#i had this issue a lot in the main tag when i saw some posts about how silence/silence x saria/rhine lab is bad

[stormsandfoes]

Thomas Hewitt/ Reader

𝔚𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔦𝔰 𝔩𝔬𝔳𝔢, 𝔱𝔬 𝔰𝔬𝔪𝔢𝔬𝔫𝔢 𝔴𝔥𝔬 𝔥𝔞𝔰 𝔫𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔯 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔯𝔡 𝔬𝔣 𝔦𝔱? 𝔑𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔯 𝔱𝔞𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔴𝔢𝔢𝔱𝔫𝔢𝔰𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔦𝔱𝔰 𝔫𝔢𝔠𝔱𝔞𝔯?

Written in third-person limited POV, focusing on Thomas. Content tags: Neurodivergence, Cannibalism, mentions of rape, Canon typical violence, self harm, Mommy issues, child abuse (mentioned), good vs. evil with nothing in between, religious trauma. Author notes: I honestly intended this to be short and to the point- but here we are. I read a lot of Thomas/Reader stories where Thomas is portrayed as neurotypical and I don't know why it bothers me so much- it's just fanfiction after all, but I wanted to write a short "love" story where Thomas is violent and scared and lonely. He's nonverbal, he's mentally disturbed but not 'slow'. His world is very black and white and full of violence, so that got me wondering- what would love look like for him? What would happen if this man, who has only ever known darkness, met someone who was nice to him? Fair warning, lots of rambling ahead. I also just want to say that I am Autistic and that influenced a lot of this story- from the way that I write, to how I portray characters, to certain interactions. So if anything seems weird to you, I apologize- my mind works in weird ways. If I need to clarify anything, just shoot me a message. I would love to talk about the writing process and why I included certain things. Important: This is about 15k words and NOT even half of it. I had to cut it into pieces, will update the rest in another post.

Thomas brings the axe above his head, his breath ragged as he swings it down and cuts the piece of firewood in half with a low grunt. He’s hot, even though it’s the middle of winter- the weather low even with the sun that hid behind the clouds- and his shirt is sticking to him uncomfortably, the sweat doing nothing to cool him down.

He lodges the axe into the tree stump, grabbing the two pieces of wood and throwing them in the wheelbarrow before he wipes his forehead with dirt covered hands. It was the last chore of the day, and he was tired and sore- a tightness in his shoulders that seemed to spread all the way down to lower back and made him want to get in bed. His mask is damp and tight against his face, the skin underneath irritated. He wants to go inside and change, the thought of taking a shower was frustrating but he knew that he needed one. He could smell himself- bitter with sweat and the slightly suffocating scent that seemed to stick to chickens now clinging to him from when he had cleaned out the chicken coop. His nails were lined with dirt- hands and arms caked in grime. It made him feel heavy and slow.

Uncle Hoyt would drag him to the back and hose him off if he saw him, and he hated that more than he hated cleaning himself off- the feeling of water on his skin something he had never got around to liking. He could handle other things- blood never seemed to churn his stomach, or when Momma or Uncle Hoyt used to ask him to go clean out the pig pen- back when they could afford to have pigs, they were empty now, the whole farm seemed to get emptier and emptier as the months passed- he hadn’t thought that shoveling pig shit into a bucket was all that bad. But he had trouble smelling sometimes, especially with the leather pressed so tight against the place his nose had once been.

He takes the handles of the wheelbarrow, filled with enough dried out wood for the weekend- maybe Monday, if the weather stayed where it was at- and began to haul it towards the house. Momma would need some in the kitchen, to boil water and heat the ovens for Supper when she got back from town. He’d have to check the fireplace on the main floor- sometimes even on the coldest days of winter that room stayed warm enough that if they were to turn on the fireplace it’d be too uncomfortable to sit in. He would wait until Uncle Monty asked for more- he didn’t like it when any of them made decisions for him, more so now that he was stuck in that wheelchair.

There were no fireplaces upstairs, just piles of blankets to layer and hope they did enough to keep them warm. Sometimes it would be enough for him, but there were nights that even with two or three of the ones Momma sewed together for him; he would still lay awake, teeth chattering from the cold. It’s why he hated the cold- he could manage the heat, but winter was unpredictable even in the deep south of Texas.

Uncle Monty is in the living room, asleep in his chair as the TV keeps playing, almost as loud as his snoring. He walks past him, noticing the almost empty fireplace. His footsteps are heavy and loud from the metal on his shoes as he carries an armful of wood into the kitchen. He sets it down on the dining table, right on the white plastic cloth momma had set out before she had left, dirt falls onto the floor and he makes a low, grumbling noise of frustration, hoping that she didn’t see it when she got home.

He had forgotten the plastic mat last time and gotten her favorite tablecloth dirty -the mud staining the light blue cotton forever. He didn’t see why it was such a big deal, Momma had once told him that life was messy, that’s how one knew that they were living it, but she had been so angry at him then- sending him out with the bucket and soap, shouting about the mud he had tracked inside their house. Supper had come late that night- Hoyt growing angry at him. He liked it when it was ready and waiting for him when he got home- shouting at momma that working men weren’t supposed to wait for food.

He had gotten into an argument with him that night- he didn’t like it when people were mean to momma. Uncle Hoyt had called him a bad name- making his blood boil.

He didn’t want that to happen again. He didn’t like how badly he had wanted to hurt Uncle Hoyt at that moment. Momma said that family fought all the time, but he had to be careful not to do anything that he would regret. Maybe he would regret it when his blood stained his clothes, but part of him wasn’t so sure. He liked him better when he was Uncle Charlie. Uncle Hoyt reminded him of the bad men.

He tries not to think about it anymore when he heads back outside to grab a few more pieces of wood for the living room. He didn’t like thinking back on the things that made him angry, sometimes he couldn’t come back from them, and he’d end up doing something bad.

By the time he’s pushing past the double front doors, Momma’s car is pulling into the dirt path off to the side of the house. It’s an old one- rusting from the heat of too many summers, but momma didn’t mind it.

 The car comes to a stop as he picks up another armful of wood and takes it inside.

Ever since Hoyt became Sheriff of the town, things had gotten better for them. There were never days where they went to bed hungry, the meat freezer down in the basement always seemed to have enough for them. If it ever ran low, a Hoyt always seemed to find a way to get it restocked. Momma had taken over the shop in town after the owner had passed away and Hoyt made sure that his son- one of the bad men- went right along with him. He had filled the bellies of those who still stayed in town, too hungry to care enough to question them. Sometimes she brought back what didn’t sell that day and they’d have themselves a little feast. There were days Uncle Hoyt brought a guest with him- always a woman-, other times he’d ask momma to bring his food up to his room- the muffled screaming drowned out by Monty’s TV show.

He liked to stay in the basement on those days. It was harder to hear the pleading and begging as Hoyt played too rough with them. He would always get stuck with getting rid of them afterwards and he was starting to dislike the chore.

By the time he finishes stacking the wood, Momma is calling out for him, the front door swinging open. He freezes- his shoulders squaring and his breath suddenly heavy as he looks up at the hall, hidden between a wall and the fireplace. There was someone with Momma. He could hear the footsteps- Momma walked with a purpose, heavy and loud like him. She said that she did it so God would hear her better, but he wasn’t so sure that God was with them anymore. The ones that came after her were lighter, nervous.

He didn’t like guests. Didn’t like that Momma and uncle Hoyt had developed a habit of taking in strays that would just end up in the basement with him later. They would scream when they saw him- call him those names that made the anger come. Some of them liked to hurt him, momma taking him to the bathroom afterwards and stitching him up.

“You’re going to love my Tommy. He’s a little bit shy but he’s got the sweetest heart.” Momma says and he hears the other person laugh. It’s a soft noise- gentle in a way that manages to make his heart race faster as he tries to crawl deeper into the tiny space. “He’s here around somewhere… but let’s get you set up in your room then you can come down and help me with supper, okay?”

Another laugh, his heart racing uncomfortably in his chest. He didn’t want Momma to find him, he was already so tired.

“Of course,” the stranger says, and she- the thought of a woman in the house irritates him- doesn’t talk like Momma or Hoyt or Monty. Her voice is quiet, it doesn’t drawl out. He’s heard it before- she must be from out of town. “I would love to!”

For a moment, he feels bad for the woman as he hears them go up the stairs. He always feels bad for them at first. Momma said that his heart was too kind. Hoyt called him a pansy boy, in need of toughening up. He doesn’t know why he feels bad, the guests were never good people- he’d always come to learn that, but it never seems to do anything to make the twitch of guilt go away from his heart. The steps grow quieter the farther up they go- until he hears Momma’s muffled voice and then her footsteps coming back down.

She spots him, curled into himself in that tiny, dark space and she sucks her teeth, shaking her head. “Thomas Hewitt, what in the lords name are you doing there?”

He feels embarrassed all of a sudden, getting caught like this. He makes a low noise in his chest, pointing to the firewood.

“Come on and get on out of there if you’re done then, we’ve got company.” She comes down the rest of the steps and makes her way towards him. When she holds out her hand he takes it, a comfort that has his heart slowing down.

 “I need you to go and grab the rest of her stuff from the car- poor girl don’t got no power in her home.” She says with a shake of her head as she pulls and helps him to his feet. “She’ll be staying with us until her electricity gets put back up.”

He shakes his head, this time the noise he makes is in protest, a deep groan of anger. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want her in his house.

Momma frowns, crossing her arms over her chest. “Now listen here Thomas, not everyone is as lucky as we are. Sometimes we have to help those in need.”

He wants to believe her- Momma wasn’t one for lying, after all- but this isn’t anything new. He knew how this would end; with the woman in their bellies and her screams in his head, keeping him awake at night. She would make a mistake and then she’d end up in the basement, begging for her life.

It was like Momma had set her up to fail, like a game that promised a prize that would never come, and Thomas didn’t want to play. Not this time. He shakes his head again, his way of telling her no.

Momma and Uncle Hoyt have a lot in common, no matter how sweet and gentle Momma tried to be, her anger was almost as bad as his. He doesn’t like it when she gets angry at him- everyone was always angry at him- and he can see it in her eyes, making him bend his chin against his chest as he let out a whine, glancing down at the ground. She never hit him, but she would ignore him and that hurt a lot more.

“Then you go on upstairs and tell the poor girl that she’s got to leave. I won’t be the one to break the bad news.” Momma huffs, stomping over to the kitchen. “Tell her you would rather see her freeze than offer a small kindness.”

There it is, that harshness in her voice that makes him tremble, his heart picking up its pace until he feels like he can’t breathe. He shakes his head again, digging his fingers into his arm. He didn’t want to have anything to do with the woman. Didn’t want to be forced to deal with her later but if this is what Momma wanted, then he would do it. He would make her happy.

He lets out another noise, smaller this time and turns towards the door. Part of him is angry- angry that he wasn’t allowed to be angry without being punished. Angry that sometimes it seemed like he wasn’t allowed to have a say when it came to things. He felt as if momma sometimes liked to hurt him on purpose- pushing and pushing until he snapped.

As soon as the thought crosses his mind, he feels the guilt settle in his stomach, hot and suffocating. Momma wasn’t like the bad people. She wouldn’t hurt him. Sometimes he just made her so angry- he knew that. He knew that he was difficult and stubborn and sometimes she got tired of dealing with him.

It wouldn’t be long before the woman disappeared anyways- Hoyt will see her at supper and he’d take her upstairs. The screaming will start, and everyone will act like they couldn’t hear it; Momma would knit, and Monty would turn the volume on the TV up until it was too much. He’d end up sleeping in the basement again, picking at his skin until it was raw and bleeding- the crying twisting his stomach and threatening to swallow him whole.

He just had to wait until then. He would be good until then.

The trunk of the car was left open for him, and he finds the woman’s things waiting for him. It’s not much- a simple backpack, filled with so many things that it ballooned uncomfortably. He grabs it, grunting at the fact that it was heavier than he thought, and slams the trunk close. The car shakes and squeaks at his aggression as he carries the bag inside. He doesn’t like the fact that he’s touching the stranger’s things.

He’s dirty- his fingers staining the bag- but he’s also dirty inside. Rotten from the anger, the bad he’s done. The bad he was going to do. He can feel himself soiling the items inside- turning them just as dirty as him as he walks into the kitchen and sets the bag down on the floor. Momma had taken the firewood he had left and put away the mat. He could feel the warmth of the fire even from where he stood across the oven- filling the room with the scent of smoke. He grunts, wanting Momma to turn around and see that he had done what she asked. He wanted her to smile at him- to ease the way his heart still hammered in frustration.

She turns, but the softness in her eyes isn’t directed at him- she barely looks at him and his heart sinks further down into his stomach, tension building in the back of his neck. He can hear her footsteps now- the creaking of the staircase as she came downstairs. He’s standing in front of a wall, the staircase on the other side. For now, he was hidden- but it wouldn’t be long until she stepped into the kitchen, and he couldn’t hide anymore.

“We’re in here dear,” Momma calls out to her. “Tommy here’s got your bag for you.”

He sees her for the first time out of the corner of his eye- spotting her before she spots him, her eyes on Momma. She’s short- shorter than momma by a bit, and clean and well dressed. Her sweater is thick and colorful, the cuffs of her sleeves neatly folded against her wrists. Something there catches the soft yellow light of the kitchen- a thin golden bracelet halfway hidden beneath the fabric. Her jeans look like they’ve been around for a long time- a different shade of fabric stitched into one of the knees. Her boots are old and worn out, reminding him of his own.

He doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like this feeling that runs through him as he inspects her.

“I really like your house!” she says- voice light and full of excitement that made his mood worsen. “Its-” whatever she was about to say dies in her throat as she turns her head to the left and spots him for the first time.

He doesn’t let her look at his face- turning his head to the side as he folds into himself, chin against chest. He doesn’t like this- doesn’t like that she stares at him without saying anything. He can feel her eyes on him- inspecting him- an animal on display. His chest rises and falls painfully, his breathing hard and loud in the silence. He can feel his hands twitch- his thumb nail grazing along the length of his finger.

“This is my son,” Momma’s voice is tight as she talks. “Tommy this here is our guest. Don’t you want to say hello?”

He shakes his head, his hands trembling. Something wet lands inside the sink and he startles. He hears Momma suck her teeth and he can see her in his mind- shaking her head like she does whenever he does something she doesn’t like.

He doesn’t like this. Doesn’t like that Momma is getting mad at him, that the woman still stands there, watching him tremble in fear. He could already hear it- her laughing as she called him an idiot. They always called him something. They always laughed at him.

“It’s okay,” her voice shakes a bit as she breaks the silence, and she coughs and clears her voice. “I, um, I’m a little shy myself so I know how hard it can be sometimes.” She speaks slowly, her voice almost a low whisper. She tells him her name. Tells him that it’s nice to meet him.

He doesn’t say anything- not that he can, he’s never spoken a single word- but he nods his head, his eyes quickly glancing over at her. She’s still looking at him and his heart almost beats through his ribs. He expects her to be looking at him like they always look at him- filled with disgust and hatred, looking for any excuse to leave, to get as far away as possible from him- but he doesn’t find that in her face.

He finds her mouth twisted downwards and her eyebrows pushed together just a tiny little bit, her eyes gentle and wide. She looked at him as if he was a dog out by the side of the road on a hot summer afternoon refusing help and she had been chasing him with a bowl of water.

She looks at him like there was nothing scary about him. Like he was a man, dirty from a long day at work and not a freak- poor and disfigured- a monster. He had never seen that look from anyone who didn’t live in this house, and it scared him. It terrified him that someone would decide to look at him like that.

But as soon as he met her eyes she looked away, towards Momma- a smile in her voice.

“What are we making for dinner?” she asks, stepping farther into the kitchen and pushing her sleeves up towards her elbows- ready for whatever Momma tells her to do.

The tension disappears just like that, Momma laughing lightly as she places her hand on the woman’s back and pulls her close. “You’re such a darling, helping me out like this. How about you start getting out the pots and pans? They’re over there by the pantry.” She pointed to the cupboards by the fridge and the woman nodded and went straight towards them.

With her back to them- Momma turned and looked at him finally. He could still feel his heart hammering away at his chest, but this was more manageable. He was still waiting for the names to come, for the screaming and the disgust to appear in her eyes. Sometimes when Momma was around people hid it a bit better, but he knew that it wouldn’t be long until they couldn’t hide it anymore.

He expects Momma to still be mad at him- blue eyes dark with anger- but instead she sighs and puts her hand on his shoulder, a silent apology that has his muscles relaxing. The woman pays them no mind- bending down to inspect the cupboard down there.

“Go on and take her bag up to her room and get yourself cleaned up, okay?” She tugs on the collar of his shirt before fixing his hair out of his face. It’s damp from his sweat, but she doesn’t flinch. “She’s a good girl- try to handle her with care, alright?” Her voice is a low whisper- something the woman wasn’t supposed to hear. It unsettles him as he nods along with Momma- not quite understanding what she meant. He doesn’t know if he’s supposed to nod along with her or shake his head, but Momma doesn't wait for an answer, patting him on the cheek before she turns her head and calls out to the woman.

“Honey, Tommy is going to take your bag up to your room- is that alright?”

The woman rises from the ground, two pots neatly stacked in each other in her hands. “Yes,” she says softly- her eyes meeting his. “Thank you, Tommy.”

She smiles at him shyly and his heart begins to hammer against his ribs again. He feels his skin begin to burn- his flesh raw and exposed to her. Even underneath his mask he can feel himself heating up as he looks away, scrambling to grab the bag.

He needed to get away from her- from Momma and her words that he couldn’t understand. He felt like he couldn’t breathe with her here. He stumbles up the steps- feet so heavy against the wood that he swears he can feel the house tremble underneath him.

Momma gave her the room across his- the empty one where she liked to keep the extra bed sheets and towels. But it’s cleaner now as he turns the knob and goes inside, the curtains pulled open to let in the bit of light that still shone from outside- the sun close to setting. The piles of blankets that were on the bed are gone- the sheets neatly tucked into the space between the mattress and the boxspring. There’s a jacket thrown on top- red and faded, the cuffs ripped up on one arm.

He sits the bag right next to it- on the floor, wiping his hands on his jeans. It topples over and he lets out a grunt- fixing it so it sat upright again. He decided that he would stay up here until Momma called him for supper. He wouldn’t go down to the basement while the woman was here- he was worried that she would be stupid enough to follow him down there. That would be the end of her. Blood and flesh and sinew torn from her bones for them to feast on.

He’s careful when he’s leaving the room- closing the door gently so that it doesn’t slam before he hurries off into his own- locking the door behind himself.

Here it’s dark, his windows covered in greased up newspapers. He didn’t like it when it got too bright- when the sun shone through and reminded him of the mess around him. His room is small and cramped and full of things that he had hauled up from the furnace room so that he wasn’t stuck going up and down all the time. Uncle Monty said that he sounded like a ‘goddamned bulldozer,’ stomping around the house when he was trying to sleep. So, it was better this way- even though sometimes he got irritated that there were too many things. But it meant not being bothersome, so he tried not to mind much.

He checks the door again- making sure that he had really locked it, pulling and twisting at the doorknob just to be safe. He knew that no one would come up here and go into his room- Monty was stuck on the first floor, Momma was with the girl in the kitchen preparing supper and Uncle Hoyt wasn’t home yet. But he was always a little paranoid, just the tiniest bit afraid that someone would knock down his door and see everything about him that he had tried so hard to hide. Not even Momma was allowed in here. This was his- the only place where he could hide from everyone, where he didn’t have to worry about anyone disturbing him.

He takes his mask off and it’s not quite the relief he was expecting- the leather inside has gone stiff, his face raw and tender and aching from all the sweat and dirt that had managed to get in. He can feel it as he runs his fingers across his face, a cut on the corner of his lips that wasn’t there last time. It blends into the sores and scarred tissue already there, his skin long ruined. It shouldn’t bother him- but as he opens his mouth and feels the skin stretch and crack, a drop of blood welling up and rolling down his chin- he gets upset, grunting in frustration. He had wanted to clean the mask and add some petroleum to try and soften it up so it wouldn’t bite at his skin anymore- pinching and scratching and making the pain worse. It would have been something to do, something to keep him busy and distracted until he had to face the inevitable, but now it was something that he no longer wanted to do. Why would he? What would it change?

It was never this bad- but ever since his nose began to fall away, it only ever seemed to get worse- no matter what he did or how hard he pleaded for it to just stop and go away- nothing ever changed. There was no one there to listen to his pleas.

With a low groan of frustration, he tears his hand from his face, wiping the blood on the front of his shirt. He hates himself. Hates everything about himself. Momma liked to say that the bad people were liars, that people who were hurting only ever knew how to hurt others- but he knew that wasn’t true. He was a monster. He saw it, looking back at him in the mirror- wild and ugly and evil, everything that he did not want to be. He hated taking his mask off- hated knowing that the man that existed underneath it was the same man that he was trying to escape from.

Coming here was a mistake. He should have stayed downstairs, should have gone out back to the barn- there he would have found something, anything, to do.

