#but just in general strange with other possible people and beings as the cause

[saintsenara]

Hi, do you have an analysis for why you prefer bottom Tom? Most fics have him as a top, but I'm very interested in your perspective ma'am.

well, the short answer is because i want to and because i can.

the longer answer is that i just don't find any of the arguments for why voldemort would never bottom under any circumstances to be as convincing and definitive as their proponents claim them to be.

my issue - to be clear - isn't with people having a preference for reading or writing about him being a top. it's with the fact that him only being a top - and not only that, but him being repulsed or humiliated by the idea of bottoming - is typically presented as such an objective fact that preferring to read or write about him being a bottom provokes responses which range from the simply annoying - "this is out of character!" [any fic in which he consensually shags his prophesied child-enemy is out of character, be serious] - to the genuinely troubling - "it's disgusting! voldemort is a real man and real men don't want anything up their arses!".

obviously - let's be real - a lot of the arguments about why bottom!voldemort is impossible are just typical "slash fandom reinvents gender roles" shit - they essentially boil down to "omg no harry would bottom because he's the girl".

but others do come with more weight behind them. and two of these are:

that the gender norms voldemort was raised with would inculcate in him a big lump of internalised homophobia which would make him see bottoming as feminine, and - in seeing it as feminine - see it as weak, humiliating, dependent, and incompatible with his understanding of control and power. that voldemort would be horrified by the idea of being penetrated, because he would see it as something which polluted or profaned the body he considers to be sacred.

i do think it's possible to argue both of these points robustly, using actual readings of the text rather than just vibes. i've just never found any of these readings compelling.

and the reason why all comes down to this:

"I knew I was different," he whispered to his own quivering fingers. "I knew I was special. Always, I knew there was something." [HBP 13]

he's talking about something specific - how he's always known that he's a wizard - here, of course. but we can also take this statement and use it to think more generally about how he views being perceived as deviant, strange, or wrong by the norms of the society in which he lives.

by which i mean... he's somebody who believes that being different makes him special and that people who try to punish or shame him for his difference are idiots who simply haven't yet worked out that he's superior to them in literally everything he does. he's not someone who perceives being different in a self-flagellating way - he doesn't think there's something wrong with him, he doesn't think that his difference makes him a pathetic or unimpressive person. and he's also not somebody who views being criticised or punished for his difference as something which causes him sorrow or anxiety. it causes him rage - because it inconveniences him [it creates obstacles he has to overcome, although he entirely believes he can overcome them] and because it doesn't recognise his self-conception as the protagonist of reality:

Riddle's reaction to this was most surprising. He leapt from the bed and backed away from Dumbledore, looking furious. "You can't kid me! The asylum, that's where you're from, isn't it? 'Professor,' yes, of course - well, I'm not going, see? That old cat's the one who should be in the asylum. I never did anything to little Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop, and you can ask them, they'll tell you!"   "I am not from the asylum," said Dumbledore patiently. "I am a teacher and, if you will sit down calmly, I shall tell you about Hogwarts. Of course, if you would rather not come to the school, nobody will force you -" "I'd like to see them try," sneered Riddle. "Hogwarts," Dumbledore went on, as though he had not heard Riddle's last words, "is a school for people with special abilities -"   "I'm not mad!" [HBP 13]

you can entertain a very dark reading of this scene - in fact, i have - but it's also possible to entertain a liberating one, and see the child voldemort as someone who has always been proud of his difference and prepared to defend that pride in the face of censure, and who is absolutely delighted to be given the language to define and describe his difference and to be given access to a community of people who are similarly - in his words - special.

all of which is to say... the standard interpretation in fandom seems to be that a queer voldemort would fall somewhere on a spectrum from indifferent to his sexuality to actively ashamed of it.

but i think it's much, much more plausible that he'd actually be proud of it, and for his statement - "i knew i was different... i knew i was special" - to be used as the starting point for how we might imagine him realising that he's queer.

and this is why the "he'd have so much internalised homophobia he'd never bottom" argument always falls flat for me - it rests on an assumption that queer men having to grow past a childhood/teenage fear that there's something wrong with them is the default position. it overlooks the fact that there are many ways for somebody to come to understand their own sexuality.

and that two of those ways are "defiantly" and "spitefully". aka the lord voldemort special.

something which always stands out to me about the canonical voldemort, both when he's a good-looking teenager/young man and a monstrous, serpentine adult, is that - even with all the phallic symbolism which surrounds him [enormous snakes and ultra-powerful wands and so on] - the text presents him as somebody who comes across as fairly effeminate:

he's typically described - as we can see from this excellent analysis from @said-snape-softly - as speaking "softly" or "quietly". when he isn't, he's often "shrill", "shrieking", "screeching", or "screaming".

he has a hair-trigger temper and he's extremely emotionally volatile.

he's typically described as moving in ways which have similarly feminine connotations - he "drifts" and "glides". while the primary doylist reason for this is clearly so the reader associates him with snakes, ghosts, and dementors, it ends up giving him a quality of movement which is fey, rather than powerful and purposeful. indeed, we only ever see him do one thing which requires physical, as well as magical, prowess - duelling. but, like fencing - which is its real-world equivalent - good duellists aren't people who are physically strong or imposing, they're people who are cunning and nimble [and the other men the text emphasises are good at it are snape, flitwick, and harry - with harry's quick reflexes being explicitly given as a reason why [i.e. GoF 34] ]. his ability to fly is a demonstration of his magical power alone, since it allows him to circumvent the need to use a broom, which does appear to require physical strength [hence why the only main characters who aren't fond of using brooms are either women or fat, cowardly little boys like neville...]

building on this, he's often described in ways which make him sound quite physically fragile - he's very thin, he's very pale, he's always cold, every time his heartbeat is described it seems to be irregular and so on.

his reputation in his teens and young adulthood is as a "polite [and] quiet" goody-two-shoes who "showed no sign of outward arrogance or aggression at all" [HBP 17]. i think that point about aggression is really important - it builds on what mrs cole tells dumbledore about it being "very hard to catch him" bullying other orphans [HBP 13]. he's not dudley - or james and sirius - using his physical talents to subdue and control people. he's sneakier... more insidious... indeed, in chamber of secrets, ron explicitly compares him to percy - somebody else the text presents as fairly effete - in order to complain about him "squealing" - aka, running to tell a teacher, like a girl, instead of settling things like a man - on hagrid [CoS 14].

when he's a young man, living alone for the first time, the text thinks it's very important to tell us that he has "slightly longer hair" than he does at school [HBP 20]. "slightly" is obviously the operative word here - i don't think he's strutting into hepzibah smith's house in a twenty-four inch lace-front - but we can certainly imagine him with the sort of greaser or pompadour haircut which was understood in the 1950s as being a bit counter-cultural...

of the five horcruxes which are objects - rather than harry and nagini [who is, of course, female] - three [cup, diadem, locket] originally belonged to a woman and are acquired from a woman, two [cup, locket] are acquired by killing a woman using a stereotypically female murder method [poison], two are connected to voldemort's rage at his mother being disparaged [locket - he's furious to hear hepzibah say that merope must have stolen it, ring - he attacks morfin immediately after morfin calls his mother a "slut"]. and all five of these horcruxes also depend on women to introduce them into the narrative in a way that facilitates their destruction: the diary is given to ginny; dumbledore puts on the ring in order to speak to his sister; the locket is associated both with walburga's grief [it's literally moved from the cave - voldemort's grave for his mother - to the house which is walburga's own tomb!] and with umbridge's performance of femininity; the cup is given to bellatrix [and the text is very clear that both she and voldemort understand it as having only been given to her, rather than to her and rodolphus] and is then destroyed - albeit off-stage - by hermione; and harry is given the tools to acquire the diadem by cho, luna, and mcgonagall, although he has to overcome the obstacles of alecto carrow and helena ravenclaw to get hold of it. harry - of course - also only becomes a horcrux because of a woman - lily's - sacrifice.

his favourite death eaters are a woman and a very feminine-coded man. but - more interestingly - what the text finds unimpressive isn't that he likes bellatrix and snape... it's that he leaves a lot of his dirty work to male minions who are characterised by their brutish strength - people like greyback, hagrid [who he makes carry harry up to hogwarts], rowle, gibbon, amycus carrow and so on. there's the heavy implication in the text that voldemort's preference for leaving the violence to others - as i'm always pointing out, his canonical kill count is really low; most of the murders in the series are done by other death eaters acting on his orders - is something we should see as weak.

the text associates him with this effeminacy - i think it's really important to note, given who jkr is - as a criticism. it's something - much like the text's presentation of him as aromantic, and the fact that the degradation of his looks via the creation of the horcruxes makes him look sexless/eunuch-like - being used to underscore his villainy. he's feminine-coded in a toxic way.

but let's take this in another direction [and let's also return to the actual question you asked me...] and read him as someone who has always had to deal with being perceived as queer by other people, and having that perception be associated with negative assumptions.

he's very easy to imagine as a child/teenager who's the target of ridicule from his fellow orphans/fellow students [for not being sporty, for liking to sit in the library for hours on end coming up with anagrams of his own name, for the way he walks and speaks] which hinges on the idea that his failure to conform to the expected conventions of "proper" masculinity mean that he's not a proper man... and that if he's not a proper man then... he's not straight.

but then we have to come back to the "i knew i was special" point, don't we?

voldemort's belief in his own superiority can - in my view - be used to read him as somebody who would embrace being camp or effeminate or whatever term we want to use, in order both to express his contempt for people who criticise him ["think i'm a messed up little deviant, do you, mrs cole? well, you don't know the half of it!"] and who conform to social norms he thinks are reprehensible ["oh, do purebloods frown upon bottoming, abraxas? well - guess what - so do muggles. do you agree with what muggles think?"] and to humiliate, subjugate, and control them ["you think i'm a faggot, do you...? well, you're right... i'm a faggot who's defeated you in battle and now i'm about to kill you... still feel like a man?"].

while - obviously - appearance/gender presentation has nothing to do with preferred sexual roles - the manliest men on earth can be bottoms! being femme doesn't prevent you topping! - i really do think that voldemort is someone who can be written entirely canon-coherently as thinking that the homophobic perception of bottoming as weak, powerless, or humiliating is complete nonsense, and who would actively flaunt his rejection of this perception as a way to mock people who subscribe to it.

after all, we see him do something similar in canon when it comes to his blood-status and social class. the death eaters - lots of whom are posh pureblood men who conceive of themselves as the most important people in the universe - are made to kneel at the feet of and kiss the robes of and be branded like cattle by and be at the beck and call of someone who's neither pureblood nor posh. there are - as lupin tells us - no wizarding princes... and yet the closest things the wizarding world has to an aristocracy are rolling around on the ground debasing themselves and calling a half-blood orphan "my lord".

voldemort does this to humiliate them. but he also does this to amuse himself - à la logan roy making men who've displeased him play "boar on the floor".

[wormtail being forced to care for him when he's in his half-form at the start of goblet of fire, for example. he's not humiliated in the slightest by his dependence on wormtail... wormtail is humiliated by it, and voldemort finds it hilarious.]

and so i think we can plausibly imagine him also deeply enjoying making his straight, married, "i would die before i let anything near my arse", "i'm not getting changed for quidditch with so-and-so there, he's queer", "i'd disown my son if i found out he let other men fuck him" death eaters grovel for the favour of someone who loves getting railed...

this deeply aligns with how voldemort understands things like power and control - and it's why the argument that he'd only top because he would regard it as the only way of being powerful and controlling never hits for me.

because this also rests on an assumption - that the bottom always understands themselves as the passive partner. i do think the fandom is broadly getting better at recognising that bottoms and submissives are different things [although the bar was on the floor...], but i think there's still a tendency to default to the idea that the two people involved in sex are an active partner and a passive partner, and that the passive partner is - for want of a better term - the receptacle.

the language used around bottoming reinforces this assumption. its voice is passive - the bottom is penetrated, is bred, is fucked, is taken - its verbs are passive too - the top does, the bottom receives.

but the thing is... this is just semantics. and it's a semantic argument directly rooted in misogyny, and the homophobia which stems from and connects to it.

and - since it's just semantics - we can change the language we use at any time to completely reconfigure the assumed power dynamic.

the bottom grants access. the bottom consumes. the bottom takes. the bottom absorbs. the bottom uses. the bottom captures. the bottom detains. the bottom grips. the bottom devours. the bottom permits. the bottom destroys.

the top is the person who's passive - who receives permission, who is granted access, who is consumed, who is absorbed, who is captured. the top is the person having their life-force leached from them. they're just a toy, just a piece of meat. they literally don't matter.

and the text already uses this sort of language - the language of consumption and capture and permission to cross thresholds and so on - to talk about voldemort's attitude to power, magic, and the body.

he drains the blood of unicorns; he uses up the life-force of the people and animals he possesses; he grows stronger by consuming ginny's secrets; he is restored to his body by taking from his father, wormtail, and harry; he takes the money dumbledore offers without feeling the need to thank him or regard it as a gift; he offers up gifts to people he wants to use for his own gain; he "doesn't march up to people's houses and bang on their front doors" [OotP 6]; he hoards and conceals precious things; his soul is kept safe by being encased by the horcruxes; his locket is guarded by something which has to be drunk, which destroys anyone who assumes they can simply take it without his permission; he "would be glad to see anything miss hepzibah shows me" [HBP 20] and then seizes her secrets and uses them to bring about her doom; his descent from slytherin is proven by his control of the threshold of the chamber of secrets; he places himself and his talents at dumbledore's disposal, "i am yours to command" [HBP 20]; he controls snakes and they do his bidding; he drains the ministry of its secrets; he controls the dementors, who devour joy; augustus rookwood "has lord voldemort's gratitude... i shall need all the information you can give me" [OotP 26]; he is the greatest legilimens - that is to say, he is excellent at pulling other people's secrets into his own mind and using them as he wishes - the world has ever seen; he has seen ron's heart and it is his; his followers live to serve him...

his followers are called death eaters, not death fuckers.

and so it's inarguable, really, that he'd have a legion of service tops under his command...

[zagreus-eats-your-bread]

rank every dr who on how likely they are to eat rocks

Hm which number should I go by? Let's go from least to most. I'll rank the TV Doctors and then reblog to give you general opinions on the others.

16th place - 3rd Doctor

You may disagree with this because his scientific mind might conceive of a situation where eating rocks could possibly be an option. However Liz would hit him on the nose with a newspaper like a dog if he got anywhere near her rocks. She would at length scold him and tell him that most rocks are bad for you and you shouldn't eat them.

15th place - War Doctor

He would definitely eat rocks but not for pleasure. When you are stranded on a planet because of woke war you may have to eat some rocks. But he would hate it the whole time.

14th place - 9th Doctor

Similar to War Doctor but you know what he kinda sees it. He kinda gets the appeal. I think he ate one (1) rock during his life and Rose was like Why and he was just nodding to himself like "Yeah this has a certain something".

13th place - 12th Doctor

He would eat some rocks on occaission but it would be like his guilty pleasure and he would hide it from Clara.

12th place - 7th Doctor

If there was ever a way he could incorporate eating some rocks into one of his 5D chess plans he would do it. Afterwards Ace would give him the side eye and be like "Professor this could have all worked out without you eating any of those rocks" and he would boop her on the nose and say nothing.

11th place - 6th Doctor

He would NOT eat rocks you are being RIDICULOUS. And then he finds a new rock on some planet and it smells so good and then he would take a nibble and get absolutely addicted to eating them. He would spend the next 40 years always having pebbles in his pocket to snack on and all regenerations after him would lowkey barf when someone offered them one of those rocks because of how much he used to eat them.

10th place - 13.5th Doctor

He would eat rocks just to fuck with Yaz and be quirky but his heart wouldn't be in it.

9th place - 10th Doctor

Someone would offer him something suspiciously rock shaped and he would eat it and be like "This is amazing, what is it?" and they would be like it's a rock and 10 would be like huh.

8th place - 14th Doctor

Same as above but he knows now he likes the taste of rocks. However his recent experiences made him less privy to them. He had too many.

7th place - 2nd Doctor

He would eat rocks in a heartbeat but he doesn't really like them. Like he will do it but his heart doesn't yearn for rocks. He would just do it to be silly and/or make people think hes not a threat and just some weird guy who eats rocks.

6th place - 5th Doctor

Sometimes he will pick up a rock and say what type of rock it is and eat it. And then Nyssa has to hold Tegan back lest she hit him.

5th place - 1st Doctor

Ian sees him eat a rock and is dumbfounded. He asks "Doctor, what are you doing?" and the Doctor will try to gaslight him into thinking HE is the weird one for thinking that him eating a rock is strange. And then he would laugh his old man laugh. He also sometimes eats rock flavoured food cubes from the food machine. Just cause.

4th place - 15th Doctor

He would see a rock, pick it up, laugh and jump with joy and enthusiastically ask Ruby "Do you know what this is?" and she would be like "Uh-" and he would cut her off to say "This is a rock!" and eat it.

3rd place - 8th/11th Doctor

They would both eat rocks and others who see them would be like "Yeah ok checks out". Like no one is surprised they just accept it.

(Both pics = them when they see an uneaten rock)

2nd place - 4th Doctor

Those teeth were made for rock chompin'. If 4 had to defeat an alien monster made of rock he would just eat it, and no matter which companion would be there to witness it they would all be changed forever. He would just carry on like it didn't happen.

1st place - 13th Doctor

She will see a rock and be like "is anyone gonna eat this" and not wait for an answer.

