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moonstruckme · 1 month ago

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Thawing Out

collab with @ellecdc

cw: modern au, some mature themes (in that it vaguely references past smut), allusion to past abusive dynamics/child abuse

poly!wolfstar x fem!reader ♡ 2.7k words

Somehow, Sirius’ hand is cold even underneath the covers.

Remus wakes with it like a cool weight in the center of his chest, fingers curled slightly with sleep. The other boy’s arm is cast over you, stretched out like Sirius had been determined even in sleep to keep you both close.

You’re considerably warmer, sandwiched between the two boys in the large shirt you’d thrown on to slink into Sirius’ room in the early hours of the morning. You’re all crammed in tight on Sirius’ bed, chosen because it’s still intact whereas yours is now only a mattress on the floor (Remus hopes you don’t need to explain that to anyone in charge of your lodgings). Remus’ leg is only just balanced on the edge of Sirius’ mattress, and Sirius himself is lying with his backside pressed against the wall, cheek resting on the mattress as he’d evidently given up on trying to share the pillow at some point in the night. The sunlight coming in through the window plays prettily over both of your features, and Remus’ chest warms with something like—wait. There’s sunlight. Coming in through the window.

He nearly falls out of bed reaching for his phone.

You make a soft sighing sound, rolling forward into the space he’s left.

“Remusss,” Sirius mumbles. “Stop moving.”

“We need to get up,” says Remus, breathless. His voice croaks with sleep.

“Hm?”

“Up, up.” He pats both of you on the shoulders before devoting his efforts to Sirius, tugging the sleeping boy upright. Remus has chosen correctly, because you rouse on your own, sitting up on your elbows with a squinty, confused look Remus really wishes he had more time to admire. “We’re on in forty minutes. Did nobody set alarms?”

You sit all the way up now, eyes going wide. “We are?”

“Did you not set an alarm?” Sirius asks him. “I was counting on you two for that.”

You shoot out of bed without an answer to your question. “My phone’s in my room.” Now that you mention it, Remus thinks he can hear a faint chiming coming from the room next to Sirius’. These walls must really not be very thick. You look at Remus, very much awake now. “Forty minutes?”

“Forty minutes,” he confirms, trying to tamp down on his own panic in an effort to avoid exacerbating yours.

You nod. “I’m going to stretch. Meet outside in ten?”

“Alright.” Remus gives you a small smile. He doesn’t blame you for not thinking to return it as you rush out the door. He turns his attention back to Sirius, still looking half caught in a dream and like he might return to it at any moment. “Oi.” Remus gives him a hard look. “I have to go get dressed. Can I trust you not to fall back asleep?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sirius rubs his eyes. “I won’t miss the bloody Olympics.”

“Good,” says Remus. He starts backing towards the door, trying to look stern while silently praying there’s no one in the hall to see him in his underwear. It had been one thing in the dead of night, but now… “Ten minutes. Get some stretching in, especially that ankle.”

Sirius seems to come a bit more awake, lips stretching in a grin. “Yes, Coach.”

Remus ignores his flirty eyes, though his face feels distinctly pink as he steps out the door, making his way quickly to his own room. He’d gotten a tad bossy the night before, not harsh but certainly directive, because it had seemed at times that you and Sirius were too timid to take steps by yourselves and damn it—Remus had waited long enough for what was about to happen. So out of impatience and necessity, he took charge. Sirius’ particular enjoyment of that came as a not-unpleasant surprise.

Remus dresses quickly, grateful he doesn’t need to stretch as you and Sirius do. He fills the time instead by fetching tea and coffee from the dining hall. They don’t have any fancy coffee syrups for Sirius, but the spoiled twat will just have to make do. He finds you where you said you’d be exactly ten minutes later, already knocking anxiously on Sirius’ door.

“Here you are.” Remus passes you your drink of choice. “He’ll be nearly ready, just give him a moment.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Sirius gripes from inside, sounding characteristically cheerful after a rushed wake-up.

“Oh. Thank you.” You take the drink from Remus, looking down at your other hand. He follows your gaze, and you’ve a drink carrier of your own. Three drinks identical to the ones Remus has brought.

A little laugh tumbles out of him. “Where did you find the time to get those?”

“Drinks are always my job.” You shrug, smiling a little. You look nervous, tension sewn into the muscles of your shoulders and preventing your happiness from reaching your eyes. Remus has the urge to drag you back into bed and soothe it out of you. “I went first thing. Had to rush my makeup, though.”

Since dragging you to bed doesn’t seem particularly timely, Remus settles for an ardent kiss to the top of your head. He takes the other drink carrier from you.

“You look lovely,” he says, meaning it. Your hair is smoothed away from your face, your makeup simple but dramatic, bold sweeps of eyeliner and color across your lids. Underneath your sweats he knows you’ll be wearing your costume, and the overall effect is bound to be mesmerizing enough that Remus hopes he can pay attention to your routine. “Extra drinks never hurt anyone.”

“Alright!” Sirius’ door whooshes open. He’s made up similarly, formidable slashes across his eyes and face set in determination. “Let’s go.”

He takes his coffee with a brief thanks. If the flavor isn’t to his liking, he doesn’t complain. This ritual, the stretched-taut tension of going to compete, should feel like coming home to Remus, but he can’t help but feel a bit odd.

If he’d taken the time to imagine what waking up next to you and Sirius would be like, it would probably have gone a bit slower. Soft rousings, lazy kisses, maybe a fond argument about who had to get up to get tea before you all decided to stay in bed just a little while longer. Not, perhaps, quite so much of this rushing, with none of you talking to each other and Remus fighting to keep up as you and Sirius speed-walk towards the competition.

He’s just caught sight of the boards when Sirius stops short. You falter beside him. Both you and Remus trace his gaze back to where two people, a man and a woman, are advancing on him with a steely resoluteness Remus knows but can’t place.

“Sirius Black.” The woman seems to be leading the charge, a stormcloud of dark hair and hateful eyes. “Horrid, ungrateful child!”

Remus blinks. The movement feels slow and dumb. You snap out of your stillness, taking several steps forward—not just in front of Sirius, but towards the woman.

“Get out of here.” Your expression is as fierce as Remus has ever seen it. The woman’s stare catches on you for a moment, a frigid flicker of annoyance, then dismisses you. “What makes you think you can just—”

“Thousands of pounds on skating lessons,” she seethes, the cold hiss of her voice somehow louder than anyone else’s. “The best tutors, private training facilities, and after all that you neglect to invite your own family—”

“He doesn’t have to invite you to anything,” you snarl.

Family, thinks Remus. Yes—the dark hair, the cool, scornful eyes—this woman is Sirius is his cruelest form. His mother.

“Sirius doesn’t have to go anywhere with you,” you go on, fervent. “You lost that privilege, both of you, you—”

Sirius never talks about his family. Ever. What does it mean, that they’re here? The way you’re speaking to them—you know them, you’ve met before, but there’s certainly no kinship there.

“—need to leave. Leave him alone—”

“Quiet,” Sirius’ mother spits. Her voice is like the twigs of a barren tree rattling against each other in the wind, harsh and grinding.

Remus looks at Sirius. He doesn’t at first know why, realizing only after he does it that he’s waiting for the other boy to stand up for you. To move his body in front of yours, fiery and protective, the way he always does. But Sirius looks rooted to the spot, his expression frozen and eyes just slightly widened. A weight sinks into Remus’ gut as he remembers what you’d told him the night after he got in Sirius’ face for the first and only time.

It’s not my place to tell you about what his life has been, you’d said, hedging. You can shout at him all you want, but just stay away from physical stuff like that.

Remus looks at Sirius’ mother, all cold fury as she tries to get closer to her son. You, continually stepping into her path, eyes blazing like some goddess of guardianship and inner strength. And Sirius, as passive as Remus has ever seen him. Afraid.

“That’s enough.” Remus hardly recognizes his own voice when it comes out. It’s harder than any he’s used as your coach, harder even than the one he’s used on himself. Sirius turns to him in surprise, but you keep your eyes on the woman in front of you, unyielding. “No one,” he says, “no one, regardless of their relations, comes in here and harasses my athletes. You will leave, or you will be escorted out.”

If possible, the woman’s expression grows colder. “How dare you. My husband and I are—”

“You two,” Remus ignores her for a moment, softening his voice some to address you and Sirius. You turn now, eyes flickering to Sirius first as if to check he’s okay, “go get ready by the boards. I’ll meet you there in just a moment.”

There’s not much left for you to do to get ready, but Remus knows better than anyone the importance of having a clear head before competition. Neither of you need to be here for this.

Remus waits as you nod, going back to Sirius and looping your arm through his before continuing towards the boards, keeping yourself purposefully between Sirius and his mother all the while. Remus watches you go, and then he turns to face Mrs. Black.

Remus has never gotten to kick anyone out of a rink before. It’s a significant mood-booster. The way Walburga—he’d learned her name when she’d shrieked it at the staff no less than a dozen times, endeavoring madly to gain some favor from her surname, which Remus had never heard before Sirius but in Walburga’s mind apparently ought to have the lower classes bending over backwards—had screeched and threatened as she and her husband had been dragged out was almost enough to make Remus regret sending Sirius away so he couldn't witness it himself. But, of course, Sirius is always better off with you.

Evidence of this arises as soon as Remus finds you. You’ve both shed your sweats, your matching costumes and makeup making you look nearly a mirror image. Sirius’ head is cupped between your hands, your foreheads bent together as you whisper to him ardently.

“Fuck. Them.” You push your forehead into his.

“Yeah.” Sirius’ brow is furrowed, his eyes closed. “Fuck them.”

There can only be a minute or so before you’re supposed to go out and perform, but Remus hangs back. Letting you have this, he thinks, might prove more effective than anything he could say.

“They don’t deserve you,” you tell Sirius firmly, “they never did. You’re here because of your hard work, not because of anything they gave you.”

Sirius takes a breath. Pushes it back out. “I know.”

Remus’ heart gives a painful squeeze for the both of you. As though by some sixth sense, Sirius looks up, blue eyes landing on his.

“They’re gone,” Remus says. You let out a breath, expression easing, but Sirius only nods. Remus draws closer. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” Sirius replies. He turns, catching sight of the staff member coming to tell you it’s your turn. “Let’s do this.”

Remus watches you two go out onto the ice, hoping he looks more confident than he feels. He doesn’t doubt your ability to perform well—he never could, after all he’s seen from you these past several weeks—but you’re angry and Sirius is something else, neither of you collected enough to summon the focus you need to pull this off. Remus forces himself to take a deep breath as you finish your loop around the rink and come to a stop in your starting position, telling himself he’ll be happy for you no matter what.

He should have had more faith in the both of you.

As soon as the music starts it’s like the confusion of the past few days is wiped away entirely. You’re the same as you were, as you’ve always been, gliding alongside each other like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. The only difference is that the energy between you that’s always been there has shifted ever so slightly. Still love, but fuller now. Actualized.

Your costumes, gauzy layers of deep indigo, billow behind you to create the impression that you’re actually painting on the white canvas of the ice, each step a brushstroke done with intention and artistry. You and Sirius sweep around each other, undulating and circling and drifting apart before coming back. Your blades hit the ice after each jump like a crash of cymbals, perfectly on beat.

Towards the end of the routine, Sirius takes your hand in his. You start to circle him, backwards, one skate off the ground. Remus tenses as Sirius lowers himself into a squat, looking at you down the length of your arm. There’s not so much as a flicker in either of your expressions as he lowers you all the way.

Remus draws in a sharp breath of cold air.

You adjust beautifully, your training taking over to guide you through a move you’ve never practiced, back arched and skirt fluttering in front of you. You go through a few rotations that way before Sirius lifts you up and propels you seamlessly into a spin. The death spiral finishes out flawlessly.

For just a second after your spin, you catch Remus’ gaze, eyes smiling as if to say, See?

He beams.

Remus is still beaming when he meets you in the kiss and cry, feeling soppy and ridiculous and overwhelmingly proud.

“That was brilliant,” he says, taking you by the shoulders when you make it to him first. You’re smiling too, radiant, eyes sparkling as sweetly as the day he met you. He squeezes you warmly. “Brilliant.”

He catches hold of Sirius next, cupping his neck with both hands. The other boy’s eyebrow twitches, a sheepish smile coming to his face.

Remus laughs, “Prick,” and kisses him in the center of his forehead.

You make an ill-contained squealing sound, throwing your arms around them both. “I knew you’d do it,” you say, putting your lips to Sirius’ cheek, overflowing with happiness. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Sirius gives a short laugh. He’s no doubt enjoying the onslaught of affection, but he rolls his eyes anyway. “Yeah, sure. Just ask next time.”

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pencil-n-pen · 5 days ago

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SPILL YOUR GUTS

˚₊‧꒰ა . ——— ˗ˏˋ ✮ ˎˊ˗ ——— ˖ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

practice boyfriend! eddie x fem! reader

summary: eddie’s your practice boyfriend. you’re positive he’s upset at you and you’re waiting for him to get mad. however, he has a different response in mind.

cw: references/allusions to past child abuse but extremely vague, references/allusions to bad relationships (also pretty vague), reader acts on a learned response and assumes the worst about Eddie, anxiety

tags/tropes: angst, hurt/comfort (my brand!) sappy sappy romantic idiots, they kiss and figure their mess out at the end

a/n: this came to me in a vision

summary makes this sound smutty but i promise it’s not. this accidentally became disgustingly romantic. read at your own risk :)

࣪˖ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ˖

You’re positive Eddie’s mad at you.

Okay. Maybe positive is a strong word. But still.

You’ve only been fake/pretend/practice dating Eddie for about two weeks now. He’s the one who approached you with the offer— when you were in the Upside Down together, you’d made an off-hand comment about how you might die without ever having a real boyfriend- not one that mattered, anyway. It��s always kind of been a sore spot for you for a good portion of your life. Growing up, you didn’t really have the best relationship with your dad (Robin likes to call that “The understatement of the year, and we almost died.”) and out of the incredibly small handful of guys you’ve gone out with, none stuck around longer than a month and all ended in such equally, specifically, and uniquely horrific ways, you finally came to the conclusion you had to be fucking something up. What are the chances of all them ended so completely horribly?

After you all had decidedly not died in the Upside Down, Eddie approached you with an offer: pretend date him. You’re popular and well known enough that it’ll help get people off his back about the whole Chrissy/murders thing —even though he’s been absolved of all charges, the people of Hawkins hold grudges— and in exchange, you get a trial run of a relationship that won’t end unless you both agree too— you get to figure out what you’re doing wrong.

You feel bad about it, because even though you spend so much time together, you feel like a nervous wreck. All. The. Time.

You’re constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop— waiting for him to tell you that you’re too weird, that you’re not considerate enough, that you’re selfish, or that you talk too much.

But he never says any of it. All he ever tells you is the good things. He tells you how sympathetic you are, how kind you are, how good you are at remembering little details that matter. He tells you that you’re a good kisser.

(Yeah. Your first kiss, even after those failed relationships, ended up being with Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson. You’re not quite sure you’ll ever forget how you felt when his lips —just a little cracked, but not rough— met yours; when his hair tickled your face and you could faintly smell the cigarette smoke that stubbornly clings to all of his clothes, no matter how many times he washes them. You didn’t tell him he was your first. That’s something you decided you couldn’t bear to share.

You kind of have a feeling he knows anyway, though.)

It all sets you on edge. You’re under no reassurance that you’re perfect. You’re currently questioning if you’re tolerable, from a romantic standpoint.

You know how you are. You’re clinging and you drink up reassurance like a dying man in the desert. You linger in his casual touches like it’s the first and last time you’ll ever feel them. You know you’re a lot. You know. You know that guys in a relationship don’t want ‘a lot’, they want a pretty thing to hang off their arm and laugh at what they say.

But you just… can’t.

You tried, and you tried, and you tried. But you always ended up being too much, or it didn’t work out for some other reason. You want more. You want to feel safe, and happy, and cherished and loved and all those things that only happen in the movies.

The ironic part of all of this is that when you first started setting out terms for your arrangement, Eddie had told you flat out: “This will only work if you are completely and one-hundred percent yourself. You gotta lay it all on me, angel.”

And so you had, and now you regret it because he’s upset about something.

You’d come over to his trailer at his request to ‘hang out’ while he went over DND stuff for his next campaign. Eddie does this a lot— he calls them ‘Neutral Dates’ where you’re not really doing anything in particular- most of the time, you’re both doing seperate things, but still just being in each other’s presence.

It’s nice. The majority of your friend circle consists of everyone involved with the Upside Down and that entire mess. You two are no Steve and Robin (you’re convinced those two have the kind of bond no one can replicate or break. Like the kind of bond stray cats get and then they have to be adopted together) but it’s still nice. To just be with someone.

Even if you feel like you’re walking on eggshells.

It’s not always eggshells. Sometimes, for a a few moments, you forget. You forget it’s all pretend. You forget he’s just a friend helping a friend fulfill a goal. That’s all.

You’ve almost forgotten just now, too— you’re too concerned about what you might’ve done.

He’s not acting angry, per-se, but he’s definitely upset. You tend to pick up on this kind of thing: small changes in someone’s personality or body language. Most of the time it’s not a conscious habit.

Most of the time.

Right now, he’s run his hands through his hair about a million times. It’s become a frizzy mess behind him, and when you’d made an offhand joke about it —an attempt to lighten the mood— all he’d done was scowl. Not at you, really, but the message was there. You’d snapped your jaw shut so fast you’re pretty sure he heard your teeth click.

After that he’d frustratedly made tea for the both of you, which consisted of opening the cupboards faster than he usually did, closing them slightly louder than he usually does, and drumming his fingers impatiently on the stove-top while he waited for the kettle to boil.

All of this you observed from the corner of your eye while ‘reading’ on the couch.

And if all of that wasn’t bad enough, when you’d finally mustered up the courage to speak again, a little joke about a part in the book you were reading, all he’d said was a flat:

“That’s great, babe.”

You’re starting to get antsy. Nervous. Maybe you should go? Unless he gets upset at you leaving. That would be bad. But he’s clearly upset with you being here, so maybe you should go.