He takes a breath like Momma showed him, trying to push the anger away- down, down, down, until he couldn’t feel it slithering through his veins and pounding in the back of his head. He just had to focus on something else-he liked it when he had chores, things to do that kept him busy and away from the bad thoughts. He takes another deep breath through his mouth- dirt and salt on his lips as he picks up the mask and tries to clean it off on his clothing. It does nothing but lift the dust off into the air as he places it on his face, tightening it too much across his head, leather digging into tender skin. He would take a bath, change his clothes, then sit in bed and wait. Uncle Hoyt would come an hour after the sun disappeared and then he would have to go downstairs. He didn’t want to go downstairs.

He didn’t want to feel the bad feelings anymore. The fear, the anger. The woman would look at him and his throat would tighten, and his heart would beat painfully. He hadn’t liked that feeling- trapped in his own skin, unable to get away. Yet at the same time, he wanted her to look at him. No one ever looked at him.

He could still feel her eyes- soft and warm on his skin, simultaneously calming and worsening his anger. He was half embarrassed- covered in dirt and sweat stains, his clothing old and faded- Did she think that he was disgusting? He was always messy in everything that he did- always having to teach himself how to do things. Filth had never been a stranger. Had never bothered him. But he finds himself wanting to wash the grime and sweat from himself- even if he was just going to put the same clothes back on.

His stomach growls, empty and needy as he unlocks the door and roughly pushes it open- he finds the woman outside of it.

The door swings open, the gust of wind pushing her hair around as the door barely manages to miss her. She’s looking up at him, eyes wide and mouth slightly open- her arms up by her chest. It scares him, seeing her there and he makes a messy, garbled noise of surprise.

“Sorry!” she speaks fast, her words all pushed together. “I was just trying to find the bathroom!”

He feels his heart beating in his throat, muscles tense and solid as he stares down at her. She’s so much shorter than he thought- he could reach out and crush her throat in his hand and it wouldn’t take much force to do so. He’s almost tempted to, his fingers twitching at his sides. Momma would get mad at him when he dragged her body downstairs- but she would forget eventually.

“I’m in your way- I,” she takes a step back, her eyes finally releasing his. “I’m sorry, I’m just-”

He grunts. Low and short- his way of telling her to stop talking. Nothing she says is making any sense to him and the sound of her voice makes his heart hammer at his chest. Thunderous and loud and painful. It scares him how easily she does that to him. Such a small thing like her, carelessly walking into a house where God was nowhere to be found without a single ounce of caution. He could take her to his room, and no one would hear her scream. He could scare her more than she scared him.

She squirms in the silence like a rat stuck in a trap. She tugs at her sleeve, at her collar- his breathing loud as he watches her- watches her chest rise and fall with every breath, her eyes on the space between them.

 Another grunt and she startles backwards, looking up at him. This time, when her eyes meet his own, he doesn’t cower even though his body tenses and he can already feel her pulse beneath his hand.

 His body is stiff as he steps out of his room and moves out of the way of the door- he has to turn his back to her and for a split-second, panic runs cold and fast through his veins as he remembers the woman who had stabbed him. The door slams close as he turns around quickly, eyes wide and wild as he looks down at her hands.

He expects to see a knife pointed at him- the scar on his shoulder aching from the memory of being sliced apart, the pain still there even after all the months that have passed since. He hadn’t done anything to deserve that pain- the woman and her friends had attacked first, had tried to hurt his family. Uncle Hoyt had told him, so had Momma with tears in her eyes and blood splatters on her dress. They were bad people who wanted to do bad things to them, and it was his responsibility to protect them- to keep them safe. It hadn’t mattered that his hands shook so hard with fear, and he could taste vomit at the back of his throat, vile and burning, he had to protect them. They were all that he had. He couldn’t- wouldn’t- lose them.

He was panting as he searched the woman and finds nothing in her hands, her eyes widening as she takes another step away from him.

 Was she scared?

Did she finally see it? The evil that radiated off of him that others seemed to see- always scared of getting too close to him- He was a disease on this town. A burden. Did he finally scare her?

Would she scream?

Was she going to hurt him- just like everyone else? Drive a knife into his flesh- a pain that would only last for so long before it faded into a memory that he refused to think of. A pain that wouldn’t be so bad compared to the shame that churned his stomach whenever a stranger screamed when they saw him.

He waited- teeth clamped together as he stared her down in the heavy silence.

He watched as her lips part, lower lip trembling slightly. If she screamed, he would hurt her before she could hurt him. If she screamed, she would be nothing but a pile of bones, tossed into the fire by the time the sun rose tomorrow.

Scream, he thought, fingers twitching at his sides. Scream already and let this end already.

“You’re scared of me, aren’t you?” she whispers and her voice trembles even as she keeps talking. “I can tell- you’re looking at me like I just pulled out a gun on you or something.” She lifts her hands towards him and moves them back and forth, as if she was showing him that he had nothing to worry about. “But my hands are empty-”

She lifts her hands, palms facing him, and wiggles her fingers. “If it makes you feel better, apart from a kitchen knife I don’t think I’ve ever held a weapon.” She smiles oddly at him- as if she wasn’t sure how to do so, her eyes still wide and unblinking. As if she was worried that he would lunge at her at any second.

He doesn’t like how his body seems to let go of its worries and fears so fast, his shoulders drooping and his heartbeat slowing down until it’s no longer pounding against his ears as the ringing slowly starts to disappear. He unclenches his teeth, the pain still lingering in his jaw and neck, and suddenly, he’s no longer thinking of hurting the woman- of how easy he would have snapped her neck. He still could, part of him even ached and begged for him to do it. To get it over with.

But he doesn’t listen to that part of him that never truly seemed to go away- always begging for blood, for a voice that would finally be heard. He’s staring at her hands instead, focusing on the tips of her fingers that are flushed pink. He notices the birthmark on her left middle finger- a tiny dot right underneath the crease of her knuckle. He notices all the tiny little lines that make up her palms and the way her thumb trembles lightly.

He did not like her.

He did not like the way something as simple as her hands was enough to draw his attention- his eyes seeking out the tiny little patterns between her fingers. He did not like how her voice could soothe him so easily when he wanted nothing but to crush her- to take her, to taste her flesh on his tongue and her blood on his lips.

He did not like how she called out to him as he just stared at her- stared through her, voice gentle with his name. It wasn’t the same as when Momma said it though. This felt like a spell, a bad omen- Satan’s own voice whispering temptation in his ear. Sweet and gentle and unfamiliar.

She made him feel the same way he had felt that one night he had snuck upstairs to watch Uncle Hoyt and his new friend. He had pushed the door open just enough so that he could see but still stay hidden from the light. He hadn’t made a single noise as he watched Hoyt undo his pants and pull the woman’s legs apart. He hadn’t been able to see much from his hiding place, but what he heard had sent a shock of electricity through his body- blood boiling with need as he listened to the crying and the begging and the sound of something slick being hit over and over again. His stomach churned the same it had that night- tight and hot and restless for something that he could not give it.

He lets out a whine- deep and guttural and full of frustration. Go away, he wants to yell at her. Go away before you ruin everything.

“Tommy…?” she asks again, not understanding his plea.

He whines again and it takes him a second to realize that he’s scratching at his arm- digging his fingers into the old scars there and agitating the skin. It hurts. But that pain is familiar and calming and helps him focus on something other than the panic rising in his throat.

She was messing it all up.

 It’s supposed to just be the four of them- Momma, Hoyt, Monty and him. It’s always been just the four of them. There wasn’t enough space here for her. She was too much of a change to get used to- too loud, too much. Even if he went and hid in the basement until Momma got tired of her, he knew that he would still be able to feel her through the walls, a choking weight in the air that would only poison him until he forgot what it was like to be ignored and cautious even in his own home. He’d be able to hear her- hear her laugh, her steps, the tiny little noises she would come to make the more time went on. She would fill this house with her until she soaked the walls and filled in the foundation. Until everyone forgot that she had a stranger at one point- a spontaneous good dead in all the bad they dealt in.

And even then- what would stop Hoyt from taking her to the room where almost all of the women ended up in? From the emptiness of their bellies that might make them remember that she wasn’t one of them- that she was the answer to their starvation?

He's sinking his nails in harder- the thin skin underneath breaks and he itches at the spot as if there was something alive and buzzing under the flesh. He doesn’t feel the pain as the blood begins to gather underneath his dirty nails. He can see it, even in the dim light- but he can’t feel it. Can’t stop. He digs and digs and digs, hoping for the thoughts to stop- for the voices to stop telling him that he had to kill her. That if he didn’t, he had to make sure that she never left- that this house swallowed her whole and kept her from running, from leaving them. Leaving him. If she tried to run, he could keep her in the furnace room; could tie her up and warn her that if she wasn’t good, she wouldn’t be able to stay.

He could be good to her. He would learn if he had to, would ask Momma to teach him to be gentle and kind. He would not make her angry, would not make her cry or scare her away as long as she listened to him. As long as she stayed with him.

He’s lost, stuck in the farthest corner of his mind, in a future that would stop existing if he simply reached out and touched her. All he had to do was cover her face with his hand, she would be too surprised to fight him off when he pressed her against the wall and kept her there-the weight of him against her back. He could already feel her as she squirmed against him- her body unable to stand still as her lungs began to burn. He could already feel her warmth through his clothes, feel the way his heart would race as she sank her fingers into his skin, drawing blood from fear and desperation. His fear would seep into her flesh, make her lash out more. Her pain would become his and they would be inseparable in that moment.

 It’s when he feels her- fingers cold and desperate as she prods and pulls at his arms, forcing them apart that he returns to reality- to the dimly lit hall, the heat of the fireplace already seeping through the cracks in the foundation. He can feel the way her arms tremble, her fingertips burning holes into his skin.

The woman’s eyes are wild when he looks at her, all wet and round- something in them, in the way she looks at him, makes his heart fill with lead- knocking against his ribs painfully.

“It’s okay!” she says, her voice panicked as she keeps repeating it over and over again, almost as if she’s trying to convince herself- or maybe she thinks that if she says it enough times it’d become true.

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” she repeats, her eyes on his as she pulls his arms towards her. “We just have to get this cleaned up and it’ll be okay.”

He doesn’t budge when she tries to pull him towards the staircase- instead, he watches as she stumbles over her own feet, her hands sliding down his arms.

“We need to get this clean,” she’s pleading now, tugging at him to get him to move. “It’s going to get infected if we don’t and there’s no doctor in town anymore-” the more she talks, the more hysterical she begins to sound, her voice growing higher. “I don’t know where the bathroom is, but we can go down to the kitchen, Luda M-”

He doesn’t let her finish, easily pulling his uninjured arm free from her. He didn’t want Momma to know. To see the mess that he made of himself. She would yell at him if he was lucky- tell him that he was sick in the head, hurting himself like a damn fool again.  But he knew that Momma wouldn’t be kind like that- she would take one look at him, dripping blood on the floor and she would blame the woman for his pain.

He could already hear her yelling, the shrill sound bouncing through his head. Momma wouldn’t care to listen, to see anything other than what she wanted. Momma was like that- kind and sweet and quiet until someone was stupid enough to go after the family. He was like her in a way, protective of them all. He liked to think that he got it from her- that he couldn’t possibly be bad when Momma’s blood ran through him, sweet and caring.

He couldn’t let Momma find out. Not now- not when he had decided that the woman standing in front of him was worth more to him alive than chopped up into pieces that would fit into the deep freezer.

 With a grunt that shuts the woman up from her rambling, he grabs her arm. She’s soft and small under his touch- her sweater itching at his palm as he begins to pull her deeper into the hallway, into the darkness. Away from Momma. Away from a future he wanted no part in.

“No, Tommy we have to go downstairs. I don’t know what to do.” Her voice is shaky as she takes a couple steps forward before planting her feet and refusing to keep going. “Your mom might me better at this than me, please.” She pleads even as she begins to walk again when he refuses to stop.

He tries to tell her that Momma couldn’t find out. That if she did then he wouldn’t be able to protect her- to keep her safe. Momma would tell him to get rid of her and he always did what Momma wanted, even if sometimes he didn’t want to.

He loves Momma. Loves her more than Uncle Hoyt or Monty. He loves her more than anything or anyone- even himself. He could suffer through any pain as long as Momma was with him- as long as she was happy with him.

He tries to tell her that he knows exactly what he’s doing, but all his words come out as a garbled mess of a groan, the muscles in his throat too weak to form any actual words. It frustrates him- hearing himself talk in a way that no one would ever understand.

He lets out a low howl, that frustration growing when she stops walking again. He has to be careful not to hurt her- he didn’t want to accidentally pull her arm too hard if she was going to make this a habit. He just needed to get her to the bathroom. She had to wash off the blood on her hands before she went back downstairs. He could take care of his injuries himself- Momma had taught him how to clean and bandage cuts and bruises. Though he wasn’t concerned with the open wound dripping blood down his arm.

Right now, he needed to get the woman to understand that Momma couldn’t find out about this. That if she went down those steps, stained with his blood, then there was nothing he could do to keep Momma from lashing out. Facing her, he points to himself- finger beating against his chest twice before he points at her.

He’s watching her- his eyes on her as she watches him repeat the action two more times. Her face is flushed, her eyebrows pushed together, and he begins to worry that she’s not understanding him, that now that he’s let go of her, she was going to be stupid and try to push him back towards the stairs.

Letting out a small whimper, he grabs at her wrist. She’s pliant under his touch- her skin cool and soft. Touching her reminds him of the Cattle fences that were used back when the Slaughterhouse had been open. He had touched one by accident, not fully understanding why they had so many warnings signs- and just like back then, something hot and quick ran through him. Back then, the muscles in his fingers and arms had tensed and burned, taking away all his strength. But touching her, feeling the way his scarred thumb slid against the thin skin on her wrist- felt like a shockwave of warmth had run through him- intense and disorienting and addictive.

It scared him, but he didn’t let go of her even though his brain was yelling at him to stop touching her. He couldn’t. He had to keep her safe. Slowly, he began to raise her hand towards him, his mouth opening as he made a noise from the bottom of his throat.

He looked at her face as he pressed the back of her hand against his chest. She was already staring at him, her lips twisted into a frown. He couldn’t look into her eyes for too long, something in him ached when he did, so he kept his eyes on her mouth as he tapped her hand against his chest. That same warmth that was spreading through his arm poisoned his chest. He could feel it in his throat, in the depth of his belly- It knocked around in his head until he was dizzy.

For a moment, with her hand on him and his eyes still glued to her lips, he forgets about the bad people who called him all those bad words. He forgets all of the evil that he’s done, all the screams that haunt him, all the blood that he can never wash off.

He finds the confidence to raise his eyes to her own and part of him is scared that in them he would find disgust at having to touch something like him. A smaller, quieter, part wonders if she feels it too- the electricity that flows out of her and through him. He wants her to tell him that she feels him in her- that he’s also warm and electric through her veins. He wants her to tell him that a real monster wouldn’t feel the way he did- that if he really was a monster, the softness in her eyes wouldn’t be affecting him so much.

Dropping his eyes, he taps his chest with her hand twice before pointing it towards him. He does it one more time before he lets go of her. He expects her to pull her hand away, but instead she lets it linger on his shirt, the dirt and stains not bothering her. He wonders if she can feel the way his heart knocks against his ribs.

“You want me to follow you?” her voice cracks a bit as she takes her hand away.

He nods, grunting as he motions to a door off to the side behind him before he lifts his bloodied arm and runs his hand over the scratches- they’ve stopped bleeding already, his arm a mess of blood stains and dirt. Pointing behind here, towards the staircase he shakes his head, bringing his hand back towards his arm and covering the mess he made.

She doesn’t say anything as she tries to piece everything together- her face twisting into itself as she thinks. He repeats the movement, groaning when he points at the staircase and once more when he covers the cuts. ‘Not safe,’ he tries to tell her, ‘Take care of it here.’

Realization makes her eyes brighten, her features smoothing out. “You don’t want Luda Mae to find out?”

It’s not exactly what he was trying to say but he lets it be, seeing as it was close enough. She could have thought that he wanted her to go down and grab Momma- and he was worried that with how small she was she would take off running before he could stop her. In trying to help she would run straight into her end.

The thought made his stomach drop- a sudden chill rocking through him.

“Tommy- I don’t know if I can do anything about that…” she pauses, and he watches as she reaches for him, taking his arm in both of her hands. Her touch burns him again, and this time he can’t stop the small whine of delight from escaping his lips. Her mouth twists down as she inspects his arm- and he tenses, waiting for her to start yelling at him, for the bad names to come. But they don’t- she stays silent, her eyes glued to his arm.

The damage isn’t bad- compared to the collection of scars that line both of his arms, this was nothing. He had scratched a small hole in his forearm- breaking the skin and tearing apart the bit of muscle and fat there. He was lucky that he hadn’t hit anything vital- that he had stopped when he did.

When he was younger, he had taken to cutting- tearing flesh from his body and slicing himself open as a punishment for his mistakes, for his bad thoughts. He had done a good job of keeping it from Momma until the night he had cut too deep, and the blood wouldn’t stop. He had ran to her, howling in fear- bloody arm pressed against his chest. She had made Uncle Monty hold him down while she stitched him together, only a glass of whiskey to keep the pain away. She had yelled at him the entire time-first with tears in her eyes then when they had dried up and she had finished sewing his skin together- she had taken the belt and beaten him raw. When she got tired of beating him, she had told him that this was all Satan’s fault- that she had no choice but to beat the devil out of him. God was gonna soothe his pain, his fears, his anguish. He would see, Momma liked to say. She had kissed him on the forehead, and he swore he had seen the devil on her shoulder, laughing at him.

The pain hadn’t convinced him to stop- he simply learned how to hide it better, how to keep things clean, how to stitch himself together on those nights that he fantasized about finding peace in death. He learned where to cut and how deep to dig- and eventually, Momma made herself forget it ever happened at all. Sometimes, he thought that she was afraid of God- of making him angry, of him turning his back on her. It’s why he didn’t tell her that every once in a while, he could feel the devil itself pumping through his veins. Taunting him.

The woman gently turns his arm, and he pulls himself from the memories, watching as her fingers caress his skin. She’s too trusting- doesn’t she see the danger that she’s in? How easily he could overpower her? This was a Godless house, no matter what Momma and Hoyt thought- he knew the truth. He knew that they were all rotten, inside and out. She would be ruined by them all if she stayed. He would ruin her with his sins-but his guilt wasn’t strong enough to stop his desires.

“It looks a lot worse than it is, doesn’t it?” she asks him, but he doesn’t answer- too busy watching the way she touches him- her touch making his breath deepen.

He likes the way she doesn’t mind that his blood is on her hands- twisted into the tiny cracks of her bracelet. She’s careful and slow as she traces the tip of her index finger above the crater he had created in his flesh. He’s almost tempted to push her hand down- to feel her flesh against the inside of his own, to have her hurt him before he could hurt her- but she moves her hand away before he can make up his mind.

“Okay…” she sighs, not letting go of him. “Show me what to do.”

He grunts in satisfaction, the weight of Momma finding out and the woman being punished lifting from his shoulders. Slowly, he turns the arm she cradled in her hands so that he was grabbing her instead- his hand swallowing hers.

He tries not to think about it too much as he tugs gently and finds no resistance in her steps. He almost smiles- lip twitching against the leather on his face as he leads her to the bathroom. Inside him, the devil starts to dance in glee.

The room is cold as he pushes open the door and pulls her inside before he follows. He can feel the cold seep into his thin shirt, see it with every exhale when he turns on the light and shuts the door, dropping the woman’s hand. She shivers and he wants to know if it’s from the cold or the fact that he’s no longer touching her.

The light flickers and dies for a couple seconds, leaving them in darkness before it turns back on- low and yellow like all the others in the house. It makes the woman’s skin look sickly- washing her out as she blinks and tries to get used to the light.

“We have to clean it,” she’s already walking around him, towards the sink. It’s a small one, too low for him to reach without having to bend his knees uncomfortably. Maybe that’s why she pauses mid-sentence- was she trying to picture him, hunched over as he scrubbed the dirt and blood and sweat from his arms?

The thought of her thinking about him- caring about him- splits him in two, a feeling that he’s never experienced before.

“Where are the towels?” she asks, turning around to face him. “If we lay some down on the floor it should keep the mess down a bit, right?”

He doesn’t tell her that it’s not a good idea- that a pile of soaking towels would raise questions that need to stay buried instead. So, he shakes his head, already closing the small distance between them.

The bathroom is small- all of them are. The tiles on the walls are a faded green color, some of them cracked- some of them are separated by mold- the caulk so old and weathered by age and neglect. He hopes that she doesn’t see them- his blood warming in embarrassment as he tells himself that he would fix them later, before she realized that this house was falling apart right under their feet.

The toilet and sink and the bathtub are old- not quite as stained, but still the same faded shade as the tiles that surrounded them. Under the harsh yellow light, it all looked a mess. At least it wasn’t like Hoyt’s bathroom- with too many colors and carpet all over the floors that trapped the smell of tobacco and sweat and soap, the steam that seemed to linger and stick to the walls doing nothing to lessen the stench.

