#i have a hard time with all the acronyms | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mostlysignssomeportents · 4 months ago

Text

You should be using an RSS reader

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

No matter how hard we all wish it were otherwise, the sad fact is that there aren't really individual solutions to systemic problems. For example: your personal diligence in recycling will have no meaningful impact on the climate emergency.

I get it. People write to me all the time, they say, "What can I change about my life to fight enshittification, or, at the very least, to reduce the amount of enshittification that I, personally, experience?"

It's frustrating, but my general answer is, "Join a movement. Get involved with a union, with EFF, with the FSF. Tell your Congressional candidate to defend Lina Khan from billionaire Dem donors who want her fired. Do something systemic."

There's very little you can do as a consumer. You're not going to shop your way out of monopoly capitalism. Now that Amazon has destroyed most of the brick-and-mortar and digital stores out of business, boycotting Amazon often just means doing without. The collective action problem of leaving Twitter or Facebook is so insurmountable that you end up stuck there, with a bunch of people you love and rely on, who all love each other, all hate the platform, but can't agree on a day and time to leave or a destination to leave for and so end up stuck there.

I've been experiencing some challenging stuff in my personal life lately and yesterday, I just found myself unable to deal with my usual podcast fare so I tuned into the videos from the very last XOXO, in search of uplifting fare:

https://www.youtube.com/@xoxofest

I found it. Talks by Dan Olson, Cabel Sasser, Ed Yong and many others, especially Molly White:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTaeVVAvk-c

Molly's talk was so, so good, but when I got to her call to action, I found myself pulling a bit of a face:

But the platforms do not exist without the people, and there are a lot more of us than there are of them. The platforms have installed themselves in a position of power, but they are also vulnerable…

Are the platforms really that vulnerable? The collective action problem is so hard, the switching costs are so high – maybe the fact that "there's a lot more of us than there are of them" is a bug, not a feature. The more of us there are, the thornier our collective action problem and the higher the switching costs, after all.

And then I had a realization: the conduit through which I experience Molly's excellent work is totally enshittification-proof, and the more I use it, the easier it is for everyone to be less enshittified.

This conduit is anti-lock-in, it works for nearly the whole internet. It is surveillance-resistant, far more accessible than the web or any mobile app interface. It is my secret super-power.

It's RSS.

RSS (one of those ancient internet acronyms with multiple definitions, including, but not limited to, "Really Simple Syndication") is an invisible, automatic way for internet-connected systems to public "feeds." For example, rather than reloading the Wired homepage every day and trying to figure out which stories are new (their layout makes this very hard to do!), you can just sign up for Wired's RSS feed, and use an RSS reader to monitor the site and preview new stories the moment they're published. Wired pushes about 600 words from each article into that feed, stripped of the usual stuff that makes Wired nearly impossible to read: no 20-second delay subscription pop-up, text in a font and size of your choosing. You can follow Wired's feed without any cookies, and Wired gets no information about which of its stories you read. Wired doesn't even get to know that you're monitoring its feed.

I don't mean to pick on Wired here. This goes for every news source I follow – from CNN to the New York Times. But RSS isn't just good for the news! It's good for everything. Your friends' blogs? Every blogging platform emits an RSS feed by default. You can follow every one of them in your reader.

Not just blogs. Do you follow a bunch of substackers or other newsletters? They've all got RSS feeds. You can read those newsletters without ever registering in the analytics of the platforms that host them. The text shows up in black and white (not the sadistic, 8-point, 80% grey-on-white type these things all default to). It is always delivered, without any risk of your email provider misclassifying an update as spam:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/10/dead-letters/

Did you know that, by default, your email sends information to mailing list platforms about your reading activity? The platform gets to know if you opened the message, and often how far along you've read in it. On top of that, they get all the private information your browser or app leaks about you, including your location. This is unbelievably gross, and you get to bypass all of it, just by reading in RSS.

Are your friends too pithy for a newsletter, preferring to quip on social media? Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to get an RSS feed from Insta/FB/Twitter, but all those new ones that have popped up? They all have feeds. You can follow any Mastodon account (which means you can follow any Threads account) via RSS. Same for Bluesky. That also goes for older platforms, like Tumblr and Medium. There's RSS for Hacker News, and there's a sub-feed for the comments on every story. You can get RSS feeds for the Fedex, UPS and USPS parcels you're awaiting, too.

Your local politician's website probably has an RSS feed. Ditto your state and national reps. There's an RSS feed for each federal agency (the FCC has a great blog!).

Your RSS reader lets you put all these feeds into folders if you want. You can even create automatic folders, based on keywords, or even things like "infrequently updated sites" (I follow a bunch of people via RSS who only update a couple times per year – cough, Danny O'Brien, cough – and never miss a post).

Your RSS reader doesn't (necessarily) have an algorithm. By default, you'll get everything as it appears, in reverse-chronological order.

Does that remind you of anything? Right: this is how social media used to work, before it was enshittified. You can single-handedly disenshittify your experience of virtually the entire web, just by switching to RSS, traveling back in time to the days when Facebook and Twitter were more interested in showing you the things you asked to see, rather than the ads and boosted content someone else would pay to cram into your eyeballs.

Now, you sign up to so many feeds that you're feeling overwhelmed and you want an algorithm to prioritize posts – or recommend content. Lots of RSS readers have some kind of algorithm and recommendation system (I use News, which offers both, though I don't use them – I like the glorious higgeldy-piggeldy of the undifferentiated firehose feed).

But you control the algorithm, you control the recommendations. And if a new RSS reader pops up with an algorithm you're dying to try, you can export all the feeds you follow with a single click, which will generate an OPML file. Then, with one click, you can import that OPML file into any other RSS reader in existence and all your feeds will be seamlessly migrated there. You can delete your old account, or you can even use different readers for different purposes.

You can access RSS in a browser or in an app on your phone (most RSS readers have an app), and they'll sync up, so a story you mark to read later on your phone will be waiting for you the next time you load up your reader in a browser tab, and you won't see the same stories twice (unless you want to, in which case you can mark them as unread).

RSS basically works like social media should work. Using RSS is a chance to visit a utopian future in which the platforms have no power, and all power is vested in publishers, who get to decide what to publish, and in readers, who have total control over what they read and how, without leaking any personal information through the simple act of reading.

And here's the best part: every time you use RSS, you bring that world closer into being! The collective action problem that the publishers and friends and politicians and businesses you care about is caused by the fact that everyone they want to reach is on a platform, so if they leave the platform, they'll lose that community. But the more people who use RSS to follow them, the less they'll depend on the platform.

Unlike those largely useless, performative boycotts of widely used platforms, switching to RSS doesn't require that you give anything up. Not only does switching to RSS let you continue to follow all the newsletters, webpages and social media accounts you're following now, it makes doing so better: more private, more accessible, and less enshittified.

Switching to RSS lets you experience just the good parts of the enshitternet, but that experience is delivered in manner that the new, good internet we're all dying for.

My own newsletter is delivered in fulltext via RSS. If you're reading this as a Mastodon or Twitter thread, on Tumblr or on Medium, or via email, you can get it by RSS instead:

https://pluralistic.net/feed/

Don't worry about which RSS reader you start with. It literally doesn't matter. Remember, you can switch readers with two clicks and take all the feeds you've subscribed to with you! If you want a recommendation, I have nothing but praise for Newsblur, which I've been paying $2/month for since 2011 (!):

https://newsblur.com/

Subscribing to feeds is super-easy, too: the links for RSS feeds are invisibly embedded in web-pages. Just paste the URL of a web-page into your RSS reader's "add feed" box and it'll automagically figure out where the feed lives and add it to your subscriptions.

It's still true that the new, good internet will require a movement to overcome the collective action problems and the legal barriers to disenshittifying things. Almost nothing you do as an individual is going to make a difference.

But using RSS will! Using RSS to follow the stuff that matters to you will have an immediate, profoundly beneficial impact on your own digital life – and it will appreciably, irreversibly nudge the whole internet towards a better state.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/#read-receipts-are-you-kidding-me-seriously-fuck-that-noise

#pluralistic #rss #xml #standards #disenshittification #big tech #surveillance #accessibility

1K notes · View notes

happy74827 · 6 months ago

Text

One Call Away

[Wade Wilson x Female!Reader]

Synopsis: During one of his "jobs," Deadpool gets a call from his favorite gal [GIF Creds: jdsheart]

WC: 1970

Category: Fluff, Major Comedy {TW: Deadpool’s Humor/Nonfiltered Personality}

This man is so hard to write. I’m always stressing the noggin when it comes to planning and plotting 😔

『••✎••』

"And away we go..."

One neck crack and a couple of hip twists later, he was off like Aladdin and his fucktoy carpet, scaling the building similarly to a chameleon on LSD.

The only thing that was missing was some epic music.

He'd been chasing this baddie around the city for almost two days now. Some big-shot mob boss with ties to Hydra, or the Mafia, or the Yakuza, or some other three-letter-acronym organization. It was hard to keep track of them all at this point. They were all the same, except for the name.

They all had their own agenda.

Kill him, keep him prisoner, pay him off...

Wade never cared enough to listen because it was always the same. He just got hired to do the dirty work, and the pay was good.

The killing was better.

This one, however, was particularly good at eluding him. He'd been trying to get his hands on this man for a few days now. It wasn't as though he was trying to be stealthy or anything, either. He'd walked right up to his front door, knocked, and was greeted with a spray of machine gun bullets.

So, the usual.

But then the guy ran and didn't stop. It was like the fucking Roadrunner met Sonic the Hedgehog, and they decided to fuck around and find out.

Wade was getting real sick and tired of being a Roadrunner, too. He had a reputation to uphold. He wasn't known as the Merc with the Mouth for nothing. He was supposed to be the one doing the running and the killing.

Not the other way around.

Finally, finally, he managed to reach the roof where the guy was currently taking cover behind a small brick shack. The sun was rising, but it was still dark, and there were a couple of floodlights shining on the rooftop. It made him think of the night he'd had that heart-to-heart with Blind Al, even though all she really wanted was for him to bring her some of that special brownie mix.

What a night that had been.

But anyway, this monologue is starting to get too long, and we should probably move things along, eh?

Right.

So, the baddie.

His name was something long and non-English.

Salvatore, or Santino, or Salvation... Whatever the fuck it was, it didn't really matter. What mattered was that it was time to make him dead.

He stepped around the corner and was met with a spray of bullets, all of which lodged themselves into his Kevlar vest.

"Oh, come on!" he yelled over the sound of the gunfire. "This is real leather, you know. I'm tired of all the offscreen sewing and shit."

When the spray finally ended, he took a moment to catch his breath.

"…ow," he whispered to himself.

"You shouldn't have followed me here," the man said.

"Yeah, whatever," Deadpool replied. "Look, I'll make this easy for you. You drop down and give me fifty, and I'll let you keep that hideous mustache you're sporting."

The man's eyes widened in surprise.

"It's not that bad, is it?"

"Yes, yes it is," Deadpool assured him. "You got a squirrel living in it or something?"

"It's just a little bit of gray, you dick," the man argued. "What about you? What's with the mask? Are you hiding a mustache under there, too, or something? Maybe some acne scars?"

Deadpool shook his head and stepped forward, his guns drawn.

"Don't come any closer!"

"You know, this would be much more intimidating if you didn't look like a cartoon mouse."

"Stop it with the mustache!"

"Alright, alright," Deadpool said. "Enough with the mustache. But what is it about your hairline? I can't put my finger on it."

The man sighed in exasperation and pulled out his pistol, aiming it right at Deadpool's face.

"Hey now, don't point that at me," Deadpool scolded him. "That's not a very nice thing to do."

He ignored him and pulled the trigger, a loud boom ringing out as the bullet fired. It whizzed by him but missed its mark.

"You really are a dick," He grumbled before aiming his gun right between the man's eyes. And he was going to shoot, honest.

He really was.

But then his phone rang, and he was well-reminded of the current song playing through his head.

I'm a buff baby that can dance like a man. I can shake-ah my fanny, I can shake-ah my can!

Needless to say, he was distracted.

He lowered his gun and looked down at his pocket, where his phone was still ringing and still vibrating against his leg.

"Shit, hold that thought," He said to the guy, and he holstered his gun.

"Wh-what the hell are you doing?!"

Deadpool put his finger up to shush him before pulling his phone out of his pocket to answer it.

If you're an evil witch, I’ll punch you for fu—

"Heyyyy," he said in a sing-songy voice, "you've reached the phone sex hotline. For kinks and fetishes, press one. For booty calls, press two. For your favorite mercenary, press three."

"Ey, pendejo—" His opponent started, but he cut him off by snapping and raising his finger.

"Cut it, Tuco Salamanca. Breaking Bad called and wants its meth-cooking mustache back."

"Wha-I-you-"

"Anyways, this is your favorite merc speaking. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?"

"Is this a bad time?"

Wade's eyes widened in shock, and his jaw dropped open when he heard her voice on the other end of the line.

"Baby girl! Is that you? Oh, how I've missed your voice. It's like hearing an angel, or an angelic chorus, or a whole bunch of angels, but you're the most important one. Like, the lead singer or something."

"I literally saw you last night." Your voice was always drenched with the most amazing kind of sarcasm, and he'd missed it.

"And?"

"It's only been a few hours."

"And?"

"That's a short amount of time."

"And?"

You sighed, but he knew you weren't really annoyed.

"Anyways, you sounded busy," you continued, "so I'll just let you go."

"What?! No! Don't hang up!" He shouted into the receiver. "I've only fiddled with my pistols! Nothing interesting is happening right now!"

"Your pistols, huh?" You asked a hint of mischief in your voice.

"Well, yeah. They're the most important part of the mission, you know."

In the corner of his eye, he could see his target making his way towards the edge of the building. Quickly and efficiently, without dropping his attention from his conversation with you, he lifted his gun and fired a shot at the man's knee.

"Ah, fuck!" the man screamed in pain. "My knee!"

"Hey! Language!" Deadpool scolded him. "The lady of the house is listening!"

"Lady of the- what the fuck?!"

"I said language, you mustachioed rat!"

"Mustachioed rat?" You asked.

"Sorry, babe," he replied. "You know how excited I get when Downtown Abbey is on."

“There’s gunshots in Downtown Abbey?"

"Gunshots? Oh, no, no. That was… uh, a car alarm. Yeah, the neighbor's car alarm was going off."

"Uh-huh," you said, not sounding very convinced. And, of course, that was right around the time the guy's gun went off again, this time hitting him square in the shoulder. It made the phone fall out of his hand and clatter onto the ground, but the call was still connected.

"Dammit!" He yelled, looking at the fresh blood dripping down his arm. "That's gonna take forever to heal!"

"Who are you talking to?" The man demanded, his gun still aimed at Deadpool's face. "You're working with someone?"

"Hey, now, I don't remember giving you permission to talk," Deadpool told him, holding his bloody arm up to his face. "Look, I've gotta call you back, babe. I know it's been so heartbreakingly long—"

"Again, only a few hours," you said.

"—but duty calls. Love you, bye."

"Love you, bye."

With that, the line disconnected.

"Ugh," he groaned, his heart aching for the loss of your sweet voice. "I miss her already."

"Ey," his opponent growled, drawing his attention. He started speaking in rapid-fire Spanish, which Deadpool didn't really understand, but he didn't have to. The guy was just ranting and raving.

"Alright, alright, chill," Deadpool said. "Just calm down. It’ll all be over soon, little buddy."

"I am not little! I am a giant!" The guy protested, and Wade could practically see the steam coming out of his ears. "And I will not chill!"

"Well, can't argue with that, I guess," Deadpool said with a shrug, and he took aim. But before he could pull the trigger, the guy was running again.

"Hey, what did I tell you about running?!" He yelled, but his voice fell on deaf ears as the guy reached the ledge.

"I am a giant!"

"No, you're a giant asshat!"

"I will not be bested by some masked buffoon!"

"Buff? Me? Why, I never!"

"You're the biggest asshole I've ever met!"

"You know what? I am a big ass! A big, round, bubbly ass." He paused for a second. "Hey, what's your favorite flavor?"

"Fuck you, you red-clad imbecile!"

"You know, I'd ask you out to dinner first, but we're kinda past that now."

"Argh!"

"Alright, enough stalling," Deadpool said. "It's time to end this."

"Yes," the guy said, turning his gun back on Deadpool. "It is."

Of course, Deadpool being the smart-ass he was, he'd already taken a step to the side. As the bullet whizzed past him, he reached for his gun.

"Now, where did I put that thing? Oh, there it is."

He aimed the gun and fired, and the man fell back onto the ground. The bullet hit him right in the middle of his forehead, his blood splattering all over the concrete.

"Ha ha! Fatality. Deadpool wins!" He said, his voice taking on the deep, grounded tone of the narrator from Mortal Kombat. "Flawless Victory."

He stood over the body for a few seconds, reveling in his victory, before he felt the presence of another.

The gun on his right side got ripped from its holster, and the barrel was aimed back into his face, as it always seems to be.

But, he already sensed it was coming, so his fingers wrapped around his other and aimed that right in the golden spot… and let’s just say, The Golden Girls was a little less golden and a lot more crimson.

"Wow, this has got to be a record," He said as he bent down to stare at the new one’s anguish. "Two dead ugly mustaches in the same day. You can call me Sweeney Todd because shit… I just shaved you the fuck up."

He didn’t give the poor bastard a chance to even whimper before he fired another two shots into the man's head. All in all, this had been the easiest payday he'd had in a while.

