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lale-txt · 8 hours ago

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❦ IDLE HANDS (Kuroo x f!reader)

Shameless, you think. Unsure if you mean him or yourself when you narrow the distance between you two.

a/n: little something for @husbandograveyard ♡ writing this made me a Kuroo girlie. i get it now. i really, REALLY do. also when i started writing this i was aiming for 1k or so idk what possessed me but here we are. maybe listening to bouncy while writing this wasn't the best idea (lie)

tags: f!reader, mild enemies to lovers, fluff, mutual pining, shameless flirting, food mention, bit of a slow burn, they're so in love your honor

wc: 3.7k

Kuroo Tetsuro is a heartthrob.

With his stupid messy hair and his stupid rolled up sleeves, showing off his stupid toned arms while he’s mumbling stupid sweet things to your favorite cat that’s currently coiling underneath his stupid big hand, getting the best belly rubs of her life from the looks of it.

It’s not like you’re jealous or something, no; it’s just that you’ve been coming to this cat café for a year now and you thought you and the calico shared a special bond. Maru, who is just as her name implies, very round and very soft, has been sitting and purring by your side while you spend hours typing page after page of your next book. She’d also stretch out all over your laptop and remind you to take a break when you’ve been going at it for hours. Yes, it took you some bribery to win her heart but over the past months she really warmed up to you. Wow, she usually isn’t this friendly with people, you remember the café owner say once.

What a blatant lie.

Your peace has been disturbed. A slight shift in the universe when he showed up for the first time merely a week ago. It was easy to remember him, because he was sitting in your spot with your favorite cat purring in his lap, looking like he didn’t have a single worry in the world except maybe that untamed hair of his (and even this was kind of charming, you had to admit begrudgingly).

Sharing usually wasn’t a big deal for you–until it was. You come to this cat café almost every day, feeling much more inspired to write here than in the shoebox you call your apartment at the other end of town. Your landlady doesn’t allow pets, so this place has been a lifeline in the tiring times of deadlines and rejected book deals. At the end of the day there was always a cat rubbing against your legs, reminding you that not everything was bad and that no matter how severe things got, there was always a kitty waiting to be picked up.

You hold this place very dear to your heart, a secret gem you felt a need to protect. It is hidden away in a side street, far from the hectic buzz of the city. The interior is cozy, it isn’t too big and the owner, an elderly lady with candy cotton hair and knuckle tattoos, lives upstairs and treats the place like her second living room with all six of her cats. There’s never too many other guests around and in the corner seat by the window you can unravel your thoughts quietly. It feels homey, something you haven’t felt in a long time.

But now there is an intruder in a business suit and you didn’t really know how to deal with that new found irritation.

“That’s my spot.”

Balancing your laptop, notebook, a slice of carrot cake and a hot drink in one hand, all manners aside, you point at the stranger with your other. In your right mind you know it is rude to point at people, but to be fair he kinda started it by sitting where you rightfully belong. His eyes, a certain gleam in them, follow your movement down to the cat curled up on top of his thighs. With the amount of cat hair sticking to his suit pants you could only pray for him that he had a lint roller somewhere at his desk.

He cocks his head to the side, giving you a boyish smirk that maybe would make your heart skip a beat if it wasn’t for his audacity.

“Usually I ask someone’s name first and take them on a few dates before I let them sit in my lap, but I guess I can make an exception,” he replies and you never in your life before wanted to strangle someone so badly. If that wasn’t already worse enough, the tuxedo cat lifts its small head and slowly blinks at you before jumping down from his lap, as if it was trying to make space for you. My bad, didn’t know this seat was taken. Here, girl, you have it.

For once in your life you’re too stunned to speak. You watch the stranger check his watch and let out an almost inaudible sigh before he grabs his backpack (one that looks like he has had it since high school) and stands up to full height. He’s in your space now and you have to crank your neck slightly to meet his eyes. Mentally you’re adding stupidly tall to your list of things you hate about him.

“Gotta get back to work. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

True to his words he is there the next day, too. This time around you managed to secure your spot by the window, three cats idly sleeping next to you on. You’ve been stuck on a paragraph for almost an hour now when the doorbell chimes and his figure appears at the counter. The cats look up with interest but you force yourself not to pay any attention to him, which is hard when his order is literally “I’ll have whatever she is having”, followed by a nod in your direction and this cheeky smile again.

This damn smile.

“You didn’t strike me as a dirty chai drinker,” you deadpan when he takes a seat at the table next to yours. The café is almost empty around this time of the day, which is no surprise since most of the workers in this district are having a hearty meal for lunch and not whatever sweet delicacies this place is offering.

He peels himself out of his suit jacket and rolls up the sleeves of his shirt. The same cat as yesterday jumps into his lap immediately after he sits down, giving you a look of “if you don’t want him, I’ll take him” and you almost roll your eyes. Kuroo (you learn his name from the ID he is wearing around his neck) seems to notice and he grins at you.

“Then what did I strike you as?” he asks, his chin resting in one hand while his other finds the soft fur of the kitty, stroking it gently.

You look him up and down, now taking your time while stretching out the silence between you two. Only the purring of the cats and the soft music in the background could be heard. At first glance he seems like your typical office worker in the three piece suit who spends his time filling out spreadsheets and drinking cheap vending-machine coffee from the conbini next door. Everything a little rumpled, himself included, someone so used to tristesse he doesn’t even notice it anymore.

Only at second glance do you notice the small wrinkles around his eyes, not from age but from laughter. The dimples when he smiles down at the tuxedo cat in his lap, now showing off its belly. His calloused hands, atypical for an office worker, more like you’d see them at craftsmen or athletes. Something in his eyes that radiates warmth and an air of calm confidence. None of it is unpleasant.

“If I had to guess, maybe three espresso with a pump of caramel and honey,” you say, more to yourself than to him. Kuroo looks at you in surprise before barking out a laugh. You hate how you like the sound of it.

It’s the beginning of spring and you award Kuroo Tetsuro the title of the greatest nuisance you’ve ever met.

In the midst of summer, you pity him.

“I’m just saying that maybe you radiate a natural fragrance of catnip,” you say as you stir your iced oat milk latte. Kuroo got you that one when he popped in during his lunch break and saw that your glass must have been empty for a while. By that time you were hunched over your laptop, trying to decipher your notes from last night. You had saved him a seat at your table, but if he asked you, you’d say you just happened to put all your belongings on one chair and nothing more.

The man is swarmed by the cats of the café. They didn’t even bother to hide who their favorite is, rubbing around his legs, sitting pressed to his side or just straight up climbing his shoulders. It would’ve been enviable if he wasn’t already sweating from wearing a suit in the humid heat of the summer month alone.

“Can you get at least one or two off me?” he asks and his tone is close to pleading. It makes you laugh as you stretch out in your light sundress, giving him a look as if you’re contemplating his question.

“I could, but it’s really much funnier seeing you struggle like that. Serves you well,” you chime and pull out your phone, snapping a photo of this moment. You hold it up for him to see, a kitty phone charm dangling from it (they just happened to come in a pack of two and you gifted him one out of generosity, nothing more). He snatches it from your hands and makes a face.

“So you like seeing me suffer, is that how it is?” he snarls at you, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. His slender fingers fly over the screen of your phone and you let out a small gasp.

“Don’t you dare delete it,” you huff and grab the orange tabby mercifully off his shoulders so you can lean over him better.

“Relax. I’m only saving my contact info since you never bothered asking me for it despite being my constant for the past three months.”

There was this cheeky smile again. You blame the flutter of your heart on the caffeine and not the way his pupils are dilating when he gazes at you.

He loosens his tie and unbuttons his shirt slightly, just enough to reveal a sliver of skin. Suddenly you’re very aware of how close you’re leaning over at him. Kuroo gives you a little glance from the corner of his eyes and taps the now revealed side of his neck.

“What do you say? Do I really smell like catnip?”

Shameless, you think. Unsure if you mean him or yourself when you narrow the distance between you two. You can feel the heat radiating off him and for a brief moment you wonder what it would feel like to press open mouth kisses on his skin. Your eyes flutter shut as you engrave this moment into your heart.

“Definitely irresistible,” you murmur once you pull back–reluctantly, as if a hidden part of you ached to be in his proximity, in the inside of his soul.

By autumn you miss him on the days when he was gone.

He traveled quite a lot. You didn’t know one would need to be on the road so much for something as simple as volleyball (you can imagine the look he’d give you over this). But he was passionate about it and that’s also something you liked about him. The way he talks about the sport holds so much love and you wonder what it would feel like to be loved by a man like Kuroo Tetsuro.

Gentle, you think. Honest. Treasured.

A tap against the window pulls you out of your thoughts and when you look up, you're met with a pair of honey glazed eyes. Whatever he sees when he looks at you, it’s making him grin from ear to ear before he hurries towards the entry door, eager to meet you again.

Kuroo is holding up a bag, some brand of sweets from Hokkaido he’s been texting you about, but you didn’t think he’d actually go so far and bring you some. He sounds breathless when he speaks, as if he rushed all the way to get here and when he keeps on rambling, you order him and yourself a hot matcha boba and a chocolate mousse to share.

The cats are happy to see him back too, and you laugh when you help him take his scarf off before some kitty claws can tangle up in it. It was a precious gift after all, one you knitted for him, under the feeble excuse of “keeping my hands busy helps me come up with ideas for my writing process”. It makes you happy to see him wearing it, and the color makes you feel as if you took the red string of fate connecting you two and turned it into something to help him stay warm.

You think a lot about kissing him now. Sometimes your hands would brush against each other on the table, neither of you pulling away. He spends his lunch breaks with you and comes to pick you up from the café in the evening, walking you to your station. The two of you still bicker at each other, but underneath lies a certain kind of softness, one that feels too fickle to put it into words just yet but also too bright to ignore. The leaves of the trees are falling and so are you.

With winter comes snow and the quiet realization that maybe, just maybe, it’s unadulterated love.

You spend a lot of time huddled together in the corner by the window now. He looks over your shoulder when you type on your laptop, one arm resting idly on the back of your chair, fingertips brushing against your spine sometimes. You don’t think he even notices when he lets them run up and down there. Often you forget which cups on the table belong to who but it doesn’t matter since you order the same things anyway and because this could count as an indirect kiss, right?

On some days he’d just close his eyes and laze next to you, with his head resting on his folded arms on the table and your fingers idly weaving through his hair, before he had to hurry back to work. On others he would tell you excitedly about a special match he was organizing and you can hear the pure joy in his voice. It’s contagious.You get them now, the cats. How drawn they are to him, like chasing sunbeams.

He spells L-O-V-E on your back with his fingertips and something inside of you softens.

Then there’s snow, more snow than you’ve ever seen in your entire life, and Kuroo comes to pick you up early, the tip of his ears bright red and his cold hands seeking yours to warm them up.

“I’m really sorry but I’m closing the shop early today,” the café owner apologizes and puts a box of cinnamon rolls for you on your table. “You two kittens better hurry and get home, too. On the radio they said they’re gonna shut everything down soon.”

It can’t be that bad, you think. But when Kuroo and you stand in front of the closed station, it dawns on you that maybe you’ve underestimated the amount of snow a teeny tiny bit. You huddle a little closer to him for warmth and to shield yourself against the snow as you pull out your phone.

“If there’s no more trains running, I better start looking for a place to stay. With some luck there’s still a few vacant rooms in the hotels nearby…”

Kuroo puts a hand over your screen and gives you a stern look when you open our mouth to protest.

“You can crash at my place for the night. I live close by," he mutters and it doesn’t really leave room to decline his offer. Maybe it’s not really an offer to begin with; more of a silent pleading to stay. Not just for the duration of the snowstorm, but forever maybe.

His place is just like you imagined it would be like. Not overly spacious but it feels like a home in every corner. There’s photos on the wall, back from when he was a kid to his high school and college years, and pinned with a magnet to the fridge is also a polaroid he took of you back in summer. In it you’re laughing about something silly he said and you’re holding up two cats at once, one strap of your sundress almost slipping down your shoulder. You still remember how he fixed it for you because you didn’t have a hand free and how his fingers lingered for longer than necessary.

You hope one day he won’t pull his hand away anymore.

The apartment is certainly not messy but you can see he lives in this place, with some papers scattered across the coffee table and the unmade bed and the slightly concerning stock of buldak noodles in the kitchen shelves (in which you peeked out of curiosity into while he was in the shower). You imagine yourself living here, too. Maybe you’d get a cat on your own and plants for the balcony once this winter was over.

The laundry machine rumbles quietly in the background after you step out of the bathroom, too. It wasn’t just the steamy shower that had your cheeks feel hot, it was also his clothes that he put out for you, with his scent lingering on them and engulfing you softly. Kuroo appears with two cups from the kitchen and pauses when he sees you, his mouth opening and closing again as his eyes flicker over your form. He doesn’t want to stare but also he does want to stare, wants to drink you in and memorize every detail of this moment.

You can see his Adam's apple bop slightly when he swallows and nods over to the couch, and it’s at this moment that you know you’re not leaving this apartment again before every inch of your skin has been plastered in kisses.

“It’s not as good as the one’s at the café but I tried my best for my special guest,” he laughs quietly when he hands you your cup, his fingers brushing against yours. The hot chocolate looks impossibly sweet, with whipped cream and sprinkles on top (they’re not ordinary sprinkles, you realize, but tiny cat shaped ones), and the first sip would’ve been enough to send you in some higher spheres if you weren’t in a state of bliss due to his proximity already. You put the cups to cool down on the coffee table and sink into the couch.

Outside the snow is falling relentlessly, muffling the sounds of the outside world and opening up a new one, right here in these four walls.

In his arms.

Without realizing you both settled down in your now familiar positions, only closer this time. Huddled next to each other, with one of his arms around your shoulder drawing you nearer to him. It feels natural, the way your head comes to rest against his shoulder and your legs thrown over his lap, the two of you sharing a blanket.

He’s warm. Kuroo is so warm.

And when he presses a fleeting kiss on top of your head it’s like everything is falling in place; the months of pining and yearning and unspoken desire. In the midst of a snowstorm both of your hearts are set ablaze, with a tenderness you haven’t experienced in this lifetime before. You sure hope he will find you in the next and the one after that as well because you never want to miss his embrace ever again.

“That’s my spot,” you murmur and Kuroo laughs, the kind with his head tilted back and his chest rumbling. His grip around you tightens and he pulls you impossibly closer, till you’re really in his lap now, your head tucked under his chin.

“Damn right it is.”

You can feel his heart drum, or maybe it’s your own that’s doing somersaults–either way, it’s the same rhythm, a steady thrumming and rattling, begging to be felt. Time seems to freeze at this moment and you’re both quiet. Cat’s got your tongue. Kuroo has both arms around you now, and one of his hands settles on your waist, at the part where your sweatshirt is bunched up a little. His thumb draws small patterns against your bare skin, his touch featherlight and gentle.

You lift your head, only enough so you can catch his gaze. For the first time in your life you understand what it means to have your heart in your throat, because he takes your breath away with a simple glance. His other hand comes to rest against your cheek, cupping your face softly while his grip around your waist tightens a fraction.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he mutters and you can see his sharp teeth flash in the corner of your eyes when he laughs.

“Like what?” “You know what.” “I think I’ll need to have it spelled out for me.”

He laughs again and this time he leans in closer till his breath is fanning over your skin and everything is happening all at once. Honey and caramel eyes asking you to drown in them. The heat of his body mingling with yours. Your fingers playing with the shaved part of hair in the back of his neck, sending small shivers down his spine.

“Oh, I’ll spell it out for you alright.”

Kuroo kisses you with all the gentleness of the world. It feels as natural as if he had done this countless times before, as if he had kissed you in every life prior to that. He hums into the kiss and smiles when your lips part for him so willingly, and then he deepens the kiss in a way that makes you forget your name for a heartbeat or two.

Sweet, you think. Soft and saccharine. And warm. So warm. The same what loving Kuroo feels like.

#hq x reader #haikyu x reader #haikyuu x reader #kuroo x reader #kuroo tetsuro x reader #kuroo fluff #hq fluff #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu reader insert #haikyuu imagines

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arcanarix · 2 days ago

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Make That Double, Ch8 - Yan!SatoSugu x Fem!Reader [AO3]

Word Count: ~7K

Warnings: non-con, exhibitionism, double penetration (in one hole and in both), mommy kink (geto calls you mamma), sex toys like dildos and nipple clamps mentioned

For more reasons you can’t wrap your head around, Geto has become far, far kinder to you.

And you know what that means.

You can’t fuck this up again.

