#dubious time placement

[radioactive-earthshine]

The Legionnaires, some dubious time, some dubious universe, trapped in some dubious prison.

Invisible Kid: Okay Legionnaires I'll be brief, Brainiac 5 and I have assessed our options and we've narrowed them down to one desperate act. We only need you, Tenzil.

Matter Eater Lad: Huh? Me?

Brainiac 5: Correct. You are the only one with the the unique abilities necessary to get through this door while we are momentarily incapacitated.

Matter Eater Lad: You want me, to eat through the door?

Invisible Kid & Brainiac 5: Yes.

Matter Eater Lad: ... ::shrugging and flexing:: O-kay. ::his maw opens as he begins to chew through the door at an unprecedented rate like a black hole devouring light, the sound is atrocious::

Invisible Kid: with disgust and awe:: Terrifying. Horrifying. But by god, it's working.

Brainiac 5: Fascinating, and revolting, the PSI of his bite must be unrivaled by anything that has ever lived.

Invisible Kid: We can test the upper limits of his abilities when we get out of there.

Matter Eater Lad: This tastes bad.

[toxicanonymity]

raider masterlist

dark!Joel Miller x f!reader

new one shot Jan 5, 2025: forest floor. ⚠️ Nov 2024 note: this post hit the link limit, and I haven't decided what to do. I will still try to update the newest fic link above, but FYI it won't update a reblogged post.

moodboard by @milla-frenchy 🖤 a rb will not stay up-to-date.

SUMMARY: He's a bad guy, and you're his good girl. Joel saves you from bad men, but claims you for himself. His persona starts to crack, but he gets even more possessive. You're his world, and he'll do anything to keep you. Emotional slow burn but smut the whole time. WARNINGS: 18+ canon-typical violence, noncon via implicit threat, evolving to enthusiastic dubious consent (stockholm syndrome), depraved use of praise and pet names (sweet pea, baby), unsafe P in V, exhibitionism, extreme possessiveness, dark fluff (🖤), angst, and more. NO USE of Y/N, No physical description of reader.

Spotify: raider, sweet pea (smut) Optional reference: trailer floor plan

Carter masterlist

main story

Note, non-bold links in this section were written out of order and may contain spoilers or references to future events. their placement in this list is based on timeline.

Raider: (Mar 24, 2023) - He "saves" you, then has his way with you but is kinda sweet about it. Joel POV (Oct 3, 1k)

Failed Rescue (Apr 8 - 1.9k) Your bf tries to save you. Joel makes him watch then keeps you.

Stash House (Apr 11 - 850)- Joel takes you to the stash house and shows everyone you're his. Wash Bin 🖤 (Aug 27, 1k) Shooting Practice Drabble(Jul 28, 1.6k)

Failed Escape (Apr 23, 4k)- Joel saves you from FEDRA, bathes you, amd edges you.

J. Miller (May 19, 2k) - Joel labels you with his switchblade and claims all your holes. dark. Can be skipped.

Home (May 29, 1.3k) - Joel makes dinner at home, cleans your chest, and tucks you in. 🖤

Company (Jun 9, 2.2k) - Joel brings home a girl to distract his men. dark. Extra Scene - angst.

Close (Jul 3, 2.7k) - close call with other raiders. You-almost-died sex, and later, tender sex 🖤

Gun Hug (Jul 31, 3.7k) - Joel traps 2 bad guys with some help and kills them while you. . .🖤 If you want him (1.5k) - he holds out to see🖤

Night Air (Aug 30, 3.5k) - Joel is brutal with a bad guy and his POV reveals some feelings. 🖤 Bonus blurb, wakeup pwp drabble

Hunger (Sep 29, 7k) - Joel takes you on a trek, comforts you, kills a guy, and gives you head. 🖤 He's only human (1.1k) - 👱‍♂️Carter POV, overlaps w/ hunger.

No cliffhangers. Bulletin from Tox

Bodies (Dec 3, 7.8k) - Strangers show up and cause a shitstorm, but Joel takes a big step. 🖤 Raider POV

more (drabbles, etc)

🔥 smut

Trying to use him (800) (riding) 🔥

House meeting drabble 🖤

You get sick at night drabble 🖤

He goes down on you (oral f) 🔥

If you touched his scar

if men had hurt you in the past

if you got your period 🖤

magazine and makeup 🖤

yoga pwp drabble piv 1k 🔥

boots drabble (oral f receiving) 🔥

graveyard blurb (spice)

if you bit his arm drabble (p in v) 🔥

If you snapped (emotional spice) 🖤

face sitting on sofa 🔥

being bad, looking good (2.8k, smut) 🔥

Van ride drabble (800) 🖤

sleeping beast (<1k), PWP 🔥

If Joel was sick 🖤

If you were annoying

cutting his hair 🖤

waking up on top 🔥

tired 🖤

waking up on top again 🔥

Sweet pea overhears Joel 🔥

Choking on his dick (600) 🔥

his birthday 🥺

Note: not all content is linked. Asks can lead to lore, snippets, and previews or hints of future plot points, etc. which are not added here.

quickie (daddy kink scenario) 🔥

✨Roly poly - comfort 🖤

Headcanons (not written like fic)

If another man has his way (Q&A)

dacryphilia - evolved update (Q&A)

if you had scars or tattoos (Q&A)

sweet pea by herself

If you sketched Joel and Jack

Apple picking 🖤

Responding to a Nightmare 🖤

accidentally hurting her 🖤

Analysis (#raider!analysis)

why does he keep her

why did he snap (in Company extra scene)

his eye contact

his affection / feelings, trajectory 🖤

falling for sweet pea

his self hate and her feelings

the dog and joel's concern for you

awareness of growth / why keep her

Raider Tommy

Birds of prey (2.6k)

Art, etc.

Mattress by esquire magazine

Stitches by @not-a-unique-snowflake-blog

collage by @milla-frenchy

lose control edit by @survivingandenduring

🌸 sweet pea mood boards by various

6 month collage by milla-frenchy

6 month cake by not-a-unique-snowflake-blog

🌸 sweet pea cosplay from night air

👱‍♂️carter mood board by @romana-after-dark

pts. 1-3 rb mood boards by @iamasaddie

night air gif by not-a-unique-snowflake-blog

raider/sweet pea collage by milla

sweet pea's pup by @dark-scape

want it that bad gif by dark-scape

Bodies gif by not-a-unique-snowflake-blog

👱‍♂️carter mood board by milla

Then and now drawing by romana-after-dark

Raider/sweet pea drawings by @lumoverheaven

our stars moodboard by milla

raiding edits by gasolinerainbowpuddles

under the anger by iamasaddie

🎥 Trailer (video) by @carminepoison

birthday sketch by lumoverheaven

In love w raider by milla

✨ checks that you're ok 🐺 by milla

If I've left yours off please lmk I prob tagged improperly

Back to Joel Masterlist

Fic recs: other raiders

🖤 If mine or another writer's work has inspired yours, it's always better late than never to share / shout-out 🖤

[bitsbug]

good evening rainworld community. look at my ocs NOW

YOU CAN ASK THEM QUESTIONS BTW. please do I’ve been marinating them for months. finely cured.

multiple paragraphs introducing each under the cut !

Curtains Drawn Over Bone - he/him

The first of my iterators, and frankly the most developed. Curtains is incredibly young for an iterator, made at the tail end of the last generation, and was subject to some.. negligent planning during his construction. He was placed in an area of dubious rain quality and worse ground stability; the conditions were considered acceptable back then, but millions of cycles later that's no longer the case.

 Despite this glaring issue, he's been handling it better than you'd expect. Having recognized the long-term affects of his placement early on, Curtains took an interest in maintenance and optimization in order to survive, completely disregarding the Great Problem. He's broken some taboos in the process, and surprisingly didn't contract rot while doing it. His efforts have paid off with a suite of purposed organisms and a significantly more advanced, upgraded facility.

 Some things would be impossible to address, though. Despite his best efforts, erosion and earthquakes now threaten to topple his can; something he's scrambling to fix.

 Curtains is generally regarded as a finicky, flighty person by his group. He's a recluse and a workaholic, driven by some desperate ferver to avoid the worst. When he does appear in chatrooms, he seems constantly wound up, often vanishing as quickly as he arrives. He was like this long before his current situation. But do not mistake his nervousness for ineptitude, because Curtains is very meticulous and dedicated in his endeavors, backed by his thorough understanding of iterator anatomy and a genuine passion for his work.

Twenty Taken in Vain - they/them

The only iterator in this damn group who isn't a social recluse. Built in the golden age of the Ancients, a time of prosperity and uneventfulness, TTiv found their place in the bustling global communities of their kin. They're of the belief that research is best done collaboratively, and constructed their workflow around this frame.

But, really, they never much cared for that work or their purpose. Devoting themself to tireless research for something likely impossible just wasn't a good use of time, nor did they find the process very interesting, so they sought to fulfill their life in less desolate ways. As much as a sentient, static building is able to, at least.

In particular, Twenty Taken in Vain pursues a variety of art forms! There's a critical lack of artwork made with iterators in mind (While interesting to discuss, most Ancient books can be read in less than a second for example), so they seek to fill that gap. Their main passion is literature, but they do dabble in many other subjects, such as digital painting, textile weaving, 'false memory' qualia fabrication, and DMing a tabletop roleplaying game for their local group.

Their social proclivities haven't served them well in recent years, because the global communications decay has left them more isolated than ever before. Losing contact with multiple close friends has drained them of motivation, and made them fearful of losing those they do have left. Imagine like, depression but on a supercomputer scale.

In personality, TTiv is as chatty as you'd expect of them, but without the energy associated with extroversion. Their charisma is carried in their nonchalance and humor, with an undertone of snarkiness - only occasionally with any bite to it. They're adaptable as well, without a fixation on one subject and a willingness to introspect. Since the comm failure, they've become a lot quieter and more irritable, stress they've barely kept under wraps.

Anxiety Practice - it/xe

Polite and inoffensive, AP is an easily overlooked iterator. It appears frequently in chatrooms, but always in the shadow of its kin, and rarely draws attention to itself. Despite this demeanor, xe certainly aren't shy or nervous - that's already taken by Curtains - xe just prefer xer distance and privacy.

 As it currently stands, Anxiety is the only member of its group actively working on the Great Problem. It prefers exploring more unorthodox theories for ascension, with a fixation on Karma flowers and their properties. As part of its experiments, its created a few.. curious organisms hybridized with the flower. It also collaborates closely with Distant Humming for information on the grander Cycle and general advice. Thus far, it's made a few fascinating discoveries, but predictibly no breakthroughs on the Triple Affirmative. Oh also, sometimes xe put karma-affecting drug cocktails into xer water intake. normal iterator behavior i promise.

 Even at xer most comfortable and nonchalant, AP keeps an aloof, almost stoic nature. Chronically icy cool, xe seem incapable of expressing anything besides calm indifference. This isn't true, of course, xer composure is just nothing to scoff at. It even uses its reputation for comedy at times, usually through deadpan delivery or 'breaking character'.

Distant Humming - she/Her

An anomaly in existence, the first iterator to almost reach ascension. Distant Humming became an echo by her own hand, using heavy adjustments to her retaining wall and filter pumps to essentially bathe her facility in void fluid, solving the issue of her kinds' distributed conscience by just addressing all of it. at once.

 Her subsequent failed ascension left her systems broken and mutated in impossible ways, but she functions nonetheless in her ethereal, undying state. The warping irreparably affected her memory and personality though; she considers herself a different person from the Humming before.

 Despite her uncanny nature and haunting appearance, Distant Humming is a surprisingly amiable person, if vague or foreboding at times. Her detached state of existence allows her the breathing room to appreciate the world for what it is, and insight into the Cycle that'd be impossible to gain from within it. She's happy to share her observations with anyone who'd listen.

 About once a year, Humming's karmic cycle aligns with that of her local group, affording her a limited time to speak with them. She appears totally non-existent outside this period.

THAT’S ALL BYEEE

[yeyinde]

WILLOW TREE MARCH

John Price x Reader | Fae!AU

"They'll give you gifts," your gran says, shaking her head. "Things from their realm. Little trinkets and gems—" geodes, sapphires and diamonds, raw gold and coral; "—and you must never accept them," a whittled deer made of sequoia under your pillow; crow bones buried in the garden."Because if you do, if you do, they'll never let you go."  "Why?" You asked, blinking at her.  "Because it's a courting ritual, and to accept means… well," her mouth twists in wry disdain. "Just don't." 

—WARNINGS: 18+ | SMUT fae shenanigans, mythological nonsense; unsafe sex, smut in random places, slight exhibition kink if you squint; Dom-ish Price, soft Price, pining Price; fae trickery (dubious consent on account of the trickery but not really); unreliable narrator; ahhhhhh, body horror (??????????) —TAGS: Fluff, AU, mythology —WORD COUNT: 8,5k —Based on this ask

There's a thick forest at the edge of your town. It curves along the coastline, breaching the yawning maw of the inlet—the last safe haven before the open ocean—and can be found almost nowhere else in the entire world. A unique ecosystem comprising vaguely familiar flora and fauna. Brown and Black bears. Wolves. Sitka-black-tailed deer. Ravens. The waters that crest through the forest are full of salmon, steelhead, and river otters. On the coast of the inlet, you can find whales, sea lions, seals, orcas, and porpoises swimming offshore. 

It's protected, in large part, by its sheer vastitude. Spanning a massive chunk of your home, it stretches far north with curling fingers cutting through the granite of the crumbling coast, and as deep south as its knobby knees can reach. 

From above, it looks like a child curled on its side, knees tucked to its chest. It's this pose alone that makes others revere it as some sacred being, slumbering mindlessly until the day it cracks open its eyes, and awakens to the new world. A child god made of conifers, red cedar, spruce, fir, pine, birch, and hemlock. Mossy caves of granite and limestone. Thick colonies of moss, liverworts, plume moss, and common haircap. 

The forest is linked to your town only by a small strip of land that juts out from a raging ravine with currents too dangerous, too deadly, to try and traverse. An archipelago all on its own, untouched by greedy, human, hands because of its placement. 

It's insulated by the vast ocean on its front, and a series of insidious looking mountains ready to swallow wandering mountaineers whole if they get too close to the sleeping child. Protected and safe by anyone who might try to harm it. 

You used to dream about the forest. A nightmare dredged up about whispers and calls. Lured close to the edge of the river where a man would hand you his heart—sap-stained, and charred; a brittle piece of Bristlecone pine that felt fragile and worn—and told you to come back for him. To wait for him. 

You'd wake in a cold sweat each time, heart pounding so fast that it almost felt like you were dying.

(Maybe you were. Maybe you did.)

You don't know if you believe the stories told about people wandering into the gaping chasm of the forest and never coming out. It's not uncommon for people to get lost, after all. But it feels distinct and archaic. Old. Something about the way the wind howls sounds different from the other woodlands scattered around your home. 

It sounds like a beckoning call. A mother calling their child home for dinner. Come to me, the Chinook bellows. Come home now, dear. 

You never venture too close. You know all too well what happens to children who do.

His name is—was now, you suppose—Kyle, but no one called him that. To everyone in town, he was simply known as Gaz. 

