#don't ask me about the world this takes place in i technically had a meltdown in front of a friend once

[vintageskeletons]

post about em bby, tell me about those ocs

you have no idea how incredibly bad i feel to have left this ask rotting for two weeks, so bad that i'm willing to just overlook the pet name term we somehow got going on now? (like what the hell dude i don't even know your favourite ice-cream flavour??? tell me the third letter of your fake internet name or whatever at least, give me something to work with smh)

warning : vin is about to be annoying and start rambling boy run away

anyway! i'm soooo happy you asked about my children, but unfortunately for them they have the most shittiest parent. i literally don't have their names, full design and characters down let alone a coherent reference sheet ajdncsjncnsj. (only a google docs full of brain vomit and two pages of just names i might never use)

i do however have this half assed sketch-doodle thing that i gave up on polishing so you're getting it as is :)

rough translation : 1) thank god ghosty isn't with us right now 2) i'm getting chills and the air is already freezing. 3) careful idiot, this is the second time you've said his name. 4) hush, he's not freaking bloody mary what's wrong with you? 5) *insert bomb ass profanities that would sound less epic if translated*

btw this is only four out of supposedly six of them 〒▽〒 stay tuned for the other two's debut whenever that might be.....

[faithfromanewperspective]

I grew up believing that if you have shit worth stealing while people need to eat, you don't really have a right to complain if you get robbed. I came to this position out of pure spite: my family were never rich, but as a kid with no autonomy over anything I owned who was sheltered from responsibility but saw poverty from a young age, I didn't know that. I just wished I had something worth stealing so that I could be free of the expectation to find happiness in material things I couldn't control the destination of, feel worthy because something I had made a difference in someone's life.

decades later, the option came to opt out of using my writing to train AI, and I chose not to take it. I tell myself it's because filling in any form often sends me into a meltdown it takes days for my nervous system to recover from (which is true) but there's also something narcissistic (morally neutral) within me that says. me? you think my stuff is good enough to train your bot on? I made anything good enough to steal? fuck yeah I wanna be stolen from. god knows I put so much out there into the universe and no one fucking cares. might be good to get some acknowledgement even if it's only in a turn of phrase I used that I see someone else catching onto: I've been there when I was a trendsetter in high school and felt on top of the world to think some of the shit that came out of my brain meant enough to someone that they started doing it too.

and I know a bot isn't the same and no one who is starving gets any benefit from it it's pure greed with a side of environmental destruction and you have every right to protest against them using your intellectual property and I fully support each and every one of you for doing that. but also, if you're me and you desperately want people to feel okay and you can't end exploitation fully but sometimes ending it for one person is enough, I'll voluntarily take the place of the exploited in a heartbeat. it's fucked up, I know that, but if it means I'm not dead yet from the frustration of it all it's a misplaced kind of coping mechanism but when I do it in little ways, I can say no to the big ways that cause me actual harm.

technically, this doesn't align with my beliefs at all but for some reason in my head, stealing is wrong when it's from anyone but me. I'm a stickler for intellectual property who has been known to rant about the injustices perpetuated by streaming services to both artists and users but when it's the thoughts coming out of my head I want them in the world by any means possible. I don't care if I get acknowledged. it's better than being completely unheard, invisible, to think it's going towards something--it's like I trust there's enough good in what I spew out to think that if it's getting used for evil, evil won't get very far with it. I don't care if it doesn't have a soul, I'm offering it mine bleeding out around the edges. don't take anyone else's. take mine. it's hurting me otherwise.

now I've admitted to enabling capitalism I ask myself: what am I but a part of the commons? am I a person and an artist on my own or am I simply creative commons? I need to get these thoughts out before they kill me. one day I'll make something I'm actually proud of and try get some cash for it. for now I'm overflowing and I don't give a fuck where any of it goes. take it, it's better than taking something that means a lot to someone else.