Yes, while men can be easy to manipulate… Geto seems to be smarter than you give him credit for, as well. That’s YOUR mistake. You realize that, and now you have to conjure a new way out but that doesn’t mean you can’t poke and prod at what seems to be a shaky foundation between Gojo and Geto. You can still play it up to your advantage. It’s gotten you out of some high-time embarrassing scenarios, like the other night when Gojo wanted to test out a pair of nipple clamps he’s found while online shopping. One glance at your horrified expression and Geto refuses to entertain the possibility, even after Gojo profusely begged him to let him try it out.

“We can try it on you, Satoru,” Geto offers with a hum. Geto settles the argument with that when Gojo seems more than pleased by the idea. Tweedledum glances at you with that irritating smirk on his face as he waves the package of nipple clamps over your face.

“Just let Princess take the wheel from here, Suguru~! But then you have to let me put them on her!”

That may have been the first time the two of them allow you agency.

Well, not the only time.

When it’s just you and Geto, he doesn’t initiate all that much. Instead, he seems to allow you a bit more room to breathe after any sessions with Tweedledum there. You can’t call sweet, because that’s one word you can’t use to describe either of those two men, but it’s…considerate enough.

It’s still not enough to sway you into a certain direction, though. Because for as much as Geto insists he doesn’t expect you to return his affections, he’s let down each time you don’t acknowledge his own perceived ‘selfless’ acts.

Again, many definitions seem to have changed over the years. Apparently ‘principled’ means not killing off people without a reason (and by people, he really means young sorcerers, non-sorcerers are ‘free for alls’). ‘Selflessness’ means not forcing himself upon you when you decline his advances, and you have made a point to decline each and every one of them if he gives you the ‘illusion of choice.’

Which, again, isn’t an illusion this time around. He really does keep his hands to himself now.

More than Gojo does, at least, which is…good enough.

On your way back to the bedroom for another agonizing evening to spend with your ‘new beau,’ you stumble across a note with a bouquet of freshly picked roses resting on the foot of the bed. Your brows knit together as you pick up the note, reading its contents.

‘Meet me out in the back. We’ll have a picnic. Just us.

-Geto, S.’

You have half a mind to rip it to shreds, but you remind yourself you can’t screw this shit up again. You have to play along.

Groaning to yourself, you slip back on your robe and step back out of the room, meeting Geto in the extravagant, botanical gardens his servants maintain to perfection. If not for the circumstances, you may have taken the time to admire the beauty and the effort put into keeping up the temple’s pristine appearances.

But this temple isn’t a paradise for you. It’s your chamber of sheer torment.

You find him near the smaller, stone koi pond and fountain, where he’s rested his picnic blanket and basket. Upon sensing your presence, he glances up and smiles at you, patting the vacant spot next to him.

You don’t say a word as you accept his invitation. This is better than everything else he’s forced you into, and you keep reminding yourself not to fuck this up like a mantra.

“I figured you wanted to get some fresh air after some time,” Geto states as he sets the utensils and plates onto the blanket. You glance over at the contents of the basket—you catch some sweets from a bakery the twins like to go to nearby. Some finger sandwiches and other interesting food items you haven’t tried before. He’s even picked up some of your usual orders, perhaps for good measure.

This can’t be good news.

“That’s nice of you, Suguru,” you reply, attempting a smile as he hands you a plate.

“Did you have a good time with the twins?” he asks, tilting his head as a fond smile plays on his lips. You’re taken aback, stumbling over your answer as he places some food items onto your plate before helping himself.

“We had a great time,” you answer, “Mimiko and Nanako can’t seem to agree on a theme for their Animal Crossing home, ,though. They kept trying to get me to gang up on the other. It’s kind of adorable.”

Geto rolls his eyes at the mention of Animal Crossing.

“They probably should have gotten their own copy instead of one,” Geto murmurs, “that would have settled some issues, but I thought it was a waste of money. I can’t remember how much money Satoru wasted on Digimon games, and I don’t want them to become ungrateful for how much money I spend on them for such a dull hobby.”

“It’s not that dull,” you laugh like it’s a nervous tick for you, at this point. “Video games are a great way for a family to bond. That’s how my family and I did.”

Why are you even trying to have small talk with him?

It feels so…weird. Like there’s this barrier. You feel like you’re trying to reach some untouchable deity when you speak to him. And in some ways that’s not all that far off. Your worlds are so different from each other.

“You never talk about them,” he remarks, “Your family.”

“Oh. Well, it’s just me now. My parents died when I was a teenager and I was an only child. I don’t really know about any other family,” you shrug, nibbling mindlessly on the finger sandwich. “But I do miss them all the time. My dad was the biggest Mario nerd, so we played all of those classic games together.”

“What was your mother like?” he asks, eyes twinkling in curiosity as he inches closer to you.

“She was like any other mom I guess,” you say, “She was a lot softer though. Like, not as strict as some of my friend’s moms…”

“I see,” he hums, “I never had a close relationship with my parents. As you can imagine, I was born into a family who didn’t have sorcerers. They didn’t try to understand what was happening to me.”

That’s kind of sad…

“You’re making quite an effort for the twins to have a normal family.”

Yeah. Yet another definition which has changed…

“My girls deserve everything I never had,” Geto replies, smiling. “I can’t change my or their past, but we have a future to look forward to together.”

Maybe in another world, you may have found this truly admirable.

But this isn’t that world.

“How’s the food?” he asks quickly to change the subject, and perhaps to alleviate the tension growing between you both.

You glance at the crumbs in your hand.

“Good,” you murmur, “Fantastic. Like gourmet.”

Geto’s smile widens.

“I had the chefs prepare it special,” he explains, “But while I was out with the girls I picked up some of your orders. So help yourself.”

He gestures to all of the items laid out on the blanket.

“Of course,” you reply finally, ignoring the twist in your gut. “Thank you.”

Awkward, you muse to yourself, your lips forming a thine line.

“I really want you to be happy here,” Geto speaks up again.

Your head snaps up at that, eyes widening.

“Huh?”

A calloused hand rests on your cheek.

“It’s true,” he goes on, the hand sliding to your shoulder. He squeezes gently. Reassuringly. “While it’s best you don’t disobey me, I don’t want you to be afraid of me, either. You’re part of the family.”

What a joke. He should petition for the greatest comedian of the year if he actually expects this…

“That will take time,” you manage to bite out, your words sharper than intended but does he expect anything different? Does he honestly believe that you, after everything he has done to you, may accept this with open arms without a single complaint?

He must be out of his mind.

He pouts at that, retracting his hand (smart move, you were tempted to bite it off).

“I understand,” he sighs in defeat. For now. “It’s like I told you, I don’t need you to return my affections.” Liar. “Your cooperation is more necessary than that.”

“I know.”

He leans in to press a chaste kiss on your lips. Every time he does he tastes of fire and brimstone. Of toxins seeping deep into your skin, contaminating your body. You aren’t in love with him, and you never will be; that much you are certain. You have been dragged into this nonsense by some rotten stroke of luck, and yes, you can’t change the past, but you can see to the future.

And you don’t want a future with him.

“My little dove,” he purrs as he pulls slightly away, eyes half-mast as he takes in your features. “I wish you could let me in your world.”

There’s no chance for that.

“But I suppose I have to settle with this for now,” he continues, hovering his lips to the crook of your neck.

You flush, furtive eyes darting to either side. Out here in the open?

Why are you even surprised?

“Suguru,” you start, resting a hand on the back of his head. “Not now.”

“But no one will see,” he mutters into your skin, inhaling your scent. He smiles upon recognizing something—notes of caramel and marshmallow and amber. “You used one of the perfumes I bought you.”

Well, yeah! Of course you do. No one likes to stink. And you don’t have many options here.

“Suguru please,” you try again, and Geto makes a sound, before retracting himself from you. He still hovers close while reaching for a pastry to present to you.

“Very well,” he concedes, cutting a piece of a strawberry crepe and bringing it to your lips. “We can settle on this.”

You open your mouth and let him feed you. The rush of strawberry filling overwhelms your taste buds, but you like this better than his lips on yours. But you speak too soon, his lips finding yours again as soon as you gulp down that bite. His tongue chases remnants of that lingering taste and he hums, pulling away with a little playful nip with his canines.

“You make these sweets tolerable,” he chuckles, darting his tongue between his lips to catch any remnants of your taste.

Nasty, you think, your face falling at he sight. Ugh. Maybe it helps a little that he’s objectively gorgeous, but since he’s the kind of man he is, you can’t give him the satisfaction of even entertaining the idea that he’s objectively attractive. You try to ignore the way your heart kind of flutters whenever he glances at you with those little jewels of amethyst for eyes or whenever he draws near you to steal a kiss. It’s only because objectively, yeah, he’s attractive. That makes this a bit more bearable. Nothing more than that, right?

This is kind of pissing you off a little… what the HELL is going on in your head now? What kind of bullshit is it trying to spew at you!? Have you lost your goddamn mind?

“I need more, Mamma,” he drawls, as he sets aside the plate, digging his fingers into either side of your waist.

“Suguru…” you whimper, as his face draws close to yours and you try to crawl away. That’s asking for a death penalty here but you can’t help it. “Not out here.”

“I’ve been patient with you, Mamma. Let me touch. Satoru’s been getting all the fun, and you know how I feel about that. We came to an understanding about that, did we not?” he trails kisses down your neck and across your collarbone, and your fists clench tightly, resting on your knees.

“Ah-hem, Geto,” Suda’s voice interrupts and saves you from certain torture. She approaches the both of you, clipboard in her arms as she focuses more on the text on the page rather than what’s transpiring in front of her. Perhaps she’s witnessed more than she wanted to. “I hate to disrupt your private time, but your presence is needed. We have acquired the scammer who tried to keep money from you.”

“Ah, I’m sorry, my dear,” he sighs as he pulls away, rising to his feet. “Duty calls, but we can continue this later.” He turns to his secretary. “Suda, you can remain with her until I return.”

“Yes, Geto,” she replies, straightening her posture as he brushes past her with a displeased look on his face. Nothing grinds his gears more than conman, speaking as if he isn’t a conman himself.

He’s such a fucking hypocrite; you’ve definitely noticed.

When it looks like Geto is gone, you glance up at Suda with curiosity twinkling in your eyes—and a touch of wariness as you feel with the rest of Geto’s goons. Her wavy pink hair cascades around her heart-shaped face and her dark green eyes stun you, resembling little jewels. She stands tall and proud like a runway model, and can probably give one a run for their entire career and salary if she ever decides to go that route. You can’t help but admire another woman’s beauty—even if she probably wants nothing to do with you like everyone else around here seems to. They seem to share similar ideas when it comes to non-sorcerers: they’re scum and are better off eradicated.

She huffs, scrunching her nose in distaste as she finally addresses the likes of you. “I don’t understand what Geto’s doing with you, but as much as I don’t like it, I’m here to help a sister.”

Your ears perk up at that. That’s something you don’t expect, but it’s a welcome surprise, indeed.

“Men abusing their power over us is nothing new,” Suda remarks in a rather snide tone, but you expect nothing less when it comes to such subject matter. And of course Geto is involved. “I’d have liked to believe Geto was different in at least that regard.”

It’s a sad, but cold, hard, truth: men may swing their swords around and pound their chest like gigantic gorillas, but in reality, they’re as frail, weak, and vulnerable as chimps out in the wild. Geto isn’t removed from this fact; neither is Gojo. Neither is any other sorcerer who happens to have male anatomy.

In the end, it’s their most fatal flaw.

At least Suda understands that as well as you do.

“Why work for him, then?” you ask, your curiosity piqued.

She shrugs, staring off into the distance. “Good living, I guess. Better than the dump I came from where guys would harass me all the time. He doesn’t come near me. Not like that. Just expects me to organize this circus of his.”

She gestures to the general area of the temple. Well, she’s not entirely wrong in that department—it’s decent living. Never mind the fact that her boss is a raging lunatic which apparently she’s more than aware of herself.

You tilt your head, processing the newfound information like it’s a software update. Interesting.

So even Geto’s goons know he’s not all that, either? Then what the hell are people doing here, other than for the good pay? Just for the shits and giggles? Maybe there’s got to be some other things they might benefit from in aiding a maniac like him…

“And I guess some things, I owe to Geto,” she finishes while adjusting flyaways in her hair after a gush of wind rushes by. Ah. There it is—a sense of obligation then. “But this can be between us. Even if you’re not like me, you’re still a woman.”

She doesn’t need to finish that statement. You fill in the blanks yourself. Women protect other women, and that’s that.

Even if Suda is ultimately loyal to Geto and whatever this vision of his is—it still doesn’t really add up to you, but then again, as Geto and Gojo love to preach to you, these are matters far above your scope of understanding.

“Thank you,” you murmur as a little smile plays on your lips. This is the most hopeful you’ve been since this whole thing went down, and knowing someone has your back is good enough for you for that very moment.

“Besides,” she adds, resting her clenched fists on her hips. “You being here just isn’t right, anyway. Whatever Geto wants with you, it’s for his personal gain, ultimately. I probably shouldn’t question him, but he does make a lot of questionable choices.”

Your mind flashes to when Miguel tells you something similar.

You flash her another smile. She manages a small one herself before her mask comes back full force. She strolls over to one of the benches and takes a seat, crossing one leg over the other as you both wait for Geto to return. This time, the silence is a little comforting. You fiddle with some of the remaining food on your plate, finally feeling some semblance of relief wash over you because maybe, maybe, you have fnially found your ticket out of there.

Geto finally returns, moments later, that displeased look still etched on his face as he tuts at the current situation to Suda.

“Rich men can be so foul,” he scoffs, shaking his head. “Not including certain people, of course.”

You know who he means.

“What did you do with him, Master Geto?” Suda dares to ask as she rises to her feet, hugging her clipboard to her chest as she maintains an air of a professional secretary. She can flip that on and off; it reminds you much of yourself when you were still working at that bakery that had since gone out of business for obvious reasons. All workers and customers mysteriously dead, you going missing as a result. You are also presumed dead or missing to the public. That can’t look good for someone’s business if they want it to skyrocket.

“I let his curse do away with him,” he answers smoothly with a dismissive wave of his hand over his head. “If that’s all, Suda, I’d like to be alone with her now.”

Suda gives a curt nod before twisting on her heel and sauntering off. Thus far, Geto has no suspicions with you or her, but you stay on your guard nevertheless. Geto always has something up his sleeve.

Once you’re left alone with him, Geto glances down at you with a mysterious smile. You ignore the fear pricking at your insides like toxic barbs. Your hand rests on your stomach as you will yourself to relax. You have backup. You have an ally. That should have you rejoicing and dancing in glee but instead you’re still coiling every time Geto so much as glances at you?

Yet you can’t find yourself faulting yourself for that either. The man is goddamn terrifying in his own right, and he has full control over you.

But not for much longer. You just need to hold on, for just a little longer. You have already settled on having to play the long game here. Don’t get discouraged.

“Now with that interruption out of the way…” He returns to his spot next to you. “Where were we?”

“Watching the sunset,” you reply as he tries to inch himself closer to you.

Fight back. Any way you can. You remind yourself. You force down any and all emotions combating against each other in your head. They quiet down the moment you try. You try to imagine something more peaceful and serene than something like this—anything else sounds good right then. A nice trip to Paris, far away from a country where Geto and Gojo resides, enjoying a baguette and hot chocolate while someone serenades you with a violin performance.

Anything is better than this. Anything. You can’t believe how your life has gotten to this point.

Frowning, Geto glances up at the sky. The sun has just begun to set, just a blinding, shining gold glob amid a pink and blue sky.

“It is a lovely sight,” he muses, before his gaze flits back to you. “But nothing beats the sight I have right here, beside me. You truly are a work of art, my dear.”

Ah. More pretty lies. That seems to come as natural as breathing to him.

You know better than to fall for anything he says or does. They never align.

The picnic continues in a tense silence. You do appreciate the pastries he picked up for you, helping yourself to that brookie you’ve been eying for a while. Geto just watches you, content just being next to you. He doesn’t try to touch you again, which you thank the stars above for, but that’s going to be short-lived the moment you go back to the bedroom with him. He can’t control himself for all that long.

After the sun fully sets beyond the horizon, Geto gathers the items and retires with you back to bed. Instead of his servants attending to you in the restroom, he decided to take their place, preparing the shower while attending to his own business. He ties his hair long, flowy hair up in a bun as he changes into a pair of silk indigo pajamas.

You slip out of the shower, wrapping a towel around your frame and he approaches you with a bottle of lotion.

“May I?” he requests with that same, dangerous smile that you know it best not to anger.

You’re not allowed to refuse.

You settle onto the edge of the tub connecting to the shower, removing your towel and allowing it to slip to the marble tiled floor. Geto starts massaging the lotion into your shoulders, slowly and softly moving down your back.

“Soft,” he praises in a little whisper, pinching a little area. You wince.

“Am I doing a good job, Mamma?” he purrs into your ear as he moves to your arms and to your breasts and stomach.

“Yes, darling, you’re doing so good, taking care of me.”

