#cherry is the one with a cherry on top and is kind of the default pie filling texture that you might see in american cartoons

[byteofwhump]

key lime pie actually refers to a specific breed of lime you're supposed to use, but they're hard to come by in a lot of places so most people just use regular limes, which is why it is never as good as when you buy it from like a bakery

Looking at the pictures here, I see:

Blueberry pie

Cherry pie

Pumpkin pie

And apple pie

They all start with the same basic crust, which you can make vegan by using a vegetable shortening (think crisco if they have it in your country) pie crust recipe. I won't claim that these are MY recipes, but they're the ones I use when I'm the designated Pie Maker TM for Thanksgiving (this involves making all of the above pies... at the same time... help)

(Not using my pie crust recipe because it isn't vegan, but this one should be good for you. It's by Crisco, so they should ideally know how to bake with their own product)

Cherry pie (this pie disappeared completely despite the gluten free crust last year; they recommend using some animal products, but they're optional)

Blueberry pie (same as above; do NOT disregard the warning re: the pie tending to leak blueberry all over the oven if you don't put it on a baking sheet; can confirm that one)

Pumpkin pie (this filling can't really be made vegan just fyi; you really need the eggs to make it happen)

Apple pie (usually we use my aunt's home-canned apple pie filling that she makes from her apple trees, but when it's not Thanksgiving, this recipe is good.)

Anyways sorry to hijack your post but asking for pie advice in my vicinity is my batsignal.

PS: if you have questions about all of this, or want recipes for another kind of pie (I have made So Many Kinds Of Pie Holy Shit Dude) feel free to DM me

@rosewriteswhump whatever these are- im so serious when i say i want the cartoon ones. its been on my bucket list since forever

[mutable-manifestation]

Family at the Core

Parts 1 & 2, Part 3

Part 4!

***

Learning that he had put his soul at risk in making a deal with a supernatural entity was unpleasant enough.

Learning that said entity was firmly in ‘nearly completely uncharted territory’ was just the cherry on top.

(Or was the cherry on top Constantine calling him an idiot to his face?)

The research they’d conducted after their JL Dark allies’ abrupt departure had come up just as Constantine had implied: empty.

They’d keep searching, of course, but it wasn’t looking good.

The next morning they awoke to chaos; a bomb had gone off at the Yuyan building and police had started swarming it.

Presumably, Kitty had done it to draw them there and complete her end of the bargain. He hoped that was the case, at least.

Despite the media swarm the night before, they hadn’t shared any of the footage of their meeting with the ghosts. And none of the news crews had sent out helicopters to try and record - at least self-aware enough to know that regular voices wouldn’t be heard over propeller blades. The odds of it being an outside bombing were slim - a League of Assassins member might’ve made it out when the ghosts were removing their fellows, but they wouldn’t have risked drawing that kind of attention to their own base.

Signal practically inhales his breakfast in his rush to get on-scene.

Watching his helmet feed showed a Yuyan building with criminal evidence practically set out as a buffet. 

Every hidden passage lay open and waiting, sticky notes and brief explanations pointing to the mechanisms, labels on weapons, an A4 sheet taped to a chair with an arrow pointing down to a desk and the words “murders committed &/or planned.”

No sign of the ghosts or the boy, however.

Not until 11, when Kitty calls to remind him of their ‘deal.’

Oracle mutes the feed and answers the phone on the batcomputer’s speakers.

Information on the attached number pops up before the call even connects, but it’s practically empty.

The number is new, no information attached to it, and the location signature is easy to find except that it bounces all around the globe like a ping-pong ball.

“Hey, Wayne. The building is getting raided as we speak. Hope you’re ready to put your money where your mouth is.”

“Or my soul, you mean?” Bruce asks pointedly.

“Isn’t it always, in business?” She laughs. “Chin up Bruce - can I call ya Bruce? We are parent-friends now - anyway, worst case scenario you default on the deal and I make you buy the building anyway. Plus a few extras - call it interest for lying. Lucky you I never developed a taste for the finer things in after-life. Ha, taste.”

All of them stiffen at that.

“Seriously though, Bruce, you are the one parent-friend and Gotham-friend my fright has at the moment. Try to refrain from making any more underly-specific deals sealed with handshakes with beings you don’t know, yeah?”

“Right,” Bruce swallows back his frustration, pulling his ‘hurt Brucie Wayne’ voice over it like a shroud. “It’s going to take at least a few days for them to complete a sweep of that size, but the building will likely be seized before the day is out. I’ll express my interest now, but it’ll likely be at least a week before we can close. If you need a place to stay until then-”

“No,” she cuts him off. “Appreciate it but we can stay out of sight well enough, and Danny…. He really shouldn’t be going anywhere just yet.”

“Is he alright?” Bruce doesn’t even have to play up the concern. The kid had been barely above catatonic when they’d seen him on the Joker’s broadcast.

She doesn’t answer, at first.

Then they hear a single, deep breath through the line - something that had been missing from their previous conversation with the ghost.

“He will be,” she settles on. “We’re gonna make sure of it.”

That tells him nothing.

“I know a great doctor, if y-”

“Nah,” she cuts him off. “Bullet ‘s going to the Far Frozen to see if someone can make a house call since Danny really shouldn’t be traveling. Given how fanatic they can be, I doubt they’ll say no.”

Bullet was the ‘deputy’ Walker had mentioned, Bruce recalled. The Far Frozen must be some kind of clinic.

“Fanatic?” he asks dubiously. The word rarely spells good things.

“Oh yeah. They’ve got murals. Anyway, I’ve got progress to monitor and a baby to check on. We’ll be waiting!”

She closes the line before he can even say goodbye. 

The first thing Signal says when he unmutes is “Well, at least we know the only thing she’ll hurt is your pocket?”

“Assuming she is telling the truth,” Damian replies skeptically.

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

The entrance to level with the Lazarus Pit is missing.

They watch as Signal searches, but there are no clear labels to mechanisms or secret passageways like everywhere else in the building, and even the access Bruce recalled discovering once was absent. 

Nothing below the level Signal was currently on was documented; the police wouldn’t blow out a wall or floor to search through what they thought was dirt.

On the one hand, it was a relief to not have the Pit exposed so publicly. 

On the other hand, what did that say about the new residents? 

Had they merely sealed that section away to have somewhere to stay until the building was bought? Or had they truly been after the Pit the whole time?

Four days later Brucie Wayne is touring the building, in full ‘air-headed rich boy’ mode - blathering on and on about like the view from the top and the fascinating architecture -  while his children use the time to do some exploring of their own. They don’t find anything new.

Six days later - two days after their tour - Bruce Wayne officially owns the Yuyan building.

And less than 24 hours later he’s being made to sign another contract - legal this time - granting the group of ghosts rights to the building. Not that he can say no, since “buying the building for us includes making it legally for us.”

Of course the whole thing blows up in the papers when the news catches wind of Bruce Wayne owning and managing the building but signing over all rights for use and access to the new ‘meta’ group.

A lot of “blink twice if you need us to call Superman” memes are floating around - mostly in the wake of the “Batman fails to defend his sugar daddy, same as ever #BrucieDeservesBetter” memes.

The whole thing is more than a bit of a circus, and every day they don’t get to check on the kid they all get a bit more anxious. The only relief they get on that front is the update Kitty gives them when Bruce asks before the more formal contract meeting can get started - their doctor, Frostbite, finally showed up with Bullet to get the kid a check and projected that he’d make a full recovery with ‘another few weeks of TLC,’ as she put it.

At least, it was a relief until Tim questioned what, exactly, a ghost might consider to be healthy.

Luckily, Kitty only asked they “give us a day to get the place all set up” before bringing Damian - and his other children, once she’d realized they exist - over to visit.

***

@yjfk @fisticuffsatapplebees @little-pondhead @avery-isastupid-name @queenofdiscord @samgirl98 @inkyunicorn @mimilikey @aconitewolfsbane @miraculousandmore @someonebored0100 @wildbacon @fleshybeing @vala-dreams @ironicvixen @blurblurbblurrrr @ectoplasmic-knife @terzatheunderscorerima @britcision @passivedecept @demigraceling-blog @wolfjackle @xysidhe @immakittybear @d-j-t-15 @ashenfairytale @jaguarthecat

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[shadowsageingempress]

Tierlist of the Masterquest costumes from Hyrule Warriors Legends.

Costumes and explanations below the cut

I don't quite know why they decided to make Warriors' tunic and hat purple. But I think it looks really good on him, especially with the blue scarf. They blend very well together.

This outfit for Impa looks a lot like her Great Sea costume, but a bit darker and with a black cloak. Despite those seemingly minor differences, she looks amazing in red and black. And the cyan feathers are a nice touch.

Sheik's Master Quest outfit seems to lean hard into the ninja aspect, with the black and dark blue. I think it looks awesome. My only minor gripe is that the hair color could have been changed, but it's not too noticeable, so it doesn't matter too much.

I think I might actually like Lana's Master Quest costume more than her default one. I love how it was made to resemble Cia, and the colors work very well on her, especially with her hair color changing. I especially like her cloak and hair clip.

Valor's costume takes clear inspiration from Princess Hilda from Link Between Worlds, so you could use that for roleplaying if you want. I don't have that much to say about this. I like the dress, I love the dark hair, it's an overall solid costume.

Yet another one of Ganondorf's costumes that slap harder than he does. The colors for this one are incredible and mesh perfectly together, especially the teal centerpiece of his reddish armor. His hair is also marvelous.

Much like Valor's Hilda cosplay, Darunia's costume based on Darmani's ghost looks amazing. It's a much larger change than his Great Sea costume, but I think it works better. The arm tattoos and slash mark across the stomach are the cherry on top.

Similarly to Darunia, Ruto's costume is based on her Termina lookalike, Lulu. Also like his, this design absolutely slaps. The little designs on her fin-skirt are my favorite part, and kind of remind me of false eyes seen on fish. The purple is also pretty.

Agitha still appears to be in a goth phase. But for some reason, I think it works a bit better than her Great Sea costume. Maybe because her face paints don't clash with her dark clothes as much. Whatever the case, she looks good.

As if Midna wasn't already peak character design, they somehow made her look even cooler! The dark stone of the Fused Shadows and red markings already work perfectly with her design, but the shadow beast theme of her costume is executed perfectly. I do think that it would have been cool if her hair color was also changed, but I understand why they didn't.

When I saw Zant in this outfit after obtaining it, I actually said "Oh Hell yes!" out loud. Much like Midna, his shadow beast themed outfit not only fits him, but it looks incredible. The darker colors of his armor and robes with the red streaks are exactly what he needed, and even though I didn't notice the purple sash at first, it looks great.

Fi's boss outfit is beautiful. It adds a bit of a more metallic hint to her body, which works very well given her nature. But theming aside, she just looks so cool.

Ghirahim also seems to be going through a goth phase with this one, although I think it might be in reference to his true spirit/sword form. The dark clothing contrasts with his pale hair and skin, but it works incredibly well for him. It fits with the idea of him having a pretty face which hides ugly intentions (if you get that reference, you get a cookie).

I can definitely see what they were going for with Cia's costume and how it takes inspiration from Warriors. Initially, I didn't really care for this one, but it kind of grew on me. The white tattoos and blue cloak definitely make it work.

Even though I don't really know what Volga's costume is based on, I still think that he looks really cool. The copper, orange and gold look really good and add to the fire dragon look. I don't think it's any more effective than the normal design, but I still like it.

Even though Wizzro only looks slightly different from normal, I think it works. The more vibrant colors somehow fit the "dark magic curse creature" vibe really well, arguably more so than his darker default outfit.

Bonus:

The Guardian of Time outfits for Lana and Cia look very beautiful. The white clothes look good on Cia and Lana looks cute with that hat. I did deduct points for the costume changing Cia's skin tone, because I think she'd look pretty. But I'm not touching the implications of that otherwise.

[kankuroplease]

What kind of men or women do your Ocs like? characters, physical, physical characteristics...

I have a lot of OCs, so you’ll have to be more specific if it’s not one of the main 5;

Aori (bi/male preference leaning)

Men: nice guys finish first with her lol. That is her ultimate preference, but she’s pretty lenient if the mean guy is nice to her (I can fix him- Aori M.) He has to have a strong sense of morals when it comes to what is right verses blankly following an order.

Appearance wise; she likes guys her age but also older guys (yes, she has daddy issues), nice eyes, and well hydrated.

Women: really feminine mature women (and mommy issues). The type that speak in cursive, dress boldly, and confident. That is type of woman never fails to make an impression on her.

Katsura (Demi/Pan)

In general, she prefers intelligence over genetic attractiveness and a calm demeanor. A little backed up overt confidence goes a long way with her too. But if they’re a pervert? Take them away, she doesn’t want them 💀

Must be a Shinobi. She can not deal with a civilian partner as she does not believe they would be compatible given her upbringing and default of shutting her emotions down when stressed.

Yuuta (Pan)

He genuinely doesn’t have a type, if they look good, they look good. Big or small, fit or unfit, that doesn’t matter to him. They just can’t be liars, too timid, or too clingy too fast. He’s got some trust issues and is fiercely loyal to Ino, so they will also have to understand those things first and foremost.