He picked up his cell phone and slipped it back into its pocket before bending down and scooping up the mustache man's pistol.

"Ooh, lookie here, a nice, shiny new pistol," he said to himself. "Just what I've always wanted. Well, I don't actually need it. It's not like I have any other holes in my body, but you know what they say. The more the merrier."

He stuffed the gun in his holster and turned around, heading back the way he'd come.

"Time to get back to the good stuff," he said. "I have a date with my favorite girl."

He hopped up onto the ledge and looked down, his eyes locking on the window to his apartment.

And when he arrived, bloody and battered, you could only smile while holding up little ole Mary Puppins in all her drooling glory.

God, how he missed his girls.

2K notes · View notes

northopalshore · 6 months ago

Text

Union persona chart observations

₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑

.₊ ˚ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ . ₊๋ ‧₊ ˚ ⊹꒰ঌ ✦໒꒱ ༘. .‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚

╭──────────.★..─╮

Union asteriod (1585)

╰─..★.──────────╯

Signifies circumstances in which you'll meet your future spouse. It also tells you events or changes that will happen within your life when meeting them.

All observations only apply to union person charts. How to calculate?

acronyms used: FS (future spouse), FTF (face to face ), w (with), ° (degrees)

Stellium in 1st house/ aries

• love at first sight

• meeting at sports events

• meeting during a competition

• business events

• meeting while putting yourself out there

• social events

Stellium in 3rd & 11th house/ aquarius & gemini

• meeting online/through friends

• meeting through social media

• texting/communicating a lot

• meeting through social circles

• your friend could share their video/profile to you

Union (1° aries) in 4th house

• they'll come to your house

• they'll come to you if you live in different countries to meet ftf for the 1st time

Saturn (16° cancer) in aries 5th house

• can't go on dates/out together often

• difficult to spend time together (busy w work)

• spend time at home together

Pluto in 1st house

• they will reshape your identity

• transformating the way you express yourself

• when they come in your life, they're bringing a whole lot of upgrades to your self esteem

Union (14° taurus) in scorpio 12th thouse

• meeting ftf in a foreign land

• might be long distance for a while

• meeting at their place 👀

• meeting at a restaurant or somewhere fancy

Sun (26° Taurus) in Libra 11th house

• meeting online/through friends

• meeting because of friends

• sitting in bed scrolling through tiktok lol

Venus in aries/1°, 13°, 25° 1st house

• they'll bring luxury, romance and beauty into your life

• love at first sight!

• they might make the first move on you

Pluto (Capricorn/10°, 22°)

• they'll bring a lot of new changes into your identity i.e improve status, financial stability

• brings more passion and luxury

Eros (pisces/12°, 24°) in 1st house

• intoxicating romantic/dreamy lust surrounds your connection

Uranus (7° libra) in pisces 4th house

• might change your living situation

• long-distance/they live far from you

• change within living status

• meet online suddenly while at home/out w friends

• sudden meeting, you won't expect it at all

Saturn in 9th house

• long-distance for sure

Neptune in aquarius 3rd house

speaking honestly from the heart

talking through the phone

online conversations

dreamy conversations

maybe putting up a front at first

Instantly clicking with eachother

Feels like talking to someone you knew for years

Chiron in Capricorn 2nd house

might have issues financially ( doesn't necessarily mean you'll go broke being w this person. If you are long-distance for example, it might be hard to buy plane tickets or other means of transportation often because of how expensive it is/can get )

financial situation may be changing because of eachother

Moon in 10th/6th house

• might have met them when you have a lot on your plate

• wanting to involve them in your work/career

• wanting to show them off to other people

• might want to work together

• they'll comfort you from your work/routine

Psyche (16) in 12th house

• you might have dreamt of this person before

• feeling déjà vu when you meet them

• feeling connected to them spiritually

North node in 5th house

• meeting when you're having the time of your life

• meant to have a lot of fun with this person

• meeting at a party

• gaining a burst of creativity

• you might collaborate with this person in an artistic pursuit i.e music, theatre

• feeling like a child again

Extra notes ♡

I found that similarites between your Solar return chart and Union persona chart can indicate the chances of meeting your FS!

ex: My aunt had venus & pluto in the 1st house in her SRC, she also have these planets in the 1st house in her union persona chart. She met her husband that year!

*** entertainment only, reader discretion is advised***

° ﾟ ꒰ঌ ✦໒꒱ ༘. ﾟ ꒰ঌ ✦໒꒱ ༘. ﾟ ꒰ঌ ✦໒꒱ ༘. ° ꒰ঌ ✦໒꒱ ༘°

Thank you for reading !

@northopalshore

₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑

#Union persona chart #persona chart #astrology community #astrology observations #astrology content #astrology blog #astrology #Union chart observations #Northopalshore #future spouse #astrology ramblings #astrology notes #astro observations

562 notes · View notes

mypoisonedvine · 1 year ago

Text

𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙯𝙫𝙤𝙪𝙨 | helmut zemo x reader

@radmerrmaid requested a drabble with zemo and enemies to lovers. what happened is a whole oneshot. don't ask me how.

word count: 4.3k

warnings: DUBCON SMUT, enemies to lovers/hate sex, rough sex including hair pulling, degradation and name calling, restraint, a slap, and overstimulation, touchstarved reader, unspecified age gap, very mild violence (hand-to-hand combat and a mention of a previous gunshot wound), kidnapping, soft!dark zemo?

"It must drive you crazy," he purred, wrapping his fingers carefully around the crystal glass before picking it up. "Seeing me like this."

He smirked around his sip of bourbon— at least you figured it was bourbon— as you tried to keep a poker face. You didn't like the idea of being seen as crazy at all, let alone because of him. "Like what?" you pressed instead of admitting to it.

"Free," he shrugged. "Out of that cage you worked so hard to keep me in."

"Getting you there was my job," you corrected with a frown. "If keeping you there was mine, too... you'd still be in it."

He laughed lightly, if briefly, and shook his head. "Still so prideful. You're young, and you have something to prove."

"I have nothing to prove to you," you asserted, shifting your weight on your hips— it was sort of uncomfortable to keep standing, but it felt wrong to take a seat even though he'd offered you one when you entered. It seemed like a sign of trust. Not that he should be surprised by you acting aloof, when he'd offered to meet you here without even explaining why.

"No, not to me," he agreed, setting the glass down again and taking one step closer to you. "To your friends at the CIA."

He seemed to emphasize every letter of the acronym, a playful condescension in his tone. "Friends is a funny way to say it," you rolled your eyes, "like I do what I do because I want to be popular, and not because I want to keep the world safe."

"Safe from me," he added, "the evil terrorist. Right?"

You ignored his question, not really wanting to dignify it with an answer— or start some spiel about how you don't really believe in evil people, just actions that merit punishment, bla bla bla...

"Yet, you couldn't keep yourself safe from me," he went on, raising one eyebrow as he examined you. "Or, you can't. Here you are— alone, as I asked."

Obviously, you had tried to imagine some way you could have back-up for this, even just tell someone where you were going. But this was Zemo's turf, and he had eyes and ears all over the city... he would know if you tried to turn this into a sting. Instead, you only hoped to gain some sort of information tonight that you could use to track him down when he tried to run again.

"You're more trusting than I suspected," he smirked, gaze darkening a bit. "Or, more desperate."

"Maybe the right word is 'curious'," you proposed. "Clearly, you have something to discuss with me."

"I do," he nodded. "A question to ask you-- one I feel only you can answer."

You waited for him to ask it, but even just the way he sucked in a sharp breath made you realize he was going to bore you with some preamble first— just like him, really..

"You see, after evading you so many times—"

"Narrowly," you interjected.

"Maybe some times," he shrugged, smiling, "other times, I think I had plenty of room. But that's besides the point... the point is, here I am. I've probably bested you for the last time—"

"That's not—"

"Ah ah, no interrupting, please," he scolded gently. "I know you know that if I can keep a low profile here, your organization has no hope of getting me back. I simply have too many resources, and your superiors know my risk is relatively low. No?"

Again, you refused to answer, but the way you crossed your arms tighter and glanced away seemed to serve as enough of an agreement.

"So that's it— I'm free. It should be so simple," he sighed. "So, why am I disappointed?"

You furrowed your brows, staring at him in confusion. You were waiting for him to say something to give context to that, but he didn't— he only waited for your response with an earnest look. "Why... are you asking me that?" you wondered.

"Because you're the person who knows me best."

You'd never thought of it like that, and it was such a jarring idea that you began to shake your head almost instantly. "No, that... that doesn't seem right..."

"I figured you would take pride in it," Zemo grinned. "You tracked me for years, studied me, learned my habits... I had to do the same to escape you. I must know you better than anyone else."

"That's ridiculous," you scoffed. "What are you trying to say?"

"I just hoped you could tell me why I feel this way— why I feel so wrong about never seeing you again."

Your chest tightened. You couldn't bear to meet his gaze; your stomach felt sick and strange and you just wanted to run out of there, but what good would that do? You needed him to tell you something you could use, one last chance to catch him before it was too late.

"If I didn't know you so well, and hate you so much," he went on, "I wouldn't have the energy to keep running. And me? I'm your biggest case. Sometimes you act like I'm your only case. What is it about me, that you need to win against me so badly?"

"It's not you," you insisted instantly, "it's me— it's who I am."

"Maybe that's how it started," he suggested, "but you can't spend so long hunting someone without becoming a little obsessed with them— trust me, I would know."

You grimaced at him. "You— you can't be serious."

"Who will you be without me to chase?" he pressed anyways, matching some of your anger as he stepped closer again— almost too close. "Without this... passion, between us?"

"Don't step any closer," you warned.

"Or what?" he challenged. "No weapons, no soldiers— it's just the two of us here."

He stepped up again, nearly pressed against you, and you couldn't let him get away with that... you had to prove you meant what you said. You weren't armed, and you knew he wasn't someone you wanted to go up against hand-to-hand... but at the same time, it was one thing you'd always secretly wished for. A chance to wage this war the way it should be, the way it had always been: personal.

You stepped back at the same time as you swung your fist, giving yourself just enough room to gain momentum— but you weren't quite fast enough, and he blocked you. From then on it was fast, instinctual: he was stronger but you were quicker, and on the offensive.

You never quite landed a hit, but neither did he— which felt like a good sign, until you realized he wasn't really giving it his all. Dodging and blocking, yes, but he wasn't trying to win, just keep you at bay.

"Come on!" you yelled in frustration as you finally got in a kick to his chest, forcing him to stumble back and nearly fall. "What are you doing, pitying me?"

"Hardly," he wheezed, a little affected by the hit, which made you smirk. "But I don't want to hurt you."

"Please," you rolled your eyes, putting your fists up and stabilizing your posture. "If we're going to do this, let's do it right."

He came at you, and finally, there it was... his real strength. That passion he'd been talking about, you could feel it.

Both of you were flushed and panting, exhilarated by the sport of it all. Unfortunately, right as you thought you'd found your moment— the weak spot in his form— it was a trap. When you moved in closer, he grabbed you and spun you around, holding your back against his chest so tight that you struggled to breathe.

But he didn't shove you down, didn't put you in a chokehold, didn't even threaten you or gloat about pinning you. Instead, he only held you tighter, and soothed you with a gentle 'shh' in your ear when you tried to squirm out of his grasp.

"Wh-what are you doing?" you whispered, your whole body shaking as he ran his tongue up your neck.

"If it's curiosity that brought you here," he purred in response, "I can satisfy that."

"You can't be fffucking serious," you hissed, though a moan tainted your words as one of his hands ran down your body, the other still effortlessly holding you still.

"I know you so well," he went on, a deep growl in his voice as your eyes fell shut. "I know how lonely you must be. That's one of the things we share."

His hand was heavy and warm against your leg, even through your pants— and it was moving higher, petting your inner thigh as you shivered. Though your mind longed to resist him, your body was desperate for any affection; because he was right, you were lonely. You couldn’t think of the last time someone had touched you like this, and yet you remembered it didn’t usually feel this good. His touch was precise and careful and teasing— not too awkward but not too cocky. And the heat of him wrapped around you, his hot breath on your shoulder, his wider form encompassing you… how could it feel so good?

“And I know you’ve thought about this,” he added. “That’s something we share, too.”

He couldn’t know that— he might be rich and resourceful, but he wasn’t omniscient. If you were any more logical in that moment, you would’ve realized he was just guessing and denied it. But his teeth brushing over your pulse didn’t exactly provoke your critical thinking skills. “Fuck, I— fuck,” you choked out instead, shuddering when he chuckled proudly.

“You might hate me, draga, but you need me,” he explained. “Your mind needs me, just as much as your body does.”

Something about the way his fingers traced up your side, teasing your breast before pulling away right before getting to anything too exciting… it seemed to bring you back to reality, at least partially. You absolutely couldn’t do this— you couldn’t let him do this. “G-get off me,” you choked out, struggling against him again.

“That’s what you want?” he taunted.

��Get the fuck off me!” you yelped.

“Make me,” he challenged.

Bringing your foot down hard on top of his, he winced and you managed to break away, spinning around and shoving him back— he actually lost his balance that time, falling to the floor. You were ready to deliver a firm and swift kick between his legs, but rolled over and grabbed your leg while it was up, bringing you down to the floor with him.

He laughed breathlessly, sounding a little frustrated, as you flailed for purchase against the floor— only for him to grab your wrists and pin you down, positioning himself over you with a grin. His hair was shaken out of its style, hanging around his face which was flushed from exertion. “You keep me on my toes, I’ll give you that,” he offered. You tried to writhe again but he had you properly trapped now, with absolutely no way out.

“You wouldn’t,” you sneered incredulously.

“Wouldn’t what, dear?”

“You wouldn’t force yourself on me,” you completed.

He seemed a little surprised, hanging his head and shaking it. “Oh,” he breathed, “no, I wouldn’t.”

A little relieved, you started to catch your breath.

“I don’t need to.”

He brought his lips down to yours suddenly— the collision was almost too rough, and yet it was the only thing that made sense for the two of you. You groaned in protest yet submitted instantly, opening your mouth wide for his desperate and dominating kiss.

Your back arched up off the floor, and his weight seemed to sink down on top of you in response. Though you hated yourself for it, you spread your legs a bit, just enough for him to rest his hips between— and fuck, you could feel it. The hard, throbbing heat, you could feel it pressed against you and the most horrible moan was nearly lost to his lips.

He hummed back proudly, running his hands over your body, kissing you faster.

You were gasping for breath when he broke away, which only worsened when he latched onto your neck. “God, I hate you,” you blurted out, just to remind you both that if this was going to happen, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

“You hate me for all those times I embarrassed you?” he assumed, hands holding your waist and starting to slide up your shirt. “For when I eluded you, wasted your time, made a fool of you?”

“And that time you shot me.”

“I winged you,” he corrected— like that was any better.

He tugged your shirt up and you raised your arms, letting him slip it off; he spotted the scar right away, a line across your arm just under your shoulder. He cooed for a second before kissing it softly— too gentle a moment for you to let lie. You shoved his jacket back next, helping him slip it off his shoulders before pulling him down to kiss you again.

Your sports bra had a clasp in the front, it was a bit unique in that way, yet he had no trouble with it. Freeing your chest, he of course had to tease you a bit more— instead of groping your waiting breasts right away, he guided your arms down from where they held onto the back of his neck, lifting you up from the floor a bit so you could slide the garment off and toss it away.

When you laid back down, the floor was cold, but the hiss you let out was more a response to him rocking his hips against you, teasing you through these stupid remaining clothes. “You know why I hate you?” he returned as he started to unbutton your pants, even though you’d entirely forgotten that last part of the conversation.

Before he answered the question, he yanked your pants and underwear down to your thighs— and swiftly got his own out of the way. Your heart raced; you weren’t totally convinced this was really happening, not until he pushed into you in one painfully sudden thrust. You cried out, yet he took no mercy on you. He was ruthless, in fact.

Choking on your broken cries, you arched up off the floor again as he hammered into you, rage and relief and desperation evident in every movement. He had to hold your legs tightly just to keep you from sliding across the floor, which only ensured you took every stroke as deep as it could go— which was already too fucking deep.

“Say it,” he ordered, “tell me why I hate you.”

“I caught you,” you said— but you knew that would just make him angrier. Maybe that was kind of the idea.

Stopping just long enough to tug your pants the rest of the way off— and leaving you naked while he was still mostly dressed— he descended over you and looked right at you, far too close, with a rageful stare.

“You trapped me,” he corrected gruffly. “You played dirty.”

Before you had a chance to retort that all’s fair in love and war, he started to pound into you… harder and meaner than ever. You didn’t surprise yourself by crying out, considering how intense and nearly painful the feeling was, but you were a little confused that the word you said was a needy yes!

"Those years in prison," he snarled, "you could barely call it living, life in that place— you put me there. I thought every day about how you put me there."

He yanked your hair, making you whine loudly and exposing your neck for his lips and teeth to explore freely.

Finally, a hand latched onto your chest— a hot palm encompassing your breast and skilled fingers pinching lightly at your nipple. You couldn’t believe how composed he was through all this— in many ways, he wasn’t, but he seemed to be deliberate with every way he touched you and that was far more togetherness than you had.

You weren’t together at all, actually… something about the heat of the moment, the way your body responded to him, the way he glared at you… you could already feel tension building inside you. It wouldn’t be long, not if he kept going like this.

“I thought about you every fucking day, draga— that you were free, and I was trapped in that cell,” he growled. “You missed it, didn’t you? Chasing me.”

