#i have way too much time on my hands lmao

[scoupsakakitty]

Hii hellooo, may i have a request like svt 14th fem member youngest like they care abt platonically and protective specially when there's some male idol who wants to hit on her? Or like whenever they are shooting and some people stare at her, or during live some like that and like they become protective but the reader doesn't have any clue thank youu

Unspoken Rules | Seventeen x 14thMember | fluff

"Y/N, stand over here," Seungcheol murmured, subtly guiding her to the middle of the group as they prepared for a live broadcast.

Y/N blinked up at him, confused. "Why? What's wrong with my spot?"

"Nothing. Just... better camera angle," he answered smoothly, glancing over at Joshua, who was already nodding in silent agreement.

"Right," Y/N said, unconvinced but not questioning it further.

The members had always been protective of her—she was their youngest, after all. But lately, something had been feeling... off. Like there were unspoken rules she wasn't aware of.

The broadcast started, and everything seemed normal—until she noticed the way Jeonghan casually placed a hand on the back of her chair whenever a certain male idol sitting across from them spoke to her. Or how Mingyu laughed a little too loudly whenever she responded to said idol’s questions, effectively drowning out the conversation.

It wasn’t until later, when she scrolled through comments, that she saw fans noticing it too.

"LMAO the way Seventeen turns into a human shield whenever a guy talks to Y/N." "DK literally just changed the topic mid-sentence when that dude asked for her number." "Do they realize she’s an adult? 😭"

Her eyebrows furrowed.

"Okay," she started as she marched into their waiting room, crossing her arms. "What is going on?"

The room went silent. Some members pretended to check their phones, others suddenly found their drinks very interesting.

"You guys are acting weird," she pressed.

"We're always weird," Vernon pointed out, unhelpfully.

"Don't change the subject!" She narrowed her eyes. "Tell me why you guys keep acting like my personal security team every time a guy so much as looks at me."

A long pause. Then, Woozi sighed, rubbing his temples. "Look, Y/N, you’re our little sister. We don’t trust these guys."

"Yeah," Hoshi nodded seriously. "Some of them seem... too interested."

"Too interested?" she repeated, confused.

"Like, flirting," Jun clarified, making a face as if the word itself was offensive.

Her jaw dropped. "Wait. You guys think they—?" She burst out laughing. "You guys are ridiculous."

Seungkwan scoffed. "Oh yeah? Tell that to the dude who tried to ask for your number last week."

"What?! When? Who?"

"Exactly," Dino muttered. "You don’t even notice."

Minghao crossed his arms. "That’s why we have to."

Y/N stared at them, realizing just how deep their protectiveness ran. It wasn’t just playful big-brother energy—they genuinely looked out for her.

She sighed, shaking her head. "And what if I want to finally meet someone? What if I wanted to give him my number?" She looked at them, exasperated. "You guys can’t protect me forever."

Seungcheol, who had been quiet until now, leaned forward, his voice firm but gentle. "Yes, we can. And we will. Until we know for sure that the guy is good enough for you."

The room hummed in agreement.

"Exactly." "Facts." "Scoups speaks for all of us."

Y/N groaned dramatically and fell backward onto the couch, staring at the ceiling. "I can’t win against you guys, can I?"

"Nope," Jeonghan grinned, ruffling her hair again.

She huffed but couldn't help the small smile creeping onto her face. Maybe having thirteen overprotective brothers wasn’t so bad after all.

[coldsaturn]

hiii! i have a question i thought you might be able to answer: how did aftg originally get so popular? i know it was mostly word of mouth on tumblr (still is, i think) (who says this website is unmarketable!!) but what were the early days of the fandom like? personally i've "only" been here since 2016, and by then the series was already decently popular. i remember at that time that the fandom was really welcoming and kind in a way that felt really exceptional to me, and it definitely contributed to me picking up the books, which is the only explanation i can really think of for why it got a bigger following than some to other books which did receive a whole big-publisher marketing campaign aside from it just being well-written. do you have any theories for why it got so massive on here? and do you know how the first readers found it? i hope you don't mind me asking you this, but i remember your blog from wayyyy back when and thought that if anyone had the answer, it would probably be you :)

Hello! I always get so happy when I can talk about the early days of the fandom <3 Sit down here around the fire, let me tell you about this wondrous tale.

So, story time: it was spring 2013, I had just finished a thorough read of In The Company Of Shadows and I was starving for another black hole. It was automatic for me to look up the goodread lists ICoS was featured in, to see what other titles I could pick up, and ended up on the list called "Online M/M stories that deserve to be published". The Foxhole Court was right there (it's not anymore because it IS published <3), so I read it. That was the start of the end lmao

If I remember correctly I didn't wait too long before reading TRK, but TKM didn't come out until the end of the following year, so in the meantime I all but shelved it as something that had incredible potential but that was possibly doomed to never be completed. Fast forward I think the start of 2015 when I accidentally stumbled upon TKM and I couldn't believe I could finally know how the story ended. Nora had a blogspot where she talked about the books (including updates between TRK and TKM), and I remember trying to get as much info as I could on this series. And that was it. For a bit.

So, by the first half of 2015, the fandom was made by people commenting on her blogspot, on her livejournal, the book pages on goodreads, and Ao3 literally had 2 fics ( webarchive gives you what we saw - btw Don't Speak Against The Sun is FIRE and instantly became a new standard for f/f for me). You can still find all this content online. Tumblr had a handful of scattered posts about TFC, mostly Nora's mutuals/friends on tumblr, and a couple of readers screaming into the void with no one answering their call.

I was pretty active on here, especially in the bellarke fandom, and I engaged with mutuals and other blogs often enough that I knew if I talked about something, at least someone would reply. A mutual was reading The Raven Cycle and got me curious enough to liveblog it myself. Instant love, of course, and if you've read TRC you know how strong the found family vibe is. So at the end of my liveblog (we've reached July 2015) I threw out a comment where I recommended AFTG as another worthy title. With the first book being free while the other two were only a dollar each, it sounded a fairly easy commitment. One mutual decided to read it (if you're reading, hi!!!) and liveblog it, and that got the party started.

A party of 2, and I'm not kidding. While we chatted and made up headcanon after headcanon on the phone, the intention was to get others interested in this story. But they'd never do it if there wasn't enough content around to engage with and motivate them to blog themselves, so we started with quote posts, liveblog reactions, a few timid edits and poems. An important choice was figuring out which tag to use (at the time tumblr search only scrolled through tags, not post content): "all for the game" was an actual sports tag, "the raven king" was the title announced for the next TRC installment, "the king's men" was the last book of the trilogy and it wasn't even the free one, so we settled for "the foxhole court" which was an empty tag. Even now my blog content is organized around "tfc" because of it, even though we took over all the relevant tags. A couple other mutuals I had from bellarke fandom got curious as well, and now we could consider ourselves a proper group. We were so starved for fan content that whatever you put out would be automatically reblogged and enthusiastically engaged with. It was a happy little fandom bubble. Then Nora noticed us and started interacting with us, and you got the birth of what would become the extra content page as she replied to our questions.

I possibly had a little bit too much time on my hands because I appointed myself as fandom archivist and tour guide. I reblogged every single post I saw in the tags, and I started a welcome page where I could keep track of everyone announcing they were reading the series. It was meant as a way to find mutuals to interact with since tumblr hadn't yet "canonized" all the tags, and it was entirely possible to lose each other in dashboard chains. I used to reply to everyone reading the series by "officially" welcoming them into the fandom, linking them the page where they could find mutuals, Nora's blog, and the extra content present up to that point. Oh and there was a fictional exy team where you could choose your position and then put it in your blog for fun or roleplay it. I also used smashword's gift system to buy the series for whoever said they couldn't pay for it, just to try and avoid pirating the book (good for word of mouth, bad for sales). This was on my side, but this fandom had so many people pouring their entire heart out I still get emotional thinking about it.

Everyone (before January 2016) made as much content as they could, be it meta, fanart, fanfics, headcanons, edits, wikia pages etc. We had fandom challenges where we pronounced the names of the characters and aftg keywords with our native accent, others where we said our favorite scene. Every headcanon was the first headcanon ever seen in the fandom. The fun thing was that at the time there was a strong etiquette toward "if you have nothing nice to say then don't say anything" so fan content really went in all directions with basically no limits. We tagged for triggers and that was it, we had free reign. For those who were around at the time, the sin squad was a group of us fans churning out the saddest/filthiest/fluffiest/most problematic content we could think of.

Then we reached January 2016. We were around 300 in the fandom at that point (I know because I counted them, literally), it had been slow but constant growth where each new fan brought at least other two people with them, and we had around 20 posts per day in the main tag. Then someone bridged the gap between us and the TRC fandom. If you ask me how the fandom got really popular, that's it. The TRC fandom was stuck in hiatus waiting for The Raven King, and now you had 300 rabid foxes spamming aftg content on tumblr, using trk as tag, too. Popular fanartists that were active in that fandom helped making aftg known, and semi viral posts did the rest. We went from 300 to 700 people in a couple of months, and shortly after I had to stop adding people to the welcome page because the post broke. I didn't even know that could happen. It wasn't long after that we were featured in the tumblr end of year recap for book ships. We were so many it was suddenly possible to meet in real life! Cosplays, tattoos, merch. You name it, someone in the fandom did it.

But how did it feel when we were only 20 people and a cardboard dog cutout? It felt like the most chaotic book club ever, and every new fan was automatically a friend. Nostalgia is a lying bitch, but I really don't think I'm making shit up here. We had fun and made great memories.

By the way, if you want to see how things were in 2015, you can! Just go through my archive starting from July 2015 (I think 17th) and onward. You can also search my blog for the tags "fandom history" and "started from nothing and now we're here", whereas here you can find a list of aftg fandom tags I used.

Tl;dr We were starving for good content, we wanted to have fun together, and we were lucky enough to half-hijack a bigger fandom in hiatus. That was all the marketing AFTG needed on tumblr.

[vaguely-concerned]

The Wigmaker Job Reread thoughts

Feat. numerous bonus general Dellamorte boys thinky thoughts, because I can’t help myself when this particular brain state comes over me I will just. keep writing.*

SO I'm rereading The Wigmaker Job and folks, I uh. think Lucanis asked Illario to come along on this job mostly because he's incredibly lonely lmao. Not entirely sure he's recognized this himself and completely sure he would not have the language, ability or instinct to convey this to Illario in a coherent way if he did, but I really do think that's what it is. (He certainly doesn’t make it easy for Illario to actually pitch in meaningfully on the job itself at any point that’s for sure!) And what’s more, I think Illario does realize it, better than Lucanis himself… and did decide to go along with it, huh. I’ll try to show my work a bit later on in the post but for now, we have a lot of rambling ground to cover, let’s get going! 

(Obligatory disclaimer that these are just my personal impressions and reflections slash barely hinged stream of consciousness and if your read on something is different that is totally fine; as usual I am mostly talking out loud trying to explain to myself what the hell I’m thinking more than anything else lol. I’m going to be touching lightly on themes of suicidal ideation and child abuse in this, but only to the extent that is already present in the short story itself. I’ll mostly skirt around the body horror elements too, if those get to you!)

— “The man who’s taken the contract is no ordinary Crow,” Felicia explained, careful to keep her voice steady. 

Ambrose uncorked the wine with a wave of his hand and began pouring it into a crystal decanter. 

“He’s Lucanis Dellamorte.” 

The bottle clanged against the crystal. A crack splintered down the glass. 

“Ah.” Goose bumps pebbled the Wigmaker’s neck. He set the decanter back on the counter and sighed. “Shit.” 

*** 

In an unassuming inn, on an unassuming road, Lucanis Dellamorte sat with a whetstone in hand, his favorite sword resting across his knees. The monotonous movement of grinding stone against metal soothed him. Seven daggers of various size and shape lay polished and glistening on a rough wool blanket at his feet.

The opening mood whiplash of Lucanis’ name being spoken only in hushed voices among the Venatori, smash cut to Lucanis sitting there peacefully sharpening his knives (this is genuinely and unironically what he does for fun. This is his idea of a good time outside of work. Give him a cup of coffee to go along with it and his day is perfect. He’s been contentedly sharpening seven daggers and a sword while Illario gets dressed. Sometimes his attraction to Viago ‘I’m going to make a spreadsheet about who to kill about this I find that relaxes me’ de Riva makes so much sense to me.)? Of course amazing the first time around, but coming back to it now that I like. Know him. No actually that is exactly who and what he is huh got it in one fhsdkj. He’s wearing a sensible neutral toned knitted sweater beneath his brooding hotboi leathers and this is what you need to understand about him.  

I wonder if we were originally going to get more of the Erimond family in the game itself, other than just the notes we do find. It’s not every day a family produces someone even Cole can’t find a good word to say about, it would be fascinating to see what else it’s capable of haha. 

— This whole description of Lucanis’ sensory hypersensitivity especially to sound (hypersensitivity, as we see later, that extends to magic, despite describing himself as being as magically adept as a brick, however that works!) taken together with his, I feel I must reiterate, sharpening his knives for fun… I know diagnosing fictional characters is a flawed premise at the outset but as far as I’m concerned and with a whole game to add to my evidence pile this man is SO autistic and if you read him through that lens it does explain some things hahaha. 

— “Any excuse to primp.” 

“Hey—I’m only here because of you,” Illario grumbled. “We should be halfway home right now. Only ‘the Great Lucanis Dellamorte’ could delay a summons from the First Talon herself.”

Lucanis set his sword aside. Illario was generally thick-skinned— except when it came to their grandmother. “Caterina can hardly complain. She’s the one who beat into me my commitment to contracts.” 

Memories of sweat-filled days without food or water came unbidden. Lucanis’s back tingled from where his grandmother’s cane had bruised his flesh for letting his guard down or fumbling his footwork. For years, he’d hated her. But his time as a Master Assassin had since taught Lucanis that Caterina’s cruelty was her way of making sure that he was prepared for this life—that he survived. 

“All that effort training and grooming us, and the old woman still won’t step aside.” Beneath the bitterness in Illario’s tone was something rotten. 

“Your time will come,” Lucanis assured him. 

“Will it?” Illario’s piercing gaze met Lucanis’s in the mirror. “People talk. You’ve always been her favorite.” 

He’d heard the rumors. For all their secrets and intrigue, the Antivan Crows were a chatty bunch. 

“My talents lie elsewhere,” Lucanis said, gesturing toward the arsenal around him. “You’re the one with the silver tongue.” 

“So, if she named you heir to House Dellamorte, you’d refuse?” Lucanis opened his mouth to respond, when he realized someone was creeping up the stairs.

. . . 

“Lucanis?” Illario pressed. 

He held up a hand and clutched the worn leather grip of his sword. Illario’s pretty-boy mask slipped as a coldness flooded his features. A retractable dagger shot out from under his sleeve.

Now we don’t have time to unpack all of that — etc. but I want this exchange here in its entirety for stuff I’ll talk about later and also hey what the hell and so on. So much going on here. Lucanis’ acts of quiet rebellion by means of a sort of malicious compliance/competence — he’s following Caterina’s teachings to the letter and getting to have some in the spirit room left over for himself. He’s found a loophole to put off going home to something he dreads in an elegant practiced way, I definitely think this is a tactic he’s employed before.to claim some bits and pieces of agency. ‘How can she complain that I’m exactly what she taught me to be?’ suppressed anger/resentment under there. 

The fact that Caterina still hasn’t named either of them as heir at this point continues to be insane, of course, as is the fact that her blatant favoritism is a matter of public knowledge to the point of ‘As you know, Bob —’ connotations and neither of them even thinking to pretend to deny it. Wild shit. If she wanted to create an environment for seething toxic resentment, she couldn’t have done it better if she’d dedicated her life to nothing else lmao. Illario: I think I should be First Talon! Lucanis: I agree (please don’t make me talk to people)! Caterina: Isn’t there someone you forgot to ask? (Would Illario make a good First Talon? I don’t know, what does that even mean, really. But as has been said many a time before it would have been a much more natural use of their skillsets and natural inclinations to have Illario in the people-facing role and Lucanis to watch his back/stab anyone who disagrees, especially if what you’re after is stability. Oh well.) 

The special element of humiliation that it is a matter of public knowledge and tactical consideration across town that you’re the least favorite child… Illario’s obsession with winning the public opinion and being able to control his own image to the outside world is ah. Perhaps understandable.

Many thoughts and feelings about how they’ve individually made sense of/created narratives around the abuse in their upbringing. I didn’t end up going that deeply into that specifically in this post but it is an incredibly important element of their relationship. 

They come back to having this conversation again at the end — everything in this story right down to the structure of it is Lucanis desperately trying to avoid something and finding it implacably still there waiting for him no matter what he does. He’s playing for time as best he can and pretending that if he doesn’t think about it it won’t happen and he won’t have to deal with it, but no matter what happens in between it will be waiting for him at the end — Illario is not letting this go, and neither is Caterina. We open with it, and we close with it; it’s inevitable no matter how you bargain or try to go for the ‘well if I’m real lucky I could just die before that becomes relevant!’ gambit. Oof. Sorry Lucanis this isn’t something you can solve through stabbing no matter how good you are at it I know that’s terrible news for you but here we are my sincerest condolences 

— So cute to see their little double act of casual smalltalk/bickering as a diversion in action already here, in exactly the same way they break it out during the café meeting in Veilguard! Courtney Woods is really good at moments of establishing character like this, showing both the brewing conflict between them and how well they know each other and the ways they can wordlessly communicate because of it all in one scene. How unspeakably comfortable and uncomfortable they are together in ways only family can manage to be haha. 

— Illario complaining that Lucanis let him get a whole outfit made thinking they were actually going to the party and mentioning how long they (not he, they, Lucanis came along for all of that) were at the tailor’s (Lucanis, implied to be very dryly: “I recall.”)... listen. Especially once you hear the banter in the Treviso market about how Lucanis once sat around waiting for six hours while Illario tried on gloves to find exactly the right pair — that is clearly Lucanis making gentle fun of him, but he is also inadvertently revealing something about himself in that he stayed for six hours to keep Illario company through that. I think coming along on shopping trips where he knows nothing is expected of him except to hang out, make light snarky comments when asked for his opinion and wait might kind of be Lucanis’ idea of a good time socially hahaha. Nr. 1 shopping wingman in Thedas. His main ‘I’ll follow you to hell and back with only light complaining’ arena for Illario. This is part of the pattern of not telling Illario the whole plan and deliberately keeping him continually on the backfoot during this whole story — which clearly, not fair to him and not a great look, Lucanis, you’re not being very nice — but I feel like this is also another entry in the pattern of Lucanis desperately craving company and not quite knowing how to ask for it nor perhaps realizing that’s what he’s up to. Also I get the sense he thinks Illario finds getting ready for missions like this and picking out what to wear fun. Which to be fair he’s probably right about, if he just didn’t also go out of his way to make Illario feel like an idiot in the process lmao. 