Big tits, clits, dicks, and whatever fits may apply. (Who is he trying to fool, small boobs are fun too and will be teased and napped on too)

Gou (Bi/ fem leaning)

They have to be a little cocky or sweetheart, that’s her preference.

Masculine :

She likes free thinkers and have dominate personalities. A little silliness is the cherry on top for her because she loves to have fun/not take things too seriously.

solid build - fat. She loves the big boys. Skinny guys are cute or whatever but, she can and probably would crush them with her thighs, so she’ll respectfully pass.

Feminine :

Again, solid build - fat. Squishy and big dommie mommies that are also hyper feminine PLEASE contact Gou immediately if you would like to be a spoiled housewife and wear matching robes while watching dramas 😩

Okami (pan)

She is highly intelligent, quirky, and sensitive. Her preferred partner wouldn’t judge her and will tell her it will be alright

Bright personalities and a nice smile are her weakness. Light colored eyes? Her achilles’ heel. Tan - rich complexion? Gorgeous. Dorky and a badass? Yes yes yes. An unexpected freak? Fatality 😮‍💨

[catboydan]

helloooo i am curious about "Hmmmm" since that's just such a vague doc title, what's it actually about? also going to ask about phoenix since it's at the top of the list and you said that's the stuff that's closest to done!

(in re: the wip game)

well the fun thing about Hmmm is that it's actually just straight up smut lmao. the premise is catboys dnp uni professor phil x about-to-graduate dan smut in phil's office. it's the shortest of the bunch cuz it's a one-shot, and is surprisingly the only one on the list to feature catboys.

phoenix is fully-fledged enough that I can give u most of a little blurb! it's got about 20k, not counting the outline rn.

After dying at sea, Dan is reincarnated as a phoenix, stuck eternally putting up with an existence he only wants to escape. He struggles to find meaning in his life and come to terms with his role among the people of [location name tbd], who can't help but deify him. And then, a mysterious man shows up: an Elf from the veiled Albion--whose presence itself signals danger. As Dan investigates, he learns the Elf harbours a kind heart and a dangerous secret. Threats begin to converge from every angle, and Dan has to decide who he is--who he wants to be, [etc] (blurb isn't finished yet lmao but it gives the gist)

The title is tentatively Dogwood and Cherry Trees! it's set in a very forgotten realms-esque fantasy setting, though the locations are sneakily actually real. PJ is there as a traveling merchant who stops by regularly, there's a fortune teller, unicorns, some silly scenes, lots of angst and some whump, and dan's eternal quest to eat tasty food. The meat of the narrative takes place over a few decades, as Phil ducks in and out of the area Dan lives, trying not to stay in one place for too long for Reasons, but risking it for, well, you know.

sneak peak below the cut ;)

"It's beautiful," Phil mused, almost absentmindedly. Dan looked over to see he held aloft a single leaf, still green, on the smaller side, and a little brown from the drought. He stared as if inspecting it closely.

"Hm?" Dan asked.

"It's just lovely. The tree, too." Phil continued rotating the leaf's stem slowly between his thumb and forefinger.

The air had shifted. Sometime in the last few minutes, the small hours of the night had arrived, the time for sentimentality, the time for truths. Dan swallowed.

He could—but no. One of them was keeping mysterious secrets, and it wasn’t Dan. It wasn’t Dan. It wasn’t.

Instead, Dan tilted his head up to regard the cherry tree. It looked just like all the other trees in the orchard. “It sure is a tree,” he joked after a moment.

Phil attempted to throw the leaf at him, but it fluttered against the air and landed next to Phil’s shoulder instead. “Stop it. You know what I mean.”

“Sure,” Dan agreed. “Nature is beautiful, and all that.”

Phil’s head lolled to the side to look at Dan. “You don’t get it?”

“No, I do,” Dan insisted. “It is pretty out here. But that doesn’t mean you’d catch me looking at a leaf like I want to kiss it,” he teased.

Surprisingly, Phil didn’t react, instead just turning back to look up at the sky through the sparse canopy. The silence felt awkward. Dan cursed himself. Why’d he have to always default to making stupid jokes? Couldn’t he lean into the [feeling in the air] and be serious for once?

But thankfully, Phil eventually replied. “I guess it’s different for me. It’s just, everything in the Kingdom is so different. It’s all curated, styled. Every tree or shrub or flower is picked out. But out here stuff just… grows. It just is.”

Dan gestured to the trees around them, growing in a small grid of straight-ish lines. “Phil, we’re in an orchard. It’s absolutely curated.” He’d done a lot of work curating it, in fact. “But,” he added before Phil could cut in, “I get what you mean. Out there.” He waved a hand towards the edge of the orchard, where the forest proper began.

“No, really, even here. Even the orchards in the Kingdom are pristine,” Phil said. “Not a blade of grass out of place.” He plucked the flower of a clover patch near him. “They’d never allow this to grow.” He paused. “I think you’d have to see it to really get it.”

Then Phil quieted for a while and continued to gaze at the sky above. Dan chose to stay quiet too, against his nature, hoping Phil might continue. He struggled to control his breathing, keeping it at a steady pace despite his heartbeat speeding up. Was he finally going to talk about the Albion?

Eventually, miraculously, Phil took a deep breath and began. “The buildings, the walkways, they’re made of cast stone. Moulded by a wizard to be perfectly shaped. The paths are lined with trees that are always in bloom, perfect grassy meadows, beautiful flowers. They get seeds from all over the world. Landscapers compete to make the prettiest and the rarest decorative plants. Leaves with weird colours, bigger and brighter flowers, making some of them tiny or maybe huge. Stuff like that.

“I heard we used to have a whole forest, but I don’t know how big it was. It’s not there anymore, not really. It’s like a big garden now. People go there and wander around and go on dates and mingle. It’s a destination, I guess. And caring for it is a full-time job, ‘cause it’d die without upkeep. I’ve seen it happen. Things can just—“ Phil made a poof motion with his hands, “—they can just crumble, once they’ve been changed. Like literally, into dust.

“But that’s normal in the Kingdom. Everything requires upkeep.” Phil shrugged. “And it really is pretty, definitely. But it’s so intentional. So of course it’s pretty; it’s supposed to be.

“But out here, everything just feels more real. [Loc name] is real. It just exists. No one carved it into existence. Anteios—the whole Albion, really—it’s nice, but it’s also just kind of boring.”

Dan absorbed every word. Phil hadn’t looked at him the whole time he’d talked, but Dan hadn’t been able to look away.

And as always, Dan felt like he understood Phil perfectly. “It’s not authentic,” he said.

Phil smiled gently towards the sky. “Yeah, exactly. It’s not authentic. Maybe that’s what everything here has. [Loc name] isn’t here for any particular reason, it’s just here. The people just look like themselves, not trying to perfect themselves with a glamour. The land, the people, that leaf, they’re all beautiful. I don’t think anything Albionian can ever be beautiful in the same way.”

As Dan gazed at Phil, and Phil gazed at the stars, Dan did not deny Phil’s claim aloud; but, heart racing, with the smallest, quietest voice hiding in the deepest part of his consciousness, Dan disagreed.

[cyto-kinin]

My Roommate is a Househusband

As a daily adamlyle worshipper we r starving for more content so here have a domestic adamlyle fic i wrote awhile ago! Story follows Adam as he moves in to Lyle’s apartment (if he even has one but anyways) Hope u enjoy~

Out of all the places Adam could choose to live in, his best friend Lyle offered to stay in his apartment. What could possibly go wrong?

Adam set foot on the front door of his best friend’s apartment. He scanned the hallways, looked at the door up and down. It was a simple complex anyways, not too fancy, but not too bad either. Though the walls looked like they could use some polishing,

“Ahem.” Lyle attempted to break the silence, waiting for a response yet Adam looked back in his ‘default’ stoic expression.

Lyle smiled and shrugged it off anyways. He reached for the door and began opening it. The sound of clicking keys lasted for a while but soon they were greeted with a loud creek from the door,

“Tadaa! Welcome to collodeez apartment!”

“What’s collodeez?”

“Collodeez nu-“

“No-“

The both stood in awkward silence, exchanging looks. Lyle proceeded to pat Adam’s shoulder lightly and pulled him to the room. ‘Lyle as cheeky as always but I like him that way’ Adam thought as he dragged in his luggage.

 The room was quite big, right in front of the door was the living room and a bean bag near the TV, the kitchen and table were just next to it, there were two bedrooms and one bathroom. There was also this one room, only it was locked. 

The only thing that bothered Adam was the amount of rubbish scattered across the entire room. Some leftover instant noodles on the table, snack crumbs on the sofas and floor, and stained shoe tracks. The peculiar smell was the cherry on top which made his nose scrunch instinctively.

‘What kind of person wouldn’t take their shoes off?’ The first thing that caught Adam’s attention was the soiled floor. Adam has always had cleanliness on top priority. Back during prep school, Adam would scold Lyle for wearing shoes in their dorm. He followed it thoroughly but look at him now. 

“Okay allow me give a quick tour, dear frien-“

“No we have to clean.”

Lyle only expected Adam to clean certain areas of the apartment, though it was just too big for some man to clean it up, but he was wrong. He’s cleaning the whole apartment spotless. 

Gloves, check. Mop, check. 2 Buckets of soap water, check. Everything except sterility, check. First, Adam took the trash bag near Lyle’s door and shoved all the snack crumbs, noodle leftovers, and rubbish in. He finished in less than 5 minutes which made Lyle question his new roommate’s hidden abilities.

In Lyle’s eye, Adam has always been a diligent student and a strong fighter but he doesn’t seem to have any other interesting talents. Adam was a shy boy with no specific hobbies anyways.

Adam dipped a handkerchief into the bucket, pulled it out, and gave it a squeeze,  letting out a floral scent. 

“Can you help wipe the countertop? I’ll do the rest.” Adam reached out his hand that was holding the handkerchief to Lyle, 

“Okay, but wouldn’t it be too tiring for you?” 

“I’ll be fine”, Adam reassured the other with a small smile which made Lyle grin as a response. It’s rare to see Adam smile, even if it was just a small smile it still counts!

Lyle snatched the handkerchief as Adam dipped another one and went to wipe the rest. Eventually, both finished at the same time. Next is to mop the floors. 

Adam proceeded to dunk the mop into the other bucket and began mopping each 

and every tile spotless. He tasked Lyle to wait on the entrance until the floor was dry. Adam walked back and forth with the bucket to every room. 

The finishing touch was the perfume he sprayed on every corner of the apartment to make sure the smell disappeared.

Lyle noticed how the floor quickly dried with no stains. Right about the time he was about to step into the living room area, Adam held his wrist and the mop on the other. Lyle confusedly looked into the brunette’s strict eyes. 

“Take off your shoes and don’t wear them here”, Adam ordered as a sigh of frustration trailed,

“You are a real husband material.”

The words unknowingly fell off Lyle’s lips. Hearing his friend's compliment (?) instantly reddened his ears and loosened his grip. His mouth was left agaped, he tried speaking but the right words won’t come out. Lyle had the same expression except he was more mesmerized.

“I mean it.” Lyle continued

“…” His ears visibly redder now

“Fine, I’ll take off my shoes only because I get to see your ears blush for once~”

“Do you know what it feels like to be hit with a sandal?” Adam spoke directly and had his stare petrify the other.

��Curse Adam and his sandal technique! Though he won’t actually hit me with it’ (He would literally hit him with it) Lyle’s brain whispered as he began taking his shoes off out of fear. Adam left the moment Lyle bent to untie his shoes, and started washing the tools. 

As a token of pity, Lyle will now sleep in the guest room and Adam gets the main bedroom where Lyle used to sleep in. Eventually, the two started chatting again up until night. The next morning a questioned popped into Lyle’s mind,

“So who’s cooking?”

———————————————-

That’s a wrap of part 1(?) if I ever continue it idk tho but I hope y’all like it! Also if there r any feedbacks pls don’t hesitate i don’t even know if I’m continuing this lol

[goodbyenorthernlights]

and also the one i did for rezo

Visual: Rezo is a 6’3” tall, fair-skinned, human man with purple hair (anime) that sticks out at the sides like a pair of bird’s wings. (Again, anime.) His build is fairly nondescript, although he’s in better shape than you’d expect a scholarly type to be- he can run up a long flight of stairs and not get winded, for instance.

His eyes are permanently shut, making it difficult to discern their shape and impossible to tell the color. If you somehow do get them open without unleashing the Dark Lord Ruby Eye Shabranigdu in the process, you will find that Rezo’s eyes are an unassuming brown, with an upward slant to the shape.

Fashion: Rezo is usually wearing eye-catching red robes, a set of extremely dramatic blue-green shoulderpads, a tabard with a diamond insignia on it, and of course, an enormous red cape that covers his entire body below the shoulderpads if he stands still with his arms down. The cape is very good at swooshing and billowing, and the entire ensemble obscures his figure such that he resembles an imposing red rectangle.

He is also usually carrying around a long staff, slightly taller than he is. It’s topped off with a loop with four rings attached, that chime together when he moves around, and at the very tip is a red gem. (Like a cherry!) It’s essentially a fancy khakkhara staff. The staff serves as a way of channeling and directing magic and as well as being a mobility aid, and he can summon or banish it at will. Magic!

Demeanor: Rezo’s default expression is a smile, small, serene, and seraphic, but with a definite aloof edge to it. Accordingly, in most situations he is formal and kind without necessarily being friendly, usually sticking to whatever business is at hand.