When you didn’t answer, he struck you across the face with the back of his hand; the shock of it made your walls clench on him, or at least you could blame it on that, but you had no way to explain the way you moaned a moment later.

He moved even faster, a sickening wet sound echoing through the room which you hated to acknowledge was your own body. “The worse I am to you, the wetter you get,” he noticed, smiling for just a moment. “What a filthy whore you are.”

“F-fuck you,” you stammered roughly.

“Actually, why don’t you?” he offered, grabbing you by the hips and rolling both of you over until he was on his back and you were straddling him. “Show me how bad you need it.”

As much as you wanted to not do what he told you, your hips were already moving— your body was on its own mission now, desperate for pleasure and friction and heat. Desperate for anything he would give. You whimpered as you grinded down on him, feeling his cock go so much deeper than you imagined was possible. “God,” you sobbed, tossing your head back and trying not to picture the way he must have been looking at you then.

His hands moved all over you, up your thighs and over your breasts, even wrapping around your neck once though they didn’t put on enough pressure to really choke you. “Pretty girl,” he praised darkly, making chills dance over your skin.

But when his hands settled on your hips, trying to guide you the way he wanted, you’d had enough; you grabbed him at the wrists and leaned forward, pinning his hands beside his head. He smirked up at you at first, but when you bounced your hips up and down while hovering over him, his eyes fell shut and he let out a deep groan. “I’m close,” you panted sharply.

“You can make yourself come like this?” he realized, sounding a little impressed. He opened his eyes and lifted his head for a moment to get a better look at you, before almost instantly giving up again and dropping his head back to the floor with a moan. “Fine, take it— just take what you need, draga.”

You held tighter to his wrists, mostly to keep yourself stable, and you felt his own hands ball into fists as you bounced faster. “Oh god, oh god, oh god— yes!” you yelped, legs quivering as it struck you. It seemed to come and go so quickly, perhaps because your strength gave out halfway through and you felt weak and paralyzed. It had been ages since you’d felt pleasure like that… actually you weren’t sure you’d ever felt pleasure like that, at least not so much all at once.

If only he were satisfied by that. With your grip weakened, he easily pulled his hands away to wrap his arms around you, holding you tightly and bucking his hips up into you rapidly.

“Fuck, wait, s-slow down,” you panted, whining weakly as he shook his head against the crook of your neck.

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” he purred. “I won’t be able to slow down at all until you’re full of come, draga. I want you dripping.”

You were all numb and limp now, so raw and sensitive inside— he put you on your back again and didn’t struggle at all to pull another orgasm from you. The third, though, was a little more hard fought: he rubbed your clit with an almost painful amount of pressure, watching through dark eyes and with a sneering grin as you screamed and shivered.

“Not too loud, darling,” he warned, “the people in the streets might hear you, the window’s still open—”

“Fuck!” you shouted, high-pitched and shaky, and he covered your mouth with his other hand as he laid on you with a growl.

“Just one more, then I’ll fill you,” he promised. “I only need to feel you come one more time. You want a rest, don’t you?”

You nodded weakly, biting down on your shaking lip.

“Then give me what I want.”

Your final cry was stuttered and helpless, every final ounce of energy in your body being taken from you by the final forced peak of ecstasy. But it wasn’t until you sighed out his name, barely audible under your breath, that he groaned against your neck and pumped himself deep inside you— every drop, leaving you full to the brim and then some.

You didn’t even have the strength to hold onto him, but he held you far too tightly as if to make up for it, and didn’t let you go for quite some time.

It had only gotten darker and colder out, and the draft through the window eventually danced over your sweat-slickened skin. When you shivered under him, Helmut lazily reached up to the couch nearby, pulling a throw blanket off of it and wrapping you both up in its soft embrace. You sighed with relief from both the cold air and the hard floor, not even realizing you were falling asleep.

Even when you woke up, you didn’t really notice that you’d been asleep— except that Helmut was gone, and the fireplace was going. Sitting up as little as you could get away with to look for him— since moving at all was quite a task given how tired you were— you heard him coming around the corner and turned back to look at him.

He was in a robe now, and carrying two crystal glasses of water. He smiled at you as he sat back down on the floor, laying beside you on the blanket and handing you your glass. “Figured you would need this soon enough,” he explained with a soft voice as you sipped carefully at the water. You weren’t really ready to talk to him yet, but you wanted to thank him for the water, so you just nodded and hoped that would get the point across.

The silence was probably only awkward for you— he seemed totally at peace, getting through most of his drink before setting it down on the floor and cuddling up to you again with a contented sigh.

You quietly drank the water, staring forward at the crackling fire, hardly believing where you were. It actually sounded sort of romantic on paper: a dashing and wealthy older man, a penthouse apartment in a foreign city, a fire, a blanket, a crystal glass…

If it weren’t for the wanted terrorist, it might make for a good little fantasy.

Yet, you set your glass aside and laid back down with him. He slipped an arm around you, holding your shoulder and petting it with his thumb, even kissing the side of your forehead sweetly. “I don’t understand how you can… be like that,” you whispered, glancing down at his arm crossed over your chest.

“Not everyone is so afraid of their feelings as you are,” he countered, and you snorted a little.

“I’m not afraid of my feelings,” you denied half-heartedly.

“You’re afraid of me, then?” he wondered.

“Not… quite…” you murmured your answer, not even sure yourself what you felt. “I mean, I drank the water, so—”

“I wondered if you would,” he laughed, “but I’m glad you did.”

“I mean, only half the glass, technically,” you noticed.

“Oh, don’t worry, you’ve had enough,” he shrugged.

“Enough?” you chuckled. “After that, half a glass of water is hardly enough. I won’t be recovered until I have a protein-heavy meal and probably a couple painkillers— if I wanna, you know, sit or jog or whatever in the next few days.”

“I suppose I’ll take that as a compliment,” he chuckled, “but I didn’t mean enough to recuperate. I meant enough for you to sleep until we get there.”

“...what?” you asked, turning over your shoulder with knitted brows to look at him.

“If even you know where you’re going, you might find a way to get out is all,” he explained flippantly.

“What… what are you…?” you started, shaking your head— but it didn’t shake off that funny feeling, that heaviness in your head.

“You see, I did think about you every day in my cell,” he went on, “and I thought about how, someday, I would lock you away— so you’d know how it feels, to be a prisoner.”

Whimpering as realization dawned, you sat up quickly to try to fight whatever was in that water… but it only seemed to make it worse, spots forming in your vision like when you stand up too fast— except they didn’t fade, just multiplied.

“I’ll treat you much better than I was, though,” he assured, “in fact, I think you’ll be better off than you were before… you’ll be mine, draga. No one else will ever see you again.”

You tried to speak but it wasn’t really coming together— you tried to push him away but you only limply held onto him, looking up at his eerily blank expression with your fading vision. As it all turned to black, he caught your head before it hit the floor, cradling it rather tenderly before kissing your cheek.

“Now,” he whispered to you, though you couldn’t possibly hear it, “let’s get you cleaned up— the plane is waiting to take you to our new home.”

#baron zemo x reader #baron zemo smut #dark!zemo x reader #helmut zemo x reader #helmut zemo smut #daniel bruhl smut #dark!zemo smut #helmut zemo dark fic #baron zemo dark fic #WELP. oops.

1K notes · View notes

explorevenus · 2 days ago

Text

fit for duty ♡ wolf hybrids!chreon/puppy hybrid!f!reader

nsfw (18+) - minors. dni or i will call ur mom. and also the cops

word count: 6.1 k

tags/warnings: wolf hybrid chris, wolf hybrid leon, chreon being sneaky/manipulative together, puppy/mutt hybrid reader, cringefail reader, pet names, brief daddy kink mention, abuse of power, drugging (kinda), reader gets forced into heat, breeding, multiple orgasms, belly bulge, vaginal double penetration, knotting

description: you used to be the government's best tracking hybrid, until a chemical agent fried your sense of smell. chris and leon find a better use for you than the battlefield.

a/n: as commissioned by my darling kennykins <3 @dollfacefantasy happy valentine's day >:)) :Kyle:

divider by @strangergraphics

my masterlist ♡

my ao3 ♡

fic under the cut, thanks so much for reading and i hope u enjoy ;w;

-venus ♡

"Poor thing," Chris observed with a heavy sigh, tilting his head to look at Leon as they stood at one end of the track, watching you bumble your way through your training course on two left feet. "She was not built for active duty."

Leon's ear twitched with mild amusement, the wiry grey fur losing its contrast by the day against his dark blond head of hair-- he almost could've sworn that worrying about you was aging him quicker. "Not even slightly," he agreed, "I'm gonna lose my shit if they try to send her out there."

Typically Chris would have discouraged Leon from losing his shit, but even he couldn't argue with that sentiment. Arms crossed, they continued to stand back and watch, trying not to let the pity show on their faces.

You were once the U.S. government's most prized and expensive sniffer dog, a hybrid born of the most ideal combination of breeds for the job. You were highly effective and devastatingly accurate, lent out to the FBI, CIA, DEA, DHS, DSO, so many acronyms you lost count, tracking down bombs and drugs and cadavers and counterfeit currency, and anything else under the sun that left a minuscule scent behind.

Until eight months ago, when you were victimized in an ambush attack involving an aerosol respiratory agent that absolutely fried your sense of smell. No expense was spared trying to get you good and recovered, but it soon became obvious that the damage was irreversible. Without any other kind of training, that revelation just rendered you the country's most costly, sentient paperweight. That's where Chris and Leon came in.

By all metrics-- and whether they liked it or not-- Chris Redfield and Leon Kennedy were the poster children of their field in the hybrid program. Their canine genetics weren't distilled from domestic breeds, but instead from wolves. Unmatched in their strength, agility, and stamina, their tracking abilities second-to-none now that you were out of the game…

If anyone would be capable of training you from a soft puppy into a tactical canine, it would be Chris and Leon, and yet here you were, just a few weeks from graduating basic and barely meeting your marks.

You weren't particularly fast, you weren't very strong, and you were so used to relying on scent to guide you that you had a hard time gaining awareness of your surroundings outside of the ground beneath your non-functioning nose. They did everything they could, they really tried your best with you, but you really, really just weren't cut out for this. It was downright painful to sit here and watch you flounder.

As you finally reached the end of your training course several minutes behind your peers, Chris and Leon shared a pitiful, fed-up, communicative look; whatever it might take, they weren’t letting you flounder anymore.

If Chris and Leon had learned anything over their years of service to the government, it would be the value of good relations in high places, the value of a single strategic phone call, the value of being owed favors. Of course both men usually preferred to go about things the right way, but when the right way wasn’t working, what else were they to do but carve an alternative path of their own?

You weren’t just any little whelp, after all, you were more than worth the effort. They’d grown dangerously fond of you over the course of your time together. You were so earnest and sweet, so pretty and kind and so very lost, like a fallen angel. Looking after you became an unbreakable habit, and it awakened something in them that they hadn’t felt since they were… well, your age.

You awakened in them the urge to protect, the urge to claim, the urge to compete for the right to pin you down and mark you up with their teeth, the urge to retire, to build a home for you, and to spend the rest of their days breeding you up with litters to fill every room.

The urge to keep you all to themselves.

It wasn’t their fault that you smelled so good. Hell, it wasn’t even your fault. In your condition, you didn’t know. You were oblivious to how rich your own scent became during your heat, and you didn’t seem to react to the heady musk of their ruts, either. Maybe if your nose actually worked, you’d have long since caught on to their increasingly unprofessional interest in you, but for better or for worse, you appeared to be clueless as always.

That, and your painfully poor performance today, worked well to their advantage. Chris took out his phone as you trudged off into the locker room, and one call was all it took.

One call, and your career as a field agent was finished. You had been swiftly and quietly reassigned before you even got out of the shower.

"Hey," Chris caught your attention as soon as you stepped out of the locker room, arms crossed casually over his beefy chest even as his sudden appearance caused you to jump a little. Both him and Leon were leaning against either side of the doorway just waiting for you to come out, like two hunks in some cheesy movie. "C'mon, let's go get some dinner. We need to talk to you."

If it weren't for how calmly he spoke, the mere words 'we need to talk to you' would have sent your ears flat against your head and your tail between your legs, but as your eyes cast between the two of them in curiosity, you realized their expressions were less disappointed than you expected, given your performance today. They almost looked mischievous.

"Okay, sure… dinner sounds good," You reluctantly agreed, scrutinizing them now.

Leon reached out to take your athletic bag for you without even asking. Chris draped his arm around you and pulled you into his side while the three of you walked, his hand spanning across the entire width of your lower back to guide you. Their tails were swinging wide enough to brush with yours, and each other's.

Oh, they were definitely up to something.

“Why are you guys being weird?” You asked bluntly, nudging Leon with your elbow. If you were going to get either one of them to crack, it would more likely be Leon. “Am I in trouble or something? Look, I know my times were shit today, but I was honestly trying, and I swear I’m gonna get it eventually—“

“Relax,” Leon interjected, pinching your butt just to watch you jump. “You’re not in trouble, pup. Take a deep breath, or you’re gonna pop a blood vessel.”

Rolling your eyes, you took a deep breath and kept walking. “You didn’t answer my question all the way,” you huffed dramatically.

“I said we wanted to talk to you, didn’t I?” Chris spoke up, raising a brow at you in that subtle look of near-disapproval that almost always straightened you out immediately. “We’re gonna take you home, we’re gonna have some dinner, and we’re gonna talk. Just be patient.”

Just be patient. Hmph. That was a tall ask for you and they knew it, but you conceded anyway for fear of pushing their buttons. Despite your outwardly playful demeanor, you weren’t feeling great about yourself in the wake of today’s results.

Plummeting from the height of your profession due to circumstances outside your control, deemed irreparably broken after several weeks in and out of experimental surgeries, training your ass off for months just to continue to fail and fail and fail… You were getting exhausted, your optimism was wearing paper thin, and these days it was starting to feel like the only people who believed in you, let alone cared about you, were Chris and Leon. You appreciated them deeply of course, but at this point, something had to give.

Something had to give, or, like Leon said, you’d pop a blood vessel.

Chris and Leon’s shared apartment, thankfully, was something of a sanctuary for you. You always felt protected and cared for within these walls, and the only thing you didn’t like about it was that you couldn’t smell anything, but that wasn’t their fault.

The pair all but ordered you to relax on the couch while they convened in the kitchen to make dinner, and as you sank lazily into the cushions, you wished you could bury your nose into the navy blue fleece thrown over the arm and breathe in their scent, or even the faintest hint of detergent, cologne, sweat, something. Sure, thousands of people live completely normal lives with no sense of smell, but how many of them were canine hybrids like you? Scent wasn’t just your career, it was your compass in so many aspects of your life.

Scent was what told you if you could trust someone. Scent was what told you if a building was safe. Scent was what told you when you were home. There was so much more to it than just wishing you could fully taste certain flavors again, or catch a fresh autumn breeze, or enjoy a fragrant candle. You felt completely detached from the world as you were genetically engineered to experience it.

“Alright, pumpkin, dinner’s just about ready. Come set the table,” Leon poked his head out from the kitchen, the low vibration of his voice working like a charm to soothe the tides of your anxious mind. You could practically already hear him ratting you out to Chris for being too hard on yourself— a big no-no— and that was more than enough to redirect your train of thought for now.

So you popped up from the couch with a nod and followed in his footsteps, thoughtfully setting the table with silverware, plates, and water glasses, humming a little tune to yourself while you worked. It was your adorable mannerisms like this that made Chris and Leon love you so much in the first place. You couldn’t be any more precious if you tried.

Unless you were to be waddling around the house with a bellyful of puppies, of course, but they were working on that. All in due time.

Dinner was relatively simple, but hearty, a hot bowl of soup with crusty slices of bread to go with it, sure to replenish all you’d lost after a long day of physical exertion. With your back turned while you set the table, it didn’t require much sleight of hand for Chris to stir a little something extra into your portion to help the process along, just a few supplements to promote fertility and prepare you for what was to come.

Both men joined you in the dining room to serve the meal, and now that you were all sat, the air in the room went immediately tense as you stared at them in anticipation.

The dining room was quiet aside from the faint sound of the TV in the other room, and the dull clicking of silverware. It would have been peaceful if you weren’t so eager to hear what they wanted to talk to you about. Sitting here wondering made you feel like you were going to explode.

“C’mon, pup, eat,” Chris ordered gently, nodding to the bowl in front of you. “You had a very busy day today.”

Stubbornly, you groaned, picking up your spoon to take a few bites. It’s not that you weren’t hungry, of course, you were just anxious, and they knew that. Your mannerisms were almost laughably simple to read, which made them feel a bit bad, but hey, they couldn’t just let you leave your dinner going cold. It was made special just for you.

“You’re killing me,” you whined, scooping up a bite of soup with your bread nonetheless, always with the dramatics.

Leon chuckled at your display, ears flicking with amusement, and while Chris was usually the one to call the shots, the blond chose to step in and offer you a compromise. “Three more bites and we’ll talk, okay? And no cheating, I mean real bites.”

That seemed to work, and you nodded, albeit with a bit of grumbling at his pulling the plug on any potential cheating before you even had a chance to try to get away with it. The two wolves shared a silent look of understanding while your attention was captured by the meal in front of you, and once you were finished with those three agreed upon bites, it was Chris who accepted the responsibility of starting the conversation.

“You’re not such a big fan of field work, are you, sweetheart?” He asked, tone delicate so as not to freak you out— you weren’t in trouble, far from it. “All the shooting and fighting and running around?”

Looking down at the table, your ears laid low, you gave a half-shrug and mumbled, “I don’t mind the running around part.”

