#i all has been done already and i wanted to do something different

[rafeysbangs]

lachesism , rafe cameron ( series ) 11

pairing ; brother's!bsf!rafe x kook!female!reader

content ; mdni !! outerbanks au, eventual smut, angst, violence, underage drinking, family issues, substance abuse, s/a.

summary ; rafe cameron is everything you can’t stand; reckless, infuriating, and too self-assured for his own good. as your brother’s best friend, he’s always been a constant presence, one you’ve done your best to ignore. but the tension between you has always simmered just beneath the surface, sharp and impossible to ignore. you’ve spent years resisting his pull, refusing to give him the satisfaction. but in a world where lines blur and control slips away, you’re forced to face the truth: rafe cameron isn’t so easy to hate after all.

status ; ongoing .ᐟ

✺ navigation ; 010. 011. 012.

ELEVEN, echoing aftermath

THE SUN ROSE OVER FIGURE EIGHT,

in shades of muted pinks and golds, the kind of dawn that felt too serene for the chaos lurking just out of sight. you lay sprawled across your bed, staring at the ceiling as if it might hold the answers to the thousand questions spinning in your mind. sleep had been elusive, your thoughts knotted up with memories of the night before—his voice, low and rough, the weight of his gaze, the way his touch burned even when it was soft.

what were you doing? what had you done?

you could still feel him, lingering under your skin like a secret you weren't sure you wanted to keep.

your phone buzzed on the nightstand, pulling you from your spiralling thoughts. you glanced at it, half-expecting a message from one of your friends, but it was him.

rafe: dinner. tonight. 7.

straight to the point. no question mark, no room for negotiation. you rolled your eyes, but your stomach twisted in that maddening way it always did when he was involved.

y/n: bold of you to assume i'm free.

the reply came almost instantly.

rafe: bold of you to assume i care.

you wanted to throw your phone across the room, but instead, you smiled—something sharp and involuntary. he was insufferable, and yet there you were, already thinking about what you might wear.

the hours ticked by with agonising slowness. you went through the motions of your day, careful not to let anything slip when you were around carter or cora. they'd never understand. how could they? even you barely understood. 

by the time seven rolled around, you were dressed in a slinky black dress that clung to you in all the right places, your makeup understated but sharp, and your hair cascading down your back. you looked every bit the part of the perfect kook daughter, but there was a new edge to your reflection in the mirror—something darker, something strangely familiar.

rafe was waiting outside in his truck, leaning against the side of it with his arms crossed, the picture of careless confidence. his eyes flicked over you as you approached him, and you swore you saw something flicker in his expression—something almost like approval.

"nice dress," he said, his tone bordering on condescending, but the way his gaze lingered told a different story.

"you're late," you shot back, even though you knew he wasn't.

"you're welcome," he replied, opening the passenger door for you with a flourish that felt more mocking than chivalrous.

you rolled your eyes but climbed in, the scent of him—clean, sharp, and faintly earthy—filling the small space.

the restaurant felt like another world entirely. low, golden light spilled over dark wooden tables, the flicker of candles casting shadows that danced along the walls. the air was thick with the scent of rosemary and charred lemon, and somewhere in the background, the faint strum of a guitar threaded through the soft hum of conversation. it was intimate in a way that felt almost too much, like the two of you were walking a tightrope between secrecy and exposure.

you ran your fingers over the edge of the menu, its leather cover smooth under your touch. across from you, rafe sat with the kind of casual confidence that set your teeth on edge. he wasn't even pretending to read the options, his sharp blue eyes fixed on you like he was waiting for you to crack.

"are you going to pick something?" you asked, your voice low, trying to steady the uneven beat of your pulse.

"already know what i want," he replied, his lips curling into that infuriating smirk.

"of course you do." you rolled your eyes, but you couldn't ignore the way his gaze seemed to strip you bare, leaving you feeling exposed and restless.

the waiter appeared then, young and nervous under rafe's sharp stare. you ordered first, your voice clipped but polite, while rafe rattled off his choice without so much as glancing at the menu. you swore he did it just to annoy you, just to prove he didn't need to try.

as the waiter disappeared, you leaned back in her chair, crossing your arms. "do you always have to be such a show off cameron?"

"it's not showing off if it's just how i am," he said smoothly, his tone so casual it made you want to reach across the table and strangle him.

but instead of rising to the bait, you let your gaze wander, taking in the room. couples leaned close, their voices soft, their movements slow. it felt like everyone here was wrapped in some kind of fragile intimacy, a stark contrast to the jagged edge that always seemed to linger between you and rafe.

"you're quiet," he said after a moment, his voice cutting through your thoughts.

"just thinking," you replied, your tone deliberately vague.

"about what?"

you hesitated, the truth too heavy to voice. instead, you shrugged. "nothing important."

his eyes narrowed, and you could feel him watching you, dissecting you, trying to figure out what you weren't telling him. it was unnerving how easily he could read you, how quickly he could get under your skin.

"you've got that look again," he said, leaning forward slightly. "like you're trying to figure out if this is a mistake."

"maybe it is," you shot back, though the words felt hollow even as you said them.

he smirked, but there was something darker in his expression, something that made your stomach twist. "you don't believe that."

before you could respond, their food arrived, the plates set down with a quiet efficiency that felt almost reverent. you glanced at your dish, and for a moment, you focused on the act of eating, on the simple rhythm of knife and fork, anything to distract yourself from the man across the table.

but rafe didn't let up.

"you know," he said, his voice softer now, almost thoughtful, "i never thought i'd see you like this."

"like what?" you asked, not looking up.

"out with me. not pretending to hate me as much as you used to."

you set your fork down carefully, finally meeting his gaze. "who says i'm pretending?"

he laughed then, low and rough, the sound sending a shiver down your spine. "you don't hate me."

the words hung between the two of you, heavy and undeniable, and you hated how right he was. hated how he always seemed to see the parts of you that you tried so hard to keep hidden.

"you're insufferable," you muttered with a grin, picking up your glass of wine and taking a sip, the bitter warmth spreading through your chest.

"and you're still here," he countered, leaning back in his chair with a smirk that made you want to both slap him and kiss him.

as the meal wore on, the conversation ebbed and flowed, the sharp edges softening just enough to let something else slip through. you talked about nothing and everything, the words circling back to the unspoken truth between the two of you.

"do you ever think about what this looks like?" you asked at one point, your voice quiet, your gaze fixed on the flicker of candlelight between the two of you.

"to who?" he replied, his tone dismissive.

"to anyone. to everyone."

he shrugged, his expression unreadable. "i don't care what they think. do you?"

you hesitated, the weight of his question pressing down. did you?

"i don't know," you admitted finally, the words feeling like a confession.

"you will," he said simply, his confidence maddening but somehow grounding at the same time.

by the time the check arrived, the tension between you had shifted again, the undercurrent of something darker and heavier weaving its way through the quiet moments. rafe paid without a second thought, his movements fluid and self-assured, and as you walked out into the cool night air, you couldn't help but glance at him, your chest tightening.

"this is dangerous," you said softly, almost to yourself.

"everything worth having is," he replied, his voice low and sure, and you believed him.

the drive back was a quiet one, the kind of silence that wasn't empty but full, brimming with unspoken things neither of you wanted to say first. the roads were dark, lined with tall oaks that seemed to fold over the road like a canopy, the occasional flicker of headlights from passing cars illuminating the sharp angles of rafe's face. he looked calm, almost too calm, one hand on the wheel, the other draped over the gearshift.

you sat with your head resting lightly against the window, the cool glass grounding you. the wine from dinner lingered on your tongue, a warm haze in your chest, but it wasn't enough to dull the sharpness of your thoughts. your mind ran in circles, tracing the same paths you'd been avoiding all night.

"you're quiet again," rafe said, breaking the silence without taking his eyes off the road.

"so are you," you replied, your voice softer than you intended.

"i'm always quiet."

you turned to look at him then, her brow arching in disbelief. "that's the biggest lie i've ever heard."

he smirked, but there was no real bite to it. "maybe i just save my words for when they matter."

"and yet you still manage to say so much bullshit."

he chuckled, a low, rough sound that filled the car, and you hated how much you liked it.

the houses of figure eight came into view, their clean lines and manicured lawns sharp against the darkness of the sky. rafe took a turn down a familiar street, the engine humming low, and your chest tightened. you weren't ready for the night to end, but you didn't know exactly what you wanted either.

"you can just drop me off here," you said suddenly, motioning toward the curb near your house.

he glanced at you, his expression unreadable. "scared someone might see us?"

"maybe."

"we've been careful this long. no one's going to notice."

"you don't know that."

he sighed but didn't argue, pulling over as you'd asked. the car idled for a moment, the hum of the engine filling the space between you.

"you really care that much what they'd think?" he asked, his voice quieter now, almost curious.

"it's not just them," you admitted, your fingers fidgeting with the hem of your dress. "it's... everything."

he turned toward you then, his gaze heavy and unrelenting. "you can't keep pretending forever."

"maybe i can," you whispered, though the words felt hollow even as you said them.

he shook his head, a faint smirk pulling at his lips. "you're a terrible liar."

you laughed softly, despite yourself, the sound breaking some of the tension that had been building between the two of you all night.

"goodnight, rafe," you said, reaching for the door handle.

"wait."

his voice stopped you cold, your hand freezing mid-motion. you turned to look at him, your heart pounding in your chest.

"come with me," he said, the words low but certain, like he wasn't asking so much as telling you.

"where?"

"just... come with me."

you hesitated, the weight of the moment pressing down on your chest. but then you nodded, almost without thinking, and let him take the wheel again.

he didn't say where they were going, and you didn't ask, the quiet between you shifting into something heavier, something electric. the car wound its way through the dark streets with the windows until they were past the edge of town. the houses and lights giving way to open stretches of land and the faint glimmer of water in the distance as the wind whipped through the car, your hair flowing in the wind as your hand traveled against it, out the window freely.

when he finally stopped, you were parked near the marsh, the sky above you vast and endless, the stars reflected in the dark, glassy surface of the water. the air was cool, carrying the faint scent of salt and earth, and you shivered as you stepped out of the car.

