#i don't want people to conceal themselves for me but i hate when it's expected of me

[kohakuhibiki]

Apparently a microcelebrity got into wanting to appeal to a crowd while knowing they could still eat in the palm of those alienating the aforementioned crowd when that doesn't work. Many awkward generalizations and snippets of isolated events ensues. Apparently it's hard, but, it's exploitable and has entertainment value, so...

[baronessvonglitter]

The Haunting of David York

Dave York x ghost!reader

Word count: 2.6K

Summary: It's a typical Halloween night for Dave. The last thing he expects is for you to come back and get your revenge.

(Spoilers below the cut, so resume with caution)

WARNINGS: Rated M; Dead Dove Do Not Eat; mentions of wet work, murder, brief gore, threats of violence towards family, major character death (don't hit me)

Author's Note: this fic is for @mermaidgirl30 Jamie's Halloween Writing Challenge 👻 thank you for hosting this lovely fic challenge!

The idea for this started out as a random discussion about why we're afraid of ghosts if they can't really hurt anyone.. then I wanted to add our favorite suburban murder daddy to a ghost story and got some inspo from watching old school stuff like Creepshow and early seasons of AHS. (I haven't written horror in a very long time, so gimme a little break)

Shoutout to @yorksgirl for the Dave chit chats-- there will be a sweatpants scene in another fic, promise!

"Dave, not again!" Carol whines from the front steps.

"What?" he asks innocently, hefting the human-sized 'body bag' consisting of garbage bags stuffed with leaves and tied up with duct tape to fashion a corpse decoration in the yard for Halloween. Dave has been working on them all day. He's now up to seventeen.

"The HOA is going to complain," his wife shakes her head. "We got away with a warning last year. This time they'll definitely fine us."

"It's worth it to see the looks on everyone's faces," he insists. "Besides, I'll have them picked up and out of sight by the end of the night. I promise."

Dave doesn't love Halloween, but neither does he mind it. People dressing up to be anything other than themselves for one night only? Try doing that 24/7.

He doesn't get to parade around the Mr. Hyde aspect of his life. He doesn't get to knock on doors while in tactical gear, sniper rifle resting in one arm while he sticks an orange jack-o-lantern bucket out to get a handful of tooth-rotting sweets. He doesn't get to wake up on November first and pretend it was all for fun.

It's a silly holiday, but he likes scaring the shit out of the neighbors with the decorations. And his kids love planning their costumes months in advance. Alice is going as a zombie cheerleader (he never understands where these ideas come from) and Molly is some type of Pokemon Dave thinks is a squirrel but she insists is something called an Evoo or Evie or something completely asinine.

Carol usually insists on taking them out trick-or-treating, dressing up herself in a last-minute Minnie Mouse getup, a red sweater and black leggings, and a headband with sequined mouse ears to complete the look.

"You'll be okay here by yourself?" she asks, putting the finishing touches on her mouse whiskers and nose with liquid eye liner in the hall mirror as the girls wait impatiently to leave.

She asks that every year, as if something bad will happen on his watch, as if he can't hack it alone for a couple of hours.

"Unless Michael Myers or Pennywise show up, I'm pretty sure I'll be fine," he says, giving the girls a quick kiss before they go.

"What's Pennywise?" Alice asks as Carol herds them out the door, and she shoots her husband an annoyed glance.

There aren't as many trick-or-treaters this year, and Dave regrets that he'd bought so much candy. He dips his hand into the large tub of mini chocolate bars and fruit-flavored chews that stick to one's teeth and selects some Nerds, eating them straight from the tiny box. With barely concealed disgust he finds the candy corn, plucking the small packets of the hated sweets out from the bowl. He doesn't know how anyone can eat these. These can go to the next kids who ring the doorbell. When the next round of costumed kids come around he gives out huge handfuls. The less sweets they have in the house, the less sugar-fueled meltdowns he's likely to experience from his kiddos.

When there's more of a lull he relaxes on the sofa, mindlessly unwrapping a chocolate bar as the Halloween song hums from the TV, The Nightmare Before Christmas playing where the girls had left it on:

Boys and girls of every age wouldn't you like to see something strange? come with us and you will see this, our town of Halloween

He finds his glass of Macallan pairs nicely with a mini Hershey's Special Dark chocolate that he knows the little trick-or-treaters won't appreciate. The candy rests on his tongue as he savors the lingering taste of the scotch while the movie keeps playing. He absorbs a little of it, a now thirty-year-old film that came out when he was his kids' age. He watches idly, letting the scotch lull him into a nice semi-rest.

This is Halloween, this is Halloween pumpkins scream in the dead of night this is Halloween, everybody make a scene trick or treat, 'til the neighbors gonna die of fright

Enough of the singing. He changes the channel. There's postseason baseball on TV, but his favorite team isn't in the playoffs, and the announcers are annoying. Click. Of course there's a horror marathon on every channel. All the Scream movies, which he can appreciate for their ingenuity, Psycho, Shaun of the Dead, the entire Friday the 13th franchise even though it's Thursday, the 31st.

He flips channels, mindlessly, watching tidbits of each, digging into the leftover candy once again when he hears a thud.

With feline alertness he mutes the TV and sits up straight in one swift move. He zones in on where the sound came from, waiting, his racing heart the most audible sound in his ears.

Most people listen for a sound and relax when they don't hear it again, chalking it up to the house settling, or a rodent in the attic. But Dave knows better. He's been on the opposite side of this type of situation countless times. He doesn't relax and just chalk it up to mundane things like other people, because he knows there are guys like him out there-- becoming one with the shadows, as silent as possible--

It's coming from the back door.

In stealth mode, he grabs his gun from the safe in his study and quickly, skillfully, loads it. Adrenaline sings in his veins, carries him towards the danger. He flips on the light switch for the patio and the lights glare into the dark, lighting up nothing. His gun is still in his hand as he slowly opens the door, listening for footsteps.

Quiet.

A little disappointed that he's gotten riled up for no reason, he sighs as the rush of adrenaline dissipates and leaves him weak for a brief moment.

He keeps the gun in the holster at his side as he returns to the sofa, a little more on edge. It could be just teenage assholes playing pranks out of boredom, but he doesn't want to risk it.

He shuts the TV off and the silence becomes the largest thing in the room, even louder than his thoughts. He's taut as wire, not allowing himself to relax just yet. He's listening for more sounds. Most are explainable: a slow drip in the kitchen sink that Carol told him about just yesterday, the notification pings on his daughter's tablet that she left on the dining room table.

"Fuck!" he curses in surprise as the TV turns on, The Nightmare Before Christmas still playing where it left off:

I am the one hiding under your bed, teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red I am the one hiding under your stairs fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair

Dave quickly snaps the TV off, removing the batteries from the remote.

It's just some electrical glitch he tells himself. And then the power goes out completely.

"Shit," he mutters, using his phone to light the way to locate the real flashlight. It's not in the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink where it's supposed to be left. Carol must have moved it. He checks the garage. Through the windows he can see the neighbors still have power, so he grabs the trusty flashlight and checks the breaker box. After fiddling with it, it won't reset. The flips do absolutely nothing.

Heaving a frustrated sigh, he pinches the bridge of his nose, taking out his phone from his pocket. The battery shows 1% before fizzling out to a black screen with the gray spinning wheel before dying.

"You've got to be shitting me," he grumbles. With another curse, he shoves the useless thing back in his pocket, letting the flashlight guide him out of the garage. He may as well get the keys and go try to find Carol and the girls, who are probably several blocks over by now, maybe get them to stay at her mother's place while he gets things sorted out with the power issue.

And then..

he hears the sound of his name spoken, a sharp. accusatory whisper, as if it's right next to him. It's so real he can feel the cold breath against his ear. It makes him jump out of his skin.

Alert, his body tense and ready for action, his eyes dart around the room as he begins to get his bearings back and his heart goes back to its normal rhythm.

Stupid.. he curses himself, sitting upright again. Annoyance colors his face.

But the sound of it.. of your voice still rings in his ear. And he'd know your voice among a thousand others.

Now he knows he's imagining things, because it couldn't have been your voice at all.

You're dead.

He doesn't want to think about that day, a cold autumn day just like this. In fact it'll be one year exactly on November 14th. The last day you saw sunlight, the last day you ever breathed.

It's not that you were bad, you were just in the way. There was no room for you in Dave's perfect, clock-precision life. He tried to make your end painless, make sure you didn't see it coming.

Some secrets don't stay buried forever..

Nobody knows he assures himself. It's impossible.. He'd even kept it from his teammates, and they knew nearly every damn thing about him.

No, this particular job.. the handling of you, had to be done on his own.

Casting a glance at the backyard patio again, the light from his neighbor's back porch glows eerily, spotlighting the patch of earth Dave had avoided until finally he'd caved and erected a bird bath with a small garden, a surprise for Carol's birthday. His wife never suspected that you were buried there, beneath her gift.

Without thinking, he's already walking outside, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, leading the way to your grave. He never comes out here anymore. The guilt has become too crushing and he's not a man who dwells on guilt. He does what he has to and revisits the issue if problems arise.

You won't arise, though. When he closes his eyes he can still see the bullet hole in your temple, the blank look as the light left your eyes.

Forgive me, he'd thought, unable to speak it aloud as he stuffed your body in a bag and placed you in the dirt on a moonless autumn night.

When he reaches the stone path that leads to your innocent-looking grave marker, he has to process what he sees:

there's a hole in the ground, where some of the rocks and flowers around the bird bath have been upheaved, and in the breeze his flashlight shines on a tattered, empty black body bag. The scent of death greets his nostrils as he pales, trying not to vomit.

He goes back to the house, immediately on the defensive, irrationally expecting to find you there, clothes dirty and hair caked with mud and blood, a specter of his own paranoia and guilt.

It's still shrouded in darkness, the home that is supposed to be his shelter from such dark things as yourself. It's his domain, his castle, and in this trouble, without his family, he feels like less of a king.

"There's no fucking way," he mutters, stomach roiling with fear and suspicion. He opens the patio door and steps inside.

The whole place smells of death, of the grave.

You're in every corner, quiet, waiting, watching. But not impassive.

He feels you everywhere, himself made small by your ubiquitous pall. The gun in his hand feels useless, and this makes him angry.

You feed off his anger. You love it. It's the only thing you can feel anymore. Pure, unadulterated hate.

You slither towards him, wicked grin growing bigger as you approach him. Dave gets the chills down his back, not knowing just how close you are to him.

"Boo" you whisper lightly, ghostly breath caressing the shell of his ear.

Your cackling thunders in his ears as he whips around, eyes wide with fright. You delight in the fear he's giving off. The scent of it it so intoxicating. It's the only good thing about being dead.

"I should make your death as nice and quick and clean as you made mine" your voice echoes all around the room. Dave looks equal parts pissed and afraid as he tries to track you.

"But I won't."

You've been waiting for this night, this one unholy night where you'd be allowed to come back, to gather the unearthly powers granted to you. Halloween: the one night of the year when the living come back to haunt the dead.

And the son of a bitch had the gall to kill you in November. You had to wait almost a whole year for your revenge.

Gonna make it sweet.

It takes a lot of energy to assume something of a human form, but as you grab onto the fear he's giving off, as you use the most ancient of forces to pull your corporeal parts together, it gets easier. You don't feel afraid. You haven't, not since he killed you.

"Consider yourself lucky it's only you I'm after. If I had my way your family's blood would be splattered on these walls along with yours."

Dave shivers violently. "Please, don't!" He's not used to begging or pleading. He's actually on his knees. He tries not to look at you; your visage is too grotesque. Your flesh is falling off your face and your eyes are sunken into your head, giving a ghoulish appearance.

You force his gaze upon you with the ice-cold touch of your hand. "Your family is safe. For now. Hell, there's always next Halloween."

With the cracking open of his ribcage and the spilling of his guts you reach into him, finding the fullness of the heart, the organ he uses the least.

All Dave can do is scream and scream and scream.

The next day Carol sits at the dining room table, two detectives with her. Her coffee has grown cold, barely touched. She still bears the remnants of the makeup she'd put on to complete her costume last night. The girls are upstairs. She couldn't bear sending them to school, having them apart from her. Not while Dave is missing.

"He was fine last night. Normal," she adds, shrugging as she dabs at her eyes with a Kleenex.

Because of his position as a government agent, his disappearance is being taken very seriously. Officers are en route, dispatched to start searching the area, especially the nearby woods, which Carol has always feared.

Dave's gun is there, his wallet, phone, and keys also left behind.

One of the field officers comes in (there have been many people coming in and out of the house today) and motions to the backyard. "Halloween decoration?"

