#i already made sure the calibration was good

[wosoimagines]

Surprises

part 1 of rivals

fifteen year old Jo Knox gets her first call up to the USWNT camp and she makes her first professional rival.

3,744 words

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I sighed as I pushed open the door to the hotel. I was vastly aware that it was highly unusual for someone to be in my position. Especially walking onto a team of such a high calibration.

After all, how many fifteen-year-olds could say that they got the chance to play with the United States Women’s National Team?

Mia Hamm. That’s it. The entire list.

Well.

Before today, at least.

Or, I guess I would actually have to take the field before I could actually be classified as playing with the national team. But just being at a camp with the national team was huge. And to be doing it toward the end of the year before the World Cup?

I wasn’t sure what it meant just yet. It could mean that the coaching staff really liked what they saw in me. Or this could be a test to see how I could handle the pressure. 

And I wasn’t sure which one I would rather it be.

I would have to tackle this just like I did at home. Stay out of everyone else’s way and get my job done. That’s what mattered. If I could prove that I was good at what I could do, who knows? Maybe I would actually have a future with the national team one day.

“Jo! Over here!”

I lifted my head to find a woman smiling at me as she waved. I sent her a small smile of my own as I moved over closer to her.

“Hi,” I softly said once I got close enough.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Jo,” the woman said as she held her hand out to me. I reached out to shake it. “I’m Dawn Scott. I’m the High Performance Coach for the team.”

“I’d introduce myself, but you already know who I am.”

Dawn let out a small laugh as her smile grew a bit wider.

“Come on, they haven’t really gotten far into the meeting yet,” Dawn said as she turned around. I dragged my bag behind me as I started to follow Dawn. “Jill’s excited to have you here. She wouldn’t stop boasting about you to Tom. Between us? Jill was very frustrated that Tom wouldn’t call you up.”

“And now she’s the coach?”

“Interim while the USSF tries to hire a new head coach. She was excited about getting the opportunity to add you to the roster though,” Dawn admitted. I was a bit surprised by that. I knew that I had been watched while I was with the youth teams, but I didn’t realize I had been watched specifically by the person they would trust to lead the team at this time. “It helps that Jill doesn’t mind risking chemistry to try out new and upcoming talent. Let’s face it, you’ve got a lot of talent already and you’re still nowhere near your full potential.”

“Yeah, well, outside of school, soccer is pretty much all I focus on. I mean, we all pretty much have our own thing in my family, mine just happens to be soccer,” I shrugged as we slowed down outside of one of the conference rooms. “With a family like mine? You have to do something to make sure that you stand out.”

“You can leave your bags just inside by the door if you’d like. I’ll have to go and sit on the side with the coaches, but you’ll have to sit with the players,” Dawn explained. That made sense. It would be even weirder if a teenager was sitting with the coaches rather than the other players. “There’s usually a seat in the back that’s open.”

“Thanks.”

Dawn nodded as she gave me one last smile as we both ducked into the room. I wasn’t too surprised when heads turned to stare at me as I left my bags by the door before I sat in the back left row. I tried not to let their stares bother me as I turned my attention to Jill. Jill wasn’t going through anything other than what I expected, just how we were going to have a tight schedule and what she was hoping to get out of this camp.

“One last thing before you can go! I have called up Jo Knox,” Jill announced as she peered over the others to look at me. I nodded as I avoided everyone else’s eyes. “I know some of you might not want to get along with a fifteen-year-old, but please make her feel welcomed. I’ve watched her on the field, and I think she’s got something special. You’re all free to leave. Jo, if you’ll stay behind.”

I waited in my seat as everyone else moved to leave. It wasn’t until most everyone else had left the room that I finally stood up. I moved to the front of the room as Jill was talking to one of the assistant coaches, but she turned her attention to me when I got closer.

“Hi, Jo,” Jill greeted me. I only gave a small nod in acknowledgement. “Look, I don’t want you to focus on being the absolute best right now. I just want you to focus on getting settled in and getting used to the team. Think you can handle that?”

“Yeah, of course, Coach.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Jill said. She held a keycard out to me. I took it before sliding it into my pocket. “You’ll be rooming with Becky Sauerbrunn. Becky will help make sure that you study for school. I know that you have final exams coming up.”

“Yeah, I’ll make sure to study,” I nodded. It was one of the only reasons my parents had let me come to camp anyways. “My parents gave me certain grades to get on my finals anyways if I want to come back to camp during the school year.”

“Just don’t stress out too much between soccer and school. Don’t need your play suffering because you’re too stressed out,” Dawn said from the side. 

I looked over at her before I nodded. I knew that she was right. I really didn’t need to stress too much about everything. 

“You want to know a secret?” Jill asked. I looked back over at her before slightly nodding. “I already plan on calling you back up for the next camp, okay? I know that this is going to be a stressful camp for you with it being so close to the end of the school year and you joining the senior squad. I just wanted to get you into camp so you would have an idea of what it’s like. The only thing that will keep me from calling you up for the next camp is you getting injured. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“All right, all of your gear is in your room. Ryan’s got everything up there for you. We’ll get you into media here in the next couple of days,” Jil said as she looked over at the rest of the staff. I guess they weren’t all coaches after all. “If your gear breaks or wears down, including shin pads or boots, you tell Ryan and he’ll help you get new gear within the same day.”

My eyes landed on the man who sent me a small smile and wave. I guess that was Ryan.

“Okay, cool.”

“I think that’s about all that I have for you. I’ll let you get settled in,” Jill said as she sent me a small smile. “I’m sure the girls are dying to get to know you. They’re probably waiting on the floor to bombard you with questions as we speak.”

I nodded at that before I gathered my bags and headed to the elevators. I didn’t have to wait long for an elevator. Once I was inside the elevator and by myself, I sighed as I watched the numbers climb higher. I wasn’t entirely sure what was waiting for me at the top though. But I definitely didn’t expect for a majority of the players to be standing in front of the elevator doors staring back at me. 

I shuffled off of the elevator but I didn’t try to push past any of the older players.

“Hi,” I said as I rubbed the back of my neck and looked down at my shoes. I really needed to get new shoes. And ones that weren’t hand-me-downs from Deliliah.

“God, you really are just a kid.”

I looked up to meet Megan Rapinoe’s eyes as she finished the statement. I only shrugged my shoulders. It wasn’t like I could change the fact that I was fifteen.

“So, are you any good, kid?”

I could only stare back at Abby. I mean it was Abby Wambach. I slowly nodded as I realized everyone was still looking at me for an answer.

“Well, I mean, I think I am at least,” I said as I rocked back and forth on my heels. “I’ve been playing with people older than me for all of my life.”

“Oh, yeah? How much older?”

“Well, I started playing with my club's U16 team when I was 12 and then I moved up to the U18 team when I was 14.”

“So you’re a prodigy?” Lauren Cheney asked. I only shrugged my shoulders at that.

I wasn’t sure that I would call myself a prodigy. I put in a lot of work into my game, but it did feel like soccer was in my blood. Like I was meant to play this game.

“As if some pipsqueak could get a ball past any goalie worth being on a national team.”

A lot of the players in front of me turned to the voice that came from the back of the group. A few even glared at the person. I could only look anywhere else but at the woman who had made the remark as she narrowed her eyes at me.

“I don’t think you could even get one ball past me.”

A few of the older players started to scold the woman while the others muttered amongst themselves.

“I think the coaches would beg to differ.”

All of the older players went silent as all of their eyes turned back to me. I still refused to make eye contact with any of them or even look at the woman as she pushed her way to the front of the group.

“The opinions of our coaches doesn’t matter if the facts state otherwise.”

“What facts? That I’m fifteen? I’m smaller than you?” I asked as I finally met Hope Solo’s eyes. “Everyone underestimates me. Everyone. And I thrive with the underestimations. And tomorrow, during practice, you’ll underestimate me and you don’t even know what I can do. You have no idea if you should or not. But you’ll do it anyway because of how small I am. Because of my age. And when I get that ball, every single touch will matter. And nothing you do will stop that.”

The two of us only stared at each other as Hope towered over me.

“Hey, break it up!” A new voice called out. Most of the women moved to the side, but Hope didn’t budge and I refused to break eye contact with her now. “I said break it up.”

Hope didn’t move. Not until Christie Rampone put her hand on the keeper’s arm.

“Just don’t be surprised when I crush your dreams tomorrow, kid.”

I watched Hope’s back as she turned and walked away from the group.

“What’s going on here?” Christie asked. I only moved my gaze down to my feet again. I didn’t want the eyes on me. Not like this. Christie’s gaze moved from me to the rest of the team when she realized that I wasn’t going to say anything. “I thought I told you all to back off the kid for now.”

There it was again.

Kid.

That’s all I was to everyone. Just some kid who had no idea what she was getting into.

“The kid’s got balls.”

I didn’t care who had said it as I pushed my way through them all so I could get to my room.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hope wants you to take penalties against her,” Jill said as she looked down at me. I had my hands on my knees as I was trying to get my breath back after I had ran the length of the field to get the ball back before taking it back toward my team’s goal myself before I had gotten the assist. “You okay to do that?”

I stayed quiet as I nodded my head. I knew what she was doing. Hope either figured that I would chicken out and refuse to take the penalties or she would be able to stop them.

“No one can stop me,” I said as I stood up to look Jill in the eye. “That’s why you called me up, isn’t it? You saw that no one had an answer on how to stop me at the youth levels.”

“I called you up because you have potential.”

“You don’t have to lie to me,” I said as I looked over where most of the team was. “You can tell them that your decision was based on potential, but don’t lie to me . And now you’re curious to know if Solo can stop me.”

“I’ll admit, I’ve been a bit confused as to why Hope wants to try to humiliate you,” Jill said as she looked over at Hope. “But I did call you up because of the potential. I mean, if you’re already able to play the way you currently are and you’re only fifteen, what can you do in a year after playing with the best women in the world?”

“I want to do the penalties. I want to show them I’m not just some kid who can’t hold their own.”

Jill turned her gaze back to me as she stared at me for a moment. I knew that practice was about to wrap up so it made sense for us to do this now anyways.

“Gather up!” Jill yelled, causing most of the players to turn to where we were standing. “Just know that Hope added an extra stipulation to it.”

Jill tossed me a water bottle as everyone on the team gathered around Jill.

“We’re going to have a penalty shoot out! five shots just like an in game shoot out,” Jill announced. A few of the players groaned. I wasn’t sure if the team had to do something like this a lot or not. “Today’s shoot out will be a little different, though. Solo in goal for all five while Knox shoots them all. Majority wins, just like in a game. If Hope saves 3, outfielders run extra laps. If Jo makes 3, goalies run extra laps.”

I didn’t miss the way some of the older players were muttering to each other about the rules. This was quite unfortunate. If I somehow wasn’t able to make 3 of my penalties then I was really screwed because I knew that the older players would absolutely hate that I hadn’t been able to back up my talk from the previous night and be the reason they had to run extra.

“Line up!”

Everyone else moved to the midfield as Hope headed for the goal. I trailed behind Jill who picked up a ball.

“You really want everyone to hate me, don’t you?”

“I really want to see if you’re as good as you think,” Jill said. She glanced over her shoulder at me. “Score 3 of them and none of them will hate you.”

I sighed as Jill handed me the ball before she moved to talk to Hope. I stopped at the penalty spot before I placed the ball how I wanted it. I eventually moved back when I was sure that I had the ball like I wanted it.

I waited for Jill to finish talking to Hope before she moved to the side. I tried to ignore all of the eyes on my back. It was just a penalty, I didn’t even have to get past any defenders. I waited until Jill blew the whistle.

Then I waited one more moment as I finally picked my spot.

I rushed toward the ball before I put as much power as I could behind the shot. The ball sailed perfectly into the top left corner as Hope had just missed the ball by less than a fingertip. I didn’t miss the cheers behind me. I grinned even as Hope glared at me.

I stopped the ball with my foot when Jill kicked it toward me before I picked the ball up. I placed the ball back like I wanted it before moving back behind the ball. I waited until I heard the whistle. This time I didn’t give Hope any extra seconds as I was rushing forward as soon as I heard the whistle. The ball hit the top left corner again.

This was going well for me. I already had two of the three goals that I needed. And Hope hadn’t been able to stop even one. I took a deep breath as I placed the ball on the penalty spot for a third time.

I gave myself an extra moment again this time, but this one lasted even longer than the first time I had taken an extra moment. I just needed one more in the back of the net. This time the ball fired off of the sidebar before knocking into the goal.

The posts were still rattling as Hope threw a glare at me, but I only smirked and shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t actually care about myself having to run, but I had wanted to prove that I knew what I was doing. And it definitely helped that I had gotten to show off against the Hope Solo in the process.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“That was an amazing game,” Julie Foudy said. I grinned at the praise that I was receiving through the headset. “Tell me about it from your perspective.”

“You know, I just wanted to go in and show everyone what I could do,” I shrugged. It was true. I had really just wanted to show what I could do at this level. “I didn’t exactly expect to get a goal coming in so late if I’m honest. But I’m happy to have been able to help the team get the win.”

“And your first cap and goal comes against Canada. That’s got to be an amazing feeling,” Julie said as I nodded. It really had been amazing. “Knowing what our rivalry with Canada is like and having played them before. It’s a great game to get your first cap.”

“Yeah, it was definitely incredible. I don’t think I could have asked for a much better opponent to get my first cap against,” I said. I glanced over my shoulder where I watched as the rest of my team was headed to the locker rooms. “It’s definitely different getting to play in the game rather than just watching it on TV. And if today was any indication of how hard the games against Canada always are, I’m looking forward to future games.”

“Well, do you have any plans when you get home? I mean, you just got your first cap and it’s time for summer break.”

“Uh, not so much as fun plans right off the bat. I have finals to take when I get home,” I admitted. I rubbed the back of my neck at the reminder. “After that, I don’t have many plans other than soccer. Might take a trip to the lake sometime over the summer if I’m lucky. Just have to see what my summer schedule turns out to look like.”

“All right, well, I’ll let you get to the locker room so you can celebrate your first cap with the team.”

I gave the camera one last wave before I pulled the headset off and handed it off to one of the crew members before I headed down the tunnel. I was a bit surprised when I stepped into the locker room only to have water dumped onto my head. I couldn’t help the grin that broke out on my face though as a lot of the older players cheered around me.

“Okay! Okay! Settle down!” Christie called out. She had a ball in her hands as everyone settled down. “We have the game ball for Jo to celebrate her first cap and her first goal which gave us the win over Canada!”

Everyone cheered again as Christie handed me the ball.

“Go ahead and say a few words, kid.”

Everyone went quiet again as I rolled the ball in my hands. I wasn’t even sure what to say.

“I’ve been watching this team ever since I could remember. Some of you, I’ve been looking up to ever since I was a really little kid. Some of you, I’ve only been looking up to you in the most recent years. But it has always been a dream to get to play with this team and it’s been amazing to get my first cap with such an amazing group of women,” I said as I looked around the locker room. “I really can’t wait to get more training time at camps and work with all of you even more. And I guess the last thing is, I’d like you all to sign the ball so I can always remember who was here for my first cap.”

It didn’t take long until I had the ball back in my hands after the team had passed it around to sign it. Now I was standing in probably the only person in the locker room who still had a bone to pick with me. I held the ball out to Hope as she stared at it.

“Come on,” I said as I only pushed the ball further toward her. “It’d be a shame if I didn’t get the whole team to sign the ball. And last time I checked, you’re part of the team.”

Hope rolled her eyes but she took the ball from me before signing it. I grinned once Hope gave me the ball back.

“I still don’t like you that much.”

“You don’t have to. You just have to be my teammate.”

[satancopilotsmytardis]

Universal Tongue

Pairing: Shigadabi

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Commissioned by @norsetenko, Dabi has been the science officer on the ESV: Ingenuity for three years, their vessel currently undertaking a five-year-long exploratory surveying mission. He never tires of going to new planets and seeing new things, though it's usually from a distance in the initial sweeps. But the jungle on this one is too thick for their rovers or drones to breach, which means he has the rare opportunity to go planet-side himself to collect his samples. Unfortunately for him, a heavy storm rolls in fast, and his pod is trapped in the mud.

Fortunately for him, there is a cave system nearby to take shelter in. And very, very fortunately, the strange reptilian humanoid who lives there is open to negotiating sharing his shelter for the time being.

Contents: Absolutely inaccurate sci-fi bullshit, language barrier, voice kink, brief descriptions of violence, anal sex, oral sex, xenophilia, non-human genitalia, double penetration, organic lube, oral fixation, tail fucking, grinding, cumming untouched, multiple orgasms, wet and messy, size difference

Word Count: 19,435

The ESV: Ingenuity has been his home away from home for three years. Exovin Explorations became his home at eighteen when he decided that even being on the same planet as his father and his constant belittling was too close. He put up with it getting so much worse for the two years that it took for him to study, improve his health, and eventually apply and test to join the program. It had been a grueling process to train his body, heavily scarred and stapled together from when he'd gotten into one of the labs at the Endeavor Institute of Interstellar Advancements and had gotten caught up in a volatile reaction. But he put everything he had into doing it, and had made it.  And the day he'd gotten his acceptance letter, Toya had packed his shit and left.

He went through his basic training, broke off into his specialized training, and at twenty, he had been assigned to the crew and the ship he would be acting as the Science Officer on. Burning the letter that had been addressed to him from his father trying to make him 'give up on a stupid dream' and go back home to at least be somewhat useful at his father's company, had earned him the callsign 'Dabi' and he had all but put 'Toya Todoroki' into the flames too. His official ID doesn't even say 'Toya' anymore, and of the names that he could have gotten saddled with, he's really not begrudging Dabi as his new one. 

"You almost ready, Dabi?" Spinner's voice crackles through the earpiece that's already comfortably in place as he finishes making sure that his suit is fully sealed from head to toe, and his full case of equipment is in order. At least he didn't end up with a name because everyone watched him fuck up the calibrations for one of their machines to the point it spun so fast it nearly decapitated someone. 

"Yeah, I'm doing final checks." He responds. 

Compress's voice crackles through next. "The radar is showing a forming stormfront about ninety miles off." 

"Are we postponing?" He doesn't really do a good job of keeping the slight disappointment out of his voice. The only reason he's getting to go down to the surface of this planet ahead of schedule is because the jungle biome that stretches across the southeastern quadrant of this continent has such dense vegetation that none of their rovers have been able to get in, and the canopy is too dense for their other sensors to scan. So far there haven't been any signs that the planet wouldn't be habitable to humans, but until every section is cleared, they're not supposed to go down to start cataloging anything for possible use. This mission got special clearance and Dabi always loves taking his first step onto a new planet, so he was excited to get to do so before everyone else. 

"No, it's still a ways off and it seems pretty localized, just collect the early samples." There's a wry warning in that tone, because it's been three years and the rest of the team on Ingenuity knows that he can, and will, immediately get distracted by any alien flora or fauna that he sees that is especially different from anything he's ever seen before. 

"... Am I still being dropped off in the lake?" Based on their scans, that's the only place that he can get dropped if they don't want him to have to hike into the jungle himself. He chooses not to comment on the warning as he ensures that he has his extra case of specimen jars just in case. 

"Yes." But he can practically hear Compress rolling his eyes.

"Cool," He secures his gear and gets into the single-person pod and straps in. "Starting launch procedures." 

It still takes another couple of minutes for his vessel to be lowered out of the belly of their ship. They've been holding just outside the gravitational pull of the upper atmosphere for the better part of two weeks now, and Dabi is excited to get to watch the descent out of the windshield as the pod slips lower and lower, into the cloud layer and then beneath it. The path that Compress programmed for his descent is smooth, though he does see the dark clouds and crackling lightning of the distant storm raging as he goes. 

It only takes a few minutes for his pod to be half-submerged in the lake, and with just a few flicks of switches across his control panel, it is starting to putter to the nearest shore. When he gets to the shoreline, another switch is able to get the mechanical legs to unfold from the chassis and bring it just up to the tree line before he checks in again, "Landed without issues. I'll be disembarking to collect air, soil, and water samples." He says mostly for the official logs. Then he pushes his luck just a bit. "Should I set up a collection container to try and get a sample of the rain in case it gets here?" 

Compress sighs. "We'll see. It's going to depend on how fast the storm moves. Be careful." 

"You got it, Cap." 

He disembarks with his specimen bag in tow and starts by collecting some of the rich earth that's on the bank of the lake. One of the best things that he's learned since he started training for this position is that life on other planets, no matter how strange it is, is also all so similar to one another. Planets with carbon-based lifeforms, which is Exovin's primary interest, are all made of the same building blocks no matter what else has changed. In the soil he takes from the bank, he sees that it's mixed with clay, and when he moves up a little closer to the tree line, he's greeted with with plants with pale woody trunks and tall splayed branches, though the leaves on this planet are extremely dark-- nearly black-- and fanned out in large bunches. The shape is different, the color darker than anything he'd ever seen on Earth, but he knows that he'll find cells in these leaves that aren't all that different to what he would find on Earth.

The little insects that he finds skittering around are all mostly clinging to those trees, steadily making their way upward to find a feast in those dark canopies, and the sounds of life filter in from every inch of the world around him. The buzzing of flying insects, the distant songs of birds that have chirps and whistles lower and longer than the ones that he's heard before, and the rustling of leaves above that make it abundantly clear that there are other creatures moving around in the foliage. He begins to take his samples, letting the pack on his hip begin to run a diagnostic on the makeup of the air. The gravity, according to their tests, is about one percent higher than the gravity on Earth, but it's not really noticeable as he moves around. Gathering the samples he was supposed to take is easy and quick, he's finished in twenty minutes before he asks for clearance to set up a way to collect water from the rain. 

He tries to find a spot that hopefully won't be too intrusive and begins to set that up as well before Compress's voice crackles in through his speaker again, "That stormfront is starting to move and it's picking up speed. Finish up what you're doing and return to the ship." 

"Got it." He doesn't dilly dally, though he wants to. He's the first human to ever set foot on this planet; he cannot be blamed for being curious and wanting to catalog literally everything he finds. They have another nine planets in their quadrant that they're supposed to finish doing these initial surveys on over the course of the next two years, and then they'll report all of their findings back to Exovin and return home for a year of rest and reevaluation. After that, they'll hopefully be given clearance to go to the planet that seemed the most likely to be able to sustain interplanetary resources and spend a few years there where he'll be able to explore and catalog new life to his heart's content. But for now, this little jaunt will have to do. He finishes up and starts to move back in the direction of his pod as he starts to hear the distant crackle of thunder. 

He's just stepping out onto the bank as a cavalcade of movement starts to come from alongside it and Dabi half tucks back into the trees to hide from whatever creatures are trying to take cover from the oncoming storm. The beasts that come through have six legs, and he's guessing they stand nearly as tall as a giraffe, their eyes are set into the sides of their skulls and their bodies have long, irregular stripes of white and gray across them, the color darkening and growing more solid as it reaches their heads which must be up in the canopy most of the time. The herd of nearly a dozen of them are moving fast as they go, and for a minute, Dabi is caught up in the majesty of seeing a species that it's possible no one else has ever seen before. 

And then they plow into his pod. 

"Shit!"

"Dabi? What's happening? Your pod just sent a distress signal--" Spinner's voice comes through sharply worried, but Dabi is just wincing as he watches the herd of megafauna trample his pod into the thick clay at the bank of the lake. He doesn't dare try to shoot them or set off an alert out of fear of starting a full stampede, and instead resigns himself to watching the metallic structure sink a third of its body into the earth. The pods are sturdy machines and he flicks a heads up display to switch to a live feed to show the rest of the crew on the Ingenuity what's happening. 

"Oh dear." Compress's voice sounds as shocked as Dabi feels, but then he starts to troubleshoot as the herd moves on and Dabi chances slipping back across the freshly trodden earth to get a look at his poor pod. "Spinner, are any systems reporting significant damage?" 

"No, it looks like everything is still intact, but two of the legs are wedged into its body like this. I might be able to remotely activate the third to try and dig it out, but I'm not sure." 

Dabi moves around to the side of the pod that may be able to help-- "The foot is underground on this side too." He warns before the other can activate it and make the situation worse. "I'll dig out this side and we'll go from there?" 

"You need to get inside for now," Compress tells him. "The storm is moving fast, the winds are charting at category four." 

"I can't get in," the pod would be the safest place to take shelter, "The hatch is buried--" he takes out one of the smaller drones that he has in his kit and launches it, sending it to scan between the trees and the rest of the area, looking for shelter for him. His readout is more simplistic than the ones they should be getting back on the ship and in a matter of minutes, he's seeing a strange blob of a structure about half a mile from the lake. "Is that a mountain range or a cave system?" 

"Both," Compress tells him. "It's the only enclosed structure within walking distance-- Do you think you can make it there?" 

Thunder rolls through the sky and Dabi's chilled just from how that noise has silenced the insect and birdsong. "Yeah, moving now." He has supplies to last him a week in his pack, just in case of something like this, and he knows how to set up for basic survival in case of situations like this, he'll be fine. He starts to make his way through the jungle again, having to turn on his headlamp even though he hates making himself a beacon for predators. He doesn't have a choice if he doesn't want to make this whole situation even worse by breaking an ankle tripping on a root. 