Both men cracked a little smile at this, their own ears flicking with amusement.

“Of course you don’t mind that part, silly baby,” Leon teased, “but, honey, the rest of it… it makes you miserable, doesn’t it?”

You didn’t respond for a beat, gaze still fixed down at the table while you tried to gather the right words, idly stirring your spoon through your bowl just to fidget. The last thing you wanted to do was disappoint them. They’d put so much work into preparing you for this final evaluation, so much time and effort into helping you learn the ins and outs of field operation, and you didn’t want to just give up.

But they saw the conflict raging in you and they knew what you were thinking, and it wasn’t fair, not to you, not at all.

“Hey… it’s okay if you don’t like it, puppy. No one’s mad at you, no one’s disappointed, no one’s in trouble,” Chris reassured you, reaching across the table to gently tilt your chin up with one curled knuckle. “That’s actually why we wanted to talk.”

Heat crept up the column of your neck as you met his eyes, recognizing the kindness and care in them, feeling him disarm you in real time. What you didn’t know was just how carefully Chris was trying to phrase this, that Leon was squeezing the meat of his thigh under the table to ground him and encourage him.

It was much harder to navigate breaking the news to you than they forethought.

“Listen, sweetheart, me and Leon and some of the higher-ups have been thinking that field operation might not be a good fit for you,” he continued delicately, the pad of his thumb swiping gently back and forth, caressing the curve of your jaw. “We were… informed today that you’ve been reassigned.”

Chris did feel rather guilty in the back of his mind for phrasing it that way, like it wasn’t their idea in the first place, but they were in too deep to turn back now, and he was already getting a little bricked up thinking about fucking you after dinner. He’d beg for your forgiveness later if he had to.

Your expression went through a series of emotions— first shock, then guilt, then questioning— and for as reassuring as Chris and Leon were being right now, it was hard not to feel utterly lost again. As far as you knew, reassignment meant you’d probably never see them again, just like the team you used to work with before you were injured. To be taken away from Chris and Leon as a result of your own failure to perform would kill you.

“D-Does that mean I won’t get to be with you anymore?” You asked hesitantly, voice weak and quiet due to your thinking you already knew the answer.

And that’s where Leon stepped in.

“Actually, pup, it means the opposite,” he interjected, all too happy to be the one to give you the good news part of this. “You get to be with us all the time now, and we get to take care of you forever. No more training, no more guns, no more worrying for your life or for ours. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

Your breath hitched and your brows pinched together in sudden confusion, that deep sense of grief and devastation that was preparing to descend upon you just… halting for a moment, paused in the tunnel of your throat.

It did sound nice, but it sounded too nice, like there was more to it that they weren’t telling you, another shoe left yet to drop, and surely there had to be. You’d been branded a sunk cost enough times to know that the government didn’t like to fund things it wouldn’t be seeing a return on, and you were far too young to retire, so what was the deal?

Reading the look on your face with impressive accuracy, Chris couldn’t stand to watch any longer as you sat there clearly fearing the worst, so he chose to speak plainly.

“They’re thinking we’d make some good, healthy litters together, sweet girl,” he said, reaching across the table to squeeze your hand. “That’s a nice idea, isn’t it? Settling down, havin’ our pups…”

Consciously or not, your ears perked up halfway at this, flicking with interest. You wished you could say you hadn’t really put any thought into something like this before, but come on, that would be a lie. You liked Chris and Leon a lot, they were so sweet to you, and so very handsome— it was only natural that you’d dream girlishly from time to time about playing house with them, what your babies might look like, what Chris and Leon might be like as fathers…

And how big their cocks are, and how amazing it would feel to take them both at once…

Now wasn’t the time to be dreaming, however, with both of them watching so closely for your reaction. You nearly let a drop of drool slip past your lips before you snapped out of it, hand flying up to wipe your mouth. Smooth.

A smug look of knowing washed over Leon’s features, his fingers drumming on the table to coax your attention on him, his sharp left canine bared in a lopsided smirk. “Oh, you really like that idea, don’t you, little one?” He drawled, reaching across the table to nudge your hand away so he could swipe the pad of his thumb along your plush bottom lip, tempted to dip it in and make you suck on it, but he wanted to get you squirming a little more first.

“L-Leon—”

“Don’t lie to me… you like it a lot, baby, I can see it on your face,” he cut you off, intent upon not letting you deny it. “You were never built to be out there fighting and risking your life, were you, pup? You were never ‘sposed to be put in danger like that, our poor, precious girl… It’s no wonder it didn’t work out for you, huh? You didn’t do anything wrong, you just knew deep down that you were always meant to be a mommy…”

Your wide eyes darted up to look at Chris as if you were begging him to step in without being able to form the actual words, a timid whine making its way out instead, but unfortunately for you, he wasn’t interested in cutting you a break. Why would he? Leon had made such good progress.

“Leon’s right, you know… you smell so fertile, I’ll bet we could get at least two pups out of you on your very first litter…”

“Just two?” Leon puffed, “I’m shooting for three.”

“Yeah, right, old man, all you’re shooting is blanks,” Chris countered with a playful growl, turning to nip at Leon’s nose with his teeth, the movement allowing him a decent moment of cover to readjust his pants under the table. Just as soon, though, he made no effort to conceal the path his hand took from his own lap to the crotch of Leon’s jeans, palming his partner’s stiffening sex through the denim.

Leon’s head tilted back with an airy groan and his tail beat dumbly against the frame of his chair, hips bucking up slightly. Your jaw was stuck open now and you shifted in your seat, the movement bringing your attention to just how slick you were, standard issue cotton growing sticky and warm beneath your athletic leggings.

Dinner sat long forgotten on the table in front of you, but that didn’t mean you weren’t affected by what Chris gave you. To witness this would have flustered you regardless, but right now you were flushed red and practically dripping— with every passing moment, you were losing your ability to think straight, almost like you were going into heat. Swiping your hair away from your face with shaking hands, your lips parted for oxygen, drinking in slow, shallow breaths in an attempt to regain control of yourself, but every lungful of air you breathed was teeming with their pheromones. You were only getting dizzier.

And they were loving every second of it. Grinning slyly as he continued to knead Leon through his jeans, Chris couldn’t help himself, “You’re lookin’ a little flushed there, puppy. Maybe you should go lay down.”

Your eyes locked with his, and within what felt like only a single moment, Leon was up from his chair and circling the table to tug you out of yours. Before you could fully register the movement, let alone respond to it, he was tossing you over his shoulder like you weighed nothing and carrying you deeper into the apartment.

“Chris!” You yelped out of habit, but once again, the older wolf had no interest in lending you a hand. He was following right along with you both, and once you crossed the threshold into the bedroom, he shut the door behind you all with a decisive click.

Leon tossed you down upon the center of the bed less than gracefully, immediately caging you in so he could bury his face into your throat, breathing you in with desperation between needy kisses and possessive bites. Positioning himself at the head of the bed just above you, Chris guided your head up to rest in his lap as Leon’s attention crept lower and lower down your body, until his strong nose was pressed to your navel.

Heaven, Leon thought to himself, this must be what heaven is like.

Your scent was peppery and sweet, creamy with fertility. His hands balled up into fists clutching the fabric of your shirt and he tore it off of you without a second thought. Encouraged by the revealed expanse of bare skin— and your failure to protest— your leggings were similarly ripped apart directly thereafter. Without missing a beat, Leon grabbed you at the thighs and spread your legs so he could situate himself between them, head ducking forward to huff wantonly at the sodden fabric of your undies, tongue darting out to taste them.

Reaching down to flick him in the forehead, Chris scolded him playfully, “You plan on coming up for air anytime soon, or am I gonna have to make you?”

Leon responded with a humorless grunt, clearly just as lost in the throes of hormonal lustfulness as you were. Nonetheless, he acquiesced, nipping at the crotch of your panties with his teeth before sitting up to his haunches and countering, “We gotta make sure she’s prepared first. Don’t wanna break her on your knot.”

You tensed a bit upon hearing this, but Chris quickly shushed you, scratching behind your ears reassuringly. “We’re not gonna break you, honey.”

He scooped you up beneath your arms to pull you up into more of a sitting position in his lap, and only now did you notice he’d already undressed. While you were busy ogling every rippling inch of his tanned skin, Leon was stripping too, the temperature in the room rising exponentially. Try as they might to remain cool, Chris and Leon were panting just as much as you were.

You could feel the weight of Chris’ stiff cock pressed up against your lower back, making you whine and squirm to get closer, intoxicated by the idea of sitting on it. But you knew Leon was right— you had no hope of taking even one knot comfortably without more preparation, no matter how wet you were.

“F-Fingers, fingers, please,” you all but babbled, taking it upon yourself to shimmy your panties down to mid-thigh. You were desperate for something thick and warm to claim the empty space between your walls, a void that felt like it was only carving deeper into the pit of you.

From the start of your very first cycle, the doctors were always timely with your monthly inhibitor— it didn’t negate the symptoms associated with going into heat entirely, but it absolutely did dampen them. You’d never felt your heat with such intensity before, and that was by careful design— a pinch of cinnamon among the additives to your meal was all it took to counteract your inhibitor, which was nearing the end of its four-week lifespan anyway.

Maybe Chris and Leon would even luck out and, moving forward, you’d subconsciously associate the intensity of your heat with them.

“Shh, shh, alright, baby,” Chris cooed in your ear as he worked in tandem with Leon to tug your panties off the rest of the way. His massive palm then sank down between your legs, fingers spreading apart your slippery folds, and with a subtle nod to Leon over your head, he added in a sultry murmur, “Let’s get you good and taken care of.”

Leon was on you in a second, prints pressing deep into your hips as he rutted into the mattress and lapped at your sweetness, tail swinging back and forth in a haphazard pendulum of dumb weight. Through the incomprehensible horny fog that hung over his head, Leon was determined to commit the taste of you to memory so that he could discover how it might change once you were finally pregnant.

Sucking your clit between his lips with a low moan, Leon took advantage of your surprise to push his index finger past your tight little hole, his other hand keeping your hips steady so you wouldn’t accidentally hurt yourself when you bucked. A sharp whine pushed up from your throat but it wasn’t one of displeasure. Far from it. You were clenching around him like you were trying to suck him in, and what kind of gentleman would he be if he didn’t oblige?

“Mm, there you go, good girl,” he groaned, flattening his tongue on you to lick a broad stripe from your hole to your puffy clit. “Takin’ daddy’s fingers like a fuckin’ dream…”

“Yeah, you are,” Chris agreed without hesitation, gently stroking the boundaries of your cunt in a soothing motion that spread you open wider, allowing Leon to sneak a second finger in with the first. “Gonna take our knots with no problem at all, aren’t you, pretty girl? ‘Til you’re all fucked full…”

The way you squirmed and twitched in Chris’ lap only worked more blood to his dick, but thankfully he was a much more patient man than Leon, whose hand was plunging in and out of you at a measured but shaky pace. You were dripping like a faucet and kicking your legs out over his shoulders, clutching the portion of grey-blond hair between his wiry ears in a white-knuckled fist.

Leon only unlatched from your cunt to breathe, dragging in a series of heavy breaths before his teeth sank deep into the plush, creamy flesh at the inside of your right thigh, marking you. The sting of it was quickly followed by Chris’ own claim bite where your tender neck met your left shoulder.

The sharp sensation rushed through you and forced goosebumps to rise along your skin, head falling back against Chris’ chest as you whined and convulsed around Leon’s fingers, tumbling over the cusp of an intense and unexpected orgasm. But it didn’t dampen that heat in you, it didn’t offer any relief— if anything, as the tides began to calm, you were only left wanting more. More and more and more, want turning quickly to need.

As Leon withdrew his slick fingers from you, your head was spinning, upper half falling forward as you braced yourself on your elbows, spine sloping down to the mattress in a languid arch to present yourself to Chris. You could feel the cool air of the room chilling the arousal that leaked out from between your soft lips, hole pulsing and squeezing around the mere idea of his length.

“Please, please, please,” you whimpered, tail curled up to the base and wagging timidly side-to-side, like it was just beckoning him to sink into you. “Gimme pups, gimme pups, please—”

You couldn’t see his expression, but Chris was sweating, caressing your hip with one hand while the other tugged at his aching cock, already sticky and leaking down his clenched knuckles. “Fuck, baby,” he groaned, “look at that pretty pussy… you showin’ off?”

Nodding dumbly into the bedding, you felt Leon’s hand come forward to card through your hair, making your eyes flutter comfortably shut. He was stroking himself too, every pump of his hand signified by a subtle schlicking sound of his own pre marrying together with the mess you’d made on his fingers.

Chris started with two fingers first. His were just a little bit shorter than Leon’s, but much thicker, stretching you out more. It was just so adorable, the way you gasped and mewled and rutted back into him while he carefully scissored your hole further open. The anticipation that vibrated through you only ramped up their own.

“You’re gonna look so pretty knotted up, aren’t you?” Leon smiled down at your flushed form. “And even prettier with a bellyful of puppies…”

You drew in a breath to respond but didn’t have much of a chance before Chris replaced his fingers with the heavy head of his cock, each and every rigid inch sliding in without resistance. As his hips rutted forward to become flush with your bottom, the air was punched from your lungs and expressed in a needy cry. Heat bloomed through your middle as he went still for a short moment, but you didn’t need still, you needed babies.

So you shifted beneath him and began to fuck yourself on Chris’ dick, working up to a fervent pace where every twitch of your thighs felt like lightning, but it didn’t stop you. It thrust you forward. All your mushy little brain could think to do right now was fuck and fuck and fuck until you couldn’t move anymore, until you couldn’t even keep your eyes open. Lucky for you, that was the only outcome that would stop them, too.

Chris gripped you at the waist to hold you steady so he could truly start pounding into you, losing himself in your silky cunt. You were squeezing him so perfectly and he couldn’t look away, pupils blown open wide as he watched you suck him in deep, dripping creamy white along the length of his shaft.

“You’re perfect, pup, just… j-just perfect,” he rumbled in your ear, leaning over your back to kiss and nip at your throat between gasps for breath. “Perfect little puppy, such a good girl… swear I could fuck you forever…”

Losing his patience by the minute, Leon had to stop touching himself just to keep from blowing his load early, but he was throbbing with the need to penetrate you. He could already imagine how good you must feel just by the look on Chris’ face.

“C-Chris, Chris… fuck, I’m… gonna fuckin’ bust,” he shuddered, “please…”

And Chris could tell by the look on Leon’s face that he wasn’t joking. His meaty hands printed into your skin with the effort it took for him to slow down, one hand sliding up the length of your spine to tug you up by the back of your neck like a little baby whelp.

“Think you can handle that right now, princess?” He asked in a breathy whisper, lips ghosting along the curve of your slack jaw.

Once more, you were nodding like a bobble-head, bleary eyes catching between the sight of Leon’s cock, and the sight of Chris’ hammering up beneath the soft skin of your belly. You didn’t have much capacity to wonder if you could handle them both right now, because you just so desperately wanted to anyway.

“Alright, then,” he replied in something of an affectionately patronizing tone, like he didn’t fully believe you, but he gestured for Leon to join you regardless.

Leon scrambled forward on his knees, spreading your legs open as wide as they could comfortably rest so that he had a good, clear path to you. Hooking one leg over Chris’ hip until you were upright and sandwiched between them at the head of the bed, Leon ground himself up against you, carefully angling his tip until it caught on your hole. All three of you buckled at the feeling, your breath caught in your throat and tears leaking down your chin as Leon bucked up into you, tongue lapping at every stray teardrop in a series of stilted, needy puppy kisses.

The gruff wolf was all but whimpering and whining against your skin until his head fell back in pleasure, teeth gnashing at his own lip just to maintain focus while Chris gradually approached his earlier pace, if not a bit shaky now with the added friction of Leon’s firm, swollen sex dragging back and forth alongside his own. They could feel every little dip and ridge of one another, every throb of each other’s veins, and while they knew they had a long night ahead of them in terms of helping you through your heat, they were getting dangerously close already.

In the midst of everything, you were pretty sure you came twice more just in the time it took Leon to push into you too, and your body wasn’t giving you any signs of stopping soon. You were wetter than ever and twice as incoherent, babbling complete and utter nonsense into the hot, heavy air just to cope.

“Oh, sweetheart, you’re so cute like this,” Chris growled against the crown of your head, trying his best to hold off for as long as he could, but it was all just too much— balls drawing up tight, he grunted, “You ready?”

All it took was the first semblance of please making its way past your lips for him to lose it, holding you down firmly in his lap. Rope after rope of his cum flooded into you, finally sating some of that burning emptiness you felt. You went all but limp between their firm bodies, shivering and twitching and crying in ecstasy, in relief, yet another wave of near-overwhelming rapture licking over exposed nerves.

And then his knot began to swell. You jerked in surprise at first, but he just shushed you, nuzzling against the nape of your neck while he continued to hold you still. The weight of your clenching walls and the slickness of Chris’ spend sent Leon over the edge too, while you were distracted, and with two baseball-sized knots expanding to fill any and all empty space in your poor little cunt, you quickly realized you wouldn’t be moving anytime soon.

“O-Oh, ow,” you wept, trying to squirm a bit, but they wouldn’t let you.

They were mindful to check that you were okay, of course, because as much as it would have killed them to risk wasting any cum that could otherwise be getting you pregnant, they weren’t going to keep you knotted tonight unless you really wanted them to— this was presumably your first time, and would be considered a lot for anyone’s first time.