Such lies feel like toxic barbs piercing your skin.

“Does that mean I get a reward?” he asks, swirling his tongue around a nipple. Your breath hitches.

“No,” you bite your lip, grimacing at what you’re about to say next: “Good boys are supposed to do what they’re told.”

“Then what else must I do, Mamma?”

He flicks the tip of his tongue around the stiff bud, making your throat tighten. Your hands grip the edge of the tub. His hands snake up your meaty inner thighs as they stretch apart, his palms resting just before your intimates. Slender, calloused fingers brush against your skin, inching closer and closer to your nethers where he has already lubed up. Two fingers tease your outer lips, pressing them together and from the corner of your eye you see his toothy, pleased smirk as he pries your lower lips apart. The cold air hits your sensitive skin and you hiss, tightening your grip on the edge of the tub until your knuckled whiten. Your legs begin to tremble, and he gasps in delight, falling to his knees on the ground and marveling at the sight of your flushed pussy glistening in a light coat of your arousal.

He licks his lips, leaving his tongue sticking out at the corner of his mouth as a finger easily slides into your entrance. A shaky gasp leaves your parted lips.

His finger sucks itself inside your pussy up to its knuckle. He coos as you wriggle a bit in your place.

“Shall we take this somewhere else more comfortable, Mamma?” he grunts, dipping another finger inside with a purr. “Let me get you to come once and then we can take it back to the bedroom.”

He steadies you, using his free arm snaking around your waist as he picks up a faster pace. Gentle pumps but his speed picks up each time. He groans at the feeling of your walls closing around his fingers, desperate to suck him in further, and you clench your teeth, failing to conceal your desperate whines and gasps as you can feel something inside rising, rising, rising…

“Come for me, Mamma,” he grunts, “Aren’t I being so good for you? I can always be this good. I want my Mamma to be happy with me.”

Your orgasm comes like a tight thunder clap, seeing setars behind your eyes, and you gasp out, panting as your body comes down from that high. He lets out a satisfied, arrogant little huff at his handiwork before scooping up your naked form into his arms, carrying you back to the bedroom and resting you on the plush mattress.

“Good,” he praises with a low, sultry purr as he gazes at you with that smoldering look in his eyes. His violet eyes glint with mischief and ulterior motives as he pries your legs apart, keeping them spread for him as his fingers toy with your soaked, flushed folds. “So good for me, Mamma. I just want to make you feel good.”

You shut your eyes, wishing this would end but it doesn’t seem like the torment ever does for you anymore. The minute you feel his lips kiss up either of your thighs and it’s over. He takes and takes and takes; it doesn’t matter.

You just need to hold on. Just for a little longer.

Just hold on for a little longer.

In the following few days, Geto tries to be a little more considerate of your needs. You know it’s not going to last long like all of the other times he let his desires take over, but you still are going to take advantage of the time he allows you to breathe. You’re found in the common room with the twins as they engage in a handful of classic board games. It’s a rainy day and they find they’ve grown tired of video games and want to give themselves a little detox from electronics (apart from some special condition for Nanako, which you’re a little confused about). Geto is more than happy to entertain this and watches with fondness in his eyes as Nanako bests Mimiko in another Chess match.

You are seated on the couch next to him, observing the sight yourself. You don’t have much to do in these situations—you have tired the magazines stacked under the low coffee table, and you haven’t the attention span to try out one of Geto’s long-spanning epic fantasy series. You’re running out of things that might stimulate your mind for the better, and you don’t like the sound of it. There’s only so much you can do in a situation where much of your agency has been taken away from you.

You have come to realize the longer you’re here the more time no longer matters. All that matters is just trying to find that opening, which you already have some semblance of when Suda dropped that bomb on you the other day. You just have to find another opening.

Geto calls your name and you’re ripped out of your thoughts. Somewhere you’d rather be than in the present moment.

“Mimiko was asking if you wanted to play a round of Chess with her,” he tells you, “You look a little bored.”

Yeah. Painfully, you think to yourself. It does kind of get old being your sex doll when it’s just us and then some weird nanny for your girls.

“I can’t guarantee I’ll be a challenging opponent, but sure,” you reply as you take a seat by Nanako, who peers at you with a gleeful smile on her face.

“I can always sneak ya a few hints,” she giggles, “Mimiko kind of sucks at Chess anyway…”

“Nanako, that’s rude,” Mimiko chides, her face etching an expression of irritation that oddly mirrors Geto’s. Guess they do pick up a bit after their adoptive father…

“Sorryyyyy but you know I’m right!” Nanako quips while clapping excitedly. Mimiko rolls her eyes as she resets the Chess board for a new game. You can’t help the little smile on your lips while watching the interaction.

Oh, they’re definitely sisters.

Geto has no problem watching over the three of you as you entertain them with a few rounds of Chess. The first time you play against Mimiko, you lose, more on purpose because you realize you remember how to play the game better than you thought. Then you alternate, going up against Nanako, who beats you fair and square. She is a natural at this game, for sure. Rinse, lather, repeat. You win some rounds (mostly against Mimiko). You lose a lot of rounds.

Getting back into classic board games does help alleviate the boredom a little. Afterward, Nanako and Mimiko switch to Jenga, a game you haven’t touched since your own childhood. It brings so many memories flooding back to you and suddenly you wonder why all of your dreams have been taken from you. As much as these girls deserve a functioning family, you want a functioning family of your own, not manufactured like this. Not when you have been taken away against your will. You try to silence these thoughts threatening to bubble forth, focusing on building the tower and not letting it topple over.

You shouldn’t let yourself topple over with your own raging thoughts, either.

“Mom?” Mimiko addresses you with a concerned look on her face.

You freeze. She…she really calls you that now, doesn’t she? How long has it been since you have been here now? You have lost track of time. After all, time here doesn’t matter for you. Not when you have gone through the same routine again and again and again. It’s madness.

“Yes, love?” you ask, trying to sound as motherly as you can because you can feel Geto’s cold stare searing into the back of your skull. You don’t want to anger him, and you don’t want to make them feel like they’re wrong in addressing you that way. It does feel wrong, to you, but that doesn’t matter. They don’t deserve to be in the middle of this.

“Are you happy with us?”

Your jaw drops for a moment but you close it immediately.

“What has you thinking about that?”

“We’re just wondering,” Nanako pipes in while nudging your shoulder. “You’ve been with us for over a year now! Crazy, right? So… does this mean you’re really going to stay with us? That you like Mr. Geto?”

“Do you like being here with us?” Mimiko adds onto the myriad of questions Nanako is bombarding you with and you don’t know how else to respond.

“I’m the happiest I’ve ever been,” you lie with a smile. “I’m so happy to call you girls my daughters.”

“We love you, Mom,” Nanako says, pulling you in for a hug. Mimiko follows after.

“We love you,” Mimiko parrots.

“I love you both too.”

It’s another lie.

But one that won’t get you killed in the end.

The next time Satoru visits, they don’t go all that easy on you. As if they ever do regardless of what promises they spew out of their assholes for mouths.

Satoru’s handsy as usual, roughing up your breasts and biting everywhere on the sensitive skin and laughing every time you yelp or shriek from the sharpness of each bite. Geto wastes no time entering your pussy while Gojo explores every inch of your body, licking and kissing every area of exposed skin. Geto makes you come three timed before pulling himself out and disposing of that last condom while Gojo adjusts you, leading you to sit on his lap. You don’t even bother to try to wriggle or squirm because you’re no match for two grown men. Two grown men who possess abilities beyond your own comprehension. If you dare try, they may not hesitate to be meaner. Crueler.

“Ooooh, Princess, my pretty baby,” Tweedledum purrs into your ear. “You’re being so good today.”

Tweedledee behind you just hums as he approaches the two of you, vibrator in hand. “She knows we only want to take care of her, Satoru. She understands.”

This time, they still don’t insert both their dicks at once like they have entertained before, even teased and terrified you with before, but Satoru manages to squeeze a dildo alongside his cock while taking you in the ass and Geto rests a vibrator on your pussy at a moderate setting. It’s all to get you stretched out and perfect and ready to take them both in that damn hole or even in your pussy. Someday sometime soon but likely not today. They can’t stop thinking about it.

Even if Geto recognized your hesitation at first, he eventually caves to his own desires like he always does.

You cling onto Gojo’s shoulders, biting down hard on your lip because the stretch feels so wide with that mild burn yet it somehow doesn’t compare to the stretch you feel from Geto’s size by itself.

“Satoru,” you squawk like a bird and he just laughs, hand coming down to smack your ass before fondling one of those fatty cheeks of yours and making you whine again.

Geto pumps the dildo inside of you and Gojo pumps his cock in tandem. The vibrator on your pussy grinds against your clit and folds and you’re not sure you can take much more.

“Fuck, Suguru, she’s so tight,” he growls, low and guttural as he kisses into your neck, increasing his erratic pace and waiting for you to come so hard on his cock that your pussy splatters everywhere. His eyes roll back as he reclines his head onto the back of the couch; his grip around you tightens. Geto hasn’t stopped with his dextrous hands working both your dripping cunt and ass. Your juices splatter onto the ground and leave behind a large puddle beneath you. Geto slides the vibrator close to your entrance and you shout, your ass walls clenching around Gojo’s cock and the large pink dildo pumping inside you. It hurts, fuck it hurts, your head is spinning.

It’s too much. It’s too much. It’s too much. And they don’t care!

“You’re being so good for us, little dove,” Suguru purrs in approval. “Not making a fuss, letting us take care of you, because you know we’re only doing this so you can handle us, hm?”

“Y-yes,” you wheeze out, “I-I want to be good for you, Suguru…”

“Good,” he says as he switches off the vibrator. You’re relieved at first until he lines the tip of his protected cock to your entrance. He presses a kiss to the crown of your head. “Then you’re ready for us both now.”

He chuckles darkly as he slips the head into your entrance, and you hide your face into Satoru’s chest, panting heavily. Geto has enough of a conscience to remove the dildo moving alongside Gojo’s still fully rigid, stiff cock as he fucks into your ass again.

Geto kisses into your shoulder and moans.

“You’re taking me better and better each time,” he drawls, taking his thumb to draw circles around your stiff clit as he keeps a gentler pace than Satoru does when entering you. While he still doesn’t shy away from taking what he wants, he still finds it in him to be a little kinder. Just a little. If you can call any of this kind.

“Satoru,” he calls, bringing the dildo that was just in your ass to Satoru’s lips. He opens up willingly, allowing Geto to fuck it into his mouth and get remnants of your taste off of that piece of silicone. Your heart twists in disgust from the act. You shouldn’t even be surprised anymore but they do everything to get each other off with you.

Gojo slobbers over that dildo like he probably does over Geto’s cock whenever it’s just them. Some of it even splatters onto your shoulder and Geto is ‘considerate’ enough to swipe it off with his thumb. When it’s the three of you, it seems more like a competitive game between them—see who can make you come more times, see who can make you come faster, see who can make you beg or scream or cry for mercy, etc. They’re not as interested in getting all over each other (though they still do, doting on each other to the point it makes your whole body shudder, riling each other up in any way they can).

The two come practically in unison but they don’t stop until you find yourself coming two, three more times.

But apparently, the torture is not ending there today after they slip their spent cocks out of you.

“Those nipple clamps last time sure were fun,” Gojo suggests while smacking his lips at the thought. “Your nipples were so hard. So perky and perfect. Just like the rest of you.”

As if to rub salt in the wound, Gojo traces his finger around one of your nipples before pinching it, making your breath hitch. You’re too tired to try to fight them off; it’s not like you ever win anyway.

“Satoru, what did I say about picking on her?” Geto scolds but his tone sounds more amused than ever angry. But you know later those fits of jealousy or rage come out at the most random of moments, and though you have known better than to try to initiate anything with Gojo again, Geto can easily twist any situation in his favor if it means he can justify his punishments. However he chooses to exact them on you.

But he never really hurts you. Not really, no.

Geto always just finds a way to repurpose his cruelty.

Gojo huddles you close to him, flashing yhou that irritating grin of his you wish you could rip straight off his face but you can’t fight two grown men. You’re helpless in these settings. And you’re so tired of being helpless.

But that doesn’t mean you still can’t find other ways to bend and shape this all to your advantage, however small.

“Suguru,” you say, batting your eyelashes at him. “Need you.”

Satoru quirks an eyebrow at that. “What’s the matter, Princess? You tired of me?”

He can’t help but snuggle you closer into his bare chest and you drag out an impressed sigh. This is your chance; this is the only way you can get under their skin at all because you just have to remember their one fatal flaw.

“Satoru,” you murmur, “I thought you were nice. Suguru can be so much nicer than you.”

Satoru’s eyes flash at that and he almost looks pained by your rejection. “What? But baby…”

“You heard her, Satoru, so respect her wishes,” Suguru interjects with an icy stare as he scoops you up into his arms instead, casting a genuine smile at you, like he’s pleased with your submission. “She knows who best takes care of her. Don’t you think?”

You wish you could smirk yourself. No way are you ever going to truly submit to either of these pieces of shit.

Gojo scowls at his lover, before flashing a worried look at you. For some reason, he’s not buying this sudden shift, the sudden shift in preferences, but if he had half a working brain cell he’d understand that you favored neither.

“You can’t honestly expect me to believe Suguru’s actually been treating you better than I have, Princess,” he pouts while crossing his arms over his chest. “Don’t we have something special, too?”

“Of course you both do,” Suguru interrupts again, then coos at you while you tuck your head into his shoulder with a faux look of love in your eyes. “But you remember the initial arrangement. She belongs to me, first and foremost, Satoru. All you are is part of the package.”

Gojo huffs at that. “Ugh, fine, you’re right about that, but come on, Princess, don’t you like me more?”

“I like you both just fine,” you mumble, “But right now Suguru’s being nice. You have been kind of mean lately Satoru.”

Suguru’s smile widens at that, nuzzling his face into yours before his lips smack against your cheek, and it’s an unsettling sight, indeed. You almost wonder if what you might encounter following this might be worse than if he decides to punish you for appearing to favor Satoru over him. The tension between the three of you builds with each passing second and you wonder if you should attempt to diffuse the situation but you have already dug your hole. You might as well keep digging until you find what you’re looking for.

Gojo lets out another petulant sound like the manchild he’s proven himself to be, far more so than Geto.

“I’m sorry about that, Princess. I’ll…I’ll work on it,” he replies, his lips still curled into that pathetic little pout as if he thinks that might do something for you.

However, it seems to for Geto, and that’s enough for you. Geto reaches over to Satoru and sympathetically pats him on the cheek.

“You promise to be a good boy next time you come back, Satoru, and she’ll warm up to you again,” he chucklse as he adjusts you in his arms. “You should probably head back now. Don’t you have to be in the countryside for your next mission?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles, standing up and grabbing his clothes. He presses a kiss to the corner of Geto’s mouth. “Stop fucking hogging her.”

“I’m doing absolutely no such thing,” Geto counters with his lips quirking into a smirk.

Gojo only shakes his head as he disappears to clean himself up before leaving for that day. Geto mentions something in pasing about that mission likely lasting longer than usual, but you don’t really listen, shutting your eyes as Geto escorts you back to the main area of the temple.

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anghraine · 1 day ago

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This isn't going to turn into All US Politics All The Time blog for four years (all going about as well as possible). And I don't begrudge anyone finding comfort where they can from the various state-level small victories—the GOP losing their incredibly corrupt supermajority in NC and failing to take the governor's seat, various state measures to protect or at least advance abortion rights, my candidate for governor winning in my own state, decent performances in a lot of House races, the predictable Senate disaster not being quite as bad as it might have been in this environment.

But for me, there is something discouraging about these as well, and something overlooked in the comparisons to the 2020 election. To me, the obvious point of comparison is less 2020 than 2016.

[This is not an even slightly positive post—putting most of it below the cut so you can skip if you don't want further doom 'n gloom.]

Trump's victory in 2016 was more shocking, yes, but it came with a lot of qualifications. Most obviously, the majority of people who voted in 2016 didn't vote for him, and while this didn't change the result of the election, it did affect the sense of what was going on nationally. Hillary Clinton, a flawed candidate under investigation during the election (however obviously politically motivated that investigation—and it was reopened right before Election Day) and the object of a 30-year misogynistic campaign of relentless, unabashed right-wing and journalistic hatred, and the leader of a campaign that made some clear tactical missteps, was preferable to Trump for the majority of voters even without certainty about what his administration would do. And people could and did lie to themselves about what a Trump administration would be like because he was a posturing blowhard who'd never held office. I always thought "Trump's just saying stuff, he's really going to outflank Hillary from the left!!!" was stupid as fuck, but it's a thing people convinced themselves of.