Dabi moves as quickly as he's able to through the foliage, but it still takes him ten minutes to find the cave system he's being guided to, and by that time, the rain has already started to fall thick and heavy. He ducks inside of the opening, large enough that he's got at least another six feet before hitting the ceiling, and calls his little drone back to him from where it must have been scanning the full system. The little bot takes a few minutes to come back as he checks in with the others on the ship. 

"I'm here, looks like it's high enough that hopefully it won't end up flooded with the rain." 

"Alright, good, it looks like there might be some thermal vents deeper down, so make sure to run a full air quality test before you remove your helmet-- if you need to." 

"Got it." He moves a few yards deeper into the cave and then does get out his on-site testing kit and starts to test the air quality and the soil and water samples he'd gotten from near the lake. If rainfall like this is common, then those samples should show him if there's anything particularly dangerous for him if he's exposed. 

It takes about twenty minutes for him to determine that the air is breathable and that the rainfall must be something truly torrential during these storms from the minerals he finds that have been deposited in the water through the erosion of stone. But it's not dangerous in it of itself. This is a perfectly habitable planet for humans and at least twenty three of the seventy eight cataloged species who work with Exovin. Spinner, a gecko-like humanoid called a Varqix, would actually love this part of the planet based on the temperature and humidity levels.  

Dabi takes off his helmet and cuts off his oxygen tanks to ensure that he doesn't waste what he has, just in case, as he sends that information back up to the ship. He settles in to watch the storm and run any other tests that he can on what he's gathered so far. He doesn't know how long this will last, but at the very least he can be productive while it's going. 

///

It's been about two hours with the sky still a riot of activity drenching the planet below, when Dabi's proximity scanners built into his suit start to beep. He glances up at the mouth of the cave, turning on the flashlight built into his wrist to see if there is a creature that calls this place home that he needs to be mindful of. But there's nothing at the entrance. He reluctantly turns to the deeper darkness of the cave and shines his light there, but he doesn't see anything coming from that direction either. The proximity alarm goes off more insistently, and Dabi hates every atom in the universe that has led him to this point as he preemptively brings a hand slowly and shakily to cover his mouth before he takes a timid breath and looks up towards the cavern ceiling. 

The hand was a good call, because even anticipating something being there, does not let him fully trap the scream that tries to tear out of his throat as that ring of light falls over the edge of the creature watching him from the ceiling. The alien is clinging to the rock, its skin as pale as the tree bark outside, and easily ten feet tall, and even longer than that as he sees its long serpentine tail coiling around one of his legs and across the irregular cragginess of the cavern. Its head is swiveled around to look down at him, solid red eyes from lid-to-lid save for the dark spot of his pupils. It's definitely a reptilian species, given the more slitted nostrils that are part of his nose and the longer slits that extend his mouth past the place it should naturally close at the corners. The creature opens its mouth and puts two rows of wickedly sharp teeth and that exaggeratedly large mouth on display in a frankly terrifying show, but Dabi has training for this.

He fumbles to push the button on the neck of his suit, and before the creature can drop down to hurt him. The speaker in his suit crackles to life and it starts to chirp out different ways of saying 'safe' in as many languages as Exovin has been able to register throughout the decades of interstellar travel. It takes about nine of them before they hit one that has the creature tilting its head and clicking back lowly. His translator locks onto those sounds and the earpiece he's wearing hums back to life. 

"What are you doing in my den?" The speaker translates the low growls and chuffs that make up this creature's language and the sound that his translator chooses to use is rude, frankly. The creature was already terrifying as it lowers itself from the ceiling. His body is mostly humanoid and densely muscled, his hands and feet ending with four digits on each, though his hands have one finger that is longer than the rest that seems armored, all of the appendages having wicked talons on them. Long white hair spills across the creature's scalp, reaching across its face, over its shoulders, and halfway down its back. Its long tail slithers languidly across the ground towards Dabi's things and he does his very best not to flinch as his translator takes in the language sample it's received and extrapolates a bit more to work off of from the language that the creature seemed to recognize. 

"I'm sorry to intrude," he starts carefully. The creature tilts its head to the side slightly as his translator parrots the words back in its own attempts at this guttural language, though it doesn’t make his voice as deep as the speaker made the creature’s. "I got caught in the rain and was looking for somewhere safe to stay. I don't mean you any harm." 

The creature listens, and then responds, "Do you feel safe here, little one?" 

Dabi does his best not to bristle, not wanting to potentially get himself into any more trouble. "From the weather? Very." 

It tilts its head to the other side, its tail swishing languidly across the ground as it looks down at him. "You don't belong here." Dabi is about to ask for clarification, but the creature goes on, "The sky egg, on the bank, that is yours, yes?" 

There's an immediate relief from that. At the very least, if the creature knows that it's possible for other creatures to come from their sky, he isn't going to have to handle first contact with a species that's going to be convinced he's a god or demon, or something else absurd. "Yes, I was visiting to learn about this planet," he gestures at his kit and the little vials of soil and cuttings of plants he was trying to process, "When a herd of six-legged tall creatures with long necks knocked it into the mud." He explains carefully. The translator will get better the more they speak and the more information it takes in from the other creature. 

"Aindrul," The creature tells him, and the translator tries to run that species name through their databases, but it comes up blank. It really was a new species then.

"Aindrul," Dabi agrees. "I can't leave until I can dig out part of my ship." He explains. "And I can't start to dig until the storm stops. I was hoping that I could stay here until the rain stopped? Then I'll go on my way. I'll do my best to stay out of your way." He will do his best to not annoy the creature with too many questions, though he has a million. Their scans of the other parts of this planet didn't show any signs of civilizations, which must mean that if this is the dominant species on the planet, then this species must not be very social, to the point where any information about culture that Dabi can learn will be especially interesting. It's always fascinating to hear about the cultural practices of species that are so completely different from humans. 

"...That is a long time to linger, little one."

Dabi frowns slightly, "Does the rain on your planet last a long time?" 

The creature frowns at him in return. "This is the storm of the tri-moon." He explains like Dabi is a child who should know better. "The rain will fall until the three moons are high over the lake." 

Dabi has to run some calculations in his head based on what Magne told him. She's their navigator and focused astrologist. This planet has four moons, none anywhere near the size of Earth's, with mostly two being visible at a time depending on what phase all four of them are in. Three can happen, but it would have to be the next time that they lined up to all not be waxing at the same. He tries to remember more specifics, but it wasn't his area and he was definitely more focused on and excited about the plant and animal life to have been as interested in the moons. "How long is that?" 

"A month, little one." 

Dabi blanches and the creature chitters at him. The translator picks up on the sound, but just informs him that it means 'sympathy, comfort' when his distress is so apparent to the creature. The planet rotates its sun a little faster than Earth does, the days are a little shorter too, but not by very much. Enough that a month here is three weeks of his time. Three weeks. Oh shit. "I, uh--" 

The creature chuffs at him again and then turns to start to go deeper into the cave, "You may stay so long as you do not get in my way, little one. But when the rain clears, you will leave, or my hospitality will end in a far less pleasant manner." 

His translator beeps to alert him that he was threatened, but the words and the slight growl to them was more than blatant enough for Dabi to pick up on that on his own, thank you very much. "Right, thank you!" He calls after the creature as he disappears into the dark. 

Dabi sinks back down to the cavern floor and pulls his helmet back on, calling back to the crew. Oh he is so beyond fucked. 

///

No one is happy to find out how long he's going to be stuck planet-side. It throws a wrench in their schedule, of course, requires a bunch of reports from Compress, and will definitely make him have to do a shit ton too when he gets back to the ship, but that's the long-term fuckery he has to deal with. In the short-term, Dabi is in a tight spot as far as rations go. He has a water bottle that is made to filter out any potential parasites, bacteria, toxins, and the like from just about anything he puts into it, and the rain itself is already, according to his tests, not too different from rain water on Earth, so he feels pretty safe about that. but he isn't as certain about food. It's standard practice for anyone on an away mission to take a week of rations with them, and he has that. He can stretch that as much as he can, but it won't be pleasant. What becomes far more pressing is that, as he gives these updates to the crew and they try to figure out what his next steps are, Dabi starts to notice that the temperature is rapidly decreasing. 

An aerial scan proves he's not insane about that, and the reason he's noticing it even in his thermal suit, is because it's dropped twenty degrees since the rain started two hours ago. The cloud cover is apparently so thick that any light and heat from the planet's sun is being dispersed in the upper layers of the cloud cover, leading to the ground cooling rapidly. Dabi is going to be in a rough spot if it gets too much colder at night even with the supplies he has. 

He talks to the rest of the crew for a few more minutes, but it's ultimately decided that he's probably best off going and talking to the reptilian alien again to see if it could tell him anything about surviving these harsh conditions. Dabi hesitantly starts to move deeper into the cavern and calls out, "Excuse me?" 

His voice, and the translator's approximation of it in the new language rings out around him, as he moves deeper, and it only takes until he's gone maybe thirty feet before he starts to feel more warmth in the air. Their scans didn't say this structure was connected to a volcano or anything like that, but Compress did mention there were other geothermal vents somewhere within the system.

"What is it, little one?" The voice comes from higher than he's expecting as he finds himself stepping into a wider cavern, an oblong chamber that seems to have a hole in the ceiling that's been dug out at an angle so that water can drain into what appears to be a carved pool in the floor. He turns to the left and sees that the creature has dug out a section of the rock too, about five feet up from the floor, and seems to have made it into a burrow. It's filled with leaves and other foliage from outside and the alien had been tucked into it, but now is poking its head out from the opening to watch him intently. 

"My name is Dabi," he tells the creature. "Do you have a name?" 

The creature waits for the words to be translated and then responds, his voice a low rumble that buzzes through Dabi's skull, "Tomura Shigaraki." 

Which gives Dabi a little more information about his species than he expected. "You have a clan name? Do you have a family?" 

"No. What do you need, little one?" 

"I'm sorry," He waits for the translator to repeat that, not wanting to offend the creature with his misspoken words. "... I wasn't prepared to be trapped through this storm. I wanted to know if there's any time when the rain lets up? I was hoping I could try to gather some supplies." 

"There are short lulls." The creature tells him. "Do you have enough to wait a few days for that? If so, I will take you hunting with me then." 

Relief goes through him, "I'll be good for a few days. Thank you, I really appreciate your hospitality... Shigaraki?"

"Tomura." 

"Tomura." He hesitates but still asks, "You told me before about the aindrul, I'm a human, what is your species called?" 

"Kir." As soon as the species is said, his equipment starts to run it through the database, but like the aindrul, this one turns up nothing. 

"Thank you. Humans... tend to like company. We like to talk to each other and spend time together when we're cohabitating with other species. I can do my best to make myself scarce if that's something you want, but if you're open to it, I'd like to know you more while I spend time in your den." 

The kir listens to the translator make his language understandable again and then considers him, its tail moving languidly where it's hanging out of its burrow, long enough that it's dragging against the cavern floor. "We can talk, little one, but not now. I spent the day preparing for the storm and I wish to sleep." 

"Oh! Okay," Dabi straightens, "I'm sorry if I woke you." 

"Humans apologize a lot." The kir remarks, pulling its tail up into the burrow and shifting so that the bulk of the pale body is hidden. 

"Can I ask one more question before you go to sleep?" 

"Hmm?" 

"What sex are you?" 

"...Are you looking for a mate, little one?" There's amusement in the deep growl of the creature's voice as it lifts its head to half turn back to him and pin him under that strange red-eyed stare. 

He hopes his burns hide the heat that goes to his face, "No, I just wanted to know what pronouns to use." Pronouns are hard across species, some not having any concept of them at all, and others having dozens with the punishment for getting them wrong being execution. But he would like to know so that he can report back to the others with as much detail about the kir as possible. That should help to make identifying this species against their database, if it's been entered under a different name, a little easier. "I'm male, I use he/him." 

"As am I, you may use the same for me, little boy." 

"I'm an adult," he stresses even as he starts to move back towards the cavern entrance so that the kir can sleep. 

"I suppose that means you won't get any bigger, what a pity for you. A little one forever." And Dabi cannot believe he's barely talked to this creature for ten minutes and he's being called short and a baby in one fell swoop. But the kir is amused instead of annoyed with him, and given the wicked claws and sharp teeth that he has, Dabi would rather be a source of amusement than a source of nourishment. 

Dabi leaves his main chamber and goes back down the long tunnel to the entrance, the air getting colder and colder again as he does. He is quiet as he packs his equipment back into his kit and brings it with him this time as he returns, taking out the small thin thermal blanket that is in his pack of supplies and trying to curl up as comfortably as he can on the hard rock floor. He sends a written report of the conditions, what he's learned about the kir, and then settles in as he listens to the storm rage in the distance and tries his best to fall asleep on the hard ground. 

Oh, this is going to be a hell of a time for the next three weeks. 

///

Dabi wakes, with something poking at his shoulder what feels like five minutes later, and he immediately palms the trigger in his suit that will electrify the outer layer to make whatever's touching him drop him if it proves to be hostile. Tomura sees his eyes open, and he takes hold of Dabi's arm, pulling him off of the floor. 

"Wha--" 

"Your teeth are chattering so loudly you're keeping me up." The alien pulls him, blanket and all back into the cavern and brings him over to his burrow. Before Dabi can say anything else, his tail coils around his waist in two thick wraps that covers him from sternum to the tops of his thighs. And when he's held tight by his tail, Tomura lets go of his arm so that he can use his claws to climb back up into his bed, pulling Dabi up with him. 

"Wait--" 

The kir chitters at him, and his translator doesn't have a word for the sound, so it simply tells him 'exasperated'. He pulls Dabi into the burrow, and even with the larger creature inside with him, it is big enough for both of them, though the kir curls his body and tail around him, tucking his blanket up tight between them too. He looks over Dabi, who is still a horrible cocktail of bewildered and humiliated, and then he tucks his head into his arms and closes his eyes, a very low purring starting to hum through his body. It's so low that it's a mild hum, but so deep that it rumbled through the kir's entire body and into Dabi's too. His translator tells him 'soothing, contentment' and Dabi really does mean to protest. But the burrow is filled with layers of soft material, grasses, leaves, and a strange shredded pale fluff like the head of a dandelion, which is much softer and warmer than the stone he was laying on before. Maybe the kir can be a communal species and aren't for some reason during the storm. 

This alien clearly feels empathy and has gone out of his way to express kindness, no matter how pushy that ended up being. That's a good sign, he reminds himself as he tries to relax against where his back is resting against the creature's long tail. There are plenty of creatures in the wide universe who don't feel or express those sentiments at all, regardless of species. He's a lot better off if he's trapped on a planet where this one would see his discomfort and choose to help him instead of leaving him to suffer or killing him for the inconvenience. 

He settles in and closes his eyes, listening to the creature purr and their deep even breaths echoing softly in the burrow. 

///

The next morning he finds the kir has already slipped out of his burrow by the time he's woken, and isn't in the cavern where he can see him, and Dabi does ensure that he checks the ceiling immediately as well. He checks in with the others first, 

"Good morning," 

"Morning sunshine!" Magne answers back. She and Twice should have taken over for Compress and Spinner in the past two or so hours, and she still sounds fresh and cheerful. "How are things planet-side? How's your big, scaly roommate?" 

"It sounds like it's still raining," he tells her, glad that his suit has enough lightly glowing element for him to see by even without using his full flashlight. "And he's nice. Any luck looking up his species?" 

"'Kir' didn't trigger any of our systems," she tells him apologetically, "but if you can get him to hold still for a scan or get a sample from him, we'll run it again." 

"I'll see if he's up for that." But probably not right now. The creature is already putting up with a lot from him. He doesn't want to push his luck and outstay his welcome when he apparently has weeks left of this. "Any sign of the storm letting up from there?" 

"Not that we can tell. The winds have held at forty miles per hour for the past few hours, but it hasn't stopped thunder storming. Sorry, firecracker." 

"Tomura said he'd take me with him to get supplies," he tells her instead. They had no idea that this storm would be a persistent problem, and there was no way they could have predicted that his pod was going to get smushed into the ground by the aindrul. There's no reason to linger on it, especially when, at the moment, there doesn't appear to be any significant and immediate threat to his life. "He also has definitely seen a ship and stuff before, because he's not really confused about it. Didn't Proximacard Multinational also do a brief tour of this sector? Any chance that we can send a request to them to try and find out if they logged the kir?" 

"I'll reach out, but it'll probably take a week or so to hear anything." 

"Not like I'm going anywhere." 

"I guess we can't abandon you there." She contemplates with a sigh. "You're the only one who gets excited about soil nitrates." 

"They're important!" 

"You have enough battery for long-range calls for two weeks, so we should start to ration your battery." She says, quickly deflecting from the rant he's definitely gone on before. He always had the doubt in the back of his mind that he would never see another world, so every small piece of these other planets he's gotten to explore has excited him. Even after years of it, every part of each world is a new, delightful mystery to unravel and observe. 

They talk for a few more minutes, deciding on stretching it to the four weeks they hope they'll need by only having him call in once every two days, Ingenuity time, and only for five minutes unless there's been a significant development. The only other calls he'll make are for emergencies. They'll keep an eye on the storm and let him know if the cloud cover thins enough and the lightning pauses long enough for him to leave before the tri-moons are in the sky. When they've done that, the call ends to start preserving his battery and Dabi carefully moves to the edge of the burrow and lowers himself down to the floor. That's not too difficult to do, though it was a little unnerving to back out of the opening and into the barely-lit cave without being able to see it, but he gets onto the ground without any trouble. He leaves his blanket up there. He doesn't know if it's going to get warmer again or if it will stay so chilled throughout the rest of the storm, but if it stays cold, he'll probably need to sleep there with the kir until he's able to leave. 

He moves out of the chamber to go back to his kit and he finds Tomura sitting on the floor, his tail coiled around his legs, as he looks at all of his little specimen jars and tools. His kit is three interconnected cases, one with tools to gather his samples, one to put his electronic equipment, and one with his supplies, like sample jars. His planet-side standard pack is also there and has been opened as well. 

Tomura has laid out everything from each of the packs in neat, clean rows that seem to correspond with which pouch or pocket he'd taken them out of. 

"Hmm, you know, I would have been happy to show you my things if you'd asked." It's not even really an admonishment. He doesn't know this creature, he doesn't know his customs, he's not about to tell him that to humans it was inappropriate for him to touch his things without asking. 

"You sleep for a long time, I will put them back when I'm finished." The creature picks up one of his ration packs. "This is... food?" He hasn't opened any of them as best as Dabi can tell, so he thinks that the kir must have just smelled the food through it. 

Dabi sits down with him on the cavern floor. "Yeah, I need about one more week's worth of food to last through the storm without discomfort." He won't starve, that's not going to be an issue unless things get really, really fucked, as far as the storm and his departure plan go. 

Tomura gently crinkles the package that looks tiny in his hand, especially with his one long armored talon. "...Does your food have to be... dry?" 

"No, our rations are dried so that they last longer without going bad. I can eat food with moisture in it." 

Tomura hums and puts the package back down on the neat pile of them. Then he turns his attention to the cuttings and other samples he'd taken the day before. "What are you doing with these?" 

"I'm a scientist. The group I work for has people, like me, go to different planets to try to learn more about them. I came here to take a few small samples so that I could bring them back to the bigger ship and see what they're like and how they grow." 

Tomura hums and picks up one of the jars with a cutting of a small plant he had found growing at the base of the trees. "Be careful with this one. When it's mature, it releases a cloud of burning dust." 

Well. He's glad to have found that out now rather than later and Dabi picks up the little tablet that Tomura's already laid out and scans the lid of the jar and makes a note about that. "Can you tell me about the others?" 

The tip of Tomura's tail lifts from its coil and swishes across the floor slowly and Dabi has hung out with enough cats to know that's a sign of aggravation, though he's not sure if it's something reptiles do as well. Though he does purr. Maybe he's got a little cat in him too, spiritually. "Why does your group want to learn about my planet?" 

Well, guess he does have to do this part of the pitch, though it's really his least favorite thing to have to try and make sound appealing. "We want to find planets that are safe to explore and learn more about. Not just humans, like me, but lots of different species who want to see new worlds. My crew just visits for a very short amount of time to find out what other species could come here for longer research studies. Sometimes the planets we visit only have a little plant life and some wild animals, but no people. When we find people already living on a planet, that other team will visit and talk to them to see if they can be allowed to study there." He explains carefully and then waits for the translator to do its work. After another beat he adds, "Do your people have a government that the other crew can contact?"

"We live alone, unless a mother is rearing her young, but a group could be assembled to meet these other people." Tomura doesn't say anything else about that topic and instead picks up one of his laser cutters that's no bigger than a pen. "Is this a weapon?" 

"I guess it could be, but I use it to take samples of things that I can't get with my clippers," he points to those and then puts his hand out for the laser cutter. Tomura hands it over without protest and Dabi picks up a loose rock from the ground, sets it in an empty space between them and turns on the cutter. He still can't hold his hand still enough to get a perfectly sliced line, given the flare of the laser can't cut anything more than three inches from it, and even touching the rock, Dabi cannot draw a straight line to save his life, but Tomura still chitters when the stone splits in half as Dabi finishes. 'Interest' his translator tells him. Dabi puts the laser back into the row Tomura had it in. 

"Do you have the means to hunt?" 

"Not really," he admits. "Humans don't usually have to hunt, and I'm a scientist," he says again, "I'm not normally supposed to hurt the plants or animals I find on a planet." 

Tomura considers that. "You should stay put then, little one. I'll bring back more food." 

His face burns but he doesn't protest. He doesn't know what other kinds of creatures call this jungle home, and he has no idea if he'd be able to keep up with Tomura, especially if he crawls through the trees the way he's so easily able to scale the cavern walls. "I'm really sorry about causing you so much trouble. Thank you so much for everything you're doing to help me. Your hospitality is greatly appreciated." He hopes that the mechanical chitters and chirps that the creature hears are able to express that sentiment clearly. Things would be much worse for him if he was alone, sitting here watching the rain fall and talking to the crew, sure that it would let up soon. 

Tomura listens to the clicks and his head tilts to the side slightly, still pinning him under those strange red eyes. "You're welcome, Dabi. You're a... curiosity. It's worth a few small inconveniences to sate that." The kir starts to put back the items in his kit, and yeah, they were laid out so he's able to pack them back inside exactly as they were. Dabi is guessing that if he didn't wake up, he wouldn't have ever even known that Tomura was in his stuff. "Do you eat meat?" 

"I can, plants too, but I'll probably have to cook them, my teeth aren't as sharp as yours." He just means for it to be an easy explanation, not really wanting to see if this creature knows about the risk of germs and parasites that could be in the meat of the other animals he hunts, but Dabi finds himself stiffening suddenly when a large hand shifts to his face.

The kir's skin is cool against his own and, Dabi finds, is covered in fine scales along the back , the palm tough, smooth skin. his long taloned finger rests against the side of his neck, as his two others hook under his chin and his thumb moves to his lips. He pulls gently on his bottom one. Tomura makes him bare his teeth and then clicks softly in the back of his throat. 

"Much blunter." Dabi's entire face goes hot as he pushes his large finger between his teeth, testing his canines lightly against his skin. Holy fuck. his thumb is the size of three of his own fingers and Dabi really doesn't even know where to start with the inappropriateness of this touch, but he really doesn't want to examine it either because then he might have to worry about the inappropriateness of the flickering warmth that goes through him at being manhandled so easily by this creature. "It's a wonder you can chew anything at all." He takes his finger out of his mouth and lets go of him and Dabi has to grapple for a second with that misplaced heat. Fuck, yeah it's been years since someone put something in his mouth like that, but he really doesn't need his body misbehaving like that. "Wait here, I'll bring back enough for you to eat." He instructs. 

Before he leaves though, he shows Dabi around the other parts of the cave system. A bit deeper in, there is a large pool that is being filled from three vents dug into the ceiling to let the rain water flow into it, creating a pseudo shower and bathing area, that Dabi is happy to be shown, because that means he will at least be able to be clean and clean the clothes beneath his suit while he's here as well. He shows him two other paths, one that goes deeper into the mountain that they can retreat to in case of flooding, and the other as a secondary exit in case the first is not viable for any reason. Then the kir leaves him to his own devices and goes out into the storm. Dabi watches him go, but with his coloration and the rain so thick and heavy, he loses sight of the alien in a matter of seconds as he takes off into the trees. 

///

Dabi's been alone for a few hours. The cave, even though the sky is still black save for the flashes of lightning splitting the sky, has warmed up significantly since last night, and he thinks that means he'll at least be safe during the day to take off his suit and just wear around his standard issue black thermal sweats and gray t-shirt for a while. He goes and tests the water in both chambers to see if it will be safe, bringing a small electric lantern with him. This, at least, has enough battery to last for months at a time given the simplicity of the device, and it makes it so much easier for him to see by. There are no notable parasites or dangerous contaminants in either of the pools, so Dabi does fill up his water bottle and let those filters take care of any additional microbial contaminants. He also goes back to the creature's bed and finds a few little foot holds in the wall and uses those to step up high enough he can actually look into the bed with the lantern. The cavern he's carved out for himself in the wall is an oblong shape with a domed ceiling that is at least nine feet deep and about four and a half feet tall at the highest point of the ceiling. It's been stuffed full of leaves and dried grasses like he'd noted before, but he is more interested in the white papery stuff. He takes a little sample of that out, putting that in the jar he has, and then reaching to touch it without his gloves. It feels soft and papery, and he figures the shreds of this must be what gives the rest of the bedding its fluff. 