While you’re debating the pros and cons of leaving, you try to remain as still and silent as possible. No need to upset him anymore by moving too much or being too loud.

You flip a page in the book you’re no longer reading (he might notice you’re not paying attention to it anymore) and decide to test the waters again.

“The author just spelled restaurant wrong. That’s the third spelling mistake I’ve caught in this book.”

“Hmm.”

Okay. So that was worse. Talking to him is out of the question, then. It must be something you did, to warrant this kind of reaction.

You wrack your brain, trying to think of anything you could’ve done in recent hours to make him upset, but you can’t think of anything.

You glance slightly to the right— not far enough that he’ll see you looking at him, but far enough to get a better look at him in your peripheral. He’s glaring down at his campaign notebook. Shit, he looks so angry.

Unbidden, tears begin to well in your eyes and you try to shift, trying to angle yourself away from him enough that he can’t see the tears in your eyes.

But your hand shifts, knocking into his leg.

Fuck. “Sorry!”

You yank you arm back as if burned, jolting back on the couch so you’re in no danger of touching him. “I’m sorry!”

He sits up, immediately snapping to attention at the desperation coloring your voice. “Woah woah, hey. Hey, what’s going on? Are you okay?”

You take a steadying breath. “Did I do something wrong?”

He blinks blankly at you. Oh shit, you’re supposed to know that you’ve done something wrong.

“I mean,” You hurry to correct, “I know I— Can you tell me what I did wrong so I can fix it?”

Understanding floods his features and you brace yourself, ready for the reprimand.

“Can I touch you?”

Now it’s your turn to stare with confusion. You nod once, briefly thinking about how weird it is to ask for permission first.

He sits up on the couch, facing you with his legs crossed, the couch springs squeaking loudly at his movement. You resist the urge to wince. He reaches out with a slow hand, taking the hand that’s still clenched, held away from him and up near your chest.

He stares down at your hand, holding it with his left hand and tracing delicate shapes on it with his right. His ringed fingers drag lines around your knuckles and veins, lingering occasionally over the odd, old scar.

“How long did you think I was upset with you?”

Your heart is racing, muscles tensed and ready to bolt. “Um. A few hours? Maybe?”

You’re hyper-aware of the grip he has on your hand, and how quickly and easy it could become crushing.

It doesn’t.

“Bug,” He says slowly after a moment. At first he used to use pet names as a joke— it was something you’d laugh at, between the two of you, since the relationship wasn’t real.

But recently, he’s been saying them with a different inflection in his tone. A little less teasing, a lot more fond.

“Have you spent the past few hours afraid that I was mad at you?”

He sounds… sad. Which is confusing. It doesn’t— he was. He was.

“But you were,” You say, suddenly unsure about anything and everything. “You were upset.”

“I was upset because I couldn’t work this part of the campaign out, and i’m dramatic. I was never mad at you, honey. I was never mad at you.”

You frown, gears turning in your head. “When I made that joke about your hair, you glared at me. And then when I tried to talk to you, you were upset. You didn’t want to talk.”

“I was jokingly glaring at you, I’m so sorry you thought I was serious. I wasn’t, I promise. I didn’t mean to be dismissive, I was really focusing on writing.”

You’re both silent for a moment. A beat too long. You want to squirm in the unwelcome space the silence has created.

“What did you think I was going to do?”

That is a loaded question.

“I don’t know,” You pick at a loose thread on the couch cushion. “I don’t— I don’t know. That’s the problem. You don’t yell at me, or get angry, or tell me when i’ve made you upset. I don’t know what you’ll do.”

He makes a wounded noise in his throat.

“I know you get angry,” You bulldoze on, “I’ve seen it. You’re so… loud, in everything you do. I know you get angry. But you never get that same kind of loud angry at me and I don’t know what to do because that means that I upset you and you don’t tell me about it and then I don’t know how to fix it. I have to fix it, Eddie.”

His eyes, deep and brown, search your face. He reaches up a hand, painfully slow, to cup your face. Your eyelids flutter shut, and you tip your head to the side, leaning into the job.

“I’m gonna tell you something, Bug. Are you listening?” He waits for you to hum in confirmation before continuing. “You’re not responsible for my moods. Or anyone else’s for that matter. That’s not your job. You don’t have to fix it.”

He reaches his second hand up to cup the other side of your face. “You know why I don’t get angry at you? Not all loud and dramatic like that? Because I’ve seen how you react when people do. And I never, ever want to be the reason you get that look in your eye. I never want to make you afraid. I never want you to believe, with proof and confidence, that I’ve grown sick of you.”

You open your eyes, eyes darting across the planes of his face. Searching for even the smallest hint, the smallest giveaway that he might be lying.

You can’t find any. In its place, you find eyes, shining with pure determination. You find lips parted ever so slightly, a sad-sort of smile being etched into being. You find two hands on your face, thumbs delicately sweeping across the skin of your under-eye, of your cheekbone. Smoothing away the steady tears that had begun falling, wiping away the hot trails they leave on your face.

And you realize all at once that love isn’t like the movies. It isn’t picture-perfect kisses. It isn’t ball gowns and dresses and kisses in the rain. It isn’t like the love you thought you were supposed to have: empty and hollow; a life of hanging off of arms and praying your next slip-up didn’t cost you your relationship.

It was this.

It was just being. Just being and knowing the other person is there for just that— for you. It was not raising your voice. It was carrying extra hair-ties. It was making two cups of coffee. It was steeping tea for an extra couple of minutes, just the way he liked it. It was playing your favorite music in the car, and looking over at each other during the bridge, belting the lyrics with the same, toothy-smile. So full and so happy you just keep screaming the lyrics, because you’re filled with so much you don’t know where to put it all.

Your tears begin to fall in earnest now. Your heart is thudding in your chest, but for a different reason now. You’re struck with the need to convey all of this to him— to tell him you understand, you know, you feel the same.

“These hair ties,” You shove your wrist up to his eye-line. “They’re for you. Because you always forget your own. And— and I steep the tea for a few extra minutes, because you like your tea strong, and you didn’t just find that tape in your van, I bought it ‘cause I know you lost the old one in the Upside Down, ‘cause it felt out of your pocket.”

You’re babbling, nearly choking on your tears and your words, rushing them all out of your mouth in an aching wish to be understood, in this very moment.

“I know,” He says, voice a little hysteric and eyes a little too bright. His lip wobbles. He presses your face tighter in his hands. “I know. I know. I see you. I see you.”

You stay like that for a little while. At some point, your hands find his wrists, and then you’re just two fools, smiling like idiots with tears streaming down your faces, staring into each others eyes.

Eventually, Eddie clears his throat. “The next time you think I’m upset at you, you tell me, okay? You can ask. You can ask me and I pinky promise I won’t get mad.”

You giggle wetly. “Pinky swear?”

“Pinky swear,” He says, taking his left hand away from your face to hold up his pinky. You intertwine yours and his together, the both of you laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.

He gets quiet for a moment; removes his hands from your face and instead clasps, your hands together, resting in your lap.

“You know why I never tell you when you’re being a bad practice girlfriend?” He says, his voice low and soft.

“How come?”

He smiles, full and good. “Because you’re not. You’re so sweet and kind and loving. And if you’d let me, I’d really like to kiss you right now.”

You furrow your brows. “The real kind? The I-love-you kind?”

Your face flushes over the words ‘I love you.’

“I’ve always kissed you for real,” He says, words laden with fondness. “Ever since the day we met and you slapped the shit out of me for being stupid. I’ve been hopelessly obsessed ever since. I’ve just been waiting for you to notice.”

You suck in a breath. “So all of this— the, the dates and the hanging out and the kissing— that’s all been real?”

“Every last bit.”

“Then in that case,” You say, squeezing his hands. “I would very much like you to kiss me.”

He leans in, slotting your lips together and everything just clicks. Like this is where you’re meant to be. Maybe it’s puppy love. Maybe it’s not.

All you know is that Eddie Munson is kissing you for real, and he always has been. You couldn’t ask for anything better.

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

#girlblogging #eddie munson #soft eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #angst #angst with a happy ending #x reader #hurt/comfort #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fanfiction #stranger things #stranger things fic #stranger things fanfiction #eddie x reader #that’s such an ambiguous tag #which eddie??? eddie DIAZ???#maybe i should start writing for him actually

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legitalicat · 9 months ago

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Forged From Death - Sihtric Kjartansson x Widow!Reader

An: Thank you so much @foxyanon for the request and officially turning me into a Sihtric girl. I hope this is everything you wanted. And @zaldritzosrose thank you for creating the header you are amazing!

Masterlist here!

Separate from the normal CW section for a special attention. This is going to be dark as reader thinks cruelty of her husband, Sigefrid, and her father towards those around them. No explicit examples of violence or abuse. I really was just trying to capture emotions without talking of direct acts.

CW: Language, political marriage really, Sigefrid is not a good man, neither was reader's father, warlord husband and father, scared child, character death, P IN V sex, fingering, dirty talk, gets quite dirty lots of smut, breeding kink, vague talks of pregnancy kink, she/her pronouns, use of you, reader not really described or named, FLUFFY, Stepdad!Sihtric, found family trope, soulmates trope kinda, love and lust and first sight

Pairing: Sihtric Kjartansson x reader

Word Count: 6.2k

You knew what you were. A bargaining chip, a prize. Something akin to a crown, symbolizing power. With your own father being a man who bargained in fear rather than respect, you weren’t surprised when your husband was the same.

Sigefrid Thurglison, rather quickly upon marrying you, decided his family’s wealth and power would be found in England. So, you sailed along with him and his brother to find this for yourselves. You, the dutiful wife, who knows your fate would be worse had you denied your father’s arrangement. You, who disappointed your father from birth by just being a daughter, who he could only use as a piece in his games but never actually respect. You, who married a man just like him.

You remained silent throughout. You played your part well, perhaps too well. Your name was used as a way to remind men of the force your husband could bring upon England. Even if they weren’t directly familiar with your father, they remembered the tales their fathers spoke to them, and they bowed at Sigefrid and Erik’s feet.

Until they met a man by the name of Uhtred. You couldn’t tell if he wanted to die or if he was just too stupid to realize that death was a very real possibility. But he was quick to anger your husband and his brother through way of opposition. And, apparently, Uhtred did not heed warnings well. He was unconcerned with the possibility of your father showing up.

“If he wanted England, he would be here,” said a voice from behind Uhtred upon your first meeting. You looked for the source. When you saw the man, you were certain your heart stopped for a moment.

You had seen beauty before. Land, sky, men, women, all of which held a certain captivating air about them. And yet there had been nothing as beautiful as the man who stood before you. You heard Uhtred refer to him as Sihtric, and your eyes made their way over his form. From his brown hair, to his striking yet mismatched eyes, over the angles of his face, and the swell of his muscles that already could be seen straining against the silver bands he wore, there was no part of him you felt was not hand crafted by Freyja herself to be the perfect embodiment of everything she represented.

And Sihtric noticed you. By the gods, did he notice you. You were pretty, prettier than any woman he had ever seen. He couldn’t tell what started swelling faster when he saw you looking back at him and smile: his cock or his heart.

That was the day he swore he would have you.

When he saw you again, it had been over three years. He hadn’t gone a day without thinking of you if he were honest. He was waiting so he could have his chance with you. Those few moments of seeing you was what carried him through the years. You were the face he saw with every victory and every stroke of his cock.

He only wishes it were under better circumstances.

You still resided in the fortress after Sigefrid laid dead on the ground. You knew the only way any of this would end would be if Sigefrid died. And you knew, as you listened to the herd of feet approach the room you were hidden in, that he had.

Sihtric was the first in the room. He knew that Sigefrid would never leave you far behind. It was unfortunate such a man had the honor of being your first husband. Sihtric, though, was perfectly fine being your last.

A feeling that did not waver when he saw you holding a small child close to your body. There was a fear in both of you, but you had the rage of a mother in your eyes. He could see it, and he wanted you more for it.

“He is dead?” you asked Sihtric as others, Uhtred and another you vaguely recognized, came into the room.

Despite having only seen him once, you knew Sihtric could be trusted. You couldn’t explain why. Maybe it was lust clouding your judgement. Perhaps it was a sign. Or maybe you were being stupid and crazy and you would only end up right back where you have been your whole life.

But, his eyes made you feel like that would never be the case again.

“Aye,” he said to you. “How old?” He nodded towards your child, your daughter, who looked at him in fear. He held up his arm, wordlessly keeping Uhtred and the other man from coming any closer.

“Four. She was born here, before we were sent away,” you told him truthfully.

“Her name?” he asked you. He continuously looked between your faces, barely capable of holding himself in place and not taking you in his arms.

“Astra.”

He said nothing else to you for the moment, instead crouching down to be on the same level as your daughter. She clung to you tightly.

“Hello, Astra. Are you hurt?” he said quietly to her. In silence, she shook her head. “Is your mother?”

“Mama is safe, I am safe,” she whispered.

It caused your heart to ache when you heard her repeat the words you told her when everything got quiet. Had you never left England, you would’ve been able to leave Sigefrid. You knew you would have had somewhere to take Astra to keep her safe from him. But when your husband was banished, he swore he would return with your father, and you knew better than to wait around for that. Your only saving grace now was that your father had died before you got back to Norway.

“Would you like to leave here? You and your ma can come with me, if you would like.”

Astra looked up at you, tears in her eyes as they had been all day. You knew that while Sigefrid had never touched either of you, he had given you both more than enough reason to be fearful. And you wanted so badly to make sure she never had to live with this fear again.

Your daughter looked to him and nodded silently. He extended his arms towards her slowly.

“Come then, little one. I will get you out of here,” he said softly. Astra, who had never trusted anyone but you, walked directly into his arms.

The sight of his arms wrapping themselves around her small body caused your heart to ache. It was something you had never thought to wish for, your daughter being in the arms of someone but you. Now you could only pray that this was her new normal.

“I’ve got you little one,” he whispered and stood up, holding her close. “I want you to close your eyes tight and put your forehead against my cheek until I tell you. Can you do that for me?”

She nodded. You watched as she squeezed her eyes shut, her whole face squinting up. Her forehead rested perfectly against his cheek, her brown hair matching his in a shocking way. It almost felt as she was made of him.

“You are as pretty as your ma, brave just like her too,” he told her. You were surprised when you heard her giggle. He looked to you. “Take my arm, Lady. “

You did as he said, stepping closer to him and holding tightly to his arm. He made sure you were not questioned or stopped as he led you out of the fortress. He already had stepped in as your protector and you barely knew him.

When you were outside the walls and far from the carnage, Sihtric finally stopped. You watched as he sat Astra down to stand on her own. He told her it was safe to open her eyes, and she looked relieved when she opened them and saw you.

“Lord,” Sihtric said as he saw Uhtred approach. He instinctually moved to stand between you both.

“Are more men following him?” Uhtred asked you, looking at you over Sihtric’s shoulder. His hand remained on his axe, though he did not unsheathe it.

“He was the last of them,” you told him. And that was the truth. Any men that hadn’t abandoned him before this battle laid dead.

“Do you have anywhere to go?” he asked.

You knew the truth of what he was asking. You were a widow now. Your husband’s family were meant to take care of you now, and your daughter. But Sigefrid was the last of his family, having killed his own brother during his last rampage. Their father had long since been dead and had no living brothers.

“No, Lord,” you told him. “He had no surviving family. And my own father died two winters ago. I was the only child.”

He looked past you to Astra. You could see in his eyes he did not trust you. And you did not trust him. You could not find it in you to trust anyone but Sihtric. But good men, which you ultimately believed Uhtred to be, did not harm little girls.

“You may come with me and my men, then. Until you find other…arrangements,” he said gruffly.

It was three and a half months when you began to worry about your future. You thought of Astra and worried endlessly for her. Her father’s reputation would stain her future forever, you feared. You had no way to provide for her truly. Should your fears be proven true, you wouldn’t even be able to arrange a proper marriage for her when the time would come.

But, you thought perhaps you were worrying too much for Astra. You stood in Uhtred’s hall, watching as Sihtric, Osferth, Finan, and Uhtred spoke, Astra settled peacefully on Sihtric’s lap. She was loved so deeply by Sihtric, and by extension the men he fought beside, one could be forgiven for thinking he was her father. Interestingly enough, she looked more like Sihtric than she ever did Sigefrid.

Uhtred looked to you and nodded, having noticed your presence for the first time. You two had a somewhat uneasy trust in each other now. Well, trust that if either of you betrayed Sihtric, or the others, the other would respond with a blade. And that seemed to make you friends.

Sihtric noticed you, immediately lighting up when he looked at you. He beckoned you to him, to Astra, the both of them holding your whole heart.

You were insane, you knew it. But from the moment you saw him those years ago, you loved him. He was obvious. You would burn down all of England for him if he were to ask.

He had never done anything but protected you and Astra from the very first moment. The day Sigefrid died, it could’ve been so much worse for her. But Sihtric was the one to make sure that no bad ever touched her since he met her.

It was one of many ways that everyone knew you two would find your way to each other. Sihtric would give everything for and to you. As far as he was concerned, the universe began and ended in you and at your feet he would worship. And there had never been a moment in which you doubted his devotion to you or Astra.

“Go say hello to your ma, little one,” Sihtric said softly to Astra.

“Okay, papa,” she giggled as she crawled off his lap while you knelt down.

It was not the first time she had referred to him as such, but it touched your soul every time you heard it. Sihtric looked to you immediately to make sure you did not think to correct her. He was not deluding himself into thinking his presence in Astra’s life could erase all the bad. But he knew, without a doubt, that she was his. From the moment he first held her in his arms, she was his girl and there was no argument he would listen to.

Your darling girl ran into your waiting arms. She was giggling, as she had done since your arrival in Coccham. She was happier than she had ever been. She felt more peaceful.

“Mama, mama, papa is making me an axe,” she told you excitedly.

“Oh is he?” you asked, raising an eyebrow as you looked up to Sihtric. He blushed brightly, especially when Uhtred and Finan began to tease him for being in trouble.

“M-my love, I only,” he said, beginning to attempt an explanation.