But you just clung to them. Any little adjustment they made was met with your grabbing hands pulling them close again, and a quiet, tearful whine. Splaying his hand out, Leon delicately rubbed your tummy to help you relax while Chris kissed you all over and massaged some of the tension from your trembling thighs, bucking gently up into you just to hear you squeak.

“You did so good, puppy,” Chris mused, “gonna make such a pretty mama.”

“Mhm, so good, and so pretty,” Leon was eager to agree, already chubbing up again at the mere thought of your belly beginning to bloom where his hand laid now. “Fuck active duty, you’re staying right here.”

#venustext #sintext #resident evil #chreon #chris redfield #leon kennedy #hybrid!chris redfield #hybrid!leon kennedy #chreon x reader #chris redfield x leon kennedy x reader #chris redfield x reader x leon kennedy #chris redfield x reader #leon kennedy x reader #chris redfield x you #leon kennedy x you #chreon x you #chreon smut #chris redfield smut #leon kennedy smut

291 notes · View notes

ghostbeam · 6 months ago

Text

Oblivi_n.exe | Dabi/Touya Todoroki

Touya Todoroki, known as ‘Dabi’ to the league, quirk class: cremation, mech title: Blue. You’re his new handler.

As Dabi’s new handler, you’re well aware of his history, how frequently he goes through handlers assigned to him. Not that he ever uses them—it’s more complete resistance. You’re not particularly good at your job. Transferred from the PLF for lack of success in handling any of their pilots, you’ve always been far too gentle. You lack authority. Your pilots never respected you. You don’t think Dabi will be any different. You give it a week.

Notes: okay wow hiiiii it’s been a long time since I’ve posted an actual fic (nearing almost a year now😬) this is something I’ve been working on for a bit. I have mech brain rot curtesy of @streimiv and @hawnks (both of whom this is dedicated to bc there’s no way I could have written this without yapping to them abt it and also mint helped me come up w the acronym for HERO’s) and we’ve all got our own mech fics in the works atm but anywayssssss this is kind of my baby atm but I hope it makes sense it’s very inspired first and foremost by pacific rim and then also NGE (mostly through consumption of YouTube vids bc I haven’t actually watched it pls don’t hate me) it’s a whole mess of things and Dabi is kind of a bitch and reader is slowly coming into herself and at the end of the day they both wanna be metal fused to one another forever (no matter how hard he denies it) also I’m not a huge computer person idk if this title makes sense so don’t make fun of me pls ok anyways I hope u like it!!!!

Warnings: 18+, minors DNI, pilot!Dabi x handler!reader, there’s no explicit sexual content in this part, not even a kiss sorry guys, mentions of robot gore (exposed wires, insides described as guts), brief descriptions of being trapped inside a small space, descriptions of burning while inside said space, mention of surgery to fashion a metal jaw onto someone, mentions of child abuse (nothing graphic just allusions to the todoroki family and touya’s past), angst, many run on sentences, a small cliff hanger

Words: 7.9k

Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 (coming soon)

You are nothing without your machine.

It’s the first rule, the first thing beaten into his brain by his father. You carry the burden of the mech alone, or you’re weak. You don’t exist.

U.A. raises the best and brightest pilots, navigators, mechanics, and handlers, each one carefully trained to ensure the most important outcome: winning. It should be protection. It should be defense. But if Touya has learned anything at all, it’s that winning means glory. It means worship. It means HERO’s (Human Engineered Robotic Objects) are saints, and pilots are gods.

Touya used to be one of those best and brightest before his accident.

First son to Enji Todoroki, Touya was supposed to be the golden child, the first Todoroki to pilot without a handler. He was supposed to carry the burden alone, something his father couldn’t do, something only one man has ever actually been capable of.

But Touya is born weak, bad bones, a brain unable to handle all that the mech needs to unload onto it. One too many accidents results in him being expelled from the pilot program, his HERO discarded and collecting dust in its pod, and Touya is promptly transferred to mechanics.

It should have been a smooth transition. If one kid can’t handle it, the next will. Because they have to.

He doesn’t take the news well. It’s a fit of tears, a persistent fight, unable to accept the loss of his machine—of his body. Because Touya loves it. What he lacks in strength, he makes up for in pure passion, and despite being unable to handle the burden, there’s no denying that he’s good. He’s almost perfect.

But almost is not enough for Enji Todoroki, and no matter how hard Touya tries, he’s made up his mind.

After months of mechanics, Touya makes a decision. When the next fleet of HERO’s is deployed for the next kaiju battle, Touya sneaks in among the chaos, tucked neatly inside the chest of his machine where he belongs. It doesn’t take long for things to go south, for Touya to get caught in the crossfire, losing control of his mech and burning from the inside out.

It should be an excruciating death, stuck inside a machine made for war, fire raining from above as a battle continues on outside without him.

But he survives, because what he lacks in strength, he makes up for in resilience, and his mech is programed with solutions to every situation. He’s stuck inside for months before he’s found.

Tomura Shigaraki rescues him, pries open the chest of his mech and pulls him from inside. His group feeds him, takes him in, fashions a new jaw for him made from the metal of his mech, and allows him the decision to join their cause or go back home.

And since there’s no home to go back to, Touya finds his footing with the league and becomes one of their top pilots. One who vehemently resists any and all handlers.

…

Touya Todoroki, known as ‘Dabi’ to the league, quirk class: cremation, mech title: Blue. You’re his new handler.

Following closely behind Tenko, formerly Tomura, he quickly explains to you the in’s and out’s of the pilot/handler relationship, along with a warning about Dabi’s resentment toward the whole idea. You try to keep up, but he talks quickly and uses his hands a lot. Even so, you can tell he’s a natural leader, something he had to grow into after overthrowing the man who raised him. His story is a tragic one, and it resonates with you because Tenko came out the other side stronger. Now, the league is a community with a cause, one you really believe in. Even if you and Dabi aren’t the right fit, you still have a place here.

You follow Tenko into what he calls the garage, a large floor of the abandoned academy that serves as the league’s base, this part of it full of HERO’s and mechanics all focused on the machines in front of them. It’s completely different from how HERO’s were worked on at UA, where you grew up, and even the PLF didn’t have one dedicated floor to this sort of work. You can feel the energy of the room buzzing on your skin, music blasting from old radios and mechanics tossing tools towards one another in a familiar routine. Tomura leads you to Dabi and his HERO, Blue, though you’re instructed not to call it a HERO around him. With goggles over his eyes and gloved hands, he brings two wires from Blue’s ankle together, sighing at the way they spark each time they connect.

“Dabi.” Tomura calls over the music coming from the radio hanging off of Dabi’s waist. He drops the wires and his gaze flickers toward the two of you. Pushing his goggles up to his forehead, he gives you a once over. His eyes are the brightest you’ve ever seen—kaiju blood blue—and burn scars litter his body. He’s striking in a way you’ve never seen, almost too beautiful to be human. Giving Dabi your name, Tomura explains that you’re taking over as his handler, seeing as he couldn’t keep the last one for more than a couple of days. “She’s your last handler. If you can’t keep this one, then go ahead and fry your brain. See if I care.”

“You say that every time.” Dabi calls from around sucker as Tomura walks away, leaving you alone with your new pilot.

You just your hand out in a greeting, “I’m looking forward to working with you.”

Eyeing your hand, Dabi shakes his head and turns his back to you, picking the two wires back up and connecting them again, despite the same spark from before igniting between the two. He looks back up at Blue, touching his fingers to the slim lines starting at the back of her ankle and running all the way up her leg. You peak over his shoulder at the wiring, noticing that he’s connecting two of the wrong ones.

“It’s the wrong wire.” You tell him, and he spins around to look at you, tearing his goggles from his face as he scoffs.

“Here we go.” He sighs with a roll of his eyes, pulling the candy from his lips and tossing it onto the tool cart without a care. “Handler know-it-all bullshit. This is my mech.”

You push passed him and grab the similarly colored wire from beside a red wire and connect it with the one in Dabi’s right hand. Blue lights up cyan through the thin lines that run along each of its limbs and torso, connecting with the two cameras within its head, which seem to blink before the light reaches them.

In an instant, you’re being pushed up against the hard metal, a strong arm over your chest—pinning you up against the HERO. Dabi, now having discarded his goggles, looks at you full of white, hot rage.

“Don’t fucking touch her.” He growls. You’re suddenly aware of the close proximity, eyes flickering between the snarl across his lips and his angry gaze. For a beat, you both freeze, the air suddenly charged like you’re waiting for one another to strike. Snapping yourself out of his hypnotic stare, you push against his chest, forcing him to let you go.

“If I’m going to be you’re handler, you’re going to have to trust me with her.” You remind him. He lets out a harsh laugh, like he can’t believe you would suggest such a ridiculous idea.

“I don’t trust anything but this machine.” He speaks, turning away from you to seal up the machine’s exposed wires. It’s a challenge you’re willing to accept.

“Well, I’m here to change that.” You tell him, before turning on your heel to leave him alone.

He thinks he’ll give you a week.

…

One of the worst parts of being assigned a handler, Touya thinks, is the way that pilot/handler living quarters are set up. He assumes the academy, before it was abandoned and turned into a base for the league, created this sort of set up so that handlers could keep a close eye on their pilots. The handlers Touya has burned through up until now also assumed the same.

The door that connects both the pilot’s and handler’s dorms doesn’t lock, and all of Touya’s past handlers have taken advantage of this fact. He’s been pulled out of bed far too early, pushed around and commanded and barked at. Most handlers behaved as if pilots belonged to them, which was the sentiment drilled into their brains from being thrown into such a fucked up system at a young age.—unless you were a pilot of status like a Todoroki. While he league dedicates a lot of its time to reversing these ideas, most handlers look at Touya like some kind of challenge, this arrogant pilot begging to be tamed. It never takes long for them to realize how easily he’s able to flip the switch on them. You’ll be no different.

But hours pass and you still haven’t entered. You don’t swing the door open and demand he apologize for his behavior earlier. You don’t try and punish him with training regimes, a command of a set of push ups, a schedule you expect him to follow, an extremely detailed meal plan. The entire evening comes and goes without so much as a sound on the other side of the door so he knows you’re even behind it.

He falls asleep unnerved by this, waking up late into the night in a cold sweat, expecting you to barge in, rip the covers from his body and demand to train together. When he wakes up (peacefully) the next morning, there’s no sign of you. He rises from his bed, drinks orange juice straight from the carton and eats a candy bar for breakfast. He fiddles with the navigation screen from his mech that stopped working a couple of days ago, tools spread out on the counter in front of him. Once he’s got the thing working again, your knock sounds from the unlocked door between the two of you. He thinks this might be it, the commands he expects to fall from your lips at the ready as he swings the door open, but you stand there, nervous, hands twitching as your eyes finally meet his.

Greeted by a shirtless Touya, hair mused from sleep, cargo pants hung low on his hips, dog tags swinging against his chest, his scars on display, unashamed and proud. The sight of him knocks the breath out of you, and you clear your throat in embarrassment, hoping your state of dreaming comes off as nerves rather than lust.

“Dabi. Or do you prefer Touya?” You smile. When he doesn’t answer, you continue. “I wanted to see if you wanted to eat breakfast together in the caf. I think we should start over. Yesterday was—”

You’re promptly cut off, “I already ate breakfast.”

With a harsh slam of the door, he leaves you stunned in your room.

You eat alone.

When you started as a pilot, back when you’d entered UA (a few years about Touya’s accident), you went into it believing you could change the world. The exam had placed you into the position of handler, and you were assigned a pilot who had always seemed a little frightened of you despite your obvious lack of authority. Bringing the fact up to your instructors did nothing. They all assured you that this was the ideal dynamic, that the handler always had the upper hand, but you hated that feeling. You weren’t a team like you expected to be; you were urged to control your pilot. You were there to keep them in line, not to be a pillar of support. The bond was never built on trust, and the soul link was always a looming threat. No matter how many pilots you went through, the link was never held as a gift, but a prison, something you would both be stuck with for the betterment of society, a sacrifice to make.

You’d been expelled from the handler program after guiding your pilot to help save another in the wreckage of your first battle together, resulting in the damage of your pilot’s HERO. Your pilot was okay, but the other couldn’t be saved, and you were blamed for the damage of both mech’s.

When you found the league (or when the league found you), you were working with the PLF, but proved to be a weak handler. Every pilot you were assigned to took advantage of your optimistic outlook on the kind of relationship dynamic that pilots had with their handlers. Despite all that you had been through at UA, and with the rest of the pilots you’d been paired with after, you never gave up the hope that handlers and pilots could behave as a team, or, even better, one entity.

Tenko had taken one look at you and demanded you’d be transferred to the league. There hadn’t been much of a choice in the matter, not that you really cared. You were miserable everywhere else. But when you arrived at the abandoned academy and taken a peak behind the kudzu covered walls where each and every area of the building acted as multiple moving parts in collaboration with one another in order to create one massive system, you realized that this was the future you imagined for yourself—and for the world you lived in.

Tenko saw something in you that day, something you aren’t sure you even see in yourself. And so Dabi was your first task, one that’s proving to be very difficult. But he doesn’t treat you like all the other pilots before had. He doesn’t use you. In fact, it seems like he wants nothing to do with you. And while that’s a problem, it’s still one you can work with.

You’re broken from your thoughts by the sound of a voice through an overhead intercom asking for everyone to meet on the first floor of the academy at their earliest convenience. Judging by the quick movements of those around you, you figure you’d better head downstairs as soon as possible.

The meeting on the first floor makes you very aware of just how small the league really is. While it’s definitely not a tiny organization, it’s still much smaller than both UA and the PLF. With everyone piled up like this in one group, you realize it feels more like a community, and the hum of conversation that surrounds you comforts you in a way you’ve never felt within the walls of any other academy before.

There’s discussion about the upcoming mission, one which may be the league’s most ambitious yet; the plan to hijack a mech and kidnap a pilot may be a little unorthodox compared to the league’s past missions, but the jaded pilot they’re targeting has a high chance of joining the cause. Or that’s what they have assumed. As the bodies move and speak around you, it strikes you how different this meeting is from any other meeting you’ve ever been a part of. Tenko is less a dictator and more a wrangler for the disembodied voices of your peers.

You don’t know much about his story, save for the vague details you’ve heard, but Tenko’s status as a lone handler is something you find yourself curious about. If he’s able to work without a pilot, why can’t you? It’s an idea you keep in your back pocket, one you think you can fall back on if things with Touya don’t work out. But you want them to work out. So badly.

You aren’t sure what it is about him, but he’s reignited that spark inside of you. You know he’d rather you give up, and maybe the you from a couple of months ago would have, but something about him—and this place—won’t let you leave.

As you observe the meeting, you take the time to look around the room, taking in your peers and their attentive faces as they listen to Tenko intently. You turn to your right, your eyes meeting a pair of blue ones, impossible to miss. Dabi holds your stare for what feels like ages, and when your colleagues erupt in a fit of many simultaneous discussions, you tear your eyes from his to observe the commotion. When you glance back in his direction, he’s gone.

You don’t seem him again after that. You train with other handlers, get to know your peers a little better. Everyone else seems to be welcoming, and most offer you sympathy when they find out you’re Touya’s new handler. From what you can gather, he’s had his fair share of them, all of which have quit or left in hysterics due to his harsh nature. When you ask around about where he could be, you’re told that he’s most likely in the garage, a place you assume he’s in more often than not.

You don’t know if you’ll ever get used to the garage. A place so completely different, so against the ideas and beliefs of any other academy you’ve been a part of, the chaos and community within is so foreign to you. You find Touya with Blue, working inside of her chest, where the cockpit is.

“Touya!” You call up to him and watch as he peaks his head over the edge of her metal plating. Annoyance falling across his face, he jumps down from where he stands, landing hard on his feet in front of you.

“What are you doing here?” He questions, his figure so tall and imposing above you. He’s not particularly muscular, not even all that tall compared to Tenko, but he makes you feel small regardless, in more ways than one. Rolling your shoulders back, you stare straight into his eyes, unwilling to back down.

“I figured you wanted your space today.” You explain, as Touya moves around you to get to his rolling cart of tools, forcing you to turn toward him and follow him if you want him to hear you. “I know adjusting to a new handler is rough, and I never want to make you uncomfortable. But I was thinking we could try some of those pilot/handler bonding exercises. It might be good to start training like some of the others do.”

He drops the wrench in his hand onto his cart with a loud thud, turning around toward you with a look of disbelief on his face. “Pilot/handler bonding exercises? They really brainwashed the shit out of you at UA, huh?”

At the mention of your past academy, your eyes widen in surprise. You had no idea he knew about that. Clearing your throat in order to compose yourself, you speak again, “I left UA for a reason. I have no attachment to their methods, but you guys do the same stuff here, so what’s the issue?”

“The issue is that I never asked for a fucking handler in the first place, especially not one as eager as you.” He spits, “Sure, you’re understanding now, all that bullshit about ‘giving me space,’ but the moment you get a lick of power over me, you’ll change. You’re not different.”

“I don’t want power over you. This is an equal exchange. Pilot’s and handlers are meant to be a team—” You try and argue, but he doesn’t let you finish.

“That’s what they told you, right? We’re a team, and as teammates, you make sacrifices. And it doesn’t matter if one of you turns into the other’s braindead dog because that’s your place.” His words hit you hard, the exact thought process you went through when leaving UA, completely disillusioned with their idea of “teamwork.” He’s right, and you know it, but since coming here, you thought that wasn’t how it had to be.

“Look, trust me, I get—” You’re cut off again.