He goes back to his equipment and sits down, beginning to go through his samples one-by-one, and doing whatever field tests he can with what he has on hand, writing everything down as neatly as possible in an actual notebook by hand. At least this way he'll be able to photograph these pages and send his work back to base during his next check-in to save power. And he waits. 

///

It's starting to get chilly again and he's gotten back into his suit when Tomura comes back into the cave. He hears the change of the cadence of the falling rain and gets to his feet, going to greet him at the mouth only to find himself gaping as he sees the large predator dragging an even larger animal behind in his tail. His arms are full of round, nearly bowling ball sized fruits, and he's completely drenched, not that that's a surprise, with his long hair plastered to his face and down his back. 

"Little one," he greets, but moves past him, inclining his head to get Dabi to follow, which he does, a good yard and a half behind him as he tries to take in what he can of the beast that the other killed. This creature also has the pale coloring that the other animals on this planet have had with the majority of its body being white, and pale shades of gray, in splotches and stripes, but the back and head of this creature is dark like the canopy above, the color split like that of a shark. It is a quadrupedal creature that he guesses must live among the higher tree branches because its feet and hands are structured the same, like with monkeys and chimps on Earth. It also is scaled rather than furry though, and its corpse is bleeding sluggishly as it's dragged deeper into the cave from the wounds in its neck and side that look like they're from Tomura's teeth and claws, its head rotated at a sharply unnatural angle that Dabi guesses is what actually killed it. 

They move into the main cavern and Tomura drops the beast from his tail and then uses that and his arms to set down and stack the bulbous fruits. Dabi hadn't turned off his lantern when he heard him approaching, and Tomura blinks at the light, but doesn't comment on it. The fruit are the deep red of an apple, though the color is almost uncomfortably uniform across all of them. He expects fruit to have variation in it, and the stunning lack of change aside from a slight difference in size is very strange. 

"Do your tests, find what you can eat. I will take whatever you cannot." 

"Thank you." He really doesn't have better words to express his gratitude for the other creature's hospitality, so he tries to at least just be fast about it. 

Dabi goes and gets his kit and uses his tools to take samples from the beast. He does test the meat, and over the course of the next hour he determines that the meat is edible, and will remain so after it's been cooked. He's glad that he did get survival training though, because as he carefully butchers a section of the large carcass, he feels Tomura watching him from his burrow. He hopes he doesn't look too inept. He has a small flash cooker with him, only big enough to contain 20oz of whatever he puts in it at a time, but it can also work as a dehydrator, and Dabi determines how much meat he'll need to stretch his rations to make it a full month, just in case something else goes wrong. 

He takes what he needs and it's barely a quarter of the meat on one side of the creature's body, then he moves off to the side so that he can work on cutting it into strips and making it into jerky. 

"Little one, surely that isn't enough." 

"I'm little," he says, with some amusement when the creature seems to be admonishing him. "And I don't hunt, I don't need as much energy as you do." 

He huffs softly, but does move over to the carcass himself and begins to take his meal. Dabi watches between changing out strips of meat in the small chamber. Tomura's mouth is large, despite how it looks when he's just talking, and he uses the way his jaw can seemingly unhinge to take large bites out of the creature's body, focusing on the areas that are covered in the most muscle tissue. The two rows of teeth carve deep grooves out of the creature and, like Spinner, he doesn't really chew his food, just making sure the chunks he takes in are manageable and then swallowing them down. He also can, apparently, eat bone, though he does tend to break open the bigger ones first to lick out the marrow with a long forked tongue. It's a little gross to watch, but no different in concept to any wild predator taking a meal, and by the time Dabi has finished dehydrating most of the meat and flash cooking the strip that he is going to eat fresh tonight, the kir has consumed half of the corpse. He purrs and the translator tells Dabi 'content', though he could have guessed that on his own. 

When he finishes with the carcass, Tomura takes the last of his kill out of the cave again, but he takes it through the other tunnel that he showed Dabi earlier and then doesn't come back immediately. Dabi takes that opportunity to have a bite of the meat himself. It has a toughness and a gaminess that Dabi has heard is common in wild game, and has a deeper umami flavor than beef alone usually does. It's definitely palatable and Dabi is certain that if it was prepared with even a bit of salt, it would be an easy staple meat and livestock on this planet if it were ever colonized. He is eating when Tomura comes back after about ten minutes, the blood and gore cleaned from his skin completely. 

He sees Dabi is eating and nods to himself before going over to the fruits. He uses his long index finger to break open a small part of the shell, and given the force he uses for it, and the way that the accompanying crack sounds as it echoes around the room with them, has him guessing they're as hard as a coconut at least. The coloration has also started to wash out slightly, getting less vibrant as Tomura puts the fruit back on the ground and kicks it towards the pool that is still filling with rain water. It rolls easily across the stone until it splashes into the little pool and then Dabi jumps out of his skin as it explodes with a loud pop, spraying a foot around the puddle with displaced water. 

Tomura lets out a hissy little chitter. 'Laughter, mockery'. Dabi glares at him, but the kir just chirps in reply before going over to the shallow pool and fishing out the fruit with his tail. It's cracked nearly all the way in half now, and the color of the outer skin is that vibrant rich red again. The inner flesh looks to be mostly a papery, stringy pulp, but he tears that away and pushes it to the side before extracting a fist-size mass of paler pinkish flesh that's dripping with a semi-translucent fluid before coming to sit down beside him. He offers him half of the flesh and Dabi takes it and puts a small pinch of the sticky flesh into his scanner. It takes a minute for it to work and firstly determine that it's not poisonous. Then it begins to break down the nutritional components inside of it. 

After another few minutes it beeps again and Dabi has to read the output twice to make certain that it's correct. The fruit is rich in vitamin C and D, with nearly double the amount of protein as guava, and it has more than ten percent of Ladreynyx per ounce. Holy fuck. Ladreynyx is one of the most sought-after substances in the wider known universe. It tends to occur on planets that at one point had a higher concentration of radiation, and early lifeforms seemed to develop this secretion to help counteract that and neutralize the negative effects of the radiation, healing their own cells and insolating them from the worst parts of it, so that they could thrive. It's such a hard to find substance, and one that medical professionals want in abundance so that they can test out how much good it can do helping to treat and prevent cancer and other forms of radiation sickness. All of which are becoming more common given how many people are going off-planet and getting exposed to the radiation of different planets and their atmospheres. 

"What's this fruit called?" He asks as he brings a small bit of it to his lips. Ladreynyx isn't poisonous unprocessed, but he is a bit concerned that it may be bitter and medicinal. The flesh has the texture of slightly unripe mango, and a sharp citric flavor that is bright on his tongue, but as he chews it mellows into a softer sweetness that reminds him of dango. 

"Uzut, they can only be harvested during the rain." Tomura explains, seeming satisfied with Dabi eating the flesh. "They wither quickly once they've been removed from the water and the inside becomes foul when the skin ashens." 

"And they explode?"

"Only when their shell is compromised in water. But it is a faster way of getting to the pits. It kills the fish that try to eat them." 

Dabi takes another bite of the flesh and then asks, "And what kind of creature was that?" There is some hesitation in the question. Some species find constant questions unpleasant, some find them outright rude, and he really doesn't want to piss off his host. 

Tomura doesn't get aggravated though. He answers any question Dabi asks him and asks his own in turn as the night gets colder and the thunder keeps booming outside. And they spend their evening talking about anything and everything that either of them can think of. 

///

They spend the next two days together, with Dabi sleeping in the creature's bed with him against the chill, and the kir being as amused and interested in learning about humans as Dabi is about learning as much as he can about this planet. Being on a surveying crew, he doesn't usually get to become so focused on the worlds they visit. Usually, he only gets to take a passing interest, but this, for as unorthodox and unforeseen the circumstances may be, is giving him the opportunity to learn as much as he can about this planet as possible. 

They're sitting together on the floor of the main chamber, Tomura curled around him, his tail easily fully encircling him, though not touching, just close so that he can watch as Dabi lays out his samples in order of what he wrote about in his notebook so that he can send his pictures back to base. He's learned that Tomura can change from being an endotherm to an exotherm, mostly at will, and during the day he tends to be endothermic and delights in having Dabi's much hotter body as a way to soak up some extra warmth when he can. When everything is all ready, Dabi turns his communicator back on and turns off his translator. He doesn't necessarily want the other creature to hear everything that he's saying, especially if they've turned up something interesting about the kir from past expeditions. 

On the hour, the connection opens up and Dabi immediately starts to take and transmit the pictures of his notes before Compress even opens his mouth. 

"Dabi--" he pauses in his greeting as he starts to see them coming through. "I take it you're doing fine then?" 

"Yeah, I'm good. Tomura has been super helpful and very nice." And the creature immediately pokes his head up from it resting on the circle of his arms when he hears his name and enters the frame slightly. He clicks at the screen and Compress smiles at the other creature. 

"That's good." And they launch into the rest of their check-in. No news yet from Proximacard and the storm is as thick as ever from their scans, but other than that, there hasn't been too much disturbance on their end either. They filed the paperwork to deal with the sudden delay in their schedule, and they may be rerouted to dock at the nearest space station afterwards so he can get a proper check-up and they can restock on the supplies they're going to be down because of the delay, but it doesn't sound like they're in any trouble over it so far. 

Dabi hopes they'll be in even less of it when he uploads his notes about the Uzut and their abundance of Ladreynyx. 

///

The storm rages on outside and time slips by. By the end of the first week, Dabi feels gross enough that he needs to bathe and preferably clean his clothes as well. The only thing that keeps him from it initially, is that it's dark and still fairly cool in the cave even during the day, and he's worried that he won't be able to get them dry again. He voiced the concern to Tomura and the kir considered for a little while before he disappeared for a few hours. Then he'd come back with a few strange mud-covered bulbs like that of a tulip, that were as long as Dabi's forearm. Tomura used his claws to tear them open and inside had been a fibrous tissue that Dabi had been able to light with his laser tool, creating a small fire near the second entrance to the cavern that he could use to dry his clothes over. That was a fantastic bonus, but he wasn't prepared for the kir to follow him into the second pool to bathe. 

His face had heated, but he stripped down anyway, only leaving his translator, the speaker wrapped around his throat, and the earpiece in place so that he would be able to understand what the creature said as he bent over the pool and sunk his arm in up to the shoulder. He pulled up an egg-plant shaped fruit from inside of the water, that was bleached as white as so much of the vegetation that grows near the ground on this planet. He squeezed it, and it started to ooze out a thick viscous liquid that smelled strongly herbaceous, and Dabi had to pull his clothes back on to run a sample through his scanner to determine that it wouldn't melt off his skin before he'd accepted it. 

It definitely wasn't quite soap as he was used to it, but the way it lathers and how it does help to leave his skin clean in a way he guesses isn't dissimilar to the way bitter ginger nectar can on earth. He washes himself and his clothes, and then wraps himself up in his thermal blanket as he waits for them to dry. And Tomura stays with him, his eyes linger over his body, but Dabi can't begrudge him that. He's been looking at the alien's body whenever he can, fascinated by every inch of pale flesh and patch of scales, the curve of muscles beneath, his single armored finger on each hand, his sharp, bright eyes and large, dangerous teeth. Tomura is far from the first alien species he's ever interacted with, but this is different from meeting a foreign species in one of his classes or on an established planet. This feels... special. So he doesn't protest when he finds the creature's strange eyes lingering on any patch of his skin, and when he chitters at him inquisitively about the scars littered across his body, Dabi explains what those are too. 

It's especially amazing how he takes that in stride and it doesn't change the texture of his glances. There is no pity that sours his looks. It's been a very long time since Dabi met someone who could manage that.

///

The first week is the most difficult, and even then, it's only a challenge because they are starting to put together a routine. Not because there is any real hardship. He learns that aside from hunting when he's hungry, something he usually only has to do once a week given the volume of what he eats during his meals, Tomura spends most of his days sleeping. It's not uncommon for species that haven't developed other kinds of entertainment, and since the kir are intensely isolationist to maintain their territories, they don't have any kind of society or trading. Dabi talks a little about his, how humans are a social species, how they have laws and things that they have to abide by so that they could invent agriculture and industry. He's not trying to convince the kir that is the way things should be done-- the earliest humans who wanted to explore the stars had definitely tried that, and there are chapters after chapters dedicated to them in every textbook for every beginner course on space travel that talks about how they were slaughtered for trying to colonize other sentient races. Which is why Exovin's policies are to make contact and enter discussions, meeting the dominant species on their terms before anything else. 

Tomura asks about how humans live on Earth and in their societies, so Dabi tells him. And in turn Tomura tells him things about his species. 

"Our mothers lay and hatch a clutch of usually two to three young at a time." 

"You have siblings?" 

"One, a sister. I haven't seen her since we left our mother's den when we were of age. I believe she makes her territory in the desert." 

"Will you ever visit her? Or your mom?"

"No, females are fiercely territorial. She would probably tear off my head long before realizing who I was." He chitters, but the translator says he's amused by the thought, so Dabi figures that his species must not get lonely, must not crave connection the way humans do. "Do you have siblings?" 

"Yeah, I'm the oldest of four. I have one younger sister and two younger brothers." And on and on their conversations go. 

Tomura doesn't seem to have any concerns about having their long talks, especially not when Dabi doesn't protest to him wrapping around his body the same way he does when they are laying together in his burrow at night. And Dabi never protests, even when he is made to feel so small because Tomura's voice is always so low. It rumbles through his chest in his chitters, growls, and purrs as he speaks, and they send a low, steady hum throughout the room. The vibration of them as he speaks sometimes makes gooseflesh crawl along his skin... and sometimes it puts a little heat there too. 

Dabi really does his best to not think about that, but he can't quite help it. He recognizes the growl that he lets out when he says 'little one' even without the translator now. Fuck, maybe three years without any sexual contact that wasn't his own hands is more than he thought it was. He never broke down or hooked up with any of the others, though he thinks that they may have been on and off throughout their voyage. He wasn't usually aching for it, but something about Tomura, something about the way he watches him, the way he leans in close and speaks too him so low that Dabi can feel the echoes of his voice in his own chest, that's making the celibacy a far more noticeable inconvenience. 

But he doesn't know how the kir mate, and he is not about to ask. Besides, he's damn sure that Twice and Magne won't let him live it down if his 'first contact' has to have the 'Kirk Clause' added to his final report. 

///

At the midpoint of the storm, the howling winds, crashing thunder, and torrential rain somehow get even worse. His check-in isn't until tomorrow, but Dabi has a sneaking suspicion that they're getting into a severe enough storm that tornados would be possible if this were Earth. He asks Tomura if they have tornadoes here, and he seems flabbergasted by the concept, which leads them to discussing the different natural disasters that they can have on their opposing planets and Dabi watches Tomura dig out another little hole in the side of the wall, easily breaking through the stone and scraping away the contents.

He had been thinking, given it was a smaller structure, that it was going to be a bed for him, because the kir wanted him out of his space, but when it's finished, it's just big enough for Dabi to store his kit and suit so that they aren't tucked off at the side of the room anymore. Tomura still lifts him into his bed at night and holds him close as they sleep, his purrs rumbling through them both.

///

It's still cool and late when Dabi wakes hearing his communicator chirping frantically from its place across the room. Tomura grumbles, but unwraps his tail from around Dabi's body, relinquishing his hold around his waist as well when he recognizes the sound. Dabi slips out of his burrow and goes over to retrieve his tablet, taking it into the bathing chamber so that he doesn't disturb Tomura any more than he already has as he answers with a yawn, 

"Hey Mag--" 

"Dabi," her tone is strained in a way that has him sharply shaking the last lingering threads of sleepiness. 

"What is it? What's going on?" 

"Are you alright? Tomura hasn't hurt you?" 

He blinks. "No, of course not-- Why?" 

Her face is pale and drawn as a file comes through for him. "We got the communication back from Proximacard. They registered the dominant species as REH-129, and marked the planet as 'unsuitable' for foreign life because the species was extremely hostile. Six of their people died." 

Dabi opens the file, trying to make sense of what she's telling him. He mutes the video file that's been attached to the report, leaving the subtitles on, and watches as the Proxima crew lands and starts to comb the jungle, taking their own samples and exploring. It's sunny and bright in the video, but the footage has clearly been edited down to show the first contact with-- Tomura. There's no mistaking the creature. He knows his eyes, his hair, recognizes the way he holds himself as he looms over the crew in one of the trees and clicks and snarls at them. He asks them who they are, why they're in his territory, and Proxima tells him that they've arrived to enter the planet into the rest of the interplanetary community, they say they're looking for useful things, that they want to find the government if there is one here, they hold themselves firm and strong in the wake of Tomura's increasing agitation. 

They open fire when he moves too quickly into their space. The phaser blast hits his skin and dissipates across it harmlessly. And Tomura opens his mouth wide enough to show off all of his teeth before he lunges. The footage is shaky and awful then, a horrible blur of violence as he watches Tomura easily tear through their suits, through flesh, as he cuts down the members of Proxima. They learn quickly enough that they need to run, and the last of the footage shows Tomura dragging their dead deeper into the jungle. His stomach twists. 

Based on the feedback they were able to get from the suits, he'd eaten a fair amount of the remains before the signal stopped transmitting. 

"They tried exploring other regions and they found the other REH-129's to be as aggressive if not more so." She warns. "Are you sure you're safe there?" 

He was positive of it up until ten minutes ago. "He hasn't ever hurt me." Is all he can think to say. He doesn't want to elaborate too much about how close they've been so far. 

"That may not always be the case. The Proxima members who survived their other interactions found that phasers didn't work, but electricity and laser weapons could do some damage. If you need to protect yourself--" 

"Okay." He cuts her off, his stomach gone sour from this new knowledge she's saddled him with. "He hasn't made any aggressive action towards me. He said his people are territorial-- they don't even visit family members to keep out of each others' space. They may have just been scared of how many people were showing up in their domains." He tries weakly. But that doesn't take away seeing how bloodthirsty Tomura could be if the mood struck him. 

Magne doesn't look satisfied with that. "Make sure you're wearing your monitor for your vitals, alright?" So they know if he gets killed. It's not as if they can get down here to help him if they think he's in trouble. 

"Okay." He agrees, but they don't stay on the call much longer than that. He doesn't return to bed for a long while. 

///

He can't help but keep replaying those clips over and over in his head as Tomura stretches and readies himself for the day. He yawns wide and shows all of his too many teeth-- and then he licks his lips like a cat when he's finished. He tilts his nose up and scents the air, opening his mouth again to get an even better read on the room, and Dabi sincerely hopes he can't literally smell the discomfort under his skin. 

"Hmm, I'm going out to hunt. I'll bring back a feast for us, little one." 

He has never felt so relieved to be alone as he does now. "Oh, you don't have to worry about me--" 

The creature titters at him in that low grumble, leaning down a bit to nose at his hair for a second before moving on. "You will like what I return with." He promises, and then moves out to the edge of the cave. "Stay in this chamber. The weather may be worse before I return." If Tomura had said that yesterday, Dabi would have asked if he had to hunt today, or if he could hold off until things got a little better, but he doesn't now. Now he's worried about what Tomura will do if he gets hungry, so he says nothing. He goes and Dabi tries to put it out of his mind. 

 It's worse than failure when he watches the videos over, and over, and over again, as if that will somehow make the horrors he's seeing less real instead of more. 

///

He's alone until it's starting to get cold again, and Tomura returns with his kill. He made sure to bring the same creature as the first time, knowing that Dabi can eat that too, and an array of other fruits. He waits patiently for Dabi to test them to see what he can eat and what he can't, and he does have to put one aside for containing a nearly lethal dose of arsenic around any of the flesh that touches the seeds. But otherwise, he's able to try the four that are presented to him. Tomura watches him, his tail slithering languidly across the floor, a constant purr in the back of his throat. 'Happy' the translator tells him when Dabi lights up as he finds one of the fruits tastes like fresh strawberries and citrus. 'Content' it says as they eat together. He tries to pretend that he isn't scared when his mouth opens to tear into meat and fruit with the same ferocity. 

Tomura takes the remnants of their meal and disposes of them and he wonders if he goes to the spot where he dumps the remains of his kills, if he'll find anything he can bring back to the ship of the Proximacard crew, something to send their families, maybe. He tries not to think about that. He waits for the other to clean the blood from his skin and return and he cuddles up in his burrow with him when they're both full and starting to really feel the bite of the cold air as the storm rages on. 

///

Dabi wakes to Tomura nuzzling into his neck and purring loudly, he shifts a little to hit his translator, usually leaving it off at night to save battery, and is immediately told 'hungry', which sends ice flooding his gut. 

"Tomura," his voice is thin with his sudden, sharp terror as the kir coils his tail tighter around his body, pinning his arms to his side and forcing him still as he nuzzles in closer to his neck. His tongue flicks over Dabi's skin as he takes a deep breath, scenting him more thoroughly than he ever has before. 

"You smell so good, little one." He purrs, nuzzling his skin again. "Smelled like this all day. What's different, Dabi?"

'Hungry' the translator tells him again as Tomura purrs, the sound of it rumbling through Dabi's body and trying to shake loose his arousal alongside the fear tinging his veins. "I-- Tomura--" He squeaks softly as one of his large hands moves around his waist, slipping underneath his shirt and meeting his skin with cooler flesh and the barest prickle of his sharp claws. Tomura's tail moves, trying to wrap a little tighter around him, as he shifts so that they're not laying curled around each other anymore, but the other creature has his weight over him. And his tail drags over the inside of his thighs as it rearranges itself, putting a pressure somewhere that's had none for so long. Preparing to die by being eaten alive is really not the appropriate time for his body to start to warm, but Dabi lets out a whimper as it happens, two sharp spikes of heat in his cheeks as he feels his face begin to blush. 

The translator clicks something out in Tomura's language and Dabi stiffens, terrified of how that was translated. Tomura hears it and then lets out the loudest, deepest growl that he's ever heard from him which should be pants-shittingly terrifying, and instead only makes Dabi's body go a little warmer from hearing it echo around the enclosed space. His hands are firm as they pull at him, forcing Dabi onto his stomach and before he can ask what he's doing, he's got one of his elongated, armored fingers between his teeth. his mouth stretches around the intrusion as it pushes into him, back until it's filling him, the tip making his throat flutter as it sits just at the point of breaching him. It's been long enough that he's had something there that Dabi gags weakly, his head going into a dizzying spin of terror and arousal. 

Tomura presses his face into the back of his neck again as his tail wraps around one of Dabi's thighs and pulls it up, making him tuck it between his chest and the floor, his other hand around his hip and pulling those up and back so that he's spread wide. 'Hungry, hungry, hungry' the translator tells him, but Tomura is growling and purring. The hand that isn't in his mouth moves over his hip and up his back, pushing his shirt up with the movement. 

"I thought that things may be different for humans-- but you smelled so good, little one. This is good, isn't it? This is what you're hungry for, isn't it, Dabi?" His voice ripples through him and Dabi doesn't know how to think past that sound, past the fullness in his mouth to find fear when Dabi is hungry. Hungry in a way that the translator doesn't understand in its coolness. Not for either of them. 

He moans weakly around the intrusion in his mouth and timidly rocks his hips back. The growl that Tomura lets out has Dabi's cock hardening as the kir presses in even closer, putting his hips flush to Dabi's ass. But he's never seen the other's sex organs, and he can't feel anything now. He whines around his finger, licking and sucking at his claw, and making the alien purr even louder as he does. He doesn't protest as he pulls at his waistband and the sweats and his boxers slip over his hips, leaving him open and exposed to the other, his cock already half hard. 

Tomura purrs and leans in close again, nuzzling against the back of his neck as his hips move against Dabi's bare skin again. And this time, he feels something slick starting to spread over his skin. It's hot and viscous, and Tomura's tail uncoils partially from his limbs so that the thin tip can move between his legs. It pauses on its way to his hole, finding his cock and rubbing along him. "That's it, little one. I'll give you what you need." 

Dabi feels certain he's going to when that tail leaves his cock, which has him whining and reaching his hand between his legs to touch himself, as his tail slithers over his balls and to his hole, spreading around more of that slick over him. He's happy to have it because all too soon, the tip is prodding at his center, nearly as wide as two fingers and Dabi is moaning again. It's been so long since he's had anyone else touch him there and he is desperate for it now. Has been desperate for this creature's touch since he first caught his chin. He tries to stay relaxed as his muscles are rubbed at gently. For all that Tomura is so large, such a violent predator, he seems to know how to be careful where it counts and Dabi will take that if he can get it. He still doesn't know what the other's genitals look like and he's not even sure if they're compatible like this, but he's willing to try. 

The tail spreads that slick inside of his hole, moving against him in serpentine, undulating motions that makes all of those nerves light up in a way his own fingers haven't been able to since he's been on this excursion. His tail isn't like his fingers, it's so much longer and it gets perfectly thicker as Tomura feeds it into his body inch by inch. He had been hoping for a cock, but Dabi won't complain if this is what he gets instead. He squeezes himself at his base when Tomura's tail rubs just right and he finds his prostate, the loud moan that comes out of him is muffled around his finger as his whole body goes tight and he jerks his hips back against the alien's strength to try and get more of that sensation where he wants it. 

