#but he wants this

[softquietsteadylove]

Hello dear!

So i don't know if anyone already requested this, but we N E E D the proposal in the Ice Queen/Tyrant King AU! I literally crave for this.

Hugs and much love to you!! 🖤✨🖤✨

Gil paced the floor of Thena's flat, muttering to himself. He had been going over the plan incessantly, had calculated every detail, thought through every possible complication. The deal would go through, he was sure of it.

He had never hoped so strongly for it.

There were white rose and lily petals scatted all around the home, over her white shag rug and the white furniture. He had even affixed a few wisteria to the spiralling pendant lights. There was also a trail of the petals leading to the bedroom. Just...if she felt like celebrating.

Gil clutched the ring box in his hand. He was ready.

He had gone back and forth on how to do it, thought about the impact this would make on their lives, their businesses. He had thought about the ring, if he needed one and what she would like if he did get one. They already had their tattoos, after all.

Gil grinned down at his ring tattoo, still his favourite, and for good reason. He loved to think about the matching one on Thena's light, delicate finger, scrawled in white ink in a promise he would never demand she say aloud.

Really, part of him had wondered if she would want him to propose at all. His Goddess of War was a being of practicality, after all. And if they both considered themselves married, then wasn't that enough? Certainly, he was happy to think so. And if she never wanted him to actually ask her--if she never wanted to actually marry him, then he could live with that.

He just wanted to be with her, and for her to be happy, and if those two things could be true together, then he could die a fulfilled man.

If it weren't for Kingo, he would probably still be debating on what kind of ring she would even want. He just had never even considered that the idea of getting married would be even further along in her mind than his own.

But if what Kingo said was true, then she was prepared to face down his horrible family, and she was prepared for their empires of business to have to conflict a little before they really melded at all. Apparently she was prepared to have a traditional ceremony for the sake of his family.

Gil's heart swelled in his chest. He wasn't nearly so willing to oblige them. But the thought that his stubborn and sharp edged Ice Queen was?--for him? It laid to rest any doubts he could have about her not feeling as strongly as he did.

Thena wasn't a poet, and she never claimed to be one. She did better with actions than words, and always had. Even before they were together, he always knew that to understand the state of the Ice Queen, was to watch her behaviours carefully.

Once upon a time, he was just a colleague, seated a respectful table away from her in meetings. He would watch her come in, notice her beauty - maybe indulge in it a little bit - and keep an eye on her. It allowed him to learn about her without risking his life by asking her even the smallest of conversational questions.

Now, they were about to be engaged. He hoped.

Gil sighed, starting his walk around the carpet again, dragging his feet and watching the flower petals move around him. He hadn't exactly thought Thena would be this late, and it wasn't helping his nerves. By the time she got home at this rate, she would be tired from work, and he would have to rush to get his speech out before she could ask him what all this was about.

His phone buzzed on the coffee table, and he nearly tripped in his hurry to pick it up. "Princess?"

"Gilgamesh."

She wasn't alone. Or she just wasn't in the mood for pet names right now. "Hey, are you almost home?"

"I've found myself occupied at my office." She was looking at someone while she was talking. He could hear the way her tongue was dragging over her words.

Was she in danger? "Someone we know?"

"Actually," now he could hear a faint smile on her lips, "your mother's sister is here."

Shit.

"I'm on my way!"

[scramratz]

[dsmsix]

thought I was muted and just had this exchange with a coworker on a zoom call

[girldraki]

[captainjonnitkessler]

>Join a union

>Hear people constantly complaining that the current union leadership is super corrupt, it's all just the same ten guys making all the decisions in secret and nobody else in the union ever gets to know what's going on

>Go to the monthly union meetings that are completely open to all 1200 union members

>The only attendees are the same ten guys every month, giving detailed reports about everything that's going on

[unsung-idiot]

don't show him modern technology; it won't end well

bonus under the cut:

[time-woods]

Accessorize ! Accessorize ! Accessorize !

based off of how my dad got his ears pierced))

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[great-and-small]

Apparently the local university’s undergraduate entomology course sends students to catch insect specimens at the same place I like to go birdwatching, which explains why I saw three enormous frat looking dudes with tiny bug nets and overheard one emphatically say “bro BRO I told you we already have enough lepidopterans”