[cloudcryptid]

HI HELLOso this is a very out of the blue question but if u feel ok sharing how did u go about making ur whf ocs into their own original universe?? a close pal of mine and i have been into whf for years and we still love it but want to separate the ocs we made for it into our own universe w some of the same general themes, so i guess what im asking is, do u have any advice from ur own experience of doing that? u dont have to answer this if u dont want to btw no pressure :3

so i've been thinking on how to answer this one, since i struggle to put concepts into understandable words and honestly i would consider asking @theshiaxartist about it as well as he's the one i did this with, he's usually better at explaining things in my opinion, plus multiple perspectives always helps :>

but also i didn't really?

so me n shiax looked at our ocs and the relations we'd built between them and decided we didn't want to change that, so we just kinda, transplanted it over

are we using whf itself? no, but we are using a lot of the concepts that play major parts in it: -completely isolated island -major mood changing and manipulating drugs -it was supposed to be a better place and ended in dystopia and destruction -etc etc

we took this concept and moved it over to a technically premade world (in actuality it was just bits n pieces of worlds that we'd both made but no longer has use for and so just slapped them all together, we're still constantly adding and developing to it, friend's connected universes are real)

i suppose why it seems like they're no longer fan ocs now is that we're not currently in that portion of the timeline, we've moved on

for us, the events of the isle (our stand in for whf) happened, it is a very important part of the oc's backstory and character development, without it they'd be completely different people but canonly, where we are in the timeline of things is roughly 2-5 years after they escaped and the isle essentially had a nuclear meltdown

we made them our own sorta, think kinda like how aus take the base content and shift it slightly to the left (yes they can shift further out but for the sake of things here, just a little for now)

its a simple and easy option and i think people are a little afraid of ideas being too similar but being heavily inspired is better than being stuck

worlds are large and ocs are fictional have fun

i suppose for tips tho:

-figure out what really makes the ocs, well them, what major events and relations are required for them to stay as they are, keep those or find something similar enough to get the right outcome

-building a whole new world for them can be fun, but it can also get you stuck up in minute details or floundering to have everything explained, it's ok for characters to exist in a void until you can fill it with something (you should also ask shiax about this, his world building is always really fun and he's great for like, looking at how things actually work together, ie. if there's 2 moons, how does that impact things)

-frankly, don't be scared to just rehaul as well, some ideas simply won't work in certain contexts and you'll have to figure something else out

-you are free to play around, nothing is set in stone, make as many different possible worlds and lands and settings until you find the one that sticks people get stuck on making it right the first time and this applies to oc creation too

i know this doesn't really like, set you in a definite direction, but creation is fickle and whimsical like that

[tina-mairin-goldstein]

For the authors ask: 🍔, 🍭, 🥑, 🥠, and 🌮! Any and/or all

Thanks for the ask! These are going to be kind of hard.

🍔What's a headcanon that hasn't made it into a published fic yet?

This one is really hard! Uh...

That would be a Fantastic Beasts one (this was before SOD came out) and is that Credence/Aurelius is the magical love child of Dumbledore and Grindelwald. Through highly magical means, Dumbledore gave birth to Credence, sent him off to America with his aunt, and then thought he died when the ship went down. Grindelwald doesn't know this.

🍭What's been your most challenging story to write, and why?

That's a tie! That would All Night or a Hundred Years, and For Remembrance (Holes in the Floor of the Mind).

All Night or a Hundred Years is giving me the challenge of writers' block right now, because I know how it ends but I don't know how to get it there. It's an FB one about Percival Graves and Leta Lestrange being alive but held captive by Grindelwald. It needs to take place over the course of five years, and is confined to one POV and one room, which makes it extra challenging. I don't know what could happen for five years locked in a dungeon by Grindelwald. I'm thinking of laying a few things out and then doing a time skip.

For Remembrance was a challenge to incorporate a plant from the language of flowers and its meaning, and it was challenging to write because the initial story, told from the POV of Abigail Hobbs, was not satisfying me. It needed to be something more, and I had a self-imposed deadline to meet. It grew into a post-fall amnesia fic, and writing how that would change Hannibal's relationship with Will and Abigail was a challenge. It was also the first time I had ever written directly from Hannibal's POV, which was intimidating to me. I had a few meltdowns about it, but luckily some lovely mutuals allowed me to talk to them and give them pieces to read, and helped me get it to a place where I am just so happy with it.

🥑What are you currently working on?

Technically six stories right now, but three are on hiatus.

They would All Night or a Hundred Years, my Percival and Leta story, and it's on hiatus indefinitely at the moment.

Caraval, a Hannibal AU of the book Caraval by Stephanie Garber, where Will and Hannibal team up to play a magical game and track down Abigail. They need to win.

