#but I think part of me still rots my brain very badly especially when changes happen ��

[teamdays]

im like if a lonely girl became a normal guy and escaped the loop of agony against all odds. more or less.

[bakugoushotwife]

kinktober day fifteen: brat-taming kink

>>> god bless i love him so bad...brain rot for this plot...y'all should i make this one like a series fdskjkjgjkgj i swear to god i'm feeling this way about all my fics as of late!! this one has a lot of japanese symbolism and traditions included. i am not japanese and all my research came from different sources across google, but if anything is incorrect or insensitive pls reach out and let me know <3

>>> starring: suguru geto x curvy!f!reader >>> cw: brat-taming, history/pining between reader and geto, face-fucking (m!receiving) edging (f!receiving), fingering (f!receiving), breeding, degradation/praise, pet names, creampie >>> wc: 4.6k >>> event masterlist:

he didn’t love the idea, to say the least. he understands why a marriage is necessary. it humanizes him, makes him relatable, opens the door to more preaching topics. he didn’t understand why he had to marry his fellow sorcerer and old classmate—especially one as mouthy as you. you didn’t either, forced into it by the higher ups with hopes you could bring suguru back to the right side of history, not taking your feelings into the matter at all, not that you expected them to. but you’re sure they already knew you wouldn’t be able to complete this mission—perhaps they hoped for your death at his hand.

at one point, you were friends. now, you were about to become the unwilling misses geto, though even that was more complicated than it seems. you were the third musketeer back in the day. even shoko preferred to stay out of the boys’ shenanigans, sticking to herself or utahime, not bothered in the slightest to let you chase after satoru and suguru. you were closer to the latter, finding it easy to gang up on the former together. he entertained your  wit and you let him try out new moves on you. you loved each other. that’s why it hurt so bad—still hurts to this day—that he left and turned into this. and now you’re stuck in the thick of it. 

you make him beyond angry. putting aside your utter disrespect and disobedience, you remind him of nothing but conflicting times, things he’d rather not think about now that those days were supposed to be far behind him. you hadn’t changed a bit from the day he left, and he hates that even more. you’re lively and talented, your powers long abused by the very higher ups that contributed to his madness and the ones that leveraged you into this ceremony. when he was told of your engagement, he could have refused and had them find him a new wife. he could have killed them all and refused this altogether—he’s not quite sure why he said yes. he pulls on his hakama trousers, smoothing at the pleats as he racks his brain. he slings his haori around his shoulders, and he realizes a small part of him may have always wanted to marry you; he remembers fantasies of you in high school, recalling how badly he yearned for your affection. and he hates that more than anything. 

he knows you feel similarly about him, hence all your acting up. you had been short and cold and almost satoru level snotty with him through the engagement parties and wedding planning and obligatory dinners. you have the nerve to sneer as you speak and look at him with nothing but disgust. he’s the one who should be disgusted with you. you chose to stay with gojo over him, chose that world of lies and injustice when you could have been enlightened like him from the beginning. it’s only fitting you’re his bride, really. it’s what he deserves, as retribution for your betrayal. and he would make sure to claim what was his on his wedding night. the servants come to get him as he shrugs into his montsuki with a new smug smile replacing what was a dreading frown.

you wore a red iro-uchikake. and you look like a dream he had when he was a teenager. it’s ironic really. he knows not wearing the more traditional and all white shiromuku was another one of your jabs, but the color red was more significant to him than white. it means life, it wards off all evils. perhaps you knew that too, and that’s why you chose the color, though geto remembers you wearing the deep blood color often enough through adolescence that seeing you in it again makes some of the tightness in his chest let off just a little bit, even as you avoid his eyes. 

he looked magnificent. his hair had grown longer, and you had always liked to play with it before, but now it cascades over his shoulder in waves despite the top-bun halving the thickness. you could hear your heart pound. if you were to tell the second year version of yourself that you would be sharing a wedding temple with suguru geto, you may have cried from relief and happiness. but as you get closer to him with no guests to witness this other than the priest and a handful of temple ladies, you feel the coursing energy of excitement and nerves. you aren’t sure what to expect from him now that no one will be watching. you don’t even truly know how he feels for you. he has been making attempts to earn your favor, but that was because he had a crowd. 

he takes your hand and smiles down at you like he did when you were much younger and much less conflicted over your feelings. it makes your heart flutter like it used to, and your eyes widen a bit at his gentility. the priest offers his blessings to the gods as you two stand before him, hand-in-hand. your mind races. how much of this is real? and even if he’s being genuine, does it really matter? after everything he put you through, all the things he had done, the things he wants to do, can you look past it all just to love him anyway? 

the temple servants set up the sakazuiki. they space the three ceremonial cups evenly apart, and fill them with the richest sake. san-san-kudo. you bite your lip, hating yourself for your doubt. suguru gently pulls you out of your head and towards the table, to the binding ceremony of old tradition. he picks up the first cup, holding it to his face. 

“you look beautiful, okusan.” he smirks over the cup, looking oddly satisfied with himself, like he knows something you don’t. he then sips the first cup three times, holding your eyes. you feel your body burn, looking down at the kimono you chose and back to him. his fingers lightly brush against yours as you take the cup. you feel butterflies. 

“thank you, geto-san.” you tilt your head down to indicate your grace, thoughts fuzzied by his intense stare and old feelings bubbling up your gut. you sip three times, and he picks up the next sakazuiki. he chuckles, and you swear you see a little bit of light in his deep eyes. 

“are you waiting for titles until the conclusion of the ceremony, anata?” he piles on the mulit-meaning endearment, passing you the second cup. you nearly choke on your sake. 

“no. you look very nice, uchi no hito.” you take your final sip, and it’s geto’s turn to stammer. he expected a tsureai or muko, but the one you chose had so much meaning. your home, your person. that’s what you called him. he knew the shock and wonder had to show on his face based off of your smug grin whenever you set the cup down. you think you can toy with him, pull stunts with him. you’re much too bold—and he wants to hate it, he wants to smother that personality right out of you, but for now–he’ll let himself love it. 

“this binds us through our love, wisdom, and happiness.” he says the words to bring you together officially, tying your souls together for better or worse. he sips from the final cup three times, the symbolism not lost on you, and passes it to you to do the same. 

“this binds us through our hatred, passion, and ignorance.” you look him in the eyes as you take your drinks, and his dark pink lips stretch into a wide smile. 

“and now you are mine. how lucky we are to be brought back to each other in this way.” he chums, taking the wedding rings from his pocket as the priest continues offering his prayers to the skies. you hold out your hand expectantly, and he arches a brow. 

“nine is not a lucky number, perhaps we’re cursed instead.” you shrug, that same smugness tugging at your lips. oh, you’re going to drive him crazy. you give him hope and you pull it away, you jab at him and you’re so gorgeous that he can’t even be upset with you for it. he slides the diamond encrusted with black gems down your third finger, giving you a smug smile of his own. he can play dirty too. he extends the box to you and you pluck his gold band from it, sliding it slowly down his finger. the excitement builds in your gut as you become more and more okay with whatever this is. you always thought he had a point. the jujutsu society was so horribly fucked up–maybe he was right all along and you were the coward after all. i mean, where did all your loyalty get you? sold off to a dangerous man with hopes to shut you up for good? passed around mission to mission until your body barely functioned anymore? maybe you could turn a blind eye to all his indiscretions, especially when he’s looking at you with such affection in once cold eyes. you still hold his hand in both of yours, and he enjoys the warmth, but you’ve pushed and poked him just enough, these teasing touches part of them. 

instead of a kiss to seal this union once more, he leans down to your ear. “go get changed. i like simple lingerie.” he all but purrs in your ear, sending shivers down your spine at the order. you were losing sight of yourself at a rapid pace. you had hoped to hold out longer than this. his lips tickle the shell of your ear and a soft gasp leaves you. you tell yourself to be strong.

“and if i don’t? you’d be lucky to sleep with me at all, husband.” you sneer, and again he doesn’t know what to make of you, but he’s dedicated to figuring it out. he leans up and tilts his head, analyzing the lust in your eyes and the shakiness in your hands. he laughs at you when he realizes. 

“go get changed, little pet. we’ll discuss your guilt and attitude later.” he shakes his head at you, his gaze making you feel as if you were already undressed before him. he turns, tossing that confident smirk over his shoulder again for good measure. “red is your color.” 

and then the temple girls are at your side, ready to escort their new geto-sama to her new room in the geto estate.. you allow them, trailing silently as you wonder just what he was able to figure out by looking at you, and what lingerie you would put on for him. 

you choose a red babydoll dress. the sheer plunging neckline leaves little to the imagination and the tight fit of the lace leaves even less. it fans out from your body from there, the fluffy hem stopping just below your ass. seeing yourself in the mirror, perched perfectly at the end of the bed, you smile. you imagine that qualifies as simple, though you’re sure it will still make him crazy for you. you’re embarrassed to want that, to dress yourself up and present yourself to him just as he asked. your friends would be ashamed, namely one. but as the door creaks open and you feel an icy stare raking over your body, you can’t quell your excitement. 

he hums approvingly as the door clicks shut behind him. he’s so grateful he didn’t deny this union out of his own narrow minded rage. he never thought he would see you again after you denied him the first time, but here you are, on the bed you two would soon share in his home, now branded with his last name— all wrapped up like a christmas present. 

“sugurin–” the old nickname flies off your tongue in your haste, and a fondness glosses over the devious intent in his eyes. you clear your throat and tug the sides of your dress down pathetically. “i... actually don’t know what to say.” you blink in realization, painfully aware of how alone you two are. was he still the same man you knew? 

“don’t worry, kibōchi.” he returns his own nickname, the way you squirm in your place at the sound of it wasn’t lost on him, though the name puts you at was in the same way it stirs you up. his desire returns at your doe-eyed stare, you trust him to some extent, even through your wariness. “i’ll start. you were assigned to marry me, no?” 

you nod your head, now knowing he wouldn’t hurt you, not with the fondness in which he says your name. your core tingles as he approaches you, a scarily sweet smile on his face.

“good. thank you for your honesty, anata girl.” he nods, sliding his crested black kimono off, the only proper covering of your wedding remaining on his body, for your convenience if anything. “and you’ve been such a brat because…? which is it: you’re mad at them, mad at me, or mad at yourself?” 

you furrow your brows at his words. it seemed he learned everything in just an extended look at you. “am not a brat.” you fold your arms in indignation, incidentally proving him right. he just shakes his head, chuckling again. 

“look at you. you didn’t answer my question and you’re pouting like a toddler.” he lets his gaze drift down to your body just begging for his touch. he can’t help but wonder what you’ll like and what your favorite position will be and how fertile you are and what kind of drive you’ll have, all things he never learned about you when you were just friends. you feel his scrutiny and fight through your mixed feelings to respond. 

