#but you mean so much to me; starshine

[ratstuckinamarble]

@bluebelleisabelle I'm so beyond glad I let you into mine, and that you let me into yours <3

you let someone into your own little world and they become so precious, oh so precious

[laurenairay]

Baking traditions - Q.Hughes

Summary: Noticing that you’re homesick, Quinn makes sure to include some of your autumn traditions.

The second of my Autumn & Halloween blurbs! How could I resist this slice of domestic life with Quinn?

Word Count: 778 words

Tagging: @fallinallincurls @starshine-hockey-girl @lam-ila @kurlyteuvo @tonyspep

@cixrosie

~

“Babe? What’s all this?”

When you’d gotten home from work that evening, you hadn’t expected your kitchen counters to be covered with ingredients.

Your boyfriend just smiled a little sheepishly, but shrugged innocently.

“I wanted to surprise you,” Quinn said simply.

“When congratulations, I’m surprised,” you mused.

Quinn just laughed, cheeks a little pink with blush as he leaned down to kiss you in greeting.

“Hey,” he murmured.

“Hey yourself,” you murmured back.

He smiled sweetly, pecking your lips in another kiss before standing upright again.

“I know you’ve been missing home…”

Well that was blunt. Quinn wasn’t wrong though. You’d moved to Vancouver to live with Quinn and take your relationship to the next level only six months ago – and while everything had been fairytale-levels of amazing, that didn’t mean there weren’t stumbling blocks. Like your homesickness, that you’d thought you’d done a good job of hiding.

“��and I just wanted to do something to cheer you up. I called your mom, and she said that you love baking in the Autumn, like all the spices and stuff are your favourite, so I thought maybe we could bake together?”

His voice trailed off in a hopeful embarrassment, but it was all you could do not to cry. This man. How were you gifted a man like this? Quinn noticed the tears in your eyes and immediately groaned.

“You hate it. This is making your homesickness even worse. I’m so dumb, I’m sorry, I-”

“Quinn, no, you’re not dumb at all. You’re the sweetest man ever. I love this idea,” you interrupted, laughing a little watery with a big smile.

The relief that spread across his face was immediate and dramatic.

“Really?” he asked.

“Really really,” you nodded, “What are we making?”

“I thought we’d try something easy? Chocolate chip pumpkin banana bread?” he said, “I found a recipe online that looked okay and I double checked with your mom too.”

So sweet.

“That sounds amazing, Quinn. Are we baking now?”

“It takes an hour to bake in the oven so I figured we could order take out now and eat dinner while we wait for the banana bread to cook?” he suggested.

Your man with a plan.

“That sounds great to me, baby, thank you. I’ll get changed out of my work clothes and we can start?”

“I’ll order dinner while you get changed,” he added, smiling.

In no time at all you were back in the kitchen in comfy sweats and an old t-shirt, take-out order being processed, while Quinn scrolled through his ipad for the recipe he saved.

“Okay, so first off, we’ve got to mash all these bananas. Shall I do that while you measure out the dry ingredients?”

You nodded, smiling up at him as you reached for a mixing bowl he’d already put on the kitchen counter. You whisked together the flour, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, dark chocolate chips, baking soda, baking powder & salt, and after mashing the bananas, in a separate mixing bowl Quinn whisked together the oil, sugars, eggs & vanilla extract until no lumps remained.

“That’s lump free, right?” he frowned, peering down into his bowl.

You glanced over and nodded. “Yeah that looks great baby.”

Quinn beamed back at you.

“Now we’ve just to combine the bananas into my bowl with a cup of pumpkin puree, before carefully stirring your dry ingredients mix into my bowl too,” he explained.

Somehow the two of you managed all of that without making too much mess.

“Last step is pouring it into the lined loaf cake tin and baking it for an hour. I already pre-heated the oven so we should be good to go?”

After you’d combined all the ingredients, Quinn’s face was as serious as you’d ever seen it as he carefully carried the loaf tin over to your oven, and you tried to hide your smile as you opened the oven for him.

He really cared, didn’t he? He cared so much.

“I’ll set a timer for an hour. I don’t want it to get burnt,” he frowned.

“It’s going to be amazing, I already know,” you said softly, resting a hand on his chest.

His frown softened to a sweet smile. “I just want this to be good for you.”

“The fact that we did this together is what made this good for me. The cake itself is an added bonus,” you said, smiling up at him.

A light blush spread across his cheeks and he nodded, sliding his arms around your waist to hold you closer to him.

“As long as you’re happy, I’m happy,” he said warmly.

“With you, how can I not be?”

[zaynemybeloved]

Breathe, Love.

aka, you're having a panic attack and the boys try to help.

These are just my headcanons, so I'm sorry if these are ooc for anyone.

Warnings: mental health, panic attacks, brief mention of psychogenic (non-epileptic) seizures, if anything else needs to be tagged please let me know.

Rafayel

🖌️ Would try to distract you with his sass and dramatics.

🖌️ "How does my bodyguard end up being the one who needs guarding? I'm supposed to be the vulnerable one here!"

🖌️ The smirk on his face says he's not being serious, but if in your anxiety riddled state you don't seem to respond well he would change his approach.

🖌️ "Hey, just breathe with me, okay? In... Out..."

🖌️ He would try to do breathing exercises to get you to a stable point, mostly unsure what to do.

🖌️ He might not be able to do much, but he's trying. He doesn't want his cutie to be upset.

🖌️ Would try to research how to help, just in case it happens again.

Sylus

🪶 "Kitten. Breathe."

🪶 His voice doesn't have the bite it usually does. Surprisingly gentle sounding as he looks at you with concern written on his face.

🪶 He would 100% know what happens in these episodes and what works and doesn't work for most people.

🪶 All kinds of grounding techniques on standby in his mind. He would probably start with the 5 senses one, honestly. I feel like he'd gently grab your hand or wrist for the touch part.

🪶 Would have Luke and Kieran go to get you some water and a blanket.

🪶 "Did someone do something or is it unprompted?"

🪶 If someone caused the anxiety attack they would be dealt with swiftly, otherwise he would be getting you in touch with one of the best psychiatric professionals he knows of.

Xavier

☄️ "Starshine, what's wrong?"

☄️ Concerned and caught off guard he would be trying to figure out what's going on. Once he figures it out though he would immediately jump to action.

☄️ He hates seeing you cry, so he wants to do what he can.

☄️ I feel like he would be the type to wrap his arms around you and press into you, acting like your own personal weighted blanket. Unless you don't want that, then he would settle for gently rubbing your back or arm.

☄️ "You're here with me, you're safe. There is no danger."

☄️Would definitely be the type to talk you through the attack, giving you something to focus on that isn't the tightening of your muscles and the pounding of your heart.

☄️ Something tells me he has experience with dealing with panic attacks, but a fairly limited experience.

Zayne

❄️ Knows the look you have right before a panic attack starts.

❄️ The most prepared of them all, but also likely the least hands on.

❄️ "It's okay, just focus on your breathing. Let it out, love."

❄️ Has water on standby, and would only touch you as a means of stopping you if you start to subconsciously harm yourself in the midst of the attack.

❄️ Would know exactly what to do if you happen to start shaking or twitching. He would remain calm during the episode which would be helpful at not increasing the distress you're under.

❄️ "You're doing good. I'm proud of you. Keep breathing, you've got this."

❄️ Absolutely going to put you on an anxiolytic and get you in touch with a therapist.

[pparacxosm]

dearly beloved

(tashi duncan x fem!childhood best friend!reader x patrick zweig; artashi wedding; nonlinear narrative; tw infidelity but then wrong fandom; tw obsessive dysfunctional relationships but then wrong fandom; tw patheticism but then wrong blog; oakland!tashi truthers i’m sorry; florida!tashi truthers ((if there be any)) you’re welcome ! ; uno mentioned twice for some reason; unromantic romance; callow sapphic pining; tw nascent menstruation; y2k teenage girlhood; it’s always patrick zweig at the scene of the crime; ((the crime is unrequited devotion)); tw a little bit of body shaming kind of; but then general tw for excessively derogatory banter; sorrow shared is sorrow doubled; cake shared is just good cake; tw atlanta™)

‘Love is awful. It’s awful. It’s painful. It’s frightening. It makes you doubt yourself, judge yourself, distance yourself from the other people in your life. It makes you selfish. It makes you creepy, makes you obsessed with your hair, makes you cruel, makes you say and do things you never thought you would do. It’s all any of us want, and it’s hell when we get there.

So no wonder it’s something we don’t want to do on our own.

I was taught if we’re born with love then life is about choosing the right place to put it. People talk about that a lot, feeling right, when it feels right it’s easy. But I’m not sure that’s true. It takes strength to know what’s right. And love isn’t something that weak people do. Being a romantic takes a hell of a lot of hope. I think what they mean is, when you find somebody that you love, it feels like hope.’

The Priest, ‘Fleabag’ (2016—2019) Episode 2.6

It strikes you that Tashi Duncan has always had a strange way of talking about her own wedding, as if the whole event is a starstrewn chrysalis. Something transformative, that will make of her an airborne creature, carried off by the lightness of her being.

She looks fucking beautiful, of course.

Sleek and exacting, draped in silk crêpe de Chine, like a white bullet. Tashi Duncan, the bride. Heavenborne starshine, all wrapped in tender clouds, just as she should be.

But then you’ve always thought so.

When she rehearses her aisle walk, golden gazelle legs glissading her across the hotel room carpet, she speaks of herself as if she were a rare and fragile insect.

She says, “I feel my bones changing,” her hands on either arm of the makeup chair you’re in.

You sniff, eyes flicking over every part of her. She is so close, bent over you, but she’s blurred at her edges on account of your gushing tears. You’re weeping. “Your bones?” you all but wail, face twisting in sorrow as the tears sluice harder.

Your left eyelash dangles wetly halfway off your eyelid.

You’re melting like a fucking witch, because her dress reveal came before the setting spray, and now your palms are soused in foundation. You keep wiping your face to keep from bemiring the butteryellow satin of your bridesmaids gown.

You weep more than Pam, as Tashi floats around the room.

She is radiant as sunlight on water.

Tre and Tevin holler, spirited, scattering around the room in all directions, like a great empire has collapsed. Okay, Tashi! they whistle, We see you!

And you weep and weep.

And now, her amber knee, faint scar, peeks from the slit in her silken, sweeping skirt and knocks against yours.

Her arms are lithe and lustrous and they bracket you within the amalgamated cloud of her meticulously curated Big Day fragrance. She floods your body.

She’s nodding softly. She is haloed by bloodwarm morninglight. You feel too pathetic to even be looking at her. You feel worse, even, when her delicate fingers coast poetic down your arms, and she takes your hands into hers.

“Hey,” she says softly. Squeezes your fingers. The flesh of her soft and fragrant as rosepetals. Her smile unfurls like a star going nova. “You’re crying so much,” she laughs.

“Of course, I’m crying,” you choke out, a watery gasp wafting her gorgeous face. “Pauline hates me.”

Tashi spares a glance over your shoulder, where her makeup artist is leaning against an ornate dresser, chewing the edge of her thumb and seeming generally engrossed with her phone.

“Oh, honey,” Tashi’s manicured thumbs caress tender circles over your knuckles. Then clicking her teeth softly, “You are making her do her job twice.”

“Oh God,” you sob, your head dropping heavily onto the crushed velvet cushion of the chairback. “Don’t get married.”

Tashi's smile turns soft and commiserating.

“Babe.”

“T.”

Tashi places your hands gently in your lap. She swivels your chair so you’re facing the vanity mirror.

The sight of yourself festers your misery like rotting flesh. You look like a smeared oil painting. Your lashes clump like eldritch spiders. Your face is smeared and swollen and gleaming wet. Your lower lip trembles.

Tashi glows behind you in a tragic pastiche of a solar eclipse.

“I can’t do this,” you blather past the clot in your throat. Mucus bubbles from your nostrils and trickles to your mouth. You swipe at it. You sniff again. “I’m gonna mess up your wedding.”

Tashi’s warm, slender fingers trace your collarbones. In college, you used to give each other lymphatic drainage massages.

“You’re gonna make my wedding.”

This makes you tear up again, in earnest.

The tissue of your nose is raw and sore. You moan a broken lament. Her thumbs drift in gentle ellipses along the slope of your shoulders. Her warmth seeps into you.

“Do you remember what you said to me,” Tashi asks, “When I got engaged?”

You swallow, coughing around a flower of phlegm. She leans down, resting her cheek against the top of your head. Her hair spills over your shoulders in velvet sunbeams.

You blink at her reflection. Her eyes wash you in tender flame.

“‘Dear God, please, no’?”

It is staggering, at thirteen, to stand over a limp, bloodstrewn body.

You are traipsing through the halls, summoned by weeping, and, when you peek into the loo, the dense miasma of sweat and antiseptic is pervaded with something stannic and fetid.

Tashi Duncan, splayed across the tile of the corner stall, clutches her tummy with death’s desperation. The athletic uniform of Blue Vista High garbs these young girls in floaty skirts of daisy white, which Tashi now thinks is fascinatingly deplorable.

Unfamiliar and unprepared, her eyes gleam with tears. Her heart pummels in her chest to the same faraway thunk, thunk rhythm of the tennis balls striking the clay courts outside.

The world seems to have turned against her. Her clothes are drenched red, and her body is betraying her. Tashi, twentyone months your senior, is a late bloomer. Here is her inaugural encounter with the inevitability of womanhood.

So, you encounter this horror film tableau. Tashi Duncan, bloodstrewn and splayed. You don’t feel nausea or concern or anything. You’re thirteen. You’re mildly reproachful, if anything.

“Um,” you say, a bit too loudly, “I have a tampon. If you want?”

“I want to play tennis.” She writhes. “My match is in twenty minutes.”

You swing your backpack off your shoulder, clutching it in front of you and digging clumsily into the front pocket. “Well, you need a tampon.”

“I’ve never…” She seems halfcoherent. You don’t have great faith in her ability to sweep across a court. But she catches the tampon with an easy agility when you toss it over.

There’s an odd, blithe immediacy to girlhood. You drop to your knees and play gynae. You introduce yourselves somewhere there. Your hair’s pretty; Where did you get those pins on your bag?; Do you think Mr Cleven’s kind of cute? Yeah, no, me neither; Is it in yet?

“Aw, what?” you whine at her insistence you disrobe and give her your clothes, “For how long?”