Tomura growls again and that does not help Dabi's leaking cock. Fuck. It's been so long since he was fucked-- he's pretty sure he's not going to last very long at this rate. He forces himself to let go of his aching cock, clutching onto handfuls of the bedding instead as Tomura's tail thrusts inside him a few more perfect times. He feels helpless, useless in the creature's grasp, and tries to show that he can be worth his time, sucking on his finger, swallowing around him, and running his tongue along the chitin-like armor plates along it, careful of the sharp tip of his claw against the sensitive tissue inside of his mouth. It earns him another low purr and his tail starts to retreat. 

He wishes he could speak, but his talon is too deep in his throat for him to manage it, instead whining as he's made suddenly empty. Dabi tries to push back, wanting to be fucked full desperately, and going stiff as he feels his ass rub against Tomura's hips. It hurts a little and he has to nip at his finger to get him to pull back just enough so that he can peek over his shoulder, but as soon as he does, he thinks his brain may melt. 

Like most reptilian races, Tomura has internal sex organs. Or internal until they're needed, and they both need them now. The two cocks are pressing out of a slit between his legs, stacked on top of one another, thicker than Dabi's and longer too, proportional for his body, but holding the same familiarly phallic shape that he expects. There are bumps along the top, ridges that move up his lengths to frame his head, and he's soaked, that thick slick dripping translucent from his heads and his slit. He whimpers. He wants to be full but-- but they're so big. 

Tomura's other hand cups his ass, pulling him open wider, his thumb brushing the edge of his flushed, puckered hole, and opening those stretched muscles again so he can dribble more of his slick inside. "Such a pretty color, little one." He purrs and makes Dabi tremble as his voice sinks that praise all the way into his bones. He presses forward, his heads rubbing against his hole, and he goes absolutely breathless with his anticipation. There's no way that he can fit both of those inside. A thin panic starts to go through him, terrified he'll be torn open, but the kir seems to recognize the tightening of his hole as nerves, seems to see the difference in their size, and he shifts to just focus on his lower member, letting the other glide between his cheeks instead as that blunt head starts to push inside of him. 

His cock is thicker than the amount of tail he was given, and the stretch, even through the slick, makes Dabi moan. Tomura starts to chitter too, purring his pleasure, and the translator can only tell him 'good' and 'hungry' as the kir slowly feeds his first cock into Dabi's body. He hopes that the other understands how good he's feeling as well, and tries to lave his tongue along his finger like he would if he had one of those thick, gorgeous cocks inside his mouth. It takes a moment before he's inside as deeply as he can go, purring the entire time. But once he is, he starts to gently rock his hips, and that immediately makes Dabi desperate for it. He doesn't know if he's ever wanted to be fucked harder in his entire life, and he can't stop himself from trying to immediately twitch his hips back to get more. 

For a split second he thinks he must have done something very wrong because Tomura snarls, his grip tightening everywhere. He's certain for a moment that he's about to die impaled on this creature's cock, but then he's pulling his hips back and snapping them forward into his body. Dabi lets out a loud cry of pleasure, his cock twitching and begging for release as the kir sets to a fast, brutal pace that pushes Dabi deeper into the bedding. 

He's blinded by his pleasure, by the rough thrusts of the other man, and he can't even swallow around the finger in his mouth anymore, drool slipping out past his lips. But as he gets more pliant, Tomura must think he's ready for more, because he draws his hips nearly all the way back on one thrust, and then there are both heads at his hole again. He doesn't have a chance to tighten, to fear, this time because it's a smooth movement, eased by his slick, and unrelenting in the even pace he uses, as he fucks both of his cocks into his hole. 

Dabi has never been this full before. Hasn't ever felt such blinding, perfect pressure against every inch of his inner walls, a constant, hard press against his prostate just from how deeply his cocks are reaching and how wide they're stretching him. And he can't hold on. Dabi gives a broken sob as his balls tighten as he's made so, so full, and he cums all over the creature's bed. 

"That's it, little one," Tomura chitters, his other hand going to Dabi's softening cock and cupping him, keeping his sharp talons far from his skin. "Such a good boy, showing me how good you feel. Show me again." 

He doesn't have the breath, or the use of his tongue to tell the other that he can't again immediately, but it doesn't matter. Tomura keeps fucking him, his cock pushing pleasure along every inch of his nerves until Dabi thinks he might tear around it. And he doesn't stop until Dabi is hard again and moaning and sobbing constantly as Tomura's thrusts and growls go through him and make him so, so hot. He didn't know he could feel like this-- he's never wanted someone like he wants Tomura right now. and it's with a fresh sob that he finds himself going impossibly tighter around the kir's cocks as his own pulses with pleasure as he spills across the bed a second time. 

The tightening of his muscles again seems to be what pushes Tomura over the edge, his hips slamming hard into Dabi's, putting his cocks as deeply inside of his body as possible, and then he snarls. The sound should be terrifying, but it only makes Dabi keen with an animal pleasure he's never felt before, as his cocks twitch and he soaks his insides with his cum. 

It takes so long for him to stop spilling, and by the time he has, both of their breaths are just starting to calm from the way they were echoing around the little burrow. He pulls out and Dabi mewls as he feels the flood of him go down his legs and soak the bedding. But Tomura doesn't seem to care. He purrs and chuffs at him, 'content, content, content', pulling Dabi's exhausted body in close as he licks the tears from his cheeks, but he doesn't take his finger out of his mouth. Dabi doesn't protest it, slumping against his chest and letting himself be soothed to sleep by the happy purrs deep in his throat. 

///

When he wakes again, he's horribly sticky, and still cuddled up tight against Tomura's chest, his jaw aching a little because he still has the tip of his finger between his lips. Dabi tries to shake the last of the sleepiness and reaches up to pull on Tomura's wrist. The kir looks at him, his tail twitching with his agitation, but he hesitantly lets him take it from his lips. A low, clicky, chirp leaves his throat as he does, and Dabi frowns as the translator tells him 'fear'. 

"What's wrong?" His throat feels a little thick, and he really is gross from the mix of sweat, cum, and bedding stuck to his skin, But he does not want Tomura to be scared, or threatened, by him. He doesn't even want to imagine how badly that would go. 

"...Typically, we don't stay with our mate after we've finished." He says carefully, watching Dabi like he might be the dangerous one. "Females try to incapacitate males once they've finished mating. They often tear or bite off their mate's--" 

Dabi blanches. "Humans don't do that," he tells the other quickly. "Humans can stay with their partners if they want to, they raise their young together sometimes, no one gets hurt in our mating unless they want that, or unless... something else is going on that's not okay." He doesn't want to elaborate on that now, not when he's trying to put the other at ease. He catches his hand, lacing their fingers together, running one of his along the heavily armored one. "...You keep females gagged so they can't.. bite?" And clearly evolved this as a way of doing so. 

"Yes... Do humans not eat their mates?" 

"Not like that." Dabi explains. "Why do kir?" 

"Once impregnated, it becomes hard for a female to hunt, if a male can't escape before she's recovered from the coupling, she kills and eats him to sustain herself until she's ready to lay her clutch." He's fairly certain that sounds like the mating practices of some spiders on Earth and arachnid-like races that have been registered. He'll have to ask if female kir exhibit that same kind of sexual dimorphism later, but not right now. 

"Oh. Well, you don't have to worry about that with me. I'm not a kir and I'm not female. Humans don't use our mouths to hurt each other when we have sex, and we mate for pleasure, not just to make children." He explains carefully. A flicker of warmth goes through him. "I can show you what we use our mouths for." 

Tomura considers him for a moment, his other hand coming up to his jaw, his thumb catching his lower lip again. Dabi presses a kiss to the pad of his finger, waiting for him to decide. "Alright, little one. Show me." 

Dabi is still careful and slow as he moves up the creature's chest so that he can start by pressing a kiss to his cheek. His skin there is cool, but not covered in one of the thicker patches of scales that seem reserved for along the tops of his thighs, his back, chest, stomach, and along the backs of his arms. He peppers those little kisses along the seam of his elongated mouth, showing that there's nothing dangerous in the action before he takes a little breath, tries to push aside the flesh he's seen the other rend with his teeth, and gives him one against his lips. Tomura is still beneath him, letting him do what he pleases, and Dabi pulls back a little. 

"We use our tongues too-- just not our teeth. Can I?" He figures he's better off asking than having his tongue abruptly removed. 

"Be careful, you're so delicate, little one." The kir purrs and the sound of his voice, the soft concern in it, makes Dabi want to show him that his softness is good. That he can make it good for the other as well. 

He presses back in and seals their lips together, going slowly, but deliberately as he shows the other how to kiss him back. Tomura still hesitates when his tongue prods lightly at the seam of his lips, and Dabi tries to soothe away that concern by running his hands over his skin, along his chest, down to his waist as he all but climbs on top of the creature instead of just being cuddled against him. Tomura opens his mouth a little and Dabi slips his tongue inside, careful of his very, very sharp teeth. It takes some coaxing before their tongues are moving together, and Tomura's is so much longer and more flexible than Dabi's own, and he tastes like the fruits they'd eaten the night before, though mingled with the staleness of sleep. 

They kiss, and kiss, and the longer it goes on, the longer Dabi proves that his mouth isn't any danger to the other, the more bold Tomura grows, eventually even chancing slipping his tongue between Dabi's teeth and licking into his mouth the same way that Dabi had his. He moans, his cock starting to harden, because Tomura's tongue is longer, bigger, and settles inside with a weight that makes Dabi hungry for something else. 

He pulls back a little and when Tomura sees his cock starting to flush, he begins to purr loudly again, his tail moving up Dabi's thighs to prod at his hole again. Those nerves are so sensitive from being fucked before that Dabi immediately moans, rubbing himself against those questioning little touches, and then watching with his own fascination and arousal as that slit starts to show on the kir again. His skin separates along an invisible seam between his legs and a translucent fluid starts to leak out. His tail moves from Dabi's hole to tease along the lips of his sheath, making more of that slick ooze out, and when his tail is shiny with it, it goes back to Dabi's body. 

He hums, pleasure sparking down his spine, and a recklessness deep in him when he murmurs, "Humans kiss there too." 

Tomura chitters, a sharp surprised sound. "Do they now?" 

"Mmhmm," he agrees, trying not to get distracted as the tip of his tail slips inside. "Can I? Please? I like to lick my partner's cock-- cocks." He corrects. "I promise I don't bite." 

The kir hesitates a second but then lets out a low breath. "How can I deny my mate anything that would bring him pleasure?" And the words alone are doing it for him as he moves down Tomura's body. His tail stays stretching and teasing his hole, but Dabi is mostly focused on how badly he wants to have Tomura in his mouth. 

His heads are just starting to press out from his slit and Dabi gathers some of the slick dripping out across his fingers and gently slips one along the lower head and up into his sheath, just a bit. He glances up to make sure he isn't causing any discomfort, but Tomura is growling and purring as his cocks start to press out a little more. Dabi teases his fingers along and around him, finding the one place of Tomura's body that is as warm as his own. He licks his lips before bringing them to the head of his upper member, and then he licks gently against that sensitive part of his anatomy. The flavor of him is overwhelming. It's a sharp citrus flavor like so much of the fruit here, but it has a musky bitterness to it as well that tempers the flavor somewhat. It's a strange taste to have on his tongue, but not one he'll complain about, especially not when he hears the strained little chirp that the kir lets out as Dabi laves his tongue along him. 

He's more than wet enough with his natural lube for Dabi to be comfortable kissing him along his lengths as they continue to press out until he's fully erect again. And then Dabi leans in, and completely wraps his lips around the head of the upper one. Tomura growls as Dabi moves his tongue over him, reveling in just how soft his skin is. He forces himself to pull off, even though he wants nothing more than to have the weight of him in his mouth, stretching his jaw. 

"Can I keep going?" 

"Yes," The other sounds half crazed, a hand moving to catch his hair and pull him, trying to get more. 

Dabi laughs, pressing another teasing kiss to the one he hasn't sucked on yet. "I can't get both into my mouth, is that okay?" 

"Little one, anything you do with your mouth is more than enough." 

"If I tap your thigh, it means I need you to let go so I can breathe." He warns, but trusts the other not to hurt him, and too impatient to have his jaw stretched open again to wait for confirmation. 

Dabi figures he's representing the whole human race and their persistent love of both giving and receiving oral sex, so he doesn't do anything by half. He does his best to keep his head on and not drift away and just fall into the haze that having his mouth so full can put him into. He moves along his upper length, his hand wrapping around the lower one and stroking him in time with each movement of his head as he slowly bobs down lower, and lower, his tongue working over him. The ridges and texture along his cock feel as good in his mouth as they did when he had him inside of his body before, and he drools constantly against his tongue as he chitters, chirps, growls, and purrs in such a messy string of noises that goes straight to Dabi's cock and has him leaking against his stomach too. 

He lets himself warm up a bit longer before he takes a breath and then sinks down until his head is pressing past the tight ring of muscle into his throat. Dabi can immediately feel the stretch there and it has him moaning, sending those vibrations along Tomura's length and his hand tightens in his hair as he snarls again, his tail in turn, fucking deeper into Dabi's body. He tries to hold onto some sense of rhythm after that, but it feels impossible. He just can't stop himself, moaning and rocking, trying to be fucked from both ends, and Tomura obliges him. He starts to move his hips, lightly at first, but when Dabi sucks and swallows so hungrily around him, the movements get faster, harder, and Dabi is floating, taking in little sips of air between movements and moans as they move together. 

Dabi doesn't get a warning, forgot to say he would want one, when the kir is close. He just gets a sharper deeper flavor of citrus and salt on the back of his tongue, and then Tomura is holding him in place, holding himself deep in Dabi's throat, as he cums. The gush of it makes Dabi dizzy as he does his best to swallow and swallow, but it still feels like there's too much and he taps his fingers frantically against Tomura's thigh. The kir chitters and pulls out, and Dabi feels his cum drool across his chin, as he gasps for breath, moaning from how close he is to his own orgasm. 

Then Tomura pushes his thumb back as far as he can on one side of his jaw and keeps it spread open, "Give me your tongue, little one," he growls and Dabi can't do anything but moan deliriously and open wider, letting his cum-soaked tongue lull out over his lower teeth and sore lip. Tomura shifts, bringing his second, still hard cock, to his mouth and fucking it inside. he doesn't push into his throat this time, but being used like this, just held open for the other's pleasure makes Dabi's entire body burn with his need. He finds himself moaning and shifting, spreading his thighs around one of Tomura's and rubbing his dripping cock against the texture of his cool scales there. That sensation makes his nerves scream, and Dabi chases more and more of it. Tomura fucks his tail and cock into him at the same frantic, unrelenting pace, and in a matter of minutes, his cum is splashing across Dabi's tongue again, and Dabi is following him, cumming hard against his thigh as he tries to swallow as much as he can with his mouth held open. More of it just spills down his chin and onto their skin, but the kir is purring the entire time that Dabi shudders through his orgasm. 

"Gorgeous, little one. So beautiful, so wonderful. My mate," he praises, gently removing himself from inside of Dabi's body. Dabi can't even hold himself up anymore from how good his whole body feels in the wake of his orgasm. Tomura just gathers him up again, and holds him close, licking up the mess from his skin as he purrs and purrs. 

///

They can't keep their hands off of each other once they've started, and Tomura learns to wrap his serpentine tongue around Dabi's cock and lick, squeeze, and stroke him like that until he's falling apart. He delights in learning about his prostate and that his tongue can be as good as his tail or cocks to stimulate the gland as well, and make Dabi feel good too. And they still talk, they still share meals together when Tomura goes out to hunt, and Dabi grows accustomed to the creature purring and purring all day, every day, getting even louder whenever they touch. 

But for as good as the sex is, as kind as the kir has been to him, Dabi knows, and when he goes out to hunt again and Dabi is left with only the dwindling storm as company, he finds himself thinking about that again and again. He sits with those thoughts making him colder and when the other comes back with more fruit and a smaller reptilian quadrupedal corpse, Dabi knows he has to shatter this soft thing between them that feels so good. 

"Tomura?" 

"What is it, little one?" He asks, setting down the food and coming to get into Dabi's space, licking over his cheek as he scents him deeply. 

"...I'm not the first human you met." He says carefully, watching the creature's strange eyes. "Another group came here, right? In orange suits?" 

Tomura's lip curls back and he gives an unhappy hiss. "Yes. They were not like you. They were many and violent. They encroached on my territory," His tail flicks with his agitation. "They wanted to take my land as their own and claim the spoils of it." 

"...You killed them." 

"Of course." He doesn't sound concerned about that, but when Dabi doesn't say anything for a second, Tomura nuzzles in a little closer, chittering at him softly. "They were different from you, Dabi. You came to my home and asked for permission, you ensured you were not hurting me or my land. You met me with kindness, not violence. I will meet you in kind for as long as you stay here with me." He promises. 

Dabi lets out a shaky breath. Well, he guesses when he calls Fuyumi next time he's on the ship, he's going to have to actually thank her for smacking him all throughout high school until he finally grew some manners and tact. "The storm is going to stop soon, isn't it?" 

"You could stay anyway." Tomura offers, "I would never begrudge your company." 

He can't, but the kir seems to know that even without making him reject the offer outright. Instead Dabi wraps his arms around his neck and the other purrs softly before he leans in to give him a kiss. 

They don't eat until, much, much later. 

///

The rain does stop after another three days and Dabi watches it happen with a hollowness in his gut, even as Tomura brings him outside so that he can see the three foreign moons sitting high and lovely in the sky. He sits close to him as he calls back to base and Compress tells him that if he can retrieve his pod, then he should be ready to go as soon as he's able, the kir scratching at his neck almost constantly as he listens. They're already so far behind schedule that they really can't afford to linger, and they're sure he's ready to come home too. The Ingenuity has been his home for years, he should be excited to go back. There's a pit in his stomach as Dabi puts what he's taken out of his pack, back inside, and Tomura ensures that he's leaving with samples of every fruit that he's given him. 

He walks with him out through the mud that Dabi really would have expected to be thicker given how much rain they had, but it seems as though the temperature creeping higher and higher is sending it evaporating and choking the environment with humidity and fog. Tomura keeps an eye out, ensuring no creature is brave enough to try to hunt him. The lake is, unsurprisingly, flooded, coming up to the tree line, but with a press of a button, the submerged pod is able to dislodge itself from the soft earth and crawls up to where they're standing. And then there's really no stalling anymore even though it feels like there's lead in his chest. He's only just started to turn to Tomura when the kir wraps his tail around his waist, and cups his face between his hands and kisses him. Dabi meets it just as desperately. Fuck he's going to miss Tomura. It's a sharp burning ache of that deep in his chest. 

"Be safe in your travels, little one," Tomura murmurs, resting their foreheads together. "And if the moons allow, come back to me again?" 

He feels his throat tighten. Two more years of his trip surveying this sector, then a year minimum back on Earth, waiting with baited breath to find out if this planet will even be considered for deeper study given how hostile the kir can be. Another four months to travel out here again. That's so long. Tomura might not even still be here when he gets back-- if he does. "I'll try. Thank you, for everything. I wouldn't have survived without you and I'm so glad that we were able to meet." He gets up on his tiptoes, and Tomura gives him another kiss. 

"...Be safe, Dabi." He seems reluctant to let go of him, but he has to, and Dabi steps away and seals up his suit and puts on his helmet. 

He doesn't dare watch out the window as he gets inside and does his final checks for launch. He is not gonna walk back into the Ingenuity crying. 

///

When he arrives back, he's immediately put in full quarantine. It's standard procedure for an extended stay on a foreign planet and Dabi subjects himself to it without complaint. Twice has him go through a barrage of medical scans, even as all of them talk to him through the glass like he's a zoo animal about how happy they are he's back. And he is happy to see them again. He did miss the familiar halls, their faces, but he doesn't think he does a very good job of hiding his melancholy. Definitely not when Magne and Compress come to see him at around midnight the third night that he's in quarantine and they pour him a shot before carefully passing it through one of the special hatches in his containment unit, before they both take a seat on the other side. 

"So Twice reviewed your vitals data from while you were planet-side." Magne starts. "I tell you a guy killed six people and you immediately have to get on that as fast as possible?" She teases carefully. 

But Dabi doesn't want to tease, doesn't want to make light of something that felt so... solid. Real. It only was a week and a half and Dabi is pretty sure it's the only romantic entanglement he's had in his life that made him want to stick around and find out how much more that could be. He drinks instead of answering her and Compress takes that as his cue to step in. 

"Dabi, whatever happened on the planet... if you're in need of counseling or assistance--" 

"Wasn't forced, Mister," he says flatly. "Tomura was good to me. He didn't like that the Proximacard crew tried to pull their colonizing bullshit. I was polite, he didn't see me as a threat, and we got close." He puts his cup back into the slot, waiting for it to be decontaminated before Magne can pour him another. "I've started writing my report, I'm being as thorough as possible." 

"...I'm sure there are things that you won't be including in that report. And that's fine, Dabi." Compress tells him gently. "But we're here as your friends. If that's something you need right now." 

Magne pours herself and Compress a shot and then puts the whole bottle in the chamber for Dabi. "Come on, firecracker, tell us about the scary lizard boy you had to hump and dump." 

"He purrs like a cat." He grumbles, taking the bottle when it's relinquished. "And he's got two dicks." 

"Oh, well, I could overlook murder for that too," she agrees sagely and Dabi tries to unravel the knot of sorrow that's been living in his gut. 

///

It's not years before Dabi is touching down far closer to the cave system that he spent so much time in before. It's only six months. Six long, agonizing months negotiating his contract. He'll still have to go back to the nearest base in a year and a half if Tomura lets him stay, and he'll be responsible for trying to find a way of harvesting the fruit of the uzut to try and find a sustainable way of getting more of the Ladreynyx for further study-- but he can stay here if Tomura lets him. 

He disembarks with a shaky breath. He has his own ship now, not a pod. It's small, only big enough for him and maybe one other person, and it won't be able to travel long distances, but it's his, and it can take him away if he's not welcome anymore. God, Dabi hopes he's still welcome. He takes off his helmet before he steps out of the ship, hoping that seeing his face will ensure that he doesn't draw any undue ire from the kir. 

"Tomura?" He calls into the forest, into the cave. Things are so quiet for a second and then he hears twigs snapping, and before he can fully turn, the kir is breaking through the tree line and rushing up to him. Dabi has a split second of terror that he'd mistaken what happened between them, his heart going to have to break before it stops beating-- but then he hears Tomura's familiar purrs as his hands catch his face and his tail wraps around his waist as he's hoisted from the ground so that the kir can chitter and purr at him as he brings their mouths together in a series of frantic, needy kisses. 

"Dabi," his name is spoken with such reverence between the kisses that it leaves him breathless. "You're back--"

"I'm back," he agrees, warmth blooming in his stomach as he curls his hands over the kir's shoulders. "I can stay, if you'll let me--" 

"I regretted letting you go the moment you left." And Dabi thinks, maybe, if he didn't know the other creature so well, that might be a frightening sentiment. But instead he feels so warm. 

"I've been trying to come back ever since. I have obligations, my company wants me to send more samples, and I'll have to leave again for a little while to check in, but I can stay," his voice still goes small. "I can stay?" Because this is for so much longer than before, this is asking a lot of a creature whose race typically lives in solitary. 

"By my side forever, little one." Tomura promises him, leaning in to nuzzle at him and scent his skin. "So I never have to miss you so fiercely again." 

Dabi doesn't know if kir have a word for love in the romantic sense when they barely hold ties to their families. But Dabi hopes that a year and a half to start is long enough for him to figure out how to explain the concept. 

Thank you so much for reading and thank you @norsetenko for commissioning this piece! If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a comment, they brighten my day!

[kallie-den]

Marital Aid Ch. 1

Clea uses hypnosis to liberate her boss, Isabella, from a failing marriage… and awaken her to the life as a kinky lesbian

This story was a commission from one of my patrons! Thank you very much to Myles_EXVS for their kind support

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---

“Clea?” The sound of Bruna’s voice brought Clea back to herself. “You’re supposed to be spotting for me, babe.”

“Right.” Clea shook her head, blushing a little. “Sorry.”

“Hold on.”

Bruna strained and groaned as she lifted the monstrously heavy bar up over her head and placed it back onto the rack. She sat up on the exercise bench, and Clea apologetically offered her a sweat towel to wipe her forehead off with. Clea was a little jealous of just how good her friend looked when she was working out; Bruna had the kind of muscular figure that made other girls drool, and her deep brown, Brazilian skin always glistened appealingly when she was flushed and sweating from exertion. Clea couldn’t relate.

“OK,” Bruna said, after taking a swig of water. “What’s on your mind? Out with it.”

Clea sighed and sat down on the bench next to her. Unfortunately, Bruna knew her too well. The two of them had been gym buddies for a long time, and friends for longer.

“It’s…” Clea didn’t know where to begin. It was far too embarrassing.

“It’s her, isn’t it?” Bruna asked sympathetically.

