#hes also autistic. i know that's just how these stories were told back in the day but he's so very autistic

[janetfraisersmassivestrap]

remember when I started watching tmfu and said I was 1-2 transmasc headcanons from. realizing things about myself. I have yet another hc and this number is getting dangerously close to zero

[foldingfittedsheets]

A friend I had briefly in my teens years was this girl in Arizona. She was a junior when I was a freshman, and as I was socially awkward and very lonely she kind’ve pulled me under her wing for a while. I don’t remember how we met, but I remember riding in her car and meeting her cute miniature Doberman.

But the thing I remember most about this girl was that she loved lying to me. And I had a massive but unacknowledged crush on her so I adored being lied to. Her natural charisma and storytelling was hypnotic.

It’s not what it sounds like because it wasn’t malicious but she came up with this in depth lore to tell me about this fake job she had. I know autistic people are meant to be credulous but I truly never believed her stories, I just adored her storytelling and was very ready to listen to whatever tale she spun that day. Another of her friends chided her once for teasing me but I genuinely never minded.

In her lore she moonlighted as a Professional Liar. People would hire her to get close to a target they wanted rattled. She’d make friends, develop a strong relationship, foster a dependency on her, then disappear. Then when they were confused and missing her sometime when the employer needed their target rattled she’d show back up as a glimpse to knock them off balance. Often it was implied she’d faked her death in the interim.

That itself was fine, it was an okay story. But in order to maintain that lie she’d make up tons of supporting details that were way more fun. She had this fake boyfriend who got high as balls on a mission and ended up seeing a sheep in a field and carrying it to a farmhouse to try to buy it because he wanted a puppy. I liked that one but suspected she didn’t know how big sheep were.

She’d IM chat with me as this made up boyfriend sometimes; once she had him ask me if I noticed her limping and he told me she’d just lost a toe but was covering for it like a champ. That one was fun.

She told me about something she called “purple charge” which was a way to get instant night vision. I did try looking that one up on the off chance, but was sadly disappointed there.

She said that Professional Liars had such high stakes jobs that they needed a week of insane time where they just partied so hard it was like a Dionysus rave and her IM boyfriend persona implied she’d killed someone during one of those stints.

I had such a fun time with her elaborate fiction that I’d often ask follow up questions and she had to do a lot of world building to keep up with my fascination. We’d get to class and I’d have three or four new questions which I think is why her friend thought her teasing was too far. They genuinely thought I believed her but I was just loving the fiction.

If any of this sounds malicious I’ll also add that when I got harassed on a roleplaying board she went out guns blazing to go after the guy who’d been harassing me. She genuinely enjoyed my company. She also complimented my art, sometimes as her made up boyfriend which I appreciated.

I find myself looking back on our friendship very fondly. I can’t remember her last name or have any way of looking her up, but she really was a professional liar to me. The only downside is that I’m completely faceblind so if she ever wanted to pop unexpectedly into my life I’d have no idea it was her.

[inbabylontheywept]

your life stories are always so interesting so i shall poke a stick into the cage and ask for more. do you have any fun stories of near death experiences? personally i choked on a lifesaver as a child and could not breathe

personally? not really. ive got a pretty decent hospital story though.

see, my grandpa was in charge of the easter pageant in my state. its a big mormon thing, a lot of other churches come because its just good easter worship. anyway, in part of the pageant, theres a pony for jesus and mary to ride around on. technically supposed to be a donkey, but ponys are just so much more photogenic. anyway this happened when my little sister was going through her little-girl-pony phase, so this was so major-league shit to her. so much so that my grandpa, who i still miss so much, brought this pony to our house so she could ride it.

my little brother? he also wanted to ride it. and i didnt really want to ride it, but they were both so small someone kind of needed to hold those two onboard, and i was the lighest person capable of doing so, (didnt want to overload the pony) so i went on the back too.

and it was a stellar time until the donkey went under a tree, then my little sister hit her head on a branch and fell left, and her fall took my little brother out because he was holding onto her, and both of them took me out, so we all fell off the pony, but me with 2 kids on my left arm.

god blessed me with a third elbow that day.

here are the things that followed after the Miracle of the Third Elbow

my autistic dad came outside to check on me. id broken my arm the year before, so i knew what it was, and i knew what it felt like, so i was able to pretty clearly go "yeah, dad, i broke my arm." and he was able to go "whew. yeah. thats like, harry potter broken." and i was able to say "yeah. yeah it hurts pretty bad." and he said "oh, yeah, definitely. that looks horrible." and then i basically said something like "hopital" and he was like "right" and then we left. my memory after that gets weird.

i can remember driving up main street, and seeing this guy dancing. like, full on dancing down the street. and i asked my dad about why that guy was dancing, and he said that man was a schizophrenic, and he was medicated, but the medication had just made it so that his voices told him to dance instead of hurt himself. now he danced all the time. i should clarify that my dad worked in the ER so he knew a lot of the local homeless on a life-story kind of level. my dads a good guy.

i can remember sitting in the waiting room with a magician that had sliced his right hand open pretty bad while cooking. he was trying his best to keep us entertained with his cards, but because he was doing all his tricks left handed, he'd mess them up sometimes and it was actually kind of more fun to watch than just him in expert mode. another good guy. very friendly, but visibly repulsed by my arm.

i can remember being in a bed, and a nurse coming up to me and saying that they could give me some painkillers, which i was super stoked about, but the IV from the painkillers basically required being stabbed with a needle as thick around as a pencil. she recomended saying the alphabet backwards when she put the needle in, and i said i didn't know how, and then she stuck in the needle in. over 4 seconds i was able to go from z to c, a feat i have never since been able to replicate.

after the painkillers, i watched a tv show called Jackie Chan Adventures, which was an animated cartoon with an animated Jackie Chan, voiced by the real Jackie Chan, solving mysteries. i actually assumed that whole thing was a hallucination until i was an adult, and i was describing it to my wife, and she was like "no, that actually happened." which was funny to happen to me, because when me and her started dating, she just kind of dropped how awesome it was that obama was the first muslim president, and i was like what, no hes an episcopalian, and it turns out that her dad, who sucks for many reasons, had told her that obama was a muslim, and she was sweet enough to believe that, and also to just be like oh, neat, our president is black and a muslim, we are truly moving forward as a counry." i love her so much.

no memories of it after that. not even sure when i got home. just a straight up weird time.

[elisaintime]

Okay, I remember reading that Armand's favorite movies are "Blade Runner" and "The Time Bandits" ... right? Do you know if the books specify what are Louis and Lestat's favorite films?

I wouldn't call those Armand's "favorites." They were just movies that "struck his fancy" at the time that they came out. That he would watch over and over for a while before he'd move onto the next one. Those were the ones he was hung up on in the early 80s when they came out. They were Of A Time, and he was fascinated by the groundbreaking emerging ideas of the zeitgeist, what the minds of human artists of the era could produce that to a vampire restricted by The Detachment seems so unreachable.

But in the 90s, Armand had moved on and was into the newest film adaptations of Shakespeare. Namely, Othello (1995), Romeo + Juliet (1996), Hamlet (1996) (specifically because Lestat told Armand that if he read all of Shakespeare he would finally understand humans, so Armand developed a HUGE Shakespeare obsession right before his suicide attempt). By then, he hadn't been into sci-fi genre stuff like Blade Runner and Time Bandits anymore in over a decade. But unlike with those films where he watched the same thing over and over again, Armand was binging through the entire Shakespeare canon, and had a huge buffet of works to read and films to watch.

I'd say it's similar for Louis and Lestat. In the late 80s/early 90s, the films Louis watches over and over again are The Company of Wolves, Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, and The Dead (based on the story by James Joyce). If you haven't watched these movies, oh god, go watch them right now!! And you will see exactly why Louis of all people identified with them.

We also get an honorable mention of Louis standing in the street in the rain outside an electronics store watching Romeo + Juliet playing on a TV through the window. This is funny because at the time Anne wrote that she was fan casting Leonardo di Caprio as Lestat, so this was basically a soaking wet Louis sadly staring at a screen of a man who looks to him just like Lestat instead of just going home and being with Lestat himself 😂 This of course being the new generation version of Armand's obsession with Blade Runner because Rutger Hauer in it reminded him of Lestat. He doesn't really have the Lestat look in that movie (though he absolutely has the attitude), but look up pictures of Rutger Hauer in Turkish Delight and you'll see exactly why Anne fc him for Lestat in that era. 😁

Lestat never goes on about any particular passing favorites or obsessions with films. He mentions watching Death in Venice and Apocalypse Now and the impact their messages about evil have on him, and how good he thinks they are as films, but that's just to make a point to segue into why he needs to become a Rockstar. It's also just one example of how he watched a fuckton of movies in general when he woke up in 1984 to catch up on all he missed during his 50 year nap. But yeah, no particular favorites emerge from that edutainment endeavor.

But if you want some ideas for him, here's a good tip: look up on Anne's Facebook any time she ever mentioned any films she particularly liked, and you can bet Lestat liked them too! What Anne liked, Lestat liked, and vise versa. Lestat does also mention at one point how much vampires love to watch TV, and Anne was very into epic TV series like Game of Thrones with lots of story and lore and drama, so don't discount cinematic TV in there either!

Coming back to the word "favorite," maybe it's just the autist in me being too literal, but I guess I'm just thinking of it as like... when you live forever, it's kind of impossible to hold onto a "favorite." Something new is always going to come along to replace it. But it is nice that Anne did give us these mentions of things that the vampires were super into at least during a brief point in their lives to give us glimpses into never-ending the evolution of their tastes!

[drdemonprince]

I read what you wrote about Autistic women being gradually moved into relationships with men and my first reaction was that’s a bit offensive implying that Autistic women are that weak. Then I thought about it and realized this is Exactly what happened to me! This man was my manager at work, he was married but had affair after affair that were all well known to everyone. And yet he was generally well liked especially by the women employees. He decided to target me. I thought he was a creep and he was also a shit manager. I didn’t see the appeal whereas all the other women fawned all over him. He wore me down over the course of a year. It was a challenge to him. We became friends but everyone just assumed it was more, especially him. My friend/coworker was like oh he’s sweet you should give him a chance. My mother who also worked there went on and on about how I should give him a chance as well, knowing full well his history. But I had been single for ages and she literally just wanted me in a relationship because that was the expected thing. I told him repeatedly I wasn’t interested and that he should move on. He ignored all the boundaries I tried to place and just kept on being insistent. One night after a work function I was really drunk and he drove me home. He kissed me and I was like I don’t really like this or want it but whatever. I was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that I had been single too long and that I felt I needed a relationship to be validated. So eventually I just gave in. By this point everyone had already assumed we were in a relationship and had started inviting us to things as a couple. So we got together, got married, had a baby. Everyone was like Cool now she’s finally got a conventional normal life and that’s great. And guess what happened? He cheated on me, obviously. With a friend of mine when our son was just little. We finally separated and I’m in the process of trying to untangle my life and finances to get back to some semblance of what I had. But yeah, I did not see that coming at the start, was hell bent against it and now I’m like. What the actual fuck just happened…?!

oh my god Anon I am so fucking sorry that this happened to you. It is such a common fucking story too. I'm not going to tell you how to describe or understand your own experiences, but there was an immense amount of coercion and social pressure and restricted choice working on you here. and I've spoken about this before, but when women capitulate to men it isn't because they're weak. It is because they are accurately recognizing the power structures all around them that are limiting their choices, and they're recognizing the structural power that men have over them and how few strategies of resistance would actually work. none of this shit is your fault. It does happen to be especially likely for disabled women to be taken advantage of in these ways to an even more extreme degree.

[blessedbucky]

ℙ𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕍𝕀

pairing: autistic!satoru x suguru x autistic!reader

word count: 12.5k (why do i yap so much)

summary: a bunch of traumatized teenagers try their best to keep their world from collapsing.

tags: autistic!reader, autistic!satoru, bisexual!reader, bisexual!suguru, bisexual!satoru, mayhaps some poor coping mechanisms, maybe some codependency, loss of virginity, fingering, vaginal sex

beautiful people who asked to be tagged 💕: @ichikanu, @iceheartsice, @anders-is-being-a-simp-again, @honeydew-cheesecake

author note: JUST BEFORE PREMATURE DEATH ARC WHO READY! like the summary says, this is just a bunch of dumb teenagers making reckless decisions because they're also traumatized as fuck and mentally ill. there some really messy and complicated feelings reader has for Satoru and Suguru that's trying to be processed.

Story Masterlist

[YEAR THREE]

[PART ONE]

A cherry blossom slowly flutters down from a branch and lands square in the center of Suguru’s forehead. Not that he knows this because he sprawled out on the picnic blanket and was asleep not even ten minutes later. And yet, despite how much he sleeps, the place under his eyes seems to be getting darker and darker. You pluck the blossom from his forehead, careful not to touch and wake him up accidentally. You’re worried about him. Sometimes, in the dead of night when you’re alone, you’ll worry yourself sick.

Something cold and wet presses your forehead.

“Plum Fanta,” Satoru announces. After you take the bottle from him, he shuffles to plop down on the blanket next to you. “Eh? Is he seriously still asleep?”

You nod slowly. “It seems like all he’s been swallowing lately are high grade. You know those are the hardest on him.”

“Just on his stomach, though, right?”

Until last year, you naively thought that, too. Back in your village, when he swallowed them, he would nap after, but he always told you that it was to sleep off the stomachache. Maybe that was true. Now…it’s different. Everything is different. You naively thought that your lives would settle after Zen’in Toji. You knew it would never be the same, yes, but you thought it would level out.

You were wrong.

“I don’t know, Satoru. If I had to spend almost every single day swallowing something fouler than words can describe, that might take a toll on me, too.”

“Sorry,” Satoru mumbles dejectedly.

You sigh. “It’s not your fault, Satoru.”

“I feel like I could be doing more. Maybe I can volunteer to take on more assignments so there are less on his plate.”

“That’s not your responsibility, Satoru.” You take a deep breath, resisting the urge to get snippy. You shouldn’t take your bad mood out on everyone else. “You’re human, too. The truth is that you’re both stretched thin.” The grip you have around the bottle tightens. “I just…wish things would change. It shouldn’t be like this.”

Satoru tilts over until his head is knocking against yours. “How else would it be?”

“I don’t know. Not this, though.” Absentmindedly, you pick at the label of your soda. “This just isn’t a sustainable system. I wonder how many Special Grade sorcerers there have actually been, but they just couldn’t reach their full potential because old men sent them off to die.”

“Maybe you’re just not cut out for this line of work, Sketch,” Satoru poses.

The sting of that reality is lessened by his flippant tone. It was meant to be a tease. But a sting is a sting. “Everyone doesn’t need to keep reminding me of how weak I am. I get it, alright? I know I’m useless, but I’m trying to—”

“Give it a few years and you’ll literally be able to control minds. It’s never been an issue of strength with you, Sketch. It’s just that you’re…soft.” He pauses. “Gentle.” Then, he hooks his pinky around yours. Turns his head ever so slightly so his lips brush against your temple on every word. “You’re so worried about everyone else that you’re not taking care of yourself. How much sleep have you been getting?”

“I haven’t given it much thought,” you lie. You’re averaging about four hours a night, probably. “No sleep isn’t a new thing for me, though. I’ve always had trouble with sleeping.”

“Oh? Me, too.” He pokes you hard in the side making you squeak and flinch away. “Why are you on my case, then?”

Feeling petty today, you sink your claws into his sensitive spot which is to say that you dig your fingers right into the nape of his neck. “Because I’m not the one frying my brain twenty-four seven with my cursed technique,” you hiss.

Satoru hisses back at you, the two of you like a couple of feral alley cats. Neither of your drinks are open yet, so they end up rolling off somewhere on the blanket while you two start tussling. Trying to get hands on the other’s most sensitive spots. You have a height disadvantage, but you have sharp teeth, damn it. There’s an outraged squawk from Satoru when you first bite him, but it gives him permission to get dirtier with his tricks. So, the bastard rolls you both over off the blanket, pinning you under him, right on top of the grass.

“No,” you whine pathetically when he holds your cheek against it. “Satoru, bugs can get in my hair! It’s like thousands of tiny needles stabbing me!” A little dramatic. It’s more poking and itchier than anything else, but you still hate it. “If you don’t let me up, I’ll throw all your melon soda stash in a pond!”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I’ll return those oil pastels that I got you!”

“Idiot, you can’t return those! You got them last year and they’re almost used up!”

