hold you.

"I do admit I have my secrets and I’m not ready to tell you about them yet. For that I apologize, you have to wait a bit longer until I’m more comfortable with you. But you're not an outsider to me my dear. You could never be. I also believe that we are more than friends, like I said before. I need you to trust me a little more. And I’ll do the same with you, I’ll trust you a bit more. I want it all and this soulbond, as long as it's you."

Your eyes widened and sparkled upon hearing his words. Your bond finally settled into something of a quiet hum underneath your veins. You hugged him tighter, which he smiled at.

"I'm sorry, I should have explained to you how I felt senpai." You whispered sadly. But he just hushed you and held your hand. "It's okay, next time we can do better. Let’s start anew shall we?"

You spoke out a soft yes in response. It was honestly still a disjointed relationship. Like you’re both just two parts of a whole trying to find their way to each other.

"Let's face the truth. This is really an unconventional relationship. We can't really abide by the normal fall in love then confess situation can we?" You said.

"Why can't we?" Noritoshi asked, looking a bit surprised. "It's unconventional and gives us a fair share of problems, that's true. But we can still fall in love and confess the normal way. With time." He added.

You just hummed and nodded.

You pulled back from him, “Anywayss, Why are you still awake at this hour anyways senpai? It's bedtime.”

“Reading the diary of a man who was my past life.” Your eyes widened at that. “Let’s read a bit of it together, then we can sleep?” You nodded.

He set up the pillows so both of you could lean side by side in bed while reading the diary entries. The story was not a nice one. Hotaru eloping with his lover, on the run from their families, curses and curse users. Constantly taking odd jobs to get money, and hiding in old inns. It sounded so exhausting.

You found yourself looking over at Noritoshi every now and then, wanting to lean closer, your eyelids getting heavier.

He turned to you then looked at the clock. 12:47am.

No classes tomorrow, since it's the weekend but you looked terribly sleepy. So he closed the book, set it aside. Closed the lights before climbing in beside you.

You stretched out like a cat before tucking yourself under the sheets. "Sleep time??"

He smiled at you. "Yeah." He laid down beside you, and you were both lying on your sides, facing each other.

"Good night darling." He whispered. Your face heated up but you thanked the darkness that he couldn't see your blush at the pet name.

"Good night Nori- ah senpai." You whispered back.

He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Drop the Senpai, just call me Noritoshi."

"Okay…. Noritoshi."

"Mmmm."

2 minutes passed, but you're both still staring at each other.

"Noritoshi."

"What is it?"

"Nothing much… Just saying your name feels nice. Can we hold hands while we sleep?"

He chuckled and reached to clasp both your hands in his. Your mark has long stopped flashing wildly. It's now a warm dark red glow.

You smiled at your marks.

"Can I kiss you? Properly?" He asked hesitantly.

Oh. You would like that very much. Your heart is literally in your throat, beating so furiously Noritoshi could probably feel it.

You could feel some of his stronger emotions through the bond. He really wants to hold you in his arms, you realized. You never felt so bare with another person before. He could probably feel your emotions too, so no point in hiding it.

As you nodded, he slowly crawled over you, caging you in with his arms. Slow, he was too slow.

You grabbed the front of his Kimono and pulled his lips down to yours. His eyes widened, but soon closed shut as he finally finally got to taste you. He was careful not to crush you as he pressed you into the sheets for a deeper kiss.

You both found yourselves running your hands over the other's body. His tongue entered your mouth and played with yours. Dangerous. Your hands tugging at his hair. It was getting dangerous.

Noritoshi quickly pulled back, chest heaving against yours, and tucked you under his chin. His heartbeat was beating furiously before quickly calming down.

"Darling I'm-" how could he tell you that he wants you right now. This wasn’t good, he had to hold himself back. He kissed you on the forehead.

"Shhhh, I'm right here." he whispered sweet nothings into your ears as you whined out at the loss of his lips on yours. "Time for bed as you said. Good night." He kissed you once more on the cheek.

You pouted and looked up to see him cuddle you with such a soft expression. So you relented, "Okay. Good night Noritoshi." And fell into a deep sleep in his arms.

◇◇◇

"Nnnghhh…."

"Mmnghhh…."

…. You opened your eyes to see Noritoshi groaning above you. It's like 3am, in the middle of the night, and you accidentally shoved your knee in his gut.

He was still asleep, but he could feel the pain. You hurriedly retracted your knee, reaching over to pat him on the back. Then moving to stroke him gently on the head.

As he finally settled back into sleep, you subconsciously moved forward to tuck your head under his neck. He is feverishly warm and comfortable. It’s gonna be hard going to bed without him.

And as you fell back into a deep sleep in his arms, Noritoshi, still asleep, wrapped his arms tighter around you and then continued dozing off.

◇◇◇

You felt yourself wake up with the best night’s sleep you’ve had in years. And that was saying something.

Noritoshi was still sleeping. He looked like he was having a rather nice dream. You traced the outline of his features with your fingers until his eyes snapped open.

You jumped back, shrieking and almost falling off the edge of the bed. But Noritoshi had fast reflexes, hand reaching out to grab your waist and pull you close to him. Your face smacked into his chest.

"Morning." His voice was so deep and raspy, you shivered at the sound. His eyes darkened.

"Morning senpai." You whispered, feeling so small.

"Do you make it a habit to play with other people’s faces while they’re asleep?" He whispered.

Goosebumps prickled along your skin as he stroked your arms slowly. "Ahh, I didn’t know you were awake, I’m sorry." You blushed.

Both of your stomachs were kind enough to growl and save your sorry ass. Noritoshi laughed at this.

"My darling needs some breakfast. I'll have the Kamo household prepare and deliver some for us." He said as he reached for his phone.

"Noritoshi, you don't have to, I don't want to be a bother really." You tugged at his sleeves.

“I already said you're never a bother to me haven't I?” He slumped over you as he typed out a text.

You groaned from underneath, "You're heavy Noritoshi."

"That's to stop you from leaving my room without breakfast." He deadpanned.

Blood Bound: Table of Contents

[drowningbydegrees]

For once this month, I actually wrote what I meant to.  Written for @whumptober2020 prompt 26. If you thought the head trauma was bad (Migraine, concussion, blindness). Pretty please mind the tags. <3

Read on AO3

In retrospect, they had had better days. They’d been all but run out of town, which, they were killing a monster for these ungrateful jerks, so rude. Said ungrateful jerks had also greatly understated the monster problem so that Geralt would agree to save the town they wouldn’t even let him sleep in for less money, so extra rude. And now, the monsters are dead, but the building that had served as a nest has pretty much come down around Geralt’s and Jaskier’s ears, which probably isn’t the villagers fault, but they’re summarily awful so the bard opts to blame them anyway.

Jaskier coughs as the dust and debris settle, but it still feels like he tried to breathe in a sandstorm. Blindly, he shakes the rubble from his hair with his hand, staring out into the darkness. There’s only the weakest light shining in from off to his right promising that a world continues to exist beyond their unexpected prison.

A prison that Jaskier hopes Geralt is investigating to find them a way out of. Geralt is quiet, but he’s always quiet, so that really doesn’t mean much. When he can’t hear the witcher, Jaskier squints at the dark room, wishing his friend didn’t absolutely insist on wearing black all the time. “I don’t suppose you can do that magicky thing you do and break us out of here?”

No answer comes.

“Geralt? You’re not on the other side of all these rocks are you? I really don’t fancy being stuck here alone,” Jaskier calls a little louder. He feels his way to where the crumbled stone blocked off the exit and finds it every bit as impassable as he feared. Jaskier thinks to try and free himself, but the first rock he grabs comes loose and the whole pile rumbles, sending the bard scrambling backward, tripping over something and landing in a heap on the floor. Alright, bad idea then.

He had initially assumed the something he tripped over was more rocks, except that it makes a wretched little whimpering sound that rocks are very definitely not capable of. Fuck.

Hampered by the fact that he can’t see, Jaskier feels his way across the floor until he finds the hard leather protecting Geralt’s torso. Geralt isn’t moving and he can’t see, so Jaskier curses under his breath as he maps his way up to the witcher’s face. “C’mon Geralt. Wake up. This is really not the time.”

A hand held in front of Geralt’s face confirms that at least he’s still breathing, but that’s no real comfort when he’s still so still and quiet. It’s as much reassurance as Jaskier thinks he’s going to get though, so he continues. Maybe if he could get Geralt to sit up…

Jaskier never gets that far. Blindly, he slides a hand behind Geralt’s head and his heart nearly stops in his chest. Geralt’s hair is matted with something warm and sort of viscous, and when Jaskier rubs his fingers together, they’re wet. The touch that just got what Jaskier assumes is blood on his hands is also the thing that finally pulls a sound from Geralt. That makes it even worse because it’s an agonized moan that Jaskier is pretty sure is going to haunt him every day for the rest of his life.

“Okay, don’t panic Jask. You can fix this,” he mumbles under his breath. If he just had some light. Jaskier glares at the little hole where the sun is still shining in like the wall did this just to harm him personally. If the window is mostly blocked, there have to be a lot of stones in the way, and no telling if he could lift them.

Except maybe he doesn’t have to. Frantically, Jaskier feels around for Geralt’s sword, breathing out a sigh of relief when he finally wraps his fingers around the hilt. If luck is on his side, maybe he can get enough leverage to knock something free.

“How do you use this thing?” Jaskier grumbles once he’s got it, supporting the weight of the sword against his shoulder. It’s not that it’s all that heavy to stand there and hold, but even the idea of swinging it around is exhausting. On the upside, it seems sturdy enough to pry a few rocks loose, and if it isn’t… well, a sword is replaceable. Geralt is decidedly less so.

Every second feels too long, like he’s moving in slow motion. Jaskier shuffles across the open space as briskly as he dares, shoves the sword into the first thing that feels like a gap in the rocks and shifts his weight downward against the hilt. There’s nothing. The rock is too heavy or he is too weak, or the sword isn’t stiff enough, or…

Jaskier shakes his head, refusing to give up like that. He yanks the sword free and tries again, a little off to one side. This time, the sword slips further in with the grating sound of stone on steel. Once again, he throws all his weight into pushing the sword down like a lever. There’s a creak, an echoing sort of groan as It moves a little and then all at once. Jaskier barely has time to jump out of the way as a sizable rock skids from its resting place along with a shower of pebbles.

It’s not really a big enough gap to get out, but it does let the light in quite a bit more. The room is dim and dusty, but it brings the periphery into focus, not that Jaskier cares a whit about that. He nearly stumbles over the rocks scattered across the floor in his hurry to get back to Geralt.

“Oh, no no no.” Jaskier’s breath catches in his throat when his gaze settles on the witcher. He has seen Geralt muddle through all manner of injury, has patched up a fair few of them himself. He’s stitched up angry, uneven gashes and set fractured bones, but none of those things prepares him for the way Geralt looks now. Blood spreads around the witcher’s head like some sort of macabre halo staining Geralt’s hair a disturbing shade of crimson and soaking into the dust and rock around him.

It’s not really a relief to find Geralt’s potions weren’t lost when the building came down around them. It’s more like a handful of sandbags in the face of a hurricane. He’s not a complete stranger to them though, and a rather distraught effort at rifling through the witcher’s bag turns up one Jaskier recognizes. It’s an orangey red, almost sparkling, and he’s seen it work before on things that should have killed Geralt. He’s got it in hand when he realizes he needs to back up a step. It can’t mend the witcher if he bleeds out first.

There are no bandages, because of course there aren’t. Jaskier shrugs out of his doublet. It’s not soft at all, so the chemise goes too, and that he can work with. Carefully as he can, Jaskier winds the cloth around Geralt’s head, tying it in place and hoping to whatever deity might be listening that it’s enough.

The potion comes next, and that’s somehow much worse. Geralt doesn’t stir when Jaskier brings the bottle to his lips. The only thing Jaskier can think to do is drip it in a little at a time, so agonizingly slowly that he worries it’ll be too late before he’s even finished. Afterwards, he stares at Geralt’s unnaturally still form, waiting to make sure he doesn’t choke on the stuff somehow.

Are you supposed to leave people where they are or something else entirely? Jaskier doesn’t have the foggiest idea, but he can’t bear the idea of leaving Geralt on the hard ground. Shivering in the chilly air, Jaskier ignores the blood seeping into his trousers and sits so that he can rest Geralt’s head in his lap. He won’t panic over the stain spreading too quickly across his chemise. He won’t. “You're not dying here. You don't get to leave me behind. Not like this.”

All that’s left to do is wait.

***

Geralt can’t remember ever opening his eyes to this before, the world having slid so violently out of focus. There’s a weight, or maybe it’s him that’s heavy. Even curling his fingers a monumental effort.

“Wh-” It’s all he manages before words fail him, and suddenly there is a hand squeezing his shoulder.

“Oh thank fuck,” someone says. Jaskier? Geralt thinks it’s probably Jaskier. It usually is. “How are you feeling?” Did something happen that suddenly granted him sleeping in Jaskier’s lap privileges? He doesn’t think so. That feels important in a way he can’t imagine being ambushed by, tied to a conversation he keeps not having, but here they are, his head very definitely in Jaskier’s lap. Only Jaskier looks horribly unhappy, so… so…

Jaskier had been asking him something. “What?”

“How’s your head? There was a lot of blood and I didn’t know if the potion would be enough, and…” Jaskier’s still talking. Geralt is distantly aware of this, but the words won’t stick.

“What happened?” he says, or hopes he does. His mouth feels as disjointed as the rest of him and it’s disconcertingly difficult to tell.

“The building came down on us. Don’t you remember?”

“Obviously not,” Geralt bites out. Wait. The building came down and as that sinks in, there’s a sharp pang of fear, but not for himself. He’ll be fine. He’s always fine. But Jaskier is human and sometimes overwhelmingly fragile. Geralt's head is swimming and he's almost afraid to ask. “Are you alright?”

“Me? I’m fine.” There’s more, but the rest won’t stay put. That’s the important bit anyway. Jaskier is okay. The swell of fear dissipates like a puff of smoke as quickly as it had sprung up. The building is a problem, but he can figure that out. Somehow. It’ll come to him eventually. To Jaskier’s credit, he does seem fine, if oddly clothed. Rather not clothed, actually. “Where is your shirt?” “Ah yeah, that.” Jaskier’s knuckles brush gently across Geralt’s temple. Dizzily, Geralt leans into it before it occurs to him maybe he shouldn't. “You were bleeding a lot. It was all I had to work with.”

“Hmm.” There’s an itchy sort of feeling at the back of his mind suggesting he’s supposed to be alarmed by that, but the response itself never comes. Not the way it did for Jaskier. Which, there was a reason he was worried about Jaskier, he’s pretty sure. There might be a reason he’s lying here too, what whatever it is, it’s lost to him now. They’re somewhere dark and dusty, and they can’t stay here forever, so without much thought, Geralt rolls over, trying to get up. It’s a mistake.

That the room is spinning is the least terrible thing out of all the things that come of his attempt to get up. The shift in equilibrium feels like having nails driven into his skull from every angle, sharp and impossible to tune out. There’s a high, keening sound Geralt only belatedly realizes is him.

“Geralt. Fuck. Hang on.” There’s nothing to hang onto though, and Geralt all but collapses down to his forearms. For a second he’s very, very certain he’s going to retch, but the immediacy of the sensation passes, leaving him deeply nauseous instead.

Jaskier’s hand smooths up and down his arm in the places where hard leather doesn’t block out sensation. In another place he might call the touch affectionate, but what daydream could he be in where that’s true? “Where are we?”

“We just talked about this. We're in a building that collapsed.” Something has crept into the edges of Jaskier’s voice, fretful and shadowed. Geralt decides he doesn’t like it. He’d like to soothe it away, but does not know how.

“‘M fine,” he tries because Jaskier seems worried about him, but even in his own ears the words blur together. Geralt tries to lift his head enough to look at Jaskier and prove his point, but the awful needlepoint pressure only presses more deeply. The witcher drops his head, forehead resting against what he thinks might be Jaskier’s knee.

“You’re not fine, you dolt. I don't want to mess it up, but I don't know how to fix this one. Are you supposed to sleep it off? Should I make sure you don’t sleep?” Jaskier is saying things still, Geralt is distantly aware, but the words all drift like dandelion seeds. There’s only this thread of terror that Geralt cannot stomach hearing.

“It’s okay. We’re okay,” he mumbles, blindly reaching to lay his hand over Jaskier’s. He’s not dead and Jaskier is well enough to talk, so it can’t be that bad, can it? “Tell me what happened.”

“...Geralt?” Jaskier’s thumb is brushing against the back of Geralt’s neck. It’s sort of lovely in that it's one pleasant thing when everything else is awful. “What do you remember?”

That’s a trick question if Geralt ever heard one. His memory is fine. He can’t think of any reason it wouldn’t be. Refusing to fall for it, Geralt aims to distract instead. “That feels nice.” 

 “Well, now I know you’re unwell. The Geralt I know barely tolerates my being around for more than a few weeks at a time, and would never own up to liking something I was doing.

Does Jaskier really think that? Maybe. Geralt can’t seem to hang onto where that line of reasoning was going, but Jaskier was talking and wrong. He needs to know he's wrong. “That’s not true. I miss you when you’re gone.”

“Ooooookay. That’s very sweet, but I think you’ll remember that’s not true when you’re better." It sounds sad, but Jaskier still has a hand on him, warm and welcome.

He’s staring very closely at a floor that was probably pretty once, but it’s cracked now. It’s a weird place to be, even for him, so Geralt tries to get up. Sort of. More precisely, he lifts his head an inch or two. It’s as far as he gets before his head feels like it’s splitting and he thinks he might be sick.

”Okay, that’s enough of that. You are, in fact, the worst patient. I would like to not be stuck here, and I imagine you would like to not be stuck here, so just let me help.” Stuck? Geralt doesn’t know where they’re stuck, but he knows there’s some reason he shouldn’t ask. Nodding is probably a terrible idea, so the witcher hums an agreement and listens to Jaskier sweep the worst of the debris from the floor next to them.