"Yeah," Carol sniffles, smiling just a little. "Dave likes to shock the neighbors. He promised he'd put them away before the morning.. but he never puts them out back.."

Out of guilt, or maybe just to give herself something to do, she gets up and goes to put the decorations away. The detectives follow.

Funny. There's just one.. she thinks, looking at the lone body bag on the lawn, tossed haphazardly next to her bird bath.

It's heavier than she expects. She's too petite to pick it up. Sighing, she kneels, the crunch of the fallen leaves beneath her knees. She'll just take the leaves out and throw the bag away.

Ripping it open with her nails she's stunned a moment, not processing what she's seeing before she lets out a bloodcurdling scream.

Wrapped up in the duct taped body bag is what's left of Dave.

dividers by @saradika-graphics 👑

tagging @almostempty @itwasntimethatdidit40 @milla-frenchy @salingers @zascal

[furiousgoldfish]

Hello, so I checked the checklist thing and I realized that the things I experienced aren’t normal but I also don’t think my parents do this intentionally. I think that this is just the only way they know how to do things, like they just don’t know anything else. Neither of them had particularly good parents so I just don’t think they realize that some of the things they do aren’t good. They try their best to be supportive and stuff but they do control some of my things and hit me when I do bad things, I’m a minor btw. I think that since they grew up with that they think it’s normal.

Yeah I get what you're saying! I felt these exact same things as a minor, and could see very well that from the perspective of my parents, they are doing what they think is correct, and it's how they've been taught, and of course there's no way for them to know they're doing damage or neglecting you because this is all they know.

However, from an adult standpoint, I know that parents are responsible for taking care of their children, and that neglect, ignoring issues, or particularly hateful and cruel behaviour is very obviously, not a mistake or just parents 'not knowing how to do any better'. They know how to treat other adults as human beings. They know to be polite and sensitive with their boss, with people they're trying to impress. They know to be kind to their guests and relatives they want to be in good graces of. They know how to take care of themselves and give themselves the attention and care they want, and even get other people to do it.

While it's impossible for children to know better than they've been taught, adults absolutely know better, and you know, even if nobody ever taught them directly, they could have, picked up a book on parenting! They could have shown interest in gentle parenting or looked it up, they could have researched all possible illnesses and signs of trauma and distress on their child - btw I did all of those things, even not planning to have children, I read those books, I researched those things, just for a mere chance that one day I end up caring for a child. It's not out of this world to expect parents to give a shit about learning how to parent! To just repeat whatever their parents did to them (which they often complain was so tough and cruel and hard on them) is an excuse to be willfully neglectful, willfully abusive.

When you're a kid, you're convinced that you're doing a perfect job of hiding just how alone, sad, scared, upset and traumatized you are, but to an adult it's pretty obvious, you're not really capable of hiding it that well. And it begs the question - why do kids even hide it, why do they conceal their fear and pain? The answer is, because they've been trained to, because they've been punished for expressing that same pain in the past, because they've been humiliated, hurt, ignored or attacked for it. So the mere fact that you are concealing how their parenting is affecting you, proves that they did something to compel you to hide, to not bother them with your needs and fears anymore, they don't want to be responsible for taking care of it, for being your parents.

I know I made a lot of assumptions here, and I'm sorry if this is all completely out of the mark! It's just that I could have written this ask myself as a minor, and I thought these exact things, and then later on it turned out I've been groomed to think like this, and to not see abuse or recognize it at any cost. If it feels dangerous or wrong to acknowledge the abuse, or to hold your parents accountable for it, you can just ignore this for now, and not think about it. It is sometimes, dangerous for minors to be aware, or to try to call it out, and if that's your case, I support you to just survive the best you can, believing in whatever brings you the most comfort. Because this is not your responsibility to fix, this is not your fault, this is not shameful for you, or a sign that something is wrong with you, you are fine, you're doing exactly what you're supposed to, you're surviving. Keep holding on.

[valiantroeagleangel]

On replay.

Will Ramos x female reader

Not that much of a plot, toy, masturbation.

Tag list: @circle-with-me @witchyweeb3 @malice-ov-mercy @darkhallcorner @sthnog @loeytuan98

Yes, I have a tag list now 🥹 (*proud mama intensifies*) Still possible to add people if you tell me what you're interested in, love you ♡

Wrote this last week because why is no one writing about Will? I haven't found one fanfiction on him and that is SCANDALOUS (please send me some, this is a desperate lady talking). Anyway, my man is so hot he deserves some recognition. Even if this is more a drabble than a real smut, we're going straight to the point here.

Will was leaving tomorrow and you hated that. He was going on tour, once again. The last time he left was kind of hard for both of you, you were used to it now but it still hurt. You didn’t want him to leave you, even if it was something regularly happening.

Sitting on the edge of the bed you were rummaging through the drawer of the nightstand looking for an old necklace you left there while Will was finishing his luggage next to you, always doing it last minute.

You heard him groan in the closet, looking for some t-shirt that apparently "mysteriously disappeared in the night because I swear I saw it there yesterday", which made you chuckle.

-I'm being serious! Don't laugh! I saw it, I had it in my hands and then I went to the nightstand and- He was reproducing the things he did last night to remember where he put it.

When he turned himself toward the nightstand, you decided to open the little door under the drawer, revealing his shirt. Happy he smiled, stepping to you to take his clothing as he left a sweet kiss on your forehead to thank you.

But when you started to close the door you found a box that was concealed under his shirt, hidden with a discreet wrapping paper. Bending yourself a little you took it in hand with no idea of what it was.

Will had already disappeared again in the closet when you called him, curious. Deafened by all the noises he was making, he didn't understand what you said until he pulled himself out.

-What did you say, love? He asked, his head turning too far towards you.

-What's in this box? You lifted your hand, showing him the present you held.

His eyes widened, not expecting you to find it already but obviously, he lost his shirt when he hid that here so finding his shirt also meant finding the box.

He bit his lower lip, letting all the clothes he had in his arms on his suitcase. Slowly, he came to sit next to you on the bed, his fingers tangling with themselves.

-It's um- it's for you. I thought about giving it to you later but I guess you can open it now. He was a bit awkward and you arched a brow at him, not sure where he was going.

Silently, you tore the paper off revealing a black box, very minimalist which was definitely not helping you to know what it was. Curious again, you questioned him silently as he leaned on the bed, trying to relax.

-Come on, open it now, you're stressing me.

He laughed softly at you while you resumed your unboxing. Opening it you discovered a purple toy, that was quite long, making your eyes widen.

You looked back at Will trying to guess what was going on inside his head but he only looked back at you, a small grin on his lips.

-It's for you to not feel that lonely. I chose it myself, it does that little thing you like when I touch you. He mimicked it with his fingers, making you blush urgently.

He quickly noticed your discomfort, his smile leaving him as he straightened himself.

-I mean it's okay if you don't want it. I just thought that maybe, I don't know, that way you would think about me? Maybe it would make you feel less lonely, it's like I would be there? Well not really but I thought about that so... God, I don't know. It's fine if you don't like it, really.

He was panicking and you felt your cheeks flushed at his words. It's not like you never talked about it, you just never took the plunge and suddenly it made you feel a bit hot.

Will passed a hand through his hair, waiting for you to say something but you muttered yourself in silence, butterflies installing themselves in your stomach as you thought about masturbating with it, Will settling in your fantasies.

Imagining how you would just lay on the bed, missing him, imagining him touching you while you fucked yourself with the toy. Moaning his name like he was the one with you.

Shit, you were certainly blushing hard now as you tried to shake all your phantasms away. He called your name, trying to get your attention back to him but you only kept to mindlessly stare at him.

Will sighed, a bit disappointed by his gift, he thought it was a good idea in the beginning. Now he overthought it and felt like it was a really shitty idea. Of course it would make you uncomfortable, you were not as comfortable about all of this as he was and he knew that.

He felt bad to have made you uneasy like that.

-Excuse me, love. I should have known it was going to bother you.

He leaned on to kiss your temple making you close your eyes at the feeling while he took the box from your hands.

-It's okay Will. You breathed out, finally focusing on him, your thighs discreetly clenching together.

-I'm sorry. He looked at you with puppy eyes only to find you breathing a bit more heavily next to him.

-Don't be. You exchanged another look as you boldly spat out your words. You can use it on me. Please, use it on me.

For once he was the one stupidly staring at you with a surprised look on his face. He didn't answer you, his mind racing to proceed if you really just said that or not.

-Use it on me before you leave. You shifted closer to him. Use it on me so that I will think of you every time I'll fuck myself with it.

Alright, it didn't take him much more time to realize what you just said now. He was not going to let that chance go away. Without thinking he threw the box to the side, jumping on you in the second.

You both giggle at his reaction, letting him crawl to you as you lay down on the bed. His lips quickly came for yours, pecking your mouth while you gently cupped his face. Ghosting his lips against yours, he eventually pulled back with a smirk, making you chase him.

-So, you're keeping it?

-Hm hm, maybe. You draw him back to your lips, forcing him to kiss you again.

Of course, you were keeping it, that was one of the hottest things he did for you. You may almost want him to leave earlier so that you can use it by yourself already.

His lips still on yours you felt his hands ramble immediately to your pants, putting them down. His hot fingers started to brush your hips and thighs gently, his gaze still on your face.

-You're sure it's alright, love?

-Yes. You nodded, whining a bit as you squirmed under him. Please;

He smiled at you, lowering his head to your thighs, gently kissing the interior. His hot breath against your skin, your hands quickly found the back of his head, pushing on it.

Looking down you felt your insides tighten as you met his gaze. He was staring at your face, analyzing every one of your expressions. His mouth left your thighs to rise to your underwear, kissing your core through it until he lifted his kisses again, pushing your shirt up to leave wet kisses on your stomach.

You gasped and shifted under him, feeling one of his hands joining your core where his mouth left you alone. His fingers gently brushing onto you, they tried to be as gentle as they could to not attack you directly.

Your gaze wandering you saw the toy on the side of the mattress, not far away from you and it made you clench at the sight. Urging Will, you reached out to the nightstand, pulling out a tube of lube.

You felt him smirk against your stomach, his lips not leaving you as he intensified his caresses on your wet underwear, making a soft moan escape you.

-Will, hurry. Please.

You tried to rock your hips against his hand, looking for more friction. 

Gladly he obeyed you, his fingers dipping in the clothing as they immediately found their way to your core. Pleasure got to you, your cheeks and feet heating as his fingers slowly started to thrust into you and, fuck, it felt good already. 

Extending your arm you reached out for the box, grabbing it and silently giving it to Will.

His head stood up, leaving your belly to look at you, then at the box as he opened it with one hand. He put the toy out and showed it to you making you realize the size of it. You clenched on his fingers, your eyes widening while you looked back at him a bit panicked.

-There is no fucking way that this is going to fit.

He curled his fingers inside of you, reaching that sweet spot, just like you liked it as a loud moan escaped you.

-Yes it will. He came to kiss your cheek. Open your legs for me, baby. I wanna see you.

Reluctantly you spread your legs, watching him fall back to sit on his knees between your thighs. Taking the lube that you got out a little before his fingers left you, making you feel the emptiness of their demise. You sighed at the feeling, letting Will grab the toy and put some lube on it.

-We don't want your new friend to hurt you, hm? Be patient.

You tried to be but the view of your boyfriend, cautiously wetting the object, made you want more even if its size scared you a bit.

His hand resting back on your inner thigh he kept your legs open for him, teasing you with the tip of the dildo. The coldness of the thing made you squirm under him, your legs automatically trying to clench together.

Still, he slowly pushed it in you, watching you stiffen every time he went a bit deeper. Your face contorted as you felt the silicone completely fill you. Once the toy fully in you, you tried to reach for Will, your arms extending as you straightened yourself a little bit.

He gladly came to you, his head finding its way to your neck as he nibbled on your skin. After some time you felt your hips starting to move on their own, eager for more when you were ready to fuck yourself on your own on that thing if he wasn't willing to move it.

You only heard him chuckle as his hand quickly pressed something at the bottom of the toy, turning it on when you expected the least.

The feeling got you jolting under him, your arms immediately coming to surround his neck making you cling to him. 

He let you do so, turning the switch once again as the vibrations intensified. Only a desperate cry got out of you. You didn't know how to react to the sensation, it just felt really good and really quick. The sensation of Will leaving kisses on your neck and jaw at the same time got you overwhelmed. You just needed more of that, you could crash him on your chest to feel more of that heat.

Will's lips came to yours, kissing passionately as his hand inclined the toy to a different angle inside of you.

-Do that again- God, just like that, right there. You tensed up at the feeling, letting him hit that spot again.