— At the bottom, they found an elf in a scarlet coat guarding a large steel door. She greeted Lucanis with a cordial smile. “Master Dellamorte. And . . .” 

Her friendly façade faltered as she spotted Illario. 

“Master Dellamorte the Lesser,” Illario offered with a grin. 

“My cousin,” Lucanis clarified. 

Appeased, the elf asked, “Where does your business take you tonight?”

If you wear your self-loathing and resentment on your sleeve for long enough while everyone around you ignores it as a joke it becomes an accessory! And other Illario Dellamorte hot fashion tips in this edition of Treviso Weekly. Fhdskjas the things these two motherfuckers say that they consider completely normal and sane things to say — to each other and to say about themselves and each other in public… 

— Lucanis peeked over the side. No one looked up. One of the world’s greatest wonders is mundane to these people. 

“How do they get it to float?” Illario asked, tapping his boot tip against the aqueduct.

This is so quietly sweet to me. Illario does look up, because he is also a Crow. Courtney Woods is really good at creating these under-the-surface feelings — I love the small details she puts in to emphasize Illario and Lucanis connecting over their common background, over being two Antivans in Tevinter, in being Crows, in being Caterina’s grandsons. (...and also the places those connections fail or fall short. Ouch and owie.) At a point later in the story, Lucanis thinks to look up because he hears Illario’s voice in his head making a joke, reminding him. 

Moving in tandem, Lucanis and Illario dropped to their chests and shimmied to the edge overlooking the courtyard.

Lucanis seems to value these moments of connection through common experience because they don’t require him to speak or explain himself, which he clearly finds extremely hard to the point that he’d rather not even venture the attempt/doesn’t even know how to start. These are wordless ways he and Illario know each other, intimacy/connection that’s natural and effortless where that is clearly incredibly difficult for him in many other settings — body knowledge of another person’s company with the person he (thinks he) knows the best in the whole world, the most familiar and comforting presence in his life. They were boys together, they learned how to move together, they’ve eaten at the same table all their lives. In the Crossroads when he finds the smell of coffee and home there, it’s home because Illario was there with him. Hmghfsk. Agony. Suffering.

— “So, the Wigmaker.” Illario wiggled his fingers ominously. “Tell me about him.” 

“He’s weird,” Lucanis replied bluntly. He found the moments before a job crucial for focus, but Illario was never one for comfortable silence. 

“Specifics, cousin. No one hires us to kill normal people.” 

“I gave you a dossier.” 

“Yes, but I want your assessment.” 

“I wrote it. It is my assessment.” 

“Humor me.” 

Their dynamic in this is so heartbreaking to me in that like… okay this is going to be heavily vibes based and integrating some of the things we get to see of them in Veilguard so bear with me here while I try to explain this to myself. But what Illario is trying to do here is clearly to get Lucanis to engage with him outside of the professional sphere. Of all people in the world at this point in time, I think Illario is the one single person who best knows and also cares the most about Lucanis as a human being, not about what he can do for him. He loves his cousin, he wants to know what Lucanis is thinking, he wants to be engaged with him; he’s trying his fucking damnest to pick the locks to get to the person beneath the Crow, as it were! Maybe to a Lucanis he remembers from long ago, when they were children and the connection between them was effortless and open, not yet marred by all the ways trauma and the unequal dynamic enforced on them has forced them to shut parts of themselves down to survive. I feel there’s a where did you go that I couldn’t follow and when did it happen, why did you leave me here alone, come back sort of undertone to it, both here and in The Wake. As well as in Veilguard itself, come to that! ‘That is not my cousin, that is a demon, a stranger with his face’ is a sentiment that may, perhaps, have deeper roots than Lucanis popping back up from the grave like a jumpscare. Another metaphorical/emotional truth made mockingly literal, as it were, just like Lucanis’ Freeze response and deep sense of being a monster somehow in a way he can’t put his finger on is older than Spite or the Ossuary. (Zara thought making ‘the Demon of Vyrantium’ literal would be great value for shits and giggles, and this is also a Narrative Pattern in this corner of the story, the unspoken emotional metaphors in this fucked up little family heightened and made real through the literary device of magic. It’s good stuff. Veilguard does pretty solid work with metaphors overall, honestly.) 

Meanwhile Lucanis both seems to long for that connection too (there’s a reason he asked Illario to come along with him for this even though he refuses to like. Actually give him the information he needs to actively help out particularly effectively) AND to feel threatened/inadequate when Illario asks for it. I’m not sure he entirely knows how to give Illario the closeness he’s asking for anymore, and the pain both of not being able to give someone you love what they need from you and the feeling of something being fundamentally wrong with you that you can’t understand how to do that, as well as threatening the system of values Caterina has instilled in him so deep: the job always comes first, anything that could stop you from prioritizing that is dangerous, even love. (Especially love, you only get to keep that if you do your job perfectly first.) There’s also the resentment of ‘why are you asking me for more when I already tried to give you this information/closeness in a way I’m actually capable of, if only you’d be serious and pay attention for five minutes’, a feeling of not being understood or seen. A sort of I crave your company but every time I have it it only reveals how I’m fundamentally broken despair and stuckness as well, as we see the sort of fraught irreconcilably mixed emotions in all of Lucanis’ attachment relationships in Veilguard. 

Even at this stage, Lucanis’ is a psychology held together with workaholism and ‘I’ll just bottle this all up in here and then someday, on the bright side, if I’m lucky, I will die and not have to worry about it! If I can’t see it it can’t see me and it’ll be okay’ logic, and Illario’s attempts at breaking through, born of increasing desperation, love, and justified concern as they may be, are disruptive to those defensive structures and Lucanis instinctively rejects them. (Indeed, very much in the same way as Spite’s presence in Lucanis’ psyche works eventually, and eliciting the same initial reactions in him: avoidance, distaste, fear and anger. Davrin too refuses to stop poking and back off at subtler signs, and evokes a lot of the anger and rebellious little shitness for lack of a better word that Lucanis also has with Illario. Which I think ironically is also a sign that Lucanis kind of weirdly trusts him or at least trusts that he understands the parameters of their relationship clearly, it’s one of the few places he lets himself be openly angry right from the get go.) Thus the irritable pulling away/dismissiveness, and thus Illario’s (accurate tbf!) sense of rejection and dismissal and (I think inaccurate or at least incomplete) perception of Lucanis’ motivations for it. Though, again, who can blame him for reaching the conclusions he does with what Lucanis is able to give him to work with here. And so the misery carousel keeps going round and round.  

Illario and Spite speak the same truth to him: WE ARE TRAPPED. WE NEED TO GET OUT SOMEHOW OR IT’LL KILL US. (Inferred and indirect: HELP ME) And because Lucanis’ survival instincts naturally go towards Freeze, being asked for action of that specific kind is what he’s least able to deliver, because it’ll inevitably hurt someone he loves, no matter how he moves. So he just. Doesn’t. Rook finds Lucanis trapped in a chamber deep in his brain I think has existed in a less Fade-enhancedly literal form for much, much longer than the most recent barrage of trauma. The set dressing is new, the underlying logic is old and firmly established.

Lucanis’ instinct to keep the current patterns going as painlessly or numbly as possible, to ‘keep still’ and only work within the structures Caterina has set up for them — because in his mind a flawed yet stable status quo, yes, even a toxic one, is better than the risk of unbearable and irretrievable loss and chaos at its disruption, as they have in fact experienced before under traumatic circumstances — is incredibly destructive to the both of them, and it’s born out of an incredibly deep love and protectiveness. He’s trying to keep Illario safe, in exactly the same way he thinks he’s doing for everyone he cares about by staying in the Mind!Ossuary later, but it’s a child’s/survival instinct’s flawed logic and causing so much harm in the process. Logic that indeed is inherited from Caterina, whose solution to that same logic is what Lucanis is scrambling to protect Illario from the same way he tries to protect himself (if only Illario would understand that and stop rocking the fucking boat!!!, right…). Don’t struggle against the riptide, go limp, if you try to swim against it directly you’ll always lose. (And from Illario’s point of view: well, if you loved me you’d at least try, and not just wait for it to finish the job and finally drown us.) 

In this short story you can feel how they’re trying so hard to speak with each other in the only ways they know how, with the broken mangled tools Caterina left them with, and they can’t understand each other and very soon it’s going to be too late. I’m going to go lie down on the bottom of the ocean for ten thousand million billion years. 

— More observations of the patterns between them in this generally because it didn’t fit anywhere else lol: here’s the feeling I get. Illario makes bids for connection, Lucanis seems to bluntly brush him off even as we see from his internal dialogue just how fond he is of Illario — I think even some of the more dismissive comments he makes in his head is more along the lines of the affectionate amusement we see him have around people he cares about and their foibles in Veilguard too. If you listen to how he talks about Viago and Caterina especially, there’s that same laconic observation of their peculiarities as a part of how he loves them. HowEver. He and Illario do not have the tools or understanding to express to each other that ‘oof, no, that hit on something too tender, back off’, other than to try to jab back harder and sharper. And so resentments build and deepen on both sides without ever getting any outlets. A relationship where you don’t have the right or means to say ‘no’ is never going to be a healthy one, and saying ‘no’ is the one thing Caterina has most forbidden. In other relationships Lucanis solves this by creating distance internally — Caterina is in his inner world, but she’s the outermost lock, kept further away from his deepest self. He does not resent her ‘anymore’ (he says and probably thinks. I think he might ah. Have deferred it more than resolved it but that’s just me lol), but he has protected himself from her within the means he had to do it with and found a way to maintain his attachment to her in that state. And yet he is incapable of and/or unwilling to do that same process with Illario, to let go of the closeness he can maintain there. Illario is the innermost lock of his psyche, the person who has meant the most to him and as unguardedly as he’s capable of, who he’s held the closest all this time… even after finding out what he did. 

Illario is the safest, closest relationship he has… which also means that he is the one who gets parts of all the anger and resentment and frustration that cannot be there with Caterina in particular because that would be Dangerous Territory in a multitude of ways. I think Lucanis tries to mitigate this by more deliberately pouring that stuff into his job, but it’s still down there unresolved at the core, bubbling away, the fumes rising and infecting his interpersonal relationships in subtle ways. Even the ‘read the goddamn brief Illario’ move and refusing to budge is just another version of the malicious compliance/competence as rebellion that this whole mission is towards Caterina. (Unfortunately this is how it works sometimes when you’ve had to push things down that hard for that long; it comes out with the people we love the most and who deserve it the least.) And even then it’s mostly in undercurrents moving beneath the surface— it’s something that happens in an obfuscated and buried enough way that you can’t simply break it open all at once and let air in to stop the wounds from festering. If Illario did try to bring it up directly, I do not think Lucanis at this point would be capable of staying with it, he would flinch away and dissociate/freeze and deny it was even a thing at all (be unable to recognize it as a thing at all). And Illario clearly knows this too — you get the feeling that he’s been trying and trying and trying to get through here and found no way. He’s at the end of his rope, and not just about the First Talon conundrum.

Whenever they are speaking to each other, they are also speaking to Caterina through each other because you can’t really bargain with God directly (especially one that’s known to be a wrathful god given the provocation), but there’s enough of her and her meanings fused into you over the years that it’s almost the same thing when you talk. And sometimes it’s hard to see past her to your brother actually standing there with you.   

I’m going to SCREAM Lucanis loves Illario so much that he would prefer to die, would condemn himself to hell in his own mind forever rather than face having to lose him or deliberately harm him, AND YET!!!! AND STILLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!! He is letting him down and leaving him behind and making him feel small and stupid in ways so incredibly profound and sad without even realizing it all the time. No one in this family has ever been equipped to talk about anything ever and I doubt they’re about to start now and I need to tear into something with my TEETH

Anyway. Breakdown over, on with our regularly scheduled tevinter nights reread post with slightly less anguish lol. 

— [Lucanis] clapped a hand over the mage’s mouth and slammed his skull against the wall. “Knock it off.

What does he have to go and be so casually funny for at all times. The undisputed master of the perfectly tuned in levels of comedic mild exasperation. Stop stop I already love him. 

— Illario waited with a chair and rope. 

“Sit down.” He beamed. “Enjoy a little Antivan hospitality.” 

While his cousin secured their prisoner’s bindings, Lucanis retrieved his sword from the wall. e mage was coming to. His unfocused eyes took stock of his situation. 

“I won’t talk,” he spat. “Even if you torture me.” 

“I’m too busy to torture you,” Lucanis said, and ran him through with his sword. 

. . .

Illario frowned. “If I’d known you were just going to kill him, I wouldn’t’ve put so much effort into the knots.” 

“Check his pockets.” 

“Ah—” Illario said, pulling a scroll from the mage’s jacket. “Found something.” 

The seal was broken, but the imprint of two dragons was still visible in the wax. “Venatori.”

 “Thought as much. What’s it say?” 

Illario unrolled the parchment and scanned the page. “‘Gallant brothers and sisters . . . In our veins runs true Tevinter blood, passed down from the dreamers—’” Illario’s head snapped up as Lucanis began pulling his sword from the mage’s chest. “ Careful! Remember the tanner job? You ruined my best shirt.” 

Lucanis smirked and continued extracting the blade. 

Illario took two wary steps back, then continued reading.

Unfortunately I do love it when Lucanis is a troll fhsdkj 

— Lucanis’ inner logic that he can buy the tiniest sliver of autonomy and meaning by consistently offering up a sacrifice of perfection — that’s the silent deal he’s struck with Caterina, an exchange she’ll accept as long as he doesn’t try to get too clever with it, and his subsequent panic in Veilguard when he’s too worn down to be able to perform to perfection anymore (and with that, in this internal logic, goes his right to autonomy or freedom)……….. He really does make me so so SO sad. He needed so much therapy even before the Ossuary. Some deeply entrenched ideas about the basic transactionality in even the closest relationships here. (Where I think Illario is kind of his exception to. That’s an assumed mutual unconditional love even when some terms and conditions probably would be in order actually situation for him.) 

Also I think this is a useful look at how the Crows operating on ‘might makes right’ lines could be harnessed if you’re of a mind — basically anything goes, as long as you’re good enough to get away with it and/or don’t step on enough toes that the rest of the crab bucket momentarily team up to tear you down. And Lucanis chose to use that little loophole to go ‘well you see I’d sort of like to get to be kind sometimes actually’. Which, y’know. Eccentric for a Crow, to be sure, but are you going to be the one to tell the Demon of Vyrantium himself, Caterina Dellamorte’s most speacialest and scariest little murderboy, that he can’t keep protecting servants of the households he hits because it’s making the whole team look kind of soft??? The whole business runs on ‘I’m bigger and stronger than you so don’t try any shit’, and Lucanis has successfully built up the image of being bigger and stronger than anyone who’d think to try any shit well enough to get away with it, as Caterina has achieved for their house overall. (It’s not like him sparing witnesses gets in the way of the interest of other houses or anything anyway, he’s creating potential trouble for himself more than for anyone else which I hardly think anyone would feel compelled to protest against. If it’d been something that threatened anyone else’s bottom line, a completely different story, but I think Lucanis understands the system well enough to know where he can get away with it.) And again, all he has to do to earn it is to deliver unflinching inhuman perfection at all times! So that’s not a stressful set of psychological parameters to have to function under at all, especially when you feel yourself start to fail as you’re falling apart after horrible new waves of trauma lmao

Which I think is partially also what the ‘You think I’m not good enough?’/’Are you?’ exchange is about — it’s an extremely unhelpful and mean thing to say the way he does (especially in front of other people! Other people who, to Illario, are basically strangers!), but it’s also said out of howling protectiveness and a deep recognition of this stark truth. You can get away with it if you’re good enough, and if you’re not good enough you’re dead. Something Lucanis is blithely ready to risk his own life on all the time for perfect strangers, and is completely unwilling to accept when it comes to Illario’s life! Lucanis’ love has that light element of  possessiveness/proprietariness to it from time to time — the ‘he is ours’ sentiment that both he and Spite maintain for Illario in love and in hate. I have a lot of sympathy for it because it obviously comes from a place of painfully earnest love and fear in someone who has lost people in horrible ways at a young age, but there is something paternalistic in that protectiveness too, a lack of trust in Illario to take care of himself and willingness to cross lines in Illario’s own autonomy to ensure that he’s safe. (Not healthy or anything but considering the shit Illario pulls in this game… a little bit of can you fucking blame him I’d be three seconds away from an ulcer about it at all times too going on here haha). ‘It’s okay if you don’t agree or don’t forgive me afterwards, it’s all worth it if it means you’re safe, if it means you’ll survive’. Sins of the grandma dude. Sins of the grandma. The generational trauma starts coming and it won’t stop coming. 

— I also think it’s relevant that Lucanis can count on some things from Caterina consistently, as long as he upholds his part of the ‘deal’ between them to be her perfect poor boy slash best knife who’ll never let her down. However devastating the cost of her regard and support is, it’s only Illario who’s left completely to fend for himself in this family dynamic. A little bit of what the fuck does he have to lose going on here. Lucanis, I suppose. For a long he has Lucanis to lose, but Lucanis is starting to act an awful lot like he’s not that invested in living too much longer. So where does that leave you if you’re Illario. With a very dumb plan that was never going to work, apparently. 

— While hunting his mark, Lucanis had opened the wrong door and walked into an orgy. Getting out of that had been interesting.

Nothing of substance to add here except that the mental image is hysterical, of course, and only more so after having a whole game to get to know him. Also this is just my personal read but I don’t think Lucanis would use seduction, even as a tactic on a job, by choice — my feeling is that his act as a servant in Vows and Vengeance would be more indicative of the social stealth skills he’d use when that’s what gets him where he needs to be. (Very tired service worker towards the end of their shift might in fact be the role he was born to play he has exactly the vibes for it.) 

A good assassin knows his tools, and I think Lucanis realizes that flirting, even in a professional capacity as it were, is one of his blunter and more inflexible ones and so mostly wouldn’t use it haha. If he understood someone to be attracted to him in a way that required nothing much of him actively and would somehow aid the job I’m sure he’d use the opportunity it provided well enough, don’t get me wrong, but I just don’t believe it’d ever occur to him to go there as an opening move. The theoretical understanding is mostly there, the practical application… maybe less so. He knows he’s not very good at it and so wouldn’t rely on it if he could help it; that’s Illario’s sandbox to play in. Again this is just my personal opinion, so feel free to disagree of course, I know people have a range of reads on this element.  

— His skull felt raw. The backs of his eyeballs itched like he hadn’t blinked in days. Whatever magic Ambrose was using for his creations was tearing at the seams of the Veil. 

“Something’s wrong.” 

