#hence how the size measurments got slightly fucked

[victoriacoffee]

MINECRAFT LECTERN COMPLETE!!

[evening-starlight]

Daddy’s Best Friend

I’ve gotten really into this story so updates are coming in QUICK

All Work Master List

DBF Master List

5

Word Count: 1942

    "Armel?" Amaris asks, shock taking over her face as her ex stands in front of her, in New York with that precious smile that made her fall for him in the first place. "How.." She shakes her head to try and get her bearings. "How did you find me?"

    Armel chuckles, tilting his head to the side as he answers, "You're not as secretive as you think you are, Mon Amour. There are many Amaris Clarke, but only one you." Amaris blushes at the pet name he gave her in Paris the second day they knew each other.

    Their romance started fast, meeting in the cafe she frequented, and he worked at. He bought her a coffee when he left his shift, writing his number on the cup before setting it down and leaving without a word. They toured France together, Armel showing Amaris his birth town and beautiful places tourists don't frequent. He took her breath away from the very first day, but nobody could keep her attention as long as Tom could.

    Amaris says she broke up with Armel because she didn't want him to see the lifestyle America thinks she leads, but deep down, it was because he wasn't Tom. She won't admit it to herself yet.

    "Oh, come in, come in." Amaris gestures, opening the door wider for Armel and his one black suitcase. "Why.. why'd you come?" She asks after the door is closed behind the brunette.

    "Who could leave such a smile without a fight?" Armel asks in a thick French accent, laying a soft hand on her cheek with a faint smile on his face. "I did as you did. I got a study program at, uh," He thinks over the college name. "Ehn-yu?"

    "NYU?" Amaris corrects. He nods with a bright smile.

    "Oui." Armel steps closer to Amaris, hand still on her face. "You are a treasure, Mon Amour. I was depressed when you left and remembered, 'ah-hah,'" He acts out his thought process with a finger up in the air, something Amaris found endearing about him. "She adores romance. Hence," He gestures himself up and down, then to her. "New York."

    "Who the hell is at the door?" Danica yells, entering the foyer with a huff. Her tone changes quickly when she sees the handsome french man in the front. She smoothes out her wrinkled pajamas and tucks a stray hair behind her ear. "Oh, hello there." Danica walks towards them and offers a hand to Armel. "I'm Danica. And you are?"

    Armel takes Danica's hand and presses a soft kiss to her knuckles, causing the twenty-year-old to giggle like a schoolgirl.

    "Armel. I am Amaris's..."

    "Friend from Paris," Amaris interrupts Armel, not wanting to explain their complicated relationship just yet. "He flew in to surprise me." Danica eyes Armel up and down, a flirty look evident on her face. Amaris rolls her eyes, slightly annoyed her younger sister is trying to flirt with a boy she met first.

    Danica shifts her focus back to the eldest sibling. "Your omelet is getting cold. So if you want to lose, stay out here talking to this cute guy." Amaris sighs and slips her hand into Armel's.

    "Grab him a fork; I want him to taste the monstrosity you call food." Danica sticks her tongue out at her and skips off to the kitchen. "I'm so sorry, but you're about to meet my family." Armel shrugs, tightening his grip on Amaris's hand like if he lets go, she'll leave once again.

    "I assume. This is family house." Amaris giggles at his broken English. He wasn't fluent but knew more than enough to get by with her family. They start walking towards the kitchen, where Amaris can hear Juno and Danica arguing how only siblings can over which fork is better. "Is omelet the one I taught you?" Armel asks as they get closer to the kitchen.

    "Of course, Cherie," Armaris slips back into the habit of calling him pet names. They get to the kitchen, and all eyes fall on them. "Guys, this is Armel. He's a friend from Paris who came to surprise me. He's gotten into study abroad with NYU." William stands up, sizing up the boy who's holding his daughter's hand. He offers a hand to Armel, who shakes it without hesitation and a bright smile.

    "Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Clarke. Amaris tells me much about you," Armel greets. William makes eye contact with Amaris, giving a slight nod. That was his seal of temporary approval. Armel made a good first impression on her dad, but the support can always be revoked.

    "Please, call me Will, son. Take a seat," Will offers, motioning to a seat next to Juno.

    "That's my dad's friend, Tom," Amaris starts to introduce her little family in order from right to left. "You already met the witch herself," She teases as she gestures to her sister.

    "Hey," Danica huffs, crossing her arms over her chest. Before she can retort, Amaris moves on.

    "Dad, and my youngest sibling, Juno." Juno gives a small wave, backing deeper into the chair behind them. They didn't like meeting new people when they know nothing about Juno and their situation. They'd much rather disappear. Although, if it was Amaris's friend, they should be alright.

    "Pleasure to meet you all," Armel smiles before taking his seat next to Juno. Tom looks the boy up and down. Of course, Armel was exactly Armais's type. Curly, tall, French. She always had a weakness for french accents; she's admitted as much herself. But why did she introduce her ex as a friend? Was Tom the only one who knew they were together in Paris?

    "Okay, try the next one," Danica shifts attention to the breakfast judging. When everyone took their first bite, their eyes roll back, and food-related moans leave them. "Oh, that's bullshit," Dancia fights, taking out a fork and trying a bite herself. She moans as well, followed by, "Fuck."

    "Armel, try the other one," Amaris suggests, handing him the plate. She obviously won, but she had to win fair and square. Armel takes a bite of Danica's omelet. It was tasty but not as delicious as Amaris's. "Alright, so who wins?" Amaris asks, already knowing the answer from the reactions she got.

    "Oh shut up, Mari. We all know your stupid omelet won." Danica pouts, including the jutted-out bottom lip. Everyone agrees the one on the red plate was superior. Amaris laughs with her hands in the air.

    "Those cooking lessons paid, did they not?" Armel asks, leaning on the counter with the damned smile that makes Amaris lose her breath every time. Danica gasps.

    "That's not fair! You had Paris cooking lessons," Danica complains. Amaris shrugs as she reaches for the orange juice she set out earlier. "I demand a recount with the new information." Amaris rolls her eyes as she brings the cup to her lips.

    "If my apartment is cooking lessons, Oui," Armel inputs, causing Amaris to choke on her sip. Danica looks between the two ex's, slowly putting two and two together.

    "Holy fuck, you two fucked didn't you?" Amaris starts to blush furiously, confirming Danica's suspicions. "Oh my God." Danica looks over Armel one more time. "I mean, I don't blame you, but ew," Danica continues her dramatic 'ews.'

    "Are you done now?" Amaris huffs, burning up from being under the spotlight. Danica holds up a waiting finger and throws out three more ew's for good measure. "You done?" Amaris asks again.

    "And finally, ewww." She pauses. "Now I'm finished." Danica smiles a pleased smile. She loves to torment her older sister, especially in front of the boys she likes. But, unbeknownst to Danica, she embarrassed her sister in front of two boys she likes.

    "You're the most annoying sister on the face of the planet," Amaris complains, starting the breakfast clean-up, picking up the empty plates that Juno and Dad finished off.

    "So you're saying I have to be more annoying than the annoying sisters in the center of the earth?" Danica quips, laughing at the murderous look Amaris shoots at her.

    "I literally hate you more than Cleo," Amaris mumbles as she moves around Danica towards Armel. "We're gonna be outside talking." She states quickly before grabbing his hand and dragging him down the hall and out the double french doors.

    "They do not know?" Armel asks once the door is closed behind them. Amaris shakes her head, leading Armel to the lounge chairs. "Why?"

    "I didn't know how to tell them I dated a boy they didn't know about for a year and left him in France." She shrugs, pulling her legs onto the chair so she could sit criss-cross. Armel nods, picking at his cuticles and avoiding her stare. "So, why'd you come looking for me?"

    Armel looks up at her, lips tight. He brushes a stray curl out of his face before confessing his love in French. Amaris stares back at him. They promised they wouldn't say those words unless they were truly meant, with the fact that she would be leaving in less than a year when they met. "I've searched a thousand lifetimes for a woman like you, Amaris. That's no thing to let go." Amaris feels guilty for feeling the joy she feels.

    Tom would never make a move on her; he has too much respect for William to take that chance. But it still feels like cheating to Amaris after he kissed her just the night before. Or maybe she felt guilty because she didn't feel guilty when she kissed Tom.

    Amaris repeats the confession in the same language Armel did, smiling when Armel jumps up and plants a passionate kiss on her lips. They kiss for a second before they hear someone clear their throat behind Armel.

    William stands there, hands across his chest looking strict, but really his heart was filling with pride and happiness for his daughter. From first impressions, this was a wonderful boy for his daughter. She deserved nothing but the best after her rough start in life without a mother figure helping her with the boy problems that came in her teen years.

    "Hi, Dad," Amaris draws out. Armel walks over to him, hands clasped in front of him in a begging pose.

    "Mr. Clarke, sir. I ask your blessing to date your wonderful daughter," Amaris covers her mouth with a finger to stop from laughing out loud at Armel's antics. Will looks back at his daughter with a raised eyebrow and smirk. He loved this kid instantly.

    "Only if you promise to treat her right," Will states in his best father voice he can muster at the pleading boy in front of her.

    "Of course, of course. Amaris is a goddess and deserves the world. I will give her as much as I can," Armel continues to gush. Will sets a hand on Armel's shoulder, smiling at the boy.

    "You have my blessing, Armel. I expect you at family dinner this Wednesday." Will says before walking back inside. Armel throws his hands up in the air like he won a championship boxing match and turns to Amaris, who continues to giggle at the scene that unfolded.

    Tom stands in the living room window, watching the blessing happen and feeling a pang of... jealousy? Why would she choose a kid when she could have a man like him? Tom shakes the thoughts out of his when he sees them kiss yet again. He should be happy that she found someone who made her giggle like that. So, why does he feel angry?

Taglist: @queenofallhobos​

[dershloop]

i wrote this while sick nd did edit it while slightly less sick so excuse and weird discrepancies LMAO

Title: Get Well Soon, Gumball

Words: 1698

Warnings: a bit of swearing, some self-esteem/body issues mentioned

Relationships: Glacier, background Plasma

“Are you sure you should be training today Cole? You don’t look so good,” Jay said hesitantly, looking over at his friend concerned for his health.

“Yeah dude, you look rough. I’m surprised Zane even let you get out of bed,” Kai chimed in, narrowly avoiding a hard blow to the head from the automated training dummy.

“Don’t say my name too loud guys, he didn’t,” Cole croaked, “I just can’t afford to take a day off.”

“What?” Kai exclaimed, purposefully being as loud as he could to try to draw Zane’s attention from inside the monastery. This time, however, he wasn’t as lucky in regards to dodging the dummy while also attempting to look after his best friend, letting it land a well-placed blow to his ribs. “Fucking hell, ow,” He groaned from his new position on the dusty ground, splaying out his arms in legs, letting out loud, long, laboured breaths as he attempted to lessen the pain.

“Oh my God, firefly are you ok?” Jay said, abandoning his kendo helmet and Shinai on the ground as he rushed over to his boyfriend to help him up. Cole walked over too, though with a lot less urgency, not even taking off his helmet or dropping his own Shinai.

“Ok you definitely need to get back in bed,” Kai said through laboured breaths to Cole, taking Jay’s hand and hoisting himself up with a wince as his side stabbed with pain “You didn’t even drop your Shinai. I’ve known you for years and even if you’re feeling rough you’re always one of the first to help us if one of us falls. You’re not well.”

“I heard shouting, is everything ok?” Zane called, walking out into the yard to the sight of Jay fussing over Kai and Cole stood, fully geared out and standing shakily, looking as if he wasn’t 100% sure where he was.

“You’re boyfriends being a little shit,” Jay said, looking over at Zane as he practically dragged Kai away from the yard and towards Nya and Pixal’s workshop to get some kind of medical help for his extremely bruised and possibly broken ribs.

“Yeah Z, he is not ok. You need to sort him out and get him in bed,” Kai wheezed, hobbling slightly.

“Kai shut up before you do yourself anymore damage. This dumbass probably just broke a few ribs and he still has the nerve to lecture Cole about being out of bed. I hope he feels better soon, I’ll come and see him after I’ve dumped him on Nya and Pix,” Jay said, beginning to attempt to drag Kai away.

“You know you love me really,” Kai coyly remarked, stilling wheezing slightly. Jay didn’t respond, but Zane could tell he rolled his eyes.

Zane panned his eyes over to his own sick boyfriend, who was still standing, fully kitted out in his Kendo training gear. Even his shinai was hanging loosely from his large hands. He looked genuinely awful, worse than he had that morning in fact.

“Before you say anything, I feel fine,” Cole croaked, letting out a long sniff afterwards.

“Cole Hence Brookstone I told you to stay in bed,” Zane said sternly, looking over at the quivering mess of a boyfriend who was currently stood in front of him.

“I know but-”

“No buts, you’re coming with me right now.”

Cole knew better than to continue to protest; in situations like this, Zane usually got his way. Whether or not it was rightly so was down to interpretation. He shuffled through the blurred hallways, not 100% sure where he was going. He knew a bed of some kind would be involved but the question of whose bed was a largely unanswered one considering his brain was 300% more concentrated on keeping him upright and at least semi-conscious. The room he was led into was dark; too dark to be Zane’s and it wouldn’t be Kai, Jay, Lloyd or Nya’s because that’d be weird. Even he was conscious enough to know it was his room.

“Here, I’ll sort out your gear and stuff just try to relax,” Zane spoke softly, taking the kendo helmet off and placing it to the side, doing the same with the rest of his gear and gi. He then began sifting through Cole’s wardrobe, pulling out a hoodie and sweatpants to change into. Only then did he let him back into bed. Cole frowned and looked up at Zane from his place in bed.

“Get in with me. I need my teddy bear,” Cole groaned, his voice gravelly and even deeper than usual. Zane smiled.

“Ok, just give me a second to change. I doubt I’ll be leaving here for a while so there’s no point in being in my gi,” He said, walking over to Cole’s wardrobe again and pulling out a t-shirt and shorts, quickly changing and climbing into bed with him, any thought of training for at least that day discarded. Cole quickly readjusted himself, scooching over onto Zane, wrapping his arms and legs around him, resting his head on his chest for warmth.

“Why’d you get out of bed? I told you I’d be back with tea soon.” Zane said softly, running Cole’s hair through his fingers, twirling strands around and watching as the light reflected off it, showing at least another 10 hues shining through. The deep blues, browns and midnight blacks mingled and danced with the golden light streaming in through the curtains. It was beautiful. He was beautiful. Even if he didn’t always think so. Zane would always be there to remind him that he was.

“I can’t afford a day off,” Cole said hoarsely, “I’m already not as thin as you guys, the more days I take off the worse it’ll get.” Zane furrowed his brow and thought for a moment, trying to fully process what Cole had just said.

“Are you… saying what I think you’re saying? Because if you are, I’m going to have to take evasive measures,” Zane said matter of factly. If Cole really did think him being bigger was a bad thing, there would have to be action taken.

“What? You know it’s true. If I stop working out I’ll just get fatter, I can’t take a day off,” He croaked sadly, biting his lip. His head was spinning but he couldn’t just lay in bed all day; he had to do something. He had to at least get a few reps in.

“Hmmm,” Zane hummed, “It’s worse than I thought. Cole, it seems you are suffering from a serious case of negative body image. There’s only one known cure,” Cole laughed a little and played along.

“What is it, doc?”

“500 kisses and a whole day in bed of cuddles,” Zane replied stoically.

“Oh well then, someone who spent 2 hours downloading every episode of greys anatomy must know what they’re talking about,” Cole replied sarcastically, a goofy smile playing on his lips.

“Exactly, and I know you’re being sarcastic so I see I’m going to have to crank it up to 700 kisses.”

“Oh no! How terrible!” Cole gasped, still being sarcastic, however, it backfired as he began to cough aggressively.

“That’s what you get for being an asshole, I’m also cranking your prescription up to 1000 kisses but seeing as this might go on for a while, I’m capping it at that,” Zane said with a chuckled, rubbing his hand up and down Cole’s back slowly, just waiting for Cole to say the word so he could administer the treatment.

“You know me too well,” Cole laughed weakly, propping himself up on his chin which admittedly was uncomfortable but he was willing to endure so he could look at Zane’s beautiful face, “So doc, when’s the treatment starting?”

“How… about… now!” Zane exclaimed, beginning to pepper kisses all over Cole’s head and face, making Cole laugh hoarsely.

Zane pushed Cole off of him, pinning his arms down and kissing all up his arms and onto his hands and fingers, before moving to his torso and making sure every square inch was covered in his love. Eventually, he made his way back up to Cole’s face, making sure every little bit of his neck was covered as well, in some places even leaving small red marks behind. Whether or not they were unintentional, Zane would never tell. The final kiss was placed on Cole’s lips, making sure to press extra hard to accentuate his point.

“Wow, Z, you’re meticulous I’ll give you that,” Cole said through laughs shaking his head at the nindroid currently sat on his lap. His hands sat on his waist comfortably, a true testament to how much they really were meant to be. It was almost as if the sweet tin can sat on top of him was made for him.