Separating himself from you he straightened a bit, one of his hands still playing with you while the thumb from his free hand came to your clit, circling on it.

His finger in synchronization with the toy got you reaching your high much faster than you both expected. You begged him to come back to you, needing to feel his body tower you when your orgasm washed over you. Leaving your clit he leaned on again, his lips on yours he kissed you as his other hand kept fucking you through your orgasm.

Once you stopped trembling under him he turned it off leaving it in your core nonetheless.

-Already came, ugh?

You looked at him totally enhanced as you nodded, tears in your eyes.

-Fuck, I love that thing. He smiled, proud of himself and his buy. I'm going to make you come over and over.

His body left you to regain its place between your thighs, he kissed them one more time before turning it on again.

By instinct you grabbed his curled hair firmly, surprised by his actions.

-Why are you turning this on again? You moaned, still way too sensitive from your first orgasm.

He bit your inner thigh.

-Oh we're going to do that all night, until the only thing you'll be able to remember when you touch yourself is how much I made you come with that thing.

[travalerray]

Rewatching Mysterious Lotus Casebook 5/40

the intensity of his expression the moment Di Feisheng comes on screen......The bitter rage....(and perhaps some amount of heartbreak).

You Sure Did. Might want to name this dog of yours?

I wonder how he felt all those years....nursing a single hatred even after having given up on the rest. Biqiu? Forgiven. Zijin is barely in the picture. But man. Di Feisheng, who he had some sort of arrangement with, who supposedly went and had his shixiong killed.....and then he finds out that was a lie too. His shixiong isn't even dead. He's alive and he hates him. He has always.....hated him? All this time? What else did he miss?

What other people have been concealing emotions that he never realised?

.... interesting ranking.

sometimes you need to become your own matchmaker and cling onto your crush like a leech. Does it work? Well,

my favourite part about their conversations is when Li Lianhua tells something to Fang Duobing as an advice but you know he's rebuking his own self. Don't trust the wrong person, check the body, you can't live up to the expectations of others, people must learn to forgive themselves....etc.

Jiao Liqiao......honestly knowing the fact that she was the one who arranged the thundering bombs makes the conversation funnier.

DFS: Did you know about the bombs?

JLQ: Of course, of course! It destroyed parts of both Sigu Sect and Jinyuan Alliance! [Said as I, recall how meticulously I planned my yandere schtick by poisoning and blowing up people]

DFS: *stare*

"Those who betray me will become like these two corpses here, don't you agree" man I know that he doesn't really start to suspect JLQ until a little later but I wonder what he thought of the whole situation. He kills two people suspecting treachery, and perhaps the conversation between him and JLQ is really just to establish his character and to foreshadow her eventual death, but hm. Makes you think about how he trusted only the Four Kings since they established the Jinyuan Alliance together.

[terrence-silver]

ok the post the other day ab terry liking to be called mommy got me thinking about his actual mother and just

I feel like his dad was pretty similar to how people commonly interpret him: sleazy businesses man who expects too much out of son, cares more about money than people, and doesn't treat his wife too hot. he's manipulative, and for the longest time that's where terry thinks he gets it from

but his mother, on the other hand, anyone who saw her would assume that she was at silver sr.'s mercy. getting walked all over, pushed to the side, etc, etc. she has more than she needs, money wise, but from the outside she seems like a trophy wife to be pitied

but i like to think that mrs. silver used that to her advantage. she moved in the shadows, and had more influence on silver sr.'s business dealings than he ever realized. she always got what she wanted, and she wasn't starved for attention because she never needed it from him

and it takes terry decades to realize just how self-sufficient his mother was, just how much influence she had on every. single. aspect. of their lives. it takes him even longer to realize just how much he's learned from her, manipulation tactic-wise, things he previously would have attributed to his father, or even just his own cunning

idk just a personal headcanon bc i hate when ppl will write off a mother as a trophy wife and negate any real effects she had. none of this to say, of course, that his father did not have a major effect on his psyche still. and i like the idea of control freak terry slowly realizing things about his past where he didn't have as much control as he thought he did

I agree, because I think Terry Silver got everything he is from someone even before the trauma train in Vietnam hit him as badly as it did --- like, I don't think he was ever exactly a commonplace, ordinary kid. He even implied he had many teachers himself. And who else but his very own parents? Who else is every child's first teacher? A child's first set of Senseis? The family home the first ever dojo one steps foot in? The first ever dojo was one born to, in fact? Acquiring ruthless, old school business tenacity from one parent, and the ability to walk hidden in plain sight from another so one would never even outright know he's a ruthless businessman in the first place? It was nature as much as nurture. How do I know? Isn't it for everyone? Because even while he was Twig back in the war, he was already hidden in plain sight in certain ways; the scrawny, shy, clumsy kid being the undoubtedly richest one in the platoon who's capture is realistically, in a material sense, worth most back home, even though many of his team mates and Captain might disagree? Small wonder of profound irony.

I like to think Terry Silver's parents represent two sides of the same coin.

Two distinct aspects of power.

Yin and Yang.

One, direct, out in the open, undeniable, and another, behind the scenes, in the shadows, often pulling the strings. And guess what? Terry's a master of both, and the fact that he's gotten the more clever approach from his mother is a good point. He would've grown up somewhere in the 1950's, give or take, and women always needed to be smarter, one step ahead of the game, devising intelligent ways to conceal themselves in a society out to oppress them, earning them the title of traditional schemers. Not writing off Terry Silver as some sort of hidden feminist icon (goodness, no) but I do think that he learned his craft from wherever he could, and that he was always hyper-observant, absorbing everything he witnessed and utilizing it to his advantage. That he collected all knowledge and utilized it in his own life and circumstances and what better source to learn from than from mother? He's mother too. I mean, the pipeline between an antiquated, classical Stepford wife with a faux Stepford life and what Terry Silver had going on at the beginning of Season 4 is very, very small indeed.

[signiorbenedickofpadua]

I tried dressing "androgynously" for years before and after I realised I was non-binary, and it sort of made me hate my body a bit because there was no way to get around the fact that I have a very curvy figure which could not be concealed with anything but the loosest of clothes, which 1. wasn't my style, and 2. only made me look big all over instead and hardly in an androgynous way. This gave me a weird, dysphoric relationship to my body which I interpreted for a long time as meaning that I wished I had a skinny, flat-chested, narrow-hipped figure.

BUT I eventually decided that being non-binary did not have to mean dressing "androgynously" (which really was only code for masculinely to me)! I had always sort of half hated wearing dresses and skirts and pink, and I finally realised that that had much more to do with having it be expected of me than actually disliking the clothes themselves. So, I started experimenting with wearing feminine clothing again and was delighted to find that wow! my wide hips look great in an A-line skirt which emphasises my hips rather than tries and fails to hide them! And wow! my tits look great in this blouse which is actually designed to have room for them!

Suddenly my body didn't seem like a problem anymore, because I was dressing it in what looked good on it instead of trying to squeeze it into a very narrow ideal which only highlighted all the ways in which it didn't fit it, and I discovered that I don't actually hate my body at all, and I don't actually want to get rid of my curves because they look great, actually! This was huge for me!

And this is, of course, not to say that this is true of all afab people and that those who actually want top surgery etc should just embrace their tits or something, definitely not. That's another common experience, it just wasn't right for me. But if you're NB and feel conflicted about feeling like you have to hide the parts of your body which don't fit into the "androgynous ideal", maybe consider trying on an outfit which highlights those very parts and take a good look at yourself and see if you maybe like them better when you get to show them off instead.

There is no wrong way to dress as a NB person, that skinny, boyish ideal is made up and if you don't feel like you can make yourself fit into it it might not be right for you! You're not less NB if you dress in clothes that match society's expectations of your agab! It's allowed! Do what makes you feel good, even if that turns out to be something which you have rebelled against for years because it was forced upon you!

I know SEVERAL afab nonbinary people who, as soon as they came out as nonbinary - immediately began dressing in ridiculous hyper-femme outfits they never would have worn before.  A lot of people see this and say shit like “Theyfab” or say they are only nonbinary for attention.  After all, look how femme they are.

But to me, this makes perfect sense.  When you are forced into the category of “woman” against your will, femininity is a chore.  It’s a job that you have.  As soon as you say no, I’m not a woman, suddenly femininity isn’t your job anymore.  It’s not a requirement.  It’s just a fun hobby you can get into.  Or a little treat sometimes.

[giorno-plays-piano]

Virtue

Part II

Pairing: fae!Steve Rogers x fae!reader

Warnings: soft!yandere, obsession, Stockholm syndrome, mass murder (kinda? annihilation of fair folk), failed suicide attempt (nothing descriptive), hurt/comfort.

Words: 2k.

Summary: Rumored to be the deadliest out of all fairy queens, the bearer of curses, you have been laying in your glass coffin for centuries until the knight destined to save his kind comes to your tomb. He demands justice, but not the kind you expect.

Part I

__________

Now it's you who's taken aback by his words as you watch him watching you. Slowly, you regain your vision little by little, and you see the knight has bright blue eyes, and his hair is light like ripened wheat. With his miscular figure and broad shoulders, he looks too much of a human to think he's a descendant of a fair folk, too, but you don't doubt him. A mere man wouldn't be able to find you, taken away by the Unseelie prince somewhere where you spent centuries, undoubtedly. Besides, he must have put charms on your tomb, charms the knight had to break to get in, and it surely wasn't easy. No, he's here because it's his fate, just like you. He was chosen to wake you, stop the curse from taking the lives of fae descendants who wanted to live in peace. Is it his family who suffers from your curse? His parents? His wife? His child?

Despite his kind words, he must hate you for bringing this deadly magic into the world, hurting people he loves. You smile at him, grateful he conceals his anger well, but he can see through you and your pain, you know for sure.

"I was raised with love," he starts speaking when you are silent, still. "My father was human, and my mother is a part fae, so both of them knew their children might carry this disease, but they still got married. They loved my sister and me probably more than they ever loved themselves. Even when my mother fell sick and I learnt it was me who was destined to find the Queen of Curses, it was because we were together we could still keep going. I can't imagine what it feels like growing in a place where no one at all loves you."

You make a strange sound, something that was supposed to be a laugh but turned into sigh. You wish the knight was talking about someone else, not you, but he's right. Of course, your mother loved you, maybe even as much as his mother loved him, but she's not with you, and you wish for someone else who would at least pretend to be kind to you.

Your knight does exactly that, though.

"Is it love that you want?" He asks you suddenly, and you raise your head, confused and strangely ashamed. "If the fair folk failed to give you any, would you take mine in exchange for breaking the curse?"

It sounds like a twisted proposal of marriage where the groom has to submit to the bride unless he wants her to stab him. It makes you feel miserable, it makes you feel guilty and sick and disgusted with yourself because you made someone do this for you in exchange for the lives of his loved ones. You are no villain, you thought when you marched to the Unseelie prince in hopes he would kill you in an instant, but you enjoyed the thought it was you and your hatred that wiped out your immortal enemies from the earth. You didn't think of all those people who died just because the curse carried on without your or their involvement. Gods know how many innocent lives your curse took just because they had fair folk's blood running through their veins. When you imagine your knight's mother laying in bed, knowing her days are numbered just like her children's, your face distorts in disgust.

"If it's love you want, I can give you so much until you're sick of it," the man whispers to you, and you see he's desperate, silently praying for you to accept his proposal while you sit in front of him like a queen, waiting for a better offer. "You won't be disappointed with me."

"Stop," you shake your head, wondering why your hair seems to be the same length as when you were put into coffin centuries ago. "I don't want anything in return. I will break the curse for you and other descendants of the fair folk, and that will be the end of it."

"Don't try to trick me," he cocks his head to the side, his sharp blue eyes nearly burning a hole in you. "I know it's love you long for. Why do you refuse taking what I am willing to give?"

You understand what makes him so cautious - he, undoubtedly, considers you a faerie since you grew up among them, those ancient, wicked creaturs who would lie and cheat for their own sake. It shouldn't surprise you he doesn't believe your words.

"I will give you an oath if you so desire, but I'm telling the truth. I won't take advantage of you."

"Then it's too late for that."

You want to hide your face in your palms or scream at him in frustration because you don't know how else to prove you are not the Queen of Curses he still expects you to be. You want nothing. You're an empty shell of a human girl you once were, and all you want is to crawl inside that glass coffin behind you and close the lid. What good will his sacrifice do for you? What makes him be so reckless with his own life when you offered him an oath you won't break?

You're tired, you think as you raise your head and stare at the ceiling again, exhaling loudly. You don't know what else you can do.