Untangled, a FB Tangled AU where Newt is in the roll of Rapunzel, and Tina is Flynn Ryder. Grindelwald kidnapped Newt as a baby because the flower magic Newt has fixes his magic, which was broken in a duel with Dumbledore.

The Third Day, a Hannibal AU based off the HBO show The Third Day. Currently on hiatus, because I haven't actually seen The Third Day and that's making things difficult.

Han+SPN, a Hannibal/Supernatural crossover co-written with Sarc. Sam and Dean team up with Will, a half-ravenstag, who is being pursued by hunters and needs to rescue his mate, Hannibal. Hiatus because I forgot to come up with the outline.

And The Great Red Dragon, a Hannibal knight AU where Francis Dolarhyde teams up with Will and Hannibal to save his love from a dragon.

🥠What's your approach to world-building?

If it's an AU based off something else, I lay it out how it was laid out in the source material. Otherwise, I just try to stick it in the front and lay out the facts to get that out of the way.

🌮How do you balance the desire to write for yourself versus the desire to write for an audience?

Uhh... I've never felt compelled to write for an audience. I write what I write and HOPE there is an audience. I experienced this with a critically endangered rare-pair I wrote fore. About an audience of 10 there, but I write the stories I want and get inspiration for.

Thanks for the ask! This was really difficult, but also really fun!

[well-its-not-human-anymore]

So this is a personal one for me to ask and if you're not comfortable with it don't mind it; how would the tmnt boys (seperate) react when the reader confesses that they're autistic after the boys got curious when she had some peculiar, behavior or stims. The reader would be stressed, because she has a crush on the tmnt boy in question and she didn't want them to find her weird or just stop interacting with her. When she's met with confusion instead, because the boys never heard of it, cue this weird conversation where reader tells them to the best of her ability what it is and the boys just keep asking questions. Also some general headcannons with it maybe?

Okay so I'm actually really happy that you asked me this because I feel like ASD isn't portrayed a lot in any type of media. My ADD and ASD have a lot of overlap so I hope I can capture what you're asking of me!

Now let's get into it!

TMNT Headcanons

The boys reacting to an autistic reader

Leonardo

he wasn't really sure what was happening the first time you reacted

one minute you were standing next to him doing dishes and the next you were attempting to claw your skin off like an angry cat

Leo tried not to look annoyed as he watched you rub your hands against your shirt until your flesh started to turn red

you looked like you were crying but he knew you weren't

but your face was starting to turn purple and your cheeks were puffy from the effort of holding your breath

"Y/N? You need to breathe."

You shot a glare at him, scathing eyes meeting his now very concerned expression

your own softened and you clutched your arms to your chest, heaving oxygen into your lungs until your face became a normal shade again

"Are you okay?"

The words were stuck in your throat and you weren't sure if you should nod or shake your head

so you gave him a half-hearted shrug

he frowned back at you but turned to finish the dishes on his own

when he questioned you about it later he couldn't help but be curious

"Well actually it's uh- it's kinda a sensory type of thing? There are certain textures that I can't stand touching do I avoid them but if I come into contact by accident my brain just kinda explodes and I shut down."

"How exactly does that work though?"

"I don't really understand it much but like- you know that feeling you get when you think there's a bug on you and there's not but it really really feels like it?"

He nodded

"Yeah, it feels like that. And anytime I touch something that triggers that reaction it takes FOREVER to get the feeling off my skin. That's why I usually wear gloves when I do dishes. Guess I just forgot to grab 'em today."

He was sympathetic

and god, you were so embarrassed

lucky for you, Leo's not an asshole

"Well thank you for explaining it to me, you really freaked me out earlier. I'll talk to April and see if we can keep a pair or two at the lair just in case you forget again."

Consider your heart melted

you couldn't even find the words to thank him and holy shit was your face red

"Hey y/n?"

"Yeah Leo?"

"Why didn't you ever tell me- us that you were autistic?"

Did you rip the band aid off now or make something up? Which would ,technically speaking, be less catastrophic in the long run?

"I uh- I really like you and I really didn't want you or the other's to look at me differently..."

wow, you liked him? miss ma'am you have saved this boy a world of anxiety and damn does he thank you for it

"Thanks for telling me... and y/n? I really like you to."