“She will need an axe if she is going to be on my shield wall one day,” Uhtred told you, grinning from ear to ear. He stood from his seat, drumming a bit on the table, before he jogged over to you and Astra. “And if there is one thing my Little Star will be it is an excellent warrior.”

You watched as Uhtred picked her up and put her on his shoulders. She squealed and giggled until she was settled on her perch.

“If you are teaching her, then I consider myself lucky to have such a warrior in my home,” you said, standing, while grinning ear to ear. “Perhaps she will be knowledgeable enough to teach our next child.” You looked directly at Sihtric as you said ‘our’.

“Our next ten,” he said back to you. He was still blushing a bit, but he enjoyed these moments.

“And you shall birth them all? If it is up to me, you get five,” you said to him.

“You would give me five more children?” he asked excitedly. You could practically see him buzzing.

“Should you decide to take me as your wife,” you said nonchalantly, shrugging to him as you walked over to the table he sat at.

Once you were in his reach, his arm wrapped around you, hand resting on your hip. There was no hesitation from either of you as Sihtric pulled you onto his lap and you wrapped your arms around him.

At first, you had withheld from such public affection. You were only a few months a widow, you felt as though there was some need to respect your loss. But, when your husband had been so cruel to everyone around him and Sihtric was such a soft presence, you lasted perhaps a week before you made your affections clear.

“You honor me, my love,” he said softly. “To think you have already blessed me with one, and are willing to bless me with more. One would be a fool to deny the chance to be your husband.”

You kissed his cheek. It was truly simple with him. There was no darkness. Only love and warmth flowed between you both.

“You will make sure she is careful?” you asked him, bringing the conversation back to the idea of Astra getting an axe.

“Of course, my love,” he confirmed to you. “You know nothing means more to me than the safety of my girls.”

It was less than a month later that you were married. Sihtric made sure it was everything you dreamt of it, everything you were not afforded the first time around. He was watching as you danced with Astra. He loved both of you more than anyone had loved two people.

“Congratulations,” Uhtred said as he sat next to Sihtric. “You will make a fine husband.”

“Thank you, Lord,” he said, smiling. His eyes went between you and Uhtred rapidly, wanting to make sure you never disappeared.

“I see our Little Star got a hold of your hair,” Uhtred smirked as he grabbed a drink. Sihtric’s hand moved to his head, where there was a tiny braid in his hair.

“There is no finer braider in all of England,” he said. “Finan has offered to keep her tonight.”

“Did he tell you Osferth and I were asked to come too?” Uhtred chuckled.

“He did, Lord,” Sihtric laughed, taking a drink of his ale. He sat the cup down, looking to his Lord, his friend. “I want her to be mine.”

“She already is,” Uhtred said. “Nobody will deny that.”

“No, I mean....I want Astra to be just as the children of my blood. I want her to inherit, I want to be responsible for her. Entirely. And should she and my wife allow, I want to give her my name,” Sihtric said.

Uhtred could see a determination on his friend’s face that he had not quite seen before. It shone through in a burning heat. He lived for the family he had with you now. No oath superseded his oath to the two of you, and none ever would.

“Should they wish it, it is done. I will make it known Astra is to be no different than any child of your blood,” he promised his friend. “Now, go dance with your wife. Take her to bed. We will keep our Little Star.”

With a clap on the shoulder, Sihtric stood from the table and began to work his way through crowd to you. You were twirling Astra around, making her laugh and laugh. He could not imagine a more perfect life for himself.

Sihtric chuckled when Astra noticed him and ran into his legs. He knew she was his. She was meant to be his daughter. He could not be bothered by something as trivial as blood. He, of all people, knew family was not limited to blood. Family was created by love, and he loved her enough to create a universe.

Then there was you, his dear wife. He thought you looked stunning in your dress, the deep red color feeling like the physical representation of his love for you. You were more than he could have ever dreamed of. All of his life, he wanted to be what his father wasn’t. A good, honorable man who stayed for his family and loved his wife. A man worthy of love and respect.

And he realized that’s exactly how you saw him.

“Hello, my love,” you said to him when you saw him.

“Are you talking to me?” he asked teasingly, picking Astra up when she stopped dancing.

“Yes, my love. Though, perhaps you would much prefer my husband,” you said, smirking.

“Aye. After all, I will never call you anything but my wife again,” he said and rubbed his nose against Astra’s cheek.

“Hehe papa,” she said as she hugged him tightly. “I love you.”

Sihtric could feel his heart skip a beat. She had called him papa for months at this point, that was no surprise. But, Astra had not told him she loved him. And there was something so precious about hearing it.

“I love you, little one,” he said softly, pressing his lips against her forehead.

You smiled at the two of them. You wanted to hold this moment in your mind for the rest of your life. Capture it, freeze it for all of eternity, something you could hold onto and remember love.

“Now little one, Uncle Finan is excited to start your time together. Your ma and I will see you in the morning,” he told her as he sat her down.

“UNCLE FINAN I AM COMING!” Astra shouted as she ran off through the crowd.

Every person parted to let her through, allowing your eyes to follow her path to Finan. She was loved by most any in town. Her personality was loud and bright enough so that everyone knew her. Of course, it helped that she was always right by your side, and you were always close to Sihtric.

And you knew, at least within the confines of the town walls, she was safe to move about. Most everyone would agree that harming a child is egregious. Everyone agreed that harming your child was the fastest way to ensure a brutal death by the hands of Sihtric, and a quick one by Uhtred and Finan. Even Osferth, sweet Osferth, would pray for his God’s forgiveness as he took the life of anyone who would lay a finger on Astra. She was loved, she was safe. For the first time in her life she did not flinch when she was more than an inch from your skirts.

“Being my wife suits you,” Sihtric told you, drawing your eyes from Finan and Astra to him.

He looked at you with pure adoration. He worshipped you. Made certain that he loved you enough to make the bad parts of your life feel like another lifetime.

“Just as being my husband suits you,” you said to him, wrapping your arms around his neck.

His arms wrapped around your middle, pulling you tightly to him. He breathed you in, feeling overwhelmed by you. Everything about you was intoxicating to him. From your beauty, the way you smelled, the way your body pressed against his own, there was nothing that could dampen his desire of you.

“Then it seems we are in agreement,” he said.

“That it does,” you said softly, leaning forward slightly. Your lips hovered next to his ear. “And I think I would like to feel my husband.”

You felt him shudder with your words, the unmistakable hardness of his erection beginning to dig into you. It had not been difficult to get him excited these last months. Even after both of you had agreed to wait until you were married, you had enjoyed riling him up before he returned to his own home.

“I have dreamt of this night for years,” he muttered to you. “From the moment I first saw you, I knew you were mine. I dreamt of my cock sinking deep into you for hours on end.”

It was your turn now for a shiver down your spine. There was no part of you that could deny dreaming of the same thing for just as long. In the years trying to exist outside of England, the nights where you went to bed amidst yells and cheers during another fight to the death for Sigefrid’s amusement, you dreamt of his mismatched eyes. Of his sharp beauty. Of a life you now got to share with him.

You weren’t sure who broke away first between the two of you, but it wasn’t long before you were walking down the streets to his, no your, home. The home you would grow old together in, gods be good. And the two of you couldn’t keep from stopping every few feet, pulling the other for a deep, passionate kiss.

When you finally arrived at the house, he picked you up and carried you over the threshold. In fact, he did not put you down until he could place you on the bed. You had barely recognized that you were laying on it before he was hovering over you, repeatedly kissing your neck.

“Such a pretty wife,” he muttered with every kiss. You put your head back to expose more of your sensitive skin. “Have been blessed, haven’t I? Blessed by the gods to be given such a pretty wife.”

You placed a hand on the bag of his head and gripped his hair firmly. Despite the pull on his hair, you only brought him closer into you. You could feel him starting to grind himself against your thigh, desperately looking for some relief.

“Fuck, Sihtric,” you moaned out. But when his name left your lips, he nipped at your neck quickly. It took you by surprise, causing a quiet squeak to escape you.

“Be a good, pretty wife and do not use my name tonight,” he whispered in your ear.

“Such a demanding husband I have,” you teased. “So desperate to fuck me he has to rut against me like an animal.”

He groaned into your neck at your words, his right hand beginning to fumble with the fastenings of your dress. You ignored the shaking of your own hands, your need of Sihtric outweighing your nerves. This was meant to be, after all. And you had faith it would be perfect.

“Use your mouth for better things and perhaps I will let you fuck a child into me tonight,” you told him. This time it was not a groan, but a quiet whimper, that left his lips. His fingers struggled with undressing you, the way it was held to your body being more complicated than he had thought.

He pulled back entirely, sitting up on his knees as he began reaching for the knife he carried. He cut the fabric of your dress away from your body. You stared at him, eyes heavy with lust.

“Nothing but a dress, you can replace it,” he told you. You could only nod at him as he helped remove the material away completely. After a moment, the tattered remains of the dress and his knife fell together to the floor, just as quickly forgotten.

He stared at your naked form. He could not help it, truly. Everything about you was perfect for him. He leaned forward and kissed you once more, before his lips started trailing down your body. Along your jawline, down your neck, over your collarbone. He only took pause when he got to your breasts. Sihtric’s left hand began pawing at one while his lips wrapped around your nipple.

You moaned quietly as he sucked while massaging your soft flesh. Your eyes fluttered shut, whimpering every time he decided to graze your nipple with his teeth. You wanted to beg him to give you more, to pleasure your aching cunt.

He groaned to himself before pulling away from your breasts entirely, muttering a promise he would play with them more. You almost started to laugh, only for it to catch in your throat when his fingers found your slick. He smirked down at you.

“You must really enjoy this, wife,” he whispered teasingly. His fingers ran up and down your folds, deliberate in their light touching of your pearl.

“Of course, I have only dreamt of you as my husband a few dozen times now,” you told him. Your thighs trembled a bit as you resisted the urge to buck your hips into his hand.

He hummed quietly as he allowed his finger to sink into you. While you became a whimpering mess, he just slowly thrust his finger in and out. Never had you known such bliss. His finger felt thicker than you had anticipated.

“What is it, pretty wife? Cannot think through your pleasure?” he asked you, looking directly into your eyes.

Your resolve finally broke. With a moan, you allowed your hips to move to meet his hand. All you could think of was chasing your pleasure with him.

“You say I am demanding, but you are so needy,” he cooed. He pushed another finger into you, curling his fingers slightly with every thrust of them. His touch was perfectly focused on the spongy spot inside you.

“Love, my love, please, fuck, please,” you moaned. You couldn’t finish a single thought as you felt a band tightening behind your navel.

You had only experienced such a feeling with yourself. Pleasure had never been at the forefront of your life. Until now, at least, since Sihtric seemed determined to make you reach that point. He increased the speed of his fingers movements.

“Cum for me,” he practically demanded of you. His voice was quiet, meant only for your ears, but forceful in nature. “And then I’ll give you my cock. Such a good girl, you deserve it. Don’t you, my love?”

“Y-yes,” you whispered. You gripped the furs under you tightly, the edges of your vision going fuzzy.

“Deserve my cock, deserve my love. You have both, entirely, you understand?” he asked you, his thumb barely ghosting against your pearl.

“Yes, fuck, my love, my husband,” you whined pathetically. It seemed to please him, at least enough.

His thumb finally rested against the bundle of nerves, rubbing circles in time with every thrust of his fingers. The band finally snapped as you cried out, back arching off the bed. A jumbled mess of his name, husband, love, and expletives left your tongue.

You were able to watch as Sihtric removed his touch from you entirely. He brought his fingers to his lips before he sucked them clean, earning another whimper from you. And then you got to watch him undress, his shirt and pants being flung away in a matter of moments.

You weren’t entirely sure which of the gods had blessed you, but you thanked everyone of them when Sihtric stood naked before you. His toned chest and stomach was near flawless, save for a few scars earned in battle. The Thor’s hammer pendant rested against his taut chest. Your gaze washed over the grooves of his form, able to count each muscle, until they finally landed on his cock.

He was blessed even then. His heavy cock bobbed with need. When his eyes caught yours, he smirked at your hungry gaze. He was long and thick enough to make you question just how exactly you were meant to take him in entirely.

Sihtric couldn’t hide his smirk when he grabbed you by the hips and pulled your body closer to his. He groaned softly as his cock now rested against you, already collecting your slick.

“I love you,” he said to you, his voice softer than the cocky look etched on his face would have you expect.

You tried to stutter out some response before he started rubbing himself against you. Anytime the head brushed against your pearl, the feeling stole your words and sent shockwaves through your body. There was a pride he felt at already having you responding like this before having even fucked you.

“I love…fuck, fuck me, fuck I love you,” you finally managed to get out.

“Good girl, using your words,” he cooed. He moved his cock to start pressing against your entrance. “Are you going to keep being a good girl, love?”

“Yes,” you said weakly and nodded

He smiled at you. He grabbed your leg gently, hooking it on his arm, as he leaned down to bring his face closer to you. Your knee pressed against your chest while he kissed you. You melted into his kiss, your hands releasing the furs you laid up on to hold his face gently.

Your kiss only ended on account of the way he couldn’t hold back his whines and whimpers when he pushed into you. He couldn’t help the way your name left him when you took half of him without issue.

He pulled himself away to look down at your face. After a moment, he looked between your bodies and groaned when he saw you impaled on his cock.

“Fuck, such a pretty wife I have,” he muttered. “You ready for more, my love?” he asked when he reconnected your gaze.

“Yes,” you told him, nodding eagerly.

He groaned as he moved his hips forward. It was pure bliss for both of you. His cock throbbed with every thrust, your walls clenching tightly around him. Every nerve ending in both of you felt like it was on fire as your connection only grew. Sihtric watched you every second, trying to make sure it was as mind blowing for you as it was for him.

His speed increased desperately. He needed more, you needed more. Your hands roamed his body, your moans filling his ears like a beautiful song. The head of his cock kept moving against the spongy spot inside, making your thighs tremble once again.

You watched him as he thrust into you. His pendant and your breasts moved in time with his thrusts, captivating him. You could see him teetering the line of control and instinct. He wanted this to be sweet for you, to be perfect, everything you deserved. He has heard enough stories of your life to know you deserved more than to once again be used for someone else’s pleasure.

“Such a good husband already,” you told him, gripping his biceps. His gaze softened when you spoke, his hips stuttering a bit. “We have all our lives for you to make me scream your name in pleasure, do we not? “

He nodded wordlessly. His cock never once stilled in you as he watched you. He kept grunting under his breath, every noise ending in what sounded like a whine.

“Then I say tonight, I want you to finish inside of me until there is no doubt that come morning I am carrying your child,” you commanded.

His mouth hung open, his hips slowing a bit as he stared down at you. You could see him searching for any uncertainty on your face. Yet, he could search for his entire life and never find in you any doubt of him.

You couldn’t help yourself. You leaned up and took his pendant of Thor’s hammer in between your teeth before looking directly into his eyes. His thrusts picked up in speed, going harder and deeper than before.

He closed the gap between you, his lips coming next to your ear as he finally released your leg. On one side all you could hear a symphony of skin slapping against skin as he fucked you at an almost bruising intensity. In the other, he began to whimper and whine for you.

“Pretty wife, amazing mother,” he whispered in your ear, punctuating each word with a thrust of his hips. He was throbbing inside you and you could feel just how close he was. The way he twitched and pushed against you, his weight pressing into your chest, the band started to tighten again.

“Already a desperate man for you,” he grunted. You were incapable of getting any sound to leave your mouth. All you could do was focus on his word, his sounds, his movements. He was all you knew to be true in this moment.

“Can’t wait to see you pregnant. Probably prettier, round with child and tits swollen with milk. Fuck,” he said to you as his hips started stuttering more frequently.

Your orgasm overcame you finally, causing you to cry out his name. You were barely aware of his whisperings still in your ear.

“That’s a good girl, fuck, yes, my pretty wife,” he practically growled in your ear. Finally, his thrusts stopped, his cock buried inside you as he released ropes of hot cum into you. Sihtric let out a sound with every throb.

You were trembling when he pulled himself from you, breathing heavily. Carefully, he maneuvered the furs out from under your body before carefully covering you both. You moved closer to him and laid your head on his chest. His arm wrapped around you, holding you as though he was terrified of you walking out the door.

You laid there in silence for several moments, basking in the way you felt. With being given from your father to Sigefrid, you had never known much of love or safety. You had never really known kindness. You had feared for so long that the violence and chaos both of them had brought into their lives and halls would haunt you forever.

Yet, laying here in Sihtric’s arms, you almost couldn’t remember how they made you feel. He made you feel so powerful, so loved, so worshipped beyond belief that you would now go days without thinking of the horrors of your past. Even Astra seemed to feel nothing but safety and love.

You turned your face to look at him. He was looking happily down at you, a cheesy, lazy little grin splashed on his face. You were certain nothing could get better than this.

“I love you,” you said softly. “Especially your eyes.”

He rolled them, yet the smile never faded. “Which is your favorite?” he asked.

“Oh no, that is like trying to choose a favorite mountain, or snowflake. Each so unique, so special, one would be an ignorant fool to pick a favorite,” you told him, smiling up at him. “Luckily, I do not have to. I get to enjoy them until I die.”

“Oh? And if I die before you?” he teased, kissing your forehead.

“You are not allowed. I cannot let you walk into Valhalla without me there to greet you, even if that means I will need to pick up an axe again,” you said simply. It was your truth. “I have spent my entire life waiting for the love you give me. You are not allowed to ever make me live without it again, husband.”

Sihtric tried to hide it, but you could see him wiggle just a bit, his smile spread further, when you addressed him as husband. In the moments past, he was too distracted by lust. But now it was sinking in, for both of you, and you felt just as joyful as him.

“Of course, wife. I would not dare leave you to raise our ten children alone,” he said, smirking as you laughed.

“I believe I said five more,” you told him, raising an eyebrow.

“I believe Freyja will bless us with a small army, as much as I plan to bury my cock in you,” he told you, kissing your forehead. “Speaking of.”

