#i am not denying any of that.

[lilthya]

i think what is fucked up is that we cannot side with lilith in diablo iv. when like.... a lot of what she says is true..... yeah, her methods are very, well, hellish., chaotic... "demonic...?" I guess you can say... but honestly? in comparison to inarius (who we basically get help from...have an alliance with without a choice as a player..) who is an angel, and is more WRONG and SELFISH than lilith. yes, her methods to free the world are very extreme, and can be considered cruel. but if you're going to paint her as the villain then inarius is too. thanks. you can fight me on this.

[akanemnon]

So THAT'S where he is!

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference sheets)

[xpupslxtx]

a moment of appreciation for when they’re so hard their t dick starts twitching

[meziniart]

It comes down to this Your kiss Your fist And your strain

[trans-axolotl]

my gendered experience growing up as an intersex person was overwhelmingly defined by my responses and resistance to everything that got me labeled as a failure: failure to quickly get a gender assigned at birth, failure to go through a normal puberty and grow up into a woman, failure at meeting the standards for "complete womanhood" because of my intersex sex traits, and yet simultaneously failing to ever be acknowledged as a "real man" and being treated as a threat when I expressed I wanted to transition.

before i realized i was a man and came out as trans, the ways that girlhood was denied to me was very often humiliating and painful. locker rooms filled with other girls were a frequent source of shame. there were many big and small ways that i was told that my intersex body made me insufficient, incomplete, broken. i was forced onto estrogen, forced into shaving my body hair, and was constantly being told to change myself to better fit this mystical idea of a "normal woman." and even though I ultimately ended up becoming a man, the denial of girlhood was painful.

but i think that these things would have been even more difficult to navigate as an intersex girl if on top of everything I already said, i was having to cope with the denial of my girlhood while i was forced into boys locker rooms. if my doctors were forcing me onto testosterone hrt and refusing to even discuss estrogen, if all my legal paperwork had "M" on it and was a logistical nightmare to change, if every support group for my intersex variation labeled it as a "men's support group," if the LGBTQ community spaces i tried to join were misogynistic towards me often to the point of exile, if my self determination as an intersex girl was denied in most spaces of my life, and on and on and on. while listing all these things out i also don't want to make it seem like it's all about suffering and pain--so much of transition for me has been about joy in my self determination and how much it feels like a reclamation of autonomy to decide what I want my body and self to be like--i know this is an experience i share with so many of my trans intersex friends.

as an person who was AFAB, although there were many ways that trying to grow up as an intersex girl were a painful, logistical nightmare, many times and places that i was excluded from woman's spaces, etc. however, there was a simultaneous affirmation that i was right to strive for that in the first place. which is logic rooted in some fucked up compulsory dyadism, but also which would have made some things slightly easier or even possible at all if i had wanted to embrace being an intersex girl within this fucked up system.

pretty much every time i've seen people on tumblr talking about "afab transfems" in an intersex context, people seem happy to collapse these experiences and act like there's no meaningful distinction or point in distinguishing between different types of intersex embodiment. it seems incredibly extractive, to be perfectly honest with you--taking terms already used by a community to make meaning of their experiences and to expand and dilute that term enough that it means something pretty different than the original.

it's making me think about the concept of epistemic injustice, which is a term coined by Miranda Fricker to describe oppression related to knowledge, communication, and making meaning of the world. There's two subtypes of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustice refers to the dynamic where marginalized people are labeled as not credible, excluded from conversations, and their testimony and knowledge is labeled as unreliable, even when they're the ones who are experts and have first hand experience of what people are talking about. (this is why i probably won't make this post rebloggable--i've noticed this pattern on tumblr many times where trans men speaking about transmisogyny get lots of notes and are given a lot of grace, where trans women are silenced, attacked for not having perfect wording, and otherwise delegitimized.)