“can’t it be a mixture of all three?” you sigh out shakily, deciding to stick to your guns even if you want him, too. 

he clicks his tongue in consideration. “i suppose. but the sorcerers of your past no longer have any influence over your life. and you should be more forgiving to yourself, even if you are being a snot.” 

you scrunch your nose up in distaste, hating how his words soothe your heart. “you conveniently left yourself out of that equation.” you fold your arms and it only pushes your chest out more. you’re impossible, and it’s hard for him not to smirk at you. you’re powerless, he knows and you know it—yet you fight anyway. it’s precious. 

“i don’t regret leaving. i did the right thing.” he says, head held high. his devotion is moving, even when he looks at you with such a mixed bag of emotions. “i missed you however. i accepted this union to see you again.” 

you can tell from his eyes that his emotion is genuine, but it still shoots pangs through your heart as you recall days spent in bed crying over his absence. you turn your head away so the influence of his obsidian stare couldn’t cut so deep. “you left me.” 

“you didn’t join me when i asked you to.” he retorts, clenching his jaw at your argumentative nature. “i came back, just for you.”

“you came back to use me.” you spit, echoing the words of your other classmates. the look in your eyes is angry, this was something you genuinely believed. that infuriates him. “you were going to leverage me, until you provoked him.” 

his jaw ticks again. “and who told you this, satoru? i would have thought you knew me best.” he sighs his disappointment, grabbing your hands. he pulls you off the bed, your knees buckling you into a stand—then he roughly grabs your cheeks to make you look at him. “or did you forget just how close we were? how deeply i loved you then, all the time we spent together? you’re the one who betrayed me. you were mine! mine, you were supposed to be mine and you stayed with him!” his voice rises just a bit with his frustration, but he drops his grip on you and steps back, “i would have done anything to take you with me. and everything…could have been the same, i would have kept you safe and away from this life. We could have had so much more time together—and you’re being so goddamn bratty now that i have you back…what am i to do with you?” 

you blink rapidly at his speech washes over you. did he really mean it, that he just wanted you to have you? you were never intended to be used as a bargaining chip, and you let everyone else warp the vision of the man you once held so dear? you shake your head violently, rejecting the idea. he rakes his hands over his face, fed up with the back and forth. “i’ve compartmentalized you out over the years. but i have you back, and i refuse to waste any more time.” 

“i’m sorry sugurin—i thought you hated me!” you defend, reaching for him. he grabs your wrists again and plants your hands on his chest, moving his touch to your face. 

“then make it up to me.” he orders with a fervent nod, his hold on your face firm but comforting. you surprise him by leaning up and closing the remaining distance to kiss him, balling up his shirt in your fists. you were absolutely insufferable, annoying, bratty, and irritating—but he could do this forever. feeling you move with such passion, vigorously pulling at him and finally giving in to all those pent up feelings was enough to prompt him to do the same.  he memorizes your taste for a while before he pulls away and directs you to your knees with his signature rough handling, though he’s still careful not to hurt you. “i want you to really make it up to me.” 

you nod eagerly and shove your hair over your shoulders while he frees his waiting ache. he can hardly stand the sight of you on your knees under him, massive cock creating a shadow over your obedient and eager face. as gorgeous as you are like this, it was too late to make up for your transgressions. you salivate at the sight of his impressive length standing proud over you, curved and so long he leans to one side with a thickness you know will make even your throat burn. your mouth parts for him immediately, slick sliding down the insides of your thighs at the idea of relieving his drooling slit. “you’re gonna have to open wider than that, okusan.” 

and he helps you do so, planting his broad callused hands firmly on each side of your face, bumping his cockhead against your puffy bottom lip and shoving himself into your silky walls. you moan out in surprise and relax your throat, making your new husband grin at the performance. He’s perhaps unintentionally violent as he sheaths to the hilt, your nose bumping against black coarse hair above his shaft. “there, there.” 

he pats your cheek patronizingly, flicking away a tear that formed. “don’t cry, kibōchi. you were made for this.” he coos affectionately, body growing hot to the touch at his vision. he knew this was a great start to teaching you your place in life, and that being a brat was not one of them. running away was not one of them, you were permanently his and he would never let you go again. he pulls your head back off with that grip to use you, plunging your throat back down on him and biting down on his lip to keep his own sounds from interrupting your gorgeous gags.

“don’t you like this so much better than acting snotty, sweet wife?” he teases only slightly, taking your teary eyes flicking up to look at him as a yes. you can feel him deep, that burning sensation that you knew would come starting to sting your vocal cords. “you take me so well, i’ve always told you sorcery wasn’t for you. this is all you need to do forever.” 

you moan at the idea, him keeping you home to take after the estate and maybe even caring for the kids you may have in the future. he chortles, pleasantly surprised by you yet again. “you think you’re clever, darling. acting all sweet now so i’ll forget all about your behavior, hm?” 

he pulls you off with a lewd pop, pushing at the wimpy straps of your dress with a satisfied hum as the fabric falls away from your chest. “too bad. get on the bed.” 

your heart raced, but you nod. your throat was too hoarse to speak anyway. you weren’t planning anything, you felt like liquid, you had given into your vows and let suguru take you mind, body, and spirit—and he hadn’t even touched you yet. you wobble up to your feet and he slaps your ass when you turn it to him, which makes you gasp and stumble forward. he hums, predatory narrow eyes watching you climb up and lay in the center of the large mattress. he wastes no time in positioning over you. he spits, thumbing his lube over your sensitivity. he pins your fluffy dress up over your stomach, lulling you into sweet moans, your high building in your stomach rapidly. he doesn’t know where to look, you’re all too perfect. the faces you make, your beautiful, slobber-soaked mouth pouting out all your pleasures, your gorgeous tits sitting so prettily in wait for him. then there was your weeping cunt, so pathetically soaked just from sucking him off. 

“su–gu-rin~” you whimper out a little, your legs trying to close around his large body mass as the feeling becomes more intense. he hums, smacking your cunt. 

“brats don’t get to cum.” he shrugs, licking and biting at the insides of your thighs to tease you further. your plush skin is so sensitive, and he loves watching the way you squirm to get away from his canines scraping your flesh. you gasp in anger, orgasm ruined the longer he refuses to touch where you need him most. 

“brat?—you’re really gonna be mean to me, uchi no hito?” you pout, and he can feel his heart pang at the insistence and the sweet way you call him yours. you’re softening his heart already. he still had the want to punish you, but the need to claim you was surely fighting back.

“then apologize for your behavior or you won’t cum at all.” he sits up a bit, tossing some hair over his shoulder. you bat your lashes at him, knowing he was hurt by your choice, just like you were hurt by his. but now there was a chance to make it right, to be together forever like you were meant to–and if you had to apologize for your doubts in him, you would sing them loudly. 

“oh—sugurin, i’m sorry! i really am,” his fingers squeeze and toy with your clit, making your body jump as you try to stutter through your words. “just mi-missed you, that’s all, was mean because i missed y-you!” you writhe and wiggle closer and away from his touch simultaneously, and he hums happily at your speech. 

“that’s better.” he hums approvingly, pushing your legs up to your chest. he wants you to feel this as much and as deeply as possible. “such a good girl, did i tell you how beautiful you look okusan?” 

you nod, feeling the well of nerves heating up in your core, his hands resting on your knees as he looks over the disheveled lingerie. “told me at the wedding…” you sniffle, wiggling your hips for his attention again. 

“i see.” he frowns, as if disappointed by your answer. his hands feel your thighs and trail back to your knees, getting his hands closer and closer to where you needed him most with each pass. you whine desperately, and he hums out in fake curiosity, “what is it, darling?” 

“need you to touch me—please.” you squirm, giving him those irresistible doe-eyes. he planned to make you beg much harder than that, but you had him worked all the way up, your body, behavior, and the history between you was setting him on fire. 

“oh i’ll make you cum, kibōchi.” he moves his grip to the backs of your thighs as he moves his hips forward. you try to prepare yourself but it’s no use, he plunges in without any hesitation or resistance on your part. it aches, you clench down at the spread and his thumb comes back to your clit to rub the pain away. “but you can only do it on my dick. got it?” 

you nod slowly and his hips set a pace. he’s so deep you can barely believe he’s allowed to fuck you like this, the pain melting away to a dull pleasure, different from earlier. his gaze is still white hot and searing, devouring every inch of your body. “you really are so beautiful, sweet okusan. my kibōchi turned perfect cocksleeve, yeah?” he growls into the space between you, his fingers digging into the fat of your skin so hard you know he’ll leave his mark.

that draws a moan out of you, loving the idea of being nothing more than a wife, his partner, something you never thought you’d be once you parted ways. the feeling of him rocking into your body is addicting, and now you know you are capable of looking past anything he’s done or will do just to love him anyway. you would throw all your morals away just for this, and he knows that too. “my pretty little okusan, trying so hard to pretend she didn’t want me. now look, the prettiest you’ve ever been bouncing on me.” 

he leans over your body, deepening his angle and allowing him to pick up his speed. he watches the way your tits bounce at this pace, your eyes rolling back a little as you’re rendered unable to speak again, only lewd smacks of his balls against your ass and his feral grunts to be heard. his hand finds your throat, and his mouth drops open in response to your sweet moans and impossible beauty. you are perfect. he knew you would be, but your pussy was his personal kryptonite. “you feel so good, anata girl. you look even better, stuffed to the brim.” 

he smiles at the double meaning. you are his darling girl, but you are also his exasperating brat. god, he always knew what to say. your jaw falls, gripping his forearms to warn him that you were close. “please—need to cum!”

 he hums, nodding his approval, “then cum, okusan.” he commands, deep voice booming. his spine tingles at the idea of you taking your first round of his seed. his hair falls so angelically around his angular features when you open your eyes, it’s the final push over the edge. you choke out a moan, and then your nails are scraping at his biceps, his shoulders and chest, whatever you can get your hands on, and your release is rushing over his dick seconds later. 

“are you on birth control?” he groans, feeling his cock twitch in between your wet walls. you shake your head, chest heaving deliciously. “good, let’s see how fertile you are.” 

your eyes cross at his statement and his balls feel so heavy, squeezing tight and spurting out their contents against your womb. your head digs into the pillow and his falls back at the feeling of being so full and warm. he keeps his hips rocking, making you gasp with every stroke as he shoves his deposit deeper. You’re both panting when you look at each other, years of unspoken yearning and love being communicated between you. there’s a lot to catch up on, and a lot to relearn about one another, but one thing is certain: this marriage was fated, and not arranged. 

[desireness]

Wants & Needs [Sasha x f!reader] 16+

-cw: au, praising, oral sex, thigh riding, fingering, wlw, slight choking, dom! reader, sub! sasha

sneak peak: You’ve had attraction for your friend Sasha for a very long time. What will happen when she calls, begging you to hangout? Especially when she confesses that she’s been so horny lately..

notes: Been having sasha brain rot recently so here’s this. Sasha is just *chefs kiss*. Enjoy.

You open your eyes to the sound of your ringtone going off on your phone. You search around for your phone on your bedside table without even looking, too tired to bother. You briefly look at your phone’s screen to check who’s calling you.