“Why thank you. Are you cured?”

“If I say no, do I get more kisses?” Cole said coyly with a smirk, massaging circles into Zane’s waist with his thumbs.

“Depends. If you’re good and get in bed properly and don’t leave until your better, then most assuredly,” Zane said matter of factly, his own hands idly drifting over Cole’s torso. If he could see inside his mind for just a moment, Zane was sure he’d see himself the way he saw him. He was the perfect size for hugs and cuddles, and his larger stature just meant all the more Cole to hold and love. It also meant he could pick him up which, in their 2 years of dating, Zane was sure he’d never find it the most amazing and adorable thing ever.

“Oh well then, it’s settled,” Cole said quickly, moving Zane off of him and getting under the covers, quickly snuggling back into his chest. He could hear all the mechanical parts inside him buzzing and whirring, turning and pumping, keeping Zane alive. There was something comforting about the soft noises that emitted from his boyfriend that just radiated comfort. The mechanical buzz was a grounding constant. Always there, always around, always keeping him sane.

Zane smiled and wrapped his arm around Cole, holding him close.

“Get well soon, gumball.”

[sanstropfremir]

ok alright alright alright kingdom episode two

kinda disappointed that they only showed half the stages, but that's just an editing thing to draw out the content so you can air for longer, i'm not super surprised about that. i would have liked to evaluate them all at the same time, but at least this gives me time to go more in depth for all of them since they're full stages this time and I wrote 3000 words for last episode when they only had 100 secs. so this format will probably keep me sane for longer, i think. 

solid stages all round for them, none had especially glaring flaws on the whole. i'm not gonna do a full ranking for this episode since we haven't seen them all, but i will say that btob’s was my favourite from this set and both ikon’s and tbz’s stages were about equal; they both had things i liked and disliked in equal measure so i'm tentatively giving them the same ranking. full opinions and analysis on each stage below the cut, plus another section of general notes because hey what the fuck did you do to that stage mnet???

and for anyone that’s wondering yes i do have the qualifications. also seriously grab a drink or something because this is LONG.

some general notes

and here i thought this section wouldn't be as big as it was last time because mnet was going to get their shit together about the stage design, but noooooooooooo they had to go and make it worse! thanks mnet i hate it! remember how i said you shot yourself in the foot last time? well ya fuckin kneecapped yourself AND all your idols with this one ya dumb fuckin idiots. alright folks welcome back to stage design 101, my recurring segment where i explain the different types of stage layouts and their effectiveness for kpop idol survival shows, i guess.

ok so last week i covered the basics on theatre in the round and traverse staging, which i’ll link here if there’s anyone new or just wants a refresher. i mentioned that its likely that mnet will switch to an in the round style staging because it offers a lot more freedom for camera movement and also for directional blocking. well, i was wrong. so i'm gonna give you a quick rundown of prosceniums. a proscenium, proscenium arch, or just prosc, is an architectural feature that sits around the front ‘opening’ of the stage that delineates the stage from the audience. if you've ever been in or seen any pictures of old european style theatres it can be quite ornately decorated with scrolling, but it's almost always there in most western theatres. it basically provides your ‘wings,’ which are where you exit off into to get offstage, they provide cover from the audience sitelines. pretty much any theatre where the audience is directly opposing the stage across the 180 degree line is a proscenium stage, even if it doesn't physically have the arch. hell, movie theatres are prosc stages. now, there's a secondary architectural feature/device called a false proscenium, where you set a second, smaller archway inside the first prosc, usually done for a specific effect. think of it like a literal framing device; it's often used to visually signify that ‘this is a play, we are telling a story, please be aware that this is a play thank you.’ but sometimes, it can be a semi-permanent structure that’s set in place to narrow the prosc opening. we had this at my university, there was a false prosc set just inside the actual prosc because the stage had a hilariously big prosc opening for a university that never had casts larger than 24 people. so they set false prosc in to make the stage slightly narrower and to widen the wings, because it doesn't matter what size theatre you're in, you always need more wingspace. makes sense? ok, now here’s a very quick drawing of what i'm pretty sure the kingdom stage looks like:

before you get lost: stage directions are oriented to a person standing on the stage, hence SL and SR being reversed. a quick tip for remembering which way is upstage and which is downstage: if you go too far downstage you fall down (most stages are raised between 2-4’ from the floor, so if you step off the end you will actually fall.) the arrows on here signify the entrances i observed during the performances, which is not necessary in this explanation but i just thought it was interesting to note. still not entirely sure what the surrounding architecture is but it appears that the stage is a raised platform inside a room, and not actually built as part of the building. the ‘house’ is just a technical term for where the audience is, and in this case it's where it looks like most of the film crew and the producers/staff are. there’s pretty clearly a platform upstage centre, and i think there may be some others but i don't care about those right now. what i want to talk about is this dumbass false prosc they set IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STAGE. now i suspect that they did this to solve some problems that they could have had that i don't know about, since i don't know who the stage designer was and what the actual limitations of the space are. but basically they've built two stages and stacked them on top of each other to create one very deep stage, and then separated it off with a false prosc in order to control the size of the space a little better, and possibly to add some visual interest. this stage is functional for its purpose, absolutely, and i think, if mnet actually gave a shit about point of view and camerawork, it could produce some really interesting performances. however, because this stage is so deep, it kind of has the same properties as the traverse stage from before, but just with some big led screens in the middle for reasons. you extra have to pay attention to the directionality because you have all the staff and cameras concentrated in one specific cardinal point, so you have to get creative if you want to crossover between the two sides frequently. again, this is not necessarily bad; restrictions often produce some of the most creative decisions.  but! we have not seen a lot of consideration for camera and sightlines and audience pov, hence why i think this setup is dumb: it’s not facilitating the best performances it could.

ok now to the actual performances

btob

this is my favourite of the group because it's very clean lined and utilizes a few simple devices to pretty good effect. i realize these reviews are making me sound like i only like simple performances but i promise this is not at all true i'm just very critical and very picky. let’s start with the costumes, because why not. 

costumes

i like these very much, i love modernized traditional clothing in all forms, and these are very well tailored and well coordinated. they do the bulk of the work establishing the theme for the performance, along with the costumes on the backup dancers. personally i would have liked them to be a bit more colourful, à la the teal detailing that was on minhyuk’s final look. i'm getting a bit tired of the whole trend of having groups only wear all dark or all white, or maybe sometimes red if they're feeling spicy. obviously uniform colour is the easiest way to tie a group together visually, but on a show like this i think the groups would actually benefit more from looking distinct from each other internally rather than establishing the group as whole.

i liked that minhyuk had a costume change but i didn't really care for how it was how it was broken down. this is a very personal quibble because i literally have spent years prepping quickchanges but the method it broke down wasn’t the most visually compatible with the garment and felt kinda clunky. please ignore this anecdote it's just me being picky.

set

i loved the forest! a very excellent way to divide the stage area and obscure the weird stage lines/architecture that mnet has made. plus the snow, flowers, and fog? makes a really sharp and immediately indicative atmosphere, a very good use of visual shorthand to establish place.

i didnt love the screens, they reminded me a bit too much of rolling whiteboards from grade school, but they are thematically relevant. also, i feel like we didnt actually get to see about half the choreo for them? fuckin mnet and idiocy again. fun use of rear projection with the dancers’ shadows, and also good use of them to direct traffic, if you will. 

personally i think that the sheet gimmick from tbz’s performance would have been a better fit here instead of the screens, especially since the fabric motif was already established at the very beginning of the performance. plus you can do some really fun shadow work with a stretch fabric screen. 

personally i think there could have been a little bit more integration between the forest area and the screen area, or they could have done the whole thing in the forest space, but that would require a bit more consideration of camera and choreo maneuverability

sound

really liked this arrangement, obviously the song is iconic but they added a more traditional instrument sound. has good structure for the loose narrative that they had and they were well to label this as ‘theatre’ version because this did follow very closely to a traditional musical theatre sound and style

lighting

no complaints. the overall theme for this episode is apparently blue and red? again with them i like their dedication to a limited colour palette and i especially like the blossoms at the climax

staging

there was pretty clear camera choreo and a minimum of nausea inducing moves. i think some of the effectiveness of the staging got chopped by the editing but that’s not really btob’s fault.

i was just saying i wanted them to give minhyuk some time to shine, i was not expecting to get it so soon! this is a very smart choreo that proves you can be interesting without doing a lot of tricking. minhyuk obviously did a lot of practice and work with that sword, his movements are very fluid and he knows how to handle it. and it looks like its either a blunted proper blade or a correctly weighted replica. a lot of the times when sword choreo looks fake it's because the person either hasn't had enough practice or the weapon is not weighted/weighted incorrectly. only complaints are that you would never hold your fingers/palm that close and un-anchored over the edge of the blade, which is just a safety thing. also you would never scrape your blade on the ground like that, nor toss the thing like dead fish but that's a respect thing with a live blade and this is clearly done for dramatic effect so i’ll forgive it. please ignore this anecdote also it’s just my third dan getting uppity.

ikon

costume/set

smart thematically to go with the sort of miscellaneous 30s-40s (western) aesthetic because it's the fastest way to make it look like you built a theme with mnet’s weird pseudo art deco nonsense they've inexplicably got going on in the set dec. however, they should have stuck the theme all the way through, it would have been more visually cohesive and more interesting. we expect more hiphop/electronic sounding songs to come with these kinds of 4th gen costumes, it would have been anachronistic in a fun way to have them do that second half in 40s style suits. here’s a performance from sdc3 that uses that kind of anachronistic play (this was a combo stage with two ballroom dancers and it has a 20s aesthetic but close enough.) also here’s another routine from sdc3 that does a similar effect on a much more abstract scale, and also it’s a fucking incredible performance and it got slept on by the captains. also yes i know these are incredibly experienced career dancers but they way they construct narrative within their routines and their stage presence is SO GOOD. 

do not speak to me about the backup dancers costumes, holy shit i hate them. i hate them so much. how do you manage to hit too shapeless AND too fitted in the same fell swoop? i'm so mad at these. i'm neutral on bodycon dresses on the best of days but these were absolutely the wrong choice for this stage. generally kpop has abysmal costuming for female backup dancers on the whole but this is just like.....especially lazy. the point of the costume are to help give an indication of where and when you set your performance. they started off with a vaguely 40s theme and then jumped abruptly modern. why? also skirts like that are the literal worst choice for dancing in, hello?? the men’s looks are just sloppy, when you have a garment that big you want it to serve a purpose within the choreo, whereas with this it's just hiding the dancers’ movements.

as for ikon themselves, see everything ive said about black on black on black styling in the previous two reviews. 

the actual set is minimal and that's tragic. i mentioned mnet’s weird art deco theme and it was smart of them to try and play off that with a lack of stuff. definitely a mismatch of stuff pulled from yg’s prop storage, but they made it work as well as they could. no other meaningful comments i’m just kinda sad about it.

sound

the arrangement is fine, no complaints from me. they keyed up the old hollywood style musical theatre sound in the beginning which i really liked. i didn't mind the song/tone switch, i think they pulled it off.

staging

same as btob they learned more towards a theatrical style, which is smart for this particular format of show. i think this was the smartest staging of these three, and also i think the only ones to not get the crew in shot.

despite seemingly leaning into a more old hollywood style the narrative was a bit too loose for my taste. i'm not sure what i would have done to make it clearer at this moment since they had so little to work with, but i did get by on my previous knowledge of the songs. that shouldn’t be the only indication of narrative though! all elements need to support it!!

also like btob they had a pretty intentional point of direction and there weren't a crazy amount of spins. they also used the camera cuts the most effectively that i've seen so far. the first half is actually all in one take!!! incredible!!! thank you!!!! this is how you do it!!

the lighter flick gimmick was well pulled off and a good example of how to use a couple of simple tricks to good effect.

ikon as a whole has really great stage chemistry with each other, and they're extremely cohesive performers. this is a really strong physical performance from them, the dance was very solid and clean. good use of levels without verging into acrobatics. this might be the best group choreo i've seen so far, but we’re not very far so that's not a very high bar to clear.

it's a shame they had the budget of 1 banana.

tbz

i liked this stage better than their intro stage, but i still think they have a long way to go and they're still over ambitious. personally i find stages based on specific pop culture properties to be kind of twee and ineffectual, because it requires a specific knowledge of that pop culture property to work. sometimes the specificity can help with a narrative but you're at risk of alienating a larger portion of your audience out of sheer non-knowledge than anything else. 

costumes

again, interesting garments physically, but not much clarity of relation to the theme other than the colour. also the backup dancers???? another case of backup dancers being from an entirely different stage, what is up with those coats/dresses? looked more like they belonged in either sweeney todd or a vampire movie. 

hands in front of the camera again, but these were used much more effectively.  i'm not the biggest fan of mixing metals and i’m partial to silver on the whole so i didn't love the jewelry, but at least it was vague and stereotypical enough to denote ‘fire magic’ even if it does rely on a derivative middle eastern shorthand.

set

the stage set itself is fine, although definitely feels a bit haphazard to me. doric columns and frozen rocks and whatever that cover for the pyrotechnics was at the front, combined with the candles and the chaise lounge? like ikon, it felt a bit like they were pulling out of the props/set storage. not that all these things do not work together, it's just that you need a thread to tie them together, and this didn't have that for me.

sound

it's a crime they have a song called ‘no air’ and its not a jordin sparks cover. just saying.

i didnt really like this arrangement, again like their intro stage it didn't have a strong structure that suited the narrative, because they were pretty clearly trying a narrative on this one. also were most of the adlibs playback? they were singing live but there were so few shots of anyone specific singing. 

lighting

probably the weakest of the three. the projection design was a bit too tacky for me, and although i appreciated the small amount of variety in colour, it felt way too concert-lighting for me.

staging

the editing on this stage is wack and did no one any good. the hands leading/pov was a really smart device and they should have stuck out the one takes like ikon did, it would have made the whole stage feel a bit more cohesive. a lot better directional camerawork from them this time around, well done. again with the hands in front of the camera gimmick which i actually preferred this time, since they were a part of the narrative. the stretch/silhouette fabric i think they pulled off quite well, even if it didn't really fit thematically with the piece. i actually worked on a show a very long time ago that used this exact same effect with dancers and also rear shadow projection, and it requires a lot of rehearsal and trust to pull off well, so props to them. i think it was the wrong choice because there isn't an established motif for the fabric, so it kind of appears out of nowhere for one specific visual moment and then disappears, and i think that time could have been better served for something else narratively relevant.

again, these 4th gen groups are overly focussed on gimmicks as a way to make up for the lack of experience. personally i think this will be detrimental in the long run, and a reliance on gimmicks means that you don't trust your performers. tbz have the manpower to be doing some pretty cool collective dance work and i dont think its being trained or utilized correctly. they are suffering from a lack of cohesive stage presence right now and that can be fixed with training and time.

this might be because the group sizes are so different between these three but this choreo is very directionless. mnet is also providing to be absolute garbage at editing and i feel like i can't see the choreo at all.

this is a thing i've noticed with kpop camerawork in general, there’s very little regard for actually viewing the choreo as a singular work. and for some reason the camera always needs to be moving???? people do actually want to see what’s happening on the stage. the choreographer can only see from one spot, so from that spot is how they are intending it to look. you wouldn't need to upload full cams of every music stage if you just filmed the choreo properly in the first place. if you watch the two sdc3 clips i linked you can see a clear difference in maintaining the integrity of the choreo, even though both shows use several cameras and a lot of cuts.  obviously for kpop you want the money shots of idols’ faces but i definitely think there’s a healthier middle ground than what we have now.

ill wait for full subs but i want to know where in the fuck in sk you can rent a tank thas clearly been custom made for underwater photography, because that’s extremely cool even if it was absolutely unnecessary to the actual stage itself. i can think of several ways off the top of my head that would have achieved that same freezing effect without any of that wasted time and effort.

mnet decided to drop full cams while i was writing this and despite watching those my opinions are the same.

in conclusion, some more general thoughts:

i think ikon and btob got it right by leaning more into the theatrical than the cinematic, if that makes sense. i might be talking up my own ass here but these are theatre performances, and they should be treated as such. trying to do things that you can do on film isn't going to do you any favours in the long run, and it makes it harder to make a cohesive performance. i’m harping a lot about narrative but it is so important to performance. although it is not technically necessary, when doing big theatrical performance stages like this it does help with clarity of intent and general success. humans have brains structured around storytelling, it is literally the way our history has been passed down for tens of thousands of years. the atlantic published an article recently on narrative and memory, and it's a really excellent read for maybe after you've taken a break from this behemoth, oh dear god. 

tldr: the stages were good but disappointing in their own ways. mnet continues to sabotage via weird stage design decisions and bad editing. see you next week! (or in my ask box if you have questions)

[valhallanrose]

Monster Miriyam Headcanons

So, to preface, Miriyam is still technically human - her monster form comes about as a contract with her patron, the King of Swords, and manifests this way because she is halfway to becoming a member of his court. She’s essentially got one foot in the realms of the arcane, the other in her/the normal world - changing or transforming means pulling magic from the realm of the Suit of Swords and rather than expressing that through spells, does so through self modification. Hence the monster form, which was inspired off the Nyx Hydra design for the King of Swords in the Arcana tarot deck. She’s met with Arcana a few times now and while some very perceptive humans read her more as Arcana-adjacent than anything else, the Arcana very much believe that she’s human regardless of what form she takes. 

