#can you tell I tagged this at 1AM?

[dae-time-designs]

Sometimes life just likes to throw an uno reverse or two in your path. Literally.

(click for better quality I beg of you)

The tags on this are just me descending into madness at 1AM. Oops

[neoteric-muser]

old art I never posted (maybe? I forgot.), I like how I did Nastasya but the rest I feel are ehhh.

[way2gosuperrstarr]

"oh wow! what a nice community of shared interest! i sure hope i can form good, solid friendships with my mutuals/other people and interact regularly, and form a true friendship that will last even when we begin to enter different fandoms. oh, joyous ! ☺️"

<- doesnt interact with anyone out of some sort of fear, the most silent mutual on earth, waits for people to talk first (npc behavior), takes 500 years to respond to a single ask, kind of afraid to share my own ideas, has some of the most stunted/stilted/stiff conversation skills on the planet, doesnt want to intrude on anyone/make someone feel obligated to talk to me because oh my god thats horrible, and when someone DOES actually talk to me in messages on their own will i take like 2000 years to respond to a single message out of fear or general exhaustion

[arson-09]

one of the many issues i find with sjms writing (and subsequently her fans) is that a character has to be perfect to be loved (this is acotar specific) hear me out ((apologies in advance for the somewhat rambling and nonsensical bits. its late lmao)

Just about everything Feyre and Rhysand do is justified. Rhysands entire list of evil actions from acotar is retconned. Him murdering those winter court children was suddenly by an unnamed daemati whos never brought up again, his sexual assault of feyre was “for her protection”, and in general the way he treated her UtM is okayed (sa is never justifiable, even in fictional media) and him keeping very important information about Feyres body from her is fine because he was doing it to spare her feelings (also never ok to keep information of ones body from the individual)

Feyre is allowed to destroy the spring court. No matter how you feel about Tamlins character the actions she took were extreme, petty, and useless. She collectively punished the citizens of the spring court because of her relationship with Tamlin and she believed him to be allying with Hybern. Which was hinted to her to be false and she could have read his mind at any point. Feyre also is a unreliable narrator but her word is taken as truth. When she has magical outbursts its nothing, she can treat her supposed friends like shit but shes still the better friend.

Together they constantly spout how perfect the other is. Especially Feyre about Rhysand, maybe its the mating bond but the bond is how sjm communicates her feelings about the characters (which i feel is evident in the Nessian bond) Feyre says rhysand is Good and Justified in everything he does, so you the reader must believe it too, right?

The rest of the Inner Circle also falls into this. Mor is allowed to unfairly treat Nesta like shit, Cassian is unquestioned when it comes to his mistreatment of his mate, azriel is a background tapestry, and amren is a whole different issue tbh.

Nesta is the outlier. She is not perfect and we know it because of how mistreated she is by the people that surround her. Cassian is a horrible partner, letting rhysand do and say what he wants to her, restricting her food and being very neglectful of Nestas mental health. Nesta is a flawed character but shes not an antagonist. Her flaws does not call for this sort of treatment. It is disgusting how sjm portrays Nestas character and her “healing arc”. Sjm says she loves nesta, but her treatment says otherwise.

Tamlin receives the brunt of this treatment. He is a flawed character but is not evil. Hes not even a real antagonist, just because he is not friends or on good terms with Feyre and Rhysand does not make him such. His allying with Hybern is used as reasoning for his mistreatment when its clear as day hes a double agent. Tamlin, while he struggles with emotional regulation, anger issues and communication is a very good high lord and his personal relationship with a character does not change that. His actions towards feyre are often called abusive but sjms writing fails to bring this observation to fruition. She fails to actually make him abusive and antagonistic because she accidentally writes her own outs by justifying similar behaviors from other characters.