“Sasha, what the fuck do you want?” you ask annoyed.

“Were you already sleeping? what are you? a fucking grandma?” she snorts.

“yea, i’m hanging up”

“NO WAIT”

Sasha goes on to talk about how she’s sorry for waking you up and babbles about other irrelevant things. She could be so annoying sometimes but you love that about her.

“Okay, why did you actually call?” you ask rubbing the tiredness away from your eyes.

“i’m bored... and hungry. Please bring food and come hangout with me” she whines over the phone.

You hesitate at first, wanting to sleep more but also not wanting to let her down. Plus, you forgot to eat dinner before bed anyways so why not?

“Fuck it, fine. You owe me though.” You say before hanging up.

You sigh, throwing your phone on the bed. You get out of your bed, quickly missing the warmth and comfort it provided. A chill washes over your skin as you’re exposed to the cold air of your room. You go to put on a warm hoodie and decide to keep your comfy sweatpants on. You quickly grab your car keys and your phone, taking one last glance in the mirror before heading towards the parking lot of your apartment complex. Your hair was messy and disheveled, but you could care less. You were just going to see Sasha anyways.

On your way to her apartment, you stop at Sasha’s favorite fast food restaurant to get dinner for you both. The drive there was short, only about ten minutes. As you arrived you texted her, “here.”

She didn’t reply, which was quite strange. She’s usually fast at replying, especially when there is food involved. As you reach her apartment door, you type in the passcode and walk right in like you normally do. You walked into the kitchen and set the bag of food on the counter.

“Sasha?” you called out. No answer.

You walk towards her bedroom, opening the door that was already cracked open. There she was, cuddled up in her blankets, sleeping. “For fuck’s sake.” You said under your breath.

Sasha looks so pretty with her hair down and sprawled out on her pillow. You had always noticed how attractive she was. Sometimes staring a little too long at her face or especially, her lips. Her skin is so gorgeous and bright. You often find your touches on her skin lingering too long or your eyes wandering over her body whenever she changed in front of you. She was perfect and it often made your head so full of her. Wondering was it was like to touch her, kiss her, taste her, pleasure her.

You realized these actions weren’t normal for regular friends, you’ve known that for awhile so you never acted on them in fear that she might push you away. Plus, it’s not like you’ve ever really had the chance, she’s always been with some guy. They were all trash and the relationship often didn’t last long but still, it frustrated you. She deserves better, no, the best. You’ve heard all of her sex stories and how they never seem to truly satisfy her. You knew you could be the one to do that for her, make her feel so good. Sometimes you day dream about filling her up with your fingers and having her scream your name. You get wet just thinking about it. If only you had the chance.

You move some hair out of her sleepy face, admiring her for a few more seconds before softly shaking her awake. “Sash, wake up I brought food.” You say sweetly.

Sasha’s eyes flutter open and she sits up, yawning and stretching.

“Ahh shit, sorry for falling asleep. Thanks for coming.” She softly smiles at you making you flash a smile back. " ‘s ok”

You’re sitting in front of her, watching her grab her phone and look at the time. 12:23 A.M. She’s wearing an oversized t-shirt, exposing her plush thighs to you. You rub your thighs together to help ease the tension. You could tell she wasn’t wearing a bra and probably wearing some cute lace panties as well. It’s driving you crazy, you want to feel her so badly.

Sasha lays back on her bed with a groan. You ask her what’s wrong and she replies “i’ve been so fucking horny lately and nico’s been busy so I can’t even call him up. It’s so annoying.” She sighs. This only made you crave her more, trying so hard to push your desires away. “Maybe I should buy a new vibrator or something to keep me company.” She laughs. You smiled but didn’t think it was funny. She didn’t need a vibrator or anything else. What she needed was you.

“Anyways, where’s the food?” She asks eagerly.

“In the kitchen...” You trail off looking at the small bit of drool placed on the corner of her mouth. You take your thumb and wipe it away, your touch lingering a little too long on her lips. All Sasha did was giggle.

Before Sasha could say anything, you place your lips on hers, holding her chin between your thumb and your pointer. You kiss her softly, afraid to scare her off by being too aggressive at first. Sasha’s eyes are wide open, slowly processing the scene before her. You continue to move your lips against hers but you quickly realize she isn’t doing the same. You take this as a hint that she is uncomfortable, parting away from her lips. Not even a second after you broke the kiss, Sasha leaned back in to put her lips on yours. Her hands are on both sides of your cheeks, cupping your face.

Your lips move in synch with hers, relishing in each other’s taste. You want to memorize what she tastes like, you aren’t in any hurry. Your mind is fuzzy as you run your tongue against her bottom lip, asking for entrance. She quickly abides slightly opening up her mouth so your tongue could slide in. Your tongues intertwine, pulling a sweet moan from her mouth into yours. Your cunt clenches in response. It’s your first time hearing her pretty voice like that, all whiny and submissive. It was all because of you. You briefly came back to your senses, pulling away from her lips.

She is slightly panting, lips glossy from the kiss. She looks so sensual right now. “What about niccolo?” you say, slightly averting your eyes so your not tempted to throw her on the bed and fuck her right there, not caring about her feelings. “We’re not exclusive or anything.” She grabs the hem of your shirt, nervously playing with it between her fingers. “So don’t stop, please.” She’s blushing, eyes meeting yours. That’s all you needed to hear from her, a sign that she wants you to keep making her feel good.

You take no time reattaching your lips with hers, placing your hands on her waist to pull her onto your lap. You take your time to pepper sweet kisses from her lips to her jaw then to her neck. Taking the skin of her neck between your teeth while she hisses at the sting, gripping your shoulders roughly. You use the pad of your tongue to ease the sting, tasting her skin. It wasn’t hard for you to find her sweet spot. You suck and kiss her skin, making her an aroused mess on top of your lap. You creep your hands underneath her shirt, feeling the sides of her waist and ribs, while just brushing against the underside of her breasts. You can tell she’s getting impatient from the way she’s letting out small desperate gasps at your touches. You like seeing what a mess she is for you. You can feel the goosebumps on her skin as you feel around underneath her shirt. You give her jaw one last kiss before you pull away to grab ahold of the hem of her shirt. You shoot her a glance of permission and she quickly nods.

One you slide the shirt up and over, her breasts bounce down on full display for you to see. You can only mutter “fuck” at the sight before you. You had seen Sasha barely clothed before but never like this. You’ve never seen this sight knowing you had full control over it. Your eyes wander over her body being completely topless, only some cute lace underwear covering her cunt. “You’re so gorgeous, baby.” you say grasping her breasts in your hands. Sasha moans in response, loving the way you praise her.

You eagerly attach your mouth to her breast, finding the nipple with ease. She immediately whines at the contact. You suck on one breast and palm at the other, making her fingers intertwine with your hair and slightly tug on it when you nip and roll at her nipples. Her breasts are the prettiest you’ve ever seen. Perfectly round and perky, god she’s amazing. You feel her start to grind on top of you, trying to relieve the growing ache between her legs. That only makes you want her more.

“Ride my thigh, baby.” You whisper in her ear, sending shivers down her spine. You grasp her ass and her hips with your hands and guide her body over yours. Helping her ride you while your face is buried in her tits. She gasps at the sudden contact, burying her face into your neck. Her breasts practically bounce in your mouth as she moves back and forth. She nibbles and bites on your neck, trying to handle the overall pleasure of it all. You can tell she’s getting close by the way she’s whining in your ear, hands grasping your shoulders tightly.

All of a sudden you grab her hips harshly, stopping her from making anymore movement. She whimpers at the loss of contact, making you smile as you leave a sweet kiss on her shoulder. You look up at her, grasping her jaw and giving her a light kiss. Your fingers find her wet clothed cunt, making her gasp into your mouth. She whines loudly as soon as your fingers start to circle her clit. You moan in response into her mouth, lapping your tongues sloppily.

She lets out a desperate muffled, “please” into your neck. “Please what? hmm?” you purr bringing her face to look at yours. Her face is a flushed mess and her lips are slightly swollen, making you feel proud of yourself knowing you caused it. Sasha grabs your your other hand that is on her ass and places it near her cunt. “Your fingers, need them so bad.” She pleas. You hum in response, bringing your fingers up to your lips, not hers. You want her to watch you make them wet, so that it’s engraved her mind. You swirl your tongue around your fingers, making wet and sloppy sounds. Sasha watches eagerly, letting out a needy moan. You remove your fingers, leaving a string of saliva connecting from your mouth to your fingers.

Sasha stands up, removes her panties, and sits her pretty ass right back on your lap. You move your fingers down to her folds and softly run through them. Sasha let’s out a small gasp as your fingers reach down to find her slit, teasing the entrance. “Shit, you’re so wet. All this for me?” She nods in agreement with a breathy moan.

You insert your two fingers inside her, painfully slow. She clenches down hard and squeezes her eyes shut. You want her to feel every part of your fingers, want her to remember this feeling. “Feels so good inside me.” She says sweetly, making you pump your fingers inside her just to hear more of her sweet voice. She rides your fingers as you pump them into her at the same time. She throws her head back in pleasure, giving you perfect access to her neck. She cries out your name as you kiss and suck on her sweet spot while filling her up. You grip her ass hard, helping her move up and down on your now soaked fingers. Her walls are so squishy and wet, making you fuck her with your fingers ruthlessly. She repeatedly lets out loud high pitched moans. You’re soaked at this point, all aroused because of her pleasure.

“Am close, you’re filling me up so good!” She cries out. Her words go straight to your cunt and you increase the speed of your fingers, using your thumb to circle her clit at the same time. The erotic sounds of her wetness and her moans fill the room, leaving you so satisfied. Her tits are flying up and down as she rides you faster and you take a mental screenshot to remember this sight forever. “Who’s making you feel good hm? Who’s the one that’s pleasuring you the way no one ever has?” You groan. Your free hand finds it’s place around her neck, squeezing ever so slightly. “You are! It’s all you!” She sobs. The coil in her stomach has reached it’s max and is ready to snap. “Fuck, good girl.” You grunt grabbing her jaw and pulling it forward so your faces are inches away. “Now come for me, pretty.” And she does, practically screaming your name as she cums around your fingers.

She collapses onto your shoulder, panting into your neck. You rub soft circles on her clit to help her come down from her high. You pull your fingers out gently and place them in your mouth to clean them off. She tastes so sweet and saccharine, you can’t help but want to clean her off with your tongue. You whisper sweet praises to her, telling her how amazing she did. She nuzzles into your neck, leaving soft kisses as a thank you.

She hops off of your lap, laying down on the bed. You take no time to pull your sweatpants and panties down. You are so wet, you couldn’t just leave yourself like this. Sasha stares at the ceiling, unaware of your actions until you climb on top of her, cunt hovering over her breasts. She lifts her head up slightly with a confused expression on her face but blushes at the sight of your bare and soaked count. You slightly drag you cunt over her breasts as you grab the back of her head and say “Remember how you said you were hungry? Now eat.”