Before you have a chance to say a word, the knight starts speaking.

"You have been in my thoughts since the day an old crow told me of my destiny. Sometimes I couldn't sleep because I imagined myself battling with you, cutting your head off and bringing it to the fairies as a proof I've done well," he tells you, and you appreciate his honesty, knowing he's still afraid of you because of how cautiously he moves. "But then my mother told me the Queen of Fairies would charm me with just one glance at my face. It was stupid to think I will win just because I have a sword and armor. What my mother said is that I should appeal to the Queen's heart because she was greatly wounded by the man she loved."

Well, at least that part of the legend was true, you think as you listen to him, hoping he will tell you what he wants aside from forcing his sacrifice down your throat.

"She told me you longed for love so much you were ready to become curse bearer just to punish the one who refused you. In the end, why would someone as powerful as Queen end her life? She could have many other lovers. She could make her past lover suffer for his betrayal, but she preferred to die and take that lover with her because the truth pained her so much.

"Doesn't it show how great her love for him was? She could no longer live, knowing she would never be loved by the person she cherished the most. If there was anything I could do to stop the curse, it was to make her happy so that she would forget her past lover and the pain he brought her. Of course, it was what kept the curse going for so long, my mother said."

You hope you aren't crying like a pathetic child you once were. When you touch your cheek, it's dry, but the knight catches the movement of your hand, and now you are sure he knows exactly why you did it. It feels miserable.

"And so I lived, imagining an unhappy woman who wept in her coffin as she slept, neither dead nor alive, laying in her tomb as centuries passed. I thought it was her misfortune that made her cruel, and I hoped to find out how I can mend her heart. I grew up, and my compassion for her grew as well. I started seeing her - you in my dreams, and your face looked just like it does now. "

When you stare at him, you can see his expression is almost dreamy, and it makes you want to cry, but you can't. It's harder to breathe, though.

"You said you don't want to take advantage of me, but you already did when you accepted the curse. I was born because you needed me," he says, and you feel his fingertips on your skin as he touches your cheek like a lover. "I am here because we are a part of one legend, and you can't take it away from me. You can't take away my dreams of you, and the oath I gave to the world you can't take either. But you can have my love, all of it, because it's yours for the taking. Won't it be enough?"

You want to tell him this is forced love, a kind of love that isn't true, love that will poison him the moment you decide to take it, but when you look him in the eyes you know he doesn’t feel repulsed by you nor he pretends to love you out of call of duty. His feeling is true and pure, and it's a sin to doubt him or reject what he has to offer.

"I was waiting for this day my whole life," he admits with a sigh, but then you see a smile on his lips when kneels in front of you again and offers you his hand. "Please take what I give you and give me what I asked in return."

You have nothing to say as you slip your hand in his and make him sit close to you, his back against a glass coffin where you laid until he found you. When you put your head on his shoulder, you whisper your oath, releasing the curse you bore for too long, and you hear your knight breathing deeper as if somebody took their hand off his throat. You two keep sitting in the dark until you fall asleep, listening to the human heart beating in his chest, and he cradles your head in his lap. His iron armor doesn't feel as cold against your skin as you thought it would.

THE END

________

Tags: @finleyjayne  @alexakeyloveloki    ​@helenaeisenhower  @villanellevi  @hurricanerin  ​@inlovewiththefictionalcharacters @chris-evans-indian-fanfic  @navegandoaciegas  @rosalynshields  @sllooney  @angrythingstarlight  @lookiamtrying  @buckysbunny  @soleil-dor  @stargazingfangirl18  @dillybuggg  @literate-lamb  @cosicas-cuquis  @sarge-barnes-sir  @buckybarnesplumwhore  @jaysayey  @megzdoodle  @gotnofucks  @lux-ravenwolf  @ximebebx  @sourpatchspinster  @biiskuitx  @stupendouslovegardener  @yeolliedokai  @what-is-your-wish  @lovelydarkdaydream  @illyrianprincess

[thisgusting]

silence. to some, it would be a breath of fresh air, but for dawon it meant something completely different. to stun gemma was not an easy feat, and yet... they did it. finally. they swore, it wasn't going to be the last time. there was no malice lacing their words, the woman before their very own, tired eyes was fully aware who she truly was. perhaps hearing it from someone who was once a so-called friend stung a bit. as it should. that was their aim, and they have executed it flawlessly.

hawk wasn't a good person, either... — at least they concealed it better. in a world full of entertainers and pawns, they were the spectator, waiting for the stage to be set on fire so they could reap the benefits.

cracking gemma's walls was not a part of hawk's plan, and it never will be. if she was to return the favour, she wouldn't find much. an empty shell of what it once was; an energetic, eager mind — soon to be violently shaken up by the harsh reality of living as a part of the system. chipping away at their sanity, losing themselves in a rat race... becoming one of many. it was eating dawon from the inside. a change of pace, taking their life into their own hands, being independent wasn't easy. for someone consumed by work, it seemed impossible, a nightmare. sleepless nights, rewiring of the psyche, until all started to go their way. was it all worth it ??

"you want to know the truth, gemma ??" it wasn't a riddle. they were not bored enough. "i fucking hate that i don't hate you. at all. in fact, i understand why you did it." did they ?? did they really ?? an excellent liar, they were. dawon's gaze has never left gemma; observing, calculating... waiting for the right moment. "people like you... — like us, they have their own reasons. the understanding of normalcy ?? long gone. how can we even look at our own reflections ??" a bittersweet laughter. "they will never understand. they don't have to."

acceptance. it was all they've got left. it can, and will happen time and time again. they will let it. they will let gemma take the high ground, and they will observe.

"there is hope for everyone." dawon included. "you go low, but they will go lower, when you least expect it. a high chance of it happening. or... — they will see what you are capable of, and ignore it." they were willing to look past everyone's flaws, even the morally unacceptable ones. that part, however, was silent. they did not want to blow their cover just yet. "you can and will find a match, trust me." or don't.

without deigning to break eye contact, gemma listened. she took in every word, yet her face remained entirely motionless ; while perhaps underwhelming, such a reaction clashed with everything that made gemma. the loudness, the gaudiness, the overreacting to small happenings ... all of it, gone, hiding behind an oddly icy face devoid of any discernible emotion. until a smile began to creep up, and she started laughing softly.

how familiar those words were !! she was reminded of her estranged defrauded parents. poor souls. they had thought she could be changed, that they hadn't accidentally let her turn into a monster. but she'd long since welcomed her parasitic nature with open arms. and she'd never let her own inferiority hurt her again. no matter how many bridges would need to burn along the way, gemma oh would still be standing tall. she clasped her hands together. ❝ perspicacious, ❞ she commented. but she was still at a loss ... had she truly harmed hawk, who seemed so strong and unyielding ?? why did she feel so off, when this would have called for a celebration, had it been anybody else ?? the curve of her lips fell back down, and her hands followed.

❝ i'm not looking for anything, or anyone. besides, do you think a sane person could ever stand to share their time with a cockroach like me ?? with a bitch who never stops, even after taking kicks to the face ?? hawk ... you're underestimating how low i can go, if you think there's any hope of someone ever loving me. ❞

in her discombobulated state, gemma had forgotten to address the organically sourced milfs. a shame.

[maplecornia]

chapter 26

𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡 𝔠𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔱: 1.85K

𝔤𝔢𝔫𝔯𝔢: romance | slice of life | fluff | angst | bts x female!reader | ot7

𝔰𝔲𝔪𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔶: You watched them from the sidelines ever since you were a young teenage girl. Now you’re grown up, they’ve returned after 2 long years and everything has changed. What happens when you pull back the mask and find the darkness within? What happens when you see that they’re broken?

𝔞/𝔫: i don't think i'll ever get over how hot Namjoon is ;-;

𝔴𝔞𝔯𝔫𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔰: cliffhangers | angst | fluff | slight mentions of self hatred | depression | mental health illness | self harm | occurs in the year 2024 | set in a timeline where BTS went to the military together | slight language

tags: @kookaine | @fangirl125reader | @kookiebbyxx | @taradevonne | @rae-bear |@mangminnie | @pixiekooo

You groan as you lean against the pillar near the entrance to the BigHit building.

Last night, when Taehyung walked you back to your apartment, you didn't sleep very well. Turning to glare at your rather disheveled reflection in the mirror, you let out another groan.

Why did he have to show up? You were perfectly fine, things were perfectly normal, and then he had to screw up your heart all over again. Letting out a small scream, you throw a 3-second fit before leaning your back against the clear glass wall.

Sooner or later, you're going to have to go in.

Why can't it be later?

Letting out a guttural growl, you pull yourself off of the glass and head inside the building, stomping like a little two-year-old. You really don't want to see him today, you're afraid of what will happen if you do.

You don't want to fall.

Please God, don't let me fall.

Entering the building, you feel a bit more comfortable, not so out of place. Now, you have a purpose, a plan; a reason for being here. Smiling softly to yourself, you walk forward, this time nothing in your way. As you reach the receptionist's desk, you smile as you recognize Jojo behind it.

Playing coy, you knock twice on the desk before glancing away and holding your head in your hands. She glances up, ready to greet the newcomer but as soon as she sees your face, she breaks into a grin.

"Ah~ it's the snoozer, early today I see." You frown at the nickname but when she smirks your way, you can't help but grin like a giddy child. It feels good to have friends or at least the beginning relationships of one.

"I told you, the time was wrong." You pout, flopping on the desk and she laughs before preparing the schedule you need for Namjoon today.

"Mmhmm, and what happened yesterday? Was Mr. Kim too tired of waiting and told you to stay at home?" The mention of yesterday causes your grin to fade a little. With it comes the memory of Taehyung, and he starts to reenter your mind. Pulling yourself off the desk, you smile weakly, shaking your head.

"No, I had an injury, Namjoon wouldn't let me come in." She blinks a bit in surprise at the informal way you address him.

"'Namjoon?' Huh, I didn't think the two of you were that close. You only met once after all." She mumbles before typing something into her computer. Realizing your mistake you let out a small gasp.

"Oh, I'm sorry. He told me to call him without honorifics, I suppose it slipped my mind." You look away from her, a bit embarrassed, but as soon as she presses the print button, she chuckles.

"Don't worry, Yen. I was just joking." When you don't look at her, she sighs a bit before lightly knocking on your head. Surprised, you rub your forehead and pout as you meet her gaze once more. Smiling, she pays no mind, presenting you with an ID badge. Your eyes widen as you see it, and you take it from her waiting fingertips.

"Is this mine? I didn't think they'd process it so fast."

"Of course it's yours, whose else would it be?" Jojo chuckles, leaning over the counter and pointing to your name. "See? Lin Yen."

You bite your bottom lip, trying to suppress your grin. Somehow, this makes things all the more real, you can't help your delight at the sight. Jojo catches sight of the cute expression and can't help but laugh as she pulls away.

"Now hurry up, the schedule is all ready for the day. Don't forget to check in with the head manager, you remember his name right?" She reminds you, making you pause for a moment before you run off.

"Of course, it's Kim Sejin. Everyone knows that." She smiles at the coy response and waves you away.

"Okay, hurry up and go then. I'm sure Mr. Kim is waiting for you." You bow to her before taking off, a small bounce to your footsteps.

Walking through the halls without Namjoon is a bit scary, but exciting at the same time. You can't help but love the butterflies coursing through your stomach, and is it weird that you kind of want to barf and dance at the same time? Everything is so exciting and new, it's as though the world has been painted a different color.

You try your hardest to forget everything, just live in the moment as of right now. No more worries about the past. About your friends. About your mom. About Taehyung. Right now, you need to focus on yourself.

And this job seems like the perfect escape for that.

Humming slightly to yourself you do a little twirl in the hallway before turning the corner...

...and bumping right into Kim Namjoon.

You let out a small shriek, stumbling back, your body shrinking into a small protective ball like it normally does. It's a little defense mechanism you've acquired over the years. Your eyes closing themselves tightly, you don't realize who you've bumped into until he takes you by the shoulders and catches you mid-air.

Blinking as he rights you, you look up and find yourself face to face with your boss.

"Are you okay?" he asks, his voice coated with worry, and you chuckle a bit nodding sheepishly.

"Yes, I'm sorry I should've been paying attention to where I was going." You reply, stepping back from him. Though he sighs in relief as he releases you, you find that there’s a heavy cloud hanging over his head. He’s not fully there with you, lost in some unforgotten thought. Furrowing your brow in confusion, you wonder what happened to make him look that way. You open your mouth to ask him about it, but he's already speaking, and your words fall on deaf ears.

"It's a good thing that I bumped into you." You tilt your head in expectation, curious to what he's about to say next. "I needed to talk to you."

