#feels like you need a bunch of other packs to have any sort of fun w it

[tricoufamily]

did you see how prominent nancy was in that trailer……..second plane has not yet hit the towers but i fear it is approaching……

[the-remainder]

Hello fellow dunnish, Ze here. I've changed the "title" of our devlogs yet again. I suppose that's a form of development, that things have changed, for better or worse. I've taken to call it "tangents", because that seems to be what I write in these things: A few factoids that probably doesn't mean a whole lot to anyone, and a bunch of anecdotes and off-the-cuff remarks that don't necessarily mean more, but at least one of us have fun with!(That's me, btw)

1. Kickstarter progress I spent most of my days packing prints and Nim spent most of theirs cutting them while listening to creepy stories about national parks. Did you know there are supposed to be staircases that go nowhere out in the wilderness? Foodprints that aren't identifiable? Things that scratch at the side of your tent, whispers to you in the voice of your loved one whom you know is miles and miles away from where you are? Yeah, national parks are basically the twilight zone, according to podcasts. Becareful out there, nature-loving friend.

2. Writing Nim wrote and published their first novella! It's a weird mix of romance, horror and erotica. You ever wonder what would happen if you were acosted by a fae in the woods, then decided to follow them and have a wild shag or two? Nothing we can call "good", I assure you. But then again, who wants good? We want interesting. And that's what Many Winters' Briar gets you, an interesting encounter with a fae in the woods. It's completely unlike the Remainder, no one lost their memories, no high magick and tall towers. No world-ending rituals or magick talking cats. Just a cozy time with someone not quite human in a hut who likes berries and pain.

3. The Longing All we did for the longing recently was I THOUGHT about working on it, or rather I felt the urge to work on it squirm quietly in my marrows. That's typical of my process with these things. First the urge squirms in the marrows, then it migrates into the hemoglobin and courses through my veins, then some energetic buildup occurs in the fibres and tissue, then at last the fingers gnarl and twitch and work appears. Yesterday I actually opened up the draft and LOOKED at it. I expect any day now I will be swimming in The Longing again. Watch out for updates; watch along the shoreline for my drenched and cackling form.

4. Agnil's Design I began editing a short story I wrote for Ilar's Teatime stories ages ago, which was a tiny little thing about a magus college student sort of person who had some friction with her mother regarding personal hygiene. Whole thing was about 1 chapter-long if it were a book, and featured 1 character. I know, it sounds incredibly germain, but it's what occurred to me at the time. As I rewrote it, I kept feeling the story was supposed to be about more, and so I nudged it into a slightly different direction just to see what happens. A week later I'm four chapters into what I can only imagine would have to be a novel. Ilar, Vyn, and a few other semi-fleshed out characters were already aching to make appearances. And the threads of the Taldun lore came flowing in from all corners of the realm, and it keeps building. I still have no idea where it goes yet, but sink me it is fun to write. I expect I'll be teasing some of it on our socials soon. It's called Agnil's Design.

5. Other games I also started building another game, just for me, just for fun. It's going to be a rogue-like deck-builder, or as I call it, "body"-builder, where you do some dungeon crawling and collect the body-parts of defeated foe to build your character. I'm making it for no other reason than that I desperately want to play this game and it doesn't exist.

6. Social We are going to dole out bits and pieces of lore, character snippets, new-and-old art, and other enticing stuff over here in the coming weeks. Kindly glue your eyeballs to the bluesky, please. PLEASE, we need the numbers. XD https://bsky.app/profile/the-nim.bsky.social

There, that was less tangential than it could've been, but more tangential than most, I imagine. Big success?

Oh right, if you want to see these images in high res, and a few more sketches, as well as a sample paragraph from Many Winters' Briar and Agnil's Design, head on over to our ko-fi and patreon members section. Your support will help enable us to persevere in our wickedness. You have our infernal gratitude.

[sprintingowl]

BEANJACKERS

Hey. We need to talk about BEANJACKERS.

BEANJACKERS is a tabletop roleplaying game that looks like Jack And The Beanstalk and plays like One Piece.

It is twenty pages. It is easy to read. And it's got about as many rules as DnD 5e. They're all packed densely into it, and you can read them and learn the whole system in about fifteen minutes.

From a design perspective, I'm angry. When you make one of these things you're supposed to have to pick between having detailed rules and having easy to comprehend rules and having a short book. BEANJACKERS casually picks all three. It's a triumph of miniaturization. And worse, it's fun.

Character creation includes multiple classes and multiple professions, each with branching choices, plus a full equipment list and a spell list. This makes characters quick to roll up and unique---but the most compelling part of making a new character is somehow assigning their stats.

Each stat is split into a Guard and a Boost. Your Guard is your defense with the stat and your Boost is a pool you can spend to buff rolls. This gives you a *lot* of control over the dice during play---but then a bunch of things like how many objects you can conceal on your person scale off of how many points are currently in your relevant Boost pool, so you're constantly weighing your ability to stay safe vs your ability to go loud and take big risks.

Also the writing is great.

BEANJACKERS takes itself seriously, even while knowing that it's called BEANJACKERS. But the setting's currency is in pulses (gold pulses are GP, silver pulses are SP, etc.) The world exists in a sort of post-beanstalkpocalyptic airship feudalism. Beans are basically Devil Fruit, and they bestow great powers on those who find them.

My only complaint about BEANJACKERS is that it came out this year (2024), and so there's currently only the core book. It feels like a game that desperately needs a wave of third party content---not because anything in core is lacking, but because I desperately want to see how big this setting can get.

It's also not a game that I think *replaces* any other system. It's not a 5e killer. It doesn't outdate Into The Odd. It's dang good in its own right, but you're going to want to sit down and write an adventure and do some worldbuilding before you run it.

I think anyone who likes osr is going to have their brain light up when they read BEANJACKERS---same as with anyone who likes Shadowrun or One Piece. I also think folks who homebrew 5e will *really* want to take a look, as it's almost a best practices guide. Lastly, I think anyone who likes games with goofy concepts (this is how it got me) will be very pleasantly bowled over by BEANJACKERS, which starts with a zany premise and uses it to become one of the best games I've read this year.

[grapenehifics]

I’m very curious to know if you have a headcanon about whether Anakin wears a sleep shirt? He’s shirtless in both AOTC and ROTS. Is this because he overheats at night? What does Obi-Wan think about this?

Tits out, guns out.

Longer (real?) answer below the cut...

First of all, thank you for this ask; this kept my brain very pleasantly occupied on my commute to work today.

In An Uncivil War, I put Anakin in clone-issue under-armor to sleep in - which involved a whole separate headcanon, about what they wear, which is more likely probably both black leggings and a black turtleneck but I added a sleeveless black undershirt to that combo so that Anakin could wear a black tank top because this is my fic and I want to see some arms damnit - mostly to get him into something black and obviously non-Jedi issue but also because he and Obi-Wan are sharing a room with Ahsoka for all of that fic so while I think he'd be perfectly happy to go shirtless around Obi-Wan he also recognizes that they're in a war and anything could happen and he would not have the luxury of being able to get up slowly and put a robe on or anything before needing to hurry to the bridge to deal with an explosion or a Separatist attack, so during the war he might forgo the whole sleeping-naked thing at least while on duty.

I think of Obi-Wan - at least pre-war Obi-Wan - as a pajamas person, like the whole nine-yards matching-set sort of deal, and so little Anakin would think that is normal/Jedi appropriate/wants to emulate his Master, so when Obi-Wan gets him child pajamas he wears them. But I also see Anakin as deeply texture sensitive - and prone to nightmares, which make him sweaty, and unused to regulating his body temperature in a way that makes sense for non-desert planets - so he'd actually really struggle with wearing all that baggy fabric and blankets to bed, and the fabric gets bunched up underneath him, and now he's lying on top of wrinkles, and if he gets sweaty then the whole thing is damp and soggy and uncomfortable...so he takes at least the top off, and that feels better, but Obi-Wan never does, so Anakin gets yet another (subtle, unspoken) impression that he's doing 'being a Jedi' wrong.

(And honestly so long as Anakin's not completely naked, I don't think Obi-Wan actually cares if he's only wearing pants, especially in his own room; this is not something Obi-Wan actually chastised Anakin for; it's all in Anakin's head that he's being judged.)

In the AotC deleted scene, we see Anakin sleeping in his clothes:

so either Obi-Wan didn't pack any pajamas for him (potential future headcanon discussion: how old is Anakin before Obi-Wan finally stops packing his suitcase for him) or Anakin took the whole 'travel as refugees' thing to heart and decided that refugees don't get pajamas, and really he's just staying in character. The next time we see him asleep, he's at the Naberrie family vacation villa:

There's our topless boy! Is he wearing pajama pants under there? Difficult to say for sure but I'm leaning toward yes, both because of his generally awkward nature and the fact that he's trained to jump into action at any moment in case of danger.

By the time he's gone outside to meditate he's put a shirt on, unfortunately:

Is this a pajama top, or just his regular tunic? If it is his regular tunic, why is it XXL? That is not where shoulder seams generally go. Does Obi-Wan think he's still growing and is tired of replacing his shirts every six months so he's still doing the, 'it's too big now but you'll grow into it' thing?

In any case, why are Jedi so into beige; I know we (rightly) make fun of teen Ahsoka's tube top but at least the girl has an appreciation for color.

So far, though, I'm going with, Anakin will sleep in pants, at least while at other peoples' houses, but prefers not to wear a shirt. I would imagine this would probably hold while he's with the 501st, too, that he needs to be ready to spring into action at any moment but who cares if his troops see his bare chest (and, again, maybe this is just me, but this is where I see him slowly adapting to wearing more of what the clones wear, just because there's so much of it, and yes they're shorter than he is so the leggings only come up to his calves but this is would not be a dealbreaker for him).

In RotS, I have to assume that we're meant to assume Anakin is buck-ass naked under the covers here and the only reason he's wearing pajama pants here:

is because this is a PG-13 movie. I mean, he's off-duty and in bed with his wife. Yes I know she has her hair done and is wearing a silk nightgown with pearl sleeves (??) but, again, kids movie. Why on earth would Anakin be sleeping in pants otherwise.

Around Obi-Wan, though, before they get together: pants on, shirt off. (He's trying to flirt with the man, after all.) After they get together: clothes just get in the way. Anakin expects this of Obi-Wan, too, and looks so hurt the first time Obi-Wan tries to put his pajamas back on after sex that Obi-Wan course-corrects and gets into bed naked. "If you're cold, I'll warm you up, Master," and Obi-Wan doesn't have the heart to say no (also, Anakin is very warm). They have pajamas, but they're for, like, morning and evening lounge wear (and Anakin's still does not involve a shirt).

Obi-Wan does, however (eventually, slowly) manage to teach Anakin the fun of taking your partner's clothes off slowly, piece-by-piece, as opposed to popping buttons and ripping them off as fast as he can. This is both fun and has the added benefit of extending the life of Obi-Wan's wardrobe and keeping him from needing to break out his sewing kit quite so often (Anakin still leaves them piled on the floor though).

Throwing it back to you, @underacalicosky and anyone else who wants to play :) Agree? Disagree?

[aladaylessecondblog]

Red Mountain Waffle House, pt. 9

"My lord, a message from Azura."

Archcanon Saryoni looked...strange. Either he was trying not to be sick or he was trying not to laugh.

"Well? What is this message?" Vivec slipped into the godliest voice possible and looked down at his devoted priest.

"Ah...it includes an expletive, so I wrote it down. I should prefer not to speak such profane words in...Your presence, Lord Vivec."

Vivec gestured, took the offered paper, and looked with what he hoped was detached serenity. "You may go. I am not in the least angered at you, for if the messenger is blighted for giving bad news, however can it be turned to our advantage?"

Saryoni left, and Vivec finally unrolled the message, which was both very short and very simple.

To the apostate murderer Vivec

Fuck. You.

He burned it, and watched the ashes drift off. The daedric princes didn't usually bother with things like this. He still got the odd stalkerish message from Molag Bal, but this sort of thing?

What in oblivion did it mean?

He opened Morrowtwitter, intending to do his usual morning scrolling, and nearly broke his phone.

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

*The Night Before*

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

"This was a terrible idea." Sadara grumbled, and pushed closer to Jiub to stay under the umbrella. "You have all this weed and you can't get a bigger umbrella?"

"Why don't YOU get a bigger umbrella, huh? Cozy up to His Cultiness and see if you can't get us a little more gold, huh? Feel like we could use him as a friend considering Almalexia's body wasn't where I left it. First time a body I tossed just up and vanished."

"Because if I wanted to go into prostitution I'd move to Suran where that shit's legal." And she REALLY didn't want to think about Almalexia right now.

"It's not like you can catch anything off him."

"No diseases, anyway, but probably a hell of a lot of clinging."

You need to relax, Nerevar's voice wafted through her mind, Have a little fun, you know. You can't do much well if you keep being stressed about petty things.

Nearly dying because of your boyfriend isn't petty. The man has no hobbies except spreading plagues and trying to recruit people to worship him.

If you spent even ONE night with him--

I'm not fucking him, Nerevar! How about this, I'll fuck SOMEBODY at the party. Would that make you happy? But you've got to agree to be quiet while I'm here. If people think I'm talking to a voice in my head I'm not getting laid this night...or any other night.

Thankfully, Nerevar agreed.

She wanted a romp anyway. A one night stand. Something that would leave her with a headache, an ache between the legs, and a ripped pair of panties stuffed into her pocket to show for the whole thing. A story to tell for a while about the dangers of being too drunk. There was something exciting about the whole idea--

"What'd ya bring?"

A guy out in front of Greg's house, standing under the porch awning, flicked a cigarette and gestured vaguely.

"Weed," Jiub said, waggling the bag in his other hand, "Let us in."

Inside they found Greg, already well-watered and swaying only slightly. "Hey, hey, you made it! Jiub, great to see you...and uh...Sad...Sada..."

"Sadara."

"Yeah, that. There's a bunch of food in the kitchen, we've got some ashlanders in here that brought a whole roasted kagouti, so if you like kagouti steak or a burger or something you might want to get on that pronto. Ah, we got karaoke, but Jolene's here so you'll have to wrestle him off it if you want a shot."

"Jolene?"

"Big motherfucker. We don't know his name but he shows up now'n then, brings an armful of booze...and only ever sings that 'Jolene' song, so we started calling him that. Kind of a weepy drunk."

Sadara went on ahead, got a kagouti steak, some sujamma, and some ash yam fries which all vanished in a hurry. She grabbed a bottle of flin from a 6 pack somebody opened, poured it into a cup and set off, looking...

...alright, who might I regret the least when I wake up tomorrow morning?

What looked like a gulakhan made a pass at her, but the poor thing was so wobbly she couldn't do anything but decline. She gave him a smile and guided him over to an empty couch. "Have some water, you don't look so good."

He stammered out a thank you and then she turned away.

There's too many people here, Nerevar said in her head, Reminds me of old council soirees.

Yeah, this is how we party now.

She walked looking for anyone she knew, and chatted with one or two of the Waffle House regulars.

"Stupid landlord raised our rent again. We're already renting four to the apartment and we're talking to a fifth guy who's an ash ghoul."

"Thought people didn't want them in around here. Not that I mind, they've always been polite to me."

The Dunmer shrugged. "He can pay a share of rent and only eats corprusmeat. You'd think they'd be messy as all oblivion but they're actually pretty tidy. Like to keep things 'in order.' He actually came in and did our dishes without being asked."

"That checks out," she laughed. "Careful of the ordinators though, no matter how polite they are, they don't care for the ash folk."

"Oh yeah, we already got that down. Cult or not we agree all ordinators are bastards."

There was a laugh, and then the guy saw some friend or the other and headed off to speak to him.

Sadara moved through the crowd, only half-paying attention to the sea of faces around her. Her cup was half-empty and she was strongly considering going to find Jiub and ask what he did with the weed when some imperial woman appeared at her elbow.

"Hey, can you help me out?"

"With what?"

"I want to do a song and Jolene's five times in and showing no signs of stopping."

She'd ask why her, but figured it was because she didn't look too drunk...or maybe that she looked like an easy mark, who knew. She agreed and followed the woman into an upstairs room where she was then unfortunate to get within earshot of this Jolene.

"--flaming locks of auburn hair, with ivory skin and eyes of emerald green--"

Half the room was ignoring him, and half were complaining, but Jolene didn't seem to notice any of it, so consumed with the song as he was. Sadara moved closer, and got a better look at him.

He looked like someone's long-haired dad with delusions of being a rally strider racer, right down to the bandana covering his forehead and tied off in the back. Black leather jacket, jeans, shades, the whole nine yards, as the saying went. The cherry on top, though, was the braided goatee.

Why me? she thought.

Nerevar stirred in the back of her mind, but didn't say a word.

"--and I cannot compete with you...Jolene."

The man was really putting his all into it; Sadara felt bad for walking up to him. He was a little drunk, she guessed, because he didn't notice her until she spoke to him.

"Come on, time to sit down. Let somebody else have a turn."

"Why?" He sounded half-about to cry. "What's the point?"

One of THOSE drunks, she thought ruefully. Well, there wasn't much going on...she wasn't having a lot of luck finding a guy for the night. Maybe if this guy were less focused on whoever he lost he'd do.

"Come on." She grabbed his arm and tugged gently. "You don't look so good, you need to sit down."

Sniffling. Half a sob. Then he looked up at her, and his weepy expression changed in an instant.

"Sure. Sure, why not.."

Jolene let her lead him off to a couch in a back hallway that only seemed to be frequently by people heading to the bathroom at the back. She fetched a bottle of flin and came back to him with two cups, then poured him out a bit. It was only being this close now that she noticed his ring--black and with a boxy setting and a little spike at the top.

"A drink'll serve you better than weeping over it. Or at least it'll put you out of your misery for a few hours."

"Nothing ever helps. I don't get hungover and I don't stop thinking about--about--" Jolene sputtered slightly.

"Well, there's got to be something that'll work," she patted his shoulder. "Get your mind off it. It's not the same thing, but I'm broke as hell and I have a bunch of ways to keep my mind off how much it sucks."

"Such as?"

"Finding literally anything to do that's free. I learned how to make tea from trama root, that's everywhere. The Waffle House I work at's got a nice jukebox...the manager's been teaching me to patch things up better than I was doing. That...none of that will probably help you, though, you look like you've got enough money you don't...don't, uh..." Sadara waved a hand absently. "Cliffracer hunting is fun if you need to burn off some steam. It'll make you some money but you'll probably get a bunch of new scars out of it."

She rolled up one sleeve and gestured to some of the healed-over scars.

"It looks--terrible," Jolene said, his voice halting. "And you did this for drinking money?"

"Oh no, I did it for a living before I got the job at the Waffle House," Sadara shrugged. "When you don't have much you have to take what you can get...and cliffracer plumes sell for well enough to be worth the trip. They're edible, too, so it's easy food...less gold to spend on food and more to spend on healing potions and armor repair. I kept meaning to buy a lute, but..."

"What stopped you?"

"These." she gestured. "Jiub got me the job, and it's not great...pipes get clogged, landlord keeps raising the rent, and we eat sleep for dinner two nights a week, but it's not bad."

"How is that not BAD?" he burst out. "You could do MUCH better. I'm sure you have more opportunities."

"Without qualifications, and not wanting to kowtow to crazy Telvanni...I'm not sure I'd suit for the Redoran, and as for Hlaalu...well I guess I am one, but..."

She shrugged. The flin was making her chatty, she knew she was saying too much, but she couldn't help herself. Jolene was such an easy listener and seemed to be hanging onto her every word.

"But what?"

"But I prefer not to tell people, because then they ask where I'm from, and then I tell them, and I have to hear, 'oh, I know you. Your cousin is the corpsefucker, right?" Sadara shrugged. "So I just tell everyone I don't belong to a Great House. It's easier. People expect less from you anyway. If I said I was house Hlaalu they'd probably think I was an idiot for not...you know..."

"Kissing Imperial ass, it's what they're known for," Jolene said. He finished the rest of his flin in one gulp, then took the bottle and took a long guzzle from it. He handed it back to her, and grumbled slightly. "That's swill, do they not have anything better?"

"It's a party, not a soiree," Sadara shrugged. "It'll get you drunk. Who cares about the quality?"

"I do. I have this thing called standards--"

"You're in the Red Mountain neighborhood, there's no such thing. There's probably a guy in every apartment building making prison wine out of whatever he can get his hands on. And why show up if you're going to insult what they've got on offer?"

"Like I have anything else to do." Jolene sat back, and looked up at the ceiling. "All this time, all these people..."

He started mumbling under his breath and she only caught bits of what he said.

"...have to show for...the point?...know what I'm doing..."

He straightened up once Sadara had finished her own cup and was pouring out another.

Nerevar? she thought.

Yes? The voice in her mind was unusually muted.

Will this guy do?

YES. The enthusiasm was clear, and in an odd way it was contagious.

"You don't seem like you're doing good," Sadara said, "So I was wondering...I came here to get a little...well..."

"Get what?" Jolene, for all his woe over his lost love, whoever it was, seemed completely clueless.

"You know. You want me to scream it in front of everyone?" she gave a slight giggle and leaned in as close as she could manage, considering he was taller than her. "Unless you aren't interested."

"Interested in wh--"

Jolene finally seemed to get it, and tensed straight up.

"You don't...know me," he said slowly, and after a moment, leaned down and said in a quieter voice, "Feeling reckless, are we?"

"Maybe." Sadara gave a grin, and met his eyes directly. "I don't really care who you are, I don't care what you've got - I can't catch it anyway."