Newcomers to the isolated archipelago are a rarity—so much so that news of the new family's arrival sent waves through the community, making Gaz an instant star overnight, all without him even setting foot on the shores. 

None of that mattered, though. He fit in with an ease that seems almost preternatural when you think about it, as if he was meant to be there. And maybe he was. Maybe the soft rolling valleys were destined to be his home where flowers bloomed in the spring, and Arctic tern trilled from the branches. 

Gaz was unique, different. 

He picked dandelions with the same intensity that picked fights with the bullies in the neighbouring town, the ones who tried to pick on the smaller kids in the community. 

With his fists always covered in dandelion oil and bruises, face caught between a grimace and a grin, like he was never sure if he wanted to spit at their feet or tell a joke, he stood against the onslaught with an anger that seemed to crackle in the air like fireworks. Ready for battle. Thirsty for blood. 

His anger never waned even when he turned back to the group, eyes cresting in satisfaction, and body trembling with adrenaline, and you could scent the rage in his smile, hear it in the soft words he muttered to the kids, telling them everything would be alright. 

Gaz was everyone's friend. The person you told your deepest secrets to, the one you planned adventures with. He was a rock—always armed with snappy jokes to make you smile, and advice when you needed it. 

He was everyone's friend—yours especially—but you can't remember if anyone was his best friend. He was polite. Distant. 

It started in the summer. His hands were always cold, and he kept them shoved deep in his pockets, clenched tight around the latchkey his parents gave him. 

He started to seem almost liquid then. Temporal. You'd reach for him, brushing your hands against his arms or shoulders just to assure yourself that he was really there.

You noticed that his eyes would list sideways, head tilted, slanting toward the forest. It looked to you as if he was listening to something. To some unheard noise or call that only he could hear. 

When you asked about it, he'd always blink, surprised, as if you'd woken him up from a dream quite suddenly. Then, he'd smile, and shake his head. 

"Don't worry about it," he'd say, shrugging. "Just the wind."

He'd bend down and pick a dandelion for you, holding it out between pudgy fingers with a grin that seemed to mimic the cresting moon. 

"For you."

He picked them for three springs before he, too, became another victim of the endless forest. Another empty tomb in the overcrowded graveyard.

Missing, they said, but not forgotten. 

You think about him often. 

(Even more so when you, too, begin to hear your name echoing through the forest.)

Beware the woods, your grandma says. Especially when it calls your name. 

(You never understood why something that sounds so comforting, so sweet, could ever be dangerous. It sounds like an old friend calling you over to play. 

"Never go," she snaps, her hands lashing out to grip your arms tight. You feel her knobby fingers digging into your bones. "Never listen, and stay away—"

"You're hurting me, gran—"

Her rheumy eyes burn into yours. "Stay away—!"

(You wisely never speak about the whispers in your head, keeping them to yourself. A secret just for you.)

You leave town when you're old enough, when the hisses in your head grow too loud to ignore, and it feels as though they're scratching at your skull. 

(Clawing at the walls.)

"Crazy weather, eh?" The first mate mutters nervously, eyes tilted upward as the sky darkens into an angry grey. "Came outta nowhere." 

You leave, and you don't look back. 

(But oh, how the forest screams.)

She calls you back several years later with a phone call. Your gran has passed. 

You think you should mourn, but it's been so long since you thought of home, that you don't remember what she looks like anymore. The sound of her voice is a whisper in your head—the cadence gone, the tone flat. 

But you don't cry, and you don't grieve—she's been dead for a long time now, after all. Ever since your mum went missing all those years ago, she's always seemed more of a ghost than a person. Living as if her body hadn't realised her heart was long dead. 

You go back only because you think your mum would have wanted you to. 

(And pretend it isn't because the silence in your head is suffocating. Without the whispers, it feels as if you're missing something. A part of yourself forever lost in the forest.

You wonder if anyone has found it by now.)

Nothing has changed since you turned your back on the town that raised you, the forest that stole from you. 

It's the same buildings. The same market. The same roads. The same houses. 

The people, too, seem largely unchanged by the years that have passed. 

The friends from your childhood who stayed meet you at the graveyard, eyes filled with sympathy as they ask how you're doing. 

She'll be missed, they lie sweetly to you. Everyone loved her. 

She was a hermit, you want to scream. A woman driven mad by ghosts and fairytales and terror. 

You nod, instead, and let them lead you around the town on a grand tour as if anything about this beautiful, haunting place had changed since you ran away. 

It gets easier to force a smile when they ask if you're okay. 

"Fine," you murmur and wonder if your voice even carries over the whispers. "Just—yeah. Fine."

North of the town is where the river separating the lonely forest carves a path, not at all dissimilar to an idyllic trough, through bedrock and sand, and flows into the sea. 

The estuary is dangerous in high tide when the rapid ascent of water on the sandy shores hides the rip current that is known to form when the two bodies of water meet. 

It's a dangerous place to get caught in. 

This beach was impressed upon you as deadly from a young age, almost in equal—if not greater—measure than the rapacious forest across the river. You know the dangers of standing on the slippery bedrock. 

But as the sun glows a burnt orange in the distance, and the endless ocean before you darkens into an almost unfathomable black, you can't help but find the view from the cliff's edge to be the most mesmerising thing you've ever seen. 

It looks like a painting. A brush stroke of tigers eye in the centre of the cresting sun that gradually fades out into xanthous, and rings of hazy peach; the light of diminishing star smears coruscating rings of persimmons into the indigo water. The gradual fade into gradients as the waves lap closer to the shore is reminiscent of liquid sapphire and smelting amethyst. 

The picturesque view is more befitting of a pastel postcard, an ethereal pastiche of the Ninth Wave—a moment of life imitating art, or—perhaps—the same view Ivan Aivazovsky stumbled upon when he set out to render the haunting beauty of the ocean in oil. 

The cresting waves arch into curled petals of white before setting upon the sloping beach with frenzy. It's the roar of those hungry waves that seem to, if only for a moment, drown out everything in your head. 

There are no whispers. No songs. No screams. Vengeful hissing can't climb to a higher decibel than the frothing waters slamming against jagged bedrock. 

All is quiet—except the sea. 

You lean into it. The closer you get to that precipice, the quieter everything in your head goes. Sounded sucked into the vacuum of the ocean. The endless song of the sea. 

Another step. Another. 

For a moment, you're free. 

The forest doesn't scream for you. Your grandmother doesn't dig her teeth into your gyri, hands clawing at the space behind your eyes. You don't think of her, or your mother, or Gaz, or anyone else unfortunate enough to get consumed by this damnable place where fairy tales split the seams apart, and merge with reality. 

It's peaceful. 

You take another step—

A hand curls over your shoulder, tugging you back. 

Anger pools, thick and acidic, on your tongue, but the flash of your ire, your vexation, is dashed by the sound the waves make when it slams into the spot you were just standing. 

It slashes across the concrete as the stranger pulls you into his broad chest, heat nearly liquifying your spine. 

He sucks in a breath. You feel his chest expand with it. When he breathes out, you taste gunpowder on your tongue. 

"Gotta be more careful n'that, love." 

You've had near-misses before. Flirted with the reaper. Ripped yourself from the jowls of death himself. 

This isn't anything new.

And yet—

Your eyes drag up, meeting flat black boring down at you. His hood is pulled over his forehead, casting shadows down to his jaw. 

"You—"

Your teeth sink into your tongue. Emotions lash through you like the flick of a bullwhip, shredding your skin until it's raw and oozing. The tail pulls away whenever you try to wrap your fingers around one of them—relief: you're not dead; embarrassment: how could you be so stupid; shame: saved by a stranger; and—

Visceral terror. Panic. 

It bludgeons its fist down your throat, barbed knuckles clawing at the soft tissue of your esophagus until you taste blood on your tongue. 

Panic tastes of ozone and leaks, thick and warm like molasse, down your throat. 

"Hey," he murmurs, and the sound of his voice, his low timbre, is porous, calcined. The rough scratch scours through the haze of fear threading through your sternum. "C'mon on, now. Gotta breathe, yeah?" 

It's his hands on your shoulder—hotter than grenade fire—and the thick scent of musk, of stale smoke and kerosene sweat, that break through the gossamer of your acrid panic. He spins you around to face him, eyes fixed on your face. 

"That's it," he says, soft, soothing. "Keep breathin'. You ain't dead yet." 

You come to yourself in pieces. The world bleeds with startling clarity around the blurred edges. Home, you think. Maybe.

Once upon a time. 

You blink. Blink again. 

The hand still on you—heavier, you find, than an anvil—lifts, his thumb brushing over the curve of your jaw, swiping over the sweat-stained skin.

You can't see his eyes through the shadows cast over his face. A stranger. You've never seen him before. 

They didn't say anyone new moved to town. 

"Who are you—?"

"You don't know?" 

And then his hand is gone, taking all the heat in your body with him. 

It lifts to his vest, thick fingers, gloved in yellow, curling over the butt of his cigar. 

You must make a face. A grimace. A whisper of bemusement. Whatever it is, it makes his lips twitch under the shorn burnt umber of his beard. 

"I'd share," he mutters, teething sinking into the hilt as he pats himself down for a lighter. "But I ain't got the time."

"Shouldn't be smoking in a provincial park, anyway." 

The words are dragged out of you. Numbed, gritty. 

It makes him snort. "Maybe—;" he cups his hand around the end, thumb striking the ignition of the lighter. He inhales, and the red circle at the tip illuminates the cerulean blue tucked away into the folds of his hood. The plume of smoke curls over him like a shroud. "But I doubt a cigar is gonna bring the whole forest down, mm? 'sides, we all have our vices, don't we?"

With that, he leaves you standing in the tendrils of smoke that billow out from his caustic mouth. No goodbye. No name. Nothing except the hum of his touch buzzing through your veins. 

Your head is numb. Thoughts congealing into hardened clay. 

Yeah, you think sluggishly, eyes dropping to the drenched pavement where the ocean narrowly missed you. Swallowed you whole. We do. 

(Yours is bad decisions that reek of napalm. 

Men who scour your hands raw when you touch their coarse surface.)

You find him again in some desolate pub on the fringes of town a few days later. It looks like it's one strong gust of wind away from blowing down. Dilapidated. Rusted from the harsh salt of the ocean to the north. 

He lifts his head when you slide into the empty chair on the left, but says nothing about your unexpected company. 

Instead, his lips curl over the cigar sawed between his teeth. A grin, you think. 

You wonder if he was expecting you. 

(Wonder, then, with a touch of something warm gnarling in your belly, if you surprised him.)

The barkeep wanders past, brows lifting at you in question. 

"Um, a vodka soda—"

The man, Price you learned from the locals with a great of digging, snorts. 

"Ain't got none of that here, love. Two scotches. Neat." He leans over, thick fingers grasping the middle of the cigar, an inch away from the bristles on his upper lip, and pulls it away, ashing it in the tray in front of him. "And a bottle of spring water." 

"Scotch?" You echo, leaning your elbow on the sticky counter. He reeks of smoke. Sweat. Blood. Gunpowder. You veer closer, soaking in the astringent tang of him. Everyone on this island smells of daffodils and cotton; clean and neat and innocent. He reeks of danger. Everything inside of you screams to stay away. "I don't drink scotch."

The cigar burns in the tray. He pulls back, shifting in the chair. His elbow rests on the counter, the other arm is slung over the back of his seat. The picture of appeasement, of a satiated tiger eying a little mouse sniffing past it. There's no immediate danger, and his posture is relaxed. Open. But his eyes—

Price turns to you, then. His legs are spread, knees notched apart, taking up more space than you offer him. A looming presence. Dominating. Confident. He's not doing it on purpose, you don't think, he's just—

Big. 

His legs are too long. Thighs are too thick. 

Something gnarls behind your ribs when you take in his bare face. It's different, smaller, without the bulky black hood thrown low on his brow. His hands bare, leaving him in only casual clothes that stretch taut around his broad body. 

The beanie on his head, pulled low on his forehead, makes him look roguish, rough. The picturesque presentation of a bad boy down to the pelt-brown leather Levi jacket stretched taut around his broad shoulders. 

He looks older, somehow, without the tenebrous of night shading him in dark indigo. Aged like a fine whisky. All burnt umber and ivory. 

The charcoal colouring brightens the heavy blue of his eyes—crushed bluebonnets and powdered graphite; a black hole centre—and the frame of his brown lashes dusting over his clean cheeks makes something pool in your lower belly. 

(You wonder if he'd taste of whisky sour.)

"Well," he murmurs, brow lifting. It makes the skin on his forehead crinkle. He has laugh lines cresting around the corners of his eyes. They stand out to you, now. Void of the shadows you're used to. "You do when I'm paying."

The scotch, the cigar, the dingy pub that reeks of stale cigarettes and is perfumed in a dusting of nicotine that films every surface coalesces into incipient vice. 

His hand moves from where it's loosely curled around his glass, and rests, heavy and warm, on your thigh. 

When he leans in, you taste calcine on his breath. 

The acrid tang is a balm to the blisters in your raw esophagus. You meet him in the middle, smaller hands curling over the wool lapels of his jacket, tugging him into you. 

"Never thanked you for saving me," you murmur, his beard grazing your lips. A tickle. A brush. 

Price sucks in a deep breath, eyes liquifying into an intense azure. "No need to thank me, love. As much as I love the ocean, you don't belong there, do you? No," he adds, decisively. Sure. "You belong on land. The earth. You're wild, like the forest, aren't you?"

It's an out. An escape. An option to flee from the cosm that folds around you like a nebulous cloud. 

You could take it. Back up, away. Walk out of this dingy pub on the wrong side of town, and forget the man who reeks of nicotine, smoke; who leaves ashes behind on your skin when he touches you. 

The only one who stares at you from the unfathomable black of his eyes, lashes shrouded in tenebrous, and makes you falter. Makes your heart lurch, jumping to sit at the bottom of your throat.

You should pull away. Stay away from the man who leaks ethanol and nitroglycerine. From the man who smells of acrid smoke. Gunfire. 

You should. 

But your fingers tighten in the lapels of his jacket, pulling him closer. Closer. 

The bridge of his nose is warm when it presses against your own. 

His eyes spark, wildfires. A blazing forest. 

"You said something about vices." His chest rumbles in response to your hushed words. 

"So I did." 

Smoke singes your nose when you brush your lips over his. Warm. Chapped. Dry. You taste ash. Humus. The bitter tang of dandelion oil. 

"Got some time tonight?" 

"Thought you said I shouldn't be smoking."

"We're not in a park, near flammable trees," your hand falls to his chest. His heart thuds beneath your palm. Thick, full. Your eyes lift to his, lidded and heavy. You gaze at him from under your lashes, coy. Demure. You wonder if he can see how eager you are beneath the sly cut of your lids. "Are we, Price?"

The use of his name makes his lips quirk. A small, secretive thing that you can't read. 

"No, we're not." His hand slides down, curling over your knee. "Don't know what you're gettin' into, love." 

"Oh, no?" You taunt, breathless. Even through all your layers, you still feel his searing heat on your skin. His eyes drop when your tongue lashes out, wetting your lower lip. "And what's that?" 

A frisson shudders over his face. Lashes fluttering. He leans forward, resting the rim of his beanie on your forehead. 

When his eyes slide open, all you see is arsenic white pooled around Prussian blue. "More than you could ever dream of." 