Size-wise, she’s about 7’2”, not including horns (horns make it a good 7’10”). Very muscular and definitely as strong, if not stronger than you think she is based on appearance alone. Prehensile tail. 

Miriyam doesn’t break this form out without a long conversation as to what she is (only held with potential long term partners, really, casual hookups don’t usually get to a personal enough point to warrant that)

Transforming is kind of gross, honestly? Like this is some very audible crunching/popping, like when you crack your knuckles but way louder, but it’s also a very fast paced change so you don’t hear it for every long

She’s got some habits from the monster side that have quickly become noticeable when she’s wandering about as a human. 

This includes enhanced sense of smell, hearing, and sight.

Smell and hearing are particularly intense, though, to where she can pick up on a mouse running on the palace marble or tell you exactly what spices someone mixed into a dish as soon as she stepped into the kitchens. 

Sight is trickier to quantify, but the average human with 20/20 vision can see the furthest edge at 3 miles away. Miriyam’s would be somewhere in the 4-5 mile range, while night vision is about 3-4 miles (assuming clear skies and no obstacles)

Very catlike? Loves to sun herself if she can find a private spot in the daytime, will purr if you scratch behind her ears, also easily tempted by shiny things (particularly gold shiny things, her eyes get bigger than her brain at the idea of Expanding the Instinctual Hoard)

Extremely embarrassed to admit she has a not insignificant collection of gold coins and trinkets she’s collected over the years based purely on instinct - she has no idea where half of it came from

Has gone and still goes on long flights, usually to get out when her nightmares get bad. While her secondary form isn’t necessarily a secret - she used it in the Coliseum during her brief time as a gladiator, and most of the guard is aware simply for the sake of ease - she still waits until nightfall for some sense of privacy. 

Her favorite place she’s ever gone was to the Scourgelands, where she flew through the southern lights, and she’s hoping to bring a partner there one day if they’d be alright taking the fast route. 

When it comes to fighting prowess, she’s absolutely a predator - armored scales, claws, fangs, speed, strength...fuck around and you will find out and yes I do mean that double entendre 

There’s some art refs under the cut from @anonbunnyart and @lajadelmira so you get an idea of what she looks like, and then we’re going to dive into the thirst. 

In case it isn’t clear: NSFW AHEAD, MINORS DNI, also obvious monsterfucking cw 

by anonbunnyart

by lajadelmira

Still cis, still a lesbian, so she’s still attracted exclusively to women and femme-presenting nonbinary people, the pool is only narrowed based on if her partner would ride the dragon. 

Yes I’ve made that joke many times, no I’m not going to stop making it. If I don’t, just assume I’m dead

Absolutely a top and a dominant top at that, convincing her to bottom when she’s in monster form is very, very difficult and usually only comes about in niche circumstances. More on that later. 

Addendum: She’s slightly more willing to bend if you want to use your hands/mouth, but straps are damn near impossible for her to get into when she has all of you right there to pay attention to. She’s not opposed to being touched, but she’d really just rather pay attention to her partner like this. 

Personal pleasure is very much just an afterthought, and honestly, she’s okay with that

Has several ‘weak spots’ on her body that will definitely turn her to putty, no matter how tough she acts. Done in sort of a sensitivity scale from least to most. 

Horns:

It’s not that they’re sensitive, but if you grab her by the horns and tell her exactly what you want to do her/her to do to you, she’ll find it very hard to tell you no.

Loves it and will take it as encouragement if she’s going down on her partner and they grab her by the horns when she does something they like. 

Tail:

Her tail is prehensile, and she will use that to her advantage, including fucking her partner with the tip of it (which is nice if her partner likes penetration, because finding a strap to fit her in draconic form is A Whole Nightmare)

However, she will go a little apeshit if you play with the tip otherwise - particularly if you suck on it - and honestly you’ll probably get pounced

Wings:

Quick note - Miriyam usually keeps her wings tucked fairly close to her back as a sort of protective measure, and she doesn’t usually like being on her back because she doesn’t like them being pinned, but can ease into it with a partner

Loves, loves, loves it if you touch her wings - the membranes are sensitive and just running your fingers across them makes her want to purr like a kitten

Fun fact, stimulating the right spot on her wings will actually make her orgasm. (That spot is on the wing membranes closest to her back, about halfway down, and no, that’s not something Miriyam will realize until she has a partner that wants to explore her physically like that)

Territorial. Absolutely a territorial bastard. She tries to tamp it down, she really does, but some days it’s harder than others. Particularly when she can pick up the scents of other people on her partner, that really kicks up the ‘mine’ instinct even if she logically knows nothing happened and trusts her partner fully

She really likes scent marking because of this - no, she won’t piss on you, that’s just the best term I can come up with - but she has a few approaches if she’s feeling like she needs to ‘stake her claim’

Lots of roaming hands and definitely letting her mouth wander, but if not directed to a specific spot she will absolutely go for a full bite on your pulse point to really just layer the scent in there

Tucks shed scales into the pockets of her partner’s clothing (jackets, shirts, pants, etc)

Or, a good old fashioned absolute obliteration - by which I mean she’ll fuck her partner until they’re an overstimulated puddle in her lap plus an orgasm for good measure - and then taking care of them afterward 

That being said, this definitely goes both ways, she will be raring to go if you just murmur a ‘mine’ in her ear - she’ll be eager to prove that yes, she is yours, and she’s not going anywhere

When it comes to actually doing the deed...

Favorite positions (in no particular order)

Partner pinned to the wall, any position, just. Pinned to the wall

One hand around both her partner’s wrists, legs spread out over her thighs, the other hand between their thighs or otherwise roaming

I feel like I should mention here that monster Miri has a habit of filing down at least the first two claws on each hand (middle and index) if she knows sex is on the table, she’s not out here to hurt her partner like that

Seated on the edge of the bed, ideally facing a mirror, with her partner in her lap. One hand/her tail tip between their thighs, and arm around their waist, chin on their shoulder watching them in the mirror

Yeah this is definitely a favorite of monster Miri’s 

A handful of things she enjoys (all with prior consent)

Primal (predator), some painplay (ft. claws, teeth, and a very strong grip), sensation play, overstimulation

Some turn-ons

Lingerie, but the shinier the better

Gold accents in particular will really make her go AWOOGA, she jokes it’s because of the gold dragon hoard but it’s actually not far off

Dirty talk/dirty...actions?

Just manhandle her she’ll think it’s hot

Any and all of the brat fighting words 

“What are you going to do about it?”, “Make me.”, etc

Honestly the more I think about it I’m not sure there’s an off switch so much as each side of the switch being fight or fuck. Like. Miriyam is always horny like this. She can chill but why would she in the privacy of her home/when she’s with her partner

This might be. TMI. But the scale plating over the fun parts is….retractable I guess? I don’t know what word I want but they’re not always out because that feels like a hazard. And unfortunately no nips like this because those are also a hazard, but her neck, ears, lower belly, and the previously mentioned areas are all very sensitive and prime for the touching. 

[miss-choco-chips]

What if- Janet Drake was a good mom

Hers.

This little… warm and squishy ball of spit was hers. 

Her son.

His eyes still not defined, bald little head fragile under her hand and so, so vulnerable, she wouldn’t have believed he had come out of her  if not for the pain still lingering on her body and the vomit stains on that hateful nurse’s shirt, the one that talked to Janet in cooing, condescendent voice during the whole birthing process. Her son had rightfully avenged her honor by burping all over her the moment she took him out of his mother’s arms.

Her arms.

God, she was a mother. She was this baby’s mother.

Sitting by her bedside with his stupid, well meaning smile, Jack apologised half heartedly at the nurse, ignoring the proud look his wife was giving the little creature back on her grasp. He had given up on trying to take him from her, too. The almost hiss he had gotten after the first three tries was enough to let him know that wouldn’t fly well a fourth time. Slow, but he had learned not to come between a new mother and her child. Specially not a vicious, dangerous new mother like her.

-So, what’s this cutie’s name? -asked the (still annoyingly chirpy) nurse, notepad at the ready.

Jack looked at his wife and waited. He had asked for the middle name to be Jackson -which had gotten him an eye roll from the back then still pregnant lady-, and let the first one for her to decide. He hadn't tried to argue that right out of her, because, well, he valued his life and health and, despite what many people thought, wasn’t completely stupid.

Janet looked down to the- to her baby, and smiled lightly. Still high from the thrill of having brought to life something so perfect, it took her barely a moment to decide. 

-Timothy. Timothy Jackson Drake.

To honor God, in thanks -if he or her actually existed- for having let one of their angels down to earth and into her arms.

Yes, she was still hormonal for giving birth, So sue her.

The nurse cooed and took her baby again, to clean him up and measure him.

He vomited on the neckline of her scrubs this time, directly on skin.

Janet laughed.

Her son.

---.---

The party was socially required and expected. It would stain both her and Jack’s reputation if they didn’t give in to the unspoken rule. People would  no doubt start wondering why weren’t they showing off their offspring. What was wrong with them. 

What was wrong with him.

That, mainly, was what got Janet to accept it and organize the whole affair. In between, of course, to leading the company and tending to Timothy. If it was only about her, she’d first let the whole world burn than subject her son to the stupid but voracious pack of wolves that Gotham’s elite was, but if they started talking shit about him, her options were to give in to their demands or silence them the easy way. And, after a quick talk with her lawyer, she decided on the actually legal option.

Not that she couldn't get away with the other one. But she wasn’t about to contaminate her hands, the hands that held her son, with those fools’ blood. What if stupidity was contagious? She wasn’t taking that risk. Jack’s genes were enough of a wild card as it was.

A tea party seemed the most appropriate option. A ball would upset Timothy’s carefully planned sleeping schedule (as in, closely monitored so any time he woke up at night, it would always fall in Jack’s designated ‘baby duty’ hours; two weeks into it, she expected another three before he catched on), and with a tea afternoon she had an excuse to disappear back into the Mannor when -not if; when- their half witted guests started to get too much on her nerves, claiming ‘Timothy’s bedtime’ as a perfect getaway.

Halfway through it, though, she realized it wasn’t all bad. No one tried to hold her baby -men probably too uninterested in the actual child beyond the expected pleasantries, the women scared away by her ‘I fucking dare you, bitch’ glare-, Jack was properly entertained by tending to the guests, the staff doing a good job of maintaining the insides of the closed off awning at the proper temperature to keep the star of the party from catching a cold, and anyone entering the place came bearing an offering to Timothy, like peasants at a deity’s temple. It was satisfying to watch. 

‘He’s going to be everyone here’s boss, one day. The city will be his’, Janet smiled, accepting with a tilted head another gift, adding it to the growing pile on the big chest she ordered for the occasion, every socialite trying to outdo the former one.

It was going perfectly fine, and she had almost forgotten her reluctance to the whole thing, when everything inevitably crashed and burned.

Because there were a set of arms extended in her direction, accompanied by a polite ‘May I?’.

If the reaction of the people closest to her was an indication, the sound that came out of her mouth was an actual growl. Instinctively, she drew her arms closer to her chest, baby hold as tight as possible, as if she might protect him better like that.

Timothy, the angel, didn’t protest. He barely ever cried, and never when with her. Just gazed up at her face, his own eyes starting to gain pigment day by day, looking now almost completely like hers a good month after his birth. 

Hers.

Jack appeared by her elbow in barely a second, a wonder since he was at the other side of the backyard the last time she saw him, entertaining people in the farthest of the awnings she had had set. Nicole, her lawyer and one of the few people she was willing to call a friend, was at her other side a moment later, sider glass at hand and looking between her and the brave -stupid- man with equal parts amusement and trepidation.

Bruce Wayne was asking her for a turn holding her child. Nineteen year old Brucie, who had just come back to Gotham after his nine year ‘sabbatical’ from who knows where, with a high school title she was almost completely certain he had faked. Brucie, who acted as a fried brained, goofy, easy going guy, well meaning despite his supposed shortcomings in the mind department. Who was her playmate a time or two during their childhood, which is why she knew he was too damn smart to be who he showed to the society.

Or, maybe not so smart. He was asking for her baby, after all.

For a minute, Janet merely assessed him, two predators staring the other down, looking for weakness, soft spots to sink teeth into. Literally, in her case, if he tried to pry her son away. There was the shadow of amusement hidden behind the dumb, fake smile in his face. The bastard probably was asking just to watch her try to summon her inner meta human and fry him with heat vision. Oh, if only.

While she was busy staring down the threat and looking for an answer stronger than ‘fuck no’, Jack pulled a quick one over her, sliding his arms between hers, retrieving the still and warm bundle, and depositing him in Wayne’s arms, all in one smooth move.

The betrayal. Jack was sleeping on a guest’s room for the next year. How dare he give her child away? And to this man, of everyone? Smart as she may know him to be, who could promise her no harm would come to Timothy so far away from her arms?

Gods above, what if Wayne dropped him? Then she would have to throw him off a plane. Into open waters. Right in the middle of a shark circle. Tied up. 

With rocks weighing his feet.

Nicole gently grasped her upper arm, just below the dress’ sleeve (a lovely red, perfect for hiding blood stains), a gesture that might have gotten her a hole on her toes the exact size of Janet’s stiletto heel, hadn’t she been busy watching Wayne accomodate his arms to better hold her son.

At least he was supporting his head. He wasn’t a complete fool, then. Not like Jack, who might as well start writing his will (dedicated entirely to her and their son, of course).

-He… -Wayne wasn’t looking at her anymore (in any other situation, where he wasn’t holding precious cargo, a mistake), eyes drawn to Timothy’s, who returned the gesture without a hint of fear.

-He, what? -barked the offended mother, now held in both sides by best friend and husband, the only force keeping her from making a scene.

The young man smiled, still not parting his gaze from the baby. She could understand the sentiment; it was hard to look away from perfection like that.

-He looks like you -was the honest answer. A finger carefully caressed the soft, round cheek, and Timothy’s toothless mouth parted in a pure, innocent, bright giggle.

Well. Maybe Wayne wasn’t quite so bad. He’d be allowed to live another day.

-What was his name, again?

Relaxing a little, since he seemed to have an adequate grasp on the baby, Janet composed herself and answered.

-Timothy Jackson Drake.

The blank expression that overtook the man for a second when the middle name was pronounced made her feel slightly vindicated. She, too, thought it dumb the need to put himself plus the word ‘son’ on a baby. As if they didn’t already know Timothy was his. Whatever, she couldn’t complain. Any other choice about their son was hers to make, she couldn’t exactly deny Jack that one request.

Said child choose that moment to move, raising his tiny arm from the depths of his blankets, catching Wayne’s finger in a miniscule fist.

Janet saw the exact second the man melted. Huh. Well, there was an idea.

Not like it was needed, but the love and protection of one of the most rich men on earth, the richest in Gotham, might end working up on Timothy's favor. One could never have too many minions willing to put themselves at risk for their master’s wellbeing, after all.

Janet looked at Wayne, playfully moving the finger in her son’s grasp, eliciting another laugh from him in payment, and let her mind whirl.

----.----.

A little over a week later found Janet sitting on the floor next to her desk, important documents scattered around her. Timothy was napping in her lap, hence why she wasn’t on the chair (too much of a risk of falling), while she worked. Jack had been sent to entertain the board of directors of DI, one of the only chores she trusted him to not fuck up without her supervision, so mother and son had the evening to themselves.

That was, until the phone rang. Snake-quick, she raised a hand and snatched it from the desk, eyes scanning her son’s sleeping face to make sure he hadn’t woke. When she was assured, she held the device to her ear.

-Really, Jannie? Wayne? You choose Wayne as a godfather? Did giving birth melt your brain?

Swiftly, she hanged up. Then, just in case, she stretched her arm and unplugged the machine. 

Five minutes later, the butler came in, holding her cellphone (which she never had on herself during Tim’s nap time) on a silver platter. She waved him away.

Half an hour passed, and Nicole walked into her favorite tea room while she was breastfeeding her baby. Her venom-green eyes shone gleefully, kinda like they did when she utterly crushed her opponents in court.

Because she was her best friend, and Jantet reluctantly liked her, she had sent the lawyer a copy of Timothy’s daily schedule, so to be sure Nicole would never interrupt it and thus get murdered by his mother. It was no coincidence she entered the room just as Tim was finishing his evening feeding.

-Janet, wonderful to see you! 

-Tell that brain dead, lavender wearing fool that I’m not taking his call.