They were a hair's breadth away from kissing when the shout came that had ruined many a party in the Red Mountain region neighborhood and would likely ruin many more.

"BONEHEADS!"

Chaos erupted in the hallway, and shrieks aplenty were heard in the rooms nearby. Four people stumbled out of the bathroom, one of then a Dunmer trying to zip up his shorts and the three others screeching about leaving half the moon sugar on the bathroom floor.

"Fucking hells--" Sadara swore, and started to get up. "Figures I'm about to get laid and the ordinators show up. I guess I'll see you at the next o--"

But Jolene was up beside her in a flash and said, "How do you feel about Suran?"

"Suran? What's that got to--"

"I can get us there, there's a Telvanni that runs a portal from near here to there for his drug money. You want to go?"

For only a moment did she think.

"Sure. How're you gonna get us out? And I thought you couldn't teleport from inside the Ghostfence?"

Jolene grinned madly. "The Ghostfence can't stop me."

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

Between an invisibility spell and the ordinators getting busy arresting a few people who decided that attempting to run off with the ordinator's guar mounts was an excellent life decision, Sadara and Jolene slipped out without being seen--though the rain didn't stop, even for a moment. The Telvanni he mentioned was only a street over, and it wouldn't take long, she was told.

She insisted on not going too far until she got word back from Jiub--who'd been "taking a walk" with a few other guys and so had early warning of the ordinators pulling up.

You good? Jiub texted back as they were entering said Telvanni's house.

Better than good, she wrote back, as Jolene was negotiating. Going to Suran with some big hunk of a man.

I don't want to hear any details. Just be careful, alright?

Alright. I'll be fine.

"Sadara, let's go. Portal's ready."

She put away her phone, and stepped into a glowing circle on the floor. That looked enough like what she remembered from some of the Mages Guilds back in Cyrodiil.

A single blink.

She opened her eyes.

And right before the two of them was a huge sign with big gaudy flashing neon that said, "WELCOME TO FABULOUS SURAN."

"Well," she said suddenly, "What're we gonna do here? You can't go at me on the street, you know."

"There's a lot more to do here than back there behind the Ghostfence," Jolene said, waving one hand briefly. "Musical theater, magic acts, acrobatics...gambling. There's tours, if you wanted--have you ever seen any stage shows?"

"Well--online." Sadara looked around. The crowds around weren't paying a bit of attention to them. People were in House robes, armor, wearing feathered costumes...and the city, however glittery, seemed so--alive. Not like the Imperial capital, but...somehow MORE. "Just being around here's a treat, though, you don't have to--it's not necessary."

She was going to bang him anyway; she didn't want him to feel like he had to wine and dine her.

"It is ENTIRELY necessary," Jolene added in a grandiose tone. "Now tell me, my lady, where shall we go first?"

[danieyells]

Re: Obscuary! Towa and Taiga AU

@tanpopo-towa

Obscuary is a house where one is manually assigned by Darkwick, not by the Weighing Of Souls. No Weighting of Souls means your desires have no bearing on your placement there.

Darkwick puts you there if you're a nonhuman ghoul, full stop. Hyde describes a player who values harmony and is "peace-loving and open-minded" as fitting into Obscuary(perhaps not because Obscuary themselves are that way--although they are--but because you'd be accepting of them and their inhumanity), but since there is no Weighing Of Souls for Obscuary the placement is entirely on Darkwick's end.

I imagine Towa still finds Ed unpleasant, and avoids him when possible. He smells like a corpse and he embraces their inhumanity more than Towa is comfortable with, although he's starting to get used to that. Ed, as usual, has no problems with Towa.

Haru canonically transferred into Jabberwock, although we don't know when or from what house, and it's possible that Towa wasn't always in Jabberwock anyway(especially given his historical treatment of anomalies and that he only changed his ways recently.) Haru still comes to the bar every night, so he would meet him regardless of the circumstances. Haru's in his house every day being weak and vulnerable. Towa wouldn't like this at first, but when love(whether from the Tree or eventually growing attached to Haru, whichever love he's talking about) makes him find weakness more valuable he'd find it endearing.

That depends on the circumstances. Jabberwock may have been closed to general students because of Towa(history of a dislike for weakness + suspicion of murder + little display of concern for the wellbeing of others + immense amount of power='we shouldn't let him be around humans too much he might harm them, but he doesn't get along with Edward so he can't go to Obscuary'), so it's possible Haru doesn't run the place alone at all(although he'd still find a reason to go to the bar.) Alternatively they'd leave a few capable general students there or have it managed partially by Institute staff(which puts a lot of pressure on Haru either way, so he will still drink.)

Taiga wasn't really calm to begin with? His whole thing is that he's very violent, enough so that they sent him on a mission because they were okay with him killing the anomaly target instead of capturing it because that's just what he does. And the fact that he'd have to leave Darkwick on missions(because he is not getting an R&R permit the way he kills anomalies instead of capturing them, DW won't approve of it even if Rui would) in order to do any gambling due to there not being a casino on campus would irritate him. Plus Darkwick would scold and punish him over eating and fighting and killing anomalies in Obscuary's forest because they haven't studied everything in there yet--it's like releasing a pack of housecats into a protected area. He's just gonna kill a bunch of endangered species. So he'd have to restrain himself to avoid getting in trouble, which would irritate him more. . . . And play-fighting isn't enough for him, he needs to fight to the death or at least be at risk of getting really hurt. If there's no risk, it's a lot less fun! I feel like he'd be bored a lot of the time, although he's well-fed and has some enrichment.

But it also depends on how Taiga was before he got here--given Romeo implies he used to attack humans and [from his perspective] he doesn't anymore, he probably wasn't any better before coming to Darkwick lmao. Taiga may even be more restrained in present canon, since Romeo doesn't know he still does go after humans now and then(based on Ritsu's recording.)

I can definitely see some kind of esthetician or spa business being what Romeo runs lol probably employs a lot of Mortkranken and Hotarubi students. A mall could also work. . .or at least some sort of luxury business(es). I feel like a mall may make less money though and he'd be wary of operating it at a loss. . . . Of course it's a front business, they do. . .other things in the rest of the ship, but nobody has to know that. . . . (Thinking about it, Kaito probably wouldn't owe him any money in this scenario. . .unless it was some sort of mall for luxury goods and they offered scammy payment plans lmao. . .then Kaito might be lured in by the nice things and how easy 12 payments of $19.95 sound and oh man didn't you read the fine print on the interest fees and such?)

And I don't mind the rambling at all! It makes me happy that it'd generate that much thought lolol

[subspaceskater]

Do you have any celeste mod recs? My friend finished Farewell a while back and I feel like she'd enjoy chewing on some more fun level designs.

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay i love questions. i'm gonna go through some basic stuff before i get into my personal recs.

so if she hasn't done any modding at all then the first step is installing the modloader. it has all the information you'll need on now to do that https://everestapi.github.io/

don't worry about downloading dependencies when you get the mods, when you launch the game through the modloader it'll go through and download all the dependencies you're missing.

then go here to find map mods. there's all kinds of other mods on the site but those are to be applied per taste so i shan't recommend them. https://gamebanana.com/mods/cats/6800?

what i did at first was just kind of sort it by most downloaded or most liked and then just read the descriptions for the top ones and downloaded whatever i liked the sound of. there's a lot of good mods out there and the scene is just getting bigger and bigger!

there's also the celeste modding central youtube which has trailers for things and is a good way to find mods that maybe came out recently https://www.youtube.com/@CelesteModdingCentral

another thing to do is just like pay attention to difficulty levels on the mods.

beginner levels are usually a-side to early b-side difficulty

intermediate are late b-side, most c-sides, and some of farewell

advanced are around or higher than the difficulty of the hardest farewell and c-side maps and will often introduce mechanics that arent in the vanilla game but aren't too difficult to perform if you've already cleared farewell

expert is above all vanilla difficulty and will introduce mechanics that are hard to do! lots of scary shit here. but very cool looking maps. i havent really finished any expert mods but i've been able to clear a few rooms in the ones i've tried/the ones in collabs.

grandmaster is above everything else. this is where you go when you're bored of expert or really wanna do sicko shit. it's cool.

however it's also important i think to play maps that are below the difficulty level you can complete. because a lot of them are fun! and cute! and just because you can clear it in one try with no deaths doesnt mean you won't enjoy the experience. a lot of them have really cute custom art or music or custom mechanics and they're completely worth it.

now i'll put my actual recs under a cut

of course i'll just start by saying the 2020 spring collab is maybe the most well known mod because it is so fucking good. this is a great place to start and a great place to just have a big mod with a bunch of maps in it that you can complete without digging for a ton of things.

the strawberry jam collab, secret santa 2022, and secret santa 2023 are also all really good. the second two have lots of in jokes between modders that i dont really get because i only really play mods without being involved with the scene but that doesn't detract from them being fun to play.

i will say that my biggest gripe with collab packs is that sometimes there will just be a level in one that i hate. never like a bad level but just something that is antithetical to what I enjoy in a map! and it feels a little bad to be like "no i'm not fucking doing this" and just ignore one map in a floor and then not be able to do the big combination map at the end. but it's fine. maybe you aren't as whiny of a bitch as i am.

glyph is a huge one that a lot of people love. it has a bunch of really cool stuff. cannot recommend glyph enough. it has its own b-sides.

into the jungle is a custom campaign the ramps up in difficulty starting from where 7-A was.

rupture is really good. short intermediate mod with 16 rooms.

lucy's summit is a fun beginner difficulty summit remix. (a kind of mod that just sticks to vanilla level theming.)

cosmic sands is a short intermediate map with some fun mechanics i enjoyed a lot

sentimental is a 10 room intermediate map with some cool secrets

and nutty noon :) kirby.

that's probably enough recommendations.

[hisui-cotton]

About 4 or 5 years ago I came across a short series called Shamanic Princess and was really enchanted by it. I wanted to to do at least a small write up on it because while it is only about 6 episodes the story is fairly concise. They pack a lot of atmosphere and interesting design/worldbuilding in just a few episodes and it's just really nice. It's not a perfect series by any means but if you're looking for something with interesting character work to check out, this is one I'd recommend and say has the biggest draw because of how the characters bounce off each other. Right now it's available on Crunchyroll but if you're resourceful I'm sure you can find somewhere else if you need to!

The anime today is Shamanic Princess, a short OVA series by Triangle Staff. There was a short time where Crunchyroll had gotten a bunch of older anime and so I decided I’d check some of them out. This was one I appealed to me because of how few episodes it happened to have, I assumed it may have been something similar to Blue Submarine, where it was a series cancelled before it was done or rushed but the story seems to have a complete round out. As most OVAs go, the experimentation of animation, unique storyline, and overall production makes for a really compelling short series overall. It takes it’s own fun spin on the magical girl genre too taking the “magic” part to be almost tangible rituals.

From a very ominous start we’re introduced to the world of magic that shamanic princess is takes place in with almost persona like shadows lurking about. Tiara, our protagonist, seems to be on alert yet also a bit bratty in some ways too, almost princess like, especially so for a college student. Following what turns out to be a bad scouting mission, Tiara returns home to her “castle” to sleep. The big draw from here on is the missing parts of the story, Tiara is on a mission to “capture” Sarah, whom she almost somberly confronts in her dreams. The next morning she is transferring into a new college, meets an old rival, Lena, to whom we find is also well aware of what Tiara’s mission seems to revolve around. The most OVA like part of this episode comes in this following night. The characters have what seems like a playful rivalry and it only comes to confirm that the characters are not just rivals in this mission but enemies. They fight harshly with spirit creatures they summon and begin to ramp up the fight only for Tiara to be interrupted by Kagetsu, the man who has stolen the Throne of Yord and is using it on Sarah. He doesn’t enter the conversation, or conflict, beyond impeding Tiara. It’s after when Tiara retreats and Lena approaches Kagetsu that their alliance is confirmed and that Lena lays forth that she’ll kill Tiara if she needs to. The episode concludes with a follow up fight where Tiara finally goes to her full power.

A lot of the formula between this episode and the next is this power play. Tiara and Lena going back and forth between their fight and feelings for Kagetsu’s situation. Tiara is the obviously more powerful to Lena and yet Lena is the one standing by Kagetsu. In time we also learn that Kagetsu and Lena were is love, that something separated them and now Kagetsu has taken something from their magical society that is powerful enough to put all three in this conflict. Fairly obviously I suppose, this leads to a love Triangle of sorts, not just where the girls find conflict in love for Kagetsu but where they find the idea of love in eachother similarly. In a lot of ways this is also what kept me around in the story where I could understand each characters desire for connection and love in the way they’ve seen it through each other.

I really love the overall atmosphere through the story though. Theres this feeling of almost cyclical longing throughout the the atmosphere of the story, whether it’s romantic, nostalgic or just to connect with someone in general. Everyone feels lost in there sense of what they want and unsure, yet they know there is something they feel a longing for. In the classes there are two particular moments where this longing is somewhat reflected between Lena and Tiara. When Tiara watches Lena in class, it’s while they have a lecture on the beauty in conceptual ideas like functionalism and rationalism, Tiara even later reflecting she envied Lena, likely for that sense of maturity she emanates and natural sense for logic. Likewise when Lena looks to Tiara they have a lecture on the greek story of Daphne, the nymph turned to a tree. In it Apollo is plauged by cupid’s curse to pursue Daphne who is uniterested in him. In a final act she calls to her father a river god and asks for his help. In hopes that it will save her from Apollo’s pursuit, her father turns her to a tree. Although Lena’s power better fits the story of the girl turned to a tree, I think that Lena’s view on Kagetsu is what’s really in reference here. Lena feels this ever present longing of affection and desire and sees that in Kagestu. Yet it seems that Kagestu only has affection for Tiara and so Lena is left alone with that desire. Even when Lena’s thinking of Kagestu though, there is this feeling of Tiara being the focus of it. She knows the place of Tiara’s affection among the sibilings and recognizes that Tiara did her best to accept Lena into that space. As a result I feel both’s feelings end up being more about eachother than their situation, where they envy the other’s ability to react a certain way to their predicament and as a result pursue that for themselves in the series. They strive to better themselves by becoming eachother in some ways, they see what the other does wrong and yet also see everything that is wonderful about them.

The story definitely tries to rush it’s climax. Just as the story pushes it’s emotional confrontation it spends too much time overexplaining why it is emotional. It tries to play with it as being a taunt from the Throne but it takes so much time and limits so much of the action that it ends up falling flat. It should also be noted a lot of the reviews and notes on this series you’ll see likely say things along the lines of “watch episode 5 and 6 first then 1-4” but I’d say that isn’t necessary. In some ways it spoils the mystique and focus on the emotional story telling of episodes 1-4. You don’t truly have to understand the backstory to understand the emotional stakes of a story. Those episodes are still worth the watch, just don’t feel too pressured to do it in the “5-6, 1-4” order because people say it should have been done that way. You honestly could watch just the first 4 episodes and feel like you have a classic OVA experience of a short contained story by the same logic of watching them out of order. But I’d still recommend it if you like “dark magical girl” as an aesthetic, it’s not too dark but still carries a good maturity in it’s story telling with interesting magical elements. If you have the time and just want to try an older anime, I’d say this is an interesting one to check out.

[miloscat]

[Review] Starlink: Battle for Atlas (NS)

An Ubisoft open world... in space! Also Star Fox is there!

Lylat Wars is one of my childhood favs, so I'll play anything if they put Star Fox in it. It just so happens that the Switch version of this open world toys-to-life game included a bunch of Star Fox side content as an extra, so here we are. Now it's taken me a few years to recover from Star Fox Zero, but the characters are handled very well here, enough for me to open my heart to them again.

At the very tail end of the Skylanders/Lego Dimensions/Disney Infinity craze, when shops were cutting back on the shelf space they had reserved for plastic figure after plastic figure of dubious usefulness, Ubisoft decided to launch their own entry in this space... for some reason. This being a customisable space ship game, their implementation involves large ship models that attach to a controller mount. The ships then have slots where different weapons and pilots can be attached, and each component can be swapped on the fly depending on the situation. In practice this is clunky and cumbersome, but luckily the physical models are entirely optional. Instead you can buy the components digitally and switch them around in a menu, and I was pleased to score a version off the eShop that included all wave 1 components at a good discount.

Locking weapons that have situational usefulness, or suit your playstyle, behind a purchase feels a bit scummy; especially when I stuck to just four of the 27 available (double gatlings and double missile volleys). Ships are helpful to have a handful of, as they essentially act as extra lives. The pilots are more understandable as optional DLC, but you do need ones from certain factions to unlock global upgrades and I think questlines. So there's a big FOMO component that feels exploitative, but it does make extra purchases feel helpful in-game. Beyond the "digital deluxe" set I also got the Star Fox team pack that adds Falco, Slippy, and Peppy to the base game's Fox (plus a new questline), and the monkey-like pilot Startail because she looked cool... sadly she had an annoying voice (she's not alone), but I still used her and Falco for most of the game thanks to their abilities.

But how does Starlink actually play? Funnily enough it feels a lot like a follow-up to Star Fox 2, Argonaut's SNES sequel that Nintendo cancelled then finally released 22 years later. You have a big star system map with various planets, where the baddies spread to over time. Strategy elements are present but light, where most of the progress comes from the player's direct action. Most of your time is spent ranging over planet surfaces, doing tasks and activities that get you resources and push back the army of robots. These build towards climactic battles with space battleships which you fly inside to destroy (again, very like Star Fox 2). Then follows much rinsing and repeating: this is an open world game, after all.

On the surfaces your ship becomes a sort of hover-speeder. I had more fun with the planet-bound sections than the space stuff, mainly because there's a much greater density of things to do there, and movement and combat is also more manageable when it's constrained by gravity and dimensions. Special mention must be made of how almost seamless it is to transition between ground and space by simply flying up; especially impressive on the Switch which handled the whole thing remarkably well, only chugging when there was an abundance of enemies on screen. The other platforms probably have better overall performance, frame rate, etc., but Star Fox is the winning draw (the other platforms don't have any equivalent extra content of this sort either).

Anyway, in the first few hours you'll get an idea of the loop: zipping around, building up outposts to get map information and resources, and fighting enemies to capture points of interest. All of this builds up a planetwide meter that represents your control vs. the evil alien robot whatevers. I settled into this groove and found it quite fun, never getting too bored of it, although this may vary with your tolerance for repetition. A scant few sidequests can give you some different things to do (and let you hear more voice lines from the actors other than the very oft-repeated expositionary chatter) but a lot of the time it's the ol' open world grind.

The plot is your standard YA sci-fi stuff, not much to write home about. The main team, a set of largely unlikable human schmoes, have uplifted themselves with alien technology to help an alien buddy, and in medias res arrive in the Atlas system. There's some uncomfortably heavy colonial vibes here, as the planets are all some variety of wilderness teeming with settlers, explorers, prospectors, and bandits, and your role as outsiders is uniting these folk under your banner—ostensibly to fight some monster guy and his robot army—and make big decisions about how the system is run before presumably jetting off again after the credits roll. Hmm.

The personal stories of the characters, especially the alien friends you make in Atlas, were the highlight for me, although I feel like they aren't always introduced effectively. As both a game where characters can be spawned in any time from the start and one with some open-ended elements, developments can feel abrupt and the pacing uneven. The Star Fox team and their story is actually integrated very well, although Wolf as the antagonist of this sidestory was, I feel, acting quite out of character from what I would expect. I see him as an amoral mercenary, while here he's set up as a would-be galactic conqueror. Ah well.

Otherwise the Star Fox stuff is excellent: you get a spiffy Starlink version of the Arwing, there's some nice covers of classic music tracks, and the team chatter is top-notch (again, when it's not just open world exposition). The voice actors have mostly carried over either from their original Lylat Wars appearances in a few cases, or the recasts that have stuck since the 3DS remake, and they nail it, especially because they're not just doing weird alternate takes on a reheated script (Zero still hurts my soul so much...). The team are integrated into prerendered cutscenes and there's unique events and missions, plus having them as an addition only makes the overall roster stronger. It's not a full new Star Fox game, but it's pretty much the next best thing. My only complaint is having the characters still trapped in this Lylat Wars/Zero-era setting, continuing the writing-out of Krystal, Sauria, Panther, the Aparoids, everything that Command introduced, etc... but I guess that wasn't really Ubisoft's decision. It's better than nothing, I suppose.

Anyway, Starlink was a pretty good time. As long as you resign yourself to spending more than the normal cost of a game to get a full experience. And you don't think too hard about the themes of the setting. And you don't mind a bit of open world repetition, or the uneven weapon balance, or that obnoxious influencer kid who's on the team for some reason. But let's not focus on the negative; there's a lot to like here. It's a cool sci-fi space game that integrates planet surfaces well, the core gameplay loop is solid and satisfying, and it has a very good crossover with my favourite rail shooter series. I wouldn't get my hopes up for a sequel though, as the retail toys underperformed and five years later the developer is now making Watch Dogs and Far Cry games (as if Ubisoft didn't have enough of those) or assisting on every other Ubisoft release.

[chancerei]

Hey there! I've been hard at work on my next CC pack and, in short, it's going to take a lot longer than the previous ones (I'm giving myself a soft deadline at 2 weeks to keep myself from an unhealthy level of time-crunch). It might be ready sooner that I'm expecting, but I figure I might as well keep this blog up to date on my goings-on.

I've only made 3 proper CC character packs so far, and I plan to make several more, but you might reasonably be wondering why. It's 2023, I feel like most people are kind of over Sims 4/MHA/at least the mixture of the two for a while now.