[screeching-bunny]

Yandere! Concubine Harem

Warnings: Obsessive Behavior, Yandere Thoughts, Bad Writing, Stalking, Possessive Behavior, Reader is Referred as ‘You’

Many people would call you crazy or insane but you didn’t care. You absolutely hated your life and the god forsaken family you were born into. If you could choose, you would have been born into a lesser family. It wasn’t always like this, in fact when you were younger you were last in line for the throne. It was due to the sabotage of greedy and jealous mothers that got all your half siblings and full blooded siblings murdered. Unfortunately, that meant that you were forced into the position of being the next heir and eventually the new ruler.

You could remember the moment you became heir, you were immediately bombarded with people trying to curry up your favor. You honestly hated it, everyone just felt superficial and it didn’t help that as you grew, so did your power. Even your childhood friends were not immune to this. Imagine your shock when your closest friend got up on one knee and asked for the chance to court you. Then your classmate, then your former brother’s friend, and etc.

You had barely even had a concept of what love was. From a very young age your mother was murdered and your father hardly ever paid that much attention to you as well. You were mostly alone in your own little world and you absolutely loved that. People always just seemed so annoying to you that you did the bare minimum in communicating with others.

You tried to remain single as long as possible but your father did not agree with this decision of yours. He’s always seen relationships and marriage as a way to get more influence from around the world. So at the age of twenty, you were officially given a concubine, a foreign princess from the East. She was clingy and whenever you talked to other people she seemed to always want to monopolize your attention. This behavior only seemed to get worse when your father caused you to take in concubines to gain various alliances.

Within your harem there was competition daily. Sons of generals who tried to show off with their strengths, princesses who tried to get your attention with their singing abilities, princes who would try to show off their archery, scholars who showed off their intelligence, etc. The list goes on and on. There was so much jealousy in your harem that it was unbelievable. It also didn’t help that everyone was always trying to kill each other. You were so sick and tired of it. All you wanted was some peace and quiet.

There were daily assassination attempts on concubines, poised drinks to make someone infertile, constant fake crying so that you could favor someone, and etc. Every single time you take in a new concubine you could always feel them seething but you always ignored it. You didn’t know why they loved you so much, hell you even told them if they ever wanted a divorce you would give it to them. Yet, no one has ever left willingly. It was as if they looked up to you as a god or something it was just so strange.

You’re favored concubines were of course, always thrilled to have your attention on them. They were usually the ones who got to sleep with you at night. Seems as a privilege as only the most loved got to do that. You, however, had to be careful sometimes because unwanted sexual advances could happen anytime in the bedroom.

If you feel in a particularly good mood that day however, you may even let one of them bathe with you. “Your majesty, your skin is silky smooth. I wish to do this with you forever. No words can express how I feel and how much I love you. Won’t you allow me to be your first husband?” Yeah, this was basically how most of your conversations went. Everyone wanted to have the first slot at being your husband or wife. It was the ultimate showcase to prove you loved them the most and was a definite power trip for those in the harem.

Going to bed everyday was like a minefield. You just don’t know who’s going to show up in your chambers. Most of the time it’s one of your concubines, that you allowed to sleep with you for the night, in provocative attire. “Your majesty, I’ve been feeling a little lonely lately. Won’t you please pay some attention to me?” It’s honestly crazy how there is no limit of what these guys wouldn’t do for you. They just seem so overly infatuated and obsessive.

No matter what you did to them, they would always seem to look at you with love and admiration. You could basically insult all of them and they would accept it with a ‘thank you’. Nothing you did, could ever make them hate you.

Bullying was an extreme issue in your harem. No matter where you went there were always green tea bitches, white lotuses, and cunning foxes trying to bring someone down in your eyes. It’s even worse if they're new, having barely any awareness of what is happening, they definitely need to be more careful. No matter where you go at least three of them are stuck to your side. You’re alone time is basically nonexistent and extinct.

With teary eyes one of your concubines shout, “My lord, please help me! I’m being bullied by the others in the harem!” If you were being honest, you absolutely did not care about what was going on and one hundred percent knew that she was just using a manipulation tactic. However, to avoid the incoming headache you begin to console her and tell her that you’ll have a talk with everyone. You then decide to give her what she wanted and guide her towards your bedroom chambers. As you both leave she quickly looks at the faces of the others and sticks her tounge out. There was a look of absolute rage on their faces and with that they all had the same unanimous thought in their head.

“I’m totally going to get that bitch back for this!!!”

Pt.2

[xjulixred45x]

Zagreus (Hades) x Albino! Mortal!Reader

Imagine that the reader is a mortal who lives (unknowingly) near the gates of the Underworld (perhaps near one of the temples in honor of Hades next to the Cocytus River), and not only that, but she was born with ALBINISM.

I mean, skin very sensitive to sunlight, eyes just as sensitive, hair without color, etc.

Thanks to this, she gained a certain reputation in her hometown, both good and bad, but the general consensus was that her "exotic" appearance would make a good trophy wife.

So the reader resorted to an old Greek custom, covering herself as much as possible with veils and cloth, not only to protect herself from the sun, but to give the illusion that she was married to someone important, someone her suitors were afraid of.

and it works, sort of, but unwanted attention one way or another appears, so she decides to take a break from the people at the temple in honor of Hades, knowing that no one would dare go there.

What she didn't expect was to have company at some point.

Let's say this is for when Persephone returns to the Underworld and Zagreus goes to the surface at first just to tend to his mother garden, but eventually wants to wander, which leads to him stumbling upon the temple to Hades.

which leads to him running into reader.

Even if he dies before talking to her, curiosity is quite powerful, Zagreus knows that his father has very little culture (and understands VERY well why) so seeing a mortal for the first time and on top of that one who adored his father ? unusual.

The next time he surfaces he goes directly to the temple, and there is the reader, taking care of the almost abandoned place a little.

Definitely both at first are a bit wary of each other, mainly reader to Zag because of her bad experiences with men, but once she sees that he is a friendly guy (I say "see" as a way of saying because with all the veils that she wears she doesn't see shit) starts having a conversation with him.

Zagreus thinks that Reader surely uses the veils as a way to cover herself from the cold at first, but since Demeter has softened towards mortals and better times are coming and Reader continues wearing veils, Zag is confused. Isn't she roasting in there?

At the same time, as reader also covers her eyes to protect them, She probably does not know or realize at the beginning that Zagreus is a god, simply because she does not see the need to remove the veil to find out what this friendly person looks like. although she definitely thinks it's strange that be disappears after a couple of hours out of nowhere. rude.

It takes several trips to the surface for both to open up, which causes both to begin to generate a certain playful dynamic taking advantage of the circumstances. It's something...tender.

Zagreus learns more about mortal customs and their history thanks to the reader, how they see the gods, how they differ, in general, it is something quite important for Zagreus, being more empathetic than his relatives, he wants to be aware of how the gods live, as well mortals. After all, without them the gods have no work, right?

Reader definitely didn't buy Zagreus about being the son of Hades at first, and it will take a little time for her to believe it, but I think the most important step for both of them would be to know why Reader is always covered and her condition.

Let's say that one day while being outside (reader in the shade and Zagreus in the sun) Zagreus accidentally pulled a bit of the reader's lower veil while playing and that generated a HORRIBLE burn on her arm, poor boy felt so guilty :(

Although it also helped him to start connecting the dots for him because she was always so covered, and he just started asking about her condition in order to help her.

The reader would tell him some basics of her condition and how it affected her life in many ways. Coming to the topic of suitors. and I imagined something like this:

"So you wear your veils to protect yourself from the sun?"

"not only that...women in my city usually cover themselves when they get married"

"(between berserk and heartbroken mode) are you...married?"

"Oh no! Gods no! It's just a move I made to protect myself from both the sun and the men who won't leave me alone!"

"Are they that bad? Do you think that will stop them for long?"

"The worst... and the more covered the woman is, the more powerful the husband is. What do you think these men think when they see a woman covered from head to toe?"

"that you must be married to the king of Olympus himself"

when the reader finally decides to show Zagreus her face and as you can see, boy is so ANXIOUS, because well, he was already quite in love with this girl just with her personality and her attitude, so being able to put a face to the name was simply exciting . And when she takes it off? he dies (figuratively).

And for her part, the reader is quite surprised to see that INDEED her recent friend not only has a strange divine aura but also fucking BURNING FEET and begins to believe his anecdotes much more 😅

Zagreus getting her Ambrosia 🥺 I have the hc that in normal living humans the ambrosia of Hades has a certain healing effect (as ambrosia had a rejuvenating effect in mythology) and perhaps thanks to this reader can walk in the sun without getting hurt.

Zagreus definitely dislikes reader's suitors as much (or even more) than she does. If she wants him to scare them, he'll be happy to do it :)

(It goes without saying, if the reader ends up in the Underworld suddenly, er, because of the suitors, Zagreus is DEFINITELY going to retaliate by giving them a direct step to Tartarus).

If reader could somehow go to the house of Hades (maybe for Charon) she would be SO HAPPY that finally there is no sun damaging her skin or stupid men harassing her, being able to move freely is so.. MAGICAL! Her joy is contagious to Zagreus, who had already gotten used to seeing her always confined by her clothes and veils, but this is not bad at all.

Overall, I think it's a cute concept😚

Shares, reblogs and comments are very welcome!

Soon i may or may not post something about Achilles! So, stay tuned.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

hello hello! you're writing tips have been so helpful and i wanted to ask for help on how to write hypocrite like characters. thank you!!

Writing Notes: Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy - a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel, especially: the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion

Hypocrisy is a special case of cognitive dissonance, produced when a person freely chooses to promote a behavior that they do not themselves practice.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory. Has a long and esteemed history in social psychology. As originally formulated (Festinger, 1957), cognitive dissonance is induced when a person holds two contradictory beliefs, or when a belief is incongruent with an action that the person had chosen freely to perform. Because this situation produces feelings of discomfort, the individual strives to change one of the beliefs or behaviors in order to avoid being inconsistent.

Hypocrite Trope

People — particularly those with authority, be it moral or political — are expected to act in accordance with the ideals they espouse. That is to say, they should practice what they preach. Those who don't are hypocrites.

The dichotomy here is that they may fervently and honestly believe what they say is right and good… they just don't have the moral strength or willpower to consistently live up to their own high standards. (Unless, of course, they're outright liars with no intention of living up to said standards.)

it's possible to be hypocritical and a good person at the same time, whether that would be a "Jerk with a Heart of Gold" or a full-blown "Nice Guy" character trope, and it depends on how severe the hypocrisy is (and the hypocrite's level of self-awareness). This, in return, is what makes hypocrisy mainly considered to be a minor form of jerkassery by default.

It depends on whether this is intentional or not.

One writer would do this intentionally so the character would go through a Jerkass Realization.

Hypocritical Humor is a minor degree of this, when Played for Laughs.

Another writer may make a character or do something but then forgot about it later on, then making them do things that contrast with earlier claims.

It usually takes fans or other writers to point them out, and it’s up to the writer to fix it or leave it like that.

Some Subtropes

Arbitrary Skepticism: Characters who deal with the strange and bizarre on a regular basis are skeptical when they run into something strange and bizarre.

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: A character pretends to be harmless or friendly to hide their actual self.

Broken Aesop: When a story itself doesn't mesh with the ideals it promotes.

Devil in Plain Sight: When someone who is Obviously Evil isn't seen as such by a general populace that is surrounded by other evils who are obvious, but only a minority can see it.

Doublethink: AKA cognitive dissonance; when one believes in two mutually exclusive ideas at the same time.

False Prophet: Someone claiming to be a messianic figure is actually deceiving their followers.

Knight Templar: A person who firmly believes their own cause to be just and righteous, even when it isn't.

Tautological Templar: Somebody who believes that they are good, and that makes everything they do good by default.

The Horseshoe Effect: The extremists on one side aren't that different from the extremists on the other side.

You Are What You Hate: People hating others for the same traits they themselves have or what they would eventually have.

Examples

Geryon, a monster from The Divine Comedy who guards Eighth Circle of Hell, is the biological manifestation of fraud. It may have the face of a beautiful man, but behind that face is the body of a massive winged serpent with a tail ripe with venom.

Gone with the Wind: Gerald O'Hara fled Ireland, where foreigners had taken over the country's lands and exploited an underclass to work them so the new landowners could become rich. He then immigrated to the United States and became a wealthy, plantation-owning slaver.

Merlin: A deliberate and fascinating example is King Uther. The reason he hates magic in the first place is that he made a deal with a sorceress to conceive a son with his barren wife. Furthermore, he describes his deceased wife as "my soul" and yet we later find out that he had an affair with his best friend's wife, and that (as he says to his son) "I know about the temptations of serving girls."

In Spirited Away, Yubaba refuses to accept Chihiro into her bathhouse because in her words, Chihiro is a "spoiled, lazy crybaby [with] no manners". Shortly afterwards, Yubaba is interrupted by her baby, who she immediately coddles and pampers, and who fits Yubaba's description of Chihiro perfectly. Furthermore, she criticizes her employees for being greedy and attracting the wrong customer when Greed is one of Yubaba's defining characteristics.

Tangled: Mother Gothel lectures Rapunzel about the dangerous selfish evil people of the outside world… when she's the one who kidnapped Rapunzel as a baby for her own selfish reasons. Rapunzel is quick to point this out when she discovers the truth.

Smerdyakov in The Brothers Karamazov is really just thought of as a scullion who has airs of intellectualism about him, and who carries blasphemous notions about religion. He's also thought of as pathetic to others because he suffers from epileptic seizures. The idea of him being the murderer is absurd to everyone in town for these reasons, yet he is. Only the protagonist seems to have any deep misgivings about him.

The Divine Comedy: According to Dante's Inferno, those guilty of hypocrisy are forced to march in monk-robes made of lead in the 8th Circle of Hell, the robes symbolic of the weight of their falsehoods. Special mention goes to Caiaphas, the High Priest of Israel under Pontius Pilate who advised him to crucify Jesus for "societal good", who is crucified to the ground and trodden upon by the other hypocrites like a literal doormat.

The Handmaid's Tale: In "Milk", Steven laments the fact that Handmaids are used as sex slaves, but he has no problem trying to extort sexual favors from Janine and June in order to let them stay.

The Last Supper: Judas is covered in shadows, actively leaning away from Jesus, and spilling salt (an evil omen) all over the table, yet no one else at the Last Supper even begins to recognize Judas as the traitor Jesus has just revealed is in their midst.

In The Lord of the Rings (as explained outright in Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth), Saruman openly berates Gandalf for his use of tobacco, but in private, in an attempt to imitate Gandalf, becomes addicted to pipeweed himself. In the movie, Saruman says, "Your love of the halflings' leaf has clearly slowed your mind" but Merry and Pippin find several large barrels of tobacco in Saruman's home later on.

Sources: 1 2 3 ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

Hi, thanks so much, appreciate your kind words! Consider these references and choose which ones would work best to incorporate in your story. Do go through the sources as well for more subtropes and examples that might serve as inspiration.

[slasherflicks999]

new oc/sona yaaaaaay!

oh how i wish i had all those piercings (bridge come back to me💔)

can we guess where his name came from gang (suspiciously username shaped name)

i actually really enjoy his character design and i literally color picked his color pallet from a diagram(?) that shows how a bruise heals and it worked out LMAOO sooo new character design life hack

more info and lots of general yapping about him after the break if you care to read :3 and i yap a LOT i have lots to say about him bc its been a while since i genuinely developed an oc LMAO

cw for LOTS and LOTS of talk of death if you do decide to read! just in case :3

first of all you may be thinking “5’6? short king!” and i will have you know i actually made him taller than i am irl by a few inches LMAOOO whoops t boy swag will do that to ya

anyways the thing about his color pallet being based off of that of a literal bruise IS actually relevant because he is literally immortal and is CONSTANTLY getting injured like all the time. i think conveying info about characters via their color pallets is fun and i wanna do more of it so hehe. plus green and red and purple are a nice combo and it worked out very well :3 also another little note about his design: he’s a very creative and artistic person and i wanted to show that through his clothes being somehow modified and i think i did that well too. trying to properly get back into making actually decent and thoughtful character designs so im proud of myself :3

that being said his immortality causes him a SHIT load of problems. i feel like being immortal would really suck LMAO but more-so i feel like i dont see people do much with the idea of immortality in terms of horror or at least not from what i’ve seen. like im still figuring out his lore but the basics are: he has no clue who his dad is and found out he was immortal at a somewhat young age but literally his entire life he’s been viewed as just kind of off?? like he looks human and for the most part acts it but he just has certain traits that humans…. do not have. his eyes glow in pics like a nocturnal animal’s would and his teeth are suspiciously sharp and he gets weird cravings for raw meat which he can somehow digest perfectly fine with absolutely no issue but he’s not like OVERTLY some otherworldly creature he’s just a little weird. a tad strange even. possibly even kind of unsettling depending on who you ask.

and i like to imagine these are a lot of things that were present in his childhood too, like his mother would wake up to the sound of rummaging in the kitchen and find him at the ripe old age of five just gnawing at a whole raw steak in the dark. he’s just sort of always been like that and didn’t realize it was weird until he was older. (is a lot of this used as metaphors for undiagnosed neurodiversity/mental illness? …..iii dont knowwww :3 (yes) (although not every aspect of him is a total reflection of myself, he is still his own character in many respects lolol))

but in general this ends up causing him all sorts of issues in all sorts of millions of ways. for one he has sort of a fragile sense of self because he doesn’t even know what he is?? he knows he can’t just be a regular old human because of all the previously mentioned reasons and a few more, but that aside he has no idea what he is. he also doesn’t know pretty much anything about how his immortality works beyond what he’s experienced and what the others have told him during the times when he’s “dead,” he has no idea how his aging is affected by it because he seems to be aging relatively normally so far, he has no clue if he will EVER die for good/if there’s any way to kill him, he has no idea how his body seems to heal the most insane fatal injuries as if nothing happened, and much more quickly than a normal human would, he kinda doesn’t know jack shit about himself and it pisses him off a little bit!