“You went to UA! There’s no trusting you.” He scoffs, “It’s not like you’ll last here, anyway.”

“You are such a hypocrite! You’re from UA!” You retort, throwing your arms up in desperation. “You can hate me all you want. You can resist and resist and fry your brain ‘till there’s nothing left, but I believe in this shit. And you don’t get to tell me that I don’t, or tell me I’ll turn into something I worked so hard to get away from.”

Touya stands there, surprised by your outburst, completely unaware that you were capable of all of that. He doesn’t say anything back, and you roll your eyes. “So fuck you, and, by the way, her angel port is smoking.”

At your words, he turns in a rush, seeing the smoke billowing from Blue’s chest as he climbs his way up her form. Once inside his machine, he extinguishes the port and allows himself to relax. There are two things on his mind in this moment: how you could have possibly known it was the angel port without being inside of Blue’s chest and how, for the first time in a long time, he feels bad for his handler.

But for you, it’s the first time you’ve ever held your own against a pilot before, and that feels good.

…

Something feels weird.

Off, unsettling, strange.

He realizes, much to his dismay, that it’s your absence. Despite only having you around for such a short time, Touya has realized that your lack of presence now feels wrong. He hates it. He hates you.

He can’t find you. You haven’t knocked on his door. You’re not in the caf, not the garage, not the sparring floor, not in your room. And he did check—without knocking.

He’s not even sure how he can feel an absence. You aren’t a regular part of his life, and he never wanted you to be. But he feels all fucked up.

During training, Touya jams Blue’s halo core and she leaks vibrant neon from between her ribs. It takes him half an hour to get her reboot her system and rips one of the cables attached to the back of his suit in the process. He spends the afternoon cleaning HERO fluid off the sparring floor.

During repairs, he shocks himself over and over while trying to fix her core, fingers burning from the sparks each time he arranges the wires inside. The cameras in her eyes won’t work from the reboot, and Blue won’t let him unlock the lens panel to fix it. It’s almost like she’s mad at him too.

He’s a complete mess. It’s your fault. He has no choice but to go looking for you. Again.

He searches every wing of the academy before concluding that you’re in your room. He barges through the joint door, spotting you at the counter in your tiny kitchen. You’re surprised by the intrusion, a frightened gasp falling from your lips as you jump in your seat. You turn toward him, prepared with angry words on your tongue, but Touya speaks first.

“You’re not getting an apology out of me, so don’t expect it.” He begins, moving to stand in front of your swiveling kitchen stool as he looks down at you. “But I’m willing to be civil with you, so we don’t have to do this shit anymore.”

You’re not exactly sure what “this shit” is, but Touya looks a little worse for wear at the moment, so you don’t question it. He places a tray from the caf down in front of you that you hadn’t noticed in his hands upon arrival, says nothing else, and turns to leave the room. After shutting your joint door, you look down at the tray of food, noticing one of his suckers placed onto a vacant compartment of the tray.

You’re greeted the next morning with a knock on your door, Touya dressed in his pilot’s suit on the other side as you swing the door open. “C’mon. You’re gonna watch me train today.”

You watch him turn around to leave, expecting you to follow. You rush to pull on your combat boots and grip your dog tags in your fist as you rush to catch up to him. He doesn’t spare you a glance as you fall into step beside him, taking a look around his dorm before he leads you through the exit door.

“You need to get a feel for my fighting style.” He explains as you walk down the corridor. “I’m not saying I’ll listen to you when it comes down to it, but it’s important for you to know.”

You nod, agreeing that you should definitely observe him inside of his HERO. By understanding his moves, you’ll be able to understand the way he thinks, and you’ll be able to help him in actual combat if needed. He’s already said he won’t listen to you, but it won’t stop you from trying. He stops abruptly, turning to look at you, and you stop with him.

“If we’re gonna do this, it’ll be on my terms. I’m not your dog.” He tells you, seriously. He eye’s you up and down, taking in your expression as you nod at his words. “If anything, you’re mine.”

He begins walking again, leaving you in your spot, irritation filling your chest as you watch him, smug. “Asshole.” You curse under your breath.

“What’d you say?” He barks, turning to look at you abruptly.

“You’re an asshole.” You speak louder. He walks back toward you, making sure to tower over you intimidatingly as he looks down at you in annoyance. His eyes flicker down to the tags around your neck before hooking a finger on the chain and pulling you closer.

“Watch it.” He drops the chain and walks away again.

You follow him to the sparring floor, and he shows you where to go to watch. Stood behind a large window that looks over the sparring area, other members of the base watch the HERO’s engage in combat below. You spot Tenko and he motions for you to stand beside him.

“I knew he’d warm up to you.” He comments. The last of the previous battle finishes and you watch the two enormous machines retreat to the sides of the area, their pilots emerging from their chests with their handlers rushing to the bottom of the mech’s in support.

“He hasn’t. He’s not.” You shake your head. You aren’t sure why you deny it, if it’s some way to keep your expectations low or if there’s some kind of embarrassment aspect to the whole thing. Whatever is happening between you and Touya feels intimate and private, something that the two of you need to figure out for yourselves, not something meant for the eyes of others.

“Hm. Okay.” Tenko shrugs. “Guess not.”

You hadn’t noticed Touya enter his mech at all. You see the swing of one giant mechanic arm, too close to the window you stand behind, and you’ve shifted your full attention to the scene at hand.

The enormity of the room surprises you, despite the fact that you had seen it just moments before. But when you’re truly looking at it, watching these huge machines go at each other, the way the ground shakes, the leaves outside shake, the deep forrest clear in view from the wall that opens out to the greenery (the lack of a wall is likely from the academy’s abandoned state, but it’s a good feature to have on the sparring floor when giant robots are toppled over onto various surfaces).

The way Blue moves is electric, mechanic movements almost feel fluid with the way that Touya pilots her, easily dodging attacks from their opponent and moving around them in the most graceful way a giant machine can. It’s beautiful, unlike any fighting style you’ve ever seen in a HERO before.

“He’s showing off for you.” Tenko observes from beside you. You don’t argue with him, only because you can’t dispute it. This is your first time seeing him in action. It makes your heart beat out of your chest. There’s this ache like you should be inside with him, cables connected to both of you, tucked neatly inside of Blue together.

It doesn’t take him long to get his opponent on their back, the heavy thump against the floor jostling the ant-like figures on the ground below, handlers waiting for their pilots to finish. It goes on like this for a while, his training, using different methods of combat and winning each time. He’s amazing, and you can tell why his reputation is the way it is, second only to Tenko, who you have yet to see in action.

When he finishes his last session, you watch Blue walk to the edge of the room, and Touya emerges from her chest, jumping the long way down her body without any issue. You watch as he looks toward the window you’re behind. He waves at you, an acknowledgment of your presence, and you wave back, though you aren’t sure he can actually see you.

It’s the beginning of everything for the two of you. You think Tenko was right.

He lets you stay with him afterwards while he does maintenance on Blue. He helps you climb up the path to her chest, hauling you over the edge to sit inside with him. He turns around abruptly, holding a hand up before allowing you to walk any further.

“Do not touch anything.” He warns, completely serious, before letting his hand fall and allowing you further into the cockpit. You take in your surroundings, the guts of his machine, analyzing the different control panels and screens that line the interior. You can tell he takes good care of her, and he spends a lot of time in here. It looks lived in, stickers stuck to metal plating and pieces of him all over. He’s made a second home in between the ribs of his mech. You feel a little jealous, though you aren’t sure of what.

The two of you sit against the left side of Blue’s interior, waiting for her updates to finish, the loading screen on each of her monitors display a fire graphic that grows with the increasing percentage on screen. Between you and Touya sits an opened bag of sour gummies, which Touya picks out the lemon flavor and drops the candy in your palm with each new handful he gathers.

“How do you know all this stuff?” He questions around a mouthful of sour cherry, “Like, the real names for things, where stuff goes, how to fix them. That day with the wires…”

“I spent a lot of time around mechanics at UA, and then also at the PLF.” You explain, picking the yellow colored candy from his open palm as you speak. “I couldn’t connect with other handlers. I didn’t like how they thought, or how they viewed the pilot/handler relationship. Mechanics were mostly neutral, and they loved these machines like nothing else. They reminded me of why I joined UA in the first place.”

“Hm.” He nods, thinking about your past. “Well, I guess if you spent so much time around actual professionals…I could maybe use your help sometimes in the garage.”

“Really?” You question excitedly, a spark lighting up your eyes as you swerve your head toward him. He feels something tight in his chest at the sight.

“Yes, but only on the outside. I don’t want you messing with her insides, yet.” He establishes. “And never alone. I have to be there at all times.”

“Of course, yes, oh my god. Touya!” You smile, gripping his shoulder firmly, a gesture of thanks, communication of how much his trust means to you. “I’ll be so careful with her, I promise.”

“Yeah, well, you have no other choice.” He shrugs, throwing another pile of candy in his mouth. “I’ll kill you if anything happens to her.”

You take the threat seriously, but his heart isn’t in it. He’s realized that you’ve wormed your way into his life and he hadn’t even noticed just how entangled you were now.

As the weeks go by, you spend a lot more time together. You work on blue together, and you rest inside of her chest, sometimes allowing yourself to drift off against his shoulder on especially tiring days. He sits beside you in the caf, and while he doesn’t always say much, the feeling of his arm against yours is comforting. You can tell people are starting to notice, and they’re starting to talk. You’re being dubbed someone who’s tamed him, but you know how far from the truth that is.

Despite your differences and the petty arguments that come up when Touya feels like you’re intruding on his independence, you’re growing attached. You wonder if he is, too.

…

Spending time together in the garage becomes the new normal for the two of you. Being in each other’s dorms feels far too intimate, so you always meet in the garage. This way, one of you is always busy doing something with your hands. There’s no room for any strange feelings in the pit of your stomach to seep in.

You sit in the crook of Blue’s neck, watching Touya as he repairs the lenses in her “eyes.” Blue has three pairs of eyes; in her head, her chest, and down near her hips, which all footage is projected onto monitors inside the cockpit so that Touya has a full view of what’s in front of him.

He’s so peaceful while he works, you’ve noticed, almost like he goes somewhere else completely. It’s a part of him you don’t think many people get to see, a piece of him just for you, and you want to be selfish with it.

“Can I ask you something?” You question, leaning your head back against the metal. “But you can’t get mad.”

He looks up at you, still fiddling with a lens, a mocking look on his face. “I’m not making any promises.”

You take a deep breath, preparing yourself for the possible fallout of the question you’re about to ask, “What do you think about the soul link?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I’d never do it.”

You nod your head in understanding, “yeah, I get it. It’s weird, right? The idea that someone else would be inside your brain.”

“It’s fucking invasive.” He says.

“You know, at UA it always felt like a threat, you know. Like, it was a way for a handler to control their pilot, not a tool or a bond like it should be.” You begin, thinking back to how you viewed the soul link back then. You didn’t like how the bond was presented as this power that a handler holds over their pilot, a threat to keep their pilot in line. But, you could understand how the link could be used for good. “But since coming here, I can tell it’s not all bad. People trust each other here. I mean, there’s obviously some people who abuse it, but, for the most part, everyone seems to understand what it really means to be a pilot and a handler.”

You’re mostly just thinking out loud, but Touya doesn’t say anything to your ramblings. He continues to work on the lenses, and you can gather that he doesn’t want to talk about the subject anymore. But you can’t let it go, yet. There’s something you’ve been worried about since you met him.

“And what about…your brain? They say when a handler and a pilot don’t complete the soul link, the pilot will eventually fry their brain.” You can’t help it. You think about it all the time, what will happen when he can’t take it anymore. The closer you get to him, the realer it feels. “Are you ever worried about that?”

He looks at you, an expression you can’t quite make out fall across his face as he stares. It’s almost soft, the way he looks at you in this moment. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

The truth is, this is a reality Touya has accepted. He’s not afraid to die, and he never has been. He’ll probably die inside of Blue, and he has no problem with that fact. He doesn’t need to be around for long, just enough to show his dad what he’s capable of.

“C’mon.” You stare. “That’s not fair.”

“Shit. I left some of the screws for this in my dorm.” He curses. He looks where you lounge, tucked into Blue’s shoulder. “Keep an eye on her, okay?”

You watch him jump down, much higher than his usual height at her chest, but he lands anyway. He doesn’t turn to look back at you as he jogs away. You climb up the side of Blue, and look at the lenses in her head. They’re already repaired, and you know Touya used the excuse of missing screw just so he wouldn’t have to talk about the soul link.

But it’s the first time he’s ever left you alone with Blue before.

…

As the mission draws closer, Touya throws himself into training. You’re on the training floor with him most days, standing behind that big glass panel as you watch him spar with his peers. He still doesn’t let you down on the floor with him until he’s full out of Blue and close enough to the edge of the sparring floor to get to you. You’re not allowed in the actual training area, and even though he says he doesn’t want you clinging to him, it’s really because he wants to keep you safe. Seeing your human body near the giant machines that are HERO’s makes him want to grab you and keep you inside of Blue’s chest forever.

You can tell all the training is taking a toll on him. With an excess of headaches and the occasional nosebleed, you continuously get into arguments about him cutting back on training inside of Blue. There are other ways for him to prepare that don’t involve his fragile brain being hooked up to an entity that takes so much. He doesn’t listen.

Later and later into the night, as your fellow pilots and handlers disperse and return to their rooms to sleep, Touya stays inside of Blue, testing her movements and sparring against test dummies and obstacles. Once you and Touya are the only two left on the sparring floor, you speak into the intercom attached to your head.

“Touya, I think you should take a break.” You tell him, “It’s late. Get some rest and then we can pick it back up in the morning.”

There’s a pause, then, “I’m gonna stay for another hour. Get some sleep. I’ll be done soon.”

“No, Touya. You’ve been at it for hours. You barely took a break for dinner. C’mon.”

“You know, you sound awfully like a handler trying to tell their pilot what to do.” He teases, but you can hear the irritation in his voice.

“You are insufferable. I’m worried about you.” You groan.

“I’m fine. Go sleep.” He insists.

“If I find out you aren’t out of here in an hour—” Your line is promptly cut off, leaving behind static in your ear. You sigh and throw your com to the side. You hope he’s telling the truth.

With one last look at Blue, you make your way out of the training floor and find your way back to your dorm.

Touya doesn’t answer the door when you knock the next morning. With a frustrated groan, you leave your dorm and head to the training floor, assuming he woke up early to get some extra hours in. The closer you get the the floor, you notice other members of the base rushing in front of you. Feeling panicked, you pick up the pace, jogging toward the training room to make sure something isn’t wrong. You collide with a body in front of you, nearly falling to the floor as you steady yourself. Toga stands in front of you, her cheeks red and eyes glossy as she explains something your mind can’t catch up to understand. The only thing you recognize is his name, and you’re running toward the training floor in an instant.

You watch as Blue stomps around the area, her arms swinging in all directions, losing her footing as she moves. Knowing you can’t do anything on the floor, you make your way up to the overlook, finding Tenko yelling into your intercom.

“What’s going on? What’s happening?” You ask him, pulling the headset off of his head and placing it on yours instead.

“He’s out of fucking control. He won’t answer. I don’t even think he’s conscious in there.” He tells you, running a hand through his hair, pulling at the roots in anxiety. “You’re not linked yet, are you?”

You shake your head, closing your eyes in frustration as you try to think. You know it’s the only way. You have to take some of the burden off of him, make him share it with you. It’s the only way he’ll survive right now. “Do you think you can get into Decay right now and knock him down somehow?”

He hesitates, “I can get inside. I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to touch him at all.”

“You have to.” You plead, desperately. “I just need him down for ten seconds, tops. As long as I can get inside of her, I can save him.”

He looks at you like you’re insane, and maybe you are. But you know you can’t live with yourself if you don’t try something. Tenko nods.

“I can do it.” He tells you. You rush passed him, following the stairs down to the training area. You feel Tenk grab your wrist firmly. “You bring him back, okay?”

“I will.” You nod.

He dodges Blue’s movements, weaving between her legs as he finally makes it to Decay. It takes a few moments for him to connect, but he goes straight for Blue. You watch the giant machines fight one another, but it’s clear that Blue’s lack of control hinders much of her ability. She needs Touya just as much as he needs her. It’s tough for Decay to dodge her swinging arms, but Tenko manages to knock her down quickly.

The fall shakes the room, but you waste no time running for Blue. Climbing over the side of her, you manage to touch your thumb to the pad on the outside to open her chest up. She begins to stand up, and you slip down, grabbing onto a bar beneath her ribcage. You let out a frustrated groan as you try to pull yourself up over the edge of the cockpit. Finally making it over, you see Touya sitting there, still connected to his pilot’s chair, eyes glazed over and blood gushing from his nose. You push the button that closes the panel in Blue’s chest, and you’re suddenly alone with him.

Touya’s body is being jerked around by the movement of the mech, and you hang onto the walls of her chest in order to make your way to him. You situate yourself in his lap, taking his head in your hands as you look at him with tears in your eyes.

“You fucking asshole! I told you to take a break.” You sob, resting your head against his as you try and think of what to do next. “Touya, please. Please, baby, I need to you come back. Just fucking come back so I don’t have to do this without your permission, please.”

With no response from him, you wipe your tears, coming to terms with the fact that you have to complete the soul link now, or he’ll die. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Touya. Please forgive me.”

The soul link isn’t exactly an action so much as it is a feeling, an experience. There’s no trigger for it, no way to make it happen. It just begins.