There are hands on him next, guiding him somewhere else with painstaking care. Geralt lets himself be moved. He ends up on his side before it feels very abruptly like Roach is stepping on his skull. It’s all he can do to bite off a low whimper.

“Alright, hey. Just get some rest. That swallow has to work eventually, right?” Jaskier doesn’t sound certain, but there's something soft under Geralt’s cheek and there’s a gentle hand cradling the side of his neck, a thumb carefully sweeping across his temple. If they weren’t lost, Geralt would call the gesture affectionate, but nothing makes any sense here. Are they lost?

Geralt thinks about the worried quiver in Jaskier’s voice. He'd fix it if he just knew how. It's quiet here, and Jaskier doesn't belong by himself in the quiet. “I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“You’re not.” There’s a change in pressure around his skull, something falling away, but it doesn’t hurt, and it comes with Jaskier’s fingers sliding through his hair. “Your head is looking better.”

That’s good, he thinks. Maybe it means the awful needling feeling will go away. Maybe it means this other ache, the one sprawling out behind his ribcage, will go away too. It means something, Geralt knows, but he can’t quite piece it together and his mouth runs away without the rest of him. “I don’t think I want to be alone.” 

 “You’re not. I’m right here.” Jaskier’s short nails scritch tenderly at the base of Geralt’s skull, a welcome counterpoint to everything else. “You’re not alone.”

***

I don’t think I want to be alone. It’s a revelation if it means anything. Jaskier knows, of course, that the rambling of a witcher who couldn’t even remember how they got there for more than thirty seconds at a time might not mean anything at all. But if there’s nothing to it, at least Jaskier can know that there for a moment in time, he could be exactly what Geralt needed. For now, Geralt’s face is pressed into Jaskier’s thigh, his breathing the only sound in this dim place.

An hour in, Jaskier starts to wonder if it wasn’t the other way around. Maybe he was supposed to keep Geralt from sleeping. Two hours in, he worries that Geralt might wake up in just as bad of shape as before, that he’ll have failed them both. Three hours in, sitting so still has gotten to be agonizing as much as he’d like to stay.

He’s just about to try and see how carefully he can move out from under Geralt when the witcher stirs. There’s a low groan and one eerie golden eye slowly blinking open.

“Careful.” Jaskier carefully brushes his thumb along Geralt’s temple, trying to coax the witcher into staying put, even if it means his own continued discomfort.

“Fuck. That hurts,” Geralt grumbles, holding his hand over the upper half of his face, and some of Jaskier’s unease settles. The words are perfectly clear this time.

“Shockingly, Falling rocks will do that.” He should let go, Jaskier thinks, but he carefully threads his fingers through Geralt’s hair and the witcher stays like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. It's probably just that Geralt needs a little time to reorient himself, but for a moment, Jaskier lets himself believe it’s true.

Bit by bit, Geralt seems to recover. When he finally pushes himself to sit up, there’s a pained wince, but the witcher’s eyes remain focused. That’s… good. That’s probably good. Except if it’s not. “Should you be doing that?” 

 “I’m fine,” Geralt replies gruffly instead of bothering to answer the question. It’s considerably more normal than their last conversation, so that’s something.

 “Actually fine or ‘I can’t wrap my head around the fact that someone might care what happens to me’ fine?” Geralt ignores the question entirely, his gaze flicking over their surroundings before settling on Jaskier. “You were afraid.”

It's not a question, and Geralt is looking at him like a puzzle to solve. It would just figure, the one time the man is actually listening to him. It seems weird that Geralt couldn't keep ahold of where they even were, but that Jaskier being afraid for him would stick even now. Then again, Jaskier doesn't know anything about head injuries. Maybe that's just how it goes.

“Damn right I was. I thought you were dying and I was going to be trapped down here with your… your corpse or something. Then you woke up making no sense, and I don’t know what to do with a head injury, which it turns out is an awfully stressful thing to guess about. I wasn't even sure I'd done enough to fix it until, what, five minutes ago?” It's a lot, even for him, the words tripping over each other in their need to escape. Jaskier leans on theatrics because it’s all the armor he has. Anything else might give away how his heart broke with every attempt Geralt made to speak the last time around.

“Hmm.” Geralt pinches the bridge of his nose and says nothing more. Typical.

Jaskier wants to be angry, but the feeling floats away as soon as he really looks at Geralt. There are dark, angry smudges under his eyes, and Geralt is so pale, more than usual even. He appears every bit the part of someone who was recently on death’s door and Jaskier just can’t hang onto any real bitterness. “How’re you feeling?”

Geralt gives him a sour look, the kind he gets when he thinks Jaskier is asking a dumb question. Much to Jaskier’s surprise, he does answer eventually. “Terrible… but not dying.”

“Sooooo, any thoughts on how we get out of here?” It’s abrupt, but Jaskier really can’t stomach thinking the state Geralt was in, and escape is the next most pressing thing. The sooner they steer away from what happened, the less likely he is to say something foolish.

There’s that look a second time, and this time Geralt doesn’t deign to answer. Which is okay really. They’ve been stuck here this long. A little longer probably won’t hurt anything.

“I was. Dying, I mean,” Geralt says quietly, startling Jaskier from his thoughts. The bard follows Geralt’s gaze to where there is still quite a lot of blood splattered across the floor. It's dry, but it stains the alabaster flooring and pale, crumbled stone.

“Oh, that. Well, see I-” Jaskier stumbles because he doesn't know what Geralt wants, and having nearly lost the witcher in this remnant of a room has left him raw and tender in places. It's almost a relief when Geralt’s hand slaps unceremoniously over Jaskier’s mouth, stifling any further reply, but not hard enough to hurt. When Jaskier looks at him in surprise, he’d swear there was something like affection in Geralt’s exasperated expression. It's probably just a trick of the light.

“Stop. Talking. You did well. I'm still here, aren't I?” With a grimace, Geralt pulls his hand from Jaskier’s mouth and wobbles to his feet. It’s an unsteady motion, and Jaskier isn’t sure it’s really wise this soon after nearly having his brains bashed in. Geralt seems to manage though, and holds out a hand to Jaskier like he’s the one who needs support.

“In this life, some days not dead is the best you can hope for." Jaskier can’t help but take Geralt’s hand, letting the witcher yank him to his feet. Jaskier thinks he catches a smile, but Geralt turns away too quickly to be sure. What he is sure of is that he's on his feet and Geralt's hand is still holding onto his. "Not dead... and not alone.”

You can find the rest of my Witcher fanworks here. <3

[yeojaa]

Fboi!jk WHO’s lowkey in Love with oc🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

[ request a milestone drabble ] 

pairing.  jjk x f!reader.  rating.  general.  tags.  infuriating college antics and mentions of drinking.  that’s about it.  wc. 0.9k.  beta reader.  n/a.  author note.  ty for the request!  i hope you enjoyed, even though it’s a little sloppy and disjointed.  😐😐 

Jeon Jungkook is many things:  campus heartthrob, surprisingly smart (but exceedingly lazy), the guy who works the front desk of the university’s gym.  He drinks too many coffees a day, keeps a photo of his dog in his wallet, and has a surprisingly big following on social media.  (For his photography and not his thirst traps, which is perhaps the most surprising thing about him.)  

He’s also the guy who shamelessly played you during his first year, wrapping you around his freshman finger as easily as a Red Vine at the movies.  It’s why you don’t like him now, barely tolerating him each time you’re in the same vicinity.

(Unfortunately for you, your friend group overlap is massive - the worst kind of venn diagram.)

“Stop,”  your best friend chides, legs hooked over her boyfriend’s lap, the tip of her finger digging deep into your side, assaulting the sensitive side of your ribs.  You almost knock over your drink with how much it startles you, leg making forceful contact with the bottom of the table. 

Beer sloshes out of its glass, three heads whipping to stare in your direction.  “Sorry!”  You play it off with a wave of your hand, gaze bouncing to Mina’s, brow knit tight over your stare.  “Stop what?”

“Stop glaring at him.”  The way she says it makes it seem stupid - as if the answer is the most obvious thing in the world.  You resent her for it, though not nearly as much as you resent him for existing.  

“I’m not.”

“You are.”  It’s two voices at once, Hoseok chiming in with his girlfriend.  

You resent Jung Hoseok too.  He’s the whole reason you’re stuck here on this Friday night, seated in the kitchen of the frat house.  He’s the one who’d tangled everything together, turning your group of girlfriends into literal girlfriends.  (You’re happy for them, you swear.  Joon is a sweetheart and Yoongi might always seem like he’s bothered but he’s nice too.  Even Hoseok is actually okay.)

“He’s being an attention whore,”  you retort, probably more petulantly than you need to, with needles sticking out of syllables, two year’s worth of history slipping alongside vowels. 

“He’s literally just sitting there.”

Mina’s not wrong - but he’s also flirting.  Shamelessly.  With one of the girls that seem to always be at these things, all chiming laughter and brilliantly white teeth.  You’ve seen her a handful of times, almost always at Jungkook’s side for at least some portion of the evening.  

“Give it a break, ____.”  

You wish you could.  In fact, you’d like nothing more than to not care about Jeon Jungkook and his infuriating antics.  It’d save you a lot of frustrations, make it so much easier to exist on the same campus as him.  

Because as it stands, it’s next to impossible not to be reminded of him, to go a single day without hearing about how great he is with his stupid boopable nose and sparkly eyes.  Every day, from friends or strangers, it’s simp central. 

You hate it.

Jeon Jungkook is good at many things:  passing classes he barely attends (which isn’t that many, because he is actually pretty studious all things considered), making jungle juice that could knock out an elephant, dying his hair pink.  

He’s also apparently really good at pissing people off when he doesn’t mean to.  Call it a skill of his.

One he’d honed with you, nearly three years ago now.  Back when he’d been young and stupid and uncertain, when he hadn’t quite grown into well, much of anything, when he’d had his priorities all messed up.

Maybe he shouldn’t have broken up with you within two months - citing needing to focus on school - and then dated someone shortly thereafter.  Maybe he shouldn’t have seemed to find himself in every class of yours, sitting across the lecture hall listening to the professor drone on and on about statics.  Maybe he shouldn’t have introduced one of his fraternity brothers to someone he knew you knew.

(He says maybe but he knows they were all bad choices made by an underveloped brain, too addled by Thursday night pub crawls and a grass is always greener on the other side mentality.)

Sometimes, he feels bad.  He doesn’t miss the way you pointedly ignore him when he’s around, how your expression seems to be stuck in a permanent scowl any time you catch sight of him.

(He’d have to be dumb to not notice all of that and while Jungkook is many things, dumb isn’t necesarily one of them.  Immature maybe.  Impulsive definitely.)

“Where’d ____ go?”  

Someone else asks the question he wants to but keeps caged behind his teeth, hidden past his molars.  

Mina sighs dramatically, pats her boyfriend’s cheek, and shrugs.  “Who knows.” 

But Jungkook knows.  Thinks he knows, anyway.  You’ve left, because you always leave when he does things you hate.  (And you hate everything he does.)  

One day he’ll get the courage to apologise to you, to explain that he still misses you.  He knows it won’t be well-received (why would it be?) but he’ll offer it anyway, awkward and stilted and not nearly as apologetic as it should be.

Today isn’t that day though.

[fastcarsgovroom]

Don’t really know what to make of still it but here goes (the Lando Norris issue) Pt 3

This is about the Lando Norris and Max Fewtrell (and other involved streamers) issue so you don't need to read it if it's not in your best interest to. I don’t know if this thing is supposed to have blown over or anything, but I’m posting because heck this is my blog and I want to post about things I think are in line with my personal philosophy (and maybe in-group).    

The entire rant is in five parts:  

Part 1 is where I describe very basically the entire situation, essentially what I saw happening through posts on the tumblr, twitter, and reddit Lando Norris tags  

Part 2 is me trying to describe why some fans felt what they felt and reacted the way they did  

Part 3 is the videos and what was said of them and how I interpreted them  

Part 4 the ‘misinformation’ idk

Part 5 is like, a rant.

Part 3: What was actually said?

The clips of Lando and Max F saying things that were, for the lack of better words, questionable. Clip urls taken from one of the OPs who brought the issue to our attention (hope it’s all right I didn’t credit).

TW for talks about sex, sexism, and misogyny

If anything, listen to the clips for yourself and ignore the wall of text. Make up your own mind. I’m only writing what I’ve seen, and as a way to make sense of it. 

Under the cut

The relevant videos are (not in chronological order)

1. Star signs

https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_qqblm5bUU51y0rtc3.mp4

How I’d describe it: Max F brings up star signs (like, the zodiac) because his chat was discussing it. Lando reacts by saying that if a girl asks about star signs, ‘you get up and leave’, apparently in reference to his personal experience with a girl in conversation about star signs. Max F comments that the girl has ‘dodged a bullet’ based on how, for the lack of better words, passionate (’salty’) Lando’s reaction was. Lando retorts that Max F ‘wouldn’t have wanted to be with her,’ providing some information (where the girl was sitting), which causes Max F to recognize the girl and react in an amused but equally passionate way. The other streamer quoted “she crazy”, supposedly in relation to the girl.

How people have interpreted it: Others have interpreted is as being a sexual encounter, Lando being dismissive of a female-skewed topic of interest (star signs) and only listening to her in hopes of a sexual encounter (edit: the more ‘obvious’ “listening to women in hopes of a sexual encounter” is clip 4, added below. But I’ve also seen people claiming  ‘dipping’ (said by Max F) and ‘coughing’ (said by Lando) here to be references to sex, along with the ‘you wouldn’t have wanted to be with her’ as, of course, having sex, so I’ll leave this interpretation up. Again, I may be getting this wrong), that Lando and friends were making fun of the girl (’she crazy’, ‘you wouldn’t have wanted to be with her’, how Lando said the topic was ‘so boring’ at the mention of star signs, etc.) 

How I interpreted it: Personally, I don’t think we have enough context as to what really went down. I can see how you could come to the above interpretations, but I also, personally, find relating it necessarily to a sexual encounter a reach. Yeah, it could be the men hanging out and getting to know a young woman (girls) but just not jiving with her, or thinking that the woman’s interests were weird and boring. Personal conversations, essentially, that probably has no place on a public stream, but it comes across as being said carelessly and immaturely rather than with malice.  

2. ‘Stealing’, ‘don’t want to talk about it’, ‘that [descriptor]’ 

https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_qqbm90Esu01y0rtc3.mp4

How I’d describe it: This clip starts with a streamer (honestly I can only identify Max F and Lando, sorry) saying Max is bitter, to which Lando adds that it’s because Max F ‘did not receive love from a girl’. This seems to upset Max F, who retorts that if he should ‘tell a few stories’ about Lando, implied to be embarrassing ones. There was a lot of ‘yours’ and ‘mine’ (Lando and Max F) thrown around about the women. Max F brings up that Lando ‘tried to steal mine (Max F’s)’. Lando refutes this, and Max F looks more upset and says repeatedly that he does not want to ‘have this conversation’ with Lando. Lando continues on, referring to the girls as ‘the [descriptor]’, i.e. “the old one?”; “the top golf one?” and “I did not try to steal that one.” 

The other streamer appears to take issue with this, saying ‘that one?”, and Max F adds “can we stop talking about it like that?” and doubles down and tells Lando to stop the conversation. 

How people have interpreted it: This is the more egregious clip; people took offense at how the women were spoken about (’yours’, ‘mine’), the implications that they can be ‘stolen’, and how Lando referred to them as ‘the [descriptor]’. Some also interpreted Max F’s it as referring to a girl. This all leads into the perception that Lando and Max F were objectifying the women and talking about them in terms of conquests (presumably sexual). 

How I interpreted it: I think Lando and Max F were quite disrespectful in how they were talking about the women, more so Lando because he continued with the conversation (in a public stream) despite Max F telling him to stop. It does sound like ‘locker room banter’ about relationships, which is still, ultimately, misogynistic, immature, disrespectful, and inappropriate, especially in a public stream. 

What I don’t get is how ‘the/that [descriptor]’ was taken as intentional and malicious objectifying, and how the ‘it’ was referring to a woman and not the entire situation. 

3. ‘Cowboy’

https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_qqbq6nhmZR1y0rtc3.mp4

How I’d describe it: The clip starts in the middle off in-game banter, with Lando asking Max F if has any other digs at him, to which Max F replies that he does have ‘plenty off digs’ at Lando. Lando brings up ‘cowboy’ as an apparent dig, to which Max F retorts is ‘not a dig’, but was ‘brilliant’ and ‘very good’ for Lando. The Toy Story reference of ‘there’s a snake in my boot!’ is brought up, to which someone says ‘not the only snake, haha’ in a mock-jokey voice. 

How people have interpreted it: There’s probably more backstory to this in previous streams, as OP mentioned. Some have taken issue with, again, discussing personal situations involving a third party (OP has mentioned that the nickname ‘cowboy’ is in reference to a woman). Some also claimed that the nickname ‘cowboy’ is a sex position, so took offense to how it sounded like Lando and Max F nicknamed a woman they knew after a sex position, then openly talked about her in a public stream. Some said the nickname was from the woman’s social media handle, which had a cowboy emoji. 

How I interpreted it: This one is weird. I have no idea what the context is. I have no idea how people came to the conclusion that ‘cowboy’ was a sex position. Is the ‘snake’ in reference to male genitalia? I don’t know? I have no interpretation of this other than things without context always sound so weird. There’s entire twitter accounts about shows and podcasts lines taken out of context, which just sounds bizarre. 

4. ‘Reward’

https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_qqbfwzG9GC1wg3eue_720.mp4

How I’d describe it: I’m not sure if I can describe it without transcribing the whole thing or putting my own interpretation / narrative here. It’s a public stream, sure, but it sounds as coherent as a bit of disjointed conversation you’ve eavesdropped on (To me, anyway. I’m not being obtuse on purpose maybe I’m just dim).  

Clip starts with Lando and Max F sounding very amused with something, with Lando telling Max F about an encounter(?)/incident(?)with ‘cowboy’, referencing ‘rounds’ (round 2… round 6). There’s more banter, Max F saying he was ‘worried’ that Lando was talking about someone else, that he will whatever Lando is doing is ‘good for [him]’, and is ‘healthy’. 