“Like,” she gestures frenetically with her hand, “Twenty minutes.”

You hum, ambivalent, but doff your skirt. And they get anal about you guys jumbling formal uniforms with athletic uniforms, so she takes your shirt, too, and you wear hers, the navy nylon collared tee with the Blue Vista crest stitched to the breast.

You sit pantless on the toilet seat, reading her Princess Diaries paperback.

She wins her game, apparently.

Her mom drives you home. She brings a fleecy pair of Tashi’s Powerpuff Girls pyjama bottoms, which fall past your ankles. Says, call me Pam, honey, when you say, thank you, Mrs Duncan.

You keep her shirt, and her pants, and you still smell her womb.

She hits you up on AIM that night.

Mr Cleven is cute, she sends. He looks like Dawson Leery.

Then, But he’s THE WORST !!!!!!

And then, TLC or Destiny’s Child?

And things go from there.

When Christine McVie starts crooning for mercy, you think you’ve officially had your fill.

You have taken bridesmaid, like you took best friend before that, like you will one day take doting aunty to their gilded brood.

At times, it feels like there is no limit to what you can take.

But the very concept of a First Dance feels like a vaudeville satire portending a dire omen. You refuse to dance into hell—you just can’t do it. And you can’t watch them squeeze your heart to bloodpulp between their flush, swaying bodies.

Though you suppose that may be symbolic. Beginning as the end.

Hot red spilled upon her white regalia. Will she still let you splay and clothe her? Or does such proprietary now fall within the purview of his husbandly duties? All set to ‘Say You Love Me’.

You take it all. On the chin, lying down. You take it. You take four consecutive champagne flutes to the gut. You take deep breaths. You take yourself out of the girdling throng of devoted onlookers as the music starts. You take no prisoners. You take your leave.

You are weeping again.

You try to catch your tears as they fall. You think you owe Pauline that much.

The veranda is lit by scattered amber lanterns and the weeping moon. Each stone pillar stands sentinel to the maelstrom of revelry within. Things are hushed, here, but so much colder. You miss her warm fingertips against your skin. You miss everything. Shadows stretch across the tiled floor in languorous arcs.

You smell the sea.

You find a dark corner and sink into it, bracing yourself on the balustrade as you crouch to your haunches. Your body aches with the force of your suppressed sobs. Your shoulders tremble and your heart mewls with anguish.

You miss the sound of footsteps, so the voice does surprise you.

“One wedding that’s a funeral.”

You laugh, sort of. Damp and congested. You try to daub the tears away. “Ha,” you sniff, “Yeah, no, I—“

You stop.

It doesn’t seem the least bit real.

Let’s leave aside the fact that he’s The Ex Boyfriend. He shouldn’t even exist in this fucking stratosphere anymore. And that’s why he seems elusive, ghostly, even now. Emerging from the shadows like a demonic apparition.

You know Art and Tashi don’t really talk about it. They have a peace to protect. You cannot say the same of yourself.

Because in the unbroken silence of your dreams, there is a whistle. A sharp, clear necklace of sound, tightening around your throat, tugging forward. And even earlier, at the ceremony. A malevolent spirit in the room seemed to say, I won’t be ignored. And here he fucking is.

A horrid little laugh builds up in your throat, until you can’t keep it down any longer.

You laugh. It comes out like a savage chortle. Patrick stills, five feet away from you. His eyes are sad, a little surprised, and, yes, repelled.

Repelled by you and your laugh.

Suddenly, all you feel is helpless anger. You’re angrier than you’ve ever been, angrier than when they were together, angrier than when Art swooped in to take his stillwarm seat, angrier than all those times you had to be quiet and eat humble pie. You’re furious that the woman you love has jettisoned her last name, like a shorn chrysalis. And you’re livid that you have to deal with this asshole, this piece of shit pretty boy you’d thought you’d seen the last of, who is standing in front of you, on this moonlit veranda, trying to share in your mourning. He’s fucking insane.

So you say it, out loud, but not too loud, because you don’t want to make a scene. You certainly don’t want Tashi to see him.

“You’re insane,” you scoff, gaze vast and glossy with shock, “You’re fuckin’ insane, I knew it! I knew you were fuckin’ insane! I told her you were fuckin’ insane.”

You’re surprised at the viciousness in your voice. The blue in his eyes has become washedout, almost white. You can see tiny red capillaries blooming around the iris in the dark.

To his credit, Patrick has never left you hanging in your ferocity.

His brows are hoisted in defense. He gestures wildly into the reception hall, “I’m fuckin’ insane? He’s fuckin’ insane! And he’s marrying her!”

He’s all big words and movements like this is fucking Seinfeld.

You upheave yourself to a tremulous stand. “You’re both fucking insane,” you say darkly, though, at the moment, you feel a bit deranged.

Your vehemence startles him a little. Something imperceptible changes in his mien. Like he’s standing straighter. His eyes shine like glass. You’re bizarrely reminded of those National Geographic documentaries where lions size each other up before a fight.

But then his shoulders slump, and he nods, and you are almost incredulous at his patheticism. “Okay,” he breathes. He seems tiny. “You look nice.”

You blink, shifting.

You clear your throat. “Thank you. You don’t.”

And he doesn’t. He’s wearing a T-shirt and athletic shorts. And he looks vaguely showered for once, but there’s still something faintly noxious in the air he emanates.

“Yeah, well,” he shrugs, “I wasn’t gonna dress up for a wedding I wasn’t invited to.” A pause. “That’d be weird.”

For a moment, you are sure you tripped on a rock out here, and cracked your skull open on a pillar, and all of this is a stage play happening in the most masochistic corner of your mind. You have never been so disbelieving of his inanity.

“Oh, yeah, that’d be weird!” you say, eyes still wide and marginally manic. “That’d be crazy, for sure. If you dressed up for the wedding you weren’t invited to.”

He fills in the blank there—always could, for his part—that he’s shown up to the wedding. He gives a feeble chuckle. He looks awkward, really, which is… fucking something.

“When are they gonna cut the cake?” His voice is small and tentative like a child’s.

“You’re not getting any, you cow.”

He looks sincerely wounded at that, his eyes casting downward, and it borders on pitiful. But the sympathy stirred feels like a small lashing, like punishment for your lack of decorum. There is something contemptuous in that pitifulness.

You know an athlete’s body is his wound.

But you can’t bring yourself to say sorry.

You just lower your hackles with a visible exhale, which he seems to recognise as safe treadspace.

“Why are you crying?” he asks.

You snort. “Why are you here?”

He connects those dots, too, the perceptive bastard.

He clears his throat, hands in his pockets, rolls back and forth on his feet.

He stares at the ground. “You gotta say a speech?”

“Yeah, but I probably won’t.”

The ocean rushes. Luther Vandross thumps faintly from beyond. First dance is over, apparently.

Patrick peers up at you, like he’s debating saying what he’ll say next.

“Wanna go get a drink?”

Tashi jumps on the balls of her feet. Her waifishness is often a screen hiding an impressive amount of energy. PE is competition in its purest form. Every time she manages to wrest the ball from the opposing team she feels invincible. She is invincible. She dribbles the ball quickly, ponytail swishing in the air as she runs towards the goalpost.

From the corner of her eye she registers movement. She’s always hyperaware of her surroundings. That’s why she notices you sitting down in the stands, two other little girls (in the way that a year—which is all the time sundering you two—can feel like a decade when you’re fourteen) on either side of you.

One of your friends doles out UNO cards, and it is clear it is the other who had suggested this place of loitering, because she has her gaze trained conspicuously on a boy in Tashi’s class.

Tashi pivots. Makes a pointed throw. The ball goes past the goalkeeper into the net. Her team cheers. She checks to see if you have borne witness, but you are too busy stewing over your dealt cards.

She runs over to you. You look up when you hear her barrelling up the steps of the bleachers with a haste that makes them shudder.

She slides in between you and Vidya, who is unperturbed on account of her intently watching Anshu Morya pretend two basketballs are his tits and siring great gales of laughter from his audience of other fourteen year old boys.

Tashi slips a lanky arm around your shoulder.

“Hey, you,” she says, “Why didn’t you come say hi?”

You feel weird and diminutive and caught in a weird way, because Essence is looking upon her from your other side as though she is a seraph who has descended and deigned to grace you with her presence.

(Essence is in under13’s tennis, where it is wildly regarded that the girls who do under14’s tennis are the coolest people ever).

“Uh,” you drawl dumbly.

“You’re my friend now,” she squeezes your arm, pulling you closer to her side, “You have to say hi.”

Tashi seems to preen beneath the attention of these little girls, with a poise remarkably incongruous for fourteen. It feels a stark juxtaposition to the girl you’d seen, wailing, wet, and splayed in her own nascent womanhood.

You’ll come to think this a lot. Tashi Duncan, the impenetrable infanta. She tries not to show any inkling of vulnerability, if she can help it.

That’s why you always remember. You’re always recalling that blood.

And so part of you that is purely little girl thinks, I saw her first.

Even though Adidas singled her out as showing great promise. Even if Patrick Zweig won her number, and Art Donaldson, in some primevally spurning way, will have her as his bride. It was you who saw her, truly saw her, for the first time. Weeping in her own carmine deluge in a girl’s bathroom stall at Blue Vista High.

And, if you saw her first, shouldn’t you get to keep her?

You cannot bear to see her be wed.

What you’d really said, when she told you she was engaged, was a frayed and hollowed: Congratulations.

Dear God, please, no came later. It came clawing rotten from your throat like the undead, while you curled in on yourself yourself like a woman wounded, in the dark, beneath your covers.

“Dear God, please, no,” you’d whispered, lachrymose.

Your first dream, as it were, takes place on the shore of Virginia Key Beach, twenty minutes south of your neighbourhood in Allapattah.

It doesn’t look real, though.

It’s more like a film set.

That could be due to the fact that you haven’t been home in a year or due to the fact that Tashi is there, and she hasn’t been home in longer.

But you know it’s Florida because the air’s so thin and friable in California. Like the sun hasn’t fully seeped through. You know it’s summer because there’s crickets chirping in the trees behind you.

It’s dark, but the moon is bright, and, without looking, you know Tashi is just behind you, sitting on a rock halfsubmerged in the water. You’re sitting in the water right by her. You can feel her presence on your arm as you lean back. You guys are stripped to your bras and panties, like you always were. Her hair is curly.

There might have been more happening; you have a vague impression that there was talking at some point in this dream, but the details fade in the minutes after waking up. What you do retain is distressing. 

You are saying something when you are suddenly supine, and you see that Tashi is atop you, straddling you, though you cannot necessarily feel any weight of her. She doesn’t even feel warm. Her skin against you isn’t a temperature, it’s a sensation. Buzzing, like the vague shock of an electric socket.

“Hi,” she says, her voice low. 

And you’re about to say something, and then you are silenced. You wake up soon after your lips meet.

The dream haunts you for a week, until you go to a party and find a boy and kiss him instead.

The dream is not a revelation, not by a long shot, but you had thought they were a thing of girlhood. And, too, you thought Tashi was impenetrable to such things as your little desires. You’d thought, for a wretched moment, that you could be normal about a beautiful girl.

And you’re usually better at controlling yourself.

You usually can go about your day without suddenly remembering the image of Tashi leaning in.

When you do find a boy that Saturday—a short, slight, facetious glasseswearer named Noel, who prides himself on being a silent, occasionally witty observer the same way you do—you talk with him and laugh with him and kiss him and feel the world right itself. Nothing has changed, and nothing will change, if you can just get a fucking grip.

You go another few weeks without incident, until there’s another dream.

A few others.

Tashi chalks up your odd behavior to anything from exam season to homesickness. You let her.

No one knows about these dreams, with one exception.

Patrick Zweig figures you out embarrassingly quick.

All it takes is one night on the town, the three of you. A couple hours watching you replenish and rotate her moscow mules and vodka sodas and ace pineapples with a surgeon’s precision. Like forecasting weather. And he feels sure enough in his conclusions to corner you as you’re emerging from the putrid bathroom of the dive bar and say, “You got it bad for Tashi, don’t you, kid?”

You are on the drunk side of tipsy, at this point, and you blink a few times before you remember to zip your fly and respond.

All you come up with, for your part, is a weak, “Sorry?”

Patrick smiles. It doesn’t seem particularly mean, but you don’t presume to know him well enough to bet on it.

“I’m just saying,” Patrick says slowly. “Seems like you like her an awful lot. Kid.”

Your gaze goes bonehard. You don’t like him. You don’t like that you can smell his nausea-siring wintry cologne. You cannot conceptualise the scent, but it can’t be natural. He is so pretentious, he probably has it shipped from Marseille or somewhere.

He’s cracked open your ribs and plucked a raw nerve, just to watch you writhe. And there’s that obnoxious little smile, only half his mouth. Though not outright hostile, it’s not friendly.

You open your mouth. But you are so furious, you’re unable to speak. What’s more infuriating, Patrick patiently waits for you to find your words.

“Well,” you say, steadying your feet like you’re prepared to brawl this guy, “What are you gonna do about it?”

“Not a goddamn thing.”

And you must look surprised, because Patrick laughs.

“May these be the worst of our days.”

The pub is a dive, just a short stumble from the wedding venue. The air is dense with the acerbic musk of piss and spirits, danker than the worst of times. It’s a visceral contrast to the beauty of the union, and it’s one of which you both feel deserving.

You sit on a slightly cracked stool at the mucky wooden bar. You nurse a beer, and a broken heart, and Pat is on his third scotch in as many minutes. The bartender keeps giving him these nervous glances.

He gurgles out a pfft as he tips his glass to you, “Yeah, and the best of theirs.”

You regard the middle distance with a sort of weary disgust. A miserable guilt. You know what he’s portending. It’s all downhill from here. But you cannot deny that these are not unkind heights from which to fall. Garlanded by intricate golden sconces casting pristine white marble awash with warmth and love. You two cannot wish them ill in a way that even means anything.

“Fuck, they’re so happy,” you moan, “We suck.”

You feel your lungs grow achy. You are drowning in selfpity and selfpity’s lesser endearing cousin, envy. Patrick seems to bear it better. He releases a noise. A laugh maybe; a bitter, bloodaddled thing.

“Hey, I think the one of us wearing the bridesmaids dress places significantly lower on the Ultimately Fucked Over scale.”

He spins his glass around on the sticky tabletop. The scraping sound makes you envision ground bonematter.