It’s Touya, aged thirteen, wild, chubby-cheeked and happy, in the pilot’s seat of his father’s HERO. It’s his drive, his determination, his anger, his hurt. It’s the day he snuck into battle, the day he couldn’t get out, flesh burning and fusing to the metal walls of his mech, the feeling now deep in your skin. It’s you, aged fifteen, hopeful, alive, shaking hands with your first pilot. It’s your heart, much too big and much too open for your line of work, it’s your passion, your fire, every piece of you that was broken down again and again until there was nothing left. It’s Touya and it’s you, and every single bit of your souls now tied together in one big knot.

There’s nothing but darkness. And then there’s screaming. And then you can hear everything. Every thought running through Touya’s brain right now echoes in your head as you slowly come back to yourself. He can hear the same of yours.

It’s overwhelming at first, to have two sets of thoughts in your head at the same time, but you manage to focus. You can feel an anger inside of you like you’ve never felt. It’s almost like it’s your own. You need to come back. You’ve lost control of Blue.

In an instant, you feel yourself come back to your body, now straddling Touya like before, you feel his arms shoot around you and he tucks his chin over your shoulder to pilot Blue like he’s used to doing. He pays no mind as he presses up against you, but you feel your heart rate increase at the closeness.

He’s so close.

I have to be. You’re in my lap.

Shit. I didn’t think—

Clearly.

I can’t fucking believe you. I told you we weren’t going to do this.

You were dying!

Then you fucking let me!

You’re jostled around in his lap for a moment as he stops Blue from destroying any more of the training floor, and Touya wraps an arm around your waist, holding you steady.

He gains control of her quickly, moving her toward the edge of the room. You tuck your face into his neck, not wanting to distract him and keeping your thoughts at bay so you don’t overwhelm him. He powers Blue down, severing the neural connection between the two of you, and shoves you from his lap and into the pilot’s chair like you’ve burned him. He storms out of the cockpit, climbing out of his machine and leaving you inside. You think about the argument you had within each other’s head, how Touya would have rather died than be linked to you like he is now.

You slump against the seat, comforted by the metal cage you’ve been left inside of.

#dabi x reader #touya todoroki x reader #bnha x reader #tw claustrophobia #just in case it’s like so brief and doesn’t describe much yet but I just wanna be safe #ghost.writes #ghost.fic

260 notes · View notes

drabblesandimagines · 11 months ago

Text

Pink Gingham

Leon Kennedy x reader Established relationship, all fluff

It had been a long week at work. A number of your colleagues calling in sick and multiple projects in the pipeline, you’d tried to take up some of the slack with ill-advised early starts and late finishes...

Truthfully, if Leon hadn’t been away on assignment, you wouldn’t have volunteered for so much overtime.

The house still felt too big compared to the apartment you’d once shared, so the more time out of it at the moment the better, in your opinion. You’d started to feel a little off Friday morning, cast it aside as nothing that a lie-in Saturday would sort, but still found yourself awake at sunrise.

You’d got up, checked your phone to see if there were any messages – zero – showered and dressed, and taken the early wake-up call as a sign that you shouldn’t lie in today, but instead head downstairs to start on the long list of housework that had been neglected with good intentions.

You fill the kitchen sink with hot, soapy water and begin to wash the numerous glasses and cups that have built up. It must be the steam from the sink because there’s sweat on your brow by the second cup. You reason you should wait for the water cool down and take a bottle of water out the fridge, greedily gulping down half the thing before you change tact to loading the dishwasher.

After loading up the racks, you still feel too hot for what should for such a menial task. You’re feeling more akin to that time you tried to join Leon in one of his ridiculous work outs in the garage. To top it off, the beginning of a headache is now beginning to pound at your temples. You try and rub it half-heartedly away with your fingers, finally fighting back a yawn.

You check your phone again – still nothing.

It wouldn’t hurt to go back to bed, would it?

Your phone buzzes almost violently on the bedside table, startling you awake. The headache you had before you’d laid down for what might turn out to be an ill-advised nap doesn’t seem to have shifted, even with the painkillers you’d taken. In fact, it feels worse than it did, graduating into a horrible, constant throb around your temples.

You weakly kick the duvet off of you, feeling flush – should have got changed into your pjyamas rather than getting in bed fully dressed - and reach out blindly for your phone, holding it above your face to squint at the screen, trying to decipher what it was determined to tell you.

Two new messages from Leon.

Finally on my way home, sweetheart. Wrapped up yesterday but they wouldn’t discharge me till this morning. ETA 210 minutes.

You would’ve rolled your eyes at the acronym if it wasn’t already hard enough to focus.

And before you ask – bit bruised. Don’t recommend a prison tour…! All good otherwise x

Leon had set out on an assignment the previous weekend and you hadn’t heard much from him besides one text message a day, a sentence of more than three words if you were particularly lucky, often sweet words...

"All good."

"Miss you, sweetheart."

"I love you."

"Recycling out tomorrow!"

..or reminders about something you'd forget to do completely if he wasn't around. In fact, that’s the way it had always been if he was on what you’d call 'active duty', not just him in a stuffy suit up DC way, trailing behind the President. It's not like you’d got used to not hearing much from him, just that it was expected.

There was always that little lump in your throat when he was away, of course there was, that this would be the time you wouldn't hear from him at all and there'd just be a knock on the door, agents dressed in mourning suits.

Besides, you’d rather his focus was on coming back to you in one piece than trying to compose an update whilst shielding from bullets or something horrifying.

You haul yourself out of bed, immediately regretting it when your vision swims and you fall back down heavily on the mattress, balance somewhat abandoning you.

Probably just got up too fast, you reason, try and shrug it off. There’s there niggling feeling in the pit of your stomach that you’re not well, but you’re going to remain in denial about it. You hate being sick, will never acknowledge you’re feeling under the weather to your grave and just muster on. It’s all psychological – it’s just a headache, you haven’t drunk enough water, not after you’ve sweated the last one out, didn’t have a proper breakfast either.

You’re fine. There’s too much to do, anyway. Every single time Leon had arrived home from an assignment it had been to a clean house and a home-cooked meal keeping warm in the oven, his favourite sweatpants fresh out of the dryer after you’d convinced him to soak in the tub – worked wonders for tense and bruised muscles – and you’ll be damned if he didn’t have the same today. It’s what he deserves.

He'd beam as soon as he walked in, wrapping you up tight in his arms, pressing a kiss against your temple and you’d run him said bath, finishing off dinner to be served for when he returned downstairs. What would follow would be an early retreat to bed, sometimes for devouring kisses and more, or just embraced in each other’s arms.

Leon’s text was from a while ago, so he couldn’t be too far away. Probably be hungry as well – often running off pure adrenaline when he was fighting for his life, then had an insatiable appetite on his return – so you really should try and see what you could combine from whatever’s in the refrigerator.

Ugh – you hadn’t done a grocery run in a few days. That had been on your agenda for today, though you’re not sure you’ll have time for that now. The laundry hamper is close to overflowing, the dishwasher definitely needs running after you crammed it full after dinner last night, some rogue plates and glasses piled up besides the sink and definitely a few rooms would benefit from the vacuum being run around.

You don’t even what to think about the garbage and recycling situation.

So much for his usual welcome home deal, then.

You get up a little slower this time, rewarded for your efforts by no spots of black in your vision and carefully head out the bedroom and towards the stairs, perhaps gripping the banister a little too firm on your descent than usual.

The easiest task by far is to pop the tablet in the dishwasher and set that to run, so you do that first, though making sure to bend down slowly after the previous bouts of head rush. After it whirs into action, you grab an apron off the hook – a pink frilly gingham one, a gift from a friend – and turn your attention to the fridge and proceed to stare forlornly at the contents, hoping for inspiration to strike.

You close the door in defeat and lean up against the counter. Maybe there’s some pasta and sauce in the cupboard…? Your thought is cut off as you hear the front door unlock.

“Sweetheart, you home?” You want to think it’s the sound of his voice that makes you weak at the knees, but you’d be a liar.

“In the kitchen!” You call back, keeping yourself propped up against the counter. Usually you’d be rushing towards him, colliding into his chest for a hug but everything feels impossible.

“Hey.” He smiles, creases at the corner of those blue eyes you could stare into for hours. Though he wasn’t lying in his text about the bruises – there’s a black eye blooming, currently a rather pleasing shade of purple, and plenty of other marks and scrapes littering his arms.

“Hey. Sorry, I haven’t started dinner yet.” Leon raises his eyebrow at that, and you feel awful, but it’s not for the reason you think. “No, sorry. I mean, welcome home! I’ll just star-” You stand upright, intending to head over to the cupboard in search of something, but your step is a bit too heavy, too quick to move and your vision swims again.

“Whoa.” Leon catches you by your shoulders, holding you up. “You feeling all right there, sweetpea?”

“I’m great.” You try and shrug him off, but his heavy palms stay in place. “Are you okay?”

His brows furrow, eyes scanning over your face. “You look hot.” The concern gives way to a grin as he realizes what he’s said. “I mean, not the usual hot. Warm.”

A hand remains on your shoulder while he moves the other to your forehead, gauging your temperature, but you’ll be damned to admit it feels soothingly cool. “I’ll turn the AC on. Let me-”

“Shit, no. You’re burning up.” Leon’s eyes widen, a worried crease appearing on his brow. “How long have you been like this?”

“No, it’s just…” You pull your head back from his hand, reluctantly. “It’s just hot in here.”

He gives you a skeptical look as you try and step around him – a look that would usually be accompanied with his hands on his hips if he didn’t still have one keeping you in place.

“How long?” He repeats, his mind racing, heart pounding. It was protocol to be decontaminated after any interaction with a BOW – he’d showered and changed clothes since Alcatraz. Hell, he’d bagged up his old ones to be incinerated, just to be sure. He knows it’s not logical, he can’t have brought something back with him and it affect you this fast, but the worry still surfaces. “From before I got home or just now? Did you feel a sting or anything?”

“Sting? No.” You shake your head, scrambling for excuses. “I’ve had a headache all morning but I probably haven’t drunk enough water. And… And I didn’t have the AC on or the windows open today, it’s probably that.”

“Mm-hm.” He relaxes a little, he’d already began calculating the distance between here and the lab. “Have I told you before that you’re a terrible liar?”

“Honestly, I’m fine,” you protest, taking advantage. “I can get dinner started at least. You go relax and I’ll…!”

Your vision swims again from sudden movement, but this time it’s from Leon sweeping you up into his arms. He doesn’t even let out a grunt, even though you know he must be aching from the amount of bruises he has.

“Sweetheart, we’re barely into the afternoon. You don’t need to worry about dinner - you’re going back to bed.”

“No, I’ve got so much to do.” You lament, though you don’t fight as he adjusts his hold on you, wrapping your arms around his neck as he heads towards the stairs.

“So? I can handle it.”

“But you just got back, I should be looking after you.”

That’s the way it had always been. Leon comes home and you’re there for him, however he needs you to be. Sometimes he’ll tell you about what happened as he cuddles into your chest – likes to hear your heartbeat, reminds him of some good in the world – but you’ve failed miserably this time, not even remotely prepared.

“Sweetpea, I know you hate being sick but you aren’t going to feel any better pushing yourself, okay? Let me fuss over my favourite girl for once.”

You don’t say anything as he places you gently down on the bed, sitting up against the headrest. He goes over to the dresser and pulls out one of his t-shirts, tugging the knot of the apron strings loose before softly asking you to put your arms up above your head. It’s all gentle touches, removing the apron, coercing you out of your top and into his, shuffling you out of your jeans and pulling back the covers for you to get in.

“These the painkillers you took?” He lifts up the box from the bedside table, eyes skimming the instructions and dosage.

“Yeah.” You mumble back, nuzzling your cheek into the pillow. “I don’t remember when though.”

“We’ll hold off a couple more hours, then, before another dose.”

He grabs the glass that was sat beside the pills and retreats into the bathroom, where you hear the tap run for a moment before he’s back at your side, placing down the glass of water. He crouches down besides you and gently brushes some of your hair behind your ear.

“Can I get you anything?”

You open an eye. “You.”

He grins, gets to his feet and carefully clambers over you to lie down at your back, draping a heavy arm around your waist.

“Only for a bit, though. Don’t want you overheating from me.”

“Mm-hm…” You mumble into the pillow, feeling your body relax. The weight of his arm feels nice – reassuring. “Love you.”

“I love you too, sweetheart.”

It isn’t long before Leon can hear your breathing change, assuring him that you’ve drifted off to sleep. He could stay there easily, just close his eyes and nod off and though he knows you would never oppose that, the way you’d be so determined to get the house in order... A flash of pink gingham on the floor makes up his mind.

---

You wake up alone in the bed, a little confused, but clear of the awful headache. Looking for the glass of water you know that Leon left there earlier, you notice that the bedside table now holds your phone, plugged into charge. You sit up slowly – still wary of dizzy spells - greedily drink from the glass of water, feeling it slip down your throat into a particularly empty stomach. Seems like your appetite had decided to reappear.

The digital alarm clock over on the dresser shows that it’s gone 8pm and, most intriguingly, the laundry basket is now empty. Huh.

You don’t bother to dress as you head downstairs, still clad in Leon’s t-shirt. The TV’s playing on a low volume, a candle burning on the coffee table. You can hear the thrum of the washing machine from the utility and when you head through to the kitchen, you find Leon hunched over the sink, apron strings tied around his waist as he dips a glass into the soapy water. The dishwasher is slightly ajar and you can see it’s been emptied, and he’s washing everything left in the sink – by hand.

He looks over his shoulder with a hesitant smile at the sound of your footsteps and then turns, drying his hands off on the apron – the pink frilly gingham number seems to suit him a little too well.

“Hey. Not sure you should be up yet, sweetheart. You were a bit unsteady on your feet earlier. Go sit down for me?”

“Okay.” You nod, and he’s pleased that you don’t protest – putting it down to the fact that you still must be feeling somewhat lousy. He traces your footsteps as you plod over to sit on the sofa though, just in case, and watches you curl up against the armrest.

“You feel up to eating something? I ordered in some soup earlier. Can warm it up on the stove now if you like – it’s your favourite.”

You nod. “That sounds nice.”

“Coming right up.” He pulls the blanket from off the armchair – the one that’s usually reserved for movie nights – and tucks it around you, pressing a kiss on your forehead as he does.

He turns to head back to the kitchen when he feels your fingers curl around his wrist, causing him to pause.

“I’m sorry I’m an awful patient.”

“You’re not, just stubborn,” Leon corrects with a cocky grin, but it doesn’t have the desired effect as the pout remains in place on your lips, thoughts spiraling. “But so am I.”

“No, I should be looking after you. You should be coming back to everything in order. Whatever this is won’t be anywhere near as bad as what you’ve been through - those bruises look so sore an-“

“Hey, it’s not a competition, sweetpea.” He says, softly, crouching down in front of you, rubbing your thigh with his right hand. “We’re a team, aren’t we?”

“It feels like I’ve let you down.”

“Never.” He says, firmly, giving you thigh a squeeze. “Actually impossible. I’m just glad I got back in time to keep an eye on you, I just hate the idea of you feeling lousy on your own.”

The washing machine beeps from the utility and he gets to his feet, passing you the remote from the coffee table. “Why don’t you find us something to watch, and I’ll move the laundry to the dryer and get that soup warmed up?”

“If you’re sure.”

He bends down, presses a kiss against your crown.

“Positive.”

He only makes it a few steps back towards the kitchen when you call out, looking bashful.

“Leon?”

“Mm?” He twists slightly to look back in curiosity.

“You look cute in that apron.”

He gives you a twirl, ending with a beaming grin. “I know.”

---

Masterlist . Requests welcome . Commissions/Ko-Fi

#ghostdogwrites #leon kennedy x reader #leon kennedy x you #leon kennedy fluff

546 notes · View notes

gay-otlc · 2 years ago

Text

When people say they struggle with keeping track of all the tone tags (the ones like /j or /gen), everyone who disregards that by responding "it's just memorizing some abbreviations/acronyms, it's not that hard, stop complaining" is ableist and a fucking hypocrite. If you're going to advocate for accessibility, advocate for accessibility for all of us.

You can't claim to be an ally to neurodivergent and disabled people and then shit on us for our symptoms. If you actually care about helping us, why aren't you listening when we say we struggle with something? It's never okay to tell disabled people they should be able to do something they can't, that it's not that hard, but it's especially not okay if you do so while pretending to support disabled people.

Also, in addition to the "it's not that hard" statement being ableist, it's utter bullshit. There are so many tone tags to keep track of and memorize. I did a quick google search and one of my top results had ninety one tone tags. That's a lot. That's probably a lot even for a neurotypical person, and I'm not a neurotypical person. I struggle to remember a lot of basic, necessary tasks, so I really can't memorize ninety one tone tags.

Especially when some of them are incredibly ambiguous- only one letter? Acronyms or abbreviations at least give you some clues, one letter tone tags are so incredibly confusing. Like, what does /t mean? There are a lot of words that start with T! (This is a rhetorical question. I know /t means "teasing," but I only know the answer because figuring that out was a memorably frustrating experience.)

And /t is just one example of a tone tag I learned because I kept seeing it in conversation and not understanding and being really confused and frustrated. I can't tell you the number of times I've been messaging someone on discord, and they say something with a tone tag I don't recognize, and I just open a new tab to google the meaning, which is where I find lists like the one above. I usually rely on google instead of asking the person what they meant, because I feel stupid and embarrassed for not knowing this code that everyone else seemingly gets.