The other woman barreled on, ignoring her. She was lucky she was holding her son; more difficult to dismember someone.

-Aww, how’s my little baby godson? Had a good nap? 

Sighing, Janet offered the bundle of spit and genius that was her baby to her for burping duty, something she didn’t even do with his father.

-Hello, Nicole, nice to see you too. Or it would be, had I actually invited you over -she played along, accepting a cup of coffee from the maid while Nicole sat at the other side of the small table, baby held against her shoulder, little towel protecting her blouse from any substance the baby might cough up.

She would hope he puked all over her, but that would mean he’d have an upset stomach. So she switched to hoping Nicole would spontaneously combust.

-Oh Jan, you say the funniest things. Hey, one guess as to who called me half an hour ago!

Finally to the point- Tell that waste of space, colorblind idiot that if he wants to keep his place in the stock market, to never bother me again when I’m spending quality time with my son.

-He was sleeping, Jan.

-Are you a mother? No. Shut up.

Nicole rolled her eyes, and, after a few burps, cradled the baby more securely in her arms. Timothy immediately started playing with her long necklace, which she probably wore for that particular purpose, as she wasn’t particularly fond of such colorful jewelry.

-Can you even drink coffee while you’re breastfeeding? 

A scowl- It’s decaffeinated. I’m just desperate for even a taste. I have the service saving all the empty cans of this aberration, and I’m making a burning pyre with them the moment I’m allowed to drink the good kind again.

Nicole threw her head back and laughed, long black hair tragically held in a bun to keep away from the baby’s greedy chubby fingers.

-The doctor ordered it for Timmy’s good, I’m sure you can’t be that mad about it.

-I’m sure your parents must have indulged in far more dangerous vices during your conception and pregnancy, and you don’t seem worse for that.

-That’s as close a compliment I’m ever getting from you, huh? It doesn’t change the fact that I’m not your secretary, Jan. Pick up the damn phone, if only to tell Luthor to stop calling me to reach you.

As on cue, Nicole’s phone, carefully placed in the table between them, rang. Both women stared it down for a few seconds, before locking eyes. When the loud noise started making Timothy grumble and whine, Janet sighed and picked it.

-What do you want, you sad excuse of a businessman?

-So it was a good idea to call your lawyer. Hello, Janet, how is your afternoon?

-Getting worse by the minute.

-That’s no way to speak to your dear old friend.

And she couldn’t even have her usual migraine medication. Now she understood why many women choose to hire someone else for breastfeeding; if she trusted anyone else with her son to that degree, she might have done the same.

-And speaking of things that are rude to do to your favorite people, choosing someone else as godfather for your one and only son is quite the insult.

Nicole, even though she couldn’t hear the other end of the line, was smirking as she rocked the baby. Seemingly having the time of her life.

-One; you are not, by a long shot, one of my favorites. That’s a list of two, and you wouldn’t  make the cut even if one of them died.

-Timothy and Jack?

-Timothy and Nicole. Jack is currently being punished for daring give my son to someone else, and has been demoted.

-Hmm. And two?

-Two: who’s to say I’m not having another child?

-Please, you wouldn’t be able to go another year without coffee.

True, but still- Don’t presume to know my limits.

-Why him? -Insisted the man, and if they weren’t such good friends (and old classmates, from back in the day) she would have thrown the phone halfway across the rome at his pathetic whine- Is this an insult to me? Are you trying to communicate your displeasure over something I did lately? You could have done that a thousand ways, without giving such a honor to someone like Wayne.

She sighed. Nicole’s attention turned to the baby currently patting at her chin, and she let her eyes wander over them both.

-I needed someone willing to risk his life for my baby. Wayne seems like the kind of man that would, if he cares enough for someone.

-And you’re saying I wouldn’t. That…

-...is completely true. You would kill, and let other people die, and for that I already have someone -Nicole blinked in her direction, venomous green eyes stone cold for half a second before her smirk took the edge off it-. Wayne is here to provide light heartedness, and if the situation called for it… well. And you, as my friend and business partner, are bound to provide safe sanctuary when he undoubtedly reaches adolescence and runs from home in a rebellious bout.

-Still a pathological need to plan sixteen years into the future, I see.

-Still a pathological need to be chosen first, I see. I’m having memories of back in school when someone was elected first for a team during PE.

----.----.

Her baby is a genius. Of course, it was expected, being her son and everything; but with Jack’s ‘normal’ genes in the way, it was a coin toss as to whether he’d take after her or him.

He starts talking way before other babies do. Momma, Dadda, I’ole for his godmother, Bose for his godfather, and Atez for Lex. He knew how to ask for water or food, and to be carried. He had also learned to walk, although clumsily, and would be seen following after Janet’s skirts as she circled around the Manor attending to her various duties.

She was so proud of him. So excited each day, floating in a cloud of wonder of ‘what will he learn next?’, ‘how will he surprise me today?’. Nicole and Alexander were a stronger than ever presence in their lives, with Timothy as an excuse to visit as often as she would allow. And, in the softness granted to her by motherhood, she was far more lenient than she’d ever been. Still bringing fear into the hearts of whoever dared cross her but… less bloodthirsty, if her best friend’s words were to be believed.

Then, Jack came, practically demolishing her peacefulness and joy  with all the grace and delicacy of a grinning, hammer wielding moron.

-Dear! I got the perfect site for the next digging.

Time seems to stop, for her, as breathing turns suddenly an unachievable chore and her steely eyes bore into her husband’s happy ones. 

Jack, who seems to have forgotten about the very same baby currently in Janet’s arms, who had her blouse in a tight grip -as if suspecting of the situation, keeping her close-, drooling a little over the little blanket handmade by Wayne’s butler.

Her little bundle of spit, snot and genius. Her baby.

She had known, intellectually, that things were bound to change, the moment her baby was born. She had all but decided, back then, that she’d hire some good  babysitter and keep going things the way she liked them, flying from digging site to digging site, remotely managing the company and meeting her friends at fancy galas. With enough money, keeping her lifestyle, and still get her son the care he needed, without her sacrificing anything, was affordable.

But now, it was different. If she went, she would be sacrificing things. She’d be leaving the chance of seeing her son grow behind. She would be putting him in someone else’s arms and hope they’d raise him the way she wanted. 

Her son. Hers.

She looked down to the baby in her arms, and then up at her husband. Jack loved archeology, he would be leaving with or without her. 

Breathing in deeply, Janet made her choice.

[haqita-kimoji]

Darts of Pleasure - Chapter 3 - Sorry

Pairing: Levi Ackerman x Original Character (Sophie Poulain)

Genre: Romance, light fluff

Warnings: Manga spoilers, s4 spoilers, don’t read when you’re not updated with the latest anime episode

Word count: 1.6k words

a/n: I feel my writing is amateur-ish at best hence any feedback is very much welcomed. Posted on wattpad and AO3 as well.

Chapter 3: Sorry

Sophie was unsure if it was the general anxiety of being in the presence of someone she was attracted to, or the specific anxiety of actually conversing with Humanity's Strongest Soldier that is Levi Ackerman, but for some reason, she felt her heart pounding as she brewed the Marleyan tea. She set the tea set carefully on the tray, adjusting the angles of the teacups and the teapot for the millionth time ensuring it was exactly how she thought Levi would want it. Noticing the anxiety practically dripping from her forehead a cheerful voice teased her from across the kitchen counter, "Hey Shrimpy!"

She rolled her eyes turning to the familiar voice, a smiling amused Niccolo smirking towards her. Dodging between the other kitchen staff, he stopped next to her, "Having tea with a Paradis Devil is making you all weak in the knees ay?" Sophie rolled her eyes, averting her gaze back to the tray, repeatedly tapping the edge of the tray as if she was sending a distress signal in Morse code.

Both Sophie and Niccolo were never close back in the Marleyan army but now that they work together in Yelena's squad, they were indeed two peas in a pod. His pet name for her was "Shrimpy" due to her petite short stature. Breathing a huge, fake sigh of relief, Niccolo continued to tease her, "Shrimpy, you should let him put his slippery tadpole inside of you."

Sophie groaned, shoving Niccolo by the shoulder as she walked to the sink to wash her hands with soap, hoping to cleanse herself from any dirt or smell. She knew Levi's reputation as a Clean Enthusiast and would not want to leave a bad impression on him in terms of her personal hygiene.

"Niccolo, can I be real with you, can I just be honest with you?" Sophie blurted out, looking to her friend.

Taken aback by the sudden shift in her tone, Niccolo quickly replied, "Okay?"

Dramatically Sophie walked to him, placed one palm to her waist and another beside the tray, then looked Niccolo straight in the eye and announced with a lustful expression, "I want Captain Levi to place me on my knees, spit in my mouth and slap me on my forehead with his fucking dick! I don't care how big, how small, how medium it is—- I need him to envelop me in all his LEVI-ness."

Niccolo nearly tripped at the filth coming out of the supposedly innocent lips of Sophie. He sat down on a nearby stool, his elbows on his knees, his head bowed, and palms against his forehead. His voice distinct and very annoyed, he uttered, "I'm going to get Onkyankopon to baptize you in the sea this weekend. The Paradis Devil got you good huh?" Sophie smiled sheepishly to her friend, feeling gratified at his reaction, but she was glad to get it off her chest. The curiosity she felt of the mysterious Ackerman had drove her crazy ever since she landed on the island and the sudden invitation for tea was perfect for her to get to know the Captain better.

Walking timidly with the tray on her hand, the hallways of the office quarters were strangely deserted. In the rarified atmosphere of the office floor it was always quiet, but on that day it felt spooky. No voices or footsteps echoed off the stone walls. Due to the eerie atmosphere, Sophie found herself sprinting down the hallways muttering repeatedly to herself the map to Levi's office, "Second floor, turn left, first door to the right."

When she arrived in front of his door, she exhaled a long breath to calm her nerves, and with the heavy tray barely balanced in one hand, she knocked on the door carefully with three sturdy knocks. She heard footsteps and his sultry deep voice calling out to her, "Come in."

Before she could reach for the knob, the door opened and she was not ready. The door swung inwards and she was instantly thrown off balance with the heavy tray on the other hand. Falling through the doorway in a great splash of tea, she landed on the hard floor with the loud cracking of the teapots, now broken. Sprawled on her stomach, her white button-down top soaking in the brew of tea, Sophie hovered her head upwards to see a part of polished black shoe inches from her head. A man's shoe, its toe as poised as if ready to kick her in the face for what had transpired.

She saw herself reflected in the dark shine of the shoe: her tea-drenched bangs swinging by her forehead, her cheeks flushed and her mouth hanging slack as she panted on the floor, beyond embarrassed at what had transpired. Her chest heaving. The fall had drenched her white button-up blouse, leaving the linen sticking to the curvature of her body. Thank goodness for the military's linen-cotton undergarments for the female cadets.

Biting her lips and noticing the mess she made, Sophie forced herself to follow the black shoe up to the ankles sheathed in white socks that are now stained with tea. Beyond was the hem of a trouser cuff, and her gaze followed the sharp crease of his black pants up toward his knee. Meticulous tailoring and cut revealed the contour of his powerful thigh from where the trouser inseam led her eyes to his bulge and she felt hot wetness between her and the floor.

Sophie bit her lips wallowing on the mess she made on the Captain's office floor. Even in the buffed, murky leather of the shoe, Sophie could see the blush of embarrassment on her cheeks deepen. She gulped. Levi's voice broke the trancelike spell, pleasant and bemused he said, "Are you okay?"

Sophie forced herself to look up through the veil of her long, fluttering eyelashes. A face loomed, looking at her endearingly. Those were the features she saw so often in their meetings and at the mess halls. His steely eyes were grey; his forehead was fringed by his raven-black hair. His expression was mild, monotonous at what had transpired.

Still sprawled on the floor, Sophie gasped as she made eye-contact with Levi. "I'm sorry!" she squeaked. "I did not mean to---"

"It's fine," Levi said monotonously, his gaze never breaking from her.

Slowly spreading her fingers against the floor, she tried to push herself up but remembered how the hot liquid would make her white blouse reveal more than she wanted in front of the Captain. The dark-steely grey eyes watching her were as focused and unblinking, they were measuring and recording every inch of her body.

"Let me help you up," the raven-haired man insisted, reaching down to her. Sophie timidly nodded, his fingers closed around her own were surprisingly cold. An amazing strength lifted her as his lips, those lips she's always dreamt of kissing, inches from her face said, "I'll clean up the mess, you should freshen up in the bathroom." Levi pointed to the door of his bed chambers which was connected to the office room, Sophie shuddered at the thought of being in his private quarters.

She merely nodded too embarrassed for words, her arms folded across her chest as she headed to the bathroom. She looked herself to the mirror mortified at how indecent she looked, her soaked white button-up top revealing the curvature of her cleavage, her ponytail messy and drenched of tea.

A quick knock was heard on the door and it caught Sophie off-guard, she jerked back in shock. Levi's deep voice was heard as he slid to open the bathroom door slightly, "Here's a towel and a set of my clothes, I'm sure you'd fit into my size." Sophie hummed awkwardly acknowledging him and he timidly placed the items on the bathroom counter, careful not to look where she stood.

When the bathroom door closed, Sophie looked back to the mirror, told herself to get herself together, and slapped her cheek for assurance. She cleaned herself up, dried herself, and slid into the clothes he had given. The blue button-up blouse and black slack smelt fresh and it fitted loosely to her body. Muttering words of encouragement to herself, she stepped out the door to see the Captain seated on a lounge armchair upholstered in black leather.

While Levi was disappointed that his romantic high tea meeting did not transpire as planned, he did get more than he bargained for witnessing her curvature under her soaked wet blouse from the fall. As Sophie walked to him in his own change of clothes, it had only increased his desire for her. She glanced quickly at the mess she made earlier by the door but she found the floor was clean as if the accident she committed never occurred.

Stopping inches from each other Sophie broke the silence, "I'm really sorry Levi, I mean Captain Levi. I genuinely---"

"Come join me on the rooftop?" Levi interrupted her, one hand lifted a bottle of wine, and the other held out two wine glasses.

"Wine under the moonlight?" Sophie giggled nervous, dazed in the sheer abruptness of how the night is unfolding. Levi looked back at her blankly, unsure what to say. He figured maybe with a bit of alcohol the awkwardness between them would subside and they'd be able to have a conversation.

"I mean sure, I'd like that." Sophie pursed her lips and exhaled slowly.

As they walked together to the door, Sophie smiled timidly at him, looking him in the eye, begging internally for him to stop her stride. Levi felt the intensity in her gaze and was tempted, he wanted to keep the door shut, threw her body against it, and ravaged her right there and then but he held himself back. He was a gentleman after all.

[newnewyorker93]

Blueprints for a Rescue

read on ao3 here

Pepperony Week 2020 • Day 1: battle couple

Summary: Tony gives Pepper something special for their 1st wedding anniversary, and Pepper makes an important decision.

—

“Hey, Pep! Do you have a minute?”

Pepper looked up from where she was sitting, curled up on the living room floor with baby Morgan lying on her stomach next to her. Morgan was giggling and shrieking excitedly as she grabbed for the toy Pepper held out for her - a plush platypus, a gift from Uncle Rhodey and currently one of her favorite toys; its beak let out a very satisfying squeak! whenever she managed to squeeze it tight enough in her tiny fists. The two of them were so engrossed in their little game that Pepper hadn’t even noticed Tony entering the room but there he was now, standing next to the coffee table. He had something held behind his back, a thick roll of paper, and he was tapping it against the back of his leg while doing that shift-shuffling move with his feet that Pepper knew meant he was nervous about whatever it was he wanted to tell her.

Instead of answering his question directly, she instead addressed Morgan. “What do you think? Should we see what your silly father is up to this time?” The baby gurgled happily in response and tried to roll over, a move she hadn’t quite mastered yet, and Pepper gave her back a quick rub in acknowledgement of the attempt before looking back up at Tony with an inviting smile. “Sounds like a ‘yes’ to me.”

“Are you sure?” Tony asked, hesitating slightly. “I'd hate to interrupt tummy time.”

Pepper laughed. "Morgan's got a very full schedule today, but I think we can squeeze you in."

“Oh good. I've got something for you. A present, actually. For our anniversary.”

Pepper stopped rubbing Morgan’s back, a puzzled expression crossing her face. “It’s not our anniversary.”

“I know.”

“Our anniversary is next week.”

“I  know.”

"But you're giving me a present today?"

"A stunningly accurate summation of the situation, yes. Astute as always, pepper pot!" Tony was teasing her now, but Pepper could tell there was an undercurrent of real nervousness behind his words. His voice softened, then, as he explained, “It’s just, this is- well, is about to be- our first anniversary, and I want to get it right, and given my, shall we say, mixed track record on gifts…” He trailed off, giving Pepper a second to fill in the blank. She did a quick mental inventory of Tony’s various ‘surprises’ over the years - when he got it right, he got it really right, and when he didn’t...well when he didn’t a team of construction workers ended up getting hired to rip a hole in their wall so a 15-foot-tall stuffed bunny could be maneuvered through. So yeah, maybe his concern wasn’t entirely unwarranted, although whatever this was at least already had the advantage of fitting inside the house. Evidently enough of this thought process could be read on Pepper’s face because Tony nodded in agreement before continuing. “See, you get it. Hence, my brilliant solution! I give you your present a week early, and then I’ve got time to put together a plan B in case you don’t like this one!”