“This colour wouldn’t suit you,” you mumble, swinging your beer idly by its neck.

Patrick’s brows seem to knit at this.

“Yes it would,” he grumbles.

“I always hated you.”

He quirks a brow, looking at you askance.

“I don’t think that’s true.”

You make a face. “It is.” Your eyes close for a moment, as though envisaging which set of words would spurn him best. “And he’s better for her than you.”

Patrick’s mouth parts into a slackened smirk. He laughs again. “And you think you’re better for her than both of us.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Always the bridesmaid…” he singsongs.

You feel your skin heat with something sore and cloying.

“Oh fuck you.” Your eyes roll as well as they are able without you getting vertigo. “I fucked her last.”

His smile grows like a burgeoning parasite. His head is still hung between his shoulders, but he peers up at you through the dark veil of his lashes.

He tongues the inside of his cheek like he’s suppressing laughter, like he now thinks it wouldn’t be kind. “No kidding.”

You frown at this, at his amusement.

“What, you don’t think I fucked her?”

Patrick shrugs. Hums vaguely.

“Wow.”

“Not in, like, a homophobic way, or—“

“Wow.”

He snorts.

“I’m sorry.”

You shake your head. “You’re not.” You swig a mouthful of beer, relishing faintly in the acrid aftertaste. “And I’m not either. Fucked her after you broke up, licked you clean out her pussy, you’re nothing.” You stand up and close the distance between you, stumbling into him, your forehead thunking against his as you draw the word out childishly. Nothingggg-uh.

He chuckles noiselessly. “Oh yeah?”

You straighten clumsily, leaning back, but you’re still stood between his open legs, and you brace your hand against his thigh. “Yeah,” you say.

Patrick narrows his eyes at you. He inhales a breath with an air of the long since victorious.

He gives it a moment before he says it. You’re lifting your bottle to the seam of your lips.

“I fucked her two months ago.”

You slam the green glass against the bartop, eyes wide as canyons as you turn to look at him, your forgone sip dribbling down your chin. “What?” you enunciate sharply.

He leans back in his chair, raising his hands as if shirking blame. But something wicked gleams in his eyes.

You scoff. “Bull. Shit.”

He tilts his head to the side, resting an elbow against the bar, his gaze flickering between your face and the beer trickling down your neck.

He shrugs. Hums.

Your eyes search his face frenetically. Your fingers claw into the flesh of his thigh. “He doesn’t know?”

Now, something like guilt manages to sniff him out. He glances off obliquely, his throat working around a swallow. His expression is hard to discern. Swimming between guilt and a strange sort of defiance.

“Wow,” you drawl protractedly. You’re almost impressed. “You’re an ass. You said that because you wanted to make me feel bad, you wanted to one up me, like you get points for fucking her—“

“A game that you started, by the way.”

“Hey.” You lean into his space again, finding his eyes with a sniper’s determination. “Hey. You’re a piece of shit.”

His jaw works against his skin.

“Uh-huh.”

“No, you are. You are, and you know it.” Your nails embed themselves in his thigh, your other hand coming to place a finger in the hollow of his chest. “Because no matter what,” your voice is low and gravelly now, “You’re done. You’re out. I’m in.”

You lean back to look him over, as though admiring your work, but he only wears a plaintive, resigned sort of smile.

“You think that’s better?”

His voice is so soft as to seep like smoke down your spine. Your nails unearth themselves from his skin. You have not drawn blood, but morning bruises would not startle him.

A long few moments pass.

“This is what you do now, you’re all profound?” you murmur.

He shrugs, a rueful simper on his mouth. “Eh,” he hums dismissively.

You sigh. Remove your hands from him and stumble back onto your stool.

“You’d look like shit in this dress,” you say, at length.

“Maybe.”

You tip your beer into your mouth, even though it has run dry.

There’s a bit of a moue on your face. You trace the sticky outlines on the tabletop, focusing intently on the grooves. “I look amazing in this dress.”

“You’d look amazing out of it.”

Your brows furrow. You look up at him. “Dude, what?”

Patrick blinks. He seems genuinely surprised.

“Aren’t we gonna…?”

“No, what? Why would you—?”

“Oh, I just—“

“What?” Your face is skewed confusedly.

“Because we—“

Your phone trembles against the bar.

“Hold on,” you say, and then, grin growing, “Darling Ms Duncan,” you croon melodically as you hoist the device to your cheek.

Her verdant meadow laughter on the other end. “Donaldson,” she chuckles. You can hear the vague commotion of the festivities ensconcing her.

You frown.

“Don’t hurt me, Starshine.”

“You missed your speech.”

You gasp, your voice going all light and airy the way it does when you’re feigning guilt. “What?” you drawl, “No…”

Tashi cottons on, and you can hear her teasing smile as she indulges you, “Oh,” she hums in fauxsympathy, “Oh, yeah, uh-huh.”

“No way,” you grouse softly, “I’m so sorry.”

“Come back before we cut the cake,” says Tashi, “Where are you, by the way?”

“Oh, I’m in a bar, you won’t believe who I ran into.”

“Who?”

Patrick steels to alertness in front of you, shaking his head in abject alarm.

You smile.

“Patrick Zweig. I think we’re gonna have sex tonight probably. Compound our sadness. It’ll be really pathetic.”

Patrick looks at you like you’ve walloped his puppy.

Tashi is silent on the other end. You know well the firm, seraphic way her face has set in anger.

“That’s not funny,” she says, and it occurs to you that, if what Patrick’s told you is true, then it really isn’t funny.

You bite your lip. “Oh.”

“That’s—“ she takes a breath; you can picture the heat wash off of her. She can be very purposeful with her emotions. “Hey, listen,” her voice has softened, “Please come back.”

“Okay, Ms Duncan.”

“Come back and eat the cake, you chose the cake.”

A simper slithers over your lips. “We chose the cake.�� Your husband was somewhere sticking his prick in a green juice, you don’t add. “It’s kind of our cake, in a way.”

“Well,” Tashi hums, unconvinced, but you can hear her smile.

“Yeah, I’m coming, worry not, my dear. Save me a dance.”

You drop the phone.

Patrick is still looking at you like the apocalypse has been announced.

You roll your eyes.

“Put your dick down, she didn’t believe me,” you say. “Because you showing up to her wedding would be crazy.”

He chuckles dryly, but you do not miss the relief in his bones.

He cocks his head wryly, “Not really, considering…”

You stand up again, elbow leaning on the bar, your temple against your knuckles as you gape at him, sort of mystified. “You’re not bullshitting me,” you say, the corner of your open mouth quirking up incredulously, “Like actually.”

Patrick shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Atlanta.”

“Fuck!” You smack your hand down on the table, looking around as though to share in your disbelief with a makebelieve audience. “And since then, have you…? With anyone?”

“Dude, that was two months ago,” he says, like you’re a bit slow, or perhaps like he’s offended by the notion, “Yes.”

You click your tongue. “Ah, shit. You should’ve said no. Would’ve sucked you off, seen if I could taste her.”

Your hip ghosts absently against his spread open knee.

“You can still try,” he offers.

You shake your head, stifling a smile. “Nah.”

“God, we’re the worst.”

“You’re the worst.” You let your smile divulge itself.

“We should get married.”

“Fuck no.”

Patrick lets himself look putout by this, eyes going downcast. You’ve always thought his smile—really his whole face—looks vulnerable, like soft bread. He looks like the perfect sad boy, the victim rather than the perpetrator.  

“Oh,” says Patrick.

You hit him in the arm. “Don’t do that. You know it’d suck.”

“I don’t think so, actually,” he muses.

“What do we have in common? Like, sincerely. Besides her. You can’t build a marriage around a person who isn’t in the marriage.”

He makes a face as though to say this is an evidently incorrect statement. He gestures vaguely in the direction of Art and Tashi’s wedding venue.

That gets a laugh out of you.

“Oh, you pathetic asshole.” You steady yourself on his thigh again, this time with your fist. “No one has mentioned your name once today.”

You know it’s a low blow.

He returns your smile, though his is sad and weird again. They’ve all forgotten about me, it seems to say, Maybe you’ve forgotten about me, too.

Ugh, you think. Fucking Patrick who can’t stop being fucking neglected by everyone.

You clear your throat softly. “See? You don’t wanna marry me.”

Patrick lets out a depleted sigh, like he, too, is not so thrilled with the notion. And you’ve heard better proposal stories. He looks like a Labrador who’s figured out he has to go to the vet. He kicks the edge of the barstool with his sneaker.

“I do. I still do. That was fucked, but I still would.” He looks angry and lonely and resigned, and a little happy too, weirdly. “We should have one of those, ‘by the time we’re thirty—’”

“Thirty?”

“Fifty.”

You like how quickly he bends, in that moment. It has you picturing flower arrangements. But you narrow your eyes, a wry gleam to your smile.

“I think I’ll still have a shot, at fifty.”

“I won’t,” he says, with the smile of the recently condemned.

“I think you will, actually.” You regard him sort of pensively. And maybe it’s a bit clinical. “I think age is gonna humble you. And then you’ll be fifty and grey and, like, penitent. Plus fifty’s still virile, generally. And I’ve heard good things about your situation down there. Just—“

You push off the bar, your fist leaning down more heavily on his thigh as your other hand comes up to his forehead, as though checking his temperature, before sweeping upwards and pushing his hair back. You’re on your toes—further on your toes, considering the heels—assessing his hairline closely, your nose grazing his forehead and your hips certainly slotted between his.

Patrick makes an insincere attempt to push you off. “Hey, what—“

“Did your maternal grandfather have hair?”

He hesitates, “What, my mom’s dad?”

“Mhm.”

He feels that breath against his brow.

“To this day,” he shrugs, “But he’s an asshole.”

“That’s good news.” You lean back.

“That my gramps is an asshole?”

“No, the—“ You gesture to his hair again, “That’s how you know, I think. If you’ll bald. Is your maternal grandfather.”

“You think? Didn’t you do health science?”

“Didn’t you do fuck all and doesn’t everyone hate you?”

He seems unharmed, if enchanted, by this persistent claim.

He points again in the general direction of the wedding beyond the brick wall of the bar.

“They may hate me. You don’t hate me.”

You follow his finger like everything between you and that marble dance floor will collapse, and you will be given a clear view of that proprietary, knowing way Art Donaldson holds her as they dance.

You look back at him. “You really seem to believe that. It makes me concerned.”

“For me?”

“No, for myself. I don’t like that I’m putting out such false vibes.”

He is charmed by this verbiage.

He laughs, like he’s still unconvinced. “Okay.”

He holds it against you, of course.

He doesn’t do a goddamn thing, as promised, but he holds it against you.

Patrick doesn’t like the college parties, but he manages. He doesn’t like feeling like an interloper, really. Doesn’t like that Art and Tashi have this fully functional ecosphere in which he cannot take root—like he’s some sort of invasive strain of alien vegetation.

As soon as he can, Patrick excuses himself from the purgatory of social interaction with whichever set of strangers Tashi calls her friends. He extricates his arm from around her waist and catches your eye as he goes to stand, mimes taking a drink, and watches with relief as you narrow your eyes but push out of your chair and head toward the bar. You order four shots of something.

“You’re lasting longer than I thought,” he says as soon as he’s close enough to you. He takes one shot—vodka, he thinks as it slides down his throat—then another from the bar top. “You were making that face, though.”

You scowl up at him. You know exactly what he’s talking about. “I was not.”

Patrick snorts. “If that helps you sleep at night. I know I won’t be sleeping.”

He bites his lip and does a crude mimicry of delivering backshots with his pelvis, his hands holding an imaginary set of hips, and you suddenly feel beset with a strange nausea. You defeatedly slide toward him another one of those shots.

“What’s the point of her having you as a friend if you aren’t going to support us?”

“I bought you three fucking shots,” you say. You quickly throw the last one back before he can get at it, because, by now, you at least know Patrick well enough to know he’s nearly about to make a grab for it. 

He grins. “Kid, if Art had won that game, I’d make my pass at you ten times over.”

That’s enough to turn the nausea into chunder, and you quickly push past him and book it to the bathroom as it blooms up your throat.

You see your tendons as racketstrings, as you crouch over the toilet.

Taut and crossed over one another inextricably.

He’ll always have that over you, the tennis. You never had the tenacity for it. But it means he has a whole other way to upset her, too.

You take comfort in the fact that Tashi is quick to stand and take you into her arms when you reappear, halftorn, wrung out. She’s happy to take you back to your room, and nurse you for the night.

Patrick doesn’t begrudge. He’s fine to let you have your little pleasures. She’s still his, is the thing.

You’re confused about the Art Donaldson of it all.

He has a warmth in his eyes. And a mischief and a validation. He’s like Patrick, in that he watches—he watches very closely. But where Patrick has always seemed content, in this strange, visceral way, to take what he can get, Art feels like he’s waiting for… something. He’s sort of always fighting with Patrick, but they’re taking care of one another, strangely. He has this weird, symbiotic desire to know more about Tashi and Patrick’s relationship, which—well—you’d be canting to pass judgement.

Grey, grey skies out the windows of Tashi’s dorm room. It’s the most neutral space for you all. Bundled in jackets and hats on beer runs. Fingers freezing as you sit on the floor and play UNO, bumming and trading all of Patrick’s cigarettes because it’s all you can think to do. It rains all day. Patrick tucks his fingers under Tashi’s thigh, kisses the corner of her mouth.

Art has a cold, passes it on to Patrick, and now you’re all incubating it in this cloistered space that soon becomes littered with used tissues and cough drops and tornopen packets of TheraFlu.

Patrick is glad to help no one feel left out. He announces as much—I don’t want you guys to feel left out—with this quizzical simper, as Tashi places down a wild drawfour and declares blue. And maybe she’s doing something foul and saccharine like looking right into Pat’s eyes when she says that.

“I don’t think you have any blues,” says Art, sliding four cards from the deck, wearing his own quizzical simper. “I think you just want us to think you have blues, I think you’re playing smart.”

You can tell by the way Patrick grips his beer bottle that he thinks Art is flirting with her.

There seems to be an odd, prophetic thought you two share.

If the two of them—Tashi and Art—were to get married, they would have golden brown babies like Renaissance cherubs while you and he sat in the dark with the rest of the godless degenerate art.

So, in some way, perhaps, you’d seen it all coming.