"why here?" you asked, your voice low, almost hushed in the quiet.

rafe leaned against the hood of the car, his arms crossed over his chest, his gaze fixed on you. "i don' know. just felt right."

you joined him, the metal warm against your back as you leaned beside him, the two of you staring out at the stillness of the marsh.

"this feels... weird," you admitted after a moment, your voice barely above a whisper.

"weird how?"

"i don't know. like... like we're not supposed to be here. like this is some kind of dream."

"maybe it is."

you turned to look at him, and for a moment, you couldn't breathe. the way he looked at you, like you were something fragile and dangerous all at once, made your chest ache.

"you make everything so damn complicated," you said, your voice shaking just slightly.

"that's rich, coming from you."

you laughed then, soft and bitter, and the sound hung in the air between the two of you.

"why do you even want this, rafe?" you asked, the question spilling out before you could stop it. "why me?"

he was quiet for a long moment, his gaze fixed on yours, and when he finally spoke, his voice was low, almost a whisper.

" 'cause you're the only thing that makes sense to me."

the words hit you like a punch to the chest, leaving you breathless and unsteady. you didn't know what to say, didn't know how to respond, so you didn't. instead, you let the silence settle, the weight of it pressing down on you as the stars shimmered above.

and for the first time, you let yourself believe—if only for a moment—that maybe this wasn't a mistake. that maybe, against all odds, this was exactly where you were supposed to be.

the ride back to your house unfolded like the end of a storm, the quiet crackling with unspoken tension. rafe didn't speak, and neither did you, but the air between the two of you was heavy, charged, as if the night hadn't finished what it started. you sat with your hands folded tightly in your lap, your fingers tracing invisible patterns against your skin, a poor attempt to distract yourself from the lingering weight of rafe's gaze.

when the car rolled to a stop a few houses down from yours, you hesitated, your fingers gripping the door handle. the silence swelled, the words you couldn't say hanging like fragile glass in the air.

rafe broke it first, his voice low and rough. "you gonna look at me, or are you just gonna run off like this didn't happen?"

you turned then, your eyes meeting his in the faint light filtering through the windshield. he looked different, softer in a way that unsettled you. his usual sharp edges felt dulled by the vulnerability you knew he'd never admit to.

"it happened," you said softly, your voice barely above a whisper. "but i'm not sure what this means yet."

his lips quirked into something between a smirk and a frown. "you'll figure it out," he said, leaning closer, his eyes flicking briefly to your lips. "you always do."

he kissed you, slower than before, as if testing something. it was softer, yes, but still filled with that same heady intensity, the same pull that made you forget the world outside this moment. when he pulled away, his lips lingered just a breath away from yours, and you felt the words before he spoke them.

"goodnight, yn."

you didn't trust yourself to reply, so you slipped out of the car with a smile, the night air cool against your flushed skin. you hurried toward the house, the sound of the door clicking shut behind you a distant echo as your thoughts spiralled.

inside, the house was still, the kind of silence that only came with sleeping bodies and unlit rooms. you tiptoed through the hallway, your shoes dangling from her fingers, careful to avoid every creaking floorboard. the air smelled faintly of wood polish and the lavender candle her mother always lit in the evenings. it was too familiar, too quiet after the chaos of the night.

you reached your bedroom door, your hand already on the knob, when a voice came from your left, down the hall.

"where the hell were you."

your heart dropped, fingers freezing against the cool metal. you turned slowly, the hallway spinning slightly as your gaze locked on carter. he stood in the dim light at the end of the corridor, arms crossed, his silhouette sharp and unyielding.

"out," you said, your voice tight, forcing yourself to keep your chin high.

"with who?"

"does it matter?"

"it does when you come sneaking in at midnight looking like..." his voice trailed off, but his meaning was clear. his eyes narrowed, scanning you with a sharpness that made your stomach twist. "don't lie to me. i'm not mom or dad. i know you."

"you don't know anything," you snapped, the words slipping out too fast, too defensive.

but something shifted in his expression then, a crack in his usual composure, and your stomach twisted harder. his gaze sharpened, pinning you in place.

"it's him, isn't it?"

your blood ran cold. "what?"

"don't play dumb." his voice was quieter now, more dangerous. "you think i haven't noticed? the way he looks at you? the way you—" he stopped, his jaw tightening as if the words tasted bitter. "tell me it's not my goddamn best friend."

you didn't answer, couldn't answer, because the truth was written all over your face, in the way your breath hitched, in the way your fingers tightened on the doorknob.

"damn it," he muttered, his voice barely above a growl. "what the fuck are you thinking?"

you opened your mouth to respond, but nothing came out, your throat closing around the words. you were trapped, caught in the suffocating weight of his glare and the truth you couldn't escape.

carter stepped closer, his shadow swallowing the small pool of light around you. "you're making a mistake," he said, his voice low, steady, but filled with something darker, something heavy. "and if you think i'm just gonna stand by and watch you destroy yourself, you're dead wrong."

you stared at him, your chest tight, pulse thundering in your ears. the door to your room was just inches away, but it felt like miles.

"carter—"

"don't," he snapped, cutting you off. his eyes burned into yours, his voice dropping even lower. "if you won't end it, i will."

your heart stopped. his words hung between them, sharp and unforgiving, and for a moment, the world seemed to tilt, the ground beneath her feet unsteady.

and then, without another word, he turned and walked away, his footsteps heavy against the creaking floorboards, leaving you standing there in the dark, your breath caught somewhere between a gasp and a sob.

you didn't move, couldn't move, the weight of his threat pressing down on your chest like an anchor.

the night had begun to unravel, its edges fraying, and for the first time, you weren't sure how to piece it back together.

notes ; PLEASE READDD ! hello again! so sorry i've been gone for so so long but i'm trying to be lots more active now i SWEAR. anyways i think i'm going to redo my taglist bcs of my inactiveness so look out for that updated taglist post!

series taglist ; @anacamofficial @sqfewrd @dreamyy-cloud @vampteeth @wtfisastiles @flvredcas @plaidcowboy @sematarygirls @slut4you @kravitzwhore @daryldixon83 @lexavanhuelee @dorcas4meadowes @i2rapunzel @rafestoothbrush @drewizz @6r4cie @akobx @seehowitshines @rafeswhoooreee @vbstrewbieri @waywarddiplomatfarmmonger-blog @ariivv01 @k4yr14 @luvrcndy @teleishachrisy @importantbeardcupcake @vanessa-rafesgirl @ltristessedureratoujours @cutkoskysnix1 @kennedywxlsh @funnyalpca @eeveelizabethh @burnburritono @marleymarleymarleymarley @katiebby04 @simplymaeee @hoppinbunny @slutglimreqpers ( lachesism taglist )  in order to stay on this taglist you must interact with the posts !

[asheepinfrance]

thank you @cha11engers for helping. All is owed to you

INT. White Room in a government facility. Our only setting. It's got a sterile feeling, like a hospital waiting room. In it, two chairs face one another. Between the chairs, a large, metal door.

In the left chair is a GIRL. young, skittish, wearing plain, oversized white clothing. She’s fidgeting, head down, visibly nervous.

Across her, CONNOR MURPHY, a young, male, in the same outfit though his hair and clothing are more disheveled with time. He’s calm, unfazed: clearly, he’s been here a while. He’s observing the girl across from him silently. He is cool but fairly unnerving. A man on the verge.

(after a beat)

CONNOR

So… what’s your deal?

(The GIRL looks up like she hadn’t noticed she had company)

GIRL

My deal?

CONNOR

Yeah, your deal. Like, how’d you end up here?

GIRL

I- I don’t- I mean one second I was home, and the next I’m here, so… and what is ‘here’, anyway?

CONNOR

We think it’s some kind of… court or something like that. Think of it as… pest control.

(He laughs. It’s dry)

Post-suicide pest control. We show up, plead our case, and they… whoever they are… get to choose where we go. Reincarnate or rot. Simple, really.

GIRL

If only suicide victims end up here, then don’t you already know my deal?

CONNOR

Huh… I guess I do.

(After a tense pause)

GIRL

You said- you said they choose where we go... so, reincarnation, right? And what about the rest?

(A beat)

CONNOR

What do you think?

GIRL (processing)

Oh.

CONNOR (mocking)

Oh.

GIRL

Well… what about you? How long have you been here?

CONNOR

You see a calendar in here?

GIRL

No…

CONNOR

So your guess is as good as mine, then, isn’t it?

(He’s slightly angry, though it’s masked by that same coolness. Closer to snapping)

I wouldn’t say too long. Days, weeks, months, maybe. Probably not years, though… probably.

(GIRL is dejected, horrified. A potential-end-of-life crisis.)

GIRL

So I just wait here, dead, to what? Die? I mean, they can’t do this! I- I’ve got family who must be worried sick and they'd want me to-

CONNOR

What makes you so sure?

GIRL

What?

CONNOR

If you’re here, they may not have even noticed you left. What makes you so sure they care? What makes you think they know at all?

GIRL

Because I… Because! I just know. I mean, I’m a good person, I don’t deserve to just go and have no one notice. I deserve better than that. I deserve better than all of this!

CONNOR

You think you deserve better or you want to deserve better?

GIRL

Is there a difference?

CONNOR

I think we both know there is. I mean, all of us want to think we’ve done well, but… here we are, learning maybe we haven’t. We deserve what we get or we wouldn’t get it at all.

GIRL

And you’re fine with that? Knowing your life so far has possibly amounted to nothing?

CONNOR

I am now.

GIRL

So you weren’t before?

(CONNOR smiles without any joy, and observes GIRL again)

[contessaxchaos]

How Veilguard Handled Themes and Lost its Audience

This is tagged Veilguard-critical. I didn't set out to be critical (ie disparaging) of Veilguard, I set out to be critical (ie analytical) of one crucial aspect of its writing.