it also has just caused him lots of trauma as you can probably imagine. lots of dissociation everywhere he looks

moving on to how his immortality actually works: like i said there’s only so much he knows about it but this is all the info he knows so far. he CAN “die” but all of his deaths are temporary. that is to say that his body will eventually heal and regenerate itself and he will come back. it’s not like deadpool where he can get stabbed in the head and go about the rest of his day like nothing happened, he might be able to keep himself up for a while to fight back or run away but it wont be long before he drops dead for a few days or so. during said time his body outwardly does seem very dead. he’s unresponsive and still and isn’t blinking or nothing and his pupils are blown (which he already has huge pupils but yk), like if you were to just show him to someone they’d be like “yeah that’s absolutely a corpse and also why would you show this to me.” but his body is still alive in a sense, it’s just sort of… yknow when you put a computer into sleep mode?? upon first glance it’s gonna look like it’s off but inwardly things are still going on. his body is still working to regenerate itself the whole time, even if whatever he sustained that “killed” him would very much not be healable or survivable by any normal person. in his POV, he just sort of gets knocked out for a while and then wakes up exhausted and sore and absolutely FAMISHED. like he could easily eat a horse without any exaggeration the boy can eat.

he’s also always been interested in horror and the supernatural and crime and shit and is largely desensitized to that sort of stuff from that + experiencing a lot of different deaths himself bc of the whole immortality thing paired with him being generally reckless when he was younger because what’s it gonna do? kill him? (“what’re you gonna do, jeff the kill me?” -him at jeff moments before being stabbed, probably) he says he doesn’t care but it actually effects him deeply in ways he doesn’t understand for a while. as he gets older he becomes less reckless and doesn’t throw himself into dangerous situations as often.

all that being said he’s not necessarily all that dangerous himself?? he carries his dagger around with him for protection or cutting up meat and apples or woodcarving more than anything and as a proxy he works a lot more as just an… observer. despite his name he’s not really all for the killing people stuff if he can help it unlike many of the others, if anything his name more so refers to the fact that HE’S usually the one getting slashed up. (it’s actually just bc of my username but shhhhhh) but generally he much prefers to be in the background keeping watch or scoping things out or just sort of… stalking people basically. dont ask me how he manages to be stealthy in THAT outfit… he manages somehow i swear 😔

but yknow overall he’s not an incredible threat to most people, the “creepy” part of him being a creepypasta comes a lot more just from how much it would suck to be in his shoes as just a guy who happens to be immortal but still able to experience the pain of death over and over again. he isn’t the creepy thing as much as his entire life experience is LOL. usually he’s just unsettling and disturbing at most.

he also has a VERY complex relationship with BEN in my AU specifically (WHICH RANDOM DISCLAIMER TIME: NOT THE LITTLE 12 YEAR OLD VERSION NOOOOO EW my au’s BEN is like a combo of “fanon” him and behavioral event network he is not 12 years old and i dont want him being shipped with anything NEAR that version of him, ONLY my AU’s version who is 19. im not a freak. 💔 they’re not a couple anyway (BEN🤝slasher -> being aro) but i did wanna preface that just in case bc im not trying to get misinterpreted like that) might write more about that sometime… bc their relationship has a lot of symbolism and complexity bc BEN is my fav character ever period and yes i am gonna write him and my self insert oc as being incredibly deeply intertwined bc i love him and cringe culture can kick rocks and therapy is difficult to get :3 oc x canon shippers platonic or romantic yall will always be safe on my blog frfr

im gonna post more about BEN soon too…. literally working on actually making a proper design for him rn which is mostly just difficult bc i cannot for the life of me think of what to give this freak to wear. i need them to serve cunt but like….. how do i do that 💔💔 that one BEN design i reblogged that gave him the adorable little heels….. absolutely genius………. u know who u are :3

more random rapid fire fun facts about him bc why not: he loves piercings and tattoos and body mods bc they heal so easily for him, he has his tongue split! (NEEEED to do one day actually my dream body mod), his immortality doesn’t seem to effect his ability to get sick which he HATES but when he does get sick it only lasts for a day or so and he’s a total drama queen the whole time, he loves to sew (though only by hand, he’s genuinely afraid of sewing machines) and will patch up or modify clothes for his friends or other proxies if they ask, his favorite kind of raw meat is boar, and his favorite cooked meat is a tie between pork (boar or domestic pig) and chicken, he wears his headphones most of the time bc he loves music and sounds can sometimes overstimulate him, and BEN can talk to him through them because of course he can, he loves animals and actually has way more empathy for them than for humans, and he absolutely LOVES medical dramas and does not care that a lot of the actual medical parts are inaccurate he will eat them up. he WILL be caught staying up until 6am watching chicago med and he will not apologize.

ANYWAY i think that’s about it actually. if anyone actually read all my ramblings…. i love u /p u mean very much to me /p

i WILL be yapping more soon (except probably about the actual “canon” pastas hehe) :3

[historyinclusionist]

Harmless Personal Identity coining

Since the term I crafted has been picking up steam in a couple places, I decided it's time to make a official post for it and propose a flag. I'm not good at making flags and you're welcome to redesign the above one if you like this term.

Harmless Personal Identity (HPI) is an umbrella term meant to describe personal identities that people might assign to themselves, coin for others, make pride flags for, and so on, but not any identities that inherently cause harm. If an identity checks the following boxes, it can be called a Harmless Personal Identity.

Harmless: It doesn't encourage predatory behavior, racism, ableism, transphobia etc just by existing.

The identity is being labeled because it makes the person using it comfortable. Not to harm others by deceiving them. For example: LGBT people and systems are not intending to deceive others and simply want to live as they are. This doesn't mean that the term in question is completely free of criticism or couldn't be used in bad faith—I think every term that's ever been coined could be used in bad faith. This means that it may be unusual or strange, especially to people who aren't familiar with the social groups/contexts the term was coined in, but the definition doesn't encourage people to appropriate culture, speak over people of color, commit inc-st/p-dophilia/z-ophilia, or otherwise cause harm to themselves or another living being as part of that identity.

Example: "Transhawaiian" is not an HPI, because by virtue of it existing the coiner and anyone who uses this term are saying that "Hawaiian" is a feeling someone can decide they feel and apply to themself at will, instead of the racial minority that "Hawaiian" actually is.

Personal: Identities which are wholly self-determined and locatable only within that person's interaction with and relations to the world around them.

In general—Other people cannot determine your internal view of yourself because they cannot be you, therefore your identity is personal! Someone who's unfamiliar with xenogenders may tell me that I cannot be -insert gender- because -thing- isn't a gender, but my gender is inside me and I cannot possibly give them the ability to feel it for me. It is located only within me.

This includes labels that get called "contradictory", like identifying as a lesbian and a man at the same time. If you're not familiar with multigender and multisexual lesbian spaces that might sound strange, but gender+presentation and orientation labels are purely self-defined—they are the coiner/anyone who uses that term saying "this is how I would describe my attraction to -insert gender here-," "this is how I would describe my gender that only I can feel inside my head and can't physically show to someone else," and so on. A bisexual lesbian's identity is not saying that all lesbians are bisexual or that they should identify that way; It is saying that that individual determined themself to be bisexual and lesbian.

(This does not extend to, again, racism and cultural appropriation. Queer labels are a self-defined thing, whereas racial and ethnic identity and things like congenital disorders can have self-defined aspects but are largely on a completely different quadrant of identity and can't be "decided" in the same way that queer labels can.)

Identity: A self-applied label or understanding of yourself.

This one is straightforward mostly. I would like to note that this does include things like reclaimed slurs and derogatory words, since in those cases, it's that person who's been called that word choosing "you know what? I AM a -slur- and I love myself for it!" instead of it being used to put them down.

Ok, so what identities specifically?

MOGAI (xenogenders, neogenders, neo/newly coined orientations, presentation terms, neopronouns+etc)

Alterhuman (the entire alterhuman umbrella, excluding any culturally appropriative behavior)

Most plural culture/coined terms for plural experiences

Other identity umbrellas (Dissomei, desirdae, reclaimed xenoidentities, xenonatures, neurowiry,+etc)

And so on. Is it not a radqueer, transrace, transx, etc term or would you call it a "good faith identity"? It most likely fits here.

This also includes a category of personal identity I've been seeing more and more lately, which are these uncategorized identifications with specific words that have pride flags. Some examples: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Ok, cool, do I identify as this?

You would say "I use harmless personal identities"/"I support harmless personal identities"/I coin harmless personal identities"+etc. This is less an identity and more of a faster way to describe these identities.

TD;LR— Identities that are probably niche, but don't harm people like radqueer/transid/transrace/transabled do.

Tagging: @gender-jargon | @neopronouns | @radiomogai | @kiruliom | @aspectsofidentity | @beyond-mogai-pride-flags | @neopronouns | @antiradqueerguy

Alt flags and more things are beneath the cut:

Two alternative flag ideas which I abandoned, but you can use if you want.

The phrasing "locatable only within your interaction with and relations to the world around you" came from a Tumblr post by txttletale (lost link). This term and the author have no affiliation with them, I just thought it was a wonderful way to phrase this concept. This would later inspire me to coin the term History Inclusionist, which then led to me sort of backwards-coining HPI to describe it.

You don't have to be a History Inclusionist to use the term HPI and I won't tell you not to interact with me if you aren't one.

I might make subset flags later. Maybe?

[11/21/2024] I forgot to add that @kiruliom helped me adjust the flag colors. Thank you.

[moonsaver]

THANK YOU FOR READING MY RAMBLE ABOUT THIS SLUTTY MAN, I have love-hate relationship with Ratio :3 (YOUR WRITING IS AMAZING AS ALWAYS)

BUT ALSO, ANOTHER RAMBLE HERE CAUSE YOU'RE MY FAVORITE WRITER!!

I don't know if you feel uncomfortable/weirded out with this, but if you do! Please do delete this if you want, it's your choice!!

Imagine a child, it can be one of those children in Penacony or other planets. But I pick the child from the Penacony! Walking up to Ratio and S/O, who is probably bickering as per usual or just enjoying one of another times (Secretly, since Ratio wants to be a secretive or this is same past-rebelious but now Professor S/O!)

As the child tugs on S/O, calling them pretty and hugs them. THEN PROCEEDED TO BE LIKE "kay now, you're my parent/mother/father"

LIKE:

"Hey miss/mister/mx! You look very pretty/handsome/unique! Will you be my parent?"

IMAGINE RATIO REACTION, *IF* THE KID IS GONNA BE LIKE

"oh, you're going to be my dad as well/other father/other parent!

OR THE OTHER WAY, HOGGING S/O ATTENTION. Clinging On S/O, regardless how many times S/O tries to get the kid back at their actual and real parents here, and would sometimes spend time hanging out with the kid while also trying to search for the kid parent

(AND ALSO I'M GOING TO SEND SOME RAMBLE ABOUT ROBIN (if you Dont mind!) MY BABY DESERVES THE BEST)

Hello anon! Always happy to answer brain rots and imagines and rambles hehe. Glad to see you back in my inbox!

Also, so cute hehe.

I imagine Dr. Ratio is actually pretty good with kids. The thing with kids is most of them love asking a shit ton of questions, the most ridiculous kinds at that. And you know those people who are so damn smart and knowledgeable in their field they start thinking about possibilities of ridiculous ideas as actually plausible? Veritas would kind of teeter on that when it comes to kids and their imagination. I just can't help but imagine kids crawling all over him while he has a rubber duck in his hand and explains like.. hawking radiation to a kid who's just staring blankly at him.

Honestly, kids would love him. Hes the strange, serious man who always bends down and tells you really confusing but fun stuff about things and seems to know everything. To them, hes the "actual adult".

I imagine, in the case a lost child approaches him or him with his s/o, his first instinct would be just to gauge the general state. He'll simply watch as you pick up the kid and coo at him and all the willy nilly stuff, just glancing over and checking for injuries, signs of anxiety or confusion, frustration, or fear. After he's done looking over, he'd try to ask the child about where their parents are when they perk up about how both of you are their parents now.

Well.. he doesn't know how to respond. You see his eyebrows raise slightly at the kid's remark, but he brushes it off, and starts telling the child all about your embarassing history if you were the rebellious professor!s/o. If you aren't, just about any silly memories he has of you are at the tip of his tongue, and that you really aren't suited for a parental figure. Even if you try and shut him up, he'll simply turn to the kid like, "do not let those who oppress you, silence you." Or something lol.

He doesn't mind the child being all over his s/o, telling them how pretty they are, asking them if they want to be their parent, and so on. Kids are silly, and illogical. It's in their nature to say anything that comes to mind. Of course.. he's slightly sour inside that your conversation was cut short, and now the child's hogging all your attention, but he vehemently pushes it down, simply resolving to search for their parents with you.

It's not soon before the both of you finally find them. Veritas gives them a stern, subtle warning about losing their child while you comfort them, bidding your farewell. It slightly annoys Veritas when the child clings to you, refusing to let go, and all his parents do is laugh it off, saying "they're just very social!" Or something. He has better things to be doing, really. He just walks off and lets you take care of things from there.

If you ask him if he's jealous, he won't say anything, and stare deadpan into your eyes before shrugging it off and changing the topic back to what you both were discussing before. Both of you can have more productive conversations, really.

Although.. his thoughts teeter a bit, and he shortly ponders over what kids with you would be like.. would he want children? Maybe one.. or two.. or even three..

Ugh, he's thinking too far ahead. He resigns to simply paying attention in the present, and listening to you ramble instead.

[dreamingofawhiteswan]

Yandere Subspace x reader x Yandere Medkit

WARNING: Yandere themes, generally creepy behaviour, slight Subkit at the end

Notes: Apologies, I could not decide who would win in a brawl. As such, they are collaborating.

Back in the day, you felt like a third wheel.

Your old coworkers, Subspace and Medkit, would bicker a minor amount. You never really paid attention to either of them, as they both seem to exist in their own world. It's only on small occasions you saw them get along.

That being said, they certainly paid attention to you.

If you even had so much as a scratch, Medkit would be all over you. You kept insisting he not stress himself, he hated healing! Yet he would tell you to "sit still" as he examined you.

He'd rub all over the injury, manhandling you into uncomfortable positions for better access. "Be quiet." He'd sternly tell you, "I need to focus.".

He likes to take his time and be methodical, checking things more than necessary. It became more of an annoyance than anything.

But it's not like Subspace was any better. Every other week, he'd drag you around to go stare at crystals. He'd keep your hand squeezed as tightly as possible, cutting almost all your blood circulation. Your hand would feel numb after.

"Oh, come on!" He'd whine. He always went on long whines if you didn't feign interest in whatever he showed you. You knew that as a higher rank, he could get you fired.

If anything, he used his higher position to make you constantly work with him, Medkit being thrown in by the government to his annoyance. He was practically beaming when Medkit left despite the injuries he sustained after.

Barely three years after Medkit left, you followed in kind. Subspace was getting far too possessive and if you worked on another crystal you might go insane. Point is, you finally got to leave that hellhole and never have to see Subspace or Medkit ever again.

At least, that's how it was meant to be.

You moved to Thieves' Den, relatively peaceful if you could defend yourself. Kick away any stray thieves, and don't be a dick or Silver will kick you. Those were the rules you lived by.

However, the place wasn't cheap. Your wallet was consistently quite light, so you figured a side hustle would do you good. What better than professional phighting?

You head to the Flipside tower, get all signed up, and not before long you get your first few matches. A lot of people you don't recognise, a couple that you do, and thankfully no disaster duo.

You end up clicking a bit with Shuriken. He has a nice enough attitude despite spending half the match rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Does he really get worked to the bone to have eyebags that heavy?

Funnily enough, you stop being paranoid about reuniting with Medkit or Subspace during the phights, you never placed on a team with either. It causes you to relax, making you forget to check your surroundings.

And they come to you.

You were just walking out of the Flipside tower, until a pair of arms grabbed you. The stranger places his face by your ear, whispering a barely sane "I finally found you.". You would recognise that voice anywhere.

Of course, where Medkit and you are, Subspace isn't far behind.

A foul smell floods the rooms, almost making you gag. Medkit places his hand on your neck to prevent any sort of sickness from you, before turning the both of you around to Subspace.

By the Swords, you can't help but wonder what happened to him. He's positively beaming, but he's wearing an entire gas mask now. You knew his condition was getting worse, but with both that smell and the mask, you wonder if you had just left early.

"Oh!! My dearest, there you are!! Now, if this twat would UNHAND you, that would b-"

"I won't let go, not again." Medkit interrupts Subspace, holding you tighter against him. The hand on your neck releases just so he can take his revolver out of his holster and point it at Subspace.

Subspace, in kind, summons a strange crystal in his hand, and has it float around him, before pointing it at Medkit in the same manner as a gun.

You can barely even comprehend what's happening, the seconds they spend staring each other down as if it could kill the other frightens you. What makes you so special, or did their disagreement really breed this level of hostility?

"Medkit."

"Subspace."

You struggle a little against Medkit's grasp, trying to just run as far away as possible. Medkit simply tightens his hands on you, restraining you in all the ways he used to. Subspace uses his momentary distraction to approach, getting within touching range of you.

"I have... A proposition." Subspace begins. "Why not let them decide?" He starts to rub at your legs, shifting your clothing to get at your skin. You barely notice that the crystal he was holding has vanished.

"No. I disagree." Medkit replies, continuing to leave you held in his grasp. "There's a much better solution. You want them to bleed, right?" You hear him place his gun back into his holster.

"Correct." Subspace nods. You think back to those moments where they agreed on something. They never told you what they were talking about.

"And I want to be their personal doctor." Even though they never got along, those days they seemed to be like best friends. You had only assumed it was due to finding common ground.

