#but most importantly i didn't have BAD stuff happen to me

[sehnsuchts-trunken]

(Don't You) Steal My Thunder

my tyler owens playlist 🤝 inspiring fic titles

Tyler Owens x fem!reader  7k words

summary: Tyler Owens is the most annoying man you've ever met. But he's set on getting you on his good side. And the more you get to know him, the less you can resist.

a/n: i had to research sm car stuff for this it's not funny. i now know exactly how to describe a truck bed though, so. that's fun.

again, my inbox is wide open <33 i don't guarantee anything, but you can always come talk to me or request smth

masterlist | twisters masterlist

Tyler Owens is the most annoying man you've ever met.

He prints his face on t-shirts, writes his autograph on mugs, comes up with ridiculous sayings ("Not My First Tornadeo" and "If you feel it, chase it" are really just the tip of the ice berg) and most importantly, he costs you the best shots of tornadoes every goddamn time.

Tyler Owens is a problem.

And Tyler Owens seems to have actively decided to make himself a problem too.

Which would be fine, if he flipped you the bird or told you to fuck off or threw his paper towels at you. Unluckily, those are rather examples of what you have done to him. Because it's not fine, not at all - no, Tyler Owens has decided that it's not enough to be in your way all the time, he has to seek you out and rub your nose in it.

Tyler Owens is the most annoying man you've ever met. He's cocky and he's arrogant and he's entirely too full of himself. He brags too much and calls you "weather girl" too often. He gets under your skin more than you would ever admit.

And, as if all of that isn't enough - Tyler Owens is the very epitome of handsomeness.

It's like god didn't just have a good day when he created Tyler Owens, no, god must have still been in the post-haze of the best head he'd gotten in his whole immortal life when he'd created Tyler Owens.

Because Tyler Owens has the body of a greek god and the face of a Hollywood actor. He's not a pornstar, he's who pornstars worship. He's the Prince Charming little girls dream of and the Christian Grey grown women lust for.

Tyler Owens looks like everything you've ever wanted.

But he's just such a fucking asshole.

You wish you could say you didn't care. You'd love to be the kind of woman who didn't even acknowledge him. But you're not. You're not. You watch his videos when you can't sleep, you chuckle when you happen to overhear his jokes, you ogle his back when he's turned away from you. Sometimes, you get so lost in staring at him that you realise too late when he turns back around, and then you have to act unbothered when he grins his fucking grin at you. That's mostly when you flip him off, desperately fighting to ignore the heat in your cheeks.

Not like it stops him. You honestly feel like it only spurs him on.

Something has to seriously be wrong with him. It's not his face. But something is seriously wrong with him, you're sure of that.

Something has to be wrong with him. No sane person would ever go tornado wrangling. No hate to the rest of his crew - they're nice, you've managed to hold a few pretty normal conversations with them here and there - but none of them are sane either.

Storm chasing is different. You keep your distance. All you need are a few well-placed photographs - and those you can get from a rather safe number of miles away. The weather channel doesn't care about close-ups (not really, anyway). They want something to show the people on their comfortable couches, up in New Hampshire or Maine, so that all of them can say to each other "What poor folks, wouldn't wanna live there" and nod in pity as they switch the channel to watch another blockbuster.

You're just doing your job.

The only problem is that it's hard to do your job properly when there's always that fucking red truck in the way, driving down empty roads right into the heart of the tornado. And because no one on the news wants people to see that and go "Well, can't be too bad if there's still cars on the streets!", in the last few months - ever since you'd volunteered to move back to Oklahoma 'So that we've got someone right in Tornado Alley and don't have to fly people out there every time' - the weather channel has only shown the first few minutes of tornadoes forming. The rest of your pictures and videos lie abandoned in the trash file on your laptop. Except for a few - a very, very few, very, very good pictures of Tyler Owens and his Tornado Wranglers. But those won't ever see the light of day either.

You'd be damned if you let anyone know that while Tyler Owens is busy disturbing your actual work, you're busy taking pictures of him shooting fireworks into tornadoes. Pictures that would make for some damn good headers (if you hadn't buried them far, far down your gallery).

This time is no different. You get a few amazing shots of the tornado forming – surely an EF2, maybe even an EF3 - before you settle in the driver's seat again, your window rolled down and your camera hung around your neck as you push down on the gas. Then, a few miles further, you get even better shots of the full tornado, of the first few minutes of destruction, right there, in the middle of an empty field.

And as always, of course, just as the tornado takes on full form, you spot that familiar red truck through the lens of your camera. It speeds down the pavement right in front of where you’ve swerved onto the side of the road and you snap a few pictures, just because you’ve got the trigger right underneath your finger. Honestly, something about that dirty red paint against the grey skies just looks too good not to capture. But then the truck comes closer and closer and starts to slow down and you let your camera sink.

Tyler has his window rolled down already when he stops the car. There’s that annoyingly handsome grin on his lips, the one that makes you want to slap him across the face.

“You’re too far away, weather girl”, he calls out above the rumble of distant wind and thunder. “The good pictures are down that way.”

“The good pictures are right here.” You lift your camera at him. “Maybe you just need to update your equipment.”

Tyler’s grin widens, but before he can throw another of those obnoxious retorts your way, Lilly’s voice rings out through the car.

“Hey, T, looks like it’s changing course. You should hurry.”

His eyes are still glued to yours, still glued so firmly to yours that it makes your skin crawl. You can’t look away, couldn’t possibly look away. Tyler Owens might just be a cocky asshole, but you’re only human. And the weight of his gaze on yours is enough to keep you stuck in place, clutching at your camera.

“We’re on our way, Lilly”, he drawls without looking away from you. “See you around, weather girl.”

The rest of the pictures you take land in your trash file with all the other pictures of the last few weeks. You’re laying in bed, your laptop propped up against a pillow, the empty plate from dinner on the mattress next to you as you sort through today’s work. That’s the good thing about the time difference – you’ve got until seven to send the channel the day's results.

By nine, you’ve showered, put on a dress you feel confident in and settled on one of the chairs at the local bar. You’ve been telling yourself you need to get out a little bit more – you’ve been living here three months now and you haven’t really made any friends so far. To be fair, your job has kept you out and about most of the time. You’ve spent more hours at gas stations to fill up your tank than you have in your own home. But now you’ve decided to put an end to that. You're a young woman in a new town, you can meet more people than just the cashier at the local supermarket.

So for the past twenty minutes, you’ve been nursing a mojito at the counter and talking to the bartender. She’s nice, she’s your age, she’s extroverted enough to keep sidling up to you after every time she has to excuse herself to do her job. That, and she tells you she’s grown up here, so she knows most of the people around. She’s just serving another customer – a long-haired, brown-eyed, hat-wearing country guy who’s already shared a smile or two with you – when someone rests their arm on the countertop next to you.

“Didn’t expect to see you here”, he drawls, all low, deep Southern accent and you recognise his voice before you’ve even tilted your head up and looked at him. His grin drips down onto his words and wraps itself around your mind.

Tyler Owens isn’t just annoying – he’s unbelievable. He's unbelievable and he’s here.

“So you’re stalking me now”, you say, as drily as you can possibly manage. You've been doing that a lot around him. Dead-panning everything. Schooling your expression into fake neutrality.

"I'm here all the time, weather girl", he grins. "If anything, you're stalking me."

You snort, but it's rather unfunny when you think of all the videos you've watched, hours after they'd been livestreamed, cuddled up in your bed until midnight just to stare at his face. He's not that far from the truth.

"In your dreams, Owens", you say anyway, dragging your eyes back towards your almost empty cocktail glass. You wrap your lips around your straw and drain your drink entirely. What you say and what you do, none of that matters in the end. All of this is just show. Every conversation you've had with Tyler Owens in the last three months has been nothing but a performance. Other than your name, you don't think a single sentence out of your mouth has been honest. Not when it comes to him.

"Let me buy you a beer" is the only answer you get.

His grin widens when you look back up again - so cocky, so unbelievably cocky.

"I don't drink."

You push your glass an inch further down the bar top. Tyler raises his eyebrows. Fuck, someone really needs to kick him in the face. You can't keep having all these little heart attacks whenever he's close enough that you could touch him if you wanted.

Not that you want to.

"You're drinking right now", he says. You rest your palms against the bar top and blink at him.

"I don't drink with you."

He lets out a chuckle, one of those deep ones that settle right in your chest and make it hard to swallow.

"Just this once?", he asks and in all honesty, for just a second there, you actually consider giving in. He's too handsome for his own good. You really need to get it together. He's an ass (what an ass, goddamn). And he's insane. He's an insane ass. Sometimes you have to remind yourself of that - those times like now, when his piercing eyes and his kissable lips and his rugged stubble and his broad, broad shoulders and his drawled voice overshadow everything else.

"Don't you have some livestreaming to do?", you ask, hoping it still comes across just as sarcastic when you're the slightest bit distracted by how gloriously tight the sleeves of his flannel are. "Go chasing tornadoes, not me."

His grin widens inexplicably further. You're sure that if you were in a comic, there'd be a lightbulb flashing above his head right about now.

"Well", he drawls, "if you feel it..."

"Don't you do that shit to me, Owens."

He's raising his eyebrows again, raising his eyebrows as you clasp your hand around your empty glass so hard your knuckles turn white. But you're serious. Just as you'd lost yourself in the view of him, that angelic, sinful view of him, he'd gone and reminded you why you were so adamant to keep your distance. If you feel it, chase it. Ridiculous. Obnoxious. He's an arrogant, know-it-all, suicidal job-wrecker. He's the guy with cameras pointed at him everywhere he goes. He signs mugs and selfies and hats and shirts and bras. He's the reason you haven't gotten a single un-edited shot of a fully formed tornado in the last three months.

"You're not a fan of my catchphrase, weather girl?"

He can't even pretend to look wounded (even though he tries) with how big the grin on his lips still is. You stare right at him, dead-eyed and unflinching.

"I'm not a fan of you."

Lies slip off your tongue so easily by now that you wonder when you'd become morally compromised enough to not even care anymore. It must've happened somewhere along the way, sometime between the first conversation you'd had with him and the one you're having with him right now.

"You wound me", he grins, his palm pressed to his chest.

For the first time tonight, you allow yourself to grin back at him.

"I try."

With that, you slip off your chair and wave the bartender goodbye. You're already two steps away when Tyler calls after you.

"I'd still buy you a beer."

"I'm still not drinking with you", you call back. You don't turn around again. You just make your way back to your car and mark the evening as a half-successful night of socialising on your to-do list.

...

You see him again first thing the next day. Of course. Because there's no tornadoes without the Tornado Wranglers on their tail. By now, you're used to it. You wave at Dani as they come back out of the store at the gas station you're waiting at. They've got both arms full of coffees and for a second, you consider offering your help, but then you hear Tyler shout something out of his car and you suddenly don't feel any desire whatsoever to get up. You've sat yourself down in your truck bed, your camera slung around your neck and the radar on your lap. If all goes right, you're hoping for a tornado to form a little to the east from here. And as much as you dislike Tyler Owens, the fact that he's here soothes your nerves. Where he goes, there's sure to be tornadoes close by.

The few times you hadn't seen him had never ended well for you. You'd missed an EF3 your second week here just because you'd followed the wrong hunch. Meanwhile Tyler, of course, had been in the middle of it.

This might just be the one singular situation that you welcome seeing his red truck around. As long as you can manage to overtake him on the road after.

It's not that you need to be faster. You don't need to reach the tornado first. You don't even take the same way as him most of the time. He wants in there, you just want a sensible picture. Still, you can't help but feel a pang of disappointment every time you hit the brakes and jump out of your car, miles away from the actual cell as Tyler speeds down towards it. You've been telling yourself that it's because he ruins your pictures. It kind of is.

"Hey, weather girl!"

You let out a resigned breath as you tilt your head up and squint against the sun. He's still in his truck, his window rolled down, his elbow propped up against the car door.

"What do you want, Owens?"

Your fingers itch to reach for your camera. It's a visual, him in that fucking car, leaning out of his window with the sun peaking out behind him. But you can't, you can't take a picture of him this openly. Even if you were to argue that it's just the light you'd wanted to capture.

"To give you some advice", he calls out, his lips pulling into a grin. You raise your eyebrows at him. "East isn't gonna work out. Wind's changing. Go south."

He throws you a mock salute and hits the gas before you can say anything else.

Not that you'd been about to.

Instead you just curse to yourself, jump off the truck bed and throw your treacherous technology into the passenger seat with a little too much vigor. Fuck this. You sit at the steering wheel and stare out at the sky for exactly two seconds before you make your decision. Then you start your car and drive south.

You may not be a fan of Tyler Owens, but you've long since admitted to yourself that this man has got a gift. He has an unbeatable instinct when it comes to storms. And sure, you have your fair share of knowledge, but in the end, you're a photographer, not a meteorologist. You won't miss a day's work just because you're too proud to listen to Tyler.

You're a little further behind, but you can spot his truck and guess that he's driving straight on into the cell today, so you take a right and decide to try your luck with the side of the tornado. Not being right in its path doesn't sound too bad anyway.

You actually manage to snap a few well-placed pictures. You don't know what Tyler's doing, but it seems like he's not shooting random shit up the cell today. You'll watch the stream later - you're just the slightest bit curious now what's happening with them. Maybe they're doing some old-school chasing? Or maybe they're doing a challenge. Maybe Tyler is driving blindfolded. At this point, who knows.

It's good for you though. It's a considerable tornado today, an EF2 at least, and you only spot Tyler's red truck again when the cell moves further down the fields, away from him. It doesn't look like it's gonna disappear anytime soon. Maybe today's your lucky day.

Half an hour later, you're sure you've got at least a dozen pictures of the fully formed tornado, long touched down and without the red truck in the way.

You're just packing up your things, already sifting through the photos on your camera, squinting against the sunlight, trying to both tug the zipper of your bag closed and hit the right buttons at the same time when Tyler pulls up next to you.

"You look busy, weather girl", he says, already grinning that damn grin again.

"I am", you say - truthfully, for once. You let go of your bag and lower your camera. You're hesitant, but... "Thanks for the tip."

"Anytime", he grins. "Just do me one favour."

You already know this can't be good. Not with that cheeky look on his face. But he'd just saved you from chasing hot air (quite literally), so he deserves a little treat. And you don't want unsettled scores with Tyler Owens.

"I want to know what favour that's supposed to be before I agree", you say anyway, because with him, you can never be too careful. And in the end, you're only willing to do so much. (Though for him, you'd already do a lot more than you'd admit. A lot more than you hope he's aware of.)

"Let me buy you a beer", he says, and for once, he sounds serious.

The memory of yesterday night flashes before your eyes, of those same words at the bar. With him so close, way too close - with that grin and that stubble and that voice and those shoulders. You cross your arms and stare at him.

"If you're livestreaming this, I'm gonna sue your ass so hard."

He just lets out a chuckle and raises his hands in surrender.

"Cameras are off, I swear."

You stare at him for another silent ten or so seconds. At him in that fucking truck that looks just a little too good in your pictures. At him and his fucking face. That fucking face that you certainly wouldn't mind sitting on, if just to shut him up.

God, he's asking you to drink something with him. He's asking to buy you something to drink with him. You're stupid.

You're so, so stupid.

"Alright, cowboy", you say, uncrossing your arms and reaching for the handle of your car door. "I'll humour you."

...

You're in the bar again by nine that night, the same way you had been the day before. You're wearing a different dress and there's a different bartender, but you've ordered the same mojito and chosen the same place to sit.