"But your schedule isn't ready yet--"

"That can wait."

You open your mouth to protest, but he's already taken you by the hand and is dragging you down the hallways.

Even though you cry out incomprehensible questions and sounds of alarm behind him, he can't seem to hear you. He doesn't want to hear you. His mind is too cluttered with the events of yesterday.

The outlandish plan that BangPD has in store for you.

-

"Why her?" He asks, his hands clenching tightly at his sides.

After the meeting, BangPD requested to meet privately with Namjoon, after all, he was the leader and one of the people that Sihyuk trusts the most. It didn't matter to RM anyway, he needed to talk to Sihyuk as well, and if it had to be on his terms then so be it.

Bang Sihyuk glances outside at the setting sun, casting shadows throughout his office. Serene and insoluble, shadows meant to conceal that which he would rather keep inside. He sighs before answering, his hands secured behind his back as he stands before the massive glass window.

"You know, BTS wouldn't have existed without you. If I had never come across you that day, if I had never been inspired to create a group that will strengthen and invigorate your music, we would have never gotten here." Namjoon glances at him in frustration. He hates when people beat around the bush, but his respect and humility won't allow him to speak out against his senior.

"It's the same with her."

Bang Sihyuk reaches out and taps on the window before letting out a soft chuckle.

"Did you know that glass is so easily broken? That is, when it's on its own. But when you fortify it, when you strengthen it with multiple pieces, then it becomes indestructible." Turning around to face Namjoon, he smiles.

"Almost Bulletproof."

Biting his bottom lip, Namjoon remains silent as he watches BangPD walk to his desk and sit down. He raises his brow when Namjoon remains standing, but when it's clear that he has no intention to make himself at home, he merely sighs.

"She auditioned before, you know. For the BE:LIFT project, for Source Music, she even auditioned for Plus Global." Namjoon balks at that. This is new information to him. He knew that it was her dream to be a singer, but never did he know that she wanted to be an idol. Especially since she's a foreigner, that would be near to impossible. "I didn't accept her."

"Why?"

"I didn't want to share her."

At the explanation, Namjoon turns away, running his hand across his face in frustration. This is much more complicated than he thought. Somehow, she's been connected to the company for the longest time. Not just through Jaejin, not through him himself, not even through Jungkook or Taehyung. Before any of them had a chance to see her potential, she's been on the mind of their former CEO since she auditioned 5 years ago. For a program, she would never be able to succeed in.

"I have been planning this for a while, Namjoon."

He's unwilling to accept it, he can't accept it.

"She's the missing piece."

-

At the thought, his hand clenches subconsciously around yours.

He can't stand the thought of you disappearing far from his reach.

And yet, almost against his will, he finds himself bringing you to the very fate that will keep you from him.

Perhaps forever.

He pauses when the door comes into his line of vision. Almost as though he were afraid of what lies behind that very same door. Mrs. Kwon looks up from her desk as the two of you enter the small lobby, and presses a button on her phone before muttering incomprehensible words to a person on the other line.

Out of breath, you place your hand on your chest before looking up at him. At the sight of his set jaw, and stony eyes, you can't help but feel a bit worried.

What exactly happened to make him look that way?

Once more, you open your mouth to speak to him, but Mrs. Kwon interrupts and you look at her in surprise, not noticing she was there.

"You may go in."

Confused, you turn to Namjoon, but all he does is give a nod to the secretary before stepping towards a massive oak door. Curious, you peer around him to glance at it, not quite aware of your surroundings. There's a small plaque on the door, one that reads the name of the person residing within in perfect neat letters.

방시혁

Bang Sihyuk.

Your heart stopping in your chest, you freeze halfway to the door, your hand slipping out of Namjoon's.

"Namjoon, why are we here?" you try to keep the fear, the anxiety, the worry out of your voice, but the efforts are futile. He swallows hard, steadying himself before turning to you, his warm eyes soft and apologetic.

"He wanted to meet you."

𝔫𝔬𝔱𝔢: you can probably guess what will happen next, but nonetheless i'm exciiiited

chapter 27 here

check the Infinite Stars masterlist for more chapters

check my BTS masterlist for other BTS content

check out my masterlist for other kpop fanfics

[ganymedesclock]

what do you think of the general assumption by fans that lotor is a genocidal fascist? it's so beyond me, honestly. this is a man who actively opposes the empire and its ways, kills elites within it, despises his father, and was (likely) exiled BECAUSE of this opposition. the same people who lump him in with the empire's ways are always the ones who think he wants zarkon's love or don't understand his plans (ie, him attacking a galra base, etc) i am just. tired.

I think it’s a combination of things?

I think that one of the big things that I’ve seen to seem is that Lotor is characterized as deceptive and a liar. His first scene, him seeming to court the empire’s elite and his father’s viewpoint, is a complete farce as we see him sort of joking about as soon as their back is turned.

The feeling I get is that sometimes viewers felt like Lotor was also maliciously lying to them, by putting up this noble front and then turning out to be a manipulator. Which, when we see Lotor misleading one audience, it’s fair to question what we see him telling other people. But that does seem to be a fundamental misunderstanding of Lotor’s… well, just about everything about him.

With that in mind, this turned into an analysis of Changing Of The Guard/S3e1, Lotor’s debut episode and how it characterized him. It’s gonna get long, partially because I’m putting some direct transcripts in there.

I’m going to spend a lot of this looking at Throk. Throk and his friend discussing Lotor tells us something very major. It establishes, from the start, that Lotor is considered completely unacceptable by the commanding elite. After all, Throk isn’t just idly discussing this, he’s trying to recruit his friend to a movement that according to him, already has a lot of momentum within the commanding elite. Throk was just the figurehead of what most of the commanders intended for Lotor.

Lotor is introduced, and characterized, heavily by his first confrontation with Throk. So with that in mind, I’m gonna go over s3e1 for a bit and talk about Lotor and Throk, how Throk is characterized and how he and Lotor play off each other.

Throk first appears in s3e1, established by name and as an imperial commander in his brief conversation with Haggar. We see that he’s lurking in a hallway, having seemingly waited for her to leave Zarkon’s bedchamber before he approached.

Throk and Haggar’s exact dialogue- Throk is bold, Haggar is italicized.

Excuse me.

What is it, Commander Throk?

Would it be possible to speak to Zarkon today? Another planet was lost to rebellion and I feel he must be informed.

Zarkon is fully briefed on all imperial matters. He certainly doesn’t need your input.

*Of course. It is just that I fear if we do not take decisive action soon, the Empire will crumble completely. Rebel activity should be crushed with our full might before more planets are inspired to fight against us.

This is the first sign we’ve seen that the paladins’ exploits in the first two seasons are actually starting to turn the tide. Their rebellion is growing in size, a genuine threat, and aristocrats like Throk whose power and affluence is built on this conquest are starting to sweat.

Throk sees the rebellion as an eyesore and a problem, and he wants to eradicate it entirely. Implicitly, by making a bloody display out of planets like Puig, these early coalition planets, he intends to strike terror into any who might be yet on the fence. His concern isn’t so obviously on the absence of Zarkon as much as the absence of leadership around which the empire can rally to act.

This is noteworthy, because despite being about average rank for an elite (Commander, not General) Throk is a networker. His later conversation with his friend establishes that he’s dangerously fond of the buddy system and his preferred method of operation is uniting individual commanders into large and deadly fleets- incidentally something his DotU incarnation was also fond of given his hand in the Fleet of Doom.

Haggar snaps back, and this is the first time that Lotor is brought up after Haggar sent for him in s2:

Lotor has arrived at headquarters at Zarkon’s request to take command of the empire. Under Zarkon’s guidance, of course.

Lotor? Why is he not at his father’s bedside?

Zarkon needs no one at his bedside, least of all you.

So this tells us some very interesting things about Lotor, if we don’t look at all at his prior continuities, and just take this as our new introduction to a character.

The first thing we hear is that while Haggar sent for the prince to put him in power, she doesn’t intend to actually give him free reign. “Under Zarkon’s guidance, of course”, when we know that Zarkon would be one hell of a backseat driver. Lotor functionally wouldn’t be in power with Zarkon breathing over his shoulder, or Haggar acting in that alleged advising role.

Throk’s reply is also surprising because the empire’s been established as very warlike, conquering, and… sort of fantastical space-orc to our sensibilities. But this one question is something actually… reasonable.

It implies first and foremost that Lotor is young, not expected to take up the mantle as a soldier, much less a leader of soldiers, yet. Instead, the social expectation to galran sensibility is that Lotor should be tending to his ailing father.

Which Haggar practically snarls at, before pulling what, for her, is the equivalent of storming out of the conversation. Throk glares at her retreating back, then departs himself.

The camera pulls back from both of them leaving, towards an empty corner that it directed itself towards earlier- the corner was featured heavily when Throk began with “of course”- I put an asterisk there for convenience.

But here, returning to the corner, we’re revealed why it was given camera focus earlier: it’s not empty, but occupied by an orange-complected individual in blue and black armor, who was concealing herself. She drops her cloaking, watches Throk go, and then smiles, offering a succinct, thoughtful “hmm” before disappearing once again.

An astute observer will recognize a lot of the cut of Ezor’s armor here at first glance, because of its obvious similarity to that of the mysterious galra gunner in s2e9. Acxa in that episode was characterized heavily as something new and distinct from the empire’s usual tactics and personnel- Acxa wasn’t friendly to Voltron, but had no real animosity towards them, she worked with Keith and Hunk only to rob them at the last minute, making as she did an ambiguous gesture that she could shoot Keith, but was abstaining, even after she’d gotten what she wanted.

The “Weblum Galra” fascinated me personally back in s2, because of this being established as not quite friend or foe, but somewhere in between, and someone who smacks very powerfully of an obvious agenda. This first glance at Ezor is a very similar setup. She’s watching, observing, eavesdropping, and immediately pegs as a little dangerous- if she has the ability to sneak past Haggar unobserved, what if our heroes have to fight her? And what’s that knowing expression, what’s she up to? We get no answers, and the scene keeps rolling.

The next time we get back to Throk, it’s the arena. Focus is given to the large, sort of lion-like warrior fighting, and we see very little of his masked, sword-wielding opponent, just small glimpses while Throk and his friend discuss. However, we do see him casually spinning his sword in one-hand before the camera moves to Throk.

Once again, Throk is in bold, and I’ve put asterisks where we catch glimpses of the anonymous gladiator.

I tried to speak with Lord Zarkon today, but the witch stopped me again.

I fear the emperor’s condition may be worse than she is telling us. *I’m not sure he will ever return to the throne.

Some context for Haggar’s testiness in the prior scene, and also, this gentleman Throk is speaking to- he is clearly a likeminded conspirator. Again, already we see Throk is not acting alone, but in empathy with other commanders.

In the arena, we see the large warrior making swipes and strikes while Lotor tumbles around and behind them.

Agreed. And now Prince Lotor is taking over? We’ve fought by Zarkon’s side forever, and now we are passed over by this exiled brat.

This is gonna get its own observation, since it tells us a lot. Throk is old guard, he’s had a long tenure of duty, and he prides himself on his closeness to Zarkon, his ideals. The people that he is allied with and representing, speaking for, feel the same way. He boldly and confidently uses “we”, assuming that his friend will feel the same, and assuming correctly.

Lotor is conversely, not in good graces- clearly why Haggar intends to have someone look over his shoulder. He’s also younger, and seemingly has had a much shorter term of duty than Throk (interesting as we later discover Lotor has knowledge of ten thousand years ago, but, he is very much not treated as a constant to the empire the way Zarkon is) 

Lotor is absent this line and the next few, but we can hear blades ringing off each other, reminding us of the fight that they’re watching. And now we get into the really interesting exchange:

I’ve heard rumors he fights alongside his enlisted men like a lowly private.

Worse than that, his top generals aren’t even pure Galra. They’re half-breeds at best. He has no honor.

Some say * he allows the planets he conquers to continue to rule themselves. Can you imagine?

Clearly he’s a dangerous lunatic.

This is the moneymaker. And fittingly, this is our clearest shot at Lotor before we know that’s who he is- he actively jumps into the foreground, retreating from his unseen enemy.

Lotor is unacceptable to the empire’s elite, and here we see why they seem to hate him, and probably why he’s in Zarkon’s poor graces. This is also the point where someone watching carefully might pick up a suspicion- the very unusual but somewhat galra-looking woman we saw eavesdropping on Throk earlier, and how much her armor resembles the gladiator in the ring- and Lotor, who allegedly already arrived but is nowhere to be seen, with his half-galra top generals.