“Yeah,” Illario agreed, zeroing in on a group of half-dressed revelers, “we’re up here, away from the fun.” 

Lucanis snapped his fingers in front of his cousin’s face. “Focus.” 

“I am.” 

“On the job.” 

“To be fair, you never told me the plan.” 

Lucanis shrugged. “Find Ambrose. Slit his throat.” 

“Sounds complicated.” 

“It will be. The Veil’s thin here. Thinner than I expected.” He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “One wrong spell and this place will be swarming with demons.” 

“Then let’s kill the bastard and scram. I want to see what this city has to offer.” 

“Our ship sails at dawn.” 

Illario waved a dismissive hand. “Plenty of time for some good, old fashioned debauch—” 

“I see him,” Lucanis interrupted.

Lucanis does this really nasty thing with Illario where he first pushes him away and then punishes him for being disengaged with him/what they’re doing, or asks him for something he then rejects when he gets it. (I think he has some of this pattern in other relationships too but without the punishment or idk… familiarity/presumptiveness/feeling of natural entitlement to their attention part. Illario is his brother, the attachment there is safe/established enough that the part of him that doesn’t think he’s worth someone’s attention doesn’t kick in as it does in pretty much every other relationship. He’d never blame Rook or any of the Lighthouse crew for pulling away from him that same way, that’s a deep well of ‘well yeah valid I also don’t really want to have anything to do with me tbf :/’ self-loathing waiting to open up, ‘protecting’ him from making a presumption like that or imaging himself to have rights or worth interpersonally in basically any other context or relationship at the outset. But with Illario the love is always assumed. Both ways. You have a right to me on that level, and I have the right to you. The only person he takes for granted. Because that’s family. Oh boy.) 

See also: the way he barely acknowledges Illario greeting him when he comes back from the Ossuary and more crucially as far as Lucanis might expect Illario’s perspective to be beneath any repressed suspicions, from the dead — very understandably so, considering the Dire mood and implications and ‘...where’s Caterina’ of it all, but it’s also a larger pattern he has. I think he feels such deep love for Illario that he doesn’t quite get that he also has to like. Show that deep love for it to be understood by the other party. And it sure comes across as very dismissive from the outside, or if a person is perhaps primed to have that insecurity already by the entrenched family dynamics at play. Oh boy 2 electric boogaloo. 

Buddy you are setting the person you love the most up to lose again and again and again… and it would break his heart to truly realize that, probably, but I don’t know if he’d know how to stop doing it, either. 

This seems to be all completely subconscious, to be clear. These are clearly patterns established from when they were extremely young, and it’s hard for fish to conceptualize being surrounded by water other than when the absence of it leaves them gasping and dying, I suppose.

Shallower thought: So Lucanis is also not clean-shaven here! Probably a more casual didn’t bother to shave/not quite as meticulously maintained five o’clock shadow going on as with Illario, but perhaps a tiny bit of the pot calling the kettle black here, Mr. Lucanis ‘long black leather overcoat’ Dellamorte isn’t unconcerned with looking cool, in his more restrained way. (As we all know ‘looking cool’ is the foundational base of a Crow’s Maslow’s pyramid of needs to the point that Spite went ‘can do!’ immediately upon contact with Lucanis’ soul and never stopped dhfkjs.)

— “They’re never what you envision, are they?” Illario noted. 

“What did you expect?” 

“Hair, for one. Maybe a funny little dog.” 

That got a chuckle out of Lucanis, if only briefly.

The thing is that I love these two dumbasses so incredibly much. You see. This exchange of funny little observations is a huge part of how Lucanis interacts with Rook especially out on missions too, you can see where his patterns for having close relationships come from. Also restating my point from other metas that Lucanis seems to come alive a bit with collaborative humour, that’s clearly a social dynamic he finds soothing and also engaging, a way he knows how to take an outstretched hand. Since that seems to come from his relationship with Illario when it’s at its best… pain and suffering in my heart again needless to say

— Lucanis pays a lot of attention to people’s clothes and is very good at understanding what they’re trying to signal with their outfits. Overall he’s excellent at understanding people’s ways of thinking in the abstract/from a distance, as long as he doesn’t have to interact with them directly and interpersonally. Because then he falls to absolute pieces under the slightest pressure and runs. Again the best my particular brand of autism representation probably not even meant to be representation I’ve ever seen lol. 

— Camille had just taken a sip of watered-down mulsum, when a handsome stranger grabbed her glass and downed the rest. 

“Excuse me!” she exclaimed. The party drowned out her words, but Lucanis could still read her lips. “That’s my drink.” 

Illario simply smiled. “Guess I’ll have to buy you another.” 

Lucanis groaned—not only at the line, but that it worked. Even from his position, he could see Camille was hooked. He shouldn’t be surprised. This was old hat for Illario. But it was always amazing to see what one man’s smile could accomplish.

Lucanis’ mildly baffled and somewhat begrudging admiration for Illario’s social skills is so funny. As far as he’s concerned this is some kind of black magic beyond his ken. It must be a bit of pretty privilege involved in this case tho because what the fuck how did that land. Hey whatever works Illario you spent all that time on your outfit for a reason never let anyone tell you your slutty little unbuttoned shirt isn’t serving a tactical purpose I’m not about to tell you how to do your job

the fact that Illario is in fact a very good Crow. he's just not Lucanis. that's his original sin huh. never getting away from that one.

— Do u think Illario’s move with putting the keys on the tray instead of pocketing them and going back to Lucanis is maybe one of his small spiteful acts of rebellion. Ah. Family traditions. Truly they bind us together. 

— The Lucanis in this story is so much more… contained than the Lucanis we get to meet in the game, for good or ill. In Veilguard he is constantly fraying at the seams and cracking open under all the pressure he’s under, which for sure and of course is Not Great and causes him a lot of pain and distress — but also the whole that’s how the light gets in etc. thing, it also means it’s easier for things to find their way in to him and for him to let things out. Meanwhile here, there’s more the sense of immense tension —  a harder, more determined/deliberate lack of being able to move than the total helplessness of being stuck in the mind!Ossuary, but with some of the same quality. Illario tries to get in to find him and in his way I really do think Lucanis is trying to reach out to Illario as well as he knows how, but there’s a rigidness there that stops anything from really getting through or changing. Illario’s guilt trip letter after Sea of Blood saying that control is the quality he’s always most associated with Lucanis makes a lot of sense when you read this short story, even though I think Illario is mistaking ‘control’ for ‘deadening anything too vulnerable or ‘frivolous’ until I’m just a tool that can do a job’. That letter is transparently Illario deliberately pressing down on a bruise he knows to be tender, but it feels like there’s some kernel of truth to it beneath that which makes the sting all the worse. 

— Up ahead, Lucanis spied the servants’ entrance. If he could reach it, there was just enough space to wedge his body into the covered niche above the door. Not easily, of course, but nothing ever was. 

*Resigned Lucanis voice* Nothing is ever easy. (He does literally say this word for word in one of Bellara’s quests, and in exactly the tone you’d expect haha. He is my favourite person of all time)

— Lucanis thought about securing the entrance—leaving it unlocked could raise suspicion—but chose not to in case Illario decided to work tonight. He could already hear his cousin’s honeyed excuses— But seducing a beautiful woman is work! He snorted and pushed farther inside.

I do believe a certain amount of affectionate dunking is part of Lucanis’ love language and it’s too bad that’s kind of become a sore point/unequal power balance between him and Illario because it is frequently so funny fhdakj. Also kind of sweet to see the precedent for Lucanis sort of… keeping people he loves in his head like this, the locks in Inner Demons are clearly literalizations of a process he already sort of does naturally. He listens to the Illario and Caterina in his head multiple times during this story. I’m repeating my ‘this man is so desperately lonely in a way he doesn’t know how to solve’ point for emphasis. A common affliction in many of the Veilguard main cast, Solas of course being the most egregious and ongoing example. This game has Themes and it’s sticking to them haha <3<3<3 

— The cold opulence of the place reminded Lucanis of a Chantry rather than a home. 

Very interesting observation, now that we’ve seen Villa Dellamorte for ourselves! Is all I’ll say. (*Spite voice* Home? …Smells like linseed oil and dust)

Atlases bearing the visages of past Archons held up vaulted ceilings glittering with mosaic depictions of Tevinter’s golden age. The cost of such a commission must have been astronomical—both in coin and lives. How many slaves had gone blind gilding each individual tile? How many backs had been broken from hauling and placing stone after stone? 

There was patriotism and there was obsession. Neither was worth it.

Again. Very interesting observations from a man raised in a mansion built on spilled blood and with Crow decorations anywhere you turn right down to the wallpaper haha. Tevinter/specifically the Venatori lets him indulge in some ‘clean’ anger and disdain that he can’t have back home because it’s, y’know. Home. He may not have a lot of illusions about the Crows, but he also is deeply bound to them. Lucanis will sublimate his anger into ANYTHING including turning it on himself before he lets it touch something he loves. 

— Brief detour away from the general/worldstate agnostic approach of this post to my personal shenanigans, but…. Lucanis ‘breaking into morbid nursery rhymes internally while on a murder spree’ Dellamorte 🤝 Ellaryen ‘absent-mindedly reciting funeral rites in his head in the middle of a fight to keep his rhythm and also start to get it out of the way ASAP while people fall like flies around him’ Ingellvar. Made for each other, truly. 

— Too bad we never got to see Lucanis using a garotte in the main game, that’s clearly one of his go-tos normally. I suppose trying to do stealth sections with Taash on the team is a tall order even for Lucanis Dellamorte. The Crows AXE their regards!!! ]>:D

— The dead weight of the first man pulled the second one up until they both hung around the limestone Archon’s nape like a loose cravat.

Once more, I love Courtney Wood’s writing style. What a mental image. The tone of light comedy as Lucanis 9-5s his way patiently through all these guards is pitch perfect. 

— Spread out. Lucanis mouthed the words as the guard gave the order.

This dude really is out here doing his job like it’s a video game level he’s done a hundred times before hahaha. He’d be skipping dialogue and sequence breaking all over the place if he could. (Speedrunner Lucanis for modern AU, there’s a concept anyone can have for free that’s hilarious. He does cooking videos, knife maintenance videos and insane video game speedruns interchangeably on his channel and never speaks a single word nor leaves a note through text in any of them god bless. He has three followers no update schedule goes years without making a video and has never spoken to anyone online. He is my babygirl.) 

— One for silence.

Two for surprise.

Three for good measure.

Four’s exercise.

Five for a slaughter. 

Six for the thrill.

Seven means more sovereigns.

“Eight marks the final kill,” Illario said, coming to stand next to him.

The whole nursery rhyme, and Illario coming in with the unspeakably sinister final line here, considering what we know happens not even that long after this job! Again the connection there is between them, though — they were thinking about the exact same thing, counting it out with the same old remembered words. 

“Do you still recite that old nursery rhyme? The one Caterina made us memorize during training?”

Lucanis moved to retrieve his throwing knives. “What can I say? It’s catchy.” 

“That’s a word for it.” Illario glanced at the swaying guards overhead. “You know, if the Vints ever learn to look up, you’re screwed.” 

“They’d have to stop looking down their noses.” He narrowed his eyes. “Your tunic’s rumpled.” 

Illario flashed a sheepish grin. “You weren’t the only one tussling with guards.” 

“Tussling, huh?” Lucanis shook his head. “That’s a word for it.” 

“I’m happy to kiss and tell, but shouldn’t we do something about this?” Illario wrinkled his nose and nodded toward the sticky fluid seeping out from underneath the slain guards.

My nebulous vibe has always been that they’re basically the same age with Lucanis a tiny bit older, but IMMENSE younger sibling little shit energy from him in this moment fhdksfas glorious. Sheepish grin is also a very fun look on Illario I wish they’d leaned in a bit more on that capacity for him in-game. If he read as more calculatedly bumbling it’d change some of the scenes a lot in terms of feeling, I think 

— “Never known you to have a soft heart,” Illario muttered. 

Lucanis’s right cheek muscle twitched. “She won’t talk.” 

“This isn’t Antiva. We’re not heroes here.” 

“We’re not heroes anywhere, cousin.” 

Illario rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. The Venatori already have your name. If they learn your face—” 

“I’ll grow a beard.” Lucanis smirked. “They’ll never see me coming.” 

Illario’s frustration deflated. He grinned reluctantly. “That cavalier attitude’s going to get you killed.” 

Lucanis turned the key until the bolt unlatched. “It’s served me well so far.”

a) so it’s Illario who’ll refuse to take things seriously if he doesn’t feel like it, is it, Lucanis lol, b) ‘I’ll grow a beard’ :’) well. He did. Do you think Illario thinks about that every time he looks at him now, c) owie owie owie the foreshadowing 

I think being a hero is not important to Lucanis at all, being a professional/being able to do the job is. (Being the perfect professional buys him getting to do hero things when his heart calls him to, but the role of hero itself is clearly not a priority or something he particularly wants.) 

Lucanis clearly mostly works alone — I wonder how often Illario has come along before. We know he has pulled ‘soft heart’ moves before this, from in-game banter, but probably without Crow witnesses. How much does even Caterina know about? Might be some proof in the pile of how much he trusts Illario that he’s so blatant about it here. 

— Lucanis gestured for Illario to follow as he slipped through the entryway. They stood for a moment, quiet and still, allowing their eyes to adjust. Ten paces ahead, a stairwell materialized in the shadows. eir descent was slow going. Wrought iron made for easy creaks and groans. Each step was a test of patience—and balance. Lucanis went first, showing Illario where to place his feet.

And 

“He was my cousin, but we were more like brothers, really. Always getting himself into every sort of trouble. And I was always right behind him, you know? Always.” Illario’s voice suddenly grew thick with emotion. “Now there’s nobody for me to follow.” (From The Wake)

:) ahahaha. Ha. 

Both of them independently using the ‘but we’re more like brothers’ phrasing exactly the same way too. Alright. Okay. I’m fine

— All at once, the room became aware strangers were present. One by one, they moaned a horrifying chorus of despair. Lucanis stumbled back, his mouth dry. Something inside snapped. Death’s too good for this bastard. 

Illario touched his arm. Only then did Lucanis realize how quickly he was breathing. He closed his eyes. Remember your training , he told himself, and suddenly, he could hear the tapping of his grandmother’s cane, the hard elegance of her voice. There is no place for emotion in killing. It’s sloppy. File it down. Make it useful.

Illario being able to notice Lucanis being incredibly upset when he’s too overwhelmed to register/be aware of it himself and bringing him back to himself with nothing more than a touch to the arm is not devastating to me at all. It’s fine. In Inner Demons, even Viago and Teia fail to recognize that Lucanis is about to come completely apart psychologically, but again… I think Illario really does know his cousin better than anyone in a lot of ways. (And less than anyone in other ways, but hey, that’s family for ya lol) 

Make it useful, he repeated to himself. With slow, controlled breaths, Lucanis flushed the rage pumping through his veins until he could think clearly. 

I’m actually so happy they went away from focusing on the concept of wrath/passion as the touchstone for Lucanis’ character and angled it more towards the interpersonal issues he has with anger and with his sense of self than his rage at cruelty and injustice like this — that starts to step on the toes of Anders’ narrative space as a bisexual possessed disaster without bringing anything particularly new to the equation, which would have been a shame. Also as I’ve made no secret of I love what they are doing with him in the game SO MUCH I can turn him gently around to gaze at him forever 

— “What are you doing?” Illario whispered. 

“Breaking their shackles.” 

Illario stared. “That’s not the job.” 

“Fuck the job.” 

I think Illario is the only person Lucanis would ever say that in front of at this point. (See also: his point about honesty in their line of work towards the end.) This is a BIG admission from him, that there could be anything more important than the work Caterina raised them to — than Caterina’s approval and recognition. And what a horrible hurt that must be for Illario — ‘you’re willing to risk incurring Caterina’s wrath for total strangers on a whim, and yet not for me??’. (They both seem to recognize that death is secondary as a motivator here, Lucanis would rather die than let Caterina down, that’s the easy way out, and he’s putting that on the table frfr with the shit he’s pulling here.) Also part of what makes Illario fear Lucanis is rapidly spiralling/hurtling towards the edge of a cliff, probably, this acting on impulse is clearly not an everyday sort of thing for him. We know he’s made decisions of his own on jobs before, but probably not on this scale/in front of another Crow. 

There’s going to be room for so much ‘...why could you change for them and not for me? (why are they worth choosing to live for, and I wasn’t?)’ hurt on Illario’s side towards Rook and the Lighthouse crew after the events of the game. Maybe not as much on the Minrathous route, but even there. Like he doesn’t have much of a right to that after pulling the attempted fratricide card (that’s going to be the refrain of the rest of Illario’s life huh :’) entirely self-inflicted yet awful to have to live with; the Illario Dellamorte post Veilguard story), which only makes it worse to contemplate! Fun times in viddy games.  

— A+ body horror writing going on here, of course, hate every single thing about this thanks for asking!

—To his right, Lucanis sensed Illario readying his dagger. He gently grabbed his cousin’s wrist and shook his head. Illario gawked at him, his jaw clenched. 

The Wigmaker began the walk back toward the stairs. A groaning lament followed as he passed. When he was close enough to touch, Illario tensed—as if to lunge forward. Lucanis tightened his hold, his thumb finding the pressure point at the base of his wrist. The dagger fell from Illario’s grasp. Lucanis swiped it up before it clanged to the ground. 

What are you doing? Illario mouthed. 

Again, Lucanis motioned him to stand down. 

Once they heard Ambrose climb the stairs and close the door, Illario wrenched his arm free. 

“Have you lost your mind? We had him!” 

“He doesn’t deserve a quick death.” 

“Did you forget the mess you left upstairs? What do you think will happen when Ambrose finds his bodyguards slaughtered?” 

“Hopefully he panics. I want him scared.” 

“He’ll flee,” Illario asserted. “And this contract will be forfeit. Your life will be forfeit.”

Illario ‘cousin I am trying to have a fucking INTERVENTION with you here why am I more concerned about whether you live or die than you are!!!’ Dellamorte. His cousin is seemingly losing his fucking mind and playing with the one thing Caterina values above all and possibly would sacrifice even Lucanis for: the integrity of their House among the Crows. He’s seeing Lucanis determinedly, near methodically setting himself up for death no matter what path he ends up going down. This would be. Stressful. To have to witness, I imagine.