the second type is called hermeneutical injustice. it describes how marginalized people are denied the right to make sense of the experiences in their own lives. this can look like preventing people from building community, terminology, a political understanding of themselves, and the interpretive resources needed to process how you live in the world.

this is a form of injustice that I think almost all intersex people are very familiar with--we are denied community and interpretive resources to the point that we're told we don't even exist, that intersex isn't a real word, and so many more examples that leave us isolated and with very few options for understanding what we're collectively experiencing. as an intersex person i really intimately understand how frustrating, confusing, and painful it is to not have words for your experiences, your identity, your life.

so it makes me really sad and pissed off when it seems like intersex people seem to be replicating this exact same type of epistemic injustice towards transfems and specifically towards intersex transfems. pretty much every time recently i see people talking about "afab transfems" they're doing so in a way that seems to deny that trans women even have the right to make sense of their own experiences in the world. there seems to be this mindset that these political frameworks, these interpretive resources that transfems have built up are just up for grabs for anyone. and then on top of that has come with it a lot of cruel, hateful language and direct attacks towards many intersex transfems who are facing so much harassment right now.

an important value to me is this idea of reciprocity as a foundation for solidarity. to me reciprocity means that we're prioritizing the ways we care for each other, we're thinking about how we can uplift each other, and we're watching out for extractive or exploitative patterns where one group is constantly expected to be in "solidarity" with another group without getting the same respect and care back toward them. i think that there could be so many ways that intersex people of all genders could share our overlapping experiences and actually be in true, meaningful solidarity with each other, but i barely ever actually see that happen on tumblr. and that pisses me off, because i do think that there's so much we have in common that we could celebrate and support each other with. i feel so much kinship with so, so many of my trans intersex friends, and ways where i see our lives converge. but i don't think that can happen in an environment where there's no acknowledgment of the ways that our experiences will sometimes (often) differ from each other, and the ways that we have unique needs.

another frustration i've had based on this most recent couple months of transmisogynistic intersex posting on tumblr is how intersex people have been mostly ignoring intersex community resources and devaluing the existing intersex terminology that people created to try to meet our needs. so much of what i've seen people describing on tumblr seems to really line up with the term ipsogender. Ipsogender is a term coined by an intersex sociologist Cary Gabriel Costello, and is used to describe intersex people whose gender matches the gender they were medically assigned at birth, but who might not feel like cis or trans fits them, might experience dysphoria, and who might feel like they've ended up transitioning medically or socially in some ways. this is a word that exists that an intersex person put time into coining because they wanted other intersex people to feel seen, embraced, and have ways of understanding themselves and communicating to others, and that's something that's super meaningful to me! and yet, i've rarely seen anyone reference it, and also seen multiple people making fun of it in other spaces online.

there's also intergender, which is another intersex specific gender term used to describe when your gender is inseparable from your intersex traits, and that your intersex identity is intertwined with your gender identity in some way. some people just identify as intergender, others use it as an adjective and exist as an intergender man or woman. intersex terminology like this is really important to me, especially because we're so often denied the right to make sense of our own experiences.

i think ultimately what i wanted to say with this post is just that when i think about intersex community, some of the most important values of intersex community for me are solidarity, care for each other, and affirming our right to define our own existence. and i don't think that can happen in a community where people are acting in extractive ways, harassing and attacking their fellow community members, and being dismissive of the realities of other intersex people's lives.

[hydrodragons]

"i neither know why i was born in this form nor do i understand where my long life should take me... it's as if there's something i've forgotten since the very beginning."

[pikhachu]

sighh late night extra bc i got pissed off and what i feel she feels

[saetoshi]

itoshi sae has a hard time getting out of bed in the morning.

it’s bad enough that the first thing he hears when he wakes up is the soft pitter patter of rain against the window.

but when he feels the bed shift slightly, his resolve completely crumbles.

the corners of his lips quirk up when you latch onto his arm, yawning. “what time is it?”

“it’s early.” too early.