He’s careful as he walks around her- suddenly aware of just how close they were. In here, with the door closed, being near to her seemed almost intimate in a way that he could not quite grasp.

He was used to being alone with people- usually they were screaming and begging, or already half-dead, delirious and confused from the pain and the blood loss. He was used to them thrashing and running and fighting back- hitting him with their fists, kicking him, throwing whatever they managed to get ahold of. They would always scare him when they did that- the pain eventually making him mad until he lashed out and hurt them on purpose.

They didn’t seem to understand that he didn’t want to make them suffer- that he was being kind- taking their lives quickly so that they didn’t have to be so afraid.

He was used to the screaming, the name calling- no matter how scared or afraid he got, he always knew how it would end.

With the woman, he had touched her- she had touched him- without screaming, without her begging or flinching or trying to run away. Out in the hall there had been enough space for him if he needed to get away, but here it was just the two of them- existing in a space that no one else seemed to belong in.

It terrified him just as much as it thrilled him. It made him feel the same way as when he had to chased down someone that had slipped out of his hold- but this time his mind wasn’t telling him to kill. This time, as he stood besides the woman, her eyes on him as he turned on the faucet and waited for the water to warm, something inside of him was telling him to chase her down in a completely different way- to keep her at his side.

Even if he had to chain her and train her- he did not want her to leave. He would not let her leave.

He remembers when he had first started at the Slaughterhouse, when he had been put to work with the cows- separating the babies from the mothers as soon as they were born. He would take them- carefully scooping them up in his arms, a child at the time, not knowing better, not knowing what it was that he was doing- and carry them to another part of the barn where he would drop them into cages so small that even he couldn’t fit inside.

They would cry and shake, unable to stand, unable to realize what lay ahead of them. He would feed them scraps he had stolen from the feeding center- oats or barley or even handfuls of grass from outside- shoving his hand through and letting them eat from his hand. They would calm down, even though they could not stand fully- their heads hunched over and pressed against the metal. He would show them that even if they weren’t going to live long- even if the world around them didn’t seem to care for them- they weren’t alone.

She did not have to be caged like them- though if he had to, he would keep her locked up if it meant keeping her beside him. Down in the basement where no one would hear her- where no one would disturb them, he would get her to see that he was a kind man, that he only wanted what was best for her.

She was already so much like the calves from back then- stupid and small and too trusting of him. It wouldn’t be hard to break her, to convince her that it was all her fault- that there was nothing left for her outside this home.

When the water heats up- steam rising and filling his lungs- he runs his fingers under the stream. Dirt and blood stain the sink, the hot water turning his fingers pink. It hurts, but not enough for him to stop. He rubs his hands together, the water turning pink as it drains. He can feel her eyes on him as he scrubs the grains of dirt from his skin.

For some reason, it embarrasses him- having her watch him do something so mundane and ordinary. He almost swore that he could feel the warmth from her eyes on his skin- hotter than the water. It makes the simple task suddenly seem foolish, makes him feel as if this was the first time he was doing it and he wasn’t sure if it was right or wrong.

With a grunt he tries to push the thoughts from his mind- cupping his hand and filling it with water before he splashes it onto his arm, onto the wound he had given himself. It makes a mess- water splashing onto his rolled sleeve and onto the floor, the sink too small to prevent the mess.

“Can I?” she says- and she’s suddenly closer than he had thought, her body pressed against his side. He can feel her through his shirt, through the thick fabric of her sweater. He swears that he can feel the softness of her body, the beating of her heart, the blood rushing through her veins on his very skin. It makes his heart leap into his throat- the sudden touch making him want to push her head into the glass of the medicine cabinet or pull her closer- he wasn’t sure which one he wanted to do most.

He stands still, body tense as she reaches for him, grabbing his arm and lifting it closer. She must have found the linen closet- an old, red washcloth in her other hand which she places underneath the running water. She hisses, pulling her hand away and opens the cold water.

“Doesn’t that hurt you?” she asks- and there’s no anger in her voice, no underlying judgement that has him tensing up, muscles rippling with dread that he had done something wrong. Momma liked to talk to him like that sometimes. She liked to ask questions that made him feel bad, that made him regret coming to her- guilty that he had bothered her. Hurt that she saw him as something bothersome.

He shakes his head, his way of telling her that no, it wasn’t hurting him. If he had a voice, he would tell her that his skin is so damaged that he could barely feel it, that some days he even preferred it- he liked the way his skin turned red and pulsed in a way that was almost comfortable, soothing.

“This will feel much better,” she holds her fingers under the water, and once it’s at a comfortable temperature she lets it run over the washcloth. “Tell me if I’m hurting you, okay?”

He nods sharply and she smiles at him- the corners of her mouth lifting. He expects her to rub the wound directly, desperate to clean it off before infection sets in. Instead, to his surprise, she wipes around the length of it- scrubbing gently at the blood matting the hair on his arm. The hand holding his arm is gentle, her fingers sinking into his soft flesh and holding him still.

He watches her- watches the concentration on her face that has her eyebrows knitted together as she wipes and rinses, repeating those two motions over and over and over again until his skin is cleaner- until the dirt is gone and there’s nothing left to hide the many sins he carried on his skin.

She pauses- and he can almost read her mind at that moment. He can see it in the tension in her wrist, feel it in the way her fingers tremble just a fraction of a second before they dig a little deeper into his arm. The feeling of her nails scratching at him isn’t painful, but it startles him just the same as if it were- a warmth growing in his chest that travels down to his belly and pools there- filling him with a different sort of sin.

He expects her to say something about the hundreds of tiny little cuts and bruises that she’s unearthed- he can feel it hang heavy in the air- his lips tingling from anticipation. From the worry that she would open her mouth and ruin it all.

It would either be disgust or pity- and he wanted neither. The scars were his to carry- his own punishment for his terrible deeds. Uncle Hoyt always cringed and acted like he didn’t see them- even though his mouth and face twisted as if he had eaten something sour. The pity always came from Momma- her hands on his as she prayed to God to take away whatever burdens he seemed to be carrying around in his heart. She wouldn’t touch them- maybe out of fear, or anger, or maybe just like Uncle Hoyt, she was disgusted as well- scared that if she touched the scars, they would somehow ruin her as well.

The corners of the woman’s mouth are still twisted down when she glances up at him- her eyes too dark to read. He wonders what he looks like in her eyes- what is it that she sees in him that no one else seems to see?

He waits for her to talk- to break the tense silence that’s choking him- but she doesn’t say a word, dropping her eyes as she picks up the bar of soap that’s been there for months. It almost slips out of her hand, and she lets go of him completely- his arm frozen in place, his body already missing hers. The tension disappears, as if nothing had ever happened, as if it had never been there to begin with. It rolls from the points of pressure that she had left behind on his flesh and up his arms. It moves in his veins, thick and syrupy- coating all of him in a feeling that’s doesn’t sit right.

Maybe he did want her to speak- to pity him after all. But the moment is gone, and he doesn’t have a voice to bring it back- to tell her what he was feeling, so he lets the discomfort drown him just a bit as he watches her act like nothing wrong had happened.

She rubs the bar between her hands, underneath the stream of water and his heart sinks at the thought of her cleaning all traces of him from her skin- he wanted to coat her in all that he was- his scent, his hatred, the bitter taste in his mouth that never seemed to go away- he wanted her to have it all, to carry him even if they were apart for a split second. An extension of him- equally as fearsome.

“Come here,” she motions for him to bring his arm towards her hands, letting the bar fall into the sink. Her hands are covered in soap as she takes his arm in between them- gently scrubbing from his wrist to the inside of his elbow, where his rolled-up sleeve sat. At first, she doesn’t touch the wound- and he can feel the hesitation in her fingers as she scrubs at his arm, circling around it. She scrubs at his skin, at the spaces between his fingers, taking his hand in her own and gently massaging it.

It's the first time anyone has done something like that to him- and while he can’t understand why she was being so thorough when it would have been easier to just hand him the soap and let him do it, he has no intention of stopping her.

He simply watches and enjoys- his mouth twisted into the closest thing of a smile that he could manage underneath his mask.

“Tell me if I hurt you, okay?” she says quietly, and it takes him a second to understand her words, his mind lost even to himself- her fingers lightly press against the cut as she speaks, drawing him back into reality. He tenses as she begins to clean it out, rubbing soapy water into it. It doesn’t hurt- not with how light and slow she moves her hand, her finger dipping into the hole he had scratched open. He expects it to hurt or sting or startle him- but pain doesn’t come. Instead, he groans in delight- enjoying the way her finger seems to be tearing into him, stretching his skin open. It’s like she’s making space for herself inside of him- forcing herself into the parts of him that held him together, sinew and muscle and blood- now poisoned with whatever sickness the woman had inflicted in his heart.

“Sorry!” she says quickly, pulling her hand away from him. The once white bubbles between her fingers are now a soft shade of pink, mixed with his blood. It all disappears down the drain as she rinses her hand, drying them on the front of her jeans.

He grows frustrated at the fact that there’s no way to tell her that she hadn’t hurt him- that he wanted her to do it again. That the pain she caused him was almost addictive- sweeter than the whiskey Uncle Monty sometimes let him have whenever he was in a good enough mood to share.

The woman motions for him to rinse his arm, already cupping her hands together under the faucet and letting the cool water pool between her hands. He angles his arm awkwardly into the sink and she lets the water trickle from between her fingers over his arm slowly. He watches as she repeats the motion, rinsing his arm- it’s so trivial and boring, yet he’s in awe as she takes care of him.

Without a second thought, the woman is already devoting herself to the mundanity of life with him. He could see it as she turns the water off and tells him to wait- as if he would leave her side, as if he could do something so absolutely stupid- subjecting himself to an agony he had no intention of experiencing firsthand.

He hears the closet door open behind him, making him turn around and look at the woman as she rummages through old fitted blankets, washcloths and towels until she finds what she needs. With one hand pressed against the pile of folded towels she pulls one free, tossing it over her arm. “I don’t know how long this has been here for-” as she talks, she moves onto her toes, stretching her arm out as she reaches for something on one of the top shelves.

He almost moves to help her, his body already swaying in place, eager to move, to make himself useful to the woman. But he spends too long trying to decide- her hand closing around whatever it was that she had seen earlier. She lets out a small noise of delight as she drops down to the balls of her feet, and it wracks through him, sending a shiver of warmth up his spine that spreads across his chest- tightening the muscles in his lower belly.

“Expired medicine and antibiotics are better than nothing, right?” She asks as he turns and faces him- lips curved up into a smile and he almost finds himself mimicking it- the corners of his lips twitching. He catches himself, hot embarrassment forcing his eyes to drop from her face- down to the small plastic medicine bin in her hands. It did not matter that he had his mask to hide behind, the way she looked at him made him feel as if she could somehow see through it- his face exposed for whatever ridicule and insults she would eventually throw at him.

 There are bottles of pills stacked on top of one another- the type that Momma used to give him when he was feverish. It would take his sickness as well as his hunger- leaving him too heavy to do anything but lay in bed until the heat of his body burned through the drug. There are other things as well- gauze and bandages, silver packages of pills he couldn’t identify, the label worn off a long time ago- a bottle of Vaseline, faded from the years sits next to a glass jar of Vapor-Rub. Looking at it, he swears that he can smell it even with how far away from the jar he was- even though his nose hasn’t worked properly for months, he feels the ghost of it wrinkle as he cringes from the offensive smell his mind reminds him of.

Momma used to slather him with it when he had first started working at the Slaughterhouse. He hadn’t been used to the smell of it back then and every day he went back had been miserable. The scent of death and blood and shit had soured his stomach until he had gone and thrown up the oatmeal Momma had made for breakfast all over his worktable. All over the slab of meat he had been told to break down. He can still remember the taste of animal blood on his tongue after he had wiped his mouth- forgetting that his hands and arms and chest had been covered in chunks of offal. His boss had called him every bad word under the sun-some were words that he had never heard before, now fully engrained in his mind, tearing at his heart once Monty had told him what they meant.

When he had gone home that night, after scrubbing his station clean- the blood mixing with his waste underneath his nails, in the strands of his hair and in between the cracks of his boots, Momma had slapped him. She had been waiting for him on the porch, her face twisted down in anger, the blue of her eyes dark and cold behind her glasses.

She had called him a great big idiot- uncaring of how dirty he had been, of how hard he had silently prayed to God for the day to hurry up and end so that he could leave and go home. At one point, when the bell for Lunch had rung and he was forced to stay and catch up to everyone else- his boss throwing what Momma had packed for him in the garbage before spitting on it with a laugh- he had wanted to die, his chest burning every single time he brought the cleaver down. He had wanted to die right then and there- to stop existing all together. To be nothing but the air around him- free from the bad people, from the stares, from feeling like all that he did was somehow inherently wrong. No matter if it was an accident or not, no one ever seemed to care enough to listen to him.

Momma had gotten a call from the Slaughterhouse- telling her that because of his careless mistake he would have to be let go. Momma had told him, as she dragged him to the hose out back, that she had begged and begged and begged for them to give him a second chance. They couldn’t lose his income, not with Uncle Monty getting less hours at his job and the Government cutting Uncle Hoyt’s veteran checks so suddenly. They were barely making ends meet as it was- this would ruin them.

She had yelled and shouted, spraying him with cold water until he was a shivering mess, the blood no longer crusted over on his skin. He could feel the cold water pooling in his boots, making his socks stick to his toes. It hadn’t even mattered to him then, his heart hammering away at his chest at the thought of never having to go back. Of not having to wake up so early to walk all the way to the other side of town in a place that he hated.

He didn’t even mind when Momma had beat him, welts forming on his wet skin from the belt she kept exclusively for punishments. The pain was nothing in comparison to when Momma had told him that she had made sure that he had kept his job.

They were going to cut his pay, a little every check, until he paid off the cost of the half cow he had puked all over. But he still had a job, he was still able to help the family out- wasn’t that good? Momma asked him, smiling at him like she hadn’t just beat him tired.

 Momma warned him that he couldn’t mess this up again. That there were no more chances after this- sending him up to his room with no dinner, his stomach already empty and rubbing against itself.

The morning after, when she had woken him up- his body sore from all the walking that he had done and the bruises forming on his back and legs- Momma had twisted open the jar of Vapor-rub for the first time, filling his room with the slightly sweet- minty smell.

She had bought it last night, right before the shop closed- with the bit of lose change she had managed to scrap together. It’s gonna help you from making another mistake she said right before she shoved a finger full of it into his nose. It was thick, and cold, burning the inside of his nose as he moaned in pain, trying to push Momma away before she shoved more into the other nostril. She had smacked his hand away, telling him that this was for his own good. That this was only until he got used to it.

He had moaned as tears began to form, shaking his head- trying to empty his nose, the burning crawling up into his head and making his eyes water painfully. Every inhale he took through his mouth burned its way to his lungs. Momma only slapped him again- telling him that this was his fault. That he had to do this for the family.

“You’re so selfish Thomas!” she shouted at him, holding his jaw and shoving another finger into his empty nostril. “There’s no room for useless boys in this house, do you understand?”

He couldn’t remember anything after that. His memories about that day lost to the pain he had put himself through. He remembers bits and pieces- the hunger. The burning. The anger.

He always seemed to remember the anger. Flashing through him- hot and cold, boiling his blood.

Something outside of his thoughts rattle and he’s once more standing in the bathroom, a man three times the size of the child that he had once been. Beside him, the woman had set the medicine bin on top of the toilet tank and was rummaging through it- the source of the noise that had brought him back.

He’s tense, the muscles in his neck thick and tight. He doesn’t like how he seemed to live more in his memories- constantly remembering all the things that he just wanted to forget. He didn’t want to remember, to be reminded of the pain he carried.

The woman glances at him, holding a small yellow squeeze tube and a roll of self-adhesive medical tape in one hand. Their eyes meet and she smiles at him, even though he can feel the way his face is twisted down into a scowl- his eyebrows heavy over his eyes.

He doesn’t mean to glare at her- to make her smile falter slightly as her eyes widen just a fraction. He could almost see himself in her eyes and he doesn’t like the him that he imagines. Large and imposing- a thing that only knows how to hurt, how to cause fear. He waits for the woman to realize her mistake- to realize that she was trapped in a small room with a monster.

“Give me your arm?” she asks him, holding out her right hand. “Let’s get you all wrapped up, okay?” her smile is still small, and he can see the wariness in her eyes, but when he places his arm in her hand she doesn’t flinch, she doesn’t rush him- wanting to get this over with.

She pulls him towards her instead, slender fingers wrapping around his forearm as much as possible. She tugs, and he moves- lightweight in her hold.

He’s aware of the muscles in his face- of how, even if he’s partially hidden behind his mask, his face sits. He makes himself relax- something that comes easy with the warmth of her hand on his body, easing the tension that he still carried from his memories. Her touch burned into him, filled him until he swore that he could feel her in his blood- pumping through his heart.

Her eyes don’t leave his as she pulls him closer, and motions with her head for him to sit down on the toilet. “It’ll be easier, that way you don’t have to keep your arm in the air.” She explains, shuffling out of the way to make space for him.

Underneath his weight, the toilet squeaks and shifts as he does as told, awkwardly sitting down. She’s taller than him like this, his head at the same level with her chest, making him have to tilt his head back just a bit to meet her eyes.

Her smile had grown in the time he had looked away- and he can’t help the heat that spreads across his face, his ears growing hot. Could she feel it? The warmth that she caused him? The uneasiness thrumming through him that had the tips of his fingers aching to touch her? To hold her like she held him?

“Can you hold this?” she asks, already dropping something into his expecting hand. It had been resting on his lap, calloused covered palm open and waiting- a beggar’s pose. The ointment and tape weren’t what he had been waiting for, but he takes them, closing his thick fingers around them.

What he didn’t expect was for her to lean over him with a mumbled “sorry”, her hand falling onto his shoulder as she reached for something behind him- inside of the medicine bin.

He doesn’t know what to do- his body freezing underneath hers as her neck grazes his mask covered face. It doesn’t last long- maybe a fraction of a second before she’s pulling away and dropping the hand from his shoulder, but it was enough.

Enough for him to inhale the light scent of her- woodsy and sweet and nutty- just the smallest hint of sweat underneath that. It reminded him of the baked goods Momma used to make for him on his birthday when he was small. It was comforting in the same way that it twisted his stomach with the pain of remembering something that used to make him so happy, something that had been taken from him so abruptly once Momma decided that he was too big to celebrate his birthday. Too old to be cared for.

The woman had been so close that he swore that he could almost hear the blood pounding through her veins. He had almost been tempted to turn his head and feel its pulse with his lips. To scratch her skin with his mask- the scent of her tainting it the same way it has already ruined his senses.

He could picture it- his teeth sinking into the warm and thin flesh she had so stupidly given him access to. It was almost scary- the way his mouth began to water at the thought of her blood on his tongue, raw flesh between his teeth. He wanted to fill his belly with it- to make her a part of him in a way that no one could take from him.

Would she taste as sweet as she smelled?

He swallowed down saliva, clearing the bad thoughts from his mind- scared that if he kept focusing on them, he would do something that he didn’t really want to do.  Something that he wouldn’t be able to take back, no matter how hard he begged and prayed and tried to undo.

He didn’t want to hurt her right now. No matter how hard his mind was telling him to do it- replaying all of the times that he could have done so. Showing him all of the ways that he still could.

He feels ashamed of his thoughts, of the temptation that he was barely keeping at bay- and finds himself unable to look at the woman as she rips open a piece of plastic, tossing it in the garbage can between the toilet and the sink. He keeps his eyes on the space between his legs, on her beat-up boots as she stands in front of him- sweet and unaware of what a horrible person he truly was. Of all that he was struggling to not do to her.

“Do you think Luda Mae is getting suspicious?”

The question startles him, reminding him of the world outside of the bathroom, outside of the woman in front of him.

“She’s probably thinking I ran away; don’t you think?” the woman’s laugh is small, feathery light. He doesn’t know how to answer- not knowing how long they had been up here. There was a possibility that Momma had grown suspicious, or maybe she thought that he had snapped and taken care of her in the only way that he knew how.

Vaguely, he shakes his head. Whether it’s to disagree with her or to tell her that he wasn’t sure- he let’s her decide on which one he’s trying to communicate. If Momma had been concerned, she would have come upstairs to check on her already, so he wasn’t too worried. He shrugs, and her laughter fills his ears again.

“Right. If you’re not worried, then I won’t be either. I just don’t want her to think that I’ve been a horrible guest- running off in the middle of helping her with dinner.”

He shakes his head again and this time its to reassure her that Momma wouldn’t think that. At least he hoped that she wouldn’t. The thought of Momma angry at the woman made his chest burn uncomfortably. An ache that slithered in the tight spaces between his ribs- hot and uneasy in its slickness.

“Well, what’s done is done, lets just get your arm bandaged. I might need your help facing her again.” The woman likes to talk with a smile, he’s noticed. It was as if her mouth had no other way to rest- the corners turned up towards the heavens, towards her eyes that liked to seek him out- unafraid of what she saw, of what others liked to look away from.