[pookapufferfish]

[cowboysmp3]

there’s something sooo sickening about how dunmeshis whole energy is like sometimes something terrible and awful happens to you and it changes you forever and nothing can make you the person you were before but there’s still love and there’s still sharing a meal together and there’s still living

[velvetcloak]

The Olympics but high fashion by Wisdom Kaye

[rovermcfly]

proud to say that I have never once in my life figured out the whodunit in any crime story I've read or watched. I just let the facts and clues wash over me, absorbing absolutely none of it. I am the audience they think of when they throw in red herrings, in case you've ever wondered "who would fall for this obvious false lead". it's me. I am the idiot viewer/reader. not once has an obviously framed clue revealed anything to me. my head is completely empty when I consume these stories.

[qrowpilled]

hate when you find a character whose so infuriatingly Your Type that its embarrassing like yeahg no one is gonna be surprised when i announce this is my new Guy Of The Month

[inbabylontheywept]

i did wrestling in middle school. on one hand, i was actually quite good at it, which was nice. being good at any sport was a new achievement for me. on the other hand, i was bi, and i was trying very hard not to notice that i was bi, and getting folded into knots by very kind, very muscular dorks made that task somewhat difficult.

adding fire to the problem was that my parents and my grandparents wanted to watch my matches, because they were very proud that their Gangly Nerd Son was actually Sporting, and they wanted to cheer me on. which would've been sweet and all, but if there are four people you do not want there during a key part of your Burgeoning Sexual Awakening, it is your mom and your dad and your grandma and your grandpa.

right? i mean, imagine some guy's got your head in his armpit, and you're going you know, old sweat smells bad, but fresh sweat has a sort of and then you make eye contact with your grandpa in the stands and you remember you're swearing spandex so if you pop a boner people aren't just going to be able to see the outline, they're going to be able to count the veins, and the only way you will be able to restore your family's honor after that would be by moving to siberia and renouncing joy, forever. that, or lift your entire body up by your kneck then twist 180 degrees without paralyzing yourself.

it’s a lot of pressure, is what i’m saying.

still it did motivate me to win my matches really fast. because i was so tall and skinny, i was stupidly good at the double leg takedown, and then once someone was knocked down, i'd just do the half nelson and kind of flip em over for the pin. then the ref would count to three and i’d win. EZPZ.

i had one match where that went great. won in the first ten seconds, sat back down, and prepared myself for a good hour or two of doing fuck all. didn't even feel bad the parents/grandparents were gonna be bored. the matches went up from me in 5 pound increments (i was in the 115 lbs division) and it was going great until we got to the 145 lbs division. the other school's wrestler stepped onto the mat, and she turned out to be a girl so our guy flipped, because for straight guys, wrestling a girl is not a pleasant experience.

i'm not entirely unsympathetic. my experience wrestling dudes was definitely a little traumatic. but also, i dealt. guy could've dealt too. instead, he refused to wrestle, and the coach went - fine. not even worth fighting over.

so he went to the 140 pounder, and that guy said, nosir, my mom said mormons can't wrestle girls. next guy down, 135 pounder, now he knew he could pull the same card and thus did. 130 pounder, 125, both tapped out. he got to the 120 guy, and that guy was catholic, but he said he was considering being mormon, and thus would have to pass. as a precaution.

coach blew up a little at that. he said "is there anyone - anyone - on this entire goddamn team that is willing to wrestle a girl?" and then he pointed at me and said "YOU. MAT. GO."

and i'll be real, if i'd been paying more attention, i'd have pulled the mormon card too, but i'd just been putting all that audio into a buffer file because i was reading, so i was halfway across the mat before i even processed what had been said and by then it was too late to turn back.

still i had a plan. and my plan - my beautiful, perfect plan - was to do what i'd always done. tackle, flip, pin, win. sit down. read. bore my family to death. move on.

i got the first part right. she was bigger than me, but she wasn't taller. just an incredibly stout woman. god built me like a snake with glasses, just as he built her like a combat cube. the problem was the half nelson. soon as she was down, i tried hooking my arm under hers from behind and for both genders, the defense for this move is just clamping your arms really fucking tight against your sides. if you're a guy, that's whatever, but if you're a girl - especially if you're god's chosen combat cube - that pins your opponents hand right against your boob.