But in 2024, we know how bad the Trump administration would be (and there's no reason to think this one won't be worse—quite the opposite). We saw how his COVID response made a bad situation orders of magnitude worse to the point that morgues were overflowing with dead bodies. We know about how unethical he is because he's been found legally liable in relation to crimes of corruption and rape. He encouraged a coup to overthrow the last election. And Kamala Harris has far less political baggage than HRC did, is more progressive, ran a better campaign, had no October Surprise, and yet is losing the popular vote quite badly (right now, with 89% of the vote counted, Trump is ahead by about five million votes).

And seeing that people are voting to protect abortion rights in their state or ousting obviously corrupt state officials etc and then also voting for Trump is on one level—okay, so ordinary voters only sort of align with the cackling evil of GOP politicians' schemes and will at times vote to restrict their awful policies even in very red states. On a pragmatic level, that's better than being fully aligned with those policies. But on another level, I find it appalling. This loss isn't about any particular policy and I think you're fooling yourself if you think any One Magic Trick could have changed this result—that was possible in 2016, potentially, but not in this election. A lot of people are voting against specific Republican agendas and then voting for Donald Trump and JD fucking Vance.

Obviously racist misogyny (and misogynoir particularly) is likely a major culprit given that this disparity wasn't present even in far more unfavorable-on-paper conditions in 2016 against a profoundly unpopular white woman after an eight-year Democratic administration. There's the weird cult of personality around Trump. Etc. But I'm also thinking about how the most successful period for Democrats during this cycle was when they veered away from anything to do with actual policies and were like "these Republican politicians are the weird freaks with bad vibes actually." I'm thinking about how the vast majority of the country went significantly rightwards even in many places that Harris or Democrats won.

And it's like... maybe we won't become an autocracy, maybe he'll have another disastrously awful administration that isn't as much worse than the first as we fear, and public opinion will turn against him again and his sheer unpopularity will drive backlashes favoring Democrats in 2026 and 2028. But even that best case scenario isn't fixing what's wrong here.

#anghraine babbles #anghraine rants #cw politics #us american blogging #election night hell 2024 #long post

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tinfoil-jones · 2 days ago

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Gravity Falls: For Your Own Good, Ch. 5

Summary: A few years after moving to Gravity Falls and having his lab built, Stanford Pines happens upon his estranged twin brother, Stanley. He mentally prepared himself to be suffocated by his brothers neediness all over again - what he wasn't prepared for was Stanley walking right past him like he didn't even notice him.

Rating: M for language, violence, and adult implications

Preface: Dialogue only, but some actions will be annotated for clarity. Cross-Posted on AO3 Here

First - Prev - Next

CH.5

“Hey, stretch. You here to play doctor?”

“I’d just like to interview you. I’m not going to touch you if that's what you’re concerned about.”

“Why not?”

“...ANYhow, I have a few questions for you.”

“Yes, I'm single.”

“Not those kinds of questions. Can you tell me your full first name?”

“Can you give me yours first?”

“Fiddleford.”

“Stan.”

“Okay, Stan. Where are you from? And don’t you dare say from my dreams.”

“Well yeah, I’d say ‘from your dreams’, not mine. Other than that, probably some gutters or a ditch somewhere.”

“What do you mean?”

“As far as I remember, I’ve been out on the streets, or in prison. I think I had a car at some point? But I dunno what happened with that, it makes my head burn trying to think about it.”

“Do you have any family?”

“No.”

“Do you remember ever having a family?”

“I don’t remember having one, but I feel like I had one before.”

“What do you feel like happened to them?”

“They probably got tired of my BS and told me to take a hike. It’s how it always goes with me.”

“That’s a theory you’ve put together. I’m asking what you feel like happened.”

“Feel like I had a dad who was waiting for an excuse to get rid of me. I feel like I had a mom who was a liar - I probably got it from her. Maybe a sibling or two? But they don’t want me around.”

“And what do you think about Stanford?”

“You mean the guy who drugged me, kidnapped me, and is keeping me prisoner in his evil basement sub-lab in the middle of the woods? I gotta say, he makes an impression.”

“But does he seem familiar to you?”

“I don’t think I could forget someone like him”

“Is it because of his six fingers?”

“It’s twelve , and no, that's pretty normal compared to all of his other weird crap. It’s because he’s fucking crazy , and convinced I’m some mystery twin of his. But let’s stop talking about him, and talk about you instead. Are you single? You doing anything later?”

“Stay on track, Stan. Let’s take a step back and go back to talking about you. Have you recently gotten into any accidents or sustained major injuries?”

“Define ‘major’.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Judging by your friend's reaction to the stab wounds when we met, I don’t think your definition of major injury is the same as mine.”

---

"What did you determine, Fiddleford?"

"It wasn't easy to glean things because he would not stop flirting with me - was he always this way?"

"He was a little girl-crazy when we were younger, I didn't know he liked men. But that doesn’t matter right now, what were your findings?"

"He has full cognitive function. And based on your scans he has no signs of brain damage - comparing images of his brain to yours, his genetically identical twin, there isn't any morphological difference. Based on my interview, it sounds like he's never sustained significant head trauma neither.”

"But..?"

"If he really does have amnesia, it wasn't caused by a head injury."

"What else could it be?"

"A few things - perhaps he took a drug or substance that warped his brain chemistry. Or- more likely in my opinion, based on his lifestyle and what little history he tells me, he might have undergone extreme distress that caused a mental breakdown."

"Mental trauma can cause someone to lose their memories?"

"Our memories can be a shield and a sword, Stanford. Even good memories that can comfort you through a difficult time, can also cause pain and frustration when compared to a bad predicament.

He must have gone through something so traumatic that the only way his mind could cope with the stress was to... forget things. This is a phenomenon known as repression . Most of the time, a person would repress the traumatic event itself, but it looks like he’s defied the statistics and forgotten everything else instead.”

“He can’t be… that traumatized, right? This is Stanley we’re talking about.”

“I don’t know what he was like before, but he’s got a mullet, Stanford. There ain’t no way he's in a good place mentally.”

"And how would repressing memories about our family- about me , possibly help him cope with trauma?"

"If I'm going to be frank with you, this is the first time in the years that I've known you that you even mentioned having a twin brother . You've talked about other family members before, such as your older brother Sherman, but never him.

If his mind had to prioritize which memories to keep, why would it keep memories of someone he isn't close to?"

"We are- well, we were close."

"Were is a strong word, Stanford. Survival focuses on the present, not the past.”

“... What can we do to get his memories back?”

“I’m not a therapist. But perhaps if you can get him out of the survival mindset, he’d be open to some introspection.”

“So we must disable his fight-flight-freeze response…”

“Stanford Pines, I will throw that damn tranquilizer gun down the bottomless pit if you don’t put it down. Ya'll really need to stop using the slippery slope of science without consideration for morality like it's a damn seesaw. There are other ways to get him out of fight-flight.”

“Such as?”

“I would suggest you make him feel like he’s in a safe space, but that might not work.”

“Why not? He’s perfectly safe here.”

“But does he know that? From his perspective, you’re a stranger who shot him with a tranq dart and imprisoned in your basement for scientific exploitation. And I’ll remind you, this is all without his consent. He is here against his will.”

“It’s for his own good.”

“According to you, someone he thinks he doesn’t know. This may be your twin, Stanford, but he doesn’t know that. You need to gain his trust; maybe he would have trusted you by default in the past, but that isn’t the case now.”

“I… I’m not sure how to do that, Fiddleford. At one point, we knew everything about each other. And now I barely know him, and he thinks I’m a stranger. I’m still angry at him, and still bitter about what he did before he left home, and I’m disappointed in the conman and convict he turned into… but I’m sad, because he's convinced he’s not my brother.”

“You ain’t exactly the same person you were even when we first met all them years ago. People change. How about you try talking to him?”

“Just talking to him?”

“This may be difficult for you in particular, but you should try talking to him like he’s a person; and not a science experiment, anomaly, or an equation you’re trying to solve… Hey, hey don’t be looking like the last pea at pea-time now. I believe in you, you got this.”

“Thank you, Fiddleford.”

*Ford goes back downstairs to the lab. Fiddleford waits for him to be out of earshot before speaking*

“Bless his heart. This is going to be a disaster.”

To be continued…

#he did it guys he said the title #yes thats a passive aggressive bless your heart #stan asking fiddleford is hes doing anything later like hes not stuck in a cell #fords evil basement sub-lab #early amnesia au #for your own good #stanley pines #stan pines #fiddleford hadron mcgucket #fiddleford mcgucket #stanford pines #ford pines #fanfiction #cross posted on ao3 #fiddlestan #fanfic #mullet stan

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rachelamberish · 2 days ago

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Comprehensive Veilguard Review (FULL SPOILERS)

What They Got Right:

-The environments. My God, seeing some of these locations that we’ve only read about for a decade had me getting legitimately choked up just looking at them. I cried entering the Grand Necropolis. I cried at Weisshaupt. I cried at Kal Sharok. The Ossuary. The Crossroads 2 Electric Boogaloo. Just all absolutely stunning, and so lovingly crafted.

-The art direction, on top of that. They kind of go hand in hand, but genuinely, it’s great. I think the art director deserves a raise for the candlehops alone.

-The music. I love it. I know it’s not what it has been, but I think it’s fucking great. The Blight theme is far and away the best, but so many of the other tracks really fully commit to the fantasy-futurism aesthetic that has been crafted by the art direction and I think it’s so fucking cool that the music has evolved as we travel to new locations and the world of Thedas really opens up.

-Companions. I’ve spoken a little about this already. But yes, the companions are incredible. The pacing of getting to know each of them is so well executed. (It feels unfortunate that the same cannot be said about the story as a whole, really). They are each truly so memorable and I think BioWare knocking it out of the park with its companions is nothing new.

-Vocal Performances. Gareth David Lloyd should be lauded for his work as Solas. You can hear how that performance has evolved and matured over the years like a fine wine. His vicelike grasp on the nuance of that character transcends even the game’s often questionable writing. Truly incredible stuff. I also have to mention Jee Young Han for Bellara, and Bryony Corrigan and Alex Jordan for two versions of Rook. The rest of the cast is fantastic as well, those four are just so incredibly standout to me.

-This feels very specific but The Siege of Weisshaupt. That quest. Is. *chefs kiss emoji*. It’s giving game of thrones season 8 episode 4 the long night where i cant see anything but also i have existential dread!!!! Love that

-Codex entries are as well written as they ever have been, so no dip in quality of the writing there. Particularly a huge fan of the passive aggressive emails sent between Solas and the Evanuris like they were all shitty coworkers. Elgar’nan screaming “i’m the ELDEST BOY!!!” at the top of his lungs à la Kendall Roy while he and solas bicker about who was conceived of by the Fade first. Very good stuff

-Ghilan’nain is an eldritch horror lesbian witch and that is so so cool. Thank you bioware

-Maevaris Tilani

-Combat and performance. Because neither of these are story stuff, I’ll throw these together. The game performs like a fucking dream and is incredibly optimized. The combat feels amazing and I genuinely look forward to combat encounters rather than dreading them. No notes.

….The Rest, in No Particular Order:

- Morrigan forgiving her mother and the game erasing Flemeth’s nastiness was truly vomit-inducing so thanks for that one bioware

- Is Mythal good or bad bioware please answer the question and you CAN’T look at your notes

- They do get Solas mostly spot-on but Mythal is so inconceivably bad and it’s hard to divorce the two. Ironic, considering that they should be the most divorced couple that ever lived

-"Flemeth's piece of Mythal was the good version actually and was completely uncorrupted" bitch HOW?!!??!??!!?! FUCKING HOW?!?!? Literally A GAME AGO she screams at Morrigan and Lavellan about "a reckoning that will shake the heavens" promising vengeance for her betrayal because she's done nothing but stew ALONE in her anger for 2,000 years, ALSO piling on the rage and betrayals of Flemeth and (I think it's safe to presume at this point) Andraste and EVERY OTHER host she's had. If we have learned ANYTHING about spirits and "abominations" through four games it is that the spirit becomes corrupted "against its original purpose" when fused with the negative emotions of its host. What was the point of Anders, if not to foreshadow what Flemeth truly was? A spirit of justice corrupted against her purpose by living inside righteously angry women for millennia? If anything the Dagger-version of Mythal would be the uncorrupted one. Sure, she'd be lonely and pissed too but that would be the truest version to who Mythal ACTUALLY was from before. A mixed bag of grief and anger and hurt and pride. But the rage inside Flemeth's Mythal would be wild and unfettered. She would be almost unrecognizable.

-I'm moving on from Mythal now because ranting any more about her in this game is actually going to give me an aneurysm.

- Yeah this game suffers from lack of roleplay and choice carryover. It’s impossible to avoid. It was okay to suspend roleplay in a game like, say, Dragon Age 2, because Hawke as the game wrote her was such a strong personality and memorable protagonist. Rook is…. not that. Which is okay for a blank slate protagonist, but they’re also not that either. And i think they didnt commit, fully, to the idea of less roleplay. Because they *tried* to give you origin stories, but they don’t end up feeling like they truly inform the character in the way that they do in Origins, or even in Inquisition. Say what you will about Inquisition’s roleplay options, but Lavellan being Dalish DEFINES her character.

- And what do you know. Yeah. It was bad that they only let us carry over three choices. Who could have seen that one coming. It’s almost like everyone ever was like “wow. That sucks. Please reconsider.” And then they didn’t.

- And it also gets extra confusing when you realize that the three choices they said were going to matter a LOT literally don’t. At all. So that was a lie. I guess. Even Solas romancers who were being PANDERED to apparently get…like two mentions of something that feels like it should be so pervasive throughout the whole story. And one ending.

- Solavellan writing failure gets its own bullet point actually. There was so much ample opportunity for Lavellan’s presence in this story to be amplified. For the Lighthouse to contain more traces of her. In codex entries, in murals. I get that Solas probably wouldn’t talk about her to Rook much. But the fact of his yearning is downplayed when it should be overplayed. He yearns for this woman who made him think he was worth something for the first time since he took a physical body, while clouded by regret for his feelings for a long-dead woman who made him hate himself. That’s the saddest fucking story ever. Why does this game not lean into it more? I don’t know. You don’t know. None of us know.

- BioWare kind of forgot that fifty percent of the Tevinter population is slaves. What do the shadow dragons even do? There are apparently no slaves left to free!!

- BioWare kind of forgot that the Crows are very cool and yes very Italian!! 🤌🤌🤌 but also buy child slaves and turn them into soldiers by systematically weeding empathy out of them. So where was any of that.(*where is Zevran or someone who fills the role of that character. He is so desperately needed to portray the Crows with any nuance.*)

- The depiction of the Qunari/kossith, outside of Taash’s storyline (which I actually think was a very thoughtful examination of the intersection of gender and Qunari ideology), is actually the craziest most stereotypical one-note racist bullshit i’ve ever seen and i am shocked any writer allowed that to be the final product.

- You know what yes i also noticed that you couldn’t ever be mean in this game and also Rook smiles so much. She smiles when saying things she should not smile about. Idk why but that bothers me. And why are her hands always on her hips? What is she hiding

- The exposition-heavy dialogue is terrible at the start, gets way better around the first act break, then turns dangerously close back around to Avengers-style “Well, that just happened!” and it’s a mixed bag that I don’t know what to do with. I can’t blame bioware for the exposition, I’m sure that’s an EA directive of “pander to the people that want to come into the fourth installment of a series knowing nothing and not be completely lost”. But the rest…..let’s just say I can feel how many people had their hands in writing this. And I can feel it because the quality swings back and forth so wildly it gives me whiplash.

- Because of no choice carryover cameos feel like cardboard cutouts of characters. Dorian worked for me because he was doing things he would be doing anyway and it is passively mentioned that he and the Inquisitor are in close contact. Isabela is skinny like a twig now i guess (??? Hate that) and i’m happy for her whole lords of fortune thing but she is made lesser by being completely divorced from Hawke. Same for Varric, although at least he has more to do. Morrigan…………………………………………………………………anyway moving on.

- The Dalish.

- BioWare kind of forgot that Solas doesn’t hate blood magic. Doesn’t use it personally. But doesn’t hate it. Also what he does to gain a connection to Rook is LITERALLY blood magic. I don’t fucking know WHY he/the game insists that it’s not. I’m beside myself with that one.

- BioWare kind of forgot about the brewing elven uprising led by Solas that they set up at the end of Trespasser and instead now he’s a lone actor and everyone hates him. Like no. No actually some elves would have found what he was doing very cool and a great alternative to the terrible hand the world has dealt them. Perhaps all those elven Tevinter slaves you forgot to put in the game.

- BioWare kind of forgot about Briala in their rush to say “but nothing in southern thedas matters!!!”

- Cole should be in this game and the fact that he is not is actually fucking baffling.