Lando says it was “bit boring, really”, to which Max F says ‘oh, 100%, yeah waffle. Complete and utter waffle’ and “gotta do you what you gotta do, listen to her sometimes you know what I mean? Sacrifices do bring on great things.”

How people have interpreted it: Essentially, Lando is telling Max F about his hookups with ‘cowboy’ (the rounds being, well, rounds of hookups). Lando is saying that being with ‘cowboy’ is a bit boring, but Max F saying that Lando has to make sacrifices (his time? listening to boring conversation (’waffle’)?) in order to maintain said hookup partner. The takeaway was that Lando and Max F discussed sexual encounters with a woman (’cowboy’) on public stream, called her ‘boring’, and implied that she should only be listened to in context of getting a hookup is disrespectful. Many were disgusted. 

Some, perhaps not having watched the clip, attributed the ‘sacrifices for women’s attention / sexual gratification from women’ comment to Lando. Others are angry and disappointed that Lando did not speak up against the comment, which indicates that he too is complicit with the notion that women should only be listened to for sexual gratification. 

How I interpreted it: There’s a lot of innuendo here and ‘keywords’ that are attributed to sex and hookups (i.e. ‘rounds’ being hookups / rounds of sex; Max F’s implication that the many rounds (6) are ‘healthy’, a common description for sexual activity as being a healthy part of the human experience.) So, yes, I’ll believe that they’re most likely talking about their sex life. Why did I use so many words to come to that conclusion, and not just say ‘they are talking about their sex life’ out of the bag? Because that was my thought process so idk what to tell you other than what I did. Maybe it’ll come across as being apologetic and intentionally obtuse, who knows. 

Without the context, it’s not going to be very obvious.

So if I’m taking it as their conversation about sex, then the “sacrifices do bring on great things,” will very heavily imply that Lando has to have boring conversations with ‘cowboy’ for sex. Let’s be clear, this is a very disrespectful and demeaning take. It’s also unfortunately a very common one that’s thrown around everywhere in media, among immature men (young or old, lets be real). It’s also very normalized, so I get when people say they find it ‘normal’ or ‘typical’. This doesn’t excuse the comments or topic of conversation. 

On the other hand, I can also see a POV that Max F may have said things ironically or sarcastically, since it is a sentiment often used (women are nags) and both Lando and Max F are known to be sarcastic, dramatic, and dry at times. This is a reach to the other end of the ‘harmless banter’ spectrum, but without context, maybe it’s possible.

Still don’t know why ‘cowboy’ is necessarily a nickname derived from a sex position. 

Part 4

[lochrannn]

Relationship: Diego Hargreeves/Lila Pitts  

Characters: Lila PittsDiego Hargreeves  

Additional Tags: Explicit Sexual Content; Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot; Porn with Feelings; Smut; Choking; Undernegotiated Kink; but with ongoing negotiation; everything is explicitly consesual

-

Lila has never told Diego that the hottest thing about sleeping with him is the way he looks at her.

That’s not quite accurate, really, the whole endeavour is stupidly sexy because Diego is built like a tank, but limber in a way you wouldn’t necessarily expect from someone of his size, and he is always eager to please and prove himself.

That she has actually mentioned to him. How it feels just a little bit like he’s in competition with himself sometimes. She didn’t tell him because she has any real objections, she is the beneficiary of this habit, after all, she just worries for his sense of self-worth sometimes.

Diego walks around with a confident swagger and a fuck you attitude, but late at night in bed, when he’s sure she can’t see his face, he tells her about the humiliations he suffered under his father and how much it actually did hurt to be kicked out of the police academy.

Nevertheless, he inevitably sulked for a couple of days and when they had sex the next time, he tried his best to be as lazy about it as possible. It was so silly that it made Lila crack up and that, in turn, cracked Diego and they spent the rest of the evening seeing how little effort they could put in and still get each other off. It was so stupid but it’s become one of Lila’s fondest memories.

And even that time, when they finally sank into each other, he looked at her like she had hung the moon, like she was someone worth worshipping.

That’s also how he’s looking at her now.

Soft, full lips slightly parted, his warm brown eyes big and round and full of emotion. Lila can’t look away.

Diego’s staring up at her where she’s sat straddling him, undulating her hips slowly, and she can’t resist squeezing her pelvic muscles just to watch his eyes slip closed and a soft groan fall from his mouth.

His grip tightens where he has one hand on her bum and his other hand that’s splayed out on her belly pushes against her a little harder and the sudden added friction and pressure inside her make Lila’s thigh muscles spasm and she involuntarily lifts herself up and tips forward just a bit, a moan on her lips.

When she catches her breath and looks back at Diego, she sees how just the slightest hint of smugness has snuck into his expression so she sits back down on him hard, making them both gasp, but this time he doesn’t close his eyes, instead keeping his penetrating gaze on her and fuck if it’s not the hottest sight she’s ever seen.

Diego moves his hand up her body as they lazily continue rocking against each other, savouring the moment.

He splayes his hand out over her ribs, then moves it further up to cup her breast, catching her nipple between two fingers and squeezing them together, causing a delicious sting to zing along Lila’s nerve endings.

She bites her bottom lip and moans again softly and hears a rush of a breath leaving Diego’s mouth that sounds distinctly like a curse, but maybe it’s a prayer.

Lila still can’t believe that during what ended up being one of the most tumultuous and tragic weeks of her life she also forged what has now become the most intimate connection she’s ever experienced.

And despite everything she put him through when they first met, he trusts her unconditionally. And Lila’s never trusted anyone as deeply as she does Diego. Even when she still believed in her mother, she knew the woman always had an angle, that she could never trust her fully. But not Diego, he’s never been anything but honest with her.

Lila often wonders whether she tells him enough just how much that means to her.

That thought sparks an idea and without ceasing her movements she grips Diego’s wrist, pulling his hand away from her breast and then she puts it to her throat and covers it with her other hand.

Diego freezes. “What are you doing?” A small crease appears between his eyebrows.

Lila is suddenly unsure of herself and tries not to let too much of the defensiveness that boils up in her come out when she says, “What does it look like?” with a bit of a sarcastic smirk.

Diego’s features don’t relax and instead he says, “Lila, I don’t… I don’t know if this is a good idea.” His long fingers flutter just a little under hers, but he doesn’t pull his hand away.

Ok, so they should have probably talked this out beforehand and Lila regrets acting on the spur-of-the-moment just a bit, but they’re here now and it’s not uncommon for them to just have a full blown conversation in the middle of having sex. They usually just pick up where they left off once they’ve sorted out whatever has come up.

It’s not like Diego should be particularly worried about her, either. She’s a Commission trained assassin. They’ve even fought each other often at his gym and quite brutally at that. But Lila has to concede that outside of the ring, Diego has never touched her with anything but gentleness and care.

Maybe she’s never fully considered how important that is to him.

She tries to lighten the mood, “Oh c’mon, it’s not like anything can happen, I’ll just tap into your whole not-breathing thing and I’ll be fine!” she smiles at him brightly, hoping that will reassure him.

His concerned expression turns into one of confusion. “That’s not how this works,” he says, cocking his head to the side where he’s lying against the pillow.

“It’s not about restricted airflow, it’s about cutting off blood circulation to the brain.” As he says that, Diego strokes his thumb along the underside of her jaw, pressing ever so slightly into her jugular.

Lila’s breath hitches maybe a bit out of surprise and a lot out of excitement and she drops the hand that was covering his down to his chest and rubs his pec seductively, “You know an awful lot about this,” she says, putting on a sultry voice, and gives him a wicked smile.

Diego considers her for a moment then chuckles and says, “I learned how to choke out grown-ass men when I was seven and I bet you weren’t any older. Don’t bullshit me, I know you know how this works!"

“See, so we both know what we’re doing. Nothing to worry about, then!” She gives him another smile, a more innocent one now, she’s pretty certain she’s brought him round anyway.

“You really wanna do this, huh?” Diego asks and brings his other hand back around to lay it over hers where she still has it resting on his chest.

“Uh-huh! I trust you Diego!” Lila says as earnestly as possible.

There’s a flutter in her stomach and she’s suddenly reminded that Diego’s still been inside her this entire time. Yeah, she’s been thinking about trying something like this out for a while, but it’s also true that it’s never even occurred to her with anyone else. She would never have been able to let her guard down like this. Now she craves the vulnerability.

“Okay,” Diego responds, his voice a bit breathy, maybe a tad overwhelmed, but he’s clearly willing to give her this. “But you keep your hand around my wrist, alright? And if your grip loosens cause you’re about to pass out, I stop! And if you say anything that sounds in any way like stop, I let go, okay? We’re not picking a word or whatever, anything that isn’t a clear keep going, I stop!”

“Yeah okay!” Lila concedes. She feels like Diego is mostly reassuring himself, but she is grateful for him to be setting his own boundaries.

“Okay,” Diego repeats and his fingers on her throat flutter once more before they tighten just a bit right under her jaw. That’s the thing, it doesn’t actually take a lot of pressure.

Lila uses the hand she still has on his chest for balance and lifts herself up a few inches, before dropping back down and they both moan at the sensation.

It doesn’t take them long to find a rhythm and Lila can feel her arousal building more and more.

Diego’s not taken his eyes off her face once, as if he’s afraid that he could miss any sign of her discomfort.

Lila, in turn, can’t look away from him, either, because again he’s looking at her like she’s something fragile, something worth protecting, things she doesn’t believe about herself at all, but she loves that Diego does, and it makes her heart stutter in her chest.

But soon she realises that she’s getting a bit light-headed, losing focus, that her movements are getting slower, disjointed.

Diego’s apparently noticed the same thing because he stops rolling his hips up into her and loosens his grip on her throat.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Lila says. She smiles at him and hopes that he’s reassured even if it comes on just a bit slowly.

“You wanna stop?” Diego asks then, completely letting go of her throat and resting his hand at the base of her neck.

“No, c’mon, I’m okay!” Lila replies, trying not to whine. She can’t really put it into words, but the feeling she’s experienced in the last couple of minutes was weird, sure, but new and hot and she just wants to see how far she can take this, how much more turned on she can get. “Grip on your wrist’s still strong, see!'' She squeezes his wrist to demonstrate.

“What’s it like?” Diego asks almost conversationally and Lila chuckles in surprise.

“It’s good! It’s a bit weird as well, but it’s mostly good. I don’t know how to describe it. I’m sure you’ve been choked out before, you know what that feels like.” she tries to explain.

“Yeah never like this, though, and usually not for this long,” Diego shoots back his brow creasing a bit.

“I really am okay, Diego!” Lila says emphatically. “I'm just finding it a bit hard to focus, but please don’t stop!”

Diego sighs heavily, gives her a curt nod, and then, taking her entirely by surprise, he rolls them over so that he’s on top, only keeping some of his weight off her, propped up on one elbow, the other arm on her chest, hand back around her throat.

“I’ve really gotta do everything around here, huh?” he says with the hint of a smirk, eyes crinkling a bit, and then thrusts into her hard.

It doesn’t take long for Lila to see stars, but somehow the restricted blood flow to her brain now has the opposite effect from before. Now that she’s no longer under any strain to keep herself upright her focus zeroes in on all of the ways Diego’s making her delirious with pleasure.

The stretch and burn of where he’s pushing into her. The way his pelvis occasionally rubs against her clit. His forearm resting between her breasts, putting pressure on her lungs, making it even harder to breath, yet that actually turns her on still more.

The squeeze on her throat, just enough to keep her on the edge, but not enough to actually hurt. Somehow, what should evoke memories of violence and fear in her, feels like the most gentle caress when it's Diego's fingers.

She's clinging onto him, gripping his forearm with both hands and her thighs are pressed against his hips, barely giving him room to move.

And most of all she’s almost driven to distraction by the way he has his lips right up to her ear, gruff voice whispering filthily about how well she’s taking him, how much he loves her, how tight she feels, and how hot it is that she’s trusting him to do this to her.

And then Diego uses his flexibility to pull one of his knees up beside her hip, pressing her thigh into her stomach with his own, changing the angle so he’s hitting spots so deep inside her, and all of a sudden it’s too much for Lila to hold on, as a blinding orgasm rips through her, making her whimper. She squeezes her eyes shut and can vaguely feel tears slip out of the corners as she comes. Her whole body tenses and shivers with the intensity and in the end she does lose her grip on Diego’s wrist and his hand instantly disappears from her throat, but she remains breathless all the same.

She feels his elbow settle just next to her head. He slots his lips over hers for a deep, messy kiss while he continues to fuck her through her orgasm, as she scrabbles at his sides for any kind of purchase. And her muscles are still contracting when he finally comes inside of her with a grunt and one last punishingly hard thrust that rips a sob from her throat.

Lila hasn’t opened her eyes since she first collided with her release, so, panting heavily and going off of feel alone, she puts her hands to either side of Diego’s face, in a way he will often do with her, and drags her thumb along his bottom lip where she can feel his breath rushing in and out fast as well.

Their bodies are still pressed so tightly together that Lila can feel his heart racing in his chest, mirroring her own.

Diego then lets out a shaky exhale, kisses the pad of her finger and rolls off her.

He loses no time in gathering her up in his arms and dragging her to rest half on top of him.

Lila finally opens her eyes as Diego begins stroking her hair and kissing the corners of her eyes, presumably to erase the slight damp patches her tears left there.

“You okay?” he whispers into her hair, his voice still not quite steady.

“Yeah,” she breathes out, “Fuck, yeah, definitely okay. More than okay, really!” Then she adds, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah… Jesus, that was intense, but I’m good,” he mumbles against her cheek and Lila laughs gently at the way his stubble tickles her face. Then he goes on, “Fuck, Lila, I love you so much, you know that, right?”

“So you keep saying,” she says with another gentle chuckle and a yawn, as she lays her face in the crook of his neck, but apparently Diego’s not quite ready to let her drift off as he lifts her up slightly by her shoulders, so he can look her in the eyes. He doesn’t even say anything, just stares at her imploringly, so she brings up her hand to his cheek and says, “I love you too, you old sap. Can’t even dick down and choke out your girlfriend without making it romantic!”

She only catches the beginning of his smile because then she presses her lips to his for one more languid kiss before she settles back down on his chest.

They will clean up later, but for now she’d just like to bask in her post orgasmic bliss for a bit.

[kittymsmithwritesstuff]

One Shot: Candlelight Gods (Miragehound)

I do commissions (link)

One Shot prompt from @witterprompts

My AO3 (link)

Words: 1817

Summary: Elliott follows Bloodhound to a waterlogged cabin full of dancing candlelight in the middle of the night, because he’s stupid and in love, not that he’s told them the second part. 

Tags: first dates, mutual pining, friends to lovers (just add a visit from the old gods), candles, canon non-binary character, bloodhound headcannons, fluff, humor

---

“Do I want to know why you have all these candles and why it's so... creepy in here? No? Yeah, probably not."

Their laugh was half lost to the wind coming between the cracks in the boards, long waterlogged and bowing away. The candles flickered so Bloodhound seemed like an old zoetrope animation, jumpy and disjointed but still so fascinating. He almost asked them if they had a zoetrope, it seemed like they would, but was stopped by the low howl leaking through the walls. “Do not worry, Elliott,” they said, pulling out a lighter and setting it to a small stick of incense in a dish hanging from the corner. “They will not come here.”

“What are t-they, again?” He shoved his hands in his pockets. The night was cold for Solace, somewhere in the sixties. Bloodhound, in their full regalia, was unphased.

“Spirits of wind and fire,” they held the lighter, aflame, near the glass of their lenses. He could almost see their eyes behind the black. “Of cold and death. Long do they ride together, till Odin’s last breath.”

“Did you just pull that out of your ass or is that like, from those poetic eddas you told me about?”

They turned toward him. He could definitely see their eyes, not the color but the shape, the crinkling around the corners as a giggle he would have once called un-Hound-like, before he learned how like them it would be to laugh at any and all things, bubbled up through their respirator. “Completely out my ass.”

He smiled, despite the chill and creepy candles and ancient howling death creatures. “It was good.”

“Thank you. It was true, as well. Wolves and ravens both belong to Odin.” They sat on the floor, cross legged, and Elliott dropped before them. The toes of their boots and his sneakers touched. “I find the howls soothing.”

“You’re weird,” he said, and they giggled again. He leaned forward, face in hands, elbows to knees. “Sitting in a rotting swamp house with a bunch of candles telling me death doggie howls are soothing. And burning sage.”

“Keeps the bad spirits away. Usually.”

“I-I’m not sure if I should be more worried that there’s bad spirits around, or that you said usually.”

“Yes.” In his mind, they winked as they said it. “May I remind you that I did not force you to come with me.”

“You didn’t.” He’d come to creepy swamp land with them willingly, because he was dumb and in love. He wasn’t sure if the whole love thing was mutual, he’d never brought it up, and it’d been three months of I-guess-were-friends-now so he’d sort of resigned himself to never growing the balls needed to ask. Renee had called him chicken so many times but somehow they just ended up taking platonic walks in the park. He liked their company either way so, he guessed, he would live.

Maybe.

If the death doggies didn’t get him first, since they were chilling outside, staring at him through the cracks. His voice was strained. “Hoooound?”

They put a hand on his quickly, fingerless gloves letting him feel some warmth of their skin. It was a decent distraction. “Don’t fret, vinur. They are only curious.”

They were staring right at him. At the both of them. Just two. He was tense, but he leaned toward the split between the boards, watching streaks of moonlight come through the trees. The wolves seemed to glow, though there wasn’t enough light for that. Bloodhound put a hand on his arm to warn him before leaning in, face close to his. Their breathing was quiet. They both leaned, watching the wolves, and saw two birds-ravens, Elliott realized, descend from the trees and perch between the ears of the dogs. Bloodhound gasped slightly, leaning in further, Elliott doing the same until they were shoulder to shoulder.

“This is why I brought you here,” they whispered, voice a husk through the filters. “I did not know if it would happen, but Allfather has truly blessed us.”