“shouldn’t you be getting ready for practice?” you lean back to look at him.

he shrugs, turning his head to look at you, “probably.”

your brows knit in sleepy confusion, “why’re you still here then?”

a teasing smile blooms on his lips, “are you trying to kick me out of my own bed?”

“answer my question.” you yawn.

“it’s raining,” he hums.

you raise a brow, “so?”

“i wanna stay in bed.” he pouts. (he wants to stay in bed with you. but he’s not gonna tell you that.)

you weakly try to push him off the bed. “go get ready for practice.”

“what about you, huh?” he frowns, “shouldn’t you be getting ready for class?”

“i’m on a break.” you stick your tongue out at him.

“so am i.” he laughs when you give him a hard shove. (it’s still not enough to make him get up.)

“don’t lie to me,” you bite back a smile, “you never have days off.”

“who says i don’t?”

you give him a look. he simply stares at you.

“you never give them to yourself.”

“what if i wanna take a break now?” he crosses his arms.

“you won’t.” you poke his cheek, “you’re too you to take breaks.”

sae gasps in mock offense, “what’s that supposed to mean?”

“you know exactly what i mean.” (he does. he just doesn’t want to admit it.)

“well, i’m going to ask for a day off.” he huffs.

“you?” a smile tugs at his lips when he hears the doubt in your voice.

he sticks his tongue out at you before pointing at himself, “me.”

your brows raise in disbelief, “for real?”

“is it so hard to believe i’m going to take a break?”

“yes.” you laugh when he pulls you closer to him.

he pecks your forehead, “well, i am.”

“we’ll see about that,” you yawn, nuzzling into him.

he smiles when you drift off to sleep, gently wrapping an arm around you.

the soft pitter patter of rain hits the window as he reaches out for his phone, quickly sending his coach a message about not being able to make it to practice. (he won’t tell you he used you as an excuse. but he will tell you to fake being sick if his coach ever asks.)

a small smile tugs at his lips when he looks back at your sleeping face. he yawns, slumping against the bed.

the soft pitter patter of the rain lulls him back to sleep as he nuzzles into you.

[starheirxero]

ALSO !!!! ALAO ALSO ALSOOOO!!!!!

BLOODMOON'S LAST WORDS WERE KINDA HUGE TO ME. Like it can absolutely be interpreted just as Bloodmoon saying "fuck you fuck everyone we'd never side with you all and stop killing, even if it would be the best thing in the world" but what I personally gathered from it is that Bloodmoon woulda been fine with any "redemption" outcome as long as they weren't restricted from killing.

They didn't wanted to be "saved" and "redeemed" because they were totally fine with how they were living and they'd already found ways to work with their code and each other, they already felt safe and happy. Like, yea them killing people is fucked up, but you can't ask the robot called Bloodmoon to never know the taste of iron on their tongue again. They were built for that, they were built to love meat and gore and viscera!!

So, to me, his last words read more a confession that Bloodmoon can switch to the "good" side, they could absolutely work alongside the celestial family and foxy and monty and so on, but it's unfair to ask them to betray their very base coding and completely stop murdering for the rest of their life. Once again, I am HEARTILY proposing that someone just let them hunt game bc they were CLEARLY okay with setting on fish a few episodes ago.

[angel-fruitcake]

this has been said countless times already i know. but it still absolutely astounds me just how powerful, how phenomenal, how profoundly, breathtakingly, earth-shatteringly monumental the story of Dean and Castiel is. and a decent portion of it somehow wasn't even intentionally written as a romance. there are people out there to this day who still deny that it was a love story in the end.

i mean, look at it objectively. it's about a literal Angel of the Lord rescuing a human from the depths of Hell, accidentally developing emotions because of him, sacrificing everything he ever knew for him, willingly dying over and over and over again for him, and being fundamentally changed and ultimately saved in return by his own burning passion and unwavering devotion for that one human. Castiel fell for Dean in every sense of the word. what could be more tragically, heartbreakingly romantic than that?