- VERY BIG SPOILER Varric dying is fine actually and the one thing i’m literally perfectly okay with so idk why i put it down here other than it feels wrong putting this spoiler at the top lmao. But yeah that’s fine. We knew it was coming and Peepaw needed rest anyway. Good reveal, no issue there.

- Lucanis’ bugged romance ruined my life

- I made a separate post about this but Veilguard has single handedly eradicated mystery in the Dragon Age series without creating any new mystery and it’s what I’m legitimately the most sad about.

All in all, a mixed bag. I enjoyed my time with it, but it left me sad at times and not in the good way. The idea I have of Dragon Age in my head will always be more true to Dragon Age to me than this was, and I can live with that, I was just hoping for better on a lot of writing fronts.

#dragon age #datv spoilers #dragon age: the veilguard #veilguard spoilers #datv

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toydreamer · 10 hours ago

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Gotten some bad news that I kinda knew for a long time coming but jus not expecting it to arrive this quickly.. and honestly idk how to deal with it rn.

Brain’s jus coming up blank and not computing. Can’t tell if it’s a state of shock or grief or both or something else, feels like I’ll need a while to resume normality or at least sort out where my thoughts are gonna go. Jus wanna ramble and throw out all these thoughts, feels better that I write them out somewhere.

Highly tempted to box it all up and throw them out of sight out of mind. Not denying the facts, just accepting things for what it is because fate has been sealed from the day the diagnosis came out (Not me but yes it’s a family member)

And everyone jus agrees that it’s best to live things out day by day. Future seems like a far-fetched mystical concept these days. I guess we’ll get there when we get there. Future me will eventually have to suck it up and deal with things like an unwilling adult.

Physically still functioning as per usual because life’s gotta go on right? Despite everything else and time isn’t gonna give me an ounce of mercy by standing still nor is it gonna wait for me.

Feels like I really need an outlet for copium right now for the blanket of comfort and normalcy while we can only crossed all our fingers and toes, hoping for the best even if the best option right now is to be able to buy more time. Frankly, I’m not very optimistic about the outcome but I’ll still hope and pray for some sort of miracle that we’re blessed with more time.

As of right now, might take a small break to seek shelter in my next piece, thinking about my OCs since they’re kinda my babies and comfort zone.

No clue what I wanna make except I want to make and hopefully be able to get everything off my chest by mindlessly creating, letting it take a form of its own.

Been a tiring day/week overall. Funny how a piece of news like this could jus ruined things in a quick second and the only choice left is to accept things for what it is and the courage to take baby steps forward.

Also this quote couldn’t have come at a better time

#toydreamer blogs #tw: sickness #I’ll be alright eventually I guess #just not so much rn #guess the only thing I haven’t come to acceptance is how quickly time has flown by #sighs really hard #and I thought this year would finally be the best year for me #apparently not #knew it was too good to be true when I had one of the best earlier half of the year

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casteliacityramen · 2 days ago

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[Previous] [PART 2 OF 2]

“I flew around a bit."

"I overheard some talks about an open gala in Sinnoh and I decided to attend it. I’ll tell you the whole story about what happened later, but...

... Even when I was trying to relax, I couldn't feel comfortable with myself. Like… like wearing clothes that didn’t fit. The longer the night went on, nothing felt right. And I’m not just talking about the disguise.”

“You felt like a caricature of who you used to be.”

“Yeah. I knew I was going to feel awful when the Continental War was done and over with. I knew we were going to be reprimanded, or worse, but…” Rio frowns deeply, trying to gather her tangled thoughts together.

“I didn't think it'd mess me up as bad as this. I didn’t recognize who I was by the end of the night. I’m worried there’s no going back to who I used to be. I miss the version of myself who could go to a gala and not be miserable in the corner. It feels like that part of me died--that optimistic part of me."

“Do you get what I’m talking about?”

Rio waits with bated breath, only for Ray to curtly answer:

"Yes. And no?"

Rio feels her temper quickly flare up as she lets out a frustrated huff, "Whaddya mean by that?"

Ray raises his palms towards her, slowly.

"It's not that I don't understand what you're saying,” Ray turns to her and gives her a faint smile, "I like to think my experiences are changing me for the better. That’s where you and I differ."

“What, that you’re becoming less of who you used to be and more of… whatever this is?”

"A sub-par noodle penchant?" Ray laughed, throwing Rio's words right back at her from earlier that day.

"You know what I mean, Ray," Rio feels her face get hot. "It's as if..."

"... It's as if you're undoing yourself to make up for what you've done," Rio whispers out loud. The sudden conclusion steals her breath. "Ray, you're not doing all this to punish yourself, are you?"

"..."

"Please say no.”

"It may have started out that way, but that's not the case now."

“Ray…” Rio whispered in disbelief, out loud.

“You may see this as me continuing a dead man’s legacy. But it’s more than that. This place was a gifted to me and came with a wish. I intend to honor that gesture.

Even though we can’t do any of our usual duties, that’s no excuse to stop acting like a shepherd.”

“If your version of helping the commonwealth is to further seat yourself into guilt, I can’t let you follow through with this.”

“You’re still not getting it, It’s not like that."

"Are you sure about that? Because it's all starting to sound like you're doing this as some sort of messed up way of repenting for your sins."

"I'm telling you, it's not like that."

“Ray, there's a moment when memorialization for someone else turns into hurting yourself."

"Like how you visited your own gravestone in Johto? Do you really see all of your soldiers offering gifts in your memory and call that self harm? Didn't you just say that you're grieving over someone who you used to be? Is it really that wrong? To cling to what's left!?"

"For me, it is."

"We aren't mortal, Ray. This entire conversation we're having? This argument? All of it? This is what happens when we can't move on. We drag everything with us for hundreds, maybe thousands of years whether we like it or not. This is only going to bring you pain in the long run.

I’m sorry I blew up at you earlier today, but I still stand by what I said. You have no right to continue Tai Ishikawa's legacy, even if all of this was a gift.

All of this? Hanging around Ingram's descendants, Ayumi and Jack? Working an ungodly amount of hours for a tiny bit of yen? The past guilt alone will eat you alive."

"I'm aware of what happens to me if I stew in it. I've been here five years longer than you have,” Ray mutters. “Besides, do you think that I don't know how to live with all the pain I've gathered? Do you really think that guilt alone has made me stick it out this far?”

Of course not. But... she can't simply admit that.

She’s seen him on good days, bad days, and worse days. She's seen him scraping by with little money to his name but continuing to honestly run the business with a straight back and taut shoulders.

She shakes her head, unsure of herself. After all, she's borrowing words that Ray used to tell her in the past. She's not used to being on this side of the argument, which begs the question: are they destined to swap places again somewhere, sometime down the future?

"I've seen what guilt does to you, Ray. I sure as shit know what it's doing to me," Rio shakes her head, sighing. "I don't think this is only guilt... But there's more of it than I want to see. I don't need any more reasons to lose sleep at night if I can keep you from hurting yourself."

“Then…

... Are you willing to stop me? Stop all of this if I fly past that line?"

"You're already dangerously close. Some would say that you're already past the line of hurting yourself."

"I'm not."

Rio was hoping for any sense of weakness, any stumble over words, fumble in his convictions, but Ray continued to stare at her. Rio was the first to look away.

"All of this… It helped you?”

"It has. I’d love to have you here."

"Okay."

The two sit in comfortable silence. As the sun fades, so too, does the tension between them. With no further words to be exchanged, the rest of the decanter behind the counter is emptied out.

Ray makes a disgusted face with every sip. One of the unfortunate effects of their blessings is the rapid processing of whatever toxins enter their body, like alcohol. If they wanted to get remotely buzzed, they had to drink the stuff that was barely safe for consumption.

Which reminds her...

“I thought I’d get you this as a peace offering.”

“What is this?”

“Got it from the gala I talked about earlier. Wine from out of this dimension. Just like the guests."

“What?”

“Later. But guess what? I actually got drunk.”

“Bullshit. Why'd you make me drink the rest of that decanter? Pour me some.”

“You’re the one with the hands, you pour us some.”

Before Ray could reach behind the counter to grab the glasses once more, they are interrupted by the sound of a squeaky stool and a pained, muffled grunt at the end of the stand.

Jack sits in the seat farthest from them, his eyes never meeting theirs. His mouth opens, but it takes a long time for him to slowly form the words. He shrinks as he whispers:

“I don’t know where else to go.”

It's about time they get ready to open back up, anyway.

[Pinned Post]

#pokeask #pokemon ask blog #pkmnart #pokemon oc #rio #ray #plot #jack #greninja #rockruff #dewott

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narriose · 2 days ago

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Thoughts on Veilguard so far:

Preface: I’m ~50 hours in with a handful of endgame spoilers.

My general values are: Story > Characters > Gameplay > Romance > Rep > Visuals.

My rating of the previous games: DA2 > DAO > DAI

Spoilers under Cut:

What I expected: Having to deal with an unappealing art style and clunky gameplay with leftover multiplayer and live service era elements that they couldn’t get rid of for the sake of the story and characters.

What I got: Well…

Let’s Start with the negatives:

-Dialogue: I want to know what happened there. Ik for a fact they had veteran BioWare writers on the team and it feels like there was a decision to dumb everything down to the point of me immediately having a line in my head that would sound better in universe every time someone spoke. It proved especially grating once I heard Morrigan speak. And when people compare the writing to MCU I cannot really protest. “Dragon Age has always been unserious” yes but like. Not every other line was a joke or relatable™️ millennial awkwardness . When jokes did happen they became memorable moments for the fandom. It’s often very difficult to listen to. Especially when Rook talks. It is getting marginally better though.

-Tone: Dragon Age has been compelling to me because it wrote conflict and trauma and corruption in a way that felt developed enough to feel grounded and believably horrific. Even with all its faults. DATV mellowed out the horrors and seems to gloss over a lot of sociopolitical dynamics and lore. Stuff like portraying crows as vigilantes and not showing the evils of Tevinter slavery. The tone itself just feels like theyre trying to make an easily marketable sanitized IP out of it to cater to a wider audience.

-Character Writing: A lot of characterization has been “Tell not show” because I’m disappointed in Lucanis and Neve. The story says one is a serious killer and the other is a cynic but both have only been friendly soft and positive which is like??? I feel like a lot of their intro has been cut out or something where they establish those traits on screen. Another thing is: there don’t appear to be actually detestable and controversial traits in characters or even internal conflict they need to overcome. They’re just dealing with some kind of external thing thrust onto them and that is very shallow to me personally.

-Intro: I know we’re not getting Origins style personalized intros again but it felt like too much is handwaived into people making their own OCs and forming headcanons when the game doesn’t let us RP much at all outside identity stuff anyway. Like how do we know Varric? Why should any of the pep talks he gives us mean anything when we haven’t experienced anything to warrant the complements he gives us?

-Villains: possibly the worst part of the story: they lit act like theyre in a preschool cartoon down to body language. No nuance no controversy no actual horror to them when in previous games the evil felt so much more pronounced because some of the villains felt human enough to be a shitty person irl.

-Rep: Sigh. Even as a transmasc I might be a little too internally transphobic for the rep in the game. It feels like so many steps ahead of what the story should be handling. Like fix the slavery problem in a meaningful way then start philosophical gender discussions about what a gender binary even is. And it’s very cringe to me when it’s spoken about in game. Like yeah I love that there’s no way to dispute what the characters are but it also feels so entirely uncreative using modern day terminology for this stuff. And I don’t mean “replace it with ambiguous sad baby talk” but something more. Like is it terrible to want that? Even if you were planning on using the word nonbinary, at least tell us what a binary even is and how it was instituted as an idea into this world. Like I do adore Taash, I just wish the gender stuff wasn’t so clumsy.

-Visuals: It’s hard man. As an artist who sees human bodies as proportion reference points, the bodies still look off to me. Like it was worse and I’m getting used to it but it’s still painful. And I’m all for trying to stylize but this particular heroforge direction was not something I would have picked.

-OST: At first I couldn’t tell Zimmer/Balfe’s stuff apart from Morris’s but yeah, the new stuff is more boring(Sans the Rivain part)

-The 3 choice thing: yeah not a fan of that. I feel like perhaps it was a part of the multiplayer era where they would not be able to import much if everyone had a massively different world state so they limited it to the tiny MC choices. Still sad that the romance thing only really matters if you romanced Solas because the Dorian cameo wasn’t anything to write home about. Kinda feels like they added him in last minute because someone pointed out how much Solas-skewed the choices were. Idk. I so expected Josie in Antiva but alas.

Now Onto the Positives:

-Codices: The very way-too modern simplified conversational dialogue style carries over to the codices. And while I despise that as a creative, I do find myself actually reading them as they come because they are so easy to absorb. I feel like a lot of people would benefit from not skipping them because there are some references and plot reveals worth checking out.

-Story: If you deafen the dialogue style, the story itself is top. Gets way better as you play and from the spoilers I’ve heard, yeah. It’s good. Can’t wait to find out more.

-Gameplay: Listen I have a massive preference for DA style combat even if most ppl call it a slog. The turn based element, the pause button, the hoarding skills I never use. It’s like coming home to me. I hated DAI combat for the amount of anxiety it induced and I usually hate fast-paced action combat in most other games. DATV made me eat my boots. Its combat is insanely fun and engaging and often times I’m looking forward to fights more than quests themselves. Very colorful, very flashy, and very effective. The pause button gives less freedom but it’s there. The combos are fun. It is like Mass Effect except I did not find commanding the companions in Mass Effect as intuitive. Tho I wish non mages had less magicey feeling attacks.

-The CC: Yeah it wowed me with the options. I like how much can be done with the facial sliders and how good the hair looks.

-Puzzles: Listen the puzzles are extremely stupid in this game. But I also am very stupid and lazy when it comes to solving them. I have looked up the vast majority of puzzle solutions for DA games. No more DA2 Fade Barrels and no more trying to circumnavigate the ad infested Fandom Wiki to get to the Kitty’s prison solution. Crafted specifically for me.

-Mechanical Things: The game is optimized insanely well. Both when It comes to your PC and the gameplay. I’m amazed how well it runs on my PC when games like BG3 and Cyberpunk make my CPU scream. Love that. As far as gameplay goes: everything is super streamlined and designed to be as un-annoying as possible. No carry weight, no collectibles as annoying and unrewarding as the shards and mosaics. The maps are easy to parse. The game does not bombard you with useless NPCs, banter can’t be interrupted and characters catch up on banter at the Lighthouse if you’ve been avoiding certain party comps by accident. The quest locator is actually helpful. Skill points can be refunded. Looting is easy and finding shit feels rewarding.

-Characters: Honestly they do have some interesting things going on and while most characters feel a little hollow so far, I was pleasantly surprised by Davrin and Bellara. Davrin is the one I’m romancing and while the actual romance isn’t groundbreaking I’m glad I chose him. Yes, his character has a lot to do with Assan and his arc, but he does have stuff going on of his own. He’s very refreshing because some of the things he says low key both makes you think and also worry about him. He’s also not your usual preppy jock type. He can be a little mean sometimes. He’s artistic and principled. He has some remnants of “opinions I don’t agree with” that I love early DA for. When it comes to Bellara, she absolutely breaks the sort of Manic Pixie/Quirky Awkward young coded girl mold. It is the fact that there is self awareness and hints of history of failure and isolation in her words. There is also masking and over-clarification that I can relate to personally. I hope there is stuff like that to other companions when I get to know them better.

Visuals: the UI and Locations are stunning. The outfits the best the game has had so far(tho wish the overall look was less stylized) The blighted stuff(sans the ogres) and the Crossroads. Beautiful.

-Dwarf Lore: started out as fucking cheesy but I just finished meeting Valta and I’m seated.

-Solas Stuff: Hated the man for a while. Caved and made a solavellan to import to get more story stuff. NGL he is actually tolerable/interesting to me in this game.

Overall: A sickly sweet combo of Disappointed and Impressed. And I’m still gonna be playing. I am used to not liking something about every DA game. That’s part of the fun for me. But damn is this one testing me. Am I having a lot of fun playing it? Absolutely. Am I finding it difficult to get through a concerning amount of dialogue…yeah. It does still feel like a DA game but also like if someone made a pg-13 live action of Inquisition and then made a supplementary game based off that. If I forget that it’s supposed to be a sequel and just treat it like an action game with plot then it’s easier. And like I’m sure at least half of what I listed as a negative can be attributed to EA meddling or prev iterations of the game being inseparable. Anyway. Can’t wait to see the ending and I will add more thoughts when I’m done.