so, i got the hook in, she clamped, my whole arm pressed against something soft, my coach was yelling THE HALF NELSON. BABYLON! JUST FINISH IT! FINISH THE HALF NELSON! and i was just trying to press hard enough to finish, when then my brain went

...oh.

and i flipped out. of course i flipped out. i like girls, and touching a boob is an elemental experience, and i was not ready. i was not prepared. i had not committed the sacred rites. i recoiled like i'd just brushed my arm against the surface of the sun, stood up, and backed away. nobody in the room knew why i'd given up. all they saw was me, right about to win, suddenly flailing around and scrambling. so everyone started screaming at me to just get the half nelson again, and i couldn't really yell back there's a fuckin' boob in the way and it was very distressing, and the only way i could think of to make them stop was just doing it over again the right way.

so i did.

i hunkered down and prepared myself for Wrasslin' Attempt #2: The Sequel.

i knocked her down again, EZPZ. i went for the half nelson again, but she knew what i was about to do so she super clamped, and i knew she was gonna super clamp, so i wound my arm back like a pop-eye cartoon punch before swinging my arm through the gap between her bicep and her side, but the amount of time i spent winding back super signalled what i was about to to do, which gave her time to clamp even harder, which somehow redirected the entire force of the popeye punch to the bottom of her bra.

it spat out a single boob the same way an action hero might spit out one single tooth after getting a solid crack across the jaw. as if to say:

*ptooie.* "that all you got?"

i did not actually see this. my experience was that first there was an arm, then there was a bit of boob, but i was braced, i was ready, forward at all costs, tatakae motherfuckers, and then the boob went away, and i didn't know where it went but my team, and the audience, and everyone who was in front of me, they all gasped like i just kicked them in the stomach. except for my coach. he was behind me, and thus one of the four people in the room who did not see the boob. now my mom, my dad, my grandma, and my grandpa, they all got flashed but nooooooo, coach thunderbutt was behind me, and he didn't see shit so he was still yelling NOOOOOO BABYLON WHAT ARE YOU DOING JUST FINISH THE NELSON! GO FOR THE KILL! BABYLON! BABYLON!

but i did not go for the kill. i stood up and she stuffed her boob back real fast, and we just kind of circled each other awkwardly until time ran out and i won on points. that's not technically allowed, but the ref had some mercy on me.

my coach did not.

i barely had time to sit down before he strode over to the bench to chew me out.

"babylon," he said, in that very calm way people get when they're too pissed to yell. "why didn't you pin?"

and i didn't know how to say well coach, i tried, but there was a boob, and it kept getting in the way, and my mom was watching, and so was my dad, and so was his dad, and his mom, and god (like bible god) and that's a can of worms because i'm pretty sure he was already mad at me, and i'm wearing spandex, and i think i might have to move to siberia, so instead i said

"i uh. i forgot how to do the half nelson."

which is actually impossible. forgetting how to do the half nelson is like forgetting how to swallow your spit.

and he looked at me, like i was the dumbest person in the entire world, and i looked through him like i'd just survived my 250th day in a trench at verdun, and he said: fine.

fine.

but we're all going to practice it for an hour tomorrow because you forgot.

and then he left.

and my buddies had the gall to be salty about it. i got so many comments saying "dude, why didn't you just tell him the truth?" and i said "you can if you care so damn much. you could've wrestled the girl too. maybe someone else should do the hard thing today."

but they didn't. so the next day, we did an hour of half nelson drills, and i spent a decent amount of time getting thrown around the mat, and it was pleasant in exactly the way that i hated and the year after that, to the surprise of everyone but myself, i quit wrestling and joined the trivia team.

and if you want more reasons to love my mom, my grandpa joked after the match that i might have to talk to my bishop about it, and my mom told him he would be allowed to make jokes after he stood in front of a crowd of 110 people in spandex underpants while wrestling a woman that was not his wife.

he paused for almost five seconds after that. then he said: aw. hell. sorry babylon.

and i'd have preferred my apology from god, but getting it from him was pretty good too.