He, well, he didn’t know what was going on. The wolves were still freaky. They seemed…hungry. The ravens didn’t instill so much worry, but he felt like they knew way more about him than he wanted them to. “Are those, uh…okay are those deadass Geri and Freki?”

They turned their head to him. He became suddenly aware how close they were. “You remembered their names!”

“Heh, of course.” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking out at the wolves again. Geri, Freki. Both meaning “the ravenous” or “greedy one”. Words so old the definite meaning had been lost even to Bloodhound. Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory, they were, too, speculation, non definitive meanings to names wrought in stone. When he looked out, he wasn’t sure if he believed any of what Bloodhound was saying, or that it was happening, but he’d always been a little spiritual. “They’re beautiful.”

“War often is,” they said, leaning into the wall. They watched the moonlight shimmer through leaves, like speckles on a puppy’s nose. Candle flames dancing, jerking upward and falling back like storm waves. The warmth he felt wasn’t from the coat, and certainly not from the candles, but the air-between them. The warmth of friends, he thought, ignoring that tug at the corner of his psyche that insisted on more. The wolves did not stare much longer and moved, together, side by side, around the saturated earth. The ravens vanished into night. “To rest before their flight around Midgard,” Bloodhound stated.

“Epic.” He said. The wolves were not alone, a few others joining. They all appeared normal. Maybe the original two were, after all, and there was just something funny in that sage Bloth had burned.

There was a pause, and then Bloodhound moved, sitting cross legged again, further from him than they’d been all night. “Elliott.”

“Bloodhound?” He raised an eyebrow, looking at them. Their fingers fidgeted with their gloves before pulling them off, revealing all their hands, a peppering of white scars that mostly looked to be caused by a certain temperamental corvid. Before he could say anything, they suddenly lifted off their headdress and the cap beneath. They placed them to the side, and he knew they were watching him. Their hair was put up somehow, but once they released it it cascaded out in curls and ringlets. A glint of moonlight said it was burgundy red, and there were braids interwoven in the mass, tucked behind their ears to keep the hair from their face. His mouth felt dry, and he swallowed.

“I feel I can trust you,” they said, voice soft, that even tone they used when teaching the new Legends. He remembered how gentle they were when he joined. “I have told you things and you have not repeated them to a soul. Small things, really, but it still means…a lot that you have kept the knowledge to yourself.”

“R-right,” he pressed his thumb nails to his palms. “I make it a rule to not be a dick.”

“More than can be said for many.”

“You’re too kind.”

“I give credit where it is due-but, but anyway I…” they sighed, “this outing was for more than one reason. More than what we witnessed it…is because I wish to…reveal, myself, um, to you.” They gestured at their face, pausing mid-wrist swing. “Um. Oh, Gods, that sounded a lot less awkward in my head.”

He was too stunned to react, and then he was on his knees, in front of them, disbelieving but eager. “That didn’t sound awkward at all.”

“You’re a liar, vinur. But,” they laughed nervously-Bloodhound, nervous! “I appreciate it.” They took a deep breath and bowed their head. First the goggles, then the respirator. When they looked up at him, with their real eyes, biting their real lips, their skin tanned by Solace sun and dusted in freckles, he couldn’t stop himself from gasping.

“You’re gorgeous,” he said immediately.

They smiled, moon cutting their lips into sharp shapes of blue light, and half ducked their head. He caught glimpses of faint scars, and of far starker ones, across their nose, down from one side of their lip, old, white lines of pain turned cracks of beauty. Their voice was so soft. “You are a flatterer, Elliott.”

He sputtered, “nuh uh!”

“What, so I’m not gorgeous?”

He panicked. “No you’re absolutely gorgeous, and stunning and amazing and cute and-and-and,” he stopped, realizing they were looking at him, head propped on a hand casually, though the candlelight shown the blush rampaging over their whole face. They were biting their lip. Elliott felt his whole mind explode. “You did that on purpose.”

They held out their thumb and forefinger, half inch apart. “Just a little.”

He huffed, shoving their shoulder, and they laughed. “You can be an ass, you know.”

“A cute ass?”

“Now you’re just fishing for compliments.”

“You’ll find, Elliott,” they turned so they were on their knees, slowly pushing themself closer to him, so he could see the glint off their blue eye, realizing one was brown, “that I am as good a fisher as I am a hunter.”

He swallowed; voice low, scratchy. “T-that so?”

“It is.” They fidgeted before sliding their warm palms over his. “Would you believe me if…I said the same things about you?”

“I-I’d have a hard time, just, just ‘cause, ‘cause, y’know, ‘cause…” Cause that means you like me too and I might explode.

“Well, have I ever lied to you?”

“No, you’re a shitty liar even with the mask on.” He gasped and covered his mouth. They laughed.

“You are not wrong, vinur. Why do you think I wear it?”

“Wait, is that why?”

“One of a few reasons. Does get in the way of some things.”

“Like what?” He’d asked it as a genuine question, and in response Bloodhound got closer, close enough he could feel their breath on his chin.

“Close your eyes and you’ll find out.”

He’d never closed his eyes faster. The tip of their fingers touched his chin, gliding to the side of his cheek. Their lips were close-so close he could practically feel them, almost-they were right there-

They moved suddenly and kissed his cheek.

His eyes popped open and he looked at them. They started giggling, covering their mouth like that would hide it. He crossed his arms and pouted. “You tease.”

“I never kiss on the first date,” they said, standing.

“This was a date?” He asked, accepting their helping hand with a dumb look on his face.

“Wasn’t it?” They said, hand going limp, ready to slip from his, except he wouldn’t let it. He held their hand tightly, a grin forming in tandem with an idea in his head.

He pulled them closer, leaning in-not quite kissing distance, but their noses almost brushed. “Well you don’t kiss on the first date…but I always kiss on the second.”

They tilted their head, eyes half lidded, lips turned up in mirth. “I’m counting on it.”

--

Notes: Vinur - friend.

[wheredidhiseyebrowsgo]

Hi there! First off thank you for all of the hard work you have put into this page it’s so appreciated. I hope you enjoy yourselves while you enjoy so much deserved time away. Second, I’m new to your page (great timing lol) and was wondering what tag would the trope of second in command stiles fall under on your tags page? It’s my fav trope I’m quite a hoe for it. Thank you!!

BITCH ME TOO, BUT TBH I’M A SUCKER FOR STILES IN POWER PERIOD. Also, we don’t have a tag for that, but I’ll hit you up right now!

-Letta

Don't threaten the Hale pack by Bex_carma 

(1/1 | 982 | Teen | Sterek)

"Stiles stomach is coiled in anger. He knows that this alpha is a joke, that the pack snarling behind him is weak and cocky and disjointed, much like they were in the beginning, but he is still itching for blood, just because they have dared to challenge his family, his alpha."

Suddenly You're Standing Still by adara

(1/1 | 1,436 | Teen | Sterek)

It’s been a long night. Nope, that’s inaccurate. It’s been a long year but they’re all okay and in the end that’s what counts. Right?

Or that fic in which the pack defeats the latest big bad in a series of big bads, Stiles is happy, Derek is sad, and Stiles knows just how to fix a sad Derek.

torch song by spiekiel

(1/1 | 1,851 | Teen | Sterek)

Stiles knows Derek likes herbal tea, and he thinks that it’s a ridiculous thing to like, but he brings it to him anyways. Derek has never been in so deep in his life.

Scott McCall's I Saw It First by WhereDestiniesMeet17 (orphan_account) 

(1/1 | 5,875 | Teen | Steter)

It's as he's drifting off to sleep that he has revelation number three. They have no fucking idea. Not a clue that they are in love, much less with each other. Scott laughs so hard that he wakes not only himself, but half the pack.

-

Or the one where Scott figures out that Stiles and Peter are in love way before they do. Meanwhile, they have monsters to take care of.

The Devil You Know by Triangulum

(1/1 | 6,226 | Mature | Steter)

Hell is busy and Peter is understaffed. There are too many evil people being sent down below and there are only so many demons Peter has to torture them with. He needs to reorganize. They don't utilize group torture nearly as much as they should. Stiles probably has some ideas on that.

Or

Peter is King of Hell, Stiles is his second in command, and Talia summons them for a favor.

Beware of Sharp Memories by WhereDestiniesMeet17 (orphan_account)

(1/1 | 9,334 | Mature | Steter)

She smooths his hair back, nodding. "Not everyone remembers the things we do," she repeats.

-

Stiles is born able to remember all his past lives. After Claudia dies, he tries to forget all about his abilities. This makes things worse and better.

To Find Your Home by adara

(1/1 | 14,905 | Teen | Sterek)

The wind shifts just as he is is about to lay into the trespassers for disturbing this place, this private property, the place where Laura took her last breaths. Alone. The place he had come to look for his own clues in the daylight, to say goodbye to the only family he really had left. His breath catches for an altogether different reason when the shifted breeze reaches him. He stops thinking about Laura for a moment as his brain simply shuts down, taking in the sight of his mate before him.

Stiles Stilinski and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Well Maybe It Wasn’t That Bad…) by thegirlgrey

(1/1 | 22,998 | Mature | Sterek)

“Hey Derek? Are you absolutely sure that Beacon Hills isn’t sitting on a Hell Mouth?”

And If I Die Before I Wake by consciousness_streaming

(6/6 | 60,410 | Explicit | Sterek)

When Stiles wakes up on his eighteenth birthday from a chaste dream about Derek Hale he doesn't think it's a big deal. But when he wakes up the next few days to the same dream, he knows something is going on. And he's going to get to the bottom of it. Once is an incident, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a pattern. More than three is just torture.

This Was How Legends Were Made by Delta_Immortal

(8/8 | 108,501 | Explicit | Sterek)

Caught between the Hales and the Argents in their war, Stiles finds himself a slave of the great Hale pack. Stiles spends each day working hard, hoping to earn his freedom and see his sick father. It also seems each day he’s capturing more and more attention from Derek, the young Hale lord. Stiles tells himself it’s mostly because Derek is merely trying to figure out how to send the annoying, useless slave away- not because of affection, despite the tales coming from the rumor mill.

It doesn’t matter what Derek's intentions are. Stiles can’t bother with love right now. He's got to keep his head down and survive long enough to keep his promise to Kate Argent. After all, she's promised to keep his father safe.

[trashmagines]

A Hard Place: Dick Grayson x Female!Mutant!Reader

Request:  Hi honey :) Can I request a Dick Grayson imagine where the reader is his girlfriend but went missing years ago. Dick is looking for her everywhere thats why he ends up in Detroit. And he finds her in the asylum where she was held captive and he takes her back to the Safe House & things get weird because he still loves her & wants to be with her but kory has this thing for him?? It would Be awesome if you could do this. Thank you so much. I am a sucker for dick grayson 🙈

TrAshy Says: I too am a slut, I mean sucker for Dick Grayson (thanks to y’all. I wasn’t really into him at first but then the fanfic got me lmaooooo). Reader is telepathic. Also this is like, sort of disjointed (y’all will see what I mean) but I’m kind of okay with it???

Warnings: Non-descript abuse, swearing

Dick had found himself in a lot of various difficult situations over the years, but this was by far the worst. He hadn’t been thinking clearly when he brought you back to the safe house, he just knew he needed to help you in any way he could. 

“Who is she?” Kory had asked when he’d emerged from the elevator with you unconscious in his arms. “A friend.” “Hmm.”

You were so much more than that. You were his ex-girlfriend; the woman he’d let slip away because he’d been afraid of you getting hurt due to his carelessness. You’d met one dreary night in Gotham. Dick had been out fighting crime as Robin, so when he heard your terrified scream from a nearby alleyway, he’d dropped from the sky and fought off your would-be attacker. If he believed in love at first sight, that’s the feeling he’d say he experienced when he got a real look at you. Even in your clearly disheveled state, you were the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He confirmed that you were okay and disappeared as quickly as he’d come, but he’d made sure you’d made it home safely by watching from the rooftops.

Several weeks after the incident, Dick still couldn’t get you off of his mind. He hadn’t gotten your name, but he clearly remembered what you looked like. With those details and the massive database in the Batcomputer, he was able to find you. He didn’t think of himself as the stalker type, so he reasoned that he just needed to have one conversation with you, as Dick instead of Robin, and he’d be able to get over you.

Oh how wrong he was.

One conversation had turned into many, then he started meeting you for coffee or dessert, until finally you were going on dates that weren’t called dates. He hadn’t wanted to admit that he’d fallen for you, but you weren’t the type to be strung along. You asked him what your relationship was, and after fumbling over his words, he confessed that he was basically in love with you at this point. Your relationship flourished from there, the both of you moving rather quickly. He moved in with you, a dynamic you both rapidly acclimated to. He showed you how much he loved you constantly, and you did the same; if there ever was a ‘perfect’ relationship, you guys had it. 

Dick had been accepting when you told him about your ability. Truth be told, he’d seen some crazy stuff and he’d always wondered how you seemed to know what he was thinking at all times. Unfortunately, he never told you about his vigilante life. You wondered where he went at night and why he had new bruises on his body every few days. You consistently voiced your suspicions but he would shut them down and tell you not to worry about it. He didn’t want you to know because your knowledge would make you a target for his enemies. He could never tell you that though, and this secret had eventually led to the end of your relationship. He thought he was doing the right thing by leaving before you got too close to figuring out who he was, but it destroyed both of you. 

Though you were no longer together, Dick used his connections to still keep tabs on you and make sure you were doing well for yourself. When you went missing, he was distraught and finding you became his number one priority. Years passed and he’d only been met with dry leads and dead ends thus far. You were always a constant thought in the recesses of his mind, and now on top of that he had a rag tag group of super-human people in tow that he felt responsible for. 

He thought he could have something with Kory. They were attracted to each other and she made him address aspects of himself that he’d rather not talk about. He never thought that finding you would bring back those old feelings ten-fold, that holding you in his arms again would make him fall right back in love with you. But, here he was, stuck between a rock and a hard place. 

You woke up afraid in unfamiliar surroundings, and your screaming caused everyone to rush to you. When your eyes settled on Dick, you gasped, unsure if this was just your mind playing tricks on you as it had so many times before. 

“Y/N?”

Your name said in that familiar voice is all it takes for you to break down. You’re out of that horrible place. You’re free. 

You excuse yourself to the bathroom after Dick informs you that there’s a fresh change of clothes in there waiting. When you’re out of ear-shot, Rachel speaks up, her voice shaky at the flashes she’d seen of your time spent at the asylum. 

“I didn’t even have to touch her. She’s been through a lot. Like, a lot.” 

Days pass, and you quickly get acquainted with Rachel, Kory, and Gar. The testing you were put through while captive has disrupted your abilities, so now you hear other’s thoughts constantly. You know about everyone’s unvoiced concerns, their hidden secrets, and most interestingly, Dick’s relationship with Kory. You try to convince yourself that you’re happy he’s moved on, but in truth you’re saddened that you lost the only man you ever loved.

That is, until you hear Dick’s thoughts.

They’re all about you. Sometimes his mind is replaying memories of your old life together, sometimes it’s flooded with new worries about your well-being, and more often than not his thoughts contain an underlying tone of regret and guilt. 

He approaches you one morning when you’re making breakfast and asks how you’re adjusting. Until now you haven’t been able to get a moment alone with him, so you take the opportunity and run with it.

“You still love me.”

Dick freezes for just a second before taking a slow sip of his coffee.

“Yeah.”

Silence.

“I still love you too, you know. I never stopped, but you wouldn’t... You were keeping secrets from me and I couldn’t stand the sneaking around and the constant lies. You should have just told me, Dick.” “I wanted to. God, I wanted to. I thought I was protecting you by keeping you in the dark, but then you went missing and... I could have protected you if I’d stayed, Y/N. I should have been there.” “You need to stop blaming yourself. I wasn’t taken because of you; it was because of my ability. Someone found out what I could do, and even thought it’s not that spectacular, they went after me anyway. I was kidnapped on a regular day in broad daylight; I don’t think you could have protected me from that.” 

Your admission stings a bit, and Dick doesn’t respond. He has, however, inched closer to you as the conversation has progressed, and now all he can think about is hugging you and never letting you go. You want nothing more than for him to do that, but approaching footsteps cause you to walk away from him and Kory rounds the corner as you start setting the table. 

Kory prides herself on being observant, so she doesn’t miss the way Dick looks at you, or his tone of voice when he’s speaking to you directly. She notices that he’s softer with you, more open than he has been with the rest of the team, and although she feels a little played, she already understands that her relationship with Dick can’t come close to whatever is going on between you two.

“So, how long have you been in love with her?”

Kory is sitting on Dick’s bed; she moved into her own room they day he’d brought you back. Dick’s eyes go wide at the sudden inquiry, which admittedly sounds more like a statement than a question.

“I don’t need to be a mind reader to know that there’s something there.” 

Dick sighs and explains the history between you two; how you met, how he fucked up, how he never gave up the search for you. By the time he’s done, Kory’s sporting a small smile; this is a love story if she’s ever heard one. 

“I’m sorry, Kory. I wasn’t leading you on, I swear! It’s just that...well-” “You never stopped loving her. I feel like normally, even though I don’t much about who I am, I’d probably fight to get you to stay with me. But, in this case, I see how happy she makes you. You deserve that, Dick Grayson.” 

Weeks fly by, and although there’s a new dynamic in the safe house, everyone has adjusted well. Rachel and Gar noticed the difference between Dick and Kory’s interactions immediately, but neither of them spoke about it because it didn’t cause any problems or awkwardness between the group. You’re also getting closer to your version of normalcy every day, but nights are still the worst.

You jolt upright, your heart hammering out of your chest and sweat dripping from your brow. You look to your left and meet Dick’s anxious gaze, all but collapsing into his welcoming arms. Sobs shake your entire body as memories of what happened to you replay in your head; the only thing grounding you is Dick’s presence. He lies back when you stop crying, taking you with him and holding you as close as humanly possible. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” his question cuts through the darkness. “No.” you reply, your voice hoarse. 