You practically shove her face into your pussy and she complies. Kissing and kitten-licking your folds at first, making you satisfyingly sigh. She grabs onto the back of your thighs, pushing you closer. You’re basically sitting on her face now. She finally starts to lap her tongue on your clit, making you grip her hair hard. You let out a series of satisfied, loud moans making Sasha whine into your cunt. You praise her for her good work. “such a good girl for me, gonna make me cum, baby?” She pulls away to nod at you before placing her tongue on your pussy again.

She sucks on your clit repeatedly, making your hips slowly ride her face. You do your best not to crush her face in the process. Her tongue feels so good and you love having this power of her. You love quite literally sitting on her face while she submits to all of your requests. She slips her tongue into your dripping hole, making you groan as your throw your head back. You continue riding her face as the room fills with wet sounds from her tongue slipping in and out of you.

It all starts to become too much for you, making your legs twitch and shake. Sasha pulls away for a second. “Want you to cum” She pleas looking up at you, teasing your clit with her tongue. She looks so cute with her begging eyes. You hum in response, grabbing the back of her head. “Since you’ve been very compliant, i’ll allow it.” You stroke the side of her mouth before entering two of your fingers inside. You collect her saliva and your own juices with your fingers, making her pleasantly sigh in response. You bring your fingers out of her mouth and place them on your tongue. “Make mommy cum.”

You shove her face right back where it belongs, earning a gasp from her. She flicks her tongue on your clit at a rapid speed which makes you a moaning mess. You moan over and over again as her tongue reaches all the right places. Her tongue switches between your hole and clit, making you see stars. Your legs start to shake and your breathe picks up. You can feel yourself about to cum by the way your stomach and pussy tingles, sending you into pure euphoria. Sasha focuses on your clit, flicking her tongue ruthlessly to help your reach your high. Your orgasm washed over you with a loud high pitched moan, making your mouth into a perfect O shape. You cum all over Sasha’s face.

She circles your clit with her tongue to help you come down from your high, cleaning all of your release off your pussy and thighs with her tongue. You come back to your senses and remove yourself from her grasp. You both lay there for a couple of minutes, processing everything that just occurred. You couldn’t help but smile, knowing that you just fucked Sasha better than anyone else ever has. All Sasha could say was “wow” and giggle. You laughed along with her, pushing her hair out of her face.

All of a sudden, Sasha’s phone rings. You grab it, seeing Niccolo’s name on the screen and hand it to her. You can slightly hear Niccolo tell her he’s free tonight if she wants. You kiss her shoulder sweetly, waiting for her response. “I’ll pass, i’m pretty content at the moment.” She smiles at you and hangs up on him.

She gives you a quick peck before heading off towards the kitchen. She looks back at you with a cute smile before leaving the room. “Thanks for two meals tonight, by the way.”

[norestwithoutlove]

Hi, I just finished reading to build a home (quite literally just then) and it was one of the best stories I’ve ever read. everything was so cohesive and beautifully done and has inspired me to do some writing of my own. How did you manage to keep track of minor details and plots throughout the book continuity wise, with such a large word count, thats something most authours cant do and it made it feel so much more personal and immersive. this fic was a wild ride, sorry if this sounds weird btw i dont usually do this.

Hey !! sorry this one took me a while to reply to ! thanks so much for this message it made me beam - i’m glad the fic made you want to use your own voice as well! writing is such a balm especially in times like these, so i hope you’re loving it.

holy shit i’ve just gone over this and this is a LONG answer so i’m very sorry for the essay in advance. regarding continuity and minor details:

from like very early days (essentially day one of writing) i had a very clear vision of where i wanted the fic to go, and what the major plot points were (the night of the fight aged 18 and everything which caused it, even that it would take place on the roof, sam’s overdose happening in the middle of dean’s drunk love confession, the chapter 59 love confession which leads to them FINALLY getting together happening in front of the fire and cas giving dean his poetry book, the dedication saying ‘to dean, i still do, and always will’. all of that was just sitting rotting all other thoughts in my mind and so i had to type it all out at the bottom of the word document to get it down and make sure i didn’t forget. here’s an excerpt of that very early days plan (the scene where dean comes out to sam in the hospital!!! one of my absolute favourites):

other things came later, like the wedding + concussion scene, and the scene where dean waits out in the treehouse all night, which honestly was SO cruel of me and really added to the tragedy of the chapter 38, 40, 42 arc. but yeah as with the above they sat in my brain just waiting for me to reach the appropriate part of the fic to type them up from VERY early days of the fic. opinions on this vary but i don’t like typing out the scenes that i really want to type out if i haven’t actually reached them in the fic’s construction, (does that make sense?  i’ve phrased it badly) because knowing i’m gonna get to write those scenes is what motivates me to actually write the scenes inbetween. i should probably switch this up a bit as everyone advises against this form of writing but also yeah changing routine is effort.

other things plotted in the fic came about in light of the events of the show. mary wasn’t originally gonna be such a distant mother but, as spn pushed that narrative of distance and withdrawal, i thought it would be weird for readers to read a fic which pushed the deified mary mother figure like early seasons spn. especially weird for the readers to read a deified mary fic when the mary they were watching on screen seemed to differ so drastically from the one in the story. so the mary-dean relationship (which was fortunately pretty ambiguous and stilted because of dean’s grief-brain in early chapters) had to change in tbah into the really complicated entity it became. honestly the formulation of that relationship is one of the things i was most proud of in the fic because it was so thorny and hard and felt tragically real for that reason. 

other things the progression of the show impacted: dean’s relationship with jack. obviously he couldnt be a nephilim in the tbah universe(!) so i had to consider another angle which would stilt his relationship with dean in the fic. considering the fact that in the show dean’s aversion to him came from a knot of grief, anger and dean’s own upbringing, i transplanted that idea onto the fic and said okay, but here it’s not about cas, it’s about john. dean untangles much of his own trauma with john through his relationship with jack in the symbols of his father he can find in his life: driving, fishing, and building. but also in the symbols of jimmy: cooking, talking, teaching. dean gets to choose between being a john or a jimmy to his son, but the question isn’t so simple, because people aren’t just symbols, and actually dean ends up being a dean to jack, which is perfect.

weirdly, i also think music helped with continuity. i had a few songs in my head at the beginning of the fic and they became like thematic seeds which could grow and make threads to be picked up throughout. i’d listen to these as i wrote, especially as i wrote the scenes i deemed the most significant. same thing with literature.

also thinking about the fic just became really comforting to me ! so i’d play major plot points in my head like a movie before i went to sleep, which meant by the time i got to writing them they’d had a lot of time to develop and pick up earlier themes of the fic. essentially all of the fic was written in light of the future of the fic, which really helped continuity and direction but also the weird tangled traumatised nature of time in the story. this figuring of time became really important because i think tangled traumatised time is essentially just the reality of grief-time. 

subconsciously i’m sure a lot of stuff bled through which was unintentional, the framing of events which repeat location (dean waiting in the treehouse all night as a teenager to say goodbye to cas before he leaves for university vs dean and cas going to the treehouse as adults and finding teens there who are saying goodbye to each other before leaving for university. confession 3 takes place a literal 10 years after confession 1. confession 1 comes from cas and happens on the roof just before he leaves for the uk, confession 2 comes from dean and happens drunken in the living room after dean has had an intense and ambiguous conversation/fight with his mother, confession 3 happens in the living room after dean has come out to his mother, confession 4 happens on the roof as castiel returns from the uk and repairing every sense of the rift confession 1 caused because this last confession ends in their engagement.)

once i realised this was happening i went back and combed through those scenes for lines to be repeated. an easy example of this is chapter 38//chapter 59. here’s a scene from chapter 38 as they enter the big white house:

and here’s them entering the house in chapter 59: 

i think it’s about trauma and repetition (freud has a theory about this, see Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through) in that we return to sites of trauma; trauma is reiterated in memory and in the material, but in every reiteration, we grow and heal and understand the trauma and ourselves better. it’s like an upward spiral: the first confession goes so badly, the second goes better but not good, the third good, the fourth goes wonderfully (dean’s narrative frames it as paradise: “maybe this is the sound of the trumpets on the other side”). so yeah, part of the ‘continuity’ of tbah is just a traumatised cycle of reiteration, and i say this in the nicest possible way, because these cycles of repetition are how we heal. deep down, i think that’s what the fic is all about.

tl;dr: i had a scrawl of a plan at the bottom of the word document i wrote tbah on, i thought about it a lot because it made me happy, i had a pretty clear vision of where things were going from the very opening chapter, and i was a very gay english lit student.

anyway thanks for the ask lovely i am SO sorry it resulted in the borderline novel of an answer.

[valehirvas]

Speaking of art and being that I am very talkative today,

I shared my teenage trauma with a couple friends last night. Specifically the one where I was 15, and my friends online sat me down to watch the leaked Dnepropetrovsk maniacs murder video. Mid-retelling the story and how it led to my real gore phase where I spent the majority of my online time hanging out on websites dedicated to dead bodies and liveleaks of murders and accidents and deaths and torture, populated primarily by necrophiliacs which I didn’t understand at the time, I realised that was all retraumatization.

It’s always fascinated me how that video triggered that phase in me. I always wondered why, because it’s left me so fucked up for a lifetime seeing that shit. I just couldn’t stop. I kept going back. And it took me thirteen years to figure out that I was trying to regain control by repeating the exposure, I was trying to make sense of the trauma I’d been inflicted by desensitizing myself to the images and videos of extreme and often perverted violence.

I wonder how big part of who I grew up to be as an adult is a result of this exposure. My fascination with bones? The strange relief and sense of control I get from painting wounds, both on the canvas and on my skin? What about my fondness of scars and imperfections? The way I feel in control when I cut myself? The way I perceive vulnerability to violence and injury, illness and death attractive, not in a sexual sense but in the emotional, the way a creature or a character can captivate me by dying, being gutted, rotting away? The way the more decomposed and rotted a monster is, the more I will love her? The stillness and quiet I feel when I clean skulls and pick apart carcasses I find outdoors?

After this realisation I desperately want to know which parts of me were created from that one video I saw when I was young. I want to know how much it changed me. I want to know how much it changed me to learn the entire process of human decomposition and what men do to bodies when they’re alone and amongst each other, and knowing intimately that all of this is shared on websites that a 15 years old can access - and not only access, but frequent.