“Yeah.” Clea planted her head in her hands. “Yeah. It is.”

She didn’t need to explain who ‘her’ was. They both knew.

Isabella.

“Oh, girl.” Bruna threw one of her big, strong arms across Clea’s shoulder. “You’re down seriously bad.”

Clea groaned and leaned in. She didn’t need Bruna to tell her that. Isabella consumed her every waking thought. The reason she’d been zoning out when she was supposed to be spotting for Bruna was because she’d been caught up in picturing Isabella’s smiling face. She’d reached schoolgirl levels of hopeless infatuation.

And there were two massive problems with it.

Firstly, Isabella was her boss. Clea was pretty sure that falling in love with the woman she worked for wasn’t part of a personal secretary’s job description. Workplace romances like that never worked out, and she was sure Isabella was too much of a stickler to ever consider it. There was also an accompanying age gap - Clea was in her mid-twenties while Isabella was in her thirties. That didn’t bother her so much, especially since Clea had such a fondness for older women, but it was yet another obstacle.

The second, much bigger problem was that Isabella was both straight and married.

“Falling for a straight girl.” Clea sighed again, heavier. “She’s amazing, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes I wish I could just forget about all these feelings and move on. It’s so hard, having to be near her, day after day, never being able to act on them.”

“I bet,” Bruna said soothingly. She reached up and started stroking Clea’s long, red hair.

“And the worst part is seeing that she’s not happy!” Clea vented. “Her pig of a husband makes her miserable, I can just tell. Why couldn’t it be me instead? I’d treat her the way she deserves. I’d treat her like a queen.”

“I know you would,” Bruna assured her. She paused for a moment and then turned to look closely at Clea, a cunning smile on her face. “You know, babe, you do have a way of making that happen.”

Clea threw a sharp look up at her. “I don’t even know if it works.”

“Oh, it works,” Bruna told her, grinning. “I was going to tell you afterward. I tested it very thoroughly. I have all the data you said you’d need to make the final calibrations.”

“Yeah, I bet you were thorough,” Clea snorted. “I heard a few rumors about what you’ve been up to with that heiress girl.”

“Now, now. I don’t kiss and tell.” Bruna’s grin took on a cocky, swaggering quality. Clea’s friend loved to kiss and tell. “Anyway, the point is: it’s amazing! I can’t believe my friend knows how to mind-control people. It’s like you’re a supervillain or something.”

At that, Clea laughed. “It’s just a hobby,” she retorted. “I’ve always liked audio mixing and video editing. It started with music videos, but then I got really curious about how different kinds of sounds and different frequencies can affect the human mind. And, uh, I guess one thing lead to another.”

The ‘another’, in this case, was a suite of software and a set of techniques that allowed her to create audio and video files that had a potent, hypnotic effect on the listener. Clea could almost literally reprogram them with whatever commands she chose - at least, within reason and with enough exposure. Clea objected to the idea that she was some kind of supervillain, but admittedly, the description wasn’t too far off.

“So,” Bruna pressed, “why not put all that work to good use?”

“You mean… with Isabella?” Clea frowned. “No. In fact, I don’t even want that experimental data. I don’t want to think about it.”

"Why not? Just think about it! No more yearning, no more heartache. You could have her.”

Clea felt a definite, stirring pang, but looked away. “It’s not that simple.”

“Of course it is,” Bruna countered.

“I-it wouldn’t be right.”

“From what you said about her husband, it sounds like she’d be happier with you,” Bruna pointed out. “Why not think of it as giving her a little push towards a happy ending? You can’t tell me that’s not part of what this was all for. The testing. Your little hobby.”

“It just…” Clea stood up, shrugging off Bruna’s arm, and started to pace. “I don’t know. It wouldn’t feel right. Not with her.”

“Why not?” Bruna asked again, a touch exasperated.

“Because I care about her, Bruna,” Clea replied. “She’s not just a pretty girl I’m looking to get into bed. It’s more than that. I want her to be happy.”

“You could make her happy,” Bruna pointed out. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“Maybe she’s happy right now,” Clea shot back. “Maybe that’s why she’s still with him. I don’t know. That’s the point. I can’t just decide that for her. What if I’m wrong? What if I make it worse?”

“Wow, babe,” Bruna said, raising an eyebrow. “You really are down bad.”

Clea sank back down miserably onto the bench. “Yeah. I know.”

Bruna squeezed her shoulder. “Well, here’s what we’re gonna do,” she said. “We’re going to keep working out until you’re so exhausted you can barely think. Then we’re gonna go back to my bar and get drunk until you definitely can’t think. Sound good?”

“God yes,” Clea sighed.

“Atta girl.” Clea stood up, allowing Bruna to lie back down along the exercise bench, and rest her hands back on the barbell. As she did, she threw Clea one last look. “But just remember: you ever change your mind, and the data’s yours. Just give me a call.”

***

The next evening, Clea’s head was still throbbing from the hangover. Bruna drank hard, and her bar was well-stocked. The headache was a welcome pain. A welcome distraction. To take her mind off of it, and off of everything else, she was preparing a nice, big pot of stew. It would take the edge off her hangover, and give her some welcome nourishment for the week to come. The stew was still simmering on her stovetop, however, when Clea found herself much, much more distracted by a message she’d just received.

Can I come over?

It was from Isabella.

Clea’s boss, the woman she was hopelessly head-over-heels for, had just texted her on a Sunday evening to ask to come over to her apartment. Maybe she should have replied with ‘no’, or ‘I’m busy, sorry’. Maybe she should even have left her on read. There were reasons to. Refusing would have helped maintain professional boundaries, and would have helped Clea stop torturing herself about a doomed romance.

Instead, she had replied ‘yes’ right away.

And now, as she waited for Isabella to arrive, Clea was left with nothing to do but watch her stew simmer and wonder about what, exactly, had happened. She and Isabella had a friendly and warm relationship at work, to be sure. Sometimes they even confided in one another a little - that was how Clea had caught a hint of her marital issues. But suddenly dropping in to visit Clea at her apartment? That was completely unprecedented.

Clea desperately wanted to know why. But with Isabella already on her way, there was nothing for her to do except keep pacing back and forward across her kitchen restlessly, wondering, trying to stop herself from giving in to needless speculation or fruitless hope. Occasionally, she couldn’t help dashing over to the mirror in her bathroom to make sure that she looked presentable. Part of her wanted to put on some makeup, but the knowledge that she’d look like she’d gotten all dolled up on a Sunday night just to stay home and cook held her back.

Eventually, mercifully, the buzzer for her apartment rang.

Clea rushed down and opened the door as quickly as she could, and let out a mourning gasp when she laid eyes on her boss.

Isabella had been crying. That much was obvious from the way her eyes were red from tears and wide with worry. It pained Clea to see her beauty marred by such sadness. She was still beautiful, though. Clea was struck by that every single time she saw her boss.

Isabella Chase was aging more than gracefully into her thirties. Put simply, she had a figure to die for, and looked just as killer in the t-shirt and jeans she was currently wearing as she did in the smart, well-tailored business wear Clea was used to seeing on her. She had a slender, pretty face, with high, arched, sharp cheekbones that somehow became rounded and full when she laughed and smiled, lighting up her whole face. Her short, black, shoulder-length hair framed her features perfectly, and her tanned, brown skin took on a thousand tones in a different light. Clea never got tired of looking at her. She just hoped her boss hadn’t noticed the way she stared. Especially since Isabella did know that Clea was a lesbian.

“Hey,” Clea said awkwardly. “What’s wrong?”

As soon as she saw Clea, Isabella sagged. “I’m sorry,” she said heavily. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“What? No!” Clea replied urgently. “Don’t say that. You’re more than welcome.”

Isabella just sniffled and shook her head miserably. “It’s not appropriate. I’m your boss. You shouldn’t have to…”

“Just come in.” Clea reached out and touched Isabella on the shoulder, lightly. “Please?”

Isabella nodded, just as miserably, but allowed Clea to guide her inside and upstairs into her apartment. Once there, Clea immediately set to fussing over her boss. She got her seated comfortably on the couch, and then went to make tea for the both of them. When she returned, two steaming mugs in hand, she sat down next to Isabella. A worried frown was carving lines into her face.

“I shouldn’t have come,” Isabella repeated, although she seemed more settled than before. “I’m your boss. You put up with me enough at work.”

“Nonsense,” Clea told her firmly. “You put up with me just as much. We can call it even.”

That made Isabella smile, which made Clea smile.

“I just didn’t know where else to go, I suppose,” Isabella explained apologetically, sipping tentatively at her tea. “I guess I didn’t really want my friends to see me like this. So I just started driving around, and then I was in the neighborhood, and I remembered your address, and… well, you’re just so easy to talk to, at work. So I just…”

“I’m glad you did,” Clea said. “Really. It’s not an imposition. But you do have to tell me what’s going on. That’s the only condition.”

Isabella laughed, sniffled again, and nodded. “Well, it’s… it’s him. Again. Robert. My husband.”

A furious shiver raced down Clea’s spine. It was just as she’d suspected. Her husband was the only thing she’d ever seen get anything close to this far under Isabella’s skin.

“What did he do now?” Clea’s voice approached a growl.

“He didn’t…” Isabella started to say in instinctive defensiveness, before sagging again. “It’s not like that, exactly. We just had another fight.”

“I see,” Clea said tersely.

“I want kids,” Isabella said. Now that she was unburdening herself, it came out easy. She wasn’t looking at the expression on Clea’s face. “I want a family. I do. And I thought he wanted that too. I mean, we always said… but now I don’t know. Every time I try to talk to him about it, he gets so…”

Clea worried for all the unspoken things she could hear in Isabella’s voice. “Do you mean…”

“No,” Isabella told her. “Not like that. But he gets so closed off about it. So short-tempered. It’s like… it’s like me, and what I want, are just annoyances to him. You know?”

“Yeah.” Clea had to fight not to grind her teeth. “I know what you mean.”

“It’s at the point where I just don’t know what to do,” Isabella went on. “I just assumed we’d work on it, over time, together, but it’s starting to seem like it isn’t going to get better. I don’t know what to do anymore. Today, when I tried to talk to him, we ended up arguing. And when he started yelling at me, I just… I had to get out of there, Clea.”

“Get out of there?” Hope, tinged by guilt, started to swell in Clea’s bosom. “Like-”

“I mean, how am I supposed to go back to him now, after running out like that?”  The words kept flowing out of Isabella. She was starting to tear up again. “Sometimes I feel like I just can’t take it anymore.”

Clea paused for a long moment to gather her courage before saying: “Maybe… you don’t have to. Go back, I mean.”

Isabella looked up at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you’re better than him, Isabella!” Clea cried. “It’s obvious. He doesn’t deserve you. You’re amazing. You’re beautiful, you’re kind, you work hard and support yourself and others. If you want a family, you deserve one. You deserve someone who wants to have that with you.”

Her boss let out a sound that was half a laugh, half a sob. “That’s… a nice thought, Clea.”

“I’m serious!” Clea insisted fiercely. “I know it’s a cliche, but there are so many other people out there who could make you happy. You shouldn’t have to devote your life to someone who doesn’t even care enough to talk to you about what you want!”

“It’s not that easy.” Isabella seemed to tense up. “I can’t just walk out on him like that.”

“Why not?” Clea couldn’t bring herself to hold back now. “You don’t need him, Isabella. And you said so yourself - it seems like it isn’t going to get better. So what are you staying with him for?”

“I… I guess I don’t really have a good answer to that,” Isabella admitted. “But I do know one thing. I’m not a quitter. That’s how I’ve made it this far, right?”

“Isabella…” Clea slumped back against the couch cushion, defeated. She could hear the resolve in her boss’s voice, and she recognized all too well the kind of self-defeating logic Isabella was trapping herself in.

“Maybe it’s a little silly,” Isabella said, smiling sadly to herself. “But I really meant all those things I said at the altar. The promises. In sickness and in health, stuff like that. I… I know you mean well, Clea. I just think I need to see this through properly.”

There was nothing for Clea to do but look down and sigh. “I understand,” she said, even though she didn’t.

It took all the strength she had not to blurt out that it should have been her. That she was the one who could make Isabella happy that way. That she would be overjoyed to give Isabella the family her husband wouldn’t.

But of course, her words would have fallen on deaf ears. Isabella was straight, and that was that.

Before Clea knew it, the two of them had lapsed into uncomfortable silence. The only sound in the apartment was the occasional noise of each of them sipping at their tea. Clea knew she had to fix it.

“Hey,” she said abruptly, planting as bright a smile as she could muster on her face. “Well, if you want to stay here, just for tonight, you’d be more than welcome. I mean it. We can have a girls’ night. This couch folds out, and it’s actually not as bad as it-“

The sound of Isabella’s phone lighting up with a text message interrupted her.

Her boss snatched at her phone like a drowning woman at a life ring. The expression of manic, desperate hope on her face as she read the message tore Clea’s heart in two, and immeasurable dread washed over her. She knew exactly what was happening.

“Thank you,” Isabella said to Clea, already gathering herself. “That’s such a kind offer. B-but I need to go now, actually.” She gestured to her phone. “He’s worried about me, and he wants to talk.”

She was smiling as she said it, although Clea knew even Isabella didn’t really believe in whatever platitudes her husband was offering. She was just forcing herself to, because it was the only way she could keep going. Isabella’s smile was as fragile as glass, and Clea couldn’t bring herself to be the one that broke it.

“Sure.” Clea desperately hoped her own smile didn’t look too fake or forced. “Of course. I understand. And, anytime. I promise.”

She walked Isabella out of the building and the two of them said their goodbyes. But the whole time, Clea could only think about how disgustingly false this all was. She’d met Isabella’s husband two or three times, at various work-related social functions. She knew what a boor he was. She knew he wasn’t going to change. But, clearly, he was willing to keep stringing Isabella along with false hope and false kindnesses until it ground her into dust.

Dwelling on it left a pit of nausea in Clea’s stomach. It wasn’t right. She couldn’t let this happen. Not to Isabella.

And there was something she could do about it.

Once Clea got back up to her apartment, she reached for her phone and messaged Bruna.

I need the data.

***

The next morning, it took Clea quite some time to gather her courage before she could bring herself to head into Isabella’s office and bring her boss her morning coffee. Her anxiety was twofold. First, she was afraid that the atmosphere between them would be heavy with the weight of what had happened the day before; with Isabella’s unexpected vulnerability, and Clea’s unwelcome advice. And second, she was afraid that Isabella would see how nervous she was, and somehow sense what she was about to do.

Her first fear, at least, was dispelled from the first moment she knocked and pushed open the door. Isabella was already behind her desk, hard at work, but she rose to greet Clea with a broad grin.

“Clea! Good morning,” she gushed. “Oh, is that my latte? I seriously need it.”

“Of course,” Clea replied. “Same as ever.”

She placed the cup holder on Isabella’s desk, but she must have seemed a touch awkward because Isabella quickly reached out for her hand.

“Hey, um,” Isabella began, “I wanted to say, about yesterday… I’m sorry. Not for turning up - you made it clear that you were happy to help, and I appreciate that a lot. You’re amazing, honestly. The best secretary I could ever ask for.”

Clea’s cheeks started to burn and glow from the praise.

“Instead, I’m sorry for putting you square in the middle of my marital, uh, issues,” Isabella said. “I’m sure that was really, really awkward.”

“No,” Clea replied. “Um, actually, I’m glad you felt like you could confide in me. And… actually, I’m sorry too. I went way too far.”

“Nonsense,” Isabella told her firmly, smiling. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. You were just trying to help. To be honest, the advice you gave is exactly what I’d probably give to any of my friends if they were in the same position.”

That acknowledgment brought forth another heavy sigh that piqued Clea’s curiosity.

“May… I ask how it went?” Clea ventured cautiously.

“Good.” Isabella nodded firmly. “At least, I think it was good. We talked, and maybe we didn’t fix our problems yet, but we’re going to keep talking. What more can you ask for, right?”

She was trying to sound brave and sure, and it almost worked. Almost. But Clea knew her boss better than most. Better than her own husband, she’d guess. She saw Isabella every single day at work, and she knew when she was merely putting a brave face on something.

Looking deeper, Clea could see the signs. Under her eyes, she was using a little too much makeup to try and conceal some dark circles. Her eyes themselves were still tinged red. Her hair was a little messier and less lustrous than usual; probably, she’d gone to bed without doing her routine. And, most tellingly of all, her shoulders were sagged slightly in exhaustion and defeat, the way they only usually were on a Friday evening after a truly hellish week.

She wasn’t OK. It hadn’t been good. And that meant there was no reason at all for Clea to hold back.

“Well,” Clea began, “I was thinking, last night. And I have something that I think might help you a little.”

Isabella’s head tilted dubiously.

“Not with the, uh, issues,” Clea added hastily. “Just with how it all feels. It’s something for self-care.”

“Oh!” Isabella brightened immediately. “Clea, that’s so thoughtful.”

Clea had to look away for a moment. “Don’t mention it.”

“So?” Isabella asked eagerly. “What is it? Don’t keep me in suspense!”

Clea swallowed anxiously. This was it.

“This might sound a little weird,” she said, “but I have these… experimental music videos. They’re meant to help you relax. Think of it like… like meditation. Making them is kind of a hobby of mine, actually. I know it’s a little silly, but some people have said they’re really helpful. So, I made one for you.”

She blushed as she said that. Even the half-truth was embarrassing. Isabella, though, looked overjoyed.

“You did?” she exclaimed. “Oh my god, Clea! Thank you, that’s so thoughtful.”

Clea blushed again. “I’m glad you think so.”

“Of course I do,” Isabella replied. “I’ve never really tried meditation before, but you’re certainly right to think that I could use something to help me relax a little. I’d love to give it a try.”

“Great!” Clea’s relief was immeasurable, and she found herself grinning from ear to ear. She whipped out her phone. “I’ll send you the video right away. You can just listen to it whenever you have a quiet moment. Just… make sure to grab some headphones. And, uh, make sure you won’t be disturbed.”

“Got it!” To Clea’s great surprise, Isabella pulled her into a brief but warm hug. “Clea, you deserve a raise. I can’t tell you how much this means to me. Things have been so hard lately. It’s truly…”

“Hey.” Clea squeezed Isabella tight as her boss trailed off. “I know. But, Isabella, I can promise you that things are going to get much, much better for you very soon. I can just feel it.”

Once the two of them pulled apart, Isabella’s eyes were glistening.

“Thank you,” she said. “The way you said that almost makes me believe it.”

Clea and Isabella shared a laugh before Isabella went to sit back down at her desk. Clea took that as her cue.

“Let me know if you need anything,” she said, retreating out of her boss’s office. “I’ve got your first call for the day lined up in about twenty minutes.”

With that, each of them returned to the humdrum of a normal workday - but the whole time, Clea was burning with anticipation as she thought about what was going to happen once Isabella finally sat down to listen to what Clea had sent her.

***

The sun was getting low in the sky by the time Isabella’s thoughts turned back to Clea’s gift. It had been a long, busy day of work, with no chance for her to take time out to meditate. But now, the office was quiet. Everyone had gone home - even Clea, who seemed to have been lingering for some reason. Isabella figured she was probably worried about her. Clea was such a sweet girl that way.

Isabella really couldn’t blame her for being worried. Not after the way she’d fled to Clea’s apartment the day before. Just thinking about it was still incredibly embarrassing. Clea had been very kind about it, but Isabella was sure her secretary didn’t genuinely want to spend her weekends dealing with her boss’s personal problems.

Hopefully, earlier, when she’d told Clea that things were looking up, she’d sounded convincing enough to put the younger woman at ease.

The truth was… more complicated.

And that, regrettably, was part of why Isabella was staying late at work. It was the perfect excuse to spend a little less time at home.

Isabella sighed to herself. Admitting that, even in her own head, felt humiliating. Where had it all gone so wrong? When she had gotten married, she’d assumed that would be her happy ending. Having kids seemed like the natural next step - they’d even talked about it, briefly, a few times. Now, Robert got mad every time she brought it up. It was like he’d never wanted a family at all.

Another sigh. These thoughts were doing nothing but making Isabella upset again. They certainly weren’t helping her to get any work done, and the only thing worse than staying at the office to work overtime was staying at the office to do nothing except cry.

Which was why Isabella’s thoughts had turned to that relaxation music video Clea had made for her.

What better time to try it than now?

Isabella took a moment to dim the lights and close the blinds on the windows before sitting back in her office chair and pulling up the video file Clea had sent to her. The first frame looked like nothing but an indistinct mess of colors, and Isabella found herself a little skeptical that a simple music video would be able to offer everything Clea had promised. But, determined to give it a proper try, she took a series of long, deep breaths after putting in her earbuds.

“OK, here goes,” she said to herself, and pressed ‘play’.

Immediately, the screen in front of her exploded into dizzying patterns of motion that made Isabella gasp. There was such depth, vividness and beauty to the colors. It immediately drew Isabella in and captivated her, making her eyes pull wide open in an instinctive bid to drink in everything that was on the screen of her computer.

It was so overwhelming, she barely even noticed the sound playing through her earbuds.

It was music, but unlike any other Isabella had heard, and she only considered it to be music at all because of the vaguely harmonic quality of all the strange beats and tones playing in her ears. All of them were low and resonant; she felt them through her whole body, and underneath them was something like whispering, perhaps a voice, perhaps not. Whatever it was, Isabella found herself unable to bring it into focus.

Instead, all of her attention was on the screen. The true pattern formed by the colors was starting to unfold. At first, she thought it was a spiral, pulling inward, but she soon realized it was pushing outward instead, kaleidoscopic, like an ever-unfurling flower, revealing more of itself with each passing moment. Every new color that appeared at the center of the screen was a revelation, but then the whole image would turn, revealing more of itself yet again, along dizzying lines of symmetry.

Isabella couldn’t look away. Not even when her eyes started to ache from staring. She just slumped back into her seat and started to drool. She had been instantly hypnotized.

The music was getting louder, but Isabella didn’t stir, not even when lyrics started to appear inside her head. Not lyrics; mantras. Simple, blunt statements of fact that Isabella couldn’t seem to bring herself to question. They came one after another, layering atop one another, hammering themselves into her head until they felt like her own thoughts, no matter how strange and foreign they were.

They were true. She knew that. She just knew.

You are a lesbian, Isabella.

It was a hard thing to accept. Isabella had never once thought of herself as anything other than straight. She was even married to a man. So… how hadn’t she noticed it sooner? It seemed so hard to square away, and yet she knew she had to.

You don’t like men.

Isabella stirred. That didn’t seem right. She liked her husband, didn’t she? That was why she’d married him. She loved him… or so she’d thought. But she was a lesbian, so that didn’t make sense. And since she was a lesbian, it seemed only natural that she didn’t like men. Isabella reflected on how she’d felt about her husband in recent days. It hadn’t been positive.

Of course. She was a lesbian, and she didn’t like men.

You cannot orgasm with men.

Isabella blushed faintly, but settled. As unfamiliar as that thought was, it seemed to fit. She was a lesbian, and she didn’t like men. It made perfect sense that she couldn’t orgasm with men.

Her recent experiences with her husband certainly bore that out, too.

You can only orgasm with women.

Each new mantra, each new truth, was getting easier and easier to accept. They intersected and interlinked, mutually reinforcing one another, forming a net wrapped tight around Isabella’s mind. 

Forming a new self. A new identity.

You are attracted to Clea.

Isabella gasped. Clea? She’d never once looked at her secretary in that light. It would be completely and totally unprofessional of her.

And yet…

Now that the thought had crossed her mind, she couldn’t un-think it. Clea was pretty. There was certainly no denying that. She had a lovely figure, and such cute freckles, and her long, gorgeous, red hair was so striking. Anyone would call her attractive.

But Isabella wasn’t just anyone. She was a lesbian. She could only cum with women. So, naturally, it meant more to her. It wasn’t just about acknowledging Clea’s attractiveness. It was about feeling it.

Isabella was definitely attracted to Clea.

You are very attracted to Clea.

The intensity of her newly-discovered attraction more than doubled with the repetition. Suddenly, just thinking about her secretary made Isabella squirm in her chair and sent a thrill-shock of pleasure between her legs. She couldn’t believe an attraction this potent had crept up on her, but maybe it wasn’t surprising, if her lesbianism had too.

It was all but unbearable. How was she going to handle seeing Clea tomorrow? How was she going to not blush and stammer every time she looked at her? The worst part was that Clea was a lesbian too. That made the temptation so much more real.

You can’t resist Clea.

All thoughts of self-control immediately dissolved. Isabella was being washed away by the strength of her new feelings. She couldn’t resist Clea. That thought seemed so sinful. She was Clea’s boss. A level of self-discipline and restraint was absolutely essential in the workplace, but Isabella was starting to doubt she was capable of it.

What did that say about her? What kind of woman was she, to be so hopelessly, irresistibly infatuated by a girl subordinate to her, a girl so much younger than her? It was a shameful thought, but the shame was swept up in her attraction and arousal.

A picture of the new Isabella was starting to emerge. She was a lesbian, she was sexually unsatisfied with her husband, and she was desperately obsessed with her own secretary, Clea Samaras.

The longer she stared at the hypnotic images blaring on her screen, the stronger and stronger Isabella’s new sense of identity became. And there was nothing she could do about it. With her eyes wide, all she could do was sit back, stare, and drool, as the mantra began to repeat over, and over, and over again.