I do think Lucanis is passively suicidal in the way that he would vastly prefer to die on a job before he’d ever have to face the impossible choice that awaits them with the First Talon title back home — where he’s forced to let down either Caterina or Illario, possibly to spend the rest of his life on something he doesn’t want and might cost him his relationship with Illario, and is unable to deal with the thought of it so he just Avoids for all he’s worth. And he’s worth a lot that way. Which Illario clearly also recognizes and might be part of this freakout — having to watch your cousinbrother casually preparing to fall on his own sword for what seems like basically no fathomable reason (for these STRANGERS and not for me!!?!?!) and not be able to get through to him no matter what you try... you know. It’s kind of just a bad time all round for Illario too. He goes and chooses to do all the wrong things about it, of course, his talent for making everything worse in every way he possibly could is unparalleled (affectionate and derogatory), but I have a lot of empathy for where he’s coming from emotionally in a lot of ways. While you exist I’m nothing, and when you are gone I am nothing. And after you come back. Guess what. I’m still nothing. Imagine that. The Illario Dellamorte story. 

(Lucanis has also seen a lot of really horrible shit on the job lately, Venatori bullshit being what it is. That stuff must start to build up after a while, him finally snapping here makes a lot of sense.) 

— “Illario—” 

But the other Crow wasn’t finished. “I thought the plan was to have a few laughs, slit some throats—not release a demon swarm!” 

“Plans change,” Lucanis replied. His gloved palm covered the door handle. 

“Well, for the record, I preferred the other one.” 

“Noted.” 

Aw. This is my main proof that Illario does in fact understand the plea for company behind Lucanis asking him to come along on this job. Possibly better than Lucanis understands that himself, which could perhaps be. Exasperating to deal with — but he did also come along and with only light complaining etc. I umm. love them both. Some more musings about how Illario has clearly been the person most responsible for/involved in Lucanis having any kind of social life before Veilguard times: 

Comment Lucanis has around some more party districts of Minrathous in-game: “The nightlife was always more Illario's thing. He said I should get out more. Fulfilling Crow contracts didn't count.” (Illario is a terrible little fuckboy murderlad but consider what he’s had to deal with over the years…braver than any us marine etc. he’s been the one trying to convince Lucanis to take care of himself and maybe even have a good time at some point for like 20 years, a monumental task we know it takes a village/Lighthouse to make headway with. A man who has had to say ‘hey we should do something fun. No not a job with extra garrotting Lucanis Maker’s breath I was thinking a party or something’ more times than any of us have had hot dinners) 

+

Lucanis, trust me! Take this contract and we’ll be the toast of Treviso. Would I lead you astray? But I can imagine your face at that question. A better question, then: Would you truly leave me to my own devices? What would I do without you? Come, cousin, it will be just like last summer. I’ll buy the wine afterwards. —Illario

Letter we find in the room in Villa Dellamorte where it’s implied Illario has been staying since staging his little failcoup — it’s right across the hall from where he’s imprisoned his grandmother btw and I have a pet theory that it’s Lucanis’ old room. Illario Dellamorte what is wrong with you (so many things).

Illario has seemingly been drinking and reading this letter — this letter that Lucanis kept after receiving it, so Illario must have found it among his belongings at some point after his ‘death’ and has also kept it around ever since — in the same room where there’s a burned letter from Zara in the fireplace, even though the house is filled to the rafters with the Ventatori and trying to hide evidence of that connection is thus uh. Well it seems a bit late in the game to be worrying about that, is all I’m saying. It lends some credence to the idea that him crossing out Lucanis’ name in the family tree and scribbling ‘DEMON’ over it probably does carry some real emotional charge and isn’t just a tantrum/uncomplicated show of jealousy. 

So historically Illario has gone out of his way to spend time with Lucanis, and he seemingly is usually the one to reach out/take initiative in that? Lucanis clearly appreciates it — he kept that silly little letter (I am INCONSOLABLE about it btw), that comment he makes about the blight-beached boat in the Hossberg Wetlands that ‘Illario and I went on a sailing trip once. The boat ended up like that one, minus the blight (paraphrased yet very dear to me)’. Social connection is a need Illario has recognized in Lucanis before and offered even when Lucanis himself wouldn’t think to ask for it, is what I’m trying to say. I think. *sigh* listen you’ve gotten this far in the post hopefully you realize I am not entirely sure what I’m saying most of the time I’m trying to nail light to a wall here please have patience with me fhaskj

— Lucanis seems to navigate by sound a lot (which makes sense, considering how much of his job happens in the dark). Spite navigates mostly though a sense of (supernatural) smell. They’ve got a lot of eye imagery around them, but sight is not actually the most central sense for either of them. Nothing more coherent to add to that just observations haha 

— you ever think about the fact that despite everything caterina is ultimately unwilling to let go of Illario, and Illario is unwilling to let go of her. Me neither. 

— “Where are the bodies?” Illario asked. 

Effe shrank into herself. “I moved them.” 

“Not by yourself, you didn’t.” He turned to Lucanis, a smug sneer on his face. “I told you she’d talk.”

Proof Illario is not in fact an idiot and recognizes the basic logistics of a matter, and why his ‘oooh I think Zara must be back in Vyrantium already how inconvenient…’ ploy must be extra ‘...uh-huh cousin’ sus to Lucanis in Veilguard fhdjask. Trying to keep his terminator grandmother safely under lock and key while his cousin is back from the dead and possibly is now a demon with his face because of you and also you have to keep track of what lies you’ve told to what people must be incredibly stressful tbf I wouldn’t be keeping a particularly cool head either 

— Back down the hall, something wet slammed against the studded door. 

Effe’s bravado crumbled. “What was that?” 

“Take her,” Lucanis told Illario. “Find the others.” 

“Other what?” His eyes darted to the elf. “ Slaves? Absolutely not.” 

Lucanis continued as if Illario had agreed, “There’s a statue with a passage—like the one we used before. It’s not far. You should be able to escape in the chaos.” 

Illario blanched. “Did you not hear me? I said—” 

“Athima will help you. She’s the elf we met earlier.” 

“I don’t give a damn what her name is. I’m not—” 

“Once Ambrose is dealt with, I’ll meet you at the docks.” 

“Lucanis!” Illario shouted. “We are not revolutionaries.” 

Lucanis inhaled, his nostrils flaring. Illario was right. The Antivan Crows were assassins, not freedom fighters. Back home, people liked to romanticize, but Lucanis knew what he was. Still, his fingers twitched. 

“They are not responsible for their master’s mistakes.” He locked eyes with his cousin. 

Illario tried to remain resolute, but it was like touching hot steel. Sighing, he cursed and turned to Effe. “Come on,” Illario snapped. 

She glanced toward Lucanis. He gave her a reassuring nod. 

“My cousin may be a snob, but he’s true to his word.” 

“Are you? ” she asked, referring to his promise about Ambrose. 

“The Wigmaker will die tonight,” Lucanis affirmed. “But you have to go. It’s about to become very dangerous.” 

How much do you want to bet Illario is going ‘fuck it’s like trying to have a staring contest with Caterina herself’ on the inside right here, with all the emotions that may involve lmao. Lucanis is getting Illario out of there before shit really hits the fan too, notably — where Illario might see mostly lack of respect for his skills/what he could bring to the fight (there’s not none of that from Lucanis’ side either, but less than I feel Illario might be imagining), I think there’s a protectiveness, an unwillingness to risk Illario when the real madness shakes loose. *Lucanis voice* I mean it’s fine if I die obviously. but you don’t get to. get in the fucking car illario  

I think Lucanis adds the ‘My cousin is a snob, but he’s true to his word’ to reassure Effe that she can trust Illario/make Illario seem less scary/intimidating to her — both invoking the familial connection and the gentle dig to show that ‘see, I trust him, I’m not the least bit threatened by him, you don’t have to be either’. I don’t imagine ‘snob’ would be particularly upsetting to Illario either so while it is another datapoint in the grand tradition that is Lucanis-led public Illario slander, this might be one of the least egregious examples of it lol. (Implied lack of skill would hit way harder than anything about their social standing, I’m imagining)

— Lucanis has such a desperate need and desire to care for someone, as evidenced by how he reacts when he gets a whole Lighthouse full of people to do exactly that and springs into action like he’s been born for nothing else. He is that predator turned sheepdog all anxiety all the time he transparently projects onto Assan in that one banter with Davrin. That instinct has clearly been deep in him all this time, waiting for the right ground to grow in. To further his parallel with Davrin in so many things, there is a big part of him that is a protector as much as the part that’s a hunter, and it has finally found its place.

And like… can you imagine being Illario seeing that. Or this. Obviously it’s the right thing to do morally but on the petty small emotional and interpersonal level. Unbearable fhjksa.  

— Lucanis felt no sympathy. They were, all of them, Venatori supporters, who either knew what Ambrose was doing or chose to turn a blind eye to indulge their own vanity. Ignorance is bliss, not innocence.

Extremely interesting thing to think for someone raised in the Antivan Crows! I do think he actually holds himself to that standard, though — he doesn’t consider himself in any way an innocent. Even in situations where he is actually innocent, like how he feels about his time in the Ossuary. It’s easier for him to conceptualize that the demons/spirits in there were as innocent as anyone else trapped down there than to accept that maybe he didn’t deserve what happened to him either.

We’re also seeing the groundwork here for one of my favourite aspects of his character: the fact that he has an enormous, nearly unstoppable and instinctive on a kneejerk sort of level capacity for empathy — something he uses to great effect as a tool in his professional life to understand and predict his targets and the people around them, and which makes him an extremely devoted friend in his personal one — and yet is much more sparing with his sympathy. Those are in fact separate mental processes! And it’s fascinating to see someone in which the divide can be so clean and stark. (Not to keep beating this particular drum, but something deeply neuroatypical going on with this man long before the whole demon thing, he’s just found his niche and functions to the point of excelling in his particular field lol. Uneven skill profile: can intuit the thought processes of Tevinter fanatics or how word spreads through a community (as seen with the inn owner at the beginning) to a T from about two casual glances and find a way to stab anything up to and including a god cloud, cannot for the LIFE of him have an emotional conversation with his brother who he’s known all his life or understand what he’s thinking, because that all falls apart at the drop of a hat when he has to actually engage interpersonally himself and understand and interpret his own feelings on top as well in real time. Relatable. Is all I’ll say.)   

— The mage’s jaw pulsed. “You think you can come into my Imperium and act as judge and executioner?” Lucanis opened his mouth to respond, but Ambrose anticipated his answer. “Don’t say, ‘ Sì! ’” 

That earned a genuine smile from Lucanis. “Normally, there’s no judgment—only a contract. But for you, Ambrose, I made an exception.” 

The Wigmaker raised a brow. “Oh? What makes me so special?” 

“You upset my delicate sensibilities.” 

It was Ambrose’s turn to laugh. 

“I thought a Crow could stomach anything—for the right price.” 

Lucanis leveled the Wigmaker with a pointed look. “Not red lyrium.” 

“Morality is not static. Right and wrong are a matter of perspective.” Ambrose’s words were practiced and tired as if he had given the same reasoning a hundred times. 

Lucanis continued his advance, refusing to engage in the Wigmaker’s rhetoric. Nothing irritated him more than self-righteous excuses. If you’re going to do something terrible, just own it.

For your bounteous amounts of fuckery you have been promoted from the ‘contract’ category to ‘enemy’ category! Congratulations Ambrose it’s your special day. Also this makes a lot of sense with how he seems to feel about Solas too. 

— Hopelessness flooded the mage’s eyes. “One day, someone will turn your work against you. Only then will you have some semblance of the emptiness you’ve made me feel.” With his good hand, he gathered what was left of the wigs, hugging the locks to his chest. 

Lucanis experienced a twinge of disappointment, kindling for rage. He expected more fight from a high-ranking Venatori. He thought of the Wigmaker’s workshop, of the prisoners, their bellies full of poison, hanging like butchered pigs in stale, suffocating darkness. “Get up, Ambrose,” he growled. “You don’t get to do that—you don’t get to quit.” 

…

Panting heavily, Lucanis regarded the creature’s collapse without joy or anger. A vermilion fire engulfed the carcass, leaving nothing but a brittle husk. The other abominations stirred. 

“You have your vengeance,” Lucanis rasped. 

But his words did not reach them. They stared, snarling and ready. He squeezed the grip of his sword, preparing for another fight—then the pressure behind his skull eased. Without the Wigmaker, the demons had no anchor in the waking world. Gradually, the abominations disintegrated into ash. With the source of their anger gone, the spirits of vengeance returned to the Fade, allowing the dead to rest. 

Only then did Lucanis exhale and let relief wash over him. 

“Contract complete.” 

Again I’m glad they didn’t go with building on that in the end because I like what they did do with him so much better, but you can see here where they were laying the groundwork for more of a ‘righteous wrath’/outward facing central pillar for Lucanis’ character here. I’m on record as adoring the internal angle/more of the focus on disrupted self, and I think they also built really well on the subtextual family dynamics going on through this story, that’s a much more fascinating angle for me personally. This instinct for/longing to indulge in stubborn opposition sure does still exist in him, though, that’s such a fun part of him to make externalized as a whole little guy riding shotgun in his soul 

— That’s one way to make a point, Lucanis thought, coming to a stop.

Have I said enough about how much I love him. Because I do. One of his early very good ‘...wtf’ moments, so plenteous and marvellous in the game itself. (Not including all the body horror he’s actually looking at here b/c it’s truly disgusting and upsetting, excellent job as always Courtney Woods) 

— Sensing its weakness and spurred on by the demons of vengeance within, the other abominations began to surround it. 

That’s it, Lucanis smiled encouragingly. Good little demons. Turning his sword over in his palm, he cut across the roof.

Lmao. It’s interesting that Lucanis has a slightly… odd relationship with spirits/demons already here, for a non-mage and someone from an Andrastian culture — he’s able to think of them sort of as a natural part of an ecosystem that you can turn to your advantage if you’re careful and respect their unpredictable nature as part of the natural landscape as it were, and he extends his remarkable capacity for empathy to them in the way that he thinks about what their motivations and drives are in the same way he does with people — ‘you have your vengeance’. The baseline Chantry doctrine about spirits is basically ‘Always Chaotic Evil, Stay Clear’, but Lucanis seems to think of them as like… fellow predators. You know the way wolves and ravens will sometimes ‘team up’ and have symbiotic relationships? Kind of like that. Which is very him hahaha I mean sure Crows hire people for things all the time and if you can pay them in just doing your job anyway… it makes a lot of sense that this is the dude who’d think to earnestly strike a deal with a spirit despite the cultural narratives he was raised with, is what I’m getting at

— Lucanis reached the docks just before dawn. Knowing Illario as he did, he passed their ship’s allotted berth to check the nearby taverns. After a quick glance up and down the harbor, Lucanis settled on the Nug Queen purely because it was the cleanest establishment of the lot. When he entered, limping and bloody, the barkeep glowered. 

“Walk out the way you came,” the dwarf instructed. He had a tawny mustache that was twirled and waxed at both ends. 

“I’m looking for my cousin,” Lucanis explained. (🥺He’s literally just looking for his cousin…)

. . . 

Lucanis prepared to leave—then he heard Illario’s silvery voice flattering one of the waiters. 

“Oy!” the dwarf called out as Lucanis staggered toward the row of booths lining the left side of the tavern. “Exit’s that way!” 

His bellowing drew Illario’s attention away from the handsome servant. Upon seeing Lucanis, he jumped to his feet. “Andraste’s holy cabbage, you look like shit.” 

“Get that man to stop yelling at me,” Lucanis said. He plopped down in the booth, taking a moment to rest his eyes, while Illario soothed the irate proprietor.

‘Get that man to stop yelling at me, Lucanis said’ is my favourite line in this whole short story and always has been fhdskjfhsa it’s just so good. ‘Illario snooze that guy for me I never figured out how to do that non-lethally’. And Illario drops everything and DOES get to work on snoozing that guy. They’re headed right for disaster but I. adore them.  

Andraste’s holy cabbage HIGH on my list of extremely good Andrastian oaths btw thank you Illario. 

I wonder if this inn was supposed to be an in-game location at some point, it gets such a striking (and hilarious) description.

‘Silvery voice’ :’) well that got lost along the way haha. I honestly think the dialogue as written in the game could have landed differently with some changes in voice direction — if the actor wasn’t doing quite so much of an obvious Ze Evil Voice performance, the read on him might be slightly more ambiguous. (His immense susness would still be the same, of course, that’s just built in structurally, but I maintain that that storyline is more about chipping away at Lucanis’ denial that he’s been holding on to for so long down in the Ossuary until it has to crack open and crumble, less about the whodunnit of it all. We know who dunnit and so does Lucanis deep down basically from the first moment, I believe, he just can’t bear it. Not unlike the way Harding deep down knows what the red shade haunting her is, but is unable to accept and take that in until she confronts it, actually! Lucanis and Harding have some parallels going on in the deep there. People pleasers grappling with how to hold on to their healthy anger. Lovers of turnips. *Lucanis voice* Everyone likes turnips.)

Lucanis shambling around bleeding and absent-minded on post-adrenaline autopilot after that utter horror show (again I sheltered you from the body horror here but. Holy cannoli) until he finds the safety of Illario and then collapsing into the booth and almost nodding off b/c Illario will take care of it he knows how to talk to people, even though Lucanis never really relaxes he very nearly does here…………. You see the trouble is that the love is very much there. It just makes everything worse, but it is there. Always. And I’m afraid not even the Ossuary could change that, even when it changed everything else.  

Like… From Illario’s perspective Lucanis just sweeps in bleeding and limping with an imperious demand after shooing him away before — because he doesn’t have the inside view that the bluntness is because Lucanis feels safe with him. This is the sort of ‘pls solve this thing I don’t understand and find overwhelming and annoying’ a child extends to a parent/attachment figure ‘imperiousness’ to me, not an order from a superior. From which I think you can read some things about their dynamic growing up, aside from my ‘Illario has been 80% of Lucanis’ social skills most of their lives’ running joke lol. 

Both of them can form surface relationships with other people, mostly with transactional elements to them — Lucanis with the Villa Dellamorte staff growing up and people he meets and helps on the job, the ‘friends’ Illario sarcastically accuses him of making earlier in the story, and Illario clearly leaving a Necropolis-sized graveyard of shallow connections both romantic and otherwise behind him without ever getting deeper into it himself, gratification and a feeling of control and competence and entertainment all in one with no true intimacy behind it — but I think Lucanis is right when he tells Rook that Illario has been his only actual friend, before them (and the team, obviously). And for all his extroverted fuckboy antics, I think Lucanis is Illario’s only real friend too, I doubt any other relationship has ever reached him at the core but Caterina and Lucanis. They have been. SO weirdly socialized, they struggle so very badly to make real connections outside the family in their individual ways, feast or famine as their approaches are. And part of that is that in their childhood they’ve been forced to try to meet their emotional needs with each other in ways that were doomed to fail; things you should get from a safe parental figure and a group of peers, community, not your brother who’s basically the same age as you and just as traumatized and psychologically malnourished. Things they will not get from the Crows, a community that is also the constant threat that ate everyone else in the family, and not from Caterina, who aside from the general cultural Crow brutality in overseeing their upbringing is too busy negotiating with the ghosts of five children, eight grandchildren by making sure her last two grandsons survive, not realizing that it means she has not taught them the first thing about how to live. Or, perhaps as likely, that is just not particularly a priority to her, she values her control over them and thus perceived control of the future and continuance of House Dellamorte way beyond their happiness. (God it’s all such a real-feeling mess because the love is also there and real, it’s just that that makes everything worse and even more tangled. Family!!!!) 

