#but it doesn't matter if it makes everything /easy/

[impactrueno]

Beetlejuice clearly wasn't interested in Lydia when they met, so when do you think he actually fell for her? Was he so impressed by Lydia defeating him that he developed a little crush?

i think this might be the biggest thing i've been turning around in my head since the sequel dropped. how did bro get to this point. i need to know. you weren't like this where we left off, what happened during that huge time gap????

this is where canon ends and conjecture begins, you just have to theorize and fill in the gaps yourself with whatever makes the most sense to you, which is what i've been trying to do this whole time. so please bear with me here.

i don't know how much i want share or save for my comics because i don't know how much he would actually reveal about this but whatever we ball

edit: ok so i scrolled back up to this after finishing writing this and as it turns out i have no self control and i ended up sharing everything that crossed my mind. craziest stream of consciousness i've ever written down. strap on and keep your limbs inside the ride at all times. whatever. we BALL.

let's review their first encounter from his point of view:

you're hired to scare the deetzes, right? so you do just that. excellently you might add. just when you're about to terrorize their teenage daughter, barbara banishes you and the party is over. what fucking losers right? you get the sense that adam and barbara care about this girl so you make some remark about her and it pisses them off. haha. also whoa where did this place come from? damn adam, who could've guessed he had it in him. you forget about everything else and dance your way to dante's inferno room.

after spending a respectably tasteful evening with those ladies, you're chill now. relaxing under your little sun lamp to work on your tan.

someone walks in looking for adam and barbara. don't they know they're dead?

"are you a ghost too?"

"i'm the ghost with the most, babe."

hold on a sec, who's even—

...well hey. it's the girl.

the girl who can see ghosts, and she's talking to you.

target acquired. this one's your ticket out of this hellhole.

"you look like somebody i can relate to," you tell her. relate how? doesn't matter. you're ensnaring her with your affable demeanor like you always do, make people feel like you're pals with them first and foremost. she seems like a nice girl, so this should be easy. you tell her upfront that you want to get out of there and you need her help to do so.

"i want to get in," she says.

whoa there.

what? she wants to get in? she says that in response to you saying that you wanted out. she really has no idea what it's like on the other side, huh. but shit, that kinda stops you in your tracks a bit. this girl wants to die. this young? that's not right. makes no sense.

"...why?"

she just looks at you and says nothing. jesus. ok maybe it's none of your business so let's back it up. you're losing control of the conversation and you're on a mission here. you figure if she helps you get out, you might as well talk her off that ledge or show her how shitty it is on the other side or somethin'. frankly, you can't afford to care right now. you're not entirely sure why she thinks things would be better on the side you're so desperate to get out of, but alright. doesn't matter, right now you gotta get her to summon you. so you begin your little game of charades.

after she correctly guesses your name and almost says it a third time, she recognizes you as the snake that terrorized her family. god fucking dammit. you're losing her. you're getting impatient. your affable act is over. "nah...i want to talk to barbara," she says and now she's REALLY getting on your nerves because fuck barbara, fuck adam, you're SO CLOSE to getting out and you're not gonna let this go now, go go GO GO SAY IIIIIIITTTTTTT

adam and barbara walk in because of course they do. womp womp

ok well that didn't work, but you're not gonna give up so easily. sooner or later another opportunity will come and soon you will be free.

wait why are they moving the model— where are they taking it—

ooohhhhh. business meeting. get a load of these yuppies, trying to turn winter river into a town-sized Ripley's Believe it or Not. a talking marcel marceau statue? and you thought you were a con man. no wonder the deetz girl wants to die, it's bleak as hell here too. but if you get out...you can fix that. hell, you can fix anything.

these bozos are here to see some ghosts, but the girl says they're not going to show up unless the fleshbags stop making a mockery out of the whole thing and that maybe they can all live happy together in the house. ain't that sweet.

of course no one's taking her seriously. she's a kid, what does she know, right? they'd rather listen to the most obnoxious guy in the room (besides yourself) who has no idea what the fuck he's talking about, but somehow, he's got his hands on the handbook.

the girl panics, then immediately says completely deadpan "wait, what am i even worried about, otho, you can't even change a tire" and you're surprised they didn't hear how hard you cackled at that.

despite all that, they seem to have started a séance with their old wedding clothes. bad news for the maitlands. they're about to be dead-dead. the girl cries for them to stop, and these guys are just sitting there scared shitless. you're hearing everything. you knew a new opportunity would arise, so you wait, because this is the part where people remember how good at your job you are. they always do.

she knows you can help. you're the only one who can help. so here she comes. those wedding clothes give you an idea. plan B is now in motion.

well well well.

look who came crawling back.

she asks for your help, and you're happy to oblige, under one condition of course. after all, you don't do anything for free, and she's the only one who can help you with your problem. how serendipitous.

once again, you lay it on her, straight up. you want out. and a way to do it (thanks adam and barbara for the reminder) is through marriage with a fleshbag. you need to get married. a green card marriage, if you will.

she's immediately disgusted by the idea. you don't take that personally, of course, because it doesn't matter. she's just a kid and it's not a real marriage. she just happens to be unlucky enough to be the only one around who can assist you with this, the poor girl. it's a marriage of convenience—or rather, inconvenience—and you're not planning on sticking around because you will get the hell out of there as soon as you can. so there shouldn't be a problem, right? besides, does she know how many women would kill to be in that position? she gets to brag about it to her friends, what's not to like? it's a totally even deal.

the clock is ticking and the maitlands aren't getting any younger. she agrees to the deal. you win, at last.

she already knows what to do, so you sit there patiently with a shit-eating grin on your face, awaiting the three little B words. gloating.

Beetlejuice........Beetlejuice...........Beetlejuice.

it's showtime.

this is your favorite part. you love a dramatic entrance. you decide to show the deetzes and their greedy friends the circus they so wanted to turn this town into. horrible as you are, you're also pretty damn good at calling out other people's horribleness, and you do love an ironic karmic way of dealing with someone. for example tubby here thinks he can escape, but not before you change his sleek black suit into a tacky white leisure suit. the horror! this is why you're a professional at this.

you effortlessly end the exorcism and the maitlands are saved. a little pruney right now but they'll be fine. everything is taken care of, you have fulfilled your end of the deal like you promised. only one thing left to do.

"shall we?"

there's really no need to make a whole show out of this, but you're a showman first and foremost and as a 𝒥𝓊𝒾𝓁𝓁𝒾𝒶𝓇𝒹 𝒶𝓁𝓊𝓂 you'll be damned if you're not gonna let yourself have a little fun with this. everyone looks terrified. this is why you're a professional at this.

witnesses and reverend in place, you can finally begin the ceremony. you're having fun, yes, but let's try to pick up the pace a bit, okay? the closer you get to your goal, the more impatient you get. the girl isn't finding any of this very funny at all and she protests. the maitlands butt in and are now kind of twisting your arm a bit, but you deal with them harmlessly, until they get on your last nerve so you send adam to the model and barbara to saturn. all of this after you honorably fulfilled your end of the bargain and saved the day. jesus christ, are you the only one with some integrity around here or what.

you forget the stupid ring. shit. you're pretty sure you have it on you somewhere, ever since you chopped up delores into pieces for poisoning you. you kept her ring finger as a trophy and as a reminder to never get married again, and yet here you are, but desperate times call for desperate measures. finally, you find the ring (still on her severed finger) and hastily tell your new bride-to-be that delores meant nothing to you. in case she even cares. she doesn't seem to. not even a chuckle? oh well.

almost done with the ceremony. almost there. you're holding the girl's hand with an iron grip to keep her in place as you're about to put that ring on her finger. "i now pronounce you, man and—"

a tiny car crashes against your foot and it catches on fire. you scream. a fucking sandworm crashes into the room through the ceiling. everyone screams. you scream LOUDER.

you're sent back to the afterlife waiting room.

not your first rodeo with a sandworm, but that doesn't make the experience any less shitty. the real annoying part is being in the waiting room again. this could take ages. you're number 9,998,383,750,000 and they're serving number 3 right now. you trick the guy next to you and steal his ticket (number 4) but he's not too pleased about that, so that didn't work.

a long time sitting here it is, then.

movie ends, credits roll.

for reference, that was 1988. winona ryder was 15 when they were filming in 1987 so while lydia doesn't have a confirmed age, i think we can safely assume that she was the same age as winona at the time.

36 years later, it's 2024. or 34 years later, it's 2022. we don't know the exact year because while bob's in memoriam credits scene says 2024 and all the interviews talk about how 36 years have passed in universe as well, there's this other one tiny detail.

jeremy's death passport says he died on march 11, 1999. jane butterfield says he died "23 years ago," putting the movie in 2022. they did film it in 2022 so the math is mathing correctly there. given that the in memoriam scene was more of a joke and jeremy's passport is a canon prop in the movie, i'd say 2022 is the canon year the movie is set in. (small sidenote; the passport also has the roman numerals DCLXVI which is 666. cute detail i loved it)

in the sequel, beetlejuice says lydia has been ignoring him for 30 years. i always thought that was curious because outside of this claim, they always specify how many years exactly have passed since. he doesn't say 34 or 36, he says 30. and for his degree of obsession (and the fact that he remembers exactly how many times he's watched The Exorcist) i think he would be counting even the days so i think he did really mean 30 years. so this would mean at least 4 years passed between getting sent back to the waiting room and the beginning of his stalking.

AND NOW that we established all that, we are finally getting to the answer to the question, "when and how did this all start?"

so okay, he spent a while in the waiting room. a lot of time to think. probably replaying the events at the deetzes' in his head over and over, how he got here, where he fucked up, what's he gonna do once he gets out. cursing the maitlands for ruining his plan when he was soooo fucking close. wondering what ever happened to lydia deetz.

lydia deetz, the young girl who told him she wanted to die.

...

is she alright?

i don't think he's capable of feeling guilt, but we can probably argue that he's not entirely heartless. what she said about how she wanted to "get in" must've stuck with him from the way he reacted when she dropped that bomb. she never showed up in the waiting room so he knows she didn't follow through with that. still, he used a vulnerable young girl for his own selfish gain. ironically enough, he knows exactly how that feels, because he also got tricked into marriage and got used for someone else's gain. the difference being that he dealt with that shit with an axe.

much much much to think about for mr. juice.

after years of ruminating in that waiting room, he's finally out and back to the regular day to day afterlife. definitely gets chewed out by juno, maybe forced to do community service or labor or what have you, he basically just needs to clean up his act now. this freelancing shit is becoming more trouble than it's worth anyway.

he's still wondering about lydia deetz. should he check in on her? maybe he should, he's too curious now.

at this point, lydia is now about 19-21 and in college. maybe he manages to sneak into the model one time she's back home for the holidays or something. and oh my god would you look at that, what a beautiful young woman she's grown into. she's radiant. she's happy. she's no longer that gloomy suicidal kid he met in the attic. seems like what she said about the deetzes and the maitlands sharing the house did come true after all.

that's nice. very sweet. good to know.

maybe he wonders if she remembers him and tries to get her attention somehow, give her a little scare for old times sake or whatever. for a brief moment it seems like she saw something and her expression changes, but she shrugs it off and continues on chatting with her two sets of parents. no such luck.

oh well. curiosity sated! and beetlejuice goes back home and doesn't return.

until the next time he returns.

and he keeps coming back to check in on her, telling himself he's just making sure that she hasn't killed herself or something. and he's not above admitting that with every year that passes, she keeps getting more beautiful. and to think they almost got married, huh.

he constantly tries to get her to notice him somehow, and sometimes she almost does, but ultimately he never really succeeds beyond making her do a double take. very rarely she does catch a glimpse of him. he's seen her mutter to herself that she's just seeing things and she seems a bit frightened every time this happens, but there's nothing to fear, honey, it's just good ol' beetlejuice. he won't lie, he gets a bit of a rush every time and it makes his dead heart beat faintly. he's gotten this far, he can't just stop now. in his mind, this has become their little private game of cat and mouse, where the mouse ignores the cat. but aren't they cute? he thinks they're cute. this is not creepy at all!

before he realizes, he's already learned everything about her. he knows about richard and even watched their wedding from afar like a loser. he knows she gave birth to a healthy baby girl named astrid. he knows they have a blast on halloween. halloween is lydia's favorite holiday, and his too. sometimes he can't help but see the three of them happy together and think it could've totally been him. even if he and richard are nothing alike (in fact could not be more opposite) and the circumstances of their unholy wedding were nothing short of grim and a farce. but in his mind, he's starting to convince himself otherwise.

maybe it's his jealousy speaking, but lydia doesn't seem to be that happy with richard despite everything. even though richard is like, the perfect guy. then one day his suspicions are proven correct: neither of them knows why it happened, but after having a long and emotional talk (that he watched with a bucket of popcorn) they decide to get a divorce. he pumps his fist, feeling victorious for some reason. sure he's a little sadistic at times, but why is this giving him so much glee?

the divorce is hard on lydia's kid, who was always more attached to her father, but they still spend a lot of time together. sometimes the three of them, since richard and lydia kept things amicable after the divorce. lydia tries to move on and see other people, but each relationship fails before it even starts. mostly because she keeps holding back and so fails to connect with anyone else, but also sometimes because, well, he can't help himself but to scare them away from her from time to time. it's fun. in his mind, he's just being protective of her, as a gentleman should for a lady.

then richard dies. fell into a piranha infested river from the looks of it (he saw him at immigration one day, don't ask what he was doing around there, force of habit after constantly making sure lydia hasn't killed herself yet.) it's devastating for both lydia and astrid, straining their relationship even more for the next few years as they both try to cope with the loss. the shock proves to be too much for lydia, so she goes to a survivors retreat to work through her trauma, both from richard's death and "unresolved feelings."

then lydia, at her most vulnerable, meets rory.

beetlejuice was able to clock him immediately. a textbook manipulative opportunist, he himself knows the tactics very well. swoop in to "help" someone in a vulnerable position, pull the wool over their eyes and begin taking control so you can get what you want out of that person.

he wouldn't admit it, but this really irks beetlejuice. you know when you see someone who reminds you of the worst parts of yourself, so you despise them? yeah. he's been there, and he's also been him.

but rory is somehow even worse than beetlejuice. see, rory is her manager, and boy does he manage to get on his nerves. he takes her phone. he controls what medication she takes. he blames and guilt trips her about every mishap that HE causes, making himself look like her benevolent savior and making her feel like she would be lost without him, confusing her with his psychobabble. on top of all that, he's forcing her to do this hacky show called Ghost House where she "hunts ghosts" or whatever. the houses he's been helping newly-deads with in his day job as a bio-exorcist (now with a fleet of employees,) she's "hunting" those ghosts now. it's so dumb. it never works. beetlejuice doesn't even know what the hell she's doing, she's phoning it in most of the time and she knows she's become a sellout. what happened to that "strange and unusual" girl who stood up for her ghost friends when those suits wanted to profit off of them back in winter river?

he needs to bring that back. he's the only one who can.

in his mind, beetlejuice has already rewritten the events that transpired. in his mind, lydia has been his wife this entire time, it's just, y'know, one of those open long distance relationships and she doesn't always remember him, but that's okay. in his mind, they share a psychic bond that allows her to sense his presence or see him in her dreams from time to time. he's got nothing to be jealous about, because other men can't compare. no one else can match what they have.

sure, part of him knows he's lying to himself a little bit. but he's already clung to this idea; these past 30 years wouldn't make sense otherwise. he's in love with lydia deetz. this isn't insane of him to say at all. and if it is, well, you know what they say, love makes you do batshit crazy things.

it's not that complicated, no matter what they say you'll never meet another me it's not that difficult to get my head around i'll never meet another you

the end

don't trick me into writing a fanfic again

[stoopidpigeonxx]

⋆˚｡⋆୨✧୧˚ 𝑶 𝑪𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒏, 𝒎𝒚 𝑪𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒏. ˚୨✧୧⋆｡˚⋆ (PT. 2)

OKOKOK I MADE THE PART TWO PLS STOP YELLING AT MEEEE

NSFW under the cut. MDNI.

Characters/fandoms: Captain Curly, Mouthwashing Content warnings: Smut, obvi, p in v whatt, curly being a SLOPPYYYYY eater, praise (from you and him), boobs, tits even, curly being 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂, alot of dirty talking, etc. Our boy curlys a bit of perv.

-Manners? What manners?

Curly is a, what do you kids call it... a munch? Yes. If he goes down on you, and he most likely will, he will be SLOPPY with it. I'm talking drooling all over your cunt, licking it from top to bottom, shaking his head side to side and pressing wet kisses to your clit. It's ironic, really, since he's so polite in and out of bed, but he doesn't really care about a mess if it means pleasuring you. What's a little mess? Sheets can be washed.

"Sorry *kiss* about the mess, sweetheart.. *kiss* can't *kiss* help myself."

-Beautiful tits. And rack. Love it.

When asked the question 'ass, tits or thighs,' he's gonna pick tits. He's a titty guy. Sure, your ass and thighs are nice too, and he gives them an equal amount of love, but nothing can beat the feeling of shoving his face into your boobs when he's thrusting in and out of you. It has something to do with hearing your heartbeat and how fast it is, but mostly he just likes suffocating between your twins. And if he's particularly stressed, he'll just set you on his desk and lift your shirt up and go to town. Sucking, squeezing, rubbing, all that. His favorite stress balls. And god forbid the day you get nipple piercings... He's mindlessly playing with the metal with his teeth, enjoying the feeling of the cold brass on his tongue. You'll have to wear bandaids. (which he'll apply, apologizing profusely.)

-Praise me for sin.