Only this time, you're actively watching the door. And when Tyler strolls in, you've got to shift around in your seat and cross your legs. You don't even pretend you're not staring. You just ogle him openly. Not for the first time ever - you'd checked him out very obviously when he'd strutted towards you to introduce himself three months ago - but definitely for the first time in a while. And god yeah, he's a hunk of a man, alright. If you had your camera here right now...

But you don't. So instead, you drop your eyes to his feet (brown leather boots), drag them up his legs (blue jeans), over his chest (red checkered flannel), over his face (god, what you wouldn't give-) and finally rest them on the cowboy hat on top of his head.

When he's close enough to hear you, already grinning, of course, probably at how you're actually sitting there in the same spot as yesterday and hadn't just lied to his face about coming here, you raise your eyebrows at him.

"A cowboy hat?", you ask, your voice as unbothered as you can possibly manage (even though you're very, very, very much bothered right now). His grin only widens.

"Ladies love country boys", he drawls with a shrug.

"Now that's straight out of a song", you say. "You're getting lazy, Owens."

"A song?", he asks. "No, that's an Owens Original."

You pull your eyebrows even further up.

"Ladies love country boys? Trace Adkins?"

"Nope. Not familiar."

But his grin tells you that he's lying. He's a liar. He knows very well where he got that line from. And he knows just how easily he got under your skin with his simple trick. As if his face isn't enough already.

You just shake your head and turn away from him.

"Put your money where your mouth is, Owens. Buy me a beer."

...

Tyler Owens is the most annoying man you've ever met. But he's also a great conversationalist.

The hours fly by as you're talking. One beer turns into two, then into an uncountable number of soft drinks. You both agree that you need to drive home, neither of you is willing to risk a run-in with the police. You need your drivers license for your jobs.

Tyler talks to you about the pictures you've taken today, then about the pictures from last week. He laughs when you blame him for ruining half of them and almost spits out his coke when you slap his arm for laughing at you. He tells you about his crew, about the people they've helped with the money from their dumb t-shirt sales. You think you hate him less by the minute. You're not sure if you're okay with that. But he gets you talking about your childhood and your parents, about school and college and about how you've wound back up here in Oklahoma. That effectively distracts you.

That, and how his cocky grin morphs into a genuine smile the more you open up.

Not that you didn't love the cocky grin. You did, just a bit. As obnoxious as it was. But the way he smiles at you all sweet has you melting right in your spot.

It's not the first time you realise that beneath all that rough exterior, there beats a heart of gold. You've known what those t-shirt sales are for, that he offers food and water after a tornado hits a town, that he carries the injured out of the ruins of their houses and helps find lost dogs. The more you've been around him in the past weeks, the more you've seen of his soft side. Of the way he cares and supports. But in the end, it always is easier to go back to the status quo - to fall back onto mindless snark and fleeting first impressions.

You'd clung so desperately to the image of him as this arrogant, smug, holier-than-thou influencer god for the sole purpose of keeping your own sanity. Because you'd known that without despising him, you would fall head over heels for Tyler Owens, and you just couldn't have that.

But now, with his arm brushing against yours and his hat discarded on the bar top and his smile, that beautiful, beautiful smile on his lips...

"Five bucks", he drawls, already reaching for his wallet.

"What?"

"Five bucks says there won't be a tornado tomorrow."

You raise your eyebrows at him, your glass hovering in mid-air between the two of you. You'd meant to take a sip, but now you're setting it right back down on the bar top.

"You're shitting me."

Tyler just shakes his head. He's grinning again, but it's much softer this time around.

"The winds are looking great. The forecast says it's gonna be the best conditions for tornadoes we've seen in the last six weeks. I've heard Dexter talk about how we're probably gonna see an EF4 tomorrow", you tell him, even though you're sure he's well aware of all of it. This is Tyler Owens, for god's sake. He knows about the winds and the forecasts. He knows that his crew is making preparations already.

His grin only grows. And it's smug now. It's cocky now. It's everything you thought you'd left behind during this conversation. He looks like the Tornado Wrangler again, like the guy who fucks up your pictures and makes your job harder than it already is.

It takes you a second too long to realise why.

"Dexter said that on our live", he grins, as if he can't quite believe what he's hearing. You physically recoil from him. "Do you watch our streams, weather girl?"

"No", you breathe, rigid and frozen, shocked to your very core. No, no, no, no, this cannot be happening. This cannot be happening. You'd... You hadn't made that mistake. He hadn't got you to make that mistake.

"Dexter talked about tomorrow on our live", Tyler says again, straightening his back and grinning down at you like he's just uncovered the lost grave of Cleopatra. "Only on the live. You watched our stream."

"No", you mutter, your eyes wide and your mouth dry, so dry. You need to drink. You need to drink so badly. "No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did. You watched our stream, honey."

The petname runs down your spine and clogs your senses. Honey. Oh, he's an ass, he's an asshole! But you're on the spot, you're on the spot and he's calling you honey, honey, honey. You can't do anything but watch as he leans closer to you, grinning down at you like it's his one true purpose on this earth, like he wants to eat you alive.

"I'd say you watch our streams pretty regularly, weather girl."

You swallow hard and clasp your hand around your glass.

"Yeah?", you breathe, hoping against all hope that your voice sounds somewhat innocent. You're sure it doesn't. You know it doesn't. You probably sound as guilty as you are, but... Hope dies last. Hope always dies last. "Why would you say that?"

"Just a hunch." He shows off those pearly fucking whites for you. "Call it an instinct. I'm usually right."

He is.

He's right now. He's right usually.

Him and his fucking instinct. His goddamn gut feeling about tornadoes, always right all the fucking time. He's like an Oklahoma Jesus. The first coming of Tornado Christ.

Fuck him.

Fuck him.

"I'll take your bet." You drain your glass at once. "Give me your five bucks, Owens."

You don't think it'll work. You don't think he'll let you distract him. You don't think it'll be this easy to stop his vile teasing. He's not the type of guy to let something go. He's not the type of guy to let anything go ever. But he looks at you and he grins at you and he trails his eyes over your face and then he opens up his wallet and pulls out five dollars without another word.

He puts the bill flat on the bar top.

But when you go to reach for it, he pushes his fingers down.

"The price just went up", he says.

You raise your eyebrows and let your hand sink again. Tyler is absolutely unpredictable. You should've known.

"The price just went up?", you repeat. He nods. "What more do you want to bet?"

He's closer now, closer all of a sudden. He's too close, close enough to make your breath hitch. He's looking down at you with that cocky, cheeky grin, with his weirdly green eyes, with his three day stubble and his generally much too symmetrical face. You can't do anything but look back up at him.

"A kiss", he says. Simple as that.

A kiss.

Tyler Owens is the most annoying man you've ever met. He is. Truly. He's annoying and way too full of himself and much too presumptuous. Tyler Owens is the only man who would ever do something like this. The only man who'd bet a kiss on whether or not there will be tornadoes tomorrow.

Especially with that forecast.

The one that says a tornado is basically inevitable.

"Alright", you say. He may be Tyler Owens, the guy with an infallible instinct - but he is also Tyler Owens, the guy who's been doing his hardest to get under your skin. This time might not be any different. For all you know, he's bluffing to rile you up. "I'm in."

...

At eleven the next day, you're standing next to Dexter in resigned silence.

"I really thought today was gonna pan out", you mutter.

"It should have", Dexter frowns, tapping against the screen in his hands. "It should have worked out. The conditions should have been perfect. Everything's been building the last few days."

"But it collapsed this morning."

You turn your head and watch as Tyler comes to a stand next to you, arms crossed, eyes locked on the clear sky up above. He tilts his head to you and grins. Fuck, he's wearing his goddamn hat again. It's like he doesn't even try to be normal.

"Hey, weather girl", he greets. "Ready to cash out your bet?"

You shake your head at him. No, you're not giving up this easily. You never give up this easily.

"The day's not over yet, Owens. You haven't won 'til midnight."

...

You spend most of the next hours sitting in your truck bed, reading a book you'd thrown into your backseat weeks ago and had so far neglected. Lilly hands you lunch around two, Dani offers you a coffee around five and Boone pipes up here and there to joke about the wasted day. Around six, Dexter comes by to let you know they're calling it.

You still have another hour to go. By seven, it'll be too late to send your pictures anyway. But you want the hour. You need the hour.

You still haven't decided what to do about Tyler. About Tyler and his fucking bet.

He's been loitering the whole day, walking by, joking around with his crew, livestreaming a spontaneous q&a just because.

And the more minutes tick by, the harder it is to keep ignoring that you've most definitely lost the bet. Even though you do your best. You read, you check your phone. You stare at your radar. You stare at the weather forecast. You talk to Dexter and Dani and Lilly and Boone. You take a few pictures of the sky. Then you take a few pictures of Tyler, standing some feet away from his truck and looking out at the clouds.

It's only when two of three Tornado Wranglers cars are disappearing down the road, when Tyler Owens suddenly stands in front of your truck bed, that you put down your book and face reality.

"No tornadoes in sight", he says, instead of 'Hello' or 'How are you' like any other person would.

"There's still six hours left", you reason. Even if only one of those is relevant for your job today.

"You really want to wait out six hours to prove I'm right?"

"You're not right", you argue. It's fruitless, it's stupid, it's unreasonable. But... "Not yet, anyway."

Tyler raises his eyebrows at you, lets out an amused chuckle and leans against the side of your truck bed.

"Alright, so we wait."

You eye him from the side. He's fucking leaning against your truck, staring out at the sky, talking about six hours. Goddamn. He can't be serious, can he? His crew is already gone. They've disappeared into the descending sun and he's talking about waiting another six hours. Leaned against your car.

"Fuck's sake, Owens", you sigh, scooching over to the right. "At least sit down then."

You don't talk much at first. You just open your book back up again and try your hardest to ignore that he's even here at all, barely two feet away from you on the other side of your truck bed. If you stretched your leg, you'd hit him right in the hip.

It makes reading close to impossible.

Even though he's not doing anything at all. He's just sitting there, one arm propped up on the side board, that goddamn cowboy hat on his head and his feet hanging off the opened tailgate. It's almost worse that he's not doing anything.

That he's just sitting there and watching the sky change.

You give up on reading entirely when you realise that you've finished exactly five pages in half an hour. Instead, you put your book back in the car, pull out your bluetooth speaker and two water bottles and offer Tyler one of them.

You don't even ask him what music he wants to listen to. You just put on your country playlist and roll with it. By the twitch of his lips, you know he certainly doesn't mind.

Another half hour later, it's starting to get chilly and you're beginning to grow bored of the music. Tyler sitting next to you makes you fidgety, somehow, and you can't really enjoy the songs you usually love so much. So you switch to a podcast. You don't ask Tyler if he minds. He's free to go anytime.

Around eight, the sun starts to set, and the chill turns into an unpleasant cool. You hadn't really expected to be sitting out here so long. You're not prepared for the temperature to drop. You're wearing shorts, for god's sake, shorts and a top. It's summer in Oklahoma - you don't know how Tyler even manages to survive in his long jeans. You certainly wouldn't.

But now you're a little jealous, to be honest. He doesn't look cold in the slightest while you're fighting off shivers. You can feel your hands trembling already.

You really should've brought a jacket. But who brings jackets in 30 degree summer weather?

So instead, you just resign yourself to your fate and rub your hands along your arms. Anything to get some warmth into your body.

For the first time since you've sat back down, Tyler turns his head and looks at you.

"You're cold", he says, eyes raking over your arms and the goosebumps you'd gotten.

"Great observational skills, Sherlock Holmes", you deadpan, even though he doesn't really deserve that. He had so far left you pretty much alone. "A+ on that assignment."

Well, it's hard to break bad habits.

Tyler just chuckles, shakes his head and pushes off of the truck bed. You watch, eyes narrowed, as he walks back to his own car, opens up the trunk and- pulls out a blanket?

Your hands have sunken down to your lap all by themselves by the time he's standing in front of you again, holding out the blanket.

"For you, Watson", he grins as you slowly, carefully take the blanket from him. You mutter something along the lines of a soft 'Thank you' before you wrap the blanket around your arms.

Tyler Owens is the most annoying man you've ever met. But he's also the very definition of "Tough on the outside, soft on the inside". Sometimes, you think the word 'angelic' works for more than just his divine looks.

Your eyes are glued to him as he sits back down next to you and looks out at the darkening sky with that signature grin on his lips, like he knows that you're watching him and enjoys it more than he should. That doesn't deter you though. For the very first time. You don't even stop staring when he turns his head back to you. You don't even stop staring then.

You just look at him until his grin crumbles. Until he's smiling that smile from yesterday night, the one that has your heart squeezing together and then exploding in your chest. You think you could stare at that smile for the rest of eternity and never feel sated.

"What?", he asks, his voice so soft it makes you swallow. Your lips part, but there's no words on your tongue, none in your throat. They're stuck in your chest somewhere, wrapped around your heart so tightly that you can't let them go even now. So you just press your lips together, wrap your blanket tighter around yourself and say:

"So I'm Watson, yeah?"

Your podcast is long forgotten by the time the sky turns dark. So dark that you make Tyler climb into your car and turn on the lights. You're comfortable in your blanket, you don't feel the need to move.

It's around ten when the blanket isn't enough anymore.

You tuck your hands underneath your top, but that only helps for so long. A few minutes later, you're trembling again, trembling even though you're pulling the blanket as tightly around you as you possibly can. Tyler raises his eyebrows when a particularly heavy shiver runs down your spine, one of those that come and go within three seconds.

"Come here", he says, shuffling in his spot and motioning for you to move over to him. You don't really think about it. It's more of a reflex as you fumble the blanket off of your body, scooch over to him, settle yourself against his side and sneak your feet under his thigh. He tugs the blanket back up to your chin, tucks it in behind your back and wraps his arms around you.

Tyler Owens wraps his arms around you.

And he's so fucking warm you literally almost moan. God, you hadn't actually realised just how cold you'd been.

"Damn, you're freezing", he notes as well, just as you nestle further into him and hum in agreement. He's like a living heater right now. You'd like to just crawl inside of him and suck up all his warmth. "You should've told me sooner."

"I didn't tell you at all", you mutter, closing your eyes and taking a deep breath. He smells good. He smells so good. Earthy, musky somehow. You're tempted to turn your head and bury your nose in his shoulder.

Instead, you just satisfy yourself with what you can get. Fuck, he smells so good. He smells just like you'd thought he would, like country and rodeo and thunderstorms. He smells like falling into bed at the end of a successful chase. He smells like more. You want more.

You want more of Tyler Owens.

"Are you sniffing me?", he asks suddenly, but he sounds so amused you can't even bring yourself to feel embarrassed. You just open your eyes and grin at him, tilting your head so you can look up at him.

"What if I am?", you ask, if only to hear that breathless chuckle fall from his lips. Oh, those lips. You're in trouble. "Are you gonna call the cops on me?"

"I could never."

"Yeah, you better not, cowboy", you mutter, eyes dropping to his lips when he grins. He's so close. He's way too close. "There's like thirty things I could call the cops about on your channel."

His grin grows until he's showing off his teeth, glinting against the low light of the leds in your car. He's closer now.

"So you do watch our streams, weather girl."

His voice is so low and he's so close, so close. Your lips part all on their own. You haven't looked back up at his eyes in too long. Far too long. But he's so close, and he's so warm, and he smells so good.

"Alright", you whisper. His mouth is barely an inch from yours. You can feel every breath he takes. "I watch your streams."

And then your lips are on his.

Tyler Owens is the most annoying man you've ever met. He's cocky and he's smug. He makes your job harder than it has to be. He does everything and anything to get under your skin. But Tyler Ownes is the best goddamn kisser this side of the globe.