You are a lesbian.

You don’t like men.

You cannot orgasm with men.

You can only orgasm with women.

You are attracted to Clea.

You can’t resist Clea.

You are a lesbian…

---

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[spookyspecterino]

Left Behind

Sam Coe x GN! Reader

GN! Reader. Use of They/Them pronouns, no use of Y/N, or reader descriptions. Reader is referred to as Captain sometimes, like in the game.

Characters: Sarah, Barrett, Sam Coe. Mentions of Cora Coe and Lillian

No spoilers for the end of game or Sam's romance questline

A little bit of angst, but with a happy ending, language, a sprinkle of pining. No official romance with Sam has started in this fic, but the hint of one forming is there.

Seemingly out of nowhere, you ask Sarah to go out exploring with you instead of Sam one day. He’s clueless as to why, until he talks to Barrett. After realizing his mistake, he’s determined to close this rift between you and him.

This idea came to me while playing the game and going through the many different conversations about Sam’s ex-wife, Lillian. I’ve since finished his romance questline, and needless to say, I loved it and the whole thing was worth it. More is on the way. I have written many outlines. I have a particular feeling that I'm going to need a starfield masterlist here soon.

Florescent lights in the interior of the Frontier. You’d have to change those, because now more than ever, you wanted to be anywhere other than here. Every action was spurred by this increasing desire to get the hell out. Things were shoved half hazard into your bag. You took only a few meager supplies, rationalizing that more could be scavenged from the temperate planet.

A deep voice over your shoulder only makes you frown harder. “Hey, you ready to go? Looks like a good planet.”

Maybe it wasn’t the lighting that made you want to leave, but it didn’t help.

“Yeah—uh, actually. Sarah—”

Your friend looks up from messing with the ship’s calibration. “Hm?”

“You wanna head out?”

She’s unsure what to do. Her eyes flicker to Sam. “Oh, er—sure.” Slowly, as if waiting for you to change your mind, she gets up to start collecting her gun and some supplies.

With a halfway look over your shoulder at Sam, “Gonna take Sarah with me today. Spend some time with Cora, or, I don’t know, play cards with Barrett.”

Or go think about Lillian

Sam doesn’t move. Doesn’t say a word. With your pack slung over your shoulder, you’re already heading toward the exit. “Ready Sarah?”

“All set Captain.”

The sound of the hatch opening and closing marks your speedy dismissal. Sam is left where he stood. Brows pinched. The ship is deathly quiet and oddly empty without you.

And Sam does what you suggested. He sits with Cora, listening to his daughter describe the books she’s reading, listens to all her theories on what the books’ themes are, listens to her feelings on the books’ authors—it takes up only a few hours. And he likes it, he always does, but somethings’ missing. Somethings wrong.

And you’re still not back. He’s bored to tears and can’t shake that funny feeling. It’s probably nothing. Right?

After a few more hours, when he tried to take a nap and couldn’t, he got up and decided to scan the planet. And then rescan it. Then scan the system, then rescan it.

Why’d you leave him behind?

Yesterday you were fine. Looking at him with those bright, happy eyes of yours. You were such a good listener—the way you leaned in, focused all your attention on him. It made him want to keep talking. Sam sighed, maybe a little louder than he intended, and leaned back in his chair, leg bouncing.

“What’s wrong, friend?”

He snapped out of his thoughts as Barrett appeared. “Not sure what you mean.”

“Oh, don’t play dumb with me. You’re shuffling around the ship like a kicked puppy.” He leans in a little. “You missin’ the Captain?”

Sam crosses his arms. “That’s none of your business.”

This makes Barrett grin even more, as infuriating as that is for Sam. “Oh sure, sure…I just can’t help but notice they decided to take Sarah today.”

“No shit.” Sam mumbles, looking away.

“Does that…bother you?” He holds up his hands in defense. “Not trying to be nosy, just attempting to help.”

“You’ve never asked if something’s bothered me before—or if you could help with it.”

“Well, it’s no secret the captain prefers to take you along.” He waggles his eyebrows. “As in they take you everywhere, man. Even Sarah was surprised when they asked her instead. It was more than a little awkward.”

Sam only groans and rubs a hand over his face.

“Did you two get into a fight?” Barrett leans in. “A little lover’s quarrel?”

“No! No—we’re not even…it’s not like that—there was no…I…” Sam’s jaw twitches. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”

“Doesn’t seem that way to me.”

“I don’t need you to be my counselor, Barrett.”

“Alright. Alright. Have fun trying to figure out why you’re stuck on the ship. Who knows, maybe you’ll figure out the reason they’re mad at you…in a month—or two.”

Sam frowns. “How do you know they’re mad at me?”

“I thought it was obvious.” Barrett laughs. “You don’t even know you’re in the doghouse? Oh, you’re doomed.”

“Damnit.” Sam hisses. “Ok! ok. Barrett…” Sam grits his teeth as his friend slowly turns to face him with a grin. “Please help.”

“Say no more friend.” He claps his hands once, sitting across from Sam and getting comfortable. “Ok, how bad was the fight?”

“I told you, there wasn’t one.”

“You didn’t fight? Not even an argument?”

“Nope. Everything was normal yesterday.”

Barrett runs his fingers through his beard, deep in thought as he concentrates. “What did you last talk about?”

Sam sighs. This was already more than he bargained for. “Lillian.”

“Oooh, ex-wife troubles, huh?”

“Watch it, Barrett.”

“Alright, alright. What about the conversation before that?”

“Lillian, again.”

Barrett gives him a look. “Annnd the one before that?”

“Uh…I think it was…it was about Cora and Lillian.”

“How many times have you talked about Lillian with the captain?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to explain what Lillian’s like and what we’ve been through.”

“So, I’m guessing there’s been quite a few?”

“Sure, you could say that.”

The all-knowing Barrett nods. “There it is.”

“There’s what?”

“You two obviously have feelings for one another—” He holds up a finger as Sam tries to interject. “—don’t bother denying it, I see the little glances you give each other when you think no ones’ looking.”

Sam’s face tints a light shade of red despite his frown.

It delights Barrett and he continues on. “And since you two wanna be together and do all that sappy, lovey-dovey stuff, don’t you think constantly bringing up your ex-wife is a bit of a buzzkill?”

“I’m just trying to express how I feel. Can I help it that I’m constantly mad at Lillian?”

“That’s ok—I mean you obviously need to see a professional about it—but don’t bring it up every conversation. Especially when they’re trying to be sweet with you.”

“Sweet with me?”

“The lingering touches, the glances, the way they laugh at your jokes even when they’re terrible.”

“My jokes aren’t that bad.”

“Do you see Sarah and I laughing?”

“Erm…no, no I guess not.”

“Maybe ask them how they’re doing or ask them about their life. Lend an ear if somethings bothering them, but also, don’t try to fix it for them. Sometimes people just want to vent.”

“But that’s what I was doing—venting about Lillian.”

“You were doing it too much.”

“So, vent, but don’t do it too much? You’re not making any sense, Barrett.”

Barrett shifts into a straighter posture in his chair. “Let me run you through a scenario.”

He leans to the left as Sam watches with a raised eyebrow. “’Hello, Mr. Sexy Space Cowboy, how are you today?’” He makes over-exaggerated doe eyes to really sell it.

He shifts over to the right side of his chair and adopts a deeper, over the top, gravelly voice. “’I talked to my ex-wife, the mother of my child, last night. Here’s the specific details of our relationship and our history.’”

“’Oh, well, that’s nice. What if we talk about something else—’”

“’All I think about or talk about is Lillian.’”

Sam waves a hand, stopping Barrett. “It’s not like that. Plus, I’m not gushing over Lillian–I’m not even talking highly of her.”

“The fact that you keep bringing her up sends its own message.”

“What kind of message?”

“The sort of message that says you’re not over her.”

“But I am, I really am.”

“Have you explicitly said that in these conversations you’re having?”

“…Not exactly.”

“Seeee? Ok, let’s put you in the opposite position. The captain starts bringing up one of their old partners, constantly. They vent and they tell you all the horrible things about them, and all the good things too, but it’s like every conversation something about their partner comes up. How does that make you feel?”

“Wait, were they in a serious relationship?”

“Oh yeah. The most serious. Picket fence with a dog kind of relationship.”

Sam grips the handles of his chair. “When did they tell you this?”

“No, no, no this is for the demonstration. But do you see what I mean? I could tell you were getting a little on edge there.”

Sam clicks his tongue, leaning back and looking away. “I was not.”

“You looked like you were about to jump out of your seat.”

“…Ok, maybe I was.”

“Now imagine if that was real, and they brought them up as much as you do with Lillian.”

A hard pit forms in Sam’s stomach. “Alright, you’ve got a point there.”

“Doesn’t feel great, does it?”

Sam runs a hand through his hair with a long sigh. “I get it now. But how do I fix it? By bringing it up, isn’t that still talking about Lillian?”

“In a way, yes. You just have to get over that first hurdle and then let the love flow.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Let your feelings out!”

“That isn’t…that’s not really my style.”

“You’d better change that. Cause if not, you’re gonna get left behind more often, you’re going to grow even more distant, and someone else is bound to show up, you know that. The captains’ a catch.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“So just go out there and explain how you feel. And while you’re at it, confess you’re in love with them.”

Sam chuckles nervously. “That’s way too soon.”

“Ok, if the time isn’t right then maybe save that for later, when you inevitably mess up again. I will admit I like the dramatics a little too much.”

“What do you mean mess up aga—”

“It’ll happen. But we should really talk about if your approach doesn’t work.”

“Why wouldn’t it work?”

“The damage might’ve already been done. The captain may think you’re not over Lillian.”

“But I’ll tell them I’m not.”

“It might be harder to convince them than simply saying a few words.”

“So, what do I do?”

“You gotta let them go.”

“What?”

“You gotta give them their space and some time. Let them mull it over. You can’t force someone to be with you, and you certainly can’t force them to stop being mad at you. It would only make things worse.”

“You’re suggesting, if I talk to them and they’re still mad, I just…let them figure it out and step away?”

“If you love something, set it free. If it returns, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it was never yours to begin with.”

“Ah, clever. You had to sneak a phrase in there didn’t you?”

“It’s been too long since our game, friend. You spend all your time at the front trying to catch the captain’s eye.”

Sam’s head was starting to hurt and the pit in his stomach only grew when he imagined you exploring without him on a regular basis. He closes his eyes. “I don’t know if I could lose them. It would… it would tear me apart. I don’t know what I’d do with myself.”

“That’s love.”

“I’ll talk with them when they get back. Or do you think I should go out there and find them?”

“The dramatic part of me wants you to do that…but the practical part says no.” He looks out the ships’ window at the sunset and mumbles, “Plus it’s not even raining.”

“What does rain have to do with anything?”

“Confessions in the rain always have more umph to them. Best to wait.”

Sam groans. “I’m gonna go stir crazy in here.”

“Just relax, think about what you’re going to say. In the meantime, shall we play a few rounds of our game?”

Their game of back-and-forth sayings has Sam feeling better, or maybe it was simply talking with Barrett, but it was late into the night when they finished, and you were still nowhere to be found. Feeling defeated, Sam went to bed, tossing and turning endlessly before falling into a restless sleep. The little dreams he could remember consisted of trying to find you, and chasing a ghostly figure that wouldn’t stay still.

It’s late into the next morning when Barrett registers you and Sarah on the ship’s scanner. Finally returning after your scouting expedition on the planet. What Sam would have given to spend the night out under the stars with you, it makes him burn with envy at the thought.

However, he quickly forgets about it as you come into the Frontier laughing and smiling with Sarah. Talking about some weird rock formation you saw on your travels.

“Certainly odd shaped.” Sarah laughed.

“Never seen one that big. Rock or otherwise.” You replied grinning, sending Sarah into another fit of laughter.

Sam almost didn’t want to spoil your good mood, a wave of uncertainty threatened to knock him over. In fact, he was so jostled seeing you happy and laughing without him that he avoided looking at you. Preferring to mess with the straps of his holster or fiddle with his jacket out of insecurity. Maybe you would be happier without him. Maybe he should just let you go—

“Hey, Sam. Can we talk?”

Your heavenly voice is both music to his ears and the reason his heart pounds out of his chest. He looks up at you, startled, confidence wavering, and sees your gentle eyes and smile.

“Uh, sure.”

You nod toward the hatch. “Let’s go outside.”

Sam catches Barrett’s encouraging look as he leaves. The fresh air helps, a little, after being cooped up in the ship for a day. You’re wringing your hands together and kicking a branch around as he joins you. Seeing you so anxious ties Sam’s stomach into painful knots.

You stand up straighter, shoulders squared. “Thanks for agreeing to talk.” Sam prepares for the worst. “I wanted to apologize for yesterday.”

An apology? He wasn’t expecting it and his reaction said as much.

“The way I acted was rude and inconsiderate. I should’ve said something to you much earlier, rather than letting you rightfully assume you would be joining me instead of Sarah. For that, I’m sorry.”

He took a step closer, fighting the urge to fidget. You looked just as nervous as he was, and for a brief moment he wondered why. The apology did help, but his biggest question was:

“Why did you leave me behind?”

Your jaw flexed, eyes skittering around the landscape before taking the plunge. “I…I needed a break, I think—from talking about Lillian.” You were quick to raise your hands. “Not that I don’t want to support you and let you talk about your problems…I was just…”

Pinching the bridge of your nose, eyes squeezed shut, you started over. “I care for you. That’s no secret. But sometimes I have my limits. Hearing you talk about Lillian—I want to be able to help you, and I don’t see any way that I can, when it comes to her. And that hurts. It makes me feel like lending an ear and my support isn’t enough—like I’m not enough. And the way you talk about her sometimes…” You trail off with a crestfallen look out into the distance. “What I’m really trying to get at is that stepping away from it for a day really helped. I have a clearer mind now and I’d like to resume our usual exploring together.”

So, Barrett was right—not that Sam was ever going to tell him. He starts slowly. “Well, I think it’s time for me to apologize now.”

“N-No, you don’t have to—”

He smiles, good-naturedly. You were always so kind to him. “Hang on now, let me finish.” He’s feeling more confident now, the fidgeting is gone. “I was a little hurt from yesterday, but now that I know why I wanted to say thank you for listening to me vent so much about Lillian, and I’m sorry that I went overboard. You have no idea how helpful it is to have you listen and support me. I’ve never had anyone do that, and it means the world to me.” He takes another step closer. “If you need to take some time for yourself, then take it. It would be unfair otherwise. I care for you, so much, and I want you to do what makes you happy.”

Sam thinks he sees your lip quiver a bit, but your eyes are full of nothing but adoration.

He continues on. “I’ve never said anything specifically about this, and I’m just hoping that it has some weight to it, but I’m not interested in Lillian anymore. I know I talk about her too much. But I haven’t harbored any feelings for her in a very long time, and I certainly don’t now.”

“You don’t?”

He chuckles. “Absolutely not. And I never meant to give you that impression either.”

A mixture of emotion spreads across your face, one moment you laugh—the next your mouth is twisted into an anxious and nervous tilt—and then you’re laughing again.

“I feel like an absolute dumbass.” You murmur, placing a hand on the back of your neck.

The grin is slow to spread across his face. “Don’t tell me you were jealous?”

You spin to face him. “Uh…well…jealousy is an unfortunate human emotion that’s inherent in every one of us—”

“Yeahh, it sounds like you were jealous.” He laughs, his brilliant smile beaming at you.

“It was only a little bit.”

“Mhm, yes, of course.”

You laugh and throw your hands up. “Come on, can you blame me? With you talking about her having the, and I quote, ‘voice of an angel’, how was I not supposed to be?”

Sam groans, half in pain and half playful. “I didn’t say that, did I?”

“I just quoted you. You totally did.”

“Well, I’m obviously the dumbass then.” He makes a great, joking bow. “Allow me to apologize—”

“No, no—” You’re grinning delightfully. “I won’t have any more apologies today. I will, though, have a hug.”

“Ah, much better.” He opens his arms wide. “Come ‘ere.”

Without hesitation you’re in his arms, burying your face in the crook of his neck. He can feel your smile against his skin as you pull him close.

The rift between you both has closed. And Sam felt whole again.

[ofduskanddreams]

How I download fics and give them covers before sending them to my Kindle.

Hi all, I've been considering making a post about this for a while and now seems as good a time as any. I'm not an expert, and there is more than one way you can do this; I'm just going to show you my process using "Call It What You Want To" by @separatist-apologist as an example. [This will only work on computers FYI.]

Part One — Getting Started

Download Calibre (it's free.) Calibre for PC. Calibre for Mac. They also have it for Linux but idk if that's still relevant.

Follow the program's setup instructions, and then those for wirelessly connecting Calibre with your Kindle account. Alternatively, you can connect your Kindle/e-reader to your computer with a cable and transfer files manually or download the file to your hard drive and share it another way. I highly recommend taking a few extra minutes to set up the wireless sharing as I think it's far more convenient.

Create a folder in which to store fanfiction downloads so that you can be an organized human.

Part Two — The Fanfiction

Find the fic you want to download on ao3 and click it so that you're on the fic's first page.

Above the box of metadata (ratings, warning, tags, etc.) on the far right click the "download" option. When prompted to select a file type, choose "MOBI."

Note: Though ao3 has an "EPUB" option I've noticed a bug that removes the chapter navigation from the fic when downloading the EPUB directly from ao3. If you enjoy the "x minutes left in this chapter/book" feature on your e-reader, you will want to download "MOBI" and we will be converting it later in Calibre.

Save the file to the folder you created.

Launch Calibre if it isn't already running.

In Calibre, click "add books" on the toolbar at the top of the screen.

Navigate to the folder you saved the fic in, select the fic, then click "open." Calibre will import the MOBI file to your library.

Now as you can see, "Call It What You Want To" already has a cover when we imported it to the library. That is because the cover image is embedded in the fic on the archive. Some fics will already have covers embedded such as this one.

Calibre is not a genius. If there are multiple images in the fic it will usually take the first one and default it to the cover. In the next section, I will go over how to add/change the cover of a fic in Calibre and how I like to create them.

Note: Even if the fic doesn't have embedded images, covers may have been made by readers and linked to the fic either in the notes or related works sections so it's worth checking if a cover already exists. If a fic is popular enough, a Google search of the fic's title + "cover" or "cover art" will show you if there have been covers already created for it.

Part Three — Making The Cover (I use Canva)

On the Canva homepage click "create a design" then select the "custom size" option. Canva does have a book cover template but I've found that it's awkwardly tall compared to the default size for Kindle books so I make my own.

I set the dimensions of the design to be 1024 pixels wide, and 1600 pixels tall, then click "create new design."

This is where you can get creative, make whatever you want. These basic steps are shown in a gif at the bottom of the section:

One: Choose a background image (you'll want to make sure it's a high enough quality that it won't be pixelated.) I used an image I had already uploaded into Canva, but you can use whatever you would like.

Two: On the sidebar, select "elements" and then "rectangle."

Three: Make sure the rectangle covers the whole design, then change the color. I like using the colors from the photo that Canva suggests and then making them a darker shade. Once you have the color that you want, reduce the transparency of the rectangle to anywhere between 40-50%. (This step ensures that the text we put on top of the image is easily legible, play around with it a bit.)

Four: On the sidebar, select "text" and then "add a text box." Then type in the author's username and change the font, the color, and the size until you like it. Repeat the same steps for the fic's title. I like to center the title on the page and put the author toward the bottom but that's just my preference.

Once your cover looks the way you want it to, click "share" at the top right and follow the steps to download the file as a PNG. I usually just save the image to my desktop so I can grab it easily once I'm in Calibre.

Part Four — Adding the Cover in Calibre

In your Calibre library, hover over the fic and right-click. Then hover over "edit metadata" and click "edit metadata individually."

On the "edit metadata" screen, find the section that says "change cover" and click "browse."

When the file upload dialog box appears, navigate to the PNG you just saved from Canva, select it, and click "open." This will add your cover to the fic. You can use these same steps to add any cover image that you've saved to your computer.

Make sure to click "ok" at the bottom of the screen to save your new cover and navigate back to the library page.

Part Five — Converting to EPUB

In your Calibre library, select the fic and then click "convert books" on the toolbar. At the top right of the converting screen, set the "output format" to "EPUB."

Now, the following steps are unnecessary little things I do to make my reading experience more seamless.

Click "Look & Feel" on the left sidebar. Under the "fonts" tab, I embed the "Georgia" font family. I do this because I prefer reading in Georgia which is not a default option on my PaperWhite*. I have my Calibre conversion settings in place to do this automatically. You can embed any font that you have on your computer.

*It might just be me, but when opening a downloaded fic (following the methods in this post) for the first time on my Kindle the font is always weird. The trick to fix it is to go and change the font from whatever is selected (Baskerville in my case) to "publisher's font" and then I've found that switching it back to "Baskerville" on the font selection screen activates the embedded Georgia... even though it will say that it's Baskerville? Idk why this is, I just wanted to let you know how I fix it.

Calibre defaults to a justified text alignment unless you change the default settings. This appears as "original" in the alignment options. The random too-large spaces between words of a justified alignment give me the ick so to make everything left aligned, I stay on the "look & feel" page but move to the "text" tab where I can change the alignment.

Staying on "look & feel," move to the "layout" tab. To ensure even paragraph spacing regardless of how it appeared on the archive, I select both the "remove spaces between paragraphs" and "insert blank line between paragraphs" options.

On this page, you can also change the indent size of the first line of every paragraph (highlighted pink,) and the size of the blank lines Calibre will insert between paragraphs upon conversion (highlighted green.) I set the indent to 0.0 and leave the line size 0.5 which is the default.

The last thing I do is go to "EPUB output" on the left sidebar and check the box labeled "insert inline table of contents." This just means that Calibre will add a table of contents to the beginning of the EPUB. (By default it puts the TOC at the end which I don't like.)

When everything is set as you'd like it, click "ok" on the bottom right and Calibre will convert the MOBI file you downloaded from ao3 to an EPUB containing the settings we just changed. Both file types will appear in your library when you click on the fic and scroll within the right-side window. I usually delete the MOBI format after I have the EPUB because I don't need it any longer.

And you've done it! Now all you have to do is either right-click and share it to your Kindle, or you can "save to disk" and download the EPUB file to transfer to your e-reader by a method of your choosing.

I hope someone finds this marginally helpful. In truth, I was just bored so I made this post but in light of the recent DDoS attacks against ao3, I think everyone should look into downloading their favorites so that you're never left out in the cold again.

Happy fanfic downloading <3

[triptychgrip]

The Katsuki-Nikiforovs Take Vanity Fair's Lie Detector Test

I'm such a huge sucker for writing post-canon Viktuuri content involving media appearances, and absolutely love Vanity Fair's Lie Detector Game series, so writing my new fic about Yuuri/Viktor filming an episode (with Phichit/Yurio/Otabek also present) was such a blast!

Chapter 1 features Viktor's turn in the hot seat, and Chapter 2 will feature Yuuri's turn (plus some very relatable Reddit content of their fans reacting to their episode)

Below is an excerpt that I hope will pique your interest in this or my other Yuri!!! on Ice stories!

-------

“Is your name Viktor Katsuki-Nikiforov?” Yuuri read off of the page, aiming for an impassive tone.

However, the smile that crept over his face was involuntary; how else was he supposed to react when Viktor’s heart-shaped one immediately emerged?

“I am! During my very happy engagement, I was just ‘Viktor Nikiforov’, but life got exponentially better when I married my soulmate back in April 2019 and got to add on his surname,” he smoothly replied, after which Phichit and several of the filming crew members loudly awww'd.

In contrast, Yura gave a very put-upon sigh, followed by a mutter of what sounded like “Jesus…it’s already begun.” (And out of the corner of his eye, Yuuri thought he saw Otabek laughing at his best friend’s dismay).

“Good answer, lyubimiy,” he responded, blushing and feeling fond. “Moving on…are you thirty-two years old?”

A small pout immediately formed on his spouse’s lips, and when he answered, his voice sounded sulky.

“Unfortunately. A veritable fossil, as my much grumpier student makes sure to remind me every day,” he replied, jabbing an accusatory finger in Yura’s general direction.

The Ice Tiger exchanged a smirk with Otabek and they both laughed.

Having fully expected Viktor’s forlorn tone, Yuuri grinned but otherwise chose not to comment; if he really did state everything that flitted through his head over the course of this game, he and Viktor would be here all day and end up missing their group dinner reservation at Casa Limone: a restaurant that Celestino had personally vouched for when Phichit had reminded him about the trip.

“In addition to being the best figure skater in the world, are you also a skating coach and choreographer?”

Viktor’s reply was immediate and exuberant.

“I am! A skating coach and choreographer to two extremely talented athletes, that is. But given that I’m retired, I don’t know about being ‘the best’ anymore,” he said, before surveying him, shrewdly.

Yuuri had a sudden sense of foreboding around what his husband was about to say, and wondered how possible it would be for his blush to deepen even further.

“My Yuuri is the reigning Olympic Champion in Men’s Singles figure skating, as well as a 3-time World Champion, and a 2-time Grand Prix Final Champion!” Viktor crowed, looking directly at the camera and holding up 3 fingers on his right hand, and 2 fingers on his left. “His quad flip and quad lutz are better than mine ever were, plus he continues to have the most stunning spins and step sequences in the field!”