Call this man a good boy and he's whining and shaking. It goes both ways with him. He loves getting praised, and he loves praising. A few of his favorites.. "You're doing such a good job." "Look at you, taking everything like a champ." "God, you're gorgeous." "Good girl." "You're so pretty, baby.." "Atta-fuckin-girl." He knows you fold every time for that kind of talk, so he makes sure to say at least one while you're getting naughty. On the other hand, some of his favorites to hear.. "That's a good boy." "Thank you." (Manners.) "I love you so much." "You're too good." "Fuck, that's good." Hearing how good of a job he's doing is only fuel for him to keep going, and gets him hard as a rock. So, use that mouth. (Unless its occupied, wink wink.)

-He babbles when he comes.

When he's right on that edge, he goes a bit dumb. You feel so warm and good, and he's so fucking close, and his brain just loses all ability to form coherent thoughts. So he just mumbles whatever comes out of his mouth in that adorable whiny subby voice. (You know the one.) "Fuuuuck too good too good too good.. baby.. g'na make me come, coming, coming." Or just a chorus of 'yes' over and over. Its really cute because he tries to be quiet with it, but his brain is so broken that he can't control his volume too well. He has to shove his face into your shoulder or a pillow to muffle himself so the crew doesn't overhear.

-Can't stop, won't stop.

Will not give up until you come, no matter how sore his cock is or how cramped his legs are. He wants you to come as many times as possible before the night is over, and he's willing to overwork himself to achieve that. You've told him its okay, but he doesn't really care. Feeling you clench around him and ride out your orgasm is the best thing he's ever felt, so he's gonna have you coming at least 3 times each session. Unless, of course, you're begging him to stop since its too much. He'd never want to hurt you. He'd pull out and lay with you for a while and let your body calm down before starting up again. "Take it easy, angel. I'm right here. It's okay, you're doing so well." (Why does his dirty talk sound like him coaching you through birth?? 😭)

[zara-renata]

The pool | ao3 | my fanfic masterlist

Summary: You dream, you do some art, you go for a swim, Sylus destroys part of his office, you discover the hot tub, you're close to catching a clue. A 'morning' in the life at Onychinus HQ. Part 17 of the Sylus series.

Notes: Sylus x gn reader, Sylus x mc, second person POV, some Sylus POV MC is referred to by they/them pronouns as a placeholder for your preferred pronouns. This story contains: soft Sylus, embarrassed Sylus, fluff, angst, grief, profanity, mentions of self harm, self-destructive urges, mc with self esteem issues, obscene art, nudity, the twins being the twins

This is what it feels like. Lured to the edge. Balancing on the cliff. You probably know how it ends, before you even realize it's beginning. But the knowing doesn't stop you from leaning, leaning, until the gravity of the inevitable pulls you down into the fall.

Wet cobblestones, moss growing between the cracks. Fallen leaves, slick from the recent rain, gathered in the gutters, piled against the garden wall lining the uneven sidewalk. The scent of damp earth, and the pleasant smell of a wood-burning fire.

Night. Lamplight puncturing the dark at even intervals, marching into the distance. Each lit lamppost haloed by the mist, edges blurred. The muted light bathes everything in warm tones, a sunset’s yellow. Beyond the pools of light—an ocean of night.

Light rain makes no sound as it drifts to the ground, as it coats the hood drawn up over your hair. It would be bone-chilling, if the wind were blowing, but the night’s air is still. You see your breath in puffs of white. You feel like you are the last person on the planet with how quiet the streets are. It is just you, the mist, your footsteps in the pools of light, the eddies of dark between.

You are reminded of the holidays with your gran and Caleb, the way the air smelled in winter, when you would emerge from the metro and walk the last few blocks to your grandmother’s home. Hot, abundant holiday meals, the undercurrent of excitement in exchanging gifts. The scent of pine. 

Winter’s dark nights, softened by the glow of your little family.

You don’t know why you’re walking through this neighborhood, on this dark winter night. It doesn’t matter, really. The woodfire, the leaves, the stillness of the mist. Linkon City’s streets are never this deserted, even in the middle of the night. The solitude is a welcome reprieve from the constant presence of other people, their existence weighing on your subconscious in a way that you only notice when it’s absent—a form of relief, of your breath coming easy for once.

To your left, the high garden wall of a residential building. To your right, a quiet street, stretching forward into the distance, disappearing into the night. On the other side of the street, darkness. You get the sense of open space. The lamplight, though not very bright, is blinding against the black night. No matter how long you stare into the darkness, you can’t discern anything beyond that sense of open space. Like you’re at the very edge of the city. Maybe even the edge of the world. You’re tempted to cross the street to see if you could just let yourself fall and continue falling into forever.

You shake your head. What a strange thought. You have your family waiting. Your colleagues. Your work. A whole life, really. 

But do you? Your footsteps are muted by the slick leaves, the misty night. There is something you’re forgetting—you just don’t know what it could be. You’re on this lovely night walk, with no particular destination in mind. You’ve been walking on this sidewalk for what feels like a long time now, but the garden wall does not end. You do not see the end of the road, no matter how far you walk.

What are you forgetting? A woodfire in a small fireplace. The scent of pine. Plate after plate of food, apple pie.

Why are you tempted to cross the street, tempted to see what endless depths lie on the other side?

You’re forgetting something. Gifts wrapped clumsily but carefully. Ribbons that shine in the light from the fireplace, a string of lights draped over the window.

Apple pie, warm on your tongue.

You stop walking. You listen, straining to hear… something. Something you’re forgetting. You turn and look behind you. Just the garden wall. The leaves piled along the curb. The street stretching into the night. The way back is a mirror of the way forward. There is no end, there is no beginning. There is only the street, the lampposts, the leaves, and the darkness on the other side.

You take a step off of the sidewalk, onto the cobblestoned road. Still no sound. Just the small clouds of your breath. Just the crisp scent of a cold, wet winter day.

You need to see what’s across the street. A muted feeling of fear sweeps through you as you take another step. Just a few more, and you will leave the pool of light from the streetlamp. You won’t be able to see the edge if the world does drop off on the other side. You will simply take a step, and there will be nothing—

You feel like you’re peeking over the edge of a tall building, knowing that the flimsy handrail will give way if you lean too hard. But you can’t stop yourself. You take another step.

You should stop. You have your family waiting, after all.

But you’re forgetting something.

An apple rolls off a cutting board. It hangs suspended in the air, as if time has stopped.

You’re forgetting something, but you don’t want to remember what it is. You take another step.

You are caught between forgetting and remembering, now. What’s holding you back? Perhaps when you reach the edge, you will mirror the apple. You will hang suspended, between forgetting and remembering, and you’ll never hit the ground.

You need to know. Your curiosity would always lead you into trouble. Gran would scold you for it. Caleb would tease you for it. Not the curiosity itself, but the boundary-pushing, the rule-breaking you’d commit to satiate it. You used to have to know, no matter how terrible you knew the knowing would be. Now though—now there are things you do not want to know. But you don't know why you changed. You lean back, slightly, and then sprint out of the safe pool of yellow light. Your feet hit solid ground, echoing on the cobblestones. Until you take another long stride and then—nothing.

You are falling, into the black. You are not the apple. You are deadweight, and you are falling, falling, falling, with your heart in your throat, your stomach turning inside out, so terrified that you can’t even scream.

You’re going to die. The apple, no longer suspended, falls the short distance to the worn wooden floorboards of your grandmother’s house. When it hits, it explodes like a bomb—all sound is sucked from your plummeting trajectory, and all you hear is a high-pitched whine as you continue to fall.

“Darling, wake up,” a deep voice says in the black, right before you splatter onto the unseen ground.

You fall back into your body in terror, only to find that it’s held tightly by strong arms—

Sylus.

He is cradling the back of your head in his big hand, holding your face to his chest. He’s rocking you, as he did in the shower, his cheek resting on the top of your head. The high pitched whining from your dream is coming from your throat, not from the tinnitus in your ears from a bomb exploding.

You gasp.

Sylus lifts his head to look down at you. “Finally awake?” he asks, but not with his usual teasing manner. He’s pale—more pale than usual, and his eyes are wide.

You can’t speak. Part of you still feels like you’re falling. Part of you still feels the impact of when you hit the ground. All of you remembers what you were forgetting in the dream—your family is gone, and they’re never coming back.

You can’t speak, so you just throw your arms around Sylus’s neck and cling to him, burying your face where you previously bit him, where his neck meets his shoulder. It’s not close enough. 

You’re still falling. You’re still hitting the ground. Your family is still gone, and you’re all that’s left.

You push back from him.

“Sylus—” you gasp again. It’s hard to breathe.

He cradles your face in his hands. “What do you need? Tell me.”

You stare into his beautiful eyes. Red is too simple of a word to describe them. They’re the color of red brought to life. They’re the heart of a fire, glowing on a calm winter night.

“Resonate with me?” you manage to ask through your struggling lungs.

He stares at you.

“Please?” you whisper.

He sucks in a breath and drops one of his hands from your cheek, fingers gliding along the skin of your forearm where you’re clinging to his neck. He gently pulls your wrist down, aligns his palm with your own. He slips his fingers between yours, and your hand is swallowed by his. He then clasps it, hard.

Everything fades away.

There is only Sylus’s hand, calloused and rough where it grips yours, Sylus’s heartbeat, fast and hard. You’re sinking into the night, but instead of a starless void like the dream, it is a galaxy under placid waves. Quiet, and strength. So much strength—raw power. Heat. A lava flow beneath, diamond netting glittering above, reflecting the hot glow below. 

You are pure energy—there are no borders, no limits, no restraints. None, except a chain leading from him, stretched taut, anchored in you.

The longer your energy flows into him, and his flows into you, the borders between you and him blur, melt. You are him, and he is you. You can’t tell if this overflowing sense of safety, of want—this yearning threaded with adoration—is yours or his. You are strength incarnate—you can dissolve matter with your mind, disassemble and reassemble atoms, all the constituent parts of a thing, a person. If you were to punch someone right now, they would implode from the force, a collapsing star.

You are aware of all this, faintly. The power of your evol—of Sylus’s evol, your evol, borders rendered meaningless, what’s his is yours, what’s yours is his—-it’s drowned out by the power of hunger, of missing him when he’s right in front of you, an instinct demanding that you grasp him and never let him separate from you again, to taste him, lick and bite, swallow, over and over again, a snake devouring itself, an endless loop of desire mirrored. You are together, scarlet, you are together, ink, particle and wave, solid and liquid—you are not you, he is not him, there is only…

His hand, swallowing yours. A chain anchored in both directions. You are no longer falling. You are no longer hitting the ground. You are no longer the only one left. The emptiness inside you, filled. 

Sylus’s hand. Sylus’s heartbeat. Your heartbeat. Your hand in his. The energy sloshing between you, overflowing—you can teleport. You cling to his neck, hold his hand tighter, and you both dissolve into scarlet-ink mist, swirling up, spilling across his ceiling. The opposite of falling. You feel laughter bubbling up in you, amusement—is it yours? The glee of playful weightlessness? Or his, at your antics with his power? His affectionate indulgence as he waits to see what you’ll do next. You teleport out of his room, bouncing from ceiling to floor—you knock over some edgy modern sculpture. It rolls off a table lining the hallway wall and shatters on the ground—your guilt morphs into more laughter, his again. How could he be mad at you as you ricochet through his home, your home—pick another sculpture to replace it, something you like, this time. You continue, ping ponging through his hallways, destroying more things as you go. Slowly, you get the hang of it, and then you’re a bullet, whooshing through his base until you’re in the greenhouse again. You want to go in, you want to re-materialize on the garden fuck-bed, hand still clasping his, arm still around his neck, but you’re worried you’ll disturb the birds or hurt the plants. You swirl, slingshot back out of the mudroom. Mephisto has been following you, and he squawks in indignation as you rush past him.

You settle for returning to Sylus’s bedroom, where you feel less bad about knocking the pretentious books off his shelves in your reckless enjoyment of this unfiltered power. You re-materialize on his soft, black duvet, arm still wrapped around his neck, hand clasped in his. You’re breathless still, but from the laughter, the joy of reveling in how good it feels to not know where you end and he begins, to not feel so alone—not alone, with the one whose company you crave the most.

You hug him.

He’s silent, as the connection slowly fades, as you let the resonance dissipate. What’s left doesn’t feel empty. You can feel him still, somehow, even though you’re you again, and he is himself again.

You sigh. “Thank you.”

He slings an arm over your waist, as you each lie on your side facing each other.

“Can’t say that I was expecting you to ask to resonate this morning, but you’re very welcome,” he says, thumb soothing along the skin of your waist where your sleep shirt has ridden up.

You’re overcome with relief. You had been so afraid to resonate with him again. The first time had been so overwhelming—no longer hating him, after you learned that he hadn’t killed your family. But still caught in a whirlwind of fear, fascination, trauma. The way he danced with you, the way he handled your panic attack—the only reasons you were able to resonate with him at all so soon after he had treated you so cruelly. You have spent all the time since blocking out that feeling of intimate connection, of drowning yourself in him. It occurs to you that he’s never brought up resonating again, since those long days trying to force you, since you were able to do so once.

You wince. “I’m sorry that it was so abrupt.”

“I told you I don’t want apologies from you. Who said the surprise wasn't pleasant?”

“Okay. Good.” You fall silent, just enjoying his hand on you, the connection that still thrums between you.

But of course he won’t just let you get away with saying nothing about your demand that he resonate with you. “Care to share what brought on the sudden request?”

“Not really,” you mumble, curling in on yourself like a shrimp.

“Mmm,” he acknowledges. His hand slides down, over your hip, curls around the back of your thigh. He tugs a little, and the connection is still so strong that you can’t deny his desire to pull you closer, as if his desire is still yours, and yours, his. You let him pull your leg over his own thighs, and then he rolls. You find yourself lying on top of him, his bare skin under your cheek as it rests over his heart.

He places a palm on the back of your neck, just holding you against him, while hugging you with his other arm.“Were you having a nightmare?” he asks. 

You’ve never told anyone about the night terrors that have contributed so much to your inability to sleep since your family was killed. You feel like you’ve swallowed a knife.

“I woke up because you slapped me in the face as you flailed. I assume you were dreaming about something,” he murmurs, but tightens his hold as you stiffen. “You were making a noise like you were in pain. I didn’t like it.”

You can’t speak. There is a knife stuck in your throat.

“Were you dreaming that Mephisto was trying to steal your ruby earring?”

You jerk your head up and find that he’s staring down at you, his wide mouth lifted in a slight smile. The image of Mephisto trying to pluck your earring from your ear is so ridiculous that you choke a little laugh.

“No? Then perhaps you were dreaming that Luke and Kieran were trying to drag you to karaoke night. You were terrified that you wouldn’t be able to compete against my talent.”

This time you laugh out loud. He frowns a little, as if indignant that you would find the idea of his talent preposterous enough to break you out of your inability to speak.

“It’s not that funny,” he gripes. 

You smile at him. “No,” you manage to say. “I wasn’t dreaming about either of those things.”

“But you were dreaming,” he says softly.

This time, you’re able to nod.

“Were you dreaming about a wanderer attacking you?”

You shake your head.

He’s quiet for a moment. You’re expecting him to narrow it down, to figure out what could possibly cause you so much distress, but he surprises you by not prying further into the details of your nightmares. “Do you have dreams like this often?”

You’re even more surprised when you find yourself answering honestly. “Almost every time I fall asleep.”

He squeezes you tighter and sighs. “Thank you.” 

And then he just… leaves it. You’re so relieved, you just hug him back.

He makes a sound, deep in his throat, that almost sounds like a purr. You drift like that, letting the final remnants of the dream wash away in the scent of his skin, his steady breathing, the stillness of his quiet bedroom.

Eventually his purrs grow louder, more steady, and you realize that he has started to snore. You lift your head and stare into his face. He’s asleep again.

His face is so soft in sleep, you can’t look away. You prop your chin on your hands, folded over his chest, and just enjoy looking at him. His eyelashes sweeping over his pale cheek. The frown between his eyebrows smoothed. His soft lips parted slightly. The insistent rumbles of his snores.

You don’t want to go back to sleep, even though you’d be happy to lie here with him forever. Resonating with him drove the horror of the feelings from the dream away, but you’re not eager to return to the possibility of another nightmare. You slowly sit up, careful not to jostle him. His snoring hitches, stops. But he doesn’t stir.

You sit on the side of the bed and notice that your phone is on the nightstand, plugged in. He must have done it for you, after you fell asleep before the movie even started. You feel a little sad that you still don’t know what his favorite movie is, but soothe yourself with the thought that Sylus is right—you have all the time in the world now, for a little while, to discover as much as you can about him. To satisfy your dangerous curiosity.

As you’re gazing at the phone, you notice that it now has some kind of cute little ribbon on it, and what looks like a cat’s paw medallion at the end of the ribbon. It matches your favorite color, which is also the color of your phone case. It’s adorable, and you’re tempted to reach for your phone to examine it more closely, but you stop before you actually pick it up. Sylus told you that Jenna approved of your leave. She will tell the team about your absence. You’re not ready to read what “you” texted Zayne when Sylus asked for his approval in securing your convalescent leave. Not yet. You don’t want to think about the real world right now. You want to dive into this dream and stay underwater in it until the very last moment. Tara, Xavier, Rafayel—they can live without you. You are convinced that your presence is just a blip on the radar of your friends’ lives. They’ll hardly miss you at all.

You leave your phone on the nightstand, promising yourself that when you do have to pick it up again, you’ll look at the little cat’s paw Sylus clearly gifted you and thank him for it.