Caterina has set up this dynamic of Lucanis as the golden child (he can do no wrong and thus is allowed to do no wrong nor want anything for himself she didn’t let him have; never making a mistake in life is something that is normal to demand of yourself and possible to achieve etc.) and Illario as the fuckup kid, the lesser one, we keep him around for sentimental value of course he’s family but he’s largely ornamental lol. (Sorry about your life, Illario. I’m not sure whether being her favourite or not being her favourite leaves someone with the worse deal psychologically long-term, but your situation is particularly undignified and thankless I will grant you that.) Illario is much more faithfully the Crow Caterina raised him to be, where Lucanis uses his competence and Caterina’s personal affection for him to get to keep and protect some of the parts of himself the role of Crow should forbid. And she STILL openly and unabashedly loves Lucanis more, while Illario cannot do a single thing that pleases her no matter what he tries. Lucanis at least has Caterina’s recognition and affection, what does Illario have? What does he have that could make him anything in this Crow eat Crow world? 

Which is why Illario needs Lucanis to choose him over Caterina with an intensity and psychological urgency that again, is more like a child needing a parent to put them first or treat them like they matter to develop the sense of a worthy self. (Or Caterina to choose him over Lucanis, but that’s never going to happen while Lucanis is still alive, and probably not even if he really were dead.) Lucanis can’t give him that, because he is unwilling and unable to give up either of the two attachment relationships he has left, even if it means he has to mangle and push down his own self to maintain those bonds. He will freeze to hold on to what little he has, even when what he has also hurts him and they are hurting each other. At this point in the short story I think Lucanis wants Illario to be honest with him the way Lucanis is honest with Illario (which unfortunately also means Illario gets some of his more unpleasant sides), and Illario can’t give him that because when he tries Lucanis straight up refuses to listen — can’t listen, because what Illario is saying would disrupt everything Lucanis is trying so desperately to hold together at any cost. Again, Lucanis asking Illario for something he then punishes or ignores him for actually giving. They’ve had to be everything to each other and they just can’t be. Not even through any fault of their own, that’s just how it works. And Lucanis starts to find his way out of that during the game, make other connections that do help, but I'm not sure Illario does or will. Don’t look at me and don’t speak to me I’ll never be okay again 

- “Drink?” his cousin offered, returning with two glasses and a bottle of wine. “It’s expensive.”

 Lucanis accepted with a faint nod. 

“Some say a bribe spoils the vintage,” Illario mused while pouring, “but I think it tastes all the sweeter.” 

“Effe and the others. Did you get them to—” 

“Yes, yes,” Illario snapped, “I did my good deed for the year.” 

The two paused to sip their wine. 

Lucanis rolled the liquid over his tongue. Bribery had not spoiled this bottle, at least. 

“Camille didn’t make it,” he said finally. 

“Who?” 

“The guard captain.” 

“Ah,” Illario said, nodding in recognition. “Well, that does free me from promises I didn’t intend to keep. And Ambrose?” 

“You have to ask?” 

“Fair enough.” 

THANK YOU, LUCANIS!!! THAT IS THE THING YOU SHOULD BE SAYING!!!! THANK YOU FOR GOING ALONG WITH MY NONSENSE THAT I JUST SPRANG ON YOU ILLARIO!!!!! I’M HAPPY TO SEE YOU AND THAT YOU’RE ALRIGHT WOULD NOT BE OUT OF ORDER PERHAPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH MY GOD I love him more than anyone in the world but he’s infuriating sometimes especially when dealing with Illario fhdskja. You can tell how much he does trust/value Illario because this is the first time he relaxes a bit in the whole story — the mental image of Lucanis standing there with his huge puppy eyes dripping rivers of blood onto the floorboards in his fucking… batman ass getup like ‘🥺is my cousin here’ is so. It’s so much — but again you have to SHOW that somehow too Lucanis he can’t read your mind. I think it’s what he’s clumsily trying to do with telling Illario about the guard captain, a little bit — that’s an olive branch/trying to give Illario the peace of mind he just gave to him about the fallout of the mission, even if it’s a sadder outcome — but that’s also a sign that he’s completely missed on understanding what Illario would value here. (For Lucanis someone he flirted with being torn to ribbons five minutes later would be a big deal no matter what, probably, for Illario it’s all just business. Whomst??? Oh her lol.) Illario tries to fall into their pattern of companionable bullshit because that seems to be as much as Lucanis will accept from him as a show of care, but even that Lucanis breaks him off on, with what to Illario seems like doubting his skills/ability to carry out the job Lucanis handed him (Lucanis seems to want to know for his own peace of mind more than that, tho, from my vibe here; he did make a promise to Effe). 

“That his?” [Illario] gestured toward the dark stains on Lucanis’s coat. 

“Mostly.” 

His cousin’s brows drew together. “Do you need a healer? The ship will have one, but if you can’t wait—” 

“I’m fine,” Lucanis stated. 

“All right,” Illario said, topping off his glass. “We’ll just pretend that’s wine you’re dripping all over the table.” 

“What do you want me to say?”

How many times do you think Illario has had to rock up to Thedas emergency care with his cousin like ‘well he says he’s fine and to not worry about him, which in my experience is Lucanisese for ‘I’m about to bleed out and die on the spot’.’ As someone who has now been on that side of Lucanis’ ‘*actively bleeding from the eyes* I’m fine don’t worry about me’... y’know I’m not saying Illario was right or anything (he never is (affectionate) that’s his charm) but I do have a certain amount of sympathy one does start to lose one’s mind after a while. Yeah I am making silly jests and japes to avoid talking about this part because it’s so painful to me to contemplate thanks for asking. To be serious, though: being forced to watch Lucanis do this to himself, and then being asked to pretend he can’t even see it to enable it… that’s a big ask and one you should not be making of him, Lucanis. He’s not doing it intentionally, and it’s because he is also in so much pain over this that he has no idea how to handle, but it doesn’t stop it from being fucked up and unfair. 

‘I don’t understand what you want from me/I don’t know understand how to give it to you’ and ‘So we’re just going to pretend that nothing’s wrong and you’re fine and nothing needs to change, you can keep going like this indefinitely?’ 

Illario’s gaze grew hard. “How long are you going to keep doing this?” 

“Doing what?” 

“Caterina’s bidding.” 

The wine turned in Lucanis’s mouth. “Illario. Stop.” 

“If I was in charge, you wouldn’t have to do this anymore,” he cajoled. “You could quit.” 

Lucanis stared at his cousin. “I don’t want to quit.” 

Illario sat back. The distance between them suddenly felt much wider than a table. 

“Even if it kills you,” Illario whispered. 

“Death is my calling,” Lucanis stated, matter-of-fact. “Just as yours is to become First Talon.” He smiled, hoping to ease the tension, but Illario’s posture remained taut. 

“And if Caterina disagrees? If she thinks you’re the better man for the job—” 

“I don’t want it, Illario,” Lucanis insisted. 

“But you wouldn’t refuse.” 

“It’s impossible to refuse Caterina,” Lucanis admitted reluctantly. “Only prolong her, until she sees reason.” 

He knew it wasn’t the answer Illario wanted, but it was the truth. And in their line of work, honesty was hard to come by. 

Illario exhaled and lifted his wineglass in salute. “To reason, then.” 

“To reason,” Lucanis echoed. 

The two Crows clinked the rims of their glasses together, then prepared for the long journey home

Sobbing and crying and dying. So much stuff going on under the surface here. This particular conversation clearly haunts Lucanis for a long time after, it’s where most of the Illario lines in the Mind!Ossuary are taken from. ‘You’ll choose her over me every time, even if it means death and leaving me behind alone. No matter what I do I’m never going to be good enough for her or you, no one is ever going to choose me or put me first or think I matter at all’. Delicate overtones of ‘You love even the work more than you love me’. The more mundane layers of jealousy, of being the unfavorite, the Cain and Abel of it all. The I can’t grow when you always get all the sun.  

The distance between them suddenly feeling much bigger to Lucanis… in a way I think that’s Illario’s side of ‘it wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it was the truth. And in their line of work, honesty is hard to come by’. Just for a moment Illario drops the act, he stops trying to reach out to try to find him again, to do his ‘job’ in the relationship of smoothing it over and pretending everything is fine or at least sustainable, and the distance that has slowly grown between them over the years is laid bare. Lucanis would ignore that forever if given the chance, but here Illario finally refuses to play along and forces him to feel it.

After a whole story of Lucanis being ruthlessly competent at his job to the point that he turned it into a challenge run for extra style points just because he can (and because it would be quite emotionally convenient for him to die before he has to go back to Caterina and probably be named her heir), we see him try to (avoid having to) have ONE real conversation with someone he loves and he’s so awkward. He’s reduced to pleading for Illario to stop. (There are notably no please and thank yous between Lucanis and Illario — mutually, also notably  — but that ‘Illario. Stop’ carries big helpless ‘please don’t’ energy)

I’ve talked before about the way Lucanis speaks of Caterina like she’s a weather system, or an act of God — something that can’t be resisted, only navigated with immense care and a hope for the best fear for the worst attitude. He expects Illario to have reached the same conclusion, raised side by side and in the same household as they are… but he hasn’t. They are different people by nature and the roles within the family have given them different perspectives — on what’s possible, and on what’s sustainable. It’s. hey. It’s a lot. 

— God. can you imagine being Illario when Lucanis returns from the grave with some FUCKING RANDO Caterina dragged into the house five minutes ago, and not only is he, surprise surprise, already entrenched as their favourite and they don’t like Illario (they don’t even know all the reasons why they shouldn’t like Illario yet, they just think he has rancid vibes! Which to be sure he does he’s big enough to admit it it can’t be helped the rot will out!! but STILL!!!!!), on a Treviso saved run Lucanis also lets them waltz through all the locked doors in his mind that Illario has been clawing his fingers bloody against for decades while screaming for him within the span of a goddamn afternoon’s work of Fade shenanigans. and through all of it they are *throwing up noises* FLOURISHING together whether as friends or something else in a way that practically shows like a healing glow around him. Rook ‘steal your cousin-brother (you kind of lost the right to stay his favourite when you y’know. Murdered him)’ Dragon Age swooping in to end this poor pathetic little man’s entire career in the last way he hadn’t already managed to ruin it himself. You know what. I kind of get it, Illario, that would send me finally stark raving bonkers insane too. After all that I think I too would have marched over to the ancient elven mean girls like ‘sure I’ll join you in burning down the world if you spare me some gasoline I need to do something hugely self-destructive and unwise and take everything down with me’. Obviously Illario sucks in many many-faceted and inventive ways but holy shit dude. In his shoes could you sit through the café scene without choosing violence.  

— Do I have to put in a disclaimer here that even though I have understanding and empathy for just how shitty Illario’s situation is pre-game and am expressing myself with comedic hyperbole about it, what he ends up doing to Lucanis is obviously extremely bad not justified and not okay in any way etc. and I do not endorse cousin murder as a way to solve your interpersonal problems, nevermind entrusting the task to your known mad scientist girlfriend with blood magic benefits if you did mean for it to be a clean quick death. Lucanis did not deserve any of what happened because he’s an imperfect communicator and like any of us has some less than perfect interpersonal patterns, and he’s still an intensely loveable character to me with these flaws. Is that something I have to state for the record after writing 12k+ words about him like this. One would hope not but you know. I’ve been on this site for a long time now and I am carrying around some stress fractures of the psyche about it, at least this way I know I’ve done what little I could to make myself perfectly clear in this our how dare you say we piss on the poor public square lol 

— The hilarious/hopeful thing is that I don’t think this relationship is necessarily doomed because of the very specific ways Lucanis is nuts haha, he has not willingly let go of anything he loves one single day in his life and he’s not about to start now — if Illario can bring himself to take that outstretched hand and do his part of the work I feel there could be hope for it. Not for it to ever be what it was before, of course. But to be something, still. Once Lucanis recognizes some of his own shortcomings in the dynamic I think he would try to work on that on the Forgive route at least, Illario matters that much to him. 

— rare W moment for Illario towards the end here and we simply must grant him those: Zara clearly meant to merely use him as a means to get to Lucanis, but he did seemingly somehow manage to get her properly wrapped around his little finger for real eventually. Enough for her to be very bitter about it after death, at least. Listen Zara play too close to the fuckboy fire and get burned to a crisp puh-lease this man is a professional. If he’s your amatus why is he obsessed about what his grandma and cousin are going to think of him after this and killing you mid-sentence. Smh 

— god I have said so much in this (...obviously. my face is in my hands why am I like this this is my curse), but I’m still not sure I’ve managed to get at what I was actually like. trying to say. Oh well. At least this chunk of thoughts is out of my head now, maybe I’ll get some room in here for something else and maybe even sensible for a while (doubtful but one should live in hope) 

*in a 'that's a threat' kind of way. also well done for making it all the way to the end you're a real one

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Reading over your Savanaclaw clothing rant, and I don't know how I missed all the details you pointed out, especially about the sleeves.

I was mulling over why Ruggie has sleeves but literally everyone else doesn't, and then it hit me.... Could it be because Leona altered his uniform so that he could fully show off that lion bicep tattoo? It seems like he totally would, in a show of dominance and all that lolol. And then the mobs thought it was cool too so they followed suit. Djdnzjdjjs I could definitely see Crowley pitching a fit about the cut sleeves and then Leona would grumble, "Save your squawkin', Headmage. All the uniforms are uniform now ain't they?"

Also for the boob window thing, for an in universe theory, I think it might be to show off his jewelry? Some very quick and possibly inaccurate armchair googling shows that jewelry in Africa or Sunset Savanna I guess?? Tends to be intricate and detailed, and can indicate power, wealth, or status. I wouldn't be surprised that Leona likes a subtle way of showing off his status with his traditional accessories.

[Referencing this post!]

ONE OF MY FRIENDS (who shall not be named, but you know who you are) BULLIES ME FOR NOTICING THESE DETAILS ABOUT THEIR OUTFITS… “Wooow, you’re staring at [redacted] so much and finding excuses to do it?? You’re obsessed.” IT’S MY NEUROTICISM, IT’S WINNING OTL

You know what, that’s actually a plausible theory 😭 If I recall correctly, Leona became dorm leader in his second year at school. At that time, Ruggie would have enrolled as a first year. Once Leona came into power, he’d have the privilege of being able to alter his dorm uniform. He could remove the sleeve just to show off his tattoo and assert his dominance as the proverbial “leader of the pack.” (Side note: for the longest time, I thought the tattoo was temporary or just makeup… like the Heartslabyul card suits on their faces 💦) However, Leona would still have the dorm uniforms with sleeves from his first year, which he could have passed onto Ruggie (since it is canon that he gives Ruggie his hand-me-down clothes). And the Savanaclaw mobs are such diehard Leona stans that they’d probably go, “What, the boss is wearing his uniform like that? Cool!! Let’s do it too!” and follow his fashion statement… This might also explain why Rook appears to have (ripped off) sleeves on his Savanaclaw uniform, as he was in that dorm as a first year. He is the same year as Leona, so they would have both had the sleeves still on. This would also explain why Jack, the straight-laced first year, seems to have his uniform tailored when he enrolled. At that time, the common Savanaclaw dorm uniforms would have already been altered to have no sleeves in order to follow the leader.

BabcsqdAdSEracqvw Why can I totally see that unfolding between Crowley and Leona 😭 Crowley lamenting that it’s only supposed to be the dorm leader’s uniform that differs, so why’s it suddenly the entire dorm’s uniforms have been altered? Have they no respect for tradition??? And Leona would definitely twist the situation to turn it around on Crowley, riding on the fact that the uniforms are technically still “uniform” now.

Mmm, I guess that reasoning could make sense since Leona does have that really gaudy, chunky gold necklace, though I don’t think he’s necessarily doing it out of a sense of tradition. Leona is the type of person that usually gets annoyed with tradition and wants to make practical changes. (For example, he wants to remove the feathers from his staff but complains he would get scolded for it since the feathers represent the King of Beasts’ hornbill advisor.) However, I do believe he’s arrogant enough to want to show off his status as dorm leader and I guess being more decked out in jewelry + having a more open shirt could call attention to that. But SUBTLE??? 💀 Maybe it feels subtle in-universe but with how the devs constantly flaunt his boobs, it certainly doesn’t feel that way irl, lmao 😂 Bro’s constantly got shots of his hakuna matatas cleavage, even in other characters’ cards (*stares at Jack’s birthday boy groovy*).

He’s so pathetic and desperate to assert himself as Top Dog 🙄 Gross 💀 COVER UP, SLUT… NO ONE NEEDS TO SEE THAT…

P.S. Father Flamme 🙏 pray thee forgive me for spending all this time hyperfixating on and analyzing the Savanaclaw boys… Give me a pass, their dorm uniforms are confusing as hell 💀

[mikkomacko]

Reader x mob!boss Nico (also sorry if that's wrong, this is my first request for the series) but something angst smut maybe after Nico comes from the gym?

A/n: This has been in my inbox for literally months I am so sorry it took me so long to write this omg 🫶 but for those of you worried I ignored your blurb requests, they’re probably just in my drafts still lmao

I changed this up a bit but I hope you still love it!

Warnings: smut, jealous Nico, angry Nico

____________________________________________

Nico doesn’t have exes. He’s got old hook-ups and one night stands, girls that clearly come to the Rock looking for him. They’ve all heard about how hot the Devils boss is, as well as the Devils themselves.

It never bothered you.

Nico never had anything with them, at least nothing real, so you never thought you’d have to worry about jealousy between you and Nico. At least nothing beyond the light hearted pouting he does when you’re with Johnny or the way you attach yourself to his hip when girls are obviously flirting with him.

Until an old face made an appearance at the Rock.

You blame Jack for it, honestly. It was harmless, Tyson was harmless other than Nico recognizing the name as soon as you stumbled upon your old boyfriend at the bar. It was one of the first personal stories Nico ever heard about you. Your high school boyfriend, your first love, your first heartbreak. You dated him for a while, fell in love, decided to celebrate your year anniversary together by finally doing it. The universal act of love, the infamous first time from every rom-com.

Except there was nothing romantic or comedic about it at all. It was below average sex, the build up lasted longer than the act itself, and you felt so empty, so disappointed afterwards that you had burst into tears as soon as Tyson was off of you. He panicked, got dressed and basically ran out the door saying he'd check on you later. Later came the next day when he broke up with you, saying you were too much for him and should be with someone who could handle you.