If you have spent anytime on the majority side of the fandom you have seen the Feyre and Rhysand vs Nesta and Tamlin mentality. Nesta and Tamlin are hated while Feysand are treasured and its because sjm makes a perfect character for you to love so why would you root for the flawed characters hated by the narrative? Nesta and Tamlin are far more nuanced and interesting due to their imperfections, dislike by the narrative, and hatred from the majority fandom. (To note, Nesta and Tamlins characters are different ((although they have some striking similarities)) but their treatment is very equal. Which is why i, and many other people in the fandom compare and combine them so much)

Feyre and Rhysand through the narrative and fans are perfect and can do no wrong. Tamlin and Nesta are frankly evil and undeserving of love. Its intriguing to see this behavior and its almost unique to the acotar and booktok fandom. Which is why i find myself so focused on Tamlin and subsequently the fandom. its so odd and something i havent seen before that it gets stuck in my little adhd brain.

[iremiari]

something something.... in a similar vein of thought as to how crystal's mind eyes are supposed to represent her "being watched" (it was stated in an interview somewhere), what would the baby doll demon spider represent for edwin?

it took me a good while to figure out but i think it's Societal Pressure and Bullying. which is A Lot Lamer than it sounds but also,, think about it!! (a bit of a long read)

it makes laughing noises. Specifically children's laughter. It is made up of MULTIPLE doll heads and hands. It's like if an angry mob of children was a spider. And let's not forget about its nature -- If Edwin makes the slightest noise or the slightest utterance or makes a move, it chases him. It chases him relentlessly and is always there to eat him alive.

obviously the spider is terrifying in ways that also don't relate to bullying, but still kind of relate to the society around edwin. one of them being that it's made of dolls. they're fake. they're plastic. they're superficial. people tend to be so superficial to keep up appearances and ostracize anyone that doesn't.

it's also a spider. a doll spider. in a dollhouse. edwin is trapped in its web (the dollhouse). but also, he would be trapped in society's social obstacles and mazes for him if he were alive simply because he is Different from them. his true self is not one that society welcomes, accepts, nor tolerates. and they would hunt them down and hurt him any chance they get.

this also makes for some really poetic metaphors about him and his interactions in hell

i think one that's really sweet is when edwin says "I can't escape it... I can't." and charles replies "Yeah well, I'm here now." LIKE OH MY GODDDDDDD LIKE!! like think abt it. think of the implications and how it relates to the metaphor.

charles is there to FREE him from being quiet. he is free to run and to scream and to escape the web that he's in. that's so. they're everything to me.

as for simon,, i cant really say what it WOULD mean like metaphorically... except for the part where simon asks "Do you think it has to be torture? Being the way we are?" and edwin's like "No. It does not. I'm going to get out of here, you should come with me." like edwin KNOWS its not a sin and he's trying to escape the society that rejects them

other than that though, i cant really think what that interaction would mean...

maybe im just wrong about the metaphor, maybe it's Not societal pressure. maybe it's not anything at all! maybe the curtains were just blue, and a giant spider made of doll heads is just a giant spider made of doll heads. who knows?

either way it is 1am where i am right now so if anyone sees this post and has any ideas, feel free to rb/comment, id love to see your take :D

(though: in a similar vein,,, charles died due to hypothermia and internal bleeding. hypothermia or the cold is usually associated with loneliness in most fiction - the way warmth is associated with company - and internal bleeding represents,.. well you can probably guess. leads you to wonder the kind of life charles lived.)

[immult]

she genuinely looks worried if she needs to pee in the blood pool she's so stupid i missed her sm.

[febrezeluna]

As much as I truly love getting into fandoms it always blinds me from how the characters canonly act, I have to watch several Frost clips every day to stay in character for the blog and I still feel like it's ooc

There's also the issue of Frost is a fucking freak and I am not

[whataboutyouisamascot]

Discovering how to use stuffed animals to relieve pain while trying to sleep makes me feel vindicated in being an adult with a fair amount of stuffed animals

[ratcandy]

grounding techniques sound like such bs until you’re actually in the thick of it and suddenly find yourself counting shit you can touch and hear n etc and suddenly it’s like oh ok. Horrors are done

[concrete-3ater]

Honey Calcite

honey calcite got its name from honey, a food made by bees and farmed for its sweet taste, for it’s similar color. while bees no longer exist, their influence can still be seen on flowers millennia after their extinction.