“He’s telling the truth, he really does believe that you’re the best, Yuuri,” Funmi confirmed, making Yuuri feel the urge to hide his head in his hands.

More cooing cut through the air, and he decided to offer a counterpoint.

“I know he’s not lying and that he actually believes that, but Vitya will always be the best, end of story…sorry to everyone else in the field, including our very good friends,” he commented, dryly, with a glance to the side at the spectating trio. “Oh, and he’s also wrong about my quads.”

Holding a hand up when Viktor made a clear attempt to retort, Yuuri hastily rushed onwards.

“Continuing on with the last calibration question,” he firmly announced, “are you married to me, Yuuri Katsuki-Nikiforov?”

His rebuke seemingly forgotten, his love positively beamed . In response, Yuuri couldn’t resist stretching his hand across the table so that they could interlace their fingers.

“Yes! Very, very happily so, luchik,” Viktor earnestly answered, hunching down a bit to press a kiss to his wedding ring (causing the seemingly unruffled Andressa to direct a very dreamy expression their way, which made Yuuri giggle).

“Is anyone else feeling horrified right now?” Yura loudly interjected, prompting Kariesha and Otabek to let out highly spirited laughs. “For God’s sake, those were the calibration questions . This thing hasn’t even kicked off yet!”

Phichit’s commentary couldn’t have been more different in tone.

“I know, isn’t this excellent!? I already have like 4 different sappy clips for my Instagram reels!”

Yuuri ignored the two of them in favor of kissing Viktor’s hand in turn, and didn’t bother to lower his voice when he reciprocated his spouse’s tender sentiment.

“Likewise, Viten’ka,” he replied, smiling warmly at him. “Getting to call you my husband is the absolute best part of my life.”

[rata-novus]

soto started so strong and ended so. bland.

editing bc i actually really want to rant. hopefully mostly coherent rambles bc im going on like 5 hrs sleep lol

the base release was genuinely, while on the shorter end, good. interesting characters and intrigue, both from the kryptis and the (presumably skeevy) wizards/astral ward. fun lore collections. we learn about one of the astral ward who left, which shouldn’t be possible. the intrigue! (that’s never brought up again.....) the majority of zojja’s post-hot story was done thru text but it was!!! actually v good!! her ascension made me feel a mix of icky at her losing her memories and glad she found a new family - and then all that ~mystery~ and moral ambiguity surrounding the astral ward just *poof* gone.

the nayos patches started and we went from “fighting against the kryptis and also low key side eyeing the astral ward bc what they’re doing seems dubious at best and breaking some kind of moral law at worst” to “the kryptis are literally like any other group we’ve ever encountered and aren’t actually that bad and we need to overthrow their big bad the end”. oh and do about 5-10 events between story steps ty.

there were a lot of qol additions during the soto era, and i’m going to give the next xpac one more shot, but if its of the same calibre or worse (bc what’s going to be the big draw, theyve already pulled ledgy armor out of their back pocket), idk man. idk.

editing again bc i aint done lmao.

and eparch???? built up to be this terrible cannibalizing spider whom the rest of the kryptis wouldn’t dare to question (bc of the cannibalizing thing you see) and in actually he’s small with 2 lil toothpick legs and we fight him for a few minutes and he just. gives up and peitha assumes the role of king. okay. sure. whatever why not. but like..... no backstabbing? its really that simple?

sometimes..... at plot that’s straightforward. is worse. (bc its boring)

i literally could not tell you the story beats surrounding *looks @ wiki* labris, nephus, and the new kryptis general (?) at the end who isnt even on the wiki yet. what even happened? why add all these characters we’re supposed to respect and idk who they even are? build upon the new characters we already met in the base soto story. a small cast could have done wonders tbh. again: lost potential. what a mess.

[leggerefiore]

Absolutely loving your Sumbas content, tasty writing right there. If it's not any trouble, vampire Submas (separate and double trouble) of reader helping them through a sudden bloodlust? Getting them away from public, brining items to help quell heightened senses, fetching blood and offering theirs. (I'm a sucker for S/O helping take care of monster partners)

I skipped on the double trouble for now as I can't think of a good scenario, I'm sorry💕 (I'll come back to it eventually)

cw: vampires, blood mentions, blood drinking, hunger descriptions, fluff mostly

▲Vampire Ingo▼

● It was the fact that he came unprepared. He tried to be the more dutiful of the brothers when he was out in public. Emmet acted as the more instinct driven, so he decided to hold himself above that and model proper behaviour for vampires of the calibre. They were, after all, elites among their species. Ingo carried himself with the duty that he believed weighed heavily on his shoulders.

● Which is what made the current situation all the more embarrassing. His senses blurred as a heavy hunger came over him. Rage and desperation bellowed inside him as he stood among the crowds in the station. What was supposed to be a lovely date with you quickly was turning into a situation. He held a hand over his mouth as he attempted to ignore the scents that surrounded him and the heavy thumping of hearts all around. Shame and hunger mixed disgustingly in his gut at the thought of attacking anyone.

● Taking notice, you quickly grab his hand and take him away to a secluded area. He felt so close to losing himself. Why had he not eaten sooner? Sure, he had been busy with his work, but he was certainly that he had eaten recently. You sighed and shook your head before digging around in your bag for something. Every passing second was torture, as your heartbeat drove him mad. Pulling out a small container, you handed it off to him. The smell of iron was heavy from the bottle.

● You opened your mouth to say something, but Ingo had already begun to drink the liquid desperately. A trickle of crimson stained his pale skin from the veracity at which he consumed the blood. “… I figured you would need a meal with how you skipped a few,” you sighed, “Ingo, I know you love your job, but please be more careful. I won't always be at your side to provide you a free meal.”

● He pulled the bottle away from his mouth with his sharpened teeth exposed to the world and pupils slit into small, dark lines. The sight was honestly a bit tantalising. Shaking your head, you pulled a napkin out and wiped away the blood that had escaped. “… I apologise, my dear,” he closed his eyes and mouth, forcing them to return to a more human appearance, “If I had not finished that pile of documents, I feared our date would have to be delayed.” You put your hands on your hips and glared at the ancient monster.

● “You'd be utterly embarrassed if you acted like Emmet did,” you chided him lightly before grabbing his hand, “Well, let's get to our platform before we miss the train.” He lightly squeezed your hand back as you led him away from the area. Yet, before you reached the crowds once more, he placed a light kiss to your cheek, causing you to smile.

▽Vampire Emmet△

○ He was prone to random bouts of sudden, unexpected hunger. Emmet would admit he could be a glutton at times when it came to food. The taste of blood simply left him craving more, something primal in his brain calling him to more and more action. Usually, he would have Ingo to pull him out from his instinctual behaviour. He was a monster, he knew. Unlike his twin, he had accepted himself as something that could never truly be a human again.

○ His current situation bloomed from that issue. A plan for a night trip out on a date with you found an issue on the train ride there. Sudden hunger sprang forth as he sat in his seat. Your body's warmth and scent engaged in his instincts in the worst way. The sound of beating hearts around him left his somehow even more without breath. The urge to consume and take without sensibility or reason bloomed in his mind as he gazed around the car. He felt parched, his mouth impossibly dry.

○ You grasped his hand suddenly, forcing his attention back on you. The absolute last place he wanted it to be in this situation. Emmet loved you. If he hurt you because of this, he would never be able to forgive himself. He wanted to rip his eyes from you, but your wonderful scent enchanted him. You 'playfully' brought him into your neck. Using a jacket, you carefully obscured him from the line of sights of other riders.

○ “Go on,” you encouraged him, “I'll stop you if you take it too far.” He felt completely at a loss as he remained close to your jugular. Hot, rich blood poured through your system. His teeth punctured you as he had many times in the past as he drank from you desperately. The feeling of being drained of your blood was never a normal feeling. It caused a woozy, weak feeling in your system, but you knew better than to let him run around like that. His hands grasped your ribs desperately, claws lightly digging in.

○ You pulled him away after a moment extra. His eyes were distant as his blood-stained tongue circled his lips, desperate for any last drop. Thankfully, it seemed no other passengers had noticed or cared about whatever you had just done together. You reached into your bag and fished out a band aid that was pressed to your neck to help control the bleeding. Emmet looked oddly distressed as he came back to his senses. “Darling,” his voice was low yet panicked, “Are you okay? I did not take too much, did I?”

○ You decided to pick on him a little and petted his head like how one might have a child. “You always take just a bit much,” you teased him, “I'm fine. I'd rather you drink from me than cause a scene on your beloved trains.” His brows pressed together into a face of annoyance, causing you to giggle. “I'm okay with it, Em,” you leaned on his shoulder, “Just cuddle with me until we arrive as a payback.” He easily gave you that.

[i-did-not-mean-to]

YOTP - April

I've only realised now that this has never been posted! I am so sorry! I am really not super good at keeping track of these things.

Pairing: Caranthir x Finrod

Prompts: pranks, canon divergence, (seemingly) unrequited love, "No, I am not dating your brother", peace, university

Words: 2 205

Warnings: sadness, insecurity, misunderstanding

Caranthir frowned.

His brothers would have qualified his present mood as cantankerous—he would have called it the “status quo”.

As such minor inconsistencies in vocabulary did nothing to dispel the storm clouds sitting heavily on his fair brow, though, he put the thought from his mind and returned his focus to the vexing problem at hand.

Before him, in the middle of his perfectly orderly desk, flanked by neatly arranged stacks of notes and copies, lay a garish flyer, announcing the upcoming spring ball organised by and held at his university.

Usually, Caranthir managed to avoid this kind of overly dramatized, idiotic social gathering, but a strange sense of unease and helpless frustration had kept him from simply throwing away the crumpled piece of paper.

He wanted to go.

Of course, he would rather have bitten off his own tongue than admitted as much to anyone alive, but a part of him was sick and tired of being perpetually alone—undeniably unloved and universally unwelcome.

Nonsense, he chided himself sternly. It would only exacerbate his reputation as an unpleasant curmudgeon and his subsequent misery if he were to turn up alone and uninvited to a party where everyone else was making out in deserted classrooms and unsanitary lavatories.

“Good grief!” he exclaimed softly and pushed the flyer under a stack of homework—he was already late for his afternoon classes, and he’d rather not lose any more time just moping around.

The first thing he saw upon stalking into the much too brightly lit foyer of the university was his brother, winsome as ever, and his mood soured even further.

Leaning suavely against a very old, very valuable pillar, Maglor was entirely caught up in a hushed conversation and thus didn’t notice his younger brother sweeping past dramatically.

Caranthir’s heart sank—for a fleeting moment, he had considered approaching Finrod to find out whether he had any intention of attending the laughable circus that was upon them.

He knew for a fact that his co-student—ridiculously radiant and blindingly handsome—was not entirely averse to mopey, overly serious, and unbearably stiff specimens of his own gender; after all, he had dated Turgon, the only man who could compete with Caranthir’s glowering looks and hostile demeanour, for a while.

Considering how bright-eyed Finrod now looked, though, as he hung on Maglor’s full, sensual lips pointed to another conclusion: the cheery, popular, charming object of all Caranthir’s repressed desires had surely grown tired of men of his calibre. It made sense—unfortunately, that sober realisation did nothing to alleviate the painful twinge in Caranthir’s heart despite the quick onset of gruesome rationalisation and well-rehearsed self-denial.

Huffing an unnerved sigh, he hastened up the winding steps and slammed down his supplies on an old, worn table, determined to lose himself in his statistics class. He’d think of that silly ball and his agonising loneliness no more.

As soon as the class was dismissed, Caranthir slipped into the comforting silence of the library so he could make sure that he’d not meet anyone else, crush or sibling, once he was ready to return to the self-imposed isolation of his childhood room.

There was much work to be done, and he prided himself on his irrefutable excellence. This, he knew he could not only do, but do well, and so he disappeared into theories and long lists in his sullen escape from the bleak reality of wanting.

Every so often, his phone vibrated in his pocket, but Caranthir didn’t feel like reading the updates in the family groupchat, undoubtedly pertaining to the exciting plans of his various brothers to which he was never invited anyway.

The sun had gone down and the world seemed to have been dipped into translucent black ink by the time he re-emerged from his frenzied study session, and Caranthir dragged himself to his locker reluctantly.

A pounding headache was taking root behind his bleary eyes, and it took him a moment to realise that the flash of white he’d only vaguely registered upon tugging at the rusted metal door was a note addressed to none other than himself.

With trembling fingers, he unfolded the missive and gasped. It was an invitation to the very party he’d refused to obsess about all day long, and it was unsigned.

Caranthir was known for having no patience for this kind of childish game, but—as nobody but the mysterious sender—knew about this, he didn’t have to pretend that he was utterly untouched by the instinctive excitement such a communication would have incited in any living soul.

Nevertheless, before his fancy could absolutely get the better of him, he shoved the precious paper under a stack of hefty tomes and went to bed without expecting to find much sleep with the way his heart was pounding, and his mind was racing.

“Lame,” Beren commented as he folded a half-torn flyer into a paper aeroplane and sent it sailing across the spotty lawn. “How about you come with me and Lúthien instead? She’s had a rad plan for…”

“Something illegal?” Finrod interrupted pointedly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t be your get-away driver this time—I’ve been recruited by another mischievous rogue for his morally questionable scheme.”

“Oh? Tell me all about it,” Beren exclaimed, suddenly no longer fashionably bored by the mundane and yet deeply moving intrigues of the small university his friend attended. “I truly hope there is a handsome someone involved…”

“Several,” Finrod purred.

“Not your stuffy ex, though?”

Shaking his golden head, Finrod leaned back on his elbows and stared at the sky wistfully—he had no doubt that, once he’d explained the whole ploy to Beren—he’d be mocked cruelly for his fatal weakness when it came to overly serious, lethally handsome men with dark hair and flashing eyes.

“Your stuffy crush, then? A bird has told me that you were seen in an intimate conference with Maglor,” Beren—who somehow always managed to stumble upon the most extraordinary bits of information—drawled provocatively.

“If you know everything already, there’s no point in testing my patience!”

At once, the shaggy-haired youngster lifted his hands—palms outward—in a gesture of apology and goodwill. “No need to be so touchy! My source, of course, misunderstood and speculated that you might go to the ball with the pretty singer. That doesn’t sound right to me, does it? Tell me then, what is going on?”

“He’s asked me whether I’d consider inviting his brother to the party,” Finrod replied anticlimactically. “And I’ve agreed.”

“So, it’s some elaborate hoax?” Beren cocked one eyebrow in unashamed scepticism. “You know that you’re allowed to disagree with people, right? You may say that their idea, at the root, is not a bad one, but also express your uneasiness when it comes to their way of going about things. This sounds like one of those stories that get you into serious trouble only because you were too kind to share your doubts.”

He took a deep breath, the corners of his mouth downturned expressively still, and then shrugged lopsidedly. “So, did you ask the brother out?”

“I’ve sent him an anonymous letter,” Finrod confessed—he’d just been all but explicitly called a coward, which took the wind out of his sails regarding his big reveal.

“Sounds more and more like a prank,” Beren groaned. “You bloody fool. What’s his name again? Cat something?”

“Caranthir,” Finrod sighed longingly. “’Moryo’ to his brothers, hitherto ‘unobtainable’ to me…”

Nodding seriously, Beren pondered the matter for a while. “Say,” he then piped up, startling Finrod out of his own longing thoughts, “how will he let you know whether he accepts or rejects your invitation?”

“I thought that I’d wait for him in the foyer, flowers and all, a banner maybe…” Finrod admitted sheepishly.

As expected, Beren was highly in favour of that ploy, and, strangely enough, his very enthusiasm—earnest and exuberant—gave Finrod pause. He knew that this friend would have broken into the darkest, dankest dungeon or wrestled a wild beast for his girlfriend, but Lúthien was a woman who expected and enjoyed ridiculously grand gestures—Finrod was almost certain that Caranthir was not.

“Wish me luck, man,” he muttered as he changed his mind and cut his timeline in half. “I’ve got to run!”

He’d pick his secret date up at home, he decided, so as to give Caranthir a chance to let him down discreetly without anyone but his brothers witnessing the embarrassing scene. It was a sacrifice, and it left Finrod very little time to make all the purchases he’d planned, but he was now sure that this was the right way to go about his own grandiose gesture.

Caranthir paced across his room nervously; he felt foolish for having gotten ready for a party he might very well not attend after all.

Fingon had arrived 20 minutes earlier and was presently regaling his parents with funny stories while Maedhros was trying desperately to keep from blushing every five seconds—Caranthir hated them, and he loathed his father’s throaty, echoing laughter booming through the whole house.

Celegorm and Curufin had also already left; as always, they had “things to do” before even considering going to the ball, and everybody only half-expected them to make an appearance.

The twins had gone to the cinema with friends, and Maglor was sitting on the stairs, yowling to himself.

Drowning in an ocean of sound and life, Caranthir felt profoundly lonely.

And then, the doorbell rang.

At once, he threw his door open and hastened out onto the landing only to hear Maglor’s pleasant voice. “Ah, finally. I’ve been awaiting you.”

Of course, Caranthir thought bitterly. His brother had secured a date with the most beautiful, eligible bachelor on campus, a fact he’d banished into the remotest corners of his usually meticulously rational mind.

Now, though, the envy and jealousy almost made him black out with impuissant rage—here he stood, in a suit he’d stolen from Maglor’s wardrobe and embroidered in long hours of painstaking labour, to be the only one left behind, again.

Not that anyone would notice, he thought miserably; everyone was so enthralled by their own pleasure and delight that nobody would even remember that he, sullen and unloved, was still puttering around in his room.

“Good evening, Maglor,” Finrod’s chiming voice resounded, followed by a suspicious pause. “Will those do?”

“Carnations,” the gracious host cooed in his most detestable singsong tone. “How adorable!”

Caranthir was already halfway back in his room when he heard his name being called, no yelled, up the stairs for Maglor’s voice carried far and wide, and nobody could outrun it.

“Moryo, for Eru’s sake, tell me you’re ready! Nelyo said you were good to go half an hour ago…”

Leaping down the stairs two by two, Caranthir came to a slithering halt—wide-eyed and rosy-cheeked—in the brightly lit entrance, only nearly missing a stunningly handsome Finrod who was kneading a bouquet of bright red flowers in his slender hands.

“I wasn’t sure you’d accept my invitation,” the latest arrival said carefully. “So I thought I’d give you a chance to politely decline without witnesses present.”

“Ooops, that’s my cue,” Maglor laughed and moonwalked into the living room and out of sight.

“I…But…I thought you were taking out my brother,” Caranthir stammered, his eyes darting between Finrod’s luminous face and Maglor’s retreating frame. “Aren’t you dating?”

Throwing his head back, Finrod gave a merry peel of laughter. “No, silly, I’m not dating your brother. Maglor, as ever fond of dramatics, has graciously agreed to be my confidant in this.”

Caranthir gave a strangled hum of doubt and insecurity, dreading the imminent and inevitable arrival of the others on the scene, laughing at how gullible he was, to share a ride or just to distract their father so someone could steal some liquor from his private cabinet, and rubbed his thumbs bemusedly against his other fingers in a desperate attempt to soothe the contradictory impulses and desires raging within his chest.

“Please, say something,” Finrod pleaded. “I realise now that it was cowardly not to ask you in person, but—after Turgon—I wasn’t feeling quite brave enough to stomach another rejection…”

“Rejection,” Caranthir jeered feebly. “Of course, I wouldn’t have declined. I’m not doing so now—I just need a moment.”

“Certainly,” Finrod said fervently, extending his battered bouquet jerkily as if he’d forgotten that it was there. “Here, these are for you. They compliment your charming complexion.”

“Charming complexion,” Caranthir muttered mockingly. “Sure thing, my man.”

“You’re lovely—you must know that!” Heartened by the quasi-acceptance he’d been granted against all odds, Finrod quickly grew bolder and grabbed one of Caranthir’s pale, trembling hands. “I will make it up to you; I promise. Please say you’ll be my date for tonight!”

“Very well! As you can see, I’m already dressed. Let’s go before Maglor wants us to go over in a big cluster of noise and strangely clad limbs…lest you’d prefer going with my brothers?”

“They’re of no consequence,” Finrod assured him. “Let me walk you to your carriage then.”

And, extending his arm gallantly, he promptly abducted Caranthir from his parental home unnoticed.

How did those two become one of my OTPs? Nobody knows (well one person certainly does)!

Anyway, thanks for indulging me!

-> Masterlist

[sirfrogsworth]

The last thing my mom bought me was a fancy A/V receiver. She got some inheritance after her mom passed and wanted to do something nice for me since I took care of her and dad pretty much all by myself.

She died shortly after it arrived and I didn't even take it out of the box for over a year. I didn't hook it up until after my dad died. I don't know why I took so long. I guess for a long time it just didn't feel all that important anymore.

It has a lot of features and a lot of power and it seems really good... on paper.

The plan was to install 4 ceiling speakers and add two more floor speakers to get a 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos experience in my basement bedroom. I would be able to have sound come from literally every direction. (Well, not from below.)

That is still a plan, but I have had to postpone all of that due to budget cuts. The fancy receiver has been relegated to a measly 3.1 experience since I moved upstairs. I'm considering converting the upstairs living room into my home theater instead of my bedroom. I'd have a little more space and higher ceilings for the Atmos speakers, but I'd lose the concrete floor of the basement. So I'd have to figure out how to temper the vibrations of the subwoofer into our creaky floor.

ANYWAY.

The problem is... the actual day-to-day operation of this fancy receiver has been super quirky and frustrating.

The thing people may not realize about high end electronics is that they always have their issues. You'd think they'd be bug-free for that price, but it is usually quite the opposite. You have to figure out what all the bugs are and then research all of the workarounds in forums and eventually you'll learn a workflow to make the device function for your needs.

Part of the reason is that the higher the price, the more features they cram in, the more that can go wrong. But a lot of it is just poor software development. They focus almost all of their attention on getting the hardware right.

It's a maddening troubleshooting process and sometimes makes you want to buy that Sonos crap or maybe even... Bose. *shiver*

But this receiver has been *extra* buggy. I was a little disappointed by this. And I felt guilty for hating this wonderful gift my mom gave me. I have this Yamaha receiver that was a third of the price and it functions wonderfully.

Or maybe I just think that because I've already figured out all the quirks and workarounds.

No, I'm pretty sure the Yamaha has been a fairly smooth experience.

I kinda love my old Yamaha.

And I also love that they make pianos and motorcycles and drums and marching band equipment and sporting goods and boats.

Yamaha was all...

It's just that Yamaha doesn't have the Dirac calibration system included like the Onkyo and everyone on the forums said that was a big deal. So I abandoned the trusty Yamaha brand for Onkyo and it's 130 watts and 11 channels of processing and HDMI 2.1 future proofing.

The other day I noticed something extra weird with the Onkyo. My Nvidia Shield (another amazing yet frustrating device) was outputting a 5.1 signal. But my receiver thought it was stereo.

Another bug.

So I headed to the forums and found the solution. I had to turn off "Dolby processing" in a deep submenu of a submenu in my Shield settings. My receiver already does Dolby processing so I guess I was doing double Dolby processing and that is like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters.

Weirdly, this fixed like half of my issues. I don't know how in the world I was supposed to know this one setting buried deep in the menus was causing all this havoc. But it has made me go from wanting to yeet this thing out the window and get a Bose clock radio... to mostly enjoying the experience of having a fancy receiver.

It still handles HDMI switching as if it is having a stroke, but I have found if you turn everything off and power on the Shield FIRST and then all the other components, I can prevent most of the stroke symptoms.

Though sometimes it takes 3 tries.

Onkyo: SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT??? WHAT'S THAT??

In any case, THANKS MOM!

I'm sure I will love your gift when I have 12 speakers blaring at me from every direction.

[olderthannetfic]

I'm following the fic deletion discussion with interest. Yes, it got a little huffy but there are good bones there. Something I'd like to bring to the table: AO3 makes it so incredibly easy to download fic! I'm honestly astounded at the amount of people who apparently aren't hoarding every fic they love like a dragon. I went and made sure to even scrape off old LJ fics when that deletion wave hit a few years ago. I use calibre to manage my library and have it backed up to hell and back. I'm not losing my babies ever. For readers it's the best insurance against authors exercising their right to delete.

--

It's one more thing to manage. People tend to only get around to doing it when they realize it's already too late for some of the things they wanted and that scares them into action.

[whumpacabra]

Day 9: Bees

Head injury, concussion, medical setting, semiconsciousness, implied captivity and torture, implied nonconsensual body modification [cochlear implants], referenced smoking, referenced broken bones [ribs]

[Directly follows Revive]

Wolf had taken care of bees, a long time ago. His grandmother kept them behind her house, a white box barely a meter tall. He could remember the smell of summers there in the country, honey and hay and the hum of thousands of wings.

Here and now, there was blood and tobacco smoke and the hum of electricity behind his ears.

Close enough to his childhood summers, he supposed.