That said, he enjoys teasing people and yanking their chains around, especially when he’s pissed at them, but he usually keeps that under a veneer of Great Sagely Dignity.

His blindness affects the way he moves and interacts with the world, although subtly enough that unobservant characters may miss it- he moves carefully, yet confidently, and pays close attention to sounds. And again, his eyes are always shut.

Aural: Rezo has a deep voice that is usually calm and pleasant, with a lofty edge to it. His cadence is reminiscent of a university lecturer, albeit one who sometimes slips silly jokes into his lectures.

Unless, of course, he’s having a meltdown, in which case there’s probably hoarse screaming involved.

Olfactory: Beyond his natural, personal scent, you may catch a few odd notes such as: Bitter, medicinal herbs; the slightly musty scent of old wood; old books; soap and/or sharp chemical solvent smells.

Mental Information: In D&D terms Rezo would have both a high INT and high WIS score, with his INT being higher. He has a good memory, the ability to make quick mental connections, curiosity about the world around him, and the determination necessary to stick with something until he understands it. He has also lived a long life, mostly dedicated to researching magic and medicine, and from that has gained a very in depth knowledge base.

Unfortunately, he struggles with serious mental health issues of some kind (it is hard to properly diagnose someone when one of their problems is “has a literal demon in them”) which can seriously impair his judgment and pretty much always affects his mood for the worse. He’s very prone to dissociation as a coping mechanism.

He's a messy, messy bitch.

Magical Information: Rezo specializes in white magic, but also can use the broader shamanistic magics and dark magic. The general rule of thumb I go by is that he can’t use holy magic or anything that would call upon the Lord of Nightmares, but any other kind of magic in the Slayers canon is fair game.

He has a considerable amount of magical power and normally can go for days of nonstop casting without expending his capacity. However, a great deal of his power comes from being the vessel for a fragment of Ruby Eye Shabranigdu, a kind of ancient dark god from his world. Without Shabranigdu, Rezo would still be a force to be reckoned with, but not outside of human levels.

The seal on Shabranigdu is very strong, making it normally impossible to detect the dark lord’s presence within Rezo. But crosscanon RP does mean potentially encountering powers that fall outside the rules of Rezo’s setting, so in other words: If you think that your character might be able to detect Shabranigdu/otherwise mess with Rezo and Shabranigdu, feel free to chat with me about it and we can work something out!

Just note that Shabranigdu has a corruptive effect on people who get close to him and can be viscerally unpleasant for any psychic types.

[gun-witch]

Venting about “Acceptable Targets” and Bigotry.

Fair warning, this is me just speaking my mind with no real concern for formatting or making any kind of coherent point. I’m just venting.

And a TLDR if you don’t wanna read it all: There’s a problem in Leftist spaces with deciding certain bigotries are okay, I used antitheists going from attacking genuinely harmful kinds of Christian faith to attacking all Christians to attacking marginalized religions as a way to explain the issue, but this happens in many other ways.

I’ve been trying to reduce my time on twitter lately for mental health reasons. It’s the kind of site that just highlights the worst kind of people imaginable. When I made the account I currently use, I did my best to block liberally and curate things as much as I could, because I know twitter is just an awful website full of awful people.

For a while, it really seemed to work. The times politics came up on my feed, it was like it is here, curated, people having reasonable reactions to the horrible things that happen in the world. Yeah I also got into the occasional argument with right wingers, but honestly, it’s easy to disengage when you know they’re just not operating in a worldview that remotely resembles reality.

A conservative promoting racism, transphobia, homophobia, etc. is really easy to disregard because they’re so ridiculous, that any sensible person isn’t going to take them seriously. You can just post information on why they’re wrong and move on, it’s very easy to disregard what they think about you.

But, more recently, I’ve noticed bigotry creeping its way into leftist spaces (online, I’ve yet to see anything of this outside of the internet). Sometimes it’s the familiar, TERF talking points dressed up as progressive. I’m sure you all know the type, people who wanted to exclude nonbinary people when that was “new”, people who want to exclude neopronouns or xenogenders, or otherkin or whatever else. They’re usually really obvious, and having been one of these people in the past I know exactly what to say, I just tell them what made me realize the harm in gatekeeping and exclusionist thought. Usually, people ignore them, because Leftists usually know better.

Usually.

If you know me outside of tumblr (which most of you do, I’m not exactly big on this site, and I don’t want to be either), you know that antitheism is THE bigotry that pisses me off. Not because it affects me, I can write off transphobia, acephobia, etc. pretty easily even when they’re actively making my life harder, I’m just good at not letting things get to me emotionally. The real reason antitheism gets under my skin is that it’s just different enough from the big “isms” that a lot of genuinely good and well meaning people fall for it.

See, when I inevitably check the profile of someone being nasty over religion on twitter, saying that because I’m a priestess I’m the same as a Christian priest and therefore naturally evil, I often have a lot of mutuals with them, and they’re otherwise an outspoken leftist.

Antitheism is something that a well meaning atheist who sees the very real harm done by the biggest religions in the world can fall for. On the surface of it, it makes sense. A surface level reading of the Bible, the Torah, the Quran, the “big 3″ religious texts in the eyes of many activists, would have you believe they promote some really nasty stuff. If you don’t know that the Bible was written as a compilation of conflicting beliefs, and that cherry picking is a feature and not a bug, you could be forgiven for thinking Christianity is evil by default.

And on top of that, you experience hate and violence from Catholicism, American Protestantism, and so many other sects. Eventually that violence just becomes “Christianity” to you.

Then it becomes “Abrahamic” religions, because to the uneducated, Abrahamic means Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and as far as you know, these religions are identical. You haven’t done the research to know how ridiculous this idea is, and you won’t because nobody has prompted you to.

Then, because the only preachers you hear are from Christianity (which you’ve already decided represents two other completely different faiths), and you never talk religion with someone who isn’t trying to convert you (really, why would you?), that violence you experienced becomes “religion”.

Religion becomes synonymous with conservativism, fascism, and every other political ideology that we rightfully write off as harmful. So then when you meet a Gnostic, a Jew, a Pagan, a Satanist, a Native American who believes in the religion that’s intrinsically tied to their culture? You look at them and you see a Nazi.

The very important aversion to hateful ideologies is hijacked, you begin to hate marginalized groups in the name of opposing bigotry.

It gets worse though, because from there, antitheism becomes a gateway bigotry of sorts. I’m sure everyone’s heard the statement “religion is a mental illness” at this point. The antitheist becomes so attached to their bigotry, that when they realize a religion isn’t harmful directly, ableism comes in to save them from introspection.

This happened on a large scale a few years ago, in the mid 2010s we saw a lot of youtube channels and social media pages dedicated to opposing religion turn their sights on “social justice warriors”. I remember these channels promoting this hip and new thing called “the alternative right”, what they described as a secular form of fascism, a “good” fascism, because they were so deep into hating religion that they forgot why religion was bad to begin with.

This isn’t unique to antitheism by any means, like I said before it happens with exclusionary movements like transmedicalism, anti-mspec crap, and one could even argue it’s got something to do with how transphobic “feminism” rose to prominence.

I think more people should be aware of how radicalization happens, more critical of what we consider “acceptable targets”. Racism isn’t bad because of the race aspect, race is bad because prejudice itself is wrong, attacking groups of people who lack social power is wrong.

Because it isn’t the big corrupt churches you hurt when you label all religion evil. It’s the marginalized faiths. The Pagans, the Jews, the Muslims, the sects of Christianity which do genuinely preach love and compassion. Focus your criticisms on groups in power, not people who seem similar at a glance.

And this applies everywhere, transphobia and exclusionism toward transmasc people also come from a fundamental misunderstanding of what male privilege is. I’m really only using religion and antitheism as a vehicle to talk about a more general issue because it’s the one that’s on my mind.

[toshodai]

Archive update, 19 August 2023

Hello! There was a serialization's worth of time between the current series of updates and the last, wasn't it? A fair few things came up over the past couple months that took up the webmaster's attention, though they've calmed down enough for them to return to their efforts here with renewed vigor. Another stint of Izumi-san's twitter being open came and went in that time, for an even shorter time than last year's. As disappointing as the output might be, there's not as many things that need to be sorted through, so the webmaster is going to try to get everything that isn't too intensive to translate archived and organized by the end of the month. The queue of Izumi-san's past tweets has been filled for the Tuesdays and Thursdays through all of August and beyond, so there'll be a steady stream of posts for at least a little while.

Ah, but the webmaster has been using the wrong name for that other social media site, haven't they?

Aftzaak Archival Office was established on tumblr for two major reasons. One is that tumblr is already geared towards organization out of the box; a robust tagging system and an actual archive page are integrated into every single blog, making it easy for creators to curate posts into specific categories and users to narrow things down closely to what they're looking for. (A surprisingly long tail of engagement that can be extended independent of algorithmic influence also doesn't hurt, though popularity should be very low on the list of reasons anyone should like Magus of the Library for.)

On the flip side, reason number two is that twitter is awful for giving the vast majority of posts on its platform any real longevity, even moreso than the other major social media sites. This is, of course, by design—the strict text limits and ease of transmission were always intended for quick-fired thoughts instead of thought-out speech, evoke the same transience of moments in time as they pass, not persist over weeks, months, years.

Put like that, it's actually kind of baffling that Izumi-san would chose to make twitter the place to release all the extra goodies—especially for a series about libraries, bastions of reliability and informativity and longevity as they should be. But, career creatives have to go where their audience goes; and even outside of that rationale, Japan's online communities supposedly relied upon twitter even more than other cultures in the first place. You can tell from how much kana fills a search query for a certain feature or third party site after it's been disabled, like so...

Oh, wait. That's something the webmaster is lamenting, too...

If you never took to twitter or used it heavily, you might not know why folks are mourning the loss of a "Tweetdeck." Tweetdeck was a third-party-turned-officially-supported interface for using twitter, allowing users to take the default jumble of all one follows and divide it up into multiple feeds of pretty much whatever specific thing they wanted for each, be it a specific user or list of users or tweets with images or videos or text only tweets or whatever; all organized on a single, scrolling screen. This allowed people to focus on the exact feeds of content relevant to them, or view all the feeds they could ever want like a security camera room or a multi-monitor computer setup. It also took out all the advertisements without the need for adblock, which was a big, enticing cherry on top even if you didn't like the smaller viewports.

Many a devoted power tweeter would come to use twitter almost exclusively through Tweetdeck. The webmaster was not one of those people when it came to their personal use—but when it came to digging through the backlog of Izumi-san's catalog, Tweetdeck's streamlined column and faster loading times made it invaluable to quickly access all the extra Izumi-san has put out there.

And as of two days ago, August 18, access to Tweetdeck has been locked only to ""premium subscribers."" Quite possibly one of the last freely accessible ways of making twitter's interface more user friendly, gone.

This is just another mystifying (to say the least) decision made by the new, relatively-recently-minted owner of twitter, who will be referred to as the muskrat for the duration of this paragraph. Despite its numerous assurances to the contrary, the muskrat's decisions since taking ownership have consisted entirely of wholesale vandalism of just about everything twitter's most devoted users have found most useful about the site. The decision that most have likely heard of due to its sheer absurdity is an entire rebrand of an identity that had a nigh-perpetual foothold in the global cultural consciousness for over a decade. (This is why no one who has ever gained anything of genuine value from Twitter calls it X.)

There's no need for us to speculate over whatever motive could possibly be behind these decisions, as better writers than the webmaster have long since done so. But said conceitedness does have grave ramifications for anyone curious about Magus of the Library beyond the story put down on paper. The most obvious of these serves as the header for this post: anyone clicking the source link on any posts here will either be redirected to the login screen if they don't have an account, or be walled of by the lock on Izumi-san's account—and that's if any indication is given that the post exists at all.

It's unclear what, if anything Izumi-san will do as twitter grows more unstable. The site is surely hemorrhaging its population by the day as figures leave and their friends or audience follow them elsewhere. This is, of course, a big assumption—a fair few of the more affluent posters are still tweeting through the chaos until it finally consumes the site, and the footprint of its cultural hold will probably always be hard to sweep from people's minds. If a final scandal that drives enough people away or catastrophic crash that truly breaks the site doesn't happen first, we won't know until Izumi-san's account is opened again for volume 8's release next year.

But, rest assured! Just about everything Izumi-san has posted related to Magus has been uploaded to the public folder (if not completely organized still), and everything within there has been sequestered away on an external hard drive for further safekeeping. The webmaster also still does have access to Tweetdeck at the time of posting thanks to a workaround by an intrepid coder, so the archival work can continue uninterrupted...for now.