[idontmindifuforgetme]

me stoically navigating my way through drama bc bigger things are ahead and it’s not my fault people are dumb

[miguel-owhora]

not to be a freak but thinking about bill williamson's fat ass,,,,,, he's a big guy, he's fat n burly! wdym he doesn't have a fat ass? he obviously does!! hhhhhh he probably struggles to pull up his pants, having to wiggle himself into them and cursing underneath his breath whenever he has to pull them over his ass, and ykw, probably his groin, too. big guys have big dicks. bill williamson is a certified big dick n fat ass haver.

it's just unfortunate he's such a loser he hasn't been able to use it much aside from fucking into his own fist, having to bite down on his fist to muffle himself whenever he comes on his own fast. he's the type of guy to jerk off in the woods or in his tent, even when he's surrounded by others, embarrassingly getting off to the idea of getting caught - even though the actual reality of it terrifies him.

[electricpurrs]

tex red vs blue is insanely transgender but im the only one who sees it that way because im crazy in the head.

what if there was a past version of yourself. a woman, a wife, a mother, with long hair and a sweet smile. and she died long ago. and you are her. but you are not her. you're nothing like her, but the people who knew her desperately want you to be her, want to preserve the memory they have in their minds of the woman they loved through you. but you never asked to be her, never asked to carry the burden of someone else's expectation of who or what you should be. you have a new name. you prefer to go by this one. people remark on how weird it is that it's a guy's name. sometimes the people who loved [the past version of] you call you by your old name. they are not referring to you when they say it. you live in the shadows of someone who's long gone, and you're something different now, but you don't feel like you're ever allowed to define yourself on your own terms, to be your own person, to control your own life, because you exist solely through the memories people had of you. and the longer she has been gone for, the more desperately people try to get her back, the less you resemble her and the less you know who you are, or if you ever even got to be anything at all. what i mean is that transition could have saved him

[springsylph]

bodyguard.

[bodyguard!john price x rookie actress!reader]

extension of this blurb. || minors, do not interact.

read on ao3

this was supposed to be a one-off thing but uh. my hand slipped? had to cut down the "price wouldn't do that" monster with my "i can do what i want" sword, and we got 3k of an unedited brain dump that i typed on my phone at six in the morning. also my first time writing something for price! woo!

He pulls out the crown on his watch, begins to twist and twist so that the dials can begin their inevitable rotation. “You know what time it is?"

Yelling secures you your first big project.

You can’t pay those bills until I land a job. A real job.

You’re almost certain your agent thinks you’re throwing a tantrum, and it leaves a coarse grit in your molars. You don’t like to pick fights. Hate it, really. But pushes are usually succeeded by shoves, and you can’t afford to get knocked out of the ring this time around.

The worst they can do is say no, right?

Thankfully, one yes is all you need to beg for. Your chariot arrives in the shape of a surprisingly low-budget rom-com, in simple terms. You and your C-list costar (flanked by a squeaky clean track record, thank god) are swept up in a soundless spiral of table reads and filming and wrapping before you can really, truly process.

But a warden stands guard at the eye of your perfect storm. John Price, assigned to you through your agency without so much as a proper word.

(“Squeaky clean,” apparently, didn’t take a history of overzealous stalkers into account.)

The peephole to your dilapidated apartment can barely contain him. blocks him—or attempts to do so—like a child might shield their sandcastle from the pulsing tide. Only, you think the tide might be more forgiving. He’s rooted in place, made harsher under the cracked fluorescent bulbs out in the hallway. They hum along with him. Faint, unless your breathing stills.

You’d feel a little more at ease if he were actually ex-military; the scraps of information you’ve been fed tell you that he’s been discharged, but you don’t believe it. Not for a second. You hadn’t been given much else apart from that and a face, but you could put together that he was disgustingly overqualified—not that you were complaining, though. Not yet.