"I see. So what you're suggesting is..." But now, you're just starting to learn what that topic was.

"That we share them. You can torture them for a week, and I can heal them back up for a week. Of course, during special occasions we can both visit. I hate to work with you, but the situation calls for it."

What on Inpherno is Medkit saying? Does he even hear himself? The words sound alien to your ears, even though Medkit says them as if it's perfectly normal. You never thought you'd look to Subspace for help escaping a crazed Medkit, but here you are.

He thinks for a bit, before deciding to ignore your silent plea with a "Very well. I accept!".

[guardian5tiger3]

An honest love reading (general)

Pick a picture -

1 2

3 4

Group one

A cycle has just been completed in terms of love and romance and either you or someone else did not this to happen. They're almost like, dramatic about that.someone involved , you or someone connected to yourself somehow, is overly focused on love and it stresses them out and it feels extreme though I can't pick up on any situation extreme enough to justify this. Someone could have insomnia and or hair loss you could also possibly see someone's tiredness in their eyes. Someone's money might be affected. I keep picking up on a a group of, as in multiple, people. Either someone here is polyamorous and if that's the case it has something to do with denial about something or the want to be in control of something or someone, or for others there's a group of people you're dealing with and they're "heated " about something . I also heard " eyeing you" who the hell uses phrases like this if you know that's a confirmation for ya. You have a group of people somewhat obsessed they seem like obsessed people in general they may be obsessed with something to do with you or just you, I'm also picking up on one individual who has something to do with you that (is very weird, and the groups I'm picking up on more or less give me weird vibes,) well connected to this person I'm getting something about childhood and I'm seeing candy this is really weird and I just involuntarily made an angry or confused look with my eyebrows you know I pushed them down I don't know why. This person may have known you for a long time or thinks they do or something idk this is super strange g make sure you're not overly trusting of every single person ever in your life you know. Someone also could be trying to take something that isn't theirs. Lock your doors , literally. Wow.sorry y'all . Genuinely. I also am somehow picking up on someone's long straight hair and something about glitter. I also saw a purple dress.

Group Two

You guys are easily manipulated and people who are going to want to manipulate you can notice this probably way more than you can about yourself also someone needs to not bite their fork when they take a bite of food it's bad for your teeth I don't know how or why that would come up for me to say sorry. Somebody needs to literally or metaphorically open a window. Um you're on the path to love and it will happen exactly when it's supposed to how it's supposed to with who it's supposed to and honestly unless you really go out of your way you may not have any romance at all until then even if that isn't what you want like for some reason I guess it depends but either your soul wants people in the meantime or you want someone sooner or what I don't know it just don't work like that though you know. I'm generally getting like if you're the type to hope your person isn't with anyone else before they meet you then this is probably for you also. Or your person is like this and I guess they are somewhat powerful cause therefore that's the way it's gonna be and in the meantime I guess you're gonna have to be solo. Somehow this seems better and more productive for your personal development than learning by Interacting with other people and being with "karmics" and stuff.

Group Three

I'm seeing two energies that are basically, literally, nothing alike. Yet somehow they're paired up. You're with this person right now in the past or future or you wanted or want to be with them lol. Some of you it's your soulmate ,though and that's really special and actually really cool and refreshing. Like 99% of you are supposed to at least at one point be with someone like this to you. Or for like very few of you this is just about your signs like fire and water but I really doubt that's as far as it goes you are probably very different either way. You guys are very deep and cool refreshing people very beautiful , good listeners and balanced. Someone has ADHD or something else so you might doubt the good listener thing I'm getting but I think you pay attention to detail or something like somehow this is still infact accurate and you may be don't see it about yourself . I think you all are very deep mentally and have a deep capacity to hold a lot lot lot of information, knowledge, wisdom, n stuff. A lot of people might be drawn to you or notice you and also possibly a lot of different types of people as something about you a lot of different people can still connect with somehow. Yeah also someone's a hater here though and they might tease you with something somehow so I really hope you stay aware of that possibility, realize this about whoever they are and stand up for yourself basically I feel like you have the potential to retaliate and as long as it is nothing illegal I kind of feel like saying I want you to . ????????? I don't know o feel like it would be really satisfying maybe to your guides or it is when you do, fight back or argue cause you're good at it and it would not be easy to win against you or come up with any comeback especially if you plan something. Wow. Hahaha. I'm leaving it here.

I heard desperado and I know three songs called that well two are just remixes of the og you could look up the og or the Mike bars desperado lol . Or just the word maybe is significant, goes with your picture anyway. I feel like most of you that will hear the song will just like the song lol . I can dig it

Group Four

There was a conditional love given and when this was taken away it had someone really stressed out and hurt. Someone was being a complete dick that was giving love conditionally and then stopped . I feel like the shit they do or say is old as f... Like it's ugly and getting old man anyway. This very well could be past energy like long long ago for some of you. This person might have lied. They might be selfish. They may be downplaying your come up or they will when you do come up. Or some , even saying you don't deserve it but I'm being shown you very clearly do. Like this person only gets dustier through time nobody is ever gonna pick up this old kick knack and undust them theyre old and lame. I'm picking up on like, when people say the type of person that peaked in high school. Yeah so this person has their qualities but eventually everyone's like ok whatever yawn. They're definitely super greedy as I just got a card saying " GREED " lol. In terms of future love y'all will be good I'm picking up generally most of you just need to become more comfortable within yourself first and I'm picking up on like cozy night chilling and watching movies and stuff by yourself or with a pet even a friend but you get me just learning to be content also and have good times like that without the need for someone else romantically. Either way somehow some time after you get into that energy a person will come along softly and surely and it will be really nice and happy . Around that time maybe shortly after you will have something happen positive when it comes to work or their work . I also channeled the movie my big fat Greek wedding as I was channeling this last part haha so I thought I should mention that, I know I'm partially Greek and always loved that movie. Someone might like telling stories ? But yeah in the movie she has a glow up and then she sees this guy she thought was cute again and things just worked out and he asked her out and they fell in love it was just simple smooth and sweet and the timing matched up with what I said may happen for you so that's really cute y'all stay hopeful and focus on relaxation. And for some of you if you know this is true though also studying .

[extrashotodepresso]

Endeavor X Fem!Reader

To Hell With It

Warnings: SMUT 18+ Only , Minors DO NOT INTERACT, sex pollen, unprotected sex (again, don’t do this irl), questionable consent, cringy, office sex

Reblogs and comments always welcome. If you have something hateful to say, keep it to yourself. I write purely for my own enjoyment and post just in the event other people like cliche cringy smut just as much as I do. I know Enji is super shit through most of MHA, and a lot of people just hate on him in general but let’s be real- if we don’t let fantasy characters have redemption arcs, what hope do real people have?

Summary: Enji is hit with a sex pollen quirk and you, his assistant of 5 years decide to help him through it.

“Y/L/N.” The speaker on your desk rang out suddenly, causing you to jump. It was your boss and the nation’s number one hero, Endeavor. “Come to my office. Now.” His voice sounded odd—as clipped and dominant as ever, but obviously different.

He had been strange since returning from today’s patrol, covered in sweat and dashing into his office without so much as a greeting. While he wasn’t typically friendly; he would normally offer you, his head assistant of five years, a casual nod in the least. With a sense of urgency, you rushed away from your desk to go to him.

When you opened the doors to massive office, your eyes were immediately drawn to him. Endeavor was behind his massive mahogany desk, pacing and panting, his hands threading in his hair over and over. He finally stopped as you entered, spreading his arms out on his desk, brooding and clearly tense.

For a moment, you admired the hulk of a man, eyes raking over his broad shoulders and almost 7 foot frame. He was still in costume, though not using his quirk, an unusual sight while in the office. The lack of flames licking across his face made the large scar on his chiseled face stand out even more. Your heart skipped for a moment like a fan struck schoolgirl despite your increasing concern.

“Close the door.” He abruptly commanded you. You obliged, shutting the heavy door as quietly as possible before approaching his desk like a frightened animal.

“Is… everything alright sir?” Your voice was strained, careful.

“I need you to do something for me.” He reached into his desk, pulling out a small red business card. He slapped it down, covering it with his hand and holding it still for a moment before he slid it across the desk, refusing to look you in the eyes. As you got closer to grab the card, you noticed a single bead of sweat roll off his forehead, landing on the wooden surface beneath him with a sizzle. He was quite literally burning up.

You looked at the card with trepidation.

“Call the number. Have them send someone immediately.” You looked down at the card in your hands; it was simply designed, a phone number with ‘Hero Escort Service’ written in bold black ink at the bottom. “Obviously, no one is to know about this.”

“An… escort sir?” You swallowed, not being able to look at him as your heart fell to the pit of your stomach.

Over the past five years you had looked after Enji Todoroki. Everything in his life he needed, you provided. You had been the one to arrange the paperwork for his divorce, had made him almost every meal when he needed to eat, arranged meetings with his children who seldom showed, ran all his errands and… you had been stupid enough for fall for him. Not that he had any idea.

He didn’t respond.

“W-why?” You managed to stutter.

“I didn’t call you in here to ask questions.” His voice was uncommonly stern with you. “Just do it (Y/N).” Yikes, he used your first name. A pregnant pause erupted in the room; your mouth feeling dry as you struggled to grasp the concept.

“No.” You managed to say with finality.

“Excuse me?”

“No.” You finally tore your gaze from the card in your hands, looking to Endeavor with pleading eyes. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.” The words you wouldn’t speak hung in the air silently… This isn’t like you.

You realized now, that’s exactly why he was asking you. He couldn’t—not with as prideful of a man as he was—debase himself like this. The question was, why was he asking you to?

“(Y/N). I will not tolerate your insubordination in this, or any other matter. Call it.” He lit the flames of his quirk as if to intimidate you. You didn’t falter.

“Something’s wrong.” You said, ignoring his display. You stiffened your posture, staring him down with all the strength you could muster. “I never question you, sir. Just this once, I need to know. Why are you doing this?” He looked you up and down, as if appraising you and there was something behind his eyes that made you tingle. He seemed to consider your question, you could read that he was debating wether or not to disclose something.

“I got hit with a quirk. This is the cure. Handle it or I will find someone who can.”

“What kind of quirk needs…” you trailed off, then, as if against your will your eyes dragged down his body, down his hero suit and you noticed the sizable tent in his pants. “Oh.” You swallowed, though your mouth still felt quite dry. He offered no additional information and for a moment, all that could be heard was the sound of the crackling of his quirk’s fire.

You looked at the card again, then turned the phone on his desk to you. He watched you with interested eyes but still said nothing. You dialed something frantically and waited for a response, taking off your suit jacket while you did.

“Yes, this is (Y/N) (Y/L/N). Inform the security team to clear the top floor and enter into lockdown. Yes, just this floor, all other levels are to remain operational.” A pause. “Immediately.” Another pause. “Exactly. Endeavor is not to be disturbed, this is a direct order. Thank you.” You hung up the phone, trying to hide the fact that your hands were shaking.

“What are you doing?” Enji asked with interest and a little frustration. “I thought I told you-“

“You told me to handle it.” You quipped back. “Even if I call now, they’re not going to send someone here in time. These quirks just get worse until you… feel better, right?” You raised a brow. You had learned about sex pollen quirks in school. In most cases, the symptoms just get worse until the individual affected has sex to completion. Trying to fix it themselves wouldn’t even work, which is why there were agencies specially designed for heroes with this type of predicament. But you weren’t going to allow your Endeavor to degrade himself like that.

“… Yes.” He was still panting, looking over your body with a heavy swallow. He must’ve felt worse than you realized, judging off of his tensed muscles and desperate tone in his voice. How long could he possibly hold on? “But I-I can’t- not with you.”

You ignored the fact that that last bit tore your heart into a million pieces. The man you loved was in physical pain, your feelings hardly mattered right now. (Besides, you thought to yourself, given that sentiment this opportunity may never come again.)

“Please, sir…Enji.” At the sound of his name leaving your lips he moaned. “Let me help you.” You began to unbutton your blouse, looking into his eyes as you did. This was in a way embarrassing, would he be able to tell how you felt by looking at you? You chewed the inside of your cheek. You heard a feral sound emit from deep inside him as the opening of your shirt exposed your bra underneath.

“(Y/N).” He said, as if in warning. You finished removing your shirt, allowing it to fall on the floor and slowly began unzipping the back of your skirt.

“I promise, I’ll do everything I can to please you- just… let me help you, Enji.” I’ll do anything, but please don’t let it be someone else. Your skirt fell to the floor and you stepped out of it; leaving you standing before him in nothing but your underwear, stockings and heels.

He made his way around the table and just as you were reaching for your bra clasp he grabbed your arm to stop you.

“(Y/N).” He growled and the sound made your stomach flip. You looked into his eyes. His eyes were searching yours for any hint of hesitation though he found none. “I- If you stay in here like that I’m not going to control myself and- and I don’t want to hurt you.” The words came out in a broken whisper. He was shaking, clearly holding back his last ounce of self control. “Anyone but you.”

You ignored his plea, instead standing on the toes of your heels as you grabbed his face and gave him a searing kiss.

It was the kiss you had wanted to give him on your very first day. The kiss you had wanted to give him the first time he patted your head and told you you had done a good job. The kiss you had wanted when you saw him sitting alone in his office, staring at his phone with agony on his face as he desperately wished to fix his past. The kiss you had wanted when you were terrified he would be killed by the Nomu, the kiss you had wanted every single day after when you were just happy to see him. Your Hero, your Endeavor, your Enji. You hoped every ounce of that feeling could be transferred via skin, that with the crude brush of your lips he knew what you were desperately trying to say.

The way he returned your kiss you thought he might. You quickly became a clash of tongues and teeth, sloppy unhinged kisses driving you absolutely insane. You managed to pull away for a moment, the two of you panting.

“I promise… I can take it.” You kissed him a little more gently this time, feeling him groan into your mouth. His back shivered as you looped your arms around his chest, gripping for purchase wherever you could find it.

He lifted you off the ground, his tongue probing your mouth desperately as you tried to keep up. Wrapping your legs around his waist, you moved your grip from his chest to his shoulders, your hands moving over his neck and your fingers in his hair. You bit his lip, pulling it into your mouth with a gentle suck and he stuttered and growled. The violence of the sound shook his body and vibrated yours and you practically purred at the feeling.

“I’m going to destroy you, princess.” He let out in an animalistic warning. He shoved you onto his desk, using his hands to knock everything onto the floor before he pushed you down. You whimpered with the force of it as your head hit the desk, your legs were still wrapped around his waist and he ground himself against you, the bulge in his pants causing enough friction to make you gasp.

He kissed you while your mouth was open, tongue delving into your mouth attempting to swallow you whole. You were the one shaking now, desperate for every bit of what was coming. His lips seared down your throat, he let the flames of his quirk die out and you felt the scratch of his stubble searing your neck and chest as he travelled lower.

He grabbed your bra by the front, causing your back to arch off the desk towards his chest and he used his quirk to singe it off of you, the fabric giving way as he snapped it off your body. The sudden movement stung but you didn’t notice as his mouth hungrily attacked your right breast. His right hand grabbed at your left, massaging the tender flesh as he continued his oral assault. You arched further into him, panting and whimpering pathetically as your legs squeezed him harder.

He left your breast, licking down your stomach, using his hands to spread your legs off him while he lapped at your flesh. He landed a harsh nip at your hip as he kneeled on the ground. You shreiked and felt him smile into your flesh as he continued lower.

“It’s almost like you planned this, princess.” He mumbled into your flesh, his kisses and bites moving across your thighs and toward the apex of them. “It’s like you’re wearing these just for me.”

You knew what he was referring to. The very expensive lingerie set he was ruining was in fact from the Endeavor fan line; you had rushed out to buy them as soon as you saw their release announced and you hated to admit it, but the navy blue lace set was your favorite to wear to work. The thought of dressing for him and having that as a secret not even he knew was a guilty pleasure for you.

“I am.” You managed to gasp out as you felt his thick fingers caress the fabric. “It’s all for- you!” The last admission you might be embarrassed by had your thoughts not been otherwise occupied as he moved your panties to the side and shoved a finger deep into your unprepared hole. “Fuck!”

“Already so wet- what a naughty girl you are for me- if I had known…” whatever else he was about to say was lost as he brought his other hand down to singe off what was remaining of your underwear. The heat on your skin caused you to flinch, the sudden jut of your hips shoving his finger in deeper. Without warning his mouth landed on your clit, beginning an unforgiving assault with his tongue while he curled his finger deep inside you.

You were already close to snapping and he had just gotten started. His tongue felt like heaven, you swore you felt him searing his name into you. You hoped he was. Your hands gathered into his hair, your hips bucking into his face. When he inserted a second finger you looked down, as you noticed his starved eyes searing into you, watching your reactions to him you immediately came, clenching hard around him as you shook with a scream. He pulled back, watching you unravel and drip all over him. Enji let out a dark chuckle.

“Now I see why you told them to empty the entire floor. So loud- am I making you feel good, princess?” You let out a pathetic whimper at the use of the nickname, trying to shake your head yes- god you wished your brain wasn’t so blank, maybe you could tell him—“Well don’t forget, you’re here to please me, princess.” He pulled his pants down, allowing his massive raging red member to spring free. At the sight of it, your eyes widened, you tried pathetically to squirm back- there was no way—“Ah, ah ah-“ he tutted condescendingly. Now standing, he gripped your open thighs and dragged you closer to him, you could feel wetness of your own slick beneath you on the desk spread over your ass. “You promised you could handle it, and good girls don’t break their word.” His smile was dark and you felt your pussy clench at his words.

He held his cock in his hand, pumping it languidly and you wondered if this quirk he had been hit with was even that bad. He had an amazing sense of control-you had always heard that sex quirks made people go into a desperate frenzy, but the only person who seemed affected like that was you.