[yeahlikethebird]

.

[floral-hex]

Two hours. I got two hours of sleep. I’m so frustrated with myself.

Went to the ER. Everyone was very nice. They gave me an IV bag of fluids (I was dehydrated! Sad cactus!) and a little ativan (teeny dose), which was nice at the time! Just a little amount, but the (mostly) quiet room, fluids, and meds managed to relax me a lot. Could have fallen asleep if the bed was actually comfortable. Then they packed me up, gave me another little Ativan to take home for tonight, and said they’d contact my primary. Cool cool. Got some much needed food on the way home, then took the pill and got comfy. Again, smallest dosage they make, so no feeling too good. Managed to muscle past my anxiety to fall asleep, and… 2 hours. Woke up. Tried to go back to sleep. Too frustrated and anxious and I feel like crap. What should I do? Just eat a whole gummy and hope that knocks me out? For me, that feels like playing roulette. Could work, yeah. Could make me sleepy and pliable. Could also backfire and make me feel sick and extra anxious for another 5 or 6 hours. What do I do? Roll back up to the ER? “Hewwo, I woke up and I need more benzos 👉👈🥺” haha funny, but I’ve seriously been thinking about it 😑

God, I’m miserable. Been sitting outside on the porch for a bit. Not quite an hour. Needed to get out of the apartment, but tbh, nearly 4am outside isn’t doing much for me. I just feel alone. It wouldn’t help with sleeping, per se, but just someone, I dunno, hugging or holding me for a few minutes would honestly save me a little. What a mess. Oh yeah, and apparently my kidneys are going 👎👎👎 down. Bad meat. Not great test results. Not what I’m focusing on tonight. I’m a mess. Anyway, this was my update. Sorry for all the walls of text. Suppose this is mainly for me to look back on in the future, but can’t pretend it’s not at least a little validating to put this all out into the world and knowing that maybe one or two people read this and I didn’t suffer completely without recognition. Yeah…

[m-for-now]

Improving in your life is actually kinda hard and sucks, I'm gonna pretend I'm at the beginning of my anime arc now

[bitegore]

cut for length (LONG) and content (pretty explicit actually); oc/canon crossover fic where the Stunticons land in my Closerverse (original universe) a la Headin' Down the Wrong Highway except it's entirely from Rex's pov and he's a bitchy little grouch who cant fucking stand the Stunticons but who is also one of very few people who his Ath can trust to use every method at his disposal to Handle dangerous outsiders who otherwise kind of can't be managed who nonetheless are hanging around with the clan. 3/4ths of it is Rex going "i cant stand these people, i dont trust them and i dont like them and it's weird and bad that they're here and i wish they would die but i'll play nice because Velan told me to. fuck this shit" except then it turns out Dead End is a morbid little corpsefucker just like Rex so (to Rex) it's worth putting up with his personality to get some

Rex rolled over onto his back, panting. The gashes along his throat and thighs still stung like a motherfucker, but now at least they were a little distant, fainter. He was pretty sure he could see the rainbow sheen of smears of his blood drying iridescent across Dead End's glass detailing, but he wasn't sure; Dead End had been damn shiny before they got started and he certainly wasn't any less now.

"Seconds, that was good," Rex managed, and passed out.

-

Dead End was a member of a group of these really odd shaidbloods, a set of five construct type guys who all had some sort of a bone to pick with soft edges or something. They had a real coherent design language, and they all had a real similar set of skills, so it was clear enough that their whole mess of metal and glass and leather without any normal silicon or synthskin was some kind of statement piece, or something. Dead End sure looked like it. He was top to bottom gorgeous, like a piece of art someone'd sculpted and then accidentally given life to.

The rest of his teammates were not so gorgeous. But they weren't trying to be. One of them was even [yellow], for Third's sakes. ANd they all had this attitude to them like they were the biggest and baddest things they'd ever met and everyone around them better fall in line. Every one of them, that was, except Dead End.