“And if I do like it?” Pepper asked, amused and touched by Tony’s mildly convoluted approach to problem solving.

“Oh, in that case I will…um, still have to find something special to give you on the day of…” Tony scratched the back of his head, a sheepish expression on his face. “I really didn’t think that part through, did I? Although In my defense, this is my first go at a wedding anniversary.”

“Hmm, fair. You’d better get used to it though,” Pepper teased. “You’re going to have a lot more of them to figure out.”

“Yeah…” A soft happy smile lit up Tony’s face, the kind that made the corners of his eyes crinkle up and he was lost for a moment, thinking about that.

“So,” Pepper eventually prompted, “do I get to actually see my pre-anniversary present?”

“Yes! Right. Of course.” Tony moved aside the few knick-knacks left out on the coffee table and unrolled the papers he’d been holding behind his back onto it, revealing a stack of technical drawings. He gestured for Pepper to scoot forward and take a look. "I made you a suit! Well, to be more precise, I designed you a suit."

Pepper examined the figure on the top page and frowned. Armor would be a generous description for whatever this was, as it looked more like a bikini that just happened to be made out of metal rather than anything meant to be in any way protective. It wasn’t until she looked up, ready to indignantly lay into Tony because what the fuck, that she caught the tell-tale mischievous twinkle in his eyes and realized what he was doing.

“Oh god, babe, you should see your face right now!” Tony crowed. “Just a little joke to break the tension,” he reassured Pepper, “I mean, come on, it’d be completely useless as armor like this, no defensive coverage at all. Although I'm sure we could find something else to use it for… Yes? No? You're smiling, Pep, I can see it!” She was smiling, biting back a laugh because it was just so Tony, getting his anxiety out by completely designing and drawing out by hand an entire prank suit of armor. “We'll file that one under maybe, then… But seriously, as much as I enjoy a bit of pin-up Pepper, this-” he pulled aside the top sheet with a dramatic flourish, unveiling a set of schematics for a suit that looked much more like his own Iron Man armor, if slightly more feminine, “-is your real present, should you choose to accept it." 

Tony sat himself down on the floor across the table from Pepper, giving her some space to study the blueprints more closely. After a few moments of forcing himself to sit perfectly still he scooped Morgan up off the rug and snuggled her up to his chest, letting his daughter’s squirming distract him from the otherwise irresistible urge to start fidgeting and drumming his fingers against his leg as he waited for Pepper’s verdict.

“This is…wow.” Pepper didn’t even know where to begin. She was awed by the sheer scope of the project, at the amount of time Tony must have put into making this for her - there were pages and pages of plans, intricate renderings of every piece of the suit from helmet to gauntlets to boots and every bit in between, all painstakingly (and gorgeously; with so much of his work done in holograms and machinery, it was easy to forget how much of an artist Tony really was) hand-drawn and neatly labeled down to the most precise measurements. “How… You drew all of this?”

Tony shrugged. “I’ve had the image in my head for years, this was just letting it all out, finally. Like an exorcism.” Pepper cocked her head at that and Tony laughed. “Ok, maybe that’s not the best metaphor, but you know what I mean. Besides, it was kind of nice to go analog again, break out the old pencil and paper. And it wasn’t all me! Morgan helped too.”

"Oh really?"

"Yep! Very helpful design critic, our daughter. Here, I'll show you." Tony flipped forward to a sheet that displayed detailed close-up and exploded views of the suit's helmet. "She really liked this part, see?" He pointed out the signs of Morgan's interest - a wrinkly spot on the corner of the page where the baby had clearly drooled on the paper, and a few smudges the exact width of her tiny fingers streaked right across the center of the main drawing. "Tried to grab your helmet right off the page!"

While Pepper fondly examined this father-daughter collaboration, Tony turned his attention to Morgan, giving the pint-sized engineer a playful bounce in his arms. “You really are your Daddy’s little girl, aren’t you?” Morgan smooshed her hand onto Tony’s face in response and he pretended to nibble at the tips of her fingers, making her (and Pepper) laugh. “You want a suit too, baby girl?”

Pepper stopped laughing at that and looked sternly at her husband. "Tony, please tell me you aren't…"

"Of course not," Tony retorted, making sure to sound appropriately scandalized at the very notion. “I told her, I said, not until you’re at least six-” he waited for Pepper to glare, right on cue, then finished with an impish grin, “-teen.”

Pepper rolled her eyes at that, but affectionately, and focused back on the schematics. “What’s this mean, here?” she asked, pointing out the title block at the corner of the page.

“Oh, that’s what I’ve been calling her, Rescue.” Tony explained. “You can change if you want something different though!” he hurriedly added. “Maybe something a bit flashier - you don’t know how tempted I was to go with Iron Maiden; a bit more my speed than yours, of course, but you’re welcome to it. Anyway, I just kept coming back to that first time I saw you suited up, remember? In the Mark 42 armor, how you saved me…” How you’ve saved me so many times, in so many ways over the years, he thought, but left unspoken. “It’ll still have all the usual defensive and attack capabilities, of course, and we can add in whatever fancy tricks and toys you want, but the primary intent is, well, rescue.”

“Did you start building it already?”

“No, I-” Tony’s eyes met Pepper’s and she could see the vulnerability there, the kind he only ever let her see. “I did this for you, Pepper, only for you, and it’s your choice. It doesn’t need to go any further than this, it can just be some art for our bedroom wall, if that’s all you want it to be. But I needed to show it to you either way. So…what do you think?"

Pepper traced her finger lightly over a little inset drawing on the last page of the blueprints. It was an image of Iron Man and Rescue flying next to each other, more of a sketch than a schematic really (although, knowing Tony, more likely than not still to scale and accurate in all technical aspects). There was probably some mundane reason for that picture to be there, maybe to show a size comparison between the suits, but all Pepper could think of as she looked at it was Tony sitting at his worktable in the garage, lovingly drawing the two of them twirling through the air together. Maybe telling Morgan about it, spinning her stories of her parents as knights in shining armor, off to save the world. She could see how much he wanted this - for her, for them - in every line, in every detail so lovingly rendered, and to her surprise she realized she really did want it too.

They’d talked so much, over the years, about the negative side of Tony and his suits - the obsession, all the ways he’d hidden away and almost lost himself in them - but that’s never been the whole story. There’s freedom there, and joy too and this...this, she understood, was Tony trying to share all that with her. It wasn’t insecurity or a distraction, it was calm and careful - and beautiful. Invention born out of love, not fear. And just like that, Pepper knew what her answer was. She shifted her gaze back towards Tony’s tentative, hopeful face. “I think…” she gave him a soft smile and nodded. “Yes, Tony, I’ll be your Rescue.”

[bountybossier]

Burnt Brownies | Bea & Nic

Nothing really bonds two people quite like baking brownies.

With: @beatrice-blaze

Nicodemus wasn’t social media savvy and preferred the old-fashioned tree-killing method of publicizing his services. All throughout the main streets of White Crest, he had stapled sheets of paper with tear-away phone numbers. Every call went to one of his three burner phones. Given the state of the town with its current problems, he hadn’t expected a call for any house maintenance. At all. Not within the first week or so of being there at least. When the phone erupted in the silence of his hotel room, he stared at it. At the fourth ring, he finally answered. After the encounters with lobsters he had subjected himself to, a little wrench work didn’t sound terrible and he told the client he would be there as soon as he could manage it. Within the hour, he stood outside the door of a Beatrice Vural, toolkit paired with a neutral expression. He knocked twice and waited.

There were a lot of things Bea was good at. Fixing up her house was not one of them. See she understood that things broke, but when she had been living at home all she had to do was tell her dad and then it was fixed the next day. Then when she moved into her house she was simply lost when it came to those things. Usually, she called her dad still when things weren’t working, but he was too busy to come over and she was going crazy from the constant sound of the leaky sink. She was still tidying the house when she heard the knocks and she hoped that nothing too strange was left out. If anything was she hoped the handyman would just write it off as White Crest weirdness. She bounded to the door and swung it open with a smile. “Hi! Are you here for the sink?”

His face slid easily into a ‘customer service’ smile. Polite enough but detached from anything beyond business. Nic offered a nod as he hefted the toolkit over his shoulder effortlessly. He preferred bullets and crucifixes, but he could manage with wrenches and screws for the time being. “Yes ma’am, I’m Nic,” he said. He didn’t have to fake the tired in his voice. At least the work would be mind-numbing enough for him to fade into it. Briefly, his gaze flicked from her to the inside of her house. Eccentric. He was starting to realize that eccentric would be a good way to sum up White Crest as a whole. Eccentric and headache-inducing. A hunter’s sense served as both a gift and a curse. A reminder that life balanced itself out in the end. “Is it alright if I come in? ‘Spose I have to check on the sink as it is. What’s been going on with it again?”

“Great! Come on in!” Bea exclaimed as she moved out of his way and motioned him in. She wasn’t used to having people over to help her with things like this unless it was Shiloh or her dad. It was a bit weird, but she decided to just roll with it. “Do you need anything to drink?” She offered, figuring it was the polite thing to do. She led him to her kitchen sink, glaring at it before shifting her gaze to him, though her look was much more pleasant when she looked back at him. “It just keeps leaking. I thought it was just the facet, but it’s underneath too and honestly, the sound is driving me nuts.”

The hunter nearly flinched at her enthusiasm. Instead, Nic offered a curt nod and carried on into the house. At her question, he considered whether it was too early or unprofessional to ask for something heavier than water. He went for it. “Whiskey’s fine,” he said, then to be safe he followed it up. “Or water. I’m easy.” His hunter sense prickled at the back of his neck, but the same as anything else, nothing was certain. His shoulders tensed as he turned the sink on and listened. Yeah, something was definitely wrong with. Something lower. The sink was turned off just as quickly and he knelt down, cracking open the cupboards. Immediately, his eyes became intimate with mold and narrowed. Clicking on a flashlight, he looked at the pipes that ran up and back. Loose pipes with dangling washers. They could have just slid, but it almost looked...deliberate. He glanced at the neat stack of o-rings in the shadowy corner. “Hmm. Got any friends that might like the occasional prank or two?”

That wasn’t the response that Bea expected but she kept her features cool in her pleasant host face. She didn’t want to make the situation weird, though it was odd for him to ask for whiskey. He was there to work on her sink, but she didn’t think his work would suffer too much from a single glass of whiskey. “Okay, great,” She replied before pulling out one of her glasses and then going to her liquor cabinet and pouring him some whiskey. It wasn’t like she drank it that often. She padded over to him, holding the glass of whiskey out for him. “My little sister might, but not usually when it would affect her too. Why? Was someone messing with the sink?”

The whiskey had been a bad joke, but who would Nicodemus be to turn it down? It was easy to smother a laugh as he downed the whiskey in a straight shot. “Oh, uh, thank you kindly.” He grumbled as he returned to looking at the sink with annoyance. Something was there, lingering by the sink pipes, but he couldn’t tell what it was. He could feel it though and he tapped at his bent knee. “Huh, might not be her then,” he said with a wise nod. Not gonna say you’ve got a sink saboteur. Only small child-sized hands could really pull off the shit he was looking at. And he felt their eyes on him, watching him. In a house, pulling off tricks, being a goddamn nuisance...He muttered under his breath. “Goddamn brownies.” He looked back up to the owner of the house. “Alright, this might be a weird request, but...” He sucked in a breath before he spoke again. “Do you have a fuck ton of salt?”

Bea felt like she suddenly understood why he was so cheap compared to other handymen around the neighborhood. She didn’t think the other ones would have asked for the whiskey, much less just downed it in a straight shot. Though, who was she to judge. She busied herself tidying up the kitchen a bit more as he worked, not wanting to seem like she was hovering, which she was, but she didn’t want it to be blatant. Her eyes snapped towards him as he made his request and her face automatically soured. Great, something was in her fucking house again. She quickly pulled a rather large container labeled “NOT KITCHEN SALT” down from a shelf. “So what’s down there?” She asked, her tone much less enthusiastic now.

The hunter wiggled his nose slightly before pinching the bridge of it. How was Nicodemus supposed to explain this to someone who may or may have not known what a brownie was outside of the edible variety? After this, he could go for a fucking edible brownie. He huffed in a sigh and cleared his throat, rubbed at the back of his head. “So you might have a problem,” he started, slow and trying to find the right words to aptly describe it as he went along. “With rodents. Looks like they’re unscrewing the washers and taking the o-rings off. That’s why the sink is doing that.” On purpose and with expert precision. Rats with the hands of people wasn’t a bad description of brownies. He stood up and placed his hands on his hips. The kitchen didn’t have too many entrances and the windowsill could have salt put on it. Fuck, she was going to think he was weird. “I might need to use the--” he paused and glanced at the jar. “Not Kitchen Salt for, uh, extermination means.” He quickly glanced at her and rubbed at his stubbly jaw. “For the rats.”

A smile quirked at the corner of Bea’s mouth. It was nice of him to lie to her about what was actually going on, but she didn’t believe for a second that rats needed that much salt. She debating letting him continue on, but he’d figure out she knew about the supernatural sooner or later into this endeavour. “What is actually down there?” She asked, her voice slightly amused. “I know it’s not rats unscrewing my washers.” Usually, she would have done what she could pretend to be blind to the supernatural world, but this was a situation called for honesty. “Rats don’t usually need salt.”

Nicodemus tipped his head back and released a massive breath. Alright, it felt good to have passed that. He was a shit liar to begin with when it came to critters being where they shouldn’t be. He lightly clapped his hands together. How she knew or what she knew about the things that lived behind the curtain, he didn’t know and didn’t think it was imperative to ask at that very moment. “Thank fuck. Alright, so you’ve got brownies. Ever dealt with them?” He gestured to the salt vaguely. “They’re real picky with houses and like to be real goddamn annoying. Hence the sink shit.” He walked over to one of the openings to the kitchen and measured it with his eyes. “And they can’t beat cheeks over salt lines.” He bit at his bottom lip and grunted. “...I’ll help clean, because it’s gonna get pretty bad in here to get rid of ‘em.”

“Brownies,” Bea exclaimed, with a half laugh. The universe just loved to play massive games with her. Maybe this was her karma for spilling all her sister’s secrets to Alain. “I’ve never had them before, but I’ve heard they’re annoying little things. My aunt had brownies once in her home and the place smelt bad for a week after she tried to get rid of them.” She let out a groan under her breath, “I just cleaned the kitchen.” She took a handful of salt, beginning the ring around the kitchen. “So how do you know about brownies?” She asked, curious.

“Yup, brownies,” Nicodemus echoed with an exasperated look. Naming the shits wasn’t what he was in charge of. Just dealing with them. “They’re awful and they smell once they--Yup, that’s the one,” he held up a finger and shook it; a gesture of agreement. Alright, so she knew about the brownies. A good start. “So they’re about to unleash some hell on your house and it ain’t gonna be pretty, but we can get rid of them for good and at least keep them in the damn kitchen.” He was starting to wonder what had befallen him that he was fighting the most child-sized of creatures just days apart from each other. “Put some salt along the entrances and the window, they can’t really go anywhere.” He drew himself out of hunter mode and peered over at her. “Oh. Right. I deal with pest extermination.” A fine enough explanation. “You? Was it just your aunt?”

“Awful name.” Bea remarked,”Brownies are a good dessert. They don’t deserve to be lumped with these things.” She was going to have fun telling Nellie about the brownies that were found under the kitchen sink. With their family’s fondness of brownies as a food, it was hilarious (and very irritating) that the creatures kept finding them too. “My house has been through so much already,” She said exasperated, to herself. After the whole debacle with Greg, she thought the place would be peaceful for a minute. She put the salt down carefully, trying to make sure there was no way one of the little things couldn’t sneak its way out. She hummed noncommittally. “I know a lot of things.”

“You can say that shit again,” Nicodemus huffed. Any sense of professionalism slipped out the door the minute he muttered goddamn brownies. “Feels like a bad joke, but ain’t that just the way.” He didn’t think he had any iron on him, but when he found some small cast iron washers in his box, he smiled to himself. “That right? I respect that. I know a lot of things too. Comes in handy sometimes.” Not quite brass knuckles and he didn’t expect to get into a slug fest with brownies...But he wouldn’t complain if he did. After watching her place the salt, he nodded and looked at the underbelly of the sink again. With the two of them staring at it, he hoped the brownies were getting worried. He glanced over at Beatrice with a raised brow. “You got a lighter?”