You’re a little disconcerted, with the sudden freedom and safety of all the time stretching in front of you, but with Sylus in the bed behind you. You don’t have to do this alone. He told you to assume that he wants to spend time with you. There’s no one else staying at the house, besides Luke and Kieran, as far as you can tell. You can just… live, for a little while. What did he say? Recover, not just survive.

A feeling fills you, but you don’t have a word for it. All you know is that it feels good. You don’t question it. Not right now.

The only question you want to ask is what do you want to do, right now? 

You pad quietly toward the bedroom door, but pause to pick up the books that you knocked off Sylus’s shelves as you teleported, scarlet and ink, sparking mist. You read the titles—they’re all philosophy, psychology. Books to understand the breadth of human existence, the human mind. As if the person collecting them had to start from the very basics to understand what makes people tick. When you pick up the Humanity and Conquer book, you hold it in your hands for a moment, just staring down at it. The ampersand is positioned in such a way that when you first saw the title, you thought it read “Human Anal Conquer,” because someone’s passion was obviously graphic design and some overworked editor clearly approved the cover without even looking at it. You would laugh at the absurd memory, but you don’t want to wake Sylus. You set the book gently back on the shelf and head to the kitchen. There’s no point getting properly dressed if it’s just you, the twins, and Mephisto here.

Speaking of Mephisto, you turn and find him flying quietly behind you as he follows you from Sylus’s bedroom.

The answer to the question of what do you want right now? Coffee. Even if it’s from a pretentious french press.

As you approach the kitchen, you hear the now-familiar voices of Luke and Kieran.

“Oh, that’s the best one so far.”

“Do you really think so? I fail to see marked improvement between this one and the others,” Kieran says mournfully as you stop in the kitchen doorway.

It must still be “early,” in terms of Sylus’s flip-flopped sleep cycle—outside the vast windows looking out over the bleak landscape leading down to the N109 Zone’s imposing city skyline, it does not appear to be night, but rather dusk. You wonder how early it is in terms of Sylus’s morning, if the twins are already awake.

There is a fire burning in the large fireplace on the far wall, and its wood smoke scent reminds you of your dream. Strangely, instead of upsetting you, you feel what can only be the connection to Sylus thrum again, and the memory feels distant already.

You focus on the music drifting through the room instead. Something old, and bluesy, trumpets and piano, a smoky jazz voice singing about lost love. Not the kind of music you’d assume twenty year old dudes would like. But then again, nothing about Sylus and his inner circle is what you would have expected when you looked up into his beautiful face with its cruel smirk for the first time.

Mephisto flies to a perch in the corner of the room and ruffles his feathers before settling.

“I totally think so, you’re getting better and better, man,” Luke says, clearly trying to encourage his dejected brother.

You take in the scene before you, which consists of a very large, professional-looking espresso machine now squatting on the huge, black-marble kitchen island, with Luke and Kieran sitting on black leather bar stools in front of it, surrounded by a bunch of wide-rimmed mugs, each filled with what smells like coffee.

You take a step closer and see that in each mug, the clear outline of a dick and accompanying balls has been drawn in the foam of a latte.

The twins’ heads jerk up in unison as you bark a laugh that sounds more like a seal than human.

“I see Sylus made good on his threat to get a fancy espresso machine,” you say, dabbing at the corner of your eyes because you’re trying so hard to contain more of your insane laughter.

“All thanks to you,” Luke grins. “As you can see, we’re making great use of it!” He proudly gestures towards the dick art Kieran has been making.

“I wouldn’t call it great, but it is certainly amusing,” Kieran sighs, idly stirring a little wooden stir stick in the latest latte dick.

“Did you make all of these?” you ask.

“No, Luke made a few too. Here—” Kieran carefully scoots a mug closer to you, and you gasp when you look down at the meticulous, gorgeous rendering of van Gogh’s Starry Night painting contained in it.

“Now you see how he’s patronizing me with praise for my sad little penises,” Kieran grumbles.

Luke pats his back, even as he puffs a little with pride at your clearly impressed reaction.

“Your penises are awesome, Kieran. You just need to keep practicing if you want them to be photo-realistic.”

You try really hard not to laugh at this strange, earnest back and forth about dick art, but it’s a losing battle. You laugh, softly, but then clear your throat at Kieran’s disappointed expression.

“You’re way better than I am probably. I’ve never made latte art before,” you try to comfort him instead of continuing to laugh at him.

“Luke has never made latte art before either, but look at what he’s already made!”

Luke just nudges him. “You’re a lot better than me at a lot of things. Just think of it as a… an incentive? to practice.”

Kieran smiles at him. “You really are reading your thesaurus.”

Luke nudges him again. “I told you!”

They smile stupidly at each other for a moment, and you’re suddenly struck with a sharp pain of missing Caleb. Although he wasn’t your real brother, his presence in your life, a constant sidekick until your ways parted, you to the Hunter Academy and him to flight school, was a source of comfort long after you grew apart. The shared history alone…

The twins seem to notice your staring, and Luke gestures as the espresso machine.

“You wanna try?”

You shake your head to clear the grief from your thoughts, and it works, a little. “Try?”

“Latte art! You should try to draw something too!”

You stare at him for a moment. Normally you’d be too pressed for time—getting to work, getting to bed, laundry, dishes, vegging out in front of a stupid series if you hadn’t overbooked your rare time off. But Sylus, despite the absurd way he went about it, has gifted you with precious time. You don’t have to be anywhere at all. You can just… be.

“Yeah,” you smile. I do.” Luke whoops and holds his hand up. You stare at it, confused.

“High five, high five, high five,” he chants.

You laugh and slap his hand, hard. 

“Yeah! Okay, okay, fist bump!” he holds out his big fist, but when you make one and reach out to bump his, he slides his under yours and makes a peace sign. “Snail!” he laughs, wiggling his fingers, and your fist combined with his two fingers really do look like a cute little snail. Well, big snail, considering the size of his fingers.

All you can do is laugh again. Kieran gestures you to come over and shows you how to use the fancy as fuck espresso machine that Sylus had overnighted to his place based on your flippant comment. You would marvel at the insanity that is your life right now, but you’re indulging. Like this strange feeling filling you, you don’t question it. 

You just pay close attention to Kieran’s instructions, make a respectable looking latte, and look pensively down into the finished product while clutching a stir stick.

What should you draw?

Your gaze drifts between the dick and balls and starry night, between vulgar and highbrow. You decide not to overthink it and begin by lowering the little pitcher, pouring the concentrated microfoam into the liquid’s surface.

Kieran and Luke’s chatter melts away as you focus on your latte art.

It’s meditative, drawing the stir stick through the thick foam, the curves and swirls following. You could make this your new hobby, you’re enjoying it so much. After a final pour and swirl, you sit back on your stool in satisfaction.

“Oh, you done?” Luke crowds one side of you, while Kieran leans over from your other side. They’re quiet as they observe your handiwork.

“Can you even tell what it is?” you laugh, because you think you did a decent job, but who knows if anyone else shares your vision?

“Hmm, it’s quite lovely, just the design itself. But … is it an orchid?” Kieran tilts his head, his dark curls cascading over his forehead.

“Or a leaf? Like a fancy leaf?” Luke asks, tilting his own head, the mirror of his brother.

You’re about to answer when you yelp instead as a solid warmth materializes at your back, big arms wrap around your waist, and a voice like melted chocolate dripping along your skin rumbles next to your ear. “It’s a vagina, children.”

Luke and Kieran don’t even react to Sylus’s sudden appearance between them, only tilting their heads in the opposite direction as they observe your latte art with new eyes.

“Ooooh, now I see it!” Luke lights up. “And that’s the clit there at the top!”

“Indeed Luke—that’s what made me think it was an orchid!” Kieran turns to you. “You could be the next Georgia O’Keefe!”

You laugh. “You couldn’t even tell what it was. I don’t think I’ll be the next anything, but it was really fun to make.” You turn your head to meet Sylus’s red gaze as he remains leaning over your shoulder, observing your latte. “What do you think?”

He lifts a dark silver eyebrow. “Why this particular design?”

You shrug. “Just trying to balance Kieran’s fleet of dicks with some female representation in your base. Your men could use a different perspective besides the reigning patriarchy.”

“Ooh, that gives me an idea,” Luke lifts a finger like he’s just had the biggest Eureka moment since the discovery of volume displacement and hurries back to the espresso machine.

Sylus continues staring at you. “I suppose I can’t lament your lack of maturity when you were motivated by such a concern for equality.”

“Oh, I definitely also just wanted to draw genitalia like Kieran, but we’re gonna have to drink enough dick with all these mugs. I figured a little variety was in order,” you grin at him.

“You will absolutely not be drinking more than two of these,” Sylus orders. “I didn’t invite you here to have a caffeine-induced heart attack. You may have some green tea after you slurp your pussy and suck down one of these cocks,” he says sternly, but somehow—maybe through the connection that still echoes through you from the resonance—you can tell he’s trying very, very hard not to laugh at his own wordplay. Even when making a joke, he’s smug as hell.

You lean forward so that your mouth is right by his ear and whisper, “You can’t tell me what to do.”

In utter fascination, you watch as he shivers from your breath in his ear, and you feel like the raw power of his evol is still running through you from the realization that you caused such a reaction in his big body.

He turns his head to meet your gaze, so close that his nose brushes yours, lovely eyes fixed on yours. He opens his mouth to respond when suddenly Luke lets out a triumphant cheer.

“In the words of my badass brother, ‘Behold!’” he crows, pushing his mug over to you, Sylus, and Kieran, who is still standing at your side.

You stare down into the cup—and burst out laughing like a hyena.

A very detailed, highly accurate clenched asshole stares back at you.

“But why, Luke?” Kieran cries in horror.

Luke just beams. “Now the… what is the word? trifecta? of naughty bits is complete, and this one’s gender neutral. Everyone has an asshole! We’re not misogynist pigs! Sylus is a feminist and Kieran just likes dicks,” he tells you earnestly, like it’s very important to him that you don’t get the wrong idea about the twins’ stance on gender equality.

Sylus just hangs his head, the soft sweep of his hair brushing your cheek. “Look at what you’ve encouraged in my men,” he grumbles. “Now we’ve got anuses.”

You lay your cheek on top of his head. “I walked in here and Kieran already had an armada of dicks. I didn’t do anything but add a little diversity. Not everything is about your dick, after all.” You can’t help yourself and run your hand through his hair, tracing the shell of his ear with a fingertip along the way. He shivers again.

“I’m having a hard time remembering that,” he says, so softly that you could be imagining it. Before you can think too hard about it, Sylus straightens up and reaches into his pocket, where his phone has begun to vibrate. He remains close as he accepts the call, one arm still wrapped around your waist.

“Speak,” he commands, sounding irritated.

You let your attention drift as he grunts in response to whomever is speaking. The fireplace, the soft lighting, the evening darkening into night outside, Luke and Kieran’s chatter as they begin drinking their creations, insisting that the decorated lattes taste better than lattes without art, the scent of coffee. It all blends together, and Sylus’s warmth at your back anchors you in it. 

“I specifically told you to handle as much as you could without my input. And yet, the very next day, you’re calling me with this mess.” Sylus says softly, menacingly.

You turn to watch his face. He meets your eyes as he listens for another moment, looking increasingly bored.

Which you’ve learned means that he’s having big feelings that he’s trying to mask.

You place your hands on his forearm, slipping them under the sleeve of his soft sweater, and run your palms up to his elbow, and down again. He closes his eyes and exhales a deep breath, his expression softening as he does so.

“Fine. But I’m not coming in person. They will have to accept a video conference. If this happens again, just eliminate whoever is giving you trouble.”

He listens again for a moment. “I don’t care if it ruins another pair of Bontonis. They’ll make more next season. I. Am. Unavailable.”

He ends the call with a jerk of his thumb and slides the phone back into his pocket. He looks at you, his face neutral.

“You will have to entertain yourself for a little while. Aidan has already encountered a problem that requires my personal attention. I’ll find you when I’m done.”

You let your hand fall back down to his wrist and squeeze it gently.

“Okay.”

He doesn’t move, but instead turns his wrist so that the soft underside is facing up, still held in the circle of your loose grip. He puts his other hand over yours. “Are you going to be okay?”

You smile at him, filled with that strange, unnamable feeling, filled with the bizarre conviction that you’re still connected with him somehow, because of the resonance earlier. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. I told you. I can handle your big scary men, and your big scary house.” And you mean it. 

He smiles faintly in response and then leans down. You have the insane feeling that he’s going to kiss you goodbye, but before his nose brushes yours, he stops, a funny expression coming over his face. He lets go of your hand and straightens. You let your own hand fall. He stares at you for a second longer, and then spins on his heel and walks out of the kitchen.

That welcome, good feeling drains out of you as he leaves. In its place is… nothing. 

How ridiculous, that you’d think he was going to kiss you, when he has made no attempt to do so, despite all of his physical affection, up to this point.

You stare at the empty kitchen doorway, and that feeling of connection to him drains from you as well.

What’s left behind is… well, it’s what you usually feel like. Nothing has changed, really. Your echoing insides. The knowledge, deep in your bones, that the last of the people who had any understanding of you are dead. The only ones who could possibly love you for you, and not for what you could do for them. The ones who knew you before you became a killer, a sword in the Association’s arsenal.

Nothing has changed at all. It’s only in the comparison that your usual state of being hurts so keenly as you return to it. 

In this moment, staring at the empty kitchen doorway, you’re viciously reminded of why you’re so terrified of even considering the possibility that Sylus could ever care for you beyond an entertaining acquaintance. How will you ever be able to recover after having only a small taste of Sylus’s full attention, a feeling of connection to him through the resonance, when he grows bored and no longer looks at you like he looked at you before he leaned down and remembered whatever made him stop—whatever brought him back to his senses, and sent him ricocheting away from you.

You have always told yourself that you’re a survivor. You can survive anything. You lived, when you shouldn’t have, while Caleb died. And he was the strongest person you’ve ever known. If you can outlive him, even if you shouldn’t have, you can outlive anything.

You force yourself to focus on the emptiness ringing through you. The emptiness that you’ve carried for longer than you can remember your own life’s events. Whatever feeling you had upon waking in Sylus’s arms—whatever connection you imagined with Sylus after the resonance faded—it’s an illusion. What’s real is tolling inside of you right now. Echoing through the hollow halls of your mangled heart, the silent bell of your solitude.

This may be a nice dream to indulge in, but it’s just a dream.

You’ll outlive this too.

You turn away from the empty kitchen doorway. The twins are staring at you.

“I really thought boss would have more rizz than this,” Kieran says, bizarrely.

“He’s too cautious for his own good,” Luke murmurs, sounding sad.

You don’t want to know what they think they just saw. Maybe they’re bored too, and ship you with Sylus because it’s something to do. You wouldn’t be surprised if your pathetic crush on their boss is fodder for some bet, which is why they’re keen on trying to convince you he’s such a great guy. It has nothing to do with you, whether they like you or not, whether they think you’d be a good partner for their boss.

Everything hurts, and you want to run. The feeling that always comes after the self-recrimination is welling up in you. You want to slap yourself for reaching for Sylus this morning, forcing him to resonate with you after your stupid nightmare, letting him in. 

You make a fist and squeeze as hard as you can. Your nails are too short to do anything, even as your knuckles pop from the strain. It’s not breaking your promise to Sylus. It doesn’t hurt, not in comparison to what’s happening inside you right now. He told you to bring yourself to him when you feel like this, but he’s busy with … whatever it is that Sylus does.

“Hey, do you want to drink one of those lattes now?” Luke asks tentatively.

“Or tea? We can also make some tea, if you prefer,” Kieran asks hopefully.

You try really hard to make your face smile, but by the look on the twins’ faces, you probably just look horrifying.

“Thanks guys. I think I’m just gonna—” You actually don’t know what you’re going to do. But you’re going to get out of this room, to begin. “I’m just gonna go.” You turn.

“You’re not going to go, go, right? Like…” Luke pauses, looks a bit constipated. “You’re not gonna run half naked out of the house with no shoes on again, right?”

Kieran hangs his head. “What my brother means is, if you’d like to leave the base, please take the Phantom. It will respond to your face, so you don’t need to worry about a key. Luke and I will swing by and pick it up from your place another time.”

You stare at him. “What do you mean, it will respond to my face?”

He glances at Luke, and then back at you.

“Every room in this house and every vehicle in the garage is programmed to recognize your face and authorize your entry and use.”

“But why?”

He tilts his head. “Did Sylus not tell you?”

You shake your head.

“Because Sylus wanted it that way.”

“But why?” you ask again, completely confused.

“Why do you think?” Luke demands, but Kieran puts a hand on his arm.

“Why would someone give another full access to his valuables, his fortress, and his secrets?” Kieran asks instead of answering your question.

Yes, my beloved?

Words he’s never said to you.

When you wake up, you will remember this, if nothing else.

It’s just a dream within a dream.

You relive him leaning down, a kiss that never happened, him disappearing through the doorway. The twins are still staring at you.

“I’m not going to make you guys chase me down the road again. And I’m still sorry for that. I’m just going to find something to do until Sylus is done,” you reassure them, head too full, chest too empty.

You need to get out of this room and move your body.

You wave and leave them behind, surrounded by mugs full of delicious coffee.

You hear the quiet flap of wings. You don’t even have to turn around to know that Mephisto is following you. It’s fine. You think that you should wander around the grounds one of these early “mornings” before it’s full night and see if you can’t pick up some shiny pebbles to treat Mephisto with. But maybe Sylus’s bird is just as much of a snob as his owner, and he only accepts treats in the form of rubies, sapphires, diamonds.