I got into the game after EA made it free to play, and I honestly don't love the idea of paying for expansions and other nonsense. That said, without these, Sims 4 just isn't that fun or interesting, so I've gotten quite into the whole CC thing. It's a nice alternative to paying a bunch of money for off-brand Stranger Things and Star Wars and whatever. But it's been very limiting as well.

CC opens the horizons for playing Sims 4 with a wide variety of characters and kind of keeps the excitement going without needing any more real juicy Sims stuff. It's honestly just fun to see these little guys doing their thing sometimes because, like, that's Todoroki learning how to cook, Kaminari is learning to play guitar and talking about music with Jiro. It's fun.

But when that reality breaks, it feels kinda weird, violating even. Like who invited some guy named Derek to this world and why is he knocking on the door? I know a lot of people feel this way, but random townies are kinda just terrible. And the only way I know of to stop them from spawning every time I play is to get 80 non-random Sims and place them into the world, which brings us to the issue I'm trying to solve.

There are not even nearly 80 MHA CC characters available, no matter how hard you look. There's around 50-60 that I've ever been able to find with any sort of CC (usually just hair) and I figure someone might as well make that last push. I'd invite anyone else to join in and make it to 80 with me if you like, that's my goal. Not to say I'll be finished then, but that's when I will consider myself to have been successful at this.

With that in mind, there's several characters in particular that I'd really like to include in that total, and a few who haven't appeared yet in any official MHA games. I'm relatively new to blender and I'm doing my best to advance my knowledge as quickly as I can to make these characters as good as I possibly can.

The next big release I'll be putting up here is going to have 4 of these characters, and I hope that should help close the gap a bit faster. Cheers!

[pbandjesse]

I just got done my first ceramics class! It was so much fun. I forgot how much it makes my fingernails soft though and I keep trying to scratch my leg and they turn backwards and it's horrible. But I had such a good time.

And today was really good. I slept really well last night and I woke up when James's alarm went off but it was fine. I got back to sleep pretty easily. And it was nice getting to sleep in an extra hour.

When I woke up I went and got washed and dressed. I ended up wearing eye makeup today but I didn't really like it once it was on. But that's all right maybe tomorrow I won't wear any. I felt good and was ready for the day.

James packed me a little lunch and I decided to bring cereal in a container and a thermos of milk to have for breakfast once I got to camp. I did not think it through though with my laptop situation. I realized yesterday that the form that I need to fill out for creative alliance does not work on my old laptop because the Chrome browser won't update. And I needed to bring my new laptop but then I forgot to bring my new laptop. So then I felt horrible once I got to camp and I realized I couldn't fill out the form that I had told him I would have done before end of the business day. So I sent an email to Parker letting him know and he was like that's totally fine and also do you want to come on the 17th and lead another workshop for us. So now I'm going next month and leading a workshop for them too and I'm so jazzed. Like I just feel like things are going really well right now and that just feels really nice.

After I sent that email I would have my cereal while I worked on writing out some stuff for my workshops. Just kind of working through what supplies I would need and what the text of the description would be. I felt like I was making really good progress and I sent that email to James so that they could look over it for me but also just so that I wouldn't lose it somewhere.

After I did that I would jump right into organizing the cabinet that I promise to organize tonight. And I spent like a good couple hours on that. Pulled everything out and sorted where the paper goes and then we're all of our office supplies are going to go. And I had to move a whole bunch of stuff to make it happen but I got all of the junk that was on there off and all of the paperwork off and it looks awesome. I'm so happy.

We would have to go up to the barn for our program around 11:30 so that we would be ready at noon. And we ended up getting really distracted with our organization. I had stuff out on the porch and I was moving things around that when we realized what time it was Heather said that she would just drive me in her up. And we ended up having a really nice conversation about the winter and projects that were hoping to do and getting ready for next summer. The winter and spring feels like it's so long but it also is like no time at all. There's so much to do. It's almost paralyzing

The program today did not go as well as yesterday's did. Not because anything went poorly but it was colder out and the guys once they realize that we weren't just going to let them like trail ride they didn't really want to ride the horses and that's fine. I understand. The one nice man from yesterday had more fun stuff to share with me today and he brought apples and peanuts to feed everybody. And he was just very sweet. And him and the one other guy did ride the horses again and they were just really nice and so I was having a good time braiding obese hair and just being silly and having a nice time being out in nature. I also really just enjoyed my co-workers company. And we had some nice conversations about the horses themselves and working at camp and it was just really really good.

Around 1:30 We basically decided that no one else was coming. They had sent a van up to get the guys around 1:00 and then nobody else came up. So we hung out for a while but we slowly started putting things away. I walked the helmets up and then Heather and dechelle would get all of the end the horses had not gotten breakfast but they did eat hay while they were in the ring with us and are nice friend brought those apples and peanuts for them so they had eaten a whole bunch of stuff already. And when we had walked the horses down I had stopped with Stormy and OB after running down the hill with them to eat some of the onion grass and they seem to enjoy that. But it was time to go back to the field.

I walked OB and Stormy back up and Heather said that I did a great job both catching them this morning and releasing them back into the field. Both of them kind of stand still so I wouldn't really call it catching but I appreciate it her saying that. And I was having a really good time. It was fun working with the horses and like I said yesterday I really would like to learn more about working with them since I'm there. And I feel very lucky that I get that opportunity.

Once we finished getting the horses back in their home, the field, Heather drove me back to the office. Where we got right back into organizing. And we would really focus on Elizabeth's desk so that she could get that all cleaned out so that she could move into the office tomorrow. They don't have desk yet though so it wasn't like she could put anything anywhere so I think that stressed her out. I moved to the folding black desk in the middle of the room and I really like that one because you can close it so there is no opportunity for things to be placed on it and become a mess. So that might become my desk at some point. It is not built in the best way though so I did end up breaking one of the shelves and I will have to fix that at some point. But I worked on organizing that and got all of the trash at old mail out of it. And put all of my stuff inside of it. We also had a vegetable tray and I two whole peppers. Like full sweet peppers and they were great and now I want to buy sweet peppers and keep those all the time. But I know that if I put them in the house I will forget about them. So maybe as a in the moment snack. I really enjoyed them though.

 Sarah had to go through every single walkie-talkie and figure out which pieces of them worked. So she was able to steal a bunch of antennas and things to make sure that we have full walkies for next year. And she had a lot of paperwork and stuff to deal with but me her and Elizabeth kept handing each other things that we thought the others would want to use. Heather and Alexi were on a tour with someone who is a director of a different camp and would not be with us until later on. But once they did join us Kenny was there as well and it was so nice to see Kenny. He's so sweet and he's talking more everyday. He kept telling me he was doing crafts but he has a little bit of a lisp so I thought he said trash and I was like what do you mean you're doing trash. It was very silly. But it was fun to see him. He apparently had just gone to a maze and I think it's the one that me and James went to last year so that's pretty cool.

We would also talk about me and Heather going to the indigenous people stay event at Irvine. And even though the conversation kept derailing I kept bringing it up until finally Heather just handed me her credit card and I made an account and got us tickets and Alexi and her family might join us as well as well as Sarah. But for now just us. And that's fine with me I'm very excited and I hope that it is very cool.

I spent some time embroidering today too. Just sitting at different points taking a break and working on a small embroidery project that I have. I bought this black sling bag and I have this idea of doing black work style or at least inspired by black work style embroidery in red on it. I am not great at making my stitches exactly the same size I'm just going to experiment and play and see what happens. And if I hate it and want to take the whole thing part that's fine in the bag only cost me $10.

Soon though it was the end of the day and I was really surprised it felt like it came pretty quickly. I would get all my stuff together and drop it off at my car and then walked up to the art building to get my jumpsuit and my tap and then it was time for me to go get something to eat before my ceramics class.

The ceramics class is 4 minutes from camp so I didn't want to go far. So I ended up going to the grocery store and getting a premade hoagie and eating that in the parking lot and I still ended up at the shramix class a half an hour before it started. So I got changed in their parking lot putting my jumpsuit over top of my dress. And then went inside and talk to the nice woman at the desk. Who told me all about the history of the building. It's a pre-revolutionary war building which is wild. And I got to look around there gift shop and then go upstairs and check out their art and they also had a Halloween setup in their basement. Which was incredibly cold and smelled like wine. But there was dolls everywhere because they say the ghost that lives in the building is named the toy maker. And it was very silly but I did get a little freaked out walking deeper and deeper into the basement of this building. So I had to get out of there.

And then it was time for the class. I was the first one there. Sarah decided to join us as well which I was super excited about but I wasn't 100% sure she was going to be coming because when she did decide it tried to pay for it today it wouldn't let her credit card run through and then she checked her bank and there was charges that were not her and she had to call her back and canceled her card and it was a whole thing. But when I got there and then the teacher was there I told her and she said no she should absolutely still come and so she did and I was so excited that Sarah joined up so there ended up being me, the teacher, Chloe, Sarah, and a nice man and woman who had taken a one-day workshop there as well. So we all had like some experience. But none of us were very good. I took ceramics when I went to community college. It was during the summer and it was a two times a week intensive but I never really got the hang of the wheel. Like I did it but all of my bowls were always very low. I struggle with making them come up. So I'm really excited to get to practice this. Chloe says that it took her two full sessions, like 16 weeks, to really get the hang of it and I don't think it will take me that long but it was nice to see how good she's gotten at it already. And I was really excited to get started.

Mixed results. My very first one was going great and then collapsed. And then my next one went better. I ended up making seven things of various success. But I decided I was going to keep them all and then when they're more leather hard I'm going to carve them and I have some ideas about that. But even though they're a little flawed I'm really excited about them and I think they're really interesting. And I'm excited to see progress hopefully. I will probably have to buy a second bag of clay if today's class is anything to go by. I went through a lot. We get 25 lb which seems like it's going to be a lot of play but I use like 1/4 of it already? I don't know. 6 weeks of wetwork, one week of leather work, and then one week of glazing. So we'll see. I am really excited though in the class was really fun. Like everyone's really sweet and it's nice working with coworkers so we can talk about like work gossip. And the teacher has her BFA but she's like a recent grad so I think that's really funny that she's already teaching these classes but you know what more power do you. Especially when it's a hand work thing like this I think that it's excellent that she is jumping right into teaching. Like I think my only real issue is that like I kind of want her to stand behind me and see what I am struggling with but I do think she's understanding my issue and we are doing really well. Everyone is honestly. Everyone made at least one thing that was halfway decent. And I'm really excited to go back next week. The 3 hours went really fast.

Now though I'm on my way home. Should be home in the next 15 minutes. I am really excited to watch my hair. Rubbing myself all over the horses plus the clay has made my head very dirty. And the rest of me is not much better. Tomorrow we have a field trip and probably building IKEA furniture. And I just hope that it is a fun day. I hope that you guys all have a great night tonight and you take care of each other. I hope that tomorrow is beautiful. Until next time.

[gi4hao]

ᡣ𐭩ྀིྀི₊ ⊹ ˎˊ- their favorite thing to do with you

aka my take on what makes them express their love for you in a special way <3

reblogs and feedback are always appreciated!

— seungcheol + nighttime cuddles

it’s one of the rare moments when he can fully let go of his responsibilities and turn his brain off so sign him up. he’ll speed run his entire shower routine just to get five more minutes of calm cuddle time before bed. big spoon, little spoon, it really depends on his mood; but he’ll always make sure you feel held and protected no matter what, and so will you.

— jeonghan + going for a walk

at first he didn’t notice how much it meant to him. but after some time spent away from you, he realized how much he missed your silly little walks. they don’t always have a purpose, and it’s what makes them so nice. you two just wandering around town, hand in hand and your arms swinging at a regular pace. it fills his heart with nothing but love, because he thinks the world always looks a little more beautiful when you’re with him <3

— joshua + making plans for the future

whether it’s planning an upcoming trip or something more distant (your wedding for example…), joshua loves talking about his future with you. he likes to picture you in his life forever, and to hear how you picture him in yours. sometimes it’s just sleepy late-night conversations, sometimes it’s the two of you cuddling in bed and creating pinterest boards on your phones. that way when one of you gets stressed about the future, you can remember you have a lifetime to figure things out together.

— jun + watching your favorite movies

especially at the beginning of the relationship! i feel like jun could ask you to make him a list of your favorite movies and offer to watch them together, because it’s a great way to get to know each other on a deeper level. and he’d be happy to make a list of his own as well! obviously many inside jokes would emerge from these movie nights, making you the kind of insufferable yet cute couple that can hold a full conversation with no one else understanding.

— hoshi + dancing in the kitchen

sometimes it starts with him slowly swinging from left to right as he hugs you from behind, leading to something rather tender. other times it’s him grabbing your arm and making you twirl on some catchy pop-rock song. it’s his own way of expressing how happy these small moments of domesticity make him. of course he’ll also throw some singing in there, and yes he will snatch the wooden spoon from your hands to turn it into a mic.

— wonwoo + taking pictures

there are two sides to that. the first one is when a particularly aesthetic situation occurs and you both take a bunch of pretty pictures. the second one is more personal, more spontaneous. it’s wonwoo sneaking snapshots of you doing mundane things like brushing your teeth or petting a stray cat. it’s also taking low quality selfies of the two of you doing nothing in bed (with you often wearing his clothes), or just during any moment you’ll want to remember and cherish forever.

— woozi + napping

ok let’s be real here: a busy man needs to optimize his time, which means that you will get dragged into bed with him so that he can collapse on top of you and sleep like a log. but what makes it fun are the moments when he shortly emerges from his slumber and changes his position like some sort of touch-starved zombie, frowning until he gets to trap you in his arms again. he loves to say you’re exaggerating when you tell him about it, but you’re absolutely not…

—dokyeom + day trips

he loves loves loves making memories with you, so he’ll gladly dedicate half of his weekend to go on various day trips with you! he’ll pack your lunches himself, make sure you don’t have to carry any bags throughout the day, and even carry you on his back if your feet start to hurt. your camera rolls are filled with pictures of these little trips, and he wouldn’t mind talking about them for hours to anyone who will listen. he might even make a little handmade scrapbook of these memories for your valentine’s day gift :3

— mingyu + grocery shopping

you always go to the same supermarket and the cashiers all think you’re their cutest clients because of how happy you look together. there’s just something about the way he pushes the cart while reading the grocery list out loud that makes you feel like the luckiest person on the planet. also, mingyu will always insist on buying you a little treat during every grocery trip. even when you’re not with him, he knows which ones are your favorite and he never ever gets it wrong.

— minghao + museum dates

it’s the epitome of peacefulness to him. holding your hand as you wander among the artworks, discussing them, sharing your thoughts and sometimes cracking jokes in each other’s ear. when he sees you getting closer to a painting or a sculpture, he’ll stay a few steps back to take a picture of you, a proud smile on his lips as he captures the moment. “again?” you ask when you catch him in the act. “you know you look too pretty to only take one,” he replies, leaving a kiss on your temple.

— seungkwan + skincare routine

you shared a face mask with him once and it’s become a regular occurrence ever since. of course seungkwan knows how to do his own skincare, but it’s so much better when you do it for him! head resting on your lap, you could make him wear your stupidest headband and he wouldn’t even complain. he likes how gentle you are when applying the products on his face, and he looks at you like you’re the most precious thing he’s ever laid his eyes on.

— vernon + flea market

he likes everything about it. he likes that little game you have of pointing two remotely associated items and saying ‘us’. he likes to come up with backstories for the things that are being sold. and you like to remind him of that time he pointed at a trinket and asked “who even buys that?” right in front of the person who was about to get it (but he lets you laugh about it, because he just loves hearing your laugh). all in all, it’s a privileged moment where he gets to enjoy the beauty of simple things with his favorite person, and that’s all he’s ever wanted.

— dino + supporting your passions/hobbies

let me explain! obviously he loves it when you keep him company while he’s training or when you patiently listen to him ramble about it; so he’s really careful about reciprocating that energy as much as possible. that’s why he often comes to support you at your sports competitions, art shows, or just any kind of hobby you might have. he shows genuine interest and will always your biggest cheerleader no matter what, always pushing you to do your very best in what you love.

[no-droids]

Home

gif credit: @javier-pena

Part Eighteen of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 19.5K

Warnings: SMUT, religion kink (maybe?), squirting, consensual stalking/pursuing, canon-typical violence, mention of underage drinking, uhh I believe that’s it but as always, let me know if I’ve forgotten anything please!

A/N: Hey yall!!!  So I know this chapter has been a long time coming and though I’m not completely satisfied with it, I hope it brings a little happiness to you for an hour or two while you read!  School has been kicking my ass and I’ve been in a bit of an emotional slump recently, but I pulled a few all-nighters to post this on time and it’s finally finished!  Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me and sent me encouraging words over the past month or so, I hope you enjoy the end of the Sanctuary arc💕

Also like last time, part 2 of my collaboration with @followwhereshegoes will be posted after the chapter!!  As a reminder, sweet girl is a reader insert and every imagining of her will be different—this is Lisa’s interpretation of her and her artwork is absolutely gorgeous, so please go give her a follow!

Day 5–11:13am:

You zone out again in the early morning, but that happens a lot.  Din always keeps you up so late, all the time, and without any caf here, the rising sun just makes your eyes droop instead of flutter brighter and wider.  You helped a bunch of younglings find their way into their robes when it was still dark out, tying sashes and fitting masks while holding back your yawns.  The walk into Nariss is close to three hours, probably more with all these tiny little legs, and you almost forget to change into your new digs before everyone grabs breakfast.

Even though your ragtag entourage leaves for Nariss just as soon as everyone finishes eating, you don’t reach the city until nearly lunchtime.  Mostly because the kids walk about as fast as the elderly holy women chaperoning the trip.  You and Naydee lag behind the group, forcing yourself to meander slow as fuck when you nearly sprinted this same exact path just a few days ago.  On the way there, you listen to children of all sorts sing happily as they walk, chatter about their excitement for the parade, complain about wearing the fabric mask they made themselves, and more than once, somebody takes a tumble onto the ground and is left in teary sniffles and dirt stained clothes.  Likely for this reason, the robes are designed to be two pieces—a long tunic with a hood and a separate pants portion to prevent tripping instead of a draping skirt, but the smallest ones are clumsy and find a way to fall anyways.

It’s a colorful bunch—a chaotic rainbow of babies running around, and you share easy conversation with your new friend about the plans for the day until she asks something that makes you nearly trip and join the dirty robe club.

“Sister Drya said your family is meeting you in the city,” she tells you, ignoring your immediate subtle toe stub and the awkward shuffle you have to do to make up for it.  “There’s going to be lots of people downtown, I’m worried it might be hard for them to find you.”

Your heart thuds in your chest and you feel a bit short of breath at being abruptly confronted with the need to lie, but at the same time, you kind of love it.  Having a secret, hiding the truth from others, and just the reminder that you’re almost guaranteed to see Din and the baby before midnight pours warmth and tingles through your tummy.  Everything together is a hit of spice, filling you with a kind of excitement that used to be foreign to you.  Having fun, experiencing new things isn’t quite over yet, but home is calling and you miss it with every fiber of your being.

“I don’t think so,” you eventually respond, hoping she can see your kind smile and the sentiment it carries even as light, shimmery fabric wraps right around your mouth.  “If I disappear, you’ll know why.”

Naydee’s eyes crinkle in the corners to match yours.  “Hopefully you’ll be able to see the fireworks first,” she nudges you, her skin glowing against the pale cream fabric she has wrapped around her own mouth and the hood laying delicately over her braids.  “They start at eight.”

The fireworks, you almost forgot.  You know what?  Today is a good day.  You hear yourself think the full sentence multiple times, and the words put a spring in your step after every single one.  The road gradually becomes wider and filled with more travelers, and you feel safe in the back.  Like some kind of sheepdog bringing up the rear of this migrating cluster of children, making sure none of them drift off by themselves and start eating grass or something.

Surprisingly, the kids manage to be relatively patient and well-behaved once they’re in line at the gates.  The Sisters shuffle them along one by one as everyone moves up slowly, taking even longer to get into the city than it did a few days ago.  The entrance is packed already—so many people visiting for the festival, and they’re all dressed in costumes or robes of sorts, or at least a mask.  Most are beautifully crafted, but some manage to look slightly scary even with the soft springtime color schemes.  It’s a completely different world, a different life for each person as you pass them by.  Your stomach is starting to growl by the time you finally make it to the front, and luckily the guards just let the kids through without any ceremony.  Just you and the rest of the caretakers in light robes need to hold still for the retinal scan, matching each other perfectly except for differing shades of fabric, skin, and eye color.  Once the gates open for you and you step through, though… it’s… Maker.

Extravagant, magnificent are both words.  Floral is another.

It’s like they hung up bouquets wherever they could think to fit them, and this is just the edge of the city.  As the group moves through the streets and closer to downtown, it becomes more and more overwhelming.  The air itself is a warm fragrance wafting all around you, sunshiney and breezy and perfect, flowers of all kinds lining the modern buildings and archways like they were planted there from the very beginning and it just took this long to bloom between the cracks in the concrete.  You wish you had names for all of them so you could list them—the only thing you can offer is the color and vague descriptions of the ones that stick out to you.  Tiny yellow ones that are so small, they need to be bunched all together in massive quantities to even resemble normal flowers.  Up overhead, elaborate arrangements of enormous blue and purple and pink ones, wrapping around each other and hanging down from rooftops.  Some don’t even have petals, it’s like they’re big green cups that are big enough to hold things inside them.  You’re fascinated by every single one, wanting to stop and smell them all individually but needing to keep up with the large group and not allow any stragglers to be left behind, including yourself.