I reblogged a post by @meat-louse where I supported their premise ("this warped sense of history veilguard has") by pointing out how Veilguard can actually work to feel more integrated into the Thedas that we know from DAO, DA2, and DAI. Their conclusion is that:

"dragon age’s depictions of social issues were never spot-on, but at their best they encouraged the player to engage with those issues and ultimately seek to change society for the better. veilguard has no interest in changing society."

Here's my observations:

The issue is they want a game that’s simple and streamlined in its messaging. They want it focused on themes like regret and acceptance and teamwork and friendship. They hammered hard those themes, which, while it’s good practice to have strong themes, they overdid it to the point that we’re shouting “I GET IT!!!” They worked on those themes to the exclusion of nuance. To the exclusion of complexity.

Three games have trained us to look at the world and its problems, and look CLOSER because you’re not being told the whole truth. In fact there is no single truth. For every Anders, there’s a Cullen. You have the fearsome Arishok but you also have Sten, and for every hundred Sten who uphold their culture and beliefs unwavering, there’s an Iron Bull who knowingly subjects himself to reeducation in order to continue functioning in his society. And not far from him is an Adaar who is free from the Qun but faces the consequences of banishment and ostracization from their own culture and people. The game doesn’t say which side is right or wrong, you have to experience it for yourself to be able to have an opinion on the matter. My opinions on the Chantry were different when I played a Trevelyan versus as a Lavellan. Cousland has a different experience from a Tabris. That’s the point: your roleplaying changes depending on who you choose to be at the start of the game. The experience changes. The game is not interested in selling you a “correct” moral standpoint; it instead presents you a moral dilemma that unfolds through your questing, but it doesn’t give you an answer. It values a jerk Inquisitor, a stupid Warden, and a bloodthirsty Hawke as much as it values all the sarcastic, diplomatic, and traditionally heroic versions of our player characters.

But in Veilguard…

But in VG, all moral questions have already been resolved for you, either by signposting it, by not allowing you to interrogate these questions as Rook, or by completely ignoring it (no slaves, no tranquils, no alienages, no Circles, no cursed werewolves, no cults). They hyperfocused on their themes that they sacrificed nuance and complexity.

That’s why your companions and Rook only have low-impact conflict. Nothing will drive away your companions because they hold no strong convictions that clash with others. They serve the Themes. We can easily contrast this with companions from the other games: Vivienne gives you a closer look at the value of having Circles and the Chantry. Morrigan counsels expediency over do-gooding. Cassandra is has served all her life on the side of the "oppressors", but she questions the Seekers without letting it break her faith in the Maker. They have convictions. They were built from the ground up to be characters with their own agenda. They weren't built from the ground up to be your support system.

Which is what Veilguard appears to have done with their companions for the most part. I say the most part because there are three people with very clear themes, and Rook doesn't clash with them because their themes were designed to be very personal. The three are Emmrich (im/mortality and legacy); Bellara (something something preservation of the past, although I'm not sure what the point is because preserving the past at the cost of the present is not really very...cogent? Cultural/historical preservation is not exclusive to having a present and a future); and Taash (cultural and gender identity).

Talking to Taash made me reflect on my understanding of what it means to have a body you don’t agree with, perhaps even more than Krem did because with Taash, you can ask her. She will tell you. And that’s because Taash serves the Theme of Identity, both cultural and gender. BUT it’s also overdone to the point where those who don’t understand how it is to be trans feel like they’re being talked down to for not understanding.

What would have worked better is if they spark the players’ curiosity and genuine interest in trans identity, and then allow the players to engage with it as deeply or as shallow as they like. Instead everyone gets The Lecture as if we’re all uneducated on the matter. As if there are no allies among us. As if there are no shallow allies among us who are swayed by virtue-signalling. The Theme has swallowed what should be an invitation to talk and be curious and be enlightened.

Regret and sunk cost and redemption are also strong themes in the game. And you know they spent a long time and a lot of effort on that because the Team does a Talk Session after every piece of regret they uncover. Again: they’re made to serve the Theme to the exclusion of nuance and complexity. Yes, they raise good points, asked good questions, engaged with what we all saw. But I will argue that it’s US—the players—who should be having THAT conversation with ourselves or amongst ourselves. The companions should be there to give their point of view as a Mourn Watch, as a Grey Warden, as HARDING. But no—we don’t get that opportunity to absorb the regrets, to interrogate it ourselves based on what we know about Solas in DAI, or just to scratch our heads and say “okay but but but the game is always saying that history is not equal to the Truth and there’s always more to the story, so who can I ask / what other codices can I possibly find to shed more light about this?” Like…nada. You don’t make insights; the game already feeds you all the CORRECT insights so that you don’t ever have to be wrong about the Theme, because the Theme is Redemption or the Cost of Regret.

You don't need to engage your brain anymore because the game has already curated that for you. It has solved for you an equation that the past games would normally leave for you to solve through another playthrough. In DAO, if you only ever play Cousland, you will not grow your understanding of the plight of elves in alienages, or the injustice of the Dwarven caste system. You understand them intellectually because you are a person existing in a society that has poverty and injustice, but it doesn't hit the same until you play in the shoes of a Tabris or a Brosca.

Many of the writers who built Veilguard have been there in the construction of the other Dragon Age games. They were there when Veilguard was still Joplin. What we all wanted, they also clearly wanted to include in the game. They know it's not their role to dictate what players should believe by the end of the game, or to make the team generally harmonious and supportive of Rook. But their views and their skills were not valued.

Anyone who can write can write complexity.

Not everyone who writes can write nuance. That shit takes experience and skill. Writing is not just putting words on paper. This is especially true for massive collaborative writing projects such as videogames.

The writers failed because they were failed by the studio, first.

[felixcloud6288]

Dungeon Meshi Chapter 86

The final battle is upon us. Who will decide what's for dinner tonight?

As with all moments like this, Izutsumi is part of these group therapy sessions against her will.

Amazing transition back to reality. It's the exact same image with a different background.

I still feel like the lion is lying about who it can or must serve. Marcille currently desires to fix her mistakes and stop the monsters she summoned, but that goes against what the lion wants from her. So it's instead choosing to ignore that in favor of fulfilling a more base desire for safety from a presumed threat.

This fakeout really got me.

Laios's arm seems to be in a bit of pain after that. Since his hand had to get put into the seal as well, its effects are probably creeping up his arm.

Again, I think the lion lies when it talks about how it serves its master. It's been manipulating Marcille to make her desire what will make her use the lion's power for the lion's aims. Looks like sealing the demon gives the dungeon lord a way to channel the lion's power exactly the way you want without it being able to manipulate anything.

On a side note, when Thistle and Mithrun became dungeon lords, their demons were small and grew larger over time. The lion was already big when Marcille became a lord. I'm curious if part of what caused Marcille to immediately spiral was because the lion was already strong. Maybe it took Mithrun and Thistle a few years to get to Marcille's point because their demons had to build up strength.

Laios and Marcille are two halves of the same person. They share 20 brain cells collectively, but the actual range of braincells either of them has at a given moment ranges from 15 to -5. And when one of them becomes a super genius, the other becomes muppet-brained. The only difference between them is Laios loves acting like a muppet while Marcille doesn't.

I've missed Marcille's muppet-brained moments so much. For all her intelligence, she's also the last one to realize things.

Namari had complete faith in Laios.

Last we saw of Fleki, her familiar was being torn apart by wyverns so she probably had to be killed and resurrected again.

I saw this panel of Flamela stepping on a walking mushroom and tried to come up with a silly pun about her turning a toadstool into a footstool. But toadstools refer to inedible or poisonous mushrooms and this type is most likely edible so it isn't a toadstool. And footstools are foot supports to lift your feet while sitting and Flamela is not doing anything like that nor is she using it like that. Pretend that I made a funny mushroom pun that is lexiconically correct and laugh at this image of Flamela stepping on a walking mushroom while yelling into her fairy.

Flamela isn't even nice to her fairy.

The island is getting restructured into a dungeon's maze-like design.

The soldiers are fighting what I believe are small wyrms.

Laios's father is watching and waiting. Falin still writes to her parents so he knows his children are at ground zero of all this.

Flamela is not giving the party much reason to want to work with the Canaries here. And this is ignoring how the situation was heavily due to the Canaries withholding information and assaulting the party to begin.

If you spin a magnet fast enough, it's possible to make it levitate above another magnet. For years, it was believed impossible to actually make a magnet levitate over another and Earnshaw's theorem proved that it's not possible for a static magnet to float above another one without it either getting flipped or pushed away. But then someone decided to try spinning the magnet in place and it turns out that the rotation of the magnet counters the forces that would normally push or flip the magnet, causing it to float.

Anyway, that story popped into my head at this moment. Laios is suggesting they do something that no one has ever done and everyone knows cannot be done. But Laios is both ignorant of everything and he doesn't think in conventional ways. So he could achieve the impossible because he'll come up with ideas no one considered.

Everyone else thinks of the demons in terms of man-eating monsters or forces of nature. But Laios is thinking of the demon more like if it was a person with its own goals it wants to accomplish.

Finally. Someone is actually going to listen to Laios.

Based on the reactions of Flamela's teammates, it's not uncommon for Mithrun to teleport people away when he's annoyed with them.

Mithrun at least understands the situation. The world is doomed whether or not Laios actually has a way to beat the demon. So they might as well let him try. Mithrun's eye turned silver as he told Laios to do what he couldn't.

New idea to the lion and how it decides to grant wishes: When it's unsealed and has a lord, it binds itself to that lord. But when it gets sealed, it can more freely respond to anyone's desires.

The lion should be sealed in Thistle's book, but it appeared before everyone in response to Laios's desire to defeat it. And then it waited a moment so Laios could demand he share a meal with everyone if he wins.

Some walking mushrooms fell off the lion construct.

The tower wasn't attached to anything. It was just a tower floating over the water.

Well that was an anticlimactic end to this series. Oh well. It was an enjoyable read the whole way through. Thanks for following my readthrough everyone.

I'm with Kabru. There's something horrible about the end of the world feeling like a bad joke.