You want to move your body, but your feet hurt. You have that jittery feeling, where you know you’re really hungry because you haven’t eaten anything, but the idea of eating makes you feel sick. You need to move, first. You remember that the twins had mentioned a pool. You turn to Mephisto.

“Hey buddy.” You hold up your fist, wondering if he’ll get the message.

He flies to you and lands on your wrist, cocking his head as if in inquiry.

“Can you show me where your daddy’s pool is?”

He squawks quietly, and it’s just as grating as when he squawks at full volume. It finally dawns on you that it sounds as if Sylus recorded his own voice making crow noises and set that as the bird’s voice module. It’s uncanny, and jarring, and you think the idea is kind of hilarious, no matter how unlikely.

Thankfully Mephisto can’t read your mind, because he does not squawk in indignation as he would if he knew what you were thinking. He just takes flight again and begins leading you to the part of the house that contains the promised indoor pool.

Finally, he stops and hovers outside a plain black door.

“Thank you,” you nod to him and throw open the door, ensuring that he can fly in after you before it swings shut again. He flies ahead as your breath catches, settling on one of his perches that Sylus must have placed in every single room of the house to accommodate his “not-a-pet,” clearly beloved pet.  

You’re hit with the smell of chlorine, and you inhale deeply because you’re a weirdo and have always enjoyed the smell of chlorinated pools. It’s warm, much warmer than the rest of the house. Instead of the modern decor and ubiquitous black and maroon of the rest of his house, and unlike the colorful, messy tiles of the greenhouse, you feel like you’ve walked into a zen garden. The soaring ceiling is glass, like the greenhouse, with the night sky spilling into the huge space. Pale stone lines the floors, pale wood panels the walls. At periodic intervals, shelves are bit into the walls, each hosting a meticulously cultivated bonsai plant of some kind. There are low cushioned chairs, white fabric and pale wood matching the walls, scattered throughout a sort of sitting area before the pool area begins. And of course, there’s a bar along one wall, the bottles glittering, reflecting the soft lighting built into the floors and lining each wall of the large space. You joke about Sylus’s tendency to drink, but the evidence of it in each room of his house is actually starting to worry you. You shake your head and continue into the room. The stones narrow to a path leading to the pool itself. On either side of the path, pebbles that you associate with zen gardens stretch to the walls, with large rocks—boulders, really, dotting each pebble bed here and there. Along the edge of the pool, the pale stone provides a generous walkway leading in both directions, each ending with a door—one glass, the other solid. Lounge chairs line the walkway. At a glance you can see that through the glass door is a sauna. On the far side of the pool, which is probably olympic sized, floor to ceiling windows provide yet another view of the barren landscape stretching beyond Sylus’s home. 

You walk to the edge of the pool and disturb the still water with a toe. Lighting from the bottom of the pool sends the reflections of the rippling water against the glass, giving the effect of looking at the N109 Zone from the bottom of the ocean, somehow enhancing the view. The water is deliciously warm, where you expected it to be cool. You don’t even want to think about the energy bill required to keep such a huge pool this warm.

The space is so peaceful, with such a sense of soaring space, you want to cry. The whole space is simple—-no recreation of natural waterfalls, no waterslides or multi-level bathing areas. Just a huge, beautiful pool, in a minimally designed space. But every placement of rock, every design choice feels deliberate, thoughtfully chosen. You can imagine that Sylus probably flew in some zen garden expert to personally create the space for him. You could live in just this room for the rest of your life and be happy.

The emptiness, your self-pitying wallowing, the humiliated feeling of having imagined that Sylus would kiss you only for him to get that look on his face like he tasted something bad—you shed it like a second skin. You shed it like you begin to shed your clothes, not thinking about anything else. Just slipping out of your sleep shorts, your sleep tank top, your underwear. You carefully unwrap the bandages from your feet and let them slither down on your pile of clothes. You turn, run a few steps in one direction, ignoring the sting, and then take a running leap into the pool.

Under the water, all is quiet. All is still. You draw your legs up to your chest, wrap your arms around them, and sink to the bottom. Everything else fades away. 

When you run out of breath, you send yourself soaring to the surface, your gasp and the lapping water echoing through the beautiful room. 

You begin to swim, enjoying the stretch of your body, your weightlessness. Time pulls taut, snaps, becomes meaningless, as you leisurely swim laps in this lovely, secluded pool.

***

Sylus is in a bad mood. The only reason he didn’t teleport through the phone to strangle the people Aidan was meeting with during the highly unwelcome phone call that interrupted his latte moment with you was your hand caressing his forearm. He felt the rage slam into him the moment he felt his phone vibrate, his impatience a living, choking thing. But when he felt your calloused fingers drifting along his skin, the rage, the impatience, simply dissipated. What was left was not even a relief—it was like such negative emotions were never there to begin with. He recognizes that your ability to do this to him—to alter his entire mood, to change his course of action without even trying, is a weakness. If you only knew how much power you already have over him. He sighs. He wants you to know, if that means you will never doubt again what you are to him. But he can tell you’re still too scared to fully consider the possibility.

Sylus is in a bad mood, because he knows that he should be in a great mood. All of his plans are in motion. First, he has an invitation to the birthday party of a daughter of a potential business ally that he desperately wants to secure. Second, Aidan will be handling his business moving forward, for the most part. Even aside from your calming touch, Sylus is able to forgive today, because it isn’t Aidan’s fault that the presumptuous fucks supplying him with a certain number of high-grade protocores felt entitled to a face-to-face with the boss. They will be punished for their impudence, in time. But only after he has secured the product. And finally, you’re here, in his home, touching him of your own volition. What else could he possibly want?

He had carried you to his bed after you fell asleep before the film even started, and slept better than he has in years. He can usually manage four, five hours a night, and even then, his sleep is restless. His body is always on alert, even in the safety of his stronghold. But with you breathing softly next to him… he slept like the dead. It’s a testament to how relaxed you already make him that you didn’t end up seriously injured after slapping him in the face while he was dead asleep—his subconscious must have recognized that you were not a threat. Anyone else may have ended up paralyzed, or worse, due to his tendency to reflexively lash out against unexpected physical touch. Like that one time with Kieran. He closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose. He refuses to dwell on it further. It’s in the past, he tells himself. Kieran is fine. And so are you.

Except you aren’t, are you?

Another contributing factor to his shit mood—he didn’t realize you were having night terrors, despite all the time he has already spent at your side while you sleep. How he managed to overlook such an obvious thing when he was plotting how to help you with your insomnia is—frankly, it’s sloppy. He suspects that the dreams involve your family. That your night terrors are tied to your new fear of using firearms. But he could also tell from your face, drained of color when he asked you what you were dreaming about, that you weren’t ready to discuss it. He has learned his lesson well from trying to force resonance with you at the beginning. He will not push you any further than absolutely necessary to get what he wants. You’re here now, in his house. He has the time to draw your fears, your nightmares out of you—to lance the wound and let it drain. 

And yet another reason for Sylus to be in a fantastic mood—even though he regrets the circumstances leading to it, you finally asked him to resonate with you for the first time since the auction. Feeling you filling him, feeling himself fill you. Watching you playfully test out his powers as your own. The joy you felt as you got the hang of it. The rush of being folded so tightly into you as you both were energy, sparking mist careening through the halls of his home. It took a huge amount of self control not to let his true feelings flood into you as the boundaries between himself and you melted in the resonance. You’re not ready yet. But when you are ready, when he can finally resonate with you after you know the truth of his feelings for you, he intends to flood you with them, to drown you so thoroughly in his devotion to you that you will never doubt him or his feelings for you ever again. 

But then he fell back asleep. He was sulking after waking up and finding you gone, irritated at being forced to come looking for you when you should have been right there for him to roll over on top of, to breathe in, to greet the new night with, only to discover you bonding with Kieran and Luke over obscene lattes. Just when he thinks his delight with you has reached its ceiling, you do something new, so effortlessly, and he finds himself floored again. His capacity for pleasure expands beyond what he could have ever imagined. Each new encounter with you is slowly teaching him that with you, there is no limit to how much joy he can experience.

But then the phone call. He was eagerly looking forward to having an uninterrupted day full of just his beloved. He didn’t even have any plans—no dates, no distractions. He wanted to follow you around, even if such wandering ended in simply sitting with you while you read a book. No music, no phone, no games, no diversions necessary, if he could just touch you while you turned the pages. In fact, he’d love it if you read to him. Your voice does things to him that no music can ever truly achieve. Pure, unadulterated peace, hearing you talk. He taps his temple. Well, except when you’re whispering You can’t tell me what to do in his ear. He groans. Oh, he might not be able to tell you what to do, but you can make him do whatever you want. 

Fuck, just thinking about it makes him… sloppy. So sloppy that he almost forgot himself as he was leaving you to go deal with his supplier mess. It felt more natural than breathing to lean down, offer you a kiss, take from you a kiss, feel his lips on yours in a swift moment of goodbye, a promise of soon, I’ll come back to you as quickly as possible.

What would you have done, if he hadn’t caught himself at the last moment, forced himself to straighten, to leave without taking what he has been craving in every free moment since your dream? Would you have welcomed him, as you did in the dream? Or would it set his progress back with you ten steps? Sylus isn’t accustomed to fear, but he fears returning to a place where you don’t reach out to him, stroke his hair, clasp his wrist, all without his bidding. He’s greedy, and he knows it. Now that you’re putting your hands on him, he never wants you to stop.

The dream. He shakes his head. Again, sloppy. He had intended to comfort you, not maul you, when he slipped into your mind as you slept. To say all the reassuring things he was too impatient to wait until you were awake for, and ask you to remember them so that you’d believe him when he said them again in the morning. A little trick. He’ll show you how to do it, when you learn that it’s one of many up his sleeve besides his ability to plumb the depths of a person’s soul for their deepest desires. He hadn’t planned to bait you into saying such sweet things to him. He hadn’t planned to be so overwhelmed hearing your true feelings about him, your true feelings that so closely mirror his own, his kindred spirit, his twin in a different, but no less meaningful way than Kieran and Luke are twins. Hearing you speak his own feelings, admitting you felt the same way, had broken his self control in a way that should be frightening. He marvels again at the irony. You’re so afraid of even considering the possibility that he could love you at all, let alone like this. When he’s the one should listen to Aidan and be afraid of everything you can already do to him if you so will it. 

He wants to kiss you again. His want is a living thing in his mouth. He can taste it, just as he can taste your tongue now, the memory more precious to him than all the protocores on the damn planet.

He will be patient. Until he’s sure that you’ll kiss him back in real life, just as you did in the dream.

He looks down at the bulge in his pants.

He will be patient, damn it.

He is in a shit mood, but now that the video conference is over, and his impudent supplier and his posse think they’ve managed to see the boss in deference to their power play, he intends to get in a better mood. There’s not a moment to waste. Well, at least, not any more moments to waste than those he lost this morning with you already.

Now, to find you. He hasn’t bothered to raise the screen back into the ceiling that he uses for video conferences and when he’s in the mood to catch up on the news in his office, so he pairs his phone with it and pulls up Mephisto’s app on his phone, tosses the phone on his desk. The screen flickers to life, and—he almost falls out of his chair.

You’re in the pool room. In the pool. You’re swimming leisurely, free style, your gorgeous, strong arms cutting through the water with knife-precision, your legs hardly making a splash as they propel you forward. Your glorious, exquisite, mind-breaking, naked ass on full display.

He covers his open mouth with his hand.

Sylus’s brain, with all of its clockwork finesse, perfectly calibrated to calculate every scenario and its multiple pathways to the next possibility, and the next after that, endlessly—its ability to conceive of multiverses, each playing out differently in parallel—his brain is overwhelmed, grinding to a complete halt in the face of your masterpiece of an ass and the question of Why aren’t you wearing a swimsuit when there are twenty swimsuits of various brands, designs and fabric sitting in the closet he made for you?

He can’t help himself. He stares at you, shifts uncomfortably in his chair. He needs to turn off this feed. He needs to turn off Mephisto. He hates that Mephisto is seeing what Sylus is seeing. Which is insane, because Mephisto is a mechanical bird and does not care that he is witnessing a wonder of the world right in Sylus’s pool. A wonder that neither he nor Sylus have permission to see. He shakes himself, steels his resolve, takes one last glance at the screen, at you, and reaches for his phone again.

Just as he’s picking it up, the door to his office bursts open and Luke and Kieran are huffing, panting, struggling to fit through the doorway first. 

“Not! This! Time!” Luke growls, ruthlessly trying to shove Kieran’s face back behind him, as Kieran attempts to sideswipe Luke’s legs from under him with a low kick.

“Boss’s office race game winner is ME!” Luke hops, avoiding the kick, and bodychecks Kieran into the other side of the door.

Sylus’s brain is still non-functioning, because instead of smoothly flicking the app off, he accidentally projects the sound along with the visuals on the screen.

The sound of splashing water is deafening, causing Luke and Kieran to both slap their hands over their ears, wincing, while also pulling their attention to the screen, where you’re still swimming ass-naked through the water. It takes a second, but once the images and sound register, they both whirl around, still squished in the doorway together, the breadth of their shoulders making the squeeze look painful.

“Boss, what the fuck?” Luke yells.

“Have you no shame, boss?” Kieran bellows at the same time.

Sylus curses, gives up trying to use the app, and snaps his fingers. The screen explodes in a mist of red and black which then dissolves into ashen mist.

Now that he doesn’t have to worry about Luke and Kieran being able to see you just as he saw you, he manages to flick the app off his phone screen. He stares down at his home screen, which is a picture of you asleep next to him, so achingly lovely it makes his heart jam every time he uses his phone. 

“Is it safe to turn around?” Luke yells again, causing Sylus to wince.

Sylus just puts his face on his desk.

He hears the rustling of the twins moving in the doorway, and then Kieran’s tentative voice. “It’s safe.”

And then… silence. Deafening silence.

Luke clears his throat. “Look. We, uh. Well, sometimes, when we really like someone… I think?—I mean, I don’t know if I’ve ever really liked, liked someone, you know, but I can imagine, maybe, that like, when we really like someone, we uh… spy on them like creeps with our mechanical crow?”

Kieran sighs. “No, Luke, what you said first is correct. What the fuck, boss?”

Sylus keeps his face planted in the desk. “It’s not what it looked like,” he groans.

“Well, what was it then? Because it sure as hell looked like you were using Mephisto to watch your hunter skinny dipping in the pool,” Luke scolds.

Sylus rolls his head so that he’s facing the twins, who both stand with their hands on their hips, looking at him with such disappointment he wonders if this is what having parents would be like.

“I didn’t realize what kitten was doing when I checked in with Mephisto. I was just about to turn off the feed when you two came bulldozing into my office.” 

“Oooh,” the twins say, in unison. Sylus has long been used to their uncanny mirroring.

He groans again. “Which, may I remind you, yet again—we’ve talked about the no-knocking issue. Now that we have a guest, you really have to remember to knock before you come in.”

They have the decency to look a little sheepish, even as they are clearly looking at him with suspicion.

“So you weren’t being an utter scumbag and getting your rocks off watching your hunter through Mephisto?” Luke asks.

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Sylus growls. “I want kitten to know when I’m getting my fucking rocks off.”

“Eww, it’s like imagining our parents doing it,” Luke grimaces.

Kieran just winces, like the thought is unbearable.

Sylus stares at them. “Parents?”

Luke and Kieran look at each other, and then look back at Sylus. “Yeah?”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Well. You’re like. Work dad, right? And your hunter… they’re your chosen mate, right? So that makes them… also our parent,” Luke ticks off his points on his fingers, tilting his head in concentration.

Sylus can’t process this right now. He still has the image of your delicious ass in his head, and now he’s being confronted with sudden parenthood from his henchmen. Despite himself, however, he’s curious. “Would you be okay with… kitten. As… your parent?” He tries very hard to look bored. Why should he care if his employees approve of his beloved? Their opinion won’t change his feelings. They’re his henchmen, not his children. He suppresses a horrified shiver.

“Totally! They’re so fucking badass! And they’re hilarious!”

“And their willingness to play along with us, with the handcuffs and flare gun, with the latte art—I quite like them a lot. And watching them frustrate you, and throw duffel bags full of feathers at you, and shock you with their behavior in our pool, is amusing,” Kieran coughs, and then looks guilty for having admitted all that.

“Yeah, you could have chosen someone who just, totally sucks,” Luke adds. “But your hunter is fun!”

“Noted,” Sylus sniffs, ignoring the relief he is certainly not feeling because Luke and Kieran are his henchmen and not his kids. “We will never speak of this again.”

Luke and Kieran grin. “Sure, boss,” they chirp in unison.

“Was there a reason you steamrolled into my office in the first place?” Sylus ignores their obvious lie and changes the subject.

“Oh, not really. We just wanted to show you Kieran’s latest dick latte. The veins look great.”

Sylus rubs his temples. He has to install a new screen in his office because of his henchmen’s new hobby. A new hobby that they only have because of you, and your expression of interest in an espresso machine. If he wasn’t already aware of how much you’re changing his life, this would be another moment of epiphany.

“Take a picture, and I promise to look later. Right now I need to help kitten find the selection of swimsuits that are available.” Sylus is thrilled to have you swimming naked in his pool. In fact, he’d prefer it. But he wants you to have the option of a swimsuit. He suspects that you just didn’t realize that along with the rest of the things he has arranged to make your stay more comfortable, swimsuits are also among them.