Thirteen years and I still get that feeling that I want to go back. I want to take a look because I’m curious because it gives me a sense of control and calm. I’m not curious anymore. I had my curiosity sated when I was a child. There’s nothing left to know. I just want to see more, seek it out on purpose. I haven’t been to the sites since I was 19, because around that age I’d figured out how badly it was battering my brain to see that over and over and over again. People aren’t meant to watch each other torn apart and decompose. Especially not teenagers. I don’t have the composure of a homicide detective and I never will. I can’t stomach the evil that people are capable of. I saw an uncensored photo of a murdered little girl on this fucking website of all places a few weeks ago. I couldn’t move or breathe for a while. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I couldn’t get it off my eyes even if I closed them. I couldn’t stop seeing it no matter how far I scrolled. I’ve seen too many, but it’s been so long it hit me in right in the trauma to see that again. I don’t want to see another. But I want to have control. Some part of me just wants to have control. It fascinates me the same way the thought of letting my body fall forwards off a rooftop does. I want to feel the fall. The sheer fucking desperation of having no way out.

I’ve never really talked about it anywhere, or to anyone. It’s a “fun fact” about me. “Hey, I used to visit sites that had pictures of murdered people on them”. Ha ha. It’s shocking so it’s funny, right? It has to be funny. I was 15 and a boy of 18 showed it to me. When it comes up how dangerous the Internet is to a young person, I tend to conveniently forget about this experience and state that I never saw or went through anything particularly bad when I was a kid online. After all, I sought this shit out - after the initial exposure - and nobody was holding me at gunpoint to watch it. So that was my own choice, right? I think of the men who hacked into my MSN Messenger and masturbated on webcams, and how I thought it was hilarious, and how I never felt threatened by it. So I say it wasn’t that bad. I was a smart girl, after all, I was in control of the situation. I let them put on a show until they started demanding I talk dirty to them, at which point I’d disconnect and block them. I liked to think I was in control.

I don’t think I was ever in control. I was a fucking child.

[mozambique-and-a-dream]

So I Wrote An Essay about Pathfinder for a University Class

I’m in a creative non-fiction writing class and our essay topic was “a person who has impacted your life” and me being a smart ass not only asked my prof if I could do someone fictional but a robot as well. Here are the results.

I don’t know what it is about happy robots with sad backstories. They always seem to find a way to captivate my attention. I’m always finding a way to obsess over these funky little robots in one way or another. Take the Mars rover, Oppy. Its last transmission was along the lines of, “my batteries are low and it’s getting dark.” I read that and cried. I’m not talking a tear or two. I was straight up bawling. So, when I ran into a video game which featured one of these robots with a sad backstory, I decided that I needed to invest literal weeks of my life into this game. Pathfinder is a robot on a simple mission. Find his creator. A task that sounds so seemingly simple, but keeps proving very hard for a robot as naive as Pathfinder.

While playing the game, seeing an enemy playing as Pathfinder is a terrifying experience, however, the character himself is perhaps one of the cutest things to ever be seen in a video game. Despite participating in a literal bloodsport in order to become famous enough that his creator will reach out, the tall, lanky blue robot is the definition of a ball of sunshine. Whether he is telling his teammates that he loves them in almost all of his lines, to trying or giving high fives to people he is just about to murder, the robot doesn’t really have a sense for what a bloodsport is. On the other hand, perhaps he is well aware of what the dire circumstances are of the games he plays for money and fame and still uses this chipper personality to keep the others happy as well. Either way, it’s clear that being around Pathfinder will always put a smile on your face, even if he doesn’t have a face himself. Technically he has a screen on his chest that is capable of displaying different emoticons that change based on his mood, and this furthers the idea of him as a happy individual. By having a smiley face on his chest ninety percent of the time, only switching to a red angry face when he battles, it’s clear that the robot is capable of expressing  different human emotions almost as good as we are. It’s always really interesting to see a character with such a sad backstory being so optimistic about life, as it is not a trope that is seen often in any form of media, as these characters are usually written as depressed and cold to anyone around them. Pathfinder booted up one day with not a single living soul in sight and decided to set out to find who created him. Now, being a robot rather than a human, in his search, Pathfinder found his niaevity used against him. Humans would lie and take advantage of his willingness to help in exchange for answers and have him do all the work for nothing. However, even after constantly getting used, Pathfinder is still a character who chooses to be bright, happy, and optimistic in everything he does rather than form a hatred for mankind. Because of this happy personality that I needed so badly in my life, I decided that I needed to play as Pathfinder more often. Hearing a positive voice talking to me I found has started putting me in better moods, something much needed when you are a university student with six essays due all the time. 

Video games have always been a way for me to destress, however a while back I started realizing that even those were making me feel worse rather than better as I was too focused on wanting to do well in the game that I would begin to get frustrated when I lost. Because I knew these feelings would not benefit me in any way, and my interest in video games, which had once been one of my best strategies for relieving stress and anxiety, started to fade, leaving me only with my unhealthy coping habits. However, once this game came out, I was instantly drawn in by the diverse cast of characters. Any game that has cannon LGBT+ characters is enough for me to want to give it a try. This one just had the added perk of having a happy robot character as well. The more I began to play with Pathfinder as my character the more I started realizing he had started reshaping how I played video games. Instead of becoming frustrated or angry when a game didn’t go the way I wanted it to, Pathfinder was always there to remind me how much fun he was having, thus making me realize once again that these video games were indeed, just games. My frustrations in video games had soon gone back down and once again I was at a point where they were a stress reliever rather than an inducer. 

After a few months of playing the game I began to realize that not only was this robot helping me while I played games, but that I had started to pick up some of his mannerisms. From calling every person I met my friend to offering high fives all the time, it was clear to me that Pathfinder had begun to impact more parts of my life. Because of this, I had even started making more friends as I played the video game more and more. If you would have told me a couple of months ago that I would meet some of my best friends while playing a video game that I only played because I liked the robot character, I would have laughed in your face. Now however, I play this game with three other people who mean the world to me. Like me, they were drawn into the game by the diversity of the characters, as the game has both a canon gay character as well as a canon non-binary character, leaving the four of us with a rather unlikely gaming squad. The gaming community is made up of mostly cishet males, so seeing just one of our squad mates playing a video game is already defying gaming standards, as we are a Canadian lesbian, an American bisexual, a Swedish trans man, and a German non-binary person. When the four of us group together, though, everything just seems to click. It no longer feels like we don’t belong in the gaming community as we have created our own community. A community I never would have found if I didn’t have an obsession with happy robots with sad backstories. 

Even though the four of us don’t live anywhere remotely close to one another, friends that you know only through the power of the internet are friends nonetheless. In the past few months I’ve had my gaming friends ask me more about my mental health than my friends who I’ve known for years, even though we hardly even know what each other looks like. Sure we’ve all sent the odd selfie but still I have a better idea of what their pets look like then what they do. However there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t need to see someone’s face in order to know that they are my friends, not when I can hear the tone in their voices that can show their emotions. From a concerned voice telling another to go to bed as we are all in different timezones, to playful jabs at one another about the events that go on in the game. None of us even call each other by our real names! Not that we don’t know each other’s real names, that would be weird if we didn’t, but after calling all of them by their usernames since we first started playing if I were to call Biff, Axel or DrowZ, Lynkoln, it just doesn’t sound right. One of them were to call me Renee instead of Fire, I would be genuinely concerned and wonder what I did to piss them off, almost like that feeling you get when your mom calls you by your full name, you know you did something wrong. But so far, the only things these friends have done wrong is occasionally getting me killed in our video game, or stealing loot from my kills, thank you very much Wolfy.

Getting to know people from all around the world is also a fun experience I wouldn’t have gotten if it weren’t for this video game. Just the other day we spent a few minutes trying to explain to our Swedish friend what a tonsil was as he didn’t know the word for it in English, which resulted in a lot of laughter from all ends. Our obsession of the video game goes well with each other and makes it so we all have someone to talk about our thoughts on the game as well as the characters. From sharing different ideas we think the characters would do and how they would interact with each other to thirsting over the attractiveness of others, even though if these characters were real none of us would stand a chance with any of them, especially the one they all seem to have a very strong interest in despite how terrifying he would be in real life, the four of us do things that all friend groups would do. Our group chat is full of memes, we discuss how school is going, the people in real life we are interested in, and so on. A lot of people have tried to tell me in the past that people you meet online can’t be your friends but I beg to differ. Even though all of us are all poor and couldn’t afford one plane ticket between the four of us, we know we don’t need to be in the same room to hangout. Especially when just being in a voice chat with them makes it feel like they are here with me and that I’ve known them for longer than the span of a couple months. 

It’s crazy to think that something positive came out of my video game obsession. I know my mom can’t believe that I’ve gotten more out of video games than a rotted brain and sore eyes. It’s even weirder to think that it all stemmed from a fictional robot, a robot that I now can say has actually changed my life, for without him I would be missing three of my best friends. If I never would have found an interest in this video game it’s safe to say I still would not be playing any games and instead watching Netflix alone on my couch rather than spending time with my new friends. I would only have my mom left encouraging me to attend class every day but only really because she helped pay for them and not three other people yelling at me to stop playing games with them to go write an essay about the robot from the video game we were playing, even if I was doing really good this morning. Hell, without this fictional robot in my life I would probably be writing some boring essay about a real life person, who we all know are less exciting than fictional ones. Because of this I think it’s really important to take stock of not only the real people in your life but the fictional ones, as they can be just as, if not more, inspiring than someone who is really out there. We don’t often think about characters as having a way to affect our lives, but as shown by Pathfinder, my life has become a whole lot happier because of this funky little robot.

[binsofchaos]

‘I Believe in Love’: Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Final Year, In Her Own Words

Introduction by Garance Franke-Ruta. Jump to the start of Elizabeth Wurtzel’s essay here.

The late Elizabeth Wurtzel was best known for her memoirs and essays, especially Prozac Nation and Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, but after attending Yale Law School in her late 30s she also enjoyed having a voice in the political arena. She was as much an original there as everywhere else, and between 2010 and 2012 she wrote a series of pieces for me at The Atlantic.

A feminist and a New Yorker who had really lived, she looked at the world in a different way from all the boys on the bus in Washington. And she was funny. She would send long text messages written on her smartphone while she was walking through Washington Square Park, an emissary from a more vivid and creative world than the boxy K Street buildings I would pass en route to my office in the Watergate. Sometimes her stories would come in like that too, texted in graf by graf, and I’d knit the passages together in what seemed like the right order and ask for some connective language. The thoughts were always razor-sharp; the understanding of human nature acute.

Over time our editing relationship moved into a long-distance friendship. We met for dinner at a restaurant in Chelsea, outside of course so her dog could be nestled at her feet. She had somehow managed to find a lipstick with my name on it — Guerlain’s Garance — and purchased us two tubes encased in elegant silver that sat heavy in the hand. She wore hers to dinner, and when I went to the restroom, I changed my color too, making us lipstick twins. It was how she was and in many ways the secret to her success: In addition to being wildly talented, she overcompensated for being so difficult and never totally in control by being astonishingly thoughtful, and kind, and, well, seductive. She was a seductive personality; hard not to love even as she could be hard to be close to.