When Patrick picks up the phone, shoves it between shoulder and ear, and takes the sorelyneeded, sweetyolkdripping, heavily hotsauced bagel sandwich out of his mouth so he can mumble, “Yeah?” he does not expect the first words across the receiver to be,

“Hey, you fuck. I have your shit.”

Patrick rolls his eyes and takes a large bite, craning over his open palm to keep egg and cheese off his Puma shirt. This is a time when brands like Puma still want Patrick Zweig wearing their shirts.

“Uh-huh,” he says.

“You know, this feels like Christmas. Do you know that? This feels like Christmas day for me. You think you’re this special boy who can have whatever he wants. You’re bullshit. The bell tolls for thee. Your ex, I should note, has bent over and spread her cheeks for me.”

And you feel a way, about the coarseness of your words, the fissures in your mouth. But this isn’t about demeaning Tashi. It’s about flaying him.

“Dude.”

“Her beautiful, soft, floralscented cheeks.”

Patrick hangs up on you, which feels like how you imagine the President feels after election day.

You wait for him to call back.

It’s less than a minute before your phone shudders. He puts you on speaker.

“Are you done?” he says.

“Dude,” you say, “Never ever. Never ever ever.”

“How much for shipping?”

“Fuck you, coward, you’re still in town.”

There’s a revolting, wet sort of noise as he chews. And it is between these chews that he says, “You want to see me, then? Make sure I’m miserable?”

“I don’t need to see you to make sure you’re miserable, your whole life is miserable,” you say.

Patrick chuckles, the sound garbled by his food. It’s not the noise that makes you recoil from the receiver. You are more disgusted at the prospect of him being fed. Okay, sure—you, in your sadism, have been picturing him gaunt and desolate on the floor. And perhaps you are unmoored by how coherent and gutful he sounds now.

It’s harder to hide sorrow in your eyes. Maybe you do just want to see his eyes, and make sure.

“You’re real classy, kid, I think I’ll miss you most of all,” he swallows. “Where d’you want to meet?”

When you return to the reception hall, the cake is still unsevered and the music has gone slow. Otis Redding, ‘These Arms of Mine’.

Tevin keeps a clammy hand on your midback, the other slackly holding your fingers up.

You’re blinking brine from your eyes and sniffing shallowly. Tev’s giving you a chary sort of look, slightly frowning. He clears his throat.

“If things don’t work out with Lainey, I could marry you.”

But he doesn’t sound too keen on the idea. Which you think is a bit comical, because you've smelled his room, and you've seen him in braces, so, ostensible case for grooming aside, even you're not so desperate.

Still, you squeeze his shoulder lightly through his blazer. You clear your throat, roll your eyes. You let this child sway you side to side, and think of yourself at seventeen, varnishing Tashi’s toenails and daubing them clean with mephitic acetone. Over and over. Trying every colour. One time, you forgot to open a window, and the fumes had you two flaked out on the carpet.

“That’s nice, Tevvy, how’s that promposal coming along?”

In the bar a dozen minutes off campus, you slide the sloppily taped Amazon box across the table.

A microcosm of his pathos condensed into 18 x 12 inches. Each item in isolation meaningless, but altogether painting an intimate lithograph of a man discarded. All tender and immiscible.

Jacket. Toothbrush. Edgefrayed leather wristband. An old iPod with cracked plastic. A pack of cigarettes, crushed and reformed. A small bottle of aftershave. A few crumpled receipts. Unbranded notebook. Expensive fountain pen he probably stole from the bank. A plastic cardholder and a wallet, both empty. A pack of gum.

It feels a bit stupid that Patrick should come all this way for a couple knickknacks. You could have just let him Venmo you for the shipping, and it may have hurt his pride all the same. But you take pleasure in knowing that he was hoping you wouldn’t be the one to meet him here.

“How’s Tashi?” he asks.

You give a small, malicious laugh.

The predictability dissolves none of the abject carnal rapture there.

Of course it’s why he came. He wants to know all about your (singular) dear Ms Duncan. He still has a glimmer of faith that she will change her mind. Even though you both know the girl well enough to know that’s not a thing she does too often.

If you hated him, you would tell him that Tashi is thriving. Healing like a child of God. She’s a new woman, never better, can’t wipe the smile off her face.

But maybe you don’t hate him that much after all.

“She’s a fucking wreck. Moping, crying in the lecture halls, shouting your name in the rain. It’s pathetic.”

A twinge of a smile crosses Patrick’s face, the petty bitch.

“You know I meant her knee,” he says, then takes a sip of his beer.

You cross your arms on the table, then retract them with a wince once you feel how sticky the wood is.

“I don’t know,” you say while rubbing some gunk off your elbow. “I don’t know that, Patrick. You know I think you’re a raging assface.”

Patrick raises his eyebrows. “Have you guys ever fucked?”

His faith, glimmer as it may, is not without its fractures. He has a needling, bonechewing suspicion that this may be the last time you two ever see one another, that you occupy the same orbit. So he thinks he’s allowed to ask.

You just glare at him in cold annoyance. Probably fantasising about smashing his beer bottle over his head. Patrick is familiar with the expression.

“Patrick, please don’t talk to me that way.” There’s violence in your voice that’s probably not just aggrieved feminism.

He knows you’re a woman mutilated about Tashi. He considers saying something even shittier, but what’s the point? You’re not a threat to him anymore. He’s out of the running.

“Fine. Have you guys ever made love?”

Before you can bite his head off, he raises his hands in defense.

“Not trying to be disrespectful, or suggest you have casual pussy and not committed long term lesbian relationship pussy. It’s just… if I figured it out.”

There’s a moment of quiet.

“And, y’know, if she’s single and clearly in a bad place, maybe it’s worth… taking advantage.”

You are at once shocked and maybe even appreciative of his forthright shittiness. It gives you slight confidence, despite yourself.

Call him oldfashioned—or, well, remarkably progressive—but he’s rooting for you kids.

You’re both the perfect combination of hot and insufferable. Stupid and insane.

He knows you weren’t lying; Tashi probably is a wreck. It sometimes makes his tongue go metallic, the thought of her rendered so still and helpless. Maybe it’s better he only got a glimpse of that anguish.

So he’s been ousted, that’s fine. That doesn’t mean you need to dump the baby out with the bathwater. He knows she needs someone.

You sigh. “I’m getting a drink.”

You stand and walk toward the bar. You return with the same beer he’s drinking. He wonders if you got it just because it’s the cheapest, or if you actually like it.

“We never did anything,” you say, picking at the moist label with your thumbnail. “Well. We did everything. But not that.”

Patrick nods. “There’s time.”

“She’s hurt.”

“She’d be lying down.”

She is lying down.

The sky goes gold in Allapattah.

You’re by her desk, looking over her colourcoded portfolios and notebooks and Stanford paraphernalia and assorted photos and inspirational posters. You smile amusedly as you trace your finger over a WINNER cheer banner and a Never Give up, Give 100% Instead! placard.

“Mom says stay over for dinner,” Tashi mumbles, rifling through a Teen People. “Should I ask for ‘Writing’s On The Wall’ or ‘Fanmail’ for my birthday?”

“Mmm...”

You pick up her Girl Scout badges, look them over.

“Put them back in the same order!” Tashi warns, unable to help herself. But she’s spent a lot of time sorting them.

You look up. You give her a blithe, nervous smile.

You shuffle to the bed and knee onto the mattress, collapsing into her. The two of you an interwreathed coalescence of tepid girlskin.

“I have ‘Fanmail’,” you mumble into the skin of her neck.

You hear Tev and Tre roughhousing like dogs in the living room.

She gets you alone in a small, ornate sidehall before the ceremony.

She slides her arms around your shoulders and hugs you tightly. Her skin is soft, balmy and fragrant as summertime honey. The flowery milk aroma of her hair imbues you.

“You remember Ozymandias?” she says, withdrawing and placing her palms upon your shoulders. There is a conspiratorial twinkle of glee in her eye.

“… The poem?” Your brows draw in with a vague scepticism.

Your throat is still fleshtender with the sobbing. Your eyes moist and caustic. But your makeup, for Pauline’s part, looks great. You’re determined to maintain your ramshackle semblance of civility for as long as possible.

Tashi kneads your skin. “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

She clasps your shoulders and spins you around so your back is against her, and you stumble shakily to keep your strappy gold stilettos off her satiny white train. Her arms slink back around you, her thumb caressing the faint protrusion of your collarbone. You feel the sly grin on her lips as she creeps her fingers beneath your hair, sweeping it away and pressing her mouth softly against the gossamertender skin beneath your ear.

“That’s what I’m going for,” she whispers, making a flourishing sort of gesture with her hands in front of you, as if mapping the splay of a billboard. “A grand, glorious, eternal, and yet ultimately doomed endeavour. Something that stands tall and proud, resplendent and beautiful, but, in time, all turns to dust and fades into nothing but a vague memory.”

You shudder with laughter, the bare skin of her chest heated against that of your shoulderblade.

“What?” Tashi giggles softly against the shell of your ear.

“Nothing,” you grin, shaking your head.

You like, in fact, the tender morbidity of her words. That there is a melancholy in her hope. This union, like any, may well be ephemeral. Tashi Duncan, your romantic realist. You hope those are her vows. Wouldn't that throw the kid for a loop.

At the altar, you set your gaze heavenward, determined not to weep once more. This way, the sorrow has nowhere to fall but back within you. And so you do not even see her, as she flows down the aisle and embarks upon her ethereal odyssey.

You don’t think you’d have even been able to take it, anyway.

To bear witness to her metamorphosis under hallowed eaves.

But you feel it. The transience of power. Nothing beside remains.

Pam drives you two to Virginia Key Beach every Sunday after service at the COGIC. You are dithering, at first, about shucking off your clothing. The sea is such a vast, living thing. Nothing like a poky stall in the school bathroom. But, by week three, your Sunday best is sandstrewn, and you and Tashi are giggling things of cotton panties and training bras and seawater.

The waves feel giant and warm.

It fills your mouth and nostrils. The ocean envelops you. The water lifts you up. She mounts your back and drags you under. You laugh so hard you choke a bit, coughing up salt. She laughs even harder as she slaps your back unhelpfully. Her head is bent over yours, ducking to check that you’re okay, but she’s still simpering impishly. The next wave pulls you under and your lips brush against her lips, almost by accident.

You hear her small, hiccupy gasp.

You can feel the way her fingers scrabble against your shoulders. She sinks her little nails in. That Thursday, you had painted them blue.

You lie in a nest of towels afterwards, exhausted and depleted, like children after a bath.

You reach out with your hand and take a few of her wet curls between your fingers.

“When I’m tennis famous, I’m gonna marry Justin Timberlake,” she murmurs, resting her head on her arm, still panting.

“Can I be your flower girl?” you say, running your fingers through her hair.

You were a flower girl at your aunt’s wedding last Summer. You found the job so enchanting. All the doting gazes, the petals between your fingers. It doesn’t occur to you to want for more, at this time.

“You can be…” she mumbles, peeking at you over her arm. “Everything.”

It’s a strange, untenable idea, a thing not named. There are things you cannot be.

But you understand completely. “You too.”

“I wanna be a butterfly,” she hums to herself. “And fly away.”

Your lips twitch. “With Justin?”

Tashi’s face glows a little. “With you.”

Like all Floridian nights, the one of the wedding is humid. You can picture the way the feathery curls along Tashi’s hairline will start to rouse. You can picture, too, the way Art Donaldson’s stupid nose will caress that soft hair, how he will breathe her in. You don’t much want to picture anything beyond that.

There is so much moonlight to see by. It spills across Patrick’s skin in soft luminous beams.

The sand is damp between your bare toes, the satin of your dress growing wet beneath your bum. You are ensconced by a warm, saline squall.

The sea laves the shore like a hungry tongue.

The cake is a pistachio sponge, bedaubed with rosesuffused cream, the layers laden with a tart raspberry treacle, and the frangible ivory of white chocolate. You filch two slices, wrap them in monogrammed serviettes. A&T. Awful and tragic, he had joked bleakly as you clumsily took off your shoes on the foreshore. Agonising and traumatic, you’d offered. You went back and forth like this for a bit.

Patrick’s cigarette gilds his face in a copper glow. His eyes are trained pensively on swathes of sea foam.

Your phone garbles between your feet. Hums—bleary, melancholic—with Amy Winehouse.

And now, the final frame. Love is a losing game.

The cake is good. The cake is fucking amazing. You’d said that, at the tasting. Fuck, this is amazing, had been your honeyed moan. It was enough for Tashi to make the decision. You feel bad, now, lapping frosting off your fingers in her absence, your sugarcoated teeth.

Patrick blows the smoke away from you, disperses the acrid cloud with a fan of his hand. The wind will waft, though; sweep some of that fetor back to you. And all you do is breathe.

Selfprofessed, profound…

Patrick spares you a glance. Then does gawping a doubletake.

“Fuck, you’re not crying.” He sniffs deeply, his hand swiping roughly the wet skin of his cheek.

Your eyes widen.

“Oh, shit, did we start?”

He breathes a dilapidated, spitladen laugh, scrubbing harsh his cheeks with his fingers.

The heavy rivulets keep cascading. Washing his skin.

“Yeah!” he scoffs wetly, sweeping his wrist beneath his nose, sniffing again.

You stifle a rueful simper, wiping your fingers off on the napkin. “Ah, fuck, sorry.”

He gives another watery laugh.

“You’re a dick,” he grins.

And then you’re grinning too, though your brows quaver with concern, “No, oh my God, sorry! I cried a lot earlier.”

He’s shaking his head, freshets of tears still trickling down. “You’re an ass, I can’t believe—“

“I’ve never seen you cry,” you smile, something like wonder misting your eyes.

He chuckles, his cig singeing down, the smoke pirouetting upwards.

“No one has.”

You beam, but your shoulders tense with guilt. “Fuck!” you giggle, rumpling the serviette and resting it in the sand, shifting where you sit, and straightening as if centring yourself. “I’m sorry, I’ll do it now.”

“No, you won’t. You’re laughing.”

You laugh loudly, dropping your forehead to your hoisted knees.

“That’s closer than you think!” you say.

Patrick takes a deep, terminal drag of his cigarette—the ember coruscating violently—before extinguishing it in the sand beside him.

“Fuck,” he whispers, dipping his face into his shirt collar and using the fabric to swipe at his nostrils, snivelling more.

Then his shoulders fall. Elbows resting on his knees, hands falling slack between them.

The song starts up again.

For you I was aflame…

The ocean whispers soft susurrations against the beachfront.