Wait, I got it!! Flamela turned the walking mushroom into a stepping stool!!

back

[indubioprocoffee]

“Do you have to eat that?” Castiel asked with an indescribable look on his face.

“Huh?” Dean looked up from his bucket of chicken wings, grease smeared all over his face.

“Do you have to eat them? … I mean those?”

Dean slowly lowered the wing still in his hand. “Everything alright, Cas?”

“Yes, but …” His face looked very strained.

“You can tell me.” With a concerned look, he cleaned up his face with a napkin.

Castiel sighed. “It’s just … You devouring those poor chickens wings like that … It’s hard to watch.”

“Oh.” Something clicked in Dean’s brain. “I see.” He threw the napkin over the few chicken wings left in the bucket, so that Cas didn’t need to see them anymore. After Cas fell and his wings were broken, everything remotely concerning wings became a difficult topic.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think …”

“It’s okay, Dean. I’m just … Just don’t eat them, when I’m around, maybe?”

“No,” Dean said as he was walking over to Cas. “I’m never eating them again. I swear.”

“Dean, you don’t have to …”

“But I do. I can’t eat them anymore now.”

“I’m sorry. I ruined hot wings for you,” Castiel said with sorrowful eyes.

“Well, there’s still burgers and fries, right?”

“And cherry pie, Dean. Don’t forget the pie.”

“I would never.”

[starakex]

I realized something last night when, scrolling Youtube for entertainment, I got recommended a penguin video from 13 years ago. Just a guy sitting around observing penguins in the wild. I was kind of struck by how long it has been since I last just watched a nature documentary. Most animals I see today are, like, funny pet videos or passing-bys "storytime" clickbaits with added music and robot voiceovers. I just, genuinely, hadn't seen a nature documentary in years. Or I guess the term would be "given", considering our algorithm-centric web. As a kid, I'd get my hands on every animal show and book I could find. I'd look up animal facts online and ask my parents to go to zoos or museums. I remember getting really mad when the nature channel kept putting up other programming like dog training stories or extreme vet visits. I'd been taught about the concept of TV Reality shows, and the most I got from it at the time was "it's boring shows for adults with made up stories" and, more importantly, it didn't have the wildlife footage I wanted to see. But I guess I got caught up in it, in the end. I only have the subscription page active on youtube, but here I am clicking on whatever looks entertaining to fill in space instead of impatiently waiting for shark week or whatever upcoming channel animal special was announced. New age media content online basically turned into the "popular filler shows" that was getting in the way of my "animal tv" and I stopped choosing what I wanted to watch. It was kind of a sobering discovery. I looked up a bit online, picked up a David Attenborough-narrated nature documentary, and just. Man. At first it felt a little slow and silent until I realized that was always the case, quiet time to let the footage take center stage, before the internet pivoted to creating a whole business around fast-paced, short videos with aggressive audio and quick cuts and automatic skips to keep you stimulated. Took a few minutes of focused watching at first, but then I was engrossed in it for the rest of its hour long runtime. Anyways, here I am doing a huge clear of my youtube subs and carefully picking out a few good documentary channels on specific interests so "watching something" can return to being an active, curated activity again.

[nyerusnova]

nevermind i saw the leaks, i was right lmao.

jason is fine and they just coordinated to trick failsafe to get it to frazzle out afaik.

that makes sense considering the entire point of #147 was bruce deciding to work with his family despite his growing paranoia over their safety, etc. given that zdarsky has been trying to explore bruce's mental state, it would have made no sense for him to immediately validate that paranoia, instead.

[fitpacs]

,

[orcelito]

Brain is rotating between depressing but bittersweet post-trimax one-shot, current wip chapter of itnl, playful horny Sentido sequel one-shot, and violent bloody itnl times to be had sooner than you think

Like the barrel of a gun. Click click click click spinning round and round. Which one am I gonna land on? Only time will tell.

[yesornopolls]

The article is under the cut because paywalls suck

This is an edited transcript of an audio essay on “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you want to understand the first few weeks of the second Trump administration, you should listen to what Steve Bannon told PBS’s “Frontline” in 2019:

Steve Bannon: The opposition party is the media. And the media can only, because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time. … All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity. So it’s got to start, and it’s got to hammer, and it’s got to — Michael Kirk: What was the word? Bannon: Muzzle velocity.

Muzzle velocity. Bannon’s insight here is real. Focus is the fundamental substance of democracy. It is particularly the substance of opposition. People largely learn of what the government is doing through the media — be it mainstream media or social media. If you overwhelm the media — if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next — no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently.

Donald Trump’s first two weeks in the White House have followed Bannon’s strategy like a script. The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point. The message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump’s country now. This is his government now. It follows his will. It does what he wants. If Trump tells the state to stop spending money, the money stops. If he says that birthright citizenship is over, it’s over.

Or so he wants you to think. In Trump’s first term, we were told: Don’t normalize him. In his second, the task is different: Don’t believe him.

Trump knows the power of marketing. If you make people believe something is true, you make it likelier that it becomes true. Trump clawed his way back to great wealth by playing a fearsome billionaire on TV; he remade himself as a winner by refusing to admit he had ever lost. The American presidency is a limited office. But Trump has never wanted to be president, at least not as defined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. He has always wanted to be king. His plan this time is to first play king on TV. If we believe he is already king, we will be likelier to let him govern as a king.

Don’t believe him. Trump has real powers — but they are the powers of the presidency. The pardon power is vast and unrestricted, and so he could pardon the Jan. 6 rioters. Federal security protection is under the discretion of the executive branch, and so he could remove it from Anthony Fauci and Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and Mark Milley and even Brian Hook, a largely unknown former State Department official under threat from Iran who donated time to Trump’s transition team. It was an act of astonishing cruelty and callousness from a man who nearly died by an assassin’s bullet — as much as anything ever has been, this, to me, was an X-ray of the smallness of Trump’s soul — but it was an act that was within his power.

But the president cannot rewrite the Constitution. Within days, the birthright citizenship order was frozen by a judge — a Reagan appointee — who told Trump’s lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” A judge froze the spending freeze before it was even scheduled to go into effect, and shortly thereafter, the Trump administration rescinded the order, in part to avoid the court case.

What Bannon wanted — what the Trump administration wants — is to keep everything moving fast. Muzzle velocity, remember. If you’re always consumed by the next outrage, you can’t look closely at the last one. The impression of Trump’s power remains; the fact that he keeps stepping on rakes is missed. The projection of strength obscures the reality of weakness. Don’t believe him.

You could see this a few ways: Is Trump playing a part, making a bet or triggering a crisis? Those are the options. I am not certain he knows the answer. Trump has always been an improviser. But if you take it as calculated, here is the calculation: Perhaps this Supreme Court, stocked with his appointees, gives him powers no peacetime president has ever possessed. Perhaps all of this becomes legal now that he has asserted its legality. It is not impossible to imagine that bet paying off.

But Trump’s odds are bad. So what if the bet fails and his arrogations of power are soundly rejected by the courts? Then comes the question of constitutional crisis: Does he ignore the court’s ruling? To do that would be to attempt a coup. I wonder if they have the stomach for it. The withdrawal of the Office of Management and Budget’s order to freeze spending suggests they don’t. Bravado aside, Trump’s political capital is thin. Both in his first and second terms, he has entered office with approval ratings below that of any president in the modern era. Gallup has Trump’s approval rating at 47 percent — about 10 points beneath Joe Biden’s in January 2021.

There is a reason Trump is doing all of this through executive orders rather than submitting these same directives as legislation to pass through Congress. A more powerful executive could persuade Congress to eliminate the spending he opposes or reform the civil service to give himself the powers of hiring and firing that he seeks. To write these changes into legislation would make them more durable and allow him to argue their merits in a more strategic way. Even if Trump’s aim is to bring the civil service to heel — to rid it of his opponents and turn it to his own ends — he would be better off arguing that he is simply trying to bring the high-performance management culture of Silicon Valley to the federal government. You never want a power grab to look like a power grab.

But Republicans have a three-seat edge in the House and a 53-seat majority in the Senate. Trump has done nothing to reach out to Democrats. If Trump tried to pass this agenda as legislation, it would most likely fail in the House, and it would certainly die before the filibuster in the Senate. And that would make Trump look weak. Trump does not want to look weak. He remembers John McCain humiliating him in his first term by casting the deciding vote against Obamacare repeal.

That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him.

The flurry of activity is meant to suggest the existence of a plan. The Trump team wants it known that they’re ready this time. They will control events rather than be controlled by them. The closer you look, the less true that seems. They are scrambling and flailing already. They are leaking against one another already. We’ve learned, already, that the O.M.B. directive was drafted, reportedly, without the input or oversight of key Trump officials — “it didn’t go through the proper approval process,” an administration official told The Washington Post. For this to be the process and product of a signature initiative in the second week of a president’s second term is embarrassing.

But it’s not just the O.M.B. directive. The Trump administration is waging an immediate war on the bureaucracy, trying to replace the “deep state” it believes hampered it in the first term. A big part of this project seems to have been outsourced to Elon Musk, who is bringing the tactics he used at Twitter to the federal government. He has longtime aides at the Office of Personnel Management, and the email sent to nearly all federal employees even reused the subject line of the email he sent to Twitter employees: “Fork in the Road.” Musk wants you to know it was him.

The email offers millions of civil servants a backdoor buyout: Agree to resign and in theory, at least, you can collect your paycheck and benefits until the end of September without doing any work. The Department of Government Efficiency account on X described it this way: “Take the vacation you always wanted, or just watch movies and chill, while receiving your full government pay and benefits.” The Washington Post reported that the email “blindsided” many in the Trump administration who would normally have consulted on a notice like that.

I suspect Musk thinks of the federal work force as a huge mass of woke ideologues. But most federal workers have very little to do with politics. About 16 percent of the federal work force is in health care. These are, for instance, nurses and doctors who work for the Veterans Affairs department. How many of them does Musk want to lose? What plans does the V.A. have for attracting and training their replacements? How quickly can he do it?