Listen. Rex hadn't been a big fan of them showing up to camp. The big one, Motormaster or whatever his name was, had Rex's teeth sharpening and claws twitching every time he made eye contact with Rex. Something about the big construct made Rex real damn uneasy. ANd that was even before the whole… everything about his personality. he judst had something to him that made Rex want to try his luck ripping his spine out the middle of his torso. But [Velan] said they were staying. So he'd reluctantly bitten his tongue and kept his misgivings mostly to himself. That hadn't stopped the yellow one- Drag End? Dead Strip? Some stupid name like that- from picking a fight over. Fourths, what even was it? Speed? Something like that. As though a shaid-powered machine could ever beat a dragon on a short-sprint race through a thirds-damned forest. He'd been even more of a cunt about it after he'd lost, too, tried to start a physical fight and everything and Rex had to let Motormaster come in and "handle" it after he'd put his claws through the only weak points he'd found on Drag Strip and poked out his stupid fucking eyes.

Or. No. Wait. Stupid fucking optics. They got annoyed if you called them "fleshy words". They really did have a thing about that. Rex thought it was asinine, but whatever. They were playing nice, he was playing nice, they hadn't actually hurt anyone who hadn't been giving back as good as they got, Rex would pretend to care about their stupid idiot hangups.

Regardless. Rex hadn't been fond of Dead End at first, either. He was sullen and insular and kind of unpleasant and he made every effort possible to rebuff pleasantries extended toward him from anyone but his own teammates. He acted as though he was better than everyone else around him and he was just sort of a prick, really. That was fine by Rex, as far as he was concerned, for the most of their stay here. He could keep to himself and be a prick over there and Rex could comfortably ignore him and do his own thing over here and they would just never speak and that would be just fine.

And then fucking [Velan] told him that they needed an in on Motormaster's crew as soon as possible and could he [please] try and make sure they had these five on a leash [before] they started running their mouths about how cool financial crime was? Please?

And Breakdown had like an anxiety disorder or some crap and kept getting really aggressive when Rex made eye contact with him even though he was shaking like a leaf in the wind, and Wildrider had more screws loose in his head than Rex did in his project bin. Motormaster had all the pleasantness and charm of sticking your dick in a blender with even less of the fun somehow. And Drag End was almost fine, except for how he apparently couldn't tolerate a loss even when he set himself up to fail and everyone agreed he'd had a suprisingly good showing and had actually been a pretty damn fast weird little metal ground vehicle after all and so now he had it out for Rex personally. The Ninth really were looking down on him for this one. Rex had even known it was going to be a bitch; he was going ones against fives. No wonder it was such a sevenths-damned headache.

Whatever. He'd divide and conquer; it worked when it worked. It was hard with the "Stunticons" but they'd already established they could barely fucking stand each other anyway. Half the reason Motormaster was even traveling with the clan toward the ports in Lozanjela was for the sake of not killing each other, since apparently they'd been stuck together alone for a while and were at each other's throats constantly. So he'd be able to split someone off the main group eventually, get some sort of a grip on them. He'd been thinking blackmail, at first.

At first.

So he'd started in on Dead End, trying to get all buddy-buddy. Turned out kinda quick that his whole miserable shtick was less a thing he put on when hassled by annoying dragons who didn't know how to leave a loner alone and more just his default setting on life. That guy was just fucking miserable. And he didn't seem to know how to stop being goddamn insufferable about it, but that didn't mean he was trying quite as hard as Rex figured to be a dickwad on purpose. He was just miserable and cynical and kind of nihilistic and he didn't seem to see the point in making friends with people who could die, as though he could stave the end off by just making his own life as dull and uninteresting as possible.

Whatever. Rex could bounce cynicism off cynicism and jam with morbid crap. It wasn't terribly hard, when he was working at it, to be the listening ear for Dead End's curmudgeon crap. The more time they spent with Rex playing the little maroon construct, the more he realized that Dead End sas actually kind of not the worst, actually.

They still weren't friends. But just like Wildrider (who Rex had to admit was a good time and would've been good fun if he weren't here at Rex's [camp] instead of kicking it off in Ciranos or something) Dead End sort of just seemed to have some sort of real serious issues trying to figure out how to socialize without being a bit of a douche.