He trails his hands, his big, big hands, down your sides, pushes the blanket out of the way and grabs at your waist with just enough firmness. He pulls you onto his lap and rests his thumbs over the hem of your top. He breathes into your mouth and takes it slow. He doesn't care that you almost knock his hat out of the way when you try to wrap your arms around his neck. He just holds you tightly to him and lets you tug on his lip.

You honestly don't know how much time has passed when he pulls back, grinning an entirely new grin at you, hazy and euphoric.

"It's not midnight yet", he mutters, the slightest bit out of breath.

"I don't care", you mumble, drawing him right back in for another kiss. You think you might be addicted. You simply can't get enough of him. You can't get enough of Tyler Owens.

But then a thought strikes you, and you pull away with a grin that makes him raise his eyebrows.

You chuckle against his lips.

"If you feel it, chase it, right?"

[bigification]

Jealousy Jealousy

Strong, loyal, dedicated. All words used by the boss to describe me, and every word seemed like a knife in the back of my roommate. I can hear it in the way he talks to me, ever since I joined the military all he ever seems to be is jealous. I've always been stronger and more dedicated than him, he's smarter but that doesn't even matter that much.

The walk back to our room is awkward. It is completely silent and I can almost see the steam coming out of his ears. I wanted so badly to be friends with him, but he makes it impossible. I've always worked out and kept my body in good shape, and apparently that's unforgivable to him.

We get back to our room and he immediately goes rummaging through his stuff. I pace back and forth, debating whether I should talk to him. It's hard living with him and I just want things to be civil between us.

"Hey man, I wanted to ta-" I'm interrupted when he quickly swings around and jabs something into my stomach. I look down and see a needle sticking into the side of my stomach. I feel frozen with fear, I can't talk, almost as if there is something stuck in my throat. I let out a groan as he pushes the end of the needle, injecting a green liquid into my body.

"I'm tired of being in your shadow, let's see how long you'll last after this." He monologues like some cartoon villain. What does he even mean by that, was that some kind of poison? Is he killing me just because the boss likes me more.

I stumble back against the wall, I feel weak but it hurts less than I thought it would. Although my stomach feels like it's boiling.

Am I dreaming... It feels more like a nightmare. But it must be a nightmare. I see a lump form under my shirt, and it seems to grow every time I blink. It can't be real, but it feels so real. The lump grows until it looks like I have a little belly. Do I have a belly? It's growing faster and faster until my shirt becomes untucked. It finally stops after growing into a sizable beer belly, making it impossible for me to see my feet. Maybe he gave me drugs, maybe this is just a bad trip. But it feels so real.

It doesn't end with the beer belly. Next my pecs start to swell. Something I worked so hard on is gone in seconds. I see them soften into a pair of man tits, growing until they press against my shirt. I always swore I would never let myself go like my father did, but I guess that's a lie. At least it took him until his thirties to get fat, I can't even make it to my late twenties without pigging out.

I still have no idea what's happening to me. It's getting harder and harder to think. I was thinking about... Something about pigging out. It must be because I love pigging out, that's how I got this belly.

As I'm trying to think, my body continues to grow. I hear the button on my pants pop off and feel the pressure release. I think my ass is growing, not that I mind. I feel my body being pushed further and further away from the wall as fat spilled into my ass.

Why does my crotch feel so tight? I could have sworn it didn't feel this tight a moment ago. I don't really care anyway, I can't even remember why I should care.

My pants strain against the fat filling my legs, I think I can even hear some rips tearing through them. My arms follow suit, softening up my defined muscles and fattening up my hands. Better off that way if you ask me, fatter hands means better belly rubs, and I like belly rubs.

I feel an itchiness engulf my body as a thick pelt of hair covers my skin. My arms, my legs, my chest, and most importantly my belly become a forest of sweaty hair.

My body finally relaxed and I let out a loud burp. Oh... I'm so hungry. I rub my belly trying to get any relief. It's all I can think of. Wasn't I stressed about something? What would I have been stressed about, maybe I was just hungry.

"How ya feeling big guy?" My roommate asks me.

"I'm so hungry." I cry out.

"Aren't you supposed to be on a diet?" He teases me.

"Why the fuck would I be on a diet. This is the mark of a true man!" I say as I slap my gut.

"Well I'm sure this box of donuts won't hurt your fitness assessment next week, and they won't eat themselves." He pulls out a dozen donuts. It feels like I lose control of my body as I instinctively ravage the donuts.

I lean back after finishing off the last donut and let out a loud burp. God I'm stuffed, but I want so much more. I rub my belly, trying to process the snack I just had, so I can make room for more.

"There's plenty more where that came from, big guy."

Credits to bulkgainer92 for the video and for inspiring this story.

[3liza]

I'm trying to figure out how to communicate instructions to other people about how I almost completely escaped my crippling adolescent body dysmorphia and anorexia but the thing is I don't really know how it happened. it was like one day I woke up and didn't care that much.

i still had all the central psychological dysfunctions but it was like I had decided to ignore them because I had finally internalized that I was acting crazy and acting crazy, unlike being crazy, is a choice. unless you're experiencing psychosis or delusions. and the body dysmorphia is a form of delusion certainly but it's a form you can still sample against reality and see that it's not matching up. you can't do this with actual hallucinations but you can do it with stuff like obsessive thoughts about how ugly you are and how everyone hates you and how ugly people have no value etc etc. that kind of stuff is observably false and integrating constant reality checking into your obsession loops will derail a lot of the delusional obsession. your brain will fight back with arguments like "it's fine for her to be ugly because of magical reason I made up but it's not fine for me because of another magical reason I made up" but these arguments can also be quickly reality checked into irrelevance even if you still *feel* they are true. you may FEEL that the obsessive delusions are true but you can, to a certain extent, make a decision to KNOW and more importantly to ACT as if they are not.

so the new thought loop could go something like: "I'm so fucking ugly. so what if I'm 'ugly'. it doesn't seem to matter when I look around and reality check my level of ugliness to the success and affection people uglier than I am seem to experience. there just be something else wrong with me. but that doesn't make sense because actually a lot of people do like me and care about me. i have proof of that in the form of messages and memories. I'm so fucking ugly. but I'm looking closely at this unfiltered Getty image in incredibly high resolution of a celebrity on the red carpet. and she has terrible skin. her skin looks just as bad as mine does in the brightly lit bathroom mirror because there are no filters on this brightly lit professional journalist's photograph. that's really interesting. i bet I can see the same level of ugliness in everyone else that I see in the mirror if I really look"

i don't think you can fix yourself to be not crazy. i don't think that's a thing that happens. i think most therapists are useless or MLM subscribers who want to try out their latest hype word MLM technique on your because they paid $3000 to be "certified" in Hidden Dream Cousin Interrogation Biodynamics, which will test 2% better than jingling keys in front of the control group in two papers on PubMed until crumbling to replication crisis in three years.

i think what you can actually do is add additional systems checks to deal with how fucking crazy you are and always will be until you stop being able to fuck up as much with it. like an airlock system basically. i think good therapists are able to show people how to do this and maybe get them meds that tamp down some of the nasty things the craziness constantly causes to happen. but they're so rare I've never actually met one lmao

[ericshoney]

Caring Boy ~ Matt Sturniolo

Summary: Your boyfriend Matt is a walking green flag and helps you when you feel down or are sensory overloaded.

Warnings: Mentions of depression, anxiety, Autistic!Reader, sensory overload.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Your boyfriend Matt Sturniolo was amazing. He was a walking green flag. You had met Matt when you were just ten, he was eleven, and there was an instant connection. You both, along with Nick and Chris, were inseparable and when you turned sixteen, Matt seventeen, you both started dating, just before they started their YouTube channel.

One thing you always struggled with was depression and anxiety, along with being diagnosed with autism at an earlier age. Matt had been right by your side through everything. He always carried something for you in case you needed a stim break, made sure you had all your meds regularly and never ran out, and most importantly, a shoulder to cry on the rough days.

When the guys moved to LA, Matt instantly said you should go with them, which you did, now living with the trio. Chris and Nick also helped where they could, especially if Matt was busy, which you appreciated, but Matt was special as he was your boyfriend.

Today happened to be one of those rough days. The guys had to be up earlier for a meeting, so you would be on your own for a few hours. It didn't bother you since you would lay in for a bit, or so you thought.

You woke up at one, which was strange since you usually slept a bit later. Your mind was racing slightly as you knew the guys had already left for the meeting. You decided to take a shower, seeing if that would help.

However, the water was more on the cold side, resulting in taking a quick shower but not washing your hair. You got out and dressed into some shorts, a Fresh Love hoodie and slipping some socks on.

You then went to the kitchen and grabbed something to eat. You saw a pack of Pop Tarts so you grabbed a packet and sat on the sofa, scrolling through your phone.

As you ate your breakfast and scrolled on your phone, you tapped your foot a bit, liking a few posts you saw and random TikTok's.

But an hour later, after seeing many cute and pretty girls on your socials, you started to feel insecure. You had also forgotten to take your meds, completely ignoring the reminder on the fridge.

You threw your phone down and laid on the sofa, trying to ignore it. Matt always told you how much he loved you and how beautiful you were. So you had a minute thinking about that, but the more you did, the more you missed him, even if he was already on his way home with Nick and Chris.

You then stood up and went to find some of your stim stuff. You got a bit frustrated as you couldn't find them instantly, but finally found a small popper.

You walked around the living room, using the popper, so focused on it, you didn't hear or see the guys walk in. Nick walked up the stairs first, quickly signalling Matt to get you.

"Hey baby, you okay." Matt called, grabbing your hands gently.

"I, hey! When did you get home?" You asked, slightly shocked to see him suddenly. You also saw Nick and Chris, who both gave you a soft smile.

"We just got home. What's wrong baby?" Matt asked, noticing the tears in your eyes.

"Just...I woke up and my mind was racing, like lots of random thoughts. I then took a shower but the water was cold! So I took just a quick shower and didn't wash my hair which is really annoying, I mean I know it's not greasy but it would have just felt nice. Then I got some Pop Tarts to eat as I watched my phone for a bit, but all these pretty girls kept coming up and the same on TikTok, so I came off cause it started making me feel bad. Then I remembered what you said about me being pretty and you loving me, but it made me kinda sad cause I missed you. Then I needed to stim, but couldn't really find anything good so I'm using this." You rambled, holding up the popper to show him.

Matt shared a look with Nick and Chris, both boys knew what he was thinking. Nick went over to where they keep your meds and opened it to see today's still there. The eldest sighed and showed Matt.

"Baby....you haven't had your meds." He said softly.

"Shit...I forgot. I'm sorry!" I cried.

"No, no baby. It's okay. I should have set a reminder on your phone." Matt replied, watching as you played with the rings on his fingers.

Nick came over and passed you the correct meds as Chris got you some water to take them with. The three watched as you swallowed them all, Matt praising you softly.

"Thanks guys." You said.

"Your welcome." Nick replied.

"Wanna go watch some movies?" Matt offered, making you nod.

The two of you then went to his room, where you cuddled up to him, watching your favourite movie on the TV, happy to have Matt by your side.

[sorryimananti-romantic]

sorryimananti-romantic's tumblr wrapped, 2024

tagged by @makeitmingi and @sungbeam <3

2024 review

this year i explored a lot of the darker characters/dynamics which was an absolute pleasure, but i think such heavy plots also drained the energy out of me (or maybe it was the absolute monster of a wip i was writing consistently all year). while i did slip in some fluffy lighthearted fics here and there, i decided to take a break in november from writing in general. after an actual no-writing few weeks, i went back to my wip series and decided to just follow my heart (as if i hadn't already been doing that before) but more importantly, not force myself to write.

as of 2024, i have written more than a million words in a span of 3 years. i think i deserve to be slow with writing now! (plus, life, folks. real life.) thank you to all my lovely mutuals and readers for the incredible support you've shown me here!

total statistics of 2024

no. of fics: 8 total wc: 190,299 (+ a solid 113,000 if we count the leaders) no. of wips: 1 (+ a few ideas that have only been brainstormed but not written)

genres explored in 2024

fantasy, supernatural, historical, royal, thriller, action, crime, psychology-ish, futuristic, tragedy, adventure, romance, mafia (basically... everything?)

first fic of 2024: siren

- posted: jan 2nd - pairing: siren!yeosang x sirenhunter!reader - comments: this was my first time writing anything related to the sea (if memory serves me right) so while this was quite the challenge, it was fun bc i wanted to make sth unique out of the typical siren x siren hunter plot. i'm glad the response was good!

longest fic: light

- posted: sept 10th - pairing: mafia/angel!seonghwa x chemist!reader - comments: i think this is my second fav fic from this year. the idea of 'what happens when an angel becomes evil' plagued my mind so bad that i just had to get this out of my system. plus, i love writing fantasy in general so this was fun.

last fic: the leaders | chapter I

- posted: dec 31st - pairing: ot8!ateez x reader, mafia au - comments: just posted, pls check it out! it's going to be a long series since it's been in planning and a wip for over a year now. the leaders is going to be my whole personality for the foreseeable future (plus, according to my schedule, it's going to end in the 3rd quarter of 2025 so... buckle up!)

top 3 most popular fics of 2024

guerrilla

- posted: jan 31st - pairing: serialkiller/vigilante/doctor!yunho x writer!reader - comments: when i wrote this, i had no idea it would blow up. it's lighthearted but i think the response triggered me to explore more morally grey characters and darker dynamics.

ateez as villains

posted: nov 5th comments: this marked the last fic of this year, and also the villain/dark characters arc I've had going the whole year. i think it was a nice wrap because i'm taking a break from writing other stuff and just focusing on finishing my ongoing series.

new world

posted: june 5th pairing: prince!hongjoong x physician!reader comments: i think this was peak morally black characters and peak toxic manipulative dynamics between the characters, yet there was a sad beauty to it. i enjoyed writing this very much.

yumi's personal picks

star 1117

- posted: july 10th - pairing: wooyoung x alienoid!reader - comments: and this is my fav fic from 2024! it has everything i love: wooyoung, space, time travel, wholesome side characters jongho and yeosang, alienoid reader who learns to connect with the human in herself, and such delicious plot twists and foreshadowing. i'm ngl, i'm the biggest fan of this fic, and it's prob also one my fav oneshots I've written. while this didn't blow up (why do my fav fics never do), i had sooo much fun writing this.

cyberpunk

- posted: march 27th - pairing: droid!jongho x programmer!reader - comments: this was THE toughest fic to plan (not the time travel ones, not even mafia, but THIS). i haven't read many droid stories so lack of reader knowledge, and then wanting to still make a plot out of it other than 'omg my boyfriend turned into a droid' was hard. i rewrote this so many times but i'm very satisfied with how it turned out.

wave (sneaking this here bc it's the only unmentioned fic LOL)

- posted: april 25th - pairing: teacher!mingi x teacher!reader (headcanons) - comments: this one was a fun filler fic (bc i'm guilty that I've not written much mingi, and bc i literally could not write at that time). i love a fluffy mingi, i love fluffy fics in general so this was the product of my simpness, if you will.

2025 goals

finish the leaders and finish posting it, not force myself to write, write better, read more fics on here, and explore more genres (atp will have to invent some), finish the current ideas before planning and obsessing over new ones vs writing whatever i want (a constant struggle), and finally, just survive :')

np tags: @lorensonebraincell @kitten4sannie @sp4ceboo @sweetinsaniiity @bvidzsoo @pirateprincessblog + anyone who wants to (if yall write for different fandoms, you can add a 'top artists/muses' section too.)