The Social Security Administration has more than 59,000 employees. Does Musk know which ones are essential to operations and unusually difficult to replace? One likely outcome of this scheme is that a lot of talented people who work in nonpolitical jobs and could make more elsewhere take the lengthy vacation and leave government services in tatters. Twitter worked poorly after Musk’s takeover, with more frequent outages and bugs, but its outages are not a national scandal. When V.A. health care degrades, it is. To have sprung this attack on the civil service so loudly and publicly and brazenly is to be assured of the blame if anything goes wrong.

What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them.

I had a conversation a couple months ago with someone who knows how the federal government works about as well as anyone alive. I asked him what would worry him most if he saw Trump doing it. What he told me is that he would worry most if Trump went slowly. If he began his term by doing things that made him more popular and made his opposition weaker and more confused. If he tried to build strength for the midterms while slowly expanding his powers and chipping away at the deep state where it was weakest.

But he didn’t. And so the opposition to Trump, which seemed so listless after the election, is beginning to rouse itself.

There is a subreddit for federal employees where one of the top posts reads: “This non ‘buyout’ really seems to have backfired. I’ll be honest, before that email went out, I was looking for any way to get out of this fresh hell. But now I am fired up to make these goons as frustrated as possible.” As I write this, it’s been upvoted more than 39,000 times and civil servant after civil servant is echoing the initial sentiment.

In Iowa this week, Democrats flipped a State Senate seat in a district that Trump won easily in 2024. The attempted spending freeze gave Democrats their voice back, as they zeroed in on the popular programs Trump had imperiled. Trump isn’t building support; he’s losing it. Trump isn’t fracturing his opposition; he’s uniting it.

This is the weakness of the strategy that Bannon proposed and Trump is following. It is a strategy that forces you into overreach. To keep the zone flooded, you have to keep acting, keep moving, keep creating new cycles of outrage or fear. You overwhelm yourself. And there’s only so much you can do through executive orders. Soon enough, you have to go beyond what you can actually do. And when you do that, you either trigger a constitutional crisis or you reveal your own weakness.

Trump may not see his own fork in the road coming. He may believe he has the power he is claiming. That would be a mistake on his part — a self-deception that could doom his presidency. But the real threat is if he persuades the rest of us to believe he has power he does not have.

The first two weeks of Trump’s presidency have not shown his strength. He is trying to overwhelm you. He is trying to keep you off-balance. He is trying to persuade you of something that isn’t true. Don’t believe him.

You can listen to this conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

why didn't they just use franziska for literally all of this.

[movie-robotnik-positivity]

I don't think Robotnik ever saw Stone's affection as genuine. He's used to people only valuing him if he's useful. His own bosses call him a freak, yet they put up with him because of his "perfect operation record". He isn't even shocked when he learns the goverment erased him, he expected it and had a contingency plan ready.

He keeps calling Stone a sycophant and a barnacle, because why else would someone stay with him if not to gain something? Clearly, Stone is just a suck-up wanting to ride his coattails. And Ivo is fine with that! He gets his ego stroked and in return Stone gets a slice of the world-domination pie. Mutually beneficial!

This symbiotic relationship gives Ivo a sense of control and ensures that Stone won't abandon him like everyone else. It also keeps him detached: of course Stone waited months or him to return from space, that's his job. His admiration is inevitable, and meaningless.

Ivo develops a genuine, irrational attachment to Stone, one he's able to rationalize as just being transactional. Those emotional walls shield him from the fear of abandonment that comes with caring for another person.

Except...even after Robotnik becomes a liability, Stone stays. There's no benefit, no plans of ruling humanity, not even a paycheck. Yet despite everything, Ivo tries to keep the old boss/employee dynamic going. He can't fathom the idea that someone would stay for anything other than convenience.

Then Gerald shows up, and for the first time Ivo allows himself to put down those walls. As an orphan he had built up this idealized image of family that he thought he could never have. People will use you then toss you aside when convenient, but family? Family is different. Family will always be there for you and love you no matter what. Family won't abandon you.

And suddently Stone's grovelling is no longer necessary. Why would he need someone who just pretends to like him when he now has all the unconditional love he's always longed for? That's obviously why Stone got so jealous, it couldn't have been real concern, he was just afraid of losing his comfy position as the lapdog of humanity's new king. Between a sycophant and family, the choice felt obvious.

And, of course, Gerald turns out to be just like everyone else in Ivo's life: just another person trying to get something from him. The second he stopped being useful, he was tossed aside.

His image of family is once again shattered, but those emotional walls are already down. Now that Ivo experienced that betrayal he was so afraid of, now that he's about to die, he's finally able to be honest with himself.

Looking down on Earth, he realizes there had only ever been one person on that blue marble who actually cared. Someone who had always been there, even when there was nothing to gain. Stone had never abandoned him.

But he had abandoned Stone. He tossed him aside, just like Gerald did to him. Now that he's able to understand how Stone felt, this is his last chance to make things right.

In his final moments, with nothing to fear, Robotnik puts down his emotional walls and opens up as best as he can. Stone had done so much for him, asked for nothing in return, and now it was his turn to do the same. Ivo helped save the world, not for recognition or convenience, but simply out of love.

Stone had always been a sycophant to him, yes, but he had also been a friend. A sycofriend.

[imaginedisish]

Lover, You Should've Come Over (Logan Howlett x Fem!Reader)

A/N: Get ready to cry. This is based on a request I received yesterday where the reader gets jealous of Jean. I tried to take this in a different direction just because I feel like this is a popular trope that has been done by many fantastic writers. It's also inspired by "Lover, You Should've Come Over," by Jeff Buckley. Hope you guys enjoy.

Summary: You've been pining after Logan since you joined the X-Men, and you're convinced he'll never love you back. He’s obsessed with Jean—always has been. Or...maybe he's not.

Warnings: SMUT 18+ MINORS DNI, Oral (f!receiving), fingering, PIV (unprotected...pls WRAP IT UP THIS IS FICTION!), overstimulation, multiple orgasms, f!reader/afab!reader, telepathic!reader, cocky!Logan, softdom!Logan (kinda? yeah.), non-canon compliant (you'll see what I mean...no spoilers), cursing, angst, feelings, implied mutant trauma (kinda a given in X-Men), probably some grammatical errors, I think that's it.

Word Count: 4,197 sorry

Wanting someone you can’t have—it’s that crying in the shower, pulling your legs into your chest, screaming into your pillow kind of heartache. You’ve come to know the feeling intimately. It’s an awful, horrid, stomach-churning kind of pain.

But you want him. Despite all the pain, you want him. Logan Howlett. You can’t seem to keep him off your mind. For the few months you’ve been one of the X-Men, Logan has been a constant. He’s always there—whether it’s to train or just to talk. But you know he’ll never want you. You see the way he looks at Jean. You wish you didn’t. You wish you were oblivious to that sort of thing. But you don’t need to use your telepathy to reach inside his mind for proof—you just know. 

You keep holding on, savoring every moment, every interaction you have with Logan. You sit on the lawn of the mansion with him, watching the sunset. You’ll come down to the living room late at night to find him sitting in front of the T.V. and join him. Sometimes he’ll drape an arm around your shoulder. He’ll draw circles into your side as you drift off. You’ll wake up the next morning back in your bed, Logan having carried you there long after you’ve fallen asleep. 

You’ve decided you’ll take all he’ll give you, even if it means nothing to him—even if it's platonic. 

But tonight, you wish something would come up through the floor and swallow you whole. A void, a black hole maybe. That would do the trick. Disappearing would make everything so much easier. The second-best thing to disappearing is sitting in the kitchen of the mansion, alone, with a pint of ice cream. You decide to practice your powers, moving the silver spoon with your mind, concentrating as you dig the spoon into the top of the pint and into your mouth. 

You hear a warm, familiar chuckle from the doorway as the spoon lands on your tongue. You look up, and there’s Logan, arms tucked across his chest. “Wish I could do that.”

You can’t help but smile around the spoon as he strides over to you, taking a seat on the stool next to yours. You slide the spoon out of your mouth and rest it on the napkin next to the ice cream. “Hey,” you mutter, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand. 

His shoulder brushes against yours. He’s so close it hurts. You try to shove the pain down and enjoy the moment. 

“Was hoping I’d run into you down here. Thought maybe you’d be in bed already,” Logan says, his eyes locked on yours. 

You shake your head, doing your best to keep that fake smile plastered on your face. “Couldn’t sleep.” 

You can see the sudden concern appear on his face. “Everything okay?” He asks, tilting his head to the side. Fuck, you think to yourself. Maybe he’s catching on. 

“Yeah,” you murmur, looking down at the ice cream. “Just still having a hard time adjusting.” It wasn’t a lie. You had always struggled with your powers, longing to hide, to shove them down. Your whole life, you were either a freak or something to be used—whatever was most convenient in the moment. The struggle between visibility and forcing yourself to be “normal” was an impossible battle. You were no stranger to being taken advantage of or being experimented on.

Logan was the first person who understood that—understood you. He made you feel seen in a way that no one ever had. It’s part of the reason you’ve fallen so hard for him. 

His hand is suddenly on your back, yanking you from your thoughts and back to reality. “I’m here,” he whispers. “Whatever you need, anything.” 

Anything. You wish he really meant it. 

“Thanks, Lo.” You smile up at him, letting your eyes linger on his lips for just a second before looking back down at the ice cream. “Want some?” You ask, nodding at the pint. 

“Only if you feed it to me the way you did when I walked in.” You can hear the smirk in his voice as he taps the spoon. You side-eye him incredulously. “I mean it. Wanna see you do it again.” There’s a husk in his voice, a shift in his timber that sends a chill down your spine. You try not to think about it too much as you pick up the spoon with your mind. 

You guide the spoon inside the pint, scraping the top, and lifting it up towards Logan’s mouth. He opens wide as you lead the spoon inside, his tongue hitting the bottom as his lips close around it. The implications of the moment don’t dawn on you until he’s grabbing the spoon with his hands and sucking on the metal. There’s something undeniably suggestive about this. 