The sounds - he was pretty sure they were sounds - were swarming in his ears. An alien sensation buzzing in his well drugged brain. Hearing without sound, like touching without feeling. There was a numbness to it that was far more frightening than the voices (he was pretty sure they were voices) hovering around him.

“And how long until he’s recovered?“

“Recovered?” Wolf couldn’t understand the words, but he knew he was hearing them. “Fuck knows if he’ll ever - ”

“What Andy means to ask is how long until he’s stable?”

That voice. The sound - something in those reverberations made his skin crawl. It didn’t help that the familiar stench of cigarette smoke was breathed over his face.

“He needs a few weeks. At least two - maybe three. His ribs were a fucking jigsaw puzzle, thanks to you. Not to mention - ”

“Two weeks. How long until those implants start working?”

If not for the drugs in his blood Wolf would have flinched from the sharp sound snapping next to his head. His natural hearing caught it, a soft snap of deft fingers, but the humming behind his ears turned it to a piercing blade that buried itself in the soft tissues of his brain.

“They already are. We won’t be able to calibrate them until he wakes up - ”

“How long until he’s awake?”

“Given his injuries he should rest - ”

“I didn’t ask how long he should rest, how soon can you wake him up?”

Wolf couldn’t wait for them to shut up. Everything was too loud - he couldn’t wait to go back to sleep. He had been dreaming, dreaming about something he could almost taste honey sweet past the iron on his tongue.

“24 hours. But sir - ”

“Good. Get him up and let me know as soon as he is.”

“Sir, he may not be completely lucid until his injuries have had time to heal. Physically, he can’t - ”

“Don’t worry doc. I’m not taking him out of medical. And I won’t lay a hand on him until you give the all clear.”

Another sharp sound - cruel laughter that barely registered as anything other than a painful cacophony in Wolf’s brain. “We just need to have a little…debrief about his situation.”

[Directly before Linger]

(Part of my Freelancers: Swansong series)

[kairos99]

Happy N7 Day everyone!

I wanted to do something for this day and had a Shakarian fanfic collecting dust for ages. I thought I could finish it for today, but unfortunately I only managed to get it halfway done. Still, it's been literal years since I've posted a fanfic on the internet and I wanna chuck this bit to the void godammit, so that's what I'm gonna do. I'll (hopefully) get the other part done and post the entire thing when it's finished.

EDIT: the finished fic's in this blog post

----------

Garrus can't concentrate. Calibrating the new Thannix cannon, an activity that should've taken him ten minutes, was taking him twice as long because he kept forgetting which tasks he'd already run and making extremely stupid mistakes. It's a damn miracle he doesn't activate the weapon by accident and blow a hole clean through the Normandy. When he's finally done, he sets a reminder on his omnitool to do it all over again after dinner because he's not sure he didn't make things worse by accident. 

The most frustrating part is that things should be better now. Which, in a way, they are. The biggest one being he no longer feels self-loathing tearing him up from the inside every second of the day; now it's once every hour or so. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's a hell of an improvement in comparison. 

Yet there he is, failing something as simple as calibrating a gun. He could do that at his lowest, but now it seems his wits have run away from him even for such an easy task. All because of Shepard. 

Back on Omega, when his mind had been shredded by grief and hanging onto his sanity by a thread, body chock full of stims and single-mindedly focused on survival, watching her appear on the scope and tear apart the mercs sent to kill him had been nothing short of a religious experience. He’d wondered if he’d already died and she’d been sent to pick him up. But there’d be no reason to kill the mercs if that was the case, his delirious mind had reasoned, so maybe she’d been sent to save him: an angel of destruction, a spectre of death raining down punishment upon the evils of this galaxy. 

And she’d called him Archangel. 

He’d eventually found the truth, once he was safe on the new Normandy. She’d indeed died, but was resuscitated by Cerberus and tasked to end the Collectors. Another myth brought back to life. Then he’d merely thought himself lucky and offered his assistance before she could even ask for it. Her relief when he'd done that had been palpable, even as she inquired after his injuries and suitability for duty. Yes, his face hurt something ugly, but he’d worked well under worse conditions and most of the damage would heal soon enough. 

Besides, it’s not like I have anything better to do, he’d said. Judging by the twist in her mouth, she’d caught his hidden meaning. I have nowhere else to go. Will you be okay? She’d asked. As if being with her wasn’t the best reprieve he could think of after the hell he’d gone through. He might worry if he were working under anyone else, but with Shepard in charge, he could rest from the burden of leadership and trust his time and skills were being used for a good cause. It’s one of the many things he liked about her: despite their disagreements, he knew he could trust her to make the right calls. 

He’d been almost right. Going on missions kept him somewhat distracted from what’d happened in Omega and made them spend time together after two years of separation. He'd meant to use the opportunity to catch up, see if she’s changed from before her death, be there for her as a friend and confidante in these uncertain times. 

But the death of his squad had been fresh back then, an open wound undergoing an infection that planted its roots deep in his mind. When he wasn’t working, he thought about them. Constantly. He thought about their friends and families, who’d trusted him to keep them safe. He thought about how they trusted him to keep them safe, how brilliant and righteous and good they all were, how he’d pushed them to their limits for the sake of his own goals, how he’d refused them a vacation when they’d asked for it. 

Mostly, he thought about the only member who was still alive. The one who’d escaped. The one who’d betrayed them all. 

Every hour his mind came up with a new way of grieving them, a new way of blaming Sidonis, a new way of blaming himself. His dreams were no better. His team gazed at him disapprovingly while Sidonis taunted him and killed his squad over and over again, and he wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop him. 

He became distant, sequestering in the forward batteries and forcing Shepard to come to him in order to talk. He was present for his duties, but not much else. Two years apart, and he barely made the effort to reconnect. He hated himself for it, which did nothing but add to the cycle of pain and misery. 

It wasn't long till he told her what happened and his plan to correct matters. He knew she wouldn’t like it, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Sidonis betrayed his trust and got his teammates killed. As far as he was concerned, Sidonis was a dead man. 

Then, the day came to exact his judgment on the man. Despite not agreeing with him, Shepard had been, as always, the perfect partner. She’d helped him find his target and did what she could to keep him from going on the deep end. Thinking about how he’d acted back then made hot shame creep up his neck. He’d just been so angry. 

And the one time she’d actively gone against his wishes, she’d done it for him. To give him the answers he truly needed. And by doing so, she’d inadvertently been the one to get his head out of his ass and make him see, with painful clarity, where he was headed to. 

The rifle’s getting warm in his hands. Sidonis’ head is in his scope, but so is Shepard’s, and she’s blocking his shot. She shouldn’t be, but she is, and she’s talking to Sidonis and ruining all of his carefully laid plans. He’s angry and sweating and ready to pull the trigger the second his target moves. 

So what if the mercs caught and threatened Sidonis? So what if he didn't want to do it? He still got his squad killed. When things got tough, he chose the easy way out like a coward and left them all to die. He was responsible, he was at fault, he'd been the one who deserved to die. 

Shepard says something, but he doesn't catch it over the blood rushing through his head. Sidonis starts to move to the right, and she follows to block his shot. It's not a perfect blockade however; if he can time it right, there's a good chance he'll land the shot without hurting her. Time slows down, he's a mere millisecond away from pulling the trigger until he stops. 

Wait.

His eyes widen as his actions catch up to him. The opportunity passes by; Sidonis leans over a railing and Shepard's head covers his completely. 

Did he just… 

Was he willing to risk Shepard’s life in order to fulfill his revenge? His only friend in the galaxy? The only person who’d stood by him in this crazy plan of his? Who’d saved him from his mistakes and listened to him during his lowest and cared despite it? The one he cared about so deeply he’d take ten more rockets to the face to protect? Was he willing to gamble her life to finish Sidonis’? 

Horror chokes his throat. He can do nothing but listen to the rest of the exchange, helpless and numb. 

Spirits, what had he become?

That's what did it in the end. It wasn't what made him decide not to kill Sidonis; that was a nest of pyjacks he didn't wish to kick again, at least not yet. But without it, he'd have never considered sparing him. He might've done the unthinkable and not just rid the galaxy of its best chance of survival against the Reapers, but also become well and truly friendless. Just thinking about how close he could’ve been to that makes him want to curl up in a ball and never talk to anyone ever again. 

He owes everything to Shepard. For her guidance, her friendship, for being there at his worst and not leaving him to face his demons on his own. Maybe one day he’ll figure out how to thank her for everything she’s done for him. 

But he’ll never tell her what happened during those few milliseconds. He’ll tell her anything, but not that. It’s his burden to bear, and hopefully, if he ever comes close to what he’d done again, the reminder of his actions will be enough to dissuade him from going down that same path. 

What’s important is that he finally feels anchored in the present moment. He no longer feels like his continued existence has been stolen from those who’re no longer living. Maybe he doesn’t need absolute justice to feel at peace with himself. Maybe it’s okay to feel at peace without absolute justice existing in the world. 

Maybe, what he needs is something else. 

With things finally looking up, he thought that maybe life was finally giving him a break for once. 

And then, Shepard had talked to him in the forward batteries and reminded him that as good as she was at being a source of comfort, she could be just as good at being a source of distraction.

----------

Next, Garrus reflects on his relationship with Shepard and realizes he caught feelings for her, which is a huge revelation for him because he didn't know he could catch feelings for someone not his species. He proceeds to have a full-on sexuality crisis not at all inspired by my own, nope no way, zero, mhm, nada. It gets resolved relatively quickly though, no worries. :)

Thanks for reading! I'd appreciate any encouragement you can send me. It'd go a long way in giving me the motivation to finish this fic.

[pricescigar]

The Bodyguard Pt4

John Price X Elvira

Summary: With the help of Duncan... El Sin Nombre had some form of involvement with Elvira's kidnapping, to ease the tension with Phillip Graves.

Admin note: I'm so so sorry pt4 took so long! I made a lot of changes, and I am satisfied for once.

Duncan or known as "The Butcher" Had information, the information Price desperately needed. And with him calling at the right time, Duncan offered to help Price. 

"Don't worry you'll get your Princess back." Duncan replied, he tied his long locks into a messy bun. His voice was hoarse and rough. "You need to find El Sin Nombre." He said. 

"How do you know that for sure? Shadow took Elvira." Price crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow. 

"A little birdie told me it was the cartel posing as Shadow's men, halfway through Graves found out. He managed to snatch Elvira back, Valeria knew what he did to his men… They somehow came to an agreement." Duncan explained. "She allowed Graves to take Elvira, under the condition that they never cross the cartel again." 

Price sighed and shook his head as he heard this. "Fuck… Is- Is Elvira still even alive?" His tone becoming more worried.

"She's fine John, In a prison cell in Las Almas but don't worry." He reassured Price.. "A friend of mine told me… Graves is trying to break her, trying to see where Ulrich is, but she's not allowing it." Duncan chuckled as he said that.

Price smiled, the small wrinkles visible on his face. "That's my girl…" He then cleared his throat looking at his men seriously. "Let's go." He led the way leaving the room.

. . . 

"El Sin nombre."

"You think we can get to them that easily?" 

"Why not? El Sin Nombre has the information that we need. They've got to nyet?" 

"Well I know in recent events, the cartel and Shadow Company are at each other's throats lately… Should be easy enough." 

"Here, a 0.40 Calibre. Your favourite." 

Price took the pistol from Nikolai, chuckling softly, holding the fire arm in his padded jacket and straightening his posture.

"You ready?" Price asked Nikolai with a simple nod as the two men left the safehouse together. Both of them got into the vehicle and drove off, to their location point waiting for the others to strike. 

They found one of El Sin Nombre's houses, a lovely penthouse in the hills of Las Almas. The lights were on and there were a couple of guards outside doing their usual patrol, they watched a car leave the penthouse. A good time to strike… There was no sight of Elvira, she must be somewhere… Either way they timed it well tonight.

It was a hot Summer's evening, occasionally there was a cool breeze which eased them a little. 

"Gaz, Soap and Ghost are now in their positions. Ghost is up high having an overview of everything. Gaz and Soap had already found their way into the konni base." Nikolai explained to Price. "We'll get your little Princess back in no time." A chuckle escaped his lips.

"I'm just doing this for Ulrich…" Price's tone was blunt, trying to ignore his own feelings for Elvira. Brushing it aside as they continued on their journey. At this point he'd do anything to get her back.

El Sin Nombre and Graves had been at each other's throats now for a couple of days, it was the perfect distraction to sneak into the Penthouse. With Konni armed to the teeth, they had to do this stealthily if they wanted to do this right.

Soap and Gaz watched the cartel men for their daily duties, how the men patrolled, who was patrolling when and where. Mainly keeping an eye out for El Sin Nombre, but as before…. No sight.

"There." Gaz nodded towards the direction of someone walking over to a door,  which seems to be a woman. Though it was quite hard to see her face, or what she was fully wearing to get a good look. 

"We can sneak in a snake camera and overhear the conversation. Nikolai and Price should be here any minute." Soap advised as he was the first one to make the move, Gaz followed closely. Their movements were quick as they approached the door. 

Soap got the snake camera out of his tactical vest, and he placed it down on the floor setting it up. Handing the device over to Gaz as he spoke.

"You got the girl haven't you? Now give me what I want, cabr��n." Valeria's voice was stern, and could almost cut any throat. She had short black hair and brown eyes. Wearing her turtleneck, a green tactical vest over it. Blue jeans and boots. Two men were beside her as she continued to talk on the phone.

"Ready?" Gaz looked at Soap, taking the snake camera away, preparing to kick the door down. Soap nodded in agreement, getting himself ready. The moment the door was kicked down, Gaz and Soap killed the two guards in sync. 

"She's running!" Soap yelled as he and Gaz went after her, Ghost appeared from the shadows grabbing Valeria and tackled her down to the ground. 

"Got her." Ghost spoke firmly as he tied Valeria's hands quickly, pulling her back up from the ground looking at her. 

"You're making a big mistake." Valeria spoke firmly looking at the group, Price soon approached over to them nodding approvingly.

Nikolai found the others and had a few papers in his hands. "We got a good lead on where Elvira will be, let's go. I saw the patrol car coming back." He said. 

"Good work." It was all Price said, before more reinforcements could come they quickly dissected as if nothing ever happened. 

. . .

"So it was El Sin Nombre's men, or should I say Valeria, she took Elvira for Graves. I guess to ease the tension between them." Gaz looked at the others. "We got the location wrong, what do we do now?" He questioned. 

"I want to make sure Elvira is in that location for sure, for all we could know they might have moved her by now. But I just want to be 100% certain…" Price replied, a soft sigh escaped his lips. "Let's go."

The lightbulb was soon turned on, Price had his arms crossed. His blue eyes peered down at Valeria. 

"Elvira Wolff, I know you gave her to Graves. Is she still in that prison in Las Almas?" Price asked in a stern tone. 

"I don't know." Valeria replied. "Whatever Graves does with the girl is his business, not mine. I got my pay." She wasn't going to give up the information that easily.

"You put a target on your back either way, tell me." Price then got his pistol out, pressing it against her head. "And I might be merciful, if you tell me that is…" His thumb was on the trigger.

Ghost, Gaz, Soap stood there watching intently as they waited for an answer the silence was deadly. 

"... Yes. She's still in the prison, she'll be transferred to Ashkia Island if don't you get there in time. That's all I'm going to tell you." Valeria simply smiled. 

"That is enough." Price said, he quickly walked out with the others closely following behind him. He knew Alejandro and Rodolfo had been searching for El Sin Nombre for a while now, before the group left. Price left a quick text message to Alejandro.

"Found a package you might like."

Price knew Elvira was being kept now, and he'd do anything to get her back to Ulrich. Even if he would die trying to.

By the time Alejandro and Rodfolfo got to the location, Price was nowhere to be seen. Alejandro remained high in his guard and unlocked the cargo and there he saw Valeria…

"Qué chingados…" Alejandro spoke in disbelief, seeing Valeria tied up on her chair giving both Alejandro and Rodfolfo a cold look.

[observeowl]

Right By Your Side | Chapter 6 - Power Enhancing Shoes

Summary: In the world where wearing glasses makes you a different person. You were forced to swallow a pill that turned you into seven years old. Now, you're living with your crush in a small form, what would you do? Who were the ones who brought this to you? And, can you change back?

Chapter summary: Receiving new gadget that would help you to apprehend those who did this to you.

Series Masterlist

Second POV "Are you okay?" She used her cold hands to wipe off the sweat on your forehead.

Now, the life you're living in, is built on lies upon lies. One day it's going to come crashing down on you and you won't be prepared to face it.

"Yeah... just a nightmare from when I was younger." Natasha arched her eyebrow. Younger? You were already very young, she didn't think you would be able to remember much when you were a toddler.

Seeing Natasha's reaction, you knew you had made a mistake again. "Ahh... I-I mean from a horror movie my parents forced me to watch when I was younger." It was not a convincing lie but you were unable to think of anything else at the moment.

"What kind of parents make their child watch horror movies from such a young age?"

"I don't know."

Natasha cupped your face and measured your pulse sneakily. "Well, if you have any problems, you can come and find me okay?"

You nodded your head. "Can you... sleep with me tonight?" You were willing to change this situation into an opportunity, she may not know it's you but as long you know, that's all that matters now.

"Sure." She climbed into bed with you and wrapped a protective arm around your body and you slowly engulfed in a deep sleep. "You don't have to worry about anything."

"You know, there's this friend of mine. She also have nightmares and since she has a photographic memory, her nightmares would always be so realistic, not missing a single detail. I would always have to wake her up as well."

Maybe being small isn't so bad after all.

---

Your POV I went to find Bill since he said he got something for me that might help. Wanda dropped me off as Nat had a meeting she had to attend.

"So what do you have for me?" I went to the basement where he works his magic.

"Hey, is this how you speak to me?" He huffed and crossed his arms against his chest. He was never this confident against me, he was more passive but with our difference in size, he likes to tease me more these days.

"I made this pair of shoes for you." He took it out from a box. It looks like a pretty standard shoe to me. "Hey, don't judge before you try it." I made a weird face as I put it on. We went to the backyard to try out its special ability.

He placed a soccer ball in front of my feet and gave me a nod to try it. "The setting is from low, medium and high." I decided to try the highest setting first. Go big or go home right?

I've missed this adrenaline pumping through my veins. A grin naturally showed on my face. I used to play soccer to pass time and ended up being pretty good at it. I backed up slightly for the run up sequence. I took a few quick steps before pulling my leg back and kicking it straight out of the yard.

"HOLY SHIT! I told you to test it out, not to wreck my backyard!" Bill screamed and went to assess the damage I had caused.

My mouth hung open as I saw the damage I had done, the fences were broken and the trees snapped into two. I had no idea the power would be this strong, why did Bill calibrate it this way? Okay... maybe sticking to the low setting would be a better idea.

"Why is it this strong?" I questioned him. Was I meant to kill people with it?

"You deal with enemies who are tougher than trees!" He said with his back facing me while trying to fix whatever he could with his hands.

"Well, true. I'm going to relax inside." I turned on my heels.

"Hey! Aren't you going to help?"

"I'm just a kid." I stuck a tongue out at him before turning the doorknob and entering the house. There's nothing to do in the house so I went to rummage for another soccer ball. It was kept in the storage space amongst all the other tools and equipment, what a mess. He should really tidy up his house a little.

I juggled the ball around aimlessly, trying all sorts of tricks, reminiscing the times I would play them after school, trying to aim for a spot in the club. It didn't last very long before I got taken by Hydra.

---

Second POV Nat  only announced she was coming to pick you up a few minutes before she arrived. You didn't have a chance to get ready and had just managed to tell Bill when you heard her car horn.

"We're going for a team lunch outside." Nat said when you got into her car.

There wasn't any need to bring you along if it was a team lunch but you didn't mention anything. When you arrive at the café, only Steve can be seen sitting on the table. You and Nat joined him and ordered drinks to start.

Nat was glancing everywhere as she sipped on her coffee and so was Steve. It was then did you realise this wasn't a team lunch, but a mission. You looked on the roofs and inside of buildings to search if any other team members were here and you could only see Wanda, Sam and Bucky.

You sat there quietly drinking the juice they ordered for you and playing with the napkin on the table to look less conspicuous. If others were to see your table without food and the child sitting peacefully doing nothing, it would be even more suspicious.

"They could have ordered something for me regardless." You thought.

"I'm heading to the washroom." You muttered before getting up from your seat. They were so focused on looking out for any suspicious person on the streets that they didn't reply to you.

You were drying your hands on the tissues paper when you realised your table was empty. You took large strides of steps across the café and looked for them. When you couldn't see them anyway, you tried finding Wanda, Sam and Bucky where you last saw them but they were gone as well.

Screams and foot trampling were heard as people were pushing each other to be the first to get out of danger when shots sounded from the adjacent street.

You rushed against the flow of traffic. People were knocking you back like waves pushing you towards the shore. You were at their waist at most and it was hard to navigate a crowd of people when their only focus was to get to safety.

You found them fighting against Hydra agents from behind the covers. There were still a lot of people running around hindering their ability to take them down swiftly. Steve and Bucky were managing fine, their super soldiers after all. Wanda and Nat were working together as Sam navigated from the sky.

Things were getting tricky as you watched their backs when more reinforcement came. Team started to drift apart as their fights brought them elsewhere.

"You can have this back!" Putting your shoe medium setting, you kicked the bullet casing which was plenty on the floor towards a Hydra agent, it penetrated through his bullet proof vest and straight into his chest.

You continued eliminating agents as you moved from cover to cover, sometimes using other objects such as empty cans and bricks to knock out agents.

When everything was done, you emerged from your cover and went to find Nat.

"Nat!!"

She turned around when she heard you call for her. Nat bent down and looked at you. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be following the flow of the others? You could have gotten hit by a stray bullet! It's dangerous! You shouldn't be running towards the heart of danger!" Nat held your shoulders and tried to shake some sense into you.

"I- I was trying to find you..."

"... Just go to the car over there and wait for me. We need to settle some things here." She pointed towards a black car with SHIELD agents around. You trudged towards the car, you used to be able to participate in such events, now you're being pushed aside because they don't know who you are and what you're capable of.

Whatever meeting Natasha was in in the morning must be related to this.

Series Masterlist

[coughloop]

hi joan i would love if you could talk about espresso clarity more!! or like more in general what you look for in an espresso calibration/dial in THANKS!!!!!!

Simplist answer I can give:

Espresso clarity is more than anything else a way to talk about the detectable flavours in a beverage. High clarity means that you can taste more nuanced flavours, like blueberry and milk chocolate for example, while a lower clarity drink would just taste muddled/muddy and indistinct. You will get higher clarity by reducing the amount of solids in your coffee by either filtering more out or increasing the ratio of water to coffee used to dilute what you've already pulled out.

Now here's some more detailed information, it will probably only make sense if you have some experience with dialling in coffee already and know what changing grind size and ratios do:

Clarity is something often put on charts like these ones as an opposite to body (as in thickness of the beverage)

While I dont think that's a perfect summation (and that also these charts are out of order over simplifications that don't actually really make any sense) I think it's fair to say that most often when making a coffee drink, you are probably going to be choosing to lean towards one end or the other.

To illustrate that, here's a quick chart I made that focuses on 1. grind size, and 2. filtration (click to enlarge):

This ignores a lot of other important parts of making coffee (agitation, contact time, temperature, pressure applied, immersion vs percolation, yadda yadda yadda), but for our purposes it gives a smaller window to put our expectations into. If we're talking strictly about espresso it means we're sitting somewhere in here:

We know espresso has some filtration due to the metal basket trapping most (but not all) of the coffee grinds in the portafilter, but because of the tiny holes it will likely never be as clear as a coffee filtered through a paper filter which catches all of the grounds except what has literally been dissolved into the water, creating the flavour and colour of the final brew (if you want to understand more about that google "coffee TDS", its a lot to explain on top of this).

With this expectation of flavour clarity and body we can now get to work dialling in and figure out exactly how we want to balance the two.

My preference generally is a shot that sits at or around a ratio of 2.5:1 water in the final cup to the amount of coffee in the portafilter, so a pretty standard shot would be something like 17.5g dry coffee in, 44g liquid espresso out (in about 30s). I know this recipe will probably be decently high clarity, while lighter in body than a traditional 2:1 because the extra water dilutes the amount of solids that have been dissolved into the liquid, meaning I will have a thinner body coffee, while hopefully being able to get a higher clarity of flavour.

If it tastes sour and strong, like all I experience is a gross, sharp flavour on my tongue, and there's no distinctly pleasant flavours present, I would want to improve the clarity by either increasing the ratio of water to coffee or by fining up my grind to pull more out of the beans.

If it tastes somewhat clear at the beginning, but its super limp and weak and leaves a bitter, chalky taste in my mouth, I would want to do the opposite of above.

Either way im aiming to move out of the fringes of gross coffee and into the central sweet spot. Its also never this simple though, and you have to make sure you're using the right water makeup, a good quality grinder, consistent measurement and techniques, all that jazz.

I also find compass tools to be very helpful for finding a more basic dial, not specifically trying to accentuate anything in the coffee but just to get a good, sweet shot, with a healthy mixture of body and clarity.

These are my two favourites to glance at when I forget what I'm trying to do:

please let me know if you have any questions this is honestly kind of a ramble but I'm hapy to go into detail about anything specific that's confusing this post is just getting very long lol