You are struck, suddenly, by his silverveiled visage. Your gaze strokes the slope of his nose, the arch of his cheekbone. You are so enthralled by this wet gleam of his milky skin. There’s something about that; about his unencumbered tearflood and the faraway joy of the party.

Before you can stop yourself, you move in.

Your noses bump. There’s a moment where your teeth clack together and Patrick makes an annoyed noise, but it’s quickly replaced by something that sounds more like pleasure as he turns to fit his mouth against yours more easily.

You taste his tears and mouth and tongue. His hand comes to cradle the back of your neck. Your blotchy eyes flutter closed. You dig your fingers into the sand and close your fists around it. You taste the smoke and the cake and the oceanfront. It’s all a bit warm and desperate.

You think of the seaspray, the burgeoning goosebumps on your arms. You think of your mouth, mollified against his own, his hot spit on your gums, his tongue, hotter still, stroking yours. How he tips your head back so your jaw can fall further, so there is more of you available. You think of mouths. Of course, you think of Tashi’s mouth. Her smile in the mirror.

There’s a poignant tremor to Amy’s voice, as she sings,

Memories mar my mind.

And you are struck by this phrasing. And this is, perhaps, why and when the tears find you. And the sobs come soon after.

Patrick pulls away with a damp little noise.

“Oh my God.”

You’re weeping. Your shoulders start to tremble with spasmodic sobs, and you are bawling. Your face swims hot with a mire of tears and snot. He is not overtly repulsed. Well, you would not know for sure, because you cannot see him. But you feel him shift a little closer, and put a hand on your bare shoulder, his palm flushed and calloused. He gives you a few resigned pats.

“This is not what I wanted, for the record,” he says, unbothered by your head falling against his chest. “Because now I’m gonna feel like shit. Thinking, wow, was the kiss so shit that it made her cry like a baby?”

You lift your hands and cover your face, sobbing harder.

“Which,” Patrick continues, thumb caressing idly the sweat-tacky skin of your shoulder now, “I know that’s not it.”

A beat.

“Do you wanna tell me that’s not it?”

“That’s not it,” you blubber, smearing mucus off your lips.

You pull away from him dragging your hands down your face. When you look at him, you’re sure you look a sorry sight. Tender with despair, all messy, smeared, and febrile. You sniff shallowly.

“You were right,” you say weakly, “It’s not better.”

“What’s not better?” His voice, you note somewhere in the miasma of your sorrow, is uncharacteristically kind.

Your lip quivers, “I’ll have to be there when he puts a baby in her.” Your face has twisted in anguish and you are wailing once more, sobbing loud and earnest.

Patrick blinks at you, “Jesus.”

But he pulls you closer again. Turns your body, in fact, so you are leaning back into his raised lap and he is halfway cradling you like a baby. You weep into his shirt, painting it wet and viscid, and the scent of his awful cologne only makes you sadder.

“Oh my God,” Patrick says again, rubbing up and down your arm, and he sounds a bit amused, which is a little fair. “He might not,” he offers.

You snivel loudly and pull back, swallowing your sobs and casting him a disappointed glower.

“Yeah, ok. He probably will.”

You fall hard against his soaked front again, whimpering feebly. Patrick looks down at you.

“Hey, we can do that, too,” he offers now, in a pick-yourself-up sort of tone that juxtaposes so fiercely with the proposition he’s actually making, you nearly laugh. “We time it right, they can be the same age. Then we’ll put ours in the same school as theirs, and teach ours to just fuckin’ decimate the shit.”

And now you are laughing. You’re still teary and frail so it hurts all the same as a sob, but he can see you’re smiling, so he continues,

“Just everything. Fuckin’ grades, boom. Sports, boom. Instruments, boom. Our one’s gonna play two cellos, a piano, a guitar, and an oboe, all at the same time. He’ll use his fingers, toes, and dick,” says Patrick, and he sounds utterly sincere and emphatic, even as he’s sort of smirking now, because you’re laughing even harder. “And we’ll tell him to bully theirs, too. Every day just ‘oh you’re a piece of shit, you’re ugly, your parents’ marriage was doomed from the beginning’, and their fucker’ll be like ‘no I’m not’ and ‘fuck you’—”

You’re tickled, too, by the voice he puts on to imitate these fictitious children. How he talks all low and churlish like he’s instead caricaturing a worldweary pensioner.

“—and ‘I wish you weren’t so much cooler and better than me, and didn’t fuck my girlfriend, and my mom’.”

You make a face.

“Don’t make it weird.”

“Alright, fine. He won’t fuck her,” Patrick concedes, “That’d be fucking legendary if he did, though. But he won’t.”

You are, again, charmed by this, by how easily he yields. It makes you think of a nursery and fresh, boneless toes.

You rest your face on the wet of your weeping on his chest, and you feel a bit humiliated. But this isn’t so bad, as far as humiliations go.

“What if it’s a girl?” you croak, your words halfway muffled by where your cheek is squashed against him.

“Even better.”

“Where would we live? I don’t wanna go to New York, I don’t have the fortitude.”

The worst of your sobbing has waned to stillness, but he’s still rubbing your arm.

“We can shack up in the Midwest. Somewhere chill.” His leg starts shifting beneath you, and you think he wants another cigarette, but he doesn’t move. Instead, “Omaha?”

You shrug. You hated not being in Florida, but still. You shrug. “Sure. And what’ll you do? Coach? Or become like a blue collar fuckin’…” you trail off vaguely. “I can’t even picture it.”

“I always wanted to be a fireman.”

“That’s sexy.”

His laugh, when it sounds, echoes through his chest like there’s a cavern where his heart should be. Which you don’t think is such an unthinkable idea.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” you nod. You clear your throat. “Especially because you could die at any moment. So if we end up hating each other, I can just wait for you to die in a fire, and, that way, I don’t have to murder you. Then our kid doesn’t lose both parents at once.”

He pauses as if considering this. His leg shifts again. “Fuck,” he murmurs after a while.

“Sorry.”

“No, don’t ruin it.”

You clear your throat again. “And a dog,” you say.

“Fuck, yeah, a dog,” he says in his most New Yorkian fashion. Like a traveling salesman who needs you to look at this vacuum and do it quickly. It’s pretty funny. “It can eat theirs.”

You make a reproachful sort of noise. “Not everything has to be—“

“Okay, fine, yeah, just a dog,” he cedes again. The nursery, in your mind, is astralthemed. “Just a dog for the two of us. And our Nobel Prize winning child. I’ve always wanted one named Bagel.”

You think he can somehow hear your mildly scathing New York musings.

“A kid or a dog?”

“A dog.”

“We can name the dog Bagel,” you shrug, as though agreeing to dinner plans, and the tender pulse of a postweep migraine begins to encroach upon you, like the waxing sea. “Can we name the kid Bagel?”

“No.”

The song is still on loop.

Five story fire as you came…

You think of Patrick in sootscuffed bunker gear and a fireman’s helmet.

“Bagel Zweig,” you mumble wryly, your skull beginning to thump with the ache of your patheticism.

Patrick laughs. Lifts you off his knees, unceremoniously but not unkindly, and begins to rifle in his pockets for his Camel pack.

A sudden bout of cheering sounds from the reception, flashing taunting beams in purple hues. You wonder what the fuck they have to be so happy about. You sigh. Perhaps, too, did people cheer, at the mortal fall of Ozymandias. You think about that. That loss of power. That loss.

[insomniasdelusion]

Astro with a reader who sleeps a lot!

Reader x Astro

Warning: none, complete and pure fluff!

————————————

•Astro

The moon toon here also tends to sleep a little more than the others! Whenever he finds you curled up in your room, eyes closed, slow breathing, and just snoozing away. He happily climbs into bed to rest with you, wrapping his bottom arms wrapped around your waist, upper arms lacing his hands with yours.

At first in the relationship he was a little too shy, he’d give a small smile, a kiss on your head, and then would walk out.

he always makes sure that you have good dreams, he would never intentionally want to cause you harm! Emotionally or physically.

Although, he would get concerned sometimes- why do you sleep so much..? Are you not getting enough rest? Do you not feel well? Is something wrong? He would want you to be okay, but if you assure him that it’s just how you are and it’s just kinda a cycle of tiredness!

He calms down after that, no longer too worried but sometimes he’ll carefully shake you awake juuuust to make sure. If you wake up and stay awake he’ll apologize, just reassure him that it’s fine and you don’t mind! Maybe cuddles for extra reassurance?

The only downside to you sleeping all day is.. your a giant night owl, up all night doing whatever- and when it hits sunrise you waddle either to your own room to rest or Astro’s room to snuggle up with him to go back to go to sleep.

Now he didn’t realize this until one day he got woken up by the fire alarm with all the other toons because you and Cosmo set the kitchen aflame- you and the swiss roll had sheepishly apologized after some of the others scolding and Shrimpo’s yelling of ‘I HATE FIRE!’.

Astro had asked you why you were up and you explained to him that this was actually when you were usually awake! And you just didn’t want to ruin Astro’s sleep schedule so he could hang out with you.

The blue moon had blinked in surprise, it was sweet but at the same time- he didn’t mind, he’d like to be able to spend more time with you, and if that costed a little bit if his own sleep schedule? Then he guessed that was the price.

Although, he did try and help you get rest a normal time so it could be a little healthier. He’s willing to stay up with you always, but he is also going to be making sure a little more effort of a sleep schedule is put forth!

“Starshine.. what are you doing..?” Astro’s soft barely above a whisper voice called out, tilting his at you as the grip on his blanket around him loosened.

“I’m making a bracelet! Scraps has been teaching me!” You chirped back, excited and lively despite the (real) moon hanging in the sky.

“Oh..? Could I see?” He asks.

“Not yet, it’s a surprise silly” you giggled back.

“A surprise? For who..?” Astro hummed.

Turning around, you waddled closer to your boyfriend, you had put the last finishing touches on it. It was a pretty beaded bracelet with a mix of blues and purples, as well as the occasional pale yellow bead added with a moon charm that had a hanging heart attached!

“For you! I had asked scraps to teach me how to make bracelets so I could make you one..” you squeaked, bashful. Holding the bracelet out to him so he could take it.

He blinks in surprise.. you made this for.. him? His cheeks heated into a pretty sapphire blue, making his starry freckles glow softly, he looked like he had the night sky on his cheeks! It made you melt slightly inside, your own face feeling hot and your heart beating faster at how star-struck he looked.

“You.. made this? ..for me?” He whispered, carefully taking the beaded bracelet holding it like it was glass instead or plastic. He looked down at it taking every detail in, his tails wagging much like a dog’s would but that was a really rare sight for him!

“Well.. yeah! It’s to let you know how much I love you! And even though I sleep a lot that doesn’t mean your any less important to me, I love you so much I’d be fine if the sun never came out again if it means I get to keep you here with me!” You tell him, it was a little cheesy yes.. but it was how you felt!

“..I love you to starlight..” he whispered back, gently slipping the bracelet on and walking towards you to embrace you tightly, he smelled like vanilla and he oddly cool to the touch but you wouldn’t have it any other way as you wrapped your arms around him as well.

“I love you Astro.”

“I’ll love you forever my moonlight.. until the stars stop shining and even more after that..” he whispered back, gently squeezing you as he burst his face into your head.

—————————————————————

This was a little self indulgent- I do love the moon boy a lot tho <33

[princessanonymous]

When Night Comes

Platonic Yandere Vampire

Previous Part | Next Part

First Chapter

Trigger Warning: A bit of gore and death

13. 𝓒𝓻𝓲𝓶𝓼𝓸𝓷 𝓟𝓾𝓷𝓲𝓼𝓱𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽

A soft knock echoed through the room, yet it was met with a disheartening silence. Undeterred, he entered, his presence a commanding force in the quiet space. "You cannot confine yourself in your room all night," the vampire declared with stern authority, a hint of frustration lingering in his tone. 

She responded only by rolling in her bed, seeking refuge under the covers. He tried to ignore how this reaction crushed a small part within him. 

"Tell me," he pressed on, "what did you expect to get out of this? Did you wish to die in the cold?"

His mind revisited the events of three nights ago. She had almost died. That was the cold harsh truth. It was sickening, horrifying even. It had terrified him in a way he hadn’t expected. Scenarios of what could have happened made dread gawk at his inside. The fact was that he had been lucky to find her, Dorian could have tried searching for her in the opposite direction. She would have been attacked and there would have been no one to protect her from that vermin. After bringing her back, he had remained by her side all day as she slept, the events of the night having left her completely drained of any energy. He had listened as she let out soft expirations, as her mortal heart beated and watched as her chest slowly rose and fell. 

So weak…

Her existence was so ephemeral.

That night, as these thoughts had crossed his mind, Dorian had inched closer to her neck. He could fix this. He could make her better and everlasting; eternal. His daughter – his sweet doll – could forever remain safe and unaltered by time. But he didn’t. He couldn’t turn her at this instant, no matter how much he wished to. It was forbidden to do so to a child her age. He had to wait.

Tonight, as he stepped into her room, he wanted to tell her that, had he not been there to save her, she might have met an untimely demise. That this was the reason why she hadn't been allowed to go out. Yet, the words remained trapped in his mouth, sealed between his lips.

Resigned to the persistent silence, he seated himself on the edge of the bed, his eyes fixed on her form cocooned beneath the covers. "It didn't hurt you. It is gone now," he spoke with a gentler cadence, seeking to comfort. 

Dorian liked when the child was calm and well behaved, but this depressing silence was not what he had wished for. Her response was an unyielding silence, prompting him to rise with a sense of resignation.

"What," she started with a scratchy voice, breaking the silence, "was that ?"

He halted, turning back to her with a glimmer of hope at the sound of her voice. "What do you mean, starshine?" he inquired, his tone inviting conversation and relieved that she was willing to engage.

"The monster," she whispered, a tremor of fear evident in her voice.

He sighed, grappling with the decision of whether to disclose the truth. Eventually, he settled back down, choosing to take advantage of her sudden willingness to speak. Refusing to answer would only make her retreat into her shell once again.

"To complete the process of turning a person into a vampire, that person must drink the blood of the vampire that bit them. A Sanguini, the thing you saw, is what results if that last step isn't taken. Slowly, these creatures turn into ravenous beasts, going mad with bloodlust. They aren't vampires, but rather something far more disgraceful and pathetic. The shame of our world."