Awh fuck yeah, best possible execution of band aid-ripping-off ever

Donatello

Donnie wished he could act surprised when you finally told him

he really wanted to, it would've made you feel better for sure

but he sucked at lying and he didn't want to make you feel like he thought you were an idiot

because that was so far from the truth

after going through extensive research on Mikey's behalf when he suspected he had ADHD Donnie had stumbled across many different websites that discussed the symptoms and overlaps between both disorders

to make a long story short, Donnie knew that you had ASD and he was waiting for you to tell him

it would probably come off as rude if he brought it up in conversation right?

he didn't want to risk it

but that didn't stop him from keeping an eye on you and your behaviors

he was a man of science, of course he was going to analyze you

not in a weird way or anything, just as a curious sort of precaution

but the longer you were involved in the turtle's lives the more noticeable your stims and meltdowns got, Donnie did his best to cover for you without making you suspicious of him

eventually he'd come up with something that he hoped would come across as a friendly gesture and wouldn't set you off or scare you away

it was game night at the lair and you, as always, were perched on the arm of the sofa, a large grin plastered on your face

inside your head was exploding but you were masking it pretty well if you do say so yourself

but Donnie was, well... donnie was donnie

so when he noticed you starting to rock a little more visibly he removed his attention from commentating the game and grabbed a pair of headphones from the side table

you were beyond confused when he passed them to you but your face revealed everything

"They're noise cancelling, try them on."

holy shit it was like putting your head underwater, everything was muffled

not in the way normal headphones did, you quite literally couldn't hear anything at all, just a calm amount of nothing

you nearly started crying when you realized that Donnie had figured you out on his own

but you'd never been more relieved about anything in your life

Raphael

he wouldn't admit that he was mesmerized by your presence

you practically radiated calm

his complete opposite

it was his favorite thing about you, because despite your quiet disposition and calming aura you weren't afraid to call him out or rebut any of his insults

this was not something you expected him to appreciate nor was it something you thought would make you catch feelings

but damn if you didn't

he'd been sitting in on yours and Donnie's little experiment for an hour or so now, watching you both exchange quiet whispers and inside jokes that you always seemed to lag on

then you slipped up

not bad, nothing detrimental to the project, just the same mistake that you'd already made ten times over

you might as well have exploded

"Y'N, you just have to move thi-"

"I KNOW DONATELLO. I FUCKING KNOW AND I JUST CAN'T DO THIS BULLSHIT!"

you set everything down gently enough to avoid breaking it before turning and storming out of the lab, waving your hands like they were on fire

Raph and Donnie exchanged a look that sent the larger red turtle following after you

when you calmed yourself down enough to talk you kept your gaze locked on the wall, explaining that you couldn't make eye contact when you were upset

he might not be the smartest brother, but Raph's no dummy, he put those pieces together pretty quickly after you told him that one small detail

he wasn't upset that you didn't tell him and you'd personally never been more relieved

your heart nearly splattered into the stratosphere when you finally gace him your own explanation

"yeah, I like ya too."

you grinned so wide you were sure your face would split open and your entire body rocked side to side with excitement

he thought that was pretty adorable too

And he did stick around to offer a bit of support when you apologized to Donnie for screaming at him

Michaelangelo

to be frank it probably shouldn't have taken so long for Mikey to realize that you were autistic

the similarities between your own personality and his ADHD were so in sight it was near painful

it was his turn to make dinner that night and you'd made sure that you came over early to help him set up, you knew how side-tracked he'd get and you were the poster child for solid routine

what more perfect matchup existed?

trick question, there isn't one

you were on one side of the counter cutting vegetables and he was on the other throwing said vegetables into the mixing pot

the music was at an ungodly level of loud so your only means of communication were screaming over it

"MIKEY."

"WHA?"

"YOU GOT THE-"

"YEAH."

"AND THE-"

"UH HUH."

"COOL, HAVE YOU SEEN THE-"

"TONGS? NO, THE SKEWERS. YEAH, THEY'RE IN THE OTHER DRAWER."

"THANKS."

the two of you went about your previous tasks, thinking nothing of the conversation that had just taken place

at least until you'd begun washing your knife and cutting board

that's when Casey walked in, looking both perturbed and annoyed at the same time

"Alright, which one of you knows telepathy?"

Mikey exchanged a glance with you and you returned it with a raised eyebrow

"The hell you mean brah?"

he looked at the both of you like you were the ones that had grown four extra heads before speaking again

"You literally just had a conversation with like five words and somehow just knew what the other meant? What's up with that?"

you glanced at Mikey again

"Holy shit, did we?"