He wondered if she was joking- if she was just talking in order to fill the silence. He knew people who did that- people like Hoyt and his old boss at the Slaughterhouse, who had to keep their mouths moving or they would stop existing all together. He liked to think that if he had a voice, he would be like that too- not quite as annoying, but loud enough that people were forced to look at him, to listen to what he had to say.

He would tell the woman that he would keep her safe. That he wanted to go down with her and show Momma that she had done nothing wrong. That if anyone was to blame, it was him. It was his fault that she had stayed away for so long. He would hide her away from Momma’s anger- keep her tucked behind him- safe.

If he was being honest, he wasn’t sure that he wanted her to leave just yet. They could stay here a little longer- everything behind that door non-existent. He could make believe that Momma was still at work, busy with too many customers- outsiders who were just passing by, headed for more than the meat hooks in the basement of this house. That for a bit his uncle’s Monty and Hoyt didn’t exist. That the world was just for him and her.

That would be enough for him. He was almost tempted to ask God- to check and see if he was still paying attention to him after all that he had done.

The woman moves from in front of him and takes a seat on the edge of the tub, her knees rubbing against the outside of his thigh as she grabs his arm and places it on her lap. He can feel the buckle of her belt against his knuckles- his arm suddenly a solid weight as he feels the warmth that radiates from the space between her thighs.

 It crawls along his skin- up to his shoulder and through the space in his chest. It reminds him of the times that he’s stayed in one spot for too long, his limbs falling asleep. Though there was no uncomfortable pain this time- Instead it felt like a million little bugs were crawling around inside of him- a buzzing under his skin that he was unused to, but not disgusted by. It was something that maybe he could get used to.

It settles in his belly- thick and heavy and hot, stirring awake thoughts that felt too uncomfortable to focus on. Shamefully, he raises his eyes from the woman’s lap, trying to think of something other than the way her jeans clung to her thighs or how close his fingers were to the space between her legs- somehow hotter than the rest of her, the back of his hand burning pleasantly. He wanted to keep it there- to soak all of himself in her warmth until he knew nothing more.

He pushes the indecent thoughts from his mind, suddenly growing paranoid that the woman would find out what he was thinking about her. He didn’t want her to think that he was disgusting. Rotten just like Uncle Hoyt, who was obsessed with playing with their food.

“Is this uncomfortable for you, Tommy?” maybe it was because the silence had gone on for too long, but the woman whispers her question- her voice only for him, distracting him slightly as she reaches for the things she had given him, plucking them from his hand before he even had a chance to register the movement- her hand too fast that he barely feels the way her fingers skim his palm.

She’s already twisted open the bottle of ointment by the time he shakes his head- the cap balancing on the edge of her knee. With a hum she nods- her eyes focused on her own hands even though he wants her to look at him again. He wanted her to ask him more questions- her voice tender and sweet whenever she spoke to him. He wanted her to distract him for his thoughts that liked to pull him away from her- and right now he wanted to stay right here, to not miss a single moment.

The ointment is cold against his skin- the woman squeezing a light amount right above the wound. He can feel it cleansing away all of his wickedness- her finger swiping at it until it’s in the deepest layer of his flesh, leaving nothing behind but an oily residue that coated her thumb. Without a pause she sticks a piece of gauze on top- taping it up until the gauze is well hidden under flesh colored medical tape.

He had found it in the pocket of one of the first of Uncle Hoyt’s guests- setting it aside for Momma along all of the jewelry he had collected. Maybe it was for a reason that he had second guessed his decision to throw it away. Maybe that had been a sign from above that you were on your way- that God hadn’t abandoned them after all.

The woman is gentle as she pats the covered wound and leans back a bit to meet his expectant eyes. What does she see in them- in him- that makes her look at him so sweetly?

“You’re all set. How’s it feeling? It’s not too tight, is it?”

[arkiwii]

There's a lot of really mixed reactions running around Arknights tumblr rn so I just wanna say how nice it is to have your posts about Lonetrail running around, they are a breath of fresh air since this is like my favorite Arknights thing everrrr

yea, its pretty sad to see especially that a lot (me included) have been waiting for this event! its fine if people give criticism, even tho most things i have seen are mostly about "too long", "not related to rhine lab", "this passage with the doctor was wtf", etc... so it's mostly not very constructive. i can get not everyone likes it, and im not going to force anyone to, but posting complains and negative stuff is eh, i think, to people who enjoyed the event it's sad to see

so im glad you enjoy my posts! im just a little silly and i enjoy stuff, i don't really like being negative, even if there's flaws in arknights, im not blind, i just enjoy seeing my favorite guys! and i hope everyone can enjoy it too!!

[mirandasidefics]

But Home is Nowhere- Chapter 2

Pairing(s): Lucien x Plus Size Reader, Azriel x Plus Size Reader, Ruhn Danaan x Plus Size Reader

Chapter 2 Summary: Lucien and Rhysand argue over Reader's imprisonment, only one cell is traded for another. Lucien reaches out to an unlikely alley for support in getting Reader free.

Word Count: 6.3K

Warning(s): Mentions of injuries, mentions of self harm, mentions of body issues/insecurities.

A/N: I was too excited to wait the full month so here is part two a bit early! I apologize that this gets a bit dialogue heavy at the end. I may fix it later. This is going to be a long slow burn fic with a lot of angst. This will also have crossover with some of the Crescent City characters. It also probably goes without saying, but this will not follow canon past the events in HOSAB. Comment on this post if you want to be included on the tag list.

Series Masterlist

Previous: Chapter 1

Seven days. Seven days he’d been arguing and advocating for her release with Rhysand. For seven days he listened to the same rehearsed list of excuses as to why Rhys wouldn’t budge in his decision.

“You and I both know that the gate to Velaris was sealed with blood magic. Only those whose blood is linked to the seal can pass through, which she shouldn’t have been able to do. On top of that we don’t know what world she came from. I’m not risking the lives of my family-my court, which includes you- on what equates to no more than a hunch.”  

While the High Lord’s statements were reasonable and valid points, his insistence she remained confined in that dark and dank cell was not. Lucien hastily made his way down the main steps that lead into the catacombs, thoughts of his last spat with Rhysand swirling in his mind.

“Why do you care so much about what happens to this woman?” Rhys had questioned. Lucien had asked himself the same thing; but how could he say that it was less about her and more about what she represented? That when he saw her cowering form in the corner of that cell, images of Feyre, Elain, and Jesminda flashed through his mind. He had failed the two sisters. He had failed his first love. He would sooner have the Cauldron blast him from existence should he fail to protect another innocent female. He’d kept his composure standing in Rhysand’s office at the River House long enough. A simmering rage permeated the space as the raven-haired male stared him down. A silent challenge in the already tense atmosphere.

“How can you stand your own hypocrisy?” He seethed, “You sit there thinking of yourself so high and mighty, yet a simple human frightens you? You allowed Feyre into Velaris the second week she spent with you. You allowed Bryce into your home within minutes of her crashing into our world. Yet this human…this woman scares you so much you have her imprisoned in one of the most dangerous areas of your court?”

“ENOUGH!” Rhysand bellowed, his own violet orbs simmered with rage. Lucien felt his flames rise up and encircle his palms. Rhysand’s High Lord command held no sway so he continued.

“Are you that much of a coward that you could not have just asked her a few simple questions? You couldn’t have just looked into her-”

“I could not enter her mind!” Rhys’ breaths were ragged. “Something is protecting that mortal, and it is strong enough to keep me out. So long as those shields of hers remain impenetrable I cannot trust her. I must keep my mate and child safe.” Lucien scoffed, his fire dwindled. “Which is not something I can say I see you doing for your own.”  

Lucien could still feel the cracking of bone and cartilage of Rhys’ nose as it connected with his fist. The argument surly would have resulted in them demolishing the entirety of the business wing had Azriel’s arrival not stopped the two males in their tracks. The Shadowsinger’s haggard appearance set them both on edge, but his words allowed Lucien to breathe a sigh of relief.

“I’m done with this Rhys. I cannot keep hur- I cannot do this… she knows nothing.” The High Lord merely looked between the Emissary and the Spymaster. Expression relaxed and revealing nothing, even as blood dripped over his lips.

“Bring her up to the Moonstone Palace,” the commanded was towards his brother, “Since Lucien is so smitten with the woman he shall remain with her there for the time being.”

Lucien soon found himself outside of her cell. Only darkness and cold emanated from beyond the door. He paused his own breathing, wondering if she was even still alive. The last time he saw her, she hadn’t hesitated to slice open her own skin. Azriel wasn’t far behind and pushed past Lucien to enter the room. Lucien’s breath remained caught in his throat as he took in the mangled sight of her.

You had no idea how long you’d been in the darkness of your cell. Hours had turned into days, but just how many days you weren’t sure. You had gone silent on what you assumed was the third day. You knew nothing of how you got there, and you had no idea where to begin when Azriel-who’s name you gathered early on-asked you about the world you came from. Its not like he would believe you if you said your world had no magic, at least not in the same way it was here. Then again, that was clearly an incorrect assumption on your part. And after everything that has transpired you determined that this was no dream. It was a nightmare come to life. You weren’t sure how much more your psyche could tolerate. Surely death would be better than the horrors that would plague your mind for years to come if you were allowed to live. You prayed silently to whatever deity would listen to let you die. You started as the metal hinges of the door screamed into the darkness. 

“Mother above,” The horrified yet soft baritone drifted to your ears and you strained to open your eyes. You recognized the voice and Lucien’s warm body was immediately next to yours as you dangled from the ceiling. The male made quick work of the metal shackles holding your wrists high above your head, a bright light flooding the small space making you hiss. His large hand encircled your wrist and you could feel the skin repair itself. Lucien slowly lowered your arms down.

“Her name is (Y/N),” Azriel’s voice was barely above a whisper, as if he was ashamed of the space his normal speaking voice would take up in the small cell. As if what he said would break you further. Lucien held you up, warm hands around your rib cage holding you steady. 

“(Y/N),” His testing of your name tentative, “(Y/N), my name is Lucien…I’m going to take you out of here.” His arms wrapped around you, and you could have sworn you felt your skin get warmer, the cold melting away like ice. His grip never lessened, which you were grateful for as you weren’t sure your legs could fully support your weight.

“Do you feel safe enough to come with me?”  You couldn’t speak, couldn’t move your head in agreement. Couldn’t specify that you felt safe with him. You could only muster enough strength to cling to the front of his shirt, hoping it conveyed your trust towards him and him alone. Your eyes burned with tears. He shushed you as one of his hands rubbed up and down your spine. A footstep echoed in the chamber, and then you felt Azriel’s shadows attempt to wend their way over your bare feet. Your flinch was followed by a low warning growl, one that you felt more than heard.

“Follow me,” Azriel’s swallow was audible.

“Can you walk?” Lucien’s hand lowered to your waist, pushing you back far enough so he could meet your eyes. They felt swollen and your vision was unfocused and hazy, but you tried to keep them open so he could see that you would try your best. You shifted your weight back onto your heels and slowly slid your right foot in front of you. A lightning like bolt of pain traveled up your leg. Air harshly sucked into your lungs.

“I’ve got you,” his voice was reassuring as he continued to support most of your weigh in his arms. You took another step forward. Then another and another. His hands never faltered from their place on your torso as he moved himself to walk behind you. Ready and poised to keep you balanced and catch you should you fall. “Good girl,” he praised, “Let’s get you cleaned up so I can heal you yeah?”

The walk up from the catacombs to the palace proper was brutal. Your legs burned from the muscle strain and you were regretting not accepting help from Lucien while you bathed. However, the last thing you wanted was to have anyone see you naked. Lucien had helped enough with getting the large sunken in bathtub filled. The scent of vanilla and lavender contrasted with the grime and dirt that filled your lungs for the last week. You had specifically asked for the water to be scalding, wanting it to burn away the memory of everything that had been done to you in the dark. The deep cold that laced your bones was finally seeping out in the hot water. A soft knock rapped on the stone archway leading into the bathing chamber. Unable to move your neck freely you covered your chest and turned to face the male. He walked over to the bench set near the tub, a bundle of cream-colored fabric in his arms. Unless it was a bedsheet you doubted that any clothing he found would fit you. Then again, magic existed so its possible that the fabric could be altered instantly. He sat on the bench and set the garment next to the towel that awaited you.

“Are you certain that I can’t be of assistance?” He looked beyond you towards the open windows that overlooked the absolutely stunning expanse of wilderness below the palace. A darkened city jutting out from the base of the mountains the only thing that disrupted the sight. You were thankful for Lucien’s offer. Truly you were, and despite the feeling-knowing- that you could trust the male, your self-conscious nature surrounding your body was too strong.

“I-” You cleared your throat of the gravel you were certain had lodged itself inside from screaming against the rocky surface of your cell, “I’m good.” The vibration of your vocal chords felt like sandpaper as they rubbed together. He looked at you then and reflexively you squeezed your arms tighter around yourself; gripping your elbows as you dipped down into the water until everything below your neck was submerged. You were grateful for the tub size making you look small. It could easily fit two full grown adults and deep enough to reach your waist when you stood to full height. It almost reminded you more of a jacuzzi rather than a bathtub.

“Then I’ll leave you to bathe in peace,” He stood and clasped his hands behind his back, “I’ll be in the room just beyond these arches. Just call our if you need anything. I’m here to ensure that you’re taken care of.” You nodded your understanding and turned towards the side of the tub lined with soaps and lotions, his foot steps retreating against the stone tiles. While you had difficulty with your range of motion, you managed to rid yourself of the dirt, grime, and dried blood from your skin. Your hair felt silky, soft, and light compared to the heavy oily mats from not washing it for a week. You had also found a razor nearby and took the opportunity to shave, savoring the feeling that you were becoming a person again. Drying off was easier with the relaxed muscles. The vanilla scented lotion felt like heaven as it penetrated your dry skin. You surmised that the bath had really only removed one layer of nightmares as you scanned your form in the mirror on the opposite wall. Your eyes first saw the plethora of cuts in every size cover the expanse of both your arms, shoulders, and collar bone from the dagger-Truth Teller-that Azriel had used during your interrogation. Next you took in the dark red and purple bruise on the left side of your jaw. The discoloration spanning from the joint below your ear to your chin. It was a miracle that he hadn’t knocked any of your teeth out or broken your jaw from the force he hit you with. Eyes trailing further down you saw a second healing bruise, its blue-green hue spanning the length of your ribs on the right side of your body. Laying down on your side was going to prove difficult still. Finally, your eyes landed on the only injury that you yourself were responsible for. The shadows had played too many tricks on your mind, too many whispers promising to break you. The psychological and emotional pain was worse than the physical injuries and honestly became too much for your soul. Something in you broke. You still couldn’t figure out exactly how you managed to grab Truth Teller from him, too focused on plunging the black blade into your left inner thigh and dragging it along the flesh. You couldn’t reach your throat, so you had been aiming for the next major artery you knew of in the hopes that you’d bleed out fast, but Azriel was quick. His attempt to get the blade back from you pushed it away from where it would do the most damage. That was the last day that Azriel brought any form of weapon with him, and the last day he put his hands on you. Rhysand had only managed to stop the bleeding, but a large and deep jagged slice remained. Had you paid more attention you may not have doubted the guilt that lined his features as he worked to heal you. You didn’t want this to be real. You still held out hope that if you somehow managed to end your life you’d wake up on the cold concrete of the path leading up to your front door. You didn’t belong here.

You shook the memories from your mind and picked up the fabric on the bench. You expected the intrusive thoughts and nightmares, but you didn’t think that they would be plaguing you so immediately. You slipped on the airy cotton tank top and loose-fitting matching shorts. You were indeed surprised they fit as well as they did, let alone fit at all. Your bare feet padded along the cool stone floor and entered the massive bedchamber. The room encapsulated a warmth with its cream and ivory base colors. Splashes of blues, teals, and turquoise giving it a calming effect.  The dark cherry wood of the four-poster bedframe provided an interesting accent color adding to the space. Lucien sat on an ivory colored couch that faced a white marbled fireplace. Sadly, the flames did nothing to help illuminate the space and only seemed to cast heavier shadows. You glanced around the room again and noticed that the bedsheets had been turned down for you, for whenever you were ready to sleep. But you knew you wouldn’t be able to get any real rest with your injuries being what they were. Rhysand had only stopped the bleeding in your thigh. He did nothing for the other injuries. So, Lucien stated he would heal those for you. Carefully walking over, you sat your self on the couch, keeping enough space for another person to sit between you and the crimson haired male. He turned towards you with a slight smile that quickly faltered as he took in your appearance. He moved closer towards you and examined every inch of your skin. His one real eye held no warmth even as a flame seemed to ignite the iris. He took your chin in his hand to get a better look at the bruise on your jaw. His touch was gentle, but even you could tell that the male was furious with what he saw.

“I had hoped some of this had been dirt,” He turned your head to the side, a finger tracing down along the side of your neck. A metallic scent permeated the air as the hand cupped the left side of your face, covering nearly the entire bruise. His gaze slowly traveled down to your shoulders and the cuts that littered and marred the skin of your arms and shoulders. The skin warmed and tingled under his gentle caress. His eyes paused at your torso, no words needed to understand that he wanted to see the injury to your ribs. You carefully gathered the material and lifted as high as your stiff shoulder and neck muscles would allow. His fingers traced the outline of the mark, and you cringed at the touch of his hands moving your fat rolls out of the way so his palms could lay flat against the skin. Embarrassment colored your cheeks. Lucien continued his healing wordlessly. He motioned for you to stand, grasping your calf and propping your leg on the cushion of the couch. Your inner thigh completely exposed to him allowing the full extent of your wound to be seen. You watched as skin healed almost instantly. His gaze then shifted to the healed scars on your upper thigh, near the junction where it met your hip. “Um…y-you can leave those,” you brought your leg back down to stand before the male, “Thank you Lucien.”

“You’re most welcome,” His smile didn’t reach his eyes. You started to pick at your already blunt nails, a nervous habit you used to ground yourself. You glanced around the room for the third time, almost not believing that you were no longer in the cold and dark. The white walls and bedding opened up the space.

“Is…is that for me?” You pointed over towards the massive bed covered in decorative pillows. Lucien’s red hair swayed with the movement of his head as he followed your gesture.

“The bed is for you,” He stood and walked over to the small bedside table to the left of the headboard, “As is this sleeping draft.” He picked up a deep cobalt vial, giving it a slight shake before setting it back down. You hummed and nodded, but didn’t move from your spot in front of the couch. It went without saying that the potion would be needed after what you experienced over the past week. And you would only feel guilty if you woke him in the middle of the night.

“There’s water for you as well,” His voice softened as he noticed your hesitation. You chewed on your lower lip. The sun was still up, but you didn’t know how its position revealed the time of day. Depending on the time of year and how far north, or south, on the planet you were, you estimated it could be anywhere from 3pm to 9pm. You supposed it didn’t really matter as sleep was sleep and you’d likely remain unconscious for several hours, Gods willing at least.

“I will be in the room next to yours,” He pointed over to a door opposite from the entrance to the bathing chamber, “If you need anything, anything at all you come to me. We’ll get you some food in the morning.” You nodded again as your eyes started to water. You didn’t want to be left alone, but you also didn’t want to take up his time more than you already were. So, wordlessly you forced your feet to move and made your way over to the bed. You crawled in under the blankets that had been moved aside. You grabbed the vial from the bedside table and uncorked the stopper. The scent of chamomile, lavender, and something unknown wafted to you. Before you gave yourself time to reconsider you downed half the contents and set it back down. Lucien was patiently waiting at the door and smiled his first genuine smile towards you.

“Goodnight (Y/N).”

“Goodnight Lucien.”

Lucien had answered all your questions, to the best of his ability, during your first day in the Moonstone Palace. He filled you in on the basics of the Night Court and Prythian. For each bit of information he provided about the land or himself, you matched it. He also informed you that while here, Rhysand insisted that you work on finding any potential information of your world and how to get back to it in the texts that he sent. A new stack of books was brought into the small library within the palace every morning. So far, your hours of reading yielded no results. Then again, you could only read a fraction of the texts given to you. Most were in languages that you couldn’t even begin to understand. Still you scanned the tombs for any words that even looked remotely similar to names of places within your universe. Sadly, all you could find was information related to a Midgard, which was frustratingly NOT the same as the mortal realm described in Norse mythology. Lucien then explained that they had already received visitors from this Midgard that were set to return to Prythian soon. You had gathered that one of them was Bryce, but you’d not been given names for anyone else.

In addition to the books you had also been gifted a small wardrobe filled with clothing in your size. It had been awkward when the half wraiths appeared to measure you. But you were provided with some simple dresses, pants, shirts, and under clothes. Nothing fancy, which you were grateful for. Lucien explained the clothes were an apology gift from Rhysand. You told Lucien that if the High Lord was truly sorry he could at least express as much to your face. You couldn’t complain in the grand scheme of things. Rhysand wasn’t obligated to house, feed, or clothe you. He could have easily dumped you in the Mortal Lands, leaving you to fend for yourself. Although, Lucien stated that he knew of two people that would have taken you into their care. Regardless, you did as Rhysand bid, reading for hours day after day and never asked for anything in particular.