Nico hated Tyson enough as is just for that story. And then he hated him even more when he strolled up to you at the bar and acted like old friends, chatting with you even as you tried to keep conversation quick. You know Nico would've scared Tyson off in a matter of seconds, but you wanted to be civil, so you let him hang with his arm around your shoulders, sipping his beer with a brooding look as Tyson babbled about his life to you.

And you were just about to excuse yourself when Jack ambled up to Nico and asked, "who's the douche?" Which just egged on your boyfriend, his temper already flaring and he shot Tyson a dirty look.

"Her ex."

"Ouch," Jack winced, then patted Nico on the shoulder and leaned into his ear. "She has a type, I'll tell you that."

It was just loud enough for you to hear, turning to Jack with a glare and to hopefully placate Nico but it was all for nothing. He was already angry, already boiling over with a jealousy you've never seen. Denying Jack's statement was only going to make it worse, even though the stupid boy was fucking with Nico. The only thing Nico and Tyson had in common was their dark eyes, and even then Nico's are far darker, hold more depth, are more beautiful.

"Sorry Tyler," Nico spits, not even attempting to be polite or genuine in his 'mishap" on the name. "We've gotta go."

Nico's dragging you away after that, hand on the back of your neck and even though he's jerky and rough as he guides you around the bar and down the hall, his hold isn't mean or hurting. Just demanding.

Swiftly, Nico shoves you through the door into the office, kicking it shut behind him and flicking the lock. You weren't going to say anything, knowing words right now would do nothing for Nico. He accepts and expresses love through physical acts. You two are working on the words thing, but when he's upset like this, it's best to stick what's fool proof.

His hands grab at your face, cupping your jaw and dragging you forward, smashing his lips to yours in a fierce, biting kiss. And you just let him, holding the sides of his neck in your careful hands, easily letting him lead you further into the office until your thighs hit the desk. They’ve barely touched the hardwood before he’s grabbing at your thighs, hefting you onto the desk with effortless strength.

You know Nico is strong, have seen him in the gym, have seen him moving boxes and furniture, have seen him fighting. And you’ve felt it firsthand. Yet every time it takes your breath away, reminds of you that you’re with a man now, not some silly boy like Tyson and all the other average Joes before Nico.

It sends a wave of heat down your spine and straight to your core, arousal pooling in your belly and suddenly it’s like you’re so fucking empty and useless, like you’re life’s mission is to get Nico as deep into your pussy as he could possibly get. How you ever lived without him between your thighs, you don’t know.

“Nico,” you whisper, pleadingly, whimpering when he bites your lip in retaliation. His eyes are dark and demanding when he looks at you, bordering on anger but you know him better.

He just wants your attention. He wants you.

“Don’t talk to me,” he scolds, then almost dismissively he grabs at the bottom of your shirt and starts to haul it up and over your head. “Not after you made me stand there with that fucking hodensniterin and play nice.”

Knowing better, knowing you’ll get him the way you want if you sit there and let him go about his way, you comply as he throws your shirt to the floor, already working his over his head.

You don’t even realize you’ve moved until Nico is staring down at you, an unimpressed look in his eyes. “Now you want me?” He goads, wrapping a hand around your wrist and stopping you from trailing your fingers any further over his abdomen. “You want to touch me?”

You’re nodding along before he’s even finished speaking, brain already going fuzzy from how needy you feel. It’s like all your brain can think about is him, all you can see is him, all you want is him. His name forms on your tongue again and you have to bite the inside of your cheek, forcing your mouth to stay shut.

Meanly, he laughs, yanking you up to your feet by the wrist. Like a rag doll you go with him, flung and maneuvered around so swiftly it catches you off guard when your elbows hit the desk, cushioned by something. Blinking a few times, you look down and realize Nico has thrown his shirt over the hardwood, bunched up as padding under you.

It’s such a sweet thing for him to do, not unexpected of him even when he’s like this, but it still makes your body flush with heat.

“Too fucking bad,” he continues, “I’m doing the touching. Not you.”

Like it’s instinct, you arch back into Nico when you feel the heat of his body get close to you. He chuckles lowly, barely skimming the palm of his hand over your ass but flinching away when you press back into him.

Tears of frustration sting at your eyes, desperation burning in your skin. If he’d just let you talk, let you tell him how badly you want him, how much you need him inside of you right now it’d be fine. But he’s in a mood and already told you not to talk to him.

His fingers hook into the band of your skirt and underwear, the pads of them rough and warm as they drag across your skin. In one pull he's yanking both over the globes of your ass and down your thighs, leaving them bunched up around your ankles.

The air is cold on your newly exposed skin, raises goosebumps on your skin and you shiver, squeezing your thighs together to preserve some heat in your burning core, and subtly relive some of the throbbing in your clit. Nico reacts before you can even let out a hum of satisfaction, wedging a hand between your thighs and smacking them back open.

"Spread them," he demands, shoving his foot between yours now for insurance. You groan, hiding your face in your arms and biting into the meat of your forearm to silence yourself. Apparently that's the wrong move too though because Nico bumps his knee into the back of yours. "Nuh-uh, hands now."

Begrudgingly, you slip your arms around to your back, pressing your wrists together. Chest and cheek flat on the desk, the new position pulls at the stretched muscles of your legs, the ache just enough to make you throb even more.

His left hand gathers yours in one, long fingers holding them together by the wrist, and he presses down into the small of your back. You whimper, more out of embarrassment and neediness than pain but Nico sills for a moment, his right hand stroking over your ass gently.

"You ok?" He checks, voice a quiet murmur and you take a mental check of your body. It's a little degrading being thrown and bent over his desk like this, ass up for him to do as he pleases, but it stings in the best way possible. You trust Nico, know that even when he's got you exposed and vulnerable like this he would never go too far, even though he could.

It's exhilerating.

"Tell me baby," Nico encourages, settling his hand on the seam of skin where your thigh meets the bottom of your ass.

"I'm ok," you say, closing your eyes and breathing in the cologne on his shirt, the rich scent of him. It's soothing and you quickly amend, "I'm perfect, Schao."

You can picture the pleased smile on his face, the dimple it carves into his cheek.

"Good girl," he purrs, dragging his thumb through your folds. The sudden touch sends a shock wave through you, hips canting and rising to your toes to give him better access to your swollen and desperate clit.

"S'this all you needed to be nice to me again?" Nico skips over where you want him the most, going back to thumbing at your hole teasingly. "To pay attention to me instead of that cock-sucker out there?"

You're not sure if your allowed to talk again, so you bite your tongue, sucking in quivering breathes of air through your nose to stay grounded. I was just being polite, you want to say, to defend yourself. I hate him and I love you Nico.

Torturously slow, Nico dips his thumb between your folds, sinking into just the knuckle and you hold your breathe, scared that any sudden movement will spook him into stopping.

He pumps his thumb in shallow movements, careful and calculated. It's not everything you want from him but it's something, a content breath puffing out of your nose.

"Thinks he knows you," Nico mutters, more to himself than you. He pulls back, his thumb suddenly disappearing and you whine, pussy clenching down on nothing. Thankfully, Nico doesn't care about the bratty noise enough to scold you. He silences you with two thick fingers, shoving them into you up so abruptly you flinch, digging your cheek further into his shirt.

"He doesn't," Nico says, louder this time like he's trying to remind you. It goes in one ear and out the other, your mind to preoccupied with the feeling of his fingers pumping in and out of you. He pets at the sensitive sponge part of you, curling his fingers to hit it dead on and your knees shake.

"He doesn't know how to bend you over like this, how to take you apart like I do, does he?"

Your fingers clench into fists, stomach clenching and every push of Nico's finger stretching you pushes you closer and closer to your orgasm. His hand on your wrists tightens, holding you in place and then his fucking his fingers into you faster. Your orgasm crashes over you, white stars bursting behind closed eyes.

He's still talking to himself, muttering stuff under his breath and stroking you through your high. Your thighs quiver and shake, the insides of them damp with it and your knees fully give out, leaving you a heap on the desk. The pounding in your ears must have blocked out the sound of Nico's zipper and the drop of his jeans, because your caught of guard when his fingers have only left you for a second before the weeping head of his cock is prodding at your pussy.

In one swift motion he buries himself in you, stretching your walls as his hips sit tightly against your ass. You feel useless, boneless after your orgasm, only able to lay there and take it. It's so nice you could cry, sniffling as Nico pulls back and fucks into you, a raw moan ripping from his throat.

"Fuck so perfect for me," he compliments, setting a fast and brutal pace. Your thighs and hips smack into the desk so harshly they'll definitely be sore tomorrow if not bruised too. His other hand grabs at your side, holding you so tightly you can feel his fingers between your ribs, painfully keeping you still.

"Just for me, fucking made for me."

You gasp, arch further into his strong body as your walls flutter around him. "All for you Nico," you mumble submissively, hoping to god that that's what he wants from you, that he wants to hear you. He groans in approval, the sound wrecked and rough. "Just want you, only ever want you, Nico."

Somehow he picks up the pace, fucking into you even harder and in the back of your mind you wonder where the fuck he got such a sturdy desk. Pressing his chest to your back, Nico sweeps your hair to the side, his lips finding the side of your neck.

"He had you first," he says low, breath hot against your ear "but I get you forever, right?"

Desperately, you nod, another orgasm building in the base of your belly. "Forever," you confirm. "He had me first, you'll be the last to have me Nico."

Sweetly, Nico kisses your temple. "Tell me," he request, now kissing at your jaw. "I want to hear more baby."

The juxtaposition of his cock fucking you into next week and his mouth being so sweet and soft cuts through you, leaves you raw and exposed to him. You knees shake again, thighs quivering as your high gets closer and closer, stronger now that he's already left you used and sensitive.

"He was the first to have me," you choke out, Nico's mouth ghosting over your cheek as he waits with bated breath. "but you were the first to have me raw, boss."

Nico makes a wounded sound, like he'd been punched in the gut and his hips stutter for a moment before picking up the same pace. He captures your mouth in a biting kiss, licking into your mouth with such dominance and control it sends you over the edge.

He fucks you through it, rocking his hips a few more times before he too stills, buried to the hilt as he comes. You pulse around him, greedily accept everything he pumps into you with absolutely no resistance. Nico kisses at your slack mouth, mumbling soft praises as you come down from your second orgasm.

"So good, baby. You did so good for me," he dots kisses under your eye, dragging his fingers across the skin and you blink your eyes open, realize your eyelashes are clumpy with tears and he's drying your cheeks for you.

"Nico," you cry, legs and hips aching, the edge of the desk digging into your skin uncomfortably He shifts, taking his weight off of you and releasing your hands. They prickle with pins and needly, the blood rushing back to them as they fall to your sides, numbly.

"I got you sweet girl," he assures, kissing down your back. Your in a haze as he pulls his jeans and boxers back up, then helps ease your underwear and skirt back into place. You make a noise complaint, needing to at least clean up a little bit but you don't make a move to do anything.

"You're fine," Nico tells you, slipping a hand under your stomach to drag you up from the desk. "Can sit out there with me dripping from you, yeah? Want you to remember who takes such good care of you now."

Like mush, you let Nico turn and sit you on the desk again, swiping his black shirt from the surface. He looks so pretty standing over you, cheeks flush and glowing, eyes still dark with arousal. His hair falls a little flat over his forehead, a crooked and boyish smile on his face.

"Yeah," you agree, still dazed as he uses his shirt to wipe under your eyes and around your lips, cleaning the spit remaining from his mouth.

Nico leans down, kisses between your eyes in a move so soft and fluttering it tickles, makes you blush like a school girl. "You're never too much," he promises, recalling the reason why Tyson had broken up with you. "You are everything. So pretty when you come, when you cry for me like that. I live for it."

Your heart aches in your chest, his kind words drawing a fresh wave of tears to your eyes. It had been something that followed you, an insecurity always in the back of your mind. You accepted whatever love you could get because you thought that was it. You were too much, they couldn't offer you more and you couldn't ask for more.

Until Nico.

"I love you Schao."

He smiles all handsome and precious, smoothing your hair down with a gentle hand. "Love you more, my baby."

You fall forward into his stomach, cheek pressing into the damp skin on his ribs. You want to hug him but your arms are still regaining their feeling and your legs are tired right now, so you settle for lazily wrapping an arm around his thighs.

“What’s a hodensniterin?”

He snickers, hand on your head, protectively. “Ball fucker.”

[oneforthemunny]

you mentioned rockstar eddie watching her have their babies and still being obsessed ofc, and i’m wondering how janitor eddie would be, esp if she was feeling self conscious

so here's my thoughts on this, because i love janitor!eddie from the bottom of my heart, but... he's a little ball of anxiety and sometimes it makes the situation soooo much worse. like he gets in his own head, and stays in his own head, won't tell you what's going on just starts acting weird, so you think it's you and in reality, he's just in need of prozac lmao.

since oliver was adopted, there was no "down period" ya know? if anything, i think watching you be a mom to him and be sweet to him and kind and loving, it made eddie even fucking more insatiable than before in the most love sicken devoted way.

after you gave birth to olivia, it was different. through the pregnancy, he'd already been a little nervous with you. there's a full blurb about it, where he's nervous to touch you because he doesn't want to hurt you. bless him, there's not a lot out there at the time (early 90s) about having sex and being pregnant lol. so he's just scared. better to stay hands off than hurt you. which in the blurb, doesn't last because once you tell him you want to and it's ok, he's actually feral.

but after olivia, the doctor tells the usual, no sex for this six weeks or it can hurt you. eddie, ofc, asked a million questions about every single thing (turned a thirty minute visit into an hour and a half), but specifically about what could happen, how would you know if you're healed, what did they do to verify that everything was good, was there a test- like a million questions.

six weeks turns into eight, and it's really not too bad because you're both exhausted and literally collapse into each other. but around ten weeks, the routine is becoming more normal, olivia's sleeping through the night, you both feel like you can catch your breath, but eddie's still so distant with sex? like everything else is so good, but if you try to initiate, kiss him a little deeper, make yourself into the little spoon and back your ass up on him, he stills and shuts it down.

by eleven weeks, you're frustrated. by twelve, almost three months, you're hurt. wayne kept the kids for the night, wanted to give you two some alone time and wanted to spend time with his grandbabies, and you think it's perfect. you're about to go back to work, and it seems like a good time to "break the seal" so to say.

you have a dinner at home, he cooked, wined and dined you, is so so soooo fucking sweet and lovey. you're on the couch, watching a movie, but really making out like you used to. you can feel him, feel him getting hard, and when you try to make a move, he starts like panicking. apologizing, and trying to hide it.

"fuck, i-i'm sorry. i don't, just gimme a second, an-and i'll-"

"-so do you just think i'm disgusting now?" tears in your eyes, you're beyond hurt. you'd heard so many stories about men who saw their wives give birth and didn't want to have sex anymore, deemed them gross, but you never in a million years though eddie- your sweet, kind, perfect eddie would be one of them.

eddie is on the brink of an anxiety attack, because ???? why would you think that? you're the prettiest, most beautiful girl in the world to him, and he tells you so.

"then why... why are you not wanting to have sex?" you blubber around your tears. hormones still wild even after, emotional from the hurt too.

"i know you're hard. i can see it." you point to his crotch, his semi still prominent. "so it's me."

"no, no. what? no." eddie thinks he might throw up, head spinning so fast. "it-it's not you-"

"-yes it is! why else wouldn't you want to? it's because i had a baby, and-and you think-"

"-don't." eddie's throat is tight, swallowing his heart. "it's- i- i just- i don't want to hurt you."

"hurt me? you are hurting me. you're hurting my feelings because you won't even touch me."

eddie does nearly throw up, swallows bile and it's like his world is turned up side down. he was so fucking scared, petrified, of having sex with you after and accidentally ripping something. that maybe you weren't healed, that the doctor made a mistake, and he'd fuck you and cause you to like, internally bleed and die or something insane. or that he'd just hurt you, that it would hurt and he'd hear you in pain, and he'd never forgive himself.

you'd just given him everything he ever wanted, made the ultimate sacrifice out of love, and he would not- could not hurt you over that. if he did, he'd genuinely be unable to live with himself.

after he finally just tells you that, instead of being so fucking weird, you calm him down. tell him it doesn't hurt, that you'd let him know if it did.

"just... just use your fingers first. and if it hurts, we can stop and i'll go to the emergency room. i promise. you won't hurt me." you tell him, gently cupping his cheek.

and really, it didn't take much convincing after he finally spilled what had been eating at his mind, once you soothed him. i mean, he had also been in agony. every time you'd take off your top or bend over to pick up a toy, he'd have to run to the bathroom because he was so fucking hard.

it was never unattraction, it was genuinely just his own mind and anxieties and spiraling.

[intrepidacious]

melting snow

summary: Andy finally meets his upstairs neighbor

pairing: andy barber x f!reader

word count: 992

warnings: divorced andy's pov; florist!reader; snow if that counts as a warning lmao; first meetings fluff 🫶🏼 please note that my blog is rated 18+. minors dni. ageless/empty blogs will be blocked without warning.

a/n: i'm literally on my way out of the house but i wanted to post this little ficlet while we're still firmly in february because it feels so wintery to me hahah 😌 also @writing-for-marvel you sent this gif to me one and a half years ago so shout-out to you being the most patient person on the planet ily

masterlist | read on ao3

Here's what Andy knows about his new neighbor:

She lives in the apartment right above his, and even though he barely heard her moving in, just a couple of weeks after he signed his own lease, she seems to love rearranging her furniture in the middle of the night. The music she listens to is loud and annoying and keeps getting stuck in his head when he's supposed to focus on paperwork.

And right now, she's struggling to get her groceries out of her car.

It's way too early for a day off, but he's not been sleeping well on the new mattress. He’s missing the perfectly broken in softness of his old bed, and combined with the incessant noise of the cars and the sirens outside, he can count the hours of sleep he’s been getting with one hand.

There’s been a lot of change in his life after years in the suburbs, and he's frankly too old for all of this. But he needed the fresh start.

So he's on his third cup of coffee as he looks out of the window, watching the new neighbor in her bright winter jacket as she tries to balance another plastic bag on top of the stack of boxes she's compiled in the trunk.

She's pretty, his brain supplies, but he swallows the thought down with his coffee. The divorce has only just gone through. It's way too early for anything like that. Besides; there's such a thing as too much baggage.

One of the bags rips open and the neighbor curses so loud Andy can hear it through the closed window. He waits for a beat, takes in the scene unfolding on the parking lot outside, and then his mug clanks against the metal of the sink and he's grabbing his keys and his coat and pulling the door closed behind him.

"D'you need help?"