Your trembling fingers curl into the lapels of his jacket. For leverage, maybe; or to hide the quiver in your joints from his widening eyes. 

And so, you kiss him. 

A messy punch to the mouth with your sun-blistered lips. 

His mouth parts, wry curls flutter when he inhales sharply. And then—

He devours you. 

It's messy. More sealed lips glueing together than it ever could be considered a proper kiss, but it feels more like a homecoming than stepping off the boat, and you tuck that inside your pounding chest. 

(The whispers in your head seem to sing when his lips touch yours.)

You taste bark on your tongue when it slips over his. Loam. Moss. Something earthy and rich. His beard scratches your chin, your lips, but you pull him closer, hungry for more—for the taste of wilderness on his tongue, for the respite from the whispers, the screams. Like the ocean, he, too, is a vacuum, swallowing everything whole until just you remain, stripped down to nothing but sensation and want. Bare, raw. 

Your teeth ache when you pull away, fingers curling into the coarse hair along his chin. The whips of his wry curls scratch your palm. 

You never want to let go. 

Price's eyes are noctilucent clouds; a storm over a rainforest. He'll ruin you. Devour. Destroy. Take, and take, and take until there is nothing left. 

Your lips tremble when you speak, words tremulous with your desire, your eagerness, when they slip past your bruised mouth. 

"I can think of a few that are better than smoking." 

Price shudders. 

"Where did you go?" Your friend asks, eyes swinging from the cards spread out in front of him—the Idiot, Solitaire—to you. They burn into the side of your face, the same place Price touched with bare knuckles, and said you belong to the forest, don't you? "Missed dinner."

You ate Doro Wat in a small shop after Price fucked you stupid in the dingy bathroom of the pub, face scraping against the waterlogged wallpaper that chipped with each brutal thrust of his hips. 

Like that, hmm? Can barely take me, love, but you're so fuckin' greedy for it, ain't you? 

You're sure the barkeep heard your moans as they bounced off the jaundiced walls. 

(You still hear him hissing in your ear. Still feel him splitting you apart.)

You try not to shiver. 

"Ate already," you shrug, bundling your sleep clothes tight in your trembling hands. When you stand, his eyes follow you. "So. Um—"

"You okay?" 

"Yeah," you say, shifting on the balls of your feet. "I've—" You think of his eyes, gyre white, and wonder if this is what it feels like to get swallowed by the sea. "I've never been better."

"Good," he says, smiling. "I worry about you, you know?"

You nod. "Yeah," you say. "Me, too."

You break apart in the shower, falling into pieces as you make yourself finish, thinking about nothing but the phantom stretch of his cock seated deep inside of you, the taste of his come pooling on your tongue.

It balms the residual burn in your esophagus, and you know, then, when you throb, still wanting his touch on your skin, that you've always been terrible at telling yourself no. 

It can't happen. It can't.  

There's a strange magnetism about him—an uncanny sense of mystery and familiarity sutured together. 

It feels a little bit like staring at the looming maw, the event horizon, of a black hole. Unfathomable black. No way out. 

There's something that feels a bit like forewarning inside your chest when he brushes against you, and presses his lips on the skin behind your ear—a secret place only he knows, where only his fingerprints have ever been. You feel his touch even when he's gone. Haunted by the memory of his rough hands and rasping tenor. 

Running would make sense, you think, watching the ferries come and go. You have enough money for a ticket, and you've yet to even unpack your bag. 

You don't know who he is, but you've given him everything. All of it. There's nothing left inside of you to hand over, but he keeps looking at you as if he's waiting for more. 

"Waiting for a ride?" 

You glance back at the operator with a divot between your brow and cotton inside your ears. 

You want to say yes, but you shake your head instead. 

"No." I can't leave. "Just enjoying the view."

You find birch branches stripped of leaves, juniper berries, maple leaves, spindles of dogwood, bushels of fir, and bouquets of bog rosemary, northern bluebell, fireweed, and wintergreen on your doorstep each morning, laid gently against the old welcome mat. 

You should toss them out, and throw them away. How does he know where you live, anyway? It would make the most sense; be the wisest decision. 

Instead, you tuck them inside your notebook, pressing them against the pages where they'll be safe. 

(You try not to think too much about why they never die.)

It happens again. And again. Again—

It becomes a ritual for the few months you're back in town. The leaves, twigs, petals, pines, and seeds all show up at your door each morning and come nightfall, you're drawn to him like a moth to a flame. 

He finds the nastiest looking pub in the city, and you find him there after dark. 

He sits, smokes a cigar. Orders two scotches, and a bottle of spring water. Teaches you how to drink it properly—none of that sugary cocktail shite; just pure whisky, love, as it should be—and lets you puff on the damp end of his cigar, eyes gleaming in the soft yellow light above as he takes in the way your lips curl over the wet tip.

He stares at you like he's indulging you. 

Like he knows. 

And maybe, he does. 

Maybe he sees the way your jaw works, tongue lashing over the tip just to chase his taste. The heat in your cheeks, your eyes, as you gaze at him, open and raw and wanting. The way you list toward him. Eager for it. For him. His touch, his smell. 

He must, you think, but he's a right bastard. 

He doesn't give it until the end of the evening, when everyone has gone home. When it's just you and him and the barkeep that glowers at you something ugly when you stand on shaky legs, and whisper you're going to the washroom. 

Your fingers curl over the chipped porcelain, back arched as you stare at the face in the mirror. 

You can't remember if it's you. 

Whisky has polluted your synapses. The thick scent of smoke, the tobacco from the cigar, has congealed into resin over that little bundle of axons and nerves that control your impulse, logic. 

Stupid. 

You stare at the thing in the mirror, and wonder if the basal want on your face was so apparent to him as it is to you. If he saw the dark gleam of hunger, greed, impatience, swimming in your ink-smudged depths. 

The door rattles. Clicks. 

The squeak of the hinges is the only warning you get before Price is there, liquified in the doorway and clouded in smoke. 

His hand curls over the worn, peeling frame. Eyes dance with the same hunger, same want, as the ones that flicker across the surface of the mirror. 

"Couldn't wait for me, eh, love?" He breathes, his chest expands with his exhale. Scenting you, you think. You wonder if he can smell the slick pooling in your panties. The desperation brimming in your veins. "Wanted it that bad, huh?"

He moves. A mountain of a man now filling up the entirety of your gaze until all you see is him. 

You used to want to climb mountains. In training, they always warned of summit fever. Of that little part of your head that just wanted it to be over, to reach the very top of the precipice. Impatient, it couldn't wait. It made you spring up, and climb higher and higher before you were ready, prepared. 

You think of it now when your hands lift, curling over his broad shoulders. 

("Summit fever will get you killed," they say.)

"Just shut up and fuck me, Price." 

His eyes flash. "Greedy little thing, aren't you?"

You are. Painfully so. 

It etches in your ribs like a sickness, festering in your mouldering bones. Rotting you from the inside out. 

A crutch in the searing heat of skin, sweat, and sin. The feeling of him taking you apart, breaking you down into atoms and molecules that bubble in the lining of your head becomes so commonplace, so often forget who you are when you're pushed up against a wall, being filled to the brim by him.

He leaves madness behind when he goes, and the world that divides fantasy from reality begins to crack, to splinter. 

You hear his voice in your head late at night when the wind blows through the window, carrying the scent of the forest.

"Come home," he rasps in your ear. 

The scratch of his beard seems to scrape against the little thread keeping you tied down to reality. It's frayed and worn by his hands. You wonder when he'll sink his teeth in the silk, and snap the line. Untethering you from your binds.

Come home to me. Come back to where you belong—

Price takes you out to dinner three months after this—whatever it is—starts. After your house becomes more of a garden, writ with the wild remnants of the forest, after each passing day. Full of bushes, and branches. Twigs and precious gems. He gives you raw gold, and open geodes full of amethyst, and sapphire. Canopy leaves, and bark from the trees. 

He leaves a whittled deer made from the red wood of a giant sequoia, and the likeness of the little fawn makes you believe that one day, it'll come to life in your living room.

(You leave a dish of water near the doorway—just in case—and wonder if you're becoming just as mad as your gran.)

He shows up at your doorstep, the bleached antlers of a great pronghorn in his hands. It's decorated with vines and moss weaved over the ivory in intricate braids and knots that you can't even begin to unravel. You marvel at the gift as he tells you he's taking you out for dinner. 

There is no discussion. He doesn't ask, he just—

Does. 

"Found a spot," he says, arms crossed over his broad chest. The cable-knit sweater pulls, stretched taut over his bulk. "Think you'd like it."

You don't know what to say. The antlers feel heavier in your hands, and warm to the touch. You try not to shiver when you set it down beside the little fawn.

"Oh," you say, but know you've never turned him down yet. It's all—

So much. 

Your home is slowly becoming one with nature, with vines growing on the walls in great blooms of wisteria and lilac; the old floor boards under your feet shudder and creak as little saplings sprout through the cracks. You wake up at night and taste earth in your throat, feel the grass beneath your fingers. The breeze in your hair. The call of an arctic tern. 

You dream of running through the forest. Of being chased. You breathe and feel the little seeds inside of your lungs start to take root. Soon you'll bloom with dandelions.

"Okay," you say, and wonder if the madness rummaging around your head will turn into a beautiful sequoia in the end. "Let's go."

The tavern is busy on a weeknight, crowded with a swell of mainlanders who'd ventured out for a camping trip over the long weekend. 

You sit with your back straight, and listen to him talk about a hike he wants to take with you in the morning. Through the woods, he says, and you don't ask which one. You know. You know. 

(It's time. It's time.)

There are alarm bells ringing in your head, but they're drowned out by the crooning whispers. 

But the line is only frayed and worn, and despite the lure in his voice, the itch in your head to say yes, you hesitate. Falter. 

The woods are dangerous. 

You don't want to go. 

He seems to sense it. His brows knot together. 

"You want to, don't you?" 

You fiddle with your napkin and try not to meet his arsenic stare. "It's… dangerous."

"I'll keep you safe."

"It's probably time for me to leave, anyway." 

The air in the room turns frigid all at once. You think you can see white plumes of condensation when you shakily breathe out, teeth chattering. 

"Price—"

"Didn't wanna do this, love," he says, voice hushed. Barely a whisper. His eyes are lavascapes. "But you ain't givin' me much of a choice, are you?"

"What—?"

The words die on your tongue when movement flashes in the corner of your eye. A man weaves, liquid, through the mindless crowd, cutting a path like the parting red sea. 

His eyes are honeycombs. In his hand, he holds a limp dandelion. 

It takes you a moment to make out the strange man who looms in the background. A splash of colour among sfumato. 

It's Gaz.

The childish swell of his cheeks has sunken into angled, sharp bone. Slender fingers twirl the flower around, around, around—

It's hypnotic. You stare, horrified and awed—a strange amalgam of emotions that slip down your spine: worry, elation, panic, comfort—as his pink lips part into an easy, familiar grin. The cresting sun breaching the horizon. Eyes slanting in playful derision. 

He looks like he's torn between telling a joke and spitting vitriol. Making you laugh, and then making you cry. 

It buzzes in the air, electrified fingers dancing down your spine, and then just as quickly as the boy who disappeared reemerges into the land of the living, into this bastardised reality, he gives one last sharp, fanged grin, a mordant wink, and then he's gone.

He slips through the door, and without hesitating, you give chase. 

Price says nothing when you go. Or maybe he does, but you can't hear anything except the rustling of leaves in your head. 

Gaz, it whispers. Gaz, Gaz, Gaz.

(It's time for the lost little boy to come home.)

The rocks sit in a zigzag pattern through the frothing waters, a deceptive bridge that connects the valley to the coast. You feel the tremulous rattle of the water slicing against the hollow cavern beneath your feet. A ledge chiselled from the blunt erosion of the rapid currents below. One day, they say, the granite shelf will give and a massive hole filled with howling water will fill it. 

Try not to be the idiot standing on the ledge. 

You feel the power of the currents even on the peat-covered edge. 

The water in front of you is deceptive. A calm, rolling surface at the shoreline almost seems to beckon you inside. Come take a dip in the cool waters. Grow fins and gills and chase the river otters through the currents. Feast on the wily salmon, and see if your feet can touch the sandy streambed. 

But the river's fatality is nearly assured. No one has survived a dip in these waters that act as a serrated knife, carving chasms and channels through the granite below. The currents will rip into you, pulling you until your body is crushed against the wall, or into an unsearchable cave. 

One slip, you think. Just one. 

But—

The man in the bar flickers through your mind. His honeycomb eyes, fanged grin. Ethereal in his beauty like a painting of a god in oil and raw canvas. Carved likeness of a Stygian prince. 

It was Kyle. It was Gaz. You know it. Know it deep within your bones, your marrow.

Taking the first step to the jutting slate that peaks just a few precious inches from the raging waters is easier, then, when you think of the boy who plucked a dandelion from the earth, and tucked it behind your ear. It makes the risk less daunting when it's for him. 

For his parents who sunk into themselves, into the crater his absence left behind. A deep depression into the earth that swallowed them whole.

They moved last year after laying down a bouquet of flowers at the mouth of the forest. 

You toe your shoes off, leaving them at the embankment, and then you leap. The perch is slick with waterlogged moss, slimy. It wobbles under you, but you catch yourself, stabilising. Steady. You huff. One down, four more to go. 

Up close, they look so far apart. A chasm between each rock. An endless abyss that will rip you into pieces. 

Still. Still. You have to find him. Have to. 

You step, toes sliding in the algae. The rock beneath is stained green. It wobbles again when you bring your other foot down on top of it. The loud clack of rock scraping against rock is heard, unmuffled by the roaring water that tugs on the stone. You feel the push against your feet. 

Two more. Two more. 

You take another step, and then—

You fall—

The world drips into focus, a steady trickle of cognisance that paints the world in shades of greens and browns. An eagle soars above the canopy, their shadow swooping through the thick tangle of conifers reaching to the heavens.

The bed of moss beneath you is damp—lush with dew and softer than your mattress at home. You sink into the ground when you breathe, caught in an embrace. The vines curl over your wrists, your ankles, as if refusing to let go. 

It should scare you—and maybe it does—but there's something against your head, fingers digging into your temples, and you feel nothing except a warm serenity leaking in. Thought spool into liquid gold, threads that weave together in a knotted clump. Indistinguishable from each other, and unreachable when they slip deeper into the honeyed-thick fog that curls around your mind. A temper from logic, from fear. Anything that isn't pure, artificial comfort is filtered through and cast aside. 

You don't know why you're here. 

One moment, you felt the coils of the raging currents sinking its claws into your flesh, pulling you under the deep waters, and then—

Heat on your face. The sun's desperate attempt to filter through the corded canopy and touch the forest floor. The shrill call of an eagle on the prowl. The tender caress of the moss below cushions your body. 

You should be underwater. Pressed tight against the side of the rocks until you were swept downstream and spat out in the inlet, waterlogged and dead. 

You draw humid air into your lungs until it swells against your ribcage. The steady thud of your heart tells you that somehow, somehow, you're alive. An empty brag—thud, thud; thud, thud—that seems to call out to the birds in the emergent layer, the ones nestled in their branches as they watch your feeble attempt to reconcile how you survived. 