[personasintro]

I think that probably this anon might have gotten attacked or something for saying that they didn’t like the story for whatever reason (and they came here anonymously and made this comment probably because people were really saying bad things to them), which is also wrong. Why harass someone like that? You like a story it’s okay and you don’t like a story that’s also okay. There have been times where I read something and shared my opinion about it in a respectful way. I understand that anons way of saying it made it sound rude but for the author to also assume that they're taking a jab at her readers without knowing why the anon said what they said

No hate to anyone - read the previous ask and thought I’d say something

Also hello to mimi I hope you’re doing well !! 🥹Chapter 59 was really good 😊

Let me clarify – I didn't not assume, I have seen the comments and messages bunch of anons sent me, talking about other readers. I absolutely understand we all have different morals and opinions in any matter at that, especially when it comes to sharing opinions. Anon in their ask shared their unpopular opinion and gave no other context of why they have sent it.

Putting it out simply – people who get it, get it. I'm not saying this as a writer, just a person who becomes a reader herself sometimes – if I don't have anything nice to say, I don't say it. And I absolutely understand this is just my way – I do not force anyone to do it as well. But I can't imagine reading a story and it's not up to my standards, and then giving that energy to open their profile and send them a long paragraph how I think their story is not good because I don't know – the updating schedule, or the story's pace and its length.

Especially since all these people are always around, reading my asks and by now they probably know that I either, don't react to that kind of stuff and if I do, I always just say well this is how I do it and I love writing my story this way. I have spent a lot of time discussing it with them and being very positive.

Sometimes, people are just here to spread negativity and anyone with a sense can probably tell by the way they write their message. It's more about getting offended if their "constructive criticism" isn't agreed on.

And what I want to say by this – everyone has different opinions but it's more about how you deliver it and most importantly, why. There are writers who are willing to change to please everyone's wishes and needs. There are writers who specifically ask – what do you not like about this and this? (And I'm not talking about not liking anything in the stories in terms of characters or what's happened in the story. I'm talking here about critizing writer's way of doing things).

I guess it's just important to be able to tell when to give your energy and if it's needed :)

[cha-melodius]

May I ask you about your writing??? First of all and possibly most importantly, how do you do it? How do you find inspiration and such? How do you make it happen? Because I sat down with a really juicy idea not long ago and I was excited and it was incredibly hard. I deleted it, I was embarrassed. So how do you first, come up with a great idea (which you do you write such cool stuff!) and then bring it to fruition? I’ve always been a decent writer but I was really frustrated with the fic I set out to write!!!

Hey anon! Sorry for sitting on this for a while but it came in the night before a big academic conference for me, so I've had almost no time for anything, sadly.

First off, thank you so much for the compliment on my writing! A lot of the direct answers to your questions are not very satisfying, tbh. Ideas come to me from everywhere—things I watch, read, random internet things—and how I bring it to fruition mostly involves a lot of planning. I got a lot happier with my work when I started making outlines for my fics, so I always know where I want to go with the story and how I'm getting there, versus meandering around aimlessly.

I'm guessing that there was something about your idea that was particularly challenging, since you said that you've always been a decent writer but found what you produced frustrating. Since I don't know the details I'm gonna give some advice that will hopefully cover a few different aspects. And first, a short list, and then the details under the cut because I'm a wordy bitch.

Just keep writing. It can take a while to find your voice.

Get help. Seek out 'subject experts' and people who you think are good at writing the kinds of stories you want to write.

Read a lot, and broadly, especially in the genre you want to write.

1. Just keep writing. It can take a while to find your voice.

I started writing fanfic (or, re-started, because I wrote when I was young and then took a looooong break) to get the stories out of my head, and my first fics were not great lol. They were also for a rarepair and approximately 5 people read them, so there wasn't much pressure I suppose. I was just putting them on AO3 because I figured why not? And then I just kept writing, off and on for different fandoms, until the writing bug really caught me and I started producing a lot more, about five years ago. But it probably took me ~20 fics (several of which were quite long) before I'd consider my stuff to be decent. Whether you share your early works or not is up to you, but in general I'd recommend it because there's a good chance someone will love it (even if you consider it to be substandard) and that can help you feel better about your own writing. I didn't start out good at writing action, but I wrote (and read, see below) consistently in a lot of action-heavy fandoms, so I got a lot of practice. I also feel like the more I wrote, the more ideas I got, and the more unique ideas I got.

You occasionally see someone in fandom who's like "this is my first fic!" and it gets really popular or and lots of hype or whatever, but that's not the typical experience. Most of us start out writing like crap. It's ok. It gets better.

2. Get help. Seek out 'subject experts' and people who you think are good at writing the kinds of stories you want to write.

Ok, so you wrote a first draft you were disappointed in. Ask yourself what was disappointing about it? Do you feel like the beats aren't hitting, or the action is wooden, or the language is awkward? The great thing about fandom and fanfiction is that there are so many people that are willing to help out as beta readers or even just someone to talk to. I understand that getting a beta reader can seem daunting. You don't want someone to criticize your work, or it might seem embarrassing to show someone else a work you feel bad about. But if you get someone else to read it, you'll have the chance to both hear good things about it and also get advice about things you're uncertain about. People come to fandom from all walks of life and I'm a big fan of asking for help if you're writing about something you're not super familiar with. I've never actually been to therapy, so getting help from @celeritas2997 was absolutely critical for me to feel good about my couple's therapy AU. Also you can ask people for advice if they write the kinds of fics you want to write—I've had multiple people ask me for help with their action scenes, and I'm always happy to lend an eye and give advice.

Also, related to this: it's ok if you don't like your first draft. But don't delete it! Put it aside, whether you ask someone else to look at it or not, and come back to it a while later with fresh eyes. It may not be as terrible as you thought! Or maybe there are parts you still hate, but there are other parts that you can work on and revise.

3. Read a lot, and broadly, especially in the genre you want to write.

Want to write sci-fi? Read a lot of sci-fi novels. Read a lot of sci-fi AUs. Break out of your fandom and read fics in fandoms you don't know—I used to do this a lot and it was one of the most important steps in my process of finding my own voice as well as understanding how stories are built. When you read in only one fandom, you get used to a lot of the same voices and types of stories, but there is SO MUCH out there. I've been known to scroll through the 'Enemies to Lovers' tag on occasion, but also I will go into fandoms for media I know but have no strong connection to, don't want to write in but know the characters, and read those. I spent a lot of time reading X-men, Good Omens, Witcher, even MCU juggernauts like Stucky even though I don't really ship them. I know it probably sounds crazy to tell you to go read other fandoms when (I'm assuming you're RWRB) there's so much in this one, but I do think it's valuable. This one is not only for getting exposed to a lot of writing styles, but also lots of ideas. I've definitely gotten a lot of ideas that spun off from something else I read.

I feel like none of this is particularly revolutionary advice, but I hope it at least gives you (and anyone else who manages to read this far lol) some confidence to keep going and go after those stories you want to write. Everyone—me, popular fandom writers, professional authors—started out just writing a lot, and they improved over time.

Most importantly: just keep going. You can do it!!

[moonlight-tmd]

Continuation of idea-

So Bee and Blitz meet up and hang out in the military zone. Bee goes there pretty often, to his team's displease. He hangs out with Blitz, tells him stuff and plays games with him. usual hangout stuff... but on rare occasions, Bee would vent to blitzwing about things- Blitzwing having no trauma on his own tried his best to comfort Bee, they grew closer.

Until one day megatron comes back... real violent stuff begins to happen and everyone is on their guard. Bee warned Blitz about other Decepticons before, but Blitzwing thought he was referring to the two that kept going around wrecking stuff....

One night Megatron found Blitzwing in the military zone, Blitzwing was wary of him but he didn't seem like wanting to hurt him... Megatron on the other hand was pleased to see a mech with such power, he wanted him to join and help them- be a powerful weapon they can use to wipe out the autobots..

He tricked blitzwing into coming with him back to base and once he was in, he showed him all there was to know about Cybertron, Decepticons and the war. But most importantly how cruel the Autobots were. He talked to him, pouring poison into his thoughts until he decided to join. Megatron gave him the elemental weapon system and paired him with other Decepticons for training.

Meanwhile Bee was worried- one day he and Blitzwing were hanging out like normal, the next he could not be found anywhere. Bee searched and asked just about anyone if they seen him but to no avail... but then, he saw him at the battle field while the cons were stealing tech- he was with them, but it was different- Blitz wasn't excited to see Bee or the others at all, in fact he shot at them like the other cons. Bee tried to talk to him but he was cut off with a strike every time..

The cons got the tech and were fleeing, Blitzwing hesitated. Bee called out to him,... but Blitzwing only looked once before flying after the cons. Bee could only run after him and call before his voice faltered and he was standing there looking in the direction his dear friend flew...

Blitzwing has joined Decepticons, the thought stabbed him deep in the spark and he could do nothing but fall to his knees, tears freely falling as he quietly asked "Why?".

He couldn't believe it, why would Blitzwing turn on him? Did he do something wrong? Did he say something bad? Why did he leave? Why why why- he tried to find him, coming to the same military zone they spend so many days and nights in talking but it was empty every time. Blitzwing only showed up whenever the Decepticons struck and only fought against who he once called friend. It hurt, not just the debris from the attempted strikes but the fact that Blitzwing was attacking him…

He found him once during a patrol- he tried to talk with him... but Blitzwing was cold and said they shouldn't be friends. An argument rose, both of them yelling at each other for the crimes their factions committed- Blitzwing blaming Bee for not telling him anything about Decepticons and what Autobots did to his kind. Bee just yelled at him for leaving, going away and putting himself in a place that neither of them wanted to be in- he didn't care about the war and didn't want to fight. He blamed blitzwing for leaving him and telling him he could've stayed neutral like them, that they didn't need to fight.

"You said you didn't wanna hurt anyone but now you're hurting everyone! You hurt me!"

"Hummel-"

"I TRUSTED YOU!!"

Bee screamed, tears pouring out of his optics as he looked with the expression of deep hurt and sorrow, barely holding it together. Blitzwing just stared back silent.. Bee suddenly turned away and ran, Blitz tried to stop him but Bee only yelled at him to not talk to him and he drove as fast as he could away from the location. Blitzwing was left alone, weird mix of feelings swirling in his spark, but anger and regret being most prominent. Did he really make the right decision?

It's been weeks since they last talked, months since they last saw each other as friends. Bee was not doing okay, his team felt similar grief. Blitzwing was their friend too, they might not have been close but they cared, Bulkhead in particular was sad at the turn of events- he liked making art with Blitzwing, he finally found someone who understood him on that topic.

but none of them suffered like Bee did; Blitzwing was dear to him, he cherished every moment with him like it was the best thing ever, he liked him, more than he did everyone else. And he was painfully aware of what these emotions meant. How could Blitzwing do this to him…

Another allspark shard appeared, Decepticons were fighting and Blitzwing was there. Unlike many times before, Bee had not hesitated shooting at him. He aimed and fired away, even if it did close to no damage. The shots he’s been holding back on hurt Blitzwing’s spark way more than they did physically. They yelled, Blitzwing shot at Bee- he was cornered, he didn’t mean to.. but before he could do anything the crumbling building creaked and fell right onto the injured minibot that was in front of him… Blitzwing could do nothing but look at the rubble and a small stream of energon spilling from the crevices. He left with other Decepticons, not looking back.

The dull stirring of emotions filled him until he was back at base; he didn’t register what the warlord or the others were saying, only that at one point Megatron spoke to him and congratulated him on the kill. “Keep it up and you’ll be a great soldier one day.”

He was dismissed, Blitzwing walked back into his little cavern-room in base. Only after he reached it and closed the entrance did everything spill. Maniacal laughter filled with sorrow and pain sounded as he hit the wall over and over again, anger flooding his mind and hurt�� deep hurt bloomed in his spark.. he could only sit there fuming as the tears streamed down from under the visor and he leaned on the wall defeated… he remembered the first time he and Bee met, how he saved him from the falling rubble. How kind Bee was and how amazing everything felt with him… now it was gone, the same flashback of saving Bee compared to the newly formed one of him being crushed to death- the rubble Blitzwing caused to fall… Bee was no more… he cried himself to recharge that night, regret was the only thing he felt since then…

But Bee didn’t die in the rubble- he lived, barely and in critical condition. It took so many repairs to bring him back to previous state. He wished, prayed that Blitzwing would listen to him and change his mind, but when he woke up and didn’t see him at his berthside it was like a part of him died. He hoped and once again he was fooled- someone he trusted stabbed him in the spark twice,. he couldn’t take it, it hurt so much… if it wasn’t for the others being around and comforting him he didn’t know if he would make it.

Then something happened- Megatron decided to march on and try to take the Allspark at last. Half the city was evacuated and the Sumdac Tower was turned into a holding place for the crystal. The fight was brutal, Elite Guard with Autobots fighting with all that Megatron had in store… Blitzwing fought, he didn’t have another choice, he shot away without a thought, there was no way back… but then he saw it, the small yellow mech fighting with another con- Bumblebee- he was alive. Blitzwing stood there staring in shock as emotion rushed through him, he only snapped out of it once he saw the con strike Bee. He rushed to them and beat the other con relentlessly. It gave one final blaster shot before blitzwing offlined it. The ruin crumbled, Bee watched the concrete fall- only to be caught by Blitzwing. He struggled to keep it up, Bee just looked at him with confusion and disbelief- “I’m not making the same mistake again.” Blitzwing choked out as he pushed the rubble off at last. They looked at one another with unclear emotions, an explosion disrupted their moment and Blitzwing rushed to help the Autobots alongside Bee. He fought and fended off his emblem-kin, Megatron called him yelling about his betrayal, Blitzwing only shot at him. The fight was coming to an end- cons were killed or arrested and Megatron made one final stand- Blitzwing and Bee were fighting on the sidelines when Optimus declared victory via comms by arresting the warlord- even without the leader the leftover cons fought- Bee was caught off guard…

When Team Prime was regrouping in the battle field they heard a voice calling for help and then saw Blitzwing, carrying heavily injured Bee, yelling for help. Ratchet wasted no time running to them and treating Bee as much as he could in Blitz’s arms. Sentinel tried to arrest Blitz but was stopped by Optimus and Bulkhead…

They rushed back to base, Blitzwing couldn’t be by Bee’s side while Ratchet operated so he just sat in front of medbay, curled up against the wall, waiting.. Prowl came up to him and placed his servo on his arm as if to soothe him “He’ll be okay, Bee’s tougher than he looks.” he said, Blitzwing only looked at him for a moment before his optic drifted to the floor again…

When Bee woke up, everything was dark. vision slowly came to him and he was staring at the ceiling of medbay.. he felt numb, flashes of the battle played in his head as he slowly realized what must’ve happened. he tried to sit up but was quickly found rather limited to movement. He looked around and to his surprise- Blitzwing was there, at the edge of the medberth. Sat on the floor and propped up on the berth to sleep- his helm leaned heavily on Bee’s stabilizers while a giant servo held onto Bee’s. Bee stared at him for a while before slowly reaching out his other servo and petting him helm. A loud purr sounded as he pet Blitz, making Bee smile at the adorable display. Blitzwing must’ve woken up cuz soon after his helm shot up as he realized someone was touching him- he saw Bee and wasted almost no time quickly but gently pulling him into a hug. He apologized over and over again, saying that Bee was right and he was stupid for siding with Megatron. Bee leaned back enough to look into Blitz’s optics, both of them held that vulnerable softness.. Bee reached out as gently put his hand on Blitz’s cheek, a warm smile made its way on Bee’s face- the same affection Blitz remembered seeing before all of this happened. He leaned down and pressed his helm against Bee’s, both silent and content, relief and warm filled their sparks and they remained close. Little did they know Ratchet and the rest stood by the medbay door watching them, peaceful expressions on their faces.