Enji dragged the underside of his cock along your folds, your poor overstimulated pussy quivered at the sensation.

“Hope you meant it princess- would hate to break my new toy as soon as I got it.” He muttered to himself as he lined up with your opening and began to push inside. “Fuck- (Y/N) you’re so- too- f-fuck-“ he stammered and you saw his control slip for a moment before he rammed himself all the way inside you. You yelped in pain from the suddenness of it, never had you had someone so…

“S’big” you whimpered weakly “S’too big Enji-“

It seemed he didn’t hear you as he began thrusting at an unrelenting speed. His arms braced themselves at your side, his eyes rolling to the back of his head as he pounded you without compassion. Even the desk began creaking at the severity at which he was fucking you. He curled his body in closer, intolerably hot breath in your ear as he continued.

He had lost all control. He was grunting and whining and whimpering and repeating your name like a mantra, losing himself completely within you. You couldn’t feel pain anymore, just Enji. His crushing weight on your body, the heat rolling off him in waves, every vein of his cock dragging along your most sensitive spot; he was sending you hurling toward another release at breakneck speed.

“F-f-fuuu-“ you couldn’t even complete a single word. So this is what they meant by fucked dumb, huh? What the fuck had you been missing all this time?

He suddenly pulled out of you, leaving you to pathetically whimper at his absence.

“Enji- please-“ you quietly sobbed out. He grabbed your thighs again, using them to flip you over onto all fours on his desk, forcing your knees beneath you and your ass in the air before he thrust into you again.

“Gonna make you mine-“ he growled, and his voice was all you could hear. “Gonna mark you, gonna fill you up-“ this new angle had him impossibly deeper, you could feel him splitting you completely apart over his length.

“P-pleeease!” You finally managed coherence with a pathetic plea. The sound that came out of him was like a surprised sort of pleasure, like he hadn’t expected you to be so eager at the idea.

“You’d like that slut? Huh? Want me to fill you up with my cum? Hm?” When you didn’t immediately respond, he unleashed a quick but effective slap on your asscheek, forcing your dumbed out brain to process his words.

“Want all of it- please- please daddy~” his hand came up from your thigh and to your throat; not choking you but holding you up and arching your back to him as he turned your face to look at him. He looked into your fucked out eyes, seemingly trying to convey something to you in his stare before he settled on kissing you again.

He dragged his tongue along your lips, continuing his thrusting as he kissed you with a juxtaposed tenderness. You tried your best to kiss him back, but your lips were moving stupidly against his, the angle of your head uncomfortable and your hips doing their best to keep up with him taking up most of your attention. He curled his hand just a bit tighter around your throat and you exploded; flashes of white blinding you as you clamped down on him, your body spasming wildly as you lost yourself in him.

“Fuck- I’m cumming-“ he growled in your mouth as you felt a burning hot release inside you, rope after rope of cum filling you up. He fucked you through it and you felt his essence weeping around his cock and down your slit, collecting on the table below you.

Holy fuck this was glorious.

He didn’t stop kissing you for a moment, if anything he became more impassioned, biting and sucking your lips and tongue as his hips stuttered inside you. Even as his movements slowed, the kiss continued, slowing down but never stopping. When he realized you needed to breathe, he kissed the side of your mouth, your jaw, your back, and finally stilled inside you. You slowly collapsed down onto your forearms before allowing yourself to fully melt onto the table, cheek pressed to the cool surface while you tried to catch your breath.

You felt him soften a bit inside you but he refused to pull out.

You were a panting, drooling, dumb-fucked mess and when you felt him nibble at your ear the sensation distracted you enough to not hear whatever it was he just said.

“Huh?” You managed, dimly. He finally left you, gently rolling you back over to face him and allowing you to lie fucked out on the desk below him.

“How. Long?” This time he punctuated the words with kisses to your cheek and stared in your face waiting for an answer. His hand came up to your face, thumb stroking your cheek gently.

“How long what?”

“Don’t play stupid with me, (Y/N).” He growled and glared down at you. You knew what he was asking but smiled despite yourself as you replied;

“Whatever do you mean Enji?” You chewed your lip, your previous feeling of confidence and ecstasy dissipating rapidly. He refused to repeat himself so the two of you simply stared at one another awkwardly. “I told you, I just wanted to help.” You tried to cover. He had told you before any of this that he wanted it to be anyone but you, how could you possibly admit how you felt now?

“I know you do.” He said, with sudden certainty. “So answer the question before I have to punish you.” His cock twitched against you as if reminding you of his capability to do so. You instinctively bucked into him again, the overstimulation of you both causing the two of you to gasp.

“You know I do what? Enji, I do everything for you. Wouldn’t it make sense for me to help you with this too? Why would there be an ulterior-“

“You love me.” He clarified, not willing to tolerate your stalling anymore. “How. Long.”

You swallowed, suddenly feeling more exposed than ever. Ironic, really, considering what you had done.

“How long have I been working here?” You cracked a broken smile, feeling utterly pathetic.

“Five years, sixty-one days and fourteen hours.” He answered without hesitation. Your eyes widened as you studied his expression. What had been a stern gaze had become a soft smile, if not a little sad.

“There you have it.” You admitted. You both sat in the pregnant silence for a while.

“To hell with it.” He said, as if he had just decided something. He leaned down and kissed you again, with a gentle tender passion that slowly grew. You eagerly returned the kiss, feeling his length harden against you and his arms creep around your torso.

He pulled you up to a seated position- he picked you up and moved you to the couch in the center of his office. He laid you down gently, reaching over your head, feeling for something through your kiss until you heard a click. He had reclined the futon so it laid flat to give you both more room. You smiled into him, it was weirdly considerate and a little romantic of him.

You pulled at the hem of the top of his costume- wanting there to be nothing between you and he readily obliged. After doing so he brought your legs up over your head and peeled your stockings down one by one. Clearly, he felt the same. He removed those and your heels gently, and your skin prickled at his soft and careful touch.

This was certainly different.

You pulled away from the kiss, suddenly distracted by your own thoughts.

“Wait- I thought- has the quirk not worn off?” You were a little out of breath already again, his tender kisses were dizzying.

“It has.” He returned his lips to yours, slowly moving his hips back to adjust his angle before slowly pushing himself back inside of you. You gasped into his mouth as he began to make actual love to you, your brain slowly losing out to the sensations of pleasure.

“Enji-“ you moaned into his mouth.

“You’re mine now, (Y/N). I’m never letting you go.”

You spent the next several hours having a soft, gentle love making marathon. By the end of it, you simply passed out in his office, you wouldn’t be able to stand anyway.

He sent away for someone else to bring you some clothes; after all his secretary was busy at the moment. She would be for a long time.

[everydayyoulovemeless]

How about the Fallout 4 robots meeting the robots from New Vegas?? owo

Fallout 4 Robots Meeting New Vegas Robots

➼ Word Count » 1.6k ➼ Warnings » Slightly suggestive (fisto) ➼ Genre » Platonic ➼ A/N » This takes place in the Mojave cause it'd be hard for a lot of the bots from nv to move across the country

Codsworth finds Victor to be quite the character. The moment he saw him and the amount of dust he tracked behind him, he immediately decided that he should step in and help clean him off. If it left any impression on the butler, then it was that RobCo didn't have the same prestige as General Atomics had.

Victor didn't care as much as Codsworth did about the mud and grime that clung to him, but he didn't stop him from wiping his screen down.

When Codsworth happened to meet Mr. House himself, he made sure to snarkily bring up how his company seems to be 'letting itself go'. Mr. House mostly just ignored him, assuming that that was just how he was programmed to be, but he's definitely not allowed in the Lucky 38 anymore out of fear that he'll find it dirty.

Another thing that gets Codsworth itching to grab a bottle of Windex is when he's introduced to Rex. The poor mutt! Not only is he covered in sand, but that awful paint job on his side! Dear God, if he doesn't get the poor dog washed off instantly he fears he might break down!

However, after he's done scrubbing him down, he decides he finds Rex to be quite the creature and would gift him one of the Jangles plushies that Sole doesn't stop flooding his inventory with. He'll certainly find it more endearing than he does.

If there's anyone Codsworth feels understands him most, it's Yes Man. At least he's inclined to sweep every now and then. The two actually get along quite well with how sarcastic and passive-aggressive they can come across as, as well as they're desire to be helpful in any way possible.

Codsworth thinks he's an absolute hoot and couldn't think of a better way to spend his afternoon than gossiping with the optimistic bot.

Curie drops everything when she spots Rex off in the distance. What a scientific marvel he is! She's never seen anything like him before and will take plenty of notes to see if she can't upgrade Dogmeat in the same way when she gets back home.

Rex also happens to be really fond of Curie (mainly because she gives him attention) because of how much better she makes him feel. Who knew he had so many broken parts? And without even realizing it? It's a good thing she came along when she did!

In fact, there are a lot of people who are fond of Curie. One of the main ones being Muggy. Her kind and gentle aura is something he never realized he was missing in his day-to-day life and he will beg her on bended knee to take him with her. He can't stand being with the Think Tank any longer! Please!

The Think Tank couldn't care less if Muggy went with her or not, they just want her out.

They can't stand how naive Curie is. She's clueless! And impossible to talk to! Not to mention how eager she is to put her grimy, wastelander hands on everything.

So, Curie leaves the wonders of Big MT with her strange, new friend to finally go and visit the place she came here for in the first place - Vegas. But she very quickly loses sight of the extravagant place around her when she meets Yes Man.

The two couldn't possibly be more of a perfect match and, although Curie can't ever pick up on Yes Man's sarcasm, and Yes Man can't do anything else but shrug at the scientific terms Curie spits out, they still seem to agree on most things.

They're both so kind to one another and have that same sort of curiosity about a world they've been sheltered from for so long, that they hardly leave each other's sides.

Nick feels a tinge of guilt when he sees Rex running toward him. Even though he's never lived it, he has memories of opening up the morning paper and reading about the reconstruction happening on the West Coast police dogs to make them look how he does. At least he seems happy though, right? Can't be mad at that. He'll scratch him on the head and smile a bit when Rex sits and tilts his head in recognition of his occupation as a detective, and he finds his instinct admirable when it comes to spotting danger, but there's something about the dog that makes him feel a bit off.

On the other hand, Nick can't get enough of Victor. The two will go out and shoot cans all day before returning to some saloon or bar and sharing stories from their time spent out in the wasteland. They're like brothers, just born from opposite sides of the country.

At some point, Nick had found himself tied up in another case while in Freeside and it led him right to where Fisto was stashed. He couldn't help but let out a dry chuckle and a sigh when the bot started offering his 'services', and Nick left as quickly as he arrived, deciding that he didn't want to be involved.

One thing he did get involved in, however, was the little Securitron Curie brought back from outta nowhere. How could he hate a robot who found some kind of... joy? when he cleaned mugs? Muggy warmed up fast to the caffeine-addict human Nick must've once been, as his synth counterpart can't help but down a few cups every morning, despite not ever feeling tired.

X6-88 finds Mr. House to be quite the spectacle. He actually really likes him and wishes to bring his ideas and plans back to the Insitute to try and do those same tactics on the Commonwealth.

Since Mr. House had gone to CIT before the war, X6-88 considers him to be a founder of sorts and has much respect for him and the work he's done in the Mojave.

On the other hand, he finds Victor's happy-go-lucky attitude to be annoying. Even if he were invented by House himself, he can't help but sigh whenever he hears him rolling over to him. He talks way too much and remembers way too little for him to be considered as anything but an inconvenience. He tries to avoid him at all costs if he can help it.

One Securitron that X6 does seem to like, however, is Yes Man. Although he's disappointed that he wasn't what House had originally intended him to be and was made from some dirty wastelander instead, he still finds his attitude and overall composure to be incredibly helpful. If only he were in more... responsible hands, then he could really be doing great things in terms of rebuilding the Mojave.

Yes Man almost envies how pessimistic and emotionless X6 comes off as. A part of him wishes he could express emotions on that side of the spectrum as well, but he supposes he's much more likable with a positive outlook instead.

However, if there's any part of the Mojave that X6-88 thinks could be useful for the Institute, it's all the tech stashed away in Big MT. He's not particularly fond of the Think Tank at all, and could only probably take a few hours of them bickering, but all the information they have with them is enough of a reason for X6-88 to want to kidnap them and bring them back to the Commonwealth to interview them further.

They, of course, make it impossible for him to successfully take them with him since they're all too paranoid to properly be teleported back and he quickly decides to just give up and go back to the Lucky 38.

DiMA likes to debate and challenge Mr. House on his political ideals and, as much as he loves the exercise, he's not fond of how accusatory DiMA can get. Not to mention how easily he seems to get people to rally behind him, so he gets locked out of the Lucky 38 pretty quickly if not Vegas entirely.

DiMA doesn't mind though, he wasn't a big fan of the flashy lights and large crowds anyway. Besides, Freeside is full of such interesting people, that he can't help but prefer it over the city. One of those people being Fisto.

When Nick approached him later one day and told him about his encounter in one of the back alleys, DiMA found himself... concerned, to say the least. And slightly curious.

What kind of robot must one be to be active in such a way? It's strange in any manner, and he was quite intrigued to meet him. However, he was disappointed when he found out he was a Protectron that had only automated messages. How disappointing...

Vegas was fun and all, but DiMA quickly found that he was being called for elsewhere... as he was messing around with one of the radios, he got ahold of the Mysterious Broadcast and disappeared to Big MT.

The scientists, like the other two who visited, were not happy. Especially since DiMA knows what he's doing when it comes to technology.

When he starts messing with Dr. 0's robots and reading through all sorts of Klein's legal documents they decide to ban him from their corner of the Mojave. They may even shut their satellite down altogether because?? they've got the worst types of people entering their lab.

He's honestly going to be the reason everyone has to leave back to the commonwealth. No one wants blud around.

[ijustthinkhesneat]

I feel compelled to expand upon the previous fae/folklore! Batboys headcanons:

-Bruce is just a straight up normal human. I think this provides a great opportunity for angst because unlike his immortal? children Bruce does age and it terrifies them. And Bruce is young he’s in his early 30s but like his knees will crack a little or his back is slightly stiff after a bad patrol and it just sends them into a spiral because they cannot fathom their dad not being around forever. I can definitely imagine them trying to strong arm Bruce into becoming some flavor of unaging. You could go super dark or just more generally emotional angst but damn the possibilities.

-Cass is giving me shadow person. Very cryptid of her. I’m not sure that I have a clear backstory for her worked out yet. Either magic gone wrong or she’s another flavor of undead like Jason and Tim. I like to imagine she just hovers over people at night to be creepy.

-Originally I wanted to say Duke was a Will-o-the-wisp. But I’m not really sure it fits, especially since he’s primarily active during the day. Then it hit me. Mothman. My lamplight boy is a moth creature. I like the idea of him hiding his little antenna under a beany and wearing sunglasses. The wings would be difficult. But my boy is creative.

- I think Steph and Barbara are also human like Bruce they just are extra bad ass.

-Coming back to life as a magical creature warps peoples memories and emotions from both the trauma and changing into something not human. Tim is significantly less effected than Jason, at least outwardly, because he was only a toddler when he died so he didn’t have many memories or experiences to draw from, but Jason was super volatile. His memories surrounding Willis became even more dark while his memories of his mother sort of glossed over her absentee parenting and drug use. Jason can’t help but struggle with associating the negative learned experience he had with his first paternal figure with Bruce. Jason ends up going to live with Talia for a while because he doesn’t want to feel that way about his dad anymore.

-Basically I think Jason, at least mentally, is the most human of Bruce’s kids besides Damian because he actually lived a life as a human, where as Tim changed so young that he doesn’t really know how to be anything but his extremely disturbing self.

-I think Gotham just has major ‘I do not see it’ energy. Like The Batfamily? Demons from hell. The Wayne’s? Hot neurodivergent people. Did you see Dick Grayson unhinge his jaw like a fucking snake at a gala? No you didn’t he just has a really big smile. Jason Todd??? Has scales??? Nope actually he just developed early onset Eczema and he’s really self conscious about it how dare you! Tim Drake sucking the blood of the himbo blonde boy? Everyone knows Tim and Bernard are total freaks. Cassandra Cain is your sleep paralysis demon? Honestly fair.

-It’s totally a coincidence that strange misfortune befalls anyone who threatens the Wayne’s!

-Clark is Bruce’s favorite man to sleep on so he gets a pass. I don’t know why but a midwestern spin on the story of princess kaguya lives in my head rent free. Like Martha Kent is just shucking corn and then boom baby in the corn. We call that children of the corn. I still love to imagine him being like so perfect that it’s high key alien, but his little sharp nails and fangies! Maybe even slightly pointy ears. And like Clark fully thinks he is human, like his parents don’t tell him humans can’t fly until he’s in kindergarten, and even then they just tell him he is special and learned super fast and shouldn’t embarrass the other kids and Clark is such a Good BoyTM that he just never uses his powers in public cause he doesn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. Like bro doesn’t learn he is adopted until he is about to go to college, he is just straight up clueless.

-Clark learns Dick is a Fae creature when Batman brings Robin to the Watchtower cause he couldn’t get a baby sitter and Alfred doing some spooky shit like dusting the mausoleum. Like Batman just slinking around but there is this super colorful child with him. And then Dick turns and smiles and it’s just so wrong, like his mouth just stretching his face like some horror movie shit. Clark almost shots himself cause like what the fuck. Bruce told Dick to just ‘be himself’ so like he just thinks he’s being friendly. Despite being creepy as all hell Clark kinda thinks Dick is super adorable. Like was he spider crawling around the floor with all his limbs bent the wrong way while Bruce and Clark were talking? Yeah but then he just tugged on Bruce’s cape to ask for a juice box, like that’s a baby.