Her head swivels around, her eyes widening slightly as she sees him coming towards her, groceries still spilled all over the car and the melting snow. Like a breadcrumb trail of canned beans and tofu.

"That's alright," she says with a huff of air that forms a steam cloud in front of her face. "I don't have far."

"I know," he says, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "I’m 3B."

"Oh. Hi. Sorry, I meant to introduce myself properly once I'm all moved in, but then …" She trails off, but he gets it. He's only introduced herself to Mrs Hernández down the hall because he kept bumping into her at the elevator and it got awkward.

"That's alright. I'm Andy."

She says her name with a smile and he has to remind himself that he still has a tan line on his ring finger; even though it's starting to blur in the cool winter sun, blending into his skin quicker than he'd thought possible.

"Let me get that," he offers again, and this time she doesn't protest. Two pairs of hands and eyes are far quicker than one, after all. "Are you having a party or something?" he asks once everything is packed up in plastic bags again and they each carry two inside.

"Uhm, no. I have a dog, though, and some friends coming over on Saturday. But we'll try to keep it down!"

"Don't worry about it. It's good you're christening the place. I mean—" He coughs uncomfortably. "I'll be out of town anyway. Work conference."

"Oh, really. What do you do?" Bright, keen eyes study him like he’s being flayed layer by layer, a particularly interesting specimen.

He swallows and holds the elevator door open. "I'm a lawyer."

It's not that he particularly misses the stress of being district attorney; still, it'd been everything he'd worked for for most of his professional life. And then, just like that, within a single year both his job and his family were ancient history.

Anyway. A couple of weeks of retraining courses and now it's back to low-stakes cases of insurance fraud and tax evasion. It's better this way.

That’s what he tells himself in those long hours when he’s supposed to be sleeping.

"Very fancy," she says, and he supposes it sounds that way if you leave out all the important bits of backstory. "I could never. Not smart enough for that kind of stuff."

"I highly doubt that," he says without really knowing why. It earns him a smile. "What do you do?"

"I'm a florist. My best friend and I own Letters and Leaves on—"

"Arlington Street."

That gets him another, brighter smile. "You know it?"

He does. He's often wondered about it actually, a small shop selling books and flowers that's nestled between a chain restaurant and a pharmacy. There's always fresh bouquets out on the window sills, and a handwritten sign promoting new releases and book talks.

"It's on my way to the office."

"Well, you should come by sometime. I'll give you a neighbor discount."

"How much's that?"

A moment’s hesitation as her eyes flit down his body and meet his gaze again. "Depends on what you buy."

The elevator dings for his stop, and he wants to curse it.

"Thanks for your help, Andy," she says and suddenly the bags are out of his hands and he’s been dismissed.

He clears his throat. "My pleasure."

With a nod, he steps out of the elevator and she gives him a small, friendly wink as the doors close. There's something odd happening to the inside of his chest as he returns to his still-too-empty apartment and picks up his cup of coffee again.

It's gone cold.

He looks out the window again, at the two trails of footprints in the snow outside. The sun’s come out now, and they’re already beginning to melt together until it’s impossible to tell them apart at all.

A couple of minutes later, the music is turned on upstairs. He can't help it: It makes him smile.

thank you so much for reading!! see, i will save every ask i get, i'm just very, very slow when it comes to actually writing them lmao

if you want to see more of my writing, check out my masterlist or follow @intrepidacious-fics for update notifications 🫶🏼

[thegreeninyoureyes]

Caleb helping you with anxiety

dont mind me just putting some thoughts out here as a coping mechanism lmao

[gender neutral MC/reader]

expect a lot of back rubs if you're comfortable with them, especially when you're in private. if you're lying down, he'll be in front of you, slightly pulling you a bit closer as he reassuringly rubs your back. in these moments, caleb will whisper words of reassurance to you, or caress you slowly as if to guide your breath with the way his hand moves up and down on your back.

knows exactly what to ask and how to be simple with it. the least he wants is to overwhelm you even more with his will to help, so he'll look at you attentively and clutch onto any word, boundary or need you express to him.

talking about attention, you got caleb's for yourself (although when don't you, really?). he wants you to know how much he cares, how important being there for you is to him, how important you are to him. anything you need from him at that moment, you can have it.

"hey, honey. I'm here, just focus on my voice. you're doing so well. this will be over soon, and I'm gonna be here through all of it, alright? there's no way you can scare me off."

but's don't work with him. of course you deserve his time. of course you deserve to stop, take a break and bring him with you. of course he's making dinner for you tonight and you can't do anything about it. of course he has faith in everything working out just fine for you.

wouldn't take his eyes off you when he tries to help you through some breathing exercises. if him looking straight at you feels uncomfortable at the moment, he'll focus on your hand. you don't have to hold his but, if you do, he might as well bring it to his chest so you can let his own breathing guide you and calm you down. it'd be an honour for him.

if it happens at night and you can't fall asleep because of it, he'll rearrange your bed and let you get comfortable against him even if it means lying down in the most unusual positions ever. as long as it helps distract your mind, you could fall asleep anywhere and know he's got your back, pulling the blanket to make sure you stay warm and keeping an arm around your shoulders so you feel protected from any harm.

"I'm gonna be here for you, I can remind you of it if you ever doubt that. you just gotta ask, and I'll answer. do you really think there's anything else that could be more important than this, than you, to me right now?"

might chuckle after some of his words if said teasingly, but he's taking the situation very seriously and his worry goes deep. if there's any meds you need to take to feel and get better, you can bet he knows where to get it for you, although he probably has some at his place just in case, too. anything you let him know is needed to take care of you, he'll never forget.

"just rely on me, please. you're as alive as I am, and we're gonna get through this together, pipsqueak."

[crazycatmilo]

Hello everyone, I have some thoughts/theories after the new TMAGP episode (mostly about colin tbh)

Spoilers for TMAGP 31 under the cut, you have been warned

I feel so fucking bad for Colin man. 🚶

I definitely think he’s not completely “dead,” as in he’s for sure fused with the computer/program. Everyone’s been saying that they wouldn’t be surprised to hear him in an upcoming case and yeah I agree 💀

-we know his hand was basically fused with the computer and there was no blood or anything

-it says “Extension BECHER isolated/resolved,” not deleted or discarded (idk much about programming so if I’m wrong about any of this ignore me lmao)

-“Data integration cycle ongoing” definitely sounds like he’s becoming part of the program

I’ve seen everyone talking about how sulphur (the soul) is the only element that is uploaded (I definitely didn’t completely miss this on my first listen and have to edit this post, please pretend I can read). Idk if this is important but it caught my attention that out of the elements mentioned, sodium, magnesium, chlorine, and trace were all capitalized. I’ve been doing some alchemy research in preparation for season 2 lol, so I’ve seen that sodium (salt) can represent the body and magnesium can represent eternity. I honestly don’t know about the other two. I’m probably reading too much into this but it’s something that caught my eye.

Also, when I read “New administrator permissions assigned,” this makes it sound like the program picks the IT administrator? Or maybe this is referring to one of the beings in the program gaining control, but administrator feels like it’s referring to Colin. Either way, we’re almost definitely getting a new IT guy and I’m sure they’re going to have a great time with all of this shit.

I think it’s possible that the program or the entity inside of it was trying to use Colin as a sort of human host or “avatar.” I know “attempted host compromise” means Colin’s attempt to destroy the system, but idk it could have a double meaning perhaps. I know this is probably nothing but I read it that way the first time so now it’s an idea in my head lol.

“Independent operation permissions revoked” definitely feels like Colin’s getting sucked into a fucking hive mind or something. Whatever happens with him next, I’m assuming he won’t have much control anymore.

[adorethedistance]

First Time - Jamie Drysdale X Reader

Hockey Masterlist

Warnings: swearing, SMUT, fingering, oral, anxiety mention.

Words: 1310

Summary: First Time - yours and Jamie’s first sexual encounter is a lot rougher than you both thought it would be, not that anyone’s complaining.

A/n: Hi oh my god writers block is still kicking my ass but I wanted to get a fic out bc I miss yall. Debating if this should be a part one LOL. I’m so sorry my signature move is leaving yall wanting more but trust me it does wonders for engagement lmao.

You can read part 1 of the series of firsts here.

“You said Trevor’s out right now?” I ask Jamie breathlessly as he toys with the hem of my pink baby tee. He hums against my lips, desperately trying to maintain the kiss.

A lazy day off after a full breakfast and a prudish sleep over, Jamie and I are tangled in his bed, with him shirtless in his briefs, and me straddling him in a cropped Short N Sweet baby tee and a lacy black pair of panties.

After the third time of Trevor walking in on us with messy hair and mortified panting, I’ve learned my lesson to ask if he’s gone.

“Should be,” Jamie replies absentmindedly. As he speaks, he slides his hand under my shirt, up the length of my stomach, eagerly and shyly coming to rest in the valley of my chest. His hand falters, not wanting to push too far but desperately needing the feel of my skin in his calloused hands. Of course Jamie and I have made out, almost too many times to count, but any heaving petting involved has always been over whatever clothes we’d had on. And one of the main differences being I’d had a bra on in those instances, which was very much not the case now.

As his hand comes to rest between my boobs, I feel him grow hard underneath me. The sensation is overwhelming and I feel myself throb against him and the way Jamie’s eyes flick to meet mine indicates he felt it too. I sigh out a small breath to try and alleviate some of the tension but the point is moot.

Sensing Jamie’s hesitation, I grab his wrists in my hands and slowly guide them, one over each breast. He let’s out a sigh of excitement as we both feel my nipples harden under his large palms. I moan out when he squeezes gently, and slide my hands up from his wrists to apply the pressure Jamie was afraid to do himself.

“You’re not gonna break me, Jame.” I huff an antsy breath and he laughs, bashfully at first glance with an undertone of sexual deviancy.

“Is that so?” Licking my lips gently, I do my best to disguise the anxiety in my voice as I dare to tease Jamie,

“I’m telling you to be rougher, dumbass.”

As if a switch had flipped, my taunt activates Jamie. He swiftly reaches his right hand to grip around my throat, pushing me backwards with enough force so I fall flat on my back. With my head hanging off the foot of the bed, Jamie applies more pressure with his right hand, shortening my breathing and kinking the aorta to restrict blood flow. The sensation is grimly delightful, an aroused smile coming to rest on my delirious face. Jamie hums a small laugh, satisfied with his job well done. He places a gentle kiss on my lips before finally releasing the pressure on my throat. I pull in a sudden gust of air as Jamie’s fingers massage the area he had once held so captive.

“You okay?” He asks, suddenly his shy, considerate self once more. I look at him and laugh in disbelief,

“Fuck yeah.” I sit up abruptly to get closer to his adorable face, hoping to kiss him passionately, but Jamie braces a hand on my chest and shoves me back down onto the mattress.

“Good, ‘cause we’re not done yet.”

And before I can get a word in, Jamie sensually pushes the hem of my shirt up and over my naked chest, circling back to squeeze my left breast in his large hand. I whine out a moan at the way he caresses me, savoring every last moment of his touch. His other hand comes up to fidget with the panty line around my hip. He hesitates,

“Is this-?”

“More than okay,” I nod fervently, as if Jamie could evaporate any moment. My body is beyond desperate for his touch. We’ve waited for this moment for so long, neither of us ever really knowing why. But now that it’s here, I feel as though I can’t wait a moment longer, “Please.”

That’s all Jamie needs to hear. He quickly pulls the black lace down over my hips and off the end of my legs.

All the unrest and desperation of the previous moment has dissipated and I nervously let my knees fall together in self consciousness. Jamie places his hands on my hips, sliding them up the undersides of my thighs pushing my legs against my chest, exposing my pussy to his eager and willing touch.

Jamie kissed the inside of my thigh, as close to where I want him as possible, but still far enough to keep my own desire at bay. He sucks the sensitive skin between his teeth, nipping and grinding. He pulls his head away from my thigh, the skin of my leg still caught between his lips. He lets go with a salacious pop before pressing a sweet kiss to the soon to be bruised skin. I sigh in anticipation, using my hips to try and sit up once more; Jamie’s grip tightens and firmly holds my legs and hips in place. I groan out of frustration and right as I prepare to fight back harder, I feel the sultry sensation of Jamie’s tongue against my heat.

He licks the quivering expanse of my hole, slowly making his way up to where I need him most. I moan sharply as he flicks the tip of his tongue over my clit. Jamie quickly turns to sucking the exposed bud and I cry out even louder. His grip is unwavering, pinning me to the bed with no chance of escape. I reach down to tangle my hands in his hair; some semblance of control as he relentlessly devours me. I would think he was starving with the way he eats me, like he would never have a chance at sustenance again.

As I feel myself climbing higher and higher to release, the sensation is gone when Jamie pulls away. Before I can mutter any kind of reaction, Jamie plunges two fingers inside me. I moan so loud I instinctively reach up to cover my mouth, but my hand collides with Jamie’s as he comes to place it on my throat once more.

The hand on my neck is no doubt a warning for my volume level but I can’t help myself when Jamie knows how to curl his fingers just right. Each time he brings his fingertips up to reach that certain spot, like he’s coaxing the orgasm out of me one pump at a time. I feel myself growing closer and closer to finish, reveling in the pleasure of his touch. How lucky am I?

Jamie finger fucks me better than I could’ve ever imagined, and right as I think I’ve seen it all, he begins thrusting his fingers in and out of me, applying pressure against my throat. What little air escapes my lips amounts to a pathetic, desperate whine under the weight of his heavy hand. And just like that a blinding white light takes over my senses. I fight the urge to scream as I release pure sexual energy around his right fingers, fighting for breath and blood flow under his left.

Slowly, I come down from my high, and Jamie releases his grip on my throat, his fingers coated in my wetness when he pulls them out.

“You’re so hot,” he shakes his head in disbelief.

“Oh my god,” I fight to catch my breath as my body twitches from overstimulation. Jamie sits back on his heels and watches in awe, too bashful to admit he is most definitely proud of himself right now. Jamie leans over me so he can look at my face,

“You made a mess by the way.”

“Me?!”

[summerofspock]

Tagged by @shichidikai and @bageltopia to answer 20 writerly questions. Thanks so much for the tag! Some of these answers are embarrassing lmao

How many works do you have on ao3?

194 (in my defense I have been on there for over 10 years)

What's your total ao3 word count?

2,392,769 😩

What are your top five fics by kudos

Just One More (It Couldn't Hurt) - Star Trek

Car Trouble - Good Omens

mad or well-advised - Good Omens

South Downs - Good Omens

Under Construction - Good Omens

What fandoms do you write for?

Currently? One Piece and I'm fiddling with Arcane behind the scenes without posting. But I have written for Avatar The last Airbender, Game of Thrones, Star Trek, The Magnus Archives, Silmarillion, My Hero Academia, and MXTX works.

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

OK so my inbox is a fucking mess. I do try to respond to comments but once I fall behind I fall so behind. And once I start getting mean comments or concrit, it's hard for me to go back and respond to comments on a fic. Usually, I'll respond in a big wave to comments on the last chapter before posting the next but sometimes I forget.

What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I don't really write unhappy endings. 🤔 I currently have an abandoned wip that ends at an unhappy spot and I have a few dead dove oneshots that are pretty angsty but no multichaps. Maybe feather of lead.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

They are genuinely all so happily ever after fluffy that it's hard to choose. Maybe Car Trouble. Or after all the angst, you might consider the ending of such small words super happy. Idk.

Do you get hate on fics?

Depends on how you define hate. I get comments telling me I made incorrect choices or that my fics are wrong in some way for doing xyz. I get character hate. I've been told I'm a bad person for writing certain kinks or tropes on pwps or that I'm perpetuating stereotypes and that's damaging. Annoying shit like that.

Do you write smut?

Lmao yes

Do you write crossovers?

I've done it once! Star Trek/Good Omens for shits and giggles.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

One time. It got taken down fairly quickly though.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yeah! A handful of times. It's always so cool when people ask.

Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Yes. With my beloved collaborater naromoreau. I think we have like eight fics we wrote together? Probably about 200k collaborated words at this point. I've learned so much from her and nothing is as fun as writing with her.

What's your all time favorite ship?

I will probably never get over spirk.

What's the wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Hot Sugar. I'm so sorry but I lost the will.

What are your writing strengths?

I am a fast writer. My methods of getting through writers block almost never fail. But those aren't strengths that translate to the page.

On the page, I think I'm good with character psychology and motivations which I think shows up well in dialogue, pacing and plot beats. My writing is concise mostly because if I don't have a reason for including something, I will cut it. I'm a brutal editor and will kill my darlings without remorse.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I am a fast writer lmao which sometimes means I write too much and quality dips massively because the mental reservoir will empty and I end up tapping an empty well. While I like to think I am concise and efficient at conveying things, I sometimes think I "underwrite" or perhaps "overtell."

Thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages?

As a younger writer, I did it but only because I spoke that language. I think there might be value. Here we come back to, if you can make a compelling argument for *why* it serves the story then I'm open to it but also you better check with someone who is fluent.

First fandom you wrote for

Star Trek. Unless you count my notebook scribbling of inuyasha fic when I was 14.

Favorite fic you've written

God ok. I've written nearly 200 fics across a gazillion fandoms so there's a few. Most recently life in your shape for One Piece because I challenged myself to write something low conflict and loved how it came out. Watermark from Good Omens. And Grossly Undeserved from Star Trek.

I just love writing about what love means to different people!!!

If you read this whole ass thing then have a kiss on the forehead and know i love you.

I'll tag @naromoreau @softzosan if you'd like! Most other folks I know have gotten tagged already!

[thatndginger]

Actually @writeintrees I am not quite done with talking about the Shapeshifter Coffeeshop AU, because I can't just leave anything alone lol

Side note: the coffeeshop au world is just our world. No magic or shapeshifters or anything, just cute vibes

The shop is called Salty Dog Cafe. It started out as a joke because Carlisle was a sailor on cargo ships in his twenties, but everyone loves the name. It's near one of the city's piers, yet another reason to embrace the name. The staff refer to themselves collectively as the 'dog pack', and it's a tradition to write what kind of dog you think you'd be on your nametag - or other animal, if a dog doesn't quite fit.

The logo is a scottish deerhound wearing one of those sou'wester hats and sporting an exaggerated beard and a smoking pipe. Warrick likes to hide the logo somewhere in window murals. Currently, the Instagram-follower favorite is one he did of the hound - wearing the hat and a yellow rainslicker - standing in a little boat and facing down a kraken. Occasionally Warrick'll swap the deerhound for another type of dog (one that a staff member has claimed) to see who notices.

The Salty Dog opens at 6am and stays open until 10 at night, which is how they have such a diverse array of regulars and the whole morning/evening shift thing. Whoever is the designated baker for the day usually gets in at about 5am to start in on the morning's goodies. Kerr' schedule usually means he's working the morning baker shift the first half of the week, then flips to evenings for the second half. No one knows how he manages this but he actually get annoyed if you try and put him on all mornings.