It's strange, you think, but the soporific warmth coursing through your veins does not let you panic. 

You are—

"Foolish." 

The warmth turns molten. You try to sit up, but the vines tighten around your limbs. If you weren't so vulnerable, you think it would almost feel like a hug. 

The soft crunch of the moss tells you the voice—the man—is moving forward, toward you. You want to scream, but your tongue is thick, and your mouth is numb. 

"What you did there was stupid," he says, and the forest around you seems to come alive in his anger. Pulsing. The branches sway and the leaves rattle without any wind. The trees bend down, coming inward. You hear the scream of a fox in the distance. The chuff of an agitated brown bear. 

Primordial signs tell you to run.

But you're trapped. 

Price steps closer, falling to his knees beside you. You can see him now, and suddenly you wish you'd been swallowed by the waves. 

His face is writ with anger, brows tightening together in displeasure. 

He seems imbued with the forest. One with the lush green that swells around you. Burnt umber and icy blue. Ethereal, unnatural. Something in your hindbrain tells you to run from that man that looks as if he could swallow you whole.

"Tryin' t'die on me, hmm?" 

His hand lifts, and you feel his warm knuckles graze your temple. Soft, gentle, despite the ire in his eyes, and the irritation clenched in his jaw. 

"Gonna hav'ta try harder than that, love." 

You weren't trying very hard at all, you think, dazed, dizzy. You weren't trying at all. 

"You're mine," his eyes flash, and you feel the press of gravity against your skin, pulling you down to the soft earth. Your fingers twitch. The fog inside your head clears. 

Blinking up at him, you catch the scattering supernovae echoing in the corners of his eyes; galaxies of pine and cedar, humus and tussock. They bloom from the black hole in the centre, surrounded by sapphire blue. He's not human, you think, but it doesn't surprise you because you already knew. Have known, really—ever since you asked around for his name and watched the same strange fog seep into their eyes as they struggled to remember a man they claimed to know. 

Ever since you found bushels of figs on your doorstep. 

A crown of pine needles and crow feathers. 

Price leans over you, brows knotted together like the gnarled, weaving trunk of a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine. 

There's a forest fire in his eyes. "You're mine, aren't you?" 

You think about the trinkets left on your doorstep. The whispers, the screams. 

"Did you ever give me a choice?" 

The tension in his brow snaps taut. Agony frissons through the spaced canyons; whet from ire and slick from sorrow. He bends down, and shakes his head. 

"I've always given you a choice," his words are smouldering logs, crackling with his pain. "I've always told you to go, but you couldn't stay away, could you?"

Price takes you on the mossy forest floor, fingers digging into the peat as you sink, down, down, down—

His hand under your head, cradling the back of your skull, keeps you from getting swallowed by the grass knoll that breathes and trill against your spine. 

Fire licks in the crevasses of his eyes, molten desperation you can't ignore. He rages above you, quivering in the fading glow of the sunset struggling to slip through the canopy. No longer a man but a myth. He hangs over you with his canines bared, and flashes of anger and sorrow scorch the path his teeth leave behind on your skin. 

You're becoming unmoored. Each touch, and brush; each sweep of his tongue soothing the indents of his razor-sharp teeth all seem to loosen the ties that thread through your soul, anchoring you to the world that stands in full bloom before you. 

The forest shudders with his frantic pace; each piston of his hips leaks his fervent anguish and makes the trees croon, and creak as they bow their foliage in sorrow. His pain lashes through their roots, and rent the air in two. A fox mourns his loss in the distance. A wolf yowls in agony. His brethren lifting their muzzle to the sleepy moon, and howling out the melody of their despair. 

It's too much, too much, and you fall into pieces in his hands, shivering beneath him as the woods around you tremble and quake. It's a mesmerising dance. 

He finishes with a grunt that makes the world shudder anew, spending himself as deep inside of you as he can, as if he could overwrite your empty spaces with himself. Fill you to the brim until you are bursting with him, with life. Tulips for your eyes. Furze for veins. Moss for hair. Peat soil for blood. 

When he speaks, the world falls silent. 

"You don't know it yet, but you will. You've always been mine. Always belonged to the forest, to the earth. To me."

Despite his words, he lets you go. 

And you run, run, run—

Your toes dig into the wet soil near the stream. The desperate catapult across the ravine halted at the very last moment, leaving you winded and shaking. Hands clenched into tight balls by your side. Quivering with fear, with the adrenaline rush still roaring in your veins. 

You don't know what you're doing. 

The whispers in your head go silent. 

The absence of sound makes you mourn, and you think about his agony. The pain when he took you, the resignation when he let you go. 

You think of him, and you know. 

I've always told you to go, but you couldn't stay away, could you?

You scent napalm in the air, cloying despite the acrid burn that scalds your lungs when you breathe in deep, holding it there. 

You think of the chest inside your closet. The pieces of yourself you left behind. The way he fits you like a puzzle, like he was made for you. Designed with your rough edges in mind. Softening your hard lines; scouring your gritty surface it was smooth and shiny like fire Opal and precious gems. 

Ever since you felt his hand on your shoulder, you haven't been able to let go. 

(You don't even think you ever really tried.)

Come to me, the forest says, honey in your ears. It sounds like the rapid beat of a million birds' wings, ready to take flight. Pulsing and alive and full of wonder, childish glee. 

The earth blooms in your chest. You feel the soft, tender caress of the leaves against your skin, the moss sinking between your toes. Clinging to your flesh, desperate to get inside, and take refuge in your heart. Come home to us.

Your grandmother warned you to stay out of the forest, that it was dangerous. Deadly. Wrong. But how can it ever harm you when it touches you so sweetly? 

The branches curl around your ankles as you walk, leading you, guiding you, to the place where you belong. The forest opens around you, spreads apart and makes room for you to pass, touching you as you go, taking little pieces of you. Strands of your hair, the salt from your tears. Pieces of clothes. Parts of your soul. 

You pluck your heart out of your chest, and leave it beneath a gnarled sequoia. She will protect it forever. 

Moss grows inside of the empty space. A tern makes a nest inside of it, filling it with a bed of pine needles, and twigs from the junipers. You feel a mouse make a home in your rib cage, burrowing between your bones. You place your hand over your side, and feel her nuzzle against your palm. 

"You're safe now," you say. "We're almost home."

It's Gaz who greets you with a crown made of sugi. When he cups your face, you feel raging rivers and streams in his palms, and now that you are home. 

"Missed you, dandelion," he breathes, and his voice turns into a Chinook that crests over the mountains. "But there's someone who wants to see you."

His hands slide down to your wrists, and you feel the sun grazing your skin when he spins you around, around, around—

"Now," he leans down, pressing his lips to the shell of your ear. You hear the Falcons nesting in his chest, and smell pine in his breath. "He's been an impatient bastard, you know? Just moping about ever since you left—"

A scoff. You lift your head and feel the swell of the earth beneath your feet. Dizzying. Wanting. 

He waits for you in the thicket, eyes made of sapphire and stone. When he breathes, the forest swells with his breath, and you taste loam when you swallow. 

"A sorry sap, thinkin' you were runnin' away, and all. But you won't, will you?" Gaz pushes you forward, and his laughter rings in your ears. "Not anymore."

Price meets you in the middle, his eyes sparkling embers. A baptism in fire. You feel the heat on your skin, and shiver. 

You used to be afraid of forest fires, but you know, now, that sometimes trees need to burn before they can truly grow. 

Lodgepole roots bud under his skin, rippling veins across a ravine. He rests his hand against your cheek, thumb brushing the dawn redwood needles that bloom under your skin. 

"Welcome home."

"They'll give you gifts," your gran says, shaking her head. "Things from their realm. Little trinkets and gems—" geodes, sapphires and diamonds, raw gold and coral; "—and you must never accept them," a whittled deer made of sequoia under your pillow; crow bones buried in the garden."Because if you do, if you do, they'll never let you go." 

"Why?" You asked, blinking at her. 

"Because it's a courting ritual, and to accept means… well," her mouth twists in wry disdain. "Just don't." 

You don't tell her that you already have. You don't mention the sticks and precious stones that always ended up on your windowsill. The whispers of the forest calling your name. 

You nod sagely instead, fingers tightening around the sap stained heart chiselled from Bristlecone Pine. The charred ends are warm in your palm. You feel it pulse. 

Will you accept this? My heart? Will you keep it safe for me? 

"I will."

This was meant to be light and fluffy and smutty but now it's. This. And um. Oops. I hope you enjoyed it!

JOHN PRICE MASTERLIST | NAVIGATION PART THREE OF COD X MYTHOLOGY ⁞ SOAP ● DRAGON PRICE

[belle--ofthebrawl]

Rating: E

Pairing: Swiss/Rain

Tags: Dubious Consent, Consensual Kink, Barebacking, Creampie, Sexual Coercion, Dirty Talk, Breeding Kink, they're matching each other's freak your honor, Trans Rain, Mean Swiss

Summary: Okay so basically Rain is girlfriend.

Oh, that's-” Rain whispers and winces as the character onscreen is torn into, blood and guts flying everywhere as the zombies began to feed. He hides his face in Swiss' shoulder, covering his ears as the harsh screams fade into quiet gurgles.

“Awful.” He mutters. “Disgusting.”

Swiss chuckles and tosses a piece of popcorn into his mouth, catching it neatly on his tongue. He’s got his arm wrapped around Rain as the water ghoul snuggles into him and he rubs comforting little circles into his skin. He’d done the classic yawn and stretch early on, laying the groundwork for how he hoped it would go. Rain hadn't shaken him off, which was a good sign. And the gore on screen only made the poor little thing shiver and scootch closer to Swiss.

“Cold?” He asks, like he hasn't set the AC to blast frigid air over the poor ghoul's skin, breaking it out into goosebumps that left him curling up more and more because oops the blankets are all in the wash. His eyes linger on the shape his nipples make as they stiffen up into peaks under his shirt. A far more interesting thing to watch than the shitty B-movie playing out on the screen in front of him.

“A little.” Rain says with a delicate wrinkle of his nose. Swiss chuckles and momentarily sacrifices his arm placement to shrug off his hoodie and hand it over; Rain pulls it over his thin top gratefully, taking away Swiss’ top tier view of his tits but it's a willing loss in the long game he's playing here. “Thank you.”

“Anything for my Rainy baby.” Swiss says fondly, nudging him with an elbow and Rain purrs, snuggling up close.

They fall silent as the girl on screen walks down a hallway. Rain’s tense, cringing already. Almost… Swiss thinks, shifting into position. Rain won't have to worry about the rest of the film if Swiss pulls this move off. He shifts as subtly as he can, timing it with the little jump-scare that's a creaking floorboard. The girl hesitates, sweat dripping down her temple. Her fingers skate across the peeling paint of the door. Swiss does the same along Rain's arm, ostensibly to comfort him but it puts Swiss' hand right on the water ghoul's shoulder in a predatory grip.

Rain's breath hitches as she pushes open the door with a long whine of the rusty hinges to reveal an empty room. It's so cute how his Rainy mimics her relief; a little smile, a little chuckle at their own fear.

A step in the room.

Two.

She's by the bed now, and-

The zombie underneath strikes, lashing out with withered arms to drag her screaming to her bloody fate beneath and-

At the exact same moment, Swiss moves; bringing his arm around Rain's neck in a headlock as he cackles and drags the both of them off the couch, Rain kicking and screaming in fear the whole time and-

“You jerk!” Rain spits when Swiss lets him loose. Through his laughter, Swiss feels the gentle baps of Rain's irritation wherever the water ghoul can reach.

“Rainy, baby-” he gasps, but the assault continues, Rain getting up on his knees to whack him with the long sleeves of his own sweatshirt and a cute little pout. “Sugar-pie, honey-bunch-!”

“Oh, don't you dare!”

“You know that I love you!” He croons, opening his arms wide and with the assistance of his own long legs, bullies Rain right into his embrace, peppering him with kisses. “Just can't help myself, whenever I'm around you.”

Rain receives his affection with a flat face and no reaction, crossing his arms and making unhappy little noises until Swiss manages to heave them both up back on the couch. Rain flops over on his back, still not looking at him. Swiss’ tail wags happily as he settles his body weight on top of him, placing a gentle kiss on his cheek as he brackets his arms around him.

“I said I just can't help myself…” he finishes, flicking the tip of his nose. “Whenever I'm around you.” Rain is not amused if the scowl on his face is anything to go by. Swiss kisses that unhappy curve of his lips, brushing a stray curl off Rain's cheek. “You're cute when you scream.” He says softly.

“I'm always cute.” Rain corrects acidly, purposefully avoiding eye contact. Swiss chuckles, nips at his lower lip and kisses him. Sweet and chaste at first but when Rain's mouth opens to sigh, he takes the chance and licks inside in the way he knows makes his Rainy baby's tummy swoop. Fingers tangle in his soft curls, run down his neck to feel the race of his pulse and soon he's kissing Swiss back. Loops his arms around Swiss' neck and hooks a leg around his waist.

It doesn't take much more than that to get his cock to fatten up in his sweats. He's got his pretty little water ghoul gasping and arching into his touch, wearing his sweatshirt and murmuring his name. It'd make a saint go bad and Swiss is no holy idol on a pedestal. His head tips back as he starts a slow grind, right into the meeting of Rain's thighs and the softness of his folds under his leggings. Swiss doesn't think he's wearing underwear and the thought makes him leak.

“You can't be serious.” Rain huffs in disbelief, but rocks his hips up in a heavy counter rhythm to make each crush of their bodies feel that much better. “Someone just died on the TV.”

“Ain't watchin’ the TV.” Swiss chides, gripping Rain's waist to guide him, starting a thrusting pace they're both intimately familiar with. “M watchin’ you .” He pets over the fabric, finds the shape of his labia and nudges them apart so he can rub the dark head of his cock up and down his parted lower lips as Swiss covers the protests made by the upper pair. He knows which one is telling the truth about what Rain wants. This one is drooling, soaking a little patch into his leggings already. He pushes to test the heft of his cock against the weave of the leggings, rewarded with the bump of Rain's clit and lower, the way his hole winking on the other side, trying to entice his cock in. Heedless of the barrier in place, it wants him in, bad. Rain moans, deep and pleasured as Swiss kisses his neck but as the humping grows more frantic, so does Rain. Rolling his head around, wiggling his hips. Batting at Swiss as he wheezes, looking tense.

“My Rainy gonna cum already?” Swiss asks with a teasing lilt. “Just from this? I'm not even inside you yet baby, can’t you wait til I am?”

“N- oh !” He squeaks, cheeks flushed and eyes glazed over. “Swiss, we can't!”

“We both want to.” Swiss says. He can already picture the indents in his soft skin that the elastic waistband of the leggings always leave. Thinks about how he's gonna mark Rain up worse than that with bruises that'll take ages to fade. “Lemme in beautiful, lemme make us feel good.”

“There's no…” Rain hesitates. Still so shy after how long they've been together. “Swiss, you know I can't, not without protection.”

“I'll pull out, babe. Promise.” He punctuates the statement with a sneaky hand up the sweatshirt, cupping his breast and thumbing over a nipple. Rain’s hesitation doesn’t do anything to kill his libido; if anything, his cock only flexes extra hard in his sweats.