When I started working at GEN this fall and living in New York full time, I reached out to her. “I’m in remission!” she’d said brightly when we first reconnected, three years after last seeing each other and nearly five years after she first learned she had the BRCA gene and breast cancer. We drank red wine on her balcony overlooking a giant earthen pit in the ground: The future NY offices of Netflix. We went to dinner at Il Buco on Bond Street (her suggestion); I could feel she was lonely. She and her husband Jim Freed had separated and were in the process of divorcing, a not so happy ending to the happily ever after story she had been astonished to stumble into in 2015, and something she was still figuring out how to write about. She started sending me things she had written as we talked about her writing a piece about Gen X politics and the 2020 race.

“I am intimate with the dirt,” she wrote of the Netflix pit. “It has infiltrated everything. It is all over me and under me. It is Love Canal, sewage from the Mississippi, cigarette butts, marijuana ash, slave remains, rats, mice, Three Mile Island, Mount Etna, Mount Saint Helen, Dust Bowl, Adam, Eve, serpent, Satan, Chernobyl, Berlin Wall, acid rain, asbestos, uranium, geraniums, 9/11, 7/11, Donner Party, bird beaks, pigeon claws, squirrel tails, gerbil puke, hamster wheels, insulation, Saran Wrap, Mason Pearson bristles, dental floss, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Mafia hits washed up from the East River, syringes, works, the residue at the bottom of the empty bag of dope, coal waste, cookie crumbs, broken bottles, rusty nails, Bataan Death March, Manila massacre, Boston Tea Party, frog legs, goldfish, mutant ninja turtles, alligators from Florida, red algae, yellow fever, Agent Orange, bubonic plague, gold teeth, silver spoons, copper wires, iron ore, Crest with fluoride, whitening strips, stripper tips, dollar bills, twenties laced with cocaine, subway tokens, expired MetroCards with unused fare, tickets to see Star Wars in 1976, bicentennial souvenirs, gutta-percha, cat guts, doll parts, golf balls, tennis racket strings, cashmere socks, polyester, rayon, pylon, nylon, Mylar, warped vinyl, scratched CDs, crispy leaves, shredded lettuce, tarnished keys, queen bees, xerox paper, pepper spray, Prozac pills, poppers, pooper scoopers, hula hoops, leis, fecal matter, aborted fetuses, snot, rot, cots, bots, shot glass shards, broken windows, chimney smoke, dice, playing cards, poker chips, lollipop sticks, toothpicks, used tissues, dirty handkerchiefs, bandanna threads, kite pine needles, kite strings, toilet water, wolf fangs, sunburn peel, hangnails, cavities, skin, scabs, split ends, fur balls, chicken bones, dissected cadavers, wisdom teeth, crash test dummies, Big Bang, Little Miss Muffet, Humpty Dumpty, Rip Van Winkle, bog wood, petrified forest, oyster shells, freshwater pearls, blood diamonds, Star rubies, asteroids, primordial ooze, love letters, promises kept and broken.”

Very soon the piece she’d wanted to write about Gen X politics started to slip. The cancer was back. There were so many tests and scans to undergo. I told her not to worry about writing it and was surprised when she filed. She said it was a good distraction from having cancer. She badly wanted to interview Beto O’Rourke, but by the time he arrived in New York City where they might have had a face-to-face — the Gen X skate-punk candidate and the Gen X icon — he was already getting ready to drop out of the race.

She sent me a long piece about her past year, about her impending divorce and her marriage and her mother and Donald Trump. It was from something longer she was working on, she said.

We talked about her writing an additional passage when she recovered from brain surgery and running the piece on Medium. “I suppose I have to add something about this, since so much of the piece is about cancer,” she texted. “You know, of all my failures of imagination, I never wondered what a brain tumor is like. So I could not have guessed it was this atrocious, the dizziness and the pain.”

Her recoveries from the relentless march of the disease during her final, dreadful month would prove to be brief.

After her first brain surgery — she had two to cope with her metastatic breast cancer and subsequent complications — which she described as a “brain resection,” she was astonishingly herself. She was funny and poetic and articulate and in good spirits. Still dizzy and unstable — the tumor had impacted her balance center and left her clutching the furniture as she walked during her last night in her own home — but also still herself. She laughed with her mother, who took video and pictures of her in the hospital and helped coordinate, along with Jim and some of her oldest friends from college, a parade of sun-up to way past winter sundown visitors so that she would never feel alone.

And the night before the surgery, Jim was the one she stayed with. He was the one who took care of Alistair, her dog, and her black cat, Arabella. When I saw him in the hospital, he was entirely attuned to her and what she might need so that she could recover and have, in the unspoken best-case scenario, another year.

“I can’t get over how great my husband has been with this. He has made it possible for me to get better and not worry about anything,” she wrote in mid-December, after the surgery. “He loves you so much it’s clear,” I texted back, thinking of how attentive he had been, how he was arranging visits with so many people, that look on his face that you cannot fake. “I think so,” she texted back. “It’s good you see. I love him so much.”

But the past year had been a hard one. This is what she had written about it. She had shown it to Jim too, and he agreed, as did a number of her oldest friends, that she’d want it published. She loved to be published.

I Believe in Love

By Elizabeth Wurtzel

Greetings from the chaotic land of marriage come undone.

The caravansary is dismantling, toothpicks flying everywhere, the bubblegum that held it together is unstuck.

Everything is falling.

My husband moved out at the end of December [2018], as the calendar flipped from last year to this [2019], while I was in Miami Beach, strolling the walkways in the shocking morning sun and under the nighttime Van Gogh sky, away from it all.

I knew he was moving out, but still: I was surprised.

I did not see that the game was over. I did not know the clock was running. I never lose, but I do run out of time. It turns out this was basketball and not baseball.

While I looked away, my marriage fell apart.

I fell off my keel. I lost my kilter. I was a kite without a string.

Maybe it’s better.

It is a peaceful purple without him here. But psychedelic with disarray.

Marriage is an organizing principle. It is flow. It is coffee in the morning. It is who walks the dog. It is HBO at night.

And love. Don’t forget that.

Now I am an ombré mess of a person. I am missed appointments and canceled meetings. I am the thing I forgot to do. I am hanging on by a strand of Drybar dry-shampooed hair.

All day long I have to ask people to forgive me, I am flailing and failing at it all. Forgive me, I beg, as I hope my untweezed eyebrows will. Maybe soon, I will even tug at a few strays.

Or maybe wild is the way.

🖤🖤🖤

I still think of Jim as this sweet person I married. He is my trust fall. He is my emergency contact. He is my next of kin. He is my valentine. He is my birthday dinner. He is my secret sharer. He is my husband.

I do not know him anymore so I do not know myself. Who are my friends? Where is my family? I have fallen into a crevasse of nobody nowhere.

I am estranged and strange, strangled up in blue.

I do not want to feel this way. I am going through the five stages of grief all at once, which Reddit strings have no doubt turned into 523. They are a collision course, a Robert Moses plan, a metropolitan traffic system of figuring it out.

I feel bad and mad and sad.

Is this a festival of insight or a clusterfuck of stupid? I change my mind all the time about this and about everything else.

I got married because I was done with crazy. But here it is, back again, the revenant I cannot shake. I feel like it’s 1993, when my heart had a black eye all the time.

26 is a boxing match of the soul.

I did not expect bruises at 52.

🖤🖤🖤

I have blamed myself. I have blamed my husband. I have blamed cancer. I have blamed marijuana. I have blamed sexism. I have blamed Charlottesville. I have blamed my in-laws. I have blamed several men named David. I have blamed my mother who lied to me my whole life about who my father is.

Who would I be if I did not blame Donald Trump?

I am angry all the time since the election of 2016, like it happened to me, like I was gang-raped by Michigan. I don’t want to be angry, but so there, I am.

Who don’t I hate?

Who won’t I blame?

If you are standing there, I blame you.

It is not conservative against liberal.

It is everybody against everyone. Here we are, in it together, alone.

The problem is not arguments I have with people who voted for Trump, who I don’t know anyway. The trouble is the way all of us who agree about everything are bickering. Oh, the narcissism of small differences.

I remember not that long ago when the world was not political. I was part of landmark litigation that was all about a team of Republicans and Democrats working together. I loved everybody. We were all on the same side.

What Alamo did I not forgive? What Masada did I not get over?

Now there is no microaggression too small for me to scream about so the next four neighborhoods can hear.

My husband does something and I am affronted like it matters.

I am sure he does not know how I feel.

And maybe he doesn’t.

But what does any of this have to do with why we got married? We got married to be in it together. Polarization has even invaded love.

I have anger fatigue. I am sick of sick. Like everyone.

The emotional toll of the world we live in is going to do all of us in.

But politics is not about conflict.

Politics is about making the world a better place.

🖤🖤🖤

How could my mother keep a secret for 50 years? What makes someone do that?

She buried herself in it. She grew a wild Victorian garden with thorny bushes of rose and purple larkspur and red snapdragon. There was a lush meadow of lavender that gave a whiff of Aix-en-Provence en été. The dandelions ran rampant and the daffodils glowed yellow like Big Bird.

But underneath it all, beneath the lilies of the valley and the rows of geranium, there is dirt.

There is a secret.

I am a bastard. I am her bastard daughter.

There are things that come along that are a shock.

I believed something for nearly half a century. It was a lie.

I was conned.

I was wrong about myself.

I did not know who I am.

My mother told no one.

It was a lie she told for so long it became true and the secret faded to no-memory. She misremembered who my father was. She did not think it mattered.

When it all came out in 2016, not long after I got married, just after my real father died, my mother could not see what my hysteria was about. She did not understand why I was stunned.

All the while I was trying not to feel the worst way ever, trying not to be overwhelmed by the explosion, my mother could not figure out what was bothering me.

After all, she is the nuclear physicist.

My mother is like everyone else. She thinks she is normal. She is sure her behavior makes sense. She believes she does the right thing. Since she cannot imagine that this is not the case, she is surprised to find out that, yes, she makes bombs.

I scream at my mother, “What’s wrong with you?!”

I do that and she does not know what I mean.

She says, “Oh get over it.”

Her eyes widen until they look like goggles on an herbivore. She is put upon. She cannot believe we have to discuss this yet again.

“Omigod yet again!”

When will I quit badgering her?

I say, “You lied to me.”

She says, “It wasn’t a lie.”

“Then what?”

“It was a decision!”

Any relationship founded on a lie is doomed. Or not a lie, according to her, which is another lie, a lie about a lie.

That is how it is between us. We are living in the doom.

And yet, we are still at it. My mother and I refuse to give up. She is my only parent. She is all I have.

She made sure of that.

This is the most painful thing ever.

She has made so many inexplicable decisions over the years that I know about, and now I see the ones I did not know.

And yet I love her more than anyone else in the world.

She is it for me. She is in the way of everything. I should be interested in my husband, but how can he compete with how much I want to figure out the Once that started all that is upon a time?

🖤🖤🖤

I was a welter of emotions.

I was so emotional.

When I found out that my father is not my father, that my mother lied to me my whole life, that there was so much I did not know, a bomb dropped in my life. Bombs, really, aerial bombardment. It was the Battle of Manila: bazookas, flamethrowers, grenades, tanks, cannons, howitzers, banzai charges, kamikaze tactics, I was shocked and stunned with feeling.