Sihtric smirked before kissing you again, pulling you on top of him. You felt your laugh rumble in your chest as you couldn’t help but kiss him back.

You were finally no longer a bargaining chip.

Taglist: @sihtricfedaraaahvicius @gemini-mama @alexagirlie

#the last kingdom #sihtric x you #sihtric kjartansson #dividers by benkeibear #sihtric x you smut

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antispopausandstuff · 4 months ago

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idk if i would label c//a a proship but it’s definitely interesting that stans conveniently ignore all the sibling coding in this ship unless they want to talk about catra’s trauma and her jealousy towards adora. also “ridiculous abuse allegations” lmao sure whatever helps you sleep at night ☠️

i label it as proship because siblings, blood or not, are still siblings, especially since Shadow Weaver 'raised' them both and continued to negatively affect their lives to adulthood. after learning what 'siscon' is, i can definitely say Catra fits into that description, which makes the relationship proship material. at least, in my eyes.

that aside for a second, was the original reposter even referring to c//a or did this stan feel like it was specifically about c//a? if it's the first one, okay, makes sense, but if the stan didn't even see any evidence of c//a being mentioned or that this person was an anti, then that speaks for itself.

going back to the main conversation, though:

"wdym two people knowing each other for most of their lives is problematic now if it ends up not being platonic anymore"

these people don't know the difference between being raised in the same area and being raised in the same household.

if Catra and Adora were raised in the Horde, but by two different people, than that's a whole different story than the one we got. that isn't what happened, though. Shadow Weaver abused them both as their maternal figure and royally fucked them over.

so, this person is twisting it and making it too generalized and vague. it's not a case of them just "knowing each other", they're related.

this is the exact situation with Barry Allen and Iris West in The Flash ( 2014 ) by CW, where Joe West ( Iris' dad ) raised Barry after the death of his mother and his father being falsely accused of murdering her, but Barry and Iris still ended up together, married, and having a child together.

and, by the way, the show directly says that Joe is his adoptive father. more than once. like, in plain text. without batting an eye.

c//a is like that, but Joe wasn't an abusive father and the show was somehow a whole lot more upfront about it and not giving a single goddamn fuck. younger me should not have watched that show.

yeah, this person is just keeping out important context and just replacing it with "knowing each other".

not gonna touch the abuse allegations comment, you already know.

#spop #she ra #spop critical #spop salt #spop criticism #spop discourse #spop adora #she ra adora #adora #adora deserves better #adora deserved better #spop catra #she ra catra #catra #anti catra #anticatra #anti catradora #anticatradora

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orbitposting · 3 months ago

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CW: vague references to abuse

I haven't heard anyone talk about this aspect of complex trauma recovery, but I've learned that doing "bad" things is an important part of my recovery.

Growing up as a sort of "golden child", I was never given the opportunity to make mistakes and figure things out. If I did anything "bad", even by accident, I was punished. Due to this, I live with the constant fear that someone will catch me doing something "bad", and I will be punished for it. Specifically, I struggle with making friends due to the fear that they will find out I have done something "bad", and berate me.

Doing anything remotely "bad" still motivates a trauma response, but I've learned that over time, I can forget that it even happened, and never face any sort of "consequence".

Note for non-survivors: What constitutes "bad" in abusive households will likely shock you. I am not saying commit crimes to recover.

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tanimuradefender · 3 months ago

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I'm coming out of my Yakuza burnout to say that yeah, based on Majima's popularity a Majima game was bound to happen at some point. He has been on the top of the popularity polls multiple times and the reason why he was such a major player in Yakuza 0. But I'm somewhat hesitant about the fans who haven't played through Yakuza 5 and don't know what information is revealed about Majima. But I guess it's my time to actually talk about my thoughts regarding Majima and how he's involved with the plots in game and Park aspect.

Spoilers below for Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 5 mostly but references from Yakuza 1-4, vague and not in detail.

these content warnings are ALSO spoilers so CW: abortion, underage marriage, domestic abuse and character death

Yakuza 0 was of course my first introduction to Majima and the series as a whole. I don't really need to explain how fantastic his story in that game is, and how he stole the spotlight from Kiryu in numerous ways. However, something that bugs me is that there is absolutely no reference to Park or being in a previous relationship when it would've been fairly recent. Majima only remarks on how he would enjoy someone calling him "daddy" during a substory (in a non sexual context, it was from a child). it always felt somewhat odd to me that there wasn't a single reference to it. In hindsight we can assume he didn't pursue Makimura because of how poorly his previous relationship was but that somewhat ignores what actually happens to them in the game. it would be a grave simplifying of Majima's character arc.

From Yakuza 1 to Yakuza 2 (ignoring the Majima saga and Majima everywhere), Majima is lightly used throughout the story of these games and is mostly used to play off Kiryu which does make the scenes he's involved in enjoyable, but I don't understand how small his involvement is got him so unbelievably popular. His appearance is even more hollow in Yakuza 3.

I also personally don't believe that the transition into his Mad Dog person made all that much sense in Yakuza 0 but that's something else I could go on a tangent about. regardless we got plenty of references to Saejima throughout Yakuza 0 and it shows how important his brother was, what about the woman he was previously married to?

edit: someone let me know I got the timeline wrong, so it would actually make sense there's no reference to Park here. adding it here so the main post is intact but this criticism is inaccurate. that is my fault.

In Yakuza 4 we actually see the writing that makes me enjoy Majima. In Kiryu's absence he drops his Mad Dog persona and acts aimless and doesn't seem to really seem to enjoy what he's doing. his dynamic with Saejima is also revealed in this game and it's probably my favorite part of Majima - it just has to involve a character I prefer significantly more. something something rubber bullets. but overall his appearance is to help Saejima's scenes and his character arc.

So, finally Yakuza 5. the main plot drive here is Majima's believed death. but there's also something I've left out about Park and Majima's relationship. revealed by Park in Haruka's part, she explains how she was an idol married to a man who beat her after she had an abortion. so, about this:

Majima, at his youngest, would've been around in his 20s when he married Park, who would've been under the age of 18.

Majima beat an underage woman who he impregnated after she received an abortion to keep being an idol.

if your instant response to this is "Park could've been lying" or somehow blaming Park, she didn't have a reason to lie to Haruka. there is no single benefit to lying to Haruka, the whole scene where she tells her is framed as an quiet moment between a mother figure and her daughter. also she was in a relationship with an adult man that should be able to control his anger enough not to physically assault his wife.

ultimately, both Park and Majima did not do the best thing they could have in this situation. however, it reveals two character traits for Park and Majima: that Park is willing to sacrifice anything for her own career or the career of others, and that Majima has the potential to be physically abusive.

btw Park dies after she reveals this information.

Yakuza 0 was released after Yakuza 5. So even with this detail revealed amongst the public, Majima still maintained being a popular character.

I'm not here to say that we should completely ignore this information involving Majima or that it should suddenly make you hate a character you love. canonically this event happened multiple decades ago, but something that makes me nervous is that idea that this information will be erased or retconned or changed if we get a Kiwami 5. RGG knows of Majima's popularity, why else is he getting his own stand alone video game? this information was already omitted from Yakuza 0 and is only within Yakuza 5, it would be as simple as removing that line from Park or even changing Majima into a whole other character.

I'm not "Anti-Majima" or a Majima hater or hate Majima fans, I just want people to be aware of this and the possibility of it being retconned or edited.

At the end of the day, I do care about this series but this is just really connected to a greater issue I have with the series in that it's the really strange and creepy age gaps between characters. This is just one of many.

regardless, play Yakuza 4.

#yakuza #ryu ga gotoku #yakuza 5 #yakuza 5 spoilers #yakuza spoilers #majima goro

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devouringbodies · 5 months ago

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Hi there! Love your blog, love your tag system, and was wondering if you could share a bit about #mylimacore and your version of Mischa? I'm so intrigued! (Sorry, of course, if this has already been asked and I simply missed the post. Oops) 🦌

I was so excited to get an ask like this you have no idea. Please if anyone has questions about my tags or actually bothers to look through them ever please tell me cause I could talk about them all day haha. So thank you! I'm sorry in advance for the incoming essay 😂.

cw: cannibalism(obvs), familial abuse and incest

So the vague concept of my AU Mischa has all practically been built off this post originally, some aesthetics and ideas I've brewed on since then, as well as an Amazing conversation I had with @mortuaryboyfriend

A few key things to keep in mind to justify my thought process:

i. How would Mischa, if she lived, go on to process her trauma that she shares with Hannibal?

ii. "No one who survives Hannibal remains morally pure" - thank you to Peter for this statement it has lived in my head rent free since 🖤

Mischa has no characterization, in the novel, nor the film Hannibal rising, she is a faceless, blonde little plot devise that drives Hannibal's motives, but she also, in every sense of the word, haunts Hannibal's entire narrative. So she is basically a blank slate as far as characterization goes, but that's where the fun can happen, as we only have Hannibal to compare to, and the theories on how the experience they share would impact them if they had each other to lean on.

Hannibal has said that he "forgave" Mischa her influence on him. What "influence"? Well, in the novel, Mischa is the only thing Hannibal ever loves, he knew he was different since he was young and she was the first thing to make him feel literally anything. Bedelia in the show references the association Hannibal has with love, comparing both Will and Mischa, how it's an influence and its connotation is it makes him feel betrayed by himself, as if these feelings are a burden. So I imagine Mischa and Hannibal growing up together, with Hannibal having this ever growing resentment, but simultaneous unconditional love for Mischa. On the flip side, I imagine Mischa, a child praised and adored and perceived perfect in every way, who would grow and eventually sense her brother's torment. I see them forming an extremely codependent relationship in the wake of their trauma, and Mischa, so desperate to keep her brother, would quite possibly forgive him all his trespasses, actions, and love him for his inner monster all the more, cause he's hers, he protected her.

It's in this vein that we grow her character from here. I see her ultimately as morally grey/teetering towards evil. I'm unsure if she would ever have Hannibal's appetite, but she would love and support him regardless, I see her as being bemused by his games, but viciously protective and vengeful over him. Hannibal loves to play his games with everyone, and she would go along of course, but I think she would have difficulty with restraint if anyone got too close, and would lash out and murder without hesitation if Hannibal was threatened. Hannibal often says she's "ruining his fun". But there's a degree of spoiledness she can't help, she's his doting little sister after all.

It's also in this vein of fierce protectiveness of each other combined with their trauma-born codependency that I truly think they would spiral into something incestuous eventually. They would never, ever let another person get close to the other, and they would fulfill all of each other's needs I think. They both would be capable of living without romance or sex for their entire lives I'm sure, specifically and especially Hannibal, but I can't see them having that moral boundary personally, so for them I imagine it would just be an inevitable step.

Now diving into some of my own personal headcanon's for Mischa.

I think she would share Hannibal's love for the arts, though she would grow bored of the historic gab about it Hannibal favors quickly. I think she'd be more physical. I see her as a dancer, particularly Ballet, or into high theater arts, Shakespeare and classical tragedies.

I see her as this almost dual pointed sword of a character. She is so perfectly revered as a child forever in canon-Hannibal's mind, so I love the idea of this juxtaposition of her as this pure, innocent beauty, who often in reality is sensuous, cruel and violent. Hence my swan/black swan motifs. She lives in this spectrum of perceived innocence, but has brambles and thorns bubbling up inside her.

I made this post and decided that swans was my own personal visual motif for her, as black swans are mentioned on the Lecter estate and brought up a couple times throughout the book Hannibal Rising. The way that white swans represent innocence and purity vs the temptation and depravity of the black swan. It seemed fitting.

Also.

When thinking about Mischa in-canon narratively, as I mentioned, she seemed to haunt Hannibal's story. So when I stumbled across the concept of "black swan theory" - a metaphor that means "something that isn't supposed to exist, an impossibility," when applying that to my AU, where Mischa, who's character is a ghost in every sense, but made real against the odds, changing both everything and nothing, it felt extraordinarily apt.

Speaking of, as far as "how she survives" to quote Hannibal, I'm vague on those details lmao. BUT I know it involves cannibalism because it has to. It always has to. Whether some miracle sickness or woe befalls the brutal men who hold them captive and the children must eat them, or they get dispatched some other way and Hannibal has to start cutting his fingers off for Mischa and him to gnaw on (he starts with that extra one of course 😂) I know that it still involves cannibalism in some way.

So that's basically it! Again she's still mostly kinda just this vague blob idea in my head that has very specific Vibes. But hopefully this explains it a bit better. So sorry that this is way more than you asked for, but I get carried away lol ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thank you for the wonderful ask though! Have a great day 🖤

Also here are a few mood pieces from my Mischa Pinterest board too, just for funsies. Cause this post isn't long enough already, obviously.

Also linking my other previous posts that mention her cause tumblr has apparently ate my Mischa lecter tag </3

#🪰#hannibal #hannibal lecter #mischa lecter #hannibal rising #nbc hannibal #cw incest #I didn't even touch on the gothic themes and fairy tale themes ughhhh #I can literally never shut up I'm so sorry #also. This was primarily about Mischa so I didn't really get into how I think it would affect Hannibal in this au #and how he'd be different but spoiler alert it's not much. But I do have Thots on it if anyone wants to know those too #NOT TO EVEN MENTION WILL #cause I also have many thoughts regarding him in this au and they are all very much of a crimson peak flavor lol

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ashintheairlikesnow · 11 months ago

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His Word Goes Forth

CW: Referenced past child abuse, some emeto references (brief, vague), some dissoci@tion towards the end, alcohol references, prostitution references. Just a whole load of references. But I am so excited to finally be able to write this chapter and introduce... Gilly's children.

Bones in the Ocean Masterlist

The Hotel Import, Grand Island, the Colonies

Guilford Wentworth the Fifth - who went by Ford and told everyone who didn’t already know his parentage that his name was Wilford Prose, simply a cousin to the illustrious Wentworth name - woke up to sunlight streaming in through the gauzy curtains, bright like daggers against his closed eyes.

He’d been meant to go to the symphony last night and make some sort of connection with a man whose properties his father admired, a man named Hogarth or something who owned too much land and not enough good common sense to know to avoid anything to do with the Wentworth businesses. Ford had been told to convince him a visit to the Continent would do him good, to stop by the Wentworth estate and meet the elder Guilford.

He’d been told to make many such meetings before, and usually he did as he was told. Ford had ceased to be treated as a child and had become just another tool in his father’s toolbox since his mother died and could no longer shield her children. He’d been good at it at first.

But now… He was only eighteen and already he was tired of this.

And last night, he’d decided to let tired win the day.

Instead of making contact at the symphony, he’d instead allowed himself to be distracted by the promise of further liquor in a dark men’s club down the street, and spent his night in pursuit of new ways to forget his hated name.

He had succeeded, however briefly.

Unfortunately, the end result was that Ford woke up knowing his own name very well still, but with a headache that threatened to split him in two from temple to chin, a tongue that felt like cotton stuffed into his mouth, and a stomach that was either threatening to empty itself or ravenous for food and it couldn’t seem to decide which.

“Damn the sun,” He groaned, still feeling the ebb and swell of the liquor from the night before within him, stretching against the sheets. There was an ache in his hips that he enjoyed more than he disliked it, and when he tried to open one eye to look down at himself, there were marks of red from someone’s rouge, he thought, along the insides of his thighs. “... huh.”

Rubbing his face, he slowly sat up, squinting against the pain. There was a bottle with at least two good drinks left in it on the table next to the bed, and he drank it all, feeling it burn all the way down.It would help hold off the worst of the ache, though, at least until he could find somewhere darker to hide away from the daylight and a draught of laudanum to send him back to sleep.

Then, when he woke up once more, he’d need to come up with an excuse for why Hogarth Whoever wasn’t already boarding a ship for the Continent, to be swayed by his father’s monster like everyone else was.

That could wait, though. At least for however long it took to sleep off last night, both the alcohol and the pleasures that came with the darker bars and the seedier places in the city. Ocean air and warm nights made pleasures easy to find, and there were plenty of people who wanted money to eat more than they wanted their own virtue intact.

Ford had plenty of money.

Although even the money wasn’t really his.

He sighed, dropping back into the bed. There wasn’t anyone in the bed, although there had been when he went to sleep. Or passed out. Whichever it was that he’d done.

There’d been a young man, his own age - what was his name? It didn’t matter. None of their names mattered. Once they had coins in hand he could call them anything he wanted and they’d do anything they were told. Nothing there beside him now but empty space.

When he laid his hand there, it was still warm.

“Damn,” He whispered, then checked the other side, where there had been a lovely woman. Had the two known each other? He couldn’t remember. Well, in any case, that space was equally emptied, and it wasn’t warm at all.

She’d left long before the man had.

“Well… double damn,” Ford said, voice a little rasping. One of his last clear memories had been shout-singing along with the sea shanties sung by the sailors come on shore to drink and whore with the rest. Had the young man been a sailor on leave? Might have been... “If he told me his name, I forgot it. I rather liked them.”

His eyes drifted closed again.

“Of course you did,” His sister’s voice came, warm as the ocean nearest the shore, dry as the desert wind, breaking through his thoughts. “You like them all, because you are an idiot with money and that makes them like you.”

Ford gasped, his heart half-stopped before his mind caught up and he realized she wasn’t actually in the bedroom, but out in the sitting area where he couldn’t see her - and more importantly, she couldn’t see him. Even so, he felt himself flush and yanked the blankets up to cover himself, sitting upright all at once.

“Nathalie! What in the gods’ names-”

He heard the rustle of the morning paper. “Good morning,” Nathalie said, without even the slightest change in tone. “How are you, dear beloved sister? Oh, I’m fine, Ford, thank you for asking. Did you just arrive, Natty? Why yes, Ford, I did, it is so lovely of you to ask after my health-”

“Fine, fine, Nathalie, I get it. Just-... hold on, let me dress and I’ll join you.” Ford snorted, reaching blindly towards the floor and grabbing at the first pieces of clothing he found there. The suit he’d been meant to wear to the symphony, now a wrinkled mess - but it wasn’t like his sister would care, or even as if it were the first time she’d seen him in disarray after a night wasted. He had to fight a swell of dizzy nausea as soon as he was on his feet, leaning against the wall and letting his fingers scrape the textured wallpaper there, a series of flowers in dim pastels against cream. “How did you get in here, anyway?”