-Jason freaked him out in a different way. Since Jason is undead he doesn’t have a heartbeat and doesn’t need to breath so when he isn’t moving he makes literally zero noise. When he first met Clark he was just watching him from around corners and behind stair banisters and Clark was convinced he was losing his mind and hallucinating the kid from the Grudge. Then Bruce is just like “Oh you met Jason! He’s so sweet, just a little shy. He’s my second oldest! I think he likes you though.” And then a little grey blue slightly webbed hand just reaches around the corner to give a little wave and boom Clark would kill for him.

-Tim is similar in that Clark has trouble pinpointing his location because of a lack of normal bodily functions, but Tim has no idea what a boundary is. So like at first he’s a shy little toddler and then that night he’s crawling all over Clark and pranking him nonstop.

-Damian is a baby but like Clark looked in his eyes and just felt like this infant could see his past present and future and was judging him heavily. Clark was relieved cause at least he had a heartbeat.

-Cass lives to fuck with Clark. She’s Jason’s age but not only has no heartbeat and doesn’t breath, when she is in shadow form he can’t see her with X-ray vision. She can literally make herself undetectable to Superman. He learns this one night sleeping in a guest room at the manor. He gets the feeling he is being watched but can’t find anyone. Then right when he relaxes her arm shoots out from the darkness under his bed and grabs his leg. Clark screams so loud it cracks the window. And then just nearly silent muffled laughter as the arm retreats into the darkness. He X-Ray visions but nothing is there. He demands to stay in Bruce’s room after that. Bruce is just like “Oh that was just Cass. She likes playing practical jokes, she is my little princess!”

[ancientgoddessofegypt]

Astrology Theories : The Sun & The Moon

Hey! So todays astrology theory post will focus primarily on the moon/sun and the aspects and signs pertaining to it.

Let me start off by saying, people who carry the aspects connecting the sun and moon together, will be easily likeable, as well as someone who can be a team player and be a beacon for people. There is a sense of inspiration that comes out of them because the blending of these two come together and makes for something totally unique for the individual and their experience. There is a special persona that comes out of these characters who hold this placement, and the way they share it is magnificent.

Sun Conjunct The Moon - To be, this gives the energy of someone who is the first born in the family. Could naturally be a caretaker, could become a leader and be in these roles easily because of their inner nature. Could process their emotions differently, and may need small amounts of alone time, depending on the sign they both are in this can show a bit differently. These characters are born under a new moon, so their can be experiences we're they can reimagine and start over their lives for the greater good of themselves and possible the world.

Sun Opposite The Moon - Big personalities. Big possibilities. Bigger lessons. You get the picture. Everything seems more intense because of the power trip the full moon gives the sun, but they both work hand in hand together and make things powerful with their magic. Now I can assure you, they are not to be messed with. Their energy can create waves because they are use to the tides always shifting in different directions. They gotta make it work in order to balance themselves out. This ain't a walk in the park, got it? Inspiration moves right through them as they are processing their own vibration and people will tend to catch this energy and want to know more about them.

Sun Square The Moon - Creatrix. Beautiful liars. Sociopaths. Can be likeable, can be unlikeable. It depends on the upbringing. There is so many different ways to express the complexities of this placement, because they are used to being the black sheep as well as the golden child at the same time. Could very much so like to have it their way, but the world forces them to appease to others.. and vice versa. They have relationship issues do to parental problems where the parents put their needs before the child. They could of had strange upbringings with the family and learned how to occupy their time with developing their personalities their own way and keeping that unique personality to themselves. They could be selfish, they could be sweet. They could be generous, they could be mean. You never know what you're going to get with them, or when those tides can change. Cause it all depends on how their feeling, after all.

Sun Trine The Moon - Attractors. Manifestors. Healers. Creators. The people with this placement seem to have an eye for detail. Could potentially erase years of trauma and guilt from their family tree, and could strive to create better for the future head. Could be very good leaders, and someone who just knows what they want.. and they're not afraid to get it. They have great potential to be somebody in this lifetime, and could use this potential to help others see this light within them as well. They have to choose the right people in their space so that they can bloom more, it just works that way. Truly being who they are, is how they will maintain a lifetime of success. Reaching for the stars is in their nature, because they know that they are one themselves.

Sun Sextile The Moon - Healers. Potential. Channelers. Potion Makers. Could be deemed crazy. The Sextile gives a promise that these individuals can utilize this energy and can create excitement around what it is they desire. This aspect is good creating space and community for people like them. And can be somewhat of a mirror for anybody who needs to channel that energy into something new. Could be very delightful and fun to get alone with it. Could be shy and full of nervousness. Could be someone who gets their needs met by sharing their emotional needs with others. They need a safe space to survive.

[axxa-the-allikatt]

My first FengQing fic! Collab with @screeching-painter-witch. Loved working with you! Glad I had someone to help me through with my first fic about them TwT I’ve been wanting to write them forever but I was too nervous 🥲. Can’t wait for us to start working on part two <3

Here ya go guys.

***

HEAVEN JUST GOT SWEETER FOR YOU

Summary:

“Ling Wen. Hey Ling Wennn. I won the bet. Pay up.” Pei Ming's voice came in. “Which bet?” Ling Wen replied.

“You know, the one where I said the generals of the south would sleep with each other within a decade?”

There was a pause. “General Ming Guang, this is the general communication array.”

“…Shit.”

OR

As they deal with the stress of an unexplained plague in the South, Mu Qing and Feng Xin’s bickering takes a turn for the worse as Feng Xin unintentionally brings up Mu Qing’s mother.

Mu Qing storms off and ends up in his mother’s tomb, and unwittingly gives himself up to a monster in the disguise of his beloved mother.

As Mu Qing is on the verge of dying at the hands of the monster, he subconsciously sends a prayer to Feng Xin in his last moments.

Feelings ensue. Feng Xin probably ascends for a second time.

Pei Ming is going to lose his job.

***

Text

“Don’t get into too much trouble!” Xie Lian called out from the door to the two generals walking away. Mu Qing rolled his eyes as Feng Xin waved at the man, before their expressions turned sour as Hua Cheng draped himself over Xie Lian’s shoulder, giving them a smirk.

Feng Xin and Mu Qing were on their way back to the Heavenly Capital after going to Xie Lian's Puqi Shrine for tea.

After everything with Jun Wu had happened, and Pei Ming had taken over as interim Heavenly Emperor while the Heavens were being rebuilt, Feng Xin, Mu Qing and Xie Lian had been working on rebuilding their friendship.

Their new dynamic, where they were all more or less on equal footing socially, meant they'd had to form new ways to redefine their friendship from the ground up, and tea at Puqi Shrine had become both a way for them to reconnect and catch up, and a way for Feng Xin and Mu Qing, who still lived in the heavens, to escape the stresses of rebuilding the Heavenly Capital for a bit.

It had become a near weekly occurrence, during which the three had become closer and more comfortable spending time with each other (even in spite of Hua Cheng's catty remarks that Xie Lian had to visibly stifle a laugh at. Apparently Xie Lian and Mu Qing were more similar than Feng Xin had previously thought).

Today, though, things were a little more fraught than usual.

Feng Xin and Mu Qing had been notified of a plague that was beginning to ravage the South.

It was a strange condition. No one new how it was transmitted or what caused it, only that those who caught it would fall victim to terrible nightmares, crying out to people they cared about or loved ones they'd lost, until the strain of the dream drained them and they grew calm, stopped moving entirely and never woke up again.

This time, they had visited Xie Lian for advice. In his 800 years of banishment, Xie Lian had apparently run into every terrifying creature and circumstance possible, and no god had spent as much time in the mortal realm as he had.

Mu Qing had suspected it might be a ghost draining mortals' qi, and they had silently agreed that if Xie Lian did not know anything, Hua Cheng certainly would. Not that they would ask him outright. If Hua Cheng knew something, he would certainly not pass up a chance to impress "gege" (Feng Xin still grew a little red at the way Hua Cheng said that word to Xie Lian).

Apparently, Xie Lian had run into such monsters before, and even been assaulted by some of them. The casual way he'd described the encounters, plural, made Feng Xin shiver.

Hua Cheng had also run into such creatures. He confirmed Mu Qing's suspicions that the condition described by the mortals was most likely caused by a creature, although it was more demon than ghost. One of them had attempted to feed on the strong Yin energy of Ghost City, and after the disappearances of numerous ghosts, Hua Cheng had become aware of it and dealt with the problem.

He'd said no more but only stated that it "should be easy to kill for a martial god."

Feng Xin and Mu Qing had exchanged a glance at his slight mocking tone.

As the two began walking away, Feng Xin could tell Mu Qing was on edge. He hated being seen as incompetent, and Hua Cheng's remark had managed to make him feel just that.

“Fucker” Feng Xin muttered under his breath, referring to Hua Cheng. Mu Qing rolled his eyes again before adding “Can he not speak in riddles for once? Lives are on the line here!” “What was it that he said again? Something about memories haunting and losses. What the fuck is that even supposed to mean?!” Feng Xin hissed.

“Why don’t you try to actually use that brain of yours? Oh wait, you might lose your remaining common sense.” Mu Qing taunted.

“Shut up! It’s not as if you know the answer!”. Mu Qing huffed in annoyance but kept quiet.

“I thought so! Stop acting like you’re so smart. You aren’t all that.” Feng Xin muttered under his breath. “What was that!?” Mu Qing demanded.

Feng Xin was about to repeat what he said, before he had, what he thought, a brilliant idea to rail Mu Qing up. “I said maybe, commoners should train better so that they can protect themselves from the plague!”

Mu Qing grit his teeth. “Yeah?! Well, maybe if the not so commoners of Xianle had trained better, we wouldn’t have lost the war!”

“What the fuck?! Where did that come from?! Fuck off!”

“Do us a favour and kill yourself!” Mu Qing hissed back as they both ascended to the heavenly capital

“Well, maybe you should kill yourself. Go join your mother and she might teach you some actual manners this time!”

Mu Qing, who was in the middle of a retort, froze. His angry expression carefully settled into a blank stare as he stood shocked for a few moments. Feng Xin stilled at this reaction, his heart dropping into his stomach as Mu Qing swallowed hard before slowly backing away. Before he could call out to him, he had disappeared into an array, closing it before Feng Xin had a chance to run after him.

“Fuck.” Feng Xin muttered.

***

The array fell closed behind Mu Qing.

Feng Xin ran in the direction Mu Qing had disappeared in, ready to open and array himself until he realised he had no idea where Mu Qing had gone and no way of finding out.

With how badly he'd fucked up, Mu Qing would probably want to be alone right now anyway.

Fuck, fuck, FUCK!

Why did he say that? Why did he ever think it was a good idea to bring up Mu Qing's mother when he had failed to be there for Mu Qing when she'd died?

It had been going so well with Mu Qing.

After the Mt. Tonglu incident, Feng Xin had realised how wrong he was about what kind of person Mu Qing was and he had been more than happy (reluctant but not against it) to help when Xie Lian had reached out to him to help get Mu Qing to be more comfortable with them.

It had taken him all his strength not to mention Mu Qing’s little f-f-friends speech at Mt. Tonglu but really, almost all the times they used to fight in the past few centuries, he’d never thought that Mu Qing would really take it to heart.

Tripping over his own feet, Feng Xin had a vague thought about going down to the mortal realm to find Mu Qing, but realised that what he’d said was fucked up and Mu Qing would probably need space. The communication array. Right! Trying to call out to him in the array, he was met with silence. Fuck.

What the fuck was he going to do now? Leaving Mu Qing alone for a bit seemed like a good idea, but for how long? Should he wait at his palace? Should he ask someone for help? Who would he ask?

He did not want to worry Xie Lian about this. Besides, who knew if Mu Qing would be angry at him for sharing that fight and his reaction with Xie Lian?

No, he needed to seek advice from an impartial party. Someone with better social skills than himself, who had seen his and Mu Qing's fights over the centuries. That left…

The only person in the heavenly capital who had any idea about situations like these. Pei Ming (who was the interim heavenly emperor now). As much as Feng Xin didn’t want to go to him for help, he knew he’d messed up horribly this time and needed some clarification on what to do.

"Nan Yang! What brings you to my palace?"

Feng Xin had not realised how quickly he'd already reached Pei Ming's palace before the idea had fully formed in his mind.

"General." Feng Xin nodded at him. "I need advice on a certain… issue."

Curiosity piqued, Pei Ming gestured at Feng Xin to sit next to him. "And what is this 'certain problem?' Another fight with Xuan Zhen? I'm sure you can cover the damages," he said, playfully. Feng Xin winced. He clearly didn't expect that to be the actual reason.

"Yes," he said.

Pei Ming raised an eyebrow.

"Well, there are no damages, but..." Feng Xin trailed off lamely. He wasn't sure how to describe what had just happened.

After a moment’s pause, Feng Xin began murmuring to himself what sounded like a string of curses, and Pei Ming couldn’t make heads nor tails of it.

“General Nan Yang, if you’re here to curse my ancestors out of the dead, I’d be highly offended, you know.”

Feng Xin took a deep breath. “I need help. It’s…urgent.”

"Yes. You’ve said that. I'm afraid you will need to be a bit clearer, general."

Feng Xin shot him a look that probably would have made Mu Qing proud in other circumstances.

Pei Ming waited surprisingly patiently as he tried to find the words.

"We had a fight."

"That part is to be expected," Pei Ming replied. "But that's par for the course for you guys. What happened that you came here?"

Feng Xin tried to find a way to phrase it.

"..."

"It wasn't a normal fight." Great. Perfectly said. Mu Qing would have had a field day with that one.

Pei Ming, for his part, looked confused but curious. Feng Xin had a feeling he was fishing for gossip. Although, as Heavenly Emperor, he would have to keep it under wraps, at least until the whole issue was resolved.

“What's this issue that is so concerning that the general has come to ask for my help?”

"Well…There is a plague in the South, and we were looking for ways to combat it."

Pei Ming's face turned serious. "And have you made any headway?"

"We have some information, but not enough to have a clear picture of what to do. We were discussing our next course of action and we couldn't come to an agreement. The conversation got more hostile and..."

"And?"

Feng Xin sighed. “Mu- General Xuan Zhen and I started arguing again. And I sort of unintentionally brought up something that made him stalk off who knows where.”

“Oh. And what’s this that you brought up?”

Feng Xin grit his teeth, knowing full well that Pei Ming was asking for future purposes. “I.. said something about his mother.”

Pei Ming faked a gasp. “Oh that is a low blow, general!”

“I know, you bastard! That’s why I’m here for help. It’s the first time he’s ignored me in the array. He always replies,even if we’ve fought! Fuck, what if something’s happened to him?! What if he-“

Pei Ming put up a hand to stop Feng Xin from going off in a tangent. “I’m sure he’s fine, general. I don’t think he’d appreciate you thinking of him as weak. He’s probably in a fight with some demon that blocks the communication array. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.

The two of you know each other well, and you practically share a domain. A bond like that should make you as good as brothers! Back when I had just ascended-"

Feng Xin suddenly felt awkward. He rubbed at his neck, tuning out the next thing Pei Ming was about to say.

He'd really fucked up.

***

Mu Qing had no idea where his feet were leading him. He really hadn’t expected Feng Xin’s words to sting so much.

He had been so relieved when Feng Xin and His Highness had invited him to Puqi shrine, a few weeks after the Jun Wu incident. He had been sceptical at first, thinking this was a joke to remind him of what had happened at Mt. Tonglu. But neither of them had brought up the incident, and they had spent almost an entire day conversing about the Xianle days.

It had been a surprise for all of them, when both Feng Xin and Xie Lian had cautiously asked Mu Qing if he would mind cooking, and Mu Qing, for once, did not feel like they were treating him as a mere servant, and had began preparing without any argument. Over the months they had spent several days in each other’s company.

Once Hua Cheng had returned, Xie Lian had more often than not excused himself from these hangouts early, and Mu Qing found himself spending the rest of the day in the company of only Feng Xin.

He had gotten too comfortable with Feng Xin’s snarky remarks because he had believed, for once, that they held no poison behind them. Stupid stupid stupid.

Now he had to face the painful numbness that he was so used to, back when everyone pulled at his threads about his status and… and his mom. Mother. It was then that he realised where he was going. His mother’s tomb. The place that buried all the painful memories and safe guarded all the happy ones.

Even before he'd ascended, Mu Qing had wanted to find a good spot to build a final resting place for his mother. A place deserving of the honour of holding her. He didn't know when exactly the idea had first come into his mind. Muddled thoughts about what to do next and honouring her legacy were all his mind could manage after she'd died, and no one else knew how much of his determination to ascend after that was for her. She would not be remembered otherwise. No matter how wise, patient, beautiful, elegant she had been, no one would spare her name a glance.

She deserved better. She deserved the honours of a queen. Mu Qing had not been able to give her that in life, but he'd be damned if anything kept him from at least doing so in death.

He'd built her a tomb himself, filled with engravings and gold and jewels, deep in a forest in the Southwest. He'd disguised it so that, to the eyes of mortals and less powerful gods, it looked like a small decrepit hut.

He visited it whenever he needed comfort. Sitting with his mother in silence gave him a sense of peace he couldn't manage as easily in his palace in the Heavens.

But now, as he neared the clearing, the place felt more stifling than relaxing, more dangerous than safe. Stepping into the area, his breath caught in his throat. There, sitting on the stone steps of the little hut, his mother was beckoning him.

The first thing he felt was guilt.

How could he have forgotten the gold specks in the pitch black colour of her eyes? Her dimples when she smiled?