He blinks. “Oh.” In the blink of an eye, his expression is very serious and concerned. “Do you need new ones?”

And have him spend that much money on art supplies again? Absolutely not. You’ll use those things until they’re specks and then never speak of it again. But you don’t tell him this because you take advantage of the distraction. With a powerful buck of the hips, you manage to throw him off to the side, rolling over with him so you’re straddling his waist and quickly reaching for his neck. He grabs your wrists before you can, worry replaced by outrage at the presumed cheating—or so you think he sees it that way, but honestly, it’s Satoru.

“Satoru? Squid?”

Both you and Satoru freeze, turning your heads, staring wide-eyed at Suguru. His legs are crisscrossed and he’s rubbing at his eyes, scowling. His hair is almost completely out of the bun which only makes him grumpier because it’s probably sticking to his skin now. It’s actually a really warm day for spring, an omen of the summer to come, and you’re under the sun. All of you have thrown off blazers and you even took off your leggings—making the sin of the grass even more unforgiveable in your eyes, but you have a grumpy Suguru to deal with now.

Suguru, annoyed, goes on to ask, “What are you doing?” His eyes drop lower, to something behind you. There’s a look in his eyes. Angrier than simple annoyance. Then, he tells you, “Your ass is out, Squid.”

Oh. Right. Skirt.

No wonder Suguru is so mad. You’re probably embarrassing him. Face hot with shame, you try to move away, but Satoru digs his fingers into your thighs.

“Don’t let him embarrass you, Sketch! You’ve got a nice ass!”

You knock Satoru right in the stomach.

When you make it back to campus, you announce that you’re going back to your room to take a nap. Yu wanted to eat at an actual restaurant instead of konbini snacks and none of his upperclassmen can say no to him, so you’re mentally exhausted already. Suguru said the same. Shockingly, Satoru didn’t follow after you two, but he has a lot of energy today, so it sort of makes sense. Anyway, Suguru follows after you to your room.

Suguru picks up the book he’s currently reading off your desk, opting to just keep them here now. He says that there’s never enough peace in the boys’ dorm to focus on reading. As soon as his back is against the headboard and he’s settled, you crawl in next to him to put your head in his lap.

“I’m sorry for embarrassing you like that earlier,” you apologize quietly. Suguru hasn’t even opened his book yet, but it’s been on your mind since earlier. He stares down at you, puzzled. “You were angry when I was wrestling with Satoru, right? I know it’s probably a hassle—me not knowing how to act in public, even after all this time.”

“What? No. That’s not—” he takes a deep breath. Presses a thumb to the center of his forehead. “How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t care about things like that? I wasn’t mad. I just woke up and you know how I can be. I’m sorry for giving the wrong impression.”

Suguru is lying. You may not be able to read people well, but you’ve had Suguru by your side since you were six. You know his tells like the back of your hand. Doesn’t he know that? No. The bigger question is why he’s even lying to you in the first place. Is it because he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings? That might be it. You’re sensitive. You cry. You…maybe Satoru was right, after all.

“Should I quit being a sorcerer?”

He puts the book down on the mattress, a little harder than necessary. “What did Satoru say to you?”

“Why are you assuming that Satoru had anything to do with it? Are we first years again?”

Suguru says your name harshly.

You turn your head away, glaring at the wall. “We were worrying about you. I said I wished this stupid system would change and he…I know he was joking, but he asked if I was cut out for this line of work and…” You trail off, bottom lip wobbling. That, that reaction, makes you angry at yourself. Crying? And for what? “I don’t think he’s wrong.”

He repeats your name, quieter now, less aggressive. When he places a palm across your forehead, you look up at him. “Do you want to quit?”

“I…I like that I help people. It’s more than I’ve ever thought I was capable of.”

“Do you want to quit?” Suguru repeats. “Remember what we promised. Wherever you go, I’ll go.”

You close your eyes, sighing shakily. “You can’t keep letting me hold you back.”

“I’m not letting you do anything. I want you by my side.”

“I know you do, Suguru,” you whisper sadly as the tears finally fall, slipping from the corners of your eyes and leaving a trail down your temples. “You really would fall behind if it meant staying with me.” You open your eyes, meeting his gaze as you have a horrifying epiphany. “Are you sure you’re not just holding onto me because you’re afraid of change?”

“I’m not Satoru!” Suguru shouts. He squeezes his eyes shut, hands moving to clutch at the blankets. Quieter, he goes on to say, “I don’t care about strength. I don’t.”

You lean up from the mattress, scoffing bitterly. “Yes, you do. The stronger you are, the further from our shitty hometown you get. Don’t act like it’s just out of duty that you’re here. We’re here,” you correct quietly. “We want to be more than our parents told us we’d be.”

“My parents have nothing to do with this.”

Yeah, sure they don’t. Maybe Suguru isn’t even consciously aware of it, but you see it. All those little details add up. The way that no matter how furious he is, he’ll never raise his voice or hand. The way he shouted just now is the loudest that he’s ever been. Meanwhile, his father was boisterous and explosive. His appearance is as neat and clean as he keeps his room, the opposite of how his mother kept their home. He has a sense of duty that his parents never had.

“Well, mine do,” you mumble miserably. “I wanted to prove that I wasn’t the simple, stupid girl that’d never be able to take care of herself without help. And where am I now? All I did was trade my parents for you. The only difference between here and home is you don’t complain about taking care of me.”

“You’re definitely right about being stupid.” He runs a hand through his hair, more agitated than you’ve seen him in a really long time. “It’s amazing, how you see things in such a…transactional way. How can someone be so empathetic yet apathetic at the exact same time? Is it really that hard for you to believe that you’re the most important thing in my life?”

Before you’ve even had a chance to process, Suguru is up and storming out the door.

You burst out into tears after Suguru left. When you got it all out, it left you numb and physically exhausted. Your mind, though, would not settle. So, you’ve been curled up under your blankets all throughout the day. As the sun is setting, there’s a tap against your window, but you don’t move. You can sense who it is, anyway.

Since your back is to the window, you don’t see him, but you hear the thump as he kicks his shoes off and the clatter of his sunglasses against your desk. Just wanting to be held as soon as possible, you skip the questioning if you’re good to be touched stage and roll over on your other side when he slides into bed. You meet him by wrapping your arms around him and bury your face against his chest.

“Oh, man, it must’ve been super bad if you’re this cuddly,” Satoru teases, trying to bring levity to the situation. “Wanna tell me why you and Suguru are fighting and how I got roped into it because he was mad at me, too.”

Ugh. Leave it to Suguru to be like that. Either drop something so fucking profound like he did to you or throw up a wall between himself and everyone else like with Satoru. You really don’t want to talk about this more because you’ll be forced to admit that what Satoru said hit a little too close to home and potentially hurt his feelings. But you know Satoru and he won’t let it go, so it’s either let him hear it from you or Suguru.

“I asked him if I should quit being a sorcerer and it got out of control.”

“Aw, Sketch, seriously?” See? Exactly what you wanted to avoid. “I was joking.”

“I know you were, Satoru. I’m sorry that my brain is stupid and runs the wrong way with things.”

“Oi. Don’t call yourself stupid. It’s not stupid. I get it.”

You huff. “No, you don’t, Satoru. Thanks for trying, anyway.”

He laughs in such a carefree way, so completely at odds with what he says next. “What? You don’t think I feel left behind? Just because I’m the strongest physically doesn’t mean I’m strong in any other way that counts. I’m as jealous of you as much as I look up to you, y’know?”

You lean away from him abruptly, blinking in shock. “Jealous? Of me?”

“Yeah! I mean, everyone loves you, Sketch. Well, they love Suguru, too, but he doesn’t struggle with the same stuff that you and I do, so that’s why I’m more jealous of you than him in that way. You can connect with people, even if you don’t understand how they work. You’re really kind and caring. You know how to talk to people and, yeah, yeah, I know you said it’s because you just learned to study and copy people, but so have I and I still suck. You’re sad right now and all I can do is talk about myself. I don’t know how to comfort anyone. I don’t know how to reach out to Suguru after what happened. I’ve been selfish and leaving it up to you.”

Leaning up on an elbow, you push some hair away from his forehead, trying not to let your eyes linger on the little scar off to the side. “It’s not for nothing, Satoru. Some people aren’t good with talking, but you make up for it in other ways. Sometimes, being here physically is more than enough.”

Briefly, he looks away from your gaze, cheeks getting dark. “You’re doing it right now. Comforting me when it should be the other way around. Maybe Sensei is right. Maybe you do coddle us too much.” But his expression softens and that makes you feel a little better. Jeez, maybe making people happy is your comfort. “Sketch, I don’t know what to do with you. I constantly move back and forth between wanting to tell you to leave so you’re safe but wanting to keep you close by my side because I don’t know what life would be like without you in it.”

You smack your face against his sternum, not wanting him to see you cry. You’re on the verge of it. After trying to swallow down the lump in your throat, you grumble, “Why are you and Suguru dropping such heavy things so casually?”

“Eh? What did he say?”

“That I’m the most important thing in his life…”

“Oh. Yeah, okay, that’s true. You’re the most important person in my life, too.”

“What about Suguru? Shoko? The underclassmen?”

“You’d think you’d have learned how I think by now. When I say you, I mean you and Suguru. You’re like a package deal inside my brain. You’re both equally the most important people in my life.”

There must be something terribly wrong with you because hearing something like that isn’t supposed to be breaking your heart.

I’m sorry for hurting you.

You’re the most important thing in my life, too.

You had physically written down your apology and slipped the note under his door the next morning. It felt cold to send it as a text. You left it at that, too. It was your olive branch, and he would act on it when he was ready is what you told yourself. You didn’t want to pester him, as much as it killed you to not have any contact with him at all.

It’s been a week now, and Suguru still hasn’t talked to you.

And, yes, you respect his privacy, but…you’re leaving for the Kamo clan compound. The higher-ups decided that it’s finally time for you to work with seals. For the last two weeks, they’ve had an expert working with you on learning them. This wasn’t part of the deal, but what are you supposed to do? Tell them to fuck off? You stamp down your irritation by reminding yourself that this prevents the strengthening of cursed spirits or outright outbreaks. It means less work in the future for fellow sorcerers.

So, you head to the smoking area that you’ve been avoiding the last week. A text to your new partner, Kento, informed you that Suguru wasn’t in his room, so there’s only one other place that he’ll most likely be. And, sure enough, Suguru is there. Hunched over a little, taking long drags of his cigarette, staring out at nothing.

“Suguru?”

Blinking back to awareness, he turns his cautious gaze on you. “Hey.” It’s not exactly a cold welcome, but definitely not a warm one, either. That’s fine. You won’t take long.

“I’m leaving for my special assignment now,” you tell him as you fiddle nervously with the aglet of your sweatshirt. Suguru doesn’t immediately respond. He ducks his head down instead. What else could that be but a dismissal? But you did what you came here to do. “Okay,” you whisper. “I’m going now.”

Suguru doesn’t let you get far. He suddenly lashes out, snatching your wrist and yanking you back so suddenly that you almost trip over your feet. You stumble back, spinning around to try and get your bearings, and catch yourself on his shoulders. Your face is very close to his and his amethyst eyes are…the best you can come up with is that they’re sad.

Instinctively, you stroke a thumb over the dark circles under his eyes. “What’s wrong, Suguru?”

“Squid,” he starts quietly and cups your cheek. “If I was selfish and asked you to stay a sorcerer, stay with me on this path, would you?”

You sigh. “Forget what I said. I was being stupid—”

“Stop,” he interrupts. “It’s not…don’t say that about yourself. I know this is hard on you. I worry about you as much as you do about me. Not because you’re weak, but because you have a gentle heart.” It’s intense, the way he’s looking at you, and you have to dart your eyes away. “But I need to do this, and the only thing that’s keeping me sane is you. This is a lot to drop on you, I know, but it’s how I feel. So…will you stay?”

“I’ll stay,” you mumble while reaching out to touch his face, too. “It’s not selfish. I understand. This is something we both need to do. I just haven’t found my place in the world yet, but I will.” You smile softly as a reassurance. “I think things will be easier when we graduate.”

“Yes,” Suguru agrees. “When we graduate.”

“Leave it to you to cry during a horror movie.” Satoru is laughing as he keeps stroking your cheeks with his thumbs, trying to catch all your stray tears.

Through your sniffling, you tearfully defend yourself, “I didn’t expect the mother to sacrifice herself like that! And then…then, her spirit was stuck in that building!” He’s still laughing, the asshole. “Stop it! You’re being mean! I can’t help what does and doesn’t make me cry!”

“No more Sketch. Only Crybaby.”

You give him a wobbly scowl before you lean forward to smack your forehead against his sternum. His laughter dies down to snickers, and he shoves you away by your forehead. When you’re looking him in the eye, you pout and demand, “I’m sad. Let me have your last Pocky.”

“What? No way! It’s choco banana and I don’t have any boxes left around here!”

That has you pouting more. “Just buy more.”

“I don’t wanna go all the way to the konbini!”

“You can literally teleport now, Satoru.”

“I’m not that exact with my locations yet!”

“This is not how you treat a lady. I’m in emotional distress.”

“No, you’re manipulating me now.”

Oh, to hell with this. You throw yourself to the side to snatch the box with one single Pocky stick left inside. Satoru dives after you with a cry of outrage, his fingers closing around yours at the exact moment that you get a hand around the box. You try to yank yourself out of his grasp, but he won’t let go. You manage to roll over without losing your hold on the box and try to shove your knee up in his stomach as a dirty trick.

“Yeah, you’re so upset!” Satoru snaps while trying to squirm away from your knee as much as he can. “You’re a dirty liar—” he dodges a knee to the groin with a yelp. “A cheater, too! What happened to my innocent Sketch?”

“You emotionally devastated her with a sad horror movie! This is the price you pay!” He’s right, though. You’re not as sad anymore because you’re grinning. Giggling as you two roll around on his bed, trying to get control over the box. It must be an infectious thing since Satoru’s pouting slowly makes way for his own smile.

Things get a little too rough, though. Both of you skirt too close to the edge of the mattress and you go rolling off. Satoru isn’t winning any awards for gentleman of the year since you’re the one that ends up slamming against the floor. His sunglasses are askew, his hair is a mess, but he’s straddling you while proudly shaking the box. Little does he know that it’s crushed to the point where the plastic package is poking out and you can catch a glimpse of yellow.

You lash out, stealing the package from the box and quickly ripping out the Pocky stick. Satoru squawks, scrambling too late to yank it away, and then stares down at you in disbelief after you shove the end coated in candy in your mouth, smirking smugly around it.

“Cheater!” Satoru accuses again.

Your only answer is to tilt your chin in challenge. This is Gojo Satoru, of course, and he can’t not take that bait. The stick nearly slips from your mouth that goes slack when he hunches over to snatch the other end of the stick between his own teeth. He gives a savage grin.

Someone clears their throat.

Both of you turn your heads, but there’s enough of a delay that the Pocky stick finally snaps, and you end up with most of the good part. Satoru leans back on his haunches, crossing his arms over his chest while munching grumpily. “Nanamin,” he whines loudly and more annoyingly than usual. “I lost the last Pocky because of you!”

Kento is looking as stiff and uncomfortable as he did in his first year, something that you thought he was past with you, at the very least. “Pardon my interruption,” he says directly to you. “Sensei is asking for you, Senpai.”

“Ugh,” you and Satoru groan in unison.

“Did you turn the report in after our assignment at the Kamo clan?”

You open your mouth to confirm because, yes, you did…but maybe you didn’t? Shit. That’s right. You were trying to figure out how to word it without implicating your weird attachment to cursed energy. So, you snap your mouth shut, teeth clacking. Kento frowns in disappointment. “Senpai, that’s very unlike you. Are you sure you’re not being negatively influenced by Gojo?”

“Rude!” Satoru huffs. “Sketch was probably so eager to get back to Suguru that she forgot. They got over their little lover’s quarrel right before you guys left.”

“A quarrel that you caused,” you mutter under your breath. Then, your brain processes, and you sputter. “Damn it, Satoru, it wasn’t a lover’s quarrel! Don’t give Kento the wrong impression!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Finally, Satoru rolls away from you, dropping on his ass so you can freely move. “Get going. It’s about time you get a lecture from the old man.”

Kento watches you and Satoru with a weird expression on his face before he walks away.