You listen to Dick’s heartbeat and steady your breathing, but you won’t be able to go back to sleep tonight. You know it will take time for you to truly heal, and you’ll never forget what you went through, but as you lazily trace patterns in Dick’s side, you take solace in the fact that you won’t have to go it alone. 

[dixie-wolf]

Home Phone 2005

[James] Hi, you've reached James and Maryann Corenthal. We are not available to take your call because we are out having fun. So please leave a message and we'll call you back. Thank you, and have a great day. Bye bye. [beep] [Adam] James, it's Adam. Wanted to thank you for yet another gift. It's very appreciated. But, listen. You have to do a better job of keeping in touch. I spoke with Maryann. She laughed and told me that she finally broke you down and that you carry the cell phone we got you. Now just use the damn thing and we won't have to be playing this ongoing game of phone tag. [laughs] Hey. Anyway, I hear we have a lunch date with Elizabeth in Lambertville next month. Think you'll get the date? [beep] [Woman's voice, anxious and disjointed] Doctor, we [smelled the?] fires and we had to leave the area. The management [made it?] across the pedestrian bridge before the barricades went up. The police have River Road off - completely cut off and the firetrucks are blocking the bridge. We tried your cell after we realized something was wrong, but... Well... We know how successful that endeavor was. I was wondering if you could make contact with your wife. Anyway, Adam and I are safe, but we're horrendously worried for you. Please, please be safe and contact us as soon as possible. Adam is on edge and telling me we need to get further away and is saying something about a protocol? Please call me if you get the chance. [beep] [William] James, it's William. I just got a call. What the fuck? Call me. Please. [beep] [Elizabeth, playful; sirens play in the background for the duration of the call] Heyyyy, doc. Missed you at the diner. But you sure as hell bit it with me! [laughing, both male and female] Well done! I gotta say, you have been a lot of fun. And, I mean that. But, well, you know what they say. All good things must come to an end. I'll see you at the park, champ. Oh, and Maryann? Be a doll and leave the lights on for me? [beep] [James, panicked; sirens play in the background for the duration of the call] Maryann! It's me. I just - I just saw our son. I saw Evan! I was meeting with Elizabeth in Lambertville. She'd been in contact with Robert. We were all gonna meet at the diner, get a handle on the situation. We could learn so much. W-with her work with missing children, Robert's expertise, and our whole situation? Anyway, we thought that the diner would be the best place to go, we'd be in public, it would be safe. Wrong, wrong goddammit! I made the wrong decision. Before we got there, I was sitting on a bench, and a young man, he approached me. He sat - I, I fuckin' leapt out of my skin, babe. It was him. It was our son. He - He was all grown up. He told me that this would all be over soon enough. I was so fucking scared when I saw that. I didn't - at first - I, I was angry, too. I - I've missed him so - I need to know what happened. I almost started screaming. I was demanding an explanation, but before I could even turn to fully look at him, he was gone, evaporated - like into thin air. [sighs] When I got to the diner, I got a call from Elizabeth. Wait, wait - fuck, what is it? Wait - So, anyway. I got to the diner, and I get a call from Elizabeth, and I heard that telltale bullshit static that we've heard on the phone before, you know what I'm talking about? I could barely understood her. I think I was hearing her tell me that this was a set up. And the diner that they were at, they went to, that they were at a different diner, that apparently I'd been given the slip, or something, I don't know what the fuck she was saying. Anyway, I - I was wrong, I was in the wrong place. After I hung up, I looked around, and everyone in this goddamn diner was looking at me. It was spooky. I gotta tell you, their eyes, man, they weren't even blank, they were just full of hate. Three men closest to me threw down their forks, and they just started coming at me. Alright, and then the whole diner erupted into this... fuck... just coming after me, so I started taking off. I had my gun... And I'm sorry, Maryann, please forgive me, but... I was shooting people, I saw them - they're dying, they're dead - there's a lot of them dead. But it didn't even stop them. There's more coming, I don't even know where the hell they came out of, it's like it was like out of the fucking woodwork, man. Anyway, I ran into the kitchen, and there was a bunch of cooks, that the cooks, that the - everyone in the kitchen was coming after me - the plate washer, the cook, everybody was coming after me. I saw one girl go - her arm went into the deepfryer; she didn't even - she didn't even react, she didn't cry, she wasn't in a shock of pain - she just starting laughing this horrible, freakish laugh. It scared - it chilled me to my bone, I gotta tell you. I snaked through the building as fast as I could. But I - I couldn't find a way to get out. There was smoke, it was building. Bodies were piling up. They were hurting each other, and I was still shooting at them. I could tell that they - the noise and the commotion had spread to the street. Either more of these people were joining the mob, or there were just people walking by wondering what was going on. But everybody was getting hurt. It seemed to me that everybody was coming after me. Anyway, I backed myself into a bathroom, and I thought about what that wicked - that wicked boy on the park bench had said. "This will all be over soon." A small painting of a willow tree hung on the wall. It was crooked. And I remember that made me think back to when all this had started, when we were still in Ohio, when happiness was still a thought, a goal, you, me, our family, something that was within reach, it was tangible, we could touch it, it was happiness, it was joy. Babe. I'm so damn sorry. We never got that. Anyway, I got my way out of the restroom and I took off, and I heard the emergency response sounding, but I knew that they wouldn't be exactly sympathetic. I tried - I tried to stay low and I kept moving. I stumbled through the woods and across the river road. I can hear the sirens, they're getting more distant. But I know that they're gonna find me soon. So I'm at the bottom of a hill, with one long path ahead. I see a tree just like the one in the painting. This is it. He knew it would end up like this. I probably should have also, maybe a long time ago, had I been thinking clearly. I know now that I'm being watched by him, Maryann. At this point, I know that that goddamn spectre, that fucking monster that took our children, and that I've hunted for all these years, he's watching me too. I can feel him. The air is so thick, I can cut it with a knife or shoot it with a gun. Everything, everything has been leading to this point right now. It's do or die. You know what I have to do. I'm going to the tree at the top of the hill. I hope you receive this message. Know that I love you, babe. I always have, and I always will. I hope you will forgive me for dragging you, dragging us, into this mess, into this lifestyle. [sighs] You know, I've only ever wanted to help. I would love to believe that I succeeded.  Maybe, maybe history can avenge me, huh? Maybe it can tell our story. Maybe it will  help erase the monster the authorities paint me as. No matter. You know what you have to do. Follow our protocol. Disappear. Then. Then you know what you need to do if it doesn't work. I love you. Maybe I'll see you again. I sure as hell hope I do. I love you, babe. Bye. [beep]

[eldritchsurveys]

348.

How are you? >> Alive. You know how it goes. What would you say is your strongest felt emotion right now? >> At this moment? A kind of... restlessness. I don’t know how to word it since I generally don’t have to describe it, but it’s the feeling when my sensory environment is not ideal and I’m not at overload status but I just... I can’t focus on things very well and I feel disjointed and disconnected from things. It’s like feeling like the living embodiment of static, I guess. It’s not the absolute worst but it definitely puts the kibosh on doing anything more strenuous than, say, scrolling tumblr or watching dumb videos. ... Is this even an emotion? Whatever. Have you ever felt abandoned? >> Sure.  Do you think it’s stupid when girls act dumb to get attention? >> I think it’s silly when anyone acts dumb to get attention, but far be it from me to judge one’s methods unless they’re causing direct harm to me (which this wouldn’t). Where are you? >> In the... hmm. I’m not sure what to call this area of the house. The office? The parlour? An as-yet-undefined area of the Wayland house.

Have you ever wished on a shooting star? >> Nope. Did it come true? >> --- Are you talking to anyone at the moment? >> Nope. What’s been the worst part of this day? >> Just noise. But even so, today is a lot better on the sensory front than yesterday was. I’m actually glad I feel as stable as I do after yesterday, I thought I was going to feel worse. Do you have trust issues? >> I guess you could say that. Have you ever found an arrow head? >> No, I don’t remember that ever happening. Have you gave up any bad habits for someone? >> I don’t think so. Who is with you? >> Well, Sparrow and her parents and her sister and her nephew are all here, but they’re in different parts of the house. What can you not stop thinking about? >> Eh, my thoughts have been variable enough lately. I get stuck on certain things for a short while sometimes, but that’s just the way it goes. Is there anything you want or need right now? >> Nah. Do have faith in yourself? >> I have a varying sense of faith in myself from day to day, but I think at my core I have a pretty solid confidence in my ability to deal with shit, even if my emotional state at one time or another won’t let me access it. What about your goals? >> Do I have faith in my goals? I don’t really have any goals. Who last encouraged you to better yourself? >> Can Calah, as usual. Do you forgive easily? >> I don’t bother with forgiveness. I just let time and distance and self-support do the work of weakening the effects that people’s fuckshit has had on me, and then I do my best to let that fuckshit go. That’s all I need to do; this “forgiveness” business seems kind of extra and unnecessary. I know people do shit because of a variety of reasons, and I know my perception of shit is sometimes more negative than the other person’s, and blah blah blah. Whatever, man. I just want to focus on moving on. What has changed about you recently? >> How recent are we talking? Things about me change almost daily, man. Anything your excited about or looking forward to? >> I’m looking forward to just... regular stuff, like whatever shenanigans I get up to tomorrow, whatever my next outing is going to be, corn getting taller so I can make more Randall Flagg jokes...  Have you ever been called a slut or whore? >> Yeah. Are you honest when your friends ask you how they look? >> I don’t know how to answer that question. People generally just look like people to me, there’s no real opinion that I have about one outfit or one hairstyle over the other... I’m really the wrong person to ask. Ask Miranda Priestly, I’m sure she’d have a plethora of opinions on your outfit. What was the last thing that aggravated you? >> I was trying to finish my short conversation and the baby started crying, lmao. I know it’s not the baby’s fault etc etc but it’s just aggravating, I can’t help that either. In what part of your life so far, have you learnt the most about yourself? >> I guess the past 6 years or so. Are you more sad or happy right now? >> I’m not sad, so. Have you ever been in a fist fight? >> Yeah. Are you comfortable? >> Sure. Who do you miss? >> Irrelevant. Are things easier said than done? >> Well, sure, talking/typing is extremely easy. Acting on the things you say you believe in? Acting on what you claim to hold true values-wise/morals-wise? Getting up and doing something instead of ruminating or wishing or making endless to-do lists? Putting your fears aside and acting instead of letting your fears take charge? All of those things are incredibly difficult. And that’s not to say people who say and don’t do are all liars, or hypocrites, or whatever. Some are, of course. But really, Doing Shit is just fucking difficult and that should always be taken into account -- especially when we remember that sometimes Doing Shit is difficult for us too. What aggravates you most about people in general? >> I can’t think of anything and I really don’t feel like it anyway. Are your ears pierced? >> Yep. What did you last say out loud? >> I don’t remember. Who last left you completely distraught? >> Pfffft. What are you waiting on? >> Whatever is going on here to be done. I’m thinking laundry will be done soon but I don’t know if we’re staying for dinner or anything, so I guess I’m just waiting to find out. What’s on the t.v. at the moment? >> Sparrow is watching Ridiculousness in the living room. Do you like anything about being angry? >> Not really. It’s very overwhelming and I’m glad it’s an infrequent occurrence for me. Who did you last hug? >> Can Calah, probably. Did you have a summer job this year? >> No. What do you smell right now? >> Just House Smell(tm) or whatever. Nothing specific. Where do you wish you were? >> I’m fine here. I mean, being in my room always sounds best because it’s the one environment I have almost total control over, but honestly I can wait. The last thing you did before this? >> Aside from looking in the surveys tag for a survey, I was looking at my dashboard. Do you get surprises often? >> No. Name a crime you have committed? >> Shoplifting. Do you tell people when they get on your nerves? >> Not usually. I speak up when it’s, say, a person I live with and they’re doing something that I know I wouldn’t be able to deal with long-term. And even then, I try to frame it in a compromise-finding fashion. I don’t believe in just telling people what to do just because it’s best for me, but I also believe that I should speak up for myself, so that’s my middle ground. Do you have any regrets? >> No. Your in jail…who bails you out? >> I mean, I don’t know. Maybe Sparrow’s parents, lmao, but I would also assume that it would depend on what I was in there for (and how much the bail is, of course). Are you more artsy or sporty? >> I would lean more towards the artsy end of this binary. What emoticon smiley do you use the most? >> I use xD pretty frequently. Also ;D Are your feelings hurt easily? >> Not really, no. Even when my feelings are hurt, I get over it pretty quickly.  

[reliquiaen]

I wrote a thing and I was wondering if you would read it? It's a bubbline fic. It's called i could live without you (just don't want to) If you left a comment on what you thought I would greatly appreciate it. (Also apparently you can't post links in asks!? Who the heck thought of that?)

would you believe ao3 had the AUDACITY to tell me my comment was too long? outrageous. check below the cut.

It’s a little awkward to have Bonnie’s hand actually hit Marceline’s chest. Stand in front of your door and open it. Picture where the person on the other side is. There’s more space there than could be comfortably crossed by a casual arm swing from knocking. She would’ve struck air.

Set the scene more clearly. Has Bonnie ever been to this house before? It seems like she hasn’t but the reader doesn’t know that. We have no idea the pre-established relationship (whatever that is) between them either, so we don’t know if it’s even reasonable to expect that Bonnie has been here before. The lack of context also raises questions about the stuttering, especially since Marceline uses a nickname quite easily right at the start. Basically what I’m getting at here is that there’s a disconnect between how familiar they’re being with each other; Marceline is being real casual/familiar but Bonnie seems to be treating this like they’re strangers (or the next thing to it). Shoot for a little more consistency.

Following on from this point: the house is lovely? We have to take Bonnie’s word for it. You don’t have to go into any great amount of detail, just give us the top three things that make it lovely (well-lit, classy decorations, homey, photos on the walls, colour scheme, tidy - just a few ideas, fill it in how you think lovely looks!). Also not expecting you to have a floor plan (unless this is a longfic in the making and we’ll be spending a lot of time here, then yeah make a floorplan for your reference and consistency), but in your head you should know where things are and where the characters are going. So where’s this hallway in relation to where we started? Did we go through any rooms? Are there doors? What the heck is this rope??? Explain (from Bonnie’s POV) as she tries to figure out what’s going on before it happens, our brains work quickly, try and throw some of that in there.

Be careful using traits/descriptors in place of names as well. It can be useful when the character is a stranger (referring to them as ‘the tall guy’ or whatever if it’s a defining trait) but we know who these two are, use their names. Or pronouns. I find the best way to use pronouns in place of names is that the last character who’s name was used gets the following pronoun.

Description of the bedroom is pretty good, we have no guidelines to go by though; is this like the rest of the house? How tall is the house? Were the on the bottom floor and the attic is the only other floor? Or did they go up stairs? How on EARTH did a piano get up there? Strange items? Those seem like a focus point; take Bonnie’s personality into account: she’s the sort of curious where she sticks her nose where it shouldn’t be regardless of consequences. Plus ‘strange’ is the sort of word that readers will expect exploration for. Be careful of wording; Bonnie’s not analysing this, just taking it in. If you want her to be analysing, give us some more thought processes. What does she think of these things, is there anything in particular drawing her attention, is she uncomfortable and why, etc.

This is the first mention of them being in school together? There’s a basement? Definitely work on figuring out how all the rooms fit together.

Coming back to my point about setting your scene rn bc Bonnie has a crush? We are just learning this. Also why is Marceline tickling her? That’s VERY comfortable. I feel like we defs need some more details about their relationship as it stands. Especially now that Bonnie is using a nickname.

Careful with transitions. Felt like a whirlwind of situation changes happened right there between Bonnie lying down, Marceline leaving (??? not good host etiquette), Marceline coming back, the tickling??? and then the alcohol announcement. There’s very little to help with those transitions or explain any reasoning behind them.

(This is probably as good a time as any to just ask you to be careful with your speech tags and punctuation. Is Bonnie giggling the ‘stop’ or is she saying that around giggles or is she saying that and THEN giggling? Please don’t overuse smirk. It’s a great word for a sassbox like Marceline but too much smirking and it just becomes the smile of a shit-stirrer.)

Again: transitions. Marceline is pouting now. Describe it. Is this different? Has she got a reputation for being the sort of person who’s pouts folks can’t say no to? If not consider how that factors in. Please also ask where Marceline got the alcohol, why she’s drinking it, how old they are, why Bonnie is making this exception, Marceline’s motives behind sharing it (is it bc she wants to look cool? Does she understand what sorts of things Bonnie thinks are cool?). Also ask what YOUR motive is for the alcohol. Is it just to lower inhibitions and get them to talk more freely than they usually would? If that’s the case, reevaluate your use of it. It should serve a purpose for the characters as well as for you. (Pet peeve: this is an especially tricky situation for other reasons: they’re underage and consent. It’s brought up heaps in other fics, I know, but it’s worth considering anyway.)

Tie your references to blushing into what else is going on at the time. Otherwise they feel disjointed; like things you’re just reciting. Don’t give us facts! Give us emotion!

Check your tenses. By which I mean just make sure you’re not switching between past and present tense accidentally when referring to multiple actions in a single sentence. (Should be ‘plopped’.) “Shook her head yes” - check that, should be nods I think, yes? Yeah just some grammar issues here and there, a few missing words and tense mix ups, punctuation problems, capitalisation. Nothing major (we all do it) just make sure you check for them.

Use of omniscient narrator for the briefest of seconds. I get that you’re trying to convey to the reader that Marceline has a crush too, but Bonnie has thus far been your sole narrator so if she can’t hear something we shouldn’t either. Alternatively, grab a Virginia Woolf novel and welcome to the omniscient narrator club!

New speaker = new paragraph. But same speaker = same paragraph. You’ve split up some of Marceline’s dialogue into two paragraphs which can be confusing. Marceline is playing music she wrote? Why? Is she shy about this? Does she do it often? Again, is it bc she’s trying to impress? Is it bc she’s going on drunk?