***

You are weightless, and warm. Your arms and legs are growing pleasantly heavy, tired. Muscles well-used. You know that they’ll ache tomorrow—you’re not accustomed to swimming. Your workouts tend to be weightlifting, running. You used to run with Caleb, when you were still both living at your gran’s place. You take the memories and tuck them into a pocket. You don’t shove them down deep, but you don’t want to think about them right now. You don’t want to think about anything right now.

But now that you’ve worked out the anxious, jittery feeling from earlier, you’re really, really hungry. You wonder what time it is. If Sylus is done with his business. If he is, then you’d better figure out if there are any towels in here and get dressed before he comes looking for you. You finish your lap, hand touching the edge of the pool. You lift your head, preparing to haul yourself out of the water—and then squeal like a frightened rodent that’s just been stepped on. “The fuck, Sylus?”

Sylus is stretched out on one of the lounge chairs lining this side of the pool’s walkway. His chest is bare again—it looks like he’s wearing scarlet swim trunks. Two big, fluffy looking towels are on a low table next to him, along with a little bundle of dark fabric. Two cocktail glasses with little pink umbrellas sit next to the towels, along with a bowl full of… pastries? Croissants. Maybe cinnamon buns. Your mouth waters. His arms are folded behind his head, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. He’s humming a little tunelessly, eyes closed like he’s on the verge of napping.

You sink back into the water until it’s up to your chin and just stare at him.

“Hello to you too, darling. Aren’t you getting hungry?” he asks, eyes still closed.

“How long have you been there?”

“Long enough to know that you’re probably hungry by now,” he smiles faintly.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Did he watch you swim? Does he think you’re ridiculous, skinny dipping in his big fancy pool, a feral, uncivilized guest? You hadn’t even thought about a swimsuit. You just wanted to move your body, under the silent water.

“And interrupt your obvious enjoyment of our pool? I’m not in a hurry.” 

“How did you know I was here?” you ask, but you know the answer. Like the swimsuit, you hadn’t even thought about Sylus being able to reach you through Mephisto, just as he explained to you that you could reach him through Mephisto. How could you have forgotten months of Sylus’s stalking you through his pet bird? You’ve been here one day, and despite everything, you’re already forgetting to be on your guard.

“Guess,” is all Sylus says.

You scowl at him, but he’s still not looking at you.

“Well? Hungry?”

At his amused words, your stomach growls loudly. The lapping of the water seems to cover it though, because he doesn’t react.

“May I use one of your towels?” you ask, trying to figure out how to get covered up as quickly as possible.

“That depends.”

“On?” You’re so not in the mood for one of his games, but he seems playful.

“Do you want to keep swimming after you eat?”

You stare at him.

“It’s not a trick question. You can do whatever you want. Are you done in the pool, or do you think maybe you’d like to check out the hot tub in the other room? Or use the sauna?”

“There’s a hot tub behind the solid door?” You promptly forget everything else. Drinking a fruity cocktail at what feels like ten in the morning, wolfing down some croissants, and soaking your pleasantly tired body in a hot tub? And since Sylus is wearing a swimsuit…

“Are you going to come, if I want to use the hot tub?”

“Why thank you for the kind invitation. I’d love to,” Sylus’s lips curl further.

“Okay, then I want to use the hot tub. But I’m starving.”

“Can’t have that,” he murmurs. He sits up, eyes still closed, and gingerly pats the side table. You realize that he wasn’t just resting his eyes. He’s respecting the fact that you’re not wearing any clothes.

You want to tell him that he can look all he wants. That out of everyone in the world, he is allowed.

His long fingers find the little puddle of dark fabric, and he tosses it to you. Despite his eyes being closed, it lands right in front of you.

“Neat trick,” you snark.

“Having good hearing helps,” he smirks.

“I wouldn’t know,” you mutter, suddenly painfully aware of your tinnitus ringing in your ears.

“Use me then, whenever you need a pair of ears.”

You stare at him for a moment, but he just serenely waits. You pull the fabric towards you, and it spills out over your hand and down your wrist. A swimsuit. In what appears to be your size.

“Is this some kind of hint? Can’t have your uncivilized guest wandering around buck naked, even if no one else is in the house?”

Sylus cocks his head. “I’m here. The twins are still here.”

You shrug, but realize he can’t see the gesture. “It’s just my body. It barely does what it’s supposed to do these days—I can’t imagine that seeing it is particularly interesting for anyone, let alone you or the twins.”

“Then your imagination is severely lacking.”

You snort. “You’re very good for my ego, insulting my imagination.”

“I would hope it’s good for your ego when I’m complimenting your gorgeous body.”

You pause. What? “There’s no need to mock me.”

“Who says I’m mocking you?”

You take the hint and pull the swimsuit onto your body. Unsurprisingly, it fits perfectly.

“There. You no longer have to shield your eyes from the horrors.” You drip your way to the table, grab the bowl of pastries and one of the cocktails, and then head to the solid door on one side of the pool. 

When you’re faced with the question of how to open the door with your hands full, the tendrils of Sylus’s evol twist around the handle and pull.

“Thank you,” you murmur, before your breath is taken by the sight before you. Where the pool room was a study in soaring, minimal elegance, this room is small. Still with the ubiquitous floor-to-ceiling windows offering a view of the grounds, but the space is intimate. Steam rises from a pool—not a mere hot tub, but a small pool—tiled in the same colorful tile as that in the greenhouse, with underwater benches circling the edges. Moss-covered stones are piled on one side of the pool and dotted around the small room, where there is space between the large pine trees ringing the pool. You catch a whiff of pine over the scent of chlorine. It’s like being in a sheltered mountain hot spring.

You turn to find Sylus right behind you, looking at you curiously, holding the towels under one arm and his cocktail in one hand.

“All of this luxury, and it belongs to just one man,” you sigh, grateful that you’re allowed access, tormented by the thought of the poverty you’ve seen in the N109 Zone, in Linkon City.

“Well, the twins too,” Sylus shrugs.

“Do you ever have time to spend in here? Or are all these amenities in your base just for show? To be able to say to yourself that you own this, too.”

“I’m about to use it right now. Does that not count?”

You shake your head. “You know what I mean.”

He places the towels and the cocktail on the soft moss next to the pool and turns to you.

“May I?” he holds out his hand, and you give him the bowl of pastries and your own drink. He sets them next to the towels. 

“Come,” he tells you, holding his hand out. You put your hand in his, and he steps into the water, pulling you with him. The water is deliciously hot. Sweat breaks out on your forehead after just a few moments. The water comes up to your waist if you stand, but you let yourself sink until it laps around your neck. Sylus, still with that faint smile, pulls you towards him as he sits on the built-in bench that rings the pool next to where he set the towels, drink, and food.

“It’s true that the more you have, the more you want. I am not immune to being greedy.” He picks up the conversation again as he guides you to him and settles you on his lap.

You can’t help yourself—you wrap your arms around his neck.

“So you’re saying you have all this for show. That you never use it. That it remains here, consuming all this energy to stay hot for an owner who will never come, while children are hungry on the streets.”

“Careful, your tender heart is exposed again, darling,” he murmurs, reaching over to the bowl of pastries, selecting what is definitely a gooey cinnamon roll, and bringing it to your lips. “Bite.”

You stare at him. “And if I don’t?”

“You’ll stay hungry like the children you’re worried about.”

You scowl at him. “How can you not care?”

“It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that some children will remain hungry, whether my hot tub is ready for my kitten when it wants a bath or not. Depriving myself of the pleasures of life does nothing to help them.”

“Your hot tub funds could go towards feeding them.”

“How do you know I don’t have separate funds that go towards feeding them?” He gazes steadily at you. “Bite.”

“Are you saying that you do use your money for good, as well as for personal pleasure?”

“I’m insulted that you think ‘good’ and ‘my personal pleasure’ are mutually exclusive. I derive pleasure from my philanthropic efforts.”

“What kind of efforts?”

He shrugs. “I don’t need to brag, sweetheart. Let’s just say that my interests in supporting the public welfare are varied and expensive, even with the tax write-off benefits. And yes, such interests do include funds that go towards improving the lives of children.”

You eye him, trying to gauge his sincerity.

“Are you satisfied? Will you stop thwarting my efforts to satiate your hunger now? Bite.”

You lean forward and take a big bite of the gooey, soft, delicious cinnamon roll. Your eyes roll back in your head and you can’t help the sound that comes out of your throat, it’s so good.

When you open your eyes again, Sylus is staring at you, the heat of the hot tub causing a luscious pink blush to rise in his pale cheeks, the tips of his ears.

“Again,” he says softly. 

You take another bite. He stares at you while you eat, instructing you to take another bite after each swallow of the pastry. When you’re done, he lifts his thumb which is covered in the glazed icing, sugar, and cinnamon.

“Lick,” he says, his voice low.

The heat of the water, the pleasant fatigue in your body, the calm you achieved while swimming in the quiet for so long, the reassurance that Sylus, for all his faults, also tries to do good in the world—you feel pliant, and willing to do anything he wants. You lean forward again, open your mouth, and wait. Your heart pounds..

His nostrils flare and then he’s slipping his thumb into your mouth. You close your lips around it, and tongue the sweetness from his skin. When there’s nothing left, you still your tongue and wait.

He bites his full bottom lip and a look of regret crosses his face as he slowly withdraws his thumb from your lips. He then runs it along the lip he just bit. He closes his eyes, breathes.

“Why do you think no one would find your body interesting?”

Through your pounding heart, you swallow and  try to look unaffected by what just happened, by what you can clearly feel as you rest on his lap through the thin fabric of his swimsuit. Because he is affected. His body is responding to you again. But for some reason, he wants to play the guessing game instead of… doing anything about it. You think about him leaning down, as if he’d kiss you. You think about him spinning on his heel and walking away instead. 

“It isn’t so much that it’s not enough to pique interest in anyone else. It’s simply that it’s not enough to retain that interest.”

He lifts an eyebrow. “How so?”

You try to look away, but he reaches up and catches your jaw, gently guiding you back to meet his eyes. You sigh. Might as well get it out in the open. “I tried to tell you, when you asked me to help you with dating. I’m the last person you should ask, because even though I have a lot of experience in romantic relationships, they’ve never ended well. I’ve been cheated on more than once. I’m not qualified to be your dating coach.”

His brow furrows as you say ‘a lot of experience,' like he’s sucked on a lemon, before it’s quickly replaced with his customary bored expression. “I’ll take my chances. All I need to know is what you like, and you are best qualified to do that.”

“Why does it matter what I like? What about your beloved?”

He sniffs dismissively. “Why are people so insistent that I repeat myself today?” But before you can ask him what he means, he asks, “What does your… mistakes having cheated on you have to do with you?” Now he looks aggressively bored.

“When it happens not once, or twice, but more than that, it’s pretty obvious that the common denominator is me. So maybe it’s not my body that’s the issue. Maybe it’s just… all of me, that can’t retain their interest, or at least their courtesy of ending things before they seek out someone else to satisfy them.”

“Or maybe the only thing wrong with you is your taste in partners.” His eyes glow in the soft light emanating from under the pool’s water. 

You look at him, this beautiful, dangerous, mercurial creature, your heart aching from how lovely he is, how far away he feels when all you would have to do to kiss him is lean forward, just a little bit, like taking a bite from the cinnamon roll. “Perhaps you’re right.”

His brow furrows. “If they cheated, then they were not for you. You were fated for another. And the one you’re fated for will never stray.”

You’re surprised. Sylus has never struck you as the type of person who would accept fate in determining his life and destiny—such a belief feels too passive for such a strong-willed man. “Do you actually believe in fate? In soulmates?”

He nods. “No matter how much I may resent the whims of fate, I do.”

His answer makes you unbearably sad. “What if you don’t like the one you’re destined to be with? And the person you have no choice in loving—if you’re destined for someone, then it doesn’t matter who they are, what makes them unique. It kind of… removes the idea that the person you love is special, that you chose them because they fit you so well.”

He runs a finger from your chin, up the line of your jaw, until he rests his palm against your cheek and smoothes his thumb along the corner of your eye. “On the contrary, I believe that my beloved is destined for me because they fit me so well—if they were not uniquely them, then they would not be my fate. I can assure you, I have very specific reasons for adoring my beloved. Even if fate gets everything else wrong, it has not failed me in this regard.”

Part of you is breaking at the clear adoration in his voice for his beloved, who can’t be you. 

The other part of you is treacherously whispering in his deep, decadent voice— Yes, beloved? Words you’ve never heard him say to you, but you can hear so clearly in your head.

“Tell me about your beloved,” you whisper.

He leans forward, runs his nose along yours. His tongue flicks out and you feel its warmth along the side of your mouth before withdrawing again.

“You had some sugar,” he says quietly in response to the confused look on your face.

The water laps the sides of the pool with each small movement of your bodies. The scent of pine, of chlorine, of sugar and cinnamon fill your senses. The world is dark outside the windows, but you can’t see anything beyond the panes because of the condensation drifting up the glass from the heat of the pool.

Your heart won’t survive this man. You want to be put out of your misery. You never want to wake up from this dream.

“Tell me about your beloved,” you ask again.

He runs the hand not holding your cheek along your waist, his fingertips trailing goosebumps despite the warmth of the water. “Do you really still not know, darling?”

You close your eyes. “Know what, Sy?”

“That you don’t need me to answer your question. You already know my beloved better than anyone else. But you’re too afraid to admit that you already know who they are. What they want. What would please them the most.”

“How could I possibly know all those things, when I don’t know who your beloved is?” Your thoughts drift to your nightmare. To the streetlamps, and the darkness. The temptation to step off the ledge. You’ve already lost so much. What happens if you accept what he’s been waiting for you to acknowledge for a while now, and you have a brief, supernova moment of happiness with him? And as with real supernovas, the flash will give way to an endless darkness, or worse, a black hole. In either case, you know that the darkness lasts so much longer than that brief, blinding light. What happens when the inevitable result of your terrible choices in partners is repeated, and you have to experience the memory of what it’s like to be briefly loved by him, in comparison to his absence once he grows bored?

“You’re breaking the rules again, darling.”

You open your eyes, and all you see is Sylus. “What rules?”

“You can lie to everyone else in your life, but you will not lie to me. If you can’t admit that you already know the answer to your question, then I’ll wait until you can.”

He too, has started to sweat in the heat of this quiet, almost unbearably warm space. You watch a drop of sweat form at his temple, make its meandering way down his sharp jaw. You can’t help yourself. You lean forward and catch it on the tip of your tongue. 

Salt. Sylus. 

He shudders underneath you.

“I will be patient,” he says, voice strained, as if he’s trying to convince you. Or himself.

“What happens if you get bored, waiting? What if I take too long?” Because you’re not ready. The fear is overwhelming. You gave in to your curiosity in the dream, and the fall would have killed you if Sylus hadn’t called you back to wakefulness.

“You have no idea how long I’ve already waited. In the end, there is only one answer to your question, and that will not change, whether you admit it out loud right now, or fifty years from now. If you must test me in order to believe me, then test me.”

“That sounds like a challenge,” you smile.

“My beloved never backs down from a challenge,” he doesn’t return your smile. He is watching you with such sincerity that it takes your breath away. “But I’d rather, this time, they simply take me at my word.”

“What happens when you tire of your beloved once you have them for a little while, and start to notice all their flaws?”

“I’ve already evaluated the jewel; I’m afraid this particular gem is flawless.”

You snort. “No one is without imperfections.”

“My beloved is not just anyone. They’re perfect to me.”

You’re reeling. You don’t dare believe him. He must be lying. You have no idea why he would lie about this, what he could possibly have to gain, but his honeyed words are too unbelievable. You? Flawless? Perfect in this extraordinary man’s eyes? The absurdity would make you laugh if you weren’t already breathless from the idea that he has meant you, you, you, this whole time. You, his beloved.

“You still haven’t answered my question. What happens when you get bored?”

“I won’t.”

“How can I trust that?”

He lifts a dark silver eyebrow. “Only one way to find out.”

Suddenly, it’s all too overwhelming. The heat of the water. The long, physically demanding swim in the pool earlier. The fact that the only thing you’ve had to eat in the last twenty-four hours is a cinnamon roll. You lean forward, bury your head in Sylus’s damp neck, manage to resist the urge to lick his sweat again.

“Please wait a little longer,” you whisper. You need more time. You need to go on those fake dates with him. You need to see how he treats wait staff at a restaurant when the order is wrong. You need to make more mistakes, like with Kieran and Luke on the roadside, and see what happens the more the reality of you chips away at the pedestal he has inexplicably put you on in his mind, if he’s telling the truth. The edge is already beckoning you. You can’t step over yet, you can’t. You can’t.

“Again, why must I repeat myself so much today?” he gripes. “I already told you, I will wait, for as long as it takes.” He wraps his arms around you and hugs you tightly.

You hug him back, dizzy. From the heat. From the whirlwind of the last forty-eight hours. From the fraying tether you have on reality, after such a short time living in his world of dreams. 

You stand at the ledge. You’re not ready to leap. But you’re leaning, leaning, closer than you’ve ever been. You just hope that when the inevitable happens—when you let yourself fall, Sylus will be there to catch you.

“I promise,” he says, as if he can read your mind. And he says he always keeps his promises.

This is what it feels like. Lured to the edge. Balancing on the cliff. You probably know how it ends, before you even realize it's beginning. But the knowing doesn't stop you from leaning, leaning, until the gravity of the inevitable pulls you down into the fall.