The second that the bulge has slipped down his throat, you’re holding out a stick of cinnamon gum to Suguru. He takes it, trying to smile in thanks, but it comes out as a grimace. You don’t ask him if he’s okay because you know the answer already. The only thing that hasn’t changed is your immediate wishing that you could take some of this blowback for him. Wishing that he didn’t have to taste them the way he does.

When it’s you two on the case, you don’t need to use a veil. That cursed spirit wasn’t going anywhere. Besides, it was using an old department store as a hideout, and the only people who snuck inside the building were fellow teenagers on dares. You see their names in graffiti as you two head toward the staircase.

“Is sneaking into haunted houses romantic?”

Couples were the curse’s preferred prey. For a higher graded curse, it becomes a better hunter, becomes pickier. You can understand the appeal that a spirit might have in couples. It’s double the fear to feed on—a human’s fear for their own life and for their lover’s. What you don’t understand is why a couple would put themselves in that situation in the first place.

Suguru chuckles. “Not particularly, but romance is subjective, I suppose.”

Still skeptic, you lowly agree, “I suppose…”

Your tone isn’t lost on him. “I know you don’t have much experience in the way of it, but you have to know that much. Why do you sound so suspicious?” With his longer legs, he’s automatically in front of you. So, he stops at the top of the staircase, forcing you to do the same. “Were you being romantic when you did whatever it was to make Nanami ask me if you and Satoru are dating?”

You hum. “I didn’t think Kento was one to make assumptions like that.” Also, why did he go to Suguru to ask that? Weird. “It wasn’t anything like that, jeez. We were fighting over the last Pocky stick.” You pause then admit, “Well, I guess it could’ve looked like a compromising position. He was on top of me and was trying to take the Pocky with his mouth. I think it might’ve been like a weird game of chicken.”

He snorts. “Or it was Satoru trying to get you to kiss him.”

And then it…slips out. “I doubt he’s interested in doing it again.”

In the silence of the building, you can hear Suguru stop breathing. Just for a moment. There’s no emotion on his face when he quietly asks, “Do what again?”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. There was a reason why you didn’t want to talk about this with Suguru. You didn’t want to make things weird between the three of you. Suguru’s kneejerk reaction is to be protective. Who knows what he’ll do to protect your virtue or whatever. You can’t imagine how he’ll react when he hears that Satoru hasn’t brought it up because Suguru knows you well enough to figure out that it makes you…upset or…confused or…you don’t know.

Stomach tying itself in knots, you try to figure out the best way to put this. “It…it’s not a big deal! He, um, maybe sort of kissed me—” Suguru’s face twists. You start scrambling. “It was that day when we agreed he was high! So, yeah, he probably doesn’t even remember! That’s why I’ve never brought it up to anyone! I don’t want to make things awkward! None of us want to deal with me acting like…like a needy girlfriend or something! Not like we’re boyfriend and girlfriend or anything!”

Then, Suguru asks a question that hits you like a punch to the gut. “And…how do you feel about Satoru?”

How do you answer that? Seriously? How do you answer that? The idea of trying to compress your enormous feelings for them into a neat package is…overwhelming. It makes you want to cry. Or it might be this confrontation that’s making you panic. You have been actively avoiding this conversation. There’s a place in your neatly organized mind that’s wild and unmarked. It’s too daunting, always making you turn back in defeat before you even start to think about it.

“The same way I feel about you,” is your answer. Simultaneously enough of an answer and not. They are equal in your heart and mind, but what they are is unidentifiable.

Suguru doesn’t believe you and tries to call you out on it, “So, what? You’d let me kiss you?”

“Yes,” you blurt automatically. You’re afraid to back down. If you do, you’ll be forced to think about this more. You want this awful conversation to be over already.

Suguru, eyes narrowed, takes a step toward you. “Really?”

There’s a lump in your throat that you try to swallow down, but you stand your ground. “Really.”

Another step. “Right now?”

“Right now,” you confirm breathlessly because he’s so close to you now that a deep breath would brush your chest against his.

Another game of chicken, you can’t help but think as he cups your cheek. Those eyes that stare down at you are challenging you, but there’s also more. Something wild. Desperate. You wonder how he can be so calm, but when he hunches over, and his face inches towards yours, you can feel his quick, shallow breaths against your skin. You briefly clutch at the front of his blazer before splaying out a hand, desperate to feel the rapid thump of his heartbeat under your fingers. His other hand reaches down to wrap around your wrist—maybe for the same reason.

Dazedly, moronically, you point out, “There’s…you have gum…”

His throat bobs. You think it’s nerves, but then he sticks out his tongue to show the gum is now gone. Right. Okay. Okay, okay, okay. He’s serious about this. You’re serious about this, you suddenly realize. Because he touches your cheek, and you lean into it. Your eyes have never left his mouth.

And it’s you that closes the distance.

It’s so similar and it’s also not. You know to tilt your head to the side a little when your noses bump, and then they’re slotting together like what happened with Satoru. Heat rushes throughout your body again, too. But Suguru’s hand feels so much bigger and skitters down to the side of your neck, taking up so much space that a finger is behind your ear. Cinnamon explodes across your taste buds when his tongue slips past your lips.

Someone’s ringtone echoes.

The two of you tear yourselves apart. Suguru looks beyond irritated, leaving you self-conscious, but he’s pissed at his phone because that is what he glowers down at when he pulls it out of his pocket. He actually snaps when he answers his cellphone with a harsh, rude, “What?” Blood is rushing in your ears, and you press your hands against your scalding hot cheeks. You can’t hear what’s being said on the other end. “Yes, it’s been taken care of. We apologize. We thought there was another spirit,” he lies in a clipped tone. He presses his thumb to the center of his forehead. “Okay. We’ll be there shortly.”

Oh. That must’ve been the manager. You forgot that you texted her that you were done. Has it really been long enough for the manager to get worried? You don’t even want to check. You know you’ll get all flustered, thinking about how you spent all that time kissing Suguru.

Holy shit, you kissed Suguru.

Holy shit, you kissed Satoru.

Holy shit, you kissed them both.

“Holy shit, you kissed them both.”

“Gojo, of all people,” Utahime adds with no small amount of disgust.

You knock your head against the table, sighing heavily. If you tried to brain yourself right now, would they stop you? “Very helpful commentary, Senpai.”

“I just thought you had better taste, is all,” she mumbles in response.

Shoko laughs—relishing in your misery, most likely. “You told us, so now what? Are you wanting advice? Need help picking between them? Because I’ll also say you shouldn’t choose either of them.” You straighten up, sighing again, putting a thumb to the center of your forehead. “Hey, who did it first? You or Geto?”

You blink. “Huh?”

“The forehead thing.” She demonstrates by pressing a thumb to her forehead and pulling an exaggerated angry face. “Are you just now realizing that you do it, too?”

“Oh.” You stare down at your hand, genuinely shocked. You’ve never been consciously aware of it, but, yeah, you do actually dothe same thing as him. When did it even start? Which one of you started it? Was it you or was it him? “Um…no. It’s…I think it’s been this way since we were kids.”

Utahime’s nose is scrunched in distaste when she asks, “So, are you in love with them?”

“How would I even know?”

“How would you not?”

Shoko clucks her tongue, visibly irritated with Utahime. “Don’t make her feel bad. It’s not like you’ve ever been in love.” To have Shoko take that tone with Utahime is a shock. Your eyes dart to Utahime whose jaw is clenched and grip tightened around the coffee cup. This…tension between them…that’s new, right? You’re not imagining it, are you? But then Shoko turns back to you, gaze softening, as if nothing just happened. “Do you feel differently about them than anyone else?”

“I…” You know the answer. Deep down, you know it’s different with them. So…why can’t you admit that? There’s something that’s blocking you from accepting the truth, that has you skirting away from that place in your heart. For some reason, it seems unfair. You don’t know to who or why. Maybe you’re mistaking unfairness for wrongness. Shoko said it was okay to love more than one person, but there’s still that mental block in your head. You’ve been conditioned to love only one.

“You’re gonna hurt yourself if you keep thinking that hard. Calm down. You don’t need all the answers now,” Shoko tries to assure you. “There doesn’t even have to be an answer, either. This doesn’t have to mean anything at all. Just because they were your first, you don’t have to make these important. I didn’t.”

“Oh. You kissed someone?” That’s new. Definitely new. The last time you checked, when the school year first started and you two were catching up, she said that nothing happened in the way of her love life. She’s never admitted to it outright, but she’s been crazy pining for Utahime.

“Yeah.”

“How come you didn’t tell me?” It’s been busy, you haven’t seen each other much, but you’re a little hurt that neither she nor Utahime told you. Because it had to be Utahime, right? Then again, why is Shoko being so callous when discussing the kiss? She cares a lot for Utahime.

“Because, like I said, it doesn’t have to be a big deal.”

Utahime’s head is ducked down, but you can see her profile. If she glares any harder at that cup, it might shatter. Shoko, putting her elbow on the table and settling her chin in the palm of her hand, is feigning indifference. But there’s an air about her that tells you she’s anything but apathetic right now. Also, she’s now watching Utahime carefully.

The tension has you cringing. This is a delicate subject for everyone, so you’ll be the one to put a stop to it. “Maybe we shouldn’t keep talking about this—”

“Aren’t you gonna ask me who it was, Duck?”

“Why don’t we wait until we’re back on campus—”

“Mei was my first.”

It all comes crashing down. Literally. Because everything on the table clatters and tumbles over when Utahime lashes out to snatch Shoko’s wrist, her knee bumping against the underside as she moves. Her eyes are wide with panic. “Your first kiss, right?” Shoko’s mouth thins. “Right?” Still no response from Shoko. She’s resolute in her silence. Utahime’s anxiety is so palpable that your rises along with hers with every passing second that her question goes unanswered. “Right?”

Shoko snaps and yanks her wrist back from Utahime. “What does it matter to you?”

“It matters if you did this just to get back at me because I didn’t do what you wanted when you were drunk!” Um. You…feel like this has suddenly become a private conversation that you should not be hearing. You sink down in your seat a little. “Were you drunk when you went to her, too?”

“I’m not a slut, Utahime.”

“I wasn’t implying—”

“Not everything is about you!” Shoko shouts, the loudest you’ve ever heard her be. It startles you and Utahime. And Utahime drops down in her seat, shrinking as Shoko slams her hands against the table and rises to her feet. “You rejected me! You made it clear you don’t think about me the same way! Why do you care about what I do with who? And you’re so self-centered that you think I did it to get back at you! Give me a break!” Shoko storms away, grabbing your wrist and tugging you along as she snarls, “Let’s go, Duck.”

For the entire trek back to campus, Shoko hasn’t spoken. Neither have you. You’re not sure how to talk about it. So, you’ve watched her work through two cigarettes. You’ve also seen her blink back tears or scrub at her eyes with a sleeve. It’s when you’re on the way up the stone path that you finally decide to speak.

“Do you want to stay with me tonight?”

Shoko barks out a laugh. “And fight with one of them? No thanks.”

Heat crawls up the back of your neck. You should’ve known better than to think Shoko wouldn’t figure it out. “They don’t spend the night with me when they’re both on campus. They sleep with each other instead. Suguru has an extra futon in his room.”

“Yeah. I can’t imagine both of those giants fitting on a bed together.”

You fiddle with some lint in the pocket of your hoodie. Do you want to talk about it is on the tip of your tongue, but you bite it back. Instead, you press her with, “So…sleepover?”

“Sure.”

“No alcohol, though.”

“Such a dutiful citizen.”

“Because I don’t have a technique to heal the suffering that I put my body through. Just because you can do these things doesn’t mean you should.”

“You can look away from the corpses. I can’t. Sorry that I wanna have some fun to forget about the fact that, one day, it’ll be one of you on my table next.” She curses, drops her cigarette to the ground, and smashes it with her shoe. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” She rubs her forehead. “That went too far.”

It’s true, though, isn’t it? You’ve never thought about it, but with her technique…she could heal any ailment. She can’t reverse aging, but everything else is free game. She doesn’t throw herself into danger like the rest of you. She can live a long life. Time is a luxury for most sorcerers. It’s a dauting reality to face so young. Still, when you die, that’s it. One day, Shoko will be left behind.

How lonely must that be?

“You could be a normal doctor,” you whisper as you take one of her hands in yours. “You can walk away from this life after we graduate. You can save people instead.”

“I appreciate the concern, Mama Duck, but it’s okay. If I wasn’t around, you’d be dead already from a brain bleed. I want to keep all you idiots alive as long as possible.” She squeezes your hand back, grip unbearably tight. “I think I’ll actually take you up on that sleepover invitation. I wanna be the little spoon.”

“Ugh, fine.”

In the seiza position on a cushion that’s probably worth more than your childhood home, you and Kento wait to meet with your escort today. The room you’re in is beautiful, decorated with a mural of a pond with elaborately detailed dragonflies. You itch for your sketchbook. You never had the chance to see this the last time you were here. The party was held somewhere else.

“It’s still so hard to reconcile the fact that he came from such a serious and distinguished clan.”

You bite back a smile. “Kento,” you try to scold.

Kento simply shrugs in response. For someone that lectures Satoru so much about the blunt way he speaks to people, Kento can be pretty ruthless in his own assessments. He’s of the mindset that sugarcoating words is unproductive, especially when it’s in regard to jujutsu. It can get people killed, in his opinion. You agree wholeheartedly which might be why you get along so well with him.

The sound of footsteps approaching has you straightening up. Three people enter the room, all with matching white hair and blue eyes. Duller than Satoru’s sparkling eyes, you notice. At the front of them is the current head of the clan. Satoru’s…great-uncle, you think he told you and Suguru? What was his name again? Did Satoru even tell you? Satoru spent more time gossiping than actually introducing.

His great-uncle was the strongest in the clan until Satoru came into the picture. He’s more obsessed with strength than even the Zen’in clan—which is a lot, Satoru said. Before Satoru’s birth, his great-uncle went behind his wife’s back, knocking up mistress after mistress, desperate to produce a child with the Six Eyes. So, when his brother’s bloodline was the blessed one, he grew more and more bitter.

Same thing happened with the Zen’in recently, actually, Satoru had mentioned that night of his birthday party. Or so the rumor mill says, anyway. Someone got knocked off the throne when they had some non-sorcerer kids. Our clans hate each other, but we suffered the same fate. Well, it was a blessing in disguise for my clan because they get me, but my great-uncle probably wouldn’t agree.

Satoru’s great-uncle might remember you because he coldly says, “You came all the way here for nothing. I did not authorize this. We don’t need some girl poking around in our personal collection as an experiment. I tried to call Gakuganji, but he didn’t answer. Tell him that the next time he makes decisions on our behalf, there will be consequences.”

“Big talk from someone that’s running on borrowed time!”

Everyone else in the room—Kento included—sighs in aggravation at the sound of Satoru’s voice. You, however, perk up when you watch him stroll into the room. He sprawls out next to you rather than his fellow clansmen, casual as can be. It’s infectious, because you find that the tension in your body is slowly bleeding away.

“Satoru,” his great-uncle starts through gritted teeth, “did you know about this?”

“Yeah,” Satoru answers boredly. “You geezers keep yapping about how I need to be more involved in clan business if I’m gonna be the head soon. So, I handled it for you.” A vein throbs on his great-uncle’s temple. Satoru zeroes in on it. “What’s got you so cranky, old man? My gramps says it’s been years since anyone’s been in our stash, so who knows what shape all those seals are in?”

Ah. His great-uncle has been posturing. You don’t know how the hell Satoru has been able to handle all these complicated rules and customs and interpersonal relationships. And you thought it’d been bad with the Kamo. You’ve heard of the Gojo ego, but the Zen’in are supposedly worse. You’re not sure you have the mental fortitude to deal with all this.

“You should remember your place,” his great-uncle hisses. “You’re not of age yet. You have no authority—”

“Nah, old timer, you need to remember yours.” Satoru rudely points a finger, clearly mocking the man. “What are you gonna do, huh? Fight me? We know who’ll win that. You’re just keeping the seat warm for me.”

Right. This is getting out of hand. “Satoru,” you speak up. “You’re being very rude right now.”

Satoru turns his head to pout at you. “Aw, c’mon, are you seriously taking his side?”

“You’re being rude,” you repeat because, no, you’re not taking his great-uncle’s side. This is just getting uncomfortable. All you want is for this to be over with as soon as possible.