“Yeah, right.” Rain scoffs, which is an insult to the work Swiss is trying to do here. He'll worm his way in though, of that he has no doubt. He knows how much Rain likes to fuss for special attention. It might as well be foreplay to him at this point.

“Can't you be happy with a handjob?” Rain pleads when Swiss rucks his sweatshirt up, showing off his pretty tits and tickles his tummy just above the waistband. Swiss hums a negative, shaking his head. Rain's getting wetter and wetter with each dirty slide of their bodies and Swiss isn't going to settle for a dry handy.

“My tits,” he offers next, cupping then invitingly, the soft flesh spilling over his fingers and while it's more tempting it's still not what Swiss wants. He shoves his hand down Rain's leggings, circles his slippery clit with a cruel and loving touch. Rain whimpers and arches into it. Swiss plants his face in Rain’s soft chest, purring as he rubbed back and forth over his cleavage.

“My mouth?” He drags Swiss’ head up by the horns so they can kiss and Rain can show off how clever he is with his tongue. When they pull apart, Rain looks desperate. Swiss blinks at him, slow and sleepy, wide grin spreading over his face as he shakes his head. “It’s the same thing Swiss, just let me suck you off.” Rain pleads when he realizes how screwed he is. “You can cum on my face if you want.” The thought makes his stomach curl with lust, imagining ropes of his pearly cum streaking Rain’s pretty face. He hates it; which is why Swiss loves it.

“Ah, but then I couldn't kiss you when I cum.” He says sweetly, dipping lower to slide two fingers in, nice and easy. The leggings practically come down of their own accord between Swiss trying for a better, less ache-inducing angle and Rain's struggle to try to get away. “I know that's your favorite part.” His fingers curl strategically, hitting Rain's favorite spot and making the water ghoul swear, rolling his hips down into it. He’s gotta make it good for his Rainy too, what kind of boyfriend would he be otherwise? “Plus, I know you wanna cum too. I know my princess is never happy with just fingers.”

He picks up the pace, drawing out lewd, wet noises as Swiss fingerfucks him. Rain writhes, riding his hand like a seasoned whore, body betraying his mind. This is Swiss’ favorite part. Sometimes he thinks about keeping Rain like this forever. Just aware enough to deny it, but so well-kept, well-fucked enough that Swiss could slip in anytime he wanted. Maybe loan his holes out to the others if he felt generous enough.

“I can cum like this, Swiss, just let me blow you-”

“Oh, I know you can…” Swiss tells him. “Which is why I won’t let you.”

His fingers stop. Rain hisses, grinds down as he trembles. He’s so easy but Swiss can play him like a fiddle, drawing the note out until it’s just the faintest quiver in the air and Rain’s sagging as his pleasure slowly dwindles down despite his best efforts to reach his peak.

“Just the tip?” he asks cheekily and Rain cracks an eye open to scowl at him.

“ Hate you.” he whimpers.

“Love you.” Swiss croons. What he’d really love is to get his face planted between Rain’s sleek thighs, suck his little clit until he squirted all over the couch but now that he’s so close to his goal he can’t risk any interference. Next time, he thinks as he waits for Rain’s reluctant acquiescence.

“You have to pull out before you cum.” Rain tells him quietly, frowning with the internal conflict. He’s too pretty to be thinking so hard. Swiss vows to wipe all the distress off his Rainy baby’s face.

“Whatever you want me to do.” Swiss promises, all sweet, poisonous desire. Rain doesn't catch it, too busy shuffling his leggings the rest of the way off and he spreads his pretty thighs wide, fully on display. He glares somewhere off to the side as Swiss coos in admiration, taking his fingers out to pet at the soft, vulnerable skin, smearing his slick around until it shines.

Damn, Swiss really wants to eat him out now. But his cock hurts more than his tongue ever could and Rain has his eyes screwed shut like he can't bear the sight of Swiss' smug grin.

“Aw baby,” he croons, sliding up tight to Rain’s body. “Won't you let me see the look in those gorgeous eyes when I push in?” Rain cracks one eye open, baleful and suspicious. Swiss just grins, tugs down his waist and to let his fat cock spring free, smack at his pussy with the heavy weight of it.

“Does it feel hotter?” He breathes, smushing the blood-dark tip of it over Rain’s cunt, reveling in the way the little hole kisses and suckles, desperate to get him inside. “You’re so wet with nothing the way, sweetie…”

His mouth falls open with a quiet fuck as Swiss glides smoothly inside, groaning at the new feeling of Rain's body without a seal of rubber in place.

“Ooh, that's good. ” He praises, hitching deeper and deeper, inch by inch as Rain moans. “You like it? You like the feel of my bare cock?” Rain shakes his head but his cunt flexes so tight that Swiss nearly greys out at the pleasure of it.

“Oh shit, oh fuck-” Rain whines as Swiss bottoms out, voice breaking pathetically on the last syllable. “Please Swiss, please just,”

“Yeah babe.” He grunts, dragging back to see the way Rain’s slick gleams on his skin, hole already nice and creamy. Swiss can't wait to make it worse. He gets his big hands on the slender curves of Rain's waist, a perfect handhold to keep him in place as Swiss starts at a fast pace, bucking his hips in a sharp, staccato rhythm that nails the spot Rain likes best.

“So goddamn perfect.” He praises, digging his nails in, a little hurt to enhance the pleasure. Rain sings out a pretty song as Swiss fucks him right, blushing high on his elegant cheekbones, struggling to keep his eyes open, his tongue from lolling out. He's always so scared to act the slut he truly is but Swiss knows how to bring out the best in him. “Is this why you always make me wear condoms? Knew you’d like taking it raw too much?”

“Nuh-” Rain gasps as Swiss goes for his clit, the sensitive little bud turning Rain’s higher thought processes off with just a touch, a rub over the nerves. “No, Swiss please don't talk like that, please, I’m not…”

“You are ,” Swiss counters, jabbing in and holding deep, pressed so dangerously high into his body. For anyone else it would be uncomfortable but Rain rides the waves with a heady moan, hiding his face in the crook of his arm as Swiss circles his clit with the calloused pad of his finger. “But you're so scared to admit it, aren't you? Don't you know you're safe with me? Safe to be the dirty little cumslut you know you are.”

His legs are shaking, thighs jiggling as Swiss holds the pressure on his sweet spot, works his clit without mercy.

“You want it deep and raw, you want me to squirt right into your pussy.” He breathes, enthralled with the way Rain's tits look. He leans over, gives one rosy nipple a kiss before trailing up to his mouth. Rain pants and Swiss licks in, steals the air from his lungs and replaces it with more filth.

“Fill you up hot.” He continues, letting Rain feel the heat of his balls rest against his perineum. “So you can cum again to the way it feels dripping out.”

And then. He stops. Pulls away; from his sinful mouth, his plump clit and draws out, groaning at the sight of the creamy ring at the base of his cock. Rain panics, tries to urge Swiss close again with stupid, stuttered pleas; arms going around Swiss' shoulders to keep him where he's at, keep at least the tip inside and Swiss makes another deep noise at the way Rain's body tries to lure him back home.

“What are you doing,” Rain asks frantically, peppering his face with urgent little kisses. “Don't go, I’m so close, I need to cum so bad-”

“No.” Swiss says, firm despite the strain in his voice. “No baby, so’m I and if you cum, I'm not pulling out.”

Rain wails softly in despair, scooting closer to Swiss to kiss him so hard and clumsy they clack teeth. He's vibrating with need, mins gone in his desire to feel good and so lost to the way Swiss kisses him back that he doesn't notice the curve of the wicked smile even when it's right in front of him.

“Say you want it, baby.” Swiss murmurs as Rain cups his jawline in his cool palms, laying his lips to the corner of Swiss' mouth. “Say what you want and I’ll get back inside.”

“No…” Rain says, choked. “Don't make me.”

“Don't make you cum?” Swiss asks cheekily. “You're too spoiled for denial, and I'm just too whipped to say no, you know?”

He nuzzles at sweaty skin, kissing the faint pulse going wild at his temple. Let me cum inside , he mouths against it, regardless if Rain understands it or not.

“You can't ,” Rain begs, sounding like he's about to cry. “Don't cum in me, Swiss. What if I get pregnant?”

“It's not like I'll be able to knock you up again.” Swiss murmurs. “Not right away, at least.”

“Swiss!” Rain cries, batting at him and that's about as much as Swiss wants to deal with.

“You want it.” He growls, taking Rain by the shoulders, shoving him down into the couch. He looks up at Swiss with eyes that shine with tears, even as his legs fall whorishly open. “Your body wants it, stop letting your brain ruin it for you.”

He takes the plunge. Gives Rain his full length on the first slide back in and grins wildly at the squeal it earns him. His fingers find Rain’s clit again, taking up the rhythm from before and soon Rain can't even shake his head in denial anymore, just lets it fall as he moans in tormented delight, hands flying to cover his mouth.

“You’ll learn.” Swiss pants, staring him down. “You’ll lose the fear eventually. Or you can start liking anal, that won't get you pregnant. Best of both worlds.”

He punctuates the statement with a slap on the ass and Rain whimpers, tightens up that much more.

“I do like the idea of knocking you up though.” He goes in for a soft kiss, a bit of sweetness to balance out the rough treatment this time. “And I think you do too. Go on baby, show me how much you love me. Tell me how good I make you feel, yeah?”

He lovingly pries Rain’s hands away from his mouth so he can sing pretty again; high, girlish uh-uh-uh’s, indistinguishable from sobbing that blend together to to a thin cry as Rain freezes, body going stiff and cums, long and hard. Swiss doesn't let up in his clit, watching the way he goes from right to squirmy, jolting and wriggling to get away.

“That's it.” He soothes, “Oh, you love cumming on this bare dick, don't you baby? Get ready… it's got somethin’ real special to give you.”

Rain starts shaking his head again, planting at Swiss' chest to push him off but it's too late; his balls draw up tight, his cock flexes hard and he cums pressed right up against Rain’s cervix, shooting his load right where it counted the most.

“So good.” He moans, just to hear the noise of despair Rain makes as Swiss fills him up, ignoring his denials. “Never letting you put a condom on me again, baby.”

He doesn't pull out. Wants to keep it all inside, let Rain soak it all up and swim in his shame. The poor little thing is too fucked out to even cringe as Swiss collapses on top of him, sweaty skin to sweaty skin and they both float in the afterglow.

“I love anal.” Rain announces after a few moments, sounding out of breath. “Where did that come from.”

“Uh, my dick?” Swiss offers, rubbing his face over Rain's beautiful tits again. The water ghoul exhales and runs his long fingers through Swiss' curls, scratching at his scalp. He starts purring, happy that Rain is happy.

“I’ll allow it.” He says with exaggerated grace.

“Thank you.” Swiss says meekly, and they both snicker. Something wet writhes against the skin of his waist and Swiss props himself up to see his favorite thing in the world.

“Surprised it didn't come out to play earlier.” He remarks, teasing at the bud between Rain’s folds, now ever so slightly longer.

“I’ll admit it wasn't easy.” Rain murmurs as his tentacle pushes itself out of the sheath, almost shy. Swiss coos at it and lets the appendage coil around his fingers as Rain sighs. He rubs a thumb over the width of it, careful to avoid the tip, which is always more sensitive after Rain uses it as a clit.

“Hi beautiful.” Swiss says, giving it a friendly squeeze. “Daddy missed you.”

“Call yourself Daddy around me again and you’re dry for a month.” Rain threatens. There's no real bite to it, he's just being sassy. Swiss grins, eager to needle him some more.

“ Papa missed you so much.”

“Swiss, I swear to fucking Asmodeus-!”

[tinyyoruichi]

𝘿𝙚𝙘𝙤𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘾𝙝𝙧𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙢𝙖𝙨 𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙚 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙊𝙣𝙚 𝙋𝙞𝙚𝙘𝙚 𝙢𝙚𝙣 | part.1

Featuring : Luffy, Zoro and Sanji

(No use of pronouns)

Summary : you decorate the Christmas tree with one of the monster trio.

Rosie’s rant : heyyy ! The Christmas event start with the monster trio decorating the Christmas tree (others one piece men will have their own scenario in the part.2). It’s the first time I write with no use of pronouns, so if you feel it’s too gendered, please tell me

Luffy grinned widely as you stood before a towering Christmas tree, ornaments scattered around like treasure waiting to be claimed. "This is gonna be awesome!" he declared, eyes gleaming with excitement. Without much finesse, he grabbed a handful of ornaments and started hanging them haphazardly.

You chuckled, "Luffy, be gentle with the decorations."

"Why? They're just gonna look cool no matter what!" Luffy retorted, slinging a string of lights around the tree, creating a chaotic yet festive glow.

You joined in, carefully placing ornaments in between Luffy's placements. "It's about making it look nice, not just cool."

Luffy scratched his head, a sheepish grin appearing. "Oh, I get it. But can I still put this Santa hat on the top?"

You laughed, nodding. "Of course, Luffy. It's your Christmas tree, after all."

Zoro grunted, eyeing the Christmas tree with a dubious expression. You handed him an ornament, "Come on, Zoro, it's not that hard. Just put it on a branch."

He raised an eyebrow but complied, dangling the ornament with minimal interest. "This is a waste of time. Swords need proper care, not trees."

You laughed, "It's called holiday spirit, Zoro."

"Whatever. Just don't expect me to go all out with this decorating nonsense." Despite his grumbling, Zoro couldn't hide a faint smirk as he carefully positioned an ornament.

You handed him a Santa hat. "Humor me, at least for today."

Zoro rolled his eyes but placed the hat atop his green hair, muttering, "If anyone asks, I did it for the food, not for the holiday crap."

Sanji, with a cigarette dangling from his lips, approached the Christmas tree. He cradled an ornament like a precious gem, inspecting it with a critical eye. "Only the finest decorations for this tree," he declared, a chivalrous demeanor in place.

You smiled, "You're treating this tree like royalty, Sanji."

"Of course. A gentleman must always provide the best, even for a tree," he replied, carefully placing the ornament on a branch. With meticulous precision, Sanji arranged each decoration, ensuring a harmonious display.

You handed him a string of lights. "Care to do the honors?"

Sanji grinned, taking the lights as if they were delicate flowers. "I'll make this tree shine as bright as your smile, my dear."

As the tree sparkled with elegance, he couldn't help but appreciate with you the festive ambiance.

Feel free to like or reblog :)

[wisteriagoesvroom]

gax + corporate/law vibes + ‘The powerpoint was steadily taking over their relationship, something that Max was not willing to stand for.’

gax?? gax!!

power (you make some points): a gax ficlet

rated m, ~1.2k words now also readable on ao3

author babble:

bear in mind i wrote this before i knew more about the Gax Lore i.e. karting together, actually being nice to each other blablabla. you could also just retrofit the vibes and hopefully they still work. anyways!

will throw this up on ao3 when i’m not sitting bleary eyed in an airport

————

If there was one thing that Max Verstappen wouldn’t tolerate, it was George Russell having the monopoly on good PowerPoint presentations. Max had won all four years of debate in College, as well as the dubious title of “most radical deployment of Google Slides templates” at his MBA, and he was not about to be usurped by the other guy in his department who actually knew how to use an animate transition.