Marceline is getting her way a lot. We, the reader, know why. Consider from their perspective though: does Marceline know why? Does she suspect? Does she feel guilty for pressuring Bonnie? How does Bonnie feel about it? Growing frustration? A little bit of that patented Hopeless Gay™?

Why the boredom? If this was a planned get together why did neither of them think about what they were gonna do? Bonnie especially would be the type to have a plan. She probably googled ‘platonically hanging out with your crush’ to see what came up lol.

The innuendo at the end feels a bit rushed, too. But that could just be bc we haven’t seen any of the build up to this. Have they been pining for several years (unlikely if they’re in high school)? Is it the alcohol talking? Is Marceline joking? How can we tell? Is she phrasing it like that just to get a rise out of Bonnie? What does she think NOT getting that rise out of Bonnie?

Anyway that was a lot of rambling I’m very sorry. Overall a good tight storyline, it starts, it builds and it concludes satisfactorily. You just need to practice writing as a thought-process sorta thing, I’m not sure how to explain it better than as a connecting of ideas together. I mean I won’t claim to be great at that sometimes I force a situation to get to where I wanna go (sometimes you have to), but yeah just check in with your characters, plan things out (doesn’t have to be a huge spread out thing, just make a few notes about where things are) and ask questions! To question your story and motives can only make it better! It’s all that background stuff that the reader doesn’t see that makes up this underlying network of ideas, concepts, actions and characterisation that really holds up the plot and keeps shit consistent!

And that is… all the advice I’ve got! Sorry if any of it came out sounding a lil brusque it’s been a loooooong day u.u

[lollercakesff]

we were everything

wordcount: 4,034 tags: angst, pregnancy, tw: suicidal thoughts, tw: abuse relationship: Joyce x Hopper

Jim Hopper and I were never friends. Acquaintances, sure. We shared a few classes, a few cigarettes, maybe a laugh once or twice, but we weren’t friends. He was the kind of guy who had friends - loud, boisterous and drunk ones - and I was not. My circle was relegated to the disjointed ones, people who drank themselves silly and made questionable decisions because nobody really cared if we lived or died. That was my circle and I was staying in it, at least until I could get out of this town and free myself from the shithole where I lived and the class-act parents who failed to raise me right.

But that was all before today.

Here I was, minding my own damn business as I browsed the aisles of the local drugstore when I realized I hadn’t bought a tampon or a pad in almost three months. Time had slipped by, I hadn’t needed them, and sure, the signs were there but I refused to even acknowledge them. The weight gain was because I was working less at the diner. The puking? A spell of the flu. But this was much harder to deny and to say a chill ran through me would be an understatement.

My first thought was of my mother, young and unwed and desperate to escape her circumstances until she popped me out and was trapped for life. I couldn’t ask her. That was an absolute no. She couldn’t bear it and would probably pull out my Dad’s belt, the sharp pain of it still distinct in my memory.

“Fucking hell,” I croak and press my hands to my face, exhaling as I look up and down the aisle. A woman I recognize from church looks over at me and scowls, shaking her head and muttering to herself. Does she know? Can she tell?

I bolt from the store as quick as I can and high-tail it over to Lonnie’s, the only other culprit for getting me into this mess who isn’t me. When I get there he’s already half wasted, eyes bloodshot and a stain on his white tank top. His slicked back hair is pressed down on one side, almost like he’s just woken up, and his breath needs to see a toothbrush in the near future.

Pushing my way into his apartment I turn on him and lift a pointed finger, words freezing in my throat. He groans and collapses onto the couch, waving his hand as though edging me forward. “If you’re going to lay into me, might as well get it over with,” he hisses and pulls a sip of beer from his bottle.

“I… I’m,” I struggle to put a sentence together and then it explodes from me, heavy as an anvil. “I think I’m pregnant!”

The silence rolls over us, Lonnie’s frame prone on the couch as he stares into the wall. I bite my nail and wait for him to say something, anything. He doesn’t though. Because he’s Lonnie. Because he’s always been short of words. Because that wasn’t why I slept with him. I did it to forget the shit that haunted me and to try to get away from everything that pulled me down. It never worked, but dammit, this was the first time it was actively working against me.

“Well?” I hiss after a few moments, stepping in front of him and kicking his boot to rouse him.

“Well what? It ain’t mine, that’s for damn sure,” he grunts. My insides curdle and twist, my stomach pitching south as a ringing sounds in my ears.

I stand there for another minute before kicking his boot again, jumping back when he lurches towards me and pushes me back against the living room wall. His hands are tight on my shoulders, his lean frame shadowing me as his face reddens.

“Don’t blame this on me, Joycie. You’re a loose woman and I won’t let you trap me like this,” he sneers before pushing away and pacing across the room. I nearly collapse with his release, my knees wobbling as the tears come hot and heavy to my eyes. I should have known this would be his answer. Should have known this would be my kind of shitty luck.

“You’re a real motherfucker, you know that Lonnie? It’s yours and now you’re not even going to own up to it. Going to just hang me out to dry?” I shout before I even realize I had the words in me. He turns on his heel and stalks towards me, his hand coming out to wrap around my neck. He doesn’t squeeze but I can see it in his eyes that he wants to, the fury and drink evident.

“It ain’t mine. Now get the hell out of my place before I kick your ass to the curb.”

The threat follows me out of his apartment, the vivid swearing and the crash of furniture behind his door telling me more than he’ll ever know. When I’m back out on the street I try to hash out some of my options but come up empty. Lonnie won’t help. My mother will kick me out and Dad? He’ll probably beat the shit out of me until there’s no more issue to deal with.

I’m alone. Knocked up and just barely finishing school, a shitty job at a diner and no shoulder to cry on. I sink into myself at the realization as I start walking towards home, the house at the edge of town offering me one last chance at redemption.

My arrival goes unnoticed, like nearly every other day, and I try to keep it that way as I head upstairs to my room. I almost make it before my mother opens her bedroom door, frowning and leaning heavily on the jam. I can practically smell her from here, the booze leaking from her pores as she glances over at me.

“Why aren’t you in school?” She rasps, walking unsteadily in my direction.

“It’s Saturday, Mom.” I shift on my feet and back towards my room, wanting to get away before I spew the words into the empty space between us.

“What are you hiding then? You look suspicious.” Her eyes drop to my toes and scrape over me until she reaches my midline, brows furrowing as her gaze snaps up. “Girl, are you in the family way?”

How can she know? How can this drunk know the moment I realize it myself? Is it written on my face? Is it obvious and I was just in denial for so long? I barely get a chance to figure it out before she’s lunging towards me, arms outstretched and anger apparent on her face. She pushes me into my room and swears like a sailor, vowing to tell my father and cornering me near my closet. Covering my face with my hands is the best I can do to stop her onslaught of terror, my body slinking lower until I’m nearly curled in a ball.

Eventually she leaves to deal with her own shit, probably to drink some more but hopefully to go pass out and forget this conversation ever happened. I know it’s unlikely but I wish for it anyways, slowly getting up and rifling through my drawers to change into something warmer. Below me I hear the front door slam in the familiar arrival of my father, a new level of fear coursing through my veins as I hear my mother cursing from the front hall.

Another second passes and my father’s heavy steps rise up the staircase and towards my room, the clink of his belt audible even as I slide the window up and start to climb through it. I’m nearly gone when he bursts through the door and grabs at my wrist, yanking me back from my descent.

“Get up here now before I kill you, girl,” he roars and twists, a bruise inevitably starting to form from his grip. I shake my head and try to loosen his hand, panic driving me to get further away from him than ever before.

“Let go!” I scream and snap, pushing away from the house with my feet until he let’s go and I tumble head over heels down the roof and onto the ground with a thump. I land like a broken doll, my head fuzzy and my body aching, but get to my feet before he can make it through the front door and see me escape into the trees.

I wander for hours in the forest, thinking through my options and coming up empty. There was nowhere to turn for help in Hawkins, at least not for unwed teenage mothers. Here we were left on our own, scorned for daring to live and ostracized because the men who got us into this position were too pathetic to do what was right.

Breaking through the treeline I find myself on the edge of the quarry, the outcropping of rock familiar as a place where things ended. I didn’t want to keep doing this, covering up the bruises that marred my skin and my soul. It was exhausting and only getting worse, especially now that I was going to have a baby with someone who clearly had no interest in being a father.

The idea of escape floats into my mind then, hovering over me as I stand on the edge of the rock to watch the sun start to set, a last beautiful evening to see me off. There was always something in the way the breeze floated around me that felt comforting, like maybe this was what was meant for me.

Misery pushes me forward and I look down at the pool of water that lay dark and ominous below. I could slip and fall, crash into the abyss and never come up. It would mean I could stop struggling. That I could finally be free of this place and the people in it. Inching closer again my toe kicks forward a rock that falls over the edge, crashing and colliding with the bits down below.

“Hey,” a familiar voice calls out from behind me, startling me until I lose my footing and tumble down. I land on my side, the air knocked from my lungs as I slip and grapple at the ground as my body slides further over the edge.

“Help me!” I scream and thrash, trying to hold on as I move closer to letting go. All the thoughts from just moments ago disappear as I fight to stay alive, if only to meet the baby growing inside of me.

“Woah, it’s okay!” Jim grunts, getting onto his stomach and reaching his arms down towards me. One hand grabs at my collar and the other wraps around my elbow, his arms lifting me back up until I can swing my leg over the ledge. “Jesus Joyce, what are you doing?”

I keep my mouth shut until I’m back on top of the rock, the air heavy as I suck it back with deep wracking breaths. “Don’t surprise people like that,” I scold, trying to hold it together.

I fail. The tears come once more and soon Jim is crawling towards me and scooping me up in his arms, his body wrapping itself around mine as I sob into his training jersey. He smells of sweat and old aftershave, the heat rolling off of him soothing me in a way I hadn’t expected.

“Hey, it’s okay. Really. It’s okay. You’re alive. Didn’t die or anything,” he whispers and clumsily pats my head, pulling back only once I’ve stopped crying long enough to let him look down at me. “What were you doing here, standing so close to the edge like that? Don’t you remember Teddy Brown? The kid in grade school who got too close and fell?”

I pull away, a hand coming to rub the tears from my face. “Maybe I didn’t need rescuing,” I mumble and shift, putting space between us.

“Come on now, I wasn’t just going to let you fall.” He leans back on his hands and I blink from the sight of him. He’s sweaty and a mess but his smile is soft and kind, the same type that he gives when he lights my cigarettes for me. At least, it is that smile until he takes in my whole rumpled appearance and the bruising along my arm. “Joyce,” he starts, sits forward and reaches out a hand for mine.

“I wanted to jump.” My voice cracks and his smile disappears, his posture tightening as I duck my head in shame. His fingers ghost up my arm and slide to my neck, his breath catching as a sob hiccups out of me. Another second passes and he gets to his knees, arms wrapping around me and his hand cradling my head against his shoulder.

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispers into my hair, a slow hand rubbing against my back. It feels like a lie being curled up against him, like a false sense of comfort, but I lean into it anyways and try to get lost in the feeling of it. I don’t remember the last time I felt like this, like someone cared, and it’s a raw wound that splits and festers.

It’s sometime later before he eventually pulls away, his fingers grazing my cheek and brushing my bangs away from my face. His expression is unreadable and I have to close my eyes from his searching gaze because it feels like he’ll know all my secrets if I let him in.

God, do I want to let him in.

“Do you want a lift somewhere? I’ve got my Dad’s truck out on the highway. It’s a bit of a hike but it’d save you the walk home.” His offer is sweet, kind, the type of thing that I used to scorn, but right now it feels like a lifevest in a stormy sea.

“I don’t have - I can’t go home,” I reply lowly. My hands open and close, sliding protectively across my belly as my eyes slip up to his.

“That’s okay. We’ve got this old army cot I can set up in the garage. You can stay there for the night until we can figure out what to do next. Come on.” He gets to his feet and reaches a hand down towards me, a gentle giant to my too small frame. I take it and we head through the trees to the edge of the road, his hand on my back the entire way.

Once inside the cab he starts the engine and turns up the heat, a hand reaching out and bringing mine from my lap to the vents, holding them there. I look at him then, this boy who I barely knew, who was saving me from myself. We’d spent years in the same school, the same classes, and while we’d spoken, it had never really been about anything real. He’d been a fixture, like a lightbulb, always there but never noticed until the light went out.

“Thank you,” I mumble when he eventually let’s go of my hands, his own coming to rest on the wheel and gearshift.

Pulling away from the grass he gives me a look, one I can’t decipher, and starts off down the road. We sit in silence for a while before he asks me something too low to hear. I frown and look at him, waiting for the sentence to come around again. “What made you want to jump?” I shrug at his question and look out the window, avoiding and hiding from what I didn’t want to admit.

The drive back to his place is quiet after that, neither of us wanting to press on the subject. When we pull into the drive the lights are on in every window, the house leaning over me as I slip from the passenger seat. I hold onto the door to ground me as he walks towards the front entrance, giving him space to go inside and open the garage without rising the suspicion of his parents. I figure hiding out is the least I can do since he’s letting me stay here, but when he reaches the door and looks back it’s confusion that paints his features.

“Joyce!” He calls out, concern evident as he jogs back towards the truck. He lets out a breath when he sees me still there, wide eyed and pale. “Come on, we’re going this way.” He motions with his head back to the house and let’s me walk in front of him, the heat of his chest rolling off him in waves.

Together we step inside the house and into a cheerful hallway, painted bright and tidy. I watch as he toes off his shoes and heads towards the kitchen, his tall form filling the space as he leans into the room. A moment later his parents look around the door jam, his mother’s face pinching as her head shakes. There’s whispering that I can’t quite make out, his father nodding and pushing past him to go upstairs. His mother rests a hand on his shoulder and steps around him, coming to stand in front of me with a soft smile on her lips.

“Would you like some tea, dear?” She asks, her hands clasped together as Jim looks back at us.

“No, I don’t want to be any bother,” I answer. Instinctively I wrap my arms around myself and look away, a practice familiar with people who are too soft and too kind for me. The move has the opposite effect on her and she gasps at the sight of me, the blotchy bruises evident in the bright light of the hallway.

“It’s not - oh my dear,” she shakes her head and looks back at her son, a hand coming up to her lips. Colour creeps up my neck and burns my cheeks with embarrassment, my desire to escape flooding my senses. A moment later her husband appears in the stairwell, arms loaded with blankets.

It’s all too much. I wasn’t built for this kindness, this pity. My family would never take in a stray, especially one who looked like me, and I didn’t know how to deal with the anguish that seemed to fill the air the longer I stood there. With my hand on the doorknob I turn to leave, the air thinning and causing me to hyperventilate as I try to get it open. Jim is there then, his steadying hand on my shoulder forcing me to look up at him.

“Please, Joyce. Just stay the night.”

I close my eyes and picture the alternative, sleeping outside as the air chilled and the grass cooled. I’d likely freeze, or at least catch a cold, and then I’d have to face all of this alone operating at half of my capacity. The vision of it forces me to nod, a relieved sigh escaping from one of the Hopper’s.

The next hour is like an odyssey. I’m given some of Jim’s old clothes and access to a shower, the warm water like a balm to my broken down frame. When I exit the shower it’s to find Jim waiting on the made up couch, his outfit changed from his running attire but his hair still matted slightly from sweat.

“Thank you, for this,” I say from the entrance to the room, my arms wrapped tightly around my ball of clothes. I hold them in front of my belly, just in case the evidence of my real problems are apparent.

“You scared me up there at the quarry,” he admits as he gets up from the couch, stepping away so that I can sit down. I tuck myself into the blankets and pull them up to my neck, my knees drawn in towards me as I watch him pace and then slide down next to me with his back leaned against the couch.

“I didn’t - I mean, it wasn’t my intention, I just - “

“I know it wasn’t. I’ve just never had to do that and now I can’t stop worrying about you. What’s so bad that you wanted to hurt yourself?” He leans against his knees and hides his face as he asks, the question burning the air around us.

“I think I’m knocked up and I don’t have anybody really. It sounds pathetic but I’m scared. I didn’t know what else to do.” I whimper and curl up tighter, bracing myself for the rejection that was bound to come.

But it doesn’t. Jim simply turns and looks at me, steady gaze levelling against mine. “It’s gonna be alright,” he assures me. I nod because it’s all I can do, the argument dying on my lips as he leans back and rests his head against my legs.

I fall asleep not much later, carried away by the sound of his deep breaths marking his own rest. When I wake up I find him closer, his body stretched out on the floor and his hands wrapped around mine as it hangs off the couch. I disentangle myself and sit up, glancing around the dimly lit room and finding the sun starting to creep in through the windows. The guilt is heavy on my chest as I climb down and over him, careful not to wake him as I slip to the bathroom.

Splashing some water on my face, I examine my arms and the shades of blue and red that stretch along my skin. I look a wreck, like someone who has been through a meat grinder, and it takes me a second to fight back the angry tears that threaten to give way. I won’t let this define me. I can’t let this beat me down.

Back outside in the living room I round the corner to find Jim already on his feet, hands in his hair as he spins towards me with a shocked expression. “I thought you’d gone,” he states, lowering his arms and rubbing his hands across his face.

“Just a bathroom break,” I reply. We stand at odds for another drawn out moment before he nods briskly.

“I think Dad wanted to talk to you this morning. To uh, take a statement?” The words run a chill over my skin, the gooseflesh rising as I look at the floor. I knew this was a trap. I knew this was nothing more than a way to reel me in and make me a snitch.

“I have to go,” I counter, sidestepping around him and grabbing my clothes from the floor. I slam my way back into the bathroom and hurry to change, stumbling into my pants and shoving my bralette in my pocket. When I re-emerge he’s standing at the door, panic etched into his face.

“You don’t have to go - just stay for breakfast. Let us help you,” he tries to offer, tries to plead as I slip on my shoes. I give him a withering look as he blocks my exit, a sigh pushing out of him when he eventually steps aside. “Joyce,” he says as he follows me onto the porch, his voice growing more distant as I put space between us. “I know we haven’t really been friends, but I do care. I’ve always cared. Even if you didn’t realize...”