Satoru groans loudly, like the drama queen that he is. “Fine. You’re lucky that I like you so much.” To his great-uncle, he declares, “I’ll escort them around the place. If anything goes wrong, the strongest sorcerer will be there. It won’t, though. My Sketch knows what she’s doing.”

My Sketch.

Did he have to say it like that? And in front of his family, no less?

The Gojo keep their collection deep inside the estate, in the basement. When you visited the Kamo clan, it took a lot to convince Kento to leave you alone. In the end, you succeeded when you told him that you can’t mask his presence so it would only agitate the few fly heads locked inside a cage. You assured him that if something went wrong, he’d sense a surge in cursed energy, and that you’d be okay because, as previously stated, you can hide yourself.

Kento stays at the top of the staircase that leads down to the basement. Satoru is suspiciously agreeable to staying behind and hands the key over without a word of complaint. Even Kento is skeptical, eyeing Satoru with the same wariness that you know is on your face.

You should’ve known he was only biding his time.

You’re distracted when he slips inside the room with you. The caged fly heads are off to the side of the room. You don’t need them. Never have. Their agitation is a warning sign that somethingis leaking inside here, though. Actually, it might be more than one something with how much cursed energy is festering in here. None of the seals are quite at their breaking points yet, but it’s enough that someone should worry.

Frowning to yourself, you mutter, “Does no one check in here?”

“No, not really.”

Something…very weird happens.

This ability of yours, you’re still testing out. You never thought of it as something to be aimed until Satoru forces your attention on him. There’s no other explanation for why you didn’t notice his overwhelming cursed energy before. And when you do, you get smacked in the face by nervousness. But it’s not…yours. Oh, this is weird. Because, somehow, you intrinsically know that this doesn’t belong to the fly heads, either. It’s diluted, not as potent as if it were your own, but it’s…cleaner than if it came from a cursed spirit.

“Why are you nervous?”

Satoru’s mouth parts and the smirk falls from his face. Suddenly, he yanks his sunglasses off, staring at you so intensely that you know he’s using the Six Eyes on you. His eyes widen before he rushes forward to take you by the shoulders. “Stop before you give yourself another brain bleed, idiot!”

Oh. Yes. Closing your eyes, you become increasingly aware of your body. Not only is your head throbbing, but blood is dripping from your nose. Definitely not as bad as that day on campus when you broke that old man’s hip, but still bad. Satoru’s hands on your shoulders are quickly becoming the only thing keeping you upright. He steadies you when you wobble dangerously.

“Hey,” he mumbles after a few silent moments of you catching your breath. You blink owlishly. “Are you resonating with cursed energy now?”

You wipe blood away from your nose with the hem of your sleeve. “If by resonating, you mean I can feel it then, yes, I can.”

“Thought it was weird when I watched you put the fly heads down,” he remarks while tapping his chin in thought. “Also, makes sense why you were all shifty when you told us about Ryomen Sukuna’s finger, too.” As with all new things, he’s immediately intensely interested, so he hunches over to lean his face in close to yours. “What does it feel like?”

“Sure, ask the person new to this.” You roll your eyes before taking a step back. Your heart is already about to burst from his scare. You don’t need your brain overthinking the closeness by wanting to kiss you again. Ugh, great, now you’re thinking about that. “It’s…emotions. I don’t know if that’s what it actually is or if that’s what my brain is translating it to, but that’s the only way I can describe it.”

“How does it feel?”

“What? For the seals about to break?” He nods. You shrug. “Depends, but mostly…giddy. No, that’s too positive. These are cursed objects. It’s that kind of excited that you get when…when someone that you don’t like gets what’s coming to them. Some of them are angry, like they’re pissed that they’re sealed and are waiting to make everyone’s life hell.” You turn to look at one of said objects. “Most of the ones in here are angry, by the way.”

“Eh. Everyone’s a hater.”

“Satoru,” you start with a deepening frown. “I’m going to strengthen these seals, but you really need to talk with your clan about checking on these more often. There’s no excuse for the shape these are in. I know most of your relatives have Infinity, but not all of them, right? And what about the little kids that I saw running around earlier? Seriously. This isn’t safe.”

Satoru picks up on your seriousness and, for once, doesn’t try to brush it off. “I didn’t know they were this bad,” he mumbles.

“I know. You do have an excuse because you’re in Tokyo.” You scrub a hand across your face. “Forget it. I already got a lecture from Principal Gakuganji about keeping my opinions to myself. Apparently, the Kamo clan was offended when I left. They said that I, and I quote, shouldn’t meddle in the affairs of clans.”

“Well, as I’ve already established today, I am the Gojo clan. I’ll bully the geezers until they assign someone to check in on this place more often.”

You shake your head. “You’re so lucky that you have the bite to back up your bark. If not, your clan would overthrow you in a heartbeat because of your shitty attitude.”

“That’s so mean!” Satoru whines.

“It’s what they call tough love. You need to take things more seriously—”

“I did!”

“Partially, but you’re still down here, distracting me from doing what I came here to do.” You cross your arms over your chest, shooting him an unamused look. “Unless you have something serious to talk to me about, will you leave me alone so I can work on these seals? I don’t need a babysitter. Is that why you were so nervous?”

Satoru’s face scrunches up briefly before he smooths it out by forcing a smile. “Heh. Yeah. Sorry. I’ll…just…” He points over his shoulder toward the door. Your brows furrow, confused by his behavior, but you’ll have to ask him later when you’re done with this. He turns, takes a few steps toward the door, but then stops.

“Satoru?”

Satoru takes a deep breath before he whirls around and stomps back over to stand right in front of you again. “Why’d you tell Suguru that I didn’t remember it?”

Okay, you’re just genuinely baffled now. “Uh…what?”

“I remember the kiss.”

Wait. Why does he look so betrayed? Is he seriously about to pin this on you? No. Absolutely not. Offended that he’s offended, you hiss, “You never said anything to me! What was I supposed to think?”

“I didn’t say anything because you didn’t say anything! You’re supposed to be the one that’s smart about emotions and stuff!”

“Huh? I’m sorry, but do you know who you’re talking to? Suguru is the smart one when it comes to that, idiot! Besides, when was I supposed to bring it up? As soon as you came back from the dead didn’t seem like the best time! And I hardly ever see you anymore! And…and how do I even bring that up?”

Satoru scowls. “I don’t know! We don’t even have to talk at all!”

“Then, why are you so upset?”

“No! I mean—” he groans loudly, frustrated by his inability to express himself. “I liked the kiss! I want to do it again!”

The confession comes at you like a sucker punch. You don’t expect it, and it leaves you wide-eyed and breathless. Your body is still burning up, yes, but it’s not because you’re pissed anymore. No, this asshole has you all flustered now, to the point that your mouth opens and closes because you can’t figure out what to say.

Weirdly, what ends up coming out of your mouth is a sheepish, “I liked it, too.”

It’s amazing, how much Satoru perks up. You can almost imagine the dog ears raised high and tail wagging excitedly. His cheeks are flushed, but he grins. “So…can we? Again?”

“Um. Sure. But—”

Satoru doesn’t wait to hear whatever it is you have to say. As soon as you give him permission, he’s reaching out for your face, and hunching over to smash his lips against yours. In his eagerness, your teeth catch his lip the wrong way, and his blood smears across your bottom lip. You can’t help but laugh, a little delighted that he’s so excited to kiss you again. The thought of finishing up in here with the seals floats away when he starts kissing you right.

Just a few kisses, you swear to yourself.

It ends up taking thirty minutes to pull away from him.

July is sweltering.

“I’m melting,” you announce to the room morosely. Suguru, a fellow starfish that’s sprawled out on the floor in front of the box fan, grunts in acknowledgement. You fling your hand over, lightly smacking it against his chest. “Get my pencil. It’s on the bed,” you demand.

Suguru snorts. “Excuse me? Where’s my Squid with her good manners?”

“The manner part of Squid’s brain fried from the heat. You get needy Squid now. And Squid wants to draw but needs her pencil to do that. I’ll draw whatever you want. No commission fee, either.”

“How benevolent,” he drawls sarcastically. “You have hands. Get it yourself.”

“Please?”

“Seriously? It’s right there. You’re closer to the bed.”

“But I’m melting.”

“Squid.”

“I’m a squid puddle.”

Suguru is laughing quietly, a beautiful sound that seems so rare these days. “I spoil you too much.” And yet, he rolls over on his hands and knees, so seems like you’re the real winner here. “Too hot to move but not too hot to draw,” he continues to playfully complain.

Suguru clambers over, hovering above you. His knees bracket yours in, he has one arm next to your head and uses the other to fumble around on the mattress for your pencil. You smile apologetically when he scowls at you, coming up empty. Even with his long arms, the pencil must be further away than he can reach like this, and he’s disgruntled about it. You can’t blame him. It is pretty hot. So, Suguru gets on his knees totally, sitting back on his haunches.

The thing is…the thing is…that when he moves around, he sets one knee between your thighs. Oh, this is familiar, you think to yourself with no small amount of panic. Before you can move, though, his knee is already moving higher to press right against your core.

It’s an instinctive thing, pushing back against his knee, chasing that feeling. Just as you lowly whimper, your brain catches up to what you’re doing, and you cover your mouth but it’s too late. That sound is already lost to the ether. Above you, Suguru freezes, eyes slowly widening, arm hovering there in the air.

Ignore it, ignore it, ignore it, your brain screams in some desperate hope that he’s become telekinetic and can pick it up. You are, of course, not lucky like that. And, slowly, Suguru drops the task of getting your pencil completely and moves down to hover over you on his hands and knees. You can’t quite hold back the flinch when his hands drop on either side of your head, keeping you pinned there with no way to escape without resorting to violence.

You might have to resort to violence.

“Squid,” he sings in that sickly sweet tone that he always uses before he teases you. Is he really going to make this worse? Shoko was so wrong. Suguru doesn’t have a crush on you and now he’s probably disgusted by your reaction. If not disgust then he’s, at the very least, feeling awkward. “What was that?”

You resist the urge to cover your face. That’d make you look guilty. You can get away with no eye contact, though. After all, that’s not out of the ordinary for you. “Nothing!” Oh, yes, that was so smooth. You’re a moron.

He raises a brow. “Really? It didn’t sound like nothing to me.”

“I…um…my back hurts from being on the floor for so long!” Yes, yes, that sounds like a reasonable excuse. You can run with this. “Here. I will get the pencil. Then, I’ll get the futon! Because y’know, my back is killing me, but I still want to stay low to the ground with the fan and where all the cold air is,” you rant nervously.

Shockingly, Suguru allows you to squirm out from underneath him. You might not completely be out of the clear yet, though, since he’s watching you so intently that you even feel his gaze on your back when it’s turned to him. You do what you said you would—grabbing the pencil and dropping it on the floor by your sketchbook before you go to his closet to grab the futon sitting on the top shelf.

As soon as you settle down on the futon, you sprawl out on your stomach, and nervously start to scribble in your sketchbook. Just little doodles and random patterns. Anything to make you look busy. You’re desperately hoping that the shift back to something normal will make him forget what just happened.

You know better than that, though.

Geto Suguru is like a dog with a bone when he wants something.

It doesn’t matter that you’re on your stomach now. Suguru crawls on the futon and moves back over you once again. There’s no point of contact, technically, other than his hands that grasp your wrists to stop you from sketching.

“Suguru,” you complain with a huff. “Get off me.”

“Not until you tell me the truth,” he declares.

You turn your head to the side, glaring at him with one eye. “I did. Now, can you stop being weird?”

Then, Suguru is shooting you one of those…stupidly handsome and infuriating cocky smirks. “Oh, so I’m the one that’s being weird? That’s rich coming from the person that tried humping my leg.”

Jerking your head back around so he can’t see your face, you give an outraged shout of, “I was not doing that!”

“You weren’t, huh? So, you wouldn’t mind if I…”

It gets suspiciously quiet, then. You’re on edge, waiting for an opening that doesn’t come. What does happen is that Suguru shifts around and, horrifyingly, his knee starts to slide up between your parted thighs. You try to snap them shut too late and it just ends up sending his knee bumping against your pussy yet again. You’re prepared for it in that you can bite your lip to hold back any noises, but not so much for the way he’s actively rocking it against you now.

“Suguru, stop!”

When his response comes, it’s right by your ear, and you’re seriously shivering now. “Not until you tell me the truth.”

“You know what it really is! Why do you need me to say it?!”

He’s grinning, you just know it. “I don’t want to presume…”

“It’s turning me on, okay? Are you happy now? You’re such an asshole! Why are you teasing me about something that my body does? This is a completely normal reaction! What if I started rubbing up against your dick, huh?”

“Who said anything about teasing, hmm?” Suguru’s mouth brushes against the shell of your ear. “And you don’t even have to do that much to make it hard. It is right now. Just from hearing you moan like that.”

…eh?

“Do you want to feel, Squid?”

The gears in your brain spun so hard that they blew up. They’re melting away. Nothing is left in your skull. That must be why you nod. It’s a simple thing, when he presses his weight down and that hard thing touches your ass, but the breath rushes out of you regardless. You fist the fabric of the futon, warming up, waiting for him to do something more. He doesn’t. You’re not sure what you expected since he just asked if you wanted to feel, not if you wanted him to start humping you.

“See? Nothing to be embarrassed about.”

It’s out of you without a thought. “What are we doing right now?”

Suguru doesn’t say anything immediately. He lifts away enough to grab your hip, squeeze, and then nudge as a silent order to roll over. You think about not doing, about running away, but…he…he’s turned on, too. So, you relent to his silent request and move to lay flat on your back. You blink up at him owlishly, waiting.

“Ever since that talk, the one where you told me to hold out until graduation so things can get better…I’ve been thinking.” This thing he has to say is making him nervous. His eyes skitter away, his cheeks are darkening, and his voice has the tiniest wobble to it. “Do you remember what we swore to each other after we graduated middle school? We were skipping stones.”

It takes you a few minutes to remember something from what feels like a lifetime ago. He rudely doesn’t say anything else to help your memory along, either. Finally, you remember it since there was really only one noteworthy conversation from around that time, right before you came to Tokyo.

Hey, if we’re still virgins by the end of high school, want to take each other’s virginities?

Surely not…that isn’t what he’s talking about, is it? Just the thought of it has your stomach twisting and heartbeat kicking up a little higher. To verify that that’s really what he’s referring to, you remind him, “We haven’t graduated yet.”

“As good as,” he whispers.

Ah. So…yeah. You guys are really having this discussion. Right. Okay. That’s…fine. But because you are how you are, you get boggled up in the details. “We have seven more months left.”

Suguru leans down, face hovering over yours. His long, dark hair that he didn’t bother to put in the usual neat bun falls like a curtain on either side of your faces. Almost as if you’re both being hidden away from the world. “Are you planning on losing your virginity to anyone else?”

Your throat clicks as you swallow. This conversation suddenly seems very…weighted. “No,” you whisper.

“What’s the problem, then?” Amethyst eyes sweep over your face, heated in a way that you’ve never seen before. It’s a contrast with the almost hesitant way that he reaches up to hover next to your cheek in question. “This isn’t meant to pressure you,” he adds solemnly.

With a tilt of your head, you bump your cheek against his hand in silent permission to touch. “I know it’s not.” You do, truly. No lie. You’re a little overwhelmed, but it’s not necessarily bad. It’s…unfamiliar. “If anyone was pressuring, it was me. That was a weird thing to force a promise over.” Your brows knit together. For some reason, Satoru flashes across your mind, but interest in kissing isn’t the same as interest in having sex. Which is why you’re shocked that Suguru is bringing this up. “You’d seriously be okay with losing your virginity to me?”

Suguru smiles, small but genuine, and says your name and then, “It’s you.”

It’s you.

There is so much trust in that. Simple yet enough to shift the world ever-so-slightly. Things aren’t going to ever be the same, you realize, before recognizing that things have never been the same since last year. It’s you, he declares, and it’s true but so much more than that for you. It was always going to be you.

Curiously, you reach up to touch his cheek, as he does yours. Your thumb brushes the darkness under his eyes. The angles of his face are sharper, as obvious as the fact that he’s losing weight.

“Will this make you happy?”

Suguru’s gaze brightens with the impending mischievous comment. “Well, if you’ve had an orgasm, I’m pretty sure the answer to that question is obvious, Squid.”

“Not many, actually,” you casually admit. “They’re kinda lackluster.”

“That’s…really sad.” Then, he smirks smugly. “I’ll make your orgasms amazing.”