Silence persisted as she absorbed this revelation. The vampire lifted the covers, unveiling her tear-streaked face. His fingers traced the contours of her cheek as he admitted, "I feared for your safety," his voice betraying a hint of vulnerability, emotions surfacing against his intentions.

She turned her back to him. "I want my mum," she mumbled.

His hands clenched involuntarily, resentment tinged with regret at how even in death, the woman retained significance for the girl. "I am here," he declared, the unspoken words ‘And she isn't’ hanging in the air.

Her response was silence. "You have me," he asserted more firmly, his fingers gently threading through her hair. "And you need me," he added, a subtle plea beneath his words. She needed him. Just as much as he needed her.

⊱ ────── {⋆☾⋆} ────── ⊰

The atmosphere hung heavy with a somber hush, disrupted occasionally by the clatter of utensils against porcelain as she quietly partook in her meal. Her eyes would intermittently dart toward the vampire sharing the table, yet they swiftly retreated back to the contents of her plate. It marked their first shared dinner since the harrowing incident a week ago. As she cautiously chewed her food, the unspoken tension in the air lingered. Did the vampire across from her anticipate a gesture of thanks? Did he expect acknowledgement for his actions, or was he simply indifferent to her feelings? Gratitude, however, was a complex sentiment to navigate when mixed with the knowledge that he was also the perpetrator of her parents' death.

Leaving during the cold winter night had been reckless, even perilous. The storm's cruel embrace had slowed her journey, and she found herself fortunate to have escaped the clutches of the biting cold. The storm had slowed her down and she was lucky she hadn't died from the cold… or that awful beast. She finished her meal in silence, rising without uttering a word. As she moved to leave, he halted her with an unexpected announcement.

"I have something for you."

With a subtle yet firm touch, the vampire guided her towards the door of the basement, a realm she had yet to explore. There was an air of mystery about the descent into the lower levels, an uncharted territory that piqued her curiosity. Descending the stairs, she couldn't help but notice a serene smile gracing the duke's face, adding an enigmatic layer to the unfolding scenario. 

The pathway, illuminated by the flickering light of torches lining the walls, exuded an eerie chill that seemed to cling to the air. As (Y/n) and the vampire continued their exploration, a distant door loomed at the far end of the corridor shrouded in shadows. However, they never reached it. The journey paused at a second door.

The first thing that came to her was the putrid smell. Next, was the figure slumped against the wall opposite to her. The duke widened the door, ushering light into the room.

She recoiled, a futile hand pressed against her mouth, but the horrified scream still erupted. Mary, the servant who had unwittingly aided her escape, lay there. (Y/n)'s eyes collided with vacant sockets. The girl slumped in the corner, bathed in blood. (Y/n)'s gaze trailed down her face, fixing on the throat. A crimson grin seemed to mock her. The slash across her throat emanated more life than her lifeless, gaping mouth.

One arm and one leg were bent at awkward angles as though she was a marionette that had been carelessly dropped. The remaining limbs lay a few meters away, severed from the rest. Entrails spilled unceremoniously on the floor.

(Y/n) crumpled to her knees, legs weakened. The world around her blurred as waves of anguish crashed over her, threatening to engulf every ounce of composure she possessed. In the midst of her torment, she unleashed a guttural scream of pain and despair that echoed through the emptiness around her. Tears streamed down her face as uncontrollable sobs wracked her body.

Two hands steadied her shoulders. "Take this as a warning," he declared, the words carrying a weight that extended beyond their immediate meaning. His grip on her shoulders tightened, the pressure a physical manifestation of the gravity of his words. "Actions have consequences, my dear."

The vampire leaned closer until his lips almost touched the girl's ear. His voice, low and intense, carried a chilling warning. "Don't you dare try to leave again," he hissed, the words spoken with a sense of finality. The proximity of his threat sent shivers down her spine. “I will find you. I will always find you. And everyone involved will have to pay for your foolishness," he affirmed, the weight of those words emphasizing an unwavering determination

He rose, leaving her sobbing in the wake of his departure, the door closing behind him.

(Y/n) clutched her chest, sobbing harder. This was her fault. She had brought this upon a poor girl who had done nothing wrong. And here she was now; forced to confront the consequences of her actions. She wept until no more tears flowed, until her voice became too hoarse to continue.

[fairypaw]

Poly plastic critters be upon ye' 🏳️‍🌈👭👭💥

me babbling about them under the cut as always

i recently got these lps together and theyre my darling starshines. i kinda wanna make them into long running ocs make lore for them and all that,, so here are some info and hcs and lore for the girls <33

Dorothea Flores || (cocker spaniel)

• she/her (afab)

• nicknames: dory, dorothy

• met Tommy first during early highschool, they were acquaintances and were on friendly terms through classes/projects but nothing came of it due to Dory's issues and Tom moving shortly. Rekindled again much later when she was on the job to find a heavily concussed Tommy

• Met Nia in pre med, Nia was the one who really helped her sort out all her issues and how they came to date was Dory on the bathroom floor post breakdown and went "lol that was embarrassing. wanna grab coffee later its a date"

• your local recovered mean girl grew up an angry child under her parents roof, its okay she figured it out,, eventually,,, in therapy

• currently an EMT, though shes undergoing training to become a paramedic.

• loves cooking!! she sings when she cooks and her girls will butt in off key fondly

Niamh Buckley || (deer)

• they/them (transfem amab)

• nicknames: nia

• homeschooled for most of their life, conservative parents who kept them in a short leash. ran away when they were 18 and lived with Tommy and her brother before going to collage where they met Dory.

• currently in med school to be a pediatric psychologist, but teaches elementary ballet part time

• kids love them like they're some sort of children whisperer, they hope to foster kids one day, something something breaking generational trauma

• loves gardening, grows their own veggies and herbs, hoping to grow a flower garden once they're a homeowner and not a heavily in debt student

Hamamoto Tomeiko || (cat)

• she/her

• nicknames: tommy, tom, miko

• was raised only by her older half brother growing up, her parents were unfit to raise a child and her freshly 18 brother adopted her, started calling him dad down the line.

• had a crush on Dorothy since high school, but it was pretty one sided since they were only in the same school for 2 years, because her dad's job made them move around a lot

• can pick up conversational languages pretty quickly because of this, also knows two different sign languages

• Met Nia because her dad came home with a homeless runaway kid and he took them in immediately knowing exactly what it felt like, they bonded while living together and decided to be roomates again in collage. feelings ensue

• wikipedia lite, will tell you about the article they read about whatever niche topic whenever they get an excuse to (theyr a little acoustic)

• studying in aerospace engineering, girl never let go of her hyperfixation of rockers since she was 7 and it shows

them . btw.

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

You Can Run

Sequel to Come Out, Come Out and Wherever You Are

Warnings: noncon and violent elements. Warnings are not exhaustive. Please curate your reading accordingly.

Summary: You make a run for it.

As always, please, please, please, send me your thoughts and feedback, horny and otherwise! Love you all so much 💗

“Isn’t she gorgeous?” Steve stands behind you, hands framing your head. He presents you to Bucky like livestock, stroking and petting your hair. “Problem with a pretty face is you can’t tell if it’s lying.”

Steve’s hands fall to your neck, closing around it but not squeezing.

“So, Buck, was my starshine a good girl?” 

Bucky gives a crooked smirk and he pushes his fingers through his thick locks. He exhales and tuts as he considers you. His eyes appraise every inch of you, naked to his gaze.  Steve’s forces your chin back up as you try to hide.

“She was a very good girl…” Bucky comes closer, a step at a time. “Once I found her.”

“Mm, she has a habit of hiding, doesn’t she?” Steve’s grip tightens until his fingers are flush to your throat, “tryna keep a good thing all to herself.”

“Captain,” you croak and he chokes the voice from you.

“I didn’t say you could talk,” he snarls. “Sergeant, you got any ideas?”

Bucky brings his metal hand up to his chin, giving a thoughtful stroke and slides his thumb up to his lower lip. He pushes against it and hums.

“If she likes to hide… I don’t mind finding her,” Bucky snickers, “we’re soldiers, we know how to track. But it never hurts to test our skills, huh?”

“Meaning,” Steve pulls you back against him.

“You remember where we took that hike… with the team? That big forest up a ways. Real easy to hide up there. Easier to get lost.”

“Oh?” Steve hums, “there’s no moon, Buck. That’s not practical.”

“I didn’t think we were being practical,” Bucky retorts, “but if you wanna be practical…” 

Bucky holds up his metal hand and stretches his fingers. Steve clucks and slowly drags his hands from your neck, trailing along your shoulders. His breath brushes over your hair as he leans in to plant a kiss on your crown.

“That’s the thing about my little star,” he snarls into your hair, “I’ll always find her light.”

⭐

You crash to your knees, a gust swirling over you as the metal slices into the trunk of a nearby tree. You can hardly see as you scramble across the forest floor, crawling away from where the shield’s embedded into the thick walnut. You have only a thin layer of silk to guard you against the night, the belt of the robe growing looser with each move.

You get to your feet, naked soles slipping on the leaves and dirt. You throw out your arms to keep your balance as you race into the dark. You keep your hands ahead of you to keep from crashing into some unseen barrier. You squint, the vague outline of the trees speckled all around.

“Is that a fawn I hear?” Bucky’s voice rises tauntingly above you, “or a little kitten?”

You gasp and hurl yourself forward, twisting and turning without direction. Your only purpose is to get away. To keep afoot. You cannot stop, you cannot hide. They will find you.

“Cute little kitten… thinks she can outrun a wolf,” Bucky chortles as you hear his steady, patient steps. He doesn’t run, he walks with a certain pace. He has no doubt as you’re swept up in all of yours.

You slip again, crashing into the soft ground, rolling down a small ditch. The silk parts, exposing your chest and stomach. You try to fix it as you puff and stagger to your feet. You tighten the knot and fall forward. You claw your way up the rise and crest the ridge.

“You sound scared, starshine,” Steve’s timbre wafts through the chill, “I can hear your heartbeat…”

“I hear it too,” Bucky’s voice counters from your other side.

You spin around, searching through the void, lashing out protectively. The world tilts and turns violently as you whimper and thrash your arms. 

“Please, please, don’t–”

“Run.”

Bucky’s breath tickles the back of your ear and you yipe. You obey without a thought. You sprint ahead, pumping your arms and length as you sob and race into the blackness. Your feet pound against the forest floor, twigs and pebbles cutting up your flesh.

He’s behind you. Running. You hear the steps just behind yours. Your chest burns and your nerves scatter. You hit a wall and bounces back, colliding into another behind you. 

You're crushed between the bodies of the men as they close in on you, grabbing as you robe as you weakly try to fend them off. You squeak and squeal as the robe falls away and the silk is peeled from your shoulders. The fabric pools at your feet, slipping beneath them as you kick up frantically.

Bucky loops his arms through yours and pulls them above your head. You whine as Steve’s calloused fingertips brush up your stomach and he gropes your chest. You squirm as he explores your naked flesh, thumbs rolling around your hard nipples and tracing between your tits.

“Guess it’s a tie?” Bucky purrs.

“Nah, I got her first,” Steve growls.

“Bullshit.”

“We can share.”

“You can have her mouth,” Steve grabs your chin.

Bucky brings his hand up, poking two fingers into your mouth as Steve squeezes your jaw. You nearly gag as Bucky pokes at the back of your tongue. You bite down on his metal digits and he hums. 

“Fine, one hole’s just as sweet as the next, right, sugarplum?”

Steve pulls his hand back and grips the back of your head. He shoves you forward till you bend, his other hand clasps around your hips as he keeps your ass against him. You smell the blood and scent that lingers on his dirty uniform.

He wiggles against you as Bucky cups your chin and brings your head up. You bat your lashes as hot tears well and spill over. You whine and quiver as you reach out to cling to his pants. The soft whisper of his zipper cuts through the din of the nocturnal forest.

His hard tip presses against your lips as he keeps his hold on you. He pushes into your mouth as you let him. You can’t fight. You’ve fallen into their trap. He slides into your throat and you suck in air around him.

Steve shifts behind you, his pants slackening as he leans against you. You feel his veiny length rub along your ass. He trails his tip down the curve of your flesh. You shiver as he glides down along your cunt and lines himself up.

"Can you feel how desperate she is for you?" Steve growls.

He inches into you as you let out a murmur around Bucky’s intrusion. You cling tighter to Bucky as he rocks and Steve dips deeper and deeper. Your walls clench him and your feet slip on the dirt. He steadies you as he builds his tempo. 

"I feel her shaking… sorry, I got a bit carried away Rogers, but you know how that pussy just begs for it," Bucky huffs.

The noise of your degradation echoes around you. Your heart hammers behind your ears as your blood sears through your veins. You can’t breath as they use you, back and forth, stretching and bending you to their will. You are nothing more than what they make of you.

Steve runs his hand up above your ass, a sharp tap as he ruts. Bucky wrenches your head back, sinking further in as he gags you. You babble helplessly as your face streams in futility.

Steve leans over you, ramming himself to his limit as he snakes his hand around your neck. Bucky pets your head as he groans. Steve purrs as the Bucky bulges in your throat. 

"Mmm, fuck, she takes it so good," Steve grits out, "why are you hiding, baby girl, when your body needs this?"

He pulls you back, sliding you off of Bucky. The other man grunts and exhales sharply as his wet dick prods your cheek. 

Steve wraps his thick arm around your neck and pulls you straight as he stands. He keeps you locked with his bicep as Bucky steps closer. 

Bucky lifts your left leg, hooking it over Steve’s free arm, before raising your other. He keeps it bent to your chest as he lines up with your entrance. You mewl as he slowly forces his way in. Your cunt stretches painfully around both of them, burning hotter the further he gets.

Both men bury themselves to their limit. You whimper and cough, throat still raw and ragged. You tilt your head back as Steve's arm curls tighter around your neck. 

You huff and heavy as they work in tandem, fucking into you, crushing you between their ruts. You bounce helplessly, muscles straining as every part of your clenches.

"Mm, baby girl," Steve moans, "you like that, don't you?"

"Huh, the captain isn't good enough. You need the sergeant too," Bucky teases, "that's it doll, you like to be used."

You shudder and shut your eyes against another wave of tears. You grasp Steve’s side and Bucky’s arm, trying to slow both of them. You cannot. You can only steel yourself against the barrage of their desire.

You plunge into the void of both world and mind. You let it consume you just as they do. The friction of bodies, the theft of your autonomy, the assault of your very being. The heroes that shine in light turn to monsters in the depths of the dark.