Blitzwing has decided to join the team and got his own room in the plant. Bee was so happy Blitz was gonna stay around, they were gonna have so much fun and see each other so often! It was amazing, both of them were so happy to spend time with one another- Bee taught Blitz to play video games with him and Blitz took Bee on flights. Then one of their date-not-dates Bee could not hold any longer- they were chatting by the lake shore, sun setting in the distance and it was just the two of them in the secluded spot they found. Blitz was in the middle of telling a story that happened to him and bulk when Bee leaned closer and kissed him. Blitz, taken by surprise, only hesitated a second before relaxing and returning the kiss with the same tenderness. Bee pulled away and whispered without a thought “I love you.” in the sweetest tone Blitzwing has ever heard.

They stayed in that spot until the dark, holding one another close and saying sweet things. Then cuddled to recharge in Blitzwing’s berth and shared sweet morning kisses the next day. The others knew there was something between the two but now it was clear the two were a couple. Of course there was a little teasing when Blitz mindlessly kissed Bee’s cheek in front of the others but they were happy for them. 

[modelbus]

I've been in the worst writing slump... so I've defaulted to Kaz Brekker (oops). This didn't get as far as I wanted it to, but it's about 2k words!

Be warned: This contains death (murder), kidnapping, violence, skin trading, mentioned sex work, human trafficking (called "the skin trade" in here), weaponry, and I think that's it!

Pairing: Kaz Brekker x Gn!Reader

Tricked Target

Time is as good as the kruge in your pockets in the Barrel. You know this well, considering you have little of both; money and time. Or perhaps you have too much time. It simply depends on how one sees it, you suppose.

Someone might take you pouring over papers on a desk as a waste of time. See the mahogany wood, stained dark, and curl their lips as the sheer money it must've taken to buy.

Someone else might realize this isn't your office, isn't your desk, and keep their mouth shut.

Tonight, that happens to be an unfortunate man named Zade Oren. Tied in his leather chair, black ropes expertly woven, a gag stuffed in his mouth, and both Achilles slashed for good measure, he learned his lesson.

Don't piss you off.

And although he isn't technically keeping his mouth shut of his own free will, it still technically counts. You give him the slightest of glances, just enough to monitor the tears dripping down his face from wide eyes, before returning to the papers you're rifling through.

"This would be easier if you had just cooperated." You muse aloud, flicking through a ledger before abandoning it. "But you guys never do."

He makes a pathetic sort of whimpering that makes you grin.

You aren't a bad person. After all, you only enjoy the blood on your hands when it's from the right person. The type of person you have at your mercy right now, for example. If anything, you're as close to good as it gets in the barrel. A type of vigilante, rather than one of the profit-seeking groups.

Dime Lions, Black Tips, Razorgulls, The Liddies, Harley's Pointers. Now those are some bad organizations. You're still on the fence about The Dregs; you've seen them do as much good as they have bad. Mostly due to the smaller organization within them. Or maybe the Crows aren't part of the Dregs anymore; you don't care. They're not of interest to you.

"Ah. Here we go." You hum, finding a record of a transaction. Zade gives a feeble cry. Useless, these men who beg for their lives. As if you'll ever give them back.

The transaction seems harmless enough. Four pearls for a sum of money. A sum far too large to be worth even some really fucking nice pearls. And, most importantly, names of the buyer and seller. Your eyes ghost over Zade's name as the buyer, focusing on the seller's name instead.

Then, you crumple up the paper and stuffs it in your pocket.

Pearls. What a stupid code name. The sellers determine it, and they're never very creative with code names. Always something valuable, never something believable.

All it takes is one person (you, in this case) to see what it really means.

Kids.

"I should be going, I think." You finally say, straightening. "Don't worry, don't worry. No more people need to get hurt anymore."

Zade slumps in relief, and you let a wicked grin stretch over your face.

"Oh, no, you've misunderstood. No people will be harmed by me tonight. But you're not really a person, are you?" Your head tilts, watching the panic wash over his features.

Like a cat toying with a mouse, you are. It's just so amusing though, to witness the fear. To let them experience what they've instilled in so many others. That despair? It's precious.

Your knife is sinking into his chest before he can protest any more. Pushing past the hard bone, sinking into his heart with a sick squelch. By the time you pull it out, he's already dead.

"Fool." You sigh, leaving him there and striding over to the window. Let his guards find him later, you don't care.

And when you hoist yourself out the window, scaling onto the roof, the office is almost as you found it. Only his dead body and a note to proclaim the kill as justified.

It reads the same as always: Hurt a kid and I'll hurt you next.

The Avenger is the name people like to call you. Or the rumors of you. Most of Ketterdam has the wrong ideas about you, but you aren't fixing to correct them. False assumptions only make your job far easier.

Honestly, you'd rather be called a protector. But avenger works just as fine. It gets the point across.

A shiver runs up your spine when you're standing on the rooftop, but a cursory glance around shows nobody. You didn't expect it to, but still. The feeling of eyes following you has only gotten stronger recently, but seeing as nobody has attempted to kill you yet you assume it's fine.

Some people are just too curious for their own good and like being spies. As long as they aren't fucking up your plans, you really don't care. Honestly. The feeling of eyes is perfectly fine with you.

"You could say hi. I don't bite." You murmur into the still air, but to no avail.

The feeling doesn't leave as you head back to your home, a dingy apartment near a lot of the gambling dens. It's rented from a landlord who couldn't give less of a shit—she's never met the guy—which was perfect for you. And the place was cheap, which was a big bonus. Not that you were hurting for money, because you had no problems about stealing from those you killed, but you preferred to use it for better things.

Like buying new knives.

Dropping back down to the alleys, your feet hit the cobbles without a single sound. Subtlety was an art form, one everyone had to perfect in the barrel. Unless they were rich enough to get away without it, but you were not. Sadly.

There's footsteps behind her, and you turn to glare at the stranger. Give them a silent warning to mind their own fucking business.

Luck is not on your side today though, because they lunge at you with outstretched hands and a knife. You dodge, slamming your body into a wall to avoid the attack, hands scrambling for your own daggers.

The attacker is big, an ugly snarl stretched out across his mug, a beard covering half his face. Professional, if you had to guess, and definitely after you. Oh, joy.

This time, you don't give him the opening he wants. You dart forward, metal gleaming, knowing that the only way to walk away is to remove the obstacle in your path. In other words: kill him.

You both scramble, your knife digging into his forearm due to a nicely executed move on his part, but you abandon it in his arm to stab at him with another. A hand on your arm, metal meeting metal, it's a raw fight. Evenly matched.

But you must be off, must be mentally occupied, because you don't hear the footsteps behind you until it's too late. It's not until something slams into your head, sending you staggering with black spots, do you realize someone else is here.

"And that's meant to be the Avenger?" The person behind you scoffs.

"They put up a pretty good fight before you came in." Burly guy answers, stepping toward you.

His shoes are the last thing you see before your eyes roll back.

-

There's a hood over your head.

When you blinks your eyes open, you're met with complete and utter darkness. Although you want to panic—desperately—you don't. You can feel the ropes tying you to some type of chair, your wrists pulled together behind the back of it and your ankles tied to the legs of the chair.

Panicking now wouldn't do anything for you, so you just sit in silence.

But you're frustrated. So frustrated that you let your guard drop, that you've gotten yourself into this situation. You refuse to be another Mar, refuses to be the second Avenger that befalls the fate they tried to prevent.

"Makes sense now why he's wanting 'em." Someone is saying, and you try to subtly tilt your head to listen in. "He's always collecting 'em dangerous skinny ones."

"Putting together his own little menagerie." A second voice joins in, laughing.

The words have you tensing, against all instincts. Are they selling you to the menagerie?

Everyone knows what the menagerie is. Girls, tricked into sex work—and sometimes men—and people all too willing to take advantage of them. One of the things you worked against, and, subsequently, one of your worst nightmares.

"Serves this one right. Sardonic, isn't it?"

"You mean ironic?"

"What the difference?"

Oh, saints. You haven't just been kidnapped, but you've been kidnapped by idiots.

"Both of you stop. He'll be here soon." And that's a third voice. Only two people grabbed you, and you're willing to bet this third is the boss.

You don't recognize the voice, but you haven't exactly heard the voices of many people that are high in the chain in the Barrel. Not unless it's them begging for life, and you never hear from them again after.

But now you know for certain that they won't be sending you to the actual menagerie at least. The double confirmation is nice, even if the unknown is a whole other worry.

A door opens somewhere, and there's an abrupt rush of footsteps.

"You're early!" Probably boss guy shouts way too loudly. "The Avenger is all ready for you, but still knocked out."

"How long ago did you grab them?" Oh, that's a new voice. Faintly familiar, although you can't tell from where.

It's been a long time since you've felt so helpless. Like things were out of your carefully measured control. Not since you came home to an empty apartment, a person missing from it.

"A few hours." Probably boss answers. You don't need your eyes to know he's leering at you.

"...and how hard did you hit? Saints."

"They're alive, ain't they? Pay up."

"How much did we agree on again?" A cool voice asks, and your head jerks up. You know that voice, you've stalked the owner of that voice.

Kaz Brekker.

"Oh, look at that. It lives." Probably boss laughs cruelly, and you attempt a glare at him through the hood. "And you know how much we agreed on. Hand it over, Brekker."

And there's your confirmation. Your didn't just imagine it; Kaz Brekker is buying you. Why? You've never interfered with his dealings. In fact, after confirming he isn't into the skin deal, you actively stayed out of his business. You definitely didn't need more enemies than you already have.

The sound of Kruge being exchanged, followed by gleeful exclamations, makes you grit your teeth. If Brekker wants a shot at you, he'll have to do a lot more than pay some money.

"Get out." Brekker says after a moment, cutting the guys who kidnapped you off.

"This is our-"

"Get. Out."

Nobody makes him repeat it a third time, as is evidenced by the sound of footsteps fading away.

He's bossy, but he has the power to be. The cool indifference in his tone, the brilliant business plays he's made. Scrappy, like you, but far more powerful. There's a raw hunger in him you don't have; that nobody but him has.

It's scary as hell.

"Untie them."

There's movement around you, and then the hood is yanked off. You squint, blinking a few times, before focusing on the irritatingly put-together man in front of you. Although looking roughly the same age as you, the Barrel makes anyone be adults far too fast.

Brekker stares down at you, gloved hands clasped onto his cane. Behind him, a Suli girl hovers. Inej, his wraith. A spy, as far as anyone knows. Not an assassin. So that means whoever is working on untying you is Jesper.

"You're in quite the situation." He notes dully, but there's a wicked gleam in his eyes.

It only makes you glare harder. "Thanks, I'm aware."

The rope around your wrists falls away and you bring your hands to your lap, but don't move to untie your ankles. There's a sharpshooter behind you and a girl with knives in front of you; You aren't completely stupid. And that's not to mention the damage you know Brekker can do too.

"I have a deal for you." Brekker says after a moment, taking a step forward. He switches his crow-headed cane to his left hand, holding out his right for a handshake.

You don't take it. "What's the deal?"

"I don't think you're in a position to be asking questions."

"What's. The. Deal?"

"Perhaps I didn't make it clear. Take the deal right now, or we'll dump your body in the harbor to drown."

Well. That's not a lot of options. Everyone knows to negotiate all terms of a deal before accepting, but what choice do you have? He's brilliant for this move, and you hate him for it. Saving your life, buying you, just to force you into a deal to live.

Before you can talk yourself out of it, reason why this is such a horrible idea, you're shaking his hand. 

"Screw you." You spit out, life-saving be damned. Your grip tightens, just to spite him. Although his lips tug down, he doesn't pull away.

His reply is passive.

"Welcome to the crows."

[klerothesnowman]

Okay fine fuck, one person messaged me about it so under this unbearable pressure I'll rapid fire what I was going to say about the Mouthwashing discourse.

Mouthwashing spoilers beyond and CW I mention SA but not the one you probably think:

Swansea isn't your cool dad, Anya told him about Jimmy too and he did nothing and continued to belittle her.

Curly isn't Anya's special protector and lover, he failed her because he valued his own comfort over her safety and didn't want to rock the boat.

Neither of these are hot takes, this is the literal text, why are people getting upset at people for this?

Also Curly and Swansea aren't just as bad as Jimmy, they're dudes who exist in a patriarchal structure. They're likable and sympathetic and they're also Problematic.™

Again, not a hot take, literal text.

I feel like people's inabilities to reconcile stuff this is a problem with modern internet fandom culture that bleeds into how they react with real people also being Problematic™ See: Minecraft YouTuber drama (People calling GeorgeNotFound a sexual predator because he believed he had enthusiastic consent from someone who felt like she had to give it and WilburSoot fans still defending him despite his abusive behavior because they intuited that certain details are likely because he was struggling himself. I hate that I have opinions on these topics.)

On the flip side, getting on people's asses for making fanart of these people being better than they are in game is also fuckin' weird. The characters in Mouthwashing are likable and it's nice to imagine something horrible didn't happen to them.

But double wombo flip combo, I do not understand why people are making AUs where nothing awful happened to these characters and they're now completely different and also bikers or work in a vet hospital or some shit. Don't get it, this is a me thing, why not just make your own OCs guys?

Most importantly, people getting upset at people making "Toxic Yaoi" with Curly and Jimmy are peak ridiculous. "It's not Toxic Yaoi it's abusive" yeah no shit, that's what the game is about. They're exploring the relationship presented in the game in a slightly different direction. If you don't want to see a piece of shit manipulating vulnerable people then why did you enjoy and continue to seek content the horror game about a manipulative piece of shit manipulating vulnerable people?

[vaultof-thoughts]

DOUBTS, INSERCURITY AND ANXIETY

The title is blood red, why? because when I used to have doubts, and still didn't really understand non-dualism at all, my brain would set off alarms with flickering fiery red lights. As if they were forbidden , as if I was committing some crime and conducting treason. Many of us find it difficult to deal with doubts, anxiety, insecurity because it just feels so bad, so ickish... so painful an it instantly sends us into a spiral- "Oh No! I'm not supposed to be thinking this, I'm supposed to be Zen and indifferent all the time!" "NO!!! All my progress has gone to waste.." (spoiler alert: there is no progress to be made) or just endless interaction with the (seeming) thought and just piling on to the insecurity and discomfort. Trust me, we've ALL been there, and it's COMPLETELY and ABSOLOUTELY normal and OKAY. Because guess what? This will blow your mind: IT IS IRRELEVENT. I'm serious. You could think the most gruesome, ugly, thoughts about yourself and your dream but it doesn't affect " " at all. SO, what does this mean? It means these thoughts aren't yours!! You aren't the thinker!! CELEBRATE that for a moment! bask in freedom of that realization. These thoughts are from of the ego, or character or WHATEVER. Thing is, this ego is an illusion.

Thoughts, feelings, sensations, DESIRES = Ego

Ego = "the ego doesn’t exist. It’s not a person nor an entity or anything like that. It’s just a longtime held onto perception. It’s just a pile of ideas, concepts, states of mind, thoughts and feelings that we’re clung to and built upon like a castle of cards. It was never you. It was never truly real. It seemed to be because you were it. It cannot exist without you knowing yourself as it." - @crystaldust

Conclusion is, whatever you are going through right now, you are not actually going through. (sounded better in my head) Instead, there is only " " observing a ILLUSIONARY life with a nice lil character and basically in different forms. So everything is " " (the character, the life, other people, the dirty clothes on your floor you're not gonna clean up, etc) are all just different forms of " " so basically just " " observing " " which also mean that nothing is REALLY happening. Like yes I just failed my chemistry test but is there really anything happening here?? without labels, words and meaning what is there? no thing. So even the doubtful, fearful, anxious and insecure thoughts are nothing, you are assigning illusionary meaning to them and on top of that taking them to be you. Like? And what is absoloutellyyy hilarioussss is that " " put this dream or play on itself, and on purpose for fun, and you're acting like it's the end of the world.