“That’s a pretty bold declaration for a virgin to make.”

“You have some nerve using virgin as an insult like that when you’re a virgin, too.” His eyes narrow playfully. “I’ll know my way around your body better than you’ll know mine.” You raise a brow, curious where that confidence comes from. “I’ve seen a JAV or two.”

“Pervert,” you intone.

Suguru doesn’t take the obvious bait meant to throw him into a tizzy. “I’m being honest with you. You’ve never had an issue with that before. What don’t we know about each other, hmm?” Yeah, okay, he’s got you there. “So, do you want to do this? It’s okay if you don’t. This doesn’t have to change anything between us.”

“You never answered my question. Will it make you happy?”

“Doing anything with you makes me happy.”

“Okay. If it makes you happy then it makes me happy, too.”

Then, for a long time, there’s no words spoken.

In a way, you think that this was always going to happen. For the last ten years, you’ve shared everything with each other, so why would you not give your bodies to each other? There’s no judgement as you slowly strip down. There never has been. When you’ve borne your heart and soul to someone, seen the darkest parts of them and shown yours in return, nakedness seems like such a trivial thing to fuss over.

Between the kissing and leaving marks along one another’s necks and shoulders, your hands slide lower. At some point, you think he whispers something like, it’ll hurt less if you’re wet. And like that very first time that you felt true desire, this is so wildly different from when you touch yourself. He’s clumsy, unable to stick to one place in his curiosity, fingers gliding over your clit and then dipping down to slip inside you.

It’s a stretch. Stinging and painful with how much larger and longer his fingers are compared to your own. But the constant pressure on your clit has pleasure winning the war against pain. You fumble to keep your hand wrapped around his stupidly big dick, but the thoughts are quickly flittering away.

You’re not even sure how you manage to rub enough brain cells together to breathlessly ask, “Do you have a condom?”

Suguru freezes. “Uh…”

Ugh. No wonder Utahime says that men only think with their dicks. What does that make you, though? Because the halt of his fingers makes you whine and scramble to keep this pleasure going as long as you can. “Just…make sure to pull out before you come. Okay?”

He nods enthusiastically. “Okay.”

Something interesting builds inside you. Not an orgasm, but an ache. A gnawing hunger to fill the emptiness inside you. It must be inside him, too, because he murmurs, “I’m putting it in now, okay?” You nod as eagerly as he did. He kisses the place behind your ear. “Tell me if it hurts too much. I mean it, Squid. We can stop whenever you want.”

“I know,” you reply quietly. Then, you gently yank on one of his bangs, making him lean away a little to look down at you with a raised brow. “The same goes for you, too. If you want to stop, say so.”

Suguru’s expression softens so much that it makes you a little shy again. You try to turn your head away, but he tilts it back with a hand on your cheek and kisses you again. With all the things that you two have done so far, this is what makes you the most breathless. Kissing him always does. And just because you can, you place your hand over his heart, reassured to feel that his heart is beating as fast as yours is.

Fingers, you figure out, are nothing compared to that thing between his legs. It hurts, you’ll admit it. More than the twinges from before. It’s an easier glide than any of the times you’ve tried fingering yourself and you think that might be because you’re so wet, exactly like Suguru said. You bear down on instinct when he starts to press in. He hisses through his teeth, immediately pulling out.

You blink open your eyes. “Huh?”

Suguru’s cheeks are so red. He refuses to meet your gaze which is a rare thing indeed. “Sorry. You’re…you were squeezing me really tight. And…um…it’s…hot inside. And…wet…”

You giggle nervously, understanding that he was about to come. “It’s okay. You’re big, I’m tight, so this is good. It’s good for both of us if you go slow, right?”

“Right.”

For most of the time that he’s pushing inside, you’re kissing. Suguru will inch inside you a little further each time before abruptly pulling out. Each time he does this, he lasts a little longer, and you relax a little further. It starts as a painful stretch, shifts to more of a pinching, and then gets sore. The soreness, though, slowly becomes dulled against the blossoming pleasure.

By the time his pelvis is pressed to yours, you’re slipping your arms under his, clinging to him and begging, “Please don’t pull out this time.” Both of you are breathing heavily, soaked with sweat. “Please, Suguru. I know you’re not trying to tease me, but that’s how it feels now. I can’t stand how empty I feel when you leave.”

Face buried in the crook of your neck, Suguru breathes a sigh of relief. “Why didn’t you say something sooner? I’ve been going slow for you.”

“You didn’t catch on from the noise?”

“Did we not establish how important communication is here?”

That was meant to be a reprimand, but it sounds like there’s a smile in his voice. You won’t be able to maintain the eye contact long, you think, but you want to see his face. Just for a little while. So, you grab a fistful of his hair, giving a slight tug. Suguru reacts in a way that you definitely don’t expect. He moans and maybe unintentionally bucks his hips. Your grip gets tighter and the nails of your other hand dig into his back.

Suguru leans on one elbow, avoiding looking at you while he gently grasps your wrist, pulling it away from his hair. “Let’s not do that again,” he suggests hoarsely.

“You’re really struggling with this.” He scowls and you shake your head to it. “It’s…kind of a compliment. Am I that hot?”

He laughs quietly and strokes the high of your cheekbone with his thumb, suddenly looking so unbearably soft. “Squid, I’ve dreamed about this since we made that deal at the river. You’re beautiful. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen since I was six years old.”

This unknown emotion in your chest swells to the point where it’s unbearable. It’s a confession that you can’t handle. “Please,” you whisper, unsure what it is that you’re begging for.

Suguru takes the plea as one to move. He does. A tentative, unsure rolling of his hips. Your forehead lolls forward, pressing against his shoulder. It feels as if you’re about to burst out of your skin. The heat and pressure building inside you like a bomb. It all adds up, the little things. The brushing of fingers over nipples, the digging of nails into skin, the intertwining of your limbs, the breaths you feed each other when you kiss.

On the precipice of orgasm, Suguru moans loudly in your ear. Then, he pulls out, the warm ropes of his release coating your pussy and inner thighs. He doesn’t even catch his breath before his fingers roughly stroke your clit, throwing you over the edge with an arch of your back and fingers clutching at the fabric of the futon.

Suguru collapses on top of you, both of you giving an oomph. Your nerves are like livewires, so when he rests his cheek above your heart, it’s like you can feel his breath wash over your skin. You feel the need to say something, but he rests an arm over your bare waist, grips you tight, and kisses the spot above your breast. With a tilt of your head, you see his eyes are closed. His face is flushed, skin shining, but he looks…peaceful.

Yes, this is peaceful enough.

[2demondogs]

May i request a Kieran x Reader where they just go on a cute picnic date with Branwhen just grazing the grass in the distance. Maybe somewhere pretty like the fields of little creek river. (Let's ignore the humongous O'driscoll hide out in the middle of it for kierans sake🥲)

This is CUTE you guys serve when u serve me the fluff prompts! Also I want to eat this fucking game's graphics. Imagine a Walmart on this river <3.

Girls, theys, and he/hims heart Kieran's autism swag.

Words: 1.4k Tags: Gender-neutral reader, romantic fluff, established relationship, my usual autistic Kieran

The gray hairs spotting Kieran's face and temples look as white as Branwen's in the afternoon sun hanging over Big Valley. He'd taken his hat off, and the splotchy suntan lain over his pale skin is already turning bright with fresh burns, the freckles faded in the wake of soon to form ones.

Always cold, that man; though he had insisted that this rock was simply the perfect place for a picnic and, since half of it was burning up under the shine, he would let you have the shade. He is a gentleman, of course.

It's mostly sunburn on his cheeks. Kieran never does get both his feet beneath him until its almost time for you two to part ways, and any progress he made towards it today was lost when you moved to sit side-by-side with him, insisting the shade got you chilled. The sun has been hot on your back since, warming you to the bone.

He only let your horses loose to roam an hour ago, and he'd made two trips to his saddlebag for a smoke before bringing the entire carton with him. Pleased, are you, to notice that he always sits right back where he was, knee knocking yours and shoulders a polite inch apart.

The chestnut on Branwen's paint-spatter coat looks almost as warm orange as the carton's printing beneath the sun, now, laying opened and near empty in front of you on the rocky ground of a boulder overlooking Little Creek River. Glittering, the water runs clearer after the rain storms that came last week and washed it fresh. If you asked, Kieran would probably know where it leads out to; the knowledge escapes you, now.

Tobacco shreds have fallen out of half-smoked cigarettes tucked back inside, marring the foil wrapper with smudges of black ash that mark Kieran's fingers as he takes another. Down a short slope, the sound of running water nearly drowns the scratch of the match against the rough pad on the box when he lights it.

He offers it to you, first, with that searching expression as if you might slap his hand away entirely— but he's already offered you three others, so you shake your head. Smoking or eating, both seem to calm Kieran's nerves, and your meals were gone quickly. Only two small pound cakes lay wrapped in cloth atop your own satchel, which serves as makeshift table for whatever needn't touch the ground.

You don't think you've ever heard him talk this much, either. His voice is thick and crackly with smoke, louder as he goes on until he must be confident that you like the conversation and his volume breaks even over the rocks. You aren't sure how long you've been sitting and listening, nor when, exactly, it drifted into sitting and staring at the man beside you. Peppered beard, the lines on his face, how his nose bridge twists downwards and how sparse his brows are, the dark brown of his hair bleached away by the sun.

Maybe he has good reason to get timid when you're alone. If you look anywhere near as lovesick as you feel, you would shy away from it, too.

Kieran talks about nothing in particular, when he gets going like this: what he remembered from childhood, his first horse and that he can't remember his first dog though he knows there was one and it was one of them big ones; where he grew up, stories his mother and father had told him before the cholera took them; living on the streets before his time in the—

"Wait," you interrupt him, straightening up some. "You were in the army?"

Kieran pauses mid-sentence, seeming to forget his story in the treeline far ahead of you. The foggy, anxious look which had fallen over his eyes clears when they fix on you again.

"Yeah," he says, as if it is no big story. It's regular enough, sure, though most of the men in camp never served, but it wasn't something you'd expected from him. "Food and a place to live. Why not?"

Well, that's one way to put it, you think, and you find yourself endeared by how little water these things hold to him.

"How long?" You ask.

He opens his mouth to answer, before his brain catches up to his body and he sinks into himself. "Two weeks," Kieran sighs. "Didn't even fight," — scratching the back of his neck, nodding to where his legs are crossed in front of him as if to demonstrate — "They said I got... neurasthenia, or somethin', 'n' I's too scrawny. Weren't putting on weight good enough." His eye twitches some. "Couldn't read, neither. Hard time writin', too..."

If you let him go on, he'll find a million reasons for why he still can't serve in the military or perhaps even detail his thoughts on the fitness of everyone in camp, and so you interject: "Fuck the army."

Kieran barks a laugh. "Got a mouth on you, don't you?"

And then he's back to talking about nothing in particular, letting one thought trail into another. It's interesting, how fast his mind runs and the off-shooting roads it takes. If you remember correctly, he began divulging the more precise details of his life to you simply because you asked if he had a favorite brand of smokes and he said yes, Pa smoked these, they smell like home.

To you, they've always smelled bitter. Some of the chocolate-y underlayers of the tobacco flavoring grow stronger each pack he breaks open.

Even beyond how pleasing his voice is to you, the familiar pauses and breathy quality when he's talked too long, is the far away look in his eyes, as if he's reliving everything he speaks of. This quality has made him weary and vulnerable, sure; but he seems to like the memories he's sharing now, and you know that in this life it's these things which are more precious than pain.

Kieran will tell anyone how the O'Driscolls treated him, or what happened before he rode with them. When men don't have much love laying around, it takes trust to share it.

Another turn comes about.

"Pa was a mil't'ry man, too," Kieran says. Too, like he's fought as many battles, God, I love him, you think. "'Fore he died, he always said we'd move away, out to California. Find some gold or start a farm, he liked the idea of a farm more, he said," — a pause, a fond little smile as he turns to you and looks past your shoulder — "Said that way we'd have a herd o' horses, so I'd have somethin' to like about it." He rubs his chin, remembers the hair there, looks away again. "Jesus, I oughtta been eight or so."

You smooth your shirt, pull your knees to your chest in a loose hold. "Maybe we'll have a farm out west someday," you say, not really thinking. "Or some kinda horse ranch, where we make money boardin' 'em for folks. All kinds of rich folk who pay for that."

Kieran looks at you with a lopsided grin. "D'you mean that?"

And he looks so hopeful, so very glad that you'd ever suggest you wanted a life together. An ache starts in your chest, tight and hard to swallow. Being part of his stories that he runs off when the quiet is too loud— it's not a bad idea at all.

You nod. "Once we're too old 'n' frail for this life," you say, bite back a smile as you reach to move the back of your hand down his chest. "Or maybe just once I'm too frail, Mister Two Weeks."

Kieran flushes. "Hey, now," he says, but he catches your hand in his before you can pull it back, presses his lips to the knuckles. His beard and mustache are scratchy, lips chapped.

You grin. "S'rry. That was mean, wasn't it?"

"You aren't sorry," he accuses, mirrors your smile.

"Naw," you insist, twist to tuck his hair behind his ear with the hand not rested in his. The fingers never leaving his face, resting under his chin. "You're my big, strong, handsome man. Ain't that right?"

He huffs a laugh, half-humored and half-flustered. "Dunno 'bout two o' those," he says.

You scratch his jaw fondly. "And so smart," you continue, pretending to not hear his objections.

Kieran is caught between basking under the playful, but always meant, praise and shying away from it. "Stop," he drawls, laced with a laugh.

"And oh so sweet."

"Quit," he repeats, but there's a chuckle breaking through his voice and he's tugging at your hand, pulling you closer. Well, you've got to lean closer so you do, and he kisses you on the mouth, as awkward as always, as if he forgets how exactly it works until it's happening once again.

[autumnnnsun]

Now that I’ve finished reading Hortus de Escapismo and Executor’s record, I really gotta ramble about Executor for a second and kinda talk abt how Arknights handles his lack of empathy trait that I really enjoy. This isn’t a proper analysis or anything just my thoughts I wanna vomit for a sec.

So it’s implied in Executor’s record that he just, wasn’t born having empathy despite being a sankta. Or at least he just naturally doesn’t have the same levels of understanding of emotion as other sankta. The part that I really like about it is how Executor’s Record and story in general doesn’t portray that as a necessarily bad thing.

His lack of empathy allows him to think in a way that is a lot more unique than other sankta. When his partner in his record story told him to sacrifice him, he still brought his body back to Laterano. One of the reason being because of a specific sentence in the will they were enacting (“I hope all Laterans return back to their home.” Smth that most people would assume is just smth the will writer wrote for some extra literary flare) but also because he disregarded his partner’s feelings. His lack of empathy is the reason why he did something good and that is very interesting to me especially when most people tend to demonise having low/no empathy.

I also just really like how in his record story, it’s emphasised that he knows what emotions ARE. He has developed a system with his parents to recognise and visualise emotions by drawing lines that represent them. He knows what it is, he can recognise it to a level where he can think of the next best course of action when confronted with it, he just doesn’t put much importance on it nor does he bother with understanding it for the most part. Especially if it’s something that will get in the way of his job. And I REALLY like that cus it reminds me of how people irl that have low empathy will develop systems to work around it and still be kind.

I know a lot of us joke about Executor being autistic and that’s funny and I like the jokes as much as everyone else, but low or no empathy is a trait of other mental disorders and disabilities and even as someone that hasn’t been diagnosed with anything yet it still feels kinda nice to see low empathy being portrayed in a way that isn’t villanious.

In fact, Executor having low empathy kinda makes him the best person in the room sometimes especially in Hortus de Escapismo. The part where he does a warning shot at Oren and Lemuen and essentially goes “Can ya’ll STOP I’m trying to do my JOB.” And essentially manages to stop a massacre because of it is so funny but also so fucking hype bruv. I like how in the end of the event when Executor was starting to ask more questions and have more doubts and was starting to let emotions affect his actions a bit more, it isn’t framed as like “Oh mah gerd, he’s learning empathy and being more hooman!”

Instead he’s asking questions and seeking to find solutions to them in his own unique way. Asking around and adding more variables to his thought process like a computer would (which has some implications that gets my lore brain churning but hrghrghrgh)

Top it all of with the fact that he is specifically a character that is born and raised in a society that values empathy. Being able to feel other people’s emotions is what makes you a sankta. And Executor, is one of the better sanktas because he doesn’t follow that rule.