[carcass-confessions]

Just for organization (and funsies because it's only 1 am and I'm bored) I wanna make a list of all the (magic) characters I have so far for this unnamed magic school story. Also idk if bullet lists are a thing on tumblr so like don't judge me if the format is weird jfshfjjsjs

Humans:

-Claire Celeste Estrella, the Amber Star Witch (the main character, 1/3 of a prophetic trifecta of witches, the character my friends ask me if she's written on purpose to be autistic, to which I say idk I write her like I'm writing myself so like)

-Heather Dean Forester, the Limelight Hydrangea Witch (Claire's best friend, he calls her by celeste, honestly he's kind of a boring design but I'm in love with him he's literally Just a guy who likes plants)

-Nova Éliane Jones, the Pink Sun Witch (lowkey starts off like she's the Mean Popular Girl trope but that's only because she's another 1/3 of a prophetic witch trifecta and she's charismatic and tbh just has great fashion sense, and Looks Like the queen bee of her friend trio,, tl;dr she's intimidating because she's popular but she's actually nice)

-Pippa Jane Owens, the Dandelion Witch (my DAUGHTER, in my top 3 favorite characters even though I haven't even written her yet, I just think she's neat. She's in Novas friend group, and I'm considering the idea that she somehow went to preschool or elementary school with Heather and Claire)

-Halia Ka Hiwa Kapule, the Red Hibiscus Witch (the third member of novas trio, if the Heathers were nice then Nova would be chandler, pippa would be mcnamara, and halia would be Duke. Not toxic, just in the sense that she's extremely perceptive and smart and easily on par with nova in popularity and intimidation from it. Idk I really like her outfit, leather coats over sweaters look DistinguishedTM)

-Divya Deshmukh, the Hourglass Witch (hrngh purple and gold color palette,, them and another character are the rebellious seniors who know all the Campus Secrets and Gossip, I love them very dearly, and their existence provided me a neat piece of worldbuilding so I appreciate that)

Non-humans (people native to the ~other world~ that the school takes place in; if not specified, assume they're an ElfTM):

-Daphne Rosa Clover, the Lilypad Witch (Claire's love interest, one of the few people in this world that is interested in the science behind magic rather than just what it can do. I love her dearly, pastel green and pink is one of my favorite color palettes)

-Sock Elm Dragonfly, the Feather Witch (the other senior that messes with freshmen alongside Divya. They're lowkey dating, idk. This is the one character I didn't name myself, but Sock is a better name for them than I probably could've come up with, I likely would've defaulted back to plant names since THEYRE ALL UNISEX TO MEE)

-London River Knight, the Lavender Moon Witch (the last 1/3 of the prophecy, also he's a werewolf? I haven't actually decided whether he's a Classic Werewolf or just a kemonomimi like some other characters. He's a pale lanky emo boy with grey hair idk what else to say, I just think he's neat, one of my favorite characters fjshhfsh)

-Serra Mun, the Cherry Witch (the VERY FIRST character I created for this story like 5 or 6 years ago. He's a catboy, of course. Frenemies with London, and as much as I want to ship them I fear the cliche of cat x dog but god dammit it's funny watching the way they bicker, especially since that's their first introduction from the pov of Claire and heather as their roommates, another one of my absolute favorites <3)

-Welwitschia Gloska, the Teapot Witch (well this is interesting. According to the laws of symbolic magic, she shouldn't exist, since a student by the same name and symbol just died the previous year. Perhaps there's more types of magic that can touch the soul, where symbolic magic cannot?)

-Bela Briar True, the Wisteria Witch (at the time of writing this, the most recently created character. They also probably shouldn't exist according to what people believe they know about souls, death, and the recycling and reincarnation of symbols. People tend to think of their existence as world breaking. It'd be like if it was discovered that gravity wasn't real and everything we know about modern science was completely wrong. They fully lean into this reputation though, and purposefully sneak around and generally act like a freaky little gremlin)

Non-Students:

-Professor Adriata Sweetweb, the Lavender Witch (the underworld necromancy teacher. I'm going to put it here first that every professor is a huge weirdo, so just imagine every professor I mention unless otherwise specified as being balls to the walls Extra in design and personality. As eccentric as humanly possible, and then more because none of them are humans)

-Professor Edith Dire, the Purple Foxglove Witch (the kitchen witchcraft teacher. It's basically a cooking class but with magic food, drinks, etc. She had her entire body turned into a wooden puppet so she could consume magic food containing her own symbol of a Foxglove, because otherwise it's poisonous.)

-Ewa Gloska, the Silver Moon Witch (1/3 of the previous prophecy 400 years ago, believed to be deceased)

-Ursa Elara, the Golden Sun Witch (1/3 of the previous prophecy 400 years ago, deceased)

-Altair Tahtinen, the White Star Witch (1/3 of the previous prophecy 400 years ago, deceased)

-Prastopé, the Lamb (one of many deities of the underworld. Also one of the friendliest ones, as her domain in the underworld is a vast meadow under pink skies, full of lambs that act as her eyes and messengers, meant for the souls of children. Underworld necromancers that wish to enter the underworld or simply speak with any deity tend to aim for Prastopé, as she has a reputation for being the most understanding and the least wrathful)

-Flutyx, the Ferrywoman (every underworld deity has at least one ferryman that brings the right souls to their domains in the underworld. Flutyx is the wife of Prastopé, and her only ferryman. While not as visibly soft and bright as Prastopé, being draped in black fabrics and dark colors, souls tend to feel at ease in her company. If Prastopé is the shield for the souls in her domain, Flutyx is the sword.)

-Paris insert last name (the actual first character I made, but he wasn't made FOR this story and is really just a super old character I completely forgot about and suddenly remembered and wanted to bring back. Anyways he's like in charge of what is essentially TSA for interdimensional travel lmao)

Characters I need to make but haven't yet

-all the other professors, too lazy to copy paste the list of classes I made rn

-more deities for both the underworld and over-overworld

-way more students as side characters but I unfortunately get way too attached and have to give everyone a Story

-the non-magical characters like yknow. The FAMILIES of the students lmao

-the Principal? Headmaster?? Of the school. And the one before them because it's important for the Lore

-some more characters related to the folklore of the world because history is a big aspect of this story and the characters arcs

-there's a character I accidentally retconned out of existence who was once named Barley and I really want to find a way to implement him back into the world because Heather deserves a love interest tbh, also it's needed for his ArcTM

[dgaftilwedie]

sorry guys im YAPPING again................. literally making a new tag for this i love doing surveys

yeah kinda i mean i struggle with derealization so half the time nothing feels real

like 4.5 maybe???

i actually have no idea

SCOOPS!!!!!!!!

cherry blossom :3

"damn i need to shower"

my rite here rite now merch :33 hehheheeh

bi, n i don't really identify with any gender?? idk nothing feels ME my gender is just unlabeled because 1) i don't know and 2) i don't really care yknow??

dark :3

watchinf a loz randomizer video with one of my brothers

18 has been pretty cool so far

one of my brothers (the loz brother)

you........... (i don't have one)

my family laptop just has like the default

Hot Bio Teacher

laude by gaerea

idk .......... whoever it js is NOT gonna be matt groening, that's fo sho

the person who taste tested the chili cheese fries flavored pringles and decided they tasted fine. they tasted like a tuna melt in the worst way possible. they had so much potential.

man idk 😭

my boobs (sorry) (kinda) (not really)

i would probably look like my dad 😭 and i've had this very specific kinda weird fantasy where if i ever woke up with a dick, i would fuck a mcchicken. it came to me in a dream. and it's so far out there. i don't know why.

i was a cheerleader once does that count

CANNED FUCKING PEAS

grinder roll. cold cut with provolone cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and onions. mayonnaise on the top. throw it in the oven. favorite sandwich ever.

im gonna save it to add it to my tattoo fund :3

LA, HERE I COME

those fucking hard mountain dews bro that's right up my alley

no one can come to the island except for me and whoever i choose bc it's gonna become a sanctuary for the local wildlife :3

i dontrknow what that means :3

Unpleasant Question that i do not know how to answer

Next Question Please

im moving to ny wildlife sanctuary from question 28

MY UNCLE DAVE DUDE i miss him so much. maybe i could get death to bring back my rat too.......... a little two for one deal in exchange a feally good sandeicj or something

guhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh idk

oh fer sure

yeah :(

yeah :3

i am NOT wearing socks

i like a lot of different kinds of music i will listen to pretty much anything as long as it sounds nice

sunsets :3 sunrises are kinda underwhelming most of the time

chocolate?????? maybe?????? i don't have milkshakes often

the jaguars 💪💪 (they're my dad's team)

i am COVERED

i graduated a month ago and as of rn............. i am freeloading (my parents do not care) (i love my parents)

i truly hate how i am constantly overthinking. i feel so unlikable and i tire myself out by being the way i am. i wish i was NORMAL i wish my brain worked like a normal person's brain instead of being so hyperactive and stupid

i would hope so

"are you still lame??"

kinda..........

lizard + bird......... then we'd have dragons

i've had way too many weird conversations i dontrknow what the weirdest one is

yeah :3 it's not something i like to brag about bc i had to learn gow to lie out of necessity

if im around people, i don't think i'd last 5 minutes. if im by myself i'd last forever.

the 2021 pixie cut

yeah :3

i can do a lot of accents im working on my irish one rn

i dislike toast i will only eat it if it's toasted in bacon greese and dipped in egg yolk

no bucks :3 they're an awesome currency that is worth zero dollars to you and all of your disappoint to me!!!!!!!!!!

SIX SPEED HOT PINK JEEP WRANGLER

i do a LOT of shit in the shower my imagination is most active then i talk to myself a lot

yeah :3 i hope they're cool aliens

nawwww not usually. i only read it if i get my hands on the newspaper

now that i think about it........... w is a really nice letter

DINOSAURS i can't believe that they were fucking real i wish we could bring them back......... i've always fantasized about having a pet ankylosaurus

cutie patooties :33 little creatures........ they're so tiny and so adorable i love them so much

survey 10💛

length: long

----------

1. Do you ever doubt the existence of others than you?

2. On a scale of 1-5, how afraid of the dark are you?

3. The person you would never want to meet?

4. What is your favorite word?

5. If you were a type of tree, what would you be?

6. When you looked in the mirror this morning what was the first thing you thought?

7. What shirt are you wearing?

8. What do you label yourself as?

9. Bright room or dark room?

10. What were you doing at midnight last night?

11. Favorite age you’ve been so far?

12. Who told you they loved you last?

13. Your worst enemy?

14. What is your current desktop picture?

15. Do you like someone?

16. The last song you listened to?

17. You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up?

18. Who would you really like to just punch in the face?

19. If anyone could be your slave for a day, who would it be and what would they have to do?

20. What is your best physical attribute? (showing said attribute is optional)

21. If you were the opposite sex for one day, what would you look like and what would you do?

22. Do you have a secret talent? If yes, what is it?

23. What is one unique thing you’re afraid of?

24. You can only have one kind of sandwich. Every sandwich ingredient known to humankind is at your disposal.

25. You just found $100! How are you going to spend it?

26. You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world, but you have to leave immediately. Where are you going to go?

27. An angel appears out of Heaven and offers you a lifetime supply of the alcoholic beverage of your choice. “Be brand-specific” it says. Man! What are you gonna say about that? Even if you don’t drink booze there’s something you can figure out… so what’s it gonna be?

28. You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What is the first rule you put into place?

29. What is your favorite expletive?

30. Your house is on fire, holy shit! You have just enough time to run in there and grab ONE inanimate object. Don’t worry, your loved ones and pets have already made it out safely. So what’s the one thing you’re going to save from that blazing inferno?

31. You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?

32. You got kicked out of the country for being a time-traveling heathen who sleeps with celebrities and has super-powers. But check out this cool shit… you can move to anywhere else in the world!

33. The Celestial Gates Of Beyond have opened, much to your surprise because you didn’t think such a thing existed. Death appears. As it turns out, Death is actually a pretty cool entity, and happens to be in a fantastic mood. Death offers to return the friend/family-member/person/etc. of your choice to the living world. Who will you bring back?

34. What was your last dream about?

35. Are you a good… [insert anything you’d like here]?

36. Have you ever been admitted to the hospital?

37. Have you ever built a snowman?

38. What is the color of your socks?

39. What type of music do you like?

40. Do you prefer sunrises or sunsets?

41. What is your favorite milkshake flavor?

42. What football team do you support? (I will answer in terms of American football as well as soccer)

43. Do you have any scars?

44. What do you want to be when you graduate?

45. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

46. Are you reliable?

47. If you could ask your future self one question, what would it be?

48. Do you hold grudges?

49. If you could breed two animals together to defy the laws of nature, what new animal would you create?

50. What is the most unusual conversation you’ve ever had?

51. Are you a good liar?

52. How long could you go without talking?

53. What has been you worst haircut/style?

54. Have you ever baked your own cake?

55. Can you do any accents other than your own?

56. What do you like on your toast?

57. What is the last thing you drew a picture of?

58. What would be you dream car?

59. Do you sing in the shower? Or do anything unusual in the shower? Explain.

60. Do you believe in aliens?

61. Do you often read your horoscope?

62. What is your favorite letter of the alphabet?

63. Which is cooler: dinosaurs or dragons?

64. What do you think about babies?

[adobe-outdesign]

Pokeball Headcanons: Internal Environments & Mechanics

(Per the usual, these headcanons are based off of the games universe.)

Modern Pokeballs create simulations for the Pokemon inside that make them feel like they’re in a large environment. In addition to making the Pokeball feel extra comfortable, they also help keep the Pokemon enriched.

Different Pokeballs have different simulations. Note that some types of Pokeballs function differently, but share the same environments (for example, Fast Balls, Heavy Balls, and Level Balls all use the same default environment as a regular Pokeball).

Pokeball (Regular): A standard forest-y area.