Honestly, the more Rex heard about them from the inside of their little team, the more he got the sense there was something really wrong with them. Even beyond the average shaidblood nonsense, they soert of reminded him of himself.

(A weird thought, to be sure, and one he didn't linger on. But he could see the directions.)

Anyway, Rex sure did get Dead End on the hooks, just like Velan had asked him to. Rex got Dead End to see the point she'd been trying to get him to make to Motormaster, which was that running your mouth about other people's crimes wherever you are is how you get those other people in legal trouble, and Dead End did Rex the enormous favor of letting Rex know well ahead of time that Motormaster kinda didn't give half a flying fuck about anyone else around him outside his team and would sell out whoever to whoever for one single cube of "anner john," whatever that meant. Rex had passed that on to Velan, and Velan had cursed and thrown her iron teacup at a tree and then asked Rex to please for the love of the fucking Second keep the damn Stunticons in the camp when they made it to the EBC, because apparently they were being [audited] and some shaid running his damn mouth was the last thing they needed.

Sure. Whatever.

Rex had no idea how to fucking manage that one short of sleeping with Motormaster, which he wasn't going to do because it was probably going to end with Motormaster dead, and besides, the construct was really only into other machines anyway. Rex was pretty sure he caught Motormaster checking out his radio's left-side audio jack setup more than once. Still, it wasn't like they had anything that "Stunticons" particularly wanted. Rex was good, sure, but this wasn't in his skillset and he wasn't a miracle worker. He was a fucking courier, for the sake of the second. Velan was really putting a lot on him.

He'd been pissed. He was still a little pissed. He'd kept being pissed right up until he'd gone to Dead End, anger loosing his tongue a little more than it probably should've, and he'd bitched a blue streak up about Velan's goddamn practices and Velan's fucking expectations and the slack Velan cut for everyone else but never for [fucking] Rex, which wasn't even fair or true, and how if he was gonna be expected to put up with this shit he might as well just go ahead and sit on a gun and pull the trigger, since that would be less of a pain in the ass. It was really just a dramatic complaint, but it was apparently like unstopping a dam, because

well

Dead End had a fucking [kink].

And. Look. All the "Stunticons" were individually pretty decent-looking, but Dead End was without a question the best of the best. And he was the only one who put any work in to look nice. The others were always streaked with mud and dust and shit, and it showed real bad on them even worse than it did on anyone with that polished silver chrome synthskin that had been popular when Rex was last out east. And it was- it was just- Look. Look. Rex could admire a good-looking construct just as much as anyone else. And their whole mechanical deal was. Just. It was kind of hot. He'd already made a couple passes at Wildrider, but Wildrider wasn't anything like Dead End and he might'e been a fun tussle but that wasn't keeping anyone anywhere. But Dead End--

No point obfuscating it, really. Rex wanted to fuck him.

From there it was, really, just a cascade of successful mistakes and side-steps. And it went something like this:

Dead End swallowed, which was a funny thing for a construct to be able to nervously do, but they ran on some sort of combustion engines instead of the batteries Rex was more used to so it made some sort of sense. His weird little optic band thing flickered left and right. "Um. Sorry. That's. Um."

"I'm immortal," Rex blurted.

Dead End stopped dead. "What?"

"Uh. Or not immortal," Rex said. "The other one."

"Invulnerable?" Dead End asked.

"No," Rex said. "If I get killed I come back. I can die. I'm real good at it. Um."

"That [is] being immortal," Dead End said, visor starting to narrow.

"Isn't the point of it that you just don't die? I die, I just don't stay dead. I'm pretty sure that's different. Um. And more. Uh."

"Um," Dead End said.

"Interesting," Rex finished. "For you."

"For me," Dead End repeated. He swallowed again. "Um."

Rex took a breath. Oh, fuck it, now or never. "You want to, uh, shoot me with a gun and fuck me about it?"