Another two weeks went by and you and Lucien developed a little routine. Breakfast followed by hours of research. Then lunch and various exercises and tests to determine if you held any sort of latent magic. Lucien explained that his initial assessment of you that first day showed nothing, but that didn’t mean you were completely without power. Truth be told you felt he was keeping something from you. Then came dinner, after which you were free to spend your time however you wished. Mostly you spent time on the veranda studying the night sky, letting the wind caress your face and hair. There was one night you swore you heard voices held within the breeze. A song encouraging you that you would find peace again. In your world the night time hours used to provide a comfort, but here there was nothing familiar about the constellations that dotted the dark sky above. Instead, the lack of familiarity just made you feel all the more alone. It wasn’t that Lucien wasn’t good company, you just felt bad that he was stuck with you. He tried really hard to get you to relax and fall into the playful banter he likely needed to survive his own punishment. While he never said as much, you had gathered that his babysitting duty was linked to your release and apology from the High Lord. Lucien made your days easy, filled with witty remarks and a warmth that felt natural. An easy friendship had definitely taken root.

However, the nights were hard. You already suffered from extreme insomnia without the added fear of night terrors. So, your sleep cycle was suffering greatly. The first two nights were dream less thanks to whatever Lucien had given you. But the third night resulted in his bursting through the doors of your bedroom at the sound of your screams. As much as you hated yourself for feeling weak, you begged him to stay in the room. He obliged, of course, and slept on the couch. His presence helped slightly. It didn’t chase away the nightmares, but it did make the darkness that permeated the night more tolerable. You had never been fearful of the night before, having even preferred it to the hustle and bustle of the day. You had always the quite of the night to bring you a comforting serenity. But since your time in the cell…you insisted on a fire in the hearth and the faelights to remain lit, believing the light would chase away the shadows that plagued your dreams.

You felt bad forcing Lucien to sleep on the couch. But you also didn’t want him to feel uncomfortable if you offered to share your bed with him. He told you about his mate, Elain, and you felt even worse that your arrival took him away from her. Even if he explained that their relationship wasn’t what would be expected between mates after nearly 4 years of being in each other’s lives. So, you kept the offer to yourself.

Today started out like any other. Lucien and you sat down to a breakfast of eggs, toast and jam with orange juice. You never really cared for tea and coffee appeared to not be available in Prythian if your companion’s confusion was anything to go by. The only difference today were the two additional place settings.

“Are we expecting visitors?” You asked. You immediately wanted to kick yourself for asking what was an obvious question.

“Yes,” Lucien answered, pouring a cup of tea for himself, “I’ve asked some people to come and meet you. As much as I enjoy our time together, it seems that the High Lord still needs convincing that you should not be kept in a cell.”

“I’m not in a cell,” You countered. However, you didn’t miss the fact that his glare told you that your new cell was just a lavish one.

“Our guests may be able to help me make a stronger case for you to be able to move freely about the court, if not Prythian as a whole.” You pondered who he would have contacted. To your understanding, not many members of the High Lord’s “Inner Circle” particularly cared for the emissary. There was also no way that members from another court would be able to hold any sway over the inner workings of the Night Court.

“So, what do they need to know about me?” You asked, spiking the yoke of your egg. In the time spent with Lucien you were able to be yourself for the most part. You held back on your swearing, meme related jokes, and slang, but tested out your sarcasm and dry humor. One of the main things you were worried about was how to speak with others. While you had manners, you had no formal etiquette training. Something that Lucien found utterly hilarious when you asked for clarification on how to address him.

“Relax, its an informal introduction,” His gentle smile reassured you, “Just be the sweet girl that I’ve come to know.” His smile widened. You gave him a doubtful look, tucking your lips into a thin line to suppress a laugh. He batted his irritatingly long eyelashes and the two of you broke out into a fit of laughter. While you weren’t cold or bitchy by any means, you also weren’t a sweet and demure woman either. No, Lucien quickly pointed out that you had a fire within you…at least on your good days. The laughter was cut short by the sound of a thud in front of you on the stone patio. Your eyes immediately tracked the large bat like wings and you stood from your seat. Metal and glass clanged against the stone as your thighs hit the lip of the table. Your chair knocked to the ground, causing you to nearly trip as you backed towards the metal railing. Blood rushed in your ears and your vision started to tunnel. Lucien was next to you in an instant.

“Hey. Hey," He gripped your right shoulder to keep you steady, “Shh, it’s okay. It's not him. You’re safe.” Your gaze remained fixed on the unknown winged male that looked on with worry etching his features.

“See what you did,” the voice of the female he’d been carrying was distant in your ears. Lucien’s other hand cupped your face, forcing you to turn towards him.

“Eyes on me (Y/N),” He encouraged, “Breathe. There you go.” Your eyes focused on his features; the jagged scar-raised and tight, the deep reds sprinkled amongst the warm honey brown iris. Your breath evened out, and you covered the hand on your cheek with one of your own to let the red head know you were okay. You took another breath and released Lucien. However, his hand remained on your shoulder. You turned back to the couple that stood on the opposite side of the space. At first glance, the winged male held features that you noted were similar to Azriel in regards to skin, hair, and eye color. Although, Azriel’s held more flecks of green than the honey gold of the male before you. The unnamed male was taller and broader, his shoulder-length hair softly jostled in the breeze. Your eyes wandered over to the female that was with him. Her striking blue-grey eyes would have reminded you of steel had it not been for the soft sadness that shown in them at your display. You hadn’t expected to react in the manner you did. Your heart still hammered in your chest. You cleared your throat and smoothed down the front of the simple sage green dress you wore.

“I-I must apologize,” You started, “I guess I…sorry.” You wrung your hands together and looked at your feet.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the female spoke up, "It’s this idiot’s fault. We should have given you a warning.” You nodded slightly in acknowledgment. Lucien’s hand trailed down your arm to your hand. He gave it a quick and gentle squeeze before he bent down to pick up the chair you’d knocked over in your haste to get away.

“(Y/N),” He motioned for you to sit back down, “This is Cassian, the General of the Night Court’s Illyrian army, and Nesta Archeron, Valkyrie, sister to the High Lady and fellow emissary.” Lucien gestured to each as they took their own seats across from yours.

“It’s nice to meet you,” You reached across the table, your hand extended to shake theirs. When neither returned to gesture you pulled back. “Sorry, I’m used to hand shakes as a form of greeting in my world.”

“So, you are from another world?” Cassian asked, scooping some eggs onto a plate and handing it to Nesta.

“Yes, we call it Earth,” you searched the table for a spare fork, yours having fallen to the ground. When you couldn’t find one, Lucien handed you his. You raised your eyebrow at him, but he just shrugged and began to spread a blackberry jam on his toast. “And before you ask, there is no magic, at least not the same as what you’re familiar with. Also, creatures such as fairies-the Fae- shapeshifters, vampires, mermaids, nymphs, and so on - are all non-existent. Just stories that have been reduced to myths.” The two regarded you closely, listening to your spiel. When they didn’t say anything you continued, too nervous to allow silence.

“I’m not sure how I got here. There are stories of humans traveling through portals into the realm of the Fae or other worlds, but they are simply stories. Ones made to keep children out of trouble or explain natural occurrences. All prior to finding scientific explanation, of course. Like the changing of the seasons,” You realized you were now rambling, “or fairy rings-rings of flowers or more often mushrooms…” The three non-humans stared at you.

“Don’t Lu,” you warned as the corner of the male’s full lips ticked up, “Yes, I talk when I’m nervous. Yes, I’m nervous because I really don’t know how I got here. I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t understand why…I just…want to go home.” Lucien took your hand in his again, his grip reassuring and comforting.

“That’s what we’re all working on,” He assured, “There is a library that, should we manage to convince Rhys-”

“Wait, she can’t leave here?” Nesta interrupted, her eyes blazed. Cassian tensed in his seat and gave Nesta a warning glance. It was clear that not everyone knew of your predicament.

“She’s restricted to the East Wing of the palace,” Lucien clarified, “There are barriers up that she can’t pass through. Just like what Tamlin did with your sister.” If Nesta had been upset before, she looked down right lethal now. Of course, Lucien had filled in you in on what transpired with Feyre and his former home in the Spring Court. Cassian cleared his throat, his gaze falling to the other male.

“What is it you need from us exactly?” He looked to you, seemingly trying to figure out why you posed such a threat that you required to be locked away.

“I need your voice in your High Lord’s ear. I have no magic, and we’ve tried various ways to test that out.”

“Which you’re welcome to see,” Lucien interrupted.

“Yes. I don’t really know how to use a weapon, nor do I have much interest in doing so. And, as I already mentioned, up until a month ago I firmly believed that yo-the Fae were not real.”

“What did my brother say his reasoning was for holding her here?” The question was directed towards the other male.

“He can’t enter her mind.” Cassian’s surprise was not well hidden, “He believes that something or someone is guarding her-” It was your turn to interrupt your friend.

“If I was being guarded or protected, then whatever was responsible has already failed me,” Your voice was soft. A silence fell across the table, and most of the food had grown cold. You didn’t know what else to do or say to convince the General and the Valkyrie of your innocence. All they had to go on was your and Lucien’s word. Even if you were to demonstrate the exercise that Lucien put you through each afternoon with no results, how would they believe that you weren’t just pretending. A ruse to fool them. You desperately tried to quell the pinpricks of tears behind your eyes. You feared that if Lucien’s efforts failed you’d be sent back to the catacombs or worse left to rot on that-

“(Y/N),” Nesta’s clear and calm voice cut through your thoughts, “I’d like to hear more about where you’re from.” You nodded.

“What would you like to know specifically?”

“Let’s start with you. Your family, your up brining.” She leaned back in her chair, arms crossed comfortably in her lap. You swallowed and nodded again.

“I can do that.” You spent the next few hours pouring every detail of your life to the trio. Most information Lucien already knew, some he didn’t. You talked about your family and your friends. You briefly talked about your work and academic studies in music. This caught the oldest Archeron’s attention, which launched a discussion regarding your dissertation topic. The two males excused themselves as you continued to talk with Nesta. The topic changed to books and Nesta promising to bring you some of the spicier romance novels that she found to enjoy the most on her next visit; to which you were grateful as you desperately needed a reprieve from only reading books provided by Rhysand. Cassian and Lucien eventually returned as you made a raunchy joke that had you and the female High Fae laughing loudly.

“It’s time to go Nes,” Cassian set his hand on her shoulder. He looked to you and smiled. The expression was genuine. After spending the few hours you did with the male, you had concluded that he was much less frightening than the other Illyrian. At least for the time being, that is. Nesta rose from her seat and joined her mate.

“I will speak with my sister,” She told you, her features hard with determination, “It’s not right that you’re kept any where against your will when you’ve done nothing to justify imprisonment.”

“Thank you,” You smiled, “I hope to see you both again soon. I’m certain this fool is getting tired of having to entertain me.” You gave the male a wicked teasing grin. Cassian let out a booming laugh as ‘your fool’ placed his hand to his chest in mock offense.

“And here I thought you loved my company,” He stated. You laughed as you stood to join him at the patio entrance.

“Yeah, yeah,” You brushed him off, the smile still plastered to your face. The two of you said your goodbyes and watched as the guests flew off in the distance.

“I think that went rather well,” you looked to Lucien, “Don’t you?”

“Yes, it did,” He held his arm out for you to take, “Cassian agreed to speak to Rhys. He said that he and Nesta would allow you to stay in their home or at least help you get in and out of the library.” You hummed in response as you slipped your arm around his. Your mind wandered, and you felt lighter than you had since you’d been here. He walked you to your room and began prepping the couch to be his makeshift bed for the evening. The sun was quickly setting, and you hadn’t noticed that you spent the entire day talking. You paused near the entrance to the bathing chamber.

“Lu?” he hummed, looking up at you while shaking out the quilt. “Thank you, for everything.”

“Of course, sweet girl,” You rolled your eyes at the term of endearment.

“That’s sticking now isn’t it?” His russet eye brightened with mischief.

“Now that I know it irks you, yes.” You leveled a glare at his to which he just laughed. You huffed a breath.

“If you’re just going to be mean, you can leave,” You stuck your tongue out at him as you made your way into the bathing room. He continued to laugh as he excused himself to his own rooms. When he returned, you were already snuggled in your bed, breathing deep and steady.

Next: Part 3

Tag list: @jenniferpendragon @impossibelle @sweet-chai-amore @myheartfollower

[utilitycaster]

@notstinglesstoo replied to your post “The thing is, and I haven't gotten a chance to...”:

I saw someone not long ago say cr has always felt like a product to them vs D20 feeling organic and I protected my peace but I did want to ask them if they were brain dead

​Oh man I wanted to address this at length because I feel this. My posts have been centered, again, specifically on published journalists picking Daggerheart aprt critically and applauding themselves for doing so despite it being within a couple of hours of its release and therefore any analysis is necessarily going to be based on at best, a skim, when they just as frequently will claim D20 seasons/Kollok are flawless works of genius based on only a partial read, but man D20's got a fandom problem too. (and all of the following comes with the caveat of "I really enjoy D20, and Dropout, and while we're at it WBN and NADDPod which both are half D20 Intrepid Heroes cast, and think Brennan is a particularly brilliant GM, and also it's obvious that the D20 and CR casts are on great terms, and wish the fandom for D20 were more welcoming and enjoyable because I feel it wasn't like this when I first started watching, as a CR fan, in late 2019 and has since curdled into something really weird and bad.")

The first point is the obvious one: technically speaking these are both products. These are performers doing an art form; it is also a portion of how they make their money with which they can buy goods and services. Believing that art is inauthentic when the artist gets paid and acknowledges that is a thing that happens is a fucking libertarian position at best. Like cool, you think only people who are independently wealthy by other means can make art, because it's not real labor, my kid could paint that, etc etc.

The second point is also pretty obvious. I have pushed back pretty hard on the "uwu CR is just watching friends! it's like we're in their living room" mentality among the fandom, which has decreased, thankfully, but like...it did in fact start organically as a private home game, and they decided, when invited, to make it A Show For An Audience. D20 was created on purpose as a show for an audience. This doesn't make it bad or fake - reread the previous paragraph - but in terms of "this is an group of people who really played D&D in this world together even before the cameras were rolling," Critical Role literally is that, and D20 is not.

I think beyond that...my biggest issues with the D20 fandom are first, the level of discourse is abominable. The tag is almost always just shrieking praise and the most surface-level readings possible. I keep bringing up the "Capitalism is the BBEG" mug but it genuinely sums up so much of how I feel; people who want their existing beliefs fed to them as surface-level no-nuance takes. I mean capitalism is fucking terrible but I do not need every work I watch to have a character turn to the camera and say "capitalism is bad" to enjoy myself, and indeed it makes it harder due to the lack of subtlety and grace. For all D20 fans complain about how unhealthily parasocial CR fans can be (and some can be), I find that a lot of the most unhealthily parasocial "how dare they BETRAY my TRUST by having a ship I don't like or not speaking up about every single societal ill" ex-CR fans move over to D20 and then pull the exact same shit; it simply doesn't get called out. Every time D20 fans are like "we don't want to become the CR fandom" it's like "your toxic positivity and unhealthy parasocial behavior exceeds the HEIGHT of what I've seen in CR; the main difference is that CR started in 2015 when D&D was still shaking off the raging bigot dudebros and so in the early days it acquired more of those fans, whereas by the time D20 came around the landscape of who played D&D and watched Actual Play had shifted wildly, and you need to judge September 2018 D20 fans in parallel to September 2018 CR fans, not September 2015 CR fans."

I also feel, and I alluded to this in the post about journalism, and other people have said this better than I have, but the pedestal people have put D20 on does feel like a single...not even misstep, but just, difficult choice that doesn't capitulate to the loudest fans will bring a good chunk of that fandom crashing to the ground. And that includes the journalists. For all the fans of CR can still be obsessed with the cast to an unhealthy degree? The cast and company have put up pretty strong boundaries and have not budged. D20 hasn't, and I think the second they do - and I think it will be for their benefit as a company and a channel - a big chunk of their most vitriolic CR-hating portion of the fandom will viciously turn on them.

[fitgirlfemdom]

hi! I’m just curious about something you mentioned about not being explicitly into everything you post - do you think it’s attracted unwanted attention? would you rather discuss non-kink topics on here as well? I think it would be cool if you incorporated some of the other stuff you’re passionate about (anime, music, etc) 🖤

The real me is not as sexual as this account displays. I've been celibate for half a year and I masturbate maybe once or twice a week for like 20 min. I still write and draw NSFW content, but that's for my main art account that isn't linked here (this isn't for privacy or anything--i just have art moots that probably don't wanna see fat bears eating cake on their timeline 24/7).

90% of the stuff I write/have posted about, I'm into, and I enjoyed writing, especially my longer posts! If I wasn't interested in something, I wouldn't write about it for free. The issue was messages in my DMs, especially near the beginning of this account. It's why I tried enforcing the rule that if you send me face pics, I'd block you, because a lot of the people that messaged me I did not find sexually attractive. Without a face, it's much easier to RP. Also because of the dick pics. Don't get me wrong, some of you guys had very respectable cocks but I can't deny that it made me feel gross to be sent them without my consent.

The worst part was actually enjoying talking to some of you, and then realizing you clearly just used me as a dumping ground for your fetish pics, without any consideration as to who I was. It was like my DMs were just "Send Photos of Your Gut to 19 Year Old Girl Here" without any personality, any interest in who I was. Just a nameless girl who you could imagine your fantasies with. I'd ask about your day or what you were interested in, and I'd get a pic of your gut in an office chair with "whoaaaaa just drank two liters of soda :/ so bloated rn." How do I respond to that? "Good"? 😭

I think the worst DM I got was a guy saying I was "in denial about being a housewife," which I mean, I've dabbled in misogyny kink content before. Bimbofication is literally on my profile. I've never brought up my feminist views or politics, although I would consider myself a feminist, since all people should have equal rights and freedom of expression. I also believe housewives can be feminists. There is nothing on my account about my political views, nor about my career or education, because it's not important to writing porn about feeding dudes cake.

When I brushed him off with a "Haha," he just kept going, paragraphs and paragraphs about how he wanted me to be his trophy wife and clean his shit out of a bucket??? You don't even know me??? And I never responded, but it really just made me realize--just saying I'm into femdom, no matter what it is, is seen as a political transgression to these people. I'm literally into gentle femdom and want a chubby hubby/wife that I can make happy and secure financially. None of my posts are "Women are superior, men should be locked in cages." Most of my posts are "I want a gym guy who enjoys my cooking and jerks off a lot."

I DO use female supremacy tags sometimes because I use dozens of tags, and that's on me. I just type "fem" and click the ones that come up. I've also written works that are VERY misogynistic, like calling myself a fleshlight or literally writing fics about me getting gangbanged. I feel like this guy just saw "femdom" in my username and lost his mind. By tagging my stuff like this, I honestly was asking for trouble to come, so yeah, I think I just got unwanted attention I wasn't ready for.

In regards to talking about others topics, I just figured no one gave a shit, and people probably don't, but I am very passionate about metal music and music history. I have a useless amount of knowledge about various 90s/2000s metal bands and music from that time. If I get asked questions about it, I'll answer, and I DO need to follow more people on this website, but my current answer is: I don't know, maybe. I'll see how I feel.

[plentyoffandoms]

Main Masterlist ♡ Orange Cassidy Masterlist

Just like all my other stories, this has not been proofread, but please enjoy.

Warnings: none

Gifs & photos do not belong to me. 1st gif @elitehanitje

Requested by anonymous. Hope you like it.

WC: 950

James - Orange Cassidy ♤ Dustin - Chuck Taylor ♤ Greg - Trent?

Being a daughter of the man known as Kevin Von Erich, you become used to people looking at you with some type of pity if they know your family's history.

Growing up, my fellow classmates asked about my uncles, but I didn't really know them, just stories of them.

But I learned from my siblings and cousins that it is just how it will be. That many wrestling fans will ask about the supposed curse on our family. I learned who my true friends were, and I tried to grow up away from the family business.

But I guess it is just in my blood.

I couldn't stay away from wrestling,

But I didn't use the Von Erich name or our real last name, Adkisson. I use my first name, but I used my mother's maiden name, May.

Along the way, I met and became good friends with Dustin and Greg, and through the two of them, I met James. With his smile and his kind eyes, I fell for him, hard, which I pushed those feelings aside, of course.

I focused on wrestling, and I soon became a part of the best friends, and I even moved in with Dustin and James as I refused to take money from my family, even though I know they were just wanting to help.

Then the four of us got assigned to AEW, and you could say the rest was history.

But for the first time in a very long time, I am nervous about tonight. My father and brothers are coming to watch me.

They say they never miss a match when I have one. They always make sure to stop what they are doing to watch me, but tonight will also be the night I tell the world I have a 3rd generation wrestler.

That I come from the Von Erich family.