Great and Ultra Balls: Similar to the standard Pokeball environment, but much more expansive. Great Balls have 2x the area to explore compared to standard Pokeballs, and Ultra Balls have 3x.

Master Balls: Change the simulation based on the preferred environment of the Pokemon that was caught. This technology is new and there is currently work being done to try to apply it to other, more commercially-available Pokeballs.

Safari Balls: Match the environment of the Safari Zone.

Lure and Dive Balls: Underwater environments. Pokemon that don’t live in water typically don’t like these Pokeballs.

Love Balls: Same as a regular Pokeball, but the season is spring instead of summer, and there are cherry blossoms and other flowers in bloom. Breeders use a more advanced model of Love Balls that can contain two Pokemon at once in order to avoid separating mating pairs.

Friend Balls: Standard environment with the addition of picnic areas.

Moon Balls: Space environment. In addition to Pokemon that evolve with moon stones, some alien species have also shown a preference towards this model.

Net Balls: Plains environment with lots of ponds.

Luxury Balls: Indoor mansion environment, with lots of cushions and pokepuffs in every room. The inside of the ball is lined with velvet instead of having the plastic and metal exposed like in other Pokeballs, making it extra comfortable.

Dusk Balls: A permanent nighttime setting. The environment is similar to the standard one, but with the addition of multiple cave systems. Nocturnal Pokemon tend to prefer this model.

Heal Balls: A soft, luxurious bed that helps promote rest and healing. These balls emit a similar kind of energy as the instant-healing machines used in Pokemon Centers.

Dream Balls: A surreal, misty environment, similar to that of a peaceful dream. In addition to preventing sleeping Pokemon from waking up upon capture, it’s also preferred by Pokemon that need a lot of rest.

Beast Balls: Recreate an area of Ultra Space. Unsurprisingly, regular Pokemon don’t care for this.

Older models of Pokeballs (for example, old Hisuian Pokeballs) don’t have simulations. It is highly recommended you retrofit these Pokeballs with the proper technology if you intend to keep your Pokemon in them for more than a few hours at a time. (If a Pokemon is kept in a Pokeball without proper enrichment for long periods of time, they become bored and start leaving it on their own, and may start disobeying their trainer in other ways as well).

If you want to gain an idea of what different types of Pokeball environments are like, many trade shows and Pokeball stores offer VR headsets that you can pop on to experience them for yourself. Non-interactive video examples can also be found on many manufacturer’s websites.

In addition to simulations, modern models of Pokeballs offer state-of-the-art-technology, including:

Lightweight Construction: No longer is there a need to seal apricorn wood! Modern Pokeballs are made out of a lightweight plastic with an internal aluminum frame. In addition to making Pokeballs buoyant and insulated, all parts are also recyclable.

Easy Opening: No more fumbling with locks and clasps! Simply click a button to open the Pokeball, then snap shut to close.

Energy Efficient: Modern Pokeballs can simply absorb excess energy during a catch instead of expelling it from the top, preventing accidental burns and other injuries.

Built-in GPS Tracking: If you lose track of a Pokeball, you can report to your local Pokemon Center to learn its location.

Pokedex Syncing: Not only does your Pokeball automatically add your new catch to the Pokedex, but you can scan a Pokeball to pull up your Pokemon’s profile and check things like health and status.

Tagging: When a Pokemon is caught, its energy signature is ever-so-slightly modified with an invisible “tag”. Other Pokeballs automatically scan for this tag, and won’t attempt a catch if present. This tag fades after a month if the Pokemon is released, and automatically refreshes every time you return your Pokemon to its ball.

Automatic Releases: The capture tag is automatically removed if a Pokeball is broken or otherwise damaged, making it easy to transfer your Pokemon over to a new, non-broken ball.

Environmentally Friendly: Apricorn balls use tumblestones to trigger a Pokemon’s reflex to convert itself into energy. Modern Pokeballs replace this with type of invisible ray, which does the exact same thing functionally without requiring the mining of natural resources.

Easy Transfers: If you wish to move your Pokemon into a different Pokeball than the one it was caught in, just bring it to your local Pokeball store. For a small fee, the tagging system can be disabled, allowing your Pokemon to be re-captured in a ball of your choice.

[paperpeachy]

Howdy, fellow Paper Mario fanatic! 👋

I really enjoy your art. <3 Do you have headcanon voices for any of the PM characters? If so, what are they?

hiiiii thank u sm ur v kind !! and i have some loose thoughts on voice stuff let's see from the top of my head

goombella: very valley girl, but not like, lindsay tdi valley girl if u get what i mean :P californian girl ofc

koops: speaks w a lot of umms and uhhs, kinda has a nasally boyish voice.

flurrie: southern belle (literally just the voice lucahjin gave her), but she noticeably uses more aave w a subtle rasp to her voice.

yoshi kid: sounds like a RASCAL. very raspy and scrappy. think doopliss' desc but more hyper.

vivian: low, sing-songy voice, kinda sounds like a more mature fluttershy. she has a dulcet hum to her voice

bobbery: roughened up vocals, just an old sea dog voice

ms mowz: gonna b basic here and say she defo has a transatlantic accent. imagine 'badges are a girls best friend!'

-

blumiere: i think… a subtle dracula way of speak. crazy take i know. timpani: very quiet and lulling in the first half of spm, but becomes more pronounced w more of an edge to her tone. slips in some spanish flavour the more she remembers. dimentio: VERY sing-songy, effete and delivers all his one-liners w a twirl to his voice. he only ever rlly sounds cherry or theatrically in pain. i'm thinking todd haberkorn's death the kid or korekiyo nastasia: I ALWAYS SWITCH AROUND W HER i like the game's outdated-valley girl speech for her, but i also like… something of a muture lady-like russian accent to her. idk ! o'chunks: everybody do urself a favour and watch roamer's spm lp he does the only authentic o'chunks voice ever mimi: wide variation of tonal pitch changes and dialect swaps. when you first meet her she's talking in that sweet, polite southern hospitality kind-of-way, but drops the accent when she's pissed (the louder she is, the more the mechanics in her body interfere w her voice). her default way of speaking is v catty and facetious sounding. think junko enoshima meets grimes…with a touch of blair the cat's vocal purrs and cloe from bratz (<--pedantic) mr.l: just luigi but he talks w a more lower, slurred voice.

-

doopliss- ive always read his lines in greg ayres voice LOL specifically like, kaoru hitachiin/leo from ghost stories.. i think esp of leo's 'why don't we meet at the scary, isolated payphone on the bad side of town. alone, yeah :)'. i just rlly like that raspy, incredibly scratchy voice on him. but maybe not as innocent-sounding, i think he'd dip his vowels a lot for the intimidating ghostly effect.

squirps- 100% koda from brother bear (jeremy suarez)

olly- juno's olly covers have just cemented that voice for me

[oh-hush-its-perfect]

do you think there is any significance that alex's colour scheme is green and pink? or do you think rr went "u know what this character needs? to look like a watermelon"

((Prefacing this by saying that I'm giving RR way too much credit here, but you shouldn't take anything an author does for granted— even a serial author who often makes blunders and mistakes.))

A while ago I saw a (pretty unfair) assumption that RR made it green and pink because blue and pink would be too obvious, but that his intention was obviously to reinforce the gender binary by using two distinctly gendered colors for a character with two distinct genders. Of course, they did not phrase it so delicately. No offense to whoever made that post, but I disagree.

Although that may have had to do with it, there's other things to consider. One of them is color symbolism. And oh. OH. I ADORE symbolism— especially flower/plant symbolism (Language of the Flowers and all that jazz), seasonal symbolism (there's a reason that evermore is my second favorite Taylor Swift album), and color symbolism.

GREEN

Let's talk about green first. Green can symbolize a lot of different things, and there are a few that can be applied to Alex's character. The most obvious thing that green often represents is jealousy— hence the expression "green with envy." But envy is not really one of Alex's character traits. Feel free to argue with me if you think that Alex is significantly envious. Just because I couldn't think of substantial textual evidence for it does not mean that there isn't any.

One of the traits that Alex does have is wealth. Green is the color of American currency, and since both RR and Alex are American, it's safe to take an American lens while looking at this color. Alex's socioeconomic background effects her in a big way. I mentioned in a previous post that I think that Alex's fatal flaw is her sense of entitlement. That kind of entitlement is a quality not exclusive to but common among the upper class. However, her distance from her wealthy background enhances the sense of irony in the story, which is a VERY big thing that we NEVER talk about within the fandom.

This is kind of a little thing, but it's worth noting that when it comes to Valhalla and everything, Alex is "green"— as in new and inexperienced.

The color green also emphasizes Alex's connection with nature. This is one of the parts of Alex's character that the fandom consistently underplays, which is an absolute shame. I don't think I have to explain why the color green is associated with all things natural. Alex's association with nature provides a few key things to her character:

It makes her a more well-rounded character. Another criticism of Alex I believe is totally unfounded is that "being genderfluid is her only personality trait because it influences her philosophy on pottery, which is her only hobby." I'm probably going to make another post in, like, a few minutes about why I find that argument a little silly, but the primary problem is that pottery is not Alex's only hobby. She also loves camping, hiking, and ice wall climbing (I bet y'all forgot about that last one!)

It gives her a connection with Magnus. I mentioned in a previous post that Magnus and Alex are foils, but I neglected to bring up why that also makes for very good chemistry between them. Of course, yes, they have different goals and philosophy, which is what makes them foils in the first place. But foil relationships function best when the characters also share some traits. As it turns out, Alex and Magnus share several hobbies, and one of them is a mutual love for nature. This is a very unexplored thing in fics. Start doing it more plz.

Finally, and this one's kind of minor, but the Alex's green gives her a connection to Natalie. I know, whenever Alex and Natalie are compared, either in canon or in fandom, everybody kind goes "eww. Oedipus complex." Which is very fair and true. But they really do have a lot of similarites. The green of Alex's hair and clothes connects her to the green of Natalie's eyes. It's worth saying, too, that Alex has one amber eye— and amber is pretty close to dirty blonde, like Natalie's hair.

If I had more faith in RR, I might bring up the concept of intextuality and how Alex wearing green is an allusion to The Great Gatsby and how Alex is elusive to Magnus, just like Daisy is to Gatsby. But I don't.

PINK

To give credit to the person who wrote the post I mentioned at the beginning of this spiel, I do believe that part of the reason pink was used was to support femininity. Please keep in mind that Alex dresses in an androgynous way— not that there is an actually "gendered" way to dress, since gender as we perceive it is mostly made up. But Alex's existence as a transfemme person (which I will maintain until my dying day) means that pink has a certain significance to her. A lot of AMAB people embrace traditionally feminine things because if they don't, they will not be accepted as genuine women or genuine nonbinary folks, since masculine dress is unisex and kind of the default. So Alex wearing pink probably had something to do with her gender, yes. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, and it's certainly not an unrealistic thing.

Speaking of Alex's gender in relation to the color pink, let's talk about pink's use as a queer rights symbol. Alex was RR's first character to be introduced as a queer character from the start. This was not an insignificant thing, especially in the year of our Lord 2016 (which, despite popular belief, seriously had an entirely different landscape of queer rep. Though it's commonplace now to include genderqueer characters, it was exceptional at the time— especially by such an accomplished and mainstream children's author.).

Let's go back in time to Nazi Germany. Some of you might know this, but for those of you don't this transition must seem jarring. I swear there's a point. In addition to Jews, Romani individuals, people with disabilities, and Poles (among others), gay men were victimized by the Nazis. If you're wondering why lesbians weren't persecuted, it's because the Nazis didn't see them as a serious political threat, or as a threat to the perpetuation of the Aryan race since they assumed gay women could be forcefully impregnated if need be. Yeah, ew. Anyway, much like the Star of David being used to mark Jewish people, gay men were forced into concentration camps and forced to wear a pink triangle. Years later, after the gay population somewhat recovered, the pink triangle was reclaimed and used as a symbol for gay men. Some people who were not gay men used it, too, but that's somewhat controversial since it wasn't their symbol to reclaim. When the first pride flag was created, it had a pink stripe at the top to signify sex (this was later dropped so flags could be more easily produced). The pink triangle (inverted) was used during the AIDs epidemic with the caption "Silence=Death."

My point is that this is a very important color to queer folks. Having one of the first genderfluid characters in kid's lit wear pink...... I mean, it makes sense.

The last and final thing that pink represents, in this context and in general, is innocence. Granted, this kind of connects to feminitity since women (especially white women) are often infantalized and seen as innocent— which is another issue. In any case, the use of pink to represent innocence in Alex's dress is ironic. Alex has been robbed of her childhood innocence, first by her abusive parents, then by her life on the streets, and then by her eventual death at age sixteen. But then she actually regains her innocence. At the beginning of the—

Hold on. I just had a revelation. I'll make a post about it soon.

At the beginning of SotD, Alex is acting a little childish. The most obvious example is him jumping on Randolph's bed to "make noise." Alex's life is stable and relatively healthy for the first time in the years, and she experiences something that a lot of queer folks experience: a re-emergence of childhood at a late stage.