On a more serious note though, I know how hard it can be to see negative thoughts for what they really are! and to stop taking the illusion so seriously. There's death, murder, poverty, starvation and many things to react to. I know it can be hard. I know trust me, but in all honesty, guys, you are the observer! not the person. And again, I will repeat this until your ears bleed. It is ALL COMPLETELY Illusionary. This does not mean you're not allowed to bawl your eyes out or react to anything at all- infact, I mean the contrary. Do WHAT YOU WANT. It doesn't matter, there is no "process" to mess up on here. Just come back and notice " " It's always there anyway even observing right now. And remember not to be harsh on yourself and take good care of yourself :) and most importantly have fun.

(im super sorry this post is very long and chaotic im going to try to add some pretty colors and pictures and stuff in later so that people actually read it but bye and ily)

[deblklesb]

[Angel of the small death — Sevika × Reader OneShot]

[ballet dancer reader, bodyguard Sevika, smut (MDNI)]

Summary: Being Silco's daughter it's not some simple thing, especially thinking about the necessity of being guarded at all times. When a conflict starts, Sevika, his best employee, becomes your main bodyguard. It turns out things escalate a little bit until you bout break the tension.

a/n: boy oh boy this is BIG and it took me more time than i expected. this was an anonymous request so i can't tag the person who did it, but i enjoyed writing this, thanks sm! I'm so sorry for the delay, I hope you enjoy it, anon! 💗✨

cw: some violence (a loose member), blood, smut (cunnilingus, masturbation, fingering)

not proof read | 5.2k words

[reblogs are highly appreciated!]

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

Living is such a weird concept; that's all you can think about as you look through the songs on your playlists, laying on the bed. Nothing seemed to draw your attention, the assignment of your last class in mind created an urge to find the answers to your inspiration. It was a good thing, exactly what you needed now, and you couldn't let it slip through your fingers. 

The plan was to show your teacher how capable you really were. Composition wasn't an easy thing, and even though you loved that subject the song was a major part to determine your next steps on that project. So you were searching restlessly, seeking for that high only an insight could provide, as fast as you could. 

You had to interrupt your plans, though, when the screen of your phone showed an incoming call. 

"Hi, dad", the other side of the line was weirdly messy, he usually tried to get a quiet place before calling you. 

"You need to go to my office. I see you there in ten minutes"

"Is everything okay?" You sat on the bed. His tone wasn't usual either. 

"I'll explain later. Now go." 

When Silco tells you to go, you go. 

The fact was that you didn't like your dad's work. All the illegal shit surrounded the places since you could remember, even if he tried hard to cover it in front of a kid. The whispers and smiles, usually opportunistics but also nervous, the feeling of being treated like a rare piece, the fear exhaling from people who knew what was happening but couldn't tell. You saw how everyone feared the slender, incisive man. 

For quite some time you thought you should fear him too. But, for better or worse, he was a different person when he was with you. And as you grew old, he started to explain the situations and dynamics to you, teach you things, show what you could have. In your late twenty's now, you could use a gun and threaten people using an infinite amount of goons, but you definitely rather not. 

Another thing he did was give you whatever you wanted. And some would say that wasn't a good thing, but it wasn't all that bad either. I mean, come on; he would let you go to the water park and in exchange you wouldn't miss behave, it was actually a very fair agreement. So he let you play with puppies when you were young, go out with your friends when you were a teenager and, most importantly, he'd encourage you to be a professional ballet dancer. 

Thinking about his honesty and open conversations, you entered the crowded building right before David, your bodyguard, ignoring the loud music, usual from a never ending night at The Last Drop. Since that was a common scenario for you, stopping to look around and enjoy the mood wasn't necessary. Your father's tone on that call was enough to make you walk upstairs, directly towards his office at the end of the hallway. 

Aside from what you feared, the scene in front of you was actually kinda unsettling. For sure he was a man that started to tell you stuff while you grew up, but a bloody finger on top of the table was new - it wasn’t attached to a body. Red stains on the wood were shining under the lights, contrasting too much with the green bathing the room due to the big glass window behind his desk. The finger had a cross tattooed on it and a golden ring, both now looking uncanny under the crimson that drew too much attention from you. 

“You didn’t have a tattooed finger before”, was all you could say, almost out of breath. 

“Well, there’s a first time for everything, right?” 

Your eyes wandered around; there was the only unfamiliar thing, and still was capable of making you feel uncomfortable. It was a surprise for yourself, the girl who beat a school colleague at seven years old because she called you a bitch. Silco tried very hard not to congratulate you too much that day, speaking politely with the principal but also making a point of not allowing that other girl to get an apology from you; she was cursing you, not the other way around - and it wasn’t just because some childish argument, the fact that you were from Zaun made you a target of mean looks and disdain all around Piltover while growing up. That girl had it coming (a broken nose) and you got a popsicle. So, yeah, blood wasn’t that out of your reality, but for some reason that detached finger made you change the weight from one leg to the other, breathing deeply. 

“What happened?”

“Some idiot had the idea of snitching, we lost a guy who was in Rebecca's factory.” The well dressed man pointed to the bloody, sole body part. “This was her way of telling she found out about our plans”

“Point made, I guess”

“I just called you here so we could arrange things with David.” You frowned, looking over your shoulder to the serious, suited man behind. “I’m assigning someone else to guard you from now on. At least until this troublesome, unnecessary hostility ends”

“You’re trying to invade each other’s business, I’m pretty sure it’s not that unnecessary, dad”, the amount of discomfort was making you uneasy. That conflict was growing too much, a finger wouldn’t be the most alarming body part to appear around. 

As much as your dad had had numerous conflicts around, the tension between Glasc Company and your father’s business took a turn when Rebecca decided to sell drugs herself. Losing territory, the one he fought too hard to get, was very unpleasant.

So, with quick heartbeats and perspiring palms, you watched as your father gave David some papers and instructions. The tall guy nodded, turning and offering you a smile - probably for the second or third time, which made it look very off-putting for him. 

“It was very nice working for you. I never said a thing because it wasn’t part of the work”, it was more words than you’ve ever heard from him. His voice was different that you thought based on the monosyllabic answers he always gave. “but your book recommendations and songs were good. Thanks”

“Well, that’s more than I expected, I genuinely thought you hated me.” You chuckled. “It was nice having you around, David”

Then he left the room and you were left with your dad and that stupid finger, Silco seated on his couch and grabbed a cigar. “Aren’t you going to grab that finger? I thought it was rude to show it around for nothing”, you seated next to him. 

Even though your father wasn’t hurt, the aspect of where that war could lead to made you think about very violent and scary endings. He was a good criminal, but still a man, a mortal one.

“I need someone else to see it” He crossed his legs as you got closer, laying the head on his shoulder before he pulled you closer on a sided embrace. “She’ll come soon. Until then, tell me how your classes are.” 

He always did that, since you were a kid. Being on a college level didn’t make that much of a difference in his eyes, at least about that topic. He would listen to you talk about muscle pains and lame history classes, instrumental music, group dynamics and upcoming events. It was simple and chill, but it was his way of connecting with you in an area he didn’t know a lot about, aside from your yearly spectacles. 

“This new assignment seems tiring, darling” He observed. “But, like they say, break a leg. You will be just fine” 

Before you could make a joke about his use of theatrical sayings, the door swung open to reveal a tall, cloaked woman with short dark hair. The look on her face revealed dissatisfaction when she traveled it from the detached, bloody finger to you; the same you knew very well from everytime you both crossed paths. The same one you couldn’t forget for two days after receiving it. 

She just stood there, silent, hands on the side of her built body, looking directly at you as if she was waiting for something - or someone. You could involuntarily lose yourself under the grayish orbs, as much as you hated this fact, but an insight struck you. 

You backed off your father, turning to stare at him, not getting a single word in response. That must be a joke. 

“You can’t be serious”, the tone in your voice was almost desperate. He couldn’t be doing this, right? 

 “That finger points otherwise”

・・・・・・・・・・

Telling David you thought he hated you was a silly comment to cool the mood. Saying that Sevika probably hated you was an understatement. 

The first time you met she had just been hired and you both made a scene when she didn't believe you about being Silco's daughter. When your father introduced you officially, she just looked annoyed and bit back some unpleasant comment, knowing very well that it could cost her work. 

Since then, you haven't spoken peacefully with each other. She always had a snarky comment about your classes and the way you behaved - which, to be fair, she wasn't kinda wrong; every year you realized how stupid you could've been the year before, maturity didn't come out of nowhere. Sevika herself got more mature too. She was probably five years older than you and with much more life experience, but she wasn't the holder of all knowledge and could be very judgemental too. 

Putting you together wasn't a choice your father made for nothing. Sevika was his best employee. She fought better than anyone and would prioritize your safety at all costs, since it was her job now. That meant that if you wanted to go somewhere, Sevika had a saying on if you could go or not. If you wanted to visit a new place, it had to be checked before. If you wanted to stay up all night practicing in a studio you rented - because your apartment wasn't that big in order to not draw too much attention -, she had to be there and also get more people to guard the building. 

And that's exactly what was happening right now. 

A month since the finger incident, with Sevika being your bodyguard. She didn't look pleased. And you could say you weren't either… But that would be a massive lie. 

Because you liked her looks in your direction when you were getting out of classes, and you liked the way she rolled her eyes at your bad jokes, the ones you did solely to annoy her - you were very mature but you also loved to annoy her. You liked to stand next to her on coffee shop lines, instead of being in front of her, and you liked to dress better just so she could give you a look from head to toes whenever you got out of your apartment in the mornings. 

Honestly, who could judge you? 

You didn't realize those things until a week later after this whole shit started, when you tried to get off one night and accidentally imagine her. It was a very embarrassing moment and you forced yourself to sleep as soon as you got back from that high, but the image didn't fade away. The image of her towering you and kissing you, pressing her body against yours in the most desperate way. You got off imagining kisses and intimacy with Sevika. Not necessarily pornographic scenarios, no; just the thought of her lips on yours and how she would react when feeling you on her fingers, her face and the words she could say, the heavy breaths. That turned you on. The feeling of being so close you could feel the heat and your heart beat faster. 

You don't know what is the worst part: coming when imagining Sevika, or the fact that what got into your mind wasn't even that explicit. It was so simple, it made you pissed off about how she could affect you with so little. 

But it was just a fantasy, a distant and unrealistic one. She didn't like you. Right? 

Right. 

That ideas were fucking you up bit by bit. At this point it was difficult to practice, head far gone, not in the slightest focusing on that amazing song you got to choose - La Danse Macabre was one of your favorite pieces and fit the theme well in your vision. So you needed to compose a four  minute choreography and you have been practicing it for four weeks straight. You'd go from classes to the studio every day, staying up until late. Your feet hurt, your body was most definitely not that used to the extra effort, but it would be worth it. Not to brag, but it was kinda dope. 

So there you were, looking at yourself in the mirror, trying to convey all the feelings you needed to: the sensuality of death, calling the viewer in the most subtle and dangerous way at first, but ending up being beautiful. 

Your body gesture had to be on point with the postures and the weight of the moviments, it wasn't easy the fact that you would present it alone. 

At some point, you didn't know when, you noticed Sevika on the corner next to the door. She was just there, quiet, looking at you. 

Her presence threw you off. You slipped a little, losing timing and concentration. "Fuck", you hissed. 

The song stopped when you reached your phone to pause it. Looking at the time, it had been three hours since you arrived. Your legs were sore and, honestly, the concentration was so little that just the image of that woman was enough to make you lose it. Tiredness and frustration got into you, making you sigh and turn to her. She didn't move an inch. 

"What are you looking at?" That sounded more harsh than you wished.

"I thought you were a dancer. They usually are looked at, anyways", she didn't seem to diminish anything there, or to bother by your tone. That fucking look she had, the one that told you how you wouldn't get anything from her; it was nerve-wracking. 

You thought you saw her eyes wandering through your body, but it probably was just some illusion. 

"Yeah, I guess so", you shrugged, trying not to notice her posture or to imagine her torso under that cloak. And shirt. Numerous thoughts came back; no, illusions. Fantasies. Sevika holding you and her breath against your skin, would the feeling of her torso under your palms be so pleasant? Would her lips be so good on yours? Would the warmth give you butterflies? "Do you like what you see?" 

The fact that you said "see" and not "saw" didn't click immediately; you weren't talking about the dance. 

Sevika gulped. She gulped while analyzing your body on that collant and pantyhose, thinking about how your would skin feel under her touch. How she wanted to hear you calling her name and gasping, while she tried to make you feel so good like you never felt. 

The looks weren't just your imagination. The way she noticed you dressing a little bit differently, that was real. And she'd spent the day trying to focus on her work and not laughing at your horrible jokes, or not feeling too good about you succeeding in your classes and beating all those snobs' pilties. She wanted to congratulate you about the choreography and say how she would follow you without question if you were death, because dying under your hypnotizing moves would be a blessing. 

She wanted to say how you could do whatever you wanted to her. 

So that question was so timely. The smirk on her full dark lips made you shiver, a feeling pooling on your stomach, anticipation. Gods help you, the need to kiss her was so fucking overwhelming now. 

"I do, actually", Sevika said. "I like it very much. It's a gorgeous view"

It could be all. That moment could end and you'd never mention it again, leave it like water under the bridge. But, oh, you wanted to drown. You wanted to drink that water, savor it, until that thirst ended. 

So you gave a step. And seeing her chest moving with a breath, you gave another. You walked towards her carefully, like she could escape any minute, and when you were finally close enough that pressure seemed to crush your chest, taking the air from your lungs. 

In your life it wasn't that many times you'd sweat before kissing someone. And yet there you were, palms perspiring because Sevika wasn't moving.

"Show me how you like it, then", you said. "I'm a physical, practical learner, by the way" 

She chuckled lightly, looking away and then to you again. That could literally cost her life or yours. 

You could be the angel of her small death, and Sevika would die happily. 

Throwing all the reasoning away, she finally touched you. She pulled you close and erased the space between your lips, poisoning herself in your taste and your tongue. Your mind flooded with stimuli: her lips and tongue, her shoulders under your hands, the weight of her touch on your hips, the imaginary scenes your mind created to make you ask yourself about what you both could do. 

The small moan that escaped between the kiss made her hold you tighter, dominating that moment with her need. Her hair felt soft, intertwined with your fingers, and the muscles pressing yours made your head spin. It must be a gift from the goddesses. 

It didn't matter the other guards outside of the room or the building, right now it was just you both. 

"Show me how you like it", you whispered, untying her cloak to reveal her strong torso and shoulders covered by the dark shirt. "How you'd like to take me"

She groaned, kissing you again and pulling you by the thighs, forcing you to wrap the legs around her as she walked to sit on a simple couch there. 

The feeling of her body under your touch was capable of numbing your thoughts, skin warm and scarred. Her kiss was so fucking intoxicating, consuming you from inside out while she grabbed your flesh. 

When her lips traveled through your chin and jaw, going to your neck, you sighed and moved the hips on her lap. Your fingers got the elastic off her hair, letting the strands fall loose around her face as you pulled back to look at the woman. The dark grayish eyes and the full lips, beautiful nose, that jawline, some scars around; Sevika was so pretty it took your breath away. 

"I don't think you want to spend all the time looking at me, princess", she murmured and her voice made all your body respond. The smirk added to her movements to lose your hair from the high bun; fuck, you were out of words. "What? Did the cat get your tongue?" 