Dead End stopped moving again, looking thoughtful; and then his vents started going and smoke started leaking from under his chestpiece in a weird place and Rex started to get worried before he finally croaked, sounding sort of like someone had punched him in the nuts, "yeah."

-

They'd gotten together in a weird little clearing a ways out from the camp, because Rex was smart enough to know that Velan would have his hide if he got really well and truly fucked anywhere anyone could hear, or see, or more importantly get worried and start calling for help. Dead End clearly thought it was ridiculous, but he'd cooled his jets a little when Rex pointed out that if they found him with Rex's apparent corpse everyone would be mad at him and he would have to deal with their attitudes about it. Practical arguments hardly ever worked on him, but even just a suggestion of some onerous annoying bullshit would have him hauling ass; it was funny that Motormaster had apparently not learned that when Rex could see it plain as day.

So they got together all the way out in the middle of nowhere in some weird little clearing Rex had dug out for the purposes of getting himself really fully obliterated for a few hours. Dead End clearly didn't really know what to make of the whole thing, and he didn't seem real sure of himself at all, actually, constantly looking at his little radio when he thought Rex wasn't looking and sending worried messages off to who Rex could only assume had to be Breakdown. Rex, for his part, wasn't any less comfortable than he'd ever been; but then again, this was only ever going to end one way for him.

Dead End stopped in the center of the clearing like an out-of-place statue, standing still and awkward. His hard edges shone in the dimming midafternoon light. "Um. So. Uh. You said you were immortal."

"Yeah," Rex said, and then made a split-second calculation. They all had so much pride. Fuck it. "Look, I'm not gonna get cold feet, but if you are, you can back out."

"I'm not getting cold feet," Dead End said, which was what Rex wanted, and even better, he shook himself off, too, finally loosening up. "I just want to make sure you know what you're getting into."

"It's been a while, but this isn't my first time having someone put a hole in me and fuck it," Rex said. "I got some location preferences, sure, but not a ton. What kinda way do you want me to die?"

Dead End locked back up again. For the love of… "Dead End, man-"

"Mech," Dead End said.

"Mech, you have got to fucking chill out. If you're gonna start steaming every time I say anything about the fact that I want you to kill me and fuck my dying corpse I'm not gonna be able to get off on this. Okay?"

THat was just crass enough that instead of sending Dead End into another fit of-- whatever it was, embarrassment or something, he instead just sort of wilted. "Uh… sorry."

"It's fine," Rex said, which wasn't strictly true but it was obvious Dead End was trying. "You've just never done this before. THat's obvious. It's--"

"Yeah I have," Dead End said.

Huh.

"Just, um," said Dead End, "not with, um… anyone who, um."

Ohhhh, right. Of course. Rex kind of forgot for a minute that he was pretty sure the "Stunticons" were an awful lot like he'd used to be, in all the worst ways. "What, just random people? That's not the same."

"I suppose if you judge me too harshly, I'll just have to kill you again," Dead End said dryly, and visibly rallied. Great. That was what Rex was hoping to hear, basically.

"That's the spirit," Rex said, getting comfortable in a nice coil on the cleared forest floor. Dead End's eyes followed the curve of his throat. Optics. Dead End's optics followed the curve of his throat exactly how Rex was hoping it would. "Slow, you said?"

"Something long enough I can watch you, uh…"

"Bleed out?" Rex offered.

"Fade, I think, is how I'd put it," Dead End said. Which didn't mean anything, but whatever. "If bleeding out doesn't do it for you--"

"No, no, I like bleeding out," Rex said. "I usually go for something a little faster, but I don't know, it works for me. Long as I can still breathe."

"Wouldn't that be fast, if you couldn't?" Dead End said. "I thought you dragons had massive oxygen requirements, or something like that."

"You'd be surprised how many people don't realize that cutting out my heart means my lungs stop working," Rex said, which was true. "Don't worry, I won't lead you wrong. Do you want to get hands-on with it, or--"

"I'd rather not," Dead End said.

"Wait, really?"

"Not in the, uh, dragon sense, anyway," Dead End said. "I'm not looking forward to cleaning your blood out of my joints."