God I love Executor, go son, thrive.

[jupiter-on-the-compupiter]

Hello dear little moot......

What do you think that Dream would be a nerd in? The things he would start yapping about at any given chance?

OHHHH!!!!! HI MUTUAL!!!!!!!!!!!! ☆～o(≧▽≦)o

Hm!!!!!! Great question!!!!!!!! I feel like Dream would be very "into people", he'd want to learn about culture and history and I feel like he'd be very interested in all the arts associated with it—both as a tool, studying other people to understand them better and help them, and also because he'd want to fill in the gap between the 16th century and the current era, would want to know what's been going on!

Art, music, folklore, clothes, religion, languages, cuisine, and so on, I feel like he'd try to cover it with just wanting to catch up with what he's missed but really he's just very autistic (/very loving, from an autistic nerd) about it all.

In fact, most people don't know he was trapped in stone, he doesn't really tell people that and when they ask how things were in this or this era, he just Knows all the info, yk? Wjnfne

Dream and Ink definitely have very nerdy rants about art history and techniques, and Blue and Dream would be SO thrilled to try every local specialty in every Au for that reason sjfnsnfn

Night loved to read while he loved to listen to stories, and back then, there was little entertainment other than sitting around a fire and listening to music, stories and such—he probably told Night a lot of those stories that he wouldn't find in books.

This extends to learning about the intricacies in each Au, lingüístics, yk! I feel like he could infodump about that at any point in time qjnfneqjnfn :3

[classicallyunprepared]

I wrote a fic with Mel’s reaction to Langdon leaving:

Mel Finds Out that Langdon Left

Mel King & Frank Langdon

Mel's face fell as Trinity dismissed her excitement over the delivery she had just witnessed. She began to wonder if the girl was capable of any joy at all. That was perhaps rude to assume, since she'd only known Trinity for eleven hours. But she couldn't hide her disappointment, especially when she was told Langdon had gone home for the day and wouldn't hear her news.

After a long day of distressing situations, she had finally been witness to a positive one. The baby had been so small and so soft. Mel cradled the infant close to her chest to protect her. Lifting the tiny, swaddled newborn into one of father's arms and the look of pure adoration in his eyes had felt like something akin to magic. He had called his friend who had become a surrogate for him and his husband his best friend, a part of his family. They had all been so happy. She was excited to tell her mentor Langdon about the experience. Especially since the two of them had seen such tragedy earlier.

He had offered her time in the break room to recover from seeing the four-year old girl die, but he had gone back to work. He had two children himself, it had to be difficult for him to see, but he kept moving along. She wanted to share the story, a small sweet moment to bring some good news to their bad day.

When she learned he had left, she kept wondering why. He had seemed fine, and there was no sign of him wanting to take a break or feeling sick. The entire situation was confusing. She also felt like she was missing a friend now that he was gone. Who did she have to go to for advice, to tell her good news to? None of her other coworkers had bothered listening.

She was used to their behavior. She was used to people not caring, ignoring her.

He's not someone she would typically befriend. He's confident, inpatient, full of energy, careless, and sarcastic to his coworkers. She didn't think they would get along so well. But perhaps that's because she wishes she were more confident and sure of herself, and he wishes he were more understanding of others and empathetic. They're polar opposites, but that's what makes their dynamic work. She's probably thought too much about this. He had commented aloud that he has ADHD and that any other job would be too boring for him. So they're not so different. She wishes she could talk to him more about this. But when she started working, she'd decided not to reveal that she's autistic to her coworkers or superiors. She doesn't want to hide herself, but she knows that she risks being seen differently and facing discrimination. She wants more than anything to be a doctor. She wants to be respected and the best doctor she can be.

When she helped an autistic patient, she felt like telling Langdon why she understood him so well. Not only because her sister is autistic, but because she can understand how it feels to operate in the world differently than other people. The difficulty of trying to understand the world's rules and fit into them. After thirty-two years, Mel thinks she's pretty good at fitting in. But she still feels the same as she's always had, she just developed coping mechanisms and hides it better.

But she's still tempted to tell him, even though she knows she won't.

Because it was so nice to see Langdon listen to and encourage her. He hadn't just listened and offered general words of advice that could apply to anyone--he had seen her. When so few people did. She felt encouraged to continue her work here when things were the most difficult, the hardest on her emotions, her head, her heart. In these moments the challenges seemed insurmountable. He made her feel like she could do this, and she felt like she could belong here

When she asked why Langdon left, nobody would tell her. Maybe most people didn't know. Even if they did, she doubted she'd get the truth. One more hour until she gets home, and she doubts she'll get answers.

Then Robby picks up a call. There is an active shooter at a local festival. People are going to come in, lots of people. It's all hands on deck. His voice is full of a panic she hasn't heard before, and she feels anxiety well up in her throat.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for catfishing/lying to my friends?

Ok, I know some people will say this is fake or bait or whatever but 🤷‍♂️ This isn't pressing or anything, either, I just wanna see what people think because the situation was wild.

I'm not sure if this fits into what people consider catfishing but I don't think there's a better word for it. When I (ftm) was young (11 or so) I faked having a boyfriend to all my friends. He was a cool, older emo boy that I talked to on kik.

My friends eventually asked more questions (I'm pretty sure they thought he was fake lmao) I made a fake kik for him so they could talk to him. I would pretend to be him to talk to them.

From there things just spiraled. They asked to talk to him other ways? I made an email and got a texting app on my ipod. They wanted to see him? I got pictures that were just random emo boys off of google images.

I kept up this lie for all of middle school (11-13) for about 3-6 girls I was close friends with. I never came clean.

Now, I'm sure they had to know? I'd use pictures of different emo boys, it was rarely consistent. He had a super fake name (think like, gothic literary references). In hindsight? I was just enjoying pretending to be a boy and being treated like one. But still, probably weird. They talked to him pretty regularly as if he was human. I'm autistic though, and if they didn't believe in him and were all laughing behind my back I had no idea. I think they really did believe though, because, I'll be honest, a few of them were a little gullible (I'm not above this! I believed another friend when she said she was a mermaid princess.)

I'm only submitting this because I told the story to some friends recently and they all reacted with shock and horror. I think it's weird tween girl behavior tbh, no big deal. He was just another member of our friend group in a distant way. I was weirdly addicted to lying for attention or something. No harm no foul. I'd ask these girls/come clean, but we don't talk anymore and it's been like over a decade. If I was an asshole I'll just know not to tell it as a funny anecdote anymore.

(Also if any of the girls involved happen across this, hiiii, sorry. And double sorry if this is how you realize he was fake 😬)

tl;dr: When I was 11 I pretended to be my own emo boyfriend to like, be friends with my own friends x2 and to get more attention ig? I have no idea if this is a funny story I can tell my friends a decade later now, or if I should bury it in shame and never tell anyone.

What are these acronyms?

[destinygoldenstar]

TRAILERRRRRR!!!!!

Okay, so Netflix DIDN'T lie. Confirmed.

I'm NOT as scared about the release date as others. I'm still worried. But I can also see it because from what I've heard, Episodes 2-4 were being made around the same time. So, by that logic, the quality should be similar.

"But why was there such a gap with 2 & 3 then?" MURDER DRONES WAS RELEASING ITS FINALE IN BETWEEN. THAT'S WHY. Some of the animators for Digital Circus work on Murder Drones too. So OF COURSE, to avoid overworking them, there'd be a gap for Digital Circus content.

And now that Murder Drones has ended, there's not that issue anymore.

That's the logic I'm going with, anyway. I would wait to raise the red flags till AFTER this episode comes out and we hear Episode 5 comes out in, like, a month or something.

I HOPE TO GOD THAT LINE AGES HORRIBLY.

Also, um... an episode about working minimum wage labor.

These episodes are built for me, I swear.

We also have the characters in different outfits, which is neat. Clearly just for this episode. Still.

I NOTICED THIS POSTER.

"Customer is always right! Serve with a smile!"

THE AMOUNT OF TIMES I HAVE BEEN TOLD THIS IS INSANE AND DRIVES ME ABSOLUTELY NUTS.

I WOULD GET SCOFFED AT AND SCREAMED AT BY PEOPLE, AND I'M THE ONE THAT GETS IN TROUBLE.

We also have Ragatha and Gangle interacting.

I wonder why they're playing with a baseball specifically.

Because in the last episode the leisure activity played into the adventure.

JAX'S NAMETAG SAYS "I DON'T CARE"

LMAO

Gangle looks like she's been possessed by Monokuma.

This is DEFINATELY a new mask.

Here's my prediction:

Gangle has a background actress-related. (Comedy & Tragedy Mask Duality) And she is bullied CONSTANTLY in the previous episodes.

So when she's given the role of manager, she creates a new mask for herself, A NEW CHARACTER. One that gives her confidence and a character so ruthless that she can't be pushed around.

It's her spotlight. It's her time to shine.

So is the comedy&tragedy duality bipolar disorder?

We'll see. I got Kinger's mental issue wrong.

It could also be that Gangle is autistic. I KNOW AS AN AUTISTIC PERSON MYSELF. It's pretty easy for autistic people to latch onto a character they can bring to life in order to interact with people. But when provoked as themselves, confidence can easily break.

So no, I don't think she's being psychotic. I think she's putting on an act for her self esteem.

And I think whatever damage she causes in the episode will not have malicious intent from her.

I say this because we ALSO see her looking at herself in the mirror.

THIS IS ZOOBLE'S ROOM BTW. THAT'S INTERESTING.

Did Zooble loan Gangle this?

Assuming they did because we have THIS hand reach out to Gangle.

So what I'm thinking the start of the episode is: Gangle and Ragatha are playing baseball, by accident, the ball breaks Gangle's masks.

She's crying, she's writing, and then Zooble eavesdrops and offers to help.

And we know this is Zooble's hand because they're participating in the adventure with that hand.

YAY!

This guy is so stiffly animated. Or maybe it's just me.

Maybe there's a story reason for it. Idk.

They advertised this guy awhile back, said "He's everyone's favorite character".

I'm calling Glitch's bluff. I'm gonna say this guy is going to be VERY INTENTIONALLY written to be UNLIKEABLE, ANNOYING, AND MISERABLE.

And it's gonna be COMEDY GOLD to have Caine and the Circus go around exclaiming how he's the best.

CAINE GETTING THIS SUGGESTION BOX IS SO INTERESTING.

I THINK this is from Zooble.

After their therapy session, and Zooble saw first hand what could happen if Caine cuts adventures altogether, I can see Zooble making adventure suggestions that would be comfortable for them to participate in. To please Caine and to protect the circus from collapsing.

We're also getting Caine lore. BECAUSE WHERE IS THIS ROOM SUPPOSED TO BE? THIS LOOKS FAR TOO NORMAL.

AND WHAT IS POMNI DOING HERE CRAWLING ON THE FLOOR?

First off, I'm okay with her taking a backseat. She's the main character so obviously she'd get the lionshare of screen time. BUT there are other characters in this show and the show knows that. So as a Pomni Stan, I'm completely okay with this.

BUT is she snooping on Caine???

Two possibilities: One, this is just the burger place. Which is likely.

OR this is where Caine is, and she dips from the adventure to eavesdrop and figures out some lore stuff.

Not seeing her doing much else this episode anyway.

CAUSE LOOK AT THIS. SHE'S TRYING TO THROW AWAY SOMETHING AND GETS CAUGHT BY GANGLE? SHE HIDING S&#T DOG.

THE GLOINK QUEEN IS BACK.

Probably as just a cameo. BUT THE GLOINK QUEEN IS BACK.

Hmmmm... if the Gloink Queen is coming back, I wonder if someone else could show up...

[mohnaka]

So, in regards to Hondo in Skeleton Crew since it's something I keep seeing people ask about: it was confirmed that he won't be appearing. Here's the specific bit from the article:

I’ve seen speculation that a live-action Hondo Ohnaka will appear in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew. True or false? –Corey A freighter resembling Hondo’s was spotted in the distance at Port Borgo in Episode 2, but series creators Chris Ford and Jon Watts confirmed for me that we won’t be meeting the Clone Wars pirate. “We’ll rip off that Band-Aid and say no, we don’t have any Hondo,” Ford told TVLine. “Honestly, we love Hondo, but there wasn’t really a part in our story that offered a good enough role for him. Like, if we were trying to cast him in this, he would be like, ‘This part is not big enough for Hondo!'” Which is not to say Skeleton Crew, in success, won’t ever feature the interstellar buccaneer. “We would love to keep doing this,” Ford said, “and keep exploring the whole pirate side of the galaxy, and build up to that.”

There's always the chance they could be lying, but considering the wording, I don't think they are. But! He is coming in the next dlc for Star Wars Outlaws! No exact release date yet, sometime in spring. If you haven't played it yet, I highly recommend it.

Now on a side note, something else I've seen a lot of people ask/say in regards to Hondo showing up in media set after Rebels: isn't he already super old/dead/etc? Long story short, no. Short story long because I'm autistic and don't know when to shut up under the read more:

If you were somehow unaware (hoping that doesn't come off as judgmental, it's more of a surprised thing I swear!), he's actually a part of Galaxy's Edge aka "the Star Wars land" at Disneyland/Disney World, which is supposed to take place in between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker (so about 34 ABY). Or at least it was initially, they've been kind of loosening it up lately, but the two rides (Rise of the Resistance and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, the latter of which Hondo is basically the star of) are still in that specific time range. So he's not dead nor is he going to die in anything set before the sequels (but then again, "Hondo Ohnaka survives every time", could be the Force keeps bringing him back to life to fuck with everyone).

In Legends, the approximate lifespan for his species (Weequay) was about 90 years of age. There's been no word on whether this is still canon or it's been made longer, but if it is still canon, it does give us an idea of how old he was in the various eras. If we're to assume he's somewhere between 80 to 85 years of age in 34 ABY (Lando, who he's shown to be on good terms with in issue 4 of the Halcyon Legacy comic, is 77/78 years in 34 ABY for reference), that would make him:

Between 25 to 30 years old when he's first introduced in The Clone Wars

Between 42 to 47 years old when he's first introduced in Rebels

And last but not least, between 55 to 60 years old in 9 ABY, which is (supposedly) when The Mandalorian/Skeleton Crew/etc takes place

Somewhere in the middle is most likely, since the younger estimate would put him at only 14 years old in 32 BBY (during The Phantom Menace), but 17 to 19 years old isn't that wild considering what we've seen older kids/teenagers deal with in this franchise. It's not completely unrealistic that someone with a background like his would be just starting off leading a group of pirates in his late teens.

Anyway, what's he been up to since Rebels? He actually founded his own Totally Legitimate Shipping Company, Ohnaka Transport Solutions, sometime in between 1 ABY and 4 ABY prior to the Battle of Endor. It's currently (as in, 34 ABY currently) based in Black Spire Outpost on Batuu, though whether it was always there is unknown. Also at some point he got himself a ship that he named the Katooni...yes, like that Katooni. In fact, it's the one mentioned in the above interview about Hondo appearing in Skeleton Crew, so in a sense, he might have already had a indirect cameo!

Sources for most of this/recommended reading: Pirate's Price, The Secrets of the Bounty Hunters, and Halcyon Legacy #4. If you're looking for Hondo content outside the shows, read these. Especially Pirate's Price if you've always wondered what it'd be like if Han and Hondo met. And as previously mentioned, Halcyon Legacy #4 has him with (the real) Lando.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I’m planning my 2025 UK (and, this time, Ireland) trip, and I’m really really excited about it. But as 2024’s come to an end and we all do retrospectives, I thought it would be interesting for me to look back on my 2024 UK trip now, and see what, with a few months of hindsight, still stands out as the best and worst parts.

Reasons why I’m making this list: 1) it’ll be helpful, when planning for next year’s trip, to know what cool things I want to repeat, and what uncool things I want to try to avoid, and 2) I miss my trip and want to mentally re-live it by making a list and looking at the pictures again.

My 2024 trip was divided into three overall parts. Part 1 was five days in London. Part 2 was taking trains – London to Edinburgh, Edinburgh to Glasgow, Glasgow to Fort William, stayed overnight in Fort William, then Fort William to Mallaig, Mallaig to Glasgow, Glasgow to Edinburgh. Then Part 3 was five days in Edinburgh for the festival.

Part 1: London

Best parts of London, listed in whatever order they occur to me

- Trains: There were so many trains. The stations were cool. The tracks were cool. The seats were cool. The vehicles were cool. The speed with which you could get around the city was cool. The “Mind the Gap” voice was cool.