"I'll look at you a lot later", you finally said, fingers caressing her features as she analyzed you closely. "Now I really need you to handle me around" 

Sevika's smug was something so intimate to you, something that, you swear, could make you go insane. 

She pulled the straps of your leotard, eyes still glued to your reactions as the cool air reached your nipples, making you sigh. Without wasting any more time, Sevika held you by the waist with the prosthetic hand and used the other to play with one breast. A warm tongue tasted the other one, and she was so careful to let you feel every inch of that contact. You felt that throbbing between your legs more intensely the more she twisted the muscle, savoring, tasting. Her thumb and index finger played with the free nipple, shivers across your body making you breathe heavily with the sensations. 

Your hands worked on feeling every muscle you could, hips moving because the sensations spreading from between your legs through your body were getting more and more prominent. Her tongue was soft, but your attention got divided by the cool prosthetic hand pulling the leotard. You didn’t want to separate from her, but you had too. 

Sevika kept looking at your body as you pulled away, getting up between her strong legs. And she analyzed as you started to take off the clothes and the pointe shoes. Being under her sight like that was something else, you could feel your heart beating across your whole body, getting heated and desperate. Her demeanor, the laid back posture, spread legs and trenchant look got you wanting to get on your knees. And that’s what you did. 

Throwing the fabric pieces away, you started to unbelt her pants and pull the zip down while squatting and kneeling. She’d stare at you, at your easy hands and light touches going especially fast to open the clothing. The contrast between this and the way you looked at her could make her go impatient, but she held back the instinct to do everything on her time when seeing the hunger growing in you. 

“I thought you wanted me to handle you”, she smirked while raising the hips to take away the pants, after doing the same with her shoes. You helped, caressing the muscular thighs with admiration in your mind. Fuck, she was so beautiful. 

“And I hope you do”, you kissed the right thigh, trailing up slowly until you reached her crotch. Under the shirt you saw her abdomen contracting in response and the chest expanding with her heavy breaths. “Never rode someone’s face?” You smirked, right hand touching the side of her body, up and down. 

As you imagined, she then proceeded to lean in your direction while a hand grabbed you by the, now, loose hair. It wasn’t hard, but enough to make you throb and, for sure, get more wet. When she noticed your reaction was positive something shifted. Her pupils blown, and you could notice the mood changing by the glit in her eyes. 

She got so close the tip of your noses bumped, silence crushing you while she made sure you wouldn’t falt back. And then, you could swear, Sevika got a bigger hunger in her. “Finish taking this shit off”, she said. 

You needed a second as she laid back again. She arched an eyebrow as a cue for you to pull the boxers off, and as much as you tried you didn’t paid a single fuck to where that piece of fabric went. Not when Sevika drew you closer with a single ministration through your head, pulling you to her core as your heart beat faster.

She was wet and, fuck, she looked so appealing. Your mouth watered as you rested the hands on her bare thighs. 

“Tongue out”, you obeyed. 

Sevika finally pulled one last time and a satisfied, low sound got out of you, as you finally tasted her. And, oh, she was delicious.

Her hips started to move, the vision from that angle would never fade from your mind. She was enjoying this, dragging her core on your tongue, holding you there so you couldn’t leave, using you to her pleasure. And your mind was getting too crowded with that much information in the best way. Your pussy clenched when she moaned low, nipples somehow getting even harder to the point of hurting. Her taste was being scattered around your mouth and you wanted to be there for your whole life. 

“Flat your tongue”, and you did, with a rush that made her smirk. Her abs would flex with her movements, so as her thighs. 

Having Sevika riding your face was something so heavenly, so divine. You almost envied those girls in the brothel, who could get to do it so much, but then you'd remember that this woman was so worked up already because of you.  

Her bud against your palate, the juices going on your lips and chin, the expressions due to the pleasure that came to bestow her, the loose hair falling on her face and the muscles contracting. The little wet sounds of your tongue against her core made the situation more erotic, and at some point you started to move the muscle that was in contact there. It drew a moan from Sevika, who was using the left arm to sustain her weight while she rubbed herself on you, seeking pleasure. 

The more the seconds went by, the more Sevika loosened herself. She started to fault in her moves, twitching and spasming as her dark gray eyes ate the sight of you so eagerly tasting her. A small moan escaped, followed by a growl and her legs spreading more. 

Your hands flew to her breasts under the shirt, palming the warm flesh, searching for her nipples as you hummed against her core. The vibrations pleased her. 

The way you started to flick your tongue heavily got the tall woman groaning and pressing your head harder against herself. You saw the frown and the way her eyes rolled before closing, her body tensing, the shaky and sharp breaths as you felt her getting excessively wet. 

"Fuck–!" She gasped, a smirk on her full, attractive lips. "So good, princess", her words were as smooth as the caresses the woman made on your hair, still spasming everytime your tongue drew on her swollen bud. 

The flavor was divine; you thought as you palate went on her entrance. The fact that you could taste her forever made you hotter, eager, needier. 

Sevika leaned and pulled you again, making you sulk a little at the distance from that heavenly position. But then she got you back on her lap, against her chest, legs open. 

Even though no one else was there, you felt exposed. As if your secret were being revealed and, suddenly, the whole world could watch as your most recent forbidden fantasies played out. 

The way she held you there, prosthetic hand under a knee as the other one traveled around your naked body, creating heat paths on your skin. Her lips distribute kisses along your neck and shoulder, taking sighs from you. And underneath all of it was an overwhelming heartbeat that got you panting at the sensation of her touch going south. 

"Shit, you're dripping", she whispered, getting your attention. You turned to look at her, lips parted brushing on hers as her fingers went from your entrance to your already sensitive clit. "Got so worked up just from me riding your face?" 

"Yes…" 

Her digits, soaked, rubbed smoothly on your bud. You rested a hand on her hair, the other playing with your nipples as she tortuously stimulated your core. 

"So good… Do you get that wet when you touch yourself thinking about me?" 

You froze, eyes wandering around her face just to capture that smug. Despite that, Sevika didn't stop. She kept working on you, massaging your whole cunt, getting her own palm full of your moistures as you felt yourself throb. "I heard you one night. You didn't even notice you called my name, uh?"

Shit.

You actually did. With her on the other side of the door, you kinda expected that you had said it lower than it actually was, and that she hadn't listened to it that night. But it seems like life wouldn't let it pass.

"So now" Sevika kissed you, pecking on your lips as her fingers concentrated on your sensitive bud. "Let me hear you. Loud and clear" 

Her ministrations were making you move your hips. Everything started to be too much, her breath against your skin, the cold of the prosthetic hand and the air. You wanted to give in entirely, wishing you were at home so she could rail you on your bed. She increased the speed, having your moans growing bit by bit. 

It felt good. Too good. You kept messing with your own breasts, eyes rolling with your hips and her hand, feeling that high approaching. 

"Getting all loosen up and relax for me, I might as well fuck you again tonight, princess", she hissed, taking a small smile for you as two of her fingers pressed and got inside of you. 

You moaned more languidly as she moved with ease, in and out smoothly due to how wet you were. And it didn't take long until you felt that pull in your stomach, clenching around her digits and gasping, whining, a hand full of her hair as you moved without control. 

The climax made you arch your back, her fingers came back to circle on your clit again as you trembled and murmured some incomprehensible words. Throbbing and spasming; that woman made you so full of desire it was ridiculous. 

"Gorgeous", Sevika whispered, kissing your neck as you came down from your high, breathing deeply and feeling your body floating on her lap. 

"That was some stupid shit", you chuckled, panting. 

Her hands closed your legs and helped you turn a little so you could rest on her prosthetic arm and look better at her. Some sweat drops were on her forehead and the side of her neck, the dark skin glowing a bit. 

"I learned a lot today, thanks", the woman laughed, accepting your touch on her face. "It was very delightful" 

"I'm glad I could provide you some knowledge", her right hand rested on your thighs, thumb caressing your skin. "I hope on the future you can teach me how to make your fantasies come true"

At that, your core sent a shiver through your body, heat rising slightly. "Maybe someday I'll tell you"

Sevika nodded as you rested the head on her shoulder. She felt warm. Was it wrong to want her on your bed? 

"I'll look forward to it" 

・・・・・・・・・・

Your body was full of energy right now, the feeling of being on top of the world consuming you from inside out. It was almost possible to feel every molecule vibrating, twisting your guts. 

"Call another guard", you murmured to Sevika discreetly while passing by her. 

She followed you outside the building of Art classes, looking around as usual. The car was waiting, following the time established by orders. 

The whole way to your apartment was silent. Your class came back to memory, the sensation of finally presenting the piece you've been planning for weeks now. The music took you away and, during those notes that reverberated on your flesh, no one was there. Just you and the music, working together. And it didn't feel real when your teacher congratulated you with a smile on her fine lips; she wasn't the type of teacher to smile that much. That meant a lot. It was huge actually. 

But before telling anyone, you wanted to let all this energy flow to something else. To somebody else. 

So you waited until a knock on your bedroom door, and you saw her getting inside carefully, confusion on her face as you asked her to sit by a corner. 

Resting on your bed, heartbeat increasing, you moistened your lips. "Do you wanna know what else I fantasized about?"

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

[dividers by @froopis]

[dwobbitfromtheshire]

Stuck Between a Jock and a Metalhead

Summary: Nancy, on a whim, decides to visit Steve at Scoops Ahoy, which leads to her overhearing confessions from Steve that leads her to think about the decisions she's made. A few days later, she decides to come back. She finds him being hit on by the town freak. What's a girl to do? Oh, get stuck in a freezer with the both of them.

TW for SA. Yes, even though Jonathan didn't touch her, it was a form of sexually violation. We don't bring this up enough or the fact that Nancy shoved her feelings about it aside and then slept with him after being convinced to. It wasn't fair to all parties involved, but most importantly, Nancy and Steve, that this was how they started out. Yes, Steve was violated, too. I will be addressing that in another chapter. If you're going to do this in fiction, address it so all parties can have closure. Anyways, this chapter is dedicated to my fellow SA victims. Yes, I am a victim of SA, and some of my feelings bleed through there. This is for me and others like me. I also felt like I needed to do it for Nancy and her character, whose agency is constantly being taken away. She was in control when she slept with Steve but not when Jonathan took her picture and it was certainly in question when she slept with Jonathan. People always flip it around so Jonathan doesn't look quite so bad. Sorry, this is so long. I hope I did Nancy justice.

Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Jonathan wanted to give Nancy her stuff back, which was awkward, to say the least. Unfortunately, he got called into the Hawkins' Post when Nancy showed up, and so, he left her with Will. It was another awkward moment. What do you say to the person who's older brother you dumped?

"I'm glad you and Jonathan are able to be friends," Will said.

"What? Oh, yeah, me too," Nancy said and paused. "You're not upset with me for breaking up with him, are you?"

"No! I mean, it sucks but if things aren't working out between you, you shouldn't make yourselves miserable trying to make it work," Will said. "Jonathan told me some of what happened, not all of it, and he's glad that it went the way that it did. It could have gone much worse. The fact that you still want to be friends with him means something to me, too. I'm glad that he'll have someone to hang out with who isn't me."

"Yeah, me too," Nancy said softly.

"Of course, I understand if it's still awkward. If you want to leave before he comes back, he said your stuff was in a drawer in his room," Will said.

"That'd be great, actually. I promised Holly I would take her to the mall. I thought I would surprise her with an old friend," Nancy said.

"Steve?" Will asked.

"Yeah," she said and turned to head towards Jonathan's room.

"Nancy?" Will asked.

"Yeah?"

"You're a great big sister," Will said.

Nancy was grinning from ear to ear when she entered the room. While it was true that Dustin was her favorite and apparently, Steve’s as well, she did have a soft spot for Will, too. Nancy hummed thoughtfully as she looked around the room. She pulled out the bottom drawer of Jonathan's desk. Nope, she didn't see anything that looked like it belonged to her. Just to make sure, she pressed her hand to the back of the drawer. Nancy frowned when she came into contact with a small cylindrical object. Curious, she pulled it out. It was one of Jonathan's rolls of film. She wondered what was on here. Her curiosity won over, and she unrolled it, holding it up to the light. Her heart stopped. No, these photos were destroyed. Jonathan wouldn't still have copies? The proof was in her hand, though. He had somehow kept them.

She vaguely heard the front door open and the sound of Joyce's voice filtering in from the other room. Nancy knelt on the floor, still clutching the evidence in her hand. Everything had happened so fast then. . . Will went missing. . .Barb went missing. . . There was a monster on the loose, and she didn't have time to think about Jonathan taking those pictures. It wasn't just of her. It was of Tommy, Carol. . .Steve. She thought back to their argument in the woods.

"You said I was saying something, and that's why you took my picture," Nancy said.

"I saw this girl trying to be someone else. It was like you were alone or you thought you were, and you could just be yourself," Jonathan had said, and as she thought about it, that was fucking creepy.

You were alone, or you thought you were. No, there was someone in the bushes taking a picture of her most private intimate moment.

"That is such bullshit," Nancy had told him. "I am not trying to be someone else. Just because I'm dating Steve and you don't like him - "

"You know what? I just thought it was a good picture," Jonathan said.

So, him saying earlier before that he shouldn't have taken that photo that had been just bullshit? The more Nancy really thought about it, the more she realized how wrong it all was. . . How wrong Jonathan was and how he wasn't even sorry for taking that photo. He had invaded her privacy, not just hers but Steve’s as well. She felt sick to her stomach. She had slept with someone who didn't care about whether or not her privacy had been violated and who didn't understand the boundaries he had crossed even with his reason for doing it. Keeping the copies of the photos had proven that. And she had gotten mad at Steve for breaking his camera when he was just defending her and himself. She thought about Jonathan's hands all over her, and she wanted to be sick. She kept pushing it away, pushing it down and pretending like what Jonathan did wasn't that bad. She had gotten mad at Steve for wanting to pretend that everything was okay for one night when it was really her who was pretending and laying it all on Steve, too.

"I saw this girl trying to be someone else."

"This isn't you, Nance."

Why wasn't it her? Why was sleeping with Steve. . .being with Steve wasn't for her? Why couldn't everyone see that it didn't matter what it looked like on the outside to them? On the inside, Nancy wanted to be with him. . .wanted to make love to him. It only mattered what she wanted, what Steve wanted. They made the assumption that she didn't really want Steve, and without even really realizing it, she started to believe it, too. She had always been a planner when it came to the things that had mattered to her. She had planned on being with him the moment he started talking to her. She had made plans to sleep with him. All that she wanted was for it to mean something to him, and it did. When she told him to stop, he did. When it came down to it, Steve had made sure that it was her who made the first move when it came to initiating sex because he knew she felt more comfortable taking control and he wanted it to be what she wanted. . .the way she wanted it.

Sure, she had feelings for Jonathan, but she hadn't planned on sleeping with him. . .on acting on her feelings because something had been holding her back. It hadn't been just Steve, but it had been the most important part. She had been slightly drunk that night and filled with a euphoria that her plan to take down the lab was going to work. . .that she was finally going to get justice for Barb. She had wanted it to be Steve beside her. She had been set on believing that she had been settling for Steve, but maybe it was the other way around. Maybe she was just settling for Jonathan. God, she was an awful person. The sound of Joyce walking down the hallway with Will broke Nancy out of her thoughts.

"Why are you here without Jonathan?" Joyce asked.

"I'm not alone. Nancy's here. Jonathan had gotten called to the Post. Nancy came here to collect her stuff," Will said.

"Oh, that's always tough," she heard Joyce say, and then she popped her head into the room. "Nancy, honey? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine. Really," Nancy said weakly.

"I would believe that if you weren't crying," Joyce said.