But let’s look at the things Throk and his friend are exchanging looks of revulsion and horror over the very idea of:

Lotor wants to work with colonized planets and keep local leaders in power. This would seem part of a larger lack of disdain for non-galra sentient races, since he employs, and promotes to high positions, mixed race galra. The language Throk and his friend uses, “half-breeds”, tells us that’s not a small thing- even if we haven’t explicitly heard it before, the empire clearly has a pretty major hangup on perceived racial superiority. It explains the vicious inhumanity so many of them direct prisoners and slaves.

But we as an audience are perking our ears up. Because if these are the core mechanisms behind the empire’s inhumanity, Lotor is sounding very… humane. Empathetic. Reasonable. He sounds kind, in a context where we’ve seen Zarkon spurn and violently punish kindness since s1e1. Directing his opponents, and his own subordinates, a kind of camaraderie and respect. What we would call an honorable warrior- what Throk and his friend call disgusting.

Lotor is a pariah for his worldview and attitudes, a worldview surprisingly close to our heroes. And this is when Throk decides to drop that he doesn’t intend to merely sit by and complain about how “improper” Lotor is.

I’ve already spoken with the other officers in my sector. They’ve all agreed to back me if I fight for the throne. Normally I would never think of such a thing, but…

What choice do we have?

Then you’ll support me?

Yes.

It’s worth noting some very interesting body language here, and us not seeing any glimpse of Lotor or the arena. Throk, for this entire part of the exchange, stares straight ahead with an impassive face, speaking calmly. His friend, when he realizes what Throk is suggesting, stiffens, and looks around, before lowering his head to deliver his answer. 

Throk is a networker and we’re beginning to realize a dangerous one. This wasn’t just idle bellyaching, he’s been actively planning a coup. The “we” he speaks for has decided Lotor is going to be disposed of, most likely killed- he’s unacceptable.

And this is reflected by his friend- “What choice do we have?” as if Lotor, by his inclination for negotiation and empathy, is going to personally bring the plague upon their houses. Further telling us this elite is built on the backbone of cruelty, that they’re threatened by falling under leadership that won’t encourage dominating and subjugating.

Throk flashes the camera a very threatening toothy grin, and this is when his friend’s attention turns to the figure in the arena- the one we’ve been ignoring.

Who’s this little fellow?

I don’t know, I’ve never seen him before.

Important business is done, let’s talk about the bloodsports. Implicitly, they recognize or don’t care about the larger figure- the smaller one catches their eye, because, well, he’s small. And new. How unusual. The camera zooms in on him, and we see what we’ve been seeing before.

He’s agile, fleet-footed, evasive, making precise dodges of his opponent’s weapon and has been this entire time. Some of the moves are rather flashy, suggesting confidence rather than a fearful prisoner. His opponent loses track of him, and then we see him sweep in and launch a single attack, sending his opponent’s weapon flying and his opponent to the ground. It’s unclear if fatally or not. The crowd goes wild.

And then he plants his sword in the ground, to his audience’s confusion, and… takes his helmet off.

Lotor!

Here is our first characterization of Lotor speaking for himself, and holy shit is it a departure from Zarkon. Our “little fellow” actively exploited the commanders’ expectations and in returning to the headquarters, rather than any bold or dramatic entrance he could have made to try and catch people’s attention and support, he functionally snuck on board and into the ring as a silent gladiator.

And for good reason- rumors of his behavior and ethics got ahead of him, and Throk and twenty of his closest friends are already planning to reenact Julius Caesar.

Lotor’s dramatic face-revealing turn is pointed directly at Throk, who, a second later, he picks up his sword and points it directly at.

Throk. You wish to challenge me? Then come down and claim your crown. True galra do not take the throne by stirring up insurrection in darkened chambers. They rise through honorable rite of combat. Defeat me here, and the throne is yours.

This is the second brilliant fuck-you Lotor pulls in many regards. First: it’s never a good thing for your covert movement if your intended target calls you out in front of a live audience before you’ve even made a move.

Second, considering everything that motivates Throk and his conspirators to act against Lotor is his being culturally unacceptable, he’s manipulated Throk, using his own allies, into a very nasty bind.

Victory By Conquest is a VERY fundamental galra attitude, one we saw given lip service all the way back in s1e1 by Sendak. Throk knows better than to rely exclusively on direct conflict- he works with allies and plans things out ahead of time.

Lotor, however, is pretty much doing the social equivalent of dragging Throk into the ring by the scruff of his neck. All of Throk’s allies, everyone backing him, want to see their guy kick this smug little brat’s teeth in on live television. And it’s going to look really bad if Throk does the good tactical thing and refuses Lotor’s challenge- because Lotor’s tiny and pathetic-looking so he can’t possibly pose a threat to Throk, was Throk’s coup just talk?

So Lotor is both unacceptable to the empire, and not obliviously. He knows perfectly well exactly what the empire values, and how to play it to his advantage. However, he doesn’t use this to curry favor- rather, he uses it to hobble Throk.

In these scenes, we see Lotor’s expression- completely smug- and Throk’s- angry and uncomfortable- but a lot of the crowd, whispering, cheering. Lotor, as a pariah to the empire that most of them wanted to see taken down, nonetheless was able to masterfully leverage widespread social pressure to get Throk to proceed in a certain manner.

Throk has really only one answer he can give, and he knows it.

However, before he gives it- we see something else.

The Generals take the stage.

See this I think is a pretty underrated piece of psychological warfare. You have to consider these are patently obviously Lotor’s half-galra generals- the ones Throk was speaking poorly of seconds ago. The ones that Lotor is out of his mind for employing. The ones who, disdainful sniff, could never possibly measure up to real galra.

They heard everything he said about him. And now he’s surrounded by them. 

They don’t have to do anything, and they don’t really. The takeaway is still incredible. This is akin to a white supremacist mouthing off in his favorite bar over a football game only to have the new bartender lean over and go “Oh, really?” and then he’s suddenly surrounded by surly, armed, black hijabi women.

The message is clear. Lotor’s taken control of this context. Throk isn’t safe hanging back or hiding behind anybody. Not only do they have him, they have evidence on him. Throk isn’t the only one with friends, and with how dramatically Lotor stepped up on Throk, none of Throk’s buddies are going to step up to support him.

Throk’s been had, and his expression tells us he knows that.

I gladly accept your offer. Now all will see who is the rightful leader.

Lotor, conversely, is untroubled, serene, cheerful. Throk is trying to threaten him, but stepping right to the beat of his drum.

When Throk steps into the arena, he does so with a large weapon, and bragging once again, about his age and superior experience.

I have fought thousands of battles, and left many enemies much more fearsome than you wasting on the battlefields.

Again, we’re reminded of what Throk takes pride in. Victory or Death. The good old galra way, violence and subjugation. He has murdered, he has destroyed, and he is proud of it. He wants to strike fear into Lotor’s heart. That Lotor is “a brat” to him and not someone who should be a soldier at all is no concern because Lotor’s a political rival. This is the very same attitude Haxus set about trying to murder the fifteen-year-old Pidge with, and it’s likely Lotor’s maybe two or three years older- pocket change to someone like Throk who is probably in his forties or fifties.

And Throk’s opening attack is a leaping swing from the top down, intending to, if it had not been parried, split Lotor’s head open. He makes a very violent flurry of strikes, while Lotor hangs back. Once again, as he did with his initial opponent, Lotor almost doesn’t attack at all, parrying and retreating and maneuvering.

This is something big here- Lotor is characterized heavily through these opening fights as not the person who attacks first. He could easily have seemed that way if we didn’t follow Throk the entire time initially, if we didn’t hear Throk launch an absolute rain of dismissal and insult on how pathetic and inferior he sees Lotor.

At one point, Lotor stops parrying, and instead simply maneuvers past Throk. One of their clashes clips a few strands of Lotor’s hair. But he’s never concerned.

You have flawless technique, that I’ll grant you. Still, you must realize at some point that your repetitive attacks are getting you nowhere.

And this is another big line to me. Because it continues the established trend here: that Lotor’s breaking with basically every single pattern set by the empire.

Because what has the empire done, for the past two seasons? Attack, attack, attack. Victory or death. If your enemy is evading you hit them harder. And at this point, they’re starting to lose.

Lotor isn’t concerned by this. He doesn’t care that the empire’s crumbling. This is the start of an ongoing thread with his character that he pretty much refuses to play this game- he doesn’t attack the rebel planets outside of the one time he has a reason to- the next episode after this, at Puig- and even then, he leaves Puig pristine, untouched, with a couple of bruises to remember him by but nothing else, and still actively a coalition planet.

None of what Lotor’s talking up, what Throk accuses him of, at this point, is act. It is quintessentially Lotor’s character to go “Look at this. None of this is getting you results. None of this is doing you good. It’s useless, so you should stop. Change tactics.”

It’s something a warrior like Throk, who has been culturally indoctrinated from the cradle to never retreat, never surrender, never compromise, but continue pushing until you destroy your perceived enemies, finds infuriating.

And once again- once Throk rushes a second time, burnt out from his first flurry, Lotor launches his own attack. Four strikes, locking blades with Throk on the last strike, and then he uses his free hand to punch Throk in the stomach, making him flinch- and in that instant outmaneuvers Throk and disarms him with the fifth strike, hacking his weapon in half and dropping him to the ground.

Just like his fight against the larger gladiator, Lotor waits until the perfect window to go for the kill. He lets his opponent exhaust themselves fighting someone else, and then springs on them.

Then, Lotor spares Throk, and drops this line:

Your tactics are stale. And in the end, your own aggression is your undoing.

This is an ideological clash as much as, if not more than, it is a physical one. And Lotor here is clarifying something that will heavily color his ensuing speech.

Lotor brings change. A departure from every antagonist before him in this show. The very episode title, Changing of the Guard, and the conflict it’s mirroring in the paladins- the struggle of adapting to a very new situation without Shiro, potentially with Keith leading- tells us that.

And here, he’s making a pretty unambiguous threat.

“If you don’t change your tactics, galra empire? You’re going to die.” And what he sees as the poisons that are killing them are their refusing to adapt- thus, to negotiate with the situation- and their violent disposition.

The fact that he delivers this not as an observer, but as someone who’s holding the figurehead of Zarkon’s military elite at swordpoint, gives it another potential read.

“If you don’t change your tactics, galra empire, I’m going to kill you.”

So I think this is the point where despite Lotor being talked up as such a merciful, diplomatic person that the main empire finds him actively revolting, parts of the audience get, confused about the idea of reading him as a hero. Because Lotor’s a cheap shot artist. He doesn’t really read as an honorable soldier- he gives credit where it’s due but a moment later suckerpunches Throk in the ribs to get an advantage.

He very much has a vision of what the future is and should be, but, well... let’s get into that speech of his, shall we?

Lotor is poised to execute Throk. The crowd is chanting his name. In this instant, Lotor could conform to expectations. He could prove himself what the empire wants out of him- a strong leader, like Zarkon, who punishes insubordination violently and decisively. Follow him or be destroyed.

And it’s at this point that Lotor withdraws his weapon. The cheering dies down. Even Throk looks up in confusion. And he drops this:

My father built our empire on the bones of his enemies. But the time has come to change the old ways, and inspire not fear from those we rule, but loyalty.

We must not waste our energy fighting to keep our subjects down, but rather multiply it, by allowing those worthy to rise and join our ranks.

The universe can no longer doubt our strength.

Each ally gained only makes us stronger.

While those who stand against us, will be crushed.

So here, I think, is Lotor’s active con, singular, during this thing.

What he suggests by sparing Throk, by extending that hand to him, is that the “we” he speaks of is the empire, is the old guard, is these dissatisfied aristocrats. He’s pretending that he’s a man of the people, and by ‘the people’ he means the empire’s bluebloods who were threatened by him and his rebellious policies.

However, his earlier comment to Throk raises a lot of questions, before we ever see him leave the ring and basically react to that whole event with the “Get-a-load-of-this-guy cam”.

Again, Lotor standing there, over Throk, telling him that his attitudes are garbage and put him here at the point of Lotor’s sword? That gives a lot of context to his little speech.

“I’m bringing a revolution. I’m changing the old ways. I’m not going to follow Zarkon’s example, and I think that doing so is stupid. It’s a waste.”

“You have an opportunity to work with me. I’m giving you a taste of that now- see this guy, the guy I was fighting? The one you were all rooting for? Watch me be nice to him. We can be friends, galra empire. You can have a seat at the table with the revolution, too.”

“Or I can slit your throat. Your choice.”