“You missed an indent there.” Max says, pointing at the monitor. Yellow and red lights wink at them from the outside, as if to say: you’re both in your mid-twenties, quit wasting it on a computer screen at 11pm on a Wednesday, maybe?

Max is not staring, very determined not to look at his teammate’s facial expression. But George is almost certainly rolling his eyes right now.

“Was coming back to that, alright?” George huffs back. Max is very professional most of the time. But something about how wound up George is, how insanely pedantic he is about everything from semicolons to coffee cup placement for the Directors to taking insanely detailed minutes that nobody except Max reads after the meetings – well. What is it that Nietschze once said? We hate in others what we most identify with about ourselves. Or was that from Twitter? Max does not really use Twitter except to look at Bloomberg News updates and cat videos, so he does not know. And anyway Nietzsche never made a six figure salary.

“It would just be easier if you would let me do it.” Max says.

“Fuck right off, mate.”

“Oh, wouldn’t you like me to.”

“Not now.”

“Just share the link to this. I’ll do it.”

“We agreed to take turns on this.”

“Yes, Russell. But sometimes, the rules are meant to be bent.”

George swivels his chair to Max, then. Fully attempts to pin him with his gaze, commencing an awkward stare-off that lasts way too many seconds and makes Max once again realise that George’s eyes remind him of the expensive fish tank he saw at the Partners’ sushi dinner once. Max doesn’t think those same fish were the ones they ended up eating. But he does remember that dinner because it was the one where the Partners had dangled the promise of a huge promotion if they could help carry the company merger across the line successfully. The problem is, there was only one spot.

George’s distracting aquatic orbitals aside, fortunately, Max (i) never backs down, and (ii) has been told that he has the dead-eyed emotional stare of a robot missing an empathy software upgrade sometimes.

And clearly, the powerpoint was steadily taking over their relationship, something that Max was not willing to stand for.

Max leans back in his chair, stance all mock-relaxed. “Do you want to be out of here before midnight, or not?”

“We’re expensing the Ubers either way, so it doesn’t make a difference to me, mate.”

Fine. If George is so hyperfocused on The Tasks that he’s forgotten the fun part of being Questionably Close Coworkers, so be it.

Max deploys the nuclear option.

He sticks his leg out, nudging the toe of his Pradas onto George’s slacks. And strokes his foot halfway up to a sensitive point on George’s thigh. Max may even flutter his lashes a little.

To his credit, George does not react. Merely swings his eyes like a lamp to Max’s face again. His hand does, however, goes still on the mouse.

“What exactly are you doing?”

“I don’t know.” Max feigns. He knows that George hates, more than anything, anyone getting dirt on his precious Ralph Laurens. But at least he has his attention now. “Was hoping we could move onto the more fun part of the typical evening activities. Maybe.”

“We shouldn’t be doing that again anyway.”

“George.”

“What?”

“That is not what you said the last, hm, fourteen times that we have done this, eh?”

“Who’s counting?”

“I thought you were the most careful of rule followers and data analysis, knapperd.”

George is a human being, but Max is almost certain the other man shakes himself like he’s preening right now.

“Well. It’s what the team likes me for, and it’s what I’ll keep doing.”

“Oh yes. Surely we must keep in mind the team. And the shareholders. They are very important.”

“Quite.”

“But should we tell them that you like it so much, George. When I do this.” Max says. Rising up, fully crowding George in, hands gripping the cool handles of the computer chair. Leaning in to nibble the side of George’s neck.

George swallows. Max watches his throat move.

Next, Max mouths the words onto the side of George’s jaw, stubble prickling his mouth. “And this.”

The click of the mouse continues steadily as Max moves his mouth to the shell of George’s ear. “And let’s not forget. This.”

Max tilts George’s face up fully, then. George’s face is flushed, eyes sparkling, all surprise at the sudden change of pace, but eager, too.

When Max seals his lips over George’s, George groans, and his hands shoot up to Max’s waist immediately. It doesn’t feel quite like winning a deal or a pitch does for Max, but the completion comes pretty damn close.

Max sweeps his tongue into George’s mouth. George opens willingly, like he always does. In the back of Max’s logical brain, a warning sign blares that the computer chair may not be able to support the weight of them both – because they spend a lot of time pretending they don’t work out together at the gym but Max knows exactly what George’s deadlift PB is and it’s pretty damn high for a scrawny looking dude.

And despite the keening protest of said chair, the two of them are both lost to it now. Max jams one knee between George’s legs, George nibbles hungrily at Max’s lower lip, Max thrusts his hips all needy, and maybe if Max is nice about it George might suck him off under the table, and–

Outlook chimes again.

“Blasted piece of shit.” George says, breaking away. His hands go still at Max’s waist. “Why we’re using G-Suite and Microsoft Office at the same time I will never know.”

George squeezes his eyes shut, as if making himself stop this is causing him physical pain. Maybe it’s that or the workflow incompatibility when George tries to move his custom Excel-Trello gantts into a third party API.

And Max won’t lie. He kind of likes it when George gets so irritated about these things. When he cares a bit too much. Because what is Max but exactly like that, too.

“Hazards of a merger, I guess. But without that, I would never have met you, no?”

George makes a noise like he knows what Max means. The other man straightens his shirt collar, and Max runs a hand through his hair. He’s been growing it out lately, because George had made a passing comment at the bathroom sink once about it looking good.

Sleeping with the person competing for the same Chief of Staff position is possibly the worst decision he could’ve made, and Max once dyed his hair platinum blonde. But, they’re stuck here together. Hell is a slightly more tolerable place when Satan’s right hand man looks this good. And knows his coffee order without asking.

Besides. Max is not bothered. He knows that the promotion is his. This is just a minor plot inconvenience.

Later, they will expense the uber back to George’s place, where Max will put his mouth on George’s arse, and give him a practical demonstration of the three different ways he’s learned to elicit pleasure from the male prostate.

George will whimper and whine the whole way through it, and after they’re both sated, they’ll both roll over to check their emails, barely concealing their smiles. They will pretend that what’s happening between them could be as clean as their zero-email inboxes. As if their connection is not violently seeping through containment.

All in the name of team bonding. For the firm. Yes.

(Or this is what they tell themselves, to maintain the illusion, anyway.)

[ccorthal]

okok obi and ani brotherdad au notes down below!!!!!!

obi was qui gon's foster son (long term placement, he was placed w qui at age 12), but was never adopted + distances himself from qui a bit after going to college,, @ 22 y/o, obi is in his senior year of college and gets an email/text/smthn from qui gon that he should come home after graduation to meet his (surprise!!!!!) brother. qui gon claims that anakin is his biological son (dubious) and him, shmi, + the baby are living together, and as much as obi wan is a little mad at all this and having a Certified Older Sibling Moment, he's pretty quickly endeared to ani.

i think that being present in anakin's life definitely does a lot to fix obi wan and qui gon's relationship (i just finished master and apprentice and i keep thinking about how when obi wan looks back on his time with qui gon, those years after the events of the book are the bestmost important. in this au, this period of time is the same way (,: ) but the summer after obi wan graduates with his phd, qui gon and shmi pass away in an accident. obi wan kinda leaps without looking and files for guardianship of anakin, so when obi wan starts his new job at the university he is also starting his years as a parent :) babyboy has a lot on his plate. at this point he's 27 and ani is 6

[gemharvest]

You don't deserve this.

Hiiiii I'm not reading over this. If anything comes off disjointed/ reads weird, chalk it up to Beef being out of it. Sorry for meanies-posting but this shit comes to me. Way too easily. I'm going to scare myself out of posting if I let this sit long enough to give it a proper reread so Yeah.

Intended to be closer to that one sketch comic I did, so this isn't current-times RGBFverse. Dubious timeline placement because I probably mixed up some things that would/ wouldn't happen around the vague time this is supposed to be.

Characters: Yourself (Hit Single/ Ochre's), Beef (Mine)

-----

Eyes opening, unfocussed. Head hurt. Disoriented. Head spinning with an uncomfortable feeling. Felt almost like his head was flooded with a dense fog.

Didn’t know where he was, couldn’t remember even falling asleep. Nerves waking up before the rest of him.

Where was he..?

Beat.

Heartbeat…

It took a few moments more for Beef to realize he was being held, a head resting atop his: Yourself’s. Slow heartbeat, familiar hoodie fabric. Warmth built that let Beef know he had been there for a bit now.

He couldn’t remember how he got there. Could hardly think at all. Had he even come here on his own..? It wasn’t often he came over. Still felt nervous, like YS would decide to go back on being his big brother at any moment.

Must’ve been sung to sleep, though it was weird. Hadn’t ever knocked out this hard to singing. Maybe…

Beef was vaguely aware his brother wasn’t human. An angel, he had let slip in a moment of weakness. Weakness he had caused, because it seemed that was all he was good at.

Oh, everything spun more as he thought about that. He still felt so bad about that.

Still… maybe that was it. That he had let some angelic magic slip into his singing. But… why?

Why waste that on him..?

So much activity in his head, while only still just waking up. The other’s embrace should be comforting. It usually was, but… He felt off. Felt guilty. He…

He didn’t belong here.

Didn’t belong, yet only froze. Didn’t push away. Like if he moved, reality would catch up to him and he’d be tossed away. Like trash, like he truly deserved.

Greedy, he must’ve been. He was, actually. Didn’t deserve this treatment, not with everything he had done to YS. Only giving back pain to someone who treated him with such kindness. And yet, there he was, soaking it up yet again. Taking it like it was his right, and not something he should have to earn.

It wasn’t right. Wasn’t fair to YS. He was an asshole, assholes like him didn’t deserve to be given kindness like this. He should just… leave.

But he couldn’t.

Selfish motherfucker…

“Hey, little man… You alright..?”

Beef swore he’d never felt his adrenaline spike as bad as that moment. Muscles tense, and his heart had never beat faster.

Of course he was awake. He usually was. Could probably feel Beef’s emotions sour even if he wasn’t.

God, he didn’t need to be another problem.

So he tried ignoring how he felt. Tried to force his mind into a state of numbness, so he could pretend everything was fine. Pretend he was okay so he could have a few more moments before YS finally realized what a waste it was to try and comfort him.

But that didn’t exactly work; his body shaking and eyes starting to wet. The more he tried not focusing, the worse it got.

God, no, not again. Didn’t want to be discarded again. He was being too much, he would always be too much, he-

Gently, the arms around him squeezed. Body wrapping around him to keep him close.

“It’s okay, you’re okay. You’ve had a rough day, no need to pretend you haven’t. You can stay here as long as you need.”

As if on queue, Beef broke out into a silent sob. Eyes blurring again but this time with tears.

He hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on. It was scary how out of it he felt. But it was like YS felt not only his emotions, but was reading his mind as well. Scared, so scared he was going to be pushed away.

But YS only held him closer. Spoke to him with a tenderness that still felt a bit foreign to Beef.

He shook as he drew in a ragged breath, breaking a little more as he continued to cry.

Through his storm of emotion, he wondered if he had been crying before he had fallen asleep, too. It would explain why his head hurt so much. God, he hated crying.

“S-Sorry…”

His voice was wobbly, weak… pathetic. This was stupid. He was stupid, adding on to others’ problems. Shouldn’t let this side show. He was just gonna-

“Don’t apologize. If you need to let it out, let it out. I’m here.”

Dizzy, he felt dizzy. Just crying as his brother held onto him. He was a difficult person to care about; a problem child, if you would. He was just eating up YS’s patience like this. Patience he hadn’t even earned in the first place.

Gentle humming hit Beef’s ears, a melody he recognized. His song. Something special, just for him. He didn’t feel that important, but…

Beef let himself focus on the melody. Anything was better than the storm in his own mind.

Maybe he didn’t feel important enough to deserve that kind of recognition, but he still accepted it. Let himself be lulled by YS’s voice and the sentiment behind it.

Soon enough, his tears slowed, and the ache that had accompanied them died down a bit.

God, he was tired.

Breathing slowing, he let his stinging eyes slip shut. Gentle pressure, contact that told him he wasn’t alone. He wouldn’t be alone. He could doze off again if he wanted…

Greedy. He was greedy, letting himself fall back asleep here. And yet, he still did. Dizziness slowed as he focussed on all the outside stimuli he was being given.

He could be thrown away so easily. YS didn’t have to entertain this, but he was. So Beef would be greedy, as long as it was being offered to him. Felt like it wouldn’t be long until it was taken away anyways. Might as well savor it now.

Still… he didn’t want to be ungrateful.

With the last ounce of strength he had before exhaustion claimed him again, Beef sighed out two words.

“Thank you…”

[tearlessrain]

Hello! Sorry to bother you, but I'm looking to make a pair of harpy legs for the sims 4. I have no experience in modding or modeling, but I'm going to start learning both soon. Sorry for all the exposition, I really was just wondering about any tips or even how you made your digitgrade legs and paws/hooves. They're beautiful, and even though I doubt I'll make anything close, getting some advice from a professional would be oh so very appreciated.

not a bother at all, though I would definitely not call myself a professional lol. I am some guy with a dubious workflow and a dream.

for basic blender stuff there are a ton of youtube tutorials that will be more useful than anything I could say, but if you're looking for advice on making unconventional leg shapes for ts4 in particular, my main advice would be to preserve the existing joints and work around them rather than fighting them. As long as the hips, knees, and ankle joints have basically the same placement as the vanilla mesh, it will make weight painting miles easier and keep everything looking nice during gameplay (even if you're more into screenshots and storytelling, poses are still made with the default mesh in mind and you'll have a lot more freedom to use them if your joints and weights are done thoughtfully).

second thing is do the uv-1 map. it sucks and it's tedious and I haven't really found a better way to do it than one stupid vertex at a time but you gotta. it will solve 90% of problems you might encounter with mystery distortions and split seams, and it will let you actually use weight sliders. similarly, I'd really recommend mimicking the vanilla mesh's topology as closely as you can to make this easier.

I'm planning to do a kind of video tutorial thing for how I make new feet for the digilegs just so people have it as a resource to make their own parts, so hopefully that might be helpful as well when it's done.

[ohthehypocrisy]

The Problem with Paradox Pokemon: A Primer (And other Probable Interpretations)

It's been a while since the story of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet had ended, and while we now know what was the hidden treasure of Area Zero, the Paradox Pokemon are still a big mystery. Like, are they really the forms of pokemon from an era beyond time? Or are they just the wild dreams born of a careless professor's obsession?

We'll most likely never know the real answer, so the best we can do is to put together all the information available to us and form a hypothesis. There are other theories abound about the true nature of Paradox Pokemon, but I won't be referring to them here, to keep my own tangent clean and distilled. You are welcome to seek them out if you disagree with my thesis, but I think one must consider all opinions first. Basically, you can believe what you want, but at the very least hear me out first.

Let's begin by debunking a common misconception about the Past Paradox Pokemon. These are the PokeDex entries for Scream Tail;

There are two key points to take away from these entries. The first is that nearly all the information regarding Paradox Pokemon is sourced from a paranormal magazine, the Occulture series to be specific. Now, the PokeDex itself is already a dubious source of information given how nonsensical it can be, but then you've got official entries sourced from a fanatical magazine that's been described as 'disingenuous' in-universe. The fact that players took the information at face value caused great misconceptions about Paradox Pokemon as a whole, such as the placement in prehistory of the ancient forms.