About an hour later, when you’re almost in the middle of the city and there are people everywhere, it’s time to eat lunch.  There isn’t much to it because of how expensive it is, and you’d normally feel bad for accepting the small meal each one of the children gets, but you donated all of your credits to the Keja and left absolutely zero for yourself.  Good intentions, terrible idea.  Still, you pull your mask down and snack on some deliciously fried food, trying not to eye anyone else’s platter after you finish yours.  It’s so good and it’s gone in an instant; you couldn’t even say what exactly it was besides which stall you got it at.  Whether it’s just the brilliant atmosphere or if the food on this moon is really just that good, you’re not really sure, but you’re still slightly hungry afterwards with no extra money to sneak a snack.

Soon after, the kids all line up to get their faces painted, or whatever portion of their face is visible behind the cloth masks and hoods they’ve got on, and music blares from at least four different directions and none of the songs are even in the same language.  Depending on the part of town, it seems like the celebrations are all different.  It makes sense, considering most if not all of these individuals were victims of the Empire’s wrath, spread far and wide across the galaxy.  Here, they’re free, and they want everyone to know it.  Spring festivals of some sort are likely common for most cultures, at least those from planets with seasons, not like Arvala-7 where it was arid and hot year-round, and you’re assuming there are multiple things being celebrated today depending on which street you live on.  There’s chanting in different tongues, dancing and drums, outfits and masks from different cultures every single time you look.

At some point, the children spot a crowded street with flowery rails set up all along them, and you stand behind the tiny heads while everyone waits for the parade to begin.  You think your heart has just been beating slightly faster than normal all day today, but when you finally hear the sound of sirens blaring in the distance and cheers begin to pour out from the gathered crowd, it kicks up and you feel like you’re just as wide eyed at the spectacle as the waist-high babies all huddled together up against the railing.

A flurry of people and things pass in slow succession.  First, New Republic officers with their blaring holobikes, bright orange as always.  Then come large groups of people walking behind banners in languages you can’t read, some of them waving, some of them making different sounds and songs.  Bands marching in formation, dancers in dresses and masks and gorgeous flowers in their hair like crowns, and then brilliant hovering vehicles decorated in bright colors and festive depictions.  The craftsmanship and cultural significance is stunning to witness, it’s so insanely loud, there’s so much going on, and yet…

Through it all, you think of Din.  No matter the faces, the sights you see.  There’s someone juggling.  There’s either a very tall man and woman walking together or they’re both on stilts.  There are enormous balloons being led through the air, people are riding atop an assortment of animals you’ve never seen before, there are traditional costumes and spectacular stunts being performed.  Stalls with games and prizes line the stretches of concrete on the cross streets, people are laughing and celebrating and drinking in equal parts, everything is so lively and festive and fun, and yet, though it all, you think of Din.  Him and the baby, they’re always in the forefront of your mind, occupying your thoughts and making your tummy stir more and more as the time passes like the parade in front of you.  You don’t think this environment would ever be his favorite, and in some far away galaxy, perhaps if you lived other lives together and called a beautiful moon exactly like this home, then you might have to drag him out to see all the with you and the kid every year.  You’d have to bat your eyelashes and kiss his cheek and snuggle up to him all nice and pretty like, and he’d probably grumble and complain about it while wrapping his arms around you—all the people and the noise, sweet girl—but he’d go.  For you, he’d go.

Your thoughts suddenly stop short and you blink for a second.  Why… Why was that scene so vivid?  So wistful?  You used to preoccupy yourself with fantasies about Din all the time, back before you even knew him as Din.  But in every single one, it was sexual and likely came from a place of boredom, a lack of external stimulation.  Here you are amidst bustling surroundings, and you’re daydreaming about domesticity with him.  Why?  You want to travel the galaxy, right?  You want to see things you’ve never seen before, right?

For some reason, you think of the floor, and you miss it.

***

Day 5—5:04pm:

It’s late afternoon at this point and nobody can find the teens.

More people have made their way into the city and it’s starting to get extremely fucking crowded, especially where you are downtown, and the handful of them must’ve slipped away with all the excitement happening and how difficult it is to keep the young ones together now that the parade is over.  You don’t know how long they’ve been gone—one second they were walking around just slightly detached from the rest of you, you assumed because the boisterous younglings fucked with their cool vibe, and then the next Naydee is gasping out to you that they’re gone.

“Sister Drya is going to kill me,” she hisses, her dark eyebrows furrowed in self-admonishment and stress.  So many fucking people here, you know her pain.  “I was supposed to be chaperoning them, they were just here—”

She shakes her head under the loose, cream-colored hood, groaning and then speeding up her gait to catch up with the woman in charge, but you decide to grab her wrist before she can relay the bad news.  

“I can go find them,” you offer, speaking as low as you can with the blaring noise surrounding you.  “Before anyone knows they’re missing.  Is there a way to convince everybody to stay in one spot for a little while?  You won’t get in trouble, but I need to know how to find you again.”

Naydee’s eyes widen in surprise, and even though it’s likely a bit out of character for you, you have a feeling it’ll be a deceptively easy task.  Even with the masses right now and how atrociously big this city is, you already have a general idea of where they’re likely to be.  Besides, you’re not even sure your absence will be noticed if Naydee is the only one who figured out the teens were gone—the other Sisters can thrive without you while missing anyone else would be noticeable, and you owe your new friend a thousand favors for helping you out these past few days.  The least you can do is save her from the scolding of one of the scariest old ladies you've ever met.

“Be as quick as you can,” she finally agrees.  It’s a lot of trust to put into you, but you’ve had experience in reading the most unreadable man in the entire galaxy, some teenagers shouldn’t pose too much of a problem.  “If you’re not back in thirty minutes or somebody notices, I’ll have to say something.”

You nod, silently breaking away from the group without another word.  You think you can hear her announce to everyone that it might be best to eat dinner now to skip any long lines later—smart—but you’re out of their hearing range and line of sight almost immediately.

***

Day 5–5:17pm:

“Really?”  You raise an eyebrow since they won’t be able to see the way your mouth is twisted up underneath your mask, crossing your arms and tapping your foot against the ground to further illustrate just how not fucking impressed you are.

Seven teenagers freeze, and slowly—depending on how much bravery they can individually muster—they turn around on their stools to face you.  The atmosphere in the tavern is bustling and cheery, booze being passed around a large crowd that laughs and mingles, but your vibe is stone cold and quiet.  The contrast doesn’t feel wrong on you like it normally would; the negative and disapproving energy you’re emitting makes you feel powerful, untouchable, armored and strong.

“How did you find us so fast?”  One of the twin boys squeaks out behind a light blue robe, sounding worried.

“Had a hunch,” you grumble, glaring sternly at each of them in turn.  Your tone is dry, your voice sits lower in your throat when you’re pissed off.  All you had to do was look for the closest bar that doesn’t have any orange jumpsuits poking around waiting to card underage younglings, it wasn’t that difficult.  “You’re not exactly unpredictable.”

“Are you gonna rat us out?”  The other twin asks you, in a voice that’s oddly deep compared to his brother.

“I should,” you snap, quickly reaching out to push their drinks away.  “I should let Sister Drya rain down her holy fury on your asses, got good people all twisted up over you for nothing and I’m missing dinn—”

You don’t know why, but you suddenly cut yourself off and jerk upright, spinning around.

The sounds of glasses clinking and boisterous voices fill the bar, but they seem to fade out for a second.  Your eyes fly around the crowded space, your heart lodged in your throat and looking for anything reflective.  Every flash you see is a false alarm—belt buckle, wristwatch, cocktail shaker—

He’s here… isn’t he?

Only, there’s nothing.  Nothing is out of place, nothing jumps out at you the way you’re assuming it will.  You’re braced taut and ready to bolt at the first sign of a chase, but it never comes.

It’s so… unexpected, this feeling.  It’s not like you’re being hunted anymore, but instead, you’re the hunter.  You’re feeling the weight of him from this far away and it’s like he’s calling for you to come find him, teasing the wild adrenaline rush you get from just feeling his presence, as if he absolutely knows it happens.  Whispering soft in your ear and then vanishing the second you’re able to turn around, like he’s here but he’s not.  Playing with you from so far away.

This… this is a taunt.  

The whole thing at the inn was leagues below this, that was rudimentary.  Teasing, getting even, having fun with each other, whatever you want to call that, that’s what it was.  This is scarily sophisticated.  Fluid and practiced and the best kind of frightening, stark and dangerous compared to the carefree and upbeat setting surrounding you.  You’re not making it up, it’s not just you being paranoid.  You know him with your eyes closed.  You know he’s here somewhere watching you, just like you know the starlight that streaks across the pitch black horizon of hyperspace.  Not because you can see it, not really, not directly.  But because by it, even in the vastest and darkest and emptiest of voids, you’re suddenly able to see everything else.

“You okay, Nerida?”

The volume gradually comes back up and you blink, suddenly remembering where you are, who else is with you.  The chatter becomes slightly louder than it seemed before.

“Yeah,” you eventually say, slightly airy while continuing to stare emptily at the crowded room.  He’s not here, you don’t think, not anymore at least.  But you’re not stupid, you know what this means.  You’re already caught, there’s nothing you can conceivably do that will delay the reunion for the next—you look down and pull the loose sleeve up to check your communicator—seven fucking hours, there’s no way.  He’ll pull back and follow you, keep up with you from a distance and then snatch you away right when you let your guard down.  You at least need to get the kids back to their guardians before that can happen, though.

“Let’s go,” you quietly tell the group of foundlings, grabbing elbows and hauling them out of their stools.  “Naydee was the only one who knew that you were gone when I left.  Here’s to hoping she managed to keep it that way.”

***

Day 5–5:32pm:

Against all odds, you’re able to rally the wayward teens and successfully lead them through shoulders that are beginning to move closer together as the crowd grows and grows.  You stay towards the back and don’t look behind you once—not only do you not want to give the younglings an unnecessary reason to become paranoid or to question your actions, but you can still feel Din lingering.  Moving like a shadow, probably fitting in perfectly with the masked festival-goers, nothing drawing any attention to him with all the spectacular sights and noise occurring.

Soon you return to the same spot from before, and you and the teenagers seamlessly integrate yourselves back into the rest of the group without anyone noticing a thing is out of place.  When you move to stand beside her, Naydee’s bone-deep sigh of relief is palpable even behind the concealing fabric; she squeezes your hand incredibly tight in a silent gesture of thanks, and then pulls something from the deep pockets of her robe and passes it to you sneakily.  A purple fruit.  She must’ve saved it for you.

Maker, fuck yes.  It’s not much but it’s more dinner than any of the seven troublemakers get, but Naydee quietly assures you they’ll be able to eat something once they return to the Keja around midnight, just not the tasty expensive treats they’re selling at the vendors.  As the sun goes down, you try not to stain your pretty fabric a deep maroon as you chomp and feel your lips start to curl upwards.  It sounds so fucking stupid when you put it like this, but you keep going back to Din and revelling in knowing that he’s so close, like you’re just mentally checking in on him.  You don’t get the sensation by thinking, though—more like you just focus really hard on your heart and feel him there just a second afterwards.

Is that how pure, stupid, shameless love feels when you’re completely entrenched in it?  It’s not like it’s surrounding you, it’s not suffocating you or making you float.  It’s just a thing.  Like… a thing inside your chest, a physical thing you can search for and find, something you can point to on your body and say it’s right here, this is where my love for him lives.  Right at the bottom of your heart, right where it curves and beats strong when other hearts meet flat at sharp angles.  You do it over and over again, reconfirming its existence every single time.  You don’t know what else you’d call it.  Love is the only word.  To love, to know.  To hold in the heart.

Soon, you start to notice that people are slowly moving around your stationary group.  You look up and watch the crowd begin to walk, some of them giving soft smiles to the cute children as they pass by, but all of them following the same unspoken direction.

“Where is everyone going?”  You ask Naydee, standing on your tiptoes to watch the crowd migrate like a giant system, an organism or mechanism of thousands (or tens of thousands?) of smaller moving parts all traveling in tandem.  It’s fascinating—you’ve been to crowded places, you know what it looks like when a lot of people are packed into one area, but you’ve never seen what it looks like when they all move together.  They would normally be bumping into each other, slipping in between, fighting and never really getting anywhere, interacting individually and thinking separately.  Now they’re progressing in one single direction, so many with the same mindset and understanding of what comes next.  A second parade, almost, with New Republic officers directing the flow of pedestrians as they pass.

“The eastern part of the city!”  Naydee yells over the noise and points, and beyond her extended finger, you can barely see the light of a dusky body of water in the distance beyond the buildings.  “The fireworks are going to go off over the bay, but it takes awhile to get there!”

“Is…”  You blink for a second, suddenly caught off guard, trying to think back to the holomap the concierge pulled up at the front desk of the inn.  Surely you would’ve noticed it, but your sudden childlike hope makes you ask anyway.  “Is it part of an ocean?”

Naydee shakes her head.  “A really big lake!”

Your shoulders drop just the slightest bit in disappointment but still, you ache to see it.  You can’t even imagine—the fireworks are likely going to reflect across the water, giving everyone double the view.  And luckily, after all the children and caretakers are individually accounted for, you start to behind the slow-moving crowd towards the docks you know lie beyond.  

Naydee scurries ahead to keep the kids together, ushering them forward and preventing any drunk passer-bys from accidentally stepping on them, and you quietly bring up the very rear of the entourage.  You take the time to observe more than anything, walk in the back and experience instead of trailblaze.  So many people, so many stories to be told, so many differences and diversity around you.  Your face is partially concealed and you don’t move your head too much, just your eyes.  They flick around to take in everything, the crowd thinning little by little as you make it out of the confined space downtown.  You’re able to make out full bodies and outfits again instead of just heads and shoulders, allowing you to breathe just a bit easier under your mask.

And then at one point—and it’s almost a little startling because it happens all at once—the organizers must decide that the sun has officially gone down, because the lights come on.  All of a sudden, paper lanterns and bulbs flicker into existence all around you and the world decides it wants to glow, glint and twinkle from the inside out.  They’re everywhere, draping across rooftops and tangled around street signs and stuffed into the flower bouquets overhead, raining soft colors down on everything.  You’re in complete awe, trying to keep walking but also needing to look at as much as fucking possible in the suddenly luminescent city.  It’s so colorful, so vernal and warm and you feel like you’re… Like when you took a shower on the Crest for the first time and spent a few happy moments just playing with the water and soap for your own enjoyment, it’s as if all the brilliant rainbow of colors the bubbles would make under the fluorescent light decided to surround you at the same time.  You’re inside stained glass, blinking at the flowers and wondering if Din can even smell the air or if it’s filtered, processed and reduced to nothing under the helmet.

And that’s when you see him.

But with the way your chest rapidly constricts and you can count your heart beats as they pound, blaring white noise through your ears and adrenaline through your veins, it’s like he's just allowing it to happen.  You immediately understand that you don’t have fucking anything the second your eyes land on him; this isn’t a heads up that you caught wind of early, it’s not a gift or an advantage you’ve incidentally gained over him that you should be thankful for.  Being able to see him directly like this, being able to make out all these fucking details from this far away…  This just feels like you’re being informed of the endgame right before it comes.  If you were anyone else, if you were a real bounty and this was a real hunt, his armor glinting and reflecting the lanterns overhead would feel like a knife you're about to be on the wrong side of.

You have a decision to make, very quickly.  Either keep in this same direction, head straight towards him and just pretend like you are who you’re dressed as, a random caretaker for a bunch of rowdy foundlings during a spring festival on Nariss, or disappear.  Drop back, move through the crowd and use the distance you have between you right now as your only hope of getting away in time.  Neither one gives you a particular advantage—your chances of being caught have already skyrocketed exponentially just being able to see the reflection in his armor, the hovering shield at his side with big black eyes… staring directly at you.

You almost trip over your pantlegs, gasping.  Baby.  He beams at you and you think he calls out through the passing crowd, his tiny arms extending out, and your chest feels like you’re pulling organs as if they were muscles, cramping up and seizing with emotion.  You want to run to them even though you’re meant to be running from them, call out over the noise and wave even though you’re not supposed to.  You want to hold the kid again, squish his little forehead with kisses, walk around with Din’s hand pressed against your lower back and see the fireworks with him.

Your hands clutch at the draping fabric covering your chest, pulling and twisting it uncertainly.  What do you do, what do you do?

No matter what, you know it’s over.  Keep your head down and try to move past him, or break away from your group and try to escape—both are different paths that lead to the same result.  What’s the point of running when he’s the one chasing you?  The heart-pounding thrill is the only reason you’re even considering it, but his body stands so tall amongst the crowd, not moving while people ebb and flow like a river passing around him.

Except then you can hear his voice repeat the last thing he said to you in person as if he says it directly into the comm in your ear.  When you do see me… try to outrun.

You should run—run, it’s better than just hoping he doesn’t see you when you already know he does.

Unless…

Out of a trillion different possibilities, you soon realize that there is exactly one situation in which this could turn out in your favor.  You can immediately picture the scenario in your mind, but there’s just too many variables to conceivably rely on getting them all right.  This maybe has a… two percent chance of working?  Maybe?  Everything would have to go perfectly, just fucking flawlessly, but what other choice do you have?  Two percent is better than whatever odds you’re dealing with now.

You walk silently behind the group of foundlings as you approach closer and closer, keeping your head purposefully down as they skip and giggle and dance ahead.  He knows you’re here—he has to know, you’re counting on him knowing.  Walk right in front of him, pretend like you don’t see, make sure you keep left.  Keep left, keep left, keep your head down, keep your head down—

A leather glove suddenly catches hold of your wrist hard enough to tug you backwards.

Your gasp is audible over the sound of the crowd and you spin around, jerking your head up to look at him in fear.  Your heart slams as the beskar reflects your mask and hood back at you—you’re terrified and it shows, you can see it in your eyes.

You quickly try to yank your hand away, even as your index finger stretches up towards the communicator around his wrist.

“Miss Nerida?”  A child’s voice cries, and then small hands grab at you from behind as you bury the urge to actually fight him.  Your instincts are demanding you attack when his grip is this strong, but you just whine and struggle, slapping weakly at him with your free hand and feeling more of the younglings begin to pull at you, their high pitched voices calling more and more attention to the scene.

Your gaze flicks to the side, suddenly landing on a pair of New Republic officers helping direct the thousands of moving bodies from the closest street corner.  They’re looking at you, pointing and beginning to speak into their own comm units.  Din’s helmet snaps sideways to follow your gaze, and then he’s immediately dropping your wrist and stepping back, retreating as quickly as he caught you.  Though you don’t want to—though you don’t want to give yourself away even more, you want to pretend fully that he was a complete stranger and the children were right to try to help you get away—your eyes fall to your son in the hovering crib by his side and you feel yourself crumble just a bit.

Just a few more hours, kid.  A few more hours.

Children pull you away while your pursuers both disappear into the crowd, and you quickly turn to soothe the tiny babies instead of chasing after the one you miss so terribly.

“I’m alright,” you tell them, scooting them up and encouraging them to continue walking.  Blend in, blend in, don’t let anybody think anything is wrong.  “Come on, we’re fine, come on, we have to catch up.”

They take your lead as soon as one of the caretakers turns around and sees the small group crowding around you.  You think she asks what happened, but you just tell her a man mistook you for someone else and nothing more comes of it.  She’s able to settle the chaos better than you are, and by the time you’re continuing to travel forwards once more like nothing happened, the communicator suddenly flicks on in your ear.

“What did you do?”  He breathes out, his footsteps moving fast through his voice.  He’s traveling much quicker than you expected—is he still being followed?  The officers are gone from your sight, they might be going after him right now, weaving between bodies and calling out to the perpetually vanishing glint of armor as he navigates his way out of danger.

You look down at the comm on your wrist and your heart nearly soars with victory.  It worked.  It worked.  You just have to outlast a bit longer, don’t draw any extra attention to it—he’s preoccupied and he certainly doesn’t sound happy, but you hope that’ll be enough to make him slip.  Use his frustration to your advantage, let him think the only thing you were successful at was momentarily escaping him.

“The cops weren’t part of the plan,” you admit quietly, keeping your head down as your loose hood billows in the twilight breeze.  “Don’t get caught.”

There’s a few moments of just his breathing, his footsteps, and the noise floor humming through the comm, before he finally responds.  “You look beautiful.”

You stare unseeingly down at the concrete under your feet, still feeling your hand tingle from where he caught you.  The line abruptly mutes on his end and you just keep moving forward, onward, wanting to look back but knowing he’s already long gone.

***

Day 5–5:24pm:

Din is fucking furious.

He had you.  You were right there, right in front of him, and even if he hadn’t been subtly trailing you all day, seeing the red footsteps get covered and flicker out of existence just a few moments after you make them, he would’ve recognized you anywhere.  In black and white, in the fading light, with your face covered, children calling you by a different name and attaching themselves to you like they’ve known you forever—doesn’t matter, he would’ve known you.  Your eyes have always given you away, always so expressive and starry and soft, but able to see right through solid steel whenever you look at him.

But then you slipped from his grasp, and then more guards pushed him further and further away from you.  They must all be in constant communication, because every single jumpsuit he sees immediately spots him and starts following.  It’s fucking exhausting, and he thinks of you the whole time.

He waits in a dark alley with the kid and taps the side of the helmet a few times to bring up the time on his comm, but then relaxes just slightly when he sees the hour.  It’s earlier than he thought it was, he’ll be able to find you again.