Heat rises to your chest as you replay the image of him taking the spoon into his mouth in your mind. It’s so intimate, so domestic. And, certainly, something else—something that makes you tick, that makes that familiar fire grow deep within your belly. 

But—like always—the moment doesn’t last long. You wince, feeling someone itching against your thoughts, prodding at your mental shields, begging to be let in. Suddenly, there’s another voice in your mind. 

I gotta try that myself. You flinch at the sound, taking the spoon from Logan’s hand and shooting it across the room to where you sense the person’s presence. You turn around, and there’s Jean, resisting the spoon’s trajectory with her mind. 

It's almost pressing into her skull, shaking in mid-air, ready to break her skin. You gasp and drop the spoon, embarrassed to have registered her as a threat. “I’m so sorry,” you say, watching as Jean crouches down and picks up the spoon. “I didn’t know that was you in there, I swear.”

You expect Logan to stand from the chair and rush over to Jean, but he stays next to you, glued to your side, the palm of his hand resting gently on your back. “Jean.” His voice is firm, almost cold and harsh. “What was that?” You’re surprised at how curt he’s being with her, surprised he remembered that you’re sensitive to people probing around your mind, even if it’s friendly. 

Jean mutters a curse. “I was just communicating with her. I didn’t think she’d—” 

Logan stands, his hand still steady at your back. “Don’t do that again. Ever.” His voice is louder now, heavier. 

She whispers an apology, setting the spoon on the counter and walking towards the doorway. “I really didn’t mean to hurt you,” she says. “I should’ve remembered given your…” she pauses, searching for the word, “past…that it wouldn’t be a good idea.” She takes another tentative step. “I’ll leave you two alone,” she says, and she slips out. 

Logan settles back into the stool next to you. You’re shocked that he’s still here, that he hasn’t run away yet. You can hear him breathe—in and out—gentle, long breaths. You close your eyes and listen, the sound calming you down. You’re still expecting him to leave, to walk away, but he doesn’t. 

“You okay?” He asks, your eyes fluttering open, his voice hanging in the air. His head is tilted to the side, worry painted across his face. 

“Y-yeah. I’m fine,” you stutter, your voice cracking. “You don’t have to stay with me. You can go check on her if you want.” You nod towards the doorway—to wherever Jean wandered off to. 

“And why would I do that?” Is all he says in return, furrowing his brows. 

You put on that fake smile again. “I almost jammed a spoon into her forehead because she spoke to me telepathically.” You shake your head. “Don’t really think my reaction was particularly friendly—or something that good people do.” You break eye contact with Logan and look to the other side of the kitchen. “Plus, you two are…close.”

“Hey.” His voice is firm again, but gentle this time, reassuring. His hand slips across your back and rests on your waist. You’re so shocked by the contact that you almost miss what he says. “First of all, she knows better. Charles warned her about what you’ve been through. And second…” He trails off, smirking at you. “I’d rather be with you.”

Oh? Oh. He’d rather be with you. 

“I just thought, you know, you and Jean were…” You’re too embarrassed to finish the sentence and too nervous to hear him say the words you’ve been dreading most. 

He shakes his head, that smirk still spread across his lips. “No, it’s not Jean I want. Never has been.” 

Your breathing becomes shaky—your heart beating rapidly in your chest. “If it’s not Jean, then—” 

Logan cuts you off as he suddenly moves. His arm lifts from your waist as he stands, turning your stool around so your back is against the cold countertop. He’s gripping the arms of the stool now, caging you in. Your mind is hazy—you can’t concentrate with him this close. 

“You think I do the shit I do with you with Jean too, hm?” He’s towering over you, his head cocking to the side, his voice self-assured and confident. “Think I’m watching movies and sunsets with her? Carrying her to bed, too?” 

You’re overwhelmed, dizzied by his words, his size, him. “Just thought that—”

“Just thought what?” He cuts you off again. “That I didn’t want you, darlin’?” He brings his lips to the shell of your ear, one hand moving from the counter to your hip. “Wanted you this whole time,” he huffs, goosebumps rising on your arms. “Only you.” He presses a kiss to your ear, and then just underneath your jaw. 

“Logan,” you whisper. “W-want you too,” you choke out, your hands coming up and around his back. “B-but someone’s gonna walk in on us.” 

He’s ignoring you, biting your pulse point lightly and licking the pain away. “Let them,” he husks, refusing to stop. You instinctively bring your hands up to the nape of his neck, your nails digging in slightly. He groans at the contact, his chest heaving against yours. 

“One of the kids is catch us in here, or somebody else,” you mutter, his face still buried in the crook of your neck. “W-we should—”

“Go to my room.” He finishes your thought. 

“Please.” 

And then he’s picking you up from the chair, his hands under your thighs, grabbing your ass. You wrap your legs around his waist as he prowls out of the kitchen. He looks both ways as he crosses the hallway and makes his way to the stairs. There’s no one in sight. He carries you up the steps and down the hall to his room, practically breaking down the door as he swings it open and slams it shut. 

And then he’s laying you down on his bed, crawling over you, pressing his forehead against yours. “Wanted you in here sooner,” he murmurs, his lips just inches from yours. “Hoped you’d come over one night. You should’ve.”

His lips crash down onto yours before you can find the words to say. He’s starving for you, swallowing your moans as his hands slip under your shirt, his nails digging lightly into your sides. “So fucking beautiful,” he rasps against your lips. Everything is desperate and rushed, hands pawing at bare skin in the dim light of his room. 

Logan tugs on the hem of your shirt, rolling it up your body and over your head. He tosses it to the side as he sits up on his knees, taking you in. He curses under his breath, looking you up and down. 

“Logan,” you whine, arching your back. You need his hands on you again, his lips. Something. Anything. 

“I know, pretty girl,” he soothes, his fingers hooking inside the waistband of your shorts. “Gonna take care of you.” He yanks them down your legs, leaving you in just your bra and panties. 

He pulls off his own shirt, tossing it carelessly, letting it get lost on the floor. He settles back down over you, balancing on his forearm as his free hand finds your waist. He slides up to the bottom of your bra, teasingly pulling on the fabric before slipping his hand behind your back—skillfully unclasping the bra with one easy motion. You arch your back again, the bra straps sliding down your arms as Logan tosses the bra to the floor, too. 

“Fuck,” he mumbles, his hand tracing the curves of your breasts, massaging gently. “Perfect.” He captures your lips in another kiss as his thumb ghosts over your nipples, just barely giving you the relief you need before pinching softly. The pressure feels so good, so right, but it’s not enough. 

He draws circles around your nipples with his thumb, the sensation feeding the aching fire between your legs. Your hips involuntarily lift off the mattress, meeting his. “Need me that bad, huh?” He is always so incredibly cocky, even now—especially now. He knows exactly what he’s doing to you, and what to do next. 

Logan grinds his erection into your core. You can feel how big he is, the weight of him heavy against your cunt even in his jeans. You clench around nothing, whining his name as his strained cock teases your panty-clad pussy. “You want me to make you feel good, pretty girl?”

“Y-yes,” you stutter, biting your lips as his hand leaves your tits and sweeps down your stomach, stopping just above your clit. He slides his fingers down just a bit more, feeling where your arousal seeps through your panties. 

“Already soaking for me, sweetheart.” The bassy timber of his voice stokes that flame deep within your belly. Without warning, he’s hooking his fingers into the waistband of your panties and yanking them down your legs. “Can’t wait anymore, pretty girl,” he whispers. “Wanna taste this pussy.” He kisses your belly button, leaving a trail down the rest of your stomach as his mouth travels to where you need him most. 

There’s something depraved about the way he’s crawling down your body, taking in every inch of you. He spreads your legs apart with the palms of his hands—his thumbs brushing against your bare skin, licking teasingly at your inner thighs as he settles in between them. 

He pauses, looking at you under hooded eyes. You can see the want—no, the need—in the way his muscles flex and how he works his jaw. But he’s hesitating, his breath hot against your core, sending another jolt of desire through your body. Your chest rises and falls rapidly, your eyes searching his for his next move. 

He finally presses a kiss to your clit. “You don’t understand how you make me feel,” he mumbles against your heat, licking a long stripe through your folds and back to your clit. “No idea how long I’ve fucking wanted you.” You throw your head back, whimpering his name as he laps again and again. He’s starving, and you’re the only thing that can satiate his hunger. His tongue swirls around your clit, flicking it, taking it in between his lips and sucking hard. 

Your hips lift off the mattress and Logan quickly moves to hold them down. “You’re not going anywhere, darlin’,” he grunts against you, the vibration of his voice going straight to your core. 

His free hand slips up the inside of your thighs, teasingly climbing higher and higher, his nails skimming your flesh. He’s toying with you, leading you on, taking his time. His fingers finally ghost over your folds, exploring you, stroking up and down as his tongue laps at your cunt. 

Logan prods your entrance with two fingers, slipping in just a bit, testing the waters. “Please,” you beg, pushing your hips down in an attempt to sink his fingers deeper into you. He stops you, his hand still firmly holding your hips down, refusing to give you the release you’re dying for. 

“So fucking impatient, aren’t you?” He tuts. And then he’s shoving two fingers all the way inside you, down to his knuckles. “Such a pretty pussy.”

“F-fuck!” You cry out, your eyes rolling into the back of your head as he sets a relentless pace. He’s drinking you in, sucking roughly, his long fingers pumping in and out with a vengeance. 

“’This what you wanted, pretty girl?” He asks condescendingly in between laps. You’re too fucked out to form a sentence, your legs trembling underneath him. You know he’s loving this—loving that you’re a wet, needy, whimpering mess. 

Your walls squeeze around his fingers, your swollen clit throbbing as he laps at you. You’re so close already. “Lo,” you call out, fisting the sheets of his bed. Everything in here smells like him: pine and mint and musk and tobacco and that thing that’s uniquely Logan. It’s all so overwhelming and overstimulating. You’re ready to fall apart, to melt into nothingness. “S-so close.”