* * *

I said I felt like crawling into a hole for the next four years and then inflict almost 15k words on you dear readers, I'm sorry for never keeping my promises, I'm not Sylus😭. I hope you enjoyed, we're very close to an actual relationship and maybe some real life smooches. I have plans for Noah's return in the next part and some fun activities while MC gets to knows Sylus better and practices imagining what a commitment to the leader of Onychinus would look like, but who knows what will actually come out of my brain when I sit down to write again.

[babyangelsky]

It's not that being scolded by Shin's mom was all it took to make Saint pull back, it's that he hasn't forgiven himself for what he did to Shin. And honestly, no true reconciliation is possible until he does.

Saint has been doing absolutely everything he can to apologize. He's been moving heaven and earth to try to atone for hurting Shin and earn his forgiveness but the thing is, forgiveness isn't really something you can ask for or something you owe anyone. Forgiveness is something you do for yourself, so you can move forward in your life after having been wronged and be at peace with yourself.

No matter how much he may want to, Saint can't undo what he did. He can't un-break Shin's leg or un-walk away from him. The only thing that's in his power to do is sincerely apologize, be there for Shin now, and not run away from him again. Because that's what really hurt Shin, even beyond losing his future: Saint leaving him.

And that's what made it so easy for him to misunderstand Saint at the end of this episode. They're just starting to repair their relationship and Shin still doesn't trust that Saint won't leave him again, so he's almost primed to expect it. Saint isn't leaving him of course (wild horses, babes. wild fucking horses) but because he hasn't forgiven himself, it's all too easy for him to fall into this cycle of self-punishment where he does everything he can to atone except what's required. To quote @respectthepetty, he's doing the most to avoid doing the bare minimum.

Like I know it's easy to look at something like Saint's decision to drop out of school and give up Shin as a dramatic teenage response, but I think it's deeper than that. I think there's a part of Saint that really believes that he doesn't deserve to have a future because he took Shin's away.

His default is self-punishment but he doesn't realize that Shin doesn't want him to prostrate himself, take every hit for everyone all the time, give up school, or agree to do wild ass shit to get Kenneth to leave him alone. He just wants Saint to be by his side and stay there. But in order for that to happen, Saint has to forgive himself and believe that that's what Shin wants.

To move forward, they both have to move on, together and that starts with Saint forgiving himself.

[goldsainz]

# HIGH INFIDELITY — CHAPTER ONE !

SERIES MASTERLIST !

001. SUMMARY !

✯ no matter what you do or who you’re with, rafe is the thorn in your side that persists.

002. WARNINGS !

✯ drinking, rafe’s a bitch.

003. NOTE !

✯ the italics part is meant to be past, normal is present. not a lot of rafe in this part, but we’re building up the tension, bear with me guys. also this is short n’ sweet, but it was either this or waiting like a week sooo 🤗

word count : 3,1k

Summer is, without a doubt, your favourite season of the year—a time when everything seems a little brighter, warmer, and full of promise. But above all, it’s the chance for romance that makes it truly special. As the breeze grazes your skin, you're struck with all the endless possibilities for a breezy, passionate fling. Summer brings not just warmth, but the promise of memories waiting to be made.

Perhaps that is why this summer feels different, why you're filled with a sensation you are not used to. Because, in true you fashion, you cannot help but fall for the first guy that makes eye contact with you. It’s as if that single look, just a fleeting connection, has already set something in motion within you. It doesn't really matter who they are, you just hope they're decent enough that when the summer ends you won't wallow until the next one.

Despite everything you’ve always been told—that Kooks and Pogues live in separate worlds, that some lines are best left uncrossed—you can’t help but feel all that advice slip away in a single moment. A single glance across the bonfire, a glint of warmth and interest in his eyes, has you questioning every cautionary tale you've ever heard. 

He lifts his hand in a simple wave, and without thinking, you lift yours in return. He smiles, and you find yourself smiling back, helpless against the pull he seems to have over you. It’s such a small exchange, yet it sends a thrill through you. So simply, your heart is already in the hands of a Kook that probably doesn't even know your name.

For a single moment, just when you finally let your guard down and begin to lose yourself in the summer night, you feel a hard shove against your shoulder. The unexpected force nearly sends you toppling, and you stumble awkwardly to keep your footing. A quick flash of irritation floods your mind, and as you turn, you see the culprit—and, oh, if it isn’t the most predictable sight in the world.

It’s Rafe Cameron. Of course, it is. He moves through the crowd like he owns it, barely glancing your way, as if you’re invisible, or worse, just an obstacle on his path to whatever or whoever he’s fixated on. 

“Watch it, Kook!” You shout at him, your voice sharp, as you glare down at the mess now soaking into the sand, the drink he so casually spilled with his careless shove. Typical Rafe—he couldn’t just bump into you and keep walking; no, he had to leave a mark, a small reminder of how easy it is for him to disrupt whatever, or whoeever, is in his way.

There’s no point in trying to get Rafe to acknowledge his mistakes. He wouldn’t care, and honestly, why waste the energy? Annoyed, you make your way toward the drink stand, trying to shake off the aggravation and enjoy what’s left of the night. The makeshift bar is stocked with copious amounts of beer, a few murky-looking bottles of whiskey, and vodka that looks questionably watered down. You sigh, filling a red cup and trying to hold on to a sliver of the excitement you felt earlier. Maybe it’s time to call it a night, to forget the rude shove and, disappointingly, to forget the boy you shared glances with.

“Hey,” a voice interrupts as you lift the cup to your lips, pulling you from your thoughts. You look up, and there he is—the guy from across the bonfire, standing right in front of you, his expression soft but earnest. “I’m sorry about him,” he says, a hint of a smile tugging at his lips.

“Huh?” The word slips out, and for a moment, you forget all about the spilled drink, the scowl on your face, even Rafe Cameron’s entitled shove. The memory of the night seems to blur, leaving just this moment, this exchange. You’re left with that same rush from earlier, only more intense now, standing close enough to see the way the firelight reflects in his eyes. 

“He shoved you, right?” he asks, raising his voice slightly so it cuts through the noise around you. There’s a hint of concern in his eyes, and he leans in just enough for you to catch the faint scent of saltwater and something earthy, maybe cedar. “Or did I mistake you for someone else?”

“No, no,” you reply, shaking your head, a small, sheepish smile creeping onto your face despite yourself. “That was me, unfortunately. Rafe Cameron’s idea of saying ‘excuse me,�� I guess.”

He laughs, a low sound that somehow makes the rest of the chaotic night fade into the background. “Sounds about right,” he says with a shrug, like he knows exactly the kind of person Rafe is—and isn’t surprised in the slightest. His gaze lingers on you, though, holding a warmth and sincerity that feels like a stark contrast to everything you just experienced. It’s as if he’s actually seeing you, not just some girl who got shoved around in the crowd.

“So… can I get you another drink?” he asks, nodding toward your mostly empty cup. “You know, as a ‘sorry for my obnoxious friend’ kind of thing.”

"I don’t even know your name,” you say, keeping your tone casual, though you can feel a flicker of heat rising in your cheeks. Of course, you do. But he doesn’t need to know that. Not yet, anyway.

He raises an eyebrow, a playful glint in his eyes as if he’s caught on to your feigned innocence but decides to play along. “Is that so?” he asks, a grin curving on his lips. “Well, then. I guess that makes us strangers, doesn’t it?”

You bite back a smile, shrugging, as if the flutter in your chest is no big deal. “I suppose it does.”

He extends his hand, the light from the bonfire casting a warm glow on his face. “I’m Joshua, but you can call me Josh.” he says, as though you hadn’t already heard the name whispered among your friends a hundred times. “And you are?”

“YN,” you say softly, letting your name slip past your lips like a secret, as if saying it too loudly might break the spell of this moment.

“Well, YN,” he drawls, your name slipping off his lips like honey, rich and warm. Somehow, in the noise and firelight, it sounds sweeter coming from him than you’ve ever heard it before. “Can I get you a drink?”

You hesitate, just for a second, but then you nod, feeling a lightness in your chest that hadn’t been there before. “I’d like that, yeah,” you say, and suddenly, youre not so ready for the night to end.

As you lie peacefully on the beach, your head resting on Josh’s chest and the sun’s warm rays caressing your skin, a deep contentment settles over you. The waves roll in rhythmically, their soft crashing mixing with the steady beat of his heart beneath your ear. 

Josh’s fingers trace lazy patterns along your arm, a quiet gesture that says so much without a word. Somehow, these last days have passed in a perfect blur, each moment with him slipping effortlessly into the next. It’s as if the rest of the world has faded into the background, leaving just the two of you and the freedom of these warm summer days.

It hasn’t been more than three days, you’re sure. But in the rush of everything—of his touch, of the laughter, of the long talks that stretch into the night—it feels like so much more. It doesn’t matter, though. Summer is fleeting by nature, and relationships, much like the warmth of the sun, can’t last forever. You’ve always known that.

Maybe that’s why things feel so easy with Josh. There’s no pressure, no rush to figure it all out. You don’t need a lifetime to know that this connection is real, even if it’s only for now.

“I was thinking…” he whispers, his voice sending a shiver down your spine as it tickles your ear. “Why don’t you come with me to a party? It’s very casual.”

You turn your head slightly so you can look at him, feeling the heat of his breath against your skin. “Where?” you ask, curiosity piqued.

“Just… at a friend’s house,” he replies, his words vague, as though he’s trying to keep something hidden. You sense it, the hesitation, like he’s afraid the full truth will make you back out.

“Okay… whose house?” you ask, your voice a bit firmer now, wanting a little more clarity.

You roll your eyes and let out a dramatic groan, but there’s a smile tugging at your lips despite yourself. “Fine. But the second he crosses a line, I’m out. Don’t try to stop me.”

Josh raises his hands, feigning innocence, though there’s a gleam of victory in his eyes. “Deal,” he says with a grin, leaning down to press a quick kiss to your forehead.

“I’m serious,” you press, your voice soft but your gaze steady, locking onto his as if to underline your words. You want him to know you’re not playing around; Rafe has crossed too many lines before, and you’re not about to give him any more chances.

Josh’s grin softens into something more earnest as he takes your hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “I know. And I won’t let him pull anything. I’ll be right there with you.”

You nod, reassured—well, mostly. There’s still a twinge of anxiety at the thought of walking into Rafe’s space. But with Josh by your side, it feels like a risk worth taking. You take a deep breath, pushing away the doubts, letting yourself focus on the warmth of his hand in yours.

You know you’ll probably regret being so compliant later, but in this moment, under the warm sun and the gentle pull of his charm, you can’t find it within yourself to care. Not right now, anyway.

The party is at its peak when you step inside with Josh, his hand a steady presence on the small of your back. People weave around, stumbling and laughing, drinks sloshing as they chug another round. The air is thick with the smell of beer and perfume, the music pounding loud enough to shake the floor.

Tannyhill is enormous, every inch of it polished and perfect. Compared to the flimsy house you call home, this level of luxury feels surreal, almost insulting—like you’re trespassing in a world you’re not meant to be a part of.

“You good?” Josh’s voice is low against your ear, his fingers pressing lightly, reassuringly, into your back.

“Yeah,” you manage, glancing around at the high ceilings and spotless marble floors. “Big house,” you mumble, trying to play it off, but Josh catches the edge of awe in your voice and lets out a soft chuckle.

“Sometimes I forget,” he says with a smile, “that this is all just… normal to me. It’s weird, huh?”

You nod, a small smile tugging at your lips. “A little.” There’s an underlying discomfort, a feeling of not quite fitting in, but with Josh beside you, you tell yourself it doesn’t matter.

As you navigate through the crowd, you spot Rafe across the room, casually leaning against a table, a smirk on his face as he watches the crowd unfold around him. His gaze shifts, and for a brief second, his eyes lock onto yours, his smirk turning into something sharper, something that sends a prickle of irritation through you.

Josh notices and gives your hand a squeeze, as if grounding you. “Remember our deal,” he murmurs, his tone playful but his eyes serious.

“Right,” you reply, taking a deep breath and letting it go, trying to shake off the feeling of being under Rafe’s watch. Tonight, you tell yourself, is about being with Josh, about experiencing his world—even if only for a night.

There are barely any Pogues here, you realize, glancing around at the faces in the crowd. Maybe a few who hover on the edges, those who toe the line between a bad season of hard luck and those who might actually crawl and beg to be part of the Kooks’ world. They’re the ones who keep their heads down, wearing uncomfortable clothes, trying to blend in without drawing attention.

You feel the difference even more now, the gap between you and this place, this crowd. Everyone here is effortlessly at ease, basking in the privilege that’s been theirs since birth. And yet here you are, standing in the middle of it all, aware of every sideways glance, every slightly raised eyebrow as you pass by.

“You’re sure it’s okay for me to be here?” you ask again, your voice low, almost like you’re bracing yourself for Rafe or one of his friends to notice you and kick you out.

Josh squeezes your hand, his expression softening. “Of course. They don’t care, really,” he says, his tone steady, almost casual, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

You wish you could believe him. You’ve noticed, over these past few days, how little Josh seems to care about the whole Kook and Pogue divide. He doesn’t see you as an outsider, doesn’t seem to register the tension that hums just beneath the surface. To him, it’s all irrelevant, a line drawn in the sand that doesn’t matter. It’s refreshing—and it’s blinding.

Because Josh’s indifference almost fooled you into thinking the world works that way, too. Like the Kooks and Pogues can just coexist, that the labels and histories are meaningless. But tonight, standing in this mansion with strangers’ eyes glancing your way, you feel the weight of it again, the silent reminders that you don’t belong.

He notices the hesitation in your eyes, the way you’re pulling back, and his hand slides to your shoulder, a gentle reminder that he’s here with you. “Listen,” he murmurs, leaning close so only you can hear, “I don’t care about any of that, and if anyone else does… well, that’s their problem. You’re with me.”

His words are a comfort, but they’re not enough to erase the uneasy feeling that lingers. You force a smile, hoping he can’t see the doubt flickering there, and nod. “Right. I’m with you.”

For the slightest moment you feel at ease, but almost like clockwork, the grating voice of Rafe Cameron breaks your reverie, pulling you out of your thoughts. “Hey, man,” he greets, slapping a hand on Josh’s back in that familiar, boy-ish way.

“What’s up, Rafe?” Josh replies, his smile wide, clearly used to this dynamic, his tone casual and easygoing.

“Nothing much, just trying to keep everything at bay,” Rafe responds, his voice dripping with indifference as he talks like you’re not even standing there. Like you don’t exist in this moment, and it stings more than it should.

“Cool,” Josh shifts slightly, turning toward you. “I’m sure you’ve met YN, hope it’s all good that I brought her?”

At that, Rafe finally looks at you. The weight of his gaze makes your skin prickle, and for a moment, you almost squirm under it. “Yup, all good,” Rafe says, his voice laced with something colder, something discomforting. “I said you could bring anyone… and you did.”

The way he says it is so backhanded, so typical of him. You can practically hear the unspoken judgement in his words, feel it in the way he looks at you, sizing you up.

You’re not surprised, of course—this is Rafe, after all—but the little jab only adds to the discomfort that’s been creeping up on you all evening. You force a tight smile, but it feels too small, too weak for what’s really going on inside. Still, you keep your eyes on Josh, hoping he doesn’t notice how the atmosphere has shifted, how Rafe’s presence has twisted everything just enough to make you feel smaller than you are.

“Well, enjoy the party,” Rafe says, his smile almost too practised, like he’s delivering a line he’s said a hundred times before. The kind of smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, that’s meant to keep things cordial, even if the undercurrent of judgement is thick enough to cut through.

“We will,” Josh replies easily, not missing a beat, his voice smooth and unbothered, as though none of the tension is hanging in the air.

Josh’s hand finds yours, his fingers warm against your skin as he gently pulls you away from the conversation. But as you pass by Rafe, you hear him lean in slightly, his voice just low enough for only you to hear. “Not too much, yeah?”

It’s a whisper, but it feels like a slap. You can feel your brows furrow instinctively, the words gnawing at you. You’re tempted, so tempted, to turn around and shove him and ask, What the hell is wrong with you?

But you don’t.

Instead, you let Josh lead you away, his hand tightening around yours in a subtle reassurance. The music swells, the noise of the party grows louder, but it all feels distant now, like a blur around the sharp edge of Rafe’s comment. You try to ignore it, try to shake it off, but it clings to you, sticking in your chest like a splinter.

Even as you move through the crowd, you know that this night isn’t just about the music or the people—it’s about the silent things too. The things you can’t control, the things you have to push past in order to keep moving.

And Rafe Cameron is the one thing you can’t push past, no matter how hard you try. The one who thinks he can push you down, who sees you as something beneath him, a reminder of everything he’s convinced he’s better than.

But if there’s one thing he needs to know, it’s that you don’t go out without a fight. He might have the money, the reputation, the home twice the size of anywhere you’ve ever lived, but he will not ruin your summer. 

He’s attempted to get under your skin before and failed. And you’re not about to let this be any different. The summer isn’t his to take from you, no matter how hard he tries. He’s not a force you’re willing to let derail everything good about these days. Not the warmth of the sun, not the nights you spend with Josh, not the taste of freedom you’ve felt since you stepped into his world.

You’ll be damned if you let Rafe Cameron, of all people, get in the way of that.

[queenshelby]

The Peaky Role (Part Eight)

Pairing: Cillian Murphy x Reader

Warning: Age Gap, Best Friend's Dad, Some Smu

CILLIAN'S POV

Later that day, at Cillian's house, during dinner, laughter and chatter filled the air as Nina, Cillian, and her siblings gathered around the table while Danielle had gone away for the weekend.

The aroma of roasted vegetables and herbs wafted through the kitchen, mingling with the sound of silverware clinking against plates after Cillian had prepared dinner. Making dinner was a ritual for him, a way to channel the noise of the world into something quiet and nourishing.

