#die casting companies near me

[houstonindia]

Top Casting Manufacturers in Howrah, West Bengal | Call 9163221666

✔️ Strictly follow quality control regime ✔️ Products at competitive prices ✔️ Consider the latest market demands ✔️ Maintain prompt and scheduled delivery ✔️ Encourage suggestions and feedback from customers

[roastedoatmilk]

Toro

Gale Dekarios x Tav (Alys)

Summary: Fly to Miami in the morning we better make this one count

Basically my take on Gale’s act two romance scene (Alys gives gale the best fucking of his life after he bares his heart to her)

Word Count: 4.5k

Tags: slight angst, fluff, breast play, oral (f receiving), body worship, unprotected piv (dont do this be safe yall), alys has a bit of a praise kink. gale and alys being disgustingly in love, alys giving gale the love he deserves

this was also posted on ao3 !!!

A/N dividers by @/cafekitsune gif belongs to @galedekarios also thank you so much to the amazing lexi @ayyy-pee for proofreading this please go check out her works they’re so incredibly good !!!

The last thing Alys expected to see when she entered camp was a mirror image of Gale standing in front of his tent. She walked up to the image curious as to where the real Gale was. 

As soon as she stood in front of the image it began to speak,  “Good evening! I am here on behalf of Gale of Waterdeep. He wishes to extend you an invitation for a private conversation in a more suitable locale.” 

The invitation intrigued the drow, “Very well, show me the way.” 

“Gladly.” The image spoke. “Simply follow yonder path and soon you will find him.”

Alys took that as the go ahead and followed the path down to an opening in the forest. There she saw Gale sitting on the grass in the middle of casting some sort of spell that was making the sky various shades of blue and purple. Alys had never seen anything quite like it before, the fact that Gale himself was able to create this filled her with amazement. The sky seemed to change shades often going from darker blues and purples to lighter ones. After making her way over to the brown haired wizard she sits down next to him, her hand almost on top of his own.

“I love this time of night. There’s an almost reverent silence that accompanies the peak of darkness, when you’d almost believe the dawn will never break.” The wizard speaks, “ The cradle of eternity, the timelessness of lovers. That most beautiful of fantasies.” 

Alys turns to him and smiles, absolutely enamored with him. “It’s breathtaking, Gale. Is this starry sky your doing?” 

Gale smiles back at her, proud of his work. “The curse is still present of course- Just veiled and at arm’s length for now. Not a trick I can repeat often, but tonight? Tonight is worth it.” 

At his admittance to this Alys feels her cheeks warm, the thought that he did this for her made her heart flutter. As she sits next to him she can feel his warmth practically radiate off of him even under the layer of clothes that he had on. 

Gale clears his throat before he begins to speak again, “This may be my last night alive. I wanted it to be under a canopy of beauty and wonder, and with company to match. 

After he says the word beauty his head turns to face Alys causing the warmth in her face to burn hot, a dark purple flush making its way onto her cheeks. Gale sure knew all the right words to say to make her fall even deeper for him. 

“I thought this place might bring me peace. I thought it might make the weight of what I must do feel a little lighter…but I am not so sure.” Gale’s face falls as he speaks of the heavy burden he carries, finally taking its toll on him. 

“Is this truly what you want?” Alys questions her voice soft, “To die for the promise of Mystra’s forgiveness?” She desperately wants to reach out to comfort him,but fears it would spook him. 

The frown on Gale’s face deepens at the drow’s questioning, “Babe or crone, coward or hero, death is assured. Mystra’s forgiveness is not. If you knew the end was near, would you not want to ensure it had meaning?” 

Alys frowns at this, her heart aching for the weight of what Gale believes he has to do. 

The brown haired man then continues, “I am terrified- I will not claim otherwise. My face could scarcely conceal it even if my words sought to deny it.” His voice shakes as he speaks. Alys watches the man bearing his heart to her wishing there was more she could do to lessen this burden. The fact that he believes there is no other way to stop the Absolute than to sacrifice himself makes her heart ache. She mentally curses Mystra for putting Gale in this position, angry with the goddess for placing such a heavy burden onto Gale knowing that he wouldn’t defy her. Alys is determined to convince Gale that there is another way to defeat the Absolute that wouldn’t cost him his life.  

“There is no point in running from the inevitable. Better to meet it, on my own terms” Gale briefly looks at her, his brown eyes watery. 

Alys’ throat constricts, already feeling tears well up in her eyes. “Nothing is inevitable. Not when we face it together. You don’t have to die.” She manages to force out, her voice scratchy. 

Gale turns to her with a sad smile on his face, “One moment with you could sate me for a lifetime, and prise the fear from my heart. I’m so very glad you came, to share this with me.” The wizard’s voice is raspy, it’s obvious he is also trying his hardest not to cry. 

“I know this is all unreal, but I created it for you. You must know that you’re… That you’re very special to me.” Gale revealing that he did in fact create this for her causes a tear to finally roll down Alys’ light purple cheek, she rushes to wipe away the tear before he could see it. 

Gale takes a deep breath before he continues speaking, “If things were different, if we were home, I’d have taken time to do things properly. To say it all better, but time is short.” 

Gale turns to Alys and cups her cheek with his hand, “I’m in love with you.” He caresses her cheekbone with his thumb. 

“I’m in love with you too.” Alys utters softly, leaning into his warmth. 

Gale lets out a chuckle, pressing his forehead against Alys’. “That’s a relief. It would be a shame to spend my final hours making an ass of myself.” 

Alys giggles at the man, even after opening up and baring his heart to her he still manages to be the same silly wizard she fell in love with. Alys leans forward softly pressing her lips against his to gauge his reaction. He responds by firmly pressing his against her own. Alys lets out a hum at the feeling of his lips finally touching hers. They’re chapped due to being in the elements for so long, but Alys finds that she doesn’t care much. She reaches her hand up to cup the back of Gale’s head pulling him closer to her, she lightly drags her tongue across his bottom lip asking for entrance. Gale immediately opens his mouth to her in response, Alys takes her time exploring his mouth knowing that this could very well be the last time she is able to have him like this. Gale groans when her fingers dig into his hair, her nails lightly scratching against his scalp. He moves his free hand down to grip her hip pulling her closer until she’s practically on top of him. They kept kissing until they inevitably had to part for air, Alys pulled herself away from her lover and grins while gulping down air. 

“You’re a good kisser.” The drow giggles, taking in just how beautiful Gale looks right now. His face flushes a bright red, hair ruffled and messy from when she was gripping it, spit slicking his lips making them shine in the moonlight. 

Gale lets out a laugh at this, his eyes crinkling up. “And you’re a bad liar. I have lived the life of a hermit for some time before I met you- safer for all, but not conducive to pleasures of the flesh.” 

Gale then moves out from under Alys and stands up reaching out a hand out for her to grab, she takes it and lets him help her up. The two can now fully see each other for the first time since she found him in this opening. Taking him in, Alys can’t help but notice a sizable bulge beginning to form beneath the fabric of his pants. 

“I want it to be perfect- to bond with you in the way that gods do… Intertwining our spirits in visions of the Weave.” Gale utters his voice still raspy but for an entirely different reason now.

“I don’t need illusions.” Alys says her voice sultry as she eyes him hungrily, “I want the Gale standing right in front of me.” 

Gale gulps when he sees the look in the drow’s eyes, he feels the tightness in his pants grow painful. He steps towards her and gingerly grabs her hips pulling her to him until she can feel the shape of him press into her lower stomach. Alys once again cups the back of the wizard’s head and crashes her lips onto his, their teeth knocking together from the sheer force of her kiss. His lips fit so perfectly against her own as if he was truly made for her, Alys sighs against his lips pressing even harder against him. Gale groans and grips Alys’ hips tightly, moving his lips against hers. Alys feels a fire light in her core, a wet patch beginning to form in her underclothes. She lets out a moan as Gale trails his hands under her shirt meeting her warm, light purple skin when he grabs her bare hips. She pulls her lips away from his, causing him to let out a whine. Alys laughs at him before she grips the hem of her shirt and pulls it over her head baring her breasts to the man in front of her, having forgone her chest wrap that evening. Alys shivers as the cool night air brushes against her bare chest, gooseflesh prickling up her arms. She never quite got used to just how cold being above ground can be.  

Gale steps back his eyes wide as he takes the sight of her bare chest in, Alys focuses her eyes on one of the trees in the distance suddenly self conscious. It had been quite some time since she was last with someone in this way, as she begins to move her hands to cover her chest Gale grabs ahold of them preventing her from covering herself up.

“You are…. Magnificent, please don't shy away from me.” Gale rasps and then pulls her back towards him leaning his head down to begin placing kisses on the side of her neck. 

Alys lets out a small moan reaching to dig her fingers into Gale’s hair, the feeling of his facial hair scratching against the sensitive skin of her neck has her pussy drooling. Nobody had ever touched her this gently, most of her past experiences were rough and quick but Gale is taking his time with her…Worshiping her. Gale’s kisses move down from her neck to her collarbones, he scrapes his teeth against the skin leaving behind dark purple blotches in his wake. Alys knew her companions would have something to say about the marks come morning but she couldn’t find it within herself to care at the moment. Alys let out small moans each time Gale drags his teeth against her skin, her fingers gripping his hair tighter the farther down her chest he moves. Gale makes his way down to the valley of her breasts kissing down the middle before moving to press kisses against the fat of her right breast. Gale moves one of his hands that were gripping the drow’s hips up to grasp the unoccupied breast kneading the tissue with his fingers. Gale closes his lips around Alys’ right nipple causing a wail to tear through her throat echoing throughout the empty woods. Alys can already feel sweat starting to slicken her skin making it practically glow in the moonlight.

Gale removes himself briefly from her nipple to groan out, “Yes my love, let me hear you.” before returning to working on the bud. 

His fingers start tweaking the nipple that isn't occupied with his mouth, groaning around her as he feels his bulge strain against his pants begging for friction. Gale releases Alys’ nipple with a pop before standing up and leading her to the blanket they had sat on earlier. He lightly nudges her to lay down whispering in her ear, “Lay down my gorgeous girl, let me worship you the way you deserve.” 

Alys feels a pang in her core at the praise causing her to let out a whimper, she lays down on the blanket her dark blue fanning out behind her after having freed it from its usual ponytail for the night. Gale moves to hover over her pressing a few firm kisses to the drow’s lips before making his way down Alys’ body until he was face to face with her pants covered core. She can feel the heat coming off of him in waves. The brown haired man hooks a finger under the garment before looking up at her silently asking if it was okay for him to remove them. Alys props herself up on her forearms looking down at him and nods her head. 

“I need you to use your words my love.” Gale breathes, eager to finally please her. 

“Please Gale I need your mouth on me.” Alys begs, her mind already cloudy with want. A deep purple flush having completely taken over her cheeks and ears. 

Gale chuckles before sliding the drow’s pants and underclothes down her hips in one go, he gets them about half way down before Alys gets impatient and kicks them the rest of the way off herself. The wizard grins at her eagerness. He watches as she spreads her legs open revealing her dripping core to him. Gale’s breath hitches at the sight before him, he leans in and presses his cheek to her inner thigh as he takes a deep inhale his eyes roll to the back of his head as he gets high on her scent . Alys lets out a gasp at the feeling of his warm breath so close to her intimate parts, her hand reaching to pet the brown locks of her love. Gale groans and buries his face into her core using his tongue to trace a line from her hole to her clit, the taste of her quickly becoming his favorite thing in the world. Alys all but yells out a moan at the feeling of his tongue on her and grips his hair with such force that if she were in a better state of mind she would fear she was hurting him. She had never felt pleasure like this before outside of the alone time she had with herself, her previous lovers tending to get straight to the main event not taking the time to warm her up most of the time.

If it was hurting him, Gale took no notice if anything the pain all but spurred him on, he hooks his arms under her thighs as he continues to feast on her. Gale moves his lips to wrap around the bud near the top of her mound making Alys keen, her back arching. The wizard lets out a grunt into her cunt as he feels more of her essence flood into his mouth, he traces a finger around the drow’s hole before dipping the very tip of it in and pulling it back out. 

Alys groans tears welling in her eyes, “Gale, please don’t tease me. I need to feel you.” she cries. 