I did not know what to do.

I became a raging lunatic.

I was a mettle of rage.

My rage is my retinue. My rage is a filthy velveteen train I drag around with me, carelessly. It is my ruby tiara. It is my rainbow and my pot of gold.

My rage is cream. It makes Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee that my grandmother brewed in a percolator on the breakfront in the dining room taste not half bad.

It is the coloratura harmony to my singsong days.

My rage is my conscience. I insist on my right to feel.

But I got caught in a Möbius strip of emotion. I was gone round the bend of scream.

It was stuplimity.

🖤🖤🖤

My marriage is crushed beneath the weight of so much. It is delicate, like all relationships. It is not one of those fine elms that blows with the gusts and does not snap.

We are a scattering of branches on the lawn. We are deadwood.

Oh, there is a lot that holds us together, the love and the hours. We got married during chemotherapy. We are bound.

But my husband is not who he was.

Yes, I know: It is always like that. The sorrow of unraveling is the stranger you are facing. What happened? I want to scream. Where did you go?

My husband had a softness. I will not compare it to the feel of cotton balls or the touch of silk charmeuse, because it is better. He was new to love. I could tell. I could see. He was surprised. He did not see me coming. He did not know I was interested. He was alone in a room. His life was small. He had the same six friends he always had. He was shy. He was not brave. He had no expectations.

He was lovely.

The beginning is always like honey, liquid and sweet.

But he was open.

He was not wounded by a million heartaches.

He had not been through it all.

He did not have a wretched past.

He was 34, which is not young. Younger than I was, but a lot could have happened by then.

It had not.

He was fresh.

There was nothing I would not do for him.

There was nothing I did not want for him.

We met in October and got engaged in May.

We knew.

And now he knows he has had enough.

It has been too much.

🖤🖤🖤

Most of all, it is not easy to be married to someone with cancer.

I feel for my husband.

Cancer is so big. Everyone is prostrate before its deadly enormity. It is the answer to every question. It is the reason why. Is it an excuse or is it real? Who is anyone to argue? Cancer is a bully. It is an elephantine disease of body, mind, soul. My husband moved a half a mile away from it. I would love to do the same.

I am stuck until the end.

I do not know what he expected when he married me when I was ill. I am sorry that it has not been what he wanted. I am sorry that I hurt him.

After I got cancer, I was not the same.

I wanted to be.

I wanted my life to go back to what it was.

I was so lively. I was so lovely.

I was so busy. I was so social.

But I could not do it.

No surprise, I changed.

I was withdrawn during chemotherapy and my world became small. It contracted like starvation. It is hard to get back what is lost. It is more difficult still to begin anew.

I tried. So hard. I called. I emailed. I texted. I showed up.

But there was a diminishment.

Cancer is an ecosystem. It is a crime spree.

Things broke. My radius. My fibula. My tibia. My spirit.

My cancer came back a year after it went away.

You think people are nice about it? No.

Cancer is misunderstood.

Everyone says the wrong thing. Which is what they do so much anyway.

Then I say the wrong thing back.

There we are, bumper cars of mismatched words.

I can’t believe the stupid things people tell me in an effort to be kind, about something hard they had to deal with that is not the same as having cancer.

The worst thing anyone can do is tell me they are sorry about my cancer.

I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me. About anything. Don’t apologize unless you have done something wrong. It is nasty to feel sorry for anyone for any reason because it pushes her away.

Mostly sorry is just a thing to say. Anything else would be better, including I don’t know what to say.

It is always people who are the problem. What else? Our suffering is small compared to our misunderstandings with others, how they fail to give us a break, know what it’s like, judge us fairly, see the world the way we do. It is not even cancer or especially cancer. It is especially this and even that. If you are looking for absolution, you are going to have to forgive yourself.

I have chainmail from years of frustrating conversations, of people who think something bad has happened to me.

I don’t see it that way.

You could tell me everything that’s bad about cancer, like that it’s cancer, but you could not convince me that cancer has been bad for me.

Cancer has made me optimistic.

These are the days of miracles and wonders, of biopharma fireworks, of immunotherapy wow.

I have been saved.

I am miraculous me.

I will skate figure eights into infinity.

I am all claws I am all fangs.

I am not afraid of cancer. I think cancer should be afraid of me.

This past October [2018], I had a tumor in my shoulder bone that was 5 inches: big! It was threatening to break it.

And worse.

My cancer antigens were at 205, when 25 is as high as the level can go.

I had meetings in the World Trade Center while all this was going on. I hate it down there. Skyscrapers as grave markers. It is an ominous place.

When I went for help in Philadelphia at the Basser Center for BRCA at the University of Pennsylvania, only Alistair, my service dog, was with me.

My husband said he had to work.

My marriage had already come undone.

I had stereotactic radiation at Memorial Sloan Kettering. It took only three sessions to zap the tumor away. The treatment saved me, but I have a five-inch hole in my bone that looks like a cave in the Thai jungle.

When my husband moved out, I was still healing. I have a rotator cuff tear and pain from the long way home.

🖤🖤🖤

This is a love story.

Every marriage is a love story.

People who run off to Vegas after knowing each other for 10 days and find a drunk outside the Sands casino to be their witness — they really mean it. Marriage is a big gesture. There is no reason to do it except: love.

It is effusive.

I am sorry I failed.

I am sorry for this confederacy of catastrophe.

I am sorry for it all.

I think that my husband can’t believe I hurt. I know what I’m like: I have a powerful personality, it’s true. But he got me.

He made a vow to love me in sickness and in health.

There was great love between us.

And love is hard to stop.

We made a commitment for when we could not remember why we did.

He decided enough.

I am a monotheist. I am in it for life. I am in everything for life. If you don’t stop me, I will not stop myself. I have the kind of faith that you can only have if you have talked your way out of trouble all along.

I feel so much and too much. Deep in my radiated bones.

I cannot believe it is like this with my husband and not like it was that long ago on Halloween, our first date, which he did not know was a date, maybe it was maybe it wasn’t, he showed up at my door not knowing anything at all.

We were resting on our future arms, we were like people who have never read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, have never seen City of God, have never heard Exile In Guyville, oh what lay ahead.

I remember my husband in the beginning, I know the man I married, I insist he is still there somewhere.

I keep peeling for the pentimento.

Or has this all been a fraud?

Love gone wrong feels like a confidence crime.

That is the worst of it.

Do I have an electron microscope or am I blinded? Do I see more clearly now or is this a distortion? I could ask that about the whole wide world.

Sex and race look different since Trump was elected. We know all the things that we never knew. We were living in a world of trust, we believed we were on a righteous path, that things were incrementally improving, so we did not look so hard into sunlight.

All anything ever is is another way of seeing.

I thought my husband was on my side.

I thought I knew him.

I did.

I don’t.

He changed.

I do not know how to help him.

I do not know how to reach him.

Anything is possible.

I believe in so much.

I am just that way.

I believe in love.

What matters more in this crazy world?

Shame on Casablanca’s ending! I will take the hill of beans.

(This is Garance again.)

Love. Sometimes in our lives when we feel most bereft it turns out that we are not alone at all. It is the kind of cloying Disney sentiment Lizzie might have scoffed at, but it was also the truth with her. She affected a toughness that was both real and a coping mechanism, but which also led her to downplay how sick she was. Even as she was telling me she was in remission in September, spots of cancer had already returned, I have since learned.

“The people who know us when we are not our best selves — what would we do without them? I am so grateful right now for even my mother coming through for me,” she wrote after her first surgery in December. Her mother Lynne Winters and she had a famously complicated relationship, but it was Lynne who took her home to recover both times she was released from the hospital, and who had the difficult burden of having to bring her back, and who sobbed in the sparkling clean MSKCC neuro ward hallway where other parents of too-young-to-die adult children paced forlornly.

“Jim has been the best,” Lizzie texted after the surgery. “I wish you a great first husband. That might be all you need.”

They had, in fact, not divorced. The papers were signed, but not filed. He was her husband until the end, during the final days after it was clear no further interventions would work, when she lay still in bed in what was by then her at least fifth different hospital room, for all the world the image of a big-eyed Renaissance pieta looking heavenward.

“Neurology takes a positive view toward god and prayer,” she had texted after the first surgery. “And relinquishing, which is what god and prayer is about. It is always turning your will over to a higher power and letting the will of the world and not your extraordinary manipulations lead you to your desired result. I always say that, it is my constant prayer: god, if you are out there, watch over me and your will, not mine, be done. That is what will happen anyway, but I pray for release from the dreadful fight.”

She spent her whole life fighting — fighting her parents, society, the patriarchy, social conventions, addiction, depression. But man, did she live big. She had a gift for building love into her life and at the end, her friends built a cocoon of love around her.

And on the morning of January 7, 2020, she was, as she had prayed, released.

[serenephenix]

Throwing Knives

I am always afraid of writing Keith. This has to stop. I want to love my space children equally!

…and the space uncle of course…

Me basically trying to see whether I can write our Red Paladin in a realistic way or not.

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Throwing Knives

[Fandom]:Voltron: Legendary Defender

[Rating]: Gen Audience/ Gen

[Genre]: Friendship, Team as Family, character introspection

[AU]: the team is back together and everything is well

[Word count]:  2.800

[Warning]: tooth rotting kindness and Coran being awesome

[Status]: oneshot/ completed

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 Keith knew people were staring. He knew and could see the shopkeeper also staring at him from just beyond the glass he was very nearly pressed against. Usually, it would set him on edge, make him uncomfortable until he would either throw the offenders a warning glance or retreat to make as quiet an exit as possible. But right now, it mattered little that others were giving him looks: he was far too fixated on the weapon on display in shop’s window, lying on a cushion Keith would have thought more befitting of some gaudy necklace.

The blade was a real piece of art.

It was simple, small and yet elegant; nothing like his curved flashy dagger although it held a shine to it he could not just attribute to the tinted glass. It was unlike anything he had ever seen. He racked his brain, trying to remember what he had read so long ago in one of those books when he was a kid, all the information he had practically absorbed as he sat in front of a computer in the Garrison library clicking and browsing through various articles.

Just what kind of blade was this exactly? It was not long enough to be a dagger. A poniard maybe? He wasn’t sure, the mental image not really aligning with what he was seeing in front of him. And even if so, what kind of metal was it made of? Something he knew from Earth? It was unlikely. It surely had to be some kind of material that was more common in this corner of the universe. Or maybe it was a metal just like those on Earth and the techniques used by these aliens to forge weapons were so advanced and refined that it enhanced any material’s properties until it was no longer comparable with its raw state?

Keith was dying to know, desperate to compare how this blade would feel in his palm, what difference it would make to wield it and he was, just like all of the other Paladins, completely and utterly broke.