Mu Qing wasn't an idiot. The second he saw her he'd immediately put together Hua Cheng's stupid riddles. Of course the thing before him was not his mother. Of course it was whatever had been causing the deaths across the South, plaguing villagers with memories of those they'd lost until the strain was too much, feeding its victims' qi as their pain rendered them unable to move.

Of course it had found this spot, brimming with Mu Qing's spiritual energy after centuries, and decided to lure him here.

Mu Qing realised all this.

But maybe, just maybe…. “Hello mother” he called out, walking towards the hut. “Perhaps, Feng Xin was right. It’s about time I joined you” He leaned into the outstretched arms of his mother. Relaxing into the touch he missed so terribly, “Take me home mother.”

As his ‘mother’ wrapped her arms around him, he felt the soothing touch calm the torrent of spiritual energy flowing through him.

Seconds passed into minutes. Slowly, he felt his consciousness slip from his grasp, a lovely numbness spreading across his body.

Melting into the embrace, Mu Qing tried to grasp his thoughts, which tauntingly slipped from his fingers every time he held onto one for too long.

Pleasant memories flashed through his head; of the Xianle days, where he would pick berries for his mother, or would secretly slip a smile at a stupid joke that Xie Lian would make; of the times when Xie Lian had ascended and he would help him with his infinite amount of prayers; of the days back in the mortal realm, performing in the streets for whatever they could earn; of the day where Mu Qing finally ascended, years and years of training finally paying off; of the all the little things that helped him stay strong for hundreds of years; of Feng Xin whom he couldn’t tolerate, yes, but also the one person in all the world who had been with him through all these ups and downs. Feng Xin.

Feng Xin. Shit.

With a startle, Mu Qing opened his eyes, trying to jump away from this demon that had the audacity to lure him in using his beloved mother’s form.

He realised with a shocked grunt he couldn’t feel his limbs, nor could he sense any spiritual energy flowing through his body. With a wretched gasp, he felt bile rise up his throat, and blood oozing out of his nose, onto the cold wooden floor which he was now lying on.

He cried out in agony as the demon, which had returned to its real form, an ugly eight legged, one eyed monster, sunk its claws into this skull, piercing it with a painful crack. He was losing consciousness again.

He thought again of his mother. Of the woman who had dedicated her life's efforts to raising him, to making sure he could survive and follow what he wanted to do. She had believed he was strong enough to ascend, and he had. He was not going to throw that away. But what could he do now?

How stupid was he?! Falling into the arms of a demon that he could’ve ended within moments? Now he was stuck in the clutches of a monster, falling into the same fate as those innocent mortals.

At first the dreams were still nice. Sweet, calm moments of his mother teaching him how to cook, how to make the best of each plant and animal so they would have as much to eat as possible. Mu Qing and his mother, washing laundry together. Her steady hands and soft voice, patiently teaching him how to sew, each stitch demonstrated again and again, her kindness at his messy imitations until he improved.

Slowly, though, the dreams kept becoming darker, more distressing.

His mother's illness. Her shaking hands, no longer able to earn them food by mending clothes. Her voice, getting quieter and quieter. Her flushed face distorted in the agony of fever and pain. Mu Qing, sitting by her bedside, unable to do anything but watch. Hating to leave her alone, but he had to, to work, sweeping, washing, changing the prince's sheets, mending clothes--

The fall of Xianle, and then the fall of his mother, weak, delirious with pain, nearly unrecognisable by the end of it. He'd just wanted to join her, stay with her forever in the Ghost Realm, or the next life.

He could hear her voice, twisted into unusual cruelty, saying that he'd abandoned her, hadn't done enough, hadn't worked hard enough to get her the medicine on time, hadn't recognised what was wrong early enough, that he'd run off to cultivate with the Crown Prince without a care for her.

It was this cruel voice that roused a small part of Mu Qing. His mother would never say that. She never would have blamed her son for anything they went through. Even ravaged by fever and pain, she had been the one to encourage Mu Qing to find new friends, to take any opportunity he wanted, to make her proud by becoming proud of himself. As weak as she had been, she had celebrated with him when Xie Lian had argued for him to become a disciple at Mount Taicang.

Who was this creature to distort her memory like this? And how could Mu Qing possible let that stand?

Unfortunately, these thoughts had come too late.

Struggling but failing miserably, millions of thoughts flit through his head, trying to make the last impression on him before he cracked under the pain. But there was one thought, only one, that made its impact. Feng Xin.

Feng Xin. Feng Xin. Feng Xin. Feng Xin. Feng Xin. Feng Xin. Feng Xin.

Stupid Feng Xin. He wanted to think Feng Xin was an asshole for landing him in this situation. But really, Mu Qing knew he had only himself to blame. It was just a stupid remark.

Why did things have to end so badly between them? Mu Qing used to think that Feng Xin would be his death, but in death the only thoughts passing through him were of Feng Xin. How miserable.

But although Mu Qing tried to convince himself that he was annoyed at this, he still held onto the thought of Feng Xin, like it was his life line.

Feng Xin. General Nan Yang.

He passed out.

***

“And you should’ve seen her face! It was as if she had never knew gods existed! Then there was that woman who-“

It had been 10 minutes since Pei Ming began droning on about his female conquests of the decade (where had he found the time?!) and it had been 10 minutes since Feng Xin zoned out.

Honestly, for once, he wished that he could focus on Pei Ming’s gossip, because, right now, he wanted to think about anything but what Mu Qing might be doing.

His heart was racing marathons and he really wished Mu Qing would just come back to him and impale him with that saber of his (fuck, that sounded wrong…well-) instead of ignoring him. It was making him feel things he didn’t know were possible.

On one hand, in the current situation, Feng Xin felt so fucking bad for saying the things he did, and (although he would never admit it) he would fall to his knees if that was what it took for Mu Qing to talk to him again.

On the other hand, for the past few weeks, that feeling in his heart that brimmed every time he was with Mu Qing for the past 800 years was hitting him harder than ever.

He had the desperate urge to just dash to the nearest Xuan Zhen temple and pray to Mu Qing until he came back, even if it was to make fun of Feng Xin about it for the next few centuries.

Mu Qing. Mu Qing. Mu Qing. Mu Qing. Mu Qing. Mu Qing. Mu Qing.

Feng Xin was so lost in his thoughts he’d managed to completely tune Pei Ming out when he received it.

He felt a prayer tugging at the back of his mind. This one had a particular urgency to it, despite the fact that no words came to him.

He thought it must be from someone powerful, maybe a rich lord who had offerings to spare, until he caught the faint signature of Mu Qing's spiritual energy.

It built up and up, became a surge until Feng Xin wasn't sure how he could have missed it for even a second.

He unconsciously gasped, startling Pei Ming mid-speech. Mu Qing. He was-

Dashing from his seat, Feng Xin rushed past a surprised junior official. Ignoring the call from Pei Ming, he hurriedly began drawing an array for somewhere in the south.

That’s where he’d got the prayer. From Mu Qing.

Pei Ming seemed to notice his anxiousness. He looked at Feng Xin for a moment, then at the array he was drawing.

"Shut up," Feng Xin heard himself say.

Pei Ming looked startled at his words. "General, what happened? Did Xuan Zhen respond in the array? Is he in danger?"

Feng Xin still felt the intrusion in his mind, growing louder and louder.

The prayer held no words, but the feeling in it was clear.

Fear, tinged with exhaustion and the determination of someone who refused to let it get the best of him.

Fuck. Something must have gone terribly wrong for Mu Qing to call out to him like that. All the images that he had been trying to ignore, of Mu Qing hurt or worse, flashed through his mind again.

Mu Qing seemed to try to hold it back, but the wordless call for help was interspersed by spikes of sorrow, pain and the cruel words of a woman's voice Feng Xin did not recognise.

Ignoring the call from Pei Ming, he worked on the array using his own cup of tea to paint the sigils on the wall, latching on to the prayer with all his mind's strength, words beginning to make it through.

Mu Qing's voice was low, laboured, like it was hard to speak, but his words were desperate, fraught with emotion. Feng Xin didn't know what he'd expected to hear from Mu Qing right now. He would never ask for help, so the situation had to be dire. Probably cursing Feng Xin out? Telling him it was his fault Mu Qing had gotten into this? Was he-

Feng Xin.

Feng Xin. Feng Xin. Feng Xin. Feng Xin. Feng Xin.

General Nan Yang.

Feng Xin froze for a second before his worry increased tenfold.

His own name, repeated again and again. It sounded strange that way, in Mu Qing's voice but said without an ounce of mocking or derision. Feng Xin knew Mu Qing cared about him, perhaps not in the same way as Feng Xin cared for him, but he never expected Mu Qing to say his name with such desperation, almost like he was holding on to it to keep from succumbing to whatever was being done to him.

Habitually, Feng Xin drew his bow.

Without pausing for the array to completely open, he dashed through it, almost tripping over some rocks on the other side. He froze for a second, then ran.

His mind was not always as quick as Mu Qing's, but Feng Xin was sure whatever had managed to subdue Mu Qing like this must have been the demon killing mortals in the South.

The array had led him to a small clearing in one of the forests of the Southwest. There was a hut, its entrance darkened like that of a tomb. Its design reminded him of the small houses behind the palace in Xianle.

In front of it lay Mu Qing, still and bleeding. His limbs twitched. Attached to his head were the legs of a giant, spiderlike creature, its one eye trained intently on Mu Qing's unmoving body as its limbs dug into his skull with sickening strength.

“MU QING!”

At a speed that surprised even himself, Feng Xin knocked an arrow and let it fly, aiming at the thickest part of its head which was mere inches above Mu Qing's.

The arrow was infused with enough spiritual energy to break buildings.

With a cry of agony, the creature burst into a mess of filthy blood and flesh.

Ignoring the disgusting mess, Feng Xin got on his knees beside Mu Qing, almost breaking down when he saw the serious injuries on his head.

He could wallow later. Right now he had to get someone to help him.

Mu Qing was barely breathing, his eyes closed. His limbs still twitched as blood flowed from his nose and mouth. On the left side of his head, his temple had succumbed to the pressure, partly caved in in an unnatural shape.

But he wasn't dead. Feng Xin breathed a sigh as he moved to gently pick Mu Qing up. This must be painful, but it wasn't nearly enough damage to kill a martial god of his calibre.

Feng Xin was already in shock, but what he felt as his hand grazed Mu Qing's side made his blood run cold.

There was next to no spiritual energy left in him. Mu Qing's meridians were frayed to a level Feng Xin had never seen.

How did that thing get close enough for long enough to do this kind of damage?

As gently as he could without jostling Mu Qing, Feng Xin sped across the clearing and ran into the array.

This was his fault. He would fix this, and he was not letting Mu Qing out of his sight until he did.

Feng Xin was seeing red everywhere. He didn’t know how much longer he had before he himself started to feel dizzy.

Thankfully, several hands came to help him, the medical officials assuring him that they would try their best. Best? Oh, he must have been screaming for help.

As he yelled orders and ran to the Nan Yang palace infirmary as fast as he could, he couldn't keep his eyes away from Mu Qing.

He's still breathing, that's good, Feng Xin thought, even as Mu Qing's breathing got more faint and shallow by the second. Feng Xin was not going to think about that. Even if he stopped breathing, it was still fixable.

Keep breathing Mu Qing, come on. That's it. Please keep breathing.

The entire Heavenly Capital had heard what had happened by the time Feng Xin had laid Mu Qing in a cot and the healers began to administer treatment.

After what felt like hours but in reality must have been just a few minutes, he felt his body and mind calm down.

Alright. They would save him. Mu Qing would be fine. He had to be.

***

Mu Qing remained unconscious for the next four days.

Feng Xin desperately hoped Mu Qing would wake up soon because he was having waking nightmares about him lying in his own pool of blood almost every minute.

The rest of the gods and officials also desperately wanted General Xuan Zhen to wake up soon. Not only because he was a crucial part of their system, but also because Feng Xin was terrorising everyone in the capital with his constant anxiety, temper and that perpetual frown on his face.

It had been two days since Feng Xin had brought Mu Qing half dead into his palace. It had taken almost an hour until the medics were able to assure Feng Xin and everyone else that Mu Qing would make it out well, and that he had gone through a spiritual energy deviation, which had caused more damage than the actual monster.

Feng Xin spent the first two days in a chair by his cot, standing guard. He was still in his armour. The specks of Mu Qing's blood on it had turned a dull brown. Next to him, Mu Qing's breathing remained steady.

Mu Qing could wake up any minute, and he'd surely panic without a familiar face there to explain what had happened. And Heavenly Officials did not need sleep like humans did, anyway.

Countless officials came to offer their respects, although many of them were clearly just here for the gossip.

Anyone who asked what had happened for General Xuan Zhen to be struck down like this, with a too-curious glint in their eyes was promptly told to go fuck themselves.

Pei Ming visited, and Feng Xin just barely remembered to inform him that the plague in the South had been dealt with.

Xie Lian came by too. After Feng Xin told him what had happened, he insisted on keeping him company, making some not so subtle references to how he'd felt when Crimson Rain had dispersed in Mount Tonglu. He said Crimson Rain sent his well wishes, that he hadn't joined Xie Lian because he doubted Mu Qing seeing him when he woke up would aid in his healing.

Xie Lian ended up staying for longer than a day, but as Mu Qing's meridians steadily patched themselves back up, they'd agreed he'd leave them alone and return later. Two people seeing Mu Qing in such a weak state would probably be too much for him.

*

After Xie Lian left, and the healers assured Feng Xin again and again that Mu Qing was on his way to speedy recovery, Feng Xin got antsy. The healers seemed to notice this and sent him out to find some herbs and other ingredients that could balance qi and help speed along Mu Qing’s recovery. Feng Xin hesitated, but in the end his desire to see Mu Qing wake up and recover as soon as possible outweighed the instinct to be at Mu Qing’s side. He left the healers with instruction that he be the first one alerted when Mu Qing woke up.

Feng Xin had spent the next two days either rushing around the capital and the mortal realm, looking for whatever the medics asked him to get, or spent it glaring holes in his palace wall and anyone who came into his line of vision.

*

Feng Xin heard noises of his middle officials worriedly lingering from outside the curtain that sectioned off the cot from the rest of the infirmary. Feng Xin knew he meant well, so he stopped himself from yelling at them to leave and instead sent out a sharp spike of killing intent, careful to keep it away from Mu Qing.

He scowled at the curtain until the officials outside scurried away. The last thing Mu Qing would need when he woke up was curious, worried stranger staring at him.

He was focused so intently on getting them to leave that he didn't notice the slight shuffle of fabric coming from the cot.

"You look like shit."

It was barely a croak. The voice was laboured and raspy from lack of use.

Feng Xin whirled around.

"Mu Qing."

The man in question, although dazed, began to look guarded at the intensity in Feng Xin's voice.

"Yes, good job, you have eyes," Mu Qing rolled his own eyes.

There was a beat of silence as Feng Xin held himself back from lunging at Mu Qing to embrace him.

But in spite of the fondness and relief to see Mu Qing awake, there was also anger.

"What the fuck?"

Mu Qing bristled. "I should be asking you that."

Feng Xin was not deterred.

"Why the fuck did you do that? Why did you let that thing jump you?"

Mu Qing looked tired, but the anger still flashed in his eyes.

"That's none of your fucking business. You have no right to be pissed off after what you said! Why are you even here? I didn't fucking ask for your help anyway!"

"You did!" Feng Xin burst out.

Mu Qing crossed his arms, clearly trying to hide how difficult the movement was for him to manage. He still looked angry, but that didn't bother Feng Xin. Mu Qing had every right to be angry at him for what he'd said, for as long as he wanted.

What hit Feng Xin like an arrow to the gut was the fear in Mu Qing's eyes. He was hiding it with a shroud of anger, but Feng Xin knew him well enough to know that it was nothing more than a mask. And for even a bit of fear to show itself alongside the anger, Mu Qing had to he really disconcerted.

"I... what?"

Sighing, Feng Xin softened his voice like he was talking to a cornered animal.

"You called for help. Do you not remember?"

Mu Qing took a shuddering breath. Then he let the anger flash in his eyes again. He scowled at Feng Xin.

"That's not fucking funny."

"I know it's not. I'm not joking."

Mu Qing paled. He held his crossed arms in front of him like a shield, like he was afraid Feng Xin would give a devastating revelation.

"What... What did I say?"

"..." Feng Xin suddenly found himself at a loss to explain. Mu Qing had just thought of him, had only said his name. Why did that sound so strange when Feng Xin thought about saying it out loud.

Mu Qing only grew paler at Feng Xin's silence. Feng Xin hated the apprehension he saw on his face. His eyes were so wide, he looked so scared, like he was preparing himself for a lethal blow.

"Feng Xin, what did I say?"

Feng Xin forced it out, but found his voice grew smaller as he said "Nothing. You only thought of me. Only my name."

The relief on Mu Qing's face faded the second he saw Feng Xin's conflicted expression.

Whatever Mu Qing had been about to say was interrupted as Feng Xin spoke at the same time.

"You-"

"I'm sorry."

Mu Qing seemed even more surprised at that. When he didn't talk, Feng Xin continued.

"I'm sorry. I was stupid. I shouldn't have said that about... your mother."

At the mention of his mother, Mu Qing suddenly looked tired. To Feng Xin's surprise, though, he didn't antagonise him further.

"I did tell you to kill yourself right before."

Feng Xin was stunned. What was happening? "Yes, but--" he sputtered a little. "You should not have to apologise right now, for anything. It's my fault you ended up like this--" Mu Qing winced at the reminder-- "and even if you hadn't--"

Mu Qing interrupted him. "It was my decision. We would have run into it eventually. The demon was the one causing the plague, he was trying to lure me back to my mother's-- to that spot in the forest."