I joked before I left on this trip that this is like the stereotype that says all autistic people are 8-year-old white boys obsessed with trains, and then there's a cute/inspiration porn story in the local paper about the little autistic boy who's all excited to meet a train conductor. I said I'll be like that when I go to Edinburgh and see all those comedy shows, because in this simile, I am an 8-year-old white boy and these are my trains.

Then, once I actually got there, I remembered that trains are also my trains. Some autistic stereotypes exist for a reason. For example, I am a 34-year-old autistic white woman, and I fucking love trains.

- Highgate Cemetery

So beautiful. I wandered around it for nearly an hour, just appreciating all the history. And it was really cool to see Douglas Adams' grave - I left two pens, from my dad and I, as we used to read his books together. I went there mainly because I was interested in Douglas Adams, but was amazed by how lovely the whole place was.

- Taskmaster house

Obviously that was cool as fuck. I also went on a walk by the river to where they have the bandstands where they did location tasks for the first few seasons. I took this picture by holding my phone up over a fence:

- Really good non-shawarma on park bench

A couple of years ago, I heard Nish Kumar recommend a specific Montreal shawarma place on The Bugle, because he performs in Montreal sometimes. I'd never been to that place, but I was a bit skeptical of his recommendation, because I've tried shawarma outside my own city, even in other big cities, and it's always terrible. My city has a lot of shawarma places, due to various factors that mean we have a high Arab immigrant population, so I've gotten used to quite a high standard of shawarma. I know several people who've grown up in Middle Eastern countries where shawarmas actually originated, and told me that our city has their favourite shawarmas in the world.

So, I wasn't sure about Nish Kumar's recommendation. Not because I thought there could be no good shawarma in Montreal (that's not where I live, but it's a big enough city so it'll have some good stuff, better than Toronto), but because I was not sure if I should trust someone from England to know how shawarma is meant to taste. I hear British people talk about kebabs a lot, but they never mentioned shawarmas, so I figured they don't really have shawarma there. Just kebabs, which are not the same thing.

Having said this, when I went to Montreal to see some Just For Laughs shows in 2023, I tried the shawarma place that Nish had recommended, and it tasted amazing. So I had to admit that maybe he does know what he's talking about. I told all this to my friend who lives in London, and when he went to a Nish Kumar gig long before my UK trip, he went up to Nish after the show, and asked what his favourite shawarma place in London is. Nish said some place called Kebab Kid, and I put that on my list of places to visit, to see if England does have good shawarma after all.

So I made a special trip out there. I traveled pretty far out of my way to get there. I took some trains, and then I walked about forty-five minutes, across quite a lovely neighbourhood, enjoying how pretty London is. I arrived at the restaurant, and became a touch concerned that the place I was using to prove to England does have shawarmas and not just kebabs, was called Kebab Kid. But when I went inside, they did have shawarmas on the menu. I ordered one.

The guy behind the counter asked me if I wanted chili sauce or barbeque sauce. I said no, because... obviously. Obviously you don't put those on a shawarma. He said, "So no sauce, then?", and I realized those weren't optional extras, they were the only sauce on offer. No garlic sauce, no hummus. I said... okay, barbeque then. He put misc. salad in there instead of pickles and turnips. It was so clearly not a shawarma. It came with fries, even though fries obviously do not go with shawarma.

Skeptically, I took it down the road and sat down on a park bench to eat. And God, was it ever delicious. It wasn't a shawarma. That's absolutely not what a shawarma is. But it was a very, very good chicken sandwich. A guy sat down next to me and chatted to me for a while. He asked what I was eating, I said a shawarma, and he said he's from Turkey and they don't have proper shawarmas here, not like at home. I said yes, I can see that. They absolutely don't.

But it was a really really good chicken sandwich and I ate it in a really pretty park, surrounded by pigeons, and had a genuinely nice chat with a random stranger, and it felt sweet and peaceful, and I liked it a lot.

I told myself I was going to keep each item on this list pretty short, just a couple of quick sentences to explain them. I did not expect the first list item to make me break that rule would be a shawarma place. I'm going back to the rule now.

- Sunday roast

I flew all Saturday night. I arrived at 8:30 AM. My wonderful hosts picked me up at the airport, I showered and changed and dropped my stuff off at their place, and then, while fuelled entirely by adrenaline and no sleep, I accompanied my friend from a British comedy message board, whom I'd just met in person for the first time, to a pub with a Sunday roast.

I've been informed that he chose this pub specifically because it has a great Sunday roast, they're not all as good as this one. But this one was very, very good. I had horseraddish for the first time. I had Yorkshire pudding for the first time. I was very surprised that this things called pudding was just bread, until I tasted it, and I decided that anything that delicious can call itself whatever it wants. It was the perfect way to start a trip.

- My wonderful hosts

It's weird to write this part because he'll probably read it. But I stayed in the spare room of a guy I'd met two years earlier on a comedy message board, as I've said many times, I cannot believe lucky I got in messaging a guy because I just wanted a few old comedy recordings, and ending up with a wonderful new friend (and more comedy recordings that I could have imagined, that's cool too). We spoke regularly for a couple of years before my trip to the UK, which is relevant because, as my dad pointed out, it's inadvisable to stay with a man from the internet you've not met in person, but if he's been talking to you most days for two years, that's a lot of work to put in just to lure someone to your house to murder them. There are easier ways to murder someone. So it's probably fine.

He did not murder me. He has a wife whom I'd not spoken to before but she was so incredibly nice; I'd been slightly concerned that she might be put out by having to play host to some woman from Canada whom she didn't know, but it wasn't like that at all, she was so friendly and welcoming, and so was her husband of course, it was super cool to meet him in person and spend time with both of them, it was great. And they had three cats who were the absolute best cats in the world. I won't post a picture of the cats here, because, you know, those are other people's private cats. But they were excellent cats.

- The Bill Murray, Nish Kumar

Many, many hours of my favourite comedy I've of my favourite comedy I've ever heard was recorded at The Bill Murray pub, for Angel Comedy. I was so excited to see the venue in person, and I was not disappointed. I saw a Nish Kumar WIP there just before he went to Edinburgh, and holy God, it was one of the best evenings of my life. I arrived at the pub an hour before the show, partly so I could awkwardly hang around the door to the comedy room and get the best seats (I achieved this, of course), and partly because I wanted to spend time in that building, to take in the history.

And it was full of history. The walls were covered in pictures of great comedians who've performed there. There were murals with drawings of comedy legends. And the actual comedy room was perfect - small and intimate, definitely good at those technical things that I don't have enough expertise to know how they work but I know good ones when I experience them (sight lines, acoustics, comedy-conducive lighting). And I watched Nish Kumar perform an absolutely fantastic version of one of my favourite stand-up hours ever. It was a perfect night.

- Crystal Palace

I spent one morning in Crystal Palace. I ate breakfast. It's a very very pretty neighbourhood with cool little buildings and a sense of history and everything that I romanticize, when I romanticize the UK. It had a big beautiful park with dinosaur statues. I went into a cool independent bookstore, which has hosted performances by some of my favourite comedians ever, and I bought a beautiful children's book to donate to the autism centre where I worked at the time. If I'm honest, those hours were the ones I most enjoyed in London, aside from the time at actual comedy shows/venues. I just wanted to have a look.

Pictured below: not a tourist attraction (according to Elis James, who is wrong), but some cool dinosaurs

- Cambridge

On one of my days in London, I got trains to Cambridge and back. At first I was pretty disappointed in the place, because it had so many tourists that I couldn't really appreciate anything. But then I paid about 10 pounds to get into the grounds of St. John's College, which had an entry fee because it was one of the extra beautiful colleges. It was also Douglas Adams' college, so I'd wanted to see it anyway for Britcom tourism reasons. But holy God, was it ever gorgeous. I felt like I was in some sort of unnamed British fantasy novel.

The gardens. The old buildings. The history. The picturesque rooftops, the river with boats punting by like a postcard. The stained glass in the chapel. The courtyards that seemed from another world. The pillars. This was exactly what I wanted when I said I wanted to go to the UK and see "Harry Potter buildings". Not filming locations from the movies, I don't care about that. Magestic buildings with fantasy novel vibes. Also, you know, all the genuine history there. Douglas Adams, and I hear the history of Cambridge University might even go back slightly further than the 1970s.

I also ate lunch at a pub called The Eagle, because it was called the oldest pub in Cambridge, and I think that's even true (as in, I didn't just wander into any pub that had a sign saying "oldest pub in Cambridge" outside, I looked this up beforehand). Because I like history. The pub was so cool on the inside, and yes I'm aware that that's probably not even because it's several hundred years old, it's because they made it look that way so they can trade off tourists like me. I know that - that any pub that's several hundred years old is a Theseus' Ship situation. I don't care, the pub was beautiful. And I had an amazingly delicious lunch there.

- Regent's Park

One of the first places I went when I got to London. So much amazing comedy history there. Pretty park, I enjoyed walking around the pretty park. But I mainly enjoyed looking at the theatre, even though we couldn't go in, and standing on the spot of some of my favourite nights in comedy history, it was fucking cool.

- ABC Comedy, Romesh Ranganathan

This is another very cool comedy club in London, where a lot of really really awesome comedy has happened over the years, I've gotten to experience a lot of it from Canada via the magic of technology but was so excited to be there in person. And I saw Romesh do an hour-long WIP there (I think it was less WIP, and more just messing around and saying whatever came up), which was really funny and a great time. Weird to see someone so famous in person. He was taller than I expected. His reputation is for the grumpy thing, but he's so funny when he says something silly and then gives the crowd a huge grin. It was loose and great fun.

And thought I'd been told before that it's a small room, I was amazed to see in person, and confirm how very small it is, giving how regular it is for big names to perform there (Romesh Ranganathan, for a start). Just like the Bill Murray.

- All the big pretty buildings in the Parliament area, and St. James' Park

I spent a few hours wandering around the big pretty buildings in the Parliament area and St. James' park. It was old and nice and impressive. I kept walking by Big Ben and saying "There's Big Ben!" like in that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

- Square Mile neighbourhood and Leadenhall Market

Another time, I spent an afternoon wandering around a neighbourhood that I believe is called Square Mile. It had a lot of little alleyways, and I'm a sucker for little alleyways. It had big and impressive buildings that I enjoyed looking at. I went into a pub that had chandeliers.

That neighbourhood had Leadenhall Market in it, which is an exception to me not caring about places where the Harry Potter movies were filmed, because it's not just where they happened to film Diagon Alley the movie, it looks like how I pictured Diagon Alley in my head from the books. There were a bunch of little market areas like this in London, which I liked. But this one was my favourite:

- Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub

I spent nearly three hours in this pub. I ordered several alcohol-free Guinesses, because I was trying to stay away from alcohol throughout the trip. I was there by myself. So why did I spent three hours in a pub, if not for the alcohol or the company? It was just one of the coolest buildings I'd been in and I wanted to be in there for longer. I was in a basement room where I couldn't even get internet, so I couldn't even browse on my phone. I just sat there, for hours, alone in the room, and it was fantastic.

The pub had several different rooms, as you move downstairs, and one of the rooms was totally empty so I sat down there. This definitely sated my desire to see the other type of Harry Potter building - rather than the big and majestic ones that could be a wizard castle, this was a dimly lit basement that looks like it hasn't been updated since the 1600s, which is apparently when this pub was built. Knockturn Alley. Okay I'm done with the Harry Potter references (to be clear I did not, and would not, do any official Harry Potter stuff that could generate profit for the author because fuck her - I didn't even do any unofficial Harry Potter stuff like the Edinburgh tours or pictures with that Kings Cross cart - I just wanted to sit around in old buildings and feel like I was in a fantasy novel).

This gave me the thing I wanted to find in tourist attractions, but didn't. I visited some large old cathedrals, and wanted to feel a sense of history and magic and the gravity of a place like that, but it was packed with other tourists taking pictures, so I couldn't get into it. I sat in St. Paul's Cathedral trying to feel magic, and finally said to myself, "Yeah, God's not here" and left (metaphorical God, I'm not religious, but I'm often impressed with the weight of human wonder that goes into religious architecture). I found the Cheshire Cheese just after that, sat down in that old building, and felt all the stuff that I'd wanted to feel in the church but failed.

I'm genuinely glad there was no internet signal down there, because I took out my phone, and did write a whole big Tumblr post in my notes app, figuring I'd post it when I got back upstairs (okay, I didn't just stare at the wall for three hours). That magic of the building overtook me. That post was so incredibly cheesy, even for me. It contained the line "I didn't find God in a church, but then I found God in a pub," because apparently I thought I was John Robins now. And that's one of the less cheesy lines, since I'm willing to share it now. I think there were a bunch of reflections in there about struggling with my drinking problem, but written in ways that only made sense while sitting in that room. The rest of the post will be thankfully lost because I got upstairs, returned to the real word, said "this is bullshit" and deleted it. But I hope that this year, I can go back to the magical pub where the real world doesn't exist.

- Other pubs

I didn't drink at all in the UK (okay, I had one beer in a pub by the ocean on my last day in Edinburgh, but literally only one pint), and it wasn't the first time in my adult life that I've gone two whole weeks without alcohol, but it was the first time I've done that and found it easy, because things were going so well that I didn't even miss it. I did, however, drink a lot of alcohol-free Guinesses. Because I sat in a lot of pubs and wanted something that at least made me feel like I was drinking.

The worst part of London was the heat and the crowds and the fact that everyone moves so fast that you're not allowed to stand still for half a second without people getting angry at you for blocking the sidewalk, and there weren't a lot of options for refuge from that. A lot of the restaurants seemed to be takeaway-only, or just a few tables, and were always packed. So a lot of times, I found myself ducking into pubs to get out of the heat and the crowds. The pubs were old and nice and quiet and comforting, and I enjoyed sitting in them a lot.

- Egg Sluts

Okay, I'm going to change the tone a bit from the darker, drinking problem-based stuff. I had a fucking excellent breakfast sandwich in a place called Egg Sluts. I did not take a picture, but it was so good that I have to go back there in 2025. I'm a big fan of the egg + meat-based breakfast sandwich, and that was probably the best one I'd ever had.

- Sausage rolls

The first time I ordered a sausage roll from Gregg's, I did it while giggling about how I feel like a character in a story that was told on a panel show. The WILTY people are always making up stuff about Gregg's and sausage rolls. What a cute British thing to do. I'm going to eat a sausage roll on a train. This is so British.

The second, through, by my best estimation, 504th time that I ordered a sausage roll in Britain, I thought, "Fucking hell, am I ever glad we don't have these in Canada. I don't think I'd have lived to this age if I had the option to order them all the time. Sausage... in bread... it's brilliant. Why didn't we think of this in Canada? We must never think of this in Canada. This needs to remain a treat abroad."

- Lamb being a common food there

Here, it's a delicacy, often not available in places that serve the more common meats like chicken, pork, and beef. Some places offer it, but for a higher price than the same dish with another meat. Britain just puts lamb in everything.

- On a similar note, one day I went up to the roof of a high building and ate a lamb kebab while looking out at the entire city, and that was very nice:

- The Soho Theatre

Same deal as the other comedy venues - cool place full of comedy history, I've heard so much stuff from there and loved getting to see it in person and physically be in that space. Also, the walls were full of posters from shows that had performed there over the years.

- The London Underground when it was not packed with people

Fun stuff. Sometimes it was all dark and felt like a sci-fi movie. The cars made fun noises and went fast.

- I saw Daniel Kitson live twice, a couple of nights apart. One of the times, I met him after the show. My brain shut down and I forgot all the words in the English language and he stood there looking at me and I couldn't speak to him. He performed what I think is one of the best shows he's ever done, and I got to see it live, and that was cool as fuck. So incredibly cool. But oh my God, I felt terrible later that night (and the next day, and the next few days) when I realized how badly I'd Got It Wrong when I met him.