"What's for dessert?" Cillian's son, Max, asked, his eyes wide with hope as he pushed his plate away, his stomach still rumbling with anticipation.

“It's a surprise," Cillian grinned before diving into a serving of broccoli.

Nina raised an eyebrow, playfully skeptical. “Please let it be chocolate pudding. If it’s anything like the last time, I might cry.”

Cillian chuckled, a hint of mischief sparkling in his blue eyes. “Oh come on, my creme brûlée was a culinary masterpiece!"

Nina rolled her eyes dramatically. “Masterpiece? That was more like an abomination!" she teased Cillian feigned offense, dramatically clutching his chest.

"Now eat your vegtables guys, otherwise you won't be having dessert," he warned, adopting the classic 'dad voice' that made his children giggle.

"What is the dessert though, dad? I want to make sure me eating the broccoli is worth it," Max demanded, a playful grin on his face.

Cillian leaned back with amusement. "I just bought magnums," he announced, grinning as his kids cheered in unison, letting out whoops of joy that echoed off the walls, seeing how this was their favourite.

After dinner, Nina helped Cillian clear the table while her siblings rushed toward the living room, their excitement palpable as they imagined the sweet reward to come.

“Dad, can I ask you something?” Nina asked as she stacked some dishes into the dishwasher.

Cillian turned, wiping his hands on a towel. “Of course, what is it?” he asked, his brow furrowed slightly, concern flickering in his blue eyes.

Nina shifted, glancing toward the livingroom where her siblings had settled into the couch, their animated voices filling the room as they debated what movie to watch.

"I had breakfast with Y/N today, you know?” she said, biting her lip as she felt the weight of both her concern and her curiosity.

Cillian’s expression darkened slightly. “And?" he asked with a mixture of fatherly instinct and curiosity swirling within him.

“She is going through a little rough patch with her boyfriend,” Nina confessed, crossing her arms tighter, as if warding off any impending judgment. “And I was just wondering whether you could cut her some slack next week on set in case things take a turn for the worse.”

Cillian’s expression softened, understanding intersecting with concern. “Is James being... difficult again?” he asked as he shifted his weight, leaning against the counter, exuding an air of protective authority.

He had met him a few times before, at your house and it was no secret to him that the two of you were having problems.

“Ugh, you wouldn't believe it," Nina said, rolling her eyes. "He keeps hounding her about driving down to Cork to see him, like it’s the end of the world if she doesn’t drop everything. I mean, she is only here for the weekend and he expects her to drive down there to see him. She should just dump him, don't you think?" she continued, exasperation creeping into her voice.

Cillian frowned, his expression turning serious. "Well, she’s got a career to think about. This is an important time for her," he said, feeling a wave of protectiveness wash over him. "But in the end of the day, what she does with her life is her choice and it doesn't matter what either of us think about it.”

Nina huffed, pushing back a piece of hair that had escaped her ponytail. “That’s easy for you to say. You’re… well, old...," Nina shot back, trying to point out that he was at a different stage of life than her and you.

Cillian raised an eyebrow, suppressing a smile. “Old?” he repeated, pretending to be offended. “I prefer ‘seasoned’,” he quipped, arching an eyebrow. “But seriously, you’ve got to let her figure this one out for herself. She is a smart young woman and, if shit does hit the fan, then I am quite certain that she will still perform on set," Cillian added, his tone shifting from playful to earnest. “She’s got enough talent for that,” he continued, hands tucked into his pockets as he leaned against the doorframe.

Nina sighed deeply before nodding. "I just wanted you to be aware so that you can keep an eye on her. You know, in case she needs someone to talk to and she said that you are the only one she knows. She can be a bit stubborn about these things.”

“Stubborn, huh?” Cillian chuckled, his eyes glinting with humor. “I've noticed quite a bit of that lately and I can tell you that she doesn't really socialise much on set either," he admitted before pushing off the counter, leaning slightly closer. “But yeah, I will keep an eye on her at work, just in case."

Nina relaxed a little, her shoulders dropping. “Thanks, Dad," she then said, a small smile breaking through her earlier tension. “That means a lot. Just… don’t be too dad-like."

Cillian laughed and held his hands up in mock surrender. “Alright!" he said, his grin breaking through the tension before finishing up the dishes.

After Cillian and Nina cleaned up, they both settled down with Nina's siblings on the couch, where the kids had already searched through a selection of films, finally deciding on a light-hearted adventure flick.

After the movies everyone then went to their room, calling it a night and as they retreated to their bedrooms, the hallway filled with the soft sounds of yawning and shuffling.

Cillian, too, was tired after such a full day, but sleep eluded him. He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, shadows shifting as the moonlight filtered through the curtains.

Just like the last two nights, thouughts of you crept into his mind, swirling around like leaves caught in a storm. Your laughter, the way your eyes lit up when you talked about music, and that moment on the plane when you clutched his hand as turbulence rattled through the cabin like a rogue wave. He replayed the feel of your small fingers wrapped around his, the warmth of your palm breaking through the chill of the flight.

“Damn,” he muttered quietly to himself, shifting beneath the covers as he tried to banish the thoughts. What was happening to him? The questions looped in Cillian's mind like an endless song, each note tinged with an unsettling mix of desire and confusion. He turned over, seeking comfort in the familiar folds of his sheets that, instead, felt like a prison, reminding him of all the boundaries he was treading on and, just as he almost managed to drift off, the memory of your sscene together interrupted the silence in his mind—an image he couldn't shake.

You, atop him, the softness of your skin brushed with the innocent thrill of pretending. The awkwardness of it all felt like a double-edged sword; on one hand, it was simply acting, something he had done countless times before, yet on the other, it struck a nerve deeper than any role had.

The sound of your moans floated through his mind, echoing against the walls of his memory like a haunting melody. He pictured the way your hair cascaded over your bare breasts, with each adjustment made by the crew, the intimacy of the moment growing more palpable. He could almost feel the heat radiating from your skin as you leaned closer, teasing him with a hint of vulnerability and just like that, Cillian felt the weight of it—an undeniable pull toward you that tethered him to his own desires and unease.

For the past few nights, he had managed to push away those thoughts, silencing them under the guise of exhaustion, but now, in the stillness of his room, this desire he had was all too raw, too real.

He imagined what it would be like to touch you, to taste your lips as he covered your body with his own. He imagined what  you would feel like beneath him, your body trembling and arching against his as he entered you, your moans and gasps matching his own. His pulse quickened as he pictured the look of pure ecstasy on your face, your eyes alight with desire and satisfaction.

The vision was almost too much for him to bear, his hand sliding down towards his boxers  as his body responded in kind.

He closed his eyes, imagining your fingers brushing against the bulge in his briefs, the fabric straining against him as you stroked him, drawing him in, fueling his need for you.

Cillian groaned, letting out a string of swear words as he felt himself getting harder, and he knew that he had to relieve himself  . With one swift motion, he pushed his boxers down, his throbbing erection springing free.

In the dark solitude of his room, he let his imagination take over, picturing you in front of him, wanting him as much as he wanted you.

"Fuck," he moaned, taking himself into his hand and stroking slowly, building up the tension that already coursed through his veins. He could almost smell your hair or feel its silky softness between his fingers.

His mind had become his worst enemy, but he couldn’t help it––he imagined you begging for it, your body exposed under the soft glow of his bedside lamp.

Slowly, he began to get lost in the fantasy, his breaths getting heavy as he stroked himself faster, imagining the shape of your hips and waist beneath his hands.

“God,” he murmured to himself, the thought of being inside you setting his body on fire. He couldn’t stop himself, his mouth spilling obscenities as he grew closer to release.

“This is fucking killing me!" he whispered,  the words thick with frustration. His grip on his cock tightened erratically, jerking and twisting in a desperate attempt to escape the agony.

Cillian moved his head from side to side, muttering curses, a cocktail of expletives and obscenities slipping from his lips as he let loose a tirade of anger and intense need. He felt like a caged animal, the tension building up inside him until he neared the point of explosion.

Nearing his own climax, Cillian bit his lip, groaning deeply as he moved his hand faster over his cock. His hips bucked, grinding up against his fist as he felt his cock pulsing with anticipation.

His chest rose and fell with each ragged breath, the anticipation overwhelming him as he finally let go, surrendering to the blinding orgasm that spilled forth. 

"Fuck !" he cried out, his voice echoing in the dark room as ropes of cum shot from his cock, painting a messy pattern on his stomach, leaving him spent and dizzy.

For a while, Cillian just lay there in the dark, his mind abuzz with what had just happened. His heart raced, his breaths still coming in hot, heavy pants, the sweat drying on his skin in the cold air.

As the initial rush subsided, a wave of guilt and shame crashed over him, more potent than the waves on the nearby beaches.

Cillian felt disgusted with himself, hating that he couldn't control his desires for you.

"Fuck," he muttered, squeezing his eyes shut.

"What the hell am I doing?" He couldn't believe he had just done that - allowed his mind to wander to a place it shouldn't, giving in to desires that could never be realized.

He got up and walked to the bathroom, turning on the light and gazing at his reflection in the mirror. His face was flushed, eyes glazed over, and he looked like a man possessed. He turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on his face, trying to snap out of it. "Get it together, man," he told himself sternly.

He wiped his face dry with a towel and looked back at the bed, his thoughts still swirling with images of you, his daughter's best friend and his best friend's daughter. "We can't do this," he whispered aloud, "we just can't,'" he murmured  to himself, thinking about the potential consequences.

The guilt lingered, but the desire that had awakened in him was not so easily tamed. He knew he should resist, that it was wrong. He was married and you were, most certainly, off limits. 

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[selfish-cat]

Veilguard Re-imagined

Given how DAV turned out to be, I think it would've been much more interesting if it was more in line with what Trespasser was hinting at. Spoilers below:

Instead of ooo bad evil gods and bad evil people, the factions could've been so much more nuanced. And you know who would've been super involved? The elves. Elves still struggling with the truth of their Vallaslin. Elves tired of being treated like dirt. Elves who are proud of their heritage.

I'm imagining the main 3 factions would be:

Evanuris: The base of their followers would be the Dalish who have worshipped them for centuries and don their Vallaslin. Whether or not the Inquisitor spreads the news about their tyranny (and whether or not they're believed), as a people who have lost everything time and time again, why would you turn away the chance to regain the former glory your people once had? The gods wouldn't have to try very hard. They were leaders once of course they know how to sway people. Make them sympathetic! Show them mourning their friends and lovers and lost empire. Have them cast doubt over Solas' claims! They can still have their "bullies and tyrants" and their blighted dragons but they would also have the desperate and disillusioned, maybe some of whom you can still reach out to and pull back.

If you want to bring the Blight in, it would be easy enough to blight their followers under the premise of empowerment (Solas isn't the only one who can lie). Instead of throwing a billion reavers at me, give me intelligent blighted creatures who think they're reclaiming their agency, who think they're avenging themselves, their loved ones, and their ancestors by spreading the blight to cities. It would also be a good way to distinguish between the gods' followers and other factions.

You know who wouldn't be joining them? Tevinter supremacists whose Imperium past prided themselves on conquering the elves. Or the Antaam who haven't renounced their beliefs and upbringing—you don't shake off that lifelong wariness of magic unless a lot of people get real chill with a lot of things real fast. I'm not touching the Butcher part because I still don't understand it although confused, lost track of the plot, wanting to turn yourself inside out? Relatable.

Fen'Harel: Rather than being relegated to a troll in the comments, let Solas lead the army he amassed in Trespasser??? All the Dalish and the city elves who are tired of being systematically oppressed and have been for literal ages?? He clearly cares for their freedom, as established in DAI (I had feelings when he finally called the Dalish "our people" but then it was followed by EA/Bioware nonsense). Other than the one line about him breaking the chains of slaves at the beginning, his deeds are never mentioned again other than to berate Rook.

I think his forces would be smaller. More scouts and spirits that specialize in skirmishes. It would be a three-way fight between the Evanuris, Solas, and Rook (with support from the Inquisitor and different implications depending on whether you disbanded or not). I think it'd be very interesting if you established a friendship/romance with Solas' and his forces withdrew when the Inquisitor appears vs. continue fighting if you decide to burn that bridge because choices matter EA. None of the elves in his forces will have their Vallaslin.

Keep the flashbacks. Keep the lore. Keep Mythal. But also keep the character instead of teehee lied to you again why would I listen to reason uwu.

Rook: None of the party needs to change or even the order of recruitment or any of the powers at play. They're all so charming and fun and clearly written with love.

Of course Harding will be there as a rep from the Inquisition. Let her work through her struggles with the Maker and the Golden City lore. Let her explore Titan lore but in a way that doesn't end with welp guess that's that and now let's not bring it up again since there definitely won't be implications with dwarves across all of Thedas. Neve works with the Shadow Dragons and would be sympathetic to the whole situation. Keep Aelia and involve the Venatori that way—strictly in Tevinter and unrelated to the gods. I imagine their forces were severely weakened after Corypheus. They can still kill the Archon in preparation of installing one of their own in if they want because that'd be in line with their established motives.

Bellara and Davrin can help shed a light on their perspective of things. Bellara tries in DAV but given how elf involvement was basically dismissed with "nah they're steering clear of the evil gods and we defs don't have a problem with any of this" t'was rough. It would've made more sense bringing Cyrian back aligned with the gods than suddenly bringing up a Forgotten One (excellent DLC option in the Tirashan though). Davrin struggling to distance himself from his heritage and empowerment via Wardenhood and fatherhood (lol) is very interesting to explore instead of idk being a farm boy even though it'd be awfully hard to farm without a permanent settlement, which apparently was a thing but I digress. Keep the griffons and Isseya but tie her to Ghilan'nain in a sympathetic but warped way (of course Ghilan'nain loves the griffons and is sympathetic to their plight. Why not make them better? Isseya's a city elf but why would she doubt the Mother of Halla?) Also definitely keep that chat with Solas and have more of that!

Lucanis and Crow lore. Imagine debating with him about practices of kidnapping and torturing children to train them. Characters can grow and learn (look at my best boy Dorian) and when he gets promoted to First Talon, maybe he'll keep your words in mind if your bond is high enough. Taash and Emerich had more personal things to deal with which is great. Not every character arc has to be directly tied back to the Big Bads. In DAV's case, it would've made more sense if they were just standalone issues instead of trying to be like "yeahh y'know, Venatori support. Yup."

And if you play Rook as an elf, there should definitely be a city elf and Dalish option because they're different cultures EA. You can't just have options like "I'm Dalish where it counts" and say "Our Gods" and "Your People" in the same scene because what even does that mean EA. Very good posts about this stuff here and here and here

Ending: At the end of this power struggle, where the gods are inevitably taken down, instead of a uwu everyone lived happily ever after except those who died, there are! Ramifications! Those were elven gods that almost destroyed everything! Why would they just let elves be and the Dalish chill and settle in Arlathan Forest (nvm why they were allowed back in the first place given how the Dalish treat the Dales and how they expect people to react to their presence there)?

Depending on how you play all your games (or a neutral score for new players), I think this is where you see the results of your choices. Did you garner sympathy and support from leaders? What leaders did you put in place? Will things return to a tense status quo? Will there be another Exalted March where they're driven even farther away? Or will there be introspection and understanding maybe resulting in a new Halamshiral for the Dalish somewhere and more rights for city elves?

As for Solas, I think his outcome would depend on the Inquisitor's choice in Trespasser. Do you kill him, leaving any future attempts to breach the Veil a risk? Do you fade into obscurity with him to live out a peaceful life in secrecy? Or do you convince him to give Thedas as is a second chance now that the gods are gone? He can disappear, maybe he occasionally has visitors or visits those he considers friends while keeping an eye on the world and the Veil (he'll be the new Veilguard which would make that ending line make more sense)?

[roboticprince100]

Blueprint for Robotic Affirmations

The simple key to manifestation is saturation and the best way to saturate your mind is Robotic Affirmations.

Before addressing this topic, let me clear the doubt of instant manifestation and manifesting fleeting thoughts or desires without saturating your mind. Yes, this is completely possible but only when you are 100% certain, you don't have any doubts and you don't really care about your desire. These desires are not life-changing and not very big. So the mind doesn't take them seriously, you don't care whether they come true or not, you don't have doubts and boom, you get what you want. If you can do this for your big desires, go ahead and try, it's definitely possible but extremely difficult.

Now let's talk about how to affirm, how much to affirm, what to affirm, when to affirm and why to affirm. The why is pretty simple, because we have to saturate our subconscious mind. Follow the steps for answers to other questions and master your reality:-

1. Never sleep without affirming:-

No matter how tired you are, how late you sleep, your last hour before sleep should be your affirmations. Start with 15 minutes before sleep for a few days and gradually increase it to 1 hour. You go to bed at 11 PM, start affirming from 10 PM, you go to bed at 3 AM, start affirming from 2 AM. Always affirm with a timer before sleep. Not one day should be missed.

2. Affirm 4 times during the day with a timer of 15 minutes:-

During the day, try to squeeze in 15 minutes for affirming with a timer. You can do this during the commute, washing dishes, cleaning, during monotonous tasks where you don't need to focus, etc. Try to do it once per day and gradually increase it to 4 times daily. So 1 hour of robotic affirming is done before the night work. Make sure you stay consistent with this, don't let the day rule you, rule it with your words.