#dragon age the veilguard #datv #dragon age: the veilguard #Veilguard spoilers #BioWare critical #sort of a review

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rosepetalkitty · 2 days ago

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ngl hdg kinda amazes me in its ability to cater to my kinks pretty much perfectly while simultaneously triggering several of the worst parts of my trauma.

like how is it that it hits on everything i like on the surface, provides semi-decent worldbuilding to back it all up and enable the creation of stories, and even has consistent backstory and stuff, and yet the entire damn thing instills this looming sense of dread and fear that i can't shake enough to properly enjoy it...

below the break im gonna talk in like. moderate detail. about the parts that scare me. so uh yeah be aware that it'll get heavy that's just how it is.

ok, so the worst thing for me. wellness checks. the idea is cute and kinda hot on the surface. "make sure you're okay and if you're not you're getting domesticated" (which is supposed to be like. a happy thing. "now you get to just chill and be happy and get taken care of forever and in return you give me only your submission"). yeah, fuck it, im into that. hell that's not even an uncommon trope in the realm of cnc/mc writing.

except whenever i read an hdg wellness check story (in the sense of those long-ish tumblr posts that people write—i haven't even really considered reading the longer form content on ao3) there's something viscerally... off... about the tone. it stops feeling like kink and starts feeling like a nightmare when things happen to line up just so, and then it clicks, and reminds me that i knew people, real people, who had "wellness checks" happen in real life, except that instead of it being a kink thing that made them happy and was genuinely for their wellbeing, it was that their parents had hired people to kidnap them and drag them to a psych ward when they just needed a therapist. not all of those people that i knew have come home, as far as im aware. some have been gone for years.

and what about the whole idea of the non-consensual part being okay because "it's for your own good". in hdg-land it is. it's genuinely good for you and everyone seems to be happy with it, other than the occasional "bad guy who hates good things" trope (feralists, in hdg, afaik). but that's exactly what they told me when they cut contact between my boyfriend and i while he was in the hospital. "it's for your own good." guess what, it wasn't. his parents didn't like our relationship. they wanted me to forget him. they either didn't understand or didn't care that i couldn't. it was a year and a half before he came home and i had forgotten nothing.

our loss of communication was the tipping point in a series of events that, had i made one decision differently in the end, would have killed me. thankfully i fucked it up and am here today, no longer in that bad of a place may i add. im choosing not to share any of what happened to me directly right now because i don't want to turn this into a full on trauma dump, but suffice it to say there are recurring themes.

it's so interesting to me because in a lot of ways i have found comfort from those experiences in kink and writing. take flames of averon: mech pilots are neurochemically bonded to their handlers. how different is this from what the affini do to their florets? well, you have to sign up to be a pilot, and there's no authority in the world threatening you if you choose not to. even the coalition military wouldn't dare force you to become a pilot against your will, though they might never stop sending you promotional flyers if they find out you're able to tolerate the cyberware /lh

hell, im into cnc. im really into it. i chose to leave it as an opening between pilots and handlers in foa. the implication exists that if a handler tells their pilot to do something the poor thing will have a hell of a time saying no. that's intentional. it's hot to me, on either end. but the safety comes from other things.

yes, your handler has a lot of influence over you at a level that's hard to imagine, but you chose them and they chose you (most of the time), or at the very least neither of you had any complaints to raise with your supervisor when the paperwork came in for syncing your link chips (holly and astrid from seat of consciousness).

yes it's true, you can't be reassigned now that you're bonded, but that doesn't mean you have zero recourse if your handler is treating you badly. if you need to, you can always file paperwork with your commanding officer to request that something be done.

plus, handlers go through a lot of training, which includes screening to filter out people who would actually harm their pilots. yeah, some handlers are a little sadistic, but when it comes down to it they are on your side. if that wasn't the case they would never have passed pre-basic.

put another way, as a pilot in flames of averon, the closest thing ive ever written to a floret, there are a multitude of points at which you could have said no and didn't, and although that's obviously still noncon in the grand scheme of things, it's "signing away your freedom" cnc compared to the hdg flavor of "you 'consented' via it being the best thing for you whether you like it or not."

even if your handler just told you to "stay" for the first time and you're currently panicking and trying to figure out why your legs won't move, you still have some tiny amount of agency—an escape hatch, so to speak—and you'll just never end up having to use it.

and to me, the loss of that minute level of agency which will never be invoked is the difference between "this is hot as hell and feels perfectly safe" and "this is the abuse that was once leveraged against those i cared about, and to some degree myself, and it's simply been repackaged with a kink sticker slapped on."

none of this is to say i hate hdg, it's fans, those who write about it, or even the parts of it which scare me. i do think the idea is hot. hdg is pretty cool. hell, it was one of my inspirations in writing a lot of the pilot/handler dynamics in flames of averon. but it does scare me. and no matter what i tell myself i can't shake that fear.

it's frustrating, because oftentimes fear can be part of what makes something hot, but the particular flavor of fear which hdg instills in me is one which makes bitter all that it reaches. maybe someday i'll grow out of it. the traumatic memories from which that fear stems were only created in the past couple of years, to be fair. but something tells me a piece of that fear will never be fully dislodged from my mind.

so, all this to say, while i am into hdg, it's a complicated relationship.

(and on a sillier in character note to lighten the mood—please feel free to respond to this with roleplay or whatever you like!)

to any Affini out there who might be reading this, know that im not scared of you. im not scared of what you represent. im only scared by the fact that you mimic that which has left the scars you see on my soul today. im not against being taken in as a floret, and none of this is to say that i hold any level of disdain for you.

i only ask that you be gentle with me. what has been broken once can be broken again. please, do not let it come to that.

#rosie rants #rosie rambles #tw mental health #tw medical abuse #hdg #human domestication guide

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crushedsweets · 2 days ago

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I don’t know if you had answered this question before, but in your au, does some of your creeps regret ever becoming a creepypastas?

Yes, basically all of them wish everything bad never happened!!

Most of them had no control over it(like EJ, Toby, Clocky), the ONLY ones who had a choice was Nina, Ann, and Dina(and arguably Jeff)! again, everything here is in my AU!

nina regrets everything with jeff, obvi. her obsession with him went so far that her parents sent her from california to mississipi to live with her strict grandparents, who she later robbed to go live with jeff in alabama. she misses her family but went completely no contact after running away, and she obviously is traumatized by having to dispose of jeffs victims when he didnt feel like it.

Ann doesnt REALLY regret anything because she's... evil... as hell... she live streamed torturing random men on the dark web for years, and a fan ended up doing the same to her in the forest - where she got infected by zalgo. but she has no concept of guilt or regret. besides, she didn't gaf about her parents, treated her brothers like shit, was a neet with no desire for anything but money. only thing she'd regret is getting kidnapped by one of her fanboys. LOL

dina regrets a lot. she used to be seen as a deity in her cult, worshiped and prayed to and given the entire world. she regrets going out the night that lazari bit her, she regrets luring lazari into the forest to kill her as 'punishment', she regrets any little action she did that landed her trapped forever in that damn forest.

jeff is a bit more complicated. he doesn't really feel bad for being a bully, but he 'regrets' bullying randy's sister cuz that's what made him their target, resulting in his own bullying. he regrets killing his parents and trying to kill liu cuz it wasn't "necessary," but the operator that was controlling him during that. otherwise, he mostly just regrets anything that backfired on him.

OTHERWISE, the rest were usually victims of the operator/zalgo/Jeff/etc first, who clouded their mind and dug them a grave they couldn’t climb out of. they have some regrets that didnt exactly turn them into a crp, such as like..

Lulu WOULD regret even trying to get into the sorority, but she's more like a zombie these days

Toby regrets asking his sister to pick him up from the hospital the day of the crash

Jack regrets dating Jenny

Liu regrets taking the blame for Jeff

but i wouldnt say that was any of their actual fault exactly...

#asks #creeped

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2demondogs · 24 hours ago

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With Chrismas around the corner (not really but basically), i would love an Arthur x GN!reader where Arthur proposes to reader for Chrismas and they obviously say yes because, well, it's Arthur, who wouldn't?

Anon did you read my mind. I was just thinking about proposal fics when you sent this ask because I have yet to stumble on one somehow... I'm sorry this took forever btw T-T

Shoutout to my platonic boyfriend for helping me with ideas because I got writer's block <3

Words: 3k oh my good lord Tags: canon divergence (it's just people leaving the gang a chapter early), Arthur does not have tuberculosis, INSTANT spoilers for character death, cheesy shit

It's been too long, you're realizing, since holidays like Christmas felt like special things. There is a double-edged feel to this one — it is the first since Hosea's death, since leaving the gang — but it is the first, in a very long time, that you've spent in the so-called right way: in a warm house with four solid walls and someone you love, how those fanciful books Mary-Beth used to talk your ear off about always wrote.

The house is warm enough, anyways.

There's work that needs done on the cabin. Some of the wood is rotting out and chipped at the corners, forming into sharp splinters that you've brushed against one too many times, but it is a house. You haven't had this pleasure since before joining the gang.

Sometimes, with how content Arthur seems at baseline, you wonder if he's had this pleasure since early childhood. On quieter evenings, ones less reserved for happiness than this one, there has been clipped discussion about how Arthur has never had domesticity like this. Silently, it was an admission of how good it is to share this freshness with you.

During a ride into town, he'd admitted that he had never picked up painting because it was the sort of thing only steady folks got to enjoy. You'd gotten him a set of oil paints when no one was looking — he's worth much more than a few measly dollars, but that means little if you haven't got them to begin with. Some habits die hard; he was happy you remembered what he'd said only a few hours before.

Come the new year, Arthur plans to find work that will pay. New things are a luxury neither of you care much to indulge in, but the repairs will take lumber and maybe a few extra hands. Ones with more expertise, at least, because Arthur's houses usually have not had foundations.

You could simply move now that time has passed, yes. You could find somewhere much farther away, maybe even New York, and pack yourselves in alongside the other sardines bustling about a city, undetectable in uniformity. Shave beards, got jobs, change clothes, cut hair and color it, too, if paranoia strikes— but keeping low to the ground has worked itself out so far, and there is no more of that deathlike stagnation in the air of this place.

Sentimentally, you think this Christmas will seal off whatever makes this cabin yours. Shadows linger, there's been a few odd creaks that've spooked the horses, and maybe it's going to shit a lot quicker than either of you want to admit, but it's your shit-house and the shared stubbornness between you has always brought you nothing but closer to one another.

Arthur is tired of running, and so are you. Last week, he talked about writing to Mary-Beth and Simon, maybe checking if Kieran — the utterance of the man's proper name was a confirmation of the last of that stockholmlike regret having worked out of his system — had broken and followed his little girlfriend. It wasn't said with malice, just some amusement.

"Why do you think he would?" You'd asked.

"Dutch only saves people who don't ask for it," he'd said, and that wistful look in his eyes vanished before you could ask what it meant.

Maybe it's the hard work that makes it feel like a real, true holiday. Pearson and Grimshaw stopped working everyone harder in the winter over the years, once the familial glamour faded with each new addition to the gang. It was no longer a tight-knit group, but a posse, more or less, of runaways and strays all against a big, evil thing like the rest of the world, or whatever it was that Dutch grew to fear.

Since November, Arthur has been saving the best catches to be salted and stored for Christmas dinner. Each addition is cleaner skinned and cut than the last, and the newfound worst of them ended up being ate upon his return from hunting. You've both been saving back herbs since summer, dried and ready to be crumbled into the heated up pot come time for a real feast. Cornbread was made by hand for the first time since you settled down here, drizzled with honey from the general store a ways out.

The latter was Arthur's only specific request for a fancy dinner. If you hadn't gotten him a single gift save for making it, he'd still be happy as a clam.

He's been putting that goddamned honey on everything. You're glad he seems to be enjoying things again, not as tightstrung as he was before you'd made off with him. That's how it feels, anyways, after the long and struggling conversations that were had before the decision was made. Family or life? It's a hard question for someone who has such little concept of either.

Now, the grey hair in his beard is catching the light from the fireplace where he's sat himself on a chair before it. They'd sprouted through the sun-bleached blond atop his head has been looking lighter and lighter in recent months, grey finally catching up to the discoloration and giving him some malcolored sort of tabby look. It's a good one on him, as much as he complains about looking old as dirt and that it's all formed by stress.

For all the lacking color, it adds a ruddy warmth to his face. Daydreams of growing old together find you when you focus on it, or on his wheezing laugh that's gotten worse with the cold weather. Despite the woolen vest he's been sporting, his fingers are as chilled as yours whenever they've brushed. Idly, you wonder if he's gotten whatever Hosea grew into, then remember they were never by blood.

Arthur hadn't wanted you to get him any gifts. When you asked if he would get you something, he'd flushed and changed his mind, apparently already having done it.

Whatever it is, it's good-sized, wrapped in one of the dustcloths you'd gotten him alongside the paints. He's been spending more time painting, lately, tucked in the treeline and looking over the cabin or deeper into the woods, studying something plein air the way those professionals do. He'd propped it against the wall this morning, and once you've settled on the floor before the fireplace — too cold outside not to crowd close to it — after dinner, he looks between you and the cloth like he isn't sure what to do.

"D'you wanna do the honors?" He asks, and grins although the twitch of his eye tells you he's covering timidity with faux cockiness.

"You go ahead," you say, half because he's closer. Tormenting him in small ways must be part of any good gift.

The painting is an image you recognize. A photo that one of the girls took for you months before things went down the hole, using the camera Arthur was loaned by some feller in town who wanted photos taken for a book. He never returned it, and it more or less became something he tucked beneath his cot and let the elements beat around. You can't remember, now, who it was or where he went to get it developed.

The little inkling of pride you felt knowing he kept putting off getting the negatives developed — not enough money, not enough time — yet was gone the next morning to have yours developed returns, now.

It's a much nicer rendition of it, your clothes not dirty and his arm around your waist, the other holding his hat to his chest. It's clear he preferred to give your portrait more detail, his own lagging somewhere behind in clarity and looking closer to the photo. You suppose it's easier to look at someone besides himself, but there's a clearer enjoyment in the lines of you, more care taken in the color mixes.

Ignoring the dense joy of the implications of that, of how obvious it is, proves difficult. Your cheeks twinge some from the wide smile before you realize you're even reacting.

"You'll be a big name someday," you say, and he may as well shrink in on himself beneath the praise, although he's heard it plenty of times before.

"Naw," he waves a hand. "Quit that."

"Really, Arthur." Scooting closer, laying your hands over his knee. He's moving his jaw when your eyes meet his, lays a hand over one of yours, heavy and warm. "It's beautiful. I love it."

"Good," he says. His jaw clicks. "I— uh, I love you."

The hunting knife you got for him seems small, though relatively equal. Arthur looks as pleased as ever studying it, half-mumbling appraisals of yeah, nice and sharp, sturdy to himself that likely would've stayed inside his head, if it weren't for wanting to show you he liked it.

A bone handle, which he feels over with his fingers before noticing it's engraved, fits easy in his palm. You were afraid you push your luck with maintaining its quality too far adding the tiny, vague bear shape next to the deeper cut of his name. Already impressive was the fact that you hadn't ruined it with the letters, being one of your first expeditions into anything of the sort.

"I would've gotten you one of those folding knives," you explain. "But they don't hold up as well, and I know you have one."

The army knife was Hosea's.

"Needed me a new huntin' knife," Arthur says. You know, because he's complained about his current one being close to snapping with all the skinning he does anymore. He squints at the handle, turns it over in the light from the fire. "Did you engrave the handle?"

"Yessir."

He smiles. "It's real nice," he says, pats his palm with the blade softly. It makes a dull noise, sturdy metal on skin. "Why a bear?"

"They remind me of you," you admit. Really, you'd spent a long time considering what else to add, because only his name seemed so plain; although he wouldn't be opposed to flowers or vines, they are a little more intricate than a simplified bear head. "Big and strong. Hairy, too. I'd like to hug one."

He snorts a laugh, but it seems thin. His eyes are fond enough on you that it couldn't be any rejection of your words, and so you brush it off. "You wanna hug a bear?" He asks.

"In a perfect world," you amend. "Don't they look warm?"

"You'd better stick to me," he says, smooths a palm over the thigh of his jeans. The nicest pair he owns, he promised you, because he feels ridiculous in slacks and seems to think you care what he wears.

Beyond thinking everything looks well on him, at least. You often find yourself concerned with that thought.

"I got you somethin' else," Arthur starts, running a finger over the bunched inseam at his own knee. "Well, uh— it's f'both of us, really."

Isn't that intriguing, you think, but your silent, undivided attention seems to make him outright nervous, so you say: "Oh?"

Some conflict happens over his face as he pulls his vest collar away and reaches into the inner pocket, takes out a stack of thin papers that he glances over before apparently relenting to something. Confusion finds you, until he takes a deep breath and holds them towards you.

"Read these," is all he says, and he sounds like it's almost painful.

He's written much, much more than that. Your stomach turns, once or twice, realizing they are pages from his journal. Uncertain why, until the first entries which are skittering on affectionate fade into ones much more flowery. They are all about you, days you'd spent together or times you hadn't, the things you've given him over the years and the things he wished he could've given you.