I imagine you didn't expect a post this long. I either make essay responses to asks or I add on one sentence and post it. Oops. Anyway, I believe the mcga fandom can be more creative than calling Alex a watermelon. Here are some other (kinda romantic) pink-and-green alternatives:

Roses

Dragonfruit

Grapefruit

Cherry blossom trees

[endeavvor]

Jim can't really explain why his first instinct is to apologize and explain himself. Especially not when his default response is to cut and run the moment he starts feeling something beyond a superficial response. He'd come here out of curiosity, a desire to know what was hidden behind a garage door he'd passed on a regular basis. Doc was eccentric, there was no denying it, and seeing what made him tick held a certain interest. That, and the younger man really had nothing better to do and didn't feel like spending the night picking a random bar and ending up stuck to the tacky floor tonight.

He wanted something to work through, with his mind or his hands, preferably both. But the more those layers peel back, he gets the distinct feeling that they've both bitten off more than they can chew here. That they are both seeking something to fill that haunting loneliness - because he can call it like it is. It had been too long since he'd felt genuine companionship.

But to explain himself, explain is inexplicable aversion to canine as companion animals, it would be to open a door he could never close. It would change everything. And the information was still classified for his own protection. But the latter seemed the least important aspect.

So he challenges himself instead. Jim waits for a moment that the other man is distracted and Einstein has lagged back. It happens when they are standing at a table, where nothing below the waist could readily be seen and he feels the weight of the dog shift and press against his hip. He doesn't make a big deal about it, simply reaches out a hand, presses it to the top of his head, and strokes the soft fur. Because it is soft as it tickles the palm of his hand and slides between his fingers. He has to look away for a moment to hide the smile that ticks the corners of his mouth.

"My dad," He says, so easily, that for a moment he has to pause before continuing. "He had a 1965 Chevy Corvette convertible, it was this cherry red. Spotless." He knows because of how often he'd have stand beneath the sun washing and waxing it until his fingers pruned and he thought he'd never get the smell out of them. Always a sponge, never bristles, and he had to rinse it by hand with a bucket of water, filled up at the well around back. It took forever, and if the soap bubbles dried, he'd have to start over again. Perhaps he should have known then what his step-father's game was really about, but he'd been blissfully ignorant, excited to touch something his father had before him.

If Frank was feeling particularly kind, he'd raise the hood, teach Jim a thing or two, but most of what he'd picked up were from books - or odd jobs to make ends meat and have enough in his pocket for a place to sleep. He didn't appreciate the care for what it was then, but he could now.

He hadn't appreciated it then because of the string of events that changed the course of his life. He found out Frank's intention to sell the car without telling his mother, and Sam left. Sam left so thoroughly, and viciously, he poked holes right through Jim's soul.

"It's destroyed now, I drove it off the cliff into the quarry by my childhood home. It was pretty startling when I hit the fence, but here we are." He has to smile about it, in a tongue in cheek kind of way. "What's this one off of?"

It's some small measure of good fortune that Einstein had chosen that particular moment to surprise their guest, for if not for the table behind him, Emmett is almost certain he would've been knocked over in the sudden collision, leaving him with a possible concussion or worse.

He takes a few steps towards the two of them, ready to scoop Einstein up at the expense of his back if that's what it takes to separate them and give him some room to breathe, but it seems like even without his intervention, the situation is quickly brought under control. He's mildly impressed by his ability to be gentle despite the visible distress written across his face when most others would likely scream or lash out or attempt to curl into themselves, believing they were in danger.

That he makes no attempt to hurt Einstein speaks volumes.

Emmett pauses, keeping the distance once Einstein's enthusiasm is mollified by the obvious disapproval from the object of his attention. Einstein doesn't sit, but neither does he back away just yet, his tail still wagging.

❝Come here, boy—give him some space.❞ Emmett's voice takes on a sterner edge, dipping into the realm of command.

Surprisingly, Einstein neither fights nor ignores his master's attempts to put more space between him and the human who clearly has some reservations about being around dogs.

Giving someone a heart attack is hardly the way to get them to warm up to you, Einie, he thinks as Einstein shuffles back to his master's side and takes a seat.

❝Since—?❞ The question catches Emmett off-guard for a moment until he realises he'd left a thought half-abandoned in the wake of the chaos. ❝Oh, since Einstein's had the chance for company besides me. As I said, he loves people—there are very few he hasn't taken to and I've trusted his judgment every time—but I think he forgets that he's not a small dog and not everybody is comfortable with suddenly being charged at.❞

He pats his expectant canine companion's head and nearly offers another apology before thinking better of it. Instead, he aims to shift the topic of conversation back to something simpler, something that'd sparked his own curiosity upon seeing it in the young man's eyes.

❝I noticed you recognised the equipment on the table—have you worked on cars before? Older, more traditional cars in particular—you won't find a carburettor in any modern automobiles; these days, even fuel-injected ones are hard to come by thanks to the leaps and bounds they've made with solid-state battery technology back in the Twenty-First Century.❞ And while he can't deny the technological breakthrough that solid-state battery technology represented, as well as the much cleaner energy source it provided, it's not quite the same as driving an automobile with an internal combustion engine.

He has a personal fondness for those older cars, the feeling of the tyres gliding over the pavement, ever since he'd learned to drive one himself.

❝Or do you have any kind of engineering or mechanical experience? You were looking at a couple things before Einstein interrupted—I'd be happy to tell you about some of them, if you're interested. Some are still only concepts, some are fully operational, and others need quite a bit of work, however those I've set aside for the time being to focus on other things.❞

[moon-light-jukebox]

“If you want me to, I will.” [Hotch x Reader]

masterlist

Summary: Reader has worked for Aaron Hotchner for the past 6 months as the babysitter to his son, Jack.

Pairing: Hotch x (Female) Reader

Word Count: 7.4k – she thicc

Category: Smut/Fluff…and some angst because of who I am as a person.

Content Warning:

A/n: We all know that Hotch’s favorite album is the Beatles "White Album." And I have odd choices for songs that I use as lullabies. This idea came into my head and never left. This video of Billie Eillish singing part of the song is the closest to the structure of how I imagined it. Okay, okay, look, I know Roy wasn’t diagnosed until season 10. But I am taking creative liberties because I needed Jack to be younger.

Meaning this would be set around season 7. Hotch would be about 41, Jack is around 7; so, I made Reader around 26, giving them a 15-year age gap. Please don’t check my math. 😌

y/n = your name. y/l/n = your last name. italicized texts are Reader’s thoughts.

-- If you want me to, I will. --

I was disoriented when I woke up. This isn’t my bed, I thought groggily. Wait…this isn’t even my house.

“Y/n,” a deep voice rumbled beside me.

I jackknifed up into a sitting position, eyes wide and my face flushed with embarrassment. “Mr. Hotchner!” I quickly brought my hand up to my cheek to make sure I hadn’t drooled in my sleep. Because that would really be the cherry on top of my embarrassment. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to fall asleep. This is so embarrassing.”

Mr. Hotchner had been crouched down, putting himself level with his living room couch; the same couch he came home and found me sleeping on. In all the months I’d worked for the Hotchner/Brooks family, I’d never seen Mr. Hotchner smile anytime he wasn’t talking to his son, Jack. He always looked incredibly serious and sometimes incredibly sad; but the normal scowl was missing from his face as he looked at me, I noticed, watching him rise to a standing position.

“It’s fine, y/n. It’s after 1 o’clock in the morning.” He shifted, turning to go open the gun safe he kept in the part of the living room where his desk sat. Mr. Hotchner, or Hotch, as he kept telling me to call him, was the Unit Chief of the Behavioral Analysis Unit with the FBI. Which was just a very fancy way of saying he was a profiler that was in charge of all the other profilers. Some people just look like the jobs they have; Mr. Hotchner was one of those people. “Thank you for staying late, I didn’t think things were going to run this long. I didn’t even know you were here until I called Jessica a few hours ago.”

“Oh, right,” I mumbled as I began to gather my things from the coffee table and put them into my bag. “She called me a little after 4; something happened with her dad, I think.” I zipped my bag shut, standing up quickly. “I didn’t mind helping out, Mr. Hotchner.”

He made a sound that was almost a chuckle. “You don’t have to call me Mr. Hotchner, y/n. I know I’m a lot older than you, but that makes me feel ancient.”

“You’re not that much older than me,” I protested.

He looked incredulous. “Y/n, you’re still in college.”

Well, that stings a bit. “I’m in graduate school,” I said, my voice dampening a little bit. “I’m almost 27.”

Mr. Hotchner blinked at me. “Really? I thought you were younger than that…”

“My age didn’t come up in the numerous background checks you did on me?” I scoffed, immediately wincing as the words flew out of my mouth. “Oh my god, I just keep making this worse.” I slung my bag over my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hotchner. For falling asleep on your couch…and for every moment after that. I’ll just go now.”

"Y/n," he called. "hang on, it's really late, and…I still need to pay you."

Jesus. “It is late, Mr. Hotchner, that’s why I need to head home.” I forced an awkward laugh. “I have class at 9 am.”

He pushed his hands into his pockets, regarding me in a way that made me squirm. I wasn’t used to a person paying attention to me the way Mr. Hotchner did. It didn’t make me uneasy; I just felt like I couldn’t hide anything from him…which made me uneasy. “What classes are you taking this semester?”

I don’t know why it stung so much that he knew virtually nothing about me. I’d worked for him for 6 months; he wasn’t obligated to know anything about me other than how I took care of his son. “I’m actually done with my course work this semester,” I mumbled. “I’m a TA…in a class that starts at 9 am.” It doesn’t matter, you’re just tired. “You-you can just pay me for tonight the next time I’m over. It’s not like you’re gonna stiff me.” I walked over to the door and threw a very quick “goodnight, Mr. Hotchner” over my shoulder before I scurried out.

I missed the quiet “Aaron. You can call me Aaron.”

--

The entire drive home, my thoughts were on Aaron Hotchner. None of this was what I expected when I took this job. I had been in graduate school for 2 years now. I had already gotten my master’s degree and had been accepted into the Ph.D. program. There are many branches of psychology, but I had always been fascinated with cognitive psychology; it seemed only natural that that is what I would pursue in graduate school. Once it became time to focus my interest in preparation for my dissertation, I decided to study the cognitive decay in Alzheimer's patients. We knew that they lost memories, but I wanted to explore how their basic cognitive functions were affected in certain settings.

As part of my program, I was a TA in an intro psych class, and I conducted my research at the hospital connected to the university. That’s where I first met Jessica Brooks. Despite getting a stipend for my teaching assistant work, I had been taking odd jobs to help make ends meet; D.C. wasn't cheap. When I mentioned that I had experience with kids, Jessica had immediately told me that she was needing help caring for her nephew in the wake of her father, Roy's diagnosis. She wanted to keep him at home, which was both admirable and time-consuming.

I wasn’t prepared for the gigantic background check that I was subjected to. I very quickly learned that my potential employer had some power at the FBI. Jessica had raved to him about me, so he agreed to meet with me. When Jessica told me he worked for the FBI, I was expecting a bureaucrat, kind of short, receding hairline, soft from sitting behind a desk all day.

Aaron Hotchner was none of those things. He was a total cliché; he was tall, dark, and handsome. His eyes were such a deep brown they were almost black, his hair was black, and he towered over me. His hand was firm when he shook mine. I initially thought he didn’t like me because of the scowl he wore on his face; now I knew that was just his default expression. I’m pretty sure he invented Resting Bitch Face. I think it was my meeting with Jack that sealed the deal. We had clicked right away. The 7-year-old was impressed by my knowledge of both DC and Marvel comics. I could still remember our first meeting so clearly; when in a move that I now know is so much like his father, he had asked me an interview question of his own.

“What is Spiderman’s middle name?” the boy had asked with a suspicious squint of his eyes.

This kid is poser checking me, I had thought with amusement. “That would depend on which Spiderman you’re referring to. Assuming it’s Peter Parker, his middle name is Benjamin.”

We were best friends after that.

I loved Jack; I really did. And I was paid well enough that he was the only child I babysat for, the rest of my time spent working on my research and plotting my dissertation. It was clear that Aaron Hotchner loved his son, and he felt guilty for not being around more. He was fierce and intimidating any other time, but once he was with his son, his entire face would transform. His smiles came easier, his eyes twinkled, and he didn’t seem so scary anymore.

None of that is why he made me nervous, though. What made me so nervous is the fear that one day I was going to spend enough time with him for him to see the feelings I had so stupidly developed for him.  

--

The very next night, I was hiding in the kitchen floor in Aaron Hotchner’s apartment.

“Ready or not, here I come!” the little voice called out before his feet started stomping loudly across the floor.

From my position behind the kitchen counter, I tried very hard to remain silent, despite my amusement. Jack Hotchner was many wonderful, wonderful things. Sneaky was not one of them. Which is why I wasn’t surprised when I heard his little feet hurry towards me, and I didn’t lose my balance when he turned the corner and launched himself at me. “Oomph!” was the only reasonable sound to make when a tiny human slammed into you.

Jack was delighted. “I FOUND YOU!”

My response was cut off by the sound of the front door opening. Jack was off me in a flash, barreling towards the living room. “Daddy!”

Mr. Hotchner made a similar “oomph” noise when Jack jumped on him, confirming my theory. I rose to my feet quickly, smoothing down my clothes.

“We were playing hide and seek, Daddy!” Jack informed his father. “I found y/n every time! She never found me once!” His chest puffed out with pride, making my face break into a smile.

“You’re just an excellent hider, Jack-attack.”