It's okay though, because I did eventually manage to look at the pictures my friend took, and those pictures confirmed that he at least found the situation amusing (I could not confirm that at the time as I was physically unable to look at him):

Worst parts of London, listed in whatever order they occur to me

- The British Library

It might be unfair to call this one of the worst parts of my trip to London, because it was still pretty cool. But most of London was good, so by the standards of that, this was… weird. I went on the day I arrived, right after the Sunday roast, when I’d flown all night and not slept in well over 24 hours by then, so that definitely did not help. I took a guided tour of the place, and the tour was super weird. Our guide was obsessed with telling us that the government had secretly killed Alan Turing. Every part of the tour was basically a way for him to bring it back to that subject. Which almost sounds like a gimmick, but the guy seemed quite serious about it. He also told us several facts that other people on the tour pointed out were incorrect (not just the conspiracy theory thing, but factual stuff like confidently mis-labelling what language certain books were in). The whole thing was just weird, and the fact that I was reaching “asleep on my feet” territory made it feel like a weird drug trip.

- The heat

I realized a few months before the trip that this would be taking place in the middle of summer, and I need to factor in how much I cannot stand being outside in the middle of summer. I hate it. I hate it I hate it I hate it. My body cannot stand excessive heat. I am meant to live in Arctic temperatures. Where I live now, the weather has been mostly between -10 and -20 degrees Celcius for the last few weeks, and that's about where I feel comfortable. As soon as it starts going above 0, I don't like it.

London in the summer was well above 0. To be fair, it was slightly less hot there than it was at home. I was told that I was there during one of their heat waves, but even their heat wave temperatures were not quite as hot as what I get at home on a regular mid-summer week. So that would normally be nice. But at home, I'm not usually walking outside all day, for several days in a row, in the middle of summer. I'm usually hiding in my house with a fan blowing directly on me and cold wash clothes draped all over my body, telling myself that autumn will come soon.

So. Summer tourism might not be the best call for me. I got very miserable being in the heat for so long, and that made everything else harder to deal with. The crowds. The blisters on my feet. I could stand them all more easily if my body were not in horrible pain from the elevated temperatures, dealing with the sensory nightmare of sweat everywhere. Not to get too graphic or anything.

- The crowds

Oh my God, the crowds in London. I already covered most of this when I wrote about crowds before, but fucking hell, it was bad. The whole sidewalk. I'd often been surprised when I saw people on panel shows talk about how much they hate people who stop walking on a sidewalk ("pavement"). "Why don't you just go around them?" I wondered. Well now I know why - you can't! You can't go around them. There is no area of foot traffic that's not full of people. I think it was the lack of ability to stop moving that bothered me even more than just the proximity to so many people, but both were bad. And worse in the heat.

- I got awful blisters all over the bottoms of both feet on my first day there, and they didn't start to heal until after I'd left London

I still don't know why this happened. I mean, obviously it was because I was walking around all day as a tourist. But I had a job at the time where I was on my feet all day, so it's not like I wasn't used to some of that. I had good shoes. New enough to still be good, old enough to be broken in. I think I'm maybe just not used to walking on paved surfaces for so long. They were hard on my feet.

The blisters started to get better when I spent a couple of days on the trains to and around Scotland - got off my feet for nearly two straight days, just sitting in the train seats. Also, at the Edinburgh train station, I "bought some plasters from Boots", which I found to be an amusingly British thing to do. Those helped. So it wasn't such a problem when I was walking all around Edinburgh.

But for those five days in London, I couldn't put weight on either foot without it being in terrible pain, and obviously that's not ideal for an holiday where I walk around a city all day. The worst was in Cambridge, as I walked around that utterly beautiful St. John's College, and kept thinking... I wish I could be here without it causing excruciating pain to the bottoms of my feet. Then I could enjoy it more.

I need to look up good preventative blister stuff before I got back in 2025. At the very least, I'll bring some Band-Aids ("plasters") with me this time and put them on when it first starts.

On the best-of list, I put pictures of each bullet point. Be grateful that I'm not doing that here. Because I did take a picture of them one day, so I could have a record of how bad they got (seriously - the ran all the way across). But I'll spare the public that.

- Covent Gardens

Oh my God, I hated that place. I planned to spend a few hours there because there was so much touristy stuff that I figured I should see, but it was awful, for the reasons I've already outlined. Heat, and no escape from it. Giant crowds. Blisters on the bottoms of my feet. Walking around this busy square.

I went to get a something from my UK trip pictures folder to put here, but it turns out I didn't take any pictures in Covent Gardens. I was so miserable that at no point did I think "I want to save this for posterity". I'm not doing that place again.

- Buckingham Palace guard changing

The palace itself was cool to look at, but if I went back there again, it wouldn't be when they change the guard. It turns out the Buckingham Palace guard are just Mounties. We have Mounties at home. It was a bunch of guys dressed as Mounties doing the guard-changing routine that the Mounties in Canada do, but with fucking thousands of people gathered all over the square and the streets so you couldn't get anywhere near it to actually see. It might have been cool if I'd been able to get near it - I enjoy watching the Mounties do their thing sometimes. But I'd rather just go look at the pretty Palace sometime when it's not so full of people.

- St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Cathedral

I was looking forward to this stuff because as I've said, I like that kind of architecture. But the number of tourists meant that vibe-wise, it felt more like a very fancy shopping mall than the site of centuries worth of humans trying to connect to the Divine.

- The London Underground when it was packed with people

Extremely uncomfortable, do not recommend.

- The show I saw at the Soho Theatre

It wasn't very good.

I was going to add parts 2 and 3 of my trip on the end here, but this post has got too long, and I know Tumblr has a limit to the number of pictures you're allowed to add in one post. So I'll just post this one now, and then I'll add the other parts in a reblog later. This has been a fun exercise in remembering stuff.

[phoenixs-fandoms-and-writings]

Do You Think Anyone Will Love Me?

Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairing: James Potter/Reader (no pronouns are used for reader, but James affectionately calls them Princess)

Plot: You have a bad day and go home to find comfort in your roommate and long time friend, James.

Reader is autistic and James is just supportive.

Notes: This account is anti-JKR and her beliefs.

Happy Valentine’s Day! 💖

I do not give permission to anyone to repost or translate any of my stories. I also do not give anyone permission to feed my stories through AI or to be posted to any third party website or app. If anyone sees any of my work posted anywhere but here or my AO3 (simplyreflected), then it has been posted without permission.

Read on AO3 here.

You hadn’t been having a good day and went to seek out the only person you felt could help you through this, and make you think about something other than how bad you thought you looked and how bad you felt. When you got home, you seeked him out; your roommate, your best friend and your secret crush, James Potter.

“James,” you breathed a sigh of relief at seeing him.

He turned to you with a big smile on his face, but when he caught sight of you and the tears rolling down your cheeks, his face fell. “What’s wrong?”

He held his arms open and you ran into his arms as he gave you a comforting hug in a way that only James could. You started crying, “Do you think anyone will love me?”

He held you closer, “of course someone will love you or maybe someone already loves you. How could they not love you? You’re amazing. You’re perfect.” He paused, before you heard him say, “Don’t let anyone tell you or make you feel otherwise.”

“Do you really think that of me? That I’m amazing and perfect?”

“Yes! You are to me. I love you.” He pulled back and looked down at your face. “I love you so much. I want you to be mine.”

“But Lily-”

“Means nothing to me. If it ever looked like I was flirting with her, it was only because you were near and I was flirting with you. It always seemed to make you smile and I like it when you smile.”

“James,” you looked up at him for a few seconds to tell him, “I’d love to be yours.” You looked away and down to his mouth.

He leaned down and kissed you, your eyes fluttering shut. It was slow and passionate, and better than you’d ever dreamed.

When he pulled back, you smiled, breathing a little heavier than before.

“I have something I want to show you,” he told you. “I always tried to hide my feelings from you because I didn’t know how you felt and I didn’t want to scare you off.” He moved away from you and you felt a little colder without his warmth, but he took your hand and led you to his room, sitting you on his bed. “I wrote these to you, though I wasn’t sure if I’d ever give them to you telling you it was me, or if I’d leave them in the letter box as a secret admirer.” He pulled out a little stack of letters and handed them to you. “Though, I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

“I’m glad you didn’t do the secret admirer thing. I love knowing it’s from you.”

You opened the letters up and you read them, each one more beautiful than the last. One of them was written about the time you had a day like this, a day where you felt ugly, you couldn’t control your hair and you felt like you were fat. He wrote about how you might not see it yourself, but how beautiful you are and how your kindness, compassion and loyalty made you even more beautiful in his eyes.

When you gave them back to him, he put them on his bedside table. “How about we spend the rest of the day together? Just you and me.”

You smiled at him softly, before you lifted your hand to your hair, “I should probably wash my hair. It feels dirty.”

“You look amazing to me,” he said to you before moving forward to capture your lips in a kiss. “But if that’s how you feel, how about I help you by washing your hair?”

“You want to do that?”

“Of course, lovey,” he told you. “Would you like me to be in the bath with you? Or would you prefer I sit on the side? I don’t mind either way.”

You blushed and looked down, “Jamie, would you please join me?” You weren’t worried about him seeing you naked, you’d known him almost your whole life and he was the only man you felt fully safe around.

“Gladly, princess.” He smiled at you as he stood up holding his hand out to you. You took it, smiling at him. He smiled back before he guided you into the bathroom.

You loved how he let you be yourself; how he didn’t force you to do any of the societal norms, like keep eye contact, or not stim. You love how supportive he was after you found out you were autistic, you had been so worried that you would lose him completely.

You had heard horror stories from others who told others they were autistic and they didn’t want anything to do with them. When you told James, he just hugged you and told you, “I’m glad you were able to find out and that you trusted me enough to tell me. This is not a negative and you are not less than. You are an incredible and inspiring person.”

He was the first one you told and you were so happy that you did.

You were brought back to the present when you felt a warm hand on your face. You looked up at James’ beautiful face.

“What are you thinking about, my love?”

You blushed and told him, “I was just thinking about when I told you about finding out that I’m autistic. I was terrified of telling anyone but I needed to tell someone and I’m so glad that you have been so supportive of me.”

He leaned down and kissed you, leaving you breathless, “I will always support you. I always did, from the very beginning.”

After pulling away, he turned around and that's when you noticed the bath was full. He started taking off his shirt and you turned away. When he noticed this, he turned you back to him. “We’re together now. If you want to look, you can.” He kissed you before adding, “You should probably take off your clothes. I can turn away if it makes you more comfortable.”

You looked down and took a deep breath before taking off your clothes. You looked up at him nervously, and saw how James couldn’t take his eyes off you and it made you feel incredible.

“Lovey, you are so beautiful. More beautiful than anyone I’ve ever seen,” he told you and you blushed.

“Say that to me again,” you requested. “I haven’t had anyone say that to me before. Not anyone of significance anyway.”

“You are so beautiful, my love,” he smiled at you. “The most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I will gladly tell you that as often as you want to hear it.”

You smiled at him again as he took your hand and guided you over to the bath. Once he was in, he kissed your hand before he helped you in and you sat between his legs.

He got your shampoo, squeezing a little into the palm of his hand before massaging it into your scalp. You hummed in contentment at the feel of his massage into your head. It felt so good.

He did the whole routine, using a clean cup that he’d brought in to get some of the water from the bath and rinsing it out after each time he used the shampoo and conditioner, making sure none of it got in your eyes.

After he finished, the two of you just sat together a little longer before you got out and you dried yourselves off.

He told you he would be with you in just a moment, but asked if he could brush your hair and you told him that he could and you’d be happy to let him. He’d just get some clothes to put in your room. You went to your room and put on the clothes you sleep in and waited until he walked into your room, wearing only sweatpants.

He picked up your hair brush and sat behind you. He brushed your hair gently as he whispered sweet nothings to you. After he finished, he put the brush down, before taking your hand and guiding you back so you were leaning against him.

He looked down at your intertwined hands and whispered, “I like the way your hand fits in mine.”

You looked down at your joined hands as well. “I like the way your hand feels in mine.”

He looked over at you. You looked up at him and he smiled softly at you as you looked down slightly, “Would it be alright if I borrowed one of your sweaters? They smell like you.”

He pulled you up so the two of you were still holding hands and took you to his room. “Is there one in particular you’d like to wear, love?”

“No, any of them. They all smell like you.”

He pulled one out and asked, “do you mind if I put it on you?”

You shook your head and sat on his bed as he pulled it over your head and you put your arms through the holes. You looked down, smiling, before whispering more to yourself than to him, “it’s my favourite colour.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t remember?” You could hear the smile in his voice before you saw it. “Lovey, would you like me to paint your nails?”

You looked up at him, “you want to do that?”

“Of course, I want today to be all about you and pampering you. So would you like me to?”

“Yes, please,” you responded as you started to get up.

“No,” he sat you down on the bed again. “I’ll get everything, just tell me what we need.”

“Nail polish organiser bag. It has everything needed for doing this. It’s the black bag in the cupboard under the vanity on the left in my room.”

“Alright, lovey,” he leaned down to give you a quick peck before adding, “make yourself comfortable. I’ll be back soon.”

He left and you lay back on his bed, smiling to yourself. He came back not long after with the bag. You opened it and pulled out all the essentials, fixing your cuticles, making it easier for him as he picked out the ones he wanted to use.

Once he’d chosen the colours he wanted, you pulled and showed him the polish to use first. He got the little tray table you had in your room. He told you where he wanted you (sitting against the headboard) and placed the table between the two of you so you had somewhere to put your hands.

As he was doing them, a thought came to mind, “James?”

He hummed in response to let you know he was listening.

“Can I please do your nails at some point?”

He stopped painting your nails for a moment, to smile at you and answer, “of course, angel. I would love that. We could take photos of them both.”

You smiled at him and watched as he finished your nails. He moved to sit beside you and you leaned against him as you waited for your nails to finish.

You lifted your hands to look at what he’d done. “James, these are beautiful. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Beautiful colours for my beautiful angel.”

You smiled and blushed, “I like it when you use those pet names for me.”

“I’ll keep using them then,” he whispered in your ear, before leaning his head on top of yours. “When they dry, would you snuggle with me?”

You giggled and whispered, “I would love to.”

When your nails had dried, you moved the little table off the bed and the two of you lay together with him holding you in his arms and you cuddled into him.

As you both cuddled each other and you buried your face into him and his smell. You loved his smell. He made you feel safe and loved, and his smell enveloped you in warmth and safety.

He pulled you back a little before littering your face with kisses. You giggled, and when he stopped, you hesitated a little before you kissed him. He tasted like home and love, just like his smell.

You snuggled into him even more, and you knew without a doubt, with him, you were always home.

[mystycalypso]

Update: I realized I never told you guys my dnd character got a major change up

Why you might ask? Well- at the risk of sounding insane and or even more autistic, and I'm also going to preface this with my hyperphantasia which- I don't actually know if it's why I create like this but according to Kaydin it's not exactly normal so- take that as you will. Anyways, he wasn't alive in his cowboy form. I knew nothing about that man. Which is something that almost never happens when I design a character, usually they are very alive. They have a personality, a voice, they tell me their life story as I line their sketch, etc etc. Azrael was dead fucking silent.

Except for one thing, and it hit so god damn randomly I didn't understand what he was telling me for like two whole days. That being, a clip of the Bobomb vs Creeper rap battle, he REALLY liked the military themeing of the Bobomb's section. I figured for so long that it must've just been voice claiming, or something but it didn't make sense.

I sat staring at this man, trying to understand what his playlist would be, his backstory, (which is meant to include paranoia) how his godly stat (wisdom) was supposed to play into everything, and all I had was that song clip.

So I started doodling aimlessly, scrolling my music and pleading for any life out of this man, even if I had to redesign him entirely.

AND THEN HE HIT ME IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD WITH A GOD DAMN FRYING PAN. AND YELLED,

"OPEN YOUR FUCKING EARS SOLDIER."

And it all just clicked, my hand was moving fast as hell because suddenly he was there and I was drawing him with complete understanding, his gravely old voice corrected me in my ear and his life made sense.

So uh, yeah turns out I was just being deaf to my character until he physically couldn't take it anymore. Without explaining too much about the homebrew campaign, he's a (former) vampiric general, the campaign is a steampunk one and his replacement limbs are iron and similar metals with gems embedded, (ik not traditionally steampunk coloured or gear covered but the vampire kingdom's main export is iron) He's 40 in vampire years (really fucking old in human years), and a necromancer (technically warlock class) (the sword isn't even for him, it's for his skeleton/former husband)

His paranoia is much more the silently cautious type from his years in the war, which is also where his wisdom plays into it, as wisdom is real-life experience put into action.

The war he was in and the damages he gained were from the elven army, meaning he's not exactly fond of them. Expect some shitpost memes about the party's war vet father (everyone else is around 20 something in their species age) along with more au stuff