#hurt less than I expected

[lesbians4armand]

okay another thought on the “rent boy” scene, i see SO many people saying that rashidmand asked to be excused after that because louis offered to turn daniel, which, yeah okay i get it. devil’s minion things, daniel is HIS boy, but also like?? he didn’t ask to be excused when louis said “i’d give it to you now”, he asked when daniel declined and called him a prostitute i thought this was obvious??

[rui-drawsbox]

icon for @ angel_thoughtz! he's judging you btw/j

[nullians]

It’s actually insane how fandom in general has become so scared of making weird and dark and ugly works. Like I look at myself and see how I have also subconsciously adapted this instinct to self censor and make things “marketable” and it’s making me want to crawl out of my skin. I need to get weirder and worse and more off-putting hello

[blackjackkent]

Prompt fill for @astreamofstars for this ask meme: Sickfic Prompts - Jaheira/Rasaad - [ 🛒 ] - going out at an absurd hour to grab supplies for them. Set about a month before Rion's birth. c:

-----

"Who in the hells can that be at this hour?" Sleepily, Miriam Hummel treads across the floor of her shop in slippered feet, holding a candle before her to keep from accidentally walking into the shelves of dried meat and produce. She shoots a cautious look at the dagger kept unobtrusively beside the door, then pulls it open to look outside.

The thoroughfare of the Lower City market district is utterly silent, the moon hanging heavy and low between the rooftops. There is, in fact, not a single other soul to be seen besides the old man standing on the doorstep.

She recognizes him, just barely; he's come a handful of times through the shop before. Bashir - the monk, one of the couple who bought Elerrathin's Home a year or so back. He's a bit of a strange one, or so he's always struck her - very quiet, but gentle when he does speak, and remarkably quick on his feet. It's hard to guess his age; by the lines in his face, he is old indeed, but his dark eyes are bright and he has a square, stocky, muscular body that would do credit to a man half his years at least.

"Good evening," he says earnestly, as soon as the door has opened.

"Saer..." Miriam looks the man up and down with a mildly bewildered expression. Then, after a long pause and with heavy irony, she says, "We're closed."

Rasaad winces. "I realize this is not an ideal hour--"

"It's near midnight, Saer Bashir!"

"--but it would be a great kindness to me if you would give me a moment of your time." Rasaad hesitates, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out two heavy platinum coins. "This will cover all I need, thrice over and more. I beg of you, I will be here and gone in no more than a moment."

Miriam's eyebrows shoot up. "Well," she says, coming a little more awake out of pure perplexity. "That's fair generous of you, Saer, but what call you can have for any of my goods that is worth twenty gold pieces at midnight is--"

"Please," he says. "I need pickles."

She blinks slowly at him once. Then twice. "...Pickles?"

"Yes." He nods very seriously. "The largest container you have."

A long, long pause. "Are you having me on, Saer?" she asks suspiciously. "This some sort of joke?"

Now it's his turn to look puzzled. "A joke?"

Either he has the finest deadpan in the Realms or he’s being completely serious, and she’s starting to think it’s the latter. “...If it’s pickles you want for twenty gold, then pickles you shall have,” she says, quirking one eyebrow up. “Though I still can’t fathom the need.”

For the first time, his placid expression shifts, and a hint of something else pokes through the facade - worry, and a sort of pleading strain. His weight fidgets almost imperceptibly, left to right and back again. 

“It is for my wife,” he says quietly. “She is… quite far along. I have told her that she shall lack for nothing, but she asks for little; it is not her way. But tonight, she is…” A pause; he is choosing his words carefully. “Low. It is a low night. And she has a craving, as I am told women in her state often have - for pickles, so pickles she shall have, if it takes me all the night to find them.”

Miriam’s wary scowl softens. “Ah,” she says. “Well. That is a cause I can’t fault, certainly.” Her mouth turns up a little at one corner. “She is a lucky one, your wife, I should think. There are not many as would find their man willing to hunt up such a thing at such an hour.”

He tips his head to the side. “Whyever not?” he asks, sounding legitimately bewildered.

-----

The door of the house creaks open on its hinges. Jaheira turns sharply from where she is standing at the window, and relief surges unrestrained across her face to see Rasaad framed by the moonlight in the doorway.

“You are back,” she says, the words like a sigh, an outrush of held tension. “I began to know my foolishness the moment you left - to see you out at this hour. The streets are not safe…”

“There was no danger,” he says gently. “Though I do believe the shopkeeper was greatly surprised to see me.” With a heave, he lifts the heavy jar in both his hands and sets it with a clunk on the table. 

She stares at it and, to her own astonishment, feels tears fill her eyes. Her emotions have been a maelstrom all day - for weeks, really, but today has been particularly bad. She feels restless and fidgety, crawling around inside her own skin, a prisoner in her body weighed down by the life growing inside it. Earlier, it manifested in anger, a lashing-out argument buffeting against Rasaad’s infuriating calm, which was what sent him out into the darkness in search of a foolish whim.

Now it whiplashes back the other way into a gratitude so intense it is almost painful, interwoven with the pinpricks of pre-emptive grief that are always now in the back of her mind. She should not have sent him out; she feels so acutely aware, as she carries his child, of the finite weeks and months remaining to them, draining inexorably into the past. No minute should be wasted, no second taken for granted.

But she asked him for pickles instead, and he found them for her in the dead of night, and suddenly she wants to sob.

She isn’t sure how much of this shows on her face - but he must understand at least some of it, because he steps forward and gently rests one palm against her cheek, the other against the curve of her belly. “My sun…” he murmurs.