You watch as John Price—Price?—gazes with a deceiving sort of apathy toward the end of the hall, then to the other, and back to the other end in three smooth seconds.

You think he’s seeing things till the apartment two doors down produces a tenant from its depths and price is turning, warding the disturbance off with an easy mornin’ and a wave of a large hand. He says nothing when they shuffle off awkwardly without a response, and the slow crawl of his opposite hand away from a flash of metal at his hip draws your pupil like a magnet.

It’s then that you note the suspiciously white shirt—rolled up to his elbows, tucked neatly into dark denim. hands tucked into pockets. Beard trimmed. Everything not protected by the skin on his body squared away just so, with just enough of his bulk on display to prompt that second spike of wariness.

A meticulous problem, then.

You peel yourself away from the door after an inhale and swing it open regardless.

The smell of tobacco and cologne hits your nose like a hammer the moment the door hits the bolt behind you, but you recover the feeling in your knees quickly. The fisheye lens doesn’t quite do him justice—you have to look up a bit to take another quick scan, cheeks cramping with the sudden momentum of your smile.

“I don’t see a bible or a pamphlet, so I’m assuming you’re not here to preach?” 

The joke doesn’t fall flat, but it does sail into one of the weaker bulbs before it shuts off with a buzz.

“…Captain Price, right?”

His eyes crinkle with a hint of what might be a grin. Under different circumstances, maybe. “Right on the mark. A pleasure to finally meet you, Ma’am.” But that thrum of irritation is there, as is the narrowing of his eyes when you extend your hand in greeting. “Just Price’ll do though.”

Hm.

He reaches up to fix his beanie just above his brow before giving your hand a firm shake. Definitely military. And hot as a furnace. You’re more than a little dizzy when he pulls back to check his watch, the inside of your wrist now raw from the grazing of a fingernail.

You can feel the skin he’s taken with him when he looks you in the eyes. Assessing. You don’t know why, but think you’ve won until he’s looking back down at his wrist.

He pulls out the crown on his watch, begins to twist and twist so that the dials can begin their inevitable rotation. “You know what time it is?”

Nine in the morning.

Or, at least it was thirty minutes ago.

“I—yeah. Lost track of time, sorry.” You scratch just under the collar of your shirt, straighten it out when the itch turns into a tingle you’re willing to overlook. You realize after an embarrassing beat that he’s probably asking for the actual time. “I sleep like a rock,” you add anyway. Your agency had actually given you three things, not two: a poorly put together profile, a face, and a meeting time.

It dawns on you now that a thirty minute “test of patience” with your back pressed to the door may not have been the way to go.

Price looks up, finally. Rolls his shoulders back as if to shed the pileup of gravity that’s compressed his spine in the half hour you’ve kept him waiting—and somehow, someway, seems to double the amount of space he takes up.

“That so,” he questions. Low in his throat, and a tad exasperated, because you’ve studied exasperation. Went into debt to have that understanding feel like a second skin. Which is why you observe, perplexed, as he gestures to the entryway. You think you feel your head nod, and he brushes past you to push through the door. “‘Nother habit we’ll have to kick.”

Any objections you might’ve had are killed in your throat the moment his prowl begins, and your socks catch on the scuffed linoleum as you flounder in after him.

The door slams back against the bolt while Price’s boots press the air out of your hardwood floors, squeals escaping with each heavy step. You squeak out a feeble excuse me alongside them once or twice, but to no avail. He can’t hear you, too intent on following some internal rhythm that takes him to the open window, the dusty cabinets, slipping fingers into the creases of a space you’re barely acquainted with yourself.

Something like nausea begins to bubble. You planned this. You’d planned out your introduction. Picked out your clothes, your shoes, where you’d grab coffee so you could build up your integrity and explain to him that you’re not looking to be coddled, he’d just get in the way. And now you’re wringing your hands, abject unease burning in a dense knot between your eyes while you figure out how to melt into the poorly hidden pile of dirty laundry.