Bea let out an amused puff of air, not quite at the point of actual laughter when there were brownies just mere feet away from them. “Who names them? Half the time they have such funny names I can’t tell if they’re serious or not.” When she grew up learning about the names of different creatures, she had always had thoughts on the naming processes. “Comes in handy a lot in this town,” She muttered under her breath, wondering if she would have brownies if she was just hanging out in Portland. She looked at him for a moment,“Why would I need a lighter?” Of course, fire was always just a snap away for Bea so she had never needed to carry a lighter. She felt bad for people who had to, it seemed like so much work.

“I don’t know, but I’ll see ‘em in court,” Nicodemus muttered as he crouched down and looked into the dark under the sink. “Town’s pretty fucky in its own right, isn’t it?” Somewhere, the brownies were in there and they were watching them. The skin on the back of his neck prickled and ran down his spine. He likened it to a killing intent and if he intended anything, it was to kill the damn things. At her question, he hummed low in his throat thoughtfully. “Well, I don’t think they’ll take kindly to fire if I put it in their face,” he said. He reckoned that the brownies wouldn’t be thrilled with a mini flamethrower burning the hair off their heads. “Gonna try and smoke ‘em out unless you got something else I can use.”

“Let me know when you have your court date, I’ll join in on that.” As Bea watched him, she leaned against the counter. There was no need to crowd his space as he looked for the brownies under the sink. Quite frankly, she wasn’t all that tempted to see them herself, they were ugly little things. She hummed, debating whether or not it was worth blowing her secret. Finally, she came to the conclusion that if it got her house peaceful again, it was worth the risk. Snapping her fingers, a little burst of fire danced over her thumb. “I don’t need a lighter.”

All the brownies needed was a good scare and then Nicodemus would be able to sniff them out. The curse of enhanced senses, truly. He contemplated the mechanics of jerry-rigging a small flamethrower together and sticking it under the sink, but that wouldn’t do. Then he’d have more to do than just fix the sink. The snap and smell of flame drew his attention fast, his head snapping up. Well, that was something he could circle as a possibility for why his head was throbbing. “Well fuck,” he said plainly. Tools jostled as he pulled out a cast-iron knife from the bottom. He figured they were at a point where pulling a knife out wouldn’t be weird. “Yep, you sure as shit don’t. Y’mind waving that under there? I’m sure they probably know what’s coming.”

Bea let out a little laugh when his head snapped around. There was always pleasure in surprising someone with her magic. She knew that it wasn’t the nicest thing to find amusing, but it was just always so funny seeing how different people reacted to her. She squatted down next to Nic, glancing under the sink. It was no shock that she couldn’t see anything lurking. She stuck her hand, still with the flame at her fingers under the sink. Once again, she had to admit she was thankful that her mom forced her to put fire wards around the house. “I’m hoping that knife is for the brownies and not me,” She teased with another laugh.

"We'll see where we're at after the brown--Fuckin' Christ, there it is." The smell hit Nicodemus so damn hard he nearly vomited right there. To hell with his fucking senses, sometimes he felt he'd do better off without them. Her flame-kissed fingers terrified the brownies something fierce because the smell of death and all things awful hit. And then the scurrying started. Small hands and bodies slammed and slapped at them as they took off running. The press of something against his hand had Nic jabbing with the iron knife, a hiss and a sad snarl coming from an invisible as its face suddenly became clear, the blade wedged in deep enough to go through. The hunter frowned. As smart as they were, fear made them stupid. And they ran straight into the salt lines, tiny feet and hands scrabbling at the floor. "Huh. There's the stinky bastards."

There was nothing Bea could do to prepare herself for the smell that the brownies hit her with. “Oh my god!” She yelled as she covered her nose with her other hand. She had heard from her aunt about how disgusting the smell was, but she hadn’t imagined it would smell like this. This was goddamn awful. She hadn’t remembered that they could go invisible until the moment that she was caught stare at the space around her wondering where the heck all of them went. It took her a moment, but eventually she heard where they had gone. She aimed a tiny fireball at the noises, grazing one of the brownies’s side. “I hate that they can just disappear!”

It should have been a strange experience to shiv brownies, and yet, it wasn’t. Life was just a series of weird shit. The smell was bad for her too and Nicodemus was already dreading the clean-up that would follow. They were like skunks in that way. Singed skin alerted him to the presence of some of the invisible shits and he managed to stick one with the iron knife. He damn near prayed that no one walked by. Knife in hand and fireballs flying, they looked fucking nuts. But it was all for a good reason. “They’re the goddamn chihuahuas of the supernatural world,” he grumbled angrily. He grabbed two in one hand and ran them through clean, dropping their bodies. The smell damn near made him retch. The whiskey was a mistake and it started to rear up in him. He pointed at the longest line of salt. “The little feet, the little feet,” he repeated. “Fuckin’ bunched up.”

“They’re worse!” Bea groaned. “At least chihuahuas don’t smell this bad!” She could already imagine how long it was going to take to burn this smell out of her memory. She just hoped that her sisters would be out tonight while everything aired out. She didn’t want to hear them complain about how awful it was. She whipped around to stare at the section he pointed out. Taking a moment to try to aim, another fireball hit its mark. The smell of burnt flesh came through and a brownie suddenly flickered into view as it was too injured to keep up the invisibility.

Well, Nicodemus couldn’t argue that. As more brownies popped into view from her fireball, he cut them down until he couldn’t hear anymore light scampers of feet. He held his stomach as long as he could and tried to swallow down the smell, but their blood didn’t smell any better and shit was crispy. It was fine. It was fine. He smelled worse. He repeated that mantra as he held his nose in the crook of his elbow and breathed in the smell of his laundry detergent. “Think that’s it,” he said as he lowered his arm with a long exhale. “At least it better fuckin’ be.” The carnage of killing brownies looked entirely comical in a way it shouldn’t have and he laughed. Loud. “Well, it’d be pretty shit to charge you after all this…”

[lokikingofasgardslover713]

Off the Rails 2: Valkyrie/Brunhilde

Masterlist

Part 1: Thor   Part 3: Loki

Valkyrie/Brunhilde x FEMALE Plus Size Reader

Warnings: F/F SMUT! FLUFF, violence, blood

A/N: Picking up after reader is found by Brunhilde. Will the Valkyrie treat her like Thor?

This took on three parts, each is 3,500-4,500 words these are dark, but they come to a culmination of a decent ending I hope.

Words: + 3,900

It was quiet, as in the quiet that accompanies the falling of snow though it was almost summer, when it seems everything stills to wait for it to stop except Y/N was warm, covered, cozy & though there was a slight ache it was nothing compared to what she should have felt. Thickly swallowing the fear that rose in her chest the soldier gradually ventured to sit up on the soft cotton sheets that didn’t scratch or chafe at bare legs.

Pushing the sheet & heavy blanket back to look down to note cotton panties & soft t-shirt that didn’t fit to tight. Looking up to lastly take in her surroundings, the room was simple, smelled of new construction the walls generic ivory color to help brighten the area that composed of a bed, chair & nightstand. Taking note of the medical items on the stand, more specially a vile that read morphine & several needles still in sterile packaging.

Fuck, it wasn’t a nightmare, the Valkyrie had found her, possibly bought Y/N here to return to Thor. God she couldn’t go back to that, she had to leave, panic rising as she forced waking body out of bed & stumbled through the room to the door. Taking a look out & listening, it was quiet, taking her time down the hall only to stumble into the kitchen like a drunk, glass falling to the floor & as luck would have it she stepped on the shards to bloody left foot. Letting out a loud curse as the soldier plopped onto plump ass on the hardwood.

Holding a hand around the oozing gash to take the opportunity to look around the kitchen. It smelled of new construction as well, it looked very modern, bright colors. A sitting area open with the kitchen so it all flowed, noting the front door a sunny evening outside brightening the seating area before looking back to the kitchen & the glass bottles littering the counters. Hence her current state of sitting on the floor with bleeding hand in foot cursing all she could or at least until the back door that was in the kitchen opened for the Valkyrie to step in.

The woman wasn’t clad in battle armor, the tanned warrior dressed in Midgard clothes & needless to say made her look domesticated. Y/N finding herself looking up at the warrior in awe, at least until she sat the bags down & hurried toward her. The rush provoking Y/N to get quick to bloody feet in a rush to get away turning to the front door spotted earlier, reaching for the knob before strong hand grabbed her wrist & jerked her back the scream to fight echoing through the soldiers brain.

It was a short fight, one that gave the Valkyrie a run for her money as she wrestled the unrelenting soldier to the floor to end in both panting in tangled limbs on the blood streaked living room floor. Y/N on her side panting & cursing while the Valkyrie twisted in the soldiers limbs so painful they both had problems keeping it together. Brunhilde trying to speak to her calmly, explaining she wasn’t wanting to hurt her.

The soldier pressed to plump stomach, cheek forced painfully into the hard wood, the warriors legs tangled in hers & arms painfully twisted behind her back. Feeling fingers digging into tender ribs but not putting any pressure, at least not yet as an elbow jabbed into her spine to cause an audible pop.

“I'm going to let you up & help you back to the bedroom…,” Brunhilde tried to sooth before Y/N snarled back at her jerking hard to free herself.

“And get me ready for Thor! No fucking way,” Y/N growled before the warrior squeezed hard into tender ribs that were beginning to ache & make the soldier let out a pained grunt.

“I'm not taking you back to that barbarian! I plan on keeping you here safe, but if you fight me then I may have to keep you chained in your room till you come around! Is that understood,” the Valkyrie bit out another pained grunt, more cursing before trying to free herself but to no good the warrior had her in a grip that finally halted all attempts to get free.

“Keeping me for yourself…,” Y/N bit back, letting out a silent yelp as Brunhilde slowly allowed her arm to free to fall to aching side.

“Yes! But I don’t push me mortal,” the Valkyrie snarled out lessening the pressure to her spine, looking down to the soldier back to see the shirt hiking up, noting the ugly hand print of the a fore mentioned god yellowing, damn this made her fill pity for Y/N.

Well at least she was honest, Y/N going limp to be jerked up & helped gently down the hall to the room she came from. Brunhilde helping the addled soldier to sit gently on the edge of the mattress next to the table, rifling through medical supplies on the table before taking a seat next to Y/N turning to face her. The only thing the solider focused on was the floor as the Valkyrie took the wounded foot into calloused hands to lift it to her lap that was now covered in a towel. Y/N trying to not whimper at the pain it caused to pull the glass shards free, but surprised at how gentle Brunhilde treated the foot cradled in her lap.

“I need to clean it,” Brunhilde began, taking time to make sure all glass was out trying to talk to Y/N who looked at the floor letting out a pained breath but still not meeting the worried gaze the warrior gave her, the soldier letting out a hiss as the antiseptic was wiped over it before beginning to wrap it.

“You hungry? You’ve been asleep for several days. I brought some food for you, not sure what you ate,” the bronze warrior ventured, taking time to wrap the foot making a loop around her ankle before taping it down, calloused hand caressing over the supple flesh of the soldiers shin, finally getting Y/N attention at the tender gesture.

“Why are you people interested in me,” Y/N sighed out, Y/E/C orbs locking onto the cognac ones that sparkled with concern for the worried creature before her.

“Because you are a beautiful creature,” the warrior spoke finishing up to watch the woman draw away still not focusing, how did the warrior truly explain to Y/N that even she didn’t understand why she was drawn to her.

“So, I'm a play thing,” Y/N sighed, Y/E/C orbs focusing as she sat straighter, looking over the warrior for the first time, remembering when she first came to the compound, Brunhilde was a complete wreck then, but she hadn’t seen her in several months making her wonder where she went.

The Valkyrie leaning forward to capture the soldiers face in bloody hands to crash lips together in a bruising kiss. The intensity making the mortals head swim as she fell back to the pillows with the Valkyrie crawling over curvaceous body gingerly, careful of soreness as she paused between thick thighs hovering over the soldier. It was soothing, it was odd it was gentle, Y/N hadn’t had gentle in a long time & found herself moaning into the kiss as nerves calmed. The Valkyrie pulling away with at smile on her lips as the mortal panted under her, thumbs cherishing soft cheeks.

“See. Beautiful… now let’s go fix something to eat. I'm not good at earth food & I could use the help. You can sit & point, how’s that,” Brunhilde bargained with the nervous soldier that wasn’t sure what to say or how to react, this was the first time a woman had ever kissed her & truth told it was WAY better than any man.

Y/N was at a loss for words, looking up into dazzling chocolate brown eyes that actually held no malice in them, the first time in a long time she had seen that, actually holding an excited & hopeful look. One unseen in a year thanks to the snap. Slender hand carding through tousled Y/H/C hair as Y/N finally nodded in agreement with the warrior.

“Good. I’ll take care of you sweetheart keep you safe,” the warrior echoed, moving to help the nervous mortal up & back to the kitchen.

The warrior helping Y/N to get seated at the kitchen island she had totally missed in her assessment of the room before Brunhilde hurried around to throw the beer bottles in a trash can to give her room to place what she had bought before Y/N. The mortal looking over the groceries to note it seemed there was stuff for pancakes, sausage, canned biscuits & bacon as well as some juice.

“You know how to make pancakes,” the warrior asked Y/N who looked at the box the bronze skinned woman held, eyeing her in suspicion.

“How do you usually feed yourself,” Y/N asked cautiously, remembering how it was when several others of Asgard along with one other she didn’t want to think about, had come to earth & she spent her free time teaching them how to prepare simple foods.

“Take out…,” she admitted sheepishly handing the box to the soldier, moving forward as Y/N got to her feet gingerly, holding weight off of the wounded foot to look around the kitchen jolting slightly as Brunhilde grabbed her arm to hold to her, not wanting her to fall.

“OK, well, you need a bowl to mix, a whisk, measuring cups, milk, eggs, vanilla…,” Y/N trailed off tiredly looking up from the box to look at the Valkyrie who looked perplexed to say the least.

“Oh god… really? Who’s supposed to be the pet,” Y/N huffed out, preparing to move about the kitchen but letting out a yelp as Brunhilde pushed her back to the counter next to the stove & lifted her to the stone top to take a seat.

“You're not a pet,” Brunhilde spoke quietly as if it had hurt that Y/N called herself that, fingers ghosting down curvaceous side as she turned to pull out the things she mentioned, placing it next to Y/N who still held the box & began to explain how to prepare the mix.

“How did you find me,” Y/N asked cautiously, watching how tanned hands moved fluidly, the sign of a true warrior & staring at the mark on the inside of her wrist, nervously clearing her throat when she was caught to meet cognac gaze.

“After we eat,” was all the Valkyrie told the bewildered soldier that nodded in understanding as she continued to inform her how to prepare the mix and how it should be cooked.

After we eat, turned into Y/N going to lay on the couch to fall asleep, started awake by the warrior gently lifting dazed head to place into Brunhilde’ lap so tanned hands could card through the soldiers hair once more.

What was with these people, the fascination with her hair & petting Y/N like a pet. Well, at least it didn’t seem the Valkyrie was grabby like the first night she found her, remembering bits & pieces of the day. A small remembrance of someone, not Brunhilde, standing over her broken body healing it but couldn’t recall the man’s face nor voice at the moment.

“Thor sent me to find you, said he couldn’t be involved because it would endanger his position with the Avengers. Originally I thought that you were a girlfriend but when I set eyes on your ruined form on the road it was apparent you were something else. I… I just have to protect you from him, that’s the only way I can explain it. There is more to you sweetheart, but I'm not sure what yet. You're not a paly toy to me, I want treat you like that, don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe,” the Valkyrie admitted as Y/E/C orbs gazed up at the woman still not comprehending fully, it all was a rush, surreal it made absolutely no sense.

“Thor…,” Y/N began choking on the words in an effort to finish the sentence, but the Valkyrie leaned down, tanned calloused hand moving to soft cheek to cherish the supple flesh, forehead delicately placed on Y/N’ who closed her eyes & readied for what was about to happen.

“I know what he is doing, we’re working on making it right,” was all she said as freehand came to card through the soldiers hair now filling curvaceous form shake at the uncertainty.

“Who are we,” Y/N’ voice shook the warrior not making any moves to do any more than card hair & cherish soft cheek.

“Don’t worry about it, get some rest,” the warrior began filing the mortal giving up to go lax accepting a fate that was uncertain as pain began to make her body ache.

“Sleep, I’ll be right here when you wake,” Brunhilde promised quietly as Y/E/C orbs fluttered closed, relishing in the soothing touch.

It was always quiet when she woke had been the last few months anyway, the Valkyrie or Brunhilde or as Y/N had taken to calling her B, hadn’t made any real moves on her not in ways that Thor had. The warrior Y/N had originally thought was a hard ass had taken to treating Y/N with care, but this was a private setting that never seen anyone but the two of them.

This night had led to Y/N realizing the warrior had been slowing on the drinking oddly enough & having successfully taught the warrior how to make chicken & dumplings for the two. The women parting ways after they had eaten for Y/N to go to her room to change to comfortable clothes before taking the customary nap on the couch in the warriors lap but turning to find Brunhilde in the door way looking her over.