I have kept it pretty well hidden.

I very rarely post anything personal on social media, as it is usually just about wrestling or cooking.

But tonight, that is all going to change.

◆

I was pacing back and forth when James found me.

"Hey, you okay?" He asked me as I placed his hands on my shoulders and had me look at him.

"Just nervous about tonight, and I don't know why. I mean, this is my family, and I am not ashamed about them."

James dropped his hands from my shoulders but didn't move back. "Then what is the issue? You do wrestle a lot like your dad."

"I was trained by him, so yes, I do. I don't know what the issue is now. When I first started, I didn't want to get matches just because of who my family is, and I got them all on my own. I guess maybe this was one part of me. I liked not being asked the same questions like my brothers did at the beginning of their career or my cousin. I didn't have to live up to anyone expectations except my own."

The two of us continued to talk, not knowing that we were being watched.

ORANGE CASSIDY'S POV:

I watched as she walked away, hoping I was able to calm her down. She seemed more relaxed at the end of our conversation.

"James, may I have a word?" I was startled to hear a new voice join me. I turned around to see Kevin standing there, her father.

"Yes. What would you like to talk about?"

"I saw you and my daughter talking. I knew she would be nervous about tonight, and I came to calm her down, but you seemed like you were able to."

"I hope I did, sir."

"I also noticed one thing." I waited for him to continue as he crossed his arms across his chest and looked me up and down. I instantly became nervous.

"I noticed the way how you looked at her. How long?"

"How long for what, Sir?" Why are my palms sweaty?

"How long have you had feelings for my daughter?" His posture changed, and his body relaxed.

"I see the way how you look at her, and all I can say is that she looks at you the same way."

I started to stutter like a 13-year-old boy.

Tag list: @lghockey @nicoleveno14 @legit9thlunaticwarrior @hooks-martin @wwenhlimagines @melissahausen @faerieofthenightcourt @tahiri-veyla @crowleysqueenofhell

Kevin grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me a huge smile. "I would ask her out before someone else decides to James."

◆

Kevin left me standing there, giving me a lot of food for thought. I felt a hand gently on my arm, and I saw it was her. She had a soft smile on her face.

"I saw you and my Dad talking. Is everything okay?"

"Yes, he just wanted to have a talk, that is all." I laid my hand apon hers.

"If you don't mind me asking, may I ask about what?"

'Should I tell her?' I thought to myself, but then Kevin's words came back to me.

"He just talked about you." I don't know how she would feel if she found out her Dad got involved in her love life.

"I know that. I saw him mouth my name." She teased.

"I did like how comfortable the two of you looked talking to one another. So many people put him on a pedestal when he really is just a simple guy, but that also means he is comfortable enough with you to put his guard down." She softly said as she took a step closer.

"James, I am wondering if you would like to go out for dinner, just the two of us?"

"As in a date?" We have had dinner alone plenty of times before.

"Yes, a date."

"I would like that."

[officialfeanorianblog]

So hear me out - but if the feanorians were in our time, they would absolutely have some form of mental health difficulties/things they struggle with, (putting aside whether or not they had smthing like adhd for the second) and this would be very easily shown through their actions, and you could see it in the way they responded to things.

For example, Over-Achieving Perfectionist Feanor- never fully satisfied, constantly needing to be better, best, in everything he did and having tunnel vision when it came to doing that (not in the sense that he can't focus on anything else, simply just that which would effect him reaching his goal).

Compartmentalizing Maedhros- as the eldest child, and one who spent a lot of time doing things for others/having to look out for other people throughout his life, I think that (especially after Angband, but even before) he would find it really difficult to focus on things negatively effecting him unless it would effect his brothers, and would rather just throw it in his mental box for later.

I think that Maglor probably had attatchment issues, I think that with Elrond and Elros a lot is said about potentially he and Mae trying to heal the gaping hole left by their brothers' death, but I also think that for him, as the second eldest, he spent a lot of time helping and looking after his younger brothers, (though not in the same way Mae did) but also spent almost his entire life (depending on what you think of the timeline) with Mae to lean on and depend on, to be the older brother, and with them all dying and the pain of the silmarils that he struggles not to get attached to others.

Celegorm I like to think not necessarily struggles with social interaction, but as he prefers to and does spend the majority of the time outside, with animals and with only his close family for company (i do think he had someone he hunted with but can't remember) and so when he did have to be in large groups with other people would find it awkward as he isn't in the woods anymore, and so he has to behave differently.

Caranthir I think, as the middle child, probably struggles with being surrounded by his wonderful sibilings, (not that he isn't also amazing, I love them all) with wonderfully diplomatic Mae, charismatic and creative Mags, Celegorm with his skill in nature and with animals, Curi of course has his smithing (and I'll speak on that in a sec, but it's time for Cara) and the twins are known as the funny tricksters, and he struggled to find a place for himself. He's normally described as either angry (but that also applies to Curi, Celegorm, and Feanor) and/or as very smart and scholarly (which can also apply to Feanor and Mae, at least in my understanding of these characters ofc) and so finding that space, similarly to Faenor's fears of being replaced by his dad (which I do think caused his perfectionism) was a very large part of his personality.

I think Curufin's issues are spoken about quite easily, but just to add my thoughts, I think that his fear of being like his dad his whole personality probably caused a lot of resentment, and feeling not good enough. I think he probably would have a lot of internalised anger at everyone, and although I do think he did genuinely believe in the Oath (probably the only one who actually did, at least for the majority of it) I think right before he died (and I did see another post though I can't remember who by, if I do I'll tag them but it was brilliant and based off this) and saw his brother's death, that was when he realised that his dad was wrong. I think that was mentally damaging and probably when in Mandos caused him to have slightly difficult trust issues, particularly with Feanor, as he saw it as a personal affront, after all, if he's just like Feanor, and Feanor messed everything up this badly, then what does that make him?

Ambarussa- honestly I think that their main concern would be an identity crisis, with being referred to as Ambarussa, or as the twins they'd feel that they had to be funny or memorable to get people to like them/see them as people, including their own family, and that would cause issues with their relationships later down the line as they would assume that nobody actually liked them, and that they had to work to be liked.

[iturbide]

*reads tags on the last post*

...ok but now I'm actually curious about your issues with TOTK👀

okay so to be per, fectly clear: Tears of the Kingdom is a really fun game. I've been playing a lot of it, aimlessly wandering around, exploring the Depths, finding shrines, doing side quests, and so on. At this point I've cleared the four regional quests, a bonus mainline quest I wasn't supposed to know about yet I found the shrine early and had enough hearts to open the door, what can I say, I'm curious, I have the Master Sword, and I think most of what's left is armor upgrades and wrapping up the main story.

But also I have been spoiled since the game came out about what's in store and boy do I see a lot of similar narrative issues to my gripes with Fire Emblem.

So we might as well start off small with how TotK actively rewrites its history in ways that are even more extreme than Skyward Sword. Skyward Sword introduced Hylia and Demise as concepts, with Hylia inheriting the Triforce from the Golden Goddesses of Din, Nayru, and Farore and tasked with protecting it, while Demise appeared as a demonic entity intent on taking that power for himself. As of Skyward Sword, Zelda was written as the mortal reincarnation of Hylia, thereby retroactively contextualizing her powers. The Triforce has been a power source sought after and fought over through every prior entry in the series, and even though BotW didn't make outright reference to it, the Triforce was clearly present on Zelda's hand when her powers awakened and appeared in full when she sealed Calamity Ganon at the end of the game.

And Tears of the Kingdom does away with it completely.

Hylia is mentioned as the only goddess. The Golden Goddesses aren't referred to at all. There is no Triforce at all, it's instead been replaced by the Zonai 'Secret Stones' even in the ancient past, despite the fact that we saw the Triforce at the end of the last game. It was right there. Zelda is also no longer the reincarnation of the goddess: instead her powers are re-explained as being the product of the historic marriage between the Zonai Sage of Light and the Hylian Sage of Time, giving her command over both (but she's considered only the Sage of Time for some reason?).

Also, BotW pretty heavily implied that Hyrule was a matriarchy: it's the queens and princesses who have the sacred power, so it stands to reason that Zelda's mother was actually the one in charge of Hyrule before her death, and the king only stepped into the leadership role on a temporary basis until Zelda came into her powers (hence that pointed "heir to a throne of nothing but failure" remark in one of the memories). But despite there being a Hylian queen right there in the ancient past, the game firmly establishes that Rauru is the one with the power, and Sonia is just his consort, a priestess who he chose to marry.

And then there's the Shiekah. Throughout all of BotW we were surrounded by these amazing machines, ancient technology crafted by the Shiekah and unearthed in working condition after a myriad in the ground which are still running and wreaking havoc a hundred years after the Calamity. We start the game in a Shiekah Shrine that literally saved Link's life and allowed him to recover from what should have been fatal wounds, though it did take a hundred years to do so.

And all of that is gone in TotK. Not a trace of it remains: the shrines have all been wiped from the face of the earth, the Divine Beasts are nowhere to be found, the Shiekah Towers have evaporated into thin air -- and the shrine that saved our lives is completely gone, replaced by a hot spring. It still bears the name of the Shrine of Awakening, but none of the miraculous technology remains.

Personally, the idea that either Purah or Zelda would consider the Skyview Towers worthy of dismantling that Shrine completely shatters my suspension of disbelief. They're both scientists: they should want to study all of that in detail to understand how it works, not destroy it for glitchy impersonations of the old towers I hate the Skyview Tower miniquests so much.

(Let me tell you, it was absolutely chilling for me to get to Rito Village and see an empty place where I clearly remembered there being a shrine. The Shiekah presence in history has basically been wiped out in TotK outside of Kakariko Village, and I don't like what that says considering that the Shiekah were also victims of a genocide by the ancient king of Hyrule.)

And then there's the imperialism. I have my issues with Three Houses and every ending needing Fodlan to be united under a single banner, though it's most egregious in CF where Edelgard's stated purpose is returning Fodlan to its proper state unified under the Imperial Standard. TotK is worse. There have been some excellent breakdowns of the narrative implications, touching on everything from the loaded imagery and black-and-white narrative purpose of Ganondorf and the Gerudo (dark-skinned evil desert dwellers who oppose the good and glorious worshipers of the goddess...where have I heard that before...) to the game showing outright that the other races of Hyrule were treated as lesser vassals in the ancient past (the Sages being masked and therefore erasing their individual identities, receiving the Secret Stones that Rauru had been hoarding only when Rauru needed help to fight Ganondorf and thereupon swearing their very lives and the lives of their people to him and his empire???). They're great analyses, they've been living in my brain for weeks.

But I think the thing that I'm most mad about is that the narrative bends over backwards to keep anything from changing. At the start of the game, Link's arm is so badly damaged by the Gloom that he nearly dies and he spends the rest of the game with Rauru's arm in place of his own...but then, in the end, he magically gets his original arm back no worse for the wear. Zelda, in an attempt to empower and restore the Master Sword, turns herself into a dragon, a process that we are told outright in the narrative will cause her to lose herself and is therefore irreversible...but then, in the end, she magically returns to her human form thanks to her ghost ancestors somehow reversing this supposedly irreversible process. And on top of all that, Hyrule itself is exactly the same when all is said and done: there's no change to the power structures, no independence for the other races who choose to come together in the spirit of cooperation like we saw at Tarrey Town -- instead, the four Sages once again swear their support and fealty to the Princess of Hyrule.

Personally? I like a narrative where the characters and the world change over the course of it. That's one of the things that I thought was so meaningful about BotW: while most of the gameplay takes place in the present, the true start of the game is 100 years in the past, allowing us to see how the Calamity affected Hyrule, the devastation it wrought and the continued struggles of those who survived through the century that followed. We end the game with Zelda once more free, where she had been locked in combat with the Calamity; with the spirits of the Champions at peace, where they had been trapped by the Blight within the Divine Beasts; and with Hyrule finally at peace and beginning to recover now that the Calamity has been sealed away. I still think it's ridiculous that they don't actually show any of Link's scars in the game (especially since we are at one point forced to strip to prove that we are who we say we are, and they say point blank I would recognize those scars anywhere when there are no fucking scars), but at least things have changed over the course of the narrative!

But nothing changes in TotK. The status quo remains untouched and unquestioned. And it just feels...bad to me. Insincere, maybe. Unrealistic, sterilized, manufactured. It's a narrative that says there's nothing to question, that everything going back to the way it always was is the right and proper way of things, because clearly the Hyrule Empire is the right and proper rule. And I just don't like that.

[veronicaphoenix]

Chapter tags & trigger warnings: fluff at the beginning, lots of angst and sadness in the second part, hints at an abusive relationship and mentions of childhood trauma, Japanese folklore. | Word count: 3.7k | Cross posted on AO3. | Series masterpost. ✧.*

General trigger warnings: This work addresses and depicts issues related to addiction and violence, contains explicit sexual content, and explores themes of childhood trauma. Reader discretion is advised. +18

It was 11pm when the glow of my phone pierced the darkness of my room, disrupting my sleep. I had kept it on silent because I had gone to bed early that day, but the brightness was so high, that if it weren’t for that I would have missed Lia’s call.

When I saw her name on the screen and the picture I had of her, smiling happily while she snuggled Gizmo close to her face, her eyes and nose scrunched in an adorable way, I was quickly yanked from my slumber, my alarms going off.

“Lia?”

“Noah,” something was wrong; I could tell by her voice, the way she said my name. “I know it’s late and you were probably sleeping, but do you think you can come pick me up?”

“Of course,” I said without hesitation.

I sat up on the bed, my eyes getting used to the dark. I was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, but it was still freaking cold in the house those days. The temperatures were expected to drop even more in the upcoming weeks. I wouldn’t let Jolly stop me from switching on the heating if needed. The dude had some resistance to low temperatures that maybe had something to do with the fact that he had been born in a very cold country.

“Where are you? Your apartment?” I asked over the phone, kicking the duvet away and rising from the bed.

“No, I’m…” She took a while to answer, and I could picture her looking around, wherever she was, in the middle of the night. “Fuck, I don’t know where I am,” she admitted. “My car won’t start. I don’t know what’s going on. I was at Emery’s house, and we got carried away chatting. I was headed to Mitch’s apartment right now, but the car started making a weird noise, I pulled over, switched the engine off, and now it won’t start. I’ve been trying for the past fifteen minutes.”

“Are you in the city?” I put on the hoodie that I discarded on the floor last night —a few hours ago, actually—.

“Outskirts,” she replied.

“Okay. Send me your location. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Just stay inside of the car.”

“Yeah, I will.” Her reply was shaky but determined, a reassurance that echoed through the phone line as I exited my room and hurried to the main door, putting on my sneakers and grabbing the keys. I would send a text to Jolly and Jesse once in the car, letting them know where I had gone.

The city slumbered beneath a blanket of quietude as I drove the empty streets, the eerie radiance of the streetlamps casting a somber ambiance on the dampened asphalt. The clock’s hands seemed to move at a slow pace, nearly twenty minutes stretching into an eternity as I pushed the accelerator, eager to reach Lia. The hum of the engine my only company in the solitude of the cold night.

As I approached Lia’s location, I muttered a curse. Lia’s car was parked on the side of the national road, the shadows of the night taking over the distant light from the lampposts.

I stopped my car behind hers. The quietude and cold air enveloping me as I stepped out at the same time Lia emerged from her car. The chilled air bit through my hoodie, and our footsteps echoed as we met each other.

“Hey.”

Lia wrapped her arms around me and muttered a weak “thank you for coming” before standing back. I noticed she was also wearing a hoodie, one of the recent new ones we had released with her designs for the last drop. It was two or three sizes bigger on her, which made me think that it was probably mine. I could also tell how cold her cheeks would feel, for they were as red as her nose.

“Are you okay?” My hand rubbed her shoulder.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she replied. “I’m worried about the car, though,” she admitted, glancing back at the stalled vehicle. “Whatever the problem is, I don’t think I’ll be able to drive home tonight.”

“Let me take a look. It might be an issue with the injectors, or perhaps it’s just the battery. Either way, we might need to call a tow truck,” I suggested, moving towards Lia’s car.

“Great,” she sighed, her concern lingering. She tried to hide her hands inside the long sleeves of the hoodie. Her shoulders were drawn tight.

Seated the driver’s seat, I slid the keys into the ignitor. The engine responded with a sluggish sound, as if grappling with an obstruction that resisted its ignition.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I said, trying again. “Look, if it’s an issue with the ignition, we could try something.”

“What?” She asked, a flicker of curiosity in her eyes.

“There’s a way to get the car back on if the problem is with the ignition, but I’m going to need you to push the car from behind.”

Her eyes widened with a mix of surprise and skepticism.

“Do I look like I’m built to push a car?”

I couldn’t help but smile at her remark.  

“No, not really, but it’s not that difficult once the handbrake is off. I need to be here to guide the process. I have to press the clutch, put it in second gear, and move the foot to the accelerator quickly while somebody is pushing the car.”

“Why can’t I do that?”

“Because it’s harder to do than pushing the car, trust me.”

“Okay, Mr. Mechanic,” she concluded.

“Get the gloves from my car, in the storage in front of the passenger’s seat. Otherwise you’re going to freeze your hands.

“Got it.”

I closed the door and rolled down the window. Lia crouched down behind the car, hands gloved. With a signal from me, she began pushing the car, pursuing her lips hard as she used all the strength she could gather from her shoulders and arms. I heard a laugh echoing a few seconds later as the car started to get into motion. I chuckled and shook my head as I tried to get the engine on, stealing a look at the rearview mirror and seeing Lia’s expression. She looked like she had just discovered she had the super strength of a superhero.

Yet, despite our efforts, my idea proved futile.

Five minutes later, Lia stood with slumped shoulders behind her car, looking at me with a pout.

“It’s either the battery or the injectors,” I conluded, releasing a sigh. “They’ll have to take a look at it.”

“Ugh.”

“Don’t worry. Call the car insurance, and let’s wait in my car until the tow truck arrives. Then, I’ll drive you wherever you need to go.”

She grabbed her things from her car and circled mine to open the passenger door. Once inside, I helped her put her stuff in the backseat, my expression furrowing at the sight of the flowerpot she was holding.

“What’s that?” My curiosity piqued as Lia cradled the plant in her hands.

“What do you mean? It’s a flower plant. I got it this morning and it’s been in the car even since. Poor thing,” she mourned, checking its leaves. “It’s a bellflower. Isn’t it pretty?”

“Yeah,” I replied, not being much of a flower enthusiast, but the vibrant plant had a certain charm to it.  

“I was thinking if I ever have a daughter, I will name her after this flower. Bellie.”

“What?” I snorted a laugh.

“What?” She repeated, a playful defiance in her tone. “You don’t like it?”

“You don’t think people will call her “Belly” by mistake? No, I don’t think I would name my daughter Bellie.”

“If you put it that way… What about Lily?”

“Lily is cute, but it’s too common.”

“Okay, what about—?

“Are we really discussing baby names?” I interrupted her, bemused. We were in the middle of nowhere, waiting for a tow truck. It was nearly midnight. I was tired, she probably was, too, and we were having a discussion over how we would name our daughter? I mean, each other’s daughter. Or… Whatever.

Our gazes remained locked for a couple of seconds. Then, Lia shook her head and dropped her eyes back to the plant. “Mitch’s apartment is empty as hell, so I decided to get some plants, make it look livelier.”

“Are you planning on moving in with him soon?” I couldn’t help but ask, my tone subtly changing.

Please, don’t say yes.

“No, I don’t think so,” she answered honestly. A straightforward answer. That was good. “I really like my apartment. We’ll see in the future, but no plans of moving together for now. God, can you switch on the heating? I’m freezing.”

“Sure. Why didn’t you call him, though?”

It took her a moment to answer, her eyes wandering in the dark landscape in front of us.

“He just came back from tour and he’s out with his friends tonight. I didn’t want to bother him,” her voice carried a hint of shame. “I’m sorry that I called you and made you come all the way here this late.” She looked up at me, her voice low and soft in the dark.

Her reddened cheeks and nose made me want to reach out to her, to cup her face and warm her skin with my palms.

“Lia, you know you don’t have to apologize for that. In fact, you know you should call me if something happens. I mean,” a sudden wave of anger surged within me as thoughts raced my mind. “What the hell, you should call your boyfriend. You should’ve called him. Fuck his night out. You’re in trouble. He should be here.”

“Well, yeah, but…” She let out a puff, sinking herself in the seat. I didn’t mean to make her feel guilty for calling me. My point was merely to acknowledge what a moron Mitch was being. He just came back from tour and decided to hang out with his friends instead of spending time with Lia? What was wrong with him? “Noah, I know that” Lia replied, the tiredness in her tone evident, “but I don’t need a lesson right now. I didn’t feel like calling him. I wanted to call you. That’s all,” she concluded. And before I said anything else, “What’s wrong with the heating?” She put her hands on the heaters, checking the air.

“Nothing is wrong. You just have to wait a while,” I told her, mirroring her tone.   

The conversation was dropped right then, a heavy silence settling between us.