There’s a delay in your processing, and you don’t start to catch up until Price finally slows down enough for you to realize he’s been talking.

He’s stooping over your dining room table, swiping a finger over his tongue before using it to card through old mail. “Real sorry ‘bout this, Ma’am. Not the most ideal introduction, I know, but we’re on a bit of a time crunch. Standard protocol—’m sure you know how it is, yeah?”

Price moves to turn over a stack of magazines on your dining table, and you wonder: were you supposed to know? You’re sure his question is rhetorical, and you’re certainly not inclined to answer. But something about the way it hits the water stains on your ceiling justifies the way he turns to look at you over his shoulder.

Concern. An uncut gem, plucked from some cavernous fissure that might be closer in proximity to hell than your own flesh and blood.

The crease between his brows deepens. “You have had security before, haven’t you?”

“Don’t get out much. I do my work, come right home.” You shrug, but your shoulders can’t seem to come back down. Perhaps this was why they’d put him on leave—he couldn’t do math.

You shuffle a bit in place, kick aside a ratty tennis ball left behind from one of your pet sitting stints. It hits your refrigerator and he’s still looking down at your feet, so you look with him.

—at the last two toes sticking out of your sock.

You rush to cover it with your other foot while Price sucks his teeth. He doesn’t move, hands still planted on the table, but each time he blinks his eyes are trained on something different.

Price lets out a sigh before he finally stands upright, perching his hands on his hips. “I'm surprised your people waited this long to call someone in. Right idiots they are, I’ll tell you that.”

Your people. You wrap your arms around your middle, pinch the fabric of your shirt between your fingers.

“I can't really blame them,” you say after a moment. Tip your chin up, a last ditch attempt at salvaging what little of your farce is left to cover yourself with.

Price tuts, strangely unconvinced for someone you’d only known for around ten minutes. “You’d be smart to blame them.”

“Don’t think I can do that when I'm working for them, Price.”

“Can’t you? S’clear they’ve done fuck all to look out for you.”

And you could. Should. Want to. So, so desperately need to. But you’re already saddled with enough things to hate. Hope of catharsis is an outbound ship, a blip on the horizon that you don’t have the funds to board. 

“…I don't follow.”

Price doesn’t flinch when the table rocks without the weight of the magazines to keep it steady, and neither do you.

“You don’t follow,” he repeats. Like a crucial detail has been lost in translation.

You shake your head.

“Well, that’s no good.”

Cigar smoke snakes its way into your headspace again when he strides past you to put his hand up against the door, muscles in his forearms flexing when he pulls at the doorknob. He beckons you closer, and you’re pulled out of orbit when you skirt close enough for him to reach, guiding your hand to the cool metal while he stands just behind you.

“Here,” he mutters. Your chest is a cushion, and the rumble in his chest is a bright red pin.

(Somewhere in the back of your mind, you wonder if the crackle of a walkie-talkie might bury how frighteningly human he sounds.)

“What am I looking for?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

He takes his hand off once you’ve stopped throwing glances at him, and your knuckles sizzle in his absence. What was he looking for? Nothing…looks different. 

You can’t focus. His eyes are on your neck, and you can’t focus.

And suddenly, you don’t like how close he is. You’re reminded of how he’d shoved his way into your apartment. Barely spoken to you before driving a stake through the bubble put together with your blood sweat and tears. Made you feel ashamed in your own home.

Righteous indignation flares up, and you’re spewing words you’re certain you believe in until they tumble out.

“If you’re just here to poke fun, I’m not—”

Pop.

You look down. The keyhole pokes just out of the doorknob and you look to Price, his face remarkably passive.

“Lock’s been tampered with.” He runs a thumb over the offending protrusion, watches as it slots back into place. “You should see some scratches on the other side of it. Thought I noticed something when the door first slammed, but I didn't want to startle you in case my eyes were playing tricks. Can’t quite see like I used to.”