"I mean, not really. You used your hands."

now all three of you were confused but it quickly became two when Casey shook his head in defeat and left the room

"You know I think he's right."

he blinked first and your staring contest ended

"But you used your hands-"

"I got autism Mikey, one does not simply not use their hands as forms of speech."

"You're-"

"Yep."

was the silence laughing at you? could it do that? it was kinda rude

"Huh, that actually makes sense, that's not mean is it?"

you shook your head no

"You're just me but fast."

Mikey agreed with that, pestered you with a few more questions, and went back about working, as did you, you saw no reason to address it further

but your cheeks burned red

"Yo- Y/N that actually explains why everyone else thinks we're a thing."

you didn't know if you could choke on air or not but you did it anyways

"Are we?"

he gave you his signature grin

"If we are then Raph owes April a hundred bucks."

you returned his smile

"Oh this oughta be good."

I'd like to preface this by apologizing for my near three week absence. Life got crazy and my writer's block hopped on a train, went through a school zone, killed seven pedestrians, and committed tax fraud before tumbling off a cliff never to be seen again.

But on the bright side- I got my SAT scores back and started some scholarship applications. Super happy with that. School's out in a few weeks so I'll be able to write more (hopefully).

Anyways, I hope I got this one down okay. I may have hyper analyzed the request so I might be a little off. But I really enjoyed doing this one and I hope you like it!

-Mars 🌠

[bartsugsy]

I don't really get why everyone is so pissed at aaron for saying "a kid of our own"? maybe it's just me but i don't hear that as him saying seb isn't their son, he does think of both of them as his dads, to me he meant "a kid that would be just ours and no one else" because even though they are seb's dads they do share him, he's not a kid of their own the two of them, that's accurate? I don't get the anger it's not a crime to want to have kids with your husband without a third (and fourth) party

i mean, my opinion is that in the context of aaron’s entire relationship with seb, but much much more specifically the last week of episodes, the whole “a kid of our own” thing was worded super deliberately?

because i think you could argue that if, say, aaron had decided a month ago that they should have another kid and broached that subject with robert, the phrasing would be entirely different

it would be about expanding their family and giving seb a sibling and loving where he and robert are at in their lives, i’d imagine? like, just going by the way aaron has spoken about their family previously

and even, if we go to a specific scene - the last time they spoke about having kids, right before gerry’s death, robron are like u know what??? we are great dads and great guardians, which accidentally gets them onto the topic of having more kids. they have that weird little pause where u know they’re both internally yelling what if we have eight more kids right now, before they’re like loool three kids in the house is enough for the moment right hahaha

but u know they’re fully into this idea

like, this whole conversation is obvs helping to frame the tragedy of gerry’s death, yes, but it’s also a good look at how they’d see having more kids as exactly that - more kids on top of the family they already have

(and there’s a lot of other moments where you can see how aaron sees his place in seb’s life 

fuck rmr when they proposed to each other and rob was like OK AND WHAT ABOUT ADOPTING SEB and aaron was like wait what and then the next day like UH I’D LOVE NOTHING MORE???

like, the show has done months of groundwork of them being a family, everyone refers to aaron as seb’s dad, aaron is always both comfortable in his place in seb’s life and has been very outspoken about that. rebecca has also said multiple times that aaron is also seb’s dad. like, the framing is there.

(i know that people have said that they don’t necessarily think the way they’ve done it is convincing, but not finding it convincing does not mean it didn’t happen on screen. whether the viewer believes it or not is a separate issue.)

as i said, i can’t imagine that, a few months ago or even a week ago, aaron would have broached the subject of babies as ‘let’s have a baby of our own’, with this implication that seb isn’t their own, or that aaron wasn’t genuinely very satisfied with the situation of their parenting 

like, he literally never had an issue that he was co-parenting with two other people. that never came into things as a problem for him.