Gale hums against her in response and slips a single finger inside her, letting her get used to the feeling. Alys gasps at the intrusion. The wizard’s finger is much thicker than her own reaching parts of her that she can’t manage to on her own. After a moment, Gale slips another finger into her causing a whimper to come from the woman above him. Two of his fingers equaled three of her own, the stretch causing a delicious burn. He continues sucking on her clit while she gets used to the stretch. Before long Alys starts to buck her hips into his face indicating that she wants more, the wizard smirks and begins to pump the two fingers in and out of her curling them in a come hither motion on their way out. The tips of his fingers pressed against that spongy spot inside her that causes Alys to cry out, bursts of pleasure shooting throughout her body. She can feel the tension in her core starting to tighten, her body heating up. Her chest heaves as Gale slips a third finger in alongside the other two making Alys arch even farther into his face, he can tell she’s close by how her pussy clenches. It only takes a few more pumps of his fingers and a hard suck on her clit for the tension in Alys’ core to snap her pussy spasming around Gale’s fingers. Alys practically sees stars as her release washes over her, her thighs squeezing Gale’s head. He moans into her cunt as the taste of her orgasm fills his mouth.Gale continues to fuck her with his fingers as she rides out her high. After a few moments Alys twitches her hips back to try and get him away from her sensitive core, Gale gets the hint and removes his fingers as softly as he can causing her to let out a whimper at the emptiness of her core. 

Gale moves back to sit on his haunches and licks his fingers clean of her slick, savoring the taste and Alys thinks that shes never seen a man look so fucking attractive before. Alys’ chest heaves and she tries to calm her fluttering heart, her blue hair plastered to her forehead. When she takes in the sight of her lover who is still fully clothed, his hair looks like he just went through a windstorm with how crazed it was. The entirety of the lower half of his face was covered in her juices, the sheen of it glistening in the moonlight. Alys’ face burns in embarrassment as she realizes that she was the one who made him look this way. 

“Gods Gale, where did you learn how to do that?” Alys croaks, her cunt still twitching with aftershocks. 

Gale cackles his head, tipping back, “I had plenty of time to read while in my tower; perhaps I picked up a thing or two.” The wizard says with a smug smile on his face.

Alys looks at the man before her and smiles. “C’mere you.” She giggles, reaching for him. 

Gale pulls off his clothes until he is as bare as her before he moves to hover over the drow. The hairs on his chest lightly brush against Alys’ sensitive nipples making her whimper. Propping himself up on his arms he looks down at Alys admiring just how stunning she looks like this, he knows that if this is indeed his last night he wouldn’t want it any other way being here with her makes him feel complete. Alys notices the wizard being lost in thought, cupping his face in her hands. 

“I love you Gale of Waterdeep so, so much.” She sighs, caressing his face. Alys was determined to let Gale know just how loved he was so that if he does indeed decide to go through with what Mystra has asked of him, he would know that he was adored up until the very end by the blue haired drow and the rest of their companions. 

Gale feels tears once again well up in his eyes, never having felt so wholly and completely loved before. He sniffles before replying “I love you more than all of the stars in the galaxy my beautiful, beautiful Alys.” 

Alys smiles before gently pulling him down to kiss her, their lips perfectly melding together. “Now make love to me underneath the stars that you most graciously created for us.” She breathes against his lips. 

Gale smiles and reaches down between them to grasp himself, groaning at the feeling of his hand on his neglected cock. He strokes himself a few times before lining himself up at her entrance and slowly pushing himself into her. Alys gasps at the intrusion, the feeling of his cock stretching her was intoxicating. Gale keeps pushing in until his hips press into the patch of blue hair that sits just above Alys’ core. He stills for a moment letting the drow adjust to the feeling of him inside her. Alys keens at the feeling of being filled to the brim, the weight of him inside her drove her insane. The feeling of her walls clenching around him has Gale gritting his teeth trying to will himself to not cum right in that moment. After a bit Alys starts to grind her hips into his, indicating that she wants him to move. The wizard drags his cock out until just the tip remains before thrusting back in. Gale does this a few more times before he finds a rhythm, his engorged cock perfectly hitting that spot inside Alys each time he pushes back inside. Alys lets out high pitched moans each time his tip brushes against it, pleasure shooting throughout her body.

A chorus of moans come from the two of them as they make love, echoing through the woods. Alys’ hands grip onto the pale skin of Gale’s back, her nails digging into the flesh. Gale buries his head into Alys’ neck groaning at the sound of skin slapping against skin. He fucks into her with abandon reveling in her moans and the feel of her against him. Alys moves to push her hand against his chest and before Gale could question her, she wrapped her legs around him and flipped the two of them over. The sight of his love on top of him, her purple sweat slicked skin shining in the moonlight stole the breath from Gale’s lungs. 

Alys herself wasn't faring much better, the tip of Gale’s cock hit so much deeper from this angle making the lower half of her body tingle. Placing her hands firmly on his chest, her fingers brushing against the bottom of where the mark of the cursed orb is. Alys begins to grind her hips against his, her legs still slightly shaking from her last orgasm. Taking a moment to get the hang of being the one on top. Before long she lifted her hips before sinking back down onto him, gasping as he bottoms out. Alys soon finds a rhythm that hits all of the right spots, the drag of Gale’s cock against her walls making her toes curl. She begins to ride him with abandon, her head tipped back, moans steadily falling from her mouth. 

Gale’s grip on her hips was bordering on painful which only fueled Alys more, bouncing on him even harder. The wet smack of skin on skin echos through the forest, anyone within ten feet of the two would be able to tell what they were up to. The familiar tightness in her core makes a reappearance, Alys reaches her hand down to rub circles on her clit only to have Gale bat her hand away and replace it with his own. The wizard rubs fast, tight circles on the nub causing Alys to whine at how good it felt. Gale whimpered at how Alys clenched down on him as he did so.  He can feel that his own end is near but is determined to make Alys cum once more before he does. The drow lets out a shriek as he plants his feet firmly on the ground and begins to fuck up into her causing Alys to dig her nails even deeping into his chest leaving red lines in her wake. Alys feels the pressure in her core tighten even further before it snaps, she wails as sparks shoot over her entire body. Gale grunts as Alys tightens around him, it only takes a few more thrusts before he too reaches his peak filling her with ropes and ropes of his warm cum. 

The two lovers gasp for air as they both come down from their highs, Alys slumps down on top of Gale resting her head on his chest. Gale wraps his hands around her pulling Alys closer to him, rubbing his hands against her back to soothe the both of them. It takes a few moments for either of them to form any sort of thought, Alys smiles against the chest of her love soaking in the moment. She wishes that they could stay in this moment forever and not have to worry about the tadpole swimming around in their brains, defeating Ketheric Thorm, or what Mystra had requested of Gale. She feels a sadness gripping her chest as she thinks of what is to come in the next few days, tears stinging her eyes. Alys clears her throat telling herself to focus on the now, to focus on being with Gale.

“Gods Gale I think you may have to carry me back to camp.” Alys giggles, her throat burning as she holds back tears. The drow not able to feel the lower half of her body, her legs feeling like jelly as she tries to move them. 

“My love I’m not sure either of us are able to walk at the moment.” Gale laughs, pressing his cheek into Alys’ deep blue hair.

Alys perks her head up so that she can look at him and the second the two make eye contact they burst into laughter. The thought of both of them stumbling back to camp was a hilarious one indeed. Alys props her head up on her hand tracing the other one across Gale’s chest playing with the hair there. In all the time that she has known him she’s never seen him as relaxed and at peace as he is in this moment. His hair a mess, strands glued to his forehead by sweat, the flush on his face, the starry look in his eyes. Alys falls even deeper in love with Gale of Waterdeep in that moment. Her mind raced, thinking of how different her life would be if she had never pulled him out of that rock portal.

“Well I suppose you couldn’t conjure up a blanket and some pillows for us could you?” Alys sighs, “I think we may be here for a moment.” 

She can feel the rumbling of Gale’s chest against her cheek as he chuckles, he kisses the top of her head before grabbing onto her hips before lifting her up off of him. Alys lets out a hiss at the feeling of his cock exiting her, her walls now convulsing around nothing cum starting to spill out of her. Gale tenderly lays her down before sitting on his haunches to conjure up some blankets and pillows for the two of them. They were in fact going to be there for a while.

The next morning when the two arrived back at camp completely disheveled, a handful of their companions groaned before reaching into their things to grab some gold and gave it to a very smug looking Astarion and a mildly disgusted Lae’zel. 

A/N i hope y’all enjoyed this please lmk what y’all think of alys and gale 😼

[syngigeim]

Day 6 - Halcyon

In his ‘old age’, Emet-Selch made sure that no one would ever see Solus zos Galvus smile. He had to admit that playing the role of bitter old fool was not such a hard act anymore. Certainly felt more natural than the youth with ambition and grand ideas, though, of course, he still had memories to guide his acting. And besides, he was still the Architect.

He settled into his chair, in his private box within the Majestic Imperial Theater Company’s airship theater. There were benefits to given such an esteemed troupe the glorious patronage as an airship. One being that he could request they dock at his palace whenever he wished to see a performance. Though, this being after the masses were let in via their usual dock. Let them get as close to their magnificent Emperor as they can.

Indeed, merely making his appearance brought the masses to rapturous applause. The Emperor must be given his due. He closed his eyes. He could tell that this body didn’t have much time left. He didn’t need to pretend to care.

The applause died down, and so did the lights. The curtains would rise soon. “Leave me,” he said to his attendants. “I would enjoy this in my solitude.”

“Your Radiance,” they simply said as they saluted and left. They would stand by the door, where they would only hear muffled noises from the stage and the applause. No connection to the art, only their duty remained.

The play begun. It was a tragic tale of how three friends from Corvos were soon to have their lives upended by the upcoming invasion of Garlemald. Their days of peace and plenty would soon end. One would die, one would be blinded and abandoned and the last, to become the first non-Garlean to obtain the title of sas, the highest honor a ‘savage’ could have.

Emet-Selch leaned forward, drinking in every detail. The grand opening of peaceful days, the whispers of something dangerous to the North, all ignored and cast aside. He might have smiled at the excellent practical effects of the first bits of Magitek, now gracing the stage. They were so deserving of his patronage.

One character declared his intent to resist the Empire, to the bitter end. He would be the one to die, heroically. But oh, his monologues to his friends, how to never give up in the face of grand odds. It was all worthless in the end.

Something pricked at Emet-Selch’s mind. What would they have thought of this? His closest and most cherished friends? His heart twisted at the thought of them. He tried to shove the memories aside He would bear no more of them. And yet, they kept coming to his mind as the play went on and on…

This was to be the last performance the Emperor ever attended in his life. The masses noted a rare sight. The Emperor was moved to tears at this performance. Did he know his end was near, and felt moved as he witnessed the sorrow upon the stage? All would speculate, but none would know the Emperor’s true feelings deep within.

[selfindulgentpixies]

Answered prayers

Zhongli x GN!reader So i've been playing a lot of genshin impact recently and this idea kinda smacked me over the head. Not sure if I'll write more for Zhongli and Genshin impact but here's a thing at least. CW: GN!reader only they/them pronouns used for them, reader has a dendro vision, near death experience WC: 965

___

Warm blood seeps against your palm, passes between your fingers as your feet struggle to find purchase in the loose rain soaked soil. Each of your steps leave behind a small bloom, the power of your vision seeming to spill from you just like the blood you’re so desperately trying to keep within yourself.  You supposed this was your luck to die alone after letting your guard down and getting ambushed by treasure hunters. The mountainous region of liyue was too unforgiving. You’d never make it to a village in time. Not in the rain slicked rocky terrain, especially not in the dark.

The earth gives way beneath your next step send you tumbling down a slope, smacking against a rock with a choked gasp and cry of pain, the first to rip itself from you, the blade that pierced you earlier having failed to do the same with the adrenaline pumping through your veins at the time. It’s only once the ringing in your ears fades and that you pry your eyes open that you realize you’re no longer in complete darkness, no now you’re cast in a soft blue light. Looking up it’s then you realize what had stopped your fall was the base of one of the geo archons statues. Timeless and unmoveable much like the mountains around you. You let out a humorless laugh, you force yourself to sit up, smearing a bloody palm across the stone base, your blood seeping into the earth below you. “Maybe I won’t die alone then huh? Will you keep me company as I slip away, Rex Lapis?” You lay your cheek against the cool stone, not caring that you’re likely speaking to no one but yourself. No one was around to hear. Your heavy eyes fall closed. Consciousness almost entirely out of your grasp you can hardly register someone stepping through the flowers blooming around you wherever your blood touches cracks in the stone, a morbid thing of beauty. You think it must be a hallucination of some kind or perhaps a dream as you pass into death when warm fingers brush over your cheek. Your lashes flutter open slightly, golden eyes the last thing you see before you lose the fight to keep your own open. What a pretty sight to see before you go.