"Alright, sure," Rex said, splaying his legs sideways. "But then how are you gonna fuck me?"

"I," Dead End said. "Um. I."

"Don't worry about it, man," Rex said.

"Mech," Dead End cut in again.

"I'm messing with you. You want me to talk you through the whole thing, or just let you know what I think'll work best and let you play it as you want it?"

"Um," Dead End said again. "I, uh."

"Sit down," Rex said, and Dead End dropped like a stone. "Okay, look at me."

Dead End looked.

Rex took one talon and traced it against the curve of his inner thigh, muscle and vein jumping underneath his claw. "Here's a good place to make a cut. There's an artery underneath that's close enough to the skin. You want to slice through pretty deep, deep enough to sever that. By the bone, basically. Try not to tear my whole leg off though."

"Uh, okay," Dead End said.

"I don't know what kinda, uh, genitalia or whatever you got going on under there. Since you're a construct and all."

"Uh," Dead End said, and ran an aeration cycle. "So, uh, you have, like, uh, a, uh-- I have- uh- we should be. Compatible."

Compatible, huh. "What, you can't just tell me?"

Dead End froze up again, which was just unfair.

"Are you [shy?"] Rex asked, which was already obviously true but it was just fucking annoying. "Do you have a dick? Do you have a pussy? Do you have some other hole I can stick my hemipenes in or some other fucking protrusion you can stick in me? What's compatible even [mean] in this context? Do you just wanna grind me off by hand and call it good, that's fine too, but I'm not signing up for any surprises--"

"I have a cable!" Dead End finally managed.

Hm. That sounded alright, actually. "That'll burn me, right?"

"I, um," Dead End said. "I don't know. I've never really-- I've tried plugging it into pieces of meat before and that was--"

Pieces of [meat?]

"--Do you want me to just-- I can. Take it out so you can [see] but--"

"Wildrider has a whole metal and glass penis on him," Rex pointed out.

"I don't," Dead End said. "I just have a cable. Wildrider's spike is an aftermarket mod and I don't think I've ever bothered looking for one of my own. [I'm] not fragging rich ptrons who'll shell out to buy me fancy interface equipment."

Rex shrugged. "I mean, I can get you hooked up, probably, if you want. Whatever, that's not really important. You've got a cable, do I want to see it. Uh… Yeah, give me your cable."

Dead End winced, and then swallowed and made a funny little weird cog-clicking sound, and his hip-jointing did some weird little thing and then a hidden panel Rex hadn't even noticed slid away and let a massive braided cord slide out.

It was easily the size of Rex's forearm, all smooth rubber with a gleaming metal head. Okay. Not a bad look, honestly, Rex could get behind it. "If you shock me to death that's fine, but you still have to fuck my corpse," Rex said.

"I don't think I'll shock you to death," Dead End started, and then broke off into a startled squawk as Rex put the entire cable in his mouth.

Yeah. That wasn't bad. That would be really nice, actually. A little buzzy, not nearly as high-powered as the toys Ayleh used to play with back in the day. Tasted like ozone, too. He spat the cord back into his forepaw and flared his wings in a shrug. "Yeah. Think we're good."

"Primus," Dead End said, staring at Rex with wide eyes. It took Rex a second to realize that his fans were going at full speed.

"If I'm going too fast for you," Rex started, "you can tell me to--"

"Don't you dare slow down on me," Dead End said. "I just haven't done this before but you cannot fragging hold out on me on this."

"Dead End, buddy, you are the only one holding out anywhere," Rex pointed out, and then finally Dead End got a fucking move on and got to his knees in the dirt next to Rex. Rex shut his eyes, making sure to give Dead End easy reach to get at the arteries in his thighs,

and then Dead End kept not doing anything. "You need a refresher, or…?"

"No," Dead End said. "Just thinking. Um. Can I frag you first, or--"

"Why are you some sort of blushing virgin all of a sudden?" Rex

[pluplupluto]

Chapter 2 is out!

[starcastic-artificer]

I fr need to get back into art so I can draw my blorbos getting bullied by my other blorbos