so then the conversation yesterday is happening in the context of a lot of things :

rebecca wants to take seb away

aaron doesn’t want it and is the most outspoken about that

rob is very much like ok we need to keep the peace but i stand by aaron’s choice here - and so we genuinely do see them working as a team, as this complete unit, with aaron genuinely taking the lead on how to proceed with what’s happening with seb

until rebecca has a meltdown bc she want robron to live 50 miles away from seb but her living 50 miles away from either her boyfriend or seb would be the end of the world

and rebecca is talking about getting the courts involved and staying in emmerdale until a decision is made (and no longer)

and rebecca makes it clear that robert and aaron won’t win, thanks to aaron’s convictions

robert, feeling the need to protect aaron from understanding that he is the reason why ultimately they won’t get to keep their son (as the show frames it) decides that if he gives up seb now, without aaron getting a chance to fight it, aaron might never have to realise why they had to lose seb and maybe it would be easier to not delay the inevitable and ultimately kinder on aaron

which means ultimately that robert sends seb away without consulting aaron

aaron straight up asks robert if he thinks aaron is a bad dad - he feels hurt and undermined in his position as seb’s dad

rob tries to explain why he did it but he can’t really, because the whole point was to save aaron from the truth of it

and i think this was like... the turning point for aaron to start feeling insecure about his place in seb’s life. bc before, seb was living happily with them and they were talking about adopting and legal rights and whatever and no one even questioned how aaron fit in with seb’s life - aaron was seb’s dad and that was that

so i genuinely don’t think he ever particularly worried about the fact that seb legally wasn’t his, or that his position relies entirely on robert??? bc he never had to before????

and rob clearly never really thought about it, beyond knowing that he wanted aaron to have legal rights somehow, particularly once they thought rebecca was out of the picture

robert literally said that he felt relieved when rebecca had left, because it could just be the four of them. aaron barely reacted to rebecca leaving and coming back outside of being worried about robert - he never once wavered in how comfortable he felt as seb’s dad. he spent a whole scene describing elements of seb’s future that he’d been thinking about and all the ways he knew he’d be a parent to seb. 

but then rob ripped seb away from him without even giving him a say

and it was with good intentions and the best rob felt he could do in a horrible situation, but

to aaron i think it was like being hit with the reality of the situation all at once

and then aaron’s struggling and robert is trying to explain things to him and making him feel better and aaron literally spends the entire next day hugging seb lmao 

rob doesn’t get even one hug hahaha 

but then aaron can’t bring himself to give seb back bc aaron knows what it’s like to be abandoned by a parent and rossbecca panic and start bringing the police and the courts back into it 

which makes robert panic because he knows they’ll lose - even though aaron doesn’t

and so he has to ultimately explain this to aaron, thereby causing him the pain he’d tried to avoid

but the fact that rob took seb away without asking aaron still happened

and what happens when aaron tries to take seb away?? the fuckin police almost get involved and suddenly they’re staring down the threat of supervised visitations lmao

bc rob’s say technically outweighs aaron’s

and then robert is pissed bc aaron deciding that kidnap was the right response was obviously stupid and short sighted - particularly since, as robert explained in detail, rob has very strong feelings about not going to court and about parents being amicable where children are concerned thanks to his own childhood

so rob is like fuck u i’m going to the lawyer by myself and i’m gonna ignore your calls all day xoxo - not because rob thinks he has more of a right to seb necessarily but literally because he’s a petty bitch lmao. he specifically makes a point to aaron that he ignored aaron’s calls because aaron had taken seb and not picked up his phone and rob had spent all day worrying that they were dead lmao (and then it caused an entire shit storm lololol)

but again, to aaron, who has already been forced to confront the lack of control he has over this situation that’s hugely life affecting for him, this just feels like even more of a push back

and then robert says ‘my son’ and aaron is once again like ok so you said we’re a team but we’re actually not a team where seb is concerned, it’s all about you???

and rob explains that he’s just angry and so not thinking clearly about his words and doesn’t see that it’s a big deal, but it’s like a final nail in the proverbial coffin, isn’t it? aaron’s spent days dealing with the fact that his own son can be taken from him without him being able to do fuck all about it

and his baby sister has just died, something incredibly out of his control and something he wasn’t really able to grieve over in public

and so whilst paddy is with robert explaining that aaron struggle with grace’s death and that for the pain of their own son being taken from them, all they have is each other, aaron is contemplating this whole world of ways in which he's not allowed to be a parent to his own son

and so his solution is to have a baby with robert - a kid of our own. not another baby - a baby that’s just theirs. who can’t be taken away from him.

this is happening in the context of everything above. this isn’t supposed to be the perfect solution, because the reality is that getting a surrogate and having a baby isn’t going to make aaron stop seeing seb as his son and it isn’t going to cure the fact that he feels this immense loss of control 

like, it’s not going to make him feel any more secure as seb’s parent - something he still very much is. 