⭐

The sun rises through the window, casting a soft hue over the hungover scene. Limbs tangled in each other, body heat mingling to sweltering, a prison of flesh on either side of you. Steve’s arm is slung around your side as Bucky’s metal hand rests on your head, cradling your cheek, a gesture less gentle than it would look.

You can barely breathe as you watch the shadows tilt and fade over Bucky’s shoulder. You don’t move, not just for the fact that they won’t let you, rather the agony that coils around you. You are worn to the bone, stretched and stained by their hunger.

You tremble as Steve groans and his fingers crawl along your side. He nestles closer and presses his nose into your hair. As they’ve slept, you’ve lain in torturous consciousness. You cannot hide, not even in your own mind. Sleep is no escape, it cannot free you from the inevitable.

“Starshine,” he rasps as he kisses your crown, brushing his fingertips along your hip. He takes your hand in his and raises it. He plays with it, folding your thumb inward as he pushes his fingers between yours. “Wake him up.”

“Captain?” You murmur as you curl your fingers beside his.

“Go on, show him a good morning,” he goads as he leads your hand down, hovering it above Bucky’s dick, half-erect already.

You let him wrap your hand around Bucky’s length. He inhales abruptly but does not open his eyes. You watch his face as Steve guides you to his tip and back down to his base. He pumps your touch up and down until Bucky’s rigid and tense.

Bucky’s dark lashes part and he stretches his thumb under your chin, clutching your face tight as he groans. His lips curl slightly as a dimple pits in his cheek. You gasp as Steve lets you go, rescinding his hand to dip along your pelvis. He slips his fingers down and burrows between your folds, a current radiating from your clit to your nape.

“Don’t stop till he cums,” Steve snarls as his nails dig into your skin.

“Yes, Captain,” you reply as you watch Bucky’s face contort, blue eyes drowning you. 

It is better to obey than to hide. Easier to accept than deny. Just as you cannot fight these men, you cannot fight the fate they’ve confined you to.

[resident-gay-bitch]

Help me! Indians and/or James Potter lovers help me out!!

im a big fan of Desi James and i'm writing a fic at the moment and i want to include affectionate language (pet names) from all of my characters national languages and have been digging for some Hindi terms of endearment for a while and am a little lost.

a lot of the searches are coming up with words but not specifying which Indian language it derives from, and I just don't want to like mix languages and be stupid and inconsiderate about it.

anyway, so far i have "Jaan" or "Meri Jaan" which I understand means "life" or "my life" wich is fucking adorable, as well as "Mera Pyaar" (I've seen a couple of different spelling variations of this so please correct me if it's wrong) which i understand means "my love".

both are very very sweet, and i will be using them! however, i've been looking for terms more like "sweetheart", "pretty", "cutie", "handsome", "baby", and stuff like that. you know, terms that can be used a bit more casually, in the earlier stages of dating / sleeping together, before the love and devotion happens!

anyway, any help would be very appreciated. any terms of endearment you know, any extra information you can give me, anything at all that relates to Desi James that would be helpful for me to know is so appreciated!

also any headcannons you have about Desi James would be awesome! especially ones that like involve his culture and stuff like that. id really like to write him well and give authenticity to his character that i don't naturally just have. i am doing my research where i need too, of course, but if you have little things about him that i could simply just adopt or learn about would be so awesome because like, i wouldn't even know to search for a lot of little things i bet.

anyway, thank you!!! i'll love anyone that helps me out so so so so so so much!!

edit: if he were to say "star" or "starlight" or "starshine" or "pretty star" something about stars to someone as a term of endearment (or just affectionately) how would that be said / spelt? i hopped on google but there are so many translations and i don't know which would be correct in this context and im helpless! thank youuuuuuuuuuuu <3

[tainted-heartz]

Hear me out all the welcome home characters (if possible poly if not das cool u could just do wally) with a s/o who intentionally and unintentionally does the frog blink when looking at people.

I just think it would be funny

| bestie I can do poly no matter what its just gonna be so much to write...ITS WORTH IT THO<33 |

- wally finds it..normal funny enough. if you do in unintentionally he won't mind a bit even if you're staring at him during a conversation. hell he may even laugh and jokingly say “ that's a..interesting blink , dearest. ” “ what do you mean? ” “ oh nothing.. ” now if its INTENTIONALLY done he again , doesn't react in the slightest. he's probably seen much weirder so your silly little frog blink isn't much to him.

- julie can't help but giggle at it even if you're staring at something else or talking with someone else. she finds it silly yet adorable! if you blink at her that way she can't help but gently hold your face and say “ you look like an adorable froggy! ” and give you a kiss on the forehead. even if you do it intentionally it don't seem weird to her , she's going to find it cute in her own special way no matter what.

- frank is more of the ones who gets disturbed ever so slightly by the fact you frog blink at people or objects. sometimes he'll flinch if you blink at him but always quickly apologizes about his reaction and even if he's been dating you for some time he'll still jump. “ oh jeez I'm sorry butterfly , I'm just..I'd rather not say creeped out by it. it's just interesting! ” he tries to say that in a positive way and will make up for it by kisses and hugs...your his strange partner and he loves it in some form.

- sally giggles at it like julie but is a little secretive about how she thinks about it. by the way she acts she finds it unique yet adorable. she can actually keep eye contact with you but does laugh if you look at objects you're interested in and do it. “ you remind me of how moths stare at flames or go to them , starshine! it's adorable. ”

- poppy , being the motherly time , ignores it. it's a gentle way of ignoring it and even can't help but kiss your forehead if you're staring at an object or thing while doing the frog blink. she even lightly asks about it and never pushes it but does let a giggle out or two.

- eddie finds it well..funny yet unique! he says that in a gentle way but seriously he can't help but stare in such a loving way but will..lightly joke. calls you his ‘ froggy ’ and if he ever delivers letters to you expect a frog drawn on it with a lot of hearts on it! he even accidentally makes everyone else call you froggy....

- barnaby can and will joke about it only because that's in his nature . yet it will be jokes that show he loves you , if he doesn't joke around with you he might as well not be your boyfriend- he calls you “ frogster ” and somehow can hold eye contact with you and jokingly mimics you.

- howdy can't help but find it unique and adorable , always making eye contact even if you do it but if its for no reason he may be a little creeped out but just stares back usually. you're always gonna be loveable in his eyes but you're just a frog...a very lovable one.

[sso-montana]

Ok quick question just how the actual fuck do the soul rider and soul steed connections work because it's clearly not based on a single pair of souls being reincarnated and finding each other over and over again

Like there can be multiple generations of soul riders at once which okay it seems that every soul rider has their "own" incarnations of their soul steeds so it's clearly a generational thing that every I'd say 20-30 years there's a new group of riders

This means the reincarnation cycle should be based on the soul steeds life span which brings it's own set of problems like what if one of them gets killed (the Concorde incident) and it also would mean they have regular horse life spans which... you have talking magical horses surely they can live longer than your average horse next stable. They also seem to reincarnate pretty soon after they die if not right after they die, probably works like the avatar circle in atla. It's also pretty well established that there is only one guardian horse of each circle at any point in time. There can't be two starshines at once.

But there can be two (possibly three depending on how old the members get) incantations of soul riders at once

Elizabeth and Anne's mom (previous sun and star) were both still very much alive and kicking when Anne and Lisa (current sun and star) were born and bonded with their horses and discovered their powers and-

Do the previous soul riders just get weaker? are they just as powerful? How does it work??? TELL ME SSE TELL ME

[laurenairay]

Strolling through leaves - N. Hischier

Summary: a stroll through autumn leaves prompts a serious conversation with Nico.

The eighth of my Autumn & Halloween blurbs! A romantic stroll with Nico? Sign me up!

Word Count: 700 words.

Tagging: @fallinallincurls @starshine-hockey-girl @misshoneyimhome @lam-ila @kurlyteuvo

@tonyspep @cixrosie

~

The leaves under your feet crunched as you walked through the streets of Newark, the golds and browns and russets surrounding you from all angles. It truly was your favourite time of year, whether back home in Bern or here now on your visit in New Jersey, and the best part of all was that you had your boyfriend Nico by your side.

It had been a rather impulsive decision to visit him, the two of you not having anything planned until later in the year, but the moment that you’d seen the happy smile spread across his face at the sight of you, you knew it had been worth it.

“It’s so beautiful here, Nico,” you murmured, breaking yourself out of your thoughts.

“It really is. Second to Bern, maybe third to Zurich, but still beautiful,” he nodded.

You just laughed, nodding too. He wasn’t wrong there. Nothing could ever compare to home, but this was his home too.

“You know, I wasn’t sure if you’d ever feel comfortable being out here with me.”

Nico’s soft words sent an awful pang through your chest, and you stopped walking all together as you gathered your nerves.

“What do you mean?”

He winced slightly, turning to face you properly as he stopped walking too. “I didn’t mean anything bad by it. It’s just…I know nothing compares to home, and you love it there, and we’ve only been dating less than a year. I guess I didn’t know if you could ever see this as your home too.”

Your lips parted in shock at his confession. He wanted you to live over in New Jersey with him? Already?

“Do you want me to see it as my home too?” you said hesitantly.

It was one thing for him to see he wasn’t sure what you thought, but you needed to be sure about what he was actually saying for himself, before you jumped to any conclusions. Not for something this important.

Nico huffed out a laugh, nodding firmly as he grabbed both of your hands in his. “I want that more than anything. You are so important to me. This relationship…it’s everything I’ve ever wanted and we’ve been apart more than we’ve been together so I know I’m sounding crazy right now. Is it something you would ever consider? Moving over here?”

The way your heart raced and stomach filled with butterflies and head swam with his question was overwhelming. This was all that you’d wanted since the moment you’d started dating Nico, this long-term commitment, but to have it dropped on you out of nowhere like this? It was a lot. But by the earnest look in his eyes, you knew you needed to be honest.

“It’s something I had vaguely hoped for…in the future. I think right now would be too soon – there’s still so much we need to learn about each other first and I hate the thought of us rushing before we’re ready. But it’s definitely something that I would like for us?” you said, as genuinely as you could.

If that wasn’t good enough for him, then you supposed that was your answer to whether the two of you were compatible after all.

The smile that spread over Nico’s face was all the answer you needed.

“You’re right. You’re definitely right. As much as I would love to sweep you off your feet and make my house our home…you’re right. But we’ve got time. We’ve got the time, right?” he asked.

“Yeah, we do,” you nodded, smiling softly back up at him.

He grinned, raising a hand to cup your face as he leant down to kiss you, a kiss so consuming that you had to clutch at the lapels of his jacket to stay steady on your feet.

Wow.

“That was all pretty intense, so I’ll stop pressing you about it. But you’ll think about it?” Nico asked hopefully, threading the fingers of one hand with yours.

“Yeah, I will, I promise,” you said firmly.

And as the two of you continued your stroll, autumn leaves floating down from the trees all around you, you knew you’d never made a promise you wanted to keep more.

[ghoastixx]

hi sorry I’m the one who asked for the dad!Sam and dad!Cas one. Yes, it is for the sneaking beers one I’m sorry I didn’t specify!

Dad!Sam & Cas (Separate) w/ a child sneaking in beers

Synopsis above

Notes: Don't you even worry about it! It's so okay starshine, I just wanted to make sure I wrote it for the right thing!! Thank you for getting back to me so quickly, I am happy to expand upon this for you.

Author's notes: Like all the other stories that get multiple characters in one, this will probably consist of choppy notes instead of a full fledged story. Reader is gender neutral.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sam Winchester

Like when you snuck out to spray paint things, you best believe you're fucked.

He is so pissed

I believe in Sam being a stricter dad when it comes to rebelliousness so yeah he's way madder than Dean was.

He's mad that you snuck it in AND are underage drinking.

He's trying to give you a good life and is convinced your actions are going to sabotage yourself.

"Y/N Winchester, what the hell do you think you're doing."

He gives you a firm talking to about why he doesn't want you to do that.

"I mean- if you are going to drink, I'd rather you do it here rather than somewhere else. But I really don't want you drinking at all. Do you understand?"

He grounds you for two weeks.

Castiel

I don't think it would bother him much until someone else brought it to his attention.

"Cas, you know Y/N is drinking, right?" "Yes, what about it?" "You know kids aren't supposed to drink." "..No I did not."

He's not SUPER upset because he didn't know that you weren't supposed to be drinking. If he had known he would've told you. So you get off easy.

But, if he catches you sneaking it in again after he already talked to you about it?

Now you're in trouble.

He doesn't like feeling disrespected by you. To Castiel, respect is very important when it comes to his kin.

He's more disappointed rather than angry.

"I believe I have already told you I did not want you drinking, Y/N."

He will start keeping a closer eye on you. He's mad at you for a while.

[shalomniscient]

sevchino req!!! wanna see protective arle to the children please,,,,,,father in action raahhhh

you and me BOTH anon 🥺🥺🥺 ......................

protective || sevchino

cw. none (?)

notes. yeah i like bullying pantalone (and not in a fun way like a bully rahu). sue me. also super self indulgent with no consistent pov dshjjdfhk

"My, my. What's a little girl like you doing in a place like this, hm?"

Estelle hugs the little bear closer to her chest. Her father had told her to stay in the office, but she was taking so long, and it was starting to get lonely...

She lifts her eyes up from the ground to look at the man crouched before her. He has long, dark hair that reminds her of her father's with how soft it looks. He has a polite smile on his face, but it doesn't reach his eyes. And his eyes—something about them made her nervous.

"I'm here with my father," she answers quietly, squeezing her toy. "I was supposed to stay in the office, but..."

The man clicks his tongue. "Tsk. Poor little thing, did your father leave you behind?"

Estelle bites her lip. Should she answer him? Father always told her not to speak with strangers, but it's been so long, and she wants to go home. She knows she'd begged her father to let her tag along, but now, all she wants to do is go home to her mother and Noé.

So she nods, looking back down at the ground. The man sighs, and rises back to his full height. He's tall, towering over her, and the way the lights backlight his form makes Estelle reflexively take a step back. He looks down at her down the bridge of his nose, the silver rim of his glasses glinting.

"Then how about I help you find her, hm?" he asks. "I think I know exactly who your father is."

Despite her apprehension, Estelle brightens. "Really?"