Though, something tugs at him while he’s looking at the clock ticking away in front of his eyes, counting down each second that passes.  There was… a moment.  Back in the square, when he was holding onto you again, when you were looking directly into his once more—everything in his helmet— 

No, he shakes his head while the kid looks up at him curiously, it can’t be.  It was just a split second, it was gone so fast.

But he can’t get rid of it.  Though there’s no explanation, he thinks the display screen flickered.  The sky behind you looked different for a single frame, your footsteps weren’t bright red and visible anymore, your eyes weren’t grey and he stopped wondering what shade of fabric you and your friend decided to choose for you to wear.  It was silvery, he’s almost certain.  Like his armor, it only reflected the color of everything around it.

Color.  Everywhere.  Bursting for a blink of an eye, and then gone just as quick, before he could actually figure out what it really meant.

***

Day 5–6:59pm:

This water is quiet here, but it sparkles.

It doesn’t ever really get truly dark thanks to the enormous hanging moon and ringed gas giant dancing with Sanctuary II, constantly reflecting light back onto the surface and reacting with some of the trace chemicals up above the atmosphere, and you think the sky just might be the prettiest you’ve ever seen it.  Must have something to do with the equinox, the glimmering angles of light being played with by celestial bodies in this stunning system, but it’s a dream.  The Maker apparently couldn’t decide which colors he wanted tonight so he just splashed all of them together all at once, let them run and blend like ink in the gentle water below, like the various people who call this moon home.

That view in front of you, coupled with all the flowers and lanterns lining the streets behind you, and you’ve lost track of time the exact same way you hoped Din would.  You think you’ve stood for about an hour or so in this one spot, half-listening to excited chatter from the babies, mostly just gazing across the stretch of water and being able to just barely spot the docks in the distance, but it feels like it’s only been minutes.

You check your watch—the fireworks should be starting any second now.  You don’t know what to expect, just that in your experience, explosions tend to be loud.  You've decided you’re not going to plug your ears, though.  Tummy twisting with nerves and another inexplicable feeling you can’t quite put your finger on, you resolve to experience the unknown exactly the way it’s meant to be.  Fully, without worry or fear.

Then, lacking any warning or ceremony whatsoever, a single flare launches silent and high from one of the small boats skimming the bay, and the crowd seems to hold its collective breath as the dim light disappears into thin air for a split second, before—

It’s… quite possibly the most dazzling thing you think you’ve ever seen.  So shamelessly decorative just for the sake of it, not serving any other practical purpose besides celebration and visual spectacle, and you’ll probably never know another extravagance like it.  You grew up with dust pelting against tired eyes, you never thought they’d get to reflect such gorgeous bursts of color back up at the sky, glassy and childlike amongst a group of equally wide-eyed children.

As expected, a deafening boom follows closely behind the singular display, but just witnessing it is incredible enough to make you forget to brace yourself for the sound and you jump almost violently in response.  There comes a loud cheer from the people standing around you, a few delighted gasps and children who decide now is the best time to start crying, but then more flares begin to launch from the boats and the subsequent show will sear itself into your memory to replay over and over again.

Still, you think the endless sky and dark water below would have to light on fire to stop him from coming to mind.

Din.

You click the comm on, continuing to stare in stunned awe but wanting nothing more than to hear his voice right now, feel his hand rest on your lower back and the kid’s three fingers squeezing one of yours while the stars rain down from above.  You’re only continuing to run from him because it’s expected of you, that’s the reason you’re here, but it’s becoming harder and harder to argue with yourself.  “Do you always see in black and white?”

It takes him just a few seconds to respond, but he always does.  “Only when I’m tracking someone.”

The loud booms can be heard over the earpiece, happening maybe a second after they crack and sparkle above you.  You can’t tell if the latency is due to the electronics or if he’s just that far away from the source of the sound itself, but… you don’t think he is.  He feels close again, like he could just walk up right next to you any second, or maybe that’s just how he always feels now.

“Does that mean you haven’t seen the sky here?”  You ask after a moment.  This whole time, everything has been grey for him?

“I saw it,” Din murmurs, and even though it’s quiet and explosions are thundering loud enough to deafen more sensitive ears, his quiet voice somehow breaks through it all.  “When you left the Crest, I saw it behind you.”

For some reason, you suddenly feel like crying.  Whether it’s the way he phrases it or the sentiment in the words, you’re close to tears without even knowing why, looking up at the sky illuminating spectacularly.  He says it like he wasn’t the one who parked on this moon and told you to go on without him.  “Can you… turn it off for just a second?”

He takes a second, before clarifying for you.  “I turn it off and I lose your footprints.”

So that was the ultimatum.  He doesn’t want to turn it off until you’re back with him again.  Does he not understand?  Does he not know what you know?  Maybe you just happened to feel it first, this overwhelming physical sensation inside you whenever you think about him.  It’s like the exact opposite of a hole in your chest.  And it’s so odd, so counterintuitive.  Being comforted in his absence, feeling him with you when he isn’t.  Falling in love in the dark, knowing him without ever seeing him.

“You never needed them,” you say, reaching up to pull your mask down under your jaw and chin for a moment, wanting to freely breathe the freshwater and flowers while stars explode and fracture across the sky.  It’s a truth you’re acknowledging, something you’ll carry with you, something you fundamentally own at this point.  “You’d find me without the helmet.  And I’d find you.”

The fireworks continue to bleed into the water beneath them, multicolor splashes rippling into existence and disappearing just as quick.  You could’ve never imagined a more colorful, magnificent landscape—besides your waterfall on Naboo, of course.  That was a pure product of nature though, a place hidden away and untouched by people, completely sacred.  Light refracting against mist, natural glass that would shatter under your weight.  This is a celebration of life and family.  Loud in a different way, affecting you in a different way, but just as wonderful and touching.  A cultivated paradise, designed to be beautiful and safe only because they wanted it to be.

“Think so?”  He asks softly.  He sounds so deep and warm, but… a little distant.  You’re able to hear it in his words.  You don’t know why, though.  Doesn’t he believe you?  Perhaps… perhaps this isn’t The Way.  Perhaps this is part of a completely different oath, one where knowing and loving somebody isn’t the same thing as looking at their face, not at all.  Where you can have them exist entirely separate from each other, because this is love.  This is real, enduring, bone-deep love, and you haven’t ever seen his face, so how would he explain that?  How would the Mandalorians reconcile that?  You bear the mark of the mudhorn, you’ve moved through time and space with him, you’re a mother to his son, and you’ve never seen his face.  It defies both the Mandalorian oath and traditional understandings of love, or it meets them right in the middle, depending on how you look at it.

“I know so.”  For the first time, you think you might sound more confident and certain than he does.  Maybe he doesn’t fully get it yet, but then you suppose he’ll just have to trust you.  “Will you look at the sky?”

“I see it,” Din tells you, but you know he doesn’t.  Not the way you want him to.  And stars, you just want so many things for him, don’t you?  The sky, fresh air, water, light, food, rest.  You want him to see the galaxy the way you do—have a new appreciation for the gifts that are given just because you’re alive to experience them.  All the physics and mathematics aligned perfectly for it to happen—all the chemistry, the systems, the dynamics that dictate the universe, they all got together and crafted a world where you, him, and the kid all exist together at the same time.  You want him to know the significance of that.

“With color?”  You ask, knowing his answer before he seems to.

“I…”  Din wants to argue, or at least say it again.  He can’t or he’ll lose you, he already told you he doesn’t want to turn the setting off.  It’s such an unnecessary conflict, but you want to respect it so much that you’re willing to give up things of your own to make it happen.

“How do I fix it then?”  You whisper, so desperately wanting this one thing for him, this one grandeur to behold.  How do you fix this problem?  How do you convince him to look with you?  You’d offer to just go and find him instead of continuing to run away for the next few hours, but you know the show will be over soon and you don’t have much time left.  “Do you want me to come look for you?  It’ll be too late by then, you’re too far away.  Look at the sky.”

It’s silent for a moment—truly silent, even though colorful bombs are going off above the bay.  You don’t know why you’ve attached yourself to this so strongly, but it’s almost devastating when you don’t get a response.  You look away from the spectacle for the first time in an eternity, gazing unseeingly into the crowd of onlookers with a sudden sadness taking hold of you.  He won’t look, he’s too stubborn, he holds onto things too tightly.

But then, a flurry of flares start launching in rapid succession from the distant boats, screaming and crying on their way up and then igniting into showers of light, and the abrupt increase in activity manages to catch your attention once again.  This must be the end, they saved the best for last.  Every corner of the horizon flashes and sparks, and you’re mesmerized at how bright it is, how many colors they’ve managed to fit into one single frame.

“It’s beautiful,” comes his voice, and the smile that you break into feels just right for the brilliance of the view above you.  Maker, it is, isn’t it?  Now you can hear it—he sounds like he’s looking at it too, with color, in all its breathtaking glory, and you feel like you’re flying.  Like he picked you up and let you watch up close, like you can feel his armor under your fingers right now as he carries you through the sky.

It swells up inside you, a rising wave similar to the ones you can see in the distance, and you know you probably shouldn’t say it because it’s not in your best interest to say it right now, but you have to say it anyways.  It’s an unknowable compulsion, a need to connect and communicate directly with him but for your sake, not presently, not at this exact moment in time.

Luckily, you mute your comm just in time and simply give the words to him from very far away.

“Hurry up,” you say, sending the sentiment into the sky with all your love, and the conflicting hope that he won’t take the advice until a bit later on.  “Come and find me.”

***

Day 5–7:37pm:

After the fireworks are over, people start to drift off in separate directions, clearing the traffic and congestion from the streets around you.  Someone puts their hand on your shoulder and you blink a few times, spinning around and almost stepping on a bunch of tiny little feet by accident.

Stars, that’s a lot of children.  They’re all crowded around Naydee, who pats a few heads and almost buckles under the younglings clinging to her leg.

“Figured you would be long gone by now,” she grins at you from behind her mask, and you’re reminded to pull yours up over your face just from looking at her.  “It’s late—we’re going back to the Keja.”

“Oh, shit,” you breathe in surprise, but the noise of the gradually dispersing crowd manages to cover it up.  At least from younger, more easily distracted ears, but you think Naydee hears you.  Her dark eyes roll good-naturedly, looking happy but exhausted from the long day.  You’re going to have to say goodbye now.

“What happened to your family?”  She asks after a moment, and you think she’s being careful with the way she says it, likely because family is a difficult topic to navigate in general around some of the children hanging on her and begging for her attention.  “Have you been in touch with them?  If not, I’m sure you can come back with us.  It’ll be late by the time we get there, but at least you’ll be safe.”

You open your mouth to automatically decline her offer, knowing Din is still in the crowded city looking for you and wanting to stay where there’s lots of people.

But then… well, he would expect you to do that, wouldn’t he?

There’s more people here.  More danger, but better places to hide.  It’s the obvious choice, it’s the one that makes the most logical sense.  But you’d also be completely alone and you’re assuming the only reason he hasn’t snatched you up yet—which you know he could’ve done multiple times by now, is likely because you’re with a group of innocent foundlings, moody teenagers, and very stern older women.  He probably doesn’t realize you’ve told them about him and the kid, though you were slightly vague on the details.

It’s also a little over three hours to get back, but you’re banking on it being closer to four with how whiney and tired some of the small voices sound, others sounding like they’re an enormous sugar rush contained into a tiny little capsule.  Would he have the gall to try and get you right from under their noses?  Will he even know you left the city, or will he assume you made the smartest decision possible and simply account for it ahead of time?  No, you're overthinking it, just make a decision and stick with it.

“There’s also free food,” Naydee shrugs while you’re still considering, but… well, that settles that.  Almost three days of friendship and she already knows exactly how to win you over in the end.  Sustenance for your empty tummy, an escort the entire way there, and heavily guarded walls beyond.  Din will have to get creative in response—you flaunted your imagination for days, coming up with dozens of evasion tactics to outlast him, but this one just seems… incredibly practical.  Exploiting a weakness of his—isolating it, having it be reinforced by precedent, and then taking advantage of it.  You bet he’ll catch on, but still, it’ll make it more difficult for him, and you’re grasping at straws to hang on just a little longer.

“I…”  Quick, come up with something.  You clear your throat.  “The city is too crowded, I haven’t been able to find them.  I could just… tell them where I’m headed and see if they can find me along the way?”

Naydee smiles and nods.  “Sounds perfect.”

Yet, the entire walk back… you keep thinking you’re going to feel Din trailing behind you, waiting to feel the nerves twist in your tummy and your palms to sweat, but you don’t.  You keep glancing over your shoulder and then down at your wrist, needing to talk yourself out of addressing him through the comm to let him know exactly what the plan is.  You like maintaining a sense of secrecy from the new characters you’ve met on your adventures—Naydee, Karga, Peli—almost everyone you’ve been introduced to, you found a way to find a subtle enjoyment in hiding certain things from them.  But with Din, you don’t have any walls.  They crumbled nearly a full year ago when he silently pushed a cauterizer in your hand and took his armor off for you, and you’ve felt the inexplicable need to bare yourself to him in return ever since.  It would be to your extreme detriment to do it now, but you still have to fight the urge.

Even if you don’t feel him following, you still find yourself acting like he is.  Constantly turning back to double check the road behind you, drifting off in the middle of shallow, distant conversations with tiny foundlings who can’t tell the difference, keeping towards the middle of the pack this time to avoid being picked off towards the back.  The belltower at the orphanage is loud and will ring for quite a distance, so your timing has to be utterly pristine for this to all work out.  You eye your comm the entire way there, trying to stall just the right amount to avoid any realizations or fall into any traps he may be setting for you.

You eventually leave the city walls far behind you, and now you have no clue where he is.  You lost him, and maybe that’s why you feel your heart beat insanely fast the whole time.  He could be anywhere now.  Behind you, adjacent, parallel—you can’t decide where to look, but it keeps you wide awake and focused while the group tiredly travels back to the temple.

***

Day 5–11:32pm:

You can see it in the distance, the brick buildings slowly coming into view.  One might think your stress would have worked itself out by now, been brought back to a manageable level after four hours of walking, but you’ve been on red alert for the past hour or so.  Any movement or rustle that doesn’t come from the sleepy children or exhausted caretakers, you’re on top of it, snapping your attention to the offending tree or animal and not being able to relax even after affirming it’s just nature, it’s not shiny metal bounding after you in the darkness, ready to take you down.

The infants are all likely snoozing away in the nursery, and the Sister who volunteered to stay behind and look after them comes to greet the group at the gate as you approach.  Like always, two Brothers open the iron bars to allow you inside, and you feel the anxiety dig its claws into your tummy.  If Din is going to get you, this is the very last moment to do it.  These walls are guarded and you’re nervous for him, you’re nervous for yourself—you’re just fucking nervous.  Jumpy and worried, not being able to pinpoint him anymore and feeling all the more anxious because of it.

It doesn’t feel right.  Nothing feels right about this, but you can’t figure out specifically what’s wrong.  This was the exact plan, this was a way for you to just survive these last few hours and yet, it doesn’t feel right that you actually succeeded in doing so.  It doesn’t make sense that he’d allow you to return all the way here, especially when he was close enough to touch you earlier.  Din has had so much time to snatch you up, so many opportunities to lure you away, confront you—anything to catch you, and he hasn’t done it yet.  Why?  Either you truly did escape and he has no idea where you are, which doesn’t feel right, or he’s choosing not to get you for whatever reason, which also doesn’t feel right.  What’s he waiting for?  You can’t have won.  It was all too fucking easy, you’re expecting to see him around every single corner because he should be there, he shouldn’t have allowed this to happen.

When someone gently touches your elbow, you’re so on edge that you nearly whip around in surprise.

“Sorry!”  Naydee immediately apologizes, taking her hand back to lift her hood and remove the mask covering her face.  “Didn’t mean to scare you!  I was just going to say that the commissary is still open,” she offers, and you watch the small group of hungry teenagers break off from the group to make their way there.  “It’s going to take awhile to get the children ready for bed, so we’ll be in the dormitories if you need to sleep.  Otherwise, I’m not sure I’ll see you again.”

You stare at her and blink a few times, trying to readjust your focus.  She’s your new friend, she just said this was likely the last time you’ll see each other, but you can’t stop thinking about Din.  Imagine he’s hours away in the city right now, still looking for you.  You’re trying to evaluate your priorities here, but you truthfully never expected to get this far.  Inside the gates, surrounded by brick buildings and silent guards.  You know your way around here, you know hiding spots, you know how to outlast—it’s incredibly advantageous for you to be inside these walls.  What is he doing?

Shaking your head to clear your thoughts, you give Naydee a quick hug and she happily accepts it.  “I’m sure we’ll meet again at some point.”

She smiles and nods, pulling back and letting a couple grumpy foundlings catch her robes and yank on them impatiently.  The loud group eventually disappears into the dorms, and the door shutting behind them cuts off the tired crying and chatty voices determined to stay awake, leaving you in silence that feels slightly unfamiliar after going without it for so long.

Fuck, you just need to breathe.  As soon as the dead quiet grips the air around you, you realize you need to relax.  You’re way too fucking wound up; you want to bolt at the smallest thing and the sudden silence of being alone multiplies it to the point where you have to remind yourself of its importance.  Breathe.  Focus.  There’s about fifteen minutes before the bells ring, fifteen more minutes and the chase will be all over.

Can you eat?  You thought you’d want to, but you think you’re too fucking antsy.  You can’t stay here alone, that’s for sure, but you also don’t want to be around all the children right now.  The commissary will have a handful of people wandering around, teens snacking and maybe a Brother or two standing guard.  It’s the best place to wait the clock out, so you make your way there.  The gentle breeze billows around your loose robes, your pantlegs swishing as you walk.

A few minutes later, you’ve got a plate of food in front of you but your mask is still up, and you’re just sitting there.  Towards the back of the large room, sitting by yourself at one of the tables and staring down at your communicator.  Five minutes.  You have five fucking minutes left before he finds you.  Can you feel him?  Is he closing in?

You sit up a bit straighter, taking a deep breath.  Focus on that feeling from earlier.  The presence in your chest, the weight that didn’t used to be there months ago—focus on that feeling and branch it outwards.  Can you feel him?

Something catches your eye.

Or no… it doesn’t, does it?  Nothing is out of place here, nothing is visibly wrong or amiss.  The only thing that’s changed from all the times before is how dark it is through the windows, and how there are only a few kids in here grabbing a midnight snack instead of being packed like usual.  Nothing else.

But there’s… there’s an acolyte in the far corner, standing guard with his back to the wall.  It’s not his presence that gives you pause—you expected him to be here, there’s always been at least one present whenever you’ve sat down to eat.  He doesn’t look any different from the rest of the Brothers you’ve passed by this evening or the days before—tall, silent, dark brown robes, hooded and mysterious—so why do you suddenly feel yourself break out into a cold sweat as soon as your eyes land on him?

Bubbling laughter and chatter echoes through the large room from one of the tables near the entrance—seven teenagers stuffing their faces with food and sharing animated conversation with each other now that it’s late and they’re alone—but your stomach twists and your fingers start to tremble as you slowly rise from your seat in the back.  You want to keep your head down and be casual but it’s impossible, you desperately need to keep looking at that silent guard in particular and your heart kicks up in your chest—

—and then it wrenches sideways when you’re carefully backing away from the table and the offending acolyte takes a single step forwards.

Run.  Everything in you screams for you to run, and it’s rarely done that before, but you can’t.  Not yet, you don’t want to draw attention, and the logical part of your mind rages against your gut instinct to haul ass.  He’s here—of course he is, the thought screams through your veins as you try to weave quickly in between tables, feeling light on your toes and readying yourself to run as soon as you can.  The dark figure seems to find a careful pace behind you, staying just far enough behind and walking in perfect silence, and you have so many fucking questions but you can’t even think a single thing beyond run away, run away.  Where’s the kid?  How did he get those robes?  Did he actually take his helmet off just to get to you in a room where anyone could confront him?

Your feet propel you forward as soon as you make it out of the door, you break out into a sprint—just flat out bolting because you know how fucking fast he is and you need as big a headstart as you can get.

You race down the stairs and through the courtyard, the beautiful surroundings contrasting drastically with the way you’re running for your fucking life through them.  It’s not beautiful to you right now; you feel clumsy and physically unable to move fast enough no matter how quick you go, your eyes are wide and every nerve is on fire and you can’t even tell if he’s behind you anymore with how silently he moves, but you just trust that he is and keep barreling forward.  Your breath puffs against the clinging fabric of your mask as you keep sprinting, willing your legs to pump faster.  Get to the belltower at least, get to where you have the smallest chance of being caught by the people who guard this place.

As soon as you allow yourself to even conceive the possibility, two Brothers in dark hooded robes suddenly turn the corner a little ways in front of you and your reaction time is perfect—you jerk to a halt and take a single step forward as soon as they spot you.  Since your momentum already committed you to it, you just have to walk, keep your head down, move directly past them and hope Din disappeared from behind you in time.

Step, step, step—keep going, control your breathing, you’re okay, you’re allowed to be up late tonight and they shouldn’t stop you.  Walk right by…  Stars, you feel their silent stares as you casually pass, and it just feels so cold and analytical compared to the kind of danger Din is gives off when dressed in the exact same clothing.  He’s hard and tangible and an unrelenting force, where they just feel like ghosts that haunt this place.  The threat they present is impersonal and detached, but the terror currently chasing after you is so real that he can read your mind.