Yeah, a Jigglypuff from one billion years ago is one of the most dubious claims about Paradox Pokemon as a whole. Why? Because multicellular life didn't start forming on Earth at that time. Yes, the Jigglypuff species had to have come from somewhere, but certainly not 1 billion years ago. Given how close the similarities are to Jigglypuff, Scream Tail may have been around closer to several hundred million years ago, not a billion. I mean, it's evolution, in the literal sense, so of course most pokemon will have an identifiable ancestor in the past.

Speaking of which, since the Paradox Pokemon of the past come from a time where everything was still evolving, does that make the fossil pokemon paradoxes as well? Well, the short answer is yes, and no.

Yes, they are paradox pokemon in the sense that they've been brought to our time through scientific means, but the logistics make all the difference. For one, these fossil pokemon are species that have gone extinct, which is the key word here. They have contemporary families in the present day, like Aerodactyl and its fellow dragon kin, but there is no true Pterosaur in the modern age, so these fossil pokemon aren't true paradoxes for that reason. The other reason being that the method of retrieval is different, as fossil resurrection is not the same as being caught and taken through a time machine. There's a very important distinction between making a modern miracle out of a jurassic farce, and what was essentially casting a fishing line through a time portal.

Scream Tail, Flutter Mane, Sandy Shocks, they can all be considered fossil pokemon in a sense, but they definitely did not go extinct over time, for obvious reasons. Speaking of which, have you ever noticed how it is that a paradox version of Misdreavus exists but not that of Mismagius? Same goes for Wigglytuff as well, where's Screech Tail or whatever?

Well, I bring up these three because the evolutionary contemporaries in Wigglytuff, Mismagius, and Magnezone are only a recent development in the power dynamic of these pokemon. What do I mean? I mean to say that the reason why we have paradox forms of Jigglypuff, Misdreavus, and Magneton is because evolution stones didn't exist back then. They were still hiding within the earth, buried deep within the mountains, out of reach of these pokemon until humans came around and decided to dig stuff up. And whaddya know, some of those cool rocks do cool things to some pokemon when they're used together, isn't that neat?

This also means that Past Paradox forms of pokemon like Nosepass, Murkrow, or even Eevee definitely exist, which is fun to think about.

One last thing to mention about Paradox Pokemon. Everyone seems to think that all of these ancient forms all come from the same time period, and that's not necessarily the truth. In real paleontology, organisms took over the world as multicellular beings starting in the Cambrian era. This period began at around 550 Million Years Ago (I told you the dex entry for Scream Tail was incredibly uncredible) and it was when life was still figuring things out. Then you've got the evolution of plants, fish, crabs, mollusks, before eventually they started coming out of the water and got the whole ball rolling. The era of the dinosaurs started 252 Million Years Ago in the Mesozoic Era, which is where some of the fossil pokemon hail from. The Ice Age, where elephants and rhinos were all covered in hair, started around 2 Million Years Ago and is called the Pleistocene.

I'm not a scientist, but I just wanted to put it into perspective how life has persisted on this planet in different forms for years on end, and that no two eras are alike, even the ones close to each other. It's ignorant to assume the Paradox Pokemon of the Past, or the Future I suppose, all came from a single period of time, but there isn't any reason to assume otherwise. Maybe that's the Paradox, that these creatures come from an ambiguous past or future, but there's no way to know for sure. I know for a fact that these ancient creatures didn't come from 1 billion years ago, as the Occulture magazine boldly claims.

For now, we have to assume that the Paradox Pokemon all come from the same walks of life in the past, as well as the future, if only for the fact that they all share identical abilities in Protosynthesis and Quark Drive. The Pokemon TCG seems to enjoy these shots of all the Paradox Pokemon coming together. And to be honest, I love it as well. There's no reason for these pictures to go as hard as they do.

(Tumblr won't let me post a higher quality version of these images here, so go to the Paradox Pokemon page on Bulbapedia if you want to use these as a banner or something.)

Now let's move on to the future Paradox Pokemon and clear up some more misconceptions about them. In nature and in machinery, every design decision is deliberate. But what happens when both come together and forge the future of the ecosystem? What crazy contraptions will be born of the manipulation of genes and behavior?

There are two takes to consider when it comes to predicting the future. The first being that nothing is set in stone, anything can happen, and the infinite possibilities of the future means that anything and everything can and will happen, given enough time, of course.

The second take is that the future is ours to decide, which is also true. What we do today is the foundation of tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, ad nauseum until our natural lives come to an end. Of course, some things will continue to influence history long after we perish, like the accomplishments of those that came before us, such as the discovery of fire or agriculture.

I say all of this to give some credence to the Occulture magazine, despite how ridiculous it may be. Like, the idea that Iron Hands is an athlete revived through cybernetics, or that Iron Jugulis was born of a Hydreigon and a robot's love. I do not believe that any of these wild claims are legitimate in any way, but the nature of the future suggests that these are all possible, given enough time.

But to claim the Occulture magazine's content as proof is folly, since there is no way to prove any of it is real. And then you have the theory that Iron Bundle is actually a robot from the ancient past, which discredits the entire thing completely, since it and the other future Paradox Pokemon were all brought to the current timeline from a single possible future. Again, I also have no proof of that, but the fact that all future Paradox Pokemon share the same ability leads me to believe that they all come from a specific point in time in the future, one that can be predicted based on context clues.

Looking at these creatures, it's clear they were all 'designed' by a single person or entity, perhaps a company. They all share the same LED eye panels, coded lighting, and a chrome colored shiny alternate appearance. That leads me to propose the theory that the Paradox Pokemon of the future are man made creatures built in service of humanity and to restore life on earth, in an auxiliary form.

I already went on about how the future cannot be predicted, but developments in human technology do paint a clear picture for us. For one, space travel is a given, since the pokemon world can easily send a child into space to combat an alien asteroid.

Also time travel is a thing? I'm not talking about the machine in Area Zero, I mean the Link Cable system in Gen 2 where players can send pokemon back and forth to Gen 1, but the story canon takes place a few years later, so it's called time travel instead of straight up trading. Weird how we forget about this stuff...

I'm digressing. My point is, technology in the Pokemon World is far more advanced than our own. That is evident enough through the sheer existence of PokeBalls, the thing we use to catch and train Pokemon. It's not a matter of if but when humans in that world will reach an advanced enough state that they can actually make cybernetic pokemon like the Future Paradox forms.

The first step in technological mastery would usually be space travel, but cybernetic augmentation is sometimes a close second. Science fiction typically depicts an advanced neural network as a necessity to interface with the world wide web as it appears in the far-flung future. We know the pokemon are all cyberized, but would the people of the future become cybernetic as well? Anything goes when it comes to the future, but this advanced evolution of humans would probably be called Iron Hominid or something to that effect.

It wouldn't be without cause. Something would have to have happened that necessitated evolving into a cybernetic form necessary for survival. Perhaps a premature extinction event took place, taking on the form of a virulent disease, requiring iron bodies in order to preserve life on earth. Maybe an alien invasion dwindled the numbers of all life on earth, requiring a manual reboot of the ecosystem, so to speak, so humanity took to reinventing pokemon to fill the ecological niche opened up by the great war.

However it happened, all the iron pokemon we know about were built to replace what was lost. To that end, it can be assumed that, in the distant future of Iron Hominid, the future Paradox Pokemon we see in game are all extinct pokemon brought back to life through iron bodies, in the same way fossil pokemon are restored in the modern era. I mean, why not, right? They would have preserved the bones and data of all pokemon discovered, so they would be revived through cybernetic means in order to restore the ecosystem of the planet.

But these are humans we are talking about. It can never be just about doing the right thing. Most likely, the iron pokemon restored would be revived to work in service to humans, since life on earth is delicate enough to justify controlled groups of 'wild' iron pokemon. I'm sure there are truly free grottos of nature somewhere on the planet in the future, but we also have to assume the Iron Hominids have also mastered space flight, which means plenty of planets open for terraforming, so helpful pokemon born into servitude will most likely outnumber the population of 'unmodified' pokemon.

With that in mind, we can extrapolate a clear 'purpose' each of the future paradox pokemon were designed with. Iron Treads, the big wheel elephant, is most likely used for terraforming lands and plains. One Iron Treads by itself may not be able to do a whole lot, but if you needed a big plot of land tilled and ready for farming, you can't go wrong with a mini fleet of Iron Treads chewing up the ground for you.

Iron Bundle has the ability to pull together water from the atmosphere, and then serve it chilled with its built in cooling systems. It's also one of the more expressive iron pokemon, as its LED eyes are programmed beyond the bare minimum of expression. That leads me to believe it is made to dispense water when thirsty humans ask for it. It could also be used to pull in unclean water and purify it within its body, although I think another undiscovered iron pokemon would be better suited for that role.

Iron Hands may have been built to facilitate easier construction. I'd imagine those big magnetic hands easily capable of clipping large panels and lifting them into place to be bolted in. In contrast, Iron Thorns may have been built for demolition, since it was modeled after Tyranitar, a pokemon with a reputation for destruction.

The pokemon chosen for cybernetic revival are done so with a clear purpose in mind, I'd imagine. For instance, Iron Moth would be best suited for absorbing radiation and emitting it safely as UV rays in areas that receive little or no sunlight, since this was something Volcarona was thought to have done long ago. This would also make it a perfect fit for terraforming planets that have difficulty maintaining plant life for humans to farm with.

And then you have iron pokemon built for the personal need of humans. Iron Jugulis is clearly meant to be an aerial drone, keeping security of the airspace above governmental buildings. In contrast, Iron Valiant would work as personal security, as an unfeeling machine that will not stop until all perceived threats are eliminated, something similar to what Gardevoir or Gallade would have done in the past.

This is something fanartists of the future Paradox Pokemon seem to understand intrinsically, as the deliberate designs conform to the nature of the pokemon they're based off of. Though to be fair, I've seen some stellar fanart of Paradox Pokemon on both sides of the spectrum. I'd show you some, but I don't have permission to share the art, not that I've asked. Instead, you should go and have a looksee at all the wonderful designs here on Tumblr and on Twitter.

It's just a little sad that we might not ever see any more Paradox Pokemon after this generation. I mean, they were clearly pulled in from a time machine built by one crazy professor, so it's not likely we'll see more new Paradox Pokemon show up, for story reasons. And on that note, we might not even see the existing Paradox Pokemon again either, unless they were brought in through a glitchy Ultra Beast Wormhole or Hoopa's Hyperspace Hole or something.

But you know, we might be seeing Paradox Pokemon again in a different kind of game. You all know how Pokemon loves its spin-offs, so I'd imagine we'd see a few more pop up here and there.

What about a dedicated game all about Paradox Pokemon? I might be cooking something up about that, but you'll have to wait and see.

Thank you for reading this far. Sorry if I haven't posted in a while, but like I said, I'm cooking up something based on Paradox Pokemon. It's not quite ready yet, but I should have it done by next week. Until then, sit and stew and think about Paradox Pokemon, one of the best things to have come out of modern pokemon, collectively speaking.

Until next time.

[depressedhouseplant]

🔞 Just Fucking Write - Day 86 🔞

Prompt: Can be found here - Felix x Fem!Reader

Tags: Narrator is female, referenced relationship violence, cheating (the narrator is still with her boyfriend), referenced dubious consent however enthusiastic consent with Felix, fingering, semi-public sex act

A/N: This one is a little heavy emotionally so I won’t be offended if you skip it. Blame the eclipse (says the one with 0 Aries placements)

“Sorry I’m late,” I sat across from Felix at our usual table in the library. He noticed the marks on my wrists in spite of the multiple bracelets and watch I had on to cover them.

”Are we gonna talk about that?” He nodded toward my wrists.

”I’d rather not,” I replied, trying not to rub the already bruised and irritated skin.

”Did he hurt you?” The edge in Felix’s voice was unmistakable.

”I said I don’t want to talk about it,” I tried not to snap at him and failed.

”Well I do and I’m your best friend so Best Friend Code takes precedence,” he said.

“Best Friend Code?” I snorted.

”Yes, now tell me what happened,” he said, softer this time. “Please.”

”Fine, but can we do it somewhere a little more private?” I asked.

��If that’s what it takes,” Felix agreed. He slung on his backpack and then picked up mine, too. I followed him to the elevator and up to the fifth floor.

”No one comes up here,” he told me. “Discovered that when I was doing my work study assignment last semester.”

He led me to the back wall and sat down, our backpacks in front of him. I sat next to him and took off the jewelry covering the marks.

“What happened?” He asked, carefully taking my hand to examine the damaged skin.

”Bondage. Guess he was too cheap to get the fuzzy handcuffs,” I said.

”Did you agree to it?” I felt like he was staring into my soul when he looked at me. Of course he knew I was drunk. He knew everything. I never told him the worst parts, but he filled in the blanks pretty well on his own.

”As much as I could,” that seemed like a good enough answer.

”So that’s a no,” he said. I dropped my head between my knees and tried to not cry. I felt his hand in my hair, gently petting it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it worse.”

”I don’t know what to do. I want to leave him, but I’m afraid of what will happen if I do. That and I’d lose 90% of my friend group because they’re all dating his frat brothers,” I sniffed.

”I’m here. I’ve made new friends and I’m sure they’d be happy to have you. They’re kind of annoyed because I talk about you all the time, but they’ve never met you,” Felix told me. I looked up and wiped my eyes.

”You talk about me?” I asked.

”All the time. It’s also possible they think you don’t actually exist,” he smiled at me. “Don’t forget I’m fully capable of beating the shit out of someone if I want to. So he can try, but he’ll lose.”

”If I did break up with him, what would you do?” I ventured.

“This,” he put his hand on my cheek and kissed me. It was everything my boyfriend’s kisses weren’t - soft, gentle, needy without being aggressive. I kissed him back and before I knew what was happening, I was laid out on the floor with him on top of me, making out like it was the most natural thing in the world.

”I swear if we weren’t in public right now…” he began when he pulled back. His pupils were blown out with desire, his brown eyes nearly black as he looked down at me.

”What?” I asked, feeling a distinct wetness in my panties.

”I’d make love to you and show you how a boyfriend is supposed to treat his girlfriend,” he answered.

“I want you to,” I put my hand on his cheek. “I want you.”

”Can I touch you?” He asked.

”Of course,” I nodded. He grazed his hand under my shirt and over my stomach.

”I was thinking of somewhere a little more intimate,” he grinned.

”Weren’t you the one who just pointed out we’re in public?” I teased.

”Yes, but I think I can make you come without taking your pants off,” he replied.

”Oh really?” I raised an eyebrow. He rolled off me then sat up, patting his chest.

“Your back to my front and spread your legs,” he instructed. I sat up and did as he instructed. He wrapped one arm around my waist and slid his other hand down my torso, under my sweatpants, and into my panties. I felt safe like this even though we were in public. I felt safe in his hold.

”Damn, you’re wet,” he observed as his fingers started to explore my pussy.

”All for you,” I replied, leaning back to kiss him again. He teased my clit before sliding two long fingers into me. I couldn’t remember ever being this wet. My panties were containing it. For the moment.

”You’re welcome,” he breathed against my mouth as he massaged my walls, taking time to focus on the most sensitive spots. I squirmed in his grip and bit my lip to stay quiet.