this is the longest fucking answer in the world all to say the following: i think the choice of words is indicative of aaron struggling with a different problem and his solution isn’t one that will help solve that problem at all

it’s not that aaron wants a kid with robert without a third party - it’s that he wants a kid with robert because there wouldn’t be a third party, because he thinks that that’s the best way to simulate what he feels should have happened with seb

but it doesn’t actually solve the issue with seb, which won’t ever go away. they’re literally trying to actively stay in seb’s life, as his dads. having a baby now won’t make aaron suddenly feel ok about the situation with seb.

the damage is already done. it was done the second robert gave seb to ross and rebecca. 

bc the reality is that it’s not about having a baby or being a parent. it’s an issue that aaron has with robert. because robert inadvertently caused all of this. it’s the bad luck of a terrible situation yes, but it was also robert. aaron felt completely secure until robert undermined him. not rebecca. not ross. rebecca and ross both were totally treating aaron with the same respect they were treating robert. they didn’t make aaron feel insecure about his place in seb’s life. robert did.

and so having a kid with robert isn’t going to solve that issue at all lmao

[wishingforatypewriter]

Hope you don't mind me dropping another request! But I feel like the way you write our favorite Soma and Erina express the way they care about each other is through their actions and not so much by words as corny as 'I love you's, do they ever say it to each other? If so, can we get a prompt them saying it for the first time? :D Thankies xx

Notes: Heyyyy! I’ve been meaning to respond to this request for a while now, but your last prompt kind of inspired me lol. It’s true that I don’t see them as the type of couple that would say those words often, but this is the scenario I came up with. Hope you like it! 

It had been a tiny accident. Really.

Erina was fine—her Porsche, not so much—but she was fine. She had been driving back home after a dinner service at The Evening Star when hail the size of golf balls started falling from the sky. Then the driver behind her, in an eco-friendly but winter-averse smart car, skidded and rear-ended her.

She’d hit her head pretty damn hard against the dashboard upon impact, but no one was seriously hurt and she wasn’t going to press charges. Still, everyone involved had been hauled off to the emergency room because the medical bureaucracy was INTENSE.

Granted, it turned out that she did have a minor concussion. Emphasis on minor. But of course, as soon as the words accident and hospital were placed in the same sentence, people started to freak out.

The worst, naturally, had been Hisako, who would have abandoned her undergraduate students (and her next major publication) to fly fourteen hours from Boston and nurse her back to health if Hayama hadn’t stopped her. She really would have to write him a thank you note for all the Hisako meltdowns he had prevented over the years.

And then Alice, poor pregnant Alice with her brutal morning sickness, and grandfather with his heart condition, and Uncle Soe with his utter lack of chill had all been ready to get on the first flight from Denmark. And unlike Hisako, who was just worried, the Nakiri clan was also pissed. Her cousin and uncle spoke of lawsuits and jail time and general modern-day fire and brimstone, and she couldn’t tell if her growing headache had more to do with them or the actual concussion.

By the time Yukihira arrived at the hospital, she was tired and nauseous and ready for painkillers and her bed. As soon as he entered the room, she pressed mute and then handed the phone to him.

“Hisako is on one line, Alice and the family are on the other. I need you to do that charismatic thing you do and make them all stop talking.”

And so he did the charismatic thing and assuaged all their worries and assured them that he would take care of Erina and convinced them that no one needed to be sued.

And then after the calls were over, and no one was planning to fly to Tokyo, he had kissed Erina in that haven’t-seen-you-in-a-month way even though they were together just that morning. Afterwards, he held her for a long while, and Erina found it peculiar that his heart was beating so fast after he had just given two very convincing calm-the-fuck-down speeches.

She had just drawn a breath to call him on his hypocrisy when he half-whispered those words against the shell of her ear. “I love you, Nakiri. Just want to make sure you know that.”

Erina was glad he couldn’t see her face because it was probably redder than a maraschino cherry. She only nodded against his shoulder; of course she knew. She had known since before they opened Canvas, before they were even ‘together’—whatever that meant. It had been so self-evident that there was never a reason to say it directly.

But now he had, and she was still groping for the proper response like a fish washed up on a sandy shore when the doctor came back in to discharge her.