“I asked at the desk if my brother was here carousing with whores,” Nathalie said. The paper rustled again as she turned the page, as if punctuating her sentence. “And the sweet young man at the desk informed me that you were, indeed, carousing with whores. I paid him to let me in and threw out the whore.”

Ford swallowed thickly, walking with slow, careful steps along the cool wooden floor to the doorway, his shirt half-buttoned and the linen a mess of wrinkles. “There were two.”

“Of course there were.” Nathalie set the paper down and turned to look at him. She looked like their mother - both Ford and Nathalie looked like her, thank any god who might have been responsible. They had her delicacy, her bright wide eyes. Nathalie looked the most like her, though. And now she turned their mother’s look of solemn, disappointed judgment on him just like she had. “There was only one when I arrived. I sent him away.”

“Hmph. I thought he was quite nice, I was hoping to seek him out again. I can’t recall if he told me his name, though.” He dropped into a chair at the little breakfast table she’d set herself up at, slumping against the hard wooden back and tipping his head back. The world swayed dangerously around him when he did.

“His name was Darren,” Nathalie said, and when he opened his eyes to look at her, he found that the disappointment had become the slightest hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “Darren Meander.”

“That… He cannot have been speaking true to you.”

“I don’t care if he was or wasn’t, it’s what he told me. There, now you have a name if you want to find him again.”

“Thank you. Why did you bother?”

“You get on better with the whores than you do with your own class,” Nathalie said, as if the answer were obvious. “And you’re going to seek them out anyway. Besides, I use you as proof positive to myself of something I have always known.”

“What…?”

“That I, Lady Nathalie Wentworth, shall never marry, since any man of means or with a good family name may be as dissolute and pointless as you are.” She winked at him, and he might even have found it in himself to laugh if his stomach hadn’t twisted angrily at the thought. “I do enough picking up after you, I don’t think I am in need of any other man to deal with.”

“I’m sure you can find a pious man and get to him before he joins the priesthood,” Ford muttered, his face hot with guilt. She really did so often have to handle things for him, things he should have handled himself as the eldest.

Nathalie was younger than him, only just now sixteen, but she’d always seemed older, more second mother than sister some days. Maybe because, since their mother had died - when he was eleven and she was only nine - she’d done all the mothering of the twins, all the hiding them from the attention of their father, holding them in the night after nightmares or when the coastal storms raged.

Ford’s job, back then, had been to take the brunt of his father’s anger, keep Guilford’s eyes - and his fists - on him, and only him. It had kept Nathalie and the twins safe, for years… until their lordly father had split them all apart and declared the twins were old enough for finishing school, Ford was ready to take over the business interests in the Colonies, and Nathalie was old enough to run her own household and prepare for marriage.

Still.

They were all still far, far away from their father, and therefore safe from his direct influence, his attention, and his damnable monster.

Still.

Ford sighed, watching a shivery little rainbow from the sun shining through a window just right bounce off the ceiling. “In any case, I’ve hardly caused enough trouble to cross the channel and find you. What are you doing here, anyway?”

Nathalie didn’t look up from the paper she was scanning, but she gestured at a carafe before her. It had freshly-brewed coffee that steamed as he poured it into a teacup, and he sighed happily at the first sip. She hummed. “I came to see you.”

“You’re meant to be up at Howe House.”

“I was up at Howe House. I’ve been supervising it for months. It’s nearly habitable, which is lovely, considering I’ve been habiting there amongst the dust and the mouse droppings all this time.” Nathalie finally set the paper down, crossing her arms on the table and looking Ford over. She was pristine, in a light-blue linen dress made for the hot island days, her hair pulled back in a chignon to keep it from suffocating the back of her neck. “Oh, Ford. You look awful.”

“I feel awful, thank you ever so much for noticing.” He drained the first cup of coffee and poured a second, his tongue flat and numb from the too-hot liquid. He didn’t care. “So if you were at Howe House, why aren’t you there now? It’s a four-day sail to get here from there, and you sent no warning-”

“I absolutely did send you a notice, you shattered teapot of a man. You just haven’t been home in a week, I checked when I arrived. Your servants haven’t seen you since last Wednesday and not a single one had a clue where to find you except your butler.”

“Yes, well, he’s the only one I told when I left that I was going to stay here.” Ford exhaled. His sister’s constant piercing stare wasn’t helping his headache even a little bit. His stomach turned over itself and he fought back the urge to simply be sick all over this lovely table and Nathalie’s lovely dress. “... I hate the house. I avoid it whenever I can.”

“Clearly.” Something in his sister’s bristling manner softened, a little. She reached out to lay a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Ford. I know this… wasn’t how we hoped it would be, when we were young.”

Ford laid a hand over hers. His fingers felt chilled and numb - hers, by contrast, felt bright and warm and full of life. “We thought we could go farther from him, that he wouldn’t follow us. But…”

That had been when their mother was alive, and they had thought they could bring her with. Neither of them said it. Both of them heard it, anyway, even unsaid.

Ford cleared his throat. “... but if this is what our father wants, we must help to build and maintain the Wentworth name and fortune.”

“I know.” She squeezed his arm, brief but firm, and then let go of him, glancing back down at the paper. “I know. And we are, however we hate our parts, we play them. For the twins, at least.”

“For the twins. They’ll… be out of school in a few years, and by then, maybe-”

“Maybe.” She cut him off. She poured herself a coffee, then, holding it in both hands. Her nails were bitten nearly to the quick, the one bad habit that had never been broken in her no matter their father’s rages. “I should tell you, Ford, this is not a social visit. I was… sent here to pick you up.”

“You were?” Ford sat up straighter, and felt a frisson of dread like an electric eel moving inside of him. “By-... Nathalie, not by-”

“Yes. By… our father.”

He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. “... why?”

She took in a breath, wincing and pressing one hand to her side as the mere expansion of her ribs pushed against the tightly-fitted bodice. The style of the times, for wealthy young women, and Ford had spent more than a few nights undoing laces of young ladies wondering if ‘style’ was just a pretty way to avoid saying suffocation. At least the lower class women he spent most of his time with were allowed to breathe.

Nathalie’s voice was so soft it was nearly a whisper. “You were supposed to be packed and ready to go when I arrived, Ford. I was supposed to explain it to you on the ship.”

“... what?” He blinked.

"Father's letter to me made it clear I wasn't to tell you until we were underway, but-... but I meant to regardless, just-... I expected you to have seen my letter."

"... Ah." The mere mention of his father had made his stomach try to rise up in his throat again, and the idea of going back on a ship - the weeks of seasickness and then the week of land sickness afterward when he had to get used to being solid and still once again - made it much much worse. He had to swallow hard as bile rose and lean over, resting his forehead on the cool surface of the table and pressing one hand over his belly to try and calm it with the pressure.

The morning breeze blew in through the windows, bringing the salt-scent of ocean air with it. There came with the welcome salt the faint hint of dead fish, a simple fact of life everyone tried to ignore. You got used to it. Ford had gotten used to it, in the end. But it didn’t help his stomach feel any better now, or stop his heart from racing. “Father sent you... to pick me up? I am to live at Howe House with you now?” He groaned against the tabletop without looking up. “That house is full of ghosts!”

“It is not.” Nathalie rolled her eyes. He could hear her shoe tapping impatiently under the table and her cup clatter against the saucer as she put it back down. “That’s an old wives’ tale, I’ve never met a single one and I’ve been living there for more than a year.”

“Yeah, because you aren’t the heir, they don’t loathe you like they do me.”

“There are no spirits haunting Howe House,” Nathalie said firmly. “And if there were, why would they hate you?”

“The same reason I have such hatred for myself, due to the blood in my veins! His blood!"

Oh, he’d spoken too loud. The pain in his head spiked with his voice's volume, and he had to close his eyes tightly and breathe in quick, shallow pants until it ebbed again.

Nathalie was silent, but her hand laid on his back, then, rubbing gently up and down. Just like their mother had, when they were young and came to her with sickness. She gave him a moment or two of quiet, which... it helped, honestly. “You cannot help the circumstances of your birth,” She murmured. “And remember what Mother said."

"It is only blood," Ford muttered, mouth barely moving. "She had no idea how deep the ties of blood run."

"Yes she did. And... I understand, Ford, I wish as much as you that we could change our names and be gone, but you know we can’t."

"The twins need us."

"Yes. Besides, Father-”

“Why, why would Father even think of me? I’ve done everything I can to get him to forget me entirely, Nathalie!”

“Oh, is that what the drinking and whoring were about? Being easily forgotten?” Nathalie’s humor was sharp, but it never quite cut deep. He knew her too well for that, and she was still gentling herself for his sake. He made himself sit up and look over at her. There was something in the set of her face that had his nerves singing in worry. “Listen to me, Ford. You aren’t coming to stay at Howe House.”

“Well, he can’t have sent you to scold me about… this.” He gestured at the wreckage of the hotel suite around him, bottles emptied or half-emptied. It looked as though at least one of his guests the night before had left their shirt behind. Or maybe that was one of his, and it had been unpacked… He’d never seen it before, but that didn’t mean much. Ford’s clothing was bought according to his father’s specifications, he never knew of it until he was sent for tailoring. “He doesn’t even know about it.”

“You cannot be sure, but… no, no, it’s not about this.” She licked at her lips, looking uneasily over to the window. Outside, the sun shone in a perfect, cloudless blue sky. The sound of people going about their lives down there filtered up to them. “... Ford. He calls us. We have been summoned... home.”

His heart chilled at the word. "No."

"Yes." Nathalie exhaled, folding her hands in front of her. She looked everywhere but him, and he tried without success to follow her gaze. “He’s… sent for us, Ford. You know why. You know what that means.”

“Either of us, really.” His voice was a whisper, airless. The hotel suite around him seemed suddenly transparent, as if he weren’t even seated here within it. As if it were all a pretty fiction, a daydream he had at night with Wentworth Manor crowding ever closer, his father’s eyes everywhere searching for faults, always finding them. His father’s monster with teeth bared and loathing in its dreadful eyes. “It could be for either of us. You’re sixteen, I’m eighteen, it could-... it could be for you, or for me, it could be-”

“... I think it’s for you.” She took his hand in both of hers again, and this time she held on tight. They looked at each other, with their mother’s eyes, and Ford felt the wave of fear he had spent his time here on the islands trying to escape breaking over his head, to drag him under again. “I think Father has found you a wife.”

The sun shone. Birds sang. The ocean was a constant dull, reassuring roar just outside the window. Despite the heat, Ford shivered with a depthless chill and felt water closing over his head, drowning him in the dark with all his fears coming suddenly to life.

“How-” His voice broke.

He had to swallow down terror, just like he had done since he was a child, and straighten his shoulders. He had to tell himself the world was only a play, and he was only a part his father had imperfectly cast. He had to keep his own life at a distance, and not feel it, or he would feel too much. The world had too many sharp edges, and he must stand apart from them or be slashed to ribbons. “Nathalie-”

“Please,” Nathalie whispered. “Please don’t ask, Ford. Don't, I won't know the answer, none of us know."

“How long?”

She didn’t answer, only looked away. He could see the glimmer in her eyes, knew it for what it was. It made the world feel even more distance, as if he were adrift in a lifeboat, the tide carrying him away from his own body. The escape was a gift or a curse, and he didn't know which.

His mouth still moved, without his consent. Without his decree. It asked the question neither of them knew the answer to, the question that haunted every Guilford Wentworth but the first.

“After I’m married, Nathalie... after he has given me to his bride, and the monster has taken my mind and will from me... after he has me shut up in his house again..."

His voice felt like someone else's. His body was only a creation that carried blood to a new generation, to give his father more power. He was far, far away from it.

"Nathalie-"

"Please, Ford-"

"How long will he... let me live?”

Taglist: @grizzlie70 @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @theelvishcowgirl @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump @bloodinkandashes @squishablesunbeam @mj-or-say10 @apokolyps @wildfaewhump @shrimpwritings @there-will-always-be-blood @latenightcupsofcoffee

#bones in the ocean #child of whumper #worldbuilding stuff #fantasy whump #fantasy writing #original fantasy writing #original fantasy #writers on tumblr #writblr #original fiction #referenced captivity #dissoci@tion tw #referenced child abuse #whumpers who are also whumpees

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dappy-dappernette · 1 year ago

Text

IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ

Well, here it is. Since me defending myself last time without naming anyone is a “call out post” I wonder what this is.

CW: Discussion of abuse, manipulation, and accusations of gr--ming, s-icide faking.

While it may not seem like it, since last year I have been paranoid and looking over my shoulder due to certain things that have come to light regarding someone who I had once considered a friend. The person who has gone on to blatantly lie about my friends and I as well as accusing me of a serious crime based on lies and manipulations is the user @Chibidashie (on Tumblr)/ @Chibiidashie (on Twitter) also known as @Wonderful-World-Of-Hetalia, @Purin-Hime, and @hetalia-themagicalmanac on Tumblr.

I’d like to keep this as brief and concise as possible, and while she has made multiple posts vagueing my friends and I, I will be primarily responding to the claims made in this post ( https://www.tumblr.com/chibidashie/700598829666451456/alright-this-is-gonna-be-very-risky-posting-here?source=share ) she made about my friends and I on tumblr, though I will also address other notable times she has mentioned me. I will also only be responding to the claims she has made against me and/or my gf, as I don’t feel like it’s my place to speak for the rest of my friends, especially since some of them will be making their own posts regarding the situation.

Something I’d also like to address before we start is that while I do have screenshots for most of these incidents, I don’t have screenshots for all of them, as some of these conversations have happened over VC and while we are telling our truth, we understand if you are skeptical about those specific sections.

Here is my friend Mick's post about the situation, since it mostly started between him and Cheebs: Here

(The rest of the post under the cut)

Some Context:

I had met Cheebs about two years ago in my friend Mick’s (then known as Gil and who will be referred to as such in screenshots later) old Hetatwt discord server, and sometime later she would join my own (now inactive) server.

Mick and Cheebs have a much longer history together than she does with me, though I do not believe it’s my place to speak much on that as that is his story to tell. However, sometime after Cheebs and Mick had joined the friend group, Mick and Cheebs had a falling out. She reacted to this by going to most of her and Mick’s mutual friends (including me) in an attempt to turn us against him, however when we asked him, Mick told us the truth and provided full context to what happened.

Later, Cheebs contacted me to apologize once again, and while I did try to remain mature about it, after everything that had happened I was already hurt and tired enough and finally told her off. To which she apologized again, and said she’ll improve herself and come back to give us a genuine apology when she was ready.

“The Beginning of a Calamity”

(I will be starting off with this section, as it’s the start of the accusations Cheebs has levied against me. When Cheebs is referring to A she’s referring to me, P for Mick, and S for Salt, my gf. Mick is also referred to as “Gil” in some of the screenshots, as that was a name he used to go by. The reason why Cheebs calls Mick P is because an old name he went by was “Percy” and the reason why Cheebs uses A to refer to me is because my legal name starts with an A. This will become important later)

“People like P and A had suddenly decided to exclude me, saying that my oc I had since I was 16 suddenly made them uncomfortable.”

We did not “suddenly” decide to “exclude” you from the rps in our servers because we were “suddenly uncomfortable” out of nowhere. We had our own reasons as to why we were uncomfortable with your OC’s inclusion in the rp.

The main OC that Cheebs would rp in these servers is her OC Mary, a child. The main issue that we had with her rping this character isn’t “Oh an adult rping a kid is weird and gross”, it’s that she tried to push her again, child OC, into an rp where characters who were pretty awful people (much less anyone you’d trust with a kid) were discussing and engaging in scenarios that are highly inappropriate for children, with the main topics usually being about drugs and suggestive themes.

It would have been one thing if we were simply rping a fun slice of life rp or if Cheebs was rping an of age character but still excluded her, but that wasn’t the case. Many of us were very uncomfortable with her trying to insert a child into these sorts of situations and were simply trying to reinforce our boundaries.

“People, including A and their friends posted art on the art channel and would get a lot of responses from everyone on the server. I would post my art...and it seemed like I did not exist. A and their friends would post art over me, drowning my art in praise for A and their friends.”

This isn’t true, there are multiple instances where we would respond to her art. Were they lengthy comments where we would go into deep detail about what we liked? Not really but we did at least acknowledge and compliment her work and tried to show appreciation. Not only that, but Cheebs would also do the same to us, multiple times.

Also-

“this had reminded me of a similar occurrence in which a popular artist in the same fandom had done this as a tactic to harass me and send porn in servers that minors were present in.”

This came out of complete left field, and was most likely an attempt to paint me in a similar predatory light. She will try to do this again later on in the same post, which only adds weight to my concerns regarding this statement.

“Meanwhile on A's server, A would dehumanize me into nothing more than a living, breathing joke, despite knowing well that I am autistic and a survivor. One vc I clearly remember was something that went like this:A: Guys, my cat is in my room!Me: tell your cat I love them!A: Okay! [Pause] ...Oh? What's that? Cheebs, My cat says she hates you.”

I won’t deny that I’ve made this joke before, I’ve actually made it multiple times. However, what Cheebs fails to mention is that I didn’t single her out when making jokes like this, this is literally just how I joke with friends in general. The rest of the people who were on VC with us can vouch for it, and have had this joke and similar jokes directed towards them before while Cheebs was present in VC.

Not only that, but if Cheebs was so hurt by it, then she should have mentioned it to me instead of just laughing along with us. How am I supposed to magically know how others feel without them telling me? If she was honest with me and told me how it made her feel I would’ve stopped making those jokes, but she never told me, and now I’m at fault for not being able to read her mind?

“yet nobody in A's server really seemed to care that I was hurting and quite literally living a massive flashback from having so many ptsd episodes. they simply did not care at all nor asked if I was okay.”

I assume she’s talking about her vents in the vent chat and the lack of response to them, which again, something she seems to purposefully leave out is the fact that the vent chat was only accessible to people with the vent chat role. Not only that, but some of us had the vent chat muted at the time, as many of us were dealing with our own struggles and were not in the proper headspace to check on it often.