“I am sorry…” she mutters, her voice thick.

“There is no need.” He draws her forward, kisses her.

“I love you.” She whispers it against his mouth, then grunts softly as the child kicks in her womb, as if aware of its father’s nearness.

“And I you.” She feels him smile into the kiss before drawing back. “Now… please, sit. For these were dearly bought and I will not have them go to waste.”

[ikram1909]

Gavi visiting his teammates today 💔

[red-eft]

> be me. feeling incredibly anxious

> go to hold quemada, my very gentle pet snake and official actual emotional support animal, to feel better

> she bites me the second i touch her

> get so bewildered that my anxiety goes away

> task failed successfully?

[karliahs]

there are 47 fics on my ao3 and 22 of them feature aizawa. 46.8%.......

[itspileofgoodthings]

also it’s interesting because. my family is deeply unsentimental (in a very powerful way) and society is divided into the pretty heartless or the pretty sentimental (generally speaking) and I’m sort of this walking heart wound of emotion trying to straddle these lines (and having a hard time of it!) but one of the things that does guard me from being more sentimental than I am is the secret cruelty and unfairness that lurks at the bottom of all sentimentality.

[tj-crochets]

Hey y’all! Weird question, when people talk about joint pain, is that like pain of the muscles around the joint, or pain in the joint itself? And how do you tell the difference?

Asking because multiple doctors keep asking about/assuming I have joint pain, and while I do have some stiffness and pain in joints sometimes I assumed it was the muscles around the joints, because my electrolytes are Very Wrong and it causes muscle issues

Oh wait extra question: when you get cold do the bones in your hands and feet ache and feel like they take forever to warm up? Because I thought that was just bad circulation (from my inability to electrolyte correctly) but now I’m not sure

[kukuandkookie]

Need to vent momentarily so uh…

Had a giant fight with my mom this morning about admiring Elon Musk or Donald Trump just because they’re “successful” which also evolved into her again critiquing her own children and how I pointed out that the shit she says about us can be hurtful, even when she insists she’s trying to be “encouraging.”

I won’t go into detail about it because my family issues are insane sometimes—but I wanted to add this context because maybe I still have some leftover frustration and rage from that, and I guess because I’ve experienced another weeks and weeks’ pile-up of sinophobia, and I’m also overwhelmed by how awful the world is right now with the continued genocide of Palestine but also the rise in normalization of right wing politics, but I saw something today that just added to the frustration because God I hate how people can’t see “the Other” in a less prejudiced light.

It’s not a big deal but saw some sinophobia today that with my poor mood didn’t help exactly:

Basically, there’s a short from a year ago about Chinese celebrities being snubbed at international events to the point that one of them (Liu Yifei) got cut off from a group photo and how another (Zhang Yuqi) got asked to get off the red carpet because they assumed she wasn’t a guest despite her being all dressed up.

The comments are all bullshit like “well they work for the CCP right? So they deserve to be ignored” or “why are you stirring up drama? Just because they’re famous in China doesn’t mean they’re famous internationally” or “haha a taste of China’s own medicine.”

Like oh my God, shut up.

These are international events. Why are you acting like snubbing an international guest isn’t worthy of critique? Just because you hate the country’s politics?? In that case, if you don’t even recognize the celebrity, how do you even know if they work for the oh-so-evil CCP???

It’s always “I don’t hate the Chinese; I just hate their government” until it comes to actual Chinese people because then your poor brain just assumes Chinese people are an extension of their government. You think these celebrities work for the government just by simply existing?? How? Do you think they pay their wages to the CCP or some shit???

Kpop fans mentioned for years that kpop celebrities were snubbed at international red carpets until recently. Why the hell don’t fans of Chinese celebrities get to point it out then?

[shallowtboy]

how do back braces even work. back just needs a hug to not be in pain

[vraska-theunseen]

oh you do glassblowing do you do sell your things at craft fairs? hey that's a cool clay thing if you made enough of those people would buy them. oh you came to show me a cool chainmail thing you made you're proud of did you know i think you could sell that, that thing you made you're proud of it could no longer be your own fun experiment because it's goods and services now. here's this reel of someone making sculptures out of pennies you've made art with pennies in the past you can make a career out of it. don't you want to do that. don't you want to turn every hobby you find joy in into an outlet of capital. you've expressed disillusionment at the prospect of being employed and doubt in your ability to do work at an output with so little downtime required for any career. so don't you want to take the things you enjoy futzing with that take you hours and hours and hours because you're not capable of being very fast your hands get cramped you like to do them in small stretches before you get tired into something that has to take up all your time that has to have a high enough output to be profitable? that's not the same problem anymore because you'll be doing what you love. i can't imagine the prospect of doing something with a deadline would take all the stressless joy out of it for you. don't you want that?

[oflgtfol]

i used to never consider myself someone who got angry easily but lately everything pisses me the fuck off. im so stressed and it feels like everyone wants everything from me will you all just fucking leave me alone

[princessmyriad]

.

[pinkramiel]

🟡 yellowwwwww for mallowwww :3

🟡 Yellow- What is something your OC wants but knows they can never have? How does it feel to never get this specific desire?

Any answer i could give would probably be a spoiler right now.... Exept for one recent one actually,

He recently had the moment to honestly yell at Matt Marja for the way he left.... and release some steam from the deep abandonement issues it fucking caused but because of some... complications and fucked up things that happened in the moment, it did not go at all the way he wanted it to. He'll never get to redo that.

[cursed--alien]

Got my drains out! 🥳