Each page makes your chest feel tight with a panicked joy, as if his hands were not fiddling with the new knife to occupy — distract? — himself but clenching hard at your heart.

One, near the beginning, says he thought of pickin' a pretty lil' flower, God bless it, I feel ridiculous; on the back of the next is pressed a variegated tulip, crumbling with age but holding firm to whatever adhesive glues it to the paper. Again, that creeping smile, like thyme. Another entry is entirely about your hair, because it had brushed his arm. Only a few sentences made up that page, below the cursive a choppy sketch of your horse.

Certainly, Arthur stays busy in his head. You've always known as much, but never figured any of it was about you. Not like this, anyways, though the dates spread from the week before Blackwater and you can only wonder what laid in that journal he lost before.

"Oh, Arthur," you start, looking up from a third-way through, feeling giddy but not wanting him to watch you so intently while you finish them. No wonder he was shy. It's his heart. "You're so sweet."

"Finish readin' 'em," Arthur says, doesn't meet your eyes at first. When he does, they're gentle. "They get sweeter, y'know, better finish 'em. 'Cause of that."

He is nervous. Hardly moving, besides the tongue running over his teeth beneath his lips, and the rambling every time he opens his mouth. You don't mind, never have. He's endearing like this.

Outings you'd went on infrequently, the dates of his favorites underlined, you're noticing, based on the tone of his words in them; his worries and fears about courting you, and some of what you mean to him though, with its succinctness, you have a feeling he wouldn't dare put all of his genuine love to findable paper; things he likes about you, and one page where he admits that he cannot keep himself from documenting you in every other entry, which tells you this small collection is hardly everything. The previous entries turn over in your mind again, and you are struck on a random page for a moment as their meanings take hold, realizing they were especially sliced from his journal to show you.

The entries leading to the last are what set your mind and pulse ablaze. From the first appearance of the word marriage, you swallowed your idea of what may be coming — Arthur's breathing changing beside you doesn't help any, and it certainly does not help that he leans down once you've reached the last page, plucking it from your hands. Before he does, you notice quite a few crossed out lines, scribbles as if he were frustrated with not being able to find the right words.

"Think I've got the balls on me to read this one aloud, at the very least," he says, voice laced with a chuckle. Breath comes uneasy, but you collect yourself enough to gather the pages back into a neat, ordered stack in your lap. "Unless you'd rather spare me," he adds, nudges your knee with the toe of his shoe.

"No." Your voice sounds strange, even to you. "Do me the honors."

Arthur bites his cheek, nods and lets it fall as he smiles. Still, his hand finds the back of his neck, the page held between two fingers that remain surprisingly steady. The knife lingers in his hand beneath it, and isn't it just like him to propose holding a weapon.

Propose. It takes its first toll on you, rolls over your back in shards of tingling.

"December twenty-fifth, eighteen ninety-nine," he starts, eyes flicking to your face every other word until the intensity of your gaze must make him too anxious. "It's a nice little life, livin' with the one I love," — rubbing his mouth, sighing some — "Jesus, I always gotta be sappy." You laugh, though it comes out more forceful than you intended, and relax some until he continues. "The thought of another day where anythin' could happen 'n' we ain't bound is somethin' I hate."

Arthur pauses, stands up and places the journal entry on his chair. You take his hands when he holds them out to where you sit, grunting when he hauls you off the ground with more force than you expected, feet shuffling into place to stick all-too-close to his. His hands are burning, skin feverish when you grab his wrists, as if you'd ever want to stop him as he eases onto a knee before you.

And his eyes throw you off balance, too, catching the light just enough that you can tell they are stinging. So are your own, now that you think about it, but intelligent thoughts go out the window once you sense him about to speak.

"I wanna be 'til death do us part," Arthur confesses, fumbles to catch both of your hands in his in an awkward, squeezing hug of a hold.

The way your bones catch on one another, well— it's not a sensation you'll forget, like the first time he kissed you and you felt it still a week later, warm pressure on your mouth if you got too lost in the memory. He looks as good, looks so nice, and you know your fingers would be shaking if he weren't crowding them together, steady.

When he says your name, the blood is rushing through your ears too loud to hear it clearly; you almost want to ask him to do it again. "Will you marry me?"

Nodding, face slack before it spreads in a grin. "Yes," you say. "Of course I will."

His is hidden by how he lets go of your hands, catching them before they fall in stupid, limp joy back to your sides. He lays kisses along the knuckles, all three rows of them. It's so awfully saccharine and yet you could never tell him to quit being sweet— not now, not as he stumbles to his feet after you pull him up and shake off his hold to grab his face, tugging him into a kiss.

Arms come around your waist, squeeze tight enough to hurt, or to hold in place. Arthur runs a hand over your back, breaks the kiss to slide a hand into your hair and press your face to his chest, caging you in his arms. He smells warm, like good cologne, and you know he's been planning this.

#red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 fanfic #arthur morgan x reader #gender neutral reader #neutralreader #arthur morgan #ask #oneshot #fluff #sfw #rdr2 #reader insert #proposal fic

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kimmie2me · 1 day ago

Text

Greeny Ghost

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀𓂅⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Ghost!Midoriya Izuku x AFAB!fem reader

.....

The alley stretched out longer than you’d thought, shadows swallowing the corners, broken only by dim streetlights. You’d walked down plenty of places like this before, but this one was unnervingly quiet. Your friends were supposed to be with you, daring you into the so-called “haunted” alley, but when you turned back, you saw—no one. Just empty space.

“Those jerks,” you muttered, kicking a stray pebble with an irritated huff. Just your luck to get abandoned in the middle of a ghost story.

That’s when you saw him: a faintly glowing figure at the far end of the alley, barely visible in the low light, his form flickering like static on an old TV. He wore a junior high uniform, like he was frozen in time, but it was his eyes, wide and curious, that had you rooted to the spot.

"What the hell." You blurted out, which caused the ghost to jump a bit.

“You… you can see me?” he asked, sounding more surprised than you felt.

“Guess so,” you replied warily, feeling your fists clench. You took a step back, but he stayed still, watching you with something close to wonder. “A-are you the… ghost? Y'know.. that one ghost?”

“No. I mean, yes, but… not like… like an evil ghost!” he said, frowning as he waved his hands in the air, trying to seem harmless. “I don’t hurt anyone or anything. I just… hang around.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? So why are there all those rumors about people going missing in this alley?”

He let out a dramatic sigh. “I have no idea! I’ve been here for years, and no one ever went missing because of me.” His arms crossed, and he gave you an indignant look, clearly offended. “I keep watch over the place. There’s a run-down building nearby, and sketchy people use it for… whatever sketchy people do. I’m just here observing them, making notes sometimes.”

“Uh-huh,” you said, unconvinced. “Sounds like something an evil ghost would say. Plus, why would anyone believe some… green-haired ghost taking notes?”

His frown deepened and he sighed. "Really? 'Green-haired ghost? I have a name and identity, you know? My name is Midoriya Izuku."

You shrugged, giving him a skeptical look. “Sure, whatever. and I'm giving you a new identity: ‘Greeny Ghost.’ Also, how am supposed to trust you? You're a ghost and the movies basically explain what you're supposed to do. Just don't haunt me or I'll pour holy water down your throat.”

He threw his hands up. “Why are you making this harder than it has to be? I’m just here because I, well, exist here.” His voice softened a bit, frustration giving way to a hint of sadness. “It’s not like I can go anywhere else.”

“Yeah, and every creepy spirit says that before they drag you into some other world and keep you locked up for eternity,” you replied with a smirk, folding your arms in a show of exaggerated defiance. “Sorry, but I’m not falling for the ‘poor trapped ghost’ act.”

Izuku groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose as if your words were physically painful. “You remind me so much of Kacchan! In a bad way!”

You raised an eyebrow, clearly amused. “Uh-huh. And what, or who, the hell is ‘Kacchan’?”

Izuku looked at you, his face twisting into an expression halfway between exasperation and resignation. “Kacchan! My… a friend from junior high. Sort of. He’s… well, actually, no, he’s nothing like you.” Izuku seemed to rethink this, blinking in realization. “He’s a lot worse.”

“Wow. So you’re saying I’m less tolerable than some guy named Kacchan, who, by the sound of it, doesn’t sound like someone with a good rep?” you said with mock offense, pressing a hand to your chest. “Way to compliment a girl, Greeny-Ghost.”

He looked like he was about three seconds away from floating back through the alley wall, giving up on this ridiculous exchange.

You look at him a bit more closer, and you note he looked about your age, but… different. Ghostly, of course, but there was something else, something in his eyes that almost seemed… lonely. You didn’t know if you believed him, but something about him made you stay.

“What’re you even doing here?” you finally asked, taking a careful step forward. "Are you trapped here or something?"

“Besides not being evil?” he shot back, still salty. But when he saw you weren’t about to leave, he sighed, softening. “A villain got me… in this alley. I was just a kid, and I never really… left, I guess. People pass by now and then, but nobody usually sees me.” He shifted, looking suddenly uncertain. “Actually, you’re the first one to ever talk to me.”

You studied him, noticing the worn edges of his uniform, the tired, resigned look in his eyes. He seemed less scary and more… well, kind of tragic. Still, you weren’t about to let your guard down. “Yeah, well, maybe people hear the creepy noises you make,” you challenged. “Y'know it freaks them out.”

He blinked, clearly caught off guard. “Oh! You mean the notes? I’m trying to keep track of the activity around here,” he said defensively. “Besides, no one told me my note-taking was creepy.”

“Right,” you said, biting back a smirk. “So you’re a scholarly ghost, huh?”

A light blush appeared on his cheeks. “Look, I don’t get many hobbies! Ghosts don’t have a lot to do except observe.” He crossed his arms, giving you a quick glare before his expression softened again. “Anyway, I’m not the villain here. The creepy noises? That’s just me muttering to myself or something.”

Your arms relaxed a bit, the eerie feeling of the alley giving way to something else entirely. His earnestness was unexpected, and honestly, a little endearing.

“Alright, Greeny,” you relented, softening just a little. “Maybe you’re not as evil as they say.”

He sighed, looking relieved but still a little skeptical himself. “That’s… comforting, I guess.”

You shrugged, shoving your hands in your pockets. “Guess I’ll see you around.” You turned, giving him a small wave as you walked away, his faint figure watching you until you disappeared around the corner.

.....

Three days later, you found yourself back at the alley. You weren’t sure why—maybe it was the way he’d looked at you, or that stupid hopefulness in his voice. This time, you came with something: a small letter in your hand, the ink smudged slightly where you’d clutched it nervously.

You called out, half-expecting him not to show, but he appeared, looking pleasantly surprised.

“Back already?” he teased, a lopsided smile on his face. "

“Don’t get too excited,” you shot back, trying to keep your tone casual. You extended the letter. “It’s… from your mom. I found her, told her I met you… and I convinced her to write something for you. Don't ask why I did it. You looked so miserable here, it made me miserable.”

His mouth dropped open, his expression turning from surprise to something you couldn’t quite name. He took the letter in shaking hands, his gaze fixed on it like it was the most precious thing in the world.

“She… she actually remembered me?” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. He looked up, tears pooling in his eyes. “Thank you… I can’t believe you’d go out of your way for… for me.”

You shrugged, feeling a little awkward under the weight of his gratitude. “Figured you could use a reminder that you’re not just… some alley ghost.”

He laughed a little through his tears, wiping his eyes. “I’m really not an evil ghost,” he said, voice soft and grateful.

“Yeah, well,” you replied, rolling your eyes with a small grin. “You’re still Greeny Ghost to me.”

Izuku blinked, visibly surprised by your small grin, and for a second he just stood there, processing it. Then, with an awkward but excited energy, he smiled back.

“D-do you want to, uh… stick around for a bit? I could, um, show you what I’ve written down,” he stammered, gesturing to a tattered notebook that materialized in his hands.

You chuckled. “Sure. Show me what a scholarly ghost looks like.”

He lit up, practically vibrating with excitement as he began flipping through his notes, talking fast as he pointed out every bit of information he’d gathered. You listened, half amused and half impressed by his careful, detailed observations. Each page was crammed with tiny, meticulous handwriting that covered everything from people he’d seen pass by to strange objects left in the alley over the years.

“I try to keep track of everything,” he explained earnestly. “It’s not like anyone really notices me, so I figured… maybe someday, if someone needed to know anything about this area, I’d have it all written down.”

“Sounds like you take your ghostly duties pretty seriously, huh?” you teased, glancing through his observations. "Well, I try to be a hero in my own way" He replied with a small smile. As you skimmed a particularly eerie note about some “sludge villain” incident that had occurred nearby, a thought hit you.

“Wait, was it… the sludge villain? Was that what got you here?” you asked, looking up to find his expression turn somber, yet resigned.

“Yeah,” he murmured, a shadow passing over his face. “It all happened so fast. I didn’t even see him coming. They said… All Might couldn’t get there in time.” He paused, then shrugged, as if he’d long made peace with it. “Guess it’s just the way it happened.”

You looked at him thoughtfully, and something in you softened. “You know… I think All Might was really sad about what happened to you.”

Izuku’s eyes went wide, almost panicked, like you’d just told him he’d accidentally disappointed a beloved friend. “S-sad? I didn’t want him to feel sad! I mean, All Might is my hero! He’s… he’s… I never wanted to make him feel like that. I was always cheering him on!”

You attempt to put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, which failed as it phases right through. After a second try, you deem the gesture to be futile. “Hey, it’s okay. All Might probably knew that. And who knows? I bet he even came to your funeral.”

Izuku looked up, the panic giving way to a kind of hopeful wonder. “You… you think so?”

“Of course,” you said, grinning a bit. “And hey, maybe that ‘Kacchan’ guy you mentioned showed up too. You’re not as alone as you’d imagine, Greeny.”

He looked at you, eyes brimming with a strange mixture of gratitude and disbelief, as if no one had ever told him something like that before. “Thank you,” he whispered, voice soft and full of warmth. “For saying that. It… it actually means a lot.”

You shrugged it off, feeling a little flustered under his earnest gaze. “Yeah, well, can’t leave a ghost like you feeling down, right?”

Izuku chuckled, the sound light and unexpectedly comforting. “I guess not,” he agreed, eyes still shining with gratitude as he turned back to his notes, flipping to a fresh page. “You mind if I write down that you came back? I think… I think I’d like to remember it.” You nod.

"Yeah, sure you can."

From that moment on, he followed you like a quiet shadow, slipping into conversations, teasing you as much as you teased him, and reminding you of the friend you’d found in the most unexpected of places.