What only makes this statement even more frustrating is that even with that, there were still people who did check up on her and respond to her vents, such as Mick and my SO, Salt.

P’s server:

“They had also been uncomfortable at the fact I was venting about how A had hurt and dehumanized me countless times, and had not been held accountable by the people around them. They truly believed that I was shit-talking about A, when I was living a flashback of how A reminded me so much of our abuser personality-wise. P had sided with A.”

Held accountable for what? Not being able to read your mind on what jokes you were and weren’t comfortable with? Again, I apologize if whatever jokes I’ve made has made you uncomfortable, but you can’t vilify me for not knowing when you made no effort to tell me at the time.

And Mick wasn’t uncomfortable with you simply “venting”, he was uncomfortable with you lying about me and twisting the truth while naming me, while I was none the wiser to what was going on and still thought we were cool. Again, as I’ve repeated before, if you had simply stated your boundaries and come to me about how you felt then I would have respected them. But you never did.

safe space breached

“A had never interacted at all since joining my server, only basically watching me.”

I’m barely active on most servers I’m in, even the servers of some of my closest friends. And I’ll even admit this, I almost never checked Cheeb’s server, and whenever I did it was to get rid of the tagged notification that would pop up often. However this wasn’t out of malicious intent, I’m just the type of person who’ll join a server but barely say or do anything in it and Cheebs is reaching if she believes this is “evidence of espionage”.

“A's s/o, S, would interact and occasionally join game night with my friends, but even S had a very good facade that they were committed acts of espionage for the love of A”

This specific line makes me a lot angrier than it should. Because not only is this a fucking lie (again), but even when the rest of us were beginning to catch onto Cheeb’s true nature, Salt was the one to actually try to stick with Cheebs and try to be the best friend she could to her even when she herself was uncomfortable or hurt by Cheebs. We were even hesitant to tell Salt everything that Cheebs had done, including talking shit about Salt behind her back, because we didn’t want to force a wedge between Salt and who we perceived as a friend she loved.

Salt wasn’t spying on you Cheebs, and didn’t even know about our issues with you and how you talked about her behind closed doors until we told her. She trusted you and stuck by you even at the cost of her own comfort and mental health, and you decided to repay her by lying about her behind her back.

“(which i theorize that A had actually groomed S due to the fact that when i met them in A's server, A was 18 and S was 16 as well as the power imbalance between the two.)”

Well, this again is a blatant lie. And a really dangerous accusation to carelessly toss around without evidence. Salt and I are the same age, with the age gap between us being only 8 months. I’ve already disproven this claim with evidence in this post: https://www.tumblr.com/the-doll-house-gallery/712497364283326464?source=share

I should also mention that while she only uses the first initials of our usernames (or legal name in my case) to refer to us here on this post, she had referred to us by name in her server.

And while you might go “Well this was in private so it’s ok” word and gossip still spreads around, and I’ve lost friends because someone had lied about me like this before.

abusive conflict

Well this one is going to be a doozy to get through

“I had dmed A about the fact i was not a fool and i knew that everyone involved (P, S, F and D) were hiding something about me. I had no answer until around midnight, in which A verbally abused me by accusing me of guilt-tripping, as well as bringing up past mistakes of mine to make themselves appear morally superior. i admit, i had made mistakes that can easily be solved in A’s server from communicating with each other, but A had verbally abused me over dms to the point that i had a panic attack late at night, with only 2 hours of sleep and a long work day in the morning.”

This isn’t what happened at all, quite the opposite actually. Cheebs came crawling to me, begging for forgiveness. And while I did respond at midnight (for her, I’m CT not EST), it’s not as though Cheebs messaged me earlier in the day with me deliberately responding late at night so she could barely have energy to work the next day, because Cheebs had initially messaged me from 11:30 pm - 12:00 am EST.

I also had work the next day and was already stressed enough with preparing for upcoming classes when Cheebs had suddenly messaged me that late at night, tired, stressed, and at my wits end with Cheeb’s constant excuses, I messaged her this:

I, and many others, were tired of her not only dragging us into her falling out with Mick and her attempts to turn us against him, but also her overall two faced behaviour towards the rest of us as well. While yes, I could’ve worded this much nicer, at this point I was already tired and hurt by what she had done to us. I was the one who ended up confronting her about these problems, not the other way around.

“i had begged A to stop with the verbal abuse, but A was unrelenting. A kept going about how i was a terrible person for standing up for myself and being upset of P leaving me, in which they had told me “go apologize to P”, despite also saying "your apologies do not mean anything to us".”

I did not say this, as you can see in my message to her what I actually said and meant was “Apologies don’t mean anything if you don’t follow through with them”, and they don’t. Apologies are meant as an expression of feeling sorry for your actions and that you’ll at least try to do better, but they really don’t mean anything if you just keep repeating what you were apologizing for. It’s not a “get out of jail free card” you can use over and over again.

You also didn’t “beg” me to “stop verbally abusing you”, so I don’t know where that came from.

I also didn’t tell Cheebs to “Apologize to Mick for getting mad at him abandoning you” I told her to apologize to him for trying to drag everyone else into this situation and attempt to turn us against him, when this was all happening he was incredibly stressed out because she just kept running to anyone who knew him to tell them “He’s actually a terrible, cruel person who ABANDONED me and his friends!” while refusing to hear why he wanted to distance himself from her (which he will go into more detail in his own post).

“i had asked A if they were spying on me. what A said was something like “no, but P told me everything.”. A contradicted themselves, and i had assumed so; they too were a snake.”

“Something like” so not what I had actually said. This is how the conversation went:

But looking back on our messages, I was misremembering the situation. Before I joined, Cheebs told me that she was “cleaning her vents” and I got worried that she was shit talking Mick, but didn’t tell him immediately right away because I felt as though that was invading her privacy at the time. It wasn’t until Mick ended up venting to me that she’s been contacting everyone else, not just me, about the situation with Mick while twisting his words to make him sound worse and to try to get them to turn against him that I decided to tell him my concerns. Which is when he finally broke it to me about what she had been saying about me while naming me.

Cheebs had actually come to apologize to me about this in the past, however, she had only said that she vagued about us in her vents. When in reality, she was apparently naming us and twisting our actions into something more malicious than they actually were.

Also, I wasn’t only still hurt and mad about the “venting” about me, but I was also hurt by the implication of her suddenly deciding to “clean” the vents when I finally joined. That meant in the months after that, she: A- Didn’t even bother to delete those messages and tell the truth of what really happened

B- Still continued to lie about me to that server even after “apologizing” and didn’t want me to see it.

These potential outcomes, along with her trying to hide the truth from me and being overall dishonest, really hurt when I realized the whole truth.

“The last i spoke to A, A had said “come back to me when you apologize to P.””

I didn’t just say “come back when you apologize to Mick” I said “Come back when you resolve this with Mick.”, as in when you two talk through this and try to understand the other and stop taking worse-case assumptions and taking them as the fact and truth.

Foreword

“when A became verbally abusive, i had felt their aftershocks for around two weeks due to underlying ptsd and the fact that this confrontation was abusive in tone, and that they blamed me for all of these issues, from being excluded and all. it reminded me so much of my abuser, that i had begun to question whether i was a horrible person for the fact people had turned against me. even before A confronted me, i was already comparing myself to people like chris-chan and puppychan because of the fact these two were bad, not to mention that i was autistic.”

It was “abusive” in tone because I was angry, I was fucking tired of this situation and hurt by not only the things you had initially done, but also the way you would constantly tell us that you were “sorry” and that you’d “improve” when you never even tried.

Also no one except you compared yourself to Chris-Chan and Puppy-Chan, and no one else even brought up your autism, why are you bringing this up?

“was me venting about being harmed by people who turned against me a bad thing?”

Venting in itself isn’t bad, but what is bad is lying about people and their character while naming them. Stuff like that spreads around and can even be spread to outside your friend group. Again, I’ve lost friendships and now a portion of a community I was in thinks I’m pro-nazi/pro-pedo because of a similar situation like this where someone went around lying about my friends and I behind our backs in private while we were none the wiser.

I’d even argue that naming people while lying about them behind their backs in a private group is even worse than publicly naming them, because it’s an incredibly underhand and scummy tactic to ruin someone’s reputation where they can’t even defend themselves. She knew exactly what she was doing.

“A especially needs to hold themselves accountable, for that they used me for nothing more than jokes at my expense. A’s friends were complacent in letting A get away with being manipulative and still dehumanize me against my will, this includes P.”

Ah yes, hold myself accountable for things I didn’t even know you were uncomfortable with because you refused to tell me. I’m terribly y’all for not being able to read minds.

“they would paint me as mentally unstable and manipulative when none of that is ever true and perhaps due to the fact many of these people were not autistic.”

I don’t need to “paint” you as manipulative because you’ve already proven that you are by your actions, especially in this post. Throughout this post you’ve constantly been catering to everyone’s emotions, tried to make yourself sound smaller and weaker compared to the rest of us than you actually were and are, and bring up things that were never mentioned or have little to nothing to do with the situation to make yourself appear more sympathetic.

An example would be in this very post where you randomly brought up your Polish ancestry out of no where and accused Mick's S/O of calling you a nazi when that never happened:

“yet i had communicated my feelings (as would a therapist would recommend in a situation like this), only to get ignored or given an excuse”

Thank you for admitting that you never told us right here btw, makes it a lot easier on me.

“except these people now use a private twitter account and say things about me without me seeing what they said because they are private accounts.”

Well isn’t this statement ironic with everything that’s happened, also while you have no proof of us shittalking you in private, we do have proof of you shit talking us!

Also

"oh and the fact that i wanted to fake my death bc of them too"

Is really... Alarming, to hear. So you planned to fake your own suicide to make us look worse?

“i sure had wished that this situation was handled better, because it really sucks to see many of my mutuals follow the people involved in hurting me, and i only wish for them to be held accountable, like how i had held myself accountable so many times, but those people could not see that i was truly sorry.”

I wish it was handled better too, but I don’t think I’ll ever be getting that especially since you still vague about us (and presumably still shit talk us in private tho that’s just alleged) over literally a year later. Also how could we even hold ourselves accountable over things we weren’t even aware of??? Also, if being "truly sorry" is lying about others, especially when those lies include false grooming allegations, I'd hate to see you when you aren't.

Additional incidents:

BECAUSE YES THERE’S MORE

Issues with interrupting:

Whenever we’d VC and Cheebs would join, more often than not, she would usually interrupt others and skew the conversation to what she wanted to talk about. Barely letting others speak and often directing the conversation back to her. Multiple times we would gently tell her to stop interrupting everyone else and let other people speak, she would say sorry, but then do it again.

But one of the worst instances of this happening was when I was venting on call once. That night on call I was having a full on emotional breakdown, I was sobbing and overcome with grief at the time, and even contemplating taking my own life. Most of the server was there and were trying to be there for me, and when I tried to take a quick breath from all that crying, Cheebs thought it was a great time to go “...Sooo, moving on from that- Today is Dashcon’s anniversary!”

This really hurt me and made me feel as though the distress I was going through didn’t matter, so as calmly as I could possibly muster, I asked Cheebs to not interrupt me. Cheebs then disconnected, and Mick had to

The Fanfic:

Because yes, Cheebs has literally dedicated a chapter of her fanfic to this situation. How do we know this? Because not only is one of the villains named Percival, the extended version of the name Percy (which Mick used to go by at the time), while one of them is named Aiden whose name starts and ends with the same letters as my legal name.

But also because most of the things that these characters do is what Cheebs accused us of (along with her adding on additional worse things to appear more sympathetic), as well as her admitting that she based it on how “Old friends treated me” and looking at the timing of this message, it matches up.

The fanfic is “Those Fleeting Dreams of Mine” and the chapter is “Chapter 12: The Boy in the Beast” Here is the fic and the exact chapter where Aiden and Percival show up so you can read it yourselves: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35651113/chapters/104722581#workskin

This is where I feel Cheebs becomes more insidious in her ways of slandering us and trying to make herself look like the victim.

In this fanfic Percival, Aiden, and their friends are described as a “gang”, violently physically assault Jack (Cheeb’s self insert), are described as rowdy, violent, thieves, and “demons”. The main reason why I take issue with these things specifically, especially with the way she makes the falling out seem more violent on our end is because- Mick and I are not white. Mick is african-American and I am Southeast Asian. The rest of our friend are all Latine, while Cheebs is white.

Cheebs knows we’re darker skinned POC, she’s seen our faces in video calls before and she has listened in on our conversations regarding our experiences as racial minorities. She knows that black and brown people struggle with stereotypes of being violent and crude gang members, stereotypes that can get people attacked or even killed. Yet she still decided it was a good idea to portray characters that are blatantly based on us as violent delinquents attacking her weak and helpless self insert based on herself, a white woman.

Could she have just written this just for the sake of it? Perhaps. But going by her logic as well, with her accusing me of being ablest for simply calling her manipulative in my other post defending myself, it wouldn’t be too far of a reach to think she’s applied this logic to her fanfic. This is literally the definition of “White woman tears”. Words can’t describe how disturbed and uncomfortable I felt seeing her portray us in this way, especially when she knew of the shit we and our people have to deal with.

Also in that boat:

We never called you that, and it’s weird that you would even bring that up (this was before we found out about the fanfic, and looking back at it in retrospect…)

The “Neurotypical” comic:

Shortly after I found out that Cheebs was accusing me of being a “groomer”, I decided to make a post defending myself and showing evidence of Salt and I being the same age. Cheebs had apparently felt threatened by this, even though I never named her, never brought up her autism, and even kept her gender identity private. In response she made this comic:

This was the description:

This post was made a couple days after I posted the post where I defended myself against her accusations of grooming. Not only is this comic grossly misrepresenting the situations (my post was me defending myself against this claims with evidence, and Cheeb’s “vents” were her lying about me while using my name), but also- I’m most likely not neurotypical, and Mick isn’t either.

Mick is professionally diagnosed with ADHD and PTSD and self diagnosed with Autism, and while I’m not professionally diagnosed with anything, that doesn’t confirm whether I’m neurotypical or not, and based on my own behaviours I’ve noted growing up I believe I might have either ADHD and/or Autism.

I currently cannot get a professional diagnosis due to financial issues, familial/cultural issues, and transportation issues. I currently don’t have any means to get diagnosed, and even if I did, familial and cultural pressure from my family has scared me into being unable to ask them for help.

This is something I would bring up frequently in the server we were in, and Cheebs was well aware of this. So it feels incredibly callous of her to use this as a way to make it seem like we’re a bunch of “mean neurotypicals attacking someone for being autistic”. Which makes this situation even more baffling is that Cheebs supports self-diagnosis but still uses other’s inability to be professionally diagnosed as a point against them:

So is self-diagnosis valid until it’s inconvenient for you Cheebs?

The “Draw Your Squad” incident:

This was in response to a draw the squad picture my friend Bowie drew of us:

The reason why Cheebs wasn’t in this picture was because this “Draw Your Squad” pic was based on whenever we would actually play monopoly/Bankroll on Plato, and whenever we did Cheebs would never join us or never even asked to join. Again, Cheebs never even tried to join and never told us that she wanted to be included, how were we supposed to know if she never brought it up?

The most recent “vent” art: Recently, at the time of writing this, Cheebs has posted this piece to her art blog.

Yeah this is obviously based on me (and presumably Mick), not only do the accusations match up but the puppet master character has strong similarities to my sona, Dappy.

It’s incredibly evident that she’s still set on shit talking and vagueing us, even over a year later.

Other issues:

While these aren’t completely related to the topic of Cheebs slandering my friends and I, there are other incidents that make me incredibly uncomfortable, especially as an Asian person.

Sometimes, how Cheebs talks about Asian things (especially Japanese stuff) comes off as rather fetishy and racially/culturally insensitive.

“Nothing like Spirited Away”

In this post, Cheebs talks about going to a Korean bathhouse for an early birthday gift. While there’s obviously nothing wrong with embracing other cultures, it is off putting to see her adding “Def nothing like Spirited Away though lmao” at the end.

And while yes, she’s most likely making a small joke about a movie she likes, it seems like she decided to make the comparison because “Japan and Korea are East Asian countries”. Which not only comes off as pretty racist, but feels even more gross considering Japan’s colonization of Korea and the atrocities that happened during that time.

“Hikikomori”

Well this feels gross. Basically Cheebs is calling herself a “hikikomori”, which is a phenomenon in Japan where people become shut in from society. They don’t go outside, not to go to work, to school, or anything else. It is a serious form of severe social withdrawal that devastates the lives of many.

Which is why it feels gross that Cheebs is deciding to use the word as a “cute” synonym for being an introvert. Cheebs is definitely not a hikikomori, she goes to work, attends college, goes to cons, goes to meetups, still as irl relationships, etc. And while yes, she is introverted and shy, that alone does not make someone a hikikomori, and it feels more like she’s using the term as a “kawaii” alternative to introvert.

Conclusion:

Please don’t attack Cheebs or anyone else in this situation, all I want is for my name to be cleared and for this situation to end. I’m tired of constantly having to look over my shoulder, I’m tired of being lied about behind my back, I just want her to be held accountable and for her to stop lying about me. If any of you guys have other questions or need further context for some of these I will respond to your questions, but this is all that came to mind in regards of this situation.

Again, please don’t attack Cheebs, her friends, or anyone else in this situation. We just want this to stop and for her to stop lying about us.