I sprint away from his promises. From his lies and his hope. I leave him standing on his front porch, agony in every facet of his being as I head somewhere, anywhere, far away from the life I could never have.

Jim Hopper and I were never friends. We were two kids who grew up together, who caught each others eye in class and shared smiles in the hallway. Shared smokes and brief touches, shared secrets and honest truths. Sure our paths crossed on some occasions, but we were never friends. He was more than that to me. I was more than that to him. And it took us a whole lot of heartbreak to finally realize that we weren’t friends, we were everything.

[your-brother-crutchie]

I Want You

A sequel to Truth or Dare.

I do actually intend to write another part of this, I just thought that this worked well on its own so look forward to a part three! I’m giving this a tag so they’re easy to find together so just search ‘schenley park au’ on my profile to find them if you ever need to.

(Be grateful that I didn’t title this, ‘Sex Blanket,’ because I was so close to).

TW: Mentions of sexual abuse and abusive, homophobic parents

As Race sighed under Spot’s fingers, tracing gentle circles over his bare back, he tried to stop his mind from racing. He knew that Spot was going to start questioning why he was still awake, especially when he always fell asleep straight away after their starlit meetings in Spot's bedroom, but he just couldn't push everything that Jojo and his friends had said the other night out of his head.

Race loved Spot. There was no getting out of it anymore.

“Hey, what are you thinking of?” There it was. Spot travelled his fingers gingerly to the nape of Race’s neck, smiling when the boy cuddled closer into him as he twirled small curls around his fingers. Race could practically feel Spot’s eyes on him and he was struggling not to blush under it, even though he wouldn't see him with his face buried so tightly into the crook of his neck.


Quickly thinking of something to lie about, Race only looked up slightly when he knew that he could say it convincingly. There was no way that Race was risking letting this slip out, “It’s nothing. I’ve just got some exams coming up and Jojo won’t leave me alone.”

Race drew in a shaky breath when Spot sighed deeply, holding his body against his own tightly as he delicately left a lazy kiss on the top of his head, “What’s Jojo bothering you about?” It was obvious that Spot wasn't going to drop it until Race gave him a proper answer, an answer that didn't feel fake or forced or contrived. Unfortunately, those were the only kinds of answers that Race was willing to give out. He refused to admit to Spot that Jojo wouldn't leave him alone about telling Spot that he was in love with him.


“. . . It’s not important.” Whining slightly when Race felt Spot pulling him away to look at his face, Race tried to hide in his neck for as long as possible before eventually allowing himself to be positioned directly in front of Spot. He shuffled uncomfortably, looking around at anything but the boy in front of him until Spot caught his chin and held it in place.

Raising his eyebrows as Race's eyes still tried to dart away from him, Spot allowed his hand and gaze to soften as it was obvious that Race was panicked. Race could tell that he still wanted an answer out of him but had chosen a softer way of achieving that, “Tonio.”

That was the first time that Spot had ever called him, 'Tonio.' Race had told him that his name was, 'Antonio,' the week before but Spot hadn't used it. He hadn't shortened it into the most adorable nickname that Race had ever heard, especially when Spot was using it. It made him melt slightly, softening in Spot's grip as the boy leaned forwards to press a kiss to his temple
.

As he gulped slowly, Race ran every possible ending to this situation through his head with the possibility of that outcome. He knew that Spot would probably be angry if he told him but he couldn't lie to him anymore. At least when Race thought that all it was was sex, he felt fine lying to him. He could spin a tale from nothing, Spot accepting it immediately. Now, everything was questioned because Spot could tell that something had changed and it made Race want to explode, “My friends were asking why you were sitting with us now and I- um. I told them.”

Although Spot took that same adorable, heart-rushing nickname, the tone was cold and made Race shrink backwards, “Tonio.” He tried to avoid Spot's gaze but, with nothing to hide behind, settled with pulling the duvet tighter around himself. Unfortunately, Spot's twin bed made it difficult to get far away.


“I know but you don’t know them! I tried. Anyway, they're not bothered about that." When Spot eventually seemed to soften, Race sniffed slightly, realising that he should probably tell him what they were bothered about, "Jojo's just worried because I was at Schenley again.” He felt Spot shifting down in the bed, coming closer to Race and pulling the frailer boy's body into his own.

Spot buried his face into Race's hair, voice muffled by the curls as he was obviously trying his best to make Race comfortable, “Again?”


Nodding, Race barely avoided head-butting Spot when he looked up to study his eyelashes, wanting to be able to say it to him but needing something to focus on to hide from his eyes, “Yeah, I used to- uhm. I used to go quite a lot.” Race often focussed on Spot's eyelashes. They were thick and long and pretty and made Katherine jealous which made Race laugh. He smiled slightly thinking about it, glad for the distraction as Spot mulled over what Race had said.

When Spot did speak up, he held Race tightly against his side, obviously beginning to get worried about him. He couldn't blame him. If he'd heard that Jojo was worried then there was something to be worried about. Everyone knew that Jojo knew a hell of a lot more about Race than anyone else and they knew that he had to know some serious stuff. Although he rarely slipped up, anyone could tell that Race had a lot more going on than he let on, “How old were you?” Spot's voice came out in careful whispers against Race's hair as he ran his hand up and down Race's bicep.


“Fifteen.” Shrugging when Spot pulled away to stare at him, Race felt his face flushing and his eyes beginning to sting. He refused to cry because crying would mean that there was something to worry about. 


As Spot shook his head, he heard the calculated sniffs coming from Race and thought of what to do as he spoke, “Jesus, Tonio!” So, yes, Spot had been to Schenley too but as a consenting adult who could defend himself if he needed to. Race was thin and lanky as it was, let alone two years ago. He didn't even want to think about what could have happened to Race there.


“I know, alright, I know! I just-" Race had to stop for a moment, looking away from Spot furiously and swallowing thickly to stop any tears threatening to fall, before he could continue carefully, "Life’s not easy.”


As Spot brushed a hand through Race's hair, Race's heard the sound of the front door clicking and knew that Spot's mum was home. They were usually safe to stay so long as they were quiet, she only ever came in to check on him when the light was on or if she could hear something, so Spot carefully leaned over to flick off the light. He stayed quiet for a moment, yet Race could feel his eyes on him even in the dark.

After Spot's mum had gone passed his door, pausing at it before continuing into her room, Spot let out a breath as he turned to tap his bedside table lamp on. They waited for a moment for the usual creaking of floorboards that signalled that she was walking around the bed and climbing in before Spot started whispering, “You can talk to me.”

A part of Race wished that Spot had just left the light off and gone to sleep, as he sometimes did, but he knew that there was no escaping this conversation, “. . . I’m gay-” He knew that Spot knew that but it was the best way to start his explanation.

Cutting Race off, Spot stifled a bark of laughter by pressing a quick kiss to Race's lips, making the smaller boy's head spin as his eyelids fell closed and his fingers wrapped themselves into the duvet. When Spot pulled back, he chuckled at Race's soft whine before pulling him into a hug, “What? Really? Considering we just fucked, I had no idea!”


Race rolled his eyes as he grabbed a pillow, whacking Spot in the face with it and beginning to grumble softly about being interrupted, “Scotty-”


Quickly leaning over Race to turn the light off again, Spot gestured for him to freeze. Race listened, his eyes flaring when he heard Spot's door beginning to creak. Within the second that it took to open the door, Spot had given Race a good shove until the boy hit the floor with a quiet thud.

"Scott?" Spot's mum's voice was sweet and gentle and worried. It had always been a shock to Race just how well they got on, considering the fact that Spot was thought of as the tough guy around school but without a father around, it wasn't particularly surprising that they'd become incredibly close. It was nice for Race to see but, at the same time, disjointing. Happy family lives weren't something that Race understood and it always shocked him a little that people actually lived like that.

Spot, an amazing actor when under pressure, made a show of sitting up, stretching and yawning. He rubbed at his eyes blearily as if having to focus on his mother before sniffing a little and asking, "Yeah, Mum?" To be an honest, it was amazing.

Stepping in the door slightly but stopping when she saw just how tired her son looked, Spot's mum stayed hovering in the doorway, "Are you okay, honey? I thought I heard something." The danger was that she would come in, sit on the bed and talk to him as she sometimes did. Although Race was hidden on the other side of the bed from where she was currently standing, he'd be in clear view if she came much closer.

"Probably just the pipes." Spot shrugged gently, giving a soothing smile to show that he wasn't worried before making a point of yawning again and settling back against his pillow.

As she nodded, Spot's mum took one more step backward until she was on the other side of the door, "You're probably right. Sorry for waking you, I'll see you in the morning." Race heard her blow a kiss, giggling as Spot groaned and slowly letting the door shut, "Night, Scott."

Spot chuckled, throwing one of his throw cushions at the door and pulling the duvet up to his face, "Night, Mum." He sighed as she closed the door, waiting for the sounds of her settling into bed once again before he clambered out and helped Race up before throwing him pyjamas and getting dressed himself, “I’m sorry, come with me.”

Leading Race to his window, Spot slid it open silently and clambered out onto his fire escape before helping Race out after him. They climbed in silence, only stopping and resting once they'd made it to the roof of the apartment building. The New York skyline glittered around them as Spot pulled Race over to a pile of pillows under a canopy, dropping down and pulling the boy with him, laughing as he let out a squeak, "So, what were you saying?"

Race took his time getting comfy, avoiding the question but eventually sighing when he saw Spot staring at him, "I'm gay and that's an issue. Is this a sex blanket?" He pulled a blanket out from the pile and eyeballed Spot cautiously.

A snort leaping from Spot, he yanked it from Race's hand before laying it carefully over the pair of them, "It is not a sex blanket! Anyway, you're out? You're confident and you're perfect and you help the kids whose parents are shitty."


Immediately scrunching his face up, Race pulled himself away from Spot so that he could say this to his face. It made him angry and he refused to calmly utter it when cuddled against the boy he was sort-of-a-little-bit involved with, “Yes, because I'm one of the kids whose parents are shitty! My family life would be a lot easier if I’d just stayed in the closet! Maybe then my dad wouldn't hit me whenever I got home, my mum wouldn't have to turn a blind eye, and my siblings wouldn't have to see me bruised and crying all the time. I went to Schenley because there were people there who wanted me, which was a lot more than I could say for my family.” His breaths came heavily, his chest heaving as he realised that Spot was staring again, this time out of pity but also admiration.


“Tonio, why didn't you tell me?” Spot thought about it for a second before reaching for Race though quickly gave up when he jerked his body further away from him. Race was not in the mood for comfort and cuddles anymore. If he was being honest, his body was still store from falling and hitting the floor on old bruises.

Race shrugged when he had calmed down a little, struggling to fight the tears that he'd already promised wouldn't come, "I don't like talking about it."

Swinging onto his knees, Spot tried reaching for Race once again, grasping his hand lightly when the boy didn't back away. He clutched it as he spoke, obviously nervous as he refused to look up at Race, “I want you to. With me. I want you to talk to me about things. I want us to talk more. Also, I- I don't want you to go to Schenley Park. You don't have to because- because you are wanted . . . I want you." Spot only looked up when he heard Race sniffing, having failed.

As Race wiped at the tears gathering under his eyes, he tried to hide from the possibility that Spot was actually interested in him by focussing on the other part of the statement. He giggled a little, clearing his watery gaze and turning his fingers so that he could hold Spot too, "We would talk more if you weren't so horny all the time." Pulling Spot closer, Race leaned into his side and chose to move his attention to the skyline.

Spot laughed as he used his other hand to push tears away from Race's cheeks and hold the boy against his chest, "Yeah, well, we don’t have to sleep together every time we meet up. I like spending time with you. It doesn't just have to be sex," A spark of hope flickered into life in Race's chest as his breath caught in his throat, "we can be friends as well.”

Ouch.

Spearmint and Salt

[starlightafterastorm]

She Wears My RIng

Dedicated to @raptorlily​ because she really seemed to like this idea when I floated it past her earlier this week.  Ao3 link 

Betty Cooper is not the kind of girl who gets in a huff about jewelry. She has the little key necklace her mother gave her at 13. She has the little silver studs she always wears. There’s the occasional change in earrings and sometimes a bracelet or two. But she’s never concerned herself with expensive trinkets or shiny baubles.

Until she’s out shopping with Veronica Lodge one Saturday a few weeks before graduation.

They decided to have a best friend’s day. Blowouts at Chez Salon. High tea at Penelope’s. Vintage shopping at Riverdale’s (admittedly small) selection of good vintage and consignment shops.

Betty is feeling bright and bubbly. She doesn’t want to jinx it but everything feels pretty… Perfect.

After everything they've been through the last couple of years, they’re all so close to graduating and getting out of Riverdale. All of them are planning on being in New York in some way with Betty and Jughead both getting into Columbia. Betty couldn’t be more excited.

Betty and Veronica have gone through two shops already without buying anything, but Betty’s fine with that. The experience of it, spending time with her best friend is more important to her. Plus, she’s trying to save up her money for when she has to pay New York rent on her apartment. The apartment she and Jughead will be living in together.

Veronica is combing through the small collection of retro dresses when something catches Betty’s eye. It’s a dull silver ring with little crown arches around one half. Underneath the arches are a band of notches with three white stones set in a smooth finish at the bottom.

Betty’s enchanted.

She reaches out a finger and traces the glass covering the ring.

“Girl.”

Betty’s head snaps up and a blush steals its way across her cheeks when she sees Veronica’s cocked eyebrow.

“Sorry. Did you say something V?”

“I asked what had your attention but I see now. Does everything with crowns remind you of your boy?”

“Not everything.”

Betty knocks shoulders with Veronica who knocks her back. Veronica looks back to the ring inside of the case.

“It’s a cute ring.” She admits.

“Yeah. I think it’s really pretty.”

“So get it! It’s only-”

Veronica twists her head, craning her neck to try and see the price tag.

“It’s only $50!”

Betty grimaces. It’s not too bad, but it’s not as cheap as she would like.

“V. I can’t. I hardly wear rings and-”

“Oh come one Betty. Imagine the look on Jughead’s face when he sees a ring on your finger. A silver crown ring on your finger. He’ll flip. And I mean in a good way. You two are practically engaged anyway.”

“Ron. No. It’s ok. It’s pretty but it’s not like I need it. And besides, I’m trying to save up remember? I don’t need to be impulse buying a ring I probably won’t even wear that much. And don’t say that around him. We’ve… We’ve talked about marriage. Maybe. In the future. The far future. I don’t want to freak him out or anything by buying myself a ring. ”

Veronica rolls her eyes but lets the matter drop. For now.

“By the way, V. Did you see anything you like?”

Veronica’s eyes light up.

“Ohmygosh. Betty. I found the cutest little flapper dress. It’s all crystal and sparkly and even if it’s Cherylred I can pull it off. I’m definitely getting it and we need to find you one too. We must have a Gatsby themed party before graduation. I demand it.”

Veronica moves back to the rack of dresses. Betty throws one last look at the ring in the glass case before following Veronica reluctantly.

That night, Veronica and Betty are joined by their boyfriends at Pop’s. Veronica regales them all with the details she already has planned for her Gatsby themed party. Having heard all of them already that afternoon, Betty excuses herself to the washroom.

Veronica seizes the opportunity.

“Jughead,” Veronica purrs coquettishly “I have some information I think you’d might like.”

Veronica balances her chin on her hands, a Cheshire smile in place. Archie turns a startled head to his girlfriend, alarmed at her stance and tone. Jughead stuffs an onion ring in his mouth, arching an eyebrow wordlessly.

“I think the one thing we can agree on is that we want Betty to be happy right?”

Jughead remains silent, rolling his eyes, refusing to answer what he must consider a dumb question.

“And we can all agree that Betty deserves the absolute best, right? She deserves to be spoiled like a princess and given anything her heart desires.”

“You going somewhere with this, Ronnie?”

The redhead hasn’t lost the look of confusion and he nudges Veronica slightly. Veronica pays him no mind, her whole attention on Jughead.

“Get to the point, Veronica.”

Jughead seems to be done with the games.

“I’m just saying that if Betty wanted something, within reason, you'd want to get it for her right?”

“…Yes.”

“If you don’t have $50 to spare I am willing to lend it to you. Just saying.”

Jughead rears back a little bit.

“$50? For what?”

Veronica glances at the restroom door. Their window of time is slowly disappearing.

“Betty found something super cute at one of the stores today but she refused to buy it and I think you should buy it for her because it would make her really happy. I am not telling you this because Betty’s playing some bullshit passive aggressive game about it and told me to tell you or whatever. It’s because I saw the way she looked at it and she rationalized herself out of buying it, but I think that even if she doesn’t need it she should have it.”

Jughead’s eyes narrow in calculation.

Betty walks out of the restrooms and settles herself back into Jughead’s side, stealing a fry from his plate.

“What did I miss?”

Jughead twists his head, pressing a soft kiss to Betty’s hair.

“Nothing much. Veronica was just telling us about some other things that you guys saw at the antique shops today.”

“Yeah. Like that ridiculously overpriced tea set. And the hideous ceramic dolls.”

Betty’s eyes light up and she bounces a little in her seat. She turns to Jughead

“Those dolls! Juggie, they’re gonna give me nightmares. There was this disjointed clown one I swear was haunted. It had the creepiest smile that was like, half worn away and these beady eyes that followed us around the store. I’m staying with you tonight and you have to hold me really tight ok? Also we are never watching It ever again.”

And just like that, Betty is distracted, going on a tangent about how much she doesn’t like Pennywise. Jughead catches Veronica’s eye for a split second and when they exchange nods, Veronica’s smile widens.

Two weeks later, Betty is sitting on the couch in Jughead’s trailer when he breezes in, throwing his jacket and keys on the opposite end.

“I have a surprise for you.”

Betty looks up from her laptop. She’s been going through apartment listings in New York that she and Jughead can possibly afford, making a binder filled with possibilities and the pros and cons of each.

“A surprise? What is it?”

Jughead drops himself on the couch next to her, a large box in his hands. Betty cocks an eyebrow at him skeptically.

“Why the gift? It’s not a birthday, an anniversary, or a major holiday. Not that I think we can only give each other gifts on those occasions but you know, society.”