Mr. Hotchner’s eyes settled on my face then, for just a moment I saw something so sad in those eyes that the breath seized in my lungs.

He cleared his throat, seeming to shake off whatever he was thinking before smiling at his son. “I’m glad you had a good time with, y/n, buddy.”

Jack nodded vigorously. “I helped make dinner!”

“You did?” He questioned in fake astonishment. “When did you make dinner?”

“Tonight!”

Mr. Hotchner looked at me quizzically. “Oh, um, I wasn’t actually supposed to watch Jack tonight…but Jessica called and asked if I could. It was really last minute, and she’d already bought some stuff to make dinner…” I trailed off. “I hope that’s okay. Jesus Christ, y/n. You’re a 26-year-old woman, get it together.

His attention moved from me to his son. "Jack, go get changed into your pj's. It's almost bedtime." When Jack's mouth opened to protest this great injustice, his father went on. "You can tell y/n bye when you're done."

So much for a speedy escape, I thought. Instead, I just smiled at him. "Yep, I'll be right here, little man." Satisfied with this, Jack jumped out of his father's arms and ran towards his room.

“Why did Jessica need you to come over? Did something happen with Roy?” He looked genuinely worried, walking into the kitchen to stand near me.

I reached out and put a hand on his arm without thinking. "Oh, oh god no, nothing like that." Realizing I was touching him, I snatched my hand back like he'd burned me. "Sorry. She…she-um had a date."

His eyebrows rose so high they almost hit his hairline. “A date?” he asked, disbelief dripping from his words.

I chuckled. “That’s what she told me.”

He walked back into the living room then, leaning back against the couch, crossing his arms over his chest as he focused his dark gaze on me. “What about you?”

“…What about me what?”

“Does Jessica ever have to cover for you when you have dates?”

If Aaron Hotchner hadn’t made me so nervous, I might have picked up on how he phrased that question. As it happens, all I could do was fidget under his gaze. “Oh,” I chuckled nervously. “Ah, no. She doesn’t have to do that. I don’t really date.”

That had one of his eyebrows rising, his arms crossing across his chest. "Why?"

Because I want you to crack my back like a glowstick. “Um…you know, it’s hard to find the time.”

Thankfully Jack chose that moment to come barreling out of his room, charging full force at me. “You’re still here!” he exclaimed.

I smiled down at him when his arms wrapped around my hips. I put one hand on the back of his head, the other on his back, giving him a squeeze. “Of course I am! I couldn’t leave without telling you goodbye.”

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” he mumbled.

My throat worked as a sudden wave of emotion hit me. "Oh, Jack," my voice was thicker than usual when I spoke. "I don't like leaving you either, but you'll see me before you know it. I promise."

Once we had finally pried Jack off me, Mr. Hotchner went to take him to bed. He turned to me when he scooped Jack up in his arms. “Thank you for today.”

“It’s no problem, Mr. Hotchner.”

“You know you don’t have to call me that,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine. “Most people call me Hotch. Or you could call me Aaron.”

I didn't know what to say to that; all I could do was give him an awkward smile. I was gone before he came back into the living room. I didn't want to leave, I never did, but I couldn't risk being alone with…Aaron.

--

The following Thursday night, my phone started ringing just after 11:30. Glancing at it, I saw it was Jessica. “Hey,” I said in greeting.

“Hey, y/n,” she said, sounding frazzled. “I have a huge favor to ask. Dad’s home health nurse had to leave early tonight.” “Is something wrong with Melinda?” I hope not. She’s the sweetest.

“No, I don’t think so. But she needs to go home and there’s no one to sit with Jack. But Aaron isn’t home yet…”

“I’ll be there in 20.”

Which is why I was now in Aaron Hotchner’s apartment after midnight in a pair of shorts that were so short I only ever wore them at home and a t-shirt that I had had for forever. Jessica had sounded so upset when she called, I hadn't even thought to change. She had promised to be back as quick as she could; she said that Mr. Hotchner was flying back from a case, and she didn’t expect him until 5 a.m. at the earliest.

When I first arrived, I had tried to watch TV, my mind too wired to sleep, even though I had class at 9 am in the morning. Sighing, I glanced over at the clock to see it was just after 1:45 in the morning.

“Fuuuuuuck,” I whined out loud. I have to go to sleep; even if it’s just a little nap. I remembered Jessica had left some chamomile tea here for the nights she stayed over to watch Jack. Finding the kettle and the tea itself was no problem; the problem presented itself when I had to get a mug to put the tea in.

I had never considered myself a particularly short person; sure, I had to stretch to get things from time to time, but everybody did that. Looking up into the upper cabinets in the Hotchner house had me reconsidering that. The mugs were on the very top shelf and try as I might, I just couldn’t seem to reach them; my fingers kept grazing over the ceramic.

“Goddamnit,” I mumbled in a huff. What is the point to put mugs way the fuck up there? Some of us are a perfectly normal height…but noooo I have to work for giants. I braced my hands on the countertop as I heaved myself up on to said countertop. Once my knees were in place, I got the offending cup without further problems.

I blame how focused I was on my task for my not hearing the front door open, or the footsteps that followed. Which is why I had a mild heart attack when I heard a voice that sounded highly amused say from behind me, “What are you doing?”

Several things happened all at once, and very quickly. I let out the most embarrassing squeak in all of history, I lost my balance on the counter and the cup fell from my hand. The cup crashed to the floor and shattered. My fate might have been the same but two large hands caught me, gripping my hips from behind. I looked down to see his long fingers wrapping around my waist, gripping me tightly; my difficulty breathing then had nothing to do with how scared I was.  

“I’m sorry,” Aaron said softly, still not releasing me. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No, I get it,” I said lightly, attempting to act like I wasn’t going into cardiac arrest because he was touching me. “You’re a very stealthy FBI agent. It was bound to happen.”

He chuckled before his hands pushed my hips so I was twisting around, my legs shifting until I was sitting on the countertop, staring into the same dark eyes I thought about far too often. They weren’t as harsh as they usually were; tonight, they were soft and warm, and they made my pulse race a bit faster.

I moved to get off the counter when the hands that were still on my hips stopped me. “Hang on, let me clean this up first. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Fantastic, I thought, hiding my face in my hands. It seems I was incapable of not making a fool out of myself in front of this man.

He worked quickly while I debated changing my name and fleeing the country; in the next moment, he was standing in front of me again. "What's wrong?"

“Oh, nothing,” I said, not moving my hands. “Just dying of embarrassment.”

Aaron actually laughed at that, moving closer to stand between my thighs, his hands coming to rest on the countertop on either side of my hips. “Why are you embarrassed?”

I dropped my hands then. “Because this is becoming a pattern! First, I fell asleep on your couch, then I almost fell off your counter and cracked my head like an egg.” I bit my lip, shifting under his gaze. “I’m sorry and thank you for catching me.”

“I didn’t mind,” he said softly.

He still had that soft look on his face, but he was smiling too like he was enjoying my embarrassment. He probably is. I had never been this close to him before. I didn’t know his eyes weren’t just one flat color of brown, but that lighter shades of brown whirled throughout. I had never felt the heat of his body before, but now I was so close I could smell him. Why does he have to smell good? I whined internally. If he just stunk, I could get over this.

This was exactly why I tried very hard to stay as far away from him as possible because I lost the ability to think clearly whenever I was with him. I couldn't stop my eyes from moving down to his lips. I was eye level with him from my position on the counter; all I had to do to brush my lips across his was lean forward, so that’s exactly what I did. His body stiffened slightly at the first touch of my lips to his. I pulled back, ready to apologize when his hand wrapped around the back of my head and pulled me back to him. There was nothing soft about this kiss. His free hand gripped my thigh, my hands held on to his shirt, trying to pull him closer. My tongue brushed against his mouth before he sucked on the tip of it, causing me to shudder. He took a step forward as his tongue twirled around mine. I could feel him when he settled against me; he was hard, and I found myself shifting my hips to rub against him.

The shrill ringing of his phone broke us apart suddenly. He was panting, his cheeks were slightly flushed. I thought I heard him let out a “fuck” under his breath as he reached into his pocket and grabbed his phone.

“Hey Jessica,” he answered.

Now that our moment was broken, I felt very self-conscious. What the fuck did I just do?! He is my boss. He is Jack’s dad. Aaron took a step back and I slid off the counter. This turned out to be a very bad idea on my part; my body brushed down the front of his, causing me to bite my lip to silence the moan that threatened to escape.

“Yeah, I landed a little while ago,” he said as I left the kitchen.

WhatthefuckWhatthefuck. I heard him end the call with Jessica before he quickly walked into the living room. A look of relief washed over his face when he saw me. “I thought you’d try to slip away.”

���I thought about it,” I told him honestly.

“Listen, y/n, about that in the kitchen,” he began.

I held up my hands. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Hotchner. I don’t know why I did that; I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” I was giving him an out because I couldn’t handle hearing the rejection I knew was coming. “I just…I guess we got caught up in the moment? And you’re really tired, I’m sure. I’m so sorry.” I was rambling now. “If you don’t want me to watch Jack anymore-“

“Y/n, no,” he interrupted. “No, this…you’re right, it was just a heat of the moment thing. It happens. I’m sorry I lost myself for a moment.” He cleared his throat, his face still set in softness. “Jack loves you. He doesn’t need to suffer for any more of my mistakes.”

Mistakes. The word hollowed me out and left me cold. I just nodded. “Right,” I said in what I hoped was an even tone. “Just a mistake. I should get going. It’s really late.”

Which is how I found myself driving home at almost 3 in the morning with tears running down my cheeks. A mistake.

--

Things went back to normal after that night. I continued to avoid Aaron Hotchner at all costs and he…did whatever he did. I tried to hide the hurt whenever I did happen to see him, but it was so hard when I could still feel the tingle from his lips on mine.

A few days after the “mistake,” I was babysitting Jack again. He’d went to bed at his normal 8:30 and all was quiet. I decided to do some TA work while I waited for Mr. Hotchner to come home. I was halfway through grading an essay when I heard the first noise come from Jack’s room. Lifting my fingers from the keys of my computer, I waited to see if I heard another sound. I didn’t have to wait long; not even a minute passed before I heard a strained cry. Jumping up, I hurried down the hall to Jack’s bedroom.

Cracking the door open I called, “Jack-attack? Are you okay, little man?” I didn’t see him right away; he had hidden under his covers and curled up into a little ball. “Hey, Jack. It’s just y/n.” I sat down on the edge of his bed. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

I saw the lump under the blankets start to move hesitantly before I saw his brown hair peak out of the blanket near his pillow. His eyes were wide and with the light shining in from the hall, I could see tears gleam in them. “Oh, buddy,” I cooed. “Did you have a bad dream?”

The boy nodded. “Yeah…there was a bad man…and my daddy didn’t come save me.”

I felt my breath seize in my chest. Jessica had told me a brief version of what happened to Jack's mother a few years ago. "Jack, you know your dad would always do whatever he had to do to come to save you." I shifted my position on the bed until I was sitting beside him. "He'd never let anything bad happen to you." Jack started inching closer to me. I held out my arms and smiled when he lunged for me; I wrapped him in a tight hug, rubbing circles on his back.

“My dad just isn’t home a lot anymore. He has a lot of work to do,” he mumbled into my shirt.  

“Your dad would be home if he could, Jack.” I couldn’t quite keep the sadness out of my voice. It wasn’t fair to either Jack or his dad that he had to be away so much.

“I know,” the little boy whispered. “I just miss him sometimes.”

“Do you want to call him?” I offered. “I don’t think he’d mind.”

Jack just shook his head. “No, it’s okay.” He turned his face up to look at me. “Will you stay with me?”

I moved so he lay beside me with my left arm still squeezed around him. “Of course, bud.” I scooted down the bed so I was reclining instead of sitting straight up, pulling the cover-up over him again. "Do you want me to read you another story?"  

He just shuffled under his covers, looking at me with the bashful innocence of childhood. “Can you sing to me until I fall asleep?”

I wasn’t the biggest fan of singing in front of people, but how could I turn this little face down? I just nodded. “Do you have any requests?”

“Nope,” he answered with a little grin on his face.

Unfortunately, at that moment every single lullaby I had ever know left my head. I couldn’t think of a single traditional lullaby. So, I decided to improvise. I started singing slower songs I knew, some of them might not have been appropriate for a 7-year-old’s lullaby, but I don’t think Jack cared that much.

He was almost out, drifting on the edge between deep sleep and awake. My arm was still around his shoulder, he was still snuggled to my side. I decided one more song would be enough, which meant I pulled out my second Beatles song of the night.

“Who knows how long I’ve loved you?

You know I love you still.

Will I wait a lonely lifetime?

If you want me to, I will.

For if I ever saw-“

I glanced up, immediately sensing there was someone else in the room. To my horror, Jack’s father was standing in the doorway, staring at me with an unreadable expression on his face. I swallowed nervously, then I turned to press a kiss against Jack’s soft forehead before I gently detangled myself from him. I straightened my clothes that to my further embarrassment had shifted around because I was laying with a wiggly child, then, attempting to keep my face impassive, I walked to the door, moving around his father as I exited.