“What,” Y/N asked the woman who stayed put, wondering if she was taking too long.

“Um… damn I'm usually better at this,” the warrior began Y/N seeing the passion in her eyes, a feeling urging the mortal forward to initiate it oddly enough, though never having been that type of woman before all this.

“You would be interested in me… after all the shit you know he done to me,” Y/N spoke taking steps to get closer stopping toe to toe with the lithe warrior that had to look slightly up at the soldier but that meant nothing.

“Interested doesn’t describe it,” Brunhilde began, lithe hand going to the nape of Y/N’ neck to pull her to bronze lips that were softer than she thought they would.

The kiss becoming heated & the warrior using her strength to push Y/N back to the mattress falling with her to soft surface. If it was instinct or not, Y/N spread her legs willingly this time as the lithe warrior settled between them, a hand still holding to the soldiers nape as tongues tangled & fought for dominance. Free hand pressing fingers into the leggings Y/N wore to feel wetness soaking through as lips released to become a panting mess of need.

Y/N smiled up at Brunhilde, a thought echoing that this was the gentleness she had been denied the past 6 months Thor tortured her every chance he got. Ample hips bucking at the friction, breath leaving her the instant the pants were ripped front dripping cunt to expose wet core to the cold room.

“First time with a woman,” the Valkyrie asked quietly, finger delicately circling sensitive nub that begged for more friction but pulled away to deny Y/N what she wanted as if worried she would hurt her.

“Yes,” Y/N whimpered, especially as two digits sunk into tight heat that clenched around tan digits, body arching at the touch into the Valkyrie that bowed over her.

“Then scoot back on the bed baby & let me take care of you the way you need,” Brunhilde spoke darkly on pink lips.

Fingers staying put as Y/N did as told but not prepared for the warrior to settle between thick thighs tongue probing at slick hole while fingers pumped in & out. A moaning “fuck” passing parted lips as the Valkyrie moved to suckle at delicate with heated mouth, Y/N collapsing to the pillows as thighs shook.

Trembling hands snaking into the warriors hair to tug at the loose locks with a whimper falling from her lips, taking a breath to look down & realize the warriors free hand was down the front of her own pants. It sent a chill to Y/N core to witness Brunhilde taking care of her needs as well, turning the soldier on more. Ample hips bucked, needy cunt clenching as the familiar coil tightened in lower abdomen that made curses fall from pink lips.

“My kind of woman,” Brunhilde breathed out hot over throbbing clit that begged for friction.

“Please don’t stop,” Y/N whimpered tugging at the warriors ebony locks for her to return that Brunhilde ignored to make her way up thick body, never stopping her ministrations knowing she was driving Y/N closer to the edge with each circle thumb made around delicate clit.

“Not until you cum,” the Valkyrie breathed on pink lips ceasing them to swallow the cry of Y/N’ release pushed Brunhilde over the edge, swearing both blacked out with their release as they found themselves a panting wreck, the warrior sprawled over Y/N fingers sliding free.

“I have you baby,” the warrior breathed, hand going to Y/N face for the soldier to smell her own release on the digits Y/N turning to place a kiss into the palm as both laid together to regain composure before continuing anything.

It was a ritual, an odd one at that but one that happened after they ate together, the two women lying on the couch, Y/N’ head in Brunhilde lap while they talked or just sat in silence. Especially if the Valkyrie had been out all day or gone for a few days.

Y/N never bothered to leave the house, content that no one was trying to hurt her & the warrior treated her better than any man had in a long time. The gentle carding lulling her to sleep at least until a hateful sigh echoed around the room that had Y/N shooting up on the couch the instant a male voice began to berate the warrior.

“Honestly! This is where you…,” the raven-haired man began, pausing at the sight of Y/N hurrying to bare feet, Y/E/C orbs raking over the black on black suit he wore, terror flashing in them once it sat in who it was, filling naked as emerald eyes raked over the racer back tank & lacey panties.

“Do you not know how to knock,” Brunhilde began hatefully stepping around the stunned soldier to get into the gods face for intruding on them like he had, the lithe warrior showing no fear of the god like Y/N was at the moment but then again he was the brother of the very god that had rapped & abused her body to the point of ruin almost a year ago.

“I'm sorry but who is this charming creature,” Loki began changing his tone, taking a step towards Y/N who was beginning to visibly shiver.

“What the fuck is with you gods,” Y/N snapped out, not having a clue where the rage came from to watch anger flash in the god’s eyes who was quick to push Brunhilde to the side to stand before her.

“Bold little creature it appears as well,” he snipped back.

The god looking far to intrigued with Y/N to be mad, ignoring Brunhilde to reach out to stop Y/N from leaving, grabbing soft neck delicately not harshly & filling her freeze as if it was a taught behavior. The god himself remembering his own torture at the hands of the Black Order. Loki recalling back to when the Valkyrie called him to this house to heal the soldier, noting Y/N had regained her vigor & didn’t appear as beaten down.

“Let go of her Loki! She has had enough harsh treatment from Thor to last her a thousand lifetimes,” Brunhilde scolded.

Both watching Y/N visibly flinch at the mention of the older brothers name, still holding delicately to supple neck, calloused thumb cherishing the silky flesh absentmindedly as he stepped flush with her shivering form.

“What has that idiot done to you little one,” Loki seemed to worry.

The poor creature trembling before him was one his brother had been abusing for lack of a better word, relief washing over him that Brunhilde had appeared to have kept her here and safe. Loki unable to understand why he felt the need all of the sudden to become protective of her as well.

Carefully Brunhilde reached up to pull Loki’ hand from Y/N’ neck, making sure the god wasn’t going to react violently to the move & thankfully it appeared Loki understood as he released without protest.

“Go on & get a shower, I have a feeling he will be here awhile,” the warrior informed Y/N who nodded as tanned fingers cherished over shivering cheek before Y/N hurried down the hall towards the bathroom.

Leaning against the bathroom door to listen as Loki began to ask questions about Y/N, such as how she was faring & was the warrior sure Thor didn’t know where she was. It surprised the soldier at the concern in his voice, memory recalling the one who stood over her, healing broken body & all she could think was it was Loki.

After several days to putting up with the god that had taken to showing up once a day, usually late in the evening & in the signature green & black leathers. Brunhilde telling Loki he could use her room to sleep in since he showed up at bed time anyway & it wasn’t like the warrior needed it since having taken up sleeping with Y/N to quiet nightmares among other needs.

Except it appeared today he was going to return not long after Brunhilde who was met by the mortal looking as if she had anticipated her return more than usual. The lithe warrior pinning curvaceous body to the wall in the hallway as Y/N had started down the corridor to great her at the door.

Brunhilde allowed Y/N to push her to the center of the walkway, not bothering to tell the soldier Loki had followed, to enthralled by the bronze lips that captured hers, paying little heed to the sound of anther entering. Taking a step back to slam into the god & swearing it felt as if she had slammed into a brick wall. The creak of leather not registering but the cool lithe fingers caressing over the back of Y/N’ soft nape when hair was pushed away for the god to nuzzle at it having her freezing in place.

Brunhilde paying the soldiers pause no mind as she nipped at soft neck that arched to look back to the god, a shiver running her spine as Brunhilde finally stopped to watch Y/N as she turned to look up at the god, taking a step away & no doubt in her mind what he wanted by the state of lust blown eyes.

Tan arms wrapping around Y/N’ thick waist as Y/E/C orbs looked at the god in wonder before the Valkyrie slowly tugged her back to the bedroom. Not a word said as the two women disappeared down the hall to shut the door & not emerge for the rest of the evening.

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[ecotone99]

[SF] Next to Godliness

“PEOPLE ARE FUCKING DEAD!” Taro bellowed.

“Yes, Taro, we’re aware. Please sit down,” his father, the Shogun, said in response.

It’d been quite the day.

The planet of Tsukuyomi was an oddity in the Amaterasu Commonwealth of human space. Some would go so far as to call it an eyesoar. Amaterasu was the largest single dominion in the Human Quadrant of the Milky Way galaxy, controlling three entire solar system under one banner. Well, almost three entire systems: one lone planet stood in obnoxious defiance, the needless contrarian to the agreeable Amaterasu residents, a zit on its otherwise pristine face. That zit was Tsukuyomi, originally the capital of the Commonwealth when it was merely one system (also called Tsukuyomi, naturally). Unfortunately, they’d become so aggressively introspective and isolationist that they hadn’t even noticed when their neighboring planet of Amaterasu declared themselves independent, moved the capital to their own planet, took control of the system from them, and began expanding outwards under a new flag (an act the Tsukuyomi considered akin to a teenager dying their hair and taking a pretentious nickname).

“WELL THEN WHY AREN’T YOU DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT!?” Taro Tanaka, age 34, said from across the boardroom. His father, the Shogun, sat at the other end of the long white table. Everything in the room was white like it’d been bleached: the table, the chairs, the clothes the council members wore. It was all so terribly clean.

Outside was their world: everywhere were pure green-leafed trees and sparkling blue rivers. Their sun, Taiyo, burned bright above them. The people of their capital city, New Tokyo (not to be confused with the similarly named capital city of Amaterasu, disparagingly referred to as ‘Newer Tokyo’ or ‘New New Tokyo’ or, in less than polite company, ‘Jailbait Tokyo’), was a buzzing hive of white marble and limestone and silicon buildings with happy citizens, many of them government employees, in clean white clothes. And they were all in perfect health.

On Tsukuyomi, everyone was in perfect health.

Nobody was injured.

Everyone lived a very long time.

And everyone was beautiful.

Except Taro. Taro had what those on Old Earth called ‘the Hapsburg Jaw.’ He wasn’t entirely sure what that was, and he decided at a relatively young age he could live without a definitive answer.

But everyone else was beautiful. The air on Tsukuyomi was the cleanest any human had ever breathed. It had been clean when humans first arrived there- they hadn’t needed to do much terraforming at all! And they’d only made it cleaner. The soil was so rich and the crops so nutritious on Tsukuyomi that everyone’s dietary needs were met by plants alone. The situation was so good that when Tsukuyomi was first discovered, a bidding war occured in regards to who would get to settle it. An intense court case and a massive amount of boardroom meetings occurred as a result, and the winner was Taro’s answer, Shiro Tanaka. The second highest bidder had been a sore loser and moved to Amaterasu.

What was eventually found was that the air was so clean, the inhabitants could no longer go to other human planets without the aid of air filtration system- this was discovered when a group of spies went to Susanoo, the fifth planet from the sun called Taiyo, and dropped dead and were found lying in the street by local authorities. It… It had been an ordeal. Lotta paperwork, lotta proverbial (and less than proverbial) dick-sucking had been needed to soothe that particular injury.

“Junior Vice Undersecretary Tanaka, we’re doing everything we can,” his father said. Of course he referred to him by his title- he always did when he was irritated with him. It reminded Taro of how far down the ladder he was, and how he’d only gotten where he was in the first place because his father was Shogun.

What was eventually found, by Taro himself, was that everything was a bit too clean, and that everyone was a bit too healthy. And then one night, his girlfriend, Karen Callahan, introduced him to her parents, and found that she looked exactly like them. Both of them. To an uncanny degree. And that all her siblings looked like that too. And her grandmother. And her nieces and nephews. And the photographic projection of what their child would look like. And all their eyes were far too close together- they practically just one large eye, quite frankly.

It was at that point Taro began to see these things everywhere: people with eyes too close together, or too far apart; people with ears almost as big as their heads, or ears on different spots on each side (up to an including on their necks); people with necks the size of torsos, or as small as their thumbs. And a whole lot of people, based on a skim Taro then made through the marriage certificates, who got married despite having the same last name, or almost the same last name but spelled slightly different, or the same spelling but an annotation claiming they were pronounced differently. Also, awfully high infant mortality rates for those considered to have incompatible genes.

It was… An alarming discovery, to say the least.

“Oh really, Dad?” Taro said to his father. “And what exactly are we doing about this?”

“I said ‘we’, son, not ‘we’.”

“That’s the same thing, Dad. You literally just said the same thing.”

Taro’s father, the Shogun, briefly put a ponderous hand to his chin and said, “Oh, why so I did. Well, I meant ‘we’ as in the Council and I, not ‘we’ as in the Council and I and you.”

Taro blinked.

Taro had brought all this to his father, who had done the exact same ponderous pose when confronted with the realization that they were in fact a eugenics-based state. And that they had a tendency to decide people’s careers for them before they were born- since Taro had the genetic markers of a politician (which made sense- both his parents were politicians), he was a politician, despite most people who’d met him (including his father, the Shogun) confessing he had the disposition of a street cleaner (and, statistically, over 73% of Tsukuyomi citizens had two politicians for parents, and the federal government used their society’s unemployment rate of 0% as a massive point of national pride).

This had been a revelation to the Council, who took immediate action: they opened up Tsukuyomi to international trade for the first time in over a hundred years. They reopened official channels with Amaterasu, said that their rich soil and produce could be of immense value to their massive commonwealth. The Prime Minister of Amaterasu, Jose MacDonald, agreed immediately. And perhaps even more significantly, Prime Minister MacDonald decided to visit Tsukuyomi, the first non-native to do so in over a hundred and ten years.

Parades were prepared. People gathered in the federal district of the capital. And landing pad was built specifically for the Prime Minister who had gone to Tsukuyomi (whose approval ratings had back home had gone through the roof).

His Ornithopter landed on the pad. There were no bad days on Tsukuyomi (save for perhaps, somewhat subjectively, when the Shogun (Taro’s father) felt like rain)), and thus the momentous day was marked by clear skies and warm winds.

The Prime Minister stepped out into the sun and immediately dropped dead.

He then fell off the landing pad and broke his neck for good measure.

And, befitting of a member of the recently deceased who had eaten a hearty breakfast that day, the corpse proceeded to shit itself.

There was a very long, very pregnant (it called to mind Taro’s mother’s own twelve-month pregnancy for him) pause of abject silence settled over the capital. Everything was so white and clean that the sun shined off it a little too well; it got in everyone’s eyes, made them squint, preventing them from looking directly at what had happened and processing it in earnest.

The autopsy revealed the cause of death as asphyxiation: as it turned out, the Tsukuyomi’s inability to breathe the air of other human planets cut both ways. The air on Tsukuyomi was so clean it barely counted as air anymore. It was missing several trace elements that the body required to register that what it was breathing was in fact breathable.

The same fate befell the rest of Jose MacDonald’s entourage, as the overly-sterile air had made it into the cockpit of the ornithopter as well.

Hence, people were fucking dead, rather than a person, in the singular, was fucking dead.

“I see,” Taro said to his father the day after the entire traumatic affair. “So am I not welcomed here?”

“No,” Taro’s father, the Shogun, said. A member of the council, a woman named Zari Applebright, whispered into his ear. “Er, I’m sorry, I meant ‘no’ as in ‘no, you’re not not welcomed here,’ not ‘no’ as in ‘no, you’re not welcomed here.”

“So am I welcomed here?” Taro wrinkled his very, very large brow.

“No.”

“But you just said-”

“I said you’re not not welcomed here. Try to keep up, son.”

Taro blinked.

Taro exhaled through his nostrils.

Taro left the room and came back with an antique tommy gun, which he then used to mow down absolutely everyone present. People were fucking dead, indeed.

He screamed.

He kept screaming.

Literally would not stop screaming, even after everyone was dead and he was completely out of bullets;

Even after his co-conspirators came and grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him back;

Even after someone tried to pry the gun from his hands, and he responded by crashing the gun into their face; still screaming;

Even after he was forced to fight off five other people with the empty gun as a blunt instrument; he won the fight, using the gun like an escrima stick and beating the piss out of everyone who got near him while moving throughout the room like a trained ballerina;

He would not stop screaming. He never even paused for a breath, it was all one continuous, pained scream.

Finally, however, he ran out of breath. As he groped for air, he was sucker-punched and lost consciousness.

As stated above, it was quite the day.

***

As it turned out, Taro’s co-conspirators were less on the ‘co’ and more on the ‘conspirators.’

As it turned out, while they had not instructed him to kill anyone, they knew full well that someone with his mental instability would absolutely do so. In fact, he’d exceeded their expectations quite magnificently.

As it turned out, they were fully prepared to lock him away in a padded cell when it was all over. They let him watch a broadcast of the new Shogun’s inaugural speech. It was the man who’d approached him about confronting the council in the first place, whom he’d first met with after realizing all the inbreeding and eugenics their society was indulging in. His name was Seth Galloway. Seth Galloways’s inaugural speech went a little something like this:

“My fellow citizens, we live in trying times. Our society is broken, clearly. We have been wallowing in our own stagnant decay for years. However, I do not blame you. I blame the former council. They were all killed today by disaffected youth Taro Tanaka.”

Youth? I’m thirty years old!

“Taro was the son of our former Shogun, and, in a state of outrage, killed his father and the council. Taro saw the truth of what our world had come to. While I don’t agree with his methods, his heart was in the right place. He is currently in an undisclosed facility receiving treatment for condition.”