___

You wake with a choked gasp, going to sit upright only to curl in on yourself. You’re warm, wrapped in blankets while hands gently press at your shoulders to get you to slowly lay back. So many sensations when all you expected waited for you was nothingness in the void of death. It takes you a moment to take in where you are. A room lit with soft orange light, all dark woods and teal and green accents. And then your eyes trail up and meet those same eyes from before. 

“Careful now, the healer may have closed your wounds but they’re still fresh enough that you could reopen them.” The voice is a smooth rumble across your senses, the sort of voice that makes you want to rest your head on his chest and listen to him speak.  The thought is inappropriate given the circumstances but it comes to you regardless.

You go to speak but your voice cracks out of your dry throat. 

“Ah wait a moment.” He turns from you and seconds later he’s back with a glass of cool water to press against your lips while tipping your head up with his free hand. “Drink.” 

The cool water is the best thing you’ve ever tasted and you’d guzzle it if the man holding the glass would let you. Once the glass is mostly empty he pulls it away and lays your head back down on the pillow. “Don’t want you to make yourself sick.” 

You stare at him for a moment before clearing your throat and speaking. “Thank you.. If I may ask.. Who are you and where am I?” 

His lips twitch into a soft smile. “You may call me Zhongli. As to where you are, you’re in a room at Bubu pharmacy where your care is being seen to.” 

It’s a lot to wrap your mind around, you’d been so sure you were going to die alone in the cold downpour. Your lower lip quivers and the man’s expression shifts, his eyes widening slightly in surprise. “Did you save me?” You don’t actually need to ask, you feel it in your bones, see it in those eyes that he’s the one

“I did,” and his voice is almost achingly gentle, like he’s just realized he’s holding something fragile. As if you’re glass or a baby bird with a broken wing. 

“How’d you find me..?” You can’t help the wetness gathering in your eyes, emotions crash into you and do your best to keep a hold on them but barely escaping a lonely death? It does something to you. 

“Call it intuition, I was out and felt as if I should make a detour.” 

You nod, not having the energy to question why he was out in a storm like that. “Well… thank you. Truly thank you, Zhongli.” You push yourself up somewhat and his hands hover, ready to assist as you bow your head slightly to him only for him to gently tip your head back up with his fingers on your chin. 

“You are most welcome but truly there is no need for that.” He releases you. “Rest now. I’ll go get the doctor to see to you now that you’re awake.” 

You nod and lay back, watching him as he goes out the door. You’d been so far in the mountains how’d he find you and get you to bubu pharmacy in Liyue harbor before you could bleed out?

___

Like i said above I'm not sure if i'll write more for Genshin impact or not but I wanted to get this idea down. Kinda surprised my first dip into the fandom was with Zhongli and not Kaeya or Diluc.

Ahhh not sure who to tag for this: @fushigurro @zorosdimples @strawberrystepmom I think all three of you are moots who play genshin impact

[6okuto]

actually losing my mind over vere + ais + mc like…. imagine how fun that would be. they would all get up to so much m

VERE/MC/AIS HCS

gn!reader | :3 hiii. these can be read platonically! it's mostly little moments i can imagine. for fun!

it's a fun dynamic where there can always be a duo making fun of one person and it switches every day, every hour. one person goes wow vere you're so horny what's your deal and the other joins in. later vere and mc find themselves making fun of ais for acting so tough and mysterious. mc getting bullied about Not having Gloves,

sorry i've been watching lethal company a lot but they'd be sooo annoying /affectionate. making fun of each other on the radio, pretending like they can't hear them. vere getting pissed off when you don't get his body. ais taunting all the monsters while mc is telling him to shut the fuck up. mc saying "bet you can't make that jump" and then getting them to fall.

the three of them show up at the wet wick and it's already bad enough with vere and ais but now the trio… will a fight start? will a fire be lit by accident? how many people from and outside the main cast have headaches

ais says he's bored and mc goes Start a fight or something and vere's like yeah ais just start a fight. and ais is like ? you guys suck ass. but also he Will start one. so

vere and mc watching ais in a brawl and they comment to the bystander next to them like. How much you wanna bet he wins? and it's a joke but i do think they could/would bet on ais at some point LOL

mhin thinks they might die btw. would rather die than be put in a room with them, even. their worst nightmare.

leander. ....vaguely jealous of mc/all of them even as they all taunt and tease him. somebody get this guy some friends please

i never thought about it but i do wonder what vere's relationship is with princess/ais's pets. i don't knowww imagine how cute it could be watching them jump on him or fighting over who they like most...

vere and ais (un)intentionally use inside jokes/references with each other so mc has a few choices of 1) staring at them 2) asking what they're talking about 3) making fun of them etc. if mc is genuinely bothered by it i'm sure they'd explain and stay aware of it. if mc is just like Ok Be a little less Obvious they roll their eyes and tease them too

moments where two are hanging out, the third appears and goes Wow, Hanging out without me? and the two are like What, Are you obsessed with us or something? Need to always be near us?

specifically thinking of ais coming up on vere and mc are sitting together. they start teasing and jokingly flirting with him as if he's a stranger and it starts unraveling when they ask who's his favourite like Oh??? Them??? after everything we've been through???

ais disliking isolation, vere and mc check on him every so often and behind his teasing remarks, there's a softness and gratitude in his gaze

one of them starts to absentmindedly brush vere's tail and then the other notices and joins in. vere trusting them but still threatening to like, kill them if they mess up his fur. mc and ais going oohh i'm gonna mess it up so bad and then his tail has never looked nicer

a lot of things are meant for 2 people sitting... on the bus or carnival rides etc etc so the odd one out gets chosen by like. rock paper scissors. or just some silly game. not always of course but it happens. "best out of 3" "ok wait fuck you best out of 5" etc

cute little moment where person in the middle leans against one's shoulder, and the one on the other side notices and leans on theirs. a train!!

[bookishtalkswithlii]

Mini-Summary

This story is centered around two adolescent males, Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio, who have just been alerted that they have only one day left to live. Despite having never met before the start of this 24hrs they quickly grew close, some may even say their meeting was fated. This story is set in a technologically advanced New York City, where there is the existence of Death-Cast. Which is a company that calls to let people know their death date as it comes near. Is the information this company gives real? Do they actually die at the end? Find out by giving the book a read :)

Likes and Dislikes 

-There are many aspects of this book that I really enjoyed. I found it to be such a wholesome yet heartbreaking story. It did such a great job of making me feel conflicted within my own emotions while also having me grasping at straws and denying the inevitable truth that was soon to come at its end. While this story does hint at a budding romance, it focuses on the connection between two people who lived with regrets and aspirations which captivated me and left a lasting impact due to the relatability of the characters themselves.

-The only downside to this book, in my opinion, was some of the writing. Because it centers around adolescents, I believe this author like many others, tried to encapsulate how they think teenagers sound which came off as awkward while reading certain lines. 

But all in all, if you love heartwrenching, yet wholesome stories and can appreciate various types of romances in books, then you should definitely give this one a read.

Age rating- 14+

Genres- Young Adult, Romance, Drama

Do I recommend?-Yes

-Here's a playlist you can listen to, to set the ambiance while reading-

[thelastofharrington]

the hard with the soft

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

A/N: hello! this is my first joel fic that i've ever written! i'm really excited about it and made this whole blog just to post it lol. there is plenty of smut in this so mdni! let me know what you think :)

summary: Falling in love with Joel Miller was something that happened to you little by little, and then all at once. To say the chemistry was immediate would be a complete lie. At first, you couldn’t even tell if he wanted you around, let alone wanted you in his bed. No, when he rescued you that day from one of Bill’s well-laid traps, you were certain he would never see you as anything other than a nuisance. A pest he had to take care of. 

Oh how wrong you were.

tags: praise, porn with context, slow burn, mutual pining, joel is soft on the inside, reader is down bad fr, non-canonical, rip bill and frank, takes place a year/two years after the show starts, love in the midst of an apocalypse is beautiful y'all

word count: 7k

i hope you enjoy!!!

Part 1: The Stumble, 1 Year Ago

You were hungry. Starving, even. You had been left behind from your group of outcasts three days ago (or had it been four? You were too exhausted to keep track of the time) when you twisted your ankle and couldn’t keep up the pace. You weren’t overly friendly with your most recent pack of ragtag survivors, mostly seeing them and each other as a mere means of survival rather than company. You hadn’t known friendliness or love from your packs since your parents got bit five years ago. Your parents couldn’t have known that three years after they brought you into the world it would fall apart, nor did they know they would both die protecting you from that same world they blindly brought you into. It’s been hard, but you’ve made it through and it actually was your birthday this week, the big 24. What a way to celebrate – being abandoned by the only thing keeping you safe and becoming walking bait for any clickers nearby. But still, you had fairly good spirits all things considered. Until you fell into an eight foot hole. 

It was in this hole that you realized a couple of things:

You’ve stumbled upon a domesticated piece of land. Someone somewhere near had the time, safety, and resources to dig an eight foot hole. 

If your ankle wasn’t sprained before, it was definitely sprained now considering how you landed on it.

You might have just fallen into your grave.

It was a series of progressively worse realizations, to say the least. 

Time had already felt like a concept out of your grasp for the last 20 years, but now there was truly no way of knowing if you had been down there 20 minutes or two hours when a shadow was cast on you. A man-shaped shadow. A man-shaped shadow with a gun. 

The gun was pointed right at you, the sun casting a halo around this giant man’s head. He towered over you as he held his stance firm and still. No one said anything as you both stood, unwavering. 

“I come in peace?” You finally choke out, unsure of what you could possibly say to save your own life right now. 

He doesn’t move, just croaks “How’d you find this place?” You notice the fragments of a Southern accent, nearly lost to the wear and tear of an apocalypse. 

You clear your throat and try to muster up the courage to speak with conviction. “My group abandoned me when I twisted my ankle early this week. I’ve just been aimlessly wandering.” You pause, unsure of if the next sentence will be your last, “This ankle of mine really hurts by the way. Your hole here isn’t really helping, considering I landed on it.”

You see him move his head out from behind the gun and look down at you slightly, then he moves back to position. “Are you armed?”

“No, I’m barely legged.”

He does not laugh.

“That’s something we call a joke, you know, since I can barely walk and all.”

His weight shifts again and he finally puts down the gun. “I’m going to help you out, but after that you better see yourself out of here. I don’t want any more of this and I don’t want any of your friends wandering this way either.”

“I don’t have any friends. I don’t have any family. I’m just me.”

He scoffs, “Sure, kid.”

“I’m also not a kid. I’m 24 years old and I’m hungry and my ankle hurts and why do you even have this hole anyway?!” You notice yourself turning hysterical but you don’t even care. You’re unarmed and you’re hungry and you’re all alone for the first time in a very, very long time. This man holds all of the power to help you and you’re not going to give up until he does. 

He doesn’t respond immediately, but when he does it’s in the form of him reaching down into his utility belt and pulling out a rope, and throwing you the other end. “You get one meal.”

You didn’t even know a meal was on the table, so you hobbled your way behind him as fast as you could. You ended up at a white, well-kept house behind an industrial strength gate. “How the hell did you find this place?”

He doesn’t answer right away, making you worried that you said the wrong thing somehow. Finally, when you’ve reached the front door, he huffs “It belonged to a friend.”

================================================

Part 2: The Fall, 6 Months Ago

That one meal turned into two days which turned into a week which turned a month which turned into six. You owe most of your thanks to Joel’s 14-year-old companion (contraband?), Ellie. She was instrumental in convincing Joel to allow for you to stay. If it weren’t for her, the first dinner would have easily been your last. But she was so taken with you and excited to have another girl let alone someone under 30 hanging out with them. Not that she didn’t adore Joel, or him her in his own little ways. But you were just such a breath of fresh air to her that Joel couldn’t help but allow for you to stay. 

Your role in their little group wasn’t quite clear. Joel did all of the hunting and patrolling necessary to keep this little slice of paradise exactly that, paradise. Ellie’s only job was to stay safe, and you decided to pick up the slack wherever you could. Dishes, clothing repairs, cooking dinner. Ellie didn’t need a nanny by any means, but you basically became a live-in housewife. With none of the perks, despite your daydreaming.