Mr. Hotchner walked into the room and checked on his son, while I moved into the living room to gather my things. I wonder if he just left the money by the door, I mused. If he did, I could just make a dash for the door. I mean, if he didn’t, he could always just pay me next time. Sadly, my plans were escape were foiled yet again by the man in question entering the room.

"Sorry," I muttered. "I know he was up past his bedtime. I put him down at 8, but he had a nightmare." I was babbling, not meeting his eyes, my gaze very intently focused on my bag. "He asked me to stay with him until he fell asleep…" I finally looked up, shrugged, and said, "He's very hard to say no to."

“You don’t have to apologize for being nice to my son, y/n,” he said softly. “That’s one of my favorite songs on the White Album, you know.”

I hadn’t known that. “Mr. Hotch-“

He took a step towards me before I finished speaking. “Y/n, please, I can barely handle this as it is. Please call me Aaron.”

I just blinked up at him. “So, ‘Hotch’ is off the table now?”

That had a soft smile curving his lips upward. "That was a limited-time deal. You should have been quicker." I saw his hand rise up slowly, so slowly that I would have had time to move away…but I just couldn’t. He brushed my hair back from my face, his eyes were two pools of black in the dim light, they were swirling with something that made my stomach flutter.

“Aaron,” I breathed, having no idea what I was going to say.

He let out a soft sigh, turning his eyes upwards. When he brought them back down to mine, his hand slid from its place near my ear to cradle the back of my head. His eyes searched mine for a moment before his shoulders dropped slightly. “Fuck it,” he muttered before he leaned down and sealed his lips over mine.

I might have thought this kiss would be questioning or unsure, but there was nothing unsure about it. Aaron kissed me like he was starving for me. His teeth caught my bottom lip and tugged as he pulled away. “It wasn’t a mistake,” he breathed before bringing his lips more firmly against mine.

My hands began to move over his body; one of my hands grabbed his tie and used it to pull him closer to me, the other reached up to brush against the short, soft hair on the back of his neck. “It wasn’t?” I questioned when we broke away for air.

Aaron’s lips moved across my cheek, leaving soft kisses until he reached my ear. “No, sweet girl, it wasn’t.” His mouth moved down to my neck; his kisses turning into bites that were sure to become brushes. I didn’t care, I needed him. My hands moved to his shirt, quickly trying to undo all the buttons.

His hands moved down to the waist of my jeans, deftly flicking the button open before sliding the zipper down. “Is this what you want?” he asked as his hand touched my lower stomach, his fingers brushing over the elastic band of my panties.

“Yes,” I said, still working to free him from his shirt. “I want this so much.”

The fingers of his free hand rose up to tap my chin, forcing my eyes up until I met his gaze. "I want to hear you say my name again." His other hand lifted from my stomach to slide over the flair of my hip until he was gripping my ass. "Whenever I laid in bed that night after I had you pressed against me in my kitchen when I stroked my cock, I thought about you moaning my name.” The hand that was on my chin pulled away, skimming down my body until he was grabbing the other side of my ass. “So, say it. Tell me what you want.”

“I want you, Aaron.” So, so much.

His hands moved to the backs of my thighs, then he lifted me up his body, startling me. Jesus Christ, how strong is this guy? I threw my arms around his neck as he started walking us down towards his bedroom. A giggle escaped my lips. “I could have walked, you know.”

We had already entered his room; he tossed me gently on the bed before he turned to close and lock the door. He walked to stand at the side of his bed, his eyes devouring me. “I couldn’t give you a chance to sneak away again, sweet girl.” Aaron pulled off his tie before he finished unbuttoning his shirt, shedding it on the floor.

Fuck. Fuck, he’s hot. I pulled my own shirt over my head, and his body was on top of me before it even left my hands. Aaron's mouth moved down to my collarbones, his hand slipped behind my back to unhook my bra. Once the straps were down my arms, Aaron lifted himself up on his arms to toss it away, his eyes running over my body. "You're so beautiful," he said softly like it wasn't the sweetest compliment I'd ever been paid. He leaned over again, his lips skimming down to my chest before he wrapped his lips around one of my nipples.

“Fuck, Aaron,” I moaned.

He gave my nipple a flick with his tongue before he lifted his head. “Ssh, sweet girl. You have to be quiet. Can you do that?” He kissed his way over to my other breast. “I can’t do this if you won’t be quiet.”

“I can be quiet,” I whispered right before I bit my lip to smother my moan at the feeling of his mouth on me. “Maybe.”

His breath puffed against my skin when he laughed at me. My hands threaded through his hair when he brought his face back up to mine. My mouth opened eagerly for him, my tongue slicking over his while I tried to grind my body against him. Aaron was smiling when he broke the kiss, shifting up onto his knees. “Well, I appreciate you trying to be quiet at any rate,” he teased.

My response died in my throat when his fingers yanked my jeans off my legs, bringing my panties with them. I was totally bare in front of him. His eyes raked down my body in a way that would make me self-conscious with anyone else. How could I ever be self-conscious with a man who looked at me like I was the most beautiful thing in the world?

But when he started to kiss further down my body, I grabbed his arm, attempting to pull him back up to kiss me. “Aaron,” I whispered.

He pressed a soft kiss to my collarbone. “What’s wrong, beautiful?”

“You don’t…you don’t have to do…that,” I mumbled, feeling my face heat up.

Aaron braced himself on his arms and stared down at me. Enlightenment dawned on his face a second later. He leaned down to kiss me softly. “Do you not want me to?”

I bit my lip, feeling more flustered. “It’s just…I’ve never…and I know that guys don’t really like-.“ My words were cut off when he placed another kiss to my lips, still incredibly soft, but with more force than before.

"If it makes you uncomfortable, I won't," he said quietly. "But I can assure you, I can't think of anything more I'd rather do than lick your pussy until you cum all over my face." He skimmed his lips over my cheek to my ear. "And once you've come down, I want to slide my cock inside you and feel how soft and wet you are." His kisses moved down to my neck, his mouth sucking on my pulse point. "Then I want to fuck you until you're whimpering against my lips to make you cum again.”

I felt my core throb at his words. No one had ever said anything like that to me before. He lifted his gaze when he got back to my breast, flicking my nipple with his tongue. “Is that what you want too, sweet girl?”

I have never wanted anything more, I thought; but I was so far gone that all I could do was nod.

He gave me a soft smile, moving down the bed further to settle between my thighs, pulling them further apart. I felt a kiss pressed to one thigh, then the other. His hot breath washed over the part of me that was already so wet for him. “You’re beautiful here too,” he murmured before he pressed a kiss to my clit. I lifted my hips at the sensation, causing him to chuckle and move his hands to wrap around my thighs, his arms anchoring me in place. A second later I understood why he braced my hips. The second he flattened his tongue and licked the length of my pussy, my hips started moving involuntarily and my fingers tangled in his hair.

I felt a puff of air against me when he laughed again, and it made me smile. I didn’t expect Aaron Hotchner to be fun…or dirty in bed. All thought immediately left my head when he parted me with his tongue, dipping into my entrance before spearing his tongue into me. I felt the vibration when he moaned against me. "You taste so fucking good, y/n," he said, his voice still hushed. Giving my entrance one last lick, he moved up to my clit.

He spent time moving his tongue around me, learning what made me squirm. When he started fluttering his tongue quickly over my clit my hands started tugging on his hair and my thighs tried to snap together.

“Aaron,” I whined, attempting to rock my hips against his mouth.

I think he understood what I needed better than I did. His left hand released my thigh and moved down to my heat, just below his mouth. I felt his fingers brush over me before he pushed on inside me, causing my back to arch off the bed. “Aaron, Aaron, fuck.” He added a second finger, pumping them in a rhythm that complimented the movements of his mouth.

I wasn't prepared for when his lips closed around my clit, sucking lightly, while his fingers started to curl inside of me. “Oh my God," I moaned out, louder than I should have. "Aaron, I'm going to cum." I started pulling on his hair so hard it must have hurt, but he just moaned against me, never slowing his pace. "Aaron, fuck, please. I think…I-I-“

My words broke off as the band inside of me snapped, my pussy clamping down on his fingers and my back arching off of the bed, my mouth hanging open in a silent scream.

Aaron slowed his motions, slowly bringing me through the orgasm and back down to Earth. With one final kiss to my thigh, he rose and moved up my body until his face was hovering over mine. His lips were shiny with my arousal, they also looked a little swollen, but more importantly, they were smirking at me.

I’ll give him that one. Reaching up I cradled his jaw in my hands, bringing his mouth down to mine. I tasted myself on his lips and tongue when he licked into my mouth. Despite the powerful orgasm he had just given me, I was still desperate for him. I broke away from his mouth. “Aaron, I need you.”

He pressed another kiss to my lips before he lifted up and stood at the side of the bed, undoing the buckle of his belt. My eyes were fixed on his movements, watching as he unbuttoned his slacks and slid them down his legs. His cock was a thick pipe outlined in his underwear. He hooked his thumbs into the waistband before he spoke again. "I'll give you everything you need, greedy girl." Aaron pushed his underwear down, his cock springing free before he climbed back on the bed.

He was so much thicker than I expected he would be. I moved my hand down to wrap my fingers around him, pumping his length. He let out a groan and lowered his forehead to mine. “Baby,” he muttered. “I…fuck. I have to get a condom.”

“Aaron,” I whined. “I want to feel you inside me. I’m on birth control. Please?” The thought of anything separating me from this man was abhorrent to me in that moment.

I saw his willpower crumble. “Are you sure?”

So sure. “Please,” I begged lifting my head to kiss him. “I want you to fuck me.”

With a groan that I will remember for the rest of my life, he shifted his hips forwarded, allowing my hands to guide him to my entrance. Aaron kissed me then, slowly and deeply has he started to push inside me. My hand flew away from his cock, both my arms wrapping around his body to pull him closer to me. I felt my nails digging into his back.

Aaron broke our kiss with another soft moan that sounded like my name. “I knew you’d feel like this,” he whispered, pressing deeper inside me. “I knew your pussy would be this fucking tight, this fucking hot, and so fucking soft." He started moving in and out of my pussy, going in a little further each time. “You still have to be quiet, sweet girl.”

“I’m trying,” I moaned, my pussy already starting to flutter around him when he finally pushed all the way inside of me. “Aaron, fucking Christ.” I felt him everywhere, and I somehow still craved more.

He grabbed my thigh, pulling if further up his side, allowing himself to sink deeper inside of me. “I know, sweet girl. I know.” He started a slow pace, pulling almost all the way out of me before slamming back inside me.

My head was thrashing against the pillows, my teeth digging into my bottom lip. “Aaron, I need you to fuck me harder. Please.”

He groaned at my words, placing a sloppy kiss to my mouth before pulling back. He pulled one of my legs up until it was over his shoulder, the other still wrapped around his waist, and then he started to move faster inside of me.

I braced one hand against the headboard as he pounded into me. “Oh my god, Aaron,” my voice was a low whimper as I looked down to see his cock sliding in and out of me. “You feel so fucking good.”

“Baby, I want you to reach down and rub your clit for me while I fuck your tight little pussy.” His pace started to speed up as he spoke. “Can you do that for me?” He groaned when I complied, the stimulation to my clit causing my pussy to flutter around him. “Good girl.”

My fingers began to work frantically. “Don’t stop, Aaron. Don’t stop,” I begged. “I’m so close.”

“I know, sweet girl, I can feel you. Your pussy feels so good squeezing around my cock. You’re going to make me cum.” His thrusts were starting to get choppier, one of his hands braced on the top of the headboard while the other held my leg on his shoulder. “Do you want me to cum inside your pretty pussy, sweet girl?” He groaned loudly when my walls clenched around him. “It feels like you like the idea of that, don’t you baby?”

My fingers continued their pace, my head thrashing, my body trembling. “Yes. Fuck, Aaron. Please cum inside of me. Please.”

Aaron felt it first and acted quickly; his hand moved from my leg to cover my mouth. “That’s it, cum for me, baby.”

I thought my orgasm earlier tonight was powerful. It was nothing compared to how I felt when I came around his cock, only to feel him find his own release a moment after.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, y/n,” he breathed, giving a last few jerks inside of my body, pushing against the fluttering aftershocks of my orgasm. He rolled off me, careful not to drop all of his weight on top of me. To my relief, he quickly gathered me in his arm, pulling me against his body, pressing a soft kiss to my sweaty forehead.

My ear was pressed against his chest, allowing me to hear his heartbeat slowdown from its frantic pace and his breathing even out. I turned my head and pressed a kiss to his chest while his hand continued to stroke my back.

“That…that was amazing,” I said, looking up at him. “If I knew you had that in you, I wouldn’t have run out of the room every time I was alone with you.”

He laughed softly, his eyes sparkling. “Well, at least you’ll know for next time.”

My thoughts sobered at his words. Next time

“Hey,” he said, his hand cupping the side of my face. “No, don’t go away. I just got you.” He kissed my forehead again, then the tip of my nose, then both of my eyelids, before he tilted my face up further so he could press a kiss to my lips. “We’ll figure this out. We have to. I care too much about you to let you go.”

“I care about you too,” I replied, snuggling against his chest, my eyes suddenly feeling heavy.

I was almost asleep when I heard his voice rumble again. “Will you sing Beatles songs to me when I can’t sleep too?” His voice was sleepy and teasing.

I smiled into the darkness, not bothering to open my eyes. “If you want me to, I will.”

--

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