Nancy hadn't even noticed it until she had pointed it out. She touched her cheek and realized it was wet.

"Oh, I am crying," Nancy said. "He kept this."

"What is that? Is this one of Jonathan's film strips?" Joyce asked. "Full of sentimental photos?"

"I wouldn't call them sentimental," Nancy scoffed.

"May I see?" Joyce asked softly.

She really didn't want to, but she knew Joyce, and she knew how determined she could be. She released the roll into her hands, biting her lip. Joyce held the strip up to the light. Nancy watched her pale considerably, and she rolled it back up. Joyce turned to Will, who was standing in the doorway looking concerned.

"Will, go into your room and blast the music," Joyce said. "I don't want you to hear any of this."

"Mom - ," Will started to say and she gave him a look.

Will looked at Nancy and then wandered off toward his room. A moment later, they heard the music blasting.

"Do you drink coffee?" Joyce asked softly.

"Yeah," Nancy said.

Joyce helped her off the floor and walked her into the kitchen. She started the coffee and placed a box of tissues in front of Nancy. The roll of film was placed on the table, and honestly, it felt like it was staring at Nancy. Suddenly, Joyce set a steaming mug in front of her.

"Do you want me to call your mom?" Joyce asked softly.

"What? No, I'm okay," Nancy said.

"I understand if you wanted to press charges against Jonathan," Joyce said gently.

"Press charges?" Nancy asked.

"For taking those photos of you with Steve. That was Steve’s house, right? The night Barbara died?" Joyce asked. "Look, when Hopper gets busy with work, he usually comes over to complain about Mike and El. If you feel that it's what you need to do, I'm not going to be mad at you, sweetheart."

"I couldn't do that to you and Will," Nancy said and sipped her coffee.

"So, what do you want to do?" Joyce asked.

"I just want to move forward, but I need time to let myself feel all of this. When Barb died, I tried so hard to pretend that everything was alright, that what he did was okay because, in a way, it led to us finding Will. We knew what happened to Barb. I pushed what he did to the back of my mind. He captured me in my most intimate moment. It was my first time with Steve. . . With anyone," Nancy said. "And the bigger picture was Will and Barb. It made it easier to focus on that and push everything else aside. It was too much on top of everything else."

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart," Joyce said.

"I understand, I think, why he did it," Nancy said.

"You do?"

"He spends so much time behind the camera that he can't see the boundary line, and in some way, I think he uses that to keep people at arms length but at the same time, trying to get to know them. And I understand that he probably doesn't even know that he crossed a boundary, that it's harder for him to recognize that. He uses the camera to push people away, and sometimes, in doing so, it hurts them because it's easier to do the wrong thing in order to protect yourself from being hurt. I think if he just steps out from behind the camera, he'd get a clearer picture," Nancy sighed.

"I noticed that too," Joyce said softly.

"I know all of that and know he wasn't intentionally trying to hurt me, but he did. He crossed a line, and I just need time, I think, to be around him again," Nancy said. "I don't know how to do that, considering I work with him."

"You leave that to me," she said, patting her hand and squeezing it gently.

"I think it wouldn't have been so hard right now if I hadn't acted on my feelings for him," Nancy said.

"I think it would help you if you talked about it with someone. It doesn't have to be your mom, but it might be better if it was," Joyce said softly.

Joyce didn't say anything else, just squeezed her hand as they finished drinking their coffee in silence. A moment later, they heard Jonathan come through the door, and judging by the sound of his voice, Hopper had arrived at the same time that Jonathan did. They immediately noticed the tension in the room.

"What's going on? Nancy?" Jonathan asked, and she refused to look at him. "Is that my film? Did you go through my things?"

"Oh, getting mad about your invasion of privacy is not something that you want to do right now, Jonathan Byers," Joyce said.

Nancy's jaw clenched, and her cheeks flushed with anger. She picked up the film, stood up, and chucked at him. It bounced off his head and landed near Hopper's feet.

"You asshole! You kept copies of the photos!" Nancy shrieked.

Joyce placed her hands on Nancy's arms, rubbing them in comfort.

"Nancy, honey, I got this," Joyce said.

Hopper picked up the film and unrolled it, held it up to the light.

"Jesus," Hopper said, and his jaw clenched, his eyes looking at Jonathan in anger. "Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you would be in if anyone else found these? Do you have any idea what you did to Steve and Nancy by taking these photos? Do you know what this photo is?"

"It's just a picture, and I forgot I had them," Jonathan said.

He actually looked guilty, and Nancy wondered if he actually felt bad about taking them or that he got caught.

"They're just pictures," Jonathan repeated.

"Considering both Nancy and Steve were underage at the time. . . You were, weren't you?" Hopper asked, and Nancy nodded. "That's child pornogrophy! Even if Nancy didn't charge you, I would still have to arrest you for that alone. Not to mention taking the photos of the other kids involved without their consent. I could add harassment charges to that as well as trespassing. With what a hard ass Steve’s dad is, he could throw everything at you, and he would have the resources to do it, too."

"I was looking for Will," Jonathan said defensively.

"The minute you started snapping these photos is the minute that you stopped thinking about Will, so don't use your brother to try and escape the fact that you fucked up," Joyce said and sighed.

"Do you want to press charges?" Hopper asked Nancy.

"No, I just want to go home," Nancy said.

She suddenly realized that she wasn't all that angry right, she was mostly just tired. Just so drained of everything. Maybe she'll be angry later.

"Hop, do you want to take Nancy home, please? I want to talk to Jonathan," Nancy said.

"Sure," Hop said and looked at Nancy softly as he pocketed the film. "Come on, kid."

The first few minutes of the ride back home was a silent one at first.

"You going to be okay, kid?" Hopper asked.

"I thought it didn't bother me what he did. I thought it was Steve who was overreacting when he broke Jonathan's camera, but maybe it was me who was underreacting. I want to forgive him, but I think I need to feel everything that I've been pushing away right now," Nancy said. "In time, I think I will be okay."

"I've seen you take on anything. You're one of the strongest kids I know," Hopper said. "You're definitely going to get through this. You got someone to talk to? I'm terrible at giving advice, but I've got two ears."

Nancy laughed as she thought about Steve and Eddie.

"Yeah, I've got friends," she replied.

They fell into silence again as she thought about what she was going to tell Steve and Eddie.

"So, Steve broke Jonathan's camera, huh? Good for him," Hopper said, and Nancy laughed. "You know, I have to ask Steve, too. I'm not going to arrest Jonathan either. I can't with the pictures that are also on the film."

"I know," Nancy said softly. "Steve would never tell his dad, by the way. He hates his dad."

Once they made it to her house, she climbed out of the vehicle and thanked him before entering her house. Karen was busy doing laundry, so Nancy quietly climbed the stairs to her bedroom, where she threw herself onto her bed. There was a tiny knock on her door, and she smiled when Holly's blonde head popped into the room.

"Nancy?" Holly asked, and suddenly Nancy remembered that she was supposed to take Holly to the mall.

"I'm sorry, Holly, I know I was supposed to take you to the mall, but I don't really feel good right now," Nancy said. "Can we do it tomorrow?"

"Okay! I'll be right back," Holly said.

When she came back, her arms were full with her blanket, pillow, and stuffed rabbit. She threw them on the bed and struggled to climb on up.

"What are you doing?" Nancy asked.

"Moving up my nap time, duh," Holly said. "You can snuggle with Bobby since you don't feel so good."

Nancy smiled as she held her rabbit to her chest while Holly snuggled into her side. God, she wanted to stay like this forever. She couldn't wait to spend time with her tomorrow. It will be a brand new day and one step closer to a new beginning.

Chapter Five

[hiiragi7]

ignore this if it’s uncomfy to answer, but do you have any advice for someone getting tested for having possible ovotestes?

Hmm... Let's see.

Disclaimer that I was tested for ovotestes when I was a teenager and then didn't find out I actually had them until several years after surgical removal (I was more or less just told I had weird gonads that didn't function as expected and that I needed to remove them to continue HRT), so my experiences may differ from yours. I think the advice I give here should apply okay anyway, though.

Advice for the emotional side of it:

Take it slowly, breathe. You're still you, your body is still your body regardless of what gonads you might have in there. And also, even if the results come back negative, that doesn't invalidate any other intersex traits you may have or your life experiences up until now. A test is just a test. It doesn't define you, at most it might provide explanations.

Remember to take care of yourself, this is often a pretty emotionally and physically draining process and it can take a lot out of you. Even if you view your intersexuality as 100% positive, doing anything medical often is draining and time-consuming and ideally you should be giving yourself lots of space to recover from all of that work. Take breaks, engage with your hobbies, self-care, all that good stuff.

If possible, let someone else know about what's going on so you have somebody to talk to about it (both about positive and negative feelings, excitements and anxieties). If not, could always try to pick up journalling if you think it might be helpful.

If it's not too overwhelming, you could try surrounding yourself with support from others who have been in your shoes. Get to know other intersex folk in your community, or join one - InterACT has a discord server for youth ages 13-30 and InterConnect has both a Facebook group and a discord server for all ages. (Here is a link to the InterACT discord server and here is a link to InterConnect's join form. I also happen to moderate both discord servers if you're interested and need help with either of them.)

Advice for the medical side of it:

Ask lots of questions, really push them on answering.

Make sure you can see all of your medical documentation, ask to see photos from any scans or MRI they do, not just reports if possible.

If you get anything more invasive done (ex. biopsy, surgical removal), make sure to get as much detail as you can on what exactly is being done, what will happen if they find something unexpected during the procedure, what the purpose of the procedure is and what the pros and cons are. This won't guarantee the doctors won't lie or will honor all of your requests, but you should do it anyway.

Most importantly, frequently check in with yourself and make sure YOU are comfortable with all of this. Remember that unless there is a pressing health concern you do not need to rush into any of this and you can take your time to decide on what you want to do and you can decline to do tests or procedures you aren't okay with. This is YOUR BODY!

Adding onto that last point, some tests just aren't feasible for every person. For example, I've heard from a lot of intersex folks with vaginas that they either could not do transvaginal ultrasounds at all or it was very painful for them, and a lot of people have to skip that specific procedure. And that's fine! If there are any procedures you can't do, that's okay and it doesn't make you a "bad patient". Work with your body and express your needs to the medical team. If something hurts, say so!

I hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions.

[canirove]

Rice, Rice, baby | Chapter 17

Previous chapter | Next chapter

Masterlist

“Olivia… You are pregnant.”

“What?” Madders says. “That it's not possible, there must be a mistake. Right, Liv? Liv?”

“I gotta go” I blurt out before getting up from my chair and running away.

This can't be happening to me. This can't be real. It just can't. I must be dreaming, or maybe unconscious because I hit my head with something or…

“Olivia, stop!” Madders says, suddenly showing up in front of me and making me clash against his chest. How did he do that?

“I can't” I whisper.

“Olivia, Liv… What is going on? Is what the doctor said true? Are you…”

My only reply is a nod.

“But, how? I mean, I know how, I just don't understand… When? And most importantly, with who?”

“Declan” I whisper again.

“What?” 

“Please lower down your voice, James” I say, wiping away a tear. “I don't want anyone finding us here.”

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But Liv… Dear God, Liv” he says before hugging me, the feeling of his arms around me making me start crying like a baby, my whole body shaking. “It's ok, it's ok” he says while caressing my hair. “It's gonna be ok.”

“It won't, James. I'm pregnant from a guy who doesn't love me and who plays for the team my dad hates the most. This is the end.”

“It isn't, Liv… Liv, look at me” Madders says, cupping my face and forcing me to look at him. “This isn't the end. Because you have me and Kennedy, and we will take care of you. Now and I always. I am your older brother and you are my little sister, remember? And I am the annoying kind of brother, which means that I won't be leaving you alone. Ever. I am here for you and we will go through this together, ok? We will make things work out” he says, wiping away some of my tears.

“Ok” I reply before hugging him and starting to cry again. 

He has to be right. This can't be the end, things will work out. They have to. 

━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

“Liv, what do you think you are doing?”

“Uh?”

“Give me that” Madders says, snatching from my hands the box I'm carrying. “You should not be carrying or lifting heavy weights, remember?” 

“It's just a box with paper cups, James. Relax” I chuckle.

“I don't care. You need to be careful, especially during the first months.”

“Shhh!” I tell him when some Tottenham staff members walk past us. 

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Where were you taking these?”

“To the kitchen.”

“Ok, let's go” he says, starting to walk while I just sigh. 

He's been offering to drive me to work or back home every single day, texting me to ask me how I'm feeling, how I've slept, if I'm already craving something and I need it… When he said that he was going to take care of me like an annoying older brother, he wasn't kidding. 

“Now you have him carrying stuff for you too?” Alex laughs when he sees us.

“I lost a bet and I have to be his slave.”

“A bet about what?”

“Something stupid. This way, Madders” I say, opening the kitchen's door. “A bet? What the fuck, James?”

“It is a good excuse, isn't it?” he shrugs. “Anyway, how are you feeling today? I was busy earlier and didn't have time to text you.”

“A bit better. When I woke up I still felt like I was going to throw up, but it only lasted a few minutes and it hasn't come back. Yet.”

“Let's hope it keeps improving, these first months are the worst. Kennedy's nausea was so bad with the twins. She… Holy shit. What was that noise?” 

“The cafeteria” I say, quickly running outside and finding Alex on the floor. “Oh my God, are you ok?”

“Yeah, yeah” he says, getting up with Madders’ help. “I think there was water or maybe coffee on the floor and I slipped.”

“Are you sure you are ok? The noise was so loud.”

“I'm fine, Liv. That was because I tried to hold onto something, grabbed the trays, and they fell with me.”

“Do you want me to call one of the team's doctors? I'm sure they won't mind checking you.” 

“I'm fine, Maddison” Alex insists. “Just my ego is bruised. Maybe my butt too.”

“You are lucky it was just us and that the whole team wasn't out here” he chuckles.

“I wouldn't see the end of it if that had been the case” Alex replies, trying to smile. “Anyway, I'm gonna go sit down for a bit if you don't mind.”

“Are you sure you don't want one of the doctors to check you?” I insist.

“I'm fine, Liv. Don't worry” he says, giving me a weird look I don't understand and slowly walking away.

[waggtoon]

I am not good when it comes to dealing with seriously bad real life news of a certain scale. The main reasons why I often don't address this news is:

A. I am easily stressed out when some serious bad news comes out.

B. Even if I wasn't stressed I don't feel qualified to talk about those sorts of things, I feel like I should leave it to the professionals who know what they're talking about (the last thing I want to do is spread misinformation).

I'm a cartoonist who specializes in drawing wacky hijinks and goofy butts. I'm the person to go to when you need a laugh, I'm the last person you should be going to when you want your opinion on current events.

That being said, one thing I will address is that previously there used to be a cameo present on a Think Ink page who was a character related to a now-controversial creator who used to work for Nickelodeon and most notably Cartoon Network. This cameo was drawn before anyone knew of the recent news revealed about him. While this cameo was a small one (only a portion of the character's face was shown) I have decided to edit out said cameo, nor will I be drawing anymore fanart of this creator's characters (True it was a small thing, but one it was one I didn't feel comfortable with it being there).

The best advice I can give at times like this (especially with all the political news that's happening) is to focus on what you can control. Focus on your work, do stuff that makes you happy like playing video games, talking with friends, watching your favorite shows or reading books and most importantly, take a break from social media.

I'm going to take my own advice and will be taking a break from social media (outside of contacting the people who have commissioned me and occasionally posting art) to focus on my dayjob in addition to making more comics, artwork and finishing up commissions. When I'm not working on anything I'll be focusing on what makes me happy.

Stay safe.