The last six months had been tumultuous for you to say the least. The presence of Joel constantly by your side made a lot of things very difficult. Like focusing, or keeping the weakness out of your knees, or the heat out of your dreams. He was hot, there was no denying it. If he hadn’t been waving a gun in your face the moment you met, it probably wouldn’t have taken you until the end of your first dinner to realize this. But not only was he hot, he was stoic. He was still and firm, a guiding light in this uncertain world you and Ellie both came of age in. He had a cold exterior, but judging by the way he treated Ellie, and eventually you, you knew there was some warmth bubbling beneath the surface. You knew he carried immeasurable hurt on his back, Ellie had told you about his daughter, Tess, Bill and Frank, and that was only the things Ellie knew. Who knew what was in the even further past of this sturdy man. The big, beautiful, brooding man who took care of you and Ellie despite his best instincts. 

You had only very recently gotten over your sprained ankle, taking a full 12 weeks to heal from the severe sprain. This was another saving grace for you in the beginning. Joel liked to pretend that he was heartless, but he still didn’t have the heart to send you on your merry way with only ¼ of your appendages working to their full capacity. He tried to kick you out after your first dinner despite Ellie’s whining, only to be able to only stomach three of your hobbling paces out the door. 

“Oh for God’s sake get back in here why don’t ‘ya,” You remember him sighing.

He took such good care of your ankle, at night when you’re all alone you can still feel the way his calloused fingertips massing you so gently. The hard with the soft; the essence of Joel Miller. 

“Does this hurt?” He asked four weeks in, as you sat for your nightly ankle exam. Starting your very first night, after dinner he would take your foot into his lap and exam it and massage it carefully for upwards of 15 minutes. You weren’t a doctor, but you knew enough to know that a nightly exam was excessive and unnecessary. But even at the very beginning you knew this was his way of showing you that he cared, that he wanted you safe. It was around this time that you realized that Joel had a soft spot for stragglers, for the outcasts who just needed somebody. Between you and Ellie, that much was clear, and it just made you fall faster for him than you thought possible. 

This realization and the true weight of it didn’t come to a head until one day where you decided to go out and try and collect some berries from the woods on the other side of the gate for a pie you wanted to make Joel for his birthday. You had seen him do it a million times, you thought you could get away with it. Until you heard that sound. 

Everything was fine, you had collected your blueberries and you were on your way, and then you heard it. You hear it before you see it, but soon enough you see it all the same. You had your gun with you, but your reaction time was nowhere near as fast as Joel’s was. The clicker starts stalking your way when you lose yourself to your impulses and just start running. You know better than to scream, but you get close. You run and you run and you’re looking back to make sure you’re not going to get caught when you smack into something six foot and massive. Joel’s chest. After you make eye contact you look up and make eye contact with him. He’s silently fuming, fists white knuckling around his gun. 

You go to speak when he stops you, “Don’t.” He whispers right before he shoots the clicker dead with no hesitation or struggle. The walk back to the house is silent, and not because he’s afraid of being found by the clickers. 

The slam of the front door is the first sound you’ve heard in minutes. He whips around and you swear you can see smoke coming out of his ears. “What the hell was that?!”

“I-” You start.

“You know what? I don’t want to know. I can’t hear from you right now.”

You say nothing.

“That was so completely careless! Do you not understand how we do things around here? You stay, I go. It’s as simple as that.” He’s pacing at this point, waving his hands wildly as he works through his anger with you. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

You pause, “I thought you didn’t want to hear from me.”

He stops pacing and looks at you, “Ha ha ha very funny. You’re a real smartass, you know that? If I hadn’t been there God knows what would have happened. You could have gotten killed!”

You look down at your feet, trying to hold back tears before you look back up. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to do something nice for you.”

He sighs, physically decompressing. “Well you went about it all the wrong way. I don’t need anything nice from you, you do enough around the house and with Ellie anyway,” He pauses, “I don’t know what I would have done with myself if you had gotten hurt.” He says this last part in a whisper under his breath, barely able to look at you.

“But it’s your birthday!” You choke out a sob. You’re so mad at yourself for putting yourself in danger and upsetting the man who saved your life six months ago. 

“What? No it’s not.” He says, confused.

Then, a lightbulb goes off for both of you as your jaws drop and you yell in unison, “ELLIE!”

Turns out, Ellie just wanted some pie.

================================================

Part 3: The Catch, Present Day

A lot can change in six months. But also, a lot can stay the same. You’ve grown very accustomed to the life you live here, in this big beautiful house, with your small makeshift family. Ellie is 17 now and makes Joel take her on test drives in Bill’s old truck around town. Joel has definitely gotten used to having you around, and even converted Frank’s old studio into a bedroom for you a couple of months ago. A real upgrade from living on the couch for the first eight months. 

Life is pretty standard, all things considered. You’ve heard more stories about the men who ran the house before you and you think they’d be happy to have people like you living a life like this in the home they built together. It’s a beautiful thing, to have some normalcy in a world fallen apart. 

You spend a lot of time with Ellie, who has developed a crush on one of the QZ traders. She’s tall and lean and tougher than all hell, you can see what Ellie sees in her even if you’re personally afraid of her. This realization on Ellie’s part has prompted a lot of impromptu sleepovers in your art studio turned bedroom, almost all of which are ended by Joel standing in the doorway going on about keeping quiet out of respect for your elders. You have to remind him every time that you too are an elder.

It’s also the summer time which means there’s lots to do outside. You never really learned how to tend to a garden so Joel’s been teaching you how to take care of the one Frank started all those years ago. You two keep it up with the seeds you get from trading with those select few still at the QZ, and it’s been a really special time between the two of you. It also doesn’t hurt that he prefers to work in the garden shirtless. 

“Hello? Hello? Are you even listening to a word I’m saying?” 

You snap out of the trance you were in from watching him hoe or row or whatever it is he’s doing with that gardening tool that makes his arms and back look like that. “What? Sorry, I zoned out.”

“You’re never going to learn if you keep daydreamin’ like that.” He gruffs before starting his spiel on strawberries all over again. 

You really can’t get a read on him. Sometimes he treats you as an equal, someone who has a shared interest in their work and in the safety of Ellie, but other times he treats you like you’re a toddler that can’t help but knock their head on the corner of a coffee table. He claims it’s because he doesn’t want you hurt, which you admit gives you butterflies, but if anything between you is ever going to transpire (like you desperately need it to), he can’t see you as just some kid. You’re turning 25 next week, dammit. You deserve some respect. But you’re just not sure how to get it, how to make him see you as a true equal. Someone he can rely on, put his faith into, and even care about on a deeper level. 

The opportunity of a lifetime presents itself one day in the form of something actually rather unfortunate. Joel finally gets hurt.

It’s a pretty normal day until then. You and Ellie practice driving, you journal, listen to some old records. It’s too hot to spend too much time outside, but you definitely make sure to check on the strawberries considering the lecture you got from Joel last week. It’s midafternoon when he comes straggling in, clutching his left arm in his hand and seething through the pain.

You immediately jump up from the couch, “Oh my God, what happened?”

He sinks down on the chair next to the piano, not looking at you. “Nothing, just go get the first aid kit.”

That answer is nowhere near good enough, but you go and get it anyway. Ellie is out in the backyard and doesn’t hear the commotion. When you return with the first aid kit you press on, “You have to tell me what happened so I can know how to treat you.”

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat as you kneel in front of him, opening the kit. “It’s nothing, just gonna need a couple stitches.”

You pry his right hand off his arm and see a deep gash on the bottom of his forearm. It’s not too long, but it sure is deep. “Jesus Joel, what the hell happened?”

He shifts and sighs once more, whispering something under his breath that you can barely hear.

“What was that?” You ask earnestly.

He whispers again, slightly louder this time, but he’s talking too fast to make out what he said. 

“Joel, come on. What happened?” You’re tending to his wound now anyway, but you really do need to know. 

He sighs, bringing his free hand up to pinch between his eyes. Avoiding eye contact with you he finally says, “I was walking back from trading when I saw a flower. I wanted to get that flower for you for your birthday. With my shears in one hand, I leaned down to get it, and I lost my balance and I tripped and I fell on top of the shears and they stabbed me.” He pauses, “There,  you happy? Now that I’ve humiliated myself…” He trails off. 

You’re too stunned to speak. You just keep staring at him, unmoving.

“If you’re not going to fix this up, give me the kit so I can do it myself,” He huffs at you.

You swallow and smile at him, trying to find the words. “Joel Miller, you secret softie. You maimed yourself in the pursuit of trying to do something nice for me, the girl you claim not to want around.”

He locks eyes with you for the first time during this conversation, “I never claimed that.”

Silence hangs in the air for a moment until you clear your throat and turn your attention to the wound at hand (or should you say, at arm?). “Let’s get this stitched up, ok?”

“If Ellie asks, tell her I did something super manly and tough to get these stitches, ok?”

You let out a laugh and nod, “Sir, yes sir.”

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s been three days since Joel hurt himself trying to do something nice for you and it has not left your mind even for a moment. You’re laying in bed wide awake, tossing and turning wondering what this could mean. I never claimed that he said so earnestly to you. I never claimed that. The four words echo in your brain like a megaphone. It’s been torture being around him as if nothing has changed. As if you haven’t changed on a molecular level after those four words rearranged every fiber of your being. It may be nothing, but it also could be something. It could be the that takes what you’ve been craving for almost a year to leave your daydreams and become a reality. Maybe he meant it in a friendly way, maybe even in reference to your working relationship of raising Ellie and keeping her safe. But if that were the case, why did it feel like all of the air in the room stood still? Why did he look to you like he was a puzzle that only you could solve? 

Cordiality be damned, you had to know the answer. 

You sneak out of bed and up the stairs, careful not to wake Ellie in her room on the first floor. Joel may be modest, but he still took the primary bedroom upstairs when they moved in. You avoid the creaking steps up the stairs artfully and end up at his door. It is only at this point you realize how crazy this is. You’re standing outside his door in the middle of the night with no plan and, frankly, no pants on. This is a recipe for disaster that you’ve quickly talked yourself out of. You go to turn around when the door swings open, Joel looking alert. His body visibly relaxes when he sees that it’s just you, and then tenses once more as his eyes trail down our body to the long length of your bare legs. 

“What are you-” “Sorry I was just-” You say at the same time.

You laugh, trying to break the tension. “Sorry, I was just leaving.”

“What are you doing up here, Y/N?” His body was pressed up against the side of the doorway, blocking it almost entirely with his broad stature. Shoulders resting on the side of the doorway, arms and feet crossed, he looked in no hurry to get you out of there. 

“It doesn’t really matter, I answered my own question. I’ll just head back downstairs,” You go to walk away when he grabs your arm lightly, turning you back to face him.

“Must’ve been some curiosity if it’s keeping you up at night.” You’ve never heard him talk like this. Not just the words he was saying but how he was saying them, they were smooth and slow and rich like molasses. It instantly made your mouth dry up and your knees weaker.

“I um, I was just wondering-”

“Yes?” He prompted, his hand still on your arm. Had he ever touched you before this? Surely you would have remembered the heat. 

You look him in the eyes and see a glint, even in the darkness. This spark of something gives you the courage to move along. “I was just wondering what you meant by saying you never claimed you didn’t want me around.”

His hand drops from your arm and the heat is replaced by an instant rush of cold in his absence. He looks away from you and doesn’t speak. 

Fearing you said the wrong thing you cower and turn to walk away once more. How could you have been so stupid? This isn’t just a matter of personal politics, this is a matter of survival. You have no one besides Joel and Ellie and if you get kicked out for bringing feelings into what is a basic need for shelter, food, and water, you will never forgive yourself.

You’re almost to the stairs when you hear him rumble, “I just meant that I have always wanted you around.” You whip around and see him looking at you, his gaze trailing down your body and then all the way back up again. “I want you here. Always have.”

Not moving towards him you speak, “Then why do you act like I’m some sort of helpless child? Why do I not have any real responsibilities? I could be out there, with you, trading and gathering intel. But instead I get, what, strawberries?”

“You don’t get it.” He looks down and shakes his head.

You walk back over to him, softly, so as not to spook him again. “Then help me understand.”

He looks at you with a softer gaze this time, “I keep you here, away from all of that, because I can’t risk you getting hurt,” He pauses for a moment before continuing, “It would kill me.”