True to his word, Yukihira had taken care of her after the accident. He cooked exactly what she wanted and gave her back massages and responded to all her emails so she didn’t have to spend hours looking at a screen.

And while she appreciated being pampered as much as the next girl, maybe even a little more than the next girl, she couldn’t help but feel like something was off. Yukihira seemed kind of…manic? She didn’t know if manic was really the right word, but she was going to go with it.

He was always busying himself with one task or another—adjusting the thermostat by a single degree to make sure she wasn’t too hot or too cold, forwarding her Totsuki related work to Chef Doujima or Megumi, making sure there was a sufficient amount of dark chocolate in the fridge. And he was sleeping even less than usual and smoking on the balcony when he thought she wouldn’t notice.

Erina wondered, on one rare afternoon when she was left to her own devices—he still had restaurants to run, after all—if this had anything to with the ‘I love you’ thing.

Neither of them had mentioned it after he took her home from the hospital, but she technically didn’t give any response.

To her credit, Erina told him she loved him all the time, in her own way. In her language, “I love you” translated roughly to “Come the fuck to bed” and “That is not your problem” and “Peanut butter does not go on squid.”

Her “I love you” was also hours spent berating his staff for taking advantage of his kindness, and days spent tossing half-empty cartons of cigarettes down the garbage disposal, and years spent trying to work out some of her issues so she could become someone who even remotely deserved him.

She thought that she had made things painstakingly clear, but maybe he just needed to be sure. Erina honestly couldn’t remember the last time she had said those words to anyone other than Hisako, who had needed constant care and reassurance while revising her dissertation, but she supposed she would have to try.

She had been considering the possible merits of saying it in Russian to save face when Megumi arrived at the apartment bearing sweets and hugs and notes from the board meeting she missed the other day.

“Are you feeling any better, Nakiri-san?” the dark haired woman asked.

Erina nodded, biting into one of the macrons she made. “I’m alright,” she said. “Yukihira’s been acting pretty strange, though.”

As she weighed Megumi’s abnormally sharp emotional intelligence against the sting of asking for relationship advice from his ex-girlfriend, the tourism department head nodded solemnly.

“It makes sense that he would be, considering…”

Erina heaved a small sigh, fighting down wave after wave of irritation. Of course she would know exactly what was going on with him. This was why she never asked Megumi for advice. The brain injury must have really gotten to her. 

“Considering what, Tadokoro-san?”

The other woman paused, probably shocked that Erina didn’t know the piece of Yukihira trivia that had just flown to the forefront of her mind.

“W-well, I just mean since Souma-kun’s mom died in a car crash it’s natural that he would have a bad reaction to something like that. I’m pretty sure it was around this time of year, too, so…”

So she had been wrong…again. And kind of self-centered…again. Was it any wonder at all why he never told her anything?

Erina rested her still slightly concussed head in her hands. This couldn’t go on any longer.

Erina had spent the next few hours contemplating how she should broach the subject. Assertive as she was in the world of gourmet food, she had never been particularly good with confrontation. 

In fact, it fundamentally went against her nature to bring up something like this. But when he came home and started fussing over her again, looking like he hadn’t slept in days, she knew that she had to.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, leaning against the counter while he was making them dinner.

“That I’m making paella?”

She rolled her eyes. He really was an idiot. “No,” she said. “About why you’ve been acting so weird since the accident. About your mom.”

Souma looked pretty shocked for a moment, but then the pieces seemed to click in his mind. “Tadokoro did say she was gonna stop by.”

“She assumed I already knew, you know, because we’ve been together for over a year.”

“Look, Nakiri. I didn’t tell you because it’s not something you have to worry about. Just focus on fixing that head of yours.” As he said this, he ruffled her blonde tresses in a way that would usually make her laugh. Or pout. Probably both.

“That’s not how it works, Souma,” she said, her lilac eyes alight with defiance, with determination. “You can’t just try to solve all my problems all the time and then ask me to never worry about you.”

“Nakiri-”

“Look,” she said. “If something like this is bothering you, I want to be able to help you because that’s how it is when you love someone.” She closed her eyes for a moment, drawing in a deep breath. “And I do, you know…love you. Too.”

After this he kissed her, and she was somehow sure that they’d get it right eventually.

“So that’s all the emotion the world’s getting out of you for the year,” he joked.

“For the decade,” she corrected. But she was content to give all of it to him.