Which is exactly how it feels when I don't understand someone's tone in real life! Confused and frustrated and ashamed. And tone tags were supposed to help neurodivergent and disabled people not feel that way, so I don't know how we reached a point where they cause those feelings in many of us.

I can't deny that tone tags are a useful accessibility tool for some. If you find them helpful, it's genuinely good that you have that resource. But they're not accessible for all of us. It's incorrect to act like tone tags are a perfect way to communicate, and it's ableist to disregard our struggles with them and tell us to just try harder.

Either listen to those of us who say they have trouble understanding tone tags, or stop pretending you actually give a shit about accessibility.

#this was meant to be just those first two paragraphs about ableism + hypocrisy but then i kept on rambling. i am incapable of shutting up #anyway. had some thoughts about the disk horse and then i had more thoughts and more thoughts and more thoughts #tone tags #tone indicators

2K notes · View notes

sophie-frm-mars · 4 months ago

Text

I just wanna gush about DBT for a second

DBT saved my life so I'm gonna spend a moment telling everyone how helpful it can be because I know there are a lot of people with BPD out there who need to hear it.

so cluster B personality disorders are characterised by, among other things "unrelenting crisis" - this is the combination of the feeling that every small problem you encounter is just yet more insurmountable bullshit and the reality that you have a lot of bad shit going on in your life, some of caused by the wider world beyond your control and inevitably some of it self-inflicted. The problem is, to someone who is constantly activated and feels life as this kind of non stop catastrophe, it's really hard to practice skills learned in therapy to do anything about it AND it feels impossible to judge what is an appropriate thing to spend your energy on, where to even begin tackling your problems.

The group component of DBT is explicitly justified in the therapists' manual as tackling this, which I think is genius. A borderline patient will bring new problems to their therapist every week and not focusing on them will trigger feelings of abandonment but the patient will definitely have forgotten all about this problem and moved onto a new one by next session or the one after so you have two therapies, one talk therapy one-on-one and the other a group setting like a class where you learn the DBT skills, and then in the group setting no patient feels like they're being especially ignored by the therapist because they're all there to learn the skills as peers. I just think that's really clever

The bit that really whips though is the skills around Accumulating positive experiences and Building mastery. Okay so your life feels like shit, right? Like one shit thing after another? Your therapy is to have a nice time and get better at something in a way that makes you proud. There's a whole acronym for the skills you need to use to keep yourself well, ABC PLEASE, but C and PLEASE are all essentially preventative skills to stop you having an actively bad time or worsening your mental health, and A and B (Accumulate positive experiences, Build mastery) are the ones where you're proactively creating your life worth living and I love it so much.

Accumulating Positive Experiences really does just mean having a nice time in an intentional way. It can literally be watching TV, it can be whatever you want, but you approach it thinking about what will make good experiences that will actively make you feel like you are leading a life worth living. My girlfriend and I went to the planetarium and took edibles last month and it owns so hard that according to DBT that's therapy

Building Mastery is all about helping you get a sense of momentum and direction by improving at something, ideally something that isn't also what you do for work. I know "get a hobby" seems like such basic advice for helping someone out of a rough time but like I've been bouldering since early last year and seeing myself get better at it has been impossibly good for me.

I've been getting into cooking this year as one of my Building mastery practices, at first just regularish like "how can I feed myself in a way that feels like I'm showing myself care at all" like finally learning how to make some of the comfort foods I had in childhood like beef stew, or trying out new things on my very basic salmon, potatoes and broccolli, like teriyaki glaze on broccolli or making hasselback potatoes. Then after a while it became a thing where I felt confident enough to actually thing about a little project and do it like around when my gf and I started officially dating I made her roast lamb and dauphinoise potatoes (nothing photographs well, sorry in advance lol), or we started rewatching Twin Peaks and I really wanted cherry pie so I made my own, which I had never done before!

and at the same time as improving at that stuff I felt like I was good enough at it that cooking for other people was a way I could show them care, which was something I had always wanted but never put in the time to making a reality.

In The Endings Machine: Technology & Teleology I talked about how cooking vegan food in groups is more effective in several ways that going vegan yourself and afterwards my sister (who helped with recording) said to me and a friend "I've been thinking about this ever since filming, we should do this!" and we've been holding a rotating vegan group meal at other's places fortnightly since then, and it's been really good! (This idea btw was partly inspired by my time on the ZAD where communal living leads to group cooking on a rotation, mostly vegan) For the first one I made a spicy mushroom pasta, then I had to bring the dessert to one and I made a vegan chocolate tart with coconut milk instead of dairy making a coconut chocolate filling and it was SOOO good

Last week the vegan meal was at mine again and it fell on halloween so we invited more people and arranged a little spooky movie screening and I made SOOO much food and it was all fucking fantastic. My gf and I made dhal makhani, aubergine rice, parathas, vegan raita and onion bhajis and served them with some mango chutney and some oven-cook samosas that were just from big tesco. I'm so fucking proud of myself, I've never cooked this much before and it went so well! I guess what I really want to get across is how looking at this from the DBT perspective I gotta get across how good this shit is for your mental health and how absurdly well it dovetails with building community.

There are all sorts of other ways Accumulating positive experiences and Building mastery help, because DBT is a very holistic approach to helping people get better - like if you know what things you like doing and you plan them to be available to you, you know that you're going to be happy with your own company, which means if you're having a shit time around someone else you're happy saying "I would be having a better time being alone right now" and just leaving. That makes it easier to live up to your self-respect goals, which are a big part of the DBT interpersonal effectiveness skills, as well as helping to tackle every cluster B girlie's deep seated fear of abandonment.

I could go on an on, but the salient thing right now is that there are a lot of people struggling with stuff I relate to as someone who has had my shit rocked by Borderline Personality Disorder for years and years, and I know that the biggest feeling at core is like "what is this all for? what is the thing that we are all trying to do in the space we are chaotically scrabbling to try to clear all the time?" and this is the answer: you want to accumulate positive experiences and build mastery, and when you get to doing it you have such a profoundly more grounded sense of being in the world, of what it is that's worth being here for and what stands in the way of life just being like that for everyone and a more meaningful drive to try and make it be that way for everyone.

I also wanna go on and on about how Interpersonal Effectiveness makes everyone better at organising too, but I think the Life Worth Living is the better sales pitch for DBT. idk in short a close friend pitched it to me a little while ago that all leftists should learn DBT and it would make the revolution way easier and the more I live of my life worth living the more I agree.

99 notes · View notes

am-i-the-asshole-official · 1 year ago

Note

AITA for letting my boyfriend kiss me roughly in front of my friend?

We're all adults if that matters. About a month ago, my friend introduced my boyfriend and I, and we immediately hit it off. We really enjoy one another's company, and spend as much time together as possible. We're almost opposites, socially, he's a bit grouchy and more reserved. He doesn't always get along with others well and he and my friend especially don't get along too well (ironically). I love socializing and am an extrovert, being able to be around my boyfriend and friend at the same time is pretty important to me.

My boyfriend isn't the best at showing affection. He's particularly bad at kissing. I personally don't mind, I find it charming, even! Even when he gives me a peck on the cheek he tends to hit kind of hard, sometimes I'll even involuntarily squawk out of surprise. Again, I really don't mind, I think it's cute.

The problem is, when I'm with my boyfriend and friend, my friend can get defensive of me. They are never rude about it, but I can tell it gets on my boyfriend's nerves. Sometimes when we're hanging out he'll lean over to give me a little kiss, and it'll land hard enough to knock me off balance. My friend will say to my boyfriend, "don't you think that's a bit too rough?" or, to me, "why do you let him do that?" My boyfriend will get huffy about it. I don't really get why my friend can't just ignore him.

Yesterday, when the three of us were spending time together, things were going pretty well. My boyfriend was just sitting on the other side of me while my friend was talking to me. My boyfriend went in for a kiss on my cheek and bit me kind of hard, and drew a little blood. My friend exclaimed and loudly said his name, my boyfriend was startled by the outburst and left. I think my friend was upset that I let him do that, especially since we have a show coming up and my mane feathers are getting a bit thin from him kissing.

So AITA for not moving when he kisses me like this, even though it bothers my friend?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole #joke aita #pet tax

739 notes · View notes

diorsluv · 1 year ago

Text

feather , part 23

“ like a feather, like a feather, like a feather ”

series m. list previous chapter next chapter

( second post is based off of the request/ask “oh my god what if she doesn’t go to the lake house cause she thought luke and the girl were going to be there but the girl wasn’t there, so she went to a different place for the summer for no reason :(” )

( socialmedia!au )

yourusername

liked by dylanduke25, trevorzegras, _quinnhughes, and 104,680 others

yourusername i need these cakes and i need them now

view all comments

luca.fantilli is that charles leclerc 🤨

→ yourusername yes what about it

→ colecaufield oh god don’t remind her

→ jackhughes calm down cole it was lando norris not leclerc 🙄🙄

→ yourusername i would actually really appreciate it if you baked me a cake and put an edible photo of carlos sainz on it

→ trevorzegras first of all yourusername you’re delusional and he’s like 10 years older than you

→ yourusername incorrect but proceed 😒

→ colecaufield and also your obsession is getting scary

→ yourusername IT WAS A JOKEEEE 🙄

username36 wondering how luke feels about this

username17 i just know luke’s punching the air

username26 luke’s prob sayin “why am i not on those cakes”

username92 if i don’t get a cake like that i’m throwing hands

mackie.samo LMAOOO IS THAT EMINEM

→ yourusername shush thyself

→ mackie.samo what 💀

markestapa you’re desperate

→ yourusername STOP DRAGGING ME

→ markestapa you could do a lot better

→ yourusername A LOT BETTER THAN DYLAN O’BRIEN?? i beg to differ

rutgermcgroarty smash

→ yourusername #harrypotterdefender4life

→ rutgermcgroarty wasn’t talking abt him but yes queen he’s hot too!!!!

→ yourusername oh.. why r u speaking like that it’s kind of scary 😥😥

lhughes_06 they’re not that hot 🙄🙄

→ yourusername I’M SORRY WHAT????

→ lhughes_06 idk theyre mid tbh

→ yourusername check ur eyes kid

→ lhughes_06 ok lil buddy

→ yourusername ihy

→ lhughes_06 i love u too

→ jackhughes 👀

→ luca.fantilli 👀

→ _quinnhughes 👀

→ trevorzegras 👀

→ mackie.samo 👀

→ colecaufield 👀

→ rutgermcgroarty 👀

→ adamfantilli 👀

→ _alexturcotte 👀

→ dylanduke25 👀

→ markestapa 👀

→ jamie.drysdale 🤢

→ yourusername you guys need to stop doing this so much oh my god 😭😭

username15 yall all keep asking how luke feels but what abt the bigger question: ARE THOSE THE STURNIOLO TRIPLETS???

→ username7 okay but the biggEST question is: IS THAT GRIFFIN GLUCK?!?!?!

→ username55 i thought it was fucking white boy carl 💀 username7

trevorzegras i sorta approve of your taste in mid white boys

→ yourusername says the mid white boy

→ trevorzegras HEY ☹️

dylanduke25 “smash” means

→ dylanduke25 goddammit i didn’t mean to post without the definition

→ yourusername get ur definition shit AWAYYYYY 🤺🤺

→ markestapa dilf is an acronym for "dad i’d like to fuck". a dilf is any man (typically between the ages of 30-50) who is incredibly attractive and has kids. they are usually really cut, from activities such as pushing strollers, giving piggyback rides, and intense trips to the local park or disney world. the also have a killer smile and sense of childlike joy, because they play with their kids all the time. unfortunately, getting with them is hard, as they are typically very faithful to their wife (see milf).

→ yourusername that’s plagiarism ‼️‼️‼️

username11 the taste in men is immaculate

colecaufield now i don’t comment a lot on your posts anymore but i want you to REAAAAALLY think about what you’ve done here

→ yourusername i posted pictures of hot white men’s faces on cakes!

→ colecaufield yes yes and how do you think that might make other people (cough cough) feel?

→ yourusername grateful because i showed them these masterpieces 🤗🤗

→ colecaufield oh kid you’re hopeless

jamie.drysdale dad asked what dilf means

→ yourusername tell him it means “drake is literally fire”

→ jamie.drysdale too late he saw mark’s definition 😂😂😂

username46 draco malfoy 💚

missseraphina lmao fangirl

adamfantilli let’s split the cake in half

→ yourusername sure <33 you can get the part with the word on it and i can get everything else 🥰

colecaufield i’m surprised crosby isn’t somewhere on there

→ _alexturcotte goddammit whyd u bring it up

→ yourusername SID!!!!!!

→ jamie.drysdale she still has that pinterest album of ONLY pics of him

→ trevorzegras lil drizz u had a crush on him when you were like 5

→ yourusername we all had a crush on him 😒

_quinnhughes would now be a bad time to tell you he’s punching his pillow in the other room

→ jackhughes hey he made us promise to not snitch

→ _quinnhughes stop acting like we actually do what he tells us to do

→ jackhughes you’re right we never do that

→ lhughes_06 you snitched i’m telling mom

→ jackhughes mom doesn’t care ur such a baby

→ lhughes_06 fine i’m telling dad

→ _quinnhughes dad does not give a flying fuck

→ jackhughes dad wouldn’t even know what we’d be talking about

→ jackhughes actually scratch that moosey you’re really damn obvious

→ yourusername what the hell is going on

yourusername

liked by markestapa, _alexturcotte, dylanduke25, and 94,292 others

yourusername oui oui paris 🥖🎀 (creds to jamie for the pics ig)

view all comments

jamie.drysdale wow i’m so honored you remembered to give me creds

→ yourusername because we’re not allowed to argue on our trip 🤬

→ jamie.drysdale dad said and i quote “no squirreling”

→ yourusername what the fuck is squirreling

→ yourusername WAIT DO YOU MEAN QUARRELING 😭😭

→ jamie.drysdale yeah yeah so we can’t squirrel

→ yourusername it’s QUARREL

username88 mother is in her coquette era

username34 HOW DO YOU LOOK SO GOOD WITH A FACE MASK ON???

trevorzegras come backkkkkk wmy

→ yourusername no can do trev 😔

username21 hold up but i thought everyone was spending the summer at the lake house?

rutgermcgroarty but WE were supposed to go to paris together 🙁

→ yourusername no sweetie it was athens..

→ rutgermcgroarty either way it’s still in france

→ yourusername no…….. no its not 😭😭

→ rutgermcgroarty damn it i’m just trying to say you’re always going to OUR dream places with other people 😒

→ yourusername I WILL TAKE YOU TO JEJU ISLAND I PROMISE

→ rutgermcgroarty is that in europe

→ yourusername 😟

_quinnhughes it’s so weird not hearing you badly scream-sing in the shower at 2 in the morning

→ yourusername oh shut up you love my hamilton marathons

adamfantilli you should be the one wiping out on the wakeboard not me 😔😔

→ yourusername wow i feel sooooo missed

→ adamfantilli we do miss u tho (PLEASE COME BACK WE NEED YOU)

username2 wait why didn’t you go to the lake house 😟😟

→ yourusername jamie and i didn’t feel like getting harassed 💔

→ username2 BY WHOOOOO??

→ username2 actually that’s a dumb question i know who

username75 this is the first summer they haven’t spent at the lake house 😧

luca.fantilli don’t worry lil drizzle we bought u two tickets so u can come back 😁

→ yourusername noooooo

mackie.samo you need to come back rn no excuses

markestapa WE NEED TO TAKE OUR ANNUAL GROUP PIC 😕

edwards.73 duker almost burnt the house down please we need you back

jackhughes NO ONES EVEN HERE PLEASE JUST COME BACK

→ yourusername thought my cyberbully was going 😣😖☹️🙁😓😥

→ jackhughes LMFAOOO as if

→ yourusername i’ll consider it 🙄

_alexturcotte our karaoke nights are so boring without youuuu

→ yourusername you can solo our mariah carey songs trust 🙏🙏

→ _alexturcotte NO I CANT

→ yourusername turcs we booked our hotel for 3 weeks i can’t do anything 😭😭

dylanduke25 i almost burnt the house down making waffles

→ yourusername oh duker..

username24 the way they’re all begging her to go back to the lake house lmao

missseraphina it’s giving nepo baby

liked by yourusername

→ username1 LMAOAOAO at this point drizz is just clowning this bitch

lhughes_06 i need you here

this comment has been deleted

lhughes_06 we need you here

next chapter notes ) so regarding the request; i wasn’t sure if it was like a request or more of just a thought but i felt like it could add more angst so i took it as a request anyways 🤍 i also wanted to say that the time between the first and second post was a bit of a jump but like let’s just say the first post was during finals week and the second one was obv during the summer and WE ARE FINALLY IN ACT IV WOOOOOOO 👏👏👏 also thank you all so much for 300 followers AHHHH!! it genuinely does mean so much to me and i’m glad you’re here on my journey to stir up more shit between luke and “his” girl

tags: @aliaology @hockeyboysarehot @absolutelyhugh3s @jackquinnswife @freds-slut @love4ldr @blueeyedbesson @43hughes @v1olentdelights @dancerbailey3 @random-human02 @ho3forfakeguys @loveforaugust

#luke hughes #luke hughes fanfic #luke hughes fic #luke hughes x reader #luke hughes x y/n #quinn hughes #jack hughes #alex turcotte #cole caufield #trevor zegras #jamie drysdale #adam fantilli #rutger mcgroarty #luca fantilli #mackie samoskevich #dylan duke #mark estapa #ethan edwards

387 notes · View notes