"Mu Qing." Feng Xin felt even guiltier at the admission Mu Qing had just let slip. He couldn't bring himself to speak loudly, his voice low. "That was your mother's tomb?"

Mu Qing pressed his lips together into a thin line. Feng Xin had the very bad feeling he was going to cry.

"That doesn't-- Where is it? The monster, where did it go? Did it get away?"

"It's dead," Feng Xin assured him. "I killed it after you called."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Mu Qing seemed relieved at that. He looked frustrated, Feng Xin knew it was with himself. "And the tomb? Is it..."

"It's intact. The space felt drained of spiritual energy, but there were no damages."

A beat of silence.

"Mu Qing--"

"Feng Xin--"

"You go first," Feng Xin ceded.

"No. You go."

Feng Xin chuckled. If Mu Qing was back to being this stubborn, surely he was on his way to being perfectly fine in no time.

Then he remembered what he'd wanted to say, and his laugh (that Mu Qing rolled his eyes at) faded in place of trepidation. But Mu Qing had almost died. And the memory of seeing Mu Qing unconscious and bleeding, his breaths shallow, still stuck to Feng Xin. So.

"Maybe this isn't the right time."

Mu Qing scowled at him. "I'm fine. Just say it."

Feng Xin sighed. "this definitely isn't the right time, but--" he steeled himself a final time.

"I love you."

It came out more blunt than Feng Xin intended. His tone almost sounded angry. Shit, he really didn't know how to do this.

Mu Qing looked like he'd frozen to the spot. His eyes widened in shock, then realisation. Then they went cold.

"You don't need to do that."

Well. Feng Xin had thought about what Mu Qing's reaction would be, more often and more intently than he'd like to admit. But he hadn't thought Mu Qing would say that.

"I don't--"

"What, do you think I'm fragile now because you saw me weak?" His face twisted into a bitter smile. It was clear he tried to go for arrogant, but he mostly looked hurt. Vulnerable. Feng Xin hated it.

"That's not what--"

"I don't know what you think you saw or what you think I said, but I don't need to be coddled, Feng Xin. You should know that by now."

What the fuck?

Okay, Feng Xin knew Mu Qing was a champion of mental gymnastics. He was prepared for this. Even if Mu Qing did not love him, he deserved to know the truth.

"I'm not coddling you! Why the fuck would I do that?"

"Then what are you doing?" Mu Qing looked up at him, his eyes full of steel like he was facing down an enemy. Even directed at Feng Xin, even in this weak state, it was beautiful. Awe-inspiring. Feng Xin hated to admit it, but in that moment, like in many before, he understood Hua Cheng's worship of his beloved as a god.

In the face of that sight and that thought, Feng Xin said it.

"I've loved you for centuries." This time his voice came out perfectly gentle. He wanted to soothe Mu Qing, convince him. It didn't matter that he didn't feel the same, if he could convince Mu Qing that he was honest, that Mu Qing was safe with him, that he could crush Feng Xin's heart with his heel if he wanted to.

Mu Qing looked even more shocked now. His eyes had widened again, and in them, as the fear faded, Feng Xin saw something else. Something so painfully beautiful Feng Xin's heart constricted in his chest.

The slightest bit of tenuous hope.

Feng Xin wanted to keep that feeling in Mu Qing's eyes. He wanted to nurture it until it bloomed into full-blown joy.

"You--"

Feng Xin smiled. It made the fluttering something in Mu Qing's face grow.

Yes, he thought about saying, but he did not want Mu Qing to find a way to misread Feng Xin's expression of his sentiments.

So Feng Xin said it again. He looked Mu Qing in the eyes, and let every bit of sheer love he had held back over 800 years show in his expression and his voice as he said, slowly this time, "I love you."

Mu Qing kept looking at him, then shook his head as if he were trying to shake himself out of a dream.

"You're not fucking with me."

Feng Xin felt endlessly fond. "I'm not."

"Wait," Mu Qing said. He'd begun to relax, but he suddenly tensed up once more. "When you say you--" He seemed to be having trouble getting out the word.

Feng Xin was pretty sure he knew the right thing to say this time. If he didn't fear Mu Qing would read his mind the second he thought it and punch him, he would think Mu Qing was an idiot.

"I’m in love with you." He enunciated each word clearly, as if he were teaching the words to Mu Qing.

Mu Qing rolled his eyes. Then he seemed to realise what Feng Xin had said. His cheeks and ears blushed a pretty pink. Feng Xin wanted to bite it.

Mu Qing just stared at him for a while. When Feng Xin began to awkwardly fidget, wondering if he was even going to get an answer, Mu Qing spoke.

"Since you're not messing with me. I am also. Hm," he cleared his throat with a breath. "I also. Um." Mu Qing stuttered.

Oh wow…Okay Feng Xin, get it together.

Feng Xin knew how Mu Qing got when feelings were brought up like this. He needed to be steady, someone Mu Qing could rely on to get more comfortable with his emotions.

Feng Xin took Mu Qing's hand.

"You don't have to say it."

He was still smiling. Mu Qing rolled his eyes again, although a smile began forming on his own face too.

Mu Qing's blush deepened. "Shut up. I'm getting to it." Then, after a beat, "I want to."

Feng Xin thought the Heavens must be misnamed, because surely only the sight of Mu Qing's face right now could be deserving of that word.

After a number of aborted attempts (Feng Xin did not keep count because Mu Qing would kill him if he did. The number was six), Mu Qing had finally gathered himself enough to say it.

"I love you too." He'd said it stiffly, like a general delivering a speech, and Feng Xin stifled a laugh at the tone. "Well fuck you too,"Mu Qing muttered, thought there was no bite in it. He was smiling.

They looked at each other so fondly. Feng Xin had never thought Mu Qing would look at him that way. (He'd dreamed it, wished for it, but he'd never thought it would actually happen.)

The moment broke when Mu Qing yawned, his eyes drooping a little. He was clearly not back to his full strength, and the fear and stress of their conversation had faded enough for the exhaustion and his injuries make themselves known again.

Feng Xin squeezed his hand. "You can rest if you want to."

Judging by the "Hm" Mu Qing gave instead of resisting, Feng Xin could tell he was well on his way to falling asleep.

Mu Qing fell back into the covers.

Turning towards his seat, Feng Xin decided to let Mu Qing rest, when he felt a gentle tug on his hand. Turning back, he saw Mu Qing’s hand wrapped around his wrist, the injured man peaking at him through one squinting eye. Fuck. He looked so cute.

“Do you want something, Mu Qing?” He asked softly. He received no verbal answer, but another tug at his hand made his heart speed up.

Feng Xin had gotten very good at reading Mu Qing over the years. He knew what Mu Qing wanted, but he still wanted to be sure he'd understood correctly.

Tenderly, tentatively, he asked "Do you want me to sleep next to you?"

Another gentle tug.

Leaning onto the hand, he slowly crawled into the bed, lying beside Mu Qing. “Ok?” He whispered. He received no reply again, but Mu Qing made no attempts to move away when he inched closer to him, wrapping his arms around that deceitfully slim waist, pulling him against his chest.

Mu Qing immediately curled into his side like a cat, like he had once or twice in his sleep when they'd been in the same tent on missions together.

He began carding his fingers through his hair. They felt just as soft and silky as he’d dreamed they would be. Minutes passed, and as Feng Xin felt himself slipping into a cozy sleep, he felt a soft ‘I love you’ whispered against his neck.

In reply, he pulled him closer, holding him a bit tighter, as he pressed his lips into his hair.

“I love you too.”

***

Mu Qing had fallen asleep almost immediately once he’d curled up against Feng Xin and, although he’d never admit it, it was the comfiest sleep he’d had in a long while.

Which led to his situation now. It had been, what he could safely assume, a few hours since they’d fallen asleep, and Mu Qing honestly would have slept for another few hours, if it weren’t for that little nightmare he had that jostled him from his sleep.

Yes, he could’ve easily gone back to sleep, if it weren’t for one tiny problem. When he had fallen asleep, Feng Xin was still awake for quite a while.

Which is why he had forgotten all about the fact that Feng Xin snored.

It wasn’t loud by any means. It was a tiny rumble. But when a tiny rumble was constantly humming by his ear, it really took all his strength to not to push that stupid face away from him.

Mu Qing sighed. It had been almost three minutes since he’d woken up. He didn’t even want to open his eyes, in hopes that by some chance that he’d accidentally slip back into sleep. He supposed it was time he woke up.

He slowly opened his eyes, and huffed when he was met with the sight of Feng Xin’s broad chest. He wanted to bite them.

Carefully turning his head, he froze for a second before yelping and pushing Feng Xin away, consequently leading to him falling off the bed.

“What the fuck?!” Came a shout from on the floor.

But Mu Qing was too busy glaring holes at Pei Ming standing by the doorway, with Xie Lian right behind him.

Beside Mu Qing, Feng Xin shot up from the floor glaring at Mu Qing, before his eyes fell on the two martial gods. His expression turned sour as he huffed at Pei Ming then apologetic as he looked at Xie Lian.

Before either Mu Qing or Feng Xin could say anything, Pei Ming let out a loud cackle, then proceeded to huff that he’d always known that the two generals of the south would end up together. Behind him Xie Lian merely smiled at them happily, giving them a thumbs up before excusing himself.

“Fuck off” Feng Xin hissed. Pei Ming, who hadn’t shown any signs of leaving, cackled again before disappearing from the doorway.

The two generals let out a sigh. Looking at each other, each awkwardly waited for the other to speak.

Feng Xin cursed under his breath. Mu Qing was on the verge of rolling his eyes when he froze.

Feng Xin. Feng Xin was kissing him. Oh.

Letting out a surprised squeak, he felt Feng Xin chuckled against his lips. It was a moment before he regained his bearings.

Oh? Two could play that game. Mu Qing grabbed at Feng Xin’s collar, pulling him back onto the bed. As Feng Xin gasped, Mu Qing bit his lower lip, snickering at the yelp from Feng Xin.

Pulling back, the two gods stared at each other…

Mu Qing rolled his eyes.

“You ruined the fucking mood!” Feng Xin groaned. Mu Qing snickered, which turned into an embarrassed chuckle as Feng Xin threw that stupid dopey smile at him.

“Are you feeling okay? Do you want to go back to sleep?” Feng Xin questioned, flopping back on the bed. Mu Qing bit the poisoned reply on his tongue. No. That wouldn’t work. Not now.

“I’m alright. I was having a great sleep until your stupid snores ruined it,” he huffed out instead.

“…..” Feng Xin was only grinning at him like an idiot. Mu Qing face flushed as he realised what he’d just admitted. “You-“ “I’m glad you’re comfortable with me,” Feng Xin interrupted.

Mu Qing was about to retort, but caught himself. Feng Xin was being genuine. He wasn’t saying it as a joke.

“…Mn,” Mu Qing replied. He really wanted to hide under the bed right now. Instead, he fell back onto the bed, rolling onto his side facing away from Feng Xin. A few moments passed before he heard the sheets ruffle behind him.

His instincts almost made him kick Feng Xin away, but he ignored them, letting out a quiet sigh as muscular arms creeped up around his waist, a head resting against his back.

“…”

“…”

“I’ll try not to snore.”

Mu Qing kicked his foot, earning him a chuckle.

Just as he was about to fall asleep again, a voice in the general communication array caught their attention.

“Ling Wen. Hey Ling Wennn. I won the bet. Pay up.” Pei mings voice came in. “Which bet?” Ling Wen replied.

“You know, the one where I said the generals of the south would sleep with each other within a decade?”

There was a pause. “General Ming Guang, this is the general communication array.”

“…Shit.”

There was a pregnant pause, before screams of disbelief and ‘I knew it’ blasted through the array.

Without a word, Feng Xin and Mu Qing got out of the bed, grabbing their weapons before heading out to the emperor’s palace.

Sleep? Fuck that. They had some hunting to do.

***

Hope you guys enjoyed!

Reblogs are appreciated~

[huboi]

GENSHIN BOYS WITH AN AUTISTIC S/O HEADCANONS (SUMERU BOYS)🌴

character(s) — cyno, tighnari, alhaitham, kaveh, wanderer

reader’s gender is not specified, nor is their race. I always try to make my fanfics as inclusive as possible

tw/cw — none ig, lmk if there are any

note(s) — I made this as an autistic person, however this may not include like every trait of someone with autism if that makes sense. PLS DON’T USE THIS FANFIC TO SELF DIAGNOSE URSELF WITH AUTISM, it’s important to get professionally diagnosed due to overlapping symptoms

CYNO

he would be the perfect boyfriend tbh

like if you have any hyperfixations u wanna talk about? he’s all ears

even if he’s busy playing tcg with someone, he doesn’t mind you talking about your hyperfixations with him

my man can multitask, it ain’t hard

if ur not a big fan of large crowded areas, he will make sure to walk with you in the least busiest parts of sumeru city

if you don’t like loud noises, like the crowded area, he will try his best to make sure he doesn’t bring you to loud areas

if anyone ever makes fun or belittles you for having autism.... he will beat them up/hj

he will mainly use his threatening aura to make them apologies or just make them leave you alone

no one messes with the mahamatras partner and gets away with it

you have comfort foods? he’s learning how to make them. whenever he can’t make them, he will buy them for you

you’re clingy? he loves that, hug him all you want, fidget with his hands all u want, he’s smitten asf

struggle to make eye contact? he’s ok with that too! he’s actually kinda used to it tbh, cause people can barely look him in the eye due to his status

overall, quite protective and just overall rlly loving, doesn’t rlly care u have autism, he still loves u as you are <33

TIGHNARI

when it comes to your sensory issues, he can relate, as a fennec hybrid his senses can easily get overwhelmed, so don’t worry about your sensory issues being a burden, he’s totally ok with it

have comfort foods? he will make them as much as he possibly can, he doesn’t mind how simple they are, he’s making them and sometimes he will buy them whenever he goes to the city

you stim? he will support you with it, if he’s feeling generous, which he usually is since ur his partner, he will let you fidget with his tail and ears, as long as ur gentle with them obviously

have hyperfixations? he’s all ears, quite literally, you can tell him all about whatever it is ur obsessed with no matter what he’s up to, whilst he’s studying the wildlife? he doesn’t mind, whilst he’s patrolling the forest? go ahead

anyone ever makes fun of you or is mean to you, he will sort them out with a good telling off. this sassy fox man will give them the lecture of a lifetime, he doesn’t mind if it’s for u tho :)

collei is supportive as well, she’s even more so understanding than the other forest rangers mainly due to her elazer, it’s not the same in any way shape or form, but she understands what it feels like to be different

ALHAITHAM

this man has traits that are quite similar to autism, so it doesn’t bother him that you have it, he’s supportive in his own way if you know what I mean

sensory issues? oh look, there’s now a pair of noise cancelling earphones for you, how strange, how’d that get there?

people would think that your stinking annoys him, newsflash it doesn’t. in a way he finds it kinda cute, but not in a belittling way if that makes sense

have hyperfixations? he can and will listen to you all day if he has to, and he would do it gladly too

doesn’t mind if ur clingy, he can read his book whilst you hug him on the couch or sum, kills two birds with one stone, he gets his research done, and you get cuddles

he’s actually a huge softy for you but won’t admit it to anyone, not even himself :))

KAVEH

kaveh is amazing, like best supportive boyfriend alert

if you have sensory issues, he can’t really help with the big crowds and loud noise but he’ll try his best to help you cope through it and give you distractions

like if ur in a crowded erea he’ll ask you to talk about your hyperfixations to him. if you don’t have hyperfixations he’ll just ask what you have done today

when it comes to taste sensory issues, he’ll try to avoid eating food that you dont like the smell of cause he doesn’t wanna overwhelm your nose. he will eat said food like that someplace else when ur not around

if you have comfort foods, he sadly can’t really buy them often since he doesn’t have a lot of money, but now and again as a special treat he can make it for you or buy it

clingy? great, he is too, cuddle him all you want, he’s not one to complain. wanna kiss him all over? go ahead, he embraces it

tries his best to understand how you work, he can sympathise with how frustrating things can be when people don’t quite understand you and how you work

you don’t like affection? that’s fine too, he will try to keep physical affection to a minimum as much as he possibly can, he can be affectionate in other ways tho

love language is probs spending personal time together, so that’s enough for him if u don’t want affection too

overall, 10/10 best boy and baby girl, recommend

WANDERER

ngl he’s not rlly the best, but he tries. it’s just really difficult for him to be nice since after all he’s been through, he tries tho, he really does

whenever you’re feeling overwhelmed by large crowds and/or noises, he will pick you up bridal style and bring you to nahidas place, where it’s quiet and no one else is there

like certain foods? he can’t cook, since he was made by ei who can’t cook to save her life, so he will just buy your comfort foods for you instead

want cuddles? it depends on his mood wether or not he’ll comply, if he’s in a good mood, yes, if he’s in a neutral mood, yes, if he’s in a bad mood, no.

whenever you stim, he sometimes watches, other times he looks away, he doesn’t wanna say anything mean to you by accident

if you can’t understand sarcasm, he’ll try his best to not use it around you, but it’s difficult sometimes since he has used sarcasm for so long

if you have hyperfixations and like to talk about them, he will listen, doesn’t mind hearing you talk about your interests, in a strange way it fascinates him, sometimes he asks questions other times he just stays silent and nods his head now and again in acknowledgment

if he ever hears anyone being mean to you, wether that be on purpose or not, he’s finna throw some hands, and he will win. tries not to actually fight them, tries to argue with them. he tries to fight less cause it makes nahida kinda upset

speaking of nahida, she’s amazing with you, like the best person to ever go to. she’s the god of wisdom after all, more or less knows how to take care of you during certain phases, he sometimes actually goes to her for advice on your behaviours and how best to support you, but you didn’t hear that from me

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