An hour later, we were stopped in front of Mitch’s residence, a recently built five-story brick building situated near the city center. The keys jingled in Lia’s hands as she fished them out of her bag, a moment of hesitation lingering as my car remained parked in front of the entrance. Her gaze remained fixed outside the window, a nervous nibble on her lip showing her unease.  

“Lia, don’t worry about the car.”

“It’s…” She sighed again, struggling to find the words.

“Are you worried about the money? You know that shouldn’t be a problem, whatever it is that needs to get fixed. The insurance will take care of it.”

“It’s just been a hectic day,” she told me. Consequently, she shook her head and let it drop. “I really need to get to bed. You’re my savior. I owe you.”

“You owe me nothing,” I replied with a smile. I could see how she was still battling herself for her decision of calling me instead of Mitch, for admitting that he had preferred his friends over her, that her car had broken down. I didn’t want to let her go feeling like that. “Or… Actually, you can take me out to that Indian restaurant. Friday? I’ll be free after seven.”

She playfully nudged my shoulder, leaning in two seconds later to kiss my cheek. Her lips were still cold, and the sensation lingered on my skin even for a while after she was gone.

“Seriously, thank you.”

So many formalities, as if she didn’t know that I would move heaven and earth to ensure she was safe of any danger out there. Sometimes her naiveté astonished me.

“Text me when you get home? Just to make sure your car doesn’t break down in the middle of somewhere,” she pleaded.

“Hopefully not. Otherwise, how do you plan on coming to my rescue?” I joked.

“I’ll steal somebody’s bicycle,” she responded with a grin and determination.

“I can’t wait to see you do that.”

With a small laugh, she closed the door, and the silence I was left in inside of the car filled my heart with sadness.

A week and a half later, Lia and I found ourselves at the garage, surrounded by the scent of motor oil and the clattering sounds of tools. As she sat down to sign the paperwork, her eyes flickered with a mix of frustration and resignation. The mechanic, a burly man with grease-streaked overalls, handed her the pen, and she reluctantly scrawled her signature across the dotted line.

Swiping her credit card over the dataphone to settle the bill, Lia winced at the considerable amount that flashed across the screen. The cost of the repairs had skyrocketed, and the insurance only covered half of it. The issue with her car, as explained by the mechanic, was a malfunctioning injector. It turned out that a single faulty injector had caused a domino effect, fucking up the entire fuel injection system. With a sigh, Lia listened as the mechanic detailed the necessity of replacing all the injectors to ensure the car's optimal performance and prevent future issues.

Despite the amount of money that disappeared from her bank account, Lia's thoughts seemed to be elsewhere as she swiped her credit card. That day, when I picked Lia up from Mitch's apartment, I noticed an air of detachment about her, as if the car troubles were merely a backdrop to something deeper weighing on her mind.

We left the reception, both of us holding back a curse because we had no umbrella and they had left Lia's car parked at the end of the street. We stopped for a few minutes before we emerged from the shelter that was the garage roof. On the street, several people were standing back from the curb with their umbrellas to avoid being splashed with water from the puddles on the road by the cars rushing by. I pulled up the hood of the black hoodie I was wearing and looked in the direction of where Lia's car was. It was about twenty meters from where we were standing. It wasn't much, but we were going to get wet whether we wanted to or not. Lia was wearing a black beanie and a denim jacket, and she hid her hands in the pockets and shrank into herself. After the amount of money she'd had to pay for the car repair, she wasn't too thrilled about having to walk in the rain. I suggested to come spend the afternoon with me and Jolly at home; we would make popcorn, plop down on the couch and watch a Peaky Blinders with the rain drops pattering outside. However, she had turned down the offer almost reluctantly, stating that Mitch would be waiting for her at home to have lunch together.

It had been a long time since we had spent an evening like this together and I missed her, but I understood that she now had a partner and was spending most of her time at his place .I could no longer ask for her company as I did before. Things had changed a lot in the last few months, much to my dismay. I was comforted by the thought that as soon as we went on tour again, I would be back to spending whole days with her around.

“Do you think it will stop soon?” She asked in a rather low voice. Her eyes were lost in the clouded sky.

“Doesn’t look like it," I replied, also looking up. It had been raining all week, and the weather forecast predicted that the weather would stay about the same for the next two weeks. “We'd better get going.”

“Your car is on the other corner," Lia replied then, looking at me with a worried wrinkle between her eyebrows.

“Don't worry about me. Let's go.”

Lia followed me after tucking her hair under her jacket and tying the buttons up to her neck. She ducked her head and scampered down the street until we were halfway to her car. That's when Mitch's voice stopped us.

“I had a feeling you weren't going to take the bus.”

Lia and I turned around.

Mitch was standing a few feet away from us in the rain, also without an umbrella. He was wearing a leather jacket and raindrops were pooling in his hair and beard. He had half a smile plastered on his face, but it was not a friendly smile. His blue eyes looked at Lia with pedantry.

Beside me, I sensed Lia tense up.

“Mitch," was the first thing she said. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you think?” He questioned back, taking a couple of steps toward us. 

As it had been happening for the past few months, every time the three of us were in the same room, the air seemed to get stale.

“Noah offered to give me a ride," she explained calmly.

“Of course,” the sarcasm was evident in his voice and in his attitude.

When he looked away from her to me, I returned his look with narrowed eyes.

It was no secret that my relationship with Mitch had frayed quite a bit —to say the least— since he started dating my best friend. It’s not like we ever had such a great wonderful friendship, but ever since he'd started going out with Lia there had been a void between us that we both knew what it was due to.

“I thought you were working," she continued.

“I went out for coffee with Enzo and I asked him to give me a ride to the garage, since you were told to pick up your car today at this time, and here I am, unexpectedly surprised by you instead of the other way around,” his words dripping sarcasm as we stood right outside the garage, under the rain.

“What's wrong with you?” Lia countered, her features shrinking.

“What's wrong with me?” he repeated, his anger flaring. “Your car breaks down in the middle of the road and who do you call? Him!” He shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at me drawing disapproving glances from the garage workers and other passersby. “Him, damn it! And now I find you here with him again!”

“You don't have to react like that,” Lia replied, keeping it down, refusing to let her voice escalate.

“Of course I have to! Who's your boyfriend, Lia? Who?!”

“Don't raise your voice at her,” I ordered without moving. However, I was prepared to step between them the moment I considered that he had lost it.

Both of them turned their heads to me. Lia wore an expression of sorrow, shame, and guilt, while Mitch seethed with anger. If it hadn’t been clear to me before, it was now: the dude hated me.  

“I don't think you realize this isn't about you, Noah.”

It was clear he failed to understand that whatever happened to Lia was indeed my business.

Years ago, Lia might have reacted different to Mitch’s outburst, but since she had started going out with him, she seemed to have lost her sense of agency. She didn’t want to acknowledge that the frightened little Lia who once cowered in the corner of her house because her mother or one of the men she had brought home had tried to touch her was there again, making her unable to defend herself.

That day was when I started worrying for real, but Lia wouldn’t let me step up.  

She was no longer a child, and she was with Mitch by choice, and there was a line I wasn’t supposed to cross and that was growing thicker day by day.

“I called Lia a while ago to ask about the car. When she told me she was about to leave the house I offered to pick her up. That's all.”

It was a lie, of course. We had agreed on me picking her up this morning over the texts we exchanged last evening. We had even planned on going out and getting a coffee from a Starbucks nearby and taking a walk around the city center, get a few things we needed, but I guessed those plans were totally cancelled now.  

“I don't give a crap,” Mitch turned his attention back to Lia. “Have you paid the bill yet?”

“Yes," she responded in a robotic tone.  

“Then let's go.” Mitch walked toward her, extending his hand not for her to take, but to collect the car keys. Lia handed them over and he made a gesture for her to follow him.

When I spoke her name in a whisper laden with concern, Lia's eyes reached for mine. She had such huge, beautiful eyes, and I couldn't bear to see what lurked in them, that sadness.

“It's okay, don't worry," she whispered to me. She brushed the fingers of her hand over mine as she turned her back to Mitch. She was hiding the look in her eyes and at the same time trying to reassure me. The pain I saw in them made me furious, but what angered me the most was the small, forced smile he tried to sneak on me under the increasing rain.

Any other time, she would have stood on her tiptoes to give me a kiss on the cheek before leaving. It was something Lia had always done with me. Wherever we were, before disappearing, she always sought me out to say goodbye. It didn't matter if I was busy or at the other end of the house. Lia always kissed me goodbye.

This time, she didn't. And I watched her walk away from me as if a piece of heaven had just been ripped out of my hands.

Mitch took her hand. I let her walk away. She took one last look over her shoulder at me.

Things were not going well.

I felt a tug in my stomach. I knew I would get sick that day, and in a few hours, I would be coughing up flowers.

[eddiediaaz]

I’m going to send you the same thing I sent op but in a less rude way because I do follow you and like you!

“As someone who's bi, has been sexually abused, has daddy issues and has adhd, I don't agree with what you've said at all. I liked Tommy and Bucktommy until 7x09, I don't like his humor and I don't like how rude he talks and I respect people who do, each to his own. Also, good for them for having sex and kinky sex.

The reason why l've been a problem with this daddy kink joke is that wasn't the moment. You said "don't do a daddy issues joke if you don't want a daddy king joke", well no. I can joke with my traumas, because they're mine, I don't want you to joke about my traumas. Plus, having daddy issues doesn't mean that you have daddy kink. For someone who was saying a lot of things about assuming, that's assuming too. Not everyone with daddy issues have daddy kinks and for some people that joke can be triggered at.

And that has been the main problem people have been saying about the joke. No that they have kinky sex, which okay good for them, Buck has been having kinky sex since season 1 nothing new there.

The problem is that how something that is important, that can be triggered, that it was a vulnerable conversation was made into a sexual joke when it wasn't the moment.”

And adding: You can interpret that scene as flirting, which no, but okay, it’s valid. It’s also valid to interpret that scene as gross, especially if we have daddy issues and the last thing we want if to make our issues a sexual joke, valid too. Accusing us of homophobia just because we don’t like a joke, that’s not valid, that’s just creating a war using big and fancy words.

Hope you’re having a good day and hope you had it still having a good trip :) <3

okay so i don't think everyone reblogging the post is being a homophobic piece of thit, it is just a tumblr post after all. i'm a very nuanced person and i don't think reblogging or liking a post even means you agree with all of it. but i have seen some fucked up tags/reblogs and those are problematic. those do reek of homophobia. it is a big word because it's a big accusation that's for sure warranted in some instances.

this definitely comes down to personal interpretation, in this case, i think. because as someone who's also bisexual, also has daddy issues (my dad was a drug addict that was absent for a while and my ex step dad for my whole childhood was very alcoholic and abusive & manipulative man towards me until i left home at 17), and also has experience with (childood) sexual assault, i definitely saw this scene as some light flirting after a more serious conversation. tommy asked him if he was okay, they shared personal things about their fathers, and then there was a bit of flirting. one light hearted joke that matched buck's tone. and some people are acting like he told buck to get on his knees and call him daddy when it's not what happened at all? as always, some people are extrapolating what actually happened. buck is no stranger to dirty jokes and innuendos, like you said. what is true for some people ("not the moment to make a sex joke"), does not mean it's true for everyone and all fictional characters.

also not liking tommy or his humor or the ship or this scene or this joke is 100% valid, nothing wrong with that. it's just personal opinion. but when people say or insinuate he's being a predatory gay man towards buck? that he should be killed over it (even as a joke)? that's messed up, in my opinion. and there's a big difference between not liking something for yourself and accusing a gay man of being predatory. that's when that line gets crossed that i have issues with, and me reblogging 2 posts about it, that's what it meant for me.

ultimately i just think that was meant to be a lighthearted scene in a very trauma heavy episode? obviously it missed the mark for some people, but people jumping through hoops to call tommy predatory and a bad person over this, it's just such a reach. it's obvious to me that buck liked the joke with the smiles they shared, is it not? also some people are acting like tommy ordered him to call him daddy from now on lol, when all he said was "god, i hope you do." like that's pretty harmless actually sfdjkhbfds

anyway, i'm sorry you can relate to all of these, sending love <3 and also thanks for not assuming the worst of me, i guess? because that's what i always try to do with people. but if you don't agree with me and unfollowing me would make you feel better, well no hard feelings. curate your dash and all that!

[raayllum]

I remember starting the show because my friend told me about Callum and Rayla and how cute they were together. But after binge watching all 5 seasons, I just feel like the writers don’t really give a damn about them, in many ways, compared to other couples. But, to be fair, I have lots of issue with the writing. But, to me, the primary idea was to make Callum and Claudia a couple (no, I don’t ship them together), because they actually have a background, development, even chemistry too. So, I don’t understand why the writers changed their minds on this (please, tell me if they ever addressed this issue). I just think that him moving on from a childhood love, like that, out of nowhere to Raylla was again a bit odd and out of nowhere. Because nothing indicated that in the first 2 seasons. Same goes to Rayla too. And, in S5 they have acted more as friends than anything else. It’s just weird. What’s your opinion about this? And again, I don’t ship Callum with Claudia, it’s just my opinion after watching all seasons.

Thank you for sharing your feelings, I definitely have been in fandoms where the Big Ship (canon or fanon, in show or in fandom) have just not been things I could click or with or understand, so you have my sympathies. The crew has gone on record saying that Callum and Rayla being a couple was not originally the plan (we don't know if there were any endgames being considered for either of them as alternatives, but I lean toward no) with Janaya and Ruthari presumably being the main couples. This changed in 2x04 with the lightning flash and moment the two share on the boat, "everyone in the room saw it" (legit quote from showrunner) and they began to write and develop it. It is unknown if they went back to add or shift anything in S1 (we know the crew works on seasons simultaneously) but it wouldn't surprise me given the vibes

I definitely can't promise to change your mind (I'm obviously a big Rayllum shipper and I have been since S1, so I'm clearly coming at it from a different perspective) but I do have some metas that do address what you've brought up, I'm gonna link them below and then do a quick summary in case you understandably don't wanna read all that!

Rayllum and Loneliness (Post S3): a meta about how it is likely (now confirmed in supplementary material) that Rayla grew up pretty friendless and a deeper dive into how Rayla is/was the first person Callum had who was unequivocally his peer and his friend (as Soren bullied and Callum's crush - as well as other things - made him and Claudia have a fair amount of distance.)

Callum and Claudia: You Already Did (Post S3): On what appeal the ship has, why it may not appeal to others, and why I don't think Callum and Claudia were actually that close pre-S1, the various factors why, and why they were doomed to fall apart since 1x02.

How/Why Callum's feelings for Claudia and Rayla Were Overlapping (Post-S3): Exactly what it says on the tin, mostly because he is obsessed with Rayla lowkey in S1 (trying to get her to laugh three times in 1x05, taking a flirty tone with her when they aren't arguing in 1x06, etc) and then outright devoted in S2, trusting her over Claudia in 2x03.

Rebuttals to Rayllum Reservations (Claudia, Pacing, Etc) Post-S3: Pacing, emotional intimacy, platonic development and romantic feelings, etc. Probably the simplest meta and the most on brand for what you're (presumably) looking for, but the other metas I think uh do contribute nicely to explaining why Rayllum is what it is and som of the reasons it appeals to people.

It's also honestly not surprising to me that in S5 they just feel like Friends (hopefully best friends) given that a decent chunk of the Rayllum fandom, myself included, are on the aromantic and/or asexual spectrums, and don't really care if they're Romantic as long as they're Life Partners. (Aspec Rayllum tag here) Callum and Ezran are two of the, if not the, most important people in Rayla's life, and Rayla and Ezran are two of the most important people in Callum's life. To me, romance / devotion / whatever you want to call it intermingling makes sense. One of the things I've loved most about S4-S5 is the fact that whatever they are, they have each other's backs, and they care for and protect each other, no romance required, which hits different since they do both also have romantic feelings for each other. It's just not a pre-requisite for them and a lack of it is never something they'd hold against one another. In other words:

Chemistry is also something that's hard to pin down sometimes - like all shipping preferences are subjective, but evaluations of chemistry tend to be in particular (for example, I don't really think Callum and Claudia have chemistry in that way, but that doesn't mean that they can't or they don't).

That said: platonic Rayllum tag here and foils Rayllum tag here, and I hope whatever parts of the show you do enjoy, well, give you joy.

[fizzingwizard]

There have been a number of improvements on Tumblr I've wished for over the years, such as

being able to pick which blog I want to post to from the bottom of the post, instead of constantly having to scroll back to the top (since posts would automatically jump to the bottom where tags etc are)

ability to delete reblog chains in your own reblog

even though I still complain about it, For You is a little better - at least I don't get recommended my own posts anymore.

some improvements to photos. some is better than none hehe

which is great. and i am hopeful for the new communities feature. i really don't know how it's gonna look on tumblr, but I do like the idea, and think it'll be fun and maybe finally get people more interactive with each other, instead of running off with their tumblr friends to interact on discord. fingers crossed

NOW my number one, biggest ask for tumblr, number one on my wishlist, something I've wanted since I started using tumblr back in uhhh - *cough*whisper* 2012 *cough* - is a better way to organize Likes!!!!!

Because it is and has always been an absolute mess. You like a thing, it gets stored in your likes, and then you never see it again because it gets buried so deep and there's no way to search for it except to page back endlessly till you find it.

Idk about you guys, but it often happens for me that if I reblog a post from my likes, the page sometimes gets stuck buffering and I have to refresh it. And if I refresh, I lose my place in the stored likes. And I have to start all over again. So I try to only open posts in a new tab before rebogging them... but fingers slip, you hit the space bar by accident *sigh*... innumerable things make trying to speed through 12 years of likes absolutely impossible.

The main changes I'd love to see to Likes:

pagination, same as on blogs, so if you lose your place you can just go back to the page you were on instead of starting off from square one for the nth time

a search feature!! that would be amazing. searchable tags or searchable text

or how about the ability to tag likes when you like them, so you can just click a tag from your list and easily find posts you filed under that category for later?

heck even the ability to search through likes by the year they were added to your likes would be a help... at least to long-time users like me

honestly I don't need all of theses, i'd be happy just with the pagination. but I really really would love to see some changes. i don't reblog everything I like at once for a lot of reasons, and I have tried the queue, but I had issues with the queue dropping posts and me not knowing what ones they were, and also I just plain don't like it. If I post a thing I want to see it immediately. I uses a "queue" tag and still offended myself when posts I'd queued on purpose showed up and I'd forgotten about it till I saw the tag xP Yes, that's my own stupidity, but a better system for likes would definitely help my experience, and be overall useful to everyone I think.

[aihoshiino]

I saw recently you said that you dont like the current version of akane, and I honestly agree. But what are your reason you dont like post tb akane

Hello anon, sorry for the wait!!! I have actually been pecking at the response for this all week because it ended up dovetailing into some of my broader thoughts and issues with the manga using my feelings about Akane's characterization as a sort of lens/jumping off point. I hope this is still interesting to read even though it took forever to answer lol.

I also want to note that the bulk of this post was written before chapter 128! Some of my issues that are mentioned in this post did get sort of poked at and paid some lipservice in a way that makes me hopeful we'll get some improvement on this stuff as the movie arc progresses. Think of this as 'my pre-128 thoughts' if you come across it in like a post chapter 130 world in the distant future. It's also uh fucking long (it was over 2000 words long when I stopped counting.....) so enjoy this mini essay???

To get my most neutral thoughts out of the way up front, Akane is a character I really like in LoveNow! I think the arc she's given is compelling and her struggles feel super real. The gradual peeling back of her outer layers and the reveal that she's just as damaged by the industry as the people around her was really good and my only real major problem with LN is that I felt like the aftermath of her suicide attempt (at least, emotionally speaking) was glossed over a bit too quickly for my liking. On top of that, I like a lot of ideas about TB Akane on paper and I'm not inherently against any of the things that get put on the table in relation to her. My issues are more to do with the ways Akasaka executes said ideas and – imo – fails to capitalize on a lot of the interesting potential that a character like Akane presents.

I think this issue partially stems from the fact that Akane and Memcho were (iirc anyway) not actually originally intended to stick around with the main cast past the LoveNow arc. Memcho didn't really have a personal arc during LoveNow and during the rest of the manga, she sort of has a "flat" arc, so I think she makes the transition a lot more gracefully. Which is not to say Memcho herself is a flat character lol! Rather a 'flat' arc is when a character doesn't necessarily have some major change in themselves, but their intrinsic traits/beliefs/etc help to advance the arcs of characters around them; sort of like a mentor type character, if that helps.

Akane, by contrast, had a pretty dynamic character arc that felt as though it was intended to be relatively self contained and conclusive but with Akasaka's plans changing behind the scenes, Akane has ended up sort of outlasting the arc she was originally set up to have. That's not to say a character can't still be relevant after their arc is done or that a character needs an active ongoing arc to work within a story but there's a lot of things about the way that arc is simply not resolved that bug me – for example, the arc wrap makes a big point of saying that Akane will probably have to deal with ongoing online negativity for the rest of her career but this never comes up again even in places where it really should be relevant. I also just personally am not a big fan of how quickly and completely Akane's suicide attempt gets swept under the rug and is literally never addressed again once LoveNow wraps but that's more of an issue with OnK's bad habit of dropping loose threads a whole than it is something specific to Akane.