You wipe the sweat from your brow as soon as you turn the corner, and your feet are already starting to speed up on their own knowing you’re out of their sight.  Run, get to the belltower before Din does, you can see it standing tall about a hundred feet away.  The stairs leading to the door come closer and closer, but you hear something behind you and it propels you faster.  It’s like you can feel him right at your heels even though you haven’t seen him, snapping at your ankles even though your footsteps are the only ones you can hear anymore.

You scramble up the stairs and close the door behind you, spinning around and facing it even as you slowly retreat backwards into the moonlit tower, trying to stay quiet.  Breathing through your nose, eyes shifting around the enclosed space, continuing to back up and away from the door.  Where is he?  There are so many windows that allow you to look outside, but why can’t you spot his movement through them?  Wasn’t he right behind you?

Behind you.

There’s no reason or logic at all to it; you just react.  Spinning around and throwing a mean punch.

Din jerks back just in time to miss it, twisting and dodging at the very last second to avoid your next few hits—but… things seem to slow down, even if they’re happening so fast.  The moonlight cascades through the dozens of windows lining the circular walls and it shines just enough to reveal small glimpses of him.  With every aggressive strike from you, you see something else—you see a flash of his chin when you try to uppercut, you aim for his chest and you see a bit of his jaw.  When you go for his jaw, he steps sideways and catches your wrist, and you see the bend of his nose catch the light this time.

But then it’s like he finally figures out that you’re actually fighting him, and now he’s coming for you.  Trained and ruthless, not weighed down by any armor and lightning quick, launching perfectly aimed attacks that you’re only able to avoid from reaction and muscle memory alone.  You block or move whenever he strikes, you attack whenever you see an opening, you sidestep at the same time he does—

Until you land a spin kick directly to the center of his chest and snap your leg to shove him back, your heel smashing into that soft spot right above his stomach with dead precision and brute force.  He exhales sharply and takes a few more steps back to steady himself while you pause to catch your breath.

Din abruptly comes back and you fall into it with him again, keeping a sharp rhythm with each other that’s faster, harder, and way more real than any sparring match you’ve ever shared.  The hours and days in hyperspace you spent practicing with him are but a fraction of what he’s throwing at you right now, the combinations so rapid and blurred that you just have to trust your knowledge of him and his movement through the dark.

But then, your downfall.  Bells begin ringing an earsplittingly familiar melody above you, and it shatters your concentration—you falter just as he grabs you and sweeps your feet out, and though you know how to get out of that, you’re not quick enough on the jump nor counterswing to prevent it.  He takes you to the ground, hard, and then your wrists are being pinned together above your head and your mask is being tugged down.

Din’s mouth on yours makes you want to cry.

The whole thing is like coming home.  You spent a week surrounded by strangers and having them call you by a name not given to you, fending for yourself, and now here he is.  Someone who knows who you really are, someone that wants to care for you.  Tears come to your eyes even as they're pressed tightly shut, and Din kisses you like he’s never known anything else.  His mouth fits to yours as if the Maker made your lips before ever considering the rest of you, his bare hand clutching your jaw and forcing you to open for him, letting him lick deep inside after going so many days without it.  It might feel dominant and overwhelming if it happened to any other person, but through it, you can also taste his desperation and weakness, how soft he is even when he’s squeezing your jaw and squishing your wrists together too tightly.

Rigid steel that bends only for your touch.

He pulls back and your heart throbs at how moonlight continues to bathe just the smallest glimpses of him under the hood—never the full thing, never the whole face, but enough.  The quiet light that brushes the arch of his nose, how it bathes the hard line of his jaw so that you can barely see his scruff when he turns his head the right way.  His eyes are hidden in near darkness but there’s the faintest glimmer where they should be, and it’s the closest you’ve ever been to looking at him without the helmet.  You can see him, you can see shadows of his chin, his neck—dear stars, his fucking neck.  You’re pinned and paralyzed under him and the ringing bells, yet you feel like you just might float if he wasn’t holding you so tight to the floor.

“Where’s the baby?”  You finally lift your chin and ask, needing to raise your voice over the melody clanging loud throughout the tower.

“Making friends,” Din pants back down at you, and… stars, then you just start giggling.  Adrenaline turning into pure joy, imagining the kid wreaking havoc with all the other babies in the nursery right now.  It feels more light and airy than anything your body should know.

“What are you so happy about?” He asks, swallowing and then continuing on with the same quick gasps.  “You lost, I caught you in time.”

“Did you?”  You drop your head to the brick floor and ask, biting your lip as he stares back down at you.  Suddenly—

—Bong—

Din holds utterly still over you while you take a quick breath and wait for the next eleven bells… 

…but then break into a slow grin up at him when nothing but utter silence follows.

There’s a moment.  Just a single moment where the cogs turn rapidly under that shadowy hood, one where the faint reflection of light in his eyes flickers down to the communicator on your wrist that says midnight and back to you, one that solidifies the longer it takes for another bell to ring.  It’s not going to.

One o’clock.

You think he puts it together.  The one moment he was never able to figure you out—when you tried reprogramming the comms just a few days ago.  The one trick up your sleeve that you resigned to throw away and almost forget about because the circumstances for pulling it off were never realistic.  Fuck with the electronics and set the clock back just one hour—all you’d need to do is reset his communicator, the timecode is synced together.  He told you before that it’s connected to his helmet, but all the buttons still work.  Rapid, panicky thinking and a wild surge of bravery in the face of certain downfall is the only reason you were able to pull it off, and you’re perfectly willing to admit you just got lucky… especially when he’s still holding dead still over you.

But then Din moves so suddenly.  You can’t account for it because there’s no build-up whatsoever—it’s so fast, you yelp while he grabs your knees and throws them both to one side.  You flop over sideways and large hands reach up under the draping length of your tunic to yank your pants down over the curve of your ass, before he’s fitting his palm up between your legs and pushing two thick fingers inside you.

Your head thunks back against brick with how unexpected and merciless it is, but his other hand is grabbing your jaw and twisting, forcing you to look up, stare right into the dark shadow under the loose cowl.  The whole thing is too overwhelming—you’re trying to keep quiet but your breathing feels like thunder crashing inside this tall, echoing chamber.  He’s touched you so many times, he knows exactly how to do it by now, but it feels like so much more than that.  Probably because you can see the way Din’s mouth silently falls open as he feels you, stretching his fingers up and hooking them tight inside.  You can tell when he closes his eyes, the smallest glint slowly disappearing into nothingness while the hand around your jaw blindly moves up.  It catches your chin and lips, and then two fingers push over the bottom edge of your teeth to slip into your mouth.

Your entire leg twitches and jerks while you lay sideways on the ground and open up for him, your neck twisted at a sharp angle to keep your eyes on him and his fingers in your mouth, giving you something to bite to stop making noise.  Din makes room for himself inside you two different ways, and you just choke on his fingers and try to stay quiet, praying he’ll go deeper.

But then you’re not expecting his whole fucking arm to start moving the way it does—oh fuck, what is that?  First you just feel jostled and displaced, but then suddenly a wicked, deep, burning pleasure starts to roar through you, radiating outwards from the rapid motion of just two fingers inside you.  It’s not in and out, it’s up and down so hard and quick against your g-spot that your eyes cross and your hands go numb.

You think you grab at him, clutch onto his arm or chest and open your mouth to moan at the new and overwhelming sensation, but his hand pushes up against your chin and closes it for you, the bend of his fingers caught hard between your teeth but you don’t think he cares.

“Quiet,” Din hisses the word down at you while his arm continues to work, your toes starting to curl as the feeling overwhelms you.  Fuck, what is happening, what is happening?  It’s like he’s just shoving unfamiliar sensation at you so forcefully that you can’t even think straight anymore, not even ten seconds in.  You can only feel the pleasure, fire blurring hot and shapeless through your entire body as your eyes clamp shut, his fingers isolating that perfect spot and stimulating it directly, relentlessly.

Something dull and white hot presses up tight against all the muscles you have down there and you’re almost afraid of how strong it is.  You gasp and choke and he has to take his fingers out of your mouth and just clamp down around your entire jaw, sealing the whole thing shut with his large hand.  And then Din’s fingers leave your pussy too—and stars, you should be embarrassed by how desperately it clamps around nothing for as long as it does.  He’s not even inside you anymore but your body is on such a delay from the hot, twisting pleasure, and he doesn’t put them back in until your muscles are finished spasming.

Everything comes back full force as soon as he starts moving again.  Noise starts to come from your throat, humming in your vocal cords to deal with the arcing, swirling build, and so Din just moves his hand there instead.  He finds where it’s vibrating from your neck and he pushes up against it, trapping the sound right at the source.  He’s fucking perfect at it for some reason… how many times must he have done this to know how to cut noise out without stopping airflow?  You clutch at his wrist and silently mouth his name, feeling his arm work between your legs—faster, faster, harder, pushing you higher, higher—

Din pulls his fingers out again and this time, one of your thighs suddenly feels warm and wet while you spasm and you hear him growl out a ragged, “Fuck yes.”  Everything is sparks zapping through you long after his touch is gone, you cry out but it’s all trapped under Din’s expert grip.  His fingers soon push back inside you and you dig your nails into his forearm, your sounds muffled and quiet enough to hear his raspy groan.  

“Let me see it again,” Din breathes, his arm starting to work up and down once more, and you don’t even know what he’s talking about anymore.  What does he want to see?  You losing your mind again?  Being reduced to an utter mess in front of his shadowy but unobstructed gaze just because you managed to pull one over on him?

Fucking… apparently.  It’s what happens, after all.  You’ve never seen him like this before; whenever he’s worked up and taking it out on you, there was always something in it for him, too.  He’d hammer into you and rock your world until his eventually shattered, and then you’d both lay exhausted afterwards, equally affected and satisfied.  This isn’t like that—this is just cruel, targeted retribution on his behalf, coaxing the molten pleasure out of you with his fingers and keeping his other hand locked around your throat.  You blink helplessly up at him, your vision starting to blur by the time he leans down to whisper to you.

“I missed you, sweet girl.  Did you miss me?”  It’s so soft and quiet compared to the strength and relentlessness of his movements.  You can’t speak even if you wanted to, but when he finally pulls away to yank his hand out and you feel all your muscles automatically flex outwards and push against the sudden emptiness inside you, his voice groans long and satisfied while your thighs get wet again  “Yeah you did,” he breathes, pushing your shaky legs to the brick with his hand and watching you struggle through the aftershocks.

Did you just cum?  You don’t even know, that’s how fucked up you are right now.  The whole thing felt like an orgasm from the very beginning, just a boiling hot tornado ripping through every single cell in your body, never really having a peak.  If you didn’t cum, then why do you feel so weak?  You feel heavy, your limbs don’t work properly, and you barely even register Din pulling at the fabric of his own robes until he fits himself up against your entrance.

When you do realize it, though… your body burns with it, wrecked already but wanting him to take what he wants from you.

“Oh, plea—” you gasp but you don’t even have enough time to get the full sentence out.  He’s already pushing his hips forward, pressing you tight into the ground and opening you up after what feels like a fucking eternity without him.  It’s the hottest, slickest welcome you could give him, you hear it in the whispered curse his lips brush up under your ear, the wet noises your body makes that get louder the longer you hold the moan in your throat and bury your head into his shoulder.  He throbs thick and perfect inside your tight, spasming cunt, stretching you and smacking the rough ground near your head with how fucking good it is to be back, finally, finally—

Your hands grab uselessly at his chest while you try to acclimate, try to breathe while you’re blind with sensation.  It’s so fitting for him, isn’t it?  That your reunion should be just as physically debilitating as it is mentally.  Din’s voice scrapes on a groan like he’s dragging it across the brick ground as quiet as he can, catching when you clamp down on him and shuddering when you clamp down harder.  That’s just it—you don’t ever loosen, you just keep tightening and tightening around him, threatening to break and cum again.

This feels different from before, though.  It’s deep, purposefully so.  His hand reaches up to push the fabric of your hood back, lifting himself up over your body and wanting to start as deep as he can.  You feel him in a place you’d never be able to reach and that’s just the beginning—that’s before he starts thrusting into you, hitting a dull sensation at the apex of each movement so hard that it becomes sharp.  His hips don’t make practically any sound smacking into you because they don’t really smack, they just rock downwards and fuck you into the floor without needing to pull out really at all.  You know he’s just trying to keep it as quiet as possible, but what he lacks in speed and agility he makes up in power.

You don’t even realize you’re making too much noise until a palm wraps tight around your mouth and the room gets a little emptier.  Din keeps you all to himself on the floor, silencing as much as he’s working you up, smothering as much as he’s freeing you.  There’s no easing up, no dragging it out, no gradual build or climb—it’s just there all of a sudden, pleasure and pain pummeling you all at once, engulfing you in flames.

You reach up to grab at the loose fabric of the hood over his face, catching a fistful of it before his hand suddenly snatches your shaky wrist and pins it back to the ground.

Maker, you forgot—oh, you completely forgot about how many people could find you right now if they ever decided to look in the right place.  You’re not in hyperspace; your body is rocking against rough brick, you’re probably going to have a lump on the back of your head from how terrible you are at trying to map out heaven while holding still.  He’s pinned down what he can with one hand; your fingers are the only things that can move besides how tight you can curl your toes, but you feel your moans turn into words against his palm.  They garble indistinctly and you’re not really even sure what you’re saying, but Din decides it’s worth hearing.

“Shh,” he whispers, slowly lifting his hand from your mouth.  “Shh, tell me—”

“W-wanna look,” you hear yourself whimper, trying your best to keep quiet but wanting to scream it while he fucks you hard and slow on the ground, “—I wanna see, I wanna look at you—”

“Fuck,” Din gasps, and though his grip tightens on your wrist and you know he can’t do it right this second, the words seem like they shatter something inside him, “Keep—oh fuck, please, k-keep saying…”

“I want to marry you,” you nearly whine for him, feeling his hips kick up rapidly and start hammering in and out, in and out, in and—“I want to see your face, I wanna be yours, I don’t want anyone else to know you the way I-I—”

You think he drops his head into your neck to muffle his own sounds.  Though they start out rough and quiet and indiscernible, but they gradually become louder as he repeats himself over and over again, growling and fucking you rough.  You only catch it on the peak, when he pulls his mouth away from your skin and gasps them raggedly one last time.

“—ve you—I l-love y—”

He kisses you to stop himself.  But it’s not really a kiss, it’s more desperate than that.  Though it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful in a different light.  It’s not rejoicing at having you back with him once again; it’s a last prayer begging you to stay by his side forever.  He loves you.  He gives it everything—it feels even more concrete and simple than taking the hood off him and revealing his face would.  You told you that you'd know him without ever seeing him, and you did.  You picked him out and found him when absolutely nothing was giving him away, and this feels like a manifestation of that.  Even if you’re not in a place where he can show you his face, his beautiful brown eyes, something still feels like it changes.  He loves you.  You gasp into his mouth and his tongue sinks deep into yours, tenacious and brave and unyielding.  

When you finally cum, you almost bite him on accident.  

Everything surges hot and molten while he pulls back and keeps fucking you through it, and you can’t tell where you’re touching him anymore, just that his skin is blazing hot under your hand and he feels like everything the armor isn’t.  He loves you.  You’re looking into his eyes right now.  You can’t see any of the details, not really, but the moonlight flickers like silent stars moving through dark depths, staring right back at you and giving you an anchor for the euphoria rocketing through you.  He loves you.  Your nails dig in sharp and slowly drag downwards, scratching hard red lines into whatever thick muscle that is—

The back of his neck, making his hips stutter and when he cums for you, he does bite.

You lift your head just in time to feel his teeth catch your chin instead of your mouth, and his entire body shakes while you keep dragging your nails down the side of his neck and his throat.  Din fucking lives for it, he releases you and arches into the pain and owns your marks like he wishes you made them deeper, stretching his neck and lifting his chin into the moonlight and—

Maker.  You can see it, with direct light, you can see more of it than ever before.  You can see his soft lips and white teeth gritting the sound of your name as quietly as he can, the dark facial hair dusting across the lower half of his face.  A fucking gorgeous jawline and throat extended long over you, flexing hard with his cock pulsing inside you.  You can just barely see the bottom of his nose from under the brown hood, the dark curls brushing up under his ears.

Stars, you still never see his eyes, the fabric of his hood acts like a blindfold draped over them, but you think you cum again.  Even if it’s on accident, it’s mean—Din tries to keep from squishing you and his hand pushes down hard against your lower tummy while he shoves his hips deep one last time, and you cum while staring at half of his face in the moonlight.  Completely lovestruck.

How can he be this beautiful when you’ve only seen fractions of him?  You have everything but the eyes now, everything but the most mysterious thing about him, the reflection into his deepest self, but you feel like you’re hypnotized by every single feature you do see.  His tongue coming out to wet his lips, the vein pulling under his sharp jaw—he’s gorgeous, he’s gorgeous, and your body agrees.  It shakes and shudders under him and eventually, Din finishes and you keep looking as his chin slowly lowers, face disappearing into the shadow once more.

Stars.  He’s so handsome and no one has ever told him, fucking dreamy and the biggest grump you’ve ever met.  Without being able to see him, you already want to reach your hands out and touch him, drag your nails through his scruff and force him to extend outwards into the moonlight again for you.  Whenever he does end up showing you his face, you know right fucking now that you’ll never be able to look away.  For the rest of your life, you’ll be staring at him, apologizing blankly for your rudeness but not feeling sorry at all.

Din leans down and gives you a slow, gentle kiss, finally relaxing into a slouch and breathing hard with the effort it took to shatter you with pleasure.

“The kid is with the other foundlings,” he whispers against your lips.  “You… you’ll have to go get him, I need to grab my armor.”

You squeeze around his cock, pulling at the fabric of his robes and ignoring him for just a second.  He fucked you in robes belonging to one of the guards and nobody has mentioned it, you need to say something.  “Where did you get this?”

“I found it,” he tells you after a moment, kissing up under your jaw.  Oh fucking Maker, he feels so good and perfect inside you, shoulders so broad and crowding you on the floor, and his lips are plush and hot, brushing and fitting your skin like it’s just an extension of his own.  “Some guy was wearing it.”

It takes you a second.

“Mando,” you suddenly gasp in quiet horror, pushing at his chest and trying your best to detach his mouth from your throat.  It’s so much more difficult than it needs to be, but you eventually succeed.  “What did you do to him?  Where is he?”

He lifts his neck up just the tiniest bit, turning his face towards yours under the hood and holding still for way too fucking long.  He’s too close to see the expression he’s making, but you know the tone of his silence.  He’s in trouble and he knows it before you do.

“Ma—”

“They’re in a closet,” he admits at the very same time, completely monotone.

You don’t know which word to emphasize.  A fucking closet?  They’re?  Plural?  Instead of stressing any particular word, you decide not to do it at all and it ends up just coming out in the same exact blank tone as him.  “They're in a closet.”

“Inside the Temple,” Din continues on when you lay still as a statue underneath him.  His head slowly dips down once more, pushing his hips against you just the slightest bit to make you remember the cock still inside you instead.  Your eyelashes flutter with it—fuck, focus—“I didn’t know there’d be more than two.”  He kisses your neck so gently.  “It was an accident.”

You don’t say anything at all, your mouth pinching down at the corners because it should but your heartbeat galloping with how… fucking sexy he is.  You shouldn’t encourage this, this horrible behavior just to get close enough to catch you, but your curiosity overtakes you and you ask a question you’ve asked yourself before.  “Did they put up a fight?”

“Mm,” he whispers noncommittally, rocking his hips down once more.  “You did.”  Your nails dig into his chest, making him falter just slightly before slowly kissing your neck again.  “Did so good.  Fought hard, outsmarted me.  Pretty fucking girl.”

And then your eyes pop open as you feel it.  His cock suddenly beginning to harden once again inside you, twitching and gradually gaining a thicker shape, and for a moment, you actually fucking consider it.  He’s the only one in this galaxy that could not only ruin you on these sacred grounds, but then coax you into doing it more than once—stars, are you actually considering it?

“We can’t,” you automatically tell him, but it’s fucking pitiful.  Zero effort, absolutely no umph behind it, leaving it entirely up to him and how much he wants it.  Your logic reminds you that the kid is probably wreaking havoc in the nursery and there are tied up guards in the fucking temple that could be discovered any second.  You shouldn’t have even let him fuck you here in the first place, but…  ���Mando, we can’t—”

His mouth opens against the crook of your neck and his tongue brushes velvet hot on your skin, tasting the glistening sweat there and not moving his broad figure a single inch over you besides getting closer, deeper.  Your nails dig into his collarbone, aiming for reason one last time.  It’s apparent that you’d be better off rephrasing, knowing the challenging streak in him and how much telling him what to do doesn't help.

“It’s not a good idea,” you attempt instead, breathless and trying not to move under his mouth and lazy hips.  “Not smart.  Bad idea to fuck again.”

Din’s body stops moving, even though he keeps getting harder.  His jaw opens and then his teeth scrape softly against your flesh, making you tilt your neck back and gasp.

“Later,” he lifts his head to state aloud, committing it to truth now that it’s been spoken and heard by another person.  “Later, I’ll fuck you on the ship, in our bed, when I can get you naked and have your taste in my mouth.”

Tingles rock through your body and you squeeze around his cock just as he pulls it out and tucks it back into his pants.  Your lungs quiver when you inhale—it’s shaky, but it reminds you of how long it’s been since you’ve been able to breathe correctly.

“Later,” you finally agree, combing your fingers through your hair and glad you have this hood to cover your freshly fucked dishevelment.  He came inside you and you don’t want to be leaking and getting your nice pretty robes all wet and stained, but then of course, without any prompting, Din quickly scoots back on his knees and drops his head down to take care of it for you.