When the second location opens, Reese calls it the Salty Cat Cafe, and has Warrick make a second logo that depicts a grizzled persian cat in sou'wester hat and pipe. A friendly 'rivalry' between the dogs and cats is born shortly after - no one takes it too seriously though, it's all for fun and publicity. The baked goods at the Salty Cat are a lot 'tamer' than the Dog, owing to the fact that Kerr mainly works at the Dog and his protege Aleksei isn't nearly as good at coming up with gross-sounding-but-tasty recipes. Yet.

Warrick and Kerr do manage to convince Carlisle to get a liquor license for the Salty Dog (it doesn't take much convincing, honestly) and create an entire menu for it over the course of a few very long, very tipsy weeks. The drinks aren't actually that boozy, just enough to get the flavor and kick from the alcohol. Jay and Portia refuse to sell more than two to a single customer, insisting that they're baristas not bartenders. The cafe only sell this 'hard coffee' option after 5pm, and usually only on nights when there's live music in house. It's more of a novelty thing, honestly, but it draws business all the same.

As for the regulars...

While everyone is convinced that Adrien Montrose is part of the mafia, he's not. The Montrose family are business tycoons, and they may have some cutthroat business tactics, but they're not criminals. Adrien starts coming to the Salty Dog because he's the manager of one of the family's businesses nearby, and one of his staff recommended the cafe. He keeps coming because the coffee is actually really good, and he secretly enjoys the way Kerr 'haggles' him into buying some of the baked goods in the mornings.

(They started dating when Adrien came in one evening on a live music night and Kerr used the opportunity of a full house to corner Adrien and ask him if he was actually part of the mafia or not. Adrien used that as an opportunity to take Kerr on a date disguised as a 'come to this address and find out' challenge. They just ended up hooking up in Adrien's office. The animals.)

No one is aware that Adrien is a Montrose at first, and they definitely don't know that he and Lucas are related. Lucas only appears occasionally, almost always when he's made it his goal to make Adrien's day difficult. He's set to inherit the CEO title for the Montrose Group, and likes to make sure his youngest brother knows his place as a simple manager.

Along that line, while most of the Salty Cat staff are pretty sure Luka Kovac is a mafia enforcer or something, he's actually a giant nerd working at the local planetarium. He just looks scary as hell. He likes the cafe because it's quiet and has a cozy atmosphere, and someone on the staff keeps stocking the 'take one, leave one' bookcase with vintage sci-fi. He starts leaving his own sci-fi books in exchange, and slowly everyone catches on to the fact that he's just a giant, soft dork.

Calypso de la Fuente is a nightclub owner, which is why she only ever shows up in the hour or so before the Salty Dog closes. She'll only come in when she's had to be awake during the day for something, which happens every couple of weeks. Whoever is stuck making her horrifying twelve-shot, amaretto-drizzled monstrosity usually also has to navigate her trying-to-be-nice-but-too-tired-for-niceties conversation. Then she'll down half the drink on her way out the door and head to her club until the wee hours of the morning. She and Jay have definitely flirted with each other, but Calypso already has a girlfriend and Jay just likes flirting with terrifying women.

[yo-yo-yoshiko]

Hajime "Heart Guy" "Incredible Violence" Aikawa

[b4kuch1n]

siren

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Hi hello good morning/afternoon/night<3 I’m quite new to Tumblr and I really like your writing style! I haven’t read too much yet but I think it’s really good, and if requests are open could I please suggest anything Riddle x reader related? If that’s okay, of course.

It’s winter and cuffing season so there’s a WIDE range of fic scenarios I can imagine just now—then again, only if you’re up to it of course, not pressing or anything, I just really like how you write the characters plus Heartslabyul is my fav house and I love Riddle.

Sorry this is long.

Thank you for reading if you do 🫶

Hello, hello, newcomer ^^ I hope you continue to enjoy your time here on this blog~

For your prompt, I decided to go for a prompt of "sick!Reader reunites with Riddle (now Dr. Rosehearts) 10 years later"~ (When I think of winter, I think of getting sick, lmao)

What comes after Ever After?

You didn’t even notice you were falling until you collided with something solid and fleshy. Another body—that of the man that had been walking a little ways ahead of you. He had turned in time to catch you, and now awkwardly held you against his chest.

The buzz of people around you is dullened by your sickness. It’s like you’ve stuffed cotton into your ears, yet your head still spins as if you’ve climbed off a roller coaster. Your eyes and mouth and nostrils are so chapped they burn, your nose running like a leaky faucet.

“Are you feeling alright?” came a posh-sounding voice littered with concern.

Though your head felt heavy as cinderblocks, you managed to crane it and weakly nod. It was a barely passable lie, even to yourself.

“Let me see,” the man insisted. “Are you able to stand on your own?”

“Y-Yes.”

You stepped back with a sniffle—and realized that the man standing before you was a smallish redhead with prim blue-grey eyes. Two strands of hair formed an almost heart-like shape atop his crown. Wrapped up in a pristine white coat, he resembled a rose laid in the snow.

Red hair… heart-shaped… like a rose…

You audibly gasped. “No way. Is that you, Riddle…?!”

He frowned, but it was slight. There was an attempt at a smile, although that, too, was slight. “These days, I go by Dr. Rosehearts—but for an old classmate, just ‘Riddle’ will suffice.” He lifted a hand, allowing it to hover over your clammy forehead. “May I? I fear I lack a thermometer for a more exact reading.”

“O-Oh, sure,” you squeaked, half dazed.

In your delirious state, you wondered if this was even real. Riddle’s touch on your bare skin, his serious face so close, the ease with which you picked up from where you had left off 10 years ago. Those long, drawn out days in a balmy rose garden, the aroma of Darjeeling permeating the air.

It was like a dream, one you weren’t sure if you wanted to take up from.

“… You’re flushed and burning up,” he announced, retracting his hand. “It’s a wonder you were able to drag yourself out of bed. You should have stayed home and rested.”

“Then I’d have missed the reunion,” you protested hoarsely. I’d have missed seeing you again.

“Of all the foolish reasons to jeopardize your health! As a medical professional, I cannot say that I approve of this decision.” Riddle heaved a sigh, his eyes half-lidded and judgmental. Then a brief smile flickered onto his lips. “… But as a friend, I am glad that you feel so strongly about rekindling those lost connections.”

He reached into the pocket of his white coat and retrieved a packet of tissues, offering them. From his other pocket, cough drops appeared. “Here, take these. They should help tide you over for the duration of the event.”

“Thank you,” you said shyly, accepting the items. Your cheeks warmed, and you didn’t know if it was from the cold or from his kindness. “Um…”

“Yes?” he prompted. Patient, steady, like a rock in a river.

“Would you mind walking by me? And staying by me, too. I-In case I get dizzy again!” you blurted out.

Riddle chuckled into a fist. What a lovely, soft laugh he had, like summer wind chimes melting the icicles. “I would be honored to. It would allow me to monitor your condition—and it would also be an excellent opportunity for us to catch up.”

“I’d like that,” you murmured. “I’d like that a lot.”

[formereldestdaughter]

ok wait i need to hear more of your thoughts on peeta owning a bakery....

This is one of those rare times where I’m pretty sure this anon isn’t someone I know personally bc I’ve subjected anyone who will listen to my rant about the Peeta Bakery Headcanon. Anyway, you’re gonna regret asking this anon bc there are fucking Layers here.

I know this is probably a controversial take based on the number of fics where I’ve seen it, but I simply do not think that Peeta would open a commercial bakery after Mockingjay!! Like on a metatextual level, I don’t think it really fits with the point of the ending of the series. It actually sort of fascinates me that it’s just such a common headcanon because the ending of Mockingjay is exceedingly vague. I think that vagueness invites us, as readers, to imagine a better world post-revolution. A world where Katniss would feel confident that her children would be safe from injustice, where she’d feel confident that her children would never know want the way she did as a child. A just world. A kinder world. Can a capitalist society ever be just? Is a capitalist society where a disabled teenager has no other means to subsist himself (or feels like there’s no other way he can be a contributing member of his community) really the post-revolution world we dream of? Is that really the best we can imagine?

(This got so insanely long I’m adding a read more lmao)

I get that showing a better world is not always the point of post-mockingjay headcanons/fics. Like there are plenty of really great post-mockingjay fics I’ve seen where, yeah, part of the fic is that society like ISN’T all that different or all that much better. I’ve seen that really well done! Hell, I’ve written them myself! It’s easy to imagine how a lot of aspects of society would not get an overhaul, a lot of the same structural inequalities would continue to exist. One headcanon that really stuck with me (I can’t remember which fic it was from) was that Peeta sells basically mail order baked goods to people on the Capitol, sending them iced cakes and pastries by train, because there are still people who were “fans” of theirs during the Games. And idk this doesn’t actually have much to do with my point lol but I liked it because it’s kind of fucked up and like! Yeah! It makes sense! If he needed money that would be a good way to make it! War often makes people rich, often for horrible reasons, and often it’s people who already have capital in the first place.

Anyway, more about the hypothetical bakery because alright. I bring up the fact that “yeah society not being all that different post-revolution and still being an unjust capitalist hellscape” could be a reason why Peeta re-opens a bakery because that’s actually never the types of fics where I see the bakery headcanon. Fics where Peeta opens a bakery are usually trying to make the exact opposite point. Like. Things are getting better, now he can open a bakery! Look at how much better the world is now, plus he’s got a bakery! Peeta is healing, that’s why he can open a bakery now! And I am so, so sorry to inform everyone who’s never had the grave misfortune of owning a family business, but there is truly nothing further from the truth lmao. Like just putting aside the immense amount of emotional baggage that Peeta has about his family, running a small business is an insane amount of work in any context and being a baker especially is physically grueling and involves early hours (and long hours) that aren’t really the best fit with the multiple ways that Peeta is disabled now. (I could go into this more because I have a lot of thoughts. But I will spare you.). I also think it’s seen throughout the books that Peeta is someone who needs time to pursue creative outlets to process his feelings and someone who values leisure and values quality time with his loved ones. And having grown up in his family’s bakery, I think he’d understand the reality that running a bakery wouldn’t leave much space of those pursuits and wouldn’t leave much space for him to have the things that keep him healthy and stable. I think he’d know that the way he is now— after two Games and the war and unspeakable torture at the hands of a dictator—isn’t compatible with the lifestyle necessary for running a commercial bakery.

And tbh with that in mind, I don’t think he’d push himself to re-open a business (one that would be a constant reminder of his dead family and his complicated relationships with them that got no closure) that would require him to sacrifice his physical and emotional well-being. Like I think he might look into the possibility, I think he might even start trying to open a bakery out of a sense of obligation/duty, maybe harboring some idea that this is who he was supposed to be, who he would've been without the Games, or that it’s this last piece of his family that can live on, or that it’s this last connection to his family so he can’t let it die too. But ultimately, I think any attempt to open a bakery wouldn’t get very far. Maybe he'd start wading into the logistical nightmare that is small business ownership and realize it's not for him (because it's probably also true that as much as him and his brothers were involved in the business, there's almost certainly parts they weren't involved with and didn't see, i.e., filing taxes). Or maybe looking into opening a bakery— how triggering it is, the stress of it— causes a downward spiral. Maybe he hates how much he's worrying everyone by unraveling. Maybe having a breakdown from the stress of just trying to open a bakery makes him realize, yeah, maybe in another life he would have ran his family’s bakery but the way he is now just doesn’t work with running a bakery, not without great sacrifices he's not willing to make. I just can’t see a bakery coming to fruition.

I know a lot of fics include Peeta deciding to reopen a bakery as a big step in his healing or include him rebuilding a bakery as part of his healing process but honestly, I think the opposite would be more true: I think Peeta either trying/failing to open a bakery or ultimately deciding not to open a bakery would be hugely healing for him. I think it would be a huge part of him accepting the way he is now as a person, his new limitations but also his strengths. I think it would be a huge part of him accepting the way his life his now and accepting that he likes his life the way it is, that he’s satisfied with his life without needing to own a bakery. I think it would be an important part of him coming to terms with the loss of his family. I think he knows he can never have things back as they were and I don’t think he would try to recreate them, especially because his family’s legacy isn’t a business. I think he’s emotionally intelligent enough and self reflective enough to realize that what mattered to him about the bakery— taking care of others by feeding them, being integrated into his community and being actively involved in it, brightening people’s days with delightful things whether that’s beautiful cakes or hearty food or delicious treats— and the things he learned from his family through the bakery, are things that he can carry on in other meaningful ways.

(Do you regret sending this ask yet, anon? Because if not, you will soon. I’m not done yet. There’s more.)

I wasn’t really sure where to put this next part in what is rapidly becoming an essay because it sort of combines the points about like “what do we imagine a post-mockingjay society to look like” with the practical difficulties of starting this bakery but here’s another thing: do people really think that the Mellarks owned the land the bakery was on?? Like, sure, the merchants are the petit bourgeois of Twelve but I still don’t imagine they really own anything. In a society where houses are assigned to people upon marriage, where property ownership and capital are so closely interconnected with citizenship (as shown by the Plinths who, by having immense capital, are able to leave their District and become citizens of the Capitol) do people really think the Mellarks would be allowed to own the land their bakery is on?? I always imagined it sort of like a tenant farming situation: the Capitol gives them the raw materials for the bakery and in return the bakery give them some absurdly high portion of their profits, or the Capitol sells them a year’s supply of raw materials at a premium on credit and at the end of the year the Mellarks have to use the money they made with those materials to pay it back, except it’s never enough to turn a profit so they always have to buy next year’s materials on credit and the cycle continues.

We (understandably) get a really skewed view of the merchant class through Katniss’s perspective so I can see why people come to the conclusion that his family owned the property and, as the last surviving member, he would’ve inherited it. I’ve seen the inheritance thing in fics a lot or a hand wavey “well Twelve was decimated to no one owns anything anymore so it can be his” or even like an almost sort of reparations type situation where he’s entitled to the land as a surviving refugee of Twelve. But I don’t know. I guess I don’t think it fits with everything else we know about Panem that the Mellarks would’ve owned that land and I think the question of whether the government would’ve let him take ownership of the land post-revolution brings up a lot of issues about the structure of society post-Mockingjay that I find more interesting to explore in other ways, especially when, from an emotional perspective, 1) I find the idea of Peeta not opening a bakery more compelling and 2) I don’t think it really fits his character arc by the end of Mockingjay to reopen a bakery, as I went on about at length above lol.

On the flip side: literally who cares!! Do whatever you want!! Headcanon whatever you want!! I get why people go for the bakery!! It’s fun, it’s wholesome, it’s a built in bakery AU that isn’t even an AU. It doesn’t matter if it’s practical or realistic!! It doesn’t need to be practical or realistic!! It’s fanfic of a dystopian YA series!! My unfortunate affliction is that I grew up in a family that owned a restaurant and that I have multiple degrees in the social sciences so I can’t see the bakery without being like “What about the overheard? What about the start up costs? Who’s spending long nights balancing the books? Is Peeta covering shifts when an employee calls in sick? Is Peeta the sole person working there until the bakery is open long enough (often a year or more) to start turning a profit? How does that sleep schedule work with his nightmares? How does that work with Katniss’s nightmares? What happens when he has an episode and suddenly needs to take the day off before he has any employees? Does the bakery just remain closed for the day? Can the profit margins withstand regular unexpected closures? Can the supplies withstand regular unexpected closures?” And if the answer is “Elliott none of those things matter he’s not doing the bakery because he needs the money but because he wants to”, then my question is why does he want to? Does he not get the same sort of satisfaction out of feeding his loved ones? Doesn’t Peeta seem like someone who would rather give away baked goods than sell them?? Doesn’t Peeta seem like someone who would prefer to make cakes for people’s special occasions upon and then when they insist on paying him for it, he only lets them “pay for the ingredients” which actually cost significantly more than he says they did??

So yeah my point is that it’s a matter of personal taste! It doesn’t fit the way I see the series but that doesn’t mean it’s like wrong, I’m not an authority on Peeta lmao.

It’s also a matter of personal taste in the sense that I find the themes that most resonate with me at the end of Mockingjay (and the end of Peeta’s arc specifically) more interesting to explore in other ways. Grief, living with loss, relearning yourself, finding hope, figuring out your place in a dramatically different world when you don’t even know who you are anymore, healing, building a new life after such complete and total destruction of your old life— those are all things I find compelling about the end of Mockingjay but for me the bakery isn’t the most compelling way to explore them.

Not to say I find the concept of the bakery totally uninteresting. I have this fic about Johanna that I’ll probably never finish where the point sort of is that, yeah, her life really isn’t all that much better after the war. It’s been years at this point and she’s still miserable and she doesn’t know how to be a person but by the end she’s trying to figure it out. And towards the end, Peeta tells her that he’s spent years sort of passively, half-heartedly trying to figure out how to inherit the land his family’s bakery was on, only to find out it was never theirs in the first place. They’d been renting it the whole time and he’d never even known as a kid. So he sort of passively, half-heartedly went on another wild goose chase to find the owner and now, finally, after years of writing to various government agencies and being sent in circles and things being barely functional, he’s managed to track down the owner. Now it’s owned by the daughter of the man who owned it when he was a kid because the original owner (who was likely up to some sketchy war crime shit) died during the war and she inherited it (the irony…). He got in contact with her and asked how much it would take for her to sell it and she told him she’s not interested in selling but in light of the situation, in light of the fact that he’d have to build a new building in order to operate a bakery, that she’d cut him a deal— she’d only require 50% of the bakery’s profits as rent instead of the 80% his family used to pay. And of course Johanna is outraged, that’s not right, the owner shouldn’t be allowed to do that, they should do something about it, they should fight back. And Peeta is like. Not interested. He was actually sort of relieved that opening wasn’t very feasible. Getting the answer was a lightbulb moment where he saw that over the years of trying to look into this, he’s built a life that he likes— one where he’s stable, where his loved ones are stable, where he’s cared for and can care for others— and he doesn’t really want to change it drastically by opening a bakery anyway. He just needed an answer, one way or another, before he could get some closure and move on. (And the point of the conversation is Johanna is having her own lightbulb moment that it’s okay to move on, it’s okay to change, it’s not a betrayal of the people and things she’s lost but that’s not my point here!!).

But anyway. That’s obviously not about running the bakery— it’s about the choice to not run one.

Anyway!! Anyway… are you satisfied anon? Is this what you wanted?

Lastly, here is my most important qualm with the bakery headcanon: must Peeta be gainfully employed? Is it not enough for him to be Katniss’s boytoy? Can’t he just paint and garden and bake and hang out with his girlfriend all day? Is that really too much to ask?