You’re stunned. “Joel,” You start before he lifts a hand and cuts you off. 

“And I give you things like strawberries because I want you to have a chance at a good life, a simple life. One I can’t promise you forever but can promise you for right now. One I know you don’t even remember having.”

Your heart is beating immeasurably fast inside your chest. You never considered that these menial tasks were actually normal, and good. Cleaning up after dinner, growing strawberries, talking about crushes with Ellie. In the midst of wanting to prove yourself, you completely forgot to take stock of all that Joel had given you already. All the things people dream about in this day and age. 

You reach a hand up to touch his face, “Thank you. Thank you for giving me something good,” You pause, “I wish I could give you something good in return.”

He leans his head into your hand and closes his eyes, letting out a contented sigh. He turns his head to kiss the palm of your hand, “You are my something good,” he says so low you almost miss it. 

But you don’t miss it. You hear it loud and clear. You hear him loud and clear for probably the first time since you’ve met him. He is stoic and strong and brooding and brave, but he is also caring and thoughtful and safe. He is the hard with the soft, and he’s been giving you both all this time right under your nose. 

You decide to do something risky. You lean in for a kiss. You put your hopes for survival at the back of your mind and for the first time in forever you prioritize living.

It doesn’t take more than two seconds for Joel to pick up on what you’re doing and reciprocate. His arms immediately move from crossed over his chest to around your waist, pulling you deeper into the kiss. He pulls you so deep you cross the threshold of his bedroom, kicking the door shut on your way in. 

“Be quiet or you’ll wake Ellie!” You half scold, half giggle as you make your way towards the bed. 

“Sorry!” He giggles back. Joel Miller. The Joel Miller giggled into your lips. You could hardly believe your ears. 

If his words were like molasses, his kiss was just as sweet. Not too pushy, but with enough force to let you know that he was in charge. He guides you to the mattress with his body and his mouth, making you feel like you’re flying. You’re sprawled out with your legs over the edge of the bed when he finally pulls away and stands before you. 

You look up at him with hooded eyes and heavy breaths, “Why’d you stop?”

He runs his hands through his hair, “I just never want to forget this.” And he dives back down to you, not giving you a moment to respond. 

When he comes back his kiss is still sweet, but with a heat you’ve never experienced before. Granted, all of your past experiences were minimal, probably in the back of an abandoned, decaying car, and in the midst of an apocalypse, but you knew enough to know that it didn’t normally feel like this. 

You part your legs so he can insert his body between them, propping his arms on either side of your head as he kisses you deeply. You wrap your legs around his waist and pull him closer to you, needing as much of him on you as possible. 

“Somebody’s eager, huh?” He asks you between kisses.

Your resolve is officially broken, you’re laying it all out on the table. “You just have no idea how long I’ve wanted this.”

He pulls back to look at you, “Oh, I think I have an idea. You tend to have a staring problem, darlin’”

Your face flushes instantly. He lowers his lips to your ears and whispers, “I do too, I’m just a little more subtle with it.” He places kisses on your neck and then trails back up to your ear, “Your body drives me crazy, baby.”

Suddenly his hands are everywhere. One is up by your head so he keeps his balance while the other is trailing up and down your chest, your stomach, your neck. He’s everywhere all at once and it still isn’t enough. Your legs are still wrapped around his waist so you buck up to create even more friction than there already was. 

“Easy there, baby, I’ve been waiting an awful long time for this, I want to take it slow with you. Gotta treat you right.” He pins your waist down to the mattress with one hand. “Let me take care of you, baby.” His look is so sincere all you can do is nod. “Good girl.” 

With that, he takes his hand pinning you down and runs the tips of his fingertips along the waistline of your underwear, teasing you. You whine.

“Patience baby,” A kiss on the cheek, “It will be worth it, I promise,” A kiss on the other cheek. Then his fingers are tugging them down inch by inch until you’re completely bare to him from the waist down. “So pretty,” He says, almost to himself. 

Before you have time to acknowledge what he’s said, the same gentle fingertips that were teasing you a moment ago land on your most sensitive spot, creating a feeling of pleasure unlike anything you’ve ever known. Your body somehow tenses and melts into the mattress at once as he works you slowly but surely. 

“How does that feel, baby?” His voice is rough around the edges but soft at its center, he genuinely wants to gauge your reaction, as if your whines and body language weren’t enough. 

“Itfeelssogood” You slur out, hands gripping the sheets on either side of you. 

He kisses your neck, “Good. Now,” He moves his finger to your center and thrusts it in, moving his thumb back to your clit. “How does that feel?”

He’s working you up so good, you feel like you’re floating. His pace is the perfect mix between rough and conscious, never taking his eyes off you for even a second. You can tell he’s loving this as much as you are, and not just because you can feel his erection through his boxers. 

You moan as he works you before answering, “Joel it feels so good.”

“Such a good girl for me, so wet and ready. Is this what you were thinking about when you couldn’t sleep?” He whispers in your ear as he picks up the pace. 

You can feel something building deep inside of you, something you haven’t felt in a long time, and never at this magnitude. It’s coming on strong and fast, you can almost reach it. “Yes, this is what I was thinking about. I was thinking about your hands on me.”

“Mmmm that’s what I like to hear baby, what else were you thinking about?” He grabs one of your hands and brings it to his boxers, “Were you thinking about this?”

You moan and nod your head, he’s continuing to pick up his pace and you’re getting closer and closer. 

“I want you to cum for me, gorgeous. Please cum for me.”

You throw your head back and moan again, “I want to cum for you.”

“Just focus on how good it feels baby, you’re so close I can feel it. Be a good girl for me.”

And just like magic, you’re there. It hits you like a freight train and your whole body is consumed. You’re tensing and writhing and it definitely isn’t normally like this, but you’re just so overcome with emotions for this man and pleasure and all of the things that drive a girl crazy. 

He coaxes you through it with lots of reassurances and hair pets, and then finally you’ve come down. “Thank you,” You say as he brushes some hair out of your face.

“Don’t thank me yet darlin’, I’m not done with you yet.” And with that, he hauls your body up to the head of the bed, making sure your head is all settled on the pillows. He sits back on his knees and takes off his shirt, nodding at you to do  the same. You’re left completely bare and he in his boxers alone. You’re mesmerized by his body. Age normally should have broken him down, but for him he seems to have only been built up. You had seen him in the garden but this, this was something entirely different. He was raw here, with you. 

“This is what I meant by you needing to be more subtle. You don’t need to undress me with your eyes, baby, you just gotta ask.” He stands up and drops his boxers, revealing himself to you fully for the first time. He’s big. Like, real big. And thick. You don’t let yourself dwell on the mechanics for more than a moment, but you do wonder how it���s going to fit.

He gets back in bed and hovers over you once more, “Are you sure about this? We can stop at any time.”

You nod your head, “I’m sure. Never been more sure about anything, actually.”

He gives you one more kiss, a firm one with the promise of a good time. You run your fingers through his hair and tug slightly. He moans into your mouth. “You sure are an eager one, aren’tcha?”

He grabs his member and lines it up with your center, teasing you slightly. You wince at the sensitivity from your previous orgasm. “You ok?” He asks gently.

“Yeah, just a little sensitive. But I’m ready. Please fuck me, Joel.” The words even surprise yourself as you say them. You’re not the best at being direct about what you want, but right now all you can do is rely on pure instinct. 

He chuckles darkly before lining himself up once again, “Your wish is my command, sweetheart.”

And just like that, he’s fucking you. Long, hard strokes that never feel like too much too fast. Just right. You feel the fullness of him immediately and it’s so divine you can’t help but arch into him and moan. Your fingers fly back into his hair as he thrusts into you with such precision, he hits your G-spot every time.

“Is that good for you, baby? Tell me how it feels.” He grunts as he pounds into you expertly.

“I love it, baby. I love it,” You’re breathless as you try to find the words to describe the way he’s making you feel.

He takes one of your legs and rests your ankle on his shoulder, opening you up even more than you thought possible and deepening the angle of his already deep thrusts. You try not to scream, so you grab a pillow and put it over your face.

He rips it off almost immediately, “Oh no, sweetheart. No hiding from me. I want to see your pretty face when I make you cum on my cock.” 

You’re so incoherent you can’t even respond to his filthy words. You just moan in response and grab the sheets on either side of you.

He changes his pace a couple of times, switching from slow and long to fast and shallow, but it never feels out of place or off rhythm. He is just somehow so in tune with your body that he knows exactly what you need when you need it. 

You’re whining and moaning when he lowers your leg and gets his face up next to yours. His hand moves down to  your clit and he starts massaging it while he continues to thrust into you. “You’ve been such a good girl tonight baby,” He says through his own labored breathing. “Coming up here in your little panties practically begging to get fucked. Such a good girl.” You moan so loud he covers your mouth with his other hand, “I love hearing those moans baby but you gotta keep it quiet if you want me to keep going. And I know you want me to keep going.” 

You nod and he removes his hand from your mouth and sits back again, watching you from above. “Play with your tits while I make you cum.” You do as you're told, loving the feeling of his eyes fixed on you while you do exactly what he says. 

Once again, you feel something building inside of you. The combination of him inside you, his fingers working their magic, and his eyes on you makes it nearly impossible to resist the feelings as they come on strong. 

“I’m gonna cum,” You whine. 

“Do it baby, cum for me” He picks up his pace and you can tell he’s getting close himself, can tell he’s chasing something. 

It only takes a couple more seconds before you finish in an explosion of pleasure. You’re so out of it as you come down you barely register him pulling out and grabbing a tissue from the side table. What a gentleman. 

You’re both laying there in silence when the gravity of what just happened finally hits you. You just had sex with the one person that stands between you and certain death. This could ruin everything. You move to get up and go back to your room when you feel an arm on you, pulling you back down. 

“Stay,” He pauses, “Please stay with me.”

You smile softly at him and lay back down, but this time he wraps you up in his arms and spoons you. You can feel his breathing on the back of your neck and his calluses on your arms as he holds you. He starts tracing little circles on your skin with his thumb while he hums. 

“That was amazing,” You say, finally breaking the silence.

“Yeah, um, sorry if I came on too strong,” He pauses, “Haven’t done that in awhile.”

You turn around to face him and you rest a palm on his cheek, “It was perfect. You were perfect. I um, I just hope this doesn’t change anything?” You nervously finish.

He looks startled. He quits rubbing circles on your skin and moves back. “Yeah, no. No, it doesn't have to change anything.”

Clearly, you’ve struck a chord and you don’t know why or how. But you do know that you need to fix it. 

“I just, I know we’re in a precarious situation and I don’t want you to feel like our relationship has changed at all.” You begin.

He sits up fully with his back against the headboard, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Joel?” You join him up against the headboard, covering yourself with the blanket.

He sighs but doesn’t look at you, “If I had thought everything would stay the same I wouldn’t have done what I just did. I wouldn’t have opened the door and I certainly wouldn’t have let you in.”

You’re stunned and you’re scared, having no idea what he’s talking about. “What are you saying?”

Finally, he looks at you. “Dammit Y/N what if I want things to change?” He doesn’t raise his voice at all, but his tone is stern enough to send you aback. 

“What?”

Another sigh, “What if I want things to change? What if I want somebody who is going to be there for me at the end of the day in my bed? This world isn’t permanent and I can’t promise you forever but I can promise you for now. For now, I want this. For now, I want you. And I’m gonna keep wanting you until the thing that stands in the way of me and death itself disappears.” He pauses, “So yeah, maybe you don’t want things to change but I do. Sorry if that’s not what you wanted to hear.” He looks away from you again. 

“Joel, I-”

“I don’t want your pity. I get it, I’m just some old man with a 17 year old basket case trailing behind me and you’re young and beautiful and just had an itch to scratch. We’ll continue with business as usual in the morning. Good night.” He flips over onto his side away from you. 

You huff. This is ridiculous, you think to yourself. You tap him on the shoulder.

“You should probably go back to your room, Y/N.”

You tap him on the shoulder again. 

He flips around to look at you, “What more could you possibly want from me?”

You cross your arms over your blanket covered chest, “What makes you think I wanted things to stay the same?”

“Gee, I don’t know, probably the part where you said ‘things don’t have to change’?” He says sarcastically as he sits back up to face you. “Wonder where I got that crazy idea.”

“I was just saying that in case you didn’t want anything to change! I’m totally at your mercy with everything, including my survival here, so sorry for being cautious.”