“I can’t wait to be able to hear you,” he grazed his thumb over my clit, causing my hips to buck on their own. “You liked that?”

”Yes,” I whined.

”Good,” he smiled against my lips as I wrapped my arms around the back of his neck. I’d only ever fingered myself and I definitely didn’t do it this good. I felt my pussy start to flutter around his fingers.

”Please,” I whimpered.

”No need to ask, darling,” he said, pressing down on my clit and sending me over the edge. Fuck, this was probably the best orgasm I’d ever had. He didn’t stop until he was sure I was finished.

”Can I ask you something?” I said when I caught my breath.

”Anything,” he replied.

”Come with me to dump that asshole,” I requested, nuzzling into his cheek.

”Absolutely,” he agreed.

[thethirdromana]

I'm home alone on Saturday evening, what is there to do but go to Netflix and watch a truly appalling romcom? The cat's with me and I have alcohol: it's time for Irish Wish.

I normally rate Alexander Vlahos as an actor so I'm not quite sure what's happened here. His accent is to an actual Irish accent what this is to an elephant:

Picard's son from Picard is here! He's throwing fistfuls of charm at the dubious script and some of it is sticking.

Aww, Maddie is clumsy! What an unusual trait for a character in a romcom.

Fascinated by the choice to dress the mystical Irish fairy in a silk headscarf and a salwar kameez. I mean, it works, it's just... unexpected.

The puff sleeves are awful but I'm honestly impressed that Maddie has a wedding dress that she can run in.

Maybe I'm just failing at genre conventions for this kind of romcom but it feels like it would be helpful if Paul were even a tiny bit likeable, just to give some sense of why Maddie has feelings for him, and also to make it seem like maybe Emma wouldn't be getting such a raw deal out of it.

Is it just that he's loaded and has a massive house?

I've just realised that the house is supposed to be a short journey from Lough Tay, in County Wicklow, but Maddie flew into Knock Airport. And yes, I know that expecting film geography to make sense is a mug's game, but I'm also not sure why they would choose Knock Airport and not Dublin? Is this airport product placement?

Was it that they didn't think it would be plausible for Maddie to end up on a quaint old-fashioned bus from Dublin, but it was plausible that the same quaint old-fashioned bus would drive for three hours across most of Ireland to drop Maddie at the most plot-convenient location?

Oh, and now we're at the Cliffs of Moher. A six-hour round trip from Paul's house.

Let's not even get into the James Joyce thing.

James (not Joyce) tells Maddie that it would "hardly be difficult" to move her wedding to the other side of the country the weekend before it's due to take place. And the sentiment is sweet, but as someone who has organised a wedding, I have to say: it would, in fact, be difficult. Really quite difficult.

It's just not the most straightforward location to hold a wedding, you know?

I can't believe they're doing the classic "he teaches her how to shoot" scene, but with darts.

DARTS. The sexiest leisure activity.

And the height of romance is being weirdly judgmental about someone who you've known for a day.

Picard Junior is giving it socks, in fairness. I hope he gets to do this kind of thing in a better film than this at some point.

Also, Irish fairy lady is... St Brigid? Probably best not to dig into the theological implications of St Brigid-as-trickster-spirit.

The music after the Big Damn Kiss goes on just a tiny bit too long.

It is genuinely unclear to me whether Maddie intends to write a book on the Cliffs of Moher, as in about them, or physically on them. Feels like it could be either in this film.

Well, if nothing else, I hope Knock Airport's marketing team are pleased.

[offbeatcappuccino]

the impossible heir episodes 1-4 ramblings

Last week was an eventful one for Lee Jae Wook, Hong Su Zu, and Lee Jun-young's The Impossible Heir. Not only was last week the premiere of the series, but Dispatch, the popular Korean tabloid, released "earth-shattering" news that Lee Jae Wook was dating aespa's Karina. This garnered controversy and scrutiny towards the show and could have contributed to its ratings. However, as a self-professed Lee Jae Wook fan, I tuned in to watch the show last week regardless of the news. The Impossible Heir is arguable Lee Jae Wook's first "adult" show. Much of his prior work involved dramas that catered to the YA audience and for the first time we see him essaying a far more mature and morally dubious character as Han Tae Oh. While the show is marketed as having three leads, in my opinion, Tae Oh steals the show.

In the first episode, we are introduced to a teenage Han Tae Oh. The son of a murderer, for the sake of his and his mother's safety, he's forced by himself to a small town. Unlike his peers, he has no legal guardian and rents a rundown house in the village. Before the first day of school, he manages to provoke the ire of Kang In Ha, the illegitimate son of the Kang-Oh chaebol family. While the two boys are initially at odds with each other and even end up having a dramatic fight in the school lunchroom, the episode ends with an unlikely partnership- Tae Oh offering to use his intelligence to help In Ha achieve the impossible- the opportunity to be the next heir of Kang Oh Group over his two legitimate half brothers.

Over the next three episodes, we see Tae Oh and In Ha grow up as college students and later employees at Kang Oh. During their college years, we see a blossoming friendship between the two as In Ha becomes Tae Oh's only companion during their time at Hankuk University. Alongside their internal scheming to take over Kang Oh, we see glimpses that their friendship is no different from any other peers. They have birthday meals, eat lunch together in the cafeteria, and drink late night beers from the convenience. In Ha constantly chides Tae Oh for working too many part time jobs, but remains the dutiful wealthy friend that is willing to book a tutoring gig for Tae Oh or drop him off at work to help him financially stay afloat. The dynamics between both men take a sharp turn with the introduction of Na Hye-Won, who both male leads end up falling for though she ultimately ends up dating In Ha, mainly because she views In Ha as her key to overcoming poverty and acquiring wealth and prestige.

Just as episode two ends, the show takes another five year time leap and both men are working for Kang Oh group. Hye-Won also becomes what appears to be a staff member for a political party. The three remain as co-conspirators in their efforts to take over Kang Oh Group. Of the three, perhaps the person who gets closest to the chairman, Kang Jun Mo, is Tae Oh, who ascends to the role of his personal secretary. Tae Oh becomes Jun Mo's greatest asset and trusted confidante. Through his role, he starts to move the game pieces that would create a clear path of succession for In Ha.

The weakest aspect of the The Impossible Heir 's writing has to be Na Hye Won's character arc. Nothing about her frankly makes any sense. During the second episode, we are introduced to Hye Won as both In Ha's and Tae Oh's classmate and Tae Oh's neighbor. While its obvious that Tae Oh may have developed feelings for Hye Won due to their chance encounters, In Ha's feelings arise out of nowhere- to the point that it almost feels like he only wants Hye Won because he wants to take a person Tae Oh cherishes from him. However, if this was the case, the intensity of love that In Ha develops for Hye Won makes no sense. Furthermore, its puzzling to see the two boys so readily accept a stranger as a partner in developing and implementing a plan they have spent years working on together. Exacerbating this poor placement of the female lead is her poor portrayal by Hong Su Zu. Hong Su Zu's acting has been widely criticized by the Korean audience since the airing of the second episode. While I could see others' complaints last week, it did not initially bother me as much. However, the poor acting has become glaringly apparent in this week's episodes. If Hye Won is supposed to be who she's written to be- a morally grey character who is willing to do whatever it takes, including playing with someone's feelings, to escape her present circumstances, I would expect her to be desperate, shrewd, cunning, manipulative, and charismatic. However, the version that is presented to us is so blasé, stoic, and mediocre. Hong Su Zu's expressions and delivery are extremely limited- it's hard to swallow the thought that she's supposed to be a crucial main character.

Conversely, Tae-Oh's arc is the strongest point in the writing. As audience members, we are gripped by the elusive question- what does Tae-Oh get from this partnership? Why is he fiercely loyal to In Ha? and Does he truly want the best for his friend or is he planning on throwing him under the bus? Lee Jae Wook excels in playing the ambitious yet guarded Tae Oh, who becomes the "catalyst" of the story. Without Tae Oh, there's no plot. While Hye Won is a disappointing female lead, I was surprised by the chemistry between Tae-Oh and Choi Hee Jin's Kang Huiju, the younger half sister of Kang In Ha. Huiju develops an obsessive never-ending one-sided crush on Tae Oh when he becomes her short-lived mathematics tutor. At first glance, it's easy to brush her off as a minor character, but the amount of screen time she receives on the show suggests otherwise and Choi Hee Jin excels in playing the "petulant spoiled brat who surprisingly may be the only person in her family with a conscience".

If Tae Oh is a volcano patiently waiting to erupt at the right time,Huiju is a raging forest fire traveling at 100 mph. Her love and desire for Tae Oh is all consuming and destructive- something she wholeheartedly embraces but Tae-Oh fears. When Huiju's spontaneity comes to a head with Tae Oh's restraint, we see an electrifying chemistry between the two and we see another dimension of Tae Oh. While he can be avoidant and harsh, he is also gentle, kind, and protective. Its this internal push and pull that makes their relationship worth exploring.

One of the highlights of the latest episode was when Huiji confronts Tae Oh in a parking garage adamantly professing that she will force her parents to agree to their marriage and that she "will protect" Tae-Oh. I found her confession interesting on many levels because so far, all of Tae-Oh's relationships are exploitative. The other characters including his closest friend In Ha are only concerned about what Tae Oh can do for them and this is the first time we see someone offering to do something for him with no reciprocity. It's unclear if Hui Ju is a red herring or someone who will grow to be an integral part of Tae-Oh's life. As a viewer, I have to say that this relationship is one of the main draws to the show and is something that the writers utilize appropriately.

Overall, Impossible Heir is a Malthusian and Machiavellian drama that wholeheartedly embraces the capitalistic jungle. It may not be a show that fans of prior Lee Jae Wook's dramas will love, but it still deserves to be given a chance.

Rating: ⭐️ ⭐️.75/5

[blessed1neha]

11th house in Astrology

The Eleventh House is the home of aspiration, wealth, gratification of desires, friendship, and abundance.

Any planet in it is seen to be strong and favourable, and its potential is fully manifested here. It is protected from pests because it is also the home of upachaya, thus it keeps becoming better over time. Malefics in the eleventh house provide people the ability to overcome challenges and exhibit their greatest traits. It displays the results of our labours and brings dreams to life because it is the second house from the tenth.

This is the place where one can express themselves and achieve their goals. At a high level, he is connected to spiritual development and contribution to society via his gifts and prowess. It is especially advantageous if Leo or Pisces, Jupiter, the Sun, or any of their aspects to this house are present.

A strong position, though, also betrays a desire for notoriety and recognition. If the Sun is in the autumn, it may be a sign of a willingness to use dubious methods to achieve fame in any way. The placement of Mars in the 11th house is also advantageous.

Undoubtedly, such a person will be able to reach a high financial position. He will do everything it takes to achieve his goals. Wealth is also frequently indicated when the 11th house is connected to the 10th or 9th. Any planets in the 11th house, in general, represent the potential for realisation in that field.

Venus, for instance, speaks of artistic expression, whilst Saturn is favourable for politicians. By the way, Saturn does best in the 11th house. With this position, the native can start from extremely humble beginnings and go on to achieve great success in life and their careers.

A person with Ketu in the 11th house has good organisational abilities, optimism, and fortitude. They can solve any problem and find a way around any obstacle. Rahu is in a pretty fortunate situation at the moment.

Typically, these people are well respected in society, are friendly and outgoing, are strong leaders, and achieve great things in life. Nevertheless, despite all the blessings, the 11th house has its drawbacks. Being the sixth house from the sixth, it occasionally portends illness, challenges, and hurdles.

They will particularly show up at times when planets connected to the 11th house are afflicted by PAC.

[bloggedanon]

TOY COMMISSIONS ARE OPEN. DM IF INTERESTED, OR IF YOU JUST WANT TO DONATE.

Alright, listen up, folks.

My hours have been reduced to nothing for months now on account of disabilities I'm trying to get treated for, I got a med bill I wasn't expectin' in the mail, and now I'm woefully far from bein' able to pay for my upcoming psychiatrist appointment, which I have to pay for by the 24th of this month. This one is really important because there's a strong probablility this one will be the one to prescribe me some meds that just might enable me to be able to acually take care of myself (read: actually function at all) for the first time in my life. I'm prolly gonna need like $300 to cover the appointment. I ain't askin' y'all to help me for free, however.

I can sew together little pillow monster things. They have zipper mouths and button eyes. They're hand-sewn, from a pet-free home.

This is my oldest (and smallest) example. about 7" wide and tall. The ones I'm proposing to sell will be about 9" wide and tall.

Here are the buttons and (9) zippers I have available for this endeavor. (Sorry about the lighting.) Note the loops on the zipper pulls for easier zipping.

Uhh, those are soda can pull tabs in the corner. Ignore that, I'm procrastinating on working on a project.

In terms of fabric, I have fleece and flannel of various colors. 'S all preshrunk in a washer and dryer, but I don't have a good way to showcase or store fabric other than shoving it all into one plastic bag. That aside, here's the flannel I have:

(Dark blue, light blue, teal, white, space [small amount], and scales [purple, blue, and green scales, small amount])

And here's the fleece:

(Purple, red, orange, and black [small amount])

Note how I have more of some colors in one material or another than in others. This means certain body surface colors may not be possible due to material limitations. I have a whole bunch of thread colors, and just an overall abundance of thread tho 👍

These are custom made to order, and the production is paid in advance. You can do custom colors (body, front vs back color, the color of the inside of the mouth, whether or not you want it to have a tongue, number / color of eyes) and you can POTENTIALLY do other customizations. (Want it to have a ridge on its back like a cartoon dinosaur? Want me to give it horns? Want me to try to figure out how tassles work? Want it to have floppy, doofy, cow-lookin' ears? [I recommend fleece for these kinds of additions, trust me on this one.]) Shape alterations mmmmaayyyyy be possible, but that's pretty dubious. Bear in mind that any customizations / additions will likely drive priduction time wayyy up, and there are things I might not be able to do.

Shipping will be paid seperately, and at the time of shipping. I can't really afford to cover shipping, but also I have no earthly idea how to calculate shipping. I have a tiny scale at home now that I can use to weigh the finished product, but that's about it. These are gonna have to be personally taken to the post office, which means a lot of walking. I dunno, we'll figure it out.

This is all being said and shown in the interest of maximum transparency with this stuff. You will recieve update images with progress on your little monster dude, and you're gonna have to give feedback on the button placements and angles before I sew 'em on so that way I know I've got the look you want on it.

Payments are done over Paypal.

Base price: $35 USD + shipping

Comm slots open: 9

Customizations and additions will add to the price, but the extent to which it happens is (sort of) negotiable. Most customizations are going to be (sort of) experimental on my end, and hand sewing takes forever, especially when you have "everything magically is really hard and takes too long" disease.

If I hit my goal, I'll stop accepting donations. If all 9 commission slots are taken, I will update this post with a good ol'-fashioned pinned reblog and close commissions AND donations. Note that I can only work on one pillow monster at a time, and that it's on a first-come-first-serve basis. If I'm working on one and you want to commission one, I'll let you know and ask if you wanna wait for it. You'll get a number (1-9) to signify whose order I need to do next.

In the meantime, I need to go pop out and sell some blood plasma, probably. 🤡