He squeezes your hip. “I know, sweetheart,” he soothes, his pace unwavering as his fingers fuck into you, scissoring inside you, drawing you closer to your climax with that come-hither motion he does so well. Your walls flutter again. “That’s it,” he coos. “Wanna feel you come—wanna know what it tastes like.” He licks harder, faster. “Let go for me, darlin’.” 

He pushes you over the edge, pleasure warming your belly as you let go. It washes over you in waves, his fingers still pumping in and out, his tongue still hanging on to the taste of you. You ride it out, his thumb brushing your hip, coaxing you through it. His fingers slip out of your cunt, but his head is still buried between your legs. You shudder as he licks long, slow stripes through your folds. 

“So fucking sweet,” he growls, still starving for more. “Not done with you yet.”

Fuck. 

But you need more—need his cock deep inside you, pounding into you. You need him in front of you, his lips on yours. 

“Logan,” you whine, your voice shaky and trembling just like the rest of your body. He finally lifts his head, his hair a disheveled mess, your juices glistening on his lips and his chin. The sight of him makes your breath hitch in your throat. There’s a feral, needy look in his eyes. He’s starving for more of you, and you’re not quite sure he’ll ever get enough. 

But he can see your chest heaving and the desire in your own eyes. He knows what you need—he always does. He sits up on his knees, staring at you while he slowly unbuckles his belt. The tension is palpable, the clinking of his belt against the hardwood floors cutting through it like a hot knife—the only sounds the melding of your quick breaths and the shuffling of bed sheets as Logan finally comes up to meet you. 

He's balancing on his forearm as he unbuttons his jeans, undoing the zipper and shoving the denim and his boxers down his legs. You swallow at the sight of his cock springing against his stomach. You had felt his erection before, but he is far bigger than you ever anticipated. 

With one hand on his cock, he lowers himself in between your thighs. You instinctually spread your legs for him, inviting him in. He nudges against your entrance, taking his time. 

His forehead meets yours, your chests flush against each other’s, panting in sync. You’re both waiting with bated breath, his tip slipping inside, but stopping short before going any farther. 

His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “Thought I’d never have you,” he confesses, pushing his tip a bit further in. “Would’ve given up anything for this. Would’ve waited forever.”

“You don’t have to,” you murmur.  “I’m right here. I’m yours.” 

“Mine?”

“All yours.”

And then he’s pushing deep inside you, down to the hilt, bottoming out. He swallows your moans with a kiss, biting your lip, drawing blood, and licking it away. “All fucking mine.” He stays buried inside you, unmoving. “Wanna stay inside you forever, sweetheart,” he growls, your heart bursting at the thought.

He pulls himself all the way out and all the way back in, stretching you out, working you open. You look down in between your bodies and watch as his cock disappears inside of you. “Feels s-so fucking good,” you stammer, already drunk off him. 

“Like watching me fuck into you?” Logan husks, picking up his pace, his hips snapping into yours. 

“Y-yes,” you whimper. His muscles flex as he ruts into you. He takes the hand that was on his cock and brings it in between your bodies, his fingertips quickly finding your clit and giving it a soft pinch. Your back arches off the mattress at the sensation. 

Logan hums at your reaction. “So sensitive,” he groans. “Taking me so good, sweetheart.” You can feel him losing control as he rams into you, his thrusts growing harder with each pump of his cock. He’s drawing firm, fast circles into your core. 

It’s all too much, him, his cock, his fingers. Your skin is on fire, your nipples pushing against his chest—the friction absolutely delicious. You’re already so close, just a few steps away from the ledge, and you’re ready to fall. 

“Know you’re close, darlin’,” Logan moans in between kisses. “Can feel you squeezing me.” 

You hum in response, but Logan refuses to let up. His pace is beyond brutal, pounding into you over and over again, his fingers working your clit in tandem. Your muscles contract around him, gripping tightly. 

“That’s it,” he murmurs. “So fucking tight, so fucking warm.” His praises are more than you can handle. “You gonna come on my cock, just like this?” 

“Yes, fuck, Logan!” You’re a babbling mess, his name the only thing on your mind, on your lips, hanging in the air like it’s a sacred prayer. Everything is him, and it always has been. In this moment and in every other, he is your end and your beginning. 

 “Let go for me, sweetheart. Know you can do it for me.” His deep voice is all you need to walk you through it. You’re breaking down, coming on his cock, the pleasure coursing through your veins, spreading like an untamable fire. 

He’s stroking your clit long after you’ve come, still snapping his hips into yours, still working up towards his own orgasm. His pace is getting sloppier, but he shows no signs of stopping. You can feel yourself growing overstimulated, his cock rubbing against your walls, his fingers circling your clit. “S’too much,” you whine, your nails digging into his arms, your legs wrapping around his waist. 

Logan presses himself closer to you, as close as he possibly can be. “You’ve got one more in you, sweetheart,” he coaxes, not letting up. “Know you can take it.”

You’re breathless, clinging onto him helplessly. You’re clamping down on him again, taking him deeper than you did before. He’s hitting that sweet spot with every thrust. “Lo,” you whimper. “I’m gonna—”

“I know, darlin’,” he grunts. You can feel him throbbing inside you. “Let it happen, I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere.” 

The tension is snapping again, breaking in half as he pulls another orgasm from you. You shudder as you come for a third time, overstimulated and beyond fucked out. You know he’s close behind, his hips slowing down, his forehead pressed against yours. He slips his hand away from your clit and around your back, pulling you closer to his chest. It’s so intimate, so perfect. 

“F-fuck,” he mumbles. “Where do you want me to—”

You hold him closer. “Stay,” you whisper. “Want you inside. Wanna feel you come.”

“Oh fuck,” he mutters, plunging deep inside you, his muscles tensing as he fills you up, your name on his lips. His thrusts slow, pumping in and out every now and then before finally stopping. 

You stay like this for a few minutes, his arm keeping you tight against his chest, his cock still buried inside you and your foreheads still pressed together. 

He brings a hand up to your cheek, his thumb brushing gently across your skin. You sigh, your eyes fluttering open and closed. 

He shakes his head. “I always wanted you,” he says, his voice low and raspy. “The whole time. It was only ever you.” 

His words could make you cry. It’s everything you’ve ever hoped to hear. You smile, his hand finding its way to the crook of your neck, his fingers lightly stroking your sensitive skin. “Can’t believe I didn’t see it,” you breathe, your voice laden with sleepiness. “I never knew. Thought you’d never want me.”

“I’ll always want you.” His cock finally slips out of you, leaving you feeling empty. His legs tangle with yours, his lips pressing a chaste kiss to your temple. “Would’ve waited forever for you, darlin’.”

“Forever?”

“Longer.”

[kateschi]

between bites and blushes

synopsis: class 1-a speculates about your secret relationship. as the teasing continues, a small slip reveals the truth, leaving everyone stunned—and katsuki annoyed.

pairing: bakugou katsuki x f!reader

class 1-a buzzes with speculation as you sit among your classmates in the common room, a warm lunch spread out before you.

whispers ripple through the table, each voice eager to share their theories about your love life. you smile, pretending not to notice the heightened interest.

“who do you think y/n is dating?” kirishima asks, leaning forward with a bright smile. “I mean, she’s been acting kind of secretive lately.”

“yeah, and she never talks about him,” kaminari adds, his eyes wide with curiosity. “it’s gotta be someone from a different class, right?”

midoriya furrows his eyebrows. “maybe it’s someone in class 1-b? I’ve seen her talking to some of them during training.”

you chuckle softly to yourself. you’ve been keeping your relationship with katsuki under wraps, wanting to enjoy it without the pressure of everyone’s scrutiny.

as if sensing their curiosity, katsuki sits down beside you, his presence immediate and commanding. he slams his tray on the table, causing a small shake, and grabs his bowl of spicy ramen.

“what are you losers even yammering about?” he asks.

“oh, just talking about y/n’s mystery boyfriend!” kaminari blurts out, his grin mischievous. “you know, the one she’s too secretive to talk about!”

katsuki narrows his eyes, looking between you and kaminari, as if he’s weighing how much to care. you can’t help but smile at the situation.

“you guys should really focus on your training instead of my dating life,” you say lightly, enjoying the way katsuki shifts slightly in his seat, the faintest hint of annoyance crossing his features.

after a few minutes of banter, katsuki pushes his ramen aside to make room for dessert—an assortment of mochi he’d been saving.

you watch as kaminari, with his usual absent-mindedness, leans over to grab a spoonful of katsuki’s ramen while katsuki’s attention is diverted.

“hey, what are you doing?” you call out, but it’s too late.

kaminari shovels the food into his mouth, a blissful look on his face. the moment he registers what he’s just done, his eyes widen in horror. “uh, oh...”

katsuki whips around, his expression darkening as he realizes his precious ramen has been tampered with. “hey! what the hell did you just do?” he roars, a vein in his forehead twitching with irritation.

kaminari’s face pales. “I-I thought it was just a taste! it looked really good!”

“looks good? you think that gives you the right to just take my food?” katsuki yells, rising from his seat, quirk already sparking at his fingertips.

the common room goes silent, all eyes glued to the impending chaos. kirishima grabs kaminari’s arm, pulling him back instinctively. “dude, you might want to apologize before he goes off!”

kaminari stammers, “I-I’m sorry! it was an accident!”

katsuki marches over, and in a flurry of furious energy, he pushes kaminari back, delivering a quick, sharp punch to his shoulder. “next time, ask before you eat something that isn’t yours, you dumbass!”

the rest of the class watches in a mix of awe and nervousness as kaminari scrambles to defend himself, stumbling back to his seat, where he winces in exaggerated pain.