***

Commotion.

After Din helped you clean up the way he sometimes likes and then disappeared to change back into his armor, you put your mask and hood back on and tried to look as casual as possible walking to the nursery.  Your knees wobbled slightly and you couldn’t stop smiling under the mask the entire walk there, but when you arrived, you just saw a dim room with sleeping infants—not what you were expecting.  Soon, however, you hear it: down the hall, distant and coming from the dormitories, you hear a loud commotion.

Fuck, you’re nearly wincing with every step you take now, and not because you’re sore.  Well, you… are, a little bit, but in a great way.  No, you’re just dreading the ridiculous shinanigans you already know are well underway, wondering if Din actually dropped the kid off in the dorms from the beginning or if he somehow migrated his way there to cause trouble.

When you walk inside, the first thing you see is a handful of crying and shouting toddlers, and while you can’t immediately spot your favorite floppy-eared monster, you don’t have to see him to know he’s probably standing tiny directly in the middle of this tense showdown.  Automatically, you’re taking a few steps forward to rescue him, but then you stop as soon as you see what the other babies are so mad about.  A large piece of chocolate leftover from the festival levitating just beyond their pitiful little reaches.

Hm.  Who could possibly be responsible for using demon powers to steal snacks and hold them hostage from a sizeable group of hostile children.  A mystery that may never be solved.

It makes you take a second.  The sheer… the… stars, you can’t even think straight—how fucking typical it is just hits you right in the chest, sends your heart into orbit.  Of course.  Of course this is what he’s gotten himself into without immediate supervision, of course this is the shipwreck you’d walk into, and you’re holding back a chuckle before making a single move to intervene.  In the midst of everything, you can hear adults approaching distantly from behind you.

“—don’t know where it came from, I was helping the younglings into bed when I heard the ruckus and I—”

The voices gradually grow louder, and you snatch the floating piece of candy out of thin air and whip around right before Sister Drya and Naydee walk in.  Their hushed, concerned conversation is cut to an abrupt end, and you clear your throat as they take you in, standing in front of chaos central continuing to go off behind you.  Do you… look as freshly disheveled as you are?  You’re not supposed to be here, you know, but hopefully the only strange thing is your presence itself and not anything concerning your appearance.

“Nerida,” the older lady suddenly announces, the name alone holding so much expectation, and the younglings missing their candy have now turned their ire towards you and the crinkly food wrapper hidden in your fist.  “What is the meaning of this?”

“Ah, yeah,” you stand up a little straighter, letting the chocolate casually fall out of your grip behind you, and a stampede of feet suddenly kick up to recover it.  It’s fine, nobody will know, it’s fine.  “It’s just…”  Your head tips behind you to the cause of the uproar, feeling a bit sheepish yet so incredibly fond.  “My… kid.”

Sister Drya stares at you for a few seconds, before tipping sideways and staring at the culprit.  “That is your child?”

You turn around just in time to see him, now abandoned by the angry mob of children, finally notice you.  All of a sudden, his pitch black eyes light up something bright and sunshiney, and you just start beaming in return.  What an adorable little creature, apple of your eye and pain of your ass.

“Yep,” you sigh, dropping into a squat and watching him barrel towards you, catching him right before he can trip over his brown potato sack and scooping him up into your arms.  “Hiya, bug,” you murmur with a grin, lifting back up and plopping him in his favorite spot in the universe—your left hip.  “You making friends?”

He giggles and it’s like sparkles and bubbles fill the room instead, wrapping tiny arms around the largest surface area he can get and clinging.  He laughs with a tiny open mouth, bless him, clearly not understanding the sarcasm, and suddenly your eyes feel just the slightest bit wet.  No, you’re not crying, don’t be fucking ridiculous, but you missed him like hell and he’s just the cutest fucking thing—why do you feel like crying?

“Sorry about that,” you apologize to the two women while slowly turning around, brushing your thumb over one of his cheeks and smiling as it squishes.  “He’s… uh.  Not great at sharing.  We’ll work on it.”

Takes after his dad, you purposefully leave out, just a different kind of sharing.  Din hasn’t shown you his full face yet and the kid performs magic tricks to taunt a roomful of children a fraction of his age for a single piece of chocolate, completely different kind of sharing.

Sister Drya says something in response, but when you look up to address her, all you see is Din standing silently behind her and Naydee, slowly dropping his hand from his helmet to his side.  They don’t seem to notice he’s there and you automatically try your best to pay attention to the Sister speaking to you, but your eyes get caught on the silver reflecting in the dim light beyond.  Fuck, he’s a presence.  An immediate distraction, taking all your focus with a single glimpse.  Seeing him fully armored again, staring at you from the silent shadows behind everything… you melt a little bit, knowing that you’ve seen more of what’s underneath than anyone.  Your shoulders settle and your entire body burns warm, wobbly like the air around a fire, and one of the kid’s hands leaves you to reach out towards his dad.

You watch the metallic helmet tilt sideways after a moment, saying everything without saying anything.  Come on, make up an excuse, let’s get out of here.

Looking at him in the quiet shadows, you’re reminded once again about how much you love him, how much softness you have inside you for a man so hard, so guarded.  And, for the first time, a voice in your head finishes a poem you didn’t realize you were writing, adding its own verse and bringing everything back around to the beginning.  He loves you, too.  How much he lets his guard down for you, the way he’s revealed more of his face to you than not.  You love each other.  You’re family.

So, all at once, you decide to mess with him, because that’s what family does best.

“Don’t be shy, come say hello,” you suddenly urge his silent figure, taking a step forward and speaking directly to him.  “Sister Drya, Naydee, I’d like to introduce you to my—”

It’s remarkable, you see it happen in front of you.  Like he has powers of his own, Din just literally fucking disappears.  Like magic, he’s nowhere to be found within a blink of an eye.  You know he’s capable of it; he’s done it plenty of times during the chase just to fuck with your head, but you’re staring straight at him when it happens this time and it might just be the funniest fucking thing you’ve ever seen him do.

Sister Drya and Naydee both turn around to an empty hallway bathed in shadows and you laugh.  A deep, shameless, loud belly laugh.  Where the fuck did he go so quick?  You were staring straight at him and you have no fucking clue.  He’s just out, and you’re left alone with his child and the unspoken understanding that he’ll just catch up with you later.

You’re giggling even as you shake your head and give the women your genuine thanks for keeping you and feeding you these past few days, grabbing your backpack with all your belongings and eventually using three green fingers to wave goodbye to them.  The very first thing Din says when he seamlessly joins you outside the Keja later is, “That wasn’t funny,” which just makes you laugh harder.

***

About a half hour has passed, and you’re walking along a dirt road, cradling a very happy baby in your arms and giving the grown man next to you an incredibly hard time.

“You’re unbelievable,” you mutter, your back twinging slightly at the way you’re leaning about as sideways as you can get without falling over.  You think you’re basically just the hypotenuse between the ground and Din, who easily supports almost your entire weight with your backpack slung around his far shoulder and readily allows you to rest against him.

“They’re fine,” he grumbles in response, squeezing you tight to his side.  You just have to focus on moving your feet; it’s like he’s practically carrying your upper-half anyways.  “I gave them the night off.”

“You stuffed them in a closet,” you hiss, feeling his shoulder shrug under your cheek.

“I gave them the robe back,” he says, not really defending himself and more just throwing it out there to see if it helps any.  “I’m sure someone’s found them by now, they’re fine.”

Your eyes suddenly go wide, absolutely mortified at the thought.  “Wait.  What do you mean you gave the robe back?”

He shrugs once more, apparently not seeing the problem yet.  “I borrowed it, so I gave it back after I put my armor back on.”

If you could plant your feet on the dirt road and screech to a halt, you would, but all your weight is already resting on him and you’re working solely off his forward movement.  You just hope your tone holds the same amount of shocked disapproval your body language would’ve conveyed if you weren’t so completely attached to his hip like a parasite he adores.

“You fucked me wearing it, though.”  Your voice is strangely flat, so fucking confused and horrified by the mental image of him just tossing the soiled garments haphazardly somewhere in the temple behind you, or even worse, leaving them somewhere respectful, and Din soon stops in the middle of the deserted road.

“Oh,” is all he says, emotionless and blank through the modulator.  Did he not even consider this?

“I had to promise them I was a virgin just to sleep there, you know,” you admit, and you can tell that’s brand new information to him with how still he goes as you continue to lean against him.  You’re getting the feeling that he probably knows a lot more about your experiences on this moon than you think he does, but can tell that this is brand new information to him.  “And you locked three of their holy men in a closet, chased me across the temple grounds, fucked me in one of their robes, and then.  You gave it.  Back.”

Din stays perfectly silent for quite some time.  You can never go back to that place, you know this for a fact.  You’re banned forever now, it’s what you deserve.

Never one to be outdone but not actually having anything to say for himself, Din suddenly decides to just scoop you into his arms and boost up into the sky without a single word like an actual fucking maniac.

You squeal and damn near drop the baby because of it, but he cinches you tight to his chest and refuses to loosen with your struggle.  Eventually, after you realize he’s completely locked you in and you won’t fall to your death with this poor innocent child in your arms, you glance over the shiny pauldron on his shoulder and watch the kid’s crib disappear by the abandoned road as Din takes you higher and higher.

The crib—he forgot the crib—

“D-Din,” you stammer out through the whistling air, stiff as a board.  Stars, you have such a different sense of adventure than him; an explorer and a daredevil, one who gets a thrill from discovering the existence of the edge of a cliff and one who’ll take a running dive off of it without thinking twice.  He’s hit with blaster fire some days, he faces down death completely fearless like it owes him one every single time, and you’re stiff as a fucking board while he carries you through the sky.  It’s stunning up here, it’s exciting and wonderful, but you’re so scared that you can barely even look.  He’s giving you the most fantastical view, everything your budding adventurous streak could ever ask for, and your terror is crushing.  It would be different if you could hold on, but you’re responsible for not letting the baby slip through your arms and you just have to trust that he won’t let you slip through his.

You raise your voice.  “Din?!”

“I won’t drop you,” he automatically reassures, and well you sure as fuck hope not, but there’s something else.

“What about the crib?”  You call out over the wind whipping, tucking the baby tight to your chest and settling your hands over his ears to avoid them flapping and whacking you repeatedly in the chin.

“We’ll come back for it,” he responds, just as easily.  Maker, you wish decision-making came that easy to you, that commitment and choice should be so simple as to just fly away from things on the ground and promise out loud to come back for them.  You know he will, but still, his spontaneity shocks you after spending the past week thinking every decision through meticulously, and you’re taken aback by the casualness of it all while soaring through the sky, committing such spectacular feats without a single thought beyond it.

Soon—incredibly soon, which honestly kind of blows your mind—you spot Nariss glowing in the distance and then you’re flying overtop of the city, slowly dropping altitude in the middle of a quiet little side street.

Din carefully allows your feet to settle on the ground before letting go, but you still stumble a bit stupidly after flying so high without any sort of safety measure besides him, prioritizing the steadiness of the baby in your arms instead of your feet underneath you.  His gloves catch at your clumsy body and pull you along with him without another word, leading you out of the quiet alley and into the middle of a beautiful, luminescent street.

What’s he doing?  He seems slightly hurried, and you’re clueless but you go with it, clamoring along behind him to wherever he’s leading you.

Though, you suddenly remember one of the very last things you told him last night right before he steps up in front of a vendor.

“Caf,” Din grunts, sliding a few credits towards the man standing behind the counter. “The… biggest one you have.”

Okay, well.  You could just about fucking cry.

“Y’sure?” The vendor asks skeptically, jerking his head at the large thermos behind him.  He’s balding, wearing a white outfit with his eyes scrunched up and forehead sweaty, likely working all day.  “It ain’t fresh.  Closin’ up soon, was just about to trash it and go home.”

The helmet turns to gauge your response to the news, the sharp angles and contours looking so sleek and dangerous as they reflect the colorful lamplights, but just filling you with comfort beyond anything in the entire galaxy.  He’ll take that armor off for you tonight and you’ll sleep next to him.  He’ll call you by your given name, or the fond name he’s given you, and you’ll cuddle your baby on a metal floor in hyperspace with him, and all will be well.  Even if he needs to leave again soon—even if you don’t get to go with him, you’ll always have these small eternities with each other, and that’s more enough for you now.

You’re completely zoned out while staring at him, and Din turns back to the vendor before you can even remember the conflict he was attempting to defer to you.

“Yeah, just empty the whole thing in there for her,” he mutters, and you want to marry him.  It’s been a long week, and in your haze and delight of being with him in this gorgeous setting, your brain turns to cavewoman mush.  Big man, makes me happy.  Strong man, loves me, knows me.  Provider, makes me feel good, protector, loves me.

Din hands you the large cup of steaming caffeine, clueless to your grunted inner monologue but knowing better than to reach out and grab the kid from your other arm.  You’re just fine like this, hands full, the little frog snuggled up against your side and blinking up at your face instead of any of the shiny or glowing things around you.  When you look down at him, you can see the world through his eyes—quite literally, they’re reflective and gigantic—and his father’s hand quickly finds its preferred spot on your lower back.

“Try to drink it quick,” Din advises you gruffly, pulling you snug into his side and sloshing the big cupful of piping hot liquid in your hand.

“It’s a thousand degrees,” you protest, trying to balance your three favorite things in the universe all begging for your direct attention at once.  “It has to cool down.”

He gives a dismissive hm in response, and you frown even as your heart soars with how tightly he’s gripping you, how little leeway you have to even move without him.  Part of you is so thrilled at being reunited with him that you consider snarking something back at him, excitement making you brave.  He could probably chug boiling hot liquid in thirty seconds and doesn’t see the point in letting it sit any longer, and you could make some stupid joke about filtering it through his helmet or having a built in bendy straw but you decide to keep it to yourself.

So then you just stand there together, under stringed lights and flowers everywhere, and he waits.  Holding you glued to his side, completely silent and clearly just waiting for your caf to stop steaming so threateningly in your hand so you can drink it.  For some reason, the fact that he’s wanted by the New Republic doesn’t really register at this second—you’re not looking for cops, though he may be.  You’re just lost in this beautiful, fancy city that’s on the edge of finally quieting down after a long day, and you’d like to see more of it with him next to you.

“Well, do you wanna just…”  You ask, tilting your head around at all the vendors.  “Shop around for a bit?”

“Shop… around,” Din repeats slowly, sounding the words out like they’re not common Basic.  Admittedly, they do sit a bit awkward in his voice when put together like that, describing a phenomena he’s likely never even considered a thing before, but it’s so fucking pretty here and you’d like to show him something this time instead of the other way around.

“Yeah, like,” you shrug a shoulder, tipping your head in a random direction.  Anywhere, you’ll go literally anywhere with him, the three of you can go explore.  “Just wander around, and look at all the pretty things.”

From where you’re standing right now, you can already see glittering crystals and jewels being sold at the tent across the street, there’s a booth dedicated entirely to floral arrangements and crowns next to it, you can hear a distant quartet playing melodically in the distance and a couple is being painted by an artist on the corner.  Bars are in full swing at this point, as if they weren’t all day, and even though the merchandise is all different, the multicolored tents look slightly similar when they’re underlit with multicolored lights.  It’s less slightly lively than it was in the daytime, but also… more beautiful, in a sense.  Muted, softer, more romantic.

“I don’t have any more credits,” Din admits casually, finally turning to look around at everything.  You get the feeling that he’s just now seeing it, even after spending the entire day here.  “That stale caf was the last of it.”

Money well fucking spent, you can assure him of that.

“It’s okay,” you tell him automatically, gently bumping your hip into his.  “We don’t need credits, we can just look.”

So that’s what you do.  Even though it’s completely not his fucking style, for the next hour or so, you just walk around downtown with him and sip your caf, looking at anything and everything new and experiencing it with him.  At first, you think he’s just entertaining you, following you while you discover new streets and attractions, but then he points out different things and you know he's looking, too.  There are large animals harnessed up and pulling carts for people to ride, there's an enormous spinning wheel set up in the distance, its colorful lights flickering out as soon as you ask what the fuck that is and why anyone would ever get inside one.

You eventually end up finishing your caf around the time he’s leading you back through a quiet, abandoned alleyway, and you hand him the empty cup to throw away in one of the trash cans on the corner.  The conversation has faded to a comfortable quiet and you don’t really need to ask—you go willingly, not requiring anything beyond his hands on you and the baby dozing in your arms.

“Come on, sweet girl,” he murmurs, gently sweeping you up into his.  You sigh, glad he’s giving you a moment to prepare yourself this time, holding the sleeping kid securely to your chest and resting your head on his shoulder.  “Let’s go home.”

After you’re comfortable, Din rockets up from the ground and climbs high up into the canvas sky.  He disappears with you and the baby into the pastel clouds above, making it back to the Razor Crest in probably about an hour, maybe less.  You and the baby do nothing more than climb into the comfy floor blankets while Din starts up the engines, and you think you’re dozing off together by the time he makes the pit stop to collect the crib and the jump into hyperspace.

You think he might shower?  You’re not sure—you just know he moves up behind you in bed at one point without any armor, burying his face in your hair while you cuddle the sleepy kid to your chest.  It’s dark in the hull, Din’s palms are bare and warm as they slide around the front of your body and he breathes you in, and there isn’t a single place that can touch you here, not a single place you’d rather be.

Home.

***

@followwhereshegoes​ Thank you for the stunning artwork! 💕To anyone interested in possibly doing an art collab in the future, please message me!!

[classic80sand90smovieloves2]

Meeting and Dating Casper McFadden

(Not my gif)(Requested by anonymous)

- Moving into a new home was never easy. Oftentimes, it meant packing up everything you owned, leaving a bunch of good memories behind, and traveling across the country to a new town where you’d have to make all new friends and renovate old fixtures.

- But there was something about your new house that made it both easier and harder to live in: the fact that it was haunted.

- Obviously your family didn’t find out about the ghosts until after they’d signed the papers and even if they were warned about it, they probably wouldn’t have believed the realtor, but none of that mattered now. Now you were stuck in a old house with a bunch of spirits, stuck until your parents save up enough money to move again.

- So what made the manor easier to live in, you may ask. Well, the fact that it came with a friend….

- You and Casper meet the day you move into the Whipstaff Manor. You’re wandering around, exploring the home and trying to figure out which room you want to live in, unaware that there’s a specter following you.

- The minute Casper sees you, he’s head over tail. You make his undead little heart race and have him second guessing his every action. Which is the main reason it makes him a while to formally introduce himself, he’s too scared that he’ll ruin his first impression.

- Sadly for him, his first impression still doesn’t go over well, regardless of how much he practiced.

- In his defense, it wasn’t anything that he did, it was more the fact that you were suddenly face to face with a phantom. Anyone would have freaked out in response to that, and they would have freaked out to any ghost as well; no matter how friendly.

- So, like the rational young woman that you are, you scream and take off like a rocket, dashing out of the room and down the hall to find a more secure and safe looking room to hide in until your parents get back from the store.

- He follows behind, attempting to calm you down and feeling downright awful for scaring you. Once you’ve locked yourself away into a broom closet, he gives you a minute to breathe before he calls out to you, telling you that he’s sorry and trying to coax you out so that you can talk.

- It takes you another minute to be convinced and to trust him when he says he isn’t gonna hurt you, but eventually, you do brace yourself and open the door.

- Once you do, you find that he really isn’t as scary as you’d originally though he was. In fact, he was actually sort of cute; in a cartoony sort of way, and he’s friendly to boot; so you wind up feeling a bit silly for being so frightened of him. And after you begin to think like that, the two of you begin to develop a close friendship.

- While his uncles might be incredibly obnoxious and annoying, you can’t deny that you enjoy having the ghostly presences in your home; especially when school roles around and you find yourself feeling like an alien with no one to turn to. You might not have any living friends in your town but you at least have a few see through ones at home that ensure you’re not completely alone.

- But, compared to your primarily platonic feelings, Caspers feelings for you were a lot more complicated. He valued your friendship and enjoyed having you as a pal, but he also had more romantic feelings towards you. In simpler terms: he’d had a massive crush on you from the moment you walked in.

- And though he’d have loved to confess his feelings and see if you felt the same, he knew that it was practically impossible for the two of you to be together; at least until you’d died …or until he was alive again!

- The minute he remembers the Lazurus he immediately erupts into a fit of excitement and joy. If you could get it to work, he could be alive again and the two of you could be together for the rest of your lives, either as friends or as something more, he honestly didn’t care which; though he hoped it was the second one.

- So he tells you about the invention and the two of you get to work. You take the wild trip down to his fathers lab, search around until you find what you’re looking for, load the contraption up with it’s necessary elixir, and pull the levers with bated breath.

- You don’t know what you’d expected to walk out of the machine but it certainly wasn’t this. Perfectly done blond hair, shining blue eyes, and a face that made you suddenly flustered to be in your best friends presence. He looked like a Disney prince and you were captivated.

“How do I look?” He asked nervously.

“Perfect,” you responded a little too quickly. “I mean, human, normal …living.”

- His face broke out into a smile and he threw his arms around you, pulling you into a tight hug. The action caught you off guard and made your heart race but you didn’t mind in the slightest.

- Once you’d finished hugging, he pulled away slowly and you found yourselves locking eyes. His gaze flickered to your lips and before you knew it, the two of you were leaning forward and sharing a kiss.

- His uncles may or may not have interrupted you but the “damage” was already done. You were just as hooked on him as he was on you and neither of you could be happier.

- Casper loves pda. He loves being able to actually touch you and be out in public and show the whole town that the two of you are together; even though half of them are confused as to who he is. 