That threat is veiled, subdued under the much more obvious and dramatic show of sparing Throk, because what Lotor frankly wants from these people is to get them off his back. He has an agenda and he would like some modicum of their cooperation, but he has no intention of giving them anything he wants. Ultimately, he has no intention of humoring bigots like Throk whose criticisms boil down to “I don’t like that you listen to non-galra leaders or the way that you employ half-galra”. Pleasing Throk would require throwing the Generals- the core of Lotor’s power- under the bus, and diminishing most if not all of his own values.

But Lotor still means that threat in full. Because after sparing Throk, he makes sure he’s cutting off the head of that rebellious force a different way- by giving Throk a distant, isolated post.

This is some very conflicted and nuanced messaging we’re getting here.

The first is that Lotor is, in a lot of the metrics that this show has set up, a good person. He believes in teamwork. In cooperation. In diplomacy. It’s not really a surprise that Lotor is ultimately half-Altean, because he’s operating in what we’ve been told is a very stereotypical Altean mentality. Culturally his perspective is a blend of the “old”, more cooperative galra empire, the galra empire that was part of Voltron, that maintained allies, that was an enforcer of peace rather than an imperialistic nightmare- and Altea’s culture of diplomacy, negotiation- of extending the hand first, but fighting viciously when crossed.

Lotor is noble. He has these high values, genuinely means them. He wants to bring change to this rotting, foul system that’s been ruining everybody’s lives to the past ten thousand years- radical, aggressive change. He’s the last person I’d suggest is compliant with the empire’s state of affairs, and the fact that his first onscreen moment is his carefully scheduling a foremost member of Zarkon’s old guard for a spectacular political ass-kicking should tell us that.

Lotor hates Throk. Lotor hates the “classic Galra Empire values” that Throk embodies and thumps around. Throk is a bigot, Throk is cruel, Throk is proud to be a cruel bigot, and Lotor knocks him on his butt and says “Throk? You’re terrible. Everything that just happened to you happened because you’re terrible.”

But the noble, crusading Lotor, has to compromise with the Lotor who’s keenly aware he is a teenager with four friends in the middle of nowhere, who is picking a fight with literally the single largest empire in the known universe.

And this is where we see the other side of Lotor. Lotor is a survivalist. That is to say, Lotor is a cheap shot artist.

Lotor knows he can’t fight the empire. He knows, much as he’d love to, much as there’s thinly, barely-veiled scorn dripping from “Your own aggression is your undoing”, much as he has every reason to despise all of these people who find his morals and beliefs disgusting and an embarrassment... He really has no choice but to court them at least a little.

So he sugarcoats his venomous opinions of them and serves it up as a lovely little chocolate tray. So he purports to challenge Throk in “honorable rite of combat” and then suckerpunches him mid-battle after preceding it by playing head games on him. So he files all the hard edges off his real, bitter, angry feelings for all of the empire’s bullshit and he dresses it up nicely.

And alone, with the generals- with these other socially disadvantaged people who have every reason to hate the empire as much as he does- he laughs it off, mocks the empire for believing him, and makes his move to isolate Throk.

Lotor wants to live. He wants to win. And he’s the type who’s been sitting here and biting his tongue and biding his time, living off the empire like a parasite while he keeps vainly promising the empire, and Zarkon, that he really is just trying to be a good Prince like they wanted.

But being underhanded, being calculating, lying to people and then mocking them for their belief... these are villainish traits. We’re not used to seeing idealists who are nothing so much as fountains of bitterness because of the garbage world they’ve been living in. But I think that’s exactly what Lotor is. He genuinely believes in these ideas, these causes- because otherwise a shrewd and practical person like him would never waste his time defending them, dressing them up to pass by people’s defenses, expressing such genuine and utter disgust for people who disregard them.

But he’s been living in a universe built by and ruled by Zarkon. He’s been stuck there, embedded under his father’s heel, for longer than the paladins have been a thing at all. He had a front row seat to watching every good thing about the paladins of old fall apart and frankly? He’s miserable. He’s miserable the way anybody would be in that situation but that misery turned into anger and it turned into that same kind of deep simmering anger that we see flicker out of Shiro sometimes.

This is wrong. This isn’t just there are a few bad apples, this is rotten all the way back to the orchard, back to the roots of the trees that made those apples. But Lotor hasn’t been able to do anything about it. Opportunities are bubbling to the surface for him, but they’re small, and few, and he’s spent a long time building up to this.

Seeing someone so very obviously motivated by bitterness, who empathizes with bitter people, who is full of spite and largely unafraid to hack pieces out of you whether or not you deserve it if you’re between him and the door when he needs to get out of there- is not something we’re used to. And I think because of that, and because his bitterness reads so much louder than the ideals that actively drive that bitterness, makes people see him as a villain.

And seeing him as a villain, people read him as part and parcel of the empire itself, when, ironically, if Lotor really was acceptable to the empire, not only would this entire altercation with Throk never happened, a lot of Lotor’s bitterness wouldn’t have happened. He’d be living a nice, content life, probably trusted as a commander given his connection to Zarkon, have a cozy sector of space and weight to throw around.

Instead, he’s a pariah, and one who, when given the opportunity to become really acceptable to the empire, laughs it off in private because could you imagine? Him actually meaning that olive branch he extended to Throk?

[veale2006-blog]

The fatal flaw in the 9/11 cover-up!!

(Long but worth the read)

September 11, 2021

9/11 was one of the most pivotal events in world history. Its impact will be felt for years to come. You owe it to yourself to go beyond the sound bites and the simplified official story. This is an extremely complicated story with numerous players and motives.

Why can no one name the hijackers or prove they flew the planes?

Know how to tell the difference between the truth and lies of 9/11? If they're talking about hijackers having done the dastardly deed, you know they're part of the sinister cover up extravaganza, wittingly or not.

In order for the people of the world to be convinced that Islamic hijackers were responsible for terrible tragedy of 9/11, we need to see some evidence. Not hearsay, innuendo, aspersion or promises of evidence, but real evidence.

Otherwise, the whole subject is rightly regarded as a ruse, a setup to conceal the identities of the real culprits, the ones who sit smugly in front of the TV cameras and plot their cynical war on terror — otherwise known as the war on the peoples of the world.

As President Bush continues to insist that his word be accepted as truth on numerous questions, time after time his statements have been revealed as blatant falsehoods. Yet he continues to repeat them, and the whorish corporate media continues to accept them.

Why hasn't either the Bush administration or some element of law enforcement in the United States issued a single solid piece of evidence connecting the hijackers to the hijacked airplanes? Why don’t the alleged hijackers appear on the airport security videos? Why aren’t there credit card records of their ticket purchases?

Why did FBI director Robert Mueller say very publicly to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco that nothing on paper connected Arab terrorists to 9/11? I mean, 19 years have passed. And the feds produced 19 names within 72 hours of the disaster. Notice a mathematical inconsistency here? All that has happened since is mere vigilante hysteria, hypothetical scenarios trumpeted ad nauseum by America’s notoriously brainwashed Zionist press.

Seven or eight of the names on that original list have been found living comfortably in other countries. Why hasn’t the FBI made any attempt to correct the errors made on that original list?

And why, after much hullabaloo about Colin Powell using phony information in his remarks to the United Nations about the reasons for war, hasn’t the U.S. government produced a single conclusive piece of evidence to back up its claim that 9/11 was the work Osama bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists? Not a single piece!

If you disagree, tell me what it is!

There's a simple answer to this, you know. It's because there isn't any evidence. And why is that? Because those pseudo-Muslims revealed to be so publicly incompetent at piloting jerkwater training planes had absolutely zero chance of flying sophisticated jetliners into anything narrower than the Grand Canyon, never mind executing tricky maneuvers with extraordinarily complicated machinery.

The unknown men who played the roles of the so-called Arab terrorist hijackers were really recruited by either American and/or Israeli intelligence services in a scheme set up as a diversion to inflame dumb Westerners against the Islamic world. The purpose was to divert the world’s attention from the Israeli genocide and dispossession of the Palestinians by blaming the attacks on Muslims.

But that was only half the objective. The other half was to enable our despicable cabal of neocon gangbangers to fleece the American public with an endless array of no-bid contracts to enrich the conscienceless billionaires who are really driving the war machine.

You know how the Bushista American government uses anything for PR to supposedly authenticate its own evil agenda. If they had any concrete evidence against the hijackers — if they even possessed all their correct names — we would have heard about it by now. There would be an avalanche of TV shows about them, unlike that Jewish claptrap hate crime against Muslims that appeared on NBC one night.

After 20 years, with the whole world knowing that eight of the 19 names on the hijacker list are fraudulent, the FBI has made no attempt to substitute new names. And why is that? Because the identities of the hijackers were constructed with mostly stolen papers, for some of the patsies designed to take the heat. In any case, and whoever they were, there is no evidence they ever got on the planes.

But nothing. Instead we have one minor player convicted in Germany, then the conviction was overturned, partly because Americans refused to help with the prosecution.

We have the so-called 20th hijacker and assorted other preposterous character actors languishing in jails on trumped up charges. We have security camera film at the Pentagon, which surely reveal that no jetliner hit that building, locked away in Ashcroft's vault under the phony aegis of national security. We have all the rubble of the World Trade Center, which surely would have revealed the use of nuclear explosives creating shattered beams in odd places, instantly carted away with no forensic investigation. We have transcripts — but no recordings — of these phony cellphone calls, some from people who may not have even existed.

And we have the famous stand down, in which America's air defenses suddenly evaporated — the only time in our history this has happened.

We have Marvin Bush sitting suspiciously on the board of directors of the security company that had the contract for the Twin Towers.

We have Larry Silverstein, who conveniently leased and insured the towers shortly before the big hits, telling officials to "pull" a relatively intact tower, which then fell identically to the two structures that were struck by airplanes, creating the impression that that's the way all three came down.

We have billions of dollars of windfall profits made by savvy investors in the days before 9/11, and an FBI investigation that insists nothing was amiss with these spectacular deals. Of course, we don't get the details. Only "assurances" that the trades were not suspicious, despite patterns and results that were unprecedented in the entire history of financial trading.

We have reports from firemen of explosions at the base of the Twin Towers BEFORE they fell, and the seismographic evidence to back up these assertions.

We have leader after leader saying they didn't know such a thing could happen when the government had been studying the problem for ten years. It had held at least two major drills simulating such a possibility.

And we have a president sitting in a ghetto classroom in Florida, at possibly the most pivotal moment in American history, pretending to read a book that he was holding upside down.

Perhaps most tellingly of all, we have the tragic tale of John O’Neill, rabidly honest FBI investigator, prevented from following his leads about Osama bin Laden because of the danger he would have discovered the links from Afghanistan back to CIA headquarters. Just review the way he was prevented from conducting his probe of the Cole bombing, and prevented by digging into other leads by the same guys — namely insiders Louis Freeh and Thomas Picard — who prevented significant reports from other FBI agents from seeing the light of day.

So, how does all that make you regard the supposedly impartial government panel investigating these matters? When they talk about Presidential Daily Briefings months before the event, or chitchat with presidential flunkies who leak out these pseudo revelations about this and that tidbit of essentially trivial information. And especially when they talk about the dastardly hijackers (without being able to name them) as if there is no question of their guilt. Talk about your misleading urban legends! This one is the champ.

Well, no sense feeling surprise. We knew this commission was a set-up from the get-go. Recycled Watergate investigators, even. Part of the same bunch that has run the country and covered up everything for the past 30 years or more.

Surely you didn't expect a real investigation. Thomas Kean declared at the outset of his hearings that Osama bin Laden was guilty. End of discussion. As soon as he made that statement, there was no way the hearings could be legitimate.

Asserting that genuine Arab hijackers did not carry out the attacks of 9/11 requires analysis of two concomitant categories: the history of American (and Israeli) involvement (and subterfuge) with Arab terrorists, and methods of remote control of aircraft, or other means of piloting the aircraft.

The remote control aspect continues to be a bone of contention among legitimate pilots, with some asserting only real pilots could have made such extemporaneous maneuvers and others insisting only remote control could have accomplished such a feat. An interesting new perspective on this debate can be found here:

A third natural area of study in this regard would be the intimate histories of those whom officials claim to be the hijackers, including putting the microscope on their behavior in the days and weeks before the tragedy.

Many researchers claim the name al-Qaeda was made up in middle ‘90s by a variety of American functionaries (one of them being none other than Richard Clarke) as an all-purpose villain the U.S. could blame as a convenient reason for its military adventurism. And a group of Israeli provocateurs was recently discovered trying to create their own faux version of al-Qaeda.

How many more hints do you need? The absence of any relevant arrests or discovery of any clues to the hierarchy of this supposedly worldwide terror group should tell you a lot.