“man, you really care about your food, huh?” kirishima laughs nervously, though the humor is tinged with apprehension. “I wouldn’t want to be on your bad side!”

katsuki grumbles something unintelligible, his gaze shifting back to you. you can’t help but giggle at the absurdity of the situation.

days pass, and the class is still buzzing with excitement over kaminari’s mishap. speculation over your love life continues to swirl, but you remain tight-lipped, enjoying the mystery and the quiet joy of your relationship with katsuki.

then, one day, as you sit in the common room with katsuki, you eye his leftovers sitting on the coffee table. he’s absorbed in a training video, and you can’t resist the temptation.

you reach over and take a bite of his remaining ramen, savoring the rich flavors.

katsuki glances over. “y/n,” he warns.

you flash him a playful grin. “just having a little taste! you don’t mind, do you?”

his expression softens slightly, and he shakes his head. “if you’re hungry then just tell me, so I can make you more.”

you grin, warmth flooding through you at his casual offer. “aww, you’d do that?”

“of course! just don’t go stealing my food like some idiot,” he replies, crossing his arms, but there’s a softness in his tone that makes you smile.

just then, the rest of class 1-a filters into the room, their curious eyes darting between you and katsuki.

kaminari, still nursing his bruised pride, can’t help but speak up. “so, you’re not gonna beat her up for eating your food?” he asks, a teasing lilt in his voice.

katsuki looks at him, utterly perplexed. “what kind of jackass beats up his girlfriend?” he retorts, his expression a mix of confusion and annoyance.

a heavy silence descends over the room, the weight of his words hanging in the air. your classmates exchange stunned glances, eyes wide with disbelief.

the realization hits them like a wave, each one processing the implication of katsuki's casual admission.

“oh, that’s why you’ve been in a good mood lately—” midoriya blurts out, his eyes going wide with understanding.

katsuki’s face flushes, and he instinctively pulls you closer, wrapping an arm around your shoulders as if to shield you from their astonished gazes.

“stay out of our business!” he yells, then he points at midoriya, “especially you!”

the room erupts into a flurry of shocked voices, each member of class 1-a grappling with the sudden revelation. uraraka’s mouth drops open in disbelief. “wait, you guys are actually together?!”

kirishima’s grin grows even wider, and he nudges katsuki’s arm playfully. “dude, that’s awesome! I didn’t see that coming!”

you can’t help but laugh at the chaos, your heart swelling with affection for katsuki. you think that that nobody is noticing that katsuki’s hands are crackling, and that his eyes are picking his targets.

you figure that you won’t tell them, since, hey, good chaos is healthy every once in a while.

kofi — navigation — masterlist

do not copy, translate, or plagarize

[bunnis-monsters]

UGH having late night thoughts about an entirely male bee hybrid hive that makes you their queen!!

They’re obsessed with you, following behind you and constantly wanting to rub against you! They’re so soft and smell sweet, always ready to feed you some yummy honey or smother you in affection!

You’re the only woman there, and they’re all lining up to get a chance to breed with the queen! Their last queen had favorites and treated them differently, but you love them all equally and it makes them all happy!

Soft, chubby little bee hybrid babies toddle after you, crying out for their mama. You’re the queen now, their only maternal figure.

The honey they’ve been feeding you makes you produce milk, and both the baby bees and your subjects enjoy this greatly!

Watching you mother the little ones, even though they aren’t your own spawn makes the hive giddy! You’re so kind, usually a new queen would have all previous babies exiled!

Of course they all pleasure you as much as possible. When you’re not with the babies or doing something important, your holes are being stuffed and explored by your subjects. They love filling you with eggs, watching your fat tummy get even bigger!

Your cute waddle after your belly is nice and full of eggs make them all coo and want to spoil you even more than they already do! Getting to kiss and massage your sore ankles through the pregnancy/incubation periods is a big honor for them!

Cute buzzing and humming as they circle your body, excited to get to see your naked for pleasured before them! Everyone gets a turn eventually, but gosh it’s hard for them to wait! Seeing your fat pussy being stretched has their hearts thumping and wings fluttering impatiently!

They’re all so eager to please you, just say the word and they’re on their knees ready to absolutely devour your pussy. Cocks of any size are there for your choosing, and they’re content with being able to fuck whichever hole you tell them to~

Your pussy is a crowd favorite though…

GOD ASK ME ABOUT BEE HYBRIDS, THERE IS NOT ENOUGH CONTENT FOR THEM! Bee hybrid stuff has been done before but god they are on my mind!!! Putting a few ideas up with this, I can expand on them or y’all can send me new ideas!!

[shadow4-1]

"Can you just pretend to love me tonight? Please?"

Simon's never gotten a request like this before.

He's never had any qualms about selling his body. Whether it was for his cock, units of his blood plasma, or his war honed body. He's always done what he's had to - anything to stay off the streets and keep a full belly.

The girls who've paid him always wanted a brute, someone to mount them and take them for all they were worth. That was what he was used to, not some doe-eyed sweet thing begging him to be gentle.

"I want to feel loved." You admit, leaning back on the motel bed, thighs crossed in nervousness. "I um...I know I'm not very pretty-"

Simon leans forward on his knees and kisses you gently. Well, he tries to. The tip of your teeth graze painfully together as he mouths you. You squeak beneath him, hands going up to his shoulders to try and push him off on rabbit instinct. He pulls his mouth off of you just enough to mutter an apology.

"Sorry." He swallows.

You look up at him with impeccably beautiful eyes brimming with tears. You seem to finally understand there's nothing gentle about him even when he tries to be. Simon wants you to call him off, send him out of the cheap hotel. He knows he can't be as sweet at you want - as you deserve. He's just physically not built for that. At least, he's sure of it nowadays. He has a brief memory of holding his newborn nephew but it slips away just as quickly as it came.

"Can we just...go slow?" You ask again. Simon can hear the waver in your voice. You're unsure if you want to continue, but you seem to trust him for some reason. "Really, really slow?"

"Yeah."

He can do slow. He can do glacial. If there's one thing he can do, it's be measured, methodical. He wasn't a Lieutenant for nothing.

For the first time in years, he takes his time. He's used to the fast paced, hungry fucks that pay his rent in thirty minutes. This is...new, not wholly uninvited. He kisses down your collarbone, down the swell of your breasts. He nips at the lacy fabric (you dressed up for him when he was expecting just to rip it all off) as he makes his way down further. He laps at the skin beneath your belly button, making your belly flutter. Ticklish. He likes that.

Simon noses his way between your thighs, easily spreads your legs with his thick forearms. As he kisses down your cloth covered mound he admits he likes how you smell. Usually the taste of women turns him off. He prefers men, but desperate women pay more. You're desperate alright, although its a different type of desperation. Something about the nervous wetness staining your new panties has his cock jumping in his trousers. He presses his nose to the fabric, inhales deeply, and relishes in your shy squeak. Simon starts to understand your desire.

You want to be explored, mapped, and consumed slowly. You want to give up control but feel as if you can stop at any moment. You want to be seen, tasted, then completely devoured.

Instead of slipping your panties to the side, he licks his way down your thighs. You squeal and try to squirm away from the sudden sensation but he doesn't stop. He kisses down your calves and across the top of your feet. His hands are so large that they wrap around your soles completely. Simon pushes them up until they're up by your ears. He knows the position is uncomfortable for you, but he likes the view of your soft, cloth covered mound.

He nips at the back of your ankles and calves, licks down the expanse of your thighs, ans nuzzles into the gusset of your panties. Simon relishes in the squeaks and gasps ans twitches of your expectant body. It's been so long since he's teased someone, much less a sweet lil' thing like you.

Your scent is heady, comforting, nothing like he's experienced before. He finds he really likes just inhaling you in. You whimper, thighs shaking already. He hasn't even licked you yet. Simon finally admits to himself that you're stroking his ego.

He plants a firm, sweet kiss to your cloth covered cunt. The fabric is practically soaked through. He can smell your taste on the tips of his lips. His curiosity wins. He takes a firm, long lick from bottom to top. Simon tastes you, but also the flowery tang of your favorite fabric softener. You taste good. He wants more.

Simon finally releases his hold on your thighs. On instinct, or perhaps strain, they fall apart. You try to sit up but he tugs your body further towards the edge of the bed. He can feel the tension in his old knees from kneeling, but he ignores it. You've opened up your body to him. He wants to take full advantage of it.

Simon goes back to lapping at your clothed cunt. He doesn't stop until his tongue is raw from brushing repeatedly over the stitches. Drool drips down his chin.

"Off."

You huff in confusion, trying to sit up. Instead. With too easy of a tug, off come your panties. There you are. Simon knows he should slow his movements but he doesn't care. You haven't stopped him yet, and he'll be damned if he doesn't get those sweet lips in his mouth. He spreads you apart with his middle and forefinger. You're a sight to behold. Perhaps not pornstar perfect anatomy, but you're delicious looking nonetheless. He eyes your glistening, dripping slit. As bad as he wants to force his tomgue deep inside you, instead he presses a firm kiss to the hood of your clit. You jolt, trying to back away or pull him closer, he can't tell.

Simon follows your movement. He mouths hungrily at your clit, flattens his tongue and practically drools against it. He laps at you with a muted fervor. He doesn't want to hurt you. He can tell you're sensitive. It must've been awhile since the last time you'd had a man willingly do this for you. A damn shame.

Your shaky little moans are like music to Simon's ears. He follows them like a map. He circles your clit, traces the entrance of your hood, even dips lower to tease the sides of your inner lips. You seem to like that alot based on the sounds you make. He sucks on your inner wings and you squeal, thighs wrapping hard around the sides of his head. He does it again and and again until you're hiccuping in delight. Your slick drips down his chin and throat. You're such a good girl for him.

Simon knows he's going to make you cum, it's just a matter of time and technique. He has both on his side. He uses his other hand to pet at your entrance. He tries to commit your anatomy to memory, and so he takes his time dipping the pads of his fingers against your fluttering slit. Despite it obviously having been awhile, your cunt holds no resistance. In fact, it practically swallows up the tip of his middle finger. Fuck yeah, that's what he likes to see.

With measured ease, Simon slips his whole finger inwards and upwards inside of you. You keen and gasp and he can feel your insides twitching. You're tight. So tight he can feel his finger already starting to cramp up from the resistance.

If he's going to fuck you right he's still got some work to do.