- He touches you and holds you close whenever he can. He’s waited to do it since the moment he met you and now that you’re together; and he isn’t ice cold and only semi-solid, he enjoys every little ounce of affection he can provide and obtain.

- Handholding.

- Cheek kisses. 

- Long, soft kisses. They’re sort of a contrast to his usual hyper behavior, which is why, if you ever need him to calm him down and focus, all you have to do is ask for a kiss or make it obvious that that’s what you’re going to do. He skids to a stop and happily complies as he gives you an adorable little smile.

- Pet names aren’t really his thing but he does call you by fun nicknames that he’s come up with; usually a shorter or longer version of your name.

- Cuddling is a must with Casper. He absolutely loves it, no matter how the two of you do it. Sometimes you’ll lay on his chest, other times you’ll spoon, and other times you’ll face each other on the bed and talk until one of you dozes off.

- Speaking of: he definitely watches you sleep every now and again, which sounds far more creepy than it actually is. Like, you’ll be talking late at night and you’ll fall asleep and he’ll just look at your peaceful face for a while.

- If we’re going with the assumption that Casper maintains some of the aspects of being a ghost, I think it’s safe to say that he’s occasionally at least a little cooler than a normal human, which makes him the perfect companion for hot days.

- Being carried and flown around.

- Sometimes; especially prior to him being in the Lazurus, he forgets that you’re not a ghost and gets you into some uncomfortable situations. And after he turns human again, he definitely has to get used to not being able to go through walls and have things go through him when they’re thrown or fall.

- Testing out exactly what he’s still capable of doing and if there’s any limits to his new life. Is he perfectly normal? Does he have ghostly powers? Do the effects occasionally wear off during certain times or seasons? It’s all stuff you have to figure out.

- For a while after he’s brought back to life, he spends all day experiencing everything he missed when he was still alive. All the smells, sights, and touches; he runs around like Jack Skellington while you sit back and watch with a smile.

- Going to the mall. It’s one of his favorite places to visit, he just loves the entire atmosphere of the place; especially since he wasn’t really able to go and enjoy everything about it before he turned human again.

- Tv dates.

- Playing different games with each other. Board games, pirates, video games, you name it, he’ll do it.

- Sitting on top of the lighthouse with him.

- Enjoying the view from outside of the manor. You have the perfect view of the ocean from your garden so the two of you can always throw a blanket down and stare out at the sea together.

- Just goofing off with each other. Running around the house together, sliding down the stairwell, having him push you in a chair down the halls, etc. You’ve got a huge house to mess around in, why not take advantage of it?

- Dancing together. He told you he was a good dancer.

- Late night conversations. You can always talk to him about anything you want or need to.

- Catching him watching you a lot. He always has such a loving gaze when he’s looking at you, just seeing his face when he’s watching you do something or speak is reassurance that he really cares about you.

- Always having a warm and excited greeting when you return home from school. He also probably occasionally goes with you or at least walks you there or visits during lunch.

- He loves making surprises for you. Throwing you little parties or coming up with different ways to make you smile or cheer you up after school or whenever he can see that you’re feeling down is one of his favorite hobbies.

- He wants to be with you like 25/7 so don’t be surprised if he’s constantly bothering you with his presence. It’s a good thing you love him because if you didn’t he’d become very annoying, very quickly.

- Him just appearing at random is commonplace so your parents and you definitely have to take some time to get used to it. I mean he lives in your house and now that he’s human again, it’s definitely a bit easier than when he was a ghost, but still.

- Getting chairs pulled out and doors opened for you. He likes being a gentleman.

- Him cooking for you. He definitely tries to impress you with his skills and all the inventions he uses; and he just likes doing something nice like that for you.

- Discovering all his dads inventions and letting him tell you about them. It’s really quite fascinating to see how they all work and how excited he gets while showing you how to use them.

- I have a feeling that he doesn’t like winter; for obvious reasons, and whenever it comes around, all he wants to do is stay inside with you and do indoor activities. If you were to want to go out, it’d take you a while to persuade him and even if you did; or were only going out by yourself, he’d spend forever bundling you up and making up a bunch of rules to keep you safe.

- Probably dealing with his ghostly self every now and again. I have a feeling that the Lazurus machines effects occasionally wear off for a little while from time to time so while he’s alive most of the time, you do have moments of spooky transparency as well.

- Pranking each other and other people. He might be a sweetheart but he also has a bit of a mischievous streak.

- Him always wanting to show you whatever cool thing he sees, does, finds, or hears about. Just being able to share things with you makes him happy.

- Listening to his stories from when he was alive or the decades he wasn’t.

- Fixing up his room for him and hanging out up there with all his toys.

- Being gifted some of his mothers things. Dresses, jewelry, stuff like that.

- His uncles bothering the two of you. They’re constantly harassing and teasing you; just try to pay them no mind.

- Standing up for him when his uncles are being more awful than usual.

- He might be the only person you can really bond with in your town, considering the fact that whenever you have anybody over, they’re almost always harassed by his uncles and scared away. Which Casper may or may not be sort of happy about.

- Casper gets jealous pretty easily. Anytime another guy takes interest in you, he always feels the need to mock them behind their backs or be passive aggressively not so friendly whenever they approach you when you’re out with him. It’s best to not bring up guys in your class unless it’s obvious that they only like you as a friend; but even then he’d wonder why you need friends (even if they’re girls) other than him.

- He’s sort of overprotective of you. He just got his life back so he certainly doesn’t want anything bad happening and putting yours in danger.

- He absolutely hates fighting so whenever the two of you have an argument, he’s always quick to try and settle it and apologize; even if he doesn’t really think he’s done anything wrong.

- Saying “I love you” isn’t really his forte. He prefers saying and doing other things to show you that he does.

- The two of you sort of just have to go with the flow and see where your relationship takes you. You don’t know how exactly the rest of his “life” will go so you just try to enjoy the present and what you have right now.

[ohheyitsokay]

Omg I'm SO sorry!!! I'm the soulmates pain AU anon, I was completely aware you were the one with the milestone!! I saw the post through Molly's rb and I was almost completely sure I had opened your blog to send you the ask but alas, the Tumblr app can never give you any certainties. That long-ass message was completely dedicated to you, I still can't quite grasp how I managed to send it to scribbledghost 🙄🙄🙄 Sorry!!! Congrats again, I love you!!!!

for reference a Din Djarin x reader soulmate request where your soulmate feels your injuries and pain

hello, dear heart!

I wanted to say, before anything else, thank you. I've reread your words multiple times since you sent this, confirming they were to me, and they really mean the world to me. thank you so, so much! anyway, your idea is fantastic, I had a lot of fun with this one! I hope you like seeing what I did with your already wonderful thoughts 💕

ps it's well documented that I'm a big fan of sprawling thoughts, so please never apologize for sharing them!

warnings: mentions canon-typical injuries, a bunch of fluff. at least enough for a couple of throw pillows

>>

soulmate requests / follower celebration

<<

There's a short burn on his forearm when he wakes.

Din stares at it, wondering at the dull ache, trying to place the injury from yesterday's adventure when it hits him. Hot and golden warmth, flooding through his chest, thawing his flesh against the cold filtered air.

It's one of yours.

A burn, on his forearm.

And selfishly, indulgently, he pauses for a moment, mind slipping away from duty and expectations to dwell in the daydream of his soulmate.

First, his mind creates an image of a blurry mandalorian caretaker, gently moving around a kitchen in the covert. You stir a pot, tapping the spoon on the side before setting it down. Hearing distant calls, you turn too quickly and oh - a sliver of burn along your arm.

Din wants to help, wants to pull you away from the domestic .... danger, and he rushes forward. Your helmet turns to him and he almost sees it - before his mind can no longer produce the answers he aches for late at night.

The second image is of you, in armor as gleaming as his own, in a thick, unrecognizable forest. The hairs on his neck are at full attention, already subconsciously wanting to shout - but you don't need his help. You're breathtaking in all versions of his daydream - but watching you fight with practiced ease punches the air from his lungs. For a moment he feels self-conscious of his awkward maneuvers and slapdash fighting but then his mind pulls him back. You're protecting someone, or else you wouldn't have messed up - you never do, injuries from you are too rare - but you shove them behind you, shooting an enemy over your shoulder before your helmet snaps back. There are so many - you're surrounded - and a hot, sharp blaster bolt grazes your forearm before your fury is truly unleashed.

He runs his fingers over the burn, almost giddy at the possibilities.

Mandalorians are few and far between, but he's grateful he has a soulmate, and even more thankful you've kept yourself out of harm's way almost entirely, since you'd been connected.

As he dons his layers, the shine of his armor reflects bruises and scrapes littered across the expanse of his skin. His own, from his journey, and one beautiful little burn from his soulmate.

And then they're covered, and the armor is tied securely in place, and he leaves his daydreams in the room as the ship door slides unceremoniously shut.

-

You hiss at the burn, clutching your arm.

Great. Just what you needed - another injury to add to your impressive collection.

At least my soulmate gets a gift from me this time. You roll your eyes.

The vendor next to your stall is a sweet lady, already apologizing for her steaming pots and pans and offering you compensation.

The credits would be nice, but you could hardly justify taking anything, especially since it was your soulmate's fault your body was riddled with aches and pains in the first place.

Waving your hand, you accept her counter offer - a bowl of her perfect broth and noodles - before retreating. You sell cloth, from beautiful dyed lengths tucked away to sturdy, unstainable blacks, and it was days like today that you thanked your stars for that choice.

There's a thick pile in the middle that you perch on, sinking into the folds as your body cries at you, and you sigh over your soup in relief. The burden of waking to webbing bruises and sprawling scrapes and the more-than-occasional broken bone is eased by your stall - sitting and haggling until the sun goes down. That is, unless there's drama in the market, as it seems there is today.

In the distance you hear shouts, more than those of vendors selling meat on sticks to passing warriors and merchants - the taunts of drunkards.

Someone is coming, and you almost laugh when you see his form in the distance, because he's trying and failing to be inconspicuous. It's impossible, with his gleaming armor, but still he ducks into shadowy spots, forgetting - or maybe ignoring - their inhabitants.

"A Mandalorian has graced our market," your neighbor remarks dryly. They were respected, but it was well known that chaos followed them. You share a look, both wishing you were wealthy enough to conpletely pack up shop. If anything, a logical person would put away most of the stock and hunker down for a few hours. Weighing the odds was difficult: if you were lucky, the chaos wouldn't bother your business, and shoppers might be drawn out, hoping for entertainment and spending as they waited. If you weren't, a wayward burst of plasma or blaster fire would destroy your whole month's stock.

You looked at him again, the Mandalorian kneeling down the street. His form was... almost handsome, formidable but careful. He was light on his feet, seemingly with gentleness on his mind, and it drew you in like a moth to flame. You decided to stay, and hope for the best, your curiosity pulsing like your bruises.

And you were lucky, that day, because he ducked away not a moment later, taking the exciment with him.

Until, he came back the next day, this time on the prowl, stalking up and down the edge of Dicer's Row, one hand on his blaster and the other atop a bulky, wriggling bag. This time, you ventured to stand, folding and refolding your displays as you watched him through your lashes.

And then he made his move, and you sighed, feigning a yawn to cover your disappointment from your neighbor's knowing smile. She shouldn't be wiggling her eyebrows over the box wall between you - honestly his type were more annoying than anything. A crash from the alley confirmed it: there was no way a guy like that cared about his soulmate. The gentleness from before was surely a trick of the light.

Your whole side lit up with pain, the impact of something hard against your whole side and you groaned, settling into your mound again. Any curiosity or attraction was snuffed under your annoyance and pain, and your mood soured like fruit left unpicked on the tree.

Selfish, you thought, glaring as a chicken ran squawking from the commotion. What a jerk.

-

The next day, you tried to maintain the sentiment, huffing as he wandered the stalls.

Why does he keep coming back?

You'd have thought his time here was over when he'd dragged that lowlife out of town yesterday. But here he was, buying a crock of soup at the stall next to you, and ignoring her comments about how he couldn't eat it with his helmet on.

She had warmed to him, since he'd put money in her pocket, chattering in a way that kept him stuck for long moments.

It struck you as strange - he almost seemed too awkward to leave, like her returned generosity actually meant something to him. A man like him... surely could've just walked away.

But he stayed for awhile, nodding and looking at the spoons she carved in her free time, and you almost thought he was looking at you, too. Then he ducked his head and planted himself in front of you, and certainly he was.

For all the years you'd spent weaving words to sell your fabrics and goods, you'd never been so speechless. The Mandalorian was large, sharp, shining edges and bulky canvas packs tied to his shoulders - he seemed out of place, filling your whole stall, shuffling as he loomed over you.

He asked for soft brown things - children's clothes.

"Of course, I - I mean, yes, just over here -" you tripped over your words, caught completely off guard by the shape of him, the feel of him just an arms width away, and his request. You stumbled from your seat, nearly toppling in your hurry and his gloved hand wrapped around your arm, catching you.

"You're injured," he stated not really asking. It was... overwhelmingly intimate, him knowing, and acknowledging it, like he cared.

"Yeah, my..." you swallowed, trying not to get lost in the dark glass inches from your face. "My self-centered soulmate keeps getting himself nearly killed."

Even with your heart thumping in your chest, you couldn't keep the bite from your words, bitterness having collected over years of nursing injuries that were consequences of someone else's actions. He didn't let go of you for a moment, his helmet pulling back and tilting, like he was startled.

Then he was cautious, unbearably so, releasing his grip like a child freeing a captured creature when it was time. The topic was dropped, and he made his purchase quickly, but before he left, he paused. The Mandalorian's gloved hand ghosted over your cheek, slowly moving a hair back into it's place, and if you hadn't known better, it was almost an apology.

And then, thick cape swirling in the dust, tiny clothes in tow, he swept away, leaving you along with your whole body alight with a foreign longing.

-

Din felt as though he'd been stabbed.

Hot, hot feelings poured through his chest, spreading fast as fire as he desperately tried to sort through them.

You - you were incredible, fragile and bruised, with the most stunning, determined eyes he had ever seen. Not a Mandalorian, and you had a ... a soulmate, a fucker who left your skin littered with marks, burdening you with ...

He felt panicked, shocked, and guilty, just as he had when you'd told him. It had never occred to him that his soulmate might be there... out there, constantly burdened by his recklessness. His body screamed for attention, something he so often ignored, but this time, he was almost deafened by it.

His feet, legs, arms, chest, heart - all of them wanted him to return to you, in your little fabric stall. To... what? Truly, he hadn't the slightest idea, so his mind won out, shaking a little to try to reign in the muscles that he'd taught to obey him.

He couldn't go to you.

But, he couldn't stay away.

-

He was back in the market, and this time, he wasn't being subtle about staring at you.

Tall and ... slow, he waded through the crowds, making his was towards you like he was following a careful path.

"Can I help you?" You stood, moving almost involuntarily towards him. "Was there something wrong with my -" he was already shaking his head, hands reaching to make you shush.

Waiting, an irrational part of your mind wished he would touch you again, would place his big hands on your skin and sooth the aches that haunted your life. It was unfair, but you didn't stop it, couldn't if you tried.

Carefully, he slid a single finger to your arm, pushing up your sleeve to reveal the little burn you'd gotten.

He was being gentle. It made you want to stomp your feet, jealously welling up in your heart like bile, bitter and hot. How could it be, that someone so powerful had learned so quickly, wanted to, and he wasn't - he wasn't even your -

Then he moved again, pushing up his own sleeve and your thoughts tumbled over each other. It was intimate, even more than before, desperately trusting, as his skin near glowed in the morning light. And there was a burn on his skin, hairs singled like they'd met the edge of a pot of boiling broth.

You wanted to punch him. This man has spent years tossing his body around like he had one one spare, making your own as brittle as bread crust and - you wanted to kiss him. This man had learned after a single day, the impact of his actions, and had been nothing but kind.

The forehead of his helmet pressed into yours, and the two sides of your mind compromised.

Later, words would come - they had to.

But now, your eyes closed, and you sighed. He had the rest of your life to make it up to you - and he would, you were sure.

<<

taglist:

@fangirl-316 @scribbledghost @writeforfandoms @beautyagegoodnesssize @princess76179 @mrsbentallmadge @horton-hears-a-honk @saradika @zinzinina

[kedreeva]

So, I saw you say in your last-ish ask response that (it sounds like) you basically took the characters from TW and little else for Final Pack? Assuming that I read that right, then why write it as fic and not spin it into something original? Like, I guess I'm really asking, how do you let go of the "original > fic" mindset enough to just let yourself write fic instead of turning things into original stuff? Or was that never a problem for you?

I mean the short answer is that I wanted to write a story about those people, and I wanted to write it for the other people who already like those people.

Like with final pack, the story was never at any point “I want to write an original story about a post apocalypse where some human runs around learning about supernatural creatures” and I just subbed in some other characters instead of making my own. The story was ALWAYS “I want to see how Stiles and Derek, specifically, would interact in an AU of what happens after the 2012 apocalypse, if it was a supernatural apocalypse and they hadn’t met before.” And back when I started, there were a lot of people around who would have enjoyed that exact story, and I wanted to share it with them. Maybe I could have done it as an original from the start, but that was not ever the point of it.

The long answer is several answers, really.

Writing is a hobby, not a career for me. I want it to be fun. I want to enjoy doing it. I don’t want to do it for money, though I don’t mind getting money for having done it or donating it so that others get money (like charity auctions!). With original work there’s often a huge push to go get ~Published~ and ~sell your story~ and I’m just... not into it. Like maybe someday I would like to have some original stuff written and self-published so people could have a copy if they wanted, but it would be me writing the stories for me first, not me writing to make money. Capitalism is already so insidious in everyone’s lives that it’s nearly impossible to find a hobby that someone isn’t screaming at you to monetize. But you CANNOT monetize fanfic and in fact people get REALLY MAD if you try and that pleases me GREATLY. I LOVE having a hobby that capitalism can’t really touch because it shot itself in the foot with copyright laws.

I also don't particularly care for character creation; I love caring about characters but it's so much work to make whole entire people and then get to know them. I don't watch a lot of new TV for the same reason. It's just a lot of work I don't actually need to do, to tell a story I want to tell. But you know what I DO love? Worldbuilding. Fuck yeah that’s the good stuff. I love building worlds and I LOVE setting up complicated plots if I can. But I also love a good one shot that just sort of puts a magnifying glass to something I want to touch more. I don’t feel like I should have to create a whole new set of original characters and a world and a plot every time I want to make some trope play out.

Usually when I write fanfic, the story is a result of my love for the characters. When I write original, the characters are a product of the story. If you remove them from that story, then they're no longer those characters because they don't exist anywhere else. When I'm the one making the source, the source is... limited, in a way. Those characters can only belong to one source, and the rest is not their story (even if a million people write stories with those characters later). But when I write fanfiction, the source is already determined and I can just use the characters in any story without worrying that doing so will fundamentally change the source material. 

I also have a great love of examining people. I can write an original and examine those characters once, maybe more if I wrote sequels, but I cannot take them out of their world. But I can write fanfiction and I can twist and turn them a hundred times if I want, and see how a bunch of different stressors and settings affect them (I mean obviously how I THINK it would affect them based on what knowledge I have of them). This is a lot of fun for me! It's basically a puzzle with no final answer and that's hugely enriching for my little gremlin brain. And if it loses interest, I can always find another set of characters for it to chew on.

Another thing is like... There's obviously a difference between original fiction and fan fiction, but it's not "one is worse/lesser" so much as "one is a different genre with different goals." You can argue that, like, science fiction is better than westerns, but in the end they're actually just different and meant for different readers. Original fiction is great, but it can't really be compared, because it wants different things; both to accomplish different things and to get different things from the readers. If you like a character or a world or a trope, you can only get so far reading original fiction. You get one story, or maybe a couple stories, and then that’s it, and they might be absolutely perfect and amazing, but it’s still over once the source is consumed. And that one story often involves a great set of things like a cool setting or an interesting plot, but because of the way mass consumption works, it necessarily often does not contain other things like in depth character studies or campy tropes or major fluff or major angst, domestic situations, character death, or, like.... smut. Fanfiction means if you like that character or that setting or that plot, you can write about them as many times as you like in as many ways as you like AND you haven’t got to go through an editor in order to have it or give it to others. You can slap that bad boy up on AO3 and start screaming about it with friends and readers the hot second they’ve gotten through it.

Which brings me to my last point.... fanfiction allows you to interact with a community immediately. With original fiction, you a) have to wait until you’ve finished writing the whole thing, which is miserable for me b) even if you DO finish writing everything and publish your story, now you still can’t really interact like a fan, you can’t read fanfiction or meta or anything because if you ever wanted to write more, you could be accused of plagiarizing your ideas (even if they were yours to begin with), c) you have to convince people to put in the effort of getting to know your characters and world and plot before you can interact at all, which is exhausting and may or may not happen even after all the work and d) you literally cannot write fanfiction of your own stuff.... its not really fanfiction at that point, it’s apocryphal text. And if there’s any sort of fandom to speak of, it WILL start problems. I hate problems. Problems are the worst!! I have enough of them.

So I dunno. It’s a whole thing, I have way more feelings about it, but I’m tired and my head’s killing me.

If you’re asking me why I don’t write originals, the answer is usually “because I don’t want to.”

If you’re asking how you, too, might be able to get over it and write fanfiction, the answer is “write what makes you happiest.” Maybe that’s not fanfiction. Which I guess makes that bad advice for how to get over it and write fanfiction, but there it is.