He doesn’t say anything, but his mouth does fall open in shock a little bit. 

“Joel, trust me when I say I’m not taking pity on you when I say I want this too. I can’t promise you forever but I can promise you for now, and for tomorrow, and for the next day and the day after that. I choose you and I choose Ellie and I want this. I want you. I want to be the one that is there for you at the end of the day.” You smile at him and grab his hand, “You’re my good thing too.”

His face softens and he grabs your joined hands with his other one and leans over to kiss you on the cheek. You lean into it and giggle as he begins peppering a bunch of kisses all over your face. The hard with the soft, that’s Joel Miller.

“Let’s go to bed, shall we?” You ask him as he leans over you, caressing your face.

“Yeah, let’s go to bed.” He gives you one last kiss on the cheek and spoons you once more.

That night you dream of strawberries. Just fields and fields of strawberries. 

[edgyedgelord]

I'm supposed to be writing right now but I want to say something that I tell myself. I hope it helps you too.

Art isn't just a hobby. It can be a job. It's not a perfect job, but it's still a job that makes you happy. Not many other career paths can say that. Warning: This is a tangent post made by an anarchist. If you don't want to read a long novel length ramble about why money is a corrupting construct and capitalism is made to break poor people move along.

I've noticed in my 21 years on this planet, nearing the 22 mark as spring approaches, that jobs are often given a value. If you're a doctor you've got a high quality job because you went to school, got a degree, and get paid a lot. But what about nurses? They work in the same place and went to school for a certification, some a degree as well, but they aren't paid as much and are treated poorly. Why? Well because they're not doctors. They can have the same amount of knowledge, sometimes more depending on who the doctor is, but their job is seen as lower just because of the pay and general view of it in the eyes of society.

Most of the people who will tell you all this and which job is the most valuable and what to go for actually don't know much about the inner workings. Go ahead, ask someone who's told you something like this if they've done much research outside of watching a video on social media and reading random posts without checking the validity behind them.

Another things with doctors, nurses, construction workers, all these jobs everyone tells you to get instead of something you'd actually enjoy is they don't face the fact, or rather they choose to just accept the fact and do nothing about it, that those in charge are gonna kick. you. around. until you give up or give in. Those who give up usually didn't even want the job in the first place. Those who give in always dreamed of this job but once they're in it that blind optimistic veil is torn away.

Zom100 is an anime that opens with a guy going into an office job where he works for a company that produces commercials. He's a writer for the scripts and helps with casting and went in expecting to make tons of friends, meet stars, and even falls for the secretary and wishes to confess to her one day. It starts off all bright and colorful since that's how he views the world in his eyes. After going out drinking with his coworkers after their first day of work is done, everything stops. The happy smiles and attitudes of his employees vanish as they return to work and our protagonist is met with the horrible work grind culture he's walked into. Yet, he stays optimistic in the hopes he can stay strong only to finally break after a year of working at the business. He stumbles home from exhaustion to his now trashed apartment full of garbage bags, trash covering the floors, just looking like a dump because he's to exhausted from working and staying at the office days at a time to be able to clean up.

I love the first episode of Zom100, although only the first episode, because it does a FANTASTIC job at giving a message I live by. "Do not settle for treatment that is less than what you deserve." It shows what happens when you go for the give in option of what I mentioned earlier. If your boss is dumping work on you but not anyone else, call them out. If you're being harassed in the workplace and there is a clear bias because of your gender, race, or anything else, call them out. If your pay is far less than the amount you work, call them out. If they refuse to make any changes despite you having concrete evidence because they will lose the money they have to spare, quit and call them out.

The older folk in my life have told me time and time again that "You work for bad people to pay worse people and then die." (Not a direct quote but it summarizes what they say.) These people come from a time where there was an even worse imbalance in power and they had to give in to live due to the many things going on in the world at that time that made living conditions horrible if you weren't already super rich. It isn't like that anymore though.

The economy and people in power is still messed up yes we need to work on that but that isn't what this post is about.

Glitch Studios is an animation studio aiming to give independent animation a place to shine and has been doing so with MASSIVE success. It's thanks to them that indie work is finally getting looked at by bigger studios. Personally, I see this as a sign that art is finally getting a more proper place in the general view of society as a proper career path. Only issue is it's focused on animation.

I'm not an animator, I'm a writer and lover of comics. Would I want some of my stuff adapted into animation? By fans out of love for the works, yes, as an official adaptation for profit? No.

It's not a smart move marketing wise or profit wise but that's the thing. I'm not some old white guy sitting on a throne of gold bars in a big evil company business building, I'm a 20 something at a desk in a dusty apartment room surrounded by goofy posters and plushies. I don't care about money, I care about making things I and others love. I think that's what people have forgotten recently when it comes to working in this world. You can work and work and work and pay rent and be able to buy that new outfit to wear at your family gathering to show off but how long will you be happy from that? Small moments of joy is fine and treating yourself is fine too, but what do you do to make yourself happy while still fulfilling a purpose? Do you feel like you fulfill a purpose? What did you want to do, not need to do.

Working retail is seen as your go to starter job or just what you go to when you need to pay the bills. It's not a shameful thing to do, nor is any job when you just need an income for necessities. But, what if that's what you want to do? You don't want a giant house, you don't want a fancy car, you don't want Gucci clothes, you enjoy the simple job and lifestyle. That's fine. No matter if your parents say you're throwing away your potential, no matter if the world says you need to run a company, no matter what people say it is okay to have simple goals and a simple life.

Minimalism is the practice of only having what you need for what you want to do. This is the video that first got me thinking about it.

It's something I think people need to be taught about more. Now I'm not saying you shouldn't go and sell off everything you own, but maybe at least think "Do I really need a $200 phone from a popular brand that doesn't even come with a charger? Do I need it? What parts of it validate the cost?"

Now here is how this all ties back to my overall message with this tangent.

I want to make indie comics because it makes me happy. It makes my friends who have helped me shaped the stories, characters, and everything else happy. And, overall, I hope it makes others happy too. Not to mention, I can't exactly think about signing up with some popular publishing company because of how loudly of an anarchist I am and how diverse I make my work.

Why I'm making this post is because I want to get you thinking about this too. Are you happy with whatever job you have right now? Are you fairly treated? Is this what you want? Are you brainwashed by societal norms made by the big companies that you need whatever big and fancy phone or computer set up you're reading this on? If you said no to any of this I suggest looking into your own personal rights as a human being and standing up for yourself, think about forming a union if need be. If your issue is with buying expensive things you don't even need feel free to trade them in or sell them and get what you need and can be happy with while having extra money left over.

Remember, you don't need to be make a billion dollars each week to be successful. Happiness is from what you do and what makes you happy, not your bank account amount or how many bedrooms you have in a mansion. Most of all, happiness is what you choose to make it not what some old jerks who think Trump is a sane man say it is.

[princess-of-morkva]

part two of that post-camlann piece of gwen&merlin i wrote earlier

—

Gwen enters the room silently, closing the door behind herself. The lively sounds of the castle die away as soon as it clicks shut, leaving her in a heavy silence. The curtains in this chambers are always shut nowadays, preserving it from being worn down by the sun. In near darkness, she's only able to find her way around due to it being oh so painfully familiar.

There she finds him, of course. A silhouette, hunched on the floor, having been sitting there for god knows how long.

"Gwen? Is it you?" He asks, noticing her presence at last.

"Yeah."

She steps closer, and, gathering her many skirts, lowers herself beside him. From this close, she notices him holding something - clutching it so hard his fingers must hurt.

Merlin has been coming here way to often, in the Queen's opinion.

It isn't doing him any good.

Gwen tries to keep him company, whenever she can. Truly, the man shouldn't be left alone for long - not in this state of mind, she doesn't trust him not to do something foolish.

She lays a gentle hand on his shoulder, offering meager comfort.

"We all miss him, Merlin." She talks to him softly, almost as if she were speaking to an animal and trying not to spook. "It's been months already." A deep inhale. "You can't spend the rest of your life grieving, Merlin, you're wasting away."

Merlin jerkily looks up from where he was staring at his own clutched hands, looking perhaps the most present she has seen him in this last few months.

"And what does it matter?" He still won't look her in the eyes, instead he's staring up ahead, where a thin gap in the curtains casts a single ray of daylight. "I deserve it." He whispers, barely audible.

"What do you-" Gwen is quick to protest, but gets cut off.

"He's dead!" Merlin's voice cracks, and they both realise it's the first time he's admitted so aloud. "He's dead. He's gone. I couldn't save him, I failed, because i was an idiot and got it all wrong!"

He looks her in the eyes this time, and the look makes her heart ache helplessly.

"I have nothing left, Gwen, he- He was everything to me, and now he's- he's gone, and- " He stumbles over his words, and there is such desperation in Merlin's eyes when he looks at her, begging for some answer. "What do I do, Gwen?"

And while she can't grant him an answer, she pulls him closer into her embrace, wiping away his tears.

Because oh, of course she knows, she understands it all. And Arthur was her husband, and she loved him with all her heart, but she also was his Queen - and Arthur entrusted his kingdom to her, and she has her duty to her people. She is the Queen, and she must be strong and lead the kingdom, she has her purpose.

But Merlin, their sweet, ever-loyal Merlin, was absolutely and utterly lost.

Because Gwen - she lost her husband, and grieved deeply. But Merlin, he lost just that - his everything, his life's purpose, and all that and even more, and- Gwen was beginning to fear he might lose his will to live as well. She couldn't let that happen.

She pulled the man closer and held him tightly as they both were crying silent tears, on the cold stone floor of these chambers - the fireplace here hasn't been lit in months, since there was no need - no one lived here anymore, not since the previous owner hadn't returned home from that fateful battle. A worn, red knight's cloak laying between them, memento of a man who wasn't there.

—

(there will be part 3)

[houstonindia]

The process of investment casting, also called wax casting, has been used in the metal casting process for several years, and this method has been improved as technology advances the casting process that makes use of one single shot moulds for creating the castings. This casting method is best for giving high-precision and complex shapes in structures. 

[gammaliminal]

Neon Troupe; an introduction to a tf2/overwatch fan game

welcome to the fairly near future… of the 80s! IBM, dotmatrix, disco, and cassette tapes are all the rage. despite lasers, miracle healing, uplifting animals, and more invented; we're still using CRT monitors and everything still groooovyyyyyyy. enter the companies Outlook Resurrection Grant (ORG) and Past Nations re-Kindled (PNK), which are locked into a corporate turf war due to a petty rivalry between workers spiraling way out of control. now enter the Contractors, people of varying stripes all equally (or more so compared to the others) willing to kill and die for a paycheck; and with corporate backing of military hardware, unexplained respawning, and unexplained clones (for the sake of the tone, neither of these will be explained).

if you couldn't tell already, this is basically TF2's excuse plot but set in the 80s, which hopefully we can do something new and original with! this project is inspired by OW2 self-destructing, making me finally deciding to start conceptualizing my idea for a class-based shooter in a similar vein as rivals of aether for platform fighters (more so inspired by tf2 then overwatch) pleaaaaaaase be nice to us; not only are we but two people who haven't designed any games before, but we're also purely doing this out of fun and aren't going to super strictly balance this. even if we're able to actually develop it. also, while we won't confirm any orientations, it'll be a looooooooooot more outwardly queer then either TF2 or OW <3 if that makes you angry, well we aren't creating this for you - Ξλ

links to stuff related to this project!! cast list companies and a bit of LOREEEE

[honestlyvan]

(Reposted from DW)

So I try not to make these rambles too powered by salt but considering Impactor is very near my favourite character in the franchise and as a result I read a lot of badfic featuring him out of sheer desperation for something, I'm seriously devastated by the way I've never seen it explored just what a harrowing and accurate description of moral injury and reflexive self-loathing he is.

Like, it's wild to me that we have it in the text, actually on page, that Impactor outright thinks he's a monster. We see it on page! It is written with plain words! He's stuck thinking like "can't survive if the other guy doesn't die", "your life is bought with the blood you spill, and you want to keep living so you best learn to like killing" to the point where he doesn't even want to live anymore and yet he can't stop, he's stuck, there's no safety for him to retreat back to because nobody taught him to value himself in any other way except in balance against someone else.