#long post #discourse #drama #Hetalia #Hetalia fandoms #<- I'm adding these tags because that's the fandom we both frequent #People need to know the truth #I hate that I have to post this and I hate that I have to make it public #But this has gone on for too long and Cheebs won't stop lying about us #If we just sat back and do nothing I know it'd get worse from there #Especially from my own experience

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olderthannetfic · 1 year ago

Note

Hi, Olderthannetfic - I'm just sort of reaching out through the blogosphere to see if anyone in the larger proship community has any suggestions for where a community could move if not on discord. (CW for discussion of underage content and Black Butler Spoilers)

So I run a discord server for Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji) but I'm also in several writing discords including one that caters to dead dove content creators. Today they posted some rule changes, due to changes in Discord's community guidelines. Any illustrations for nsfw of obviously underage characters are now banned, and written content has to be vague and not state ages of underage participants. That prompted me to read through it: And, I gotta say, its pretty bad: https://discord.com/safety/child-safety-policy-explainer Hoping the community can offer some insight on what to do since the policy is incredibly broad. Either a new platform, or what we could even reasonably do beyond our current system of gating the server heavily to avoid issues like reporting/brigading. The meat of the policy is right here, for those who want to read it:

You may not post or share the following types of content, such as [sensitive language content warning]

Portrayals of minors engaging in sex acts, or in sexually explicit or suggestive poses

Sexual comments about or desires for real or fictitious minors

Links to websites containing material that sexualizes minors

Photos or videos of non-nude minors in a sexualized or fetishistic context

Statements expressing intent to obtain materials of child abuse or engage in child sexual abuse

Promotion, encouragement or normalization of pedophilia or sexual attraction to children

Photos, videos, or drawings of nude or sexualized minors, such as “lolicon” or “shotacon”

Photos, videos or illustrations of naked or sexualized anthropomorphized minors (sometimes referred to as “cub porn”)

Also of note from their guidelines: > Given the high-harm nature of this content, we will also consider off-platform evidence as explained in our Off-Platform Behaviors Policy when reviewing content under this policy.

This is pretty horrifying for me, since under these terms, even if we weren't writing smutty fanfiction and laughing about silly nsfw headcannons, discussion even of the source material of Kuro would be completely off limits. I mean, this is a panel from the arc that was recently announced to be animated for release in 2024:

I think even on tumblr just mentioning that this looks like an intro to a porno would be flagged.

This is particularly frustrating since this is a series that is literally sold at like, Barnes and Noble. It's one of the most popular mangas in the world. Even the numerous, incredibly obnoxious antis who run this fandom on tiktok/reddit/twitter and don't ship the "evil" Sebaciel like I do would probably be forbidden from even discussing many of the canon elements under these terms, including: * The many plot points in several arcs during which it is implied that an adult character is sexually attracted to Ciel (I was going to list them all but this honestly happens at least once per arc) * Discussion of Ciel's trauma - the inciting incident of the manga (also portrayed in flashbacks) where he is sexually assaulted alongside his brother * The Green Witch Arc plot where Sieglinde interprets the situation to be that Sebastian/Ciel have invited her to a three way to take her virginity. * The many canon depictions of Ciel in various states of undress that are clearly intended to be titillating in some manner. I mean... "Photos or videos of non-nude minors in a sexualized or fetishistic context" is basically just. The entire series. In fact, even just linking to where you could read or purchase this manga legally at Barnes and Noble could technically be considered a violation under these guidelines considering how incredibly broad they are. Much has already been said on your blog and elsewhere about how this type of policy harms queer people and CSA survivors (both terms I identify with) and how censorship like this also targets books like Speak (incidentally one of my favorite books from when i was younger) so I won't rehash that here but... its disappointing to say the least.

I assume that most of this is just covering their ass due to legislation and/or the usual pressure from payment processors. Its also possible I'm overreacting entirely and this is a paranoid reading of this policy. Nonetheless, I'd appreciate any insight you or the community might have on what our options might be.

Sorry for the massive ask in your inbox :P Just don't know what we'd do if the worst happened and we got reported.

A lot hinges on how many of those instances of "minors" they think imply "real or fictitious" and how many they're interpreting as real only. They're explicitly banning some types of fictitious material like loli/shota and cub porn, but they aren't explicit about all of the items on this list.

Will discord use these rules punitively against shit they shouldn't without warning? Almost certainly yes. But as for why they're making them, it's because discord is apparently one of the current favorite places for the distribution of actual abuse images of actual children, and they need to cover their asses.

Still, it's worth exploring your options early.

If you want to host explicit shota fan art, you're looking at a very limited selection of sites. I think a lot of people went to certain Mastodon instances.

If you want to discuss Black Butler in peace... IDK... Maybe check out how Bobaboard is doing? It's going to depend on what features you need. The more you're just making a community on someone else's site, the less liability you personally have. The more you're running your own thing, the more you have to be in charge of legal compliance stuff.

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moonstruckme · 25 days ago

Text

Thawing Out

collab with @ellecdc

cw: modern au, some mature themes (in that it vaguely references past smut), allusion to past abusive dynamics/child abuse, thoughts of being undeserving and general emotional overwhelm

poly!wolfstar x fem!reader ♡ 2.2k words

Sirius becomes aware of his trembling while you’re waiting for your score. It’s not unusual, he could tell himself, just the adrenaline of a big performance working its way out of his system, but he knows better.

Seeing his parents shouldn’t bother him. It doesn’t, really—his tolerance for their shit is certainly lower than when he lived in their house, but he’s not as scared of them as he used to be either. Sirius isn’t sure what’s rattling him so badly now. Maybe it’s you. You and Remus, his team.

Last night felt like a dream. It would have been easy to believe the two of you had been drinking as he had earlier, the way you’d moved together as though in a trance, heavy kisses and sweet, curious touches and the sort of words Sirius has only ever heard in his fantasies. After, when Remus thought you were both asleep, he’d pressed a kiss to your forehead and trailed his fingers through Sirius’ hair like Sirius was a gift to touch.

Sirius stayed half awake through most of the night, blissfully aware of every soft noise Remus made in his sleep, every shift of your body against his. It really was like a long dream, hazy and wonderful. Too good to last.

Waking felt only right. Sirius is not and never has been accustomed to hoping for better than he deserves. And reality is still better; he’s lucky to have it.

By the time he was fully conscious you and Remus were already moving, seemingly in the midst of a panic Sirius didn’t feel any particular need to contribute to. Competition loomed. The two of you seemed at war for who could be the sweetest and most prepared, each bringing caddies of drinks and each trying to sweeten his coffee enough to make it comparable to his beloved caramel latte from back home (neither of you were successful, but Sirius appreciated the effort nonetheless). You’d been fidgety and Remus reticent, but none of you had spoken about the night before. Sirius thought maybe it was best that way; he’d likely play the memory over in his head for the rest of his life, but he’d never ask anything more from either of you than a single night. Remus had been trying to soothe him and you’d been, at best, curious; it didn't have to mean anything. Sirius’ feelings were raw and unruly, but they weren’t your problem. You hadn’t signed on for that. He could tuck them back away.

Then his parents had reared their ugly heads. You’d spoken when Sirius couldn’t—shouted, really. You were ferocious, a force of nature, and then Remus’ voice had been hard as steel when he’d told them to leave. He’d sent the two of you ahead, Sirius still reeling and you trying to steady him, and Remus returned having kicked Sirius’ mother and father out of the rink. (Kicked out! A teenage Sirius would have laughed for days.) You’d stood up for him, really defended him, the both of you.

The knowledge had grounded him enough to hone his hurricane of emotions into determination just before your names were announced. On the ice, Sirius felt your stare as well as Remus’, on him and on each other, and it felt like his lungs were suddenly getting more air than they ever had before. He’d done his best to channel all of it into the routine, and then he was in the kiss and cry, both of your arms around him and this odd feeling shooting all the way down into his fingertips.

He registers your score only distantly. It places you second, at least for the time being. There are a few pairs who still have to compete.

Sirius is happy. He thinks he is, at least, he’s got everything he could possibly want. Two of the best people he’s ever known raining affection down on him like a torrent, a real chance at medaling in the Olympics, and his parents forced to watch it on TV instead of from the stands. He’s so happy he’s shaking with it.

“Sirius.” You’re smiling at him, tears in your eyes, but there’s an uncertainty about your expression. “Are you okay?”

Sirius’ throat tightens, but he speaks through it, squeezing your shoulders and trying to mirror your excitement. “Yeah. Aren’t you?”

Evidently, his performance isn’t as persuasive as he’d like. Your brows bunch. “Of course I am, but…”

To your credit, you’ve never brought up Sirius’ parents after he moved out. Sirius will sometimes joke about it, and you’ll laugh along, but you don’t push him to talk about the things he’s not ready for. He can see you battling that instinct now, trying to decide whether to leave him be or push the issue when you know something’s wrong.

“Let’s get away from here,” says Remus in his usual calm way. He touches a hand between your shoulder blades, encouraging you out of the kiss and cry, knowing Sirius will follow. There’s a short hallway, at the end of it the press room, but Remus steps into a locker room halfway down.

Sirius frowns. “We have to go take questions—”

“They can wait,” Remus says. He sits down on a bench, stretching his leg out in front of him. “Do you need a few minutes?”

Sirius feigns confusion, shaking his head. “I’m fine.”

Remus is unconvinced. “You didn’t really have time to process before going out on the ice. I can’t…I don’t know all about what happened out there, but if it were me I imagine I’d need a while to sort myself out.”

Sirius feels a familiar ire rising up in him, the itch for a good brawl. “Your imaginings aren’t a lot to go off, though, are they? I don’t need anything.”

“Sirius,” you say, softly. Without warning, or without any warnings Sirius can discern, you wrap your arms around him. The stretchy material of your costume slides against his, your wrists crossing over his back and palms flattening by his shoulder blades. After a second Sirius starts to feel like a prick for not hugging you back, so he does.

“Don’t,” you murmur, chin pushing into his shoulder. “You’re shaking.”

So, that’s obvious then.

Sirius holds you close, and he wonders if he could do more. This—hugging—has always been a privilege he felt like he hadn’t earned, but it’s not new. Is he still allowed to kiss you? If he pressed his nose to your neck and stayed there, would you push him away?

He needs you to stroke his hair, or for Remus to call him one of his treacly pet names, to know that these looks passing between you mean something.

“I’m okay,” he says, just as softly. “My parents can’t get to me like that anymore.”

Remus has that infuriatingly attractive perceptive look again, tinged now with sadness. He asks gently, “What’s the matter, then?”

“I…” Sirius shakes his head. He has the urge to think up a lie, something like I’m sore from all the fucking last night or my left sock is bunched horribly in the toe of my skate, but then you’re letting him go, looking up at him, and Sirius finds that he feels not trapped but safe between your gazes. “I’m confused.”

You blink, surprised, but Remus looks as though he understands. “You mean about…”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, god.” Remus lets out a heaving sigh, some tension Sirius hadn’t noticed in his posture releasing. “Me too.”

It’s so unlike him that Sirius laughs. Remus chuckles, too, and you join in somewhat bemusedly. Uncertainty still hangs in the room, but there’s no awkwardness between you. How could there be?

“We didn’t really have the chance to talk anything over, did we?” asks Remus.

“Did we not?” You’re looking between them, seeming genuinely perplexed.

Sirius raises an eyebrow at you. “Not that I recall. I seem to remember the bloody Olympics getting in the way.”

Remus laughs again. You look as surprised as Sirius by this; it’s probably as unwound as you’ve ever seen him. Sirius thinks he could get drunk on the sound.

“I just…” You smile, tentatively. “I thought we talked about it last night.”

Sirius leans his shoulder against the wall, trying to read you. “What do you think we talked about last night?”

“We…didn’t you say…” Your brows draw together for a few moments before your expression shifts, eyes widening. “Was it just sex?”

Sirius’ heart clenches. He shakes his head. He hates—hates—putting his feelings out to be inspected and judged, but he can’t leave you out here by yourself. “Not for me.”

“We were the ones who sprung it all on you,” Remus tells you gently. “It would be understandable if you thought it was only for the night.”

Your arms wrap around your middle, and you’re rubbing your lips together again. Sirius really wishes he could kiss you. He wants, suddenly desperately, to stop talking about all of this and go straight back to bed; he doesn’t care if he’s the one who brought it up. He’ll take whatever he can get with both of you.

“I…was confused, at first,” you admit. “I hadn’t really considered it before, but I think maybe I just hadn’t let myself consider it? I don’t know if that makes sense.”

Your voice is getting smaller as you talk. Sirius can’t stand it.

“It does,” he says. “Listen, as far as I’m concerned, whatever you want it to be, it can. I don’t want to lose either of you.”

No one has ever spoken up for Sirius the way you both did today. Whatever kind you decide to make it, there’s love between you. It’s better than he deserves, but he won’t give it up.

“Sirius.” Remus’ tone is so laden with sympathy Sirius can’t stand it. He doesn’t want to look at him, at either of you, but he’ll never not rise to a challenge. The amber eyes that meet his are warm enough to melt in.

“You couldn’t lose us,” Remus says simply.

Sirius’ hands begin shaking worse than ever.

“Obviously not.” You look almost offended. No longer small, though, so he supposes he’ll take his wins where he can get them. “I love you. I love both of you. I didn’t really think about how or—or in what way until recently, but that’s not going to change. I’m always going to care about you guys. Still, I…I would like to try.” You grow bashful again. Sirius catches’ Remus’ lips twitching at the change. “It wasn’t just sex for me.”

Sirius’ heart inflates. You both look to Remus. He looks surprised to be considered, as if you might’ve forgotten he was there.

“It was never just that for me,” he says, in that blunt way you can only ever really surprise out of him. Sirius feels himself beginning to smile, trying to quell it so Remus can finish. The other boy starts choosing his words more carefully, “I didn’t think…I didn’t want to presume anything, but I think I’ve wanted for more with the both of you for…well, probably since that first week.” His gaze drifts downward, brows pinching concernedly. “Oh, love, stop shaking. Come here, you’re alright.”

Sirius would be a fool to turn down an offer like that. He pushes off from the wall, going to sit beside Remus on the bench. You follow, sitting on Sirius’ other side and snaking your arms around his waist in a tight hug while Remus’ arm comes to rest across his shoulders. The weight of both of you is strangely reassuring; again, Sirius has that feeling, that he’s not trapped but engulfed. Embraced.

“I’m sorry,” you mumble, lips to his shoulder. “They shouldn’t have been here.”

Sirius lifts a hand, bringing it around your head to where a few pieces of hair have begun rebelling against the style you’d put it in for competition. He runs one between his fingers, because he can.

“It’s really okay,” he says. “I’m not upset. I don’t know why I’m still reacting like this. I feel fine.”

Remus makes a considerate humming sound. “It’s been a long day.”

“It’s not even noon,” you point out.

Sirius laughs, and the two of you do, too, holding onto each other despite your exhaustion.

“A lot has happened,” Remus amends. “We can relax now, though, yeah? No more parents, no more competition. You’ve done the best you can, and it was amazing, truly, but now you can ease up.”

Sirius is beginning to feel better, some unknown part of him unspooling. There was the disbelief, the hazy dream of last night. Then the fraught, tremulous happiness of morning, charged looks and harsh words spoken not at but for each other. And then there’s this. New, precious, but it doesn’t feel delicate. It feels like the rush of lowering you into a death spiral and knowing he can trust you to bear it. Knowing you can trust him to keep you up.

You sigh. “We still have to talk to the press, though.”

“Oh, that’s not so bad.” Remus’ arm tightens around Sirius’ shoulders, squeezing. There’s a smile in his voice. “You’ll do great. Who wouldn’t love the two of you?”

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whisper-my-serenade · 1 year ago

Text

revelations

a hypothetical chapter in the life of neil perry (featuring a concerning amount of james dean references)

word count: 4512

cw: emotional abuse/manipulation, implied self harm

It wasn’t until Neil Perry arrived at Welton Academy that he realized his family was painfully middle-class. All the boys in his class had summer homes, trust funds, Roman numerals tacked onto the ends of their names, and not one of them, to Neil’s knowledge, had gone to public school. He was twelve years old, had more brains than he knew what to do with, and, for the first time in his short life, he was alone.

It hadn’t been his idea, of course—his father’s detractors were quick to call him a “social climber”, a name his father detested, and yet he had no hesitation sending his only child to boarding school and inundating him with schoolwork just for the chance to say he had a son who was a Harvard-graduate doctor. Neil didn’t understand the appeal of the whole scheme—it was costly, time-consuming, and had put his mother in tears on multiple occasions—but according to his father, he wasn’t supposed to. “You’ll understand when you’re older,” was the chorus that came every time Neil tried to ask why he had to leave his friends and go to a school so far away. He was not, though, too young to understand the sacrifices his father was making to send him there, and thus why it was imperative that he be the best student possible.

Neil was not much one to question what his father said. His mother had taught him that from the time he was old enough to comprehend it: his father was the man of the house and his authority was not to be questioned. It was better for everyone involved to just give in. There were incentives to being good, too—Neil always remembered the pride on his father’s face when he was told that he was the smartest kid in his elementary school, how they’d all gone out for milkshakes after, how the story was repeated at Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter to the never-ending praise of his relatives. By the time sixth grade was done and the course of his life was suddenly set in stone, Neil figured the whole Harvard thing had to be pretty easy, seeing as he was doing so well with the plan so far.

And then Welton actually happened, Neil began to mature, and it was no longer so simple.

As it turned out, it took a lot more than brains to make it in a place like that—there was a whole new social code to learn, much higher standards than he was used to, and not a familiar face to guide him. He called his mother every day that first week, feeling desperately homesick and missing her kind, soft voice, her cooking, the way she held him when he was upset. She repeatedly assured him that everything would work itself out, but he was nearly inconsolable. He was surrounded by boys he didn’t understand, teachers who were no longer impressed by his every movement, all to reach a goal that was as mysterious to him as the distant planets. “You’ll understand when you’re older,” she said, parroting his father’s words, when he asked why he was sent away. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t just know now. ‘Older’ seemed a very long way away.

By the time he was fifteen, and two years into Welton, things were better. As it turned out, he was not the only outcast at the school, and it didn’t take long for him to form an inviting, if not close-knit, group of friends to lighten the weight of the constant pressure on him. His father’s expectations were as high as ever, but he was on track to make it through. His future was some vague, shiny thing that was still just a little too far away to touch, and he was okay with that.

The summer of 1957 came barreling in, Neil waving goodbye to his Welton friends and retreating back to the cold air-conditioned walls of his house, enveloped in a sense of solitude his home used to be respite from. But he was Neil—could not stand to be alone—and he sought company wherever it could be found.