I… I spent all day fingerpainting.

“While their end was rather inhumane, the former council did need replacement. Wholesale upheaval. And that is where we come in. The new council and myself will be treating not just the symptoms, but the disease itself. Starting today, we shall be a more open and less binding society!”

Bullshit!

Bullshit indeed.

Taro was allowed to watch the news once per week. Taro saw updates on the so called ‘cure’ Seth kept talking about:

To combat the lack of genetic diversity in their society, everyone under the age of fifty and above the age of eighteen was required to procreate with at least one complete stranger. It was known officially as ‘the strength of difference’ and unofficially ‘your societal obligation to BREED!’ And yet people went along with it;

The children produced by these strange affairs of sorts were given over to the government as state wards, raised in the long-neglected agricultural sector of the planet’s economy. When there were too many children for the available farm jobs, they started giving some of them over to the even more neglected factory sector;

Everyone was obligated to spend at least one full day a year picking up trash. If there was no trash, they had to make trash in order to then clean it up. They also had to have an officially licensed federal sponsor with them when doing so;

Drugs and alcohol were reintroduced to society. Children were required to have had their first cigarette by age six;

Everyone had to at some point in their lives come to visit Taro, who was kept in his padded cell and forbidden from bathing.

Eventually, Taro stopped watching the news.

Years passed. Taro recalled the mandatory five baths a day every member of their society had once been required to take, the requirement to report any person who might be blind or deaf or autistic or hyperactive or (God-forbid) bow-legged to the government for ‘processing’, the fact that biting your nails was an offense punishable by a fine of considerable heft. He was almost nostalgic, but couldn’t manage to delude himself that much.

Taro woke up one day and realized his gray hair was down to his waist. He did what he was required to by masturbating in front of his fans at the window in front of the padded cell. Then they all cleared away suddenly, before he’d finished masturbating (he’d managed to learn to hold off orgasm for as much as five hours at a time).

Someone had come to visit him: it was Karen. Or it was someone who looked a lot like Karen. Maybe it was her daughter. Or her granddaughter. Or her grandmother. It was hard to tell.

She pulled out a gun and fired a bullet into the glass. It shattered, and Karen extended him a hand. Taro, lacking any other source of stimulus even mildly more interesting, accepted it, and they walked out. He was bathed, trimmed, and clothed.

Karen, as they sat inside her ornithopter, said, “We need to stop the current administration. They’re doing-”

And then she told him a bunch of things he already knew.

“So basically we want your help overthrowing the government,” Karen concluded.

“Lemme guess,” Taro said, “You wanna put me in a room with Seth and the others and then I’ll lose my shit and kill them all, and then you’ll lock me up again and take over and pull a complete one-eighty?”

“Um…,” Karen stumbled.

“Well too bad,” Taro said, “Because I’ve already lost my shit. Just now, in fact.”

And then, before she could ask what in the fuck that meant, he threw her out of the ornithopter. She plummeted to her death. Taro’s only regret was not asking her how her mother/daughter was doing- he was genuinely curious. Taro took the ornithopter and flew to the nearest transit off-world. He purchased an air-filtration masked and hopped a flight- nobody recognized him with his beard shorn and hair cut and while wearing people-clothes.

Taro went to Mars, not sure what else to do. And on Tsukuyomi, everything changed, and absolutely nothing did, once again.

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[lalast0ne]

First date

Wilder

*It had been a hell of a couple of weeks. I had been put through the ringer, thrown up on the clothes line to dry. Owning a town had never been this hard. All because of a mailbox. A stupid, fucking mailbox in the shape of a duck. One neighbor got mad, stole the duck and hung it from the post office flag pole. Drama ensued. I came close to making the piece of property beside me a graveyard. It took all of my restraint not to kill both of them, along with the little shit kid who was the cause of it all. I needed a break. An escape. Calm from the chaos that was brewing inside my head. I pushed down harder on the gas petal, my car flying along the winding roads back into town. I cranked up the radio to drown out all the noise around me. Pearl Jam blaring through the speakers. I skidded my car to a stop and got out, kicking the door shut behind me. I walked around to the back, a smirk playing across my lips as I popped open the trunk and looked down, a pissed off Little Ball of Fire staring up at me.*

Layla

*I stare up at you with wide eyes, nostrils flaring and a little exhausted from all the screaming I’ve been doing for what feels like hours but in reality was about 20 minutes. My hair is still soaking wet from the shower and my pajamas are all twisted from all the wiggling and thrashing around that’s just ensued in the confines of this small cramped space, which smells extremely funky. This is not how it was supposed to be. He was supposed to turn up and I was supposed to be suitably dressed, then he’d drive me to whatever he had planned; Me sitting in the passenger seat, of course. But I shouldn’t be surprised by this turn of events and I guess I should at least be thankful he’d turned up. I sit bolt upright and ready for war when I register the smirk playing across his lips.* What the actual hell?!? *My arm lunges out and my fist connects with his shoulder before I climb from the trunk and look around to take in my surroundings then look back at you, eyes still wide and breathing still ragged* What are we doing here?

Wilder

*My eyes take in your body as you step out of the trunk. I resist the urge to rub my shoulder and laugh. I wanted tonight to be a surprise and she was being a tad difficult when I went to pick her up. All because she was not dressed for a date. She was stunning to me and that was all the mattered. Hence, the ride here in my trunk when she refused to leave her apartment. So over my shoulder she went. I shoved my hands in my pockets, rocked back on my heels and nodded my head to the right.* Our first date Layla.

Layla

*He looks a little too satisfied with himself about this whole situation and I resist the urge to hit him again. Just as I’m about to demand he take me home so I can get some clothes on, he does this cute little rocking motion back on his heels and nods his head for me to look in the opposite direction. The gasp slips from my lips before I can even think about trying to contain it. I feel you move up behind me as I repeat the words you just spoke “Our first date” and look back at you over my shoulder, giving you a huge smile.* You did all this?

Wilder

*I lean down, my mouth next to your ear as my arms come around your waist* I had a little help from some friends. Or more like some little shits who I almost killed. But we can save that story for another day. *I walk you forward and stop right beside the cushions on the ground.* This is my properity before you think we are trespassing. My house is right around the corner.

Layla

Of course it’s your property. *I laugh to myself and reach down for one of the cones of popcorn and pop a piece in my mouth as I look around our private, outdoor cinema. You’ve actually thought of everything. Two generous sized cushions, blankets, food, drinks and candles. This is possibly the most romantic thing I’ve ever had done for me. It’ll be a first date to remember for a long time to come and it’s only just begun. Popping another piece of popcorn into my mouth, I look over to you still grinning* You do realise you’ve just set the bar so high for any future dates. IF there should be any future dates after this evening. *I move a little closer to you and stretch up on tiptoes so we’re nose to nose.* I already love it and I can almost forgive the unique way you got me here .. almost.

Wilder

You could have been a little less resistant to come with me. *I laugh and wrap my arm around your waist, flick my tongue out to taste the salty popcorn on your lips.* I had to take drastic measures to get you here so a ride in the trunk it was. Our next date will be at the shooting range so don’t be expecting romance there. But with a gun in your hands, it will be a sexy as hell sight for me. *I smirk and steal a handful of popcorn and toss it in my mouth.* I wasn’t sure what kind of movie you liked, so I rented all of them. The choice is all yours tonight Layla.

Layla

*The mention of my resistance only reminds me that I am not at all suitably dressed for a first date. My hair is scraped back from my makeup free face but it’s not that that bothers me. After all it’s not the first time he’s seen me like this. What bothers me is that for our first date, I wanted to make the effort and get dressed up .. for him. But from the look on his face right now, I could be wearing an expensive $4000 dress or a black sack and he wouldn’t notice the difference. I practically choke when he mentions our next date being at a shooting range. Anyone would think he’s been speaking to my Dad who continues to try and convince me to get a gun for protection, after all that’s happened, but I’m resisting.* You seem extremely sure that there will be another date. *My free hand strokes up your chest when your arm tightens around me. I glance at the screen and contemplate* Action is a safe choice. No horror, especially while we’re out in the open. And, you don’t really strike me as the romance type.

Wilder

Action movie it is. *Laughs at your comment about me not being the romance type, making no move away from you to grab a movie. My arm tightens around your waist more.* I have a feeling there will be much, much more where you are concerned. And stop worrying about your hair and what you are wearing. You are beautiful stripped free off makeup in those cute little donut pajamas. I may insist that is the way you dress for all future dates. *I dip my head and tug your bottom lip between my teeth and kiss you deeply, losing myself in you and finding the calm I’ve needed for two weeks.*

Layla

*Any self consciousness I may have been feeling melts away instantly. Even if you’re just being polite, you words seem so sincere, I relax immediately. It’s been weeks since I last saw you. The memory of you storming off in to the night had stuck with me since. Any attempt I’d made to contact you had been met with silence and I constantly worried and waited for the news that Adam Dawson had been found dead; but there had been nothing. Instead, you’d shown up at my apartment like nothing had happened, refused to take no for an answer and now here I stood in a pair of my favourite pj’s, hot and bothered; not just from the car ride, with you looking extremely … well .. dark and sexy as usual. My lips quirk at the corners and I tip my head to one side* If you like these, I have an amazing pink pair with sheep on them. *I laugh softly as your mouth closes over mine and let you consume me. The kiss is deep and so tender. The perfect combination of slow and forceful that leaves me in no doubt that, on some level, you’ve missed me. Reluctantly I pull back and my eyes, slightly heavy with lust, meet yours and my voice is a soft whisper* Where have you been? Wilder

*I take a step back, drag my hand through my hair and lock eyes with you* Dealing with shit that comes with being me. It all started with a duck shaped mailbox. *I watch your lips quirk at the corners as I talk, that feeling stirring deep inside me again.* If I told you, you would laugh your ass off and run for the hills. Sometimes, it’s a comedy show when I’m not dealing with revenge. *I reach my hand out, threading our fingers together, that electricity still there and crackling around us.* Sheep pajamas? I was hoping you had that pair that has the little flap in the back that shows off your ass.

Layla

A duck mailbox? I’m almost sorry I asked. *My lips curl up at the corners then falter slightly. Dealing with revenge? What does that even mean? My teeth toy with my lower lip and before I can ask the question you continue. I completely lose my train of thought when you lace our fingers and continue talking* Oh I do have those .. but they only come out for really speacial ocassions .. *I tug on your hand and pull you in the direction of the nearest cushion.*. Birthdays, christmas, third dates .. *I grin, sinking down on to the ground and get comfy. The urge to snuggle into your side is there but I resist* Let’s get this film started, shall we? *In truth, I could just chat all night long but it’d be such a shame for all this effort to go to waste.*

Wilder

Third date huh? *I smirk and press play, having no clue what movie will actually start up and not caring. I move my cushion right up next to yours and stretch out on it, turning my attention to the screen. I vaguely watch as the title flashes and lean over, wrapping one arm around your waist and the other under your knees and haul you onto my cushion.* Much better. I can protect you from any wayward ducks or sheep this way. I rest my chin on your shoulder, getting lost in you and not the movie that is playing in front of us.*

Layla

*I squeal in shock as I’m lifted effortlessly and dragged on to your cushion which is the twin of my own. There’s probably space for another 2 people at least, especially with us pressed so tightly together. I laugh once more then settle down, doing my best to concentrate on the film that’s now playing on the big screen which is proving increasingly difficult with you in such close proximity. Looking at you from the corner of my eyes, I keep my voice low* You’re distracting me from the film, Mr. Steele. *Reaching for a piece of popcorn, I press it into your mouth* Stop thinking about date number 3 and those pajamas.

The next morning

Wilder

*There was a slight dampness to the air as I drank my coffee, eyes surveying the property before turning my attention to Layla. She was curled up under the blanket, sound asleep. I’m not sure how many movies we watched or what time we fell asleep. All I know is I didn’t want the night to end. She was the calm to the chaos that twisted around me. Every time she was near, everything else disappeared. All of my focus was on her. Her smile, her touch, her lips. I took another drink off coffee and walked closer to the cushion, Killer beating me to wake her up.*

Layla

*I’m currently in that state between sleep and being awake. I refuse to open my eyes because if I do it becomes the next day and, even though I’ve slept, I’m not ready for the most perfect first date to end. I snuggle a little lower under the blanket and just let the events of the night before play out in my mind. Each time a movie ended, Wilder would just hit play and the next blockbuster would illuminate the screen. We’d spoken about a lot of things, or I had anyway. He still kept his cards considerably close to his chest but that was fine. In time, I’m sure we’ll reach a point when he’ll open up a little more about himself but until then I’ll just chip away and learn each layer of Wilder Steele as he chose to reveal them. I’m dragged from my thoughts by hot breath and a large tongue attacking my face. My eyes ping open, which seems to excite the dog even more because now I’m awake I can give him the fuss he’s craving. I rub his soft ears and laugh softly as that almost seems to stop him in his tracks. My eyes drift from him to the other side of the cushion which is vacant. I twist myself to look behind and there you are; in touching distance. I squint slightly against the high, bright, sunshine and smile up at you, bringing my hand up to shield my eyes* Well good morning! *I quickly check the time on my watch and my smile grows wider* This is much more reasonable time to be awake.

Wilder

*My grin grows the minute you wake up and our eyes lock as I take another step closer. I lean down and hold out another mug of coffee for you.* Well good morning sleepy head. *I nudge Killer away with my boot, laughing as he barks in annoyance. He seems to have just as much a liking to you that I do. And he’s stealing my thunder with his annoying, cute dog shit he does.* I would have let you sleep longer but Killer was chomping to get to you. *Your laugh that escapes your throat has me grinning even wider, the calm back again. You don’t even have to try. Something about you and us makes my world lighter.* I have muffins and donuts for breakfast if you are hungry.

Layla

*I pout when you attempt to push my furry friend away with your foot and smile as he practically flops his body over my lap in protest. I can’t help but laugh. As a dead weight, he feels extremely heavy across my lap and there is no way he’s moving without force. Pressing my hands against his lax body, I roll him 180 down my legs and pull them free from under him. Still grinning, I stretch my hand out to you and motion for you to help me up. An effortless tug from you and I’m on my feet* It’s fine. I was semi awake anyway *My eyes drift around you and lock on to the plate of sugar goodness* A muffin sounds perfect *Your head turns to look in the same direction I am and I seize your coffee. Removing it swiftly from your hands and grinning over the rim as you look at me in complete confusion* And coffee ..

Wilder

*I laugh and hold up the other cup of coffee.* What was wrong with this one? I drink mine black. *I snake my arm around your waist and pull you flush against my body, grinning down at you. Hours spent last night talking, you mostly talking, me absorbing every word and locking it all away inside me. Not wanting to forget one thing you said. I’ve always had a hard time opening myself up and last night, I was close to spilling any and everything. You made it so easy for me but something held me back. The thought nagging at the back of my head that not everyone will approve of some, if not all of my actions. My eyes follow yours again when you look to the plate of baked goods.* I call dibs on the chocolate donut, Little Ball of Fire, so don’t even think about it.

Layla

*I swap your coffee with mine, take a step around you and walk to the plate. A playful smirk on my face* Oh I don’t know .. what happened to ladies first? *My hand hovers over the doughnut and I swear I see the pain in your eyes at the prospect of me eating your cake. Uncontrollable laughter erupts from me as I grab the muffin instead and take a huge bite. The sweetness explodes in my mouth, quite the contrast to the bitter coffee and I groan in approval* Did your neighbour make these again? They’re so good!

Wilder

*I growl low when you make a move to grab the chocolate donut, narrowing my eyes slightly.* I see you live up to your nickname and like to play with fire. I have no problem throwing you over my shoulder again and giving you a ride in the trunk. *I smirk and take a bite of the donut, finishing it in three bites.* She keeps the baked goods stocked at my house. Almost like she feels the need to be motherly.

Layla

Sometimes it pays to be a risk taker but *I watch, somewhat impressed, as you devour the chocolate treat in three bites* some risks aren’t quite worth it. Besides, I couldn’t take a persons cake from them. *I pick a chocolate chip from my own treat and pop it between my lips* Especially when said person has zero reservations about throwing me in the trunk of his car. *I continue to smile at you, bringing the hot coffee to my lips and blowing to cool it* Thank you so much for last night Wilder. I really did have so much fun. And my eyes drift down my body, taking in the sight of my wrinkled pajamas* I was appropriately dressed after all.

Wilder

I had a wonderful time as well Layla. I can’t wait for our third date and the ass flap pajamas. *I smirk and steal the last bite of your muffin, laughing as you pout at me. I lean in and tug your bottom lip between my teeth, kissing you deeply, our bodies molding together. I feel Killer nudge his way between us, barking his annoyance once again. We both laugh as we break apart. Our smiles contagious.* The date is not over yet Little Ball of Fire. *I take your hand in mine and pull you to the cushions, wanting to get lost back in you and every word you want to share with me.*