Like we know. Exactly what Impactor considers horrible, what he considers ugly and unseemly and corrupt. And it's all stuff that makes sense. It's all stuff the most of us probably find a little bit horrifying. We know that his perception of the world is so utterly bleak that there is no way but down, the only trajectory he sees for himself is to slip further and further from that surface because this is just his life now, this is what he is now, this may be what he always was, so isolated in his self-loathing that he can barely see the surface of where the horrible things end, and sure as hell doesn't think he can reach it. He's been cut off from his access to the sublime, to the fortifying, to the beautiful and wonderful and safe, this is all he has left, this is just what he is now.

I think the massive overriding misreading is assuming Impactor has any regard for himself. He may have the ability to act confident and move through the world with intellectual assurance over his own skill, and it's easy to take that as a sign that he has some kind of a core, undivided wholeness of personhood that lets him keep acting like he knows what he's doing. But I don't think that's it at all. His sense of self has been so completely fractured and damaged by the horrors he's committed and been isolated with that they've attached themselves to the space where his sense of self would otherwise be. Again, I'm not even extrapolating -- this just is the text of "Escape".

And then there's the negative influence of Guzzle, another person who thinks the way to deal with your trauma is by committing massive violence on it who has no idea this should maybe be something to discuss with people -- like, we see the way his abandon and reveling in having power and returning the violence drags Impactor down, too, because it's familiar, it makes sense, and then Impactor locks him in a box and goes "I can't fucking do this anymore". It's literally the most unsubtle death wish, it's a textbook flight arrest response, he doesn't want to keep doing the thing he's doing but he doesn't know what else there is, he sees no way out other than down.

And IDK I don't want to cast blame, honestly as a recovering abusive asshole myself, the terrible things he does to other people out of a sense of "this is how it has to be, don't be naive, don't be stupid", the loop of self-justification and grasping for value in his identity as an anonymous source of violence and ruiner of lives is a big part of why I love him so much, and his victims are really visible in the text, their mess deserves exploration and their pain deserves narrative validation, if only for completeness' sake

but like goddamn I just feel for this trash mech so much. He was left locked up with only his own bad thoughts for company, forced in a situation where becoming a worse person was the only way to escape further pain to the point where he's just completely cut off from his access to the sublime, to the fortifying, to the beautiful and wonderful and safe. Like where is there to go when the only things you know what to do are all fucked up? What do you do when all you've been "taught" is that living means killing, but you're getting extremely sick of the killing, when you're tired of your whole life being stained in blood and gore and the traces of the grotesquerie that is living with the knowledge that having power over other people is the ultimate act of survival when you never wanted that?

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Ripples

The ground shook. Water rippled.

Aiden, a twelve-year-old kid, froze. Stopped juggling. He gazed into a brackish puddle. Tremors continued to cause ripples. Like a giant’s footsteps, making the ground quake, they grew stronger.

Closer.

The boy rose from where he was kneeling, peeling his gaze off the puddle and its ripples. He stared into a horizon of blue over yellow, where wind fans lazily churned in the distance, and the carcasses of rusty old oil rigs slept.

The tremors neared. More ripples. And with them, a moving silhouette drew closer.

Duck-billed, giant, and saurian. The kid recognized its frame. Though he couldn’t remember the name of this genus, he recognized it from artistic renditions in books on dinosaurs: a Hadrosaurus. This living, breathing specimen of the creature bobbed and weaved between green trees on the ranch.

Closer. Stronger tremors matched the motions of its nearing, matching the rhythm of powerful legs, scaled trunks stomping down onto dry earth. Its gait was lumbering, erratic. Wounded.

Dark fluid dripped from its neck.

Blood dripped from its neck.

The boy fled.

He ran all the way back to the farmhouse. His small feet and bright red shoes thumped up wooden steps onto the porch, and carried him inside, though his weight was nowhere near enough to cause those ground-shaking tremors, nor those ripples in the puddle in the field outside.

The kid’s mother and brother were in the kitchen. Aiden’s mom, busy kneading dough in a chromed bowl on the counter, hummed while Aiden’s little brother, Baz, sat at the table, tapping thumbs away at his portable video game, complete with the bleeps and bloops the small device was continuously producing.

Oblivious.

Both of them were oblivious to the giant lizard approaching their house.

They both looked up when Aiden stormed into the kitchen, gasping for air. His breathless cries for attention made no sense to them.

“Dinosaur! There’s a dinosaur coming here!”

All the while, Aiden felt those tremors—in his blood, in his bones, and in his skull, ever thumping. Closer, ever closer.

“Honey, the dinos have gone extinct, a very, very long time ago,” his mother said with a soft laugh.

Baz’s eyes returned focus to the screen of his game and he continued tapping buttons, then whined. A little musical cue punctuated his complaint when he said, “Aw man, you made me die!”

Aiden shook his head and flailed his arms for attention. To no effect. “That earthquake, don’t you feel it? That’s a dino, it’s coming closer!”

His mother stared into the bowl where she kneaded the dough, wrists sprinkled in flour. She laughed again.

“Aiden, honey, please. That’s probably just another one of those silly companies prospecting for oil out here, drilling. You know?”

Ripples.

Aiden saw them in his mind’s eye. Ripples on the water, brought there by the tremors. By the quaking footsteps. Now… just outside.

“No, it’s not poss-specters, it’s a dinosaur, Mom!” he whined in response.

He turned to see how close the Hadrosaurus had gotten.

Dust rained from the ceiling now. He could feel the tremors in his teeth. A giant silhouette passed by outside the fly door.

Aiden’s mouth agape, he stood there, dumbfounded. Stared.

“That does feel like it’s getting closer, though, dagnabbit,” his mother said with a back turned to the horrific spectacle, with a hint of alarm now entering her tone. “What on Earth are they thinking?”

The dinosaur cast a hulking shadow through the windows of the living room it passed by next. Aiden’s blood curdled. With bated breath, he watched the Hadrosaurus circling around the building.

Thundering footsteps. Glass and ceramics rattled in the kitchen cupboards. Glass was just another liquid, and the ripples now sliced through everything. Rattling, clattering, rumbling, thundering.

His mother muttered, mouth ending as agape as Aiden’s. “What the—”

Quaking. Shaking. Rattling glass.

The portable video game in Baz’s hands emitted another little death tune for another virtual life lost. The nine-year-old looked up at his glass of milk on the table, and the ripples inside of it, now unsteadily shaking—the glass of milk was almost hopping atop the covered table’s surface.

Then the world exploded. Wood cracked, splintered. Thousands of shards of glass flew everywhere, blanketing the area like a rain of sharp shrapnel, and a skeletal architecture groaned under the strain of raw, crushing force. The backside of the farmhouse yawned wide open where a giant had torn through its side, unleashing an explosion of chaos and destruction.

Of screaming. A scream from Aiden’s mother, cut off as mountains of debris crashed down and buried her. An ongoing, blood-curdling scream from Baz, slicing high-pitched through the bedlam of collapsing house. And screams of terror, which Aiden eventually understood were coming from his own throat.

A strange and alien roar of the Hadrosaurus, almost more like an animal whine, drowned out the humans with its deafening cry of anguish.

Powerful legs, thick as tree branches, stomped around, shattering floors and turning the venerable home into a ruin.

Worlds collided as the dinosaur crashed sideways through the building. A piece of second-story floor jutted down like a jagged blade of wood, and nearly decapitated Aiden, cut short by the massive boards getting lodged on other debris. The boy’s voice died with his screams, choked out by gasps, and a growing, silent panic.

Blood splattered everywhere. Whose blood? The dinosaur’s blood? His own? His—

An even greater giant emerged from this chaos, towering over the house, and the Hadrosaurus.

A Tyrannosaurus Rex, as it lived and breathed. A living tower of death. A maw of death. A maw that could swallow Aiden whole, widening to show rows of teeth like knives, stained with blood.

Unlike the wounded Hadrosaurus, the T-Rex did not roar. It…

It sang. An alien, reptilian song, forgotten across the span of billions of years on this Earth. Now brought here through a fissure in time.

The Hadrosaurus whipped around and demolished another wall with its tail—almost decapitating the invisible Aiden in the process. Failing architecture crumbled and collapsed, braking the tail’s momentum, and stopping it from stopping the T-Rex that loomed over them.

The T-Rex lunged and its giant head rammed through twisting wood and metal, tearing through the structure like it was a toy house. Walls and floors groaned again as they bent and wobbled and deformed in every wrong direction, and the Hadrosaurus stumbled through the building’s midst, crashing and staggering out the front door’s side.

The T-Rex’s giant, clawed foot smashed down onto debris—where the boys’ mother was buried?

Baz screamed.

The T-Rex’s reptilian eye widened, and its maw gaped again.

Another lunge from the monolithic beast.

And Baz was gone. Aiden would remember the tiny limb and little red shoe sticking out from between the teeth like a gruesome toothpick. The crunch of breaking bones, a scream first muffled, then falling silent with abruptness.

And the beast chewed twice, and swallowed, and Baz was gone.

Paralyzed, Aiden stayed frozen like a statue, blending into the debris around him like a chameleon.

In the distance, the Hadrosaurus whined again, gaining distance.

Water in the brackish puddle outside continued to ripple with each thundering footstep. Tremors repeated as the prey Hadrosaurus fled, and the predator T-Rex gave chase.

And in the ruins of that farmhouse, a shellshocked Aiden remained. Nestled between the rubble and wreckage. Too terrified to move. Too horrified to grasp how he had lost his mother and brother, too paralyzed to even gasp for the air his lungs were screaming for, holding his breath as if it would help prevent him from being devoured.

Ripples continued. Ripples in the water. The T-Rex stomped away, chasing the Hadrosaurus with single-minded determination. With bloodlust.

Ripples reached through time. A single point, from which the waves moved outwards in every direction, past and future both. Pasts preserved—futures destroyed. Melting back together into the same body of water between every ripple.

Elsewhere, far out in the fields, an Anomaly glittered and gleamed in broad daylight. A hovering, orb-like light scintillated there—a connection between the eras, from which the dinosaurs had arrived.

The T-Rex chased the Hadrosaurus into the old oil fields of Midland.

Aiden fled in the opposite direction. Covered in dust, dirt, and blood—whose blood? His own?

The boy fled from his ruined home.

Hope was the last thing on his mind. Ripples consumed all.

[graha-stan-account]

Weal: Day 19

Weal: noun. That which is best for someone or something. 

Present. A nighttime visitor. Some comfort, assurance, but also hurt. Takes place during 6.0, Returning Home.

FFXIVWrite 2023 Masterlist

--- 

Napha opened the glass shutters to her Annex room, the cool sea air sweeping up the hill and through the window. It was a temperate night in Sharlayan, and the sky was clear. Napha sat on the sill and looked up at the stars. When last she had gazed upon the darkened sky, she was sure it would never appear quite the same again. But strangely, from the heavens as from the ground, it remained unchanged. No matter how high she soared, those bright lights remained still infinitely further beyond her grasp. 

Now with Zodiark dispelled, it was only a matter of time before fate determined the mantle of hero fit ill upon Napha's shoulders. She cast her gaze to the bed, weary for sleep, but fearful of what may come the morrow. 

Then, there was a knock. There was but one who would call at an hour such as this. She pulled at the heavy door. G'raha was looking down at his hands, turning one over in the other, when he raised his head suddenly, face blossoming into a guileless smile. 

"How are you faring?" Napha leaned against the open door.

"In honesty, I am troubled." 

Napha's eyes went wide, and pulling the door further open, she bade him enter. He shook his head. 

"I will not keep you overlong." 

Napha gave the smallest of nods. She squeezed her fingers with the opposite hand. He stared at her politely as her gaze crawled over him, the door frame and the hallway beyond. She offered a weak smile. 

"I suppose this is liable to be the last quiet night we have to talk for some time," he said, his look softening at her familiar, anxious posture. "And there are things you would say too, then. I'd hoped as much." 

Napha stepped aside, clearing the floor before him. He stepped just over the threshold, out of the hall. 

"I am listening." Napha fought to clear the worry from her face. She tightened her lips, lifted her furrowed brow, stood a little straighter. 

"You are not a fool, my friend." G'raha's face wrinkled with sympathy. "Nor must you put on for my sake." All such tricks would not work on the reluctant former head of a city-state, it seemed. But, as though reading her mind, that he would now rebuke one of the many slights she leveled against herself in their closed company, served to scrub the pretension from her face. "Ah, now I can be at ease." 

His sentiments had shot clear through to her heart. Her sinuses burned, the small kindness near moving her to tears. How could this put him at ease? -  she wondered. 