Most of his friends from elementary school were still around, going to the local public school and planning on becoming electricians, construction workers, maybe working at a bank if they were real high achievers—a far cry from Neil’s Ivy League destiny. Little kids could get along with anyone, really; you pretend to be dragons with someone on the playground once and suddenly your mom is driving you to their house or you’re playing little league together. But Neil had grown since then, the others had grown too, and now he felt it was like meeting whole new people, a whole new self to introduce them to.

That summer, it was a boy named Henry who taught Neil how to smoke cigarettes and sneak into the movies and play spin-the-bottle and kiss the girls it landed on. Neil remembered him as a kid, spinning wild tales that no one ever quite believed but were all ravenous for anyways, and he still carried himself with the same bravado, the eagerness to prove his manliness, and thus, his worth. Neil sometimes felt like he was a little pet to Henry—the dandy going to a fancy boarding school who would not understand the habits of the lower class, even though they’d grown up in the same neighborhood—and the other boy would have him around for show-and-tell purposes while the rest of them play-pretended maturity. It was a summer of drinking root beers on the sidewalk in front of the corner store, pretending they were real, watching little kids kick a ball down the street and acting like you were superior while secretly wishing to be among them, to be young again. Neil felt like James Dean. It was wonderful.

☽ ☼ ☾

“You and your fucking James Dean,” Henry hissed, spitting on the ground like he was chewing tobacco. “What’s so special about him, anyways?”

Neil laughed, flicking a bottle cap over and over off his thumb. “I don’t know, I just think he’s great. You’ve seen Rebel, you’ve got to admit he looks cool as all get-out.”

That was not the full truth. Neil was, in fact, quite obsessed with James Dean, a matter he kept deeply hidden out of embarrassment. There was something alluring about the man’s smile, the gleam of mischief and discontent in his eye, the flawlessness of his slicked-back hair and the messiness of his personality. To Neil he was magical—Rebel Without a Cause had flipped his twelve-year-old self’s worldview upside down, sneaking out of Welton for the very first time to see it, then doing it twice more. He couldn’t explain the fascination, it just was what it was. His death was colossally tragic, but even the grave could not keep that man out of Neil’s head.

“‘Get-out’, what the hell is wrong with you?” Henry laughed, poking fun, as he often did, at Neil for his verbal piety. What could he say, it was the way he was raised—every time he swore, he could hear his mother’s voice in his head, telling him God didn’t like it. His friend Charlie from school said it was a Catholic thing.

Neil laughed too, not really thinking it was funny, kicking a pebble along the ground.

“I think he looked cool,” said Mary-Ellen, Henry’s girlfriend of an astonishing (for their age, and for Henry,) two months, who was the only other movie buff of the group and the closest thing to what Neil would call a true friend.

“Oh, of course you do, Mary-Ellen,” Henry said, standing and taking out a carton of cigarettes and a pack of matches, putting one white stick in his mouth and discreetly glancing at the street around them, making sure no one was watching, before he struck the match and lit it. He breathed out, gray ashy smoke filling the air. “You’re just as bad, swooning over all the hunks in Photoplay.”

Mary-Ellen shrugged, scooting closer to Neil on the curb to fill in Henry’s empty space. “They’re interesting, though, aren’t they, Neil?” That was Neil’s other guilty pleasure—reading Hollywood tabloid magazines. Movies had always been an escape for him, and dammit if he wasn’t going to try and make the magic last long after the credits finished rolling. Mary-Ellen was the only person he knew who would read them with him (and provide them—Lord knew what his father would do if he caught Neil buying thay stuff).

“Ha, Neil probably only likes them for the Jayne Masfield spreads,” Henry said, taking another hit of the cigarette and blowing the smoke to the wind. Neil had to admit, it was attractive. He couldn’t quite see whatever Mary-Ellen saw in Henry, but there was something about the easy way he carried his masculinity on his shoulders that Neil admired, his own always feeling a bit like Atlas carrying the weight of the heavens.

☽ ☼ ☾

Neil knew why his dad was the way he was. His own father died when he was only nine, killed in action somewhere in the French countryside, a closed-casket funeral. His mother had spiraled, instilling her two surviving sons with religious fervor and the willpower to defy the tragedy of their father. But then there was the Depression, Thomas Perry’s college degree doing him little good in finding stability for himself and his new wife (and the children they were supposed to be having, that kept not appearing). Several miscarriages and a New Deal government job later, Neil was born into a somewhat-satisfied middle-class family. But Thomas wanted more, more, wanted Neil to inherit the opportunities he felt he’d missed. He was their only child, their only chance—he had to be perfect.

There were things his parents didn’t talk about—Neil assumed that was the case with every family. His grandfather was not brought up; Neil assumed there was embarrassment there, bitterness about his wasted life and early death. His parent’s troubles conceiving was another sore subject—it was only brought up when Neil was being scolded, when he needed reminding about how he was lucky to be alive, how hard his parents had worked to even bring him into the world. It was his father saying those things, forcing his wife to leave the room in tears. He called her “sensitive” behind her back. “Typical woman,” he’d say to Neil with a short, clipped laugh. And then he’d glare when Neil didn’t find it funny, too.

☽ ☼ ☾

“Oh, Natalie Wood’s so pretty,” Mary-Ellen said with a sigh, staring at the cover photo of the woman in question, wearing a wide-brimmed hat with a striped scarf wrapped around it. They were both on their stomachs on the dark wooden floor of Neil’s bedroom, elbows propping them up. Neil’s small portable radio bubbled in the background, playing Young Love by Tab Hunter. “I’d give anything to look like her,” Mary-Ellen went on, stroking a finger over Natalie’s pale printed cheek. Neil loved Natalie, too, remembered her from Rebel lying in James Dean’s well-built arms.

Neil gave her a little laugh. “Come on, you’re plenty pretty already.”

Mary-Ellen blushed heavily, glancing at him. “You think so?”

“‘Course. All the guys are after you for a reason.” It was true一she was really pretty, in the way Neil found most girls pretty, like looking at a painting. When he tried to think about it, he often saw girls in the same way he saw God—unearthly, distant, untouchable. Being near them, kissing them, made them tangible for a moment, but then they pulled back and the moment, the feeling, was gone. Neil never quite got the hang of religion, and he never quite got girls.

“Well, I’m not a glamorous Hollywood star yet, so I think she’s still got me beat.” The two laughed as Mary-Ellen began flipping through the magazine, looking for interesting articles or photos. Something about a musical starring Doris Day that was coming out soon, a write-up about Jayne Mansfield (Neil internally groaned, remembering Henry’s comment), and, “Oh, what's this?”

Mary-Ellen laid the magazine in front of him, revealing a full-page photo of a handsome man amid some greenery, the opposite side showing photos of him doing various manual labor tasks. “Oh, that’s George Nader,” Neil said, still studying the photos. “He was in Congo Crossing—Henry and I snuck out to see it last year.”

“Well isn’t he a dreamboat,” she said, both their eyes transfixed on the page.

“Yeah,” was all Neil could think to say.

Because he was a dreamboat. Neil figured he wasn’t supposed to say it, being a guy and all, but he’d been thinking it since he first saw the man. Dark hair perfectly slicked back, thick biceps visible below the his cut-off shirt sleeves, a playful grin on his well-carved face. He was the perfect masculine man, and yet there was something in the way he was looking into the camera that twisted something in Neil’s gut.

“Here, ‘article continued on page ninety-three,’” Mary-Ellen read, picking up the magazine and flipping to the indicated page. For a split second, Neil wanted to tell her to stop and stay on the pictures, but he retracted the thought before it could leave his mouth.

☽ ☼ ☾

Mary-Ellen left the magazine there that night, surely by accident. They got caught up in conversation (they always did) and then her mother came around asking for her home, and his mother came up asking for her to oblige, and she did, and Neil was alone again. His father wouldn’t be home from work for another few hours, and he had some algebra he knew the man would insist he start studying to give him an edge for the next upcoming school year, but Neil couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he picked up the magazine, flipped it to the page he had admittedly been thinking about all afternoon, and stared and stared and stared until his brain started to rot.

☽ ☼ ☾

“Dirty Commies, back at it again. Problem’s just been getting worse, ever since McCarthy died,” Mr. Perry said, frowning at the newspaper in front of him. It was after dinner, and the Perrys were completing their nightly ritual of sitting in the same room, fulfilling completely different tasks. Mr. Perry was reading the newspaper articles—he only read the headlines in the morning, so he could make comments at work. Mrs. Perry was mending one of her son’s shirts, the repeated motion of her hand and needle a smooth wave. “Boys will be boys,” she had said fondly when he told her of the tear. Neil was on the other end of the couch, a copy of Moby Dick in his hand but his mind making no attempt to comprehend it. Still thinking about the stupid magazine.

Mrs. Perry sighed, as she always did when her husband brought up politics. She didn’t like the subject, she’d tell her son when he was out of the room. Men making messes out of things, as per usual. She didn’t like how partisan it was—couldn’t they all learn to get along?

“Do you have something to say, honey?” Mr. Perry asked sarcastically, and Neil froze up in his seat. He hated when his dad was like this, picking fights because he knew he could win.

“No, no,” his mother replied, as quickly and casually as she could. She hated Joe McCarthy, but only Neil knew that.

His father scoffed, folding the paper and laying it on the end table next to him. “I can’t read any more of that crap. You should have gone into politics, Neil, maybe fixed a few things in this country.”

He shrugged. “Not too late,” he replied, half serious.

“Hm, no, you’re too much like your mother for that, too soft.” He smiled a little. It was not something he took pride in, his emotional hurricane of a son. But the words now were not said with malice, only a father’s fondness. All three of them smiled, because they knew it was true.

☽ ☼ ☾

The next day, he found the magazine.

It was Neil’s fault, really—he was stupid enough to leave it lying on the floor, open to the only page he thought worth looking at, when his father came in to check on the state of his summer schoolwork. It had, predictably, sent him into a rage that Neil could have no reaction to other than sitting on his bed, eyes at the floor, nails digging into where he held his arm, eyes downcast, taking the beating. Thomas Perry never laid a hand on his son, but his tongue was much sharper than his fist ever could be, and was much better at finding Neil’s weak spots.

“...son of mine reading filthy, common trash like this?” he roared, ripping the magazine apart straight down the center. “Who at Harvard is going to let in some nancy who spends all his time off in Wonderland instead of studying, huh?”

Neil felt the anger and shame rise in him, tears pricking behind his eyes and, despite his better judgment, he bit back. “It’s just fun, it’s harmless, it’s—”

“Enough out of you! I don’t work my ass off every day to send you to that school just for you to come home and fill your brain with this garbage.” He threw the tattered pieces of glossy paper on the floor. “Let me guess, it’s those friends of yours, hm? They put you up to all this nonsense? Was it that girl?”

Neil’s mouth opened and closed again, gaping like a fish. He was helpless when it came to scoldings like this.

“You stay away from her, hear me? She obviously likes you—don’t need you getting mixed up with types like that.”

Neil gulped. He knew his next line—it was practically scripted for him. “Yes, sir.”

“And I don’t want to see another glimpse of anything like that—”he pointed to the scraps on the hardwood, “—in my house ever again, understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

☽ ☼ ☾

That was not the first time Neil questioned his purpose in living. It came on him in waves every so often, binding him to wherever he sat, eyes wide with terror—sometimes filled with tears, sometimes dry as a desert. Couldn’t there be something more than school and college and work? Could something be greater outside the airtight walls his father had built around him? Wasn’t there someone who thought about things the way he did—wanting, hoping, praying to break free?

That night, he felt the wrong words ringing in his head. All the opportunities he’d been given, needed to get into Harvard, yeah, he’d heard that before. She obviously likes you. That was new.

Every time he’d hung out with Mary-Ellen flashed through his head like a movie, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d missed something in their relationship. Was the whole thing much less uncomplicated than he’d gone through the years believing? He almost laughed at the thought that she could have a crush on him. There wasn’t anyone better to dream of than sad, soft, screwed-up Neil?

Neil stared at the scraps of the magazine. Somewhere in the pile, the warm eyes and keen grin of George Nader stared back. He knew that if this were a movie, this would be the point where he’d run back down the street calling Mary-Ellen’s name, or go to her house and try to sneak in her window, desperate to declare his love for her. If this were Rebel Without A Cause, he would whisk her away in his Mercury Coupe and take her to the old, run-down mansion to play family like small children, his father be damned. But this was not a movie, and Neil was no James Dean. Even if he was, there would be something missing—he had no Plato. The story wasn’t complete without Plato.

Why did it seem that everyone else around him was obsessed with boys and girls and relationships? Neil had never felt anything like that particularly strongly—was something wrong with him? It couldn’t be that he didn’t want any of that—he did—but why was it that every time he tried to picture it it seemed like a piece of the puzzle was always missing? And why did it hurt so much to think that? Why couldn’t he just want whatever his father wanted? Wouldn’t that be so much easier?

He thought about praying, asking the Lord for forgiveness (he wasn’t sure what for, it was just what you were supposed to do) and to iron out whatever was wrong with him so he could go on with his life and live out his father’s dreams. But the words didn’t come, and Neil begrudgingly thought that if God made everyone perfect, then this wasn’t something He could fix, was it? It was Neil’s fault, Neil was the mistake, and Neil was the one who had to find that missing piece. Maybe if he found Mary-Ellen, got his Hollywood ending, he could solve it. Maybe he would take her to that old mansion and there would be no Plato and that would be fine and no one would have to die and he would go home to his parents and they could all just go on living. Maybe if he kissed her until he couldn’t breathe he would find himself enjoying it and realize it had all been a fluke. But when he tried to picture the moment, it was James Dean’s face in his head.

He curled up on the floor, back to his bed frame, shoving the ruins of the magazine out of his sight. He couldn’t stand to look at it. He couldn’t stand himself. He kept driving his nails into his arm, coating the freckled skin until it was covered in bruised half-moons. He tried to breathe, doing his best to keep the tears from falling—and failing, like everything else he’d ever done.

☽ ☼ ☾

It must have been late at night when his mother came in, wrapped in her robe and with her hair bound in rollers. She forced open his window—the room was very stuffy, he realized—then sat down on the bed next to him, mattress spring creaking under the weight of her.

Neil loved his mother—loved her soft voice, her clear blue eyes, the softness of her wrinkled hands. She had crow’s feet from the way she smiled with her eyes, and the same dimples Neil had. The two of them were more similar than they were different, always had been. He felt more relaxed around her than he ever did his father, her expectations lighter and her words gentler. How many nights had an argument broken out between father and son and it was her arms he crawled into, that caressed his hair while he cried, told him everything would be okay?

Sometimes he wished she would speak out—stand up against the mistreatment of her son, speak her true beliefs. But how could he blame her for her cowardice when he was the same way?

He was too big to be held now—they both knew it—but that didn’t stop her from putting an arm around him, gently rubbing his neck as he buried his head into her shoulder blade.

“Did he tell you?” he asked in little more than a whisper.

“Yes,” she said quietly in return.

“I didn’t think it was that big of a deal,” he said, shifting slightly to lay his head against her.

“It’s not, darling, it will pass. These things always do.”

“But he was so mad. I don’t get it.”

“You’re different from him,” she said, staring off into some unknown distance. “You always have been.”

Neil sat up, not moving her hand from his shoulder but using his own to cover his face, sinking into his knees. “Why can’t I ever be good enough for him? What does he want from me?”

“Neil, you are good enough,” she responded tenderly. “He wants a family he can be proud of, and you make him proud.”

“But it’s not ever enough—there’s always more, more, more that I have to do, something else I have to be. What if I can’t do all of it?”

“You can, love. I know you can.”

“I can’t.” A bitter silence consumed them.

After a long minute, his mother took a deep breath, taking his face in her hands and turning him to look at her. “He loves you. No matter what you can or can’t do, he loves you.”

Neil was silent for a moment, his jaw tightening.“He doesn’t act like that’s the case.”

His mother sighed, releasing him, taking his hands instead. “Don’t take it so hard, Neil. He’s not trying to hurt you—you’re just letting your emotions get the best of you. That’s a woman’s job,” she laughed, but he didn’t laugh with her. “Why don’t you go to bed, darling? You’ll feel better after some sleep.”

He sighed, shoulders sinking down. “Alright,” he said, mostly just to please her.

She stood up, leaning down quickly to give him a kiss on the forehead. “I love you, Neil.”

“Love you too,” he said, and watched her walk away.

☽ ☼ ☾

Life went on, as it always did.

The local movie theater was still playing Giant, so Neil snuck out to see it for a third time. He ran into Mary-Ellen on the way there, and she decided to go see it with him, so it was the two of them side-by-side in the dark, cool theater. She asked if he was excited to go back to school, back to his far-off world of yachts and nepotism. He said yes, meant it mostly. About halfway through, she curled up against him, her head on his shoulder and he knew that, if he had been there, Henry would have been furious. He didn’t really care, though; didn’t care if his parents came home early and found him gone or if he didn’t get into Harvard or anything. He’d make it through. He always did.

He watched as James Dean stumbled drunkenly around the screen, bemoaning his lost love in his career’s eleventh hour. There was something bitter in the performance, some prophetic knowledge that his actions—ironically, the very same he was portraying—would mean he’d never see this film to completion, that audiences would flood its theaters to mourn him. How unhappy had he been, Neil wondered. Was his success not all it had been cracked up to be? Had there been a part of him that maybe wanted to be crushed in the metal shell of that car?

Mary-Ellen moved her hand to rest on top of his. Neil made no motion in return. When it ended, they both sat in their seats, completely still, the brightening house lights glinting off the tear tracks on Neil’s face. He felt incredibly, fantastically alone.

(tagging folks who commented on the companion piece to this! @noblerinthemind @cowboylexapro )

#another piece of dpscu lore :)#this has actually been done for a bit but writers block is kicking my ass and I feel like feeding you people #I swear it will end up ao3 when I have an acceptable amount of it #dps #dead poets society #dead poets society fanfiction #dps fic #neil perry #anderperry #even tho todd technically isn’t in it lol #phoenix writes :D #my post

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