Buying a weapon as costly at this (the amount of zeroes on that shiny price tag was intimidating) was out of the question. All he could allow himself was to gaze longingly at this masterpiece until he inevitably would have to turn around to trudge back to their meeting point. The saddest part had to be that, even if he did at some point manage to scrap together the GAC necessary for the purchase, the blade would probably already have found another owner with a heavy wallet.

He was close enough to the window that his breath was fogging on the glass.

Keith rarely ever wanted or needed anything much. Most of the things he wanted couldn’t be bought anyway. But just like back when he had been to town with Shiro and seen that awesome shirt, he now stood here and looked at something else he did not have the money for. He never let it bother him before, but right here, right now, he was actually frustrated that he could not have just this. one. little. thing.

It was so unfair.

“Hello there, number four!”

The hand on his shoulder startled him so badly that he hit his head on the glass, the window actually vibrating slightly from the impact. Keith gave a small gasp as he took two steps back, eyes clenched shut as his hand went up to nurse the throbbing spot on his forehead.

He could feel his eyebrows practically weld together as he glowered at Coran, the man looking so carefree as though he had not almost given Keith a heart attack.

“Hey, Coran.”, he finally grumbled, taking a closer look at the man.

Even after having informed the Altean that the disguises were actually useless, the man still insisted on dressing up as weirdly as possible – eyepatch and everything, although he had changed his coat for some strange robe. He was inclined to agree with Pidge who had muttered under their breath that Coran was probably just looking for any kind of excuse to dress up.

He noticed the bag slung over his shoulder. It had been empty upon their arrival but now seemed barely able to hold all of the stuff Coran had said he’d need to get to work on the simulator and apparently to do some much needed repairs on their Lions.

“Got everything you needed?” He asked, looking pointedly at the bulging bag and then into Coran’s face.

The eye-patch lifted a little as the mechanic gave a smile, jiggling the cord and bag.

“Indeed, and it was a fabulously good trade at that! When it comes to Coran,” he stroked his mustache with an air of smugness Keith only ever thought Lance capable of, “those Unilu stand no chance. Anyway, what have we got here.”

And to Keith’s mounting embarrassment and horror, he actually went to peek through the window Keith had been almost plastered against for what felt like vargas.

“It’s nothing.” He crossed his arms, tucking his hands between his elbows and rips and trying hard to look casual enough.

As much as Keith wished he had someone else besides Shiro to talk about his fascination with arms and war machines, it was one of the very things he tended to keep to himself. It was partly because most people did not seem to see the appeal and other parts because…

Well, because most of the people he had opened up to about it had from then on looked at him with that strange gleam in their eyes. A certain kind of look that gave Keith the feeling he was a freak. Especially the people in whose care he ended up. For some reason, a child finding interest in these kinds of things had been unappealing. Had been strange.

Shiro had been the only one not to judge him and Keith had been stumped by the sheer relief that had flooded him when the older teen had furthermore allowed him to show him the folder he had compiled on a thumb drive – his own small encyclopedia about ways of manufacturing certain blades, about the special bows no one could really rebuild because no one any longer mastered the craft, shields and spears from all around the world being unearthed by archeologists.

One evening, Shiro had even joked that Keith would have been at home in one of those fantasy novels, with the knights in shining armor and swords of destiny to banish evil and darkness. His only response had been to jab his elbow into his surrogate older brother’s stomach.

It was kind of ironic how unknowingly right he had been back then.

Coran was stroking his chin with his hand, looking critically at the blade and Keith could feel himself growing warm from the sudden bout of self-consciousness.

“Shouldn’t we go and meet the others?” he offered, glad that his voice did not betray any of the unrest he felt at potentially being found out.

He wondered who he was kidding here, because it definitely wasn’t Coran.

The Altean merely gave a low hum, eyes still squinting at the weapon and Keith was starting to get curious as to what exactly he had spotted that obviously he didn’t.

Keith always had had a hard time with understanding people. Shiro had once consoled him with the explanation that Keith was too honest for his own good, so much so that he tended to believe that other people were just as straightforward as him when he actually should know better.

And Coran in particular was one of those people Keith was never able to tell how open he was with any of them. It was somewhat intimidating; to never know what was going on inside the man’s head.

“That’s quite the eye you got.”

Keith blinked, the casual compliment blindsiding him and making him lose his train of thought.

“What?”

Coran smiled that knowing smile they had come to expect every so often, pointing at the object of Keith’s interest.

“These kinds of blades were already much coveted in the old days. Only the Eiraklo could forge these kinds of weapons.”

Keith inclined his head, staring critically at Coran. “Eiraklo?” It sounded familiar.

“Remember how I and Allura explained that the Olkarie could bend metal at will?”

Keith nodded.

“The Olkarie are, or at least as were, as much of explorers as us Alteans and some of them went to colonize other planets. I wouldn’t say that calling their new home after their planet of origin spelled backwards was very creative, but I assure you there were no finer smiths in any part of their galaxy.”

Keith nodded, feeling himself relax.

“Did they imbed it with technology?”

It would make sense. The Olkarie were after all a highly sophisticated people. If anything, not trying to enhance a weapon in such a manner would be a waste. Although Keith had to admit that he could merely think of the concept as amazing, not having any clear idea in what way exactly technology could be used on a sword or dagger.

But it still sounded cool in his head.

“Some blades, although those are heirlooms and pretty rare. This one would be a regular imitar blade.”

“What was it used for?” Keith could not hold back some of the excitement that was bleeding into his voice but the opportunity was too good to pass up. Here Coran was, willing to share his knowledge and to give Keith answers to all the questions that had had him glued to the spot in front of the shop.

Coran gave a casual shrug: “Small ones like these usually served as a hidden weapon – hard to detect because of their size and so light that one would barely notice them or weight them down.”

Without meaning to, Keith’s eyes instantly fell back on the blade, gaining a new appreciation for its design.

“Do you want to buy it?”

Even with his voice being the most calm and quiet Keith had ever personally heard it, it still made him jerk as if hit by one of the gladiator bot’s electric rods.

He stared at Coran with wide eyes, suddenly feeling uncomfortable at how easily the man could see through him. And he felt sheepish because now he realized how he had inadvertently leaned back towards the window. It was plainly obvious what he wanted.

But the idea of being so utterly predictable did not sit well with him.

“No.” He cleared his throat when his voice broke into a higher pitch. “I mean, it was just interesting to look at and we don’t have the money anyway so-“

“Keith.”

He stopped. Coran was regarding him, blue-pink eyes steady and calm. Keith gave a sigh.

He had a heavy sense of déjà vu of his afternoon with Shiro, his best friend looking at him in all earnest as he asked Keith whether he wanted that shirt or not. Keith had vehemently refused back then and Shiro had resected him enough to back off. That did not mean that Keith had never thought back on the offer, or the way Shiro’s eyes had clearly told him that he knew he had not been honest. But Shiro had been too kind to call him out on it.

“Actually, I do.” He finally admitted, although he could not directly say it to Coran’s face, opting to stare at a tile just beside the man’s left shoe. Heat was slowly crawling up his neck at the awkward confession and he decided it was high time to leave.

“Let’s go, the others are probably waiting.” He was already in motion, trying to hurry back to that gigantic clock with benches where they would rendezvous later but Coran was quick to announce what Keith definitely did not want to hear.

“Only a tick, Keith.”

And the teenager helplessly watched, gaping as Coran sauntered right into that shop before he could even open his mouth in protest.

The one arm he had reached out to stop the man slowly lowered until it fell back to his side limply. From this particular angle it was hard to see what exactly was going on, only catching the flash of one of Coran’s white gloves every few seconds.

His other arm came to reach his elbow, fingers fisting into the fabric of his jacket as he waited.

He should not have said anything. Coran shouldn’t bother. They needed the money for more important things than Keith’s inexplicable fascination with sharp objects.

It was hopeless anyway. No one in their right mind would even bargain the price of something as valuable as what Coran had made this blade out to be. And yet, as Keith concentrated on pulling at a loose string on the white seam, he could not help but find it touching that the advisor would at least try, when they really did not talk all that much.

He was somewhat aware that he spent more time with their Blue Paladin, if only because said Blue Paladin was very vocal about how much stuff the both of them cleaned up.

The rustle of paper was the only warning Keith got as a brown bundle was shoved into his hands. He barely managed to get a decent grip on it.

He hunched his shoulders automatically, blinking up at Coran as the Altean smiled, clapping him on the back.

“There we have it: one imitar blade for our Paladin Keith.”

Keith felt his mouth drop open. He had not thought it would work. He had not thought Coran seriously intending to spend such a sum on such a small object.

“Coran, no, I can’t...” he stuttered, suddenly panicked “We need that money for more important stuff.”

Coran made a show of feigning hurt, slapping a palm over where Keith guessed his heart might be, bending a little back for dramatic effect.

“Your sheer lack of faith wounds me, young Paladin. I made sure to let you all know I was a master of bartering!”

And indeed, when Keith looked back at the shopkeeper now removing the cushion and shiny tag, he could see clear discontent on his features.

He stared back at Coran, then the package, and back at Coran.

“I- I don’t know what to say.”

His awe seemed to amuse the older man.

“A simple ‘thank you’ should suffice.”

Keith was not exactly sure what kind of expression he was sporting, but his smile was somewhat unsteady but hopefully not any less grateful.

“Thank you, Coran.”

He clutched the blade harder, mindful of the rather unsecure wrappings. There was a tingle in his limbs, a kind of lightness that Keith only ever felt when he was with Shiro or on the rare occasion that the whole team did a relaxing activity together he could enjoy. It felt nice.

“Let us make our way back, shall we?”

Keith nodded, falling into step with Coran. His thumb kept running over the coarse paper and there was no way he would stop doing it anytime soon.

“Keith.”

He looked up at the somewhat serious tone but was reassured when there was nothing in Coran’s posture or eyes that spoke of a sudden change of heart. Although there was something more… remorseful hidden in the line between those orange eyebrows.

“You carry many responsibilities as the Paladins of Voltron. You took on a destiny that even many grown man and women would have been reluctant to accept. The five of you risk your lives each and every day for the universe.”

He paused and Keith, as if entranced, stopped in the middle of the arcade’s hall when Coran did. The warmth from those eyes was paternal and unlike anything Keith had ever experienced.

“The least we can do for you, is to make this burden a little more bearable. And if that means haggling with a livid shopkeeper over a priceless blade, then that’s what we will do.”

Keith did not blush easily, but right now he could feel his whole face combust at this sheer kindness. They stood in silence for a while longer and it took Keith a moment to understand that Coran was actually waiting for an answer. All he could manage at this point was a nod, his throat somehow having constricted.

Coran returned the gesture and they headed towards one of the escalators going up.

“If you wish,” Coran added as he leant back against the handrail, “I can show you to the Castle’s armory once we get back. I’d be happy to have someone help me keep everything in working order.”

Keith’s cheeks stung from the smile stretching his lips.

If Keith could have seen what Coran saw at that moment, it would have been a young lass with a child’s excited glimmer in his eyes.