"I pray when you look at me now you do not see the boy you knew, nor the beleaguered leader. Just the same, I am not here to talk to the Warrior of Light." He chuckled. "J'napha," his voice sobered, "matters will complicate from here, like as not. A difficult journey it has been, especially for you. But know this trial too shall conclude one day, and again... we'll begin anew! So you mustn't overtax yourself." He exhaled, considering for a moment. "For this I am also to blame. I've made it too easy for you to place yourself last. Pushed you further in the name of duty. 

"So before it becomes too much, before we all lean so heavily upon you, our most dependable companion, I ask you allow me to shoulder some of that burden. Seek me out when you have need. Know that I have learned from the Exarch's mistakes. A load shared by many makes for light work. For the good of all." 

She would not allow those tears swimming in her eyes to fall. He was right. More blood and death would come. More sorrow and pain. But Napha had steeled herself, too. And as she felt the bulwarks grow around her, she found it easier to stand, scaffolded not by duty and obligation, but by love. 

"...For the good of all," Napha replied, the words she meant to say catching in her throat and tumbling back down. 

I don't want to die. Not now. 

G'raha gestured with approval. Napha captured his fist with her hand and the moment froze, their fingers slowly moving over one another's. 

But yours would be worse.  

As she took in his satisfied grin, it was another's words which echoed persistently in her mind. 

"That's the thing with you adventurers. You're so damn good at leaving an impression, but you don't stick around long, do you?" 

"So, please. What was it you wanted to speak about?" G'raha asked. 

I very well could die. And it shall not be your penance. 

"Not a thing. You've put my mind at ease. Sleep well." 

[owlsandwich]

The Mechanics of Magic

Read along with me :D - Chapter 12

Chapter 1 | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

We meet Aiden again!

(I'm sheduling these posts to go out overnight, so I'll add the full chapter links tomorrow)

Chapter 12 is below the cut:

The words in the heavy textbook blurred as Tamara’s body gave in to fatigue. Her magelight flickered from where it floated above the wide, heavy table, and she sent out another burst of focussed energy to steady it. Even the shield that she always ran against her skin had become too much effort to maintain. Long empty, the cosy isolation of her favourite corner of the palace library had kept her there far longer than intended, but getting up to leave seemed more exhausting that simply curling up in her chair.

With a yawn, Tamara closed the book and added it to her growing pile of discarded tomes. Her first assignment in this role and she was getting nowhere. Worse, she had promised Alex she would find answers. After speaking with him properly, Tamara was confident her instincts in Golebach were correct; the explosion was an accident, and they deserved to go home. To do so, however, she would need proof.

An echoing creak suddenly jolted her awake. Tamara snapped her head up, but a row of bookcases blocked her view of the library’s tall double doors. After a moment, the bright glare of an electric bulb flared into life near the entrance, causing her to squint as the shelves turned to silhouette.

Pins and needles shot down her legs as she unfurled them. Ignoring the discomfort, Tamara let her magelight die and headed towards the entrance, mindful of the sound of her steps on the hardwood floor. She hadn’t expected anyone to arrive at this time of night, and curiosity outweighed her desire to avoid an interaction. 

The entrance to the library was an open foyer with a wide sweeping staircase that led to further rows of shelves. A man came into view as Tamara approached, standing in front of the framed map that showed the layout of the two floors. Tall and slim, there was a sheen of red to his slick, brown hair, and for a second Tamara thought it was Morgan. Then he turned towards her, and she realised her error.

“Who’s there?”

Aiden Heliodor’s smooth voice sounded exceptionally confident for someone caught off guard in the dark. Tamara stepped into the open, deciding that that any chance she had of escaping notice had long passed. Though she had only met him briefly, Aiden had seemed friendly enough in Morgan’s office and she wondered if he would remember her.

“Tamara?” A smile broke across his handsome features. “Apologies if I startled you; I didn’t anticipate company this evening.” His words sounded unnaturally loud in the towering space, the bright light from the chandelier above the entrance spotlighting them as the rows of bookcases faded into shadow.

“Please, don’t worry.” She returned the smile, suddenly conscious of her crumpled clothes and obvious exhaustion. “I really should have left hours ago.” For his part Aiden showed no sign of weariness, his crisp shirt and grey blazer as fresh as his face. At least he didn’t seem offended by her approach. 

“Again, then, your timing has proved lucky for me.” Aiden crossed the space towards her. There was an amused spark in his eyes, and Tamara looked away in embarrassment as she remembered her intrusion into Morgan’s office. “I’m thrilled we finally have a chance to speak properly.” 

“Oh.” She heard the tinge of wariness in her own voice. People weren’t usually so pleased to see her and she wondered what motive Aiden had for his flattering words. “It’s nice to talk to you again as well.” She pulled her jacket tight against her chest. It seemed colder here, away from the warmth she had cultivated in her corner, and she briefly considered casting a spell for heat.

“It’s a shame we didn’t meet sooner. If you were still in Vailberg, I would have been delighted to add such a prominent magical researcher to my team. I admit, my loss is clearly Ardveld’s gain.”

Relief flooded through her at the mention of work and Tamara latched onto the subject, having feared that there might have been some other reason for his interest. Physically, Aiden posed no threat, but even she wasn’t naïve enough to discount his position.

“Are you here regarding your own research?” Her hurried question saved her from dwelling further on his praise. “The librarians have all left for the evening, but I might be able to help you find what you’re looking for. I’ve spent a lot of time in here since coming to Ardveld.” 

“Perhaps you can.” Aiden studied her, his amusement replaced by a passing displeasure that vanished as swiftly as she noticed it. “It has been some time since my last visit and there is only so much I am able to source remotely. I’m looking for unusual symbols, very old and uniquely Ardveldian.”

Back at the university, Tamara had rarely paid attention to anything outside her own field of magical efficiency. Still, she should have remembered Aiden’s own prowess as a researcher. Studying magic without any power of his own, the academic achievements of Vailberg’s prince were exceptional. His business, Sunstone Enterprises, was even successful enough to have financed the projects of many of Tamara’s contemporaries at its private research centre.

“Could you tell me what the symbols look like?” Now that she thought about it, she might have seen some relevant texts during her frantic search for information on ground magic. Half of the Ardveldian history section must be stacked at her desk.

“I can do one better.” White teeth flashed as his smile returned, and Tamara caught the perfumed scent of Aiden’s clothes as he moved closer. “Though you will have to forgive me for boring you with a work discussion.” He reached into the inner pocket of his blazer and pulled out a small, leather-bound notebook, marked throughout with coloured tabs.

As he flipped the little book open, Tamara saw that each page held a hand drawn symbol, precisely inscribed, with notes below that seemed to explain its meaning or purpose. Each symbol followed a similar pattern, fine lines that ended with circles, and Tamara was sure she had seen something similar before.

“They relate to the original magic of Ardveld,” Aiden explained. “Perhaps used side by side with what we know today as passive spells. Or even used in their place.” He traced a finger over the symbol on the open page. “I am yet to determine their full capabilities, but I can assure you, nothing anyone else is researching right now could come close to the importance of what I am about to discover.”

Tamara caught her breath as Aiden looked down at her, the blue of his eyes almost black in the shadowed light. Arrogant, perhaps, but there was a passion to his words that made her believe them.

“I think I might have seen a symbol like this before.” She remembered now. “I have the book out already. Just over at my table.”

There was a dull snap as Aiden closed the notebook and slid it back into his inner pocket. With it went the intensity of the moment, and Tamara’s breathing returned to normal. Turning away, she jumped at the touch of his hand on her back. 

“Please, lead on.” Aiden was uncomfortably close, and she darted forward, inciting a chuckle from him in response.

Without her magelight, the table in the corner was dark. Tamara conjured a new one, catching Aiden watching her as she focused her will on the growing light. 

“I think there was something in this one. Typical it would be at the bottom…” Tamara began to disassemble her book tower, feeling some more of the tension ease now she had something to occupy her hands.

“Deep Ardveldian history. Not something I’d expect anyone else to be reading at three in the morning.” Aiden gave a conspiratorial wink as she handed the book across. “Now I regret not recruiting you even more.”

“Three! I hadn’t realised it was so late,” Tamara exclaimed. No wonder she had been flagging.

Aiden smiled. “Time gets away from us all when we’re having fun. Will I be seeing you at the dinner tomorrow evening? Or rather, this evening, considering the time.”

“Oh, yes.” She had been so occupied with Alex and Eira that she had forgotten the formal celebrations were so close. That must be why Aiden was in Ardveld after all.

It was the anniversary of Ardveld’s takeover, and every year the celebratory events spanned two days. The private dinner that Aiden had referenced would host every Ardveldian official, along with many Velbian guests of various degrees of importance. A garden party the day after was open to invited members the public. It wasn’t something that Tamara was particularly looking forward to, though having a friendly face to talk with would help. Hopefully Morgan wouldn’t find the time to ask about her progress on the case. “I’ll definitely be there.”

“Excellent!” Aiden tucked her book under his arm. “In that case, I look forward to more intriguing discussions.” 

He turned to walk away just as an idea sparked in Tamara’s mind. 

“I— Sorry, I should have asked before…” She scrambled to re-stack her book pile and took a few steps towards him. “Speaking of old Ardveldian magic, I don’t suppose you know much about natural magic, or ground magic maybe? A form of magic that could exist on its own, without a purpose?”

Aiden stopped walking and turned back towards her. “Why do you ask?” There was no charm in his expression this time, and Tamara could tell she had caught his attention.

“It doesn’t make much sense as a concept, I know. Magic is tied to a mage’s life force and I’ve never heard of any other source. It’s just that I’m working on a case and something’s not adding up.” Tamara was regretting mentioning anything already. Saying it all out loud made her discussion with Alex seem even more ridiculous.

Aiden wasn’t amused, though. “Tell me.” The command made her palms prick with sweat. 

“There was a magic... incident. In Golebach,” she explained hurriedly. Aiden’s frown was making her feel as though she was being interrogated. “An ancient site was damaged. I spoke to some... some witnesses when I was there, and one said that they had felt a kind of magic coming from the ground.”

Willingly bringing suspected criminals into the security of the palace seemed like a far less sensible course of action now that she was talking to a superior.

“I wouldn’t have given it much thought, but what I saw there couldn’t be explained by a mage acting alone. The force that caused the damage… It removed every passive spell in the vicinity! Residents are also saying there was an earthquake, but Ardveld doesn’t have—”

“Doesn’t have any tectonic activity.” Aiden finished the sentence for her. 

“I can’t find anything about magical earthquakes or ground magic anywhere,” Tamara sighed, looking back at the books. “I’m starting to think I was a fool for looking.” She was supposed to be a respected magical researcher, not some conspiracy theorist chasing after the ridiculous invention of an eighteen-year-old.

“This is—” Aiden stopped and Tamara looked back at him, expecting to see disappointment. Instead, his eyes were wide, staring past her. “I didn’t bring it… I’ll have someone fetch it from Vailberg immediately.” He muttered the words to himself, his fist clenched against his chest.

Unsure how to respond to the sudden shift in the tone of their conversation, Tamara watched Aiden’s agitation in silence. Then, suddenly, he clasped one of her hands between his own.

“If you find any more information about this, I want to be the first to know.” 

Without her shield, Tamara flinched at the contact. Still, she didn’t pull away. Aiden’s eyes bore into her own until, to her relief, he released her. Then, turning on his heel, he swept out of the library without another word, leaving Tamara once again alone in the echoing silence.

[arolesbianism]

Ok no one asked but I've been tempted to make Jackie and Olivia stalien designs since I've been working on some new icons for the eternal gales stalien kiddos and it's been making me also think abt how disastrous it would be if they were in the same stalien society that the main cast are from because dear god would they either die instantly or make things so much worse. Even if they did get lucky enough to be able to be remotely near a position to found a stalien version of gravitas, no way in hell they'd be able to get far enough to even begin their own morally corrupt downfall before one of the other big companies forcibly assimilated gravitas into their own corporations and do the same shit but way WAY worse. Even if Jackie Was in a position to eventually climb the ladder enough to get to a more ceo position shed probably end up painting a target on her back way before she could get there, as her and Olivia's whole infinite power research would be very much unwanted by most of the ceo elders. Oh and Olivia would be fucked even beyond that because she's a biologist lol so at best she's going to be forced to drop every last one of her morals and barely scrape by