Al-Qaeda doesn’t exist except for when they want it to, to blame for any sort of strategic terror they have created themselves for some political reason, like influencing the elections in Spain. Hah, that one really backfired.

Why haven’t American intelligence operatives gone to these foreign countries to interview these named hijackers who turned out to be alive? Simple. Because they knew the list was fiction in the first place, and the Arab-types who have been named as terror gurus are mostly their own employees, or people who have been set up by them.

It is a celebrated fact that Mohammed Atta and some of his friends were seen in nightclubs in the hours before 9/11, certainly a fact that argues against them being able to carry out their supposed missions because they were motivated by Islamic religious zeal. So their appearance in strip clubs blows the whole story that they were devout Muslims giving their lives to Allah. Devout Muslims don't drink, never mind cavort with strippers.

If we knew who the hijackers were, we'd know their names, wouldn't we? Or is it now worth bombing other nations and murdering thousands of innocent people because we say we know who the hijackers were, even though we don't know their names? It is the great shame of the American people that they have approved of the murders of thousands of people because of that blatant lie.

Many of the men who were fingered as 9/11 hijackers received preferential treatment from American immigration officials when it came to entering and leaving the U.S. on numerous occasions. Many of these same names reportedly trained at various U.S. military installations.

What has resulted after 19 years of work by America’s crack intelligence agencies, besides the persecution of Muslims throughout the world?

Well, hundreds of innocent people have been unjustly imprisoned and tortured at Guantanamo. All of them innocent, hapless dupes rounded up in a Rumsfeld-ordered dragnet in Pakistan after U.S. planes had (inadvertently or otherwise) allowed the Taliban fighters to escape with the Pakistani army from Afghanistan.

Two pathetic flunkies have been arrested and held without due process. One of them, the notoriously pathetic shoe bomber who was obviously a deranged personality and not a member of any terror network, was ceremoniously sentenced to life in prison.

Other than that, no al-Qaeda kingpins have been even named, never mind apprehended. No clue about how the 9/11 attacks were engineered has ever emerged. This is simply not consistent with being able to name all 19 hijackers the day after the attacks. It is a case of pretending you have all of the information instantly, and then pretending you no information for the next two years. What a smell!

This means two things: that the list of 19 names was a total fabrication, and that the worldwide terror network called al-Qaeda is also a total fabrication, the wet dream brainchild of the CIA and the Mossad to be trotted out as an excuse for a whole string of terror attacks — Madrid, Bali, Riyadh, Istanbul, etc. — that were really carried out by the CIA and the Mossad themselves, cleverly involving designated patsies to give the operations a suitably foreign flavor.

Al-Qaeda does not exist except as a bogeyman invented by Western powers to justify their evil agenda. There were no hijackers flying those planes on 9/11. And honest FBI agents have been prevented from publicizing that fact.

If you disagree, prove it! The world knows you can’t, though the high-tech mass murder by the United States and Israel spreads around the world because of this falsified version of events.

History will show — and the public will soon realize — that those who are telling these lies not only allowed 9/11 to happen, but planned it for their own personal advantage.

The only question that remains is will the American public awaken to this murderous, treasonous scam before the perpetrators achieve their objective and bury the whole planet in the flames of their insane perfidy.

Just remember. If they’re talking about the hijackers, they’re part of the cover up, whether they know it or not.

Much more productive would be analyzing the tiny hole in the Pentagon, how the ejected material in the WTC photos prove there were unexplained explosions, or how those emotional cellphone calls could not possibly have been made as government flunkies have presented them.

But you won’t hear the official 9/11 commissioners talking about any of that, because they are definitely part of the cover up. You can obviously tell, because they keep talking about the hijackers.

Other than a general alert to citizens of the world about the basic lies that continue to underlie all political debate in the United States at this time, there is another, more pressing reason to discuss and contemplate all these matters at this time.

The Secret History of 9/11 - Full Documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVh9WgGxuIY

The Truth Behind 9-11 Attack [Part 1 of 9]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arub097L5Co

The Truth Behind 9-11 Attack [Part 2 of 9]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK7qJTCvAHE

The Truth Behind 9-11 Attack [Part 9 of 9]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ5AxjjDv-U

Mysterious Deaths of 9 11 Witnesses (MUST SEE) - THESE ARE NOT COINCIDENCES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suQitX2GmTU

This Computer Simulation Explains How the Twin Towers Fell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzInIjD6nKw

This is the 9/11 Cover Up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzkd0C2t2s8

9/11 Firefighter Blows WTC 7 Cover Up Wide Open

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQrmkOWhH48

Remembering 9/11 | National September 11 Memorial | United States

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTpYlm79Fis

9/11 Memorial Video (2020)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgzm4klQXOw

Alan Jackson - Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning) (Official Audio)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj6rMcVNQbw

Pray for the families that lost their love ones from such a senseless evil act of life. We must hold those that let this happen accountable and that includes our GOVERNMENT!!!

SEEK THE TRUTH. RESEARCH THE TRUTH. FOR YOU SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE!!

May Yeshua the Messiah bless you,

Love, Debbie

[gallifreyanlibertea]

can i ask for a relaxing walk in the beach at night fic? usuk of course. Don't feel pressured into writing it, anything is fine :) thank you dear

a/n: Thanks Ixie for making sure I didn’t eff up! Also… I hope this is somewhat relaxing lol (sorry for straying)

Worth Fighting For

It was on Crescent beach where Arthur had first met Alfred Jones, a man who had instantly proven himself to be as chivalrous as he later, on numerous accounts, boasted to be. He was a man who, the first time Arthur had seen him, had brows drawn together in fury, an uncommon expression on the otherwise gentle giant.

“Hey, asshole, he’s not interested.”

Of course, back then, Arthur hadn’t been… well, out. His mother had still put him up to numerous blind dates, with numerous alphas who got worse as their numbers progressed.

That one, in particular, had arms as wide around as Arthur’s middle, so naturally, Arthur had thanked every god of every religion when Alfred had stormed across the beach to confront Arthur’s ‘date’- an alpha who had snapped at Arthur for flinching at the hand he’d placed rather high up Arthur’s thigh.

“So how about you put that hand of yours back in your pocket and leave him alone?”

It was admirable, Arthur remembered thinking. Admirable how some well-built- and he was certainly well built- alphas stood up for those omegas too weak-bodied to fight for themselves. Adorable, the way Alfred had grinned down at him after the alpha had left, jutting out a hand for Arthur to shake, “I’m Alfred, hi!”

“Arthur.” Arthur had said, and, “Thank you, I would’ve handled him if he wasn’t ten times my size.”

“I’ll bet.” A small chuckle. “Hey, you can thank me by letting me buy you a popsicle!”

And Arthur had winced because oh, he would really want to. He was sure Alfred was a great guy, who’d treat him like a pearl, who’d spoil him silly, an absolute darling, but-

“I’m sorry to be so forward but… I- I’m only, er, I only date omegas.”

Coming out to strangers was significantly easier because they weren’t his parents, they weren’t someone he’d have to see every day, and of course, he had been ready to hear something along the lines of- “Woah, that’s hot”, or “You need a strong alpha like me, who knows what you want!” He was used to it.

He was definitely not, however, used to the grin that followed, with Alfred pulling down the collar of his tee-shirt to reveal the small mark of an omega etched into his neck. “Well, what a coincidence! How about that popsicle?”

Arthur knew now that it was some sort of celestial gift.

It was a lottery he had won, a lottery that now walked next to him with features illuminated by the light of the moon, hand holding Arthur’s with the warm remnants of a kiss still tingling on Arthur’s knuckles from only seconds before.

“I’ve never seen a beach at night.” Arthur mused, watching as a small smile played on Alfred’s lips, the way it tended to do when he was looking at Arthur like he was doing now. Those lashes fluttered, framing adoring blue eyes. Arthur found himself turning pink. “It’s like a school after hours, or a, uh, completely-empty Walmart or something.”

Arthur blamed the salty-cool breeze for nudging him under Alfred’s arm. “It’s a bit nippy, isn’t it, Alfred?”

“You can see all the stars.”

Arthur glanced up. He wasn’t used to the sight of what seemed to be the entire galaxy smattered in the inky sky. Freckles of stars that dipped into the purple, frothing ocean. It kept his breath stuck in the middle of his throat, while Alfred simply gazed with lips parted, those twinkling stars seeming to reflect in his eyes.

“Gosh, it’d make my crappy day better if we could see them in the daytime.”  

“I can.” Arthur attempted, and Alfred looked down at him with brows arched high. “I see you.”

Alfred laughed. It was hushed, practically a giggle and Arthur felt a proud smile spread across his lips because he really could be sweet when he wanted to be.

When Alfred had come out to his parents and they’d taken it harder than anticipated- Arthur had cradled that sniffling head against his chest, comparing Alfred to every single beautiful thing he’d remembered off the top of his head, how his hair was spun gold, eyes as blue as the gloomy English skies, lips as appetizing as beans on toast, to which Alfred had smacked him with a wobbly smile.

Or coming home to find Alfred hard at work, lifting his weights like there was no tomorrow, to which, at the sight of those bare, tanned, slightly-defined muscles, Arthur had launched himself into some feverish tangent about Greek gods, something that he was sure had creeped Alfred out, only to find him grinning at the flattery.

Alfred really did feed off of the compliments, all the shameless doting. Arthur supposed it was fine because most people tended to be slightly concerned from receiving Arthur’s attention.

Ah, yes, attention. Arthur paid attention to a lot of things. In fact, he’d noticed the look in Alfred’s eyes when he’d dragged Arthur out of bed and into a car to get to this very beach. Crescent beach.

He’d noticed Alfred’s keen choice of pocketed shorts, he’d noticed his silence while he drove, when Arthur had insulted fast food restaurants everywhere- something Arthur had expected a juicy little squabble over, only to receive a knowing smile in response. He’d noticed the strange lull in Alfred’s movements- not one word throughout the walk, not one- just the lazy movement of his thumb rubbing circles into Arthur’s shoulder, pressing his nose into the side of Arthur’s head, light, feathery kisses on Arthur’s temples.

But most importantly, he’d noticed a crumpled receipt for a ring shoved somewhere under Alfred’s pillow, only last week, and yes, he’d gasped. He’d tossed it into the trash, he’d acted like he’d seen a bug when Alfred asked him what was wrong, he’d pretended never to have seen it.

Which is why as Alfred paused in the middle of their walk and turned to face him, to tuck Arthur’s hair behind his ear, “Arthur-”

Before he’d even began to crook his knee, to reach his hand into his pocket, Arthur yelped out the answer- “Yes!”

A blink. “What?”

“Nothing, sorry, go on.”

Alfred frowned, just a bit, those eyebrows scrunching together. “Arthur.”

Busted. Arthur found himself digging his toe into the sand almost sheepishly.

“I saw the receipt for the ring last week, and you’re also really bad at hiding things.”

And Alfred grinned. He rolled his eyes, he flushed red, he did a thousand things at once and Arthur let those arms heave him off his feet, into a kiss, one not quite as bruising as Arthur had expected it to be.

Alfred’s lips were soft on his and Arthur tasted salt. It could’ve been the air, it could’ve been tears, hell, it could’ve easily been both and they were getting married so Arthur stopped thinking.

He stopped thinking about how Alfred’s family wouldn’t be at the wedding, how the matching rings on their fingers as they ate in public, walked in public, did anything in public, would draw those eyes. Those ugly, hateful eyes, who preached love for those with opposite Natures and opposite Natures alone. Those eyes for which Alfred wore patches on his mark, to conceal his omega scent, of which Arthur hated every second of.

But Alfred was holding him, and Alfred was kissing him, and Alfred was marrying him, and he chuckled in Arthur’s ear. “Let me put this ring on you.”

Arthur landed softly on his feet.

His feet sunk lightly into the sand and he watched as Alfred fumbled in his pocket, a slim, golden ring glinting in his palm as he brought his hand back out to toss a shy smile in Arthur’s direction, one that morphed into a slight wince.

“My parents are going to love this.”

“Oh, Alfred-”

“No, I’m not sad, baby,” Alfred said, and Arthur was back to that sunny day on the beach. Eating a popsicle under the shade of an umbrella, one that Arthur had bought to keep the sun from leaving him burnt crisp. He had watched as Alfred prattled on about his day, grinning, laughing, eyeing Arthur’s treat when Alfred was done with his.

He’d called him baby that first day they’d met. “Hey, you finishing that, baby?”

“You… Us.” Alfred took Arthur by the hands, pressing a warm kiss into Arthur’s cold palms, and suddenly, Arthur didn’t find it so nippy. “We’re worth fighting for.”