3. Affirm both ways - In your mind and Out loud:-

Some people prefer affirming in their mind instead of speaking out, others do the opposite. I suggest doing both. Affirm in your mind when there are people near you, affirm out loud in a normal voice and tone when you are alone. Affirming out by speaking your words makes your focus stronger. You will automatically start focusing on what you are saying rather than overthinking or wasting your imagination. It's better to think thoughts of your desires rather than useless fear-inducing thoughts. Thoughts without emotion don't have any power, your words do.

4. Practise Mindfulness:-

Be mindful of everything you do. Don't rush, don't multitask, don't hurry. Focus on one thing at a time and keep your mind engaged with only one thing. Do this even while robotically affirming. Speak slowly, be clear and relaxed while affirming. Don't spam your mind, don't speak very fast in your mind, don't increase your heart beat. The more relaxed and mindful you are, the faster your subconscious is impressed. Practise deep breathing to be more mindful and aware.

5. Affirm till you get your desire:-

There is no need to detach or let go of your desires or your techniques unless you feel it from within. I have always said this - Detachment is felt from within, it is never forced. If you don't feel like you should detach or let go, then don't. Keep repeating till you get what you want and don't stop. If you feel like you are overwhelmed, you don't need it anymore, you need a break, then you detach. Till the time you get this feeling, don't stop. You can't practise driving for 1 day and then detach from it, you drive for 30 days continuously and you automatically feel to take a break. Do the same with your manifestations.

Bonus affirmations for everyone:-

1. My weight is always ___ kg/lbs.

2. My bank balance is _________ .

3. I have the best, most loving and understanding partner.

4. Everything is amazing in my life.

5. Everything is easy, everything is effortless.

Fill the blanks according to what you want. Always remember to be consistent. Consistency will help you achieve your desires, not robotic affirmations. You do scripting, imagination/visualization, writing affirmations, SATS, water method, 369, 555, no matter which technique you use, the only thing which will manifest your desires is consistency. Don't miss a single day. Don't stop saturating your mind. Even Neville took a month to go to Barbados, he could have manifested in 3 days for the first time but it didn't happen. He saturated himself for a month. Once he mastered it, he was able to manifest within a day. Joseph Murphy took 6 months of saturation to manifest his LA Hollywood Estate.

So things can manifest instantly, you can get everything in 1 day, it's totally possible. But never stop saturating yourself if you aren't able to manifest. I promise you with these 5 steps, nothing is impossible, nothing is fiction, everything is you, everything is one. Good luck!

[derww]

DAY 27: DECIMATION

CW: Death, violence, gore.

Not Jumper/PB&J neg but can feel really bitter about them I think. And everyone dies.

I have to kill them all, she says to herself. Completely ban off the server. Because they are destroying this world, and I have to be the hero.

It's easy: you just have to reject decency and humanity. It didn't matter what the methods were as long as they led to victory, as long as her friends were safe. Everyone else can die, actually. They can even be told to die, promising a ghostly salvation and a happy ending. She should become a hero, but not for those who have betrayed her or who are useless. She walks with her head held high, and she sees the good ending ahead of her.

Bacon falls to the ground dead from a stray arrow right in the forehead, and she jokes about bacon for breakfast and feels deep satisfaction, looking at the hatred in other people's eyes. Zam dies before her eyes, laughing, smiling, smeared in blood and cherry blossoms, and she just crosses one more name off the list. Mapicc agrees to talk and obediently follows just to explode like a pinata the next moment, and she forgets about it and goes to celebrate with her team. She doesn't bury a corpse.

Wemmbu dies in agony, too mortal for a god, too self-confident for someone so weak, clutching a spyglass. Zam takes over the body of his partner only to then die in the most ridiculous way, also off-screen. Mapicc, following him, takes away Spoke's body, leaving this world without the last true god. And then Zam takes the body from the innocent and neutral, but what difference does it make? She knows she's going to win because it can't be otherwise. Because they are much stronger and better at everything. Otherwise, why did they win for so many months in a row?

Awakening greets her with the corpses of her two best friends in her arms. They are torn almost beyond recognition, deep into the meat, to bare bones and muscles, to mutilated faces and torn chests. She is crying very, very bitterly. She still doesn't understand what they were wrong about. She continues to believe that she did everything right and that their deaths were beyond her capabilities.

Two helpless gods silently follow her, leading her away from the chase and covering her from blows. She is still being hunted like a prey. She dies dishonorably and pitifully. She's dying not a hero at all.

[pastorfutureletthembe]

Could be but I hope Lu Guang knows better than giving false hope to CXS after the earthquake arc :(

We don't know what's the extent of Lu Guang's knowledge on season 2's events to be fair. He doesn't seem to know the twins, for example? Or maybe he did and that was why he tried to keep the childhood photo secret until he couldn't anymore. But a lot of information about the twins eludes him.

He absolutely didn't know CXS would be in the car when Emma got kidnapped. And the whole Emma plotline is a bit messy too. It's like the story is never the same, switch from one way to another. I'm pretty sure it comes out as a murder then a suicide as the shows goes on but I'm not sure. I don't think it would be narrative errors, only CXS and LG messing with the timeline.

In season 2, CXS seems to change many key points by the end of the show, reacting to LG's absence. Obviously, CXS is the one supposed to be kidnapped by Li Tianchen so Lu Guang really went and decided "nope not gonna happen! I believe in you CXS to somehow make it work."

Soooo I really don't know if Emma was supposed to live or die but, allegedly, she's in this situation because of CXS. No way to know if she would have ended her life after losing her job in the original timeline. Or if she ever got fired in the first place. Or if she actually went through to become the kind of innocent girl who comes to the big city to fuck her boss in hope to secure her place in society. Maybe this would have been enough to make her jump. We just don't know.

Truth be told, Emma is one of the most interesting characters in the show. And it is so for more reasons than one.

She's the perfect entry point to the show, her longing for her family introduces us to CXS's personal struggles and loneliness, and all of this presents the boys' powers.

This and, as a character, she embodies what the show really is about, and her story is very common for chinese people from what I've heard. Season 1 was actually very popular because it was about primordial chinese values and struggles. Some episodes are about true events that profoundly marked people in this country. Put time travel aside, it's actually a story about two boys struggling to pay a debt. It's about living to your parents' expectations. It's about the gap between rich and poor; and in one end of it you're barely able to buy food on a daily basis. It's about choosing the right partner to start a business. It's about family. In the end, I think she had to die as an active symbolism that the natural balance is off. What happens after her death is Lu Guang and Li Tianchen cheating.

Sadly, her character is just what it's worth: a tool. For the writers as well as for the baddies in the show. But I would have loved to see more of her (maybe in an alternative reality when CXS and she became friends). I also believe she has a strong impact on CXS, just as much as the earthquake. Because everything about how her life changed from the beginning is because of CXS's actions.

Cheng Xiaoshi is introduced as a passive character. Not a passive personality, far from it, but Lu Guang tries to make him into someone who doesn't create ripples into the river of time (which is basically impossible). Cheng Xiaoshi dives and Lu Guang drives. That's the time travel dynamic we're given and Qiao Ling, as clueless as she can be regarding their business, knows that Lu Guang calls the shots. Lu Guang has an easy role, of course, because he doesn't have to deal with consequences as directly as CXS. To him, the events already happened and there is no changing them. To CXS, the events ARE happening, to HIM. No matter Lu Guang's rules, Cheng Xiaoshi is compromised and thus not only because he lives the memories: there is an emotional contamination between his host's body and Cheng Xiaoshi's soul. Lu Guang is trying to teach CXS this distinction. CXS dives as if it's only business, like he doesn't really care, but he can get deeply involved, real fast. When this happens, he's reckless. He's in danger and can be a possible danger.

People can be appalled by Lu Guang's decision of letting Cheng Xiaoshi go through the earthquake trauma but, in all honesty, it needed to happen. CXS needed to learn his actions have consequences but that he cannot go through an unchangeable node. And he shouldn't. Hypocrite? Well, yes, but it's a reasonable lesson to learn when you have CXS's powers. Not to spoil LCLA, but this arc has exactly the same purpose: proving CXS that he's not playing superhero here, he cannot be doing this for himself, this is real life with real people and he needs to understand the purpose of his dives in order to be able to protect himself.

1) Lu Guang has nothing to return to, he's only diving forwards by taking the back door. Cheng Xiaoshi? Once he changes the past, chances are he won't be able to return to the time he's sharing with Lu Guang and Qiao Ling. 2) Cheng Xiaoshi has no right to decide what needs to happen in the past only to make it easier for people in the present. That's not healing. He lives through his host but he shouldn't give in to what the host wants, should keep in mind what needs to be.

Ironically, Emma's case required Cheng Xiaoshi to be passive and not ease her mind by reaching out to her parents, while the earthquake arc teaches him that it's okay to communicate his host's feelings. In the second case, everyone is at a dead end. Would that imply that Emma wasn't? Does it mean Emma's story wasn't supposed to end? Sending a message to her parents in the middle of the night didn't change anything related to their mission but it did change her path. If Lu Guang wants for her to survive, it either means she is alive in the original timeline or her role shifts from host to Cheng Xiaoshi's downfall.

Again, it's only a supposition but she could be the first nail to CXS's coffin, actively or passively. 1) He would take accountability regarding the role he played in her death. It could send CXS on a very dangerous path, one with guilt, depression and... We know the possible outcome for this. 2) The fact he puts her on Liu Min's path and therefore puts himself on Li Tianchen's radar would definitely be the trigger for his own death. If we project more in the future, we can guess it makes him visible by other power users such as Liu Xiao or Vein. Lu Guang wouldn't want that.

I cannot shake the feeling that Cheng Xiaoshi saving Emma was a needed correction that Lu Guang supported. The reason why he was trying to hide the case from Cheng Xiaoshi and, again, lie to his face about the truth, could be that he didn't want Cheng Xiaoshi to be hurt. He probably knew that if he involved himself with this case, someone will notice him/them.

True, Lu Guang was surprised/panicked when Cheng Xiaoshi's rescue mission almost succeeded but I think he's even more disturbed by the fact someone with ability stepped in the game. Death is supposed to be an unchangeable node but what if this death specifically happened only because someone other than Cheng Xiaoshi played a part in it? That would change things.

In the end, it is a bit difficult to trust season 1 finale when you know they took a different direction than initially planned. This character killing Emma could not be Li Tianchen. Or maybe the one possessing Qiao Ling was supposed to be Vein. The words "this is your punishment for breaking the rules of the games. Now the game has been reset" are ominous as fuck when you know what is probably coming in Yingdu Chapter.

You know what's kinda messed up when you think about it? At the end of S1, Lu Guang let Cheng Xiaoshi try and save Emma. And you're kinda thinking "wtf? That doesn't sound like Lu Guang at all" but then you get to S2 and you realize Lu Guang most likely knew exactly what was going to happen (at least I think so? Time stuff is a bit weird, so idk what all is similar and different with the timelines), so he let Cheng Xiaoshi try and save Emma, knowing full well that Cheng Xiaoshi wouldn't be able to because he knew what was going to happen next.

[foxstens]

playing dead cells again

[fernlessbastard]

hot take moment cwilbur is literally just psychotic as all hell and i think people got way too comfortable villianizing the shit out of a man who was clearly portraying signs of severe mental illness. cwilbur was like im so fucking paranoid and scared and i think everyone is out to get me and hurt me and ive spiralled to the point i cant reach out to the people closest to me because im so afraid and lost in this spiral and im having constant panic attacks and hurting myself because i dong know what to do with myself and the only way out for me is to die. and everybody was like EVIL MAN WHO ENJOYS HURTING OTHERS AND IS ABUSIVE ON PURPOSE AND A VILLAIN AND SHOULD NEVER BE TRUSTED AGAIN. and then he came back and was like im still deeply troubled and afraid but im desperately trying to make up for the wrongs i did in the past and the people i hurt in my own way and communication is really hard for me but i hope people know that im truely sorry and i love them. im going to try my hardest to fix this in the only way i know how and then respectfully remove myself from the situation because i feel thats the kindest thing i can do to the people ive hurt. and people were like ABUSER ABUSER ABUSER EVIL MAN ABUSER. like girl

Yeah no based true real no questions asked

I'd hope I manage to portray Wilbur the way he deserves in my content, cause that man is heavily bpd coded and he just needs therapy and someone who genuinely loves him but also can handle his bullshit (which has exclusively and reliably been Quackity like, canonically)

But yeah no completely agreed. The man has issues and has definitely fucked up a lot but at the end of the day he really does need love and care and patience, but also boundaries (and therapy and meds, obviously)

[nozomijoestar]

Asuka is a tragic figure, a figure of mystery, a wild card, all because the only thing she wants in life is peace and quiet for herself and to feel in control- yet her secret heritage that may be hidden from her for her own protection and the reality that life is unpredictable and will go on with or without you keep ruining that delusion, that vision of how the world is meant to work to her, and she suffers regardless of what she wants, what she does, and how little she understands anything

She was born into a family preaching peace and balance and order while being a creature of violence, and puts a dozen mental locks and excuses over this truth to justify giving into her impulse for fighting by pretending she's justice when she does it

She keeps trying to build a place of safety but she's using sand and life is a wave that destroys, yet she stubbornly persists rather than give up, not drowned to the point of self centered suicidal loathing like Jin- there's contrast, where Jin is cloaked in death Asuka stubbornly clings to life and humanity as a normal person in a terrifying world

She's not a fucking narrative clone for Jun's own purpose, Asuka's purpose must be determined by Asuka herself

[willowser]

💔for the ask game! when did bakubrat get jealous over you haahaha

💔 were there ever any moments of angst or jealousy thanks to the hidden feelings ?

bakubrat hehehehe let's see !! overall, i don't think bakugou is a very jealous person bc i do think part of his little months long process of understanding his feelings, is making sure that whoever (me) is...trustworthy ?? loyal ?? so i don't think he'd get jealous in a sense that someone might steal me away, but—

i do think there are some little insecurities that can eat away at him ?? like. i laugh at everything. it's very easy to make me laugh LOL so if i'm chatting with some sidekick boy and he makes me laugh, i do think bakugou is kind of watching through the window like 😒😒😒 LOL bc i like funny and he worries he's not funny enough for me....even though i laugh at everything and he makes me laugh all the time anyway 😊 or he gets a little jealous of guys like sero or kirishima who are just naturally very charming and can have me blushy very easily — even though he also has me so blushy but he only notices when someone else does it he's silly idk idk

i unfortunately have terrible self-worth and therefore am terribly jealous, so i would expect him at any point to find someone more suited to him every single day of my life LMAO it would honestly probably lead me to pull away from him every now and then 🥺 at random times 🥺 i get too much in my head over the weekend, thinking about someone that's stronger and cooler and more accomplished and then come to work on monday and pretend he doesn't exist until he approaches me 🥺 and even then i'm just kind of surface smiles and small talk 🥺 THAT would probably bring the most amount of angst into this stage of our relationship 💀 whoops 💀

pining stage ask game !

[claire-starsword]

Authentic Story of the Shining Force - Saint Fencer Max - Author's comments

Final translation notes:

Yodobashi Camera is apparently a japanese electronics retail chain, hence the label on the bag.

A volume with 40 pages only feels very weird to me, but I couldn't find any other possible translation for what he says here. Besides, the structure of this thing is already wack anyway, chapter 1 has like, 10 pages while chapter 4 has almost 30.

In any case, I get the feeling that this manga got robbed of an official publication, and this volume is an independent work of sorts thrown together by Ono. Might explain why the printing is wack and cut panels at points. Still very glad it exists, because I doubt scans of the original run would have ever surface on the internet otherwise. Actually, I appreciate this whole afterword so much, it's a lot of info I would have never found out by myself, and god knows video game stuff does not keep any track of its own history overall. Any recorded info helps.

Tao indeed appears in Tanuma's manga with the same design as here. I will not be translating that thing, but Tao's couple of appearances are pretty much all I liked from it, so here:

Ono also refers to that manga as only "Tanuma's version", which I feel is the main way JP fans refer to it, but since the artist's name had already been mentioned, I used the subtitle as well, which I feel is the best way to specify it.

I don't know what a Game On is, nor what a Game Dome Harumi Shop is :( Those are very unfortunate names to try to google (in fact, the latter only gave me results for this very manga lol). Let me know if you know anything.

The fact Ono has worked with Masaki Wachi later however is interesting to me. I assumed through most of my notes here that some odd elements of this manga, especially Max and Cain's backstory, could be hints of things changed late in development, and brought back for the GBA version. I still think that's the most likely explanation, as at least one of the GBA-only flashbacks is very similar to unused content in the game itself. However, I eventually did figure that something else should be considered. Perhaps certain similarities between this and the GBA version are also things Wachi liked from the manga and wanted to add in the remake, since the two continued to work together somewhere. Who knows?

The wife. For the longest I've been reading her name as Sega Blue, which was an easy reference to parse, but while joking in the tags ten seconds ago I realized I was misreading it. I'm not sure if Brel is supposed to mean anything or be read a different way. Oh well. We still have the second name for an easy laugh.

That's all for this weird piece of Shining Force, thank you all for coming along with this ride. I feel this manga has quite a lot for fans to enjoy and think about, and I think it sucks that it is even more obscure than the Tanuma one. I hope this translation helps bringing it more to light, and I hope you all enjoyed!

[handgiven]

it's genuinely something that aids my mental health so much to imagine a being that's seen the beginning and the end of the world, a being that's seen the best and the worst of what humanity can offer, a being that's had all the time in the universre to ponder about a purpose, and about the meaning of existence, and whose very simple response is just. be kind. in the long run, none of the other things matter. what matters is to allow your soul to blossom into something as beautiful as it can be, through little acts of kindness, whenever you are able. that's enough.