Why not get glasses?

“I would’ve put up less of a fuss if you’d told me up front.”

He looks at you, eyes a perfect congruence of something just beyond what your fingertips can touch. But he smiles, and you think you can understand. Maybe mash the pieces together. A distending warmth. Nepenthe sinking into every orifice until you’re expelling your woes through your nostrils.

Your axis tilts when Price puts a solid hand on your shoulder.

“It’s not good to lie, mm? Not to me.”

Not good to lie.

When you slide out from under his palm, his callouses snag on the exposed seam of your shirt. You toss him a grin, a bone. “Noted.”

Insecure seconds pass, but not without movement. 

It begins like this: Price walks away from the door, and you’re almost grateful for the squealing underneath his feet to fill the silence. He takes your stack of mail and magazines, sets them exactly as they had been before he’d entered. The table is righted, and he works in reverse from that point on.

Closing cabinet doors. Angling that picture frame you’ve been meaning to adjust for weeks. He’s putting things into their proper place, like setting bones before they’re enclosed in a stiff cast. 

You, though, are still standing awkwardly by the door.

“You really don’t need to—”

He holds out a hand. “Relax. ‘M just having a second go around.”

You bristle, but your decision to pad over to the couch is of your own volition. It caves in when you sit, and you wiggle to get the cushions to realign with your hips. Your hands feel around blindly for the remote to your TV before remembering you’d dropped it out of the window in a fit of anger some weeks ago, so you sit back, spine hitting the hard frame of the couch. Price’s noises pair well, somehow, with the wind sliding over the glass and the neighbors downstairs.

Until you feel his presence at the back of the couch, and a thought smacks you right across your forehead.

You shoot up, heart rate suddenly inflamed by panic. “Price?”

The movement stops, and you turn around, peer over to find Price prepped to duck his head under the couch. “Hm?”

“Uh.” You hesitate. Shit, think—

“H-how much are they paying you, anyways?” Good save. Maybe a little less than good.

You feel a little bad that you’d stopped Price mid-crouch; you can’t quite remember how old he is, but you know he’s old enough for knee pain to be a concern. He looks up as if crunching the numbers in his head. Hums. “Enough.”

“What’re you looking for?”

“Saw the picked lock, didn’t you?”

“Were you really discharged?”

“Depends. There something under this couch you don’t want me seeing?”

Looks like you can knock “interrogation skills” off of your list of special skills on your resume.

Your jaw snapping shut is enough to send his arm sliding under, and you can only watch in horror as his clutched hand emerges holding a scrap of thin blue fabric. He pushes himself up off of his knees. Takes his sweet time wringing out his back while your eyes track his hand like he’s got a thumb over the button of a detonator.

If he had any shred of decency—

“Another thing I caught on my way in,” he huffs. He holds out his hand and allows the blue fabric to uncurl. A flag, hung full mast right between your eyes. Another one of his tests. 

“Price.”

“C’mon, now. Take it from me.”

He doesn’t have to ask twice; your arm shoots out and you win it back in one go. Stuff your lacy underwear into the pocket of your pants and wait for your ceiling to collapse in on you.

“Can’t leave pretty things like that layin’ around.” And Price stops, watches as you curl in on yourself. Voice like the push of velvet shifting underneath your palms. “Likely to rip if you’re not careful.”

You pull your head into your shirt and curl your knees into your chest. It’s a shock when you find yourself face to face with your heartbeat, the skin over your left breast jumping underneath your nose. “I think we’re done here.” 

Price makes that sucking noise again with his teeth—agitation, you think it’s agitation—and you trace the hazy shadow of him through your shirt as he steps around the couch to walk to the window. He snaps twice, and you’re beginning to entertain the thought of what might happen if you had enough strength to push him out.

“What now,” you croak.

“Eyes up.”