"Really," he nods. His white cloak parts, and he extends a gloved hand to her. But before he can take her smaller hand in his own, an arc of pure, blistering flame snakes around the girls feet, creating a protective, blazing wall. But around the girl, the fires cool, warm and comforting instead of threatening.

Footsteps echo like thunder down the hall, and the man tucks his hand back into his cloak, those dangerous eyes turning sharp, and a venomous grin creeping onto his face.

"We meet again, Knave," he sneers. Estelle turns, and standing behind her, expression twisted into a level of fury she's never seen before, is her father. A blood-red wing pulses over her left shoulder, flickering and shifting in the light. In her father's hand is a mean-looking red scythe, radiating a furious, hungry aura.

"Stay away from my daughter, Regrator," Arlecchino snarls, practically vibrating with rage. She keeps her eyes trained on the other Harbinger as she kneels down, and Estelle runs into her waiting arm. Pantalone watches it all with a deceptively placid smile.

"You know," he hums, "she has her eyes."

Arlecchino glares at him with enough fury to kill a normal man. But as much as she loathes the waste of breath before her, he is still a Harbinger, and Harbingers have always been far from normal.

"Do not speak of my wife," she says lowly, dangerously, cradling Estelle against her chest. Estelle tucks her head beneath her father's chin, one small hand winding tight in her father's jacket and the other clutching her bear plushie. The little thing's fur is slightly singed. Then, her father's gaze shifts from the man and to her, and her eyes soften. "Are you alright, starshine?"

Estelle nods, snuggling closer against her father's warmth. Arlecchino presses a soft kiss to her forehead, then turns back to Pantalone. She dispels her scythe, but it does not make her any less deadly. She considers, briefly, ripping the man before her to shreds; but Estelle takes priority, and she'd hate for her daughter to have to witness such violence, so she turns on her heel and walks away instead.

She will ensure the Regrator understands that her family is off limits in other ways.

[midnight-mourning]

DCA Promptober Day 26: Scorch

Ignore that it's no longer October, I got busy. As a treat, have some ANGST for my being late

Word count: 880

🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃

You can hardly see in front of you, you can hardly breathe. Every gasping inhale merely sends you into a coughing fit. 

Your hands search blindly to guide you, give you any indication of where you are and what's going on. You're scared, terrified even.

You don't like fire, you don't like fire, you don't like fire-

You sit up in bed, breathing heavy. 

You touch a hand to your chest, patting once to ensure that yes, you're alive and whole. No broken parts or-

You pause, then shake your head, a weird though that you elect to ignore as your heartrate slows down again. 

Your hand fumbles on the nightstand for the glass of water you'd left there, you don't dare to allow yourself the opportunity to look at the time. 

You gulp down the drink as you contemplate how many times now you've woken up like this, from that same dream. 

It's been, months. You can't even recall when it started. You know it wasn't immediately after the fire that burned down the Plex. No, sometime after that. 

You still can't wrap your head around why you're having these dreams though. You weren't at work that night, nor have you ever been in a fire yourself in any shape or form. 

And yet, these dreams, they're so, vivid. You can feel the heat of the flames, you can taste the ash on your tongue. The crackling of the fire as it licks at your feet. How it burns. 

Scorches.

There's never an escape, you've tried. You always start in the same location, the middle of the Daycare. And no matter what direction you run, no matter what falling debris you dodge, it's always the same. You wake up before you can make it out, before you can break free. 

If you could talk to someone about all this, you would. But you don't even know how to go about trying to explain this to a therapist. It was, in the grand scheme of things, beyond confusing. 

Part of you wonders if it isn't guilt. Guilt for not being there, for not saving them. 

You should have been there. You would have been there, if not for, that. 

"Sunshine~ You have to hold still!"

You giggle, "I'm trying it's just that, the string tickles!"

"Well, you're simply going to have to get used to it because you're never ever taking this off," Sun huffs.

"Okay, okay."

After a few more adjustments, he ties the end of the bracelet off, snipping off the extra string.

"There! All done! What do you think?" He leans in closer, "You like it right? Right?"

You shoo him away, laughing, "You know I do! I like anything you make for me, silly."

He holds his head up with pride, hands on hips.

You take the moment to actually look at the friendship bracelet, he'd been insistent that you couldn't take any sneak peaks or the likes until after he was finished. 

The beads are on a red string, with various little celestial-themed charms. There's something spelled out in the middle of it all, and you read it closely, heart falling as you do.

'Love Always' With a heart on either side of the words.

The Attendant picks up on your silence, "Is everything alright, Starshine?"

"I, you don't," You start to slowly shake your head, eyes glued to the bracelet and yet desperate to look anywhere else, "You don't mean that."

Sun laughs, but there's a nervous edge to it, "Of course I do! Why, why wouldn't I?"

"No, no you don't," You get up suddenly, panicked and frantic.

You need to get out of here. You need to leave. This is too much. There's no way that he could possibly, that either of them would even consider you-

You jump when Sun's hand touches your shoulder, now standing as well.

He tilts his head slightly, "Do you think that we," His tone grows weaker, just a smidge, "Don't care?"

You stare up at him for a moment, heart pounding in your chest. But, you're a coward, and you can't face this. Can't face the idea that they don't love you the way you love them. Not right now. Maybe not ever.

"I have to go," You turn away, starting to move to the doors. 

A hand on your wrist, "Wait!"

You pause, but you can't make yourself look back to him. 

"Please. Don't go."

You bite your cheek, pulling away, voice a mere whisper, "I'm sorry."

You're out of water, but you're not anymore tired than you were when you first woke up. 

You are, however, filled with more regret. Regret for what could have been, regret for what was. 

Maybe it is guilt that's the cause for all this. The scorch the fire left on you as punishment for your inaction, for your fear. 

You set the glass back on the bedside table, laying back down again and cuddling a spare pillow. 

As you bring the bedding closer to you, your eyes catch sight of the bracelet, a haunting reminder that will probably stay with you until the end of your days. 

You close your eyes as the tears break loose, choking back a sob.

You owed them this much, at least.

🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃

Yikesss, that's tough, ain't it? Well, bummer for you i guess! Anywho, other promptobers are here, thanks for reading!

[nova--michael]

How the My Little Pony Fandom ruined my mental health (long rant(/essay?))

TW: sexual themes, gore, trauma, self harm, suicidality

I will go in-depth in alot of sensitive topics, please proceed with caution

I got into My Little Pony when Season 2 aired. In 2011, I was 7 at the time, 2nd grade. English isn't my first language, I didn't even know other languages were a thing. That is until I got access to the internet. We had a family computer that I used basically daily. I mostly drew on MSPaint and played Animal Jam. I was a happy little girl at the time. Eventually, I discovered YouTube. Which became my new obsession. I consumed content like an addict. And eventually, I stumbled upon My Little Pony, where people uploaded whole episodes. The first episode I watched was "Fall Weather Friends", S1 E13. I was hooked instantly. Bright colorful Ponies! It reminded me of the Fillys I collected. So I consumed more. Was able to find a playlist with all episodes in order. The only thing is, they were in English, which I didn't understand. But I didn't care. I wanted my magical colorful ponies! So I watched it and had an overwhelmingly fun time. It was "Bridle Gossip" S1 E9 where the language just...clicked for me. I can't explain it, but it felt like I suddenly could understand almost every word and my English knowledge expanded from there. Which was a yay for me, because now I could watch my colorful Pony cartoon and actually understand what they were saying. It gave me a big heads up when we started learning English a year later in 3rd grade. I never learned English in that class, knowledge wise I already knew what I needed and was very far ahead of everyone. All thanks to My Little Pony.

But I think it is also the start of when everything went downhill for me.

I explicitly remember holding paper in front of the screen to trace the Mane 6's outfits from the episode "Suited for Success" S1 E14 with a pencil. The show made me really get into art. I drew My Little Pony left and right, and it eventually led me to DeviantArt, which I still have fond memories of. I found out that people made original characters. So I did so too. One of my first ever character was "Starshine" which I still love dearly and sketch when I'm bored. But this also led me down the Brony Fandom rabbit hole. Once I realized people made their own My Little Pony content it was over. I literally obsessed over fan content. I consumed everything that the Fandom could offer. And when I mean everything, I mean Everything.

I don't know what the first gore or nsfw content I consumed, I really do not remember. But it was ultimately this content that shaped me or....better say traumatized me that still affects me to this day.

Just like many people in the Fandom, I found out what "Cupcakes" is. A creepy, gore fanfiction that was about Pinkie Pie dismembering Rainbow Dash and turning her into Cupcakes. One of the many fan content I consumed but I remember this being one of the first experiences I had with gore. I watched the original video from ocarinaplaya. I was, I had no idea what gore was. But it was MLP, so I watched it. And this was the first straw that altered my brain. It was like a car crash, i couldn't look away. The way Pinkie tortured and cut up Rainbow Dash. And I consumed more. Smile HD, Cupcakes SFM, My Little Paradox, Pony.MOV, Lil Miss Rarity, My Little Amnesia, Elements of Insanity (that I still unironically love to this day), and so much more. You name it, I watched it. Things like Elements of Insanity and Cupcakes SFM all led me down the SFM rabbit hole. SFM = Source Filmmaker. When I see SFM models of the MLP characters now, I swear I get flashbacks. Because through SFM I found sensual MLP content. Of course, not all of SFM was sexual or gore. Some masterpieces like Doors, Fluttershys Dream, The Walk, Remembrance, Nightmare Night, all are so good.

But of course with SFM came very...sensual MLP content. Ponies kissing or Making out or even going as far as almost having sex. And something changed in my brain. I started to...actively search out these videos. Rarijack, TwiDash - Hearts and Hooves Day, Appledash, those freaking Fart and Vore videos. I watched it all. I don't know what I felt at the time, I don't remember or more so I don't want to remember. All I know is that I started to seek them out. Like actively searching for it. Which also led me to non sfm sensual content. Twilight Sparkle Pantsu, Friendship is Benefits, Concerning Pegasi, Fluttershy gets BEEPBEEPED in the Maze and infamous Banned from Equestria.

Remember I was a child. 9-10 at the time. And 99% of these videos didn't have any warnings. Nothing. And even if they had a warning 80% of those were joke warnings.

I consumed alot of My Little Pony porn and gore in my childhood. Unrestricted Internet access traumatized me to no end.

It was Banned from Equestria which had changed a lot for me. Because I found out that it was a game. An actual game you could play. And I sought it out. I played a lot of Pony games too, especially the ones on the very old Hasbro website. But Banned from Equestria was almost too easy to find. I found it on a website mainly for bad porn games. And it had a category that was purely for My Little Pony. I just went to search for it. I only needed to type "mlp porn games" and it was instantly there. 2 clicks is all that it took. Yes, the website is still up sadly. That website led me down another awful rabbit hole of My Little Pony porn games. Again, I was 10, I had no idea what porn was. Or sex. But it was this (and a separate event that happened in my family) that taught me what it was. And again, I searched for those things actively. And played those games religiously. By 10 years old I was a freaking porn addict. Not even gore (which I developed PTSD from), but Porn was the thing that caught my attention. I also learned what masturbation was thanks to that. And I did just that. I masturbated almost on the daily. Found my Mom's toys, stole them, and used them. Now, masturbation isn't a bad thing by any means. It's good to explore your body and what makes you feel good but I was just an innocent kid...

My parents never found out. My Mom eventually caught on I stole her toys but never did anything against it. Nor did she educate me. She let me do my thing. So I basically masturbated daily, sometimes more than once. What being horny was, was something I didn't even know. I only knew I wanted to do this because is saw my colorful ponies do it.

But these porn games made me spiral. I lost so much of my childhood innocence through this. I spend most of my childhood and early teen years (I started puberty when I was 9) by watching porn, playing porn, and the occasional gore. It has twisted what sex even was for me. The whole concept was ruined for me. To this day.

Throughout the next years, I learned more about porn, and went through many different rabbit holes. My Little Pony Porn, actual porn, Furry Porn, it didn't matter. If it was Porn, I consumed it.

I would also blame this addiction was the reason I became/am hypersexual.

And now, over 10 years later, what changed?

Nothing. I have grown so disgusted by Sex, it's why I'm AroAceflux now. I know. Hypersexuality and AroAce? Pick a struggle. But I'm serious. I consume a lot of Porn to this day. Masturbation had died down but it still happens occasionally. The people I follow on Patreon mainly do nsfw content. Hell, I was on Nsfw-twt a few years ago too.

Porn has ruined my whole mental state. It's scientifically proven that subjecting children to porn and gore at an early age can severely damage their development and I think I'm no exception.

My mental health has been very bad since 2016. I started to cut myself frequently and get suicidal. I still carry scars to this day and I do blame a lot on this addiction. I've been self-harm clean for about 3 years now. I was severely suicidal again in 2021 where I almost killed myself has it not been a friend calling the cops i still struggle with being suicidal to this day though, despite having finished therapy.

I also struggled with a lot of identity stuff at the time. I have it figured out now and am openly out as a trans man by a lot of people in my life. And I have an amazing support system now. But I never really had the opportunity to talk about THIS. How the My Little Pony Fandom ruined my mental health due to the content that was created, without any content warnings. I say I also developed my PTSD from this.

Obviously not just that, it was a lot of trauma family and school-wise wise that made me develop PTSD but I also will blame these types of MLP content for this as well.

Now, I love the Brony fandom. I still do. So many people I have met who are in this Fandom are so incredibly nice, but the awful stuff just stands out even more. This was an innocent kids show about colorful ponies and the magic of friendship. Many children with unrestricted internet access watched it. And watched this type of content. The Fandom should have been a lot more critical about the type of content that they post

I know I'm not the only person that was subjected to gore and porn. Many children from 2010-2017 were traumatized by this type of content. And I wouldn't be surprised if many also developed mental disorders because of it, whether it be Depression, PTSD, Hypersexuality, etc. Many of the young fans are scarred

And we still are

And we are still trying to heal as young adults

Hell, I'm turning 20 very soon, and I still struggle so hard with my mental health and the scars I got in my early childhood and early teen years.

I should've spend those years so much differently

But I didn't and know I'm left to pick up the pieces.

I hope this shines some light on the cruel side of the Brony community, I recommend Raymundo2112's video "The SINS of Bronies", it goes also in-depth about the psychological effects of children being subjected to porn and gore

Please be careful what children consume on the internet.

Now

I apologize for this length, I just wanted to talk about it

I'm open to any questions that may come up, and I'm sorry for my irl people who see this

Thank you for reading, it means alot