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a-memory-a-distant-echo · 2 days ago

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ok, you know what, fuck it, fic recs post. historically i try not to rec works in progress or things i haven't commented on and i'm throwing that fully out the window for this because honestly, fucking whatever.

if you're on this list and i haven't been fully unhinged at you in the comments, please know that it's because (1) i'm the worst and (2) i'm trying desperately to calibrate so i hit 'enthusiastic' and not 'kind of frightening, actually'. i swear that i have written at least several sentences of a comment for every fic on this list, it's just that i'm genuinely impossibly slow, sometimes. it's me, not you.

my previous rec post is here, in case you missed that. as a bonus, special for this rec list and as a concession to the horrors, i am attempting to guess how much any given fic will fuck up the average person. obviously this is a ymmv kind of situation, but i'm trying, at least?

everything else under a cut because i am longwinded.

and found by @dangerouscommiesubversive, explicit, every possible combination of di feisheng/fang duobing/li lianhua | li xiangyi; bless, but i am not typing all that out. starting off with a wip where i haven't left a comment in like four fuckin' chapters, breaking those rules real good. this fic is a fucking ride. i will admit that i wasn't entirely convinced by the premise when i saw the blurb, but i am nothing if not willing to admit when i was wrong, and i was—once again—totally wrong. this is the fic where i was like 'ok but…is anyone really, like, desperate for gen z li xiangyi?' and then i read it and i was like 'ohhhhhh fuck yeah, ok, i get it, i was actually fully desperate for gen z li xiangyi.' he is. such a little prick. i love him. there has been something unexpected and delightful in every single chapter of this so far, plus a number of impressively memorable one-liners. this fic is fun and distracting and at least as of chapter seven, i'm gonna say it's not even gonna fuck you up. (please note that this is only through chapter seven!)

and the days are bright red by @junemermaid, explicit, di feisheng/fang duobing/li lianhua. rip to my beloved tumblr mutual @junemermaid, because they're getting called out twice in this list, but: tough. this fic is so delightful. featuring: memories of slut era li lianhua, the mortifying ordeal of being known, an entire box of historically accurate sex toys, fang duobing and di feisheng communicating (sometimes silently) in a way that unsettles li lianhua (back from his months-long sojourn), some very hot sex that is both very much about sex and also about trust and being perceived, casual intimacy, and fledgling tenderness. there are Emotions in this, and they get moderately intense, but it's a very kind and surprisingly gentle feel-good fic.

a drink under a clear window by @momosandlemonsoda, explicit, di feisheng/fang duobing and fang duobing/qiao wanmian. a fic that tackles the dreaded v-shaped polycule and makes it work. it seems like perhaps it shouldn't: fang duobing as the hinge, with di feisheng and qiao wanmian on either side, but actually it works perfectly, and is a lovely little glimpse at who they could become and the relationships they could have. i love the thought of qiao wanmian having come into her own as a leader in her own right, as more than just the representative of the ghost of li xiangyi, and this does a wonderful job of letting her be her own person. also, yes, ok, passing fang duobing back and forth like a party favour. this is a post-canon fic in which li lianhua is dead, but the fic itself a straightforward delight that is not at all fucky uppy.

the floating clouds, no resting place, again by @junemermaid (not sorry), technically gen and no ship, but functionally pre-di feisheng/fang duobing/li lianhua. the hair-washing fic. ohhhhhh. i started jotting notes for this post the day that i finished this fic, and i really thought that they were in any way comprehensive, but instead, what i typed and left as a note to myself was this:

and honestly. you're right, hypothetical reader, that doesn't totally make sense, but i stand by it regardless, because i apparently had that thought in [checks date i last saved the file] fucking august, and i'm still nodding along with myself. that is that this is like. this fic is very beautiful and will make you ache and will leave you slightly better at the end of it than you were at the beginning. it may also make you cry; this seems to me a fair enough trade.

the floating lotus by @anndramarama, not rated, di feisheng/li xiangyi. pre-canon stuff doesn't always work super well for me, but i really enjoyed this one, featuring di feisheng and li xiangyi when they're both so young and arrogant and full of themselves—and stupid and naïve and young and almost hopeful in a way that they're often not, in fic, for all that they were barely but children at the point of the donghai fight. they just seem…vulnerable, i guess, in this, in a way that i find touching. seasonal bonus: a ghost story, of a sort. given that this is set pre-canon, i think it's hard to come in any softer than bittersweet, which this very much is.

from here one's hand could pluck the stars by @howlingmoonrise, explicit, di feisheng/fang duobing. sex pollen fic! also featuring, a little surprisingly, given the premise, incredibly explicit and enthusiastic consent. look, this does what it says on the tin. di feisheng gets sex pollened. fang duobing is left to stay with him. the obvious ensues. unfortunately, it is also devastatingly charming? fang duobing is earnest and sweet; di feisheng is suffering beautifully terribly and trying so hard not to impose on fang duobing. they're both trying so hard to be respectful of what the other person needs, but they're also still bratty and argumentative and exasperated/exasperating, and it's very entertaining. this will fuck you up none percent, and may even make you laugh.

my war is done by @orchisailsa, explicit, di feisheng/fang duobing/li lianhua. another wip, with the first of three chapters posted, but please understand that this chapter is nearly 15k and so fucking good and compelling. li lianhua lives! and returns to find that things have changed in his absence, and perhaps that he has also changed in his absence, and now wants things that he had told himself he didn't mind not even having to lose. bonus: road trip and—delight!—only one room at the inn. also some other stuff that i'm not spoiling, but that made me absolutely gleeful. this is definitely a work in progress, and while i don't think there's anything particularly upsetting in the chapter, it does end on something of a cliffhanger. i personally do not feel that this is an upsetting cliffhanger, given the information about the fic that's presented in the tags, but it is technically a cliffhanger.

awkward paragraph break, but it's also important, i think, to mention the absolutely stunning (and not at all safe for work) companion piece to my war is done, you'd be there calling my name, by saki the cup bearer, who i don't think is on tumblr. it's fucking incredible; i am very decidedly not an artist but i cannot begin to imagine how much effort went into this. just. holy shit.

not unlike him in shape and form by @philologicalbat, explicit, fang duobing/li lianhua. ok look. i fucking love when things are deeply emotionally messy, and this is so emotionally messy. li lianhua who's been attracted to fang duobing and not doing anything about it, then discovering that fang duobing is shan gudao's son and is very much going to do something about it. he wants in this, and he's cunty and manipulative and mean about it, and sometimes also almost sweet, almost tender, and i love that, because i feel like li lianhua is very often an object of desire and very rarely gets to desire. i love how human he gets to be in this fic. this is not a sweet or gentle fic, but it does end in a moderately tender place that is tentatively hopeful, i think.

unbecoming heir by @bettercostume, explicit, di feisheng/princess zhaoling. i am taking your hand in mine and begging you to trust me. i know what this fic looks like. it's noncon and a weird pairing and you might look at it and expect it to go in the obvious direction and: it does not. this fic is so good that it makes me angry. it makes me miserable and everyone in this fic is trying so miserably, miserably hard, and it's fucking devastating. i spent literally thirty minutes earlier today yelling at my wife about it. i cannot rec this fic strongly enough. this is not a happy fic, but it is a good fic. it will absolutely fuck you up. this is very complimentary but also you will be fucked up.

until you are its primary evidence by @ilgaksu, mature, di feisheng/fang duobing/li lianhua. the single most effective use of what is effectively a prologue that i've ever seen in fic, are you kidding me. this fic is nothing at all like what i expected it to be, and is something far better than what i could have imagined. it's fang duobing's point of view, which is a rarity already, and it's so well done, and it allows him so much humanity and so much anger and grace alike. there are so many tricky things about this fic—the prologue, the fact that it's set in the amnesia arc, fang duobing's pov, the fact that it actually addresses canonical disabilities and illnesses without being fucking weird about it, the tension between the three of them—and it's all balanced so well. this has some emotionally heavier moments but ends tentatively happily; tentative only because it's set during the amnesia arc, and, well. we know what comes next.

as a final note: if you wrote one of these fics and feel that i've wildly misinterpreted the emotional tenor of the ending, please message me in whatever way you prefer and i will correct it. i would not normally presume to guess how things are likely hit people, as i am in many ways not anyone's ideal reader, but today it seemed like it was kinder to at least try.

#mysterious lotus casebook #fic recs #mlc fic #difanghua #liansanjiao #difang #fanghua #feihua #sorry to everyone who's seeing this post twice! it's just that i tried to correct one thing (missed a tag) and tumblr ate the whole post 💀#anyhow!#this is not what i had planned to do with my overnight last night #but it was an enjoyable couple of hours rereading all of these #so thank you very much for that #hopefully someone else who wants distraction will also find this useful #everyone please rest up and take care of yourself and stay hydrated and stuff ok? ok. good talk.#echoes linger #also i swear that i'm working on the comments thing #it's just that sometimes forming my thoughts into something audible to other people #feels very much like diy tooth extraction #the kind with rusty pliers and a shot of vodka #you know?#i'm working on it 💕

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ariasakka · 3 days ago

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Viktor arcane smut

Talks of body insecurity, smut, fluff, 18+, female reader, similar/same age as Viktor, pussy eating, etc

Nobody has been able to make you cum before. Your best friend Viktor can help you with that.

If anything in this makes you uncomfortable at any point please don’t continue to read. <3

Enjoy ;)

Viktor is your best friend and has been in love with you for years. Jayce keeps hitting on you but you don’t like him. Viktor feels a little jealous every time someone flirts with you especially Jayce but tries not to let it be seen.

You often spend the night at Viktors place because hes your only friend and you’re his closest friend.

You and Viktor were gifted some fancy drinks after presenting your new idea to the council. You both go back to his place after and decide to celebrate. That and neither of you really feel like being alone. After all you both get along with each other better than anyone else. No one knows the two of you better than one another. Late night talks are always both of your favorite. After a few glasses of the worst alcoholic beverage you and Viktor have ever tasted you both lay down on his bed feeling tipsy and exhausted.

Viktor

“I saw Jayce eyeing you all day again.”

You

“Ugh I know, wish he’d leave me alone.”

Viktor chuckles lightly

“You don’t like him back at all? Not even a little?”

You

“I don’t want Jayce. He’s barely even an acquaintance in my eyes. I’ve always gone for men like Jayce. Not because I find any of them attractive but because I feel like I have to. To feel more feminine…or maybe not even just feminine. I guess more petite next to them? Womanly? Weak? I don’t know. None of them have ever been able to make me finish either. But I guess that’s my fault. It can’t be this hard to cum for other women. I don’t really see a point in dating if I don’t find hardly any men attractive plus they don’t satisfy me at all regardless of the non existent orgasm.”

Viktor

“Have you seriously never came with someone else before?”

You

“…no”

Viktor

“Does foreplay not make it easier? Or at the very least more enjoyable?”

You laugh

“Foreplay? That only exists in fiction. Men are not into that thing.”

Viktor

“Boys are not into that sort of thing. What about oral? Clitoral stimulation with the tongue? I feel as though that can always do the job. It’s not too rough nor too gentle. It’s quite intimate and romantic at the same time.”

You

“Um…no man I’ve been with as ever been into that.”

Viktor

“What?!”

You

“Not necessarily because of me they’ve always just said they don’t do that to any woman because “it’s weird” or whatever.”

Viktor sighs

“Let me guess they request oral from their women though.”

You

“Um well….i suppose..”

Viktor

“I feel sorry for you. I assure you men who are actually interested in women don’t prioritize their cock.”

You

“Then what would they even get out of sex if not that?!”

Viktor

“Do you really think men can’t enjoy sex if their dick isn’t involved in the equation?”

You

“Well yes. All men are like that. Aren’t they?..”

Viktor

“Absolutely not. Again men *who are actually into women* will be just as if not more satisfied with his face inbetween her legs.”

You

“…”

Viktor

“Real men have far more enjoyment with foreplay or oral, etcetera than just boring average penetration. It is not impossible for you to cum. You have just been unlucky with men who should look into fucking men or better yet themselves.”

You

“I guess. I’m still convincing myself it’s impossible though.”

Viktor

“Tsk. Jayce is nice but he would probably not know how to satisfy a woman so I suppose you are dodging a bullet there my friend.”

You chuckle and nod in agreement.

Viktor

“Well…what about Jayce’s looks? Do you like him in that regard?”

You

“He’s far from my type in looks as-well.”

Viktor teases

“Do you prefer even more muscular men then?”

You laugh

“Absolutely not! Quite the opposite actually but i always feel huge next to them. If I found a man i actually like he’d never go for someone like me. If he wouldn’t find my body unattractive he’d probably be put off by my strength. Men are always so inscure when I’m stronger than them..”

Viktor feels a warm feeling in his chest when he hears you say “quite the opposite” in hopes he’s closer to your type. That feeling quickly fades when he hears you insult yourself.

Viktor

“You can’t possibly think that can you?!”

You

“What?”

Viktor moves his face closer to yours on the bed in annoyance. He has to make sure you actually hear his words. Take them in. Believe them. You putting yourself down like this is making his head spin.

Viktor

“One you can’t possibly think you’re big. You’re quite small. For Christ sake you’re average height. Two you do not have to be this stupid beauty standard of stick and bone to be beautiful. Three you’re far from huge. Thats never once been a thought in my mind. Four you’re strong. Very strong but any man put off by that is a weak one!”

You

“There are women smaller.”

Viktor

“And you’re still the most beautiful one of them all.”

You

“You don’t have to be nice to me Viktor. I’m just rambling nonsense.”

Viktor

“All women have their own insecurities of course but I truly mean it. I do. You are the most stunning woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. I truly mean that. I’ve always thought that. I can’t possibly understand how you could think differently.”

You

“I-“

As he was talking he didn’t notice his face had gotten so close you yours now that your his nose was brushing against your cheek. He was so mesmerized with your beauty. So taken aback that you couldn’t see what he saw that with every word he spoke he grew closer and closer to you getting lost in your beauty. He can feel your warm breath against his face. He can hear every shaky breath you take. He was unsure before if you’d ever feel for him an ounce of what he felt for you. In that moment he knew you felt something. He could tell with every fiber of his being. He didn’t care if you felt the exact same intensity for him as he did for you at least he knew you felt something for him and that was enough. All he wanted to do was to please you. Make your legs shake. To make you feel loved. To cherish you. To hold you.

You both paused for a moment. He was lost in thought of you. Before you had time to respond he placed a gentle kiss on your warm lips. To his surprise you reciprocated. You gently tugged on his shirt pulling him in for more. He had always been your type. Always been the one you wanted. What you needed. You were too afraid to ever let him know before. Worried he wouldn’t feel the same way. Most importantly even more worried to push away your best friend. Your only friend. You didn’t know if what Viktor was feeling was just lust or love. The way he was kissing you. The way he was talking to you. It couldn’t help but make you feel as though it was both. You had never felt something this intense. Not even sex made your body react this way. You never wanted it to end.

Viktor felt intoxicated and it wasn’t just from the alcohol. Viktor hovered his hand above your waist desperately wanting to feel your skin with his hands but waited for your okay. You gave him a nod in approval when you saw his hand. With your nod he places his thin fingers on your waist gently tracing them under your shirt. Viktor pulled you closer to him with each kiss until neither of you get any closer together. He couldn’t help but let out soft whimpers into your mouth and tighten his grip on your hip every time you tugged on his shirt.

Viktor pulled away from your lips for a moment. He looked at you with need.

Viktor

“Please, please, I want to make you feel good.”

You

“I- I can’t finish you know that.”

Viktor groans

“I know you can. And if you really can’t at all then I at least know I can make you feel pleasure, please.”

You don’t respond too lost in the way he’s looking up at you with desire.

Viktor traces his fingers gently from your waist down to your legs to your knees then back up again.

Viktor

“I can’t let you live your whole life without feeling pleasure.”

You

“Y-yes. Fuck, yes. Just..do whatever you want.”

Viktor leaves your skirt on. He places soft passionate kisses along your neck while undoing your pants bringing them to your knees. You help him by kicking your pants fully off having them fall to the floor. Viktor slides his hand down on top of your panties and gently traces circles over your clit.

Viktor

“Do you want me to make your pussy feel good?”

You nod in response. You can’t help but moan in excitement as he starts to move his fingers up and down your wet slit over your panties.

You wonder if you’re feeling this good because of his skill or just because it’s Viktor.

Once he can tell you’re soaked, Viktor slowly slides your panties off. Admiring your bare pussy intensely starting to drool a bit at the mouth.

Viktor

“Fuck such a pretty pussy. Can I give it a kiss? Please?”

You

“Mm yes you may.”

Viktor slides himself down on the bed until his face reaches your cunt. He lays on his stomach and presses his face down into your folds. Smothering himself in your juices. He gently traces his tongue along your clit. Gripping your thighs in place as you start to shake from pleasure. You were already feeling so much bliss you couldn’t imagine what on earth an orgasm could feel like. How could you possibly feel better than this.

Once he can tell you’re enjoying this and getting used to the feeling he slides two fingers inside slowly. Gently thrusting them back and forth. Fuck you never knew sex could feel this good. After a while you start to unconsciously buck your hips into his face. When he notices this he starts to scissor his fingers inside of your hole sticking his tongue in between his fingers rapidly licking your insides. With his other hand he gently holds two fingers to your clit. He doesn’t move them, Viktor doesn’t want to overstimulate you too much. The bucking of your hips should stimulate his fingers on your clit enough. Viktor can feel you getting closer and closer to release. His boxers are soaked with precum from the sight of you. The taste of you. The sound of you. If he was to grind into the mattress he could cum in under five minutes but he won’t. He’ll hold back. This is about your pleasure. A few more licks deep in your cunt and your gushing cum all over his face. It doesn’t matter how much you shake his face never leaves your pussy it’s like he’s glued to it. He groans as he tastes your cum. The sight of him licking up every drop is making your brain go numb.

Once he’s cleaned you up he sucks your juices off his fingers before bringing his body up in between your legs. Resting his face in the crook of your neck, holding you close.

Viktor

“Did I do alright?”

You

“You did perfect. I didn’t know I was capable of feeling that good.”

Viktor smirks and says smugly

“I knew you could cum.”

You smack his arm gently in response before wrapping your arms around his back. Holding him tightly. He feels so good like this. You’ve wanted to hold him like this for so long.

You

“Do you..want me to do anything to you?”

Viktor

“No, no. This is all I needed. Do me one favor though?”

You

“Anything.”

Viktor

“Stay here tonight. In my bed. Let me fall asleep in your arms like this. Let me call you mine tomorrow.”

You

“Call me yours?”

Viktor

“Is it not painstakingly obvious I’m in love with you? Do you not feel an ounce of the same?”

You

“I’ve felt the same for a while. I just..I just didn’t think you felt that too. Or maybe I didn’t want to believe it because it would be too good to be true.”

Viktor

“Let me keep being too good to be true. Please. Let me spoil you. As more than a friend. Be mine.”

You

“I’m yours.”

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