Slowly, you muster up enough spite to bring your head just above the collar of your shirt. Military men and their incessant need for…whatever the hell this was. 

“You’ve gotten better at this. Quick study,” Price remarks.

“Better at what.”

“Listening. That’s good, real good. That’ll make this a whole lot easier,” he says, a note of appreciation that you haven’t heard yet stirring that tiny pool of filth just underneath your navel. You hum.

Price crosses his arms. Flicks his stupid eyes toward the fluttering curtains. “How often d’you leave this open?”

Your face pinches. “I mean—pretty often? It’s hot, Price. And in case you haven’t noticed,” you wave your hand to the general state of disrepair, “I don’t exactly have good circulation in here.”

This gives him pause. Whatever plan he’s recalibrating, you want no part of it. You do notice that he hasn’t put his hands in his pockets since he showed up on your doorstep, instead favoring the use of his left hand to rub his chin. 

“Come over here and close the window.”

You nearly jump out of your skin. “...Close the window? Price, you can’t be serious.”

He doesn’t respond.

“Can’t…can’t you close it?”

“It’s not my window. Can’t do everythin’ for you.”

He stares at you expectantly. Your tailbone is beginning to throb, and for some damning reason, that note still ringing bright in the back of your skull. That’s good. Good, good, good.

Price catches that eager glint the moment it surfaces.

“Go on then, love.” He tips his head. “Close it.”

The rest of you surfaces slowly. You look back for a moment at the indent left on the couch, think about how long that imprint will be there until you feel inclined to fluff out those cushions again.

(Later. You’ll get to it later.)

Shutting the window doesn’t take much effort, but the swampy temperature is noticeable. You turn around a little too quickly, so you hold an arm out to the now sealed vault in an exaggerated show of bravado. I did it, see?

Price slides past you to look outside. He purses his lips when he finds what he’s looking for, and you can almost see the note being stashed into some faraway file.

He turns to you. “Keep this window closed till further notice,” and a hand reaches out to tug the curtains shut, and yellow from the lamp you’d left on last night washes over the room instantly.

“Price.”

“I take my work seriously. You take yours seriously, you’ll need me.”

It feels like a slap in the face. “I do, but that doesn’t mean—”

“My job,” and he points to himself, then to you, “is to keep you out of harm's way. Can’t do this if you don’t trust me.”

“You’re asking a lot for someone who hasn’t—”

You go silent as he reaches a hand into a back pocket, pulls out his hand and you count one, two, three square devices around the size of a nail.

“Busted lock, three faulty cameras, all outside. You’re lucky these people are idiots.” He shoves them back into his pocket before returning his focus to you. “You need me.”

You blink. 

Price smiles, raises his eyebrows as if the conversation is already over. “Hungry?”

You stumble back. “But what about—what about the apartment?”

“S’fine,” he says. He checks his watch. “I know a couple guys, you’re in good hands.”

[captain-astors]

Creature. (The rendered ones are referenced from manga panels)

[the-darkestminds]

Okay I know I've already posted about this but I can't get over the fact that if the next book is about Elriel, then as readers we will be entering their story having missed all of the early romantic development between them, because it has happened off page. We have not been privy to a single private conversation between the two of them aside from the very brief bonus chapter. Not to mention we have zero Elain POV thus far. It would be so unlike Sarah to plop us into a romance that she developed without the us along for the journey. This is why I felt so awkward reading their almost-kiss. It caught me off guard, because despite seeing evidence of a growing friendship between them, there is no indication of any lust in ACOWAR and onward. They interact, but briefly, and these interactions are only observed from other character's POVs. We see Azriel defend her and rescue her, and we see Elain gift him a gift. But we don't get to hear what they talk about, or what they do when they are alone. This is what bothers me most about Elriel. I love the growth Sarah gives us between the two characters she's focused on. We get to see the love blossom slowly and thoroughly, but that wouldn't be true in the case of Elain and Azriel. We will have missed a big chunk of the build.