As for the rest of it… uh, this might be a bummer to see in the main tag if Akane is your Oshi no Girlie so I'll put the rest of my thoughts behind a cut. Akane enjoyers, please feel free to pretend I'm just talking about my favourite ice cream flavours or something. Or even go get some ice cream yourself and say it's on me. I don't care if it's October, ice cream is a forever food!!!

SO… To get the most immediate and shallow points off the table first, I just find the character design change between LoveNow and TB Akane really jarring lol. Like, I guess it's not necessarily impossible for her hair to have grown down to her chest in the time between LoveNow and when she pops back up but that combined with the changes in how she starts being characterized really just widen that gulf. The only time she ever really feels like LoveNow Akane to me again is when she takes Aqua to see a 2.5D play and is just so happy afterwards that he enjoyed it – that's cute! That's charming! That's the Akane I liked a lot in LoveNow and I feel like we don't really see her again after that but it's hard to put my finger on what feels so off. It's kind of just Vibes.

Getting into more serious, structural stuff a big part of why I feel post-TB Akane falls flat for me is simply that a lot of the interesting things Aka put on the table for her during LoveNow have been swept away and ignored. There are so many things that could be done with Akane as a character that are absolutely screaming out with incredible thematic potential but Akasaka hasn't really taken advantage of any of them. At the worst points of the manga, it feels like she's being used as a blunt force tool to make the plot go at the speed Akasaka wants it to progress and this has resulted in Akane spending a good chunk of the story doing literally nothing on-panel that doesn't revolve around Aqua in some way. Everything else – her rivalry with Kana, her passion for acting, her relationship with her family and her manager – is paid the barest bits of lipservice if it's even acknowledged at all but when you really get down to the nitty gritty of what Akane meaningfully engages with and achieves in most arcs now exclusively has to do with Aqua.

It's not inherently a bad thing for a character to be motivated by outside factors or for their actions to be driven by devotion or even hatred for somebody else – Aqua himself is a good example of a character whose arc is driven by both of these things, as his devotion to Ai and hatred for the man who hurt her are the main external things driving him through pretty much the entire story so far. But Aqua also has things going on outside of this – other important connections and relationships, feelings and conflicts and motivations that make him feel, imo, more well realized. Not only that, but his arc has a very well conveyed and easy to understand "want vs need" conflict, of his continued pursuit of revenge having clear and tangible friction with his emotional need to let go of his past trauma and move on.

Akane has, since Tokyo Blade, been sorely lacking in a lot of these areas. Her acting career progresses entirely offscreen with no apparent conflict or effort on her part and she has absolutely no strong or meaningful connections to the cast outside of Aqua and arguably Kana, but they haven't really had any sort of meaningful or meaty interactions since way back around, what, the mid-70s, in chapter terms? Not only that but her existing relationships have largely been completely put to the wayside, too. LoveNow establishes her as a person who cares deeply for the people who care for her – her mom, her manager, her friends on the show. Akane felt so bad about people saying bad things about her mom and her manager online – not even harassment actually directed at them, or that we have any reason to believe they saw or received! – that it contributed to her suicide attempt. Contrast this to when she is literally about to walk off and attempt a literal actual fucking murder and all she's thinking is "aqua… let's have crepes together… let's be together forever…". No consideration for her parents, who are about to go through unimaginable pain, or the promising acting career she's about to destroy? Nope! Akane revolves entirely around Aqua now. It feels insulting!

I don't even necessarily hate or even disagree with taking Akane in the direction of her fixating on Aqua in response to him saving her and feeling like she has to cling to him and throw away her life to 'save' him in return. I do think the story is purposely portraying this as an unhealthy fixation and does not want us to uncritically celebrate this aspect of their relationship but I also just think the story kind of fails to really examine Akane to the logical conclusion of that flaw.

In general, Akane is one of those characters who like… I don't quite know how to express this feeling so forgive me if I go in circles on this topic a bit, but there are occasions where Akane will do or say something genuinely shitty or deranged or display a pattern of behaviour that speaks clearly to a flaw of hers in ways I want to be on board and engaged with but as time passes, it becomes clear that the narrative does not actually see anything wrong with what just happened and so it never gets addressed or meaningfully engaged with. There's a lot of little bits like this (can we talk about how Akane leveraged her suicide attempt against Aqua as a manipulation technique in TB and this never comes up again?? lol???) but the thing that really truly sticks in my craw is the way Akane is repeatedly depicted as continuing to use her fake 'Aikane' persona (as conveyed by the star eyes) during her acting career and starts getting famous at least partially because of it.

This is going to sound really dramatic but as someone who deeply, deeply cares about Ai and is so, so compelled by the tragedy that was her exploitation in life and death – this is so horrifying! This is Akane directly profiting off her exploitation of Ai's image. This is Akane digging up Ai's corpse so she can rip out her guts and parade around wearing them. It is absolutely baffling to me that the story at no point pauses to at least acknowledge that this is another way in which Ai is being exploited even in death – that even now, almost twenty years later, she cannot ever escape or be left to rest in peace as a human being.

Honestly Akane's relationship to Ai is SUCH a mountain of missed opportunities it makes me kind of crazy. Like, we get some wishy-washy stuff about ~Ai's emotions that were revived in her~ but seemingly the only thing done with that is to give Akane a cheat code to magically know things about the mystery she should have no reasonable way of deducting. But like - if Akane really does understand Ai so completely and it's so empathetic that she can Sherlock scan the emotions of a dead woman she had never met then why does she never, you know… express any kind of opinion on her? What does Akane think of Ai? What does she think about the way Ai was exploited and abused by the very industry Akane is trying to break into? Holy shit! It should be SO obvious to draw a parallel between Ai's death at the hands of a ex-fan and Akane's suicide attempt driven by fan harassment. But Akane just… never talks about Ai or even really treats her like a person even though she apparently downloaded Ai into her brain by reading Wikipedia really hard.

It's frustrating because there SHOULD be a really great thematic idea here - other characters often treat Ai as this inscrutable enigma but with Akane, there was the opportunity to make a point that Ai was just a lonely, messed up person and that if Akane can come to understand and connect with her post mortem then the people in her life absolutely could have put in the effort to understand and connect with her while she was still alive. The story failing to have Akane treat Ai even the slightest bit like a person ends up making her feel really callous in a way that was clearly not intentional and is, as a result, frustrating to read. This also comes into play in the ways she's so tunnel visioned on Aqua. Like, there's just something really darkly funny about Akane acknowledging how insanely unimaginably tragic the horror of Ai's death is and the way the people closest to her were robbed of the opportunity to publicly heal and grieve and then she just... totally fails to acknowledge Ruby also experienced this life altering trauma? LIKE

"your little sister is on her own, though"

To be clear, Akane being callous and kind of tunnel-visioned is not in of itself something I have a problem with. As a Category 5 Women's Wrongs Enjoyer (my list of favourite fictional women includes Monika DDLC, Akane Shinjo and Junko Enoshima lol) so I actually think Akane having those sorts of nastier flaws or at least having blinders up that make her behave in such a way that contrasts her actually heart would be so good and juicy! It would be a really good opportunity to dig into ideas of like... someone can go through something horrible that negatively impacts them and maybe even makes them behave in poor and destructive ways, but just because someone isn't a 100% pure and sympathetic 'perfect' victim doesn't at all take away from the fact that they were victimized and they still deserve to be helped and protected. But because the story seems to be largely unaware that Akane comes off like this, it fails to be meaningfully engaged with which, again, makes it frustrating to read.

I do have hope that a lot of these issues will be resolved, though! The AquAkane breakup finally forcefully ripped her out of the role of 'Aqua's Perfect Girlfriend' and while she's still orbiting him a bit more than I necessarily would like, chapter 128 has already done a lot to address some of these issues. Even stuff as small as Akane talking to Memcho and Kana and not really having any page time with Aqua and her acknowledging that both Aqua and Ruby (with particular emphasis on Ruby, it seems!) are both still suffering in the aftermath of their childhood trauma. It's small, but a lot of my issues with Akane were of the 'death by a thousand cuts' variety so even having them addressed in these passing ways does a lot to help.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if I eventually come around on Akane and end up liking her a lot more. I've sort of had similar feelings about characters in works I like before – off the top of my head, I remember really disliking Naoto from Persona 4 when I first played the game because the section of the story she's associated with has some really bullshit pacing and Naoto is used in some really awkward ways by the narrative that made me associate those feelings of frustration with her. I felt similarly about Megumi from 13 Sentinels where I felt like some of the beats in her story dragged down both her arc and the arcs of the characters associated with her and really disliked her as a result. Upon revisiting both games though, I was able to properly separate my feelings of frustration with the narrative from the characters themselves and ended up coming around on both of them in a huge way.

Once Oshi no Ko wraps and we can see what Akane's arc looks like in its entirety, I fully expect to have a similar turnaround on her. I don't expect that she'll ever be one of my favourite characters but once we can see the totality of her character arc and the full scope of her role in the story, I expect to find more appreciation for her. Right now, though, while I'm still sort of stewing in disappointment, hope, expectation and frustrations it's hard to fully come around on her.

[thetantiger]

Pride Doodles 2024!

Most of these are based off of real things I saw when me and my husband went to a pride faire this year, with my own goofy OCs as inserts. I'm going to talk about that a little bit and what it meant for me under the cut, but if you're just here for the art, all you need to know is: shoutout to that samoyed with the rainbow-dyed tail I saw.

So in order to really put into perspective as to why this pride event in particular was so meaningful to me (though, if you, reading this, are queer yourself, I'm sure the feeling isn't unfamiliar to you), let me give you a little bit of backstory. I live in rural Indiana, which is a statement in of itself. Last year I was unable to attend any pride events because me and my husband were getting married in June and, as you can imagine, being a bride the month leading up to such an event is an extremely busy time, lmao. If we could have fit it into the schedule I'm certain we would have, but it was just not possible at the time. Usually, I attend some sort of pride event every year.

Additionally, my husband's family is.. not the most supportive. I am bisexual and genderfluid, as well as demisexual (though this is not public knowledge in my real life, I'm not exactly closeted about it, I just don't bring it up a lot) and questioning polyamorous (which me and my husband are closeted about). Many members of his family regularly and casually use homophobic slurs (as well as racial ones) but his grandmother in particular is the main issue. When I first started dating my now-husband I was very forthcoming with the fact that I am genderfluid and this resulted in her somehow managing to find a way to steer the conversation into political debates surrounding trans people (trans people in sports, HRT, etc) every single time me and her interacted without fail. She has since at least slowed down about this, but highlights of conversations I've had with her since include: A, her questioning whether or not I'm actually bisexual because I've never been physically intimate with a woman (apparently being in a six month long committed relationship with somebody who thought they were a woman at the time [they're out as a trans man now] is not "bisexual enough"), B, her consistently pressuring me to dress more "feminine" because "your husband will like it better," and most recently C, where she made an entire event at dinner in a public restaurant while we were discussing planning to go to this pride faire, arguing that there should be a "straight pride parade" (and my father-in-law, bless his heart, proposed that it was as stupid as saying there should be a white history month, to which my grandmother-in-law vehemently claimed that there should be because "straight white people have been oppressed too"). I physically had to get up and leave the restaurant.

Anyway this is all to say that I was feeling particularly insecure about myself leading up to this event. It was repeatedly hammered into me that who I am was not worthy of acceptance or validation or love and even though I pride myself on being an extremely honest person about who I am and what I believe in, I felt myself repressing those things about myself. My husband has supported me through all of this (and sincerely, to that post about "please don't bring your straight cis male partners to pride," suck my fucking dick) and I cannot thank him enough for his unconditional reassurance that he loves who I am. As a matter of fact his parents were supposed to accompany us to the event but they flaked out on us, and he expressed great disappointment because he knew I was struggling with myself and that his grandmother was being bigoted and hateful and he wanted his parents to express their support by tagging along.

And then we got there.

I saw people flying their flags as capes upon their backs. I saw supportive ally parents walking alongside their kids. I saw service dogs with pride-themed vests. I saw lesbians with hand-knitted crop tops in orange and white and pink and I saw polyamorous couples enjoying each other's presence and I saw a trans woman in bright red mesh clothing and red leather heeled boots. I saw vendors selling vibrators and leather bondage harnesses with gay furry art decaled on the side of the tent and original graphic tees with giant cocks on them and yet no scarcity of asexual flags anywhere. I was offered free healthcare (though unfortunately we had crossed state lines to attend this event so I couldn't take advantage of it) and STI/STD tests and I stopped somebody to compliment their extremely well-made (and cool-looking) fursuit head and somebody else stopped me to compliment my shirt. I saw a guy just strutting down the street with his abs out, I saw amputees, I saw black women with fishnet stockings and pride-themed makeup and at least three pairs of men I'm nearly certain were partners and I felt at home. I was stopped by an older woman, who offered me a "glitter blessing." I asked what that was and she half-explained it to me and I offered her my hand. She put glitter on my hand, and told me I was loved, that I was accepted, that there will always be a place for me, and to never lose my sparkle and I cried right there in the street.

To see so many people come together, to love each other (platonically or otherwise!) unconditionally and to support one another, to craft a safe space for each other and to see people like me, unapologetic and unfiltered.. it meant the world to me. It meant everything to me.

My online friends are extremely supportive of me and my 60+ characters that are almost all unanimously queer. I've expressed insecurity about making so many of them queer, convinced it was redundant or tiring or "shoving it down their throat" and was only met with "okay and? make that bitch gay anyway." I can't thank them enough either, but sometimes you'll always run into that person that will never accept who you are no matter how "palatable" you attempt to make yourself. No matter how many shavings of yourself you lose trying desperately to smooth out the edges to please other people. No matter how much you try to conform.

So.. I've been reminded of something: to be myself. No matter how much I have to kick and claw and bite and gnash, nothing is more important than being myself. Nothing is more important than never losing myself for the illusion of acceptance from people who will never be convinced anyway.

Nothing is more important than never losing my sparkle, one could say. But perhaps that's a little cheesy.

And to anybody that can't publicly celebrate, to people that have to stay closeted for any reason, whether you're in a country that'll kill you for it or a household that'll leave you homeless for it or maybe you're just simply not ready yet, as I've said before; know that you being alive as a queer person is a radical protest in of itself to those who would have it otherwise.

I love you so much. Happy pride <3

[theladyragnell]

Thoughts on Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire

Sometimes I watch a movie and just have to say some words about it while I try to sort it out in my head, and I watched this yesterday and now am thinking through it!

I will get to a some bullet points in a moment, but from the tenor of conversations when I went into the tag looking for gifsets, I am going to be very clear and say that I do not have a horse in the Zack Snyder race. I am not a Film Person, I know who is directing maybe 5% of the movies that I watch, I'm not going to get involved in any Snyder Discourse, thank you.

CW for this post and also the film for attempted rape.

By far the best thing for me in this movie is that there were multiple times when I thought to myself, "I know exactly what quip this movie is about to make to ruin the sincerity of this moment," and then, consistently, it didn't. I love quips and banter, but the trend for having those without sincerity behind them has really been wearing on me these past few years. Rebel Moon went a little too far in the other direction of taking itself Very Seriously for me, but it was a bit of a breath of fresh air that it MEANT what it was saying.

By far the worst thing for me in this movie was the two scenes of threatened rape. The first was brutal and so obvious as to be unnecessary, with the soldiers and Sam, there are a thousand things they could have done to get Kora motivated that weren't that and still they chose it. At least, though, they took that one seriously. It's just that then they followed that up with "it's at least slightly humorous when the threat comes from an alien who is sexually harassing a man instead of a woman, right?" and the answer is nope! It isn't! The fact that every attempted rapist in this movie dies violently within five minutes of threatening it, including the "humorous" one, doesn't change that it's lazy, shitty storytelling. Do better.

This would have been better as a limited series. Maybe I'll change my mind when the next part(s?) airs, but nothing had the space to breathe, and the fact that it's just part one of one movie makes it feel unfinished and weird. I think it would have felt more like the first in a duology/trilogy, weirdly, if they'd finished the flashback backstory infodumps here? It's pretty obvious where the rest of Kora's backstory is going to go, the point that it almost doesn't need saying, but it should have gone here for precisely that reason. Closing that loop would have fixed a lot of things. And it would have been easy to make time for it by removing EITHER OR BOTH OF THE THREATENED SEXUAL ASSAULTS.

There are a lot of elements here that I really like. Lots of interesting bits of worldbuilding and fun visuals and worldbuliding THROUGH visuals, which always brings me joy. The warriors we pick up throughout the movie are interesting (the moment of pure joy that is that griffin ride! (I know it's not a griffin. I simply do not care)), and the moment with Sam and the robot and the flower crown was a highlight of the film for me. It's just that none of them really had the space to flourish! They were introduced with the feeling that we were already supposed to recognize them, which can be pulled off but wasn't here. Even one or two bits more establishing them as characters would have helped, and particularly I'm going to say that if you're going to sell me on General Titus as a brilliant strategic mind, he should have ordered someone into a better strategic position in that last battle. Even once would have helped.

Costumes overall were very fun, except for on Veldt and specifically with our main characters! Everybody else is dressed for a Space Adventure but Kora and Gunnar are just wearing, like. A tank top and pants. A henley and pants. Kora has her cloak, at least, but we can do better, I feel. I also take some issue with Spaceship Design, a combination of Too Dark and Meh Design means that I was often confused about what ship we were seeing until we saw who was on it.

Overall I kept comparing this to Jupiter Ascending and finding it wanting? Both are sincere, but Jupiter Ascending is joyfully so. They're both tropey space fantasy that throw you into a new world without much orientation to it and expect you to care about a lot of new people and factions, but Jupiter Ascending lets its heroine be an audience surrogate who is also being introduced to all of these things. Obviously they are trying to do very different things, but they use similar trappings to do them, and Jupiter Ascending does a more effective job, at least for me, of making me care about this new world I'm dropped into.

(Sigh. Look. I did not want this to turn into "soooo, he sure did file the numbers off his Star Wars pitch, huh." I'm not going to make larger commentary on that, BUT I will say that a lot of my problems with this movie are problems that I have with some (SOME) books that are by fannish authors who filed off serial numbers instead of starting from scratch. And that is the big difference that for fanfic, or a new entry in a well-known franchise, the audience comes in already caring about your world and characters. Even if they're new characters, or a new setting in the world, there's a level of pre-investment. And this movie has the problem of having made a new world and characters that COULD be compelling on their own, that AREN'T actually just remade characters and worlds ... but by assuming that we're coming to them pre-invested, it makes itself feel more like fanfic with the serial numbers filed off.)

In conclusion, if I had a nickel for every time one of Les Amis from the 2012 Les Mis movie played an evil lavishly dressed space emperor with a weird relationship to the movie's heroine, I would have two nickels, which isn't many, but it's weird that it happened twice.

[daemon-in-my-head]

I saw some posts about how about there is apparently a very vocal group of people who insist that enver gortash only likes monsters??? literally never saw someone say this as some written truth. I feel like it was related to your post about enver being monster lover but that was not something that hahaha enver only likes the slayer form and hates all others, so whats the issue??? people are trying to stir up some shit that does not exist

I looked at some of their blogs and there seems to be some same people who got their panties in a twist at discord of the potential of enver liking men and calling the dark urge "them" during act2-act3 transition.. now they also hate thought of enver liking non humanoid durge lol

The 'Gorty can't be gay' bit I know, saw that a lot back when Slithering Wet Malice got removed, but people have issues with him referring to Durge as them? That's likely just Larian making their and Isaacs's life easier by recording one line instead of 3 and messing with the dialogue tree even more. Would've expected people to be happy about that if anything but alas, the Internet is interneting again today.

Anyway, regarding the main topic, I think I know which post you mean. Honestly, idk if it was related to the Monster Lover post I made earlier, but I just choose to decide it isn't. If anything, I'm a very vocal Gortash x my elven little gremlins shipper, which is even more of a minority if we're being fair. Justice for elven Durges, elf durge tag literally doesn't even fucking exist on Ao3. Idek if there's any more high elf x Gorty ships being written for, if there are, I've never seen them. That's the real takeaway, the lack of elf love.

But I definitely have, during my online life as an avid Durgetash and Gortash lover, seen some discourse about how default Dragonborn x Gortash is beastiality and how any ship besides Gortash and default Dragonborn is invalid. So these posts exist and gain some traction, at least for a while.

Regardless, I think any durgetash ship is valid, and if anything, we need more of them cuz like, we all agree they had something. Whether it is default Dragonborn, a hot elven hunk or a cute tiefling lady. Gortash would fuck any quasi-deity that has an ounce of self-control and swings his way.

Also he'd fuck the Slayer. He's nasty and an aspirin tyrant, of course he'd fuck the avatar of a deity. And that's valid, cuz if you get the chance, fucking use it cuz you won't get it again. Can't change my mind about it. Live life and let em live, all that.