Jughead snorts.

“So. Why did you decide to get me something?”

“Because I love you.”

The simple statement sends butterflies through her stomach, just as strong as the first time.

“I love you, Betty Cooper. So I bought you a gift. Am I not allowed to do that?”

His eyes are so earnest that Betty curses him. How is it possible that he can make her blush and fluster so easily? Is he supposed to be able to still have this effect on her? She's irritated that he knows exactly what she’s thinking, judging by the smirk on his face.

To distract herself from kissing away his stupid smile, Betty opens the box and finds another box inside.

“You did not do this.”

Jughead’s smile gets wider when Betty tilts her head and gives him a baleful look. Sighing heavily, Betty pulls out the box and opens it up to find a smaller box. She opens up the third box to find a fourth box. And then a fifth. The sixth box is small and wooden and Betty has no idea what could be in it. She opens up the catch to find that it’s a ring box.

A ring box holding the ring from the antique store.

The little tines of the crown stare back at her and the stones sparkle in their setting . It’s been cleaned and polished very nicely since she saw it last. Betty swivels her head between the ring and Jughead, unable to form words.

“Veronica told me you liked it. And when I saw it, I couldn’t resist getting it for you. It might seem kind of egotistical to get you a ring with my symbol on it. At least what I sort of consider my symbol. But I’d really like for you to wear it, Betty.”

Betty nods rapidly, a smile on her face. Jughead scoots closer, putting an arm around her. His voice is low and serious and Betty wants to stay in this little bubble of happiness for forever.

“I… I’m not proposing. Not yet anyway. But. This is for you. And someday. Someday there’ll be another ring. If you want it, that is.”

“Oh. Juggie.”

Betty’s voice is breathy and amazed.

“Of course. Of course I want it. I love it. I love you so much.”

Betty throws herself into Jughead’s arms. She kisses, kisses, kisses him and he kisses her back just as fiercely. He scoots back just a touch and hauls Betty into his lap so she’s straddling him.

Betty links her hands behind his head while he anchors one hand at the small of her back. It’s a searing heat through her thin t-shirt. Jughead’s other hand roams up and down her spine, sending sparks skipping up and down her spine and raising goosebumps.

“Love you. Love you. Love you so much. Juggie I love you so much.”

Betty can’t stop telling Jughead how much she loves him in between kisses. Jughead pulls away just slightly and heaves a small breathy laugh against her lips.

“Betty. I love you.”

His blue eyes are warm and dark and Betty leans down to give him one more small peck. Jughead plucks the little ring box she’s been loosely holding out of her hand. He pulls the ring out and grasps her right hand gently. He takes the time to kiss the scars on her palm gently before turning it over and sliding the ring on her fourth finger.

Or… Trying to slide it on.

“It… doesn’t fit.”

Betty bursts out laughing. She buries her head into the crook of his neck as Jughead starts fighting with the ring and her finger. Jughead’s forehead creases and he growls a little at how it gets 3/4 of the way down before getting stuck. After some struggles, he eventually gets it on but it’s a little too tight for Betty’s comfort.

“Betty. Stop laughing. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

It’s Jughead’s turn to blush and Betty can’t help but kiss the pout away.

“Here, Jug.”

Betty moves the ring from her right hand to her left ring finger, where it fits snugly, but comfortably.

“I know you said you weren’t proposing yet, but I think that ring was meant for this finger.”

Jughead brings her hand back up to his mouth, placing more small kisses to her fingers.

“Why does it fit one hand and not the other?”

“I’m right handed. It happens. It’s ok. I like it better on this hand.”

“Everyone’s going to think it’s an engagement ring won’t they?”

Betty hums in agreement before responding.

“Probably. But whatever they say doesn’t matter. Whether or not we call it a promise ring or an engagement ring doesn’t matter. It’s just a piece of jewelry. What matters is us.”

“Does that mean you’re going to be the one to explain to your mother why you’re wearing it on that finger?

Betty laughs and nods in agreement. She lifts her leg and folds it underneath her so that she’s sitting in Jughead’s lap instead of straddling him. Jughead wraps both arms around her and cuddles close, settling his head in the tuck of her neck and shoulder. Betty holds her hand up so that it catches the low light shining in the trailer. Jughead presses a kiss to the curve of her neck.

“It’s so pretty.” Betty murmurs.

“Not as pretty as you.”

Betty elbows him gently.

“Cheeseball. Who knew, when we first started dating that you would be such a sap?”

“Only for you.”

Betty giggles and elbows him gently again. He tickles her in retaliation and she squeals before he swoops in to steal another kiss. They spend long minutes like that before Betty breaks away again to admire the ring. She uses the index finger of her right hand to softly stroke the little dips and grooves in the ring.

“Thank you, Jughead.”

“Well if I get thanked like that, I should get you jewelry more often.”

[oilskirt7-blog]

LISTMANIA 2018: TOP 20 ALBUMS YOU MIGHT’VE MISSED THIS YEAR (FROM SEB PAINCHAUD, TUMBLEWEED DEALER)

(2016 was the year when I discovered Montréal’s Tumbleweed Dealer through their extremely cool third album Tokes, Hatred & Caffeine (and I’m still trying to be patient while waiting for TD4). The band’s main man Seb Painchaud has very expansive and very eclectic musical tastes, and a way with words, and so for a third year I asked him to share a year-end list with us. As before, he pulls us off our usual beaten paths by highlighting some favorite releases that are way outside the usual metal lists… including a lot of very interesting Not-Metal.)

So this year we’re going to call it a Top 20 Albums You Should Check Out. If I were to make a top 20 list, I’d waste a lot of space telling you about albums you’ve already heard and will be present on every other list you read. Do you really need to see me overcompensate for my limited vocabulary with swear words to explain that Frontierer and Sectioned dominated the scene with their amazing albums? If so, then here you go: Fuck a cock on a stick its god damn fuck your mother fucking good.

And when you have every established music website and magazine tripping over themselves to talk to you about The Armed, you don’t really need me adding to it. Do we need to discuss Mol? You either hate it or love it, but you probably know about it. And all the big tech death bands released great records that pushed the limits of the human body this year. Only one remembered to include amazing song writing. Let’s not get into a shouting match over which one it was.

It was Obscura. Those Cynic-like robot vocal hooks had me going back for more all year long, Fight me if you don’t agree.

So here is my ‘Top 20 Albums You Might’ve Missed This Year’ (yes the title changed since the opening line).

20. Idle Hands – Don’t Waste Your Time

To win my friend over on this amazing EP I told him to imagine if Beastmilk had fucked with Eternal Champion to make a gothic ’80s baby that wore fur underwear. If that doesn’t entice you to give it a listen then you are clearly dead inside.

19. Glorior Belli – The Apostates

Why are people sleeping on this amazing record? I was disappointed that their last offering was devoid of their southern charm and consisted mostly of melodic black metal, but this one more than makes up for it. The bluesy vibes now channel an epicness that wasn’t present before in their sound. This is their best work yet. The closing track is the highlight of the album.

18. Weedpecker – III

I think this album isn’t making a lot of lists simply because it was released so early in the year. If you’re like me, you’ve overdosed on by-the-numbers stoner metal bands. This album infused the formula with a touch of psychedelic and prog rock, genres that have been incorporated before into this sound, but not as tastefully as on this album.

17. All Traps On Earth – A Drop Of Light

I’m a huge fan of the Scandinavian Prog Revival sound, so they had me at ex-Anglagard. They kept me because this surpasses that band’s post-reunion record. They basically kept the same sound, but they get to business quicker and stay there, unlike their predecessors who would go into almost ambient-like levels of activity for minutes at a time.

16. JYOCHO – 美しい終末サイクル

Daijiro Nakagawa is one of my favorite guitarists ever. From his work with his former band Uchu Conbini, mixing math rock with j-pop sensibilities, to the insane riffs he posts on Instagram playing both electric and acoustic guitar, the guy encompasses everything I love about math rock riffing. His new band, JYOCHO, picks up where he had left off, infusing post-rock into the mix, keeping the overall atmosphere light and airy, augmented by the female vocals and flute, while he taps away some of the most complex licks you’ve ever heard.

The kind of record you can turn your brain off and just listen and enjoy, or turn it on and notice the disjointed rhythms in odd time signatures and insane guitar work that lurks underneath. You either walk away infused with the courage to face your day, like only an anime closing song can inspire, or depressed at how much practice you need to put in on your instrument to ever aspire to that level of musicianship.

http://jyocho.com/

15. Moss Upon The Skull – In Vengeful Reverence

In a year that was, for me anyways, dominated by OSDM releases, this album stands over all of it. While other releases like Tomb Mold, Outer Heaven, and Genocide Pact are getting all the year-end press, and deservingly so, I find this album mixes all the elements that all these bands brought to the table perfectly, being the only one to touch on all of ’em at once in a cohesive effort. The band manages to mix old school vibes with a bit of technicality, a bit of dissonance, and a lot of get-your-head-banging catchiness and groove.

14. Robohands – Green

This album has a sound that immediately transports me to the early 2000s when I lived in a loft in downtown New York and would stay up to 2 A.M. working on my novel, inspired by nothing but the sounds of the city coming in through my window. Except none of that ever happened and I’ve never been to NY. That’s how powerful this record is.

You’ll be surprised at how often you’re drawn back to this minimalist jazz record that fuses simple jazz melodies over a hip-hop influenced back beat. I was curious enough to look up a video of him (yes, this is a one man project, making it that much more impressive) drumming to see if it was sampled or played live, and seeing this video of his drum work and the ways he emulates a drum machine on a real drum to get that exact sound is what really sold me on this record.

13. Grivo – Elude

This band walks the line between typical MBV worship reverb-drenched shoegaze and the riffier brand of depressed, downtrodden music that True Widow brought us. The way they easily switch between the two sounds is simple yet genius, combining both elements in different quantities in order to make for an album that is varied yet focused. It hits the same spot as Cloakroom’s debut EP and Nothing’s zenith release of Tired Of Tomorrow, yet it seems to do so without the band having an actual influence from heavier music. It sounds like it just ended up being that damn heavy through amazing compositions and production rather than by design, making it a feat in itself that they could do so while not relying on any tropes of the heavier genres.

12. Koenjihyakkei – DHORIMVISKHA

I’ve been a fan of these guys since their album Angherr Shisspa came out in 2005. Their brand of Magma-On-Cocaine Zeuhl (if that reference means nothing to you, then go on YouTube, search Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh, and in 38min52sec you’ll be compelled to send me a personalized thank-you note for introducing you to the forefathers of this obscure offshoot of prog rock) walks that fine line where it’s weird for the sake of weird while remaining artistically enjoyable and never crosses into whacky cringy territory. These are complex compositions crafted with precision. No one lays down an odd metered groove with jazz scats like these guys!

11. Wake – Misery Rites

This is one of the two bands on my list that I do see on a lot of other people’s top albums, yet I’ve decided to include them anyway. This album is just a slab of mean with a heavy side of fucking angry. I couldn’t bring into words what exactly sets them apart from any other worthy grind record this year. It’s just better. The riffs, the atmosphere, the production, it all works together in a violent way that none of those other records managed to attain.

10. Murphy Radio – Murphy Radio

This Indonesian math rock band aims for the feel good vibes and hit their mark every time. It’s Midwestern Emo worship at its finest, yet unlike Chinese Football, it’s not all tribute and has substance of its own. Most of it is instrumental, and goes through all the prerequisite Midwestern emo parts like that one gang vocal sung chorus, the obligatory electronic drum and bass influenced part, and tons of twinkling guitar parts, but does them all with enough gusto that it never feels like they are paying tribute to anything, just doing their own version of it and putting everything they have into it.

9. Shake Stew – Rise And Rise Again

Jazz for people who aren’t big jazz fans, these guys go for the catchy back beats of afro beat funk and add fun repetitive melodies and counter-melodies over them. It surges into epic bursts only to disintegrate back into minimalist parts for the saxophone to solo over just so they can build everything back up into another massive burst and bring back the main theme of the song and hit that sweet spot. This album won’t get your head banging but you’ll find yourself nodding back and forth as a show both of appreciation and as a way of saying Do Not Stop This Fucking Song For The Life Of Me.

8. The Aftermath – Vermine

Several years ago (I’m a make an educated guess and say around 2011) I went to Quebec City to see some friends and get hammered to the point of no return. The following day, as a useless mass of hungover flesh, I tagged along as we visited Studio Broil where its owner proceeded to play us a few tracks off this album. I was blown away at the brutality and technicality of the material he was playing us.

Fast Forward about 7 years and I had assumed the project was dissolved and I’d never get to hear the finished product. I was stoked to see it finally released this year, and to be honest, it was better than I remembered. It’s like Cephalic Carnage and Cattle Decapitation had a kid that grew up to resent them and be angrier than either band ever dreamed (or had nightmares) of being.

7. He Was Eaten By Owls – Inchoate With The Light Go I

I had really enjoyed this band’s debut record, a nice and intricate mix of math rock and jazz experimentation. I was sure I’d enjoy the new record as much, but I was blown away at what I got. This album is more of an orchestrated indie rock masterpiece than anything that fits the boundaries set by their first release. I’ve been describing this one as ‘2018 Indie Rock’s version of King Crimson’s Islands’ as it touches on the same orchestral rock that’s experimental yet still very much melody-focused and lyrical. This was a massive undertaking (which I somewhat followed through their Facebook and Instagram posts) that could’ve failed miserably, a huge gamble that could’ve easily turned into a piece of pretentious garbage, but they pulled it off. This is what Arcade Fire fans think they hear when they listen to Arcade Fire.

6. Cypecore – The Alliance

I’m 38, so I grew up in the mid ’90s with the boom of Gothenburg masterpieces coming out. I’ve been an In Flames fan for more than half my life. Of course, at first, I hated their new direction (don’t worry I’m getting there) but grew to love it with time. I now firmly believe that had Reroute To Remain been all killer (“System”, “Trigger”, “Cloud Connected”) and no filler (“Drifter”, “Transparent”), it’d be by far their best release. These guys take that sound and lean into the industrial Rammstein elements, and thankfully leave the emo whiny vocals aside.

This record is better than it has a right to be. It adds nothing new to an existing formula, yet here it sits at number 6 because it’s just that damn fucking good. Every song on this album could’ve been the lead single. Every chorus will have you singing along. Every new riff will have you hitting the person next you in the car and saying ‘Listen, listen, this is the best part of the whole fucking album’ only to repeat this action during the following song.

5. GoGo Penguin – A Humdrum Star

Beautifully sad, melancholic piano-led jazz of the chill-up-your-spine variety. The kind of album you love and recommend yet don’t listen to that often as it is a heavy and laboring undertaking that leaves you emotionally exhausted. Just the opening chords of the second track, “Raven”, will bring a wave of nostalgia on its second listen since you will know the journey you are embarking upon and the roller coaster of emotions you will have therein. I’m not swearing and attempting to put some effort into my description, that’s how good this record is. It’s just that damn fucking good (one can only try so hard…).

4. Monobody – Raytracing

These guys have been on my radar ever since their first release. Midway between jazz and math rock, they had put out an amazing debut record and EP, but nothing could prepare me for the sonic onslaught that would be this new album. The complex unison line and composition work I love so much in ’70s jazz rock gets a modern update and then tossed in there with electronic ambiences and coated in a math rock glazing of sugary goodness. It’s ambitious when it needs to be and laid back when it doesn’t, yet holds the listener’s attention constantly. A very modern take on Yes’ Relayer album is about as close as words can come to summarizing it.

3. Journal – Chrysalis Ordalias

With all the love Frontierer and Rolo Tomassi are getting, this album is getting left behind when people discuss this year’s mathcore offerings. What I love about Journal is that they embrace both sides of the math, going from frenetic chaotic dissonant mathcore passages to major scale upbeat math rock passages and melding the two together masterfully. It creates something pretty so it can shit on it afterwards, and makes darkness so the following light can shine brighter. In the world of brutal progressive music, whether its mathcore or tech death, it’s rare to see a band embrace this contrast. These guys do it, and they pull it off on this insanely long and diverse record.

2. Respire – Dénouement

I mentioned before that there would be a second record on the list that is actually getting recognition, and this is it. I still felt compelled to include it. The line between screamo and post black metal keeps getting thinner, and these guys have taken residence upon that divide and brought horns and strings with them. Every single second of this recording is emotionally engaging yet never manipulative. It’s simply mournfully amazing, taking the best of several genres, from the ones mentioned before to post-rock and post-metal, and puts it all together to pull you in for a heartfelt ride through genuine feelings put into music.

1. Revolting – Monolith Of Madness

Throughout this list I’ve overused the words beautiful, complexity, and composition, as a lot of these albums bring a myriad of different subtleties to the table that I find enjoyable as an artist. If you compare them to surgeons using surgical blades to make precise incisions after years of studying and training, this record is a blunt object to the motherfucking skull. And as is the case with my rankings, getting hit in the face with a sledgehammer leaves more of an impression than any medical intervention can.

This album is just all balls. Old School Swedish Death Metal done right. If you loved Edge Of Sanity before Crimson, then you’ll understand why this album filled a void that had been empty for years. They took Swanö’s melodic and catchy yet still fully death metal approach and mastered it. I could make a compilation of my favorite EoS songs such as “Twilight”, “Hell Is Where the Heart Is”, and “Eternal Eclipse”, compare it to this album, and it would still hold up.

This is the filler-less, all-singles album EoS should’ve given us instead of the uneven Infernal. If you loved them as much as I did, you understand why an album that fills that void that was left inside of me for such a recording deserves the number one spot. And, for all my attempts at using fancy words and metaphors to describe the other albums on this list, this one beats them all out on one important point: I played it twice as much as anything else this year.

I’ll be posting 100+ other albums I enjoyed this year on my instagram so follow me at https://www.instagram.com/tumbleweeddealer/

Source: https://www.nocleansinging.com/2019/01/08/listmania-2018-top-20-albums-you-mightve-missed-this-year-from-seb-painchaud-tumbleweed-dealer/